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  <row Id="1" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-07T21:56:05.347" Score="36" ViewCount="29930" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had trouble in the past explaining project risk to non-PMs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me the key element I struggle to get people to accept is that a risk is something outside the control of those on the project (so &quot;the programmers miss their estimates&quot; (without giving a specific reason) doesn't count as that's just bad estimating).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how you you define risk and how do you explain it and get buy in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7" LastActivityDate="2018-08-24T09:57:54.497" Title="What's the best definition and explanation of project risk?" Tags="&lt;risk&gt;&lt;definition&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-07T21:56:43.513" Score="15" ViewCount="8851" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the difference between Vision and Scope Document and a Project Charter? I think it is pretty much the same. Isn't it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2017-12-13T10:55:05.057" LastActivityDate="2017-12-13T10:55:05.057" Title="What is the difference between Vision and Scope Document and a Project Charter?" Tags="&lt;project-charter&gt;&lt;vision&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-07T22:08:48.697" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would define risk as any uncertain event that may or may not happen, that will impact your project. (This is pretty much the PMI definition.) This &lt;strong&gt;may mean that risks are within your control.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, on a software development project, one risk might be that the programmers don't finish the project on time. It might not be bad estimates, but it could be something within their control, like an inflexible design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, some people include the positive aspects of risks in the definition (something the rest of us call &quot;opportunities&quot;) -- like your marketing department does an unexpectedly amazing job and you're now deluged with orders you can't handle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T22:08:48.697" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="4" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-07T22:09:40.570" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Risk is any uncertain event that can have an impact on the success of a project.  Schedule slippage is a risk, even if it's caused by bad estimating.  Another example would be a change in requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can help manage risk by using a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_Matrix&quot;&gt;risk matrix&lt;/a&gt;.  By plotting the severity of an event against its likelihood, a risk matrix helps you prioritize which risks to address.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T22:09:40.570" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="5" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2" CreationDate="2011-02-07T22:10:00.383" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to PMI, they are different; the charter is a signed document by the sponsor authorizing the project manager and the team to start working. Vision and scope documents are just vision and scope; they can exist prior to the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T22:10:00.383" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="6" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2" CreationDate="2011-02-07T22:11:48.863" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_charter&quot;&gt;Project Charter document&lt;/a&gt; is different than a Vision and Scope Document in that the Project Charter defines the roles and responsibility of the Project Manager, and outlines the boundaries of his or her authority.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_document&quot;&gt;A Vision and Scope document&lt;/a&gt;, on the other hand, defines the business case for the project in nontechnical language.  It represents a high level overview of requirements, features, and proposed solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T22:11:48.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="7" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-07T22:18:42.957" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I consider three kinds of risks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;errors and omissions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;things that you don't know (including things that you don't know you don't know)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;unstated yet incorred assumptions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first category includes overlooked features, estimation mistakes, and incorrect specifications. There risks are so mundane they're often not considered as risks, but &lt;em&gt;they are still risks&lt;/em&gt; because they may adversely (positive or negative) affect the outcome of the project. Careful tracking of relevant metrics (estimation error, team velocity, et al) and use of self-correcting techniques (wideband delphi estimation, evidence-based scheduling, et al) can help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second category is large and obvious. Research and prototyping are your friend!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third category is sneaky, and potentially devastating. A common example is building a software system for a single platform in one language (e.g. Windows 7 and English are assumed but never specified) only to discover far into the process that you also have to deliver on Mac in Chinese. The way to combat this kind of risk is to state the obvious and question all implications in the requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="40" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T22:18:42.957" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="8" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12" CreationDate="2011-02-07T22:26:03.537" Score="36" ViewCount="3618" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you practice Scrum strictly after its rules or are you going a more pragmatic way, picking out the bits that suit you/your environment best, maybe mixing it up with other methodologies ? In other words, do you bend Scrum to suit your environment or do you change your environment to suit Scrum ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which way you think is the better ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastActivityDate="2020-07-22T00:06:54.083" Title="Strict or pragmatic Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="9" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="73" CreationDate="2011-02-07T22:26:06.870" Score="18" ViewCount="2846" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the PMI process, they include a document called a Risk Register. It contains a list of all the risks -- realized and unrealized -- including some fields like probability and impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For software projects, what kind of fields should we include in a risk register? Mine tend to have:&#xA;- Risk name&#xA;- Risk severity (low/moderate/high/terminal)&#xA;- Risk probability (low/medium/high)&#xA;- Risk state (eg. accepted, monitor, minimized)&#xA;- Risk trigger (how do we know this risk occurred?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What else can you put in there that has value, without creating a huge, bloated documented?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is somewhat intended as a community wiki question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastEditorUserId="38" LastEditDate="2011-02-08T23:31:47.470" LastActivityDate="2015-05-16T15:35:09.137" Title="Information to keep in a risk register" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;templates&gt;&lt;pmi-framework&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="10" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1021" CreationDate="2011-02-07T22:26:07.603" Score="12" ViewCount="1041" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have Remedy-based software that is used for task planning and time tracking. No real project management features are supported, but we need to use it because our budgets are calculated using the software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to introduce an effective set of tools to improve our project management process while keeping it aligned with the &quot;master&quot; planning/tracking software. An idea would be to use something different (e.g. Basecamp or similar) and then implement some integration layer to the DB.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I start? Any advice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="2124" LastEditDate="2011-09-14T06:18:21.020" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T17:44:12.337" Title="What software can I use to complememt our useless company task planning and time tracker tool?" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;process&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-04-02T05:41:01.233" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14" CreationDate="2011-02-07T22:30:59.300" Score="22" ViewCount="20025" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everything is in the title: What is the difference between Scrum and eXtreme Programming? Is it possible to have a simple but explicit explanation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="47" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T18:00:07.643" LastActivityDate="2018-01-25T15:13:23.150" Title="What is the difference between Scrum and XP?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;extreme-programming&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8" CreationDate="2011-02-07T22:32:05.027" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum and Agile are loosely-defined. Every company implements it differently depending on how much they can &quot;tolerate.&quot; I've worked on projects where we don't use sprints, and other projects where we break down stories to hourly items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to implement it is to use whatever practices benefit you, and leave whatever doesn't. While some &quot;puritans&quot; may complain that it's not scrum, reality dictates that unless people get benefit out of it (or see benefit in the process parts of it) they won't want to implement it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T22:32:05.027" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="13" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11" CreationDate="2011-02-07T22:34:08.957" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;XP has some practices which are not required (but are usable) by scrum, such as pair-programming and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_driven_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;test-driven development&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both are similar in that they're agile, iterative processes that require some measure of planning, development, and testing within a single iteration (sprint).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T22:34:08.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="14" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11" CreationDate="2011-02-07T22:40:07.033" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a great definition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Scrum teams typically work in iterations (called sprints) that are&#xA;  from two weeks to one month long. XP&#xA;  teams typically work in iterations&#xA;  that are one or two weeks long.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Scrum teams do not allow changes into their sprints. Once the sprint&#xA;  planning meeting is completed and a&#xA;  commitment made to delivering a set of&#xA;  product backlog items, that set of&#xA;  items remains unchanged through the&#xA;  end of the sprint. XP teams are much&#xA;  more amenable to change within their&#xA;  iterations. As long as the team hasn’t&#xA;  started work on a particular feature,&#xA;  a new feature of equivalent size can&#xA;  be swapped into the XP team’s&#xA;  iteration in exchange for the&#xA;  unstarted feature.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Extreme Programming teams work in a strict priority order. Features&#xA;  to be developed are prioritized by the&#xA;  customer (Scrum’s Product Owner) and&#xA;  the team is required to work on them&#xA;  in that order. By contrast, the Scrum&#xA;  product owner prioritizes the product&#xA;  backlog but the team determines the&#xA;  sequence in which they will develop&#xA;  the backlog items. I’ve never seen a&#xA;  Scrum team not choose to work on the&#xA;  highest-priority item. And a Scrum&#xA;  team will very likely choose to work&#xA;  on the second most important. However,&#xA;  at some point one of the high priority&#xA;  items may not be a good fit for the&#xA;  sprint being planned—maybe a key&#xA;  person who should work on it will be&#xA;  swamped by work on higher priority&#xA;  items. Or maybe it makes sense to work&#xA;  on a slightly lower priority item&#xA;  (let’s say #10 on the product backlog&#xA;  instead of #6) because the team will&#xA;  be working in the code where #10 would&#xA;  be implemented.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Scrum doesn’t prescribe any engineering practices; XP does. I love&#xA;  the XP engineering practices,&#xA;  particularly things like test-driven&#xA;  development, the focus on automated&#xA;  testing, pair programming, simple&#xA;  design, refactoring, and so on.&#xA;  However, I think it’s a mistake to say&#xA;  to the team “you’re self-organizing,&#xA;  we trust you, but you must do these&#xA;  specific engineering practices….” This&#xA;  sends a mixed message to the team that&#xA;  causes confusion. I love the XP&#xA;  practices but don’t like mandating&#xA;  them. I want teams to discover the&#xA;  value on their own.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.mountaingoatsoftware.com/differences-between-scrum-and-extreme-programming&quot;&gt;Differences Between Scrum and Extreme Programming&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T22:40:07.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="15" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="41" CreationDate="2011-02-07T22:41:38.260" Score="14" ViewCount="1939" Body="&lt;p&gt;When starting a new PMO role in a small organization, what would be the 5 most important steps to take so that people understand the merit of having a PMO, in addition to bringing real and short term value to the organization, as well as in addition to the long term value, of course?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="44" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-05-06T06:25:35.900" LastActivityDate="2011-05-14T07:19:22.777" Title="What are the first steps to take as a new PMO?" Tags="&lt;pmo&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20" CreationDate="2011-02-07T22:43:04.940" Score="5" ViewCount="698" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since managing projects, I've never figured out the utility of this tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We must do it before working, but for me, it's impossible to fill it (even a little) before the end of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I ship my report, clients seems to be displeased if the Gantt diagram is absent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I have some help with this? How to properly manage this tool, dealing with clients about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="47" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-03-26T13:06:49.137" LastActivityDate="2015-03-27T13:31:57.880" Title="When are Gantt diagrams useful?" Tags="&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="53" CreationDate="2011-02-07T22:46:00.010" Score="15" ViewCount="10957" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a related question to: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1/whats-the-best-definition-and-explanation-of-project-risk&quot;&gt;What's the best definition and explanation of project risk?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the most useful way of measuring risk? I've been thought it's best to measure it in additional monetary cost to project budget. By writing down all 'risk events' and their related probabilities and incurred costs, we can calculate the 'risk value' of a project at any given moment in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This method seems a bit unintuitive to me though (does not really go well with the word 'risk'). I'd like to know what other methods of measuring risks are there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="42" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-07-01T07:29:47.650" Title="How do you measure risk?" Tags="&lt;risk&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="18" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9" CreationDate="2011-02-07T22:46:45.983" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to what you have I'd include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What stage(s) in the project the event is likely to occur&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Impacts on other parts of the project (or other projects)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T22:46:45.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="19" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-07T22:48:20.173" Score="40" ViewCount="11983" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you could recommend a single book that made you a better PM, which one would it be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="44" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-27T04:41:09.513" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T17:52:59.850" Title="What is the Project Management book that left the most impact on you?" Tags="&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="40" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="75" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:49:47.017" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="20" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16" CreationDate="2011-02-07T22:51:29.707" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Gannt chart is a very useful planning tool. It is a great way to see a project in its entirety and see when things will most likely be done and what deadlines you need to hit in order to get to the next milestone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are talking about experiencing is accountability, where a client wants to know what you have done and at what stages. If you work out why you client is requesting a Gantt chart this may help you in your communications with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Clarity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of the biggest benefits of a Gantt&#xA;  chart is the tool's ability to boil&#xA;  down multiple tasks and timelines into&#xA;  a single document. Stakeholders&#xA;  throughout an organization can easily&#xA;  understand where teams are in a&#xA;  process while grasping the ways in&#xA;  which independent elements come&#xA;  together toward project completion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Communication&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Teams can use Gantt charts to replace&#xA;  meetings and enhance other status&#xA;  updates. Simply clarifying chart&#xA;  positions offers an easy, visual&#xA;  method to help team members understand&#xA;  task progress. To see other ways to&#xA;  compile status information, check out&#xA;  these series of articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Motivation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some teams or team members become more&#xA;  effective when faced with a form of&#xA;  external motivation. Gantt charts&#xA;  offer teams the ability to focus work&#xA;  at the front of a task timeline, or at&#xA;  the tail end of a chart segment. Both&#xA;  types of team members can find Gantt&#xA;  charts meaningful as they plug their&#xA;  own work habits into the overall&#xA;  project schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Coordination&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sample Gantt Chart in ExcelFor project&#xA;  managers and resource schedulers, the&#xA;  benefits of a Gantt chart include the&#xA;  ability to sequence events and reduce&#xA;  the potential for overburdening team&#xA;  members. Some project managers even&#xA;  use combinations of charts to break&#xA;  down projects into more manageable&#xA;  sets of tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Creativity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sometimes, a lack of time or resources&#xA;  forces project managers and teams to&#xA;  find creative solutions. Seeing how&#xA;  individual tasks intertwine on Gantt&#xA;  charts often encourages new&#xA;  partnerships and collaborations that&#xA;  might not have evolved under&#xA;  traditional task assignment systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Time Management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most managers regard scheduling as one&#xA;  of the major benefits of Gantt charts&#xA;  in a creative environment. Helping&#xA;  teams understand the overall impact of&#xA;  project delays can foster stronger&#xA;  collaboration while encouraging better&#xA;  task organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Flexibility&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whether you use Excel to generate&#xA;  Gantt charts or you load tasks into a&#xA;  more precise chart generator, the&#xA;  ability to issue new charts as your&#xA;  project evolves lets you react to&#xA;  unexpected changes in project scope or&#xA;  timeline. While revising your project&#xA;  schedule too frequently can eliminate&#xA;  some of the other benefits of Gantt&#xA;  charts, offering a realistic view of a&#xA;  project can help team members recover&#xA;  from setbacks or adjust to other&#xA;  changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Manageability&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For project managers handling complex&#xA;  assignments, like software publishing&#xA;  or event planning, the benefits of&#xA;  Gantt charts include externalizing&#xA;  assignments. By visualizing all of the&#xA;  pieces of a project puzzle, managers&#xA;  can make more focused, effective&#xA;  decisions about resources and&#xA;  timetables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Efficiency&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another one of the benefits of Gantt&#xA;  charts is the ability for teams&#xA;  members to leverage each other’s&#xA;  deadlines for maximum efficiency. For&#xA;  instance, while one team member waits&#xA;  on the outcome of three other tasks&#xA;  before starting a crucial piece of the&#xA;  assignment, he or she can perform&#xA;  other project tasks. Visualizing&#xA;  resource usage during projects allows&#xA;  managers to make better use of people,&#xA;  places, and things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Accountability&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When project teams face major&#xA;  organizational change, documenting&#xA;  effort and outcomes becomes crucial to&#xA;  career success. Using Gantt charts&#xA;  during critical projects allows both&#xA;  project managers and participants to&#xA;  track team progress, highlighting both&#xA;  big wins and major failures. During&#xA;  professional review periods, team&#xA;  members who frequently exceed&#xA;  expectations can leverage this&#xA;  documentation into larger raises or&#xA;  bonuses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brighthub.com/office/project-management/articles/2434.aspx#ixzz1DJfOe3FL&quot;&gt;Top Ten Benefits of a Gantt Chart&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2011-02-07T22:56:38.113" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T22:56:38.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="21" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-02-07T22:52:37.740" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pragprog.com/titles/rdbcd/behind-closed-doors&quot;&gt;Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;-- by Johanna Rothman and Esther Derby&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pragprog.com/titles/pad/practices-of-an-agile-developer&quot;&gt;Practices of an Agile Developer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;-- by Venkat Subramaniam and Andy Hunt&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;And for me, the best of all:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pragprog.com/titles/prj/ship-it&quot;&gt;Ship It!: A Practical Guide to Successful Software Projects&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;-- by Jared Richardson, Will Gwaltney, Jr&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I love &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pragprog.com/&quot;&gt;The Pragmatic Bookshelf&lt;/a&gt;, they publish great sources of informations and inspirations !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="47" LastEditorUserId="47" LastEditDate="2011-02-07T22:57:55.507" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T22:57:55.507" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:49:47.017" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="22" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16" CreationDate="2011-02-07T22:56:03.167" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Gantt chart shows what tasks can be performed at the same time and what tasks must be done in sequence.  If you're having trouble accurately creating a Gantt chart before the project is nearly complete, then you're probably not spending enough time breaking down what tasks need to be done and estimating how long each will take.  Once those steps are done thoroughly, it's easier to spot the dependencies between tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T22:56:03.167" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="23" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-02-07T22:57:56.770" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0201835959&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Mythical Man-Month&lt;/a&gt; by Fred Brooks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coming from a software development background, this was the first book I read that was written from a project management perspective.  A lot of the lessons discussed are deeply ingrained in the software industry and are considered common knowledge, if not common sense.  Some of the mistakes pointed out by Brooks are still being made today, so it appears (unfortunately) that the lessons are timeless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brooks' classic essay &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~cah/G51ISS/Documents/NoSilverBullet.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;No Silver Bullet&lt;/a&gt; is included in the MMM 20th anniversary edition that I have, but you can also read it at the link provided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastEditorUserId="4301" LastEditDate="2012-09-23T14:37:08.583" LastActivityDate="2012-09-23T14:37:08.583" CommentCount="4" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:49:47.017" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="33" CreationDate="2011-02-07T23:00:51.643" Score="7" ViewCount="3607" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often is recommended to have your goals SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound). Is this recommendation a good one? Why I should use SMART-goals? What is the benefit of them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="57" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-05-15T02:34:39.783" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T02:34:39.783" Title="What makes SMART-goals useful?" Tags="&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;&lt;goals&gt;&lt;definition-of-done&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="25" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="34" CreationDate="2011-02-07T23:17:00.647" Score="101" ViewCount="39839" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sooner or later we come across a task in our project, with which we are totally unfamiliar ('we' as in PM, but also possibly the staff assigned to do this particular task). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can we estimate amount of time/work/resources needed to complete such a task? What margins of error should we assume?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="42" LastActivityDate="2020-05-08T20:08:56.747" Title="How to estimate amount of work/man hours for an unfamiliar task?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="66" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="26" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17" CreationDate="2011-02-07T23:22:33.987" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only risk I care is &quot;What do I risk if not doing it?&quot;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's pretty useful: I work on a lot of risky project, and even if they fails (it's rare), I never lose the whole thing: I just reorient the resources and recycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It cause a lack of efficiency day by day, but the risk of &quot;doing&quot; disappears, and I have done in two years most that my three predecessor who prefere only doing choices they can predict the outcome. So it's easy for them to evaluate, and they work very quickly, but they do very few and spend a great deal with evaluating risk and other thing they cannot say without trying out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just try, it's less risky ^^&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="47" LastEditorUserId="47" LastEditDate="2011-07-01T07:29:47.650" LastActivityDate="2011-07-01T07:29:47.650" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24" CreationDate="2011-02-07T23:27:36.773" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sticking with the SMART discipline to the point of where everyone habitually, immediately thinks in terms in SMARTifying all goals is what makes SMART goals &lt;strong&gt;useful&lt;/strong&gt; ... SMART is useful when no one has to &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; about being SMART, when you can trust others to be SMART without being reminded ... and you can't build discipline by messing with the formula, it is never &lt;em&gt;useful&lt;/em&gt; to replace &quot;Attainable&quot; with &quot;Adjustable.&quot;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T23:27:36.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="28" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25" CreationDate="2011-02-07T23:32:13.650" Score="56" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way of coming up with a rough estimate is to talk to someone who does have experience with the type of task you're facing.  (The folks at Home Depot don't know me and they've never been in my basement, but they're surprisingly good at estimating how long it will take me to paint it, if I give them just a little bit of information.)  If no one in your organization has any experience, you might need to hire a consultant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The margin of error is going to depend on your best-case and worst-case estimates.  The text we're using in my Systems Analysis course gives the following formula (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-point_estimation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Three-point estimation&lt;/a&gt;) for calculating most likely duration:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;D = ((1 * OD) + (4 * ED) + (1 * PD)) / 6&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;OD = Optimistic Duration  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ED = Expected Duration (your best guess)  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PD = Pessimistic Duration  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;D = Most likely duration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0073052337&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Systems Analysis and Design Methods&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The formula is simply a weighted average of your own estimates, so it's really only good for turning the range [worst case - best case] into a single numerical estimate.  If your input estimates are only guesses then the output will be no better.  The important thing to take away from the formula is that your margin of error can be very wide depending on your PD and OD values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastEditorUserId="32641" LastEditDate="2018-07-01T12:07:38.450" LastActivityDate="2018-07-01T12:07:38.450" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="29" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="45" CreationDate="2011-02-07T23:37:56.773" Score="19" ViewCount="3468" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most clients understand a fixed price contract to be a fix of scope, budget and delivery date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These would appear on the surface to be against the principals of Agile. So should Agile be recommended against in this situation or are there steps that can be taken to make Agile work in this scenario?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastActivityDate="2013-07-29T06:24:02.907" Title="Is it possible to use Agile methodologies in a fixed price contract?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="30" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-07T23:42:31.593" Score="22" ViewCount="2978" Body="&lt;p&gt;Back before agile was everywhere, having a PM on all but the smaller projects was considered essential. Now, only the largest projects have people assigned to just in a PM capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess I have two parts to this question - &#xA;What kinds of projects still require Project Managers?&#xA;What can projects managers do to add value in an agile world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-27T07:31:34.597" LastActivityDate="2017-07-30T11:00:52.020" Title="What role is there for a PM on an Agile project?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;roles&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="31" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-02-07T23:53:32.893" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Chain_%28novel%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Critical Chain&lt;/a&gt; by Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt had a huge impact on me.  &lt;em&gt;This book had even &lt;strong&gt;more&lt;/strong&gt; of an impact after I learned that many academics do not care for the book and I began to understand why many sharp engineers have been &lt;strong&gt;trained&lt;/strong&gt; to be terrible project managers who get lost in multi-tasking their way through project meetings and managing their open issues decks as if all issues were created equally.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Chain_%28novel%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Critical Chain&lt;/a&gt; is about applying the Theory of Constraints to project management, staying on task, focusing on what &lt;strong&gt;needs&lt;/strong&gt; to be done, paying attention to the key constaints (e.g. overburdened resources) that threaten to cause problems for tasks on the critical path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2011-02-07T23:53:32.893" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:49:47.017" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="32" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8" CreationDate="2011-02-08T00:10:49.670" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Both&lt;/strong&gt; ... since schedule, budget and requirements of the project come first, not the methodology, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Pragmatic Scrum wins&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; in terms of what you use at that time, on that project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Strict Scrum is still important, however, because you need an &quot;ideal&quot; ... a crystal clear idea of exactly how you would be doing things if time, money and requirements were flexible and you only had to worry about sticking to strict scrum methodology.  &quot;Knowing better&quot; is the most important foundation skill necessary for making optimal, pragmatic adjustments to strict Scrum in order to succeed in the face of actual scheduling, budgetary and specification constraints of the project.  &lt;strong&gt;Strict Scrum informs Pragmatic Scrum; Pragmatic Scrum is what you use, but it's not random or completely ad hoc.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be extremely careful about getting attached to &quot;Strict Scrum&quot; ... hopefully, you mean &quot;evolving ideal&quot; or &quot;evolving state-of-the-art&quot;... there might be different ideals ... it is important to understand different approaches, different philosophies -- if you don't understand a different philosophy that others are using successful, there is a problem with your approach to learning ... it doesn't mean that way is better than yours, it means that you are dufus with a brick for a brain who doesn't want to bother to learn how other people think, doesn't want to advance.  A lot of &quot;strict&quot; fundamentalists should either be put in prison or a nursing home -- they are dangerous because of their rigidity.  Approach this material as a martial arts master; learn from many different masters; never stop learning ... Scrum is a part of an artform ... it is continually being developed; it's  riff that is constantly being improvised ... it's not a rock that crystalized and can't be changed &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2011-02-20T23:39:24.617" LastActivityDate="2011-02-20T23:39:24.617" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="33" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24" CreationDate="2011-02-08T00:24:04.210" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the benefits of SMART goals is that it is possible to measure that they are done. Ensuring that they are realistic also ensures that the goals can be achieved. Continually making unachievable goals such as &quot;I want this program completed in 4 weeks&quot; means that you are training your workers to ignore your goals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I want to lose weight&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sort of resolution is made every January 1. And is useless as it doesn't say how much weight. Adding &quot;measurable&quot; to the goal would be &quot;I want to lose 10 pounds.&quot; This now becomes a goal that can be measured: you lose 10 pounds or not. Adding a time frame of 3 months, this becomes &quot;I want to lose 10 pounds by the end of March&quot; which is a reasonable goal. In contrast, &quot;I want to lose 10 pounds by sundown&quot; is unrealistic, even though it has a time frame. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T00:24:04.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="34" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25" CreationDate="2011-02-08T00:43:35.403" Score="67" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't place too much confidence on your first guess just because you've used a sophisticated formula to derive your estimate.&lt;/strong&gt;   Do your best, move on, plan to revise your estimate, don't let bad estimates linger and destroy the discipline of your project schedule ... errors in time estimates are likely to be lognormally distributed... use a method that incorporates an optimistic guess, a pessimistic guess and heavily weights your best guess.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Estimate, test, check, then &lt;strong&gt;revise and update&lt;/strong&gt; your project schedule.&lt;/em&gt;  The third or fourth revision of the estimates is usually about as accurate as you can hope for; your second estimate is far better than your first guess ... if possible, try to get a measure from an early trial of a similar or analogous task ... revise the estimate and revise your plan as soon as better data becomes available.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your first estimate was too conservative, don't allow slack time to corrupt completion of succeeding tasks.  If your first estimate was overly optimistic, make your adjustments EARLY and let your stakeholders and customers know. &lt;strong&gt;It's more important to be good at following up, to check your estimates and to competently communicate updates than it is to be a develop skill as an estimator of unfamiliar tasks.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T00:43:35.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="35" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="30" CreationDate="2011-02-08T00:55:44.477" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am sure you have heard the popular saying: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Processes do not fail, People do&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have always believe that project managers are needed when you have an environment were &quot;processes&quot; are failing too much.  In agile you have many iterations, called sprints, that tackle a list of enhancements or defects.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first place where I see PMs adding value are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is important to make sure you have the right process in place to record, track, prioritize the list of features that you are going to work on your next sprint.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also, PMs help minimize the interruptions to developers, unless you have a Business analyst which they end up doing part of the PMs job or the other way around.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;PMs can also add value by making sure that developer are not over-committing and under-delivering which is a very common issue in inexperienced developers.  Tangent: Developers are architects at heart, they want to solve problems, don't expect them to say no very often.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said all that.  It is important to remember that PMs are expensive.  You need to make sure that your firm is able to support them. Over the long run, you can see a PM's value within the first 90 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps you clarify the questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastEditorUserId="70" LastEditDate="2011-02-08T12:57:53.513" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T12:57:53.513" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="36" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="42" CreationDate="2011-02-08T01:00:44.683" Score="25" ViewCount="3710" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is PMP certification a requirement for a successful career in Project Management? At which point would it be appropriate for a newly starting project manager to plan to include PMP certification?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="71" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-16T17:51:59.323" LastActivityDate="2015-07-24T11:39:19.227" Title="Is PMP certification an appropriate career goal for someone about to start a career in project management?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;career&gt;&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="37" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29" CreationDate="2011-02-08T01:05:27.590" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer to your question is, Yes! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer you are looking for is below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to get my point across I will minimize Fixed Price Contract and Agile definitions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my own words, Agile methodology is nothing more than having short burst of full development cycles to ease the anxiety of the customer.  Sorry that I am minimizing such a great platform in these words, but in essence, the reason it exists, is because with previous methodologies the customer was surprised too often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, a fixed price contract is the contract that has a set scope, and the vendor has 100% the Risk (in most cases) of making sure he estimates before signing the contract with the buyer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can &quot;easily&quot; (nothing is easy) break the scope of the FPC in 1-n sprints, and use agile to work through it.  Having a very minimal product always ready to be presented to the customer.  This will make Agile and FPC work together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will go a step more to say, I have never done this myself, but I think this combination could be a winner, for the vendor to identify risk in his side early on, so that he can minimize any loss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks, Geo&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastEditorUserId="3455" LastEditDate="2012-03-14T19:49:26.143" LastActivityDate="2012-03-14T19:49:26.143" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="38" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="36" CreationDate="2011-02-08T01:10:57.430" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMP is like any other certification.  They just proof that you know x,y,z concepts in a specific context.  Let me ask a rhetoric question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Will you trust a CPA that just got his&#xA;  certification and just started in&#xA;  accounting more than a CPA that just&#xA;  got his certification and has 10 years&#xA;  of experience in accounting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to be qualified to get the PMP you need certain requirements, if you meet these requirements then you probably are not starting in your PM career.  I always tell my teams, don't get hangup in titles and all the attributes after the name.  Common sense is the less common of all senses.  Try to think and you will get ahead.  Disclaimer, I have myself certifications and all these attribute after the name, but I don't think they mean that I can do a better job than one that don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T01:10:57.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="39" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15" CreationDate="2011-02-08T01:19:39.860" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the position is already a position and not new position then there is no need to &quot;prove&quot; that there is merit in having a PMO position as management already are aware that a position is needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best ways to provide value are to follow normal PM methods. This depends on the organization and/or company structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T01:19:39.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="40" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10" CreationDate="2011-02-08T01:26:05.887" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I said before, this is a good question.  I struggle through this in every company that contracts me.  It does not matter the size of the company this will always exist.  To address your question, the short answer is that you need to use politics. Yes, I know you were not looking for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The first thing you need to do is silently get all the &lt;strong&gt;main pain points&lt;/strong&gt;. Try to avoid emotions in the situation.  Remember no one cares that you spent your weekend getting a report ready, but they do care that the same report will take only 20 minutes, and it will be at the fingertips of executives.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You need to plan your tactic and strategy. No tool will make it, if you don't have a process in mind or in paper.  Tools are useless if you don't have a process that go with it. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;After you gave enough thought to your plan and strategy, then get buy-in.  Tell a few co-workers about your plan over lunch and see their re-action.  Be appreciative of feedback but remember to support your plan (that is a fine balance).  Incorporate any feedback that will get the support of a leader in your team. Then go for your boss.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest is to enjoy the view, after your company is working more effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this works. Geo&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T01:26:05.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="41" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15" CreationDate="2011-02-08T01:32:59.687" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Kieran.  Don't focus on proving anything.  There is too much of that everywhere and you don't want to be part of it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get regular feedback from all the Project Managers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure you have detailed metrics of projects, which will let you make decisions in the future.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consolidate.  If you have people going to 3 places to place the same information, try to make sure you consolidate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Standardize.  If your organization has two PMs with two different status reports, then help them by standardizing documentation.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMO is a great opportunity. Make sure you enjoy it, it will help you grow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-05-14T07:19:22.777" LastActivityDate="2011-05-14T07:19:22.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="42" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="36" CreationDate="2011-02-08T02:06:16.023" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agree with Geo.  Just to amplify a bit:  the PMP has some prerequisites that effectively shut out anyone who is a new project manager.  From the PMP &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/CareerDevelopment/Pages/AboutCredentialsPMP.aspx&quot;&gt;About Credentials&lt;/a&gt; page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To apply for the PMP, you need to have either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A four-year degree (bachelor’s or the global equivalent) and at least three years of project management experience, with 4,500 hours leading and directing projects and 35 hours of project management education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;OR&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;A secondary diploma (high school or the global equivalent) with at least five years of project management experience, with 7,500 hours leading and directing projects and 35 hours of project management education.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A newly starting out PM won't be going after a PMP certification for several years at least.  They recommend trying the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/en/Certification/Certified-Associate-in-Project-Management-CAPM.aspx&quot;&gt;CAPM&lt;/a&gt; if you don't meet the PMP requirements.  Again from their site:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To apply for the CAPM, you need to have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A secondary diploma (high school or the global equivalent)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;AND&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;At least 1,500 hours experience OR 23 hours of project management education.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this said, I strongly agree with Geo - don't get too hung up on the certification.  The PMP is really intended for professional PM's to validate their experience with an internationally recognized credential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think a credential of any type (PMP, ITIL, PRINCE) is most valuable to an experienced PM who may be worrying about weakness in their industry, is already out of work, or is interested in moving to a different industry - say from bio tech to energy.  The certification is another tool a prospective employer can use to evaluate the PM.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T02:06:16.023" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="43" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="428" CreationDate="2011-02-08T02:16:59.260" Score="5" ViewCount="700" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Don't go answer the question before reading below&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many companies follow a very distinct business specific project management approach.  I am sure this is true for mid and big companies across the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since most of the information is spread through the different departments, then, in matter of a few years you end up with one or many home grown project management applications to track different things.  To be clear, I am thinking of the PMI factors that everyone tracks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Portfolios&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Programs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;budgets&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;forecasts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I am interested in getting a good list of PMI preferred Web Applications that will allow companies to track the things above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for taking the time in reading the post and giving your opinions below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Geo&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T20:36:57.563" Title="What is the preferred PMI framework friendly - Web Application for Project Managers?" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;pmi&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ClosedDate="2012-10-06T02:24:51.693" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:50:18.827" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="44" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="65" CreationDate="2011-02-08T02:25:48.923" Score="13" ViewCount="1423" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most projects you have some sort of lessons learned session.  These sessions are both needed and painful to go through.  For experience Project Managers, I am curious to know if  you find yourself with a problem recurring over and over in different projects.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will like to get a list of common problems.  From this post we can get a list of questions on how to solve this common problems.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-20T14:53:15.863" LastActivityDate="2019-01-20T15:10:02.103" Title="What are the most common problems that you find in your lessons learned sessions?" Tags="&lt;post-mortem&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:51:27.937" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="45" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29" CreationDate="2011-02-08T02:28:32.873" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is possible to use Agile for Fixed Price projects.  However, I find it extremely rare that when you show the results of an iteration / sprint to your customer that they don't add or change &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt;.  It is these opportunities that allow you to then re-negotiate the scope or delivery date in order to accommodate their changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were allowed to go off in and build in a vacuum and then just hand off a working project with no changes from your customer you would be the envy of the software development industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T02:28:32.873" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="46" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25" CreationDate="2011-02-08T02:30:05.287" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;An old often overlooked technique is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wideband_delphi&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wide-band Delphi estimating&lt;/a&gt; technique.  It's a technique where a group of experts arrive at a consensus decision iteratively.  It has more or less be resurrected by the Agile development community as '&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.planningpoker.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;planning poker&lt;/a&gt;'. In a nutshell, the steps (again from Wikipedia) are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coordinator presents each expert with a specification and an estimation form.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coordinator calls a group meeting in which the experts discuss estimation issues with the coordinator and each other.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Experts fill out forms anonymously.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coordinator prepares and distributes a summary of the estimates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coordinator calls a group meeting, specifically focusing on having the experts discuss points where their estimates vary widely&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Experts fill out forms, again anonymously, and steps 4 to 6 are iterated for as many rounds as appropriate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This only helps define consensus, not accuracy.  If no one on the team has a clue, then you will still be in trouble.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/25/how-to-estimate-amount-of-work-man-hours-for-an-unfamiliar-task/34#34&quot;&gt;markbruns advice&lt;/a&gt; still applies.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not sure what industry you are in, but in &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0138221227&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Software Engineering Economics&lt;/a&gt;, I think Boehm has a graph that conceptually tries to capture the uncertainty - bottom line, figure +/- 100% to 150% during the earliest phases of a project, the farther you are into the project, the less error you can assume.  This graph described the total estimate error, not the error in a single task, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have many tasks with this kind of uncertaintly basked in, or you don't know how many tasks you may have to perform, you may find it helpful to resort to a parametric estimating method (a ''top-down'' approach) as opposed to the task oriented, ''bottoms-up'' approach.  Examples are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COCOMO&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;COCOMO&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putnam_model&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Putnam model (SLIM)&lt;/a&gt;.  The learning curve in using these tools may be a factor, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;See also:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0138221227&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Software-Engineering-Economics-Barry-Boehm/dp/0138221227&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0137025769&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Software-Cost-Estimation-COCOMO-paperback/dp/0137025769&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:29.460" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T02:30:05.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="47" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11" CreationDate="2011-02-08T02:34:03.550" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;XP is a software development methodology that encompasses the entire lifecycle of a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is a project management methodology that explicitly says nothing about &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; a software project gets done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T02:34:03.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="48" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="60" CreationDate="2011-02-08T03:12:37.897" Score="6" ViewCount="197" Body="&lt;p&gt;After &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/25/how-to-estimate-amount-of-work-man-hours-for-an-unfamiliar-task&quot;&gt;estimating the man hours/work for an unfamiliar task&lt;/a&gt;, how would I go about gauging and reporting on progress?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="71" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2020-05-25T15:40:14.027" Title="What is(are) the standard method(s) for gauging progress for a task that the PM isn't familiar with?" Tags="&lt;progress-report&gt;&lt;progress-monitor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="49" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="117" CreationDate="2011-02-08T03:16:40.233" Score="4" ViewCount="1131" Body="&lt;p&gt;When managing a complex project (large enough for significant daily status updates), with a large team (in the 10's of team members), which tools would you recommend for use to draft the project schedule, update it with the progress of various members/components, and for reporting? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="71" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-27T05:02:38.927" LastActivityDate="2012-07-27T05:02:38.927" Title="Which tools would you recommend for use when drafting, monitoring and reporting on a project schedule?" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-07-27T05:03:14.433" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:50:34.783" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="50" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="58" CreationDate="2011-02-08T03:24:10.260" Score="7" ViewCount="1281" Body="&lt;p&gt;Under which conditions is it acceptable to push my team to do overtime work? Once I have pushed my team to do overtime work, how do I factor the added risks and costs associated with the push into my project plan?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="71" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T08:15:32.113" Title="When is overtime an appropriate use of resources, and how do I account for it?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;progress-report&gt;&lt;progress-monitor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="51" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-02-08T03:24:40.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Picking only one would be hard.  If I had to rank them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0201835959&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Mythical Man-Month&lt;/a&gt;. Fred Brooks. This is the only book I would say should be required reading for any PM of a software project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0201699478&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Crystal Clear: A Human-Powered Methodology for Small Teams&lt;/a&gt;. Alistair Cockburn - showed me how lightweight an agile project could be and made me think about 'softer' PM skills.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0321186125&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Balancing Agility and Discipline: A Guide for the Perplexed&lt;/a&gt;. Boehm &amp;amp; Turner.  This book has helped me many times communicate to management the complex balance between &lt;em&gt;Agile&lt;/em&gt; and (most often) &lt;em&gt;CMMI&lt;/em&gt; - it also has margin notes for time pressed executives!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0932633552&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Five Core Metrics: The Intelligence Behind Successful Software Management&lt;/a&gt;. Putnam &amp;amp; Meyers - this got me re-thinking my use of COCOMO and my approach to cost estimation in general.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0670879835&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace&lt;/a&gt;. Gordon MacKenzie.  This is not a PM book, per se, but rather can help you as a PM tap into the creativity latent in you and your project team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also must say that even though the &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/020161622X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pragmatic Programmer&lt;/a&gt; is not a PM book, it drastically affected the way I managed software projects.  It's also the book I most often recommend to programmers to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastEditorUserId="76" LastEditDate="2011-02-08T03:33:20.287" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T03:33:20.287" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:49:47.017" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="52" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17" CreationDate="2011-02-08T03:28:02.617" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love your questions since I struggle through measuring risk all the time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I try not to use book definitions but I think to help you I will need to.  A risk is defined in PMBOK as &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, has an effect on at least one project objective&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the way that I am currently measuring my risk is by categorizing them how they primarily impact the project.  Either Scope, Cost or Time and then I measure the possible impact of that value. Now in reality, you could easily make a $$$ amount from any of these 3 aspects, so if you want to simplify the equation, you just covert the scope risk into a dollar amount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Geo&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T03:28:02.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="53" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17" CreationDate="2011-02-08T04:08:24.840" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;On my projects all risk boil down to &lt;em&gt;What will it cost if the risk event happens?&lt;/em&gt;  For that reason, I try to express all risk in terms of cost.  Everything ultimately costs money.  Time costs money, so schedule slips can be converted into cash equivalents.  Once everything is in the same units, you can rank your risk exposure objectively.  I like to compare them all in terms of constant expected loss. The expected loss is the total likelihood of the event occurring (Event Probability times Impact Probability) times the total loss.  A graph of these values allows you to see that risk 4 and risk 2 in the example have nearly equivalent risk exposure even though risk 4's total loss is $150,000 and risk 2 has an estimated total loss of $750,000 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/19Sgr.png&quot; alt=&quot;Risk Map&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have an &lt;a href=&quot;http://sites.google.com/site/daveparillo/downloads/superuser/RiskExample.xls?attredirects=0&amp;amp;d=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;excel spreadsheet that demonstrates the idea&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T04:08:24.840" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="54" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9" CreationDate="2011-02-08T04:24:48.583" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't keep a 'register', I keep a risk database that I can generate a risk list from, if I want a list.  The problem with a single excel spreadsheet style of risk register, which is the type you encounter frequently on the web is that it is easy to brainstorm &amp;amp; list a bunch of risks, but hard to effectively manage them.  I think it's important to have the risk event and event action plan as well as the risk impacts and the impact action plans.  These don't have to become a huge, bloated document, but they definitely won't fit into tidy spreadsheet columns either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1563272652&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Proactive Risk Management: Controlling Uncertainty in Product Development&lt;/a&gt; by Smith and Merritt has some great examples of how to organize your risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T04:24:48.583" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="55" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-08T04:35:08.607" Score="71" ViewCount="23682" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider a software project involving a bunch of developers of mixed experience.  The PM has the delivery responsibility for the project, but undertakes this through the team members. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the developers give an estimate for a technical task, how important it is for the PM to know what is being told to decide if is reasonable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the developers specify a technical impediment, how much involved should the PM be to resolve it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope you get the drift of the question.  Obviously there is no right or wrong answer, just thoughts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="84" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2011-02-14T13:44:20.557" LastActivityDate="2018-05-11T12:02:33.207" Title="How technical should a Project Manager be?" Tags="&lt;skills&gt;&lt;technical-leader&gt;" AnswerCount="22" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="34" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="56" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="50" CreationDate="2011-02-08T04:44:10.557" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before pushing for overtime, it's important to determine if the success of the goal is really reachable.  If the probability of success is low, then overtime may just unnecessarily waste time, energy, and resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If probability is too low, you'll have to answer the question yourself of whether or not it's acceptable to push for overtime.  If the reward is great, then by all means, push.  But if the reward isn't great, then the opportunity costs may prove to be more beneficial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for factoring the added risks and costs into the project plan, I'm not sure how to answer that part without more specific information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T04:44:10.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="57" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="55" CreationDate="2011-02-08T04:45:05.773" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had good managers that were non-technical, and ones whose technical skills were dated.  It's certainly nice to have first hand knowledge yourself about the tasks you're assigning to others, but remember that you're managing a &lt;em&gt;team&lt;/em&gt;.  You should have several people in your group that you can run estimates by for feedback on how reasonable they are.  You might also be able to compare notes with other managers in your organization.  In short, it definitely helps to have a technical background, but I don't think it's 100% necessary if you have a good group and your other skills are there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T04:45:05.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="58" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="50" CreationDate="2011-02-08T05:01:28.600" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Overtime happens. I am a salaried employee and don't get overtime pay.  I would not advocate pushing your team into overtime, routinely but even if you have defined reasonable goals, you may find that you have to work some overtime.  If your team is working overtime frequently, the project schedule is probably unrealistic and you as the PM need to revisit that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Account for every hour worked.  Use your standard timekeeping practices.  Don't think you'll be able to keep track of &quot;normal&quot; work in your timekeeping system and OT somewhere else.  If you don't know how much work went into today's project, eventually you will have no idea what it actually costs your team to produce anything.  In small companies expect push-back from finance.  Accounting for all the hours, but not charging for them all make finance's job more difficult because employees who work overtime are going to have to be billed at a lower hourly rate when it's time to bill the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are constantly pushing for overtime, you are probably going to impact team morale.  This will impact productivity, but I don't know how you could quantify that number.  Excessive obligated overtime becomes a weight that will eventually crush your team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you let this spiral out of control and you someday decide to try to charge you customer the true cost of getting things done, you'll find they balk at the new price. What is the risk that you might fail to win future contracts unless you continue to bake-in an artificially low price based on (ever increasing) uncompensated overtime rates?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you do need to push a team into overtime, throw a party when you're done.  If everyone worked hard &amp;amp; you got your product out the door, then a party is a good way to let everyone know they were an important part of &quot;making it happen&quot; and the company values their contribution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you need to plan for recurring overtime, you should integrate it into your formal reward system.  I would avoid cash rewards.  There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2006/10/31/nine-things-developers-want-more-than-money/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;things programmers want more than money&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are running a 'scrum-like' team, then the team itself made a commitment to a certain amount of work.  The team should try to get it done, and in my experience most teams that have themselves committed to a bunch of work will go to great lengths to honor the commitment. Then they use that as a lesson-learned for the next phase &amp;amp; they (hopefully) don't commit to so much work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T05:01:28.600" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="59" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="55" CreationDate="2011-02-08T05:06:42.677" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel that having technical skills gives me an advantage of being able to communicate about the project with the members of the team.  It's easier to bounce ideas back and forth if there is programming experience.  Many times have I suggested a solution or architectural pattern and many times have I been a sounding board for engineers looking for a solution themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, the time estimates are typically under-estimated, and my experience has helped me tell the difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the project manager is responsible for the overall success of the project, he/she should get as involved as necessary to see the project through.  There are times where it's important to dig into the code to either help get things started, choose the right technologies, deploy a solution to a client, or to understand the project from a technical standpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some might argue that choosing the right technologies borders on the &quot;how&quot; part of the project and not the &quot;what&quot;, but this is a big decision that has a profound impact on the project success, and PM's should be involved in this decision and then leave implementation details to the development team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T05:06:42.677" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="60" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="48" CreationDate="2011-02-08T05:14:05.797" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tend to be an &quot;all or nothing type&quot; when it comes to reporting status.  IMHO status reports (often based on gantt charts) that contain tasks like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Task           |  Duration   | % Complete&#xA;Build Widget   |  2 months   | 25%&#xA;Build Gadget   |  3 months   | 50%&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;are mostly worthless.  If building a widget takes two months and you absolutely positively can't break this up into discrete tasks because it's so opaque, then I would say for starters you can add that to your risk list, because your team is working on tasks they probably don't understand.  That said, how to report this?  Build widget is 0% complete until it's delivered.  Then it's 100% complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People are naturally optimistic. If you try to guess % complete on a task that is truly &quot;unfamiliar&quot; you are more than likely going to fall into the trap of being 90% complete for 90% of the task duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have to report progress more often, then either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Break the long task into smaller tasks &lt;em&gt;that result in something tangible&lt;/em&gt; so that you can update status based on the completion of each subtask.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resist the urge to report a percentage and instead communicate the work associated with the task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T05:14:05.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="61" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="30" CreationDate="2011-02-08T05:34:23.213" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project Managers are the people who eliminate barriers.  In those scrum meetings, the developers answer the question &quot;What is impeding you from meeting your goals, and what concerns do you have?&quot;.  It's the Project Manager's job to eliminate those barriers and address the impediments to success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project Managers are also jacks of all trades.  They have programming skills, marketing and business experience, can talk to customers and stakeholders, and be persuasive when support from management, the team, or other departments is necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In agile, Project Managers are important because the environment constantly changes, and new challenges continuously arise.  The project manager is able to not only keep things together, but in the process also gains familiarity with all aspects of the project in order to make the best, educated decisions as to it's future direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T05:34:23.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="62" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="30" CreationDate="2011-02-08T05:46:11.540" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a role for PM's on agile, but PM's need to be willing to accept that not all projects may be run the way they used to run them.  Agile is a metaphor for embracing change and project managers need to embrace it in their profession.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am probably 75% employed as a PM - the other 25% I fill in as designer, architect, tester, chief bottle washer, whatever the project needs.  I work exclusively on what people would consider small projects - as small as 2-3 to up to 10 technical staff.  Most of our project are 'agile' and I feel that my role as a PM is more important and valued than ever.  Just taking Geo's example above:  sprints are a popular time boxing management technique popularized by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumalliance.org/&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt;, but may not be the best choice on every project. The PM should be able to work with the team and to explain to the customer whether project X will use &quot;sprints&quot; or some other &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?TimeBoxing&quot;&gt;time boxing&lt;/a&gt; technique, or maybe even feature boxing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most projects are not 'purely agile' or 'purely plan-oriented'.  I have never worked on a project that slavishly adhered to any single process methodology. A good agile PM should know how to pull from among many techniques, models and methods to create a project team that runs smoothly and effectively in its organizations environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile does not mean &quot;No Project Management&quot;, there are plenty of management going on in agile projects, it's just that agile project tend to put &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot;&gt;more emphasis on different project artifacts&lt;/a&gt; than in traditional plan-driven projects.  There is still plenty of room for an agile PM to work with &lt;em&gt;individuals and interactions&lt;/em&gt; as opposed to processes and tools, &lt;em&gt;customer collaboration&lt;/em&gt; as opposed to contract negotiation, and &lt;em&gt;responding to change&lt;/em&gt; as opposed to following a plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T05:46:11.540" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="63" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="70" CreationDate="2011-02-08T06:29:14.453" Score="24" ViewCount="3371" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the current up to date project management tools to use? I have been using dotProject which I know is outdated, what ones are out there and the best for small to medium projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be more specific: A tool for tracking things like time, costs, progress and gantt charts etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2011-02-14T13:43:28.297" LastActivityDate="2013-02-15T14:10:35.837" Title="What are the current tools available for PM?" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="19" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="20" ClosedDate="2013-02-18T23:21:48.917" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:51:42.070" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="64" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="68" CreationDate="2011-02-08T06:40:43.910" Score="17" ViewCount="7050" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the difference between these roles and where is the crossover? Is it possible to be both in particular jobs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2012-12-17T09:56:45.580" LastActivityDate="2018-07-06T13:11:05.590" Title="Whats the difference between a project manager and an IT manager?" Tags="&lt;roles&gt;&lt;definition&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="65" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="44" CreationDate="2011-02-08T06:57:29.927" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most common problem with lesson learned/post mortems/retrospectives is that people don't really learn from them. They're often done only because PM methodology says you should do them or to make a couple of important people happy and then they're completely forgotten somewhere in local &quot;knowledge base&quot; where no one can really find them, let alone make use of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is actually the worst mistake you can make as you show people that you don't care, so why should they care to share their thoughts another time when you want to make another retro/post mortem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look for more issues I'd also count:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Getting people involved. There's always a group of people who don't believe in value of retrospective and it's hard to get their involvement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having a good discussion. Where there are a few people there are a few opinion on any given subject thus having discussion should be obvious. Unfortunately people often tend to step back when they see others, especially managers, stating something different than they think. You can always make use of a good meeting facilitator here.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Compromises. Where there are different opinions you often end up with some kind of compromises. Sometimes they satisfy neither party, but then again, post mortems aren't owned by a single person.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T06:57:29.927" CommentCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:51:27.937" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="66" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="55" CreationDate="2011-02-08T07:09:10.920" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technical skills is always nice-to-have trait for project manager but in vast majority of cases they aren't crucial. If project manager has the best technical skills in the team why is she managing the project and not building the project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If PM has to double-check every estimate he gets from the team there's some basic problem with trust in that team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PM is one of team leaders (note: usually not a manager who has direct power) who can influence team members. But it doesn't mean PM should be the most knowledgeable and most experienced person in the team. It's like with leading any other entity - when your knowledge is short find people who are knowledgeable enough and you trust them, no matter if you deal with an estimate or a technical issue or whatever. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And when we are on estimates, gather historical data: both estimates and time you really used. You'd be able to tell how optimistic your team or a specific member typically is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T07:09:10.920" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="67" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="55" CreationDate="2011-02-08T08:11:23.600" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technical skills are a plus, of course. But a project manager should understand that any information received from his/her technical team member has to be double-checked by another technical specialist. Management should always stay a bit away from implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T08:11:23.600" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="68" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="64" CreationDate="2011-02-08T08:13:13.177" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project manager is doing &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management&quot;&gt;project management&lt;/a&gt;, while IT manager is doing &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITSM&quot;&gt;IT Service Management&lt;/a&gt;. Two different disciplines. Like mathematics and physics :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T08:13:13.177" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="69" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="50" CreationDate="2011-02-08T08:15:32.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Overtime is evil. No matter what. If a project manager considers overtime as a mechanism for solving his/her own mistakes he/she has to change his/her job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T08:15:32.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="70" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="63" CreationDate="2011-02-08T08:15:33.120" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are a few that I've recently reviewed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gigaom.com/collaboration/manymoon-project-management-with-google-apps-integration/&quot;&gt;Manymoon&lt;/a&gt; - Manymoon has a free plan, boasts Google Apps integration, including email and Docs and Spreadsheets, and has a social networking feel to it.  The docs integration was awesome, but it didn't have a way to make notes in the task itself without creating a Google Doc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zoho.com/projects/&quot;&gt;Zoho Projects&lt;/a&gt; - Zoho Projects has a free plan, has tasks, milestones, reports, calendar, time tracking, a wiki, forums, and many features.  The showstopper for me was the lack of Google Docs and Spreadsheets integration, but it seems like a pretty powerful solution.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://insight.ly/features#ProjectManagement&quot;&gt;Insightly&lt;/a&gt; - Insightly is Project Management and a CRM.  It integrates with Google Apps and with email and has a simple interface.  Reporting features seem to be lacking, however.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T08:15:33.120" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:51:42.070" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="71" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-02-08T08:36:52.057" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would go with these three:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0130094862&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Radical Project Management&quot; by Robert Thomsett&lt;/a&gt;. It contains lots of well grounded, down-to-earth advice that matched perfectly my management style.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0201604566&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Software for Your Head&quot; by Jim McCarthy and Michele McCarthy&lt;/a&gt;. Very provocative and non-standard. Maybe you want to take it with a grain of salt, but definitely worth the read.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0596517718&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management&quot; by Scott Berkun&lt;/a&gt;. A great complement to the other two: the American perspective of kicking ass and having fun at the same time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="38" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T08:36:52.057" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:49:47.017" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="72" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="100" CreationDate="2011-02-08T08:39:39.907" Score="7" ViewCount="259" Body="&lt;p&gt;Which project management processes am I most likely to run into as I manage a construction project? What should I be aware of as I try to learn more about the specific intricacies that affect project management, in the construction field?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="71" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-27T18:58:26.783" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T14:11:34.757" Title="Expanding My Knowledge of Construction Projects" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="73" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9" CreationDate="2011-02-08T08:44:34.807" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to all the numerical data (impact, severity, likelihood, etc.), I always include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Minimisation measures&lt;/strong&gt;: They describe what we do in order to decrease the likelihood of the risk. Knowing that there is a risk and not doing anything to decrease its likelihood is silly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mitigation measures&lt;/strong&gt;: They describe what we will do if the risk eventuates. It is good to think about this beforehand, so we can act quickly and from some well thought out base whenever bad things happen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to my experience, thinking about and writing down these two pieces of information for each risk is extremely valuable. It helps the project manager (as well as the rest of the team) stay alert and minimise/mitigate the risks as necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="38" LastEditorUserId="38" LastEditDate="2011-02-09T17:04:49.403" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T17:04:49.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="74" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-08T08:47:00.980" Score="10" ViewCount="23968" Body="&lt;p&gt;What percentage of the project manager's time is spent planning, writing tasks, and tracking time in the project management software?  How much time should be given to documentation?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every position is a little different, so I'm hoping to see some different answers based on different experiences.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your answer, please list the following items:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Type of project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many people were on the project and their roles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How long it lasted&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much time (&lt;strong&gt;percentages are fine&lt;/strong&gt;) you spent working on the above items.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're a technical project manager, please list that as well.  I'm wondering if technical project managers spend less time planning than non-technical project managers and what impact that has on planning, organizing, and assessing the project risk, success, and other factors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scope reduction UPDATE&lt;/strong&gt;:  On smaller projects consisting of roughly 5 to 10 developers, how much of the developer's time should be spent planning, writing tasks, and tracking time in the project management software?  How much time should be given to documentation?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As per the requests below, I've narrowed the scope to just smaller projects.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE on 2/26/2011:&lt;/strong&gt; This question is still open.  I'm looking for links to professional resources that describe the suggested breakdown of time management for a project manager in a small project.  Personal experiences are helpful, but it would also help me to see the information backed up with at least one good link.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-02-26T18:55:53.680" LastActivityDate="2011-02-26T18:55:53.680" Title="What percentage of a project manager's time should be spent working in the project management software and documentation?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="75" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="76" CreationDate="2011-02-08T08:53:30.693" Score="27" ViewCount="11408" Body="&lt;p&gt;If they are, is it simple to use them with theses methods? Have you some use cases to present?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="47" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-02-04T20:54:32.103" LastActivityDate="2018-02-05T14:28:22.860" Title="Are Gantt diagrams compatible with Agile methods?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="76" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="75" CreationDate="2011-02-08T09:02:55.443" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes and no (I bet you love this answer)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile programming methodology usually deals with pretty short periods of time (e.g. a two-week sprint), during which there is also a large amount of flexibility on what tasks should be performed in what order. So on the scale of single team, I say no - gantt is not useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, on the scale of larger project involving several teams working concurrently it starts showing it's usability. On this scale you deal with more long term planning, you need to manage several teams (and in fact, some of them might be working agile, while others might be using different methodologies). So on this 'strategic' sort of level it can be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="42" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T09:02:55.443" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="77" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="106" CreationDate="2011-02-08T09:08:46.780" Score="23" ViewCount="2589" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that this question depends a lot in the environment the Project Manager works in, but still want to know on the average, which skill/skill set that need to be focused more than others. To name a few skills that seems to be necessary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communication&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Appraise employee&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimate time/effort/cost&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Proficient English&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T16:22:20.623" Title="Which skill set is necessary for a project manager?" Tags="&lt;learning&gt;&lt;personal-skills&gt;" AnswerCount="15" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="78" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="63" CreationDate="2011-02-08T09:16:26.483" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you use Scrum for PM, here are a few tools you might consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://danube.com/scrumworks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ScrumWorks&lt;/a&gt;, available both as a a basic (free) and a enterprise version&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agile42.com/cms/pages/agilo/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agilo&lt;/a&gt; - open source, based on Trac&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://trac.edgewall.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trac&lt;/a&gt; with additional plugins:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/TimingAndEstimationPlugin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TimingAndEstimationPlugin&lt;/a&gt; to record the estimated work loads&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/ScrumBurndownPlugin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ScrumBurndownPlugin&lt;/a&gt; to generate a Scrum burndown from these values&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We've used Trac, as we already had it for tickets and as a general overview point. Writing tickets for tasks and assigning estimated work loads to them worked fine as a basic tool for a small Scrum team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T09:16:26.483" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:51:42.070" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="79" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="63" CreationDate="2011-02-08T09:30:18.660" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take a look to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wrike.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;www.wrike.com&lt;/a&gt;. It has powerfull integration with e-mail and lots of features. However, it's not free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T09:30:18.660" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:51:42.070" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="80" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11" CreationDate="2011-02-08T09:31:43.233" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Picking up on a few points that have already been made: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;XP is - as the name suggests - about programming. Scrum on the other hand is about managing projects first of all. These do not have to be software projects, although they fit quite well into the &quot;Scrum way&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As iterations in Scrum are quite fast, it's quite natural to pick up certain techniques which support the ability to work quick. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pair programming helps to make a team flexible, as certain tasks are not in the responsibility of one sole member, but at least one other member knows enough to pick up on the task in case of illness etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Code reviews also help to identify errors early and give the rest of the team an idea of the architecture and components of the system under development in which they are currently not involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I would say both fit together quite naturally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T09:31:43.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="81" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="174" CreationDate="2011-02-08T09:32:05.133" Score="4" ViewCount="238" Body="&lt;p&gt;When your client is the government, and you are managing a mixed team of your own with government employees, when is it appropriate to provide non-monetary rewards (such as dinners or gift certificates)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="71" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T14:49:46.737" Title="When is it appropriate to provide non-monetary rewards to government employees that do not directly work for you?" Tags="&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;reward&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="82" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="63" CreationDate="2011-02-08T10:06:04.407" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://openproj.org/openproj&quot;&gt;OpenProj&lt;/a&gt; looks to me like the closest open source equivalent of MS Project. Don't expect much, but compared to many other free tools, this one is really good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="42" LastEditorUserId="42" LastEditDate="2011-02-08T11:11:15.817" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T11:11:15.817" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:51:42.070" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="83" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="84" CreationDate="2011-02-08T10:26:23.870" Score="16" ViewCount="220" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a PM there are many occasions where we are tasked with delivering multiple projects. My question is when (or how) do you realise you are overloaded and have taken on too many concurrent projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="98" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2011-02-14T13:41:49.873" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T15:27:59.507" Title="When do you realise you're overloaded" Tags="&lt;workload&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="84" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="83" CreationDate="2011-02-08T10:48:14.193" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually I can remember all important things for my work. I personally realise overload, if I start to  forget important things. That is usually the sign, that I have to overlook too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another measure is my email-inbox. Normally I keep only mails in the inbox, that I have to react to in some form. Usually my inbox is around 5-10 E-Mails this way, things I have to adress later. If my inbox grows much larger, I know that I got too much input too handle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="57" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T10:48:14.193" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="85" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="63" CreationDate="2011-02-08T10:51:24.850" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nobody has mentioned &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.microsoft.com/project/en/us/project-standard-2010.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Microsoft Project&lt;/a&gt; yet. Yes, it's a huge, complex piece of software that is perhaps best suited for traditional/waterfall projects than things like iterative software methodologies, &lt;em&gt;but&lt;/em&gt;, for the projects that it supports, it has a massive number of features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Theres' an art to using it - see the number of books written for it - so it's not for everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="101" LastEditorUserId="101" LastEditDate="2011-02-08T10:57:07.447" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T10:57:07.447" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:51:42.070" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="86" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="108" CreationDate="2011-02-08T11:02:35.217" Score="23" ViewCount="11820" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to do a post mortem (&quot;lessons learned&quot;) analysis of a recent feature development. It would be the first formal post mortem we do. It was a comparedly small project (roughly 3 weeks), but surfaced enough problems worth analyzing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bit of background: I'm probably the typical lead developer becoming responsible for project management. Involved are 3 of the 7 software developers (me as manager, the product manager of the feature in question, and the developer implementing it). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for general suggestions, but here are some questions I'm unsure about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should other developers / roles be involved, or just us three &quot;affected&quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much &quot;preparation&quot; should be expected, and what kind? (I'd probably list the &quot;flow of events&quot; and problems I see to give a starting point. Should I ask the other gys to prepare that as well, or would that put to much pressure on the meeting itself?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time allocated? I'd expect an hour.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What outcome would one expect - e.g. a half page &quot;was good / was bad / ideas for improvement&quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="85" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-04-05T03:11:37.677" LastActivityDate="2016-03-08T08:40:14.090" Title="How to run our first post mortem?" Tags="&lt;post-mortem&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="87" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-08T11:09:56.300" Score="12" ViewCount="278" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is posted with intention of making it a community wiki&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please provide organisations that provide on-line trainings, resources, books etc related to project management. Please also write if the access is free, and if not- how much it costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Free resources&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Management Institue&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/en/Certification/~/media/PDF/Certifications/pdc_pmphandbook.ashx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Management Proffesional Credential Handbook&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectmanagement.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ProjectManagement.com&lt;/a&gt;: Free whitepapers and articles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessballs.com/project.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Business Balls&lt;/a&gt;: &quot;free ethical learning and development resource for people and organizations&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://managementhelp.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Free Management Library&lt;/a&gt;: &quot;The Library provides free, easy-to-access, online articles to develop yourself, other individuals, groups and organizations&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amanet.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;American Management Association&lt;/a&gt;: both free and non-free content&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.itmpi.org/webinars/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IT Metrics &amp;amp; Productivity Institute&lt;/a&gt;: free PMI accredited webinars&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Agile&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.controlchaos.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Control Chaos&lt;/a&gt;: Scrum home page&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Extreme Programming: A gentle introduction&lt;/a&gt;: XP Home Page&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.targetprocess.com/LearnAgile/AgileResources.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Links to various resources at TargetProcess's site&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilexp.com/agile-resources.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Coaching Resources&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Quality Management&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isixsigma.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;iSixSigma&lt;/a&gt;: blogs and articles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Free but limited access&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dau.mil/default.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Defense Acquisition University&lt;/a&gt;: Topics mostly related to US Departament od Defense. Requires &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cac.mil/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CAC&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Paid access resources&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Management Institue&lt;/a&gt;. They have some free resources, but for the most part you need to pay their membership that goes for about $100/year&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amanet.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;American Management Association&lt;/a&gt;: both free and non-free content&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acm.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Association for Computing Machinery&lt;/a&gt; : paid membership (depending on what country you're from it can be as low as $20/year) grants you full access to Safari Books and Books 24x7 as well as several on-line courses. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://learning.acm.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ACM Learning Center&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Commercial training offerrings&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmcentersusa.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMCentersUSA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="42" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-05-08T21:27:38.607" LastActivityDate="2011-05-08T21:27:38.607" Title="Where can you get access to PM related on-line resources?" Tags="&lt;education&gt;&lt;learning&gt;&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="9" ClosedDate="2012-09-27T00:58:11.120" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:38:58.397" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="88" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="44" CreationDate="2011-02-08T11:21:11.403" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Insufficient Planning&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many of the software projects I've seen, there's just not enough time spent on the planning phase before programmers want to 'go to code' and business sponsors want to start seeing results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have agreed requirements/specifications and a project plan with clear milestones helps reduce the effects as you can course-correct as you realize you've forgotten something important, but some under-planned areas can be the death of a project, e.g. failing to get appropriate local government permission when extending a house - doesn't matter how successful house-extending project is, the government has powers to pull it down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="101" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T11:21:11.403" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:51:27.937" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="89" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-02-08T11:26:15.987" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0201675269&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Leading a Software Development Team&lt;/a&gt; has got awesome, practical advice on the various challenges faced in software projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="101" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T11:26:15.987" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:49:47.017" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="90" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="87" CreationDate="2011-02-08T13:03:47.550" Score="3" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is a given, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Management Institue&lt;/a&gt;. They have some free resources, but for the most part you need to pay their membership. The membership goes for about $100/year&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The PMI Chapter near your own city&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will continue adding later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastEditorUserId="203" LastEditDate="2011-02-16T13:37:17.780" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T13:37:17.780" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:38:58.397" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="91" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="77" CreationDate="2011-02-08T13:09:09.763" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;To your list I'd add:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Experience/Business domain knowledge&lt;/strong&gt; - often the people you'll be managing will be specialists in a technical field.  The PM needs to be able to communicate with them, &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; with the business users and stakeholders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Networking skills&lt;/strong&gt; - You'll need to have contacts in various groups within your organization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Leadership&lt;/strong&gt; - You need to demonstrate that you can direct others to complete a set of tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2011-02-09T17:14:02.923" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T17:14:02.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="92" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="96" CreationDate="2011-02-08T13:10:23.717" Score="65" ViewCount="8051" Body="&lt;p&gt;Getting started in the role of project manager is not always easy.  Are there some common mistakes that you see newer project managers making that can be avoided (e.g. trying to take on too much themselves, or allowing problems to linger too long before addressing them)?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="106" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-04-05T03:10:54.400" LastActivityDate="2017-08-29T12:35:37.380" Title="What are the biggest mistakes that new project managers make?" Tags="&lt;untagged&gt;" AnswerCount="18" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="54" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:41:45.823" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="93" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="64" CreationDate="2011-02-08T13:15:10.803" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that we are looking at two different levels here: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An IT manager could be a project manager but need not be one - and vice versa. What complicates matters - and insofar the question is a very good one - is that many IT related activities are managed in a project oriented manner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So an IT manager can be a line manager but in many cases will be a project manager and a project manager manages projects - which can be IT related (or not). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So both levels are interrelated in many cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T13:15:10.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="94" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="81" CreationDate="2011-02-08T13:16:53.330" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure if this question will be closed or not, but if is not, I think there is something you can do. From your question I understand that you are running the PM activities for a government project.  Your team members are government employees, so gifts &quot;might&quot; be mis-interpret.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I will do is, create a reward plan before giving any rewards.  Usually if you have an objective plan before hand, you will show it to your sponsor (customer in this case), and get them on-board.  If they say, is ok to give a dinner gift card when x,y,z happens, then you are set. If not, they will tell you what is allowable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's my two cents.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Geo&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T13:16:53.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="95" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="92" CreationDate="2011-02-08T13:18:02.003" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the most common mistakes is not recognising that tools are just that and as such you need to pick the correct tool for the project you are working on. Not to be blindly led by the methodology that you have just learned/is flavour of the month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know I did that quite a bit when I started out, thinking a new tool was the silver bullet I was looking for and not recognising that I just needed to pick the correct tool for the job at hand, and that is truly only something that comes with experience (at least in my case).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21" LastEditorUserId="197" LastEditDate="2013-12-24T18:39:27.967" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T18:39:27.967" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:41:45.823" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="96" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="92" CreationDate="2011-02-08T13:20:26.883" Score="71" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion a big problem is that you try to &lt;strong&gt;solve the problems yourself and not manage the project&lt;/strong&gt;. Your job as a project manager is to lead the people who do the actual work (of course this depends on the size of the project, in small projects you will have a technical role too).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another one is that you underestimate &lt;strong&gt;soft factors&lt;/strong&gt; (and therefore &lt;strong&gt;soft skills&lt;/strong&gt;). You can have as many technical tools as you like - in the end project management is people business!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T13:20:26.883" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:41:45.823" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="97" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="86" CreationDate="2011-02-08T13:23:20.280" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I try to jot down problem points in a notebook as I encounter them, to be able to easily enumerate them after. I usually briefly describe them in the agenda; if you ask me, a post mortem should very precisely target the specific pain points you've encountered, and not so much be a general discussion of how you felt it all went. If you're the only one shouldering PM responsibilities, then I'd say it suffice to say that the other invitees are welcome to make additions to the agenda, if they feel you've missed something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The time needed of course depends on the number of points you want to discuss, but keep in mind that it also depends on the number of people you invite. I try to keep my meetings focused around the small groups of people whose particular expertise are of most interest to the task at hand. Opinions from a broad range of people is a good thing, but a post mortem is not the place for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your &quot;was good / was bad&quot; is a part of the process of finding out ideas for improvement, if you ask me. It has no place in the actual outcome. What I'm looking for with meetings like this is to pin down exactly what we can do to make sure that the problems you've encountered are addressed in an ideal manner. Perhaps some items were due to error during configuration that will in the future be automated, and no action needs to be taken. Other issues might have higher probabilities of reappearance. The key should be actions to prevent that problems you've faced occur again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="61" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T13:23:20.280" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="98" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="77" CreationDate="2011-02-08T13:33:23.707" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would add &quot;People skills&quot; to your list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not a requirement but one of the main roles of a project manager is to actually talk to the client. Good relationships, specially making the client trust you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another good skill in the same direction is the ability to say NO when is needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="112" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T13:33:23.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="99" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="92" CreationDate="2011-02-08T13:44:09.107" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reinventing The Wheel&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most problems have previously been solved before by other people in your organization.  Consulting with a senior PM helps bring perspective and teaches old solutions to your &quot;new&quot; problems. One of my senior PM's has been managing projects my entire life.  He knows a thing or two.  Someone like this is invaluable helping new PM's avoid reinventing the wheel, as well as spinning them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are new, you need help.  Find someone you can meet with to spend 10 minutes every few days discussing the most critical problems you are facing.  Usually, as a new PM you won't have a very long leash anyway...so there will be someone checking in with you.  In the case that your organization is trying you by fire, the smartest thing you can do is get advice from someone with more experience.  If you think that you will be bother that person too much, find a couple of people and spread the love.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T13:44:09.107" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:41:45.823" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="72" CreationDate="2011-02-08T13:53:03.547" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your first construction project is going to be a bear.  Hopefully, you've been around construction a bit gaining familiarity with the process.  I believe one of the best things a new CM can do is spend time trying to anticipate upcoming problems, rather than spending all your time reacting to them.  Be familiar with what is coming up on the schedule, and what your crew will need to complete the task.  Where are their holes in the construction documents?  Where will the code enforcement official stick a wrench in the works?  What conflicts are likely to arise between your sub-contractors as they work in the same area? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The best case studies will be your own&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am an architect, and the first big construction project I &quot;administered&quot; (not managed) taught me invaluable lessons that have made every subsequent project easier.  While I can't point you to a direct answer or resource, I recommend noting or journaling about your experiences as they happen.  Those notes will aid you the next time around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28" LastEditorUserId="28" LastEditDate="2012-11-14T14:11:34.757" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T14:11:34.757" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="64" CreationDate="2011-02-08T14:24:10.660" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Guide_to_the_Project_Management_Body_of_Knowledge&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMBOK&lt;/a&gt; defines a project as a &quot;temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result.&quot; PROJECTS differ from OPERATIONS. There are many different methodologies and best practices that can be applied to Project Management (as well as operations). IT Management can include Project Management and/or Operations Management, but it doesn't have to include both. It depends on the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T14:24:10.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8" CreationDate="2011-02-08T14:57:53.537" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work with &quot;Scrumban&quot;, a mix of Scrum and Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Daily meetings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint review each month (but we don't have the sprint planning, neither sprint/product backlog, because our work load is on-demand)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A board showing the tasks (&quot;Not assigned&quot;, &quot;Working&quot;, &quot;External&quot;, &quot;Done&quot;, &quot;Parking lot&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Theses tasks on the board shows the work load of each person, the priority and the deadline of the tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical meetings (when needed)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This mix fits exactly what we need. So pragmatic is the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="105" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T14:57:53.537" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="86" CreationDate="2011-02-08T14:57:55.677" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best post-mortem is a team post-mortem. The project manager sees things differently from developers, and developers see things differently from each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend you give everybody a heads-up a day or two in advance, and ask them to prepare and bring points -- three positives (things that went well that we want to keep) and three negatives to try to improve in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then in the post-mortem, run through everybody's items and see which ones appear again and again. These are easy candidates to focus on, and represent a team-wide acceptance on what went well and what didn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're prepared,  you can have a ton of discussion in an hour, even with a large team. I've done this in a team of 12 and we had more than enough time in an hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T14:57:55.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="55" CreationDate="2011-02-08T15:09:51.863" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think subject-matter experts make the best PMs, however, that's not a prerequisite for selecting a PM. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Estimating definitely improves with experience as a PM and as a SME but is heavily influenced by company/culture and the process being used (waterfall, agile, wishful). A SME PM is better able to challenge estimates - but isn’t responsible, by role, for producing the work - so not always in a position to challenge those estimates.  A PM in that situation could propose alternatives to improve estimates or challenge with estimates from a 3rd-party. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There will be impediments; typically a result of changed conditions or a root-cause in the project set up. All projects that fall behind do so in the beginning.  allow for ramp-up at the start. This is really a matter of getting the core, essential, measurable goals right in the beginning and applying reasonableness to the plan before starting.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="113" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-27T07:25:04.353" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T07:25:04.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="105" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="107" CreationDate="2011-02-08T15:18:07.857" Score="27" ViewCount="5835" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a 100% certain that this is the best place for this question as it's a little more development methodology related than directly project management related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work at a company where the development methodology has lost it's way somewhat, and seems to use elements from multiple methodologies and practices (e.g. some Waterfall, some Agile, some Spiral) and then doesn't necessarily stick to any of those elements either (it seems to change from project to project). This makes it incredibly difficult for us to project manage efficiently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been tasked with sorting it out in short, and the best fit for us as a team would be the practices outlined in Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the Development Team itself consists of 3 actual Developers (the other team members are 2 Report Writers and DBA - not all of which are involved in the main development process of a project), and Scrum is targeted at larger development teams of 7 or more people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, is Scrum useable in smaller teams or is there a 'Diet' Scrum method that still holds a core of the Scrum practices that would be a better fit for smaller teams?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="115" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-10-03T22:05:44.363" LastActivityDate="2015-10-03T22:05:44.363" Title="Can Scrum be suited to smaller development teams?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="77" CreationDate="2011-02-08T15:23:20.040" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with those who say that effective project managers should have good &lt;strong&gt;project management skills.&lt;/strong&gt; I also agree that knowing your domain, industry, and having some level of technical skills in your project's field will benefit you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond this, I would say the main skills you need are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Effective communication:&lt;/strong&gt; This would be THE skill if there was only one skill. This also includes people skills.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The ability to say &quot;no:&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; Even to your sponsor. A project manager without this can quickly get into situations where they cannot deliver what they promised!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Delegation and the ability to assess team-members:&lt;/strong&gt; Being able to identify experts and leverage them (eg. ask good estimators for time estimates) is more important than having those skills yourself. Delegation is a skill in itself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, all your &quot;usual&quot; skills of knowing how to effectively manage (keep from getting out of control) your scope, schedule, resources, team, quality, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastEditorUserId="7018" LastEditDate="2016-12-25T13:22:46.030" LastActivityDate="2016-12-25T13:22:46.030" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="105" CreationDate="2011-02-08T15:29:02.157" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum works most effectively with small teams, up to around 6 or 8 people (including developers, project manager, and others). After this, you start getting &quot;scalability&quot; issues. I was on a scrum team with 43 people; our daily scrum took an hour and a half. This is not the intention of Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, once you reach around eight people, and what Kent Beck himself recommended (from a training course he gave one company I worked at) was to split up into teams of 4-6 developers. This keeps your team light and agile, and keeps the process time down to a reasonable level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coordinating multiple teams is a bigger issue and a harder one (and one not addressed in your question).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; With multiple teams, you might want to have a &quot;scrum of scrums,&quot; or a scrum with all the scrum-masters. That, and I would suggest not forcing teams to synchronize sprints, but make sure the release is synchronized at certain points across all teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastEditorUserId="36" LastEditDate="2011-02-08T15:51:17.130" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T15:51:17.130" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="86" CreationDate="2011-02-08T15:34:58.717" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me start off by saying I prefer using the term &lt;strong&gt;Retrospective&lt;/strong&gt; rather than Post-mortem. The latter is too negative and implies the project is dead and we're looking to find the cause of death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'd usually like to get out of a retrospective session with a list of lessons learned containing changes to existing processes as well as things that went well and that you'd like to maintain and nurture in the existing processes going forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Preparations&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I like to prepare for the retrospective by defining a short list of items the team would like to analyze and discuss. This involves sending out in advance a request to the team for topics for discussion. You should review the topics and choose the ones that are more frequently raised. Publish the final prioritized list of topics ahead of the session so people can come prepared with facts, opinions and suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The session itself&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It's important to set some ground rules for the session itself. You should maintain a positive atmosphere and avoid finger pointing. The main focus is to come up with lessons learned and optimizations for the processes rather than finding who's to blame for whatever happened in the project.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;When analyzing a topic, first get to an &lt;strong&gt;agreement on the facts&lt;/strong&gt;, i.e. what really happened. You'll soon find out that different people remember different things (and also percept the reality in a different way). Once you have the facts straight, &lt;strong&gt;analyze&lt;/strong&gt; what was &lt;strong&gt;good&lt;/strong&gt; about it and what &lt;strong&gt;can be improved&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;Put focus on the process&lt;/strong&gt; rather on a specific example or incident. Then you should try to &lt;strong&gt;generalize&lt;/strong&gt; the analyzed scenario and try to figure out what changes can be introduced to the existing processes to deal with situations like the one you're analyzing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;After the session&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It's important to send out the list of insights, decisions, and lessons learned after the session is over. It's even more important to take action and actually adapt your processes according to the lessons learned. This way the team will soon learn that the retrospective is really a great tool and a means for them to affect the processes. If you're working in an Agile environment, the retrospective is something you're doing regularly. I found out that when we adapt our processes as a result of good retrospective sessions, in the subsequent retrospectives the team is much more engaged and people come up with really good ideas for improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="44" LastEditorUserId="44" LastEditDate="2011-04-17T19:07:43.473" LastActivityDate="2011-04-17T19:07:43.473" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="74" CreationDate="2011-02-08T15:42:26.863" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest to spend 0% of PM's time for planning/writing/tracking of tasks. Project team has to report and software has to do the reporting. PM should stay focused on other things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These &quot;other things&quot; are risk, scope, quality, time, communication, and HR planning. All other activities in the project should be done by other people. In the ideal world, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastEditorUserId="91" LastEditDate="2011-02-14T17:25:16.163" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T17:25:16.163" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="87" CreationDate="2011-02-08T15:43:45.787" Score="6" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Management Institute&lt;/a&gt;. As Geo stated before. There are some free resources, but membership goes for about $100/year.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/en/Certification/~/media/PDF/Certifications/pdc_pmphandbook.ashx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMI handbook&lt;/a&gt;, free.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectmanagement.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Managment&lt;/a&gt;, free.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessballs.com/project.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Business Balls&lt;/a&gt;, free.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://managementhelp.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Free Management Library&lt;/a&gt;, free.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.niwotridge.com/PDFs/PM%20Chapter%20%28short%20no%20email%29%20Update%202.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Project Management for IT Projects&lt;/a&gt;, free (.pdf file)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.targetprocess.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Target Process&lt;/a&gt;, there are some resource free, but there are TargetProcess On-Site ($249 per user) and TargetProcess On-Demand ($25 per user)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also see this:&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/06/29.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Management books&#xA;&lt;em&gt;by Joel Spolsky&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="105" LastEditorUserId="105" LastEditDate="2011-02-18T12:06:40.503" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T12:06:40.503" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:38:58.397" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2" CreationDate="2011-02-08T15:47:50.120" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Charter baselines the project. Vision baselines the scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is one similarity between them: they baseline something, which is still very vague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T15:47:50.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="92" CreationDate="2011-02-08T15:49:36.180" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;One mistake made (that is not entirely the fault of the project manager) is &lt;strong&gt;being promoted into a project management role without having the right skills.&lt;/strong&gt; This happens frequently in IT (some companies even tout it as a &quot;career path&quot;) where someone who spent the last 20 years developing software becomes a project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And he might have &lt;em&gt;no idea&lt;/em&gt; about what it takes to manage a team, a schedule, or to deal with external parties (stakeholders, project sponsor, customers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While tutoring and the right tools can help, fundamentally, project management is an entirely different discipline. You wouldn't let a doctor start operating without years of study and training, so why let a project manager do it without even assessing basic skills?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a project manager, you need to understand your own weaknesses and overcome them. If you're put in this position, &lt;strong&gt;read, read, read.&lt;/strong&gt; And then read some more. And &lt;strong&gt;consult heavily with your peers&lt;/strong&gt; to avoid making costly mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T15:49:36.180" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:41:45.823" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="92" CreationDate="2011-02-08T15:50:15.273" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;One big mistake new (and experienced) project managers make is not managing risks. Just sitting down to think about them, brainstorm them, and log them is a huge improvement over doing nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T15:50:15.273" CommentCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:41:45.823" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="105" CreationDate="2011-02-08T15:51:02.840" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not say that Scrum teams need to be 7+ people. In my current company, we worked with a team of 3-4, depending on the workload from some other projects, and going a &quot;pragmatic&quot; Scrum way worked out quite well for us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As already discusses in the question &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/8/strict-or-pragmatic-scrum&quot;&gt;Strict or pragmatic Scrum?&lt;/a&gt;, there is not much sense in trying to bend your team and environment to be able to apply pure Scrum. there is a lot into it that even fits if you're only 2 people, and I agree with ashes999 that the optimal size for a Scrum team is around 6-8 people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also would try to engage the non-programmer members into the process. Scrum is also a good way to let people focus on their tasks and try helping them keeping their tasks predictable and transparent, so the whole team can benefit from the engagement of the report writers and the DBA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T15:51:02.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="83" CreationDate="2011-02-08T16:21:35.940" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, count the number of projects you are running.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the number is &gt; 1, then you have taken on too much. If you are doing true large scale project management: initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing -- and if you are doing them effectively, you can only focus on 1 at a time. If you are a small organization or team where less rigid pm methodologies work, you might be able to run 2 projects at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multitasking is bad:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;See #10 in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.focusedperformance.com/toptenpm.html&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Harvard Business Review &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2009/09/to_multitask_effectively_focus.html&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More intersting tidbits &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.43folders.com/2007/03/26/nyt-multitasking&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My humble opinion!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T16:21:35.940" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="49" CreationDate="2011-02-08T16:26:10.973" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I love the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oppmi.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;One Page Project Manager&lt;/a&gt;. More importantly, my project stakeholders love it for being concise, easy to read, and comprehensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T16:26:10.973" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:50:34.783" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="92" CreationDate="2011-02-08T16:40:26.860" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The biggest mistake I found was to assume certain parameters about a project instead of using a DDD approach or writting down every aspect of a project for the client / entity to check if it's correct. Most of the projects comes a time when you realise certain things that were ommited had a purpose / certain needs that you hadn't think of before, ruining timelines and changing the value of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T16:40:26.860" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:41:45.823" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="119" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-02-08T16:50:21.947" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definition of Scrum from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum (n): A framework within which people can address complex&#xA;  adaptive problems, while productively and creatively delivering&#xA;  products of the highest possible value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Lightweight &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Simple to understand &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Difficult to master&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum is a process framework that has been used to manage complex&#xA;  product development since the early 1990s. Scrum is not a process or a&#xA;  technique for building products; rather, it is a framework within&#xA;  which you can employ various processes and techniques. Scrum makes&#xA;  clear the relative efficacy of your product management and development&#xA;  practices so that you can improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum framework consists of Scrum Teams and their associated&#xA;  roles, events, artifacts, and rules. Each component within the&#xA;  framework serves a specific purpose and is essential to Scrum’s&#xA;  success and usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The rules of Scrum bind together the events, roles, and artifacts,&#xA;  governing the relationships and interaction between them. The rules of&#xA;  Scrum are described throughout the body of this document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Specific tactics for using the Scrum framework vary and are described&#xA;  elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastEditorUserId="21576" LastEditDate="2016-01-03T15:07:10.307" LastActivityDate="2016-01-03T15:07:10.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="120" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-02-08T16:50:21.947" Score="0" Body="For questions about using or implementing the Scrum framework." OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="21576" LastEditDate="2015-12-25T11:31:23.687" LastActivityDate="2015-12-25T11:31:23.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="121" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="122" CreationDate="2011-02-08T17:02:28.837" Score="8" ViewCount="231" Body="&lt;p&gt;How many risks do you manage actively out of your Risk Registry? And how many residual risks do you have there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T17:18:25.010" Title="How many risks normally stay in your hot list?" Tags="&lt;risk&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="121" CreationDate="2011-02-08T17:18:25.010" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is &quot;it depends.&quot; It depends on your project size and the inherent &quot;riskyness&quot; of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I primarily apply risk management on small-scale software projects. On these, I try to have at least 10-20 risks in total (including risks like &quot;top person X gets hit by a truck&quot;). Out of these, I work to make sure only a handful require active monitoring -- no more than five or six. Some additional risks may require residual monitoring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you brainstorm risks properly, you should be able to identify more than a hundred or two -- even on small projects. Keeping track of the top few, while delegating or ignoring the rest, is the only real way to manage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really do have a lot of risks on your &quot;hot list,&quot; you can always delegate so that the team shares the burden of monitoring for risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T17:18:25.010" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="123" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="126" CreationDate="2011-02-08T17:22:21.067" Score="23" ViewCount="1155" Body="&lt;p&gt;The obvious answer is 'missing key milestones', but that depends on a structured project plan with clear milestones (e.g. waterfall model).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some of the not-so-obvious or subtle signs that the project is going awry? What's the best-case or worst-case impact on the project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Please give one item in your answer so we can gather them together here and people can vote accordingly. You can post more than one answer if you have several to share. Real-world examples would be helpful.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="101" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T21:14:53.000" Title="What are the signs that a project is going wrong?" Tags="&lt;progress-monitor&gt;&lt;measurement&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;" AnswerCount="16" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="12" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:42:03.263" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="125" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="130" CreationDate="2011-02-08T17:29:44.710" Score="29" ViewCount="1024" Body="&lt;p&gt;we have a small team of highly technical people and one of them is the project manager for the project. The person who is in PM role for this project is experienced and has previous project management experience also. So it felt 'natural' for him to be PM the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, he is also a resource for the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should this be the case? is it 'normal' ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly, that person staying off the critical path is key, but what are the possible problems/risks that we may not have thought of?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="101" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-11-23T03:54:45.593" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T03:54:45.593" Title="Should a PM also be a resource on the project? Why?" Tags="&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="123" CreationDate="2011-02-08T17:32:11.667" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Decreasing communication between team members&lt;/strong&gt;. People silently disagreeing with opinions of other team members, but for whatever reason don't speak their mind and subtly start to communicate only what is needed, not engaging in discussions any more and only doing work-to-rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This leads to situations where bad solutions can more easily start becoming part of the project, which again leads to an overhead in debugging/fixing/...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-02-08T17:51:41.867" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T17:51:41.867" CommentCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:42:03.263" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="123" CreationDate="2011-02-08T17:38:30.797" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Too many &lt;strong&gt;changing requirements&lt;/strong&gt;, or a &lt;strong&gt;lack of change management&lt;/strong&gt;.  Some changes should be expected over the life of a project, but too many can be a real problem.  There also needs to be some analysis around how each change is going to impact the scope, schedule, or cost of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2011-02-11T16:23:25.103" LastActivityDate="2011-02-11T16:23:25.103" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:42:03.263" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="123" CreationDate="2011-02-08T17:40:58.523" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;People are scared&lt;/strong&gt;. One of my direct reports was running a software project that was on time, under budget, and in scope. My Director and VP felt everything was great. But users and customers were scared of the impending changes that were coming as a result of the new software implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cause of the failure: poor communication to stakeholders -- not understanding and diffusing fears, not managing expectations, not explaining regulations, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Impact: we had some loud detractors trying to sabotage the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mitigation: engaged the detractors and made them a part of the team. We communicated with them, gave them ownership in the solutions, and turned them into cheerleaders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T17:40:58.523" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:42:03.263" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="123" CreationDate="2011-02-08T17:45:15.637" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Progress that never changes. I'm sure we've all heard about the joke that projects quickly reach 90% complete where they stay at that status for the other 90% of the time. Any time that folks keep giving the same progress numbers should be a red flag. Either they've hit some barrier or the progress numbers were pulled out of their fanny perpendicular. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T17:45:15.637" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:42:03.263" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="125" CreationDate="2011-02-08T17:48:45.940" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is all about your business and business needs.  I can mention a few risks that you will have by using a PM that is also a resource, but if the alternative does not work for the business then you have to accept the risk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The few risks of using PM as a resource are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Objectivity in change of processes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Timeline creation might not be accurate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you lose the PM, you also lose a resource&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team building, either the team is going to respect the PM's coding or the developers' PMing (I hope this brings the point across)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Because of PM advance knowledge on code, he might think he can do a better job than a peer developer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also ask if this is normal. I think is more normal than you might expect.  Even in multi-national companies this phenomenon is observed.  Management and the PMO office need to be on top of these scenarios to avoid issues and minimize risks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general I don't think this is absurd, if the business supports the model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastEditorUserId="70" LastEditDate="2011-02-17T00:14:10.430" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T00:14:10.430" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29" CreationDate="2011-02-08T17:52:06.610" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the major selling points of Agile methodologies is that the iterative nature allows the customer to receive an updated deliverable after every iteration (e.g. 2 weeks). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Agile, you don't have a fixed/signed-off scope or requirements - you maintain a Feature Backlog and every week you have a meeting with the customer in which they have the opportunity to change their mind about the priority of certain items, based on their testing of the deliverable they got last time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Features in the Backlog will have relative effort estimates which will indicate how many of the top priority items can be implemented by the end of the iteration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've got a fixed number of engineers working on the project, then your number of iterations is the contract price divided by the cost of an iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is highly unlikely that you'll get through all the requirements, so it is the job of the Agile PM to manage the customers' expectations accordingly so that they prioritize to get the most important ones. Indeed, when they see their product/service coming together, they often throw out the older items and come up with more relevant ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the flexibility and responsiveness to the customers' change requests that this method gives, I'm yet to see a customer who beat up the supplier for not delivering all the features requested at the beginning of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very important that the specific feature list is not part of the contract. The contract should be on a 'Time and Materials' basis with a vision document guiding what work is going to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="101" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T17:52:06.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="49" CreationDate="2011-02-08T18:27:32.400" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally love &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.assembla.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Assembla&lt;/a&gt; for it's project management capabilities. It's got a lot of tools, even for free projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some tools include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Milestone Support&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ticketing System&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SVN/Git/Mercurial/Other SCM's&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wiki pages for documentation/frontpages&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Skype Support&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;...and more!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As stated above, they offer both &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.assembla.com/plans&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;paid and free services&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="119" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T18:27:32.400" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:50:34.783" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="123" CreationDate="2011-02-08T18:31:44.090" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Excessive overtime&lt;/strong&gt;. While some companies plan for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3413/orphans_preferred.php&quot;&gt;overtime&lt;/a&gt;, and include it as a process &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20070811195745/http://www.fuckedcompany.com/extras/mylackey_letter.cfm&quot;&gt;requirement&lt;/a&gt; (one blatant example was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ea.com/&quot;&gt;EA&lt;/a&gt; as documented by &lt;a href=&quot;http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html&quot;&gt;EA_Spouse&lt;/a&gt; and subsequent lawsuits). Generally, &lt;a href=&quot;http://archives.igda.org/articles/erobinson_crunch.php&quot;&gt;crunch mode&lt;/a&gt; and overtime are strong indicators of poor planning and resource mismanagement. While some overtime &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; rescue a project marginally behind, long term overtime is the sign of a death march and can be the result of several things, most of which are mismanagement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I strongly recommend reading the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/013143635X&quot;&gt;Death March&lt;/a&gt;. It is a reasonably light read, but gives examples of the 4 types of death marches. Sometimes you don't mind, and indeed would willingly &quot;sign up&quot; for a &quot;glorious failure&quot; while others are going to be miserable. The term &quot;sign up&quot; came from &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0316491977&quot;&gt;The Soul of a New Machine&lt;/a&gt;, which was a hardware death march. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much of our problems with time and effort estimation are due to poor skills at estimation. This is further compounded by the attitude of many management track personnel that &quot;everything is negotiable.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T18:31:44.090" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:42:03.263" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="123" CreationDate="2011-02-08T18:50:22.720" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tasks done in a rush&lt;/strong&gt;. You can hit all the initial deadlines, but when you start looking back and you see that many things, that are supposed to be the base of what comes next, are not very well done I think it's time to raise an alarm and miss a deadline on purpose (i.e.: in software: code that smells).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastEditorUserId="97" LastEditDate="2011-02-08T19:21:30.017" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T19:21:30.017" CommentCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:42:03.263" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="135" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-08T19:08:42.753" Score="2" ViewCount="338" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's very easy to get the code of an opensource project, but it's different for the higher level artifacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it because it's called open &lt;strong&gt;source&lt;/strong&gt;, is it because I can't find it, or what? Is there a place where I can get some good projects to study?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastEditorUserId="4766" LastEditDate="2012-12-31T08:36:04.117" LastActivityDate="2012-12-31T08:36:04.117" Title="Where are opesource requirements analysis and design documentation" Tags="&lt;open-source&gt;&lt;analysis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2011-02-08T21:06:04.900" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="135" CreationDate="2011-02-08T19:13:37.427" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might be interested in &lt;a href=&quot;http://readyset.tigris.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ReadySET&lt;/a&gt;, which is a Tigris project. They provide a number of templates for standard documentation - project proposals, planning, QA, design, test, releases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T19:13:37.427" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="125" CreationDate="2011-02-08T19:59:47.123" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for a consulting company.  Almost all of our project managers are also resources on the project.  I think it actually helps the process.  Being a resource on the team can give them additional insight into the status of the project.  They have more insight to spot risks before they happen.  They can also keep a closer eye on the schedule of the project, because they are working it every day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="58" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T19:59:47.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="55" CreationDate="2011-02-08T20:17:29.293" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;High-tech projects are ideally staffed by creative, educated, opinionated professionals.  A PM who understands the technical aspects of the project will be more likely to gain the respect of the project team - but it's not the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; way to gain their respect, it's just &lt;em&gt;a&lt;/em&gt; way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another advantage to a PM who has a technical understanding of the project is that they will be able to communicate effectively across all levels of the project.  One of the key roles of a PM is to facilitate communication amongst all project stakeholders.  A technical PM should be more effective at communicating complex technical information.  A non-technical PM would need to defer some of that communication to someone on the project team.  Not bad, but just different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/55/how-technical-should-a-project-manager-be/66#66&quot;&gt;pawelbrodzinski's answer&lt;/a&gt;.  If the reason you seem to need a technical PM is to second guess or double-check every decision made by the project team, you probably have a trust problem on the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T20:17:29.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="139" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="140" CreationDate="2011-02-08T20:19:28.303" Score="2" ViewCount="239" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is software development experience strictly necessary when managing a project which requires the development of significant amounts of new code? Can a PM without significant software development experience expect to be able compete with those who do have experience, when applying for this type of job?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="71" LastActivityDate="2011-11-22T02:55:38.420" Title="Will a Project Manager for a project which requires development of significant amounts of new code expected to have software development experience?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;skills&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="139" CreationDate="2011-02-08T20:29:13.730" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will address the second question on your description, since I believe the main question is address in another post in this forum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can a PM without significant software&#xA;  development experience expect to be&#xA;  able compete with those who do have&#xA;  experience, when applying for this&#xA;  type of job?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My answer is yes.  I think PMing has little to do with development itself.  That said, the PM needs to have some kind of general notion on development.  That person must understand the basics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What compilation means?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How manage a Configuration Management Plan?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to understand metrics?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now.  A great PM goes beyond the development activities.  The PM Cares and communicates about the project.  A PM with good people skills and great understanding of the PM framework, will go far beyond  good PM with technical abilities.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks, Geo&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T20:29:13.730" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="105" CreationDate="2011-02-08T20:33:45.333" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would encourage you to develop processes that work in your organization and try not to get hung up on applying a particular process method strictly.  There is plenty of precedent for using Scrum on a team of one.  Even 1 programmer can benefit from the discipline and communication offered by having a list of features they prioritize into sprints and then delivering on those promises at regular intervals.  The additional visibility / communication offered can be a real boon to very small teams that often get overlooked by management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does a scrum of one need a daily standup meeting? Obviously no, but that is not the only practice scrum provides and it doesn't mean there's nothing to gain from using it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, the idea behind agile is to be &lt;em&gt;pragmatic&lt;/em&gt; - do what makes sense for your organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T20:33:45.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="142" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-08T21:05:50.110" Score="10" ViewCount="119" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently started as a freelance researcher. I mostly work on projects where I have to do measurements and analyse the data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I have a little bit of experience with project management, I'm wondering how much &lt;code&gt;self management&lt;/code&gt; is appropriate. After all, the only person I would be reporting to is myself. So I guess the most useful result is that my future estimates will be more accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But how much of this self management is appropriate and what benefits am I currently overlooking?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6" LastEditorUserId="71" LastEditDate="2011-02-08T22:16:32.580" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T06:39:58.493" Title="How much self management is appropriate when you're self-employed?" Tags="&lt;progress-monitor&gt;&lt;progress-report&gt;&lt;self-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="143" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="148" CreationDate="2011-02-08T21:13:22.143" Score="5" ViewCount="566" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my job people engaged in projects often work in separate departments. It means that they work in separate (1-2 person) rooms on different floors. Moreover project members differ greatly in experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This results in communication barriers. People with little experience do their parts alone, which results in poor quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How this can be overcome?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="92" LastEditorUserId="38" LastEditDate="2011-02-22T19:18:26.147" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T19:18:26.147" Title="Working environment and its impact on project" Tags="&lt;skills&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;work-environment&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="143" CreationDate="2011-02-08T21:32:19.623" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience the best way would be by using common forms of technology. My entire work team is overseas. Skype screen sharing and face to face calls will usually overcome most of those obstacles. Their also has to be expectations set for senior level employees to facilitate growth and an understanding with new people of how the current organization accomplishes tasks - methodologies, communication channels, key stakeholders etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="46" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T21:32:19.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="142" CreationDate="2011-02-08T21:41:38.023" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are overlooking two standard benefits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the standard benefits associated with better reporting to a client. The more accurate, clear, easy to read and detailed, an account you can provide of the work you have performed, the more useful your client will find the actual work. It also helps signal a more professional attitude towards your work and your clients, which many clients value enough to pay higher rates for, given the same quality work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the standard benefits associated with better tracking of work in general. The more detailed, accurate and complete your self-management process is, the more likely you are to be able to find ways to optimize your time and work, and to increase your productivity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="71" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T21:41:38.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="143" CreationDate="2011-02-08T21:54:54.690" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As above, Skype is vital for working in distributed teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition we use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mikogo.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mikogo&lt;/a&gt; a lot for screen sharing - being able to see what each other is working on is also vital and this allows remote control, easy switching of presenters and pointers etc. Best of all is it is free&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, some kind of project space is probably a good idea. We use Jira and Greenhopper for agile project planning but even things like a wiki also work really well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="130" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T21:54:54.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="87" CreationDate="2011-02-08T21:59:09.903" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Free PM resources that I have used:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dau.mil/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Defense Acquisition University&lt;/a&gt; - free, but probably only useful to people doing work for the US DoD, but it has a wealth of PM information for those who can get in.  You'll need a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cac.mil/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CAC&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.controlchaos.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Control Chaos&lt;/a&gt; - the Scrum home page. Free.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Extreme Programming: A Gentle Introduction&lt;/a&gt;. The XP Home page. Free.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isixsigma.com/index.php?option=com_k2&amp;amp;view=itemlist&amp;amp;layout=category&amp;amp;Itemid=156&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;iSixSigma Top Rated Articles&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amanet.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;American Management Association&lt;/a&gt; - has lots of free and non-free resources. Haven't used it a ton, but unlike many sites, they don't hide their free resources behind a lot of clutter.  The site is well organized and it's easy to find things.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Free and non-Free Resources I have not used, or used only very occasionally:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmcentersusa.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pmcentersusa.com/&lt;/a&gt; - mostly non-free&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilexp.com/agile-resources.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Coaching Resources&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.itmpi.org/webinars/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.itmpi.org/webinars/&lt;/a&gt; - free&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T21:59:09.903" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-08T21:59:09.903" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="143" CreationDate="2011-02-08T22:05:58.650" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it's helpful to create a &quot;war room&quot; and have everyone work in a single large space for a set period of time.  It's especially useful on projects with short timelines and large communications requirements such as proposal development, but I've used it on &lt;a href=&quot;http://memeburn.com/2010/08/project-war-rooms-making-the-design-process-visible/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;software projects&lt;/a&gt; as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0201699478&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Crystal Clear&lt;/a&gt; software development methodology emphasizes the idea of &lt;em&gt;Osmotic Communication&lt;/em&gt; - the importance of having your developers all in the same room, or very close to each other.  His entire method can be summed up in one sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The lead designer and two to seven&#xA;  other developers ... in a large room or adjacent rooms, ... using such as whiteboards and flip charts, ...&#xA;  having easy access to expert users, ... distractions kept away, deliver running, tested,&#xA;  usable code to the users … every month or two (quarterly at worst), ... reflecting&#xA;  and adjusting their working conventions periodically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastEditorUserId="76" LastEditDate="2011-02-17T22:32:43.887" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T22:32:43.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="149" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="602" CreationDate="2011-02-08T22:08:44.237" Score="11" ViewCount="366" Body="&lt;p&gt;Last year I led a project for a research institute. Requirements had been in progress over the entire project, and I had lot of trouble when planning, budgeting and providing other estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, in 2011, the customer is asking for a fixed price offering to evolve the delivered system. Again, requirements are so undefined that in the first phase I'm planning a two months or so analysis task to just DEFINE requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After some thought, I'm almost convinced that an agile approach would be the answer to satisfy such a customer (and not to have yet another painful year ;)). My questions are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you agree that an Agile approach would help? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;With neither the team, nor the PM, having experience with Agile processes, is it to risky to try to switch at this point? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assuming we will be self training, how long would it take us to successfully switch to a more Agile approach?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand these are not easy questions to answer.&#xA;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-10-03T22:18:17.993" LastActivityDate="2015-10-03T22:18:17.993" Title="How long until a team can &quot;become&quot; agile on the job?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-10-04T02:50:45.053" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="149" CreationDate="2011-02-08T22:22:02.903" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it can depend on the project. Agile works extremely well when you can start delivering incrementally - and to be fair that could even be your requirements documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would suggest is don't just try to &quot;be agile&quot; - make sure you start off with a tried and tested approach such as scrum when you are starting out and inexperienced. We started trying to be agile initial and got in a right mess until we took a step back and implemented a proper framework. You can always adapt it to your needs as time goes on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="130" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T22:22:02.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="142" CreationDate="2011-02-08T22:35:44.510" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a really great question. It is far too easy for a freelancer to become focused only on the 'work' of the business and miss out on the 'working the business' tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you try to do this after the fact, you will probably be constantly catching up and reacting to situations. &#xA;My solution is always planning ahead (hmmm project manager planning ahead, who'd have thunk it)&#xA;Use you calendar, plan what you need to do for specific tasks throughout the next week. If you only plan in work for clients, you will do yourself a disservice, and eventually your clients. &#xA;Items to consider setting a weekly goal on.&#xA;1 billable time &#xA;2 searching for new work &#xA;3 increasing your skills and knowledge&#xA;4 rest&#xA;5 personal goals &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perry &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T22:35:44.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="123" CreationDate="2011-02-08T22:39:44.210" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Excellent question - there are so many signs that I tend to keep in mind that it's not so much what is happening, but what has changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many project suffer from little or no decision making for instance and that is a reflection of the organizational culture. The decisions eventually get made and the project carries on. &#xA;If, however, you are working in a culture that has a good history of decision making and suddenly you can't get a decision on something you need, you might start looking at why the environment has changed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-02-08T22:39:44.210" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:42:03.263" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="153" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="165" CreationDate="2011-02-08T23:26:59.400" Score="8" ViewCount="626" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Project Managers become more senior, what are the typical career paths (beyond just taking on larger and more complex projects)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="71" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T20:07:52.900" Title="What are typical career paths for PMs as they gain in experience and become more senior?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T00:53:56.873" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="154" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="190" CreationDate="2011-02-08T23:40:59.920" Score="10" ViewCount="136" Body="&lt;p&gt;When about to take on a project which is mostly staffed by volunteers, for a non-for-profit organization, what kinds of challenges should I prepare for, which I am unlikely to have seen elsewhere? Are there some books, courses, or other resources which will help me prepare for the transition?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="71" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T13:25:35.283" Title="What can I do to prepare for managing a project which is staffed mostly with volunteers, for a non-for-profit organization?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="155" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="157" CreationDate="2011-02-09T00:35:49.980" Score="6" ViewCount="315" Body="&lt;p&gt;On a large, fully staffed, project team, under ideal situations, who would you expect to own the project timeline?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="71" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T12:42:10.857" Title="Who owns the project timeline?" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;timeline&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="156" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="159" CreationDate="2011-02-09T00:43:16.713" Score="28" ViewCount="6222" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technical leaders in our projects are competing with project managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or in more general aspect, is it a problem if someone with greater domain specific knowledge tends to dominate in project or become an informal PM?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a person with technical knowledge, tries to become the informal PM and fight with (sometimes feckless) project manager, how would you resolve this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="92" LastEditorUserId="4342" LastEditDate="2012-12-27T20:13:37.303" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T06:20:07.827" Title="Do technical leaders compete with project managers?" Tags="&lt;technical-leader&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="155" CreationDate="2011-02-09T01:16:18.450" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the company I work for the Project Manager owns the timeline, but everyone on a project has access to it and is responsible for making sure their tasks are completed within the time slot allocated.  Having the timeline in a shared location means that everyone can see task dependencies both upstream and downstream of their own pieces of the project, and give feedback to the PM when changes need to be made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, everyone has access to the timeline, but if a change needs to be made it's the PM's responsibility.  If the entire schedule is going to slip, then I'm sure the PM will get input from the business owners as well as from the project team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T01:16:18.450" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="155" CreationDate="2011-02-09T01:41:22.867" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Its the project manager's responsibility to &quot;own&quot; it from an accountability standpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Importantly, the PM also owns the expectations management that comes with managing the project timeline. This flows upstream to project sponsors and clients, downstream to team members and across the stream to accounting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T01:41:22.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="156" CreationDate="2011-02-09T01:44:33.403" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project management is its own unique skill, more related to general management than any particular specialty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A great example is how well the new, professional management has done at Ford and GM compared to the car-guy specialists who ran the companies several years ago.  Neither the CEO of Ford or the CEO who took over GM from bankruptcy were specialists. They were successful, professional managers who knew how to get results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same should be the case with a good project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T01:44:33.403" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="154" CreationDate="2011-02-09T01:46:19.443" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bone-up on your leadership skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More particularly, the ability to lead through inspiration, being well organized and the softer skill of talking people into things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And patience. You'll need lots of patience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T01:46:19.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="149" CreationDate="2011-02-09T01:52:40.007" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile is not the answer.&#xA;Try rolling-wave planning with ample reserves in the contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't let them talk you into a fixed price without giving yourself sufficient resources to accommodate the iterations necessary to get better definition of the project. Research is full of unknowns.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2011/01/good-waterfall-better-than-bad-agile.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This post&lt;/a&gt;, and the comments, might be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T01:52:40.007" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-02-09T01:55:32.533" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0066210879&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Essential Drucker&lt;/a&gt; -the father of modern management and godfather of project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T01:55:32.533" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T01:55:32.533" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10" CreationDate="2011-02-09T01:57:54.590" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vertabase.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Vertabase&lt;/a&gt; has been used in conjunction with Remedy at large organizations to provide project management and time-tracking functionality, as well as project status reporting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Disclosure, I work for Vertabase.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T01:57:54.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="74" CreationDate="2011-02-09T02:01:29.157" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on the phase of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;During planning or requirements gathering, most of the time is spent planning.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;During execution and monitoring and controlling the project, most of the time is spent communicating with a portion of the time spent on gathering information /status updates from project management software.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, over the lifecycle of a project, over 80% of the time is spent communicating. What is done with the other 20% varies by phase, style and what's needed at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T02:01:29.157" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="153" CreationDate="2011-02-09T02:05:46.487" Score="6" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Portfolio management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Strategic decision making positions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leaders of innovation initiatives and new growth opportunities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T02:05:46.487" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T02:05:46.487" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="63" CreationDate="2011-02-09T02:07:38.200" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vertabase.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Vertabase&lt;/a&gt; (the company I work for) sounds like it could be a fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T02:07:38.200" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T02:07:38.200" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25" CreationDate="2011-02-09T02:59:35.333" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start with a best guess based on past experience and talking to other people.&#xA;This generally has a margin of error of 50% +/-.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the task gets better defined or gets underway, you should aim to have a guess that carries a margin of error of 10%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T02:59:35.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="63" CreationDate="2011-02-09T03:16:39.417" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;MS Project 2010 has improved tremendously over previous versions. Hook it up to Sharepoint 2010, and you've really got something good going. If you don't have the time or resources to implement and maintain an MS solution, you MUST look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://basecamphq.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Basecamp&lt;/a&gt; for simple project task tracking and team collaboration. I manage a team of 12, and all my team members, PMs, and stakeholders love Basecamp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T03:16:39.417" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T03:16:39.417" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25" CreationDate="2011-02-09T03:17:00.933" Score="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you have no idea how to estimate a task, popping out your calculators isn't going to help much. The principle of Garbage In, Garbage Out still applies: just because you did some clever math with your made up Optimistic/Expected/Pessimistic Durations doesn't mean that the number you get out is any less made up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are having trouble estimating something and even the purported domain experts don't know how long it would take, ask yourself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have you broken down the task into sufficient sub-tasks? The trouble with estimating may come from the fact that you are considering a large, complex task with many parts that you don't fully understand. For example, &amp;quot;Build a shed&amp;quot;... the shed could be large, small, complex, simple: the trouble with estimating comes from insufficient thought about what the shed will be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case the solution will almost always be to refine the design of the shed and figure out whether it's store-bought or homemade, how big it is, whether it will have a foundation or not, etc. etc. And when you break it down to sub-tasks you will have to sort out these issues which will produce a much more reliable estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is the task truly &amp;quot;normally&amp;quot; distributed? Certain types of tasks, especially &amp;quot;searching&amp;quot; tasks, may involve trial and error. These will be pareto-distributed, not normally distributed, and they can lead to enormous risks in a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if the project has a line item for &amp;quot;finding a development site,&amp;quot; it can be notoriously hard to predict how long that will take, because you might find the site on the first day, or you might find it on the 180th day. In fact this task has an equal probability of being completed on any given day, because every day, you go out and evaluate a site, and it either fits or it doesn't, and you have to keep doing that until you find one that fits. The mathematical shape of the distribution of probabilities for such searching tasks is pareto, not bell. There is thus a small risk of extreme overrun if the item you were searching for is not found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is the responsibility of the project manager to (1) identify cases where tasks are not sufficiently designed to get a good estimate, so that the domain experts can reduce project risk by nailing down the design and (2) identify cases where tasks are &amp;quot;searching tasks&amp;quot; and might cause enormous project risk, so that they can be moved forward in the schedule as much as possible. A project manager who applies formulas to made-up numbers because some book told them to do that is not doing anyone any favors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="132" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T03:17:00.933" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="156" CreationDate="2011-02-09T03:26:01.577" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the roles aren't clearly defined in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-is-the-difference-between-vision-and-scope-document-and-a-project-charter&quot;&gt;Project Charter&lt;/a&gt;, it's possible that there could be conflict.  Project Managers who have a background in technical areas may feel the need to get too involved in the technical aspects of the project and less involved in communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a technical background myself.  In the past, I've solved this problem by referring technical team members to other personnel who are also technical.  This helped me take a step back and let the team make the detailed decisions.  As long as my team members are collaborating and there are multiple pairs of eyes on the project, I'm happy to leave details to the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having plenty to do is also helpful.  As does having trust in the team's ability to produce results.  I find that the busier I am in coordinating with other departments where my skills aren't as strong, like marketing, the less likely we are to have issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T03:26:01.577" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="156" CreationDate="2011-02-09T03:47:56.993" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both roles are leadership roles, and the skill-sets required for one often overlap with the skill-sets required for the other. This means that, even in ideal situations where the roles are clearly defined and responsibilities are divided neatly, there can and there often will be conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the ideal situation, the manager/leader is in charge of a team of people who are specialized at their work, and are each much more talented at their own work than at the management role, and vice versa. A good manager will be in charge of managing people who are much smarter than he is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case of conflict, the best solution is to redirect the conflict into a mentor-student arrangement. If, for example, you find yourself in a PM role, and have more technical skills than one or more of your team-mates, rather than doing their work for them, or becoming a technical resource, try to become a mentor and leader. If you absolutely must spend time dedicated to helping one or more of the team-members out, put very strong boundaries on it. For example, maybe dedicate one or two hours a week to a pre-scheduled help/Q&amp;amp;A session, maybe describing it as a one-on-one. Remember that, if they are to learn, you should allow them the freedom to make mistakes, and then correct the mistakes themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vice-versa, when you find that one of your technical resources is trying to take on some of the PM work, possibly by force, treat the situation as a chance for you to increase your own skill-set. Accept that, most likely, the team-member is seeing something which is not working properly, and believes that s/he can compensate or improve the situation by taking on more work. Take time to look at what they are trying to do, and to learn which problem they are trying to solve, and attempt to form a mentor-student type relationship where they are advising you on the work you are trying to do, but are not themselves doing it. Make sure to make it clear that this is an advisory position - where you will take extra time to listen and learn from their advice, and then decide which course of action to take based on your own skills and merits. If necessary, point out that you have more information on the situation, most likely, than they do, and that you'll need the freedom to make and correct your own mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="71" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T03:47:56.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="123" CreationDate="2011-02-09T04:15:43.597" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scope Creep&lt;/strong&gt; with no-one stopping it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T04:15:43.597" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T04:15:43.597" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="125" CreationDate="2011-02-09T04:19:21.113" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.  A major benefit of having a dedicated project manager is having an impartial view-point on the best way to solve problems and/or meet the project's goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the PM is a resource, they will have skin in the game, as it were.  They would lose the impartiality (to the detriment of the project and the sponsor's goals.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastEditorUserId="7057" LastEditDate="2013-11-21T14:51:11.810" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T14:51:11.810" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="81" CreationDate="2011-02-09T04:32:23.117" Score="4" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask your contracting officer for any compliance guidelines or check online guidelines published by the relevant compliance agency e.g. FAR for US Gov't DoD.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whenever the group reaches a particular milestone (e.g. kick-off or close a project), when they need a group team-building moment or for a recognized national holiday it should be appropriated to take everyone out to dinner or bring in pizza, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where you may create the appearance of impropriety is when you do things for specific individuals rather than the group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T04:32:23.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="175" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-09T04:57:43.823" Score="7" ViewCount="656" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lets use this question to list all possible ways to earn PDUs.  Please moderator covert this question in a community post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary of all the answers: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PMI Chapter regular meetings (2 PDUs per meeting)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/175/what-ways-exist-to-earn-pdus-to-keep-active-all-pmi-certifications/185#185&quot;&gt;Six Sigma Green Belt&lt;/a&gt; certification (25 PDUs, cost about $250)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write an article or paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take a PMI quiz&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Volunteer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take a class&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attend a seminar&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Self education&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give a presentation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/Certification/Twelve-Ways-to-Earn-PDUs.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Complete List from the PMI Organization&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will pick as the right answer the one that get's the most votes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-04-25T19:09:05.890" Title="What ways exist to earn PDUs to keep active all PMI Certifications?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;pmi&gt;&lt;pdu&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="142" CreationDate="2011-02-09T06:39:58.493" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before you can answer this question effectively, you have to ask yourself &quot;What do I need to know&quot;?  Then you can decide how much planning, measuring and reporting is needed.  For example, if you freelance, you likely are responsible for providing cost &amp;amp; schedule efforts.  Do you know how accurate those estimates are?  Techniques such as tracking your &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules/velocity.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;project velocity&lt;/a&gt; are not too time consuming, but can help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you sure you are working on the most important tasks coming your way? Or do you feel as if you get caught up responding to the latest emergency? Perhaps &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.davidco.com/what_is_gtd.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;GTD&lt;/a&gt; can help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you keeping up with the latest developments in your field?  Perhaps a training plan is what you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bottom line:&lt;/strong&gt; only you can determine how much self-management you need, but &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/142/how-much-self-management-is-appropriate-when-youre-self-employed/151#151&quot;&gt;Perry Wilson's response&lt;/a&gt; is spot on - it's easy to get caught up in the daily project work and forget about everything else you need to do to become successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may find the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GQM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Goal-Question-Metric approach&lt;/a&gt; helpful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T06:39:58.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="149" CreationDate="2011-02-09T07:20:16.237" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are planning to commit to a fixed price contract to &quot;evolve&quot; something with little or no requirements stability?  Fixed price + uncertain requirements are a bad combination. This should be a danger sign and no, agile is not some &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;silver bullet&lt;/a&gt; that is going to magically make this problem easier for you in 2011.  The whole project is risky - adding a commitment to &quot;switch to agile&quot; doesn't make it much worse than it already is. Sorry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not sure what your customer expectations are, but take a look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt;.  If you think that your future project might benefit by shifting focus from the items on the right, to the items on the left, perhaps some agile practices can help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your question, it sounds as if no one on the project team has any experience with agile development and you don't plan to pay for training.  Another danger sign.  You need at least coach or a mentor - a person who really understands the process model you are trying to implement.  If you send one of your own people to get this kind of training, you have the advantage of having a mentor with excellent understanding of your organizations needs and constraints.  You may still benefit from outside consultants as home-grown mentors can have less objectivity than a consultant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than switching to agile (or not) because it someone on this page says you should (or not), I suggest you examine closely the problems you experienced last year and create strategies to eliminate or minimize them. For example:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How was planning, budgeting and providing other estimates troublesome?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did the project deliver on time and on budget?  Did you have a budget?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can you say that you know exactly how many hours of effort it took to accomplish the project?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you know exactly how many requirements you started with and how many you ended up with?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many requirements were implemented? How many deferred?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider a &lt;a href=&quot;http://alistair.cockburn.us/Reflection+workshop&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reflection workshop&lt;/a&gt; or a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules/fixit.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;retrospective&lt;/a&gt;. Do this regardless of whether you accept your fixed price job or not.  Sounds like you have something to learn from a past project that was harder on the team than you would have liked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T07:20:16.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="178" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="556" CreationDate="2011-02-09T07:34:59.267" Score="6" ViewCount="2104" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read a bit about the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kano_model&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kano Model&lt;/a&gt;, and seen pictures, etc:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/b00D3.gif&quot; alt=&quot;kano model&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but how is this connected to the idea of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.qfdi.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Quality Function Deployment&lt;/a&gt;.  How do you integrate the ideas behind the Kano model into QFD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on Marc's comment, I would say the the 'bottom line' for this question is how to use Kano to make the feature selection in QFD (it's output) more approachable to people who don't know anything about QFD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastEditorUserId="76" LastEditDate="2011-03-01T03:49:00.093" LastActivityDate="2011-03-01T03:49:00.093" Title="What is the relationship between the Kano Model and Quality Function Deployment?" Tags="&lt;quality&gt;&lt;customer-satisfaction&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="149" CreationDate="2011-02-09T11:22:43.923" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;thanks all for the feedback&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Fixed price is an administrative must for the customer and we are already pushing to the highest price possible, to keep higher the margin for the unknown.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The problem is the expectations coming from the customer that too often last year were ever changing. In my idea adopting Agile would mean &quot;force&quot; the customer to focus on the iterations and on what we will release at each one, keep track on the backlog and adjust priority depending on their feedback. In this way I think/hope I can achieve to keep the customer expectations more adherent to the project scope limiting their researchers approach that tend to make the project so risky.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Indeed there is a big politics issue under the cover here, because the customer wants research, but the project will produce a portal of services for the citizens in behalf of the government.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I cannot drive politics, but I need a way to keep the project under control&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T11:22:43.923" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="180" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="183" CreationDate="2011-02-09T11:43:41.087" Score="8" ViewCount="305" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based off of my previous question &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/105/can-scrum-be-suited-to-smaller-development-teams/&quot;&gt;Can Scrum be suited to smaller development teams?&lt;/a&gt;, we have now picked out the elements of Scrum that would best fit our team and business, however, my Boss has suggested that we implement the processes gradually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm unsure about this myself as I fear that we would not make the transition to the Scrum method that we have tailored completely and we would still be in a jumbled mess we're in now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we were to do it gradually, what would be the best way to go about it (not necessarily Scrum, but the recommended way, if any, to make the transition to a different methodology)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="115" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2015-10-04T10:22:54.890" Title="Changing Processes - is it better to do it gradually or just change?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="181" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="182" CreationDate="2011-02-09T12:00:51.407" Score="6" ViewCount="251" Body="&lt;p&gt;When starting a brand new project, no matter how well I try to consider all of the components I always end up with a rapidly expanding list of features and missed requirements by half way through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I deal with these before or during the project without repeatedly blowing my milestones, or worse; &quot;finishing&quot; with a list of missed essentials taped to the side?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="136" LastEditorUserId="37" LastEditDate="2011-02-12T15:13:34.123" LastActivityDate="2011-02-12T15:13:34.123" Title="How do I deal with ballooning timescales?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;deadline&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="181" CreationDate="2011-02-09T12:27:13.647" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few measures you can take to both prevent and deal with this kind of situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Initial Estimate +- 100%:&lt;/strong&gt; Make your initial estimates big (eg. plus or minus 100%) if you know that all the requirements are not captured. As you get more sure, start narrowing the range down. This keeps all stakeholders in the loop.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Up-Front Design:&lt;/strong&gt; If you keep missing requirements, do more up-front analysis and design of your product. Keep breaking items down until you reach the point where you feel the team can understand, estimate, and implement the work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Write Down the Risk:&lt;/strong&gt; If you're not doing risk management, start. Write this down as your first risk, and make it a high probability and impact: &quot;missing and incomplete requirements can jeopardize schedule.&quot; Come up with a mitigation plan (what to do if it occurs).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Say No:&lt;/strong&gt; Learn to say no to stakeholders. Great ideas always emerge partly through the project, especially with vague requirements. Your goal is to get the project done on time and within cost, not to get &quot;everything&quot; people want done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Buffer:&lt;/strong&gt; As part of your mitigation plan, add some buffer days into your schedule.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you miss something really big, it's OK to change timelines -- even experienced PMs in big companies do this often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if your project is a software project, try to use the agile methodology. Since agile estimates in an arbitrary unit (&quot;story points&quot;), it already takes into account the fact that estimates can change, and depends on the actual team performance to calculate the schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T12:27:13.647" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="180" CreationDate="2011-02-09T12:36:01.550" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The real question underneath your question is how to make people adapt to change. That's a tough one, and that's the hardest part of changing processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If possible, &lt;strong&gt;have a discussion first with your team about problems with the existing process, and how Scrum (or whatever process you picked) can solve those problems.&lt;/strong&gt; That'll give them buy-in to willingly follow you, and not see it as just &quot;overhead&quot; or &quot;more work.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Scrum specifically, it's hard to adopt gradually, because you break down the work differently, and finish your &quot;work cycle&quot; in two or three weeks instead of a longer period. &lt;strong&gt;Training people may help&lt;/strong&gt; (whether a seminar, book, or presentation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One enterprise company I was at adopted scrum by starting with a first sprint that was a month or two long. (They didn't break the work down any differently, but just agreed to deliver most of it in a couple of months instead of piece-meal in two-week iterations.) From here, they started shortening their sprint length and breaking down their work accordingly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, Scrum and Agile are &lt;em&gt;usually&lt;/em&gt; custom-tailored to some amount; there's nothing wrong with that. That's how you get the most benefit out of it &lt;em&gt;for your given situation&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T12:36:01.550" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="181" CreationDate="2011-02-09T12:39:11.873" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that what you have is an indicator of &lt;em&gt;good communication&lt;/em&gt; between you and end-users/customers. You discover that requirements are missed, and you discover this situation right in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is how to keep your scope and schedule synchronized. Try to communicate schedule as frequently with customers as you communicate scope. In other words, every time you discuss new requirements - discuss changes to milestones. No matter how difficult it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T12:39:11.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="175" CreationDate="2011-02-09T12:40:41.967" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Six Sigma Green Belt&lt;/a&gt; certification will give you 25 PDUs. It costs around $250 and can be passed online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T12:40:41.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="155" CreationDate="2011-02-09T12:42:10.857" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to PMBOK the PM is the only person who owns Schedule (timeline, as you call it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T12:42:10.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="154" CreationDate="2011-02-09T12:44:38.827" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The biggest challenge, of course, is unreliability of estimates. You can use &quot;padding&quot;, which is the first and the wrong choice. Or you can duplicate resources, which is the right choice, but will make your life more difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T12:44:38.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="125" CreationDate="2011-02-09T13:11:08.820" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMBOK says that a PM can be a resource, but should stay away of critical path. I think that for most projects it's the most practical approach. In other words, you can't have a PM completely out of project activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T13:11:08.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="123" CreationDate="2011-02-09T13:13:00.457" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Earned Value Analysis&lt;/strong&gt; metrics are the only objective indicator of project progress, according to the PMBOK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T13:13:00.457" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T13:13:00.457" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="154" CreationDate="2011-02-09T13:25:35.283" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The biggest difference between voluntary projects and typical ones is no power, which leaders can use over the team. It affects the way the project goes on many levels but the main differences would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are no managers so people are asked to do something or declare they'd do something but can't be told to do that. It means the worst tasks are often understaffed or done poorly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You have who you have - you can't just ask for a person with specific skills as you need them in the project. You have to fill the gaps with the group you work with. It's very important to have the group well-balanced.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes people just screw up and you can't do anything about that. People don't keep their word or just don't show up and you have no tools whatsoever to bring them back or make them do what they promise.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There's way more freedom in voluntary projects. Usually there's no client with big bucks who tells you what exactly they expect - there are many more decisions which are made by the team (or team members).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also see the post with &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2010/09/voluntary-projects.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;my thoughts after running voluntary project&lt;/a&gt; (TEDx conference).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of what need to prepare for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Risk management. Have a backup plan for almost everything.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Look for people who you can count on. Few of them will do more than dozens of those who are quick to talk but not-so-quick to do.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Discussion facilitation. There will be plenty of discussion with different opinions thrown all over the table. But unless you make some decision you won't push the project forward, which sometimes mean you have to make a decision without taking into consideration everyone's opinion. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Roll up your sleeves. In voluntary projects everyone's a worker. There's rarely a leader who focuses purely on managing a project. Often leaders do most with their own hands.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T13:25:35.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="36" CreationDate="2011-02-09T13:57:07.830" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I disagree that PMP is only for project managers. Many are those of us PMPs who are not project managers  by trade or training; yet for us, PMP is a step towards a new career, an &quot;I know what I'm talking about.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a software engineer by day, and also a PMP; I decided to change careers, and this was the first step for me. PMP serves as an excellent tool for changing careers; and it ensures you have enough project experience that you won't be stuck necessarily with entry-level project-management-career jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, bear in mind that PMI has only been around for 40 years or so; their goal is to make project management a professional vocation, and to certify and train people. PMP is great to have, but many job listings don't even require it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were you, I would get my PMP as soon as possible. It gives you a solid grounding and a decent framework from which to address project management; especially if you're &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; a project manager, it'll give you a run-down of the basic skills you need, and you'll know where you need to improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T13:57:07.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="180" CreationDate="2011-02-09T14:22:47.543" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do a lot of upfront education, planning and communicating ---then make the switch cold-turkey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure your clients know that you'll be making a switch and that there may be hiccups. So, choose the cut-off date wisely based on current commitments. Share with them what you plan on doing, get their feedback and address their concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do it gradually, you're opening yourself up to nit-picking and a long process of incremental fault finding that will distort your original vision or kill it entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T14:22:47.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="181" CreationDate="2011-02-09T14:25:55.887" Score="4" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do much smaller projects.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Break things down into smaller bits and focus on getting those done on time and within scope.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.Write down the process of how you plan on getting things done. Write down how you actually do get things done while the project is going on.  Compare the two and start to &lt;strong&gt;isolate the specific factors that are tripping you up&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T14:25:55.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="175" CreationDate="2011-02-09T14:29:34.650" Score="5" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;write an article or paper &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;take a PMI quiz &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;volunteer &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;take a class &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;attend a seminar &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;self education &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;give a presentation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/Certification/Twelve-Ways-to-Earn-PDUs.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T14:29:34.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="195" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="199" CreationDate="2011-02-09T14:39:44.033" Score="68" ViewCount="4669" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've worked a lot on projects by myself -- &quot;one man&quot; projects. These are typically small projects in the software domain. Many of them have no customers other than myself (who actually use the end product); some have other users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question that keeps recurring to me is &lt;strong&gt;what kind of project management practices should I apply, at a minimum, in these projects?&lt;/strong&gt; Having no other developers or staff, things can move and change quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a minimum, I always have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A vision of what I'm going to accomplish&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A scope statement describing much of the work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A risk register with my top 5-10 risks to monitor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A place to list procurement items (graphics/sound)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without getting too cumbersome, what are the other aspects that I should include in my projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; On the technical side, I usually use a variant of agile/Scrum -- a product backlog and estimates per story in points, with no sprints, just releases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2011-02-14T13:40:48.627" LastActivityDate="2013-05-18T04:29:53.337" Title="Minimum Project Management Practices for One-Man Software Projects" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;self-management&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="42" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="81" CreationDate="2011-02-09T14:49:46.737" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To avoid running afoul of anti-bribery laws, regulations and policies, you'll have to check with your contracting officer for guidelines. Each agency will have different policies, so there is no answer that can apply to all government workers. The laws will also be different for federal, state, county and city governments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T14:49:46.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="195" CreationDate="2011-02-09T15:04:50.643" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your list is good.  I will suggest you at a minimum do the following things, even for small one-man projects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plan (make sure you have a good list of activities that explain how to get to your vision)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Track your plan, make sure you go back to your list at least weekly and see where you are in terms of your original estimates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;close the books at the end, by archiving your project documents in a central place.  This will help you in the future.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastEditorUserId="203" LastEditDate="2011-02-16T15:22:51.333" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T15:22:51.333" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="195" CreationDate="2011-02-09T15:19:22.983" Score="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;For software projects, even when you're the only developer and end user, I find it extremely important to have some kind of issue tracking. It might as simple as a spreadsheet, or something more sophisticated as dedicated software hooked into your version control repository.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will forget things. The list is there to save you the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="42" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T15:19:22.983" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="195" CreationDate="2011-02-09T15:26:50.840" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Track your time on each task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will give you visibility into which parts take the longest so you can concentrate on improving those specific areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use big buckets to start with, like planning, development, testing, bug fixes, deployment, etc. Each bucket should be something that will hold at least 20 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T15:26:50.840" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="175" CreationDate="2011-02-09T15:38:48.770" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some employers are certified training providers with PMI.  If they are, you can often take internal training classes at work and register them for PDUs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="58" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T15:38:48.770" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="77" CreationDate="2011-02-09T17:10:56.043" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You mention &quot;proficient English&quot;. If this were about programming, I'd say &quot;oh yes&quot;. But this is project management, which is much more prople oriented and less (or not at all) computer oriented. Therefore I don't see the need to speak or understand English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will need to speak and understand the language or languages of your project team, of course, be them English or whatever. I don't think English has any special status in project management (as opposed to programming, where it does).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="38" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T17:10:56.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="77" CreationDate="2011-02-09T17:21:31.870" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it was so easy that it needed one skill only, it wouldn't be fun. :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest help in my experience is having solid people management skills. The technical stuff is very important, but you can learn that easily. Knowing how to do the latest in project management techniques will not make for a successful project if the PM can't get people to do what it takes to get the project done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T17:21:31.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="64" CreationDate="2011-02-09T17:27:10.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends a lot on the culture and size of the organization. In pure delineation of duties: PMs manage projects and IT managers manage IT people/departments.  Many projects have a significant IT component, even if they are not entirely IT driven projects. A strong relationship with the responsible IT manager will go a long way to ensure project success as long as you both agree on roles and responsibilities at the outset.  PMs shouldn't write code and IT managers shouldn't distribute the project update report. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The need and organization of the PM role is as varied as companies and projects but you will see general trends and setups.  In small organizations there is usually crossover or a breakpoint on what qualifies as a corporate project, requiring a PM.  Some organizations have a separate PMO office and some have PMs imbedded in business departments. Some organizations simply appointment someone to deliver the project, without PM title, or don't even have a PM job/role.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="113" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T17:27:10.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="181" CreationDate="2011-02-09T17:41:43.377" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is something that I have not done yet, because I'm not a professional yet and I'm just now trying to work on projects in a more professional manner (subversioning, development methodologies, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ran across &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;evidence based scheduling&lt;/a&gt;. The basic premise is that we're really bad at estimating when an entire project will be done because we don't know how long every little thing will take. In evidence based scheduling, every little part of a project is broken down, making it easier to put estimates on. Also, the actual time it took for each part is recorded so a comparison between actual and estimated time to complete can be calculated, which allows for better estimates on the future, because it's likely that all of the times will be generally underestimated by a certain factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="141" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T17:41:43.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="181" CreationDate="2011-02-09T18:44:40.700" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Shortly after asking this question it occurred to me that I was suffering this problem more so recently than in my previous job. Then it struck me: Inexperience. I'm having trouble making consistent estimates because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) Some things take longer than they should due to my lack of knowledge of the tools&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) I don't yet know the framework well enough to consider the problem down to any level of detail&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my answer to people in similar circumstances is to gain more experience (or knowledge of the area), and/or consult someone who has relevant experience when making the estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="136" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T18:44:40.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="64" CreationDate="2011-02-09T19:00:49.983" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my (brief) experience as an IT manager, and then later in finding my replacement, I found the following held true:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Small companies usually had an IT manager (like myself) doing all the management tasks, whereas a larger company would have a dedicated Project Manager organising work and a people management focused IT Manager doing appraisals etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="136" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T19:00:49.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="208" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="209" CreationDate="2011-02-09T19:12:13.017" Score="5" ViewCount="817" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently started a new project. Requirements were set, project was already specified and no new revolutionary 'features' can be added. Although on the client side, person responsible for project changed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is how to engage this person into project. As I said requirements are set and nothing 'new' can be added. This person would provide essential resources for the project from the client side and it's necessary to get really motivated and involved into project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="92" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T15:43:04.460" Title="How to engage new stakeholders into project?" Tags="&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="208" CreationDate="2011-02-09T19:24:49.330" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way, in my experience, is to show them &lt;strong&gt;how the project makes their life better.&lt;/strong&gt; What it does for them. Sell them on that. Every stakeholder has a pain point, and if you can find it (and show how your project will help remove that pain), people will fall off trees to help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T19:24:49.330" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="181" CreationDate="2011-02-09T19:25:25.440" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'rapidly expanding list of features' &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is one of two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) If the features are really fine-grained details of larger requirements, then it sounds to me like insufficient planning, particularly the requirements analysis part. Capturing what the customer wants in the final deliverable is a long process of eliciting all the specific details that the customer wants. Once you've got all those details, you need to look through the impact of each, dependencies, risks, available resources to do the work, etc, and gauge the costs of the implementation. Once you have the costs (time or $$$'s), you can present these figures to the stakeholders to ensure they understand the costs and timescales they're about to commit to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) If you've definitely gone to this level of detail for all the tasks in your project, your project has already started and your timescales are ballooning, maybe the issue is that you need a change management process, so that the is dealt with formally and the impact on the timescale spelled out to the stakeholders. For every new feature that gets added, what not-done-yet feature gets removed? Have you considered switching to an iterative project management methodology?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="101" LastEditorUserId="101" LastEditDate="2011-02-09T19:31:43.063" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T19:31:43.063" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="208" CreationDate="2011-02-09T19:26:21.067" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would approach the stakeholder(s) and let them know what you were working on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask if they have any suggestions or feature requests, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="119" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T19:26:21.067" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="212" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="217" CreationDate="2011-02-09T19:37:34.243" Score="16" ViewCount="1035" Body="&lt;p&gt;How to resolve conflicts in project when:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No roles are clearly defined (eg. no project charter).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project manager is sluggish / incompetent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical people feel like more competent than PM.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bit of explanation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This results in personal conflicts - who is in charge of technical aspects? Who is contacting with client? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nothing is done on time. Resources can't be provided. Project manager is only focused on delivering features but not on quality.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project members feel like being on slowly sinking ship. They aware of obstacles / problems but project manager apparently is not. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking forward for not-so-obvious answers (like changing the PM) :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="92" LastEditorUserId="92" LastEditDate="2011-02-09T20:05:39.110" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T13:37:41.560" Title="How to resolve leadership conflicts in project?" Tags="&lt;project-charter&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;conflicts&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="153" CreationDate="2011-02-09T20:07:52.900" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;All the way up to COO&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As your experience with larger/higher-budget/more-complex projects grows, you'll eventually be in a position to manage projects which directly affect the business in all areas, e.g. rolling out company-wide strategic initiatives. With enough experience in this, there's no reason you couldn't be invited to help decide on the initiatives in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="101" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T20:07:52.900" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-09T20:07:52.900" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="214" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="215" CreationDate="2011-02-09T20:17:51.350" Score="15" ViewCount="597" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently started work as a PM, leading part of a large, long term (18mo+) project. After working on the project for 2 months, performing essentially requirements gathering and staffing work, the funding for the project was stopped, and all work was suspended, indefinitely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I had been brought on specifically to work on this project, my contract was terminated as a result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will this be a bad mark on my track-record? How do I speak of it as I seek other employment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="71" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-27T04:38:34.073" LastActivityDate="2012-07-27T04:38:34.073" Title="One of my projects was cancelled very early on - will this be detrimental to my career? How do I speak of it on my CV?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="214" CreationDate="2011-02-09T20:22:37.340" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;'Terminated due to budget cuts' - happens all the time, nothing to be ashamed of. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="42" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T20:22:37.340" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="214" CreationDate="2011-02-09T20:28:29.297" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the project was cancelled through no fault of your own, then it is by no means a bad mark on your record. When discussing this in future interviews, consider the successful actions you  had in the project before it was cancelled:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gathering requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pulling together a team in preparation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Beginning specification&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What methods did you successfully implement to do the above?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What did you contribute over and above the norm?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How did you help wind down the project?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did you help to identify a troublesome project in the making, saving the company money and reputation?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did you learn anything that can only be learned from managing a cancelled project (using it as an advantage over other candidates)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="136" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T20:28:29.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="212" CreationDate="2011-02-09T20:29:30.787" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seems more like lack of leadership than leadership conflicts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting attached to specific roles in this kind of situation isn't the best solution. I'd look for leadership among the project team, and wouldn't care whether one's title is PM or tech lead or whatever. If I found the person I'd give them power to make project-related decisions and support those decisions, as otherwise it would ruin their authority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing to do is clearly setting up responsibilities. Who does what. Who is responsible for what. Again, I wouldn't care much about who should do what basing purely on their title - I'd look more for people who genuinely care about quality/scope/budget/client satisfaction/you name it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a good meeting facilitator at hand, possibly not someone from the team, you can also run a meeting where you try to call all the issues, possibly solve them or set solutions to avoid them in future to improve cooperation within project team. In other words run a project retrospective now. But if you don't have an arbiter it may get out of control and become more of a flame than constructive discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If above doesn't work you may want to refer to formal responsibilities, e.g. PM should do this, this and that and if they don't management should take care about that. However as long as I don't have to I wouldn't go for that as it would only make personal conflicts more intensive. Another step is asking for changes in project team - finding anyone with strong leadership skills to join the team (or get exchanged for someone from the current team) and informally take the sinking ship over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T20:29:30.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="214" CreationDate="2011-02-09T20:34:08.333" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would just discuss it openly and honestly. In vast majority of cases that's the best solution to tell about such difficult situations. Even when you screwed something up. A person who is aware of mistakes they made is a better candidate than a person who has never made any. The latter either never had to deal with issues or is a liar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T20:34:08.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="214" CreationDate="2011-02-09T22:02:58.320" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not a negative at all. Projects get canceled. It is a fact of life (and not your doing on this project).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talk about why you were brought it in the first place. &#xA;Talk about what you did accomplish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T22:02:58.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="208" CreationDate="2011-02-09T22:06:16.150" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start with a lunch, coffee or phone conversation to build a relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this has been assigned to them as part of their work responsibilities they should already be engaged, professionally.  You need to work on getting them personally engaged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T22:06:16.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="77" CreationDate="2011-02-09T22:10:15.177" Score="11" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Being Organized.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;You are the person who has to keep everything, and everyone, together.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Leadership.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;There will be times when you'll need to get people moving in a direction they may not naturally head to or accept news/modify expectations they might not want to hear. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-09T22:10:15.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="222" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="227" CreationDate="2011-02-10T00:10:26.953" Score="4" ViewCount="31133" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the difference and when should a company have a project manager or a developer manager?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found the following &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.developer.com/img/articles/2005/06/09/Fullorgchart.gif&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;diagram&lt;/a&gt; but was further confused:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0Oryi.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More specific question: In a small company is it more beneficial to have a developer manager or project manager?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2011-11-16T16:59:14.603" LastActivityDate="2019-04-18T23:52:09.883" Title="What is the difference between a project manager and developer manager?" Tags="&lt;roles&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="223" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="224" CreationDate="2011-02-10T00:48:39.427" Score="27" ViewCount="10491" Body="&lt;p&gt;When it becomes apparent that your project is running behind, what considerations should be made when deciding to cut scope, push back the timeline, or ask for overtime? Or is it purely up to the customer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2011-02-14T13:40:27.533" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T23:35:15.350" Title="De-scope vs push back timeline vs overtime?" Tags="&lt;timeline&gt;&lt;scope&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="223" CreationDate="2011-02-10T01:18:37.130" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the best decisions I've seen when it comes to this situation is to &lt;strong&gt;cut scope wherever possible.&lt;/strong&gt; Sometimes, this is possible, and this is the best approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why the best?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Overtime is demotivating for team members (especially in the long-term) and burns them out&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pushing back may not be possible if the company made promises to a customer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asking the customer is good (if they say yes and are understanding); if they say no, you're in trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best thing is to communicate status early, and not get into a last-minute situation where you're &quot;suddenly&quot; three months late. Projects don't &lt;em&gt;suddenly&lt;/em&gt; fall behind schedule; they fall behind one hour at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T01:18:37.130" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="223" CreationDate="2011-02-10T01:22:21.007" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would strongly advocate against overtime unless it's for a &lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; short period.  The hidden costs associated with staff burnout will bite you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By hidden costs, I mean such things as (but not limited to):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduced work quality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Impaired judgment &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increased time do anything&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other two options will come down to your customer really.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="140" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T01:22:21.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="223" CreationDate="2011-02-10T03:18:08.587" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to present the customer with your recommendation for the best path to get the most important aspects of the project complete within the shortest period of time for the least budget. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be prepared with analysis of how changing one variable would impact the other s though they can make intelligent choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T03:18:08.587" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="222" CreationDate="2011-02-10T03:36:56.530" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure I agree with the diagram.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that a &lt;strong&gt;developer manager&lt;/strong&gt; has roots in application development. This person may be fluent in one or more of the following: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;System analysis &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;architecture&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;application/database development&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SDLC/other programming methodologies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Responsibilities would include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;recruiting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;hiring&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;coaching&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;staff evaluations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;amongst others. To be an effective manager, this person should be respected for his/her leadership and technical expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;project manager&lt;/strong&gt; may not necessarily be a technical expert. This person's scope of responsibilities, although similar to that of a dev manager, are limited to the assigned projects. That is, a pm can hire/fire people from the project, but maybe not necessarily from the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[EDIT] If we are contrasting the role of &quot;Product Manager&quot;, I'd specify that a Product Manager is responsible for the overall lifecycle of a product or service. That differs from a Project Manager who would only be responsible for the implementation. Once the product or service is launched, the Project Manager would move on to the next project, whereas the Product Manager keeps his/her focus on the specific product/service ensuring it continues to meet business objectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2012-12-17T10:01:59.387" LastActivityDate="2012-12-17T10:01:59.387" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="228" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="232" CreationDate="2011-02-10T04:03:01.127" Score="6" ViewCount="705" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are clear pros and cons to the different types of organizational structures: functional vs. matrix vs. project. What strategies are necessary to change the culture?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-28T09:09:59.243" LastActivityDate="2012-06-28T09:09:59.243" Title="Is it possible to transform from a functional or matrix or project organization?" Tags="&lt;culture&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="229" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="231" CreationDate="2011-02-10T04:41:21.617" Score="5" ViewCount="211" Body="&lt;p&gt;What should be the best way to handle situations where the time taken for parts of a project go &quot;over budget&quot; or over the estimation that was made for them while you are also trying to achieve a high quality product to present to the client. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some tips for achieving the best balance here and a way to manage the developers that are working on the project(s)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2011-02-14T13:39:17.987" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T13:39:17.987" Title="Dealing with project perfection and time contraints" Tags="&lt;timeline&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="229" CreationDate="2011-02-10T06:20:08.933" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately there is no easy answer.  I think this is a very common issue that happens in many projects.  The short answer is increase cost, but in many cases that is not simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below what I will try to do if I was you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure to compare the requirements from your client to your &quot;development&quot; tasks. Try to avoid giving things that are not part of the requirements to make your client happier, I know that sounds wrong, but you are in a though spot.  Remember you are bounded to give what the client ask nothing more, at least in theory.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After I compare, I will see if I am doing something that should be considered a change.  I will seek your sponsor's help, if you find a few of these.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I will make a list of the features that you are building, and sort them using the frequency that the client will use that feature.  This will let you know if something might be deploy after launch.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Post a comment and let me know if this makes sense. If not, let me know and I will clarify.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks, Geo&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T06:20:08.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="229" CreationDate="2011-02-10T07:05:39.240" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the end, your goal is to provide a solution to a problem for a client.  Your role as a project manager is to communicate with developers on the project, clients, managers, and other stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are times when something must give, and that is either quality, functionality, or delivery date.  As soon as you suspect that the project will go over the estimated time, the first thing you should do is communicate this possibility to all of the stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By informing the client of the problems early, this puts the ball in their court and avoids any nasty surprises.  Based on discussions with the clients' stakeholders, the client may decide to drop some features, the client may decide that quality isn't as important, or the client may decide that pushing back the due date is acceptable.  This largely depends on their business goals, such as how flexible their schedule is or how important it is that the product be reliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, most clients will respect you for watching their back.  Like you, your client has people that he or she must answer to, and if you keep them from having to deliver awkward, last minute bad news to their stakeholders, they will not only feel more in control, but the project will also run much more smoothly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T07:05:39.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="228" CreationDate="2011-02-10T07:42:57.667" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are, as I type, moving from a project-oriented to a matrix-based organisation. We are a 50-people research organisation based in Spain and the change process is as difficult as it is exciting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sales pitch and political movement, as you say, are necessary. Not everyone reacts the same, and not everyone is equally interested in the change. In our organisation we have a long tradition of being extremely participatory in most decisions that are made, and this definitely helps make people feel part of the change process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You ask about strategies to change the culture. We find that using consensus building techniques as the way to make the biggest decisions is a great thing. It often takes longer than having someone make an executive decision, but the long-run effects are much better. No government body in our &quot;new organisation&quot; has ever held a voting session on anything; consensus building is the only mechanism allowed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;. There is something that you need to bear in mind, though. We asked for expert advice during our change process and most people pointed to one of the biggest perceived weaknesses of the matrix model: the fact that, in a matrix, most individuals in the organisation end up having two (or more) &quot;bosses&quot;. This super-complex network is not uncommon in post-bureaucratic organisations, but it definitely needs to be explained, communicated, agreed upon and thought out before you dive in into the deep end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps. Let me know if I can expand my answer with additional details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="38" LastEditorUserId="38" LastEditDate="2011-02-16T22:55:53.333" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T22:55:53.333" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="233" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="234" CreationDate="2011-02-10T11:51:56.367" Score="19" ViewCount="4138" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some time ago, the company had to downsize due to difficulties, now things are going better, but employees are still leaving the company.&#xA;There is no budget to increase the salary or benefits right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to manage the risks on the project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to motivate people to stay on the company?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it ok to ask them to disclose if they looking for other job opportunities? This would make it is easier to manage job allocation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="105" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2011-02-14T13:38:41.797" LastActivityDate="2016-11-17T20:57:55.253" Title="How to manage employees leaving the company?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;job-allocation&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="233" CreationDate="2011-02-10T12:52:58.073" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If people are still leaving,&lt;/strong&gt; then it's likely that they don't see job security in their current positions -- not surprising, considering the downsizing. I think the first step would be to talk to the team and tell them that things are getting better and that downsizing is over -- many companies overlook this small but crucial piece of communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To motivate them to stay,&lt;/strong&gt; if you know things are going to improve in 1-2 years, you can share that information with them -- whatever little you know. That's the most you can probably do. You can also personalize with them, and tell them that your salary is as frozen as theirs is. I had one manager tell me this, and it did make me feel better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asking them if they're looking is tricky; they may &lt;strong&gt;lie or deny it&lt;/strong&gt;, or may feel insecure even if they tell you. It really depends how much they trust you. If they think you may hold it against them, they definitely won't even breathe a hint of it. It also depends how much you trust yourself; will you &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; treat them the same if you know they're looking to get out? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say, if you're really going to be bold and ask them, do it in a smart way: &lt;strong&gt;create an anonymous employee satisfaction survey&lt;/strong&gt; (Google Docs can do it) and ask them if they're leaving, and put an optional field for their name. You can explain your reasons for wanting to know. If they want to tell you, they can; but you're not forcing them to tell you anything they don't want to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, for managing risks, you probably already have a risk register with a list of risks and their probability and impact (if you don't, make one ASAP!) If it's not used by the team, you can add individuals or people of certain roles leaving (eg. senior developer); if it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; shared, make a private version to manage these risks. This is probably not something you want to tout publicly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastEditorUserId="36" LastEditDate="2011-02-10T12:58:12.763" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T12:58:12.763" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="228" CreationDate="2011-02-10T13:11:06.840" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cesar got this answer pretty much to the point.  The only thing that I will add, is that most of the times this type of evolution happens over time because the business needs the change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example a mid-size functional org&#xA;  structure that grew and now is too&#xA;  compartmentalized. This organization&#xA;  is sick, and in order to fix it,&#xA;  executives need to put a strategy in&#xA;  place to improve communication among&#xA;  teams.  As part of the strategy you&#xA;  might have converting to Matrix or one&#xA;  of its variant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point being, that the change will not happen because of the pros and cons of the structure, but for the end goal to the business and strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes.  Politics, diplomacy, &lt;strong&gt;consensus&lt;/strong&gt;, lots of selling, and most importantly make your people feel secure will help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a great day,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Geo&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T13:11:06.840" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="233" CreationDate="2011-02-10T13:11:48.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;People are leaving&quot; is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; the problem itself. The problem is that their behavior affects your project plans. You didn't explain &lt;strong&gt;how&lt;/strong&gt; your problems are affected by that. Can you explain?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't, please try. It's very likely that once you start focusing on plans instead of &quot;getting people back&quot; employees will turn back or stop leaving. They will see that the company cares about the future, not the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T13:11:48.743" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="229" CreationDate="2011-02-10T13:15:55.573" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem is with &quot;Report Performance&quot; and &quot;Cost Control&quot;. You don't perform them properly, that's why the budget is in charge of you, not vise versa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The solution is to make sure you do cost control regularly, and your team members report performance to you often enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T13:15:55.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="223" CreationDate="2011-02-10T13:25:26.080" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When &quot;a project is behind&quot; there are many more options than you've listed in the question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project is a trade-off between constraints, typically cost, scope, time, and quality. If and when you understand that &quot;the project is behind&quot; it means that one of the constraints (or few of them) are already invalidated. Your job as a project manager in this situation is to get the project back on track, and make sure all constraints are valid again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't change constraints, since they are baselined by the project sponsor. What you can do is to propose a new version of constraints, and him/her to re-baseline them. Your options are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;we need more time&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;we need more money&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;we will produce lower quality&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;we will deliver less features&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T13:25:26.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="222" CreationDate="2011-02-10T13:28:58.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're talking about &quot;Product Manager&quot; here (sometimes called &quot;development manager&quot;), who is responsible for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Product Management&lt;/a&gt;. He/she is an advocate of product end-user's interests inside the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T13:28:58.977" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="214" CreationDate="2011-02-10T13:33:52.593" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project was closed, but it was not failed. You didn't fail the project, but you closed it earlier than planned. This not a failure, neither yours nor project sponsors'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Project is completed when it meets its objectives&quot;, PMBOK says. You started a project when its objective was to create a product in 18 months spending $2M (for example). In two months project sponsors realized that there is no more demand for the product on the market, and they &lt;strong&gt;changed project objectives&lt;/strong&gt;. Now project objectives are: to finalize the project in 2 months with $200k budget. Did you fail to achieve these new objectives? No, you closed the project properly, filed close-out report, and released the team. You're a great project manager, and you should be welcome to another project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Explain your experience in your resume, and a new employer will see that you know how to work in a dynamically changed environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T13:33:52.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="208" CreationDate="2011-02-10T13:41:37.283" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try to be open with the new client representative. Explain him/her that you're in trouble. That you already have a requirements document baselined, but with his/her predecessor. &lt;strong&gt;Ask for help&lt;/strong&gt;. You're in the same boat, after all. You're not enemies, but partners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T13:41:37.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="233" CreationDate="2011-02-10T13:51:46.560" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How to motivate people to stay on the company?&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You probably can't. Once companies go down the route of layoffs to cut budgets, that quick fix is done again and again. The survivors almost always have to pick up the work that used to be done by laid off workers, so they feel overwhelmed. In addition, after a round of layoffs, loyalty towards the company is broken as the survivors feel violated. Depending on how badly the layoffs were performed - and this is a case where perception is extremely important - it might never be possible to recover that sense of trust from below. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For senior .NET developers, the market has picked up, and the market wages have gone up a lot since this same time a year ago. You might not have the budget to increase salaries, but other companies do. The &quot;it isn't personal, it's just business&quot; attitude works both ways. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This point bears repeating. Indefinite retention is impossible; employees always quit. The key part is understanding why, and how to leverage this inevitability towards everyone’s advantage.&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I think companies should look more towards &lt;a href=&quot;http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Up-or-Out-Solving-the-IT-Turnover-Crisis.aspx&quot;&gt;a culture of quitting&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T13:51:46.560" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="233" CreationDate="2011-02-10T14:20:27.903" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;They need to see a significant break from the past to stop leaving.  This can be a change in leadership, a change in direction or a hit product.  It can also be a senior manager spending time with them, building rapport and showing them that their place in the company has changed.  Something needs to alter their perception of the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can help push the effort to make these changes by exactly pointing out the cost that the uncertainty is having on the company's projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T14:20:27.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="229" CreationDate="2011-02-10T14:29:43.513" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Keep the client informed.&lt;/strong&gt;  As a general rule, when something has a 50% chance of messing up your project, tell the client that its a risk.  When it reaches 75%, tell them that its a fact.  You can always outperform a lowered expectation (but its better than being caught in a death spiral of trying to catch-up).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as the developers, you need to &lt;strong&gt;cut scope&lt;/strong&gt; and have them laser focused on the key items that can be delivered in the shortest time so you can start giving your client something they can use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T14:29:43.513" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="223" CreationDate="2011-02-10T14:48:28.427" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every hour of overtime equates to an hour of under-time somewhere further down the line&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cutting scope is certainly the best option when possible - this ensures you still deliver on time and that you focus on the most important deliverables. This can then be followed up if necessary with a phase 2 project - and priorities will have often changed in the interim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pushing back time scales can have adverse effects - not least cost. By delivering on time but with reduced scope, the client can get the immediate benefit&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="130" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T14:48:28.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="233" CreationDate="2011-02-10T15:54:58.810" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider, when sharing with the team that the company is improving, using as many factual data elements as possible.  Saying &quot;I am here to assure you that the company has turned a corner and is getting better&quot; is nor as compelling as &quot;sales are up by 30% this quarter and the marketing/sales department has revised their sales and revenue outlook for 2011.&quot;  Additionally, you may want to consider openly chatting 1:1 with individual team members to see if anything folks share can reflect a possible trend to the exits.  I definitely agree with the feedback from Mark Phillips above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="68" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T15:54:58.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="195" CreationDate="2011-02-10T17:43:20.850" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;As we are talking on software domain, don't start the development only with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A vision of what I'm going to accomplish&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Design a fast flowchart of your project functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of free flowchart software on the web like, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gliffy.com/&quot;&gt;gliffy&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slickplan.com/&quot;&gt;SlickPlan&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It saves you, time and problems even if it is a small project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="105" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T17:43:20.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-02-10T18:28:40.370" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.de/books?id=5_kJAQAAMAAJ&amp;amp;q=The+Deadline%3a+A+Novel+About+Project+Management&amp;amp;dq=The+Deadline%3a+A+Novel+About+Project+Management&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=rCxUTfrKMsmi8QPcqLDvBw&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=1&amp;amp;ved=0CDoQ6AEwAAhttp://books.google.de/books?id=5_kJAQAAMAAJ&amp;amp;q=The+Deadline%3a+A+Novel+About+Project+Management&amp;amp;dq=The+Deadline%3a+A+Novel+About+Project+Management&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=rCxUTfrKMsmi8QPcqLDvBw&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=1&amp;amp;ved=0CDoQ6AEwAA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Deadline: A Novel About Project Management&lt;/a&gt; by Tom Demarco&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This one is a real page turner since it is a novel with management abstracts for the lessons learned - highly recommended!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also my summery/review of the book (in German but getting the gist should not be a problem thanks to google translate ;-)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ephorie.de/demarco_projektmanagement.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ephorie.de/demarco_projektmanagement.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T18:28:40.370" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-10T18:28:40.370" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="233" CreationDate="2011-02-10T20:44:57.197" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a PM or project owner, your project and plan is simply collateral damage to the effects of a downsizing.  Once again, the pendulum is swinging back to the other side.  We are already seeing resource scarcity geographically, in tech, and related areas.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You can help the situation in several ways:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Talk up your project from an experience and benefits perspective (this will look good on your resume), make your project the most desirable to work on&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the downsizing is over, can you say that the company still a good place to work?, &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;what's new, unique and different about your project that makes it desirable to work on?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make the project fun; find small rewards; have a [we accomplished x after hours meetup]; give out project coffee cups; and let people name the project or processes (let go some control and delegate more).  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of ways that you can make your project interesting and important by giving responsibility to others.  Let the team and the stakeholders carry the ball and sell the project.  If everyone feels a sense of ownership they're less likely to leave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that said, there is a lot of pent up job change desire in the workforce.  Many people have weathered the economic downturn waiting to move to a different job, or situation, or to change company. That is some of what we're seeing now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't forget to take care of yourself.  Network, keep your resume up-to-date, and stay in touch with all the good folks that move on, by choice or otherwise.  Make sure every project looks good on your resume&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="113" LastEditorUserId="105" LastEditDate="2011-02-22T19:18:56.753" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T19:18:56.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="214" CreationDate="2011-02-10T20:51:12.480" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Speak openly and honestly about it.  Never be negative about a past company or situation in an interview.  Focus on everything that you learned from the project, what you learned from the experience, and how it makes you a better PM and job candidate.  unless you personally killed the project then there is no guilt or blame to talk about.  Some of my best project experiences and lessons learned were from failed projects (where I didn't personally kill the project, of course :))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="113" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T20:51:12.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="252" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-10T21:50:45.693" Score="3" ViewCount="1678" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a software developer's point of view, maintaining a gantt chart (such as marking off tasks as complete or reassigning them, etc) can become cumbersome when dealing with a separate piece of software to that of the development process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, I utilise &lt;a href=&quot;http://trac.edgewall.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trac&lt;/a&gt; to create/manage tasks for the project, and have an SVN hook which marks them complete as I commit new code. What Gantt chart software can provide this kind of tightly coupled integration for myself and a small team (2 - 3)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="146" LastActivityDate="2011-02-13T05:21:38.380" Title="What Gantt Chart software can be coupled tightly with the development process for minimum effort required?" Tags="&lt;gantt&gt;&lt;trac&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="252" CreationDate="2011-02-10T21:55:43.630" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using your current setup the &lt;a href=&quot;http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/SchedulingToolsPlugin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SchedulingTools Plugin&lt;/a&gt; provides a gantt chart based on your tickets. However, the project looks to be unmaintained and without a proper English translation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A simple scheduling algorithm for&#xA;  tickets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If each ticket is assigned an effort,&#xA;  they can be scheduled based on their&#xA;  owner and priority and milestone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Then a Gantt chart can be generated.&#xA;  It displays all scheduled ticketds as&#xA;  usual together with their milestones.&#xA;  The latter ones are display in black&#xA;  if ok or in red, if a ticket in the&#xA;  milestone reaches past the milestones&#xA;  due date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="146" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T21:55:43.630" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="254" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="257" CreationDate="2011-02-10T22:15:31.903" Score="10" ViewCount="3414" Body="&lt;p&gt;You, being a project manager, assign a task to a technical specialist. You don't understand exactly what he/she is doing, since you don't have his/her skills and education. How do you define a task completion criteria? In other words, how do you know when the task is really completed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T15:54:52.477" Title="How to define a task completion criteria?" Tags="&lt;integration-management&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-02-10T22:49:22.757" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0932633609&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Waltzing with Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects&lt;/a&gt; - taught me a lot about how we set ourselves up for failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="140" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T22:49:22.757" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-10T22:49:22.757" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="254" CreationDate="2011-02-10T22:55:20.510" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check against requirements.&#xA;See if it meets the requirements (does what its supposed to do).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T22:55:20.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="254" CreationDate="2011-02-10T23:14:49.347" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verification_and_Validation_%28software%29&quot;&gt;Verification and Validation&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Verification: The process of evaluating software to determine&#xA;  whether the products of a given&#xA;  development phase satisfy the&#xA;  conditions imposed at the start of&#xA;  that phase. [IEEE-STD-610].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Validation: The process of evaluating software during or at the&#xA;  end of the development process to&#xA;  determine whether it satisfies&#xA;  specified requirements. [IEEE-STD-610]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Functionally this means:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From testing perspective:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fault - wrong or missing function in the code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Failure - the manifestation of a fault during execution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Malfunction - according to its specification the system does not meet its specified functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To actually know that the task is completed, then testing will need to be done on the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2011-02-10T23:14:49.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="254" CreationDate="2011-02-11T01:01:08.797" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way that I address this issue is the following. Usually I will have a lead in each specialty team.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: Developer Lead.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lead for each specialty will be responsible and accountable to qualify that the task is completed in accordance to our initial criteria.  They will run what &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/254/how-to-define-a-task-completion-criteria/257#257&quot;&gt;Kieran&lt;/a&gt; made reference as verification and validation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you have to go a step further and confirm that the task actually meets customer expectation (aka. Requirements).  This step you can accomplish in many ways, the most common on big projects, bring your business analyst together with the developer doing the task, every x amount of hours progressively to monitor requirement compliance.  Another way, is to have the developer present to the PM in a quick standing meeting how his piece meets requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For sure, you have to make sure that your task is linked to your SRS # and that your SRS # is tied to your BRD #. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks, Geo&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-02-11T01:01:08.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="259" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="270" CreationDate="2011-02-11T03:03:59.017" Score="19" ViewCount="2409" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I was studying for my PMP certification I learned many things that over my course of 10 years I was doing differently.  Now after being a PMP for a year, I see how you can get value from the knowledge on the PMI framework.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I still don't see is the gap between real world projects and all the projects in the PMBOK. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main purpose behind my question is to understand if other PMs see this paradigm in their work.  I see a big distance between the theory and the practice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastEditorUserId="2401" LastEditDate="2012-10-05T02:39:01.400" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T17:12:58.053" Title="What is the relation between PMBOK and real world Project Management?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;pmbok&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="260" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="263" CreationDate="2011-02-11T03:12:51.287" Score="12" ViewCount="333" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apart from the regular cost/scope/time metrics that every project contains, I am interested in knowing if I can include a few more metrics that will trigger alerts on future projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me exemplify what I mean.  As a pilot I have started to keep track of all project issues in the register, these include: Change Requests, Tasks that rise but are not worthy to go into the plan, decisions, etc.  Having a count of these every week let the management team know that there is additional work coming down the pipe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue I am having is that I am not sure yet if these metrics have been helpful or not.  Either because lack of attention of my issue administrator or client constant changes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas that might help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2011-02-14T13:36:56.603" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T13:36:56.603" Title="What metrics to keep through out the life of the project?" Tags="&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="261" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="264" CreationDate="2011-02-11T05:14:11.600" Score="13" ViewCount="1838" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me explain a little about this &quot;reward&quot;. I don't know if it is common everywhere, but companies in our country often offer some reward at the end of the year (Lunar New Year, or maybe Christmas). It could be: one extra-month salary, reward money, or, in my case, some new year gifts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can understand the choice of gifts over money, as I read from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influence_People&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dale Carnegie&lt;/a&gt;, a gift makes the employee remember about the company, instead of some money they will just spend anytime later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But things come out that not easy like I expect. Some of the team members complain (not to the director) about not having the extra-money. Since they have to go working by crowded bus, they have a hard time bring their big gifts home, and they think they'll be happier if getting some extra cash for New Year shopping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, my question is simple: what is the best way to reward the team members in the next year? I also welcome the experience about this situation, since they may bring up some helpful ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastEditorUserId="71" LastEditDate="2011-03-01T15:18:36.860" LastActivityDate="2016-03-07T09:54:23.177" Title="What is the best way to reward a small project team? (specially, at New Year event)" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;reward&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="261" CreationDate="2011-02-11T05:31:17.157" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the team has great comradery, mutual respect, and teamwork, then perhaps the best reward would be to have a party in celebration of the past year's accomplishments.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is more to life than gifts and money, and celebrating the success of members of the team in front of their peers is a great way for a company to show it's appreciation in a less-tangible, less-materialistic manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the company could just cut you a check, hand it to you, and send you on your way, but somehow that seems less exciting, less unique, less creative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One year at my company, they took us all out to a fancy dinner with an open bar, a meal, and motivational speeches about the coming year.  It was great to socialize outside of the office environment and watch everyone &quot;let down their hair.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone is different, and some people will of course complain and will have eyes filled with dollar signs, but the less-materialistic people and the majority of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/management/Str-Ti/Theory-X-and-Theory-Y.html&quot;&gt;Type Y&lt;/a&gt; employees will appreciate the recognition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-02-11T05:31:17.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="260" CreationDate="2011-02-11T07:16:10.950" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the first place I would add keeping your historical estimates (no matter how you make them) and real effort spent on tasks. This will help you to tell how reasonable your current estimates are and make them better. It will also give you another tool to discuss new work incoming to the project or raise red flags when you know that you're not going to make it before the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have something like general plan and work doesn't just come constantly in a steady stream I'd also like to know how are you going against the plan. This means you would need good work breakdown structure and update information how much is done regularly. One issue here: percent complete should be updated by the people who do the work, but sometimes you see that everything is 90% complete and nothing is 100% complete, which basically means you're screwed. In vast majority of cases you should count a feature as done only when it's on 100%, not any lower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-02-11T07:16:10.950" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="261" CreationDate="2011-02-11T07:28:36.123" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;A hard answer is: you won't please everyone. Well, in small team you actually have a chance, but you have to run an extra mile and learn what every individual in the team cares about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on cultural differences events like parties would be treated differently. I pretty much expect they're received differently in Far East than they are in Western Europe. Another thing is how much people are paid. We got used to think that in IT industry we are typically paid over our healthy minimum so just a bunch of money isn't that motivating. However if you work for someone who is struggling to make ends meet (for whatever reason) you can't go better than just handing them cash/check. But it's all about individual drivers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One idea which comes to my mind - you may want to set up a budget for everyone to spend on anything they really need or really want which will be bought by the company. You can adjust the mechanism to your specific needs if you want, e.g. it can be a budget to spent on books or such but not on partying. Then, it's individual, it's not money and you can show a bit of company's commitment taking all the logistics (orders, delivery, etc.) out of people heads. And then you can add some small thing to spice the present up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-02-11T07:28:36.123" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="222" CreationDate="2011-02-11T07:39:04.657" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The diagram isn't clear. Connection between roles suggest what yegor256 is talking about - that author thought about product manager. However if we take a step back from the diagram I understand the role differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Development manager is typically manager/leader of development group. Sometimes it's purely programming and sometimes the perspective is broader - it covers architecture/design, quality assurance, implementation and/or maintenance. Also, development manager usually has some formal power over (the part of) the team, being direct manager of people, while project and product managers in vast majority of cases aren't people managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the organization development manager can be focused more on a technical side of the work (architecture, design, etc.) or on leadership (managing people, motivation, staffing) or on both (which doesn't scale up very well).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, there is no single, universal project team organization. It will depend on specific company, specific project and specific people who are engaged, so don't take it that seriously. Look more for people's strengths so you cover all important roles in the project. It doesn't matter that much what those people have printed on their business cards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-02-11T07:39:04.657" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="254" CreationDate="2011-02-11T11:07:05.313" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a project manager, you have to understand better the tasks your team are doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a short term solution, have a meeting with your technical specialist (and more member, if necessary) and ask them to about the task and how it will fit to the rest of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trace with them a way they can present the task after completion (e.g. a prototypic, a functionality added, even the software code). &lt;em&gt;(Kudos for Kieran for the Validation and Verification tip)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main goal must be something that can be measured or presented and make sure the requirements are being accomplished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="105" LastActivityDate="2011-02-11T11:07:05.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="261" CreationDate="2011-02-11T14:48:53.030" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Amazon gift card or equivalent for online or physical retailer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-11T14:48:53.030" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="260" CreationDate="2011-02-11T14:56:17.673" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like a &lt;strong&gt;client profile&lt;/strong&gt; would be helpful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would contain specific information on the client's behavior throughout the project lifecycle.  Most specifically, this will help you price/cost the next project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of metrics, this can be as simple as estimated vs actual time spent on the project across all tasks.  Big deviation means that either the project wasn't well estimated or that the scope of work changed a lot over the course of the project. Over time, you'll be able to best isolate the cause, but at least you'll start to have a record of it per client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make this even more actionable, put your accounting or billing department as stakeholders on the report for this metric (just like how they might keep a record of each client's payment history e.g. who pays early, on time or late).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-11T14:56:17.673" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="259" CreationDate="2011-02-11T15:12:26.790" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main benefit I saw after becoming a PMP and studying their framework was a &lt;strong&gt;consistent, exhaustive framework that targets all parts of the project and project life-cycle.&lt;/strong&gt; Everything from creating and managing schedules to managing unruly team-members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMI has their own goals (like pushing Project Management as a real position, and as a professional vocation). While they have provided a framework, the most benefit I find is from &lt;strong&gt;applying their concepts wherever you see benefit.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I regularly tie risk identification and analysis into agile/Scrum development processes (even though it's not addressed in that methodology). Similarly, the PMP framework is like a giant toolkit to me: you pick and choose whatever helps, apply it, and be happy that your projects are &lt;em&gt;just that much better&lt;/em&gt; than they used to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-02-11T15:12:26.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="259" CreationDate="2011-02-11T16:05:36.583" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The biggest gap is the art of applying the right tools and techniques to each situation to get the best results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a ton of knowledge there. The trick is in using it properly -and not getting sucked into the dark side : )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-11T16:05:36.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="123" CreationDate="2011-02-11T16:44:36.163" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think one of the clearest signs is what I call &lt;strong&gt;reportmania&lt;/strong&gt;. More and more controls and reports are being established according to some motto 'the more we have written down the better we can manage the problem'. This is totally wrong in my opinion. It leads to some &lt;em&gt;felt&lt;/em&gt; security which it is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another warning sign down the ladder is &lt;strong&gt;many people leaving the project and/or getting fired&lt;/strong&gt;. By then it is often too late because you can't compensate for the brain drain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2011-02-11T16:44:36.163" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-11T16:44:36.163" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="273" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="276" CreationDate="2011-02-11T19:20:28.857" Score="8" ViewCount="560" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen many organisations where project managers would reason like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We specialise in very small projects.&#xA;  Since a very small project needs a&#xA;  very small team, I should allocate one&#xA;  person or two to each project.&#xA;  However, this means that only a couple&#xA;  of people in the organisation &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  about the project; if they leave or&#xA;  are struck by a bus, the project is&#xA;  doomed. Therefore I will allocate four&#xA;  or five people to the project just in&#xA;  case, despite the unnecessary&#xA;  overload.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can understand that a project manager may be concerned about an employee quitting and leaving the project unmanned; that would be disastrous. However, compensating by making four or five people work on a very small project that only needs one or two doesn't look like a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What other strategies can you think of to minimise the risk while preserving resources?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="38" LastEditorUserId="38" LastEditDate="2011-02-14T09:31:47.230" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T09:31:47.230" Title="How do you allocate people to very small projects?" Tags="&lt;risk&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="123" CreationDate="2011-02-11T19:24:39.517" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No status report for weeks.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(kind of the opposite of the reportmania mentioned earlier)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When this happens, everyone forgets about the project and the missing bits, risks, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="87" LastActivityDate="2011-02-11T19:24:39.517" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-11T19:24:39.517" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-02-11T19:32:22.643" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The PMBOK&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I am not working for them :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The training I did for PMP exam and the PMBOK answered many questions I had been asking myself for years. It provided a structured approach I had never been introduced to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When and how do you define who does what, how do you document it, how do you make sure you don't forget something, how do you manage risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="87" LastActivityDate="2011-02-11T19:32:22.643" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-11T19:32:22.643" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="273" CreationDate="2011-02-11T19:39:33.370" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good, clear documentation like the project's goals, the tasks involved, the risks, the schedule and record of communications with the client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-11T19:39:33.370" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="252" CreationDate="2011-02-11T20:53:50.730" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Redmine is a ticket/issue tracker capable of producing gantt charts. Combined with the backlogs plugin you can get gant charts for Scrum projects on a story and also the task level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Redmine is found at &lt;a href=&quot;http://redmine.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://redmine.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An online demo is available at &lt;a href=&quot;http://demo.redmine.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://demo.redmine.org/&lt;/a&gt; - create a new account or use demo / demo as username / password to explore the site. Feel free to add tickets to explore the charting capabilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Redmine can be coupled with DCVS like GIT and CCVS like SVN to change an issues status on commit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="148" LastActivityDate="2011-02-11T20:53:50.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="278" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="280" CreationDate="2011-02-11T22:25:24.493" Score="4" ViewCount="962" Body="&lt;p&gt;We want to get a project justified, but the ROI model is not helping us since this is a replacement of a very old, antiquated and out of date system.  There will be no increase in revenue, no process change, just a replacement of technology.  Is there any way to justify this with an ROI.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The business is on-board with the project, the sponsors are almost on-board.  How do we get the financial people on board?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastEditorUserId="10284" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T10:34:46.647" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T10:34:46.647" Title="How to use ROI to justify a project that is solely a replacement of an out-of-date system?" Tags="&lt;initiation&gt;&lt;return-on-investment&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="278" CreationDate="2011-02-11T22:41:13.167" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first place that I'd look for savings is in the cost of labor to maintain the old system.  Is the labor pool for the old technology shrinking?  If so, people in that pool are probably paid a premium.  Can you save enough on labor in a short number of years to justify the initial cost?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2011-02-11T22:41:13.167" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="278" CreationDate="2011-02-12T00:52:14.720" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple of anecdotes might help stimulate thinking about how to pitch this to the financial guys...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A large financial client of ours had some older servers running in the back area. The applications were working fine, and weren't in any need of updating, until the 2007 change in daylight savings time. It turned out that some of the older servers were NT 3.51 which was no longer supported by Microsoft. As some of the applications could not be migrated to newer operating systems, this financial client had to pay Microsoft $350,000 to write a patch for them to support the new Daylight Savings Time rules.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At my previous employer, they sell financial software used by accountants and actuaries. One of the applications was still being written in VB4 and used VBXs (16 bit ActiveX controls). When Vista came out, this application could not run on Vista, and we only found out about the problem when customers started calling the help desk. It was a year before we had a version ported to .NET so it could run on Vista and later operating systems. We suspect that VB6 applications (VB6 apps make up 60% of the revenue of this branch office) will have a similar problem when the next version of Windows comes out.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At a company I worked at about a decade ago, they had licensed the Altavista search engine. Somehow, in various moves, the installation media got lost. When they were building a replacement server, they approached the new owners of Altavisa who said they no longer licensed it at any price, so get lost. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suspicion is that you'll have to pitch it in terms of risk: what will it cost when something out of your control breaks what currently works? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2011-02-12T00:52:14.720" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="252" CreationDate="2011-02-12T01:49:57.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A team that I'm on is currently using &lt;a href=&quot;http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/GanttCalendarPlugin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GanttCalendarPlugin&lt;/a&gt;. However, we haven't tied anything into SVN at this point, so I don't know how it'll behave under your particular use case. However, it does a great job of displaying Gantt Charts and Calendering your start and end dates for tickets. You'll have to investigate in more depth, but it might be a starting point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2011-02-12T01:49:57.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="273" CreationDate="2011-02-12T04:31:52.453" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Changing resources shouldn't doom a project as long as it's well documented and you have smart people working in your organization.  It's also helpful if the previous people working on the project were smart and organized so that the code is readable and maintainable.  Although there will always be a learning curve, other developers should be able to step in and fill the role.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've worked with developers that have stepped in and filled a role on a project, and after a few weeks they were productively engaged in the project.  I have never seen a project die because someone left the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-02-12T04:31:52.453" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="43" CreationDate="2011-02-12T05:21:23.603" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the best things I've found is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/google-d-s/spreadsheets/#utm_campaign=en&amp;amp;utm_source=en-ha-na-us-bk&amp;amp;utm_medium=ha&amp;amp;utm_term=google%20spreadsheets&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Spreadsheets&lt;/a&gt;.  You can track pretty much anything just by customizing it to fit your needs.  It can notify people when changes are made to the document.  It's in the cloud, so it can be accessed from anywhere and is always up to date.  It also has an API so you can read the data and import it into another application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can create charts, use formulas to perform automated, complex calculations, and make educated, strategic decisions based on the numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-02-12T05:21:23.603" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-12T05:21:23.603" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="284" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="285" CreationDate="2011-02-12T06:16:45.350" Score="8" ViewCount="157" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once a project reaches completion, which information do you keep/store for your records? Do you only keep a record of lessons learned, or do you also keep other project-specific information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="71" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-10-05T05:49:56.840" LastActivityDate="2014-10-05T05:49:56.840" Title="What information do you keep about a project once it has been completed?" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;artifacts&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2012-06-28T08:20:48.350" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="284" CreationDate="2011-02-12T07:23:49.547" Score="8" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All metrics of estimation, and actuals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A Complete traceable matrix from requirement document (blueprint) to User Acceptance Testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All official, approved documentation, and contract with vendors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lessons learned&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Initial budget, and final cost&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot think of anything, my last closing process was in April last year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-02-12T07:23:49.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="284" CreationDate="2011-02-12T07:28:58.043" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most documentation is probably not going to take up most space, so just store it on a file server, in the cloud, or in an archive.  There may be legal reasons for maintaining the documentation, so saving it will ensure you're covered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-02-12T07:28:58.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="287" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="291" CreationDate="2011-02-12T09:03:45.460" Score="1" ViewCount="314" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is change management? How do we do it in software development? What are most popular or best methodologies for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anybody suggest good reading about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="145" LastActivityDate="2011-02-12T12:26:47.617" Title="What is change management?" Tags="&lt;change-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="260" CreationDate="2011-02-12T11:04:26.453" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A metric that you might want to add is velocity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before a project usually starts some form of schedule outlining milestones and resource allocation is created. Milestones are made up of a number of sub tasks. The speed at which these tasks are completed against the original estimate is known as velocity. Whilst a project may be delivered on time and near budget you will find the velocity will be poor at he start of your roject but vastly improves (I.E., more tasks completed more frequently) as the project comes closer to delivery. The reasons for this may include; improved domain or business knowledge, better communication, etc. You should also find that as velocity improves so does your ability to determine the delivery date. Velocity is evident in many aspects of IT agile project management, for example a scrum burndown chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without wanting to preach I feel that it is important to understand, record and diagnose velocity and how it can benefit you to deliver your projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="98" LastActivityDate="2011-02-12T11:04:26.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="287" CreationDate="2011-02-12T12:21:38.130" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Getting started at &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Wikipedia&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; is always a good idea to get a general overview of any subject, but in a few words change management is the process through which you control changes to your project. It's main objective is to prevent continuous changes to the scope from turning your project into a never-ending death march.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't recommend a book specifically geared towards change management, but every good (in-depth) PM-book will put some thought to the subject. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="86" LastActivityDate="2011-02-12T12:21:38.130" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="287" CreationDate="2011-02-12T12:26:47.617" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quoting from Wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Change management is a structured approach to shifting/transitioning individuals, teams, and organizations from a current state to a desired future state. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of software, it would be any change to the software. The change can be configuration, architecture, design, code etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good explanation of &quot;How do we do it in software development?&quot; would be to read about ITIL's change management module. I would say that most changes and change management comes into picture when the software is deployed and in service and not during software development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To start with best practices here are few points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Every change should be documented clearly for future reference.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All changes start with a &quot;Change Request&quot; document. This document might be a request for new feature, or a change due to a found bug etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Approach to handling the change should be also documented. We have a &lt;em&gt;approach document&lt;/em&gt; that specify the PLAN for the change, its impact and how &amp;amp; what the solutions are.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Timeline for the change. You need to specify how the change is going to be implemented. Will you have some development effort? down time on production server? etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a change approval process that involves different stockholders of the software.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, these are just the basic practices that I think one must follow.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="149" LastActivityDate="2011-02-12T12:26:47.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="273" CreationDate="2011-02-12T12:57:13.423" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing is that fear of overtaking a project from a person &quot;hit by the bus&quot; is overrated. Actually I've seen many cases where, for whatever reasons, teams had to do this and it wasn't that hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that everyone prefers to be prepared. I'm not sure that throwing more people on tiny projects is the solution. I think it's more about organizing the work in a way which helps to share the knowledge among the team members then just allocating them to the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few ideas which come to my mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pair programming (if we discuss software project). It's not an easy thing as people often resist this technique but this isn't something completely novel or unknown. People are pairing for long time and in specific environments it seems to work very well. And you can have at least twice as many people who know the project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Collective code ownership (again for software projects). It works especially well for projects in maintenance phase. If you have a bug to fix or a change to apply you can get any free person to do this, even if they aren't familiar with the code. If they get lost they can ask for help those who worked on an application earlier. After some time you have knowledge about projects spread all over the team. The same technique you can use against projects in their building phase but you need some kind of tech lead or project lead anyway to coordinate everyone's effort.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Maintenance team which overtakes responsibility for the project after some phase. It makes a project transition to maintenance phase explicit, thus enforces sharing knowledge, some minimal reasonable documentation etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-02-12T12:57:13.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="284" CreationDate="2011-02-12T14:48:18.290" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;We keep everything.  Initial business requirements, functional scope documents, technical design documents, schedules, emails,... everything.  Each project in our company has its own sharepoint site where this stuff is stored so it's easy to find later.  You never know what piece of information is going to be useful when maintaining a system later, or if at some point down the line you just want to know &quot;How did we do this on the last project?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2011-02-12T14:48:18.290" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="296" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-12T21:39:48.747" Score="18" ViewCount="269" Body="&lt;p&gt;How possible is it to learn the skills of project management without actually taking any classes on it? I'm definitely up for pouring through books and applying what I learn to my own projects so I can manage them and learn through experience, but right now taking classes is out of the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I go about getting the same knowledge?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="141" LastActivityDate="2016-07-09T12:20:34.223" Title="Professional PM skills without classes?" Tags="&lt;learning&gt;&lt;skills&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="296" CreationDate="2011-02-12T23:46:10.730" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're working in industry, you can start by taking on extra responsibility and helping to communicate between different groups.  If you can be proactive, communicate well, and have specialized knowledge of the project, then you can learn as you go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're already a project manager, talk to other project managers in your organization and pick their brain.  Classes will only go so far, as the job description of project managers vary from industry to industry and company to company.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While classes will teach you some fundamentals, only real-world experience will make you good at your job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been a project manager for over 3 years, and my experience is you tailor your responsibilities to the job at hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-02-12T23:46:10.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="298" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-12T23:48:00.057" Score="13" ViewCount="383" Body="&lt;p&gt;In one of projects I work we have some people working only partially. They come to work only when there is a need for their work in project and sometimes they work at home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is with commitment - when they are not part of the team they aren't motivated. When they work at home it's hard to get output from them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you recommend? How to make them participate more in the project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to deal with remote workers not doing their work on time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="92" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T01:02:31.860" Title="How to manage and motivate external workers in project?" Tags="&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;external-project-members&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="299" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="300" CreationDate="2011-02-13T01:27:14.350" Score="15" ViewCount="1106" Body="&lt;p&gt;Which project management methodology would be best suited for a research project/environment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A research environment is different in many ways, including, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some of the team members are probably not directly working for the PM - they may be professors, students or otherwise members of public institutions, participating in the project without directly working for the PM&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project doesn't have a well defined end point or set of deliverables (&quot;we think we can get 100 iPhones talking to each other and doing some cool stuff as a result, we'd like to experiment with them&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There may not be a well defined client for the project until partway through&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are still the standard problems with allocating funding, resources, and keeping track of dependencies, made more complicated by additional reporting requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="71" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2011-02-14T13:35:53.187" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T13:35:53.187" Title="Which project management methodology would be best suited for research projects/environments?" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="299" CreationDate="2011-02-13T03:56:26.513" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you need to develop a hybrid waterfall for this. I have managed these types of projects before. not research, but projects where there's no clear deliverables or unclear clients. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use the waterfall methodology for each phase - not quite agile. Plan to the next phase and drive the project there. For each phase you can identify what you need to achieve and what it will take to achieve it. As you proceed through finding the clarity, your planning phases become more clear and you are able to plan to the end when you can describe the end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-02-13T03:56:26.513" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="298" CreationDate="2011-02-13T03:59:44.480" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This one is tricky because the team members who work from home are more in control of the contact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keeping them up to date is a good way for them to feel connected. An e-newsletter is a good tool for that. Making sure you reach out to them periodically when their work is coming up will also help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to keep in mind, if they are producing what you need on time and in budget, they may be as committed as you need them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-02-13T03:59:44.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="278" CreationDate="2011-02-13T04:11:41.533" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the old system works reliably and is valuable to its users, if maintenance costs will not be reduced by introducing a new system, if the new functionality will not have any financial impact, if there are no savings for moving the software from an old platform to a new platform, if there are no regulatory or non-compliance risk with the old system, why do you want to replace it in the first place? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do you say the system is out of date? Just because it is written in an old language? If there is no maintenance risk, then why replace it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will the system run faster or will be able to run on less expensive hardware if you rewrite it? If yes, maybe you have a case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that rewriting the system will bring you back to square one on the learning curve, you will replace a reliable and debugged system with one that may have many bugs and may not implement correctly the current functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastEditorUserId="118" LastEditDate="2011-02-13T04:17:29.077" LastActivityDate="2011-02-13T04:17:29.077" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="298" CreationDate="2011-02-13T04:16:36.207" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remote workers can be managed effectively using tools such as Skype Instant Messaging and Skype Video Calls.  It's important to meet frequently and keep those channels open and take an active role in providing updates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, you need to create a culture where the workers do the same and contact you to give you proactive updates.  If the work done is something of a specialty, like programming, then having the workers working at a remote location can give them more freedom and autonomy to make effective decisions on their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just like with in office workers, it's important that deadlines are clear and that there are clear communication channels for situations where a deadline might be missed, such as if unexpected problems result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remote workers should be treated with the same level of professionalism as in-office workers.  By keeping them in the loop, encouraging proactive communication both ways, and by utilizing the latest remote workforce technologies, remote teams can be just as effective as in-office teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For part-time workers, the same guidelines can help them stay motivated.  With part-time workers, it's easy to forget to keep them informed, especially if they're not around for certain meetings or communications.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an article with some tips for how to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.suite101.com/content/keeping-parttime-employees-motivated-a152401&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Keep Part-Time Employees Motivated&lt;/a&gt; and feeling like they're part of the group and have great skills to contribute.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-02-13T04:16:36.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9" CreationDate="2011-02-13T04:45:57.520" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Besides all the items you mentioned, you should state the time when the risk can start its  existence and the time when the risk ceases to exist. This will make it easier to prioritize the risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2011-02-13T04:45:57.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="299" CreationDate="2011-02-13T04:50:12.473" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any methodology that encourages communication and frequently delivery would work well here.  In an R&amp;amp;D environment, you as the PM have a team of educated, opinioned professionals and have to manage a lot of strong personalities.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/299/which-project-management-methodology-would-be-best-suited-for-research-projects-e/300#300&quot;&gt;Perry Wilson's answer&lt;/a&gt; is fine, I would emphasize that each waterfall should be as short in duration as the team can manage.  Each phase should result in something tangible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keeping to a strict time box will keep everyone on the team (professors, students) moving.  It easy for a project where not all of the team report to or have responsibility to the PM to devolve into continual 'herding cats'.  Short time boxes keeps these people from putting off their responsibilities for too long and gives the project many opportunities to change / correct direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-02-13T04:50:12.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="252" CreationDate="2011-02-13T05:21:38.380" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're still interested in trac, I would suggest the &lt;a href=&quot;http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/TracJsGanttPlugin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TracJsGanttPlugin&lt;/a&gt;.  It installs easily, integrates with the popular &lt;a href=&quot;http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/TimingAndEstimationPlugin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TimingAndEstimatingPlugin&lt;/a&gt;.  The thing I like about this is that you can put a gantt chart anywhere wiki formatting is allowed.  It allows you to expand and collapse levels and provides a decent set of options to control the format.  You can specify any option allowed in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/TracQuery&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TracQuery&lt;/a&gt;, allowing you to filter on milestone, component, or any other ticket field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frankly, Using all the options available in both the &lt;a href=&quot;http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/MasterTicketsPlugin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MasterTicketsPlugin&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/TimingAndEstimationPlugin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TimingAndEstimatingPlugin&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://github.com/itota/trac-subtickets-plugin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Subtickets&lt;/a&gt; are probably more than a 2-3 person team can handle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastActivityDate="2011-02-13T05:21:38.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="298" CreationDate="2011-02-13T07:28:03.090" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When they work at home it's hard to get output from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you do when you don't get output from an on-site worker? What project management instruments are you using in this case? I'm sure that the same instruments should work perfectly with off-site people. Provided these instruments do not include &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrot_and_stick&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;carrot and stick&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-13T07:28:03.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="296" CreationDate="2011-02-13T07:31:23.867" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that there are three equally important important inputs for you: &lt;strong&gt;colleagues&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;books&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;experience&lt;/strong&gt;. Classes are just a surrogate form of communication with colleagues, usually with just one colleague - a teacher. Don't rely on this form too much. Learn from your friends, read books, and manage projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastEditorUserId="91" LastEditDate="2011-02-14T09:41:38.507" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T09:41:38.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="309" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="311" CreationDate="2011-02-13T09:55:32.863" Score="16" ViewCount="1392" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a young software developer that wants to create a solid team with my friends, does anyone know about how to create a solid team according to your experience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="69" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-18T16:47:29.753" LastActivityDate="2018-03-18T05:44:36.553" Title="How to Create a Solid Team (Software Developer)" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="309" CreationDate="2011-02-13T14:52:37.573" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Eko, have a &lt;strong&gt;vision&lt;/strong&gt;.  Everyone  want to accomplish something, if you have a group of friends and you want to create a solid team, you need sell them the idea.  Also, make sure you acknowledge their strengths and your weaknesses, by establishing clear roles for each member of the team.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a vision (where you want to get) and roles (who should do what). Now the only thing left is the what, and you are set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-02-13T14:52:37.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="309" CreationDate="2011-02-13T17:39:07.267" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should keep in mind that &quot;to create a team&quot; is not a one-time action, it's a process. You should worry much more about how &quot;&lt;strong&gt;to keep a team alive&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;. There are two things you should be focused on: &lt;em&gt;vision&lt;/em&gt; (already mentioned by Geo) and &lt;em&gt;motivation&lt;/em&gt; of your team members. In other words: what you want and what they want. Once they are effectively aligned you are on track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This blog post may help on the motivation problem: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yegor256.com/2017/09/19/what-motivates-me.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;What Motivates Me as a Programmer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastEditorUserId="91" LastEditDate="2018-03-18T05:44:36.553" LastActivityDate="2018-03-18T05:44:36.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="309" CreationDate="2011-02-13T17:41:48.353" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard once that you shouldn't mix business with pleasure.  In other words, if you want a solid team, you need to select the best people for the job.  If you're limiting your search space to only your friends, then you're limiting yourself to local optima instead of global optima.  This means that, unless your friends are the best of the best, then you're not going to necessarily have a solid team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, you can still have a &lt;code&gt;dedicated team&lt;/code&gt; of your friends.  The plus side is they probably won't stab you in the back, and you will have rapport with them.  There may be more unity in the team because of your friendship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it's absolutely imperative that you have a contract.  A contract is a beautiful way to resolve disputes.  Contracts can instantly sooth the flames of a fire that could otherwise get immediately out of control and cause not only your team to dissolve but your friendship as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, as Geo pointed out, having a vision and a goal is important as well.  Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE&lt;/strong&gt;:  Here are some helpful articles on starting a business with friends that emphasize some of the points I was making as well as adding a few others:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hubpages.com/hub/Business-With-Friends&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Business With Friends&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ladieswholaunch.com/magazine/how-to-do-business-with-friends/2133&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How To Do Business With Friends&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.marthastewart.com/article/starting-a-business-with-a-friend&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Starting a Business With a Friend&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ezinearticles.com/?Advantages--And-Disadvantages-Of-Starting-A-Business-With-A-Friend&amp;amp;id=876943&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Advantages and Disadvantages of Starting a Business With a Friend&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to discourage you too much.  These types of partnerships &lt;strong&gt;can work&lt;/strong&gt;.  But I also think many people jump into these types of partnerships without a full grasp of all of the challenges and pitfalls that can easily be avoided by making sure there is a plan in place and an avenue for resolving disputes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If these things are taken care of, the business can be profitable and extensible.  But without a plan, the chances of success aren't good.  I worked with some contractors where 4 of them were friends.  Halfway through, my client said she could only get in touch with one of them and work slowed to a crawl.  Apparently, the 4 of them all got into a big fight and refused to work together anymore.  The one guy remaining only knew a little PHP, so my client went through other avenues and dropped those guys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-02-13T22:43:14.167" LastActivityDate="2011-02-13T22:43:14.167" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="309" CreationDate="2011-02-14T01:01:12.763" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being friends is a great start. To build a team, though, you need to have&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a shared vision&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a leader to keep things moving&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;consistency in completing work and shipping product.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without these things, you can quickly become a bunch of guys who talked about starting a rock-band in their garage, but never quite put it together to make an album : )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T01:01:12.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="298" CreationDate="2011-02-14T01:02:31.860" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Find new people who are hungry for the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T01:02:31.860" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="296" CreationDate="2011-02-14T01:13:04.903" Score="4" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project management blogs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This forum :) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project management podcasts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T01:13:04.903" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="316" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-14T01:44:23.820" Score="2" ViewCount="535" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the Roles in the Spiral Methodology approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example Scrum only has three roles 'scrum master', 'the team' and 'product owner'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T09:40:28.743" Title="Roles in Spiral Methodology" Tags="&lt;roles&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="284" CreationDate="2011-02-14T01:49:41.317" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on why you are keeping records.&#xA;If you do work in a regulated environment e.g. financial services, defense contractor, pharmaceuticals industry, your compliance department will determine what needs to be kept and what shouldn't be kept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are keeping records to improve performance over time, keep the information related to the metrics you want to improve e.g. estimated vs actual time, change requests, lessons learned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another category of items to keep is the history of the work product produced as part of the project, e.g. the history of a brochure, previous designs for a website, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T01:49:41.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="318" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="320" CreationDate="2011-02-14T01:54:51.487" Score="9" ViewCount="1518" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the success factors for a Project Manager?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the best way to measure these factors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To ask the question in a different way: What does a successful Project Manager look like and how do we measure this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2011-02-14T13:35:23.623" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T13:04:05.980" Title="Success factors of a Project Manager?" Tags="&lt;measurement&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="318" CreationDate="2011-02-14T02:12:25.013" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The same metrics used to measure the success of the project can be used to measure the success of the project manager.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, if we're talking about online banking software, a measure of success could be based on the increased retention of banking customers who use online banking.  If we're talking about lead management software, then the increased conversion rates of the organization using the software could be used as a metric.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other fields, such as construction management, the total revenue generated by building new office space could contribute to the success of the project manager responsible for building and maintaining said office space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, these are all factors measured over time.  One can't measure this progress on a day to day basis in most cases.  In order to be effective, the metric must be measured over time, either monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, annually, or over a much longer time period.  This is largely dependent on the type of project, duration of the project, and the criteria used to measure the success of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the best ways to measure these success factors is by documenting them over time in a spreadsheet.  You can then watch and monitor changes in how things are going.  For instance, if the success of the project manager is based on average project revenue over a monthly period, then changes up or down over time can possibly measure how well things are going and can even possibly forecast future performance, assuming no adjustments are made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-02-14T05:21:16.723" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T05:21:16.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="318" CreationDate="2011-02-14T02:14:50.693" Score="6" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Projects performed on time, on schedule and that deliver what they are supposed to.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teams that deliver the work, are not burnt out and that can create innovative solutions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consistently well managed expectations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T02:14:50.693" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="318" CreationDate="2011-02-14T02:15:03.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kieran, this is a hard one.  Great question.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe the success factors of a PM are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Caring&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communication&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Creativity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are key success factors, traits that will guarantee a good outcome even if the project is not successful.  This by no mean signifies that a PM is able to miss the main objective of the project, that falls under not caring.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you only measure your people with single dimension factors, you end up having a bunch of people that will get to the goal no matter the consequences.  So that you will have a visual, Walmart on Black Friday, you see a lot of people squeezing to get in, and pushing other people to get to their goals.  These people pushing others, don't care about the others.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our line of work, we need to make sure that our next project is as successful as the one before.  So If a PM gets to its objective, but he underperformed in the 3 key success factors above, I am sure his individuality will be ok, but I am not so sure about the team perspective of this individual. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastEditorUserId="70" LastEditDate="2011-02-17T13:04:05.980" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T13:04:05.980" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="49" CreationDate="2011-02-14T02:18:46.303" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for a company that makes a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vertabase.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;tool&lt;/a&gt; that sounds like it could do the job for you. It also allows team members to update their own information relieving the pm of a lot of chasing down information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T02:18:46.303" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-14T02:18:46.303" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="323" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="326" CreationDate="2011-02-14T03:10:18.833" Score="17" ViewCount="1045" Body="&lt;p&gt;The situation is: A developer has apparently been working on an important project for a year and hasn't been able to get the product in a commercially usable form.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Im sure there a plenty of situations that someone has to resurrect a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we need from a developer to help ensure a smooth transition?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="36" LastEditDate="2011-02-14T18:48:08.447" LastActivityDate="2015-09-18T16:58:02.283" Title="How to transition away a bad developer?" Tags="&lt;roles&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="323" CreationDate="2011-02-14T04:31:08.707" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;If that developer hasn't been producing and was a bad choice for the project, then there isn't much more he/she can possibly contribute.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By bringing in another developer to take over the project, that developer is going to need to look through the entire project and make a determination of whether or not there is any value to any code written so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ramp Up Period for New Developer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll need a developer who is capable of reading code, not just writing code.  Many developers' first instinct is to toss out any code and just rewrite from scratch.  That's not always the best decision, and you'll need to make sure the developer taking over knows the difference between something that can be brought to market with determination and elbow grease and something that is not salvageable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Manager Must Understand Learning Curves Exist&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project manager will need to understand that the developer taking over can't just jump in and immediately show results.  There will be a learning curve, and it will take time for the developer to assess the current state of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Goals of Project May Change Based on Stakeholder Communications&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, since it's an important project that is now a delayed project, the goals of the project may have changed.  For instance, if time to market and timely delivery is critical, the PM will need to make sure the developer understands that -- if at all possible -- he or she absolutely must work with what the previous developer left.  That means that things might not be perfect.  The decisions here largely depend on the client/stakeholders and what their needs are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, the project can be salvaged, in most cases, but it takes having the right people take over, having a clear understanding of what the modified goals are of the project, and maintaining excellent communication with stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T04:31:08.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-02-14T08:13:54.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0071358366&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Architect's Professional Practice Manual&lt;/a&gt; - it is about architecture and building construction but the methods and explanations are really smooth and easy for non-technical people to understand. I've used the ideas here for presenting and explaining IT projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T08:13:54.800" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-14T08:13:54.800" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="323" CreationDate="2011-02-14T09:36:29.140" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;No bad soldiers only bad generals&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; Napoleon Bonaparte once said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me rephrase him. No bad developers only bad managers. Start this transition from the analysis of your own mistakes, which are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Misunderstanding of developer's weaknesses and strengths&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Micromanagement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lack of motivation model&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Defects in project vision, scope, schedule&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unclear quality objectives (!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Absence of risk management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, this article may help you: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yegor256.com/2015/09/16/how-to-fire-someone-right.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How to Fire Someone Right&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastEditorUserId="91" LastEditDate="2015-09-18T16:58:02.283" LastActivityDate="2015-09-18T16:58:02.283" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="318" CreationDate="2011-02-14T09:38:43.973" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Project Manager is successful when his/her &lt;strong&gt;project&lt;/strong&gt; achieves its objectives. That's it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T09:38:43.973" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="316" CreationDate="2011-02-14T09:40:28.743" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_model&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Spiral Model&lt;/a&gt; has (should have) any explicit roles. It's a methodology, not a framework. While Scum is a framework, like RUP, MSF, PRINCE2, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T09:40:28.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="329" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-14T09:49:08.047" Score="1" ViewCount="127" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the most effective/interesting places to volunteer, in the industry of project management?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2018-09-07T21:33:22.527" LastActivityDate="2018-09-07T21:33:22.527" Title="Where do you volunteer as a project manager?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2012-06-28T08:25:39.233" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="330" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="349" CreationDate="2011-02-14T09:51:54.080" Score="13" ViewCount="221" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should a project sponsor have an access to Issues Tracking System (call it a &quot;bug list&quot;)? If yes, how do you manage a potential conflict between sponsor's expectations of bug-free quality and a list of bugs he/she is seeing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T02:50:09.393" Title="Should one give an access to Issues Tracking System to a project sponsor?" Tags="&lt;quality&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;&lt;project-sponsor&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="330" CreationDate="2011-02-14T10:52:12.533" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd argue the business sponsor has a right to know the current state of the project and what the known defects are at any given point. If the sponsor expects bug-free quality, and there are bugs in the product, then the sponsor deserves to know that these expectations are not met. As far as that aspect goes, I wouldn't say there's a conflict of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see other problem areas, though. &lt;em&gt;If&lt;/em&gt; the project sponsor is allowed access to the issue tracker, then everybody involved should know that. Developers might employ a language internally that they would not use in a system exposed to the sponsor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, it usually interrupts the developers if the sponsor is allowed to add issues, and set priorities. The sponsor and project manager might have different opinions about what is defined as a bug and what is a change request, and such discussion should be held separately. For these reasons, I wouldn't give the project sponsor write access to the issue tracker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="61" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T10:52:12.533" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="261" CreationDate="2011-02-14T11:20:35.260" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some time ago my company did a great party to the employees with a nice celebration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some employees had a band and there were invited to play to us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As it was impossible to give money to everybody (+400 employees), the company did a drawing of cash prizes. It worked fine!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="105" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T11:20:35.260" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="55" CreationDate="2011-02-14T14:27:01.987" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience, some technical knowledge is necessary.  The PM has to at least be able to speak the the language of the technical people on the team.  I have also seen that technical people get more respect from the people on their team.  I was on a team at a previous company and the manager knew nothing technical.  His main role was just to make sure everything was on schedule and under budget.  He was not respected in meetings and people gave  him unreasonably long estimates for tasks, because they knew he didn't know any better. Some of these issues were a cultural problem with the organization, but a more technical PM, would have been able to see the ridiculous estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="58" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T14:27:01.987" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="83" CreationDate="2011-02-14T15:27:59.507" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you feel you're loosing control and playing catch-up rather than pro-actively getting information and giving direction on projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T15:27:59.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="55" CreationDate="2011-02-14T15:33:31.547" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that a basic technical knowledge is necessary to talk and understand both, your team and the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On small teams I think a technical background is more important, because the PM will be more involved to the impediments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On bigger teams there will be &lt;em&gt;team-leaders&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;technical-coordinators&lt;/em&gt; above the team, so the PM role will be less technical and more on people and project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="105" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T15:33:31.547" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="44" CreationDate="2011-02-14T16:13:40.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We do projects for 3 reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) Regulatory Compliance&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  (2) $ROI&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  (3) Political Will&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We do postmortems for N* reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Distance the guilty &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make everyone feel good, regardless of outcome&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Required step in methodology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Public humiliation (PM, Client, or both)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rationalize the outcome&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a dead document&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Input to PM performance review &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn from our mistakes (This is only achieved by each, individually, from the project experience. This is not achieved by a post-mortem meeting or document.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;N = any number of...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="113" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-20T14:51:57.890" LastActivityDate="2019-01-20T14:51:57.890" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-14T16:13:40.887" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="123" CreationDate="2011-02-14T17:09:20.857" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Too Many Meetings&lt;/strong&gt; - You know your project is not going well when the time spent in meetings exceeds the time actually spent doing something on the project.  You should be even more concerned if those meetings are not yielding decisions or, worse yet, adding to scope instead of focusing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="113" LastEditorUserId="113" LastEditDate="2011-02-15T20:44:11.517" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T20:44:11.517" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-14T17:09:20.857" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-02-14T17:27:06.300" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Death March&lt;/strong&gt;, The Complete Software Developer's Guide to Surviving Mission Impossible Projects. &#xA;by Ed Yourdon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also recommend Getting Real and Rework.  Both books, by 37Signals, are not directly PM-oriented but both contain the best ideas on gettng to the point and getting things done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="113" LastEditorUserId="113" LastEditDate="2011-02-15T20:49:41.687" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T20:49:41.687" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-14T17:27:06.300" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="339" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="342" CreationDate="2011-02-14T18:07:58.590" Score="8" ViewCount="579" Body="&lt;p&gt;What can a beginner, with good technical skills and background, do in order to gain the skills and experience necessary for the job?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="71" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T09:03:34.660" Title="What is the most effective way to gain experience that can lead to working in a PM role, in the software industry?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;skills&gt;&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="339" CreationDate="2011-02-14T18:19:38.783" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One obvious step is to take a class (that can applied to certification once you have experience). The PMP course with PMI is one industry standard example. There are plenty of others of course. The PMP certification does require many hours of on-the-job experience but taking the course is a good first step. Most of these courses tell you stuff you already know but most are also quite helpful in the simple act of formally reviewing and giving language to what you might already be doing, informally. I took PMP not long ago and have found it very helpful in my role as a hands-on PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="125" LastEditorUserId="125" LastEditDate="2011-02-15T14:36:31.507" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T14:36:31.507" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="44" CreationDate="2011-02-14T18:22:46.330" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think one of the most common problems in lessons learned sessions is that the focus is so often and heavily weighted on what went wrong. Often times, identifying what worked well and simply &quot;doing more of that&quot; can help future projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="125" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T18:22:46.330" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-14T18:22:46.330" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="339" CreationDate="2011-02-14T18:23:26.487" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Volunteer to help your Project Managers out with the planning and PM responsibilities on projects you work on.  They can probably use the help, and if you're lucky you'll find someone willing to mentor you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found it useful to take classes in the evening, that way I can volunteer for &lt;em&gt;specific&lt;/em&gt; tasks that I'm learning how to do in classes, instead of just making a generic offer to do &quot;whatever you need done.&quot;  I don't think classes are strictly necessary though.  You can pick up a text book on Project Management and start looking for things that interest you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T18:23:26.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="343" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="604" CreationDate="2011-02-14T18:43:47.297" Score="18" ViewCount="3913" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am primarily a software developer and software development manager. I use practices from Scrum and Agile development to manage my project. This means:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Incremental releases every two weeks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimating work in a vague, non-time-bound unit (eg. story points)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planning releases based on historical performance (eg. average points per week over the last six weeks)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I came across Critical Chain during my PMP training. Critical Chain has several touted benefits that are amazing; primarily, a 30-50% reduction of schedule when used properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm curious to know how I can &lt;strong&gt;take Critical Chain practices and roll them into my current Agile processes&lt;/strong&gt; to get these benefits. Some points of conflict are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Critical Chain hinges on the fact that you don't have enough time to complete the work (eg. they give you 2 days to complete 4 days worth of work). In Agile, if stories are not complete, they're simply cancelled or carried forward into the next sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Critical Chain uses a buffer at the end of the project. (If your project schedule is eight weeks, they give you four weeks to do the work, and a four-week buffer at the end of the project.) In agile, you only have sprints (iterations) when you &lt;em&gt;have work to do.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll add more points as I think of them. I'm not an expert on Critical Chain, so I'm not sure what other issues would conflict with Agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-07T00:50:07.333" LastActivityDate="2019-05-29T06:47:02.590" Title="Integrating Critical Chain into Scrum/Agile Practices" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;critical-chain&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="344" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="345" CreationDate="2011-02-14T20:10:49.330" Score="7" ViewCount="877" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know there are lots of talks and articles on agile and scrum. But I would like to know how to improve your scrum sprint for a new and small team. We are looking for a sprint length of 3 weeks. I would like to see some real experiences explained rather than the text book points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="149" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-12-10T06:05:48.847" LastActivityDate="2018-12-10T06:05:48.847" Title="Improving your Scrum Sprint!" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="344" CreationDate="2011-02-14T21:57:29.243" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few ideas which may work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you have fairly inexperienced team but at least one of team members has some experience in different work environments let her share her ideas what may work and try to adopt a few of them (not too many).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the team is fairly new to Scrum make sure everyone knows you treat first sprint/first couple of sprints as experiment - the most valuable thing is how much everyone would learn, not how much work would be done.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You may break regular routine of doing retrospectives at the end of the sprint and do retros more often. If team members generally trust each other you may try to make &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2010/12/kanban-retrospectives.html&quot;&gt;ad-hoc retrospectives&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find someone within the organization who is experienced with Scrum. Ask him for help. Let him do some mentoring or at least share his knowledge. Treat him more as an adviser than a decision-maker. In other words if the team doesn't want to follow a specific idea/technique don't enforce it on them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Change your sprints gradually. After each sprint find just one or two things which are most painful and don't change more. This way you'll learn which changes work and which don't. Also you won't overload people with too many new things which should support adoption success.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make decisions with the team. Let them decide what you try and what you don't try. Don't enforce new techniques or practices on them. Try to be more of a coach who's asking right questions to help the other side find the right way by themselves instead of serving well-done solution for every issue. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T21:57:29.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="323" CreationDate="2011-02-14T22:10:00.493" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the ideal situation I'd start with a quick analysis what went wrong and why. It is possible that developer is a problem but it's also possible that the source of the issue lies somewhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're sure you should address the problem to the developer it would be a comfortable situation to have someone other to work with the current developer hand to hand to take over the project. I could go into details here (like having both developers pair program) but well, we rarely live in the ideal world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next important answer is what happens with transited developer. If he's fired you'd tackle the issue differently than when he's moved to another project. In the latter case you can expect much support for a new person in the project. If the former is true, it's tougher issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have enough time you can ask to document the work, which would help to take the project over. If you don't I wouldn't reject quick and dirty method which is overtaking the project in whatever state it currently is. Actually I did a few times and I'm always surprised how easy it went comparing to the hell I'd expected. A bit of well-tunneled motivation works miracles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T22:10:00.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="339" CreationDate="2011-02-14T22:18:03.307" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good technical skills is a nice starting point. You can get very nice project management experience from voluntary projects and it doesn't really matter how software-related they are. E.g. you will learn a lot about project management from co-organizing a conference and this, paired with some software development knowledge and experience makes a very good mix to start a career as a software project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another idea is to look for projects where there isn't any strong project management persona. It may be maintenance project where no one really wants to take over PM role as there's fairly little PM work to do. That's an ideal situation to start building your PM experience. Expectations aren't very high and you can do it simultaneously with standard everyday tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T22:18:03.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="329" CreationDate="2011-02-14T22:26:58.443" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd point co-organizing a local conference or other community event. Conferences like TEDx can be pretty big (like 500 people) and there's always a need to for help. You can learn a lot about leading projects there. However remember about voluntary project specifics. See: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/154/what-can-i-do-to-prepare-for-managing-a-project-which-is-staffed-mostly-with-volu&quot;&gt;What can I do to prepare for managing a project which is staffed mostly with volunteers, for a non-for-profit organization?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another idea is organizing some event, i.e. holidays, for your friends. If you approach this task thinking about it as a project you can learn pretty much. Especially that friends make pretty difficult clients - often you can't count on their discipline and you don't want to play hard balls against them (something you'd consider against clients).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T22:26:58.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="330" CreationDate="2011-02-14T22:29:22.387" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The project sponsor should absolutely have to the issue list. This is necessary to ensure a common understanding of issues and facilitate communication which is important to maintaining a good relationship among all stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To &lt;strong&gt;manage a sponsor's expectations&lt;/strong&gt; it is important to include in your issue list:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Severity&lt;/strong&gt;: High/Medium/Low. Only High severity issues are showstoppers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Impact&lt;/strong&gt;: If the issue is not resolved, what is the impact on the deliverable. Also equally as important, if the issue needs to be resolved, what will is the time/cost impact.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Usual items such as owner, target resolution date, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2011-02-14T22:29:22.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="350" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="354" CreationDate="2011-02-15T00:26:17.390" Score="10" ViewCount="1240" Body="&lt;p&gt;What diagrams should be included in a project charter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our standard template there is a section for &quot;Implementation approach and methodology&quot;, this is where the flow diagrams normally are. The project is mainly front end styling related so it doesn't have many flow changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should a charter include use case diagrams? Are they more relevant in a Requirements document?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T11:58:59.510" Title="Project charter diagrams" Tags="&lt;project-charter&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="351" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-15T00:33:43.627" Score="7" ViewCount="2185" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to become better at planning in my role as PM and would like to know what makes a great planner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was told efficiency is an important attribute and im not sure if this is correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2011-02-15T23:54:18.340" LastActivityDate="2015-04-03T11:46:10.987" Title="What makes a great planner?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;roles&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="351" CreationDate="2011-02-15T00:38:57.500" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to my experience, three things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Great &lt;strong&gt;estimation skills&lt;/strong&gt;: count; if you can't count, compute; if you can't compute, estimate (see McConnell).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not afraid to &lt;strong&gt;use uncertainty&lt;/strong&gt; (uncertainty cones) and distinguish between the concepts of an estimate, a target and a wish.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ability to continuously &lt;strong&gt;rework the plan&lt;/strong&gt; as you go, and not afraid to make corrections if needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Efficiency is not especially related to planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="38" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T00:38:57.500" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="353" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="362" CreationDate="2011-02-15T01:48:44.570" Score="15" ViewCount="756" Body="&lt;p&gt;Big enterprises are infamous for creating lots of processes.  Sometimes these processes are overburdening for the team members that have to do them to the point where the process is more work than the actual job to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, these processes are needed to make sure Project Managers and Executives are able to obtain the business intelligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the gauging factor to decide if the process at hand is good, or too much?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastEditorUserId="696" LastEditDate="2011-04-07T07:19:35.797" LastActivityDate="2012-11-25T04:34:07.000" Title="What to do when team members are overburdened by process?" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;enterprise&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="350" CreationDate="2011-02-15T01:56:27.790" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kieran, while reading your question all my hairs stand up!!! Use Cases on a project charter, I am sure that is not unheard, but totally orthodox :).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why would you want to include these detail at this level?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On your other comment, I see fine that you have implementation approach.  Once you have a few PMs in your firm, then you may think to standardize the approach, eliminating the need to establish the approach in every project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your questions I will put the following diagrams or formulas in a project charter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ROI -- Investment y-axis - Time x-axis - Return y-axis another color&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Cash flow estimate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project total investment over time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T01:56:27.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="330" CreationDate="2011-02-15T02:08:32.547" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The project sponsor doesn't need to see the issue list while the deliverable is being developed. It is your job, as project manager, to take care of the project -not the sponsor's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This kind of visibility into the process can lead to a lot of wasted time trying to explain details to someone who doesn't have experience in the specifics of this type of project. It also can give the impression that you are trying to offload your responsibilities onto the sponsor e.g. &quot;you saw the list, Mr. Sponsor, and you didn't say anything about x,y or z.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, once the project is complete the sponsor should have a full accounting of where the deliverable meets the requirements and quality standards -and where it doesn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T02:08:32.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="350" CreationDate="2011-02-15T02:13:20.733" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use case is best put in the requirements and planning documentation. The charter should focus on the project's business goals, high-level outline of the deliverable and ROI. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that the requirements can change and become more refined over the lifecycle of the project.  It is the list against which the deliverable will be measured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project charter should stay basically static over the lifecycle of the project. It authorizes the project, the project manager and the budget and sets out an expected return.  It is the document against which the success of the entire endeavor will be measured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T02:13:20.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="353" CreationDate="2011-02-15T02:14:26.690" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does it help you do your job better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it help the team members do their job better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T02:14:26.690" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="323" CreationDate="2011-02-15T02:19:18.807" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Openness to answer questions from the new developer while the new developer gets up to speed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learning someone else's code can be challenging. Having the original developer available for questions can make all the difference in the world. That's not to say the new developer will use what the old developer wrote, but it provides a frame of reference in understanding the approach they were taking to solve the problem/deliver the solution in the spec.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, you do need to have a good specification describing what it is they are supposed to be building.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T02:19:18.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="351" CreationDate="2011-02-15T02:21:35.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Good at estimating&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Good at building in sufficient time into the original schedule to accommodate all the changes that will come as more is learned later in the lifecycle.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Experience in the margin of error estimates carry with them at different stages of the project lifecycle.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ability to get estimates from subject matter experts that will be doing the work or have done similar work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T02:21:35.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="329" CreationDate="2011-02-15T02:28:14.503" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Local PMI chapter or PMI special interest group online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T02:28:14.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="353" CreationDate="2011-02-15T11:28:40.767" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have worked as developer with a very overburden process and the team didn't see the benefits of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this process directly affected our job to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We improved the process to a more dynamic process where we could see the benefits and also concentrated most of the work at one person, so the rest of the team were free to do the job itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the process is really important to the organization. So you should think whether it is better to dedicate someone to insure the proper functioning of the process (as a coordinator of the process) and allow the team to communicate relevant information to this coordinator. The team will be more free to do the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another point is to review the process in order to set what process work will bring back benefits to the project/company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="105" LastEditorUserId="105" LastEditDate="2011-02-15T12:40:19.987" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T12:40:19.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="353" CreationDate="2011-02-15T12:38:01.957" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two components to the question: 1.) the view of the project team members and 2.) the view of managers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team members want the processes to quick and as painless as possible. They want to do their current task and move on to the next. Anything that you can do to make following the process faster (on line forms, single time sheet, easy edit WBS tracking, etc.) can make the team members more likely to complete the process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management wants accurate, current information on what is going on. Occasionally, they want detailed information that unavailable and may hound the PM for it. If the team doesn't follow the process, the chances of inaccurate information contaminating decision making processes increases.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to make clear to the team is that the information that management wants comes from a lot of these processes and that information can also be the &lt;strong&gt;same&lt;/strong&gt; information that &lt;strong&gt;rest&lt;/strong&gt; of the project team needs to do their job. By showing to the team members that following the process helps the team, too, their willingness to follow the process increases. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, technical team members in IT and Architecture (building design) rarely complain about spending 2.5% to 5% of time on generic overhead tracking tasks, which equals 1 hour to 2 hours per 40-hour week. If there is an extremely complicated project (global, multi-vendor, multi-phase, etc.) up to 10% seems to be tolerated for short periods of time. If you survey your team and the average time spent on process tasks (revising estimates, writing change requests, status meetings, etc.) exceeds 3 hours per week per project member (not counting the PM), your process might need adjusting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T12:38:01.957" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="344" CreationDate="2011-02-15T15:04:09.777" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum has a concept of a &quot;sprint retrospective,&quot; where you sit down as a team and talk about the good and bad that came out of the last sprint. Use it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To use it effectively, I recommend asking each team member for their top three positives (good things we want to do again) and negatives (things that went wrong that we want to fix next time). Tally everybody's votes together, and take the top three with the most votes. (You'll see repeat themes pretty frequently.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then implement your team suggestions, and move forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T15:04:09.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-02-15T21:28:48.673" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0932633439&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams&lt;/a&gt; by Tom DeMarco, Timothy Lister&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if this book falls under the Project Management category. However, I found this book to have great insights on team development which I think is an important aspect of Project Management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="121" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T21:28:48.673" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-15T21:28:48.673" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="365" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="384" CreationDate="2011-02-15T21:29:43.747" Score="5" ViewCount="1052" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of our PMs just got a new project that was on the execution phase with vague requirements.  Because of these vague requirements, the Client have requested many changes, and the product development team have miss-interpret some of them as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some of the facts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project in execution phase&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;requirement document is vague&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;changes are limiting the progress&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Timeline cannot be changed, which means some requirements will not be met.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the standard real-life approach to get through this sour patch?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-27T07:32:35.390" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T18:49:42.787" Title="How to approach a project given to new PM during execution with vague requirements?" Tags="&lt;change-management&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-02-15T21:35:00.737" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0761513698&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Servant&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;em&gt;A Simple Story About the True Essence of Leadership&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very nice, gave me a new perspective about leadership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="105" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T21:35:00.737" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-15T21:35:00.737" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="63" CreationDate="2011-02-15T21:45:47.410" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;MS Project is an institution at many companies, so taking the time to learn it to some depth is definitely worth while.  You can find some good free tutorials on YouTube.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the webspace, &lt;a href=&quot;http://gantto.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gantto&lt;/a&gt; makes GANTT charts easier and does have a nifty MS Project feature.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of new products, one that looks really promising is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.asana.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;asana&lt;/a&gt;. It's more task and collaboration focused than GANTT chart but i'm especially impressed with how visible it makes project tasks and the ease with which it manages them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T21:45:47.410" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-15T21:45:47.410" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-02-15T21:50:20.520" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best two for me both come from the unique mind of Jim McCarthy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00005TNXB&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dynamics of Software Development&lt;/a&gt; - grew out of his famous presentations at PDCs in the early 90s, Jim give such sage advice as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Never trade a bad date for a worse one: When your realize that the schedule date estimate you've given was wrong, don't immediately give another (probably much worse) estimate. Rather seek to find out why you were wrong, figure out how to eliminate those error sources and THEN give a date that actually means something.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be like a doctor: When someone asks you a question you can't answer, bracket the possibilities with appropriate uncertainty declaration. Then do the tests that will help you figure out what the correct answer is.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't flip the Bozo bit: Don't cause (or allow) yourself to dismiss someone's ideas and information just because you don't agree.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Beware the guy in the room: You know, that guy who is the only one that can get the job done, because nobody understands him, or his idea.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My second selection is the logical follow-up and expansion of these ideas into a full training guide for teams. &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0201604566&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Software For Your Head&lt;/a&gt;. This book is so valuable because it builds out the concept that a good manager is all about &lt;strong&gt;building teams&lt;/strong&gt;, not &lt;strong&gt;leading people&lt;/strong&gt;.  The simple truth is that each team needs to extract the best of each member, while limiting the exposure of the weaknesses of the members. A great manager shelters his team from distractions, guides the process and gets out of the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="159" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T21:50:20.520" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-15T21:50:20.520" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="369" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="499" CreationDate="2011-02-15T22:08:56.117" Score="11" ViewCount="4502" Body="&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redmine.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Redmine&lt;/a&gt; is a flexible project management web application. Written using Ruby on Rails framework, it is cross-platform and cross-database.  Redmine is open source and released under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2 (GPL).&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it sufficient for what project managers need?  It has issues and tasks, start and end dates, assignees.  It can do GANTT charts.  But I don't know what other Microsoft Project-like features &amp;quot;real&amp;quot; project managers use.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If so, did you need to add plug-ins to use it?  If so, which?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If not, what is it lacking?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am approaching this as a technical lead of a ~3 person project who has to do some scheduling and status tracking, not as a full project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT 2/16/11: We are already using Redmine, so I'm interested in that solution in particular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="158" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2013-01-23T22:03:41.937" Title="Is Redmine sufficient for light to moderate project management? If so, what plug-ins are required?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;redmine&gt;&lt;open-source&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="365" CreationDate="2011-02-15T22:12:15.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well Geo, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not experienced on this business, I not even a PM (yet, I hope.. I'm working on that), but I have seen a similar situation before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say this situation will be though and listing these facts above helps to understand and manage the problem (project).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the similar situation, they had to re-write documentation and generate a correction (but this was on a specific software business were a fast correction was possible to be provided to customer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, customer needs to be aware that changes are limiting the progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make a list of critical problems, sorting by the most urgent to the less urgent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make a list of the critical actions (or deliveries) to the development team (sorted like the list above). Focus the job at the most urgent action and after the completion, review the priorities and start it again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every time a action is done, check whether you can mark a problem (from the &lt;em&gt;critical problem list&lt;/em&gt;) as solved. The actions will eliminate the problems, so focus on actions and the problems will disappear naturally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talk to the team and explain the situation. If possible offer a bonus to the completion of the job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overtime will be generated? Yes. Very important to have an engaged team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="105" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T22:12:15.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="365" CreationDate="2011-02-15T22:12:51.993" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, understand where you are. Do your homework: check how important is the project and the client for the organization. Learn key constrains: who has to be happy after all, how much decision-makers care, what are general project priorities within the company, how important is to make the thing profitable at first approach? Once you know it you can adjust the strategy to the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the project and/or the client is important the focus should be set on making client happy with what they get, which probably means high flexibility in adjusting plans to the client all the way around, throwing in some extra effort from project team whenever requirements change and trying to keep the whole thing high-quality (as hard as this may sound). Basically get the team to run an extra mile. It shouldn't be hard to make everyone shine if you succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;With top-priority project it should be relatively to get some support from decision-makers within the organization. Some compensation for extra effort, maybe an extra person or two for tasks which can be easily outsourced etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the project isn't that important and the company has rather good relationship with the client it's often pretty good strategy to talk this out. Describe the situation as it is and try to find a reasonable solution along with the client. Which features can be delivered later, how the process can be organized better so constant changes don't disrupt development process that much, how critical requirements can be hardened so the final product is compliant at least with them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If neither the project nor the client is important you may just accept you won't excel on this one and just do your best to organize the process in a reasonable way even though it won't end as a stunning success. Maybe that's cynic but it's not worth dying for the project no one really cares about.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you don't care much about the client or the client is notoriously bitchy about the formal agreement you can play the hard ball and use the same approach. If requirements can be interpreted, they can be interpreted both ways. It may as lose-lose, but well, sometimes it's better to end toxic relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In any case any tricks which makes the workload organized better and reduces how much changes affect everyday work of the people would be great. It doesn't have to be isolation, you can adjust the way the team works in a way which embraces changes so no one hates the client, and the PM, for throwing yet another change in.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T22:12:51.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="372" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="377" CreationDate="2011-02-15T22:17:26.597" Score="13" ViewCount="688" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a young programmer who has recently gotten a job at a company that is small but loves programming estimates. Since giving good estimates has been a problem for me in the past I'm happy about this chance to get better at estimating my time. Any advice on how best to improve?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="163" LastActivityDate="2011-10-28T02:10:02.227" Title="Advice for a young programmer on creating programming estimates" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;progress-monitor&gt;&lt;education&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="63" CreationDate="2011-02-15T22:29:56.357" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work here, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.liquidplanner.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LiquidPlanner&lt;/a&gt; is really a great tool for project management, and we've got a lot of new ideas and features coming up for 2011. Give it a try and let me know what you think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="166" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T22:29:56.357" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-15T22:29:56.357" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="372" CreationDate="2011-02-15T23:46:40.113" Score="3" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Break it down smaller.  Never more than 2 weeks; preferably &amp;lt;2 days.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Record how you do so you can see are you typically 2x or 10x off. Use bug/task tracking that has this feature, e.g., FogBugz or redmine.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="158" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T23:46:40.113" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="195" CreationDate="2011-02-15T23:52:56.797" Score="9" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Source control&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unit tests&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Automated builds&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spec&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Schedule&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bug tracking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="158" LastActivityDate="2011-02-15T23:52:56.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="372" CreationDate="2011-02-16T01:24:34.907" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Joel Spolsky recommends no single task longer than 16 hours in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html&quot;&gt;his blog&lt;/a&gt;. If there is more detail there, break it into subtasks. I prefer 1 day or 1/2 day pieces. And IT guys and developers are regularly optimistic (assume things will work first time, minimum debugging, etc.) Track your estimates vs. actually and use that to cushion your own estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T01:24:34.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="125" CreationDate="2011-02-16T01:46:41.190" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When the plan has project management tasks, especially if they are within or part of a dependency  - the PM is normally the resource. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="178" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T01:46:41.190" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="379" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="381" CreationDate="2011-02-16T02:03:00.943" Score="5" ViewCount="2641" Body="&lt;p&gt;I once managed a very intensive, very complex project that with every tool, illustrated an on-time schedule. But in the end, the project was severely delayed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand the concept of &quot;known unknowns&quot;, &quot;unknown unknowns&quot; and scope creep; but what is the community's guidance on the best way of anticipating the potential of schedule delays? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, I understand the NASA Apollo project was subject to all the above (and more). How did the PMs anticipate delays that could have put them in Jeopardy of missing the Dec 1969 deadline? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="178" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-10-04T10:29:28.257" LastActivityDate="2015-10-04T10:29:28.257" Title="How to anticipate delays in the project schedule?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;timeline&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;scope&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="372" CreationDate="2011-02-16T02:12:42.500" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hey Ama, Even though I think this question is quasi repeated, I will give you a short and sweet way that I tell our development team to use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a first swag for your own purpose. Let's call this &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;x&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If x is &gt; than your PM tolerance (mine is 40 hours), then break down in simpler logical problems. Let's call this &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;x1, x2, x3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take x1 and the scope of x1, and think what will be the number if everything that can go wrong goes wrong.  Your dev environment get broken, you have to ask too many questions because requirements are not clear, etc, etc. Let's call this&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;x1-worstcase&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I will take x1 and x1-worstcase and average it. like this:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(x1+x1-worstcase)/2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This number will give you a good estimate in most cases, if you want to be less pessimistic, add a best case scenario. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps. Geo&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T02:12:42.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="379" CreationDate="2011-02-16T03:34:35.990" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the best way to anticipate schedule delays is to do a thorough Risk Analysis and &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/9/114&quot;&gt;keep a Risk Register&lt;/a&gt;. Someone wise (@ashes999) once &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/223/de-scope-vs-push-back-timeline-vs-overtime/224#224&quot;&gt;said&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;projects don't suddenly fall behind schedule; they fall behind one hour at a time.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keeping a Risk Register that identifies items which may affect the project schedule should prompt you to build in buffers when necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T03:34:35.990" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="379" CreationDate="2011-02-16T03:36:48.653" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me tell you something that has been very useful for us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We measure everything that we think might/could impact us with a &lt;em&gt;Risk Analysis&lt;/em&gt;.  This analysis tell us the things and the costs if they do impact, plus the probability.  This takes care of the &lt;strong&gt;&quot;known unknowns&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then we take the total amount of the cost of the project, estimated during &lt;em&gt;planning&lt;/em&gt;.  And we take x% (depending on your budget and revenue streams), and we assign that for &lt;strong&gt;&quot;unknown unknowns&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; Usually only sponsors will be able to use this money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the scope creeps, we use proper PM process to avoid them :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is not perfect but it works most of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T03:36:48.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="369" CreationDate="2011-02-16T03:51:43.423" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a small project it would be suitable.  It does offer a complete work bench in that the project team has tasks, source code management and issue management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are of course a number of other online systems such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilezen.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;AgileZen&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pivotaltracker.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PivotalTracker&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.liquidplanner.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LiquidPlanner&lt;/a&gt; which offer PM tools and incorporate the philosophies of Agile - Scrum and Kanban.  These are more focused on the PM side of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It comes down to the ease of setup and the convenience so a complete package may be the way to go.  Compared to getting all the parts of the system and doing the install.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="183" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T03:51:43.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="365" CreationDate="2011-02-16T04:14:37.207" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been in this position before.  We worked with the client to put together a Specification Document, iterated over it several times, and once everyone agreed what was within scope and what was out of scope, the client signed it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main reason I keep documentation laying around is because &lt;strong&gt;it serves as a means to resolve disputes and remind all stakeholders of what the project requirements are.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my situation, the client just plain forgot what he originally asked for.  Reviewing the original requirements with him helped him realize his mistake, and we all agreed to go with the original requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Had he insisted on the requirements changing, we would have charged a higher fee for the increased development and extended the original due date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project timeline and project features are two values in an equation that balance each other out.  If more features are added, then the timeline must be increased or other features must be removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you could make people work overtime or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codesqueeze.com/adding-people-to-a-late-project-makes-it-later/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Make the Mistake of Adding More Resources to a Project Late&lt;/a&gt;, the chances of success are not great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best, real-life approach to getting through this sour patch is to be prepared by documenting requirements early.  If it's too late to go back and do this, you can still salvage the project by communicating with the client, explaining that the requirements are vague, and calling a meeting to get updated requirements keeping in mind the balance between functionality and time to market. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Constant communication and being realistic about deadlines is your best asset at this point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T04:14:37.207" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="353" CreationDate="2011-02-16T04:32:06.413" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many times the answer to this question involves using the right tools for the job.  Strategic decisions made by management can only be made if they have access to aggregate data about the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of the job of a developer is to provide this information to project managers and executive level management via project management software and other forms of documentation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a development team spends 100% of their time coding, they may get a lot done, but consider that what they build may be 180 degrees in the wrong direction from where it would be with the proper information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even the fastest ships can't get to their destination without a good navigator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T04:32:06.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="351" CreationDate="2011-02-16T04:39:20.710" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found that better planners are great delegators.  I find that I'm more able to focus on the future of a project if I have time to research the market, read research articles, and communicate with other teams if I delegate actual work to other people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The times when I've tried to take on work myself, I've been less able to focus on planning the future of the project; however, it's helped me gather more information about the state of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maintaining a balance is key to both being aware of the project details as well as being prepared to delegate future work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T04:39:20.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-02-16T05:13:02.853" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wow, great question. The one that got me thinking about something besides whips and chains was Barry Boehm's &lt;a href=&quot;http://csse.usc.edu/csse/TECHRPTS/1984/usccse84-500/usccse84-500.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Software Engineering Economics&quot;&gt;Software Engineering Economics&lt;/a&gt;. I have a number of the others mentioned on my shelf downstairs. DeMarco &amp;amp; Lister, Yourdon, McCarthy -- all very good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user185" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T05:13:02.853" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-16T05:13:02.853" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="388" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="392" CreationDate="2011-02-16T05:43:55.413" Score="6" ViewCount="378" Body="&lt;p&gt;how to estimate costs of projects that have not been clearly needs. for example I got a project to create information systems for xxxxx, then the client requesting the cost of it, while I do not know clearly the needs of its system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="69" LastEditorUserId="230" LastEditDate="2011-02-22T19:18:42.900" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T22:49:58.033" Title="how to estimate costs of projects that have not been clearly defined" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="389" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="395" CreationDate="2011-02-16T06:04:26.427" Score="75" ViewCount="93508" Body="&lt;p&gt;Where I lecture, I was always taught to use waterfall to manage projects, but when I finished college, waterfall wasn't the only method that can be used for project management, and I am very interested in Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question: when (for what kind of projects) it's better to use waterfall, and when it's better to use Scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="69" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-03T15:13:59.507" LastActivityDate="2020-06-13T16:06:44.773" Title="When to Use Waterfall, When to Use Scrum ?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="14" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="44" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="388" CreationDate="2011-02-16T06:42:09.987" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can't. The best you can do is a top down order of magnitude guesstimate. Don't take it any farther if they insist on a hard budget without defining the needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="189" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T06:42:09.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="388" CreationDate="2011-02-16T06:50:46.620" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, software cost estimation has been a non trivial task since it was first encountered. Many models exist to contain the risks of software development cost miscalculation, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COCOMO&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Constructive Cost Model&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Function_point_analysis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Function point analysis&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimation_in_software_engineering&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;others&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, what you are asking for seems to be: How to negotiate rates with clients on a freelance-basis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the requirements are as blurry as you describe them, I'd offer a hourly rate and just tell it how it is: That with the current amount of &lt;em&gt;specification&lt;/em&gt; there is no way to realistically estimate the cost. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would then try to split the project in as many independent units as possible and discuss these and the best (implementation) approach with the client. I would bet, that if the client gets an image of the development process, he'll have an easier time identifying the one or two things, he wants first. When you reach this point, estimation should be easier, since you have fewer requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="187" LastEditorUserId="187" LastEditDate="2014-06-18T22:49:58.033" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T22:49:58.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="388" CreationDate="2011-02-16T08:33:40.530" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can always estimate cost of project, however on every particular project phase your &lt;strong&gt;accuracy&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;preciseness&lt;/strong&gt; will be different. Read more about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cone of Uncertainty&lt;/a&gt; concept originally introduced by Barry Boehm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider this perfectly valid estimate example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The project will cost $1.5mln, with accuracy of +300% and -150%&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T08:33:40.530" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="379" CreationDate="2011-02-16T08:38:04.363" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a great indicator in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_value_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Earned Value Management (EVM)&lt;/a&gt; called &lt;strong&gt;Schedule Variance&lt;/strong&gt;, which is intended to spot schedule slippage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T08:38:04.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="389" CreationDate="2011-02-16T08:57:03.283" Score="70" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, it isn't an either-or type of problem. You will find pure implementations of both approaches (pure waterfall being rather rare these days) as well as a mixture of both approaches or some of this, some of that and much of chaos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then it would be better to discuss heavy-weight formal approaches versus light-weight agile approaches, than waterfall versus Scrum as they are just specific cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to use formal approaches when:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You work for a big client who enforces a very formal approach on vendors.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You work on fixed-scope, fixed-price contracts and client doesn't expect (for any reasons) rapid change in the scope.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You project team is experienced with specific heavy-weight approach - they know how to deal with it, they know how to use it to deliver a high-quality project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should consider agile approach when:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You work on in-house projects or projects for more flexible clients where you don't have to adjust to client's processes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You work on a project where the scope is changing rapidly (for whatever reason) and you tend to accept the fact.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your team isn't fluent in any specific project management approach as generally agile methods make learning curves pretty smooth in terms of introducing best practices.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, feel free to mix different approaches - whatever works for the team and for the project can be and should be used. You don't get points for being orthodox with any specific approach - you get points for delivering projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a piece of final advice, it's better to use potentially worse methods (where worse means one which doesn't suit so well to your specific project environment) but use it well, than use potentially best methods but screw up its implementation. See: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2011/01/good-waterfall-better-than-bad-agile.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Good waterfall is better than bad agile&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="29755" LastEditDate="2018-03-27T13:57:53.043" LastActivityDate="2018-03-27T13:57:53.043" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="350" CreationDate="2011-02-16T09:26:16.520" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is what &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Guide_to_the_Project_Management_Body_of_Knowledge&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMBOK 4th Ed.&lt;/a&gt; says: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The project chapter is the document that formally authorizes the project. The project chapter provides the project manager with the authority to apply organizational resources to project activities&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think that this document should explain anything to anyone. Remove all diagrams out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-23T23:22:55.103" LastActivityDate="2012-06-23T23:22:55.103" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="397" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="438" CreationDate="2011-02-16T09:43:20.430" Score="5" ViewCount="276" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being a project manager what objective criteria do you use when recruiting new technical engineers to your project? Typically their resumes are full of magic buzz words. How to select the right person, objectively?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T08:13:26.773" Title="What objective criteria can be used in staffing a project with engineers?" Tags="&lt;human-resources&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="397" CreationDate="2011-02-16T10:24:54.610" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try to match the technical requirements with their technical knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also present what is the project, what is the goals to be achieved and ask them their thoughts and experiences on similar projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have some technical background it will be easier to share information and to understand theirs thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you can adapt &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Joel Test&lt;/a&gt; to find a better way to recruit them. Specially if a specifically technical knowledge is required, probably you will have to apply a technical test because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would you hire a magician without&#xA;  asking them to show you some magic&#xA;  tricks? Of course not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somehow, you have to understand their world to recruit them. It is hard to list some objective criteria it will depend on what skills the project demands and when talking to them it will depend on their communications skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing (version 3.0)&lt;/a&gt; can help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="105" LastEditorUserId="105" LastEditDate="2011-02-17T14:51:12.927" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T14:51:12.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="399" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="483" CreationDate="2011-02-16T10:26:46.223" Score="5" ViewCount="184" Body="&lt;p&gt;If during a sprint some task depends on customer development, should the customer developers considered as part of the team?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;At the sprint planning meeting should these developer attend to share how much time to be done for that task?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2012-07-19T06:06:51.497" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T19:42:15.210" Title="Should the customer developers be part of our scrum team?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;customer&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="400" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="473" CreationDate="2011-02-16T10:50:45.180" Score="5" ViewCount="9452" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should the Product Owner prioritize the backlog side-by-side with the customer?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Must this step be done during the Sprint Planning Meeting, or could it be done before the meeting?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Is the meeting restricted only to the Product Owner and the Team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2014-06-03T10:24:07.887" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T10:24:07.887" Title="How should the Product Owner prioritize the backlog?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="401" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="409" CreationDate="2011-02-16T11:36:52.500" Score="25" ViewCount="1886" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a project manager, I think it's important to be heard.  I find that many times, even when just meeting people, I am getting interrupted mid sentence. Can anyone out there provide tips on how to grow past this?  I'm not sure if it's a natural reaction to a personality trait or fixable.  Love to hear any tips to cure this problem.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="105" LastEditDate="2011-02-16T15:22:57.043" LastActivityDate="2012-09-07T21:44:35.940" Title="How to avoid being interrupted?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="401" CreationDate="2011-02-16T11:56:17.360" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ground Rules&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every project will have some basic rules that everyone have to follow.  In my experience if you construct the ground rules in a vacuum they will not be as effective if you come to a meeting and ask them, let's have some basic rules for all our meetings.  I am sure other people get bothered by the same behaviors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of Ground rules are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No cell phone calls while in meeting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No talking over each other&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Challenge ideas respectfully while in the meeting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the parking lot for items outside the agenda&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T11:56:17.360" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="401" CreationDate="2011-02-16T12:09:49.237" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;When it comes to being heard, I’ve found that the more you can formalize the setting (podium, projector, agenda) the more seriously what you have to say will be considered.  You can try repeating what you're trying to say, like a broken record until it's obvious to the (not) listener that they are being rude an interruptive.  You might also consider a short course in public speaking or joining a local Toast Masters group to pick up a few ideas on better making your point.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meeting dynamics are interesting.  You can count on consistent behaviors, good or bad, from the folks you interact with on a regular basis.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, it's better to be a good listener, although it's unfortunate that not many people make an attempt at it.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="113" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T12:09:49.237" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="404" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="412" CreationDate="2011-02-16T13:19:36.647" Score="4" ViewCount="1336" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently in college, working as part of at team for one of the CA projects. &#xA;it's a problem based learning project where we've been given a trigger and told to come up with something to represent it.We've been assigned to specific teams and we're not allowed change to another team. All problems/issues must be resolved within  the team. &#xA;We've decided to toy around with the idea of a game. The PBL procedure involves assigning roles to each team member and getting stuck in, analysing the problem, deciding on the best way to solve it, getting stuck into UML and coding etc... (we're using Java). &#xA;However, it seems to me that for the most part my fellow team members seem to lack enthusiasm for the task at hand. After our first lesson one member was assigned the task of printing out special &quot;trigger&quot; cards for the purpose of the next meeting, and one was supposed to update the log with the minutes of the last meeting. Now we're in week 3 and I've printed the cards myself and I've had to post on the online log and ask for it to be updated (4 days after the class).I find it quite distressing to be honest. &#xA;Last week we assigned tasks to each member, namely researching a specific type of game to see the feesability of using it for the project. I regularly composed and sent emails on my progress, ideas of how we could proceed, even diagrams and the beginning of UML class diagrams that might be useful. I got some response form one of the memebrs (4 on the team) but nothing from the others.&#xA;In the mean time we got a mail from the lecturer saying he couldn't make the next class, but it wasn't an issue, the materials were online and he was just an observer this time anyway. &#xA;When I got to class the other day, one guy didn't show up, apparently it's too far to drive if there's not even a lecturer there (like the workshop would be much different anyway); and when we got into it, the other lads had come up with &quot;maybe some sort of pacman game would be good&quot;, but that was it, no research, no ideas on how we might code it, nothing. &#xA;They completely shot my idea down as too much work, but didn't offer any suggestions to replace it. &#xA;I'm not the chair person on this team, how can I help motivate them to get stuck in without offending anyone? or maybe the team needs a shake up to get some life into it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really don't get the lack of interest or excitement, this is a part-time course, everyone has full time jobs, I'd imagine they're here because they have life experience and now know what they want, but listening to them talk, and the lack of &quot;buzz&quot; for the want of a better word, about the project doesn't instill confidence in our ability to get it done. &#xA;It kind of feels like I'm currently the driving force behind it, but I don't want to be pushy; however at this rate I can't see how we can complete the project on time. For the most part they only seem to communicate during college hours. &#xA;We've set up a shared workspace for task management, scheduling etc, but again no-one seems interested in maintaining it. &#xA;Is it me? am I expecting too much? am I that annoying &quot;me! me! me!&quot; individual in the group?&#xA;I don't think so, am I wrong getting frustrated at the lack of movement? we're heading into week 4 now and while we've agreed a game &quot;template&quot; but it's only because I pushed it, they wanted to wait for the other guy to return, but then we'd be in week 5 of an 11 week project with no movement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for the rant! I'd be very grateful for any words of wisdom you can provide. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="201" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T23:12:55.607" Title="How to motivate a team? (software development OOP year 1 degree project)" Tags="&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="397" CreationDate="2011-02-16T14:13:54.687" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;An objective answer will be difficult, because hiring is not only about technical skills. One of the first thing I try to know is: will it be OK to work side-to-side with this person? Human qualities are, in my opinion, at least as important as technical skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can you know? First, when you are reading a resume, look at the projects the candidate has done. Try to determine the involvement level of the person in technology. Did (s)he choose this job because (s)he likes it, or just because companies are giving away lots of money to get it done? For example, in IT, involvement in personal projects is a good clue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The interview is of course the main moment to determine involvement and human qualities. I ask questions like: &quot;Why did you chose IT for a living?&quot;, &quot;Are you autonomous in your work?&quot;, &quot;What was your favorite course during your studies?&quot;, &quot;Tell me about something you are proud of&quot;, &quot;What's the last book you have read?&quot;, &quot;What have you learned during your summer jobs?&quot; (for beginners), &quot;What would you say if I said this interview is going all wrong?&quot;, &quot;How would you rate me as an interviewer?&quot; or &quot;Tell me about your hobbies.&quot; (Note that some countries restrict what questions you can ask during an interview.) The purpose is to encourage the candidate to open up, in order to see if you will be able to work with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastEditorUserId="227" LastEditDate="2011-02-18T08:13:26.773" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T08:13:26.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="407" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="437" CreationDate="2011-02-16T14:27:45.703" Score="1" ViewCount="3142" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a question on dealing with ambiguous data. IF at the start of the project, a lot of ambiguous data is present how would you zero in on a particular data?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T23:04:51.500" Title="How to deal with Ambiguous data?" Tags="&lt;project-sponsor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="400" CreationDate="2011-02-16T14:29:57.370" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no single universal way of prioritizing backlog. Much depends on the way team works and on the customer, e.g. how often they change requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally the closer you follow standard (by-the-book) model, the closer you will be to the following solution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;High-level prioritization on coarse-grained features is done at the beginning of the project. It is often done when discussing with the customer which features are must-haves and which are nice-to-haves. It should be done with customer if possible. Otherwise you'd be guessing what is really important and what isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then before every sprint remaining backlog should be prioritized on fine-grain level. It doesn't really matter whether PO makes it just before the sprint or during the previous one. The important thing is that the team should know their priorities for the next iteration. Ideally this prioritization is done with the customer but when general plan is approved by the customer and it doesn't change much Product Owner can make their own calls basing on their knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you work in environment where requirements are changing very rapidly you may consider constant re-prioritization which is basically what happens when you deal with Kanban backlog. In this case PO prioritizes features every time when anything changes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T14:29:57.370" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="401" CreationDate="2011-02-16T14:54:15.647" Score="10" Body="&lt;h2&gt;If you need to learn how to be heard.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to identify how to communicate in context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who can we learn from that is great at this? What draws people in? Am I going to answer your question?&#xA;Practice telling stories to children. &#xA;If you can train yourself to speak with interesting facts and the right words, tone, and phrasing (like successful children's shows do) you &#xA;will have hit the right way to keep interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Children? Seriously? Yes. Tell me, do more people have a hard time getting children to pay attention, or adults?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is, of course, only the surface of this. You have a lot to do, and even I am not an expert. Check out your local&#xA;Toastmasters club, try to find ways to talk about boring mundane things as if they're interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you master being a good story teller, that really only gets you up to people wanting to hear the next thing you say.&#xA;Effective communication is another ball of wax that you could write a number of PhD-level papers on, but we don't need to&#xA;get that complicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at people who are great public speakers, people we like to listen to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What did they do? Why did people listen to JFK? Why did they listen to the Nazi and Soviet propaganda? Why did they listen to Obama? Why aren't&#xA;people listening to the most logical, profitable, and obvious ideas? How do these unsuccessful people tell stories? How do you tell stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;If you need to organize/gather ideas&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need a system to manage this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be a complicated computer system, or just a few scraps of paper. What you need to do is have each &quot;idea unit&quot; &#xA;contain what the idea is, what it's going to change, what the change will result in, and how we get to the change. After this,&#xA;we can evaluate if the resultant change is valuable, and explore methods to get there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bureaucratic systems are helpful, &lt;strong&gt;only&lt;/strong&gt; if you use a light touch. If you start requiring pages and pages of data&#xA;for a single concept, it won't work and you'll be stuck in your own mess of red tape. Keep it very simple, an &quot;idea unit&quot;&#xA;shouldn't require more than one or two sentences for each of the three requirements I mentioned above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lets give two examples of idea units:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Website colour:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The website is green and yellow.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We will hire a web designer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lets change the website to black and yellow.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Process change:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We are using the waterfall development method&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We split up the team into design, programming, testing and review segments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We need to switch to Agile&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means there is nobody to &quot;listen to,&quot; you can simply refer to the idea unit, and talk directly about it without having to get side-tracked from your &quot;How do I get A into B&quot; discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="213" LastEditorUserId="213" LastEditDate="2011-02-16T14:59:31.273" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T14:59:31.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="404" CreationDate="2011-02-16T15:02:08.203" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have worked in university group projects like this, (also with Java and UML) and although I have never had an experience as seemingly unbalance as this, I think motivating and keeping the group together is actually one of the tougher parts of these assignments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say you are not the chair, but you are clearly the one taking the lead here, so would there be harm in asking to become the chair so you could push the project forward?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you have to be careful of is taking on too much and then feeling bitter about your greater contribution.  I would try and find out which parts of the project the others are the most interested in, and then assign roles on this basis.  Keep the meeting minutes where these roles were discussed, so that the project marker will see who has completed their tasks, and who has lagged behind.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again in the meetings, have an agenda of discussion so you can get the most out of your time together, and assign specific tasks at the end, to be completed by the next meeting.  Making these tasks small, but maybe assigning three or four of them to each person might be beneficial - as often I think people not doing their bit in these projects is more about being overwhelmed by the size of the task and knowing where to start.  Another issue could be having fuzzy responsibility - thinking, oh well he is partly responsible for this task too, so I won't bother.  Make it clear who is expected to deliver for what, and don't share tasks unless you are willing to work together in face to face meetings (if email communication is proving difficult).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, if you do your part, the lecturer will recognise this and mark accordingly - there is no way one person can do a four person project.  If you are really worried - I would raise you concerns with the lecturer too - not necessarily for intervention, but more for a heads up if the project ends up not being completed on time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps a bit, good luck with it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="110" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T15:02:08.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="388" CreationDate="2011-02-16T15:06:39.940" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Price based on what you know. Don't get them a cost for the system, give them a receipt of work items they need to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vague system xxxxx&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Meeting with you to discuss this: $500.00&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collection of data from sources Acme and BobCo through EDI - $10,000.00&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feature that sends email to &lt;em&gt;jack only&lt;/em&gt; when this happens - $300.00&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Interface that lets you do exactly this: Download a historical list of reports - $5,000.00&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Search tool of unknown complexity - Between $1000.00 and $50,000.00&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Additional programming hours for tasks not provided: $250/hour&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please let me know if you require any changes to this specification, as we will be working exactly to this specification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They should figure out real quick that $250/hour is 10k/week because they couldn't spend the time to clearly define their requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they're still playing stupid, ask them how much does a car cost. You know, the type that travels on the road, makes turns, breaks, accelerates, that type of stuff. Cars obviously can range from $100 all the way to more than some houses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="213" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T15:06:39.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="404" CreationDate="2011-02-16T15:59:25.077" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hated group projects in school for the same reasons that seem to frustrate you! But this happens in real life projects all the time: you get stuck on a bad project team with poor leadership, and you're the only one who cares. Here are some ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Help define your team's purpose and goal -- and then make the most of it. Don't be afraid to state the obvious like, &quot;it seems that none of us want ot be here or be part of this project, but we all chose to take this class, so we might as well do a halfway decent job and try to have some fun with it.&quot; In real life, it might be, &quot;the feds are requiring X, so let's come up with a solution and have fun doing it.&quot; If the &quot;have fun doing it&quot; sounds too corny, then be honest and say, &quot;let's get this over with and move on to the next project.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you have identified some team members who care more than others. Again, this happens in real life all the time! I believe everybody has &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; to offer. Discover what that is and maximize the return. For example, some people might be better suited for documentation, some might be task managers, some might be developers, some might be in charge of communications. My favorite real-life management strategy is to identify the loud-mouth complainers, delegate busy work to them, and let the productive folks do the real work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Like @jos suggested, if you are comfortable asking the chair if you can take over, go for it. Another approach might be offering to help, &quot;would you mind if I helped you do X, Y, and Z?&quot; If you are careful in your approach, this kind of initiative may serve you well in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, don't let your frustrations ruin what you contribute. Learn what you can from the experience and be better for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T15:59:25.077" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="404" CreationDate="2011-02-16T17:59:01.977" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, school group projects suck. Here are some pointers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Self-motivation.&lt;/strong&gt; The project you're doing sounds fun and creative. If you're working with people who like programming and/or creative problem solving you're responsibility is to make them &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to work on this project. The worst thing you can do in this regard is micro-manage or assign rigid tasks with deadlines. Talk to each team-member privately. Ask what part of the project he or she would like to work on, what skills they can bring to the table, what would be fun, etc. Tell your teammates to do work on what they want to work on and report their progress as they go. Sure this will create miscommunications and redundancy within the team, but at least you're team will be excited, they'll be working, enjoying themselves and learning along the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;External motivation.&lt;/strong&gt; Not everyone can be self-motivated. If your teammates are looking to cruise through the project with minimal effort, than you'll want to express that the project is being graded and if you don't come together you all risk not having anything to show to your professor. Be careful never to insult or offend your teammates for their laziness – hurting any feelings will not help your cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lead by example.&lt;/strong&gt; I think this is the true test of a leader. In real life, collaborations fail. If you want this project to succeed, you may need to suck it up and get things done yourself. If your team is enjoying vacation time and out partying while you're staying up late and working on this project, don't be spiteful. You want to learn, you want to get a good grade on your project, and picking up other people's slack will prepare you for the real world while making you a better human being. In most cases, a professor will notice when one team member picks up slack for the rest of the team and he recognizes this when giving grades. Ideally, your team will be inspired by your work ethic and will want to help you. If not, they are only cheating themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even as you pick up slack, it is essential that you make room for your teammates to join in. As you work, don't forget to provide your teammates with consistent status updates by email and a todo list of tasks to be completed, with suggested work for certain team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, don't close any doors or burn any bridges. Realize that most people prefer to wait until the last minute and get everything done under time pressure. You can expect that as your deadline approaches, teammates will show up looking to work and contribute – this may annoy you. Be forgiving and let them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="224" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T17:59:01.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="379" CreationDate="2011-02-16T18:08:38.287" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To accurately project how long a project will take, you need to understand that it is impossible to accurately project how long a project will take.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite years of experience, the most expensive project management software and quantitative techniques, projects go over schedule time and time again - keep this fact in mind and you can become pretty competent at estimating project schedules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="224" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T18:08:38.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="407" CreationDate="2011-02-16T19:17:45.887" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the very start of the project that is at the planning stage..Now say, A step can be done by 4 methods. Which of these 4 methods should we employ in our project? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to plan for these type of scenarios you have to put time on the schedule to discuss the 4 methods and choose the one that will be taken.  Maybe you are worried that you still don't have the staff to be able to decide this.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess the short answer, in order to deal with ambiguous data &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;you need a plan to plan&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Geo&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T19:17:45.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="400" CreationDate="2011-02-16T19:29:04.080" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner and the Customer should be the same person. The project manager should be the person going through the detail, working out resource allocation and tracking progress (using whatever tools are available). The Product Owner is the person responsible for a.) describing at a high level what the requirements are, and b.) prioritising the list of features that come of the list of requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically a list of features (/requirements) is scoped at a high-level by the team, which gives everyone a view of how expensive (in time / $$$) any given feature is. This is essential if the PO is to prioritise development (if something is very costly to develop it may be pushed down the priority list). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As features reach the top of the priority list they are broken down into more and more detail, until by the time a sprint starts each feature is described and estimated at a task level by the person responsible for its delivery (i.e. a developer, and not a project manager).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use Fogbugz, and go through a process of breaking Features down into tasks which are then estimated. The backlog is then prioritised by Feature (not task), and the estimate for any Feature is the sum of all the child task estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prioritisation should be a continuous process, although it helps if the focus of the team isn't shifted within any given iteration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="239" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T19:29:04.080" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8" CreationDate="2011-02-16T19:38:29.140" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pragmatic - Agile methodologies were partly designed to overcome the challenge of applying a rigorous methodology (e.g. PRINCE2 in the UK) to a notoriously unpredictable situation (software development), as spelled out in the original Agile Manifesto - &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://agilemanifesto.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Applying any Agile methodology in a rigid fashion drives a truck through that underlying philosophy, and if anyone tells you that following the process is more important than getting the job done then you should treat anything they follow-up with with the utmost suspicion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="239" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T19:38:29.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="63" CreationDate="2011-02-16T19:44:00.163" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Amazing that no one has included &lt;a href=&quot;http://fogbugz.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fogbugz&lt;/a&gt; yet! If you're brave enough to surrender your PM-powers to its formidable EBS (Evidence-Based Scheduling - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fogcreek.com/blog/post/EBS-20.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.fogcreek.com/blog/post/EBS-20.aspx&lt;/a&gt;) you'll find it can take away a lot of the pain in planning / estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="239" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T19:44:00.163" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-16T19:44:00.163" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="401" CreationDate="2011-02-16T19:45:05.010" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd interrupt right back with &quot;Sorry to interrupt, but let me finish my thought and then we can talk more about yours.&quot; In my experience, most people who interrupt aren't particularly aware that they're interrupting. By apologizing, you're acknowledging that this is an interruption while also indicating that they first interrupted you. All without looking like a jerk, which can easily happen if you start huffing about being interrupted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="249" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T19:45:05.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="123" CreationDate="2011-02-16T19:48:07.520" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lack of a clear, shared, well-understood objective&lt;/strong&gt; - if you go around everyone in the team (i.e. not the managers) and ask them what they think the next milestone is, and what it's supposed to achieve / represent, and they don't all say the same thing, then you're in trouble. Projects often unravel towards the end - processes fall down, communication ceases, and people start working blindly through a list of never-ending tasks, with no clear idea of when they're complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="239" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T19:48:07.520" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-16T19:48:07.520" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="125" CreationDate="2011-02-16T19:49:38.267" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen great value in somewhat of an informal trickle-down-hierarchy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is the responsible VP managing a portfolio of projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;She communicates with the offical PM(not a resource) which might PM more than one project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He works with a  10-30% resource that is the day-to-day PM(70-90%) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and she then leans on a in-the-grub (90%) senior/lead-programmer/whatever. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might seem excessive and the process is in no way formalised: No scheduled meetings from level to level, no intermediate deliverables and status-reports. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That seems to work excellent because of the gradual shifts in focus without too far distance from top to bottom ( 1 VP, 1PM, 1day-to-day PM, 1lead-programmer, 2 programmers, 1 part-timer)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="246" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T19:49:38.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="399" CreationDate="2011-02-16T19:52:52.990" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel customer's developer (may be the team lead) can take part in the sprint planning. This is to keep everybody in &quot;same page&quot; and make sure everybody know what schedule they are on and to know the plan for &quot;getting the thing done&quot;.At the same time, they need not be active in other meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="149" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T19:52:52.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="123" CreationDate="2011-02-16T19:54:16.510" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Failure to understand the objective.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An objective is composed of three understandings&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where we are&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where we're going&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How we're getting there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar to &lt;em&gt;the three legs of fire: air, fuel, heat.&lt;/em&gt; If you don't know these, you don't have an objective, and you're just rubbing sticks together, doing a lot of work, oblivious to the fact you're under water. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="213" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T19:54:16.510" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-16T19:54:16.510" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25" CreationDate="2011-02-16T20:03:03.637" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are already some very good answers here, so I'll just quickly mention a couple of concepts I haven't seen represented yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, keep in mind that these are &lt;em&gt;estimates&lt;/em&gt;. By definition, they are only approximations of the actual time required. For small, well defined projects, it's possible to nail down estimates pretty tightly. But for a large project involving a lot of people and resources, the estimate is likely going to be rough and will evolve with the project as unexpected delays (and triumphs) come into play.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You specifically asked about an unfamiliar task. It has been my experience that tasks that are initially unfamiliar, often are made up of familiar subtasks. So one of the first things I would do in creating an estimate for an unfamiliar task is to see if I can break it into subtasks that might be more familiar and therefore easier to estimate. You will probably still have one or more subtasks that are unfamiliar, but by pulling out as many subtasks as possible, you reduce the effect of a less accurate estimate on the unfamiliar parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="211" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T20:03:03.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="407" CreationDate="2011-02-16T20:38:04.553" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ambiguous information, or simply the lack of information effects decision making processes. In many situations people are ambiguity averse by nature - many times irrationally so. An example of flawed decision making via ambiguous information in the psychology literature is the disjunct effect. It demonstrates how people fail to evaluate potential paths logically. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To demonstrate, when a person is considering purchasing a software solution that solve a problem the company needs to tackle. The package costs a lot of money. Meanwhile, your company is soon due to get notice whether it needs to pay more tax, or whether it will get paid tax back, but the outcome is as yet known. Most people in that situation are unable to decide whether to purchase the software solution and put off making the decision. When researchers study such scenarios and they remove the ambiguity - i.e. in this example, they would either say that the company will get tax relief, or that they will have to pay more taxes. With that variable known, the decision making is different. What is found is that with unambiguous information, the person typically consistently chooses one option, regardless of the outcome of the other variable (in this case it would be the tax situation). Logic dictates, that it then shouldn't matter if that variable is yet unknown, if it turns out that you would make the same decision regardless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is just one example, but it is an unintuitive one and it happens all the time. Very important to be aware of, even if you yourself have carefully and logically come to decisions, the people you work with may appear hesitant or averse to making decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to combat this is to write things out and explore possibilities in detail and figure out how ambiguous information and potentialities effects project planning and what reasonable amounts of risk are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In sum, as a project manager I think it's important to know in what ways ambiguous information may compromise decision making.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more about the Disjunct effect, look up the research by Shafir (paper called &quot;Uncertainty and the difficulty of thinking through disjunctions&quot; is a good place to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user265" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T20:38:04.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="401" CreationDate="2011-02-16T20:54:29.937" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like bbrown's answer, I confront the speaker immediately and say something like &quot;I'm sorry but I would like to finish what I have to say. Afterwards &lt;strong&gt;I&lt;/strong&gt; will gladly listen to &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of our scrum teams use some form of a token (like a highlighter pen, a small doll or the cap of a champagne bottle) that they pass along during stand-up: the person who is holding it has the floor. Maybe you could use a similar technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T20:54:29.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-02-16T20:57:20.917" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Death March, The Complete Software Developer's Guide to Surviving Mission Impossible Projects. by Ed Yourdon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Peopleware, Tom de Marco and Timothy Lister (I have a signed copy from Timothy from a speech he gave in Monterrey Mexico)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rita Mulcahy PMP Preparation Book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="267" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T20:57:20.917" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-16T20:57:20.917" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="43" CreationDate="2011-02-16T21:11:37.983" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use CodeSpaces.com for managing Software Projects, It´s an integrated web tool that contains Agile Project Planning using Scrum, Code Control (Suvbersion or Git), Forums, Documents, Information Dashboards, CardWall, Integration of Subversion with tasks, integration of tasks with documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find CodeSpaces.com very usefull, but this is for tracking software development, for planning I use the PMI Framework with a set of word templates and excel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For estimation I use Function Points, using an excel template.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that the tools for planning and estimating are not important, but the most important is to have an integrated environment for keep track of the project, that is where most of PMs fails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="267" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T21:11:37.983" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-16T21:11:37.983" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="399" CreationDate="2011-02-16T21:17:27.997" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, you manage them with Procurement Knowledge Area, If they are apart of the project team, they should be managed as a procurement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="267" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T21:17:27.997" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="399" CreationDate="2011-02-16T21:27:06.713" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not a bad idea, in my opinion. It certainly will improve buy-in and understanding.&#xA;However, if it's only for a single sprint, I'm not sure if it is worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even if you do, I'd still manage this as a dependency to your project and follow it up very closely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T21:27:06.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="401" CreationDate="2011-02-16T21:29:38.430" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Talk less, and don't say anything unless it's both meaningful and important.  Listen more.  You will learn more and people will listen more to you.  Then you can easily retake control of a meeting, conversation, whatever, because people will stop to listen to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you try it you will see that 90%+ of what most people say is useless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user274" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T21:29:38.430" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-02-16T21:38:31.513" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I had to pick one I would have a hard time choosing between the following two:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first one is a book by &lt;strong&gt;Klaus D. Tumuscheit&lt;/strong&gt;. Unfortunately there doesn't appear to be an English translation available, which is a pity. The original is in German (&lt;strong&gt;Überleben im Projekt: 10 Projektfallen und wie man sie umgeht&lt;/strong&gt; - ISBN-10: 3636012916) and there's also a Dutch translation (ISBN 9055941425). The advice given is timeless, not related to any industry (eg IT), funny, practical, as real as it gets, and just common good sense. If you master one of these languages, I highly recommend this book for seasoned or new project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, I finally found what I think is the best resource on creating the WBS (and I've read a few!): &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Building a Project Work Breakdown Structure: Visualising objectives, deliverables, activities, and schedules&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;, Dennis P. Miller, CRC Press/ESI , 2009, isbn 978-1-4200-6969-3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enjoy!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T21:38:31.513" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-16T21:38:31.513" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="195" CreationDate="2011-02-16T21:43:35.017" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always start with creating a WBS, also for home or private projects. I believe it is the single most important technique or tool a PM can use. All other stuff starts from the WBS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T21:43:35.017" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="63" CreationDate="2011-02-16T21:48:52.487" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have used Dotproject, you might want to check out &lt;strong&gt;Web2project&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://web2project.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://web2project.net/&lt;/a&gt;). It's a fork of Dotproject by some of the original developers. It looks promising (but that's all I can say about it)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T21:48:52.487" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-16T21:48:52.487" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="401" CreationDate="2011-02-16T22:59:51.427" Score="5" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Speak in shorter sentences.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Break down your ideas into smaller components and communicate only those, in order.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't mix statements of fact with questions. Either make a statement or ask a question.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T22:59:51.427" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="399" CreationDate="2011-02-16T23:01:08.167" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No - you don't control their schedules or manage them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can only lead to finger-pointing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T23:01:08.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="407" CreationDate="2011-02-16T23:04:51.500" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask a subject matter expert or experts for their opinion on which method would be the best to accomplish the goals of the project. These can even be people from the team itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the question is not one of how to best accomplish the goal, but rather, how to best estimate the schedule dates, use an average of the schedule data each of the methods would yield (e.g. early start, duration, early finish, etc.).  If you are leaning towards one method more than the others, you can use a weighted average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T23:04:51.500" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="397" CreationDate="2011-02-16T23:07:42.447" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Give them a sample problem or set of problems to solve. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These should be generated by senior members of the team they'll be working with and they should relate to the type of projects they'll be working on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T23:07:42.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="388" CreationDate="2011-02-16T23:09:20.637" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Give a rough estimate, letting them know it has +/- 50%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bill hourly rather than fixed price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T23:09:20.637" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="404" CreationDate="2011-02-16T23:12:55.607" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like a classic case of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_syndrome&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Student Syndrome&lt;/a&gt; from the Theory of Constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not much you can do but be prepared to do a tremendous amount of work at the last minute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T23:12:55.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="389" CreationDate="2011-02-16T23:17:38.317" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of factors to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the scope of the project, the length of the engagement, the type of engagement (whether you'll be involved in the full lifecycle of the project or only development), the client's past experience and what will work best for you and your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a post on &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120116062821/http://www.vertabase.com/blog/picking-a-project-management-methodology/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;picking a pm methodology&lt;/a&gt; that might be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-13T16:06:44.773" LastActivityDate="2020-06-13T16:06:44.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="442" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="446" CreationDate="2011-02-16T23:22:07.990" Score="26" ViewCount="2316" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm the lead programmer turned project manager in a small shop. Our project has entered &quot;the last 90%&quot; phase where many things need to be communicated between different departments. This means many more meetings than during the initial development phase. Most of these spring up as impromptu meetings whenever the CEO feels the need to communicate something, which is usually when I'm trying to concentrate on something entirely different and am least prepared for them. These meetings are less effective than they could be and they eat into my productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's a good rule of thumb to schedule meetings? Is it better to stick to rigidly scheduled meetings every day or week, even when there's nothing to say, or should meetings be scheduled with an advance notice whenever there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; something to say? How do you suppress non-time-critical impromptu meetings, especially when they come from above?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="2327" LastEditDate="2012-01-26T12:23:59.350" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T06:05:36.710" Title="When and how to schedule effective meetings?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="365" CreationDate="2011-02-16T23:22:46.343" Score="2" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Send it back to planning&lt;/strong&gt;. Tell the client its not ready for production and that they'll save time, money and increase quality if they send it back to planning/requirements gathering. Or, if you can't send it back, at least take a 5 day break to knock-out some clear specs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Deliver version 0.7 and let them iterate&lt;/strong&gt; from there. Deliver a complete, working version based on what you know. Then let them work from there, but its off your plate and back in their lap.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T23:22:46.343" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="379" CreationDate="2011-02-16T23:35:50.680" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can't anticipate them. You can only make sure there's enough room in the schedule to accommodate them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep scope well within 50% variance of the estimated due date. That is, if the due date for the project is 10 days from today, make sure the duration of the project is not more than 5 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Run Monte Carlo experiments on the schedule to best understand your exact time parameters and constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Apollo, they had the advantage that they could &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brighthub.com/office/project-management/articles/5055.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;crash the schedule&lt;/a&gt; to the greatest extent possible. (My father-in-law worked on the Apollo project.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T23:35:50.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="343" CreationDate="2011-02-16T23:46:59.713" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Its going to be a bit of a mish-mash but theory would seem to suggest that you could accomplish this by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shortening the sprint by x days e.g. 3 days&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using all or a portion of those 3 days as buffer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;NOT allow stories to be canceled or carried forward. They must be completed within the sprint plus buffer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Extend certain deliverables across several sprints (growing the stories) and build/manage a buffer that's made up of all the buffer days from all the sprints e.g. 9 days if you're using 3 day buffer and spreading the story across 3 sprints.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would be great to hear any feedback on this approach in practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-16T23:46:59.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="442" CreationDate="2011-02-17T00:21:11.357" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good meeting only comes with practice. My preference is to have standing meetings, and once you are in that last mile, increase the frequency but keep them consistent, so that you can be productive around the meetings.  If your CEO is requesting the meeting, is either because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the PM (you in this case) are not meeting his expectation in something&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the CEO has not expressed very clear goals to you, so he is anxious about the deployment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, scheduled meetings don't have to last long, if you all come in, and you go around the table and no one have updates, just cut it short.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T00:21:11.357" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="442" CreationDate="2011-02-17T00:30:13.547" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Meetings should be scheduled as needed and not more.  Communicating to a wider audience likely doesn’t require a meeting.  Maybe your CEO wants reassurances that you'll make the last project mile.  Now that you’re in the last 10%, you might create some type of a countdown chart or clock that could visibly reassure everyone while not consuming project resources in meetings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="113" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T00:30:13.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="223" CreationDate="2011-02-17T00:42:19.600" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cut scope.  You likely had too much in the beginning, which contributed to the current problem.  Projects fall behind on the front end, with contributions from weak requirements, inflated scope, and lack of ramp-up allowance.  Scope reduction may not solve the problem but it's clearly your first option.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="113" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T00:42:19.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="63" CreationDate="2011-02-17T01:20:29.817" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My company is launching a new product that goes against the grain of everybody else. &lt;a href=&quot;http://achievmo.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://achievmo.com&lt;/a&gt; In alpha right now, use sign up code pm32X (limit 10, otherwise tweet @achievmo for another). Would love to hear some feedback if you have the time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user288" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T01:20:29.817" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-17T01:20:29.817" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="442" CreationDate="2011-02-17T05:21:15.133" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The guys at 37signals &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/doc/27352131/Rework-by-Jason-Fried-David-Heinemeier-Hansson-Excerpt-Meetings-Are-Toxic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;say meetings are toxic&lt;/a&gt;, and I agree. They have some rules for meetings that I've worked into my style:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Set a timer. When it rings, meeting’s over. Period.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Invite as few people as possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Always have a clear agenda.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Begin with a specific problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Meet at the site of the problem instead of a conference room. Point to&#xA;  real things and suggest real changes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;End with a solution and make someone responsible for implementing&#xA;  it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find it necessary to improve communication, perhaps to avoid status/micromanagement meetings, try the &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/49/which-tools-would-you-recommend-for-use-when-drafting-monitoring-and-reporting-o/117#117&quot;&gt;One Page Project Manager&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T05:21:15.133" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="351" CreationDate="2011-02-17T07:41:40.763" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Planning occurs at different levels, depending on the stage of the project. There is an initial estimate, followed by more detailed stage plans for each stage of the project, and then very detailed plans for each work package. A great planner will have the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Good experience of all of these levels of plan, built up over a number of projects;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Access to data relating to other, ideally similar, pieces of work (whether well planned or not);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The confidence to explain the level of uncertainty in the plan, and the communications ability to put over this message effectively;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A willingness to refine the plan as better data becomes available;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The ability to delegate the detailed planning for each work package to the leader for that piece of work, and sufficient technical knowledge to challenge the resultant plans;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The ability to motivate people so that they commit to deliver against their plans;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The strength to resist demands for unrealistic changes to plans to meet artificial deadlines, and the flexibility to accept that there may be ways to deliver early to benefit the business.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, it comes down to a combination of technical awareness, good documentation, and very effective communication with all parties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T07:41:40.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="452" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="457" CreationDate="2011-02-17T08:06:53.493" Score="115" ViewCount="14736" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've managed a few projects over the last few years, and one of the biggest challenges I face is avoiding becoming a micro-manager.  I worked with a team once where I worked with a group of software engineers, and I was in the PM role.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I communicate with the marketing team, or the design team, I find it much easier to trust their opinions and estimates than when dealing with the engineers on my team, mainly because I have worked as a software developer and have pretty strong opinions on what is the correct answer and what is incorrect.  Looking back, sometimes I think that the decisions could have been a matter of opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the engineering team, I find we oftentimes get into debates about right and wrong, and I wonder if I'm crossing the line into micro-managing the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What situations have you been in when you've fallen into the trap of becoming a micro-manager?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How can one tell if he/she is micro-managing a project other than someone coming out and saying it?  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What are some strategies that you've used to avoid becoming a micro-manager?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-05-08T20:40:53.327" LastActivityDate="2016-08-15T02:21:21.993" Title="How to Avoid Micro-Managing a Software Development Team?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;self-management&gt;&lt;technical-leader&gt;" AnswerCount="14" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="70" ClosedDate="2016-08-11T02:19:27.427" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="125" CreationDate="2011-02-17T08:29:27.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For some years, I was a PM and a resource on my project, and I'm not so enthusiastic about this situation. Development requires a lot of focusing, while PMing requires to open up to the team, its needs, its schedule situation and so on. I'm not sure both can be done seriously by the same person. Somebody above said that the PM should stay out of the critical path. Maybe it's the solution, but I'm not sure it's really a good idea...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T08:29:27.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="63" CreationDate="2011-02-17T15:05:17.127" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_project_management_software&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_project_management_software&lt;/a&gt; for a list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T15:05:17.127" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-17T15:05:17.127" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="452" CreationDate="2011-02-17T15:10:17.337" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;Micro-management is usually caused by deeper problems, notably a &lt;strong&gt;lack of trust between developers and their managers.&lt;/strong&gt; Maybe this lack of trust is justified and maybe it isn't; but it needs to be resolved if possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working both as a software developer and a manager, I can honestly say that both sides are happier when micro management is not an issue. As a PM, you just tell people to get things done and they take the responsibility to get it done. (Although, micro-management is an effective but often demoralizing way of ensuring an extremely high quality.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're just debating estimates, I wouldn't consider that micro-management. I would say micro-management is when you &lt;strong&gt;take back and do the work that you've assigned to other people yourself.&lt;/strong&gt; As an expert PM and ex-software-developer, you should provide your expert input into estimating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T15:10:17.337" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="456" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="479" CreationDate="2011-02-17T15:15:25.507" Score="10" ViewCount="400" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say, I've been working on a watch. This is your ordinary pocket watch, it has hands, gears, shows the time...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About a month passes, and they want us to make this into a wrist-watch, still with the analog design, but fits nicely onto your wrist. They don't want to spend the time making a wrist-watch from scratch because we already have a pocket watch-- and they're kind of the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a bunch of work, and an awful mess of gears, the watch is now a wrist watch, somewhat bulky but it is passable as a wrist watch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time passes, and they actually want this wrist watch to be a grandfather clock, instead of building one from scratch, because they both tell time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I scope out a design that will be easy to make this into Big Ben, so when we're done the grandfather clock we can make the next demand suitable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Except, they now want wrist watch again, but with a digital read out, not analog. So we have to make the gears display analog time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is driving me insane, and I can't find a way to explain that these software projects that all seem similar are actually very different. They don't understand because they have a legacy system that's huge and ugly, as well as a new pocket watch that was small and simple and met the goals as originally scoped out, they want the pocket watch to grow into a LCD version of Big Ben. Instead of designing LCD Big Ben, we're screwing around wasting time working up-hill both ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've attempted numerous times to explain this situation. They don't get it. Even worse, they seem frustrated and stressed out, give me assurances that changing tracks and starting fresh will happen-- &quot;right after this next more change&quot; ... which happens indefinitely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm at a loss of solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Solutions I won't accept:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Say what I said here: I did that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quit: No. That's not a solution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attempt to wrap them in bureaucracy: I did that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="213" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-18T17:22:32.160" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T17:22:32.160" Title="How do I get my manager to understand that our project needs to stop here, and that we have to be on a new track?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="452" CreationDate="2011-02-17T15:30:28.047" Score="75" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;- What situations have you been in when&#xA;  you've fallen into the trap of&#xA;  becoming a micro-manager?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with Ashes that this happens usually when there is lack of trust between managers and the team.&#xA;Also, this can be a problem of the company's organizational culture, such as with a vertical, hierarchical organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;- How can one tell if he/she is&#xA;  micro-managing a project other than&#xA;  someone coming out and saying it?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you, in a manager role, survey your development team to know what is the motivation or realize they are leaving the company for the same reason i.e. &lt;em&gt;&quot;No hope of moving up&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, then it may be because the managers own every part of the project and don't let people make their own decisions. The problem is, when resolving conflicts, the manager usually is the one who has less information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are making too many decisions to push the team forward then it can be a micro-management warning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;- What are some strategies that you've&#xA;  used to avoid becoming a&#xA;  micro-manager?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like Joel's advice on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000072.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Command and Conquer and the Herd of Coconuts&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;everybody owns some area. When they&#xA;  own it, they &lt;em&gt;own it&lt;/em&gt;. If a manager, or&#xA;  anybody else, wants to provide input&#xA;  into how that area is managed, they&#xA;  have to convince the owner. The owner&#xA;  has final say. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;every decision is made&#xA;  by the person with the most&#xA;  information.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;management is extremely&#xA;  flat. Ideally, managers just don't&#xA;  have time to get their fingers in the&#xA;  pies of their reports. You may be&#xA;  interested to read about a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/28/ge.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;GE plant in&#xA;  North Carolina&lt;/a&gt; that has 170 employees&#xA;  who all report directly to the plant&#xA;  manager.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avoid the &quot;Command and Conquer&quot; management or the &quot;Hit and Run&quot; management, unless you have a &quot;Herd of Coconuts&quot; on your development team. In other words, &lt;em&gt;a manager must leave the developers &lt;strong&gt;alone&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="105" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2016-08-09T12:20:33.100" LastActivityDate="2016-08-09T12:20:33.100" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="456" CreationDate="2011-02-17T16:04:38.240" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good question. There are actually two parts to this question: communicating this in a way &lt;em&gt;that they will understand&lt;/em&gt;, and making the project &lt;em&gt;actually work the next time change is needed.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is a software project, then the solution to the second part is to do your best and &lt;strong&gt;make the architecture robust enough that it will easily flex to change.&lt;/strong&gt; This can mean many things, depending on your legacy systems. At worst, this is the best you can do. (Except maybe quitting.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding understanding -- it seems the problem is not that they don't know, but that you're not saying it &lt;em&gt;in a way that they understand.&lt;/em&gt; One suggestion I have is to draft up both designs (from scratch vs. reuse) and estimate both (fairly) and see which one is less time. Then, show them the time estimates, and let them decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, it's not always the best idea to start from scratch; you may never get the opportunity. The best thing you can do is try to estimate both versions of the project (from scratch vs. not) and build it the way they want you to build it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T16:04:38.240" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="459" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-02-17T16:09:40.713" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-02-17T16:09:40.713" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T16:09:40.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="460" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-02-17T16:09:40.713" Score="0" Body="This tag is for questions about software development projects, as opposed to questions about construction projects, or some other field that doesn't involve software." OwnerUserId="158" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-12-16T05:23:05.677" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T05:23:05.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="461" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-02-17T16:10:34.800" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Agile&quot; is an umbrella term for frameworks, methodologies, and practices based on the four values and &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;twelve principles&lt;/a&gt; that underlie the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6172" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2017-10-04T08:38:12.527" LastActivityDate="2017-10-04T08:38:12.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="462" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-02-17T16:10:34.800" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for any questions that involve agile approaches from the perspective of a project manager, Scrum Master, agile coach, or similar role." OwnerUserId="158" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-10-03T20:34:10.670" LastActivityDate="2017-10-03T20:34:10.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="400" CreationDate="2011-02-17T16:43:59.893" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The product owner should represent the customer and their best interests. If you have the customer on your team too, great! Remember that the product owner is supposed to &lt;strong&gt;guide the project into the direction that most benefits the customer,&lt;/strong&gt; while balancing corporate interests (limited resources, time, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should ideally be done &lt;strong&gt;sufficiently before the sprint planning meeting so that the team can take the highest-priority stories and start working.&lt;/strong&gt; From this perspective, sprint planning is only for the team to choose how to fit as many of the top-priority stories they can into the sprint, in the priority order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other two answers (@pawelbrodzinski, @Hugo Rodger-Brown) represent two other approaches -- splitting off at a coarse-grained level, and splitting off by feature. Whatever works for your team is what you should do. (I disagree with prioritizing by feature, since you often want &quot;just enough&quot; of more than one feature done within a single sprint.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T16:43:59.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="452" CreationDate="2011-02-17T16:49:34.643" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best strategy is gaining an understanding that micro-managing is in nobody's best interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to get past micro-management is to just stop. Easier said than done, but if you want to be a successful manager in the long run it's what you need to do. Be prepared, if your people are used to you stepping in to clean up their messes then they may fall on their face a few times because you have trained them not to look out for themselves. Let them clean up after themselves. It is the only way they will develop the necessary skills that you need out of them. If they can't do it then hire someone else. It is short term pain for long term gain. Your family will appreciate it when you aren't forced to put in the 70 hour work weeks because you haven't trained your team properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every bad manager I have ever had has been an ex-developer that refused to give up the developer role. Being a manager is a full time+ job. You don't have time to be a developer also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T16:49:34.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="465" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-02-17T16:57:06.317" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gantt_chart&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="158" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2015-03-01T09:37:53.537" LastActivityDate="2015-03-01T09:37:53.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="466" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-02-17T16:57:06.317" Score="0" Body="GANTT is a form of project schedule.  Use this tag for general GANTT questions.  If you are using a specific software package, use that tag instead." OwnerUserId="158" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2011-02-22T19:19:38.110" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T19:19:38.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="467" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-02-17T16:57:53.260" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project Management Professional (PMP) is an internationally recognized professional designation offered by the Project Management Institute (PMI). One of the most famous project management certifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;See also&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/pmi&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;pmi&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;pmi&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Links&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Management_Professional&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki article about PMP&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/certification/project-management-professional-pmp.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMP page on PMI Site&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-02T19:48:48.377" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T19:48:48.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="468" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-02-17T16:57:53.260" Score="0" Body="For questions about the Program Management Professional program, courses and the exam." OwnerUserId="158" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-02T19:52:05.403" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T19:52:05.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="399" CreationDate="2011-02-17T17:13:06.047" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The ideal way to coordinate would be to &lt;strong&gt;have that person sit in on your scrums,&lt;/strong&gt; or to have a representative do so to report status. This will keep communication open, which is the only way to reliably coordinate dependencies outside of your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is not possible, I would create a story to have a team-member manage the relationship -- touch base with the customer, give and get status and progress, and make sure things integrate well once they deliver whatever they deliver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because at the end of the day, you &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; have to integrate their work with yours somehow. Even if you treat it as a procurement. Best to identify it as a story and manage it proactively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T17:13:06.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="63" CreationDate="2011-02-17T19:42:48.737" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've used Liquid Planner, &lt;a href=&quot;http://liquidplanner.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://liquidplanner.com&lt;/a&gt;, for several years. It's not free, in fact, it's expensive for a SaaS application ($35 per user per month), but it manages project scheduling in an utterly realistic way. As tasks are scheduled, you enter a ranged estimate that takes into account the best and worst case scenarios. The scheduling engine behind the scenes calculates the probabilities associated with a set of possible end dates for the task, eventually rolled up to the project level. It's dynamic and flexible, providing you with the range of likely end dates given each day's current reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user331" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T19:42:48.737" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-17T19:42:48.737" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="369" CreationDate="2011-02-17T19:49:47.157" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Who cares what &quot;real&quot; project managers use, a good one would make a project work with any kind of tool. For a 3 person team Redmine is everything you need, especially considering you're not going to go overboard on project processes and &quot;full-on&quot; management. Besides, I've seen a lot of really expensive software that really makes your job harder, and lots of free software that works beautifully. Redmine falls into the latter category.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that projects need a bug tracker that you can use for a lot more than bugs, practically being a dynamic list of stuff for people to do. Scheduling becomes more a list of how much stuff is done and how much is yet to do. You can figure out rough timescales from that without having to micromanage estimates for every task. Alternatively, a bug tracker such as FogBugz has features for assisting in calculating timescales from past history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The backlog plugin offers some Agile features so that might be useful to you to help control throughput of tasks to devs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="330" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T19:49:47.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="143" CreationDate="2011-02-17T22:53:47.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;DaveParillo answert is right to me but with a couple of exceptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;War rooms works ok on short periods of time, or in a specific task that requires collaboration. I have had experiences where a whole project is developed in war rooms, in the mid of the project (about 2 or 3 months for a small project) the environment will create a destructive behavior, more if the project team members are seniors. Everything in excess is bad. War rooms work fine in my experience only for 1.5 to 2 months, or for critical phases or when you want to junior team members acquire more experience, requirents definition, some modeling, early stages of programming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other option for the question is do pair programming, where a senior staff member is assigned with a jr staff member for an specific time and target.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="267" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T22:53:47.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="400" CreationDate="2011-02-17T23:53:41.427" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of ways to prioritise the backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, the customer is not always the product owner - the product owner might be representing a number of stakeholders including multiple customers, or people with a longer term view. The product owner really needs to understand all needs and come up with the best way of prioritising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So then, first and foremost the first rule should be: do what is most important/highest impact first. In real terms as there is always too much work to do, I ask the golden question &quot;does this really need to happen or can it wait&quot;. Make sure there is a real objective to every requirement - don't get fooled into thinking something is important unless it can be justified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next thing is to think about risk - make sure you have a balanced portfolio of items - things you know are low risk and therefore are going to be done plus a few high risk items (which are probably some of the most important) that you want to get done. Do not have a release full of high risk items for obvious reasons (risk being defined as things which include unknowns/technical or logistical challenges).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you can do things like quantify the value or impact of work. There are some good books on Agile Estimating and Planning - see Part 3 of Mike Cohn's book on planning for desirability &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/books/1-agile-estimating-and-planning&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/books/1-agile-estimating-and-planning&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="130" LastActivityDate="2011-02-17T23:53:41.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="452" CreationDate="2011-02-18T00:20:44.287" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems like you're well on your way to avoiding micro-managing.  Like they say, knowing is half the solution. Like Dunk says, the other half of the solution is to stop doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trust your team and let them make their own mistakes. --And build in buffer into the schedule to give accommodate those mistake. This is where your expertise should come in, in knowing what the schedule will be despite their estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of your role as project manager is to be a leader. That means guiding them so that they can be their own, independent problem solving unit.  By trying to solve their problems for them or arguing that they should adopt your solution, you are either being a pain to them or worse, appearing to use your position to get your way, rather than using it to lead them to become a better project team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T00:20:44.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="475" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="477" CreationDate="2011-02-18T01:34:49.593" Score="5" ViewCount="658" Body="&lt;p&gt;Large projects and enterprises always seem to have various levels of management. There's usually a top committee that runs the overall direction and big-picture of the project, and one or more levels that are concerned with details of a specific part that report back to the 'higher' managers. Smaller projects seem to often get by with one manager who oversees everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I tell if a project is suited to multiple levels of management, or even if it should grow beyond one manager? Are there any guidelines by numbers, philosophy, project complexity, etc.? What else should I know when deciding if I should partition a project into multiple levels of management?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="175" LastEditorUserId="91" LastEditDate="2011-02-19T18:57:15.827" LastActivityDate="2011-02-19T18:57:15.827" Title="How can I tell when I need multiple 'tiers' of management?" Tags="&lt;roles&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="475" CreationDate="2011-02-18T01:42:39.460" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use higher levels of management if there are multiple projects that could be grouped to together into specific, over-arching goals. These groupings are generally called Portfolios.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The higher levels of management make decisions like which portfolios should get what level of resources/budget and which projects within each portfolio should get what level of resources/budget -and by when should they be delivered. This is done by prioritizing portfolios and projects within portfolios.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The individual projects are then managed either by individual project managers or through a project management office (PMO).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only add these levels of management if you need to have or would benefit from a formalized prioritization and decision making process across all projects.  Otherwise, it can be a real hinderance to planning, executing and completing projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T01:42:39.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="475" CreationDate="2011-02-18T05:02:25.093" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As in most things related to project management, there are no absolutes.  To a large extent, your company, enterprise or organization will influence what organizational structures are allowed.  That said, # of people on the project and their geographic distribution play important roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most organizations I have been involved in tend to create hierarchies based loosely on managing lines of communication.  In any group, when anyone is allowed to communicate with anyone else, the number of communication paths can be expressed as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;n(n-1)&#xA;------&#xA;  2&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;where n = the number of people.  As the size of the group increases, the number of communication paths grows quickly. A group of 10 has 45 paths, but a group of 20 will have 190.  Many opportunities for information to get lost, not communicated to those who need it, or simply mangled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides that, it's difficult for one person to effectively manage 50 or 100 people without delegating some of their management authority.  Once they've done that, voila! You've just created at least 1 management tier.  Things to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your environment.  What patterns does your organization currently employ?  Are they willing to embrace change?  How might adding 'tiers of management' change the culture?  How is management viewed in general - would adding more be viewed positively?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Geography.  Does everyone work in the same room? floor? building? city? country?  You can manage a group of people who work in a different city, but it's not easy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Group size.  Organizations differ here, but keep groups sized so that they can be effectively managed by one person.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Structure.  Are groups already organized along functional lines in your org? Is it a matrix organization?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Personnel. Do you have people with the management and communications skills needed?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have the budget to hire these managers?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T05:02:25.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="475" CreationDate="2011-02-18T06:32:07.570" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're mixing together projectized and functional organizational structures. A project always has one level of management (at least according to PMBOK), which is represented by a Project Manager. All other management levels on top of it are functional managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Projectized and functional managers have different objectives. Read more about different &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_structure&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;organizational structures&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T06:32:07.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="456" CreationDate="2011-02-18T06:43:28.117" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem is here (quoting you): &quot;&lt;strong&gt;They don't understand&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;. It's not their fault, it's &lt;strong&gt;your fault&lt;/strong&gt; as a project manager. They should not understand, they should obey your rules of work. Otherwise you're not a project manager, but just a project coordinator without any authority in the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is how you should talk:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;- &quot;We actually want this wrist watch to be a grandfather &#xA;  clock, instead of building one from scratch, &#xA;  because they both tell time&quot;, - they say&#xA;- &quot;No problem, +80% of budget, +60% of time and &#xA;  it's done with originally planned quality&quot;, - you answer&#xA;- &quot;How about +20% of budget, +10% of time?&quot;, - they &#xA;  try to strong-arm you&#xA;- &quot;Not a problem, but quality will be 3 times &#xA;  lower&quot;, - you answer absolutely seriously&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always remember, that you are protecting &lt;strong&gt;the project&lt;/strong&gt;, not your career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T06:43:28.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="452" CreationDate="2011-02-18T06:47:22.607" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Micro-management is an indicator of problems in &lt;strong&gt;quality planning&lt;/strong&gt;. You failed to institutionalize clear quality objectives. That's why very often you have to step in and discuss them again again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As soon as you see a necessity to discuss &quot;what is wrong and what is right&quot; in technical decisions made by engineers - get back to the quality objectives. Are they specified in writing? Are they really objective?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bit more on micro-management: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yegor256.com/2015/09/22/micromanagement.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.yegor256.com/2015/09/22/micromanagement.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastEditorUserId="91" LastEditDate="2016-08-15T02:21:21.993" LastActivityDate="2016-08-15T02:21:21.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="442" CreationDate="2011-02-18T06:56:26.447" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Meetings are evil&lt;/strong&gt;. If you need a meeting - it's a sign of bad management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need to distribute/collect information - use emails, reports, social networks, information systems, whatever. If you need team building - try bowling instead. If you need help to make a decision - during a meeting you will inevitably listen to those who speaks louder, use face-to-face discussions instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brainstormings is an exception, but they should happen quite rarely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T06:56:26.447" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="401" CreationDate="2011-02-18T07:00:13.993" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try to write instead of talking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T07:00:13.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="399" CreationDate="2011-02-18T07:02:16.957" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that you should do everything you can to make these people part of your team. That will mean that they will follow the rules you set up in the project. That will mean that you will control the situation much better, and will achieve project objectives with much higher confidence. Thus, the answer is &quot;&lt;strong&gt;YES, OF COURSE&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T07:02:16.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="484" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="486" CreationDate="2011-02-18T07:09:36.173" Score="15" ViewCount="3547" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my colleagues constantly faces the following problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a team consisting of programmers that are always working on one project or the other. Now there are times when we have to work with cross functional teams to get some data (data from particular databases). and this colleague of mine is responsible for getting that data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, whenever my colleague tries to get this data from a person in the other team, he is not able to succeed. One reason being the person in the other team is a very difficult person and another being that he doesn't really have the need to share his data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to this, there have been a couple of instances where this person has held my colleague up. My colleague escalated this person's behaviour to his manager; however the manager simply told my colleague &quot;You are all professionals, you know how to deal with these problems&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think my colleague should do to get the data?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19" LastEditorUserId="136" LastEditDate="2011-03-25T19:36:21.107" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T16:53:31.313" Title="How to deal with difficult people?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="484" CreationDate="2011-02-18T07:39:58.530" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming that your team has a manager, this is the time for your colleague to escalate this to him or her, and let that person deal with the other manager. The difficult person's manager has to be the one to handle the difficult person: that's part of his or her role as a manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, I assume that if your team does not get the data, the project will fail, and that cannot be acceptable for the organisation. You describe the difficult person as not having the need to share his data... but surely the data is not his? Does it not belong to the organisation? It may not be a priority for him to hand over the data, but priorities can be changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final route for resolving this must be to get your PM to escalate the issue to your project sponsor / executive / or equivalent, with the impact clearly and firmly described, and, if necessary, documented. That way, the appropriate senior manager is able to make a judgement as to the significance of the issue and deal with it at the appropriate level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T07:39:58.530" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="484" CreationDate="2011-02-18T07:43:17.120" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider the only team as one cohesive functional unit. If you're a programmer, think of them as an API. You ask them for data, and they're supposed to hand it to you. If one single person is internally responsible for that specific process, that's entirely up to them. If that particular person happens to be failing on you, you're no doubt affected, but it's their manager's &lt;em&gt;problem&lt;/em&gt;. He's the one responsible for making sure that his team is able to perform all of its tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; requires that you request data of this particular guy, fine, but when things don't work out, don't tell their manager that &quot;this employee of yours is a prick&quot;, tell him that &lt;em&gt;his team&lt;/em&gt; is keeping your team waiting, by not being able to provide the data. It's really up to him to deal with. You may very well all be professionals, but dealing with people isn't necessarily your profession - it is, on the other hand, exactly what can be expected from a manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every time this isn't working out, or every week or so of delay, if it can't be regarded as distinct attempts, remind the manager of that team that his team fails to deliver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This guy will sit passively by as you slowly grow weary of him and secretly make him redundant by building something new that doesn't depend on him. That's entirely his loss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="61" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T07:43:17.120" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="456" CreationDate="2011-02-18T07:55:00.137" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're the expert of your project and it's your &lt;em&gt;responsibility&lt;/em&gt; to apply that expertise of yours. Don't ask for permission to change track and start fresh, that's an internal strategic decision on how to best fulfil your manager's request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be assertive about this. Let them know that you're willing to deliver exactly what they're asking for, but that given the beaten path, it will inevitably take some time. If that means that you're actually starting fresh, then that's a decision you're making because you know the project best. This is exactly the kind of decisions you're hired to make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can advise against a request, but you can't really disobey it. Explain to them that their request will take a long time to fulfil, and if they still prioritize like that, then do what you have to do to deliver accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="61" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T07:55:00.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="397" CreationDate="2011-02-18T07:59:10.737" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just because a resume is full of buzz words, it doesn't mean that the candidate has solid skills. Pick the technologies or subject areas that are most vital to the job that you are interviewing for, and ignore all of the others, then ask questions about the person's detailed knowledge in these key areas. Ask questions like &quot;how&quot; and &quot;why&quot;, and probe deeply into their answers to see whether their knowledge is superficial or in-depth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But ignore the human side at your peril. For most jobs I would tend to take a person with sufficient technical skills  and the right interpersonal skills and personal competencies, rather than someone who is a deep technical wizard but doesn't fit the team. There will be exceptions, but that has worked well for me in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T07:59:10.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="489" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="491" CreationDate="2011-02-18T08:17:01.247" Score="8" ViewCount="340" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work as a freelancer and want to start tracking my time, but how do I decide how detailed this should be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, I just keep track of the time I spend on various projects, but I don't subdivide my time between different parts of those projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So now I'm looking for some guidelines to decide for my projects how detailed it should be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-02-22T19:19:25.473" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T19:19:25.473" Title="How detailed should my time management be?" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="143" CreationDate="2011-02-18T08:29:39.140" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum method can help you, especially the daily scrum meeting. IT's a daily meeting of 15 minuntes max where the team is sharing info about the situation of the project. Speaking in turn, each member of the team explains what (s)he has done the day before, what (s)he will do today and are the problems (s)he meets. Purpose is to keep the schedule up to date and to struggle with problems together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another idea is to use a chat software to help the team to communicate. But for a developer team, it can be distracting, so it has to kept under control...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T08:29:39.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="489" CreationDate="2011-02-18T08:47:58.873" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Track your time &lt;strong&gt;now&lt;/strong&gt; in as much detail now so that you can reconstruct what you worked on six months from now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might be a bit vague but bear with me. There are a couple of reasons for this 6-month rule:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Matching Your WBS:&lt;/strong&gt; Each task normally has an expected number of hours/days/weeks attached to it. You should track at that level know if you are are ahead or behind a current task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Improving Your Estimates:&lt;/strong&gt; at the start of the project you would have picked something like Task X = 20 hours. If you didn't track how long Task X actually took, you can't tell if you are under or over on the estimate.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Billing Questions:&lt;/strong&gt; As a freelancer, you will eventually get questions from your clients' accounting departments asking about past work. If you haven't tracked time to a level that makes sense to the business/finance/accounting person on the other end, you can waste a lot of time reconstructing past events.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At my previous IT consulting company, we the output of our time tracking software was attached directly to the client invoice. If I entered &quot;Assisted Verizon with installation of T1 line and CSU, then configured router and firewall for new circuit&quot; that comment showed up as line item on the invoice. That saved a lot of time in the long run. Of course, you had to write clear information into your time sheet - that took a while to get used to...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T08:47:58.873" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="484" CreationDate="2011-02-18T09:02:20.187" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a PMBOK view, I would imagine that the first action should be add something like &quot;Unable to receive required data in a timely manner&quot; to the risk register. Next step would be to identify the impacts and then try to find a way to mitigate the risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume that this is mainly a schedule risk? If so, I would be tempted to work backwards a bit. Find the key milestone related to this work, check with the team and find out the the absolute minimum deadline that you need that data, and identify that drop dead date. Publish that date immediately to the key stakeholders and a brief summary of the impacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By give a &quot;cold&quot; or non-emotional statement of the impacts to your bosses, that gives everyone a real starting point in discussions. Try to convince stakeholders on &quot;your&quot; side to back you in your requests to the managers on the &quot;other&quot; side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will take some time. So while the talking is going on, try to look for workarounds. Can you use fake data? Can you make guesses? Can you grab something similar from another source? Is there some 3rd party provider that you can just buy the data from? A good brainstorming session with the team seems like a good way to talk about &quot;What if we don't get this?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T09:02:20.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="493" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="495" CreationDate="2011-02-18T10:25:01.473" Score="3" ViewCount="487" Body="&lt;p&gt;Much of the work that a PM performs involves tough situations, politics, coordination and communication across boundaries. This suggests to me quite an array of personal skills are required, but I've been unable to find a list that breaks them down in an easy to read format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you break down the personal-skills that a PM is required to have in order to effectively do his job?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="71" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T17:48:23.870" Title="What is the breakdown of personal skills that a PM is required to have in order to effectively do his job?" Tags="&lt;personal-skills&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="493" CreationDate="2011-02-18T12:09:24.510" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A great PM should be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A problem/impediments resolver&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Strong communication skills&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reliable&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Confident&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Leadership&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Technical skill(?) [not mandatory, depends the project requirements, but should be at minimum able to talk to team and stakeholders technically]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Must know how to select the right resources (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing (version 3.0)&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the item above is meet, than the PM can trust his team to get things done, so the next skill is to keep team motivated by &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/452/how-to-avoid-micro-managing-a-software-development-team/457#457&quot;&gt;letting they alone to do their job&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Choosing the right tool to keep project on-track. (Is this a skill?.. don't know, but a PM must meet this item to do a great job)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I'd like to recommend to go deep on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/03/09.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to be a program manager &lt;em&gt;by Joel Spolsky&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mostly, becoming a program manager is&#xA;  about learning: learning about&#xA;  technology, learning about people, and&#xA;  learning how to be effective in a&#xA;  political organization. A good program&#xA;  manager combines an engineer’s&#xA;  approach to designing technology with&#xA;  a politician’s ability to build&#xA;  consensus and bring people together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paragraph above can also be applied to a Project Manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="105" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T17:48:23.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="493" CreationDate="2011-02-18T14:04:01.280" Score="5" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Communication skills&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;em&gt;The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said. - Peter Drucker&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Leadership skills&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;em&gt;Management is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right thing. - Peter Drucker&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Organized&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Resourceful&lt;/strong&gt;: No one person will have all the answers, but if one is resourceful, she will know how to get the answer. A resourceful person will have many tools in her toolbox (knowledge of PMI best practices, Agile methodologies, etc.) but more importantly knows which tools to select and apply in a given situation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T14:04:01.280" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="401" CreationDate="2011-02-18T15:05:17.520" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do the people who are interrupting you &lt;em&gt;respect&lt;/em&gt; you?  Do you respect &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt;?  It sounds to me like neither side is listening to the other.  Try listening to them first, let them say their piece, then say yours.  People will respect you if you respect them first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a project manager, I think it's important to be heard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would argue this the other way.  As a project manager, it's important to listen to your team.  If they feel that you are listening to them, their concerns and their ideas, then they will listen to you.  If not, there is nothing you can do to &quot;be heard&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="347" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T15:05:17.520" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="452" CreationDate="2011-02-18T15:09:35.410" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you think you might be micro-managing, then you probably are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're getting involved in the technical debates among the technical team, you're micro-managing.  The project manager should be doing &lt;em&gt;project management&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're making &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the decisions, you're micro-managing.  Let your people who are most informed about the issues make at least &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; of the decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're telling people &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; to do things in addition to &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; to do, you're micro-managing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If in team meetings, you are the one doing most of the talking, you're micro-managing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="347" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T15:09:35.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="484" CreationDate="2011-02-18T15:55:16.400" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Continue to escalate to your manager's manager, the owner of the total project or even that person' manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not your battle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T15:55:16.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="369" CreationDate="2011-02-18T17:52:27.583" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Redmine doesn’t (at least without a plugin, at least as far as I saw):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Seem to be the right place to develop a schedule (major).  For example, I don’t see how to allow for holidays in the Gantt. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redmine.org/plugins/redmine_better_gantt_chart&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Better Gantt Charts Plugin&lt;/a&gt; at least allows for weekends.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Handle task dependency easily.  I haven’t tried to do that at all (ease of use). Better Gantt Charts helps this, but it does have some bugs (as of Jan 23, 2013)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Report days or person-days behind/ahead of schedule (major).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Produce man-loading charts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Show historical data, e.g. are we catching up or not,  a burndown chart (major).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allow for a baseline. This is similar to the historical data.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Show progress bars in increments less than 1 day (minor).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Automatically assign completion dates from start dates and estimated hours (ease of use).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Gantt and roadmap show who is a assigned to a task/bug.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Show dates on Gantt, shows week number, day of week and month only.  Need to hover to see date (minor).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just the historical data and burndown chart issues are enough to think it isn't good for more than light project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="158" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2013-01-23T22:03:41.937" LastActivityDate="2013-01-23T22:03:41.937" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="493" CreationDate="2011-02-18T18:16:37.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'd second ashes999 comment above that there are good answers under the question he refers to.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There isn't just one type of project manager or one big definition of what all project managers do. There are some pm's that focus on requirements gathering and leading brainstorming sessions. There are others that are specialists in transitioning projects from development to maintenance, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are many ways to skin a cat. Just like there is no single set of skills that makes a great CEO there is no single set of skills that make an effective project manager.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T18:16:37.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="501" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-02-18T18:54:39.127" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-02-18T18:54:39.127" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T18:54:39.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="502" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-02-18T18:54:39.127" Score="0" Body="This tag is for project retrospectives or post-mortem; a meeting help to review the project at its end." OwnerUserId="158" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2011-02-22T19:19:47.160" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T19:19:47.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="489" CreationDate="2011-02-18T19:07:57.533" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;+1 to SBWorks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd add that there's a fine balance between too much granularity (which becomes a pain to keep track of) and not enough. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general rule of thumb, on a shorter project, each bucket of time should be of things on which at least 8 hours is spent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On medium length projects (1 -3 months), each bucket should be of at least 20 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On longer projects (3+ months), each bucket should be of at least 40 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T19:07:57.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="36" CreationDate="2011-02-18T19:51:06.357" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is PMP certification a requirement for a successful career in Project Management? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, definitely not.  I've known many successful PMs with years of experience who never got a PMP.  That being said, some job listings to request or require a PMP credential, so it's not a bad thing to have if you are looking for PM jobs or plan to in the future.  It also depends on where you're working now -- is the PMP considered important (valued) in your organization?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At which point would it be appropriate for a newly starting project manager to plan to include PMP certification?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on what other experience you have.  If you are new to project management but have plenty of other work experience, you can do the PMP.  I had about 10 years' experience as a software developer when I applied to PMI.  I was able use hours I had accrued in that role in my PMI application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="347" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T19:51:06.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="442" CreationDate="2011-02-18T22:25:00.420" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Schedule meetings in the mornings.&#xA;After lunch - no meetings. Reject them from your calendar, and put a DND sign on your cube/door, and disappear from IM &amp;amp; email.&#xA;Talk to the Boss &amp;amp; any relevant others to let them know the new plan; ask for their help in making this work for you. After you've had their theoretical buy-in, it will be easier to make them feel like an ass when they break with plan (only take one earbud out when they start to talk to you.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user352" LastActivityDate="2011-02-18T22:25:00.420" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="484" CreationDate="2011-02-19T00:48:18.783" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first suggestion to get your objective is to ask the PM to organize a meeting between your two peers.  The data requester and the developer. Have on your back pocket all the attempts you have done to get the data, but don't use it right away. Before the meeting make sure the PM is up to speed on the latest developments of your situation. In the meeting be ready to do most of the listening, try to understand from your peer's point of view, WHY he has failed to provide the data.  Maybe, just maybe, there is valid reasons for it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you both leave that meeting with a process on how to request data, and if the data will not be provided in time, a notification will go out letting your PM and you of this.  This way the PM will have to take action once the notification comes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the event that the above setting don't work.  Then I will go with David's suggestions.  The only issue I have with that suggestion , is that very likely you will be violating the company strategy.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-02-19T00:48:18.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="442" CreationDate="2011-02-19T03:26:17.037" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's get off the meetings are evil bandwagon. Bad meetings are evil. But good meetings are useful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Schedule meetings for when you need them, invite only the people you need, provide an agenda up front and stick to it in the meeting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For people who can't attend, make sure you cover off the gap in their knowledge. I prefer to send out the meeting notes (written on the original agenda) rather than sending them separate information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you run useful meetings, people will want to come. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-02-19T03:26:17.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="484" CreationDate="2011-02-19T03:31:16.700" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a consultant I have to admit this is one of the 'good' things - I only need to deal with the difficult people as long as the contract runs, and I only need to deal with getting the project done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it best to make sure I don't get caught up in the emotions of the behaviour and always work to achieve the project goals. If the person is actually toxic, I will raise the issue with their supervisor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to have the person removed from the project, you need to work on that early. If you leave it too long, they are too difficult to replace. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck, it's not fun. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-02-19T03:31:16.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="484" CreationDate="2011-02-19T07:06:38.807" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another approach to obtain the data is to talk to the manager of the other department or a member of the IT department and just &lt;strong&gt;get access to the data yourself and cut out the middle-man.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should be able to get access to everything you need to do your job.  If you're a programmer or project manager, the success of the project is riding on your shoulders.  If the company can't trust you with the data, then why would they trust you with building critical software or trust you with the reigns of the project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-02-19T07:06:38.807" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="372" CreationDate="2011-02-19T10:18:25.273" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first phase for a good estimate is to &lt;strong&gt;breakdown&lt;/strong&gt; the problem at hand to smaller pieces. Try breaking down the task at hand to functional pieces. Since you're a programmer, break down your work to the development phases you're expected to follow (research, design, test planning, coding, testing, code reviewing, documenting, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good detail level to strive for is having tasks of around 1 day of effort in size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you're done with the breakdown, the second phase would be to estimate the various tasks you have. Factors that could affect your estimates are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The level of certainty/&lt;strong&gt;uncertainty&lt;/strong&gt; around what needs to be done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;technology&lt;/strong&gt; you're working with - how much &lt;strong&gt;overhead&lt;/strong&gt; do you have in a coding to testing iteration? How long does a build take? How hard is it to test and verify your code in small iterations?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much &lt;strong&gt;interaction&lt;/strong&gt; do you need &lt;strong&gt;with other developers&lt;/strong&gt; to accomplish your tasks?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How &lt;strong&gt;stable&lt;/strong&gt; is your &lt;strong&gt;environment&lt;/strong&gt; and setup? Do you have lots of breakages or outages on a daily basis, that could block you from making progress?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could go on and on... Try thinking of such criteria that are applicable to your environment. Take these points into account and try adjusting your estimations according to the answers to those questions. There's no one answer or a lookup table to help you pick an estimate given answers to those questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next phase would be to &lt;strong&gt;review your estimates with your experienced peers&lt;/strong&gt;. Don't just review the numbers. &lt;strong&gt;Review the rationale&lt;/strong&gt; behind picking the numbers as your estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the final note here is to &lt;strong&gt;practice and monitor yourself&lt;/strong&gt; over time. Keep a log of your estimates and the parameters that made you pick your estimates, log how much time did the tasks really take you and why. What factors had impact on the actuals? Do a &lt;strong&gt;retrospective&lt;/strong&gt; with yourself from time to time and try to find factors you can take into account the next time you need to provide estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practice makes perfect (although there's no perfect in effort estimations...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="44" LastEditorUserId="44" LastEditDate="2011-02-19T15:35:24.187" LastActivityDate="2011-02-19T15:35:24.187" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="452" CreationDate="2011-02-19T14:07:05.397" Score="64" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the best methods I've found to avoid micro-managing my team is to &lt;strong&gt;ask questions rather than state statements&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Managers with technical background tend to feel they can solve their teams' problems, save them from making mistakes and tell them what is the right path to follow. This behavior causes micro-management, which prevents the team from growing and learning, as well as introduces an engagement hit in the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever you would like to make a decision or state a statement and thus practically setting your opinion as the decision to be taken, just &lt;strong&gt;stop and ask your team a question&lt;/strong&gt;. It could be a leading question, but &lt;strong&gt;let them think and come up with an answer&lt;/strong&gt;. Sometimes the answer will not be aligned with your view. You can choose to let them make a mistake and bring it up for discussion with the team later on, so &lt;strong&gt;they learn from it&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By asking questions, the team make their own decisions and they feel they have the space and ownership in their domain. They do not feel they're being micro-managed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions that could be asked to help teams reach high quality decisions could be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did you think about the performance implications of implementing it that way?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you remember what happened the last time we did this and that? How would you deal with this scenario occurring again?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you plan to make it on time to the integration point with the other team? How would you cope with the unstable lab setup we have now?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="44" LastActivityDate="2011-02-19T14:07:05.397" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="512" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="518" CreationDate="2011-02-19T18:13:32.970" Score="11" ViewCount="3519" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a software development company. I have this major ticket for which I have to produce a WBS (Work Breakdown Structure). I also have to prepare an estimation for the ticket. The ticket deals with a re-architecture of, well, various processes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now in our organization we have a generic template for this WBS. It is something we have to fill inside excel sheet. The fields in the sheet goes like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;#No.&#xA;Description&#xA;Planned Start Date&#xA;Planned End Date&#xA;Planned Hours&#xA;Actual Start Date&#xA;Actual End Date&#xA;Actual Hours&#xA;.&#xA;.&#xA;.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here we'll just use a hierarchical numbering system to jot down the tasks (main tasks are whole numbered - sub tasks are sub-numbered). The thing that I note here is there is an almost start date and end date for all most everything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not so skilled in creating a WBS. So I searched youtube &amp;amp; wikipedia for WBS tutorials/information and came to understand that WBS is a graphical representation. But then I don't get why we do it in excel sheets. Its standard practice in our organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually I want to know when do we embark on creating a WBS, and what is the best approach to go about it...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="355" LastEditorUserId="2618" LastEditDate="2012-01-30T23:09:31.980" LastActivityDate="2019-05-20T19:35:49.473" Title="Where to get general info on Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="475" CreationDate="2011-02-19T18:40:17.010" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There may be times when you -- as a project manager -- are overwhelmed with the tasks of personally following up on issues and need some help, but this doesn't necessarily justify creating a new position or expanding the hierarchy to include a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Program Manager&lt;/a&gt; who coordinates a team of project managers, as the extra workload may just be temporary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Solution to Feeling Overwhelmed - Self-Organizing Teams&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've worked in places where teams were self-organizing.  In one case, I needed to train personnel on how to use software that we had recently developed and released as a private beta.  The supervisors of the users were assigned the tasks of conducting the training, but all my time became consumed by answering questions and communicating with the 8 people handling the training.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I held a meeting and explained that I needed some help coordinating the training; I asked if one of the supervisors had extra time to help communicate issues and questions to me and relay the information back to the team.  One person volunteered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This supervisor took a lot of weight off of my shoulders.  She picked my brain and learned everything she could about the software so that, when problems or questions were encountered, she could step in and help.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She also proactively asked the other supervisors questions about how the training was going and helped make sure that we were meeting our goals.  Instead of having to follow up with each supervisor individually, I effectively delegated the task of making training a success by eliciting a highly-motivated volunteer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the training was completed and the software was released to public beta, the self-organizing team naturally dissolved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In my experience, self-organizing teams can be unofficially formed and unofficially dissolved, and tend to consist of volunteers who not only have a strong interest in the project, but also they have a specific set of skills that make them a great fit for the point of contact/liaison&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://codebetter.com/jeremymiller/2007/04/17/self-organizing-teams-are-superior-to-command-n-control-teams/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here are Some Helpful Tips on Self-Organizing Teams and How They Compare to Command and Control&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-02-19T18:40:17.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="484" CreationDate="2011-02-19T19:21:20.790" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just send an email to him keeping your manager and his manager in cc. Mention clearly in the email that your work will remain pending unless he supplies you with the required information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he still doesn't reply send an email to his manager with your manager and him in cc and ask him whether he can assign someone else to provide you with the information as the concerned person is clearly too busy to respond.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="358" LastActivityDate="2011-02-19T19:21:20.790" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="512" CreationDate="2011-02-19T20:45:26.470" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Deostroll, a WBS is a tool used to generate a good understanding of the scope of a complex task or a project.  It could be a graphical representation, written or both.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As defined in the PMBOK &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;WBS: The process of subdividing project&#xA;  deliverables and project work into&#xA;  smaller, more manageable components.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many ways of going about WBS, some people divide the project in phases, subprojects, deliverables, work packages, etc. Others decide to divide the project by functional areas, like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project [name]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PM Stuff&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Training&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Training manual&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communication plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Data&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Development&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Design Docs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation is for you to find a good way to split the task in components that make sense to you, and that you can talk about those components in logical manner.  Don't worry so much about time line or effort levels yet.  After you think you have the &quot;full&quot; scope down, you could start estimating using some of the advice in this page or using company policy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The excel workbook that you company uses seems to be a conglomerate of many things, but that does not mean that is the wrong thing to do.  Unless you see some issues with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-02-19T20:45:26.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="77" CreationDate="2011-02-20T00:14:08.713" Score="3" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Communication skills&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;em&gt;The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said. - Peter Drucker&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Leadership skills&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;em&gt;Management is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right thing. - Peter Drucker&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Organized&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Resourceful&lt;/strong&gt;: No one person will have all the answers, but if one is resourceful, she will know how to get the answer. A resourceful person will have many tools in her toolbox (knowledge of PMI best practices, Agile methodologies, etc.) but more importantly knows which tools to select and apply in a given situation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2011-02-20T00:14:08.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="512" CreationDate="2011-02-20T04:28:51.207" Score="14" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Step one: burn your template&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not to be  blunt, but if you really want to generate a WBS the first thing I'd do is burn the template you've been given, as it's going to lead you down the wrong path and will result in a product that doesn't do what it's supposed to. The template is conflating a WBS with a schedule; this is bad because they are complementary products meant to convey different information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_breakdown_structure#WBS_design_principles&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Definition of a Work Breakdown Structure&lt;/a&gt; (WBS)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A work breakdown structure is a hierarchical decomposition of a project into it's sub-elements. The main rule of the set of elements at any given level of decomposition is that they must completely describe the project (i.e. nothing is left out) and must be mutually exclusive (i.e. the same work is never represented in more than one bucket).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What does a CWBS contain&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given this definition we can derive what information should be in a WBS and what should not. All a WBS should contain is a title for each element that summarizes the effort, an identification number that locates with work within the hierarchy, and about a paragraph of text describing in more detail the WBS element (some people use WBS to mean just the ID and title and use the term WBS dictionary when the description paragraphs are added). Wikipedia has a good example of an ID and title only WBS for a bicycle: &#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tWTOF.png&quot; alt=&quot;example of a WBS from Wikipedia&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So back to that template&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trap the template is asking you to fall into is to use the WBS as a schedule by asking for dates and effort. A WBS doesn't care when its elements are completed--or how much work it will take to do them; all a WBS is trying to do is to define and decompose the work into small enough chunks to support detailed planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So start with your project, think of how the work is logically decomposed, and keep going until you think you've gone far enough. (If you're wrong you'll find out later and can iterate, but without knowing what your project actually is or how your company manages we can't help much more than to say go with your gut.) I think if you think about creating a WBS without worrying about scheduling or hours it will go much easier for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If the WBS doesn't have all that schedule stuff in it then what?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The WBS is only a critical first step. Once it's complete you need several other project management products. You need to understand the organization that will be executing the work; often, this is called an organizational breakdown structure, but unless you're standing up a new group just for this project simply understanding your current organization is probably sufficient. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next I'd create an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_master_plan&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Integrated Master Plan&lt;/a&gt; and Integrated Master Schedule. The plan is a more time- (i.e. event-) based way of looking at the work than the WBS. For example, our WBS example has an element for Frame Set. Frame Set might include the effort for procuring raw materials, bending metal, welding, priming, painting, drilling holes, and packaging for shipping. This all makes sense in one WBS element, but in terms of an IMP or IMS these steps are occurring over wide spans of time. The IMP and IMS take the work described in the WBS and define the logical order in which the discrete steps have to be completed. It is only once this IMS has been defined that it makes sense to start scheduling tasks and assigning resources (e.g. people, shops, etc.) to complete them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bottom line&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often the WBS is reflected graphically, but anything that can depict a hierarchy works fine, including word or excel. The reason your company's templates look the way they do is because they're calling their template a WBS, but they are really looking for a schedule--or more specifically an earned-value baseline, but that's another topic entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you build your WBS first, and then use that to help you build a schedule that accounts for all the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="360" LastActivityDate="2011-02-20T04:28:51.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="223" CreationDate="2011-02-20T04:46:01.710" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;It depends on what's really important&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot agree with the multitude of comments suggesting that the right answer is to cut scope. All projects are a balance of technical, cost, and schedule, the less colloquial version of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Goldin&quot;&gt;NASA Administrator Goldin&lt;/a&gt;'s famous mantra: faster, better, cheaper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if a project is running behind that means that the negotiation between these constraints that is reflected in the specifications/design, budget, and schedule is no longer valid. The &quot;right&quot; answer for how to re-balance them depends on which of the three is most important, when you've reached the point that something's got to give.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These priorities are influenced by many factors: the customer to be sure, but also the company, the team, the contract, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easy to say cut scope, but &lt;strong&gt;cutting scope isn't always the right answer&lt;/strong&gt;. Not all projects have the luxury of a Phase 2. Some things have to work right the first time and some products have non-negotiable technical specifications. If you ignore that potential reality and cut a critical feature to make a deadline you risk putting out a subpar product that will ruin your reputation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, being able to weight all of these factors to decide what to do is the crux of program management. The answer always depends on the circumstances and telling yourself any different is self-delusion looking for a bromadic solution to an intractable problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="360" LastEditorUserId="360" LastEditDate="2011-02-22T01:19:02.040" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T01:19:02.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="372" CreationDate="2011-02-20T14:22:03.290" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Get yourself a copy of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stevemcconnell.com/est.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Software Estimation&quot; by Steve McConnell&lt;/a&gt;. It will help &lt;em&gt;a lot&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="38" LastActivityDate="2011-02-20T14:22:03.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="77" CreationDate="2011-02-20T15:41:03.703" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Management Skill:&lt;/strong&gt; This will include everything from Communication and Integration (amongst various project constraints like Time, Cost, Scope etc) Skills to Networking and people skills&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Domain Knowledge:&lt;/strong&gt; This would include knowledge acquired about the Industry of your project in general and domain specific knowledge in general&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Personal Characteristics:&lt;/strong&gt; A lot will depend upon the personal style of individual here. Keeping a balanced state of mind at all the time, specially during touch situations is of paramount importance here. Other skills include leadership and motivation skills&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="365" LastActivityDate="2011-02-20T15:41:03.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="523" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="530" CreationDate="2011-02-20T16:28:58.860" Score="19" ViewCount="1971" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a small team of experts (12 staff) who do great project work. Unfortunately, their expertise makes them the go-to individuals on support tasks as well. The inability to focus on projects affects their productivity and sometimes has a negative impact on morale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I the only one who has this problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those who manage small teams without the luxury of dedicated project staff versus support staff, what strategies have you implemented to ensure high morale and productivity and manage staff who feel like they are being pulled in a hundred different directions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2014-08-04T09:57:15.710" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T09:57:15.710" Title="How to appropriately balance project activities with support tasks" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;maintenance&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="523" CreationDate="2011-02-20T19:34:48.907" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;We implemented a single point of contact for support, and the job is rotated amongst staff every week. So they know they have to do support for one week, but after that they can focus on their project work until it's their turn again.&#xA;Sometimes there is too much support so other team-members have to help as well, but most of the time this works fine. The devs are happy with this arrangement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-02-20T19:34:48.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="523" CreationDate="2011-02-20T19:35:39.733" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use a few strategies here (possibly all at once as they address different issues):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Manage incoming stream of maintenance/support tasks. If support tasks are dealt over the team with no control they tend to ruin team's productivity. However you can mix them with other work to let people know where they can expect to work on a new project and when they will be supporting old stuff. If you work with a task board with small tasks you can put support tickets into todo column (or however you call it). This should work for every but critical issue. You can also let people set their own support time everyday, e.g. after lunch, and let them deal with support stuff then. Specific tools will depend on specifics of the situation but basically everything which organizes stream of support tasks better should help.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Isolate (significant) part of the team from interruptions. If possible allow people to be isolated from support buzz so they can focus on other work. It doesn't have to (and shouldn't have to) be full time isolation - people should be expected to share the pain. However it doesn't mean they have to be faced with random phones regarding some common piece of application. You can organize some kind of 1st line of support - a point of contact where every issue comes and is verified before people are interrupted. Also if you work with experts people working as 1st line of support can try to solve the issue even if they aren't the best option and ask for help only when they struggle.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make the problem owned by the whole team, not just a few individuals. This one is about morale. If some people aren't involved in the support stuff at all you ask for some issues in the team. There will be roles considered as better and those which are considered worse. You can delegate a few people as your full-time, long-term support team but I believe some rotation helps much here. It can be either on task-by-task basis (see point 1) or some time-related approach (weekly/monthly/quarterly support duties). Either way make people aware everyone is expected to help.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-02-20T19:35:39.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="523" CreationDate="2011-02-20T22:55:53.400" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;While support issues can be a distraction, it's very important that the development team personally handle these issues for the following reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The developers can fix the problem once and for all.  See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/customerservice.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Joel's Article on Customer Service&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The developers will learn more about the users of the product and be able to improve the product so that they're actually building something that people will use!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my answer to the question &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/43948/how-to-convince-management-to-deal-with-technical-debt/43967#43967&quot;&gt;How to Get Management to Allow You to Deal With Technical Debt?&lt;/a&gt;, I mentioned that my boss at the time didn't want to be involved in it.  He said that should just be considered part of the estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a project manager, &lt;strong&gt;you and your team are the experts.&lt;/strong&gt;  When you give your estimates and timelines to your managers, it's up to you to include support issues in your estimates, as they're a necessary part of not just learning how the software is being used, but also making sure the developers fix the problems once and for all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:31:53.287" LastActivityDate="2011-02-20T22:55:53.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="49" CreationDate="2011-02-21T03:29:59.260" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest checking out LiquidPlanner, it's perfect for that size of a team and if you setup the client portal it will report on progress on it's own! &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.liquidplanner.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.liquidplanner.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="184" LastActivityDate="2011-02-21T03:29:59.260" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-21T03:29:59.260" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-02-21T03:33:10.693" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams by Tom DeMarco, Timothy Lister&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Software Project Survival Guide: How to Be Sure Your First Important Project Isn't Your Last. (Steve Mcconnell)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art (Steve Mcconnell)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="184" LastActivityDate="2011-02-21T03:33:10.693" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-21T03:33:10.693" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="442" CreationDate="2011-02-21T05:04:41.210" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One suggestion I got from a book by Scot Adams (author of Dilbert) was to schedule meetings at a time where people are not in their most productive zone. If you have a team of people that prefer to concentrate and crank out work in the mornings, &lt;strong&gt;don't&lt;/strong&gt; schedule meetings in the mornings. Some people have different days of the week as ultra-productive days. With a small team, you might be able to find a perfect time for routine meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a mix of people types, pick a time right before lunch on a Tuesday or Thursday - minimum interference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-02-21T05:04:41.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="523" CreationDate="2011-02-21T05:27:34.203" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no easy answer to your question.  You have to stand your ground and protect the team for unneeded interruptions.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a very common symptom of small companies making wrong decisions.  Some of the tips below I have implemented myself in various scenarios with good success. Before I start, I have to say that perseverance is the key.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now let's begin:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Set a rotation for the staff that will be available for support questions that day/week/month.  All questions will be routed through them, no matter what, the rest of your team will be heads down and the only people able to interrupt is you, and the staff in support. Explain your entire team that they need to be team players for this to work.  Try to be fair on the rotations for support.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make early meetings, with the hottest tickets in the queue.  Try to make sure, all the sales and client advocates are in these meetings, and do not bring the IT people. Remember that by virtue they will always want to be heroes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you have a ticketing system, try to set a support queue that everyone is able to see.  If you have someone ahead of schedule in any given task, encourage them to take a ticket.  You will probably need some kind of award system for this to work. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Morale is a hard thing to get back, keep trying and you will have success. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-02-21T05:27:34.203" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="531" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="544" CreationDate="2011-02-21T06:05:16.243" Score="40" ViewCount="46660" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working as PM, we have developers and senior managers working remotely and in-house.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a project manager, I'm at the center of all communications.  The job of managing N lines of communication falls on my shoulders and can get overwhelming at times.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm using Microsoft Outlook 2007, it is equipped with cool option &quot;Request a Read Receipt&quot; while sending mails. At receiver's end a popup window will appear upon opening mail, asking whether or not to send read receipt to sender.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will help me to know whether sender received and opened the mail I sent.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my office we all use MS Outlook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions is, is this bad manners, or etiquette, to add this option while sending mails to Senior Managers and Clients?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that in my role as project manager, it's critical that I get feedback as to whether or not people on my team received my communications.  If I worked in a field outside project management, I would not consider using &quot;Request Read Receipt&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="151" LastEditorUserId="15972" LastEditDate="2015-05-26T18:46:53.060" LastActivityDate="2019-07-24T20:56:11.970" Title="Is it bad manners or practice to request &quot;Read Receipt&quot; to all mails sent from my account?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="22" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-02-21T07:02:36.497" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Software Project Survival Guide&lt;/strong&gt; - It helped me allot in my toddling period and still keep it as a good reference book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its written by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stevemcconnell.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Steve McConnell&lt;/a&gt;, also author of great book &quot;Code Complete&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.construx.com/Page.aspx?nid=441&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;List of his other books&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="151" LastActivityDate="2011-02-21T07:02:36.497" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-21T07:02:36.497" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="531" CreationDate="2011-02-21T07:22:47.943" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to this question depends largely on how you use this &quot;cool option&quot;.  Request Read Receipt is a tool, and like any other tool, it can be used, or it can be abused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to use a tool such as this is when follow up by you is immediately necessary.  For example, a good way to make use of this tool could be to use the &quot;mail read&quot; option to proactively and quickly make a phone call to a client to ask if their issue has been resolved.  It can be a tool to know that your manager is actively thinking about a problem you're having that you specifically need their help with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage you have in these situations is that, for the next few minutes after the read receipt, you know you can call or otherwise drop in on your client or manager and know that you're not interrupting them or taking their thought away from something else.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When dealing with clients, this will wow them.  Instead of expecting them to respond to the email, you take the burden away and also appear more responsive.  When dealing with managers, this may show you as being organized, proactive, and on the ball.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you use this tool to keep tabs on people and don't follow the receipt up with a phone call or a visit, then you do run the risk of coming off as rude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-02-21T07:22:47.943" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="534" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="547" CreationDate="2011-02-21T08:08:29.447" Score="19" ViewCount="1391" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work with a team who is distributed.  Most of our staff works remotely.  As a result, communication is much more important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team consists of managers, supervisors, marketing personnel, web designers, web developers, testing engineers, and internal users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With such a large group with a diverse variety of skills and job roles, it's important that team members be great, proactive communicators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some steps that a project manager can take that will help create an environment that encourages open, proactive communication, regular check-ins and updates, and encourages people to seek answers to problems and bring those to my attention that they can't solve on their own?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;FINAL UPDATE&lt;/strong&gt;:  Thanks everyone for the great answers!  I found value in each one, which made it extremely difficult to accept an answer.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="71" LastEditDate="2011-03-01T15:16:53.677" LastActivityDate="2016-10-18T06:49:26.347" Title="How to Create Better Communicators on Your Team?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="531" CreationDate="2011-02-21T09:38:56.333" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on my experience, most of the people I work with see it as rude. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also unreliable. At the majority of locations where I have been involved in Exchange server design, read-receipts and delivery-receipts were blocked at the server level. Occasionally, this was seen as an anti-spam measure, occasionally as a privacy-protection measure, but mostly as a &quot;Who the hell thought this was a good idea&quot; reaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-08-05T21:08:12.473" LastActivityDate="2012-08-05T21:08:12.473" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="534" CreationDate="2011-02-21T09:50:45.067" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an ultra-basic recommendation, offer a mix of &quot;push&quot; and &quot;pull&quot; options. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a web-based tool for posting information, asking questions, etc. but don't stop there. Configure the system to send alert e-mails but allow people to customize the alerts. But send out &lt;strong&gt;interesting&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;relevant&lt;/strong&gt; regular updates via e-mail. I find that relying on a website-only communications method is less successful than the mixed situation (because people don't take the time to look). However, e-mail spam is equally problematic (they filter you out). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It actually takes a lot of energy to write something that people will actually read so I try to send everyone-on-the-team updates on a bi-weekly basis. These updates are e-mail advertising blurbs with links back to the website. The website is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't use it now but a &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; of people like &lt;a href=&quot;http://basecamphq.com/&quot;&gt;Basecamp&lt;/a&gt; for this. They regularly update the feature set so what I used three years ago has likely changed a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-02-21T09:50:45.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="442" CreationDate="2011-02-21T10:18:40.350" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Meeting is a decision tool. I mean you should do a meeting when a decision needs to be made, with the people having the infos and/or responsibilities to make them. In every other case, another communication tool, like an email, can replace it, which will save a lot of time for the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastEditorUserId="152" LastEditDate="2011-03-01T00:12:17.187" LastActivityDate="2011-03-01T00:12:17.187" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="531" CreationDate="2011-02-21T11:18:16.267" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would be better to use only the &lt;code&gt;Delivery receipt&lt;/code&gt; feature then you know your email was delivered to the destination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know exactly, but a think the mail server answers automatically the delivery receipt confirmation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to use the &lt;code&gt;Read receipt&lt;/code&gt; feature as jmort253 stated you should not use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always use the &lt;code&gt;Delivery receipt&lt;/code&gt; feature because I had some problems in the past with the mail server and couldn't know the destination wasn't receiving my mails. So it caused an misunderstanding about my collaboration which took much more effort to solve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="105" LastEditorUserId="105" LastEditDate="2011-02-21T13:59:50.120" LastActivityDate="2011-02-21T13:59:50.120" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="531" CreationDate="2011-02-21T12:28:53.687" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't stand that option.  Several people in our office have it turned on for all messages, and whenever you get an email from them, there is a popup that says &quot;So-and-so has requested a Read Receipt.  Would you like to send a Read Receipt?&quot;  So keep in mind that your recipient can say &quot;no&quot;, and also, you might be annoying them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="347" LastActivityDate="2011-02-21T12:28:53.687" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="534" CreationDate="2011-02-21T12:32:54.127" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;it's important that team members be great, proactive communicators&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't enforce them to communicate, &lt;strong&gt;make them wish to communicate&lt;/strong&gt; with you, and between each other. Your project rules have to tell them, explicitly: &quot;either you communicate and live, or you keep silence and die&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-21T12:32:54.127" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="63" CreationDate="2011-02-21T15:17:53.813" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out HiTask &lt;a href=&quot;http://hitask.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://hitask.com&lt;/a&gt; it's a Free online task management tool. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easy to use, probably friendliest and easiest on the market. It's very unique. It also has Business version that allows to share tasks and projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user387" LastActivityDate="2011-02-21T15:17:53.813" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-21T15:17:53.813" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-02-21T15:56:13.360" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally enjoyed Scott Berkun's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0596517718&quot;&gt;Making Things Happen&lt;/a&gt; book. While not PM-specific, Michael Loop's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/159059844X&quot;&gt;Managing Humans&lt;/a&gt; book is a great book on managing software teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="389" LastActivityDate="2011-02-21T15:56:13.360" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-21T15:56:13.360" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="534" CreationDate="2011-02-21T15:59:25.103" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have successfully used Basecamp in the past for this. I would also highly recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yammer.com&quot;&gt;Yammer&lt;/a&gt; which is sort of like Twitter for a private business. We use this extensively at work to ask questions to a large group of people, get crowd-sourced answers, post status, etc. This tool also allows you to create public and private groups so there can be more focused recommendations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="389" LastActivityDate="2011-02-21T15:59:25.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="531" CreationDate="2011-02-21T16:11:05.100" Score="59" Body="&lt;p&gt;Always seems unprofessional to me and can lead to bad project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just because someone received the email &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doesn't absolve you of the responsibility of following-up on any action item in it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nor does it give you the &quot;out&quot; of saying that the recipient should've known better since you had &quot;informed&quot; them via the email they received.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-21T16:11:05.100" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="531" CreationDate="2011-02-21T16:18:46.043" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is only triggered when someone opens the message. I tend to read everything in the reading pane in Outlook 2007/2010, so I never open any messages per se.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also selected &quot;No&quot; when prompted because I have thought it was rude, but that is just my $0.02.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="389" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-08-05T21:01:51.497" LastActivityDate="2012-08-05T21:01:51.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="534" CreationDate="2011-02-21T16:45:57.993" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, whatever you end up doing, document it on a &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;communication plan&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. Nothing fancy but at least the &lt;strong&gt;what/how/when/frequency&lt;/strong&gt; in a table format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One technique that I used when I had a team that was cross-functional and also half way around the world, was having communication gateways with their respective backups. Basically for each team, you have &lt;em&gt;communicator&lt;/em&gt;. That person was always on the meetings with the other communicators on the other teams.  They were the voice of their team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can imagine, you need &lt;em&gt;good team work&lt;/em&gt; for each sub-team for this to work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another important thing to mention is, that communicators will have the responsibility to &lt;em&gt;collect the status&lt;/em&gt; and send it to you.  They will also try to solve issues before they are escalated to the PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As SBWorks pointed out. Any twitter, or Facebook type of application will work to &lt;strong&gt;keep everyone on the loop&lt;/strong&gt;, but these application without proper process could become part of the problem as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-02-21T16:45:57.993" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="534" CreationDate="2011-02-21T20:15:26.817" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make it easy for people to communicate - start with communicating the communication plan. &#xA;The idea of having push and pull communications is great. Remember though, that you can't just expect people to read either format. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make it interesting and if possible entertaining. Where you can use  a chatty tone of voice, it feels more like people are talking about something rather than just hearing it. &#xA;Invite people to participate in the communications. Maybe have a newsletter/blog and have guest reporters. If people are geographically separated, have a section about what's going on in the area - like a little tourist blurb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest following up periodically to check if people are reading/hearing the communications. It can be as easy as a scavenger hunt for information and have some small prizes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real point is that communications is work. I've noticed that often when communications 'fail' it's because no one was working it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-02-21T20:15:26.817" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="548" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="550" CreationDate="2011-02-21T20:21:49.347" Score="15" ViewCount="161" Body="&lt;p&gt;A manager of equal level in the org chart is in charge of a team that is responsible for a critical delivery piece in one of my projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He generally assigns his team deadlines that have no room for error. This creates anxiety in my team and for the overall project. (Incidentally, his team is almost always late &amp;mdash; costing money and customer satisfaction.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our boss (the CEO) has a hands-off approach and will not intervene. However, if positioned correctly, he would support me directly working with the other manager's team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would I work with the other manager?  Should I take on his responsibilities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastEditorUserId="419" LastEditDate="2011-02-26T18:14:20.927" LastActivityDate="2011-02-26T18:14:20.927" Title="Should I work with another manager or take on his responsibilities?" Tags="&lt;politics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="49" CreationDate="2011-02-21T21:00:20.767" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually create schedules manually, using a mix of queries, spreadsheets, and graphics programs.  An automatic dashboard would be nice but it all depends on your methodology and your audience.  Remember that the schedule is a tool to communicate, and ask yourself who you are communicating with, what you want them to know, and what you want them to do about it. That said, the best and most flexible way to communicate schedule is usually a graphical timeline that fits on one page and shows ten or less key dates.  This can be maintained, manually, with MS Project, Visio, Dia, or any number of scheduling or drawing programs.  You can supplement with one other piece of information: for Scrum, a burndown chart of the current sprint; for waterfall, a zoom of the current phase, etc.  That's enough to fill one page, and that's enough to have a common reference for discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-02-21T21:00:20.767" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-21T21:00:20.767" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="548" CreationDate="2011-02-21T22:57:21.880" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You explain the situation and the first thing that comes to mind is a matrix organization. The functional manager (your peer) handles the resources (his team) and you handle the tasks assigned to his team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way you lay your question makes me think that right now you are assigning the tasks to the team and the functional manager assigns the tasks to his team. If this is correct, then by switching you are actually helping our manager focus on developing his team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you pitch the idea correctly, and you will need some support from other managers, you could be successful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, don't pitch that you are taking his responsibility, in reality is whoever responsibility needs to be to get the project done. In a projectized organization, this is the PM responsibility. In a functional organization is the functional managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just pitch the idea of allowing the manager to focus on team building, people building, department vision, budget for base resources. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-02-21T22:57:21.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="548" CreationDate="2011-02-22T02:43:21.490" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a tough spot to be in.  I've been in this situation and have tried both scenarios.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Working with the Other Manager&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the situation where you work with the other manager, you would let him know what tasks you need completed and ask if his team can commit to those deadlines.  In this scenario, your skills of persuasion are important.  The other manager must have a stake in the project.  If he has a reason to succeed as well, then you'll be more likely to be successful yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if he doesn't share the same sentiments as you do regarding the importance of the project, and if his goals are focused elsewhere, then you may end up approaching the deadline without the completed components you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think that working with the other manager may not prove successful, I suggest you sit down with the stakeholders and determine what the most critical functionality is, and then have your team work on that part.  At least then you have control over your destiny!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Take on Responsibilities&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you know that you absolutely need to have the work in question completed, you could volunteer your team to handle the responsibility.  The main drawback here is that it may create other delays on your team because they'll be focusing on double the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest selecting this path only if you're sure the other manager won't be able to meet the deadlines.  This will create a burden on your team, and you may need to put some functionality on the back burner if you go this route.  Your chances of meeting all of the requirements does drop in this scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, you may find that you and your team are overwhelmed and have missed the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T02:43:21.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="531" CreationDate="2011-02-22T06:34:49.533" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not sure if it rates as &quot;bad manners&quot;, but most people in senior management are busy.  They may have lots of direct reports and their subordinates copying them on dozens of emails per day in order to &quot;keep them in the loop&quot;.  Combine that with communications they initiated, meeting invitations and spam, the number of emails can easily run into the hundreds per day.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were one of these managers, how would you view an employee who routinely turned a one click operation (open message) into a two-click operation (open, answer question about receipt).  Eventually, people will either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn how to disable read receipt notifications.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn how to create a mail rule shunting all your mail to their junk folder.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding clients: just because you use Outlook, it's not reasonable to assume your clients will.  Many others have indicated that mail receipts in general is a feature left over from the more innocent (less spam) days of the 80's and 90's.  It seemed like a good idea at the time, but was so abused by spammers as a tracking device, that most mail systems and clients turn these notifications off by default.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also think &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/531/is-it-a-bad-manners-or-practice-to-request-read-receipt-to-all-mails-send-from/544#544&quot;&gt;Mark's answer&lt;/a&gt; is great: asking for a receipt doesn't absolve you responsibility to follow up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T06:34:49.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="548" CreationDate="2011-02-22T07:19:24.813" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I lean towards &quot;work with&quot;, but  at a distance. I would recommend setting clear boundaries and try to figure out how to minimize your risks. This manager is a risk to your project and possibly the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would first try to treat the other managers group as a supplier.  The first person to &quot;work with&quot; is the CEO (or whoever is next up in the chain), explain the problem in as positive a light as possible and get their buy-in.  If you have some historic project performance for the other manager's group beyond &quot;his team is almost always late&quot;, then you have some data you can use to pad his estimates.  Set clear timelines and deliverables.  You might try getting the other project deliverables piecemeal.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this manager is as chronically late as you claim, then this group should have to prove that they can deliver the 'right stuff', on time &amp;amp; on budget.  The project manager may not feel as if they have a stake in your project, but they ought to have a stake and sense of ownership in their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T07:19:24.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="512" CreationDate="2011-02-22T07:54:03.717" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're getting ahead of yourself.  Your template is for a schedule, but you probably don't know &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; activities you must do, much less &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; to do them.  Read &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/512/where-to-get-general-info-on-wbs/518#518&quot;&gt;Adam's answer&lt;/a&gt; - he's got a lot of good info in it.  Sorry to repeat some of what he's got, but it's good lead in to the rest of my answer too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to be clear: the point isn't hierarchy vs graph.  As you have already seen, you can turn the graphical representation of a WBS into a more concise tree hierarchy.  Rather a WBS helps focus your attention on &lt;strong&gt;what you must deliver&lt;/strong&gt;. It is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a list of tasks.  Focusing your attention on the right thing at the right time is sometimes all the separates successful projects from failures.  Early in the project is not the time to &quot;just use a hierarchical numbering system to jot down the tasks&quot;.  More important than the actual list of deliverables or the WBS graph (or hierarchy as you prefer) is the &lt;strong&gt;WBS Dictionary&lt;/strong&gt; - a page of amplifying information that defines in greater detail each deliverable you are responsible for.  Things you may choose to include or link to in this detailed description:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More information about the scope of this deliverable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How the work for this task will be billed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Major milestones associated with this deliverable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Activities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resources (people, hardware, travel, subject matter experts) required &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical references or other specs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The milestones and the activities can be used as the start of defining more detailed tasks you'll need to do in order to get the deliverable done.  At this point, you can pull all of this information from all you WBS descriptions together &amp;amp; start creating a schedule.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T07:54:03.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="178" CreationDate="2011-02-22T08:39:07.733" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To some point both Kano model and QFD deals with the same area which is sorting out which features are must-haves and which are nice-to-haves. Both are tools which should help product managers/product owners to prioritize features and organize product development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However Kano model leaves us with just a few buckets of where we can put features (Attractive, One-Dimensional, Must-Be, Indifferent, Reverse) leaving product manager or other decision-maker to make their own call which feature is which.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;QFD helps product manager to decide how important specific features are putting them against specific project-related criteria and attaching weights to them. The outcome should be similar as the one from Kano model - a prioritized list of features pointing which cause delight and which causes disguise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;QFD delivers more detailed scenario and bases less on product manager's experience and subject matter expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also sometimes Kano model is used to support decisions in QFD when the latter doesn't deliver clear answer how to prioritize features, which may happen depending on chosen criteria used in QFD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T08:39:07.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="557" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="560" CreationDate="2011-02-22T10:03:49.163" Score="4" ViewCount="384" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our company runs an online photo sharing application, letting users edit pictures, create slideshows, share them on blogs and social networks and so on. The company is small, roughly 15 people, with a technical staff of 5, 3 seniors and 2 interns, with another intern coming soon. Our CEO is also the head of the marketing team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We had a CTO until August 2009. When our CTO left, the company was having financial issues, and it was decided not to hire another CTO immediately. The technical staff (only the 3 seniors at the time) decided, between them, what to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without a CTO, we have trouble getting some decisions to be taken by the CEO. This has created some issues on technical level, like quality problems in the infrastructure and code base.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: how do we improve this situation? Should we insist on hiring another CTO which would have a hard time integrating and gaining legitimacy (I designed and created the whole server application. I will not let anybody explain to me how I have to do my job)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-10-04T10:34:30.267" LastActivityDate="2015-10-04T10:34:30.267" Title="How can we improve the situation of a technical team, without a CTO?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;enterprise&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="557" CreationDate="2011-02-22T10:40:29.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I will not let anybody explain to me how I have to do my job&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a CTO says so terminate his/her contract immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides that I would suggest to focus on documents not people (CTO or whoever it is). Your problem is that you don't have a clear architecture/design documentation, and source code quality requirements. In order to get back on track you should invest your time (or time of someone else, maybe a part-time CTO) into technical documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T10:40:29.047" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="557" CreationDate="2011-02-22T14:00:28.547" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A full time CTO could be overkill, but the reality is that you have not been able to communicate effectively to the CEO your needs. You have not provided detail about what has been provided to the CEO, but my first instinct is that you have not given him/her a business reason that you want to make an improvement. Based on what you have said, there are likely dead ends in the code that need to be remediated and these will keep your company from being able to expand. This is typically the type of information that needs to be communicated to C-Level. Tell them what it's costing them in time and money, what they would save by making the changes and/or what they can't do, but would be able to if they made the change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A CTO should have one foot in the business and be able to understand and convert your needs to a language that will get the resources. On the flip side a good CTO will also be able to explain WHY (e.g. no money available) you may not be getting the resources you believe you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="404" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T14:00:28.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="557" CreationDate="2011-02-22T16:07:32.880" Score="4" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Promote yourself, or someone from your team, to be the decision maker.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pitch your CEO on having a defined budget for IT (can be annual, quarterly, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make some decisions, spend accordingly and take ownership of the decisions and outcomes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T16:07:32.880" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="561" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-22T16:19:47.903" Score="19" ViewCount="1050" Body="&lt;p&gt;What techniques have you used or would you recommend to update project status or resolve project conflicts other than meetings?  This is a question from a company with a culture of meetings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="113" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T23:00:22.413" Title="Managing Without Meetings" Tags="&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="561" CreationDate="2011-02-22T16:46:19.077" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use the SCRUM approach, you can avoid formal meetings (the ones that are non productive and tedious)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SCRUM focuses on Team Meetings (The people who DO the work) to check what was done, what will be done and if is there any issue. If you involve stakeholder in this meeting then you are doing it wrong, because meetings with stakeholder and users are the most time consuming and little accomplished kind of meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest for meeting with users or stakeholder, to organize work-shops, where specific homework for each one is given before the meeting, users and stakeholder works, then in the meeting you have solid material to work with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Making productive meetings is an art, you need as Project Manager, people skills, leadership, organization, discipline and formal authority. Any other condition, meetings will be frequent and non productive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="267" LastEditorUserId="267" LastEditDate="2011-02-22T19:23:02.957" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T19:23:02.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="561" CreationDate="2011-02-22T16:58:18.717" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Avoiding meetings completely is impossible.&lt;/strong&gt; This is because the main benefits of meetings are to get people together in one room to discuss, and maybe decide, on something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you can't eliminate every meeting, you can do a lot:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find out the purpose of every meeting. If it's not meeting its purpose, change or cancel it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find meetings that HAVE no purpose and cut those out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Based on the purpose, decide on the &lt;em&gt;minimum set of people who need to be there&lt;/em&gt; to accomplish that purpose. Invite them, and nobody else.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set a time-bound deadline (eg. 30 minutes) to make sure it doesn't go too long; when the meeting's over, it's over, get up and leave. (A physical timer, or alarm clock, works well.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shift small meetings to other venues. Have a quick, informal conference call between the three or four people who need to be there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just be careful not to replace all your meetings with, say, email, or something that will eat up tons more time and be &lt;em&gt;far&lt;/em&gt; less productive than a quick meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yeah, Scrum is great, if you can keep your daily scrum under control (eg. 10-20 minutes tops). I've sat in 90-minute daily scrums, and it's essentially a giant meeting that you would &lt;em&gt;love&lt;/em&gt; to avoid!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T16:58:18.717" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="228" CreationDate="2011-02-22T17:12:28.430" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work with very large organizations and the move to a Matrix structure is a big change for many. Some do it with clearly defined goals - more flexibility, more sharing of resources across the organisation etc... A minority do it because it is flavour of the month and they see other leading organisations doing it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many focus too much on structure, but it is the skills and behaviours of individuals, not the formal structure, that makes the difference between success and failure. The good companies invest in skills training and carefully manage the behaviour change necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Politics and power struggles are common factors that constrain the success of the matrix.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user408" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T17:12:28.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="561" CreationDate="2011-02-22T17:20:19.283" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Update project status by having a centralized source of project information that people can update and check themselves (like project management software or a project wiki).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To resolve problems, you sometimes do need the face to face a meeting provides. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if the meeting is there to solve a particular problem, you only need to have the relevant people involved (and not do it in front of everyone else -wastes their time and brings in an unnecessary impediment to resolving the problem).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T17:20:19.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="566" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="568" CreationDate="2011-02-22T17:43:29.160" Score="32" ViewCount="4112" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working as a QA for software product development. During the course of our meetings we typically discuss what tasks we are going to do and provide an estimate for each task. My manager has a habit of loading us at 100% for the tasks. For example, if I work continuously on a task the entire day I can do it in 2 days. So I give my estimate of 3 days. But the manager reduces the time span to 2 days or less. The result is that I'm usually working continuously to finish off things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I have heard that normally at work we have times of high work pressure and times when there is less of it. The problem is that the latter is never true for me. Even after a product gets released there are more and more things to do. So I end up constantly working at either 100% or more. This affects me negatively because I don't get time to learn anything new or improve myself as I'm just meeting one deadline after another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I discussed this with my manager and he tells me &quot;that's how it's going to be, work will always be there&quot;. Now my colleague is okay with working late quite frequently but I don't want to do this. I do not want to jump to another company as sooner or later it will happen again. I need to learn to manage this. What can I do in this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="358" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-07T00:57:10.443" LastActivityDate="2015-05-28T16:08:50.310" Title="How do you deal with continuous work pressure?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;critical-chain&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="566" CreationDate="2011-02-22T17:59:52.853" Score="2" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have your eye focused on your longer term career path and where this position fits in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perform at your best.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find the stress relief methods that work for you (sports, hobbies, yoga, friends, etc.).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T17:59:52.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="566" CreationDate="2011-02-22T18:13:30.823" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems like work-life balance type of issue. In short most of us can work for pretty long time at over 100% rate. The problem is at the end of the process we're burned out. Now the manager either doesn't know that or acknowledges the fact, but doesn't care and expects to exchange those who are burned out with freshmen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the former is true there's a chance to convince the manager to change the attitude. You can start with Stephen Covey's &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.stephencovey.com/7habits/7habits-habit7.php&quot;&gt;sharpen the saw metaphor&lt;/a&gt; (and generally the whole &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Habits_of_Highly_Effective_People&quot;&gt;7 habits of highly effective people&lt;/a&gt;). As simple as that: if you never rest your performance will be decreasing over time so it's manager's business to give you some time to improve your skills. You can also try to show them how they lose competence in the team when they're losing people who can't work that way any longer. If nothing seems to work chances are good the manager is the latter type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this situation you have only two choices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Set your own borders in terms of work-life balance (btw: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/talks/nigel_marsh_how_to_make_work_life_balance_work.html&quot;&gt;here's great TED video on the subject from Nigel Marsh&lt;/a&gt;) so you keep yourself in rather healthy condition. It means you'll have to face the consequences as the one who isn't considered as &quot;engaged&quot; by the manager, but your personal development and better perspectives which follows can be well worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Leave the organization or the part of it controlled by the manager. If you can't change them, leave them. If it is possible to make a transition within the organization that's a safer way but more likely it'll be about leaving the company. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-02-23T08:20:15.623" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T08:20:15.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="561" CreationDate="2011-02-22T18:22:37.547" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of techniques which worked perfectly in one of my teams was something I call no-meeting culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few prerequisites:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Team has to be co-located&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Team can't be very big&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Team members should work with each other for a longer period of time&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Team members shouldn't shy out&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole trick is to make discussions ad-hoc instead of organizing meetings. People start talking whenever they feel there's something important to discuss. Then people who are interested join and even if they don't they're called out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interesting thing is we quickly learned how to turn off the noise - discussions which weren't interesting for us. Of course this approach adds some distractions but you gain much more in terms of improved communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read more here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2009/11/how-to-reduce-number-of-meetings-to-one.html&quot;&gt;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2009/11/how-to-reduce-number-of-meetings-to-one.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T18:22:37.547" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="548" CreationDate="2011-02-22T20:26:07.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest to discuss with the situation with your peer manager. There is definitely some reason why he is working this way. Maybe there is a lack of communication between you? Maybe your colleague has different understanding of project/work objectives that you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you take on his responsibilities you will just increase the problem, and sooner or later it will become fatal. So, start with a patient analysis of your colleague's motives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T20:26:07.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="571" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-22T20:38:55.453" Score="1" ViewCount="134" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the maximum number of project management tools a department could use? If more than one is used for the same purpose or several are used for linked purposes double data entry occurs or synchronisation between them is needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tools I consider in this category&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;time tracking tools&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;project / task planning tools&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;bug / issue trackers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;invoicing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="148" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T14:41:55.200" Title="What's the maximum number of similar tools a department should use?" Tags="&lt;progress-monitor&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="571" CreationDate="2011-02-22T21:04:06.290" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on what this &quot;department&quot; is doing. It's better to discuss what tools &lt;strong&gt;a project&lt;/strong&gt; could use (it's a &lt;em&gt;project&lt;/em&gt; management Q&amp;amp;A site after all).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately a project needs to have a project management information system, which integrates time, scope, quality, communication, risk, HR, and procurement management operations and documents. Actually, I've never seen such all-in-one systems. You always have to integrate smaller tools/instruments and you should always try to minimize data duplication. For a small project I would suggest the following components:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Issue Tracking System: Issues List, Tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wiki: Charter, Scope Statement, Plans&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Google Docs: Risk List&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Google Groups: Communications&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T21:04:06.290" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="566" CreationDate="2011-02-22T21:12:11.817" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, you should share your concerns with the manager. Explain him the situation as you did just now. Tell him that you want spend your 8 working hours not only on routine tasks, but also on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;self education&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;professional networking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reading&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;writing (incl. at this Q&amp;amp;A site)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;thinking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of &quot;I don't to work 100% of time&quot; your message should sound like &quot;I want to spend 6 hours for routine tasks and 2 hours for strategic things&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T21:12:11.817" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="574" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="576" CreationDate="2011-02-22T21:18:41.200" Score="9" ViewCount="503" Body="&lt;p&gt;Risk Register normally contains very sensitive information about potential problems. Some of them sound very scary like &quot;we may loose our key sponsor&quot; or &quot;our CTO may eventually leave the company&quot;. These severe risks are very important for a project manager; he/she has to include them into the Risk Registry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, shall a PM make this document visible to other project participants, like programmers, sponsors, architects, shareholders?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T04:47:41.507" Title="Risk Register is a public document in a project?" Tags="&lt;risk&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="571" CreationDate="2011-02-22T21:27:07.603" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a trick question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="347" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T21:27:07.603" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="574" CreationDate="2011-02-22T21:30:23.920" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say that &quot;we may lose our key sponsor&quot; is an actual risk on your project.  Would you want to discuss that risk with your team members and stakeholders?  Would you want them to discuss as a group how to mitigate this risk?  If so, then you should make your risk register available to those people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am all for openness and transparency when managing a project.  When you start to have &quot;secret risks&quot;, you then have an additional risk -- that someone will find out that you have secret risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="347" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T21:30:23.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="566" CreationDate="2011-02-22T21:40:38.567" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DON'T PANIC&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have already seen managers that overload the employee in order to make he figure out a way to do more work he thinks he can't do. It is a way to get the impossible goal done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you let the stress behind and start thinking a way to improve your effectiveness at work, soon you 'll be able to do more and more tasks and also feel great with the workload as a challenge. Think it is like your manager daring you to do the job faster and still with the expected quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, he/she (your manager) can be testing if you really can work under pressure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this workload and pressure is totally nonsense, try to agree with your manager tasks priorities (like &lt;code&gt;must do&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;good to have done&lt;/code&gt;). If the manager don't collaborate with this new approach set yourself the priorities, do what you can do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Own&lt;/strong&gt; the tasks you have to do. If you are the person with most information, you should have the power of decision about the time each task will take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have the activity and you have the deadline, so it is your responsibility to find a way to deliver results on time. You should not anticipate the tasks only because your manager says so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, all this pressure makes me think that this project is not well planned and the time for tasks completion were not well dimensioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It came to my mind that your manager may be using &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Chain_Project_Management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Critical Chain Project Management&lt;/a&gt; concepts. Also see &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/343/integrating-critical-chain-into-scrum-agile-practices&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="105" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T16:50:03.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="574" CreationDate="2011-02-22T22:10:39.420" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The scenarios you mentioned &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be evaluated by the project team with a mitigation plan and owner. If key personnel leave the project, what will the impact be? Who has the authority/responsibility of replacing the resource? If it is sensitive company information, then you must certainly use your professional judgment. Document the risk &quot;loss of key personnel&quot; instead of saying &quot;the CTO is going to be fired next week.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T22:10:39.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="574" CreationDate="2011-02-22T22:22:00.620" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Risks are of different levels. While I advocate 100% transparency in risks, this is not practical. &lt;strong&gt;Practically speaking, a subset of all risks may need to be shown only to a limited number of people.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, your company is undergoing a round of lay-offs. Morale is low, and people may quit. Do you &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; think it's smart to put &quot;X person (or X position) may quit&quot; into a public register? That could exacerbate the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The easiest solution to this is to keep &lt;strong&gt;two risk registers&lt;/strong&gt;: One contains those risks that may be damaging and should be kept to only the few people who need to see them (like senior management), and everything else should be public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also forces you to think twice if you add a risk to your confidential register; does it &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; need to go there? Most risks won't need to, but a few will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-02-22T22:22:00.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="580" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-02-23T02:11:35.673" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a great example of some great questions that fall under the &lt;code&gt;roles&lt;/code&gt; tag:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1497/what-are-the-differences-between-project-leader-and-project-manager&quot;&gt;What are the differences between project leader and project manager&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/452/how-to-avoid-micro-managing-a-software-development-team&quot;&gt;How to Avoid Micro-Managing a Software Development Team?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Roles can be planning, leadership roles, management roles, team-member duties, functional management roles, executive management roles, project sponsor roles, or any other stakeholder involved in a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The topic focuses on boundaries of the roles, responsibilities of the roles, and how to effectively deal with issues that arise from unclear boundaries or for roles that may overlap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-05-08T20:38:17.463" LastActivityDate="2011-05-08T20:38:17.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="581" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-02-23T02:11:35.673" Score="0" Body="This tag is for questions about what is part of a role on a project, for example what the a planner does, what a lead does, etc. This tag can also be applied to questions about methodologies, such as Scrum, where the question involves individual roles in that methodology. In that case, also tag with the specific methodology." OwnerUserId="158" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-11-16T17:19:07.020" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T17:19:07.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="582" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-02-23T02:12:39.627" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimation_(project_management)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia's page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="158" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2014-10-20T09:05:22.110" LastActivityDate="2014-10-20T09:05:22.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="583" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-02-23T02:12:39.627" Score="0" Body="Questions on estimating schedule, costs, etc. go here." OwnerUserId="158" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2011-02-26T18:15:49.333" LastActivityDate="2011-02-26T18:15:49.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="584" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-23T02:13:10.430" Score="4" ViewCount="525" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assume I work as a part of a small team (2-3) people who are all remote from each other. We build web applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;* I use a project management web application to manage bugs/resources/specs etc.&#xA;* Passwords are managed using keepassx and dropbox&#xA;* We use git for version control and codebase/github&#xA;* We use screencast and jing for screenshots and screencasts to share&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can I improve the above?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I add a new layer - central dev server for testing application (using capistrano)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Real time collaboration solutions that don't cost $100,000/hour?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anything else you want to add?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been taking on some increasingly large projects recently which demand some effective project management and workflow tools. Any advice or criticism is welcome!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="417" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-27T07:33:48.433" LastActivityDate="2011-11-18T14:52:33.527" Title="Please Advise On Project Management software" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-08-17T14:36:03.710" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="585" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-02-23T02:13:52.893" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-02-23T02:13:52.893" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T02:13:52.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="586" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-02-23T02:13:52.893" Score="0" Body="A project sponsor is an internal or external customer that is paying for the project." OwnerUserId="158" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2011-02-26T18:15:45.543" LastActivityDate="2011-02-26T18:15:45.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="574" CreationDate="2011-02-23T02:28:20.623" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Create different versions of the risk register that are specific to the group you are sharing it with.  They should be sub-sets of the overall project risk register.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just as you don't need to share the status of every sub-task with your project sponsor (the milestones will do) or share the designers tasks with the engineer (each has their own task list to worry about), it can be detrimental to share every risk with every stakeholder on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9179592/Context_trumps_content&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;customizing communications to the right context&lt;/a&gt; from ComputerWorld (I wrote it) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vertabase.com/blog/the-twitter-rule-of-project-management/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a blog post on this topic&lt;/a&gt; (the Twitter Rule of Project Management).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T02:28:20.623" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="588" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-23T02:46:29.150" Score="5" ViewCount="205" Body="&lt;p&gt;My company has recently acquired another small company. Now, my company has a ERP system that we are using it presently. Also, the acquired company has an ERP system of its own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I have been given the responsibility of integrating my company's ERP System with the ERP system of the recently acquired company. To do this, I have to map the data between these two processes and see if there are any redundant features. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I was told by my friends that there would be lot of problems when I need to sit with both employees of the two companies, given the fact that my company doesn't treat the other company employees that well in terms of credibility. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I wanted to know, how do I make sure that there are no hard feelings between both sets of employees and what steps do I take for effective brainstorming sessions among both the teams?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19" LastEditorUserId="70" LastEditDate="2011-02-26T18:14:31.410" LastActivityDate="2011-02-26T18:14:31.410" Title="How to manage hard feelings among distinct teams? (Integration of data)" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="588" CreationDate="2011-02-23T03:26:03.793" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this situation, what's done is done.  The decision to replace their processes with others has already been made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is bad blood between your company and the acquired company, you may find that your efforts are less than welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's important that you be assertive, take charge, let others know what your goal is and that you'll need their support.  You can add that you also want to make the transition as smooth as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an opportunity for you to possibly form a cross-functional team with the goal of merging the data.  You are in a position to possibly create a sense of teamwork, if you select the right people to help contribute ideas and energy to this merge project.  If you can, select an equal subset of employees from both companies to help collaborate on a solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you listen to concerns and be objective, it will go a long way towards helping avoid hard-feelings, but you are in charge of the project and will need to make that clear from the very beginning; otherwise, they may walk all over you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T03:26:03.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="588" CreationDate="2011-02-23T04:05:17.163" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are in a very interesting situation.  I agree with JMort on being assertive and making sure everyone knows you are responsible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, take in consideration that these two teams will continue to use the final result of your project after it is done (I assume they will not be fired), so you don't want to shut your chances of adoption.  Think of the objectives of the project as the goal, but the road needs to set you up for success.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be objective and always ask, &quot;why?&quot;  I find this question to work very well, even when you already know the answer.  Together with, &quot;how would you do it?&quot; takes people from their defensive stand to a more communicative.  I often find people complaining without possible alternative solutions, making them more friends of your proposition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be open, and open for feedback, but always keep control.  &lt;strong&gt;Make sure from the beginning that you say that you will be collaborative, but if there is any tie-breaking you will make that call.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a final point, try to watch for the influencers in both teams, infiltrate them, convince them, and win them.  This will make your life much easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T04:05:17.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="574" CreationDate="2011-02-23T04:24:17.070" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Consider this, there are risks that you may not even know about!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There could be a pressing legal issue that only senior managers know about that could affect your project.  In that case, even you, the project manager, doesn't have this information in your Risk Register.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer in your situation is simple.  You mentioned that your Risk Register contains &lt;strong&gt;&lt;code&gt;very sensitive information about potential problems&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By definition of the problems being labeled as &lt;code&gt;very sensitive information&lt;/code&gt;, you do not want to make that public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The analogy I use in this scenario is in Government security.  There are oftentimes may layers of security with varying degrees of personnel authorized at different levels.  At the top secret levels, the most sensitive risks are known.  At the bottom levels, only very granular risks are known.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are the maintainer of this document, then you need to work with your managers to identify the level of sensitivity of the risk, and determine what type of &lt;code&gt;secret clearance&lt;/code&gt; project members and stakeholders will have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-02-23T04:47:41.507" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T04:47:41.507" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="571" CreationDate="2011-02-23T04:44:24.757" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no set maximum or minimum number of tools you should use.  What it comes down to is what works best for your organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can find a single tool that can do everything, that is ideal because there is less duplication.  But in most cases your needs are more specific, and one package won't do everything you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next best scenario is to find tools that integrate easily.  For instance, some bug tracking software has hooks to connect to version control comments.  Since committing files and making updates to the bug tracking software are usually done together, as well as sending updates to team members, it makes sense to integrate these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But other things don't need to be so tightly coupled.  For instance, the tools you use to maintain the Risk Registry probably don't need to integrate with your Subversion repository.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T04:44:24.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="566" CreationDate="2011-02-23T05:15:21.820" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some companies create an environment of lifetime learning.  In these companies, people own their tasks.  You give your managers estimates, not the other way around.  If you say it takes 3 days for task X, then it takes 3 days.  In these companies, managers don't micro-manage your every move.  You are looked at as a trusted professional who is given plenty of autonomy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other companies are not like that.  I won't describe them.  You already know what they're like.  But know that to some degree &lt;strong&gt;every organization must produce results.&lt;/strong&gt;  Businesses don't make money being non-profit playgrounds for people who just want to learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, keep in mind that it's your responsibility as a professional to take control of your career and move it along.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say your colleague works late.  How much more does your colleague learn from doing this?  Is it fair to your colleague that he stays late to get the job done on time while you instead expect special treatment from management?  I understand not everyone wants to put their spare time into their careers.  That's a personal choice each person must make for different reasons, but you need to decide what's most important to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If work-life balance is important to you, then perhaps you need to find another job.  Maybe working in a research position would be more to your liking.  There &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; jobs where you can be paid to learn.  Just look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://labs.ericsson.com/developer-community/blog/beyond-html5-peer-peer-conversational-video&quot;&gt;Ericsson Labs and the Peer to Peer Conversational Video Research&lt;/a&gt;.  These guys and gals sat around for &lt;strong&gt;six months working on an open source project for WebKit&lt;/strong&gt;.  I'm sure they had fun, learned a &lt;strong&gt;LOT&lt;/strong&gt;, and still went home to relax on their time off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T05:15:21.820" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="557" CreationDate="2011-02-23T06:06:36.510" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Leaders don't need titles.  You don't need a CTO.  CTO is just a fancy term that is usually given to a company founder who has a technical background.  The person has skills and most likely built half of the infrastructure single-handedly, but if that person left, then no one can fill that role.  You can't create another company founder in a company that's already been founded.  You can give someone that title, if you really want to, but they're not going to be the previous CTO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EHow does have a job description, but the position varies so much from company to company.  This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/facts_5418526_job-description-chief-technology-officer.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CTO Job Description&lt;/a&gt; will give you an idea of the CTO's role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-become-a-chief-technology-officer/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How to Become a Chief Technology Officer.&lt;/a&gt;  Note the key responsibilities include the words &quot;strategic&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say the problem is in the code?  That's not a CTO problem.  The CTO doesn't dictate code quality or take part in such low level issues.  That's the teams' domain.  That involves &quot;tactical&quot; management.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do need a leader, it just doesn't need to be a 6 figure high-paid executive.  Why don't you try stepping into that role?  Don't give yourself the title though, just fill the need.  Leaders don't need titles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T06:06:36.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="588" CreationDate="2011-02-23T07:17:35.130" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;how do I make sure that there are no hard feelings&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why? What is the reason to worry about it? You &quot;have been given the responsibility of integrating&quot;, not of team building or making peace. Changes typically lead to &quot;hard feelings&quot;, it's inevitable. If you blame yourself for them you very likely fail the project. What you need to do in this situation is to identify &lt;strong&gt;negative stakeholders&lt;/strong&gt;, identify their needs, and take them into account. That's it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T07:17:35.130" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="584" CreationDate="2011-02-23T08:13:07.943" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see two gaps in your toolbox.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Task management. It is possible you use your project management tool to organize tasks although you don't mention it. Basically every project management app has some task management so it shouldn't be a problem to use your current tool (whatever it is) to deal with that. Alternatively if you think about improvements you may rethink the way you manage tasks. You don't mention how it currently look like so it's hard to discuss it here (however I think that's a great subject for another question).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Instant messaging. In remote teams instant messengers proved to be very powerful tool. They're more instant than emails and distracts less than calls. My messenger of choice is GTalk since it's totally lightweight but you can choose to use pretty much any of them, Skype being one of the most obvious options.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T08:13:07.943" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="452" CreationDate="2011-02-23T13:31:24.397" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend that you recognize that, whether you are a subject matter expert or not, you are no longer a technical contributor.  You don’t own those estimates or get to decide on what technique to use.  To continue to try to define the technical aspects of the project will only lead to frustration on your part because you no longer have authority on those decisions.  Change hats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the best advice I ever received, as a new app development manager, was when my manager told me he now measured me on the success of my team, no longer on my program development abilities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="113" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T13:31:24.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="588" CreationDate="2011-02-23T15:04:51.887" Score="2" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't let your plans or meetings be tainted by what other people have said re the feelings each side has. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prepare for different situations but leave the preconceived notions behind.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go in with an open mind and make your own, independent assessment of the potential challenges and opportunities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T15:04:51.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="343" CreationDate="2011-02-23T15:30:44.870" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This probably won't be a popular answer, but if you're doing Scrum, throw out most of what you learned doing your PMP.  They are completely different thought processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Critical chain processes assume that you have a huge, detailed schedule, with resource and task dependencies.  In Scrum, you have a well-prioritized backlog, from which the most important feature / task is always completed next.  The team communicates daily (if not more often) and shows features to the customer every two weeks or 30 days, and tasks/features are re-prioritized accordingly.  This will squeeze the inefficiencies out of the process for you, much like critical chain would do in a traditional project management project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if you like the concept of &quot;buffers&quot;, you can still use them with Scrum.  I recommend the book &quot;Agile Estimating and Planning&quot; by Mike Cohn.  He has some great techniques for dealing with estimates and &quot;buffers&quot; in an agile way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KVOji.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="347" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T15:30:44.870" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="571" CreationDate="2011-02-23T15:32:49.013" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The minimum amount to get the job done right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, sounds like you could cut out at least one tool by finding a tool that integrates the task planning and management with bug/issue tracking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could go even farther by using a tool that further has time tracking built in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are working for a department in a larger organization, its best to find time tracking that can integrate with the existing corporate accounting system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T15:32:49.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="208" CreationDate="2011-02-23T15:43:04.460" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;People like to be asked for help- it makes them feel important and valuable. In this situation, I would plan to meet with the new person to &quot;go over the project with them&quot;, and as part of the planning activity, identify a few key areas where you could do with some assistance from them. Make sure these are genuine - not just trivial matters for the sake of asking for help. Every project has them, and they are typically such things as improving communications, seeking user-side resources, user involvement in testing the processes, etc. If the new stakeholder agrees to help, he or she is likely to be on your side, if the question was asked in a positive manner. If he or she won't help, you've got a problem - but at least you know!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't be asking for new ideas or additional features at this point, as the scope should only change via proper change management processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T15:43:04.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="149" CreationDate="2011-02-23T15:45:47.987" Score="4" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Actually, contrary to others, I think agile might be a good answer here. Having said that I consider you sign some kind of agile contract with the customer, which means they can terminate contract after each sprint. Of course that's not so easy to negotiate this kind of contracts - you can find &lt;a href=&quot;http://vimeo.com/17638921&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Paul Klipp's presentation on selling agile&lt;/a&gt; very useful if you want to go this way (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/pklipp/selling-agilevfinal?from=ss_embed&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;there are slides too&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Classic fixed-price contract with vague requirements should raise red flags, as DaveParillo points so I'd focus either on well-defined specs or convincing the client to switch to the contract which limits risks for both side in this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using agile approach within the project team is another story which isn't connected so tightly with the contract form. You can employ agile approach in a project which is under fixed-price terms and it can work pretty well. If the client is ready to take their part of the process, e.g. product demos after each sprint or repeatedly prioritizing features, it probably is a good idea. So my answer to a question 1 is: yes, agile may help you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Transition to agile with no member having experience in agile will likely be hard. A reasonable minimum is someone who has experience from different projects and different organization so they know what can work and what won't work. Also the team should be very open for learning and improving themselves over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it would be much better if you were able to find a coach who would help you with kick start. Otherwise it is possible that you're going to visit some dead ends before finding a way which works well for your team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is no easy general answer how long it takes to switch to a new method, no matter whether agile or not. It vastly depends on people, situation, project, deadlines etc. I can give you an example when we were switching to Kanban - approach which neither of us had known from practice before. It took about half a year to reach the point where we were pretty fluent with the way we worked, however it wasn't a single point of time - we saw first improvements after just a few weeks from the start. We had a person experienced with different approaches and the team was willing to learn and adapt. It's really hard to answer exactly but I think somewhere between month and two months we were doing better than before the change.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T15:45:47.987" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="584" CreationDate="2011-02-23T17:25:03.710" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One gap in your development is documentation. You should have a wiki or some sort of collaborative environment where the team (PM, developers, everyone) keep updated on how things are working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With distributed teams, communication is essential; if you aren't already, you should have a quick (10 minute) daily synch-up where everyone mentions what they're working on (Scrum style).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chatting and wiki will go a long way, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T17:25:03.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="343" CreationDate="2011-02-23T17:46:32.343" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Chain_Project_Management&quot;&gt;Critical Chain Project Management&lt;/a&gt; demands higher flexibility of your team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Wikipedia Critical Chain Project Management:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Critical Chain project network will&#xA;  tend to keep the resources levelly&#xA;  loaded, but will require them to be&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;flexible in their start times&lt;/strong&gt; and to&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;quickly switch between tasks and task&#xA;  chains&lt;/strong&gt; to keep the whole project on&#xA;  schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But also (from Wikipedia Critical Chain Project Management):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;when they are running their &quot;leg&quot; of&#xA;  the project, they should be focused on&#xA;  completing the assigned task as&#xA;  quickly as possible, with &lt;strong&gt;no&#xA;  distractions or multitasking&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And also (from Wikipedia Critical Chain Project Management):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because task durations have been&#xA;  planned at the 50% probability&#xA;  duration, there is pressure on the&#xA;  resources to complete critical chain&#xA;  tasks as quickly as possible,&#xA;  overcoming &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_syndrome&quot;&gt;student's syndrome&lt;/a&gt; and&#xA;  Parkinson's Law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What concerns me the most is the probability of the team end up doing a bad multi-tasking. See the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000022.html&quot;&gt;Human Task Switches Considered Harmful&lt;/a&gt; article by Joel Spolsky:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Joel's article mentioned above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The trick here is that when you manage&#xA;  programmers, specifically, task&#xA;  switches take a really, really, really&#xA;  long time. That's because programming&#xA;  is the kind of task where you have to&#xA;  keep a lot of things in your head at&#xA;  once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you specified that you are working with software development, try to make sure your development team will understand the Critical Chain process otherwise they will freak-out and start doing many tasks at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also from Joel's article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In fact, the real lesson from all this&#xA;  is that you should &lt;strong&gt;never let people&#xA;  work on more than one thing at once&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;  Make sure they know what it is. Good&#xA;  managers see their responsibility as&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;removing obstacles&lt;/em&gt; so that people can&#xA;  focus on &lt;em&gt;one thing&lt;/em&gt; and really get it&#xA;  done. When emergencies come up, think&#xA;  about whether you can handle it&#xA;  yourself before you delegate it to a&#xA;  programmer who is deeply submersed in&#xA;  a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To eliminate your conflicts between Scrum/Agile and Critical Chain:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Critical Chain hinges on the fact that you don't have enough time to&#xA;  complete the work (eg. they give you 2&#xA;  days to complete 4 days worth of&#xA;  work). In Agile, if stories are not&#xA;  complete, they're simply cancelled or&#xA;  carried forward into the next sprint.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This conflict can be solved if you assume the fact that a 4-days-task actually &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; a 2-days-task. The real work is done in less time than dimensioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law&quot;&gt;Parkinson's Law&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Stock-Sanford Corollary to&#xA;  Parkinson's Law reads, &quot;If you wait&#xA;  until the last minute, it only takes a&#xA;  minute to do.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course some tasks will take more time than expected, but Critical Chain assumes half tasks finish early and half tasks finish late.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Critical Chain uses a buffer at the end of the project. (If your&#xA;  project schedule is eight weeks, they&#xA;  give you four weeks to do the work,&#xA;  and a four-week buffer at the end of&#xA;  the project.) In agile, you only have&#xA;  sprints (iterations) when you have&#xA;  work to do.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The eliminate this conflict you will have to set your sprint in a way that you &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; have work to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the reduced time to finish the tasks as stated on first conflict much more tasks will  fill the sprint-backlog. The overall time for project completion will reduce, than set it as the ideal time for project duration and let the remaining time as buffer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very important to set priorities on tasks, like &lt;code&gt;must do&lt;/code&gt; (justification needed if not completed) and &lt;code&gt;should do&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;could do&lt;/code&gt; (justification not needed if not completed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Basically, you will run a pragmatic Scrum methodology under Critical Chain's eyes.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="105" LastEditorUserId="105" LastEditDate="2011-02-23T18:53:34.433" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T18:53:34.433" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="605" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="606" CreationDate="2011-02-23T18:39:46.217" Score="14" ViewCount="3737" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does it makes sense to adjust Sprint duration during the project?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Consider a 10 months project for a web portal, requirements are a little obscure right now, so I expect that at the beginning (first and maybe second month) there will be much more analysis and background/infrastructure implementation than following months. So does it make sense to start first two sprint of 4 weeks and then shorten them to 2 weeks when development speed will raise and will be possible to deliver quickly portal functionality? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T19:43:50.853" Title="Can Scrum Sprint duration change from 4 weeks to 2 weeks during the project?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="605" CreationDate="2011-02-23T18:51:04.060" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great question.  Start with your 4 weeks (or whatever you decided to use first).  Then make sure to have a Retrospective at the end of each Sprint.  If during the Retrospective the team thinks that 2 weeks would be better (for example, so that you can get faster feedback on new features), the team can decide to change Sprint duration for the next Sprint.  Then you should analyze in the &lt;em&gt;next&lt;/em&gt; Retrospective whether that was a more effective choice for your sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a bit concerned by your statement that the first few sprints would only include analysis and infrastructure implementation.  This is counter to Scrum, where you start delivering features in the first Sprint, doing only as much analysis and infrastructure as are needed to support those first features.  Did you have a specific reason for doing it this way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="347" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T18:51:04.060" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="584" CreationDate="2011-02-23T19:25:40.550" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on your comment to Pawel, sounds like you could benefit from better task management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use a tool that integrates tasks with project plans/resources, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also tools that integrate tasks with bug fixes and source control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T19:25:40.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-02-23T20:08:14.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Worth mention on decision making and understanding irrational decisions, is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.swaybook.com/preview.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the book Sway&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's focused on a few common causes of irrational behavior, and bad decision making.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, why the chief of safety for an airline would take off without authorization, killing everyone. It explains &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; that sort of thing happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="213" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T20:08:14.187" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-23T20:08:14.187" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="588" CreationDate="2011-02-23T20:18:32.897" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bring pizza or cookies to the kickoff/first meeting.  Talk about the culture, the takeover, and other elephants in the room.  Try to find common ground and common goals.  If you can accomplish that in the first meeting you've accomplished a lot.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If nothing else, tell them this will look good on your resume, too. Let them know you didn't personally commit the takeover, etc.  In other words, you need to establish a trusted relationship before you can expect cooperation.  It will take time - but people come around quickly in these situations, especially in bad economic times.&#xA;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="113" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T20:18:32.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="605" CreationDate="2011-02-23T20:47:19.223" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know teams which has their sprint length floating so that's not an issue to change sprint length over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main value you get from keeping the sprints equally-sized is you can measure how much work the team can do over the next chunk of time. If you change sprint length during the project it will be more difficult to estimate velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides in Scrum sprint length determines frequency of planning meetings, demos and retrospectives. If the team is new to Scrum I'd probably go for shorter iterations from the beginning - you don't have to treat as the rule that you have to deliver presentable demo after each sprint, but the more frequently you meet to improve your process (retrospective!) the faster you'll be adjusting your method to the optimal one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: if you have rather experienced team and measuring velocity isn't crucial I wouldn't object changing sprint during the project. However if the team isn't that experienced (so you prepare for frequent process adjustments) or learning how fast you can run is important I'd prefer to start with 2-week-long sprints on the beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-02-25T10:54:48.393" LastActivityDate="2011-02-25T10:54:48.393" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="611" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-23T23:10:07.003" Score="47" ViewCount="66372" Body="&lt;p&gt;What techniques I could use after I discover that one of my team members keep agreeing on time lines, but he does not communicate he will not meet those dates until the 11th hour (I mean just before the day).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I ask him about his repeated behavior, I get a reply in the lines of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have been cc:ing you in every email&#xA;  of all my other tasks, so I assumed you&#xA;  knew the task xyz was getting delayed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other members of the team are have similar experience with this individual.  The functional manager of this team member is also trying to change the behavior, but is still impacting parts of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-09-19T13:24:35.717" LastActivityDate="2015-03-22T15:04:19.320" Title="How to deal with a team member who keeps missing deadlines?" Tags="&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;timeline&gt;&lt;deadline&gt;" AnswerCount="19" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="223" CreationDate="2011-02-23T23:35:15.350" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We only have three knobs we can adjust; scope, resources, timeline. Adjust one or more to deliver what the customer needs, wants, expects. My experience is that usually all three knobs have to be adjusted as a project progresses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="438" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T23:35:15.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="611" CreationDate="2011-02-23T23:42:01.690" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd approach the issue from two sides:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Measuring progress. If you set a big task which is either done or not the only thing you can get is information whether it is done or not. Zero or one. However if you, or discussed person, split the task to a set of smaller pieces of work you can more easily tell where you are - we have 3 out of 12 done which means that you're ahead/behind/on target according to the schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can do this as well as asking for updates of percent complete but then you are more likely to hear that you're going with the plan from 0 to 90% and then everything is stuck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also to avoid waiting to the last moment for the information you're not getting what you expected set a more frequent update schedule. You want to hear current status every n hours/days/whatever. You may need to remind the person to deliver their status update, but hopefully they can learn to do this. If not you have a problem somewhere else as well (with the basic work organization of the discussed team member).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Clearly setting expectations. This is something we often forget about. We don't tell what exactly we do expect from team members. In other words if we don't tell we need to hear about the slip at the very minute you're falling behind the schedule, we shouldn't expect everyone would willingly come to tell us about that. If we don't tell we need regular status updates in specific time slots, we hardly get any. If we don't clearly explain that being CCed on email doesn't mean we are able to decide whether we are on time or not, people may assume that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever method we choose in point 1. we should clearly explain what we expect or request from the team member (or team members). Without that we can address the issue to our communication problems and not discussed person's bad self-organization and poor communication.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="179" LastEditDate="2011-04-14T06:12:26.340" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T06:12:26.340" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="611" CreationDate="2011-02-23T23:47:06.737" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find if I am working with someone like this that I need to leave no room for doubt. You have to become pro-active. Make a point of asking for updates, follow up and make sure you actually get the updates.  Gently but firmly insist that this person provide you with the detail you need for the project to be successful. You need to make sure there is no wiggle room, if you do leave wiggle room it sounds like this person will wiggle out of his commitment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found in dealing with folks like that that you don't need to do this for too long before they understand they will need to be responsive to you and they start at a minimum communicating more normally. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One word of caution... don't let this become personal. Keep it about the project, never about you and never about the other person. If this person turns it around you want to be part of the team that helped him/her turn it around. If he/she doesn't turn it around chances are good this person will be losing their job - either way you want all your actions to be professional. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="438" LastActivityDate="2011-02-23T23:47:06.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="611" CreationDate="2011-02-24T00:04:04.783" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Insist on a weekly report.  This person should learn to summarize rather than just cc: emails. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you aren't going that way, either talk to him after getting emails that report problems or if his emails aren't reporting it, explain that to him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="158" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T00:04:04.783" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="616" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-02-24T00:05:07.793" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/About-Us.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMI self-definition&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Project Management Institute is the world's leading not-for-profit&#xA;  professional membership association for the project, program and&#xA;  portfolio management profession. Founded in 1969, PMI delivers value&#xA;  for more than 2.9 million professionals working in nearly every&#xA;  country in the world through global advocacy, collaboration, education&#xA;  and research. PMI advances careers, improves organizational success&#xA;  and further matures the profession of project management through its&#xA;  globally recognized standards, certifications, resources, tools,&#xA;  academic research, publications, professional development courses, and&#xA;  networking opportunities. As part of the PMI family, Human Systems&#xA;  International (HSI) provides organizational assessment and&#xA;  benchmarking services to leading businesses and government, while&#xA;  ProjectManagement.com and ProjectsAtWork.com create online global&#xA;  communities that deliver more resources, better tools, larger networks&#xA;  and broader perspectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;See also&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/pmbok&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;pmbok&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;pmbok&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/pmp&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;pmp&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;pmp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Links&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/default.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki article about PMI&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Management_Institute&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMI Home Page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-02T19:50:45.853" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T19:50:45.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="617" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-02-24T00:05:07.793" Score="0" Body="For questions about PMI (Project Management Institute). PMI is a US not-for-profit professional organization for project management. Well known as publisher of PMBOK Guide and provider of PMP certification." OwnerUserId="158" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-02T19:48:55.053" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T19:48:55.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="611" CreationDate="2011-02-24T00:20:31.347" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unlikely you'll ever change this person's behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Build in the expected variance into your schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Move them out of the critical path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T00:20:31.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="484" CreationDate="2011-02-24T01:54:02.897" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a common one.  (full disclosure, I'm founder of a company who's products are intended to help solve the cross-functional team friction problem).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most likely the issue isn't your co-worker, really.  It's more likely that the different parts of the larger team are not focused on the same goals &amp;amp; priorities.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.noeltichy.com/umprog.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;smart guy&lt;/a&gt; once said that ~80% of the friction in teams is due to unclear goals vs. a very small fraction due to intractable interpersonal crap.  He pointed out that conflict tends to come from Goals, Roles, Processes, and Interpersonal &quot;stuff&quot; in roughly that order. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What to do?  Your guy's manager's solution &quot;you are all professionals&quot; doesn't get at the core issue.  But escalating the immediate problem is just going to get people's backs up -- pretty naturally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some ideas: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://marketplace.pmi.org/Pages/ProductDetail.aspx?GMProduct=00101095501&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMBOK&lt;/a&gt; (the American National Standard for project management) would point you in the direction of the project charter.  See if you have one.  If the team has a charter use that to focus people's attention.  Since you are referring to the authority your position will be strong.  If you have questions about this and don't have a PMBOK, happy to answer them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Point out to the &quot;all professionals&quot; manager that there is a mis-alignment that has nothing to do with a lack of professionalism.  That's a managerial concern that can't reasonably be shucked off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you get traction to the idea that the team needs a re-baselining of it's goals, roles and responsibilities again see PMBOK for tools such as roles &amp;amp; responsibilities matrices. See if you can get an Organizational Work Breakdown Structure (also see PMBOK; a WBS that is mapped to groups of people) from someone so you can match against the matrices.  What you're trying to do is make the roles &amp;amp; responsibilities concrete.  Making things clear is half the battle -- and saying that they are not yet clear is much easier for people to hear than if you just say, in effect, so and so is a bozo.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you get the &quot;you're asking for so much new work&quot; complaint point out that this is basic stuff that &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; in some form already exist in someone's inbox or a shared drive or there wouldn't be a cross functional team to begin with.  So it's not new work, just needs to be reviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you get much further I would seriously suggest finding a project management information system that includes roles, goals, responsibilities, requirements and decision-making in its information model.  Something that can keep your team aligned and focused on a day to day basis. That way you can get past today's issue and also not get stuck again tomorrow.  (As I said at the top, on this point, I'm biased...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="442" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T01:54:02.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="588" CreationDate="2011-02-24T03:32:42.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have the right question. It's really important for the other company's employees to feel valued because you are about to enter a period of confusion. My experience is in merging two banking platforms. We found that often we would be saying the same words but completely missing the fact that we meant different things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest you look at some of the great publications about forming teams. Don't dwell on what has been, look forward to what can be. If you use some communication icebreakers you'll find people are quite willing to get involved. &#xA;good luck &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T03:32:42.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="611" CreationDate="2011-02-24T08:41:26.167" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When I ask him about his repeated behavior, I get a reply in the lines of: ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is what are you doing next? What are the consequences for this particular person, for you, for your project? I assume that almost nothing happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to solve this situation get back to &lt;strong&gt;Human Resource Plan&lt;/strong&gt;, and analyze, whether:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;motivation is clearly defined for every team member&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;rewards and penalties are objective and explicit&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;everybody agreed on this plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T08:41:26.167" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="622" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="628" CreationDate="2011-02-24T09:06:48.570" Score="16" ViewCount="8193" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am aware that Cumulative Flow Diagrams are the norm for a Kanban / swimlane-style system, but I found I derived no useful information from them. I was hoping to see some patterns evolving, but I wasn't getting any more information than I was watching cards flow along the board. I would hope it would red-flag places where bottlenecks were occurring and give me clues where I could be optimising the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there other charts or graphs that are employed for Kanban system that work really well to highlight issues?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="448" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-02-24T11:16:46.937" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T14:29:11.770" Title="Useful charts for a Kanban system" Tags="&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="623" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-24T10:06:43.273" Score="6" ViewCount="2356" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new to Project management. My current position is helping to project manage a small software team. I have been giving the opportunity to attend the PRINCE2 course which from my reading I would be looking to use to combine with Agile methodologies. Will this approach work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="449" LastActivityDate="2015-03-16T04:04:49.067" Title="How to approach project management using both Agile and Prince2?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="605" CreationDate="2011-02-24T10:38:57.337" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, you can adjust the duration of the sprint since your team see the benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Retrospective is the key to keep the process good and efficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See this question about &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/8/strict-or-pragmatic-scrum&quot;&gt;Strict or Pragmatic Scrum&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ashes999 says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum and Agile are loosely-defined. Every company implements it differently depending on how much they can &quot;tolerate.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also look at this question about &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/344/improving-your-scrum-sprint&quot;&gt;Improving your Scrum Sprint!&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="105" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T10:38:57.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="623" CreationDate="2011-02-24T10:41:15.847" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;PRINCE2 is a rather formal methodology, while Agile is an opposite to formality. In order to combine them you should ask yourself - why are you doing this? What is the purpose of this combination?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest to use Agile since you're managing a small team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Btw, this phrase is not valid: &quot;project manage a team&quot;. You can &quot;project manage a project&quot; or &quot;manage a team&quot;. Project is something that is bounded in time and scope. While &quot;team&quot; is a process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T10:41:15.847" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="623" CreationDate="2011-02-24T10:48:18.853" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Naturally. Agile methods like Scrum can be perfectly applied as the process for &quot;managing product delivery&quot; (Prince2 process group).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T10:48:18.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="623" CreationDate="2011-02-24T11:23:38.277" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that there is a conflict between the formality and requirements-driven nature of Prince2 and the just-in-time, flexible and iterative nature of Agile. Who wants you to attend the Prince2 course? Is a course available instead that would help with your understanding and implementation of Agile? Does the company you work for favour one approach above the other for their own business reasons?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile and Prince2 are generally used to manage different sorts of projects: in my experience agile is for fast results-driven market-critical projects where many changes and flexibility are paramount, whereas Prince2 is more often used for projects that need a high level of accountability and paper-trails for all decisions and many stakeholder sign-off and overview procedures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="424" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T11:23:38.277" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="622" CreationDate="2011-02-24T11:42:32.480" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Kanban you get most information from the board itself and data you can scrap from it. CFD can also deliver some useful information. Usually the board + some data analysis (Excel sheet) + CFD is enough to get all the information you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Kanban board&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing you mention are bottlenecks. You should find them easily on the board. As a rule of thumb - if you keep hitting limits on the board it probably means you either set your limits too tight or there's something wrong with the way people work, e.g. they start too many new tasks without finishing the old ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing are tasks which have been hanging on the board too long. If you write down starting date on a sticky note you can easily see how long the task is under development. Then it takes a quick analysis to decide whether there is some problem with the task or simply it was too big, and you should have split it to a few other at the beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you have blockers. The easiest trick to make them visible is to mark cards which are blocked with some visual, e.g. small sticky note. With this approach you should instantly see how many tasks are blocked at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also you can mark who is working on the task at the moment, e.g. with color pins or color magnets, which gives you a clue who may be possibly overwhelmed with tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use priority lane you can note whether there is some emergency down the line. It is when there is anything on the priority lane.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Data from the board&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another useful thing which isn't instantly visible on the board is the information about estimates and real development times. If you want to use estimates (many Kanban teams don't) put them on cards. Then note starting time and ending time to get how much time it really took. Then it's enough to put the data into an Excel sheet and you can build over that pretty good estimates to new systems when you need them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also you can measure team throughput, e.g. how many features team can complete in given time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can learn how the team become more fluent (if they do) and how you get better at splitting tasks from the sheet as well. It's enough to check how cycle time changed over time and analyze specific cases, e.g. we came from 30 to 12 days in cycle time but the main reasons was we started splitting work to smaller features and not because we got that better in finishing fast.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cumulative Flow Diagram&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cumulative Flow Diagram can be very useful as long as you know how to read it. CFD shows how cycle/lead has improved over time, how big backlog has been over time, how often we release new versions etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CFD doesn't show specific numbers, Excel sheet works way better here, but is way more useful to show trends, e.g. cycle time becomes shorter, we keep release frequency at stable rate and our backlog is at steady size since we're constantly getting new features to build.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A longer description of how CFD works and what kind of interesting stuff we can learn from it &lt;a href=&quot;http://brodzinski.com/2013/07/cumulative-flow-diagram.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;can be found here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.paulklipp.com/images/cfd.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Paul Klipp's picture&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; which describes what you can see on CFD:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TVIbf.png&quot; alt=&quot;Paul Klipp&amp;#39;s picture of Kanban CFD&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2014-01-28T14:29:11.770" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T14:29:11.770" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="629" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="632" CreationDate="2011-02-24T12:28:24.483" Score="5" ViewCount="4952" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the suggested approach to sprints organization during the tests phase? Lets assume that we have finished development sprints, internal tests (analysts &amp;amp; developers) are over. Application is deployed on test environment for user acceptance tests. Those tests are covered by business users of the application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should we do now?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do something else waiting for users&#xA;bugs for the next sprint?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plan the sprint for period of time without any issues and solve the bugs as they come?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start the next sprint, what to do with bugs that are coming?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="455" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-10-31T13:21:02.370" LastActivityDate="2018-10-31T13:21:02.370" Title="How to organize sprints during the user acceptance tests phase?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="629" CreationDate="2011-02-24T12:43:27.740" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the environment you're describing, the ideal way would be to deliver the functionality in small increments. Every sprint should introduce new functionality or enhanced functionality for the users to test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should not wait until the whole development phase is over and only then start the user testing. It kind of missing the point of iterative development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the company I'm working for, we have development teams (also responsible for the functional testing) and then we have a solution testing team. The development teams deliver content in sprints. The solution level testing team has subsequent sprints in which they test the new features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way you can get feedback from the users in an early stage, in which you can still make changes and focus on the most important features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="44" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T12:43:27.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="631" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="633" CreationDate="2011-02-24T13:05:15.060" Score="26" ViewCount="4120" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’m new to project management and it’s not a fulltime job; in other words a programmer turned project manager, still do some coding :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was following this site’s proposal from the beginning, and posted few example questions .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This one question was important to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the team select skill only gained from experience? Or will there is other ways to select right person for right task?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally I will get a resource pool, from graduate interns to highly skilled and experienced programmers. Sometime we have to manage the resource crunch with low experienced persons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My take on team selection - There will be at least one person who can do the task correctly and within time, success of PM is to find that right person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to hear from experienced persons, how they select their team. I guess, team selection has been described in every PM book; especially my favourite “Software Project Survival Guide” &amp;amp; “Mythical Man Month”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="151" LastEditorUserId="151" LastEditDate="2011-03-11T06:12:55.630" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T06:05:05.607" Title="As a PM, How do you select your project team members?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="629" CreationDate="2011-02-24T13:18:34.913" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the ideal situation you should deploy new version after each sprint when you were building application so testing phase would be spread over the longer period of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that I understand there are clients who expect acceptance testing phase done at the end, after delivery of the whole functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this situation I consider fixing bugs has higher priority than developing new features. You have a few options here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start a new sprint, plan for smaller velocity than typical. For the first sprint you can follow you gut feeling to set expected velocity. Then you fix bugs as they come which affects negatively how much new work you can do. This way you should be able to fix bugs and do some new work. However you risk a lot of context switching, as people will drop working on new tasks to fix old bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start a new sprint but take away the part of the team as maintenance team for the old project. This way you have a standard sprint, although with smaller group of people, and a few others who should deal with submitted bugs. You can adjust the number of people in both groups after each sprint, depending on bug-related workload. Velocity of the team working on new features will be floating but you limit context-switching. However you risk frustration of people dealing with bugs as they'll be dealing with bugs made by themselves and those made by others, who currently work on new cool tasks. It's a good idea to mix people among those teams after each sprint if possible.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Set bug-fixing happy hours/days - time of day/week when everyone is dealing with bugs. Other than that they're building new features. You can adjust length of happy hours to amount of work you have with bug fixing. Again, you risk here that people will be fixing code authored by others, especially when someone build pretty low-quality code with a lot of bugs. However it introduce one for all, all for one kind of attitude in the team which usually works fine.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If there's enough bug fixing to fill all days for the whole team I'd wait with launching new sprint until there's at least someone who can deal with new tasks, no matter which method you choose. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T13:18:34.913" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="631" CreationDate="2011-02-24T13:43:51.827" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, if you're free to select people who will be working on your project you're pretty lucky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good team is a mixture of characters and a mixture of skills and this is general advice you should follow. Unfortunately we often forget about it and fall into one of traps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Look only for rock stars. Definitely we get a bunch of great specialist but probably we also have a few people with strong, and rough, characters which can introduce some conflicts within the team. Usually it's better to have people with different experience both in terms of how much experience they have and where they got it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Look only for characters we like. There are some people who we get on well with. Those who we likely to go for a beer or even become friends. However project is not a party, so don't make it key criteria when you choose people. Good character doesn't get the job done. Skills and engagement do. Even if we don't specifically like someone they can still be very good specialist which could help us vastly in a project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Look for people who cover your weak sides. This is often a mistake of team managers - they don't want to have in the team people better than themselves. Actually they should aim for the opposite. If the manager is the most skilled person in the team it is likely a team of mediocre performers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Choose people only by their skills and not by their characters. There are people who, for whatever reason, totally piss us off. It's not that we don't get on very well. We are annoyed by a sole fact we hear them talking. Well, adding this kind of person to the team is a sure shot way to add some unnecessary problems. Especially if we talk about person who pisses off one of project leaders. It's better to cover skill gap some other way.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also see my post on traits which I look for whenever I'm going to work with someone: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2011/02/why-i-want-to-work-with-you.html&quot;&gt;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2011/02/why-i-want-to-work-with-you.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T13:43:51.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="611" CreationDate="2011-02-24T14:00:40.470" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had similar experiences in the past. A specific example was a developer that was constantly late with his deliveries. One of the differences from your case is that I directly managed that developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I have seen an improvement in my ability to get a sense of when his tasks were behind schedule when we moved to using SCRUM. In planning he was expected to create tasks that were up to 12 hours of effort. On the daily stand-up meetings he needed to talk about tasks he completed and his plan going forward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moving to SCRUM did not transform him into a developer that is constantly delivering on schedule but at least the team and the project knew when he was lagging behind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="44" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T14:00:40.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="571" CreationDate="2011-02-24T14:41:55.200" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest the department focus on process -- especially its goals for the process -- before worrying about which tool and/or the number of tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For e.g. issues like: &#xA;    -- what information are you trying to capture?&#xA;    -- how will the information be combined and referenced over time?&#xA;    -- what information management problems have been seen before?&#xA;    -- how many forms does the information need to be in for productive use?&#xA;    -- what is the desired workflow?&#xA;    -- ABOVE ALL, what is the potential for a lack of clarity, and how damaging would that be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general you want a single version of the truth.  But that probably should be an &quot;eyes open&quot; goal.  Different tools have different capabilities -- for e.g. JIRA &amp;amp; MS Project combine well because they don't try to do the same things (generally) and don't need to share information (typically; caveat: JIRA is evolving pretty rapidly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will likely also find some specific times where this type of tool consideration is not unlike that of developers' tools: IDE may be up for grabs (in some shops) but the code repository is not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some team members' areas of responsibility may be clearly defined enough that it doesn't matter if a day to day to-do list is in Excel, a text file, a general purposes list tool (e.g. Basecamp) or a team management tool (e.g. my company's tools).  But for non-self directed work, or where there are dependencies or required collaboration, that heterogeneity isn't going to cut it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what people are independently responsible for is also a consideration; basically what is team information vs. what is more subject to the needs of individual productivity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, if everything else is uncertain or contested, go for the solution(s) that keep the relationships between team members and their work clear.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="442" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T14:41:55.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="350" CreationDate="2011-02-24T14:52:39.803" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm mainly just echoing the other comments, but what you are talking about is not a charter.  (At least in the PMBOK sense).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you are probably talking about a project plan. (Or perhaps a project operations definition document that is not closely associated with any one project).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that there are several steps to project management, each has deliverables and can be broken down to specific chunks of information.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chartering precedes project planning which includes, but is not identical to, project scheduling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As someone said above, the charter is about authorization, mission, scope, risks, key personnel, etc.  It is not a plan for how to execute.  Nor is it the schedule of the execution of that plan.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keeping the stages and deliverables clear is important to starting the project off with as much clarity as possible. And maintaining clarity is critical to team performance, agility, access to resources, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with the project!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="442" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T14:52:39.803" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="631" CreationDate="2011-02-24T15:09:34.753" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Paul in regards to what to look for focusing on &lt;em&gt;'Is the team select skill only gained from experience?'&lt;/em&gt; - it's 99% experience. You can give personality tests, do background checks, ask for work and anything else - but the ability to select a GREAT team comes over time and with the constant introspection of why you selected good and/or bad in the past. NEVER settle on team selection - the TEAM will make or break the project; end of story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="458" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-03T14:55:33.103" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T14:55:33.103" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="629" CreationDate="2011-02-24T15:18:33.080" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're doing Scrum, you would do the testing &lt;em&gt;during&lt;/em&gt; the Sprint where the development occurred.  Feature is developed, feature is tested, both are accounted for in the Sprint plan -- the feature isn't &quot;done&quot; until it's been both developed and tested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't complete the testing in the same Sprint, you probably aren't breaking down your stories into small enough chunks.  Worst case, test each story in the Sprint immediately after they are developed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a development &quot;phase&quot; (X number of Sprints), and a testing &quot;phase&quot;, (Y number of Sprints), that's Waterfall (or iterative waterfall).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="347" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T15:18:33.080" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="611" CreationDate="2011-02-24T15:20:37.873" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can't change the person - and in most cases it's not easy to 'move the person on'...(aka giving them the boot) - but if you can boot the person out after repeated issues, the impact of one poor performing individual on an entire team is often large.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To reduce risk, only assign the lowest priority work to them, assume they will fail to deliver on time and assume you will not know until after it's due.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep track of all of their deliveries with original est. delivery date and current and final- and post it on their cubicle wall.  Mark in RED all late deliveries.  Ask them to send you a email daily with each task's delivery date - updated daily.  This is basically raising the pain of late delivery...aka negative reinforcement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="458" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T15:20:37.873" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="641" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="649" CreationDate="2011-02-24T15:56:34.387" Score="15" ViewCount="2185" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently using a Google Spreadsheet to manage my product backlog. It has a list of stories, each with an identifier, feature it belongs to, story points, and the sprint that it's assigned to. It works well for most of my small projects; I simply add a collection of stories, estimate the work, carve off groups for sprints, and the project gets done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are two major failings that I can't seem to surmount; these are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can I effectively manage priorities within and across features?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do I indicate dependencies between stories?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a preamble, &lt;strong&gt;I cannot move to any other project management tool, nor build my own.&lt;/strong&gt; I tried both of these solutions; nothing works the way that I need it. (For example, I use the historical average velocity to plan new sprints.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Issue #1: Managing Priorities.&lt;/strong&gt; At the beginning of the project, I add dozens of stories, prioritize them amongst each other, and rank them with a priority number. However, since I need completed stories for historical purposes, I can't just sort by priority to find the next most important stories; I see a lot of clutter. I need to go through, checking the status of each story, and picking out the unfinished ones. Very tedious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make it worse, I add new stories in the middle, and some of them are high priority; but then, it becomes that every story is relative to every other story -- otherwise, I get a chunk of done, super-high-priority stories at the top that I always have to look at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried removing the priority number entirely and just shuffling stories; this seems to work a bit better, but doesn't let me easily view dependencies between stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Issue #2: Managing Dependencies&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I mentioned that I use a priority number; this allows me to implicitly code dependencies. if story A (with priority N) must be done before story B, I put story B's priority as N-1 or N-2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has several problems; first, if I split off work, I need to re-prioritize everything. Even if I use N-10 or N-100 instead, it still means a lot of manual renumbering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plus, I prefer not to use a priority number; but this makes it impossible to see which stories can be done in parallel, and which depend on each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I'm hoping there are good solutions to these.&lt;/strong&gt; These are significant problems, and I'm keeping my scope very limited right now to work around them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-10-31T13:20:48.463" LastActivityDate="2018-10-31T13:20:48.463" Title="Using Spreadsheet for Backlog - Dependencies and Priority" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="642" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-24T16:23:14.713" Score="3" ViewCount="253" Body="&lt;p&gt;Background:&#xA;We have long running product development project, which consists of different features. &#xA;The development team consists of 15 developers and 5 QA engineers. &#xA;We setup releases each 5-7 month.&#xA;Each release we either add new features or enhance/existing features. &#xA;Each release consists of 6-8 development sprints (3 weeks each) and 2-3 pure stabilization/bug fix sprints. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Issue:&#xA;Some of features take several months and more to complete development to be at minimum level of deliverable or production ready stage. We do split them into small tasks and progress developing them in each sprint, but it ready for first demo only after 2-4 sprints and ready for QA/production after 5-8 sprints. Those features are complex and generally consist of developing new or enhance infrastructure, core/services, business logic, UI, Web and then integration in monitoring, reporting, printing, marketing and etc. Before these all done the feature cannot be considered as done (production ready). On the other hand in same release we have small features or enhancement which are much smaller and can be production ready in single sprint or two... Those long running features prevent from us to release product in smaller chunks since they takes much more sprints to be production ready rather the others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question:&#xA;Any idea/advice what could be better approach if we would like to make our releases shorter? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks,&#xA;Pavel&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="463" LastActivityDate="2011-03-05T15:47:13.040" Title="Long running product development project" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="643" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-02-24T16:25:21.840" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-02-24T16:25:21.840" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T16:25:21.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="644" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-02-24T16:25:21.840" Score="0" Body="This tag is for questions specific to timelines.  See other tags for GANTT and scheduling." OwnerUserId="158" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2011-02-26T18:15:37.900" LastActivityDate="2011-02-26T18:15:37.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="642" CreationDate="2011-02-24T16:53:44.633" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I think is happening, you are calling sprints to the development effort then you have &quot;sprints&quot; for QA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you are using a cascade model instead a incremental model. I would try to dissect the tasks in backlog to the minimum size and in each sprint integrate QA, so you don´t wait until the sprint 5 to 8 to testing and go back with the 2-3 weeks or sprints for stabilization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of each sprint, you should have working histories developed and tested, then with a Configuration Management Strategy you can deploy those new or reworked functionality to the stating environment and after UAT, you can deploy to the live system, so the system have new functionality every sprint, and to at the end of the development and testing &quot;sprints&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you are misunderstanding the &quot;sprint&quot; and SCRUM life-cycle with the traditional life-cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="267" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T16:53:44.633" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="642" CreationDate="2011-02-24T18:23:16.217" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer here may be a good tool. I don't know what kind of solution you use for version control but I think moving to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_Version_Control_System&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Distributed Version Control System&lt;/a&gt; might help. The main change of the mindset with using DVCS is you don't merge everything into one trunk, which you have to stabilize before pushing into production, but you can add different features into one release basing on distributed code base.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many Kanban teams face the same issue, although in a smaller scale and DVCS proved to be pretty good solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE (based on comment): With DVCS you change the mindset regarding working with trunks/branches. Read &lt;a href=&quot;http://joelonsoftware.com/items/2010/03/17.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Joel Spolsky's introduction to DVCS&lt;/a&gt;. Also you may check &lt;a href=&quot;http://hginit.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Joel's Mercurial tutorial&lt;/a&gt; to get familiar with DVCS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-03-05T15:47:13.040" LastActivityDate="2011-03-05T15:47:13.040" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="642" CreationDate="2011-02-24T18:28:17.960" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that you the problem is that the scope is not elaborated properly. There are 15 developers, 5 testers and no analysts? Who is working with the scope documentation/analysis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need someone at this &quot;&lt;strong&gt;system analysis&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; role. You need this person to break down the scope to much smaller chunks than now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T18:28:17.960" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="631" CreationDate="2011-02-24T18:34:49.543" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;Loyalty to Project Goals&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; is much more important than skills, experience, education, or anything else. I would strongly recommend paying attention to this parameter during team building.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T18:34:49.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="641" CreationDate="2011-02-24T19:25:53.317" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;For what I get from your first point, managing priorities, your actual problem is that done sprints clutter your spreadsheet.  So why you don't just add a &quot;done&quot; column and sort with 2 columns, &quot;priority&quot; and &quot;done&quot;.  Google Spreadsheets lets you do just that!  Your columns just have to be adjacent:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select your 2 columns with the mouse&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go in Tools-&gt;Sort...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click on &quot;add another sort option&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choose the right columns and the right sorting direction, and you're done!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concerning your second issue, I can imagine a solution, but it's a bit more complicated.  You need to have a column with an ID for each sprint and a dependency column.  If each sprint depends only on one single other sprint, it's not too complicated:  The priority field becomes a formula, calculated with the priority from the task on which depends the current sprint, minus an offset, always the same or stored in another colulmn.  If your sprints can depend on more than one other sprint, it's also doable, but the formula becomes really more complicated:  Choose the sprint from which the current sprint depends, with the biggest priority or something like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-03-04T04:07:57.947" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T04:07:57.947" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="343" CreationDate="2011-02-24T20:31:59.563" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, the buffer-concept works quite well with an agile development method like scrum. I'm not so sure about cutting estimates in half though, but we also apply something similar by using &lt;strong&gt;'most likely' - 'worst case'&lt;/strong&gt; estimates. Here's how we do it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First we do proper project management by starting with a well designed Work Breakdown Structure (&lt;strong&gt;WBS&lt;/strong&gt;) up till work package level. The list of work packages is our product backlog. These work packages are then estimated with a 'Most Likely' - 'Worst Case' range.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our 'budget' is the sum of the 'Most Likely' estimates.&#xA;The 'buffer' is calculated as the sum of averages - the sum of most likely. Some use 2 x standard deviations, as explained in the Cohn book recommended by Marcie (see chapter 17 Buffering Plans for Uncertainty).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to execution: lett's say that according to our team's capacity we can finish the project in 6 sprints (according to the most likely estimates) and our '&lt;strong&gt;buffer'&lt;/strong&gt; budget is good for another 2 sprints. Makes a total of 8 sprints to finish the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually we split up our projects into several technical phases (or more formal releases); each such a phase gets its own buffer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T20:31:59.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9" CreationDate="2011-02-24T20:48:10.320" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nobody has mentioned it yet (or I read over it), but apart from the risk itself the most important is the &lt;strong&gt;risk owner&lt;/strong&gt;. Who is doing something about it? The PM shouldn't be the only watchdog on a project :-), nor should risk management only be practised by PM's! On the contrary, too many risks assigned to the PM is a sure sign of trouble. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T20:48:10.320" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="631" CreationDate="2011-02-24T21:38:27.770" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Balance is key. You want your share of highly skilled and seasoned experts on the team, but if you're also a functional manager with the responsibility of developing staff, it's a good idea to mix in some young talent. Generally speaking, I like to hire for attitude and train for skill -- which is not to discount intelligence and competence. Some of my best performers had the least amount of experience and tenure in the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Select people who are smarter than you. If you're a good PM, they'll gladly help make you look better (if you're a bad PM, they'll steal your lunch.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Select people with diverse opinions who can challenge each other in a respectful and professional manner. This will help produce some really creative solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T21:38:27.770" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="629" CreationDate="2011-02-24T22:11:06.793" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been involved in user acceptance testing while using scrum. Our UAT cycles were defined by contract and outside our span of control. We usually had 3 days of UAT followed by 2 of days for bug fixes, each product release would have at least three of these UAT cycles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So our team broke the entire UAT period - about two weeks into several mini-sprints. Not strictly in the scrum framework but that's the beauty of scrum, you can and should adapt it to your environment. When the customer had the product and environment locked up for testing we would code bug fixes. When the environment was released back to us for bug fixes we would deploy the bug fixes from the prior bug fix mini-sprint and perform environmental testing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We found that we usually had some spare cycles during UAT if we had done our jobs well and there were not a lot of bugs. We used this time for any neglected housekeeping tasks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="438" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T22:11:06.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="641" CreationDate="2011-02-24T22:33:12.740" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Group dependent stories into buckets (&quot;projects&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prioritize the buckets/projects as a first filter, then prioritize stories within as a second filter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another idea is to create a network diagram /flow chart of the stories and the dependencies and use different colors of the nodes for priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T22:33:12.740" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="642" CreationDate="2011-02-24T22:37:56.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd start by taking a look at the critical path of your delivery cycle.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Map it out with the different durations of each phase then see where you can condense or better sequence your activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T22:37:56.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="631" CreationDate="2011-02-24T22:40:38.033" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make sure you find people that you can communicate with, whose opinions you believe you can trust and who are able to grow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-24T22:40:38.033" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="641" CreationDate="2011-02-25T04:04:37.460" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally try not to spend too much time prioritizing everything.  My roadmap is a living, breathing document that is in a constant state of flux.  If an opportunity comes up, we quickly assess the situation and put resources on the problem if the likelihood is high that we can take advantage of the opportunity and also build a product that can be marketed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we miss the opportunity with client X, then we can fallback and market it to other clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you only prioritize the items that will be tackled in the next few sprints, then you increase your flexibility and free up your time to focus on other aspects of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The market can sometimes change so much that priority item #100 could slip into obscurity, and the time you spent prioritizing that is time you can't get back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-02-25T04:04:37.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="631" CreationDate="2011-02-25T05:35:38.170" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it makes sense to think short and long term if you get to put your team together. You've had the advice to look for a mix of experts and novices. I would also add look out into the future and see who has the team work personality that will benefit you for future projects. Take those people and start mentoring and training them. &#xA;That said, most of us don't get to pick our teams. So the best skill you can develop is figuring out how to make any team work well together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-02-25T05:35:38.170" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="666" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="668" CreationDate="2011-02-25T08:06:59.160" Score="16" ViewCount="5235" Body="&lt;p&gt;Very often I hear people say &quot;Quality Assurance&quot; while talking about &quot;Testing&quot; and vise versa. According to my understanding these two terms mean different things. Could anyone explain the difference? Or they really mean the same?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastEditorUserId="2618" LastEditDate="2012-01-30T23:04:55.153" LastActivityDate="2018-12-12T10:03:31.290" Title="How Quality Assurance is related to Testing?" Tags="&lt;quality&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="666" CreationDate="2011-02-25T12:40:51.700" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;These two terms are often used interchangeably but this is wrong understanding of their meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&quot;&gt;Software Quality Assurance&lt;/a&gt; is a set of processes/practices which aim to assure high quality of the product. Testing is only one of these processes. QA consists, but is not limited to, design, architecture, coding standards, code reviews, testing, change management, configuration management, release management, audits, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_testing#Software_quality_assurance_.28SQA.29&quot;&gt;Testing&lt;/a&gt; sometimes is the only area where quality assurance is implemented consciously, and this is probably the source of wrong understanding of the terms. If you wanted to use other term for testing it would be quality verification, not quality assurance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: quality assurance is implemented all over the production process while testing is only one of stages of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-02-27T09:47:58.307" LastActivityDate="2011-02-27T09:47:58.307" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="666" CreationDate="2011-02-25T12:44:53.213" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;'&lt;strong&gt;Testing&lt;/strong&gt;' is an activity to assure the quality of your end result. Hence it is a subset of Quality Assurance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So '&lt;strong&gt;Quality Assurance&lt;/strong&gt;' are all activities you planned to to to make sure you deliver up to the quality standards you decided upon at the start of your project (= Quality Planning). Another activity could be peer code reviews for instance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quality Control finally = the act of monitoring the results off all those activities (like testing eg test coverage, # tests passed, # bugs, and initiating corrective actions when necessary (like bugfixing)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this is clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-02-25T12:44:53.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="631" CreationDate="2011-02-25T13:34:22.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your organisation does any sort of personality profiling or psychometric testing, you have the opportunity to get a blend of people within your team. Effective teams tend not to be full of clones, and certainly not clones of the leader! I've used Belbin profiling in the past to identify the mix within the team, and then tried to fill the gaps when recruiting new members - and it works! Rather than going into detail here, look it up online (for an overview try &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.belbin.com/rte.asp?id=8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.belbin.com/rte.asp?id=8&lt;/a&gt; ) or ask your HR department for help. Technical skills are important too, but the increase in performance from having a well-blended team is phenomenal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-02-25T13:34:22.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="623" CreationDate="2011-02-25T13:46:18.210" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;My view is that Stephan is right in his response. Agile methods address components of the overall project, but the project should be about delivering the business benefits, not just the technical components. Prince 2 ensures that you have the right governance in place (otherwise how do you know whether the project is still viable?), and the right people directing the project (otherwise how do you know that you are delivering what the organisation needs, especially in times of business change?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prince 2 can be applied with a light touch: that is one of the key principles of the methodology. And if the project requires money to be spent, I suggest that this requires proper governance of the company's resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To try to put my response into context: If you are delivering a series of components, then you are managing products (in Prince terminology), whereas the overall project will be delivering business change and business benefits, including the implementation, training, and most importantly, mechanisms for benefit realisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-02-25T13:46:18.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="666" CreationDate="2011-02-25T15:52:05.450" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Testing is something that is done to check the level of quality.  It &lt;em&gt;CAN&lt;/em&gt; be thought of as quality &lt;em&gt;assurance&lt;/em&gt; or quality checking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the process of assuring that a deliverable meets a certain quality standard is something that needs to be built-in directly into the project itself.  You can't make something quality at the end, you can just catch the defects and try to remediate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quality is planned  (like meeting requirements).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-25T15:52:05.450" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="666" CreationDate="2011-02-25T16:17:02.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Quality Control&lt;/code&gt; (aka testing) is checking the product after it comes off the production line.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Quality Assurance&lt;/code&gt; means making sure that the processes and inputs to the production line are correct so that only good products come off the line. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The slogan &quot;you can't test quality in&quot; can be demonstrated with the following manufacturing examples:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On assembly line A, every product coming off the line is 100% defective. If QC is doing their job correctly, every item off the line fails testing and nothing gets shipped. When QC screws up, they'll let defective products get shipped. QA would not sit at the end of the line and test everything, QA would shut the line down (since the line is producing 100% defective items) to find out what's wrong and fix it.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On assembly line B, every product coming off the line is 100% good. If QC is doing their job correctly, every product gets shipped. When QC messes up, they fail a good product. With everything working correctly, QA has nothing to do except to continue to monitor the situation. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastEditorUserId="7763" LastEditDate="2014-01-05T20:21:42.727" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T20:21:42.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="611" CreationDate="2011-02-25T16:49:10.870" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are a couple of possibilies, but you're the person on the spot, so I'll defer to you on which one it might be. I'll just throw these ideas out there for you to decide on:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The person is terrible at confrontation, and they agree to the deadlines because they are incapable of saying &quot;no.&quot; CC-ing you on all the emails might be one way of them trying to tell you they can't meet the deadline without the stressful/fear_provoking step of actually saying it out loud. This might be an assertiveness issue (which can be fixed) or it might be a cultural issue (and beyond what you can fix).  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The person is incompetent. They are over their head and don't know it. I've got a friend in this situation, and he can't face that he's long past his &quot;sell by&quot; date. He hasn't been keeping up with technology, but he has a high maintenance wife and so he can't afford to go back to school (he'd be 60 by the time he's done with a bachelors) nor can he transition to a less demanding career than programming. My friend is really good at blowing smoke up your butt and cc-ing you on everything. Since he is also wonderful with manager-speak, he comes across to managers as a highly competent person, but in scrums, his peers will quickly identify his lack of progress and call him on it. Ask this person's peers in confidence, because it is really hard to fake technical competence and very easy for managers to get a warm fuzzy feeling with all that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_smoke_enema&quot;&gt;smoke blowing up their butt&lt;/a&gt;. The cure for this is to let the incompetent &quot;work&quot; somewhere else.   &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The person is overworked. This might be because they can't prioritize, or they might have too many things to do. I'm reminded of the scene in Office Space where Peter mentions that he reports to 8 bosses.   &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The person cannot handle interruptions with any skill, so all interruptions derail them to the point that they can't meet any deadline. If you've read any of &lt;a href=&quot;http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?SevenHabitsOfHighlyEffectivePeople&quot;&gt;Covey&lt;/a&gt;'s books, you will have come across the &lt;a href=&quot;http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?FourQuadrants&quot;&gt;Four Quadrants&lt;/a&gt;. Many folks have trouble distinguishing between quadrant 1 (urgent &amp;amp;&amp;amp; important) and quadrant 3 (urgent &amp;amp;&amp;amp; !important). This gets called &quot;the tyrrany of the urgent.&quot; Resolutions of this situation will involve teaching them time management practices. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The person cannot prioritize things. As above. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They're (marginally) ADD and have trouble getting into &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?MentalStateCalledFlow&quot;&gt;flow&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. I have no recommendation for this one, and if you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; find a fix for it, let me know, because I'm in need of it too. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They are worse than terrible at estimating. &lt;em&gt;looks around guiltily&lt;/em&gt;... &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They are bored with what they are doing, and aren't working. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2011-02-25T16:49:10.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="611" CreationDate="2011-02-25T17:17:19.813" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does this person give to you his time estimate or you give this estimate? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What Is would do is to ask how much time do you think the task could take, compare with your estimate, average and ask commitment from the person because he is giving a confident estimate he have set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you ask for estimate, the person psychologically commits to the estimate, if you set it, they will feel it as pressure and the performance in some people can decrease under this circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other issue I can imply from the question is, he have more than one manager, what % of his time is he commit ed to each? Does the other manager interfere??&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="267" LastActivityDate="2011-02-25T17:17:19.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="611" CreationDate="2011-02-25T19:32:10.750" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;First thing should to point out the obvious, which seems not be for him: cc:ing email is not communicating. When he realize the deadline will not be made, he have to get to your office and say it. If you commonly use chat, it can be an acceptable alternative, but any asynchronous communication system simply can't! Because that information is too important to be delayed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second thing is: this person may be demotivated. He's not meeting the deadlines, and he's not giving a heck about it. So you should do something about his motivation if you want to help him to improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third: what's your reaction when you hear (early) that a deadline will not be met? For example, if you are yelling at people (I'm not accusing you of doing that), it's no wonder people are waiting as long as possible to give you the info, by a way not implying being near to you. But if he's the only one with that problem, it's probably not the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastEditorUserId="152" LastEditDate="2011-02-25T19:38:29.493" LastActivityDate="2011-02-25T19:38:29.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="677" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="682" CreationDate="2011-02-25T20:09:54.983" Score="42" ViewCount="25079" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're using scrum you should know that there is a clear difference between tasks and stories. A story is something that is valuable to user. A task is a step to produce that value to user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how shall we define a bug?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it something we should just fix? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it something that will put more value to user?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-01-27T10:50:18.270" LastActivityDate="2020-07-21T06:41:45.607" Title="Should bugs be treated as stories or as tasks?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;" AnswerCount="14" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="24" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="677" CreationDate="2011-02-25T20:45:53.513" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Something that puts more value is a feature or a story.  A bug is something wrong in a feature/story that has been completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="158" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2011-03-01T21:02:37.287" LastActivityDate="2011-03-01T21:02:37.287" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="677" CreationDate="2011-02-25T21:09:05.140" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A bug is bug per se and should be treated as a task. I see no difference, you can have a sprint with tasks of bug fixing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="267" LastEditorUserId="267" LastEditDate="2011-02-25T21:22:54.150" LastActivityDate="2011-02-25T21:22:54.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="631" CreationDate="2011-02-25T21:44:59.147" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another factor is to determine the life span of your team. A team that has a long lifespan will allow it to grow together, assuming that the team members stay in it for its duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team has only a short lifespan, time for it to grow is not a luxury you can have. So a successful team for either life span are made up of different team members. You may want to base your team on team members who have work together in the past on successful projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="480" LastActivityDate="2011-02-25T21:44:59.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="642" CreationDate="2011-02-25T23:29:42.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to agree with a lot of the comments here. You seem to be iterating a waterfall structure and confusing it with Agile. There is no problem with an iterating waterfall process, and I think you can find solutions in the way you initiate each cycle. If you think of each cycle as a new project, you may notice you've missed a bit of the methodology. If you don't have Analysts, you need to get some as yegor256 said. &#xA;Also this is a great environment for you to conduct lessons learned sessions and implement change suggestions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-02-25T23:29:42.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="677" CreationDate="2011-02-26T06:09:36.327" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use a modified version of Scrum with my teams in week long sprints.  The product backlog is ordered from top to bottom in order of importance.  The development team takes items off the top of the stack and works on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the feature isn't done at the end of the week, we talk about what will be done at the end of the next sprint, and work continues on the incomplete items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20141224102926/http://consultingblogs.emc.com/marksummers/archive/2008/10/15/managing-bugs-in-scrum.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Managing Bugs in Scrum&lt;/a&gt;, the author, Mark Summer, suggests treating bugs as the same as a partially implemented feature.  If you really think about it, that's exactly what a bug is.  It's a specific part of a feature that is not completely implemented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I currently have a bug list and a feature list.  I am considering merging them and treating the bugs as incomplete features, as suggested by the blog author.  This will greatly simplify the challenges I face in prioritizing tasks, and it will make it easier for developers to pull tasks off the product backlog stack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-21T06:41:45.607" LastActivityDate="2020-07-21T06:41:45.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="631" CreationDate="2011-02-26T06:46:56.167" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Select your team so all &lt;strong&gt;enjoy working with another and learn&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000072.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Joel Spolsky's Command and Conquer and the Herd of Coconuts&lt;/a&gt;. He describes why working for one company was boring while working for an other was much better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me as a non-manager a good working and learning environment is most important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="418" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-03T14:53:18.143" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T14:53:18.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="677" CreationDate="2011-02-26T07:07:40.510" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A bug is an output of &quot;Verification&quot; and an input to &quot;Project Planning&quot; and &quot;Requirements Development&quot; (according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model_Integration&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CMMI&lt;/a&gt;). Thus, in order to keep a transparent traceability between artifacts you should refer to your bugs when making changes to &quot;stories&quot; and planning new &quot;tasks&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-26T07:07:40.510" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="677" CreationDate="2011-02-26T07:20:31.473" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;My recommendation to teams I'm coaching is to separate bugs to two kinds:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The bugs/defects that are due to a failure in CURRENT work (e.g. story from current sprint) - for those I recommend tracking them as tasks on that story, and as blockers to that story being DONE/Accepted. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bugs/Defects that are detected but are understood to have been there for some time now, maybe even already there in production - for those, treat them as backlog items that you need to prioritize. Thats usually a Product Management/Ownership decision/policy. The end result CAN be that you will fix them right now, but it depends on the priority. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastActivityDate="2011-02-26T07:20:31.473" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="622" CreationDate="2011-02-26T07:53:14.487" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would add the following to Pawel's answer (which is great):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use Control Charts when looking at data - for example for Throughput and Cycle Time variation. Chart each story that finishes with the related Cycle Time it exhibited. This will show you Average, variation, add 2-Sigma control limits (easily created in Excel using trend/error lines), and you can derive possible SLA, exceptions for Kaizen moments. This is dealing with Special Cause Variation. With time, aim at improving your average. &#xA;Same can be done for Weekly Throughput - look for weeks with exceptional performance (good or bad) and think what caused it and how to create more great weeks and less bad weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Buffer Management - inspired by TOC sDBR - using the Cycle Time history/SLA, when adding a card to the board, calculate when is the worst case scenario for when it should be done. now you can look at the board, and assign &quot;colors&quot;/&quot;status&quot; to cards according to the time left on their clock. e.g. if average cycle time is 7 and worst case is 14, use an SLA of 14, and start cards when you have 14 days until due date (if due date is relevant). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;now, once you start, card should be green with 5-14 days remaining. &#xA;yellow with 3-6 days remaining - warning sign to start doing something about it&#xA;red with 0-3 you really need to scramble and finish this card&#xA;black - this should have been finished by now. &#xA;This provides you both with the ability to manage priorities, as well as retrospect after the fact - those reds/blacks are interesting to look at...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another interesting area is blockers - once you find an item is blocked, mark that as a new card, with the date the blocker was created. when removed, mark the day it was removed. Then do a control chart, and also track the blocker reasons and look for trends...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are more metrics/charts you can use - some people liked some presentations I did on the subject:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/yyeret/simple-lean-agile-kpis&quot;&gt;http://www.slideshare.net/yyeret/simple-lean-agile-kpis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/yyeret/explaining-cumulative-flow-diagrams-cfd&quot;&gt;http://www.slideshare.net/yyeret/explaining-cumulative-flow-diagrams-cfd&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/yyeret/lean-agile-metrics-and-kpis&quot;&gt;http://www.slideshare.net/yyeret/lean-agile-metrics-and-kpis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastActivityDate="2011-02-26T07:53:14.487" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="611" CreationDate="2011-02-26T08:07:41.167" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My take on this is first go for visibility. Start a coaching engagement with him. Recommend he map the things he's working on using something like a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.personalkanban.com/pk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Personal Kanban&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. All his tasks, due dates and whatever information is relevant. Ask him to start visualize his work there for a couple of days, and meet with you every couple of days to see what you can learn from the picture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will help you see some of the effects other mentioned here - bad multi-tasking, procrastination (Parkinson's 1st Law), tasks that are blocked/impeded and why. Start using elements like &quot;Work in progress Limits&quot; to help him focus/flow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Break work into small tasks - ideally tasks that are less than a day. Each task should have a clear &quot;Definition of Done&quot; what will he have ready when done. Ideally each task should have value...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use elements like colors that mark how far a task is from a due date (when unable to break into very small tasks, or when tracking a project comprised of several tasks) - for example if a task is due in a week (5 work days), once it starts a clock counts down from 5. &#xA;when clock is 3-5 item is green&#xA;when 2-3 yellow - warning!&#xA;when 1 red - really need to finish!&#xA;when 0 and below - black you are LATE!&#xA;Expect most tasks to be finished while yellow... due to uncertainty in estimates...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another technique is to stop having due dates for a while, and just tell him to do tasks as fast as he can while still delivering at the agreed quality and sustainable pace. Tell him to track his actual cycle time (how many days it takes to process) and create a &quot;Control Chart&quot; showing his various results. With that in hand, have a discussion on what can be the SLA/expected due date for various kinds of tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure he knows that there is a commitment - when the task can be done with 95% confidence. And beyond that the expectation that tasks will most of the time will be done BEFORE the committed date. (there's a bell curve of certainties). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are all techniques that are relevant at a team level as well, and those familiar with Scrum and TOC will recognize them. They are aimed exactly at those problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastActivityDate="2011-02-26T08:07:41.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="343" CreationDate="2011-02-26T09:33:40.290" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My take is that there is a potential for good synergy between CCPM and Scrum&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we focus on the direction of how to improve Agile/Scrum using CCPM thinking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of project buffer versus task buffers - my recommendation is to avoid task estimates altogether. just use small tasks, without due dates, and pull them as fast as you can to completion. This avoids parkinson's law and deals better with variability. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprint Commitment in light of variability - commit based on the worst case scenario, but have a scope buffer of things that you can over-deliver in case the average happens. Plan for Murphy, but plan also for Murphy not showing up... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Release Commitment same way using Scope Buffers and Worst case/Average scenarios. I see release/project/delivery commitment much more important than sprint commitment, and much more deserving of buffering. You don't care about local optimization of the sprint (unless each sprint is a delivery), you can more about global optimization of the release/delivery. &#xA;Start using Control Charts to learn capabilities to improve commitments and predictability. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avoid bad-multitasking by enforcing priorities on the release backlog and sprint backlog, and limit the amount of stories that are in progress in the sprint, as well as features that are in progress in the release backlog. &quot;Stop Starting - Start Finishing&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also aspects that are similar to the multi-project environment staggering approach and freezing - when using Kanban to manage the release end to end - limit the overall design in process in the system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum/Agile gives you a great headstart on typical CCPM - because of the work using end-to-end stories in the backlog, resource flexibility due to drive to collective ownership, and reduced need to synchronize due to Feature/Scrum teams, you get a much simpler critical chain, with lesser need for feeding buffers, resource buffers, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do have dependencies between teams and other external entities, you can have a high level pert chart of your project, also known as &quot;Lookahead Planning&quot; in the Agile world. &#xA;But if you see TOO MANY dependencies, it might be an indication that your teams are not formed ideally to deal with the work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a lot more to this discussion, but bottom line - not enemies, but cousins...&#xA;now the CCPM consultant will tell you CCPM is much stronger and Agile is a local solution, but be strong ;-)&#xA;CCPM on its end has lots to learn from the Agile world - flexibility on the features/requirements, early feedback, team empowerment, all the great things that can improve a CCPM environment and help deal with variability and improve predictability and throughput even for a great CCPM implementation. I see Agile/Scrum as a way to apply the Process of Ongoing Impromevement (POOGI) in the CCPM world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastActivityDate="2011-02-26T09:33:40.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-02-26T14:19:35.810" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stevemcconnell.com/rd.htm&quot;&gt;Rapid Development&lt;/a&gt; by Steve McConnell.  Hit just the right level of technical and project related material and really inspired me to move on from being a software developer to wanting to manage my own projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="487" LastActivityDate="2011-02-26T14:19:35.810" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-26T14:19:35.810" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="677" CreationDate="2011-02-26T14:33:21.073" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me the bug in implementation is usually a task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for bugs in design/architecture these are usually not so easily fixed and tend to end as a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="488" LastActivityDate="2011-02-26T14:33:21.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="691" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="695" CreationDate="2011-02-27T02:18:07.737" Score="4" ViewCount="2101" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a product/project manager for a product we've created.  We have customers using the product, which we are continually updating as it is Web based.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some tools and techniques for managing communications with clients regarding product updates?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="2618" LastEditDate="2012-01-22T02:40:16.057" LastActivityDate="2014-11-29T08:58:45.603" Title="What are Some Tools and Techniques for Communicating Product Updates to Existing Customers?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;customer-satisfaction&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="691" CreationDate="2011-02-27T05:31:06.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your updates are small and can be made public, I would include Twitter in your list. Take &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/#!/OmniFocus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Twitter stream for OmniFocus&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/#!/FreshBooks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;or for FreshBooks&lt;/a&gt; as examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="490" LastActivityDate="2011-02-27T05:31:06.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="691" CreationDate="2011-02-27T06:31:51.333" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest &lt;strong&gt;to avoid&lt;/strong&gt; any promotional one-way communications in this particular case (and in almost every other case). Try to make the product speak for itself without a product manager behind every message. One of the methods is &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch13_Promote_Through_Education.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;promotion through education&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. Turn your customers into evangelists. They will promote your product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-27T06:31:51.333" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="691" CreationDate="2011-02-27T09:26:44.237" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the updates to the product affects the customer's ability to use the web application, I will encourage you to use your time of less traffic and to give ample notice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are only thinking of the actual strategy of communicating the updates, I will suggest the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a YouTube campaign with videos explaining the benefit of each update.  This will help educate your users as you tell them the good news. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a webminar type seminar were you will show users that subscribe the new updates.  This might seem like an overkill, but you will get questions from the users that you did not think.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Send twitter messages that encourage people to take action, update your profile before the update, etc. you get the idea.  This will let you know how effective is that medium.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to send similar messages from different sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-02-27T09:26:44.237" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="691" CreationDate="2011-02-27T10:25:43.767" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Communication channels will depend vastly on the type of product you have and your target clients. You can consider a few of following strategies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;* Social Media&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most important ones (Twitter, Facebook) already mentioned here. If your product is some web application which is targeted directly to end users this channel may prove to be the most valuable. Just remember that once-in-a-quarter updates don't work. These streams have to be alive no matter if you have a software update to announce or not. Note: for big products or those addressed to big clients this channel won't work that well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;* Product/company blog&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When we are on social media another popular strategy is a blog: either product-related or company-related. As an example of the former you can take &lt;a href=&quot;http://googlereader.blogspot.com/&quot;&gt;Google Reader Blog&lt;/a&gt; as an example of the latter you can take &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.targetprocess.com/blog/&quot;&gt;TargetProcess blog&lt;/a&gt;. Also you can approach this one creatively - for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ericsink.com/index.html&quot;&gt;Eric Sink on his personal blog&lt;/a&gt; writes mostly on the stuff of his company. In this case, again, it will work better if your relationships with clients/potential clients are rather informal. I'm yet to see a good corporate blog out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;* Auto-updates messages&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This one assumes you have a good auto-update mechanism, but for web based solution somewhere in the cloud I take it for granted. After successful update you can display messages with description what has changed. Many people will dismiss it anyway, but some will read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;* Messages within application&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can put information about new features within the application. This is something Facebook sometimes does - you can see a box on the top of your stuff which for example says that privacy settings have been changed or that a new localized version of the site is available. If I remember correctly it hangs there unless users closes the box, so direct action i required to dismiss the message which raises the chance that the message will actually be read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;* Mailing list&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the discussed application is web-based I assume you have users' credentials, including emails. You can use them to send the message about new features. Note: it is important not to break privacy policy (if you have one). Also I'd be very careful with frequency of such emails. On the other hand that's probably the best method to inform about important changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;* Trade shows/Conferences&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As crazy as it might sound &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2010/10/21.html&quot;&gt;people actually do that&lt;/a&gt;. If you know places where you can meet your users go there, talk with them, tell them what has changed. Direct communication always is more convincing than communication through electronic tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;* Viral marketing/Buzz/Advertising&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can consider a campaign to share news about your new features. It won't work with every update you do, but for major changes it can be a good idea. A good example of this strategy is what Google did with Google Wave, which is by the way already dead product. There was a lot of buzz and viral messages spread all over the world about new cool Google product and what Google basically was doing was unveiling some details about the product to sustain interest. Of course this can be made easier with completely new products than with a stream of update messages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-02-27T10:25:43.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="691" CreationDate="2011-02-27T11:05:02.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If, as I understand from your question, you are only targeting your &lt;strong&gt;existing&lt;/strong&gt; userbase, I would advise to use only a single way to communicate your updates. In my experience, &lt;strong&gt;e-mail&lt;/strong&gt; with a sober and consistent format works best. Keep it brief, with only the highlights of the update, with an additional link if they wish to read more. Clearly explain the consequences (eg down-time from - until).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Three messages seems to be adequate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One week in advance, to inform them about the coming update (including a link with more info but also a ontact link if they still have questions)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The day itself, as a reminder (especially if down-time or a user action will be required)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When the system is online again (including a link for support)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my view, attracting new users with new functionality is something completely different from informing your existing users about an update.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-02-27T11:05:02.593" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="697" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="698" CreationDate="2011-02-27T12:05:31.120" Score="9" ViewCount="545" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the parts of self-organization in agile (but this is not necessarily related only to agile) is that we look at the team's performance and focus on supporting the team doing their job the best they can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Self-organized team may decide on many thing on their own to achieve better results. One of them may sometimes be the need to remove a team member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is how in practice do you achieve that? Have you been in such situation? What can be done at the team level, so that the team can actually be sure and even encouraged to do that (start the team member removal process)? How can the Scrum Master (or anybody in the similar position) support that process? What about the upper management?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes teams just talk on the side about it or there is a tension inside the team that you can feel, but I've never seen the next step taking place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="435" LastActivityDate="2020-10-22T20:41:48.053" Title="How to actually empower self-organized team to remove its member?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="697" CreationDate="2011-02-27T12:20:08.847" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first question here is: whether the team should have power to remove one of its team members. Usually trash talking on one of team members at the water-cooler is a combination of frustration and no power to do anything about the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, considering there's some power delegated to the team, &lt;strong&gt;I think that's still a problem of management.&lt;/strong&gt; It's manager who built the team in the first place. It's manager whose is paid to resolve such organizational and/or people issues. For me, what a team member should do here is to raise the manager's awareness of the problem. If it doesn't work with a direct superior one might try to go further up through the hierarchy, depending on the organization of course. &lt;strong&gt;Either way it should be management decision to remove someone from the team.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the supporting behavior I'd look for actions aimed to remove a problem, not the person from the team, e.g. trying to discuss it through, find the source of the issue, try to find generally accepted way to improve things around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way: there's a good &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160517195106/http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/removing-team-members&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mike Cohn's post and even better discussion in comment section&lt;/a&gt; on removing team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="25355" LastEditDate="2020-10-22T20:41:48.053" LastActivityDate="2020-10-22T20:41:48.053" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-02-27T13:33:25.100" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me it is a book from a UK-based author: Richard Newton. He is not known outside Europe but his work is really great. The book is called &lt;a href=&quot;http://corporategeek.info/project-manager-mastering-art-delivery&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Project Manager - Mastering the Art of Delivery&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I enjoyed it a lot because Richard writes in a very personal manner, based on his actual experience. Unlike other PM books, it is not a collection of dry &amp;amp; theoretical recommendations. It's simply real-life experience shared honestly with his readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="409" LastActivityDate="2011-02-27T13:33:25.100" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-02-27T13:33:25.100" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="700" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="702" CreationDate="2011-02-27T18:23:22.387" Score="8" ViewCount="316" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our team sometimes has one-on-one or 3 attendee meetings in of the developers' cubes. We have one developer who always jumps in to &quot;offer&quot; his suggestions for projects that do not concern him. Engaging him tends to derail the efficient nature of our semi-formal/quick meetings, where 1 or 2 developers convene, make a decision, and go our separate ways. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ad-hoc nature of our meetings doesn't require us to reserve a conference room every time. So meeting in one of our cubes just makes sense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comments are always welcome but not necessarily if we are pressed for time and have a very focused agenda for a meeting that does not concern him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a professional/tactful way to communicate that his behaviour is intrusive and not always welcome?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="492" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-02-28T15:57:01.643" LastActivityDate="2011-02-28T15:57:01.643" Title="Meeting Etiquette - Intrusions" Tags="&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="697" CreationDate="2011-02-27T19:29:04.527" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The ability to remove a team member from a team depends entirely on the structure of the team.  In more flat organizations, decisions such as these can be taken by the team with a unanimous vote.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other situations, there could be a more hybrid model where the team approaches the manager first.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all situations, the goal of the team and manager should be to coach the team member to resolve the conflict.  Teams that demonstrate a good tract record for taking bad team members and turning them around should ideally earn more autonomy than teams that do not have enough seasoned experience to handle ineptness.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many cases, investing some time in a person can turn them around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/tech-manager/five-management-tenets-for-every-cio/5405&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Five Management Tenets&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Check out point #2.  In most cases where I needed to remove someone, I found that they typically removed themselves, after we gave them some coaching and tried to believe in them.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.managementtraining.biz/management_training_biz_How-to-Coach-Someone-With-a-Bad-Attitude-Management-Training-for-Coaching-Staff.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to Coach Someone With a Bad Attitude&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rethinkingsales.com/the-grow-model-coaching-team-members-to-improve-performance&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Coaching Team Members to Improve Performance&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, we removed team members after a 100% unanimous decision by myself, the development manager, and a team leader.  The decision to remove has occurred in maybe 15% of cases while in the other 85% cases, the team member removed him or herself.  In 100% of cases, we put our best efforts into helping this person grow.  Either they realized this job was not for them and moved on, or we realized it was just dragging out and we removed them ourselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, these people moved on knowing that we all tried, and our goal has always been that we all learn something from the experience and grow.  Many of the people that left our organization may have found a better fit somewhere else after changing their work ethic, finding a company that fits them better, or taking the plunge into a new career where they can excel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-02-27T19:35:00.797" LastActivityDate="2011-02-27T19:35:00.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="700" CreationDate="2011-02-27T19:55:21.473" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to be interrupted, I would suggest finding a quieter, more isolated place to meet.  Here are just a few ideas of places you can go to have a meeting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conference Room&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a conference room, you can close the door and have more privacy.  If your conference room has a computer on the wall, you can make use that for any presentations you need to make.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Coffee Shop&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes we have ad hoc meetings on the way to our local coffee shop.  This has the advantage of getting us away from other team members so we can have a discussion amongst ourselves.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this is more difficult to take formal notes, it's a great way to get outside of the office for a moment and brainstorm some ideas.  Some smart phones have note taking facilities that may come in handy, or an IPod or Xoom may be a great tool to bring to the meeting, especially if you have time to sit down and consume your invigorating beverage on-site.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Go For A Walk&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of us could use the exercise.  Sometimes we take a 15 minute walk around the block.  This has the added benefit of energizing us, getting us out in the fresh air, and can both isolate the group and generate new ideas.  Walks suffer from the same disadvantages as going to a Coffee Shop, as notes can be harder to take, especially since you're moving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can get outside, this will also give you some much-needed exercise and lower stress.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be Clear In Expectations&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, getting away is not an option.  Besides, you shouldn't always feel you need to run away in order to have a productive meeting.  Sometimes, letting people know up front the expectations can be a nice way to make good use of your meeting time while saving the intruder the embarrassment of being called out as they're perpetrating the crime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before the start of the meeting, let the developer know you wanted to give them a heads up that you and one other person will be having a semi-private meeting and will not be available to talk.  Unless this developer lives under a rock where social skills don't exist, he or she should get the point that you are not to be interrupted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that fails, then a much more blunt approach is warranted.  It's not rude to let someone else know when they are being rude.  Be clear in your expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't Get a Manager.  Try to Resolve Yourself&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're all adults here.  Hopefully.  So we should be able to resolve any conflicts without having to go &quot;tell&quot;.  If none of the above techniques work, a last resort could be to ask HR to send a reminder from the Employee Handbook Section on Meetings, which your organization most likely has already written.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest avoiding any direct action from management, as you're essentially giving up any persuasive power and respect you may have earned from the developer, as well as from your manager.  In the eyes of the developer, there will be some conflict and tension.  In the eyes of management, you may be viewed as incapable of resolving conflict, which may exclude you from promotion to higher level management positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do understand that sometimes the situation does warrant this, but I would encourage this as a last resort.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do Get Advice from Your Manager&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you don't want to complain to your manager about Person X, depending on your corporate culture, it may be okay to seek advice from your manager.  By asking how he or she has handled the situation in the past, you demonstrate to your manager that you have the desire to resolve conflicts yourself.  You also may learn some other conflict-resolution techniques from someone with more experience than you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just make it clear that you're not asking your manager to step in and resolve the issue.  Make sure you're clear that you want to hear some tips for solving the problem yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike &quot;Reporting the Issue&quot;, this demonstrates that you are a competent individual capable of solving problems as well as knowing when to seek guidance.  This will gain you more respect than simply reporting the issue and walking away.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, these are just a few of many ideas that can help you have productive and fun meetings.  Find out which ones work best in your situation by giving them a try!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-02-27T19:55:21.473" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="703" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="705" CreationDate="2011-02-27T20:46:06.647" Score="15" ViewCount="683" Body="&lt;p&gt;Going back to our day to day work, sometimes, we have to be direct. During those times, and during times of high stress (due to deadlines or other family reasons), people become more sensitive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What steps can a PM take to fix a broken relationship? How can I determine if it is fixable? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When is it acceptable to have a broken relationship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-20T02:54:09.740" LastActivityDate="2017-07-04T15:52:14.700" Title="Strictly as PMs, how do you restore a broken relationship?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;career&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;relationships&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="703" CreationDate="2011-02-27T21:00:01.723" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I try not to break relationships in the first place. It doesn't always work :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find, like you, that sometimes when the deadlines approach and stress is high, I sometimes miss the clues that people need a bit less directness. I have been successful in simply apologizing and agreeing how we will interact better next time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To avoid breaking relationships, I remember that my job is to get the people through the project and it's not about making alliances. As long as I focus on that, I'm more likely to treat the person the way they need in the moment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-02-27T21:00:01.723" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="703" CreationDate="2011-02-27T23:00:23.727" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a manager, you absolutely cannot bring your personal problems to work with you.  Plain and simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been times where stress has gotten the better all of us.  It's important to learn the triggers that cause this stress and also learn how to recognize when you may not be at your best.  By knowing when your judgement is affected by stress, you can make adjustments to your own behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I personally try not to criticize anyone while I'm under duress, as I know I'm more likely to overreact.  Instead, I either get the opinion of a third party beforehand, or I wait until the stress is not so high and when I know I can be objective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, there are times when stress does occasionally get the better of us and we say or do things we wouldn't otherwise do under normal circumstances.  If that does happen, be an adult and apologize.  As long as you aren't making a habit of blowing up on people, most people will understand that you too are human, like they are, and you will be forgiven.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the success of a manager is defined by the ability to provide motivation and leadership and earning the respect of others, broken relationships will never help you reach your goals.  You can't lead and motivate people who don't respect you as a leader.  In summary, at no point in time is a broken relationship acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.everypoet.com/archive/poetry/Rudyard_Kipling/kipling_if.htm&quot;&gt;Rudyard Kipling's poem, &quot;If&quot;&lt;/a&gt; to be a great source of inspiration.  When all those about you are losing their head, this is when you must keep yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-02-27T23:06:14.643" LastActivityDate="2011-02-27T23:06:14.643" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="700" CreationDate="2011-02-27T23:37:48.017" Score="0" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tell him this is not his meeting, nor&#xA;his issue nor the time to discuss it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Get a manager involved.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-27T23:37:48.017" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="531" CreationDate="2011-02-28T06:33:02.383" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see it as Rude, as well as conveys a message of not trusting/empowering the people you are working with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastActivityDate="2011-02-28T06:33:02.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="697" CreationDate="2011-02-28T06:56:05.423" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure it needs to be a fully formal ability of the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the organization does some sort of 360 degree feedback and Listens to the team, it can drive the the right decision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I saw teams that raised the issue to their management consistently, and the end result was that the relevant team member was removed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation - don't jump too fast to changes in HR policy around this, but be attentive to the teams and team members, and use 360 degree feedback as well as MeasureUP (people are measured and compensated based on the results of the teams/groups they are members of as well as individual performance). good things will happen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastActivityDate="2011-02-28T06:56:05.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="703" CreationDate="2011-02-28T09:16:32.197" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to avoid any relationship problems every manager shall strictly separate personal domain from business domain. &lt;strong&gt;Never criticize a person, criticize a solution&lt;/strong&gt;. In other words we can say: &quot;be objective&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If relationship is broken it means one of two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You were not objective. Admit it and explain your mistake to the person you offended.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You were objective, but your colleague is not professional enough to admit objective criticism. Forget about this relationship.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-28T09:16:32.197" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="697" CreationDate="2011-02-28T10:28:43.533" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that &quot;adding and/or removing members&quot; decision shall be objectively motivated by a &lt;strong&gt;Human Resource Plan&lt;/strong&gt; established in the team. It means that every team member shall know upfront when and how he/she may be removed from the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-02-28T10:28:43.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="711" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-28T13:51:01.717" Score="9" ViewCount="612" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been asked to takeover managing a project that has no structure in place; the only documentation is the initial brief, contract and a broad schedule including a product layout. The owner of the project has now left and there was no handover. The project is still viable and the team have been working on the project ad-hoc, where should I focus   for the remainder of the project? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="449" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T12:13:51.357" Title="How to manage a project with no existing structure?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="711" CreationDate="2011-02-28T14:27:10.600" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first piece of advice is to resist any temptation to implement a formal structure just to make everything look official. Start by evaluating the health of the project; determine what has been working well, and what has not, if anything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question of where to focus: &lt;strong&gt;focus on what is working well&lt;/strong&gt; and keep those things the same. Make sure you are comfortable with whatever status update tools are in place, and if there are none, start there. If the project is going well, don't rock the boat by introducing a new set of rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are a bunch of things that are not working well, take a pragmatic approach to implementing tools to address those needs. Are there unaddressed risks? Create a Risk Register. Is there a lack of communication? Develop a communication plan. Are there unclear expectations of the project team? You get the idea...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2011-02-28T14:27:10.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="711" CreationDate="2011-02-28T15:01:24.540" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since there was no official hand off from PM to PM, you're in a position where you're going to have to go through the hand off procedure with one or more team members on the project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a strong likelihood that some of the team members know more about the direction of the project than you do.  Initially, you're going to need to meet with these team members more often than you normally would.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just like switching any resource in the middle of a project, switching project managers will cause delays as well.  Make sure the change is communicated to everyone you'll be working with.  Introduce yourself and clarify that you're in the process of picking up where the old PM left off.  Let people know you're interested to hear their opinion on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask questions about where the previous project manager was going with the project.  What goals did he/she set?  What was the plan for the next 3 months?  What are the major problems on the project?  What blockers are impeding progress?  Ask their recommendations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First and foremost, document everything.  Documentation will help you make notes in your own words.  This will not only serve as a reference to you, but the act of documenting things will actually help you commit things to memory and facilitate a greater understanding of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point in time, the single, worst thing you can do is start blindly, arbitrarily implementing changes.  Your job right now is to observe, ask questions, and learn as much as you can about the project so that you make educated decisions in the near future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-02-28T15:01:24.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="711" CreationDate="2011-02-28T15:09:04.493" Score="3" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Meet with the client / the person you're doing the project for&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find out and confirm what they are expecting and what they want done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;See if that is doable or not&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get back to them and let them know what you found out in terms of feasibility (of scope, schedule and budget).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Iterate until you come to a realistic plan (this process will also allow you to build a relationship with them)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If feasible, execute. If not, stop the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-02-28T15:09:04.493" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="442" CreationDate="2011-02-28T16:04:05.867" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Schedule them as long as necessary.  There is nothing wrong with scheduling a meeting for only 15 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Schedule them after one another, for example after the weekly project meeting.  That avoids a second interruption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="158" LastActivityDate="2011-02-28T16:04:05.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="531" CreationDate="2011-02-28T16:45:16.017" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If someone turns on &quot;request read receipt&quot; then I set up a rule to route all their messages to a sub folder with their name. I then only check the stuff once per day, setting aside a block of time (usually an hour) each day for them, rather than click on their email every time it arrives. While this comes across as &quot;passive agressive&quot; on both our parts (the read receipt, as well as the rule), I find that the folks who are always demanding receipts are also asking complicated questions that require research and long responses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I am bothered by people who put read receipts on everything. It smacks of being unable to decide what is important (and what isn't) by claiming everything is a number one priority. I have also worked in places were read receipts were used as part of the documentation used to show that someone wasn't doing their job, in order to get them fired. So I have some bad memories left over from some petty machiavellians. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Managing goes both ways: from your boss to you, and from you to your boss. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2011-02-28T16:45:16.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="711" CreationDate="2011-02-28T18:55:52.323" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't say how much longer the project will continue, the scope or what happens after the project ends...making a response a little difficult.  If the project is delivering as 'expected' (based on some upper managers perception since there's nothing documented to gauge it against), focus on the post-live hand over.  Help with communication in anyway possible (without interfering with existing communication lines), keep your eyes/ears open for any rough areas/risk points that you can apply your time to...and help QA as much as possible (end of an un-managed project often delivers interesting results)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="458" LastActivityDate="2011-02-28T18:55:52.323" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="718" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="722" CreationDate="2011-02-28T19:03:58.993" Score="15" ViewCount="4233" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am the Scrum Master for a team that has completed two sprints.  For Sprint 1, the burndown looks like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Day 1: 70&#xA;Day 2: 70&#xA;Day 3: 70&#xA;Day 4: 70&#xA;Day 5: 13&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Sprint #2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Day 1: 90&#xA;Day 2: 90&#xA;Day 3: 90&#xA;Day 4: 86&#xA;Day 5: 86&#xA;Day 6: 86&#xA;Day 7: 86&#xA;Day 8: 86&#xA;Day 9:  2&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost all stories are completed the day of the review, causing problems including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stories are accepted untested rather than production-ready&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some stories are gold-plated or not quite on target&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acceptance testing is cursory and does not include user testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These issues were raised at both Sprint reviews.  The main response was that many stories were linked so it was hard to deliver them separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I encourage or enable the developers to deliver stories throughout the sprint rather than all at the end?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Context:&#xA;The team comprises three developers, two business analysts, and a Project Owner.  The developers work at one campus; the rest of the team and all of the users work at another campus 15 miles away.  The developers prefer to work in isolation: after a half-day kickoff, the groups have very limited contact until the sprint review.  The developers are willing to use Scrum but resistant to a daily standup; the last sprint included one standup halfway through a two-week sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2020-07-22T06:56:11.243" Title="How can we avoid finishing all stories on the last day of a sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="642" CreationDate="2011-02-28T19:04:59.990" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think pawelbrodzinski provided the best answer...but it seems you/your-team is code branch averse.....another approach would be to release the changes - working or not - with each sprint, making them only reachable by certain user roles or links (so the current user base can not access it prior to completion)...this might mean duplicate tables (some with a new structure to support the new functionality) and duplicate links (one to the old functionality and one to the new functionality)...not a good solution or one I would follow myself, but another approach&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="458" LastActivityDate="2011-02-28T19:04:59.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="718" CreationDate="2011-02-28T20:36:38.287" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are multiple aspects to this. Firstly, your team has just started using scrum, so it needs time to get used to it. Introducing a taking advantage of what the different practices have to offer isn't always straightforward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sprint planning meeting should enable the team to break the stories down and understand the dependencies between these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team must adhere to a definition of done but also understand that the goal isn't merely to have it all done by the end of the sprint, but rather to reach a steady pace where (if estimations aren't too far off) the ideal burndown path is followed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The daily stand-up meeting is one of the most important practices that scrum advocates and ihmo, it's what pushed people forward and enable peer pressure (ideally in a good way). Without the daily stand-ups, there's no update of the estimations, no awareness of the encountered issues, ... thus most of the benefits are lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask the team to try daily stand-ups for a few sprints and do the sprint retrospective meetings to try and improve the process along the way. Once people are used to it, they often agree that it helps them stay focused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="502" LastActivityDate="2011-02-28T20:36:38.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="718" CreationDate="2011-02-28T20:47:52.873" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on the fact that all stories are getting &quot;finished&quot; on the last day, and are not tested properly, I'm guessing that you're actually taking on a few too many stories per Sprint.  Try just a few less next time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if the team is blaming this on the stories being &quot;linked&quot;, try to find ways to break those linkages so that more of your stories per Sprint are &quot;independent&quot;.  Maybe you can also break them down into smaller chunks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most concerning thing that you've mentioned though is the development team's unwillingness to hold a daily standup.  This absence, coupled with the fact that they don't sit near the analysts and PO explains why you have gold plating and a disconnect on the completeness of your stories.  Find out why (unless you know already) the developers do not want to sit with the rest of the team.  Are there personality conflicts?  Issues with the working space?  Other?  Whatever the reason, it's probably an issue or &quot;block&quot; that you as the ScrumMaster need to address.  As the ScrumMaster, you are also responsible for how Scrum is implemented.  You may need to insist, or at least strongly encourage at the next Retrospective, that the entire team hold a daily standup.  If the developers aren't willing to drive the 15 miles to your other location, you can try holding it remotely via teleconference, but the fact that you're not having one is a huge problem for this project.  Can you 4 (SM, PO, and business analysts) go to where the developers are for the daily standup?  Just a thought.  I don't know what the issues are, but if that's what it would take for the developers to be willing for the whole team to meet every day, it's something to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="347" LastActivityDate="2011-02-28T20:47:52.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="718" CreationDate="2011-02-28T22:38:57.657" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like the recommendations above. I would add a couple of things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, Start improving visibility during the sprint. The basic thing to look at is a Story Burnup. This focuses on the pace of closing stories, rather than work remaining. Its in my oppinion a much clearer visibility of the key aspect important to a team - Flow WITHIN the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, consider adding visibility to the stories that are NOT done yet. They can be &amp;quot;TO DO&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;In Progress&amp;quot;, or maybe even &amp;quot;Dev In Progress&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Dev DONE&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Test In Progress&amp;quot;. This visibility can be added to the team taskboard, and then to the burnup, by using Cumulative Flow Diagrams. I provide an explanation how to do it that people find useful over in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/yyeret/explaining-cumulative-flow-diagrams-cfd&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.slideshare.net/yyeret/explaining-cumulative-flow-diagrams-cfd&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have the visibility, what you want to do is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Drive towards smaller and smaller stories - these ENABLE reducing the batch size and pulling earlier into testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Limit the amounts of stories in progress - ruthlessly prioritize during the sprint - try to swarm to a few early stories and pull them all the way to Done, before continuing to the rest of the sprint backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In essence, you are describing a waterfall within a sprint (aka ScrummerFall), while I'm trying to drive you towards a really Agile sprint... It is a classic behavior of starting scrum teams, so you are in good company! The tips I'm describing can help you get out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might run into other obstacles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;stories cannot get any smaller (work on story slicing techniques - my friend Elad Amit is working on a cheat sheet to help with this... but for now look at  &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110313102802/http://yuvalyeret.com/2011/01/05/what-do-i-need-to-know-to-start-being-a-product-owner/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;What do i need to know to start being a product owner?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;we cannot swarm to fewer stories - each of us knows a certain area, or we cannot safely/effectively work together in the same area - now you really need to go Agile in your engineering practices! Continuous Integration, Collective Ownership, Pair Programming, and other practices help the teams ability to focus its energy on a smaller target...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-22T06:56:11.243" LastActivityDate="2020-07-22T06:56:11.243" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8" CreationDate="2011-02-28T22:49:50.317" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the teams I work with use pragmatic Scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The areas I typically like to be pragmatic about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Commitment — I believe its important to have some clear goal/commitment, but its more important to actually over-deliver and deliver as much as possible every sprint, than to meet the commitment. I dislike the over-planning some teams get into just because they fear commitment. (Scrumban helps here btw)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum Master — I believe a Team Leader can drive an effectively agile team if he/she is an effective Team Leader. And for sure, a team/organization can be start experiencing agile iterations using Scrum, and consider how deep into the Self-Organized world they want to go later on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All stories done by end of sprint — I believe this might be a bit hard for many enterprise-level teams. There are two reasons to do this — one is to actually have something shippable. If so, either finish all stories, or use latent code patterns to allow some stories to be &quot;half ready and dormant&quot;. The other is to serve as a container forcing the team to collaborate and focus instead of spreading all around. I believe that a limit on the number of open stories is a more pragmatic approach than disallowing any open stories. Many teams use longer sprints due to this limit and others, which is horrible. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line, I believe pure Scrum is the best way if you can adhere to it. But I'm not assuming any team can/wants to go there. The question is what is the best road — is it the road of most resistance, or least resistance. probably least resistance won't drive you to improve much. so somewhere in the middle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did I say I'm a Kanban consultant ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2016-08-07T18:34:11.800" LastActivityDate="2016-08-07T18:34:11.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="711" CreationDate="2011-03-01T02:50:27.990" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start by trying to capture top-level requirements.  Then do what the other posters suggest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="158" LastActivityDate="2011-03-01T02:50:27.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="718" CreationDate="2011-03-01T02:59:14.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that -- because of the dependencies -- maybe a modified version of Scrum might be more applicable to your situation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It pains me when I hear stories couldn't be completed because of dependencies and that there was too much work for the sprint.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not to get too technical into the realm of software development and computer science, but one of the fundamentals of engineering is to break a problem down into smaller components and also create layers of abstraction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, if you're developing blogging software and one of your stories involves the user entering a post and clicking save to store the post in the database, and the ability to view a published post is dependent on the ability to save, your developers could use a placeholder to act as a &quot;saved post&quot; for the purpose of developing the retrieve post functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only does this help facilitate loosely coupled systems, but the individual retrieve functionality can be tested independently of the full system as a whole.  Once the actual real save functionality is implemented, then the entire system as a whole can be tested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this isn't a project management problem, this is a development problem that could be solved if the developers can take a step back and think about the system more modularly.  While stories are great for conceptualizing the features, the actual implementation should be more abstract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-03-01T02:59:14.927" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="726" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="731" CreationDate="2011-03-01T04:55:20.980" Score="7" ViewCount="2648" Body="&lt;p&gt;The advantages of total time accounting seem self-evident to me, but I routinely get resistance from senior leadership when attempting to institutionalize this in the organizations I have been.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What makes CEO's, CFO's or accountants resistant to this as an idea?  Are there some hidden negative aspects to total time accounting I'm not aware of?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lots of answers regarding the cost of instituting a time tracking system.  Just to clarify, this companies in question are US defense contractors and they all must adhere to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dcaa.mil/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DCAA rules&lt;/a&gt;.  Since the cost of implementing such a system is a &quot;sunk cost&quot;, required to win a contract in the first place, then what are the sources of push back if the cost to implement and maintain the system is already incurred?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastEditorUserId="76" LastEditDate="2011-03-02T04:51:51.563" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T13:57:31.053" Title="Why might Senior Leadership push back on 'total time accounting'" Tags="&lt;timekeeping&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="726" CreationDate="2011-03-01T06:10:38.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are always many negative aspects of &lt;strong&gt;truth&lt;/strong&gt;. Your upper management may afraid to know exactly what is happening in the organization. I'm sure that it's a big company you're talking about, and your managers are not its owners. As soon as they know that 50% of your team time is wasted (for example) they may loose their jobs. Why taking a chance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-01T06:10:38.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="726" CreationDate="2011-03-01T07:36:00.263" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Total Time Accounting is something typically seen in projects contracted by Government entities, based on a few quick Google searches, and this article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techcouncilmd.com/GCL/GovConLeaderAprilF4.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Government Contracting Leader - UNCOMPENSATED OVERTIME AND TOTAL TIME ACCOUNTING&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In government, as well as many rigid corporations, process is king, and there are huge departments of people whose job it is to audit these reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In smaller businesses that aren't so regulated, this type of time tracking just isn't necessary, and it may have more costs associated with maintaining it than without.  These costs could be monetary, but these costs could also be mental.  Any time spent documenting time for each and every task takes energy away from actual work and thought on those tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Accordingly, all government contractors should ensure that their time charging system is capturing all hours worked and allocating the cost to all hours worked using one of the aforementioned methods. Doing so not only requires investment in compliant accounting and timekeeping systems, it is also requires the implementation of effective policies, procedures and employee training programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the author uses the term &quot;investing&quot; when talking about accounting and timekeeping systems, senior management will easily see this marketing-speak for what it really is, additional costs.  Policies, procedures, and training programs also imply additional, unnecessary expenses in the eyes of senior managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, many smaller businesses just don't require this level of accounting.  Also, senior managers would prefer to look at the strategic big picture rather than the details.  As long as a profit is generated, that's all that matters to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, engineering isn't the same field as one that involves preparing your burger and fries.  Engineering is fundamentally &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; an hourly position.  It involves creativity, ingenuity, intelligence, autonomy, and decision making abilities.  Some of the best ideas even come when engineers are stuck in traffic, in the shower, sleeping, or awake at 3am.  The question is how to objectively measure such subjective gains in a project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Senior managers may view this level of accounting as not making sense, but also they may see it as not having measurable value and being riddled with more productivity-robbing costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-03-02T04:22:38.513" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T04:22:38.513" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="718" CreationDate="2011-03-01T10:29:19.820" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The main response was that many&#xA;  stories were linked so it was hard to&#xA;  deliver them separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds to me (and correct me if I am wrong) that the user stories were not defined by the developers. &#xA;Stories that are independent rely on a deep understanding of the system, not just the end user experience. Maybe try having the developers come up with a set of independent user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I don't tend to have my user stories at 0 or 100% complete. Once completed by the developers, maybe mark them as 75% complete, so that the burndown will progress, but they are not done until tested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="509" LastActivityDate="2011-03-01T10:29:19.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-01T11:57:45.863" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Prince 2 manual states that &quot;The purpose of the Risk theme is to identify, assess and control uncertainty, and, as a result, improve the ability of the project to succeed&quot;. Not a bad description of why Prince 2 focuses heavily on risk. It also makes the point that risk is inevitable in projects as every project is an enabler of change, and change introduces uncertainty, i.e. risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you should explain that risk is the uncertainty that comes from making any change, and state that a strategy is required to deal with risk (noting that the strategy may validly be to accept at least some individual risks). If you document the strategy and ask your project sponsor to sign off against it, you are more likely to get a response than if you just have a discussion with no evidence that this took place. This may appear to be a bit Machiavellian, but as PM you have to protect yourself as well as giving the project the greatest opportunity to succeed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-03-01T11:57:45.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="726" CreationDate="2011-03-01T13:11:03.060" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are a  few reasons I've encountered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Resistance to imposing changes on how people work. Leadership may be afraid it will make people think that big brother is watching them and that's not the kind of culture they want to create.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Senior management often wants (and sometimes needs) flexibility in how it pays people.  Total time accounting adds in a seemingly objective metric to use when deciding compensation. This makes it harder for managers to pick favorites, incentivize specific types of behaviors or, in general, be subjective in how people are paid.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;People will argue that not everyone accomplishes the same work in the same period of time and therefore total time accounting is &quot;not a good fit&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AFTER READING THE EDIT&#xA;With the clarification in mind that this is for DCAA Compliance here are a few more reasons that I've seen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The next audit is far away in management's minds and they'd rather scramble ahead of a fixed audit date rather than invest in compliance on an ongoing basis not knowing if and when an audit is coming.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They use a different allocation of costs for the company's books when managing the company on a daily basis as compared to the accounting statements they prepare for the DCAA audit.  Reasons for this include that they may track different metrics for making business decisions and their banks may want information presented in a way that's different from the DCAA.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2011-03-02T13:57:31.053" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T13:57:31.053" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="732" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-01T15:15:19.980" Score="4" ViewCount="752" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some are more obvious - for example, the team has to be large enough to be able to complete the project on time, and at an acceptable level of quality. Others, not quite - for example, when dealing with a large corporation, even a small (2 person) team is going to require multiple levels of oversight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's a comprehensive list of all of the variables that should be considered when determining the team size for a given project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="71" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T00:43:10.177" Title="Which variables should be considered when determining team size for a project?" Tags="&lt;team-building&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="732" CreationDate="2011-03-01T15:47:08.757" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's give it a try...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Size of the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Forseen delivery date&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Range of skills needed. It's not possible to find a team member with all needed skills, and if it's possible, you will not be able to afford him/her&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Above a given number of team members, you will need more middle management to supervise them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastActivityDate="2011-03-01T15:47:08.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="732" CreationDate="2011-03-01T15:47:32.960" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you state the question &quot;how many&quot; the answer is in your question - enough to deal with workload without cutting the quality level. Then you should plan for some project risks - whether team size can be fixed or you expect changes in scope and client requesting your rapid reaction, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However if you build a team it's even more important to decide who exactly has to be in the team in terms of skills, roles and characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of things which is crucial while deciding about team size are skills. It is said that best developers can be 10 time more productive than others and even if &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.construx.com/blogs/stevemcc/archive/2011/01/09/origins-of-10x-how-valid-is-the-underlying-research.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the rate is disputable&lt;/a&gt; no one would reject the fact you can have one specialist who deals with twice as much work than another. If you just count heads you won't take all of that into your consideration which can sink the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also you definitely should cover all the roles needed in project. It's hard to have comprehensive list of them since they would differ among projects and teams, but project management, analysis, design, development, testing, deployment, maintenance and support should be considered in this way or another. It doesn't mean you need a specialist in each role, but you should at least have a plan which team member will be dealing with what. It may require adding some people part-time to the project for a sole fact no one from the core team has enough experience and/or potential to fulfill a specific role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another story are people characters. There's a &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/631/how-do-you-select-your-team/&quot;&gt;good question here about the way you select team&lt;/a&gt; which can help you with this one. Building the team out of rock star programmers only, even if they are highly productive, isn't the best idea I've heard. The team should be balanced if it means choosing people who aren't top performers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T00:43:10.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="149" CreationDate="2011-03-01T17:36:03.063" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, agile methods change the relation you have with your customers when you are a IT service provider. Pricing and  billing can become kind of a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think a solution is to proceed by bundles. I think it should be particulary suitable for Scrum: You define a set of stories for each sprint, and you bill each sprint, so project moves on, you keep a visibility (the scope of a sprint cannot be change while it is in development), but the project is open to change and the customer is involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastActivityDate="2011-03-01T17:36:03.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="737" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="754" CreationDate="2011-03-01T18:01:36.617" Score="16" ViewCount="7540" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was looking for some information on bug tracking best practices, but the Google search on this topic wasn't as helpful as I wished; I mainly found about software issues such as writing good bug reports, however I found two great discussions on Stackoverflow: the first one is about &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/465019/bug-tracking-best-practices&quot;&gt;bug tracking best practices&lt;/a&gt; and the second one is &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/232506/redmine-best-practices&quot;&gt;about redmine best practices&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a project management perspective, what are the best practices to use for bug tracking ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="158" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:41:23.897" LastActivityDate="2016-08-06T01:42:33.467" Title="What are best practices for bug tracking?" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;redmine&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="726" CreationDate="2011-03-01T18:11:17.400" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One rational reason: overhead of keeping track of all hours worked. Everyone has to register their hours, think of filling in time sheets or - worse - their time spent working is somehow measured automatically. It may work for people digging trenches, it is a complete idiocy for any kind of knowledge work like product development, marketing, software development etc. etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a manager I always paid a monthly wage + a bonus to my employees. And I told them I'm not interested in when they do work but in results. Worked great for me - and for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="511" LastActivityDate="2011-03-01T18:11:17.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="739" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="741" CreationDate="2011-03-01T20:37:01.403" Score="5" ViewCount="164" Body="&lt;p&gt;Knowing there are pros and cons for each type of procurement contracts.  I am trying to find the real price % increase from a time and material contract with specific scope to a fixed price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example.  Let's say you ask your vendor to prepare a contract to build 4 walls and a roof.  He comes back and he said, it will take me 10 gold coins. 5 coins for material and 1 coin for each day I work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later for reasons outside of everyone's control. I need to shift the total risk of the construction to the builder (in essence converting the contract to Fixed Price). I know it will be more expensive, but how much?  Is that going to increase 1 coin = 10% or 5 coins = 50% increase???&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any people in the forum with this expertise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More details:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The SOW right now that we have is T&amp;amp;M, so the buyer already has a quote.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Because of legal reasons, we need to switch the contract to Fixed Price. Making the deal a bit more expensive for us, but also more secure.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The scope is very fixed, is a simple solution.  There will be lots of control to limit scope creep.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastEditorUserId="70" LastEditDate="2011-03-02T13:25:11.707" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T13:25:11.707" Title="What will be the standard increase of price from a Time and Material to a Fixed Price?" Tags="&lt;procurement&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;&lt;fixed-price&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="737" CreationDate="2011-03-01T20:44:55.907" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Brian, I have been in your shoes.  My main recommendation is: &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Forget about Redmine, for now, focus on your process&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you have a good process for bug tracking defined, then go back to see if Redmine fits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other recommendations based on experience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep in mind that the most common incidents are either (Bugs (some call them defects) and Enhancements (some call them features))&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make a process for defect and another process for features (Each process needs different treatment)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get commitment from your team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get commitment from your customers (internal only)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a process to handle exceptions, this will be more useful than what you think&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-03-01T20:44:55.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="739" CreationDate="2011-03-01T20:55:53.183" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Completely depends on how well scoped out the project is and how detailed the requirements are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The better and more detailed the scope and requirements, the less deviation there should be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming its well-scoped but not super detailed, I'd expect a 25% increase to compensate for unknowns.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that the price negotiations themselves can be a good way to flesh out the scope further between the contractor and yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-03-01T20:55:53.183" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="737" CreationDate="2011-03-01T20:59:22.743" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;+1 to Geo re focusing on processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to do searches for testing methodologies, quality assurance in software development and variations on those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-03-01T20:59:22.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="389" CreationDate="2011-03-01T21:01:46.540" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Waterfall should be used when required by the customer or regulators. Not that I know of any regulators that require it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise its original paper had it as a straw man to be knocked down; then people took it as a good practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="158" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2012-02-24T23:17:26.353" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T23:17:26.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="744" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="793" CreationDate="2011-03-01T22:11:29.287" Score="5" ViewCount="503" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a IT staff of 5 persons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 senior with C and PHP skills.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 senior with Java and database skills.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 senior with Flex and Actionscript skills. He get some C# with .Net 2.5 skills, since he followed a training, but he never really used them, so it's not worth much anymore.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 intern and another incoming in the next days. Both will leave in September.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 apprentice, which means he's part time in our company and part time in his engineering school, on a 3 months cycle. He just left last week and will be back in June.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the seniors work in the company since 4 years and are fully committed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart our online photo sharing application, we get a Windows desktop application which makes it possible to burn video DVD with the slideshows made with the online application. It's written with Zinc, an alternative to Adobe AIR, with some Imapi code and FFMpeg.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, this application is a pain for all the team because it's way to buggy due to technical limitations of Zinc. So we want to remake it from scratch in C#, which will allow us to get a much better software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here comes the real matter: We cannot afford to hire another senior engineer, and we don't have currently the C# skills in-house.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some solution ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;contact an IT consulting company to rent us C# experts. I'm not so fond of this solution. I worked in the IT service business, and I know what some of their so called experts are worth...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;find a freelance C# developer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;hire a C# expert for a short time contract&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;hire an IT consulting company to do the job&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to confess none of these really make me happy. What do you think? Any innovative idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastEditorUserId="152" LastEditDate="2011-03-01T23:24:12.967" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T02:37:40.040" Title="Skills unavailable currently in our team" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;skills&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="744" CreationDate="2011-03-01T23:07:16.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple of wild shots:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Will the interns be in house long enough that if you get a mentor you will get your value back?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The mentor would have to be a C# expert of course, maybe a freelance contractor part-time (depending how much mentoring is required).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are the senior developers committed with the right tasks? Could your senior C# do with some mentoring to freshen-up his knowledge and help glue with the interns?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="179" LastEditorUserId="179" LastEditDate="2011-03-02T02:30:49.610" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T02:30:49.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="737" CreationDate="2011-03-01T23:29:20.997" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself what you want from your bug tracking system and what connections it needs to have with other systems (traceability, searchability)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the following points relevant to you (by no means an exhaustive list)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Track bugs for the lifetime of the project (develop and forget)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Track bugs for the lifetime of the product (long term support)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you just track bugs so that you correct them?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you track bugs to also find out how to improve your processes (will cost more but should bring longer term benefits)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you need to track time spent on investigation and resolution (to analyse costs, I'm sure there are other ways to do this)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A good practice is to reference the bug number in the version control comments for the solution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A good practice is to link bug reports to a relevant test cases and/or relevant sections of the design document that they pertain to (and to associated business requirements) - this allows you to review the history of bugs whenever you are going to change those requirements or design elements (such traceability allows better risk analysis and test requirements planning of future changes).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write up a non-regression test case as part of the resolution of this bug.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="179" LastActivityDate="2011-03-01T23:29:20.997" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="732" CreationDate="2011-03-01T23:35:26.420" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would have thought your budget is a prime variable. That is unless you set the budget as a consequence of your analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="179" LastActivityDate="2011-03-01T23:35:26.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="744" CreationDate="2011-03-01T23:36:04.967" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it needs to be done on .NET framework, you can alternate to another programming language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.startvbdotnet.com/dotnet/languages.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;.NET framework supported languages table&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to this table .NET supports Java language, and you have a Java expert in your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure whether programming Java on .NET framework is feasible. Maybe you should ask this at &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;programmers SE&lt;/a&gt; or at &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;stackoverflow&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the decision of changing the programming language is not possible and you need to solve the lack of skill in your team, I would recommend the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a short term:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hire a freelance C# developer to start the job. (This will be important if you need this DVD burn application fast)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allocate time for meetings with your team and the freelancer, so they can follow-up the development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a long term:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allocate time for your senior to build up competence on C#.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide C# training to your team. (This will be important for maintenance of the application after it is done, better than pay for support)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After sometime, the senior will be able to work with the freelancer making the transition smoother.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="105" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T11:33:46.223" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T12:00:31.397" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="744" CreationDate="2011-03-02T00:15:30.207" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Could you leverage the Actionscript and Flex skills and do it in AIR?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a project management question, I would recommend hiring an expert on a short-term contract. Gives you control, flexibility, the chance to rehire in the future and the potential knowledge transfer of having that person in-house (particularly if people from your team can shadow / pair with them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T00:15:30.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="737" CreationDate="2011-03-02T01:07:07.147" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As someone who has tested and created software (as well as lead a team), here are some of the items that mean the most to me when it comes to defect best practices&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Process, first and foremost...&lt;/strong&gt; - Figure out the defect management/testing methodology right now.  This will get rid of many headaches down the road for you and everyone involved (for instance, you aren't letting your developers close defects, are you? Who will be in charge of verifying fixed defects?)  Look at several test methodologies and tailor one to your needs.  Define the roles and responsibilities for everyone involved in the software quality process.  Figure out the life-cycle of your bugs as well.  Most of the major tools (Bugzilla, Jira, etc) have a defect life-cycle already baked in.  Some of the better ones will let you define the life-cycle so that it fits your needs.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;...now give it the critical once over&lt;/strong&gt; - Everyone gets the process they deserve, but not always the one they wanted.  Review everything you came up with in the previous step, and make sure you have something that works and addresses all your testing needs.  Fix any issues, make sure it works now, and keep an eye on everything moving forward in case something needs to be adjusted.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Clearly describe the defect when it is found!&lt;/strong&gt; - This might not be on the process level, but it is one of my pet peeves.  Make sure that defects are being described clearly so that you will be able to understand what they are now and in the future when someone needs to review them.  It is really disturbing to come back to a 6-12+ month old bug and not be able to make heads nor tails of what the issue was.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Track your defects&lt;/strong&gt; - This will tell you a great deal about the health of your software.  Linking defects to specific test cases, and more specifically to functional areas, will help you determine where efforts should be focused.  If 70% of your defects are coming from the &lt;em&gt;XYZ&lt;/em&gt;  functionality, does it mean that the quality of the code in this area of the application needs to be re-examined? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="106" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T01:07:07.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="752" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-03-02T04:46:07.650" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project procurement management is the process to manage all acquisitions of product or services from outside your project team. Both, the seller and the buyer need to agree on a risk level for their engagement. This risk defines the type of contract that they will use. The contracts can go from Firm Fixed Price (all risk to seller) to Cost plus % of Cost (all risk to the buyer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions related to contracts, cost management with vendors or contractors, and risk could be mark with procurement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastEditorUserId="70" LastEditDate="2011-03-04T06:24:25.167" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T06:24:25.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="753" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-03-02T04:46:07.650" Score="0" Body="Project procurement management is the process to manage all acquisitions of product or services from outside your project team." OwnerUserId="70" LastEditorUserId="70" LastEditDate="2011-03-04T06:24:34.527" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T06:24:34.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="737" CreationDate="2011-03-02T05:31:41.887" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every project will have its own goals for a bug tracking system.  Only you can define yours, but asoundmove &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/737/bug-task-tracking-software-best-practices/746#746&quot;&gt;makes some good points&lt;/a&gt;.  To not get too repetitive, I'll just assume you read that answer &amp;amp; jump right in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure your process supports your goals.  You'd be surprised how often people pick a tool or implements a process because its 'the &lt;em&gt;best&lt;/em&gt;', but eventually no one values it.  It provides nothing useful to anyone &amp;amp; it dies.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start small.  Effective process change management takes time and you'll have more success implementing small changes over time than trying to design the &quot;perfect&quot; but tracking process and throw it at your team all at once.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider your bug tracking database may have uses besides the day-to-day resolution of defects.  It can be used as a scheduling tool itself, to monitor when you are pushing the team too hard (more defects), or to help estimate future work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're going to use it to track tasks, be careful.  Common mistakes you can make tracking 'tasks' in a bug tracking system:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Too fine detail.  Assuming it takes 10 or 15 minutes &lt;em&gt;minumum&lt;/em&gt; to write a decent task description, you have to ask how long will this task take?  If it's something that could be done in an hour or so, you are adding a huge admin burden on top of every activity you undertake.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vague exit criteria.  Defects &amp;amp; enhancements are 'simple' to manage in a bug tracking system - it's easy to know when you're done.  Depending on your process, someone validates / confirms / tests that the requested change was made satisfactorily.  It's easy to write 'tasks' that have no clear mechanism to know if the task was accomplished correctly, sufficiently, or completely.  These tasks become an administrative burden.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Duplication of effort.  Are you capturing tasks in a bus tracking system, but also reporting them in status reports or as tasks in Gantt / schedules?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All change requests, whether defects, enhancements or tasks tied both to some kind of customer requirement (which might also be captured in the same database) and closed change requests either have a resolution explaining why no change will be made or a link to the changed artifacts.  Preferably these changed artifacts are checked into your revision control system: source code, build &amp;amp; initialization files, tests &amp;amp; documents.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T05:31:41.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="755" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-02T05:41:08.663" Score="3" ViewCount="210" Body="&lt;p&gt;At this link: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.payscale.com/research/CA/Certification=Project_Management_Professional_%28PMP%29/Hourly_Rate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Hourly Rate for Certification: Project Management Professional (PMP)&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, they show salary comparisons of PMP professionals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: What is the difference (years of experience, responsibilities etc) between Project Manager (IT), Senior Project Manager (IT), Project Manager (Software Development)?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The wages are very different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="516" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-10-04T10:49:20.290" LastActivityDate="2015-10-04T10:49:20.290" Title="Different kinds of PMs" Tags="&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="755" CreationDate="2011-03-02T07:15:41.087" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest to email payscale.com directly with this question. All these terms listed in your question are informal. My assumption is that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Manager (IT): ITIL, ISO 27001&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Senior Project Manager (IT): manages other Project Managers (IT)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Manager (Soft.Dev.): PMBOK, SWEBOK&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T07:15:41.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="739" CreationDate="2011-03-02T07:18:56.607" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why do you think it's going to be an increase? I would suggest to use earned value management (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_value_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;EVM&lt;/a&gt;) in order to calculate the numbers. As Mark has said, you will need to know the Scope Variance first of all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T07:18:56.607" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="732" CreationDate="2011-03-02T07:26:02.390" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to PMBOK &quot;Develop Human Resource Plan&quot; goes after other &quot;Planning&quot; processes, including developing of project management plan, scope statement, WBS, and schedule (!). It means that you have to know your project requirements first, then you can understand what human resources (people) are required to make your plans happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T07:26:02.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="759" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="760" CreationDate="2011-03-02T07:31:13.460" Score="19" ViewCount="4415" Body="&lt;p&gt;What motivational mechanism works more effectively - penalties or rewards? I'm also interested to know whether penalties are used in modern software development teams. If they are - in what form?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ps. Please pay attention that I &lt;strong&gt;didn't&lt;/strong&gt; say &quot;monetary&quot; rewards or penalties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;pps. I've written an article recently, on this very subject: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yegor256.com/2014/09/24/why-monetary-awards-dont-work.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Monetary Awards Can Work&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastEditorUserId="91" LastEditDate="2014-09-25T09:13:17.737" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T09:13:17.737" Title="Rewards or Penalties? Or just rewards?" Tags="&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="759" CreationDate="2011-03-02T07:47:50.837" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;When dealing with professionals, I find that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_theory_Y&quot;&gt;Theory Y&lt;/a&gt; style management is best.  Theory Y assumes that employees want to do a good job.  It assumes money is not a motivator, so intangible rewards are best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Theory X style management assumes employees are lazy, need constant direction, and are motivated by fear of punishment and cold hard cash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When dealing with people who you need to be proactive and make their own decisions, a positive, rewarding, encouraging atmosphere will foster more leaders in your team, and that's what you need as a PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If penalties are used, they shouldn't be anything drastic, demotivating, or something that will make the team members job incredibly difficult.  In software teams, the person who breaks the build usually is responsible for having to fix it.  Although it's a type of penalty, the developer will learn from the mistake and also be able to take the leadership role on coordinating getting it fixed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another type of penalty might be putting a penny in a jar each time another developer finds a bug in your code.  Since it's more like a game where the person with the most pennies loses, it's actually quite motivating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe the loser in the group has to be the one to go get coffee for the others that week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To use an example outside programming, when I was in the Army, if I forgot something on my uniform, the penalty was 20 push-ups.  It helped me stay in shape, served as a reminder for next time, and was a sort of game that we all laughed about, even with our Sergeant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would avoid financial penalties at all costs, as this is someone's livelihood!  Everytime Roger Goodell fines an NFL player for making a mistake, I cringe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For rewards, the reward should also be intangible.  You're not dealing with rats in a cage that you can shock and feed arbitrarily based on their choice of paths.  Instead, the reward could be work related, such as giving the best engineer the opportunity to lead the team presentation of a new product feature to the CEO or a client.  A reward such as this is work related, so it actually encourages the behaviors that may have helped the employee get to where they are in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example of a great reward would be more freedom to make decisions on the project independently.  If an engineer has proven him/herself, then let him/her have more of an independent role on a project.  Make this clear so that everyone knows this priviledge/right of passage was earned.  (This is more for junior engineers.  Senior engineers should already have earned this right.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone else (Craig Villacorta) said &lt;strong&gt;recognition&lt;/strong&gt;, which is what I'm alluding to with these examples, so I won't beat a dead horse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, keep in mind that while you are dealing with professionals who &lt;strong&gt;naturally will do their best because that is who they are&lt;/strong&gt;, that doesn't mean these professionals are dry and don't like to have fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as the reward/penalty system is a fun thing, it can be a tool used to help improve morale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think &lt;strong&gt;reputation&lt;/strong&gt; on Stack Exchange sites!  Sure, most of us are here to help people, improve our writing skills, and learn from others, but isn't it just a &lt;strong&gt;little&lt;/strong&gt; fun to see your reputation score go up??&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-03-03T04:47:26.347" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T04:47:26.347" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="759" CreationDate="2011-03-02T08:45:53.197" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd forget about typical reward/penalty approach. Vast majority of people I know who are best in their project teams don't work to get reward or avoid penalty. They do it because they feel accountable for the results of their work, they don't want to let client/their organization/leader/themselves down, they simply want to do good job, etc. Basically they dedicate 100% (or more) of their work because they believe it is a right thing to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you make it all about reward and/or penalty you create the system which will be tricked or at least people will make attempts to trick it. You won't get significantly better performance if you tell the people that at the end of the project there's a huge reward. If it worked that way in sports you would always have teams rewarded best on the top, which obviously doesn't work that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, I'm not against rewards, but don't make it the clue of motivating people. And regarding penalties for me well-delivered critical feedback always worked better than any specific penalty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So in short my answer for the question rewards versus penalties is &quot;neither.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-03-02T11:59:22.713" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T11:59:22.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="762" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="767" CreationDate="2011-03-02T08:54:33.093" Score="16" ViewCount="12885" Body="&lt;p&gt;What risk identification methods you recommend to use? If a project manager needs to build a raw list of risks containing, say, 100 items, how would he/she do it? As I understand, brain storming is not the best mechanism here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS. I finally managed to create my own system for that: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.yegor256.com/2019/05/14/cause-risk-effect.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;0rsk.com: Cause + Risk + Effect&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastEditorUserId="91" LastEditDate="2019-05-16T08:53:18.220" LastActivityDate="2019-05-17T11:58:07.183" Title="How to identify risks?" Tags="&lt;risk&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="755" CreationDate="2011-03-02T09:03:49.757" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitions of project management roles aren't strict. I know people who are a few times more than others and earns at least a couple of times more despite all of them have the same title - Project Manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also I'd be far from assuming that a specific role name means PM is dealing with specific method. You will find Project Managers or Senior Project Managers who don't work with any specific approach, as well as those using formal methods and those basing rather on agile techniques. Business card tells you neither of those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Senior Project Manager doesn't have to automatically manage other Project Managers. I'd say that it would be a role more of a Programme Manager than Senior Project Manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specific area where a Project Managers works (software development/IT) tells you more about typo of project that they're dealing with than about their seniority, experience, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I had to draw any conclusions form salary differences I'd say that generally senior roles earn more than basic ones (which is obvious) and that there differences in salaries of the same role between different industries (which is also obvious; look at rates of project manager in construction). I wouldn't go much further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way since in real life definitions of roles are rather vague don't treat research basing on that as an oracle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And one more thing: if we discuss hourly rates they would differ vastly depending on a company, world region, etc, which is another reason not to treat these result so seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T09:03:49.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="718" CreationDate="2011-03-02T09:27:27.930" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first sprint / scrum combo had a similar problem, due to a lack of realistic breaking down of tasks. The difference I had is that fully tested was a prerequisite of DONE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore I'd pick out a number of things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Break down tasks in the smallest jobs worth measuring (jmort253's blog post scenario is a good example).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Break down the workflow into meaningful stages. I normally use To do | In dev | Test | Done as starting points, add and remove stages as necessary for you and the team to get visibility on progress. The team will start to see real progress. (Do you use any software to track task progress?)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I would try and get a routine scrum in some fashion or another, whether through a conference call or video chat. I can't tell you how useful it is. There may be resistance at first but if you can convince them that it's only ~10 minutes a day, you watch how quickly they start cross-communicating things they wouldn't usually think of telling other team members. It really is illuminating.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="448" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T09:27:27.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="677" CreationDate="2011-03-02T09:38:41.650" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me it depends on the size, severity and when it is found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's found during testing of a planned feature, it goes back into development to be re-worked on, and discussed in the scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's major, red alert, red-flag stuff then it probably needs it's own task to be inserted into the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If during general testing a heap of smaller, ordinary priority bugs are found, I tend to make up cards that say &quot;fix 5 outstanding bugs&quot; (or whatever suitable number), assign it a small value and but it in the backlog with all the other tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't get hung up on the terminology - just make sure they can be tracked, repaired and accounted for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="448" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T09:38:41.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="762" CreationDate="2011-03-02T13:16:32.880" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This article on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.suite101.com/content/project-risk-identification-process-a128629&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Risk identification process&lt;/a&gt; (2016 edit: this site is now defunct, an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectmanagementportmanteau.com/2012/12/risk-identification-getting-help-from-your-team/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article inspired by it can be found here&lt;/a&gt;) shows Brainstorming as a key method, the following two methods look to me just like brainstorming in a different attire, but then the author shows two analytical methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; shows a more comprehensive picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have not said what type of risks you want to analyse. Are you talking about project risks (i.e. the risks of not completing on schedule, on budget and to specified resources)? Or are you talking about business risks (i.e. risks that the project will not deliver the expected benefits).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not conducted a formal risk analysis session, but I believe no single method is good enough on its own. It all depends on how critical the project or system is. Are you talking about air traffic control, building a sky-scraper or making changes to a word processing piece of software? The consequences of errors for each of those are not quite the same, to say the least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some highly analytical approaches might be just too expensive in some situations, while the pure brainstorm might be too little in other situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I would favour two different analytical techniques for systems (business) risks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start from the business / systems requirements and evaluate what could cause them not to be met and what the consequence would be if they were not.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start from the system detailed architecture and evaluate the consequence of a component failure or the failure of the interface between two components.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to project risks, a similar approach can be taken:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start from the expected benefits of the project and work back to what can cause them not to be met.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start from the project plan and evaluate which points of coordination and which tasks can go wrong.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="179" LastEditorUserId="179" LastEditDate="2016-04-02T08:23:20.113" LastActivityDate="2016-04-02T08:23:20.113" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="762" CreationDate="2011-03-02T13:36:44.893" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to PMBOK, there are a lot of activities involved in Risk Management, but there are definitely some specific tools and techniques for identifying risk. Some of my favorites are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Brainstorming&lt;/strong&gt; - I know you indicate it might not be the best, but I think there are some projects where this technique can be valuable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Interviewing&lt;/strong&gt; - Talk to experienced team members, stakeholders, and SMEs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Root cause analysis&lt;/strong&gt; - My favorite technique here is to ask &quot;why&quot; 5 times to get to the true root cause, and then to develop preventive action.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Checklists&lt;/strong&gt; - based on historical knowledge and documentation. This is why historical project documentation is important, even though many people hate doing it. &lt;em&gt;&quot;Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.&quot; (George Santayana)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SWOT&lt;/strong&gt; (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's important to remember that identifying risk is an iterative process, and the entire project team should be involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastEditorUserId="114" LastEditDate="2011-03-02T13:42:35.950" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T13:42:35.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="759" CreationDate="2011-03-02T13:58:14.483" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;+1 to @pawelbrodzinski for &quot;neither&quot;. However, I'll add that sometimes &lt;strong&gt;recognition&lt;/strong&gt; can be a great reward. It doesn't have to be monetary or material. Many people I've worked with and interviewed really respond positively to a genuine &quot;thank you for doing a great job.&quot; It makes them feel like people really notice and value  their work. In my organization, we start our team meetings with a roundtable list of &quot;wins&quot;. People love recognizing others and being recognized themselves in public. We also &quot;manage up&quot; where I'll pass along a hint to my VP that a team member did a good job on something, and our VP will actually send a handwritten &quot;thank you&quot; note to the individual saying something like, &quot;I heard you were working on X and are doing a fine job. Thanks and keep it up!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T13:58:14.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="759" CreationDate="2011-03-02T14:07:43.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Neither. To most developers, what gets rewarded or punished is perceived as being out of their control, so the rewards/punishments end up getting perceived as arbitrary or based on popularity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T14:07:43.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="770" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="771" CreationDate="2011-03-02T14:13:33.910" Score="5" ViewCount="153" Body="&lt;p&gt;The company I work for is looking to create a new version of their main software package, and wants to outsource the development to a local company. So far, so good. The non-technical project manager asked me for assistance (three months in), largely to ensure that he doesn't get the wool pulled over his eyes when discussing the technical elements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However(!) firstly, there is no structure on our end to deal with creating a proposal to give to potential partners. There is the project manager, assisted to some degree by his technically minded, but busy father (also employed at the company) and an enthusiastic final year university student, and now, me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, the project manager has produced a &quot;Funtional Spec&quot;, influenced by his father, which deals largely with how the project should work (Django, jQuery, MySQL), and very little with what the project should do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thirdly, we've only entered negotiations with one company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel that we should have a structure in place at our end dealing with roles and responsibilities, that we should have a proper requirements document that deals with the &quot;what&quot;, rather than the &quot;how&quot;, and that we should be speaking to a good number of other potential contractors. I also think that a functional spec, dealing with how the project should work and which technologies will be used should be produced by the (outsourced) developer; I think that these decisions should be the responsibility of the person who is responsible for implementing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How, in the real world, ideally, should this process work? Who should be producing the functional spec? Am I right to worry about the way this project is going?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks all for taking the time!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="521" LastActivityDate="2011-12-08T09:11:29.777" Title="Asked to assist on a technical level with a project, have misgivings about the direction and management of the project" Tags="&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="770" CreationDate="2011-03-02T14:20:07.570" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like the project manager made the right choice in bringing you into the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you are right-on-track and should bring up those exact concerns and solutions to the project manager.  Of course, you will be the person tasked with writing up those specifications and helping find the other contractors to talk to.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I would view this as an opportunity and use it as such by making sure that senior management in the company knows about what you've proposed and how you're doing it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could accomplish this, perhaps, by offering to do a presentation in front of the project manager (and his father's) boss in order to help win support for the plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T14:20:07.570" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="759" CreationDate="2011-03-02T14:31:02.287" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being part of a good team that accomplishes and delivers good products, being treated with respect and having a chance to grow in your craft are what I've found to be the most desirable factors for a software development environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you must work in an environment where knowledge workers are treated more like 19th century factory workers (as seems to happen in some development shops) then power and money are the main variables management plays with. Power can range from having higher priority in picking vacation days or project assignments to having the ability to tattle-tale on other workers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is NOT, IN ANY WAY the kind of environment I would recommend nor want to operate, but that's how I've observed managers navigate those kinds of shops.  Incidentally, shops run that way can only exist when there is a low cost advantage to the environment. However, once innovation and creativity become factors in winning business, these kind of environments generally implode. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a post (and discussion with Pawel) you may find interesting on the topic of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vertabase.com/blog/teach-engineers-to-be-remarkable/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Teaching Engineers to Be Remarkable&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T14:31:02.287" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="770" CreationDate="2011-03-02T16:09:05.043" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, I fully agree that you should focus on &amp;quot;what&amp;quot; in the first place and then eventually go to &amp;quot;how.&amp;quot; Btw: &amp;quot;how&amp;quot; doesn't have to be owned by a vendor - often companies set technology guidelines as they want to keep their infrastructure coherent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way &amp;quot;how&amp;quot; should be a consequence of &amp;quot;what&amp;quot; and not the other way around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coming back to decide your &amp;quot;what&amp;quot; - you can approach the problem using one of a couple strategies (or mix them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Up-front specifications&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this approach you basically try to write specifications covering all you needs. Usually more detailed means better here as it forces you to rethink specific needs. Also it leaves less place for interpretation later for both you and the vendor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually the situation where you look for a replacement for existing solution is definitely an argument for choosing this path. However note that we basically never are able to define what we want in such precise manner that our requirements won't change over the course of the project. And that's where another approach kicks in...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Agile approach&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With agile you assume you don't fully know what you're going to end up with. You set general goals which should be achieved by the project but you arrange details, including detailed specifications, during the project. Usually development is split to short, few-week-long iterations and at the beginning of each you see what is already done and you make arrangements what will be done during the sprint and set all the details needed for that. It's a kind of iterative planning - you don't try to write everything down up front, allowing yourself to make decisions later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since it looks like you don't have much prepared already in terms of specifying your requirements it might be an argument to choose this path. Note: usually it's much harder to sign reasonable agile contract which covers interests of both client and vendor side (if you want to learn more on the subject &lt;a href=&quot;http://vimeo.com/17638921&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here's good presentation&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T16:09:05.043" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="762" CreationDate="2011-03-02T17:11:18.360" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Asking the team would be my first action. They may have idea of what risks are in their part of the work. Plus you can ask them about overall project risks they see. They may also know if they aren't done with another project or their time is being split across projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="158" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2012-10-09T20:12:25.677" LastActivityDate="2012-10-09T20:12:25.677" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="775" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="776" CreationDate="2011-03-02T17:37:33.057" Score="5" ViewCount="1346" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work primarily on small-scale (and large-scale) software projects. One of the questions that always needs answering is &lt;strong&gt;how do we decide how many bugs should we fix?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Realistically, software &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; has bugs. And these bugs are of different types; data corruption bugs are not the same as the-border-color-is-wrong bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some project management methodologies answer this question directly or indirectly; Six Sigma comes to mind (leave no more than one bug per one-point-something-million), as do Clean Room and Zero Defect methodologies (no bugs allowed, period).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But how do I decide how many bugs I should fix? What do I look at? Some metrics might be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many bugs do I have budget for fixing (fix as many as possible until launch)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many customers are complaining about bugs (fix bugs that multiple people complain about)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Severity of bugs (fix data-corruption and software-halts bugs only)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize and clarify, I'm looking for &lt;strong&gt;a method or technique I can apply to come up with a set of guidelines on which bugs to fix and which to ignore.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastEditorUserId="70" LastEditDate="2011-03-02T17:42:34.580" LastActivityDate="2019-08-07T01:52:10.623" Title="Deciding how many bugs to leave as unresolved" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;defect-fixing&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="775" CreationDate="2011-03-02T17:55:57.880" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;+1 for the comment:  &quot;you will always have bugs.&quot; - It does not matter the methodology, it is just plain impossible. Unless you are dealing with an extremely small team, with an extremely small application.  Enough of the strong words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we do in our practice is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We finish dev and do our internal unit testing (in dev environment), after a few sprints of fixing those, we release the sw to QA team (another developer if you don't have QA personnel)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then we run test cases on the QA environment to find other defects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After a few iterations (depending on the project) you will get a few defects on each category (high, med, low).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get the QA person perspective in a document (&lt;strong&gt;QA Report&lt;/strong&gt;, with go or no-go recommendation)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Regardless of either go/no-go in the QA report. Take the report to the business(hopefully it will include the amount of defects left) and ask them if they feel comfortable with those bugs. If they say, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;yes let's go even if your QA say no, then you have your decision point.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take the SW to UAT and you are done, until next time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T17:55:57.880" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="759" CreationDate="2011-03-02T18:19:19.490" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would refer you to &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/u6XAPnuFjJc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt; which gives several citations demonstrating that for skilled jobs, performance actually decreases with pay. (I suspect that the &quot;overpayment&quot; part of that statistic is a red herring, but the general point is still good.) Of course, pay is only one kind of reward, but I infer that the only kind of reward many skilled individuals really want is ongoing access to interesting problems and occasional, not over-the-top recognition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="523" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T18:19:19.490" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="775" CreationDate="2011-03-02T18:42:46.873" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have spent time in countless meetings where more time was spent discussing a bug -- what is the bug, why is it there, can we just leave it in? -- than would have taken to just fix it.  What if the team spent the energy they would have put into categorizing and ranking the bugs and put that energy into &lt;strong&gt;fixing&lt;/strong&gt; the bugs?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are times when you may decide to leave a bug in the product, but that should be rare.  You should at least &lt;strong&gt;try&lt;/strong&gt; to fix all the bugs in your product.  Once you start leaving them in, it's a very slippery slope.  One &quot;acceptable&quot; bug often begets others.  Or the &quot;we had to do it this way because of that bug we never fixed&quot; effect on your overall design.  Also, your developers will tend to be more sloppy once they know that some bugs are acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="347" LastEditorUserId="347" LastEditDate="2011-03-04T17:21:22.457" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T17:21:22.457" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="779" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="788" CreationDate="2011-03-02T19:03:48.847" Score="16" ViewCount="3469" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a project manager, for a major project at school. One of my team members had joined the team as a developer, without knowledge of particular languages. The member has spent almost half the project's estimated duration without contributing. All the extra developmental burden has fallen on me, as I am PM and responsible for it. &#xA;During meetings the member always nods, agrees and accepts to work by a given deadline. But when the deadline comes and goes, there is absolutely no response. I don't mean to bitch, but these are the facts, truly. I spend most of my time almost baby-sitting, by going thru the coding with the member and explaining how to code during one-on-one meetings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried to give extra time for the member to come upto speed, and spent time trying to train him. All has been almost wasted, because the member either is too busy with other self important work, or too slow to learn or plain simple incompetent or lazy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you give any suggestions as to how I can encourage the member to put solid time and effort into contributing towards the project ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;dropping the member off the team is highly unprofessional, but should I consider it if it becomes too much of time-constraint issue ? or should I keep using reward-only policy ? &#xA;I am sort of frustrated and don't know how to proceed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you-Egon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, as suggested, the team member is now preparing slides, writing documentation, and all such secondary work. Thnx folks to help me make up my mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="524" LastEditorUserId="524" LastEditDate="2011-03-23T02:17:35.637" LastActivityDate="2011-07-02T19:34:25.290" Title="Handling unskilled / unmotivated team members" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="775" CreationDate="2011-03-02T19:06:05.347" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me suggest an article written a year ago by our team: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.technoparkcorp.com/innovations/test-planning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.technoparkcorp.com/innovations/test-planning&lt;/a&gt;. The idea in the article is that there are two indicators: Quality of Implementation and Quality of Product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quality of Product (&lt;strong&gt;QoP&lt;/strong&gt;) is how good your product is going to be, comparing to some ideal. To calculate it you need to know the anticipated size of the product in order to make an assumption of how many bugs you need to find. To find in order to reach &quot;critical mass&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quality of Implementation (&lt;strong&gt;QoI&lt;/strong&gt;) is how good you managed to create the product so far, comparing to the planned QoP. This is where you are calculating the bugs actually found and fixed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having these two indicators in place you will be able to claim to your customer/sponsor, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&quot;Planned quality is 78%, while 55% of it is already achieved&quot;.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T19:06:05.347" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="762" CreationDate="2011-03-02T19:09:43.197" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not sure what you mean with a &quot;raw list of a 100 risks&quot;. I assume you want to use this as some kind of checklist for similar projects? I would certainly question a list of a 100 risks on a single project, and if they are all genuine risks, than I would question the project ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, my tool is the &lt;strong&gt;WBS&lt;/strong&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Print it out on a large format, then plow through it with your team, questioning each and every element on it for possible mischief. If you have a large team, you can split them up in small groups to do the same, then discuss all findings in a plenary session. Try to get some representatives of other stakeholders to attend as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will give you a valid list of risks for your project, and as they are connected to the appropriate work packages means you can take better informed decisions for handling them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T19:09:43.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="779" CreationDate="2011-03-02T19:17:48.893" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMBOK says that every problem in a project is a personal fault of a project manager. Let's review your mistakes in the explained scenario. Hope this will help you to change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All the extra developmental burden has fallen on me, as I am PM and responsible for it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're responsible for &lt;strong&gt;managing&lt;/strong&gt;, not for development. As soon as you started to do his work you made a severe mistake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During meetings the member always nods, agrees and accepts to work by a given deadline&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meetings are not for accepting. Meetings are for discussions. Instead of asking him at a meeting you should create a list of tasks, send him by email, and ask for &lt;strong&gt;estimates&lt;/strong&gt;. He should provide deadlines, not you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;explaining how to code during one-on-one meetings&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should not explain. You have to establish &lt;strong&gt;quality standards&lt;/strong&gt; in your team and let him obey them. They have to be in writing, those standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the member either is too busy with other self important work, or too slow to learn or plain simple incompetent or lazy&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He is neither lazy nor slow. &lt;strong&gt;He is smart&lt;/strong&gt; because he is still in your team and you're still doing baby-sitting. My final advice is to get back to the &quot;ground rules&quot; of your team and review them. Are they explicit? Do they explain motivation of every team member? Do they explain &quot;rewards and penalties&quot; (non-monetary first of all!, read &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/759&quot;&gt;Rewards or Penalties? Or just rewards?&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T19:17:48.893" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="779" CreationDate="2011-03-02T19:30:48.710" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Letting your project go down the drain and you knowing the reason all along, that would be unprofessional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So unless this project serves in part as a training for your teammember, but I gather from your description that it was not the intention, you will have to act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So either you accept it, but then you will have to talk to your manager or steerco and ask or more time/budget and/or additional help. You will have to do this anyway if there is no alternative available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, confront the person with the impact of his behaviour on the project, talk to his/her boss about it, and if they don't comply (say within the week if you can hold it that much longer) there is no other option but to let him go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not 'hope' for things to just happen, or to get better. As a project manager you will need to make them happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T19:30:48.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="775" CreationDate="2011-03-02T19:45:06.267" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Number of unresolved bugs should be part of your acceptance criteria; the final word is always with your customer however. As a guideline we have the following classification:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blocking: needs immediate resolution; number = 0 before go live, naturally&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Workaround available: maximum 5 to 7 (but this depends upon the product!) and ofcourse need to be planned for the next update.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cosmetic (what you call &quot;the border colour is wrong&quot; type of bugs) - no limit&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We classify ourselves, but the list is regularly discussed with the customer. Cosmetic bugs are resolved when time permits, prioritised by the customer. Now and then the list is cleaned out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;hope this helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T19:45:06.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="775" CreationDate="2011-03-02T21:04:37.353" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's some additional info that would help with the response:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what are you 'contracted' to deliver? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is there a fixed budget that you CAN NOT exceed (seems to be by your question)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do you prioritize your bugs by impact and probability of occurrence &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what if you don't fix ALL the bugs - what's the outcome? is there any liability?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, you want to fix ALL known issues, you can never compromise on quality, there's a direct relationship between it and productivity. (Capers Jones, DeMarco, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="458" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T21:04:37.353" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="779" CreationDate="2011-03-02T22:27:03.440" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely nothing unprofessional about letting him go.  You are not failing, he is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is another post on this site about &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/404/how-to-motivate-a-team-software-development-oop-year-1-degree-project&quot;&gt;Motivating a Team Member&lt;/a&gt; on a college project that may help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T22:27:03.440" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="775" CreationDate="2011-03-02T22:39:10.100" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always aim for zero.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While leaving cosmetic bugs in may seem acceptable, I would argue that they cost less to resolve than leave in.  As long as they are left, they will take time to review every time someone goes through the bug list.  They may also multiply through copy and paste.  (Screen 1 has wrong border color. We copied it to build screens 5, 8, 12, and 17, now they have the wrong border color.  Four new bugs to raise and fix.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I might leave feature bugs in, especially if there is disagreement about the feature.  (I worked on one project where we had a feature Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  It was taken out for Tuesday, Thursday, and the following Monday. What a productive week!!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It tends to be cheaper to fix bugs as soon as possible.  The responsible developer is likely still available and knows exactly how to fix it.  Wait a couple months and the developer will likely have to spend more time figuring out what he did and how to fix it.  Wait longer and the original developer may have moved on to another project or company.  Also if developers spend too much time fixing their bugs they are likely to improve their quality or move on to greener pastures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have mentioned, when the policy is not to fix bugs then workarounds are implemented.  It costs time to implement and test the workaround.  This cost will likely exceed the cost of fixing the bug.  Even worse, the workarounds may break when the original bug is fixed, increasing the repair cost of the original bug.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scope bugs should be left unfixed but should be documented as such or rejected.  Make sure you can easily get scope bugs out of the regular bug review flow. (Bug: The clock radio doesn't turn on my coffee maker when the alarm goes off.  Reject or ask for a scope change.)  Man pages used to have a bugs section.  The &lt;code&gt;awk&lt;/code&gt; command had a documented bug that it didn't work for lines longer than 1024 characters.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T22:39:10.100" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="779" CreationDate="2011-03-03T00:21:30.970" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start writing him up for failure to perform. When you get enough documentation to satisfy HR, fire them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;During meetings the member always nods, agrees and accepts to work by a given deadline&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On 03/02/2011, Wally agreed to have doohickey_12 completed by3/7.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;3/8: Doohickey_12 not completed. Wally says it will take another week.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;3/15: Doohickey_12 not completed. Wally says it will take another week. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do this for each item Wally is responsible for. In case you forget who Wally is, he is the guy with glasses in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dilbert.com/&quot;&gt;Dilbert&lt;/a&gt; comic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;dropping the member off the team is highly unprofessional&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No it isn't. They're just wasting your time and energy as well as the employer's money. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you utterly loathed some other manager, you could make Wally seem like a hero and connive to have the other manager &quot;steal&quot; him away from you. In the business world, there are so many Wallies that Scott Adams doesn't have to look far for humor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are in a situation where you cannot fire the guy, and you can't get rid of him, have him make coffee and go get lunch for the rest of the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T00:21:30.970" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="389" CreationDate="2011-03-03T00:36:58.990" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Waterfall&quot; is far superior when the customer knows exactly what they want and nothing changes other than bug fixes. It gets a lot of discredit because the vast majority of customers don't know what they want, so iterative processes are far more effective at finding out just what those customers want - and giving it to them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T00:36:58.990" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="762" CreationDate="2011-03-03T01:59:27.940" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yea, I'll support using the WBS as a key tool to identify where risks might happen. I tend to do risk identification this way.&#xA;With the sponsor as we develop the scope statement &#xA;with the planning team as we develop the WBS&#xA;With the project team as we approach key milestones/things change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to Tangureas's comment. I'm hoping that was a joke. No you can't say someone is underpaid and might leave. What you can do is identify the key risks for specific people leaving the project (not just the company). You can have standard approaches. &#xA;what happens if the sponsor leaves the project&#xA;what happens if the pm leaves the project &#xA;what other key people do we need a plan for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T01:59:27.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="775" CreationDate="2011-03-03T03:57:10.783" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think looking at the number of bugs might be the wrong approach.  I'm not saying it's a bad idea.  But I want to point out two opposite albeit unlikely examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On one end of the spectrum, you could have 100 bugs that cripple the system, eat the client's data, sends all of the nasty emails in their Saved Drafts folder, burns their business to the ground, and urinates on it to try to put the fire out.  These bugs are the nastiest of the nastiest bugs you've ever seen, and everything else -- other than that -- is perfect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So do you fix all 100 or do you use some magic formula that tells you to just fix X of them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, you could have 1,000 &quot;the-button-has-an-extra-pixel-in-it-omg!&quot; type bugs that just don't matter to anyone except the designer who conceptualized the user interface.  Do you again use the magic formula and go fix Y of them because that's what the formula says, or do you recognize that in all of your hallway usability tests, everyone loved the software, and not one person complained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that at some point, it's worth reading between the lines and using your judgement to determine what bugs affect the quality of the system, and your bottom line, and what bugs would just represent unnecessary costs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're new to project management, a formula is a fine way to get started, but eventually after gaining some experience, you'll come to rely more on your judgement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T03:57:10.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="744" CreationDate="2011-03-03T04:18:50.743" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds like a classic build vs. buy decision. I would recommend getting the team together to write up a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000036.html&quot;&gt;functional specification&lt;/a&gt; of what your software should look like, what it should do, how it will be installed, and how it will be maintained. Put in a statement of &quot;Preferred development in C# for future flexibility. Proposals for using alternate languages are accepted/not accepted&quot; (your choice). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then send out an RFP to custom development shops and find out what the price might be to just &quot;buy it&quot;. After you have that price &lt;strong&gt;then&lt;/strong&gt; you can decide on build vs. buy. If building is still cheaper, the functional spec will probably still be useful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, make sure you buy the source code and copyright. Lawyers are useful for contracts like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T04:18:50.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="759" CreationDate="2011-03-03T08:48:10.553" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have a direct answer, but a story that may tell you something to keep in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once, there was a training for leaders of a military flight school. They were explained that for learning new skills, it is best to reward good performance, but not reprimand bad performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the flight instructors immediately argued that that was wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When one of his students would perform badly on a day, he would reprimand them. The next day, their performance got better. When one of his students would perform very well, he would reward them. The next day, their performance dropped. His conclusion was that reprimanding is effective, where rewarding achieves the complete opposite of what he wants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reality of the story is that his reprimanding or rewarding have little to do with this kind of performance changes. Flying, like software engineering, is a skill that takes time and effort to gradually learn and improve. Sometimes you will have good days, sometimes you will have bad days. But, you usually regress back to the mean - which is gradual growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The morale of the story for your question is: if you decide to do reprimanding or rewarding, make sure this is something based on the long term. Everybody has good and bad days, sometimes even weeks. If you act as the flight instructor in this story, you will actually end up with the mindset that rewarding is ineffective, and reprimanding works well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user259" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T08:48:10.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="779" CreationDate="2011-03-03T12:09:09.617" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the developer has agreed a deliverable, you should be holding him to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But when the deadline comes and goes, there is absolutely no response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As soon as he is not delivering, you must escalate the issue. You are responsible for ensuring that the project is delivered on time, and answer to the stakeholders, at present, it sounds like he is major risk to the projects. All agreements of deadlines should documented, and if there is persistent failure to meet these deadlines, the professional thing to do, is to discuss it with him, and if there is no improvement, let him go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's commendable that you're pitching in to cover the developers deficiencies, but the concern is that your focus will be more on what he is doing rather than the whole project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T12:09:09.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="775" CreationDate="2011-03-03T12:52:58.017" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can search for the &quot;Good Enough Software&quot; term. When I was in the university I did read a controversial book that talks about that, it was inspiring. I don't remember the name, but I trust in google can put you in the way.&#xA;If anybody knows that book, please tell me the name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: It was an article from the IEEE Software journal (May 1995) called &quot;When good enough software is best&quot; by Edward Yourdon. Then, the &quot;The Pragmatic Programmer&quot; referenced to that one. &#xA;Some link to the text: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/52.382191&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/52.382191&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=625475&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=625475&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="460" LastEditorUserId="460" LastEditDate="2019-08-07T01:52:10.623" LastActivityDate="2019-08-07T01:52:10.623" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="775" CreationDate="2011-03-03T13:43:37.427" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The success of a deliverable will be defined by the quality of it. Its important to establish a process of assigning the severity of the bugs, normally by risk and impact, I don't think this should be overly complicated. Reverting back to a pre-defined acceptance criteria, the focus should be to clear all bugs of a certain severity (i.e. high, medium) and a percentage of the remaining. Ultimately, agreement with the stakeholders should guide your decision on what is acceptable or unacceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T13:43:37.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="762" CreationDate="2011-03-03T14:55:39.407" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using the WBS is a great way. All of the subject matter experts, project owners, and participants should contribute in brain storming sessions to identify risks. This not only brings out the risks, but starts to show people how they will be relying on each other for the projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, man power should be addressed as a risk if it is one, but just head count. A previous poster talked about saying that certain people are under paid and might leave. Bringing this up is bad in any organization. It's also bad to discuss whether certain people are good at their jobs or not. Stick to the amount of people you need to do the work and the specific skills needed to complete the work, like specific software languages etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="538" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T14:55:39.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="799" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="802" CreationDate="2011-03-03T15:57:54.190" Score="14" ViewCount="1708" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems that the worst aspect of any project is documentation - what developers have done, what contractors delivered, who owns what, how to support the end result, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you encourage all project members to contribute to handover documentation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="167" LastActivityDate="2018-07-24T22:12:55.400" Title="How do you encourage project members to document their work for end-of-project handover?" Tags="&lt;personal-skills&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="799" CreationDate="2011-03-03T16:07:41.003" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No one seems to enjoy the task is right.  In that case, I like to make it a required task with time spec'd out for it.  It should also be listed as a part of the deliverables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="106" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T16:07:41.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="799" CreationDate="2011-03-03T16:22:47.050" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agreed, it is the worst aspect of the project. Ideally, this identified as a task within the project for each work stream to complete. However, I do favour having this as a specific work package assigned to a resource(s) who areresponsible for the creation and collation of documentation. In addition, it is worth having a specific standard to how it is presented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that using a tools such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/pages/default.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SharePoint&lt;/a&gt;, allows for easy checking in- &amp;amp; out- of documentation, and can easily be administered by the appropriate person(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="532" LastEditDate="2011-03-03T16:28:07.547" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T16:28:07.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="799" CreationDate="2011-03-03T16:39:58.070" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few ideas which can be used:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In bigger organizations dedicated person or team working on documentations often seems to be a good idea. It is possible to find people who like to write, use correct English (or whatever language you use) and are technical enough to deal with most of technical documentations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It always help to have clearly defined handoffs within the project. For example we don't treat a feature as done unless it is documented or we don't treat a feature as ready to development until there's user story along with test cases. With clear criteria people will know that documenting effort is a part of their tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Spread the documentation through the whole building process. Like in the previous point analyst/product owner has to prepare their share before developers start working on a feature, then developers prepare their part before it goes to QA staff, then QA staff work on their stuff before a feature goes to deployment and so on. With this approach you should have quite good documentation before the feature is considered as ready. If you work with this approach consistently the whole documentation effort seems to be less painful.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Standardization is also one of ideas which may work (although not necessarily will). With some standards which are set in the organization everyone knows what is expected in terms of documenting a project. Note: chances are good that you will have to remind people about standards and expectations for some time until they get used to them and will fulfill your expectations in this area with no pushing. Also don't make your standards too strict or too heavy or people would ignore them and you will have hard time getting docs you need and they will have hard time adjusting to your expectations (kind of lose-lose scenario if you ask me).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use tricks which reduce burden with creating documentation. There are ideas like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-documenting&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;self-documenting code&lt;/a&gt; or writing requirements in a way which allows automatic or semi-automatic test case generation (this one depends on tools you use).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T16:39:58.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="803" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="833" CreationDate="2011-03-03T16:49:15.623" Score="2" ViewCount="428" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you have any criticisms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been having a hard time fitting it all together but I finally understand which parts go where and the need for me to customize to a certain degree to make them fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problem is, the internet is full of rubbish. I can't tell you the amount of times I've seen: TDD vs FDD..they are 2 completely different things!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please, help me untangle this web. Do these 3 appear to fit well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prince2&lt;br&gt;&#xA;FDD&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Agile &amp;amp; XP  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have anything you'd like to add?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="417" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-03-04T13:23:43.007" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T21:20:50.223" Title="What about Prince2, FDD &amp; Agile Development (with XP)?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;extreme-programming&gt;&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="799" CreationDate="2011-03-03T17:54:25.040" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;For contractors I would think it is pretty easy: link it to payment - but make sure the criteria for acceptable documentation are well defined and the review process well understood and agreed upon before entering into the contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For team members it is a little more difficult, but by spreading the load, making each person accountable for their own contribution, defining clear roles and limits, and making it part of performance appraisal, I think this can motivate people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One key motivator is comparing with others, so if other teams are doing better, showing a public tally of monthly scores might be an incentive for some to do that little bit more in the right direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly everyone has different skills. So your best bet is to recognise which are the best people to produce the documentation and put less strain on the others. It does not let them off the hook, they still get appraised on it, but by shifting tasks to people who are happy enough to do them you'll probably end up with a better result overall (most cost effective, desired quality).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in the end if you are landed in an organisation with a culture that screams against documentation, you are up for a culture change. These things are slow, need the support of key people and must be effected gradually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="179" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T17:54:25.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="799" CreationDate="2011-03-03T18:10:33.400" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This information should have been gathered during the project.  It should be apparent early in the project if the project documentation will be a problem.  Documentation writing skills are often not the best among developers.  You may need a coach, writing assistant, or technical writer to assist with the task.  Having been both a producer and consumer of documentation, I can attest that it is difficult to produce good documentation, and that good documentation wonderful to have.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ongoing sources of this information includes:&#xA; - who owns what should have been specified in the contracts; &#xA; - what the contractors delivered should match what was specified in the contract, and delivery recorded in the status documents; &#xA; - what the developers have done architecturally should be recorded in design documentation;&#xA; - what the developers delivered should have been recorded in status documents; and&#xA; - how to support the application should have been documented during development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This information should be developed as the project develops.  On-going management of the contracts and contractors should result in the desired information being available at the end of the contract.  A simple document tracking contracted deliverables and there state should enable immediate determination of what the contractors delivered.  Be sure to add out-of-scope deliverables. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recording what the developers delivered may be more difficult as they may not file good status reports.  For an agile project, tracking story delivery should give you good documentation.  Track equivalent deliverables for other methodologies.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Support documentation has always been problematic.  Ongoing hand-offs to a production team can be used to gather this information. The production team should require or generate run-books for the application.  This should include how to deal with ongoing support.  This documentation may be prone to rot on the shelf,  perhaps more so for projects which require less on-going support. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would consider hand-off of the projects repositories (content management system, bug database, wiki, etc.) a critical concern.  This can be an invaluable trove of information.   If you haven't contracted ownership of the code this will likely not happen.  I would at least want the code in escrow.  If you supplied the repositories, it becomes an issue of placing them into maintenance mode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Documentation on how to setup the environments for development, building, testing, and delivery preparation is important for the maintenance team.  This should have been documented early in the project and kept up to date.  If your organization does multiple projects, try to standardize this as much as possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T18:10:33.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="807" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="823" CreationDate="2011-03-03T18:25:47.973" Score="12" ViewCount="4451" Body="&lt;p&gt;The notice period in our company is one month. One of my team members has quit and he is serving his one month notice period. However, it is getting difficult to get any work done from his side. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you guys have any tips or tricks on how to motivate my team member when he has already shown no interest in doing work in his notice period?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="541" LastActivityDate="2011-03-05T11:34:11.350" Title="How to manage a team member when he is serving the notice period" Tags="&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="807" CreationDate="2011-03-03T18:43:03.143" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There isn't much of a carrot you can entice him with, and since he's leaving in a few weeks, there isn't much of a stick you can smack him with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he's becoming (more?) difficult to work with, get another dev to sit down with him and go through his projects to capture any smarts that have not been sufficiently documented. When that's done, just let him go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T18:43:03.143" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="799" CreationDate="2011-03-03T18:51:14.837" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Developers are typically conditioned (in the pavlovian sense) that when documentation is suddenly being demanded that layoffs are on the horizon (and in these cases, waiting until after the last moment to document anything is a survival skill to delay getting laid off). It would be far better to slowly switch the company culture to document things as you go. This will involve an internal wiki as well as a more structured document system. If you have some boss who makes remarks like &amp;quot;we only want full and complete documentation&amp;quot; then you have to keep them away from the developers as that sort of boss will shut down any wiki they can find - and the requirement that docs be &amp;quot;full and complete&amp;quot; raises the bar for docs so high that no one will do them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;We’ve all experienced how managers and higher-ups dance around the fact that we’ll quit someday. The justification given for why a process should be documented is almost always “because you might be hit by a bus tomorrow” (or the less macabre “win the lottery”). Since neither is within the realm of reasonable probability, this transitional documentation is often half-assed with the understandable “you’ll have more things to worry about if I get hit by a bus” attitude. But imagine if the justification for documentation was different:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I need you to document this process in detail so that any yahoo can understand it a year from now after you’ve left.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I’ve never had a manager or higher-up ever put it that way. In fact, many people feel that’s an even more stolid justification than “hit by a bus”. But it isn’t; it’s just reality. Why not accept it?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Up-or-Out-Solving-the-IT-Turnover-Crisis.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that I forget things, and many other developers know they forget things, but the process of making documentation has become so painful for most developers that we'd rather go to the dentist. To get better documentation is going to require a culture change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T18:51:14.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="799" CreationDate="2011-03-03T19:25:27.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem with documentation (age old question) is that if it's created up front or anytime prior to completion, it will not be insync with the actual code or process - and if it's not in sync, it's value is greatly reduced and the group/person taking over maint doesn't trust it and goes directly to the code to determine what the documentation should have said.......so, following XP - don't create documentation tasks, let the developers follow TDD (or any similar agile process)...if you want to encourage them, make them the supporting group after the system goes live (and inform them prior) OR have the group/person taking over the maint develop the documentation with the developers.......code far outlasts any documentation created. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="458" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T19:25:27.820" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="779" CreationDate="2011-03-03T19:39:04.417" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I entirely agree with @Tangurena's point about using a spreadsheet; this has been very useful to me in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the everyday deadline missing, I would also log any other possible misconduct:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Specifically ask him to warn you in advance of overshooting a deadline (25% of the task's duration in advance), and log if he fails to do so.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If he attempts to assign even minor blame elsewhere: log, investigate, refute (if possible), and log results.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid pettiness, but keep track of small things nonetheless: pettiness makes it seem personal, but sometimes minor things turn out to be larger in impact than expected. Excess entries can be filtered out before the document is used in earnest.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, if he is doing work elsewhere, is it for other managers? If so, discuss the situation with them to see if they're suffering the same issues. Be warned though, at the extremes this can either end with a new ally, or discovering that he's already laid the groundwork to undermine your actions (&quot;Egon is so unreasonable, and clearly has it in for me personally.&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Final tip: Patience. Remember to give them all the rope they sensibly need to improve or fail, and only pull the noose when necessary and decisive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="136" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T19:39:04.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="812" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="839" CreationDate="2011-03-03T19:47:19.803" Score="13" ViewCount="14172" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a basic question that was asked on another site (a precursor to this site) but that seemed to be very helpful to visitors.  Let me know if you find it useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When initiating a project there are many different names for the base project document which is compiled at the beginning of every project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;* Project Charter&#xA;* PID (Project Initiation Document)&#xA;* SoW (or Project Statement of Work)&#xA;* Project Proposal&#xA;* you can name others&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are those the same or similar (by content or purpose)? What makes them different? When should each one be used?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-10-23T10:45:16.427" LastActivityDate="2017-10-23T10:45:16.427" Title="Are the 'Project Charter', 'PID', 'SoW', and the 'Project Proposal' different names for the same thing?" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="762" CreationDate="2011-03-03T19:52:20.663" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;If you build it, they (risks) will come&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Craig and Stephan have great answers about the different tools and methods you and your team should use to identify an initial set of risks and that you should use periodically to refresh the list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But just coming up with a list of risks is kind of pointless unless it's the first step in a risk management process, which is the mechanism to keep the pressure on until the risk has passed (lucky you), mitigated (nice work), or realized (sad). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Luckily, merely having a risk management structure in place will--over time--generate risks; this is because the best (meaning most insightful) risks often come to people during their normal daily work. Without a home for these thoughts they either linger as nagging worry beads in their minds, are actively neglected because people don't know how to deal with them (where they fester into nasty surprises), or are straight-up forgotten. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if your team knows that a risk management process is in place then these potential risks find their home in the process, where they can be properly dispositioned, watched, mitigated, etc. And as long as people perceive risk management as value-added, they'll keep using the process to track risks as they think of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="360" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T19:52:20.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="814" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="827" CreationDate="2011-03-03T19:59:14.613" Score="10" ViewCount="497" Body="&lt;p&gt;A member of my team has had a terrible experience with other senior managers on one project.  He used to work for them. While he worked for them he was misled on delivery dates, requirements and generally pushed around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am now managing him directly. However, the managers he used to work for continue to want to intrude into his work-life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to protect him?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2011-03-03T20:47:10.283" LastActivityDate="2011-03-14T14:42:46.023" Title="How to protect a team member from management?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;politics&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="807" CreationDate="2011-03-03T22:04:13.263" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure that if there is anything that can be done to motivate him. His mindset is already on the downturn, and could have negative affect on the other team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best you could do is to shield the other team members from his toxicity either by cutting him free from the team, or getting him to do trivia tasks that have minimal project impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="480" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T22:04:13.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="814" CreationDate="2011-03-03T23:57:00.570" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are they &quot;your&quot; Management too?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, you need to firmly tell them to &lt;strike&gt;F*ck&lt;/strike&gt; back off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tell them its unethical, unprofessional effecting his productivity, and adding unnecessary risk to your project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's just that simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="535" LastEditorUserId="535" LastEditDate="2011-03-04T00:07:33.947" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T00:07:33.947" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="799" CreationDate="2011-03-04T05:51:31.690" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a manager, so I would just like to share what motivated me in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one likes doing end of project documentation, but at my last company I entered as they were doing their first set of field tests. The firmware dev before me was on his own and did not do documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After working for 3 years at a company and having to recode everything I document everything, and I will continue to. The amount of work it takes when there is no documentation really can be a good motivator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice, when you have someone that does not understand the point of end of project documentation throw them into helping with a project that has insufficient documentation. If you are short on these projects, good job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="549" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T05:51:31.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="814" CreationDate="2011-03-04T06:15:30.663" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the reaction of the member of your team? How does he/she behave when getting instructions from someone besides you, the manager? I assume that he follows the instructions without letting you know. And this behavior causes problems for your plans. In other words, the member of your team doesn't deliver on time. Am I right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I'm right, you should focus yourself on this particular result, not the cause. The cause is the problem of the member of your team. Not yours. Let him/her manage it. Be objective and very explicit about &lt;strong&gt;your expectations&lt;/strong&gt; in &lt;strong&gt;your project&lt;/strong&gt;. Very soon the member will understand what distracts him/her from the work (the upper manager) and will resolve the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T06:15:30.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="812" CreationDate="2011-03-04T06:20:59.990" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Exact name of an exact document is dictated by a management framework used by the team. Project Charter is from PMBOK. PID is from PRINCE2. SoW and Project Proposal are from somewhere, I never met them in RUP, MSF, Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What really matters is the content. In this case we're talking about a document that formally authorizes the project and answers at least the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who and how shall approve the budget and schedule?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who shall approve the scope statement?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the risk tolerance of the project?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who is the sponsor (who will pay the money)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who is a project manager?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T06:20:59.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="821" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="878" CreationDate="2011-03-04T06:28:44.960" Score="5" ViewCount="1248" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can a project manager specify a testing task statement of work for a fixed-price contractor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm hiring a contractor to do testing in my project. All other works like design, architecture, programming, analysis are done in-house. All testing activities have to be accomplished by the contractor, including (if necessary) test planning, test scripts, test cases, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastEditorUserId="2618" LastEditDate="2012-01-30T02:07:29.987" LastActivityDate="2012-01-30T11:44:34.670" Title="How to define a Test Exit Criteria?" Tags="&lt;quality&gt;&lt;testing&gt;&lt;procurement&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="822" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="824" CreationDate="2011-03-04T06:30:41.510" Score="6" ViewCount="760" Body="&lt;p&gt;Under what circumstances a full-time member of a project team is more preferred than a part-time one? And vise versa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-05T16:58:25.727" Title="When a full-time project member is better than a part-time one?" Tags="&lt;human-resources&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="807" CreationDate="2011-03-04T06:34:12.623" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;When an employee gives notice to a manager, the relationship instantly and fundamentally changes.  The relationship is no longer manager/employee and instead becomes a peer to peer relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2006/08/20/9-tips-for-quitting-a-job-gracefully/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;9 Tips for Quitting a Job Gracefully&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;code&gt;9.&lt;/code&gt; Be conscious of the shift in the balance of power.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The moment you quit is when you go from being your boss's underling to your boss's equal. After all, you are no longer beholden to your boss for a job. At the point of quitting, any more work you do for your boss is out of kindness and respect for the custom of giving notice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the employee does technically still work for you -- and yes, he/she does still receive a paycheck -- keep in mind that he/she is essentially &lt;strong&gt;doing you a favor&lt;/strong&gt; by sticking around for the month-long notice period.  In many cases, the employee could just start early at the new company and leave you high and dry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, this person has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=short%20timer&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;short-timers syndrome&lt;/a&gt;, which is not to be confused with laziness.  Remember what it was like when you started a new role and what that stress and excitement was like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, a good way to view your former subordinate turned peer is as if he or she is a volunteer who has agreed to help train his or her own replacement.  Don't look at him or her as a resource on the project after the notice period, as the purpose of the notice period is to transition, not to squeeze out the last few drops of productive work from said employee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T06:34:12.623" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="822" CreationDate="2011-03-04T06:53:13.753" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, a full-time member of a project will be better than a part-time member.  The main challenge is domain knowledge and communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a part-time employee, you may feel more left out from the team.  The other members of the team will know details about the project that you missed because you were out when the announcement was made.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, a part-time employee may have more trouble being productive, as it sometimes takes time to get into a rhythm, and there is just less time to devote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have more resources on the project to make up the difference, you'll have to remember that there are still more communication paths to consider, different skill sets, and more distributed domain knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the contrary, if the project involves many different skill sets where there isn't enough for FTE (full time equivalent) work for someone with that skill set, then that may justify part-time workers.  Just remember that communication will be more of a challenge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T06:53:13.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="822" CreationDate="2011-03-04T07:44:32.913" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree to some point with @jmort253 that the full-time member is usually better, but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Having a team consisting only of generalists able to do any work is a nice to have fiction. So there will be some parts of the project requiring particular person able to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The part-time membership is usually driven by the scope of the work that needs to be done. For example the team may need a graphic designer only part time as there is not enough work or tasks for him to make it a full-time assignment in that team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mind also the difference between part-time member and part-time worker. Depending on the organization there may be some feature teams and service teams (like administrators, graphic designers). There will be no need to make administrator a full-time member in any feature team, however she will be a full-time worker providing &quot;services&quot; to different teams upon request.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually part-time membership in the team is driven by business/economical reasons and there is nothing wrong about it. It has the communication drawbacks that @jmort253 described, but &#xA;if it suites your context best, then you should not be afraid of such solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="435" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T07:44:32.913" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="826" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-04T10:21:42.853" Score="16" ViewCount="1562" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was thinking of tagging resolved cases by their (probable) cause, e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;incomplete feature specification&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;last-minute fix after test&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;typo&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Maybe&lt;/em&gt; common causes might show up in this, so we get feedback and take precise steps to prevent these. Or maybe this is just a futile exercise in statistics and blame circulation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More general,&lt;/strong&gt; what kind of analysis do you run on your issue tracker? What other information besides &quot;what should I do today?&quot; and &quot;can we deliver?&quot; do you get out of it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="85" LastEditorUserId="2618" LastEditDate="2012-01-22T02:33:54.490" LastActivityDate="2021-03-04T20:35:02.117" Title="Do you track the cause of bugs?" Tags="&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;post-mortem&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="814" CreationDate="2011-03-04T10:35:10.860" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tell them he is your direct and that you are responsible for him. So if they have any issues they should address them to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T10:35:10.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="822" CreationDate="2011-03-04T11:10:09.833" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Note that if you have this resource available for a specific period (either full or part-time), it might add additional complexity to your schedule. If the availability of this resource is fixed in time, a slight delay before that period can cause troubles. For instance if the deliverables that this resource needs to do his/her work is not yet ready.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if the resource is truly only part-time (eg only 50%, but for the whole duration of the project), I haven't experienced the issues as described by jmort and Marcin. Not in a high degree, that is. The main issue is to make sure that you get your 50%, as the other activities/projects might be eager to 'keep' your resource for just that 'little bit' more. It's also a pain to keep him focused; we all know the danger of multi-tasking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you need to 'control' the time reporting more closely, since many people just book 50/50, even if the actual work done is more 40/60 or something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T11:10:09.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="829" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-04T11:36:05.177" Score="51" ViewCount="85407" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been looking for a week now, all over the net for a simple desktop based kanban management system. I work in a distributed team, but my company won't accept to use an exterior webapp like agilezen, atlassian or anything else. I don't want to have to manage any server. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems the hype is on hosted applications. Many offer very good things. But is there any software (free or not) that would simply let me share a kanban board with anybody, using e-mails or a shared folder on windows ? Being the scrummaster I am in charge of managing the whiteboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe something like an offline (desktop version) pivotal tracker would do the trick also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-05-30T18:49:20.710" LastActivityDate="2020-07-22T06:55:17.483" Title="Where to Find a Desktop Kanban board application?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="14" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="34" ClosedDate="2015-06-24T07:31:32.447" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="826" CreationDate="2011-03-04T11:46:46.993" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that blame is to be avoided if you want an open working environment. What you should concentrate on is what area it happened in, and in what part of the lifecycle it was introduced:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there areas of code that keep getting bugs? Are they especially sensitive to changes because of over complexity? Should these areas have more unit tests and/or stricter release management (or even a rewrite)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are bugs consistently being introduced at the end of the project? This can be an indicator of too many late requirement changes. Bugs evenly distributed throughout the main development stage can be helped by performing peer code reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if issues are arising because of a person, concentrating on adding countermeasures to what they're working &lt;em&gt;on&lt;/em&gt; rather than &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt; will allow you to mitigate problems without causing personal issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="136" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T11:46:46.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="829" CreationDate="2011-03-04T12:14:53.833" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out the following list: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.opensourceprojectmanagement.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.opensourceprojectmanagement.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe Icescrum, Jamcircle or Simple-kanban is what you are looking for. I've never used these tools, so I can't give you any recommendation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're using Episerver Scrum dashboard (plug-in for Visual Studio).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another interesting list is 1&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110324071419/http://open-tube.com/10-free-scrum-project-management-tool?utm_source=feedburner&amp;amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+opentubefeed+%28open-tube.com%29&amp;amp;utm_content=Google+Reader&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;0 free scrum project management tools&lt;/a&gt;, but the Desktop apps don't seem to have a board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &amp;quot;very&amp;quot; simple solution might be to create a Kanban Board in Visio or an Excel sheet, or some similar Tools. I once used a Mindmap (in Mindmanager) with three arms (To Do, Doing, Done) to represent the work in progress :-).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck in your search. Let us know if you find something that fulfills your requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-22T06:55:17.483" LastActivityDate="2020-07-22T06:55:17.483" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="829" CreationDate="2011-03-04T12:25:46.647" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.simple-kanban.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Simple Kanban&lt;/a&gt; for a project that does not need changes very often. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="527" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T12:25:46.647" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="803" CreationDate="2011-03-04T13:21:57.140" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think 3 methods you mention are a perfect match.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not fully sure what you mean by Agile &amp;amp; XP. I mean is there some other method besides XP which you want to use or was it just a clarification? Anyway, I assume the latter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;FDD and XP don't really conflict with each other. There are some areas which would be tricky if you decided to implement both by the book but it shouldn't be hard to adjust them to get most of both. Basically FDD tells you how you approach product development and XP tells you more how you organize work. The tricky part may be where feature-by-feature design and development meets iterations. However if you aren't orthodox feature-by-feature approach may apply to the whole workload for iteration instead of a single feature, especially when you have short iterations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The main problem I see with mixing the trio is with Prince2 and FDD/XP. Prince2 deals with formal side of project management which is covered by neither FDD nor XP but in its origins Prince2 assumes more BDUF (big design up front) approach than iterative one. It means that usually in projects which use Prince2 you have more formal and more detailed design on early stage of the project as opposed to emergent design and architecture proposed by FDD. Also with XP you assume that you plan in more details at the beginning of the iteration so again design effort is distributed over the time span of the whole project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, it's not that hard to use subset of Prince2 to deal with formal side of project management and build the product according to rules proposed to FDD/XP. It just means you will have to carefully choose what you take from Prince2 and what you leave outside your toolbox. By the way: Prince2, similarly to most formal approaches assumes you use only a subset of the method - those which are relevant for specific team. Again it is different from agile approaches where you usually use everything and even add more practices/techniques specific for the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As alternative option you may consider exchanging Prince2 with something more agile supported with required set of formalisms. Scrum comes as one of ideas although it may be not sufficient if you think about a project for a customer which requires very formal approach to project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T13:21:57.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="826" CreationDate="2011-03-04T14:31:09.083" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitely don't think this is an exercise in apportioning blame, but a process which enables a greater understanding of what the main causes of issues were within the project. It's up to the project manager to maintain a non-blame culture within the project boundaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Or maybe this is just a futile exercise in statistics&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The statistics will substantiate the key problem areas. This will assist in the post implementation reviews, and identify what lessons can be learned for future projects or even benefit other projects that are currently running.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T14:31:09.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="829" CreationDate="2011-03-04T14:36:29.297" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Also check &lt;a href=&quot;http://limitedwipsociety.ning.com/page/tools&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://limitedwipsociety.ning.com/page/tools&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen both downloadable things like Simple Kanban, and tools that save data as cookies, i.e., in your local web browser.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't seen any &quot;local tools&quot; that handle sharing very well, so you might want to consider a dedicated Kanban computer for editing the board if you go that route.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you reconsider managing a server, LeanKit Kanban, one of the hosted tools, also have an &lt;a href=&quot;http://leankitkanban.com/Home/PricingAndSignup&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;on-site version&lt;/a&gt;. [Update: unfortunately, they no longer provide this service. I've asked them, and they might do it sometime in the future.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="401" LastEditorUserId="401" LastEditDate="2012-04-11T12:42:17.477" LastActivityDate="2012-04-11T12:42:17.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="826" CreationDate="2011-03-04T14:44:47.650" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best solution I've seen to this is in enterprise-level bug-tracking. They try to assess and determine the &lt;strong&gt;root cause&lt;/strong&gt; of the bug. Not the person, but the actual root &lt;em&gt;cause&lt;/em&gt;. Examples of this might be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Didn't follow the coding conventions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bad coding logic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fix for another bug broke this bug&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Third-party library's bug&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finger-pointing is not useful, and even if done, we didn't put much stock in it. Everybody makes mistakes. It's more important to see &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; mistakes are being repeated, so that we can fix them. For the root causes listed above, the solutions might be (in order):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a convention that will prevent the bug, and enforce it via code-reviews&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fix the logic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put in unit testing to prevent regressions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Trade one third-party library for a less buggy one&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T14:44:47.650" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="812" CreationDate="2011-03-04T14:47:51.407" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Under the PMBOK framework, these are different. They would be (differences or defining characteristics listed only):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Charter: a sponsor-signed document indicating work can begin&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PID: same as Charter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SoW: an initial scope statement. It's a section in the charter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Proposal: Might be the &quot;business need&quot; of the project, or the SoW. Goes into the charter too.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMI's framework is pretty simple: the charter has all the information needed to get it signed by the sponsor so that work can begin. Anything and everything can go into the charter, from scope (SoW), timelines, milestones, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T14:47:51.407" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="799" CreationDate="2011-03-04T15:48:21.813" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way that I have found that works is to have the developer put together a presentation, and then present the results to the team, who will undoubtedly ask questions about how things work, where things are etc.  This works because no one wants to end up going to a meeting unprepared and encourages communication, rather than have it be a solitary project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="558" LastEditorUserId="167" LastEditDate="2018-07-24T22:12:55.400" LastActivityDate="2018-07-24T22:12:55.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="812" CreationDate="2011-03-04T16:58:11.757" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't use/have never used a &lt;em&gt;PID (Project Initiation Document)&lt;/em&gt;, but as for the others, they are different.  In my line of worK:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;Project Proposal&lt;/strong&gt; is a document written by a hopeful contractor to a customer as part of a bid for work.  It typically includes 3 major sections: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical proposal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management proposal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cost Proposal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the size of the contract a proposal can be anywhere from 5 or 10 to thousands of pages long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proposal may also be required to contain a 'separable SOW' - a completely self-contained statement of work that the contract will perform to after award.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;Statement of Work&lt;/strong&gt; defines at least the goals, scope, period of performance, milestones, major activities, and reporting requirements.  It may also define quality, compliance or performance standards, security requirements, financial reporting requirements, travel etc.  Depending on the size, complexity, and type (fixed price, cost plus) of the contract, the details of a SOW can vary wildly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The statement of Work is typically more than 3 - 5, but less than 20 pages long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;Charter&lt;/strong&gt; can be defined in several ways, but if working on a project that already has a formal SOW, it can be as simple as a document that formally associates a specific project manager with a charge number and a statement of work.  It formally authorizes the PM to use the defined charge number to plan &amp;amp; execute the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A charter is frequently 1 page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T16:58:11.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="641" CreationDate="2011-03-04T17:00:15.710" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understand correctly you use the spreadsheet for two reasons: you manage current backlog content (prioritizing, adding stories, etc) and analyze historical data. You may consider splitting these goals into two different tools:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Spreadsheet which basically looks the same. You add every feature there, fill the data (sprint number, story points, all that stuff you need for your analysis). You use the spreadsheet basically to store and analyze historical data. Which leaves us with little support for backlog management, but that's where another tool kick in...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sticky notes on the wall. When you add a story you write it on a sticky note and put on the wall/board/whatever. Record in the spreadsheet is a copy on a sticky note (you can even add records to the sheet when you have a story finished). You do whole backlog management on the wall with sticky notes. You don't have any problems with reprioritizing them - it is as easy as shuffling cards. You don't have problems with showing dependencies - you can easily group some cards in one place. You can add some mark to make top priority stories visible, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I worked in this kind of setup with Kanban and it proved to work extremely well. And it doesn't really require anything more but a stack of stickies and some empty room on the wall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T17:00:15.710" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="826" CreationDate="2011-03-04T19:21:41.303" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe tracking of the root cause of bugs is quite important, even more so if the root cause turns out to be something systematic like part of your development process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the analysis shows that the code that deals with the integration of a deliverable from an outsourced company is consistently broken and the root cause is that the requirements specifications were not well understood and controlled. This is a systematic problem and needs to be addressed so that future impact is minimised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We tend to track the root causes of the defect and the area which the solutions are applied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="480" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T19:21:41.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="826" CreationDate="2011-03-05T00:17:46.803" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;+1 to ashes999 for &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/826/do-you-track-the-cause-of-bugs/836#836&quot;&gt;focusing on the root cause&lt;/a&gt;, but characterizations like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Didn't follow the coding conventions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bad coding logic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fix for another bug broke this bug&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Third-party library's bug&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tend to be so specific that over time, you have too many categories to be helpful.  On some projects (but not all) I have categorized bugs by &lt;em&gt;Phase&lt;/em&gt; - sort of a loose term to try to capture when in your project life cycle the defect was injected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a drop down box allowing you to select from &lt;em&gt;Requirements&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Design&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Code&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Integration&lt;/em&gt; is all I have ever needed.  If you are really hardcore you could split this into 2 parts: &lt;em&gt;Phase Injected&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Phase Detected&lt;/em&gt;.  The basic idea here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=Pn_aVZnuHLsC&amp;amp;pg=PA348&amp;amp;dq=defect+containment+total+effectiveness&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=935xTZjfM4q-sQPC9IjOCw&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=1&amp;amp;ved=0CCwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=defect%20containment%20total%20effectiveness&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;defect phase containment&lt;/a&gt; - there is some good evidence that shows that the longer it takes you to find a defect, the more expensive it is to fix.  For example, a requirements error is cheap to resolve in the while you are working on your requirements, but may cost plenty after you've released your product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you don't do all the fancy level 5 CMMI analysis, knowing what phase you are injecting problems in is extremely helpful.  Like any other measurement, you should create it with a specific goal in mind - knowing that most of your defects are ultimately related to requirements or design or coding or whatever helps focus you attention on where the process fix should be.  Otherwise, you may be tempted to add more and more testing.  This is potentially the least efficient way to address the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isixsigma.com/index.php?option=com_k2&amp;amp;view=item&amp;amp;id=750:exploring-defect-containment-metrics-in-agile&amp;amp;Itemid=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Exploring defect containment metrics in agile&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-03-05T00:17:46.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="829" CreationDate="2011-03-05T00:33:19.067" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually the words &quot;distributed team&quot; and &quot;share&quot; imply some kind of hosted or web based application, not a desktop application. You either need a web application or a tool that will allow you to pass files around.  You may just want to stick with a spreadsheet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastActivityDate="2011-03-05T00:33:19.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9" CreationDate="2011-03-05T05:31:20.977" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A risk database (or register) should contain the following information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short name&lt;/strong&gt;: a quick reference title, hopefully unique&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Risk statement&lt;/strong&gt;: this statement should thoroughly yet succinctly define the risk. Often people use the if/then structure as a guide. For example: &quot;Lot 2 production will use a new supplier for Part X that does not have an active production line. &lt;strong&gt;If&lt;/strong&gt; the supplier does not pass our quality assurance audit on X-day, &lt;strong&gt;then&lt;/strong&gt; there there will be a day-for-day slip of first article delivery.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Risk severity and probability&lt;/strong&gt;: often these are characterized in a five-by-five, color-coded matrix, where the y-axis represents the likelihood of the risk occurring (1 = highly unlikely, 5 = almost certain) and the x-axis represents the consequence if the risk were to occur (1 = not that bad, 5 = devastating). Often, consequence is assessed against the metrics of cost, schedule and technical (i.e. performance), with the worst rating across all three categories being the one that is assigned. The colors indicate the seriousness of the risk. Your risk database should have objective criteria defined for each level of likelihood and consequence. A helpful comment points out some mathematical rigor can be put behind how the colors are assigned in this matrix. A &lt;a href=&quot;https://eight2late.wordpress.com/2009/07/01/cox%E2%80%99s-risk-matrix-theorem-and-its-implications-for-project-risk-management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;good synopsis&lt;/a&gt; of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1539-6924.2008.01030.x/pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;canonical paper&lt;/a&gt; proves many standard matrices (like the one from NASA below) are misleading.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MpTJI.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;standard risk matrix&quot;&gt;&#xA;Image credit &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nasa.gov/offices/oce/appel/ask-academy/issues/ask-oce/AO_1-8_F_risk.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NASA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A colored 5 × 5 matrix consistent with the findings of this paper would look more like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zCMsN.png&quot; alt=&quot;better risk matrix&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Risk disposition&lt;/strong&gt;: accept (we've decided to do nothing, or that nothing can be done), mitigate (which indicates a plan is in place and action is being taken), transfer (the risk has been transferred to another entity, like a subcontractor), or avoid (eliminate it--in our example perhaps going back to a proven subcontractor)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Risk status&lt;/strong&gt;: active or retired (nothing's ever deleted from the database, in case the historical record is needed)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mitigation plan&lt;/strong&gt;: for risks being mitigated, this is a plan of the actions that are going to be taken to mitigate the risk, who is responsible for the action, when the action is due, and what the new assessed value of the risk will be when the mitigation step is complete. Mitigation plan steps should decrease the severity and/or likelihood of the risk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Risk owner&lt;/strong&gt;: the person or organization responsible for maintaining the status of the item in the register, for coordinating the efforts of the mitigation plan (if applicable), for championing the risk (e.g. obtaining funding and attention for dealing with it), etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although this list seems long, in practice most of these fields can be very concise. Even the mitigation plan is probably no more than a sentence or two for each step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="360" LastEditorUserId="360" LastEditDate="2015-05-16T15:35:09.137" LastActivityDate="2015-05-16T15:35:09.137" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="807" CreationDate="2011-03-05T07:02:45.317" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask him what does he want. What are his plans for the next year? What would motivate him? Ask him how can &lt;strong&gt;you help him&lt;/strong&gt; to achieve &lt;strong&gt;his goals&lt;/strong&gt;. Once you know his goals try to align them with your project objectives. Once you do this - he becomes a valuable resource for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In very very rare cases you won't be able to achieve such an alignment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-05T07:02:45.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="849" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="851" CreationDate="2011-03-05T09:07:44.860" Score="7" ViewCount="2072" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about to take over the project manager role for a project being run by another development manager. The project is currently in an early planning phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which topics should I make sure I get covered with the current development manager so that the hand-over process is comprehensive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="44" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T20:16:44.927" Title="Which topics should be covered when handing over project management to another PM?" Tags="&lt;process&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="807" CreationDate="2011-03-05T09:09:54.743" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, the notice period is not thought for the leaving person to get more work done. It's meant in order to manage the transition: get all the know-how out of him because when he's not here anymore, you will be in trouble if you don't. Maybe you can also seek his help to hire a replacement. But him not wanting to commit to new strategic-to-the-company projects is completely normal!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastEditorUserId="152" LastEditDate="2011-03-05T11:34:11.350" LastActivityDate="2011-03-05T11:34:11.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="849" CreationDate="2011-03-05T12:22:35.537" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In terms information you get when taking over a project most of the time the more means the better. Of course if the data you get is structured well it is way more useful than just &quot;memory dump&quot; from your predecessor, but it's still better to have information buried somewhere in email archives than not having it at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When talking about specific topics I'd focus on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Every arrangement with the client which was already made.&lt;/strong&gt; This one is crucial. As you don't want to be surprised on the way you need to know pretty much anything which was agreed with the client so you plan to fulfill your promises. This information is usually the most difficult to get as often arrangements are made through many different channels: email, phone calls, on meetings etc. If we discuss product which is built not for external customer but internally within the company the point is still valid - just exchange &quot;client&quot; with &quot;product manager&quot; or other key stakeholder you have.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Contacts.&lt;/strong&gt; You need a list of contacts to every important person involved in a project both: on client's and on your side.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project scope.&lt;/strong&gt; Since you're in planning phase you should know what you're going to build pretty well at least on a general level.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;WBS.&lt;/strong&gt; Since planning has already started my guess is someone took some effort to prepare some kind of Work Breakdown Structure trying to analyze in more detail what exactly will be done.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Architecture.&lt;/strong&gt; Again, it usually something which is prepared pretty early. Architecture should tell you how the application will be built from the technical perspective. It also has some consequences in terms of hardware and infrastructure needed to deploy the project. I assume you will also learn everything about technologies you're going to use from architecture document.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project plan.&lt;/strong&gt; It may be ready or, more likely, people are working on this one at the moment. However chances are good at least general schedule is ready. What is most important information here is deadline (if there is any), especially when it was already agreed with the client.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project team status.&lt;/strong&gt; Who is in the team? What are their skills? Do those skills cover needs of the project? If you were later in planning phase you might have some insight how many people you'd need and which specific skills are/aren't covered. On early stages it still can be pretty vague.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Any other project-related stuff which might be available.&lt;/strong&gt; This includes potential risks, stakeholder analysis, additional preferences (e.g. project should be completed sooner than planned if possible), business background (especially when the project is addressed directly to end-users), budget (if known), etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-03-05T12:22:35.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="852" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-05T14:21:31.953" Score="12" ViewCount="1415" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need a way to make fast estimates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example I'd like to know how long it takes to take a mobile device from nothing to production... let say that a customer wants a IPHONE like product(scope) ... than planing,developing,testing etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that the general direction is Google... but I don't know how and if there are other ways...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="563" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T08:23:47.963" Title="What tools can help me estimate a project length?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="852" CreationDate="2011-03-05T15:33:32.867" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First fast most of the time means rough, so bear in mind the quality of fast estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second if you want to spend almost no time analyzing what the product should be the only approach will be experience + gut feeling and quality of answers will depend tremendously on your past experience with similar projects. If it is n-th iPhone app you're working on your rough guess might good enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However if you're unfamiliar with project and still want to reduce time needed to build a reasonable estimate I'd advice following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Gather and use historical data. When you work on different projects try to store your estimates and real times you spent on tasks. This would allow you to learn how much you miss your initial estimates for different tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Break the work down to fairly small pieces. Usually we estimate way better when we deal with small chunks of works than we do with big ones.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You may also try to split the work into similarly-sized tasks. This way you can use historical data to directly estimate how long it would take you to complete the project. We were using &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2010/05/kanban-estimation.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this kind of approach in our Kanban team&lt;/a&gt; and were able to come up with pretty reasonable estimates in short time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-03-05T15:33:32.867" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="822" CreationDate="2011-03-05T15:42:40.673" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please forgive me but this question disturbs me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that after the last economic crisis the US and the other countries had experienced I think it is safe to say that saving on the little employee is always fun but generally not useful. I would elaborate but this is not the place and you only care for a simple answer anyway...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A guru... a super professional that costs a lot should be hired on a part time job if not on a freelance contract. Most of them even want this because they get bored on routine tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For &quot;normal&quot; people&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They like to have one supervisor - less overhead (no one likes to report to many supervisors; explaining to each why he has not finished his tasks)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The organization itself suffers a large amount of wasted setup time. It's hard to setup meetings, and it always take too long to recap and decision coming from individuals rather then a group is always more complicated.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An Employee that feels unsecured even if he is well appreciated does not see himself as part of the organization. Today he is here, tomorrow there and the day after in other company (it's not about being loyal to a company - but to a project)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes I'm coming from the project management world and the part time job is crucial when a projects &quot;needs&quot; help or when an employee is not needed... In both assigning an employee to a part time job is serving both the organization and the employee best interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, while being a great temporal management solution. It's a very bad long term solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Extra note: The cost of training a new employee instead of the old one usually cost more then the saving of a few hours(partial job). It can be the loss of time of the mentor, It can be the training time which bring no value and it can be the loss of bonus for early delivery(which is possible with extra human force available.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Humans are not machines...The most effective companies lost half of their value due to social reasons: people that lost their job stopped buying. Try to see the bigger picture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="563" LastActivityDate="2011-03-05T15:42:40.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="822" CreationDate="2011-03-05T16:58:25.727" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because people don't usually have the opportunity to choose their team, I'll take the answer in a different direction. &#xA;If you have a part time resources, remember that they are full time on the project when they are working on it. Try to negotiate the time as full days so they can be more productive and it will make your scheduling easier. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-03-05T16:58:25.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="849" CreationDate="2011-03-05T17:05:55.780" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please, please please..... go over the documentation of decisions and issues. As a PM who has taken over projects, I have found my biggest challenges have been searching for answers that already exist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-03-05T17:05:55.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="852" CreationDate="2011-03-05T18:43:12.847" Score="12" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Two options: empirically based or subject matter expert based&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there are two fundamental methods of estimating the duration of a project:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Base the estimate on the actual time it took to complete a similar project.&lt;/strong&gt; Obviously the more similar the work the better the estimate will be. In practice folks will use all sorts of modifiers and complexity factors to account for differences between the cases, but obviously the more the estimate needs to be tweaked the less it accurate it's likely to be. If you have an identical or trivially different task, this can be a very quick and highly accurate means of generating an estimate. It's great for groups repeating routine operations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have the luxury of comparing to a similar-enough project, then you're probably forced to use the second method; luckily, it CAN be just as accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have a knowledgeable person (or people) estimate the project duration.&lt;/strong&gt; This is really an entire continuum, ranging from low- to high-fidelity estimates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the simplest, this method means having someone who is very knowledgeable and experienced in the subject field learn as much as they can about the scope of the project, the available resources, the technical solution, etc. and then having them estimate how long they think it will take based on this information and their experience. This method can be made slightly more scientific by asking several people the same question and determining the variance of the answers. You can generally get a fairly good and very fast estimate at this end of the spectrum; let's call it &lt;strong&gt;go with your gut&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At it's most complex (i.e. expensive) this method involves generating a very detailed schedule where tasks are small and durations are estimated at the task level. The schedule is then generated via &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_path_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;critical path analysis&lt;/a&gt;. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;evidence-based schedule method&lt;/a&gt; advocated in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Joel on Software blog&lt;/a&gt; is a refinement of this technique (or perhaps even a combination of the two primary methods. It's key innovation is adjusting the lowest level task estimates with a historical factor to account for how much the person who generated the estimate typically underestimates--based on their past estimating performance. When done right (and this method's complexity makes it hard to do right without practice) this is really the only way to generate a believable schedule for a one-of-a-kind project. It's also probably the only way you have any hope of actually managing a complex project to a schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="360" LastActivityDate="2011-03-05T18:43:12.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="852" CreationDate="2011-03-05T18:59:56.997" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can point you to two techniques that are quite interesting for new projects and low confidence in your velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First one was once posted at Ask About Projects forum and I liked it very much:&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.askaboutprojects.com/questions/1858/agile-project-management-estimation/1873#1873&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.askaboutprojects.com/questions/1858/agile-project-management-estimation/1873#1873&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second one is called Magic Estimation ;-)&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://campey.blogspot.com/2010/09/magic-estimation.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://campey.blogspot.com/2010/09/magic-estimation.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both are team/collective wisdom techniques. You should not stick too much to estimates found in Google or somewhere else as the scope you're estimating is only one of the factors determining the final score. The other one (very important) is the people that will be actually doing the job. There are also other factors that depend your team/organization context. So even you find the raw estimate for some iPhone app project, you still need to assure the same environment and a set of skills in your team to do the same job within the same time period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="435" LastActivityDate="2011-03-05T18:59:56.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="859" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="863" CreationDate="2011-03-05T19:05:41.970" Score="8" ViewCount="1465" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a project team of about dozen of people. Whole development stuff is done by a team (7 people) led by a manager who is responsible for this part of the project. The manager organizes tasks, share the workload among developers, verify quality of their work, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is he doesn't raise any project issues, e.g. even when he believes deadlines are too tight for his team he doesn't communicate it and just get people working until someone else realizes that there will be slip. No matter whether the problem is solvable or whether anyone else is aware of it he doesn't let PM (or others) know until it's too late.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simple solutions, like explicitly asking him to communicate about problems or trying to get him involved in risk management doesn't work. The manager himself and his team can't be replaced with another group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to improve the way he communicates project-related issues? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T20:23:13.103" Title="How to deal with team manager who doesn't communicate problems in project?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="860" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="864" CreationDate="2011-03-05T19:16:34.910" Score="14" ViewCount="2221" Body="&lt;p&gt;You get the project and development team which is assigned to it recently finished one of those hard-core projects, where everyone is working overtime for long months just to end up being completely burned out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now they're starting to work on your new project but they aren't going to get engaged which means their lower performance and few options when any issues pop up. You can't get another team assigned. How to bring back their enthusiasm and engagement back?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt; It isn't you who rode the team into the ground - you just got them to your project. Also it's not the goal to have them working crazy hours again - you just aim for commitment you'd get form most of other teams in the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-03-05T21:31:37.133" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T07:22:15.617" Title="How to get burned out team back engaged again?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="860" CreationDate="2011-03-05T20:05:47.690" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand this is not the &quot;fix&quot; you were hoping to receive, but I've always found that the best way to deal with this situation is to avoid it altogether. A team that works tons of overtime for long months is not only going to run into &quot;burn out&quot; issues when it comes to the next project, but they are going to be much less effective at their jobs during that overtime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://37signals.com/rework/&quot;&gt;Rework&lt;/a&gt; touches on this topic in two separate sections: 'Go to sleep' and 'Send people home at 5'. They worded it more eloquently than I had been able to prior to reading those passages, so I'll explain via paraphrasing the book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As people work on a project and get tired or burnt out, they become stubborn and will continue to try to push through whatever path they've chosen in a constant effort to reach the 'finish line' in the distance. The result is they don't make smart choices about when to change their tactics/processes/solutions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Creativity is diminished. Reword posits that more productive people simply use their creativity to find ways to do things in a shorter amount of time rather than beating the problem over the head with tons of man hours. The more you slam people against a problem, the less creative they become.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Morale suffers. This one is fairly obvious, but should be considered to be a problem just beyond employee satisfaction since low morale means loss of motivation to do things the 'right way' or to tackle larger issues that they would normally jump into head-first.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People become more irritable and communication and overall team efficiency can suffer as a result.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You get used to doing things in inefficient ways. Rather than working smarter to get the problem done, you simply throw more hours at the problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In the long run, the easiest way to bring their enthusiasm and engagement back is to inform the team that the last project helped you to realize that the team needed to strive toward working smarter, not harder.&lt;/strong&gt; It can be hard to justify this to higher-ups sometimes, but if you can analyse previous projects where you hit &quot;crunch time&quot; and point out places where you had to go back and redo parts (thus wasting time) or that the number of issues/defects was higher than normal (thus wasting time), you begin to build evidence to the fact that you're hurting both the projects and your team more than you are helping anyone by working 50-80 hour weeks for several months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The alternative, I'm afraid, is usually to overwork them to the point where they start looking for other jobs. Some people are more tolerant than others, but if that kind of project is your 'norm' then I would expect to see a high turnover rate. Typically, you'll end up losing the most skilled people first as it will be easiest for them to find new jobs. &lt;strong&gt;In the end, the best thing the team could hear right now to give them hope and motivation is something along the lines of &quot;Look, I know your last project was brutal, but this one will be different. I want you guys fresh and effective, and that means not working yourselves stupid.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="528" LastEditorUserId="528" LastEditDate="2011-03-07T03:11:49.437" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T03:11:49.437" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="860" CreationDate="2011-03-05T21:29:08.773" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once you have let them burn out it is difficult to get them back.  Burn-out usually takes a fair bit of time to recover from.  Getting them to do the same-old same-old won't help.  You will need to make changes.  Get them engaged in something new.  It is a new project, make it really new.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few things that may help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As Shaun mentioned focus on working smarter, not harder.  Get them engaged in helping each other to work smarter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Send people home at the end of eight hours without fail.  If some needs to do something after hours, send them early the next day. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Arrange for the team members to get positive feedback when they are moving in the right direction.  A sincere &quot;that's great&quot; or &quot;thank you&quot; is a good start.  If you need them to correct something, ask questions that lead them to make the discovery themselves.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Arrange the project so that it delivers usable functionality daily.  Make sure the team sees this movement. (Look at Agile for some techniques.)  Management will be more comfortable with 40 hour work weeks too.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to help your team members get engaged in something outside of work. (You may need to get to know the team members better to do this.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you don't get burned out managing the team.  Ask the team for help if you need it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2011-03-05T21:29:08.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="859" CreationDate="2011-03-05T22:52:47.857" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way that I've found to get information from people is to ask questions frequently and be proactive.  As a PM, sometimes it's hard to remember to communicate with everyone, and vice versa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the people I work with regularly track me down and meet either in person or via video conference so that they can ask me how things are going and get into more specifics.  Most of the time, the questions help remind me of other updates that I need to give to that person or even to others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This tactic works for dealing with people who aren't managers as well as dealing with those that are managers.  Communication is a two way street.  Ideally, it helps if both parties are proactive, but sometimes one or the other must step up and ask more questions to balance things out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a PM, I try my best to update everyone, but sometimes I forget or lose track of things; I've come to really appreciate those team members who do take initiative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-03-05T22:52:47.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="860" CreationDate="2011-03-06T02:24:12.950" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Shawn and BillThor in general, Rework is a great book about this issue.  Also have a look at &quot;The way we're working isn't working&quot;.  Tony Swartz hits else you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also think you are looking for some specific to-dos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are four.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Limit their time in the office (8 hours is plenty, 7 would be better for a while, but you will need some leeway from your management.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) As a group, block out about 2 hours a day (NO phone calls, NO meetings, email or IM, except within the group). This is time for them to code, study and breath.  1 hour in the morning and 1 hour in the afternoon.  It should be fairly quiet during those 2 hours.  If you have to pick just one thing, this is it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) If you can, breakup your new project into some smaller bit sized chunks, so the team can get a few small wins to build some momentum on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Recognize good work when it happens, right on the spot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How this helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="570" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T02:24:12.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="859" CreationDate="2011-03-06T02:25:05.603" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are three potential solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Building off of @jmort253's answer, have him give &lt;strong&gt;weekly presentations&lt;/strong&gt; on the status of each project. This will give you chance to ask about problems directly and to connect the dots yourself, as it were, to spot where potential problems might be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use Percent Complete or Earned Value Metrics&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Using more quantifiable metrics on a project can help you spot problems without requiring the manager's direct input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tell him its not his fault&lt;/strong&gt; Oftentimes people don't report problems because they believe it will reflect poorly on their abilities. They think that if things aren't going right it is their fault.  I communicate to my managers that their job is to report the facts, objectively and that if things aren't going well, objectively speaking, it is not their fault.  Of course, there is accountability. But they are not expected to be able to control every variable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The example I generally give is the Engineer of the USS Enterprise on Star Trek (Scotty or the engineer from the crew of your choice). When they report that something is wrong with the warp drive, nobody thinks that they are idiots and that its their fault. They appreciate having the information and can now make rational decisions based on that information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T02:25:05.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="821" CreationDate="2011-03-06T02:32:30.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write it exactly like how you started spelling out the question in more detail in your second paragraph. Make sure to include the iterations that testing takes from when a bug is first reported, to someone fixing it, to it being retested, etc. as well as specifying how bugs should be reported and what information the bug report should contain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T02:32:30.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="452" CreationDate="2011-03-06T05:37:33.467" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I stumbled upon this blog article that has some really great tips on how to avoid micro-managing a team and describes &lt;a href=&quot;http://michaelhyatt.com/how-to-better-track-the-tasks-you-delegate-to-others.html&quot;&gt;How to Better Track the Tasks You Delegate to Others&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article includes helpful tips such as assigning a task to one person and making sure it's clear what the expectation is.  Also, it's important to make sure that the timeline is clear so that there will be no surprises.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, it's good to have a check-in date so that progress towards the goal can be measured.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author of this article suffered from the opposite of micro-management, not following up on tasks.  His advice not only can help a PM follow up, but I also believe the advice can help prevent one from becoming a micro-manager.  According to the author, the best way to avoid micro-managing the project is to make yourself available for consultation if needed, but to stay focused on the outcome and not the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T05:37:33.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="868" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="869" CreationDate="2011-03-06T09:53:04.823" Score="10" ViewCount="650" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some companies have policies where people may date but that the two individuals can't be working in the same department or be in a supervisor/subordinate relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But with projects, you often see situations where cross-functional and/or self-organizing teams are created to solve a series of different problems.  Sometimes these teams last indefinitely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you, as a project manager, suspect that two members of your team may be in a relationship, should this be something you should be concerned with?  Risk can appear in many forms, and management finding out about the relationship could cause you to lose one or both of your team members.  Additionally, if the relationship were to end, that could cause a team dynamic issue if the two members are unable to work together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this something one should be concerned with?  How would you handle this scenario?  What is the proper procedure for handling this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2011-03-06T15:01:50.550" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T20:19:54.247" Title="What is the Procedure for Handling a Team Where Two Members Might be Dating?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;politics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="868" CreationDate="2011-03-06T10:10:16.757" Score="12" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If there are no policies against dating and we discuss two team members (not superior and subordinate) I wouldn't step in until relation affects how the project goes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If there is a policy against dating I would wait until I have more than just a suspicion and then approach one of daters to remind in a polite way about the rules asking whether they were aware of them. I'd probably choose to talk with one which I have better relationship with and I can do it more informally.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If we discuss superior-subordinate relation I would wait until I have more than just a suspicion but then I'd act with more determination. First, I'd ask directly whether there is such relationship. If confirmed I'd try to organize teams in a way where superior is not dating their subordinate. If teams are self-organized I'd clearly explain my expectations that this kind of organization isn't accepted, but since we discuss only a manager-team member relation here my guess is it would be hardly a matter of self-organization.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If we discuss superior-subordinate relation which is denied after direct inquiry and it appears to exist after all it's a hit on the trust and it becomes and the main issue becomes lack of trust and not relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a rule of thumb, as long as any policies doesn't say anything else, private matters of team members are their private matters. The only situation where it becomes a problem for me is when superior is dating their subordinate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T10:10:16.757" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="852" CreationDate="2011-03-06T12:56:33.163" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Wideband Delphi&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with other posters: get input from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wideband_delphi&quot;&gt;lots of different sources on your estimates&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Software Component&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not the complete scope of what you're asking (hardware + software), but Construx has a nice &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.construx.com/Page.aspx?nid=68&quot;&gt;tool for estimating the software component&lt;/a&gt;.  It uses simulation based on your project type and scope estimates, or you can use your company's data also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="569" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T12:56:33.163" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="871" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="924" CreationDate="2011-03-06T14:57:33.040" Score="10" ViewCount="6868" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a classic question whose answer would likely help a lot of people on this site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it worth it to get the PMP? How about other project management certifications?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-16T17:52:40.867" LastActivityDate="2019-07-12T13:09:08.660" Title="Is the PMP or other project management certification worth while to have?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="872" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="887" CreationDate="2011-03-06T16:26:49.333" Score="13" ViewCount="853" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider you run a project where a key stakeholder is one of VPs. She is a typical hit-and-run type of person: she comes to a project team with half-baked idea, either refuses to discuss details because they're confidential or just throws some anecdote as a business story and expects everyone would start working on a project, whatever that might be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make things worse from time to time she bypass project leaders and just tell people what they have to do, no matter how disconnected it is with any project plan which was prepared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of hierarchy she can't be ignored as the project team works under her. Also standard methods, e.g. trying to set some formal rules, don't work as she just ignore any arrangements she doesn't like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to deal with that kind of person? How to bring some order to the project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or maybe it's best option just to accept how the things look like?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2016-02-02T00:54:49.547" Title="How to deal with chaotic stakeholder who is high in pecking order?" Tags="&lt;politics&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="873" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-06T17:37:22.083" Score="12" ViewCount="1328" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just took a new job at a company with 4 offices and many cross-office teams. The company is very email-heavy and I am a huge advocate of using web based project management/collaboration tools. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really like the projects I'm on and the people I'm working with, but I find myself spending a good deal of time copying discussions up onto the collaboration tool. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions for getting your team to get into more of a habit of putting the discussions online? (note: this tool has email integration, so conversations can continue without leaving the email inbox)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="184" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-03-06T20:47:48.470" LastActivityDate="2018-04-09T14:40:47.070" Title="How to Encourage Team Members to use Web Based Collaboration Tools?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="859" CreationDate="2011-03-06T18:10:15.047" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The guy who first has to admit he won't make the deadline becomes the scapegoat.  So, if the deadline is too tight for your team, but even tighter for a 3rd team, it is in the PM's best interest not to communicate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ordering him to do weekly presentations or status reports is a typical response, but this only makes matters worse.  The typical status report for a project is an Excel sheet full of green traffic lights.  This is true even if every single member on the team knows the project is FUBAR and weekly progress is zero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would try is the &quot;SCRUM&quot; approach.  Organize a team meeting with the full team.  Ask each person what he thinks he can do next week.  One week later, have the same meeting, but with two parts: what did you do last week, and what do you think you can do next week?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Key points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask for conservative estimates (they'll still be too optimistic)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In a first cycle, if 50% is done, that's a good score.  If it's less, investigate why.  If it's more, put checks in place to ensure done is really done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep a written log of every week's promises and realizations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This helps shift the best behavior from &quot;everything's fine here&quot; to &quot;we'e moving forward as best as we can&quot;.  A weekly cycle makes problems visible quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="578" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T18:10:15.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="859" CreationDate="2011-03-06T18:39:27.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on where you are in the relationship. If this manager reports to you, then some coaching and mentoring is needed. They may not understand the importance of the 'heads up'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you report to the manager - you need to make sure he has the information to raise the issue, what it is, and what the impact is. You don't have the information about why (or indeed, if) the issue isn't raised. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, I'm working on a project with very tight timelines, and i do raise the issue with the sponsor, and we discuss the implications and decisions are made. The decision is often, Okay we'll deal with the fallout and the risk as we go along. This is because timing is critical for the delivery. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T18:39:27.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="873" CreationDate="2011-03-06T18:46:05.300" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see a lot of 'I' in your question. My suggestion is to talk to your team and find out why they don't see the same value as you so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you discuss - why you think it's valuable after you as them why they don't see the usefulness of the tool. You might be surprised at the responses. Be ready to listen, and remember why you think it's valuable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FYI - I love the online collaboration tools, but have faced the same issues with having my teams use them. One of the main issues - people like to have information pushed to them, rather than having to go looking. If you can find a way to combine some push to this, you will bring some people across the line. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T18:46:05.300" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="873" CreationDate="2011-03-06T18:54:30.780" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it's easier to work as we were all the time so I understand why there's reluctance. &lt;strong&gt;One of ideas can be using the tool which automatically copes with email answers&lt;/strong&gt;, e.g. you start the thread in the PM tool, it is send out to everyone who is interested and they answer to the thread via email but it gets as the answer in PM tool automatically since the app is dealing with such situations. I know &lt;a href=&quot;http://basecamphq.com/&quot;&gt;Basecamp&lt;/a&gt; works that way. I know a person who wasn't even aware she's using it and we weren't losing anything in email archives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Show them value of the tool.&lt;/strong&gt; Show why it makes sense to use it. Show that other cool companies do it. Show them what they get from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Then you need to find a group of people who would support you.&lt;/strong&gt; Let it be those who are going on holidays and need someone to play their role during absence or pretty much anyone who needs general project archive. The more proponents of a new tool the better are chances people would start noticing its value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask them about test drive.&lt;/strong&gt; One trick I often use in this kind of situations is asking why everyone assumes that [discussed thing] won't work. I ask for a chance and tell them it's not here forever and if it doesn't work we can change it. Surprisingly often people accept trial and then either see its value and stick with it or doesn't see a difference and it just stays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You may consider getting some support from management.&lt;/strong&gt; If you can convince someone high in pecking order to use the tool as standard it may be easier to introduce it in the team. Note: this strategy can be tricky as people may start considering you as someone who is playing politics card.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course I always assume I can be wrong as well. If I'm not able to convince anyone to my ideas, maybe they aren't that good and everyone around is right and I'm wrong. Sometimes it's better to pass it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T18:54:30.780" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="821" CreationDate="2011-03-06T19:50:34.573" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem with working fixed-price for this type of work is establishing where the contractor will stop: you cannot write &quot;untill all tests have passed&quot; as system quality lies outside his responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A statement of work usually contains the focus on the work to be done, in this case you will need to specify&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;* Test Planning&#xA;* Test Development&#xA;* Test Execution&#xA;* Follow-Up&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and more general stuff like planning, Hand-over, the place to be, resources by name, payment schedule, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Test Planning.&lt;/strong&gt; Can the contractor start from a list of functional and non-functional requirements? Or will he need to create a set of test requirements? 'What to test' should be as clear as possible, eg functional correctness, security, usability, performance, portability, documentation ...  Also important here is &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Test design Coverage&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;: it might look trivial that this is 100%, but maybe the core processes/features of your system need more attention (read # of tests written against them) than the simple admin functions for, I don't know, creating parameters or something. If it is of less importance, you could state that these functions are out of scope for this testing assignment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Test Development.&lt;/strong&gt; How will the test scenario's be documented: do you have a tool available, or will it be in a spreadsheet or word processing program. If you already have a template available (or the contractor) than add it to the SOW. If the contractor needs to create one, than a review and acceptance process should be described. The same counts for all the tests: who will review them and how will they be accepted. Decide upon the level of detail: will the tests be high level, so that a knowledgeable person needs to execute the tests, or will you require detailed testprocedures, so that anybody without prior knowledge, can perform these tests. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If automated testing is required, than also here the details of the technique and review process of test scripts should be described and agreed to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, for the gathering of testdata, your people will have to supply them in some form, so the contractor can create specific test cases: who at your side will be available: business, functional analysts ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Test Execution.&lt;/strong&gt; How many testruns must be performed? One run is doing each test once, regardless of the outcome. What happens when there are blocking errors that prevent the tests to be performed? What may the contractor expect as to the resolution so he can continue the test execution (he shoulnd't be sitting idle).  How will bugs be reported (a tool, a bug log in a spreadsheet, ...), what info needs to be supplied in a bug ticket and how will it be communicated with the technical people. If you are doing scrum, then tests are usually developed and (re-)executed as part of the sprint. In that case the number of sprints will have to be determined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Follow-up.&lt;/strong&gt; Reporting like test execution coverage, passed product,  etc. Maybe also bug status reporting, # bugs per application area, ... Attendance to weekly status meetings or daily stand-up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally some other stuff:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Planning.&lt;/strong&gt; List the relevant milestones of the project and how this contractor should allign his work to it. Or add the specific milestones for quality assurance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hand-over&lt;/strong&gt;. Knowledge transfer between consultant and client, so that you can continue when the contractor has left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;People.&lt;/strong&gt; Who is the resource(s) of the contractor that will do the job. Sometimes specialised test consultants send in a senior profile for test planning and development, but junior (= often cheaper) profiles for test execution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this was useful&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-07T19:39:24.817" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T19:39:24.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="852" CreationDate="2011-03-06T20:00:28.437" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First build your &lt;strong&gt;WBS&lt;/strong&gt; up to work package level. Describe every element with some additional sentences to describe what it is (or is not). This is not a full analysis and it doesn't take much time, but it is often overlooked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then use the techniques others have posted here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T20:00:28.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="849" CreationDate="2011-03-06T20:16:44.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pawel's list is very good. For what it's worth, the PMBOK also has a good one: the contents page :-).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go over each Knowledge area and its processes and check what has been done, or not done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T20:16:44.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="872" CreationDate="2011-03-06T20:27:29.147" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe you still need to confront this person with her behaviour and the impact she has on the team and its performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that doesn't help, you need to brave her as a team. For instance, when you are working in sprints, everytime she comes up with something new you could tell her that the sprint is now fixed but that she can add her new idea / additional work to the backlog of the next sprint. If you all do this consistently, and back each other up when she is targeting an individual, just maybe after a while she will get the point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T20:27:29.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="872" CreationDate="2011-03-06T20:53:00.757" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might be worth discussing the idea of maybe hiring a senior engineer to work directly with the VP.  Part of innovation comes from the ability to move quickly on new ideas, and it's usually the VP's job to make strategic decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that the VP is interfering with tactical decisions or making too many strategy-changing strategic decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the VP had a researcher that could work with her, her new team could experiment with new ideas -- possibly helping to discover some new channels of business -- while still keeping the current projects on track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's not an option, then maybe a 5% or 10% project for a few select team members is an option.  Google has had tremendous success with the concept of 20% projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If hiring more people and using 5% to 10% projects is not an option, then the VP should maybe consider researching it herself, assuming that she is a CTO or someone with a technical background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T20:53:00.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="883" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="922" CreationDate="2011-03-06T20:53:38.260" Score="22" ViewCount="118670" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking to take the PMP exam in a year or so, and see that one of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/en/Certification/Project-Management-Professional-PMP.aspx&quot;&gt;requirements&lt;/a&gt; is &quot;at least three years of project management experience, with 4,500 hours leading and directing projects.&quot;  What sort of documentation is required for the 4,500 hours, and does anyone have any good recommendations on tracking project participation to this end?  I figure it would be better to start documenting now then trying to remember 3 years of projects a year from now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="439" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T10:23:54.067" Title="PMP Experience Documentation" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="21" ClosedDate="2016-11-30T01:55:58.877" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="803" CreationDate="2011-03-06T21:20:50.223" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not agree with Pawel that Prince2 assumes big design up front. Prince2 is all about project governance, it doesn't tell you anything about which development method to use. But he is right that the method can be tailored to your specific needs. None of the (I admit many) templates have to be used, and lightweight (agile) artifacts can be used instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, Prince2 works quite well with Scrum, where Scrum is used for the &quot;Managing product delivery&quot; process group. Likewise, as you can tailor Prince2's technical stages to allow for the FDD processes, I am sure you could do the same with XP (I've never practised XP myself, so I am not an expert ;-) ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the issue, in my view is not Prince2 but the combination of FDD and XP. These are both development methodologies, and combining them strictly is going to give some friction. That doesn't mean you could use one, and add some aproaches of the other. Pair programming, automated testing, refactoring ... These are not exclusive to XP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T21:20:50.223" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="883" CreationDate="2011-03-06T21:33:48.713" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep your time registration entries. These should be enough evidence to fulfill this requirement. If they are too high level, for instance if you cannot distinguish between project management processes and product development processes on a particular project, you will have to make an assumption. To prepare for a possible audit, you could ask your boss to agree up front with the assumptions you have made about how you've spent your time on these projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T21:33:48.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="860" CreationDate="2011-03-06T21:45:40.997" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good advice given already. I would add the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a thorough lessons learned workshop with your new team. Let them recount their experience, then try to find the weak spots in the current project where it could happen all over again. Then do something about it visibly. This is risk management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T21:45:40.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="872" CreationDate="2011-03-07T00:40:22.480" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's a typical problem for C level. The CTO or even the CEO will have to deal with it, as that's exactly their function in the company: taking decisions about operations. Neither a stakeholder nor a VP has this power, so if they don't want the other stakeholders to fire them because the delays in projects cripple the company, they better address the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your role in the matter is simply to let them know what's happening, and let them do their very job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if they decide to let the VP do her thing, then there is nothing more &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; will be able to do!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't forget: your hierarchy is fixing your priorities, not this person. If you are stuck between your hierarchy's order and the VP's order, refer to the hierarchy and let them decide what to do. If the VP is unhappy with that, just say her to check it with the C level, as you are not allowed to change your priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastEditorUserId="152" LastEditDate="2011-03-07T14:55:20.230" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T14:55:20.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="888" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="895" CreationDate="2011-03-07T00:41:04.510" Score="4" ViewCount="529" Body="&lt;p&gt;It happened to me in the past that for some reasons a project (software app) has become very messy, or we inherited it that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With messy I mean that some basic best practices was not followed at some point, and as a result everybody was a little scared to touch anything because you don't know how it's going to affect the whole (say at this point the project misses 10% to be completed), this leaded to a even worse situation.&#xA;We realized this status too late, when the project was close to be finished and we hoped we needed very little maintenance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'm wondering what to do if the situation comes again, of course you should avoid the project to get to a point where you're afraid to touch it, but once it's there, is it acceptable to make an exception, limit the work do do on it and fix each problem the short way. When does it worth to refactor it anyway, going out of budget?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastEditorUserId="97" LastEditDate="2011-03-07T16:12:34.677" LastActivityDate="2015-05-08T08:42:57.313" Title="What to do with a messy project when it's close to be finished" Tags="&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="860" CreationDate="2011-03-07T01:04:34.557" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main thing to say is this: if your team needs on a constant basis to do overtime to get the job done, it means the project planning is not worth a penny.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know what the reality in companies is today, but to much work with to less resources will not lead you anyway. Planning needs to be realistic!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, how to remotivate your team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change your organization to work smarter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Overtime has to be exceptional&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your team is already burnt out, give them a vacation. Not necessarily everybody at the same time, but under a few months, for example&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain your team things are changing right now, and &lt;strong&gt;mean it!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastEditorUserId="152" LastEditDate="2011-04-04T10:14:07.577" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T10:14:07.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="872" CreationDate="2011-03-07T01:57:39.080" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to include more about the context of the situation. On the top of my head is one key fact that needs to be considered: is the problematic stakeholder the person who is paying for the project or the boss of the person who is paying for the project? If the answer is yes, the best way of addressing the issue is going to the person and explaining why and/or how her actions are interfering with the goal of getting results - this explanation should be clear, to the point and defensible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if the VP is not somehow responsible of paying for the project, then the issue shall be escalated to whoever has this responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T01:57:39.080" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="873" CreationDate="2011-03-07T02:11:21.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand from your description of the situation that the problem you see is that discussions are not shared via a collaboration tool. I have a question for you: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why are you transcribing the discussions to the collaboration tool? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are any other persons besides you, using the information in the e-mails you are copying? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer is no, then you are wasting your time and effort. No one uses a tool if the effort of using is offset by the benefits derived from its usage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if this information is useful for the team members, then all you have to do is to tell them that you can no longer continue transcribing the texts, and that the only way of continue sharing those conversations is that all team members post their discussions to the collaboration tool. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="118" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T02:11:21.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="852" CreationDate="2011-03-07T15:02:51.130" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first gut reaction is DON'T USE ANY TOOLS...get some paper, a pen and write down what you plan on doing from a top down (work break down structure or mind mapping) approach.  You can't estimate how long it's going to take to get somewhere, when you don't know where you're going (really know) - and all a tool does is make your bad estimate look real (and commits you to the client...aka contract).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you have A LOT of prior experience with similar projects or have access to people who do (and will work with you), my recommendation is to take a different appraoch to the project - either prototype to production, Agile sprints.... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="458" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T15:02:51.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="860" CreationDate="2011-03-07T15:36:33.880" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The unfortunate truth is that they may be working overtime again, it's usually not the PM driving the team, but the company culture - so, if you can't change the root cause of the overtime you'll be going down the same road. My advice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find the root cause of the prior overtime - correct that if you can&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you can correct the cause, tell the truth to the team - no sugar coating. That's life in some companies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build in some additional 'buffer' time - may make it look like you're less effective, but it's always the right time to do the right thing (MLK quote) - even if it means an impact to your reputation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be prepared for turnover and low productivity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reward the team more than rewarding individuals - team outings, help the team with their home chores (dry cleaning), buy them lunch, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="458" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-27T07:22:15.617" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T07:22:15.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="860" CreationDate="2011-03-07T16:27:55.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To recover from burnout will take time. Which you might not have. Some folks can recover in a few weeks, some take a few months, and some never recover (I'm aware of one guy who took 17 months before he was back into the swing, and one who I lost contact with at about 24 months who was still burned out). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Insulate them from the managers and tasks that got them burned out in the first place.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get them working on small projects so that they can get a few &quot;wins&quot; under their belts. Padapa calls that &quot;building momentum.&quot; Much of the malaise from burnout is the sense of things being out of the team's control. A few small wins will get the sense of control back, and that will help recover the sense of confidence and control. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recognize that some folks won't recover from burnout. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Figure out what got them into the burnout zone this time, and figure out how to prevent it from happening again. If it is corporate culture, there is no cure, and the folks at the top will have planned for the disposal of the victims already. The book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/013143635X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Death March&lt;/a&gt; should get some starting points on what to look for. EA_Spouse wrote a long rant about a certain game company that built into their business model burning out and then disposing of developers.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T16:27:55.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="888" CreationDate="2011-03-07T16:30:42.753" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way you tackle this kind of situation depends on a set of conditions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will a project be actively developed in future?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What arrangements with client do you have regarding SLA and generally fixing bugs?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is is an important project for both client and your company?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short you should try to answer how painful it would be to for you/your team/your organization to live with the project without improving its quality. Sometimes it's the best idea just to accept how it looks like and move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand if leaving low quality is going to be royal pain in the neck it's better I'd try to pay at least some &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.construx.com/blogs/stevemcc/archive/2007/11/01/technical-debt-2.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;technical debt&lt;/a&gt; back. How far you can go depends on the organization and your role. I would generally discuss openly the issue with project sponsor and try to reach some agreement how much time and effort you can invest to turn project maintenance into more profitable venture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more you do the better project should be but it should be treated more like an investment than trying just to be as perfect as possible. &lt;strong&gt;As a rule of thumb - if investment in project quality improvement can be judged with expected savings I'd go for it.&lt;/strong&gt; So should most of decision-makers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: The link has gone dark, wikipedia has &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a definition&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="16978" LastEditDate="2015-05-08T08:42:57.313" LastActivityDate="2015-05-08T08:42:57.313" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="872" CreationDate="2011-03-07T16:44:19.637" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've worked in a similar situation with a VP who I refer to as &quot;Crazy French Lady.&quot; This was in the IT department of a consulting company (so it was like Office Space, but the rest of the company were the Bob &amp;amp; Bobs). Even though she was a VP, she had enough clout with the board of directors to get anyone fired. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, the PM pretty much surrendered and let her have direct access to the developers (which I was the last one remaining) as the PMs could not handle her activities (which sound remarkably like the situation you are describing). About the only method we found for dealing with her was to put everything into a spreadsheet, and cross off what was done (this was in the mid 90s, there wasn't a lot of bug tracking software out there, so our bug tracking was done in Excel) because there were a lot of conversations like this:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CFL: Blue? Blue! What sort of idiot makes things blue?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Me: What color would you like?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;CFL: Green!&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Me: &lt;em&gt;adds new entry to bottom of spreadsheet with time and date, and remarking that CFL wants the web pages green&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;next review meeting&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CFL: Green? Green! What sort of idiot makes things green?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Me: What color would you like?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;CFL: Everyone knows the corporate standard is blue!&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Me: &lt;em&gt;adds new entry to bottom of spreadsheet with time and date, and remarking that CFL wants the web pages back to corporate standard from green, and point back to the line where she wants it green&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;later on&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CFL: You developers waste so much time! Why?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Me: &lt;em&gt;pulls out spreadsheet that gets emailed to everyone on a weekly basis and point to all the flip-flopping she's done.&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T16:44:19.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="897" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-07T17:21:56.763" Score="15" ViewCount="397" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a situation I am not quite sure how to handle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have asked a freelancer to come up with some designs for a piece of e-learning. Now, as part of the quote he did some concepts which were part of the pitch so not charge for, however he missed a couple of key points I mentioned in the Brief (unfortunately it was an informal discussion instead of a brief, so I can forgive him that). I am not keen on the look'n'feel anyway, and some of the concepts in the pitch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I like some of his other stuff, and the design isn't &lt;strong&gt;bad&lt;/strong&gt;, its just not good enough. So, I am thinking of asking him to produce a couple more - and pay him for them, BUT what If we do not like them again? Is that tough cookies? How do you handle this. I realize design is extremely subjective, but I know what I want and I know what makes a good looking usable website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, what do you do if you do not like a piece of design you are paying for? If it was code - you wouldn't pay for something that didn't work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did think about posting on the Graphic Designer Stack, however I could predict their answers :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks guys!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="462" LastEditorUserId="2618" LastEditDate="2012-01-30T23:15:33.783" LastActivityDate="2012-01-30T23:15:33.783" Title="What to do if you do not &quot;like&quot; work produced by a freelancer" Tags="&lt;external-project-members&gt;&lt;procurement&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="897" CreationDate="2011-03-07T18:12:17.780" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Design requirements are actually hard to write. My main suggestions are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write down an overall goal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Detail the specific elements you want to see on the design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Include sites that use those elements (examples)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let him show draft versions of the elements, so that he still has time to fix them without paying him again&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also, tell him to quote you for a few revisions of every design.  So if for 100 he will give you a logo, for 150 he may give you 5 revisions of that same logo.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T18:12:17.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="897" CreationDate="2011-03-07T18:22:05.480" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd also add:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Split the work into a few stages, e.g. first, you work on wide range on sketchy designs just to choose a direction, second, you choose shortlist and you get something which takes more time to prepare and finally, you choose one design and iterate it until you're happy with it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write down anything which is important for you. You both will have something to refer to when discussing different designs. The form doesn't really matter here - just make those requirements reasonably precise.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T18:22:05.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="883" CreationDate="2011-03-07T18:28:56.377" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even though the language on the PMI website say&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;with 4,500 hours leading and directing&#xA;  projects&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My believe is that by leading they mean be involved in one of the process groups, including being a team member in a project.  I am almost sure I took this from Rita's book, but I will double-check this today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In essence you need to be part of the projects for 4,500 hours. It will be good that you document your time based on the 5 process groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T18:28:56.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="897" CreationDate="2011-03-07T18:34:00.653" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to this question very much depends upon the relationship you have with the freelancer. Is there a contract involved or is it &quot;at will&quot; employment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="558" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-03-08T03:21:31.800" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T03:21:31.800" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="897" CreationDate="2011-03-07T18:57:18.240" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;With design, you are often paying for the brainstorming/concepts themselves. Code will either work or not but design can &quot;work&quot; it just might not &quot;work for you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Directing a design process is very different from managing a software project. One thing that can help steer the designs is by doing a collage of images, looks, feelings, etc. that you want your site to have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I first learned about this approach from the founder of an extremely successful design company: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.duffy.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.duffy.com/&lt;/a&gt;  and have used it since.  It helps take a lot of the subjective out of the process and gives some direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its not perfect, since each aspect can be subject to interpretation. But it does act as a more &quot;design-centric&quot; common reference point to help hone in one where you're going and where you want to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T18:57:18.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="897" CreationDate="2011-03-07T19:08:50.260" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you talked to the freelancer? Often verbal requirements leave great gaping holes in expectations. &#xA;Separate the topics - first discuss what you think is missing  and how that gets fixed. Then if the freelancer wants to add cost, you can engage in that discussion with some facts behind you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the future, my recommendation is never do verbals. Even if you just do an email confirmation, writing it down does something to our brains that makes us strive for clarity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck. and remember, the freelancer wants to do a good job so he/she will get more work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T19:08:50.260" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="897" CreationDate="2011-03-07T19:37:13.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like Perry, I would start with a focused discussion about the former designs, and tell him what I don't like about it. If he is a good designer he will be able to grasp what you mean and write down or even sketch you're requirements while you're at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is key to write them down together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he just sits there, saying &quot;Ok, I'll see what I can do&quot;, then maybe it is time to look for someone else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T19:37:13.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="897" CreationDate="2011-03-08T00:37:03.610" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to do not forget any detail, we use basecamp (as has been said mail is good as well), but of course meetings are necessary anyway... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to get a clear deal in my opinion is by using mock-ups, there is never everything in it but you get a good idea of where you're going, and it gives the designer the idea of what you're looking for. All the rest of the design should be consistent with what you arranged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it's just a part of the process, regular and frequent checks on how the design is evolving should help as well, the sooner you identify a new or changed requirement the better it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T00:37:03.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="611" CreationDate="2011-03-08T02:37:02.730" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If he's got only one manager, then the manager should be responsible for informing the resource what the prioritization is. If XYZ is more important that ABC or DEF, then the manager should be telling him that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="444" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T02:37:02.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="883" CreationDate="2011-03-08T02:40:58.110" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you fill out the experience portion of the PMP Application, you will be asked to provide the total number of hours you spent &quot;leading and directing&quot;, i.e. managing the project and what percentage of that time was spent on various activities in each &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.spread-digital-literacy.eu/wiki/Project_management_processes_and_knowledge_areas_according_to_PMBOK&quot;&gt;Process Area&lt;/a&gt;, organized by the process groups. It is time consuming.  Since I wasn't as forward thinking as you, I ended up asking my company financial admin staff to print me a report of every project I had billed for the last 5 years.  Fortunately, we are typically pretty good about setting up charge numbers for various activities on a project, so the translation from charge numbers to PMBOK process area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also this way, if I was audited, I already had the source material I could use as justification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/docs/pmp-application.xls&quot;&gt;http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/docs/pmp-application.xls&lt;/a&gt; is a slightly dated version of the type of template you could maintain if you wanted to get a leg up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not every project you document needs to cover every process group, but the sum total of all your experience needs to cover all the PMBOK processes.  At least that's how it was in 2009 when I documented my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My interpretation of leading and directing is that you don't have to be designated as &quot;the PM&quot;, but you &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; need to have been performing some sort of leadership activity on the project.  On a software project, perhaps you were the software lead, which gave you experience &lt;strong&gt;executing&lt;/strong&gt;, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is that you need to be comfortable with yourself - if you have made every effort to honestly document your management experience &amp;amp; have records to back up your claim in case of an audit, you'll be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastEditorUserId="76" LastEditDate="2011-03-08T02:46:40.723" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T02:46:40.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="908" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="914" CreationDate="2011-03-08T03:12:57.913" Score="14" ViewCount="1886" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not talking about the project closing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it the responsibility of a project manager to recommend to senior leadership or the customer to prematurely terminate a project with no reasonable chance of success?  Should this decision be made only by the project sponsor?  What does the PM do in the case of a difference of opinion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that the project is failing for reasons beyond the control of the PM, how does one terminate the project without also terminating your career?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastEditorUserId="70" LastEditDate="2011-03-08T03:14:57.973" LastActivityDate="2012-07-15T15:52:02.290" Title="Is it the responsibility of a PM to terminate a failed project?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="909" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="916" CreationDate="2011-03-08T03:20:24.017" Score="5" ViewCount="7345" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to build a work breakdown structure for a project I'm working on and since this is my first time doing something like this I was wondering if I could get some guidance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The application I'm working on is a simple task list web application which has:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an authentication module that has two roles for authenticated users (admin/user)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a simple create a task screen&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a search for a task screen&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a dashboard that graphically displays tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some simple basic reports&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some advanced admin reports&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone help me get started on a WBS for something like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for any help&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="586" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-03-08T08:03:06.050" LastActivityDate="2016-10-11T18:01:43.983" Title="Help regarding creating a WBS for an Application" Tags="&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="908" CreationDate="2011-03-08T03:21:19.230" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is part your responsibility to terminate a bad project, is completely your responsibility to bring all the facts to the table for the sponsor to pull the plug.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be objective about it. Bring your sponsor and tell him/her what is the current status of the projects.  Explain the modifications that you will do to get this project back on track.  Sometimes this objective modification will include things that are not acceptable by the sponsor or sponsor's executives.  Making him pull the plug.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you say difference in opinion, I think that you either believe the project is not a failure or your sponsor does. In either case my comment above covers the general idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T03:21:19.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="911" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="929" CreationDate="2011-03-08T03:38:18.460" Score="7" ViewCount="2748" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming you are running projects where every employee submits their time in a corporate accounting system like SAP or Deltek, should every project always define charge numbers for every WBS item?  Why or why not?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there exceptions to this rule?  Are there instances where you charge labor hours and there is no associated WBS item?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T19:08:08.077" Title="Should every WBS item map to a single &quot;charge number&quot;?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="691" CreationDate="2011-03-08T04:11:38.777" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like the way LiquidPlanner does it. They use the space on the right side column of the dashboard  once a user logs in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZogWc.gif&quot; alt=&quot;LiquidPlanner dashboard&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way whenever I log in I'll see their update and can click to find out more. If you're already using a web based system than why not take advantage of letting announcements and other news reside where users can easily find them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="184" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T04:11:38.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="908" CreationDate="2011-03-08T04:23:17.667" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The project sponsor who approved the charter is really the only one who can cancel a project outright. The same people who initiated and authorized a project need to be fully informed of the need to kill a project but the decision is ultimately theirs and not the PMs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T04:23:17.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="908" CreationDate="2011-03-08T08:00:32.123" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Canceling a project is a sponsor's decision. However if you, as PM, believe project should be canceled it's not enough just to prepare project status and plans to bring it back on the track. Actually most of the time you need to attach you recommendation to close the project. Otherwise the message may not make it through to the project sponsor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: often decision-makers are reluctant to cancel a project, even if it's doomed, because of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sunk cost&lt;/a&gt;. It usually means you need very strong arguments to convince them to make this call. You may find &lt;a href=&quot;http://herdingcats.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/08/etc_versus_eac.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; helpful in terms of estimating how much finishing the project would cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't be afraid of consequences of project termination. Actually if you're right about project status it may be presented as achievement: &lt;em&gt;&quot;I saved big bunch of $ by convincing decision-makers to cancel a doomed project.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; Also I'm generally far from setting simple dependency between project success and project manager's success. Answers to &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/214/one-of-my-projects-was-cancelled-very-early-on-will-this-be-detrimental-to-my-c/218#218&quot;&gt;a question about discussing terminated project in CV&lt;/a&gt; may be helpful (even though a situation is different here).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T08:00:32.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="915" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1558" CreationDate="2011-03-08T08:08:48.340" Score="3" ViewCount="3942" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible and useful to combine &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter_five_forces_analysis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Porter's five forces&lt;/a&gt; model with his &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_chain&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;value chain model&lt;/a&gt;? Or is it not useful to combine these two?  I want to have a basis to analyze a fictional Mergers &amp;amp; Acquisitions case (will/could it be successful). Until now, I find it difficult to get these two models into one useful construct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="589" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2019-09-28T11:30:37.570" LastActivityDate="2019-09-28T11:30:37.570" Title="Porter: five forces and value chain combination" Tags="&lt;business-analyst&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="909" CreationDate="2011-03-08T08:40:53.227" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually you already made the first step. Your list looks pretty well as a top level of WBS. Another step would be decomposing these features into lower-level tasks. For such a simple application I would probably end up with only a couple of levels on WBS and wouldn't try to split any further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example of what I'm talking about could look something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Authentication module&#xA;    Database design&#xA;    User list&#xA;    CRUD for managing users&#xA;    Log in screen&#xA;    Mechanism to verify permissions (access to specific function)&#xA;    etc.&#xA;Task management&#xA;    Database design&#xA;    Task list&#xA;    CRUD for task&#xA;    ...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: here's what I understand as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Create,_read,_update_and_delete&quot;&gt;CRUD&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should end up with simple hierarchical structure which represents fairly well what your app is going to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE&lt;/strong&gt; (After Stephan's answer): What I assumed here was that every feature (database design, user list, etc.) is a deliverable, which means at the completion of the feature you have it working: tested and deployed (if you work on web-based app). It is approach used often in agile approaches where you often try to complete whole production cycle on feature-level and avoid splitting the project into phases: design, development, testing, deployment, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-03-08T16:17:51.410" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T16:17:51.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="909" CreationDate="2011-03-08T09:59:03.920" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Pawel to keep your WBS for this project as simpe as possible. A WBS is &lt;strong&gt;deliverable-oriented&lt;/strong&gt;, so I would not add the individual tasks right away. Tasks are added in the next step when you have a clear understanding of the full project scope. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on every deliverable that needs to be produced in order to come at the end of the project. Project scope includes both the product scope and the supporting processes to create that product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Everything that is not included in the WBS is out of scope and will not be done.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my WBS for the above project would look something like this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1. Analysis&#xA;    1.1 Requirements analysis / Product backlog&#xA;    1.2 Domain Model&#xA;2. Application&#xA;    2.1 Authentication Module&#xA;    2.2 Task screen&#xA;    2.3 Search module&#xA;    2.4 Dashboard&#xA;    2.5 Reporting module&#xA;         2.5.1 Basic reports&#xA;         2.5.2 Admin reports&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In principle you could break it down further to each individual report, if that would be appropriate. Size of each deliverable is important here: if one report only takes an hour or two or it is only a single task to develop one, than this level might be too detailed for follow-up. That is the idea behind the WBS: you break it down up to a level of detail that makes sense for organising your project. The lowest level is the work package level = a deliverable that you can further break down into tasks, like Pawel did. Detailed analysis can be part of each deliverable, or combined into a single deliverable (requirement analysis document for instance), depending on how you will organise the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next you have to add the other processes that surround the creation and deployment of this application. That might look like the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;3. Deployment&#xA;   3.1 Testing&#xA;       3.1.1 Test scenario's&#xA;       3.1.2 Final system tests &#xA;       3.1.3 User Acceptance testing&#xA;   3.2 Deployment&#xA;4. Documentation&#xA;5. Business Roll-out&#xA;   5.1 Support organisation&#xA;   5.2 Training&#xA;   5.3 Communication&#xA;6. Project Management&#xA;   6.1 Project Charter&#xA;   6.2 Status reporting&#xA;   6.3 ...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next step is to write down a few (or more) sentences about each element of your WBS (called a &lt;strong&gt;WBS dictionary&lt;/strong&gt;). It doesn't have to be a complete analysis, but it should help everybody understand what is going to be done (eg for training: are you going to write a complete manual, an online help file or just some powerpoint slides with some screenshots; the same with the reports: list the number of them and a fwe words about their contents,  ...). The aim is to have a clear understanding of what will be realised. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T09:59:03.920" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="829" CreationDate="2011-03-08T11:52:45.233" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;As DaveParillo says, if you want to share it, you probably need some kind of hosting or at least shared folder. Besides online offerings there are also some tools you can install (host) on site on your intranet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a question about scrum tools on StackOverflow - &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/858607/what-electronic-scrum-kanban-board-do-you-use-and-recommend-for-distributed-teams&quot;&gt;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/858607/what-electronic-scrum-kanban-board-do-you-use-and-recommend-for-distributed-teams&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here are some tools you can install on an apache server with PHP:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/projects/digaboard/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Digaboard&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumie.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrumie&lt;/a&gt; = by &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/858607/what-electronic-scrum-kanban-board-do-you-use-and-recommend-for-distributed-teams/4753397#4753397&quot;&gt;manRo&lt;/a&gt; - UPDATE 2020-07: This is no longer a self hosted solution&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you first try it online - there is a demo for scrumie using demo/demo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="527" LastEditorUserId="527" LastEditDate="2020-07-21T16:14:19.907" LastActivityDate="2020-07-21T16:14:19.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="911" CreationDate="2011-03-08T12:07:24.457" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on which level you wish to follow-up on costs. For instance, if in your WBS you have one deliverable that you have subdivided further into a number of work packages, you could decide to track time and cost against the higher level deliverable, instead of on the individual work packages, while still use the work packages for resource allocation, responsibilities and your schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you miss the advantage of following each work package in more detail, compare it with your estimates on these work packages, cannot use it for future estimates etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is to always build a WBS to work package level, and track time and cost against them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We don't track time against individual tasks to create the deliverable of the work package.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your second question: What would be the scope of the work, if there is no relevant WBS item for it? Then this work would be out of scope, not? The WBS should represent all work to be done. Be wary of what we call &quot;Dustbin&quot; tasks where all kinds of 'unspecified work' is charged against. They tend to spill over very quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T12:07:24.457" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="908" CreationDate="2011-03-08T12:25:12.523" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following Prince2:&#xA;It's the task of the PM to give advise on termination of the project and escalate risks and issues.&#xA;But it's the project board (executive, senior user and senior supplier) to give authorization to terminate the project. If you don't have the authorization, you cannot end it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are working as consultant as PM you should seek other opportunities in that company. If none can be found, then, you should move on to the next client to be a PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are working fixed at the client, then you will be placed on other projects or be thanked for the work done...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's better to close the project properly, in my opinion, then to try to keep it alive without a good reason, and costing extra for the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to close the project in correct way, and get it on paper by the company that 'stopping the project' was not because of the work done by the PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;closing a project too soon, is just a part of the PM job I suppose... but please correct me if wrong...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T12:25:12.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="909" CreationDate="2011-03-08T14:18:13.830" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers cover the obvious items for a WBS. I would add some preparation items to the WBS.  Things to consider are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Selection and setup of servers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Selection and setup of revision control system.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Selection and setup of bug tracking system.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Selection and setup of automatic build system.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Selection and documentation (or review of) processes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Selection and implementation of framework(s) and libraries.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Selection and setup of project Wiki or CMS (content management system).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Selection and setup of development tools.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team selection.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once an organization gets it processes under control, then several of the can change from &quot;selection and setup&quot; to &quot;add project to&quot; or some similar simpler task.  Letting these things just happen usually means they don't happen or aren't available when needed.  You may need temporary resources to perform some of these things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastEditorUserId="529" LastEditDate="2015-11-23T05:51:54.103" LastActivityDate="2015-11-23T05:51:54.103" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="883" CreationDate="2011-03-08T14:23:34.020" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Documentation required is pretty scant on the 4500 hours. They will ask you to break the hours down into five process areas (initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing) and then into various process activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't worry too much about it. I'm a software developer by experience, so I had to scrounge various projects to get my 4500 hours. I was also audited, so I know that they accepted my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you enter your hours, &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; you get audited, you will get a letter to sign for each project, from the manager of that project (or co-worker, or subordinate). It will say &quot;XYZ said they worked on this project for these many hours (by process area): ... do you agree with this? (Yes/No) and any other comments?&quot; So no real documentation is necessary; &lt;strong&gt;as long as you are honest,&lt;/strong&gt; your experience is valid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, for tracking, I would do it in a spreadsheet; list projects and an approximate number of hours spent on each project. That makes it easier to subdivide into the process areas and processes later; you can &quot;budget&quot; those hours until they add up to approximately the same amount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, PMI really wants just &lt;em&gt;project&lt;/em&gt; work experience, whether leadership or not. I passed the audit, and I had projects like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Software developer on X project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project manager, sponsor, developer, and customer on X small project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Novel writer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Volunteer group leader/worker&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of your hours will probably fall into the execution area; that's probably what they expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T14:23:34.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="897" CreationDate="2011-03-08T15:45:00.343" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may be hard for design work, but can the missing bits or changes be quantify. ie, all corners are to be rounded, or specifying a set of colours to use etc. Once these missing bits quantify, then they can be measured and tested against an expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But design work is almost art rather scientific, but this may not be possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="480" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T15:45:00.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="871" CreationDate="2011-03-08T16:57:56.277" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Certifications of any type, whether for PM (PMP, PRINCE2), Computer Security (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.comptia.org/certifications/listed/security.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Security+&lt;/a&gt;) or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iapmo.org/Pages/splash.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Plumbing&lt;/a&gt; are of primary use to job seekers. It's an independent and objective assessment you can put on your resume to document that the certifying authority thinks you possess a particular skill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question a person needs to ask themselves is: what are they hoping to gain from certification?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally got my PMP specifically because I was considering changing jobs &amp;amp; I was looking to add a PM credential to my resume. I had been managing projects for over 10 years. I applied, bought &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0596102348&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Head First PMP&lt;/a&gt;, took a few free online practice exams and took the test. The certification provided exactly what I expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a younger or candidate PM, I'm not sure I'd encourage them unequivocally to run out &amp;amp; get certified, unless they also considering a career change. The PMP is heavy on theory and light on practice - it reminds me of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CMMI&lt;/a&gt; that way. I've run across some PRINCE2 sites that deride the PMP for essentially capturing 'common sense' and little else. That said, because of the devotion to the PMBOK, which is an excellent set of practices, the PMP certification is of increasing value as the size of the project increases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a nutshell, I highly recommend the PMP or any comparable cert for job seekers. I would not recommend it outright for people wanting to learn the profession, but it's an option that you could certainly take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-07-12T13:09:08.660" LastActivityDate="2019-07-12T13:09:08.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="925" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-08T17:09:52.267" Score="0" ViewCount="234" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems terribly obscure, long winded, over complicated, and wreaks of unnecessary overhead.&#xA;Is this stuff really in use? If so, there has GOT to be a better way to get things done. This PMBOK stuff could cause a lot of waste in terms of both time and staffing resources for a business, as far as I can tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this really a current standard?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any pros care to share some real world experience to a student who seems to have stumbled across a terribly inefficient looking set of guidelines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="592" LastActivityDate="2011-03-09T14:37:28.667" Title="Currently taking a PM class based around PMBOK, doesn't it seem quite inefficient?" Tags="&lt;pmbok&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2011-03-10T04:35:49.197" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="925" CreationDate="2011-03-08T18:01:26.277" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you write yourself, it is a &lt;strong&gt;standard&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;NOT&lt;/strong&gt; a &lt;strong&gt;methodology&lt;/strong&gt;. It contains a loadfull of &quot;&lt;em&gt;general accepted practises&lt;/em&gt;&quot; that are useful on &quot;&lt;em&gt;most projects, most of the time&lt;/em&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a project manager, you still have to decide what to use and what not or adapt it to suit your needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because it is a standard, it is supposed to cover very large, complex projects, as well as short and simple ones. That is why it may look overwhelming. But for simple projects, well you simplify things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it a terrible document, but the principles it contains are universal for &lt;strong&gt;good&lt;/strong&gt; project management. They're not a guarantee for succesful projects, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T18:01:26.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="871" CreationDate="2011-03-08T18:25:28.523" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There was a paper in the February 2011 issue of the Project Management Journal (Vol. 42, Nbr. 1): &quot;&lt;em&gt;PMP Certification as a core competency: Necessary but not sufficient&lt;/em&gt;&quot; (pages 31-41). Although it was only a limited study, its' results are interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The PMP Certification was the least valued of a list of 15 core competencies by professional IT recruiters. The most important where softskills like leadership, ability to communicate at multiple levels, verbal and written skills, attitude and the ability to deal with ambiguity and change.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There was no difference in project success rates between PMP certified and uncertified project managers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still value my certification because it gave me the opportunity to study the pmbok in more detail then I otherwise was ever going to do. Like all the rest, this is tacit knowledge I carry with me to do my job. But when people ask me about it I call it the cherry on the cake: it looks good, but it doesn't tell you anything about the cake :-).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-11T16:33:10.680" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T16:33:10.680" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="911" CreationDate="2011-03-08T18:45:40.397" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing to keep in mind is that if your workers charge their time to X number of charge numbers; the greater the number X is the less likely that they are not making up the numbers. In my experience, most people cannot remember how much time they spent on each discrete task. In our company, asking someone to bill more than 3-4 charge numbers on any project seems to become very generic and less meaningful quite quickly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a delicate balance between having data and possibly slowing the team down or even causing turnover in a data quest. Ask yourself, what are you going to do with the data. Is it really important? Any answer that starts with &quot;it would be nice&quot; or &quot;I might do&quot; I would not do those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="389" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T18:45:40.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="911" CreationDate="2011-03-08T19:08:08.077" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Charge numbers and the WBS&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Control accounts are issued at the intersection of the WBS and the OBS; they hold the budget for a particular group of people to perform a specific bucket of work and are typically assigned to a control account manager (CAM). The CAM should have authority over how budget is spent and resources consumed within their portion of the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CAMs typically break out charge numbers at least one level deeper than their control account. I've seen charge numbers used to collect actuals by smaller elements of the team (i.e. OBS), to break things out in phases to align to a schedule (e.g. charge numbers change after some big review), and/or to collect costs by a lower level of the WBS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, it's perfectly fine for a charge number to span multiple WBS elements--as long as the sub-elements it spans all fall under the same parent. For example, you could have one charge number for 1.2.1 and 1.2.2 and another for 1.2.3, but you &lt;strong&gt;don't&lt;/strong&gt; want to have a charge number for 1.1.2 and 1.2.2 and another for 1.1.3. If you did that, you'll have no way to determine how much 1.1 cost, because it will have 1.2.2 costs embedded with it at the charge number level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the hard rule is that charge numbers cannot span WBS elements above the level you're required to report costs at, or to mix charges from WBS elements at the reporting level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within that constraint charge numbers can span multiple lower-level WBS elements or you can have multiple charge numbers within a WBS element.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Reasons hours might not be collected against a WBS element&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can only think of a two cases where hours would be charged and there would be no associated WBS item:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The WBS is missing something &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The hours were supporting something you track as overhead, so you should collect them under a special set of charge numbers that map to overhead accounts not program accounts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="360" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T19:08:08.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="925" CreationDate="2011-03-08T19:57:48.843" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looks like you have a bad teacher in your class. PMBOK is a state-of-the-art project management body of knowledge. The problem is that its description (the PMBOK Guide itself) is difficult to read. I would strongly recommend you to read this book first: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1932735186&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMP Exam Prep, Sixth Edition: Rita's Course in a Book for Passing the PMP Exam&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T19:57:48.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="909" CreationDate="2011-03-08T20:00:30.103" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to build a WBS for a software development project you need some SDLC framework. For example &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Rational_Unified_Process&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;RUP&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Solutions_Framework&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MSF&lt;/a&gt;. They will tell you exactly what deliverables and work packages shall be placed in WBS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T20:00:30.103" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="908" CreationDate="2011-03-08T20:05:55.417" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;project is failing for reasons beyond the control of the PM&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This phrase means serious problem. &lt;strong&gt;There are no reasons beyond PM's control&lt;/strong&gt;. This is a fundamental rule of the entire project management discipline. If project is failing it means the PM is failing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the situation around the project is changing (shortage of fundings, failures of suppliers, scope creep, quality problems, etc.) the PM has to make changes to project constraints: scope, cost, time, quality. Every change has to be re-approved with project sponsor. If necessary such re-approval may be done a few times per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good project manager together with a new project baseline shows a forecast to a project sponsor. He/she explains to the sponsor that &quot;the cost is $500K now and, according to my forecast, in 2 weeks it will be $550K&quot;. Project sponsor makes a decision whether to stop the project or to continue. A bad project manager will try to hide the truth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T20:05:55.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="897" CreationDate="2011-03-08T20:09:49.827" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest treat this situation as &quot;&lt;strong&gt;buying designer's time&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; instead of &quot;buying an artwork&quot;. It's like a song. You pay a singer for his/her time, not for the song itself. If you don't like the song - change the singer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T20:09:49.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="872" CreationDate="2011-03-08T20:13:24.223" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ignore her in terms of project management. At the same time be very polite and friendly in terms of personal relations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time be very strict and explicit with your project members. They have to understand who is giving orders - the project. Sooner or later they will start ignoring her and obeying project rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may help: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yegor256.com/2015/01/26/happy-boss-false-objective.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.yegor256.com/2015/01/26/happy-boss-false-objective.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastEditorUserId="91" LastEditDate="2016-02-01T21:25:21.850" LastActivityDate="2016-02-01T21:25:21.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="868" CreationDate="2011-03-08T20:19:54.247" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest to setup a project-wide &lt;strong&gt;Policy of Conduct&lt;/strong&gt;, which shall be a subset of corporate rules (nobody read them). Write a skeleton of it (one page) and discuss with all project members. Let them raise their concerns and vote for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Review it regularly (once a quarter). Let them all &lt;strong&gt;share your concerns&lt;/strong&gt;. They have to understand why dating is bad for the project. Maybe it's not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T20:19:54.247" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="859" CreationDate="2011-03-08T20:23:13.103" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;until someone else realizes that there will be slip.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What happens next? How this guy is affected by the project problems? I assume that he is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem here is a lack of &lt;strong&gt;Human Resource Plan&lt;/strong&gt;, which shall explicitly state responsibilities, rewards, and penalties (non-monetary first of all).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T20:23:13.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="908" CreationDate="2011-03-08T22:36:08.210" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should push to cancel failed projects specifically as protection for your career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is better to stop a project before more of the company's time and money are spent on it. You are a steward of the company or client's resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a difference of opinion, you need to listen to your manager. But make your opinion clear. If it turns out you were right, great for you. If it turns out you were wrong, you can always give a tip of the hat to your manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T22:36:08.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="942" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-09T10:58:26.600" Score="3" ViewCount="334" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have calculated the available capacity in hours &lt;strong&gt;by month&lt;/strong&gt;, taking into account overhead, training, holidays, sick leave, etc. (all based upon historical data and expected holidays during summertime).&#xA;Available hours varies for instance from 650 hours in April to 260 hours in July.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also have estimates for a number of fairly independent work packages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to simulate a number of &lt;strong&gt;scenario's&lt;/strong&gt; related to the &lt;strong&gt;planning sequence&lt;/strong&gt; of these work packages eg when I do them all in sequence, where would I end up. What happens if I do two of them in parallel. The purpose is to create a &lt;strong&gt;release plan&lt;/strong&gt; (or a number of possible release plans) to discuss with business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be a good method or tool to do this? Excel is my friend at the moment, using cumulative numbers. I've tried MS Project, but I could not find a way to set a capacity limit by month, and it's all very cumbersome. Anybody has a good way to do this? Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-07-20T13:24:05.887" Title="How to simulate scenario's of possible project networks based on actual capacity by month?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;release-plan&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="943" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="952" CreationDate="2011-03-09T11:02:25.737" Score="7" ViewCount="10112" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say a work package (containing several tasks) is estimated to take between 320 (Most likely) and 480 (Worst case) hours of work (not duration) to complete. Because of some dependencies and the schedule and budget risk involved, you think it is wise to add an &lt;strong&gt;intermediate buffer&lt;/strong&gt; at the end of this work package, besides an overal margin at the end of the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you determine or calculate this individual work package &lt;strong&gt;margin&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 x the standard deviation, as proposed by Mike Cohn in his book &quot;Agile planning and Estimating&quot;, chapter 17.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PERT (in that case you also need an optimistic estimate): calculating the expected value for the schedule and a 2 x standard deviation for the margin&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Just the difference between the Most Likely and the average of the two&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Monte Carlo simulation, but this calculates schedule margin for the whole project. How can I determine which intermediate margins to use? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any other formula&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And what would be your justification for the proposed method? And your success rate ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T20:48:39.393" Title="How to calculate budget margin?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;risk&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="829" CreationDate="2011-03-09T11:45:53.873" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out Microsoft OneNote. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A page of a section of a notebook can be treated as kanban board.&#xA;E.g. you may create dedicated page for each project iteration/phase.&#xA;For each project you may create dedicated section. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has several ways for sharing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;over filesystem. I.e. you may put notebook on shared folder within windows network. You can grant permission (full access\readonly) as well&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;over TCP\IP ports in local networks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;over web. (OneNote 2010 is required)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several nice features also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;drag &amp;amp; drop&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;integration with outlook. you can easily send task to some of your teammate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;icons flavors for notes/task&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;priorities &amp;amp; alarm&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sample image of the one of my project. Although it is not Kanban board, it is enough to demonstrate the idea.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ekyzx.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="609" LastEditorUserId="609" LastEditDate="2013-05-18T14:13:24.047" LastActivityDate="2013-05-18T14:13:24.047" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="925" CreationDate="2011-03-09T14:37:28.667" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pros: going into a large organization, without any structure, it's an easy sell and gets people thinking about PM processes.  How's it's implemented should be determined by a knowledgeable PM than can fine tune it (or any other methodology) to the specific org.....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="458" LastActivityDate="2011-03-09T14:37:28.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="943" CreationDate="2011-03-09T14:41:48.150" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is &quot;intermediate buffer&quot;? What is &quot;overall margin at the end of the project&quot;? There is no such thing as &quot;margin&quot; for a work package. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The terms used in the question indicate that &lt;a href=&quot;http://svprojectmanagement.com/avoiding-problem-of-padding&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;padding&lt;/a&gt; is used, which is a problem. In order to avoid padding and keep your schedule/cost realistic you should do &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmthatworks.com/2010/11/paddingis-it-really-bad.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;risk management&lt;/a&gt;. Identify and document all negative and positive (!) events, which, if they occur, may change cost and/or duration of your work package. Estimate probability and impact of these events. Manipulate them all together outside of your work package. All together they will affect your contingency reserves:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eXBZz.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Picture is taken from &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1932735186&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rita's Course, 6th Ed&lt;/a&gt;, page 238.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a look at this quote as well (page 189, same source):&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FCXTQ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastEditorUserId="91" LastEditDate="2011-03-11T10:45:44.177" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T10:45:44.177" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="947" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="950" CreationDate="2011-03-09T15:29:06.660" Score="17" ViewCount="1161" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm the only software developer and project manager for the technical side of a project we're delivering for one of our clients. We initially agreed to and signed-off on a high-level spec that we would deliver whatever would make them happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We delivered the product (code) to them about a month ago. We internally test this product ourselves (~150 unit tests in JUnit, including simulations of end-to-end user-style test.) We asked the customer to test it and sign off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They identified a small problem. And then another. And a third. More and more issues are emerging. Some of them are simple to diagnose and fix; some of them are due to an incomplete and vague spec delivered to us; some of them are feature requests for new functionality; some of them are technical or architectural holes; some of them are due to holes in the design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everybody is getting antsy. Our company needs to get this project done ASAP, because it's holding up other, mission-critical work for us. The customer doesn't understand why testing and resolving issues is taking forever. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What's the best way to resolve this situation?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We asked the customer to identify whatever tests they're running, in as complete detail as possible, so we can see what they're testing and make &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; work. However, their executive sponsor is getting antsy. This was supposed to be a small, quick project which is now dragging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; In an attempt to clarify exactly what they want and what we need to deliver, we created a &quot;user acceptance testing&quot; doc with test-cases that they're running. So far, it covers around twelve tests we've added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is, they add tests that are not tests (eg. &quot;Department X will test the deliverable&quot;) or they keep adding more specific requirements (eg. how fields will look) to the testing. It's too open-ended, perhaps, for us to clamp it down to control scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2012-07-19T06:07:02.027" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T06:05:35.070" Title="Testing and customer acceptance of a project is dragging on forever" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;&lt;customer&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="947" CreationDate="2011-03-09T15:42:59.610" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Next time specify a maximum acceptance time, such as 3 months.  At least then you can get paid, even if the work drags on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="158" LastActivityDate="2011-03-09T15:42:59.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="947" CreationDate="2011-03-09T15:58:29.297" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't let them push scope creep or change requests into the testing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly delineate what is a bug fix vs what is new functionality / scope creep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Push back on all scope creep and set a timeline for getting in/reporting all bugs, after which you will walk away from the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-03-09T15:58:29.297" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="947" CreationDate="2011-03-09T17:32:40.827" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's in both parties interest for this project to be finalised. The best course of action is to facilitate a meeting with all key stakeholders, to agree on a strategy which will enable the completion of the project within a agreed specified period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will need to establish an understanding and agreement with the customer of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customer testing plan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Definition bugs, you should only be fixing bugs that affect the agreed deliverables in the original specification (prioritising is important here). Any bugs outside these parameters should be defined as after release issues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test cycle that has been identified by the customer, including duration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The SLA after implementation, if any. Come to an agreement what issues (either low priority or out of scope) will be investigated further.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastActivityDate="2011-03-09T17:32:40.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="947" CreationDate="2011-03-09T18:01:38.160" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds a bit like you have lost control of the process. Someone needs to own the testing record/log. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go back to the requirements and list the use cases/processes. then list the tests for each. Putting columns for who will test will help illustrate the depth of the involvement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then get the people together and get agreement on the scope of testing.&#xA;Then identify what has already passed and what still needs to be tested. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talk to the sponsor about setting a deadline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often this happens when people are afraid to put their name on the pass because they anticipate being blamed for anything that happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, next time. Get agreement way ahead of testing how that will work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-03-09T18:01:38.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="943" CreationDate="2011-03-09T18:12:00.957" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me the real question is how good your estimates are. If they are wild-ass guesses nothing will really save them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I don't like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Just the difference between the Most Likely and the average of the two. It seems like some magic formula which I can't really support with reasonable data.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;PERT. It should probably increase your original estimates a bit but this approach still bases just on some estimates and not any hard data.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other two seem better to me but they also are more tricky:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Standard deviation. To learn what your standard deviation is you need to use historical data for tasks you've completed. For this sole reason it's a better method than two above.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Monte Carlo. With this one I'm not sure what your approach is. Again this is a method which bases on some hard data, so I expect you make Monte Carlo simulation using you historical estimates and real working times. If so why don't you just base estimates themselves on Monte Carlo simulation instead of just calculating buffer this way?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I'm not missing something you do need to use historical data (estimates versus real working times) at least in a couple of proposed methods. If so, my idea would be to use Monte Carlo simulation against your estimates to calculate new, better estimates which include your track record. There's a great article about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;evidence based scheduling&lt;/a&gt; which describes how you may do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case I would work on schedule you feel good with (whatever probability level makes you feel good). Then if you need some additional safety catch I'd add buffers which are based on schedule with higher probability of success. For example, after Monte Carlo simulation you get following results: 70% probability that you complete work package in 390 hours and 90% probability it'll happen in 475 hours so you have 85 as your buffer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to split this buffer into a couple of parts after some work is done simply split your work package into smaller parts and do the same analysis for both parts independently and add the result at the end of each one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I would prefer just to go with 90%-probability schedule instead of adding buffers to less probable one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use approach pretty similar to evidence based scheduling and it proved to deliver pretty good results as long as historical data is reliable so that would be my method of choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-03-09T18:12:00.957" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="947" CreationDate="2011-03-09T18:13:42.950" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try to go back to the drawing board and get the specification detailed out. With a proper specification, you will have negotiation power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A specification will allow you to analyse the gap between the truth and what you have. You can use the gap analysis to discuss with all the stakeholders and attempt to reach a decision. It allows you to let the users prioritize on what they want. You can say, &quot;This is what you have requested. It is going to take 2 million years to complete all of them. Tell me what you want done and I will add time to the timeline.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This gives you the rights to say &quot;no&quot; to ridiculous requests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also offers your the chance to say, &quot;hey, I think you have a great idea there, and best of all, it can be applied to a lot of other modules/places. Why don't we keep it for the next version so that we can put it in more modules/places.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a specification can't be obtained, whether through resistance or sheer ignorance of the users, then you may want to put up a list of TODO items for everyone to see. Have a meeting and let them vote for which goes in and which goes out. Give them a choice of &quot;A&quot; or &quot;B&quot;? Don't answer &quot;do you want this?&quot; The answer will always be yes. And UAT is exactly the &quot;do you want this&quot; type of question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="601" LastActivityDate="2011-03-09T18:13:42.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="943" CreationDate="2011-03-09T18:37:42.160" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would use the difference between a rough weighted average of the likely and worst case (320 and 480) and the most likely (320).  The weights for each one would depend on how severe the downside is if the task runs late. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you mentioned budget risk. If the cost of being late would be huge, use a weighting like 10% and 90% for Most Likely and Worst Case, respectively. If the downside isn't all that bad 50/50 and if its minimal 90/10&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've used this approach many times (for mostly internal calculations) since it accounts for the potential impact of tardiness and gives you room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-03-09T18:37:42.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="955" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-09T18:44:10.077" Score="9" ViewCount="6929" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been doing freelancing with PHP, Ruby, and mostly open source frameworks for a long time. Now that I have a certain client base, they are giving me regular projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have decided to go in for a full fledged company with several employees, some will be recruited and others are freelancers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm looking is for a project management software that allows me to manage various projects, like building logos, corporate identity, CMS, and e-commerce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for some advice on open source web interface solution that allows me to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collaborate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time shart, Gannt Chart&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resource Allocation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Issue tracking, bug tracking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allows the client to login and view the progress of task done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Invoicing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time tracking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above list might not be comprehensive, I'm starting at this, please feel free to add more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I would also like to add that while&#xA;  googling I came across &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.achievo.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Achievo&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redmine.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Redmine&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.project-open.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project-Open&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though being a beginner in this, some user opinion will be very helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;This might be another topic but useful for someone opening a new company&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also need clients engagement. For some clients I would like them to see the issues they created or see what tasks are pending and what are about to complete. Or should there be a completely separate software to manage customer engagement? I would like to stress on the fact that customer billing and invoicing is not a great issue as there are many other good alternatives available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do any of the PM software allows me to define what a particular client can see. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Jira, as mentioned by Hoang Long is good, but it can be overwhelming in terms of price and usability for beginner, but nevertheless it was the most feature rich and complete PM software I came across. Given, you don't lack funds, I guess you should invest time and money in good PM Software for a streamlined business processes in later stages.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="616" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-25T02:07:50.270" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T02:07:50.270" Title="Project Management Software for a web development company" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="16" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="13" ClosedDate="2012-07-03T14:21:47.473" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-03-10T14:11:12.040" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="955" CreationDate="2011-03-09T19:25:53.517" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may not find it all in one solution.  I recommend: &lt;a href=&quot;http://37signals.com&quot;&gt;37Signals.com&lt;/a&gt; suite of tools (BaseCamp for starters) for client engagement and collaboration; find a good web-based billing/invoicing company (references on SmashingMagazine); lastly, reconsider or greatly simplify Gantt charts.  Basecamp doesn’t even include them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Build slowly.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="113" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-03-10T06:22:33.553" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T06:22:33.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="947" CreationDate="2011-03-09T20:09:11.543" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;some of them are feature requests for new functionality;&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Push back on every single bit of new functionality until the existing bugs are done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Some of them are simple to diagnose and fix; some of them are due to an incomplete and vague spec delivered to us; ...  some of them are technical or architectural holes; some of them are due to holes in the design.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This part appears to be a severe infection of &lt;em&gt;I'll know it when I see it&lt;/em&gt; syndrome. You're a lot closer to the ground than I am, but here are a number of possibilities:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The subject matter expert doesn't know how to explain what they want, so they don't explain it and can't be more articulate than &quot;I think that couch would look better on the other side of the room.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The subject matter expert feels threatened, or has a long history of keeping things close/confidential so that they don't get replaced. This is a strong indicator when specs turn into &quot;department x will test...&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The client doesn't want things clarified and written down because that has legal ramifications - you could go to court and say &quot;we did what they asked us&quot; but the death of a thousand change orders that you're encountering is a countermove.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The client is disorganized. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Department X will test the deliverable&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. Push this right back. It needs to say &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; department X will test it. What user cases? What scenarios? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;they keep adding more specific requirements (eg. how fields will look)&lt;/em&gt;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Push back on this as well. Defer all prettiness features like this until the next version. Otherwise you'll end up spending the next 6 years arguing about which Pantone color that all submit buttons should be. If you are billing for these &quot;how many angels can dance on the head of a pin&quot; discussion, then feel free to let it continue, otherwise cut them off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if the client is obsessively visual (do they get bent when you move something on their desk, or touch their monitor, must everything be positioned 'just so' before they can start work, or they're concerned about how folks dress), then getting the stuff to line up and be the right font is more important to them than if the darned thing actually does the job it is needed to do. If this is the sort of person they are, then prettying up the application is your number one task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;We asked the customer to identify whatever tests they're running, in as complete detail as possible&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've had this with a project that dragged on forever. The key is to sit down with the subject matter expert and go through the workflow. Be prepared to print out tons of screenshots and write notes on every screenshot. If you can record the conversation do so, and write stuff up later. This is the only way to make things work with an SME who won't part with details, or in the situation I just got out of, the SME had been secretive for so long that now that they were within 6 months of retirement (they're a federal civil-service employee, so it isn't like they could be fired), they still couldn't open up.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you haven't done so already, set up something for tracking bugs and feature requests. Mantis, Trac, whatever. Take an evening to write up everything in a list and triage it into &lt;em&gt;must do&lt;/em&gt; , &lt;em&gt;should do&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;won't do&lt;/em&gt; (more politically, call this last category &quot;deferred&quot;). All new features go into &quot;deferred&quot; until the project has passed acceptance testing - even if it is one line of code.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;We initially agreed to and signed-off on a high-level spec that we would deliver whatever would make them happy.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really? They want a pony because that will make them happy, and you'd get them one? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2011-03-09T20:09:11.543" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="947" CreationDate="2011-03-09T22:22:08.590" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Perry, Dave and Fun Mun. You have to get back to them with your high level requirements, show them how you've built it and your testplan and go through it requirement by requirement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write down everything they say, find agreement on which things should be changed, what are real bugs and what is out of scope. Then determine a warranty period for bugfixing and draw up a new agreement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take your boss with you. If he wants this customer to be happy, he'll have to work hard too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you guys are good negotiators, this is probably going to cost you. Then it becomes a commercial/business decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-09T22:22:08.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="955" CreationDate="2011-03-09T22:28:50.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have had a nice experience with Dotproject (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dotproject.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.dotproject.net/&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the main contributors started a fork, which looks promising (but that's all I can say about it): Web2project (&lt;a href=&quot;http://web2project.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://web2project.net/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-09T22:28:50.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="955" CreationDate="2011-03-09T23:41:09.157" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Other than invoicing, which this site does not incorporate, you may want to look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unfuddle.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Unfuddle&lt;/a&gt; which handles ticket tracking, milestones, messages, source control (GIT or Subversion), time tracking, and can handle multiple users with different levels of access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a free version you can use, or, as your team gets larger, you can upgrade your account as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="142" LastActivityDate="2011-03-09T23:41:09.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="955" CreationDate="2011-03-10T01:11:48.650" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://redmine.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Redmine&lt;/a&gt; for some time now for remote collaboration and project management for my partners and clients. What I love about it is the rather advanced features, inbuilt extensibility and the fact that writing a module for it in ruby really is not that hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It lacks on the time tracking and invoicing side but makes up for it with great GANTTs, subprojects and subtasks, inter-project-task-dependencies and more stuff control freaks just drool over. And of course it's free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do my time tracking with &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.google.com/p/time-tracker-mac&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Time Tracker Mac&lt;/a&gt;, and invoices get done in Google Docs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="622" LastEditorUserId="622" LastEditDate="2011-03-10T01:20:21.760" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T01:20:21.760" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="955" CreationDate="2011-03-10T02:05:13.363" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The company I work for, Vertabase, makes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vertabase.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;project management software&lt;/a&gt; that sounds like it would be a good fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IN RESPONSE TO YOUR UPDATE&#xA;Vertabase allows you to control what each client sees. You can set very granular access level controls if you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2011-03-10T14:10:23.600" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T14:10:23.600" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="955" CreationDate="2011-03-10T03:46:40.873" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have used and would recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;JIRA&lt;/a&gt; along with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Confluence&lt;/a&gt;. It's simple to use, and have almost the functions you required. It also allows your customer login, see the progress, create issues and even comment on the tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you can take a view on &lt;a href=&quot;http://trac.edgewall.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trac&lt;/a&gt;, but this open source software have dispute on difficult setup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastEditorUserId="376" LastEditDate="2011-10-01T12:15:13.500" LastActivityDate="2011-10-01T12:15:13.500" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="947" CreationDate="2011-03-10T06:18:26.490" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's never a good idea to sign off on such a vague specification.  By signing a document that says you'll do whatever it takes to make them happy, you effectively give all your bargaining power away to the client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's like indentured servitude, but worse!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They say the customer is always right, but that's not the case in engineering.  In engineering, the customer and vendor are two negotiating parties participating in a give and take relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a vendor, it's your job to only sign off on objective, measurable, criteria.  Without objective, measurable criteria, there is no recourse for resolving disputes that arise in the project with regards to scope.  A good specification can douse the flames of a potentially heated confrontation and give both parties a point of reference for determining scope boundaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best medicine for a situation such as yours is prevention.  This is a great lesson learned for your organization, and this will make you stronger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To fix this, you'll have to draw a line in the sand.  Meet with stakeholders to define clear, objective testing criteria and clear, objective acceptance tests.  Your only bargaining chip at this point is the clock.  There will be a point where the client won't want to drag this on any longer too, and you can use estimates of scope creep to reduce that scope.  Eventually, it will cost the client money too if they can't use their software, and they'll have to pay you something if they want to ever use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, you choose your clients just as much as they choose you.  If your client can't agree on objective criteria that you can measure, then you don't want to do business with them.  It's your job to teach your clients to be good clients by taking control of the situation and only agreeing to work on tasks that have a clear, objective, measurable answer.  If they let you be the expert you are, then they are worth doing business with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T06:18:26.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="965" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1052" CreationDate="2011-03-10T07:06:55.647" Score="4" ViewCount="562" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently working as project lead(prince2 certified) since a few months and find it very interesting to see how other PMs solve problems, react to situations, use tools, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;StackExchange is very interesting and really helpful on this but do you know other interesting sources of information that are high quality and relevant for day to day situations for a PM?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm following some blogs like these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmhut.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pmhut.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumalliance.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;www.scrumalliance.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fearnoproject.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fearnoproject.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;are there other blogs, rss or even other sources you recommend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also have access to a lot of digital books, so interesting title or authors to follow are very welcome as well. &#xA;Little side note: I already know Prince2, PMBok, RUP so the basic study books aren't needed anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my current situation (consultant) I'm working with RUP (from IBM) so specific info on that is also welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also it would be good to have recommendations on audio books that are good to listen to in the car, while driving to work on these topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastEditorUserId="591" LastEditDate="2011-03-14T10:42:09.277" LastActivityDate="2011-11-02T10:41:58.160" Title="Where to find good PM documentation?" Tags="&lt;books&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;rup&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="12" ClosedDate="2012-07-26T07:40:05.933" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-03-10T14:04:27.377" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="965" CreationDate="2011-03-10T11:24:20.870" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several PM groups on LinkedIn that may be useful - I'm a member of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Management Link - www.pmlink.org &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Project Manager Network - #1 Group for Project Managers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and I know there are many others. If you're not on LinkedIn, it might be worth joining. Some of the discussion can be a bit heavy and tedious, but there are nuggets of gold in there too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T11:24:20.870" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="888" CreationDate="2011-03-10T11:41:20.763" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to suggest a couple of things that you could do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your organisation maintains a 'lessons learned' file (which they should), analyse where the project went off the rails, and get these lessons into the corporate memory so that the mistakes don't recur. If there is no such documentation, be the one to create it! But that only helps for future projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Regarding the current project: if it is likely that the system will be further developed, you need to think about how easy it will be for someone new to step in and do that development. If it is a real nightmare of spaghetti code and poorly designed features, it may be most appropriate to &quot;come clean&quot; with the project sponsor and ask for a follow-on project to put this one right. There should be a positive return on investment (ROI) in terms of avoiding future difficulties and hence delays and costs, as long as the people who made the mistakes can be relied upon to not make the same mistakes again. I don't think you should just take on the recovery without proper buy-in from the business.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more radical solution would be to accept that this system is fundamentally flawed, and should only ever be touched to fix faults during its life, and immediately start on a new project using different developers and more rigorous quality checking. Or try to buy an off-the-shelf product that does most of what you need!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T11:41:20.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="965" CreationDate="2011-03-10T12:15:42.960" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try Agile Alliance:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilealliance.org/resources/articles/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.agilealliance.org/resources/articles/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="458" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T12:15:42.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="969" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-10T12:36:56.873" Score="18" ViewCount="1130" Body="&lt;p&gt;What criteria should a software company use to decide if they need to introduce a project management role into their team?  From what I have seen, most companies start out with no project managers, and large corporations are usually full of them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What happens in between to make that transition necessary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-12T19:11:58.527" LastActivityDate="2011-12-15T10:47:42.200" Title="At what point should a company decide to introduce a project manager role?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="969" CreationDate="2011-03-10T13:24:25.177" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;following Prince2 if you start a project 2 roles are required: the executive and project manager.&#xA;These are required to have in any project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;executive&lt;/strong&gt; represents the project board, users and suppliers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;project manager&lt;/strong&gt; can represent Team managers, teams, developers, etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So actually if you talk about a project... there is always a PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the question is more: &lt;strong&gt;who gets which roles and resposibilities?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that completely depends on the project (size, scope, cost, company fillosophy, etc...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastEditorUserId="591" LastEditDate="2011-12-15T10:47:42.200" LastActivityDate="2011-12-15T10:47:42.200" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="969" CreationDate="2011-03-10T13:54:54.660" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;We should start with distinction of project management as role and project manager as job. Some tasks which are typically understood as project managerish are there even in small projects, however they don't have to be done by a person who has &quot;project manager&quot; printed on a business card.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, as the organization grows, first people who start acting like project managers are team managers. After some time company leaders realize it would be beneficial to have project managers and let team managers do their job, which is leading teams. If I had to guess I'd say it happens when company size is somewhere between 25 and 75 people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However there are a lot of specific situations where it would work differently. One of examples can be agile organizations, where formal project manager job doesn't have to be introduced as their tasks are spread over different roles, e.g. in Scrum over the whole team, including Product Owner and Scrum Master. If the company follow this kind of approach rather conservatively they can avoid hiring project managers for quite a long time, which of course doesn't mean project management tasks aren't done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also it is usually important what kind of clients you deal with. The bigger and more formalized organization as a client the faster you have project managers on your side as those clients just expect that you have them in your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T13:54:54.660" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="965" CreationDate="2011-03-10T14:08:10.950" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PMI has many great practice guides available in digital form. They are free to PMI members e.g. on estimating, risk management, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For audio in the car, try some of the project management podcasts available like Cornelius Fichtner's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.project-management-podcast.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pmpodcast&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://pm411.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pm411.org&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T14:08:10.950" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-03-10T14:08:10.950" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="888" CreationDate="2011-03-10T15:16:50.377" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like a project is 'reported' as 90% done, but there are a lot of problems - or in other words, it's really not 90% done....a very typical condition.  Couple of recommendations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;don't stop work on the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have someone 'objectively' review and report on the state of the project, gap analysis, impact to delivery, list of top issues and cost/time to address&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;report to Sr. Management ASAP the concern and the results of the review and a recommended plan to address (never go in without a plan)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;maintain focus on the key delivery areas (those areas/functionality that is required to go live and provide value)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="458" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T15:16:50.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="974" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-10T16:08:26.707" Score="10" ViewCount="1630" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many users here who might be using one project management software or the other. Some may be using paid or some stick with opensource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paid are good and have good set of features. But whats interesting is the growing breed of open source softwares for project management like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Codendi&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;achievo&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Redmine&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;dotproject&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;web2project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project-open&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the users who have been using open source should list&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;why they use that software&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what business they do&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what is the most useful feature to them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what see lacking in it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;are they happy with it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;are they also using any paid counterpart and a small comparison&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would greatly benefit young users like me, who want to use project management for their projects / business and also keep cost down at the same time, by using open source software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also if anyone come across some good resources that show how to choose a good project management software &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; reviews about project management softare please share here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="616" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2011-03-10T19:31:54.333" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T06:56:17.870" Title="Open Source Project Management Software" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="7" ClosedDate="2012-09-16T20:18:55.677" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-03-12T18:49:12.510" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="969" CreationDate="2011-03-10T16:23:35.913" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider staring with a project lead, i.e., a more senior person who still also an individual contributor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="158" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T16:23:35.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="969" CreationDate="2011-03-10T17:46:57.683" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What happens in between to make that transition necessary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A necessity to assign responsibility. As soon as you establish a formal position of a Project Manager you can implement project management as it is dictated by PMBOK. Without a formal declaration of rights and responsibilities you will have a lot of &quot;project coordinators&quot; doing everything except project management (see PMBOK 4th Guide, page 13 &quot;Role of Project Managers&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T17:46:57.683" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="969" CreationDate="2011-03-10T17:51:42.813" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A company needs a project manager when there are projects to manage. Don't get me wrong, I'm not just expressing the obvious: not all companies have projects to manage. If you look at an existing small bakery, for example, there are probably no real enterprise projects, and so, no project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want your company to think in a project-oriented way and manage novelty under the form of projects, you need project managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T17:51:42.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="978" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="995" CreationDate="2011-03-10T18:18:52.743" Score="20" ViewCount="3235" Body="&lt;p&gt;Communication issues in projects are very common. Often the advice we give others or get from others is to communicate more and to be more transparent and most of the time it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is how far we should go with this approach? Is it possible to over-communicate in project? Do you know situations where communication became a problem not because it wasn't sufficient but because there was too much of it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="591" LastEditDate="2011-03-14T12:35:00.207" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T08:39:14.813" Title="Is it possible to over-communicate in project team?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="955" CreationDate="2011-03-10T18:34:26.133" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Web developer here and &lt;strong&gt;Fogbugz&lt;/strong&gt; works great for us as it is a bug tracking tool with project management features built specifically for software development. We even use it for support issue tracking with built in email because it has all the features needed for that as well. The EBS (Evidence Based Scheduling) is something to behold, the Fogbugz interface is clean and usable, and it handles all of our time tracking for billing purposes as well. You can also send emails from cases and replies will go back and append the case, and external users can be given a page where they can track the status of things without being logged in (clients).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, it does everything you wanted, does it well, is highly usable, is specifically designed for software development, and the newest version even has mobile browser support, highly recommended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fogcreek.com/fogbugz/features/project-management.html&quot;&gt;http://www.fogcreek.com/fogbugz/features/project-management.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh yeah, the install and management for your running it on your own server is easy and I think the pricing might be more ideal than having them host it and pay monthly: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fogcreek.com/fogbugz/for-your-server.html&quot;&gt;http://www.fogcreek.com/fogbugz/for-your-server.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Fog Creek Promise:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you’re not satisfied, for any&#xA;  reason, within 90 days you get a full&#xA;  refund, period, no questions asked. We&#xA;  don’t want your money if you’re not&#xA;  amazingly happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="592" LastEditorUserId="592" LastEditDate="2011-03-10T18:54:13.637" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T18:54:13.637" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-03-10T18:34:26.133" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="978" CreationDate="2011-03-11T03:28:28.920" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can absolutely over-communicate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project communications should provide information that is relevant to the listener. Whether that be an update task status to a project manager, further clarification on a work package to a team member or a budget report to a sponsor, for example.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Communication should not be an unstructured stream of conversation. Effective communication is not more communication but rather meaningful communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T03:28:28.920" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="978" CreationDate="2011-03-11T04:37:12.993" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Mark. Adding that a communication plan is very important to the success of communication.  With the communication plan I stop the famous &quot;meeting emails&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'meeting emails' are those emails that&#xA;  copy everyone, everyone replies, and&#xA;  no decision was made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue with over-communication is that is difficult to detect, and to control.  Specially because the people creating it, think they are doing good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a great question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T04:37:12.993" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="982" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="985" CreationDate="2011-03-11T05:45:02.857" Score="20" ViewCount="2273" Body="&lt;p&gt;When managing a project that involves participants across the globe, it is quite manageable for any two timezones to meet (someone will be at the end of their shift while someone is starting theirs), but add in a 3rd timezone, and someone is going to have an 11 PM call.  Are there any practices you have found to work well? The solutions I have seen so far are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having the project manager take the hit and schedule meetings that work for the time zones of the project participants.  The project manager is then a zombie during their shift.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Schedule a recurring early-morning meeting (to meet with, say, the European particpants, and a recurring late afternoon meeting (to meet with folks in Asia).  Twice the meetings!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have one meeting, but rotate the time so that every 3rd meeting, folks in a given region have the meeting way past bedtime.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make the region with the fewest participants take the hit&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What has worked well for you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="439" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T18:04:44.643" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T12:53:00.947" Title="Managing projects across time zones" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;distributed-team&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="983" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="984" CreationDate="2011-03-11T06:07:54.897" Score="13" ViewCount="7450" Body="&lt;p&gt;Taking meeting minutes  is important for documenting what discussions and outcomes came out of a given meeting, but I personally find it difficult to lead a meeting at the same time as taking notes (they use very different parts of my brain).  Any recommendations on fairly choosing a meeting note-taker from the participants (and ensuring that they take meaningful notes)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="439" LastEditorUserId="3169" LastEditDate="2012-02-08T00:30:36.313" LastActivityDate="2017-11-01T14:28:11.010" Title="How does one fairly choose someone to take minutes of a meeting?" Tags="&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="983" CreationDate="2011-03-11T06:19:22.967" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;For periodic, regular meetings, one possibility is to rotate the duties of taking notes each week or period.  This will change things us a little bit and spread the responsibility so that one person doesn't become overwhelmed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the meeting is an ad-hoc meeting, you could ask for volunteers to take notes.  Chances are, a person willing to volunteer to take notes places the same importance in note-taking as you do and likely wants to have something to refer to after the meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you work with different people in your organization, you'll learn who the good, attentive, detail-oriented note takers are, and you can enlist these individuals to help you when you need all your mental faculties to focus on facilitating the meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T06:19:22.967" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="982" CreationDate="2011-03-11T06:26:25.050" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, the best solution is to share the load.  No matter what, someone will be inconvenienced.  Thus, if you rotate the meeting times so that everyone experiences the pain  periodically, it will help the team as a whole value the time their distant coworkers spend in the meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your team spends an early morning meeting with you, you'll appreciate their time more when you have to give up your sleep to meet with them late at night.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, consider that &lt;em&gt;your meetings are already remote&lt;/em&gt; and will involve some form of meeting technology or video conference software.  You could give the non-business hours participants the option to meet from the comfort of their own home, assuming they have the technology.  This will eliminate any need to commute to the office for just a short meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T06:26:25.050" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="974" CreationDate="2011-03-11T06:37:09.910" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://trac.edgewall.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trac&lt;/a&gt; (open source) or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;JIRA&lt;/a&gt; (commercial) are two popular tools for software development teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T06:37:09.910" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-03-12T18:49:12.510" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="982" CreationDate="2011-03-11T06:41:40.890" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Avoid meetings. There are plenty of tools that work much better than plain old phone conversations. Such tools include: wiki pages, issue tracking software, document sharing, code review systems, version control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T06:41:40.890" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="983" CreationDate="2011-03-11T06:47:31.540" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a good practice to assign a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitator&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;meeting facilitator&lt;/a&gt; as the most out-ot-scope person in the group. Invite someone from outside of your team. Someone who understands very little about your subject, but at the same time is a good meeting facilitator. Give him/her your meeting agenda and a list of decisions/results you're looking for. The facilitator will drive the meeting through the plan and will make all notes. You and your team will be disciplined and managed by the facilitator, and won't be distracted by the making notes process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T06:47:31.540" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="983" CreationDate="2011-03-11T07:08:50.070" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ideas from jmort253 are great. I'd add one technique which has proven to be worthy for me. If I'm an organizer of a meeting I prepare rather detailed agenda just for myself: things I want to launch discussion on, some ideas I may but may not use during discussion depending on situation and such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It results in two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'm usually better prepared to the meeting and I don't forget about some specific things I wanted to go through.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As I leave some empty room on my agenda for my scribblings I'm able to take very brief notes or even keywords which doesn't really distract me but let me record the ideas we have to follow up. The basic trick here is I don't have to write down a context since I have it the agenda so taking notes takes way less time and is way less distracting yet yields good minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T07:08:50.070" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="978" CreationDate="2011-03-11T07:40:11.417" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As project managers, it's our job to delegate issues and manage communications.  The more work we try to take on ourselves, the less communicating we can do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read your blog post, and your question involved 150 people.  That's a large team and a lot of communication paths!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to this article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://greatworkplace.wordpress.com/2010/02/17/how-many-employees-should-your-supervisors-manage/&quot;&gt;How Many Employees Should Your Supervisors Manage&lt;/a&gt;, 20 is the maximum number of employees recommended for a supervisor to manage when there is a wide span of control.  With a narrow span of control, the author recommends supervisors manage no more than 5 to 6!  Since project managers are oftentimes responsible for coordinating many areas, they usually have a wide span of control and delegate ownership to other individuals or groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With 150 people, you would need to divide the 150 into groups of 20 or smaller.  Your communication paths would then consist of a liaison within each group, who you hold accountable for ensuring communications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The liaison doesn't have to be a supervisor or manager, just someone on the team who has accepted responsibility for communicating information to the team and passing information proactively back to you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this to work, I want to emphasize that you &lt;strong&gt;must hold the liaisons personally accountable for these communications.&lt;/strong&gt;  When information isn't communicated, you need to ask that person why and what he/she plans to do to improve.  It's his/her job to keep the people updated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-03-11T08:02:23.940" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T08:02:23.940" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="983" CreationDate="2011-03-11T09:14:53.330" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm gonna be vague, it mostly depends on the type of meeting you have because this results in what should be actually documented.&#xA;I have daily meetings at with I just document:&#xA;&#xA;1. What has been progressed&#xA;2. What is next in queue&#xA;3. Blockers if any&#xA;(kind of adopted from the Daily Scrum)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a monthly program meeting I make notes of:&#xA;1. Suggestions or Comments vs the agenda points (Who said what - very brief)&#xA;2. Updates to the Action list&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the simplest one on the Monthly Company Board meeting there is just one thing that we take note of:&#xA;1. Action points (Owner, Target Date, Status)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;KISS would be the principle you would go with - I have seen lots of MM docs that do not convey what was the actual result of the meeting and what decisions were taken - and that should be it's purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="634" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T09:14:53.330" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="978" CreationDate="2011-03-11T09:24:43.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have much experience in project management, but I think I have seen over-communication in projects, e.g. when I have joined a project for charity -- some self-organized group. Well, actually, I think that voluntary projects is the kind that is easily over-communicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that: all participants are volunteers so it's hard to enforce decision. People just love to discuss things, express ideas, but it seems like it's never coming to commission. Because we have no clear deadline, the work doesn't get paid, and all of us have &quot;brilliant ideas&quot; to make them real before the project comes to the end. As I look at it now, it might be a lack of leadership, which was responsible for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reason which is possible: to say is easier than to do, and people love to do easy things. For example, in an open-ended project, it's very tempting to collect lots of information that you'd never use. For example, to create a new product, which can take several years to be on the market (I haven't been there, but one of my friends has). The investigating phase is spread over a long time, which may be related to the fact that collecting market data (user needs, similar products,...) is far easier than &quot;inventing&quot; a new thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, communication isn't good or bad. It will be good as long as it concentrates into the problem, and not break the predefined schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-07T19:05:26.880" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T19:05:26.880" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="983" CreationDate="2011-03-11T10:02:09.070" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only really important things you have to note down during a meeting are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Decisions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Required actions&lt;/strong&gt;: who will do what by when&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is fairly easy to note these down even if you're leading the meeting. I usually have enough with one A4 for a normal day of meetings (actually the back of my printout of the agenda from outlook). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing them down actually helps your brain to confirm the decision/required action as fully understood and appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T10:02:09.070" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="982" CreationDate="2011-03-11T11:02:12.387" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start from the need of the meeting and Its agenda:&#xA;1. Is it a reporting meeting?&#xA;2. A clarification meeting?&#xA;3. A meeting for the sake of the meeting (seen a lot of those)&#xA;4. A brain storm meeting&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on this you can see who the attendees should be, maybe not all of the team members are needed but just the Team leaders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But using shared Documents through Google docs or the better new Google Cloud Connect proved to be a wonder getting the team synched on what should be worked on today - this helped us remove the project daily calls and leave just 1 Scrum of Scrums per week. (Just the Team Leads share the burden of the call) &#xA;The teams (3 different time zones: -6 +2 and +9) keep doing their local meeting when it suites them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="634" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T11:02:12.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="978" CreationDate="2011-03-11T11:39:39.180" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't believe over-communication is a bad thing. In fact, &lt;strong&gt;repeating&lt;/strong&gt; your message, vision and status is actually critical. Not everybody will &quot;get it&quot; the first time, nor even the second. And I'm not talking about a difference in intelligence here. Thinking everybody knows what he needs to know is an assumption, and should be treated as such. If I remember well, it is a Dale Carnegie quote that says something like &quot;Tell your audience what you are going to say, say it and then tell them what you've just said&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regular and open communication of project status and other things also builds &lt;strong&gt;trust&lt;/strong&gt;. Sometimes people believe they can retain power or control by limiting communication. This is wrong as it will quickly result in distrust. Or rumours start to spread. Especially in critical change efforts, these can be devastating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when in doubt, it is always better to over-communicate than under-communicate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are afraid you are spamming people with too much detail, you can work with head lines or summaries, with a link to more info for those who need it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T11:39:39.180" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="978" CreationDate="2011-03-11T12:26:25.290" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a leader you have to give what your team &lt;strong&gt;need&lt;/strong&gt;, not what they want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask your self:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this information relevant for the team?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this information help the team to understand severity of problems (or the importance of the customer issue)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will this information make the team more committed?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will this information bring new ideas or improvements?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If two or more answer of these questions is &quot;Yes&quot; then it is okay to share.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The better way to know if the shared information is bringing a positive result is to ask for a feedback from your team. (It can be made personally and informally or by a anonymous survey)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="105" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T12:26:25.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="983" CreationDate="2011-03-11T13:23:29.360" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because meetings should only be held if and as needed, it's important to have an agenda, distributed before the meeting, and meeting minutes following the meeting.  Otherwise, people met, discussed something and maybe agreed verbally.  None of that promotes accountability or documents expected actions as a result of your meeting.   Remember: it’s your meeting and you are asking for a very expensive resource: people’s time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At conclusion, it's good form to summarize what's been said in the meeting.  That is the essence of the meeting minutes and provides an opportunity for those in the meeting to agree/disagree/modify what will be documented as the meeting outcome.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for actually collecting information and notes during the meeting, I recommend the buddy system.  Find someone in your team/department or ask that person who always seems to be capturing every word in the meeting if they will provide you their notes.  The goal is to capture and document the essential agreements and actions resulting from the meeting, not the conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to move a meeting toward agreement is to use a TIM (Time is Money) calculator (also free online version) to prominently display the collective cost of the meeting.  It's surprising how quickly the total cost adds up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="113" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T13:23:29.360" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="982" CreationDate="2011-03-11T13:57:21.387" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Share the load.  But don't forget you really have three different teams.  There will be no end of differences between the teams.  Some items will be difficult to resolve over the distance.  Do anything you can to improve communications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even with teams from two different sites a couple of hours apart, I found there were communications difficulties across the distance.  I didn't have video conferencing available so communications were limited to email and phone calls.  Over a period of two weeks I would end up with 10 to 12 sticking points with various groups in the other team.  In the course of a few hours during my bi-weekly trip they were all wrapped up in face to face meetings.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T13:57:21.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="814" CreationDate="2011-03-11T14:02:20.807" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your organisation is in the habit of recording the time spent on every task, then ensure that there is a time recording allocation for interruptions or working for others. Otherwise, ask the employee to make an informal note of how often he / she is interrupted, and for how long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have the evidence, you can use this to take action with your employee (for accepting the other guy's work) and / or with the other guy (for consuming your team's time), based on hard facts. Anything else runs the risk of opinions and interpretation getting in the way of the truth. And the facts will help you if you have to escalate the issue to your own manager at any point in future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a manager, you need to decide on a course of action that will get the result that you want - so make sure you know what the desired result is &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you tackle anyone. Then use the facts as the basis for presenting your argument - and keep it objective, not subjective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T14:02:20.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="974" CreationDate="2011-03-11T14:18:38.080" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ganttproject.biz/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ganttproject.biz/&lt;/a&gt; for my gannt charts. It's not very friendly for more complex charts, but basic ones are relatively painless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="213" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T14:18:38.080" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-03-12T18:49:12.510" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="814" CreationDate="2011-03-11T14:24:23.860" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;File a complaint against them with the leadership saying they are undermining your department and management by subverting the chain-of-command. Instruct your team they are to only take orders from you, and proved them with a one-paragraph cut+paste text to email to persons trying to direct their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="213" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T14:24:23.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="915" CreationDate="2011-03-11T15:03:09.537" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suppose you can...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From a Value Based Management point of&#xA;  view, the Five Forces model&#xA;  (Market/Industry Attractiveness) of&#xA;  Porter can be seen as one of two&#xA;  dimensions in maximizing corporate&#xA;  value creation. The other value&#xA;  creation dimension is how well a&#xA;  company performs relatively towards&#xA;  its competitors (Relative Competitive&#xA;  Position), for which two other&#xA;  Porter-models are frequently used: the&#xA;  Value Chain framework and Porter's&#xA;  Competitive Advantage&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;more info can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.valuebasedmanagement.net/methods_porter_five_forces.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T15:03:09.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1003" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1007" CreationDate="2011-03-11T18:05:46.100" Score="13" ViewCount="44017" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the fundamental differences between a functional manager and a project manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it possible to switch from a job as project manager to one as a functional manager? (provided I know about the specifics of the function of course)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-24T03:01:32.447" LastActivityDate="2018-07-20T17:16:20.310" Title="What are the fundamental differences between a functional manager and a project manager and is it possible to switch between the two?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1004" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-11T18:27:42.183" Score="17" ViewCount="18555" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually I record notes of project meetings in pen and paper (regular notepad). If I am taking notes in a laptop, some people tend to think that I am not paying attention. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have thought of buying an iPad to get my notes, in any way I want, still keeping the notepad approach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any experiences or thoughts related to this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="394" LastActivityDate="2012-05-19T16:19:33.280" Title="How effective will be an iPad to take Meeting Minutes?" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="18" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1004" CreationDate="2011-03-11T18:34:43.610" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on whether you will be typing or using a pen and how detailed the notes are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're using a pen and want the notes to be electronically captured, most people I know use a tablet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For typing, there are a few option. You can use the iPad's soft keyboard, you can use an external keyboard with the iPad or you can use a laptop or notebook computer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T18:34:43.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1004" CreationDate="2011-03-11T18:54:06.067" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tried to use the iPad for taking meeting minutes. Even more than a PC, the iPad becomes a barrier to quick notes. The keyboard is useful for short stuff, but longer notes just become burdomsome. In addition, just like with a computer, you are limited to linear text entry. This means no quick memory icons, pictures, drawing lines of relationship, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly, until we have very reliable pen entry tablet devices, the MK I pad of paper is still the absolute best notetaking device there is. I tackled this very topic in &lt;a href=&quot;http://thegorillaisnamedhogarth.blogspot.com/2011/01/i-can-see-you-gorilla-program-team.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a blog&lt;/a&gt; a couple months back. While using a computer to take notes may be efficient, it is not effective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yes, I have many meeting days that start at 8:00am and go straight through to 5:00pm and I still use a notebook to take notes, even when presenting and reviewing things via computer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="3364" LastEditDate="2012-05-19T16:19:33.280" LastActivityDate="2012-05-19T16:19:33.280" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1003" CreationDate="2011-03-11T19:05:32.447" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Functional Manager will be dealing with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Expertise of that specific function. If you are the Data Architect manager, you will know and strive for the best processes, technology, and management of all things related to data architecture. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resource management.  The needs of the data architects are not the same as the needs of the sales team.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cost related to the function. Training to make sure skills are there.  Conferences, corporation compliance with standards ISO, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Load balancing.  Making sure there is always a resource available for this function.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM will be dealing with almost the same things but for a specific goal, instead of a function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think is possible for a manager to switch to a project manager, and pm to switch to a manager. Both are very possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T19:05:32.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="969" CreationDate="2011-03-11T20:00:13.420" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A project manager is really a change agent. His job is to force a change in the organization, like a new product or a new process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as your organization is in a state of continual change, you can do without project managers. One company I worked at grew to 100M turnover without any formal project structure. It was a very nice place to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="578" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T20:00:13.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1009" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-11T20:38:19.933" Score="3" ViewCount="722" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are using MS Project 2010 to manage our projects. We have a subcontractor that works on the same project. They report differently within their company than we do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, we had him break apart his schedule so that we could bring them in as four small chunks in the appropriate places in our schedule. The problem is that no matter what % complete the subcontractor schedules report, it does not impact the overall % complete. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems incredibly counterintuitive. How should we fix this issue? Is it even an issue at all? If not, how do we handle this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="389" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-01-13T10:30:07.053" LastActivityDate="2019-01-13T10:30:07.053" Title="MS Project with Sub-Projects" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;&lt;schedule&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="829" CreationDate="2011-03-11T21:02:44.610" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rallydev.com/agile_products/lifecycle_management/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rally&lt;/a&gt; to manage our 70 person distributed development team using Kanban and Scrum, but &lt;strong&gt;I use our other product, &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilezen.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;AgileZen&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; to manage all the things going on in my CTO life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AgileZen is an amazing simple product that spreads like wildfire.  I have 7 boards that I work across on a weekly basis, some of which are internal to Rally and others span into my non-profit world, and a book that I am collaborating on.  The ability to invite anyone into your boards makes this product spread, but it is the ease of use that makes you and your friends love it and use it. The pricing plans begin with a free version and move up to an unlimited at $99 per month for unlimited users and projects.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because AgileZen implements the kanban concepts so simply, it helps you limit your work-in-process and decrease the time it takes you to get the important things through your process. AgileZen has a [great support site, but follow them on Twitter( @agilezen ) and watch what other users are saying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since we own AgileZen, it works so well, and I am not the product manager for that product; I have not tried any other kanban products.  As Ingvald, points out the LimitedWIP society has a list of kanban products kept up on their site. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="640" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T21:02:44.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1003" CreationDate="2011-03-11T23:18:55.460" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel there is one and only one true difference between a functional manager and a project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the year, the fucntional manager writes a job review. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are three regularily accepted types of job power, Role, Expertise and Relationship. Ask around nearly any job industry and you'll get a general agreement that Role power is all but dead. A manager that uses his &quot;Boss&quot; power to rule his department is not going to last long. We even see the ability to hire and fire degraded for the traditional boss. To fire someone requires incredible amounts of paper work and acts of HR. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relationship power is the primary power of getting things done. Expertise power helps to give your reltionships some firm ground to stand on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To that end, both PMs and FMs must be good at managing people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an article describing &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.askmen.com/money/career_300/304_the-three-types-of-power-at-work.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Three Types of Power at Work&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-03-14T08:58:33.950" LastActivityDate="2011-03-14T08:58:33.950" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="871" CreationDate="2011-03-11T23:25:46.500" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't argue on the value to job seekers. But recently I had a fundemental Aha Moment that made me realize the value of certifications, if done right. I wrote a long blog on this, specifically in reaction to the recent PMI Agile Certification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to read the full blog, click on the URL below. The nutshell points to the US Incident Command System. A national system that allows multiple emergency service agencies to plug into each other and operate together on a disaster. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The can do it because of a common language and a common framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certifications give you that common ground from which everyone can agree that the red cylinder thing is a fire extinguisher and not an upright vacuum cleaner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Potato, Pahtato Gorilla- &lt;a href=&quot;http://thegorillaisnamedhogarth.blogspot.com/2011/03/potato-pahtato-gorilla.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://thegorillaisnamedhogarth.blogspot.com/2011/03/potato-pahtato-gorilla.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T23:25:46.500" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1004" CreationDate="2011-03-12T00:22:33.333" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am still in the process of wondering whether the cost of this iPad is worth it. I do see a lot of people using them to take notes in meetings and they don't seem to have problems. I think given the size, it's much less distracting than a laptop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I look forward to seeing other opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T00:22:33.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1004" CreationDate="2011-03-12T00:42:08.750" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an app that will let you do type, hand and drawing in the same place.  It will sync it with your notes in the cloud and make it avaiable in your laptop.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This application is called Note Plus.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk_KVY-4HfI&quot;&gt;you tube video link here&lt;/a&gt;, this application together with a stylus will be the ideal match.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I have not use it myself, I have seen other people. I am planning to buy an iPad 2 to give it a try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T00:42:08.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1009" CreationDate="2011-03-12T03:11:44.410" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wow! That's a tough one. For something of that complexity I'd suggest just typing MS project help into Google. There are several free sites with forums and a couple of reputable pay sites that specialize in MS project help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's what I do whenever I run into a project issue I can't solve. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-03-13T01:23:26.960" LastActivityDate="2011-03-13T01:23:26.960" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1004" CreationDate="2011-03-12T05:45:55.377" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, it really comes to &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is the Ipad really worth it for taking notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a gadget freak myself, I have ipad as well as android tab. I have tried both the devices for taking notes in meetings with clients as well as meeting with my peers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever the case may be, the biggest problem I had was &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These devices distract my mind, as well as the minds of people I'm working with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best thing I ever had has been a simple nice notepad and a pencil. This is the best way to take notes, scribble, draw immediately and show them to the clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What Ipad has been useful to me was, when I wanted to show clients some elaborate map of how things would be done and Ipad made it possible to do it in colorful picture. That was really handy and I think it made an impact on the client also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Biggest advantage I found having these devices for meeting purpose was &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You appear sharp, more technically advance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yes, some clients do appear to be impressed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Its helps to show clients some colorful drawings, samples easily ( laptop is not suitable for this )&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can do without laptop, Ipad is enough if you are going to meetings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;saves space and is lighter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;collaboration is also possible with these devices and this is the biggest plus point.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;So it all boils down to your own person comfort level and preferences.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should experiment and let yourself discover what suits you the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="616" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T05:45:55.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="969" CreationDate="2011-03-12T07:09:09.680" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience it is problematic to have the role of &quot;project manager&quot; and &quot;software developer&quot; assigned to one person because the role of the &quot;project manager&quot; (calculating efforts, schedules, ...) will suffer when the solution must be finished as soon as possible. (&quot;Why should i waste my time with these calculations?&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="418" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-03-12T11:37:16.960" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T11:37:16.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="982" CreationDate="2011-03-12T11:43:13.680" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently involved in a similar scenario managing a global project that requires alignment with our colleagues in Asia, Europe and North America.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We still have calls at 6.00am GMT and other late calls to discuss open issues with the teams in the States, specially when located in the Western coast. However, we ensure that only required teams attend and support these calls from home by using the VPN and another conference facilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, we can't avoid having these conference calls at least once a month which are very supportive to avoid any miscommunication via email but we use these calls to set up the next steps and allocate the workload and, eventually, discuss any open item that we haven't been able to resolve the previous weeks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once we have agreed the next steps we set up a working folder in our SharePoint for each region which will be open to all Team Leaders and the Programme Manager to track any progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By using tools like SharePoint, EDMS, or corporate wikis as a mechanism to communicate workload, issues and stats, we have managed to reduce the need for weekly calls involving all regions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another alternative could be the establishing of a controller role or central administration team located in Europe to collect and manage input from the other two regions; e.g. early morning reviews with Asia and late reviews with America. Nevertheless, I have found this role quite tricky since it manages information earlier than other members of the teams and can create certain conflicts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summing up, the key factors are determining the most relevant meetings that require live interface and establishing a robust mechanism to communicate effectively and track working progress (Google Docs, SharePoint, and so on...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T11:43:13.680" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1004" CreationDate="2011-03-12T12:25:52.193" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rather than typing notes in iPad I have found more comfortable recording the meetings. I have been recommended to use &lt;strong&gt;Dragon Dictation&lt;/strong&gt; to record meetings and transferring the conversations into Notes afterwards. These can be edited, converted in PDF and emailed to your colleagues as Minutes. To my colleagues this application has worked very well in 1:1 reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I have found this app quite sensible to accents and the distance between you and the commentator resulting in odd notes sometimes. In these cases I have had to use my old-fashion notepad for further notes and diagrams that could complement the recordings. However, I had to take some time out to review the notes taken by iPad and amend any strange words. The good news is since you have been listening properly to the entire conversation rather being typing you would be able to amend the recording easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;By recording the meetings the attendees will not feel that you are not paying attention but it's really important that you check and comply the company's policy for recording meetings. Check in the Apple Store for similar apps.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T12:25:52.193" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1003" CreationDate="2011-03-12T19:00:55.990" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you switch? Yes, the right skill set will always work both ways. But, the jobs are very different and require different application of the same skills. &#xA;When you are a PM and you have a difficult team member, you usually only have to deal with that until the end of the project - temporary and specific behavior adjustment. When the same person reports to you on a day to day basis you need to deal with this behavior year after year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T19:00:55.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10" CreationDate="2011-03-12T22:19:15.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great question.  I'm not familiar with Remedy but I truly hope you end up with one integrated solution and not two separate ones.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To meet the needs of two constituents I wouldn't take the silent/side project development approach.  I would try to work with in-house Remedy stakeholders and explain the project management needs that could be addressed by an extending the Remedy-based solution.  While an under-the-radar project will proceed faster it won't be inclusive of people that will probably be key to acceptance and adoption.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's been my experience that going it alone (creating a Remedy interface without input from internal owners) might not result in adoption because the very people you need to go forward may feel disenfranchised.  At a minimum, it will take a while to get them on board with the idea.  Better to include them in the beginning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="113" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T22:19:15.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="955" CreationDate="2011-03-12T22:31:09.233" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;SmashingMagazine (dot) com/2008/11/13/15-useful-project-management-tools/  is a list of 15 Useful Project Management Tools.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Search the site for more &quot;best of&quot; lists for project management tools, invoicing, and time tracking.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found Smashing Magazine to be very usefull for all sorts of web development questions and technique ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="113" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T22:31:09.233" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-03-12T22:31:09.233" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="942" CreationDate="2011-03-12T22:47:39.500" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have an answer but I would look in the direction of manufacturing planning software, which has long included capacity planning.  Google turned up quite a few links to open source capacity planning software, including: &quot;Top 10 Open Source Web-Based Project Management Software&quot; (that include capacity planning).  You might be able to get free or 30-day capacity planning software to run your scenarios. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please update when you find a solution.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry this is not more useful.&#xA;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="113" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T22:47:39.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1024" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1046" CreationDate="2011-03-13T00:32:29.327" Score="7" ViewCount="1697" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project Managers work with different skilled workers to meet a specific goal, while Functional Managers manage a specific business unit that may provide services to the project manager.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the answers in the question, &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/1003/34&quot;&gt;What are the fundamental differences between a functional manager and a project manager and is it possible to switch between the two?&lt;/a&gt;, the Project Manager may deal with several different business units, such as development, marketing, sales, business development, and many more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, a Functional Manager is responsible for the ongoing success of a specific business unit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of career growth, which position is more likely to help someone move into an executive-level position?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-03-14T00:05:40.413" Title="Are Functional Managers or Project Managers Better Candidates for Executive-Level Positions?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1003" CreationDate="2011-03-13T00:33:59.280" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Functional Manager is in charge of a specific business unit.  Here are some examples of Functional Managers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Development Team Manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sales Manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Marketing Manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accounts Receivable Manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contact Center Manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customer Service Manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each one of these managers has a specific, technical skillset in their field, and this person is likely a manager partly based on their knowledge and experience in that area.  For example, the Development Manager was likely a Software Developer at one point, and the Sales Manager was likely a Sales Associate at one point in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project Managers, on the other hand, work with a project team toward a specific goal.  The Project Manager may have expertise in a particular field, such as Software Development, but works with a cross-functional project team to meet a specific goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Project Manager may work with developers, sales associates, call center managers, customer service managers, marketing associates, and other personnel that have an impact on the project.  In some cases, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_manager&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Project Manager may report to a functional manager&lt;/a&gt;, while in other cases, such as in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Matrix Organization&lt;/a&gt;, Project Managers work alongside Functional Managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Functional Manager with good coordination and communication skills could move into a Project Management role.  Having expertise in one area of the business is helpful, and a willingness to learn a little about everything is even more helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Project Manager with a strong talent and knowledge base in one area could move into a role as a Functional Manager.  For instance, a Project Manager who was a Software Engineer could move into a role as a Development Manager, or a Project Manager with marketing experience could move into a Marketing Manager role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the question one must ask is &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/1024/34&quot;&gt;Are Functional Managers or Project Managers Better Candidates for Executive-Level Positions?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-03-13T00:33:59.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1004" CreationDate="2011-03-13T04:15:52.467" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never used it, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2009/07/my-new-favorite-gadget-livescribe-pulse-pen/22468/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;James Fallows&lt;/a&gt; of the Atlantic swears by the Livescribe pen. As long as it's okay to record the meeting this could be a great tool: all the power of pen for drawing pictures but a recording to ensure an accurate record is available in case anything needs to be written up verbatim. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="360" LastActivityDate="2011-03-13T04:15:52.467" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="873" CreationDate="2011-03-13T11:23:08.020" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel that your problem is becoming quite common among teams that have been operating in one particular way for long time. I really see myself represented in your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have recently move roles and departments within the same company and have started to manage projects with a team that have been in the field for more than 5 years, hence they truly believe they know &quot;everything&quot;. I have to agree that the knowledge they have in this field is excellent and this is helping me a lot to understand the problems and tips to liaise with other departments. They are lovely people and have supported my integration to the team in few weeks. However, after few months managing tasks I realised that there was a lack of communication which made me really uncomfortable. This could be one of the reasons for certain problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every discussion is email based, even though we are sitting next to each other we tent to write a two pager email. No one has the time to read 200 emails of these characteristics and as a result we end up missing key information causing us losses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my previous roles I had quite a nice experience using SharePoint as the main mechanism to communicate issues, tracking project progress, managing meetings, log/store documents that can be accessed by anyone across the teams, setting RSS feeds and alerts, among many other benefits. So my intention ever since has been getting my team using this application, but they were not very eager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's difficult to change processes to people that have been there longer than you, but it isn't impossible&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. You will need to work hard to set up and build every site or library, and demonstrate the possible usage and benefits of them to the team. Try to develop &lt;strong&gt;friendly user guides&lt;/strong&gt; (with plenty of screen shots), &lt;strong&gt;live demos&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;individual training sessions&lt;/strong&gt; (focus on individual needs)... &lt;strong&gt;Ask you Senior Management to be involved&lt;/strong&gt;, if this is a process improvement they will be more than 100% supportive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It takes some time to move the foundations of their operational behaviour but if you work hard and constantly support them to understand the tool you would like to use they will move along :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2011-03-13T11:23:08.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1028" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-13T12:00:30.130" Score="-2" ViewCount="1415" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is this a common term in consulting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our prof mentiones this, but I can't find any definition in the inet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="652" LastActivityDate="2019-03-14T10:41:42.903" Title="What is OEM-dependent consulting?" Tags="&lt;definition&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2019-03-14T13:14:36.900" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1029" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1031" CreationDate="2011-03-13T12:27:52.173" Score="8" ViewCount="162" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PRINCE2 Practitioner with a strong Business Administration and Economics background. In my years as a PM, I have always been responsible for projects focused on the Business User area and final client. I must admit that I have found these projects very enjoyable because they connect you to the real users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless, I have developed a strong interest in Object-Oriented projects and Business Intelligence, and I would like to roll out my experience in projects of this kind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have learned a lot liaising with IT and trained on different methodologies but, unfortunately, my CV still lacks of experience. &lt;strong&gt;How could I transition into the IT area? What are the key requirements or steps that I could take to support my development?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-09-30T02:23:46.473" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T02:26:59.277" Title="How to move from the Business area of PM to a more IT system related projects?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;skills&gt;&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1029" CreationDate="2011-03-13T15:13:52.317" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short but hard answer is: get some experience so your resume looks better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Look for projects within your organization.&lt;/strong&gt; Maybe there is a project where they lack a helping hand from PM and would appreciate your help. Also, in some organizations, there are thing like innovation programs or 20%-projects (e.g. Google) where people can work on different areas they have. If it's possible you can use such program to launch a project of your interest.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Launch your own side project.&lt;/strong&gt; Look for some startup idea you'd like to pitch and try to build something which lives at least as long to become a valuable point in your CV. Then you can prove both your PM skills (your past history) and IT skills (your side-project). Note: it requires a lot of consistency and usually quite much time to run side-project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Look for a small company which looks for PM.&lt;/strong&gt; Often big companies are very orthodox in a way they look on people's resumes. I find small companies way more flexible here. You may be able to convince them you bring a good mixture of proven PM skills with yet-to-be-proven IT skills.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-03-13T15:13:52.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="871" CreationDate="2011-03-13T15:31:01.630" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few perspectives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Looking for a job&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case it really depends. There are some organizations which values certification highly and those which don't really care and won't pay you even a penny more because you have a bunch of certificates. Big corporations tend to be in the former group. I personally present the latter approach. You can either prove your skills during recruitment or no and your certificates don't change it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Knowing the stuff&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever kind of certification we're discussing here it deals with specific methods, practices, principles and nomenclature. If everyone at your workplace follow specific method getting certification can help to sort all the stuff out and get you on the same page with others. Especially when the organization follows some approach rather conservatively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Learning/becoming better specialist&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's where certification barely works. You can get most certificates pretty easily (PMP being rather an exception here). Having the certificate proves only you participated in some course (see: &lt;a href=&quot;http://technicaldebt.com/?p=645&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://technicaldebt.com/?p=645&lt;/a&gt;). Even PMP with PDU mechanism doesn't really work well here. A bunch of PDUs is no confirmation that I'm better specialist or know more than someone who doesn't care about it at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize: if your organization is orthodox in following specific method, certification might be quite a good idea. If you look for a job, think first what kind of job you're looking for. And if you want to learn I believe you can use the time much better than trying to earn a certificate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Btw: so far I know no PM-related certificate which would work differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2011-03-13T15:31:01.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1028" CreationDate="2011-03-13T16:37:28.677" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never heard of it in project management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though, it sounds vaguely like Jack Welch's &quot;Voice of the Customer&quot; approach of being hyper-tuned to a customer's specific needs. In this case, sounds like it would be consulting that is completely in-sync with the needs and directions of the OEM that you are providing services to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-03-13T16:37:28.677" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1024" CreationDate="2011-03-13T16:58:29.167" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Functional managers are more in-tune to the goals of an executive and operate in a similar environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project managers in a corporation rarely have the appetite for risk and uncertainty to make it as executives. Nor do they operate in an environment that demands these kind of efforts.  Project managers usually work off of a defined set of requirements and have the goal of delivering those set of requirements given specific constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Executives generally operate in a world without requirements. The most successful executives see a way to increase profits and/or power and find a way to achieve that -even if it gets messy from a process/methodology or (sometimes) code-of-ethics perspective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-03-13T16:58:29.167" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1035" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1038" CreationDate="2011-03-13T17:12:38.850" Score="12" ViewCount="3252" Body="&lt;p&gt;With most projects focused on meeting requirements within specific constraints, how do you create innovative solutions on a project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a portfolio management approach, how do you encourage innovative projects and get them funded?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T18:18:58.317" Title="How do you create innovation on your projects?" Tags="&lt;innovation&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1009" CreationDate="2011-03-13T17:37:09.070" Score="1" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check to see that the chunks coming in as sub-tasks are at the appropriate points.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check that the header tasks (of which these are sub-tasks) are set to calculate percent complete based on sub-tasks/&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the schedule mode auto or manual? Check this setting, as it will affect this as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-09-30T02:39:41.103" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T02:39:41.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1035" CreationDate="2011-03-13T17:42:16.520" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a separate budget for what we call &quot;venture&quot; projects: these are short, innovative but high risk development projects to try things out, but with the likelihood of failure. They are more ideas that look promising but for which we haven't (yet) have a good business case. Everybody with a good idea may apply for it. The results are often working prototypes released in the market to see what our customers think about them. Our first iphone apps started this way. When we see that the ideas catch on, proper development starts. The 'prototype' is then thrown away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-13T17:42:16.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1035" CreationDate="2011-03-13T17:50:14.833" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Innovation is all about creativity. Let your creativity loose and you will see innovation coming your way. The problem with creativity is that you cannot encourage too much of it all the time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now your statement on requirements is true.  I urge my team to look at the requirements and be creative within them to create innovation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example: If to build ABC you need 160 man-hours, to get 40% benefit. And with creative thinking you can build ABC with a twist of creativity in 180 hours, to obtain 50% benefit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think as a portfolio manager you have to focus on pushing the right values to your program and project managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-03-13T17:50:14.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1035" CreationDate="2011-03-13T17:59:17.143" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Within a project ask the team what is slowing them down. I look for process improvements, e.g. automation, removing reports that don't need to be done.  Not exactly innovation, but sometimes that discussion results in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="158" LastActivityDate="2011-03-13T17:59:17.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1035" CreationDate="2011-03-13T18:30:32.940" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Innovation comes from giving people the room to create.  Google does this with their 20% projects.  Each engineer can spend his or her entire Friday working on a self-created project.  He/she must document it just as it were a regular project and also set deadlines, but he/she owns it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many Google products that started out as 20% projects.  Innovation doesn't come from doing what the client wants you to do, it comes from letting your engineers run free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This interview with Seth Godin on &lt;a href=&quot;http://michaelhyatt.com/seth-godin-on-the-difference-between-leadership-and-management.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Difference Between Leadership and Management&lt;/a&gt; also offers some excellent advice on how to create a culture of innovation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-03-14T03:45:09.150" LastActivityDate="2011-03-14T03:45:09.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1035" CreationDate="2011-03-13T19:49:34.933" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you want your team to do something (innovate, for example) you need to give them &lt;strong&gt;motivators&lt;/strong&gt; and get rid of &lt;strong&gt;de-motivators&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typical motivators:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;career path: &quot;I create it = I own it when it's huge&quot;, like Google says&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;money: &quot;My innovation helps the project = I get my stake&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;recognition: see for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/innovation/innovator-archive-072903.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Oracle Innovation Showcase&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;freedom: &quot;Friday is mine!&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typical de-motivators:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;fear: &quot;innovation mistakes will be my faults?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;unclear corporate objectives: &quot;why would I innovate if the company just needs requirements?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;overload: &quot;I don't have time for a lunch what innovations are you talking about?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastEditorUserId="91" LastEditDate="2011-03-14T05:57:17.087" LastActivityDate="2011-03-14T05:57:17.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1029" CreationDate="2011-03-13T19:52:56.037" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to PRINCE2 I would recommend you to get yourself familiar (and certified) with some software development framework, like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rational Unified Process (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Rational_Unified_Process&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;RUP&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Microsoft Solutions Framework (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Solutions_Framework&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MSF&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.computer.org/portal/web/swebok&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SWEBOK&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They will give you a lot of IT-related information you can't get from PRINCE2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-13T19:52:56.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1009" CreationDate="2011-03-13T19:58:02.350" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The problem is that no matter what % complete the subcontractor schedules report, it does not impact the overall % complete. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe this is by design? When a subcontractor reports you completeness in % you shall treat is as &lt;strong&gt;0/100 rule&lt;/strong&gt;. Mostly because this business entity is out of your control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-13T19:58:02.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1029" CreationDate="2011-03-13T20:25:36.010" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know how it is playing out in other regions, but in Silicon Valley I've been seeing more and more IT groups looking for stronger business skills in their PMs. This creates an opportunity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need two things:&#xA;1- clear stories on how your skills can help improve a process, project, business. Show that your current skills are well developed and will be a value to an organization that already has strong technical people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2- A track record of learning fast and on the job. &quot;I don't know SQL, but I taught myself HTML in a month.&quot; I've successfully parlayed my ability to learn quickly into more than one job. I had the organization and leadership skills and an ability to learn quickly. I was hired for my soft skills, which were deemed harder to train. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best,&#xA;Joel BC&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2011-03-13T20:25:36.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1028" CreationDate="2011-03-13T21:53:20.773" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The definition (referencing to my prof, but expressed in own words):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Offering standardized ERP software systems or parts of it, to integrate into the business processes. Coming with the information technology is the offer, to support the process of implementation, as well as the implementation of another software module or business process optimizations.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the OEM-dependent consulting relys on the customer's need of support, by implementing the information technology systems. I hope, this is a fairly clear definition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="652" LastActivityDate="2011-03-13T21:53:20.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1024" CreationDate="2011-03-14T00:05:40.413" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is a great question. You'll find executives with all kinds of backgrounds. The key qualities for an executive position are about seeing the bigger picture and having a vision for the business beyond the short term project goals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A project manager is responsible for the short term goals and vision of the project. That doesn't mean the PM doesn't have the longer term vision, it means they need to find a way to display the executive characteristics while still succeeding at the job. It's important to be &lt;strong&gt;seen&lt;/strong&gt; as a good candidate as well as &lt;strong&gt;be&lt;/strong&gt; a good candidate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-03-14T00:05:40.413" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1047" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1048" CreationDate="2011-03-14T07:28:46.637" Score="4" ViewCount="1611" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you want to use such tool?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It will be some tool with product backlog, sprint backlogs, Scrum/Kanban dashboard...&#xA;Me and my partners want to develop this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="658" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-27T07:50:06.017" LastActivityDate="2020-07-22T12:56:45.710" Title="Scrum+Kanban SaaS tool" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ClosedDate="2012-09-30T02:20:18.553" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1047" CreationDate="2011-03-14T08:02:59.710" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd strongly advice to think it through. There are many Kanban/Scrum tools already - here you can find pretty comprehensive list: &lt;a href=&quot;http://limitedwipsociety.ning.com/page/tools&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;limited WIP society tools&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, when we're discussing Kanban many teams tend to work with physical board and not software as long as that's possible. But of course there are also those which can't and have to fall back to some kind of application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, for me this niche looks pretty crowded already and unless you have a good idea for differentiator - something which would make distinguishable from others and would the best of breed at least for some specific group of end-users (teams) - it doesn't sound like the best app you can build.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-22T12:56:45.710" LastActivityDate="2020-07-22T12:56:45.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1029" CreationDate="2011-03-14T09:13:55.567" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to combine PRINCE2 with development, I would go for Scrum, XP or RUP from a PM's point of view. They all fit in prefectly together with PRINCE2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Out of my experience, I find Scrum a very good way to follow up development, and it fits perfectly on the level of 'managing product delivery' in PRINCE2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to go into development, I recommend you subscribe for some object-oriented training in Java, .NET or another language. Also, try to create a small application. In development, there is only one good rule: &lt;strong&gt;Do it, to learn it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are not going in the code itself, try looking into some techniques, like OO design patterns, to understand what goes on behind the scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good books on this are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596008673?green=21541990509&amp;amp;cmp=af-mybuy-9780596008673.IP&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OO - programming&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596007126?green=21541990509&amp;amp;cmp=af-mybuy-9780596007126.IP&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Design Patterns&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lessons on the basics of programming can be found in my blog post titled, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kennethvr.be/blog/2010/05/19/programming-methodology-lectures/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Programming Methodology Lectures&lt;/a&gt;, (I published them once on my blog).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-09-30T02:26:59.277" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T02:26:59.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="978" CreationDate="2011-03-14T10:52:25.503" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately yes, over-communicating can become an issue. I have found this area very difficult to measure, and therefore resolve, since what it may be interesting for some people may be an area of concern and conflict to others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I have come across several issues when communicating potential changes to the project's allocation of resources. I have always thought that a transparency is the key for building the confidence of a team and awareness of what's going on in the project at different levels. However, there is the risk that team members perceive certain information as a threat to their jobs or misunderstand the purpose of senior management's decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my point of view I would keep communicating anything related to working packages, open issues, and current status of assigned tasks but I would discuss with my line management to set up a communications plan, delivered by a &lt;strong&gt;Communications Specialist&lt;/strong&gt; (independent role that reports to a different level of management), for information like resource re-allocation (outsourcing plans specially), budget constrains, and any other sensitive topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my current job we have a person in charge of releasing communications in reference to the overall status of the project via email and posts to our SharePoint site. Should there be any questions within my team we openly discuss them in our reviews and I address their concerns to my line management for further support. This helps me to reduce my level of involvement on any matters aside my duties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also see: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2010/how-to-stop-overcommunication/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2010/how-to-stop-overcommunication/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-14T08:39:14.813" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T08:39:14.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1004" CreationDate="2011-03-14T11:02:30.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scott Berkun has a great book called 'Making Things happen' and one of the topics is how to lead a good meeting, on which he also speaks about the use of laptops or gadgets in meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the people in the room don't think what's going on is important enough to warrant their full attention, then they shouldn't be in the room. Face time is precious...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I completely share his view on this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read it here &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=vKVQaJ0pMdQC&amp;amp;pg=PA211&amp;amp;lpg=PA211&amp;amp;dq=scott+berkun+meetings+without+laptop&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=pIE6TUCCg_&amp;amp;sig=r_fwX0NHB1PaW9vHMsIRVB6IeH8&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=PPR9TZbbCoqEOtKQkM4H&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=5&amp;amp;ved=0CDcQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scott Berkun: Making things happen&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I completely agree on this, as I was in some meetings with a colleague the last months and he had an Acer tablet that he used to take notes. First of all, the notes where real crap, andsecond of all, he wasn't meeting actively...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastEditorUserId="591" LastEditDate="2011-03-14T11:08:55.343" LastActivityDate="2011-03-14T11:08:55.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="965" CreationDate="2011-03-14T11:30:05.177" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found the following links quite useful;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.best-management-practice.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Best Management Practice&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alchemyformanagers.co.uk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Alchemy for Managers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can download PRINCE2 Training Material in the following training site:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prince2-ug.be/training-manual&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.prince2-ug.be/training-manual&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, as mentioned ILM there are very good groups in Linkedin that could help you out depending on your area of interest&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agile Project Management Group&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2011-03-14T11:30:05.177" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-03-14T11:30:05.177" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1028" CreationDate="2011-03-14T12:23:07.853" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this refers to an ERP consulting firm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enterprise resource planning (ERP) integrates internal and external management information across an entire organization, embracing finance/accounting, manufacturing, sales and service, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OEM is an international firm of consulting experts with a proven track record in implementing custom designed business solutions. This firm supports the integration in Operations, Engineering and Manufacturing with automated IT services. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can follow the services they offer in the following hyperlink:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oemconsultants.ca&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.oemconsultants.ca&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe your organization has plans to hire these kind of services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2011-03-14T12:23:07.853" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1047" CreationDate="2011-03-14T12:47:29.773" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;All credit to Stanislav for asking the question before starting a development that ends up with no customers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@Stanislav, if you and your partners want to develop it, you must feel that there is a market, so I suggest defining your market and carrying out some more market research before committing any time or effort to starting the work. Make sure you think through &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; the tool will be used, and not just what it will do (ie what is the use case): that might help to identify the differentiator that you need to justify the work, and it may also help with the subsequent marketing of the product, should you build it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-03-14T12:47:29.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1055" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1057" CreationDate="2011-03-14T13:56:11.133" Score="17" ViewCount="548" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a situation where a project is in progress, and the project manager does not seem to be doing his job. This is a high profile project within the company, and has a very definite finish date. The project has been running for a couple of months now, but more and more I am having to intervene to ensure the correct management processes are being empolyed to ensure that the project stays on track. Examples of this are ensuring communication is maintained constantly within the project team, ensuring the deliverables are still on track taking the necessary escalation steps if otherwise, and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it acceptable to go above the project managers head and report his adequacies? Or should I be providing him with more support?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="532" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-07-23T12:39:59.437" LastActivityDate="2016-03-14T09:18:40.513" Title="What should you do if the project manager is so 'bad' that you end up managing the project yourself?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="814" CreationDate="2011-03-14T14:42:46.023" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately this happens quite often when there is an existing working relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my personal opinion, I would have a chat with the member of your team that is suffering from this situation. I would let him know that I will support and back him up whenever he needs it and that he should start being strong to say to his previous manager/s &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Sorry but I can't help you on this. Perhaps if you talk to my manager he may be able to support you&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;. If they really want something from your team they will need to talk to you first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my previous job I have a situation with an analyst that was approaching the members of my team when I wasn't around, asking them to do things that weren't their responsibilities and, whenever something went wrong my team was blamed. I called this analyst to a meeting with my line manager to discuss what kind of need was required and explore other alternatives to provide her with the right support. I explained to her that my team was handling specific tasks and were given specific deadlines so in order to do not compromise those dates she would need to start contacting me beforehand so I could allocate the right resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This became a new weekly meeting for me to assign resources to help her but my team didn't suffer from any inadequate approach any longer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2011-03-14T14:42:46.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1055" CreationDate="2011-03-14T14:44:51.307" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;First you should talk to the project manager that you are spending more time than planned because of this 'extra' work. Maybe it is just a misunderstanding: because he saw that you take things to heart he 'delegated' this to you in his mind, without discussing it openly. Maybe he is unaware there is an issue at all. So first and foremost, talk to him about it, and look for ways to put things straight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the other side stays mute, you should talk to your boss first, telling him the same: that you are doing more then is expected from you and that it has an impact on your time and maybe even the quality of your own work. Then the both of you can decide how to tackle the issue: your boss could talk to his boss about it, or when your boss is also the boss of the PM it is a coaching issue for him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jumping hierarchy should be handled with care and only used as the very last option. Exposing somebody in public, without him having had the chance of setting things right, is even worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-16T08:25:54.423" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T08:25:54.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8" CreationDate="2011-03-14T15:57:38.050" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;My general answer is start with Vanilla scrum and change your environment only when those changes PROVE to deliver better throughput, quality and team work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vanilla scrum is a receipt that works. It is a complete system of practices that help you achieve greater throughput, higher quality and more joy.  I and many of our coaches tell folks to first implement vanilla scrum to see how it positively affects your whole system. Also, we ask teams to see where the pain remains that keeps you from getting the cost of iterating down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A great way to do this for a new team&#xA;is to have them run daily sprints for&#xA;a week.  (I learned this from a team&#xA;at in Vancouver - Agile Vancouver's&#xA;2008 &amp;quot;Much a do about Agile&amp;quot;&#xA;conference.)  The great thing about&#xA;doing planning and retrospecting daily&#xA;is that it teaches you the practices&#xA;very quickly. It also forces you to&#xA;keep your planning time down to less&#xA;than an hour and drives learning very&#xA;fast with daily retrospectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you are a novice at Scrum, the benefits of the individual practices and the overall receipt are hard to see apart from each other.  The fast daily feedback loops shine lights on your problems. But, the extremely fast pace forces you to live with these pains for at least a week. Now we all know that it is so easy to rationalize or justify the difficulties/problems away, but if you don't let that happen you can use that pain to continue to make major improvements in the quality, throughput and value.  And, most organizations need to make those strides, as they tend to increase the scale, complexity and distribution of their agile efforts as the proof pours in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I totally understand making a hybrid version of scrum like Scrumban.  However, I only support Hybrid efforts in teams that have shown the visibility, transparency and metrics to prove their changes.  Adjustments to vanilla scrum should be put forth as tests.  If the tests yield better results, you should keep them and hybrid it.  If they do not yield better measures, you should not.  Of course this begs a strong technical infrastructure, like Rally or AgileZen to manage metrics reporting:)  It also requires a team that can reflect and retrospect on the qualitative measures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, Hybrid for better results not to satisfy your long, linear and late current behaviors.   Way more on this topic on our blog from Ed Willis - &amp;quot;In Defense of Half-Assed&amp;quot; - &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120522095654/http://www.rallydev.com/agileblog/2010/08/in-defense-of-the-half-assed-part-1/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Part 1&lt;/a&gt; &amp;amp; &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120522091539/http://www.rallydev.com/agileblog/2010/09/in-defense-of-the-half-assed-part-2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Part 2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="640" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-21T09:37:46.643" LastActivityDate="2020-07-21T09:37:46.643" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-04-04T04:17:56.800" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="75" CreationDate="2011-03-14T16:14:40.527" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes - provided you are talking about Feature Gantt charts and not resource Gantt charts.  Feature Gantt charts, get you and your organization focused on the work and not on the workers.  Because most of the world knows how to read a gantt chart, it can be very helpful in communicating widely about your progress and priority. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In comparison, burn-down and cumulative flow charts require an education for most folks. Now the burn-down and cumulative flow charts are much more helpful for steering your agile teams and work in process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="640" LastActivityDate="2011-03-14T16:14:40.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="389" CreationDate="2011-03-14T16:28:23.347" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use Agile (Scrum, XP, Kanban) when:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you want to benefit from fast feedback and burning visibility of objective data &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you don't completely understand the value and definition of what you are building&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your payoff/downside curves could vary widely &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have a team passionate about it or a coach who will help them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have complicated project without all the experts you need or a complex project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use Waterfall when:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the project is simple&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the project is complicated, but you have the expertise to deliver it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it is all you know and you have no support for change&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the upfront investment is not risky to make&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you focus your performance measures on delivery date and budget&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Great post by Dean Leffingwell on same topic - &lt;strong&gt;TAKE THE QUIZ&lt;/strong&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;https://scalingsoftwareagility.wordpress.com/2011/03/04/picking-agile-vs-waterfall-%E2%80%9Cprojects%E2%80%9D-a-ten-point-quiz/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Picking Agile vs. Waterfall “Projects”: a Ten Point Quiz.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="640" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2018-11-15T14:09:33.583" LastActivityDate="2018-11-15T14:09:33.583" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1055" CreationDate="2011-03-14T17:27:12.310" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take care on this. As a PM I have a view of the whole project and may have different understanding of the project priorities. If you go over my head, you will take up my time to resolve the issues that raises. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Stephan says, talk to the PM, if that doesn't work, talk to your supervisor. Use the hierarchy, don't jump it unless there is no other choice, and the issue is critical. You can only come across as a trouble maker if you go to the Sponsor behind the pm's back.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-03-14T17:27:12.310" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1063" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1066" CreationDate="2011-03-14T18:20:45.720" Score="36" ViewCount="3862" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's the thing: In agile, client has very important role to fulfill - if they aren't involved, agile loses much of its value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you convince clients to change the way they run projects, especially with big companies and at least medium-sized projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess they don't just believe salesperson saying &quot;that's better.&quot; And if they don't have much experience working the agile way, clients are likely to be reluctant. So how you make them to change their minds?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-09-30T02:18:29.600" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T02:18:29.600" Title="How do you convince a client to use Agile Methods?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;clients&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1063" CreationDate="2011-03-14T22:43:33.883" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Gradually&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you try to convince your customer (or boss, management, colleagues, etc) to do something totally differently to how they've been used to doing it, then they'll react in one of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_moved_my_cheese&quot;&gt;typical ways in response to change&lt;/a&gt;: acceptance, panic, refusal, etc. So, I recommend a gradual adoption of Agile methods until you're there, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start by having weekly meetings with the customer to discuss the 'prioritised requirements' (&lt;em&gt;Feature Backlog&lt;/em&gt;). Ensure the priorities are set by the customer and are in &lt;em&gt;Story Points&lt;/em&gt; units (with guidance from you).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When you add items to the list, write them in '&lt;em&gt;User Story&lt;/em&gt;' language, but familiar enough not to confuse/alienate the customer. If you've already got some kind of specification or use cases, adapt them, but don't be tempted to totally re-write them - the customer likely won't be able to make the leap.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have &lt;em&gt;regular deliverables&lt;/em&gt; so that the customer can see progress and the benefits of the new way of working. Make sure they know what they've just received, how to get to it (URL, download site, etc) and follow up to make sure they've tried it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Get feedback on these deliverables at the next weekly meeting so that the customer can refine the Feature Backlog according to what they want to see next. Take the time to outline this 'choose top user stories, implement, deliver, review' mechanism to introduce the concept of an '&lt;em&gt;iteration&lt;/em&gt;' or &lt;em&gt;sprint&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Assign cost estimates to each User Story so that the customer can understand the effort required to achieve each User Story and can learn how much could be achieved in one iteration. Be open with the customer about the &lt;em&gt;Planning Game&lt;/em&gt; used to come up with the estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make sure the customer can see how many User Stories have been achieved so far (budget used) and gets a clear understanding of how many of the remaining stories could be completed in the remaining time/budget.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've done this successfully with multiple customers and found that after delivering on promises for a few weeks, they totally trusted us from then on and focussed more on which features they wanted most urgently rather than whether or not we were going to deliver. We didn't necessarily expose them to all the terminology, but they 'got' the regular updates and open-and-honest discussion about what features get implemented next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's nothing scary, wrong or weird about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iterative_and_incremental_development&quot;&gt;iterative project methodologies&lt;/a&gt; (such as Agile, XP or Scrum), its' just not the 'traditional' Waterfall method. Having a nice human explanation helps: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In traditional construction, you can't alter the foundations without&#xA;  first tearing down a house/office block/bridge. This is one reason that&#xA;  you have to get the foundations right first before moving on to the walls&#xA;  and roof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In other industries, you can change any part of the system without having&#xA;  to start again. For example, in Formula One, you can jack up the car&#xA;  to change the wheels - you don't need to disassemble the whole car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Therefore, some projects are very suitable for a iterative/cyclical approach where&#xA;  the initial solution is refined many times until it is just right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I've deliberately been vague with the Agile terminology in order to convey the message easier and I've had a long day so may have got a bit muddled in there.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="101" LastEditorUserId="101" LastEditDate="2011-03-15T14:48:53.190" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T14:48:53.190" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1063" CreationDate="2011-03-14T22:50:16.097" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One of good answers is &quot;you just don't.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is perfectly possible to run agile project without showing client exact way the team works. What more, very often client won't be interested in that. The trick is they won't be interested in being the part of the team as well. They won't be actively participating in prioritization or product demo at the end of the iteration. Usually the best method here is to emulate the client within a project team. Very often the best person to do this is project manager who knows the client and the merits of the project well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Another answer is: make it win-win&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some time I thought it is very, very hard to build some kind of agile contract which is win-win and limits risks on both sides: client's and vendor's. &lt;a href=&quot;http://vimeo.com/17638921&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This presentation form Paul Klipp&lt;/a&gt; (slides are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/pklipp/selling-agilevfinal?from=ss_embed&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) is the best approach to the subject I've seen so far. It gives incentives to both sides to finish faster and shares the pain of dealing with the slip inflicted by scope changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Also you can try to show them&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This one is tricky as it assumes you can convince the client to give it a try. However one, pretty good, argument I heard which can change client's mind here is letting the client abandon the project after first two or three iterations at no cost. Then you have some time to show the value of your approach, possibly presenting how client's engagement helped to make the result of these first few iterations better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-03-15T07:30:48.397" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T07:30:48.397" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1068" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1071" CreationDate="2011-03-14T22:51:51.227" Score="7" ViewCount="1000" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my previous organization there was a disconnection between the Business Operations and IT that always impacted the final derivable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some reason, the Business intent was not accurately represented on the final product. Even though we reviewed the Business Case over and over there was always a piece of functionality missing or not performing as expected. We did have QA testers in the Development team but no UAT was carried out on the Operational end. So I have few questions of which I would like your support to prevent this issue in my the future,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should we need QAs at both ends? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who should be &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; carrying out the UAT? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who should write the Test Cases? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2011-03-17T14:17:34.910" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T14:17:34.910" Title="How can the role of QA maintain the alignment between the Business and IT?" Tags="&lt;roles&gt;&lt;quality&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1068" CreationDate="2011-03-14T23:18:51.500" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It reads to me like a fundamental lack of decent requirements were collected at the outset. Was the Business involved at the discovery or initial discussion? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds like the perfect scenario in which to try an agile, iterativeplan. Concentrating on smaller, more frequent delivery (a sprint, if you prefer) with a representative of the Business unit to give feedback should result in a product closer to everybody's goals. Or if not, they should know why sooner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1 QA should be enough, if requirements are accurately defined. 2 sounds like bureaucratic hell.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In this instance I would advise UAT is conducted by Business.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If requirements are collected, test cases should practically write themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="448" LastActivityDate="2011-03-14T23:18:51.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1055" CreationDate="2011-03-15T03:31:27.990" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that some leaders merely energize others to do their jobs and then take a step back and let people excel at what they do best.  It's possible that the project is going smooth, thanks to people like you who contribute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the project isn't going well, management will likely step in, so I would suggest focusing on your sphere of influence and focus on the things that you're responsible for.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal is to complete the project, not to single people out and stab them in the back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not suggesting that's what you're trying to do, and I'm sure you have the best interests of the project in mind.  But to others, a back-stabber is the image you could unwittingly portray.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just continue to provide the support you're providing.  You never know, when your roles are reversed, the other PM may be there for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T03:31:27.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1068" CreationDate="2011-03-15T04:57:28.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a common issue, that I have run into in several organizations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Business may have an expectation that QA can ensure that the system meets their needs.  However, QA will be working from the same requirements specifications as development.  QA can ensure that the system meets the specifications.  This is not the same as ensuring the requirements meet the business needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UAT should be an entirely different process.  It is verifying that the requirements as implemented are meet the business needs. If you consider this a QA activity, then you do need two QAs with two different teams.  After delivery is not the time to identify variances between the specifications and the business needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usability tests may fall in the grey area between UAT and QA.  QA should handle those tests that require a fresh user (outside resource) each time.  UAT can handle cases where business users apply the system to its specified purpose.  Users in UAT tests may be involved in more than one test cycle.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;UAT is a business role to ensure that the system as built really meets the Business requirements.  The earlier you can get get the business team to test that the application meets their needs the better.  The earlier business reviews the system, the earlier problems can be identified.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting business involved in UAT tends to be difficult.  I have found this is a fairly common problem.   This will delay detection of variances between the specifications and the business needs.  Business involvement throughout the development process should result in earlier detection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Business may also want to pass the blame by withdrawing from the project after providing the requirements.  Avoiding the blame game, and getting business involved in ensuring the success of the project may help.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The QA team should be writing the requirements test cases. If they are involved in the  requirements gathering process, they will have a better understanding of the requirements.  This will allow early detection of variances between the documented requirements and test specifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be a significant number unit test cases developed for the code. This should be the responsibility of the development team.  Requirements tested in unit test cases may not be part of the system requirements.  The QA team may be able to mentor the developers in designing unit test cases. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this quote sums up one of the problems with requirements gathering:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, &#xA;  but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”&#xA;     Robert McClosky&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T04:57:28.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1072" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1073" CreationDate="2011-03-15T07:16:14.910" Score="7" ViewCount="236" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently active as a project leader (under a project manager) on a project at the European Commission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've literally asked my PM to guide me, let me know what I could do to improve etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What would you recommend to do for getting good guidance?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The broader perspective of this question is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you recommend to do if you are a junior Project Leader to learn the tricks of the job and eventually, in a few years, get the status of PM?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: He told me to follow training on PM, go to conferences in the next months...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T19:55:21.837" Title="What are good steps for getting guidance to become a project manager?" Tags="&lt;project-leader&gt;&lt;training&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1072" CreationDate="2011-03-15T07:52:20.717" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may be controversial but I'm not sure trainings and conferences are the best way, but it definitely is the way which requires least effort from your PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First of all, you're in a pretty good position to learn about project management.&lt;/strong&gt; You are a project leader so I suppose there are some tasks you're fully responsible for - you have to deal tasks, coordinate people and generally ensure the job is getting done. That's basically what PMs do but in a larger scale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Second, something you'd probably make some good use of is full responsibility for some project.&lt;/strong&gt; If that isn't possible in your current workplace look for other opportunities. The most obvious one is organizing an event for your friends (like vacations or a trip). Also you may consider joining some &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/154/what-can-i-do-to-prepare-for-managing-a-project-which-is-staffed-mostly-with-volu&quot;&gt;voluntary project&lt;/a&gt; which is happening around. Although they aren't very typical project you can learn a lot being a part of organizers of such events. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Three, I would consider joining other organization.&lt;/strong&gt; I don't want to be unfair as I base on limited information you shared in a question, but think whether people in your workplace would support your chosen career path. Also that depends of course on project but at least some of projects done for European Union don't look like typical commercial projects so they may not be the place to learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;And four, which is connected with the previous point, if you think about changing workplace I find small companies great places to learn.&lt;/strong&gt; Not only is learning curve very narrow but also, pretty often, it's much easier to be promoted as the company grows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T07:52:20.717" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1072" CreationDate="2011-03-15T07:55:57.370" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're working as a project leader under a project manager, then it sounds like you're already on the right path towards leading your own project.  My suggestion is to try to take on more work communicating the project updates to other team members and taking on communication tasks delegated by the project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a larger project with lots of communication paths, taking the weight off of the project manager by funneling some of the communications to him/her can not only make the project more successful and help out the project manager, but it also puts you in a position where you're doing more project management tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard many project managers on here say that they ended up in project management because they were doing a different job and just ended up doing project management-type work, almost as an accident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, the best way to get into a project management role is to start taking on more project management responsibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T07:55:57.370" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1075" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-15T10:40:04.433" Score="8" ViewCount="10492" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you give examples of projects that failed due to their project management mistakes? Would be nice to have some internal details about &quot;why?&quot; and &quot;how?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2012-06-12T02:45:42.760" LastActivityDate="2012-06-12T17:22:30.233" Title="What are most typical iconic examples of a poor project management?" Tags="&lt;failure&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ClosedDate="2012-09-30T02:03:26.123" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-03-15T20:58:28.563" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1076" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1077" CreationDate="2011-03-15T11:28:50.170" Score="13" ViewCount="460" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had experiences in the past where different developers will give different qualities of estimates--which then have to be consolidated into a single project plan--only with a twist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One developer will look at a task, figure it sounds like an easy problem, and estimate a couple of hours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another developer will look at a task, figure it sounds easy, but recognize that there could be additional complexity or clarification along the way, so planning for contingencies, estimate a week.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A third developer doesn't want to do the task and in an effort to discourage its inclusion (or his assignment to it), will estimate a month.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does one go about discerning which estimates fall into which category? Do you just go by feel? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastActivityDate="2012-10-30T11:19:48.903" Title="Discerning estimate validity" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1076" CreationDate="2011-03-15T11:54:51.160" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Planning Poker is one of the options and is a very easy way of giving an 'average' estimation of the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UFmlz.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Planning Poker Cards&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is explained on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_poker&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; and a lot of other Web sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Planning Poker is a consensus-based technique for estimating, mostly used to estimate effort or relative size of tasks in software development. It is a variation of the Wideband Delphi method. It is most commonly used in agile software development, in particular the Extreme Programming methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I found great advantages is that everybody that is included in this has his estimation, and the extremes, like the one in your question are automatically removed during short discussions among developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If an estimation should take a long time, or are done quickly, by doing planning poker you get an insight view thanks to the opinion of all developers in the room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2012-10-07T15:43:54.957" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T15:43:54.957" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1076" CreationDate="2011-03-15T11:55:07.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Such an output from your estimators is a clear indicator of problems with the &lt;strong&gt;input&lt;/strong&gt;. You should make one step back and refine your requirements. Then again request an estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T11:55:07.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1079" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1080" CreationDate="2011-03-15T12:54:22.680" Score="26" ViewCount="8480" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question has raised a debate within my organization with multiple points of view. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several Project Managers think that they are completely different things aiming for different results whereas other colleagues believe that both methodologies could be combined. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be interested in understanding what makes PRINCE2 and SCRUM compatible and what makes them opponents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are your thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2020-07-21T06:43:07.747" Title="Can PRINCE2 and SCRUM work together?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1079" CreationDate="2011-03-15T12:57:28.447" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prince 2 is on project level, as Scrum can be done on 'managing product delivery' level within PRINCE2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum process is all about&#xA;  delivery. Fast and effective delivery&#xA;  is key. Within PRINCE2 the delivery process is a black box. PRINCE2 is all about managing the project’s process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GnFo7.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This makes Scrum a natural fit to the&#xA;  PRINCE2 ‘Managing Product Delivery’&#xA;  process. This also makes PRINCE2 the&#xA;  project management wrapper around&#xA;  Scrum. I think this is a great&#xA;  combination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is more info on this: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.borselaer.org/index.php/2010/03/whitebook-prince2-combined-with-scrum/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;whitebook&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastEditorUserId="591" LastEditDate="2011-09-08T06:18:50.617" LastActivityDate="2011-09-08T06:18:50.617" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1076" CreationDate="2011-03-15T13:46:48.867" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually any method which involves discussion between three estimators should do well. A few ideas you might find useful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Planning poker&lt;/strong&gt; which is pointed by Kennethvr.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Similar technique, which works for big number of tasks to be estimated at the same time, is &lt;strong&gt;magic estimation&lt;/strong&gt;. Read more here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://campey.blogspot.com/2010/09/magic-estimation.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://campey.blogspot.com/2010/09/magic-estimation.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have some &lt;strong&gt;historical data&lt;/strong&gt; you may approach the problem trying to base on that. One of my favorite techniques here is &lt;strong&gt;Evidence Based Scheduling&lt;/strong&gt;. See: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you look for something simple &lt;strong&gt;plain old discussion&lt;/strong&gt; between estimators should bring you to results which aren't spread that wide.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another trick that may improve quality of estimates in general, and this situation specifically, is using &lt;strong&gt;short estimation scale&lt;/strong&gt;. One idea can be &lt;strong&gt;T-shirt sizing&lt;/strong&gt; (S, M, L). Another, and the one that is usually an instant hit, is: &lt;strong&gt;1, 2, 3, TFB, NFC&lt;/strong&gt; (where TFB stands for Too F*king Big and NFC for No F*king Clue). The latter usually introduces fun factor to estimating which makes the process smoother.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As a rule of thumb: if results differ that much it is a clear signal people understand the issue differently, so if you want to get reasonable estimate you should get people at the same page in the first place and only then focus on getting some number which makes sense.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2012-10-30T08:39:35.300" LastActivityDate="2012-10-30T08:39:35.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1076" CreationDate="2011-03-15T13:53:38.457" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;How valid is any estimate? And what is the track record of each of the people providing previous estimates? Those are two big things to take into consideration. Given the productivity swings from developer to developer (I think DeMarco or Capers Jones said is was as large as 20 to 1 - dependent on ability/experience) it makes sense to have the varying ranges. You said about one finding an easy solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the best way is to get the person/team actually doing the work to provide the estimate, check their earlier estimates against delivery and have one senior developer check. It might require a few rounds to determine any major variations in specific sub-components.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="458" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-05-23T21:08:27.510" LastActivityDate="2011-05-23T21:08:27.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1075" CreationDate="2011-03-15T13:59:09.027" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a mini-series of such stories run on my blog some time ago:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2010/02/pm-failure-resource-management.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;I Want Them All&lt;/a&gt; is about lack of project monitoring, leaving inexperienced PM alone and adding many people late to the project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2010/02/pm-failure-win-lose-relationship.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Win-Lose Relationship&lt;/a&gt; is about ruining relation with client while trying to suck them out.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2010/03/pm-failure-working-overtime.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;I Expect You to Stay Late, Headcount&lt;/a&gt; is about burning the team out and then doing nothing to save morale or bring people back to the right track.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2010/03/pm-failure-own-project-to-run.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Don't You Have Own Project to Run&lt;/a&gt; is about ignoring help from others and making people frustrated and unwilling to help others.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T13:59:09.027" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-03-15T20:58:28.563" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1075" CreationDate="2011-03-15T14:01:49.647" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;London Ambulance Service computer aided dispatch system in the early 90's is a well known disaster, on all levels (management, technical, etc etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/doc/33885504/After-the-Crash-A-Case-Study-of-the-London-Ambulance-Service-Computer-Aided-Dispath-System&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scribd.com/doc/33885504/After-the-Crash-A-Case-Study-of-the-London-Ambulance-Service-Computer-Aided-Dispath-System&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="670" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T14:01:49.647" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-03-15T20:58:28.563" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1075" CreationDate="2011-03-15T15:02:20.647" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, the worst example of management is a &quot;project manager&quot; telling a team member something like &quot;I'm not interested by your problems, just get it done&quot;. This shows really a PM not doing his/her very job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T15:02:20.647" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-03-15T20:58:28.563" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1075" CreationDate="2011-03-15T15:08:15.387" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mythical Man Month&lt;/strong&gt; - several essays based on big project failures. There's one example quite curious mentioned in Chapter 7. This example actually was taken from another book... the Holy Bible: &lt;strong&gt;The Babel Tower&lt;/strong&gt;. Main failure? Lack of communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other valid project failures (at some level, not completely failures) are the Denver Airport mess or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nasa.gov/offices/oce/appel/ask/issues/39/39s_big_dig.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Boston Big Dig&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="458" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2012-06-12T02:48:26.860" LastActivityDate="2012-06-12T02:48:26.860" CommentCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-03-15T20:58:28.563" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1075" CreationDate="2011-03-15T16:29:19.420" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PM not understanding the toolset they have to work with. I saw a PM modify a standard corporate budget spreadsheet to account for a two year project. Unfortunately he did not understand the internals of the spreadsheet and he seriously overran the project because six months of budget data in the middle of the spreadsheet were not getting added to the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lesson: always understand your tools and if you don't, check any changes with someone who does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="389" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T16:29:19.420" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-03-15T20:58:28.563" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1028" CreationDate="2011-03-15T17:09:31.713" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;OEM = original equipment manufacture (aka owner of hardware or software - Apple, Dell, HP, IBM, SAP, Oracle are all OEM's)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically an OEM must supply consulting for their products.  Now, third-party consulting firms like Accenture could choose to train their folks on a product and deliver product specific consulting like an SAP Practice at Accenture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My guess is that OEM-Dependent consulting is that consulting that ONLY the OEM vendor delivers because is so specialized or perishable that the 3rd Party teams can not profitably deliver that service.  For example, API consulting on a specific low use module like Admin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a young start-up with no critical mass and no 3rd Party SI's to deliver services, all of your consulting would be OEM-Dependent.  You as the buyer are dependent on the OEM for that service.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does that sound like what your instructor is talking about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="640" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T17:09:31.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1090" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-15T17:40:40.077" Score="15" ViewCount="10184" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some consider the BOE the most important part of an estimate. How do you know that, when you write one, you hit the necessary aspects that brings confidence to the reader that the estimate is sound? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What makes a quality Basis of Estimate?  What gets included, what gets excluded? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-09-30T01:57:39.017" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T01:57:39.017" Title="Basis of Estimate" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1063" CreationDate="2011-03-15T19:48:35.667" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both of the answers already given are excellent and I support them. I just wanted to add one modifiying factory. At a recent Agile panel one of the speakers made a very good observation. &quot;If things are working and running well, then getting someone to change to a whole new system is going to be a very hard sell. Pitching an change to Agile is going to have better traction if things are already broken.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you need to tailor your Agile reponse to what is actually broken. You don't just swoop in and &quot;Go Agile&quot;, you have to see what has been happening and migrate from that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T19:48:35.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1092" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-15T19:48:59.843" Score="8" ViewCount="3836" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use the Scrum methodology for our software development. Since software development isn't the core activity of our company, and since this company isn't agile methods oriented yet, I need, as the ScrumMaster, to provide an interface between the Scrum methodology and the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The top management asks me to maintain a classic project plan, using MS Project, at mid-term (6 months), with resources defined, etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: How can I provide a useful project plan for my top management while keeping all the flexibility and agility of my team in the daily organisation and operation, and also stay Scrum compliant?!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, defining resources in the project plan removes a lot of benefits of sprint concepts, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="644" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-09-30T02:07:56.180" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T02:11:01.887" Title="How to link Scrum release backlog to conventional project plan (MS project) in keeping sprint benefits?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;integration-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1072" CreationDate="2011-03-15T19:55:21.837" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;90% of what a project manager does is communication. Perception colors any and all communication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention working on MS Project. This is a good and practical skill for many PM jobs, but it is not project management it is learning a tool that PMs use for one part of their job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The good news is you are already doing something about becoming a better project manager, you are asking questions. Being a good project manager is a constant state of asking questions and learning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To expand off of JMort's suggestion, you want to find ways to help the project communicate. &#xA;- Offer to run the status meeting&#xA;- Offer to compile the weekly status reports&#xA;- If the project is large, suggest to your lead PM that you take a subset of the project and run it, reporting progress to him/her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then keep listening, keep asking questions and keep active in the PM community both locally and virtuall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best,&#xA;Joel BC&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T19:55:21.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="697" CreationDate="2011-03-15T20:31:50.993" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Teams that form with a clear definition of working agreements and norms have a leg up on most teams.  If you repeatedly violate the working agreements and norms of the team the team should make that obvious to you, the team member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that scenario, I have seen the team member who is not living inside those working agreements will change their behavior or actually help the team remove them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have not established these things up front, you run into the swamp described in all the answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="640" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T20:31:50.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="983" CreationDate="2011-03-15T21:35:53.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found it useful to streamline the minute-taking process by ensuring that open action items from each meeting automatically become the agenda items of the next meeting, plus any new items of note. Close those open AIs. Following these steps will cut down on the time needed to record the open items and streamline the meeting, since participants will recognize the agenda as the previous meeting's AIs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user673" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T21:35:53.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1092" CreationDate="2011-03-15T23:10:23.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all: I don't bother much about being 100% Scrum compliant, or any methodology, so the following method might arouse some comments from those who follow a methodology to the letter. I unscrupulously steal every good idea, whatever the source, as long as it fits good project management practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First build the &lt;strong&gt;WBS&lt;/strong&gt; of your project up to work package level. Then design the plan or work package &lt;strong&gt;network&lt;/strong&gt; the way you want to build the product. After estimating, this network goes into MS Project for &lt;strong&gt;scheduling&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The work packages represent the &lt;strong&gt;Product backlog&lt;/strong&gt;. Based upon your schedule, you can devide the duration in &lt;strong&gt;sprints&lt;/strong&gt; or groups of sprints with intermediate results (iterations). This depends upon the product you are building and/or the way you organise the project to track progress (increasing product maturity).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each sprint the product backlog items are translated to a sprint backlog. From then on it is the normal Scrum proces at work here. Time is tracked against work packages and together with physical % complete and/or ETC can be fed back into MSP or any other 'system' for reporting and forecasting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although we're far from big design up front, as some may call it, you do need to have a pretty good idea of what done looks like. But hey, that is sound project management, right?&#xA;So the work package network rarely changes (unless increasing understanding leads to an improved plan), but flexibility is allowed within the work packages, depending upon the feedback of the customer after each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based upon your WBS and network and the size of the project, you can have more than 1 scrum team working in parallel, each team assigned to a single (big) work package or (usually) a group of work packages leading up to a specific result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all the work packages have to be done by using scrum; typically only the development stuff is organised this way. If you have other work to be done as part of the whole project (like training, transition to business etc.) these may follow another 'method' of realisation. As always, it all depends ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this is usefull.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T23:10:23.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1092" CreationDate="2011-03-16T03:35:56.203" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a little less structured than Stephan, but have had experience with this as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I manage programs that combine hardware and software. The hardware is running in a strict waterfall/BDUF model, while the software is operating in &quot;mostly&quot; Scrum. In MS project, I have listed the overall project estimated number of sprints (obtained by doing a detailed planning sprint to get an order of magnitude estimate on the product backlog). On the MS project, I track the completion of the sprints. Originally, it was just &quot;Sprint 1 is done, mark complete.&quot; For the MS Project purposes, I divide the total estimated backlog by the number of sprints. It allows me to present the entire project in MS Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I then track the software program in more traditional Scrum formats with a burn down/up and so on. If the software derails, I know about it here, and I adjust the MS Project to reflect this under the &quot;tweak it to look right&quot; model. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MS Project is a reporting tool and &quot;baseball bat&quot;. It is used to report progress and also is the blunt insturment to show sales and others why we can't instantly produce a product they just thought up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-09-30T02:11:01.887" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T02:11:01.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1099" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1115" CreationDate="2011-03-16T10:49:53.157" Score="5" ViewCount="202" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am managing a project for a big company.&#xA;The sales manager, who is supposed to be my POC, is not co-operating and actually causes many delays. I know I can send a lot of emails to everybody, including her and my managers, with the deadlines and delays, but I want to keep a good atmosphere and productive working relationship.&#xA;How do I do that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="678" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2012-07-19T06:08:06.860" LastActivityDate="2012-07-19T06:08:06.860" Title="Customer management and communication - how to keep things productive?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;customer-satisfaction&gt;&lt;relationships&gt;&lt;customer&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1099" CreationDate="2011-03-16T11:17:29.013" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes &quot;good atmosphere&quot; and &quot;being productive&quot; are counterparts. As long as you're a project manager and this is what your company is paying you for - focus on your obligations. I mean - be productive. Let the company worry about good atmosphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice it means (at least):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Formally collect commitments to your plans from all project members, including her&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Formally report missed deadlines&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Establish an explicit human resource plan (with obligations, rewards, and penalties)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T11:17:29.013" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1090" CreationDate="2011-03-16T11:24:32.233" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good Basis of Estimate (BoE) starts with a &lt;strong&gt;quality WBS&lt;/strong&gt;, as is everything in project management. It's the documentation of how a time or cost estimate was produced for each lowest level (work package) of the WBS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Minimally it should include &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the method used for estimating, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;assumptions taken, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;who made the estimate, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;specific cost figures used (eg internal hour rates or external consultants fees etc.), &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;possible risks involved (with the worst case estimate, see below)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, it should be the proof you made a reliable estimate for the project, based upon the information known at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All work packages should be included; rolling up those cost figures (higher level WBS elements) together with management and contingecy reserves will be the &lt;strong&gt;project's Budget&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen BoE documents of government agencies like NASA that have much higher requirements for their BoE (like probablity distribution for each WBS element) and require lots of additional documentation and multiple estimating techniques. But for my type of projects the above will do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the method for estimating, there are ofcourse many possibilities. The ones I use most often are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Historical data&lt;/strong&gt;: comparing the work packages with data from similar projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Breaking down&lt;/strong&gt; the Work Package into its tasks and estimating each task&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally you should work with estimate ranges, taking into account uncertainty and hence schedule risk. Some use PERT, but I stick with Most likely - Worst Case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T11:24:32.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1102" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1111" CreationDate="2011-03-16T11:26:28.990" Score="17" ViewCount="7403" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are positive and negative stakeholders in every project (according to PMBOK). Positive ones will benefit from project implementation, for example their work will become more effective, more automated, easier, and more fun. At the same time negative stakeholders will have problems once the project is implemented. For example, they will be fired because their job will be done by new software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a project manager responsibility to take negative stakeholders into account and neutralize their influence to the project affairs. How do you do this in your real-life projects? What are the most effective methods?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2012-07-29T17:10:45.807" Title="How to neutralize negative project stakeholders?" Tags="&lt;stakeholders&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="873" CreationDate="2011-03-16T13:59:41.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was trying to promote using organisation wiki instead of emails I have just inserted links to initially created pages into emails and sent them to interested people. I usually asked them to answer me on the that page. Usually discussion were moving to the page. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="455" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T13:59:41.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1099" CreationDate="2011-03-16T14:30:09.923" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well I have been at both ends of the ropes at certain point in time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a project manager&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I remind the POC of their commitment either through polite email or a phone call&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I also send the summary of the conversation to my boss, POC's boss, and the POC itself&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It has helped me a lot as POC now knows that he will be held accountable should the project be achieving standstill&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Because every email is send at appropriate date, meaning when the POC misses a deadline and most importantly the emails are polite, they take care of maintaining the atmosphere.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes its better not to think about creating a good atmosphere because in the end you will be suffering if the project comes to standstill just because your POC is not interested in your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another effective method I found was when working with a clothing store for their e-retailing website was that I used make certain decisions myself as I found them to be not interested in what I was doing. I took decisions about the design layout, the fonts, features etc. I just made stuff according to my uderstanding and then send them reports about this this and this has been done --&gt; need your feedback. If no credible reply was there. I assumed that part of work to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Key is formulate your email in such way that at later stage the POC will be held accountable for the wrong decision or missing features. This way you can also ask for extra $$ for doing more work than required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="616" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T14:30:09.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1102" CreationDate="2011-03-16T16:39:42.433" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think attitude of negative stakeholders (as you define them) is usually out of control of project manager. In vast majority of cases PM has no power over them whatsoever so the tools which are available are limited:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Escalation to people who have formal power over negative stakeholders usually positively influence their involvement in project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ruling negative stakeholders out from every critical project tasks (if possible) would reduce impact of their attitude.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Convincing some of them that their behavior would affect their future careers can bring you at least a few of allies, especially when firing all of them is not the only option at the end of the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Basing on available documentation, although may be risky as it isn't always complete and up-to-date, may be alternative when negative stakeholders don't seem to be helpful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in terms of taking negative stakeholders into consideration it actually is PM's responsibility as this is one of project risks, often a big one, which should be dealt with. And this definitely is a job for PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way: the problem is by the way bread and butter for project managers who deal with transition projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T16:39:42.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1106" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1113" CreationDate="2011-03-16T17:02:24.560" Score="6" ViewCount="719" Body="&lt;p&gt;When selecting a team do you think it’s beneficial to use information collated from exercises such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles&quot;&gt;Honey &amp;amp; Mumford – Learning Style Questionnaires&lt;/a&gt;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, would you encourage team/individual exercises like this in an existing team with the intention to strengthen and improve working style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="449" LastEditorUserId="91" LastEditDate="2011-03-16T17:38:42.023" LastActivityDate="2011-03-19T10:34:54.517" Title="Are there any wrong methods when selecting a team?" Tags="&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;education&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1106" CreationDate="2011-03-16T18:20:08.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There certainly are wrong methods, and one of these is to just throw people together and hope they gel. I don't have any experience of Honey &amp;amp; Mumford, but if (as it seems) it is to do with learning styles, it may not be the best tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have used Belbin profiling And have referenced it in &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/631/as-a-pm-how-do-you-select-your-project-team-members/670#670&quot;&gt;another answer elsewhere&lt;/a&gt;), which seems to work well if you have the flexibility to ensure that you have covered all the different personality types. It can also explain why a project may be struggling, despite having good people in the team: I once had a small team of three of whom two were &quot;Resource Investigators&quot;, one was a &quot;Team Worker&quot; and I was a &quot;Completer Finisher&quot;. Even taking into account secondary roles, we had big gaps, which I filled on an informal basis by asking other interested parties who had the right profiles to participate in our team meetings, which made a huge difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer the final part of your question, yes, I would encourage this type of exercise, for reasons of knowing what you have, and giving you the opportunity to fill gaps and/or improve the overall balance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-03-18T22:57:23.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1108" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1112" CreationDate="2011-03-16T18:39:57.367" Score="15" ViewCount="398" Body="&lt;p&gt;I managed a project in a company where I was the only person with experience of using formal methods (Prince 2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The directors of the company, and the other senior staff, all took the attitude that the project was my responsibility, and if I asked for help they would give it - but otherwise I should just go away and deliver the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They were not interested in forming a project board, or reviewing risk registers, or even breaking it into manageable stages. It's not that they were disinterested - they just didn't &lt;em&gt;&quot;get&quot;&lt;/em&gt; the reason for formal processes, as they had never used them in the past. It's not that all of their projects had been successful in the past: their management style just didn't fit with formal processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I capitulated and delivered the project (on time and budget and to their satisfaction, amazingly) without imposing any formal processes outside my own project team, but I felt very exposed. If I faced a similar situation again, how should I handle it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastEditorUserId="105" LastEditDate="2011-03-18T12:58:02.670" LastActivityDate="2011-03-18T12:58:02.670" Title="Is it still possible to use formal methods if the organization has chosen not to adopt them?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1108" CreationDate="2011-03-16T19:24:20.763" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Change the company. If you're interested to grow as a project manager this business environment is against you. I'm not saying they are bad businessmen, not at all. I'm just saying that your professional growth will be significantly delayed there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T19:24:20.763" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1108" CreationDate="2011-03-16T20:03:52.787" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Project Manager, you have many tools in your toolbox. As the resident expert in your company, it is your responsibility to select and use the tools that you find necessary to ensure a successful project, and it sounds like you have had success within your team using those formal methods and tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If upper management is giving you the resources you need, but are just oblivious to your processes, don't abandon the tools that help you and your team deliver a successful result. There may be a time down the road when an issue arises, and management asks, &quot;how did this happen? What are we going to do about it?&quot; You'll be glad you had a risk register.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stick to your guns, keep advancing yourself, and find opportunities to demonstrate value in the tools you use. For example, write a project charter, even if nobody reads it. Manage scope and create a change management plan. When scope creep happens, execute the change management process. Management doesn't have to drink the Kool-Aid, but they'll be better off thanks to your commitment to good project management processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T20:03:52.787" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1102" CreationDate="2011-03-16T20:16:22.120" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I never would have said this a year ago, but sometimes giving negative stakeholders some attention and TLC can convert them into powerful allies for your project. In your example, if their job is being eliminated, there's nothing you can do. However, in one of my recent projects, we took a negative stakeholder aside, showed him how even though the project seemed like a headache for him, it was good for the company -- and he liked being employed by the company! In another instance, we gave a negative stakeholder an opportunity to give input into the product design. We haven't actually implemented her idea, but feeling like she had contributed and had ownership changed her attitude tremendously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Converting negatives to positives is probably the exception rather than the norm, and I would not spend a ton of time and energy trying to do it. However, if you are able to succeed, it can reap great benefits. In both of my examples, the converts turned into great project champions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T20:16:22.120" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1108" CreationDate="2011-03-16T20:26:19.317" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Years ago, there was a great series of articles by &lt;strong&gt;Donna Fitzgerald&lt;/strong&gt;, describing &quot;&lt;strong&gt;stealth Project Management&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; practices which I took to heart during an assignment which was a bit like the situation you described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears they're still posted on Techrepublic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techrepublic.com/article/stealth-pm-how-to-craft-a-successful-launch-quietly/1050480?tag=mantle_skin;content&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Stealth PM: How to craft a successful launch, quietly&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techrepublic.com/article/stealth-project-management-staying-on-track/1061805?tag=mantle_skin;content&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Stealth project management: Staying on track&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While searching for it, there's a summary and some criticism (with reply from Donna) on Hal Macomber's site here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reformingprojectmanagement.com/2003/03/03/137/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Management Just Unnecessary Overhead?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope you like it as much as I did. Donna has written some really great stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T20:26:19.317" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1106" CreationDate="2011-03-16T20:37:36.597" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To be honest I find approaches like Honey &amp;amp; Mumford (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meredith_Belbin#Belbin.27s_Research&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Belbin's model&lt;/a&gt; is even more popular) pretty artificial. In real life we usually try to cover project with specific skills in the first place, so what you look for are traits and experience. Then, you don't want to ruin team work so you try to avoid to bring conflicting characters and such. But it is in this order and not the opposite one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Actually if you have a team of people with right skills but you have some imbalanced set of characters you have quite a good chance to succeed, especially under a good leader. On the other hand, if you have ideal set of characters but your team lacks some important skill or skills you're most likely to fail.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to use one of such models to support your choice, considering you have plenty of options but on the other hand if you go with right skill set and gut feeling in terms of people characters you really can't go wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Btw: if you want to see positive approach to the same problem, i.e. how to select team and not what you want to avoid while selecting team see &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/631/as-a-pm-how-do-you-select-your-project-team-members&quot;&gt;As a PM, How do you select your project team members?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T20:37:36.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1106" CreationDate="2011-03-17T05:21:04.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that the worse way to put a team together is to pick random people and hope for the best. You can make a good team with any group of people with good leadership. And I mean any group of people. I've worked on projects with bullies who got handled well and became part of the team and brought real value. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look in to business books on team building - often the knowledge in teamwork comes from the business world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T05:21:04.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1099" CreationDate="2011-03-17T07:59:54.020" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this situation, I would get half-an-hour in the PoC's diary, and meet with her to discuss:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether she knows the responsibilities of the role that she has been allocated;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether she has sufficient time and interest to carry out the role effectively;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether she has sufficient confidence in you that she doesn't know why you are bothering her with &quot;trivia&quot;, or alternatively that she thinks that you are empowered to make some of the decisions yourself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be that she will suggest someone else to take on the role of PoC, and if that person is enthusiastic (and authorised to make decisions) you should welcome this, but make sure that you don't leave the existing PoC in a difficult position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the very least, you will have raised these issues and should record the meeting in your project diary, and don't forget that if you can't resolve an issue yourself, the project structure exists to allow such issues to be escalated. Not a nice thing to do, but sometimes necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T07:59:54.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1102" CreationDate="2011-03-17T08:51:32.197" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A 360 degree analysis of stakeholders will probably show that you have both positive and negative stakeholders who are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Directly involved in the project (ie part of the extended project team);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Directly impacted by the project but not directly involved (ie their jobs will change specifically because of the project, one way or another);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Indirectly impacted (ie they may not have to change anything, but they will be aware of the project and may have more influence than might be expected).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM needs to deal with group 1, as they are within his or her sphere of control. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Group 2 can be dealt with by the PM (as per the other answers), and the PM may also involve other people such as HR, line managers, corporate communications (if this exists). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that Group 3 is the hardest to handle. They will often be sitting outside the project, looking in at it, and may have the ear of the senior people in the company. You have to get them on side, and that needs the PM to work with professional communicators who can create a campaign of communication (which will also help Groups 1 and 2), designed to get the right message out. This &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; a part of the project, and is one that is easily forgotten, so I agree with @pawelbrodzinski's comment about this being a project risk which should be managed within the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T08:51:32.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1117" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1121" CreationDate="2011-03-17T12:47:44.293" Score="10" ViewCount="960" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently our team was informed that they will be joined to another team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We work in a big system and there are several subsystems that demand specific competencies, currently we have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team-A --&gt; competence-A&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team-B --&gt; competence-B&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our project manager asked us to follow a rule at the beginning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tasks with competence-A will be handled by Team-B and vice-versa and then we will have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team-A --&gt; competence-B&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team-B --&gt; competence-A&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team will have to self-organize to give support to each other and help on competence build-up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way I see this plan happening successfully is with a strong team-work, organization and internal communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pain points are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to build-up this team-work to make things happen naturally?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the best approach/methodology to this issue? (currently we are working with a pragmatic Scrum (we call it &quot;Scrumban&quot;, see little more &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/8/strict-or-pragmatic-scrum/102#102&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering whether some external activities with the people to make them work together would improve the team-work, communication and create a friendship between them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Additional info:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;90%-80% of the people are seniors and everybody is engaged to the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We will keep metrics separated for a couple of months.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After a couple of months we want to have a completely joined team (Team-C with competence A and B).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Meetings between Team-A and Team-b already started to allying some process handling differences.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Both teams are co-located.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="105" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-01-07T14:15:39.537" LastActivityDate="2019-01-07T14:15:39.537" Title="How to improve the team-work?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;scrumban&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1106" CreationDate="2011-03-17T12:48:58.813" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like Perry before me, I believe that a good management can work (almost) any issue that comes up in a team. Yet, I believe in human relations and intuition, terms that are often under-estimated in the business environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I choose my people myself, interviewing them from the first stage using no &quot;formal&quot; techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In these interviews, I try to predict the following parameters:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How well does the person suit for my open position.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How communicative she is, or more precisely, what kind of communication does she use? Is this communication method(s) suitable for me and for the rest of the team?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How close she is to the other team members in age, social level, lifestyle, hobbies etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not reject anyone according to this compliance, but I do think that there is a greater potential for team work if people can first be friends and only then co-workers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, I usually ask someone from the team to join the interview in order to have an additional opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="678" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-03-18T07:10:02.073" LastActivityDate="2011-03-18T07:10:02.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1102" CreationDate="2011-03-17T15:00:15.470" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not recommand on neutrelizing anyone from the project.&#xA;Every opinion should be heared. sometimes there is a lot to learn from these so called negative opinions.&#xA;People are often frustrated not becuase they are about to lose their job, but because they feel &#xA;that they are not taken under consideration in planning/ implementing a new system/ work method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sometimes listening to what people have to say can really teach us PM a lot about what we do and how we do it. we may have focused on the technical side rather than the user experience, or we may have just forgot to explain the users what is happening. their disutisfaction is a warning sign for us.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;things that makes a negative project stakeholder (excluding losing her job):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Poor user experience &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Poor system performance &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improper training about the new system/ process &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;New solution doesn't fix the users' old problems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keeping the users out of the picture. lack of communication or poor PR for the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="678" LastEditorUserId="678" LastEditDate="2011-03-17T21:17:42.793" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T21:17:42.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1117" CreationDate="2011-03-17T18:50:06.710" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's one question I have at the beginning: are both teams co-located? Depending on that techniques you'd use may vary a bit. Anyway a few ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To foster knowledge exchange I'd choose one person from team A to join team B and vice versa. They would work as local go-to-person to share knowledge whenever needed. At the beginning it would be like full-time job but with time they should be able to take some regular tasks on their chests.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't isolate teams longer than needed. Actually I wouldn't even start with telling people from team A to work on competence B only. Anyway, I'd try to get as soon as possible to the point where you have both competences merged on one board/in one backlog and you pull them according to their priorities no matter what was the original competence of person taking the task. It would probably be a bit longer but it would be way more natural and also you'd have this attitude that no one is in better (or worse) situation. I take starting situation as given but I'd try to move toward this kind of organization ASAP.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I would invest time to have everyone form both teams on daily meetings. For some time old teams would know better when new teams would be visiting dead ends or discussing easy issues etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Team leaders should be first ones who show helpful attitude. Since there will be a lot of questions at the beginning everyone should feel they get support whenever needed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some effort on networking would be great: having a couple of beers jointly or whatever seems fine in your organization, team, culture, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T18:50:06.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1122" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1192" CreationDate="2011-03-17T20:43:16.240" Score="5" ViewCount="1072" Body="&lt;p&gt;How would you manage/lead a project team during a reorganisation of the company. The project itself has nothing to do with the reorg, but the people are affected: some change departments, some are presented different working conditions. All decided above their heads. And all the while, when peoples lives are affected, you have to maintain focus on the project vision and deliverables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T16:30:36.943" Title="Team focus during corporate restructuring" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1122" CreationDate="2011-03-17T23:02:29.550" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not certain you, yourself, can repair the situation other than gently reminding the survivors that there is still work to do and what needs doing. Be professional, and try to remind them to be professional as well. Restructurings, reorganizations and layoffs always introduce significant amounts of fear, uncertainty and doubt. The clearest cure would come from the top, as senior leadership can quickly squash rumors with open, honest facts. When uncertainty outperforms truth from above, then every rumor could be true and workers will treat every rumor as if it were true. When rumors rule, fear triumphs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm currently listening to &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0061353248&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Amazon link&quot;&gt;Predictably Irrational&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://danariely.com/the-books/excerpted-from-chapter-4-%E2%80%93-the-cost-of-social-norms/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;book excerpt&quot;&gt;chapter 4&lt;/a&gt; goes on about the difference between social &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norm_%28sociology%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;norms&lt;/a&gt; and market norms. One of the key points the author was making is that folks typically work harder when motivated by social norms (which is why many companies try to introduce such norms by pushing for the &quot;we're all family&quot; approach). When social norms get replaced by market norms, people who had the social norm attitude feel betrayed, and it can take years to recover from that betrayal. If any of your senior leadership is saying &quot;it's nothing personal, it's just business&quot; then they've totally repudiated all social norms in favor of market norms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T23:02:29.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1090" CreationDate="2011-03-18T03:42:16.213" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;Basis of Estimate (BOE)&lt;/strong&gt; is one of several types of products required by formal government proposals. (Others include cost, price, and/or technical evaluations of subcontractor proposals, Priced Bills of Material (PBOM), &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/512/where-to-get-general-info-on-work-breakdown-structure-wbs&quot;&gt;Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)&lt;/a&gt;, lists of required Government Furnished Equipment/Information/Support/Facilities/etc. (GFE/GFI/GFS/GFF), and others.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although the term may be used more broadly outside of the government sphere, within it, the purpose and required content of a BOE are not only standardized but codified in the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) and Defense FAR (DFAR).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most common type of BOE is a labor BOE, and its purpose is to justify the number of labor hours the bidder has proposed to complete a given scope of work. &lt;strong&gt;A labor BOE should not--as a rule--address costs or rates.&lt;/strong&gt; It is only concerned with labor hours. Technical people review BOEs to ensure the hours are properly justified; finance people review labor hour rates and the conversion of hours to cost and price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A BOE should contain the following information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A description of the &lt;strong&gt;technical task&lt;/strong&gt; for which hours are being estimated. Often this section will either reference or include descriptions from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/512/where-to-get-general-info-on-work-breakdown-structure-wbs&quot;&gt;Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)&lt;/a&gt; or Statement of Work (SOW). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A discussion of the &lt;strong&gt;estimating method(s)&lt;/strong&gt;. This section is typically just a couple of words as there are only a few stock answers that meet the compliance requirements. The logic of actually implementing this method to arrive an an estimate is discussed later.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The most common is &lt;strong&gt;analogy or similar to&lt;/strong&gt;, where the work being proposed will be compared to identical or similar work that has been previously performed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bottoms up&lt;/strong&gt;, where a subject matter expert (SME) in the relevant field provides their assessment of the effort required. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cost estimating relationship (CER)&lt;/strong&gt;, which is an equation used to calculate hours based on a scale factor from another total. Most often, CERs are used for program management or functional, level-of-effort (LOE) support (e.g. configuration management).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Background&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Source of actuals&lt;/strong&gt;, which only applies to the analogy or similar to method. This section would describe the work that the proposed effort is being compared to. It will also cite the source of actuals (i.e. specific charge numbers that document how many hours were actually required to complete the historical task and enough meta data than an independent auditor with access to the historical database can verify the entries)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Relevant experience&lt;/strong&gt;, which only applies to the bottoms-up method. This describes why the person making the estimate is qualified to do so, typically by summarizing the author's previous work in the field and justifying it's applicability.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Derivation of CER&lt;/strong&gt;. Normally CERs are justified by deriving a percentage for the effort based on history. For example, a similar software development project consumed 11 percent of the total hours doing program management, thus our bid for PM will be 11 percent of the other bid hours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Derivation&lt;/strong&gt;. This section actually applies the estimating method to calculate a number of hours. It make take the actual hours for the analogous work and modify it by a complexity factor to account for differences in scope, by a scaling of the period of performance, or in another other way that is sensible and can be defended. A CER derivation would show the basis of hours that was being scaled from. A bottoms-up would discuss at as low a level of detail as possible how the logic behind the SME's estimate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Labor spread. Typically a table showing how many hours will be expended each month.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other meta data required to cost the hours. This can be things like the salary grade or experience level/mix of the people that will be performing the work, the geographic location where the work will be performed (important because labor and overhead rates vary by location for companies with multiple sites)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically BOEs are written at a given level of the WBS and taken together justify 100 percent of the prime contractor's labor hours. (Subcontractor labor is addressed in the aforementioned subcontractor proposals, technical evaluations and cost/price evaluations.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="360" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-03-18T03:42:16.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1125" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1126" CreationDate="2011-03-18T13:08:41.103" Score="25" ViewCount="5314" Body="&lt;p&gt;Report Performance (especially if it is behind plans) is a responsibility of a project manager (according to PMBOK). Very often adequate and accurate reporting of insufficient performance will provoke a negative reaction of a project sponsor. Consequences may be fatal, including project closure and a discharge of the PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having all this in mind, shall the project manager always (!) be honest and accurate with his/her reports about poor project performance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;p.s. I wrote a blog post about this very problem: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yegor256.com/2015/01/05/how-to-be-honest-and-keep-customer.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to Be Honest and Keep a Customer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastEditorUserId="91" LastEditDate="2018-03-04T13:46:55.060" LastActivityDate="2018-03-04T13:46:55.060" Title="How to deliver bad news to a project sponsor?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;communication-management&gt;&lt;project-sponsor&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1125" CreationDate="2011-03-18T13:49:07.487" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should always deliver all the facts as objectively as possible. And as soon as possible. There is one exception if you think you can have a number of alternatives or workarounds/plan of actions quickly available. Then you can wait until you have all information to present to your sponsor and/or steerco: both the problem and the solution(s). But there shouldn't be too much time between the discovery of the bad news and your communication about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once they smoke you're holding back information, all &lt;strong&gt;trust&lt;/strong&gt; you've worked hard to establish will be gone in an instant, and it is very difficult to regain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, make sure they hear the story from you. You have no control over the way other people present the facts, and this can also create bias between you and the sponsor if he hears it again from you, but a bit differently ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-18T14:10:02.857" LastActivityDate="2011-03-18T14:10:02.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="63" CreationDate="2011-03-18T15:59:49.053" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am CTO at Rally - but don't miss &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilezen.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;AgileZen&lt;/a&gt; for small to medium sized projects of any style.  Agile Zen is based on lean kanban concepts to help you move work by limiting your work in process.  Check out their twitter stream of supper happy users at @agilezen.  Tag line:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Project management gets lean&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are considering doing agile/scrum/xp/kanban in large scale software or systems environment, you can start with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rallydev.com/agile_products/editions/community/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Community edition of Rally's Enterprise product with up to 10 users free.&lt;/a&gt; Check out Rally's twitter stream at @RallySoftware.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="640" LastActivityDate="2011-03-18T15:59:49.053" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-03-18T15:59:49.053" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="744" CreationDate="2011-03-18T17:19:45.237" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What we actually did: My colleague with previous C# training is going up to date in C# skills and he began developing the new version of the software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We scheduled the project in order to replace &lt;em&gt;gradually&lt;/em&gt; the different elements written with Zinc by C# code. First the part to embed the Flash UI, then the part used to grab pictures from the slideshow, and finally the part gluing together the different part of the system, including the embedded FFMpeg video encoder with a huge tunnel effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way we can keep a working software at every moment, and in the same time improve it gradually. And my colleague has more time in order to get up to date, without engaging in a monolithic project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, the project is on track and going ahead well. The first improvements are really promising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastActivityDate="2011-03-18T17:19:45.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1129" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-03-18T19:24:45.527" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;Work Breakdown Structure&lt;/strong&gt; (WBS) is a result-oriented hierarchical breakdown of the project's deliverables and supporting processes that produce these deliverables. The WBS describes the whole scope of the project. What is not in the WBS is not in scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The deliverables are decomposed up till &lt;strong&gt;work package&lt;/strong&gt; level. It is a management control point for duration planning, cost estimates and assigning responsibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A WBS contains both a visual representation (hierarchical tree or outline) and a description of each element, called the &lt;strong&gt;WBS Dictionary&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The WBS is the the tool for integrating&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scope Management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time Management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cost Management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quality Management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk Management &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Procurement Management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;HR Management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communication Management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-12-17T17:11:25.333" LastActivityDate="2012-12-17T17:11:25.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1130" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-03-18T19:24:45.527" Score="0" Body="Questions about how to create or manage a Work Breakdown Structure." OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-12-17T17:05:16.247" LastActivityDate="2012-12-17T17:05:16.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1132" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1134" CreationDate="2011-03-18T23:07:48.627" Score="9" ViewCount="269" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am attempting to get a proposal going where some time is set aside for innovation, similar to the well known free time at Google, but I fear that one of the biggest argument will be that it will encroach onto project time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if your are PM on those projects, how would you manage or balance the team's time on the project vs the innovation time, especially on projects that have hard deadlines? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="480" LastActivityDate="2011-03-19T21:16:42.830" Title="How to mix innovation time with project time?" Tags="&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;innovation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1125" CreationDate="2011-03-18T23:11:37.523" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When communicating with project sponsors, well, when communicating with pretty much everyone in a project team I find that open and straightforward communication usually is the best way to go. When we discuss bad news it should be also communicated as soon as possible as, on a general level, you can treat bad news as a project risk which you should manage. So basically I agree with Stephan on that (+1).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the thing I learned to take into consideration is the character of the project sponsor. Actually it does matter how you deliver bad news to and the message itself should be baked in a way adjusted to the addressee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I don't advise to delay the message or just use some lies I know people who I can share the naked truth with and those who need a very specific approach, like selling the truth as otherwise it wouldn't be accepted or covering people who did their best but project is all red despite their efforts etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: PM should be honest and accurate with their reports but the form of the message does matter and should vary depending on who is the project sponsor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-03-18T23:11:37.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1132" CreationDate="2011-03-18T23:28:43.513" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;All sorts of innovation programs are always a trade-off. From a project perspective you usually lose more than you get, e.g. you can allocate only 4/5 of people time, which is measurable difference, and what you get instead is people who are a bit more motivated and happy. The gain of innovation programs is on company level: you get a chance to come up with some breakthrough, you raise motivation of people across the company and you draw better candidates to join the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're PM and there's such program in place, just &lt;strong&gt;plan for it&lt;/strong&gt;. If people are free to use 20% of their time on whatever they want, plan that they'll have one weekday off as they'll be busy with their side projects. I assume here the organization which introduces such plan is ready to take it with all its consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the program is introduced in the middle of the project &lt;strong&gt;you can ask the team to finish their work as planned and only then join innovation initiatives&lt;/strong&gt;. It won't be the best idea if the project is going to last like two years from now though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway you can't forbid people to do something which is generally approved so if they are allowed to join some innovation initiatives react as you would in any other similar situations, like too low estimates, sickness, leaving etc. &lt;strong&gt;It doesn't really matter what is the reason of not having a specific person for some time in the project - reaction would be similar&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you can try to fill the gap with other, possibly new, team members&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you can work on scope trying to move some work out&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you can renegotiate schedule if possible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-03-19T21:16:42.830" LastActivityDate="2011-03-19T21:16:42.830" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="978" CreationDate="2011-03-19T00:02:03.597" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Joel Spolsky has a great &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100201/a-little-less-conversation.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; regarding your question and from his conclusion it's clearly that the answer is &lt;strong&gt;yes, it is possible to over-communicate&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When you started your company, you probably did a great job of communicating. Everybody told one another everything. And your customers loved it, because when they called in to ask about their purchase order, everybody knew where it was. But as you get bigger, you can't keep telling everybody about every purchase order, so you have to invent specific communications systems so that exactly the right people find out and nobody else. &lt;strong&gt;Not because it's confidential. Because it's a waste of time.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you follow the links, you will find &lt;a href=&quot;http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-shutdown-crapfest.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Windows Shutdown crapfest&lt;/a&gt;, an interesting example and the answer, of an ex-Microsoft employee to Jeol's question on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/11/24.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How many Microsofties does it take to implement the Off menu&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="697" LastEditorUserId="697" LastEditDate="2011-03-19T10:21:31.317" LastActivityDate="2011-03-19T10:21:31.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1132" CreationDate="2011-03-19T00:58:11.707" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is innovation in scope?  Is part or all of the project's solution unknown such that innovation is required?  For projects where there is not a research and development component, I opine that innovation is not part of the project at all and should not be planned for nor paid for by the sponsor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, there is always some incremental innovative thinking that goes on in all efforts and this is not what I am talking about.  But you are using Google's free time to think about new things and that is not consistent with project work, save for R&amp;amp;D projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-03-19T00:58:11.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="942" CreationDate="2011-03-19T01:04:08.877" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot remember the name of the tool but research Deltek's risk management software.  It has a scheduling simulator, or Monte Carlo, and can do exactly what you want.  I sat through a demonstration.  However, it is expensive!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-03-19T01:04:08.877" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1138" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1139" CreationDate="2011-03-19T01:40:01.920" Score="12" ViewCount="2549" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess you know the situation, that with some of your colleagues you manage to establish a common way of communication right away (whatever you talk about is understood perfectly by the other one), whereas with others it takes a while or maybe never gets established.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that to a large extent that's related to communication skills in general, but I think it is particularly important when you as a project manager assign tasks. &#xA;You explain the overall objective, how this fits into the overall project, within which time the results are expected, maybe give indications how you think this can be solved, and your colleague agrees and indicates everything was well understood (which may or may not be true).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What seems to me very important in that regard, is that just because of fear of not being understood to start micro-managing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So which possibilities come to your mind how to make sure that you managed to express yourself understandably? How do you deal with people that, for whatever reasons, would not come back with questions for clarification to you and rather spend a day or even week on something that does not contribute to the overall progress?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="699" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-02T14:27:41.300" LastActivityDate="2019-01-02T14:27:41.300" Title="How to make sure a task assignment was clear?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;micro-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1138" CreationDate="2011-03-19T02:22:50.633" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that offer to the colleague the opportunity to &lt;em&gt;let him explain&lt;/em&gt; what he's going to do is one of the most simple and effective way to review if you made yourself clear enough. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice you don't need to actively asking him 'okay, so what you're going to do now?' but offer enough space to let him explain how he's intended to do the task, what he believes he may need and if he can see any possible obstacle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case you have clear in your mind what the goal is (if you don't know / understand what you're asking, you need to clarify your questions first!) you might foresee possible problems / scenarios to be discussed. In case none of them are raised, maybe the colleague didn't get a vision of the whole scenario or he misunderstood your message. Either way, recap the topic before move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-03-19T04:06:24.343" LastActivityDate="2011-03-19T04:06:24.343" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1138" CreationDate="2011-03-19T06:24:02.010" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suspect that the task assignment was perfectly clear (how can you not understand &quot;I want you to complete Task X by Friday&quot;?) but the task &lt;em&gt;scope&lt;/em&gt; was vague. Specific acceptance tests are strongly encouraged on all tasks, even when adequate specs are available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="40" LastActivityDate="2011-03-19T06:24:02.010" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1125" CreationDate="2011-03-19T06:26:18.637" Score="18" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Early and Often&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Preferably with a solution or two to propose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="40" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2011-03-19T06:26:18.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1106" CreationDate="2011-03-19T06:27:58.323" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;the team members need to fit the positions and work well with each other&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;that is all, and it is your responsibility to choose wisely&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;let the existing team help; people are better than questionaires&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="40" LastActivityDate="2011-03-19T06:27:58.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1138" CreationDate="2011-03-19T06:53:06.837" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't believe that the assignee should describe &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; he/she will complete the task, as suggested by @Tiago.  It is the assignee's job to determine &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; the task will be accomplished.  It's not the project managers job to determine &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt;; instead, his/her job is to determine &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; needs to be accomplished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I typically do is have the assignee repeat back what the &lt;em&gt;goal of the task&lt;/em&gt; is.  If he/she doesn't understand the goal, I'll be able to clarify, based on his/her original interpretation of what he/she thought the task was about.  Some people repeat back this information on their own, and I've come to appreciate the people who understand the importance of repeating back communications as confirmations of understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is also why face to face communication is paramount to making sure instructions and goals are crystal clear.  Body language can help communicate understanding versus confusion, as well as apathy and listlessness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A great example of how confirmations are helpful is in the military.  The military uses confirmations to help avoid accidentally blowing up troops or civilians because one soldier said 7 degrees and the other soldier heard 10 degrees.  When the artillery unit confirms &quot;10&quot;, the soldier on the front line can confirm/reject the instruction and re-clarify.  No one does anything until the front-line says &quot;Yes, you understand. FIRE!&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to confirmations, I also set pre-determined, scheduled check-in dates where one of us will approach the other to see how things are going.  I always leave the door open for the assignee to come to me at any time with a question or a problem, but I try not to bother them until the check-in dates we agreed upon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only do the check-in dates help me &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/452/34&quot;&gt;Avoid Being a Micro-Manager&lt;/a&gt;, they also hold both of us accountable for managing the communications.  This gives the assignee plenty of room to breathe and ownership of the task, while still giving room for any adjustments, should we discover discrepancies in the check-in meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-03-19T06:59:57.657" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1138" CreationDate="2011-03-19T09:43:27.580" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's one piece we're missing here. One thing is to hear recap of the assignment from the assignee but another thing is clearly setting expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me the problem starts earlier - if we just deal tasks and expect people would know how they're expected to act we basically ask for communication issues. We should start with clearly setting your expectations, e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if anyone has any issues they should ask &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if they aren't sure whether they should ask they should ask&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if they're stuck with the task for longer than [put something reasonable here] and they used [Google/local knowledge base/etc] they should ask&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if they make any assumption they should at least make PM aware of it or ask&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if, for whatever reason, neither of above rules doesn't apply they should ask&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same (setting expectations) applies to reporting, Make it clear how often you expect updates and what information they should include. Also, if possible, make it more comfortable to people who report to you - if one developer hates to drop you an email at the end of day, let him come to you for a quick chat or call you instead and share his update. The more comfortable people feel the more likely they're going to follow the rules. Of course another perspective is the size of the project - you're not going to have a hundred chit-chats everyday if you run such a big project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-03-19T09:43:27.580" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1132" CreationDate="2011-03-19T10:18:13.253" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just like the previous people said: this is not something related with your project or project manager. It's simply about changing the company's policy. Therefore you should not go to your PM with such a proposal but to your department's head or your company's managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="409" LastActivityDate="2011-03-19T10:18:13.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1106" CreationDate="2011-03-19T10:25:17.333" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the worst methods for choosing project teams is used very frequently in the IT outsourcing industry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: A big corporation (BC) hires a smaller company (SC) to handle a software development project for them. BC requests resumes for all the people available in SC, so that they choose the team working on that project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SC asks their employees to fill in some standard resume template. They take the resumes and &quot;enhance&quot; them, so that they all look better on paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BC chooses the team solely on the base of the &quot;enhanced&quot; resumes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It happens so often and it is such an &quot;epic fail&quot;. :(&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, i prefer it when the big companies let their supplier choose the team, based on the supplier's knowledge of their employees and the main objectives/deliverables of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="409" LastEditorUserId="409" LastEditDate="2011-03-19T10:34:54.517" LastActivityDate="2011-03-19T10:34:54.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1147" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1261" CreationDate="2011-03-19T13:13:07.743" Score="5" ViewCount="3879" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've bought the two books mentioned above to prepare for the &lt;strong&gt;PMP&lt;/strong&gt; exam until I have the &lt;strong&gt;required conditions&lt;/strong&gt; (3+ years of PM work) fulfilled. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've recently had a look at the &lt;strong&gt;CAPM&lt;/strong&gt; exam however, and thought it can't really hurt to sit another test. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is this: &lt;strong&gt;Can I use the two book I have to prepare for CAPM? &lt;em&gt;I.e.&lt;/em&gt; Is CAPM's syllabus a subset of PMP's?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Those books I mentioned are the two best-selling PMP preparation Books. Those are :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The PMP Exam: How to Pass on your First Try :Crowe, Andy&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1932735410&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMP Exam Prep, Seventh Edition: Rita's Course in a Book for Passing the PMP Exam&lt;/a&gt;: Mulcahy, Rita&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="703" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2013-04-30T18:27:30.743" LastActivityDate="2015-10-05T05:21:36.033" Title="Is it possible to use Rita's and Andy Crowe's books to prepare for the CAPM exam?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;education&gt;&lt;books&gt;&lt;pmi&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="254" CreationDate="2011-03-19T21:48:34.083" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What seems crucial to me is that it needs to be clear what &quot;finished&quot; means in your particular context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Especially in the field of software development, I sense a big tendency towards &quot;been there, done that, finished (because the QA/PM/whoever will test afterwards anyways&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is very important to clarify that &quot;it is not done until it is done&quot;, meaning that 1st level testing is definitely part of what the assignee should accomplish already (even though that is what common sense might be telling you already, I experienced serious deviations from that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="699" LastActivityDate="2011-03-19T21:48:34.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="254" CreationDate="2011-03-19T22:53:46.950" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you develop the task with the team member, have this discussion. It's often true that the PM doesn't know enough about the actual work to assess the doneness of the task. If the requirements don't tell you then someone should be able to describe it in measurable terms. A Subject Matter Expert? The person doing the task - they will need to know more about the whole project to do that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-03-19T22:53:46.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1150" PostTypeId="7" CreationDate="2011-03-19T23:49:51.737" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The site is for project management practitioners, academics and amateur theorists. This is a site about the field of project management for people who love the subject. Our site includes the following topics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This site is about...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Management Practices and Theory&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agile&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PRINCE2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tool Usage in Project Management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Manager Career Advancement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This site is NOT about...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recommendations for blogs, books, links, or general terminology. (Just take a look at our top users' profiles! Many of them maintain popular, knowledgeable blogs)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tool recommendations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;General workplace issues (See &lt;a href=&quot;http://workplace.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;The Workplace SE&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&quot;&gt;Shopping Questions&lt;/a&gt; in general&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project Management Stack Exchange is a community-run Q&amp;amp;A site, run by the community, with rigorous discussions about the site itself taking place on our &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.pm.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;Project Management Meta&lt;/a&gt;. Welcome to our site!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2013-01-24T10:32:38.830" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T10:32:38.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1151" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1157" CreationDate="2011-03-20T09:39:11.473" Score="16" ViewCount="2496" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum is the most popular of agile methods and since agile has become mainstream it is chosen more and more often as something teams should try. No surprise we often see Scrum implementations fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: what are the most important factors which drives Scrum adoption to failure or in other words: what has to be done correctly by a team/an organization to make Scrum implementation success?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2018-02-26T19:32:42.640" Title="Why do Scrum adoptions fail?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;failure&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1152" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1155" CreationDate="2011-03-20T10:44:46.223" Score="32" ViewCount="5069" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a project where:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the middle of project it is already late&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Initial estimates were done by development team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It looks like estimates were too optimistic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Development team says it's client who changes their mind all the time, but it's just how the client interpret project scope&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project sponsor says they expect to have the project finished on time without additional investments (like adding people to the project team) and if estimates were wrong estimators should feel accountable for that&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, there's pressure for development team to take all the consequences of the slip on their chests, while they don't feel it is their fault. How should PM act, considering limited options they have left by the project sponsor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T19:16:58.183" Title="Project is late, how should PM act?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1152" CreationDate="2011-03-20T11:56:50.733" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PM should escalate the issue of the perceived requirements change to the change control board and governing body, including representatives of both the client's and supplier's contracting folks, to iron out and come to an agreement about those changes.  The client is only one party to this two party agreement so they cannot simply dismiss this accusation as different interpretations.  They have an obligation to sit back down at the table and argue their case, and hear the supplier's case, hopefully to arrive at a mutually beneficial result.  Even if only 50% of the perceived change results in a retroactive change order, then the team will get some relief in time and cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project sponsor can have all the expectations he wants.  The hard truth is, if targets were placed competitively on a project's time distribution, this project had a good 40% to 50% likelihood of overrunning its time target, and the sponsor needs to deal with that as an adult.  Things happen outside of a capable PM's control, including stochastic events--pure chance--that both favorably and unfavorably affect a project's outcome.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter the outcome of the change effort, the PM needs to report factually the project's current health and predicted outcome, alternatives, and recommendations, and then let the sponsor make some decisions, let the chips fall where they may.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I do not know the contract type under which this project was let, so this plays into it, too.  If it was a firm fixed price deal, then time is the only piece to discuss.  However, it sounds like this is not the case since the sponsor apparently had a vote in additional resources.  If it was FFP, I would still pursue the retroactive change piece but I'd also bring in additional resources to try to crash the schedule if I thought that had some likelihood of working.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2011-03-25T12:15:43.710" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T12:15:43.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1151" CreationDate="2011-03-20T12:26:54.293" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum requires a very skilled project team, starting with the project manager, who manages the entire process, the product owner, the customer and the developers.&#xA;In scrum, one weak link affects not only the certain stage in which it functiones, but it affects all the following iterations as well, again and again and again.&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Therefore, to my opinion - the most important thing when working with scrum is a strong dedication and commitment to the project by all project team members.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, the following factors are important:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Experienced PM, who knows the project dependancies, and therefore aware of the possible risks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Backup plan - for every resource in the project, including the PM herself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The customer should know the implications of using scrum. &quot;we can't wait for you. if you don't make a decision - we make it for you and it is impossible to change it later since we already moved on to the next iteration&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A high priority project. if the project you are dealing with is not high prioirity in your company - it is very likely that scrum would fail, since resources are &quot;leaking&quot;, other things come up first, and the delicate scrum cards tower will definitly crash in no-time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="678" LastActivityDate="2011-03-20T12:26:54.293" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1152" CreationDate="2011-03-20T15:28:51.830" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, I think there are two external, important factors, to be kept in mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Type of contract, how the contract was created, who created functional requirements and technical proposal and to which extend&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Interests of company management in that particular customer as current and future customer. If management considers that customer or project to be of high importance for the entire company, maybe you can convince them of considering that project as some type of 'investment' where maybe they should make further funds available. Maybe there are also other stakeholders on that project which might have their say.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, what seems to be the core of the problem is interpretation of project scope, and that's also what I would mainly focus on in discussions with the sponsor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main argumentation line would be that it was impossible to plan that project in more detail in advance, because otherwise you would have to charge him just for that pre-planing tasks already. Given his agreement on that project approach (I assume there was some type of agreement on that in advance), it is natural that there are deviations in expectations, and that you and your estimators simply could not take everything possible into account in advance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keeping in mind the above said regarding company management, I think the least you should ask for is extension of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="699" LastActivityDate="2011-03-20T15:28:51.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1151" CreationDate="2011-03-20T15:43:09.837" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing I want to add to Tsiki Azuz requirements: Not only dedication and commitment to the project by all project team members, but also by both the customers and even more important the company management!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am very convinced that this does not only require agreement, but explicitly stated and executed commitment from the management.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;To that extend, adoption of Scrum is not anyhow different than any other change in organizational structure or approach, which in my understanding all require clear and executed commitment from the management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="699" LastActivityDate="2011-03-20T15:43:09.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1151" CreationDate="2011-03-20T15:45:51.923" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion Scrum has quite simple rules that focus mainly on general workflow and team organization, thus I see the following factors crucial:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Scrum itself is not enough. It isn't a prescription for the full software development process. @Pawel, I once heard you saying the same thing about Kanban - if we put the crap in, then the crap will go out of it. I would say it's totally the same with Scrum. It needs a good engineering culture behind it. So the first reason would be forgetting about that fact. Many people think that following Scrum workflow will magically result in better software, while the only thing they will get out of it will be uncovering even more serious problems about the way they make software. This leads to the second reason...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One of the most valuable properties of Scrum is that it quickly makes problems visible. But that's all. Now when adopting such a framework (like Scrum) we need to be prepared to deal with those problems. But many times teams try to either ignore them or just game the framework to keep the problems hidden. This way they create impression that everything goes fine through iterations, but in the end the blame goes to Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finally it's about false expectations. I think the scrum adoption failures are more often spotted in the environments used to more prescriptive (not to say heavier) software development methods/processes. The false expectation is that by adopting Scrum methodology (which it is not, but just a framework) will tell us how to create software better. Our organization will become faster, we will have a better quality code, and we will do all that with a lower budget. While Scrum a good step towards improving the process, it's still only small piece of the puzzle.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is however a lot of generalization when talking about Scrum adoption (including my own answer ;-)), while the framework is all about the context, details and collaboration to uncover the very local problems. It's also the reason why it's so hard to actually form a universal list of reasons for failing scrum adoption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="435" LastActivityDate="2011-03-20T15:45:51.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1151" CreationDate="2011-03-20T17:22:19.990" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum, like any methodology, fails because of a lack of &lt;strong&gt;leadership&lt;/strong&gt;. When there is no leadership from outside or from within the team, Scrum fails. The idea that letting a team &quot;self-organise&quot; will solve all problems is a myth. Self-organisation doesn't happen out of the blue. It needs leadership. If there is no leadership from within the team, and the 'outside' (i.e. management) has left the team on its own to &quot;self-organise&quot;, it just won't work. You can find all kinds of excuses, but its the lack of leadership that makes it fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So make sure your new Scrum team has sufficient support and guidance, before it is left to run the show on its own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-20T17:22:19.990" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1152" CreationDate="2011-03-20T21:24:42.557" Score="19" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;if estimates were wrong estimators should feel accountable for that&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is going to guarantee that sponsor will never hear estimates again from that group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Project sponsor says they expect to have the project finished on time without additional investments&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only solution to this is to cut back on features. Sit down and analyze which features can be cut to get the remainder of the project finished on time, and if scope changes happen, defer them to the next version. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2011-03-20T21:24:42.557" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1152" CreationDate="2011-03-21T03:39:54.820" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stop - if the project is late, and you know what the causes are, stop the project for long enough to replan and reestimate after bringing the analysis to the governing body and the sponsor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The solution may be cutting back on features, as Tangurena says, but it could also include extending the deadline or changing the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm adding on another comment- as I read the responses it seems to me that there is a lot of 'who takes accountability' discussion. I think it's more productive and professional to first look at 'how does this get fixed' and 'how do we learn from this' than arguing where the responsibility lies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastEditorUserId="131" LastEditDate="2011-06-24T21:31:53.353" LastActivityDate="2011-06-24T21:31:53.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1152" CreationDate="2011-03-21T10:25:14.107" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the PM you may need to escalate this issue to the Project Board. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend you to document the impact of these delays to the final derivable and, most importantly, to the client or final customer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The end customer is a key element to take into account since it could jeopardise the future project portfolio so it's a very powerful weapon to get attention from Senior Management, specially the Senior User. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to run some numbers and find out if there is any other competitor that could release this project earlier. You could use your risk log or project chart to convey this message. The sponsors are always concerned about the money invested so highlighting dramatically the risks can be helpful to trigger the question of holding the project for further estimations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T10:25:14.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1152" CreationDate="2011-03-21T12:00:16.077" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the middle of project it is already late&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the project is already late then the cost implications are very important.  The only options are scaling back the project or someone taking a financial hit.  The client or the company will have to have to pay to complete the project in its current form - so a serious discussion with the client needs to start on de-scoping some areas if the project is to continue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It looks like estimates were too optimistic&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimates are usually too optimistic, developer estimates are often wildly optimistic.  The other day a developer questioned the need to integrate a CMS into a project with the standard line 'why integrate a third-party CMS when we can write one from scratch in about 10 minutes'.  An experienced PM would have to know a developer very well before they can gauge the accuracy of any developer's estimating.  Add 100% to any finger-in-the-air guesses masquerading as estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Project sponsor says they expect to have the project finished on time without additional investments (like adding people to the project team) and if estimates were wrong estimators should feel accountable for that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is perfectly reasonable for a PM and Project Sponsor to accept a developer estimate, but from that point on everyone is the joint owner of that estimate.  If a Project Sponsor sees an estimate that looks too low initially, then it probably is - its no good simply ignoring it!  If its a bad estimate then it is everyone's responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="693" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T12:00:16.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1164" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1166" CreationDate="2011-03-21T12:06:45.153" Score="9" ViewCount="402" Body="&lt;p&gt;We see software developers these days that do not know what does it mean not to use TDD or other practices of XP, project leaders that never worked in a non-agile environment, etc.&#xA;These people don't know what is a critical path analysis, they've never did any WBS neither worked with a Gant chart and so on...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is the knowledge base for a PM changing these days? We focus on skills where it usually falls into interpersonal ones, but what about the knowledge that the today's PM should have?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume we're talking about companies that grow from startups (not the ones that are transforming). Do they for example need to know the PMBOK? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it's always good to know more than less, but from a pragmatic point of view? Does it mean an agile PMs are becoming more ignorant or do they gain/require a different set of knowledge? If the latter, then what kind of knowlege/areas of interest are they right now?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="435" LastActivityDate="2019-06-26T08:35:25.783" Title="Is the PM's required knowledge in agile environment changing nowadays?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;skills&gt;&lt;pmbok&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1164" CreationDate="2011-03-21T12:20:35.647" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;More important than knowledge of the latest patterns and techniques is the ability to learn and adapt.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within any IT discipline anyone who thinks that they can live off their past achievements and stop learning is lost; anyone with a good attitude and decent intelligence should be OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a developer has never done TDD then they can pick it up or go on a course - if they don't want to then they should be shown the door.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a project manager doesn't know about critical path analysis then that sounds terminal (I learned about that during my business degree 20 years ago - that is not an agile concept TBH!) but otherwise training and a willingness to learn mean that PMs with the right attitude and aptitude can adapt and survive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="693" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T12:20:35.647" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1164" CreationDate="2011-03-21T13:19:18.940" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't say that required knowledge is changing. Actually PM was always expected to know the method used in their projects. Yes, we have more and more agile projects so knowledge how to run such projects is commonly expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't however agree that agile PM don't know how to do WBS or analyze critical path. They approach the subject differently but after all we have the scope split to smaller tasks (even if we call them user stories) and we know which of them have to completed to make project a success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you ask about PMBOK I wouldn't say that knowing it is a universal requirement even in non-agile projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I'd answer the question on a few different levels:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;TDD or Gantt chart are just &lt;strong&gt;tools&lt;/strong&gt;. You need to know them if you use them. Tools are changing pretty often and so is knowledge we require from PMs. Many of tool-related decisions can be left to the team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;PMBOK or Scrum are &lt;strong&gt;methods&lt;/strong&gt;. Again, you need to know them if you use them. Also PM should know other approaches at least on a general level. Since methods aren't changing in such a rapid manner as tools are I'd expect PM would know very well at least the method of their choice.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Breaking the work down, prioritizing or analyzing critical tasks are &lt;strong&gt;basic project management concepts&lt;/strong&gt;. They should be know by pretty much any PM out there, no matter what kind of work environment they work in. However specific approach to these concepts will differ - they will be tackled differently in formalized, fixed-scope project than in iterative, agile one. Either way, they will be done.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on a perspective you may say that PM needs to know exactly the same what they used to know 10 years ago as the concepts are the same or that the required knowledge is completely different as tools have evolved rapidly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-03-23T14:30:52.240" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T14:30:52.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1167" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1168" CreationDate="2011-03-21T13:48:59.623" Score="3" ViewCount="481" Body="&lt;p&gt;Which Project Management Software would you recommend to assist PMs in developing plans, assigning resources to tasks, tracking progress, managing budgets and analyzing workloads, &lt;em&gt;other than MS Projects or SharePoint&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T09:11:34.890" Title="Non-Microsoft Project Management Softwares" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2012-09-30T01:53:32.830" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1167" CreationDate="2011-03-21T14:24:36.143" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a similar question on the forum about &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/955/project-management-software-for-a-web-development-company&quot;&gt;project management software&lt;/a&gt; that has several answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also search the forum by the tag &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/pm-software&quot;&gt;pm-software&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T14:24:36.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1169" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1877" CreationDate="2011-03-21T14:29:06.623" Score="14" ViewCount="405" Body="&lt;p&gt;What should a PM do if he has sound reasons not to trust his sponsor? And if the sponsor openly acknowledges that he doesn't trust the PM?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a challenge found all too often (and migrated from another site).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2011-03-21T22:19:38.277" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T13:26:13.860" Title="No trust between Project Manager and Sponsor" Tags="&lt;politics&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1167" CreationDate="2011-03-21T15:09:36.497" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a very good comparison online for all &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_project_management_software&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Management Softwares&lt;/a&gt; based on the following fields:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collaborative software&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Issue tracking system    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scheduling   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Portfolio Management &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resource Management  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Document Management  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Web-based, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;License/Provider&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T15:09:36.497" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1167" CreationDate="2011-03-21T15:33:12.777" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our host, Joel on Software, sells &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBUGZ/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FogBugz&lt;/a&gt; which I have used for that purpose.  It can track tasks, not just bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="158" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T15:33:12.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1169" CreationDate="2011-03-21T17:02:31.577" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say that this situation is &lt;strong&gt;good&lt;/strong&gt; for the project. Without trust both parties will be focused much more on objectively verifiable results instead of promises (they just don't trust them). The project manager knows that every report, every decision, and every milestone will be double checked - it's good. The sponsor knows that his every &quot;yes&quot; has to be confirmed with a signature on paper - it's good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not saying that lack of trust is what a project has to go after. But very often too much trust is what ruins good projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T17:02:31.577" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1173" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1185" CreationDate="2011-03-21T17:40:01.183" Score="6" ViewCount="2302" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a common practice in some territories to pay bribes while doing business. Sometimes government officials have to be paid in order to issue a license or permit. Sometimes customers ask for certain money back in case of tender winning. Unfortunately, in some territories it's a common way of doing business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should a project manager do if he is asked to pay a bribe?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T17:57:03.480" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T03:48:03.860" Title="What should a project manager do if he/she is asked to pay a bribe?" Tags="&lt;code-of-conduct&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1169" CreationDate="2011-03-21T19:19:00.427" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the answers on the &quot;other site&quot; were clear: if the relationship is deteriorated as such, then the best and professional thing to do is to propose a replacement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things may go fine when everything is ok, but once issues come up (and they always come up), a bad relationship may result in blaming the other side, or worse, the sponsor taking action behind the PM's back. Things may escalate very quickly, the team may find it difficult to continue optimally in such conditions. Sometimes they will be forced to choose sides ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, when you don't get along, you better end it. It is trust that helps you work together when things are not going well; without it, there will be no cooperation possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you realise you are part of the problem that may endanger the project, you have to do something about it. So either you can work it out, or you propose to leave with sufficient transition time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-03-26T18:44:43.110" LastActivityDate="2011-03-26T18:44:43.110" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1175" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1191" CreationDate="2011-03-21T19:53:25.267" Score="3" ViewCount="73" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ok, admittedly, that title is quite cryptic, but couldn't imagine any better short explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I mean is the following:&#xA;The (expected) performance / qualification of employee A is MUCH higher than that of employee B for a given task X. The (expected) performance / qualification of employee A is also higher than that of employee B for task Y, but the difference is not that big.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the general assumption (at least one that I have - may be discussed in another question), that 'everyone has his strengths and weaknesses' does not apply here, to the extend that A is considered to be more qualified / efficient in task completion than B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on which criteria do you decide whom you assign to task X, and whom to Y? Priority and importance of the according tasks? Even though this may sound a little to rational, do you think the concept of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;'comparative advantage'&lt;/a&gt; may be applied here (disregarding the fact that true qualification is hard to be quantified)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does your decision change if task Y is more important and of higher priority than task X?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="699" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T14:44:53.837" Title="Perf.A(task X) &gt;&gt; Perf.B(task X), and Perf.A(task Y) &gt; Perf.B(task Y) - whom do you assign?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1176" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-21T19:54:02.797" Score="1" ViewCount="909" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any on-line ms project like software which allow create project plans and save it in Microsoft Project format? I know  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amiproject.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;www.amiproject.com&lt;/a&gt;, but it let just view plans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="722" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T16:14:17.033" Title="MS Project On-line" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-09-30T01:48:37.313" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1177" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1184" CreationDate="2011-03-21T20:14:54.110" Score="9" ViewCount="723" Body="&lt;p&gt;(I understand that this question may be discussed in a pretty wide sense. However I want to focus on its relevance to PM / PM teams).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine a PM who does not seem to be qualified in several regards, fails to be exact on meetings and dates, provides poor communication, but nevertheless for some reason was raised to that position.&#xA;Even worse, the PM himself seems to be very convinced of his work and self-confident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The consequences are not to severe, but nevertheless the project team suffers under those weaknesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you think it is the team members responsibility to continuously silently correct PMs weaknesses? Bring it to his attention (risking that he may be either insulted or just give it a shrug)?&#xA;Or just give it a shrug as well, similar to what the PM himself is doing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="699" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T16:34:26.440" Title="Is it the team members responsibility to correct PMs weaknesses? (or at least in his own interest)" Tags="&lt;self-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1178" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1189" CreationDate="2011-03-21T20:37:58.393" Score="17" ViewCount="1023" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the seldom cases where your project (or milestone) completion estimation was too pessimistic, do you deliver results right away? If not, which tasks do you assign your team members in the meantime?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my point of view, there are two contradictory thoughts involved:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;+Delivering earlier most likely increases costumer satisfaction.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;+Depending on the contract, it may even decrease costumer costs, which even more contributes to costumer satisfaction&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-On the other hand, delivering earlier may significantly weaken your position when working with that costumer again ('10 Months? Last time it was a third less anyways, so nevermind').&lt;br&gt;&#xA;-It may question your capability to estimate ('This guys estimate was wrong by a third last time either, maybe better find somebody more suitable...').&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Furthermore, even though if it was a fixed contract, you may be in bad position to justify the price. If not, may be even worse, because company management will be unhappy because of lower project value than expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on that topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="699" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-03-23T05:02:42.770" LastActivityDate="2011-03-26T20:20:35.560" Title="Deliver results when finished significantly prior to the agreed deadline?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;politics&gt;&lt;timeline&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1177" CreationDate="2011-03-21T20:39:37.393" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;On any given team, each member has strengths and weaknesses.  The PM is not immune to that.  In fact, most teams are filled with only average performers.  It is the entire team's collective responsibilities to identify team weaknesses and jointly figure out how to overcome them if the desire is to become a high performing team.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not certainly not about &quot;correcting&quot; the PM.  It is about filling the void in a capability and the void closure should be done on each team member.  And if a team member's &quot;own interest&quot; is at play here, then the team is suffering from far more than a PM with a few weaknesses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T20:39:37.393" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1178" CreationDate="2011-03-21T20:43:40.527" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you are finished, deliver.  Delaying delivery serves no purpose except provide some sort of smoke screen that your customer will likely learn and then develop distrust in you down the line.  Deliver and use the developed slack in your schedule to make up for those packages where you were too optimistic.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="179" LastEditDate="2011-03-21T23:41:13.090" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T23:41:13.090" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1173" CreationDate="2011-03-21T20:59:49.637" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The US &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.justice.gov/criminal/fraud/fcpa/docs/lay-persons-guide.pdf&quot;&gt;Foreign Corrupt Practices Act&lt;/a&gt; makes it illegal for an American to pay bribes to foreign officials. Your profile mentions you live in California, and CA has their own &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shouselaw.com/bribery-commercial.html&quot;&gt;commercial bribery statutes&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://law.onecle.com/california/penal/641.3.html&quot;&gt;641.3&lt;/a&gt; of the penal code). Based on a quick read of the CA statute, if they're asking for less than $250 it won't get prosecuted (because it isn't a crime). Likewise, if they are doing it with the consent and knowledge of their employer, it isn't a crime. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a corporate attorney, then you should be in contact with them. You may need to write up your notes as soon as possible after the solicitation of a bribe. In the federal case, paying a bribe is itself a crime. In the California case, only soliciting and/or accepting a bribe is the criminal activity (not offering or paying one).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T20:59:49.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1173" CreationDate="2011-03-21T22:14:55.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two perspectives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Individual.&lt;/strong&gt; For example I would neither give nor accept bribe. If asked to do that I'd refuse. But it comes to individual morality of a person in such situation. There are people who don't do it and there are people who would do whatever it takes to get the job done. Either way play it the way which is aligned with your ethics.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Company-related.&lt;/strong&gt; There are companies which just give bribes and there are markets where it is the way things work. You can find those which don't do that even if it makes their life on specific market way harder. So the question is about general practice within the organization - if such behavior is commonly accepted and you're fine with that then, well, what's keeping you?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I'm not sure if anywhere in the world handing a bribe can be done without breaking the law, but then we go back to the point 1 - your ethics. If only one of those criteria is &quot;no&quot; then a decision is &quot;no&quot; as well. And for me personally it is always &quot;no.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T22:14:55.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1178" CreationDate="2011-03-21T22:26:56.803" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's possible - deliver. If not to give something more to the customer, do it for the sole purpose of finishing the task on your side. You won't have to come back to that when the deadline is coming etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also delivery itself can introduce some issues so the earlier you are the more time you have to fix those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the customer needs explanations you should find them easily. They can vary from the honest one (we might have been too optimistic, but when we are too pessimistic you don't get charged additionally) to some smoke and mirrors (we used more people on the project and that is why we're early). My personal favorite is honesty as it build long-term relations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't really find argument against telling the truth valid. If the customer decided to pay x dollars to get something it was worth the money for them. No one stolen that money from their pocket. They did sign the agreement, didn't they?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To some point the next negotiations can be more difficult, but I wouldn't expect much change. You should gain more on better relations than you could potentially lose there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T22:26:56.803" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1177" CreationDate="2011-03-21T22:39:32.360" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that it is team's responsibility to make PM aware of the issues in this way or another. Specific method may depend on a situation and specific person so the team may start talking directly with the PM or with PM's manager or with own manager. Either way it's their job to share their expectations and their view of things with PM (either directly or indirectly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing is whether they should correct PM's behavior and here I think it's more an issue for PM themselves or PM's manager. Team members aren't in the best place to play the role of the coach as they are very subjective here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there's one more perspective, which is project itself. For the good of the project it is possible and sometimes even preferred to have team overtaking some of PMs responsibilities. It shouldn't however be done instead but as an addition to letting others know about the problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T22:39:32.360" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1173" CreationDate="2011-03-21T23:41:51.573" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not even a question of ethics, actually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm working for my employer for a living. No matter how many (s)he's paying me, it will &lt;strong&gt;never&lt;/strong&gt; be enough for me to accept to go to jail. And that's what is very likely to happen if I accept to pay a bribe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it's just not going to happen. No matter what the consequences could be, for example being fired, I'm not going to let myself getting involved in illegal activities for my employer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastEditorUserId="152" LastEditDate="2011-03-23T17:57:35.217" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T17:57:35.217" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1178" CreationDate="2011-03-22T00:03:57.957" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tell the truth. You finished earlier than expected. As long as there isn't a pattern of sand-bagging your estimates, no client should [rightly] fault you for this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few bad outcomes of delaying:&#xA;1) Project team members already know the work is complete. Delaying delivery will hurt productivity on the next project, as the team will work slower next time. That's bad news.&#xA;2) Your client might find out. If you're trying to hide the fact that the project is complete, and your client finds out via some other source, this will severely undercut their trust in you. That's really bad news.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="723" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T00:03:57.957" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1177" CreationDate="2011-03-22T00:11:01.647" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Communication is key here. If you are a team member and you see a weakness in the capabilities of the PM which is having a negative impact on the project (that last clause is key), you do have a responsibility to yourself, to the project, and to the PM to approach them privately with your concerns.  An honest dialog is helpful for everyone involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The absolute worst thing that could happen is for the team to snicker or back-bite about the PM's perceived lack of ability in this area. This will undercut trust amongst the entire team, and trivialize the importance of the project -- and unfortunately, this is the most common outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="723" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T00:11:01.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1167" CreationDate="2011-03-22T02:36:32.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As for web application alternative:&#xA;We've been using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.manymoon.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Manymoon&lt;/a&gt; for medium-complex projects &#xA;For small projects works very well &lt;a href=&quot;http://freedcamp.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Freedacamp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First one is quite good, includes PM and simple CRM in one place. Now they are a part of SalesForce, but anyway it is worth to try&#xA;Second one is pretty simple, comfy and FREE! Allows to add task in a second, have discussions, file storage, time tracking, invoicing. We love it for its simplicity!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regards&#xA;Alex&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="724" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T02:36:32.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1178" CreationDate="2011-03-22T03:16:39.563" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;An early delivery date for a final deliverable shouldn't come as a surprise to the client, because the project manager should've been in touch with him/her all along during the phases of the project, right? You should certainly be able to account for the earliness, but it should be a granular part of the overall project schedule. It wasn't that the &lt;em&gt;whole project&lt;/em&gt; was 2 months early, it was that things added up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The customer was unexpectedly reasonable in their requirements. The specification was drafted a week early. &lt;em&gt;The pm adjusted the schedule.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The customer was responsive and signed the specification immediately after receiving the second draft. The specification was approved and agreed upon by all parties a week early. &lt;em&gt;The pm adjusted the schedule and informed the customer.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A developer stumbled upon some prior work that shaved two weeks of additional planned development time off the project. &lt;em&gt;The pm made sure the code-base was license-compatible with the customer's requirements and adjusted the schedule, informing the customer.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A second client canceled an engagement early on so resources were redirected into this project. Estimates accounted for a net project time savings of one week. &lt;em&gt;The pm noted this in the project log.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The alpha was very similar to the documentation team's first draft, so they were able to shave a week off the documentation phase by skipping a draft of documentation. &lt;em&gt;This did not in itself affect the project schedule because it was in parallel with development; however…&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;…The two members of the documentation team were available to help test for an extra week during the alpha and release-candidate phases of the project. (Unit and automated integration tests were built into the development schedule.) The extra two testers shaved a week off development time. &lt;em&gt;The pm adjusted the schedule and informed the customer.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The customer was unexpectedly responsive and available for user-acceptance testing. They accepted and signed off on the final release a week ahead of schedule.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you haven't been informing your client all along then the best thing to do now is go ahead and deliver. That said, in project management, surprises are never really a good thing, especially when the project manager has to deliver them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="523" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T03:16:39.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1176" CreationDate="2011-03-22T09:15:29.547" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've used &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tomsplanner.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tom's Planner&lt;/a&gt; in the past and got on really well with it. Very easy to use and has all the things I needed such as dependencies, sub-tasks and collaboration, presented in Gantt style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They're also quite responsive to queries on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twitter.com/tomsplanner&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Twitter&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't save in MPP format but it does export an XML, XLS or CSV file which enables you to import into MS Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="448" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T09:15:29.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1175" CreationDate="2011-03-22T14:44:53.837" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The final part of your question implies that you have already decided that employee A should be given task X, and employee B by default would be allocated task Y, if the two tasks have similar priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general I would agree with this allocation: take it to extremes, and I would argue that it becomes obvious that if employee A has skills and employee B has no relevant skills for Task X, you would not normally give the task to employee B. The only reason to change this might be if the task is of low priority and you want to use it as a learning opportunity for employee B, perhaps under supervision from employee A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My final comment at this stage is to say that there may be good justification for any allocation of duties, and if you do want to do something counter-intuitive, make sure that it is for the right reason, and that you record any associated risk in the project risk register (and monitor it!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T14:44:53.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1122" CreationDate="2011-03-22T15:06:41.250" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very difficult situation to be in, and I speak from experience!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter what you, as PM, may say, the team members who are affected will have their own perspective on this. The best that you can hope to do is provide a structured environment where they can immerse themselves in their work. You may be expected to be a sympathetic ear to the concerns of the team: this is fine up to a point, but if you end up being the person that they all pour out their hearts to, but can't do anything about the situation, you will lose respect and authority, so be careful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When this happened in my place of work, I met with the team and made sure that they understood what I could - and more importantly, what I could not - do to change the situation. I then reminded them of the objectives of the project, and asked them to tell me directly (and individually- not in the open forum) if they saw any specific barriers to success. This allowed them to think about the impact of the re-organisation on their work, rather than on their personal situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This worked up to a point, but if people are upset and / or worried, it doesn't matter what you say: they will still be worried until they see how they are actually impacted by the new structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T15:06:41.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1122" CreationDate="2011-03-22T16:30:36.943" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been there. It's difficult. You need to look at this from two different perspectives. &#xA;1- your projects. You are the PM and you need to advise your sponsor on how to manage the impact on your project. Does this mean your project might get delayed? That it should be canceled? If you didn't identify loss of team members as a risk, then deal with it as an issue. &#xA;2 - the people. As the PM you are viewed as a leader (or should be) and your job is to support the organizational goals and help people through the change. Do this by honesty and respect, don't minimize the impact, don't over dramatize the impact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be done. When this happened at my company, I led a team of PMs and ran major enterprise wide projects - and my job was eliminated. Over a 2 month period I had to close down the projects - most of the key team members were downsized - and keep my PMs motivated and focused on going forward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T16:30:36.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1177" CreationDate="2011-03-22T16:34:26.440" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two ways to make this work. The first relies on a solid relationship with the PM and an agreement that the PM is willing to be coached. &#xA;The second way - and the most common - is as Pawel stated. Raise issues. If it 's not an issue for the project, then it's performance management and that's between the PM and his/her direct manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T16:34:26.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1004" CreationDate="2011-03-22T17:23:38.847" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's important to agree and write down the results and this should be transparent to every attendee. So I disagree with Kennethvr.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Especially for the iPad you should take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agreedo.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;www.agreedo.com&lt;/a&gt;. Works great!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user728" LastEditorUserId="765" LastEditDate="2011-05-11T21:06:26.753" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T21:06:26.753" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1173" CreationDate="2011-03-22T22:05:28.740" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, the act of bribery leaves a very bad taste in my mouth as it is just wrong on so many levels. However, your question is &quot;What should a project manager do if he is asked to pay a bribe&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the request is from a client, the answer would be a no, and I would have serious doubt on the client's trust and business practices. The dynamics of the business relationship would be fractured and be difficult to heal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the request is coming from within my company, the answer would stil be a no. Again, I would have serious doubts about the ethics of people making the request and/or my company if it condones it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being part of anything illegal is very damaging to future career prospects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="480" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T22:05:28.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1197" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1198" CreationDate="2011-03-22T22:06:48.287" Score="5" ViewCount="219" Body="&lt;p&gt;A new PM taking over a project &quot;mid stream&quot; will need to get up to speed with all of the documentation, objectives, etc. If the previous PM had produced estimates that the new PM doesn't agree with, how should the new PM proceed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accept the old estimates and try to work within them, or produce new estimates?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Produce new estimates?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see practical difficulties with 1 (especially if the estimates are too tight), and political difficulties with 2, especially if the old PM is still in the organisation. In addition, revising the estimates, especially upwards, will undoubtedly impact on the benefits case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-08-16T22:35:14.710" Title="If taking over a project, should the new PM have to stick to the previous PM's estimates?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;politics&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1197" CreationDate="2011-03-22T22:54:07.693" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a new PM accepts the old estimates then he owns that estimate as much as any of the rest of the stakeholder team owns the estimate.  Later on they will have no get out if the plan is bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if the new PM doesn't agree with the estimate then the PM needs to make that perfectly clear from the outset by stating that his first task will be to revisit the project plan after  full consultation with all the stakeholders.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All stakeholders of a project will expect a new PM will have new ideas - and revisiting the estimates and plan is a perfectly reasonable objective of any PM who wants to properly get hold of a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clear communication from the outset and clearly defined reasons why the project is being looked at should ease the concerns of the client and prepare the ground for any cost/deliverable/scope/benefit revisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="693" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T22:54:07.693" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1197" CreationDate="2011-03-22T23:32:11.423" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can claim that changing the pm was probably un-planned when the estimate was first decided, this by itself takes some time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it's good to stay in the estimate, but it's worse to say you will an then loose a deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you have to say, the sooner the better, you can decide with the committee how to deal with your point of view. Hurry up and loose quality, accept to postpone a deadline or add more resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the reasons why the previous pm have been changed? this could matter, but anyway now this is your project and you should behave the same way as when you realize that the estimates were wrong in yours, but you have the advantage that it's not directly your fault.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A little diplomacy helps, but if you state the facts and show evidence of your beliefs you start with right foot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience if you say that the estimates are shorts you're probably already cutting time from unforeseen problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;The sooner the better, but be sure about your ideas, plan them well, state that you need some time to have deeper understanding of the project (obviously).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastEditorUserId="97" LastEditDate="2011-03-22T23:37:54.053" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T23:37:54.053" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1197" CreationDate="2011-03-22T23:55:33.477" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are we talking about here?  A task estimate or a target baseline?  These are not the same thing.  Estimates of time or cost of any task, whether it is a highly decomposed activity, hammock level package or control account, or at the project level, are a range, not a single value that the target baseline is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every estimate has a minimum, a maximum, and a most likely.  The target baseline falls somewhere within that probability distribution.  So if a new PM comes in and disagrees, with what is (s)he disagreeing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A new PM cannot come in and expect to &quot;start all over.&quot;  If you jump into a project, you get all the good stuff, the bad stuff, and everything in between.  The target baseline has some probability value to it and lives in constant uncertainty.  The PM needs to escalate this uncertainty as (s)he does with all risks--report the threat, analyze the exposure, recommend a course of action, draft plan B.  If (s)he can show that the target baseline cannot be achieved with 100% certainty, then (s)he escalates this along with all of the other issues and problems.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T23:55:33.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1201" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1202" CreationDate="2011-03-23T07:11:04.730" Score="10" ViewCount="6425" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wonder if it is possible to create and manage tasks in microsoft project 2010 and commit the modifications to the TFS project's tasks?&#xA;It will be practical to raise the percentage of a task in MSProject and send this modification to the TFS server..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="733" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T19:50:34.243" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T19:50:34.243" Title="Is it possible to link msproject with the TFS system?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1201" CreationDate="2011-03-23T09:10:29.073" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, I manage some tasks this way between TFS and MS Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Project you need the Team toolbar showing, which allows you to &quot;Choose Team Project&quot; and connect to your TFS server. Once you've browsed to your project, choose &quot;Get Work Items&quot; and browse for your queries that can retrieve tasks / bugs / etc (I use Visual Studio 2010 to construct queries).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have the list, you will probably want to modify the Project columns and fields to get everything in easy to reach places - I like to add 'Remaining Work' and '% Complete' for example. Go through, make all your changes, hit &quot;Publish&quot; and you're done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="448" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T09:10:29.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1203" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1242" CreationDate="2011-03-23T11:17:55.397" Score="2" ViewCount="299" Body="&lt;p&gt;A product has been released with several open issues that have been ranked as minor by the PM and Project Assurance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Board believes that with the functionality released the Business Users can operate and have agreed that Minor releases will be delivered throughout the year to resolved the open items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, the facts are the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Business Case required translation into more technical specs and expected behaviours were missed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Development Team communicated that certain bits of the functionality were not working as per the Business expectations and advise a process change that was not aligned with the Business Processes. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Project Board approved the content but did not approve any changes to the Business Processes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The user cannot return to Business As Usual since the functionality is preventing operational processes rather than improving them. Heavy manual intervention is required from Ops to deliver the service to the ultimate customer. &lt;strong&gt;The project has just failed&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my personal point of view, the lack of communication between the Business Users and the Project Team led the project to this position. In order to fully resolved the open items according to specifications throughout the next releases, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;what level of involvement in Operational side (real business) is required by the PM?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2011-03-23T12:20:25.340" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T18:52:43.723" Title="How to return Business As Usual when the Project has not delivered the requirements?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;failure&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1164" CreationDate="2011-03-23T11:43:13.993" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question wether a specific approach is sufficient or not depends entirely upon the &lt;strong&gt;domain context&lt;/strong&gt; in which it is applied. Your referral to a start-up lacks specification of the domain (what start-up, which industry, how many parties involved etc.). Maybe agile techniques may suffice, but I wouldn't bet on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next is the assumption that Agile development methods are somehow in competition with project management (or PMBOK if you insist). They're not. The agile techniques are focused on product development (software development specifically), or &lt;strong&gt;product scope&lt;/strong&gt;, whereas project management is focused upon the whole &lt;strong&gt;project scope&lt;/strong&gt;. A project might involve several other work packages outside the realm of product development with their own specialised techniques and approaches. Agile touches some of the aspects of project management, and the agile approach is a form of risk mitigation. But it hardly covers the whole spectrum of project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Knowing the PMBOK will give you a number of tools and techniques to apply in the circumstances when they are required for managing your specific project in your specific context domain. That is why the PMBOK is a &lt;strong&gt;standard&lt;/strong&gt;, not a method. Agile gives you an approach specifically for software development, and can be of use in some other (product development) domains as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A mature PM knows where to apply those specific approaches (agile or otherwise) for the benefit of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T11:43:13.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1205" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-23T13:02:43.100" Score="3" ViewCount="247" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are good reasons to jump from the PM to the Manager seat?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T15:36:30.547" Title="Good reasons to jump from PM to Manager?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1205" CreationDate="2011-03-23T14:26:16.410" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most important reason: &lt;strong&gt;if you believe you'd like people manager job better than PM job go for it&lt;/strong&gt;. It is said that when we find the job we love we don't need to work anymore and there's much truth in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other reasons to transit from PM to people manager:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If working with people is something you like most about PM&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you want to try something a bit different for whatever reason, e.g. have richer resume&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you want to learn another perspective of the project - team manager has a pretty different one than PM&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Often managers are paid better than PMs although the difference isn't that significant, however if this is your only motivation don't do it&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'd say that management position gives you better options in terms of advancing into top positions in the organization, like VP or C-level exec (see: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1024/are-functional-managers-or-project-managers-better-candidates-for-executive-level&quot;&gt;Are Functional Managers or Project Managers Better Candidates for Executive-Level Positions?&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T14:26:16.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1207" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1208" CreationDate="2011-03-23T15:05:32.963" Score="15" ViewCount="388" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am very often in an environment where the employees performing the work are constantly rolling over to new employees and these employees are allowed to estimate on their own how long tasks will take. I have found that the error in their estimates always seems to be the same. Like if Bob over estimates on task 1, he is very likely to over estimate on task 2 as well. Same thing if Jim under estimates on 1 he will probably under estimate on task 2 as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question, is there any way to perform a quick test of sorts to identify these trends before starting into actual work? This &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/25/how-to-estimate-amount-of-work-man-hours-for-an-unfamiliar-task&quot;&gt;post&lt;/a&gt; seemed to hit some of my questions, and I like the PERT method as described by Bill the Lizard. Ideally what I would like is to be able to very quickly identify if I need to change the weights of Optimistic, Expected, and Pessimistic for that person in order to better estimate how long it will take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since there is such a fast roll over it seems like about the time the employee has done enough estimates/work to know how to treat their estimates they end up moving on. So, any suggestions on how to handle this? Would going with something other then PERT work better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And PS, the fast roll over is due to it being a student driven group so it is expected that the student will leave once they graduate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="648" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T17:56:02.647" Title="How to determine how good someone estimates their time?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1207" CreationDate="2011-03-23T15:26:32.570" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should never change estimates provided by estimators. All you can do is to add corrections, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;               ML     BC     WC      PERT&#xA;               ------------------------------&#xA;Bob             8      6     12       8.3&#xA;John            7      8     20       9.3&#xA;Alex           16     12     60      22.7 &#xA;                               --------------&#xA;      Average                        13.4&#xA;   Correction                        -4.2&#xA;                               --------------&#xA;       Result                         9.2&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every correction has to be documented individually:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&quot;I think that Alex over-estimated the complexity of the task&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way you will always keep track of estimating history and will be able to get back when the tasks are completed and validate your estimates and corrections (!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T15:26:32.570" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1205" CreationDate="2011-03-23T15:36:30.547" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt; of the following apply, it may be time to make the jump:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are bored with managing the projects that you are being allocated;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You understand the role of the manager, and are confident that you would be good at it;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You want to remain with the same employer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not bored, don't jump, unless you need the money. Management roles get frustrating too, especially for someone who is as delivery-focused as most PMs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't understand the role, or have any doubts about your ability to be a manager, don't jump. Most management positions are, in my experience, pretty political, and that doesn't suit everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have no commitment to stay, move on into a bigger, more interesting PM role elsewhere. I wouldn't recommend moving out of PM into management and changing employers at the same time, as you won't know what you are moving into.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly, any negativity you may detect in my answer comes from bitter experience!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T15:36:30.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1207" CreationDate="2011-03-23T16:47:54.000" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know of any quick test. As you have no prior knowledge about their estimating accuracy, I would always let them &lt;strong&gt;estimate in group&lt;/strong&gt;. You can use &lt;strong&gt;planning poker&lt;/strong&gt; for this (I'm sure students will love this), but also just letting them discuss their individual estimates in group will quickly give you a much better estimate. And it really doesn't take so much time.&#xA;As Yegor already suggested, make good notes of risks connected with he worst case and any assumptions made. Not only as a historical record, but to manage!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have good records of past performance, you could establish a table like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Class A: Been done before - low=-5%, high=+8% &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Class B: Some new development - Low = -10% High = +12% &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Class C: New development - Low = -10% High = +15% &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Class D: New technology - Low = 10% High = +17% &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;where the percentages are calculated based upon past performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even then I would still let them make the single point estimate in group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T16:47:54.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1207" CreationDate="2011-03-23T16:49:06.840" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The process by which a team arrives at the estimate is what drives how precise an estimate is.  You need to facilitate an iterative approach using several competent people, challenge extremes, discuss, iterate, use historical values where you can, use parametrics where you can, iterate, iterate again, finalize.  Further, an estimate is NEVER a single point.  It is ALWAYS a range from minimum, to most likely, to maximum.  In fact, maximum never truly ends, i.e., the tail on the right goes out to infinity.  PERT is a simple formula that helps identify a potential target; however, it is based on a BETA distribution.  Not all tasks fit this distribution.  So it has limitations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where you target your time and cost is risk management.  It becomes more of an exercise of the degree of risk you want to assume.  So long as the target falls within the estimate distribution, it is a technically correct target.  Is it too risky, too optimistic, those are the questions to ask.  Then, it is not about &quot;correcting&quot; the target, which implies an error; it is about &quot;adjusting&quot; the target to meet your degree of risk aversion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:  After several iterations you team determines, at the project level, it will take between 45 to 65 days, most likely 52 days.  Your team comes back with a target baseline of 48 days.  Forty-eight is greater than 45; thus, it is a correct target.  However, you determine that 48 days falls on the 20th percentile, too risky for your tastes.  So you move it to 55 days, or the 60th percentile.  You now have a 60% chance of hitting that target.  Neither is more correct than the other.  One is less risky, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T16:49:06.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1207" CreationDate="2011-03-23T17:00:12.523" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some research suggests that software project duration estimation accuracy&#xA;follows a lognormal distribution.  So if you have enough estimation data for an employee, you can statistically test whether or not their pattern conforms to the norm or if their is something else going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a link to one such study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Ralph Winters&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.ecs.baylor.edu/faculty/grabow/Fall2010/csi3374/secure/Estimating/Little06.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://web.ecs.baylor.edu/faculty/grabow/Fall2010/csi3374/secure/Estimating/Little06.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="558" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T17:00:12.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1075" CreationDate="2011-03-23T17:03:29.057" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the case of the Denver airport baggage handling system, the engineering managers said &quot;projects of this size take 4 years to build and debug.&quot; The sales managers said &quot;the airport opens in 2 years, so we promised them it would be finished in 2 years and that's what the contract says.&quot; The system was finished 2 years &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the airport opened. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the sales managers had more clout, there were no alternatives to handling bags while the system was not fully operational (it never really was &quot;operational&quot; in the sense of &quot;works as intended&quot;), so there was no way to handle bags in a parallel system (when the conveyer belts were stopped, what was in the tunnels was stuck for hours or days) and no way for humans to fix things while the airport was open (there was no room for people to access the tunnels except on the conveyer belts). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The perceived delay in getting the system operational and the media attention it got sank the division of BAE that made these sort of systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this failure serves as a litmus test to determine if someone is a mismanager or not. Re-read the first paragraph and answer for yourself &quot;was the project completed on time or was it late?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T17:03:29.057" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-03-23T17:03:29.057" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1214" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1232" CreationDate="2011-03-23T17:14:52.060" Score="8" ViewCount="817" Body="&lt;p&gt;After reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://greatandsmallblog.com/2011/03/07/the-death-star-was-an-agile-project/&quot;&gt;this blog post that suggests that the Death Star was an agile project&lt;/a&gt; I was wondering if using metaphors is a good way of describing methodologies in a slightly fun way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Movie x demonstrated agile because of a, b, c' - 'Movie y demonstrated waterfall because of f, g, h' - would this help clients understand what the concepts actually mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="693" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T18:39:30.863" Title="Can metaphors in popular culture help with explaining agile or waterfall to clients?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;&lt;clients&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1201" CreationDate="2011-03-23T17:46:31.610" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Gary describes, with Team Explorer installed, you can review TFS Work Items directly using MS Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need more flexibility than that, also check out the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bharry/archive/2011/03/08/vs-tfs-2010-sp1-and-tfs-project-server-integration-feature-pack-have-released.aspx&quot;&gt;TFS Project Server Integration&lt;/a&gt;.  Among other things, this tool allows you to use detailed Tasks and other work items in TFS and track to a &quot;rolled-up&quot; project milestone in MS Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="347" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T17:46:31.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1207" CreationDate="2011-03-23T17:56:02.647" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually there is a very good, simple but not so quick method: compare people's estimates with real times they spent working on those tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The observation that people miss their estimate usually by similar percentage isn't new. Pretty much the same was brought by Joel Spolsky in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;his article on Evidence Based Scheduling&lt;/a&gt;. And Evidence Based Scheduling is a great tool to deal with the problem you point - it basically takes into account the situation and uses it as information to analyze.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you learn how much an estimator misses their estimates you can apply this knowledge to their current estimates to calculate more real ones. Joel explains it very well in the article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Generally if you look for a method to learn how good someone's estimates are there's no better approach than basing on historical data to verify what's the person's track record so far.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also you may find more ideas in &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1076/discerning-estimate-validity&quot;&gt;this thread&lt;/a&gt; as it discussed similar issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T17:56:02.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1214" CreationDate="2011-03-23T18:07:39.580" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technical matter and business can easily be some kind of arid. And everything which can be useful to make things more understandable is good. Just be careful with metaphors: they can easily bring with them some false ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the metaphor needs to be well fitted for the people you're aiming. For example, Star Wars is maybe not a good metaphor if you want to explain agile methods to the C level of your company...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastEditorUserId="152" LastEditDate="2011-03-24T10:25:44.020" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T10:25:44.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1203" CreationDate="2011-03-23T18:17:24.677" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;So the main problem is actually that all involved people don't have the same perspective about the output of the project. Changing this is mandatory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A project which has failed is not a project which has almost delivered all the features and needs some minor changes. So what needs to be done is to make sure everybody get the same perspective about the status of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, the business part will be ok with the current situation OR go back to the old tools they used before the delivery and the project team will schedule minor changes OR schedule some major work to finish the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what your role is in the story, so I don't know what you need to do. If you are with the sponsor, you need to explain clearly your disappointment to the project manager. If you are part of the project team, I'm not completly sure about your motivations, at this point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T18:17:24.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1214" CreationDate="2011-03-23T20:01:35.873" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Funny question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think of Matrix as Iterative, as The Architect mention that is the sixth version of the Matrix, so machines build in a iterative way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evan Almighty construction of the Noa´s Arc, is a good example of waterfall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="267" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T20:01:35.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1220" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1237" CreationDate="2011-03-23T20:52:19.840" Score="5" ViewCount="1556" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our organization needs to start a &lt;strong&gt;Community of Practice&lt;/strong&gt; or a &lt;strong&gt;Center of Excellence&lt;/strong&gt; around project management. What would be the steps to implement this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our organization won't be able to successfully implement this without a blessing from top management. What arguments can we use to engage top management?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These initiatives often start very enthusiastic, only to die down after a couple of meetings. Thus, what strategies can we use to keep the interest going?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2018-08-14T09:14:51.280" LastActivityDate="2018-08-14T09:14:51.280" Title="How to create a Project Management Community of Practice in an organisation?" Tags="&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1221" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1228" CreationDate="2011-03-23T20:58:12.313" Score="25" ViewCount="2313" Body="&lt;p&gt;What would be the essential elements of project management you would teach to &lt;strong&gt;kids&lt;/strong&gt;? And how would you teach them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would there be a difference in teaching approach for 10-12 year olds vs 12-16 year olds? For instance, would the topic of risk management be more elaborated for the latter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-10-05T06:50:52.197" LastActivityDate="2014-10-05T06:50:52.197" Title="Project Management for Kids" Tags="&lt;training&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1222" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1420" CreationDate="2011-03-23T21:56:30.107" Score="14" ViewCount="1617" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for a project management system, for a small development company (5-6 developers, 2-4 designers, 2-4 customer relationship managers) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some constraints are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;projects have &quot;fixed&quot; and usually &quot;tight&quot; budgets&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there are more than 40 concurrent projects, at the different stages of development. (in development or waiting for feedback from customer) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;also there can be some &quot;quick fixes&quot;, that require 1 man/day at most. (for earlier projects)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some project deadlines are really strict, but some are really loose. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;one major problem is, sometimes a project can wait for customer feedback for indefinite time. For example project A can wait for 1 day, but B can wait for more than a week. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I need: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;change project priorities in runtime with as little negative effect as possible. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;predict and calculate total cost of project. (after done)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;predict and alert if a project will pass deadline as soon as possible &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any methodology and/or software suggestion will be great. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastEditorUserId="2618" LastEditDate="2012-01-30T23:22:14.210" LastActivityDate="2012-01-30T23:22:14.210" Title="Project management system for multiple concurrent projects" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1221" CreationDate="2011-03-23T22:08:00.567" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think to teach the relationship between Time. Cost, Scope and Quality is the base for project management. Also, the main processes, Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring and Control and Closing can be taught by an exercise of planning a party. I think it would be excellent for kids from 10 to 16.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think PM should be taught starting at that age, because it is a skill that everyone should develop for their professional and personal advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="267" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-03-24T03:24:09.687" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T03:24:09.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1220" CreationDate="2011-03-23T23:14:17.740" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many of such initiatives fail because too few people care. If I had to point success criteria it would be: &lt;strong&gt;how many people believe the initiative is valuable and are going to get actively involved&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first place I'd think about bottom-up than top-down approach. Top management, sooner or later, will stop caring about the idea or will get all hot about another one so people who might keep it running aren't there. They are fellow PMs who want to improve their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Now, if you want to have enough fellow folks working on the thing you must answer the question: what's in it for them?&lt;/strong&gt; As long as they can see value for themselves they'd likely follow you. However if you can hardly answer the question in a reasonable way, that's a huge risk for the initiative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: people rarely look at such things form the perspective of organization. It's not about what the company gets, e.g. improved project management method, but about what I get, e.g. less work, nice achievement in resume, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;And one more thing - there should be someone who takes care about dropped balls.&lt;/strong&gt; Someone who put some effort to coordinate things, fight those small fights whenever needed, pushes people to do something and brings some fresh ideas. A leader. Not a formal initiative owner but someone who feels accountable for keeping the machine running. Otherwise at some point you may find that for a moment everyone is overwhelmed with everyday tasks and suddenly no one will overtake some effort to gather people again to get back on the track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T23:14:17.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1214" CreationDate="2011-03-24T03:15:49.273" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;waterfall is like artillery: a lot of setup, tons of prep work, massive amounts of ordinance, extremely precise aiming, difficulty hitting a moving target, and takes out a city block wherever it lands&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;agile is like a missile: arm, fire, aim...aim...aim...aim...aim...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="40" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T03:15:49.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1173" CreationDate="2011-03-24T04:49:29.973" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some societies, some issues are generally identified by the population as being a moral issue.  However, in other societies, that very same issue can be categorized as a social issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference is that one is a hard, solid rule that must never be broken, while the other is considered a social norm that, if not followed, just seems odd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some countries, bribery is a moral sin.  However, in other countries, bribery is considered a social norm, a normal part of doing business, just something that is commonly known as &quot;greasing the wheels&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to this question depends on a distinct combination between morality and adhering to the social norms of the country in which you're doing business.  If you want to be successful doing business in the global marketplace, this may require you to weight your values and determine if you're really dealing with a moral issue or a social issue.  If the cost of doing business conflicts with your moral beliefs, even if those moral beliefs aren't considered moral issues in the country you're doing business in, then you should perhaps consider only doing business in countries where you will be successful.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you report the person you're doing business with, what will happen to them?  Will the agency you're reporting this to take action, or will they just laugh at you, ruining both your chances of doing business with that person as well as making enemies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's up to you to determine what is moral because you believe it's a moral issue and what is moral because society says it's a moral issue.  This will help you understand how to proceed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DISCLAIMER:&lt;/strong&gt; I am not agreeing or disagreeing with this process.  I'm just saying that you have to understand the rules of the world and how they change from locale to locale if you want to operate in that world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-03-24T05:04:35.560" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T05:04:35.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1221" CreationDate="2011-03-24T07:56:53.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Teach by example. A good project manager manages &lt;strong&gt;almost everything as a project&lt;/strong&gt;. Your kids will do the same if you give them a good example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T07:56:53.377" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1221" CreationDate="2011-03-24T11:05:57.047" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, kids should be encouraged to develop skills like leadership, communication, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will be very necessary in the future (to a PM role or not).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having these skills developed is more important than teaching project management elements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, you can develop these skills &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; teach some essentials project management elements by assigning them (as PM) to a &quot;dummy project&quot; like developing a science project or something else from school or even planning a party as Arturo exemplified.&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Also, ask them to present the project results to you or to your family members.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They will develop their leadership, communication and other interpersonal skills;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They will learn how to manage projects (and the project elements like time management, scope, risk management, etc);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They will achieve the project objective (i.e. the science project or some other educative activity);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And they will learn to handle any activity in the future as a project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this is worth if the kid is &lt;strong&gt;enjoying doing this&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Don't force anything.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="105" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T11:05:57.047" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1222" CreationDate="2011-03-24T11:12:39.093" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www-01.ibm.com/software/rational/offerings/ppm/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IBM Rational&lt;/a&gt; has a number of products that may help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T11:12:39.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1230" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1233" CreationDate="2011-03-24T13:27:04.390" Score="11" ViewCount="273" Body="&lt;p&gt;Report Performance is one of the processes being done by a project manager in every project (according to PMBOK). Performance metrics have to be reported to a project control board in order to allow them to take necessary actions in time (add resources, terminate the project, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is whether the PM has to report performance to the project team as well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastEditorUserId="2618" LastEditDate="2012-01-26T01:20:51.077" LastActivityDate="2012-01-26T01:20:51.077" Title="Shall performance be reported to the project team?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;communication-management&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1214" CreationDate="2011-03-24T14:15:54.630" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely, use whatever metaphor or tool you can to explain the difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might find the following articles helpful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vertabase.com/blog/managing-expectations-on-projects-agile-mindset-waterfall-mindset/#more-73&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Mindset, Waterfall Mindset&lt;/a&gt; uses agile and waterfall as metaphors themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fusionauthority.com/techniques/4798-what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-projects.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;What We Talk About When We Talk About Projects&lt;/a&gt; discusses the importance of creating &quot;boundary objects&quot; -linguistic tools or project artifacts to improve communication on projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T14:15:54.630" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1230" CreationDate="2011-03-24T14:28:36.063" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Naturally. People want to know how they're doing as a team, not only individually. Besides, when you need to take corrective actions towards the team, they need to know the reason why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They can also help the PM when things go not as wished and they'll feel good when things are going as planned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, transparancy builds &lt;strong&gt;trust&lt;/strong&gt;. Hiding information from your team will create tension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, you still need to &quot;&lt;strong&gt;manage&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; your communication. For instance, if bad performance is due to a single person (for whatever reason), and it is deducable from your performance report, you have to take care that the rest of the team does not start picking on him/her before you had the chance of starting something corrective. So instead of just forwarding the info to them, you better discuss the report during the weekly status meeting so that you can put things into their proper perspective (and at the same time get input for improvements).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T14:28:36.063" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1230" CreationDate="2011-03-24T14:42:35.077" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Report&quot; performance to the project team is perhaps too formal, but I would certainly discuss performance with the team and let them know the highlights / lowlights and general trend. The team will, individually and collectively, have a view on how the project is going, so if you hide the performance from them, they will make up their own version of the truth. This may be a long way from what you are reporting, so when someone informally asks a member of the team how the project is going, they will get an answer that doesn't reflect your view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other reason to keep the team in the communication loop is that if the project is going well, they will be boosted by that knowledge. If it is going badly, they may be able to offer suggestions for getting it back on track, and in some cases these may be far more radical than you would have felt able to ask for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, if you want the team to act as mature participants rather than just resources, they deserve to know what is happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T14:42:35.077" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1173" CreationDate="2011-03-24T15:22:59.040" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's a very good question and I would like everyone who answered to rethink it a little more.  Besides the outright bribe, think of all the lunches, post-work drinks, game tickets, etc. exchanged between team members, 3rd party vendors and companies.  A check under the table is a clear and easy case, what about some tickets to a hockey game or a lunch?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We all live in a society where 'networking' is a known way to get something done.  So, the question could be: How  much are you willing to bribe or how much are you willing to receive prior to it crossing the line?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's see who claims to be a white-knight........&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="458" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T15:22:59.040" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1230" CreationDate="2011-03-24T15:43:17.430" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a story related to this.  Some years ago, I worked on a project team for a particular PM for about a year and a half.  At the end of that year and a half, she left the organization.  Shortly after that, I was asked to help locate some documentation.  I found it, but along the way I found a folder full of &quot;Weekly Status Reports&quot; that she had submitted about the team and its progress.  I had never seen these before and had no idea that they existed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started glancing through the Status Reports and found some real &quot;surprises&quot; in there.  Needless to say, I was pretty unhappy about some of what I found.  As a team member, I would have appreciated the opportunity to clarify and even correct some of the information that was provided there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you're providing a written performance report about your team to anyone else, I would recommend also letting the team look at it.  If they see or hear about one of these reports from someone else and have disagreements about it, it will not be good for your relationship with the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="347" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T15:43:17.430" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1220" CreationDate="2011-03-24T16:09:09.010" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a large organization with a successful PMCoP.  I can't tell you how it got started, but I can tell you a little bit about how it operates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is a mailing list of PMs throughout the organization (we have hundreds of PMs)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Meetings are held monthly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 PMI PDUs is given out for attending (attendance is tracked)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any given meeting has about 100 or so attendees (more for certain topics)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Topics for the year are decided in the fall&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Members submit topic ideas, and all topic ideas are voted on by the members with the top 12 choices being selected as topics for the following year&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Topics are often specific (or tailored) for our organization and are fairly relevant to a PM's daily work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMI is very keen on these PM Communities of Practice, so your local chapter can likely provide resources, advice, and guest speakers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="347" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T16:09:09.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1230" CreationDate="2011-03-24T17:05:35.363" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Of course.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;+1 for Stephan's answer, highlighting two important things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;'Manage your communication': As a manager, your duty is to make the team feel as one as possible. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Respect: Programmers are highly motivated by &lt;em&gt;respect&lt;/em&gt;, not only by &lt;em&gt;money&lt;/em&gt; (I read a great post about it somewhere... but I couldn't find it now). Offering the feeling that they're on the right path will make them feel a lot more motivated to keep the good job. If they have no feedback if they're doing good, they'll miss this feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't need to be a 'formal weekly reporting', as highlighted by ILM. I'd say that as much as informal - but realistic - as possible, the better. However, after the informal chat, a mail to remind the topics discussed is always welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T17:05:35.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1075" CreationDate="2011-03-24T18:19:39.133" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A large project I worked on failed for basically &quot;being stealth.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Management was unable (unwilling) to add the project to the company's project list, so the budget was carved out of slices of various departments' discretionary spending. The thought was that once we delivered the product, then everything would work out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, we couldn't talk about the project with anyone else to get help or learn what other groups were doing. We lived in a schizophrenic state where we knew what we were doing, but had to lie to senior management constantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally the deadlines grew short and our management panicked because we weren't going to have time to deliver. They threw a whole bunch of people at the problem (&lt;em&gt;Death March&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Mythical Man-Month&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Peoplesoft&lt;/em&gt; be damned) and had us race like mad. We predictably fell flat with the finish line in sight, but all the chits had been cached in and bridges burned, so there was no way to ask for more time or money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All told, we ended up with 6 large product specification binders, a lot of code (now lost) and a bunch of people on the street. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lessons learned:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Run away as fast as you possibly can&lt;/em&gt; if the following exist in your project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project isn't officially sanctioned&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project isn't officially funded&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no business plan signed-off by the sponsor &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project sponsor disappears for weeks or months at a time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project sponsor is not involved in/does not care about the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are not allowed to talk about the project with anyone not on the project team (obviously doesn't apply if you work for a defense contractor ;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are required to lie about project status to the sponsor and/or stakeholders&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change management/control is&#xA;absolutely essential for large&#xA;projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Steven McConnell is a Software PM God.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="117" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T18:19:39.133" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-03-24T18:19:39.133" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="49" CreationDate="2011-03-24T18:29:48.767" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can do all that with a spreadsheet. What matters is that progress is captured and the PM has the ability to extract relevant information from from the tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="117" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T18:29:48.767" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-03-24T18:29:48.767" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1214" CreationDate="2011-03-24T18:39:30.863" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course.  What area of thought or practice is not helped by metaphor?  What after all is thought?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest the movie &quot;Rain Man&quot;.  Tom Cruise for Agile, Dustin Hoffman for Waterfall.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="743" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T18:39:30.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1203" CreationDate="2011-03-24T18:52:43.723" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the project has concluded (&quot;ended&quot;), then the project manager's work is finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, it sounds like the Right Thing to Do is to initiate another project that will get the product aligned with the business. A good PM would sit down and do an after-action report/lessons learned on why the original project failed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How were the requirements gathered incorrectly and/or incompletely?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How did the design fail to take into account the users' needs?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where did User Acceptance Testing fail?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that the &lt;strong&gt;product&lt;/strong&gt; failed to meet the actual business requirements sounds like a flaw in the requirements gathering/design phase. If the product was delivered and the  user acceptance testing phase passed somehow, something is fundamentally wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="117" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T18:52:43.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1243" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-24T21:58:04.957" Score="10" ViewCount="2478" Body="&lt;p&gt;recently, I asked how to deal with PMs weaknesses from a team members point of view:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1177/is-it-the-team-members-responsibility-to-correct-pms-weaknesses-or-at-least-in&quot;&gt;Is it the team members responsibility to correct PMs weaknesses? (or at least in his own interest)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sense a wide agreement that team members should raise according questions to PM, but they might not always do so. This contradiction makes me wonder how a PM can encourage team members to behave as you consider it most helpful? To give you honest, yet respectful, feedback on your weaknesses? Probably not only you, but also within the team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my point of view, the ultimate minimum should be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Behave yourself as you want them to behave. Give honest feedback, mention what is to be mentioned, but on a objective, non-personal level.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Repeat whenever possible that you are interested in their opinion and invite them to give feedback also un-asked, &lt;em&gt;and mean it&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think some of the principles discussed here &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1117/how-to-improve-the-team-work&quot;&gt;How to improve the team-work?&lt;/a&gt; might apply for my question as well, but I think there might be more to say on that particular topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for your thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="699" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2017-05-02T15:55:44.020" Title="How to encourage team members to contribute to an open, yet respectful, team environment?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1243" CreationDate="2011-03-24T22:49:44.497" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Very interesting topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please define first, &quot;PM weaknesses&quot;, weak in the person leadership, behavior, knowledge, skills, authority perhaps?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that the &lt;strong&gt;PM should always have formal authority and power on the project&lt;/strong&gt; from the sponsors, this way the PM have the authority, with authority comes the power and should be no &quot;weaknesses&quot; from the PM, other way the PM will be assumed as weak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the team is not responsible to correct the PM weaknesses, actually in a formal speaking, in the PMBOK, this issue is never mentioned (as I know, maybe some one can correct me). &lt;strong&gt;The only person responsible to correct the PMs weakness, is the self PM, as a project, PM performance should be measured and corrected along with the project.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Formal Project Management is not for everyone, PMs should hold credentials and be selected carefully by the sponsors, that is why PMs with experience and credentials are very valuable, of course not always or everywhere, but for sake of the PM profession we should target to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="267" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T22:49:44.497" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1243" CreationDate="2011-03-24T22:52:20.980" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a lesson I've learned more as a manager than as a PM: don't treat people like &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; want to be treated; treat them as &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; want to be treated. Even if you expect honest and straightforward feedback it doesn't mean everyone does. I mean you should probably share your opinion but not necessarily &quot;straightforward&quot; is always the best way to go. BTW: personally I fail at that one pretty often, but it's really difficult thing to learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also just telling people that you expect honest feedback is rarely enough. It should be stated but you can't consider the job being done even if you repeat it once in a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think we should take it a level lower - &lt;strong&gt;you can't expect people will believe you when you ask for honest feedback or they will share their opinion with you unless they trust you&lt;/strong&gt;. So the step number one would be building trust relationship. Then you probably don't even need to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And when we are on trust, that's totally individual thing. Some people will just give you a credit of trust and unless you waste it they will be open with. Others will wait to see whether your actions are coherent with your words and then will drop their shields. And there are those who will be distanced for a longer time, no matter how hard you try. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, you can't go wrong being honest and transparent with whatever you do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T22:52:20.980" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1246" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1253" CreationDate="2011-03-24T23:13:09.650" Score="6" ViewCount="339" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a question inspired by the one about handing the bribe: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1173/what-should-a-project-manager-do-if-he-she-is-asked-to-pay-a-bribe&quot;&gt;What should a project manager do if he/she is asked to pay a bribe?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mine is a bit different. You're a project team member in the middle of a project and you accidentally overhear salesperson talking with the client in the way which clearly indicates there was bribery involved to get the project. You personally wouldn't hand the bribe out even if directly asked by your superior. Anyway, no one asked you about that and no one got you involved in that. You didn't get your hands dirty - you only learned about the situation. What should you do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-03-26T18:01:18.190" Title="How should team member act when they learn there was bribery in the project?" Tags="&lt;code-of-conduct&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1246" CreationDate="2011-03-25T02:09:52.563" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Report it to your boss and let the stuff go uphill that route.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a company lawyer, let them know. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take the two-pronged route because your company may have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/15/the-wetware-crisis-the-themocline-of-truth/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;thermocline of truth&lt;/a&gt;. That is, there is almost always some level in a corporation where the truth stops going up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T02:09:52.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1246" CreationDate="2011-03-25T02:56:54.630" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I support what Tangurena says completely. I think it is just important to add, that anyone with a PMP is obligated to do this because of our code of ethics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not an often talked about part of the PMP, but I've met senior business people that think that the PMP code of ethics is one of the things that makes hiring PMPs so valuable. Especially in larger corporations, the fact we are bound by ethics is something that creates value and trust. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we don't uphold it, not only do we do ourselves harm, we do every PMP holder harm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="91" LastEditDate="2011-03-25T07:03:59.437" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T07:03:59.437" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1243" CreationDate="2011-03-25T03:08:44.620" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;pawelbrodzinski's comments are very valuable to getting the right mindset for this. You have to make an environment that is condusive to open communications, not just say &quot;No, really tell me how you feel.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with pawelbrodzinski, I would leverage my people management training in this situation. I have applied the &lt;a href=&quot;http://manager-tools.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Manager-Tools&lt;/a&gt; trinity to project management with great success. I have project management one on ones with my team members on a weekly basis. Over time this has created a safe and open place to discuss all manner of things. The Manager Tools feedback model also has a project management version which works very well. Finally, their retrospective model, dubbed the Hotwash, is great for open brainstorming and then seperating the feedback from any decisions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to create an environment of trust, before there can be trust. Mark Horstman likes to say &quot;start looking for a problem in every widening circles about yourself.&quot; Make sure you are creating the right project team environment by example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best,&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thegorillaisnamedhogarth.blogspot.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Joel Bancroft-Connors, PMP&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T03:08:44.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1250" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1302" CreationDate="2011-03-25T09:17:25.993" Score="5" ViewCount="311" Body="&lt;p&gt;An earlier question,  &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/561/managing-without-meetings&quot;&gt;Managing Without Meetings&lt;/a&gt;, was mainly focused on the number and frequency of internal team meetings. This question is about project board meetings that are scheduled to take place on a regular monthly basis, and therefore don't usually coincide with the end of stages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not my project, but what I have observed is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The board members like the predictability and feeling of involvement that this gives them, but the meetings tend to be &quot;talking shops&quot; that don't achieve very much. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project is supposedly run using Prince 2, but is subject to a variety of &quot;interpretations&quot; of the methodology. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project executive will make decisions regarding issues and risks outside the planned meetings, and then present these decisions to the Board as a done deal - probably because the meeting schedules are not aligned to the needs of the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is an higher level Programme Board that meets monthly, so the project board meetings are aligned to it, to allow the Executive (who is a member of both boards) to report on project progress.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that fixed, regular meetings, scheduled months in advance, are a cultural aspect of working within parts of the UK public sector, should I advise the PM to accept that this is the way that things have to be, or should he try to persuade the project executive that there may be a better way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T11:32:09.797" Title="Dealing with a culture of fixed, scheduled project board meetings" Tags="&lt;politics&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;&lt;progress-report&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1250" CreationDate="2011-03-25T10:51:34.610" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Accepting status quo is the end of learning, growing, improving, advancing, and correcting.  Even seemingly bad ideas often times are the root of great ones.  Culture is hard to change; it took a long time to create so it will take a long time to evolve it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meetings are notorious for being wastes of time; however, there are easy to implement rules that help with that.  Also, your communication requirements require information exchange and meetings are a vehicle to that.  So you need to be careful that any improvements made in one area do not damage a capability in another, unless you can justify it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I opine that it is bad coaching to ever tell anyone, no matter the level within the organization, to just accept something as the way it is.  Nothing is ever perfect and, if someone has a good idea where I might be able to squeeze out a tiny piece of benefit, I want to hear about it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T10:51:34.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1250" CreationDate="2011-03-25T10:57:51.530" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would advise to match the Project Board meetings as much as possible with the important events and stage approvals of the project. Otherwise you'll get delays because of late decisions and risk of continue to work without the proper approval.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless the project executive takes all responsibility for these decisions. Than the Board doesn't really matter. In that case make sure all decisions by the executive are clearly documented and ratified by the board afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure your Project Executive understands this responsibility; but if he has the power and the money, why wait for a Board. But make sure you have understanding and/or informal approval from the important other members of the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, I like to work more with a good project executive (or sponsor) than with a sluggish board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is often said that Steering Comittees don't steer ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T10:57:51.530" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1246" CreationDate="2011-03-25T11:27:19.883" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If one does not do anything about it, (s)he is in collusion and it is exactly as if (s)he took the bribe directly.  Blow the whistle.  That said, I think we need to open a discussion on how unbelievably difficult that really is.  We have relationships with those with whom we work; our livelihoods are attached to this; there is a ton of uncertainty of how it would all play out.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Few of us can truly predict with any degree of accuracy our future behavior when faced with stressful events.  We like to think we can but it has been shown too often we stink at it.  It is far too easy to turn a blind eye, justify/minimize it away, wait for the next guy to blow the whistle, and even distort the events in your head to remove the dissonance one might feel after witnessing it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We all know what should be done, but the real question is how.  How do you drum up the strength, how do you resolve the fear of the unknown results, how do you really take that first step?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T11:27:19.883" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1178" CreationDate="2011-03-25T15:45:47.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I up-voted the leading answer.  But I have an answer of my own:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Comb over the spec and ensure it is&#xA;fulfilled. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look for places to exceed&#xA;expectations, &lt;s&gt;exceed the spec.&lt;/s&gt;  &lt;em&gt;(thanks jmort)&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make all this a team activity. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take&#xA;a little time to build a &quot;lessons&#xA;learned&quot; doc that is suitable for&#xA;your team, and for the client.  (Or&#xA;two different docs, if that is more&#xA;appropriate.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="743" LastEditorUserId="743" LastEditDate="2011-03-26T20:20:35.560" LastActivityDate="2011-03-26T20:20:35.560" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="942" CreationDate="2011-03-25T17:31:34.990" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Monte Carlo simulation is probably the best route to accomplish what you need.  However you CAN do it within Excel with the appropriate add-ins.  It is not necessary to buy a separate package.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.palisade.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.palisade.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vertex42.com/ExcelArticles/mc/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.vertex42.com/ExcelArticles/mc/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="558" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T17:31:34.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1257" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1275" CreationDate="2011-03-25T18:13:26.360" Score="5" ViewCount="411" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.davidco.com/what_is_gtd.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Getting Things Done&lt;/a&gt; helpful in terms of understanding PM, and does it make any direct contributions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not asking whether GTD will make &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; better organized, or more effective generally.  I mean, has it led to practical tools for PM?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="743" LastEditorUserId="743" LastEditDate="2011-03-26T22:35:27.550" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T16:36:12.517" Title="Are GTD techniques applicable to PM?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1258" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1260" CreationDate="2011-03-25T18:23:31.827" Score="6" ViewCount="1057" Body="&lt;p&gt;Define Scope is one of the processes to be accomplished in any project. An output of this process is a Scope Statement (according to PMBOK). This artifact identifies boundaries of a project and helps Project Manager to control its execution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is what tool/instrument can be used to effectively specify and maintain such a Scope Statement artifact in a software development project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T21:52:50.607" Title="What instrument to use to Define Scope of a software development project?" Tags="&lt;scope&gt;&lt;scope-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1258" CreationDate="2011-03-25T18:49:57.410" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, review the Organizational Project Assets and Historical Data to see if previous project used a tool for this. I really doubt that there is a tool/instrument (software or something like that) Interview with project sponsors to define the project scope, I think this is the real tool. The scope management plan is define in planning, and is monitored in the Monitoring and Control process. The project scope statement is the input for many project management process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some templates for the project scope statement that may help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="267" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T18:49:57.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1258" CreationDate="2011-03-25T21:52:50.607" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;Work breakdown Structure (WBS)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It not only contains a breakdown of the &lt;strong&gt;Product Scope&lt;/strong&gt; in meaningfull Work packages (that make sense to the customer), but also all supporting processes that support the product and its implementation into the business (if that is part of your project). The WBS defines the &lt;strong&gt;Project Scope&lt;/strong&gt;: what is not in the WBS, is out of scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each Work Package should have a short description of what it contains (the WBS dictionary). You can link each Work Package to more detailed functional and technical specification documents, which are elaborated during the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your network plan (of Work Packages) should clearly show how the product will reach its intended maturity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can color code each WBS element, depending on the status of the analysis. This gives a single glance overview of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T21:52:50.607" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1147" CreationDate="2011-03-26T03:13:55.413" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fundementally the CaPM and PMP test on the same information, that being your knowledge and understanding of the PMI Body of Knowledge (PMBoK).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used Rita's exam prep when I studied for my PMP and her approach to training will give you a strong basis in the main principles of the PMBoK. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing a little digging, I found a Blog that compared the test break downs. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/what-is-the-difference-between-the-capm-and-pmp-examinations.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Based on this blog&lt;/a&gt;, I would say that a PMP prep book will more than prepare you for a CaPM. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stepping away from fact, to offer a small opinion. Unless you are planning to go on to get the PMP, I wouldn't recommend just getting the CaPM. At least in Silicon Valley, I've seen it equated to &quot;Junior Project Management&quot; skills. While this is not the case, I think there is much more value in pushing for the PMP. Remember, almost anything can be a project. As long as someone can vouch for you, then organizing a bake sale can be a project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="91" LastEditDate="2011-03-26T06:48:21.170" LastActivityDate="2011-03-26T06:48:21.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1176" CreationDate="2011-03-26T03:17:41.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I listend to a recent podcast of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.botinternational.com/thepmopodcast.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMO Podcast&lt;/a&gt;, where Mark Perry interviewed an expert on MS Project 2010. I'm pretty sure they said that with the integration fully into SharePoint it could now be a cloud use product. You'd probably want to listen to the podcast to be sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="91" LastEditDate="2011-03-26T06:49:19.690" LastActivityDate="2011-03-26T06:49:19.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1264" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-26T16:34:23.687" Score="5" ViewCount="146" Body="&lt;p&gt;Answering my recently asked question whether to &quot;deliver results when finished significantly prior to the agreed deadline&quot;, Smandoli &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1178/deliver-results-when-finished-significantly-prior-to-the-agreed-deadline/1255#1255&quot;&gt;suggested&lt;/a&gt; to fill the slack with &quot;Look for places to exceed expectations, exceed the spec.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that deciding whether to do work which goes beyond defined project scope depends on a number of factors. Which ones do you consider to be particularly important to make a qualified decision?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="699" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-03-27T06:58:48.523" Title="What criteria should be considered when deciding to do work which goes beyond project scope?" Tags="&lt;politics&gt;&lt;customer-satisfaction&gt;&lt;relationships&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1250" CreationDate="2011-03-26T17:44:21.853" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think be major criterion to measure whether project board meetings contribute to the progress of a project is whether they help to give overall direction or their cyclic timing rather blocks overall progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading your question, I understand that the PM has the authority to make operational decisions himself, and only reports them to the board afterward. That sounds like an excellent setup to me! It would be very bad would his decisions be overruled there and several tasks to be un- or redone, but your particular setup sounds really good to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What in my understanding the board should then still do is giving overall direction and mid-term goals. I think it should be possible to foresee those core-questions in advance and raise them during the next meeting. For all other questions that require immediate decision I think it is actually very helpful that the next meeting is not required to be waited for and PM can make decisions himself instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="699" LastActivityDate="2011-03-26T17:44:21.853" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1264" CreationDate="2011-03-26T17:48:08.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just be aware that everything you deliver exceeding specification, and so an existing contract, cannot be sold, and you will probably never get any money for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastActivityDate="2011-03-26T17:48:08.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1264" CreationDate="2011-03-26T17:57:02.720" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tricky subject because so many projects pivot on the client expectations - which often don't match up to the written specification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could deliver the core product early and ask the client which areas they would like improving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could guess and produce something that is extended in areas you think are important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could just deliver early!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could show the client what you have done and then the client may well point out that they had a different expectations of sections 2,3,6 and 7 - and could you re-work them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember reading a case study on the iPhone UI project, where they decided to exceed expectations in areas that would make the phone seem special like the touch screen and zooming in/out - but almost ignore humdrum elements like cut-and-paste - and that was what lead to the huge approval ratings.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So if you are going to exceed expectations the iPhone lead is worth considering.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="693" LastActivityDate="2011-03-26T17:57:02.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1246" CreationDate="2011-03-26T18:01:18.190" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edmund Burke&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="693" LastActivityDate="2011-03-26T18:01:18.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1169" CreationDate="2011-03-26T18:11:52.033" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;@yegor256 makes a good point, but not a convincing one.  Whenever there is too much trust between certain project stakeholders then shortcuts will be taken.  Documents will be ill-defined and omit detail, specifications will be deemed wish lists and so on.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is little or no trust then the paperwork seems more likely to be in place so that the project success metrics will be well defined.  But decent paperwork seems to be the only benefit from an incredibly stressful situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a lack of trust then the stress levels on the project will not be helpful - especially if key project members will be constantly on the lookout for a knife in the dark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creative tension is good - not taking short-cuts because of personal relationships is good - lack of trust between key people has the smell of a project that is doomed.  One or other of the conflicting people needs to move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="693" LastActivityDate="2011-03-26T18:11:52.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1169" CreationDate="2011-03-26T18:32:02.470" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you get the right executive support for your project in this situation. The PM and the Sponsor need to work together to deliver a successful project. Even if this lack of trust is well founded, they need to try to put it aside and find a working relationship. If this can't happen, then the sponsor needs a new PM - not the other way around. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've worked on projects where I've needed to work on the relationship with the sponsor. The only way I know to make it work is to remind myself that the project belongs to the sponsor and my job is to get it done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-03-26T18:32:02.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1264" CreationDate="2011-03-26T18:37:35.490" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be careful about exceeding expectations based on 'having time to do it'. I've been on the client side of this behaviour and my reaction was not what the team expected. If I had been given the choice, I would have asked for completely different use of the time. No only did the team not exceed my expectations by deciding what they could do, the didn't meet my expectations because of their actions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is to give the client the options. Remember, they might just be happier to have the early delivery, rather than have what you determine is 'extra' value. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-03-26T18:37:35.490" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1264" CreationDate="2011-03-26T18:40:22.570" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I'd say in any scenario there should be some gain either for you or for the customer and possibly for both sides.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few ideas to consider which come to my mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Depending on a type of project, you may add something which pleases the client but also makes you product better for future implementations. Not only should you consider this specific implementation but also potential future ones.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another factor to consider is paying some &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.construx.com/blogs/stevemcc/archive/2007/11/01/technical-debt-2.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;technical debt&lt;/a&gt; back. Vast majority of projects I know incurred at least some technical debt and such situation is a good occasion to do something about that. It usually pays of in terms of maintenance cost.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This brings me to another thing - there are some features which reduce maintenance burden and cost, automatic updates being the most obvious example here. They usually are win-win which makes them good candidates to consider in such scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-03-26T18:40:22.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1250" CreationDate="2011-03-26T18:42:59.713" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pick your battles. If you can show value to the people on the boards to change their schedule to match your needs, it's worth a try. Be careful that you are not trying to change this structure for your own reasons. Remember they meet for subjects other than your project. &#xA;Most of my projects have to report to a board of executives in one way or another and they have their schedule. I have no problem meeting their schedule because I a) know when I have to report, and b) know how to compose my reports to give them the information they need without messing up my schedule. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-03-26T18:42:59.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1264" CreationDate="2011-03-26T19:57:05.607" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I vote no on this under most if not all circumstances.  This runs too close to the line of scope creep.  Projects finish earlier or later than targets all the time, secondary to nothing more than random events.  Most times, we finish later due to our uncanny ability of estimating too optimistically--planning fallacy.  If you finish early, capture the favorable variance and move on as planned because you will likely need the slack later when you begin to overrun a succeeding package.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-03-26T19:57:05.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1257" CreationDate="2011-03-27T02:56:41.743" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a great fan of GTD, and I believe in &lt;strong&gt;custom-fitting to take what benefits you.&lt;/strong&gt; Things I found from GTD that are great when applied to project management:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Formally tracking &quot;waiting-for&quot; tasks  (eg. dependencies on work from other teams)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keeping everything documented electronically (at least, my GTD systems are always like this)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using a calender to track specific dates (with email notification) for things due on that date (I tend to use a giant spreadsheet and not keep too many dates)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, GTD doesn't really add much to project management. You'll get more out of PMI's framework, or a specific methodology like Agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-03-27T02:56:41.743" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1264" CreationDate="2011-03-27T04:14:18.510" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well I think its a perfect case for Agile style project management. If you are operating in an Agile fashion then you have a few of things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- When the project, as defined is done, you can ship it.&#xA;2- You are communicating with the customer regularily. This allows them to adjust what they want. You won't be done and wondering if you should add more, the customer will tell you. &#xA;3- With a well defined and groomed backlog you can easily reach for the next items on the backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be my own Devil's Advocate, you have to be very careful in what you ship, if it will be used by an outside consumer. If you add a dozen new features to your database and no one tells customer support about it, they'll be trying to support a product they don't know. This just stresses the need for total team communication. Even in an Agile development process you can have groups like customer support ready to go the moment you ship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="91" LastEditDate="2011-03-27T06:58:48.523" LastActivityDate="2011-03-27T06:58:48.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1277" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1278" CreationDate="2011-03-27T10:38:30.847" Score="10" ViewCount="395" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to work in an organisation that set a limit of 20 days effort, below which a task would be allocated to a technical lead who would be told to &quot;just get on with it&quot;. Above this size, the work would be allocated to a PM, and would be subject to project disciplines (albeit very lightly applied at the smaller end). Ignoring the question of who produced the initial estimate, how do other organisations decide whether to use a PM and manage small pieces of work as projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastEditorUserId="693" LastEditDate="2011-03-27T14:35:45.550" LastActivityDate="2011-10-24T09:57:51.777" Title="When is a piece of work too small to justify a PM?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1277" CreationDate="2011-03-27T11:42:35.037" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;All temporary work, no matter the size, requires project management and the PM disciplines that go with it.  The smaller and less complex simply require less formality, rigor, and documentation of those disciplines, but they still exist.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So whether you formally assign the role PM to a human, someone on that small team will assume those duties.  Either they are legitimately assigned or they will assume it.  Obviously, if the task is small, you will not burden it with a full-time PM.  It would not require 40+ hours a week, but it will require some hours in that week.  Either a full-time PM pops in and performs that work along with other projects or a technical lead allocates a portion of his time to it.  Either works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-03-27T11:42:35.037" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1279" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1319" CreationDate="2011-03-27T12:48:52.303" Score="22" ViewCount="16885" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently been given the role of Technical Architect in my organization (I will also be project managing some projects and developing if the 10-12 senior developers are all too busy).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering whether a technical architect should have a strong role at the start in defining the project architecture and the right developers for the project - but then takes a back-seat during the actual project.  Is that reasonable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="693" LastEditorUserId="217" LastEditDate="2011-03-29T11:06:10.043" LastActivityDate="2018-07-30T13:17:21.803" Title="What role should a technical architect play in Project Management?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;technical-leader&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1277" CreationDate="2011-03-27T14:34:50.007" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say a work may not need PM if it's &lt;strong&gt;isolated&lt;/strong&gt;. I mean, if it's only one person doing it, and (s)he has not to insert it into a tight schedule, and it only needs resources available all the time, why bother for complicated planning and organisation? Just get it done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which means most of the tasks will need some sort of PM, of course...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastActivityDate="2011-03-27T14:34:50.007" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1277" CreationDate="2011-03-27T14:41:56.183" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;That 20 day rule for 'just getting on with it' seems fine as long as the project is properly specified - as with many things if the specification and estimate are accepted then you are in a decent position.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't see where the PM will really be able to make a difference without significantly cutting into the project budget on that size of project - but I would like to have the technical lead regularly feed back process (perhaps in a daily 15-minute agile stand-up), otherwise it might still be 20 wasted days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="693" LastActivityDate="2011-03-27T14:41:56.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1282" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1283" CreationDate="2011-03-27T14:48:06.710" Score="10" ViewCount="213" Body="&lt;p&gt;Partway through a project and a significant holiday kicks in for the PM.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should the PM take their temporary replacement through before they go - and what should they expect to be handed back to them when they return?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="693" LastEditorUserId="374" LastEditDate="2011-03-28T21:21:01.307" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T21:21:01.307" Title="When a PM goes on holiday, what can they expect when they get back to convince that the project has not suffered?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;progress-monitor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1282" CreationDate="2011-03-27T15:25:03.473" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the PM has done her job, the project would be functioning with a high performing team working under well defined roles, high performing processes, a clear direction and a good degree of buy-in with all stakeholders.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, the PM should be able to leave for a period of time and return with little to no adverse effect.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Before goes:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;When handing over the reigns for a vacation, current high priority risks and exceptions should be briefed to the temporary PM with clear direction on his tasks to be accomplished during that period.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When returning:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Upon return, a counter briefing describing progress against those tasks and where the project is in terms of those risks and exceptions are required.  Everything else ought to be running like a well oiled machine.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2011-03-28T13:28:00.483" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T13:28:00.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1279" CreationDate="2011-03-27T15:28:26.607" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technical architect is a specific role as expectations for person fulfilling it differ much depending on organization and even with the same organization depending on a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In short technical architect should take full responsibility for, well, software architecture.&lt;/strong&gt; Not only does it mean designing it in a way which allows to fulfill all non-functional requirements, e.g. scaling, performance, but also making it reasonably easy for developers to build software. You don't get points for fancy top-notch architecture if development team struggles to build the application and maintain them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I think about responsibility I consider it throughout the whole project. &lt;strong&gt;Architect's job isn't done when development starts as architecture may be, and usually should be, evolving over time.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also in many agile projects you may find &lt;strong&gt;architecture which is built incrementally&lt;/strong&gt; - you set only general borders up front and then add and change it as you add new functionality. Again, if you plan to adjust to changing requirements when it comes to features you should plan the same for architecture so the work isn't done at the beginning of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also say that it's &lt;strong&gt;technical architect who should care about &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.construx.com/blogs/stevemcc/archive/2007/11/01/technical-debt-2.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;technical debt&lt;/a&gt; in project&lt;/strong&gt;. Whether it is incurred and when, if ever, it is payed back. Of course as long as anyone even cares about such thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually it isn't direct architect's responsibility but I'd add &lt;strong&gt;responsibility for project maintenance&lt;/strong&gt; as we often see projects which are even finished on time but then maintenance costs skyrocket and sometimes the main reason is either bad architecture design or poor execution, i.e. not ensuring that development team is following guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the vague thing here is how we understand &lt;em&gt;architecture&lt;/em&gt;. It can be anything from just some general high-level guidelines up to detailed rules what should and what should not be done, which tools, libraries, design patterns, coding standard, etc. are used and which are not. Anyway, however architecture is defined in the organization or the project all architecture-related issues should be addressed to technical architect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-15T19:33:02.453" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T19:33:02.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="442" CreationDate="2011-03-27T15:36:37.820" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using a tool like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agreedo.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.agreedo.com&lt;/a&gt; can help you to get your meeting minutes right and to track the results. Tracking the results of a meeting is crucial to leverage &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="765" LastActivityDate="2011-03-27T15:36:37.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1282" CreationDate="2011-03-27T17:24:30.413" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, it's best to divide the communication workload between several specialists while the PM is away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, if we know that we're expecting important calls from clients, I'll forward that to my supervisor and ask him to handle those communications.  If the marketing team is waiting for updates on when feature X will be live, I put that communication responsibility on the lead developer.  If I know that the development team will need to know what to work on after feature X is completed, I give the lead developer all the information on next tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By dividing the communications, individual project members are still able to focus on their primary objectives while the group as a whole is able to temporarily fill the important parts of the PM role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-03-27T17:24:30.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1277" CreationDate="2011-03-27T19:46:10.713" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our shop, everything smaller than 50 (ideal) days is treated as a request and (when approved by continuity steerco) processed by continuity teams. We have coordinators (they're same positions as PM's) who manage the throughput of these requests, so there's is no 'just get on with it'-mode.&#xA;As from 50 days (and usually multiple involved parties) a PM takes over, with 'light' methodology. From around 100 days no excuses left: full PM Methodology to be followed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There can be exceptions, but these are the general principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-27T19:46:10.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1277" CreationDate="2011-03-27T20:31:33.903" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my current employer (unless otherwise specified by federal or DoE regulations) tasks more than 3 weeks long have PM supervision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At my previous employer, the project manager was responsible for allocating all work of any size. Basically, his title was &quot;PM&quot; but he was just a manager. The pointy haired boss hired him because he got tired of dealing with developers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2011-03-27T20:31:33.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="442" CreationDate="2011-03-27T20:41:30.263" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the current place, we allocate standard meeting times and cancel them when no one has anything to report. This is a method for blocking off time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most effective client I worked with had lots of regularly scheduled meeting and sending an agenda was one of their business requirements. Anyone lackadaisical enough to send out meeting invites without an agenda would have their meeting invites canceled. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Is it better to stick to rigidly scheduled meetings every day or week, even when there's nothing to say&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, I find this to be the better option. Schedule them and ruthlessly cancel them when they aren't needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;should meetings be scheduled with an advance notice whenever there is something to say?&lt;/em&gt;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, and try to push for agendas ahead of time. I find that it is much harder to get sandbagged if you know what is likely to be discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How to suppress non-time-critical impromptu meetings, especially when they come from above?&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One method is to block off time in advance. Another is to use &quot;I don't know&quot; as a mantra. Getting prepared for meetings is quite time consuming, but if I don't, it looks like I'm an idiot from all the &quot;I don't know, let me get back to you on that&quot; going on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2011-03-27T20:41:30.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1279" CreationDate="2011-03-28T06:51:38.237" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Rational_Unified_Process&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;RUP&lt;/a&gt; Software Architect is responsible for Software Architecture Document (SAD), which is a bridge between Software Requirements Specification (SRS) and Software Design Document (SDD).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice it means that an Architect has to be responsible for information transfer between problem domain and solution domain, across the entire project lifecycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T06:51:38.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1291" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-28T12:42:04.173" Score="9" ViewCount="4682" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have analysed the possible risks of my project, and I do intend to get back to them from time to time and make sure that the project is safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am trying to figure out how often I should check them, trying to avoid risks as much as possible, while spending not more then the necessary time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How often should risk management be analysed and tracked?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="678" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-01-01T00:17:01.150" LastActivityDate="2013-01-01T00:17:01.150" Title="How often should risk management be analysed and tracked?" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;analysis&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1277" CreationDate="2011-03-28T12:48:07.163" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;whenever the resource that in charge of doing the job is not capable of reporting and following up on missions. &#xA;As project managers, we often don't contribute much to producing value (code, design, work process), but we are there just to make sure communication, order, work procedures and timelines are all in place. thank god we're there...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="678" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T12:48:07.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1282" CreationDate="2011-03-28T12:50:02.170" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;that can already be predicted during the holiday, according to the number of phone calls we receive :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="678" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T12:50:02.170" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1291" CreationDate="2011-03-28T12:56:40.650" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on your project. At a minimum, I would recommend reviewing them once a week. Your goal in a review is to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify risks that actualized into incidents&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify new risks that may occur&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Drop old risks that can no longer occur&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your project can tolerate it, and will benefit from it, track risk more frequently. In Agile software development projects with two-week release cycles (small, frequent releases) we used to track risks daily. The best risk updates were &quot;nothing new here.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it's something of a best-practice to have the &lt;strong&gt;whole team&lt;/strong&gt; help in identifying and monitoring risks, not just the PMs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T12:56:40.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1291" CreationDate="2011-03-28T13:13:08.943" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The identification and its subsequent risk analysis and COA decisions are ongoing.  Your risk capability should have a vehicle in which each and every project team member and other stakeholders can escalate a potential threat on a daily basis.  This part of the process should not be &quot;scheduled&quot;, but rather simply a fluid trigger.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each discrete risk captured on your risk database has its own schedule for progress updates, briefings, and oversight.  Some will require daily updates sequel to the threat and overall exposure while others may only need monitoring on a monthly, quarterly, or other basis.  The team assigned to mitigate can recommend the schedule and PM can put a requirement out there, too.  The points here is to let the threat dictate reporting and update requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Formal update briefings to leadership and client can be scheduled on a set frequency.  No right answer here; it will depend on many factors and, of course, overall agreement to all the parties involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T13:13:08.943" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1176" CreationDate="2011-03-28T16:14:17.033" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://gantter.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Gantter&quot;&gt;Gantter&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It features MPP import and XML export&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="771" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T16:14:17.033" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1257" CreationDate="2011-03-28T16:36:12.517" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;One element of GTD that has been helpful for me in project management is the habit of asking &quot;What is the next action?&quot; when a particular issue, problem, or mini-project is discussed in a meeting.  All too often, meeting participants can leave the room without the &quot;next action&quot; being identified.  Thinking in terms of GTD for my personal productivity has led me to ask this question more often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="347" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T16:36:12.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1298" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1304" CreationDate="2011-03-28T17:48:07.487" Score="5" ViewCount="1007" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a matrixed organization without a PMO, where projects tend to be coordinated by different resources (perhaps a Team Manager, perhaps a technical lead, perhaps the person who proposed a given project), where none of the project coordinators have formal Project Management experience or training...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any recommendations about the best way to start introducing the basics of project management to these people? People who would rather just &quot;get the project&quot; done than spend time attending a brown-bag training on even the basics of writing a project charter, work breakdown structure, capturing basic risks, performing basic communication status tracking/reporting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="439" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-04-05T03:09:00.533" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T03:09:00.533" Title="Managing projects without a PMO" Tags="&lt;pmo&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1279" CreationDate="2011-03-28T17:48:45.900" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me, it is a big red flag that you are being asked to be the organization's Technical Architect (responsible for the architecture of X number of projects), project managing Y number of projects, and being a developer on Z number of projects.  I don't know how you will manage to be successful in all 3 roles, in X+Y+Z number of projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried doing both development and project management at the same time, and it usually involved taking turns neglecting one role vs the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that you are being asked to do all these things does say to me that the organization thinks very highly of your skills and knowledge, so that is a good thing!  But just don't take on more than you can successfully manage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="347" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T17:48:45.900" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1298" CreationDate="2011-03-28T17:56:48.800" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're the PMO (which it sounds like from your question -- one-man PMO), brown-bags that are short and sweet might be the best way. Make sure they're short though (under an hour) and practical, so that whoever attends can see the immediate benefit of adopting whatever you're teaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on how much people resist, you can hold informal seminars (eg. &quot;lunch and learn&quot; presentations during lunch), formal presentations, or even workshops. I would again stress that &lt;strong&gt;attendees must see the benefit,&lt;/strong&gt; or they won't attend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I decided to go the PMI route, and I'm glad I did; while their framework is clunky at times, it's comprehensive, and it covers pretty much all of the core concepts you need to learn along the way, along with practical advice (depending on how you study for it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, it's up to whatever your creativity can muster!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T17:56:48.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1291" CreationDate="2011-03-28T18:30:15.487" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Risk management is an &lt;strong&gt;ongoing process&lt;/strong&gt;. Both Ashes and David have pointed that out clearly. Some of my own practices are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My &lt;strong&gt;top 5&lt;/strong&gt; risks are always on my radar (as are my top three issues, but that's another matter)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;During weekly status or sprint planning or other team meeting I encourage team members to express whatever concerns they may have, justified or not, in order to capture &lt;strong&gt;new risks&lt;/strong&gt; early.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The whole risk register is reviewed &lt;strong&gt;weekly&lt;/strong&gt;; I check up with risk-owners how their mitigation or other actions concerning their risk(s) is going forward as planned. When we come close to the specified time-range of a risk (if it has one) I notify the risk-owner, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risks and their reduction are discussed during each SteerCo meeting as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your total risk exposure should decline over the course of the project. That means it has to be actively &lt;strong&gt;planned&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;managed&lt;/strong&gt; that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T18:30:15.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1250" CreationDate="2011-03-28T18:37:45.743" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer that I'm going to take from those provided is a combination of what @David Espina and @Perry Wilson said. It could be argued that they are completely opposing positions, but I don't think this is the only way to look at it. My interpretation is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will advise the PM that he should engage the Project Executive in a discussion about whether the Project Board could be more helpful to both of them, by taking some pressure off the Executive, and providing a breadth of perspective to the PM that the Executive alone cannot achieve. If this achieves nothing, then the PM should back off, having at least opened the conversation, and hopefully made the Executive think about the issue. Don't accept the status quo, and don't start a battle either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Executive does take on board these comments, the Executive may help to spread the message to his peers on the Programme Board, and start to effect a change across the whole organisation. Such a change will be slow, but dripping water can carve a hole in a rock, if it is given enough time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T18:37:45.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="943" CreationDate="2011-03-28T19:54:32.497" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found a great blog post from Glen Alleman related to this topic, particularly how to use Monte Carlo analysis to calculate risk margin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find it &lt;a href=&quot;http://herdingcats.typepad.com/my_weblog/2010/12/managing-schedule-risk.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T19:54:32.497" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1298" CreationDate="2011-03-28T20:12:51.827" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From your question and comments I get the impression that you really have a lot of convincing to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion would be to objectively make an analysis of what goes wrong or could be improved. From your examples I gather you already have a thorough understanding of that. Then show them how PM principles and techniques may give an answer to those problems and how it may improve the lifes of all those ad-hoc PM's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also check out the links I gave regarding 'Stealth Project Management' in a related &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1108/is-it-still-possible-to-use-formal-methods-if-the-organization-has-chosen-not-to/1112#1112&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side-note: most people that I teach PM principles in my organisation, who have had no formal PM training, but have to juggle projects apart from their normal jobs, are really pleased and convinced after I have tought them the simple technique of the WBS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start with simple solutions for big problems; I would wait with formal methodologies or standards until you have made a few improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T20:12:51.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1305" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1311" CreationDate="2011-03-28T21:57:01.500" Score="6" ViewCount="821" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the interest of not reinventing the wheel, are there any useful websites with collections of good samples of various deliverables (project charters, status reports, communication plans, RACI matrixes, post-mortem templates, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="439" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T04:15:44.280" Title="Project Management Templates" Tags="&lt;templates&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="5" ClosedDate="2012-10-03T00:54:31.233" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1306" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1318" CreationDate="2011-03-28T22:33:47.087" Score="9" ViewCount="1663" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although scope creep often comes from stakeholders, it can also come from project team members in the form of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scope_%28project_management%29&quot;&gt;Gold Plating&lt;/a&gt; (&quot;when technologists augment the original requirements because of a bias toward &quot;technical perfectionism&quot; or because the initial requirements were insufficiently clear or detailed.&quot;).  I've been one of those technical perfectionists myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any effective strategies for drawing a &quot;good enough&quot; line in the sand in order to bring a project to a close?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="439" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T20:35:25.033" Title="Managing Gold Plating Scope Creep" Tags="&lt;scope&gt;&lt;scope-management&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1307" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1309" CreationDate="2011-03-28T23:01:08.887" Score="16" ViewCount="2780" Body="&lt;p&gt;Running a project post-mortem (or post-implementation review) is a valuable way to identify and document lessons learned from the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After doing so, how to best share (and act upon) those lessons learned with an organization as a whole? It is not just the project team that would benefit from the lessons learned, and too often I see the review outcomes relegated to a document library for an archived project where it is never read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand some companies such as Boeing have a black book of lessons from past failures that are shared with employees... any other approaches that work well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="439" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T11:41:53.610" Title="How do you share lessons learned from a post-mortem?" Tags="&lt;post-mortem&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1306" CreationDate="2011-03-29T00:08:17.067" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Drawing a &quot;good enough&quot; line in the sand implies something around quality whereas gold plating is going above and beyond scope.  These are two different things.  Good strategies to avoid gold plating is ensuring your scope is well defined in that the characteristics of the product are defined, documented, and understood by all of the principles.  Your quality control reviews during development can help identify where gold plating may be taking place with the idea of stopping it before it becomes out of control.  And of course conducting ongoing training with your team and periodic inspections of their work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, your original question used the words perfectionist and good enough.  Quality is simply different than gold plating so I am not sure what you were really after.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T00:08:17.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1307" CreationDate="2011-03-29T02:59:47.507" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Retrospectives are incredibly powerful tools if they are used wisely. (Not unlike the Jedi's Force, it can be for good or darkness.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my first suggestions on making them more effective, is to hold them more often. Holding them only at the end of the project means you can't apply any of the lessons to the project. Holding Retrospectives after major milestones, phase gates, etc. can be quick and quickly applied. I highly recommend the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.manager-tools.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Manager Tools&lt;/a&gt; Hotwash podcast for an excellent and quick Retrospective for during a project. I marry this with the Scrum guideline of focus on fixing just one thing at a time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now instead of saving up a years worth of lessons, you can put learning into practice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Retrospectives can still be very valuable after a project has ended. Reach into the PMBoK and it lists Lessons Learned as an Organizational Process Asset. During the chartering or forming of a project you would specifically look back on past projects for what can be learned from them. PM consultant &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linkedin.com/in/ainsleynies&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ainsley Nies&lt;/a&gt; used to specialize in Retrospectives. This was until she discovered that something like 80% of all Retrospective found issues could be traced back to the Chartering stage of the project. Now she is helping companies kick of their projects right, by looking back. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="439" LastEditDate="2011-03-29T15:59:22.637" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T15:59:22.637" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1306" CreationDate="2011-03-29T03:01:13.923" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you're working on the specifications, the client is usually involved in those meetings to make sure that the project scope is properly defined.  Both parties go back and forth discussing the goals of the project until the specification contains enough details to satisfy both parties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to help keep technical resources from increasing the scope, involve the technical leads in the discussions as well.  If the technical leads feel involved in deciding what goes in the specification document, they will be more likely to adhere to its scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The act of having a contract helps resolve disputes, hold all parties accountable, and also help answer questions about scope, not just for the client but also for the technical team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T03:01:13.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1305" CreationDate="2011-03-29T03:34:51.010" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a list of Project Management Templates broken out into categories like planning, executing, controlling, closing, and other project documentation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectmanagementdocs.com/templates.html&quot;&gt;Project Management Docs - Templates&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are just a few highlights:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Management Plan Template - This defines PM approach, scope, milestones, schedules, communication management, and many other details of the project, in a Word/Open Office document.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Expense Report - Spreadsheet to list item by item costs incurred on the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk Register&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communication Management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Status Reports&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cost Management - Approach, measuring costs, define reporting format, cost change control process, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many more.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems very thorough and worth checking out.  The templates are free to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T03:34:51.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1305" CreationDate="2011-03-29T04:15:44.280" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some other resources I have found... It looks like Microsoft provides quite a few templates here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/CT001226193.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/CT001226193.aspx&lt;/a&gt;, and Key Consulting has a number of templates here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.consulting.ky/free_project_management_templates.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.consulting.ky/free_project_management_templates.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="439" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T04:15:44.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1306" CreationDate="2011-03-29T04:39:59.197" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Gold Plating occurs when there isn't a clear scope and proper communication of priorities.  Some of the agile techniques can help reduce this tendency.  When you have work to deliver daily or weekly, it tends to limit the ability to Gold Plate the solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen a developer spend a month coding a screen to turn off the save button when the edits resulted in the data returning to the original values.  The screen had a clear button which could be used to do the same.  I was not  aware of any other screens with the same functionality.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being somewhat a perfectionist myself, I will often try to exceed the good enough criteria.  I certainly advocate for inclusion of features which will increase security such as automatically disabling unused administration user-ids.  I would likely capture the data to enable the functionality, even if the functionality were out of scope. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastEditorUserId="529" LastEditDate="2011-04-18T20:35:25.033" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T20:35:25.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1298" CreationDate="2011-03-29T07:12:56.823" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Isolate one project (as much as possible) and implement your PM discipline there. Achieve some results and make a summary of what you achieved. Demonstrate your results to the management. Try to convince them to give you enough permissions to do same things with other projects. If they agree - mission complete. If not, re-iterate with another project. After a number of failed re-iterations change the place of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T07:12:56.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1306" CreationDate="2011-03-29T07:19:10.593" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Gold Plating is the effect of problems with Human Resource Plan, especially its &quot;Motivation Plan&quot; part. People do Gold Plating when they don't know how exactly the project wants them to behave. In most cases they think that &quot;to work hard&quot; is what the project needs from them, which is absolutely wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To solve the problem you need to explain them (in writing!) that the project wants them &quot;&lt;strong&gt;to deliver scope&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T07:19:10.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1307" CreationDate="2011-03-29T08:02:29.700" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find documents which are results of retrospectives/post mortems/lessons learned very often useless as no matter how good they are people rarely go back to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me retros serve a couple of purposes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Learning what's wrong.&lt;/strong&gt; From this perspective the discussion is the most valuable part as no one in the team is kind of oracle who knows everything about all the issues in the project. Here, focus should be set on facilitating a good discussion during retrospective, get everyone involved and create atmosphere where openness and honesty are encouraged.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Applying those lessons.&lt;/strong&gt; Actually this is &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/44/what-are-the-most-common-problems-that-you-find-in-your-lessons-learned-sessions/65#65&quot;&gt;the biggest problem with retrospectives&lt;/a&gt; - people don't learn from than. So what I'd do here is building short and simple plans which can be verified. A few ideas here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try to focus on a single most painful problem only. Move to another once the first one is fixed. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Set goals, measurable if possible. Check regularly whether you're doing well. If you have no other idea just discuss it with the team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do retros frequently, e.g. in Scrum you're advised to do them after each sprint which means once every 2-4 weeks. This way you often have checkpoints when you can verify how you're doing and adjust the course or move to another thing on the list.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you work in a co-located team you may try &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2010/12/kanban-retrospectives.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;informal ad-hoc retrospectives&lt;/a&gt; which are very light-weight but then they virtually are call for action which makes it likely to see results very fast.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you want to spread the knowledge among the whole company, first make your retros successful and then invite some people who care to improve their teams as guests to your meetings so they can see what you're doing and share that in their teams.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T08:02:29.700" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1307" CreationDate="2011-03-29T09:35:17.293" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apart from the project team, the first audience should be other PM's. If you hold a monthly &quot;PM community&quot; meeting or something, you could add the sharing of lessons learned as a fixed item on the agenda.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make it compulsory for PM's to present their Lessons Learned at least at the end of a project, or every 6 months if the project takes longer than a year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, you could put this in their yearly evaluation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T09:35:17.293" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1306" CreationDate="2011-03-29T09:59:51.090" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find two techniques to be very helpful in this respect:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First is &lt;strong&gt;agile&lt;/strong&gt; development practises. Short (2-weeks), focused sprints make sure there isn't a lot of excess time to go gold-plating. Furthermore, as the customer reviews and accepts the results every two weeks, it is the customer who decides when something is 'good enough'. So after that, the chance to waste time on perfection is gone. Ofcourse, this is something the scrummaster/PM and product owner need to be wary off.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Second is scheduling with &lt;strong&gt;most likely&lt;/strong&gt; estimates, while keeping a risk margin when they prove to be too optimistic (based upon worst case estimates). Managing time against the most likely is usually tight enough so there is little time left for gold-plating.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T09:59:51.090" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1279" CreationDate="2011-03-29T13:58:59.667" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're going to be working on multiple projects, I think you need to be sure that your focus is on the cross-project picture, and not too intensely on any one project.  If you become the major decision maker/architectural owner for the core of each project, you will eventually become a chokepoint as you are deluged with questions from the team on what you've decided.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a strong proponent that the people who make the final call on architecture should be the people who will be stuck with implementing it and bugfixing the final product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that you're doing cross-project work, I would think your responsibilities should be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developing and seeding the teams working these projects with the right knowledge, people and vision.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keeping some degree of consistency and cross-pollination of ideas between projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Being the final call only on areas where there's a reason to keep projects consistent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Occassional firefighting on a specific project as necessary due to calamity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there isn't a person each project who has the primary responsibility &lt;em&gt;for that project&lt;/em&gt;, then you have a problem.  The minute your role becomes being the primary owner of a given project you will have to make the decision between focus on that project and a sweeping focus on all projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="718" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T13:58:59.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1298" CreationDate="2011-03-29T14:02:47.727" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say keep it problem/solution oriented.  At least at first.  If you're dealing with a group who sees no innate value in basic project management, then saying &quot;do it because it's how other people do it&quot; is not likely to be a sell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you can link project management good practices to problems the teams are trying to solve - then you have a way to build advocates, because you are giving them something they need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="718" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T14:02:47.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1307" CreationDate="2011-03-29T14:09:30.520" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend having a company intranet site with current events, current projects, etc. and a section for templates and lessons learned. The &lt;em&gt;best&lt;/em&gt; way I know of seeing something used/implemented is to reward for it so, after publishing and having available lessons learned, allow for other teams to reference the lesson and how they utilized it on their project. If the PMO feels it was well utilized, buy the team lunch (pizza greases the wheels of success all the time). Constant and consistent recognition of improvements -- planned or otherwise -- sends a strong signal to &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; teams of what is expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="458" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-18T22:42:24.047" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T22:42:24.047" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1306" CreationDate="2011-03-29T14:34:16.733" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;All the above answers give the standard reasons for Gold Plating.  But, there is another reason.  It comes from the fact that developers are highly creative people, and the very often get stuck in an &quot;OMG!!! This is so cool!&quot;  trap.  Google's policy of allowing developers to work on their own projects has as a side benefit, the mitigation of this trap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, if a developer ends up in the trap, the best way to deal with it is to defer the coolness to the next release.  See if you can get Sales involved, and get the client to pay for the gold plating on the next version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="778" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T14:34:16.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1323" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-29T18:21:21.233" Score="9" ViewCount="789" Body="&lt;p&gt;As projects involve people with many different personalities (trying to) work together as a team, it it worth the time and effort to have the team participate in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator&quot;&gt;Myers-Briggs&lt;/a&gt; personality inventory?  Does the answer depend on the size of the team? The type of the project? Should the project manager make decisions about task assignment and communication styles best on the results?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="439" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T23:08:40.297" Title="How important are Myers-Briggs personality evaluations as a project management tool?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1323" CreationDate="2011-03-29T20:41:25.017" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe such evaluations have little value in terms of working with the team. I assume you already have your team so you don't want to use the method to select people. If I'm wrong here you can also be interested in &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1106/are-there-any-wrong-methods-when-selecting-a-team&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway when we're talking about everyday work with people I strongly believe you will learn much more from your interactions with them than from some sort of artificial evaluation. Everyday communication is what will give you the best clues about what kind of communication style you should choose in each case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think about task assignment you're likely to base on competence in the first place and not on the way someone perceives the world (or similar criteria).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In short: I wouldn't invest the time to do such evaluation. However, models such as Myers-Briggs are usually worth knowing so you have some background you can refer to when processing observations and experiences from everyday work with people. From this perspective they can give you better understanding and help you to make better decisions.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T22:38:46.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="943" CreationDate="2011-03-29T20:48:39.393" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I think is very interesting in that regard is what Jurgen Appelo described in his blog: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.noop.nl/2009/07/your-project-will-suffer-from-power-laws.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.noop.nl/2009/07/your-project-will-suffer-from-power-laws.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to consider that as well, since it contains a lot of insight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="699" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T20:48:39.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1326" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1329" CreationDate="2011-03-29T22:06:02.040" Score="12" ViewCount="1002" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a project with huge technical debt which is currently in maintenance phase. However because of the technical debt a lot of effort is needed to keep the thing running - 3 people should constantly work on fixing bugs to deal with workload.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue is planned budget for maintenance is about 50 hours per month which is far less than what's really needed. Now:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The sponsor expects maintenance budget won't be exceeded&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Development team director don't want to assign more than a single person to the project as planned work can barely fill 1/3 of developer's time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The client expects maintenance work and bug fixes won't be delayed whatsoever&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should PM do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-04-11T19:24:10.193" Title="Maintenance project with insufficient staff - what should PM do?" Tags="&lt;stakeholders&gt;&lt;maintenance&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1323" CreationDate="2011-03-29T22:14:04.857" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am with Pawel on this.  I would not waste precious project resources on doing MBTI or DISC or anything else.  The only deviation from that might be if the project was a long term gig and I was having difficulty getting the team to gel, i.e., intervention based on an issue where other interventions failed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is interesting, though, and can be helpful when trying to figure out how to deal with someone.  In an ongoing operations, I'd likely do something like this.  On a project, no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T22:14:04.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1326" CreationDate="2011-03-29T23:07:06.183" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I honestly don't see that much to do, beside tell them being explicit on what's going to happen, fail their expectancies (giving the best and solving bugs with higher priority oc) and see if they want to find a proper solution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds like software/web development, being in rush prj refactoring becomes often a too much expensive luxury.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T23:07:06.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1326" CreationDate="2011-03-30T01:06:46.630" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I pretty much disagree with eco. I believe that if things are at risk, the PM needs to act - and fast!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1st - Identify the reason behind this problem&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to be one (or maybe more than one, hope not!) problem somewhere that needs to be addressed for further cycles: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;OR the project has been presented to the sponsor in an over optimistic way&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;OR there are far more bug to be fixed that initially expected &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;OR the development team is performing below expectations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, the PM needs to identify where the bottleneck lies. Once identified, take notes and keep it. We'll use them very soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2nd - Make the team / managers aware of the scenario&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok, back to the current scenario. Now that we know where the problem lies, is clearer what needs to be done. We can't expect that bugfix guys will be available, so the PM needs to know how much can be done having 1/3 developers working on development. Gather all this information and formalize it, having a clear and realistic meeting with your managers about the problems. You need to clarify where (from the above items) this scenario came from. This meeting will be a post-mortem meeting (since the deadlines are pretty much in risk) so next time the PM will need to act as soon as he believes something will get out of the track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3rd - agree with the client what must and what may be delivered&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your managers are aware of the problem, now we need to deal with the client. This meeting will be tuff. You need to provide the necessary information and agree with them what are the main developments to be delivered (based on the 1/3 resource). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They won't want to take anything out, but if the scenario is as you stated, delays or partial deliveries are a fact. Having the list of must-have, the PM will take a list of nice to have entries, in an optimistic case where the bugfix guys have time to do some development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point, the clients have only two options: partial deliveries or delays. The PM needs to feel the best approach to propose to them (I'd go for partial deliveries, as above).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4th - Avoid this problem in the future&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are problems with the communication, estimation, development, bugfix, or all of them. The PM must identify them ASAP and act to have them solved (or mitigated). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bottomline&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything can goes wrong. It's IT, for God sake. But, the PM must act as soon as an unexpected scenario arrives, and the first action is communication. Letting everyone know that a storm is coming, they cannot blame the team / PM for problems (basically because the PM had already alerted about them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A ps.: The PM is also a developer's  agent. Thus, if the PM will have a long term relationship with the developers, his duty is to not expose them, but also acting very effectively when something goes wrong with a developer. If the relationship is a short term... he must not expose them either. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-11T19:24:10.193" LastActivityDate="2011-04-11T19:24:10.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1330" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-30T01:37:04.603" Score="22" ViewCount="3667" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many project managers start out as strong individual contributors, and end up as accidental project managers (filling in while the project manager is away, filling a need where a project manager is not available, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Managing projects is a very different beast from being an individual contributor.  Project managers must be able to delegate, direct, communicate, and coordinate (skills that are often the weak muscles of individual contributors).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can a new project manager best develop some of the skills that make a project manager successful as such? (I am especially interested recommendations on developing delegation skills.  It can be tempting for a technical person to take on many project tasks themselves, rather than delegating to others on the project team.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="439" LastEditorUserId="2618" LastEditDate="2012-02-11T10:43:36.653" LastActivityDate="2020-01-10T17:57:16.460" Title="Transitioning into a project management role" Tags="&lt;skills&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;training&gt;&lt;transition&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="8" ClosedDate="2020-01-12T12:45:28.503" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1092" CreationDate="2011-03-30T01:40:56.597" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not sure if you've seen it, but the Project team has released a free Scrum Solution starter for Project 2010 that will allow you to manage your product backlog, sprint backlog, and generate sprint burn down charts directly from within Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/P2010Scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/P2010Scrum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="439" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T01:40:56.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1323" CreationDate="2011-03-30T02:00:58.390" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a project management tool, perhaps not.  But I think that it can be a good team-building exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few years ago, the team that I'm part of all did MBTI, not to pigeonhole us or change task assignments, but rather to try to give everyone a little extra perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It reminded us that we're all different, with different strengths and weaknesses, and that sometimes extra care/effort is needed when communicating with people that don't think in the same way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="783" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T02:00:58.390" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1330" CreationDate="2011-03-30T03:36:30.163" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like you am I am in transition, albeit a slow transition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With my relatively short project management experience so far, I find it easiest to know what to delegate when I have identified all the tasks that need doing (including evaluating the workload for some of the other tasks) and the time frame they (ideally) need to be done by.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the total exceeds available hours, there is no choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another great delegation motivator is lack of know-how. When some of those tasks require someone else's knowledge or skill, you have no choice either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="179" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T03:36:30.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1326" CreationDate="2011-03-30T03:46:24.820" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's all about risk versus cost management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have risks been fully identified? Have consequences been assessed? Are the risks manageable? Is the cost associated with those consequences justifiable? Is the cost of a heavier maintenance option justifiable? Are there procedural ways to address the risks? Have the risks and consequences been formally recognised and endorsed by the sponsor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The role of the PM is to provide all the relevant information so that the sponsor can make an informed decision. If you cannot be faulted for identifying the risks, consequences, and mitigation options (or absence of), then you have done your job, the ball is in the sponsor's court, let them decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="179" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T03:46:24.820" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1330" CreationDate="2011-03-30T04:37:22.517" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came at PM from a management position and I have found my management training to be the most valuable part of my toolbox. It will depend on what your background as an individual contributor is. I recommend you take some time and consider - what are the gaps between what you have as skills and what you think you need as a PM. &#xA;When you have an understanding of your gaps, look everywhere to find a way to fill them. If you are strong in technical skills, look to supervisory/management courses to help you understand how to delegate and lead. &#xA;Good luck and welcome to Project Management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;as an aside, I offer project management training for the accidental project manager. It's focused on business people who have been voluntold to do projects. &#xA;www.perryawilsonconsulting.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T04:37:22.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1323" CreationDate="2011-03-30T04:47:48.560" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your project is long and your team is expected to stay with the project, you may want to invest sometime in doing some testing like this. Often teams will invest in communication style assessment and analysis. Communication preferences are different from myers briggs. They allow you to see how your team members fall into communication quadrants and then support the team in understanding how to deal with each other's styles. One I used with my team was True Colors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T04:47:48.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1330" CreationDate="2011-03-30T04:53:05.963" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the best ways to improve your skills as a project manager is to practice.  You're right that it's tempting to take on tasks yourself, but the main point to keep in mind is the the number of tasks that you as a project manager personally undertake is inversely proportional to your ability to effectively plan, manage, and delegate tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more work you take on, the lower your ability will be to see the bigger picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're working in a great organization, you'll likely have plenty of people on your team who will be more than happy to volunteer to take on some tasks.  One way to start learning to delegate is to ask people if they want to handle a task. If they say yes, define the success criteria and quality metrics, as well as the goal, and then let that person run with the ball.  Set a check-in time for that person to come back and update you, and then &lt;em&gt;stay out of the way.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, you as an individual can now accomplish more by directing and motivating a team than what you'll accomplish by yourself.  As soon as you fully believe this, the better off you'll be.  It's tough to get to the point where you feel okay delegating; it's something you get over with time and practice.  Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T04:53:05.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1330" CreationDate="2011-03-30T08:40:28.093" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One thing is working on PMs skills.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick which helps PM to learn delegation is &lt;em&gt;trust&lt;/em&gt;. If I think why we prefer to do the task by ourselves it's usually because we believe we'd do it better, which basically means we don't &lt;em&gt;trust&lt;/em&gt; that someone would do it at least equally well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However it also means PM doesn't give people chances to develop their skills. As long as they aren't given challenging tasks how can they earn PM's &lt;em&gt;trust&lt;/em&gt;? It's a kind of vicious circle. So PM basically needs to break it, making step forward and assuming people will cope with tasks they're given. Not only is it a chance to build trust and develop them but also it a good lesson about delegation for PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as PM is good with delegation the rest comes pretty easy as they should have enough time to work on communication, coordination, task management, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Another thing is (not) having a good example.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of reasons we often suck when becoming PMs or people managers is we don't have good role models around. Especially when we don't bring a long experience with us, we often learn from people who we're working with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if my manager sucks at delegation chances are good I'll suck at that as well. If PMs around micromanage their projects and focus on individual tasks instead of coordinating effort of the whole project team I'm likely to do the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What PM can do here is to find a good role model. Look around, search for PM who act like you'd like to act. Ask them to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mentoring&quot;&gt;mentor&lt;/a&gt; you. It's a very light-weight relation, yet the one which should be very rewarding for both sides. In terms of personal development a good mentor in the workplace can hardly be overrated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T08:40:28.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1339" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1340" CreationDate="2011-03-30T08:41:50.430" Score="14" ViewCount="1400" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Targets in a one man developer team?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you are the only developer on a new startup, how do you think the project management should move forward. Because I am the only person with a technical background I am really the only person who is monitoring my progress. I'm not a slacker and would really like to enforce some kind of accountability and target based expectations on myself, but I don't know how this is really possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The new start up has other team members, but at the moment their role is purely supervisional and advice based (when it comes to the software development).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm concerned with finding techniques to accelerate my development. The industry that the software is designed for is seasonal so timeframes are of importance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe I should consider using software? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In response to the first answer, I see that I should provide more information to my question. This is the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am going to continue to be the only developer for the forseeable future and I will be working on this start up for several years.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project will see me develop software which will be used as a service.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The service will care to the needs of many clients&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &quot;needs&quot; of these clients is where the other people in the team comes in. They have been operating in this industry for many years. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have already done several months of design and brainstorming&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have been developing for about 7 weeks now, and will hope to have a core prototype'd demo product in about 7 more weeks. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="785" LastEditorUserId="785" LastEditDate="2011-03-30T09:45:05.057" LastActivityDate="2020-07-20T13:36:53.053" Title="How do you &quot;project manage&quot; when you are the only developer?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;progress-monitor&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1339" CreationDate="2011-03-30T09:04:46.077" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The range of tasks in such small projects depends much on what exactly you're working on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case you probably need to cope with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Managing the scope.&lt;/strong&gt; It can be very light-weight, so the scope can be just a general direction, which is pretty common in startups, and it can be split into coarse-grained tasks. As you work in startup you probably &lt;a href=&quot;http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/03/happy_squidoo_d.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;plan to change anyway&lt;/a&gt;, so there's no need for very detailed planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE: Since you've already done a few months of planning the general scope should be known pretty well. I'd still consider it's going to change over the way, especially after you get feedback from early adopters. Anyway your focus here should be set on splitting the scope into smaller work items - features, user stories or whatever you feel comfortable with. I wouldn't go into very detailed level here as priorities will be changing, that's for sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Monitoring progress.&lt;/strong&gt; Again in one-man team it doesn't have to be anything heavy. However I'd try to have tasks not longer than few-day-long, which means you may need to split those coarse-grained features which you came up with when working on the scope of the project. Than it's up to you whether you only need to monitor progress by marking them as done once you're done or you want to have some more data, like real working time or maybe estimates as well. The latter two may help you to estimate future work if you're asked for that and help you to come up with some information when you're going to finish your work. You may consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt; as a very lightweight tool to manage tasks and monitor progress in such project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE: In terms of tools/software which can help you here, don't look for anything fancy. For such project Excel sheet would probably work wonders. However personally I'd go with some &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2010/02/kanban-board-revisited.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;task board&lt;/a&gt; in your workplace. It nicely visualizes what's done, what's ongoing and what are top priorities for the nearest future. Not only would it work for you but also for other folks in your startup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is more of a product, so you build something which is addressed directly to end-users, like web service, you should also focus on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product management.&lt;/strong&gt; In bigger projects that's not really PM's job, but since you work in one-man project actually every important responsibility is yours. In terms of products for end-users product management is very important - you need to decide which features are needed and which are not, you should gather some feedback about your plans etc. This is to some point connected with managing the scope, but here you actively create and change the scope and not only work on predefined one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE: It looks like most of that one is responsibility of other people in your organization. However you haven't clarified whether they're actively working with end-users to get feedback. If they do then fine. However experience you can get talking directly with end users (in some, I don't say you should publish you mobile number) is invaluable. So even if product management is covered I wouldn't isolate myself from communication with users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you work on a product for a defined customer you will also have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Communication with customer.&lt;/strong&gt; In such a small project it probably be mostly informal (emails, calls) than formal (documentation, specification) but it's pretty likely some of communication will be required to keep the project aligned with client's expectations. In startup project you will probably want to demo your progress pretty often and get feedback how you're doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE: It looks like your client is your users so pretty much the previous point covers the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last thought: even though it looks like quite a wide range of tasks don't make them any more complicated than it's absolutely needed. You may go with as simple tools as possible, just to make the work done. It's not the goal to have full-blown project management process - you just try to cover gaps, which in small projects are really small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T10:12:26.003" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1330" CreationDate="2011-03-30T13:29:17.610" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, don't panic!! You may feel a little disoriented until you are comfortable with your role. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stop for a second a think about the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Business Acumen -&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Are you familiar with the project's intent? What's your level of knowledge about the business? Do you understand the industry, trends, competitors, etc...?&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are comfortable with what is going on then you will find easier to focus on the actual Project Management skills and tools required to execute your role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Training -&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;What can &quot;I&quot; need to understand the role of the Project Manager? and, most importantly, how can &quot;the company&quot; support me on the transition to Project Manager?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't be afraid to ask your line manager the available options within the company to develop or strengthen your skills. This is not only for your own benefit but for the project's sake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check for a Project Management course or intensive training to complement your current knowledge; e.g. PRINCE2 Foundations, in which you can obtain a fair level of understanding of all the components of projects. Additionally, you could take some training to excel on planning and control practises (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lsaglobal.com/learning-solutions/onsite/Project-Management-Planning-Training.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Project Management Planning Training)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lessons Learned -&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;Has anybody been involved in this project before? Is there any similar project or ideas that I could check out? What's the experience/feedback from the Project Teams? and from the Board?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to identify from your Project Team whether there were issues with the previous PM. Was the communication good enough? The tasks clearly assigned? Was there any mechanism to record and resolve any issues encountered? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, try to list down and understand what went wrong so you can do something different that works. Use your team members as your allies to support you improving processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just remember that if you have been appointed as a Project Manager is because you already have the material. Try to combine the three steps above and I am sure that you will succeed and enjoy this role. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T13:29:17.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1326" CreationDate="2011-03-30T13:32:40.817" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I reckon the first thing for the PM to do is take a long hard look at the risks caused by the lack of resources being allocated to the project. If these risks have a high probability and impact, there may be a strong business case to be made for a follow-on project to fix the problem once and for all. Sure, there will be a cost of doing this, but the benefit could be massive by comparison (hopefully), through reduced ongoing maintenance and a better platform for future development. With such a cost/benefit case out in the open, it is relatively easy for the business to make an informed decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, the PM's responsibility is to do whatever (s)he can to deliver the project, but if this can't be achieved, it is also the PM's responsibility to flag the issue up to the Sponsor. If the Sponsor won't accept what the PM is saying, that's a different question entirely. Certainly, in Prince 2 terms, the Sponsor (or Project Executive) has the responsibility to take any issues that exceed defined tolerances to either the Programme (rather than Project) board, or to the corporate organisation. Even if that's not relevant in this situation, I guess there will be some corporate responsibility that the Sponsor has.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My final comment on this is that the PM should keep a record of all such conversations in the project diary or elsewhere, so that if challenged, the trail of events can be evidenced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T13:32:40.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1339" CreationDate="2011-03-30T14:42:55.563" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1339/how-do-you-project-manage-when-you-are-the-only-developer/1340#1340&quot;&gt;pawelbrodzinski's answer&lt;/a&gt; is excellent, but I feel compelled to add a bit more...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even a 1 person project can benefit from the old &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDCA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Plan-Do-Check-Act&lt;/a&gt; cycle.  Even though this is mostly about changing your processes, you can use it as a framework for how you approach everything you do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Plan&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Establish clear &lt;em&gt;objectives&lt;/em&gt; and follow a plan, even if your plan is a rough release schedule, it will give you deadlines to work, setup expectations for your customers and provide a framework for tracking progress.  It may be that the bulk of your plan is what you &lt;em&gt;won't&lt;/em&gt; get done.  Sometimes knowing what is out of scope for a particular release is the hardest part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work in small increments.  This applies to implementing change as well as to your regular work.  Frequent releases in &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20190224145012/http://scrumpedia.com/articles/timebox_your_projects&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;strict time-boxes&lt;/a&gt; creates a 'heartbeat' for your project that you and your customers will both feel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Check&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Verify that you are following your plan, whatever that is.  Was you last release on time?  Did it include the features everyone expected?  You are considering adding some process to your work, but it still may not be working the way you want - don't be afraid to change - &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0446672602&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sacred cows make the best burgers&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Act&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learn from the checks you performed and refine your plan for the next release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-20T13:36:53.053" LastActivityDate="2020-07-20T13:36:53.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1326" CreationDate="2011-03-30T16:02:05.930" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes a PM needs to get out of the middle and bring all interested parties together, in a single room or worst case conf call, to discuss the current state and the on-going plans.  Cash is and always will be king, without sufficient funds resources can not be allocated - period.  I'm not sure of the history of how the project 'failed' (did not meet expectations), but that's history and can't be changed.  The focus needs to be on what steps to take to ensure the most benefit is derived from what there is OR worst case close it down (if it's found the best tool is another tool OR no tool - i.e. - the delivery has negative overall benefit).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SO - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;schedule a meeting with all Sr. team members, sponsors, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;present the state of health for the project - very objectively&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;discuss what can be done within the given budget and the priority of how the outstanding items/issues should be addressed (high level)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;discuss what the sponsor NEEDS to have done and when (upcoming events, etc. that impact the system's use or needs)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;open the floor to the IT manager and sponsor on potential solutions and track the conversation, next steps, etc..but start to identify who the problem owner(s) are and make sure they take responsibility (for example the sponsor might need to get more funding - it's the sponsor's problem and you - the PM - need to follow up on the progress of that&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="458" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T16:02:05.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="484" CreationDate="2011-03-30T16:15:58.277" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is all about building a relationship with the people who make up your project team. If one person is missing the deadlines you can complain all you like to their manager but ultimately that will not help to improve your relationship with them nor will it help your project release on schedule. I see two options: can you remove the need for the data from this person by getting it some other way? Probably doubtful, so you need to work with them to build a relationship. Try to understand why they are not meeting your dates&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is it because the dates are unrealistic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;are they too busy doing other higher priority projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is it difficult for them to get the data&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is there anything you can do to help them get the data you need&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe they are just being awkward which is a real pain but complaining to their boss will not help. Ultimately people only really do things for other people because there is a good relationship between them so you need to work on building that with them. There is a good podcast at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.manager-tools.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.manager-tools.com&lt;/a&gt; that has a number of useful resources for building and maintaining relationships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="788" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T16:15:58.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1339" CreationDate="2011-03-30T20:38:46.430" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found the &lt;a href=&quot;http://openagile.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OpenAgile&lt;/a&gt; framework lends itself to small projects that may or may not have a project manager. In an effort to prove this theory out, I mapped how OpenAgile would work for a project manager conducting a job hunt and detailed it in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://thegorillaisnamedhogarth.blogspot.com/2011/01/openagile-pms-job-hunt-best-friend-doin.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't replace anything that Dave or Pawel has said. I think it just may provide a good, structured framwork to work from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="91" LastEditDate="2011-03-31T07:05:34.743" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T07:05:34.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1347" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1567" CreationDate="2011-03-30T21:45:57.507" Score="4" ViewCount="85" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most management practices derived from manufacturing were developed in an environment where measurements to the nearest 1/1000&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt;  are common place.  Most software project strive to estimate production +/- 10%.  Given the difficulty the software world has in even &lt;a href=&quot;http://sunset.usc.edu/events/2007/CIIForum/presentationByDay/fri%20nov2/2%20ToolFair/A%20SLOC%20Counting%20Standard.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;simply quantifying its size&lt;/a&gt;, it seems translating process from the manufacturing world to the IT world must be done with care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does any publicly available quantitative evidence exist that shows the impact of implementing manufacturing-style process on software project where it did not previously exist?  I'm not picky about the process, could be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isixsigma.com/index.php?option=com_k2&amp;amp;view=item&amp;amp;id=1463%3awhat-is-six-sigma?&amp;amp;Itemid=155&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Six Sigma&lt;/a&gt; or something I've never heard of as long as its source was originally manufacturing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T13:16:03.267" Title="Is there quantitative evidence showing that processes adapted from manufacturing work  when applied to software projects?" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;measurement&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="955" CreationDate="2011-03-30T22:10:05.393" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are familiar with python and comfortable with open source, I would definitely recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://trac.edgewall.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;trac&lt;/a&gt;.  It's a lightweight, flexible project tracking tool that I have used successfully for years.  Out of the box it provides a minimal core set of functions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;wiki&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;milestone tracking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;bug &amp;amp; feature request tracking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;customizable ticket workflow&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;fine-grained access control&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Intertrac and interwiki links&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trac uses a wiki as its core - wiki markup is allowed practically everywhere.  With a little familiarization its easy to link from software changes, tickets, miletones, blog entries and &quot;regular&quot; wiki pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trac is open source &amp;amp; easy to extend with plugins.  You can find plenty at &lt;a href=&quot;http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/WikiStart&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trac Hacks&lt;/a&gt;.  Some good ones that apply to your situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/TimingAndEstimationPlugin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TimingAndEstimationPlugin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/IniAdminPlugin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IniAdminPlugin&lt;/a&gt; Edit all trac ini information via the web&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/GanttCalendarPlugin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GanttCalendarPlugin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/FullBlogPlugin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Blog plugin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;invoicing would remain a major gap, but trac provides a lot of capability at my favorite price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="76" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T22:10:05.393" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-03-30T22:10:05.393" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1349" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1352" CreationDate="2011-03-30T22:38:07.403" Score="4" ViewCount="541" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm taking over a project as a project manager where several functional teams deliver and integrate. Those teams are also delivering to other projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of the teams is expected to have its own project plan (with the schedule, tasks and milestones depicted in a Gantt). I would like to create a project wide Gantt and I'm considering 2 approaches:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Managing the project in a single Gantt, including all tasks of all teams&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having each of the teams manage their own Gantt, while I manage a high level Gantt with milestones signifying the integration points and deliveries of the teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm leaning towards the 2nd alternative and wanted to hear thoughts and ideas about these approaches, pitfalls I need to watch for, recommendations I'd rather follow and anything else that could be of help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="44" LastEditorUserId="44" LastEditDate="2011-03-31T08:54:50.577" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T13:53:07.077" Title="How to create/track a project Gantt while aggregating multiple functional teams plans" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="484" CreationDate="2011-03-31T02:28:24.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;All the answers are great. Your colleague needs to be able to manage this issue. The difficult person's manager is both right and wrong. If they were both professionals, there wouldn't be a problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your colleague should also remember that the sponsor is there to help with issues. This may need a bit of a Sponsor to Manager conversation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T02:28:24.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1347" CreationDate="2011-03-31T02:32:07.357" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would use care with this translation of manufacturing to other industries. The problem is that often in manufacturing the 'solutions' tend to the 'replace the widget/ reorganize the line' options. Outside manufacturing, widgets and lines are less common and you can't just replace a person like you can a widget. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, you can find lessons in the way work is sequenced or building standard processes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I advise proceeding with some caution but proceeding anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T02:32:07.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1349" CreationDate="2011-03-31T03:30:55.940" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a suggestion and I'll post that here. I would like to clear something up before that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Gantt chart is not a project plan. It is a list of tasks to be done, usually with the resources. It could be used as the project schedule. A plan is much more than that. Its one of the project management myths a lot of companies without strucutered PM propetuate, that a Gantt is a project. I've run projects that never got near a gantt chart. Right now the only reason I keep around MS Project files is for showing the execs why they can't have a product release in only eight weeks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, if I might replace &quot;plan&quot; with &quot;schedule&quot;, here is my suggestion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go for Option 2: For a number of reasons. &#xA;1- Mental sanity: You are effectively the program manager. It's not your job to track the individual projects. Your job is to see if things are on track and to work with a project manager (leader, whoever is the &quot;point man&quot;) when a problem rises up that threatens that project. &#xA;2- Time: You'll spend all your time reporting and none solving problems. &#xA;3- Errors: If you have one shared Gantt file with many users, you increase risk someone steps on someones changes. IF your master Gantt is separate from the project Gantt, you can quickly get out of sync. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd take it a step further and ask what you need a master gantt for? Gantt charts are not typically good for reporting up. You can spend a lot of time massaging it to make it look good. If you are just tracking major milestones and are manually inputting that data into the master Gantt that could be a waste of time. I currently use a simple Excel file that has all 30 projects we currently use. I have the major milestones as columns and dates in the cells. I color code the cells to quickly show status and have a notes column for one/two sentence status. 90% of the time I just use this. When I really need a strong &quot;presentation&quot; I copy this into a ppt deck I have that is designed to be an exec dashboard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself who needs the data, how will it be used, how often is it needed (when) and why it is needed. Often you can go with a much simpler solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="91" LastEditDate="2011-03-31T07:04:44.933" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T07:04:44.933" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1347" CreationDate="2011-03-31T04:35:39.920" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question is very broad with the use of the word &quot;process&quot; and the word &quot;manufacturing.&quot;  Many of the lean practices and six sigma problem solving practices can be effectively applied to software.  But, I would argue that since the goals are very different between manufacturing and software that the process should not be directly transfered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you buy that Agile is a lean recipe that uses small batch size, cadence and feedback to manage the software process, you can look at the QSMA study of Agile teams performance verus more traditional teams. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rallydev.com/company/news_events/press/2008-108-new-study-shows-that-agile-teams-are-37-percent-faster-to-market-and-16-percent-more-productive.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;QSMA Agile Impact report&lt;/a&gt; is located on the Rally web site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leveraging from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reinertsenassociates.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Don Reinertsen's Product Development Flow book&lt;/a&gt;, we know that manufacturing tries to drive down variability to find an optimal point of lowest cost production. But by driving down the variability in software development, we drive out innovation.  By driving out innovation, you reduce the potential pay-off of the software efforts.  In software development, you are looking for the biggest payoff and not the cheapest cost of production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="640" LastEditorUserId="696" LastEditDate="2011-04-07T05:19:22.297" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T05:19:22.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1354" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1355" CreationDate="2011-03-31T08:56:48.377" Score="10" ViewCount="777" Body="&lt;p&gt;Which Project Management trainings or certificates would you recommend to take if you do not have any PM background/experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can see some questions for Templates, Software, etc... but I would be really interested on references to training for people that are new to this area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="649" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-05-08T20:26:06.367" LastActivityDate="2017-07-10T09:27:16.617" Title="Project Management Training/Certificates" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;skills&gt;&lt;education&gt;&lt;training&gt;&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="8" ClosedDate="2017-07-10T16:20:10.630" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1354" CreationDate="2011-03-31T09:05:11.943" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would definitely recommend you to take the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRINCE2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PRINCE2&lt;/a&gt; Foundation and Practitioner&lt;/strong&gt; training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this training you will gain solid knowledge about Project Management and everything that surrounding a project regardless of your background (IT, Marketing, etc...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T09:05:11.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1167" CreationDate="2011-03-31T09:11:34.890" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend you Jira + Greenhopper plugging &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/greenhopper&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.atlassian.com/software/greenhopper&lt;/a&gt; . You can create tasks, subtasks, estimations ...etc. Also, it has a section when you can create graphs an reports of any kind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="649" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T09:11:34.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1354" CreationDate="2011-03-31T09:37:25.720" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I second the PRINCE2 Practitioner certification as it gives you a good overview of a general project management methodology. If you are a software development focused project manager a ScrumMaster certification would be useful as this is becoming more and more common place as a software development methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a few colleagues who have done the PMP training and they rated it very highly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="788" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-04-11T03:37:26.127" LastActivityDate="2011-04-11T03:37:26.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1358" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1369" CreationDate="2011-03-31T13:38:44.107" Score="21" ViewCount="9150" Body="&lt;p&gt;My R&amp;amp;D organization is following an Agile (Scrum) development methodology. One of the development teams is working mostly on items that are really problematic in terms of the certainty during the sprint planning. It means they mostly deal with performance issues that need to be researched and resolved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This team is expected to work in collaboration with the other teams, while following the Agile methodology. The manager of the team finds it hard since during sprint planning there is very low certainty around his team's tasks. Moreover, during the sprint, hot issues arise and require the team's prompt response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be a proper way for this team to work in this context? How should they plan their work? Should they allocate buckets of time for the unexpected issues? Should they split their work to research and resolution parts and plan for them separately? Any other ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="44" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2015-06-06T08:18:47.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-06T08:18:47.730" Title="How can a team working on research based items work in an Agile project?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;process&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1359" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-31T14:30:26.013" Score="13" ViewCount="1546" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently I work on a small team of 3 developers in a privately owned college with about 12,000 students.  There is currently no tracking of projects, tasks, bugs, or other work items.  After I started here and realized that they don't have any sort of task tracking I was appalled.  Recently I have been given the go ahead to come up with a solution to this problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because it is a small team I want to keep it basic but the team supports around 20 different applications and systems.  I have access to MS Project and TFS but have no training or experience using either system.  We have just started to use TFS as our version control software.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would you recommend as a starting point?  Should I delve into MS Project/TFS and try work my way through that or should I look at something more basic and easier to use?  Prior to this I have used software like Mantis, Scrumworks, and Excel to track issues.  I have a good idea of what is needed to begin to organize things but am not sure which tool to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="779" LastEditorUserId="347" LastEditDate="2011-03-31T15:11:08.233" LastActivityDate="2011-04-23T12:32:21.407" Title="Ideas for setting up task/project management for small team.." Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1354" CreationDate="2011-03-31T14:50:38.040" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would also support Prince 2 Practitioner, for the reasons provided by the earlier responses. One word of caution, however: it teaches you the fundamentals, but it is not realistic to expect that a week's training course can take someone from project naivety to project expert. The title &quot;practitioner&quot; is a bit of a misnomer on that basis! - but it is a great way to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also reckon that the official OGC course manual (Managing successful projects with PRINCE2) is a valuable reference source, especially Appendix A, which provides product description outlines for all of the products that you need. (It is also a very helpful resource to use during the exam!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If sitting the exam, you will be able to take your manual in with you and refer to anything that is written (but not stapled or otherwise inserted) into the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck if you go down this route.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T14:50:38.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1361" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-31T15:01:36.843" Score="16" ViewCount="405" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should a client be billed for a certain amount of the learning curve? Should an employer pick up the tab on overhead? Should it be the developer themselves? Or perhaps a combination of all three?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am conflicted on this - I've heard it being said both ways - that a client (or project budget) should not have to deal with the inefficiency of a lesser experienced programmer. And again I've heard it being argued that people learn on the job so projects should include a certain amount of training budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually find that I (and other devs that I work with) work off hours or weekends reading up on technology , design patterns etc, sometimes struggling with a small piece that may go beyond contingency budgets - so most projects that we work on take up a bit more of our un-billed time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought I'd open it up to the PM Stack-exchange hive mind for more insight from folks with much more experience. I have posted the same question on the Programmers (non programming related) StackExchange and am interested to look at the delta.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="582" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T21:24:20.853" Title="Who pays for learning curve?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1359" CreationDate="2011-03-31T15:11:00.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are using TFS for version control, you should also consider using it for work item tracking.  It's pretty simple to enter tasks, bugs, and scenarios / requirements in TFS.  The nice thing about your developers also using it for version control is that they can associate their code changes with a particular work item in TFS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you start using it and have specific questions about how to use TFS with MS Project (also see &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1201/is-it-possible-to-link-msproject-with-the-tfs-system&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;), you can post questions here if related to project management or to StackOverflow for general TFS questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="347" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T15:11:00.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1361" CreationDate="2011-03-31T16:09:32.893" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMO, if it's customized application, the customer should pay for everything. If it's generic, the organization may chose to exclude some of the costs like training costs because it builds to the assets of the organization (It was senior and top management decision where I used to work). However the customer actually pays for the extra quality activities effort anyway that result from the extra defect rates due to developers are not yet mastering the tool or approach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="681" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T16:09:32.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1354" CreationDate="2011-03-31T16:55:04.890" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first contact with Project Management was on a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junior_enterprise&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Junior Enterprise&lt;/a&gt; when I was asked to write a Project Plan following a template.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Project Plan was not critical, so I had time to work and learn on it adding the feedback received from my colleagues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had the opportunity to follow the project execution with my colleagues. I learned a lot with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, buildup a theoretic knowledge base and consider having a coach to give you some practical experience. This will improve your PM skills. &lt;strong&gt;Look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/339/what-is-the-most-effective-way-to-gain-experience-that-can-lead-to-working-in-a-p&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; related question.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider improving your personal skills. Identify which personal skill you lack the most and improve it. Read &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/493/105&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/77/105&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; questions to find the most revelant personal skills for a PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/87/105&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; question as a reference to PM on-line resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take some time reading related blogs like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://blog.brodzinski.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/&lt;/a&gt; (I like very much &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/08/10.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Identity Management Method&lt;/a&gt; article)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vertabase.com/blog/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.vertabase.com/blog/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;PMSE&lt;/a&gt; itself is also a place to be if you want to learn PM stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Good luck&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="105" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T16:55:04.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1361" CreationDate="2011-03-31T17:01:25.870" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the end the customer always pays one way or the other.  They will also pay for lack of training as well.  It may be in the client's interest to request appropriate training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a contractor, I don't expect the customer to pay for training.  However, there are cases where they will pay for my time in training.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I am evaluating a new technology for the organization, then I would expect the customer to pay the costs.  This may include attending training sessions.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have audited courses presented to customer staff so that I would know what the staff could be expected to know. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an employee, I expect the employer to provide ongoing training.  The training covered by the employer is one of the factors I use in evaluating them.  Tuition for my MBA was covered by one of my employers.  The cost of the training becomes part of the overhead of the organization.  This cost will be passed the client or project.  In general, training is of net benefit to the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project budget should include training under some circumstances:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;New or existing technology is being used for which experience staff is not expected to be sufficiently available.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Training will be used to communicate standard approaches for the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project is or will be using new releases and training on the new release is required or desired.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastEditorUserId="529" LastEditDate="2011-04-02T21:24:20.853" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T21:24:20.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1361" CreationDate="2011-03-31T17:24:43.743" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bill's points are spot on, but I would add that it matters what the customer was told when they were being sold on the project (or when they chose you as the implementer).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When reading the court cases that pop up when big SAP/ERP projects fail, SI's often get the contract by promising a certain number of trained/experienced individuals to lend their expertise to the project.  If that's what was promised, it is incumbent upon the promisor to provide those resources (rather than hiring a bunch of new employees to learn SAP while implementing the system that provides payroll and HR for a county). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the customer requests that a new technology be implemented, and are aware that the project team does not have those skills, they should be on the hook for ramp-up time.  I think the key is transparency up front as to capabilities, so the client/sponsors can make an informed decision one way or the other (use the new technology? hire a different team? postpone the project?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as the developers... there are not enough hours in the day to stay on top of everything you could/should know.  I spend many weekends myself playing with new technologies so that I have half a clue when the time comes to put them to use.  Take advantage of every opportunity your employer provides for professional development, and then fill in the gaps on your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="439" LastEditorUserId="439" LastEditDate="2011-03-31T17:44:27.173" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T17:44:27.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1367" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1371" CreationDate="2011-03-31T18:04:18.987" Score="12" ViewCount="2191" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does a PM need qualifications and training, or can a good PM &quot;grow&quot; and &quot;evolve&quot; into the role based on just good experience and observation, with no exposure to the theory? What are the risks that such an approach can introduce?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-11-17T03:14:34.953" LastActivityDate="2013-11-17T03:26:28.433" Title="Does a PM need qualifications and training?" Tags="&lt;training&gt;&lt;qualifications&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1367" CreationDate="2011-03-31T18:21:01.517" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A PM will take longer to be known as a &lt;strong&gt;good&lt;/strong&gt; PM if he only learns by experience than if he has proper training (or at least search for proper material, just like this site we are discussing now).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A teammate that joined the company with me several years ago had a very tough experience managing a team with no project knowledge, no project documentation and no PM expertise. Results: The project succeeded, but the whole team suffered because the PM was learning with his mistakes. It burned out the team, he lost some of his own self-confidence, but he's still managing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people are natural leaders, and it is easier to them to manage a team. But leading people and managing people are different things that cannot be misunderstood. If you're a good leader, you might have success as a PM. But having proper training will make you feel much more comfortable managing your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-04-01T05:03:38.520" LastActivityDate="2011-04-01T05:03:38.520" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1358" CreationDate="2011-03-31T18:44:20.783" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, Agile is a good fit to research projects because of the amount of uncertainty and the potential of requirements to change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile is more like a set of guidelines than a rigorous methodology full of rules. Custom-fit it to your project and process tolerance. I would suggest you adopt the following practices (some of which you mentioned already):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tackle the most uncertain items first.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tackle the riskiest items first.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't pick up tasks mid-sprint; sprints are short enough that you can &quot;wait&quot; for the 1-2 weeks remaining to take it on. Or, if you DO take something on mid-sprint, drop something else so that you can still get everything done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Track your velocity (points complete per story) and use that to plan future sprints.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimate tasks relative to each other. Task X was vague and took, say, 8 points; task Y is similarly vague, so let's estimate at 8 points too. (This works best if you have typical story samples that represent a &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, etc. point story.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider re-pointing if stories are too big.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to break stories down as much as possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, agile is about &lt;strong&gt;vague estimates of work relative to past work complete.&lt;/strong&gt; It's not about nailing down the number of hours, minutes, or seconds something will take. As long as you can say &quot;this past task X was similar and was Y points, so this task is Y points too,&quot; your velocity will be consistent, regardless of the precise numbers you point tasks with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Split work however seems natural and best fits the teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T18:44:20.783" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1361" CreationDate="2011-03-31T19:51:25.993" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Team competency is never certain.  Your deterministic schedule and cost--or your performance measurement baseline--were established under the assumption of a level of competency.  The reality is you may end up with higher or lower than what you planned.  This is a constant in every project in every industry since the beginning of time.  It is unreasonable and unrealistic for anyone to expect that, when they purchase services, they will get the best of the best of the best every time.  Therefore, I opine the customer is &quot;always&quot; liable to pay for the services rendered on their project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are caveats and limits to this.  If you load the team with nothing but junior, inexperienced folks, then you are taking unfair advantage of your customer; plus you will likely destroy your PMB and fail to deliver to specs..  A good test is, if this were a firm fixed price contract, where you own the cost risk, how would you staff your team?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T19:51:25.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1367" CreationDate="2011-03-31T19:53:45.150" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Qualifications are not necessary in a project manager. You can, like any field, learn on the job; but that might mean that you &lt;strong&gt;miss key, fundamental knowledge in your field,&lt;/strong&gt; and that you &lt;strong&gt;get burned on newbie mistakes that you will inevitably make.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at the flip-side, Project Management is not really well-established as a &quot;proper&quot; position or career path in many places around the world. (That's what PMI is attempting to address -- formalizing project management into a professional career.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you theoretically had some credentials -- a PMP, a Six-Sigma Black-Belt, and others -- what good are they without experience? Perhaps, like myself and many of my friends, &lt;strong&gt;they can be the key to open the door to a career change.&lt;/strong&gt; But you will not and cannot excel as a project management without &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; fundamentals &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a novice project manager is a risk to the project, and should be placed as such on the risk register. The project manager should be mentored by the PMO and experienced project managers until he or she is proven capable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T19:53:45.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1367" CreationDate="2011-03-31T19:57:58.550" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great question! I literally just wrote a blog on this subject and posted it a couple hours ago. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ran across &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.examiner.com/project-management-in-miami/why-just-having-a-pmp-is-not-enough&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;blog and study&lt;/a&gt; that showed IT Execs put the PMP certification at the bottom of their list for deciding to hire someone. Well my initial reaction was to reject the reality and substitute my own. On deeper reflection I found I agreed with the fundamental concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certifications will get your resume looked at, they will help you get your foot in the door. But a certification will not get you the job, only your skills and accomplishments will. A lot of certified PMPs were accidental PMs and had a lot of experience before they got their certification. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related to this, someone with no project knowledge can succeed as a PM. To do so, they need to focus on the people aspect. If you can manage people, you can manage a project. It's all about communication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're interested in the complete blog article I wrote, you can find it here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://thegorillaisnamedhogarth.blogspot.com/2011/03/project-managers-poker-hand.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A Project Manager's Poker hand&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-04-01T05:25:20.657" LastActivityDate="2011-04-01T05:25:20.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1367" CreationDate="2011-03-31T19:59:00.950" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Managing projects has been around since the early human.  In fact, you can observe lower level species manage &quot;projects&quot;, like a pride hunting prey.  We have been managing projects successfully long before formal PM training and the development of theory.  PM is first and foremost a function of work before it is a profession.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Formal education and training are great, but unlike many other professions this is one where OJT is probably the biggest contributor to a PM's strength in his/her capabilities.  In fact, since PM education has been introduced in colleges and universities, there is still little to no evidence in its efficacy.  So the jury is still out on that.  Until we collectively find that formally trained PMs out perform the rest, you cannot legitimately substantiate additional risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T19:59:00.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1367" CreationDate="2011-03-31T20:02:31.670" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can't hurt, and it might help :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One benefit that humans have over other animals is the ability to learn from the mistakes of others.  It is a rare problem in project management that has not impacted thousands of other project managers.  How do you estimate how long it will take to complete a project? Ask someone who has run a similar project or try some of the academic estimation methods out there.  The theory and best practices provided in the PMBOK or with other frameworks/methodologies like Prince2 or Agile provide frameworks that have worked well for others in managing their own projects.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there is nothing like sticking your hand on a hot stove to learn to not do that.  Similarly, a project manager needs to be burned a few times by undercommunicating or not spending enough time planning, or not managing the sponsor's expectations to truly understand the &quot;why&quot; behind some of the recommendations you will find in classes and books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will passing a certification exam get you your dream job? Probably not.  Can you apply the lessons learned to your own projects, raising your value to your employer?  Definitely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="439" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T20:02:31.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1375" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-31T20:26:14.053" Score="4" ViewCount="4903" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project Managers are expected to guess the future, a difficult task even in sciences like meteorology.  As many projects finish late (due to expanded scope, underestimated durations, etc), it is tempting to pad estimates.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When is it okay (or not okay) to do so?  Off the top of my head, it is risky to share padded estimates with project team members (as they will expand their work to fit the expanded timelines), and risky to share padded estimates with management (as they will add some padding of their own before passing the schedule upwards).  On the other hand, planning a schedule with no padding is pretty much guaranteed to lead to a late project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="439" LastActivityDate="2011-04-01T15:51:29.443" Title="When is it okay to pad estimates?" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;scope&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1376" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1383" CreationDate="2011-03-31T20:43:52.900" Score="28" ViewCount="1518" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project Managers almost never have a direct reporting relationship with the team members assigned to their project, but remain accountable for the project outcome.  What are some effective ways of influencing commitment and participation when team members may have committments and priorities that conflict with participation in a given project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="439" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T04:24:31.323" Title="Responsibility without authority" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1367" CreationDate="2011-03-31T21:04:13.103" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no training like experience.  PM is all about OJT - no amount of &quot;book learning&quot; will take the place of actually working under fire.  That Said, going through the effort to attend a course from Pragmatic Marketing is time very very well spent.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user795" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T21:04:13.103" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1375" CreationDate="2011-03-31T21:17:12.020" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is never okay to pad.  Contingencies are calculated and added to the PMB to handle uncertainties in your time and cost estimates.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T21:17:12.020" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1375" CreationDate="2011-03-31T21:57:15.550" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should always work with a range of estimates: Most likely and worst case. Add margins at the risk spots in your schedule and at the end, but make them clear for all to see. That is the professional way of managing projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Manage your team members against the most likely estimates. They'll have no issue working on the edge when they know that there is room to manouvre when Murphy strikes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have your contingencies worked out well, management will have no reason for padding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, transparancy works best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T21:57:15.550" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1376" CreationDate="2011-03-31T22:07:54.560" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always try to put things in the open as much as possible. There can be a valid reason why 'other' work gets more priority than your project. Not every project gets a 10 out of 10 for strategic importance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way is to address it with th team member and the functional manager. If it cannot be resolved you discuss it with your sponsor and/or SteerCo. When they are not inclined to do anything about it, you adjust your project plan accordingly and get it approved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you do get priority, there is always a chance someone is not as philosophically about it as you are. So make sure you follow it up very closely and report every breach of the new 'agreement' immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T22:07:54.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1359" CreationDate="2011-03-31T22:18:54.330" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Marcie is right about &lt;strong&gt;TFS&lt;/strong&gt;; it is a pretty good system. I wouldn't bother with MSP though, not for 20 different apps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Better make some high level Timeline where you stake out the most important events for the systems under your charge. We call it a &lt;strong&gt;Roadmap&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the day to day management I would advise a &lt;strong&gt;Kanban&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;Scrum&lt;/strong&gt; board (certainly when you are co-located), with sticky notes and stuff. We have everything electronically in TFS, even with an add-in for an electronic Scrum board, but we still duplicate the sprint items on a physical board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check out Pawel Brodzinski's &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;blog&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for some great material on Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T22:18:54.330" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1349" CreationDate="2011-03-31T22:30:57.673" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd go for option 2 as well. Make your &quot;programme&quot; plan based upon the Work Packages you have authorised to the several functional groups. Don't bother to break the work packages down in more detail. That is for the persons responsible for each work package. Reconcile their input with your overall plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is perfectly OK to use a Gantt for this. As long as it shows the network of work packages that result in the growth of maturity of your end result, with all its dependencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a Gantt is not sufficient. Make good agreements upon status reporting. Besides actuals and ETC, measurable physical % complete is required to keep on top of things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T22:30:57.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1376" CreationDate="2011-03-31T23:51:13.603" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;First thing is to &lt;strong&gt;learn how much of priority your project does have&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second thing is to actually &lt;strong&gt;ignore that information and fight for it&lt;/strong&gt; like it was top priority thing and life of all people in the world depended on that one. It's actually working more often than you'd expect as it's so very common that priorities are decided only basing on whoever yells louder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third thing is to &lt;strong&gt;escalate importance of the project&lt;/strong&gt; to people who actually have power to decide, so they can repeat after you: &quot;my priority is more important than yours.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourth thing is to &lt;strong&gt;make the project cool&lt;/strong&gt;, for whatever reasons. People actually prefer to work on cool project than on a boring one so they will likely run an extra mile to be involved in some cool venture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said all of that I will refer to something I refer to pretty often: &lt;strong&gt;build trust relationship with people&lt;/strong&gt; and you won't be afraid of their involvement at all - they'd either get really involved in your project or they'd tell you the sad truth. Either way you know where you stand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T23:51:13.603" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1358" CreationDate="2011-04-01T00:00:01.090" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One idea is to use historical data and try to plan for such things, so like we have such a number of maintenance issues, such a number of fires to extinguish and some &quot;normal&quot; work to do. You can also plan for such things, so no matter what happens we don't work on maintenance more than 50% of time, since we want to have new features done as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another idea is to use &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_%28development%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt; which is really a method which suits such situations very well. In this case you don't really try to plan some kind of iteration or however you call a couple of weeks-long period. You just react for whatever is top priority at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually such approach works pretty well for maintenance teams. You can also tweak your own solution so you have things lie priority lane, where super-duper high priority tasks are dealt with and such. So it's pretty easy react for changing environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T19:20:03.830" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T19:20:03.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1376" CreationDate="2011-04-01T03:48:21.727" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sean, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I applaud you on understanding that even when we lack authority, we need to take responsibility. It is a tough road for a PM to walk and full of challenges. It can be done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think Pawel's suggestions are solid. I would switch around the order a little and offer a bit of caution on one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Trust first, trust last:&lt;/strong&gt; This boils down to relationship. There are three key powers in the work place, Role, Expertise and Relationship (You see seven listed in many texts, but they can all be traced to these core three). You don't have role power, even if you did, you have to be very careful and judicious with it. Expertise power is very hard to pull off as a PM. Even if you started as an Engineer, you are not one now and it doesn't take long for the Engineers to think &quot;he's out of touch.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to build relationships from the absolute get go. This will build trust. Then you can start influencing the project. This is a go slow to go fast technique. When I joined my last company, I spent the first 90 days doing nothing more than holding a weekly status meeting and interviewing people. I listened. Three months in I was put on a failing project and pulled it out of its nose dive. I did it by leveraging my relationships. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Careful Escalation:&lt;/strong&gt; Escalation can be very powerful. You also don't have to just escalate up. I have a PM technique I call Pothole Project Management. The concept is if you hit a bad pothole everyday, you probably won't be much influence to get it fixed. If the Mayor of your town hits it, you can be certain it will get fixed very quickly. &lt;a href=&quot;http://thegorillaisnamedhogarth.blogspot.com/2011/03/pothole-project-management-gorilla-pm.html&quot;&gt;I wrote a complete blog on this if you want to read more&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This said, you have to be very careful when you escalate.  The kid who runs into his parents every time his brother so much as tosses a pebble, will soon get a reputation as a tattle tale. These kids are the ones that get ditched after school and picked last for dodgeball. You need to develop regular reporting and communication channels. Then instead of escalating, you just report. You make them easy to read and people will read them. Then you have a ready made venue for highlighting issues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Joel &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="147" LastEditDate="2011-05-17T04:24:31.323" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T04:24:31.323" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1221" CreationDate="2011-04-01T04:17:31.337" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would think your language would change for the older class. In a class of 10 - 12 year olds, you might want to avoid using terms like risks. Just ask, 'what do you think might go wrong? and how could we (choose a strategy) that?'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I with 12 - 16 year olds they might have a better understanding of things like insurance. &#xA;Good luck, as Johnny said, make sure they have fun, they will learn. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-04-01T04:17:31.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1375" CreationDate="2011-04-01T05:01:54.637" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's better to under-promise and over-deliver than it is to over-promise and under-deliver.  Padding your estimates by adding a safety buffer will help ensure you're in the first category and not the last category.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's impossible to predict the future, especially if you're estimating something that contains many tasks you don't have experience with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-04-01T05:01:54.637" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1376" CreationDate="2011-04-01T07:10:20.103" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend building great working relationships with the line managers of your team, as well as with the team members themselves. That way, there is a better chance that the managers will try to support you whenever possible, rather than pulling resources from your project when a resourcing issue erupts elsewhere. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been in a meeting where a line manager said &quot;I've no idea what is going on with X's project, so I'll pull Y from it for a couple of days to help Z out of a hole. If X has a problem with that he can come and talk to me, but by then Z's problem will be fixed and X can get Y back.&quot; If X had communicated more effectively and built a better relationship with the line manager, this would not have happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Building these relationships will help to demonstrate to your team members that they are important to you, and it shouldn't need much encouragement from you to get them on side and supporting your objectives, rather than allowing themselves to be distracted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-04-01T07:10:20.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1376" CreationDate="2011-04-01T12:16:09.613" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not completly on-topic, but one unspoken strategy to get things done is: annoyance. I &lt;em&gt;annoy&lt;/em&gt; people not doing what I think needs to be done for the project, in order to have them do the stuff just to get rid of me. And it's working &lt;strong&gt;everytime&lt;/strong&gt;! Team members, providers, contractors, other employees of the company somehow involved in the project. If they protest, just say &quot;it's really important for the project to succeed&quot;, and what could they possibly answer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Phone them, mail them, fax them, meet them, remind them, let post-its on their desk, call them at home, whatever. It cannot fail. When it's more annoying for them to listen to you than to do what you need (which they have to do anyway sooner or later, as it's actually their job), they will do it as quickly as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After several times, they will even do it &lt;strong&gt;before&lt;/strong&gt; you begin your annoyance tactic, and you actually trained them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastEditorUserId="152" LastEditDate="2011-04-01T13:29:14.090" LastActivityDate="2011-04-01T13:29:14.090" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1367" CreationDate="2011-04-01T13:34:46.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's mainly a question about how many mistakes you will make before being competent at the job. You will make some anyway, and you will still make some once you got good at PM, but in my opinion you will make more of them if you got no training and have to learn everything the hard way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastActivityDate="2011-04-01T13:34:46.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1391" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1556" CreationDate="2011-04-01T15:07:07.530" Score="3" ViewCount="687" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following this &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1201/is-it-possible-to-link-msproject-with-the-tfs-system/1215#1215&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt; I have created a MSProject file to follow, create and manage tasks for teams in TFS system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It works pretty good but it seems impossible to describe with precision the task, I mean in the TFS you can add a description to the task (Details/Description) but I don't see the possibility to edit/retrieve this field in MSProject.. Have anyone the tips to do that? Is it possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for response&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="733" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T03:27:39.780" Title="How can I attach more text to a TFS task with MSProject?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1375" CreationDate="2011-04-01T15:51:29.443" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;'Padding and Estimate' is a skill and a base requirement for a PM - it's actually Risk Management, right?  A plan is an map of where you are going and how long it will take to get there, neither are certain because neither have happened yet.  You need to 'pad' or accommodate for a change in direction and a change to work effort based on events that have not happened yet (such as a change in developers, new technology, internal/external business changes/influences).  A good approach is to compare prior projects for the same company/team and see how their original estimates matched up against the final.  Another good approach is to develop a risk grid that includes a potential of occurrence and impact potential - with a range of time/$'s - you can use that as a 'risk pad' for the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="458" LastActivityDate="2011-04-01T15:51:29.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1393" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-01T16:18:32.030" Score="3" ViewCount="319" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the most important project-management assets you build up during your project is &lt;strong&gt;documentation&lt;/strong&gt; of all kinds of things -- how you broke down estimates, how much work you completed each work-period, what kind of risks actualized, etc. etc. and this is all useful because it will help you in future projects that are similar, whether greatly or slightly similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned in previous questions, I work primarily on one-man software projects using agile methodologies. I don't have the benefit of a PMIS, a &quot;Project Management Information System&quot; that consolidates, archives, and indexes my documentation so I can search through past documents quickly; nor do I have the cash reserves to purchase or implement one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How, then, do I usefully archive all past project documents that may be valuable?&lt;/strong&gt; I'm trying to keep all my documentation online as Google Docs, breaking down projects by folder, and having an &quot;archive&quot; folder of completed projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2013-12-07T01:59:11.870" Title="Archiving Useful Documentation Without a PMIS" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1395" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1409" CreationDate="2011-04-01T16:21:47.403" Score="25" ViewCount="3011" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law&quot;&gt;Brooks' L&lt;/a&gt;aw, adding more people to a late project will make the project later (or by analogy, nine women cannot have a baby in one month).  The increased lateness is due to the fact that productive team members must now invest time in ramping up new team members rather than working, and communication needs grow exponentially.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yet, some managers still see it as a viable way of finishing a project that is running late (a practice appropriately named &lt;a href=&quot;http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project-help/about-project-crashing-shortening-a-project-schedule-HA010036416.aspx&quot;&gt;crashing&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to best push back on the proposal to just add people to a late project, or are there times when it is acceptable to do so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="439" LastEditorUserId="32641" LastEditDate="2018-07-02T17:23:32.647" LastActivityDate="2018-07-03T07:37:49.407" Title="Adding new team members to a late project" Tags="&lt;scope&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;&lt;scope-management&gt;&lt;team-size&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1396" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1437" CreationDate="2011-04-01T16:32:06.500" Score="5" ViewCount="586" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/125/should-a-pm-also-be-a-resource-on-the-project-why&quot;&gt;Should a PM also be a resource on the project? Why?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you're a project manager, you tend to spend (at least with larger projects) the vast majority of your time on project management tasks -- tracking the schedule, work complete and incomplete, holding meetings with stakeholders, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But sometimes, as a project manager, you're also a team-member -- whether implicitly (eg. team lead spending 50% of his time on PM work) or explicitly, because the work &lt;em&gt;just needs to get done.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I want to know are two criteria:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to tell when you, the project manager, need to &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; project work.&lt;/strong&gt; What are the (warning) signs? Is it that there's more work than the team can handle?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to find the balance between time spent on PM work and time spend on project work.&lt;/strong&gt; How do you know when you've found the balance? Or, conversely, how do you know if you're spending too much time on PM tasks (neglecting project work) or project work (neglecting PM tasks)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T11:28:44.903" Title="Strategies for Managing vs. Completing Tasks as a Project Manager" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;self-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2011-04-03T14:59:27.560" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1397" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-01T16:50:55.710" Score="11" ViewCount="2620" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of the hallmarks of agile projects work best with a co-located team, perhaps all working out of the same bullpen where face to face interaction is the norm.  In fact, some of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;principles behind the Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; underscore this point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, it possible to run an agile project when team members are located globally? Can a product backlog on a website make up for one in the room with sticky notes? Can conference calls with team members in a given time zone make up for a stand-up meeting with the whole team face-to-face? Can a team self-organize over e-mail? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any recommendations for running agile projects with a global team or do the downsides outweigh the benefits?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="439" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T18:04:25.140" LastActivityDate="2015-06-28T20:44:50.913" Title="Is it possible to manage an agile project with international team members?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;distributed-team&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1398" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-01T17:06:40.463" Score="3" ViewCount="382" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmhut.com/primary-project-sponsor-responsibilities&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMHut&lt;/a&gt;, the primary responsibilities of the project sponsor are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be chief champion of the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have accountability for the project&#xA;and ongoing accountability for the&#xA;outcomes &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chair the project steering&#xA;committee &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Advocate the project&#xA;internally and externally &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Facilitate&#xA;and support policy and funding&#xA;recommendations &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide overview and&#xA;direction for the project &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resolve&#xA;issues identified by the project&#xA;manager when requested (and agreed)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Support the project manager in&#xA;carrying out the project &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Monitor the&#xA;project budget &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Monitor project risk&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure that deliberations of the&#xA;project are adequately recorded and&#xA;available to appropriate parties&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you handle a project sponsor who takes a &quot;just let me know when it's done&quot; approach to sponsoring a project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="439" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T00:53:05.100" Title="How do you manage an uninterested project sponsor?" Tags="&lt;project-sponsor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1399" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1405" CreationDate="2011-04-01T17:26:45.007" Score="13" ViewCount="27531" Body="&lt;p&gt;Occasionally, key stakeholders of a given project (perhaps those with organizational authority several levels above that of the project manager) will have conflicting requirements or demands of the project manager.  How can a project manager deconflict these requests when the stakeholders (who may be peers) can or will not come to an agreement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="439" LastEditorUserId="439" LastEditDate="2011-04-01T17:41:26.943" LastActivityDate="2019-03-19T00:16:51.017" Title="How do you manage conflicting stakeholder demands?" Tags="&lt;scope&gt;&lt;conflicts&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1400" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-01T17:33:01.360" Score="5" ViewCount="14074" Body="&lt;p&gt;A given project team may have a dependency on an external team in order to complete work on their own project.  The Boeing 787 Dreamliner project is probably an excellent example of a large project that depended on company A to develop widgets, company B to develop sprockets, both of which were key dependencies for the &quot;assemble the airplane&quot; project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can a project manager manage external dependencies outside of their control that directly impact the feasability and progress of their own project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="439" LastActivityDate="2015-01-13T16:51:57.880" Title="How can a Project Manager manage a dependency on an external team?" Tags="&lt;dependencies&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1400" CreationDate="2011-04-01T17:50:54.663" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never experienced this scenario before, but I believe all the PM can account with is the other team's estimates. Every part of the whole process has it's own managers, and they should have the responsibility of delivering before deadlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe it's not acceptable to have a project manager from A who depends on B to start micro-managing B. It would&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a very uncomfortable relationship between A and B PMs (B has a PM, right?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A's PM will be creating more work to himself than he's supposed to do&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bottomline:&lt;/strong&gt; A PM is restricted to his team. If he depends on other teams, he will discuss with other PMs to take the estimates he needs, and that's all. If something gets out of the track, PM B will be asked to give answers, not A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, never lived this scenario. It &lt;em&gt;would be&lt;/em&gt; my approach in this case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rgds!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2011-04-01T17:50:54.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1400" CreationDate="2011-04-01T18:55:13.063" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't manage the dependency, you manage the risk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the impact of the risk? If we don't get the toilet paper dispenser installed, will the plane be unable to fly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the probability of the risk? If the supplier has never missed a delivery date, the probability is low. If the supplier doesn't even know how to forge admantium, then the risk is high. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is your risk tolerance? Building an airplane, you are pretty risk adverse. Building a $.99 iPhone game your probably willing to ship with some crash bugs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calculate your impact to probability score and see how it rates on your risk tolerance scale. Anything over the threshold must have a mitigation plan and should be included in sponsor status reports. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use a spreadsheet I made for risk tracking. It has a weighted scale that gives more weight to impact than probability. Then at the start of any project I work with my team on the risk tolerance. I've had products where a score of 50 was considered a red risk and projects that a score of 90 was a red risk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Joel&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2011-04-01T18:55:13.063" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1399" CreationDate="2011-04-01T19:01:38.197" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently picked up a great trick from the book &quot;Elements of Scrum&quot; on managing trade offs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors suggest a simple forced rank Four by Four table. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Along the top list: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FIXED   FIRM   FLEXIBLE  FLUID&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Along the right side list:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SCOPE&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DATES&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;RESOURCES&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;QUALITY&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You then get four Xs. One X per column (Fixed, Firm, Flexible, Fluid). You get the stakeholders and sponsor to agree on this at the start of the program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am using this on a high risk project right now. Date is fixed, Quality is firm, Scope is flexible and Resources are fluid. We've run into a lot of issues and I've been able to go back to the chart to form a basis of discussion on what we will do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every single time we've either adjusted the scope or added resources (bodies, money, hardware) to the project. Halfway through the project and the chart is holding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Joel&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="147" LastEditDate="2011-04-01T22:08:47.250" LastActivityDate="2011-04-01T22:08:47.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1397" CreationDate="2011-04-01T20:05:09.147" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It IS possible. I've done an Agile project with 43 team-members across four time-zones. It wasn't easy, but it's possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming your team is already fluent in Agile, as are you, you probably just need to know:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Communicate more.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;Way&lt;/em&gt; more. Call team-members more, check up on people more, and just keep in touch with people. You can't see them; email and phone is all you can do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use web tools.&lt;/strong&gt; SaaS software (like GMail) is the best, because it's easiest to coordinate work across multiple people and timezones.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Co-Locate as much as possible.&lt;/strong&gt; If you're not stuck with seven people in seven different timezones, try and bring people together into clumps as much as possible. That will mitigate the communication hit a lot.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally find (as many do) that working from home is a &lt;em&gt;huge&lt;/em&gt; perk (for IT teams specifically), or working close to home. That's a great benefit to sell for virtual teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-04-01T20:05:09.147" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1399" CreationDate="2011-04-01T22:36:19.117" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Probably the best you can do is to gather stakeholders in a single room, lock the door, make a list of conflicting requests/goals (all goals actually), and not let anybody out until they prioritize the list in some way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let them have their discussions, let them have their fights. Answer their questions and make clarifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But as long as they're peers and none of them can make the call for anybody else it's their job to reach some kind of consensus. However it's PM's job to facilitate this meeting.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can happen that, for whatever reason, they won't give up that easy and will oppose against having a meeting. Then PM's goal is the same except they have to run between one office and another passing bits of information between one and another trying to help them to sort the list of goals/requests. The pattern is similar, the difference is in time consumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-04-01T22:36:19.117" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1398" CreationDate="2011-04-01T23:04:12.603" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually this is kind of extensive list and not every project would look the same. If you think about agile projects, well, forget steering committee, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, the PM job definition I once heard I like a lot is: &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;PM responsibility is to get to job done.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; Sure PM doesn't make it all with their own hands but they try to coordinate everyone's effort so the final result is satisfactory when compared with success criteria (whatever they might be).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the perspective of such definition PM can basically use one of a couple of approaches to inactive sponsor, or a mix of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fight with it.&lt;/strong&gt; When PM needs something from the sponsor they ask, beg, threaten, bribe, convince or whatever it takes to get it. It's like overcoming sponsor's inactivity. When they don't act whatsoever by themselves let PM force them to act. This approach, if applied successfully may change inactive sponsor into an active one. But then remember: be careful what you ask for, because you might actually get it and sponsor's activity might not be exactly kind of behavior PM would expect.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Accept it.&lt;/strong&gt; When PM potentially needs something from the sponsor they look for any other path which leads to the same result: getting information from someone else, finding other people with enough authority to make the call, making decision by themselves and asking for forgiveness instead of permission etc. Pretty often no one would even notice. Having said that it can be somewhat risky - if the end of the project is marked with a failure and blame game starts, guess who will be the first target.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then of course there are all kind of mixtures of those, like using the latter in most cases and retreating to former when there's no other choice or potential consequences of choosing poorly are very high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-04-01T23:04:12.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1395" CreationDate="2011-04-01T23:21:05.880" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the project is rather a big, and long, one and from the very beginning you actually planned for scenario like that adding people late (but not too late) might actually help. Consider 1-year long project which has deadline written in the stone, like some software for Olympic Games. You can't really move the deadline, unless we're postponing Olympic Games, and probably dealing with scope is rather hard so we aren't left with much choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you planned software in a way there are separable modules which can be build by independent teams you actually can scale the team up. Of course there are stages of the process, say setting the architecture up, which can't be approached that way but they're usually during the early phase of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, that isn't a default scenario. By default you prefer to avoid such situations so you should bring good arguments with you. &lt;strong&gt;I'd start with some historical data showing (bad) impact of late additions on a project deadline.&lt;/strong&gt; If there is such data of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Also you can try to show the cost of learning&lt;/strong&gt; - time spent by a newbie on learning a project and time spent by one of existing team members on teaching/coaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Then you can move to industry experts&lt;/strong&gt;, like Fred Brooks, but from my experience such arguments rarely works. I mean if someone blindly believes that more people means faster delivery they probably haven't even bother who the heck Fred Brooks is, let alone reading his writings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If everything else fails just &lt;strong&gt;accept late additions, but make sure you actually measure their impact on a project&lt;/strong&gt; so in the worst case you will have some ongoing data analysis and maybe you'd be able to act somehow during the project. And even if not, the least you get is some historical data you can use when the same discussion happens in the next project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-04-01T23:21:05.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1398" CreationDate="2011-04-02T00:53:05.100" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Weak project sponsorship is a source of rather significant risk for project success.  It is noted as one of the nine critical success factors of organizational change.  I differ from Pawel's answer in that acceptance is not an option, in my opinion.  The risk of project failure or serious compromise must be escalated and actively mitigated to the bitter end.  I would also work various contingencies, i.e., facilitate sort of pseudo sponsorship activities where I might be able to promote the appearance of strong sponsorship.  One idea might be scheduling some type of town hall meeting where the identified sponsor is a key note speaker.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At some point, the PM ought to be able to determine that failure is imminent and can escalate the exception where the sponsor needs to make a critical decision.  While this is easier written than done, the PM needs to stop work and force a sit down.  I see this as the highest example of true professionalism.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T00:53:05.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1395" CreationDate="2011-04-02T00:56:00.460" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Accept the proposal when -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- the people coming in are experts(at the task) and would &lt;strong&gt;directly&lt;/strong&gt; add value /expedite the project mission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Push it back when -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- the intention is just to throw more bodies at the task , just to bring the resourcing estimates(numbers) in control, to create a perception that the project is now aptly resourced to finish on time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="804" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T00:56:00.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1395" CreationDate="2011-04-02T01:03:05.483" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many examples of tasks whose duration can successfully be compressed by adding additional labor.  Brooks Law is hugely valuable but I think a PM needs to assess the uncertainty on a case by case basis.  If a task is generally not unique and rather standard for industry, then your risk is reduced and you have decent likelihood that your duration will compress.  If the solution/product is quite unique and processes/tools are homegrown, you have some threat here.  In either case, the added resources need to have reputation of competence and capability that precede them, where you can have a reasonable level confidence that they can hit the ground running.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T01:03:05.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1411" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-02T03:05:35.237" Score="1" ViewCount="177" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on an ongoing project which spans over the course of several years.  The project has moved to the stage where the product we're building has customers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our management structure is the matrix style where project managers work with functional managers to find resources for the project.  The team is also self-organizing in that people will sometimes volunteer their time to help out with a specific area in their expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The challenge sometimes is that the other departments have their own goals and deadlines.  The general rule of thumb is that they provide services to internal clients, but sometimes their customers take precedence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is defined as a risk to the growth of the project and is documented, but &lt;strong&gt;what is the procedure for handling high risk involving another team's conflicting goals?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T11:09:06.710" Title="What is the Procedure For Handling High Risk Involving Another Team's Conflicting Goals?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;risk&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1411" CreationDate="2011-04-02T03:43:03.140" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is quite common in projects. If you have team members attached who have operational duties, they can run into priority issues. I've found the best way to deal with this is both risk management and issue resolution. &#xA;If you identify the risk in the early stages of your project, you can set up some theoretical approaches, but when it comes down to having to actually deal with it, you need a specific plan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keeping communication open, building strong relationships, and dealing with the issues professionally will go a long way toward resolving the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T03:43:03.140" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1399" CreationDate="2011-04-02T03:48:41.807" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, be clear about the project objectives. Try to find a way to align the disparate needs to the objectives. If after this, the demands still conflict, bring in the sponsor to help manage the expectations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T03:48:41.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1399" CreationDate="2011-04-02T09:04:13.933" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am making the assumption that the conflicting demands are in the form of changes to the objectives and deliverables of the project, and hence can be considered as change requests, so I'm answering from that perspective. There may be other perspectives around timescales, resources, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM should be working to the content of the Project Initiation Document (PID) and should have a strategy agreed with the Executive / Sponsor in terms of how to deal with change requests that move the scope beyond a given tolerance. It doesn't matter who is asking for a change: if this will take the scope beyond the tolerance, the agreed approach needs to kick in - and I would recommend that the normal route would be for the PM to escalate the change to the Project Board. Unless the change is adding value, the Board would/should be completely within its rights to reject the request, no matter who is asking for the change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pragmatically, there may be political reasons for going along with a change (ie the CEO wants it, and won't take &quot;no&quot; for an answer), in which case it gets logged, included in the scope, and the project is re-planned taking this into account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, have a strategy for dealing with change, and use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastEditorUserId="301" LastEditDate="2011-04-02T09:10:45.250" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T09:10:45.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1411" CreationDate="2011-04-02T11:09:06.710" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When we had a similar situation, the PM presented two risk mitigation options to the business:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option 1: Buy in dedicated resources (ie avoid the risk);&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Option 2: Accept the risk of staff being deflected away from the project if operational issues arose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end we had a combination of the two, where some dedicated contract resource was bought in for the activities that required specialist knowledge and were on the critical path, and agreed that ongoing discussion between team leaders / managers would be used to handle any conflict for more generalist resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It worked fine most of the time, as long as the &quot;generalist&quot; team members were properly informed as to how they should be allocating their time to the project. This was usually between 40% and 70%, depending on the individual. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T11:09:06.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1393" CreationDate="2011-04-02T11:29:38.580" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If we think about one-man project I think keeping everything in Google Docs may not be the best answer. Google Docs is still pretty infant in terms of features you get. Of course you may upload there a file of any kind but then if you plan to edit/change documents it's better to have just Google Docs version which means you have rather basic set of features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one-man project it can be safely assumed that for most of the time there's only one person interested in accessing documentations. From this perspective I think it would be hard to find more convenient solution than keeping everything on local disc and organizing it in some structured way (folders etc.) Any desktop office suite gives way more features than Google Docs and also there's no problem when internet connection is dropped - one still has access to all the data. In terms of search, novel operating systems do pretty good job here. As an alternative &lt;a href=&quot;http://desktop.google.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Desktop Search&lt;/a&gt; can be considered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This kind of approach has a couple of drawbacks: documentations might be available from different computers, e.g. when developer is working on different machines, and others might need to access documents on occasions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These issues can be solved with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dropbox.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dropbox&lt;/a&gt; which may synchronize local folder(s) between a few machines, keeping a copy in the cloud which can be accessed not only by the owner of data but also by others if needed. Also it works nice as a backup if something bad happens with a local hard drive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, considering I have MS Office license I'd go with MS Office with locally stored documents synchronized with the internet, and potentially other machines, by Dropbox. If I had no MS Office license I'd go with some alternative, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openoffice.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Open Office&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T11:29:38.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1399" CreationDate="2011-04-02T11:43:37.057" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Conflicting goals and stakeholder demands are the norm.  Not only do you have stated objectives that differ but you also have hidden goals and agendas.  The latter is even more problematic because you cannot see them, hear them, or respond to them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those that are known, hitting them head on is your only option.  If these differing objectives and demands directly threaten your success, it is the joint responsibility/accountability of PM and sponsor to resolve to the degree possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to deploy a prioritization method that &quot;objectively&quot; scores each goal/demand comparing value, cost, and risk for the organization.  This method needs to have strong rules of engagement--to which all stakeholders agree--so that you keep folks at the table and acting like adults.  The PM needs to use a strong facilitator to get them through the scoring process.  The method will rack and stack the objectives and get everyone a bit closer to the high priority demands.  Allow each stakeholder to continue arguing his/her case for say the top 30%, maybe 40%, then score again.  This is iterative and ought to end up with a group consensus.  Your threat here is someone walking out of the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once this parts finish, the real work begins.  You need to maintain this prioritization and manage those that came up short, the politics and ongoing lobbying, and those that disengage.  This is where your communication and org change capabilities come to play.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T11:43:37.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1418" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1427" CreationDate="2011-04-02T13:58:23.223" Score="7" ViewCount="426" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background:&lt;/strong&gt; I worked for an organisation that delivered services to a number of public sector clients, geographically dispersed. A series of security-related changes were required to allow one such client to comply with centrally-mandated security policies. Most of these changes were not technically demanding, but the volume was very high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The senior manager on site was a technical manager who reported into a different leg of the organisation from me. There is no question about his technical skills or knowledge of what had to be done, but he was recognised as being a big personality who had his own agenda and his own views on the importance of this work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The technical manager knew more about the client than I did, and because he was based on site there, had a strong personal relationship with client staff. I was based elsewhere, and had been parachuted in to create and run a project to deliver the things that this technical manager had failed to deliver in the past. His &quot;reason&quot; for failure to deliver in the past was that he could not be expected to both manage the technology and run the project - hence my involvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Situation:&lt;/strong&gt; I established the project, created the WBS, got the technical manager's agreement to the plans, presented the plans to the client, and started to push out work packages, which the technical manager accepted. He then failed to deliver &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; of the work within timescales, and, worse than that, started to undermine me in meetings with the client, saying that his estimates had been misinterpreted, and the client expectations were unreasonable. Given his personal relationship with the client, he was able to persuade the client that he was right, and he effectively hung me out to dry . His line manager would not intervene at this stage. I ended up delivering an incomplete project late, and finally got the technical manager's line manager to step in to support me, and we did enough to allow the client to pass the security review - but no-one ended up happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; What could / should I have done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T09:28:33.663" Title="How should I get work from someone who &quot;Talks a good game&quot; but won't deliver?" Tags="&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;politics&gt;&lt;relationships&gt;&lt;technical-leader&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1418" CreationDate="2011-04-02T15:47:58.790" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems the project could it drive more accountability to all individuals.  For what I understand the technical lead was not on-board with his own estimates, or they were misinterpret.  A similar situation happen to me in a medium size project, and I ended up asking for approvals and description of each estimate, so that we did not have that situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you cannot do much about the relationship between client and technical lead, but you can request and request again until it happens to be in the loop at all times.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more thing, mid-project milestones will let you know if your tech lead is failing to meet those, allowing you to escalate earlier in the game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps. Geo&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T15:47:58.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1222" CreationDate="2011-04-02T16:16:42.363" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer&lt;/strong&gt;, this sounds like a great case for applying a Kanban system, as described by David Anderson in his book &quot;Kanban: Successful evolutionary change for your technology business&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long answer&lt;/strong&gt;, I feel the most important first step is to select some means of visual control over the entire process. If your team is all located in the same location, a physical board describing the various stages and the current status of each project, along with who is working on which one, is probably the easiest answer.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From here, consider tracking the priorities through explicit policies. Effective use of impediment tracking will make it clear what information is blocking (and which customers are causing problems). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have the visual control and an understanding of how to flow the higher priorities, you will start seeing the cycle time and lead time associated with different types of requests, allowing you to pass this information more meaningfully to your customers. It will also allow the development team to focus more energy on finishing rather than starting, making management of the whole system easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also wish to check out Don Reinertsen's &quot;The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development.&quot; It provides a lot of background material that may provide perspectives about how you plan for the many concurrent projects you face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there are a number of low-cost SaaS tools available for supporting the management of the many work items associated with having this many projects. However, I find it valuable to define and try the process first and then select the tool that supports it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T16:16:42.363" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1421" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-02T17:48:23.440" Score="5" ViewCount="751" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the answers on this forum have re-iterated over and over, frequent transparent communication is critical, and stakeholders should be made aware of risks and problems early and often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, when (or is it) appropriate to name names in a status report to stakeholders when a given project is off track due to bad performance by a given team or team member?  How do you balance the hit to the working relationship versus the need to draw attention to a problem that may have a broad impact?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="439" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T02:11:23.477" Title="When is it appropriate to name names?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1421" CreationDate="2011-04-02T18:01:27.493" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, &lt;strong&gt;the project manager is responsible for the survival or failure of a project.&lt;/strong&gt; If a team member did something that caused a problem (or even project failure), you are still responsible for the project. Stakeholders expect you to manage the team, the risks, the scope, the schedule, everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on this, I would say that naming names (especially for blame) is useless. If anything, it'll look like you're trying to pass on the blame to someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I would say &lt;strong&gt;name team-member names to those outside the team to give them credit.&lt;/strong&gt; This shows that you support your team and are happy to give credit where it's deserved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And also, &lt;strong&gt;name names (if absolutely necessary) within the team.&lt;/strong&gt; Ideally, the person you're blaming is in the room when you're telling whoever else it is who needs to know what they did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, the person is not important who made the mistake, because everybody makes mistakes; what's important is to &lt;em&gt;move forward as a team, regardless of who slipped up.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T18:01:27.493" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1421" CreationDate="2011-04-02T18:18:07.233" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Feel free to name names when giving credit.  Avoid the appearance of favoritism.  Giving credit as soon as possible is a good idea, but you don't need go give credit every time it is earned.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would try to avoid naming names when there are problems.  You can still target teams by stating which deliverables are not available on time.  The appropriate managers should know which team is responsible.  There may be acceptable reasons why you aren't getting the support you need, but management needs to be made aware of the effect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have problems with resources assigned to the project, you may need to involve the Human Resources department.  They may be placed in an appropriate position or otherwise out of their comfort zone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need to dress someone down, do so in private.  Listen to their explanation, and try to come of with a remediation plan. Document the discussion as soon as possible.  If the person needs to be removed from the project, such documentation may be important. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the problem is an honest mistake own up to it, but don't name names.  Those involved will know what happened.  Do consider how to avoid similar mistakes in the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T18:18:07.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1421" CreationDate="2011-04-02T18:40:32.247" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have two answers for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First-&lt;/strong&gt; Always. Build your project from the start, with clear lines of responsiblity. Every task has an owner, and it is clearly visible in the responsibility matrix (I use a full RASCI style). In my upcoming milestone reports I will list who the owner is for those upcoming milestones, along with the status. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You create a pattern of accountability from the get go. Green, Yellow, Red, every task has an owner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Second&lt;/strong&gt; Never report a red status up the line without first making sure that task owner knows the report is happening and give them time to address the issue. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.manager-tools.com&quot;&gt;Manager Tools&lt;/a&gt; just put out a podcast labled &quot;Internal Team Pre-Wire&quot;, which addresses this topic directly. As Horstman puts it &quot;You don't drop a dime on a team member.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if its a regular status report, you make sure the task owner is clear. &quot;Bob, I have to report project status on Wednesday. This is going to show as red.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Horstman suggests 48 hours notice. Not always possible, but five minutes notice (Walking into the meeting, you tell Suzy you are going to hang her out to dry is not giving her time to respond). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-04-02T19:48:01.287" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T19:48:01.287" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1395" CreationDate="2011-04-02T19:57:46.277" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Gift-wrap a copy of &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0201835959&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Mythical Man Month&lt;/a&gt;, and focus on providing alternatives. Cutting scope or extending the deadline are usually appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There will be some small, fundamental functionality which needs to be delivered. Identifying this vision, and engaging the team in finding quicker alternatives to delivering it, can really help to reduce the need for evening and weekend work. You'll be amazed how creative technical people can be when their quality of life benefits!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T19:57:46.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1426" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-02T20:42:07.830" Score="18" ViewCount="5159" Body="&lt;p&gt;I deal with the HR management and would like to ask what are the most effective attractors and motivators for young highly skilled people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some more details:&#xA;I am not project manager; I am head of university department. So I am partly manager and partly university teacher. I teach HR management and also project management is taught at our department.&#xA;I know many researches and forecasts about the work trends: shrinking labor pool of young talented people, the usage of virtual work, ad-hoc team creation for particular project. There is a lot of theory about effective recruitment and motivation of young people for project work.&#xA;I would highly appreciate if some project manager is willing to share his/her practical knowledge. I will share it with my students and also to use it for my work as we solve also projects, mainly scientific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="808" LastEditorUserId="152" LastEditDate="2011-04-07T10:51:22.090" LastActivityDate="2012-02-10T18:11:05.850" Title="How to attract and motivate talented young people to work in our project?" Tags="&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1418" CreationDate="2011-04-02T22:31:04.813" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the discussion in front of the client was an unhealthy result of some sort of source issues. A few ideas what might be wrong:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If such blame game happens on the meeting with the customer it means that there's friction between you and technical manager, but more importantly, that you haven't agreed common statement before the meeting. For this example it doesn't really matter what kind of excuse or explanation you were going to use but it should be something you both support, at least in front of the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You haven't written what happened after the first slip. It shouldn't be left alone until the client get pissed. First missed delivery, or couple of them, was the moment where you should have started looking for reasons why things aren't going as planned. There should be some discussion between you and technical manager on what was going on, and then what were you going to tell the client (see above).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you have agreed how to talk with the client, but nevertheless the technical manager ignored your arrangements, it was the time to act. First I'd talk directly with him, but if there was no reaction I would bring the issue to the attention of his manager and mine as well. Such behavior is a big hit on reputation of the whole organization so if you two couldn't solve it without any help it was a good time to call for some.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T22:31:04.813" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1426" CreationDate="2011-04-02T23:44:21.070" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Enablement&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Engagement&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to attract and keep young &lt;strong&gt;highly skilled&lt;/strong&gt; people on a project/in a company you should enable them to have active input into the project, not just make them do the grunt work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they feel that their opinion is highly valued and that they are a key part of the project team, they will feel more engaged and influential. This in-turn gives them a great feeling of ownership of a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="710" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T23:44:21.070" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1429" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1540" CreationDate="2011-04-02T23:52:36.803" Score="14" ViewCount="3320" Body="&lt;p&gt;What &lt;strong&gt;documentation&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;skills&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;amp; &lt;strong&gt;tasks&lt;/strong&gt; should a new (Technical) Product Manager concentrate on learning first to effectively do their job?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_management&quot;&gt;this Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;, and it didn't answer my question. It tells you about product management, not &lt;em&gt;how to learn it&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;what skills are the most important to learn&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="710" LastEditorUserId="36" LastEditDate="2011-04-04T15:11:43.743" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T13:00:39.893" Title="How and What to Learn - New to Product Management" Tags="&lt;skills&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="8" ClosedDate="2015-09-16T01:35:54.310" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1430" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-02T23:57:08.427" Score="15" ViewCount="6699" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a project goes through the planning and design phases, many decisions will be made.  To develop with technology X instead of technology Y. To leave feature z off of the plan for this version of the release in order to hit a hard deadline.  Many decisions, large and small (and sometimes the decisions about what will &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; be done are as important as decisions about what will be done).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can a Project manager best capture and share the decisions that were made so that they are not continually revisited throughout the project? Should the &quot;why&quot; and the &quot;who made the decision&quot; be documented as well? How should the project manager balance the  communication of key decisions without overwhelming uninterested parties with minutiae? When is it okay to revisit a decision that seemed like a good idea at the time, but does not bear out in practice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="439" LastEditorUserId="439" LastEditDate="2011-04-03T14:12:40.317" LastActivityDate="2011-07-21T02:21:25.960" Title="How should a project manager capture decisions?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1431" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1436" CreationDate="2011-04-03T00:37:23.213" Score="11" ViewCount="617" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/261/what-is-the-best-way-to-reward-a-small-project-team-specially-at-new-year-even&quot;&gt;similar question&lt;/a&gt; discusses cash, presents, and parties as good ways to reward project participants after successful completion of a project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On smaller projects without a budget, and with participants that are not local, are there any ways to express appreciation and maintain a good relationship with the participants so that they will look forward to participating on the next project?  A private &quot;thank you&quot;? An e-mail to their manager with praise?  Any other ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="439" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T09:33:40.997" Title="How can I reward hard work without a budget to do so?" Tags="&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1431" CreationDate="2011-04-03T02:25:32.683" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on the type project, would could offer some form of 'public' recognition of a job well done, going above and beyond, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a lot of people, the only thing better then a pat on the back, is a public pat on the back. Look at the armed forces, they have plenty of medals/awards they give out for service, courage above and beyond, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="710" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T02:25:32.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1431" CreationDate="2011-04-03T02:39:37.907" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is &quot;it depends.&quot; Some people love public reward, some hate it and prefer private reward. International teams are harder (more cultures to know about); if you're looking for a laundry list of things you can do, here are a few that might be effective:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &quot;this person did a great job and I want to say so on their annual review&quot; email to their manager, CCing them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A thank-you email to them and their manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;$10-$20 gift card (coffee, electronics, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cash bonus (&amp;lt;= $100)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unofficial vacation days&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perks (like working from home days, or unofficial sick days)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the best item is the first one -- put positive input on their annual review if you can, and help them get promoted. The rest may work, and the last couple depend largely on your ability to give them benefits in concert with (or without violation of) HR rules and regulations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T02:39:37.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1430" CreationDate="2011-04-03T02:42:43.147" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the PMI, decisions &lt;strong&gt;should all be documented&lt;/strong&gt; in the Project Charter (I believe), along with &lt;strong&gt;the reasoning behind the decision.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason is to first answer the question future people ask of &quot;why did they do X?&quot; and the second is to keep a paper-trail in case things go wrong -- not to blame, but to understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the easiest way to capture decisions is in a publicly viewable document; you can categorize them, starting with major decisions (like technologies or features), and putting sections for other areas for people who care (eg. finance decisions, technology decisions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's tough to say about revisiting decisions, so I'll say this: avoid it personally (except in cases where you're 100% sure you made the wrong decision) because allowing it means anyone, anytime can challenge the decision, and you end up having the same meetings again and again and again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T02:42:43.147" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1418" CreationDate="2011-04-03T05:18:58.110" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He then failed to deliver any of the&#xA;  work within timescales&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What could have been done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wondering why the situation reached this point?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was wasn't the technical output progress monitored?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why wasn't the slippage (when viewable over the horizon) raised (with tech manager's line manager) and addressed earlier?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What were the (direct) accountability criteria were for the technical manager ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[he] started to undermine me in&#xA;  meetings with the client&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I ended up delivering an incomplete&#xA;  project late&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is highly unacceptable behavior and in my previous experience such a situation has invited &quot;disciplinary behavior&quot; irrespective of whatever level the person is on and of  whatever relationship he has with the client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such a reprimand should happen (through the tech manager's line manager) and moving forward, ideally only one party should be managing the relationship with the client and that should be you, so such a farce should be avoided in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This message should go out loud and clear to the tech side and it should be from you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="804" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-03T09:28:33.663" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T09:28:33.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1431" CreationDate="2011-04-03T07:03:46.897" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;My vote would go for a face to face personal praise (&lt;strong&gt;with at least the contributor's manager present&lt;/strong&gt;) or an email (with cc to manager) if physical contact is not possible &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;content of the praise would be based around:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Big thanks&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Explaining what was special about the contributor's efforts&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Explaining how his efforts added to the project's success&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why would the team like to involve him again in the future&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="804" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-03T09:01:21.380" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T09:01:21.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1396" CreationDate="2011-04-03T08:11:56.107" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the major blockers/risks at the time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You need to do more PM work if&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the team is seeming lost&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People are not sure where the project is up to&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People are not sure what their current/next priorities are&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You as a PM are not sure on the health of the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If the above are not true, then you may need to do more project work if&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team members have a stack of tasks they know they must do, but don't have time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You know the project is not on track&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You find yourself doing unimportant/low-value PM tasks more frequently then normal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You feel you have plenty of time. Your team doesn't.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="710" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T08:11:56.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1393" CreationDate="2011-04-03T08:17:20.390" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Evernote&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best document manager ever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="812" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T08:17:20.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1431" CreationDate="2011-04-03T09:21:49.070" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most answers focus on &quot;thank you&quot; message/praise which is of course a great idea, however I'd look deeper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides sharing praise in a way which is adjusted to the character of praised person (public praise being default if I have no other clues) I'd think about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Giving some slack.&lt;/strong&gt; Especially after difficult project where the person gave much more than expected, e.g. long working hours which are always at cost of personal live. After such project people are often burned out, or close, and no money or pat in the back can really change it. Letting them to get some rest not only when they take some days off can be the best reward here. See more: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/860/how-to-get-burned-out-team-back-engaged-again&quot;&gt;How to get burned out team back engaged again?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Offering a job in a dream project&lt;/strong&gt; (whatever the person's dream project might be). We often work on projects which we don't really love. Sometimes there are also those which we'd love to join, in the office next door. Transfer to such project, even temporary might be something someone dreams about even if they don't ask for it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Unofficial role change.&lt;/strong&gt; One thing is a raise or promotion and it's out of the scope of this question. But another, often even more important, is unofficial status within the team. It can be something like informal team leader, one who gets more responsibility in the project, or something else, depending on the career path chosen by a specific person. Let the whole team know that it's going to work that way. Oh, and don't make it just virtual as the effect would be opposite to planned.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In terms of sharing the praise, one more idea.&lt;/strong&gt; Instead of doing it by yourself, go up through the pecking order to someone high enough and convince them it's worth to share some praise and thank people for their effort. Make them believe they should do it and it's worth to do it. If it's going to be &lt;em&gt;&quot;thank you guys, whoever you might be, and well, I have to go to the next meeting&quot;&lt;/em&gt; - don't bother. But if it will be genuine thank you it can work way better than the same words from PM or team manager or someone else who is close to the team everyday.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T09:21:49.070" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1431" CreationDate="2011-04-03T10:02:44.057" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask them upfront what do they want as a reward. In most cases you will be surprised, but try to follow their wishes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T10:02:44.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1393" CreationDate="2011-04-03T10:04:59.030" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Configuration_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Configuration Management&lt;/a&gt; is what you're looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T10:04:59.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1430" CreationDate="2011-04-03T10:09:36.997" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read &lt;strong&gt;Decision Analysis and Resolution&lt;/strong&gt; Process Area in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sei.cmu.edu/library/abstracts/reports/10tr033.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CMMI for Development 1.3&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T10:09:36.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1395" CreationDate="2011-04-03T10:29:28.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is definitely a conflict between &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Brook's Law&lt;/a&gt; and a modern project management discipline (where &quot;crashing&quot; technique comes from). The source of this conflict is an assumption being implicitly made by Fred Brooks in his book that a software development team is creating software in a permanent chaos, without any project management at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since 1975 many things have been improved. PMI gave us new knowledge and a new law - law of project management - the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/PMBOK-Guide-and-Standards.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMBOK&lt;/a&gt;. If you follow it you will be be able to compress schedule by means of crashing in any moment of time, even on the last day of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer is - Fred Brook is right if your team works in chaos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T10:29:28.253" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1431" CreationDate="2011-04-03T10:44:01.743" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thank you messages and awards from within your own structure are great, regardless of whether private or public, but best of all can be recognition from the client. If you can ask your customer to say a genuine thank you to the team, that can be a real boost to the team members, especially if this is on top of in-house recognition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T10:44:01.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1426" CreationDate="2011-04-03T11:27:16.823" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that keeping people fully engaged requires the people on the project to have a sense of ownership, and that they see how they are contributing to the success. I would also add that they should be able to see how their contribution and involvement will benefit them personally, in terms of career growth, peer recognition, and personal satisfaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Attracting young people to the project is a slightly different - but related - issue. You need to be able to sell the project to them, by showing how it will either advance their prospects of develop their technical capabilities. This is probably easier if using cutting-edge technologies, but even using well-established technologies can be stimulating if the subject area is interesting. A bigger challenge might be attracting people into a straightforward project using conventional methods... and that's where you may  have to get a bit more creative in terms of rewards and future opportunities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T11:27:16.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1396" CreationDate="2011-04-03T11:28:44.903" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would advise you to &lt;strong&gt;plan&lt;/strong&gt; your PM work in detail: put it in your calendar, with sufficient contingency for tackling issues, etc. Make sure you don't have any (or little) non-PM work to do at the important moments of your project: eg end of month when status reports are due; phase transistions; go-life; project closing etc. ... Ensure you have back-up for your non-PM work and also try to make your non-PM tasks as short as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't do this, you'll be overwhelmed in no time when Murphy strikes, needing all your time for managing your project and at the same time still having lost of non-pm work to fulfill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T11:28:44.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1430" CreationDate="2011-04-03T11:33:59.530" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use a simple Excel sheet for capturing issues/actions and related decisions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those decisions that need SteerCo approval are recorded in the monthly Project Status Report, updated with the results of the SteerCo meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T11:33:59.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1431" CreationDate="2011-04-03T11:38:25.563" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apart from Pawel's personal praise, why don't you buy them a drink from your own pocket?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T11:38:25.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="484" CreationDate="2011-04-03T16:39:13.787" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your manager is refusing to do his job than the only remaining thing to do is to politely escalate more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, before doing so you should be aware of &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/29057/how-do-you-deal-with-workplace-conflicts&quot;&gt;these things&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="816" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:31:53.287" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T16:53:31.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1451" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1460" CreationDate="2011-04-03T16:42:32.397" Score="8" ViewCount="950" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't the four agile principles get a bit lost in the middle of all the SCRUM process? How can this be avoided? How to promote these four principles over the process that is imposed? How to make the technical staff aquire a more value-oriented mindset and act in more assertive manners instead of turning them into drones?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="816" LastActivityDate="2018-02-23T22:18:13.797" Title="How to implement SCRUM without forgeting the four principles of the agile manifesto on the way?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1431" CreationDate="2011-04-03T18:04:47.177" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Money is not the only, or the best, option. Most team members understand that there may not be a budget for rewards and often the team is spread over the country, or the world, so face to face isn't the option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sincere and specific praise per previous answers. Advocating for time off with their functional manager. Organizing a 'potluck' lunch, lots of free or really cheap options are available. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T18:04:47.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1451" CreationDate="2011-04-03T18:41:16.583" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile principles alone will not get your software delivered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think Scrum is the right method for your shop, then make it so. That is hard work enough in its own right. You can worry about specific principles once the results are there, and only so if it wil clearly bring an improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T18:41:16.583" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1125" CreationDate="2011-04-03T19:40:39.420" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may setup an infinite loop since the article references this post ;)  ProjectSmart has some good recommendations on how to &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; deliver bad project news here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/how-do-you-deliver-bad-news-about-your-project.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/how-do-you-deliver-bad-news-about-your-project.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I particularly enjoy &quot;The Grenade&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is where the messenger walks into&#xA;  a crowded room (typically full of&#xA;  executives), delivers the bad news&#xA;  with all of its horrendous&#xA;  consequences without any warning, and&#xA;  then leaves. This is totally&#xA;  unacceptable, ineffective and not&#xA;  sustainable...primarily for the PM's&#xA;  career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="439" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T19:40:39.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1430" CreationDate="2011-04-03T20:07:59.103" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The vast majority of the decisions are taken in the context of meetings. For this reason, I choose to document decisions in meeting minutes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every project I am running has its own repository of meeting minutes shared and visible in a collaboration tool such as a wiki so it is easily accessible by all and easily searchable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When documenting meeting minutes, I mark decisions items with [Decision] prefix. I also document the rationale behind the decision, alternatives that were discussed and the context of the decision. Since the decision is documented in the context of a meeting, the participants of the meeting and who took the decision are also documented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This methodology allows anyone to search for [Decision] and get all the decisions taken for a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="44" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T20:07:59.103" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1457" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1481" CreationDate="2011-04-03T20:47:01.560" Score="2" ViewCount="1845" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know I am posting this question. in the right place. I thought I could post it on stackoverflow but this places looks more suitable for this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering that how much drawing a a blueprint/sketch of &lt;strong&gt;the architecture of a project&lt;/strong&gt; before starting to actually build it would help? could it be useful? what are your experiences on this. I am about to dive into a big project on my firm and I just wanna explore the options before getting into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, is there some online tools which are specifically designed for that kind of purposes so that I can do this kind of stuff on my machine instead of on a paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="815" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-04-05T03:13:05.037" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T00:35:42.337" Title="Drawing Architectural Diagrams Before Building Software" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1458" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1459" CreationDate="2011-04-03T22:20:09.700" Score="20" ViewCount="313" Body="&lt;p&gt;This excellent post by Joel struck home (&lt;a href=&quot;http://thegorillaisnamedhogarth.blogspot.com/2010/02/gorilla-with-too-many-hats_12.html&quot;&gt;The gorilla with too many hats&lt;/a&gt;), and made me think.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many project managers started out as individual contributors, and may have strong technical skills in a given domain.  In an era of &quot;do less with more&quot;, it is tempting for a project manager to step in and &quot;just do&quot; a few tasks for a project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the perspective of management, it may be tempting to solve resource gaps by asking the project manager to do some coding, build a quick prototype, perform some research, make some decision, run the project server, serve as a technical backstop for escalations, send newsletters, provide technical support to a customer, help close a sale...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Joel mentions (and as I keep seeing whenever I read about how the mind works),  &quot;interruptions seriously affect performance. A single 30 second interruption can result in a 15 minute work loss.&quot;  When the project manager serves as the focal point for communication and multiple projects and multiple stakeholders, randomization can end up killing as much of your day as meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can a project manager identify where they add the most value to their organization, set clear boundaries about what they &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; do (which is only a subset of what they &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; do), and protect those boundaries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="439" LastActivityDate="2019-01-01T10:22:35.090" Title="How do you get the most value out of a PM who can do everything?" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1458" CreationDate="2011-04-03T22:42:22.627" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would refer to the PM job definition I really like, which is: &quot;get the job done.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually I believe your question can't be answered a single good way. If we think about what project manager should do to use their skills most efficiently we go to an area which is very, very individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However referring to a definition I shared above you could easily reduce it to a couple of rules:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Find people who can deal with specific tasks in a project and delegate those tasks to them.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you can't find, or get, anyone who can do some work it belongs to you.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say it works the same with team managers. First thing you're trying (or should be trying) to do is to delegate as much work as possible to other so you have enough time to deal with the work no one besides you can cope with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the whole trick is with defining which is which, but then again that's totally individual. If some coding is what it takes to get the project done, where's the problem? If you have someone who can give you a hand when it comes to do some project management stuff what's the point in rejecting help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If basic PM's responsibility is get the job done they should use people's strengths and avoid weaknesses even if that means some counterintuitive actions.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T22:42:22.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1451" CreationDate="2011-04-03T22:56:40.617" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;When it comes to Scrum implementation it pretty much depends who you listen to. If you go with &lt;a href=&quot;http://kenschwaber.wordpress.com/2010/06/10/waterfall-leankanban-and-scrum-2/&quot;&gt;Ken Schwaber's, rather conservative, approach&lt;/a&gt; you'd hear that Scrum is actually the solution and you shouldn't change it much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However you may also find opinions that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.noop.nl/2009/09/scrumbuts-are-the-best-part-of-scrum.html&quot;&gt;Scrumbuts (we do Scrum, but...) are the best flavors of Scrum&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latter kind of answers your question - it's not about applying specific method blindly. Do what works for you and if it doesn't just stop. That's not what you're going to hear from everyone but, well, if you look for kind of common sense answer you won't need to look for it very long either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many people who don't treat agile in general and Scrum specifically as sacred cows. For them, well, me included, it's just one of tools I may use - either as a whole or only partially. So it's not processes and tools over people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also point that as long as you're going to choose your own way understanding how the work is done and how a team works is crucial. Otherwise you will be throwing out parts of this or that method without understanding why they were implemented in the first place, i.e. what the team was supposed to get thanks to them, thus what you should address with different bits and pieces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pretty often lack of understanding the work is a reason why selective approach to any method fails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2013-01-27T13:44:55.550" LastActivityDate="2013-01-27T13:44:55.550" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1451" CreationDate="2011-04-04T04:24:24.110" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you can't implement principles, you are left implementing practices - aka Tools, techniques and methods by &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0385472560&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Peter Senge in the Fifth Discipline Fieldbook&lt;/a&gt;.  Peter makes the case for two other things that hold your &quot;domain of action&quot; together:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Guiding Ideas&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Innovations in Infrastructure (both social and technical)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To keep from missing the principles, don't forget to lock in the social and technical infrastructure necessary to cement those guiding ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that is best done by implementing vanilla scrum first - &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/8/strict-or-pragmatic-scrum/1058#1058&quot;&gt;See my answer in Strict or Pragmatic Scrum?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="640" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T04:24:24.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1462" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-04T04:28:47.787" Score="5" ViewCount="895" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/node/12075015?story_id=12075015&quot;&gt;Management by Walking Around&lt;/a&gt; (or Wandering About) is an extraordinarily effective (yet simple) way to keep your finger on the pulse of your team, to build relationships, and hear about problems and concerns early on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Easy enough to do over coffee with a local team, but how would you go about implementing this concept with remote team members? Can you have the same impact with a phone call, e-mail or video chat?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="439" LastActivityDate="2011-04-25T02:57:44.053" Title="Management by Walking Around (with a remote team)" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;distributed-team&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1462" CreationDate="2011-04-04T05:33:20.710" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have big doubts that &quot;management by walking around&quot; has anything to do with professional project management. To keep your finger on the pulse of your team you should use Scope Control, Quality Control, and Cost Control tools and techniques listed in PMBOK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Objective information should &quot;walk around&quot;, not a project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T05:33:20.710" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1462" CreationDate="2011-04-04T06:47:36.640" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I ran a distributed team of 8, and was co-located with just one of them. It was easy enough to remain sighted on progress against deliverables via phone calls, emails, and a regular team video meeting, but extremely difficult to &quot;take the temperature&quot; of the team by such means. The best way to understand how individuals were feeling, or identify the undercurrents and interactions between members of the team and each other, or between team members and other workers in their locations, was to physically visit them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Machiavelli wrote &quot;In the beginning of the malady it is easy to cure but difficult to detect, but in the course of time, not having been either detected or treated in the beginning, it becomes easy to detect but difficult to cure.&quot; In other words, look out for the first sign of trouble and nip it in the bud. You need to have your radar switched on to identify even the slightest sign of an issue when talking to your team, and without the body language and other forms of non-verbal communications, this is not easy by phone. Pick up on &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; hint of a problem and decide whether it needs attention - don't leave it to chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this is very time consuming so you need to consider the best way to manage your time, and don't expect a PM with a distributed team to be as productive as a PM with a co-located team. The team may be as effective, but the PM is unlikely to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW - another definition of MBWA is Mismanaging by Wandering Aimlessly. Make sure it is productive!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T06:47:36.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1465" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1509" CreationDate="2011-04-04T07:17:11.640" Score="6" ViewCount="1461" Body="&lt;p&gt;My company has a series of projects with dependencies between them (eg back end hardware refresh/virtualisation, new desktop build/roll-out, database upgrade and implementation of new functionality, new major release of existing applications, and implementation of a couple of new applications). All are significant enough to justify individual project managers, and we want to coordinate them all within a programme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question: Are the skills required to run a single large project the same as those required to manage a programme? If not, what are the differences, and what additional training is required?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastEditorUserId="95" LastEditDate="2011-04-05T14:45:52.843" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T17:52:04.840" Title="Are Program Management skills different from Project Management skills?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;skills&gt;&lt;training&gt;&lt;program-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1458" CreationDate="2011-04-04T08:23:51.990" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Pawel that this question doesn't have a single good answer. I want to share some ideas and experience in this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my company, it's totally like the situation in the blog post. Yes, Project Managers also code &lt;strong&gt;code as well as any senior developer&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason is simple: my company size is pretty small, so one person needs to be able to do many kinds of work. I think it's reasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I don't fully agree with &quot;interruptions seriously affect performance. A single 30 second interruption can result in a 15 minute work loss.&quot; Yes it is, if that are &lt;strong&gt;unplanned interruptions&lt;/strong&gt;. The PM can set up their time: how much for managing things and how much for other works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With some people, a little break from tedious duty is necessary to renew ideas. With others, it's unacceptable. So, at the end, I think it's highly dependent on the PM personality to decide which should be done. Often, I see our people defined it by experience, &lt;strong&gt;try-and-error&lt;/strong&gt;: take a little more work, then if you feel that's too much, step back and see what's wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-07T13:20:14.403" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T13:20:14.403" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1431" CreationDate="2011-04-04T09:33:40.997" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe... no reward at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not totally kidding. You can ask people to pay for their own party. The best reward is not necessarily money, neither it must be from you. People satisfication is the only goal here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my company, once in a while, we have a &quot;very small party&quot;: the fund are contributed by all of us. In the party, we are all brothers, no boss or PM or developers. Or people can take their turn to fund those small parties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing here is the attitude of participants: if you successfully create a warm atmosphere, all people feel relaxed, tell jokes and talk casually, then you succeeded. With this kind of activity, all people contributes because they feel that they are part of a family, and they are happy with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T09:33:40.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1468" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1475" CreationDate="2011-04-04T10:45:32.667" Score="2" ViewCount="3754" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's assume that we are starting a project, but have no previous experience of budgeting a software project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should the guys who will work on that project do to make a decent budget planing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should every movement be considered on this process?  I meant &lt;em&gt;coding the structure and data access, creation of restful services, creating the database structure and architecture, and so on&lt;/em&gt; by every movement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should the time planning process go on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="815" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-04-05T03:12:31.620" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T19:46:10.960" Title="Making a budget and time plan for a software project" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1462" CreationDate="2011-04-04T11:07:56.607" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a perspective from someone who has witnessed both (running a remote team and being a part of one) for a decently long period of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some important things here which will decide how well you can communicate with your remote teams:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have you hired the right guys? Make a mistake here and everything else in this list just doesn’t matter. Hire developers who are not just kick ass developers but are able to communicate and express concerns openly and candidly. In some cultures you might need to be careful of issues like mitigated speech and sugar coating.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Meet them in person; If you are friends with someone working remotely is not even a problem. Of course, you cannot be having coffee with them every day because they are remote but have you made the effort to go out there and meet them a couple of times a year? Meeting someone in person and spending time with them for a few weeks matters.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use your communication mediums wisely; discuss most work over email and have quick casual catch-ups over phone calls. Most work is best done over email. It’s non-intrusive and if you have a responsible team which replies back on time, work will get done.  That doesn’t mean you stop all verbal communication. Calling up to catch up on how someone’s birthday celebrations went or how they celebrated their sprint success is priceless.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pick one or two points of contacts for personal discussions; Status calls will work, but they are way too professional. You are better off picking one or two people you can genuinely trust (folks with good communication skills who have proved themselves with their work and code in the past) and keeping in touch with them to give you an idea about the pulse of the rest of the team. The point is personal discussions over phone and general catching up.Not a status call with a finite agenda or time. The key here is to get friendship going where neither party hesitate while calling each other in middle of the night and neither of them overdo it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Video chats are meaningless (at least in most cases); Depending on the country and the culture where your remote teams are located, developers might feel “monitored” when asked to get on video chats so my advice would be to avoid them unless you are sure what you are doing or you know your team members really well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allow autonomy; This is a mistake I see most managers managing remote teams make. The desire to know the rationale behind every single decision before it is made cripples your team. Let them make judgment calls and take their own decisions. Unless these are downright wrong or they hurt you don't overrule them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Respect; Again, you’re going to have lack of information when managing teams remotely. With lack of information it is often fairly easy to doubt your team’s decision.  The real question here is, are you able to respect them and empathize with them just like you would do with your office peers. If you can do that and if you have a kick ass team, most of your work is done. They will do the rest.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management by Walking around by itself has its own perils; One of its biggest proponents Steve Jobs is often criticized for being a jerk. When you do it remotely it's easy to overdo it by calling people every eight hours and expecting responses to your email the very next day. If you have a kickass team that you can trust, my recommendation would be to trust them and not overdo it just because you are not in the action and not feeling the immediate pulse all the time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important of the list however is the first point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you’ve failed at that you’re going to have a hard time keeping up with others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you’ve succeeded at that, just simple phone and email, are good communication tools. &#xA;Good luck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do let us know how it goes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8143" LastEditorUserId="8143" LastEditDate="2011-04-07T16:57:31.727" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T16:57:31.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1470" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1471" CreationDate="2011-04-04T12:36:06.627" Score="19" ViewCount="19059" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even though Scrum was originally suggested for managing product development projects, its use has focused on the management of software development projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of the project management teams I have worked with in non-software product development have ever used agile methodologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, could we incorporate Scrum in Product Development projects within the Automotive industry?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="696" LastEditDate="2011-04-07T07:20:02.317" LastActivityDate="2021-02-28T19:09:09.683" Title="Agile methodologies such as Scrum in non-software development projects" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1470" CreationDate="2011-04-04T13:51:40.910" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two main tenets of Scrum that, in my opinion, define it and tell you the worth of it for any project or product. Those two are: &lt;strong&gt;changing requirements&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;iterative releases.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many great posts on this site about Agile vs. Waterfall. The bottom line is that Waterfall is amazing &lt;strong&gt;if you can gather all the requirements up-front, and they won't change much.&lt;/strong&gt; The hard part is getting those requirements right, on paper, before doing any of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that waterfall would apply very well to industries like automobile, healthcare, aerospace, etc. where it's easier to clarify up-front what exactly you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, iterative releases are very, very useful -- even with fixed and un-changing requirements. You could theoretically do it, but I don't see what benefit you'd get out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, I would focus on some other useful parts of Scrum, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimating tasks in vaguer units (story points) instead of time -- if requirements are unknown and/or changing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Breaking work down into small units that can be completed in a week or two, or less.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communicating daily across the team to say &amp;quot;here's what I did yesterday, what I'm going to do today, and what I got stuck on.&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Your mileage may vary.&lt;/em&gt; I would say look at Scrum/Agile, and start pulling those practices that you can see will benefit you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastEditorUserId="36330" LastEditDate="2020-10-08T07:34:53.677" LastActivityDate="2020-10-08T07:34:53.677" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1470" CreationDate="2011-04-04T13:56:44.727" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is pretty much an open question at this time, and as Agile evolves I think we can expect to see greater use of it outside software development settings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See this discussion for a good blow-by-blow: &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1702128/can-i-use-agile-in-a-non-development-project&quot;&gt;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1702128/can-i-use-agile-in-a-non-development-project&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, I'm going to be pedantic: scrum is an Agile tool. Also, Agile was designed for software projects - there's no shift in focus as you suggest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3170" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:41:23.897" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T13:56:44.727" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1468" CreationDate="2011-04-04T13:56:46.430" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer you're probably looking for is &lt;strong&gt;give large ranges of estimates (plus or minus 50-100% or more) and say: this is what we think.&lt;/strong&gt; Because you don't know. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Planning is probably best done top-down, starting with vague items (eg. feature X) and broken down into smaller items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't know your requirements well, or if they may change, &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; if you're not building something static like a compiler, I would suggest giving agile/scrum/xp/etc. a whirl. It allows you to estimate remaining time to work &lt;strong&gt;given actual past team performance,&lt;/strong&gt; and you only need to wait one sprint (~2 weeks) to get real data on how you're doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMI suggests a lot of great estimating techniques that you can probably make use of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimating based on similar projects (if possible)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimating based on similar products/pieces built in different projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Three-point estimating (weighted average of best-case, worst-case, and average case)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Top-down and bottom-up estimating (yes, both)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A budget is harder to estimate. I don't have much experience with it, so I'm going to duck out on that part. Earned Value is generally terrible (from my perspective of software development), albeit tracking expected vs. actual costs to-date is very useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T13:56:46.430" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1430" CreationDate="2011-04-04T15:44:30.177" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The important point in the original question is to document them somewhere that is easy to go back to. It is much less important how you record them but you should be consistent throughout the project. It is also very useful to be able to easily see all the decisions in one view regardless of when they were raised which is why I prefer to track them independently to meeting minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use SharePoint to manage all the documentation for our projects and therefore also use it to track decisions. We have created a custom content type based on an Item (but you could just as easily use a Custom List type). We captured a brief summary and a more detailed description of the decision along with the date. We then use an Approval workflow to have the decision approved by the appropriate people. That way we have a good audit trail to show who approved the decision and when.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="788" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T15:44:30.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1468" CreationDate="2011-04-04T16:22:44.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to define the budget and the timeline of a project, the first thing to know is the scope of the project. Which means: you need to know what's &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; in the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Starting with the scope, you can roughly break the project down in main tasks, and get a first estimate of the planning and budget of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just keep in mind (and remind the stakeholders) that it's rough and need to be refined. Don't let such a rough estimate be written down on a contract!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To estimate, the first thing is to get a time estimate, which is rather a question of experience, in my opinion. Given an amount of work and knowing the complexity of the task, a PM has to be able to estimate the time needed to accomplish the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, cost is pretty easy to calculate. The cost depends of the consumed resources: the cost of the team is obviously the main cost. And then the tools they will use (computers, software, etc), the services they will consume (power, internet access, phone, etc). Maybe you will need to work with contractors, providers. And so on...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cost is of course the sum of all costs for the time of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastEditorUserId="152" LastEditDate="2011-04-04T19:16:16.617" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T19:16:16.617" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1470" CreationDate="2011-04-04T16:48:52.040" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ken Schwaber actually released a book called &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/073561993X&quot;&gt;Agile Project Management with Scrum&lt;/a&gt; that runs through a number of case studies in industries outside of software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="439" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T16:48:52.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1429" CreationDate="2011-04-04T16:54:03.347" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, I think that this question is irrelevant to project management. Second, I think that a technical product manager is a specialist in the product under development. Thus, in order to be good at this position one should learn as much as possible about the product you're developing/managing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T16:54:03.347" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1478" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1482" CreationDate="2011-04-04T17:15:29.077" Score="7" ViewCount="5758" Body="&lt;p&gt;What metrics do you use in order to report performance of a software development project? And how do you collect them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-22T07:14:53.683" Title="How to report performance of a software development project?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;communication-management&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;performance&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1458" CreationDate="2011-04-04T17:21:58.160" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sean, thanks for the great question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since writing that blog I've read Peter Taylor's book, the Lazy Project Manager. Reading it inspired me to finally write a blog on the differences between &lt;a href=&quot;http://thegorillaisnamedhogarth.blogspot.com/2011/02/effectiveness-is-new-gorilla.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;efficiency and effectiveness&lt;/a&gt; and of course to do a blog &lt;a href=&quot;http://thegorillaisnamedhogarth.blogspot.com/2011/03/book-review-lazy-project-manager.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;review of Peter's book&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the things in Peter's book that just jumped out screaming at me, was the base premise of the book. That of Pareto's 80/20 rule. When 20% of your projects problems cause 80% of your projects work, then focus on that 20%. If you then take this and look at many studies on failed projects, you find one of the key places projects fail is in the beginning. A failure to define the project right, to get the right sign off/buy in, to get the right resources, to get a mutual agreement on what &quot;Done&quot; is, are all major issues raised as the cause of a projects failure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So like Peter suggests in his book, I advocate a PM focusing on the beginning and the end of project, based on those two areas being where the majority of problems arise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Joel&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-04T19:31:48.143" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T19:31:48.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1478" CreationDate="2011-04-04T18:22:56.180" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best metric for showing progress of a software development project is &lt;strong&gt;working software&lt;/strong&gt;.  Let's say that you report status weekly or monthly to your customers or project sponsor / stakeholders.  You can report that 22% of features specified have been completed (or more likely, 13% of features are complete, another 4% have been started, and another 5% are 50 to 90% complete).  But what do those numbers really mean?  In reality, those numbers mean almost nothing to a customer.  Even for a feature you think is &quot;done&quot;, the customer may have had a different expectation, and then your &quot;done&quot; is something other than &quot;done&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you have a demo of working software on a set day and time, the customer/stakeholder can see exactly what is done or not done, to what extent what has been done meets their expectation.  This is the heart of the agile software development philosophy.  But even if you aren't &quot;doing agile&quot;, you can still &quot;report progress&quot; this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="347" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T18:22:56.180" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1457" CreationDate="2011-04-04T18:46:10.723" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have much experience with this in terms of tools. I find architectural diagrams really useful, especially with complex interactions and multiple systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had one project that required JQuery, Silverlight, and PHP all rolled together. I stuck to pen and paper and drew up some interaction diagrams (UML is really useful for cases like this) to make sure I understood the workflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, I would say stick to pen and paper if you can. Google Docs has some online drawing functionality, if you're interested in having it available online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T18:46:10.723" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1478" CreationDate="2011-04-04T18:57:57.067" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like Agile specifically because of this -- tracking and reporting on performance is intuitive, detailed, and also &lt;strong&gt;based on actual team results.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some background:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in agile, you break a project into &quot;stories,&quot; small pieces of work that, if implemented independently, would make sense to a customer. For example, for the PM.SE site, you might say &quot;Posting a question (title and content)&quot; is one story; being able to edit (by the original author) is one story; adding tags is one story; and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories are estimated in a vague size unit (story points) which are &lt;em&gt;relative&lt;/em&gt;. A story that's two points is roughly half the work of one that's four points. Having an iconic, standardized example for a one or two point story, you can easily estimate everything relative to that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In typical agile/scrum, you track your &quot;velocity&quot; (number of story points per day). Your &quot;product backlog&quot; is the list of all stories over the life of the product; at any given time, you can say &quot;we have X points of stories to do for this project, of which, we have completed Y points.&quot; That's your performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above and beyond standard agile practices, you can do fun stuff, like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Budgeting (eg. we only do up to 20-30 points per two-week iteration)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Statistics (over the last ten sprints, our velocity has been rising from 30 to 40 points per sprint consistently)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Earned Value: I personally &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; like this part. Track the &quot;expected points done today&quot; vs. &quot;actual points done today&quot; value. It tells you if you're ahead or behind.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product planning: You're two weeks into an eight-week project. You've completed 20 points so far (10 points per week); the entire project is broken up into &lt;em&gt;160 story points&lt;/em&gt;. There's no way you're going to make it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the flip side, some people consider points insufficient, and require developers to further break stories into tasks and track tasks on a task-by-task basis and estimate those in hours. Whatever gives you the visibility you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T18:57:57.067" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1468" CreationDate="2011-04-04T19:54:43.983" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First thing you need to do is create the &lt;strong&gt;Work breakdown Structure&lt;/strong&gt; (WBS) up till Workpackage level. The WBS describes the end-product you need to deliver as well as the processes needed to deliver it. This will need a number of iterations on discussions with your stakeholders to make sure that everything is included that is required. You need a pretty good idea of what done looks like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The end-result should be broken down in sufficient detail into the functional components that will add to the capability the product needs to support. Each will be a workpackage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next each work package needs to be estimated. Ashes has given some typical methods for getting a valid estimate. As estimating seems to be a problem, I would advise to develop each work package (or lowest level WBS element) into &lt;em&gt;all the tasks required to complete the deliverable&lt;/em&gt; (= &lt;strong&gt;task definition&lt;/strong&gt;). Each task is then separately estimated into ideal work hours or days. Meaning that if someone would work uninterrupted on this task it would take him x hours. Again, estimating is done by subject matter experts and/or the people who will perform them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't use single point estimates, but a &lt;strong&gt;range&lt;/strong&gt; (Most likely - Worst Case). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This means that, instead of estimating&#xA;  a task will take 10 hours, detail the&#xA;  estimate in the most likely effort of&#xA;  8 hours and a worst case of, say 14&#xA;  hours because we don't know technology&#xA;  XYZ very well and it may be a&#xA;  piece of cake but when factor X&#xA;  doesn't match with Y than we have to&#xA;  reconfigure Z, hence the 14 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How much effort or how long a task&#xA;  really takes is not deterministic (10&#xA;  hours) but follows a probability&#xA;  distribution you have to account for.&#xA;  Think of your daily commute: does it&#xA;  take exactly the same amount of time&#xA;  each day? By taking into account the&#xA;  worst case, you can work out a margin,&#xA;  but you manage against the most likely&#xA;  (because Murphy does not always pays a visit&#xA;  and to prevent student's&#xA;  syndrome (take all the time&#xA;  allotted)).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that, if you're not sure yet which technology to use, you will either have to make assumptions or (better) make an estimate for each possibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimating is best done with a group of people, instead of individually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summing all these estimates up will give you the required budget in hours or days for each work package and ultimately for the whole project, and possible alternatives of execution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next make your &lt;strong&gt;network&lt;/strong&gt; of all work packages (this is the plan you are going to follow) and schedule the tasks and assign people or profiles to each of them, so you also know the &lt;strong&gt;cost estimate&lt;/strong&gt; and the &lt;strong&gt;delivery time&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perform &lt;strong&gt;risk identification&lt;/strong&gt; (use the WBS!) and add specific risk mitigation tasks where required. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Check out each WBS element for&#xA;  possible risks and create a risk&#xA;  response/mitigation plan: these&#xA;  'actions' of your risk response plan&#xA;  must be added somewhere, either in a&#xA;  work package of their own or in the&#xA;  affected work packages. These tasks&#xA;  must then be estimated as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure these cost items are identified so that you know your contingency budget and how it is applied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final schedule is based upon the most likely estimates or any other way of calulating it (eg PERT), but make sure you also calculate some &lt;strong&gt;margin&lt;/strong&gt;, in both time and money. As estimating seems to be a problem, you better argument to take the difference between the most likely (or average, or PERT or whatever ) and the worst case. Since you will manage against the former, that should be ok.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't forget to add any material costs, licences, ... to complete your budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this makes sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final word: &lt;strong&gt;track time!!&lt;/strong&gt; So that you can use it for the project after this one. Not only to be able to compare with previous realised work packages or tasks (if you track time on this detail), but also to track how well you're doing the estimations. If you notice that you under-estimate by a certain %, you can use that 'evidence' next time as a separate margin or even to adjust the most likely estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-04-18T19:46:10.960" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T19:46:10.960" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1484" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1781" CreationDate="2011-04-04T19:57:52.337" Score="4" ViewCount="2277" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1468/making-a-budget-and-time-plan-for-a-software-project/&quot;&gt;Another question&lt;/a&gt; came up about estimation of budget and time plan estimates for a project. In &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1468/making-a-budget-and-time-plan-for-a-software-project/1475#1475&quot;&gt;my answe&lt;/a&gt;r, I stated that the ground knowledge for time estimate was experience. Does anyone knows a more rational mean to get an estimate the duration of a programming task?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T11:41:59.873" Title="How to evaluate task duration?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1470" CreationDate="2011-04-04T20:08:38.377" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of Agile methods are development methodologies. If you take Extreme Programming, for example, it's obviously impossible to apply it in another domain than software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum, on the other hand, is a way to organize a project team. It's really good suited for software development teams, but there is no reason why it wouldn't be suited for project team in other domains than software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I just discovered Jugaad, which could be relevant to your interest. Take a look at the official website: &lt;a href=&quot;http://jugaadinnovation.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://jugaadinnovation.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also a book: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1118249747.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1118249747.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jugaad is a way to consider innovation in a frugal and agile way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastEditorUserId="152" LastEditDate="2013-11-12T22:08:30.667" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T22:08:30.667" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1484" CreationDate="2011-04-04T20:24:01.503" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Steve McConnel has a great book called &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0735605351&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Software Estimating: Demystifying the Black Art.&quot;&lt;/a&gt; It's great. I read one chapter; he talks about multiple techniques you can use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One is &quot;decomposition.&quot; If your task is to code 10 widget classes, and historically it took you 2 hours to code one widget class, 2 * 10 = 20 hours estimated time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That, along with more traditional estimates (like analogous estimating -- estimating based on similarity to a known task, three-point estimating -- using best/worst/average case estimates, etc.) should suffice you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That, and a good ol' dose of experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastEditorUserId="91" LastEditDate="2011-04-19T11:41:59.873" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T11:41:59.873" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1484" CreationDate="2011-04-05T00:09:08.403" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you are estimating, you are trying to predict the future.  There is no fail-safe way to do this.  A controlled method that is iterative, performed by several &quot;experts&quot;, using multiple approaches--e.g., historical values, parametrics, top down, bottom up--validated by a rigorous simulation will produce the most &lt;em&gt;credible&lt;/em&gt; results.  Unless you cook the books, you will not meet your target with zero variance.  You will finish some in less time, and others in more time.  Capture those results and use them in your analysis for the next estimation, but do not chase those numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T00:09:08.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1430" CreationDate="2011-04-05T02:35:01.293" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've experimented with a few different strategies for logging decisions. Like mentioned by Stephen above, I had one tab in my status excel sheet as an issue log. This issue log is where I tracked any questions/answers that came up that might not make their way back into the requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with the poster above who records it in meeting notes. This is a good way to get the context. I like to do that and also note the decision where I have details for the task being done. When you have a collaborative tool like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.liquidplanner.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LiquidPlanner&lt;/a&gt; this can be easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="184" LastEditorUserId="184" LastEditDate="2011-07-21T02:21:25.960" LastActivityDate="2011-07-21T02:21:25.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1426" CreationDate="2011-04-05T05:54:24.570" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;After having spent years watching young and highly motivated groups of people I’ve come to simple conclusions on what moves them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Purpose (Meaning); Let’s accept it. Talented people are going to have bigger dreams than earning a paycheck. Think about it, what would a young talented programmer fresh out of college prefer? Working for an enterprise that pays him 100K+ for building CRUD applications or working on the core pieces of the Google Page Rank algorithm and making it better for a 80K a year? Most kickass young talents know instinctively that if they can build meaning and find purpose in their work, they have plenty of time for the money part to take care of itself. If your organization, product, company, project is built on meaning and a genuine story it will attract the best of the best. If your only story is that you “work for the fortune 500 and build enterprise projects” the best of the talents are going to yawn when they hear your story.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sense of Belonging (The ‘At Home’ Factor); That probably comes from the fact that they have been rock-stars and alpha geeks in their current educational environment and want the same sense of respect, the same sense of acceptance, the same sense of belonging and the same sense of tribe from their workplaces. Are they allowed to speak their minds? Are they allowed to bring about change? Are they recognized and valued for the changes that they bring about? Are they rewarded and respected justly? Put simply, do they sense a culture where they can be ‘At Home’ and work with likeminded talents without having to worry about being bossed around.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Autonomy And Lack Of Interference; most kickass young talents crave autonomy and the fact that there is so little of it out there, should make your organization a hub for talents to flock if you can offer genuine autonomy. Genuine autonomy however, is very different from telling people you trust them and then having them to fill an approval form for a ten dollar cab fare on a business trip.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Other Young Kickass Talent; Good talent is viral. It tends to have a multiplier effect. Good young folks know other talented folks and if they are happy at your workplace they tend to recommend others. Geeks have a reputation for being introverts but you’ll be surprised at how large their circles of influence are. Hire a few kickass guys and if they are happy they will go out and recommend friends and do the recruitment for you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Managers and veterans that can Handle talents; Let’s face it. Most managers out there aren’t competent enough to handle genuine talents. I’ve seen managers get all worked up and insecure the moment they land up with young talents who have the spinal cords to have their own opinions. Having managers who aren’t insecure, can listen to new ideas, can allow these ideas to exist, accept difference in opinions and allow these folks to grow without becoming impediments to their growth is a very important factor. Most genuine kickass guys leave their jobs when they are rubbed the wrong way. So again having managers who can allow talent to grow is an important factor. Also having talented veterans who have been there and done that that the young ones can learn from and who have an open mind to learn from the young ones is a huge plus.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Empathy and small things; Flexible timings, flexible dress code, logo ware, swag, mentions of names in meetings, genuine appreciation. All of these count. Appreciation of success and empathy for failure are two things which can attract the best of the best to work for you. Acknowledging that people have a personal life, that they have up and downs, that they are not automatons, that they have bad times once in a while where their productivity takes a nose dive. Having one on one conversations. Office picnics and parties. All of these small things add up and result in stories which spread within the corridors of your organization and outside your organization so pay attention to the small details. Pamper your employees and give them all it takes to kick ass.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Culture; This is not your policies. It’s the core values with which your organization runs. Success Factors has a “No Asshole” culture where being nice is not an option. It’s a mandatory requirement.  Culture is something talented youngsters can sense by taking one walk around your office and they can tell if you are faking it or if you are serious about it. Hire a few seed employees who become templates for the culture you want to build and then get out of their way. Very soon your culture might be doing most of the work for you as far as hiring kickass youngsters is concerned.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Salaries; I am going to include this here primarily because the whole idea that awesome guys are so awesome that they don’t need a paycheck and that just because you think your cause or culture is awesome they should work for you for food, is often publicized by organizations in a bizarre kind of a way. You don’t need to have the highest of salaries but if your paychecks are an insult, it just means that your cause isn’t successful enough or profitable enough. That or you don't respect your employees enough. Respectable salaries matter because when you spend peanuts you get monkeys.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many others but I think these eight are often a good start and form a foundation for building on top of. Also, all of these are also true when hiring veteran employees also, but things like culture, meaning, purpose, autonomy etc. matter as much to young talents as they do to veteran employees. This is because most young talents want to have the highest impact that they can possibly have and build something meaningful that changes lives. Anyone who doesn’t care about the above eight items and only works for a paycheck is not someone you probably want to attract even if he is the most talented dude out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8143" LastEditorUserId="8143" LastEditDate="2011-04-07T12:52:06.323" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T12:52:06.323" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1430" CreationDate="2011-04-05T10:44:40.173" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I too minute meetings and use a key to track decisions; all bullet points in my minutes start with one of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I: For information&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A: For action, with the action owner at the end in bold &lt;strong&gt;[Like This]&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;D: For decisions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, I keep an assumptions slide in my monthly project board/ steering committee pack and highlight in bold anything that has changed since last month. We review this in the board meeting to ensure that everyone is happy with the decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="95" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T10:44:40.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="711" CreationDate="2011-04-05T10:45:32.053" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say take your time before you come to conclusions. No documentation and no structure are not the same thing. Most managers often tend to mix up the two when in reality most experienced development teams tend to have their own silent structures which are not evidently visible when seen from the outside. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would have to agree with Criag that trying to put too much structure too soon often creates more problems than it solves. See what is working and do it more often.  One advice I can give you is spending a lot of time playing with the actual product or application and understands it’s functionality inside out. Use verbal communication and quick one on one questions instead of calling meetings. Maybe even start filing a couple of bugs along the way if you bump into bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are multiple benefits to this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One is you can focus on the project by being hands on and without intruding into the time and space of others in the team who might already be busy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plus, that way you get to work on the application, know it inside out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not just that you get to know and work with the development team directly. If they are any good and if the project has survived thus far, chances are that they are using some sort of a structure (Test Driven Development, Unit Test Cases etc.) already. It just isn’t evident or visible to you. Working with the team will allow you to get to know them, know what existing development methodology they are using and what their skill levels are.  Maybe they are talented programmers who are getting away by using a very light weight process and trying to rush in to add more management structure might add more problems than it might solve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After spending some time being involved with the project hands on you might be in a much better position to take better decisions on the kind of changes that might benefit the project rather than rushing in and trying to make changes to the structure and workflow of how work is getting done. Then start making very small incremental changes, one step at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the client side, focus on constant communication and see if they are happy with the current output that they are getting. Again, if they are happy, I don't see any reason to rush in and make radical changes to the overall process. If they aren't happy, it would boil down to addressing one concern at a time. Very simply, avoid big bang changes on either side if possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8143" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T10:45:32.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1494" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1501" CreationDate="2011-04-05T11:38:18.550" Score="3" ViewCount="2286" Body="&lt;p&gt;Which tools would you use to capture business requirements? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T14:17:29.380" Title="Tools to capture business requirements" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ClosedDate="2012-10-01T04:15:00.760" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1494" CreationDate="2011-04-05T11:59:46.490" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest to read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theiiba.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Body_of_Knowledge&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK)&lt;/a&gt;, in order to get a complete answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T11:59:46.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="711" CreationDate="2011-04-05T12:13:51.357" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Begin by knowing the current status of the project:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask the team about the situation, especially what are the current issues which could jeopardize the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check with stakeholders to confirm what is to deliver, and if they already saw anything working&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you got these infos, you have to address the issues you learnt about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T12:13:51.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1497" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1500" CreationDate="2011-04-05T12:59:16.277" Score="18" ViewCount="124554" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any difference between a project leader and a project manager? Is their involvement different in any aspect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the tasks performed by project managers?  What are the tasks performed by project leaders?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="823" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-05-08T20:32:29.060" LastActivityDate="2019-07-12T11:29:55.853" Title="What are the differences between project leader and project manager" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;roles&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1497" CreationDate="2011-04-05T13:23:28.430" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may have a few project leaders in a big project, not all have to be project managers.  From a business perspective, a project leader is the one that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;promotes the change in a positive manner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;exchange ideas and brings on-board the detractors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;use their influence to make sure the PM's objectives are met&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, all the above can and should be used by the PM.  So in general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Every project has a project manager,&#xA;  but not every project has a project&#xA;  leader. And you could have more than&#xA;  one project leader if you are lucky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T13:23:28.430" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1497" CreationDate="2011-04-05T15:13:31.347" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not sure what you mean by project leaders. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two ways to interpret this question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One is the designation “Project Lead” or “Technical Leads” used in multiple organizations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is your interpretation the differences are simple:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Leaders are primarily responsible for aspects or modules of a project (usually technical in case of Project Technical Leads) sometimes even functional aspects of the project. They are usually not concerned with operational details e.g. documentation, scope control, staffing etc. which in most cases are handled by project managers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is typical to have multiple project leads or tech leads in a project, but then large scale projects also have multiple project managers so that isn’t a real distinction. But then most companies usually start out standard projects with one project manager and multiple project leaders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical Leaders are typically responsible for design and documentation of the design in most organizations that follow BDUF methodologies where else Project Managers are usually responsible for areas like planning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Technical Leaders are responsible for running small technical teams under the oversight of a manger who is supposed to keep these teams functional from an operational aspect.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[edit based on request in comment]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project management role compared to a Team Leader’s role is much less technical (unless you are a technical manager) and is much more operational. Roles range in multiple areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Operational – Project planning, estimations (teams should be involved in this), deciding with the client which features you will build (technically called “Scoping”), controlling random changes from happening in the last moment (traditional PM’s like to refer to this as “Scope control” but I feel that the terminology is overrated in these cases). In some cases it also includes seeing to it that people have the right resources (e.g. the right amount of RAM in their laptops etc.) to get their work done. Basically keep the project moving and seeing to it that operational glitches do not slow down the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communication – communicating delays to the client, clearing confusion, demoing the builds in some cases etc. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People Aspects – talking to people and keeping a track of their likes, dislikes, aspirations and helping them grow in specific areas of their interest.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Motivational aspects – spending time with the team, figuring out ways to keep the motivations high, get right recognition to the right people etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[/edit based on request in comment]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In smaller organizations which focus on innovation both designations often mean similar things since people are allowed to play multiple roles. I’ve also seen projects being executed with any project manager per say where the project leader was playing the role of the project manager and doing some basic status reporting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other way to interpret the question and the word “project leader” is a person who leads a project or a team. E.g. Steve Jobs is a classic example of a leader for the Macintosh team but most people would not call him a manager. He is known for his leadership qualities, which include vision about which products will work, which features will make a product click, which interfaces will have the biggest appeal and how to introduce the products on stage where he practically plays the face of the team. The skills of leadership don’t essentially always make you a good manager. Qualities of a Project Leader are a good plus to have but management has a scope which includes other areas particularly, understanding, working with, empathizing with, helping growth and getting all operational impediments (more colloquially reffered to as “Bullshit”) cleared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8143" LastEditorUserId="8143" LastEditDate="2011-04-06T10:08:47.307" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T10:08:47.307" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1497" CreationDate="2011-04-05T15:14:53.700" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to the question pretty much depends on definitions of project leader and project manager. While the latter, despite being interpreted to some point, is something which most of us perceive in a similar manner, the former will vary vastly, depending on who you ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For me project leader is someone who genuinely lead people in the project.&lt;/strong&gt; Something who has the vision and is able to get people signed in to this vision and engaged. In means that in one project functional manager can be project leader, in another it would be project manager and in other one of sponsors or stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also if you &lt;strong&gt;scale it down&lt;/strong&gt; to one-man projects there's probably project leader (the only person in the project, who is probably just a developer by the way) and there's definitely no project manager whatsoever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;strong&gt;scale a project up&lt;/strong&gt; to the point where you have multiple project managers responsible for specific modules or parts a project leader would be probably someone sponsor who is high enough in the hierarchy to take responsibility for the whole project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if we keep a definition like that: you can have project where you have project manager (who is dealing with all typical project management stuff) and no project leader. By the way this wouldn't be the best project to work at, as there as fairly small chances it would be a success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a great article, &lt;a href=&quot;https://leadwithhonor.com/2011/04/19/are-you-a-manager-or-a-leader/#comment-1800&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Are You a Manager or a Leader&lt;/a&gt;, that clearly and objectively, as well as with a nice diagram, describes the differences between leadership and management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="36457" LastEditDate="2019-07-12T11:29:55.853" LastActivityDate="2019-07-12T11:29:55.853" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1494" CreationDate="2011-04-05T15:20:49.343" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simplest tools are often the most effective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use basic excel and word to capture requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Visio or tools like Smart-Draw are good for visualizing user interface quickly and showing them to the customer to get on the same page. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recording MP3 files during meetings is an effective way to make sure you do not miss out of important points later. Also works really well if you have remote teams since it lets them “listen in” on the meeting if they aren’t really there and get a feel of the requirements first hand. Just record your requirement gather sessions and post them out on a server where everyone in the team has access to them. It helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tools like Project Path and other tools from 37Signals are awesome. E.g. some features like White boards like you brainstorm, discussion feature lets you capture requirements through email and their task list helps you decide what does into which sprint. Not many bells and whistles but does the job if you believe in doing things the simple way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8143" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T15:20:49.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1502" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1503" CreationDate="2011-04-05T16:08:34.060" Score="4" ViewCount="517" Body="&lt;p&gt;What specifically is all the &quot;stuff&quot; a PM is actually responsible for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="823" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-04-06T04:59:49.953" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T18:51:21.810" Title="Project manager's responsibilities?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1502" CreationDate="2011-04-05T16:13:49.450" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A complete answer: &quot;A Project Manager is responsible for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Management&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. Project Management is a discipline (we can even call it a &quot;science&quot;) with its body of knowledge explained in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Guide_to_the_Project_Management_Body_of_Knowledge&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMBOK&lt;/a&gt; (for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A short answer: a Project Manager is responsible for keeping a project in its scope, time, cost, and quality constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T16:13:49.450" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1504" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1505" CreationDate="2011-04-05T16:23:38.860" Score="4" ViewCount="256" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a project needs specific knowledge, skills and abilities (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Skills_and_Abilities&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;KSA&lt;/a&gt;) there are, in most cases, two options: either to train existing project team members or to buy new ones on the market. What are pros and cons of each option?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T19:03:27.553" Title="To train or to buy knowledge, skills, and abilities?" Tags="&lt;human-resources&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1504" CreationDate="2011-04-05T16:41:37.377" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a rudimentary answer (I'm sure someone will provide a more detailed one): the trade-off is essentially &lt;strong&gt;long-term vs. short-term&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;cost vs. time.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Training your own people is both &lt;strong&gt;long-term&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;time-intensive.&lt;/strong&gt; You have to spend time (and money) to train them and retain them; and if they leave after training, well, you just paid for &lt;em&gt;someone else&lt;/em&gt; to reap the benefit of their skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, hiring people is &lt;strong&gt;expensive, but quick.&lt;/strong&gt; Contractors can be very specialized, and once they learn your project needs, they can apply themselves quickly and efficiently. But it comes at a premium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I feel that if you can retain people long-term, training is more efficient and effective in the long-term. Contractors have a way of jumping quickly if they can get more money elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T16:41:37.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1504" CreationDate="2011-04-05T16:42:10.730" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the general pros and cons are the same or very similar whether it is labor or product or tool.  When you buy, time to deploy is minimized, costs should be less, what your buying has been demonstrated to work, whoever built is is an expert in the area where as it is outside of your core competency.  When you build, you can tailor it to meet exactly your requirements, you can evolve it as your requirements or business environment changes, you can build it to fit in your existing organization versus modifying your organization to fit what you bought.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there exists general pros and cons of each, I do not think there is a general best answer.  Each case needs to be analyzed by itself to identify the best answer.  If you adopt one answer over the other, you are biasing your approach and that usually spells disaster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T16:42:10.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1502" CreationDate="2011-04-05T16:42:38.123" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PM is responsible for &lt;strong&gt;getting the project to successful completion on-time and on-budget.&lt;/strong&gt; Anything else you can mention probably falls under that umbrella -- hiring, training, retaining, scheduling, cost-management, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T16:42:38.123" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1465" CreationDate="2011-04-05T16:57:43.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sorry this is not a great answer because I have not done much traditional programme management but I wanted to share the link. The Project Management Podcast had a good interview about programme management a while back, I have looked through their archives and I think it is this one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.project-management-podcast.com/index.php/episodes/319-episode-146-projects-programs-portfolios-a-career-advice&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.project-management-podcast.com/index.php/episodes/319-episode-146-projects-programs-portfolios-a-career-advice&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also looks like this podcast may be relevant too &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.project-management-podcast.com/index.php/episodes/381-episode-170-30-years-of-program-management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.project-management-podcast.com/index.php/episodes/381-episode-170-30-years-of-program-management&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="788" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T16:57:43.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1465" CreationDate="2011-04-05T18:26:57.763" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have done both roles and there is some difference. As a program manager you take on a temporary product manager role - your product is the program of projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the Program manager, you usually have more discretion with decisions, you may have the ability to prioritize the time/budget of the individual projects. You may also deal with multiple sponsors. The program will have a sponsor - or a steering committee and each project will have a sponsor. This means your skills at facilitating decisions and working with the executive will need to be very strong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T18:26:57.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1504" CreationDate="2011-04-05T18:29:30.757" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to ask yourself whether you will need the skills in the future. If so, it's worth the time to train, if not, go external. If you go external, remember to include some time for the effort of bringing them up to speed on the project and the culture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T18:29:30.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1504" CreationDate="2011-04-05T18:37:28.913" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a huge dependence on your specific context when making this decision. Some of the things you may wish to consider are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What level of expertise is needed?&lt;/strong&gt; Training to a basic level of competence is fairly easy, while attaining expertise is very difficult. Consider exploring the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_model_of_skill_acquisition&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dreyfus model of skill acquisition&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How urgent is the request?&lt;/strong&gt; Highly urgent requests push for contractor-based solutions, with hiring being a possibility if the local market is conducive to fast hiring. Careful planning can allow a longer-term perspective, making training and development more effective.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is your business in an active growth mode?&lt;/strong&gt; If you're going to hire anyway, hiring somebody with both growth potential and a unique skill they can share across the business makes sense.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are your cash constraints?&lt;/strong&gt; Sometimes, you just can't afford a hire or contractor within the budget, and training (or even self-training) becomes the best option.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are the ramifications of failure or poor quality?&lt;/strong&gt; If you're dealing with situations where poor quality or failure is not an option due to safety, business criticality, or regulatory concerns, go for the existing experts and have them mentor others in the organization. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the duration/scope of the need?&lt;/strong&gt; If you need the skill on an ongoing basis, then you probably won't want to continue paying for a high-powered consultant. On the other hand, if you need somebody to perform an initially technically complex activity that then requires minimal ongoing support, a consultant can do the hard work and train your team for the much less intensive ongoing work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you don't always need to make an extreme decision. Options may include hiring an expensive contractor to cover an urgent situation while you hire a full time employee, or my favorite, hiring the contractor to both provide expertise and train your existing staff to a sufficiently proficient level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T18:37:28.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1512" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1523" CreationDate="2011-04-05T18:55:06.380" Score="15" ViewCount="712" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a team is first adopting kanban, they do not typically have reliable numbers for cycle time, and will struggle to make commitments based on a Service Level Agreement. What commitment techniques help during this period, especially when other dependent teams will be at other levels of adoption?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastEditorUserId="696" LastEditDate="2011-04-29T16:36:11.660" LastActivityDate="2011-05-02T22:42:44.563" Title="What common techniques do Kanban teams use to make commitments to other teams in their organization?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1513" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-05T19:24:32.243" Score="16" ViewCount="40100" Body="&lt;p&gt;Full disclosure: I am not a project manager. However, no other group on stack exchange seemed more likely to be able to comment constructively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the company where I am about to begin work, each development team has an architect/team lead and a Team Manager. I am taking on the Team Manager role, though it currently seems a little poorly defined. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: how do the responsibilities of these two roles differ? I expect that they may overlap in some places. I have been told I am responsible for everything. Meaning, the architect has to convince me before he can proceed. But who is supposed to do what on a daily basis? How do I manage and lead the team without usurping the Team Lead's job?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I should add that there is also a ScrumMaster assigned to the team.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="836" LastEditorUserId="696" LastEditDate="2011-04-07T07:20:17.073" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T05:07:12.850" Title="What's the difference between a Team Lead and a Team Manager?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;technical-leader&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1395" CreationDate="2011-04-05T19:26:22.753" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The biggest dangers of adding people to the late project seem to come from the additional communications paths, the distraction caused by training the new people, and the team having to go back through storming and norming phases again. As with many things, a bit of advance planning can help with these challenges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First and foremost, try to bend scope or date before you try and pile on people.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider low-risk, low-learning pieces of the project that could be broken off wholesale without needing a great deal of input from the existing team. Can you outsource this piece with minimal distraction to the rest of the team? Imagine outsourcing as adding a bunch of people that don't have to distract the existing team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have the opportunity to mitigate the potential for being late ahead of time, extend the previous point by giving that supplier a bit of work throughout the project so they already have people that understand the context and the domain. Essentially, you're buying the option to disperse the &quot;damage&quot; of adding additional people if the project does become late. This strategy is detailed in Don Reinertsen's book &quot;Principles of Product Development Flow&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The earlier the better. It's typically far less disruptive to a team to add one person three months before a deadline than three people one month before a deadline. Consider slowing adding capacity if it can be done without overly distracting the team, and the new members can train more easily. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cross-train aggressively. If you have external reviewers that work with the team throughout, they are more capable of joining the project without disrupting things. If other teams are frequently involved in brown bags and other demos given by the team at risk of being late, people will already have background to do less damage.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, if being late is inevitable, try and adjust scope or date reasonably. If adding people can't be reasonably avoided, strive to mitigate the damage done to the team to where those people are a positive difference rather than negative. Oh, and always set the expectations before taking this drastic action... make sure stakeholders don't expect double speed by doubling people, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T19:26:22.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1515" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1524" CreationDate="2011-04-05T19:28:07.603" Score="3" ViewCount="675" Body="&lt;p&gt;What planning and prioritization techniques are effective for Scrum teams and Product Owners working within an IT organization that uses waterfall planning behaviors at the release level? Are there ways to optimize the Scrum team's experience or otherwise buffer the team from the ensuring challenges?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastEditorUserId="696" LastEditDate="2011-04-29T16:37:00.693" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T16:37:00.693" Title="What techniques are effective for Scrum teams within organizations that do waterfall release planning?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;release-plan&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1397" CreationDate="2011-04-05T19:37:13.380" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible? Certainly! Is it easy, not at all. A distributed team will never be as effective as a co-located team. A dispersed team is even more challenging. The tools recommended by ashes999 are some of the most important ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Others:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider forming the team in a way that each location has all of the skills required, and model the team more like two smaller teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be aware the challenges are very different between a) having 4 people in the US and 4 in India or b) Having 4 people on the US West coast, 1 on the east coast, 1 in Russia, 1 in China, and 1 in India. Fully-dispersed teams have their own distinct challenges, and I recommend reading Matthew Heusser's writing at &lt;a href=&quot;http://xndev.blogspot.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://xndev.blogspot.com/&lt;/a&gt; where he explores the challenges faced by SocialText.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Expect the problems and be prepared to work through them. It's very easy for frustration to be heard as browbeating, jokes to be heard as complaints, and so on. Be aware.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be aware of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Conway's Law&lt;/a&gt; and use it to your advantage. While it's not the best agile approach all of the time, structuring your team around the desired architecture can be powerful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastEditorUserId="696" LastEditDate="2011-04-06T15:04:22.057" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T15:04:22.057" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1513" CreationDate="2011-04-05T19:46:03.227" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds like a very challenging situation to be walking into. My &lt;em&gt;guess&lt;/em&gt; as to the expectations across the three roles would be generally as follows. While this guess is based on the large number of organizations I've delivered with, each organization tends to define these things in their own ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Team Manager:&lt;/strong&gt; Some or all team members are direct reports of the team manager. The team manager is responsible for vacation requests, annual reviews, any HR-based intervention, and hopefully career management/mentoring activities. The team manager probably has veto power over most anything, but should rarely exercise it. In the absence of a ScrumMaster, the manager also likely takes on many of the facilitative roles and ensures important stakeholders aren't being ignored (but does not become the conduit for those stakeholders).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Team Lead:&lt;/strong&gt; This is generally the senior or most respected individual contributor of the team. There's an implicit understanding that the team will generally support decisions made by the team lead, and the lead will also take on much responsibility for the technical training and development of the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ScrumMaster:&lt;/strong&gt; This is a defined facilitative and coaching role of the Scrum process. I recommend doing a little research on the role, perhaps starting at the (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ScrumMaster#Core_Scrum_roles&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, spend some time with the people around you and understand what &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; believe their role and your role are all about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2011-04-05T23:08:51.263" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T23:08:51.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="86" CreationDate="2011-04-05T20:36:55.977" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often use the Sticky Note technique: get everyone together in a room (not only the team but also important players of other involved departments), give them a pack of sticky notes and let them write everything they think about. Each thought on a different note.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What went well&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What could be better&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After 20 minutes collect everything on a white board and cluster them. Just as Ashes explained, focus first on those things that reappear most frequently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T20:36:55.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1513" CreationDate="2011-04-05T21:05:18.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Eric, he's approach to answer the question sounds quite reasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a nutshell, I'd say that the difference between Team Leader and Team Manager is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Team Manager:&lt;/strong&gt; Responsible for the team estimates / deliverables. It's usually someone with &lt;em&gt;high management skills&lt;/em&gt;, as the name says. The Team manager is the bridge between the client and the development team. As pointed by Eric, the Team Manager is also responsible for non-technical tasks for his team members. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Team Leader:&lt;/strong&gt; Head of the development team, which might have a closer contact with the Team Manager even having other developers in the team. It's usually someone with &lt;em&gt;high development skills&lt;/em&gt;. The Team Lead is the bridge between the Team Manager and the other developers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is a kind of 'granularity' of responsibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you're a Team Manager, discuss with other team managers about their roles in their teams; these tasks changes quite often from company to company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rgds!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T21:05:18.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1502" CreationDate="2011-04-05T23:22:33.557" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management&quot;&gt;Project management&lt;/a&gt; generally deals with planning and organizing a project and dealing with people and resources in a way which allows to reach project goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specific tasks would depend on project's size and complexity and also on a specific method chosen as project management approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Planning&lt;/strong&gt; is about preparing some kind of plan for the project. Depending on the project size and approach you use it can be anything from just a general list of project goals to a very detailed list of tasks planned to be done by specific people. Also you can spread planning over a longer period of time, so you just take whatever is the most important/most urgent coarse-grained task at the moment and you plan in a detailed way only work related to the task and you repeat the process over and over again.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Organizing&lt;/strong&gt; is about getting specific people to do specific tasks. Again, much depends on a project. In agile projects often you base on self organization which means the team makes many decisions, like who does what, on themselves. In more formalized project it can be responsibility of PM, or PM along with team manager, to make those decisions. Also when I think about organizing a project I see reacting for changing situation, which includes &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_management&quot;&gt;risk management&lt;/a&gt; for example.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dealing with people and resources&lt;/strong&gt; means getting enough of them to deliver project within constraints. Most of the time the problem is in people, too few or too incompetent, but it's PM's job to react whenever something is wrong and project can't be completed because of insufficient or inappropriate people and/or resources.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Every PM's activity should be aimed to help with the general goal which is delivering the project on time, on scope and on budget. Basically if anything helps to do that it's the part of PM's job.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-07T18:51:21.810" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T18:51:21.810" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1512" CreationDate="2011-04-05T23:32:16.680" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually I'd say it isn't dependent on any given method you use. If you don't know how you deal with any given task than, well, it's just hard to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few ideas you might use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use any information you have.&lt;/strong&gt; Like you may have some estimates for some simple tasks done by the team and you may use them as early rough data to use while estimating a new project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Estimate like you would if you had no Kanban process whatsoever.&lt;/strong&gt; You would actually do that if you didn't have Kanban in the team, wouldn't you?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Just start working and use whatever information you gather&lt;/strong&gt; to adjust future estimates so you have your final estimates better and better over time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask other teams&lt;/strong&gt; which are using similar techniques for help. Ask them how they would estimate such project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get used to the thought you will be guessing&lt;/strong&gt; to some point, you want it or not. Make everyone around aware of that. With no historical data and little experience on similar projects it will always be guesstimate. Don't try to make it anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Actually I wouldn't say Kanban changes here a process - unless you have some reliable data to base on your estimates will base on gut feelings, you want it or not.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T23:32:16.680" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1515" CreationDate="2011-04-05T23:42:11.270" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of tricks I use in agile teams which are working with old-school highly-formalized teams is mapping. &lt;strong&gt;The team should map basically every client's responsibility to some team member.&lt;/strong&gt; It usually goes to project manager as it is the person who is closest to a client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then it is about &quot;building the bridges&quot; - effort aimed at translating whatever client said or wanted to the language and process understandable by the development team. In other words it means translating agile inside to formalized process outside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't mean there are specific prioritization techniques PM should use. Actually agile techniques don't really tell you how you should prioritize features - they deal more with reacting for planned features. However it's definitely worth the effort to ask the customer to prioritize the list of features so you all know what to cut when times goes harsh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE (basing on comment): An example: we have a couple of teams working internally on the same project for the client who has pretty formalized approach to project management. One of teams (team A) prefers to work agile way and introduces Scrum as their method of choice, while another (team B) prefers to work with the old waterfall-like method. The release planning, we want it or not will follow waterfall-like method. I assume project scope can be split among those teams as they work to some point independently. Now we have a few channels of interactions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Team B with the client.&lt;/strong&gt; In this case it is simple. Both, client and team follow similar process so the team probably just adjusts to the specific schedule proposed by the client.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Team A with the client.&lt;/strong&gt; That's where it starts to be different. Client doesn't really care about iterative development, but team works that way. The problem is the team expects feedback from the client on each release. And that's where PM should kick in with their &quot;building the bridges&quot; effort. It's PM who should emulate the client with such tasks, so PM should actually learn, check, verify, etc. what the client really wants and share the feedback with the team. However, generally the scope won't be changing much, as it is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BDUF&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BDUF&lt;/a&gt; project and the client believes everything was in specs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Team A with Team B.&lt;/strong&gt; This is another tricky one, but since both teams are in the same organization a few approaches may be tried. One is the same as between the Team A and the client -- &quot;building bridges&quot; which means that someone, probably the leader of Team A is translating agile approach to formal one used by another team back and forth. Another idea is to let collaboration happen spontaneously, considering the fact everyone works in the same company. Finally, teams can choose they keep their methods but whenever they need something from others they do respect how others work, e.g. when Team B wants some changes in API built by Team A, they respect that Team A don't make changes in the middle of sprint so they will implemented in another one. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-08T16:54:55.290" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T16:54:55.290" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1530" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-06T05:49:18.097" Score="0" ViewCount="362" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the funny and innovative techniques you use as a manager to bring about structure in a project without enforcing rules per say. Here are some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a Big Balloon with the words “I Broke the Built” on the cubical of the person who breaks the build. The Balloon keeps moving depending on who broke the build last.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another fun rule we have worked in the past is we stop all development the moment the high priority bug screen on our bug tracking system has a scroll bar on it. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another one is a “GJD” (Great Job Done) batch gifted for doing stupid things like introducing a nasty bug in the system.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anyone who breaks the build adds a dollar to the kitty and when we have enough money either donate it or have a party with that money.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A classic is the Joel Spolsky recommendation: Who ever causes a build break the build baby sits the build till someone else breaks it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key here is funny techniques which foster no negative feelings but at the same time encourage people to act responsibly in a fun environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you believe in using fun to encourage responsible behavior in a team environment? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If yes, what are various innovative ways you use with your projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A huge interesting list all in one place would be valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8143" LastEditorUserId="8143" LastEditDate="2011-04-06T09:26:20.603" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T09:26:20.603" Title="Very Interesting ways to encourage responsible behavior in a project." Tags="&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;learning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ClosedDate="2012-10-01T04:08:32.047" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="86" CreationDate="2011-04-06T05:56:56.030" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This might not be very relevant here but I think the best “post mortem” is a “pre mortem”. A pre mortem is when you do not wait for a project to fail. Instead you take the team in a room while the project is running and you tell them “Assume we have moved ahead 2 months in time and the project has failed. What according to you are the reasons which caused the project to fail?” This is a fun exercise because everyone knows the project hasn’t failed, but at the same time it allows people to express their opinions on why it might. It is an excellent way to bring out potential problems in a project before they become urgent issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8143" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T05:56:56.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1533" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1551" CreationDate="2011-04-06T07:12:01.457" Score="35" ViewCount="163731" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the reasons why a project manager should select PMP certification rather than Prince 2, or vice versa? Are they complementary or competing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-16T17:53:58.557" LastActivityDate="2019-03-17T07:49:52.357" Title="PMP vs PRINCE2 - Why one rather than the other?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;prince2&gt;&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1530" CreationDate="2011-04-06T08:26:42.377" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Best practices board.&lt;/strong&gt; You put a board near the water cooler and everyone can propose some best practice while making a coffee. It can be something like &quot;let's start pair programming&quot; or whatever one believes would help the organization. Then other people vote it up or down in some way, like adding &quot;me too&quot; sticky or writing &quot;+1.&quot; Then you implement highest voted ideas. It's like StackOverflow/StackExchange engine on a piece of hardware (board).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Visualizing effects of the issue and letting people figure out what to do with that.&lt;/strong&gt; In one team we had like probation in maintenance project so we could have only certain number of critical and major issues, so we got huge whiteboard, drawn two lines of men - each line represented one level of bugs we might have had (either critical or major) and each man represented a single bug. Then, every time a bug was submitted we crossed one man out so we saw how our &quot;army&quot; was shrinking every time we screwed something up. Not only made it people more aware of potential problems they might cause with their work but also introduced &quot;one for all, all for one&quot; sort of attitude.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Making RPG-like game based on work in the company.&lt;/strong&gt; Every employee can enter the game and earn badges/achievements, like &quot;once a trainee&quot; or &quot;survived hard-core project&quot; or &quot;pair programmed for a 10 business days in a row&quot; or whatever good idea you might have. If you crowdsource creation of the game to the people (some moderation would probably be needed though) you'd see how people are adding goals which really add value: they either introduce best practices or focus on project quality etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T08:26:42.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1533" CreationDate="2011-04-06T09:39:29.557" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've got them both and can tell that they are competing. The biggest difference I found is the role of project management. In PMP the PM is responsible for the result of a project. If something goes wrong - blame the PM. If the project is behind the schedule or overruns its budget - blame the PM. That's the fundamental rule of PMBOK. (and I totally agree with it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In PRINCE2 the PM is a middleman between the project and its control board. If something goes wrong the PM has to raise the problem to the board (upper management). Then they make a decision and return it back to PM for execution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case I would recommend to pass them both for your portfolio and your self-education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T09:39:29.557" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1513" CreationDate="2011-04-06T09:45:30.393" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both terms are vague, but this is my understanding of them. Team Manager is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_manager&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;functional manager&lt;/a&gt; of a business unit (the team). Team Lead is the one with the strongest formal/informal &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadership&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;leadership&lt;/a&gt; inside the business unit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T09:45:30.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1397" CreationDate="2011-04-06T09:51:19.480" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tools are your best friends in this situation, including (you can omit some of them in co-located team, but in distributed team their effective usage is mission critical):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Issue tracking systems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Version control&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Code review tools&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mailing lists&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Video conferencing (with recording!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wiki pages&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;24x7 open video Skype conference is really an option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T09:51:19.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1539" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1543" CreationDate="2011-04-06T10:33:18.243" Score="21" ViewCount="50190" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_%28business%29&quot;&gt;Quality&lt;/a&gt; is one of the four key &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management&quot;&gt;project constraints&lt;/a&gt;, which need to be planned and controlled by a project manager during the entire project lifecycle. In order to plan and control it the PM, first of all, has to understand how to measure it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are possible and most effective methods of measurement of quality in a software development project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T07:57:36.740" Title="How to measure quality in a software development project?" Tags="&lt;quality&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1429" CreationDate="2011-04-06T10:40:27.547" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as my recommendation would go, it would be that learn from some of the best product managers out there. Read their blogs and see how they manage their products.&#xA;Getting Real and Rework are excellent product management books from 37Signals. Getting real has an online version which is free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gettingreal.37signals.com/&quot;&gt;http://gettingreal.37signals.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides read guys like Steve Yegge who is a good product manager:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/05/not-managing-software-developers.html&quot;&gt;http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/05/not-managing-software-developers.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/08/business-requirements-are-bullshit.html&quot;&gt;http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/08/business-requirements-are-bullshit.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Steve is a technical product manager and has many other posts on product management that give you insights into good product management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Joel Spolsky has an excellent blog and books where is he fairly open about decisions that he took while managing his products at Fog Creek. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is one of his books which should give you some good insights into product management:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.readershideout.com/Book/Show/50&quot;&gt;http://www.readershideout.com/Book/Show/50&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His blog Joel on Software also has some nice articles on product management ranging from pricing products, how to decide if a feature makes it into the product etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to learn product management is from product managers like Joel, 37Signals, Steve Yegge and product management blogs like How to be a good product manager: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodproductmanager.com/&quot;&gt;http://www.goodproductmanager.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these links should get you started and if you “crawl” through the references that the above books and blogs should provide you should bump into other good product managers and pick up some serious product management advice. The information is based on real life products and the experiences their managers had instead of the Wikipedia page. I am hoping this is what you were looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Happy reading and do let us know how it goes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8143" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T10:40:27.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1541" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-06T13:42:15.530" Score="0" ViewCount="113" Body="&lt;p&gt;The goal is to have sustained growth and sustained delivery of high-quality products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T17:01:08.387" Title="When growing a company, is it more important to build a culture or  establish processes?" Tags="&lt;culture&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2011-04-06T16:50:31.827" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1539" CreationDate="2011-04-06T13:47:19.147" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on your definition quality is highly subjective, and therefore difficult to measure.  As the project is being developed, it will be difficult to measure &quot;How well the product meets the consumers needs&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the traditional measures of quality is the bug detection rate.  This is relatively easy to measure, and somewhat less subjective.   It is believed that a relatively fixed percentage of bugs will go undetected.  Projects with a high rate of detected bugs will likely have a high rate of undetected bugs.  The rate of bug detection will vary depending on the techniques used and skill of your testers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a variety of bug tracking tools which can be used.  Most will allow you to track bug counts over time.  Aiming for zero bugs at all times may improve overall quality.  One method to do this is &quot;Fix bugs first&quot;.  This may have multiple benefits, including lowering overall bug rate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to categorize bugs by source: Specification, Code, and Test.  Expect relatively equal counts for each category.  Tracking injection and detection phases may help estimate how many errors will remain.  Tracking the testing methodology used may also be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usability may be considered part of product quality.  Unfortunately, testing contaminates the testers, so you may need a source of new testers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastEditorUserId="529" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T22:54:41.350" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T22:54:41.350" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1539" CreationDate="2011-04-06T14:19:58.843" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending from circumstances, you can use different techniques to evaluate the quality of a software product:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Completness: Which part of the needed features are actually implemented&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Asking users: What is the feeling of typical users about the software?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Metrics: Some metrics can give you a good idea about the quality of the code &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_metric&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_metric&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Process: The use (or not) of certain processes is a good hint about the quality of a development process. Bugtracking, automated tests, versioning tools...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bug detection: As BillThor explained, bug detection rate is a good indicator&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastEditorUserId="152" LastEditDate="2011-04-13T08:56:34.493" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T08:56:34.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1539" CreationDate="2011-04-06T14:20:46.050" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are talking about quality in terms of correctness and stability after release, then bug defect rate is the easiest way to measure it.  The problem with this metric is that it only works after you've released it.  &lt;em&gt;It's already too late.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though it's too late, I'm going to suggest this is still the best measure.  You can at least change your development practices to improve it for the next release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's what happens with project development.  You do what you think is necessary in regards to quality, ship it, take your lumps, and improve.  This is why it's important to have experienced developers and testers.  They've already taken their lumps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some practices we rely on to address quality:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Automated integration tests.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unit Tests.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acceptance tests for every story (we use user stories for requirements)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feature Level Tests (testing groups of stories)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Code reviews (all our code is reviewed using a tool)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk tracking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manual testing for each story, immediately after it is implemented.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Automated performance tests.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of these practices have come about as corrective measures after we learned we could do better.  It's an iterative process.  We change every release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="837" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T14:20:46.050" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1541" CreationDate="2011-04-06T14:31:37.517" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say building the culture is more important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nuances of a process are likely to be driven in part by the behavior and attitudes instilled by the culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="833" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T14:31:37.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="622" CreationDate="2011-04-06T15:20:54.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the most useful chart for me is % complete over time.  I measure the % complete in terms of estimates on the y-axis and time on the x-axis.  It's not necessary to take a reading every day&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this chart, it's fairly easy to project out to a completion date.  One difficulty with the cumulative flow diagram is that with story growth and completion rate both changing, it can be hard to pick when they converge on a ship date.  With a % complete burn-up chart, both of these are accounted for in a single line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="837" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T15:20:54.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1541" CreationDate="2011-04-06T15:38:27.413" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course a culture is more important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an analogy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would you prefer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A city with lots of traffic rules and rowdy drivers or;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Really careful responsible drivers with a couple of broken signal lights that don’t work at all.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can have all the signals you want but if the drivers are rowdy there WILL be accidents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand if you have responsible drivers, they will drive slowly around crossings and turns even with the signal lights turned off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same is true with culture; a strong culture and having responsible people is way more important than a full proof process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A strong culture and kickass talent will often fill up gaps in a weak process, but you cannot make 10 clueless chumps without any purpose and meaning do the job of one kickass employee with a strong purpose, meaning, &lt;strong&gt;culture&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;competence&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8143" LastEditorUserId="8143" LastEditDate="2011-04-07T17:01:08.387" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T17:01:08.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1548" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1549" CreationDate="2011-04-06T17:44:49.713" Score="5" ViewCount="2191" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been asked to estimate the profit that could be achieved for a portfolio for IT training courses. I have to estimate the income and the fixed and variable costs and hence the profit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I made the top level WBS for this project but I don't know how to apply the fixed and variable costs on the WBS to estimate the profit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="844" LastEditorUserId="91" LastEditDate="2011-04-06T18:10:29.283" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T15:47:55.380" Title="how to apply the fixed and variable costs on the WBS to estimate the profit?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1548" CreationDate="2011-04-06T18:09:47.020" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Work package         Type       Amount Units   Cost   Total&#xA;------------------------------------------------------------&#xA;Room space           Variable   5      Hours   ?      ? (5 hours)&#xA;Trainer              Fixed      5      Hours   $150   $750&#xA;Brochures            Fixed      50     Item    $5     $250&#xA;Project manager      Variable   15     Hours   ?      ? (12 hours)&#xA;....&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_cost&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Variable cost&lt;/a&gt; can't be directly related to this particular project, and are normally out of your control. In this example you just don't know what is the price of one hour of your (the PM) work. Even if you know your salary that's not everything the cost includes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_cost&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fixed cost&lt;/a&gt; can be directly related to this project. If the project is not approved - none of these costs will happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should come up to your project sponsor with the following summary document:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Fixed cost       &#xA;  $1000&#xA;Variable cost &#xA;  5 hours of room space&#xA;  12 hours of my time&#xA;Income&#xA;  $3000 = 20 tickets to be sold $150 each&#xA;Gross profit&#xA;  $2000&#xA;Net profit&#xA;  ?&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The management will calculate the net profit using the information they have about the cost of indirect expenses (variable). And they will decide whether to approve this project or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T18:09:47.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1548" CreationDate="2011-04-06T18:34:32.463" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You do not apply fixed and variable costs to the WBS. The WBS and its work packages contain project costs, both labor and material. Your business case analysis resides outside of the WBS. I am assuming from your question that the project cost is your revenue, i.e. you are a supplier. I also assume that your contract does not stipulate a separate fee; thus, your contract cost value and your total contract value are equal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If these are true, then your labor rate that you used to calculate your TCV must include a margin for G&amp;amp;A, OH, and other direct costs. If my last assumption is correct, then the labor rate must also include a margin for fee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your TCV is your top line or your revenue. From here, you need to pull in the appropriate amount of allocated costs to calculate your gross and net profit. You need to assume that the margins that burdened your labor rates -- G&amp;amp;A, OH, etc. are the appropriate allocations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-08T15:47:55.380" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T15:47:55.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1533" CreationDate="2011-04-06T19:50:17.777" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMP and Prince2 are two different things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;PMP is based upon the &lt;strong&gt;PMBOK&lt;/strong&gt;, which is a &lt;strong&gt;Standard&lt;/strong&gt;, NOT a methodology. It contains a truck load of processes and 'generally accepted' techniques of project management by which to evaluate or complete the way you run your projects or the methodology you use. It is therefore more theoretical, a &lt;strong&gt;reference&lt;/strong&gt; guide.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Prince2&lt;/strong&gt; on the other hand is a &lt;strong&gt;methodology&lt;/strong&gt;, with a detailed process model and templates. It gives a step by step guidance on how to organise and run a project. It is more practical than the PMBOK. It still needs to be tailored to your needs but it is more a &lt;strong&gt;manual&lt;/strong&gt; than a reference guide. It focusses on just a limited set of techniques. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would therefore dare to call them &lt;strong&gt;complementary&lt;/strong&gt;. One example would be procurement management, which is not included in Prince2. Google around and you'll find some in depth comparisons between the two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to preference, that is personal of course. Just like Yegor, I'm happy to know them both, (but not Prince2 certified). The PMBOK (hence PMP) is more comprehensive of the whole project management field. I can apply (parts of) it on any project, also a Prince2 - project. Prince2 is, well, a methodology. Many companies create their own aligned with pmbok (or other standard like IPMA).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T19:50:17.777" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="353" CreationDate="2011-04-06T20:18:32.850" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the gauging factor to decide&#xA;  if the process at hand is good, or too&#xA;  much???&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One common trend I've seen in large enterprises - a gauging factor, if you will - is redundancy.  If you, as a PM or an Executive, have the ability to modify processes, then you will definitely need to invest time and energy to ensure there is no duplication of effort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in some organizations, there are multiple documents that need to be filled out for software/ IT Release updates.  Although there are 3-4 different documents that the team members/ PM need to fill out (implementation plan, impacted systems, roll back, contingency plans, etc), there is usually a high degree of redundancy across these documents. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The excuse usually given is that these documents are circulated to different teams (Finance, Internal Audit, Release Management, PMO, etc) who need to feed various pieces of info into their systems.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can sort through the various templates ahead of time and streamline / amalgamate the processes and documentation, then it will certainly reduce the burden on your team.  Of course, there would be a slight learning curve for the various departments downstream, but if you can get everyone at the table ahead of time, it can usually work wonders. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alas, we cant eliminate the bureaucratic processes entirely.  -/&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="847" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T20:18:32.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1553" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1562" CreationDate="2011-04-07T02:45:15.550" Score="10" ViewCount="659" Body="&lt;p&gt;When managing multiple projects at once, what information would be most valuable to a project manager if the projects are related? Not related?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Purpose is for the development of new project management software]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&#xA;These are great responses! Thanks so much. Very helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&#xA;Clarification of question:&#xA;I do understand the answer and it's part of our mission. There is no reason that project management software should get in the way of management or create a steep learning curve which prevents the true understanding of the software itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;High Level&quot;     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project 2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project 3&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All three projects are under the supervision of a p.m. or a team of. &#xA;Our team is curious what information is most valuable to see at &quot;high level&quot;.&#xA;Although the overall goals of the projects are important, I have a feeling more relates to their success than simply making sure that their large goals or milestones are hit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Current health of the project in terms of deliverables, over/under budget, and over/under time are obvious to see at that level for each project in a unified way. We were curious what other things came up as a common desire to see at that high level out of project management software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="849" LastEditorUserId="2618" LastEditDate="2012-01-31T00:00:57.127" LastActivityDate="2012-01-31T00:00:57.127" Title="Valuable Information When Managing Multiple Projects" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1553" CreationDate="2011-04-07T02:59:03.273" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am sure this question can be answer in one of 100 ways, but I will give you make 2 cents on &quot;valuable information&quot; for multiple projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Resource allocation/capacity/availability&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The program manager has 10 resources, with xyz skills.  2 of them are 100% on portfolio of projects x, 3 of them are 50% across project A on portfolio x, and project B on portfolio y. you get the idea.  This is very difficult to get right in the real world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Milestones&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Important milestones that are late/on-track/early &amp;lt;- some system intelligence here will be nice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T02:59:03.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1553" CreationDate="2011-04-07T03:14:33.183" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't get dragged to deeply into the details. If you are managing multiple projects, related or otherwise, you need to keep the focus on the overall goals of the projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T03:14:33.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1391" CreationDate="2011-04-07T04:14:21.087" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;While this doesn't specifically answer the question you've asked, have you considered simply loading the task by ID via TFS's web interface (1)? I've used TFS since it was in initial betas and the availability of the web interface when they bought TeamPlain was a huge boost in their general accessibility by people other than the core development team (i.e. those who used Visual Studio all the time). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found it remarkably effective to create a search provider in my browser of choice so I can simply type the ID in the search box, or in Chrome type &quot;tfs1234&quot;. This should save quite a bit of time. For Chrome, simply right click on the address bar and choose &quot;Edit Search Engines...&quot; and for other browsers I wrote a &lt;a href=&quot;http://ericwilleke.com/posts/finding-creative-commons-images-on-flickr/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;short tutorial&lt;/a&gt; a while back that should be very easy to extend to the TFS link.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) If you can't find it, I believe it's usually on &lt;a href=&quot;http://yourtfsserver:8090&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://yourtfsserver:8090&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T04:14:21.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1465" CreationDate="2011-04-07T04:53:16.517" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems that the differences are primarily in the scale of decisions and the level of abstraction involved. Many of the techniques and perspectives required are very similar, especially when looking at the communication and interaction aspects of the role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the specific planning activities take on a very different feel as a result of the differences of abstraction. Also, i've seen that the potential damage caused by micromanagement is much higher, as there is value in maintaining the abstractions to manage and reduce the overall complexity of the system except at the interface points between projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, with appreciation to @yegor256 for the link leading me to find it, page 7 of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/CareerDevelopment/Pages/~/media/PDF/Certifications/pdc_pgmphandbook.ashx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PgMP guide&lt;/a&gt; provides some informative language supporting the perspective of the program manager as an evolution of the same skills as the project manager, rather than a different set of skills. The one new &quot;skill&quot; it suggests is the ability to understand and execute against a higher-level, more abstract strategy than would typically be expected of a project manager of a single project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T04:53:16.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="915" CreationDate="2011-04-07T05:10:12.983" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The two approaches typically target different areas. The five forces model appears to be best suited to understanding an entire industry, while the value chain is primarily a tool for understanding and analyzing the activities of a business that works within that industry, although it can be applied generically at the industry level. That said, an understanding of the five forces model should prove very valuable to ensuring that the value chain is not omitting anything obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter_five_forces_analysis&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; on the five forces model suggests that it should be used as a checklist and entry point, with the value chain approach following. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter_five_forces_analysis&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Strategy consultants occasionally use Porter's five forces framework when making a qualitative evaluation of a firm's strategic position. However, for most consultants, the framework is only a starting point or &quot;checklist&quot; they might use &quot; Value Chain &quot; afterward. Like all general frameworks, an analysis that uses it to the exclusion of specifics about a particular situation is considered naїve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your M&amp;amp;A case, I'd imagine it would be best to explore both models for both companies and see where they complement each other effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T05:10:12.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1426" CreationDate="2011-04-07T05:38:06.443" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rather than provide a specific answer, I suspect you may find a lot of parallels with motivating young professionals in adult learning theories such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andragogy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;andragogy&lt;/a&gt; and their explorations of adult motivation. There is also a lot to learn in the experiential learning theories of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_A._Kolb&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;David Kolb&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformative_learning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;transformative learning theory&lt;/a&gt; as proposed by Jack Mezirow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understanding how adults are motivated and learn has been a key part in my ability to mentor and excite professionals, especially in knowledge workers. Taking a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs&lt;/a&gt; and the other related theories mentioned in the Criticisms section can also be very valuable in understanding impediments to this motivational process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, none of this takes anything way from the very practical advice offered by @thousandtyone and @Dan, and I've found that having highly engaged people in an organization tends to attract very high quality candidates and keeps the successful candidates there longer due to the tight personal &amp;amp; professional network that grows from successful internal referrals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T05:38:06.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="353" CreationDate="2011-04-07T06:07:45.160" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The collective answers on this are all quite valuable.  However, one thing I haven't seen mentioned is the value in automating processes where possible. For example, much of the pain in software traceability has been mitigated through better tooling that allows (for example) easy linking of source code checkins to items in the work tracking systems that they are implementing, which in turn can be easily linked to both higher-level work items and the supporting design artifacts that can easily stored and maintained in (again, for example) a team wiki.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the data collection for processes is automated, it becomes quite easy to build and generate appropriate reports. This does, however, cause some degree of tool lock-in as a hidden cost of decreasing the transactional costs associated with following processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T06:07:45.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1470" CreationDate="2011-04-07T06:17:47.703" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is entirely possible to apply agile principles and the Scrum process outside of software and is being done in a variety of environments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The recent &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110410234148/http://phoenix.scrumgathering.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Beyond Software&lt;/a&gt; conference held in Phoenix during September 2010 explored this topic in great detail in an open space format. As an attendee, I was among a number of people sharing their experiences using Scrum in different environments including education, marketing, sales, and government. I've personally coached a marketing organization towards applying the Scrum framework towards their campaign planning and implementations, and know of at least one sales team actively applying Scrum (and using software project management tooling effectively in doing so).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, I'm personally aware of two sessions that have been accepted for the Agile 2011 conference related to the application of Scrum beyond software development. One applies to &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110828122942/http://submit2011.agilealliance.org/node/11110&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum in Sales&lt;/a&gt;, and the other applies to &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120123122312/http://submit2011.agilealliance.org/node/9604&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile in Academics&lt;/a&gt;.  There may be many others I've not noticed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: I'm not sure of the longevity of these links after the submissions process closes for Agile 2011. As both are accepted, the experience reports will eventually be published in the conference proceedings, which is published by the IEEE)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-21T06:43:50.493" LastActivityDate="2020-07-21T06:43:50.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1553" CreationDate="2011-04-07T06:35:57.620" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are multiple ways of answering this question; one is mostly philosophical, which involves picking the right team leaders and the right kind of developers who can raise red flags at the right time. Also involves fostering the right kind of culture where everyone is allowed to raise their hand if they believe a project is faltering and making yourself available to people in all the projects. Let’s not elaborate that side here since you did mention that this question was asked because you could decide the features to implement in new project management software, so let’s focus on the parts that you could implement in the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Burn down charts are an awesome way to indicate velocity and health of a project at a high level so burn down charts of the current sprint of all the projects is something you can display to a program manager who is heading multiple projects.&#xA;For more information on burn down charts see this link: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tinyurl.com/burndownchartpost&quot;&gt;http://www.tinyurl.com/burndownchartpost&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build a “concerns” feature into the product which allows every single member in the team to raise critical concerns which the program manager can review like a hawk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ability to look at a monitor “functionally important” features that have been moved to the “next sprint” for more than two sprint. Usually teams tend to move features to the next sprint when they run out of time. If a single feature is getting moved to the next sprint for more than a couple of sprints the feature is either too complex or not important and probably can be dropped (thus reducing the psychic weight on the team).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check-in pulse rate. Ability to hook on to SVN or source control system and see a quick graph of the rate of check-ins.  In general small incremental constructive frequent check-ins is a good thing. If a project hasn’t checked in anything in more than a couple of days there is something wrong or they are working on a huge feature and probably trying to bite on more than what they can chew.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have build automation a quick graph from the continuous integration server showing how frequently your build was broken or healthy in the last month.  Constantly broken builds are bad because they show lack of responsibility on the development team, and slow down other developers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test case reports specially if you have automated test cases. Your ability to monitor at a high level the percentage of test cases that passed and the percentage that failed on a per project level can show you the health of the project. For methodologies like Test Driven Development this might actually be able to show you the progress of the project as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A feature where the project lead or individual project managers fill in the classic stand up questions “What progress did we make yesterday? What progress are we planning on making today? Is there any external help we require?” on a very high level (not more than a line each) for every single project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A Happiness index where every team member can click on a “mood” smiley, ranging from a laugh to a sad face. Average it out and show the mood of the project. The premise is that happy developers produce successful projects so why not average out the moods of developers and capture the mood of multiple projects when you are managing multiple projects. Along with other matric this could be a really useful metric.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also note that NOTHING replaces talking to people and one on one interactions; the above points are there because I assumed that you wanted advice on “features” you could introduce in a brand new project management software that you are building. If the answer was generic it would have been very different and much longer. &#xA;Hope this helps you in the development of the product. Good luck for your product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8143" LastEditorUserId="8143" LastEditDate="2011-04-08T04:50:57.800" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T04:50:57.800" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1553" CreationDate="2011-04-07T08:39:03.277" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Specifically talking about &lt;em&gt;related&lt;/em&gt; projects, I would love a great overview of the &lt;strong&gt;dependencies&lt;/strong&gt; between them, the time they are expected and the type of the dependency (is it a specific deliverable required, a capability that one project needs to continue, or specific specialists, ...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Including a quick link tot the specific risks involved with these dependencies and the mitigation strategy ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T08:39:03.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1426" CreationDate="2011-04-07T09:04:52.737" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apart from thousandtyone answer (+1), which is great, I'd add that whatever you do to improve the workplace have humans in mind as you want to attract, well, humans, and the best of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;From my experience one of the most commonly mentioned &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kano_model&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;excitement attributes&lt;/a&gt; in workplace is atmosphere. It's hard to introduce one, but you may do much to help it emerge and it basically can be reduced to think about individuals whenever making any workplace-related decision. Think how people react for adding one more policy and how they react for organizing social room in the office. Learn what your people care about and try to improve these things.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Internships works great in terms of attracting people with great potential who can't somehow show their full value during the interview. It doesn't matter whether it's because one has no experience whatsoever or is just such an orthodox introvert that it's hard to learn what they really know - give them a chance. With internship program it's easier.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Isolating engineers from office politics is crucial in terms of making them happy and getting referred candidates. I don't fool myself that it's possible to get rid of office politics in many organizations, but the least you could, and should, do is to get managers isolating engineers from it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Getting rid of rotten apples. That's somehow omitted pretty often - if you don't do anything with slackers and other rotten apples the basic effect is other apples rot as well. This was by the way a key frustration of a few companies which were considered by engineer paradise some time ago. Best specialists expect to work with at least decent ones and it takes just a couple of slacker who peacefully do their crappy work not bothered by anyone to make the place labeled with &quot;they don't care about professionalism and expertise here.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Having an industry star in the team attracts many people. I guess &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fogcreek.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FogCreek&lt;/a&gt; doesn't have a problem recruiting best folks as everyone know &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Joel Spolsky&lt;/a&gt;. I guess it would be hard to hire Joel but there are other, like Scott Berkun, who &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2010/news-i-have-a-new-job-automattic/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;actually can be hired&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T09:04:52.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1553" CreationDate="2011-04-07T10:19:24.547" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every project has its own objectives and constraints. Focus on them and don't get yourself confused by any sort of mixed objectives or constraints. Always isolate projects one from another. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you see that they affect each other in some way - identify and document these conflicts as &lt;strong&gt;risks&lt;/strong&gt; (both negative and positive). Risk management should be done more aggressively in your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T10:19:24.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1513" CreationDate="2011-04-07T10:21:15.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my past, I have come across Team leaders who actually stays with the team  beyond the lifespan of a project. So as the team moves from project to project, the structure and the makeup of the team is essentially the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the leadership was only valid for the duration of a project, they would normally be titled as Project Leader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, every company that I have dealt with have their own spin on the roles these positions take on. It can get quite complicated if the roles have large grey areas of responsibilities between the team manager and the team leader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="480" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T10:21:15.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1347" CreationDate="2011-04-07T13:16:03.267" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dave - You might find this article useful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/08-001.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/08-001.pdf&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a study of lean production techniques as applied to the processes of a software development company in India. It is generally positive about the adoption of lean techniques, although it does feature multiple caveats as to how robust the findings are in a bigger sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3170" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T13:16:03.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1515" CreationDate="2011-04-07T13:52:03.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What planning and prioritization&#xA;  techniques are effective for Scrum&#xA;  teams and Product Owners working&#xA;  within an IT organization that uses&#xA;  waterfall planning behaviors at the&#xA;  release level?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I'm understanding correctly, your situation is similar to mine - i.e., we work in organizations where SDLC/ Waterfall is the norm, but there's been a recent push towards agile in isolated pockets of the company.  Even so, we run into road blocks of sorts when it comes time for the code to hit the production environment, because the Release team hasnt embraced the Agile methodology. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In these situations, as pawel mentioned, you can usually get the product owner to prioritize a list of 'stories' that define the release steps for a product.  Its ideal to be able to work as an isolated team, but sometimes the red tape doesnt let you deploy code as a stand-alone release.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on how much sway you have over the deployment process, the worst case scenario is that we can continue to develop via Agile in the QA / Beta environments and respond to real changes on this platform.  When the official release date comes, all the stories can be deployed into the live environment.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Admittedly, this sort of defeats the purpose of 'Agile', especially if you're working on a product thats already available to the public. Another alternative might be to restrict the product release to a select group of users.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, I'm grappling with this issue myself, and would love to hear what others have to say as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="847" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T13:52:03.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1221" CreationDate="2011-04-07T14:16:08.870" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;No real experience in teaching youngsters but I did have to explain to my 12 year old brother the elements of Project Management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My theory was focused on 3 key components;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implement the plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Monitor the processes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To illustrate these points to him I use the example of a Chef in a restaurant which has been given the project of delivering a special menu for a particular event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Planning&lt;/strong&gt; - The Chef brakes down the event to identify the end customers, their food preferences, quality expectations, number of customers attending the event, available assets (food, appliances...)&#xA;Once all components of the project have been put together the Chef gathers the team and proceeds to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assign Workloads &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create timelines&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Supply Chain and Set Up Logistics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Implementing the plan&lt;/strong&gt; - At this stage the Chef needs to ensure that all his/her staff understand what they are responsible of doing, when, and how. Elements included in this phase are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sourcing and Purchasing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Processing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Monitor the processes&lt;/strong&gt; - Finally the Chef (PM) needs to stablish robust mechanisms to monitor processes and supervise groups to ensure the completion of the meal on time for the event and according to the requirements of the customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could be an example to use with kids aged 10-14. I actually think that adding Risk Management, Budgeting and the financial aspects of a project would be well received by kids from 15 years old on since, quite often, this group starts managing their on finance at this age, and can have certain appreciation for financial constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with them!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T14:16:08.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1570" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-07T15:52:48.153" Score="5" ViewCount="623" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been looking into project management qualifications on behalf of my department for junior, intermediate and senior project managers. I would like to recommend courses at these levels that will be useful in a practical sense in the context of IT and cover most of the key topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arraspeople.co.uk/project-management-careers-advice/ppm-qualifications/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.arraspeople.co.uk/project-management-careers-advice/ppm-qualifications/&lt;/a&gt; has been extremely useful and presents the most comprehensive summary of what qualifications are available, however it is not clear to me whether those offered by ISEB, APM, PRINCE2 or PMI would be of most benefit specifically the UK IT industry. Is there anyone here who has gained more than one of the qualifications who provide some insight?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="95" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-16T17:55:09.477" LastActivityDate="2011-04-16T17:55:09.477" Title="What is the most useful and practical project management qualification for an IT professional in the UK?" Tags="&lt;training&gt;&lt;certification&gt;&lt;qualifications&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1504" CreationDate="2011-04-07T16:34:39.210" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rather generally aceeepted opinion by a lot of veteran managers is that train your people if it is it related to your core intellectual property, buy go with external, if it is non-related to your direct bread and butter. A rather hypothetical but simple example but this should help clarify: Let’s assume you are in the business of building search engines. There is something seriously wrong if you out hired programmers on a contract to build your search or ranking algorithms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That’s your core knowledge essential to the functioning of your business (your intellectual property if you will) and hiring contractors to build that would be a losing proposition in the long run; having said that if you wanted cool paging component to page your search results and you hired a contractor to build a paging component (or just bought one online) that would be perfectly fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Facebook going with contractors to build the wall would be a losing proposition for them, but they can easily allow external parties to build Farmville and other games on the platform. Yes face book is not a project but they have drawn really good lines on what they control vs. what they let the community build.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot people seem to be highlighting the cost aspect the time constraint aspect etc. all of which are valid but the primary governing factor, especially if you are working on a project that you are going to support and maintain for a long time after you’ve built it or if you are working on a product must be that you should keep knowledge internal as far as your core intellectual property is concerned and go with consultants with for add on stuff if you are running low on time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start by building a solid platform using a good design (interface driven or service driven), control the basic core functionality, the core business logic and allow external consultants to work on building plug-ins of external services which your core can consume for add-on functionality, that is functionality that is not deciding factor for the success or failure of your product or project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know training can take time but if it’s pertaining to your core intellectual property or critical to the success of a long term project you are better off spending some time and effort as an investment since it tends to pay off in the long run specially if you can pass the knowledge around as the team grows, retain the knowledge, grow on top of it and cultivate in specialization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8143" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T16:34:39.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1504" CreationDate="2011-04-07T18:13:17.647" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to emphasise the importance of the relationship between expertise and time here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A business I owned often found itself in a situation where we needed to add a team member (or two) within five to ten days or we would lose business. So the time available to act was negligible. However, the skills I needed from the newcomers were skills that took years to acquire, so training was out of the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In these instances hiring, not training, was the only option. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me the pros to hiring in this scenario:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team members walked through the door possessing the skills we needed that day&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If everything fell into place, immediate customer satisfaction (our hiring process was vigorous)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Expensive; graduates were tried but not an option - working as we did needed grounded pros with years of experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No time to acclimate the new team member to the culture of the workplace&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mistakes had significant impact. If we got the hiring wrong, it required a significant effort to rehabilitate the situation (note to self: never trust a single reference no matter who they are)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3170" LastEditorUserId="3170" LastEditDate="2011-04-07T18:19:19.463" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T18:19:19.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1497" CreationDate="2011-04-07T18:52:10.780" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have noticed (in practice) three different approaches to the 'difference' between Project Manager and Project Leader:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The 'titles' are used interchangeable. No difference whatsoever.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A company prefers the term 'project leader' because calling them 'managers' would imply they are, well, managers, just like Unit managers or something like that who have a team directly working for them. Since they don't want to give or imply the poor PM guy has the the same privileges and benefits, or just don't want to confuse them with 'real' managers, they prefer to not call them manager. But what they do is real PM stuff. It's purely semantic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Project manager oversees the whole project, while project leaders are responsible for sub-projects (or large work packages). They are often technical specialists also taking responsibility over the delivery of a specific deliverable. But they are below the project manager in the hierarchy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T18:52:10.780" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1574" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-07T19:01:01.797" Score="13" ViewCount="623" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are some practical, everyday uses for mindmaps for project managers? Please don't reply with a list of what &lt;strong&gt;could&lt;/strong&gt; be done with them, but what you &lt;strong&gt;really&lt;/strong&gt; use them for. Why a mindmap? Why does it work for you? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2018-09-07T21:33:35.877" LastActivityDate="2018-09-07T21:33:35.877" Title="Mindmaps for project management" Tags="&lt;visualization&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ClosedDate="2012-07-01T01:06:44.997" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1504" CreationDate="2011-04-07T19:03:27.553" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Couple of things should take into account are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Would your team require these particular KSAs in the future? or, are you or the Company interested in investing on development for your existing team? (this question is crucial in a lot of organizations)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; - If you would like your team to become stronger or is part of your duty as their manager to develop them, then I would suggest reviewing the available budget for training and support your team acquiring the abilities you need.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When does the project require these abilities? Is the need urgent?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; - If you need them now, it's better to get external help that already meet the desired KSAs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you decide to go on with the first point and develop your team, you need to understand the implications of the time that your team will require aside the project to acquire the additional knowledge. Resources must be allocated correctly. Moreover, once your team is fully trained stop and think, &lt;em&gt;am I going to assign additional workload on to them?&lt;/em&gt; Be careful here, if your team already had a heavy workload according to their abilities and you end up adding more they will struggle anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T19:03:27.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1553" CreationDate="2011-04-07T19:24:27.243" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Priorities. Definately the most crucial one. There is a slight chance that everything you run is important. You should never lose focus on getting priorities from your stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T19:24:27.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1574" CreationDate="2011-04-07T19:31:44.087" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use mindmaps in a very limited way, but one use that I have found to be highly beneficial is at project start-up, when trying to get a grip of all of the components and other aspects of the project, prior to developing the first draft plan or WBS. Using a simple mindmapping tool makes it far easier to organise my thoughts and collect ideas from other interested parties, then restructure or arrange / organise them later. Far easier than ploughing through pages of unstructured notes!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use a bit of software called FreeMind, which works well for me. I have no experience of any other mindmapping tools, so cannot comment on how good FreeMind is compared to anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T19:31:44.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1578" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1580" CreationDate="2011-04-07T19:52:56.197" Score="17" ViewCount="4693" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm about to facilitate another Retrospective with my team. I'd love to hear what different types of Retrospectives you do, to prevent falling into a routine. How do you improve such meetings to keep people engaged instead of bored? I'd appreciate especially unconventional ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me some examples are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sticky notes - putting notes on the white board - every thought is a separate note.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Engagement/attitude chart - you draw a timeline for the whole sprint/project and you ask each person to draw his engagement/attitude line for this time period. Values should differ from smile [:); happy/fully engaged] to sad [:(; bored, not interested in continuing the project]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Brainstorm&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Voting things - you put some issue on the board and ask people to add whatever comment they want: &quot;+1&quot;, &quot;me too&quot;, &quot;bullshit&quot;, ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Uncompleted sentences - you ask people to complete sentences:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I was most satisfied with ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The real pain was to ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What other techniques do you use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastEditorUserId="10489" LastEditDate="2014-08-02T22:10:32.570" LastActivityDate="2017-10-15T23:30:04.270" Title="Different ways of running Retrospectives" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1574" CreationDate="2011-04-07T19:54:46.863" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use mindmaps for planning, retro / futurespectives, weighing up pros and cons, taking notes in meetings, and presentations. It seems to fit the way my head works far better than linear list or note-taking, and I can go back and re-read the notes or outlines very quickly, while remembering what I was thinking at the time that created the relationships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still have a love of pen and paper, but Freemind is also my tool of choice. I've tried a few others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find mindmaps work very well with Edward de Bono's &quot;six thinking hats&quot;, and have facilitated a number of retrospectives with this model (replace the White hat with gray).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T19:54:46.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1578" CreationDate="2011-04-07T20:09:27.657" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of my favourites:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Six thinking hats&lt;/strong&gt; (mindmap)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blue hat (big picture) - belongs to the facilitator&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yellow hat (positive) - what's gone well? What resources do we have?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Black hat (negative) - what needs improvement? What risks can we see?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;White hat (facts) - what do we know? What do we need to learn?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Green hat (creative) - what changes do we want to make? What actions to take?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Red hat (emotion) - how do we feel about that? Is this the best we can do?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Boat variant&lt;/strong&gt; (with post-its)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the left: the rocky shore.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the right: the beach with the palm trees and a deckchair, cocktail glass optional&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Between them: a simple boat (I tend not to use sail and anchor any more)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the left, put all the things you're leaving behind. There may be some things you're sorry you're leaving; add a sad face (or use a different color post-it). We're leaving this land for the one over there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the right, put all the things ahead. There may be some things you're scared of; add a sad face. This is where we're going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there's anything you really want to take with you, put it in the boat!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Futurespective, twice over&lt;/strong&gt; (post-its, also works with attitude timeline)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Useful for looking ahead rather than behind. Draw a timeline for the project or the next iteration on the board. Get everyone to walk through the timeline, then look back to the past (which is actually the present). This works better for projects and longer timelines than iterations, but it's possible to do either. I've also used this for first releases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1st time: We failed dismally! That was awful. What happened? What went wrong? (Team put red post-its up for all the things which went wrong)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2nd time: Hurrah! We succeeded. How did we manage that? How did we address the risks? (Team put yellow or green post-its up for all the things they did right)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Anchoring&lt;/strong&gt; (any retrospective format)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a tendency in Retrospectives to focus on what went wrong. As well as improvements, work out what went really well and ask the team how to anchor that. If they can't, get them to imagine that next iteration, the thing that went well will disappear or be banned or taken away. How can they stop that happening?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, the team had an expert sitting with them who was really helping. When they imagined him being taken away from them, they realized he was very expensive and the manager who paid for him might not know - so they went to the manager to say thank you and explain how useful the expert was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is also a great technique for generating a positive, blame-free culture - how few managers ever get thanked for their decisions!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T20:09:27.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1578" CreationDate="2011-04-07T20:22:36.877" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hey there, &#xA;Just a quick idea about the 2nd thing you mentioned &quot;Engagement/attitude chart&quot;.&#xA;You may want to check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://mercuryapp.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mercuryapp.com&lt;/a&gt;, it'a an app by Corey Haines (one of the major figures in the Software Craftsmanship movement) and the graph you explained just now is being drawn by constant feedback of the team. The TL can then see this and judge how the project is going along. So it's not just &quot;when we're doing an retrospective&quot; but constant and you could then talk about the graph when doing the retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm using it for myself to measure &quot;how do I feel about this project&quot; etc currently, and it gave me some interesting insights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="857" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T20:22:36.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1578" CreationDate="2011-04-07T20:22:54.770" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always liked retrospectives in Agile settings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give three colored sticky notes to each person in the room. Have them write&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Green sticky: What went well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Red sticky: What didn't go well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yellow sticky: What could we change (start doing)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go around the room, one person at a time, with each person walking to a central point and sticking their green note to a board while reading their note. This always led to small, obvious groups of like-notes. Then spend some time discussing what went well (this is sometimes not done - which is odd. Celebrate and reflect on success.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once done with the Green, repeat with the red, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things to note: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;everyone is equal. Directors and managers get one sticky note of each&#xA;color, just like everyone else. Watch the fireworks if they try to add&#xA;multiple...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The scrum master runs things. Period. No one gets to override him or her. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's time boxed. When time is up - it's up.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3170" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T20:22:54.770" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1421" CreationDate="2011-04-08T02:11:23.477" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Within the team: always (for the &lt;strong&gt;good&lt;/strong&gt; and the bad)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outside the team: Never&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you as the project manager do this, putting blame on someone who isn't even there and has no chance to defend themselves (the technical term for this is &quot;throwing someone under the bus&quot;), you will do more damage to your team than you can probably imagine.  Instantly the team focus will be on CYA (Cover Your Arse) instead of working as a team and being honest when things aren't working out.  A blame game, or rather arms race or cold war, will begin, and any positive team dynamics you had will be destroyed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="859" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T02:11:23.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1574" CreationDate="2011-04-08T07:11:26.410" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to use mindmaps in planning my day/week. On the left side I had projects splitted into big tasks splitted into small actions. On the right side I had days of the month. Every morning I was putting some stuff from the left to the right. I defined custom actions which for me looked like prioritizing (adding a number to element), marking as done, marking as delegated and so on...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still use mindmap when I try to get a lot of ideas about something - for example when I prepare a presentation I use mindmaps to write down everything that I can talk about - it is then easier to sort out which thoughts are connected with others, which are important, and which are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T07:11:26.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1574" CreationDate="2011-04-08T07:23:43.927" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's, in my opinion, very useful to create a product breakdown structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can add items and sub-items whenever you need and do updates quite easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are very powerful solutions to give an overview of the solution that was worked out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastEditorUserId="2427" LastEditDate="2011-11-03T16:01:34.530" LastActivityDate="2011-11-03T16:01:34.530" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1574" CreationDate="2011-04-08T07:56:45.057" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm using mindmaps for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;risk identification&lt;/a&gt;, where nodes are risk causes and leaves are risk effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T07:56:45.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1587" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1593" CreationDate="2011-04-08T08:04:43.907" Score="12" ViewCount="3542" Body="&lt;p&gt;A project budget includes fixed and variable costs. In most cases (especially in weak matrix and pure functional &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_management&quot;&gt;organizations&lt;/a&gt;) salaries of project members are variable costs. In order to calculate project budget the project manager has to know the numbers. It means that he/she has to know how much his/her colleagues earn monthly. In most organizations this information is private. How to resolve this conflict?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2021-01-27T16:47:49.763" Title="A project manager should know how much his/her project members earn monthly?" Tags="&lt;cost-management&gt;&lt;budget&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1587" CreationDate="2011-04-08T08:35:32.660" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In large institution, like European Commission, every job or position stands for a specific value that is used in the budget management.&#xA;In that way it's quite easy to do this and only a matter of multiplying the days they will work with the value they have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In private companies, same can be done if the salary is private, by giving a certain value to a job or experience the workforce has.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good thing could be to let your boss (or those who do know the salary) confirm the estimated values before using them in your planning or budget allocation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not really matter of what the PM thinks.&#xA;If the company's philosophy is to hide salary, then they'll hide it...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastEditorUserId="95" LastEditDate="2011-04-08T12:48:22.677" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T12:48:22.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1574" CreationDate="2011-04-08T09:01:09.030" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my organisation I have never seen Mindmaps used but I have personally used them within my team to gather all the components of our projects and draw a picture of the current status of the project or what we would like to achieve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I have found them very useful because Mindmaps provides the audience with a visual representation of what's going on. Even if they don't have PM skills they can understand what the project contents are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have used the software Mindjet, is not free but it's quite user friendly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend you to use Mindmaps at every stage in the project since you can always review your maps and quickly identify variances, issues, etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T09:01:09.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1590" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-07T22:21:50.393" Score="4" ViewCount="3800" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wondering if it is a good way to shift from programming into project management by taking a project certificate like Stanford Advanced Project Management Certificate? Any ideas would be appreciated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="adg" LastEditorUserId="2618" LastEditDate="2012-01-30T23:48:51.493" LastActivityDate="2012-01-31T01:28:35.577" Title="Stanford Advanced Project Management Certificate" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;certification&gt;&lt;training&gt;&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1590" CreationDate="2011-04-08T10:24:07.023" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Stanford Advanced Project Management Certificate is a great certificate for Project Managers to excel their Project Management skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, as said in the actual tittle, this is an Advanced Certificate thus a solid background or working experience in Project Management is required. I really don't know if as a programmer you have been involved in projects at all or your level of understanding on this field so I can't advise properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you would like to start from scratch in Project Management I would recommend you to take a more generic training like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prince2.com/what-is-prince2.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PRINCE2 Foundation and Practitioner&lt;/a&gt;, with this training you will gain solid knowledge about Project Management and everything that surrounding a project regardless of your background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see other suggestions from SE users &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1354/project-management-training-certificates/1355#1355&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T10:24:07.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1570" CreationDate="2011-04-08T10:24:27.023" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer to your question depends upon which roles you are seeking in the IT Industry. Are you seeking a project management (PM) role, or a more technical role?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are seeking a PM role, then in the UK, PRINCE2 is the usual qualification which employers are seeking. I used to be a contract PM in the IT industry and recruitment agencies 8 years ago were recommending me to become PRINCE2 qualified, which is what I did. If however, you are seeking a PM role in the US, or in Asia, then probably get the PMI certification because PRINCE2 is not really known in these areas, but PMI is well known there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, it is rare to see APM PM qualifications asked for in the UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you are seeking a more technical role, for example in IT support, then I would recommend the ISEB ITIL qualifications. ITIL is used all over the world, so these qualifications are useful in any country. Within the ISEB qualifications there are a wide range to choose from: software testing if this is the career you want, business analysis if you want to get into change management, solution development if you want to get into systems analysis and design, and ITIL if you want to get into IT support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I think you need to figure out what role exactly do you want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a PRINCE2 trainer, I can tell you the demand &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.knowledgetrain.co.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PRINCE2 training&lt;/a&gt; is hugely popular as are the ITIL qualifications. Within the ISEB set, business analysis qualifications are becoming more and more popular. I hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simon&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="862" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T10:24:27.023" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1587" CreationDate="2011-04-08T10:29:31.640" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use three &lt;strong&gt;'profile' rates&lt;/strong&gt; (High, medium, Low). It is an approximation of the total (hourly) cost of an employee (not only salary). We know the profile for all team-members (actually for everybody). This way we can calculate the budget without needing to get private salary information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T10:29:31.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1367" CreationDate="2011-04-08T10:50:30.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like many people, I got into my first project management (PM) role by accident, rather than by design. I had no PM training, and as it turned out, neither did the PM's for whom I had worked for as a software engineer and team leader. It was only later on after I had done my PRINCE2 training did I realize that I had been repeating many of the same mistakes that my previous PM's had made. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To a large extent, project management is common sense, but it is amazing how common sense seems to evaporate when issues come up on a project and fire-fighting mode takes hold. Since I am familiar with PRINCE2, I will say what I believe to be one of its key benefits: it is based upon good project management best practices. Why repeat the mistakes from the past when we can learn from them instead? So, instead of &quot;evolving&quot; I think some solid project management or PRINCE2 training would certainly help because it will focus your mind on the key things to think through and on the controls that you need to put in place to ensure your project has a better chance of being succesful. Without these things, then yes, it certainly is risky!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After saying that, don't think that purely focusing on the more technical aspects of managing projects by atttending, for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMI/PMP&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.knowledgetrain.co.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PRINCE2 training&lt;/a&gt; will be enough. At the end of the day, project management is about managing people, not things, so the better you are at communicating, delegating, leading, motivating (plus a hundread and one other soft skills) the better you will be in a project management role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="862" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T10:50:30.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1595" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1603" CreationDate="2011-04-08T11:38:44.170" Score="4" ViewCount="201" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of the skills I've picked up as a Lean / Agile coach seem to be relevant to project management, and I've started getting offers of PM work from agencies. Since I coach PMs, I feel like I ought to have a go at actually managing a project at some point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My people-related skills are pretty good and I have a thorough grounding in both Lean and Agile (including the many places they fail). I've seen projects through from creation to iterative release, coached different roles within projects, and have a good understanding of risk with tools and courage enough to identify and manage it. I'm also into Systems Thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the difference between a good coach and a good PM? What additional skills will I need to adopt in order to successfully manage a small project? Do you recommend any particular books or training courses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2011-04-08T11:53:00.790" LastActivityDate="2011-04-25T03:19:21.260" Title="What would I need to do to transition from a team coach / organizational change agent to a PM?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;career&gt;&lt;skills&gt;&lt;training&gt;&lt;lean&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="254" CreationDate="2011-04-08T11:49:36.097" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use a tool such as a checklist to ensure that all deliverables have been met, and&#xA;go through the checklist with all the team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user864" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2012-10-07T15:54:52.477" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T15:54:52.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1597" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1604" CreationDate="2011-04-08T11:58:27.600" Score="19" ViewCount="1823" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a web developer, working in a small web development firm. usually we have small set of projects, using PHP &amp;amp; MySQL, and a small team with less than 4. But some times its hard to recollect details about these projects and maintain tasks as projects grow... and confusion arises.&#xA;What is the best process to manage Web projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="555" LastEditorUserId="863" LastEditDate="2011-04-08T15:44:53.327" LastActivityDate="2013-05-15T16:04:53.530" Title="How to manage a Web Project" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1595" CreationDate="2011-04-08T12:16:35.593" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good coach (external consultant) can use directive and non-directive approaches with trying to influence change.  A PM (internal employee) will have system constraints they may just need to deal with (IE: those useless status reports are reality in many organizations, may not make sense to swim against those organizational currents).  A change agent that moves into a PM or any full-time team role, IMO, has a better opportunity to influence change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="865" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T12:16:35.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1587" CreationDate="2011-04-08T12:17:10.727" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For many internal projects, the budget for labor is not known and, therefore, the PM cannot be accountable for project costs.  In that case, you are managing schedule and scope only.  If the organization chooses to monitor the cost of a given project, the organization must supply a rate for all of the labor categories used for the project.  This rate would not only include the actual hourly rate for an employee's salary, but will also include various types of overhead, i.e, a fully burdened rate.  For example, if the employee's labor category is senior business analyst, the rate for all senior business analysts might be $120 an hour.  However, the employees' actual hourly rate is something much less than that and can range from $25 to $80 an hour as an example.  The burden rate is a truer project cost than the employee's hourly rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, it is not a requirement and likely not very appropriate to know internal employees' salaries and wages.  Obviously, if you know someone's labor category and you roughly guess where they are, but there is a lot of variation in salaries in a given labor category and, if this information becomes public, opens the door to disgruntled employees, low morale, in-fighting, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are told to monitor the project's budget, then the organization OWES you labor category rates.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T12:17:10.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1595" CreationDate="2011-04-08T12:46:32.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess the biggest practical difference is in the client-facing aspects of a typical PM role. Coaches (once the gig is won) tend to work with internal folks (the team, and others inside the team's host organisation). Not a hard-and-fast rule, to be sure, but worth considering?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PM's can often be expected to be a Product Owner or PO proxy, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then there's the whole mindset thing. Can e.g. Agile folks (especially coaches) tolerate a classically &quot;Analytic&quot; organisation (the natural home of all PM's), which might be regarded as dysfunctional in many respects, compared to a synergistic organisation, or team, environment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW Knowing you, I can't believe you'd be anything but super, great in a PM role! But would you enjoy it? Hair shirt?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HTH&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bob @FlowchainSensei &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="866" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T12:46:32.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1587" CreationDate="2011-04-08T13:06:30.947" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Staff salaries, being &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; of the main reasons people are working for you in the first place (if we're honest about it), are an important factor in understanding motivation - especially when a person is not performing well. Many projects fail or suffer difficulties due to the actions of people on the team so it's vital in my opinion for managers to know the full story. Certainly based on my own experiences of hiring and managing a team of people I'd say this is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Way back in the 1970's Robert Townsend (turned around Avis Car Rental) said that to 'outsource' what was then called &quot;personnel&quot; aspects (now called human resources) of management to someone else was a dereliction of the managers true responsibilities. He devotes a section of his renowned book &quot;Up The Organisation&quot; to it &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0787987751&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;see his book here...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="867" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T13:06:30.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1597" CreationDate="2011-04-08T13:35:49.433" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;My recommendation would be that you start with simple tools and stick to this simplicity as you move along. Sometimes, if the teams are small a simple shared white board can be very effective. At other times focus on simple tools like Project Path for 37 Signals to maintain tasks and collaborate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at tools like BackPackit and Project Path from 37signals for tasks and basic collaboration. The basic functionality of these tools is free and with a team size of 4 you should be able to use these products for free. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A free version of Google Apps is also often effective since the it allows multiple people to update the same excel sheet online. You can ask people to update the same excel sheet when they finish their tasks. This approach is generic where else tools like Project Path are slightly more specific and offer some bells and whistles like email notification, basic time lines etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option can be using an open source bug tracking system and tweaking it to capture tasks. Bugzilla should be a good option. Bugzilla has features like time taken per feature etc. which you might find useful if you want to track the time that some of these features track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A strong recommendation I have is, no matter what you do to keep it simple, not just now but even as you grow as a team or as a organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question seemed slightly generic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this answer helps. If you have other specific questions pertaining to this do not hesitate you leave and comment on this answer and we will try our best to respond.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8143" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T13:35:49.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1595" CreationDate="2011-04-08T14:30:46.960" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you have actually been managing projects already. The single biggest skill you'll need to be mindful of is learning - make sure you reflect on your progress in the new role of managing projects. Daily at first then weekly self-catch-ups will probably help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also recommend finding a great mentor - a project manager you admire and who is sufficiently experienced for you to be able to bounce ideas off and ask for advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Self-awareness and awareness of the differences between being the mentor and the &lt;em&gt;mentored&lt;/em&gt; will help as you swap roles and go &quot;back to school&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you'll need resilience to deal with the real-world stresses that exist on projects that you may or may not have been subject to in your role as a coach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember the old quote: &quot;Grant to us the serenity of mind to accept that which cannot be changed; courage to change that which can be changed, and wisdom to know the one from the other&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="867" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T14:30:46.960" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1597" CreationDate="2011-04-08T15:03:02.193" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can choose any tool you like as long as you're following a process. My view is that tasks should be divided in blocks that can be completed in one day and assigned to each team member. At the end of each day do a quick meeting to update whatever tools is being used to track the completion of the tasks. If not time is available for everyone to meet make sure that everyone fires a short email stating progress made in the day and assign a team member to update the tool tracking the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously the team needs to decide how long a task takes and what functionalities are necessary in order to complete the project. Try using a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Function_point&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Function Point estimation&lt;/a&gt; mixed with Expert estimation to decide it will take the team to deliver something that fits the requirements of the client. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure that whenever you get the requirements all ambiguity is resolved before you accept the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you follow some of this guidelines a small project can be tracked even with a simple Excel spreadsheet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="863" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T15:03:02.193" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1587" CreationDate="2011-04-08T15:26:53.473" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. Almost all organisations have rates for employees. The PM needs to know the rates for each team member, not the actual salary. At most this might give the PM an indication on how much a person earns (by comparing with its own salary and rate) but not an exact figure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using a rate for employees its not related to having or not a transparency policy, it's just an easier way to figure out costs. Costs per employees are not only dependant on salaries but should also include hidden costs like logistics costs or organizational costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="863" LastEditorUserId="863" LastEditDate="2011-04-08T15:39:29.013" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T15:39:29.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1595" CreationDate="2011-04-08T16:37:14.883" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say that much depends on a type of project you're going to manage. &lt;strong&gt;If the project is run in an agile way internally there's little more to learn.&lt;/strong&gt; The biggest difference is the role of coach is kind of hit-and-run. Coach doesn't live long life with result of their advices. Coach doesn't fight an uphill battle to sustain changes which have just been implemented, etc. But then if the organization has reasonable approach the effort should be spread over whole team and it shouldn't be responsibility of PM only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The bigger difference is in outside world.&lt;/strong&gt; Even agile organizations often work for clients who aren't agile whatsoever and it's PM's role to map these two worlds back and forth. So basically you need to learn the way the client work and find a way to make them happy and at the same time build bridges to your teams approach to project. The former may mean working on project in a very formal way, preparing extensive documentations up front, analyzing whole thing at the beginning, little feedback from the client along the way, managing every change in a very formal way, etc. It may also mean difficult discussions with the client even if that's not what you'd prefer to do - if you work within budget constraints not every change should be embraced as not every client understands what it takes to eat the cake, i.e. they aren't getting it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Then we have projects and organizations which are formal/very formal.&lt;/strong&gt; Usually the first thing is to learn local office politics as in such organizations it is often required just to have a chance to succeed, let alone achieving a success. Then it's a bit like adopting to the way client works but on the other side. Whatever the current organizational culture is you're probably going to learn and accept it, at least to some point. If you're out of luck it won't be aligned with what you believe is right and it usually takes long, long time to change the culture even if you have much power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To summarize that somehow I'd say that the main role of a PM is delivering a project while the main role of a coach is improving the organization.&lt;/strong&gt; It doesn't mean one shouldn't do both but they should know where their priorities are. So if you ask about specific skills I'd go with adaptation. And if you ask about specific books I think it's more important to learn local specific than to look for generic answers in generic books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="696" LastEditDate="2011-04-25T03:19:21.260" LastActivityDate="2011-04-25T03:19:21.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1587" CreationDate="2011-04-08T17:51:10.343" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is very dangerous knowledge for a PM to have. Most organizations either don't count the cost of internal employees or they use a 'standard rate'. Similarly when an organization hires a consulting firm they know what the hourly rate is but it's not usually divided out into the individual salaries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T17:51:10.343" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1590" CreationDate="2011-04-08T19:01:53.113" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to work as a programmer, and then I became a Team Lead/ PM. I wouldn't recommend to start your journey in project management by passing any exam at all. I would advise reading books, blogs and articles and &lt;strong&gt;learning by doing&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a boss - ask him to let you manage a project. If you don't have a boss find a pet project where you can try your management skills. If you have problems with both try find a project somewhere else - in your real life. Organize a holiday trip for a group of friends - if you think, that it is easy - the better for you. &lt;strong&gt;Practise&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read more about this kind of approach &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2010/06/learning-project-management-basics.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T19:01:53.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1595" CreationDate="2011-04-08T23:14:59.720" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on my personal observations as a team lead, as a coach, and in my brief ill-fated attempt to merge architect with PM, there are only a few major areas of difference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Budget&lt;/strong&gt; - Coaches and technical team leads are rarely responsible for managing the project's budget, especially when it comes to the staffing and people aspects. While agile makes it easer (burn rate * expected number of sprints), that doesn't take away the need to track, manage, and otherwise own and report on the budget.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scope&lt;/strong&gt; - Agilists are happy to say &quot;vary scope&quot;. We're also very happy to say &quot;we'll solve business problem X&quot;. We're not very good at saying &quot;we'll solve business problem X in 5 sprints or less&quot; when it's a big problem. On one hand, this opens the door to incremental funding models and all sorts of fun things in that direction. On the other hand, it opens the door for very stressed out project managers as they try to understand and explain what's going on in a way that doesn't get the project cancelled.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Staff&lt;/strong&gt; - Scrum, at least, assumes a properly cross functional team. Somebody has to be responsible for building one (or more) of those before the project starts, ensuring it survives without killing itself, and generally make sure that the people are available and paid. Many times, this falls on the project manager either to put in the req to a functional silo or to hire directly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Politics&lt;/strong&gt; - the nature of the politics seems to change from the coach's &quot;art of the possible&quot; to the PM's &quot;art of keeping the project alive&quot;. I don't have a good feel for the details of this aspect personally, but the sort of politics that needs played seems to be different between the roles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you mentioned in your question, many of the people that are great coaches already have most of the interpersonal and communications skills to be effective PM's. These are the bits I see that are &quot;new&quot; skills for coaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T23:14:59.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17" CreationDate="2011-04-09T01:33:05.833" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quantitative measure is great, but most project risks can likely be managed very well using a 5x5 ordinal scale for both probability and impact, reserving the more intense and harder-to-do quantitative approach for more higher impact risks or where you might need that degree of precision for decision making against several alternatives.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-04-09T01:33:05.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1574" CreationDate="2011-04-09T03:44:15.100" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've used mind maps very successfully for gathering requirements and stories. When projected on a wall in front of a group it's an effective way to capture and reorganize and gain agreement on ideas on the spot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="875" LastActivityDate="2011-04-09T03:44:15.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1597" CreationDate="2011-04-09T06:55:35.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try to use some Issue Tracking System (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issue_tracking_system&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ITS&lt;/a&gt;) for tasks and bugs. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issue_tracking_system&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;JIRA&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://trac.edgewall.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trac&lt;/a&gt; are quite popular. You will keep your history organized and searchable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-09T06:55:35.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1597" CreationDate="2011-04-09T08:29:44.027" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;confusion arises&quot;&#xA; Is the key problem here ( in my view ) .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What ever process you adopt,make sure it is easy to understand,implement and is not much of an &#xA;overhead since you have a small team , so that further confusion does not ensue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what I suggest-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Break you project progress into simpler tasks . Which have a clear goal ,time line and completion criteria&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increase visibility of tasks,their updates/progress and blockers/risks to acheving those tasks  -- short daily stand ups would be my recommendation. Involve all relevant stakeholders.Progress visibility should be your mantra in these.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make a person responsible for capturing the above data -- use a big white board .&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure you have a proper bug tracking system.I would not recommend excel. JIRA is popular , easy to understand and light &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use a low tech dashboard to highlight quality issues &amp;amp; test progress . &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.satisfice.com/presentations/dashboard.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.satisfice.com/presentations/dashboard.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would start with these steps and see how it goes . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;good luck &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="804" LastActivityDate="2011-04-09T08:29:44.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1616" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1625" CreationDate="2011-04-09T08:36:08.320" Score="11" ViewCount="414" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a project team which has just got a project into production. The project was late (a bit) and over budget (more than a bit) but it isn't considered as a failure within organization. It was more like a challenged project, which you learn most from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the project entered maintenance phase PM is trying to enforce specific organization of the team - who should fix bugs how maintenance should be handled etc. The team seems to prefer different kind of organization. The question is whether the PM should interfere with such things and if so to which point?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: PM formally is neither the part of the team nor their superior. Also the team, along with team manager, is responsible for dealing with maintenance while the PM is responsible for keeping it within maintenance budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="696" LastEditDate="2011-04-25T03:17:41.713" LastActivityDate="2011-04-25T03:17:41.713" Title="To what point PM should interfere with team's organization?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;maintenance&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1616" CreationDate="2011-04-09T09:40:20.517" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like an unusual set-up, for the PM to retain budgetary responsibility but not to be responsible for the team in a management structure, so that would be the first area that I would look at. If the team can deliver the maintenance within budget under their own preferred structure and using their own version of processes, then the PM should let them, and only get involved if the budget starts to be threatened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more fundamental issue is whether the scope of the project included setting up the maintenance team and maintenance processes. If yes, then the PM has the authority to drive that; otherwise it is up to the team and the team manager to do what they feel is right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-04-09T09:40:20.517" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1616" CreationDate="2011-04-09T11:13:26.070" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;That seems odd to me, as well, regarding the PM being accountable for the money but with no command and control over the team and its capabilities.  That is not unlike my being accountable for Pawel's sister's husband's budget.  That set up is broken and needs to be fixed.  There are essentially two accountable people and that never works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-04-09T11:13:26.070" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1616" CreationDate="2011-04-09T16:02:35.797" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe fully in self-organizing teams (having finally had the opportunity to be part of one) -- &lt;strong&gt;let the people who want to do the work, do the work.&lt;/strong&gt; This will increase their job satisfaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, the PM is a leader, and &lt;strong&gt;the team members are the ones who get the work done.&lt;/strong&gt; So you need to (ideally) get out of their way, and enable them to do the best job they can -- and enforcing a certain structure contrary to what they want might not do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Regarding the team self-organizing and destroying the budget or schedule: if they're self-organizing and know how to distribute work (and not just have everybody vying for the &quot;easiest&quot; work), they're very likely a &lt;strong&gt;highly proficient team who knows how to get things done.&lt;/strong&gt; The chance of them blowing the budget or schedule out the window is therefore &lt;em&gt;less&lt;/em&gt; likely than if the PM enforces an organization upon them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, we're talking about bugs and maintenance -- there's not usually a significant budget or schedule; it's just &quot;here, keep knocking off these bugs.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastEditorUserId="36" LastEditDate="2011-04-09T16:38:02.443" LastActivityDate="2011-04-09T16:38:02.443" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1616" CreationDate="2011-04-09T16:18:42.213" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;With budgetary responsibility but not people responsibility, all you can do is identify the shortcomings of the current set-up, propose a solution and demonstrate in the best way that you can that it is a better solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Present this both to your boss, the one who handed the budget over to you, and to the manager in charge of the team that burns your budget. &lt;em&gt;They&lt;/em&gt; must come to some conclusion: either the budget is too small or the team need to adjust in some way or other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="179" LastActivityDate="2011-04-09T16:18:42.213" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1397" CreationDate="2011-04-09T17:56:52.693" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm answering this with respect to projects which have worked well using offshore suppliers, though these should be roughly applicable to in-house distributed teams or people working from home, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make it safe to ask questions&lt;/strong&gt;. A lot of suppliers and offshore developers feel like they can't show that they don't understand, particularly where requirements are concerned. Making it safe to communicate by being overly friendly helps. Send photos. Open video chat. Use the same IM. Make it easy to talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Establish clear tests for work&lt;/strong&gt;. Use examples where possible. BDD scenarios are great for this, but even higher-level tests for capability, stakeholder goals etc. can be defined and have helped our offshore teams produce the right work, or define the right lower-level tests when offshore testing has been used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Keep things which have never been done before in-house&lt;/strong&gt;. Things which involve new aspects of a domain, process, technology or new people are risky, and aspects are likely to fail. It's easier to adapt to the failure when you can see it immediately. If only some of the developers are offshore, shipping the &quot;boring&quot; work can keep the more expensive onshore developers learning and exploring the risky areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Visualise the work&lt;/strong&gt;. Either share an electronic tool, or point a video camera at the physical board. This helps make communication less about status updates and more about new issues, blockers and ongoing learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hold daily stand-ups&lt;/strong&gt;. Check that the offshore team is comfortable with the work, has the tools and access they need and know who to contact in case of difficulty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Prefer video or voice to email&lt;/strong&gt; or email will get clogged up. Ideally, email should just be a record of conversations or decisions so that everyone's in the loop. Make sure that everyone knows everyone else's name and has a photo so they can see a face; it helps make people more comfortable to reach out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-04-09T17:56:52.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1622" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-09T14:52:31.643" Score="7" ViewCount="272" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0932633439&quot;&gt;Peopleware&lt;/a&gt; suggests that managers should set realistic schedules and should not put overreaching pressures on developers. In an early startup with hired developers, how does one keep the competitive edge with a very fast paced culture without burning out the developers? I've heard stories that people at startups work tirelessly without breaks, but won't that cause burnout eventually? How does one strike the right balance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="samxli" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2011-04-10T00:33:05.153" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T15:27:49.717" Title="How do you implement ideas from Peopleware in an early startup?" Tags="&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1623" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1634" CreationDate="2011-04-09T22:32:24.440" Score="8" ViewCount="1261" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to organize the help desk. I have some thoughts and ideas.&#xA;The project for which I have to do is a Web application. It has 5 servers&#xA;in different time zones.&#xA;We have something about 25 instances of our Web application and 8 entry points. The help desk is going to be split into different levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Key users - Normal users can report issues only to key users. Only key users can proceed issue to help desk. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Help desk - people with handbooks and defined &quot;know how&quot; workarounds and other solutions. They should also be able to get full knowledge about the issue from our users.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Support team - They should resolve some simple code bugs and configuration bugs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The last part is development team. If some issue needs new feature development or it's a huge bug then this team should schedule it and resolve the problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've got some concerns about 3rd point and the support team. What is the border between simple bug which should be left for support team, and which should be proceeded to development team? What do you think? For example if something will take 1 day/person it stays in support team otherwise it goes to development team? (If the task is longer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the second question: &lt;strong&gt;Who should be responsible for prioritizing tasks for support team?&lt;/strong&gt; This is something what I don't know what to think of. :( Is the same Manager should/can be responsible for daily prioritization of support team tasks and development team tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="878" LastEditorUserId="878" LastEditDate="2011-04-10T06:06:11.690" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T09:40:02.510" Title="How to Organise Help Desk?" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1397" CreationDate="2011-04-10T00:18:26.263" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Running an Agile development shop between two offices located 12 hours apart was a challenge that actually created more opportunities for us to stand out as an organization.  Here are a few things that we have accomplished as a result of being agile:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Improved communication:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We learned to use tools, like Skype, to facilitate face to face video calls.  We talk with our overseas colleagues daily.  This also led to us moving our contact center to an all-at-home model for our contact center agents, which resulted in lower turnover and increased quality of the employees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Green initiatives:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of the lower commutes, we documented our impact on the environment.  We've taken hundreds of cars off the roads and scaled down our main office in favor of work-at-home offices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Independent Workers:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of our employees are more well rounded and understand more about the core business model, which means we build better products that people actually want to use.  We have a product backlog that developers work on in weekly sprints.  They are responsible for gathering requirements and understanding the use cases prior to writing any code.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stand ups:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developers and project managers always meet face to face through Skype Video calls to discuss the project.  We are also going to use a Google Site for each developer to document what he/she accomplished in the previous sprint, what he/she is going to accomplish in the coming sprint, and what challenges he/she is facing each day.  The Google Site Announcements Template works like an intranet blog for keeping track of these Stand-ups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, nothing beats a live call through Skype.  It's free, and it encourages team members to collaborate and plan effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, this &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be done with the right tools and the right people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T00:18:26.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1616" CreationDate="2011-04-10T00:30:22.777" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the PM is responsible for the budget, and the team is self-organizing, then perhaps the best approach is to set clear expectations for the self-organizing team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the PM dictates an actual structure, then he/she may be micro-managing.  It's also quit possible that the PM is not finding the &lt;em&gt;best&lt;/em&gt; possible solution and instead is only finding what he/she &lt;em&gt;believes&lt;/em&gt; is the best solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One possible way to keep everyone happy is for the PM to sit down and determine what an effective, acceptable metric is for the different team structures, and then assigning the self-organizing team the task of finding a solution that meets the financial constraints. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's quite possible that the team may come up with a solution that is much, much better than what the PM alone would come up with, and this will satisfy the team as well since they were a part of the decision-making process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just because you are responsible for the success of the project doesn't mean you must make all of the decisions yourself.  Instead, delegate those decisions and let the smart people on your team surprise you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T00:30:22.777" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1623" CreationDate="2011-04-10T00:42:03.123" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The development team is naturally going to have more knowledge of the core systems involved in the application since they were the people who built the features in the first place.  The support team, on the other hand, sound like programmers who may not have been involved in the actual development of the application.  Therefore, the support team is likely to have less domain knowledge of the actual architecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's difficult to classify a bug as something that involves domain knowledge and something that can be resolved by any developer.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is to use your escalation process.  The support team should likely spend some time investigating each issue and only escalate bugs that they've spent some time on and know they won't be able to resolve on their own.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, certain issues, like new feature requests, can be escalated to development right away.  In this case, the support team shouldn't spend any time at all on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you may want to consider that the developer who built the feature should probably be the developer who fixes the bug.  This type of structure, where maintenance is kept separate from new development, may encourage sloppy development practices, as developers know that they can simply leave a poorly-written feature for someone else to clean up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if this structure was dictated to you, then perhaps you could make sure each new feature is properly tested and code reviewed by the support team.  Not only will this keep people in check, but the support engineers will also gain some useful knowledge about what part of the code to go to for each feature.  They'll feel more in control of their destiny by participating in quality control, and they'll also gain the necessary domain knowledge to be effective when an issue is escalated to the support team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T00:42:03.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1627" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-10T07:07:15.187" Score="10" ViewCount="8335" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to manage IT maintenance operations like a project, with typical project management mechanisms including scope, time, and cost planning? In our project we experience difficulties in such a management of our IT infrastructure support department. We don't know how to define their scope, how to control it, and how to make sure that the work is done. They are not developing any software but organizing our server space. Sometimes (and very often) their mistakes severely affect the entire project. I'm interested in finding some formal or semi-formal instruments on IT department management and coordination with the rest of the business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="882" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2014-05-21T12:27:24.723" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T12:27:24.723" Title="How to manage and control IT support department?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1622" CreationDate="2011-04-10T08:56:50.490" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;overreaching pressures on developers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is a good sign of poor project management. If you try to solve the problem and &lt;strong&gt;protect team from the PM&lt;/strong&gt; you have to restrict PM's rights in some way. That will inevitably lead to even bigger problems in project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, I'd suggest to replace the PM or educate him/her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T08:56:50.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1590" CreationDate="2011-04-10T10:55:19.790" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend to start with something more programming-specific, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Rational_Unified_Process&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;RUP&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Solutions_Framework&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MSF&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28development%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt; certifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T10:55:19.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1627" CreationDate="2011-04-10T15:03:20.750" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main problem with maintenance and support teams is that it's usually really hard to plan their work in reasonable way in any longer time span.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we define maintenance team as one which reacts either to problems within project (bugs, issues, inquiries) or to requests submitted by others (client, other teams) it's more like dealing with constant priority changes. If there's critical bug submitted we likely deal with it in the first place before moving to regular stuff. If there are other (major or minor) bugs which have solution deadline they also go up through priority list as the deadline approaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However even though it's hard to plan team work in any detailed way as the plan is going to change a number of times, you still can organize process in a way which just takes such situation as given. A very good method to try here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt; as it doesn't force the team to plan work up front but allows to react to priority changes in a neat way. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2010/11/beauty-of-kanban.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2010/11/beauty-of-kanban.html&lt;/a&gt; as example of how Kanban in terms of reacting for frequent priority changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban also does a very good job in terms of visualizing what the team is doing now, what they're going to do next, any problems they might have, individual responsibilities for tasks etc. In given situation not only may it help you to track their work but also help them to see what they're really have on the plate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also with Kanban it doesn't really matter what kind of tasks the team deals with as it wasn't designed with a purpose of applying it to software development only, so it can be perfectly used for the team dealing with infrastructure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T15:03:20.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1622" CreationDate="2011-04-10T15:08:40.877" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of managers assume that management is about putting right amount of “pressure” on developers. The underlying assumption often seems to be that developers are a bunch of idiots who have no sense of priority and will work based on the amount of pressure managers put on them. If that's the culture you want to build, that's how your developers will react.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would recommend instead, is hiring kickass programmers who are smart. Exposing some aspects of the business side to them, being completely open about everything e.g. what do we lose if we do not ship this feature by next month. Most developers sense urgency and react very maturely when you trust them. You will be surprised to see that most developers go out of their way if they sense a need of urgency or firefighting within their projects. The moment you have to “put pressure” on a team you have failed as a startup. Maybe you've failed at recruitment or failed at trusting people, but none the less, you have failed as a startup. My personal experience is that if you teams are awesome and your management is completely transparent the teams will react to the situations pretty much automatically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also have to remember that while Peopleware was an awesome book, a lot of other books recommend that you involve the development teams while making the schedules. Honor their opinions and let them pick their own timelines. That way the timelines will be much more realistic and they will be aware of the business importance if these are not met. Plus, they can also suggest workaround and the team (both managers and developers) can collectively drop features which are not hugely important intelligently when they near a timeline and discover that they are not going to meet it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, you don’t get a fast paced vehicle by getting yourself behind a automobile and pushing it really hard. You get fast pace by buying a car with a really fast engine. Culture is no different. You don't need to push to build a fast paced culture. You just need a strong, wiser, competent, strong team of programmers. That and you need the fuel of trust, team work, friendship, understanding and empathy to keep the speed going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8143" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T15:08:40.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1622" CreationDate="2011-04-10T15:21:35.727" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you think about most successful startups these are usually stories about passion and involvement to achieve some kind of big goal, or make big vision come true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the trick is to get people who genuinely care about your startup and its success. Of course you still shouldn't expect people would work crazy hours just to push the product ahead but chances are good they will at least run an extra mile. In matters much not only in terms of engagement or staying late on occasions but also in terms of their involvement in product development -- sharing their thoughts and ideas what can be done better, getting them to promote the product among their friends etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you analyze &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessinsider.com/the-25-best-startup-fail-stories-of-all-time-2010-10&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this set of startup failures&lt;/a&gt; you can bring many of them to some kind of lack of engagement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you happen to base on just average hires to work on your startup finding the right balance will always be hard. In startup it's more valuable to have someone who maybe not that skilled but at least they genuinely care. And that would be what I aimed for in this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-10T15:27:49.717" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T15:27:49.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1574" CreationDate="2011-04-10T16:22:06.273" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use Mind Maps (XMind is my preferred tool) for the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Creating detailed Work Breakdown Structures - it is very easy to create them and, with XMind or MindManager, you can easily export them to many formats, including PDF and share them with larger audiences.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Documenting and communicating high-level scope for my projects - works great with project boards.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Brainstorming ideas (both by myself and with my project team) in a more structured way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planning &amp;amp; communicating the strategy I want to apply to managing &amp;amp; executing different types of activities/projects. Examples: &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planning my work for past and future books to publish and sharing the strategy with publishers, my team, etc. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planning the launch of the websites I work with my team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planning study cases.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally Mind Maps are inputs to all the project plans I create and also awesome communication tools during the execution of projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="409" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T16:22:06.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1623" CreationDate="2011-04-10T16:23:50.713" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd leave much of that to self-organization. It seems you have 4 lines of support: key users, help desk, support and development team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My idea: set people a goal that they should solve any issues they can investing reasonable amount of time -- you don't want help desk guys to learn programming. The let them pass the case to another line of support if they believe they won't handle with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming people want to their best you should actually find some balance in terms of what should be escalated deeper in organization. Also support team should get some insight what kind of code-related issues they should fix by themselves and which they should pass to development team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case your teams don't do their best you will probably want to store issues with people who dealt with them, when they were escalated etc. If something doesn't work smoothly you will quickly see some red flags, e.g. support team complaining that help desk pass them issues which should be easily solvable by help desk guys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then it's leader's job to find out what's wrong. The reason may be some guys are trying to test the system verifying how far they can go, but it's also possible that they lack some training or information or are just overburdened. Specific solutions will depend on specific issues here but leader will definitely see whenever some problems pop up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of task prioritization I'd use similar approach. I'd let the previous group decide what is the priority, e.g. help desk sets/adjusts priority when they pass the issue to support. Then if something goes wrong you need some kind of escalation path from key users up to the leader so they might point something important gets ignored, so the leader gets warnings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T16:23:50.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1616" CreationDate="2011-04-10T16:38:16.360" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You cannot be held accountable for that over which you have no authority.  This is a case of assigned responsibility without authority.  The PM in this case should set budget limits for the maintainenance team.  This is the only control that can be exercised over the current situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="113" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T16:38:16.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1597" CreationDate="2011-04-10T16:45:27.903" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm guessing you will soon add version control issues to the list of problems.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of the replies to your post point to one thing: adopt and follow a process.  I'd also recommend that everyone has to be on board with the &quot;one&quot; process and that it extend to code control and website versioning. A methodology is a wonderful thing for making life easier.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="113" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T16:45:27.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1627" CreationDate="2011-04-10T18:30:39.187" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a danger in trying to use PM methodology to manage an operational process. PM methodology - waterfall, agile, Prince2, whatever - is designed to deal with temporary endeavors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you build the processes you need to make thinks happen in the support department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are unfamiliar with process development, you can find all kinds of resources on line. The basic steps are;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make a list of everything your department needs to do&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;organize it into process groups&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;document the steps for each process &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;start improving the processes &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T18:30:39.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1079" CreationDate="2011-04-11T07:02:21.733" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A project can remain Prince2 for as long as it adheres to the 7 prince2 principles. I have a detailed PDF on this found at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.MasterBusinessChronicles.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Master Business Chronicles Blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user884" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-04-30T02:04:28.717" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T02:04:28.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1627" CreationDate="2011-04-11T13:41:38.857" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Technology_Infrastructure_Library&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ITIL&lt;/a&gt; may help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-11T13:41:38.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1641" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-11T13:59:04.827" Score="5" ViewCount="232" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to find publicly available lists of risks which I can use in my own risk identification processes. Maybe risk taxonomies or just risk lists. Can anyone share such links?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-10-12T19:05:24.187" Title="Public risk taxonomies/lists?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;risk&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2012-10-01T03:44:54.523" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1627" CreationDate="2011-04-11T14:34:42.847" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I have had support responsibilities I found it was a very successful week if I got the planned work done on two days.  A lot of support time may be taken up responding to problem reports.  Even if the problem is out of your control you still need to determine that it isn't in your control.  You may then need to manage the response to the problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are projects (usually on the small side) within the work that the support group will be handling.  Setting up a process to make those happen could be worthwhile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one area ITIL is reported to be best suited to is managing support groups.  I would consider implementing that area of ITIL. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2011-04-11T14:34:42.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1641" CreationDate="2011-04-11T15:02:04.857" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're looking for risks, look at risk registers from previous projects. Those should be more relevant and accurate to whatever you're working on in your company. If they don't exist, try to get other PMs who worked on similar projects to list a couple for you and email them to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, risks are very domain specific; risks in web development are not at all like risks in construction. So I don't think a public list exists, and if it did, I don't know how generic it would be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-04-11T15:02:04.857" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1627" CreationDate="2011-04-11T15:20:43.403" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may be considered as a project itself &quot; &lt;strong&gt;IT Operations Alignment&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to manage the service delivered by the IT Support Team you will need liaise with the Team Lead to understand the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Current &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Process Logic for IT Operations&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (planning, approval requirements, etc...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Current &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Service Level of Agreement&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_level_agreement&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SLA&lt;/a&gt;) to deliver solutions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Resource Availability&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (remote teams, on-site testers, etc...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have gathered all relevant information regarding their processes try to match these with your own ones and identify any gaps or areas of improvement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Document Agreed Business Process and Operations/Projects&lt;/strong&gt; - defining the scope of your business/project and where their support must imply.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Agree a Service Level of Agreement&lt;/strong&gt; - for an estimated timing of resolution according to the severity of the issue/requirement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Define and classify the defects or incidents&lt;/strong&gt; according to the timing agreed on the SLA; &lt;em&gt;e.g. Critical issues to be resolved in less than 24h, Critical incidents can be unavailability of the system or servers down. Moderate issues to be resolved within 72h, and so forth...&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I would also recommend building a &lt;strong&gt;robust defect reporting mechanism&lt;/strong&gt; which interfaces with IT. A good example could be eTracker, Jira, or SharePoint. By using these tools you can raise items according to the agreed scope and track the progress, flag concerns, escalate unresolved issues to senior management, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a separate note, I would also consider that depending on the complexity of the teams and/or the business the maintenance of this relationship between IT Support and Operations may need to be managed by a separate role. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2011-04-11T15:20:43.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1616" CreationDate="2011-04-11T16:44:32.403" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is always tricky, the reputation of the project manager is affected by the 'post implementation defect fixes' but the operational teams feel that the project is over. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the project manager shouldn't try to enforce anything - they will get a reputation for being difficult. The key here is to be clear about responsibilities and hand over. If the PM is responsible for the fixes, he/she needs to negotiate with the operational manager for resource time. Working with the project sponsor to make sure everyone knows who needs to do what, then documenting the hand over, will go a long way toward resolving the problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-04-11T16:44:32.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1646" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6236" CreationDate="2011-04-11T18:38:03.293" Score="13" ViewCount="8963" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of side discussions here on PMSE brought me to this: what exactly do we understand when we say &quot;a project?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most obvious thing is to start with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia definition&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A project is a temporary endeavor,&#xA;  having a defined beginning and end&#xA;  (usually constrained by date, but can&#xA;  be by funding or deliverables),&#xA;  undertaken to meet unique goals and&#xA;  objectives, usually to bring about&#xA;  beneficial change or added value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However this brings me to another problem: using this definition in orthodox way would make many ventures, well, non-projects. Consider Google search as an example - its development isn't constrained by date or funding or specific deliverables, yet my guess is no one would deny it is a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, many R&amp;amp;D projects don't suit the definition well. Same with many startup projects which change rapidly along with their constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, even if we think about &quot;classic&quot; software projects, when exactly do they end? I mean there's maintenance and operations and such and you can treat it as a part of a project or not. If the former is true we come back to constraint problem - how long is the venture going to last?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So what would be a common definition of a software project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I didn't try to make the question cross-industrial as that would be even more difficult to define, so let's stick with software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-07-28T22:05:58.543" LastActivityDate="2016-11-18T10:58:11.297" Title="What is the generally-accepted definition of a &quot;software project?&quot;" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;definition&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1641" CreationDate="2011-04-11T19:27:46.920" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mitre.org/work/sepo/toolkits/risk/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Risk Management Toolkit&lt;/a&gt; on the Mitre.org site is probably the best resource on the web for risk management. Look on the right under &lt;em&gt;Taxonomies&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a smaller and useful list at the end of Tom Kendrick's &quot;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0814413404&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Identifying and Managing Project Risk&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But note that I agree with Ashes: you can use these for inspiration, but handle with care!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-04-11T19:27:46.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1646" CreationDate="2011-04-11T20:16:03.763" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that the IT / software industry is guilty of using terminology in an imprecise manner to suit itself - which is ironic, when you consider how accurate a developer must be when writing code!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, a project is defined by its original, baselined scope, with variations to the scope having to be agreed by appropriate governance. Perhaps that's the Prince 2 training kicking in!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very often, we use the term &quot;project manager&quot; to mean &quot;the manager who once ran the project but now is responsible for all aspects of the system and will remain in this position until either he or the system dies&quot;. That is not project management. It may be commonplace: it may even be what your organisation wants; but it is not project management in any formal sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want the project to include handover to operations / support, write that into the project scope, and close the project once the scope has been completed. If the same manager takes care of the work afterwards, that's fine, but recognise him as the in-life manager, and no longer the project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-04-11T20:16:03.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1515" CreationDate="2011-04-12T02:48:53.453" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We keep the releases very small -- to 3 months or less. This gives us a reasonable shot at creating a groomed backlog to represent the scope of the release. We actually use a Kanban process to flow the feature requests through research, specification, discussion, review, and approval status while keeping WIP under control. This isn't an ideal mix, but is (for the time being at least) a reasonable compromise between our company's Waterfall and Agile camps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user888" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-14T08:34:16.037" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T08:34:16.037" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1478" CreationDate="2011-04-12T03:37:20.023" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;While not disagreeing at all with ashes at all, I have a slightly different take on the most valuable metrics and tend to report the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lead Time&lt;/strong&gt;: Also used predictively as &quot;your wait from this point is approximately N days&quot;. This is the average time in working days from the customer's request to delivery for a specific class of service.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cycle Time&lt;/strong&gt;: Really the same as lead time, but with a different starting point for measuring. This is the average time in working days from the team accepting it as &quot;ready&quot; to delivery for a specific class of service. The difference between Lead and Cycle time is the time it spends sitting in a backlog being ignored.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Throughput&lt;/strong&gt;: How many work items are delivered on average in a given time period for a given class of service. This is essentially velocity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many people like the Cycle and Lead time measurements as much as the throughput because it explicitly tells you how reactive your team/organization is. I tend to avoid velocity of stories because it includes the teams estimate, and is thus easily gamed by the teams, especially if they're expected to show progressive improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the second part of your question, it depends entirely on the context of the team. I can't imagine running a distributed or large project without some sort of electronic tooling support, and have personally had good success with both Rally and Microsoft's Team Foundation work item tracking. For small projects, it's less than 5 minutes effort to capture it from a card wall each day, allowing easy graphing with Excel or on big visible paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T03:37:20.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1578" CreationDate="2011-04-12T03:51:39.573" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been using the ORID approach lately. Essentially, this is a four step approach that funnels the team's focus from sharing observations through collaboratively committing to actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Observations&lt;/strong&gt;: I saw... He said... The work took... There was a bug about...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reflections&lt;/strong&gt;: I felt... I was reminded... I was excited by... I was surprised by...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Interpretations&lt;/strong&gt;: I thought... I realized... I learned... I believe...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Decisions&lt;/strong&gt;: I will...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When teams are able to restrain their desire to jump ahead to making decisions, I've found that they are able to stimulate a lot of new perspectives across the team by sharing the observations they each found relevant. Often, this allows a more complete picture of a situation to emerge, and allows people to express their opinions and perspectives on the different possibilities more easily. Once these perspectives are out for all to share, it's much easier to identify the solution that everybody can embrace, leading to a relatively quick and effective decisioning/actioning portion. The important thing is that the process is focused around something (a sprint, a specific bug for root cause, etc) and that the team exists with a consensus and commitment on the desired actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find an effective ORID can be done on a very focused aspect in about 30 minutes, with 60-90 being ideal for broader retrospectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an example about how Rally uses them, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rallydev.com/agileblog/2010/07/10-steps-to-successful-marketing-using-agile-and-lean-practices/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;check out the example under #2&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T03:51:39.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1578" CreationDate="2011-04-12T03:58:12.143" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I'm not using ORID, I always include the following four stages in any retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Brainstorm&lt;/strong&gt;: I create an area of silence and safety, and people put their thoughts, perspectives, desires, and decisions onto a board using sticky notes. Typically, this is a 10 minute period of no conversation, merely writing and reading, and the notes are distributed into a starfish (start/stop/more/less/keep) diagram.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cluster&lt;/strong&gt;: Again silently, but much more animated, the team works quietly to group the brainstormed ideas into similar topics. Often, the entire team's focused on the same problem but approaches it from different perspectives (&quot;Stop releasing buggy code&quot; vs. &quot;Start doing code reviews&quot; vs. &quot;Write more automated tests&quot;). I advise notating the +/-//= on the card before they start getting reordered&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Prioritize&lt;/strong&gt;: I don't feel teams can be effective in tackling everything at once, so I use something like dot-voting to get the team's decision on which 1-3 items are worth the most discussion and attention. The rest are respected, but not carried into actioning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Actioning&lt;/strong&gt;: The team needs to decide on specific actions and commit to carrying through with them before the next retrospective. This creates a consistent improvement cadence. Insist on real commitments, not &quot;we'll start...&quot;. Instead, use &quot;We will schedule 3...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know where I got this format specifically, but I know I didn't invent any single aspect of this process (the overall concoction may be mine). I wish I had better citations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T03:58:12.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1646" CreationDate="2011-04-12T09:18:33.817" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/PMBOK-Guide-and-Standards/Standards-Library-of-PMI-Global-Standards-Projects.aspx&quot;&gt;PMBOK Guide 4th Edition&lt;/a&gt;, page 5:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A project is temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google Search is a product, created by some project. Every new version of Google Search is a new service to the original product. Maintenance, for example, is a service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Misunderstanding of 1) temporary nature and 2) uniqueness of deliverables leads to misunderstanding of project management &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle&quot;&gt;triple constraint&lt;/a&gt;. It's mission critical for a project manager &lt;strong&gt;to separate project from its product&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T09:18:33.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1623" CreationDate="2011-04-12T09:40:02.510" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your aim, in this case, is to bother the development team as less as possible. They are actually not part of the helpdesk, but only some kind of last resort. They have other projects to deal with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if a problem is not crashing the whole system or blocking the users or something of the same &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;severity&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, you should not escalate it to the development team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prioritizing the tasks of the support team can be done by 2 means: either you put somebody at the head of the support team to manage these questions or you let the team organize itself, using bugtracking tools, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T09:40:02.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1655" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1660" CreationDate="2011-04-12T09:42:51.407" Score="11" ViewCount="1123" Body="&lt;p&gt;Metrics are valuable tools to measure performance and to manage projects/people. Nevertheless, I have started to encounter certain issues with regards to the measurement of my team's performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Members of the team have started to believe that &lt;em&gt;&quot;more is better&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, and they are trying to get involved in additional assignments. I was pleasantly surprised with this turn of events; &lt;em&gt;the team is motivated and want more challenges to keep developing their skills and grow a reputation within the Company&lt;/em&gt;. Therefore, even though the tasks weren't fully completed successfully, the contribution was appreciated and noted as part of their development plans. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, following up on several 1:1 reviews with certain members of the team, I realized that the real intention behind this was the number of assignments on which they have participated rather than the quality of their performance, using these metrics to request a salary increase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I implement mechanisms to measure and balance Quality over Quantity on my Team's Performance Metrics?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can we motivate people to increase their level of involvement in the projects taking into account the quality expectations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-10-01T03:40:19.553" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T03:40:19.553" Title="Team Management by Metrics" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1655" CreationDate="2011-04-12T11:31:07.113" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You change what you measure (I think that's a quote from Tom DeMarco or List). If you want better quality, measure quality by the # of defects/issues found in QA or overall end user satisfaction. Be careful about rewarding individuals instead of teams because that's what you will end up with. I would recommend creating a simple list of 3 items to measure for reviews, define to a degree how you will measure and keep in place a combination of qualitative and quantitative measurements. Not everything can be measured with a ruler.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="458" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-15T16:05:18.727" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T16:05:18.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1655" CreationDate="2011-04-12T11:31:19.227" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not just confined to the management of people but is a rather common issue with many things that are measured.  The metrics you choose to use need to be well thought out such that you are not measuring the wrong thing, creating two measures that contradict each other, incenting behavior in the wrong direction, or fixing one area but breaking another.  When I observe this happening, I find it was due to two things: metrics implemented too quickly to get the program going or not having enough flexibility in the program to alter the metrics as you learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in your case, it sounds like you had one metric for quantity that did its job; it motivated folks to fill their plate with work.  But you did not have a corresponding metric on the quality of the performance of the work.  Start from the top--the goals and objectives of the organization over the next period--and redesign your metrics for alignment.  Carefully look for inconsistencies and do some if-then scenarios to ensure you are not creating any unintended consequences.  Benchmark your new metrics, then press go.  Re-evaluate after a period of time to see if you erred in your metric design and be flexible enough to admit it and change it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T11:31:19.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1655" CreationDate="2011-04-12T11:31:24.890" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simple rule is: &lt;strong&gt;you get what you measure&lt;/strong&gt;. If you measure a number of assignments you will see a lot of them being undertaken by people. If you look for a number of bugs you'll have virtually tons of them etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually I find extremely difficult to create metrics which work universally for different people in the team. What works much better is goals. If the team shares common goal, like completing a project on time and on scope you will see more self-organized positive behaviors than you would if you tried to introduce specific metrics to incentivize specific actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you try to optimize specific part of the system, e.g. using single metric, you usually get suboptimal behavior of the whole system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In short: think more about goals, which are shared by the team and let people organize in a way which brings them closer to achieve the goal instead of measuring, and optimizing, specific fragments of the whole process.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another trick is to make the goal achievable so people actually believe they are able to achieve it, otherwise the result will be pretty much the opposite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T11:31:24.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1655" CreationDate="2011-04-12T12:56:01.673" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to create &lt;strong&gt;a conflict between metrics&lt;/strong&gt;, in order to keep them productive (and non-destructive, like in your business case just explained).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have a metric that motivates people to produce more you need to create a metric that de-motivates them to produce low quality. In every industry such metric pairs could be different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T12:56:01.673" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1655" CreationDate="2011-04-12T13:24:35.837" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have a specific answer, because the specifics need to be customized to your organization and perhaps even your project. One thing I do strongly believe in is that if they are necessary because of the political environment, at least make them team-level or even division-level metrics to ensure everybody is working to the shared goal rather than their own individual goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, before defining any goals, I highly recommend you read (at least) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vitalsmarts.com/influencer_book.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Influencer&lt;/a&gt;, as it provides an incredible six-influence model to understanding how to build effective incentives to create the desired result. The main goal is not to have any competing signals, as the opposition degrades or even cancels the effectiveness of the incentives. I'd also recommend reading through &lt;a href=&quot;http://danariely.com/the-books/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Predictably Irrational&lt;/a&gt; and perhaps &lt;a href=&quot;http://danariely.com/the-books/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Upside of Irrationality&lt;/a&gt;. These two books provide many easily-understood experiments that point out the unexpected results of our attempts to coerce people through incentives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T13:24:35.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1513" CreationDate="2011-04-12T21:11:44.510" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found that sometimes mixing up the attendees will bring out new ideas. If you put a vendor, a user and a couple of the team members in one group, they will start to look at the ideas from a different perspective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T21:11:44.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1655" CreationDate="2011-04-12T21:15:24.320" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is always tricky because you can't think of all the repercussions of any measurement. I've found it's more about how you describe the metric than anything else. If you say we want to increase X then you will get an increase in X - perhaps to the detriment of Y. If you say we want to increase X and then see a related increase in Y, you narrow the possibility that someone is only going to focus on grinding out more X. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T21:15:24.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1497" CreationDate="2011-04-13T00:29:10.763" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a very small linguistic difference between the two titles. In my experience, there are only a couple of differences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A project manager is almost always involved in budgets, purchasing, and approvals whereas a project lead tends to be an advisor instead of a decision maker.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A project manager is more often involved in HR/staffing related decisions than a project lead&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A project manager tends to be person who starts, organizes, &quot;sells&quot; a project to management, gets it staffed, monitors the project, deploys it, and closes out a project. A project lead roles normally starts after the project is a &quot;go&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that the distinction between the two titles is only mildly useful. In a large organization with long running, multi-phase projects, it might be a more useful distinction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T00:29:10.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1457" CreationDate="2011-04-13T00:35:42.337" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since I started out as an AutoCAD drafter for architectural firms designing buildings, I am a big fan of software architectural diagrams because I tend to be a graphically oriented person. However, not everyone agrees with me on that. This seems like another &quot;6 month&quot; type of question - draw whatever information &lt;strong&gt;now&lt;/strong&gt; that you think will be critical 6 months into the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to tools, I can get a lot of mileage out of Visio but I am really comfortable with the software. You can do really good diagrams with Balsamiq Mockups that have a rough look-and-feel that offer the right image for an early project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T00:35:42.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1646" CreationDate="2011-04-13T05:10:25.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While both yegor256 and Iain9688's answers are great and complementary, I'd like to add my two cents worth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you ever seen an endeavour that was not limited by any type of constraint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to take one example, even google search is limited in resources. Sure the limit is quite high in the present day, but they had to start out with small budgets like everybody, and deliver tangible results with those tight budgets. The fact that their budget is likely to be huge nowadays does not abstract them from harsh reality. To be a successful business they still need to produce results in a fashion that consumes less than it brings in, in a timely manner. This can only be ensured by setting milestones for specific deliverables to be developed within a given timeframe with a limited amount of resources. To you some of those constraints might appear so large that they do not exist, but to the business that sets them they are very real nonetheless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like others have said your product or service may not have a theoretical end of life (although even that is a rare thing - technology advances and changes generally take over at some point or other, so watch your competition and market advances). But to make your product or service evolve, you need to set targets to reach. The act of reaching for those targets is what a project is about. The art of going about this act is project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="179" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T05:10:25.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="852" CreationDate="2011-04-13T11:26:57.020" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found quite nice articles on estimation techniques. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/articles/estimation-toolkit&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.infoq.com/articles/estimation-toolkit&lt;/a&gt; &amp;amp; &lt;a href=&quot;http://agile101.net/2009/08/18/agile-estimation-and-the-cone-of-uncertainty/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://agile101.net/2009/08/18/agile-estimation-and-the-cone-of-uncertainty/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally - I have recently had a interesting discussion that after you have requirements to estimate it would be helpfully to ask yourself: &quot;What's the business value of it? How business would benefit from it?&quot; It would give you a chance to make sure that you understand what should be done so your estimates would be more accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="898" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T11:26:57.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="852" CreationDate="2011-04-13T12:28:30.500" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great comments already posted but I would like to add this:  break this silly notion that there exists a &quot;correct&quot; estimate.  There is no such thing.  I have found that people tend to believe there is this one true estimate--both cost and time--that exists for any given task, work package, control account, or project.  If your estimate is missed, then apparently it was NOT REALISTIC.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practice probabilistic estimation, get used to trying to identify that distribution curve that shows likelihood of some minimum amount of time, a maximum that never really touches zero, and a MODE time.  Setting your deterministic estimate that becomes your baseline when you truly understand the probability becomes a much easier and credible task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T12:28:30.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1669" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1713" CreationDate="2011-04-13T12:43:16.780" Score="3" ViewCount="155" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea here is to improve the quality of the service delivered by the Operations Team in a department responsible for the distribution of Variable Marketing Payments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This team primarily creates programmes to generate the discount premiums to customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following a Customer Satisfaction Survey it has been raised that the Quality of the service needs to improve. The knowledge of the business and the system is limited, therefore the team is not in a position to advise better practises to customers in order to maximise their premiums according to the customer's specific requirements. This issue has been discussed several times with Senior Management who has now acknowledge that there is an issue and wants a plan to resolve this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My proposal is to run this as a formal project, &lt;strong&gt;Operational Quality Improvement Project&lt;/strong&gt;, which at least requires:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Business Case&lt;/strong&gt; - actual issue, costs, business options, benefits, risks...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Planning&lt;/strong&gt; - tasks and timescales to achieve the prime goal...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Implementation and Control&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, Senior Management does not consider this as a Project because it's not software related (incredible!!!), they believe this is something that can happen on the fly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I strongly believe that in order to improve the quality of the programmes delivered the team requires a better understanding of the business, the system and the different usage thus training requirements from an expert in the subjects are a  &lt;em&gt;MUST&lt;/em&gt;. This training has &lt;strong&gt;costs implications&lt;/strong&gt;; hiring an expert and the time that the team will invest on training sessions would impact the creation of Variable Marketing programmes. Again, &lt;strong&gt;planning&lt;/strong&gt; is required to mitigate the impact to our customers. Finally, we would also need to &lt;strong&gt;monitor&lt;/strong&gt; the success of the project, for example by reissuing Customer Satisfaction Surveys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have any suggestions to support my proposal to Senior Management? What other aspects should we need to take into account to present this as a formal project? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2011-04-13T13:35:09.830" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T21:27:40.747" Title="Quality Improvement Projects in Operational Environments" Tags="&lt;politics&gt;&lt;quality&gt;&lt;business-improvement&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1578" CreationDate="2011-04-13T13:06:30.500" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could try 35 technique presented by Lyssa Adkins - see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.coachingagileteams.com/coachingstories/category/thirty-five/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.coachingagileteams.com/coachingstories/category/thirty-five/&lt;/a&gt; &amp;amp; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thiagi.com/pfp/IE4H/march2008.html#Framegame&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.thiagi.com/pfp/IE4H/march2008.html#Framegame&lt;/a&gt; It really works.  I've tried in once for retrospective and it went smoothly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More games/techniques can be found in Agile Retrospective book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0977616649&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Agile-Retrospectives-Making-Teams-Great/dp/0977616649&lt;/a&gt; It's kind of retro bible ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="898" LastEditorUserId="898" LastEditDate="2011-04-13T13:39:21.917" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T13:39:21.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1478" CreationDate="2011-04-13T13:18:29.040" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest you to track following metrics:&#xA;- velocity: number of story points you team delivers during one iterations&#xA;- number of escaped defects: defects that were escaped from your QA efforts and found after release by the customer&#xA;- time to fix defect: average time to fix one defect&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We collect those metrics using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.programeter.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.programeter.com&lt;/a&gt; built by ourselves to track performance and quality of our product development efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="190" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T13:18:29.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1673" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-13T13:41:01.600" Score="3" ViewCount="988" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many great tools helping you to manage your projects or just to track team tasks. But I am looking for a tool to track recurrent tasks of my team. For example, there are lot's of tasks like do weekly code reviews, write a blog post 2 times a week, and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What tools are you using for that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="190" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-10-31T13:19:34.100" LastActivityDate="2018-10-31T13:19:34.100" Title="Tool to track recurrent tasks" Tags="&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;recurring-tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-10-01T03:35:54.177" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1674" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1677" CreationDate="2011-04-13T14:27:22.470" Score="13" ViewCount="289" Body="&lt;p&gt;Background: I am a computer science student and am currently employed as a programmer for a health institution. Recently we discovered the need for a project which is beyond a 1-man job (I am their only programmer), so my boss asked me to assist his working group to get a clear grasp of our requirements which we would then take to a software company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are now in a phase where we would like to get some offers from 2-3 software companies in order to estimate how much functionality we can get for how much money (which is both flexible within a certain margin) and I am starting to wonder how detailed we have to know what we want before doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put that to scale: We started with the idea that 'we need to get rid of this paper pile and enter stuff directly into a computer to speed up the process' and now have an 11-pages requirements elicitation document with a fairly precise description of what we would like to achieve in business-terms plus some non-functional requirements but no use case specifications or GUI mock-ups which show the changed business process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the requirements elicitation document is usually a fairly large part of any software project, I wonder where to stop. Would you recommend me drafting some use cases to get an even more distinguished idea or would I just be doing the contractor's work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="903" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-10-06T18:12:26.283" LastActivityDate="2016-10-06T18:12:26.283" Title="Eliciting Requirements as a Client" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="343" CreationDate="2011-04-13T15:18:10.903" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am late coming to this but I would highly recommend reading the book. It is learning wrapped in a story and is a quick read. It is not the worlds greatest fiction but it gets the point across without being textbook dry. I agree that these two methodologies are cousins and not diametrically opposed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="389" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T15:18:10.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1674" CreationDate="2011-04-13T16:20:48.890" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are basically two approaches you can use here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Try to be pretty specific in terms on what you need.&lt;/strong&gt; If you know you requirements well then just try to write down everything you know, or you think you know. &lt;strong&gt;It is more important to put your knowledge into paper in some way and not the exact way of putting it into paper.&lt;/strong&gt; So go add some use cases but only as long as you believe it has some value, which basically means both you and a vendor would know better what you're building.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also note that often one of big problems regarding projects is misunderstanding or misinterpreting the scope by one of sides or, in other words, making wrong assumptions. This means the more detailed is the scope the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As an alternative you can just accept the fact that &lt;strong&gt;the point in time when you know least about project is at its beginning&lt;/strong&gt; (in your case now) and plan that scope, to some point, may change. &lt;strong&gt;Then you'd like to find a vendor which wants to build the project agile way.&lt;/strong&gt; In short they will be building the project iteratively and you will decide what's the next thing to add basing on what you already got and not only on idea you had at the very beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way you will probably get what you want but you also share consequences of frequent scope changes as you would basically pay for them. This is because this kind of contracts base, at least to some point, on time&amp;amp;material rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As a rule of thumb - the more sure you are about what you want to get the more you should lean toward the first scenario and vice versa: if you aren't exactly sure what you want to build you should consider second scenario as a way to go.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T16:20:48.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1674" CreationDate="2011-04-13T16:42:48.343" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you've done a great job detailing the requirements. My suggestion is to assess why you are hiring the outside firm. If you are looking for new ideas and innovation, take care not to 'tell' the firm what to do in the requirements. If you are looking for someone to grind out the work, you need to detail every feature and process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you aren't sure why, then go to your boss and get clear on that. If you hire a company to do the grinding and they are an innovative design group (or the other way around), you'll struggle to achieve success. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T16:42:48.343" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1669" CreationDate="2011-04-13T16:51:31.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is tricky. Your corporate culture is focus on the project for customers and not internal. There are a couple of ways to approach this. &#xA;1 you can do the discipline under cover and then show success. This means you still create a scope statement, you still plan etc. and you show the process to the sr management as soon as you have success. &#xA;2 the other way is to get some goals - i.e. customer satisfaction rate increase by X%. and then do what you have to to meet the goal and never show the methodology unless you are asked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will depend on your corporate culture. Option 1 can come across as &quot;I know better&quot; in some cultures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T16:51:31.313" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1673" CreationDate="2011-04-13T18:08:02.360" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In terms of tracking I see no difference between recurring and one-time tasks. Basically you want to know how much time you've spent on a specific task so you need to add it somehow to your weekly/monthly schedule. It can be a single task or a separate task for each occurrence, depending on your goals, e.g. whether you just want to know how much you spend on such tasks or you also need to plan people's time in a detailed way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I don't think a specific tool makes any difference here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also you may want just to ignore tracking such tasks and just make sure they're somehow accounted for other work so you don't miss your estimates. See Joel Spolsky's article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Evidence Based scheduling&lt;/a&gt; to see how it can work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T18:08:02.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1673" CreationDate="2011-04-13T19:39:22.147" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about using Google calendars + Remember The Milk? It's simple, portable, and can give you email reminders when things are getting close to deadlines. You can create calenders per team-member (or per task type, eg. writing vs. coding vs. ...) and share them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Supplement this with Remember the Milk, which is a prioritized todo-list manager. You can have it email you when tasks are due if you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the entire workflow would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add tasks that have no due date to Remember the Milk (handles recurring tasks)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add tasks with specific date/time to Google Calendar&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set up both to share what's done and not done publicly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastEditorUserId="36" LastEditDate="2011-04-21T22:39:41.030" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T22:39:41.030" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1574" CreationDate="2011-04-13T21:55:31.533" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have used mind mapping as a day-to-day management tool for about six years and have found that I can no longer live without them for my work. I find that my brain remembers where I have put things on my set of maps and I can usually navigate to the piece of information I want quickly and easily. Switching from a task list to mind maps was a jump from 1-dimensional thinking to 2-dimensional thinking about the work I need to do and it has made me massively more efficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some use-cases that I have found in my work; generally I use the first two on a daily basis and the others less frequently:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Dashboard&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This map shows me everything I am responsible for in my job, at a high level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the right hand side of the map I have delivery responsibilities such as projects I am managing along with nodes representing people that are working for me whose development I need to manage plus other key areas of responsibility such as putting together a training plan for the department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the left hand side of the map I have other things that I want to represent as part of my job that don't necessarily fall into the category of delivery. These include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Notes I have made to discuss with my line manager at our next weekly 1:1 meeting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Books that I want to read to improve my general industry or project management knowledge&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reference notes and diagrams that I will want to refer to all the time such as the list of internal dialling codes, our corporate colour palette, key slides from the latest IT strategy presentation, links to key intranet sites that I have found etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Notes on my colleagues that I can use when asked to provide feedback in our annual review process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I get a new project or responsibility, or find a key piece of information that I will want to refer to again and again, it goes onto this map. I also have an 'archive' node which I keep 'collapsed' (i.e. all sub-nodes are hidden away) and drag items onto once they are done so I never lose any of my history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Current tasks&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This map is an up-to-date view of the tasks that I need to get done. It is a low-level view of actionable items as opposed to the Dashboard map's view of my responsibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The map has four nodes coming out of the centre as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Top-right: High priority, high importance - things I need to get done quickly that are key to my deliveries&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bottom-right: High priority, low importance - things I need to get done but aren't really that important, such as completing my weekly timesheet or booking meeting rooms. Not achieving them will be an inconvenience but I am unlikely to get in serious trouble.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Top-left: Low priority, high importance - things I should be spending more time on in order to progress strategic goals (whether for myself, my projects or my department), for example writing down thoughts on how we as a department should take an approach to testing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bottom-left: Low priority, low importance - tasks that I may not get around to doing but I may still want to pick off one or two of them given the right time and energy to do so.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of the four nodes has tasks listed under it in priority order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever I get given something to do I add it to this map. It stays on this map even if it gets delegated so that I still keep the accountability for making sure it gets done - typically I add an icon to show it has been delegated along with the person's name to whom it has been assigned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As things change I can drag tasks from one of the four nodes to another and once items are completed they get dragged and dropped under an 'archive' node so I have a historical record of things I have completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is my most frequently-updated map.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Objectives&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At my firm we set objectives on an annual basis. I use a mind map to capture all of them on one sheet of paper. As I go through the year I review the map periodically and update it with how I am doing against each of them. Preparing for my review meetings is straightforward - I bring the map up-to-date and then bring copies of it to the meetings with my line manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Individual project mind maps&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I find that these are very useful when I am first getting into a new project and trying to organise my thoughts about a (potentially new) subject. I keep as much data as necessary about each project here - scope, dependencies, intial risks and issues, budgets, org charts, links to key documents etc. Over time, I find that I do not use these day-to-day as other tools such as the project plan and RAID log take the place of the map but it is still useful to have a 'one-page' overview of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best example I have for where this came in useful for a project was where I picked up ownership of an IT project that was to reconcile data from a large number of different systems, the feeds from which were all in various states of development. As I was new to the department I found it very hard to keep up with who was working on what and with what system. Adding the data to a mind map made it very easy for me to quickly navigate to some up-to-date notes when I needed them; I found that my brain could easily remember where the information was and it was a quantum leap from trying to work with notes in my office jotter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Terminology&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a map that documents terminology and acronyms that we use at work along with their meanings. The nodes are sorted alphabetically (clockwise from the top-right) for ease of use and the map is 'balanced' with an equal set of nodes on both sides. This makes it very easy to look up details on any of the terms used in the office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Business analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have successfully used mind maps to represent the output of business analysis work on one sheet of paper. In one of my roles we had requirements from three sets of stakeholders which meant that we needed to make changes to almost all of the systems in our department. I documented the high-level requirements in a map, added nodes representing each of the systems and then included icons representing each of the stakeholder groups along with details of what the impact of their requirements were, estimates for the changes etc. I used lines between nodes along with 'callout' notes to detail interdependencies. The result was a one-page document that helped to easily communicate the overall impact of the requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Brainstorming&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have used mind maps in a number of group sessions where we have had a map up on a screen and captured points as we have discussed them. The team then had a say in what nodes related to the others and how the data should be structured to represent our thoughts. An example is where a number of us came up with the content for an IT induction course, throwing lots of ideas up to start with and then structuring the content so that it had a flow to it whilst covering the topics that we all agreed were important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="95" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T21:55:31.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1673" CreationDate="2011-04-13T22:54:27.580" Score="4" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Outlook&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;rememberthemilk.com&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="158" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T22:54:27.580" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1674" CreationDate="2011-04-14T02:11:50.417" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to Perry's excellent answer, I'd like to say that the level of details you need in requirements is entirely dependant on the level of proficiency the contractors have in many different ways. Just to quote a few:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do they know the subject area?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do they usually work at that scale (is it below their run of the mill project, just what they do, or it is a stretch)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how do they like to work? Some guys are good with getting their own requirements, others need them spelled out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other way to look at it entirely is to take a risk-based approach. What are the risks of things going wrong with one particular set of requirements, what is at stake? A chapter that is more critical to your operations (higher cost if anything goes wrong) needs to be more detailed. A chapter that is less critical needs less detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a particularly important part of your requirements, describing what the user expects (or at least what benefits the user expects) could be a good way to convey intent. Call it a use case if that's your way to think about it, but it does not necessarilly need to be as formal as that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to doing the contractor's job, there is no rule to say you can't do your share if you have the knowledge. But keep in mind that some contractors will want to put their ideas forward so you may be doing work that will be wasted. Or it may be the case, if they like what you have done, that it will save you all time and effort. That depends on the relationship you will build with the chosen contractor, on how well your work stands on its own, and how well you or your boss will negotiate the contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have saved a former employer of mine 8 times my yearly salary by doing 3 months of testing that therefore did not need to be repeated by our key supplier. It did not go brilliantly with our supplier, but 1/ they finally accepted the facts and got more business afterwards anyway; 2/ my bosses were happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That little personal story just to say that circumstances can be on your side or not and saving your boss money should always pay off, even when it is at the expense of slightly more difficult relationships with your supplier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="179" LastEditorUserId="179" LastEditDate="2011-04-14T02:22:06.023" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T02:22:06.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1674" CreationDate="2011-04-14T09:57:36.790" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't draw a line between yourself and your contractors. Instead, try to setup an open environment where information about requirements flows effectively, between all parties. The document about requirements (either a set of UML diagrams or MS Word files or whatever it is) has to become a live platform for all communications between all project participants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And again, never stop to elicit requirements and develop the document. Read more about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iterative_and_incremental_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;iterative and incremental software development paradigms&lt;/a&gt;. Also I'd recommend to read Requirements Development process area of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sei.cmu.edu/library/abstracts/reports/10tr033.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CMMI for Development 1.3&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T09:57:36.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1673" CreationDate="2011-04-14T10:12:35.553" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recurrent tasks don't fit &quot;as is&quot; into &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;project management&lt;/a&gt; paradigm (according to PMBOK). You can't add recurrent tasks into &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_Evaluation_and_Review_Technique&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PERT chart&lt;/a&gt;, and you can't use them in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_breakdown_structure&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WBS&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you can do (and should do) is to translate your recurrent task into a collection of fixed-scope tasks, connected to each other as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependency_%28project_management%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;finish-to-start&lt;/a&gt;. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Task #1: &#xA;  SOW: Audit software artifacts and report defects&#xA;  Duration: 1 day&#xA;  Responsible: John Doe (programmer)&#xA;  Dependencies: none&#xA;Task #2: &#xA;  SOW: Analyze the necessity of the next audit and create new Task&#xA;  Duration: 1 hour&#xA;  Responsible: Mark Kofman (project manager)&#xA;  Dependencies: #1:finish-to-start&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T10:12:35.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="611" CreationDate="2011-04-14T10:17:42.663" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;When faced with this kind of challenge (often, in the past) I ask myself (and then, the team) some questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What's wrong with our system here that allows this kind of thing to happen? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What's up with the social dynamic in this team that makes it hard for people to break &quot;bad news&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How can we all help each other (including the person in question) to reduce the occurrence, impact of this issue?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why do I feel it's &quot;my&quot; team, and why do I feel I have to be &quot;the one&quot; to find the answers?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally, if it really IS an issue specific to ONE person, (it almost always ISN'T), then consider applying the Toyota-ish policy of 3R's (Retrain, redeploy, remove - in that order).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't forget, how you (collectively) resolve the issue WILL have an impact on the social dynamic (for good or ill) for months or even years to come.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;¬ Bob @Flowchainsensei&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also: &lt;a href=&quot;http://leanandkanban.wordpress.com/2010/02/28/vanguard-network-day-25th-february-2010-part-1/&quot;&gt;post by David Joyce mentioning the 3R's&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="866" LastEditorUserId="866" LastEditDate="2011-04-14T10:37:39.690" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T10:37:39.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1669" CreationDate="2011-04-14T10:18:09.540" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Align your objectives with the objectives of your Senior Management. Don't fool yourself that they want quality as first-class priority. Very often it's not true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask them what are the objectives/goals they are going towards. According to the information received, build your project proposal and try again. Don't give up! Sooner or later your proposal will be accepted. And don't try to start this project without explicit commitment from the management!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides that you're absolutely right that such an endeavor shall be managed like a fixed-scope project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T10:18:09.540" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1689" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-14T11:07:32.583" Score="4" ViewCount="4636" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are current world-wide numbers of people who are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PMP (Project Management Professional)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CSM (Certified Scrum Master)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prince2 certified&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T18:42:29.193" Title="Number of PMP, CSM and Prince2-certified PMs" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;prince2&gt;&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1689" CreationDate="2011-04-14T12:36:50.210" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;For &lt;strong&gt;Prince2&lt;/strong&gt; there was a study saying following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the past few years, certification has had a steady growth of approximately 25% per year. This trend is expected&#xA;  to continue for at least a couple of years.&#xA;  The following graph shows the PMI and IPMA certifications. Unfortunately, there are no statistics about the total&#xA;  number of PRINCE2 certified people worldwide since 2000.&#xA;  However estimates are that in 2009, more than half a million people have a PRINCE2 certification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sts.ch/documents/english/pm_certif.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.sts.ch/documents/english/pm_certif.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in 2008 Total (World) &#xA;foundation: 79,885 &#xA;practitioner: 41,791&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Management Professional (PMP)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As of 31 July 2010 (2010 -07-31),&#xA;  there were 393,413 active PMP&#xA;  certified individuals worldwide.  Over&#xA;  4,300 individuals a month, since&#xA;  September 2006, have obtained a PMP&#xA;  certification&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Management_Professional&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Management_Professional&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T12:36:50.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="611" CreationDate="2011-04-14T13:32:24.727" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may be a bit broad of an answer as the problem description is 3rd hand.  You know via another manager that has told you.  There can be all sorts of team dynamics and politics that are not being surfaced via your question.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Communication seems to be a real problem.  Hiding behind emails is not a way to build a highly functioning team.  There sounds like things are been chucked into the &quot;too hard bucket&quot; that are not being discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the progress like for the rest of the team?  Are there any team feelings of being over/underwhelmed?  It is best to ask this anonymously as personal dynamics and the feeling of letting the team down can affect how people react.  &quot;Everything is great!  Full speed ahead off the edge of that cliff.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What sort of development cycle are you working in that the person keeps going through deadlines?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there also a problem with the quality of the work the person is doing?  Is the team also building to a high measurable quality?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the person a key man risk?  Are they responsible for a certain part of the system that no one else can do?  Is this person having to juggle work to help others complete their tasks as they are required on so many features?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the person working on multiple projects at a time or just one?  Is he/she working on more than one feature at a time?  Are there external pressures/people that change the priorities of feature deliveries?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multitasking is a great way to kill productivity and increase errors.  It may be that his WIP (work in progress) is too high.  Is the delivery split into enough slices to allow displayable progress?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not use percentages of progress.  The feature is either done or too large to be done in a short iteration and needs to be split into separate smaller deliverable features.  You do not want to get into the case of &quot;It is 98% done all we have to do is test it now...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these real commitments to external or internal customers for delivery of features or is the delivery part of some sort of Gant burn down chart?  At the end of each deadline is the functionality showcased to the clients?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we are only talking about estimations that's what they are estimations.  A great way to kill team moral and encourage the wrong behaviour is to beat them to death with artificial deadlines.  Once missed and the team scolded then a pattern is set.  You may be dropping quality for the time constraint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="912" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T13:32:24.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1692" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1704" CreationDate="2011-04-14T13:57:23.267" Score="12" ViewCount="341" Body="&lt;p&gt;After two years on a project I finally worked face-to-face with the Project Manager yesterday. The project we work on has one major deliverable - a web site. The project team has roughly 20 people working on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It came as a surprise to me to find out that the PM had never looked at the website before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can see this in a couple of different lights. On one hand, the PM's expertise is in managing the team and the resources, why should they care what the product looks like? On the other hand, a client is ponying up millions for the site and the support services, and you might expect a little more knowledge on the part of the PM regarding the deliverable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I be concerned by this? Does such a lack of knowledge cause problems? Or can the PM act optimally without knowledge of the deliverable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3170" LastEditorUserId="167" LastEditDate="2011-04-25T17:40:16.820" LastActivityDate="2011-04-25T17:40:16.820" Title="Should I be concerned that the PM has never looked at the product?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1693" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1699" CreationDate="2011-04-14T14:16:49.363" Score="16" ViewCount="1199" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it more useful that all the people in a team to communicate with the client or should there be one person - i.e. the project manager that does all the communication and then informs the other members of the team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because we have a client, that likes to have his hands on and get informed on everything that is being done and communicate with each member of the team separately. This has caused a lot of problems to us in terms of communicating with each other etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should we restructure the way we communicate with the client? Would we impose more problems if communication is channeled trough only two people?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="750" LastActivityDate="2011-12-07T11:55:24.653" Title="Number of people in a team that need to communicate with the client?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;communication-management&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1694" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-14T15:19:32.517" Score="2" ViewCount="95" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there an easy way (could be software, but needn't be) to &lt;strong&gt;manage a pool of devices as one can a small library&lt;/strong&gt;? That is, &lt;strong&gt;track who has which device&lt;/strong&gt;, track the status of the devices, when they were signed out, and so on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A shared spreadsheet requires quite a bit of maintenance and quickly becomes out-of-date, and a paper sign-out sheet is too inconvenient for teams across different floors of the same building.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've &lt;strong&gt;only a dozen or so devices&lt;/strong&gt;—phones, cables, chargers—used for tests and demonstrations, but would like to be able to see where and with whom they are at any given time, and rely on that information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="914" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T16:44:12.857" Title="How best to manage a shared pool of testing devices (phones), track who has which device?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2011-04-18T04:01:30.317" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1693" CreationDate="2011-04-14T15:40:06.703" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If this client creates conflict by approaching everybody in your team I would recommend you to establish a &lt;strong&gt;Single Point of Contact&lt;/strong&gt; (SPOC) mechanism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This client will need to go through this allocated person or department in order to seek for info. If the client keeps calling other members of the team you will need to give specific instructions so they immediately forward the call to this SPOC person or group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T15:40:06.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1693" CreationDate="2011-04-14T15:47:18.853" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can unequivocally say there is no right answer to this question.  There are benefits and penalties to both extremes and this will become more of a balancing act between the two.  You control communication through one or two, you can ensure a consistent message going out and less misunderstanding coming in.  Both of those are benefits.  However, you will stifle teaming and risk development of mistrust between client and contractor, and inappropriate filtering both outgoing and incoming messages by your POC.  Penalties.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to feel your way through on this one and find a balance.  Tighten some areas and keep others loose, if possible.  Whatever you choose, capture your risks and go work them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2011-04-14T15:54:33.873" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T15:54:33.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="611" CreationDate="2011-04-14T15:52:37.837" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, it's a &quot;person&quot;, not a &quot;resource&quot;.  A computer is a &quot;resource&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know what you mean and I know that term is used throughout the industry, but it's annoying to people on dev teams and many developers lose a little respect for people when they use that term to refer to people.  We aren't just a cost item that is listed in a spreadsheet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="915" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T15:52:37.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1692" CreationDate="2011-04-14T15:55:02.657" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simple answer would be - if it works for you it is OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't like to work that way. In fact this is one of my major objection against PM's I'm working with. They don't know the project neither from the business side nor from the product side. &#xA;&lt;strong&gt;PM should know the business domain his working with and should be a partner for the client in discussions about the product.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When we talk about the product itself (Web site in your case): &lt;strong&gt;How can the PM understand bugs, misconceptions, troubles the users are falling into while using the product if he has never seen it?&lt;/strong&gt; I believe that PM should be able to explain how to use the product, how to get something done click-by-clik. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T15:55:02.657" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1693" CreationDate="2011-04-14T16:11:03.890" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my team it works like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When we are facing a problem, something bad has happened, the project is on fire - we usually have &lt;strong&gt;contact with the client on &lt;em&gt;Management Level&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (either PM or TeamLead). The same applies when the client asks how much/long would it take to add a feature X. In such cases developers are told to forward the conversation to &lt;em&gt;Management Level&lt;/em&gt;. Client have people on &lt;em&gt;Management Level&lt;/em&gt; on his side too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, if developers are working on a specific feature, or there is a bug submitted from a specific user at client side, &lt;strong&gt;developers are obliged to contact the person directly&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We came to this approach from trying more restrictive ones: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Single Point of Contact - we had problems with distortions of the messages passeed: from the client to the SPoC person, than to developers, and than back the same way&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Everybody - we had problems that some things were consulted with developers excluding &lt;em&gt;Management Level&lt;/em&gt;; another problem was, that developers were directly blamed about something by client&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now we succesfully work with our model for about a year. &lt;strong&gt;Developers have less distractions&lt;/strong&gt; from clients, and on the other side &lt;strong&gt;they get specific information on low-level tasks directly&lt;/strong&gt; from the person interested in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T16:11:03.890" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1693" CreationDate="2011-04-14T16:15:14.127" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In agile methods you get a role of Product Owner or similar, which creates single person responsible for working on the product vision on your side. However I would suggest the following (assuming that your team is &amp;lt;10 people):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I would make one person responsible for the general communication regarding the project/product. This role can be transitive for example each month.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion it's good to arrange a meeting from time to time where all team members can meet the client or his representative to talk about the next steps in the project. This is the easiest way to take everybody on the same page. Of course you can use variations depending size of the team and size of the project. For example the meeting can be arranged around some working group and a particular part of the system.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To avoid the effect of client loosing his ability to stay informed, you may arrange shorter meeting from time to time. This would use the protocol of a daily stand-up, but it does not need to be daily. The point is to allow team inform everybody else what is happening. It needs to be short and client needs to listen. You may allow him to comment at the end, but the meeting itself cannot be used for discussions. They need to be taken later, preferably by the person assigned in the point 1.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one thing to avoid for sure is to allow contacting a particular developer ad-hoc. This will lead to misunderstanding and loss of information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="435" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T16:15:14.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1694" CreationDate="2011-04-14T16:31:25.650" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I ran into a similar problem when dealing with a library mobile handsets for testing. We found the following setup to be fairly effective, although it is a version of a paper signout:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each phone was in its own little box with all the associated cords and whatnots&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each box had a notecard in it with lines for names and the model of the phone written at the top&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you took a phone, you wrote your name on last available line on the card and left it on the shelf in the place of the box&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The shelf with the phones was next to the desk of a semi-protective QA guy who was good at reminding people to leave a card when they took a phone&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you brought the phone back, you crossed out your name on the card&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its a simple method, and it doesn't always hold up perfectly, but we could usually ID who had the phones more easily than not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="916" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T16:31:25.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1693" CreationDate="2011-04-14T17:17:51.753" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a number of factors you should consider why deciding on your communication strategy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Shortening communication paths.&lt;/strong&gt; Basically the shorter communication path is the better. If information goes from IT guy at client's side, through client's PM, your PM, your tech lead to your developer you're risking misunderstandings. It would be more efficient if the IT guy at client's side could contact the developer directly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Controlling outgoing messages.&lt;/strong&gt; Leaving all communication paths wide open may result in a situation where your developer is making some unreasonable promises just because from his perspective it seems a good thing to do. It may be about promising some feature on tomorrow but it also may be telling that &lt;em&gt;&quot;this would take me just a couple of days,&quot;&lt;/em&gt; which may even be true, unless you have to account how it would affect the rest of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Controlling incoming messages.&lt;/strong&gt; Sometimes you deal with one of those difficult clients. They either tend to yell at everyone with no real reason or are changing their mind like twice an hour. In both cases you probably want someone who would isolate the team from such client so you'd have some kind of filter passing to the team only relevant and meaningful messages.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Getting right people informed.&lt;/strong&gt; What you basically want in project is people who know every piece of information they need. Now if you have multiple communication paths you may end up in a situation where the client told a developer something which should be shared with a PM and a tech lead but the developer thought everyone knew that and the message wasn't passed. On the other hand the same situation may happen if you have a single contact person and she sucks at deciding who should know what. In this case the decision is heavily dependent on people in project team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Keeping internal affairs, well, internal.&lt;/strong&gt; It's not that rare when we deal with some project-related issues and we don't want to share everything with the client. Especially when relations between you and the client are rather far from ideal you might prefer to communicate well-thought messages instead of updating them with every bit of information related to the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Taking into consideration overall picture.&lt;/strong&gt; Most likely a project team isn't the only group which is contacting the client, you likely have other projects done by different teams, salespeople or management contacting the client as well. Since you're the part of the organization you should take into consideration the big picture as well. If the standard approach within the company is to discuss every issue very openly with the client (rather typical case for agile organization) you might want to have more communication paths. On the other hand if you try to play with the client to suck the most out of them (sometimes happens in big corporations) the communication paths should be very limited.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's all about finding the right balance.&lt;/strong&gt; I'd say the goal is to communicate efficiently, which means messages are relevant and reach the right addressee as soon as possible, however you can't forget about your environment and its constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your specific case, since the current situation is a problem, I'd work to change it toward more controlled, but it's hard to say where the balance is. You may want to cut communications paths here and there and see if it helps. If so, go a step further and evaluate the result again and so on and so forth until you find your own equilibrium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-12-07T11:55:24.653" LastActivityDate="2011-12-07T11:55:24.653" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1692" CreationDate="2011-04-14T17:41:37.263" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on how the project is organized on your side. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a project management perspective we can point 3 areas which are, or can be, interesting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Organizational.&lt;/strong&gt; This is all about organizing the team and the work to be done. Basically if the project is staffed properly, everyone knows what to do and things go according to the plan (which also means there is the plan) PM did a good job. This is something vast majority of PMs do.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Business.&lt;/strong&gt; This is all about knowing business background for the project. Basically when you're building something for the client you need someone who is a partner for discussions about business. In your case it can hardly be done at all without knowing what the product (website) does.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Technical.&lt;/strong&gt; This is all about knowing general system architecture, along with all integration stuff, etc. You need someone who understands that and can discuss with the client all the details when needed. Depending on a client required knowledge in this area can be very small, e.g. when I want you to build my company's website, or very big, e.g. when I want you to integrate your project into my telecommunication infrastructure which is always a mess.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In big projects sometimes there's clear distinction between business, technical and organizational roles. If the sole PM responsibility is to cover organizational stuff and you have other project team members who cover business and technical roles then I see no problems. However if you expect your PM to be competent in at least one of other two roles, not knowing the product at all is surprising. I'd do that just out of curiosity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also: think more about roles in the project and not about titles. &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1177/is-it-the-team-members-responsibility-to-correct-pms-weaknesses-or-at-least-in&quot;&gt;It isn't always PM who does project management work.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T17:41:37.263" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1705" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1722" CreationDate="2011-04-14T20:07:14.250" Score="10" ViewCount="496" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently joined an existing large, complex project to deliver some specific outputs. The only information that the PM gave me related directly to the part of the project that I am responsible for, and not to the wider aspects of the project. I can do my part without knowing much about the rest of the project, but it would be nice to understand the whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should a PM communicate to new team members if they join mid-project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to clarify, my role is to bring in some temporary technical resources that will deliver short term support while the organization decides what level of permanent staff will be needed to fill the roles, and after a few months they will go into the market to recruit. This is a one-off piece of work that doesn't involve any development, coding, or anything of that nature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-14T22:24:01.763" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T12:25:18.470" Title="Should a Project Manager give new team members a document that defines the project?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1705" CreationDate="2011-04-14T20:11:11.800" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bearing in mind that you want to deliver the maximal information with the least overhead, I would say educate them on &lt;em&gt;what they need to know to get the project to delivery&lt;/em&gt;. Background and historical information is nice; more important is knowing where the project stands today and what work is left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also critical is the project vision and the &lt;strong&gt;business-case of &quot;why&quot; we're doing this project&lt;/strong&gt;. This can make a huge difference in terms of motivation and buy-in from the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a particularly large or complex project, you may want to train them with general background information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T20:11:11.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1692" CreationDate="2011-04-14T20:15:52.027" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PM should be responsible for delivering the benefits, so I wonder how he can understand the benefits without knowing at least something of the deliverables, and how can he understand the deliverables if he has not looked at the website?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This situation would worry me a great deal. I know that some PMs (myself included) have a tendency to get too far into the detail, but some awareness of the detail is, in my opinion, essential to allow constructive discussion about what has been achieved, what remains to be done, and what will be the impact of any changes to scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless the PM has delegated all customer contact to someone else, I cannot understand how this situation is tenable, and echoing Pawel Brodzinski's answer, I wonder who really is the PM on this project. It certainly doesn't sound as though it is the person who has that job title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastEditorUserId="301" LastEditDate="2011-04-14T20:31:08.737" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T20:31:08.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1705" CreationDate="2011-04-14T20:18:47.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to knowing the why, knowing the scope of the entire deliverable will know prevent reinventing the wheel. Is feature X a 'one of' or similar to something already created? The answers to these types of questions mat come from the PM if you know to ask. Knowing the larger spec will help you ask the right questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you will be expected to participate in status meeting at some level. Knowing how you piece ties into the rest of the project will help you communicate to the other team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="920" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T20:18:47.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1692" CreationDate="2011-04-14T20:55:49.900" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Holy Moly! -yes, I'd be concerned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either you are doing a GREAT job delivering value, interfacing with the client and doing the PM's job for them.  Or, the PM is not incented to care a whole lot about the project.  Perhaps they are too glued to their GANTT chart to look at the deliverable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is part of the PM's job to check against requirements and, in a larger sense, be an impartial voice for different solutions on meeting those requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, be concerned. Be very concerned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T20:55:49.900" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1705" CreationDate="2011-04-14T21:05:36.413" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Something I haven't seen mentioned yet - &quot;a document that defines the project&quot; is called a 'scope document', and it's critical that everyone that's in any position to effect a change or make a decision, to any of the deliverables, MUST know what the scope is. Not knowing the scope (project definition) adequately is where scope creep comes from. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T21:05:36.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1693" CreationDate="2011-04-14T21:12:14.957" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have said, there's no right answer, in general. In your case, you asked if changing the communication to a one or two channel approach would cause problems. No, because you've already said that the Owner going directly to the team is causing problems, so removing some of those channels can only help control a problem you're already experiencing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T21:12:14.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1692" CreationDate="2011-04-14T21:18:45.060" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM is ultimately responsible for the end result. A PM that's not regularly walking around and talking to his team or reviewing the progress and product simply isn't doing his job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the scary part is, that's usually the PM that will throw you under the bus when the client is unhappy and say &quot;I didn't tell them to do that.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T21:18:45.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1669" CreationDate="2011-04-14T21:27:40.747" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your best argument is that they're going to get out of it what they put into it. If they're not willing to put money and effort into it as a project, they're going to get results that reflect that investment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, you can ask them that, if it can be done on the fly, how will they know when it's done? There are no goals, no plans, no measurements,...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And lastly, point out that the predominate QI methods in use (Six Sigma, TQM, Toyota Production, etc.) all follow a 'project' path. They do this for a reason.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T21:27:40.747" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1693" CreationDate="2011-04-14T21:42:33.027" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There should be ONE point of truth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, there's way too much politics, misinterpretation and wasted time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T21:42:33.027" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1705" CreationDate="2011-04-14T21:46:41.730" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Coming in mid-stream means that decisions have already been made on how the requirements are being fulfilled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say you only need information related to the specific task you need to take care of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T21:46:41.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1716" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-15T02:06:36.213" Score="10" ViewCount="1845" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not everyone works together all the time, but various pairs do on different projects.  What is the best way to configure desks to optimize for communication and ability for people to focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="923" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T17:46:14.363" Title="For a team of 15-25, what types of seating arrangements are optimal" Tags="&lt;team-building&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1716" CreationDate="2011-04-15T02:46:53.417" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally (with quite a bit of development and testing experience in various settings: open spaces, closed spaces, semi-open, partitioned) I much prefer and favour a totally open space. Two rows of desks facing one another makes a line. There may be a few lines one next to the other with a comfortable amount of space for people to walk between the lines freely without bothering those sitting. You must make sure each desk has enough room to welcome an occasional guest and spread large enough amounts of paper notes without moving the computer, screens, keyboard, mouse or chair(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not necessarily put pairs that frequently work together absolutely besides or facing one another. Close proximity helps (easy access to information), but a bit of mingling with others helps too (easy access to different experience), find a healthy balance. In a fully open space, I have frequently helped others working on unconnected projects to mine or to one another, to connect them on similar problems and speed up solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Top all of that with a minimum of one meeting room to sit at least half the largest team, if not the whole team. And maybe a second meeting room to sit maybe a quarter of the largest team. Both rooms must be equipped with phone conferencing facilities. Computers in the meeting rooms are a bonus, a minimum of one can be really helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meeting rooms should be available relatively easily for any pair to work their heart's content if a bit of privacy from the crowd helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="179" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T02:46:53.417" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1705" CreationDate="2011-04-15T03:00:18.243" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Least amount of overhead is a critical thing here, I agree with ashes999.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have frequently been given way too much information. This generally has three effects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;information overload leads to indecision (there's so much to handle, where do I start?);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reading overdose leads to sleepiness and therefore inefficiency;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in an effort to keep control over both overload and overdose, some documents get tossed to the side - some of those might be more important than those that made it through.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously you don't want any of points 1 to 3 to happen if you can help it. I much prefer the &quot;need to&quot; basis. That said, it depends who the person you give it to is. If they are very business focused, the type to gloss over information anyway, then they may as well have the full story, they'll be just fine. On the other hand, if the person is detail oriented, meticulous, then refrain to the best of your ability from feeding them the full story. Give them what they need, otherwise you'll swamp them and lose them for months (speaking of own experience here).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="179" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T03:00:18.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1574" CreationDate="2011-04-15T10:13:15.730" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll add my own experience as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like other answers on this question, my main use of mindmaps for project management is to create a &lt;strong&gt;Work breakdown Structure&lt;/strong&gt; (WBS) for a project. From the first moment I am allocated to a new project I start building the WBS. The structure is very easily changed as more information becomes available. A print-out or projection of the structure (in Organisation chart layout) makes it an excellent tool to discuss with the team an stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also added a small template for the notes section of each element, containing the WBS-dictionary information&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Description&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Out of Scope&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Source&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Responsible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other comments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a push of the button everything is exported to Word (with an image of the map included), which makes it easy to share. The fact that both WBS structure and WBS Dictionary is maintained within one application makes it a great timesaver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also started to use a mindmap to create our '&lt;strong&gt;Project Initiation Document&lt;/strong&gt;' (or Project Charter): all relevant information, like background, planning, budget, preliminary risk analysis, stakeholders ... was added to the mindmap until the final version. By exporting to Word I could easily share the draft versions with stakeholders. The only problem was that I couldn't export it to the required template, so for the final version I had to copy/paste all info from one Word doc to the other. But since the titles etc. were alike, this took only a moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, some years ago I tried to use a Mindmap as a project &lt;strong&gt;dashboard&lt;/strong&gt;, as others have reported here. But after a while the mindmap became to big and to unwieldy and I abandoned it. After reading others' experiences here, I'm tempted to try it again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-04-18T19:48:38.070" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T19:48:38.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1716" CreationDate="2011-04-15T11:27:14.610" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having tried a few different arrangements, I would say that the best is to have people clumped together into small groups/teams as applicable -- similar to a long line, but &lt;strong&gt;make sure people have (the perception of, at least) sufficient privacy.&lt;/strong&gt; It's important to give that sense of (partial) privacy, because people sometimes need to handle on off-topic or personal issues at work, and don't want to be embarrassed about doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience is that half-cubicles (chest-high) usually give people enough privacy, but also sufficient openness that they wouldn't risk playing Tetris during work hours.  I like clusters of four arranged in a square, but this would work equally with a line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Totally open spaces tend to be noisy and very social -- people disturb you for anything and anything -- and in my experience, that's more detrimental than helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastEditorUserId="36" LastEditDate="2011-04-15T12:45:30.660" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T12:45:30.660" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1339" CreationDate="2011-04-15T11:55:34.497" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree, Pawel is close to awesome in composing accurate answers in the subject. I only want to add one more dimension to what was said before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As long as you are your own PM you must remember it comes with responsibility for team's motivation and pace of work.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You worked on this project for 7 weeks now, and you know your worker for years already, so you also know what to expect next. Almost every writer has problems with creativity, motivation and joy taken. I think it will be a challenge to a developer as well. Prepare for it and try to overcome the problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T11:55:34.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1705" CreationDate="2011-04-15T12:02:51.170" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tent to believe that providing with a high level summary of the ultimate project's goal cannot hurt anybody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have joined mid-cycle projects with a specific responsibility and minimum interaction to the rest of the team members but I found very difficult to define certain specifications and implementing them because I was missing the overall project's objectives. Eventually I had to discuss this with my supervisor and he provided me with the &lt;strong&gt;high level Executive Summary&lt;/strong&gt; that was delivered to the Project Sponsors containing &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;key goals&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;business benefits&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; and main &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;components&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. Not too detailed but rich enough to understand the project and my position within it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have followed this practice ever since, in other roles, to bring up to speed new members of the team as part of an &lt;em&gt;Induction Plan&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="179" LastEditDate="2011-04-18T22:22:41.247" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T22:22:41.247" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1716" CreationDate="2011-04-15T13:57:50.287" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One scheme that works well during death marches is to have a large &quot;war room&quot; with a bunch of desks facing each other (in lines if the room size fits) while keeping the cubes &amp;amp; private offices. When communication is very important, move part of the team into the war room while allowing them their old offices to retreat to for the occasional quiet time. The togetherness of the war room allows for much more rapid and effective communication than even IM allows. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a managerial viewpoint, the war room concept also makes it very hard for those developers that don't do anything to hide. The other developers will quickly &lt;em&gt;out&lt;/em&gt; them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T13:57:50.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1494" CreationDate="2011-04-15T14:17:29.380" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use MIcrosoft Team Foundation Server and capture the requirements there.  It provides full tracability from creation to source code check in.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="913" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T14:17:29.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1725" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1755" CreationDate="2011-04-15T17:18:42.467" Score="14" ViewCount="2035" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I started to search to learn more about project management on Google, I was overwhelmed by all the certification links.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All I want to learn is about the various software (especially web development) related to project management and all about the models like &lt;strong&gt;scrum&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;Price2&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;agile&lt;/strong&gt; development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be the best resource, like a free online resource, or better, a book, which would get me started learning about project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Also please note that I may have asked the wrong question, because I'm very confused after searching on Google, and here I came as a last resort to clarify.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="616" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-04-24T22:44:22.213" LastActivityDate="2011-04-24T22:44:22.213" Title="Starting to learn Project Management, which book or path to follow ?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;books&gt;&lt;learning&gt;" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="12" ClosedDate="2012-07-27T20:19:35.527" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1590" CreationDate="2011-04-15T18:36:08.147" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's going to take a combination of the answers above - training, experience, reading others, and starting with a field you're already somewhat familiar with. Training alone won't do it, that's all theory. Experience alone won't do it (although it will get closer), as you're limited to your own experience. Reading - same pitfall as training. Starting with afield you're already familiar with gives you an advantage as you already know most of the processes and terminology, so you're not trying to learn pm AND a new domain/context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So really, it's start doing it, and learn from as many sources as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T18:36:08.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1533" CreationDate="2011-04-15T18:44:53.007" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Part of the answer depends on your reasons.&#xA;To get a job? In the US or UK? PMP in the US (and most of the rest of the world), P2 in the UK.&#xA;In a specific industry? P2 for more IT related, PMP for more general applications.&#xA;To increase your knowledge? As Stephan has already pointed out, the PMP gives a broader base, the P2 a more focused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure I see where they're competing as Yegor says though. To me, P2 fits within the processes contained in the PMBoK Guide, just more defined and controlled. Much the same as the  Agile concepts could be included in the Guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T18:44:53.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1553" CreationDate="2011-04-15T18:59:05.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing I have only seen alluded to - managing multiple projects (both related and unrelated) is generally seen as &quot;program' management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this type of management, the information needed is that which tells you, are these projects progressing towards the desired goals? &#xA;Those goals could be profit, reputation, business value, innovation, etc. It's different for each company. But your company is engaged in these projects for a reason. So as the projects go, you'll want to watch schedule, resource allocation, budget, etc., with an eye on how they overall are affecting your company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example - I typically manage 20+ construction projects (as a contractor). So I have two central focuses (focusii?). I watch the projects individually, but I also watch them in the larger context of how they relate to my division. Do we as a division have enough manpower to meet my schedule AND the schedules of the other projects? Enough equipment? How are my projects affecting our target margin goals? Cash flow? WIP?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When managing multiple projects you have to be aware of the other projects around you, even if seemingly unrelated, because if your company took them on, they;re all related. So if you're project succeeds and another fails, you're only half successful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T18:59:05.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1725" CreationDate="2011-04-15T19:07:11.973" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For PRINCE2 I would start with &quot;Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2 - 2009 edition&#xA;This is the official book from OGC, which developed and owns P2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apmg-businessbooks.com/productInfo.aspx?prodid=1056&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.apmg-businessbooks.com/productInfo.aspx?prodid=1056&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Scrum, I would start with the Scrum Primer from ScrumAlliance &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumalliance.org/resources/339&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scrumalliance.org/resources/339&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can probably find both on eBay relatively inexpensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure about Agile, but I'm sure someone here has a good starting point, beyond the Agile Manifesto site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T19:07:11.973" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2" CreationDate="2011-04-15T19:38:27.607" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll disagree with most of these answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Charter is the high level authorization - here's what the project is, here's why we're doing it, here's what it's supposed to accomplish, how much it should roughly cost, how long it should roughly take, who's doing it, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scope is the specifics of the project. What is the final product going to be, what is it supposed to look like and do. What are the features. And more importantly, what's included and what's not included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vision, although I've never run into one, would be more along the lines of Charter. The 'why' are we doing this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T19:38:27.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="30" CreationDate="2011-04-15T20:04:06.223" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer this question I'd start with a distinction of a project management as a role, one of crucial ones &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1339/how-do-you-project-manage-when-you-are-the-only-developer/1340#1340&quot;&gt;even in one-man projects&lt;/a&gt;, and project manager as a title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you will basically always have a person, or a group of them, who are fulfilling project manager's &lt;em&gt;role&lt;/em&gt;, however it is perfectly OK if neither of them has &quot;project manager&quot; in their signature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, contrary to others, I don't consider having a PM is crucial in agile projects. If we take Scrum, which is the most popular agile method we won't find project manager mentioned anywhere. &lt;strong&gt;It is because project management role in Scrum is spread over the whole team, with some kind of special position of Product Owner.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It means that Scrum teams, especially more experienced ones, can perfectly deal without someone who is called project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: I use Scrum just as one of examples here -- I know Kanban teams which follows the same pattern as well.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Usually the reason to introduce project manager to agile teams is the way the customer wants to run a project.&lt;/strong&gt; If the agile team is working with the client who prefers to have project managed the classic or formal or whatever you call it way you likely want to have project manager on your side -- someone who would be translating the way the team works to the way the client wants to see it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the agile team can work directly with the client using methods they want, e.g. product owner on client's side, demo after each iteration, client's active participation in prioritizing work for every iteration, etc., you probably won't find project manager in such team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Another reason to introduce project manager to agile teams is when your organization wants to have projects run classic way for whatever reasons.&lt;/strong&gt; Then again, you may want to have PM on the top of the team so you have someone connecting both worlds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the most important job of PM in agile teams -- being a bridge builder, as some teams need those bridges to translate their own methods of work to something which is expected outside of the team. &lt;strong&gt;This is natural since agile methods tell us little about formal side of project management so they're falling short whenever it is needed.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt; Chris added in comment one thing which is worth stressing and hasn't been stated directly: PM in agile teams is less of command and control type of person as power to make many project-related decisions is delegated to the team. I wouldn't go that far to say that Scrum Master is agile version of PM, because is isn't, but still if you consider the team has more power someone has to have it less, and it's usually a PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T07:34:43.333" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1732" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1815" CreationDate="2011-04-16T00:14:07.213" Score="12" ViewCount="903" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's change that starts at the grassroots level, where the people who hold the vision for change don't have the authority to just make it happen.  What can help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if the person with the vision does have official authority to make the change, what can help them get real buy-in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="932" LastEditorUserId="1331" LastEditDate="2011-05-26T21:26:21.013" LastActivityDate="2011-05-26T21:26:21.013" Title="What techniques or frameworks help with influencing organizational change?" Tags="&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1725" CreationDate="2011-04-16T00:38:41.467" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're looking for good overview, try &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0131111558&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Craig Larman's Agile and Iterative Development: A Manager's Guide&lt;/a&gt;.  It was published in 2003, so it doesn't have the latest on Agile but it's a very good starting point. The reviews on Amazon are pretty thorough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="932" LastActivityDate="2011-04-16T00:38:41.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1732" CreationDate="2011-04-16T03:24:54.107" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My two biggest tools are Trust and Value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Trust:&lt;/strong&gt; You need to have built trust in your organization. You need to be seen as compentent, knowledgable, and someone who listens. If you don't have that trust, you won't get people to even listen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Value:&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;What's in it for me?&quot; No matter what the organizational change will do, you need to tailor the message to each adopter (person or organization) as to how it will benefit them. If they don't see a value, then they don't have a stake in the game. No incentive is a powerful uphill battle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best,&#xA;Joel Bancroft-Connors&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="147" LastEditDate="2011-04-17T20:36:49.837" LastActivityDate="2011-04-17T20:36:49.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1732" CreationDate="2011-04-16T06:18:22.737" Score="-1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...the people who hold the vision for change don't have the authority to just make it happen. What can help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do we know that this vision is the right one and the best one? If these people don't have the authority - maybe this is how it should be? At least this is how the organization want to place these people, giving them zero authority in certain fields. It's a clear message from the organization - &quot;I don't want to listen to you&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think that there is a misunderstanding, and the organization should listed to these people - try to convince the management. Try to change this attitude. Try to become part of the management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line: &lt;strong&gt;don't blame the organization, blame yourself for being too far from its decision-making center&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-16T06:18:22.737" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1725" CreationDate="2011-04-16T06:23:00.440" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would highly recommend to read &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1932735186&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rita Mulcahy's book&lt;/a&gt;. Even though it's about PMBOK it's the greatest material about project management I've ever read. And I've read a lot of them..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-16T06:23:00.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1738" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1741" CreationDate="2011-04-16T06:43:43.003" Score="17" ViewCount="960" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often the project manager in my team is under severe pressure to commit to and deliver to a particular schedule, when this looks unlikely they get stressed and this has an impact on the whole team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can I do as a developer on the team, to help the project manager in this situation? Are there skills or techniques I can help them with, what support is most valuable to them at this point?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="925" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T18:32:16.387" Title="How can I help my project manager deal with schedule pressure?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;scope&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1725" CreationDate="2011-04-16T06:58:06.853" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://pragprog.com/titles/jrpm/manage-it&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Manage It!&lt;/a&gt; by Johanna Rothman as a good overview of project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As follow ups to this, read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dorsethouse.com/books/waltz.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Waltzing with Bears&lt;/a&gt; by Tom Demarco and Timothy Lister for really good coverage of risk and how to manage it. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Mythical Man Month&lt;/a&gt; is a classic about how team size and changes to teams affects the progress of a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="925" LastActivityDate="2011-04-16T06:58:06.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="30" CreationDate="2011-04-16T07:22:54.577" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Project Management&quot; is happening when a group of people is creating some product or service with a limited amount of time and resources. &quot;Project Manager&quot; is someone who is in charge of applying project management tools and techniques to the project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is no explicitly defined project manager role - than the tools and techniques are applied by someone else, or are not applied at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, the answer is that &lt;strong&gt;every project requires a project manager&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-16T07:22:54.577" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1738" CreationDate="2011-04-16T07:25:17.427" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Report risks&lt;/strong&gt;. That's the best thing you can/should do. Let your project manager know about all risks you foresee, their probabilities, and their potential impacts. Also let him/her know what risk responses you would recommend to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-16T07:25:17.427" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1725" CreationDate="2011-04-16T08:02:30.047" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It all depends on Your general experience and knowledge about management and project management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the beginning I would recommend something more general than books about any concrete practices and methodologies. First thing is to know when to apply given practice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So shortly speaking I would point:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scottberkun.com/books/making-things-happen/&quot;&gt;http://www.scottberkun.com/books/making-things-happen/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;as quite nice introduction to managing a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find there (http://www.scottberkun.com/essays/) lot of interesting articles that can help you to find right path most suitable for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="936" LastActivityDate="2011-04-16T08:02:30.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1738" CreationDate="2011-04-16T09:26:19.477" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What probably happens in such situation is PM, and the team, has to make some tradeoffs. If the schedule is tight and there's much pressure from the top to deliver anyway the team must sacrifice something in order to get things done on the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This basically means cutting corners. Now the question is what kind of corners you're going to cut. Commonly it's one of a couple (or both):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Quality.&lt;/strong&gt; The team can steal some time from testing in order to build more features.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scope.&lt;/strong&gt; In order to get some functionality done well other part is abandoned at all.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever the team would finally do there are two possible situations and two strategies which may be helpful to the PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;h3&gt;1. Help to make best possible tradeoffs&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is usually the PM who make the last call on these sacrifices, at least when such decision is made consciously. &lt;strong&gt;As a team member the best you can do is to help them to make this decision as good and reasonable as possible.&lt;/strong&gt; It means feeding them with consequences of each tradeoff, either quality-related or scope-related, so they have possibly best knowledge how things look like from teams perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I'd also throw any ideas which might help to keep the deadline or find arguments to postpone it.&lt;/strong&gt; It's pretty common than some team members consider a piece of information so obvious they don't even communicate it in any way, while others have no idea about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course that doesn't mean the decision, which is going to be made, will be satisfactory for the team, as PM has to take into consideration all the technical stuff but also business consequences, e.g. client's reaction to incomplete project, and internal affairs, e.g. stakeholders satisfaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;h3&gt;2. Get the PM actively looking for solution&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The problem can have another root cause as well. PM, instead of making conscious decision about tradeoffs, is choosing hope as a strategy.&lt;/strong&gt; It meant they hope everything would go fine and the team would deliver before the deadline. If this one is true no wonder why they're stressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway in this situation the best thing you can do is to make them aware of the fact that hope is not a strategy and getting them actively tackling the issue, which basically means coming back to the point number 1, once the PM accepts the fact they should actively do something about the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of techniques which works pretty well here is getting the list of all tasks which have to be done, showing how unlikely it is to get everything done by the deadline and asking about priorities. Then, on the bottom of the list you have your tradeoffs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, I know PMs who would tell you everything is the top priority, so you may also need to refer to the old rule: if everything has the highest priority, everything has the lowest priority as well and the team is going to choose tradeoffs randomly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-04-16T09:26:19.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1738" CreationDate="2011-04-16T09:27:57.583" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I second Yegor's suggestion around risk management.  Actively identify those threats that could inhibit your ability to meet the schedule and work them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only this, but use a leading practice method to monitor your schedule.  These include critical path management, earned value (to some degree) and earned schedule methods.  The first method is your best approach as threats to those packages on the critical path are what will delay your deliveries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Monitor your costs, too, because you may need favorable variances to help mitigate or recover from schedule slips.  If you slip, increasing op tempo or adding people, if you can afford it, may help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Watch the op tempo levels for non threatened parts of your schedule.  If you have resources that are not operating at planned utilization levels, then perhaps you can fast track future packages, start them earlier than planned, if able.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, understand the probability of your schedule.  There is no such thing as a single-point estimate for a task or project.  Yet, that is how we schedule and make our commitments.  Therefore, your commitment rests somewhere on your project's probability curve and you need to understand where it falls.  If your schedule is p20 through p40 or even p50, you have an aggressive schedule and you have significant exposure of not making it, NO MATTER (or little matter) WHAT YOU DO.  That is a good thing to understand if nothing more than to relieve some stress and begin early communication on the risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-04-16T09:27:57.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1738" CreationDate="2011-04-16T17:23:01.077" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll take a slightly different tack. All of the above suggestions are good, but they're missing one key point. If your PM is committing to unrealistic schedules, regardless of whether they're imposed or not, then your PM is part of the problem.&#xA;Your question, while well-intended, indicates that your PM hasn't been doing his job, and now you're trying to help him after he's failed in his responsibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that the schedule may be dictated, but it's at that point that he should be saying &quot;okay, but....&quot;, and then offering the suggestions that Pawel has offered. &quot;If you want the product on X date, we can do that. But you're going to have to tell us what can be left out.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would suggest that while you as a team may be able to offer some support and evidence of how the schedule can't be met as required, or offer some suggestions on what corners could be cut, ultimately, if your PM is doing this, no matter what you do will stop it. He needs to get stronger in his role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-04-17T01:53:36.780" LastActivityDate="2011-04-17T01:53:36.780" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1732" CreationDate="2011-04-16T17:48:23.337" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I second Joel's &lt;strong&gt;trust&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;value&lt;/strong&gt;. Especially the former. As long as people in the organization don't trust you it's likely it will fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I'd take a step further. You may or may not have trust relationship with people around. So you might want to actually show them the value of change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need is &lt;strong&gt;small group of people&lt;/strong&gt; who you can convince to your idea. Then you need to figure out &lt;strong&gt;how to run it in small scale&lt;/strong&gt;. Most of ideas don't have to be implemented company-wide from the day 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we took as an example implementing new approach to project management it's enough to find a single, possibly small, project with people willing to try something new. Actually if you want to run something in small scale you probably won't even need to bother decision-makers, and if so, they would likely agree as small experiment doesn't really hurt them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you need &lt;strong&gt;consistency&lt;/strong&gt;. I've seen a number of good ideas which were abandoned only because people expected instant results. Well, most likely they are not coming. So you better get your people prepared for a marathon, or at least middle-distance run than a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After some time, when results of small-scale change are visible it's time to &lt;strong&gt;spread the word&lt;/strong&gt;. Actually a bit of boast isn't probably that bad idea. Anyway, when people see that it works they're more willing to jump on the bandwagon. And then it's easier to &lt;strong&gt;convince authorities&lt;/strong&gt; to implement change in big scale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that is when you can make great use of veterans from the initial team, as they know how the thing works and can serve with their knowledge when spread over different teams within organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is how you &lt;em&gt;earn&lt;/em&gt; trust and &lt;em&gt;show&lt;/em&gt; value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-04-16T17:48:23.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1748" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1749" CreationDate="2011-04-16T19:38:15.140" Score="32" ViewCount="43193" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not a beginner question. &#xA;I've seen too many otherwise competent PM's that don't know the difference, and I'm curious how others define it. Bear in mind, Scope Creep and Gold-plating are not the same either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2018-03-15T09:36:10.783" Title="What's the difference between Scope Creep vs Scope Change?" Tags="&lt;scope&gt;&lt;scope-management&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1748" CreationDate="2011-04-16T20:14:03.407" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/scope-change.html&quot;&gt;Scope Change&lt;/a&gt; is an official decision made by the project manager and the client to change a feature X to expand or reduce it's functionality.  Generally, scope change involves making adjustments to the cost, budget, other features, or the timeline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scope_creep&quot;&gt;Scope Creep&lt;/a&gt; is generally referred to as the phenomenon where the original project scope to build a product with feature X, Y, and Z slowly grows outside of the scope originally defined in the statement of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scope creep refers to scope change which happens slowly and unofficially, without changing due dates or otherwise making adjustments to the budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good analogy is when a frog is placed in water that slowly heats up to a boiling point.  The changes are so small that a problem isn't noticed right away, until suddenly, the team finds itself in hot water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of scope creep in a construction project could be last minute changes to add more costly trimmings, better paint, more expensive tiles, or other changes in the types of materials in areas where the materials weren't well defined in the scope document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of a scope change would be when the client decides to not only redo the master bedroom in the house but then also decides to obtain an estimate on redoing the bathroom as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-04-16T20:19:22.670" LastActivityDate="2011-04-16T20:19:22.670" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1748" CreationDate="2011-04-16T23:06:04.887" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I second Jmort EXCEPT to qualify &quot;original&quot; in the definition of scope creep.  Scope creep is an unapproved change to the original statement of work plus approved changes.  That is very important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-04-16T23:06:04.887" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1748" CreationDate="2011-04-17T02:39:38.153" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scope creep is always upwards (at least in my experience).  It lacks the proper planning, costing, and/or approval processes.  It usually happens bit by bit as various actors decide to to a little bit more.  Sources of scope creep include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an unclear understanding of the project scope.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;adding features because they are deemed useful, interesting and/or low cost.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;adding unplanned necessary features (missed scope).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;idle hands adding a feature to fill in time. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scope change can be either upwards or downwards.  Scope can be removed, or added as required.  Proper scope change should involve planning, costing, and approval.  Scope change can induce scope creep if the new scope is not properly communicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Projects may provide some time to handle missed requirements.  This contingency budget can result in scope creep if it is not well managed.  Without a clear process for allocation of the contingency, it will be difficult to tell whether the features are scope creep or scope change.  Features which do not resolve a missing feature preventing meeting the scope, are likely scope creep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2011-04-17T02:39:38.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1748" CreationDate="2011-04-17T16:31:30.137" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scope creep as others have said is unmanaged scope change - yes always increased scope. I think the challenge is not so much that people don't understand the concept, it's they don't recognize when they open the door to creep. The minute you say 'yes' to a change, no matter how small you have given permission for every other idea to be added. &#xA;The best way to avoid scope change is to always make the effort to assess the impact of requests. Some you'll add because there is little or no impact. Even then, complete the paperwork for the scope change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-04-17T16:31:30.137" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1725" CreationDate="2011-04-17T16:41:19.740" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I won't add another resource for you, the ones about are great suggestions. My suggesting is to step back and not try to eat the entire buffet in one sitting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The different methodologies are for specific things. Prince2 is not as recognized in North America where PMI is the preferred certification. Both are good, but they look at project management differently. So, find out what the preferred certification is for your area. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile and it's relatives are used for specific types of projects, mainly ones where there is a lot of uncertainty in the beginning. I suggest you investigate it and the traditional (often called waterfall) approach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tools are another area where you need to tread carefully. Learning the tools won't help you be a better PM. You'll find that many organizations use enterprise software and you will need to learn their application. My advice here is to try some trials for tools, most will come with 30 - 60 days trail. Pick a sample project you make up to test out the tools. For instance, I will often run a test on a new tool by planning an event or planning a move, things I can make up the steps for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-04-17T16:41:19.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1725" CreationDate="2011-04-17T16:58:02.153" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following 2 books are my all-time general project management favorites, and both will get you started:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first one is a book by &lt;strong&gt;Klaus D. Tumuscheit&lt;/strong&gt;. Unfortunately there doesn't appear to be an English translation available, which is a pity. The original is in German (Überleben im Projekt: 10 Projektfallen und wie man sie umgeht - ISBN-10: 3636012916) and there's also a Dutch translation (ISBN 9055941425). The advice given is timeless, not related to any industry (eg IT), funny, practical, as real as it gets, and just common good sense. If you master one of these languages, I highly recommend this book for seasoned or new project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The interactive project workout&lt;/strong&gt; 2nd Ed. Robert Buttrick, Prentice Hall, 2000, isbn 027364436X - very good, general text about PM, with a very good Project Life Cycle you can adapt to any project.3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On top of that, something you really can't do without as a starting PM is a good resource on the &lt;strong&gt;Work Breakdown Structure&lt;/strong&gt;. After a long search I finally found what I think at the moment is the best resource on creating the WBS (and I've read a few!): &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Building a Project Work Breakdown Structure: Visualising objectives, deliverables, activities, and schedules&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;, Dennis P. Miller, CRC Press/ESI , 2009, isbn 978-1-4200-6969-3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-04-17T16:58:02.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1725" CreationDate="2011-04-17T19:48:10.577" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You didn't specify what kind of projects you plan to manage. There are plenty of IT people around here (including myself) so I assume you mean IT project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Take small steps&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People usually learn in special manner. At first they need small, easy, little successfull steps. So don't take everything at once. You will probably need to make many shortcuts, put some things in black boxes and simplify others. Decide what to learn at once and where to dig deeper. Use this thread's links wisely :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Know the reasons (or ask &quot;why&quot;)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project management is not about the practices, it's about decisions and reasons of those. I find it important to know what decisions other managers made and where it lead them. So I consider blogs as interesting (or even more) than literature. Maybe you should find people (other PM) you value and trust and track their blog entries. My personal top 3:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.mountaingoatsoftware.com/&quot;&gt;&quot;Mike Cohn&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/index.html&quot;&gt;&quot;Joel&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/&quot;&gt;&quot;Pawel Brodzinski&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Take some practice&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You wont get far with theory only. Not all the lessons one can learn from other's mistakes, so finding a company which will trust you and THE team is the first step in making your own mistakes. Try it sooner than later even if it mean very tiny little project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastEditorUserId="927" LastEditDate="2011-04-22T05:52:33.537" LastActivityDate="2011-04-22T05:52:33.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1716" CreationDate="2011-04-17T20:37:50.117" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Individual offices with doors are best for focus.&#xA;Next best are two-person offices with doors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="158" LastActivityDate="2011-04-17T20:37:50.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1391" CreationDate="2011-04-18T03:27:39.780" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use the &quot;Team Foundation Task Sheet View&quot; to edit all of the fields that are synchronized between TFS And MSProject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More information is available &lt;a href=&quot;http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd380701.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;on this MSDN page&lt;/a&gt; under the section titled &quot;View and Modify Team Foundation Task Fields.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T03:27:39.780" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1748" CreationDate="2011-04-18T09:37:09.997" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;-- scope change -&gt; what you were supposed to deliver has changed/increased/decreased.&#xA;                   your timelines/budget are usually changed (amicably) to factor this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- scope creep  -&gt; what you were supposed to delivered has not changed but you are sweating to deliver it in time/budget because -you underestimated the complexity of the problem,design was faulty,design was good but implementation was bad,too many bugs,bad risk analysis etc.&#xA;Usually it indicates that you did not estimate the delivery's complexity well and you now find &#xA;staring at an inferno rather than a camp fire..&#xA;your timelines/budget is not changed amicably when this happens :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;hope this helps                         &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T09:37:09.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1539" CreationDate="2011-04-18T14:58:00.147" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As it was described above quality is very wide and subjective matter. What comes to my mind is for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) &lt;strong&gt;meeting customer needs&lt;/strong&gt; - if you have comfort to collaborate customer you can measure it by demonstrating your product to him, and have excellent feedback about this aspect of quality.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lot of aspect is significant here starting from product robustness through implementation of most needed features finishing on usability of product and comfort of work for customer. All aspects are more or less included in feedback. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hard to think about any tools that can measure this aspect of quality :). This is where Agile approach with short iteration and frequent user feedback might improve quality (satisfaction) a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) &lt;strong&gt;low level of bugs&lt;/strong&gt;  - as single measure that shows you how well requirements were turned into code.  This value can be measured and there are lot of tools that can help you.&#xA;(JIRA, Bugzilla) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c) &lt;strong&gt;code quality&lt;/strong&gt; - not related directly to level of bugs - but rather to difficulties in later modifications of code and product maintenance. This is more 'fragile' aspect of quality and you definitely needs a tool to measure it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cobertura (http://cobertura.sourceforge.net/)  - unit test coverage tool - generally the more automated tests the easier to do anything with code without breaking it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PMD (http://pmd.sourceforge.net/) - static code analysis tool - the more readable is code the easier is to modify it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This aspect might be also described as Technical Debt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt)(kind of compromise that were done on account of code quality, to be able keep deadlines for example) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;d) another aspects might be &lt;strong&gt;scalability, performance, high availability&lt;/strong&gt; there are also some general and also very specialized tools to help measure such aspect of products. Let me mention only :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grinder (http://grinder.sourceforge.net)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jmeter (http://jakarta.apache.org/jmeter/)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="936" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T14:58:00.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1761" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1762" CreationDate="2011-04-18T15:04:58.353" Score="11" ViewCount="3952" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wonder if it's possible to integrate a template from MS Projects into SharePoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have been using this tool to plan and illustrate workpackages. However, since we have moved into a bigger team in remote locations we have been asked by management to find a way to incorporate our plans into SharePoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SharePoint has become the online workspace in our department, but I am not sure how efficient it is to track progress. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any thoughts on how to do this effectively?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="649" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-01-16T22:41:01.890" LastActivityDate="2019-01-16T22:41:01.890" Title="Can MS Projects be integrated in SharePoint?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1761" CreationDate="2011-04-18T15:14:53.797" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe what you might be looking for is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_Project_Server&quot;&gt;MS Office Project Server&lt;/a&gt; which allows to publish project plan as a baseline and then actively update progress through the web, e.g. you don't need MS Project installed on every machine you want to make updates from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually the new version works basing on SharePoint. Older ones worked as stand alone solutions, but you could still achieve the same effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T15:14:53.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1763" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1766" CreationDate="2011-04-18T17:40:19.460" Score="24" ViewCount="2311" Body="&lt;p&gt;As described &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/25/how-to-estimate-amount-of-work-man-hours-for-an-unfamiliar-task/46#46&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; planning poker is a group estimating process. It seems that it would work.But is there any data to show that it is better than individual estimation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit 4/19/11:&#xA;I am interested accuracy in terms of time-planning.&#xA;I am interested in planning poker in particular, but will look at the Wideband Delphi references since they are better than nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="158" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T22:25:43.807" Title="Is there any data to show planning poker produces better estimates than individuals?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1763" CreationDate="2011-04-18T18:58:53.997" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may find interesting the paper titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://simula.no/research/se/publications/Grimstad.2007.1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Inconsistency in Expert Judgment-based Estimates of Software Development Effort&lt;/a&gt;. The purpose of that paper was to check the consistency of estimations made by experienced individuals, but one of the conclusions is that collective estimation may reduce such inconsistency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will also find some references in this paper. However I think I've seen somewhere the paper or article saying that there is no evidence that collective estimates (like those from planning poker) are more accurate. Maybe someone here may point it. I'll try to find it and add in the comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically it will always much depend on who is doing the estimates. Don't expect inexperienced team to come up with accurate estimates (no matter if they play poker or not). Planing poker has its strength in encouraging discussion around the most optimistic and most pessimistic estimate within a team, but itself does not provide any magic solution. It's just that you will sometimes discover that some people find some parts of the task more problematic or see some risks that you would not think of if doing the estimation alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="435" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T18:58:53.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1763" CreationDate="2011-04-18T21:40:03.360" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Better at what?  Do you mean better accuracy in terms of time-planning?  Better at understanding your product?  Or something else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not overlook point #5 from your linked description:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a group meeting, specifically focusing on having the experts discuss points where their estimates vary widely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is like a homing missile for areas where the requirements are not clearly understood, and &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; is the real benefit of planning poker.  Individual estimates may be as good in terms of time-planning-accuracy but they miss out on team interaction and discussion, which (like most agile techniques) is designed to find problems early on where they are cheaper to fix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, reflection on disagreements allows team members to think more critically about the estimation process and to become better at it.  Marcin Niebudek's linked paper does not seem to discuss this long-term aspect of group estimation (although I can only read the abstract).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="952" LastEditorUserId="952" LastEditDate="2011-04-18T21:55:36.490" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T21:55:36.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1763" CreationDate="2011-04-18T21:42:48.037" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Planning Poker combines a number of techniques, one of most important being the use of relative estimating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You start with a reasonably well understood task (Task 1) and estimate that.&#xA;Subsequent less well defined tasks are then easier to estimate, because they can be compared to already estimated tasks.  Are they easier or harder than Task 1?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's akin to looking out of your window and finding two reference points.&#xA;In a traditional estimating approach you would try to estimate your distance from each reference point in metres.&#xA;With relative estimating, you say which one is further away and by what magnitude relative to other reference points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Planning poker as whole probably doesn't have much data associated to it - but the component techniques it uses may do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="954" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T21:42:48.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1763" CreationDate="2011-04-18T21:43:01.203" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Planning poker focuses the team discussion on what matters, and allows quick movement on from what doesn't. It gets the entire team on the same page about what the stories are, and in general agreement about their effort cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Picture: team around the table, story one, everyone shows the same number. Great, put it in the bag and move on. No more wasted time on that one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next story, 5 different estimates. Okay, that's weird - discuss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Oh, you mean x? I really thought this&#xA;  was dealing with y. Well, I don't&#xA;  know, maybe it is y. What do you&#xA;  think? Okay it is. What about x? We&#xA;  need another story for x, then. Okay,&#xA;  break it up - this is y, that is x.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimate y, similar numbers. Bag it. Estimate x, similar numbers. Bag it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, where you might have had one guy estimating a story incorrectly due to a misunderstanding of what it actually dealt with, now you have the whole team with a common understanding of what the story is, and agreement on what it will cost in effort. The important part is that you've headed off potential downstream troubles related to poor understanding of the features at the pass. Consequently, your estimates are probably much better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, no, I do not know of any data to substantiate any of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="955" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T21:43:01.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1763" CreationDate="2011-04-18T22:00:47.623" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Planning Poker is not really about &quot;estimation.&quot; IMHO the word was ill-chosen in Mike Cohn's book, Agile Estimating and Planning. Planning Poker is really about &quot;sizing.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference is that an &quot;estimate&quot; is a guess or prediction about how much time will be needed to complete a task, while &quot;relative sizing&quot; is a unitless comparison between the level of effort of two tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of sizing tasks is not to try and make &quot;accurate&quot; predictions of time. It is to get a general sense of how much work will fit into a given time-box (iteration, sprint, etc.). It's not meant to be highly accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Data to show Planning Poker is better than estimation. Hmm. Are apples better than oranges? Some people would say so, I guess. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IME general task sizing has been at least as useful for purposes of short-term planning as traditional time-based estimation, and it takes less time and effort. I'm pretty sure I know whether I prefer apples or oranges. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's an insidious problem with task-level estimation. People start to worry about whether reality happens to line up with their predictions, instead of focusing on building the right product. At best, a distraction. At worst...?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user966" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T22:00:47.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1763" CreationDate="2011-04-18T22:03:40.960" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may also want to have a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.mountaingoatsoftware.com/how-do-story-points-relate-to-hours&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this post by Mike Cohn&lt;/a&gt; where he analyzes the relationship between story points and hours as it sheds some light on the accuracy of group estimates and why there is a tenuous-at-best relationship with hours:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the one-point stories are centered around a mean of x, ideally the two-point stories will be centered around a mean of 2x. This will never be exactly the case, of course, but a team that does a good job of estimating will be sufficiently close for reliable plans to be made from their estimates. &lt;strong&gt;What these two figures show us is that is the relationship between points and hours is a distribution.&lt;/strong&gt; One point equals a distribution with a mean of x and some standard deviation. The same is true, of course, for two-point stories, and so on…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ergo, the &quot;accuracy&quot; of group estimates is really - and this is key - continually refined over successive iterations so that the effective distribution centres on a mean. This could be extrapolated by a single individual, however, without group ownership and gut-checking, it has no context and is not refined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="960" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T22:03:40.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1458" CreationDate="2011-04-18T22:05:24.597" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's less asking the question of what should the PM be doing, but more asking what can only the PM do.&#xA;Assuming that the PM is well-versed in it all, and that he has an equally capable team, then he should focus on those tasks that only he can do, or are his sole responsibility.  Part of being a PM is knowing how to delegate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T22:05:24.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1772" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-18T22:11:58.217" Score="18" ViewCount="6924" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're a project manager and set some rules how you expect the project team to behave, e.g. you want summary of the daily work in your inbox at the end of the day from each of project team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, everyone in the team seems to follow these rules except of one person who is just ignoring them. He also ignores your requests to adjust and escalation to his team manager doesn't seem to work either -- he just take the blame on his chest but nothing changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should PM do in such situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt; As some put the rule I used as an example into question, some more background. The team is spread over a couple of different locations so PM can hardly get all the data by walking around. Daily reporting isn't extensive -- it should take just a couple of minutes at most. Also team members working hours are different and last ones leave the office much later than PM. PM has to report status daily to the customer every morning, as the project is challenged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discussed person is working at the same office as PM and leaves at similar time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, the rule was only the example and it wasn't really the point of the question. If you don't like it you can pretty much imagine any other rule which is generally accepted by the whole team with the exception of a single person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-19T07:30:19.627" LastActivityDate="2017-12-08T12:37:57.480" Title="A person in a project team not willing to follow the rules - what to do?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="14" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1772" CreationDate="2011-04-18T22:40:18.667" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest talking to him individually. I think that it may help figure out what the problem(s) he has are. I would ask if he is having any problems, or if he has a reason for ignoring your requests and the rules put in place. If he has a valid reason, attempt to cope, otherwise, explain that he has to be part of the team, and that his refusal to do such is also a refusal to do his job, and as such, could result in escalation to a higher power (the person that pays him).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="496" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T22:40:18.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1323" CreationDate="2011-04-18T23:08:40.297" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to my readings, MBTI has effect on team formation. It tells us communication styles of the persons and being aware of it helps conducting effective meetings. It also makes some people more suitable to certain roles more than others and it helps you directing people to career paths they are best at. This all sums up in motivation and making people more effective. But I have to say it's very difficult to make decisions based on MBTI. For example if you organized your team according to MBTI and one of the members had to leave, it's difficult to get or hire someone with similar technical skills let alone his/her MBTI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMO, if your organization's structure is functional, it's most difficult to apply MBTI. If it's team based or project based and projects are long enough, it would be easier to apply MBTI. Also it's easier with larger teams than with small teams. It's also easier if the organization does not mix roles so if the developer is responsible for Analysis, Design, Coding and Testing, it will become useless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So where I used to work, it's been usually a luxury I could not afford.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="681" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T23:08:40.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1772" CreationDate="2011-04-18T23:42:25.010" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It looks to me that you are searching for justification to discipline the person and have already made up your mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly, I would question your need to have a written daily progress update. What is it you are trying to accomplish? You are making the assumption that your request is reasonable (possibly) and that everyone who is giving you data is doing so accurately (doubtful). In a case of micromanagement such as this (sorry, that's how I see it with such rigid, arbitrary rules) in an environment where you don't have buy-in because the rules were set top-down by you, some people rebel in inappropriate ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the developers job to produce work or to produce status? If you don't look to yourself also as a possible cause of this kind of behavior, you're doing everyone involved a disservice. I haven't met a PM yet who didn't think that their requests were reasonable, regardless of how much time it took to comply. I'm sure you have a status report to make, but have you considered other ways of gathering the information? Walking around and asking, for example. If you aren't reporting status every day, why should they? If you are, find a way to get your data that minimizes the efforts others to produce data for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="976" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T23:42:25.010" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1772" CreationDate="2011-04-18T23:49:03.443" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the person tried to follow the rules and failed, he/she is having a problem : either the rules are not fit with his situation so the process has to be updated, or he is missing something and needs help so he should get training, supervision , support, ... etc till he become on track or may be he is just sloppy person who just keep on missing some details which result that the rules are not applied in the end. In this case you or a reviewer should keep raising the non-compliances he makes and ask him to resolve them till he at the end do it the right way the first time without thinking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OTOH, if a person never tried so he/she is either not convinced or stubborn. If not convinced then if it's due to prior experience so he may have a point and it may result in process improvements or giving him more information like the first case. If stubborn then you have a people problem more than technical one. According to the personality of this person you should get him/her to try. Tell him/her that he might have a good instinct about this and you might share him the doubts but you need solid evidence to raise to higher level and make enhancements. The problem may not be related to the rules, it might be related to his direct supervisor or senior and the way they communicate so it's good to make both feel important and appreciated and explain the importance that everyone follow the rules and try to solve the communication problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last case is that you are dealing with a lazy person who make up excuses not to do his/her job properly or he is a kind of stubborn that has no point of view at all (I only do it this way and will not do it the other way. That's it) in this case you should express your authority firmly at first and give orders instead of requests making the consequences clear. If still off track, it's time for punishment according to rules defined in the organization. In extreme cases escalation for firing or moving to another team or role may become the best solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally I want to say all the above actually depends on the kind of rules. If the rule is trivial you may live with it till the employee becomes better and till then make it affect his/her performance evaluation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="681" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T23:49:03.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1772" CreationDate="2011-04-19T00:00:53.687" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remove and replace the resource.  The damage to the teaming process is unacceptable.  The message to the other team resources is compliance is elective, and that is unacceptable.  No person is irreplaceable, no matter the skill set with which this resource may present.  And the risk you assume by removing this person and replacing with a less competent and capable resource is likely much less than the overt disrespect and sequelae, i.e., risk and issues, cause by keeping him/her on the project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update:  Clearly my answer is unpopular and I am not understanding why.  Many of the other answers are similar.  Pawel indicated that he &quot;ignores your requests to adjust and escalation to his team manager doesn't seem to work either....&quot;  He then says, &quot;the rules was ONLY THE EXAMPLE&quot;, and you can &quot;pretty much imagine any other rule...,&quot; which suggests that this guys violates many rules.  How long exactly must a PM endure this?  How many interventions are required before taking the step of removal?  Why is &quot;remove and replace&quot; so unpopular to afford me so many negative points?  I am completely at a loss to this.  We are project managers.  We do temporary work.  We do not have the luxury of time to work with a violator who is not responding to interventions.  Someone please explain why my answer is so god awful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2011-05-12T22:33:09.703" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T22:33:09.703" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1761" CreationDate="2011-04-19T00:18:40.690" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you cannot deploy Project Server there is nothing to to stop you from using a regular SharePoint site to host the MPP file. The SharePoint site will simply act as a web-enabled file sharing system and will treat that file just like it would any other file (check-in, check-out, version history, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T00:18:40.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1772" CreationDate="2011-04-19T00:23:17.533" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interesting question. I have a project where the sponsor and I want to have processes in place, we pull the right people together to agree on the process, everyone agrees to use it. Then they ignore it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish it was only one person ;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest talking to the person, remind them why the process is in place and what happens when people don't use it. Ask what's getting in the way of them doing as other are doing. Then try to come to some kind of accommodation. &#xA;@Kevdog. There are points in the project where daily - even hourly - check ins become necessary. Usually at key milestones, or post implementation, I need to gather and disseminate up-to-date details on progress. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T00:23:17.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1484" CreationDate="2011-04-19T01:00:47.860" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Academically-speaking, there are several approaches to forming an estimate. The actual model used probably combines one or more of these approaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Expert judgement - Ask someone with experience.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Regression - Compare future work to past work. Here, you need to have actual durations from past work. Usually this is a mathematical model of some type.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Case-based Regression - Find something similar that has a known duration and adjust for differences.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Analogy - Characterize the project by attributes from similar projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing to remember is that it is impossible to derive an exact value; Steve McConnell covers this very, very well in his book &quot;Software Estimating: Demystifying the Black Art.&quot; Your estimates will get more and more accurate the closer you get to completion as unknowns become &quot;knowns.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="978" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T01:00:47.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1772" CreationDate="2011-04-19T04:10:52.170" Score="14" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Know the reasons&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone is absolutely not changing their ways, that person has a reason that justifies their choice of behaviour. Your first port of call is not to judge. Judging will only make matters worse, distance yourself from them and reduce your credibility in their eyes. Do not start thinking that person has a problem, and do not start asking them about any problem they may have - that is almost a sure-fire way of getting nowhere fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find out (genuinely positively) what their reasons are for their choices before you can do anything about them. You must understand before you can act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They may be good reasons or bad reasons, that is a judgement, but if you actually want to know and reach that person, you must not judge to start with, and you must make sure they think you are genuine when you ask for their reasons. There is plenty of time to judge afterwards. If for any reason you have lost their trust (such as pushing to their manager), then there is very little you can do other than try and regain trust. Anything else will fail. Could be slow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have established the reasons, then you have to respect those reasons and somehow use them to your advantage, if you can. It may be the case that you need to treat this person differently because they are otherwise valuable to the company - despite falling below par in your terms (not in their own of course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Challenge your own rules&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I would never agree again (I have in the recent past) to any daily report of my activities or my team's, unless it can be done in less than five minutes. My personal experience is that any more than five minutes per day on status reporting is a huge waste of anyone's time. Who reads that? What benefits does it bring? What is the associated cost?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So before you dare 'sell' your rules to that person again, challenge yourself one more time. Pick holes in your rules and find suitable arguments to justify their value as objectively as possible, clearly state the benefits and who benefits, and identify the cost each person following those rules must pay. You may (or may not) find that your rules need changing, amending, or some flexibility in some cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The likelihood is that the 'recalcitrant' person is quite clever. You must share transparently the whole purpose, benefits (including who benefits) and costs with them so they can come up with their own reason to follow your rules, or, maybe offer you an alternative that could satisfy you both. Maybe you could suggest that they come up with an alternative that could satisfy your requirements, or let them negotiate which ones of your requirements are acceptable to them - if that helps in any way achieve your goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different people have different needs and reactions. Those differences are often for the better. That said, you may also find with this exercise that you can no longer have this person in your team. That is a definite possibility, but without actually knowing why, you'd be setting yourself up for trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Keep a record of discussions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, if this story looks like it might turn sour - you be the judge - document everything. Make sure you keep a solid history with dates and times of what you say, what you write, verbal and written answers, formal or informal, situations, witnesses, the lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is double edged, but if you do your job the right way around it will serve you in good stead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Breaking the rules&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people believe that rules must be broken - they are right, just not all the time. It can be tricky deciding when it is time or not. Of course this is subjective and everyone will see this differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="179" LastEditorUserId="179" LastEditDate="2011-04-19T04:21:42.707" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T04:21:42.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1772" CreationDate="2011-04-19T05:42:58.440" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you may see there is a lot of questioning about how resonable your rule is. I am quite sure you considered it twice and that rule is there for some reason, so I will put away that part of the story for now... (by the way nice joke by David Espina :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, I would &lt;strong&gt;do the talking&lt;/strong&gt; and finding out why is he behaving like this. Then you need to decide if it is the rule you need to change (because it do not fit to reality) or is it a behaviour that needs changing. So maybe it is the second choice, and maybe you did the talking already and did it many times, so it does not work. Sometimes it works when you give him a day off to rethink the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I would &lt;strong&gt;give him a visible warnings&lt;/strong&gt;, like two yellow cards in the soccer. Have him do the work which nobody wants to do or (better) a work that is good, needed and valuable but puts him out of his comfort zone. Team should know you don't put maximum punishment on the table at first sign of trouble. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When all the talks, warnings and thinking days are over and you still have the problem it comes to deciding &lt;strong&gt;whether you want to work with him or not&lt;/strong&gt;. Maybe there is a project where drawbacks (as seen in current situation) would became valuable assets?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, about that rule again... In agile project I would not want to get status updates by email as well as specifications. If I do not have even a single question about the status report it usually means it is not important to me. And when it comes to questions then it is better to chat about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T05:42:58.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1772" CreationDate="2011-04-19T05:52:10.943" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You're a project manager and set some rules how you expect the project team to behave&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rules are not complete. The rules don't explain what should happen with those who don't do what he/she should do. Get back to the rules definition. Discuss them again with the team, including the &quot;penalization&quot; part. Get everybody's commitments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T05:52:10.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1785" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1786" CreationDate="2011-04-19T08:07:40.980" Score="4" ViewCount="278" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Knowledge Manager&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; role has evolved drastically from that of one involving the creation and maintenance of knowledge repositories to one that involves influencing the culture of an organization toward improved knowledge sharing, reuse, learning, collaboration and innovation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am thinking about this role who has also gained knowledge about the different projects running within an organization and is heavily involved in future plans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could I consider this resource as a &lt;em&gt;potential Project Manager&lt;/em&gt;? If so, what key elements or strategy would you recommend to develop this role accordingly? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T20:44:01.277" Title="Could a Knowledge Manager be a Project Manager?" Tags="&lt;personal-skills&gt;&lt;knowledge-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1785" CreationDate="2011-04-19T09:52:21.790" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm educated in KM, but I'm in a position right now that involves a lot of project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, yes, people in KM positions in your company are likely trained in the same Project Management techniques you use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got a little Six Sigma, workplace psychology, GANTT and PERT charts, planning, forecasting, goals and the like in my education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However a KM pro is usually focused less on the project deliverables, and is more focused on the procedures, technology and culture of the teams delivering the project. You'd be wasting a significant portion of this professional's abilities to assign them to a single, deliverable project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the project you're looking at involves changing the firm's culture, breaking down information silos, aligning policies and procedures with the firm's goals, and implementing &lt;em&gt;appropriate&lt;/em&gt; technology then a KM pro is what you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="225" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T09:52:21.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1705" CreationDate="2011-04-19T11:46:32.677" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The information has to be available for you. The responsibility of a project manager (part of &quot;Distribute Information&quot; process of PMBOK) is &lt;strong&gt;to make information available&lt;/strong&gt;, instead of communicating to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, imagine a project of 50 members, joining and leaving very often. The PM will be busy just with communications? Definitely not! The PM has to spend his/her time for establishing proper communication environment in the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T11:46:32.677" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1789" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1790" CreationDate="2011-04-19T12:03:22.300" Score="7" ViewCount="500" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the impression that people (including myself, I'm not going to be ignorant) have the nature of locking themselves up if they have an '&lt;em&gt;off day&lt;/em&gt;'. It's a lacking of inspiration, stimulation and encouragement to go on sometimes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course as a good PM or PL, you want to have the occurence of these periods as low as possible.&#xA;As a PM or PL, people depend on your input and on your outcomes and if you slow down, probably the whole project slows down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you keep yourself motivated on days that you cannot find the drive to go for it 100%?&#xA;What are your tricks to keep you fresh and motivated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&#xA;If I have a bad day (and it only happens once every few years) I oblige myself to go to one of my colleagues and ask for something. No mather what, even if it is how it's going with his work, I always come back a bit refreshed. Seeying other people work, often stimulates me to get back on track with my own job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T04:26:02.833" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T04:30:29.150" Title="What are good ways to stimulate and encourage yourself as Project Manager or Project Leader?" Tags="&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1789" CreationDate="2011-04-19T12:42:41.437" Score="6" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One of the most refreshing things you can do is, as you mention, talking with people -- not only occasional chat with one of colleagues but also some planned discussion around topics which are important but not necessarily urgent.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another idea is to use such time to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chimaeraconsulting.com/covey.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sharpen the saw&lt;/a&gt; -- learn something new or improve your PM toolbox. Actually &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2011/03/bad-time-to-sharpen-saw.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;it's almost always bad time to do this&lt;/a&gt; so treat it as opportunity which may pay off pretty soon.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also you can try to overcome such mood. One of methods which proved to be worthy for me is &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2008/02/do-it-now-day.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;do-it-now day&lt;/a&gt;. You just switch to the mode when you deal only with whatever comes next. This focus change makes it much easier to do something constructive and valuable and, at the same time, you finish a lot of small tasks which would wait for their turn pretty long time otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A couple of times I used such mediocre days to make them even more miserable trying to complete especially dull tasks. This doesn't do any good in terms of your enthusiasm and engagement but at least you get some really boring task done which, surprisingly enough, can be pretty rewarding.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Consider taking the day off. Especially when you risk the situation may last longer than a single day. Even a single day off can be like taking a deep breath before diving back under the surface again. Personally I like to use such a break for some physical activity which is great in terms of stop thinking about the work for a moment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T12:42:41.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1772" CreationDate="2011-04-19T12:44:26.693" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's &quot;Change the person or change the person&quot; situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would fall in like with earlier answers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check if your own rules are really &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; necessary.  Are you &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; sure you need daily report and it should be done manually and in no way you can extract same information from process by-means?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure all in your team talked about your rules and committed to them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Every being does what &lt;em&gt;he&lt;/em&gt; thinks is best for him right at the moment of action.  If your team member acts againt rules - there are reasons.  Talk about them (in private setup, at least initially).  Know them.  Act accordingly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have no time to solve this situation in a clean way - replace the person.  If you can't for whatever reasons (deadlines, special knowledge, etc) - work around him.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Managing extremely distributed software development team, I know such situations very well.  In my cases all of them resolved either via:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Action was automated (most frequent)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Person left the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Person changed behaviour (most rare)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="911" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T12:44:26.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1789" CreationDate="2011-04-19T14:11:51.393" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;List down the things that absolutely definitely need to get done that day, delegate them out and take off.  Pushing yourself through a 'rough day' often does more 'damage' than good - don't let the team see you under stress, part of the role is to always be balanced and in control and if you're having a rough day of it, do what you can - including not being there - to not show it.  PM Psychology 101.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="458" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T14:11:51.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1732" CreationDate="2011-04-19T14:17:06.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One situation you may encounter more in small companies than in larger ones is the person who &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; make the change won't make it because it will make that person appear to have been wrong. These are situations you cannot fix, so it is best to identify them when possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T14:17:06.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1772" CreationDate="2011-04-19T15:16:15.273" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If people doesn't follow rules, there can be 2 reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They disagree with the rules&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They have another issue which impact their work, like a lack of motivation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first possibility should trigger 2 reactions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Question your rule. Is it really useful or is it just a painful loss of time for everybody?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it is useful, you need to convince people it is by explaining the reasons&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unrelated issues leading for example in a lack of motivation must be dealed with properly. I think that's beyond the frame of the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If everything else fails, you will have to remove the person from the team and replace him/her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastEditorUserId="152" LastEditDate="2011-04-19T15:21:55.890" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T15:21:55.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1732" CreationDate="2011-04-19T18:29:35.117" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;And never forget: &lt;strong&gt;Culture eats strategy for breakfast&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;Unfortunately not my words, and not my article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.parshift.com/Speakers/Speak016.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.parshift.com/Speakers/Speak016.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="936" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T18:29:35.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1772" CreationDate="2011-04-19T19:42:45.460" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I've been in a similar situation several times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do a face to face meeting. I understand that you cannot come by and talk to the person, but maybe you can talk to him via phone or video conference. It may work (my girlfriend's boss does it this way, and he is quite successful with it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing I do that I try to find out the motivation behind the ignorance (prepare with examples, really important). If you can find it, maybe you will understand the person. Even if I got the motivation, I remind the colleague to respect the team and me and follow the rules. Consider this as the first warning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the discussion with the &quot;motivation knowledge&quot; in my pocket I try to find a way how to work with him/her, but I always have the team's interest not the person's interest in view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When nothing changes, then another discussion will come with more examples but with less &quot;democracy&quot;. In this case, I make perfectly clear to the person that we really have a problem and the situation needs to be solved. Second warning. In this case I talk to my boss and inform him about the situation, just in case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end comes the third meeting, but this time there are three participants. The person, our boss, and myself. During this meeting the person receives a formal notification about the case and he/she should decide whether he/she would like to work in the current team/workplace otherwise he/she should leave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think three notifications are quite fair. I value teams over individuals. If someone is not capable to work with others its better for both of us, when he/she works somewhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't waste time and efforts on those who has no respect towards you or towards his/her teammates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T05:04:37.013" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T05:04:37.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1785" CreationDate="2011-04-19T20:44:01.277" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I concur with Brett that the potential is there. I think the key is the soft skills. More precisely how well does this person engage with others, communicate and handle stress. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a proponent of the D&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DISC_assessment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ISC Behavioral Model&lt;/a&gt;, so I'll speak in these terms (DISC is not Myers Briggs, it is more &quot;what's your default behavior, if you don't manage it&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your KM is a classic High C (Mr. Spock), they might dive too far into the details to be effective at the big picture planning a PM needs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your KM is a classic High S (Mother Teresa), they may lack the forefullness to speak up and be a team leader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think I've ever met someone who does KM that is a straight High D (General Patton, MacArthur) or High I (Uber Salesman, President Clinton). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A balanced High D, High C KM would make a great Project Manager. They have the data analytical tendencies and know how to step up and use the right amount of force to make a point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion- Hard skills are very transferable and will really help on large or complex projects. It comes down to the people skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best- &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T20:44:01.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="389" CreationDate="2011-04-20T03:08:26.843" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;You shouldn't use waterfall for anything but the simplest of projects, which effectively excludes about 90% of all software projects.  Why? Because software projects are complex on three dimensions: Requirements, Technology and People.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To illustrate, this is a Stacey Graph, developed by &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1881052893&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ralph Stacey&lt;/a&gt; of the University of Hertfordshire in the 1980s - he studied complexity and human behaviours in organizations and businesses and how to adapt management practices to counteract its effects.  I've adapted it based on the graph that Ken Schwaber uses in his Scrum books and classes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UyZxe.png&quot; alt=&quot;Stacey Graph&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Waterfall projects fit into scenarios that map into the &lt;strong&gt;simple&lt;/strong&gt; zones on the graph where we have almost perfect understanding of our customer's requirements and the technology(ies) we need to use to implement them into a working software solution along with a small team size 1-3.  As you might guess, these scenarios are few.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typical software projects, however, tend to reside in the &lt;strong&gt;complex&lt;/strong&gt; area in the middle of the graph where requirements run along a continuum where they are not entirely understood or agreed upon (because they've yet to be implemented) and the technologies required run along a similar continuum where we're not 100% certain about how they work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far, this is the good news.  We can deal with &quot;complex&quot; projects.  However, what pushes complexity into the zone of &lt;strong&gt;anarchy&lt;/strong&gt; is when we add people and put them into a highly-creative process like a software project where they need to collaborate to deal with the aforemention ambiguities. Waterfall methodologies, which enforce following a rigid plan over responding to change (within and outside the project), exacerbate this tension and contribute to failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In these situations (ie. 90%+ of the time) you &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; to use an iterative/incremental process to contain the complexity and mitigate risk exposure within a defined time box (the iteration or sprint) so that you can continually inspect and adapt the solution according to the realities of requirements + technology + people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="960" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T03:08:26.843" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1359" CreationDate="2011-04-20T03:40:40.400" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Choosing an iterative/incremental process framework like Scrum is a good idea:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get training for yourself and the team; if everyone doesn't understand the rules, you can make a right mess of things and end up practicing Scrumifall or Scrumbut and you'll be in as much trouble as no process at all.  Start by reading the Scrum Guide &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrum.org/scrumguides/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're going to play the role of Scrum Master AND Team Member, you're going to be running up a bit of a hill - it's not impossible, but it is definitely difficult because you're not able to keep yourself separate from the competing interests of being a member of a self-organizing/cross-functional team while meeting with your various Product Owners.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Speaking of whom, you will need to assess who you're responsible to for the myriad of projects - someone needs to set the to-do lists (Product Backlog) and validate the results.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Working iteratively requires your team to pick up some new skills - chief among them:  Automated regression tests.  Start small and work your way up:  TFS has great hooks into unit test projects that allow them to be run on the server.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider using a Process Template to add work items to support working with Scrum like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/59ac03e3-df99-4776-be39-1917cbfc5d8e&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0&lt;/a&gt; template along with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://urbanturtle.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Urban Turtle Team Web Access add-on&lt;/a&gt; which gives you a really easy-to-use UI for managing your Product Backlog and Sprint Backlog - including tracking your impediments and bugs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="960" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T03:40:40.400" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1789" CreationDate="2011-04-20T04:30:29.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the afternoons, I can definitely slip into 'off' moments.  So what I do is I drop whatever I'm doing and go for a 20 minute walk around the block.  I don't go for a slow, leisurely walk.  Instead, I go for a power walk.  When I get back to the office, whatever steam I needed to blow off was effectively blown away during the speed walk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also find it helps to talk to people face to face.  In a world filled with faceless chats and emails, it's easier to say things using a sarcastic or negative tone, but when you see someone face to face, you may find it easier to keep yourself in check.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T04:30:29.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1802" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1844" CreationDate="2011-04-20T09:24:29.993" Score="3" ViewCount="514" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, the workload has been getting heavier and there are more areas to coordinate in an ongoing program to develop and market a product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The product has reached the sales stage and has taken on clients, which means a sales and customer service group is needed, in addition to accounts receivable, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the ideal number of tasks for a product/program manager to manage before he/she should approach a manager and ask for more help in the project management area?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="2618" LastEditDate="2012-01-23T01:24:19.620" LastActivityDate="2012-01-23T01:24:19.620" Title="What Is the Ideal Number of Departments/People for a Product/Program Manager to Manage?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;workload&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1802" CreationDate="2011-04-20T10:12:32.650" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Span_of_control&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Span of Control&lt;/a&gt;.  The number of tasks or size of the project in dollars or complexity can be misleading.  Span of control dictates the number of people that an individual oversees.  In other words, if the work is expanding, the number of people assigned to it will also expand.  At some point, another layer of leadership is created.  If it expands more, add another layer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are different school of thoughts on the appropriate size of what an individual controls.  Most times I have read that the number where we have maximum performance on average is between six and eight direct reports.  Most recently, that number has been challenged and it was suggested we need to have as high 15 to 20 direct reports.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally feel 8 to ten is about right, at least for me.  So, if I managed a team of 30, I would have a layer of team leads between me and the rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="91" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T11:32:16.470" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T11:32:16.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1802" CreationDate="2011-04-20T12:06:53.067" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is a such arbitrary number (it would be 42 if any...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, one should &lt;strong&gt;consider tasks as a statistical measure of load they introduce&lt;/strong&gt;. I suppose you can imagine managing 30 tasks if each of them won't take more than 5 minutes a day. So instead of counting tasks, try to summarize their workload and probability of appearing. This way you can easily - and anytime - point the most demanding tasks as well as worst case scenario when all of the tasks will require your attention at the same period of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having such information refreshed frequently, you can not only ask for help in such areas but may also point to other solutions such as upgrading software or automating some tasks (which is a one time expense).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-04-24T18:56:24.590" LastActivityDate="2011-04-24T18:56:24.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1470" CreationDate="2011-04-20T12:35:50.197" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you ask about Agile outside of the software industry what I go back to is the work done by W. Edwards Deming in manufacturing.  One of his core principles was the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle.   AKA the Deming Cycle.  This cycle along with his 14 pints and 7 deadly sins are the foundation of the much of modern manufacturing process and were key to the rebirth,and success, of manufacturing in Japan post WWII. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With its emphasis on an iterative process and focus on quality of product, rather than post production QA, Deming's work is the logical starting point for applying Agile outside of software development.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By taking Deming's work and adding to it the Agile principles around sprints, velocity, frequency and retros you get a working hybrid for non-IT applications.  You additional get 60 years worth of accumulated experience in manufacturing processes that work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="996" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T12:35:50.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1806" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-04-20T18:17:40.273" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A method for building software with an emphasis on just-in-time delivery while not overloading the team by limiting Work In Progress. It emphasizes that the team pull work from a queue, and the process, from definition of a task to its delivery to the customer, is visualized for everyone to see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-12-16T05:45:59.763" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T05:45:59.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1807" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-04-20T18:17:40.273" Score="0" Body="Use the Kanban tag for project management questions about how to implement Kanban as a methodology. This tag is not for questions about software recommendations. However, questions about how to integrate a specific software solution or tool as it relates to Kanban is on topic." OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-12-16T05:45:59.763" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T05:45:59.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1808" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1811" CreationDate="2011-04-20T18:19:24.410" Score="5" ViewCount="1020" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am the development manager for a small software company. My team focuses on developing our product, and we have some partner companies that do the &quot;professional services&quot; work for our product: things like developing custom add-ons and doing user training and system implementation. We are planning to start doing some of that professional services work in-house, because some customers have said that they would feel more comfortable working directly with us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have experience with this kind of thing? I'm trying to figure out how to structure the development resources for this new team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One option that comes to mind is to just add some new people to our main development team and then have everyone rotate through that job. This would help spread the knowledge around, but I think that some of the developers would be unhappy about switching projects like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option would be to form a separate development team to be responsible for the new services work. This ensures that people can focus on the work that they like best, but it has the downside that the new team might not inherit the strong culture of quality that our main team has.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any other options that I'm overlooking?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1011" LastActivityDate="2011-04-24T08:34:06.173" Title="What are good ways to structure a group that has both a product development team and a professional services team" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1809" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-04-20T18:26:50.887" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T18:26:50.887" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T18:26:50.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1810" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-04-20T18:26:50.887" Score="0" Body="This tag is for all questions related to leading and managing project teams and project team members either directly or indirectly." OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T18:26:50.887" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T18:26:50.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1808" CreationDate="2011-04-20T18:47:14.387" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see a few approaches you may choose to tackle the situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have separated teams to deal with professional services and product development&lt;/strong&gt; (you mention this one). On the plus side: you can recruit people in a way they do what they like -- some of them would prefer building new products and others would enjoy contact with clients. On the minus side: building two separate teams would probably make communication between teams more difficult and you might appreciate shorter feedback loops between your clients and the development team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have people in the development team taking professional services gigs as a rotating role&lt;/strong&gt; (you also mention this one). On the plus side: feedback loops between your clients and development team will be shorter and you may actually find people in your team who deal with such engagements astonishingly well, even though you wouldn't know unless you actually tried it. On the minus side: it is likely some people in development team would hate the job and if their turn takes like a few months they may get frustrated and leave. Also if you don't organize it in a way that everyone get their own fair share of the workload it may bring some unnecessary conflicts to the team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make professional services tasks a voluntary assignments.&lt;/strong&gt; On a plus side: feedback loops are short and you likely to find people who actually like such tasks and are willing to take them. Also you may find people who just want to try it just once, to see how it is and, even if they don't really like it, they definitely learn a lot from such events. On the minus side: you may and up with no one really willing to do some tasks so you need some kind of backup plan either way. Also it may mean that some of folks who are crucial for your product development are also those who are most willing to do professional services work so you might need to make some tradeoff decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Just put professional services endeavors to your work queue so whoever is free at the moment would get the task.&lt;/strong&gt; On the plus side: you make your feedback loops short. Also eventually everyone will try to do such tasks and see how it is like. Not only will they learn a lot from that experience but also they will share the pain with clients, if there's anything to share that is. On the minus side: quality of some of your professional services might be a bit worse as not everyone is great at such work, especially when we're discussing developers. Also it means you will be trying to make some sort of generalists out of your people which means quite a big investment in learning.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can pretty much get any of these approaches working well so if I had to choose one I'd consider who I have in the team and would choose one of paths basing on what's going to work best with the people. It's always all about people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-22T06:35:54.107" LastActivityDate="2011-04-22T06:35:54.107" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1812" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1813" CreationDate="2011-04-20T18:48:11.983" Score="5" ViewCount="240" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider a PM who has his own strong opinion how project management should look like. Now, the organization he works for takes a bit different, more loose and more flexible, approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of examples: PM would like to see daily reporting while organization enforces weekly reporting on project teams or PM expects all the dates, even those with low priority, would be kept, while managers in the company often react to changing situation sacrificing some of low priority tasks in order to adjust to new high priority requests from their customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, PM tried to discuss with senior management about how he'd like projects to look like but they turned his request down leaving much flexibility to project teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should PM do in such situation? Should he accept the way things look like?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-04-23T12:22:09.580" Title="PM doesn't agree with company-wide rule - what should they do?" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;work-environment&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1812" CreationDate="2011-04-20T18:56:01.867" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMO - if you want change, you're going to need to sell the team, not the company on the idea.  If other PMs in the company are content with the current system, then there's not going to be a large buy in from above for change, since the whole company isn't having a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you've seen merits in a more formal approach, then I think the best strategy is to sell the people working with you on the approach.  If there's an impact to not doing daily reporting, or not tracing low priority tasks, then describe the impact to the teams.  And be up to a negotiation or to hearing why what you ask for is unacceptable.  Look for small steps, not big ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least in my company, there's a few in PM-type management that have a particular way of doing things.  It's specific to the individual and not particularly linked to corporate process.  They get what they want because what they want gets results.  While it's not official process or anything, most teams working with these managers are willing to bend a little, because when they do, the project overall is better.  Sometimes these practices &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; make it into corporate policy, when they are shown to be a good way to solve an overall problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="718" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T18:56:01.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="605" CreationDate="2011-04-20T19:43:50.853" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might like to consider a shorter sprint/iteration to begin with, it solves many problems.  In this instance you will get a shorter feedback loop which will enable you to adjust sooner.  As your requirements are a bit obscure planning out 4 weeks just might be a bit risky.  There is nothing inherently wrong with varying your sprint length although it will disrupt your rhythm and your velocity chart will look like the Loch Ness monster.  The golden rule is not to change your sprint length once you're in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1012" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T19:43:50.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1732" CreationDate="2011-04-20T19:46:02.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Change is not an event, but a process.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to start small, start introducing your ideas to individuals and groups who will become intrigued about it and will support it. You will need to make them so interested that they &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to become involved in or part of this new idea you are proposing. You need additional champions to further create buy-in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A known framework for introducing change is &lt;strong&gt;ADKAR&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A&lt;/strong&gt; . . . . Awareness of the need for change&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;D&lt;/strong&gt; . . . . Desire to participate and support&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;K&lt;/strong&gt; . . . . Knowledge how to do it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A&lt;/strong&gt; . . . . Ability to do it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;R&lt;/strong&gt; . . . . Reinforcement of the change&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several micro-strategies to start creating the first two. A very good book on this and one I recommend is &quot;&lt;em&gt;Fearless Change. Patters for introducing new ideas&lt;/em&gt;&quot; from Mary Lynn Manns and Linda Rising, Addison Wesley 2005, ISBN 0-201-74157-1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T19:46:02.977" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1725" CreationDate="2011-04-20T19:54:22.413" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're interested in Agile and Scrum I always enjoy Mike Cohn's writing.  I would recommend both User Stories Applied and Agile Estimating and Planning as great books to add to your starter collection.  There are some great books that will take you to the next level but you can't read everything right now so start small don't overwhelm yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1012" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T19:54:22.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1063" CreationDate="2011-04-20T20:03:05.167" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mark, as a consultant/coach you can't want change more than your customer.  They have to want to change and that may mean you have to stand by and let them fail.  Maybe they're already failing but just can't see it.  You can try and point this but this is a tricky slope that often leads to the fragmenting of the relationship.  Better to step away and be invited back later when they are ready to change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1012" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T20:03:05.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1716" CreationDate="2011-04-20T21:21:17.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Individual offices with privacy provided to developers is the best method.  Would also have several group offices set aside for anyone who has to work as part of a team and wants to sit with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1014" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T21:21:17.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1812" CreationDate="2011-04-20T23:00:01.667" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMO - The PM should accept things relatively as is.  I am assuming a PM for a software project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the PM expects formal status reports daily they is being a little obsessive.  However, a daily stand-up status meeting at the start of the day may be appropriate.  This meeting should just cover status changes and blockers.  The PM should work on removing the blockages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As yet estimating software development is not an exact science, the PM should be reasonable and accept the normal variances.  It is relatively common to delay lower priority tasks to complete the higher priority tasks.  If you are working in a zero defects environment, then expect unscheduled delays.  (Zero defects will likely save time in the end.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the PM is dealing with task which can be accurately estimated, and no blockers occur, then expecting the tasks to be completed may be more reasonable.  Try to keep the overtime to a minimum in any case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T23:00:01.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1812" CreationDate="2011-04-20T23:39:33.290" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, if you can show value to others for changing, they'll at least give something a try. Working through the process of seeing value from other points of view can always help to weed out the 'I wants' from the 'this would be of values'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your examples, I sense there are I wants in the mix and you are not selling value. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T23:39:33.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1812" CreationDate="2011-04-20T23:41:03.003" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a blog a month or so ago (&lt;a href=&quot;http://thegorillaisnamedhogarth.blogspot.com/2011/02/stealth-gorilla.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Stealth Gorilla&lt;/a&gt;) on the concept of rolling out change in a change adverse group. The basic concept revolves around a personal mantra of mine &amp;quot;First get it done, then figure out who owns it.&amp;quot; and I've successfully used the tips I laid out in the blog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially you start by doing it. It's a lot of up front work, but people start to see the value and adoption follows. In the case of the daily status, use your feet and go out and talk with everyone. Then publish a status report based on the information you collected. Once the value is shown, you can start changing it. Start by sending out the status report and saying &amp;quot;Did I miss anything&amp;quot;, then sending yesterdays and saying &amp;quot;anything changed? Are you still red on the DB integration.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This only works once you've built trust. You can't do it on day one. My own preference is &amp;quot;Do no harm for the first 90 days.&amp;quot; Spend your first three months with a team building trust. Then start introducing new ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T23:41:03.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1802" CreationDate="2011-04-20T23:41:38.110" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are talking tasks - very few. If you are talking activities or projects, it will depend on the phase of the project, the skill of the team, and the experience of the PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T23:41:38.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1812" CreationDate="2011-04-21T04:17:47.140" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My opinion is that the pay-cheque counts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing that counts in a company is results. Of course quality is important in order to get recurrent business, and therefore it is important to have pretty good processes and not let too many things slip away. But in the real world you always have to balance expediency and quality for most efficient results. Results that keep the shareholders happy, results that keep the customers happy, results that keep the staff happy (in that order for most businesses - though this depends on who the top person is).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, like bethlakshmi and others say, if you can demonstrate value in the changes that you propose then get buy in, step by step, and bring it on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience is that if you don't have support from above you still have a few routes to try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do it for yourself anyway (bottom-up approach). But beware, you are on your own and it could backfire. So make sure that if your actions involve other people, that those people are Ok with it first. You must get at least reasonable levels of buy-in from all involved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do nothing, keep the status-quo (get to know your world before you swim out of sight of the coastline). You now risk to do a job that you don't like. But this can buy you time, if circumstances don't get in the way. Use that time, though, to build alliances, to build your credibility, to adopt other ways of doing things in order to get into the politics and systems of the place.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build a solid business case for it that clearly demonstrates the benefits (top-down approach). This theoretical approach must be backed by significant experience though, from you or someone else, so long as they will respect the recommendations. Must be based on solid evidence for it to convince higher management.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can blend from one solution into another or chop and change. Your choice. If you get results or a message that they value, you will get noticed in a good way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every project manager has their own style, especially in a large corporation. Each must work in a way that they feel comfortable working. So what suits you might not suit another and vice-versa. Those styles can be quite different, and so long as the general philosophy goes in the same direction and that everybody is happy with how they interact with one another, everything should be smooth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, though, no matter who is right in principle, you can't and should not try to fight the tide. If the company is overwhelmingly going in one direction, you can't go in the opposite and expect to remain in your role. You must accommodate yourself with the broad direction that the company is taking, go with the flow and stir or veer in smaller ways in your direction of choice. You can't just do an about-face. Even if you feel that the about-face is absolutely required, you have to respect how the company got to be where it is today, who leads it and how they lead it. If you don't, you're in the wrong job and it is only a matter of time before you or they tire and look for alternatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="179" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T04:17:47.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1748" CreationDate="2011-04-21T07:41:38.917" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scope creep is unmanaged increase in scope:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cwd.dhemery.com/2003/04/banish_the_scope_creep/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://cwd.dhemery.com/2003/04/banish_the_scope_creep/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T07:41:38.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1812" CreationDate="2011-04-21T09:31:38.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion there is no single best approach to project management. There are projects and teams where daily reporting brings best results but there are some, where results of such approach would be poor. It is the PM duty to fit the best approach to a specific project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If projects in your organization don't need such a rigorous approach (important: and it is proven in battle) there are two options for PM: stay or leave the organization. If PM chooses to stay (which means he accepts loose and flexible approach) he should learn how to manage projects in such an environment. Another question is: how should he do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-22T06:34:19.320" LastActivityDate="2011-04-22T06:34:19.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1748" CreationDate="2011-04-21T09:40:06.297" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scope creep is the customer trying to get more out of the deal by trying to introduce unapproved changes in the original specification, especially where the spec is unclear. As the customer then discuss these points with people whose work is to implement the project and not negociating the contract, it's very likely to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T09:40:06.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1802" CreationDate="2011-04-21T10:40:16.457" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hard to give a really definitive answer. I would say: It is as much as the PM can seriously manage, which depends on the workload each of these departments and people represent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the workload becomes too heavy, (s)he has to refocus on a part of the work and delegate the rest to somebody else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-04-24T00:17:25.320" LastActivityDate="2011-04-24T00:17:25.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1725" CreationDate="2011-04-21T11:54:09.427" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=8GqC7xHTwGsC&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Quality Software Project Management&lt;/a&gt;. It has detailed explanation about every process area and every PM needed skill and methodology. It's the best I have read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="681" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T11:54:09.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1358" CreationDate="2011-04-21T13:38:30.507" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;We work on a week-long iterations. Whenever there is a task which needs some research (which means that team don't have a clue on how to solve a problem and the level of uncertainty is high) we decide how many hours we want to spend on a task in iteration, ie. 4h. It means that during the iteration someone takes such a task and spends no more than 4 hours on research. After finishing, whatever the results are, they are presented on demonstration meeting and the outcome is used on next planning session.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, sometimes first couple hours spent on research bring too little knowledge, so the research is continued in subsequent iteration. Also with time-limit. However in our team this situation is rare. Usually first couple hours is enough to tell what's task about and how to deal with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course the amount of hours needed for first-step-research depends on business domain. Maybe it would be day or longer. Or maybe an hour. However please keep in mind, that good-enough results are visible quite fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T13:38:30.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1716" CreationDate="2011-04-21T17:46:14.363" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two important things you have to take into account when deciding how to group people:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How much of the work is &amp;quot;deep thinking, in-the-zone&amp;quot; work (like programming, writing, solving problems, research, and reading) and who is doing that work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People doing deep thinking work need to get into a psychological state of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;flow&lt;/a&gt; and stay there. There are only to ways to provide this in the workplace: individual private offices or a workspace &lt;em&gt;exclusive&lt;/em&gt; to other people doing &amp;quot;in-the-zone&amp;quot; work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What are the important official communications paths and what are the valuable unofficial communications paths?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of an official communication path might be a team of writers working on a script together. Their very work depends on speaking to each other. An unofficial communications path might be a salesperson and a programmer bumping into each other in the break room, and the salesperson gives the programmer useful insights into customer requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main experience is with software companies. At software companies, you have a large group of people who spend most of their time &amp;quot;in the zone&amp;quot; and who need library-like quiet and no interruptions to be productive. You can either provide this with private offices (ideally). You can possibly provide this with small team rooms of 2-4, or even a large open workspace, as long as everyone in the same room is a programmer. But the larger the space, the more likely it is that &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; conversation will knock &lt;em&gt;everyone&lt;/em&gt; out of their sense of flow and concentration. This is extremely damaging to productivity, a process which is well documented in the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/navLinks/fog0000000262.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Peopleware&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other people at software companies (sales people, marketing people, designers and product managers) are much more likely to be talking--to each other, or to customers--during the day, and &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be kept away from the programmers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I've designed four offices for software teams and the design is always a large number of private offices for software developers, and an open work area for everyone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="132" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T17:46:14.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1748" CreationDate="2011-04-21T18:27:13.860" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scope creep is nothing more than unmanaged change to the scope. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1024" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T18:27:13.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1738" CreationDate="2011-04-21T18:32:16.387" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a developer you need to identify risks and issues as soon as possible so they can be better managed.  A lot of developers try to shield management from bad news and / or work very hard to fix problems before they come to light.  As a project manager I need to know what your challenges are as soon as possible so I can get you help or mitigate.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1024" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T18:32:16.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1725" CreationDate="2011-04-21T18:35:26.680" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scott Berkun's book, Making Things Happen, as mentioned above, is by far the best book I have ever read on project management.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1024" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T18:35:26.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1705" CreationDate="2011-04-21T18:43:15.457" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should be sharing most of the documentation related to the project with your team members when they come on board and continue to do so throughout the course of the project.  As yegor256 alluded to, if you are doing it right, all of this is baked into the process.  Project charters, plans, status reports, etc. should all be available on a shared drive, Sharepoint, Lotus Notes, Basecamp, etc.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1024" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T18:43:15.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1693" CreationDate="2011-04-21T18:52:42.437" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Mark Phillips for the most part.  Keeping a single point of truth shields you from &quot;He said, She said&quot;.  When you are really in the think of things, consistent messaging is crucial if you want to maintain credibility and trust.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, if you are getting inconsistent messages across your team, you have a larger problem with internal communication.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1024" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T18:52:42.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1692" CreationDate="2011-04-21T19:01:26.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, I would be concerned.  If the PM is not familiar with the primary deliverable, they have most likely been hiding behind excel spreadsheets, project plans and email.  It sounds to me like he or she is acting as a project administrator and not a true project manager.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1024" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T19:01:26.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="55" CreationDate="2011-04-21T19:08:16.620" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It always helps but it isn't crucial.  What is most important is that the project manager is a critical and logical thinker.  Here is an interesting quote from Paul MacCready who built the first human powered airplane with little knowledge about airplanes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I have no background in aircraft wing structure. Thus, in my naiveté, I started from first principles (with some insights left over from building indoor model airplanes in the 50s and hang gliders in the early 70s), pretended I never saw an airplane before, and came up with the Gossamer Condor approach that permitted a 96’ span vehicle to weigh only 55-70 lbs. The British engineers also knew about indoor models and hang gliders, but they knew so much about their specialty that an easier approach was not apparent.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2861-how-nature-and-naivet-helped-paul-maccready-build-a-human-powered-airplane-in-only-six-months&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How nature and naiveté helped Paul MacCready build a human-powered airplane in only six months&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1024" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T19:08:16.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1478" CreationDate="2011-04-22T07:14:53.683" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would slightly disagree with thesis that agile is exceptional with relying with tracking and reporting on actual team results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could imagine non-agile teams reporting real work progress, and I have seen agile teams reporting fiction (95% of work completed and 1 out of 5 story completed during review), it is all matter of rules and personal responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What really can help on this area is agile concept &lt;strong&gt;Definition of Done&lt;/strong&gt; - shortly speaking set of conditions that must be fulfilled to treat piece of work as really, really completed that immediately can be reported and completed. &#xA;I think this is one of the most important thing that need to be defined before any measure of performance start. Only then there is a chance that measurement will be objective and informative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="936" LastActivityDate="2011-04-22T07:14:53.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1812" CreationDate="2011-04-22T08:30:39.440" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of ways that I would look at this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the PM is setting more rigorous standards than the company norm, that's within his right as the manager of the piece of work, and he can ask this from his team if he thinks it helps him to deliver. If they don't like this, they have to justify to him why it's a problem - and at the same time, he should be explaining to them why he wants what he is asking for. Hopefully they can reach a common understanding and agreement. The bigger problem would be if he was looking for less rigorous standards than the company requires, as he is then reducing, rather than increasing, the quality standards.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The reporting and quality requirements should be defined at the outset of the project, and agreed by the key stakeholders. If the PM has proposed a level that the project sponsor/ executive doesn't like, then the PM has to fall into line. But if the sponsor/executive is OK with the proposed reporting, the PM can drive forward his own standards.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These two perspectives are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and ultimately the company culture will have as big an impact as the rules that are written down (assuming that they are!), so there is no single right answer that will always apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be good to imagine that the PM might be sufficiently open-minded to try new ways of operating, as we are all capable of learning new techniques. Flexibility can be a virtue, and ultimately I believe that using the right approach to meet the circumstances will deliver a better result than always approaching problems in the same old way. There's an old saying that if the only tool in your toolbag is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail. Maybe this project manager needs some new tools!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-04-22T08:30:39.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1812" CreationDate="2011-04-22T08:48:45.940" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main question is: how is the current organisation working? If projects are done in budget and time without teams going crazy, I see no need for a change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if major issues in the workflow exist, it's probably a good thing somebody is trying to improve the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Major rule: Don't change what's working, don't repair what's not broken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastActivityDate="2011-04-22T08:48:45.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1802" CreationDate="2011-04-22T13:46:08.033" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you've moved more towards operations than project management, but I could be wrong. Either way, the same concepts apply. There's no rule or restriction, as each PM is different. It just depends on your own management style and how comfortable you feel. It goes to David Espina's Span of Control comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At various times, I've managed 20-25 projects with 5 reports, and others it was 40+ (plus general operations) with 9 reports. Managing them directly, it would be about half that. The more projects, the more hands-off I became and relied on the reports to do their job and provide me with the information I needed. For example, at one point I was responsible for all the projects in our division, but also I was responsible for the accounting (A/R,A/P). Accounting isn't my area, so I had an Office Manager that handled that and provided me with weekly status reports so I could watch for and deal with problems at a division level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A big part of it isn't dollar volume, or number of tasks or projects, but management complexity. If your projects are relatively straightforward from a management standpoint (limited # of stakeholders or they're the same for every project, limited importance to the co., similar work, etc) then you could probably do more than if they were complicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your description I would say you're in a somewhat complex environment as each of those depts you listed are going to have differing goals. So the complexity of managing increases because, as a whole, they're pursuing the same goal (product success &amp;amp; growth), but as depts they're chasing different ones, and they don't always work in parallel. So I would say you're perfectly justified in asking for assistance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-04-24T18:54:53.077" LastActivityDate="2011-04-24T18:54:53.077" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1512" CreationDate="2011-04-22T16:30:01.883" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pawel's answer brings great coverage of the subject but as you wanted more thoughts on the subject as I deliver:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I woudn't expect your new team to beat delivery rates of other teams with higher level of adoption (Kanban and/or work experience) unless you were allowed to hire top guns from outer space.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SLA's are not everlasting, in fact, there should be some paragraphs about improvements and reevaluations as well. Make first cycle short and meanwhile grab all the measurements experience in estimations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your team is already working on the project then introducing Kanban table doesn't change much in task estimation. New practices do change a lot. I.e: introducing a WIP limit means you can not promise (SLA) too much concurrent tasks but average task work time should decrease. If you suffered from unproper prioritetization of tasks before Kanban then you could probably expect to handle critical tasks better/faster and ofer better quality of service in such area of SLA.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is not so bad idea to ask team for an estimation or even a guesstimation of best- and worst-case scenario. You can ask as well for their preference: are they willing to take worst-case scenario, work in more pleasurable atmosphere, but suffer from not so well PR among other teams OR should you take rather best-case scenario and maybe work overtime in order not to break commitments. Make sure it will last only for the first period.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastActivityDate="2011-04-22T16:30:01.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1847" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1850" CreationDate="2011-04-22T16:56:54.580" Score="27" ViewCount="3867" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm sure I'm not alone in this. I have heard and read a lot of snippets of information about this topic and I've formed my own understanding - probably not the best way to assess the value or try to implement it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you post your favorite resources(books, blogs, podcasts) that will help a beginner. Or worse than a beginner someone who needs to undo assumptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastEditorUserId="696" LastEditDate="2011-04-24T23:37:17.787" LastActivityDate="2020-07-22T12:59:31.897" Title="Scrum, Agile, Kanban looking for 'for dummies' type of information" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="22" ClosedDate="2016-07-01T11:13:56.980" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-09-16T13:22:27.180" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1847" CreationDate="2011-04-22T18:20:10.593" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perry although I've heard mixed opinions I really enjoyed Corey Ladas book &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0578002140&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrumban&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also there is some great material from Henrik Kniberg.  For example: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.infoq.com/minibooks/kanban-scrum-minibook/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban vs. Scrum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1012" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-15T09:06:59.227" LastActivityDate="2020-06-15T09:06:59.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1847" CreationDate="2011-04-22T18:28:19.693" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;As for Scrum I would recommend reading &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.infoq.com/minibooks/scrum-xp-from-the-trenches-2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum and XP from the trenches&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for Kanban, you should listen to one of the great speaks from Pawel Brodzinski. He sells Kanban as easy as he is breathing. One link I found in no time:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2010/11/kanban-basics.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2010/11/kanban-basics.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for Agile, it's a very large domain. Should we stick to Agile Manifesto only?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-22T06:55:50.560" LastActivityDate="2020-07-22T06:55:50.560" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1847" CreationDate="2011-04-22T18:44:12.963" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First, to set the tone, you may start with &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3406177/how-agile-lean-and-kanban-relate&quot;&gt;this StackOverflow question on agile, lean and Kanban&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, agile and lean are general concepts, the former basing on &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; and the latter on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Production_System&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Toyota Production System&lt;/a&gt;. Then we have Scrum or XP, built over agile, and Kanban, built over lean, which are specific methods teams can implement, like Prince2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I don't treat agile and lean movements in a very orthodox way -- they base on the same principles. So, to some point, they're overlapping. Also, you will find teams mixing methods from both houses, Scrumban (a combination of Scrum and Kanban) being probably the most common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you wanted to position agile/lean methods somehow I'd say that:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum is the closest to the old-school project management methods, although it doesn't really deal with formal side of project management.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;XP focuses on engineering practices and is generally programmer-centered.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kanban is often dubbed change management framework as it doesn't change the way team works on the day 1 and lets the process evolve over time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As all three focuses on different things, it isn't uncommon to see them, or their parts, used jointly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you want to learn more I'd start with such set of materials:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/topics/scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Introduction to Scrum&lt;/a&gt; on Mike Cohn's site.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you want more on Scrum Mike Cohn's site is a good place to find also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/articles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;more advanced stuff on Scrum&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once you know what Scrum is I'd strongly recommend Henrik Kniberg's and Mattias Skarin's minibook &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/minibooks/kanban-scrum-minibook&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban and Scrum - Making most of both&lt;/a&gt; which is great in terms of describing Kanban but has a lot of referrals to Scrum&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For more advanced stuff on Kanban I'd recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://limitedwipsociety.ning.com/page/articles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Limited WIP Society articles&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://xprogramming.com/what-is-extreme-programming/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Good kick start on XP&lt;/a&gt; can be found on Ron Jeffries' site.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In terms of books as a kick start, I'd recommend:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0321579364&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mike Cohn's Succeeding with Agile&lt;/a&gt; for Scrum&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0321579364&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kent Beck's Extreme Programming Explained&lt;/a&gt; for XP&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0984521402&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;David Anderson's Kanban&lt;/a&gt; for Kanban&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-22T12:59:31.897" LastActivityDate="2020-07-22T12:59:31.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1851" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1852" CreationDate="2011-04-22T23:01:29.267" Score="5" ViewCount="3513" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been searching but all that I have found is the characteristics of a good SRS (Software Requirement Specification). What are the metrics that you could use to ensure that the set of requirements is good?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1038" LastEditorUserId="16715" LastEditDate="2016-04-17T12:35:17.503" LastActivityDate="2016-04-17T12:35:17.503" Title="What are the metrics for a good SRS (Software Requirement Specification)?" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1851" CreationDate="2011-04-23T01:28:53.053" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of the metrics for a good SRS are no different than the metrics defining any good specification. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;maturity&lt;/strong&gt;: measured by number of TBXs, shorthand for to be determined (TBD), to be reviewed (TBD), to be suppplied (TBS), etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;verification information&lt;/strong&gt;: in a good spec, each requirement will have an associated verification method (i.e. test, inspection, demonstration, or analysis) and a methodology (i.e. what action will be taken to verify the requirement). Verification methodology doesn't have to be long, but it's important. For example, if the requirement is a system with some percentage of up-time, how is that going to be measured? For how long? What counts as down? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;baselined&lt;/strong&gt;: a spec that's not under revision control isn't very useful&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="360" LastActivityDate="2011-04-23T01:28:53.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1847" CreationDate="2011-04-23T05:43:36.000" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Books on Scrum:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v1/scrum-guide-us.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; - by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland; short, concise, free PDF that covers just the essentials for working iterative/incremental.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0130676349&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Software Development with Scrum&lt;/a&gt; - Schwaber/Beedle; canonical text that is often referred to as &quot;The Bible&quot; by many teams.  Lots of great supporting material about why iterative/incremental frameworks like Scrum help teams become more productive and deliver ROI.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Podcasts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The venerable &lt;a href=&quot;http://agiletoolkit.libsyn.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Toolkit Podcast&lt;/a&gt; by Bob Payne.  Bob's interviewed just about every thought leader in the agile space over five years.  Sometimes there's huge gaps between casts, but each one is worthwhile.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="960" LastEditorUserId="3178" LastEditDate="2016-06-29T09:08:38.917" LastActivityDate="2016-06-29T09:08:38.917" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1725" CreationDate="2011-04-23T05:54:18.717" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Find course books and papers covering a variety of topics related to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.microsoft.com/project/en/us/product-information.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;project management&lt;/a&gt; on the Project website. Microsoft offers project management certification which is a toughest exam out there and they also provide details on project management study &amp;amp; prep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1037" LastActivityDate="2011-04-23T05:54:18.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1851" CreationDate="2011-04-23T11:16:59.363" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://standards.ieee.org/findstds/standard/830-1998.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IEEE 830&lt;/a&gt; requires an SRS to be correct, unambiguous, complete, consistent, ranked for importance, verifiable, modifiable, and traceable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every one of these qualities could be (and should be) verified in their own specific ways. How exactly - depends on the format of SRS document you're using.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-23T11:16:59.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1856" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-23T12:14:25.423" Score="5" ViewCount="4363" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the best possible instruments/tools to maintain an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Requirements_Specification&quot;&gt;SRS&lt;/a&gt; in a small agile project (up to 10 people)? How to keep this document(s) available to the entire team, to enable its baseline (and re-baseline), version control, etc. What is your recommendation according to industry experience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T02:10:43.060" Title="How to maintain software requirements specification (SRS) for a small agile project?" Tags="&lt;scope&gt;&lt;scope-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1812" CreationDate="2011-04-23T12:22:09.580" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;but they turned his request down leaving much flexibility to project teams&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It means that &lt;strong&gt;he is not a project manager, but a project coordinator&lt;/strong&gt; (according to PMBOK). The management doesn't provide necessary authority to the person to manage the project. It means that it's not a project management any more. If the person is interested to stay a coordinator - let it be this way. Otherwise it's necessary to discuss authority problem with the management first. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_charter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Charter&lt;/a&gt; is where such questions/concerns are raised and baselined &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the project starts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-23T12:22:09.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1359" CreationDate="2011-04-23T12:32:21.407" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend to use &lt;a href=&quot;http://trac.edgewall.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trac&lt;/a&gt;, an open source instrument for project management in small agile teams. Moreover, you can get its &quot;cloud installation&quot; for free at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fazend.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fazend.com&lt;/a&gt; (together with &lt;a href=&quot;http://subversion.tigris.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Subversion&lt;/a&gt; for version tracking).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trac is much easier to manage and understand than Microsoft solutions, especially for small distributed teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-23T12:32:21.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1859" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1868" CreationDate="2011-04-23T16:20:24.093" Score="8" ViewCount="1230" Body="&lt;p&gt;A general direction has been set, a team of people assembled, they know what their first deliverables are, and they are off and running. They don't know what the end deliverable will look like, nor do they have a set of satisfaction criteria. Neither they nor their customers can say how long the work will last, and drip-feed development could go on for ever. They describe themselves as a project team, but are they really? And is their manager a project manager? Prince2 would suggest not, and I suspect that PMBOK would agree, but it is not an uncommon situation. If this is not a project, what is it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T03:29:30.983" Title="Is a project without defined completion criteria really a project?" Tags="&lt;scope&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1859" CreationDate="2011-04-23T17:02:23.060" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on how orthodox you are going to be about project. If you take either Prince2 or &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1646/definition-of-software-project&quot;&gt;PMBOK or Wikipedia definition&lt;/a&gt; it doesn't make a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However personally I'm far from being conservative on definitions and so are many people people out there, so I'd say it is a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, many R&amp;amp;D endeavors works like that. Also, in many agile project, you don't have clear completion criteria or it is changing very often, like every couple of weeks -- it just depends how you look at the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What more, if you asked people they would answer they are a project team. The client is probably describing this venture as a project. The vendor probably refers to it as a project as well, so who are we to disagree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, we don't get points, or get paid, for being conservatively aligned with definitions, whatever they are, but for making clients satisfied. So as long as everyone is happy, I see no issues with breaking rules of one or another specific project management methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-04-24T19:00:52.237" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1859" CreationDate="2011-04-23T17:32:02.083" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally I would call this a Research (project). But even for a research project, you must have some sort of goal, a problem you want to solve. Is there some stage/level you want to reach before you call it even a small success in its own right (no matter how long it might go on afterwards).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can identify a first step quite clearly, then you have it, it is a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to look at it is to ask who calls the shots, who pays for it. Is there any criteria for pulling the plug? If there is a defined stage by which some form of result must have appeared or funds dry up and the project team must be dissolved, then there you go again, you have a set of criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that those criteria may not be hard and objective, but I don't know of many endeavours (including personal ones) that don't have some sort of tangible even subjective milestones to reach, for either self satisfaction, or as a decision point to go on to the next step, can the whole thing, or try a different direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="179" LastActivityDate="2011-04-23T17:32:02.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1862" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1865" CreationDate="2011-04-23T19:10:03.460" Score="0" ViewCount="283" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have generated the javadoc for my app, but my question is if I want really support software quality in documentation of code, Its just ok with the javadoc, or  what else to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1038" LastActivityDate="2011-04-23T19:57:18.697" Title="is javadoc a good way to support software quality in documentation of code?" Tags="&lt;quality&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2011-04-23T22:58:44.483" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1856" CreationDate="2011-04-23T19:16:50.660" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to document code is to write self-documenting code. This way, the desired behavior of the code is always kept with the actual behavior of the code, and - fingers crossed - they become the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unit tests and automated acceptance tests, aka examples and scenarios, can form another part of this living documentation. All these should be checked in alongside the code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, sometimes it can be hard to see the big picture from code and tests alone. Keeping lightweight documents describing the capabilities and architecture of the system on a wiki might also be an idea. Some wikis - for instance, Moin Moin - are small enough that they can be checked into version control alongside the code. This high-level domain knowledge doesn't change as often as the code, though, so checking it in isn't as important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some project tools can keep histories of features, stories and bugs. A stack of index cards is almost as good at doing this as an expensive electronic tool, and has many other benefits around visibility, team ownership, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important documentation, and the one which will affect the project most greatly, is the documentation in people's heads - their experience, tacit knowledge and understanding. To keep this documentation alive and maintained well, make sure everyone talks about the project and shares that knowledge frequently. Tell stories. Pair program. Make sure the project team members are happy and motivated so that they stay, keeping their documentation accessible for newcomers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-04-23T19:16:50.660" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1862" CreationDate="2011-04-23T19:19:42.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If Javadocs can be generated, then they cannot tell you any more about the code than is already in the code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Self-commenting code will normally be easier to read than Javadocs. If you remove any Javadocs which add no new information, the code will be even easier to read still. Adding Javadocs manually to explain any oddities is better than generating reams of comments that nobody uses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to document the code and support the quality of that documentation is to provide examples of how to use the code together with a description of why that code is valuable. These are also called unit tests, and will not only improve the quality of your documentation, but the quality of the code itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-04-23T19:19:42.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1862" CreationDate="2011-04-23T19:57:18.697" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Javadoc is a good way to document the purpose and public interface of a class.  When refactoring a class I would expect the Javadoc to remain untouched.  Other than when making changes to the Interface that add or deprecate functionality it should be stable.  Clarifications of the Javadoc should be done if required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Package documentation can provide additional documentation.  Many packages can be used quite well based solely on their Javadoc.  Good Javadoc should be complete enough that programmers can use the classes without the code.  That said, Javadoc is mainly useful to programmers rather than other users of the code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Javadoc is not an appropriate tool for user documents, nor for design documentation.  The appropriate user documentation depends on the complexity of the application. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional code documentation you may want includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build and distribution packaging instructions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Instructions on setting up a development and testing environment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Documentation of the development process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A bug database. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A list of dependencies (required libraries etc.).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Documentation on design decisions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Suggested process improvements to any of the above for the next project. (Post development review documentation.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you build more applications, the first three items should be similar.  If you use a tool for the bug database, you may be able to use it more multiple applications.  The final three items should be generated for each application, although I would expect overlap on the development process and dependencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you develop more applications, strive to improve your process and product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2011-04-23T19:57:18.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1859" CreationDate="2011-04-23T20:18:44.973" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It appears you have a Development Team in search of a Project.  Their leaser would be a Development Leader.  Unfortunately, too much development is done in this manner.  However, it appears they do have a direction.  Whether, their development approach is appropriate for the ultimate (apparently unknown) goal remains to be seen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not knowing exactly what the end deliverable will look like may be appropriate.  Not knowing the scope of the project is not.  What is the vision of the project?  Are they building a bread box or a skyscraper?  I would not want to be their customer, and it can be frustrating to develop in such a situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once they have a project with a vision, scope, and satisfaction criteria, they will become a Project Team and their leader a Project Leader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2011-04-23T20:18:44.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1851" CreationDate="2011-04-23T22:17:48.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Weinberg and Gause proposed an &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Ambiguity Metric&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; in their book &lt;em&gt;&quot;Exploring Requirements. Quality before Design&quot;&lt;/em&gt; (Dorset House 1989). The idea is that you ask &quot;qualified individuals&quot; to estimate the cost or effort to design and build a solution to meet the requirements. When the range of estimates is large, you know you still have work to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if anyone ever used this, but I don't think it very practical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you can do is quantifying your &lt;strong&gt;requirement testing&lt;/strong&gt; or review process, which you should do anyway. For instance, 17 out of 20 requirements passed the tests. You may calculate a general number, or more detailed depending on the individual tests (e.g. 15/20 are incomplete; 3 we haven't figured out yet how to test ...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tests of individual requirements can be any or all of the criteria for 'good requirements' that most textbooks on requirements engineering will offer, e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Completeness of the requirement template&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Traceability&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consistent terminology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it relevant for the business objectives?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it testable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;em&gt;maturity&lt;/em&gt; number Adam proposed is also a good one&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-04-23T22:17:48.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1859" CreationDate="2011-04-24T00:13:33.623" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the team is working on an ongoing project or series of related projects, it's quite possible that this particular team is part of a program or part of product development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia describes a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Program Manager&lt;/a&gt; as a person who manages multiple projects and who communicates with one or more project managers in order to meet a specific strategic goal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to Project Management Institute (PMI), The Standard for Program Management, 2nd Ed., &quot;A Program is a group of related projects managed in a coordinated manner to obtain benefits and control NOT available from managing them individually. Programs may include elements of related work outside of the scope of the discreet projects in the program... Some projects within a program can deliver useful incremental benefits to the organization before the program itself has completed.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_manager&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Product Manager&lt;/a&gt; is someone who manages the development of products for an organization.  In my organization, this role would best describe what I do, as I am handling cross-functional goals, including development, marketing, sales, customer service, and human resources.  Below is the definition of a product manager from Wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A product manager investigates, selects, and develops products for an organization, performing the activities of product management.&#xA;  A product manager considers numerous factors such as intended demographic, the products offered by the competition, and how well the product fits with the company's business model. Generally, a product manager manages one or more tangible products. However, the term may be used to describe a person who manages intangible products, such as music, information, and services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia also goes on to say that a product manager may also perform the duties of a program manager and/or a project manager as well as playing a leading role in supervising and setting goals for program and project managers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your scenario, your team and manager may cross the lines between being categorized as a product team, program team, or project team, depending on where you are in the process.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I may be breaking the fourth wall by adding this, but I also want to point out that &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/70/should-questions-regarding-program-management-be-included-in-the-list-of-on-topic&quot;&gt;Questions About Product and Program Management Are On-Topic Here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T15:46:53.307" LastActivityDate="2011-04-24T05:14:26.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1869" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-24T08:01:00.210" Score="9" ViewCount="354" Body="&lt;p&gt;Projects are defined as being temporary.  As a result, this means that unless more projects will follow, a project manager could be any employee with the necessary skillset who is selected to see the project to it's completion and then return to his or her previous duties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal would be to organize the sales/service process, increase sales volume, and build enough volume to keep a 3 person team busy.  The project would be a success if 3 sales associates are actively talking to 10 leads per week and are able to either self-manage without the project manager or are managed by a designated member of the 3 person team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you needed to select a project manager to take on the details of putting together a sales department and customer service department to sell a product you're developing and provide customer support for that product, how would you select this person?  What specific criteria or skills would you look for in this person?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T03:09:25.097" Title="Tips for Selecting an Existing Employee to Be a Project Manager" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;sales&gt;&lt;customer-service&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1808" CreationDate="2011-04-24T08:34:06.173" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that when it comes to adding a professional services team, you need to form a team that contains a very specific set of skills.  Communication skills are important for any role, but when it comes to professional services, you need developers with outstanding communication skills, who are extremely smart, and who like talking to people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because some developers prefer to keep to themselves, this may prove difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The developers who would fit these roles would command a much larger salary than the developers who build your product.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also important for developers to have domain knowledge of a product, system, or feature.  This factor may prevent job switching.  It's very time consuming for a developer to switch from a product he/she built to one that he/she knows nothing about.  Your professional services developers will be no different.  In fact, the professional services developers will need to have a very strong mastery of the subject, feature, or product that they are building or extending for the client, and they'll have to have knowledge of the business problem or domain problem that the project is supposed to solve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One approach to ensuring professional services developers know the product and domain is to select them from the existing team by advertising the position internally and having interested developers interview for the position.  You'll want to select candidates who are passionate, smart, and who know their stuff.  Remember, you're trusting this person to accurately and professionally represent your product and company to a client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-04-24T08:34:06.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1871" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1874" CreationDate="2011-04-24T08:57:26.573" Score="15" ViewCount="6822" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you've earned your PMP certification, you now have to maintain your credentials by participating in professional development activities.  This is from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/Certification/Maintain-Your-Credential.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PMI Web Page on Maintaining Your Credential&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Congratulations on earning your PMI certification!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that you are a credential holder, you need to adhere to PMI’s Continuing Certification Requirements (CCR) program. To follow the program, participate in professional development activities to earn professional development units (PDUs) to maintain your credential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some free or inexpensive methods that could help earn PDU's?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T11:19:02.470" Title="How Can I Maintain My PMP Certification and Earn PDU's In an Inexpensive Manner?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;certification&gt;&lt;pdu&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1869" CreationDate="2011-04-24T10:13:19.877" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There usually is one key and critical criterion that predicts success when hiring.  Multiple criteria do not really add predictive powers, for some reason.  I do not know why, but that seems to be a general consensus in the HR community.  Since these are existing employees, you have the benefit of real observation of their performance versus relying on unreliable interviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were to choose that single criterion, it would be leadership.  If you throw two or more people at a task, with or without assigning a legitimate leader, one of them will, likely, consistently exhibit control and the other(s) will follow.  It is rather a natural by product of being human and, absent demonstrable PM competencies of one of the employees, I'd most likely rely on that as an indicator of future success for this project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-04-24T10:13:19.877" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1847" CreationDate="2011-04-24T17:59:11.487" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile Learning Labs, a San Francisco based Agile coaching shop, just released &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0982866917&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Elements of Scrum&lt;/a&gt;. I reviewed the book on my blog and can highly recommend it. Based on a handbook from their CSM courses, the book is a very easy read that mirrors the relaxed coaching style ALL has been successfully using (I took my CSM course from them). Even though is is a high level primer, I still keep it on my office bookshelf. I've reach for it about once a week, either for my own reference or to explain something to someone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2011-04-24T17:59:11.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1871" CreationDate="2011-04-24T18:18:47.627" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The possibilities are nearly endless. I earned a good half my PDUs through free resources. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now before I list my suggestions, I do need to make a caveat. This March (2011), PMI updated their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/GLOBALS/~/media/Files/PDF/Certification/PDU%20CategStructure_Final.ashx&quot;&gt;PDU guidelines and condensed their categories&lt;/a&gt;. I'm still coming up to speed on them, but from what I've studied so far, most of the suggestions still apply. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Self Directed Learning:&lt;/strong&gt; Up to 30 PDUs can be gained this way.&#xA;- Reading articles, books, or instructional manuals; watching videos, using interactive CD-ROMs, Podcasts or other source material. I highly recommend Cornelius Fitcher's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.project-management-podcast.com/&quot;&gt;PM Podcast&lt;/a&gt;. He's a great interviewer and covers excellent topics. &#xA;- Having formal discussions with colleagues, coworkers, clients or consultants. Most chapters have networking events. In the Silicon Valley there are breakfast sessions where PMs meet and discuss various topics. 1 PDU for the price of a cheep IHOP breakfast and you get to talk with other PMs. &#xA;-Being coached or mentored by a colleague, coworker or consultant (If you&#xA;served as a coach or mentor to someone else. (Remember, you need to be able to be audited on this.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Creating New Project Management Knowledge:&lt;/strong&gt; Authoring books, published articles, podcasts. Giving a webinar, speech, being an SME in a panel discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Voluteer Service:&lt;/strong&gt; Pretty much any service to your PMI chapter. Doing project work for a Non-Profit&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Being a project manager:&lt;/strong&gt; And the reward for the easiest PDUs is the 15 PDU you can earn for doing your job. If you hold a job as a PM, you can earn up to 15 PDUs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With three years to earn your PDUs it is completely possible to earn 100% of your PDUs without paying one cent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anyone would like specific suggestions for any of these categories, feel free to contact me directly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="147" LastEditDate="2011-04-25T04:11:24.933" LastActivityDate="2011-04-25T04:11:24.933" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1871" CreationDate="2011-04-25T02:01:39.727" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I posted about this before; one of the best free ways to eearn PDUs (in category C -- self-directed learning) is to &lt;strong&gt;spend time on the PM Stack Exchange website&lt;/strong&gt; (i.e. this site). You can use RescueTime to track hours; I've claimed around 4-5 PDUs already from this method. (You can read more details in &lt;a href=&quot;http://ashiqalibhai.com/easy-free-self-paced-pdus-yes-really/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;my blog post here&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, PDUs generally cost about $10 each (that's the most cost-efficient I've seen) if you purchase materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find most of mine through free online sources (webinars, articles, etc.) Starting this cycle, I also plan to claim as many as possible by contributing (writing PM-related articles/books).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check the PMI website for the guidelines, which keep changing, and to keep on top of the limits of what you can claim (eg. max of 45 PDUs for writing PM-related materials).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastEditorUserId="36" LastEditDate="2015-08-12T11:19:02.470" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T11:19:02.470" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1169" CreationDate="2011-04-25T02:42:53.770" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The actual reason can greatly inform the required approach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, as a PM I can typically identify the reasons for mistrust very early in a project. Either I've done something to harm the sponsor, I've been put in place over the sponsor's &quot;favorite&quot;, I'm perceived as a threat to the sponsor's agenda in some way, or previous PM's and projects have led to situations where the sponsor won't trust anybody in a PM role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any of these situations, my role is typically to focus on regaining the respect and trust of the sponsor as quickly as possible. Usually, this is through delivering early and often, being transparent with both successes and failures, and helping the team gain a reputation for excellence in delivery during the first weeks and months of a project. I also focus on ways to improve the sponsor's &quot;project experience,&quot; ensuring that the team isn't wasting the sponsor's time or money with pointless meeting, teaching and mentoring good facilitation approaches, and generally helping the sponsor slowly realize that he greatly enjoys working with this team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if the &quot;sound reason&quot; is that the sponsor has a proven history of actively sabotaging projects or that the PM is joining deep in crisis mode and doesn't have a chance of success, then there's not much to be done and I recommend the PM focus on advancing his career elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastActivityDate="2011-04-25T02:42:53.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1462" CreationDate="2011-04-25T02:57:44.053" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've tried a few different things with varying degrees of success as both a project leader and as a member of Rally's fully-dispersed coaching team. As a short answer, I'll say &quot;yes, you can succeed remotely if you're willing to invest.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One item of note: in order to effectively manage by walking around, you need to help the team create the connections amongst themselves that span locations. Otherwise, there's really nothing for you to walk around &quot;to&quot; outside of the current location. This is especially critical for fully dispersed teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few specific techniques:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Schedule 1-on-1's both as a leader to individuals and between individual contributors. There's power in giving somebody explicit permission to &quot;just chat&quot; for 30 minutes with somebody half a world away.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Engage in random IM and video chats when you know you're not interrupting somebody's flow. I like to lead with a random compliment of their work when they first log on in the morning, as it both helps me get to know people and sets a good tone for the day.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ambient video chats and open conference lines can help get a sense of the emotional context of a distant room. Doesn't work as well with dispersed teams as it does with multi-cell teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team chat environments, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://campfirenow.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Campfire&lt;/a&gt;, can help the entire team keep a casual connection throughout the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Big visible electronic status boards can help here, for example a monitor displaying the current in progress work, a tail of the latest CM checkins, and a frame for the group chat.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where possible, give people the chance to cross-pollinate across locations. Being aware of the shape of the remote work environment can go a long way towards allowing a virtual presence to feel &quot;real&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastActivityDate="2011-04-25T02:57:44.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1616" CreationDate="2011-04-25T03:12:03.107" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm struggling to understand the role of a project manager in the situation described. Typically, something in maintenance is allocated an ongoing budget that can be directly translated to an appropriate staffing level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this level allows for multiple people (a team), that team should be generally free to arrange themselves in ways to best perform the required work. At most, the PM should suggest improvements in that organization for the team to consider, but should have no formal authority or involvement in the project. (I have seen organizations with financial controls that require a PM to be allocated to anything consuming budget, even if it's not a &quot;project&quot; per a strict definition.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the leveling is such that it makes sense to combine a pool of different maintenance budgets together in order to sustain a meaningful team, then somebody should fill the role that ensures the work mix is fairly allocated across the products. This person could be a full-time PM, especially if there are a very large number of products being supported. In this case, the PM should have a certain authority over how the various demand streams are being prioritized, but should not be able to force the team to work in certain ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both those answer aside, I also suspect at a more philosophical level that nobody should have the authority to &lt;em&gt;force&lt;/em&gt; somebody to work in a certain way, especially when performing any sort of knowledge work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastActivityDate="2011-04-25T03:12:03.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1856" CreationDate="2011-04-25T05:13:41.167" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scope Management across a team is easiest when the team knows they share the same vision for WHY they are building the software.  Given a shared vision for Why, it becomes easier to describe HOW you are going to get there.  I like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_Startup&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lean Start-up approach&lt;/a&gt; that combines an Agile Software Development model with a Customer Development Model.  This approach helps blend technical feasibility with business viability and customer desirability.  Given a shared understanding of WHY and HOW we are building solution then the scope management process becomes easier and lighter.  Without that shared understanding, scope management becomes an inventory management process and not an unfolding process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I try to find the lightest way to manage stories and I try to make sure that we progressively elaborate them in a just in time basis.  I like to work with a board or product that can allows the team to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?aq=f&amp;amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;q=User%20Story%20Mapping&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;create story maps&lt;/a&gt;.  Typically, I map the Epic stories that comprise our believe of the Minimal Viable Product or Minimal Marketable Feature on the wall for the team. It is important to have a team of 10 see and be a major part of how the stories are unfolding from real customer/user feedback. You can use a wiki or a idea management system to link those customer narratives to your stories management approach.  I am partial to Rally's solutions for story management for small teams including &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rallydev.com/agile_products/editions/community/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Community Edition - free for 10 users&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilezen.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Zen&lt;/a&gt; free for personal accounts.  If you want a very detailed and prescriptive approach for &lt;a href=&quot;http://scalingsoftwareagility.wordpress.com/agile-requirements-the-book/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Requirements Management&lt;/a&gt;, don't miss Dean Leffingwell's newest book of the same title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like Lunivore, I believe the flow of knowledge is the most important thing to stimulate. Creating the right software, based on successful prototypes and tests, as it is typically more important in the early going than building the software right.  As you understand the problem domain and the solution begins to emerge, building software right becomes just as important.  Thus as stories get implemented, writing simple well document code with unit tests help describe the functionality for the rest of the technical team.  Continuously deploying that code is almost as critical for keeping the flow of knowledge from Agile Development to the Customer Development team during the unfolding process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="640" LastActivityDate="2011-04-25T05:13:41.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="175" CreationDate="2011-04-25T10:51:19.223" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Participate on this site.&lt;/strong&gt; You can claim PDUs under Category C (self-directed learning); I myself claimed around 4-5 PDUs already from spending time on this site. (You can use RescueTime to track how long you're here.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More details are listed &lt;a href=&quot;http://ashiqalibhai.com/easy-free-self-paced-pdus-yes-really/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;on my blog post about this topic&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-04-25T10:51:19.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1883" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-25T11:51:02.353" Score="-3" ViewCount="612" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many styles of Project Management, and many Project Management philosophies to choose from. Some emphasise a plan-based approach, some try to tackle emerging objectives in a dynamic or adaptive way, some emphasise structure and documentation, and others emphasise people. There is Lean management, PMBOK, critical path, the process approach, and so on – but where did the different styles and directions of Project Management originate and how has the discipline evolved until today?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answers should&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;summarise the historical origins of Project Management,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;provide references and links for further information,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;highlight the most important characteristics of each approach to Project Management,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;show who, where and in what context the approach was created (explain how people came to that approach and what problems they were trying to solve with it), and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;give some indication of the role of each approach in today's Project Management activities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since multiple historical lines of development exist, a valuable answer should give some categorisation that allows comparison of differences and similarities in different Project Management approaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="889" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T00:45:57.360" Title="The History of Project Management" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;education&gt;&lt;culture&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;&lt;lean&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2011-04-26T02:05:28.730" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1871" CreationDate="2011-04-25T13:16:15.487" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the inexpensive ways to collect PDUs for your PMP is to listen to or watch podcasts and webinars. There are many which are free of charge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, there are two types -- the one type is provided by the PMI's R.E.P. -- they'll give you type A PDU, and the others give you type B PDUs. Still, webinars have to be somehow related to project management. One site which collects many links to free or inexpensive PMP PDUs is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pdu4free.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pdu4free.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that it'll help you to maintain you PMP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1046" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-04-26T03:16:25.637" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T03:16:25.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1885" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1896" CreationDate="2011-04-25T16:15:40.700" Score="9" ViewCount="1226" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the past, I have failed by not seeing problems as they occur - only seeing them after the fact.  For example, I would take a status update at its face value, not realizing that the project was falling behind.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I can see a problem developing.  I am seeing tasks that are not delivered, deliverables that arrive but are not complete or the quality one would expect to see, and excuses I can see right through.  I am experiencing a problem where whenever I want to  bring this up with the consultants we're working with, they say a lot of words but basically nothing that really explains the problem.  It's like they say &quot;Oh, there is no problem&quot; or &quot;some things are ahead, others behind, don't worry.&quot;  Or, they just will not acknowledge the lateness or that it might be a problem.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know what to do.  I can see I am going to be hit by a train but can't get out of the way.  Risk lists, project plans - all the stuff I learned in PM School is a little irrelevant if I can't get these people to be straight with me and work with  me to resolve the issue.  To make it more difficult, the consultant is across the ocean from me, and I can't dial internationally on my phone so I have to send an email and request a phone call.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Admittedly, I am not a natural at manipulating people.  I'm very straight-forward and honest and hope/expect others to be the same.  I don't know what to do here to &quot;convince&quot; them to talk to me about whatever problem they are facing that is preventing them from meeting their deadlines (which were, by the way, set by themselves, not by me.)  Of course, I understand that they do not want to look bad.  But I don't want them to look bad either - I just want to know the real reason we're late - and all I get are protestations that there is nothing wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="933" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-04-26T03:27:56.263" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T16:08:27.090" Title="Help me deal with a consultant that will not admit there is a problem" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1885" CreationDate="2011-04-25T17:11:12.073" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Metrics.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;  PMs, most humans actually, suffer from optimistic biases.  This is a known cognitive bias that allows us to believe that everything is going to be okay, despite strong contrary evidence that suggest imminent demise.  It is not surprising that, if you are relying on your consultants' sole assessment on how things are, they are reporting all is well.  You also mention that these folks are across the ocean.  There are likely cultural issues at play here, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is where metrics and a performance metrics baseline come in to play.  We have tools like EV and the ability to track data across time and compare actuals to some either planned or industry benchmark.  These things are not new and should already be in your arsenal of tools.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not saying that an assessment by one of your resources is not valid or important.  But the results of your metrics analysis can be used to validate or call into question what you are being told.  After all, tracking metrics is not perfect, either.  So you need to analyze the contradicting data.  However, the metrics will give you the substantiating evidence that you have risks and issues threatening success and should help convince your resources that they need to address what you are seeing and not just give you lip service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am also picking up that your consultants are perceiving a lack of accountability or responsibility in the success of delivery, i.e., if they fail, it does not affect them.  Is that true and, if so, how did that structure come to be?  If that can change, where they, too, have their share of penalty for failure, change it.  Else, the perception that they get paid no matter what will prevail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-04-25T17:11:12.073" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="175" CreationDate="2011-04-25T19:09:05.890" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simply being a PM earns you PDU's.  I believe it is 5 PDU's per year.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1024" LastActivityDate="2011-04-25T19:09:05.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1871" CreationDate="2011-04-25T19:13:19.410" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;At some point you will have to take a course to get the required PDU's.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prodevia.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Prodevia&lt;/a&gt; offers course for a reasonable price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1024" LastActivityDate="2011-04-25T19:13:19.410" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1885" CreationDate="2011-04-25T19:20:22.623" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have measurable milestones. Perhaps this tale will help...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine [1] got into a project over his head. Originally, he got me to help him over the weekends, and when that wasn't enough, got me brought onboard officially (part-time at first). He had been claiming in status meetings that he was working on parts of the application that folks were unable to get to [2]. When I got on the project, I started working from the front end of the website, wiring up the stuff that he told even me were partly done. It became blindingly obvious that he wasn't doing the work and was billing 40 hours/week and doing nothing [3]. Within 4 weeks he was terminated from the project. Because they were threatening to sue him to recover the funds wasted [4], I promised to finish it even when the money ran out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;It's like they say &quot;Oh, there is no problem&quot; or &quot;some things are ahead, others behind, don't worry.&quot; Or just will not acknowledge the lateness or that it might be a problem.&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This friend is really good at blowing smoke up people's rear ends. And what you're saying sounds identical to stuff he said in meetings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would have prevented this from getting into such a bad state that lawyers were involved:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;1. Being on-site more than 1 day per week would have prevented him from multi-jobbing. Remote working is acceptable if there is progress. When the progress stops, there is a reason behind it and not a good one.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2. Measurable milestones. &lt;em&gt;Feature X needs to be done by date Y.&lt;/em&gt; And hold folks to it.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;3. Bugs fixed in a reasonable amount of time. When a bug gets reported, it should be fixed in a week or less.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;4. An issue tracking system so that you can keep track of whether stuff is fixed or not. No more he-said/she-said meetings going &quot;no, I fixed that bug last month. No, the bug is still there.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;5. Have the QA people working in parallel [5]. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;To make it more difficult, the consultant is across the ocean from me&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep re-opening bugs and tasks that are not fixed. If necessary, include screenshots and test data to show what things needed to be vs what they are. Maybe your workers don't care, maybe they're billing several people for the same time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notes:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;1 - I've known him for 7 years and have worked with him off and on over those years. Until 2009, I thought he was a very professional person who was very good at finding jobs and being able to work remotely. I'm 5 years younger than him (and we're both in our 50s), and have never been good at finding jobs, and I'm terrible at working remotely (to the point I'll only do it when weather makes it impossible to get to the office). He's since moved across the country, so that I'm not coming over to have dinner with him several times per month.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2 - One had to log in, then there was a main status screen (partially done), then a details screen (undone) and a bunch of tax screens after the details. He'd claim to be working on the tax screens which no one could get to.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;3 - He was billing them 40 hrs/week, and 2 other jobs 30hrs/week each. His mortgage reset and his monthly payments had shot up about $2k/month and he was unable to refinance that boat anchor. His high maintenance wife was still refusing to get a job. He was working about 10-12 hours per day.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;4 - The project was more than a year late, they had already doubled the budget. What this website connected to was also more than a year late. The company that had been doing the CRM system this was connected to had to pay for the multimillion dollar cost overruns they already had incurred. The client is a federal agency and if they decided to blacklist the contracting company, then that guy is out of business. I'm going to be able to use this project as the Pole Star of &quot;What Not To Do™&quot; for the rest of my life.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;5 - There were bugs that were discovered a year later because no one had actually used a couple of forms, even though the subject matter expert signed off on everything. Is it my fault the page never worked from day one? Yes. Is it the SME fault for not even visiting this page at all? Yes. There was more than enough blame for everyone involved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2011-04-25T19:20:22.623" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1885" CreationDate="2011-04-25T21:28:57.750" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both the answers above deal with the PM and basic management aspects of the problem, but to me it seems as though your problem is more with communication than accountability.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You diagnosed your problem pretty well on your own by writing down what you're currently experiencing.  You were able to identify elements like &lt;em&gt;distance&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;culture&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;gender&lt;/em&gt; (I can't tell if Shannon is male or female) that all need to be given special consideration.  To better understand the cultural norms and customs, I encourage you to learn by reaching out to locals and making use of your network.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You described yourself as honest and forthright and that you're dealing with an individual who seems more sly and slippery; I don't believe there is &lt;strong&gt;ever&lt;/strong&gt; a need to be manipulative in business dealings or any relationship.  &lt;strong&gt;Exercise your soft skills.&lt;/strong&gt;  As a consultant, their business solely depends on the client satisfaction and the success of the engagement, which in turn helps grow his business and clientele.  This needs to be &lt;em&gt;explicitly&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;wisely&lt;/em&gt; communicated and understood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest the book &lt;strong&gt;&quot;The Trusted Advisor&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;.  Maybe getting it as a gift for the consultant would help close the gap and be a kind gesture (make sure to be aware of customs first).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, there is no textbook answer for your situation, but as you were able to identify by tagging your question with &quot;team-management&quot; you will need to find a way to convey this to the other party in terms of tangible goals and understanding (see the suggestions above).  Be confident you can overcome this challenge as you continue to constructively work towards achieving a closer relationship and meeting your goals. Best of luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1049" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-04-26T03:49:47.713" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T03:49:47.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1869" CreationDate="2011-04-25T22:08:55.977" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best communicator. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the best communicator may also be your best leader and if they are, it is likely their communication skills that helped to make them a good leader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project Management is generally accepted as being 80% communication. Most hard core project managers will argue that this number is too low. My own experience has been there is virtually nothing I do that is not tied to communication in one way or another. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good communicators often are also very good at interpersonal interactions. You need to be good with people to be a really effective communicator. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2011-04-25T22:08:55.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1869" CreationDate="2011-04-25T22:36:14.223" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, when looking at a pool of staff you already know, good project managers will be people with the following qualities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attention to detail and organization&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Good interpersonal skills, and well liked by the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some expertise in the area the project covers (Although he or she doesn't need to be an expert)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Skilled at documenting and communicating their ideas to others&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the problem you're trying to solve &lt;strong&gt;isn't&lt;/strong&gt; something I normally would think of as a project. If there is a specific sales process you're trying to overhaul, that makes sense as a project, but if you you're just trying to increase sales and improve the way things are going, I think &lt;strong&gt;you're really looking for a Sales Manager&lt;/strong&gt; or equivalent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trying to keep the number of active conversations high amongst your associates and ensuring that your initial processes get documented is a lot less about someone's ability to manage a lot of complex requirements (A PM) and more about someone who understands sales and can help get things moving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="916" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-04-26T03:09:25.097" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T03:09:25.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1893" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-04-25T23:08:45.517" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &quot;best practice&quot; is a method or process that practitioners recognize (usually through experience and research) as being more effective at getting the job done than other methods (or processes). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While frequently used as a buzzword to describe good ideas, most &quot;best practices&quot; actually help folks get the work done more reliably, efficiently and effectively than average. Please keep in mind that a &quot;best practice&quot; for one industry is not necessarily the best way to get the job done in another industry. The &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Joel Test&lt;/a&gt;&quot; gives a number of examples of features of software companies that many people have come to recognize as &quot;best practices&quot;; for example, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_integration&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;continuous integration&lt;/a&gt; system would pass both steps 2 &amp;amp; 3 of the Joel Test at once.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-12-16T05:32:13.950" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T05:32:13.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1894" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-04-25T23:08:45.517" Score="0" Body="For specific, practical questions relating to the DEVELOPMENT or IMPLEMENTATION of project management best practices. DO NOT USE for questions asking for best-practice recommendations or off-site resources." OwnerUserId="66" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-11-25T15:24:28.673" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T15:24:28.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1883" CreationDate="2011-04-26T00:45:57.360" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on project management&lt;/a&gt; along with other interlinked articles (if you need more detail) answer your question very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T00:45:57.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1885" CreationDate="2011-04-26T03:11:38.337" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know you've accepted an answer, but here are my two cents anyhow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll respond to the last paragraph of your question. In particular two points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1/ You say that you can't dial internationally. It may not be easy in your corporate set-up, but get a Skype account if you can (or any other of the VOIP solutions available nowadays). If it really means that much to you (remember the train coming to hit you), then shelling a few dollars of your own money should be no big deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2/ You put forward being honest as a negative. Being honest does not mean you can't be firm. But before you can be firm, the other party must have agreed to clearly identified deliverables and time-frames. This somewhat overlaps with Tangurena's answer, but I believe it is more simply expressed here. If you can't identify clear deliverables from your consultants, then that train truly is coming to you (or whomever set this up in the first place - just because you're the PM does not mean that you are responsible for setting up a course for failure. But if you are on that course, then make sure you do your darned best to correct this now).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day the one(s) you should present the risks to is not the consultants if they won't listen or care, but the stakeholder, the boss, the person who pays for it all or controls the agenda.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="179" LastEditorUserId="179" LastEditDate="2011-04-27T16:08:27.090" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T16:08:27.090" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1859" CreationDate="2011-04-26T03:29:30.983" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the &quot;team&quot; is not working against a defined list of features with acceptance criteria inside of a specified time horizon, they aren't a project team, they are an exploratory committee working on a &quot;spike&quot; (to borrow a term from XP).  While completely acceptable, &quot;spikes&quot; are exercises undertaken by a project team when they need more information to better understand the product they are developing and any underlying technical challenges so that they can provide better estimates and risk evaluations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone, somewhere is paying the freight for this effort - they might have some expectation of ROI.  How do you define ROI if you have no means of measuring outcomes like what you're building or if it was successful?  Agile/lean/iterative/incremental processes are best suited in situations where the end goal is understood but not necessarily how to get there:  Risk is managed by continually inspecting and adapting within short time horizons - without goals, this quickly becomes a morass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="960" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T03:29:30.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1173" CreationDate="2011-04-26T03:48:03.860" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer:  Walk away - let your project sponsor know what happened.  If they want to pay the bribe irrespective, run away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to work for Microsoft Consulting Services, and as such was subject to what was referred to as &quot;QRP&quot; commitments - essentially reading over and signing off that I understood company policies as it pertains to my role in the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over and over and over it was impressed on us through some really creative morality plays that we'd view as streaming videos, what constitutes right and wrong when it comes to gifting or receiving gifts where even the perception of exerting influence or appearing to be influenced could be construed, not to mention the legal implications as Tangurena describes.  Cultural norms &lt;em&gt;NEVER&lt;/em&gt; entered into the equation.  Personal ethics &lt;em&gt;NEVER&lt;/em&gt; entered into the equation.  You didn't accept from or offer gifts to a customer that you're engaged with - directly or indirectly.  Period.  Full-stop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reasoning is clear: It doesn't pay to have your organization caught in some legal snare because you &quot;played the game&quot; - it damages your brand, and perception of trust and integrity with other customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="960" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T03:48:03.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1899" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1901" CreationDate="2011-04-26T06:05:00.187" Score="11" ViewCount="1268" Body="&lt;p&gt;Imagine you're a project manager. In fact - more coach than manager. You have a team of 6 people. One of team members plays a lot of web-based game. You infer this, because his monitor is facing door and more than 5 / 10 times when you enter the room he's playing a game. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First what you did was taking him aside and inform what your observation is. You asked him if he thinks he plays too much and also how does his playing influence other team members (your concern was that this may cause demotivation of others).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reply he stated that he can reduce or even stop playing. As you're more coach than PM, it's not your purpose to tell people what to do, you just show them consequences of their behavior. That's why you responded that it's up to him what he'll do, but asked him to take into consideration what you've remarked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's been a month or so since then and he's still playing the game. The difference is that when he sees you entering the room, he quickly changes the screen...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would you do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T20:04:56.130" Title="One of team members plays a game during a work" Tags="&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1899" CreationDate="2011-04-26T06:39:22.450" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you've attempted to coach the employee, and after a month, this waste of space is &lt;em&gt;still&lt;/em&gt; playing games instead of pulling his weight, then maybe it's time to escalate this to someone who can actually take some formal action on this person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is now progressing beyond just the psychological impact on the other productive team members.  This person is essentially stealing from the company.  1/6 of the amount of resources allocated to this project is being flushed down the toilet, and no business should tolerate this sort of employee theft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you haven't already started documenting this behavior, I would start now.  You'll want to have some good, thorough documentation to approach your (or his) manager with.  Having documentation will result in a much faster resolution to this problem than if you simply rely on the manager to make these observations.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another tactic, although not a permanent solution, would be to contact IT and have them block the gaming site he's visiting. Or even better: ask IT staff to check problematic person's internet activity logs -- this way you have both documentation of the behavior and a nice tool to discuss with the guy, e.g. &quot;no need to switch screens when I enter the room, it's there, you see?&quot; Either way, this just masks the symptoms of a much greater problem.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best solution is to either find out what's bothering this person and fix it, or start the process of trying to rid yourself of this cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-26T07:46:05.183" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T07:46:05.183" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1899" CreationDate="2011-04-26T07:24:03.630" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Find out why&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You see the symptoms but you need to know the reasons. Is he the only one or is it the common behaviour in a team? If you talked to him about the situation you should know what it is about. What are the rules that allow him to do that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask yourself 'is it wrong?'&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks obvious to many managers that this is WRONG but in some cases productivity doesn't go up if you work more. In many cases scrum teams can not work 40 hrs a week because productivity goes down after 30, 20 or even 16 hours. You can easily dig internet and find the numbers. &#xA;So if your whole team need a brake this could be the case. I would consider introducing more socially integrating activities than playing flash games but nevertheless...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Change what is wrong&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you are sure it is wrong and want to change it. There are different ways to archieve it, not only &quot;the talking&quot;. You can introduce rules that enforce a presentation of work done by each team member. Daily standup, reports, demo every 2 weeks... that way gaming member will be forced to stop or to officially convince. You can introduce rules making gaming almost obsolete: pair programming for example. It is very rare that one person in a pair will refuse to work or both will play games.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If nothing works...&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;... it means everybody already know he is lazy one. What to do with member which does not accept rules - it is &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1772/a-person-in-a-project-team-not-willing-to-follow-the-rules-what-to-do/1783#1783&quot;&gt;another story&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T20:04:56.130" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1899" CreationDate="2011-04-26T09:23:19.923" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take a step back and assess your observations first &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What is wrong in the person's behaviour?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is just unprofessional conduct? is it reducing his productivity?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How is it affecting other people in the team? How do they see it? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What would you like to be done/changed and why?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Armed with the above answers if you see enough pressing evidence/reasons to change the person's habit then armed with that evidence see his immediate leadership and put forward your concerns and take it from there...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-26T21:40:15.287" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T21:40:15.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1899" CreationDate="2011-04-26T10:02:30.447" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interpreting behavior is a funny thing.  You were silent on this guy's productivity in terms if he is &lt;em&gt;measurably&lt;/em&gt; late or produces a high rate of defects or the like.  The simple fact is ALL of us are unproductive during a much larger part of the work day than we care to admit.  And our unproductive behaviors vary drastically.  Some go out to smoke, others talk by the water fountain, others walk from office to office, others draft e-mails to their friends.  The list goes on and on.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you could time the unproductive behavior of each member on your team, the results could surprise you.  He is likely well within the norm of your team and within limits of normal human work behavior.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the issue is, game playing is such an overt act of unproductivity and a slap in the face.  So the question becomes, is he less productive or are you stinging from the slap?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be careful in your attempts to minimize unproductive behavior.  The results could be exactly opposite for what you hope.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T10:02:30.447" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1899" CreationDate="2011-04-26T12:54:27.460" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whenever I see or hear about someone playing a game, watching videos, reading the news or whatever is not job related, I beg to ask the question what's the deliverable they are working on and why do they have nothing to do? These two points being the responsibility of their PM or team lead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they produce what is expected of them, leave them alone, peer pressure will take care of their behaviour if it is going to be a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they do not produce what is expected of them, then there is no point in tackling the game playing. What needs to be tackled is why they do not produce what is required from them. Are they waiting on someone, is there a blocking issue that stops them, are they themselves demotivated by their team or boss?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, everybody needs some form of break during the work day. Some of those breaks involve interaction with other people, sometimes online if that is possible. Personally, I use my phone to get in touch with people who matter to me. In a previous job I have put some time aside for playing board games with workmates, and even occasionally with our CEO. It all depends on context, frequency and whether of course you deliver the goods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="179" LastEditorUserId="179" LastEditDate="2011-04-26T22:28:24.790" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T22:28:24.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1899" CreationDate="2011-04-26T16:55:08.820" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If that situation concerns you not him - it's a good sign of poor management. The employee is not discharged and was not penalized in any other way after a month of playing. Your rules of work are not effective. Very soon you will start loosing A-people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get back to your ground rules and review them. Whether you measure performance objectively? Whether you reward/penalize people objectively?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T16:55:08.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1885" CreationDate="2011-04-26T16:59:55.697" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Risk lists, project plans - all the stuff I learned in PM School is a little irrelevant if I can't get these people to be straight with me and work with me to resolve the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything you learned is very relevant. Get back to PM fundamentals and stop believing in promises (read &quot;people&quot;). Start being as formal as possible, very soon the project will be back on track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T16:59:55.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1907" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1908" CreationDate="2011-04-26T18:56:28.600" Score="10" ViewCount="595" Body="&lt;p&gt;I consider introducing some gaming elements to a project. The team does Scrum and it would be nice to add some more motivation, so I was thinking about set of rewards which would favor teamwork and complying with company's best practices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are the pros and cons you can think of?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: &#xA;Talking about rewards I meant assigning some virtual points for taking &quot;proper&quot; way of doing things. Some points can be rewarded for one person actions but more for the action of the whole team. Points should be exchangeable for team party, long lasting gifts or other benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: if a team has problems with being punctual then I would consider smaller reward for one person being punctual for the whole sprint but greater amount of reward for all the team members being punctual.&#xA;Another example is DoD (definition of done). In some parts it depends on creativity and good will rather than on &quot;make it by the list&quot; behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastEditorUserId="927" LastEditDate="2011-04-26T20:47:44.617" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T20:58:56.737" Title="Project gamification - is it worth a try?" Tags="&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;gamification&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ClosedDate="2013-01-15T03:48:28.153" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1907" CreationDate="2011-04-26T20:18:07.837" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You aren't specific with what exactly you want to try out but as long as you treat it as a kind of experiment you can't really go wrong with it. However it would be rather hard to discuss how exactly it may affect the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I think about experimenting I assume that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You don't plan to introduce gamification (or any other idea) as top-down, do-what-I-say kind of thing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You want to discuss it with the team and get their buy-in first.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're going to evaluate impact of introducing new practice, or however we call it, and adjust it according to feedback you get.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're prepared to throw it out completely if it doesn't really work or people don't like it once they try it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With such attitude the potential upside is, at least theoretically, big. However you can't take any upside as granted. And you can't expect to fix or improve any specific area either, at least as long as you discuss a general concept and not specific implementations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, potential downside is rather limited as you just invest a bit of time, probably not that much since you plan to use gamification during tasks you do anyway -- it's more a different way of doing old things than completely new things to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe the value you can get from such experiment is more dependent on the attitude you have than on specific technique you're going to implement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE&lt;/strong&gt; (after examples were added to the question): Why not to let the team decide the rules of the game? It would definitely work better, and would be accepted easier as well, if the team came up with rules of the game. Your role would be just correcting the course if they're going too far. Btw: if it won't be fun people will less likely play it, so don't be totally strict in terms of drawing the border between rules which are proper and those which are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-26T21:29:21.117" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T21:29:21.117" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1899" CreationDate="2011-04-26T20:38:44.900" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you're leaning more towards the coaching/mentorship role rather than direct manager, I suggest making the individual more aware of their accountability.  There is an increasing number of programs that help track time and help with productivity, many of which also include smart phone applications.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be mandated for that individual or for the team.  Although it has a Big Brother ring to it and many on the team may feel targeted in the crossfire towards disciplining one individual, there are ways around this.  For instance, the information does not need to be collected and can serve only to help them manage their own time, while strategically speaking to the individual about their work habits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suggested programs include a number of extensions and add-ons for browsers (Chrome/Firefox) that track web history and time spent on each domain.  Other software like &quot;Toggl&quot; tracks time in general and can be purchased with a team license or free to try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is the ethical factor that has not been addressed, as this individual is being paid to perform and adhere to the culture and rules of the organization.  If they are wasting their spending time, they are also wasting the company’s time and potentially making an improper earning.  Especially in tough economic times like today, many people out of work and I am sure that any one of them would trade anything for their position.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the matter is immaturity then a more direct approach is needed. I am not suggesting terminating or disciplining the employee but sometimes the hardest lessons are those that need to be learned through experience.  These situations call for special skills that can be learned from real life coaches that deal with rough personalities, big egos and high stake situations.  Often applying the wrong amount of pressure can backfire and have the individual shut down and feel betrayed.   If you are interested in investigating this approach, I suggest looking into resources of teaching or coaching troubled youth or talent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they continue to not take their work seriously then there may be something deeper going on than the lack of motivation or ungratefulness; perhaps relationship or family trouble.  As a coach investigate these, by befriending from a distance and not getting emotionally attached or personally involved.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all fails, don't be discouraged. You did your best to wisely inform this individual to shape up and their negative influence spreading to others.  It is also potential learning experience for you. Remember to always keep your cool; as a coach you have vested time and effort in this individual, but their eventual success or failure can only be determined by them alone.  Best of luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1049" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T20:38:44.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1910" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-26T20:51:32.600" Score="3" ViewCount="816" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;in-house&lt;/strong&gt; in this context means developers working in a company department, where software is used only by that company (defined due to subtleties in translation)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been confused by this for a while; Agile advocates tend to claim it's a new approach to dealing with development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've reviewed the manifesto, and can't see anything in there that many in-house developers (as opposed to a software-publisher) weren't doing well before 2001.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd appreciate it if people could indicate when their career started in their answers - this provides a good indication of whether or not they're talking from industry experience, or trusting 3rd party sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NOTE&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;This may be unintentionally confrontational; I am genuinely here to be convinced. I must be missing something for there to be so many books and speakers on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on responses so far, I'm learning that my experiences are somewhat atypical, quite possibly due to my primary sector (financial markets).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1052" LastEditorUserId="1052" LastEditDate="2011-04-26T22:38:50.477" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T01:41:04.263" Title="How is agile different from the way in-house developers have always worked?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1910" CreationDate="2011-04-26T21:12:00.250" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Agile Manifesto, and methods which are build over it, weren't meant to invent new techniques, approaches or values.&lt;/strong&gt; If someone treat Agile Manifesto and agile movement as whole like that I dare say they misinterpret agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I can hardly think about any single practice which wasn't used earlier, before it became a part of one of agile methods.&lt;/strong&gt; From this perspective you're right that it probably isn't that different to what some teams, or in-house developers if you prefer, used as their method of choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the trick here is the definition of &quot;some.&quot; I believe way more teams, those working on in-house solutions included, hadn't been following principles which were later reflected by Agile Manifesto (or other, similar and reasonable set of principles for that matter).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So while in specific case the answer might be &lt;em&gt;&quot;there wasn't much difference&quot;&lt;/em&gt; in general case difference was significant,&lt;/strong&gt; and it doesn't really matter what kind of solution a team was working on. What agile movement changed is it made specific attitude become mainstream, which is a kind of mixed blessing by the way but that's a different story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS. My career started in 2000 and included both working on in-house solutions and commercial projects of different type (off-the-shelf, fully customized, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T21:12:00.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1899" CreationDate="2011-04-26T21:21:56.707" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It could also be a warning sign that the employee (or whole team) is under-utilised, or bored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The right approach to take depends on whether or not they are valuable to the company (and feel it), or a disposable asset.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this the only culprit, or the only one that gets noticed because of the monitor angle?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1052" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T21:21:56.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="452" CreationDate="2011-04-26T21:34:04.907" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;By no means meant as a criticism, but perhaps the easiest solution is to find more work for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Micro-management is time intensive for the manager, and if you reduce your available time, you'll have to focus more on what you do or don't need to control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not recommended for workaholics, as they tend to borrow time from the wrong side of the work/life (or work/family, work/pub) divide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1052" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T21:34:04.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1910" CreationDate="2011-04-26T21:41:33.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, Agile Manifesto is a strange thing a bit like an iceberg. Seeing it is one thing, but the understanding and imagination of what remains unseen is another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started coding in 90's. It was pascal I think. First time I got payed for coding in 2000 or 20001. Industry experience since 2003 or 2004.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe, back then, it happened to be agile somewhere (but named differently). In my world, developers weren't so educated about project management and coding rules were foggy and unclear as well. Everything was slowly evolving and experience was gathered here and there. Agile Manifesto looked like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Individuals and interactions&lt;/strong&gt; over processes and tools&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course there was not so much knowledge about processes and not so much tools. In-home developers worked - back then and now as well - in small teams of friends where project management isn't so easy to implement and tools are usually too expensive. So it leaves you with individuals and interactions alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Working software&lt;/strong&gt; over comprehensive documentation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really do not know even single one developer who would like to work on documentation. Really. In-home developers do documentation only when sponsor asks them to do so. Quality of such documentation is the other thing as well as &amp;quot;working software&amp;quot; term. Today we know many indicators of quality and customer satisfaction and collaboration so &amp;quot;working software&amp;quot; means whole different thing than years before. TDD, user stories, code coverage is relatively new and even now I wouldn't bet in-home developers do all of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Customer collaboration&lt;/strong&gt; over contract negotiation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Responding to change&lt;/strong&gt; over following a plan&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Few years ago it was almost impossible to sign an agreement where sponsor would not get: clearly described what product he will get, when it will be ready, how much will it cost and what milestones you should achieve to get paid at all. Collaboration meant that customer will change the requirements in the middle of the project (sponsor would name it being more descriptive) without changing the contract or a milestone plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not making it up. It was common mindset among the customers. It took years to change it but don't ask me who did it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only now I can imagine signing a contract where there will be rather description of some iterative developement process with two-side involvement than a nice looking, strict plan that nobody understand in the same way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T21:47:03.340" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1910" CreationDate="2011-04-26T21:43:04.173" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When 10 years ago I started working as a developer in a small company we didn't know what agile was but we were already using some of what will have became agile techniques, but not very many and not very consciously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is important to me is to have a clear and reliable approach, so the point is not if it's new or old, but the fact that it is complete, documented and reliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also about which tools works better together to cover with the maximum efficiency the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, taking SCRUM e.g. I'm not sure many companies were using burndown charts before study about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T21:43:04.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1907" CreationDate="2011-04-26T21:46:28.987" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the team uses Hudson, &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/The+Continuous+Integration+Game+plugin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Continuous Integration Game plugin&lt;/a&gt; might be useful, if code-quality metrics are important (and tested in build)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1052" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T21:46:28.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1885" CreationDate="2011-04-26T22:59:55.473" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A complication when dealing with consultants can be that you have different motivations on timescales, especially when the consultant is paid for their time, rather than deliverables. Next time round, early-completion bonuses might be useful - making acceptance tests even more important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working with overseas consultants can be tricky, but I'd urge you not to make too many adjustments for cultural differences; I don't know if this is an issue here. An often overlooked factor is that you are overseas to the consultant, and it is only fair that they respect your culture as much as you respect theirs, otherwise the balance of power slips in the consultants favour. If it's relevant, I'm speaking as someone not living in my native culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1052" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T22:59:55.473" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1899" CreationDate="2011-04-27T05:38:21.227" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interesting, is he missing deadlines? Does he not have enough to do. Are other team members starting to play games?&#xA;If there are no repurcussions, why do you need him to change? If there are repurcussions, does his manager need to know?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T05:38:21.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1885" CreationDate="2011-04-27T14:49:13.927" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I liked so many of the answers here that it was difficult to choose just one.  There were elements of several answers that were right.  I will post what I did do here, for the benefit of future readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what I ended up doing.  I wrote a simple e-mail stating that I would like to talk AND I put in email (writing) the things I needed to know about.  Essentially, I listed the action items that had been committed to, that I was looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the next day, I had one of the things I had been waiting for in my inbox.  I had an answer on some of the questions.  In one case, it turned out that they had a question preventing them from creating the deliverable - we resolved it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also I was able to talk about both deadlines and concerns without feeling like I was getting a big run-around.  I decided I hadn't done enough of that - showing the big picture and explaining why it would matter if we were late, and what other things were being affected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is probably a combination of effects. I did attempt to be more direct ... maybe that it is required for the culture I am dealing with.  I am working with a European consulting house, whereas I am used to working with India outsourcers and had adapted my style for that.  I believe I will have to continue being very direct.  I know this contrasts with me saying that I'm a straightforward, honest person, but I also had adopted a style that allowed everyone to save face, said things indirectly so as to suggest things to people rather than command them, and apparently it does not work with all people.  Some people really need you to come head to head with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="933" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T14:49:13.927" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="365" CreationDate="2011-04-27T18:49:42.787" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;all great answers. I think it's also important to remember that by stepping back in they project lifecycle to make sure the scope and requirements are clear and then replanning doesn't mean a delay of weeks. Often this retrofit of methodology can be done in a day or two. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've taken over projects with these problems and done a quick review of the scope and requirements and status reports. If people are working away at project tasks and those tasks have little relation to the original purpose of the project, it's time to talk to the sponsor about what changed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T18:49:42.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1899" CreationDate="2011-04-27T18:54:32.410" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You said that you wanted to coach him rather than force him to stop playing. Try asking him to  install some kind of tool that measures how much time he spends with specific tools/IDEs, websites and so on. Than you can talk with him about the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It worked suprisingly well for me when I asked my teammates to measure how much time do they spend on each activities. I never took any consequences from it - I didn't have to. When they realised they are surfing the Internet or reading news or so on for 2h a day they reduced it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have tried:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rescuetime.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;RescueTime&lt;/a&gt; - it has a nice feature of setting goals. For example &quot;I want to use instant messenger for less than 0.5 hour a day.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.manictime.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ManicTime&lt;/a&gt; - my teammates liked it more &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T18:54:32.410" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1922" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1928" CreationDate="2011-04-27T20:24:09.933" Score="5" ViewCount="389" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a person who is a team leader and project manager of small project. At the beginning it is planned for 6 people: 3 developers, quality engineer, sys admin and PM/leader. Eventually it may grow larger depending on how business goes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, the PM/leader has to recruit the team as she's the first person on the team. Her background is in software development but her technical skills are outdated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the project is kind of a startup idea it requires skilled and highly engaged people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How she can deal with recruiting great engineers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-05-08T23:57:13.670" LastActivityDate="2011-05-08T23:57:13.670" Title="How to hire great engineers when your technical skills are dated?" Tags="&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1922" CreationDate="2011-04-27T21:44:02.110" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It doesn't sound like this is an isolated project independent of a larger organization, so my first advice would be to seek out other, active employees of the company with similar skill-sets and have them do the technical skills audition, while the PM/leader focuses on the personality and team culture aspects of the candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is something that's in isolation of the larger organization, I'd recommend that the leader try some of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attend local technical events to both brush up and to find people that are connected to the local network.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find trusted peers that have professional networks in the desired technology and ask them to help find the right people.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hire for learning capability, not just current skills. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jrothman.com/blog/htp/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Johanna Rothman's&lt;/a&gt; work, and apply her ideas to get the right people. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you get a strong leader with good non-technical skills as your first development hire, they can then help you get the &quot;super&quot; second hire. Also, don't forget that average teams can have phenomonal results if the right product and project management is in place, helping them avoid distractions and focus on the right incremental steps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T21:44:02.110" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1924" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-27T23:32:35.377" Score="9" ViewCount="527" Body="&lt;p&gt;The team I'm involved in is more on the business side of the project and the development is being done by another company.  This development company comes from an old VB6 background and have only in recent years started using VB.NET.  This custom project is outside their main software product they develop on.  Our business team has big concerns over not only their modern development skills in the .NET space but also the fact they are using VB.NET for this project and not what seems to be superior language in C#.   Our thinking is if we asked them to develop in C# they would likely need to add new developers vs. using their existing old VB and now converted to VB.NET developers and thus we would likely get a better product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are we worrying too much about this from a project management and success standpoint.  There just seems to be way more C# developer talent out there vs. VB.NET talent.  Also, just worried these old VB6 developers will have poor development habits.  Should the business side raise an issue on this or just let it be?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1076" LastActivityDate="2011-05-03T09:22:18.240" Title="Worried about the programming language development team wants to use" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1924" CreationDate="2011-04-27T23:52:39.330" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should consider a list of factors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Relationship with development team.&lt;/strong&gt; They are a different company and you are concerned about technology they use but it doesn't seem you consider finding another vendor which would build something you want using technology you want. If you can change the development team it is one of options to consider, depending on other aspects. If you can't, well, read the rest.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Type of project.&lt;/strong&gt; If it is one-off type of project or chances are good no one else beside the original development team would be updating it in any way I would care that much about technology and focus on business side of the application. However if you consider different implementations for your customers and expect plenty of customization technology starts playing much more important role. But then, don't make it about &quot;what seems to be superior language&quot; but more about &quot;we need such and such things, does this technology allow us to get them, get them cheap, and get them in a way which won't make maintenance costs skyrocket?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Developers' skills.&lt;/strong&gt; If the development team is skilled with one technology and doesn't know other it isn't the best idea to force them to use the latter. If you go with known technology you can get pretty good results even though it can be considered as generally worse. However in your specific situation it can be opposite, because of development team's skills.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bad habits.&lt;/strong&gt; Actually this one is technology-agnostic. You can have developers with bad habits no matter which technology you choose. Besides if you have your developers learning the technology from a scratch odds are they would screw something because of limited knowledge. With well-known technology you at least avoid this risk.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, the subject is worth discussing internally and, if you come to conclusion that technology is crucial here, externally as well. However don't fix yourself on a specific answer - it would probably come out from discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T23:52:39.330" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1922" CreationDate="2011-04-28T00:14:42.453" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interviewing is already a weak indicator used to predict job success.  It has been shown in many studies that interviews yield a successful hire a little over 50% of the time.  That is a coin toss.  Absent a predictor tool such as a proven test of some sort, stale technical skills are not likely going to inhibit a good choice any more than one is already inhibited by the interview process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if the person does not trust his abilities to assess, then conduct a team interview or multiple individual interviews with other assessors.  Focus in on the ONE most critical criterion.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T00:14:42.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1910" CreationDate="2011-04-28T01:41:04.263" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Phil, you're right, it's a new, old approach.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been in the industry 25 years now.  Although that doesn't make my responses any more valid than anybody else's.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there were some mitigating factors in the past that led to the popularity of plan-driven (waterfall) processes.  Software used to be built from the bottom-up with little if any reuse, systems were expected to have a large lifespan, compilers were so much slower than they are now and there was the popular notion that software engineering should learn from the construction industry (good idea, wrong industry). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today we see that empirical approaches to software development are more successful and yes of course, they have been around for a very long time as has the plan driven approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those who crafted the Agile Manifesto are to be commended on their courage in challenging the status quo and giving a brand name and some momentum to this new/old way of building products. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1012" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T01:41:04.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1922" CreationDate="2011-04-28T03:15:42.353" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like the old proverb: &quot;A player find A player; B player find C player&quot;, if you want to hire A-level people, you must be at least a B+ player. Lacking a bit of technical skill will not hurt much, as long as she has experience &amp;amp; expertise connection to make up for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like Eric, I agree that the best chance to find such good people is using social connection. The birds of same feathers flock together. You can use recommendation from trusted peers, social networking site(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linkedin.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Linkedin&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.facebook.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Facebook&lt;/a&gt;), use words of mouth to spread the news, and when you get an A-player, look around in his/her connection for other candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that there are 2 conditions: the employee should be &lt;strong&gt;skilled&lt;/strong&gt; AND &lt;strong&gt;highly engaged&lt;/strong&gt;. The first part can be guaranteed by candidate's old co-workers. The second part (no less important) is much harder to test, because it's highly individual. I just can advise to look at the candidate's history: did he join any startup before? Did he stick with it? Does he/she have any problems right now, which may result in giving up in the mid-term? But this part depends most in the PM social skills, not technical skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After finding the &quot;right&quot; people, the last problem is how you attract good people &amp;amp; keep them. To highly competent people, the best thing is not money. &quot;Give them enough challenge, give them space to succeed, make the open &amp;amp; comfort atmosphere&quot; - those are all buzz words, but they will work if applying well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At last, you may find &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inspiredstartup.com/where-in-the-world-are-the-a-players/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt; useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastEditorUserId="696" LastEditDate="2011-04-28T22:58:39.453" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T22:58:39.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1924" CreationDate="2011-04-28T06:19:37.407" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Software engineering is one of those fields that constantly changes.  In one moment, we're developing in Java on EC2 and Tomcat using Struts and in the next moment we're using Google App Engine, Jetty, and Spring.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as the developers you're working with are smart, pragmatic, and capable of exploring and mastering new technologies, then I think you'll be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a software engineering perspective, and from a Computer Science perspective, once you learn how to program in one language, the learning curve for another drops significantly.  My suggestion is to list this as a possible risk and maybe clarify what the plan is with the development team.  They will most likely be able to alleviate your concerns if you talk with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T06:19:37.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1924" CreationDate="2011-04-28T09:08:23.523" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you manage properly your contractor, beginning with a contract protecting your interests and forcing the contractor to deliver a quality software in time and budget, you should be safe. Is somebody monitoring the progress of the project from your side?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would say is this: when selecting an IT contractor, don't only look at the price. Audit the development processes (are they using a methodology? Which one? Is it suited to your working processes?, Do they use up to date working tools, like continuous integration? etc), the used technologies (as you pointed out, VB.NET &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; be a bad choice for serious .NET development). A project failing will turn out much more costly than the most expensive contractor!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T09:08:23.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1924" CreationDate="2011-04-28T10:00:07.220" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A point I would make is that your selection of which company to use to develop your software is crucial, the language used to develop the solution is less of an issue to you and more of a problem for the company you are using. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you pick a solid company that has been around for a long time and are willing to use them for the foreseeable future to maintain the code then your job is one of managing the link between your project and that company. They have the responsibility to delivery the business requirements using whatever language they see fit (within some limits you may wish to impose - it wouldn't make sense to start a new project in VB6 for example)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1085" LastEditorUserId="1085" LastEditDate="2011-05-03T09:22:18.240" LastActivityDate="2011-05-03T09:22:18.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1932" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-28T11:04:27.593" Score="4" ViewCount="1124" Body="&lt;p&gt;My question is really about right metrics to report when looking at a set of projects and functionality of project management tools which help in highlighting these metrics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are trying to do retrospectives and look at our projects to see why they got delayed.  In our system, anytime someone pushes back a release date, we force them to document a reason so we have documented every delay and every reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the issue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I have 10 projects that are all dependent on one another and project #1 gets delayed by 1 week, &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; 9 other projects would then have dates slipped by a week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I review all the delays, I don't think it is correct to show 10 weeks of delay (if I add up delays in all projects) because I'd be adding the same week many times as all projects were delayed for the same reason, e.g. pushed back just because of the 1 week delay in project #1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to highlight and accurately report project delays (considering we understand what went wrong) without having this multiplied counting issue where you are penalized for just having many projects queued in the pipeline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can change our system so I am curious how other tools deal with this type of metrics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1087" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-04-29T08:27:09.793" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T08:27:09.793" Title="Tools and methods to report and quantify delays" Tags="&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1932" CreationDate="2011-04-28T11:43:57.733" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Was an integrated master schedule used for all of the projects?  Since they were dependant upon each other, did the schedule have predecessor/successor logic both inter- and intra-projects?  If so, you should be able to do your retrospective analyzing the effects of schedule delays through the critical path within the master schedule.  If not, then create the schedule network diagram now using actual schedule results from the baseline schedules for each specific project and logical sequencing of packages and milestones between projects.  With a bit of analysis, you should be able to calculate your finish variances without double counting.  Some late tasks and packages of a predecessor project will not always affect successor packages if not on the critical path.  So double counting should not occur if you focus on the critical path and ignore unfavorable finish variances on non critical path packages and milestones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T11:43:57.733" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1924" CreationDate="2011-04-28T12:19:19.370" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;None of these are really worth raising with the development company, for the reasons you identify. If you are worried about it, stop using them. That is that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1090" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T12:19:19.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1935" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1937" CreationDate="2011-04-28T12:48:21.130" Score="8" ViewCount="1299" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the rules of the Scrum states the team should self organize and be in control of the technical part of the project. It is rather easy when Product Owners are delivering tasks which every member of the team is capable of dealing with. But there are some cases when it became more complicated, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When it comes to deciding on architecture of the project it is noticeable that one of the team members is much more experienced, so democracy in decision making in such area is maybe not the best idea. (or such team member is brought to the project especially because of previous problems with architecture)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some products are designed for specialized group of people. Product Owners have the knowledge about functionalities they want to introduce and how such features should look like, but each task needs also a legal advice on it's subject. Probably legal advisors should be introduced to the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could bring more examples if needed but you get the image...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is:&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;How does specialization fit into Scrum?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;strong&gt;&quot;How to introduce work of specialists into tasks taken by Scrum team?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My thinking is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;When I throw task at the team they should be capable of doing it. If they do not have all the knowledge, technical skills or competences needed then such task should remain out. Introducing specialist to the team only in order to handle such tasks would probably create botle necks and is rather a fake solution to the problem.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how to fit them properly into the team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T21:59:44.690" Title="How does specialization fit into Scrum?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1578" CreationDate="2011-04-28T12:49:39.723" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check this out: &lt;a href=&quot;http://agileretrospectivewiki.org/index.php?title=Main_Page&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://agileretrospectivewiki.org/index.php?title=Main_Page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use some of scenarios from up there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T12:49:39.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1935" CreationDate="2011-04-28T13:15:12.150" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason why Scrum introduced equal role for each member of the team, with the exception of Scrum Master and Product Owner, wasn't to make all people in the team generalists but rather &lt;strong&gt;to show that everyone should feel equally responsible for achieving the goal or failing at it&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With such attitude &lt;strong&gt;having specialists in Scrum team is perfectly OK.&lt;/strong&gt; If there is an architect who designs architecture which everyone else would build on - that's fine. But then, we have The Team which is responsible for getting the product right, which means both: the architect and, say, a developer should feel equally responsible whenever it appears something is wrong with the architecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It means there shouldn't be finger pointing and blame game to show that the architect screwed and now the poor developer has to clean all the mess. On the other hand it shouldn't be a situation when the architect feels everything is perfectly fine as they did their job and these are definitely developers who just don't get the concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's working well, the only thing you need is &lt;strong&gt;to find some simple mechanism which allows you to deal tasks reasonably among your specialists&lt;/strong&gt;. It can be either choosing specific tasks or stories to be covered end-to-end by a specific person or rather splitting the process into a few stages and have different people deal with different stages, e.g. developer building a story and QA engineer testing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final note: don't underestimate the power of self-organization. I would assume that people would have healthy level of discussion on architecture even if there's the architect in the team. After all, no one considers they know everything, do they? You'd need to step in if, and only if, you see the team running your specialist down for non-merit reasons, e.g. &lt;em&gt;&quot;we don't like you because you haven't worked with us on the previous project.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T13:15:12.150" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1935" CreationDate="2011-04-28T15:32:22.637" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not an expert in Scrum, but this is where I can smell a rat:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... one of the team members is much more experienced, so democracy in decision making in such area is maybe not the best idea...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum assumes that the team consists of self-motivated professionals, which are honestly doing  their best. Such a team shall effectively make decisions &lt;strong&gt;together&lt;/strong&gt;. In other words, democracy &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; the best idea in Scrum. Otherwise, it's not Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T15:32:22.637" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1924" CreationDate="2011-04-28T15:51:26.723" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are we worrying too much about this from a project management and success standpoint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stop worrying, start &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;managing risks&lt;/a&gt;. Identify risks associated with this sub-contractor and the technologies they are using. Analyze them quantitatively and qualitatively. Develop response plans. Assign risk owners. Start risk monitoring. That's a professional alternative to &quot;worrying&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T15:51:26.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1932" CreationDate="2011-04-28T15:55:54.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;you are being penalized for just having multiple other projects in your pipeline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not &quot;just having multiple other projects&quot;. You're penalized because one failure caused a number of subsequent failures. And someone has to be accountable for this. At least the company should know that there are 10 failures, not just one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest to leave everything &quot;as is&quot; now, and continue &quot;failing&quot; every project individually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T15:55:54.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1922" CreationDate="2011-04-28T15:58:45.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hire a part-time contractor to do the interviewing. Explain him your project objectives and required &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Skills_and_Abilities&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;KSA&lt;/a&gt;. Ask him to provide a detailed report after every interview, with a unified score.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, a project manager should never rely on his/her own technical skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T15:58:45.313" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1942" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1958" CreationDate="2011-04-28T16:24:28.557" Score="9" ViewCount="3045" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see various ones on the web (such at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eljamal.com/pm/docs/Cheat%20Sheet.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;), but not being a project manager, I can't really tell which ones are good. I'm looking for a checklist of things to do and important terms; specifically for someone who is new at project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="158" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2018-09-05T01:33:48.367" LastActivityDate="2018-09-05T01:33:48.367" Title="Good project management cheat sheet" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ClosedDate="2012-07-01T01:16:52.410" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1943" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1947" CreationDate="2011-04-28T18:49:01.653" Score="12" ViewCount="453" Body="&lt;p&gt;The CEO of our small company (14) asked me to introduce some elements of Scrum into the working process of our development team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problem is: the piece he would like to see introduced is not really the main part. It mainly the daily scrum meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that to introduce Scrum completly would force him to change his own work (constitue backlog, define content of sprints, and so on), and he obviously doesn't want that...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can see the benefits of introducing these small bits of Scrum. Better communication of the team, mainly, as we have no CTO, it's rather a self-organizing team anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also some hopes that ones we have begun with Scrum, we could further integrate the method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have seen something like this yet? How does it turn out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-12-09T13:39:03.007" LastActivityDate="2018-12-09T13:39:03.007" Title="Partially introduce Scrum into a team" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1943" CreationDate="2011-04-28T19:14:01.873" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. Been there, seen that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum daily meeting makes sense in Scrum because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;all the team members are interested in making taks done so they track progress and impediments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there is often a possibility of switching (one person finishes what other started) so they need to track progress and impediments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they need to use &quot;resources&quot; wisely, so they usually meet more than once a day to switch around tasks and help each other and share knowledge, so they need to know what is going on in team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without Scrum it sucked (in case I've seen) because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;each developer was working on his own tasks and could live without knowing what others do (I will do my part)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they had no reason to speak about impediments as others wasn't interested in helping (they did THEIR tasks), so all the stories was succesfull ones&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they saw no reason in doing daily standups (nobody consulted the situation with them) so most of the time they was saying &quot;I am doing the same I was doing yesterday and I will do it probably for the next two weeks, thank you&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not saying standups will not work for you. But have you (I mean managers) asked yourself a questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;why do we want to do it&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;what do we expect to get&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;is it the right choice to get what we want&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;did we spoke with the team about it&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;what are the team's suggestions?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is probably wise to know the patient's illness before administering drug-which-should-work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastEditorUserId="927" LastEditDate="2011-04-28T20:17:21.323" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T20:17:21.323" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1924" CreationDate="2011-04-28T20:00:05.963" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;There just seems to be way more C# developer talent out there vs. VB.NET talent.&lt;/em&gt;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this is an observation bias - you are seeing more C# devs because more of them are available and not working. I'm seeing lots of calls for skilled VB programmers to convert existing VB6 applications to .NET before the next version of windows comes out [1]. The replacement app uses VB.NET mostly because the team leads are more fluent in it, however a lot of new development is in C# and Python [2].  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This development company comes from an old VB6 background and have only in recent years started using VB.NET.&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds somewhat like my last employer. Some features were done in .NET a long time ago, but if you looked at their commercially shipping apps, most were VB3 [3] and VB6 until recently. Apps ranged from VB6 to .NET 3.5 and you'd have to dig into DLLs to find out what was what. The programmer with the most seniority has been there 17 years and is still VB6-exclusive. The youngest programmer there as of December was me - and I left after being there 5 years. The first shipping product was made in VB3 about 18 years ago.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Should the business side raise an issue on this or just let it be?&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My opinion is to let it be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notes:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;1 - Microsoft has stated that Win7 and Server2008 are the last operating systems to include the VB6 runtime. This could mean that we have to figure out how to distribute it ourselves, or perhaps it means that the next operating system will break as much stuff as Vista did.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2 - The C++ and FORTRAN bits aren't getting converted.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;3 - VB3 apps with VBXs could not be made to run on Vista. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T20:00:05.963" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1946" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1953" CreationDate="2011-04-28T20:27:50.970" Score="6" ViewCount="11987" Body="&lt;p&gt;After you've resisted the urge to run towards the door screaming, what are the first two or three things that you do to get your thoughts in order when you have been given a new project? I tend to start to think of the desired objectives and start to sketch out what I know, then develop high level plans from there, but how do others approach it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-05-03T17:04:33.610" Title="What are the first steps to take when given a new project?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;initiation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1943" CreationDate="2011-04-28T20:58:13.800" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Contrary to Bartosz, &lt;strong&gt;I believe that short, daily meetings are something which actually can perfectly work in many different environments, even when it is virtually the only practice taken from Scrum.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What more I know teams, and quite a few of them, which tried Scrum, then abandoned it, and the only practice they still exercise is daily meetings. And they even point it as the best thing from Scrum -- no surprise since they dropped every other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, daily meetings are all about exchanging information within the team and they aim to make it in a very light-weight way. This means chances are good people will actually see the value. So I'd definitely try this one out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However I don't have much hope it is a good starting point to introduce Scrum as a whole.&lt;/strong&gt; Starting with Scrum is a revolution for vast majority of teams. Different team model, different process and a bunch of new practices to follow. It's often hard to make transition to Scrum sustainable as people naturally oppose revolutions and that will be the force which would be hard to overcome with step-by-step Scrum implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you think about incremental changes of the team Kanban seems as if it's a better tool to support such ongoing change.&lt;/strong&gt; Actually Kanban is often dubbed change management approach and, if I understand correctly, that's what you want to do. Kanban also assumes nothing really changes on the day 1, but then unveils issues and incentivize people to improve the way they work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T20:58:13.800" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1943" CreationDate="2011-04-28T21:00:31.457" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seems like he's really missing the point of Scrum.  Just the Daily Scrum is like having just the foam of a cappuccino.  Granted it is an integral part of Scrum and it is a great litmus test for how well the team is working together but on it's own it just doesn't make sense.  Maybe a communication problem.  I wonder if you could go back to your CEO and ask him some  open-ended questions about what it is about Scrum that he finds appealing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1012" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T21:00:31.457" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1935" CreationDate="2011-04-28T21:05:20.687" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even if it is very obvious who is the best fit for the role the team should always be allowed to self-organize.  If someone not performing the work decides who does what: a) it doesn't save any time; b) it sets a bad precedent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1012" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T21:05:20.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1946" CreationDate="2011-04-28T21:11:57.247" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First thing I consider when given a project are people. All sorts of them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stakeholders&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Client&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sponsor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Subcontractors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whoever else might me engaged&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe it's a bit counterintuitive as it basically means I don't think about the project itself in the first place but I believe that great people would fill most of the gaps which may be there, while wrong people can ruin even a sure-shot project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think about project team only -- we'll be building the thing, share good things and bad things but that's not everything you need to remember about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another key folks are stakeholders and sponsors -- if you deal with stakeholders who don't really know what they want and have enough power to enforce whatever they want at the very second project is going to be hard. On the other hand if you happen to work with reasonable people in these roles it would be hard to overvalue their impact on project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then we have client. They might help or obstruct or not give a damn. Either way it will affect the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there is all the rest who, depending on a project, can also have significant impact on the project team. Like subcontractor who you end up fighting with etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;At the end of the day these are people who make or break the project using thousands different methods. So that's exactly where I direct my first thought to.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T21:11:57.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1943" CreationDate="2011-04-28T21:34:09.547" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As they say, every journey begins with a single step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at this as a start and make it a successful proof of concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T21:34:09.547" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1935" CreationDate="2011-04-28T21:59:44.690" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, +1 to @Ken and @Pawel, because it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; the team's job to organize and make the appropriate decisions as a team. However...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any question about specialization is should be a conversation about the relative merits of specialization vs. generalization in your particular context, and the same conversations are about both individuals within a team and about entire teams.  As with many things in project management, neither extreme is all that appealing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, at a team level, which I feel makes for much more obvious examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your company doesn't do anything but .NET, you should probably specialize your teams around associated skill sets. It doesn't make sense to maintain teams that have a strong Java capability if you never use it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ditto visual design skills. If your products are essentially serving systems and publishing API's, your teams in general don't need to maintain strong visual design skills or front-end development skills.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teams supporting many products in production often need a much broader set of skills to effectively handle the broad requests that come in, and as such are less able to really go deep on any one aspect.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, those same scenarios can help inform the type of specialization desired within the team. Examples and thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teams that do a lot of new development should have one or even two people that are very strong at understanding systems and their interactions and the trade offs inherent in various design approaches. Some people call them &quot;architects.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teams should have enough design and testing capability to allow them to achieve their definition of done in a meaningful way. &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Generalizing between tests and dev is far easier than people make it out to be. I've never met a dev who couldn't script tests, and I've never met a tester who couldn't learn to read code (Thanks @lunivore for the language)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business analysis and testing is really the future vs. past tense of very similar skills, and is very easy to learn to do both.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Rare&quot; skills, like security &amp;amp; penetration expertise, are often more valuable as a shared advisory and mentorship role across multiple teams, unless the team has continual and deep security ramifications.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team composition decisions need to be made based on your context, and then management needs to be more &quot;hands off&quot;, telling the team what capabilities they value from the team without meddling in how the team achieves those goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T21:59:44.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1946" CreationDate="2011-04-29T05:54:11.960" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;When starting a project, here are the things that I consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Define the Scope&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Defining the Scope of the project is perhaps one of the most important pieces to ensuring success of the project.  It's important to get everyone together in the room, from the technical team, client, sponsors, my manager, and anyone else with a stake in the project, and clearly define what we are and what we aren't going to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is tough and has taken me time to learn that it's better to ask these tough questions now than deal with scope creep later because the scope wasn't clearly defined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Define the Specification&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next thing I think about is the specification.  This is as important as the scope because it is essentially the architectural plan -- in a software project -- for how the features will function.  I work with the client back and forth to clearly define the functionality.  I take the spec to my technical team and then send questions they have back to the client until we eliminate as much ambiguity as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Define the Timeline&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third thing I think about is the timeline of the project.  Depending on features and estimates from the technical team, we may offer suggestions of which features to eliminate from the spec when the client is more concerned with timely delivery.  We may also reduce the scope of certain features in order to fit the timeline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Define risks&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team working on the project may be called away to fix production level issues.  The client's API may not work exactly how they explained.  The client may realize that the defined features may not be what they were looking for and hence may want to change the spec.  The client may decide to cancel the project.  We document as many of these as possible and try to stay one step ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T05:54:11.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1932" CreationDate="2011-04-29T06:03:42.467" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since your are coordinating multiple projects, it sounds like you may be crossing the lines into program management.  Here is a quote from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia Article on Program Management&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The other view[3] is that a program is nothing more than either a large project or a set (or portfolio) of projects. On this second view, the point of having a program is to exploit economies of scale and to reduce coordination costs and risks. The project manager's job is to ensure that their project succeeds. &lt;strong&gt;The program manager, on the other hand, may not care about individual projects, but is concerned with the aggregate result or end-state.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One possible solution to your problem is to focus this reporting on the entire program and not treat each individual project as its own separate entity.  In this scenario, where you are working on N projects to support a common end-goal, the simple solution is to produce one report that focuses on the delay of the program as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can, and should, produce a detailed report documenting the delay at the project level, but when it comes to the other projects being delayed, just briefly mention in those reports that the projects are delayed due to a delay at the program level.  I would suggest not drawing too much attention to the delay in the other project reports and instead to just mention it briefly as a footnote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T06:03:42.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1955" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1960" CreationDate="2011-04-29T07:56:23.157" Score="14" ViewCount="1251" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I explained in a &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1943/partially-introduce-scrum-into-a-team&quot;&gt;previous question&lt;/a&gt;, our company is willing to introduce some elements of the Scrum method in our working process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a in-house graphic designer, who is attached to the marketing part of the company, but feels more related to the technical team, as he also creates stuff and works with us in the production of the features of our online application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you think it's a good idea to involve our graphic designer in our daily Scrum meeting? Have you seen it before? With which results?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-10-31T09:19:40.180" LastActivityDate="2018-10-31T09:19:40.180" Title="Involve graphic designer in daily Scrum meetings" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1955" CreationDate="2011-04-29T08:16:16.797" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, everyone is welcome on Scrum meetings. You can even have CEO on meetings too. The only rule is that as long as someone isn't directly involved in a project they don't speak - they just listen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, from what you write your graphic designer works for your projects so he could perfectly suit daily meetings as a regular member. Of course it means that sometime he would have little to add, as he would be working on some marketing stuff but that's also important information for the project team. It means &lt;em&gt;&quot;Now I'm doing some other stuff so you should take it into consideration in your plans as I won't be able to do work for the team at the moment.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's another thing as well -- if the graphic designer wants to join just take him to the meetings and treat is as an experiment. If it works for him and for the team -- just keep it going. If it doesn't think whether you want to change it or skip it completely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's always a question of time invested by an individual to attend the meeting and value he, and the rest of the team, gets. Personally I'd say that chances are good the net result in this case would be positive so I'd definitely give it a try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T08:16:16.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1942" CreationDate="2011-04-29T09:38:47.817" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not so fond of cheat sheets, as I don't trust in recipes and prefer real thinking. But it can be a good help for a beginner, I think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The official Project Management for Dummies cheat sheet should be a good beginning, especially if you're not familiar with project management:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/project-management-for-dummies-cheat-sheet.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/project-management-for-dummies-cheat-sheet.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other cheat sheets:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thepracticalpm.com/serendipity/index.php?/archives/18-PM-Cheat-Sheet.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.thepracticalpm.com/serendipity/index.php?/archives/18-PM-Cheat-Sheet.html&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Its step-by-step approach seems interesting and make it immediatly usable for a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.focus.com/fyi/human-resources/managers-cheat-sheet-101-common-sense-rules-leaders/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.focus.com/fyi/human-resources/managers-cheat-sheet-101-common-sense-rules-leaders/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;This one has a more transverse approach, things you should know or you should think about all the time, even if I'm not ok with all the points: Is body language really so important for a PM? I'm not so sure...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastEditorUserId="152" LastEditDate="2011-04-30T09:09:21.450" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T09:09:21.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1942" CreationDate="2011-04-29T10:31:53.270" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is one I carry around with me all the time: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.niwotridge.com/PDFs/Project%20Breathalyzer.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Project Breathalyzer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I beg to disagree that it is only useful for a beginner :-). When you're tied up in project work, it is a healthy habit to sit back at a quiet moment and reflect upon your project. A good checklist can help organise your thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found the Breathalyzer through &lt;a href=&quot;http://herdingcats.typepad.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Glen Alleman&lt;/a&gt;'s site, which is a treasure trove for beginners and experts. One blogpost from Glen is of particular interest for your question: &lt;a href=&quot;http://herdingcats.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/05/a-simple-way-to-put-pmbok-to-work.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A simple way to put PMBOK to work.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I also found useful over the years is a copy of &lt;em&gt;Table 3-1. Project Management Process Groups and Knowledge Areas Mapping&lt;/em&gt; in the PMBOK. (currently on page 43 in the Fourth Edition).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I actually forgot to mention the most important one, which is my own checklist. It is based upon the Breathalyzer, the PM methodology of the organisation I work for and personal experience. I strongly advise you to start creating &lt;strong&gt;your own checklist&lt;/strong&gt; today (styarting with the examples provided here). It will be a good friend along the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-04-30T12:55:10.183" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T12:55:10.183" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1946" CreationDate="2011-04-29T14:54:03.287" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once I have read the available documentation so far, I already start building the &lt;strong&gt;WBS&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;WBS Dictionary&lt;/strong&gt;, even if it only has a few lines. I also add elements I know will be required from experience (better to have them chopped out explicitly then to 'forget' them because no-one said so ...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also draw up a list of possible &lt;strong&gt;stakeholders&lt;/strong&gt; (involved people, SME's already assigned, departments affected, whoever ...). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I visit them &lt;strong&gt;individually&lt;/strong&gt; to see what they have to say about this WBS and about the project in general (objectives, requirements, risks, other people that I might need to see, concerns, ...). After each interview I update my preliminary WBS and send it to them for review. Main stakeholders first, for instance, if the sponsor is already known I visit him/her first, etc..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a few meetings I already have enough material to draft the beginnings of a &lt;strong&gt;charter&lt;/strong&gt; (or initiation document, whatever you may call it), which I take with me in my interview rounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only when I have all individual points of view, is when I start scheduling joint meetings with several stakeholders to get agreement on the points that are unclear, different, contradictory etc., as appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T14:54:03.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1955" CreationDate="2011-04-29T15:01:30.893" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on your statement &quot;feels more related to the technical team, as he also creates stuff and works with us in the production of the features of our online application&quot; I fully encourage him to join the daily stand-up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more important question is if he's going to join the team or not... there could be a great advantage to your designer being a full member of the team, sharing the responsibility for the team commitment, etc. My general recommendation is &quot;yes, he should&quot;, but there are legitimate reasons why it wouldn't make sense. Please note there are MANY excuses why it wouldn't work as well, and as @Pawel recommends, you ought to experiment with it for 2-3 sprints and see if it's better for communication, or if it happens to hurt communication with the rest of the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T15:01:30.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1946" CreationDate="2011-04-29T15:29:02.857" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read more about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management#Initiation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Initiation Process Group&lt;/a&gt; in PMBOK. You start a project with (in this specific order):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;analyzing of business needs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cost/benefit analysis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;stakeholder analysis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;project charter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_charter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Charter&lt;/a&gt; is approved by a project sponsor - you may start spending money and human resources, in order to deliver project scope in time with required quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T15:29:02.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1955" CreationDate="2011-04-29T16:00:32.643" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a great question about how to tailor scrum when you have external dependencies on other teams. In big enterprise projects (and in small ones), the best approach I've seen is to &lt;strong&gt;include a team representative if you have a dependency on an external team&lt;/strong&gt; -- like work from the graphic-design team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be the person doing the work themselves, but it's usually more useful to have the team lead, because they give bigger-picture stuff (eg. team member is spending x% of time on your work because of A, B, C other priorities).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T16:00:32.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1922" CreationDate="2011-04-29T18:19:54.530" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a wild thought that might yield interesting results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the techniques that a lot of teams use is to avoid the interview format and instead put a candidate into the team situation in the workplace. In other words, if you're hiring a programmer for an XP team, sit them down with the team and have them pair with others and see how they interact. The people who pair with them will get deep insight into their technical ability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'm thinking, if you're really all alone and have to hire technical talent, why not bring in two or three people at the same time and treat them as a team? Tell them to bring laptops. Give them some kind of programming problem to solve together, as a team. Then be there as a PM if they have questions, and watch them work. I think you could learn a lot this way. Certainly you will quickly be able to rank the candidates relative to one another and use that information along with other techniques to help your decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and if you try this, could you come back to the group and tell us how it worked?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;alan&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1101" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T18:19:54.530" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1955" CreationDate="2011-04-30T01:40:02.390" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only challenge that I see in including other people in the scrum meetings is dedication.  In this case, I'm assuming the developers who are part of this scrum team are all dedicated resources on your project.  This means that 95+% of their time and energy is dedicated to the advancement of your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question I have is whether or not your designer is a full time member of your project.  Does this designer have other conflicting responsibilities.  If so, then adding this person to the team may not be very helpful as you may be subject to sharing this person's time with other departments.  In cases like this, design may take a back seat for your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, the questions you would want to first answer are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How will you handle situations where the designer misses the meeting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How will you handle scenarios where a designer can't get the work done on time, not because of scope, but because the marketing manager wants this person to work on something else this week?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How will the team dynamics be affected by someone whose contributions and dedication to the project appear to fluctuate from period to period?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the designer is actually dedicated to working on your project, then I would strongly suggest including this person in the meetings as none of these challenges will apply.  If not, just be prepared to handle those situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T01:40:02.390" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1965" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1969" CreationDate="2011-04-30T01:57:04.043" Score="3" ViewCount="602" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're a product manager in charge of developing a new product, and you've done months of research to determine a direction and a vision for the product.  The product development is going well, and now you've involved other departments, like marketing, graphics design, sales, and operations in order to create a support chain for the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As more managers of these areas get involved, many of them will have their own views regarding how things should function.  For instance, you, as a technical person, may picture the development team implementing a new architecture that uses web services to bring custom API's to your clients and internal developers, which will help the other developers extend your product by using the services it provides.  However, the marketing and operations personnel may view the architecture change as unimportant as they don't have the technical knowledge to understand how the new architecture could power other products built using that technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you want is similar to what marketing and operations wants, but since they don't understand software engineering, they may not understand what the developers are working on.  They then use their influence to convince others in the organization to skip the architecture development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it may be beneficial to include department managers in meetings -- instead of just the resources they've allocated to your team -- sometimes it's more difficult to control the direction of your product in these cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What tips or suggestions are out there for gaining support from other managers without necessarily having them take over the project with their influence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-04-30T05:23:29.753" LastActivityDate="2017-11-23T17:31:43.190" Title="What Techniques Do You Use to Deal With Other Managers Who Try to Change Your Product Vision?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1965" CreationDate="2011-04-30T02:20:51.197" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A huge part of a product manager's role is exactly what you describe. Sometimes the new suggestions or ideas are great, but sometimes you need to preserve the initial idea both to prevent delays and also to ensure the final product makes sense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on where the suggestions or new requirements are, I use different tactics, but here are some (Each with their own pluses and minuses):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put your foot down and be obstinate. Basically just have a stronger, louder opinion than the other person. (Not my favorite, but sometimes necessary. Don't overuse it)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep people who will only meddle out of the loop (Sometimes dangerous, as people may realize what you're doing and take offense)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Defer the discussion and the feature by agreeing that the new idea is a good one, and put it on the roadmap for a future release.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a variation on deferring the suggestion, point out that there is a deadline and that with the time and resource pressures adding things isn't an option.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain why that idea doesn't fit in with the current product direction. If you can, use specific customer feedback to back up why you're right. &lt;strong&gt;(When you have the time, and the person is willing to have a real conversation this is almost always the best solution.)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build social capital in the organization. You can't do this overnight, but if you've been right before about other things and you are a trusted leader, you'll find far fewer suggested tweaks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While not exhaustive, the above ideas are the main tactics I've found helpful in the past for fending off unworkable suggestions. In general, I find I have much better results with the &quot;soft sell&quot; and try to be agreeable and approachable by explaining my reasoning and deferring rather than rejecting ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="916" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T02:20:51.197" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1967" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-04-30T03:38:26.837" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This tag is a tool to collect the questions and people asking them during the 2011 RallyOn conference into a single RSS feed and cohesive environment to support the introduction of many new members into the community in a safe and easy manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information, please see &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.pm.stackexchange.com/q/205/696&quot;&gt;this meta.pm.stackexchange.com post&lt;/a&gt; for the background and context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastEditorUserId="696" LastEditDate="2011-04-30T05:15:53.393" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T05:15:53.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1968" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-04-30T03:38:26.837" Score="0" Body="The RallyOn11 tag collects questions emerging from the user conference of the same name. It assists helping people find conference related questions and in giving transparency and additional context to the question and the asker." OwnerUserId="696" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2011-05-10T23:27:47.237" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T23:27:47.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1965" CreationDate="2011-04-30T04:31:19.963" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would answer your question as it was about &quot;dealing with other managers&quot; because &quot;preventing others&quot; would mean you do not want to hear other's oppinions and maybe lost some flexibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sell the idea&lt;/strong&gt;. It usually means you need to deal with each of the managers separately as each of them works in different area of expertise and is trying to achieve different goals. It also means you must find the time for proper explanation of concepts and planned functionalities. Making a big presentation of your strategy will be tempting as it saves some time (you don't need to explain all the details to each of them separately and it gives good impression when it's well done) but such &quot;big bang&quot; usually changes a lot less than expected. Consider selling the idea, piece by piece, by asking the questions: i.e.: &quot;&lt;em&gt;As regards the costs, do you think it is a good idea to let client's internal developers extend our product?&lt;/em&gt;&quot; Find some interesting part for each of the managers and make them sell your idea. CEO might be interested in lower costs while the marketing manager may be interested in knowing that better architecture design and exposing it to client usually means less bugs and better quality.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hear them&lt;/strong&gt;. Whether you ask the questions or not, you will hear other's oppinions. It should remain clear for the disputant what your area of the expertise is and that it is your responsibility to make decisions, nevertheless the disputant should also feel she was heard, understanded and her input will be remembered and taken into consideration before making the final decision. Putting such feedback as the backlog items (as Rain suggested) is good idea because of visibility and it also assures you will...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;strong&gt;Rethink your ideas&lt;/strong&gt;. I find it not so rare to improve the initial idea after receiving some feedback. Other managers work with different clients so they can share their points of view for free (which you probably couldn't imagine even if you tried). If you improve your idea that way, take some time to thank the originator and inform you did a bit better thanks to her feedback. It's a win-win situation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastEditorUserId="927" LastEditDate="2011-04-30T04:39:15.043" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T04:39:15.043" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1965" CreationDate="2011-04-30T05:29:37.610" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came up with more strict answer to your question. I would treat it as &quot;what not to do&quot; answer but if you wish to get rid of the disputants you can try:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use &lt;a href=&quot;http://search.dilbert.com/comic/Reflector&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Wally reflector&quot;&gt;Wally reflector&lt;/a&gt;. If somebody gives you an advice or suggesting a change ask him to write detailed document covering the subject&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Say &quot;&lt;em&gt;It's a good idea, in fact, it's a GREAT idea worth remembering&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. Forget about all of it after 10 seconds (my favourite CEO's answer)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Switch the train to the secondary rails. Find some minor flaw in your opponents argument, stick to it and discuss only about it. After each slight change of the subject pick another minor element and stick to it...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Say you already disscussed that (a couple of times) and came conclusion it's worthless. You do not remember the details but it doesn't change the situation, right?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Buy a book on &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1906142246&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Eristics&lt;/a&gt; by Artur Schopenhauer. You will find some more examples there. &quot;&lt;em&gt;You do not have sufficient backgroud for conducting disscussions on such subjects.&lt;/em&gt;&quot; - is the universal one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T05:29:37.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1942" CreationDate="2011-04-30T17:27:47.687" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not fond of checklists myself. I think they lead to sloppy thinking. Better understanding the process can lead to using the right tools at the right time. If it's a memory aid for a new methodology, I like it to be a list of questions and prompts. (@david, a checklist is a list of points that need to be checked off. Anything that makes someone think, isn't a checklist). &#xA;For instance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do you think you've completed initiation? Can you answer the following.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know what you are supposed to be delivering - could you explain it in less than a minute?&#xA;Who are your key stakeholders and why are they key?&#xA;When is your planning session? Who will be there and why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that illustrates the idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T17:27:47.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1965" CreationDate="2011-04-30T17:34:38.197" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the challenge when you are running your own projects. Because you have a vision and you know your product inside out, it's harder to translate the vision you have into terms other people can understand. &#xA;My suggestion is to take the time to translate what the developers are building into terms that describe the end result. That way Marketing and Operations can align their efforts with what will become reality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T17:34:38.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1973" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1985" CreationDate="2011-04-30T19:43:39.943" Score="36" ViewCount="58934" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently the PM on a project that is scheduled to run for about 14 months. The current sprint structure is 4 weeks of development; week 5 allows us to show the progress to the client, deploy it for their testers, eliminate bugs and discuss the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the length of the sprint is 4 to 5 weeks, it will generate about 13 to 14 sprints.  Is this a reasonable number of sprints, or should we look to have fewer sprints (say 8-10) for a project of this duration? Is there a rule of thumb on a reasonable number of sprints for a project with several man years of budget?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="693" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2014-04-16T11:26:05.050" LastActivityDate="2016-08-12T08:13:00.030" Title="How long should an Agile Sprint be?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="16" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1955" CreationDate="2011-04-30T19:50:38.220" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think too often the graphic design and UI elements of software projects is considered a non-developer task.  I've found that renaming those team members (who do design and often generate html or CSS as a result) as &lt;strong&gt;front-end developers&lt;/strong&gt; helps give them a defined role in software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have front-end devs who are enthusiastic I think you should definitely invite them to the daily stand-ups - whether they should be there will become quickly obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="693" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T19:50:38.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1973" CreationDate="2011-04-30T21:17:56.627" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrummethodology.com/scrum-sprint/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ScrumMethodology.com&lt;/a&gt;, a sprint is 30 days long.  However, I can see advantages and disadvantages in having both longer or shorter sprints. In fact, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Portals/0/Documents/Scrum%20Guides/2013/Scrum-Guide.pdf#zoom=100&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum.org website's Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; describes a sprint as being &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;no more than 30 days&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for the following reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sprints are limited to one calendar month. When a Sprint’s horizon is too long the definition of &#xA;  what is being built may change, complexity may rise, and risk may increase. Sprints enable &#xA;  predictability by ensuring inspection and adaptation of progress toward a Sprint Goal at least &#xA;  every calendar month. Sprints also limit risk to one calendar month of cost. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The longer the sprints become, the less agile you really are, especially if you follow the scrum methodology rules that don't let you interrupt or change the sprint in the middle.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The smaller the sprints, the more agile you become; however, it may be more difficult for the development team to get more work done since the product must be in a working version at the end of each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like the complexity of the current sprints could very well dictate their length.  If you're at the phase of the project where you're just resolving minor bugs, then maybe smaller sprints are easier.  However, if you're making major changes to the system that require a lot of focus by the development team, then longer sprints may be more appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, consider that if the sprints need to be longer than 30 days, you may need to check with the development team and ask them if they're designing the system with agile best practices in mind.  Many techniques that are popular today, such as using a RESTful architecture, allow for independent deployments of modular components, which helps prevent bugs in other systems and create an environment where deployments can in fact be made more frequently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-04-14T00:11:45.637" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T00:11:45.637" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1955" CreationDate="2011-04-30T21:50:04.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming that &quot;he is enthusiastic&quot; (as you said above), the real question here is what are the &lt;strong&gt;cons&lt;/strong&gt; of involving him into regular meetings. I see the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;risk of overcrowding (especially if he is an active talker)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;security breach (if you have different &quot;clearance levels&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;loss of focus (team members may start thinking about graphic design more than they should)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T21:50:04.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1973" CreationDate="2011-04-30T21:56:13.147" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The shorter the sprint - the better. That's the rule of thumb. However there are many obstacles which do not allow us to deliver every, say, week. Some of these obstacles are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;project sponsor/customer has certain bureaucracy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;resources (people) are slow in delivery&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some tasks take longer and can't be broken down to sub-tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the most important. Analyze yours and try to fight with them in order to make your sprints as short as possible. In general, your 4/5 weeks duration looks reasonable for average circumstances. But again, I would recommend to try to make it shorter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T21:56:13.147" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1978" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-30T23:17:01.210" Score="2" ViewCount="787" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a technology organization supporting a line of businesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are currently managing a large budget with a portfolio of over 100 applications and hundreds of projects that impact these applications (some projects affect a single application and some affect multiple applications). We are tracking lots of detail and high level information including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;List of all application with buy/sell/hold, future end state, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;list of all projects with RAG status, risks, dependencies, etc and change history around status (active, pipeline, etc), resourcing, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we have lots of data, but I am trying to figure out how we can use this data to help people understand what is really going on and to help people (both technology management and our business management) make strategic decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the right &quot;dashboard view&quot; (or views) that are useful for management to look at?&#xA;Are there standard reports or metrics / ratios, etc that should be included?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see a lot of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codeproject.com/KB/mentor/apppfoliomanage.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;articles on this&lt;/a&gt;, but I can't find concrete specific on what people think are the key views to help drive a strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.applicationportfoliomanagement.com/how-to-measure-application-portfolio-management.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;stated here&lt;/a&gt;, I am trying to figure out the best way to show how we are doing against our strategy and to help drive strategic decision making.  Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1087" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-05-01T20:49:32.507" LastActivityDate="2011-06-19T04:13:31.120" Title="What are the best metrics and reports for doing strategic application portfolio management?" Tags="&lt;progress-report&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1979" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1980" CreationDate="2011-05-01T02:06:30.080" Score="1" ViewCount="4044" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, this metric is causing some troubles in my head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I understood, its magnitude is: man/hour.&#xA;So for example, if in a project I put two employees working, the effort would be: 2 man/hour. Is this ok?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then suppose my industry is Software development, and the productivity of each man is 100 LinesOfCode/hour.  Is this magnitude ok?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means that my total productivity per hour is: Effort*IndividualProductivity = 200 LinesOfCode/hour. Is this ok?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If my project size is 1000 LinesOfCode, that means that: Duration = Size/TotalProductivity = 1000/200 = 5 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sorry this is not an specific question. It's more like an 'Its ok this reasoning?' one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1107" LastEditorUserId="91" LastEditDate="2011-05-01T02:34:20.160" LastActivityDate="2011-05-02T19:28:25.450" Title="Effort vs (Size, Productivity, Duration)" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;performance&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1979" CreationDate="2011-05-01T02:32:47.993" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your calculations are mathematically correct, but they assume that productivity is linear. It's not true in most cases. Especially it's not correct for writing code, which size can hardly can be measured by lines of code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_lines_of_code&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Software Lines of Code&lt;/a&gt; (SLoc) metric is used &quot;post-mortem&quot;, when the product is ready and we are interested to calculate our &quot;productivity&quot;. But it should not be used for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_effort_estimation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;estimating&lt;/a&gt;. Other metrics will help you there, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Function_point&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;function points&lt;/a&gt;, story points, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-05-01T02:32:47.993" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1979" CreationDate="2011-05-01T03:16:45.583" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I'd like to point out that you are writing the metric down wrong.  Man/hour implies &quot;men per hour (men/hour)&quot;, which is essentially a rate, not an output.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you talk about the amount of total work performed, you're not referring to rates but instead are referring to output.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A man-hour or person-hour is the amount of work performed by an average worker in one hour. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read more: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.answers.com/topic/man-hour#ixzz1L4B7a4N5&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.answers.com/topic/man-hour#ixzz1L4B7a4N5&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you hear someone using the term &quot;man hours&quot;, it's actually written as &quot;man-hours&quot; (not man/hours) and implies that it's the total number of &quot;men&quot; in this case multiplied by the total number of hours in the period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if I have 5 developers who work 8 hours per day, then 8*5=40 man-hours of work performed in one day.  Whereas a rate involves division, output involves multiplication, so the two units will appear side by side, not one over the other with a division sign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-hour&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on Man Hours&lt;/a&gt; goes on to say that this type of measurement of output is really only effective for measuring simple tasks with simple dependencies that are also very predictable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, in the shipping industry, it's reasonable to assume that doubling your manpower will double your output, but in a chef's kitchen, adding more chefs won't make the water boil any faster.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, software engineering is not a simple production-based field with small, simple dependencies and simple tasks.  Unfortunately, each engineer will bring different skills to the table, which involve different timelines and estimates.  Moreover, the same developer who takes longer than other developers on one task may smoke those same developers on another task, as it's also about specialization, to some degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-05-01T03:16:45.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1978" CreationDate="2011-05-01T03:30:05.447" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Senior managers are interested in the bottom line.  Most of them want the answer to a very simple strategic question:  Are we in the black or are we in the red?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, the information that you provide these managers should be limited to the information that answers those questions over the course of the financial quarter.  My suggestion is to average your increases in revenue over the course of 3 months and show this on a weekly basis in a spreadsheet.  Then at a glance, managers will be able to tell what is holding steady profit, what areas are growing in terms of profit, and what areas are declining in terms of profit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to point out that it's still possible for something that is not currently generating profit to show trends that the losses are decreasing at an increasing rate, which means they are approaching profitability.  Likewise, it's also possible to show that something that is generating profit is actually decreasing the amount of profit each month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a strategic management perspective, just because something shows profit one month does not mean strategic managers will want to invest in it moving forward.  For instance, a profitable project that is decreasing it's profit may be nearing the end of the product lifecycle.  Maybe strategic managers may want to maintain it until it's in the red, but they likely won't want to bet the entire business on that one area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, what's important to strategic managers is seeing how things are changing over a period of time so that they can use that information as a crystal ball to help them better prepare for the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-05-01T03:30:05.447" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1978" CreationDate="2011-05-01T08:09:26.517" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You appear to have a roadmap for the various applications (as per your comment on buy/sell/hold, etc), so one simple metric would be to categorise the projects in your portfolio and map them against the different classes of application. That way you could see whether you are investing time and effort on developing and improving applications that don't have a future (as opposed to doing the minimum to keep them running until they are retired / replaced). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, draw up a matrix of application classes on one axis (buy / sell / hold / develop / strategic development, etc), and project types on the other axis (maintenance / development / cosmetic / bug fix / legislative change / etc). You can list the projects in the cells, or just count them, or put in some anticipated resource, investment or ROI figures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do this you should see whether your effort and your strategy are aligned, and where they are not, you can make informed decisions to re-align them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even as a one-off snapshot in time, this can help to clarify where you are, and give you a clearer insight into what you should be doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-05-01T08:09:26.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1973" CreationDate="2011-05-01T10:11:06.027" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience I found it good to have &lt;strong&gt;7-10 day sprints at the beginning&lt;/strong&gt; and increasing it to &lt;strong&gt;15-20 days later&lt;/strong&gt; on as the team got to the &lt;strong&gt;norming/performing stages.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="634" LastActivityDate="2011-05-01T10:11:06.027" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1973" CreationDate="2011-05-01T11:24:54.197" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you were new to Scrum and sprints, I would say you should start with some given length (3 weeks or 30 days) and check if it works for you and make changes if necessery. Instead, it looks like you are already familiar with sprints, so question is: what is your experience with sprint duration? Do you have any doubts which makes you ask the question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can see couple of influencing factors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprints come bundled with some additional time cost&lt;/strong&gt; (meetings, plannings, demo, free day also?). Too short sprint means work/cost ratio will be low.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprints should deliver&lt;/strong&gt;. If you choose too short sprints, some of them will be dummy ones: with sprint goal not achieved, with almost nothing interesting to show on demo, sprint goal will be a stub itself and retrospectives will tend to be dull. In other words, sprint will fail to deliver.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;...and deliver frequently&lt;/strong&gt;. If you choose too long sprints, you will probably notice: overcrowded demo, too many goals per sprint and retrospectives where nobody remember what happened at the begining of the sprint. Client will be &quot;flooded&quot; with features once the sprint is over, so sprints are not frequent (agile) enough.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There should be &lt;strong&gt;no delays between sprints&lt;/strong&gt;. Do the demo, retrospective, backlog evaluations, (day off if there is such rule) planning meeting and start the next sprint. You should take a closer look at the 5th week as it takes 20% of your time. You can probably eliminate bugs in sprint time, make deployment easier and regarding PO's: they should have tasks for the next sprint prepared already, shouldn't they?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can not give you the exact number of days sprint should take, as what I said above is tightly connected to the team quality, technology and architecture used, and product you are working on. It is probably not the best idea to change the sprint length too often because it affects your and team ability to predict velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastEditorUserId="927" LastEditDate="2011-05-02T07:05:29.087" LastActivityDate="2011-05-02T07:05:29.087" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1979" CreationDate="2011-05-01T14:50:21.137" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding your lines of code per hour, I do not find anything wrong with that parametric being used for estimating, so long as that metric was identified using industry benchmarks and / or actual data tracked within your organization.  What I would change, however, is I would identify the triangular (or whatever shape) distribution in which the metric lives, i.e., I would identify the optimistic or 10th percentile metric, the pessimistic or 90th percentile, and the MODE.  The same way you identified the 200/hour you can identify the min and max.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is sufficient actual data that went into the metric, it will be a reliable metric against which to estimate.  However, you do not rely on just one method of estimation; so this is one of several methods to arrive at your estimate and targets on your new project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-05-01T14:50:21.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1973" CreationDate="2011-05-01T17:01:52.467" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general the shorter the sprint, the better even when you are starting.  The shorter the sprint, the sooner to inspect and adapt.  Shorter sprints will also encourage better agile practices: reducing work-in-progress, reduced batch size and better throughput.  Longer sprints can encourage old waterfall habits.  In a recent webinar we delivered to 2,800 people we polled attendees for the most common sprint length and slightly over 50% responded with 2 weeks.  This is the sprint length we generally recommend although there are more mature teams that have no sprint at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1012" LastActivityDate="2011-05-01T17:01:52.467" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1988" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-01T19:35:54.927" Score="2" ViewCount="227" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wanted to see if &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.google.com/apis/visualization/documentation/gallery/motionchart.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;anyone has used motion charts&lt;/a&gt; for project management or project reviews over time or for any general application portfolio management?  I see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gensight.com/Project-Portfolio-Management/Overview/Home.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;gensight solution seems&lt;/a&gt; to give you a few motion charts to try to highlight project risks or strategy alignment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which ones do you use for general application portfolio or project management?  Are these more beneficial than non-motion charts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1087" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-16T17:52:18.783" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T17:52:18.783" Title="How can Motion Charts be applied as a project management tool?" Tags="&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1989" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-02T00:58:02.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions that should have this tag will be about career growth, finding a job as a project manager, or using a job as a project manager to move onto other related careers in program management, product management, or executive level management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The questions should relate to the career of the person asking the question and should not be about project managers trying to build a team.  Instead, the team-management tag should be used for questions regarding how to build a team or the career management of individuals on a PM's team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-05-02T00:58:02.000" LastActivityDate="2011-05-02T00:58:02.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1990" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-02T00:58:02.000" Score="0" Body="These questions relate to career growth related to project management." OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-05-02T00:58:02.000" LastActivityDate="2011-05-02T00:58:02.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1965" CreationDate="2011-05-02T08:41:04.390" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key is separating the user requirements from the technical delivery. You state that what you want is similar to what marketing and operations want, so it seems that the user requirements side is not an issue for you - you all want the same thing, more or less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the real challenge is keeping the marketing and operations managers focused on the &quot;what&quot;, rather than the &quot;how&quot;. You have the technical ownership: they have some business influence. An approach that I have used successfully in the past is something like: &quot;Let's not get into the technicalities of how this will be developed. I will deliver the capability to do what you want, and I will also give you some flexibility to add or change functionality in the future. Surely you don't want me to compromise on future capability just to save a few days just now, do you?&quot; You may have to think of a couple of areas where they may want future changes, just to put this into context, but it does work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-05-02T08:41:04.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1988" CreationDate="2011-05-02T10:21:23.053" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any method you choose, whether it is verbal, text, table, picture, or any type of graph, needs to be &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;aligned and consistent&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; with the message you are conveying, and needs to be &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;easily decoded&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; by the intended recipients.  For the first part, you would not use a scatter diagram to show a trend across time.  You could use a table with data but a line graph would be easier and faster to interpret and one could easily highlight the ebbs and flows better.  For motion chart, I can see its value in PM if there was something in the motion that was part of the message or that I could make that message more compelling by the motion.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But whatever one chooses to convey a message, less is more and simple wins.  Remember, the rule of thumb is you need to tell someone something between five and seven times for the recipient to remember you said it once.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-05-02T10:21:23.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1973" CreationDate="2011-05-02T13:18:04.280" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;amelvin,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I worked on a three-team project where for a 15 month effort we ended up using two week sprints - this (for us) was the optimal length. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I say &quot;ended up&quot; because we quite deliberately, in the first few months, tinkered with a number of the basics, and sprint length was one of them. Longer sprints (IIRC, 4 weeks was longest we tried) was not effective. We felt feedback was taking too long to get (retrospectives), stories were less precise, and problems seemed to drag on rather than get closed down quickly. I don't believe this is a simple given - another project's teams might handle this better - but our experience was that shorter is better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3170" LastActivityDate="2011-05-02T13:18:04.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1988" CreationDate="2011-05-02T13:30:53.000" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds like a solution looking for a problem, so if you have to ask the question, perhaps  you are wanting to use these charts just because you can. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.juiceanalytics.com/writing/better-know-visualization-motion-charts/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;This Blog&quot;&gt;This Blog&lt;/a&gt; offers some useful views on when and how to use them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could perhaps see a valid use in showing how different teams have performed over time and in comparison to each other, as part of a live presentation. In reality, however, I can't think of many situations where the audience wouldn't expect a hard copy to take away and study the comparative data - which is not possible with motion charts. Perhaps you could use the motion chart during the presentation, and have the underpinning data available for handouts...?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, anything that helps to convey a message in a clear, readily understood manner has a value. If you have a good reason to use motion charts, and you believe they will make a memorable impact (perhaps because of their relative novelty), then try them out on a critical friend, then decide whether they will work for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-05-02T13:30:53.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1979" CreationDate="2011-05-02T13:43:29.770" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your arithmetic is right, but the logic behind is not. Never forget productivity is not linear, exactly like 9 women cannot give birth to a baby in one month!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastEditorUserId="152" LastEditDate="2011-05-02T19:28:25.450" LastActivityDate="2011-05-02T19:28:25.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1996" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-02T18:16:43.477" Score="12" ViewCount="273" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider an example. An iteration plan is created by a project manager. It contains, say, 50 tasks for designers, programmers, testers. The tasks depend on each other (network diagram is ready). The PM announces the plan for the team and gets team commitment to complete it. People perform first tasks assigned to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now it's time to start tasks that follow the ones already completed. Should people wait for &quot;go ahead&quot; from the PM? Or they should continue according to the plan? How &quot;directive&quot; the role of project manager should be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T20:35:23.800" Title="Should tasks be given as orders?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1996" CreationDate="2011-05-02T18:32:47.997" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer depends on the experience and capability of the individual worker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A senior team member should be able to perform work without appreciable direction.  They should understand the schedule because they helped create it.  In many cases they will have a better understanding of the work and how it will happen than the project manager does.  The relationship between a project manager and an experienced worker should ideally be at a peer-to-peer or consultative basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other end of the employee spectrum, a less capable employee will require complete supervision of their work - either by a senior worker on the team or by the project manager.  For this level of worker each task would need to be checked and new tasks explicity assigned and instructions given to complete it.  This is not a bad thing.  Taking time and effort to train and develop new workers should be expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1118" LastEditorUserId="1118" LastEditDate="2011-05-02T18:38:32.227" LastActivityDate="2011-05-02T18:38:32.227" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1996" CreationDate="2011-05-02T18:45:04.257" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;ADDITION: I think to level set the answers the OP needs to describe the level in the WBS or schedule about what he was thinking when asking this question.  I am inferring from many of the answers provided here that many are describing a situation where a competent and experience technologist is asking the PM permission to do the next task every 15 minutes of 1/2 hour.  I described in my answer below a situation of controlling work packages, wherein you can have hundreds of activities and tasks and can span a duration of days, months, or even years on really complex projects.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of cost and schedule control is this concept of the Work Authorization Document (WAD).  This document, delivered to the team and / or individual resource, is the control order that describes what work is being performed, by whom, when, and where, the target cost and time, and the method of tracking their work hours, e.g., charge code(s).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The WAD can contain a single work package or several, depending on the nature of the work, dependencies, and risks.  The team or individual is authorized to perform the work issued in the WAD and nothing else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carte blanche approval to just allow work to go without these types of controls means your project is out of control.  Work and materiel need to be coordinated, risks and issues need to be worked through, cost and schedule variances need to be mitigated, change requests need to be assessed and scheduled, and scope needs to be verified and validated.  Too much else goes on within a project for a shotgun release to be effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2011-05-04T10:14:38.970" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T10:14:38.970" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1999" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2000" CreationDate="2011-05-02T19:27:51.067" Score="10" ViewCount="3769" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Scrum method defines that the content of a sprint cannot be changed. But can a sprint be cancelled while it's done? I mean, it's unlikely to happen and probably shows really bad planning skills by the product owner and a really awful prioritization of the backlog, but if the features of a sprint are not useful anymore, can the whole sprint be cancelled? Have you seen something like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: More generally, are the sprints and their content as sacred as the method recommend it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-07-08T08:59:29.793" LastActivityDate="2019-07-08T08:59:29.793" Title="Cancel or change a sprint" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1999" CreationDate="2011-05-02T19:48:39.683" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cancel a sprint? Been there, done that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a slave to a method is never good, and sometimes, despite all the planning, things can go awry. Really awry. When that happens the sensible thing to do is get off the train before it plunges over the cliff. That way everyone can regroup, calmly analyze the situation, identify what went wrong, discuss ways to avoid such a thing happening again, and start anew. (Assuming it was avoidable - sometimes the wide world intervenes. Hacks, infrastructure disasters, clients going south etc etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More commonly, however, I've seen a single team have their sprint completely re-arranged. Typically because team members were pulled to deal with an emergency/something high-profile cropped up. In this instance stories were re-selected for the remaining team, or re-written (ie. broken up) to better fit the remaining expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line - sprints are a tool, a means to an end. Sometimes, for a myriad of reasons, they wont get you there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3170" LastActivityDate="2011-05-02T19:48:39.683" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2001" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-02T22:11:43.207" Score="16" ViewCount="1912" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm curious what others are doing with regard to getting teams up and running with Agile in a sustainable way. What do you emphasize first (practices, principle, process framework)? Or is there no one approach for kicking off teams? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I guess I am still looking for something in between business and technology. Where does that guidance come from and what does it look like? I'd love to hear some ideas on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1117" LastEditorUserId="903" LastEditDate="2011-05-25T14:33:30.370" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T05:42:39.477" Title="How do you kick-off new Agile teams?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1512" CreationDate="2011-05-02T22:42:44.563" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would add that probably not all work is created equal when considering need for commitment. Take advantage of that. &#xA;Use the work that is less sensitive to commitment as a sort of &quot;buffer&quot; that keeps you delivering on time, even if you underestimated somewhat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all of your work is under SLA, you definitely need to take buffers based on earlier estimation techniques like Pawel described... Some people would say that is a problem in and of itself. I agree. But if you are working at the team level, and you currently don't have enough trust/sway to convince other teams to move more of the work to Pull mode, then you will have first to deliver, then change the reality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastActivityDate="2011-05-02T22:42:44.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2003" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2006" CreationDate="2011-05-03T03:07:21.713" Score="5" ViewCount="2040" Body="&lt;p&gt;In medium size project were you are interfacing with functional Project Managers, and you are the PM for the entire project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much details do you want in your WBS?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you break it and keep it high level but deep enough to know what's going on?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or do you go all the way in, to the point you know each team members tasks, even if they are 16 hours task?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastActivityDate="2011-05-03T16:41:12.443" Title="What is the right approach to work package size?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2003" CreationDate="2011-05-03T03:42:36.677" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I hear of a project manager managing project managers -- the &quot;project manager manager&quot; -- it makes me think more along the lines of program management than project management.  While the skills are very similar, it sounds like you're in a position where you need to focus on higher level concepts, similar to a program manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Program management exists because businesses realized that sometimes a driving force was necessary in order to drive separate yet complimentary projects towards the same high level goal.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Program managers are less concerned with the details of the individual tasks and are more focused on the strategic goal.  As a result, their project portfolios will contain very high level information about each project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's more, there is a phenomenon that exists where increases in the amount of available information is inversely proportional to the ability to actually process that information.  In other words, the more tasks that you try to keep track of, the more poorly you'll do at keeping up with the progress of those tasks.  After all, that's why you have project managers working with you, so that they can worry about the details while you worry about the big picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on the big picture, trust your project managers, and measure the success of the project portfolio from a high level, and you'll find that you're better able to focus on your responsibilities of aligning the goals of each individual project with the goals of the entire program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-05-03T03:42:36.677" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1996" CreationDate="2011-05-03T03:46:18.703" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a benefit to waiting to begin?  Is there a cost in waiting?  How do they compare?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to (long time ago) try to manage things this way, but beyond a few simple cases, trying to keep individuals in lock step while one person encountered a problem proved to be more of a headache than it was worth.  What usually happens is either lots of slack is built into the plan (to allow for the variations) which builds in some inefficiencies to the plan, or you end up replanning once a week to compensate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was an interesting experience for me to really look into what was happening in the team.  I realized that trying to model the very tightly coupled interactions with FF, FS, SF, and SS dependencies couldn't get me a stable model (one that didn't require constantly updating each week)  Adopting the attitude of &quot;I don't care what you do on M-F, so long as by Friday the team has accomplished X, Y and Z&quot; (and the team gets to say what x, Y and Z are!) left the team to structure their work more effectively, and I ended up managing &quot;week chunks&quot; which we much easier to handle and replan as needed.  Planning was then at a week basis and everyone aligned during the week.  Because of this, people knew about how much &quot;free time&quot; they had for the week and could offer to help others who might be overloaded.  (This was my &quot;self discovery of Scrum&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your example is programming (also my area of experience) so I'm not sure my answer applies to other domains (for example, in construction, there may be very good engineering and safety reasons to wait until the PM gives the go ahead)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-05-03T03:46:18.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2003" CreationDate="2011-05-03T04:09:18.277" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really recommend using a WBS only for what you want to summarize and report on.  In many many cases you only need a few (3?) levels in a WBS to capture things like budget centers or functional departments.  I've been part of attempts to define 9 levels in a WBS where level 9 had the categories &quot;design, implementation, testing, documentation, rework, etc.&quot;  The feeling was that at some point after the project was done, you could simply add all the Design items up to get a &quot;cost to design&quot; the product.  These never worked.  Their usefulness tended to be related to the size of the projects (bigger projects would like this more, smaller projects can get the same thing without it).  But bigger projects tend to re-organize and re-baseline, so you start getting weird things like &quot;don't count Baseline 6 in the totals&quot; which invalidates the 9 levels pretty quickly and only creates work for people to keep everything updated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To solve your problem of &quot;keeping on top of the sub-projects&quot;  I always ask for milestones from their schedule.  So, one sub-project might have &quot;transmission prototype available&quot; that I want to know about.  So, I ask to report on that milestone.  As the &quot;transmission prototype&quot; slips in and out with the schedule, I can see it in the milestone.  I'd usually ask for a few milestones each month for each sub-project, and I would feel no hesitation in looking into the project plan/details whenever I was feeling bored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, I've learned in my old age that the best way to approach a medium sized project is to work like heck to decompose it into small projects that can be &quot;done done&quot; and built upon iteratively/incrementally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;hth&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-05-03T04:09:18.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2003" CreationDate="2011-05-03T10:19:10.527" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no right answer to the WBS decomposition.  What worked for one PM on a similar engagement could be disastrous for another on the next engagement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You decompose your WBS to the level at which you can manage the project.  This is one of those thing where you know you have right when you see it.  You also need to listen to your intuition on this.  All of us approach management in a different way.  One size does not fit all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are trade-offs.  Too high a level, the administrative burden to manage it is less in terms of cost.  However, you lose insight into what is going on in the work and to understand where variances are accruing and why.  This lack of insight increases your risk of successful ability to mitigate those variances.  It decreases your ability to able to re-plan the sequencing of work if you have to correct for a schedule variance.  And if your WBS is deliverable-oriented, you have less ability to control scope creep with a higher level WBS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Too low a level, all of those risks above are decreased or go away but your costs to manage will sky rocket.  You will spend more effort on analyzing the WBS and schedule than managing the overall effort.  For each project and for each manager, there is a balance between these two points.  You have find that for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-05-03T10:19:10.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2009" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2011" CreationDate="2011-05-03T15:03:29.087" Score="8" ViewCount="3970" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen plenty of people using Kanban or Scrum boards to manage the work of a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I also use a personal Kanban board to manage my work at home, so I was curious - does any PM use a Kanban board to manage the work that they, personally, have to do as part of their day-to-day work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, what kind of things do you put on it? Conversations you have to chase up? Information you're waiting for? Reports you have to produce?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has it been helpful to you, and in what way? Were there any surprises? Recommendations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I am looking for more information on using this to focus on personal work, rather than the use of boards for team collaboration and status tools).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If nobody is doing this but someone would like to try, I'd be interested in what you discover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T23:41:32.663" Title="Does anyone use a personal Kanban / Scrum board for project management activities (rather than work items)?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;personal-skills&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2009" CreationDate="2011-05-03T16:39:08.750" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://paulklipp.com/images/PersonalProductivity.pdf&quot;&gt;Here is a great article on personal productivity&lt;/a&gt; written by Paul Klipp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a mix of GTD, Kanban and Pomodoro. Tasks on the Kanban board are anything from reminder to do 50 pushups (tiny task) to 1-hour tasks (large) or even bigger (huge). Tasks which have exact due date, like meeting at 5pm, goes into calendar instead of Kanban board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach can be easily adjusted to project management tasks. Actually many tasks Paul mentions are project management-related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-05-03T16:39:08.750" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2003" CreationDate="2011-05-03T16:41:12.443" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really depends on the length of the project.  For reporting purposes, I have seen the rule of thumb that the lowest level WBS items should span no more than 10% of the project's estimated length.  And also seen that no item should span more than your reporting period ( time between status reports ).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned above you need to weigh the administrative burden as well.  Leave the 'inch pebble' tracking up to the project managers, or the people who are actually doing the work.  Let them roll it up in their status reporting.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, as you are tracking multiple projects you should really be focused on deliverables and not discrete tasks.  But again, it is entirely up to you how you want to track things.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to note, the WBS should be a tool for your teams to decompose their work.  Let them get as granular as they want if it helps them figure out what needs to be done.  Then simply roll it up to the appropriate level for status reporting.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1024" LastActivityDate="2011-05-03T16:41:12.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1973" CreationDate="2011-05-03T17:03:48.907" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no rule here. The most common sprint length is 2 weeks. Vast majority of teams, I'd say more than 90% of those using time-boxing, would have anything between 1 and 4 weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But then I don't believe there's a universal solution which suits everyone.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no rules regarding how many iterations you should have in the project or how the number of people in the team affects the sprint length. You can often hear &quot;the shorter the better&quot; but it's really about feedback loops. Ask yourself how short, or long, feedback loops you need. How often do you plan check up of your course? Since the end of each iteration is a natural occasion to perform such check it may be a good hint there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Anyway, probably the best piece of advice if terms of deciding on sprint length you may get is: experiment.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try with whatever feels good, you may choose one of industry standards if you have no better idea, and then look how things are going, adjust it and evaluate results. If you have 14 months for the project you also have enough time to find the right rhythm for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After all, much depends on people in the project team and this is something which can hardly be evaluated using simple methods. It's better to check what works and what doesn't than to make extensive analysis on the subject. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.forbes.com/nathanfurr/2011/04/27/why-kindergartners-make-better-entrepreneurs-than-mbas-and-how-to-fix-it/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nathan Furr's article on planning versus experimentation&lt;/a&gt; as a reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-05-03T17:03:48.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1946" CreationDate="2011-05-03T17:04:33.610" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Outside of the answers above which relate to the specific project at hand, you also need to decide what your plan is for project administration and housekeeping.  Answers to these questions are somewhat project independent and have more to do with the culture you are working in and the tools you have available.  Some things to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What tools will you use to track&#xA;schedule, budget, issues, risk, minutes, actions, etc.  MS Project, Sharepoint, Excel, Basecamp, Whiteboards?  Do you have a network drive assigned and a default folder structure?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the method and format for your&#xA;incoming and outgoing status reports?   Do you have a powerpoint deck laid out to present progress to executives?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What supplies do you need?  Whiteboard markers ( always run out ), pens, paper, stickies, staples, binders, printer paper, coffee, candy?  Who will keep this stuff stocked up for your teams.  How can you buy a USB stick if you need one without having to wait 10 days for a requisition to be signed by a VP.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How will you manage meetings?  Do you&#xA;have rooms?  Scribes?  Whiteboards?  Conference lines?  Screensharing?  IM?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How will you manage people based information?  Contact details?  Vacation calendars? Email lists?  Physical / Logical Security for building access, software, folders, etc.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How are you going to manage / house your documents / deliverables?  Will you put these under change control?  Who is allowed to change scope documents, schedules, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could go on and on.  The important thing to think about is the scaffolding that you want to put up to manage the project.  When you are in the thick of things it is nice to know that you have thought through all of this.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1024" LastActivityDate="2011-05-03T17:04:33.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="983" CreationDate="2011-05-03T17:17:56.047" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have the luxury, you can have an administrative assistant take your meeting minutes.  As noted above, what is really important are decisions and actions.  The key on these is to get them out of free form mode, aka MS Word / Paper, and get them into Excel or another tool where you can track them.  Having actions embedded into Word doesn't give you the visibility and ability to track things across multiple meetings, sub-projects, etc.  If you categorize them correctly, you can then carry them over into your next meeting, topic, status update, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of people bring laptops to meetings these days.  They may be multi-tasking or surfing the internet for all you know.  If you are chairing the meeting, simply say to them before you start the meeting &quot;Great, I see Steven is taking notes.  Steven, can you send the team your notes after the meeting is finished.  Thanks!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1024" LastActivityDate="2011-05-03T17:17:56.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2017" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-03T17:23:16.607" Score="17" ViewCount="2250" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you collect and share status? Some PM's think group status meetings are a waste of time and prefer to collect status in one-on-one's. Others prefer email. What works best for you?  How do you collect updates on various tasks and share it across the team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1024" LastActivityDate="2019-01-16T10:06:05.603" Title="Collecting And Sharing Status" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2017" CreationDate="2011-05-03T18:12:49.107" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, I recommend looking for approaches where something serves the needs of collaboration and allows trivial status collection as a byproduct. Take a look at &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?InformationRadiator&quot;&gt;information radiators&lt;/a&gt;&quot; for more information, ideas, and perspectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the transparency inherent in lean or kanban often involves a highly effective card wall is something that a team will keep accurate because it supports and serves the need of the team. The status is then easy to extract without having to &quot;bother&quot; the team. Used carefully, electronic tools can serve the same needs, especially in highly distributed/dispersed team environments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that the daily stand-up in an agile team is NOT a status meeting, and is another tool that serves the needs of the team while allowing some amount of status to be extracted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastActivityDate="2011-05-03T18:12:49.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1705" CreationDate="2011-05-03T18:26:26.383" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the world of government contracting the first documents I ask for and read when joining a team are the &lt;em&gt;scope of work&lt;/em&gt; (SOW) and the &lt;em&gt;operations concept&lt;/em&gt; (OpsCon) documents.  These are also the documents I hand to anyone joining the team.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;scope of work&lt;/em&gt; is part of the contract documentation and describes the work being paid for.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;operational concept&lt;/em&gt; document describes how the product is intended to work once delivered.  It helps me understand the goals and overall picture of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1118" LastActivityDate="2011-05-03T18:26:26.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2017" CreationDate="2011-05-03T18:48:57.340" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One-to-one meetings work best for me when collecting status information. In contrast to team meetings, they give me a much better feeling how things are really going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For sharing information, I am using both frequent personal updates and team meetings. I try to minimize the number of meetings but without getting everybody together regularly, there is a big risk of &quot;loosing&quot; some team members. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1131" LastActivityDate="2011-05-03T18:48:57.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2017" CreationDate="2011-05-03T18:49:58.447" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a small team, up to a dozen people or so, I have found a short weekly email to be useful with the least overhead cost to the team.&#xA;This status report consists of &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the list of goals for the week and their stauts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;anything else worked on during the week not on the goals,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a prioritized list of what will be done next week.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exercise of drafting the email causes everyone to spend some time thinking about where they are in the work and about where they need to be.  If redirection, or correction is needed then I would approach people one-on-one to discuss.  If additional coordination is needed then bring only the necessary people together to coordinate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This avoids a weekly meeting where everyone has to wait idly until their turn to report status.  Perhaps in this meeting some coordination occurs that would not have without it.  However, I think work coordination is better handled among the team, or at a meeting focused on the technical matters - sometimes without a PM present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1118" LastActivityDate="2011-05-03T18:49:58.447" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1973" CreationDate="2011-05-03T18:55:23.420" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can see good coverage on your specific question, but how is you 4/5 week length working for your team, client, system? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you tried other lengths?  Did they deliver better results, was it easier to plan, deliver value, was the team happier?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is your overall implementation of agile going?  Is the 4/5 week time box helping you adopt the other part of the agile/scrum receipt for software development? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you stopped improving?  Where did you start with your sprint length? Are you and your team actively managing the duration down like &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/1012/ken-clyne&quot;&gt;Ken Clyne&lt;/a&gt; talked about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on those answers, I would say that you need to actively manage it yourself and skip the rules of thumb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="640" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-05-03T18:55:23.420" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1955" CreationDate="2011-05-03T19:42:39.110" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in favour of this; a common complaint from 'development teams' is that come release time, they meet resistance from QA, DBAs, network admins, support staff, and anyone else affected by roll-out. IMHO, all these people should be represented in the 'product development team', not just the coders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bringing people into the daily scrum meetings saves the amount of time lost due to re-designs needed to address other teams concerns, and roll-out delays when other teams need to be brought up to speed - sadly their 'due diligence' can be seen as obstruction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bringing this into the context of the graphics designer, graphics designs are influenced by the ideas they represent (as ideally is marketing artwork), so the daily heads-up of what is changing in the logic helps them keep pace with changes, and avoid delays later on. Similarly, the other product developers will gain from input on what works from a artwork/marketing point of view, saving on redesigns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1052" LastActivityDate="2011-05-03T19:42:39.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1996" CreationDate="2011-05-03T19:49:59.260" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In principle, I like to give teams (and individuals) the freedom to get on and do the work when they are ready to do it. However, there may be occasions where this is inappropriate: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if waiting for a product to be Quality Assured, or an interface design to be approved, or something of that nature, then that is not an appropriate time for the team to do that work. You should not allow the team to make assumptions that the draft versions of such documents will remain unchanged, and you don't want to have to unpick work that was started on the basis of such assumptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other situation is where you are using stages for governance of the project. No work should span a stage boundary (using the Prince terminology) until approval is given to start the next stage. This could be because of go/no-go (gateway) technical or business decisions, or simply that the funds have not been confirmed for the next stage. Either way, each stage should stand alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in summary: Within a stage, and subject to not making assumptions as to technical standards or designs, give the team their freedom to make progress. Just make sure you don't lose control of them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-05-04T04:49:53.883" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T04:49:53.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2025" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2027" CreationDate="2011-05-03T20:04:30.413" Score="5" ViewCount="1431" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most PMs are driven by results, and that is probably a good thing, most of the time. However, I have a colleague who has become utterly focused on delivery, and won't accept any answer that she doesn't want to hear. This results in her challenging everything that she is told, upsetting junior members of the team, alienating suppliers, and getting personally involved in even trivial decisions. Members of the team have asked for my advice on how to approach her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What advice would you provide to the team, and is there a way that I could help to resolve the situation without damaging a long-standing working relationship with the other PM, that has been positive until now?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T13:23:54.643" Title="How &quot;pushy&quot; should a PM be?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;personal-skills&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1996" CreationDate="2011-05-03T22:39:42.673" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Giving team members the opportunity to sign up for tasks themselves lets them make their own commitments and collaborate effectively to achieve the results. From a psychological point of view, that's hugely powerful. People are far more likely to work hard and effectively to meet their own promises than promises made on their behalf.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assigning tasks to individuals is more likely to cause them to work in a silo'd way, focusing on their own work ahead of helping their team mates, even if that help is the most effective thing to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a team doesn't seem to be signing up for the right tasks, it may be that they don't have the skills, don't feel safe signing up for something challenging, or don't understand the priorities or vision of the project. Letting a development team sign up themselves is a great way to see what's happening in the project environment, since without this the only feedback you get as a PM is the length of time it takes to do the work. If you see that team members aren't proactive, there may be something as a manager which you can do to help, ensuring that the team has sufficient vision, skill, resources and safety to succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2011-05-04T20:35:23.800" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T20:35:23.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2025" CreationDate="2011-05-03T23:34:42.783" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your question: a PM should be effective. He/she should finish projects on time and in budget. If it's necessary to be pushy - be pushy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, in your situation, it's clear that the PM is not effective any more. The team complains and this will lead to problems very soon. It means that the PM is &quot;pushy&quot; too much. The team should analyze the root cause of this situation. Why the PM is behaving like this? Why did she choose this method of management? Maybe the team was not performing well recently?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;General advice is to start &lt;strong&gt;an open and honest dialog&lt;/strong&gt;. The team has to raise its concerns and discuss them. Don't hide problems, discover them and resolve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-05-03T23:34:42.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2025" CreationDate="2011-05-04T01:24:02.137" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think most of it is &quot;in the approach&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Staying pushy long term will grow resentment, leading to the &quot;bare minimum to get the job done&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Encouragingly pushy is slightly different. You can drive people, sitting next to them, checking frequently, offering to remove hurdles or find people that can. Refocusing on the goal consistently, while taking their concerns into account as you do it, I find is far more effective long term (when I do it consistently).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="689" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-05-04T04:38:05.157" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T04:38:05.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2029" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-04T03:15:16.740" Score="3" ViewCount="11869" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Project 2010, is it possible to conditionally format a bar style/color based on the value of a custom field for a given task? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see a pretty complicated workaround to accomplish this with Project 2007 here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/epm/archive/2009/07/23/formatting-the-gantt-chart-in-ms-project-2007.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/epm/archive/2009/07/23/formatting-the-gantt-chart-in-ms-project-2007.aspx&lt;/a&gt;, but it would be great if there is an easier way to do this in 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: At Perry's request, adding more information about what I am specifically trying to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a project that has tasks carried out in parallel by different teams.  I have added a custom &quot;Department&quot; field that allows me to specify that a given task belongs to Department Foo, Department Bar, or Department Schmucatelli.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I can create views to filter or group the tasks by department, I would like Project to actually color-code my Gantt chart tasks Red (if they belong to Department Foo), Green (if they belong to Department Bar), or Purple (if they belong to department Schmucatelli).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can do this manually by filtering by department, selecting all, and formatting the bars (once for each department), but I would like this to happen automatically depending on what department I select for a given task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="439" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-01-13T10:31:44.033" LastActivityDate="2019-01-13T10:31:44.033" Title="Conditionally formatting bar styles in Project 2010" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2025" CreationDate="2011-05-04T04:42:25.277" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might be possible that the problem is not really with the PM. It's important to examine what may have changed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did someone lie to the PM, causing her to distrust the team?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are functional managers withholding resources, or are team members who are not dedicated having more of their time taken from the project?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are people doing things behind the PM's back when she asked for X to be done instead of Y?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there problems in the project itself?  Is the project going to be cancelled?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are no answers to these questions, then the problem could be related to the PM:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is she burned out?  Is she working too much?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there personal problems affecting work?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the PM effectively delegating tasks to the right people?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answering these questions could give more insight into what may be happening and could lead to discussions regarding how to fix these problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T04:42:25.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1996" CreationDate="2011-05-04T09:06:07.427" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that tasks should be given in order if the employee is not experienced, however in most cases in practice using a good Project Management System helps very much about that -- you add the task, assign a person, assign a priority and the system notifies them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not believe that there is a need to waste your time in giving tasks one by one like feeding a little kid -- if they are professionals they &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; manage their own tasks themselves and also I believe that a Project Manager has way more important things to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1136" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T09:06:07.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2025" CreationDate="2011-05-04T09:11:50.840" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on the situation -- some of the team members are very effective if they are pushed and some of them if you leave them alone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it is healthy for the team to become pushy with the whole team (I am doing this) and remind them that project MUST be delivered on time and in budget and most important to have one more great testimonial from the clients after the project is closed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a summary, this strongly depends on the situation, the team and the position of the project manager (you cannot be effectively pushy if you are not respected by the team).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1136" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T09:11:50.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2025" CreationDate="2011-05-04T10:10:57.833" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This PM is alienating her team, is perceived to be pushy, is not listening to what others are saying.  This has NOTHING to do with her being a certain type of PM making sure things get done on time and within budget.  It is ALL about the perception of her team that is using all of these negative adjectives to describe her.  Unequivocally, she is exhibiting poor leadership/management traits and is an all together ineffective PM.  There is no scenario that would justify a PM acting in such a way such that her team walks away with these perceptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly, her soft skills--which is, what, 80% of leadership?--are immature or missing.  She needs trained or replaced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2011-05-04T13:23:54.643" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T13:23:54.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2025" CreationDate="2011-05-04T10:11:24.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking at your description of the situation,in my view a point to investigate would be this statement&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;who has become utterly focused on delivery&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be strongly inclined to do a reality check on the PM , whilst she has lofty expectations , is the project environment that she has created congenial to delivering those expectations ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;are her expectations fair ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;does she havw the people with the right skills ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;people are not happy, why are they not happy ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;bottom line is , however pushy she can be , if things are not quite right she would not be able to get anything substaintiable out of the team &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so, I would start with the PM first...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T10:11:24.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2036" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2042" CreationDate="2011-05-04T10:16:19.420" Score="20" ViewCount="3627" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently a Project Manager at web development company working on always more than one project (rarely big project for more than 3 months and most often small project up to 1 month). As we open projects all the time it is essential for my resources to close them quickly, however &lt;strong&gt;I have a problem with the clients -- they do not respond and do not provide the required information on time.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My question is how to make them respond quickly and on time so there are no interruptions in the working process?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've discussed an idea with the director to sign a contract with clause which will make them pay for each delay, however we both agreed that to punish your clients this way will affect the overall client satisfaction (which is very high currently). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would highly appreciate every idea as I am currently running 14 project and 6 of them are On Hold...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1136" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-05-05T16:36:24.490" LastActivityDate="2011-11-01T08:54:04.237" Title="Clients do not respond. How to manage that?" Tags="&lt;customer-satisfaction&gt;&lt;clients&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2037" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2054" CreationDate="2011-05-04T10:39:05.197" Score="5" ViewCount="3582" Body="&lt;p&gt;My understanding is that this Summary, along with the majority of the Business Case, should be developed by the Executive role. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been requested to produce an Executive Summary since I will manage the project but I lack the  understanding of what the project is actually trying to achieve. The Executive Manager in this case has set up this project as a Business Process Improvement by using SharePoint but hasn't given me any direction so I cannot determine when we will be able to consider that the improvement has been reached.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure if this Executive Summary is meant to be part of our Business Case or if it's just a document to inform Senior Management of our plans. Anyhow I would like to make sure whose responsibility is this to approach the right person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As PM have you ever had to produce these Summaries? What other roles' support have you used?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T02:23:14.957" Title="Is the PM responsible of producing the Executive Summary?" Tags="&lt;business-case&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2036" CreationDate="2011-05-04T11:27:03.333" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you thought about &lt;strong&gt;rewarding&lt;/strong&gt; your customers if they provide you with feedback promptly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have come across this issue several times with clients where they rush us to complete things and risking the project (specially in B2B projects where our clients are also pushed by a final customer). However when the project or release has been delivered and we request their agreement to sign it off we never hear back... sometimes, after a sensible period of time, we consider this as their approval.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on my experience clients, as any other member of a team, need to be motivated to cooperate. It can seem difficult but you as a service provider can offer some &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;discounts&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;free maintenance services&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; to your clients if they feedback to you within an agreed time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For following projects think about adding a clause in the contract about feedback reporting including timing and list rewards to the client for their prompt support. Anything related to additional services gets a lot of attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T11:27:03.333" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1705" CreationDate="2011-05-04T12:25:18.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is kind of strange question for me -- in my practice, each one of the team members receives a scope of project, design and prototype (this is for websites) at the beginning and basically based on these (especially the scope) I receive the reports for the progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1136" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T12:25:18.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1973" CreationDate="2011-05-04T12:28:50.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it depends on the project -- I managed project with 1 week sprints and 3 month sprints, so it really depends on what are the goals. I also believe that setting the realistic goals is most important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1136" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T12:28:50.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2037" CreationDate="2011-05-04T12:38:50.833" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard of the term executive summary but always in reference to a section in a document or paper, where it serves as a short--yet comprehensive--overview of the entire document. It is typically no less than a page but often, especially for very long documents, it can be an entire chapter. Executive Summaries are common in long government reports, where I assume the intent is for someone like a Congressman to only read the summary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this context, the purpose of the Executive summary is all in the name; it enables someone with limited time (e.g. an executive) to understand the key points of the work without having to read the entire paper. Absent this context, the term Executive Summary has no meaning to me, and I can't see how one would be written by anyone but the author. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the term Executive Summary has another meaning, please clarify.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="360" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T12:38:50.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2036" CreationDate="2011-05-04T12:41:29.707" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two ways I deal with non-response:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;default position which allow you to continue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;meeting with a goal (default position)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is because there are two main reasons they don't respond. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fear and lack of understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fear of commitment or more fear of making the wrong choice ... Especially if their job is hanging in the balance, they will put it off as long as possible... Giving a default which is to continue forces them to focus and move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lack of understanding ... Most people aren't developers, they can't imagine the end result ... So you have to help them through it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addition: &lt;strong&gt;Default position that allows you to continue&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When ever you hand over a &quot;please make a decision&quot; document, you phase it more like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Here is the list of options (A, B, C), we are heading down path B, please let us know by Friday if this is incorrect&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can justify this by saying something like &quot;in order to keep on the critical path we are going to make this assumption ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="689" LastEditorUserId="689" LastEditDate="2011-05-05T00:47:08.907" LastActivityDate="2011-05-05T00:47:08.907" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2043" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2045" CreationDate="2011-05-04T13:15:48.273" Score="16" ViewCount="1047" Body="&lt;p&gt;Imagine that you need to hire new programmer, however you are 100% sure that there are not experienced (what you need) developers on the local market and you need to work with newbies. A couple of months ago we hired such developer with the clause that he will learn &amp;amp; learn to satisfy the needs of the company however that did not happened and his progress is disappointing. Anyway he is leaving in two weeks and we will need a new one. It is important to mention that we have a policy for 6 months test period which I cannot change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My idea was to hire not 1 programmer for six months, but 2 programmers for 3 months and make it like a game -- set goals, make a competition,  set a final test and choose the better one the other one will leave (in the best scenario we will have 2 good programmers :) -- basically the issue is with the lack of quality programmers we can find on the local market and outsourcing is absolutely not an option, I suffered this before).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have any ideas how to motivate the future programmer to become the greatest one in the universes within 3-6 months? I need quick results in short time or the Director will say &quot;This one is not good enough, we need another one.&quot; and everything will start over (which is such a pain).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1136" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-05-08T23:13:56.313" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T21:20:28.250" Title="How to choose, motivate &amp; develop a newbie programmer?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2025" CreationDate="2011-05-04T13:21:29.783" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Focusing on delivery is not a bad approach as long as it doesn't affect the health of the projects. However if this is the case where the PM just wants to deliver projects regardless of the quality then something is definitely wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with yegor256 in starting an open and honest dialogue. Perhaps this PM has been also pushed by her line manager to achieve certain figures, releases or anything that requires the team to develop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this person has recently changed her attitude towards the team and their achievements I am pretty sure that something has happened or her direction has changed. As her colleague you could try to discuss with her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should this not be the case and this person is conflicting with the team and your goals as organisation I would recommend you to talk to your next level of management. This person might need some training or simply be told that her attitude is affecting the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T13:21:29.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2043" CreationDate="2011-05-04T13:32:11.423" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Programming isn't really a discipline where pure competition works well.&lt;/strong&gt; You can get much more trying to foster cooperation than competition, so I don't think hiring a couple of people instead of one would do the job here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to develop newbie programmer you need:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Right attitude.&lt;/strong&gt; Generally speaking &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2010/04/people-dont-learn.html&quot;&gt;people don't want to learn&lt;/a&gt;, which is sad, but it also means those who do usually really shine. And learning attitude has nothing to do with current skills - it's just attitude. That's something you should look for during interviews.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Someone to learn from.&lt;/strong&gt; It may be colleague from the next desk or mentor withing the organization or manager or pretty much anyone who suits the role in a way you wish. Ideally let them work together, but the least you should do is to get a &quot;teacher&quot; enough time to verify work delivered by newbie guy and share some ideas on possible improvements with them regularly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Time to learn.&lt;/strong&gt; Frequent failure in terms of self-development is expecting people would grow and not giving them time to spend on learning. We can't expect people would become rock star programmers when they have virtually no chance to learn anything as they're buried under loads of urgent work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Learning sources.&lt;/strong&gt; Most likely this one is trivial as there's a lot of great stuff on the internet on pretty much any popular technology. However if you think about some very narrow technology with limited user base you may need to support it with other means of training.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Clear expectations.&lt;/strong&gt; You shouldn't forget about setting clear expectations either. As long as I'm not told my primary goal is to show decent learning curve I might focus on something else. If I fail at learning you probably want to get rid of me anyway but that's another story. Expectations should be set very clearly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: find the person with right attitude and give them help in their learning effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T13:32:11.423" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2043" CreationDate="2011-05-04T13:35:33.943" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;First things first: You need to hire someone valuable. This means somebody who is smart and get things done. No better reference than this article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html&quot;&gt;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, you need to invest in his/her learning. If the newbie is all alone after you hired him/her, his/her motivation will not last long. Train him, give him motivating tasks, and not just some junk work, and things should work out just fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastEditorUserId="152" LastEditDate="2011-05-04T19:58:33.867" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T19:58:33.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2036" CreationDate="2011-05-04T13:53:12.887" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd start with naming the real problem. Typically it is one of a couple of options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Either late answers disrupt project team work and as a result project ends up later and client complains about that&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Or late answers does make it way harder to organize development as project team has to be put on hold until questions are answered&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the former is the case you should probably focus on formalizing communication with the client a bit. If you send a question with a deadline for an answer and information that answering about the deadline would inflict a slip on the whole project the least you have is an argument to the discussion about delivery dates, when you're late. If you're lucky people on client's side would consider their options and decide that actually answering you in timely manner can cost them less than delaying decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another idea is to monitor progress and react when needed - remind them regularly that you're still waiting for answers. Escalate when it is appropriate. People are afraid of escalation and if you use it wisely it would work very well. However, remember not to overuse it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the latter is the case I'd rather plan for such situation than attempt to change the client. A few ideas which comes to my mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask earlier, so they have more time to answer. Usually with a bit of better planning on our side we can bring our doubts much earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Inform client that if they're late with answers you can assign other tasks to &quot;their&quot; project team and the delivery date can change more than just their delay with the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Plan the work in a project team in a way that allows to fill all the gaps inflicted by late answers. If you have to put a project on hold have some tasks in other projects which can be done.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Split work into possibly small tasks so you don't leave big unfinished tasks waiting for client's answers but have some small features completed. This way you can find other tasks to work on much easier whenever you have to stop building one of them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-05-25T09:45:26.740" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T09:45:26.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2037" CreationDate="2011-05-04T14:33:15.943" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Adam said above &lt;em&gt;&quot;it enables someone with limited time (e.g. an executive) to understand the key points of the work without having to read the entire paper&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is the PM's responsibility to create the Executive Summary (before the Business Cases) with the assistance of the Executive Sponsor.  It is the document that will summarize:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Summary&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scope&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Functionality &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimated Expense&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dependencies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the PM,  You can achieve this by setting a meeting with the Executive Sponsor and understand what he/she is looking to achieve.  The Executive Summary will be written by you but the accountablilty will be from the Executive Sponsor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your last question, I use a ES for any project that will take a developer/engineering more than 5+ days to complete. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1140" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T14:33:15.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2049" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2058" CreationDate="2011-05-04T17:07:32.183" Score="4" ViewCount="216" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just sat through &lt;a href=&quot;http://fasttransients.wordpress.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chet Richard's&lt;/a&gt; keynote talk at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://lssc11.crowdvine.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lean Software and Systems conference&lt;/a&gt; here in Long Beach.  He asked us to build our own list of fundamental practices that we should become great at.  What practices have you found that make your team always successful? This was a true gift of Chet's during his talk. I wanted to share that with this group, but I also want to hear this group's answers.  I am trying to build my list and I am only at iteration 1.  Please answer the question to help me shape iteration 2 of my list with a broad scan.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="640" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2021-01-17T15:20:19.863" LastActivityDate="2021-01-17T15:20:19.863" Title="What is your list of fundamental practices that you use to make your project and organization successful?" Tags="&lt;best-practices&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2021-01-17T16:18:20.833" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2036" CreationDate="2011-05-04T17:43:38.933" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the already suggested things, have you already tried to give the clients regular updates by a two-way communication medium like short phone conferences? Many clients might appreciate that you take the time to talk and at the same time feel embarrassed when they have to come up with an excuse for the xth time when you ask them once more for the information you need. Usually, people will have a harder time to ignore you on the phone compared to email. Of course you nave to make sure that you provide valuable information to them at every call, otherwise they will cancel the teleconferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1131" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T17:43:38.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2051" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-04T18:16:58.410" Score="1" ViewCount="2707" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you measure work coordination and follow ups with internal teams, customers, and project managers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work coordination is when you are coordinating the tasks so a deliverable is met. &#xA;Follow up is asking for an update on where we are with the deliverable. &#xA;Some examples of tasks are the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assigning the work via action item&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manage request items&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Analysis of project status&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Update daily status of team by creating reports&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="614" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2018-05-11T13:22:26.177" LastActivityDate="2018-05-11T13:22:26.177" Title="How do you measure work coordination and follow ups with internal teams, customers, and project managers" Tags="&lt;coordination&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2036" CreationDate="2011-05-04T18:46:29.837" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The customer will be unhappy and unsatisfied if the project is late.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should put a clause in the contract that says that at least states the project WILL be delayed if you do not get timely feedback.  Whether you want to put in monetary penalties or not depends on how much the delays are costing you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, make sure to document the delays, how much time they are taking and how far off you ultimately are from your original schedule. These will help you better estimate costs and deadlines for that client on the next project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T18:46:29.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2036" CreationDate="2011-05-04T18:47:09.097" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your idea about mentioning such delays in your contract is actually valid. The question is how exactly you can penalize the customer. I would suggest to allow the developer to push back delivery milestones after every delay caused by the client. &lt;strong&gt;Don't think that customer satisfaction is high when you always say &quot;yes&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastEditorUserId="91" LastEditDate="2011-05-05T02:13:41.297" LastActivityDate="2011-05-05T02:13:41.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2037" CreationDate="2011-05-04T18:54:43.773" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Executive Summary has to be developed &lt;strong&gt;by&lt;/strong&gt; business executives (CEO, COO, etc.) using the information provided and prepared by VP/Marketing, VP/Engineering, VP/anything. A project manager of the future project is not involved at this stage. Because the project is not yet authorized and Project Charter is not yet baselined (the PM simply can't start spending resources).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, a Project Manager may take a participation in a preliminary/preparation project, which will produce (for example) cost-benefit analysis of the future project, or marketing plan, or preliminary technical solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, there are &lt;strong&gt;two projects&lt;/strong&gt;: 1) create the Executive Summary, 2) implement it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastEditorUserId="91" LastEditDate="2011-05-05T20:43:48.267" LastActivityDate="2011-05-05T20:43:48.267" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2043" CreationDate="2011-05-04T18:57:45.207" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_programming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pair Programming&lt;/a&gt; may help here. Try to pair more experienced people with less experienced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T18:57:45.207" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2036" CreationDate="2011-05-04T18:59:44.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you ask &quot;how can I make my client&quot;, I believe you're jumping ahead to a presumption of conflict. In many cases, the challenges are symptoms of a very non-conflicted situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many tools to help dig into the reasons for the lack of communication, but they all start with one key too: meaningful conversations. Having those conversations will likely reveal something that guides the needed response. I strongly suggest avoiding a one-size-fits-all contract-based &quot;solution&quot; to the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some outcomes I've seen:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Client isn't aware of the impacts, helps seek solutions with you&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Client trusts your decisions, doesn't actually feel the need to be consulted&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Client truly is busy, willing to abide by your decisions (or finds corrections easier/cheaper)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Client isn't empowered to answer and fails to share that while seeking the answer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Client isn't individually invested into the effort and is managing on behalf of another&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T18:59:44.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2036" CreationDate="2011-05-04T19:14:15.303" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can lead a horse to water....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Customer performance--including other external stakeholders--is a source of uncertainty for all projects all over the world.  Because it is a rather organic project risk, plus a known issue on your projects based on history, you need to build contingencies in your schedule to allow for this threat.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You likely have mechanisms already in place to communicate in a factual--not emotional or punitive--way what is threatening your schedule.  Your baseline schedule will expose the variances that can link back to delays in the tasks/milestones owned by your customer.  You report this on a set frequency, I assume, so your customer will be told early and frequently that you are predicting a late finish due to missed milestones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These risks will be further documented in your risk tool, detailing the cause, the likelihood, impact, and what you are trying to do about it.  Again, these are reported to the customer.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I suspect you have in place an escalation process that allows for these issues and risks to climb as high as the governing body.  Use it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The customer will respond when they respond.  All you can do is pull the right levers at the right time, using tools you already have at your disposal.  While the customer may be upset for missing deadlines, your documentation will mean they need to hold you harmless for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T19:14:15.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2049" CreationDate="2011-05-04T19:16:30.160" Score="6" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Good and frequent communication in general and specifically active listening.&lt;/strong&gt; Communication is one of key root causes for broad range of problems, which could be avoided if were better at it. This is definitely number one for me. Since many project managers tend to rely deeply on formal communication I stress active listening (which assumes talking) as key area here.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Continuous improvement which is tightly connected with experimenting.&lt;/strong&gt; I never assume that what we have is an optimal solution. I never assume I know the right solution from the top of my head either. So anytime we have a possibly better idea we just try it and see if it works. Actually I'm not even sure which part here is more important: the one where you change things and evaluate result of changes or the one where you constantly look for occasions to adjust the way you work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Visualization.&lt;/strong&gt; Actually it doesn't really matter what exactly we do visualize. It works miracles in terms of updating status of a project, discussing architecture, organizing project portfolio, etc. Think how many times it was just easier to describe things with an image, even a crappy one, than just with words. The very first thing I need in a new office is a couple of whiteboards. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T19:16:30.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2051" CreationDate="2011-05-04T20:33:37.437" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Action items are a common way to track agreements between stakeholders.  I see them tracked in excel spreadsheets. Treat an action item as an agreement between the actionee and receiver for a piece of work.   An action item usually includes a actionee, a receiver, status, a due data and a short description of the work agreed to.  The metric to watch is the number of open and closed items over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But an action item list is only a map.  It is not the territory.  To understand how well coordinated a team is I would consider how confident I feel that the different people understand each other's position and what is expected of them.  In part, I would look at how well everyone is communicating.  The trick is to determine this. One way to get there is to be engaged with all the people on the team, individually and in groups. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Signs of a lack of coordination among the team include people talking over one another, people repeating their position without listening to someone else, the need to repeat matters in coordination meetings, the need for too many coordination meetings...  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1118" LastEditorUserId="1118" LastEditDate="2011-05-04T20:45:22.033" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T20:45:22.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2049" CreationDate="2011-05-04T21:09:17.063" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Building on &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2049/what-is-your-list-of-fundamental-practices-that-you-use-to-make-your-project-and/2058#2058&quot;&gt;Pawel's answer&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;be inclusive&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deploying software may involve QA, sys admins, network admins, DBAs, and front-line support staff - get them involved early.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often the perceived resistance at deployment time from these teams is because they need to do their due diligence. They also posses a wealth of knowledge about the larger software ecosystem, and user behaviour; this should be incorporated as part of the continuous improvement - many developers are shielded from the quirks of end-user behaviour, or unusual aspects of the larger software ecosystem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1052" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T21:09:17.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2061" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2071" CreationDate="2011-05-05T00:11:02.513" Score="4" ViewCount="349" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a researcher at a university. I have supervised some Master's theses, but never a work project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, I informed my first ever student assistant that she is hired. She is a nice girl and has more work experience than the average student. But she also has a strange form of stutter. She can talk smoothly for some sentences, but at some point, she starts searching for a word. At this point, she lays her had to a side, and her eyes roll up, showing only the whites, while she is trying to say the word. This can continue for up to a minute. The fact that we are communicating in her third language probably doesn't help either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Co-workers who have taught her warned me what to expect, so I wasn't shocked the first time it happened during her job interview. I also asked less questions than I would have if she hadn't had the problem. I just patiently sat there while she searched for the word, and there was only one time she gave it up, else she was able to recover and say the word at some point. They also told me that she usually just tries to speak as little as possible, but they don't really know more than that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later, she will be able to do most of her work by herself. But at the beginning, we will probably have to discuss a lot. And I am afraid that especially at the beginning, when she isn't yet at ease around me, she will have the most problems talking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience from the interview was this: When we are talking and the tic happens, I am feeling silly and inadequate. I try to sit there with an encouraging smile and wait, but have no idea how she is interpreting my behaviour. I can think of several things I could do in the future, and have no idea whether she would be glad for it, or consider it rude. What I have thought of until now is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I have a good guess of what she is trying to say, I can prompt her with the word. But I don't know if she would like that, and my guesses aren't that good (unlike some stutterers, she doesn't pronounce the first part of a word before getting the tic). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I could offer her to converse by instant messaging, even though she is sitting in the same room. It would be a very thorough solution if it works, but also one which feels even more awkward than the rest. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I could offer her to talk in English, because it is her second language. Maybe she grasps less for words in it, so this could lower the frequency of the tics. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The approach I would like best is that I just directly ask her how she would like me to behave, and whether there is something we could do to make the situation better. I mean, she is aware that I am aware of her tic, so why not speak openly about it? But I am afraid that she would consider such open speaking rude, and I don't want to be considered rude by somebody I will be working with a lot. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't help that most people consider me very blunt. My friends have grown used to my sometimes tactless questions, and know that I often don't realise that they will have a problem answering them until after I have asked them and noticed their reaction. But discussing such a sensitive topic with a person who is still practically a stranger, and presumably quite shy, will really be very hard for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I wonder, how should I react. Should I ask her for her preferences? Or suggest ideas of my own? Or say nothing and treat her with patience, hoping that we'll get the communication done somehow? And if I decide that I should talk to her about it, when should I bring it up? Is it better to give her some time to get more comfortable about working and communicating with me, or will waiting look bad, as if I have been hoping that the problem will be minor, but have noticed that it hampers our work? And if I should wait, than for how long should I wait? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1150" LastActivityDate="2011-05-05T18:07:05.343" Title="How to work with a team member with a severe tic?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;personal-skills&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2061" CreationDate="2011-05-05T00:38:21.950" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would be honest and ask her for her preferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it starts to affect her work, invite her to come up with solutions. Perhaps she finds it easier to communicate over IM or email, or to draw diagrams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment, you are possibly feeling uneasy around her, and expecting something to go wrong. She will be picking up on this, perhaps unconsciously, and it will increase the unease between the two of you until it's resolved. It may be better to resolve it sooner than later!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also presume that she's shy. What if you're wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm slightly deaf, and knowing that people are prepared to work around that - tapping me on the shoulder rather than just using my name, for instance - really helps me know that I can be productive and useful. I hope that she would feel the same way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-05-05T00:38:21.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1999" CreationDate="2011-05-05T00:57:25.103" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This comes down to how you want to run the project and who will pay the 'cost' of the canceled sprint.&#xA;In the end there can be valid reasons for just caning the whole sprint and 'shelving' all of the code created to date and starting again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend getting the stakeholders in the room and ask the hard question - if we are going to cancel this sprint and throw away the work that has been done, who is going to cover the cost. This tends to either get the focus you need and you can reshape the sprint to salvage some/all of the work done or confirms your decision to cancel the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, as Gary said, Sprints are a tool/set of rules. I like rules, they help guide develoers, customers and PMs to the right decisions - canceling a sprint can be the right decision and can often be better than moving the goals of the sprint in the long term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1151" LastActivityDate="2011-05-05T00:57:25.103" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2061" CreationDate="2011-05-05T01:21:26.047" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first thought when reading this was why did you hire this person? Not to sound rude/judgmental, but the only indication of why you may have hired this person is because she has &quot;more work experience&quot; than the average student (explicit deduction), and she may be smart due to the fact that she can speak 3 languages (implicit deduction). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why would you hire a person whom your co-workers told you speaks as little as possible? So much of being a college assistant is to learn from the one modeling the role (you). Wouldn't you want there to be lots of collaboration, discussion, and communication going on between you and your new assistant?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But! To answer your question, you need to be open, honest, and discuss (or potentially lead) a working agreement between you and your new assistant. You want her to learn as much as she can and it would be a disservice to both you and her for there to be communication blockers to her learning success and for you to receive the needed work that you hired her for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1124" LastActivityDate="2011-05-05T01:21:26.047" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2049" CreationDate="2011-05-05T07:49:09.400" Score="2" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Honest and open communication. No politics, dilly dallying or beating around the bush.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Leaders who trust, listen and stay out of the way of great technical work. Managers play support role!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Empowerment at lowest level. Team organizes and gets stuff done themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not manager but team delivers. A realization by each individual in the team that he is directly influencing to the project's delivery &amp;amp; success.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Generous reward program which spots and rewards great work, consistently.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-05-05T16:34:44.880" LastActivityDate="2011-05-05T16:34:44.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2043" CreationDate="2011-05-05T14:46:51.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's deeply unfair to the developer that does NOT get the job.  I would never take a position where my longevity was dependent on &quot;beating&quot; another coworker in some kind of competition.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you really have the time to create a complete curriculum, along with a final test?  Is that the best use of your resources?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are having trouble finding local candidates, consider telecommuting as a way to expand your pool.  If that's not an option, take a long-view approach.  Tune your business practices to the long, hit-and-miss process of grooming local newbies.  Introspection and understanding your own strengths and weaknesses as an organization will help.  If you know what works, and why it works, you can teach it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finding those that want to learn (an excellent point by Pawel) is the hard part of building a development team, no matter the location, size, or quality of your hiring pool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1161" LastActivityDate="2011-05-05T14:46:51.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2067" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-05T16:05:06.630" Score="14" ViewCount="1665" Body="&lt;p&gt;I run a small web development company in Australia looking for a project management system. We've been looking for a while and haven't really found any that cover issues mentioned below. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to ask if anyone had any recommendations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I looked at: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Basecamp&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mavenlink&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clarizen&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Liquid Planner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Worketc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Goplan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teambox&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and quite a few others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We manage a number of projects, and each project may have a number of different contractors, and the client, all of whom are spread around the globe. We want do the following&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Restrict access for certain contractors to only certain projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Restrict contractor access to parts of the project, e.g. financials &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Restrict contractor access to be able to only view tasks assigned to them and perhaps the project outline and certain documents&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide client access to the project area to submit their own issues, bug reports, and tasks etc – these are not visible to the contractor until assigned to them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assign client bug reports, tasks etc to contractors &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Restrict client access to see only certain parts of the project eg tasks assigned to them, documents etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as we work with certain contractors and a client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contractor A can't see contractor B’s tasks or client tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contractor B can't see contractor A's tasks or the clients tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Client can't see contractor As tasks or Contractor B tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please let me know what you'd suggest re:above requirements &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we are just about to sink beneath the surface managing stuff with outlook!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1162" LastEditorUserId="22629" LastEditDate="2016-05-02T11:32:16.097" LastActivityDate="2016-05-02T11:32:16.097" Title="Recommended web-based project management apps" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="13" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="12" ClosedDate="2012-07-16T13:14:20.387" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-05-17T20:03:20.100" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2067" CreationDate="2011-05-05T16:40:08.340" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you looked at &lt;a href=&quot;http://basecamphq.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Basecamp&lt;/a&gt;? Several web design companies I've worked with use it for managing their projects. You can create separate instances for each client, and only allow users you created for each specific instance to log in and see how things are going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is lightweight and easy to setup, but on the downside it isn't particularly good for handling complex task workflows. It may not do everything you want, but it is definitely worth a look.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="916" LastActivityDate="2011-05-05T16:40:08.340" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2067" CreationDate="2011-05-05T16:50:22.760" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;JIRA&lt;/a&gt; can be configured pretty extensively, including rights to access specific areas and items, and I believe it should cover all scenarios you mention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-05-05T16:50:22.760" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2017" CreationDate="2011-05-05T17:24:28.220" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use Microsoft Project Server for the team members to enter the hours spent and hours remaining on their tasks, and we use a SharePoint tasks list for action items.  That way, we do not spend a lot of time in the status meeting talking about the boring part of status reporting.  Rather, we spend our group meeting time coordinating future activity, discussing issues or questions, and reporting on status where other people in the meeting would care - for example, if person A finished a deliverable that person B needs, that would come up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="933" LastActivityDate="2011-05-05T17:24:28.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2061" CreationDate="2011-05-05T18:07:05.343" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can only imagine what I would do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Try to understand her&lt;/strong&gt;. While asking her about how should you behave will be probably helpfull, nevertheless only understanding her would provide you with an overall idea of what to do in almost any situation. There is nothing wrong with people trying to understand each other so don't hesitate to speak about it. Reveal your intentions about understanding. That way, you will probably know if she has problems with finding a word or if she just goes stuck anyway. First case comes with solutions like prompting, rephrasing, using English or partially English (for a lost word only), hand writing, using IM application. Latter case means you will probably have to wait until tic is over.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Assure her of your good intentions&lt;/strong&gt;. It may be the case that this particular tic is connected with stressfull situation or conversation subject she doesn't feel convenient enough. Try building an atmosphere of safe conversation and observe her in chit-chat situations. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tell her what your worries are&lt;/strong&gt;. As you stated:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you feel silly and inadequate because you are not sure how to behave&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you worry about communication quality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you would like to think about solution rather than a situation itself&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you don't want to be considered rude&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me it looks more than fair enough!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastActivityDate="2011-05-05T18:07:05.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2043" CreationDate="2011-05-05T20:10:36.707" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe you are setting out to fail, by putting a great deal of pressure on the poor guy (or girl). If there are no good people locally, this could be for one of a number of reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are genuinely no suitable people... without knowing your environment, I can't comment on the likelyihood of this;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your organisation is not attracting the right people. This could be reputational, financial, or the industry is not attractive.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why not consider a completely different approach? - hire a contractor for a few months, and see whether this gets the job done. This isn't outsourcing, at least in my book! If this works out, then you have a technical result that you want - admittedly without a new developer for the future. If it doesn't work out, perhaps you're expecting miracles, and a newbie would have no chance no matter how good he or she was. You're looking to make the new person the &quot;greatest in the universe&quot; in a few months... forgive my bluntness, but that just doesn't seem realistic, and you are doomed to disappointment after disappointment if that's truly what you are expecting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-05-05T20:10:36.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2073" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2084" CreationDate="2011-05-05T20:44:22.873" Score="9" ViewCount="3022" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a software project which, in big part, was delivered by a subcontractor. It is already in production but there are many bugs submitted by the customer. Bugs are redirected to the subcontractor as, according to formal agreements, they should fix them. The problem is they don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bit more of background:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SLA between the vendor and the client covers not only this project but others as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SLA between the subcontractor and the vendor is rather loose and doesn't include forfeits for not keeping deadlines.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The vendor, for whatever reasons, is late with payments for the subcontractor and no one from the project team has any control over it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The client loses their patience as the number of overdue bugs grows over time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should PM do with the subcontractor in such situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2012-01-17T09:51:51.060" Title="How to deal with unreliable subcontractor?" Tags="&lt;subcontractor&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2073" CreationDate="2011-05-05T21:02:52.067" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Look for alternative development resources.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the short term, you're probably stuck with the vendor you have and the subcontractor you have, and your best bet is to be &lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; proactive in following up on their progress and deadlines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you continue to push them, start looking for other development resources and begin transferring whatever pieces of the project you can. Possibly the primary vendor can help you if you insist on them moving to someone else, but given the slow payment problem you mention, I'd recommend looking at other vendors as well. Clearly the current situation is bad, and in my experience it isn't apt to get better over time. Find someone else and transition away from the problem subcontractor (and possibly vendor). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="916" LastActivityDate="2011-05-05T21:02:52.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2073" CreationDate="2011-05-05T21:09:03.467" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that subcontractor not fixing the bugs is not &quot;the problem&quot; but a symptom... of what? So what is the real problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a PM I would look for that problem as simply trying to push a subcontractor harder will probably fail. Is this subcontractor new to the vendor and simply turned out unreliable or is there some deeper conflict involved?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand if the problem stays unresolved too long I would opt for arranging a team using my own people to fix the bugs/address client request while maybe trying to work on the subcontractor. It introduces the additional cost to the project, but it's a matter of lower loss due to the SLA with the client (if it will cost me less to pay for the additional work than to pay for failing SLA and also for aggravating the relationship with a client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="435" LastActivityDate="2011-05-05T21:09:03.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2073" CreationDate="2011-05-05T22:13:02.780" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PM has to do something with payments to the subcontractor. The SLA is already broken by the vendor, why would the subcontractor fulfill its obligations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-05-05T22:13:02.780" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2073" CreationDate="2011-05-06T00:15:34.297" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DECIDE&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*&lt;em&gt;D&lt;/em&gt;*efine the problem: The sub is no longer fulfilling its obligations.  Why?  There is no longer a &quot;win&quot; in it for them and/or there is a bigger win somewhere else.  They are focusing their limited resources there.  The vendor (not sure what the PM's relationship is with the vendor but I am assuming (s)he works for the vendor) is making payments but untimely.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*&lt;em&gt;E&lt;/em&gt;*valuate what &quot;fixed&quot; looks like:  Although in production, the bugs need removed.  You need a sub that is incented to work and you need a capability that makes timely payments for completed work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*&lt;em&gt;C&lt;/em&gt;*onsider alternatives:  Everyone is replaceable.  Rarely are we stuck in one solution.  Identify alternatives and investigate the benefits, costs, and risks of each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*&lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt;*dentify the best alternative:  Based on your analysis, choose and go forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*&lt;em&gt;D&lt;/em&gt;*evelop the plan and go do:  If you are staying with the original sub, get them to the table and find the win-win.  Find out why the vendor is untimely with its payments and facilitate a solution where you can.  If another alternative is chosen, go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*&lt;em&gt;E&lt;/em&gt;*valuate:  Measure the improvement, fix your errors in your thinking and plan, fine tune your performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T00:15:34.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2037" CreationDate="2011-05-06T02:23:14.957" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since it is part of the project, the Project Manager is responsible for ensuring that the necessary document &lt;strong&gt;exists&lt;/strong&gt; - the doesn't necessarily mean he has to &lt;strong&gt;create&lt;/strong&gt; this particular document. Overall, the executive summary should come from the same process that created the project charter, which means that it should come from the sponsors and key stakeholders. If it does not get produced that way, and the document is considered important, the PM should figure out the best way to get one produced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my projects, the executive summary / one liner description does get produced in the early charter-creation stages. I end up writing them, but I don't necessarily &quot;own&quot; them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T02:23:14.957" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2073" CreationDate="2011-05-06T03:29:37.733" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would &lt;strong&gt;reduce the ongong payments&lt;/strong&gt; to the subcontractor. If you stop them completely they are likely to cut their losses and run, if there is some incentive there you have more hope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make it clear that if they provide the level of support required by the client then you are happy to pay them the full amount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In the background&lt;/strong&gt;, if you have someone internal and have the source code, start having them review the system and fix minor issues. Let this stream of fixes grow over time until you have a solid understanding of the solution. This is an investment that will be paid off long term with the continuing SLA. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have the source code then your in more trouble. I would work on getting it put into escrow at a minimum ... you need that or the Vendor is completely exposed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="689" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T03:29:37.733" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2051" CreationDate="2011-05-06T05:39:46.657" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whenever I measure the success of a project, I try to look at the actual success criteria of the project when determining how well it's going.  Looking at how many items are coordinated does not seem like an accurate measurement of a project's success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would be like measuring a sales associate's success based on the number of phone numbers dialed from her phone instead of measuring her success based on what really matters, the number of sales that she closes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that you're also dealing with an educated person who is likely to be intrinsically motivated and who wants to do a good job, or at least should want to do a good job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion, unless you want people to game your system and create extra work to &quot;increase coordination paths&quot;, is to look at what the end result is and measure success based on how close you are to the goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T05:39:46.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2081" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2085" CreationDate="2011-05-06T05:48:30.753" Score="7" ViewCount="7286" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a project (Project A) which is possibly being put on hold because resources are being diverted to another project that has potential for impressive revenue gains.  The project sponsors, as well as the PM, both want to revisit Project A and bring it to a successful close, but they want to do this after the new opportunity is seized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting Project A on hold may affect certain stakeholders who have an interest in this project.  Some of the stakeholders are clients who aren't paying for the project but who know they directly benefit from the completion of Project A and who became clients because they knew Project A was in progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the steps that a PM should take when putting a project on hold for more than three months to an indefinite amount of time?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T13:36:34.930" Title="What Are The Steps I Need To Take When Putting a Project On Hold?" Tags="&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2081" CreationDate="2011-05-06T06:48:35.143" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some basic steps here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get the other projects timeline and create an exception plan to the current plan that you have .Get the risk log and pad those in the time line from Project B.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get the Project A's stakeholders (internal &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; external) approval of the exception plan, listing the impacts of the project - this should take a couple of meetings to get the executive, senior user and senior supplier agreeing to the same thing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now you should be ready to put the project on hold. One thing that you should be doing is setting a recurring status check on the other project, to see if the exception plan that you put in place will actually work in order to mitigate any risk and inform Project A's stakeholders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="634" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-05-06T13:36:34.930" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T13:36:34.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2073" CreationDate="2011-05-06T08:47:47.993" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I finally manage to post an answer but in the meantime you received many answers. Some of my points was described already, but maybe you will find something new and worthy :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, &lt;strong&gt;you are responsible for your part&lt;/strong&gt; of the SLA. If means you should buffer all the problems and stop the domino effect, shielding the client from it. If you can't get the subcontractor make work done, then only way left is to find internal or external team to overtake the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Describe the situation to the subcontractor&lt;/strong&gt; as well as client's impatience. He may do his work and have your active support with talks with the vendor or he may choose not to cooperate and tighten &quot;the spiral&quot;. If I understand properly, first case brings him big chances of being payed (late) while the latter means he will only get additional problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sweeten your relation with the client&lt;/strong&gt;. Try referring to overall cooperation within the whole SLA or even offer something in exchange for extending the deadlines (additional support or extended period of of it). That way, you will buy some time to solve the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tighten the screw&lt;/strong&gt;. Your original agreement with subcontractor may not include forfeits for delays but it doesn't mean you can not introduce deadlines. There are usually many informal aspects and &quot;buttons&quot; one can push. Put on the table as much as you believe is needed: subcontractor's reputation, your support/opposition, future engagements with this subcontractor (at least you have recommendation/criticism ability), agreement re-negotiations or formal actions that can be taken. Start it gently, not all guns blazing, and fluctuate slowly to the carrot&amp;amp;stick situation if needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastEditorUserId="927" LastEditDate="2011-05-06T12:57:04.690" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T12:57:04.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2073" CreationDate="2011-05-06T10:44:38.130" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You cannot fix this on project level. This is a &lt;strong&gt;management issue&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get the managers from vendor and subcontractor together to negotiate a payment plan vs results. If that proves impossible, terminate the contract and start an alternative route, like fixing yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you start fixing yourself however, make sure you have an official and formal copy taken by some independent official third party (maybe a bailiff, I don't know the correct terminology/function?). This might proove very useful if things turn nasty (like a lawsuit).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T10:44:38.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2081" CreationDate="2011-05-06T11:07:55.887" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Conduct a risks and issues exercise that are sequel to the project hold.  Do a thorough job with this so all impacted stakeholder groups understand what their threats and impacts are.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notify all effected stakeholder groups, including team resources, subcontractors, vendors, and external folks.  Include in the communication what you are doing, why, the risks and issues caused by the work stoppage, recommended mitigation and contingencies, and future plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Verify and validate all completed scope and have the sponsor formally sign off on it.  Verify and validate all scope that is work in progress and dispose of these in some way, i.e., store, protect, discard, whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reconcile all financial matters.  Ensure all lagging cost claims are identified, accrued, and ledgered.  Ensure all payments to and from are made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Formally close the performance measurement baseline and capture all variances accrued to date and remaining performance dollars as that has to be reconciled when the PMB is re-established.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Review all existing agreements to ensure the T&amp;amp;Cs of each secondary to a work stoppage are met in full.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conduct a post mortem and document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Send everyone &quot;home.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T11:07:55.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2073" CreationDate="2011-05-06T14:01:13.833" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Only one answer, from my experience (and I had quiet a lot problems with subcontractors and providers, believe me...): get rid of him, as soon as possible, because things will only get worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the subcontractor is not reliable, it means your business is not important enough to him, and there is not much you can do about it. So the sooner you will dump him, the sooner you will stop to feel the pain...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand it's not always possible to get rid of a subcontractor immediatly, so in the meantime, always plan while expecting the worst from this subcontractor. And begin to look for a replacement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About your bug correction problem, look at your contract: is a allotted time defined for the correction of each reported bug? Try to get a statement from the provider about this, and set a planning up in which you will define when each bug should be corrected. Transmit as soon as possible to the person in charge, with copy to hierarchy in-house and in the subcontractor company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Complain if it's not done in due time. Escalate if needed, both in your company and in the subcontractor company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastEditorUserId="152" LastEditDate="2011-05-06T14:15:29.260" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T14:15:29.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2087" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2096" CreationDate="2011-05-06T15:18:44.607" Score="7" ViewCount="240" Body="&lt;p&gt;A small company signed time&amp;amp;material type of contract with client A which basically guarantee that 3 people would work on project for the client. The cooperation lasts a few quarters already and so far both sides were happy with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the meantime another very important client B orders a big system from the company and basically everyone except of PM is taken to work on the new system. It is a decision made at the very top of the company which PM has no control over. The situation is temporary but will last about a couple of months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can PM do to maintain good relations with the client A and avoid losing the contract with them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T17:44:09.457" Title="No free people to work on time&amp;material type of contract" Tags="&lt;customer-satisfaction&gt;&lt;relationships&gt;&lt;clients&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2087" CreationDate="2011-05-06T15:52:44.293" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The company has abandoned its obligations under the T&amp;amp;M contract.  This is actionable and it appears the company has accepted the possibility of a suit.  The way I am reading this, this issue is way outside the scope of the PM to handle.  I cannot see how the PM can facilitate a solution in this case.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T15:52:44.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2087" CreationDate="2011-05-06T15:53:11.280" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the relationship with client A is good enough then level with them and explain the problem.   The alternative being to keep them in the dark.  I think client A is likely to discover this, and that would burn a lot of the client's trust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with leveling is that they will not trust that your top managers will not throw them aside again in the future should another big fish come along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be wise to get buy in from the bosses before talking with the client.  Ask for their buy in and at the same time present ways to demonstrate their commitment to client A.  Some part time help from some of the people diverted to project B might help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a contractor you are being paid to provide solutions.  So, don't present the problem at hand to client A unless you can also provide some kind of solution, even imperfect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1118" LastEditorUserId="1118" LastEditDate="2011-05-06T16:00:39.220" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T16:00:39.220" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2087" CreationDate="2011-05-06T15:56:35.133" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Would this small company consider &lt;strong&gt;interns&lt;/strong&gt; as a temporary measure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the current economic climate and the labour market crisis you can find a lot of professionals (not recent graduates only) that would prefer working for free for a period of time (or &lt;em&gt;volunteer&lt;/em&gt;) rather than lose the experience opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this company could manage to gather at least a 50% of resources to allocate to client A the project could be handled at some extension. However, it would be really important that the Client A is advised of the current situation and supports your willingness to find a solution for them (even if it's slower).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have met people that had taken temporary jobs for free because it keeps developing them and helps to cover gaps on their CVs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T15:56:35.133" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2091" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-06T17:31:16.587" Score="7" ViewCount="1077" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the outputs from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_assessment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Qualitative Risk Analysis&lt;/a&gt; is project &lt;strong&gt;Risk Score&lt;/strong&gt;, which is an indicator of project success probability. This indicator explicitly tells a project manager what is the likelihood of project completion within the given scope, time, and budget. The indicator is very important for the PM, but should it be disclosed to the project sponsor and other stakeholders?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastEditorUserId="3170" LastEditDate="2012-07-23T09:33:41.310" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T09:33:41.310" Title="Should the customer be informed about an overall project risk score?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;risk&gt;&lt;customer&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2087" CreationDate="2011-05-06T18:12:54.270" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've actually been in this situation and both David and Steve make good points. &#xA;Senior management made the decision to renege on the contract with client A, so it's outside the PM's authority to do anything about that aspect of it. Senior Mgmt will have to do the explaining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To Steve's point, in the meantime the PM can try to do as much damage control as he can, but really he's going to be limited in what he can say. He's walking a fine line between lying to the client, and throwing his bosses under the bus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best path is to go to Senior Mgmt and say &quot;you've made this decision which puts us in a bad spot with Client A. What do you want me to tell them when they ask why no one's available? There are three options - I can tell them the truth, I can lie, which I won't do, or I can refer them to you. How would you like me to handle this?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastEditorUserId="927" LastEditDate="2011-05-07T07:11:45.987" LastActivityDate="2011-05-07T07:11:45.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2091" CreationDate="2011-05-06T18:40:02.107" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In all of the larger programs I've worked on the customer requires, by contract, that risk analyses be reported to them on a regular basis.  In addition to reporting a list of risks identified, the contractor reports on the mitigation plan, and status of the mitigation plan.  The customer reviews and approves the mitigation plan or accepts risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If risk reporting is not required by contract and  if you are tracking risks I think it's a good idea to report it to the customer.  It demonstrates that you are working to prevent problems for occurring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1118" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T18:40:02.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2091" CreationDate="2011-05-06T18:40:39.163" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the project sponsor is the customer, it is imperative that he be informed about the risk. Only the project sponsor and / or the project board should have the ultimate authority as to whether to take the risk: the PM should only be the means by which the project is delivered within the environment that the sponsor has agreed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the customer is someone else (eg a third party who has commissioned a piece of work from your company), and if (and only if) the customer doesn't carry any financial risk around the failure of the project, then there may be an argument to not inform him, although if I were the customer I would want to know whether there was a risk that I may not get what I had commissioned. A better model may be to inform the Project sponsor (internally to your company), and allow him to decide on the communications with the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key issue here is the roles that the individuals have. I appreciate that the PM may also be the salesman, or the customer may also be the sponsor, or the company hierarchy may not map against the project hierarchy, but I suggest that the roles need to be carefully analysed and understood. Only then can you truly unpick the complexity of the situation, and decide what needs to be communicated to whom, by whom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T18:40:39.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2091" CreationDate="2011-05-07T02:06:40.663" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I firmly believe that risk should be communicated to the customer.  Open communication and clear expectations can spell the difference between grave financial losses and an action plan for scenarios where the problems occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, if the customer knows there is a chance that the project may be delivered with more than zero defects, and there is a strong likelihood that there will be defects in the product, the customer then has the opportunity to make backup arrangements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, if the client is moving from a legacy system to a new system, they may then use the information you've reported to have a skeleton team -- one that is less sensitive to system failures -- use the new softwware while the team that is fault-intolerant can continue to use the old legacy system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is just one example.  I've seen clients who were told our systems may not be 100% reliable make backup arrangements and still be successful with as low as 80% success rates, while I've seen clients who were told nothing lose millions of dollars because of one missed opportunity that they missed because they expected 100% success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you communicate with your customers and set clear expectations, they'll be more satisfied with you for watching their back and making sure they look good in front of their managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-05-07T02:06:40.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2087" CreationDate="2011-05-07T02:15:47.817" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this situation, it's best to communicate the situation to the client.  Unfortunately, ignoring the problem won't make it go away.  If you choose to say nothing, it will only make you look incompetent when the client discovers that progress has either slowed drastically or come to a screeching halt.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you inform the client as soon as possible of the changes, there's a strong chance that they can make arrangements to their plan and make adjustments to their schedule.  They may still be upset and may cancel, but if they are dependent on you, they may be able to meet you in the middle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just remember, you're dealing with real people who have bosses and managers that they have to answer to as well, and by informing them early, you can help prevent them from looking bad in front of the people &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; answer to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-05-07T02:15:47.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2097" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-07T04:38:22.263" Score="6" ViewCount="298" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like some web or list of well-known laws of project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples: Pareto Principle, Law of 90%, Parkinson Law, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some days ago I read about one that say something like: &quot;If you study how some group of people react to a certain thing that promises to perform better, they will surely perform better independently of the real 'cause'&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I can't find the name. There's another of &quot;The more expectation you give a person, the performance output it's gonna be better&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to have a more organized list of this &quot;Laws&quot;. Any help will be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1107" LastEditorDisplayName="user16244" LastEditDate="2019-01-26T16:08:25.300" LastActivityDate="2019-01-26T16:08:25.300" Title="Project management Laws" Tags="&lt;practices&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2019-02-01T10:15:43.923" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-10-03T13:35:54.337" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2098" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-07T05:48:40.660" Score="5" ViewCount="132" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my projects depends heavily on another project at a different location. The leader of the other project does not take charge of it but relies on me to make many decisions for his project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I get my peer to take up responsibility for his project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some more background information: The goal of my project is to develop, say, the tea kettle of the future. The other project has to fix the leaks in the tea kettles sold now. I need leak-free kettles to succeed. At the beginning, I trusted that my peer would do his job and ship me some nice kettles. However, &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt; happened. By now, I am spending more time making plans for patching leaky kettles than managing my own team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To complicate the issue further, the projects are running at different locations in different countries with different cultures, making face-to-face communication a rare event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1131" LastActivityDate="2011-05-08T16:17:28.923" Title="How to Get a Peer to Take Charge of His Own Project?" Tags="&lt;politics&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2098" CreationDate="2011-05-07T06:28:37.830" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this situation, doing your peers job for him will not teach him how to take responsibility.  Instead, start by trying to work together to solve the problem, and escalate the issue if the problem can't be solved by the both of you.  What I would suggest is to do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get Skype and a video camera, both for you and your colleague.  There is no reason you can't have face to face conversations in the year 2011.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make it very clear to your colleague that you have a problem with the leaky kettles and that this is causing you problems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work with your colleague to come up with an action plan to fix the leaky kettles.  Clearly explain the problem, and then come up with a plan together that solves the problem and scales.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the problem can't be solved, contact your supervisors.  The job of your manager is to help you solve the problems that are preventing you from successfully doing your job.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-05-07T06:28:37.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2098" CreationDate="2011-05-07T07:10:31.310" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, communicate the issue to your peer openly. Try to base on facts and avoid just opinions. Direct communication shouldn't a problem these days as jmort points (+1). Chances are you peer is just unaware what he's expected to do and with some guidance not only would he help you but also would be grateful for help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, be prepared that not taking responsibility for the project may be just a symptom of some deeper problem which can be totally out of your control, like you peer may be totally overwhelmed with other, more important, projects or may be just incompetent. In this situation you may either try to investigate the root cause of the issue or try to escalate your problem. I'd start with letting know your peer's supervisors as it's usually pretty successful method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, there is some kind of agreement between two project teams. You don't mention any other company so I assume both project teams are parts of the same organization thus I don't expect any formal agreements but then there probably are some informal arrangements that guys over there would deliver leak-free kettles so you can build kettle of the future. Otherwise you wouldn't depend on them, would you? Now, if you can't solve the issue by yourself you should make aware of the problem people who made these arrangements in the organization. This starts to be large caliber gun so you may want to wait with that until you have no other options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourth, independently of all others you should treat the situation as your project's risk and make it visible for everyone interested. It would help you to share the issue with people involved in your project, including your supervisors and also it should make it easier to get some help with your efforts to solve the problem, especially that most likely you'll need to engage other people in organization anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-05-08T15:52:42.217" LastActivityDate="2011-05-08T15:52:42.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2097" CreationDate="2011-05-07T12:51:44.363" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The second &quot;law&quot; you mentioned &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;If you study how some group of people react to a certain thing that promises to perform better, they will surely perform better independently of the real 'cause'&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is called the Hawthorne effect.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_eponymous_laws&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_eponymous_laws&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://plebiandesign.com/blog/?p=327&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://plebiandesign.com/blog/?p=327&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="1752" LastEditDate="2012-02-24T14:16:12.770" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T14:16:12.770" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2091" CreationDate="2011-05-07T13:17:55.303" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, not just around risks, I try to run as transparently as possible.  What I know, my client will know; what I do not know, my client will know I do not know.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like the WBS, you have an RBS.  There are a ton of lower level risks with lower level impacts with which the client sponsor does not need to waste his/her time.  I may withhold reporting on those but they are readily available on the risk tool and the tool is available to the client sponsor.  But higher level risks with more material impacts I will always report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, for those more major threats, the course of action--mitigation, contingencies--will likely involve the client in some way.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Caveat:  if under a firm fixed price contract, there are a ton of risks that do not affect the client at all.  For example, if you are running hot and blowing your budget, the client will not care.  No reason to raise this up.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-05-07T13:17:55.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2097" CreationDate="2011-05-07T22:13:37.157" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;My favorite is a list of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lockheedmartin.com/aeronautics/skunkworks/14rules.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;14 management rules&lt;/a&gt; developed by &lt;strong&gt;Skunk Work's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Johnson_%28engineer%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kelly Johnson&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. Many of them are particular to aerospace and defense work--and several don't have any obvious parallels in software-only projects, but the overall theme of these guidelines is timeless. I've bolded what I think are the most widely applicable statements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Skunk Works manager must be delegated practically complete control of his program in all aspects.&lt;/strong&gt; He should report to a division president or higher.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Strong but small project offices must be provided both by the military and industry.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The number of people having any connection with the project must be restricted in an almost vicious manner. Use a small number of good people (10% to 25% compared to the so-called normal systems).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A very simple drawing and drawing release system with &lt;strong&gt;great flexibility for making changes&lt;/strong&gt; must be provided.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There must be a minimum number of reports required, but important work must be recorded thoroughly.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There must be a monthly &lt;strong&gt;cost review covering not only what has been spent and committed but also projected costs to the conclusion of the program.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The contractor must be delegated and must assume more than normal responsibility to get good vendor bids for subcontract on the project. Commercial bid procedures are very often better than military ones.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The inspection system as currently used by the Skunk Works, which has been approved by both the Air Force and Navy, meets the intent of existing military requirements and should be used on new projects. Push more basic inspection responsibility back to subcontractors and vendors. Don't duplicate so much inspection.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The contractor must be delegated the authority to test his final product in flight. He can and must test it in the initial stages. If he doesn't, he rapidly loses his competency to design other vehicles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The specifications applying to the hardware must be agreed to well in advance of contracting. The Skunk Works practice of having a specification section stating clearly which important military specification items will not knowingly be complied with and reasons therefore is highly recommended.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Funding a program must be timely&lt;/strong&gt; so that the contractor doesn't have to keep running to the bank to support government projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There must be mutual trust between the military project organization and the contractor, the very close cooperation and liaison on a day-to-day basis. This cuts down misunderstanding and correspondence to an absolute minimum.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Access by outsiders to the project and its personnel must be strictly controlled by appropriate security measures.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Because only a few people will be used in engineering and most other areas, ways must be provided to reward good performance by pay not based on the number of personnel supervised.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="360" LastActivityDate="2011-05-07T22:13:37.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2098" CreationDate="2011-05-08T16:17:28.923" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have already tried cooperation and discussion, you need to bring in the sponsor. This is probably not something you can solve without the sponsor getting involved because you have no idea what's going on in the other project. Perhaps the other PM is doing the right thing for his/her project. &#xA;When the sponsor has worked it out, you can find a way to solve your problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-05-08T16:17:28.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2105" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-08T20:27:55.303" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-05-08T20:27:55.303" LastActivityDate="2011-05-08T20:27:55.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2106" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-08T20:27:55.303" Score="0" Body="This tag is about topics that involve managing one's own actions.  Project managers must not only manage others but also their own behavior and actions." OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-05-08T20:27:55.303" LastActivityDate="2011-05-08T20:27:55.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2107" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-08T20:28:57.517" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia link to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_plan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Plan&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2014-10-09T11:09:40.700" LastActivityDate="2014-10-09T11:09:40.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2108" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-08T20:28:57.517" Score="0" Body="This tag is for questions that involve planning a project schedule or planning tasks for the team." OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-05-08T20:28:57.517" LastActivityDate="2011-05-08T20:28:57.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2109" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2120" CreationDate="2011-05-08T20:31:57.937" Score="5" ViewCount="1557" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I'm building a project Gantt, involving multiple teams. In the past I've had a good experience with a Gantt as a means of planning a project but not so much as a means of tracking a project's progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to figure out what would be the best way to reflect the integration points and dependencies between teams and then track it as easily as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Current approach&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Right now, what I have in mind is creating tasks for teams' activities and after each task that indicates a delivery to another team I creating a milestone, with the task as its predecessor. The receiving team's task depends on the milestone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;==== [Team A develops]&#xA;   +-&amp;gt; * [Team A development complete]&#xA;       +-&amp;gt; ==== [Team B develops]&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The downside of this approach is that the Gantt gets cluttered with a lot of milestones. The upside is that I get more control down the road around team delivery tracking and an easier way to filter the deliveries of each of the teams. Also, a side benefit is to avoid messing with weird task updates, splits, etc. I would ask for updates to estimated delivery dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd be happy to hear your thoughts and ideas around this issue. How would you approach this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="44" LastEditorUserId="44" LastEditDate="2011-05-08T20:49:43.270" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T16:47:51.110" Title="Best usage of milestones in a Gantt" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2110" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-08T20:45:55.180" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some project managers are non-technical and are largely responsible for driving the forward progress of the project.  These project managers will focus on communication between departments, communication with clients, and communications with managers and stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technical project managers sometimes face problems that are uniquely different than those faced by non-technical project managers.  Since many project managers come from a technical background, they will have questions regarding how to deal with what some might consider to be their technical Achilles heel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example topics that fall under this tag include asking questions such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/55/how-technical-should-a-project-manager-be&quot;&gt;How technical should a Project Manager be?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/156/do-technical-leaders-compete-with-project-managers&quot;&gt;Do technical leaders compete with project managers?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/452/how-to-avoid-micro-managing-a-software-development-team&quot;&gt;How to Avoid Micro-Managing a Software Development Team?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-05-08T20:45:55.180" LastActivityDate="2011-05-08T20:45:55.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2111" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-08T20:45:55.180" Score="0" Body="This tag is for questions that are related to a leader's involvement in the technical arena.  " OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-05-08T20:45:55.180" LastActivityDate="2011-05-08T20:45:55.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2112" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-08T21:29:58.323" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Overview:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project Management software consists of either desktop, web-based, or mobile software used by project managers and their teams to report on the progress of the project, manage the schedule, provide information to managers, or document the progress of the project towards completion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Questions with this tag:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions with this tag should be about a real, actual problem faced by a project manager using a specific software program used in project management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This tag is not for tool recommendations. Tool recommendation questions are considered both not constructive (they ask for list of things) and are &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.pm.stackexchange.com/questions/351/we-will-be-closing-all-tool-recommendations-within-2-weeks&quot;&gt;considered as off-topic&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you ask a question using this tag, be sure to include specific details about your environment. Are you an agile shop or waterfall? How many people on your team and how many projects do you manage? What have you tried so far? What didn't work and why? Providing this information helps avoid closing your question as not a real question, and will help the community give you a great answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Commonly Used PM Software Tools:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While tool recommendation questions are discouraged, we have compiled a list of commonly used software that may help you as a project manager:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://trello.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://basecamp.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Basecamp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://atlassian.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;JIRA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://liquidplanner.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Liquid Planner&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.do.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Do.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;When to NOT use pm-software tag:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are software that due to their extensive usage around the community have specific tags, such as the below. Whenever possible, use a specific tag instead:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/asana&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;asana&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;asana&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/jira&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;jira&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;jira&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/pivotal-tracker&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;pivotal-tracker&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;pivotal-tracker&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/ms-project&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;ms-project&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;ms-project&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For questions that apply to most versions of Microsoft Project, use this general tag. For version-specific questions, please use one of the tags below instead of the catch-all tag:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/ms-project-2003&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;ms-project-2003&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;ms-project-2003&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/ms-project-2007&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;ms-project-2007&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;ms-project-2007&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/ms-project-2010&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;ms-project-2010&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;ms-project-2010&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/ms-project-2013&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;ms-project-2013&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;ms-project-2013&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/ms-project-2016&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;ms-project-2016&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;ms-project-2016&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/project-server&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;project-server&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;project-server&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/projectlibre&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;projectlibre&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;projectlibre&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/redmine&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;redmine&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;redmine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/tfs&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;tfs&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;tfs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/trac&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;trac&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;trac&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/trello&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;trello&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;trello&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/vsts&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;vsts&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;vsts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/zenhub&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;zenhub&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;zenhub&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-11-15T18:19:37.473" LastActivityDate="2018-11-15T18:19:37.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2113" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-08T21:29:58.323" Score="0" Body="This tag is for questions regarding the USAGE of software directly related to project management. Questions about technical support or product selection are off-topic. You should already know what tool you plan to use and what process the tool will automate before writing your question. Use specific software tags (e.g. &quot;ms-project&quot;, &quot;jira&quot;) rather than this generic tag whenever possible." OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-01-14T09:39:34.377" LastActivityDate="2019-01-14T09:39:34.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2114" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2121" CreationDate="2011-05-08T22:52:25.847" Score="7" ViewCount="470" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for resources for Scrum. Online resources would be particulary suited, but I'm ready to consider books. There is much material available, and I have to say it's hard to choose the good ones. Can you help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not only looking for tutorial, but also for documents presenting the advantages and drawbacks of the method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastActivityDate="2020-07-22T06:56:23.430" Title="Resources for Scrum" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;resources&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="7" ClosedDate="2014-05-10T16:20:09.133" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2115" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2117" CreationDate="2011-05-08T23:18:22.557" Score="8" ViewCount="24053" Body="&lt;p&gt;As some of you know now, I'm trying to introduce Scrum in our company. Our CEO asked me if famous projects and/or big companies used the method. I found some companies, that's easy (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Adobe, Nokia, Siemens, BBC, CNN, General Electric, Bank of America, Novell, Unisys...). Google maintains a list of companies using Scrum &lt;a href=&quot;http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=t9L4o6JXfQTa8I4DKkvka5g#gid=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. But which famous projects use Scrum? That's not so easy. Do you know some?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T03:45:43.063" LastActivityDate="2020-07-21T12:11:52.267" Title="Famous projects using Scrum" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2012-08-08T05:20:25.007" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2109" CreationDate="2011-05-09T00:10:13.657" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tend to use milestones to mark key meetings or approvals of work. If there is some sort of formal cut-over process, make it a milestone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T00:10:13.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2115" CreationDate="2011-05-09T00:12:08.623" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The BBC iPlayer team I believe used Scrum.  iirc they're doing more Kanban type stuff now but it's a good tangible project to talk about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T00:12:08.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2109" CreationDate="2011-05-09T00:38:41.090" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You do not need to use milestones to show the task relationships. In your schedule, once you have determined the sequence of work, based on BOTH hard and soft logic, link them. Link them using FS, SS, FF, with the appropriate leads and lags as appropriate. Baseline it and go. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should provide you with the control you need. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T00:38:41.090" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2109" CreationDate="2011-05-09T03:03:59.833" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about tracking deliveries between teams and as a separate list?  This list would be managed by the program office.  Each party would need to mutually agree upon what each delivery will contain and when it will be made.  Once they sign up these agreements would be as binding as schedule milestones.  This list would be used in addition to a master schedule - it does not replace a schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number and status of these hand-offs also makes a useful metric.  The practice provides teams a way to ask for and get attention for things they need from one another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1118" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T03:03:59.833" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2109" CreationDate="2011-05-09T04:11:00.107" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've used (and like) a section at the top of the schedule for milestones.  This keeps the key milestones visible and easily reportable.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really want to use milestones to show links between teams, I would suggest first that the teams -really- be separate teams and not just different roles.  For teams that each manage their own schedule, I have found milestone linking like you are describing moderately helpful.  Here is how I have done it &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Warning - this requires a -ton- of overhead to maintain, I strongly suggest you really understand why this level of tracking is needed...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give each team their own project file.  Each project file has three major &quot;sections&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Published Milestones&lt;/strong&gt; - List of milestones from the local schedule file that are reported up and to other projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;External Milestones&lt;/strong&gt; -List of milestones from other teams or external sources.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Schedule&lt;/strong&gt; - where the actual tasks are for the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You then control a master schedule that takes each team's schedule and &quot;creates the links&quot; between their milestones.  That is, you need to use the &quot;Published Milestones&quot; to drive the &quot;External Milestones&quot; across all of the teams' project files.  This is time consuming and for five teams takes a good few days to set up, plus the communication needed to ensure everyone understands the structure.&#xA;Each week (or whatever your timeframe is for managing the schedule) you need to pull in the teams' projects into the master, observe the links changing, and resolve the issues.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, I can't stress enough that this requires a -huge- commitment to the project schedule.  I wouldn't attempt this without some of the teams each having their own PM who understands this and can help you work with it.&#xA;If you can live without a Gantt chart, you might just keep a list of Excel milestones that can be used to communicate across the teams and trust each team to update the milestone list.  This gives you 90% of the benefit with 2% of the effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T04:11:00.107" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2114" CreationDate="2011-05-09T04:43:44.473" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend a lightweight book you can find online for free. It is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/minibooks/scrum-xp-from-the-trenches&quot;&gt;Scrum and XP from the Trenches&lt;/a&gt; by Henrik Kniberg. It describes how SCRUM was implemented in a company with a lot of tips and insights about the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="44" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T04:43:44.473" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2114" CreationDate="2011-05-09T05:54:44.030" Score="7" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On Mike Cohn's site you'll find nice basic &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/topics/scrum&quot;&gt;introduction to Scrum&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I also recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/articles&quot;&gt;Mike's articles&lt;/a&gt; on Scrum, as he has reasonable and down-to-earth approach to the method.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/minibooks/scrum-xp-from-the-trenches&quot;&gt;Henrik Kniberg's minibook&lt;/a&gt; pointed by OrenD in the other answer is great as well.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then, there's a list of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumalliance.org/scrum_student_resources&quot;&gt;recommended readings on Scrum Alliance&lt;/a&gt; site. Btw: skip Scrum introduction there as it is aimed at selling you one of their courses.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you look for more orthodox approach to the method you can check out Ken Schwaber's work: &lt;a href=&quot;http://kenschwaber.wordpress.com/&quot;&gt;his blog&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.controlchaos.com/my-articles/&quot;&gt;his articles&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T05:54:44.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2123" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-09T06:30:48.793" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This tag is for anything related to issues with hiring, termination, and other personnel problems that might typically involve the human resources department and involves a problem faced by a project manager. For questions about general team building and team management, see the team-building or team-management tags.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2016-03-01T20:55:49.033" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T20:55:49.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2124" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-09T06:30:48.793" Score="0" Body="This tag is for anything related to that might typically involve the human resources department and involves a problem faced by a project manager." OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2016-03-01T20:56:19.407" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T20:56:19.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2125" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2126" CreationDate="2011-05-09T06:54:24.670" Score="11" ViewCount="858" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm handling a team of 6&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 Software Engineers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 Software Architect&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 Creative Artists&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 System Administrator&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;for a remote start up company, what could be the best project management and software development life cycle for this setup? This is my first time doing the work of a project manager. I also have to mention that the arrangement is, the compensation will be upon completion of the project, we're already on our 1 1/2 months and the output of the developers are declining. We all have day jobs, and we're doing this part-time (4 hours a day) after our day job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How should the manager motivate the team?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How should a manager handle &quot;I'm so tired from my previous work, can't work right now&quot; type of statements from the developers?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How should a manager push to keep the tasks moving?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What project management style should the manager apply in this setup?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What software development methodology / life cycle best fits this setup?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="777" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-05-15T05:36:06.677" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T05:36:06.677" Title="Remote start up company software development" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2125" CreationDate="2011-05-09T08:13:59.530" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;First things first. &lt;strong&gt;I don't think project management approach or software development lifecycle of your choice is your problem at the moment.&lt;/strong&gt; What you have here is more an issue with leadership and/or team management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know such setup to be very difficult to work out. At the beginning everyone has a lot of energy to pursue the new thing but after some time most of people start considering it as just another job on the top of their main one and their private lives. &lt;strong&gt;Then the question appears: what's in it for me?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, &lt;strong&gt;if the answer for the question is money and money only you may be in serious trouble.&lt;/strong&gt; I don't know what your timeline is, but working part-time on a regular basis and as an addition to your regular job will likely burn people out in a matter of a few months. Additionally, if they don't see results they're for in the project (money is supposed to be at the end) they may just decide to cut their loses (invested work) and abandon the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Much more sustainable motivation, and motivation you should look for, is when people genuinely want to create the product because they strongly believe in it or they're having fun with building it for technology reasons or whatever else.&lt;/strong&gt; But then, such motivation wears out as well -- people can become tried waiting for the first version to go live or they decide to pursue another technology or they just don't want to sacrifice their private lives anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without answering the question why people are in the project in the first place you won't find an answer to deal with their decreasing motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you know that, as a PM of the project, you can try to adjust the project environment in a way which would be more motivating for the people. A few ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Discuss engagement issues openly with everyone.&lt;/strong&gt; Try to find root causes. Try to learn what can be changed to improve people motivation. Be honest and open with what you can offer. Leave open doors for those who want to leave. It's better to have fewer engaged people than a bunch of crappy contributors.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For those who are in the project for the money &lt;strong&gt;think of partial payments&lt;/strong&gt; so they actually see what they get for their work. It's a bit tricky since if people decided to go, they'd take the money and go anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For those who are just tired &lt;strong&gt;think about smaller contributions they can make&lt;/strong&gt; so they don't sacrifice as much of their lives as they currently do.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For those who care about technology &lt;strong&gt;try to give them enough freedom in this area within borders of the project&lt;/strong&gt;. Sometimes it doesn't really matter what kind of framework you choose to build something but it can be a delighter for developers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Look for potential substitutions.&lt;/strong&gt; As harsh as it sounds people would eventually abandon the project as this setup is really hard to deal with from everyone's personal perspective (think 8 hours of daily job and then 4 hours working on the project). If you think about new people in the project focus on those who would be there for non-monetary reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This why the project is funded that way.&lt;/strong&gt; From what you write I read there could be 3 people working full time on the project plus yourself. And then for some reasons it isn't build by people working full-time or contractors but as a side-project for everyone in the team. The question is why? Do sponsors really believe in the success or do just want to try it out and do it cheaply? If the latter is true, don't expect much of motivation from the project team. If sponsors don't believe in the project why should the team?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know there are many questions here instead of answers but there isn't some kind of magic wand which would solve such a difficult situation. When it comes to people motivation you have to do the grunt work first, otherwise you won't be successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T08:13:59.530" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2127" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-09T11:18:36.730" Score="0" ViewCount="1079" Body="&lt;p&gt;Robin: Department of Correction&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Robin, a senior consultant for a large consulting firm, was just assigned to be the project manager for a $100 million project to upgrade the information systems for the State Department of Corrections. Robin’s boss and mentor, Jill, knew that Robin had a lot of potential and wanted to give her a challenging assignment. Robin had a lot of experience with technology involved in the project, but she never worked with the state government and she knew little about the state legal system. Her firm assigned its top legal person, Fred, to the project to assist Robin. Fred had worked on several projects with the state and understood the corrections process, but his expertise was in law, not technology. Fred also had never worked for a woman before and he was surprised that Robin was ten years younger than he was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the kickoff meeting for the project, Robin could see that understanding and meeting the stakeholders’ needs and expectations for the project would be a huge challenge. The new governor attended the first few minutes of the meeting, an indicator of the high profile of the project. The governor, who was known for not trusting consultants, questioned the value of spending more money on information systems for the Department of corrections, but the decision to fund this project has been made before he was elected. The federal government would be funding half of the project, since the new system would have to interact with the federal system. The head of the state Department of Corrections, Donna, had worked in the state legal system for twenty-five years. Donna knew the corrections process and the problems they faced, but she knew very little about information systems and preferred doing work the old fashioned way. She had heard horror stories about inmates released because computer errors. Donna’s new assistant, Jim, was very computer savvy and seemed most supportive of the project. No federal representatives were invited to the meeting. The meeting did not go well, as it seemed disorganized and highly political.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is required to prepare a stakeholder analysis for this project. The stakeholder analysis should be in a form of a table. A template was given which I used to do it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what I aready did: &lt;a href=&quot;http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/198/stakeholderysis.jpg/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Stakeholder Analysis&quot;&gt;Stakeholder Analysis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately I did not succeed in completing the whole table. I'm still having problems filling in the other blanks. Please help me if you can. Any help will be appreciated. Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1188" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-11-20T15:25:15.400" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T15:25:15.400" Title="How can I fill in the blanks in my Stakeholder Analysis table?" Tags="&lt;communication-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2043" CreationDate="2011-05-09T12:36:31.497" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pawel has provided a very good answer, but it is missing an important concept: environment.  You need to choose newbie characteristics based on the type of environment you're going to place them.  If they are going to be thrown into the shark infested deep end of the corporate pool to develop software, you should hire based on survival instincts.  If it is a team focused environment, personality often far out weighs skills at least until you get to the bottom quarter of the bell curve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developers are not interchangeable widgets.  They have a fairly diverse personality set and will react differently based on their personalities and the environment around them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, if you are hiring for a competition, insure that personality won't disrupt the rest of the organization of the competition is done.  I've found that overly competitive developers tend not to play well with others or tend to focus on the wrong aspects of the project (short term visible goals, not long term strategic paths). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="476" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T12:36:31.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2127" CreationDate="2011-05-09T14:30:33.847" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stakeholder analysis is an exercise to understand the universe of people who are and will be affected by the project.  There is no one right way of creating and completing that table.  The one right think you can do is to maintain this matrix as a living document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Segment your stakeholders into meaningful categories based on group attributes.  These segments will help identify what communication needs to be delivered to them, what communication you need from them, and what level of participation you need from them and the frequency of each.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the segments will define who are proponents of the change, opponents, and neutral.  Then you can figure out who to use as an influencer on another segment, and figure out what segment you need to isolate and quarantine if possible.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the segments will define what type of training they will require and when.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your segments can be as large or as small as necessary, including one individual.  It is a balance between complexity and effectiveness.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T14:30:33.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2125" CreationDate="2011-05-09T16:20:11.287" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team was in the same situation and we developed a methodology called XDSD (eXtremely Distributed Software Development), take a look at this &lt;a href=&quot;http://doc.xdsd.org/XDSD-WhitePaper.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;white paper&lt;/a&gt;. As the document claims - it is possible to be effective in your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T16:20:11.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="296" CreationDate="2011-05-09T16:25:00.607" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can learn a lot of class-taught PM skills by checking course requirements for a Masters-level IT or management program. MIT, to name one school, provides many of their course materials for download and study. Most include teacher notes, talks, or presentations for self-study and point to other resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MIT OpenCourseWare: &lt;a href=&quot;http://mitsloan.mit.edu/academic/open-courseware.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://mitsloan.mit.edu/academic/open-courseware.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Software program managers need to understand people, development methods, scheduling, and negotiation, so expect to study at least those four areas. Building a range of skills helps you step into different roles as-needed, from planning to coding to testing. (Writing well also helps, so find an editor or colleague to review your work.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To further develop your practical skills, look for an open-source project or local business start-up that needs help. It's an important resume addition for you and they'll usually take enthusiasm over formal PM certification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="227" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T16:25:00.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2127" CreationDate="2011-05-09T16:41:02.223" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Part of the problem is that your chart is severely incomplete. You're missing several key stakeholders, the addition of which will change the dynamics. You need the Governor, the Govs staff, the fed gov't (even if they didn't send a rep, they're spending money), Jill, the software/hardware vendors, the rest of the pm team, the end-users of the new system, among others. You've limited your analysis to only 2 decision-makers and their support. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;David makes a good point regarding proponents/opponents, etc. You need to clarify who's in favor of the project (Robin,Jill,Fred, Jim), who's opposed (Gov, Donna), and who'd neutral, and their relative influence levels and how they interact with each other.For example - Jim isn't a decision-maker, but he supports the project, knows the issues and system, and has the ear of Donna. So Robin should work with him to help make points and get clarification. Swaying Donna will then help in getting the Gov on her side. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The software vendors want to make a sale, and can be brought in to help alleviate some of Donna's concerns about future mistakes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But part of the problem with filling out the rest of the table is that you don't have the whole picture, so you're missing relationships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T16:41:02.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2109" CreationDate="2011-05-09T16:47:51.110" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, I like how you're planning it. I think part of the problem is that you're now focusing on the aesthetics of the gantt chart as opposed to what it's being used for. Who cares if it 'looks' cluttered? The only real question is - does it make sense to you, and can you quickly and easily see and find the information you need?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T16:47:51.110" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2073" CreationDate="2011-05-09T18:03:19.170" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest two steps. - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Call them every day asking for updates on all the bugs submitted and projected 'fix' dates. Keep calling every day until they get tired of hearing from you and do something about it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Inform them that you have lost confidence in their work, and that in the long-term, as the contracts end you will not be re-negotiating, and in the sort-term you will be looking both for another subcontractor to take over the bug-fixing responsibilities, and for a way to early-terminate the contracts. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Number 2 will have one of two effects - it will either cause them to pay more attention to #1, which will help eliminate your problem, or they will care even less about #1, which means you're on the right track to terminate as soon as possible and find a new sub-c.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T18:03:19.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2091" CreationDate="2011-05-09T18:19:52.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been some very good comments so far. What I see missing is any discussion of severity or type of risk though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First let's be clear, we're talking about risk in terms of the probability of a negative outcome, so anything less than 50% probability is a non-issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From there, then you have to look at 'who's risk is it'? As David pointed out - is it a risk or the contractor not making projected margin or budget? Then no, the client doesn't need to see that, but the Sponsor (senior mgmt) does. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it a risk of the project failing? Then everyone needs to know. Is it a risk that the client can help mitigate? Then everyone again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So really, the answer is - who needs to see it? Whoever's going to be affected. You're the manager of the project, not the owner. It's your job to present all the relevant information to the concerned parties. There's no justifiable reason for hiding information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T18:19:52.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="296" CreationDate="2011-05-09T18:37:04.493" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you're already working as a PM, classes would actually be at the bottom of my list or sources. As Mark and Jmort have already said - experience and interacting with other PM's (either virtual or live) is the best teacher. Post or answer questions here, get involved in discussions on LinkedIn, read pm blogs and respond or comment for clarification or to add your thoughts. The PM community is amazing supportive, and most learn as they help others as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Partly why I participate here - I find a lot of great insights and differing views that challenge my own thinking. I'm not coming from the IT domain as most here are, so I have to make sure I've thought through my own answers before commenting. Broadens my view and brings clarity to my thinking (and sometimes changes it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T18:37:04.493" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15" CreationDate="2011-05-09T20:47:29.697" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a little late to this one, but I'll answer anyway. The tone of your question suggests that the PMO itself is new, as is your position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If true, there's only one important step - make sure you're addressing a REAL problem, and make sure that a PMO is the right answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All too often, when a company faces challenges with their projects, the default answer is - we need a PMO. But why do you need one? What's going to change? PMO's don't magically solve problems. In fact, if done for the wrong reasons, they'll create even more than they solve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, I question whether a PMO is the right choice. Primarily because you're starting out by asking &quot;what should I do to show everyone this has value?&quot; It should actually be the other way around. The PMO should be implemented because all concerned felt that creating one is the answer that would bring value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T20:47:29.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15" CreationDate="2011-05-09T22:49:48.140" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Contrary to the 'don't prove anything' advice, which I find somewhat naive. I'll recommend you prove your value to everyone. If you don't prove your value, you won't last. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;prove your value to the executive team by linking the PMO to the organizational goals and strategy &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;prove your value to the PMs inside and outside the PMO by linking the PMO activities to their needs for help and efficiencies and development&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;prove your value to the client by showing how the PMO saves money &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;prove your value to your PMO management team by developing a vision for the PMO and communicating it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;prove your value to yourself, this is going to be a roller coaster, make sure you know what you bring to the table. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T22:49:48.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2127" CreationDate="2011-05-09T22:56:13.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a great question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start by think about who in your team can help. You need to know what actions will satisfy the stakeholders. I generally put them into 4 categories: keep satisfied, monitor casually, keep informed and manage closely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found the best way to identify which category a stakeholder fits is to talk to people on my team and talk to the stakeholders. You can ask a stakeholder if they need to just be informed of what's going on (ie get a copy of status reporting) or if they need to give input on specific deliverables (keep satisfied).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck, stakeholder management is a challenging task but it's also quite satisfying as you gain the skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T22:56:13.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2141" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2243" CreationDate="2011-05-09T23:11:15.307" Score="4" ViewCount="10451" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen several references to the PMF, and I'm wondering what it is, and where I can find good reference material to do a quick, deep, dive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="71" LastActivityDate="2013-12-03T17:42:23.750" Title="What is the Pragmatic Marketing Framework, and how do I go about learning it in the quickest time possible?" Tags="&lt;pmi-framework&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15" CreationDate="2011-05-09T23:37:13.157" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMO is a centralized service.  As with all centralized services, there are pros and cons.  If the PMO start-up was approved, someone found the pros outweighing the cons at least in its initial business case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the new PMO needs to build initial capital quickly.  It needs to find quick wins to validate its efficacy in order to continue to build buy-in.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first step would be to begin building competency and capability.  The PMO needs human resources with the competency to act as SMEs right from the beginning, but also newer resources that you can grow over time.  You need to define processes and procedures and get these documented and distributed as fast as possible.  You need to acquire the tools to enable services and output in an efficient way.  And you need to establish the beginning of policies, guidance, and rules that will govern the organization's project behaviors here on out.  The PMO maturity level is low to non existent and will grow over time.  You cannot rush it.  I would have a plan to progress through the maturity levels in a controlled, realistic way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second step would be to capture quick wins and build capital as quickly as possible.  Something triggered the idea of the PMO; I would understand what these things were and move to &quot;fix&quot; them through the PMO capability and take credit for it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, I would start my marketing and sales campaign, selling the PMO throughout the organization and cementing its relevance.  The campaign is a two-way street; I would solicit ideas and ask for concerns and I would address to closure as quickly as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourth, I would establish organization-level performance metrics and tactical-level metrics against which the PMO will be measured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fifth, I would begin measuring numbering four, and sell the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T23:37:13.157" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2114" CreationDate="2011-05-10T04:22:26.037" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum though prescriptive is very lightweight and needs to be augmented with technical practices.  If you could buy just one book I would recommend Mike Cohn's User Stories Applied.  In this book Mike covers Scrum in as much detail as some specific Scrum books and also provides great depth on one of the essential practices needed to be successful with Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1012" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T04:22:26.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2114" CreationDate="2011-05-10T09:30:03.330" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can recommend &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0321186125&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Balancing Agility and Discipline&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Boehm and Turner. This book compares quite a few methodologies, each with their own characteristics on the &quot;planning continuum&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1195" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T09:30:03.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2147" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2155" CreationDate="2011-05-10T16:27:44.370" Score="1" ViewCount="190" Body="&lt;p&gt;In convincing management of the benefits of working on smaller scopes in more iterations. Have you seen this make a difference in speed, quality or ability to adapt to change in requirements?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T00:59:41.563" Title="What are the benefits of reducing the size of scope or no. of story points in an iteration?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2148" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2159" CreationDate="2011-05-10T16:31:49.213" Score="1" ViewCount="128" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often, corporate policies governing a work-flow or project management processes are outdated or were decisions that were made arbitrarily.  Sometimes there is a reason behind them. WHat are the best ways to challenge the assumptions, when trying to brainstorm on ways to improve workflow or project management processes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T21:19:00.523" Title="How can you productively challenge corporate policies to investigate what can be changed?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;business-improvement&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2148" CreationDate="2011-05-10T17:32:10.093" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Couple of ideas - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, get a group of those involved at all levels of the process, then remove yourself (the group) from the day-to-day work. You want to be looking at the processes and work-flow only, not an actual project. A real actual project will introduce specifics and cloud the reasoning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then start at the beginning (how do we solicit work), and work your through every step of the process to close, and at each step ask yourself and the group, &quot;what do we do here, why do we do it this way, what problems do e routinely encounter, is there another way to do it, etc?&quot; This is why you want people from all levels. There are invariably reasons or thinking that you're not privy to. So get input from everyone. And at each discussion point, find out the &quot;why's&quot; for the current state, and see if there's another way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have group consensus on what's the best way, move to the next step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T17:32:10.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2148" CreationDate="2011-05-10T17:32:20.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some processes contain a component of self-improvement where the process has a built-in process for changing itself.  This might provide an opening to start a discussion.  Before starting this it is important to understand and clearly state the goals of this assumption challenging.  What greater good for the corporation and, in particular, the assumers might result?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think data is the most solid ground from which to challenge assumptions.  I would collect data on current performance and try to run a pilot program to collect data on potential improvements. If data from the industry at large or a competitor shows room for improvement that can be very convincing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also find that if I approach data collection with an open attitude, and am willing to question my own assumptions that I have more success winning over defenders of the status quo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It probably goes without saying, but politics can make or break this kind of thing with or without data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1118" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T17:32:20.930" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1978" CreationDate="2011-05-10T17:44:59.040" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just in reading your synopsis, it sounds like you're coming at this from the wrong end first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dashboard, reports, or metrics should be an outgrowth of your strategy. So rather than asking what's the best view or measurement - the questions would be &quot;what's our strategy (why do we have so many projects), and what information do we need to see to ensure that we're going in the right direction?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you have buy/hold/sell apps. What decides if one of those should be changed? That's the information that needs to be on the dashboard. You have lots of projects that affect multiple apps. Presumably those apps are being modified with a goal in mind. So you need information that tells you whether those goals are going to be achieved, or if something (either project or goal) needs to be modified. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T17:44:59.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2148" CreationDate="2011-05-10T18:15:31.030" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Gartner, most organizations' level of process maturity is level 1 and 2 on a 5-level scale.  This kind of question is indicative of an &quot;immature&quot; organization from a process perspective.  This is a critical piece of information because the level of maturity dictates the approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Processes gain weight over time.  Work flows are created to solve a temporary issue, but they remain.  Controls are created for the same reason, and are never removed despite the driving issue is no longer in existence.  Outputs are created and delivered but are no longer used in the subsequent process.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ASSUMING the organization is on the low side of maturity, I would start with the mapping of the as is processes.  Not all of them; I would start with what is known to be problematic at this stage.  This is a facilitated effort involving a representative sample of folks who do the work.  I would not use some fancy BPM tool but would throw stickies on a wall so that the team can actively participate.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once that is finished to everyone's satisfaction of completeness, I would begin the analysis.  Process analysis starts with the output.  No work needs to exist except to produce something of value in the supply chain.  So the first set of questions are: what is the output, who gets it, why do they need it.  This very first part of the analysis will likely cut 20% of the work being performed!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second piece of the analysis is the work flow itself.  The complexity of the as is map is a good initial clue.  If there are a ton of carbon copies, forks and merges, and decision points, you have a lot of areas that are candidates for removal or modification.  The questions become: why does this role need to see this information, if it is removed, what happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The outcome of the analysis is likely a good 'to be' map.  In a lower maturity organization, rolling that out quickly to capture a quick win is advantageous; it will trigger the motivation for deeper analysis and continued leaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2011-05-10T18:23:31.403" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T18:23:31.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2114" CreationDate="2011-05-10T18:54:32.167" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a fan of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allaboutagile.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;All About Agile&lt;/a&gt;. The site has good articles on the basics in addition to aggregating the best articles from around the web. If you are looking for books, I recommend taking a look at Jurgen Appelo's list of &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20190717154429/http://noop.nl/2008/06/top-20-best-agile-development-books-ever.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;top 20 agile books&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1159" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-21T06:43:29.907" LastActivityDate="2020-07-21T06:43:29.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2147" CreationDate="2011-05-10T18:59:49.757" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team has been paying special attention to story size for the last few iterations and we've noticed several benefits of breaking down features into smaller stories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We are better able to judge how much we can get done in an iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We reduce doubt and uncertainty around a story by breaking larger stories down into small, well-defined stories. Doing so requires extra research and extra thinking upfront that pays off in the end.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If something happens during an iteration that makes us unable to complete everything we scheduled, it's a lot easier to push off small stories that weren't started than to try and roll over parts of bigger stories to another iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the flipside, we have found it harder to swarm on smaller stories, but overall keeping the stories small allows my team to keep delivering completed features or parts of features more reliably.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="332" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T18:59:49.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2114" CreationDate="2011-05-10T19:32:08.017" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you will consider &lt;strong&gt;books&lt;/strong&gt;, the classics from Ken Schwaber: &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;Agile software development with Scrum&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot; (ISBN 0130676349) and &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;Agile Project Management with Scrum&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot; (ISBN 073561993X) are still good value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More general Agile (but still with references to Scrum) are Mike Cohn's classics. The already mentioned &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;User Stories Applied&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot; (ISBN 0321205685) and &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;Agile estimating and planning&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot; (ISBN 0131479415).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For &lt;strong&gt;online&lt;/strong&gt; resources I second &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/minibooks/scrum-xp-from-the-trenches&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum and XP from the trenches&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot;. Is also liked the summary given in &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumprimer.org/scrumprimer20_small.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Primer&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt; and the &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agileadvice.com/2007/10/23/referenceinformation/scrum-rules-cheat-sheet-updated-3/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum rules Cheat Sheet&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-20T13:36:50.150" LastActivityDate="2020-07-20T13:36:50.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2148" CreationDate="2011-05-10T19:53:25.447" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume you have the support you need, and the company's management will be with you on this.&#xA;Then, the idea is as simple as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make sure you speak about the same workflow&lt;/strong&gt;. It would be no surprise if there are no one who knows the whole workflow. Sometimes each departament knows the best only it's part and has a slight knowledge about the rest. Take step back, speak to almost everyone. Visualize the workflow if needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make a list of the problems&lt;/strong&gt;. It may look as an easy task but often each asked person has its own understanding of what problem is and, often, it's a strongly subjective understanding. Dig deeper and ask questions as long as you need to get clear vision of internal connections and possible causes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Identify risks and achievable profits&lt;/strong&gt;. It should allow you to prioritize the list. They say if you want to eat the elephant you need to make it 'piece by piece' - it's much easier with priorities assigned to each piece. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Monitor progress and react&lt;/strong&gt;. For sure, you should manage change as every other project, but also you should remember it is very unlikely one will came with the best solution to the problem on a first try. You can make it work a lot better if you iteratively improve.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do not abandon to challenge the assumptions&lt;/strong&gt;. Even if you fix a lot, the environment changes all the time, so you will be soon able to start over again...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T19:53:25.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2147" CreationDate="2011-05-10T21:05:34.393" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly, &quot;only over the long run&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen huge benefits in being more predictable.  (usually a team can get very predictable after 2-3 iterations).  Once you have that down, you can take on (productively) the things people are noticing that slow the team down or cause quality issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that smaller iterations are -only- beneficial (IMHO) if you get -customer- feedback on the release at the end of the iteration.  This is tough to understand until you have a customer who actually reviews and cares about the output, then you get a whole new understanding about requirements change and customer needs!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T21:05:34.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2148" CreationDate="2011-05-10T21:19:00.523" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do not challenge ... drive out fear by listening and substituting leadership.  Listen.  Understand.  Offer solutions not challenges.  Challenges are something you do in high school or maybe junior high ... grownups lead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes just asking questions is enough to get a bad policy revised, but you must ask tactfully to understand first.  Often bad policy was instituted because of an incorrect over-reaction to problem.  Sometimes bad policy is a necessary antidote to a problem.  It is necessary to understand the original problem.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Develop and assemble a team of allies &lt;em&gt;[choose people with power, who can get things done -- avoid people who are just whiners]&lt;/em&gt; ... your team will help overturn the policy and it will be useful in the future.  Apply patient diligence as you continue to work with and through other people.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T21:19:00.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15" CreationDate="2011-05-10T21:25:27.853" Score="2" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most importantly ... ditch your preconceptions and the easy prescriptions that everyone gives you ... no two organizations are the same; one size solution does not fit all.  You must see reality [in your new assignment] as it really is, not as you want to see it.  &lt;em&gt;Put the cape and superhero costume back in the attic;&lt;/em&gt; you must work through others, make other people the superheros ... acquire a state of profound humility as you approach the new assignment.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Listen ... especially to the people who are &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; most effective at getting things done ... don't listen to the people who believe that they are the ones who do things.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Observe how the organization really works.  A PMO must step in to provide the foundation and structure for others to be successful ... [it might be a bad metaphor, but] remember that the strongest, most important block in the pyramid is not the decorative stone at the peak ... as the PMO stonemason, your priority is always shoring up the weakest stones, to maintain and push that peak higher.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Understand what needs to change and in what order that change should occur.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Develop your plan ... ask lots of questions like this one, but mostly think about serving others and delivering positive, measurable business results to your organization.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2011-05-11T17:44:34.373" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T17:44:34.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2161" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-10T21:33:39.647" Score="1" ViewCount="217" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a generic community forum, how would I best curate user-generated content in the form of a Q&amp;amp;A pair - into a knowledge base?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1199" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-05-14T19:42:26.197" LastActivityDate="2011-05-14T19:42:26.197" Title="How to transfer knowledge from QA into a Knowledge Base for the company?" Tags="&lt;knowledge-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2162" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2202" CreationDate="2011-05-10T21:56:37.150" Score="4" ViewCount="960" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a software development firm, we often make release plans to fit a particular need: be it a focus on feature development, or carving out a market niche, or just overall quality improvements to stay ahead of the competitors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When faced with the need to plan a year or more in advance, what sort of techniques can be applied to maximize alignment with the overall strategic goals while still remaining responsive to environment or market changes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="332" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T01:43:37.223" Title="What approaches exist for long-term planning and responding to change?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="452" CreationDate="2011-05-10T22:06:42.033" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recognizing the problem is the first step.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, get to the root cause ... ask yourself why, then ask why you do that and so on until you understand what it is that's the core issue driving you to micro-manage?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the time you need to let go, allow qualified people do their jobs and you need to work harder to make sure that they have whatever they need [just before they need it] to make them successful ... in other cases, although this is usually not the case, micro-managing is actually the appropriate thing to do [because somebody's not really mature enough or qualified for the assignment they've been given].  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recognizing the problem and then understanding the root cause will allow you to discern the difference.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T22:06:42.033" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2001" CreationDate="2011-05-10T22:13:54.013" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make sure business owners are on board and see a need for change – not just technology/delivery people. Change is hard and unless there is business value ($s) on the line any transition (Agile or otherwise) will stall and fail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1200" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T22:13:54.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2165" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2170" CreationDate="2011-05-10T22:18:19.523" Score="14" ViewCount="2585" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a software engineer working in a CMMI level 5 company with around 2 years and 5 months of experience. I am fascinated towards project management and analysis, for this I want to get some certification which will enhance my knowledge but I am not sure which certification should I do at this stage and what should I do first. Here is the list I found related to management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PMP&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ITIL&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prince2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;MSP&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;M O R&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;P3O&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;MoV&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CAPM&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could you please help me knowing which certification should I go first suitable to my experience? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1198" LastEditorUserId="1198" LastEditDate="2011-06-27T12:03:05.043" LastActivityDate="2016-04-12T12:40:06.423" Title="Career path in project management" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;certification&gt;&lt;capm&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2166" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2180" CreationDate="2011-05-10T22:20:24.667" Score="10" ViewCount="1242" Body="&lt;p&gt;When adopting Agile and moving away from waterfall what specifically changes in the day-to-day job duties of a PM? I'm interested especially in hearing from PMs who have made (or are in the process of making) the transition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1200" LastEditorUserId="1200" LastEditDate="2011-05-11T15:52:46.477" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T15:52:46.477" Title="How does a Project Manager's job change when transitioning from waterfall to Agile?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2166" CreationDate="2011-05-10T22:49:40.467" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, you may want to take a look at the very related question on &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/30/what-role-is-there-for-a-pm-on-an-agile-project&quot;&gt;a role of PM on agile projects&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the specific transition much depends on a type of projects you run. If you work on solution which you have full control over, like internal projects with no paying client outside the organization, you may end up in the point where there's no formal PM role in the project team. This would be classic example of implementing Scrum by-the-book. Often in such situations PM becomes a Scrum Master but it's a tricky solution as Scrum Master is more of a coach than a project leader. Another idea, and the better one, is to go toward Product Owner role although it's more about dealing with product than dealing with project. Either way Scrum distributes part of typical PM's duties over team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other type of projects is when you actually have some kind of external client and this client probably got used to run projects in more formal way. After all if the transition is a new thing for you it's probably a new thing for your clients as well. In this case the PM's most important role is to translate the way team works to the customer (the other way around too) and to fill any gaps there might be. These gaps would usually be more about formal side of project management as agile teams generally try to minimize it even though clients sometimes do expect quite a lot of formal artifacts. You can read more about such approach in &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1515/what-techniques-are-effective-for-scrum-teams-within-organizations-that-do-waterf&quot;&gt;the question about merging different PM approaches withing the same organization&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T22:49:40.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2168" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2176" CreationDate="2011-05-10T22:52:15.833" Score="14" ViewCount="2319" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our company is in the process of introducing elements from Scrum in our working process. As we have flexible work time (not completely sure how to say it in English. People can come to work when they want, in some limits, as long as they make their work hours), it's not easy to let the daily Scrum happen really early, as the method recommend it. My first idea would be to define a limit hour to let the Daily Scrum begins, even if everybody is not here, but to begin before this hour if everybody is here. How do you manage it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-15T17:26:36.370" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T17:26:36.370" Title="Daily Scrum and flexible work time" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2001" CreationDate="2011-05-10T23:06:05.567" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let go of your focus on Agile for Agile's sake ... forget about trying to do Agile as Agile should be done or to earn stars on some sort of Agile report card.  Agile methodology is only a tool ...  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on business results -- develop and communicate SMART goals in terms of business results -- use/re-shape/refine/re-engineer methodologies like Agile as your toolset to accelerate the delivery of business results.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you could turn &quot;successful adoption and transformation to Agile&quot; into some kind of specific, measurable, aggressive, realistic, timebound objective, it will still be a really dumb strategic objective because business results &lt;em&gt;pay the freight&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T23:06:05.567" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2165" CreationDate="2011-05-10T23:10:37.063" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;From your list, the CAPM is the most appropriate at this point if you're looking for something 'now'. This is assuming the firm you're with does not use the PRINCE2 methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your list:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMP - requires 3 years experience prior to submitting the application&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ITIL - not really pm focused, more 'service' as I understand it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PRINCE2 - specific methodology, although you can self-study for the Foundation test&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MSP - Managing Successful Programmes - program management, which is different than project management&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MoR - Management of Risk - Focused on Risk Management specifically&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P3O - again, program or portfolio management focused, not projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MoV - never heard of it [Edit] - just ran across this - Management of Value - focused on realization/capture of value on an organization-wide basis as opposed to project management specific. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CAPM - entry-level prior to the PMP, doesn't require as much experience&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll add one more option - look at the IPMA Level D exam. Similar to the CAPM, but in my opinion a more difficult exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastEditorUserId="921" LastEditDate="2011-06-02T22:10:07.567" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T22:10:07.567" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2165" CreationDate="2011-05-10T23:26:24.177" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;[Assuming that you can meet the experience requirements] you should work toward the certification that represents the body of knowledge that you find most immediately rewarding and beneficial for your anticipated assignments ... what kinds of things have you done well at, what do you really want to work on most?  A certification will help define what sort of things people will hire you to do -- the best job involves work that you excel at and find most satisfying.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all of these are pretty much equal to you ... what is probably best is to look to your current and immediate future customer, i.e. your employer(s) ... you need to ask the question in terms of how much they are willing to increase your salary if you earn one of these certifications ... all other things being equal, your employer would probably want you to get all of these certifications, but having your employer put a dollar-figure [or some form of tangible recognition] on that certification will tell you how much that certification is worth to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your employer doesn't want to compensate you, it might be time for you to have a conversation with a [knowledgeable] recruiter and ask that person to put market values on each of the certifications.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certifications for certifications sake are kind of silly ... over the course of a decade or so, it's easy to rack up far too many letters behind your name ... make sure you're working on what is really important to you and your customers [or employers].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T23:26:24.177" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2168" CreationDate="2011-05-11T00:05:26.127" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've run into this before, and seen it handled almost exactly how you describe. We pick a time, usually around 10AM when most people will be at work and we do the Scrum meeting then. If someone isn't there, we just go without them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you pick a time that corresponds well with the &quot;core hours&quot; of most of your team, you should be pretty safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="916" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T00:05:26.127" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2147" CreationDate="2011-05-11T00:59:41.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You get something sooner. Less = Quicker&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your developers are more focused. 1 thing to think about, 1 thing to ponder, 1 thing to get right at a time. The more fragmented your focus the more mistakes / errors you will have.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each small sprint provides the ability to adjust priorities. In business this is critical, if they are committed to a single path for too long, you will have people trying to break in and say &quot;can you just get my thing done on the side&quot; ... &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Selling it to business&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you really want to be locked in for a long time? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If client X jumps up and wants something new which will make you an additional $500,000, do you want to make them wait 2 weeks or 6 months?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Each feature has an ROI&lt;/strong&gt;, which is the time it saves someone over the old way of doing it by the number of people doing X. Using this you can show that releasing small things sooner will have an ROI starting in 2 weeks and continually paying off more and more with each sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The graph for the other case has &quot;nothing for 6 months&quot; then you start with the payoff at the high point, the saving is the difference between the 2 weeks and 6 months ... Plus the Risk involved in the 6 months is a much bigger gamble ... Haven't got a good ROI for it but discussions around risk usually have the desired result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="689" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T00:59:41.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2168" CreationDate="2011-05-11T03:31:19.903" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a dicipline thing - you need your scrum developers to have some sort of discipline. They are being paid to code after all. The scrum is a core part of the methodology and a part of how the PM keeps track of what is going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, before changing anything or getting heavy handed, check with HR (or the contracts directly) there will almost always be a clause about hours in the office. Use this as your starting point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;10am is not unrealistic as a scrum time; however, it does tend to interrupt the flow for people who get there early, so try for earlier if you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key thing is that &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; developers should be there. If you have one dev who starts late and thus is never at the scrum, he or she will always be behind. He/she won't get the benefit of the shared learning and will never really get Scrum as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1151" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-05-15T05:59:29.890" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T05:59:29.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2161" CreationDate="2011-05-11T03:38:06.987" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me start with a disclamer, this contains some assumtions!&#xA;* your forum has some sort of moderator&#xA;* your forum has some form of points system to reward good answers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;now, get a wiki of some sort set up and expand the same moderator/points system to wiki contributions (maybe even bias it so more points go to people putting in good wiki content)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;hopefuly that will kick things off &#xA;Have a look at wikipatters.org, in particular the wiki gardener pattern&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wikipatterns.org/display/wikipatterns/WikiGardener&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://wikipatterns.org/display/wikipatterns/WikiGardener&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;hopefully this will get you started&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1151" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T03:38:06.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2168" CreationDate="2011-05-11T04:59:53.103" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider the limits that are imposed on people's work hours. Most companies typically maintain &quot;core hours&quot; when all employees are expected to be present (barring exceptional circumstances). It would be a good idea to schedule scrum during those hours. I would suggest keeping it at the same time, even if everybody is present earlier, because doing so would establish a habit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There will still be days when someone's away due to vacation or an emergency, but that's okay. In a previous job, if someone was away for a day or working from home, they'd typically send out an email to the team with a brief update on the status of their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think even an afternoon scrum could be beneficial with some adjustment from &quot;here's what I did yesterday and will do today&quot; to &quot;here's what I did today and plan to do tomorrow&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="332" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T04:59:53.103" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2168" CreationDate="2011-05-11T05:02:38.117" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's critical that all developers are present for the SCRUM meeting and that absences are the exception rather than the rule.  Agile/SCRUM allows you to adapt to changes quickly and you can't do that if everyone is not participating.  That being said, you also need the discipline to start on time as to not waste anyone's time.  It may take a while, but teams usually get used to the SCRUM starting time as it becomes part of the culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1202" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T05:02:38.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2179" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2181" CreationDate="2011-05-11T05:48:02.123" Score="5" ViewCount="217" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to come up with a &quot;3x5 card risk board&quot; which is essentially a movable dry-erase board where 3x5 sticky cards can be posted by the team and moved/reviewed daily/weekly as needed.  (I use the 2-D grid of probability &amp;amp; impact for placement)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like a reasonable &lt;em&gt;minimum&lt;/em&gt; set of data for the cards so they are readable and contain just enough info to be useful.  I can follow up with the author/owner after the meeting to get details that I can put into the actual register, but people tend to only look at/use the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than Title, what would people suggest be a minimum set of data for the cards?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T10:50:57.690" Title="Risk Management - minimum data?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;risk&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2166" CreationDate="2011-05-11T06:15:41.567" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've made the transition and helped others make the transition as well (with varying degrees of success :-)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;High level changes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You will be more in a server role than a &quot;captain of the ship role&quot; (but you still have accountability and responsibility...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You will rapidly find your time administering things (e.g. tracking time sheets) goes down&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your cross-department and team communication (face to face) will increase dramatically&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You will focus less on status and more on problems and risks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You will spend much of your time talking to customers or Product Managers/Owners seeking involvement, clarification and information&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your comfort level will go way down until you and your team really trust each other&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of these are debatable.  I know many people who will not let go of lots of the &quot;old style&quot; administration of a project even though the team doesn't find value in it and Agile methods don't readily support it (Earned Value is a great example of this)&#xA;Also, there are Agile PM's who aren't that hands on with the team, so problem resolution and &quot;obstacle removal&quot; get pushed to other functions/people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifics of the day to day activities are difficult to generalize but... (many of the below assume Scrum is your Agile method)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You will attend a daily standup meeting with the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You will be sweating over the product backlog to make sure it is up to date&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You will spend some time looking at (and maintaining) the burn-up and burn-down charts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You will be reviewing retrospective notes and coming up with suggestions for the team on improving their process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You will be arranging customer review of the product being produced&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hopefully you will be sitting with the team and listening to their discussions and using your experience to help with personal and interpersonal issues &amp;amp; obstacles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ymmv!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T06:15:41.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2179" CreationDate="2011-05-11T06:17:13.440" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I like the idea of a risk board with the probability/impact axis. It can make the team more focused on the risks of the project and can create the desire to mitigate risks and thus pull them to the lower-left side of the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I would add the following to the risk cards:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A unique ID for each of the risks, that can be used to identify them in the risk register (just a running number)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk title, should be a short sentence describing just the event that could occur.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk owner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest of the details should be maintained in the risk register.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMO, if the team discusses the risks on a frequent basis, this level of detail is just enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="44" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T06:17:13.440" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2179" CreationDate="2011-05-11T10:24:32.543" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You will also need the course of action. You can use a simple code to keep the data on the card to a minimum. Use like M for mitigate, A for accept, etc. I'd also include a code to indicate if there is a contingency plan and resources in place.  Include estimated date of impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have available landscape, you can also indicate if this risk is associated with another risk or issue(s). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I'd add a stop light indicator to report its current health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T10:24:32.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2183" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2197" CreationDate="2011-05-11T10:42:19.810" Score="2" ViewCount="280" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my previous post, &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2125/remote-start-up-company-software-development&quot;&gt;Remote start up company software development&lt;/a&gt;. I have received a suggestion that XDSD will be useful in my case. The next question is how to do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="777" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T02:59:55.550" Title="eXtremely Distributed Software Development" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;learning&gt;&lt;distributed-team&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2184" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2222" CreationDate="2011-05-11T13:21:16.857" Score="2" ViewCount="170" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm about to start writing up a spreadsheet to describe some manual test steps and expected results. This will be sent to people to test the website get them to fill it in and then send it back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It occurs to me that this is something which could be done much better than excel with a fairly simple web app, but I haven't seen one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does such a thing exist, or is there a known way to manage tests with spreadsheets etc which is very simple negating the need for it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1204" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T05:33:30.257" Title="Tool to manage manual tests" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;&lt;quality&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2183" CreationDate="2011-05-11T13:32:09.517" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK there are a few things which will help with this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly you need a central source control system which can be accessed from anywhere. This along with some online documentation (which could be in the source control system) should vie a new team member enough information to get going. Githib, unfuddle, et al are great at this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll need clear channels of communication, I have worked with a distributed team which was constantly on a private irc channel. A lot of conversations can go on in here allowing people to read up on what has been said. Instant messenger should be discouraged in many cases as the information will be lost. If you can set up a bot to record what is said in the IRC channel for people who are not online even better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A daily 'stand up' is also very important, this should be done using voice (or video) calls, it allows for the team to understand what each other are up to and how they are feeling it is vital for team cohesiveness. People who are not present will start to be forgotten about. This may be tricky if you have many time zones but even if it is last thing in the day for some people and early morning for others a quick chance to talk really helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will also need online bug tracking but often the same tools which host the source can do this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1204" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T13:32:09.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2179" CreationDate="2011-05-11T15:35:18.940" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since it sounds like you're running an independent risk register and this board is only for team use and review/identification of risks, I'd forget the 2D grid and use just use a blank space. This will eliminate the focus on &quot;high probability/high impact&quot; risks, and keep everyone looking at them all. You could if you wanted order them according to severity or proximity, but the grid creates an unconscious focus on specifics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for information, I'd suggest using both sides of the card. The front side (visible to all) would be just the risk, and its impact. On the back I'd add the risk register code as Oren suggested, the M,A,T codes per David, the risk Owner, and the date the risk was identified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key here is that you don't want to clutter the cards, but you don't want to lose valuable information. So separate what you need from what you want the team focusing on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T15:35:18.940" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2187" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-11T15:38:55.397" Score="6" ViewCount="5538" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a small project I want to carry out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need an open source Project Tracker which could integrate with Subversion and has a Scrum oriented UI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to raise this as a client server on a windows server or similar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is probably more than one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any with this characteristics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Resuming:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decent Project tracking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum oriented UI&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Open Source (or useful as Free version)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SVN integration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Liftable on a win based server.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Bugtrackers and Project Trackers aren't the same, Project Trackers could contain a Bugtracker...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="823" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2014-04-17T10:46:37.413" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T10:46:37.413" Title="Open Source Agile Project tracker?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;open-source&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1035" CreationDate="2011-05-11T18:18:58.317" Score="0" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Employ radical constraints ... get rid of those nice-to-have requirements that nobody really thought through all that seriously ... go through your requirement specification again and ask, &quot;Is this really, really, REALLY necessary?&quot; ... use the Pareto principle to create innovation by REMOVING 5% of the features that cause 95% of the headaches.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attack thorny problems ... design out big headaches that no one can effectively overcome, take out the waste, frustration, nuisance factors ... change the things about your product or your development process that people don't use, don't like.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The best writing, like the best sculpture or film, is usually a matter of patient editing and diligently taking things away ... you have to genuinely, fanatically &lt;em&gt;love&lt;/em&gt; the product to do this; you have to &quot;sleep&quot; with it ... otherwise it's just butchering and hacking.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't Unnovate in an attempt to make it look like your innovating ... unnovation is about complexification, clumping more shiny crap on top of other shiny crap to get a really big pile of shiny, clumpy, automated unnovative crap. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T18:18:58.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1772" CreationDate="2011-05-11T18:47:51.170" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Act decisively&lt;/strong&gt; ... effective PMs don't &quot;shoot from the hip,&quot; but they must be &quot;deciders&quot; ...  &lt;strong&gt;time is of the essence.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have three choices ... they should be pursued in the following order: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As soon as possible ...convince the person to change behavior OR reach a shared understanding of why change is not going to happen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Modify the rule in a manner that allows you to achieve true consensus on the rules ... but NEVER &quot;take down a fence until you know why it was put up.&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get rid of the &lt;em&gt;impact&lt;/em&gt; of the rule-breaking person ... maybe the person stays on the project or in the organization somewhere else, but in a different role/capacity (e.g. the person is an &quot;adjunct resource&quot; or &quot;consultant&quot; to the project, but not recognized as a full member of the &quot;core team&quot;) ... getting rid of the impact is not necessarily getting rid of the person, but that might become an option that someone eventually exercises if the rule-breaking or lack of consideration for others becomes an established pattern. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your project is important, you do NOT have the choice of being patient, waiting or escalating this through endless bureaucratic wrangling ... situations like this hurt other team members, destroy the morale your project needs, negate chances for success on the entire project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2011-05-11T19:00:17.173" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T19:00:17.173" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2184" CreationDate="2011-05-11T20:21:45.997" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a shared spreadsheet is good enough for your needs, then I would simply use Google Docs or any other online collaborative tool allowing to share a spreadsheet between multiple editors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can break down your test cases to test steps in the spreadsheet's rows, have a column for the expected results and then additional columns for the actual results in various executions of the test plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using Google Docs' Spreadsheet you can have a team edit the same document without the need to merge the changes on each and every edit. It also provides real time collaboration and chat over the edit session, which is a cool way of collaborating on a document. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="44" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T20:21:45.997" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2191" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2245" CreationDate="2011-05-11T21:02:55.387" Score="9" ViewCount="1069" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have run into several teams who tell me that they no longer run iteration retrospectives: they were a waste of time and they weren't learning anything new. What is your answer to these teams? Should they just let go of the need to have retrospectives? If not, how do you convince them of the value of the retrospective?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1117" LastActivityDate="2020-07-19T06:59:20.820" Title="What are you doing with Agile teams who no longer run retrospectives?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2192" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-11T21:08:04.817" Score="3" ViewCount="532" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am really eager to hear different perspectives on team complacency about their Agile adoption. Is it the ScrumMaster's problem? The team's issue? The manager's fault? I can see so many complex webs here. I'd love to know what you think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1117" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2011-05-11T21:10:32.463" LastActivityDate="2011-05-16T19:58:34.863" Title="Who owns the issue of Agile team complacency?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2193" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-11T21:14:23.857" Score="4" ViewCount="781" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've listened to some David Snowden podcasts on complexity theory and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cynefin&lt;/a&gt; framework. It looks as though it could be powerful for guiding Agile adoptions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who has used Cynefin for this work? What guidance can you give me about strengths and weaknesses of applying the framework in an Agile rollout/adoption?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1117" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-05-15T05:13:51.193" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T20:57:31.840" Title="Who is using Cynefin for their Agile adoption?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2194" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-11T21:34:30.357" Score="0" ViewCount="3892" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our organization, we mainly use Use Case estimation for new use cases which is very clear and simple. However we sometimes deal with tasks that are not related to Use Cases or are UI related or sometimes we deal with maintenance tasks in legacy application that we do not have written Use Cases of. So we developed an in-house method using complexity points for these tasks. It simply categorizes tasks into scale from very simple to very complex according to a guideline and give every scale a size. We calculated a conversion coefficient to convert between UCP (use Case Points) and CP (complexity points) in case the project used both methods. In our organization the PM usually have technical background to do the estimation. S/he may consult the team if needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know more about other people experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What size estimation method(s) do you use/recommend (Use Case Point, Function Point, Class Point, ...) ? Or do you estimate effort directly?&#xA;Who does the estimation in your project (PM, Team, Estimation committee like in Delphi method, ...)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly please tell us about a situation where your method failed and why do you think this happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="681" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T16:21:25.410" Title="What estimation method do you use?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2011-05-15T15:16:53.050" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2193" CreationDate="2011-05-11T21:46:01.760" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have used this in Agile adoption. Here are a couple of anecdotes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An organization was looking to create a strategy for their Agile adoption. We used ritual dissent, an open source facilitation technique from Cognitive Edge, to help the executives and management create an overall strategy with specific objectives that they want to attain through the use of an Agile method and associated practices/techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Worked with another organization that was trying to figure out what the landscape of their projects were and where they could best leverage Agile. They wanted to figure out how to isolate a group and allow them freedom to implement Agile methods effectively. We used the Cynefin model to identify those that were towards simple, complicated, complex and also found 1 in chaos and another 2 in disorder domains. The complex projects seemed like a good fit. Many folks don't know that there are more pieces of the Cynefin model as you zoom into the boundaries between domains and that can provide more guidance to those trying to understand what approaches will tend to be more effective in context. For those that are truly complex the use of &quot;probe, sense, and respond&quot; or &quot;inspect and adapt&quot; is a better fit than &quot;analyze, sense, and respond&quot; which is better for complicated issues.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those are just a couple. We are huge advocates for Cynefin and the open source techniques they provide. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1215" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-05-15T05:15:56.060" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T05:15:56.060" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2187" CreationDate="2011-05-12T02:47:37.697" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://trac.edgewall.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trac&lt;/a&gt; is an obvious choice. We provide its &quot;cloud&quot; installation in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fazend.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fazend.com&lt;/a&gt; for free, together with Subversion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T02:47:37.697" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2183" CreationDate="2011-05-12T02:59:55.550" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xdsd.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;XDSD&lt;/a&gt; site explains, the methodology helps you to achieve high quality of developed software, when all team members are located remotely, without any central office. Actually, this is how the majority of open source products are being developed. There are four principles of XDSD:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Everyone gets paid for verified deliverables&lt;/strong&gt;. The most difficult to achieve, especially when talking about management and architecture/design tasks. How exactly you can achieve this in your project depends on the tools you have in hands and your management skills.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Defects are planned and don't block delivery&lt;/strong&gt;. Instead of &quot;delivering bug-free software&quot; (which is a big mistake in software development) you should plan how many bugs your product will have, discover them all, and fix them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Quality-of-code metrics are CI gate conditions&lt;/strong&gt;. Quality control has to be pro-active, instead of re-active. You should technically (!) disable an ability to add low quality code to the repository. How exactly you can do this - depends on available tools and instruments.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;VCS commits to trunk are prohibited&lt;/strong&gt;. Main stream of source code in repository (called &lt;code&gt;trunk&lt;/code&gt;) should be in read-only mode for everybody, except one person, who is responsible for quality control.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a strong believe that these principles lead to higher quality, when the team is &quot;extremely distributed&quot;. There is not enough experimental data so far to prove the concept. The methodology is still in R&amp;amp;D phase, your contribution will be very  welcome (team@xdsd.org).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T02:59:55.550" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2162" CreationDate="2011-05-12T04:28:24.850" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the simplest answer to your question is to keep delivery iterations as short as possible and keep as little work as possible &quot;in progress&quot;  If you start a 6 week release (six, 1-week iterations) then the chance of a big change derailing the project is smaller than a 6 month release with 4 week iterations.  (I'm assuming Agile development based on the RallyOn11 tag...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you might consider making the risks you are concerned about more visible.  I like a 2-D risk chart with Impact and Probability as the axes.  Brainstorm a few of the risks in these areas using the format {cause}, {effect}; {impact}.  (A customer might release Feature A before Feb, this will cause a re-prioritization of the backlog with the impact that we might sacrifice other features for the release) This won't solve the problem but will help form the thinking and discussion around planning for the events.  If a risk scores high enough it might not be wise to accept the risk.  In the example, you might want to plan the project as if the competitor were releasing in Feb.  Or, maybe other features are sacrificed or &quot;cut down&quot; to help mitigate the risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other side of your question, maximizing alignment with strategic goals might be achieved by &quot;coding/labeling/coloring&quot; your requirements/User Stories according to a taxonomy (like: Bug fixes, Feature Enhancements, Competitive Response, Strategic Direction)  This will help show the balance of your project and help communicate when/how these get delivered (and also show impact if Bug Fixes keep taking a back seat to Strategic Direction).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your team can also help by restructuring implementation based on the above info.  Never underestimate a team of engineers' ability to find a solution to optimize the parameters of the project!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!  Feel free to ask follow up questions, I'm still not 100% I answered your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T04:28:24.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2191" CreationDate="2011-05-12T05:07:37.403" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you have a larger problem in that you aren't getting the right things out of the retrospectives. Pushing them to run retrospectives isn't going to help, providing a real reason to do them will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have metrics you can collect to show the imprvoement made by the retrospective? Number of features implemented, number blockers encountered ... somthing. If you have a graph that is trending the right direction, then they can't help but see the benefit.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you ensure the feedback is address from the retrospectives? I would be fed up if 5 times in a row I said &quot;we need to do x&quot; and nothing ever happened as a result ... conversely if I said &quot;this thing sucked&quot; and a sprint later we were doing something different ... then I would look for other things that sucked as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my answer to the teams would be &quot;OK, so the current methodology sucks, fine, how can we improve it? here are some ideas, what would you like to see coming out&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also qualify it by saying done properly the retrospectives can help all of us do better in our jobs, help us learn more and help us keep our jobs against the competition who is continually improving against us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually for developers I would say that retrospectives help us improve which means we can give you nore work you enjoy doing rather than having to constantly fix stuff that is broken and chase your tail around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="689" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T05:07:37.403" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2192" CreationDate="2011-05-12T06:50:10.770" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Literally&lt;/strong&gt;, it's the team's problem and the ScrumMaster's issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The complacency is the effect, not the cause, therefore no particular person owns the effect, but, for sure, there is an owner for each of the causes. &lt;strong&gt;Focus on finding the causes&lt;/strong&gt; and the owners should become clearly visible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum Master is the owner of each impediment and he owns the part about solving the issue. On the other hand, SM is not directly capable of solving every issue. Some may be solved by the team itself, some by the management and some by someone out of the loop, so big part of such issue is not owned by SM. Her job is to make others solve such impediments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the complex connections, it is difficult to judge without making guessed assumptions, so I will only serve some questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the complacency the impediment? Why do you consider it so? Are there any drawbacks already?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the team overconfident? Have you talked about it freely? Have you described them your point of view on Agile adoption? Why did they ignore it? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is more exaggerated? Is it your concern or their complacency?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have you tried making the workshops about it? Did you run some team games to simulate and reveal the problems?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastEditorUserId="927" LastEditDate="2011-05-13T05:20:53.417" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T05:20:53.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2187" CreationDate="2011-05-12T09:59:10.093" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redmine.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Redmine&lt;/a&gt; works too. It has built-in calendar, gantt chart, wiki, news, files, documents modules that you can take advantage of. It integrates well with version control systems such as git, Subversion, CVS, etc. This is free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="777" LastEditorUserId="777" LastEditDate="2011-05-12T10:04:19.573" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T10:04:19.573" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2162" CreationDate="2011-05-12T12:57:26.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have adopted a &lt;strong&gt;roadmap&lt;/strong&gt; approach with a specific '&lt;strong&gt;bandwith&lt;/strong&gt;' percentage for each type of work. The overal capacity bandwith is known (fixed number of FTE) and is divided into three parts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;60% of available capacity is used for &lt;strong&gt;roadmap development&lt;/strong&gt;: the wishlist of new modules and features, rewrites of older modules, etc. for the coming two years. High-level roadmap-items have a breakdown into work packages, which are estimated (most likely - worst case). So we can calculate more or less what we can accomplish each year with the 60% bandwith.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;20% is used for maintenance work, consultant support and technical 3rd line &lt;strong&gt;support&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The remaining 20% is '&lt;strong&gt;flexible&lt;/strong&gt;' in the sense that this is used for small enhancements based upon customer requests or responding to market demands.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All development and support is managed with scrum in &lt;strong&gt;2 week sprints&lt;/strong&gt;. The 'flexible' part is determined during sprint planning by the product manager depending upon the priority of items in this particular backlog. Percentages are monitored each sprint, so if the situation arrises that there was more support or more 'flexible' stuff done, that we can correct this in the next sprint(s), so that we do not loose track of our yearly goals (we got off track a few times in the past when we didn't monitor the 'bandwith' very well). While still being able to respond quickly to customer or market demands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Naturally, when the situation arises, we can still adapt our roadmap plans to respond to changing market conditions. But we try at least not to change the yearly plan. This gives stability and focus to the dev team and sales teams and allows us to develop against strategic objectives and at the same time the 'flexible' bandwith allows us to service our customers better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T12:57:26.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2194" CreationDate="2011-05-12T14:47:58.313" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes you just don't know how long is it going to take, or don't know in some part.&#xA;Sometimes you think you know and your devs have other knowledge different than the one you have (sometimes more, sometimes less).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best estimate you get by &lt;strong&gt;analyzing first you as a PM and without giving the team information&lt;/strong&gt; about your numbers, &lt;strong&gt;ask for a meeting with the team to tell you their estimates&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you and them differ a lot from what you thought it would take, resolve your doubts asking how they came to those values​​. And &lt;strong&gt;try to establish a reasonable point&lt;/strong&gt; given that either you or them may have forgotten something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;From the Devs&lt;/strong&gt;, you require them to tell you their time estimates considering also what they have as an &lt;em&gt;unexplored territory&lt;/em&gt;. (Thing that sometimes devs &lt;strong&gt;tend to obviate&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's why I've created my own &lt;strong&gt;Developer's Rules of thumb&lt;/strong&gt;. These estimates are not imperative, but are a good idea to start managing estimates, perform estimations, and assembly tasks in the medium and long-term project. These are my rules of thumb:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the task is part of known duration&#xA;and estimated duration (ie, parts&#xA;that are &lt;strong&gt;known&lt;/strong&gt; as going to take, and&#xA;parts where the team is almost &lt;strong&gt;guessing&lt;/strong&gt;) the&#xA;estimate should be estimated as if it&#xA;were &lt;strong&gt;2 different subtasks&lt;/strong&gt; (This does&#xA;not mean create a new task, but&#xA;estimating them separately and add up&#xA;the estimates.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the subtask is &lt;strong&gt;guessed&lt;/strong&gt; duration&#xA;(unknown), estimate with a&#xA;mattress that is &lt;strong&gt;50% to 100%&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the subtask &lt;strong&gt;guessed&lt;/strong&gt; is &lt;strong&gt;less than half an&#xA;hour&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;triple&lt;/strong&gt; the estimate (ie, 10min&#xA;-&gt; 30min).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the subtask &lt;strong&gt;guessed&lt;/strong&gt; is &lt;strong&gt;less than 6 hours&lt;/strong&gt;,&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;50%&lt;/strong&gt; estimate mattress (ie, 2h -&gt; 3h).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the subtask &lt;strong&gt;guessed&lt;/strong&gt; is &lt;strong&gt;less than 2 days&lt;/strong&gt;,&#xA;estimate &lt;strong&gt;30%-35%&lt;/strong&gt; of the mattress&#xA;(ie, 3d -&gt; 4d). &lt;strong&gt;Otherwise 20%&lt;/strong&gt; of&#xA;mattress.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the task has &lt;strong&gt;over three days of work&lt;/strong&gt;,&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;break it&lt;/strong&gt; up into &lt;strong&gt;2 tasks&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those may sound a little excessive, but I assure you they are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I don't know if in English you call it mattress to the &quot;extra time&quot;, English is not my native lang. Sorry for that.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not remember, that this estimation method failed by far. Once it happened that one of the developers was a junior and came to a point where not only made ​​a mess in the code (complicating the next guy who would have a task) but also could not solve a certain task, which delayed the delivery, since in what was working was one the main items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="823" LastEditorUserId="823" LastEditDate="2011-05-12T14:57:44.067" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T14:57:44.067" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2204" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-12T14:53:47.227" Score="2" ViewCount="1040" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not to be confused with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/30&quot;&gt;What role is there for a PM on an Agile project?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2166&quot;&gt;How does a Project Manager&amp;#39;s job change when transitioning from waterfall to Agile?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an agile process, where should PMs stand? What exactly is their Role? Should there be PMs in agile in the first place? Or Should they be replaced by a PO (Product Owner), or -may be- a Scrum Master?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That's a question that really&#xA;confuses me a lot.. I can't give a&#xA;definite answer.. Should they replace&#xA;POs.. Hmm. I guess not.. On one hand,&#xA;a PO should be the one directing the&#xA;project, knowing what the customer&#xA;want.. But still, a PO -probably-&#xA;should have some technical&#xA;background.. So according to my&#xA;answer to the previous question, PMs&#xA;can't replace POs..&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the other hand, Replacing a Scrum&#xA;Master, is a bit too far for PMs,&#xA;Scrum Master are supposed to be in&#xA;favor of the development team, ie a&#xA;facilitator &amp;amp; protector for the dev&#xA;team; &amp;amp; PMs are notorious of failing&#xA;to do so.. :D&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another option -that just came to me&#xA;right now- is PMs replacing customer&#xA;in environments where it's difficult&#xA;to involve the customer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1113" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2020-01-30T10:23:30.877" Title="In an agile process, should there be PMs in agile in the first place? Or Should they be replaced by a PO (Product Owner), or -may be- a Scrum Master?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;roles&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2194" CreationDate="2011-05-12T16:21:25.410" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the question is broad there is a broad answer. Start with Steve McConnell's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0735605351&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. Once you get some &quot;academic&quot; background in estimating read more about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COCOMO&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;COCOMO&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cosmicon.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;COSMIC&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T16:21:25.410" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2087" CreationDate="2011-05-12T17:44:09.457" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communicate the situation to the client A (most likely through account or seniors)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Expand the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multitask&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our (software development) company we successfuly exploit (2) and (3).  Given we don't promise certain time committment per day/week, we have that option.  On the other hand, we communicate expected delivery date, which puts considerable pressure on our process and team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="911" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T17:44:09.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2204" CreationDate="2011-05-12T18:12:45.770" Score="5" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It depends on what is agile in your company's workflow and what is not. Probably the most common combination is agile product development surrounded by non-agile workflow. In such setup &lt;strong&gt;PM's role is required i.e. to start/initiate, manage, control, report and finalize project&lt;/strong&gt;. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.borselaer.org/index.php/2010/03/whitebook-prince2-combined-with-scrum/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;see whitepaper&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The team empowerment and &lt;strong&gt;agile process makes much of the PM's authority distribute across the team.&lt;/strong&gt; Some authority goes to PO's and some to team members. It's described in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2166&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; you already provided. Nevertheless, PM can be very important as a Chief PO who represents business in the agile process. Furthermore, Scrum Master usually suffers from low authority (being PM brings role conflict as you stated), so PM is the one who can help with management and motivation issues. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are many teams whose work depends on others' work. While PO's represent parties who benefit from product (like customers or sponsors), &lt;strong&gt;PM can be responsible for contacts with parties which team depends on&lt;/strong&gt; (for example when it involves outsourcing or work with suppliers).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The problem can arise in small companies where existence of PM, PO and SM would be probably too much for a single team, so some roles must be shared. If I had to choose I would left the PO alone (she is already overloaded with work) and try to marriage PM role with ScrumMaster's (teams on the early stage of agile adoption would benefit from having SM who performs PM functions, while mature agile teams would more likely benefit from having PM who also acts as SM). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T19:15:02.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2208" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-12T20:17:29.250" Score="0" ViewCount="118" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been having this question for quite sometime: &#xA;How much do companies need or should value training, especially in an IT Company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should there be training for everything?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does everyone feel training is important in an IT organization?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="200" LastEditorUserId="200" LastEditDate="2011-05-17T08:49:53.657" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T17:35:31.520" Title="How much do you value training in a company especially IT Business" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;training&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1397" CreationDate="2011-05-12T20:44:52.243" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've managed about a dozen projects over the years that have used Agile (and its forerunner - RAD) with offshore developers. It is hard work!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few of the things that I would look to address include ... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First - common method. Don't let the offshore team use their own variant of Agile. Invest time and effort making sure everyone is calling the same things by the same name;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second - put the right people in the right place. A core design team may be better placed onshore with the grunt work being done offshore. It might also be an idea to bring the offshore team onshore for a week or so at the early stages of the project so they can get to know the business and the people they're working with. Don't underestimate this;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third -communicate clearly. Language barriers, misunderstanding, odd translations can all plague a project and limit its ability to deliver;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourth - and I think is pretty key - get someone offshore to act as a local Project Manager. They need to be ontop of things over there - but they shouldn't be making decisions, just ensuring that the team is working well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've covered this off in more detail in a white paper on managing Offshore Agile projects. You can download it &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dalmenyclose.com/OffshoreAgile&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;from DalmenyClose.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Managing Offshore projects is a huge amount of fun and very rewarding. You just need to keep your wits about you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1222" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T20:44:52.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2184" CreationDate="2011-05-12T20:56:12.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This kind of thing should be easy to do with a wiki.  Build a page with links to your manual tests, and build your manual tests.  On the links page, you can categorize and sequence the tests as desired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One problem I frequently see in manual tests is specifying fixed dates.  Generally you need a processs to specify appropriate dates to use when the test is run.  You can used the wiki to document your process for writing and running manual test plans.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want people to be able to easily send in results, you may want to use a wiki with forms capability.  These can be used to capture the results in the wiki, or forward them to an appropriate application.  You may also want to provide a link to your bug tracking software. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-05-15T05:33:30.257" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T05:33:30.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2208" CreationDate="2011-05-12T21:03:42.843" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a group of people in an organization is required to build up knowledge around a certain subject, a dilemma often arises - whether a training would be the most effective approach or books/manuals reading would be enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it really depends on the subject. The most effective approach, when learning technical areas, is a combination of both. My past experience shows that starting with reading overview materials, then arranging a training and then getting into more comprehensive books reading is quite effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage of having a training is that a subject matter expert is available for the team to learn the terminology, develop a common ground around the subject, and most importantly - be there for the team to answer questions. The latter is harder when you build your knowledge only on reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other types of subjects, such as soft skills related subjects, where training is required because it contains exercises and workshops that you cannot replace with reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="44" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T21:03:42.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2212" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2221" CreationDate="2011-05-13T00:48:33.623" Score="15" ViewCount="396" Body="&lt;p&gt;During a recent open session at RallyON 2011 we talked about paradoxes in Agile. One of the items that came up during the conversation is when a high-performing team becomes so well greased that all the &quot;agile-ness&quot; has been sucked from the process. When introducing NEW change to the well-oiled Scrum team, they balk because things are going so well...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A way to keep learning going, we talked briefly about &quot;gameification of work&quot; in an Agile team. Has anyone done this before? What are ways to keep an Agile team fresh?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1124" LastEditorUserId="696" LastEditDate="2011-05-15T18:04:48.917" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T21:03:05.453" Title="Gameification - How would you gameify work in an Agile team?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2208" CreationDate="2011-05-13T01:07:54.540" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Training is fundamental to make sure everyone is on the same page in a service organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people need technical training, others training on the specific processes that their job requires.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Training also encompasses learning the &quot;soft&quot; skills of an organization like its culture or attitude towards creativity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T01:07:54.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2192" CreationDate="2011-05-13T01:41:11.737" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can't solve it by designing the right system. It is about people, more often then not. Each case has to be approached and understood individually so you can work with the people involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adoption of a new process, and particularly adoption within an existing process structure, is highly individualized by each organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you indicated in your question - there are many complex webs here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spend time learning and understanding the dynamics at work in each individual case. This is not so much a &quot;systems&quot; issue as a rich and complex &quot;human nature&quot; question.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are techniques you can use to encourage your desired behaviors, use them. But it is rarely the case that one size fits all. (You have to get to know the people and place.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T01:41:11.737" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2162" CreationDate="2011-05-13T01:43:37.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take a look at rolling-wave planning, from both a project perspective and a portfolio perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This post on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vertabase.com/blog/and-because-a-developer-is-not-a-doctor/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;rolling-wave for development&lt;/a&gt; might be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T01:43:37.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-05-13T02:08:18.840" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0143118447&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Difficult Conversations&lt;/a&gt; by Stone, Patton, Heen and Fisher&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not a PM book per se, but is a fantastic resource for the most important of PM skills, communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T02:08:18.840" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-05-13T02:08:18.840" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2161" CreationDate="2011-05-13T02:44:19.043" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may not be the answer you are looking for, but based on my experience, the technical details of the &lt;strong&gt;tools&lt;/strong&gt; are of minor importance. Moving from basic exchange of knowledge to a full Knowledge Base depends on the writing skill of people involved. I've used .NET custom apps, SharePoint Publishing, an automatic tracking-ticket-to-KB tool and the quality of the tool had no correlation with success of the KB.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get everyone in rough agreement on minimum quality of the content. This is much more important if the KB is supposed to link with other systems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get everyone in rough agreement on the publishing process (open wiki, pre-publishing technical review, everyone can publish, only a small group of editors can publish, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then start looking for tools that match your needs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T02:44:19.043" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-05-13T02:59:18.547" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1932735186&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMP Exam Prep, Sixth Edition: Rita's Course in a Book for Passing the PMP Exam &lt;/a&gt;, by Rita Mulcahy. It's the best you can find about project management, after PMBOK itself, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T02:59:18.547" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-05-13T02:59:18.547" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2208" CreationDate="2011-05-13T03:00:35.303" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't remember where I first read this (it has been a while) and I wish I could find the original so I could do an exact quote, but here is a rough paraphrase:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Training has costs&lt;/strong&gt;: costs in cash, opportunity costs from the time spent, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Training has risks&lt;/strong&gt;: risks of people leaving after gaining training, risks of people slowing down as they try new things, risks of new &lt;em&gt;gold plating&lt;/em&gt; after people learn new things, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Training has benefits&lt;/strong&gt;: increased efficiencies, better quality, more satisfied employees, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The company should pay for all costs of training when the benefits &lt;strong&gt;clearly&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;emphatically&lt;/strong&gt; outweigh the costs and the potential risks. For example, sending technical sales people to classes about the products that they sell (very low risks, probably low costs, and likely good benefits).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The company should subsidize cost of training when the benefits &lt;strong&gt;appear&lt;/strong&gt; to outweigh the costs and potential risks. For example, sending developers to classes about a new version of the IDE they use every day (some costs, some risk, and maybe some benefits).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The company should not subsidize training when the benefits appear to be &lt;strong&gt;less&lt;/strong&gt; than the costs and potential risks. For example, sending a junior developer to classes about a technology that is not currently in use at the company and not planned to be used in the next 12-18 months (some costs, some risks, and low benefit).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T03:00:35.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-05-13T08:55:43.043" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey by Kenneth Blanchard -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0007116985&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.co.uk/One-Minute-Manager-Meets-Monkey/dp/0007116985&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1136" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T08:55:43.043" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-05-13T08:55:43.043" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2212" CreationDate="2011-05-13T09:57:35.667" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A while ago I asked &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1907/project-gamification-is-it-worth-a-try&quot;&gt;a quite related question&lt;/a&gt;. I received small but worthy feedback and also an overall feeling that maybe there is nobody here who actually tried it (or there is a silent one). So I am glad you asked &quot;how would I...&quot;, not &quot;how did I..&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make a list of things you want to achieve&lt;/strong&gt;. What does it mean to keep the team &quot;fresh&quot;? If there is practice or behaviour you want your team to introduce (or keep using), put it on the list. In order to bring it to mind, you can think of your process and every activity being taken. It helps to remind what are your thoughts about it (for example: daily meeting and what you want to change about it).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make a list of rules or &quot;boundary conditions&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;. For example: &quot;&lt;em&gt;achievements should be clearly visible to anyone&lt;/em&gt;&quot; or &quot;&lt;em&gt;gamification should not make the work worse for people who do not feel they like to participate&lt;/em&gt;&quot; or &quot;&lt;em&gt;game elements should be interesting even for new team members&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. Remember about the rules and stick to them while designing the concept. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Consult the idea with the teams&lt;/strong&gt;. They will probably come with new ideas for things they want to achieve (#1) and rules (#2). You can also get the feedback about your ideas and concepts (badges, XP's, levels, rewards etc.) that are already on your mind after creating #1 and #2.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Design the solution&lt;/strong&gt;. Yeah, I know, it is easy to say. But it's too complex problem to describe it here. It's probably too complex even for a book, and yes, I don't fully get it either. It's not much, but here are some links: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O1gNVeaE4g&amp;amp;feature=player_embedded&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gabe Zichermann talk&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/doc/45179834/SGFI-Fall-2010-Dec-7-Product-Gamification-Zichermann&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;presentation he shows&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://gamification.org/w/index.php?title=Encyclopedia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;much more resources&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Try to hack the system&lt;/strong&gt;. People like to take shortcuts and like to make achievements. The question is what will happen when they try to maximize their XP and will think only about game achievements not the real life ones. Ask the team how would they hack the system? Make necessary modifications and you are ready to try it...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's my vision on how to make gamification work (very short version), although I am not sure if it helps keep your teams &quot;fresh&quot;. There are many hidden pits one can fall into, as successful game design isn't easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T09:57:35.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2184" CreationDate="2011-05-13T10:27:53.050" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;if your looking for a bit more than a spreadsheet and don't mind the cost of open source software, give TestLink a try - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.teamst.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.teamst.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use it quite successfully however the UI could do with some work so you often to hunt around for what you are looking to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It handles test with multiple steps and expected results for each, multiple versions of each test so you can evolve them over time and multiple project stages so tests can be written in advance of development but testers don't get distracted by tests that arn't in the current release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1151" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T10:27:53.050" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2223" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2231" CreationDate="2011-05-13T12:04:54.600" Score="15" ViewCount="735" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am expecting to host my first job interview soon. We received lots of CVs for a PHP Programmer, and the best one that fits our needs was invited to the interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue for me is that this is the first one, and I need to prepare carefully as my decision will basically form the final decision for this applicant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I decided to take the other PHP Programmer working with us, who is really experienced, and asked him to prepare 3 simple tasks to test his skills. Regarding the technical point of view, he will help me with the decision. My goal is to decide if he has the right personality; he will work remotely (not in the office) so I need to know the following answers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If he will work with us 8 hours everyday (good self-discipline)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the communication via e-mails, phone and messengers will be effective&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If he can work well with the designer (he mentioned in his CV that his previous website(s) was designed by himself)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If he is fine to work with either Agile or Waterfall (whatever is necessary)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If he is solution oriented, not only a programmer that follows instructions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like mentioned, from the technical side, the other programmer will help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would highly appreciate every idea - thank you in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1136" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-05-14T19:47:11.327" LastActivityDate="2017-02-16T09:49:03.603" Title="Job Interview - how to recognize the right personality?" Tags="&lt;human-resources&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2223" CreationDate="2011-05-13T12:24:20.003" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, let me refer to the CV filtering process, or the expected funnel of candidates in the various stages of the recruitment process. You said that out of all the CVs you received, you picked only one and invited him for an interview. From my experience, and it really depends on what you're looking for, the percent of the candidates that passed interviews out of all the candidates I invited was around 5-10%. Now, out of all the CV's I received I usually invited only 20% for interviews. These are very rough numbers, but what I'm trying to say is that you shouldn't expect to find &quot;the one&quot; by picking a single CV out of the pool. If you're not experienced with interview yet, invite some more, exercise and build-up your &quot;senses&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, I'd recommend that if possible, join a veteran interviewer for an interview as a spectator. You'll pick some tools and ideas on the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, I recommend reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing&lt;/a&gt; by Joel Spolsky. It's an interesting read and you'll get some ideas around how to approach this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, for some tips for your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the candidate is supposed to work remotely, conduct a phone interview and see how is his verbal communication, how can he receive requirements, handle them and communicate back the results, how he asks questions and clarifications.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have some correspondence with him over email to see how is his written communication skills.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the interview ask what he loves about his jobs and what are the main challenges. Try to listen to what he says as well as what he doesn't say.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask for references that could talk about his past experience and performance in similar scenarios you're expecting him to work in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's much more but I hope this helps for starters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="44" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T12:24:20.003" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2223" CreationDate="2011-05-13T12:58:03.237" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;CV review and the interview process are horribly unreliable.  As an interviewer, you come to the table with a host of biases and prejudices through which you will interpret how the interviewee presents and how he answers your questions.  Most likely, there is very little correlation between your interpretation and his/her future performance.  Studies have shown that the interview process yields only a bit better than 50% favorable results.  That is a coin toss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, studies have shown that there is usually a single criterion that is the best indicator and that other criteria we usually attach offer little assistance in our prediction of future success.  Find that single criterion that best meets your job requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be suspect of some typical biases that we all have: how someone dresses, introverts versus extraverts, stereotypes, etc.  Consider some unique biases that you have and truly ask yourself if your belief is grounded in reality.  Start with 'no' because that is likely the true answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some good tips in the article Oren suggested.  I personally like the multiple interviews by several peers as well as allotting more than an hour to really get to know the candidate.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best thing you can do is check your biases at the door the best you can.  If you have a belief that you have a talent of really objectively assessing someone or something, you likely are poor at it.  The more in touch you are of your prejudices, the more you know it is super hard to control and there is a lot going on outside of our conscience.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And accept the fact that you have a 50% chance of getting it wrong and your best efforts, including following good advice from that article and others, will only up your chances a few points at best.  The interview process is simply one of the worst indicators we have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T12:58:03.237" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2226" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2238" CreationDate="2011-05-13T14:48:48.020" Score="3" ViewCount="862" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several developers and I were recently added to a waterfall project. We were told that the project was almost done but needed a few extra coders to help finish it up (that's the first mistake).  We were all assigned different modules to work on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This phase of the project became more agile in that we were doing nightly builds and deployments to a test environment and the qa team was actively testing and reporting bugs. Occasionally our regression tests on the new modules would fail - stuff that used to work no longer worked.  We discovered that there were design changes being made that only involved the developer working on the module and the architect and PM.  The problem was that this affected the modules of other developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The developers got frustrated with one another, asking that they be informed of design changes, because it may have an impact on their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to communicate design decisions that may be made in a hallway conversation or an email between a few parties.  Should there be a formal process for handling design changes, even if they are extremely minor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1228" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T21:14:54.277" Title="How should design changes be communicated in a waterfall/agile hybrid project during the implementation phase?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2226" CreationDate="2011-05-13T15:12:20.200" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may just be the way you've worded it, but I'd argue that the design changes aren't minor if they're breaking the modules of the other developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to go completely formal and review every change beforehand, then your developers need to have enough knowledge of the overall design to assess the impact of any changes and involve the other teams as appropriate. You mention architects - they should be ideally placed to do this so why isn't that happening?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also suggest some form of central change log (your SCM tool may give you this) so that if breaking changes do still occur, you've got more chance of understanding how they came about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if there are few areas of the system that can be amended without affecting others then you might have a larger design issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1230" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T15:12:20.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2226" CreationDate="2011-05-13T15:20:54.553" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend building in an extra cycle&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to review design changes, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;integrate them into the source code repository (like SVN) and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;resolve code conflicts &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;before moving ahead with other design or development changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could be its own milestone (complete design) or built into every iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T15:20:54.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="955" CreationDate="2011-05-13T19:08:35.647" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're willing to pay for a commercial tool, my team is using &lt;a href=&quot;http://versionone.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;VersionOne&lt;/a&gt; to good effect.  We also looked at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rallydev.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;RallyDev&lt;/a&gt;.  It was pretty close and VersionOne just seemed like it fit our process better.  Both fine tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1234" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T19:08:35.647" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-05-13T19:08:35.647" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="955" CreationDate="2011-05-13T19:37:33.987" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several good project management solutions on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Apps Marketplace&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many are free and can be upgraded to paid versions with more features. I've tried three of these apps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mavenlink.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mavenlink&lt;/a&gt; - this is a very comprehensive project management app that supports collaboration with colleagues and clients alike.  Good task and milestone management and invoicing capabilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paymo - it's best features are the time tracking and invoicing and estimates. Not as comprehensive as Mavenlink.  The UI isn't that great. Its good for small projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Harvest - this is ok too but is more for just time tracking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1228" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T19:37:33.987" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-05-13T19:37:33.987" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2223" CreationDate="2011-05-14T00:11:15.040" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interviews are about as effective as flipping a coin. Realizing this, many companies use recruiting companies to try to filter things down, although this is expensive for everyone involved. To get away from this dilemma, many companies are moving towards &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1564148696&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;competency based interviews&lt;/a&gt;&quot; instead of the trivia based questions (such as &lt;em&gt;&quot;Q: from what object are all .NET objects derived? A: system.object.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://sharepoint.sandiego.edu/hr/Employment/CompetencyInterview.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sample 1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pipsc.ca/portal/page/portal/website/memberservices/representation/classification/tb/cs/wd/appldev/JCP%20GNCS020004%20v1.0.en.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sample for a programming position&lt;/a&gt; Oddly enough, nowhere in that sample do they try to list &quot;programming&quot; as a competency, but then I don't think because the vast majority of interviewers couldn't identify what one looks like (uh, t-shirt and Mt Dew addiction?).   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll take some of your issues and come up with some questions you might try:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;if he is fine to work with either Agile or Waterfall (whatever is necessary)&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tell me about when you worked in an agile environment... Sometimes we have to use waterfall, tell me about when you worked with waterfall... Some follow up questions should be done to get some more details. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;if he will work with us 8 hours everyday (good self-discipline)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What other jobs have you worked remotely on? Describe your typical day telecommuting?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;if the communication via e-mails, phone and messengers will be effective&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What IM clients do you use?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What were the difficulties you encountered? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you handle people who want to talk on the phone and not use email (we had exactly this problem with a remote worker who was email oriented [long detailed emails that were long] asking questions of a guy who was verbal oriented [he hated email and you could never get him to answer it]) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look for answers that indicate that they actually did it, such as &quot;well, a couple guys would never answer their phones, or respond to email, so I...&quot; or have an idea what's going to happen. If all your workers have 2000 unanswered emails in their inboxes (that verbal-oriented guy usually had that many), you'll be sorry if you hire an email oriented person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;if he is solution oriented, not only a programmer that follows instructions&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll leave you with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;smart and gets things done&lt;/a&gt; versus &lt;a href=&quot;http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/06/done-and-gets-things-smart.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;done and gets things smart&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-05-14T19:54:47.567" LastActivityDate="2011-05-14T19:54:47.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2226" CreationDate="2011-05-14T15:47:33.313" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Document your design decisions by means of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_testing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;unit tests&lt;/a&gt;, and start using &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_integration&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;continuous integration&lt;/a&gt;. You won't need to talk about design any more - you will see it in action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-05-14T15:47:33.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2161" CreationDate="2011-05-14T19:40:46.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When we started building our wiki, the CEO offered incentives for people who contributed articles to our knowledge base. The incentives amounted to gift cards and recognition and friendly competition with co-workers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, we did have a person whose responsibility it was to go through the articles and clean up the spelling and grammar, as well as make suggestions for improvement to the posters. This person also tagged the content, resolved and merged duplicates, and handled general maintenance of the content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final result was a knowledge base of content that is still useful today, but because of the technology and search capabilities, it's only really useful to those who know where to look for that content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say technology is important. A major requirement is to ensure that the content is easily searchable and accessible to everyone who needs to know the information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-05-14T19:40:46.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2223" CreationDate="2011-05-15T08:57:07.857" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is important that you dig beneath the surface to uncover the depth of knowledge and experience that the candidate has, and to check that the answers are not just theoretical. Ask structured questions for each area that you want to explore. A good series that I was given, and that I have used successfully, is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tell me about a time that... (e.g. you worked in an agile environment);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What specifically was your responsibility at that time?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What decisions were you expected to make? - Give me an example.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How did you make that decision?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What was the outcome of your decision?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would you make the same decision again? - explain your answer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also echo many of the other comments: don't expect a single candidate to be the right one, and interview several to get a better chance of identifying someone who can be effective both technically and culturally. Interview &quot;remotely&quot; if the working environment requires remote working; use other people to support the process, and try to test both technical and personal competencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T08:57:07.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2208" CreationDate="2011-05-15T09:42:09.417" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some companies have a policy of putting everyone through training every year, as it demonstrates commitment to the employee's development. This is good for some employees, who like to be exposed to training even when it may not be directly relevant to their current jobs, but it does not suit every member of every team. Some are competent at what they do, and have no desire to undergo additional training, so why bother?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the best models for training that I have seen was some years ago when I worked in a company that operated the British Computer Society Professional Development Scheme, which used an Industry Structure Model to define required skills and competencies for staff to be effective (now replaced by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bcs.org/category/7849&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SFIA Plus&lt;/a&gt;). At that time, training requirements were considered from three perspectives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What the Scheme required for professional development to allow the member of staff to progress;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What the company wanted the member of staff to be doing within the next twelve months, considered alongside the skills that the employee already had;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What personal development the individual was interested in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking these three dimensions together, you could build up a model for each individual, and if necessary, decide what was affordable, and how to prioritise it all. I still try to consider these three aspects, and find that sometimes an employee requires a substantial investment in training, while others don't need very much at all. Sometimes I don't have the budget to pay for everything that is indicated: that's where prioritisation comes in, and people then have the option to do anything extra in their own time, at their own expense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your original questions asked whether there should be training for everything: I would say that if the organisation expects someone to learn a new skill, the best way to provide it is to provide high quality training. The alternatives could be far more expensive in terms of poor productivity and ineffective (or even incorrect) decision making. Better to pay once and have the confidence that your employees are competent. This also answers your second question: how important training should be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of this removes the personal responsibility for staff to keep up to date with industry trends and developments, or to tell you if they feel that they need additional help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T09:42:09.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2168" CreationDate="2011-05-15T10:16:20.600" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If everyone respects the core hours, then I recommend holding the stand up no later than 30 minutes after core hours start. This gives people a chance to get in, get settled, pour coffee, review what they achieved the day before, then join the stand up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I prefer having the meeting earlier in the day in order to provide the most time to handle obstacles, but, as always, let the team decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1243" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T10:16:20.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2226" CreationDate="2011-05-15T10:20:31.143" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you need to move quickly making changes that might affect others, then perhaps you can find a way to isolate others from your changes, such as with interfaces, facades, or adapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other options include (1) learning how to make the corresponding changes that &quot;the others&quot; might need to make, and either sending them patches or making the changes for them, (2) notifying them before you commit your changes and asking &quot;the others&quot; for an emergency review, (3) inviting an &quot;other&quot; to work with you when you sense that your work will affect their module.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I imagine you could find other approaches, but each of these would work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1243" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T10:20:31.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2204" CreationDate="2011-05-15T10:25:50.820" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different PMs do different things on different projects, so that makes this simultaneously easy and hard to answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Easy, because each PM can simply look at what he normally does, look at what work the project needs doing, then do whatever in the project matches what he normally does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hard, because the answer &quot;we don't want PMs&quot; is both true and unsatisfying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When involved in a project attempting to use lean practices, I think the PM can help most by modeling the behavior of good project planners: notably mapping value streams and looking for ways to increase the flow of value through the system. He could lead the charge in applying systems thinking to the project and suggest higher-level changes to the way the team works during retrospectives. The more the PM takes a system view to the team's performance, the better. I'd like him also to spend time teaching that to the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would /hate/ to see a PM reduced to the menial tasks of tracking, reporting, and punishing. We have software for the first two and middle managers for the last one. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1243" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T10:25:50.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2192" CreationDate="2011-05-15T10:43:09.007" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When someone asks this question, rather than &quot;what should we do about it?&quot; or &quot;what potential causes should I consider?&quot; it makes me nervous. I don't mean this in some idle collectivist fantasy sense, but what does it matter who &quot;owns&quot; the problem? and what do you mean by &quot;own&quot; here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a team shows signs of complacency, then surely that complacency will affect its performance, and surely that will show up in a value stream map or during a retrospective or in the occurrence of some unfortunate incident. If the team sees a symptom in any of those forms, then who owns the problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I could interpret your question as &quot;Who should focus on detecting complacency on a team with a Scrum-my structure&quot;? Well, &quot;becoming complacent&quot; seems like a risk to me: who has special responsibility for identifying and watching out for risk realisation indicators on a Scrum-my team? Scrum Master seems logical; manager seems logical; any senior team member seems logical. I would think that we'd want some redundancy built into the system so that at least 3 people are watching out for this kind of thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1243" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T10:43:09.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2191" CreationDate="2011-05-15T10:45:16.103" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Map a value stream with them. That will definitely get them talking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1243" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T10:45:16.103" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2179" CreationDate="2011-05-15T10:50:57.690" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going by memory, but Waltzing with Bears taught me to record the following for each risk: description, cost, probability, indicators, mitigation strategies. An indicator is something you can notice that tells you that the risk is about to be realised and become a problem. I don't know whether you can fit all that on a 3x5, but I'd try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1243" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T10:50:57.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2141" CreationDate="2011-05-15T18:03:34.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Pragmatic Marketing Framework is fully detailed at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/pragmatic-marketing-framework&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The framework appears to be a vendor-specific model used by the Pragmatic Marketing company as the shared basis for many of their seminars and training services. According to one source, over 60,000 people have been trained using the framework... about the same as official Certified Scrum Master course completions as of year or two ago. This implies it probably has significant value as a shared language and as a reasonable taxonomy/ontology for product development and marketing topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for a jump start, other than attending the official training, there appears to be quite a few articles available around the framework located &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/resources/articles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T18:03:34.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2212" CreationDate="2011-05-15T18:18:04.887" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Talking from theory, not practice, and just looking at the StackExchange sites in general, here's some random thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;+1 To @Bartosz&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wear the &lt;a href=&quot;http://lizkeogh.com/2010/01/06/the-evil-hat/&quot;&gt;Evil Hat&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make it easy for new teams to get a bit of initial love from the game&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make it progressively harder for experienced teams to get to the next level/badge, especially without changing how they work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be sure to build in things that help build relationships across teams, such as &quot;new practice adopted by another team: +10 team rep&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make reputation entirely at the team level&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only explicitly reward good behaviors. Perhaps create an annual or quarterly &quot;bloopers&quot; award.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't forget to reward the minor acts that crate a good internal community (i.e. +2 rep for edits on SE)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pay enough attention to the ease of tracking things per team, so that you know you'll keep it going long enough to tweak and evolve the system.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let the teams help design it as a multi-team-building exercise... get everybody together on a Friday afternoon to brainstorm the system, create some buzz ahead of time, get people excited about it before it happens (and then follow through)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once you get a feel for the scope, create some org-wide reward events (rather than team rewards, let the &quot;league table pride&quot; handle that part). i.e. &quot;If total reputation exceeds 10,000 in a quarter we cater an awesome dinner for everybody&quot; or some such. (Did I mention the &lt;a href=&quot;http://lizkeogh.com/2010/01/06/the-evil-hat/&quot;&gt;Evil hat&lt;/a&gt;?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T18:18:04.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2191" CreationDate="2011-05-15T18:31:51.027" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a great case to try out the &amp;quot;5 Why's&amp;quot; mentality and dig into the root cause of their previously useless retrospectives. The times I've dug in to dead and dying retrospectives, the reasons tend to fall into a few different categories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Failure to act&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Too many retrospectives end up as bitch sessions, with no real outputs coming from the event. If a team doesn't exit having committed itself to actions as strongly as it makes its sprint commitments, it's not making progress. I wrote on this &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120206222547/http://ericwilleke.com/posts/just-one-thing/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;No longer having fun&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team's not enjoying itself, it's hard to create the safety and energy needed for effective retrospectives. Shameless self-promotion: Ken and I are talking about this at &lt;a href=&quot;http://submit2011.agilealliance.org/node/8991&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile 2011&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;ScrumMaster visibly doesn't care about ceremony&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ScrumMaster is often a leadership figure on the team, and a visible lack of caring from that one individual can easily poison the entire team against the retrospective. This can then pervade the organization, leading to anemic or non-existant retrospectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Failure to close the loop&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Implied by @Rob above, there needs to be a visible evidence of progress from the retrospective outputs. I prefer doing a brief &amp;quot;Sprint retrospective review/demo&amp;quot; at the beginning of each retrospective, where the team will reflect on their action commitments from the previous sprint and how effective they were. Essentially, this is putting the 'C' and 'A' on to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDCA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PDCA&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Ceremony becomes forced&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've observed ScrumMasters that go around the room and ask each person for a plus, a delta, and an appreciation. The overall effect felt somewhat like kindergarden, and a small piece of the team's soul was dying with each progressive request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Approach no longer creates variation&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teams that do plus/delta sprint after sprint will eventually find that lens to be ineffective at discovering new improvements. They need to try a new format of some sort, and there were a few suggestions &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1578/different-ways-of-running-retrospectives&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Lack of Trust and Safety&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Responding to Jean's comment (Thank you, Jean!), I'll add lack of trust as its own point. There are cases where management behaviors and team dynamics have conspired to create an environment that is toxic to retrospectives. In many cases, I find these are the results of other causes, not a cause in and of themselves, but there are occasional situations that are truly dysfunctional on the trust side. These cases are often the result of politics in the organization, especially where vendors &amp;amp; contractors are involved and creating the need for an &amp;quot;aura of perfection&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-19T06:59:20.820" LastActivityDate="2020-07-19T06:59:20.820" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2226" CreationDate="2011-05-15T21:14:54.277" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not an expert on Agile, but I see this as a communication problem that can apply to any methodology. Would it help for the teams to meet daily for a quick review of the changes before they start working. Then again at the end of the shift?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T21:14:54.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2248" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-15T23:50:02.423" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Umbrella and Version-Specific Guidance&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use the generic &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/ms-project&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;ms-project&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;ms-project&lt;/a&gt; for questions that apply to most versions of Microsoft Project. For version-specific questions, please use one of the tags below instead of the catch-all tag:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/ms-project-2003&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;ms-project-2003&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;ms-project-2003&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/ms-project-2007&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;ms-project-2007&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;ms-project-2007&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/ms-project-2010&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;ms-project-2010&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;ms-project-2010&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/ms-project-2013&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;ms-project-2013&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;ms-project-2013&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/ms-project-2016&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;ms-project-2016&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;ms-project-2016&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/ms-project&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;ms-project&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;ms-project&lt;/a&gt; tag is a catch-all tag for questions about how to use MS Project to manage or track a project. Here are some examples of questions asked by the community that fall under this tag:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2029/conditionally-formatting-bar-styles-in-project-2010&quot;&gt;http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2029/conditionally-formatting-bar-styles-in-project-2010&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1009/ms-project-with-sub-projects&quot;&gt;http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1009/ms-project-with-sub-projects&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1201/is-it-possible-to-link-msproject-with-the-tfs-system&quot;&gt;http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1201/is-it-possible-to-link-msproject-with-the-tfs-system&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTE: Do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; use &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/pm-software&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;pm-software&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;pm-software&lt;/a&gt; for MS Project questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;See Also&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/project-server&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;project-server&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;project-server&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-15T18:46:44.757" LastActivityDate="2018-11-15T18:46:44.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2249" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-15T23:50:02.423" Score="0" Body="Use this generic tag for questions that apply to most versions of Microsoft Project. For version-specific questions, please use an alternate tag instead of the catch-all tag. Version tags currently include: ms-project-2003, ms-project-2007, ms-project-2010, ms-project-2013, and ms-project-2016.&#xD;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-11-15T18:29:06.293" LastActivityDate="2018-11-15T18:29:06.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2251" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-16T00:05:17.487" Score="0" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Tools is a Superset&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/tools&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'tools'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;tools&lt;/a&gt; tag is a superset. If another tag is more appropriate or more narrowly-targeted, please consider using that tag instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Good tagging examples with &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/tools&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'tools'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;tools&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some good examples that show the appropriate use of &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/tools&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'tools'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;tools&lt;/a&gt;. Note the focus on how to use or implement the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/tools&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'tools'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;tools&lt;/a&gt; in support of the project management workflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Should QA have a column on the kanban?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I am using Some Proprietary Tool&amp;trade;, and currently calculate man-hours manually. How can I include man-hours automatically in the burn-down report?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;On my project, all tasks need to be estimated in Roman numerals. How can I enforce this requirement?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Bad tagging examples&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technical support questions, lists of &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/tools&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'tools'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;tools&lt;/a&gt;, or requests about &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/tools&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'tools'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;tools&lt;/a&gt; selection are all off-topic. Also, please don't use the tag for questions like these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Help! Some Proprietary Tool&amp;trade; gives me an internal server error. What do I do?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I want to ensmallen therbligs on my project. What tools are available for that?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I have an iPhone. Is there an app for...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;What do other people use for...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;See Also&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/pm-software&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'pm-software'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;pm-software&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-07-13T23:16:08.990" LastActivityDate="2012-07-13T23:16:08.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2252" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-16T00:05:17.487" Score="0" Body="This tag is for questions about the USAGE or IMPLEMENTATION of materials or practices used by project managers to support their work-flow. As a superset tag, the &quot;tools&quot; tag should not be used when there's another, more-specific tag available. This tag should not be used for software recommendations, which are off-topic on this site per the Help Center guidelines." OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2014-10-22T11:04:33.490" LastActivityDate="2014-10-22T11:04:33.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2192" CreationDate="2011-05-16T04:14:49.523" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Answer D. None of the above! W. Edwards Deming, management theorist and systems thinker, said that 95% of performance issues are attributable to the “system” (work design, structure, management, processes, technology, etc.) and that only 5% are attributable to individuals.  When teams get complacent it's usually due to &quot;friction&quot; they encounter within the system.  You likely need someone who can understand the system and can affect change in that system.  In my experience, people who are working &quot;in the business&quot; are too close to the situation and can't affect that kind of change.  You may need someone in a separate role who can work &quot;on the business&quot;, like an Agile Coach.  Coaches can bring experience, specialized skills and a fresh perspective to teams whose practices have become stale.  For example, someone in a coaching role can open teams up to new patterns or ways of doing things.  They can work across teams to resolve inter-team problems.  They can reinforce principles and values underlying the practices so that people keep fresh in their practices.  They can lead a community of practice or help individual teams raise the bar on practices where the teams have self-identified opportunities for increased performance.  Obviously, this works only when everyone (managers, ScrumMaster and the team) has an appreciation for the coach's input and it will in the end, require everyone who is working within the system to participate in the revitalization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1213" LastActivityDate="2011-05-16T04:14:49.523" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2115" CreationDate="2011-05-16T04:38:49.737" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitely take a look at the salesforce.com story - it's a classic.  You can Google it or read the whitepaper here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110429103410/http://www.ca.com/Files/WhitePapers/wp-agile-development_239775.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Transforming Your Organization to Agile: The inside story of salesforce.com’s transformation from waterfall to agile&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the whitepaper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By 2006, the last of the company’s&#xA;  “pre-agile” days, salesforce.com had&#xA;  gone from four seasonal releases per&#xA;  year down to just one, which goes&#xA;  against the very grain of cloud&#xA;  computing. That release, which took&#xA;  about 15 months to complete, was a key&#xA;  indicator that the company needed to&#xA;  make a radical change in its&#xA;  development methodology. Since our&#xA;  move to agile, each successive major&#xA;  release has been deployed on the exact&#xA;  day it was scheduled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1213" LastEditorDisplayName="user32339" LastEditDate="2018-05-10T16:42:51.890" LastActivityDate="2018-05-10T16:42:51.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2043" CreationDate="2011-05-16T05:49:27.533" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nothing is a substitute for relevant&#xA;  experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a quote by Chris Sterling in his book &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Managing Software Debt: Building for Inevitable Change&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.  His point is that for anyone to be successful in software development, they need to be provided a chance to gain relevant experience (domain, technology, etc.).  The people who have that relevant experience need to share it.  Six months should be plenty of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a chapter on managing Platform Experience Debt, the author reaffirms your experience that &quot;When the gap between those people who have substantial knowledge about the technology and the domain and those who are novices is too large, pairing alone probably does not suffice”.  He proposes that &lt;strong&gt;knowledge sharing&lt;/strong&gt; activities and &lt;strong&gt;collaborative team configurations&lt;/strong&gt; are two ways in which organizations can deal with the type of problem you’re facing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of &lt;strong&gt;knowledge sharing&lt;/strong&gt;, I think training programs may be the best option for you.  I've had good success with a couple different approaches in my organization.  The first is &lt;strong&gt;Tech Labs&lt;/strong&gt; where anyone can bring forth a development issue they're facing and have some of the more senior team members consult them on the problem.  They do this in a group forum so that other people who come across the issue may learn how to deal with it.  This also allows specific examples of issues to be identified as anti-patterns, where appropriate, so that better design patterns can be adopted in the future.  The second is the standard &lt;strong&gt;Brown Bag&lt;/strong&gt; session, where people convene over lunch to learn about a topic that’s new to them.  The brown bag topics we've held typically focus on principles that the team members can then put into practice.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Team configuration&lt;/strong&gt; can also have a huge impact on the success of new team members.  For example, you may not want to set the expectation with the new person that they are to be generally knowledgeable about the entire application they're building.  Instead, you may want to arrange for them to focus on a specific component, providing them an opportunity to gain confidence and incrementally increase their domain knowledge.  Other configurations may include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make the new team member an SDET&#xA;initially so that they have a chance&#xA;to understand and test code that is&#xA;being written by others &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give the new&#xA;team member a refactoring assignment&#xA;to gain familiarity with the code&#xA;base before taking it &quot;head on&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stand up a mentor who spends 50% of their&#xA;time providing hands-on support to&#xA;new team member  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stand up a community&#xA;of practice around certain&#xA;specialized areas where there isn't a&#xA;general distribution of knowledge, in&#xA;which new team members can&#xA;participate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1213" LastActivityDate="2011-05-16T05:49:27.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2067" CreationDate="2011-05-16T06:49:58.070" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you tried the following:-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rule.fm/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rule.fm&lt;/a&gt; - web based service&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.activecollab.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;activeCollab&lt;/a&gt; -- web based, self hosted, open source&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my experience I would like to add that each company needs are different -- the above are more like project management systems, not business management systems, so if you look for something that will help you run your business you may think of custom built system if you have the resources and the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1136" LastActivityDate="2011-05-16T06:49:58.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2257" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2259" CreationDate="2011-05-16T14:43:35.843" Score="4" ViewCount="405" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm managing an large project where most of the work is done through a subcontractor. We worked collaboratively to come up with a project plan and schedule, building in contingency reserves for tasks that we anticipated as being problematic. Unfortunately, it looks like at least some of the subcontractor's team are taking the contingencies as extra time to get their work done. The contract is FFP so we don't have a carrot/stick for bonuses or penalties. Is there a more effective way of avoiding or at least mitigating this other than telling them over &amp;amp; over that the idea is to only use the contingency reserves if absolutely necessary? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2011-05-16T22:26:06.803" Title="Avoiding Parkinson's Law" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;subcontractor&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2257" CreationDate="2011-05-16T15:37:27.200" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why Firm Fixed Price (FFP) contract can't have bonuses/penalties? It can, like any other type of contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the main problem here is that you should not disclose your schedule to the subcontractor. It's your internal document, as a project manager. And, of course, you should not disclose them your contingency reserves. They are for you, not for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-05-16T15:37:27.200" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2257" CreationDate="2011-05-16T16:15:12.800" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am reading that the contract between you and the sub is FFP, correct?  I think I interpreted it differently than Yegor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you did not build bonus and penalty into your FFP contract with your subcontractor, then you indeed have lost your ability to provide a decent incentive for performance.  It is hard to substantiate that your sub is simply using the contingency runway because it is there (Parkinson/Student Syndrome) or because they are truly needing it to recover from random issues.  To accuse them is essentially severing your relationship with them, which may or may not be a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since it is not likely you can &quot;cure&quot; their use of the schedule reserves, your options are limited to what you can control, which is to mitigate the downstream effects on the packages that are succeeding the sub's work...to the degree possible.  Then, capture this as a lesson learned and ensure to include that carrot/stick in your next FFP contract with any sub.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You control for Parkinson's Law and Student Syndrome during the planning phases.  You set your target schedule considering where it falls on your probabilistic estimate, the risk you care to assume, AND the effects of Parkinson's.  After this, you calculate your contingencies and build them in to your baseline.  After that, the results are the results; trying to blame unfavorable schedule variances is a non winnable argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-05-16T16:15:12.800" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2260" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2262" CreationDate="2011-05-16T17:03:01.730" Score="13" ViewCount="4395" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work at a small company our development team is just me and a jr. developer. We just hired another intern. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm having a hard time justifying to my boss that we need a project manager. What are some valid monetary reasons for having one? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He insists that he cannot afford one full time and he rather do one himself. I know that this is a terrible mistake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE&lt;/strong&gt;: Thanks for the overwhelming responses! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1253" LastEditorUserId="1253" LastEditDate="2011-05-17T14:50:48.883" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T14:50:48.883" Title="Justifying a Project Manager" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;budget&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2260" CreationDate="2011-05-16T17:25:45.850" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may not need a full time project manager, perhaps only a part-time manager with the right tools. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project management practices are definitely valuable with three developers.  You need to determine how you will organize the way you work. It is not just about juggling tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A project manager is more than a task manager/traffic manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone needs to make sure requirements are gathered upfront or that there is engagement by the client on what they want throughout the process.  This alone can save the company 10X the cost of what it takes to fix things later-on in the project (or if work is not organized well).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Projects need an objective eye to manage the project and make sure all stakeholder's goals are met (to the greatest extent possible).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your boss may not have an objective eye when it comes time to pushing back on the client or making sure that the right work is worked on that advances the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A project manager can also identify risks that a boss or team member might not see. Or, on the other side, put risks into perspective that might otherwise be overblown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't justify it with arguments alone at this point, track your estimated vs actual time spent on tasks on the project and the deviation from the estimated start and end date on your projects. This data can be used to show the need for a project manager later on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-05-16T17:25:45.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2260" CreationDate="2011-05-16T17:51:17.400" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've faced this conundrum many times in my career. Most pre &quot;chasm&quot; companies don't see a need for a project manager, seeing it as part of being a bigger company. The constant drive to be multi-task oriented can lead people down a slippery slope of effectiveness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Mark says, you may not need a PM right now. The problem is, by the time you need a PM, its almost too late. I've written two blogs on this subject &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thegorillaisnamedhogarth.blogspot.com/2010/02/gorilla-with-too-many-hats_12.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Gorilla with too many hats&lt;/a&gt;&quot; and &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thegorillaisnamedhogarth.blogspot.com/2011/04/when-do-you-add-your-project-manager.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;When do you add a project manager?&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. The two nutshells of these blogs are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- A good project manager makes the team around him more effective than another engineer. The law of diminishing returns say you can't throw more engineers at a project to have a pool built in a day. At a certain point it takes a fixed amount of time. A good team facilitator (project manager) can make a small team much more effective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2- One hour of planning saves eight hours of work. It's an old adage, but a true one. The opposite of this is if you wait until your project is in trouble to hire your PM, then the PM will just be fighting fires. Still valuable, but not nearly as effective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, as Mark suggests, you may not need a full time PM. Hire someone who also fills another need in the firm that has PM skills. Alternatively, plan for the future. You will need a dedicated PM if you suceed. Plan for success and make sure you can cross the Chasm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also recommend the book &quot;Crossing the Chasm.&quot; All start ups should read this. Someday you won't be a start up. You'll either be a business or out of business. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best- JBC&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2011-05-16T17:51:17.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2192" CreationDate="2011-05-16T19:58:34.863" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you a team member or external to the team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're in the team, as J.B. says above, ownership is not the issue.  If you know there is a problem, regardless of your role you should raise it with the rest of the team.  It sounds like a great topic of conversation for a retrospective.  5 whys or similar technique to get to the causes of the perceived complacency and take some team actions to resolve those seen as the biggest issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're external to the team, I'd definitely have a chat with the Scrum Master about it and get their views. Your perception as an outsider might be very different to how the team feel or, equally, your external view of the team could provide insight into a problem the team hadn't yet noticed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2011-05-16T19:58:34.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2260" CreationDate="2011-05-16T20:02:19.190" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both Mark and Joel make good points. One of the biggest reasons is that PM's are looking at different things than those involved in either managing the company, or delivering the project. They're focused on making the 'project' successful, not the product, and not the client/sale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A real-life example - my BIL and I have been friends since we were kids, and we spent a large portion of our early career in the same field of construction. He stayed focused on the field aspect, and I moved more towards management. Every so often we'd get together and he's ask me what a construction PM 'did'. I'd explain it to him, and he'd tell me that all of the things I mentioned should be done by the Superintendent, and he still didn't understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fast forward a few years, and he'd started his own company. He was explaining an issue he was having with a client that he couldn't get resolved. I gave him my view and some ideas about how to resolve it (it was an issue I routinely ran up against), and they worked. But he didn't change anything and still didn't understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fast forward two more years, and he's closed up shop. He couldn't keep up with trying to manage the field, AND make sure the pm side of things was done correctly. Projects were late, materials didn't show, prices were outrageous, etc. And when he told me what had happened, they were all things that a good PM would have focused on (maybe even part-time), allowing him to focus on installation and construction. Now he understands, but as Joel said, sadly it was too late. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my advice - tell him that by hiring a competent PM (part-time) will allow the three of you to focus on the 'product', him to focus on securing more work, and if the PM's any good, they should be able to provide enough value to pay for themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-05-16T20:02:19.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2257" CreationDate="2011-05-16T20:09:14.347" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For you current contract, the only effective path is to lay your cards on the table and tell them how they're affecting your work. But there's no guarantee that they'll care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For future contracts, always put the carrot/stick in the contract, be very clear about milestones and delivery dates (and how those relate to carrot/stick), and never divulge contingency amounts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastEditorUserId="921" LastEditDate="2011-05-16T22:26:06.803" LastActivityDate="2011-05-16T22:26:06.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2067" CreationDate="2011-05-16T20:57:11.670" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did you just look over the WORKetc website or have you tried out the software?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WORKetc allows you to invite an unlimited amount of clients to use the WORKetc system to check on correspondence, support tickets, project updates, paid invoices, etc. What a client or contractor sees and does is entirely up to the permissions you set. You can also invite contractors to use the system, and their abilities are defined by permissions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the main reason WORKetc is popular amongst the web dev community is it's integration. Instead of going with 3-4 apps to take care of CRM, project management, collaboration, time tracking, billing, and other needs - WORKetc consolidates alll of this into one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest checking out the 14 day trial to get more accurate insight into how the system works if you haven't already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1256" LastActivityDate="2011-05-16T20:57:11.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2267" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2284" CreationDate="2011-05-16T21:05:37.970" Score="4" ViewCount="1677" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm considering the use of a software in order to help our team to implement Scrum. I saw iceScrum, but I don't know if it's a good tool. Do you ever used it? Can you suggest another tool?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastActivityDate="2020-07-20T13:36:43.310" Title="Choosing a tool for Scrum" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-12-20T15:54:16.813" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2268" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2289" CreationDate="2011-05-16T21:12:15.453" Score="2" ViewCount="397" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are currently in the process of implementing Scrum. I would like to let us started with a tool to help the team get along with it (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2267/choosing-a-tool-for-scrum&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; about this point), but after a presentation I made where I spoke about the agile manifesto, our CEO is arguing that it's against the agile principles (&quot;Individuals and interactions over processes and tools&quot;). Problem is: we are not going any further without some formalisation of the organisation, and a tool to organise our backlog and our sprints would be the right thing to do now, in my opinion. Did you meet such resistance when you started with agile methods? How have you overcome them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T12:53:29.627" Title="Tools in agile methods" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2257" CreationDate="2011-05-16T21:22:57.210" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let them know how it will affect their chances for follow-on work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you find alternative vendors and that you have copies of the code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-05-16T21:22:57.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2115" CreationDate="2011-05-16T22:45:07.987" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found an article on scrumalliance.org about Adobe using Scrum:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20121031011719/http://www.scrumalliance.org/resources/612&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum @ Adobe - including downloadable slides (56 pages, 5MB)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They use it in all of their developments, now, and began with Adobe Lifecycle, Adobe Soundbooth and Adobe Audition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-21T12:11:52.267" LastActivityDate="2020-07-21T12:11:52.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2271" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2274" CreationDate="2011-05-16T22:56:05.930" Score="3" ViewCount="446" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Brooks Law&lt;/a&gt; basically states that adding people to an already late software project makes it later. But does it hold for other fields as well? I'd imagine in a construction project it would probably be almost completely expelled because the work requires less of an understanding of the project as a whole to contribute to. But does it hold in scientific fields? Do managers in other fields use similar maxims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="175" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T11:46:32.793" Title="Does Brooks Law hold for other fields as much as software development?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2272" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2280" CreationDate="2011-05-16T23:04:37.357" Score="2" ViewCount="1195" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in high school and I'm curious about what I can do now to increase my knowledge about software management. What should I know about software management to better my chances of becoming a manager? How can I get 'real-world' experience at this stage that's as valuable as possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="175" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-05-18T06:38:40.517" LastActivityDate="2015-10-21T14:27:08.620" Title="What should I do/study in high school if I want to be a software project manager?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;education&gt;&lt;learning&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2273" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-16T23:32:55.080" Score="5" ViewCount="321" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are working in an environment where customers give us thick requirement documents and they expect the technical team to do an estimation on the whole requirement. Once they receive our estimates, they can approach the budget team to ask for the money according to the estimated effort. They have been doing this for more than 15 years, and recently there have been some talk to move to a more agile process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This practice of BIG estimation up front will be the first thing that they have to deal with among other things. The big question that they are trying to solve right now is &quot;how can they advise the customers that we can't give them full estimates up front?&quot; Agile process relies on simple, easy to estimate stories, where each story carries a certain estimates - well at least this is how stories are defined in XP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following XP principals, the technical team should not produce a big estimate up front, rather they should break up the requirement into stories. If this is the case, how can the customers get full estimates and ask for budget?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this where Agile process need to be tailored, or mixed with another practice to make things work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1257" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-15T17:21:25.227" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T17:21:25.227" Title="How to Give Better Estimations to Customers" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;budget&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2271" CreationDate="2011-05-17T00:00:11.647" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, Brooks Law holds in construction as well, to a degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference is, where in technology Brooks applies to the learning curve, in the built environment it applies to limited physical space and/or sequencing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In construction you're following a more rigid waterfall type of process (A must go before B must go before C, etc.) If the framing isn't done first you can't do the drywall. So you can add more people, but only to a point. Before too long you've got too many people bumping into each other and creating more confusion that helping. There's also safety issues to keep in mind. In most cases, crew sizes are determined around the most efficient, and safest numbers. Adding more increases the likelihood of an accident. Or having too many machines operating in the same place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The alternative to Brooks is if you have a big enough area, you can crash the schedule by adding more crews in different locations to work on the same types of work (plumbers in bldg A AND bldg B instead of just bldg A), but that's not really the same as Brooks. That's more of a phasing issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T00:00:11.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2273" CreationDate="2011-05-17T00:14:17.023" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually do a release plan prior to, or very shortly after a project starts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sit down with the stakeholders and write some really high level stories (you'll see them called epics in some places, personally, I hate the term).  Essentially, you're looking to brainstorm the key features in your product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get the stakeholders to prioritise them - I usually insist on linear priorities (that is to say, no two things can have the same priority).  This gives you an idea of scope and an idea of ideal delivery order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now sit down with your dev team and lay out all the stories in priority order.  Rather than estimating each story, just get them to draw a line after what they expect to be a couple of weeks work. The devs should be factoring in thinking time for the more unknown tasks. It's a good idea to have a flipchart to capture dependencies, risks, assumptions and spikes needed too.  Keep going down the list, splitting the work into 2 week segments as you go through.  When you get to the end, you have an idea of how much the whole project will cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end, check the devs are happy that the final figure sounds about right.  If not, re-visit and refine.  It can be useful to have a stakeholder in the room both to answer questions and to give them a better feel of the reasoning behind the final figure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of reporting the result back up the chain, you need to factor in the risks, dependencies and assumptions.  If possible, express the result as a range, with the difference between your lower and upper figure reflecting the number you've identified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can spend the time, it's a great idea to do an inception phase, although I from your question I'm guessing you're looking to do this at a point where there is no go-ahead decision for the project so getting the time needed would probably be difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, ideally, if you're only doing this for financial sign off, you should try to work with the finance guys to come up with a better system. If your projects currently run over budget reasonably regularly, they might be quite receptive to looking at ways to improve the system of requesting and granting sign off to something that suits all parties better, depends how open your organisation is to change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastEditorUserId="1185" LastEditDate="2011-05-17T00:21:08.630" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T00:21:08.630" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2267" CreationDate="2011-05-17T00:29:31.697" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is this for a distributed team or co-located?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're co-located, imo nothing is more powerful than index cards and sharpies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For distributed teams, I like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.getapp.com/project-management-planning-software/a/agilezen/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;AgileZen&lt;/a&gt; and I know one team at my place is using &lt;a href=&quot;https://mingle.thoughtworks.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mingle&lt;/a&gt; and really like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-20T13:36:43.310" LastActivityDate="2020-07-20T13:36:43.310" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2268" CreationDate="2011-05-17T00:38:43.427" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I kinda agree with your CEO!  If you've got a co-located team, I'd stick with whiteboard, index cards and sharpies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a distributed team, make the point that everyone needs visibility of progress for Scrum to really work - we aim to encourage individual decision making and interactions with others and an important trigger for that is the wallboard.  For a distributed team, that means having a tool of some kind is useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T00:38:43.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2268" CreationDate="2011-05-17T01:53:50.877" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly, it sounds like you are expecting a tool to help you out with Scrum, and your questions both here and in the link you gave seem like you haven't yet arrived at the understanding required to assess and select a tool yourself.  My suggestion is until you can write down some expectations and selection/evaluation criteria for a tool, you might be expecting too much from a tool and aren't ready for one.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I (as a Director) brought Scrum into our organization, I first got my managers and technical leads on board and bought into the change (it was a biggie).  Then sold the idea upward and outward to get buyin.  (sounds like you have this already)  Then, I offered to buy the teams four tools to assist them: Dry erase boards, sticky cards, projectors and Excel.  I wanted them to be -very- close the to the data they were managing.  Then needed to calculate velocity and understand how to work with User Stories without the framework/constraints of a tool to force them into an interaction.  They are smart people and would learn and adapt.  We also got an Agile coach to help with the transition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once we understood the process and really made it our own, then we looked for a tool that fit into the way we worked.  We had enough experience to know what we needed help with managing and what we just didn't need to bother with.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tool suggestions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep your backlog in Excel.  It sorts&#xA;well and has more than enough&#xA;capacity to deal with the data you&#xA;need.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Portable board or dedicated wall to persist important information&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sticky poster paper for Retrospectives (allows you to write on the fly then transcribe notes later)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Projector for demos and projecting Backlogs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dry erase board that you can draw your burn-up and burn-down charts onto (draw the axes with a Sharpie)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An agile coach, or (if you can't afford it) an open brainstorming/improvement/review time that operates above the Sprint Retrospectives.  Have a meeting once a month to deal with the strategic improvement ideas for Scrum.  When this team begs for a tool, you can then drive the selection criteria and select from the very large list of free and commercial tools.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are already 9 months into this process and your teams are frustrated with the data they are managing, then build a budget.  If Scrum is achieving value (more predictable schedules?  shorter delivery schedules?  improved quality?) then you should have no problem getting the money needed to buy a tool.  If Scrum isn't providing this business value, then a tool isn't going to help at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;my 2cents...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T01:53:50.877" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2272" CreationDate="2011-05-17T02:00:58.093" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Find some projects to manage. The principles of project management apply across all different types of activities.  You could help work on a website, blog or coordinate a group event. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would focus on doing something that entails gathering requirements from somebody, working with another person or group of people to produce the deliverable that meets those requirements then deliver the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T02:00:58.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2272" CreationDate="2011-05-17T02:02:50.337" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;My honest advice is that there is so much time and &quot;cognitive distance&quot; between high school and a professional career in management, that I would say &quot;take classes you love and will do well in&quot;  Go to college/university and discover your passion and career interests there.  If you are successful and want to move into management, then you have many options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are just too many &quot;good paths&quot; into management:  I've seen English Majors, Art Majors, History Majors, Biology Majors, CS Majors, EE Majors, and I'm a Physics Major myself.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to focus on software, then do something that keeps you coding and developing.  having domain experience is a huge help for any management position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't be afraid to change directions and try new things.  If you really love Project Management, there will always be opportunities...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;good luck and enjoy the trip!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T02:02:50.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2273" CreationDate="2011-05-17T02:34:50.217" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is any secret to estimating or sharing the estimates...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimate in as small a breakdown as possible with the customer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Always look at the same problem from multiple views (create multiple estimates from different perspectives - architectural perspective, UI perspective, group think, top down, etc etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From the above and with the team, generate a &quot;graph&quot; of with &quot;level of confidence&quot; on the X axis.  The graph will look a little like the tangent curve from trigonometry  (at 99% confidence, your estimate will be huge, at 1%, it will be very small)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Review the confidence curve with the customer.  Work with them to establish the estimate.  They can choose a lower estimate, but they need to understand there is a smaller chance of delivery.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Establish a buffer with the customer.  That is, drive the team to an internal (unbuffered date) and commit to the external (buffered date)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manage the buffer (complex, but since this is about estimating, I'll just leave it at that...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always get comfortable with generating an estimate even with limited information, but never give a single number.  Generate the confidence graph every time, it will help convey the level of uncertainty in the estimate, and gives you an opportunity to engage the customer in dialog that will help you manage the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real &quot;trick&quot; in Agile is that a customer shouldn't care nearly so much about the -cost- of development, and instead focus on the -benefit- of having the product with the feature built in.  By working in small chunks and keeping &quot;in progress&quot; work to zero and always having a deliverable product at the end of an iteration, the customer can always say &quot;thats enough benefit for me now, lets move on...&quot; and moving on might be &quot;ship it!&quot; or some other feature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This, however, requires you to change the mind of the customer to adjust to this mindset.  I know of no magic for that!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T02:34:50.217" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2260" CreationDate="2011-05-17T02:55:48.890" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may be unpopular but...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For such a small team, you might need someone to focus on Project Management issues, but I find it hard to believe you need a Project Manager.  I'm part of a very small startup company right now.  We have two developers as well.  I'm wearing the Project Manager hat, but I'm also wearing the Product Manager hat, oh, and the Functional Manager and the QA hat, and UI designer and and and...  Bringing on anyone dedicated to those roles isn't practical.  I would love to have a UI expert to rely on, or a Product Manager, but these are expensive roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention that it is a &quot;terrible idea&quot; for the boss to be the Project Manager.  What have you noticed?  Have you brought up (constructively) the gaps/issues you see?  If there are specific things you and the team need, bring them up.  If you need to identify/work on Risks (picking one of the PMBoK knowledge areas) then do so.  Start identifying them and use your boss to help manage them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You ask for monetary reasons to have a PM... with costs an issue in a small company, how much of your salaries would you give to have the PM role?  Are you confident that there is enough inefficiency right now for a PM to recover that much money and pay you back?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T02:55:48.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2273" CreationDate="2011-05-17T03:46:12.433" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong in &quot;big estimate upfront&quot;. The problem is that in most cases people don't understand how to manage &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accuracy_and_precision&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;accuracy and precision&lt;/a&gt; of estimates. How about this big upfront estimate: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&quot;1000 man-days, 150% accuracy/precision&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T03:46:12.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2267" CreationDate="2011-05-17T06:09:02.513" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a small team I would recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/&quot;&gt;JIRA&lt;/a&gt; with Greenhopper ($20 / 10 users). For a larger team I also recommend JIRA, but it comes with a price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T06:09:02.513" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2285" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2387" CreationDate="2011-05-17T06:11:41.373" Score="4" ViewCount="1361" Body="&lt;p&gt;How would you profit the work of a software developer? I would also say team, but I speak partly about single developer and partly about the whole. I have seven years in the developing scene, with mostly all projects for internal usage of the companies itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't still seen this kind of profit/bonus/wager-strategy for a developer's work, where I worked myself. With that say I think there are more developers out there who meet same situation, not to make the question localized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the development process is tied to some sort of salary or an application that sells per distribution, profit can be more natural to implement, or already have implemented. Profit-sharing of the business-win in overall is not a discussion of this (even if it fits, I refer to profits specific for the specific worker/work).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that we can't talk values in terms of money, but at least how to measure a value of a work, i.e. dignity and complexity of work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think about a developer who has a generally high morality for work. She dies before dead-lines,  doesn't leave unsolved threads (at least not willingly), is highly willing to learn for better result, etc. This does not automatically mean that she works efficiently and right on spot all the time. &lt;em&gt;Just a side note for an employer's thought about a bonus program&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And ok! Who wants a robot? But I think a bounty or profit for finished work will gain &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;More accurate threads (because she knows she doesn't get them back if they got status Complete.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Developer knows where the wallet can be helped, behind an extra work on a project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the project manager is too busy for continuous following the status of projects, the developer can feel responsibility for follow-up. Also there are up to the developer really finish the threads/points because he/she don't want them back!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1240" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-15T12:47:00.957" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T12:47:00.957" Title="Should you give developer(s) bounty/bonus for his/her result?" Tags="&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;reward&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2272" CreationDate="2011-05-17T10:52:21.803" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds a bit silly but: Just Read... Read a lot...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By reading decent business and project management books, you can learn from other people's experiences. There are other suggestions elsewhere on this site but here are my suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business @ the Speed of Stupid - by Day Burke and Alan Morrison&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Peopleware - by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Inmates are Running the Asylum: Why high-tech products drive us crazy - by Alan cooper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T10:52:21.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2271" CreationDate="2011-05-17T11:46:32.793" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My going-in position is &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; Duration = Work / FTE.  It serves as a consistent, reliable benchmark from which you can adjust based on the plethora of factors that can affect the duration result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The relationship between work and FTE is simply not linear.  Performance variability; environmental factors (as Trevor indicated); the continuum between abstract, analytical work to repeatable, manual tasks; and simply random uncertainty will affect the validity of that relationship, causing the duration not to compress to the degree the formula states, remain constant, or even grow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming Brook's Law will always occur is a little analytically weak.  I think no matter the industry or task it is worth challenging and analyzing the possible affects of crashing your schedule.  But, to disregard the law wholesale is at your detriment.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T11:46:32.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2288" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-17T11:54:15.460" Score="8" ViewCount="452" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work as a Product Manager in a company focused on GIS Products. Our software development team works on both internal products and clients projects using agile methodologies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm having trouble planning for each new release of the product, i used to plan each new release as a separate project, with a new project plan, time plan, srs, project closure for each new relea... and now there is too many documents to prepare, might take me a week to plan for a 3 weeks release. How do you guys normally manage a scenario like that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-03-30T18:00:28.223" LastActivityDate="2016-03-30T18:00:28.223" Title="Managing Product Releases" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;release-plan&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2268" CreationDate="2011-05-17T12:53:29.627" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interesting discussion.  First I need to issue a disclaimer, I work for Rally but I am not on StackExchange to promote our company or our product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with your CEO that individuals and interactions come first and Ben makes a good proposal for a co-located team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would disagree with the suggestion to use Excel, it is a lousy tool for collaboration and it is a manager's tool not a team's tool and this is a cultural impediment.  If you are determined to explore this option try Google Docs vs. MS Office, it has much better collaborative support.  Maybe you can't create pivot tables but perhaps this is a good thing :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are determined to use a tool, there are plenty of teams that succeed with a tool however bear in mind that it may not solve your problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also advise against &quot;formalism&quot;, a basic tenet of our agile approach is continuous improvement, there is no standard to formalise just core principles to adhere to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1012" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T12:53:29.627" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2288" CreationDate="2011-05-17T13:05:12.277" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out my answer &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2162/what-approaches-exist-for-long-term-planning-and-responding-to-change/2202#2202&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; on our &lt;strong&gt;Roadmap&lt;/strong&gt; approach. Each planned release is a workpackage, and as such is planned within the available capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have two-weekly sprints, and the whole thing is directed through a monthly SteerCo. So I made one 'project management plan' (or rather a release management plan) for the whole year, and I issue a monthly status report for my SteerCo and other stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T13:05:12.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2273" CreationDate="2011-05-17T13:15:15.030" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;zfranciscus I don't think there's anything wrong with people asking for an estimate up-front.  I believe the root cause lies with the &quot;thick&quot; requirements document.  We just don't know everything up-front, many of those requirements in the reqts document are likely waste (not needed, never will be used) and some reqts that should be in there are not.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The classic approach is to abstract the detailed requirements to a higher-level (as Ben advocates above) allowing yourself flexibility in the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that this does not address the real problem.  The &quot;thick&quot; requirements document is a safety blanket.  Those creating it believe this is the only way to be successful and perhaps they also believe that if they don't get all the reqts approved before the baseline is approved it will cost them a lot of money.  It is always difficult to address these fears through conversation.  The very best way is to get people involved and demonstrate by doing (running a few iterations). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1012" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T13:15:15.030" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2288" CreationDate="2011-05-17T13:53:51.037" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would separate a couple of part here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Long-term product development strategy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Everyday release management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, you need to know where you're going so you need to figure out goals which your product should achieve and ways (big chunks of functionality) to achieve that goal. That gives some kind of high-level roadmap which you plan to follow. As it takes into account business strategy you should have there big milestones, like delivering quarterly big hairy version with a big bunch of new thrilling stuff to your customers. And this is the point where you start dealing with releasing product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to know which versions covers which features and when they go into production. Then, you probably need to prepare reasonable amount of documentation if you have once-in-quarter-or-less-frequent-release strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, you mention agile as your method of choice and 3-week long timebox. It means that you should have something to release once every three weeks. And for such releases I'd try to limit amount needed documentation to as little as possible. If you don't push each of such versions into production that's good because you can perfectly skip most of documentation, especially parts regarding planning each sprint as a separate product. If you do push each version into production it's even better -- I believe there's little documentation which is really crucial if you release in such frequent manner. You should also have pretty repeatable process after a few consecutive releases so it definitely shouldn't be as painful as you say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to make it even better think about even more frequent releases. I don't how it is now, but some time ago guys building StackOverflow were trying to push something new into production on daily basis. Then incremental value you deliver is small but your increments are very, very frequent. This basically mean you just have to limit amount of different formalities around release process to lowest possible level which gives you powerful motivation to find lowest reasonable subset of documentations and planning you really need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: that the everyday release strategy is just a way of fulfilling long term strategy so it should be means to achieve some bigger goals. As long as you are aligned with your high-level plan it usually doesn't really matter whether your nth release goes live on Tuesday or on Wednesday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T13:53:51.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2288" CreationDate="2011-05-17T14:00:46.380" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found that transitioning to Agile with short iterations and more frequent releases causes exactly the tension you describe.  The old way of working isn't compatible (won't scale into) the new way of working: this isn't an Agile problem so much as a &quot;The business just changed the way they are working&quot; problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some things that have helped relive the tension&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to the consumers/customers for the documents.  Understand the minimum information they need from those documents.  In many cases all they need is a graph, or a bulleted list, or some other summary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For the &quot;time plan&quot; (schedule) - show the burn-up/down charts and see if that will meet their needs.  The teams should be generating these naturally themselves&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requirements/SRS: If you are tracking User Stories for the team, then can't that be used for the SRS?  Start with some high level User Stories then decompose them as the team delivers.  Don't write it all up front, but refine it over time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some things to watch out for&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teams can ask for -tons- of your time with questions like &quot;Which shade of blue should we use?&quot; and &quot;Ask the customer X for us&quot;  Some of these are valid and some should be pushed back into the team to &quot;make their best pass at solving it&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You might want to write more about &quot;intent&quot; rather than &quot;shall statements&quot; when you describe the project/release.  Continuing to write &quot;old style&quot; requirements keeps you in demand from all the teams.  Giving them the intent empowers them to take some ownership as well&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm very interested to hear other perspectives on this.  It is a very very common problem for Product Managemnt!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T14:00:46.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2260" CreationDate="2011-05-17T14:36:20.970" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only &quot;good&quot; monetary argument you could make is that your company is too small and has too little money to not spend it. If you want to succeed you may have to bite down and take the risk of running out of money sooner than expected. Depending on what the books look like this could range from relatively low risk to utterly stupid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the suggestion for a part-time PM is probably the best solution for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately my experience in a small biotech company is that it is probably more likely that either (a) a &quot;senior&quot; manager will be take the role or (b) it will get offloaded onto the technical team. Neither works. The manager is conflicted - trying to answer to shareholders in the short term is an incentive to ignore issues on a project that impact could have an impact later on, and is the source of any number of horror stories I have. And the technical team that you have is likely too inexperienced and too short-staffed to manage a project well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T14:36:20.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="677" CreationDate="2011-05-17T16:50:01.600" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with:&#xA;- if part of work on current feature, treat it as part of the sprint and not a separate defect&#xA;- if outside of the sprint (e.g. from production issue) then create a Bug item on the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should you give them Story points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;: means they are treated just like stories and help with the accuracy of your planning process.  However, it also implies that they add business value and form part of your team velocity measure which they shouldn't&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;: means that they are not treated as adding business value and punishes the velocity if you have a quality issue that needs addressing and falling velocity would be an indicator.  It also means that you may find it hard to plan your releases against the rest of your backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1270" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-11-22T02:00:50.567" LastActivityDate="2012-11-22T02:00:50.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2272" CreationDate="2011-05-17T17:19:47.003" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend you find a company or individual where you can go observe.  Nothing will be a better education than observing the real thing.  Think about where you might intern, I would recommend a small company where you get to see a much larger variety of people and work.  Bear in mind that the field of Software Project Management is evolving rapidly right now after many years of staying the same.  This should influence your choice of places to go observe and books to read.  Consider volunteering at a conference, for example I know the Agile conferences (next one Agile2011 in Salt Lake City) will give free registration if you volunteer.  Study online for example, go listen to some TED talks.  It is unlikely that you can step into management without some experience so you should consider your best path to management.  I would think the most obvious path would be software engineering but if that is not your passion then there are other routes.  Best of luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1012" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T17:19:47.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="677" CreationDate="2011-05-17T17:32:07.293" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The wonderful thing about agile is that we retired concepts such as the requirements baseline so for an agile team the difference between a bug and a story is not an argument worth having.  Both represent &quot;stuff&quot; you need to.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the bug is part of the work being done in an iteration/sprint and we want to fix it in that sprint/iteration then treat it like a task.  Otherwise put it on the product backlog.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the bug is on the product backlog then there is value in fixing it otherwise it should not be on the backlog.  The bug should also be estimated otherwise you will have difficulties planning work and measuring.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is one special case where new development exposes a latent bug so severe that it impacts the whole iteration and I don't think there is an easy answer to this one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1012" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T17:32:07.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2208" CreationDate="2011-05-17T17:35:31.520" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It always puzzles me that companies recruit the very best graduates who have a minimum of 17 years of education and then expect all future learning to be on the job.  We need to constantly learn and the best companies invest in their employees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1012" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T17:35:31.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2285" CreationDate="2011-05-17T17:49:07.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not 100% sure I'm reading the question correctly, so please let me know if I'm missing the mark here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the basic question is how to you structure bonuses and other incentives for software engineers, there are a few options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give them equity in the company, that way if they contribute to the company's success they get a piece.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For more contract and engineering services companies, you can tie productivity to revenue and so giving the engineers some reward based on revenue is an option.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finally, you can set goals or objectives as bonus requirements. For example: Complete your piece of the project on time for your annual bonus of 15% of salary. Assuming a well managed group, I've seen this work well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your asking if you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt;, all I can say is that many companies do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="916" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T17:49:07.643" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2115" CreationDate="2011-05-17T17:49:51.917" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my favorite Agile companies is Menlo Innovations out of Ann Arbor.  They are not Scrum per se but XP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind that many of the early adopters have evolved from Scrum through continuous improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trap with seeking out success stories is they take a while to get published and if you expect to see a success story before putting your feet in the water you are already a quantum leap behind.  More here&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20121026071308/http://www.rallydev.com/agileblog/2010/10/dont-be-a-blockbuster/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;don't be a blockbuster&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1012" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-21T06:43:26.250" LastActivityDate="2020-07-21T06:43:26.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2067" CreationDate="2011-05-17T19:05:58.880" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have tried Basecamp and Unfuddle and reviewed most of the rest and have settled on &lt;a href=&quot;http://assembla.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://assembla.com&lt;/a&gt;.  I find it configurable to various types of projects, it has some nice features such as a Kanban-like cardwall, it is easy to encourage team members to start using, and it is under active development.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at your list of requirements, I think it fits the bill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1272" LastEditorUserId="360" LastEditDate="2011-06-05T13:52:00.507" LastActivityDate="2011-06-05T13:52:00.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2302" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2304" CreationDate="2011-05-17T20:18:06.367" Score="15" ViewCount="6132" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's about a Scrum Team. PO and the couple of developers. They do well every time, when task is clearly defined and only technical part is to be done.  It gets complicated when there is a need to work with a fuzzy epic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epic is big. Inside of it, there is almost nothing but the idea. There are many customers and it is very hard to find a pattern, a statistical representation of the customer, so there is a need to merge many points of view into one solution. There is also much to be done with it, but the problem is how to process it in the Scrum? (the idea should be described, technical obstacles should be defined, prototypes/solutions should be proposed, checked against legal issues and finally: selected, solution should be understanded/described, stories created and etc.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be done by arranging several meetings and working on the subject, but it looks like a solution which is outside the Scrum process. On the other hand, putting it into the Scrum would create several tasks connected in cascade pattern (ping-pong with multiple players) and many of such tasks would be incompatible with the Definition of Done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help would be appreciated. I fell I am missing something obvious, yet important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2011-05-17T20:37:27.747" LastActivityDate="2020-07-19T06:59:59.413" Title="How to handle big stories / epics in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2302" CreationDate="2011-05-17T20:41:54.877" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The same way you tackle any epic: break it down into smaller chunks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many different stakeholders, so first try writing down the user story from each stakeholder viewpoint.  If there are &lt;em&gt;N&lt;/em&gt; stakeholders, that will generate &lt;em&gt;N&lt;/em&gt; user stories.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, try to identify ONE user story of the &lt;em&gt;N&lt;/em&gt; that can be fully fleshed out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tackle that one, and see what it tells you after the first iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tackling things from a stakeholder viewpoint is just one approach.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=+breaking+down+epic+user+stories&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Check out Google for other ways to deal with it&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="569" LastEditorUserId="569" LastEditDate="2015-02-17T12:45:26.353" LastActivityDate="2015-02-17T12:45:26.353" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2302" CreationDate="2011-05-17T20:55:24.153" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're describing a situation in which a project needs to be planned and executed in an environment with high level of uncertainty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There could be several areas of uncertainty:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Requirements uncertainty&lt;/strong&gt; - what needs to be done, how done looks like, etc. This is mainly due to a lack of real customers with real spelled out needs. &lt;br&gt;&#xA;This kind of uncertainty could be handled by brainstorming and coming up with several approaches, alternatives, ideas that could be broken down to user stories the SCRUM team can develop in a sprint. These user stories should be defined as features/capabilities that when done can be presented to customers, or focus groups (UX testing) or any opinionated stakeholder. Plan for gathering feedback and adjusting the user stories in your backlog, that define the Epic according to the feedback that you get. Change and adjust the Epic from sprint to sprint until you reach a point in which all (or most) of the stakeholders are satisfied.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Technical uncertainty&lt;/strong&gt; - how should the solution be formed, performance concerns, infrastructure concerns, etc.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This kind of uncertainty can be handled by starting with a simple user story for building a slim end-to-end solution. In the first sprint you may encounter issues and problems. Then on the next sprint you will be able to define user stories that would handle issues around performance issues, architectural issues and more, by changing, refactoring and even throwing away code developed in the first sprint. Don't expect (and don't try) to be able to figure out all the technical aspect on day 1.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="44" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T20:55:24.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2285" CreationDate="2011-05-17T21:55:47.117" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There should be a baseline agreement between the developer and the employer on what work will be completed at what level of pay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pay will generally be higher for more experienced/higher quality work.  However, the end of a project is a bad place to try and get more money if you feel you were underpaid.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't expect extra pay if you went above and beyond the agreement.  If your employer doesn't recognize the extra effort you put in, keep that in mind next time they come to you with a job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though, part of the problem could be in the communication between you and your employer.  The employer may not know that you went beyond what was expected. This is often the case where either communication was not consistent throughout the project or if your employer is not familiar with software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T21:55:47.117" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="677" CreationDate="2011-05-17T23:25:27.640" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;What's the difference between a story and a task?  Or a story and an epic?  Or, a bug and a story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, it's all work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a bug is found in a story we're working on in the current sprint, the story is moved back &#xA;to the sprint ready queue and flows back through the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's something unrelated to the current sprint and gets prioritised by the PO, whether it's a bug with previously delivered work or something new, it's moved &#xA;to the sprint ready queue and flows back through the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T23:25:27.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2307" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2310" CreationDate="2011-05-18T05:30:33.437" Score="9" ViewCount="1417" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had the opportunity to work at quite a few start-ups. One thing I've found to be common in them is adhoc way of doing things and ignorance towards processes, best practices and known project management techniques. When I suggest changes to the employers they come up with the answer that all these processes look good in books and reality is different OR they are only relevant in Google, Microsoft and Yahoo like companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example in the middle of the sprint (in Scrum) a product owner would come and say. Hey I've changed my mind about so and so feature so lets do the changes. Don't tell me about man hours, estimates and sprints. Just finish this tonight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems start-ups are exempted from following the standards and best way for them is to just go with the flow and make decisions based on gut feelings. Is that true? What is the justification?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1279" LastEditorUserId="1279" LastEditDate="2011-05-18T06:29:39.663" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T15:47:16.740" Title="Are processes and procedures only for enterprises?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2168" CreationDate="2011-05-18T05:38:05.350" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Martin Fowler answers these questions (and more!) about stand-ups beautifully in the following article - it's the best one I've found about the topic.  In it, he says &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With flexible work hours, not every&#xA;  team member will arrive at work at the&#xA;  same time. A common practice with&#xA;  “flex-time” is to use a set of core&#xA;  working hours. The start time should&#xA;  be at the start of these core working&#xA;  hours. Similarly, if team members need&#xA;  to arrive later for personal reasons&#xA;  (e.g., need to drop off kids at&#xA;  school), the start time should be set&#xA;  at a time so that everyone can attend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also talks about the importance of holding the ceremony at the same time (in the same place) each day.  I wouldn't recommend you change the time even if everyone is in the office early.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We want the team to have a sense of&#xA;  ownership of the stand-up. We also&#xA;  want interested parties to be able to&#xA;  drop by to observe a stand-up to avoid&#xA;  having to schedule yet another status&#xA;  meeting. This is difficult if any&#xA;  particular team member is allowed to&#xA;  force a delay or change of location of&#xA;  the stand-up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a read here for other recommended stand-up practices: &lt;a href=&quot;http://martinfowler.com/articles/itsNotJustStandingUp.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://martinfowler.com/articles/itsNotJustStandingUp.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1213" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T05:38:05.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2309" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-18T06:04:37.243" Score="19" ViewCount="2384" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are some of the different patterns you use to schedule maintenance work (any non-feature work like bug fixes, technical debt reduction, etc.)?  In our organization, we've considered mash-ups of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finish feature commitments and then peel off teams for maintenance work during test or warranty cycles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bug Quash (a social event where the goal is to fix, or “quash”, as many bugs as is humanly possible in a time-boxed period)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Schedule fixed capacity up front in each release (e.g. plan for 1 sprint per team in a release)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dedicated full-time bugmeister to triage and coordinate fixes with teams&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ping-pong the maintenance work between off-shore teams&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, we follow two guiding principles in this area of practice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People should fix their own bugs to the extent possible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No dedicated maintenance teams&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, too, the reality is we have bugs.  Please don't tell me to find a way to eliminate bugs so that we don't have to worry about solving for this problem.  I'm interested in other ideas about how to approach the problem.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(P.S. credit &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.natebeck.net/about/&quot;&gt;Nate Beck&lt;/a&gt; for the Bug Quash idea - thanks Nate!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1213" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T17:09:22.337" Title="How do you schedule maintenance work in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;maintenance&gt;&lt;defect-fixing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2307" CreationDate="2011-05-18T06:24:00.413" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Small start-up companies have to be very agile and fast. Since these companies are small, meetings can be conducted in the hallway and decisions do not get documented and communicated out of those meetings. The rationale is - all stakeholders are there in the hallway! It's effective for them. This kind of approach (we can even call it culture) is effective enough for those companies. Up to a point the company starts growing. During the growth process people continue using their small-company habits and processes. At some point they realize it doesn't work any more. Things start to fall between the cracks, there is no healthy communication between people. Project status, including schedules, decisions, architecture, design, issues, and more is vague and not visible to all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to your question - yes, you can find this phenomena of making a lot of exceptions to common practice processes in small start-up companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, a company can be agile and fast even if it follows some basic processes. Processes are not just for the enterprise. A company needs to make sure the processes it follows allows it to move fast enough and be agile enough. The right tools need to be selected for the right job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way I can think of to adjust the processes of a company is to conduct retrospective sessions in a high enough frequency. In these sessions people should bring up concerns and issues and the processes should be adjusted to deal with the issues. This way the processes can be gradually adjust to the needs of the company, to the complexity of its workflow and to the right amount of agility it needs to have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="44" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T06:24:00.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2309" CreationDate="2011-05-18T06:51:38.347" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen projects in which almost all of the methods you mentioned above were being used. This is a comprehensive set of methods to handle maintenance work in SCRUM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually the PO is more interested to push new features development to the sprints contents. The development team usually tries to reduce technical debt, to re-factor areas of the code, to develop maintenance items that would make it easier for them to further develop the code base in the future and more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way I've found to work this &quot;tension&quot; between the PO and the development team is to agree on a capacity distribution between new features and maintenance (or non-functional items) on a release basis. Then, a good approach is to maintain 2 backlogs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;New features backlog&lt;/strong&gt; - maintained by the PO&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Maintenance backlog&lt;/strong&gt; - maintained by the SCRUM master and contains the maintenance items that are not functional.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should note that when maintaining 2 backlogs, you will put the functional bugs (bugs that are related to features development) in the PO's backlog. These bugs need to be prioritized with the other items in that backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The maintenance backlog will include items that are non-functional, infrastructural, re-factoring, tools development, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using this method would allow avoiding a lot of conflicts with the PO around what's more important - the re-factoring of component X or new feature Y.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the release planning (or every so many sprints, if the release is long), the PO and the team should agree on the capacity distribution by looking at what's in both backlogs and considering the priorities of the project as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, regarding functional bugs, bug quashes is a nice method, however I think an effective way is to allocate some of the team's capacity to bug fixing in each and every sprint. Ideally, you can plan for specific bugs you'd like to fix during sprint planning but sometimes you need to plan for the unknown (severe bugs that were not found yet). You'll want to allocate capacity for these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="44" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T06:51:38.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2307" CreationDate="2011-05-18T07:25:37.983" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe it's not ignorance but &lt;strong&gt;strategy&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Too much rules, procedures &amp;amp; processes prevent your people to practice &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thewisdommeme.com/Articles1/practicalwisdom.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;practical wisdom&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main advantage of startups comparing to big companies is their agility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore I highly encourage you to set common objectives, vision and strategy, and let your people help you achieve them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1280" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T07:25:37.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2309" CreationDate="2011-05-18T07:45:28.347" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing I don't see in your question is any information on your SLA. This is important as if you have SLA in place you may be forced to inverse priorities and agree that (at least some) bugs go first and new development goes second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is the case another option is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Finish commitments regarding bugs and then invest rest of the time into new development.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Minor bug which has 60-day long resolution time becomes important after 58 days. Also if you don't have enforced SLA you can agree internally for informal SLA for specific bugs so you create the sense of urgency and important bugs eventually get fixed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another approach you can use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Put bugs along with new features in a single backlog and allow the team and PO prioritize work items against each other.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way you make conscious tradeoffs when you decide what to do. Also it's a good thing to visualize the difference, e.g. with different color of sticky notes so PO sees how many bugs you have when they want to push new things into development. After all, if the product is buggy, no matter how cool it is, people won't like it much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Challenge your rules regarding bug-fixing.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't say they're wrong but I found in a couple of teams that skipping the rule that &quot;everyone fixes their own code&quot; brought us closer to collective code ownership and improved the pace we were learning each others' code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T07:45:28.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2272" CreationDate="2011-05-18T07:57:06.343" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;this may seem counter-intuitave but you may want to look at becoming a software developer for a while - even if it is only on the side. It never hurts to have 'done it' before managing getting it done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1151" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T07:57:06.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2307" CreationDate="2011-05-18T08:12:57.697" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer to your question is: processes and procedures should be adjusted to environment you work in. Definitely start-ups are more flexible and way more often continuously changing than big enterprises. But then it's not about being start-up or not, but about the way people work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If in your situation people change their mind often and priorities are changed in the middle of iteration maybe you should either adjust iteration length or change the process to iterationless, e.g. Kanban. It a start-up I'd look for lightest possible rules which help to make the job done and yet limit flexibility in the least possible way. I'm not sure Scrum would fit this definition perfectly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Processes and procedures are for you and not the other way around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T08:12:57.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2316" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2332" CreationDate="2011-05-18T09:00:43.040" Score="11" ViewCount="5906" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Given a small team (3 people or so) and a technically challenging area (e.g. middleware, embedded software etc.), and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assuming that a user story is a smallest thing that &lt;em&gt;has value for the end user&lt;/em&gt;,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;how do you go about handling stories that take more than one month to reach the DONE-DONE state? Of course one could always split them into several so called &quot;technical stories&quot;, but they are, with the exception of refactoring spikes, a big no-no in Agile, aren't they?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1281" LastActivityDate="2020-07-19T06:59:11.710" Title="How to handle user stories that cannot be split and do not fit even a 30 days long sprint?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="677" CreationDate="2011-05-18T09:08:18.293" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A practice I've heard of is grouping a number of related bugs into a single product backlog item. This makes sense to me as there might be hundreds of bugs in a large system, and keeping track of all of them as separate product backlog items would incur a considerable amount of backlog grooming waste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also easier to attribute end user value this way, and we also avoid estimations in fractions of a story point that otherwise would be inevitable for trivial bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1281" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T09:08:18.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2316" CreationDate="2011-05-18T09:51:35.303" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you genuinely can't split the story into valuable chunks, I'd go with &quot;smallest testable component&quot; to slice it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you give an example of a story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T09:51:35.303" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2319" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-18T11:15:23.000" Score="3" ViewCount="286" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a developer as part of a team comprising of a variety of roles e.g. project manager technical lead, business analyst, quality assurance etc, what are the most important things for a developer to be aware of about project management? How deep an understanding is appropriate for a developer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="925" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T17:43:19.200" Title="Important Information for a Developer to Know About Project Management" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2320" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2323" CreationDate="2011-05-18T11:17:59.597" Score="18" ViewCount="639" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a developer working on a team with a project manager, is it valuable for the team and/or the project manager to have team members who are aware of project management and for them to share their opinions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does this effect the relationships between team members?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="925" LastActivityDate="2011-06-14T10:02:48.050" Title="Is a Developer Getting Involved in Project Management a Good Idea?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2320" CreationDate="2011-05-18T11:42:48.357" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually, I avoid involving the team members in the Project Management role as I usually work in small teams. When I work in bigger teams it is always helpful to have one of the experienced developers involved in the management (a shotgun). In practice, this leads to better task organisation on the lower levels and increasing the productivity. Just to be clear, do not expect miracles if you make a developer your assistant, it just helps a little.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1136" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-05-19T02:03:54.017" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T02:03:54.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2302" CreationDate="2011-05-18T12:09:27.513" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing that intrigues me is that you say &quot;they do well every time, when task is clearly defined&quot;.  It seems there is a dependency on detail.  This leads me to wonder if the team is clear on what the overall direction is.  Epics are not standalone little projects they should be aligned to the overall product strategy.  Is everyone clear on the vision?  How about the product roadmap?  The vision should help guide and steer decisions.  A product roadmap will set expectations and avoid the last-loudest priority problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I may be completely missing the point and you might want to check on Bill Wake's excellent &lt;a href=&quot;http://xp123.com/articles/twenty-ways-to-split-stories/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;20 Ways to Split Stories&lt;/a&gt;.  He describes a couple of techniques for breaking down large stories that are not yet well understood.  A great technique for working out whether we need to implement spikes or research stories is if the team cannot estimate stories.  If you play planning poker and notice a large standard deviation in estimates you may need to do some more work before making commitments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1012" LastEditorUserId="44" LastEditDate="2011-05-18T12:43:28.070" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T12:43:28.070" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2320" CreationDate="2011-05-18T12:44:16.463" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;First things first.... the PM should always be listening to the opinions of the team. They are key stakeholders in the project and the best way to keep them engaged, motivated and productive is to foster good and open communications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may have to work harder at communicating with those with little knowledge of PM than with others. I'm in a field that doesn't have a long PM history, and a lack of knowledge of PM in the teams leads to unnecessary impacts on scope/cost/time. This is mainly due to not paying attention to proper configuration management, change and communications practices. I've been trying to alleviate this by hosting weekly PM awareness sessions, and have noticed a reduction in problems with those who have been regular attendees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T12:44:16.463" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2324" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2327" CreationDate="2011-05-18T12:53:28.710" Score="17" ViewCount="6357" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does project management mean managing people? So far, from my understanding, managing people is somehow part of project management. But I don't have any formal training in this direction and I can't form a very educated opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1284" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2011-05-19T12:58:00.937" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T18:17:19.220" Title="Does project management mean managing people?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;personal-skills&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2320" CreationDate="2011-05-18T12:56:12.640" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not only is it a good idea it is perhaps the only idea.  Delegating decision making down to the lowest possible level will lead to better buy-in, better decision making and better employee growth.  It is not easy however.  If you have a culture where people are used to being commanded then it will take some courage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1012" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T12:56:12.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2324" CreationDate="2011-05-18T13:23:37.007" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Management is, ultimately, always about people. Projects are about people work together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two main approaches that can be used:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Design a process (system and environment) that is most effective for people working together. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Utilize soft skills effectively to manage people and create a work environment conducive to people working together.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best project managers are aware of and use both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FURTHER INFORMATION (Based on Mihai's request)&#xA;Agile and related methodologies are a good example of no. 1. They are based on concepts from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Constraints&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Theory of Constraints&lt;/a&gt; and nearly a century of data on industrial engineering (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Deming&lt;/a&gt;). From these perspective, the data shows that people can accomplish specific tasks better under certain environments versus others. You can improve people's performance by changing process elements of the work environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking towards no. 2,  good communication skills can create an environment where people are happy and productive, often despite the process elements. That is, even if the factory stinks, there can be a relatively happy and productive work environment with a good manager.  To learn more, read about leadership and communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2011-05-19T12:57:18.770" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T12:57:18.770" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2324" CreationDate="2011-05-18T13:24:03.247" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes and no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically when we think about managing people we think about superior-subordinate relation in terms of hierarchy. So we have a manager who has a team to manage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project managers however rarely have such relation with project teams. Usually there is at least one manager (sometimes called functional manager or line manager) who leads the team and has formal power over people and project manager is somewhere on the side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that project manager's everyday duties usually cover a lot of telling people what to do (on different levels), which means it's kind of similar area. However with no direct power it is more about influencing or leading people than simply managing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: there's a project team led by functional manager and project manager. On everyday basis it is PM who deals tasks among people and checks whether everything is going OK. However when there's some issue with one of team members which has to be dealt by their superior, for example some hasn't shown up to work and hadn't let anyone know, it's an issue to solve by the functional manager. PM role here may be only making the functional manager aware of the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T13:24:03.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2320" CreationDate="2011-05-18T13:29:24.740" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PM should create time for you to express your concerns. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, since the PM is accountable for the project, let them guide the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have ethical concerns or concerns that could impact more than the project itself, the best place to voice those would be to upper management rather than to your team.  Voicing it to the team can create unnecessary and unproductive friction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T13:29:24.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2272" CreationDate="2011-05-18T13:51:52.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems unlikely that your first job out of college would be in software project management, unless you manage to get hired by one of the big consulting companies.  It would be like jumping right into doctor without doing a residency, if that makes sense.  The consulting companies however do like to hire young and you can get experience fast.  Overall, I do think it takes work experience in the trenches to become a good manager, as you need to develop your instinct.  It isn't all book-learning, although great books can help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A college degree is a minimum requirement, and a masters in a pertinent area would be a huge plus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, I can't remember any classes offered in high school that I would use today, aside from mathematics (for calculating schedules and so many other things) and English (for writing).  High school teaches you the basics, and then college teaches you how to think, and the rest you learn on the job -  isn't that how it goes?  I went to a liberal arts college to get a computer science degree, but I suspect you could learn a lot from taking some Computer Science courses, business courses, IT courses.  You would want to get some work experience in, learn how a corporation works, learn to navigate corporate cultures.  You want to be practicing your soft skills all the time, master public speaking, develop good writing skills (for emails and documents).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to pursue a project management certification or even go to graduate school for it; Myself, I will be completing my Masters in Project and Program Management this summer and the classes and discussions with other PMs have been very helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="933" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T13:51:52.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2319" CreationDate="2011-05-18T13:54:06.917" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no such thing as appropriate level of understanding of project management. Actually, if the project is organized very well a developer can perfectly know nothing about project management at all and it would be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand the more every project team member knows about job of other project team members the better. From this perspective a developer should know about project management as much as possible as then they're better partners in any discussion with PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway if I had to point the most important aspects of project management which should generally be known by as many team members as possible I'd point:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Communication, especially communication with clients.&lt;/strong&gt; We have to know what we can tell and whom we can tell that.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Estimating/scheduling.&lt;/strong&gt; We need to plan our work in some reasonable way.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Being aware of how project looks like in a big picture.&lt;/strong&gt; It always help to know the context of our work, so we can choose our solutions better.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T13:54:06.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2331" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2333" CreationDate="2011-05-18T14:00:22.967" Score="2" ViewCount="273" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure how to phrase this but I'd like to ask how Agile handles this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My understanding is that in Agile, you freeze the stories that are in the current sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What happens when a developer starts working on a story and realizes it's bigger than expected?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At that point, do you plan ahead by removing something else from the plan?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;conversely, if they start working and get it done much faster than expected, can you fit something else in?  Or do you  just complete the sprint achieving less than you could have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specific to my situation, we have 6 week iterations, and the work is estimated upfront to fit into the iteration plan - but sometimes developers realize later that it will take more or less time, and then the iteration plan has to change.  It seems that this would be incredibly common even if developers are choosing their stories and estimating/committing to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="933" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T16:22:24.120" Title="Given a &quot;frozen&quot; iteration plan, what happens if the plan's stories require more work than expected" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2316" CreationDate="2011-05-18T14:06:10.620" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, do things which do make sense. If it does make sense to &lt;strong&gt;split the big story into a few smaller ones, even if you can't deliver those parts to your client separately,&lt;/strong&gt; why shouldn't you do it? You don't get paid for being perfectly adjusted to what some thought-leaders say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, if the situation is rather an exception treat is like one. If you don't want to split the story into smaller chunks you may &lt;strong&gt;push one story among a couple of iterations&lt;/strong&gt; and agree that this time it will just look like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, if the situation is rather common &lt;strong&gt;think how you can adjust process you follow in a way which actually allows such stories&lt;/strong&gt;. One thing which comes to my mind is Kanban, where you resign from iterations completely and you can deal with one XXL story and at the same time build a lot of smaller ones as you don't limit work basing on time but you limit a number of concurrent tasks. In this case one huge story would take only one slot but it would use it for a longer time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Four, &lt;strong&gt;don't be orthodox on delivering value to a client&lt;/strong&gt;. If you wanted, and needed, to do some housekeeping in architecture which brought exactly 0 value to your customers, but helped you to limit maintenance costs would you reject such task? Probably no. And yet you would somehow put it in your backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After all agile is about flexibility, about reacting to changes and not about keep rules at all possible cost, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T14:06:10.620" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2331" CreationDate="2011-05-18T14:16:33.200" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you basically aim for in time-boxed approaches, like Scrum, is to get by the end of iteration potentially shippable product. It means that the ideal situation is when every story you started working on is completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now it doesn't have be the same set of stories you planned for iteration. There are a few possible situations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You planned to do n stories but for whatever reasons (underestimation, unplanned absence, new information, etc.) you can't.&lt;/strong&gt; It means you should throw something out of the scope of the iteration so you can still deliver something rather complete, even if completeness means something different than you thought during planning meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW: because of such situations it is generally better to start working on most important stories first, so when you need to throw something out of the scope you choose among least important stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You planned to do n stories but you go faster than planned and you can do more.&lt;/strong&gt; A good practice here is to plan not only must-have features which you need to complete during sprint (taking your velocity into consideration that is), but also add some nice-to-have stories which you can start working on when you have time. It means that you basically agree that it is likely you won't complete those additional stories but if you're lucky some of them can be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You go exactly according to plan.&lt;/strong&gt; Congratulations! Nothing to discuss here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You have a combination of 1. and 2.&lt;/strong&gt; Then you probably first compensate your underestimation with unplanned free time you have and check whether you still have some slack or are still overloaded and react accordingly as described above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T14:16:33.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2331" CreationDate="2011-05-18T14:39:03.673" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;We solve this problem by working with &lt;strong&gt;committed&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;non-committed&lt;/strong&gt; scope for each iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;each work-package (similar to functinality) is estimated with a &lt;strong&gt;Most Likely&lt;/strong&gt; and a &lt;strong&gt;Worst Case&lt;/strong&gt; estimate (by comparing with similar work or expert group estimation techniques).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based upon business priority, we plan the releases based upon the Worst Case estimates. This is our &lt;strong&gt;committed&lt;/strong&gt; scope of the release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, the difference between worst case and most likely estimates is used to plan additional, but &lt;strong&gt;non-committed&lt;/strong&gt; scope (using the most-likely estimates for this).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This gives us some leeway: there is space if things turn out worse then expected, and we know what to work on when there is time left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a work package needs even more time than the worst case estimate, there is usually still some time left from other committed scope. of course, if we think that we cannot even deliver the committed scope, then we need to replan accordingly. This will surely happen a few times in the beginning, but over time your estimates will get better and you'll be able to plan regular releases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T14:39:03.673" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2331" CreationDate="2011-05-18T14:55:09.300" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't remove stories from a sprint but I would make sure the product owner has them prioritised.  That way, so long as they are informed how far over you're likely to go, they'll have a good idea how far through the sprint commitment you'll get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Equally, if you're getting through stuff quicker, make sure the product backlog is well prioritised and you can pull in stories from there if you get through your commitment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key for me is communication with the product owner so they don't get any nasty surprises.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to try shortening your iteration length.  The shorter the iteration, the less variation you're likely to have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastEditorUserId="1185" LastEditDate="2011-05-19T16:22:24.120" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T16:22:24.120" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2336" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2339" CreationDate="2011-05-18T15:07:25.213" Score="9" ViewCount="1088" Body="&lt;p&gt;After four prototypes on a mailshot design, the client is now telling me that the project is going to be cancelled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because a lot of work was involved, I submitted an updated &quot;cost estimate&quot; (in this case the project was being made in a &quot;project-value&quot; kind of cost estimate).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, now the client is asking for parts of the project (very small bits), telling me that they are paying parts of the project so they're &quot;entitled&quot; to have some parts, and I am in the middle of an argument trying to explain that the new cost estimate is related to the work done and not the deliverables, I thought a canceled project means no deliverables, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what should I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A. tell them to pay for my work and nothing more (no deliverable handed)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B. send them those bits, very insignificant but still this goes against my point (my concern is that in their minds they feel they can use my work and unfortunately my contract isn't very specific for those cases because honestly in 15 years this is the first time this happens!) If I take this option, I will definitely tell them that they are forbidden to use any other material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;C. ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="751" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2011-05-18T15:29:22.717" LastActivityDate="2016-09-18T17:25:57.000" Title="Project cancelled, still client wants to use parts of it?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;contracts&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2331" CreationDate="2011-05-18T15:24:48.450" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't want to plan around a best-case scenario and task out to 100% of the team's capacity, perhaps stop at 70%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prioritize and limit your work-in-progress so that if something goes wrong instead of having al your stories 70% complete you will have 70% of your stories 100% complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1012" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T15:24:48.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2336" CreationDate="2011-05-18T15:37:43.920" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;They are paying for your work. In my opinion, that means the result of this work is theirs. Of course, you have no obligation to finish something that is currently not, as &lt;strong&gt;they&lt;/strong&gt; want to cancel the project, and are probably not ready to pay for more work. What's actually the problem with sending them what they are paying for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T15:37:43.920" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2336" CreationDate="2011-05-18T15:37:48.560" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you've already made up your mind :)  So, here are a couple of after-thoughts on it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Send them the bit of work they are asking for if you want to work with them again (and make sure the next contract is more specific).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to work with them again, tell them that unfortunately, since the project is canceled that effectively means that your engagement on the project is over. But, that you'd be happy to work with them again in the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be very professional and non-emotional about it.  Don't take it personally.  Chalk-it up to a learning experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T15:37:48.560" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2324" CreationDate="2011-05-18T15:50:39.703" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is - yes, project management is about managing people. Or rather, it's about influencing people to help you get done what needs to be done. That aspect of it is actually the most important part of project management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find stories everywhere about PM's that are technically brilliant, but no one wants to work with them. And there are PM's with poor skills that still manage to succeed and are raved about. It's this interaction with the people that's usually the difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When we talk about projects, what we're really talking about is producing a result. And to the best of my knowledge, unless you're the only person working to produce that result, you're going to have a team involved helping you. That's the people management side of it. If there are people involved, and it's your responsibility to produce that result, then your job is to influence the team in the right way to achieve that result. You can't do that if you have poor people management skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T15:50:39.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2320" CreationDate="2011-05-18T16:03:07.227" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The more people that understand the process, and what goes into it, the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is actually why the PMP was originally created. There's a reason it's called Project Management Professional, and not Professional Project Manager. ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the beginning, the PMP was designed to certify that team members, not the PM, had a good understanding of the general processes of project management. The thinking was that the more the team knew about what went into managing projects, the more assistance they could provide. Knowing the how's and why's of what the PM is doing or why they want certain information helps the team members understand better, and possibly provide more accurate or relevant info.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Mark said, this doesn't mean that the PM should be overruled or argued with, as they're ultimately responsible, but it helps if everyone's speaking the same language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T16:03:07.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2324" CreationDate="2011-05-18T16:10:08.307" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My understanding for what the project manager is doing is &lt;strong&gt;finding real solutions of real problems&lt;/strong&gt;, however I believe - yes, you can tell that part of the job is managing people on a day to day basis (already mentioned by Pawel). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a project manager, you need a set of different skills and it depends on the company policy -- what duties and responsibilities you have, but managing people is a must, otherwise this position is not a project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1136" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T16:10:08.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2336" CreationDate="2011-05-18T17:11:36.140" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd have to agree with Traroth. I'm having a hard-time reconciling how you justify not giving them what they ask for. They paid you money, they're entitled to what you produced. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I t was their prerogative to start the project, and it's their prerogative to cancel it. If you accepted money from them, then you were doing so &quot;in return for something&quot;. That something is theirs, working or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for them asking for just a piece, if you're really that upset, then send them everything and let them separate out what they want. But for me, that's just bad business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T17:11:36.140" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2324" CreationDate="2011-05-18T17:17:18.710" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being a PM means you manage all your resources, human and otherwise.  The concept of a matrixed organization does not remove the command and control authority of the PM; it weakens it.  The PM has absolute authority over the team role and the individual who occupies it.  The issue of a weak matrixed organization is caused by conflicting or competing requirements of an employee wearing multiple hats.  The PM, who is a temporary boss, typically loses in that conflict.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T17:17:18.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2336" CreationDate="2011-05-18T17:25:34.193" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your contract should already spell this out.  In a services-type project, it is explicitly indicated who owns the intellectual capital and product materials produced during the project.  In many contracts, some of the material is owned by the seller and others by the buyer.  Your contract should already state ownership.  If it does not, it is too late and your only recourse is through arbitration, which is likely not in your best interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T17:25:34.193" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2316" CreationDate="2011-05-18T17:30:38.827" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great answer from Pawel.  Some other things to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Done should be from the perspective of who the story is getting delivered to. This is not alway the end-user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a difference between potentially-shippable and shippable. The work that we do we try to be feature complete although it may not be feature-set complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All stories can be broken down.  It is difficult to do this theoretically during planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try not to break stories down across the process dimension.  For example, don't build in one iteration and test in the next.  This will impact throughput and can lead to technical debt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1012" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T17:30:38.827" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2319" CreationDate="2011-05-18T17:43:19.200" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I totally agree with Pawel. Expanding on his &quot;big picture&quot; comment it is important to know:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What the project product is supposed to look like, especially product quality/acceptance criteria. Without this you can wind up with a lot more problems integrating sub-products into a final release.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What the project roles and organization are. Letting everyone know what their roles are and how that fits into the big picture helps to reduce the amount of overlapping and/or abandoned responsibility.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, I think team members need to be aware of the ethical standards that a PM works under. The PM needs to have the team exhibit mutual respect, fairness, honesty and responsibility if the project is going to be a success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T17:43:19.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2316" CreationDate="2011-05-18T18:45:32.597" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The same way you tackle any epic: break it down into smaller chunks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many different ways to do this.  For example, if your project has lots of other (legacy) systems to interact with, try to find a lower-level user story that deals with ONE legacy system.  And see how &lt;em&gt;implementation&lt;/em&gt; of that impacts the overall epic story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2302/how-to-handle-big-stories-epics-in-scrum/2303#2303&quot;&gt;Another approach is to tackle things from a stakeholder viewpoint.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20101218085924/http://www.leighstringer.com/2009/06/14/breaking-down-epic-user-stories/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Check out this post for yet another way to deal with it&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="569" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-16T23:21:53.587" LastActivityDate="2020-07-16T23:21:53.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2349" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2350" CreationDate="2011-05-19T05:02:49.013" Score="4" ViewCount="488" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're about to meet some influential people on my project's field (at least they're influential in my country), data mining, mainly looking for some advice and, why not, a possible alliance in a mid term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm finishing the Vision and Scope document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, who should see this document? Should it be shown to demonstrate that we have something concrete and well planned and that it's not a bare idea? Or is it something that must be handled inside the organization only?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you ask what covers mine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Problem Description&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Background&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assumptions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Solution proposed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People involved&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Potential users&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Features&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That sort of things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1063" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2013-04-12T11:00:05.283" LastActivityDate="2013-04-12T11:00:05.283" Title="Who should see the Vision and Scope document?" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;scope&gt;&lt;vision&gt;&lt;analysis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2349" CreationDate="2011-05-19T06:10:00.463" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want them to help you with the idea or even join you some way to build it I wouldn't have any problems with showing them such document. The only prerequisite would be signing NDA but my guess is it's already signed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, both vision and scope (in your case both in the same document) should be distributed as broadly as possible. In the old times some teams had this tradition of physically signing such documents to show their commitment. All stakeholders should know what exactly you plan to build and how much it is aligned with their goals. Clients should know it as well since they're basically buying the vision and the scope. Partners, and potential partners, should know what they're sign for (and this is you case).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to discuss project with some outsiders you will eventually end up showing them the document so no need to show lack of trust from the beginning. If you fear that they would steal the idea first, we go back to lack of trust and rethinking whether you want to talk with those guys at all, second, that's what you sign NDA for, and third, this kind of scenarios are overrated -- most of companies care about their good name and don't want to be dubbed as thieves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, I wouldn't hesitate to show the vision and scope document to people who are considered as potential partners or anyone else who is involved in a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T06:10:00.463" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2324" CreationDate="2011-05-19T09:24:27.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless you are doing all the work on the Project yourself (!) then it is inevitable that you have to manage people in some way or another, maybe not in the traditional sense of line management, but a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;matrix management&lt;/a&gt; arrangement is very common these days. This, in my experience, can be even more challenging because you have all the responsibility for the work that people are doing but less of the power to affect change if things aren't happening as you would like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1085" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T09:24:27.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2352" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-19T10:21:41.643" Score="4" ViewCount="1858" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to create common checklist for project estimation in my organization. The idea behind is to make sure that you have taken into account different aspects (ie. lack of knowledge of given technology, people leaves, 3rd dependencies, complex UI, etc.) in the estimates. I would like to find out if someone has been already verifying estimates against such help questions. If so, how detailed they are, what kind of types you are using? Do you find them useful? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="898" LastActivityDate="2016-03-23T10:10:18.113" Title="What questions would you recommend to put into project estimation checklist?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2353" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-19T11:19:32.017" Score="6" ViewCount="481" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a small team that just created a website. We used Scrum and it worked very well for us. But now we have to shift our focus to marketing that website. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We would like to keep Scrum as our development method, but it does not seem to handle the requirements of marketing very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problems are for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;stories that have external dependencies, like waiting for a callback. Those tasks are very often not &quot;done&quot; at the end of a sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;many stories have a strict deadline and are lost in the one dimensional backlog that is sorted by importance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;new opportunities (e.g. an interview is scheduled) come in on a daily basis. Having them in the system just as timeboxed &quot;handle interviews&quot;-story seems very crude.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know best practices to integrate marketing into a Scrum process?&#xA;Or is there a different lightweight process that our marketing team could use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1293" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T22:59:14.447" Title="How do we integrate marketing in our Scrum process?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2353" CreationDate="2011-05-19T12:04:21.127" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can keep most of Scrum engineering practices but resign from time boxing and put &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_%28development%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt; over it. Kanban can be pretty easily organized in a way that allows you to put high-priority new tasks (interviews in your example) on the top of the backlog at any time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are also encouraged to visualize different information important for the team or the project. This can work very well with having your deadline attached to specific tasks. This way everyone in the team sees that and it's hard to ignore those deadlines. This trick can be easily used on your current task board without implementing Scrum whatsoever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of dealing with stories with external dependencies you can also easily adjust Kanban board in a way which covers this scenario and points every such situation so your PM, or whoever deals with external dependencies, sees it instantly. Read more about such approach here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2010/10/kanban-moving-cards-back.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2010/10/kanban-moving-cards-back.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This kind of change would mean that you change the way you plan as you would rather plan on-the-fly and not at the beginning of an iteration (as there would be no iterations), but it would also mean that you can better adjust what you do ever-changing situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T12:04:21.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2353" CreationDate="2011-05-19T13:00:51.157" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often, successful marketing depends on consistent, repetitive tasks done over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use a set of recurring tasks or monthly projects that consistent of a templated work-breakdown-structure (WBS).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T13:00:51.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2353" CreationDate="2011-05-19T13:22:15.637" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like Pawel B's comment about layering Kanban over your Scrum.  I do think Scrum can accommodate what you are looking for if you really want to keep to Scrum...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stories have external dependencies&lt;/strong&gt; - Do you have the User Story correct? (Might you do well splitting it into 2?)  Can you complete something that provides value to your customer (market) without the feedback?  Maybe the User story captures the tasks to produce the first version and if the feedback comes in, you can take off the other User Story in the Backlog &quot;Update with Market Feedback&quot;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stories have external dependencies&lt;/strong&gt; - Scrum might be pointing out that what is missing is a different customer/information management technique.  If getting feedback is of critical importance, &quot;waiting for a callback&quot; doesn't seem up to the task to accomplish this.  What about holding a &quot;launch party&quot; or some other marketing event that drums up interest and ensures you can get the feedback you need?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Strict deadline&lt;/strong&gt; - This isn't uncommon.  It requires some diligence when reviewing the backlog, especially for things where a long dependency chain exists to a given date (e.g. Present at Conference requires submitting a proposal, writing the presentation, getting it in by the deadline, travelling there, etc.)  I've used different colored stickies to show the story has a time dependency on it, and also tagged with a field/flag to make them stand out&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;New opportunities&lt;/strong&gt; - Does this need to be part of the backlog?  Does it get prioritized with other features, or just it &quot;just happen&quot;?  Would you ever -not- do this?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is very good for building up a product, but horrible about managing the &quot;chronic&quot; activities  (1-on-1 meetings, department meetings, network with potential customers, etc. all need to happen, but don't &quot;build up&quot; to the final product...)  Typically (for me at least :-), things like the burn-up chart are useful to give groups like Marketing the info they need to structure their activities.  Some times, if there is a dependency between Marketing and the Dev team, then Marketing might have a story, or sign up for a task.  Usually tho, these groups (along with Legal, Finance, HR, Shipping...) don't need to get integrated with Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is use Scrum where it is helpful, and use something else when it isn't.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T13:22:15.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2352" CreationDate="2011-05-19T15:50:59.700" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Steve McConnell has an Estimate Sanity Check (Appendix A) in his book Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art. This is, like it says, a sanity check, not necessarily a checklist of considerations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some considerations I have personally encountered (in no particular order):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Team (size, longevity, experience);&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Project (scale, clarity of requirements, domain[1], repeat of similar project, risks);&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tools (maturity, team experience with, complexity, availability of support);&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Organization (overhead[2], management support, budget)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] The particular domain of a project may change effort (i.e. - financial industry vs. gaming)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Organizational overhead can greatly influence things like bringing in new team members (i.e. - background checks, drug tests, security, new PC, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="978" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T15:50:59.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2352" CreationDate="2011-05-19T15:52:13.600" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you're describing sounds more like a list of potential risks and lessons learned than simply estimating. So my advice would be to go back through past projects and identify those things that caused the most trouble, and make list of those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start with that list, and then from here on out, keeping adding as you identify new risks on projects and learn new lessons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T15:52:13.600" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2352" CreationDate="2011-05-19T16:25:55.330" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use the work-breakdown-structure as a basic list of items that need to be estimated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then track estimates versus actuals to build up a database over time of parameters that affect the estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T16:25:55.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2360" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2362" CreationDate="2011-05-19T16:36:17.633" Score="5" ViewCount="430" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've worked with organizations that have started project management offices (PMO) in order to become more project oriented in their work processes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it works, and the PMO becomes a source of project management knowledge that it teaches throughout the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other times, it starts running in the opposite direction as the rest of the organization, becoming the sole source of all project management knowledge -wanting everything to go through it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What steps can be taken to make sure a PMO benefits the whole organization rather than turning people off to project management?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T08:54:53.187" Title="How can a PMO help the adoption of a project management culture in an organization?" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;politics&gt;&lt;pmo&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2352" CreationDate="2011-05-19T17:11:26.587" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of things that go into an estimate is based on expert analysis and judgment.  It comes down to methodology and technique versus those tangible actions against which you can have a checklist.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your estimating/planning process and procedures can easily have a checklist to ensure that all steps have been taken, controls have been met, approvals obtained, etc.  So to construct the checklist, I would examine the process and procedures and capture the wickets over which you have to jump.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The examples you cited above are, in my judgment, part of the analysis and expert judgment and opinion.  I cannot see how to break down 'thinking' and 'opining' into checklist items.  To ensure that an estimate is comprehensive and credible, I might start with a basis of estimate template that must be completed as part of the estimation process.  At the very least, the BoE can be critically examined to try to ascertain the quality of the estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T17:11:26.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2360" CreationDate="2011-05-19T20:17:16.770" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What you can do is to find The Purpose and The Goal which will guide you&lt;/strong&gt;. Something you could call The PMO Manifesto - the set of rules you want to conform to, the set of reasons PMO were raised and the set of goals you want to achieve. There should not be too many of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks like you already know what you want to achieve and what you are afraid of (what you are afraid loosing). I guess it would look (for example) like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;we are here to help people&lt;/strong&gt;, help improving the efficiency (process) and help improving work environment&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;we value process that work over the process that is trendy&lt;/strong&gt;, buzzwordy, or by-the-book&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;we remember about changing of the environment and incompleteness of our knowledge, therefore &lt;strong&gt;we promise to stay open minded and ready to learn&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Print it and put in clearly visible place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Or you can find a leader among you&lt;/strong&gt; who will share the vision, show the way and make you remember about the path taken. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T20:17:16.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2360" CreationDate="2011-05-19T20:24:35.017" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Step 1 should be to ensure that the person chosen to manage the PMO is a great communicator, as well as having the appropriate qualifications. Step 2 should be to ensure that the PMO manager knows what the organisation expects of the PMO, and that the organisation understands the role and purpose of the PMO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest that problems are most likely to arise when there is a variance between the corporate understanding and the PMO manager's expectations, so ensuring alignment should be the top priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Introducing a PMO is a business change project in itself: you are introducing new working practices, changing the status quo, and potentially triggering some resistance from people who feel that their roles are being changed or diminished by the new team. I like a very simple model to help me to manage this type of change:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider the business need for this new set-up, and make sure that this can be expressed concisely and clearly;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be able to paint a very convincing picture that sets out a clear vision of how you want it to be;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure that the necessary resources are available to manage the change (including communicating it), as well as having the resources to operate the new PMO;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a simple plan for managing the change, or at least for the first few steps of the change.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully these, when taken together, will exceed the resistance to change. If not, then they need to be strengthened until they combine to make a case that stands up to scrutiny.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T20:24:35.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2353" CreationDate="2011-05-19T22:59:14.447" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would keep the marketing activities outside of Scrum teams, because they are changing quite frequently, it is hard to predict what will happen, and unfortunately Scrum cannot handle frequent changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Delegate - if it is possible - the marketing tasks to the product owner or proxy product owner, and when a marketing activity results in actual work, handle it as a user story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, marketing can be part of customer relationship management, which is a product owner duty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T22:59:14.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2360" CreationDate="2011-05-19T23:20:51.247" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are great answers. In my experience it's critical to look at the value chain of the PMO and makes sure that you look to provide value that your 'client' understands is value. For instance, by strengthening the methodology and standardizing process you provide efficiencies that save time and money for the business side of the company (in their language) or you build a standard methodology to delivery projects (your language). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T23:20:51.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2349" CreationDate="2011-05-19T23:24:29.357" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it would be great for you to share it with everyone who might have a stake in the success of the project. Knowing the scope and vision early can avoid a ton of misunderstandings and issues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, make sure your sponsor is okay with you sharing the actual document. Often in an organization the vision and scope is written for the organization's culture. You may need to create a shorter document to share with others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Luck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T23:24:29.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2212" CreationDate="2011-05-20T08:44:51.333" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most high-performing Agile teams have flexed and changed their own processes so much that they feel as if they own them (rightly so). Someone external to the team coming in and asking them to change again will meet resistance just because they're external to the team and don't share the team's context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of introducing the change, why not introduce the goal and let the team decide how to meet that goal? You didn't give examples of the changes, so here are some which I've met in the past:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We've realised that only Ben knows XYZ technology, and we think this is risky. How can we reduce this risk?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can we make our deployments go more smoothly?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How could we get them smooth enough to deploy every week?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can we help team B adopt the process you're doing so well?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can we get George on the team and up to speed quickly?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By getting the team involved in the solution you turn it into a problem for them to solve, rather than a change for them to adopt. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also do the things which @Eric and @Bartosz mentioned. Since Eric's already mentioned the Evil Hat, I'll link to my other blog on &lt;a href=&quot;http://lizkeogh.com/2011/05/05/gaming-culture-with-the-dreyfus-model/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;gaming culture with Dreyfus modelling&lt;/a&gt;. This was for newcomers to Agile, but you can probably get some ideas for how to game experienced teams too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-05-20T08:44:51.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1354" CreationDate="2011-05-20T09:53:59.733" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.microsoft.com/project/en/us/find-training.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Microsoft Project certification&lt;/a&gt;/training. This helps understand step-by-step features and concepts which are needed to plan and manage projects effectively. You will learn how to think and organize your projects details, plan a schedule, sequence tasks, produce a baseline, assign resources and costs, and revise your project plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1037" LastActivityDate="2011-05-20T09:53:59.733" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2187" CreationDate="2011-05-20T09:59:36.047" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recommend Microsoft Project 2010. It includes an interactive module to help effectively visualize and manage resources. Microsoft Project 2010 improves productivity through a simple and intuitive user experience and enhances collaboration and reporting. Although it is not free but you can get a free 60-day trial for evaluation. I will recommend you to try &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.microsoft.com/project/en/us/project-standard-2010.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Management Standard&lt;/a&gt; 2010 to see how it fits your needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1037" LastActivityDate="2011-05-20T09:59:36.047" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2370" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2371" CreationDate="2011-05-20T10:43:38.653" Score="2" ViewCount="1330" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are working on the project (IT), but we were puzzled to price project. Does anyone can explain, about what it takes as a consideration in determining the price of a project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="69" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-15T17:28:33.397" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T17:28:33.397" Title="How to Measure The Price of The Project?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;clients&gt;&lt;pricing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2370" CreationDate="2011-05-20T11:50:41.730" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cost + Fee = Price.  Costs include salary and wages of project team personnel, travel, and raw materials needed for the project.  The salary and wage of team personnel often times are &quot;burdened&quot; with a multiple that covers general and administration (G&amp;amp;A) costs and overhead (OH) items.  For example, if a resource's salary is $100K, that equates to about $50/hour.  On top of that, you have costs to cover employee benefits and have some mark-up to contribute to your gross profit margin.  The unburdened labor rate might be $120/hour for this resource.  Then, you burden this rate to include the multiple for G&amp;amp;A and OH, which is determined by estimating your yearly costs and spreading it logically across your labor categories.  Thus, the burdened labor rate for this resource might be $200 to $250 an hour.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to have specific definitions of G&amp;amp;A, OH, and raw materials to avoid double costing materials.  Your materials will typically have a mark-up, as well, which contributes to your gross profit margin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fee is your pure profit and is industry specific.  Your fee plus what remains from your gross profit margin becomes your net profit.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How you display this to your customer depends on the type of contract you are pursuing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-05-20T11:50:41.730" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2302" CreationDate="2011-05-20T14:36:01.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please consider the advice at &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agileinaflash.blogspot.com/2009/02/breaking-down-larger-stories.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://agileinaflash.blogspot.com/2009/02/breaking-down-larger-stories.html&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;and at&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.coryfoy.com/2011/03/breaking-down-features-to-user-stories/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.coryfoy.com/2011/03/breaking-down-features-to-user-stories/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You basically want to have individually demonstrable stories that each provide some kind of value to the end user.  A minimal marketable feature may still be an interation's worth of work. Consider each story coming out of the epic to be a path that a user can take. Concentrate on the desired use of the story, and cut feature corners not quality corners. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In regard to fuzziness, you should not let your involvement with the team end at specification. Your stories can be fuzzy (represented on 3x5 cards even) if you come along with the story and work with developers. You get a better result, everyone learns, developers become more vested in the result,  and specification takes less time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For that matter, have the customers and developers help you break the epics down. You might be surprised at the excellent results!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1302" LastActivityDate="2011-05-20T14:36:01.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2370" CreationDate="2011-05-20T16:13:23.493" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;David gave a great answer. The only change I would add is if your structure is more subcontractor focused, then the pricing model changes slightly. You then wouldn't necessarily have the G&amp;amp;A and OH costs. Then it's subcontractor price, plus mark-up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will confess that I'm a bit confused about one point - you have the project, but are just now trying to figure out how to price it? What did you do, or how did you get the job in the first place without providing an estimate of costs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you asking about pricing of a different type?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-05-20T16:13:23.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2302" CreationDate="2011-05-20T16:29:33.843" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like the existing scrum-based answers aren't getting you what you're looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider skipping scrum in this situation and going towards a &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110212023354/http://www.vertabase.com/blog/and-because-a-developer-is-not-a-doctor/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;rolling-wave&lt;/a&gt; based approach.  It is non-colliding with your scrum process and can deal with the factors you described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-19T06:59:59.413" LastActivityDate="2020-07-19T06:59:59.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2370" CreationDate="2011-05-20T16:48:07.250" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to add one factor to David and Trevor answers that may affect the price of the product. Is the product custom (made for one specific customer) or is it generic (made to fit the needs of many customers). If the product is generic, you have to estimate the product life time in the market (when it is expected to be deprecated and need to be replaced). This parameter with the estimate of number of sales will affect the price. If it is expected to be sold for many customers you may lower the price (may be sometimes to be less than the cost) to give the product marketing advantage and end up with more profit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="681" LastActivityDate="2011-05-20T16:48:07.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2302" CreationDate="2011-05-20T18:09:40.403" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've done something inside iterations, rather than strict Scrum, which might help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason we split the stories is not just to provide value earlier, but to get feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take all the ideas and work out which ones absolutely &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to be delivered in order to get some value from the project. Then work out which of those areas is most risky. Dan North suggests we &lt;a href=&quot;http://dannorth.net/2010/08/30/introducing-deliberate-discovery/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;focus on the areas of greatest ignorance&lt;/a&gt; to identify the risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within the riskiest area, find the places where the team know the least, and focus on those. Decide which ones you'll address each sprint, and which questions you'd like to answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will end up with some stories which might not be end-to-end, but on which you can get feedback. Do whatever is necessary to tie them into something which proves the feedback is valid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, if you see the performance of a message bus as a risk, hard-code some messages which roughly match the kind of data you'll put into it then run some performance tests (architects are the stakeholders to which to showcase in this instance). If you're creating a new UI and you don't know whether it's usable, hard-code some data behind that then get the users to play with it using just the hard-coded data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will let the team get feedback on the most risky aspects of the code, early on. It won't be deliverable - but then, you identified the minimum deliverable in paragraph 3, so you know you need &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; those ideas (and if you didn't, eliminate the ones you don't need!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Early on, everything will be something about which the team is ignorant, and which they probably haven't done before. Velocity will be all over the place and estimates will be impossible. The team will be discovering a lot. However, as the project progresses they'll be filling in the gaps which they &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; know, and velocity will stabilise, allowing the team to have as good an idea as possible as to whether they'll hit the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the main reasons for using estimates and velocity is to get the trust of stakeholders. It turns out that up-fronting the biggest risks is also a good way to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-05-20T18:09:40.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2377" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-20T22:07:54.427" Score="4" ViewCount="2522" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am using Redmine for managing a small team of developers. To organize our contacts, we need a CRM system soon. Are there any CRM systems that have a Redmine integration? Is it possible to link Redmine-tickets to contacts or phone-minutes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1305" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-05-22T21:49:12.423" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T08:47:07.460" Title="Which CRM systems work well with Redmine?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;redmine&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-10-04T02:49:54.877" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2378" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2380" CreationDate="2011-05-21T09:09:43.820" Score="4" ViewCount="186" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a contract PM, managing a small project within a much larger programme. My project is highly dependent on corporate decisions that come to me via the in-house Programme Manager. Unfortunately, the Programme Manager is involved in some very challenging aspects of the bigger programme, and consequently is unable or unwilling to devote sufficient time to answering my questions or directing me in line with (ever changing) corporate decisions. Because the corporate position is in constant flux, my project's goals are also subject to regular change, but I don't hear about them in good time. This is impacting on my ability to make progress. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Programme Manager is also my line manager, and the organisation is highly hierarchical, and takes a very dim view of people (especially contractors) bypassing their managers to escalate issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do to both make progress and protect my position?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-05-21T16:42:12.663" Title="Dealing with a Programme Manager whose priorities differ from those of the Project Manager" Tags="&lt;goals&gt;&lt;program-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2378" CreationDate="2011-05-21T10:27:07.783" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try this: Ask your program manager (PM) what would it take, or what goals should your project have so that he could give a 100% commitment - note 100% commitment doesn't imply 100% time of work day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be attentive and receptive to these &quot;win conditions&quot; (WC) - i.e., these are the things if satisfied (or satisficed) will make him a winner and consequently encourage him to give his 100% It's very possible (fact of life) that his win conditions may conflict with yours and may not disclose some personal ones like (it'll help me get a promotion, bonus etc.,) Be receptive to even those if they are made explicit (or just be aware of their existence).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now in case of conflicts you'll have to see how best to negotiate the expectation (or WCs) at the same time keeping him (and probably other &lt;em&gt;success critical&lt;/em&gt; stakeholders - SCS) &lt;em&gt;&quot;satisficed&quot;&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem in such scenarios is that expectations of SCSs are not known even known to each other!! Once you understand them you'll be in a better position to see how best to gear your project or adapt to the larger goals of the company as well as satisfices those of the SCSs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are probably thinking that this is very people oriented, and in fact it is :) In my experience this works quite well! In fact just &quot;knowing&quot; the expectations (WCs) of your SCSs can (and DOES) make life easier for everyone!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(In case if you are wondering does this approach have a name - it's called Theory-W :) It grew from the software management field but is applicable everywhere nevertheless...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1119" LastActivityDate="2011-05-21T10:27:07.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2378" CreationDate="2011-05-21T11:43:13.480" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like your organization is immature from a capability standpoint as evidenced by the constant change in company direction or its goals, the lack of communication channels such that you do not receive company information timely, the lack of apparent governance, and non existent risk/issue/exception escalation processes.  It sounds like you are working in a high degree of chaos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While your company is out of control, it does not mean that you cannot maintain control within your project.  Your communication plan should include a stakeholder analysis where you can direct your documented risks and exceptions for review.  Your plan should include periodic meetings for both give and take with these stakeholders.  And, perhaps you can identify a stakeholder or two that you can align as an ally who might be able to influence a degree of control within the company to help you.  This should not be construed as going outside your chain of command but rather normal communication channels that all projects create (or should create).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Become more formal in your project, i.e., document everything.  Not only is this generally good practice--&lt;em&gt;if it is not documented it did not happen&lt;/em&gt;--but it can serve to sort of protect you if others start pointing fingers.  As a contractor, you are only protected so much but, unless this company is completely off its rockers, if you can show you actively attempted to do the right thing by the project and company your risk is greatly diminished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your boss, we tend to take the path of least resistance.  His behavior with you is likely because he is coping with the same chaos.  He needs you to make this project, and its risks and issues, easy for him.  I would bet he wants you to make executive decisions above your pay grade such that it is off his plate.  Dangerous proposition but he is likely doing the same for his boss.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than this, there is a degree of acceptance on your part.  Your company is in chaos--if my assumption is true--and will likely remain there for some time.  This will simply inhibit progress so your expectations need to align with that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-05-21T11:43:13.480" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2378" CreationDate="2011-05-21T16:42:12.663" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Nupul. It's time to stop asking project questions and ask what it would take to get the attention you need. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-05-21T16:42:12.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2352" CreationDate="2011-05-21T16:46:42.160" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;before you ask questions, remember to check if they understand the concept of estimating. Are you asking for effort or duration? Don't assume people know how to estimate, have them break the task down - even if it's just in their minds - and add up the time for each task. Offer to work through it with them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this is very basic, but often estimates don't work because assumptions are not opened up in the process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-05-21T16:46:42.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2336" CreationDate="2011-05-21T16:52:08.460" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know this seems tricky to you, but it seems to me that if I've paid for the work, I get the results. You need to think bigger than just this project. If this is an ongoing client then they get a bit more than they've paid for usually. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I may be wrong but I'm hearing a bit of reaction in your question that looks like anger that the client has cancelled. If so, put that aside, the client has paid for something more than just your time. If deliverables are complete, my suggestion is to hand them over. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-05-21T16:52:08.460" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2384" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-01-04T08:54:01.300" Score="4" ViewCount="1947" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the following situation in my organization:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some developers are assigned to Project A. Since this project is currently in the final stage of maintenance (bug corrections, etc.) their involvement in this project declines over time (for example: in February 80%, in March 60%, in April 40%, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In parallel, I'm planning another Project B, and I would like to be able to do some rough planning of tasks in this project for these developers, taking into account their involvement in Project A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for example, Person A is available for 50% in first 5 days of February so when I plan a task that takes 5 working days to complete and starts on the 1st working day of February, MS Project should plan that the completion date of this task will be 8th working day of February.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, it seems like MS Project 2007 doesn't allow for that. I tried to configure &quot;Resource availability&quot; on &quot;Resource sheet&quot; (February 20%, in March 40%, in April 60%, etc.); however, when I create the task, enter &quot;Work&quot; parameter and assign it to a person with variable &quot;Resource availability&quot; configured, it seems like it is not taken into account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anybody confirm whether there is a way in MS Project to achieve the desired outcome?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2407" OwnerDisplayName="michal.slocinski" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-13T10:32:56.513" LastActivityDate="2019-01-13T10:32:56.513" Title="Planning of work with taking into account resource availability (MS Project)" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2384" CreationDate="2011-05-21T22:51:00.380" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make sure the task is fixed units instead of fixed work or fixed duration.  If not, it will just make the resource over utilized.  I think the default is fixed work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2011-05-23T10:12:18.047" LastActivityDate="2011-05-23T10:12:18.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2302" CreationDate="2011-05-22T11:08:33.370" Score="6" Body="&lt;h3&gt;How (1)&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before I dig in, I'd suggest that in your question when you comment &amp;quot;It can be done by arranging several meetings and working on the subject&amp;quot;, you're actually headed in almost the ideal direction. No approach to working through problems with larger, fuzzy things that need built will be successful without facilitating the right conversations at the right time. These do NOT have to be &amp;quot;meetings&amp;quot;, and should be focused on the right people being involved, often 1-on-1 or small group in the team room as the work is being done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;How (2)&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, I will typically come at this from two directions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, recognize that stories typically take longer for one of three categories of reasons, and thus derive higher story point estimates as a results. Those three categories are &lt;strong&gt;complexity, effort, and doubt.&lt;/strong&gt; Complexity is the &amp;quot;We've got to figure this out&amp;quot; bit of the work, effort is &amp;quot;we know exactly how to do this, but it still takes time to go through the steps&amp;quot; and doubt is &amp;quot;we don't know how we're going to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, I've observed that giving people a framework within which to decompose stories can often help immensely when they're working. Engineering types LOVE to create new approaches and processes, and that can be highly distracting from the effort to figure out how to approach the epic. As a result, I tend to suggest something like Dean's &lt;strong&gt;Epic - Feature - Story - Task&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://scalingsoftwareagility.wordpress.com/2008/12/04/a-lean-scalable-requirements-information-model/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;decomposition model&lt;/a&gt; to organizations that are tying to coordinate many teams, while only using Epic - Story - Task for single teams or smaller organizations that don't need the extra complexity. The framework may not be ideal, but most work I've seen fits into it rather easily and it &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; provide a useful model for teams to get focused on their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, using those two perspectives, I'm able to work with teams to isolate the uncertainty. During release planning or backlog grooming time, the next large epic can be split up to understand which features are included and important (some teams just call these &amp;quot;child epics&amp;quot; instead of features). Each conversation around a split will indicate some things that are obvious, but hard (high effort), some that need figured out but are definitely possible (high complexity), and a few things that we're not even sure if we're headed in the right direction or if it's possible (high doubt). The relative value of these things can inform if you need to attack the doubt items first (because you might cancel that part of the app if it can't be done)  or ignore them altogether (because you realize they're not important), while the complex items can be handled by planning time to have the right conversations just in time. High effort items just need done, and can occasionally be outsourced easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having this understanding around each of the stories and features going into the work allows the team to focus on the right aspect at the right time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;When&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other part of your question seems to be &amp;quot;According to Scrum, when do I do this?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most implementations of Scrum, the team will need to spend some of its time assisting the product owner in grooming the backlog to the right level of detail. Most if not all of this time should be focused on stories that will be implemented in the coming sprint or two, as the learning from the conversations will fade quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversations needed for complex items should occur just in time, during the sprint if at all possible (which is one reason Scrum requires a highly available product owner). Conversations around high-doubt items will need to occur earlier so that everybody understands exactly what is doubtful and what the decision points will be as the team attempts to resolve it. Many teams use spikes for these high-doubt items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2011-05-22T11:08:33.370" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2285" CreationDate="2011-05-22T21:22:07.983" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the perspective of a Project Manager...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is certainly the job of the PM to negotiate a &quot;project reward structure&quot; with stakeholders/sponsors.  I have never seen/heard of this done for an individual, but only for the &quot;whole team&quot;  and involves things like improving on the committed: delivery schedule, project cost, product quality, market/customer acceptance,  etc.  The &quot;maximum bonus&quot; ranges from 2% to 15% &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once negotiated, there are many options for dividing it amongst the team.  Typical are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each person gets the same %age bonus based on their salary over the duration they were active on the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People are ranked/prioritized based on either objective or subjective scale and the bonus is given only to the &quot;top x% of the project team&quot; in some sliding scale&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you (as a programmer) are slaving away on the project, the one piece of advice I would strongly recommend is that you ensure the work is both noticed and also providing a definite benefit.  I have personally witnessed some individuals slaving away over what they perceived as high value activities, but they weren't part of the plan and weren't asked for.  This type of &quot;extra work&quot; may appear to be beneficial to the person doing the work, but it might fight against the direction of the PM. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, like others have said, irrespective of any bonus or personal reward, be sure you are comfortable with your base salary.  Expecting a bonus to make you feel validated or valued may lead to disappointment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastEditorUserId="927" LastEditDate="2011-05-23T13:38:03.893" LastActivityDate="2011-05-23T13:38:03.893" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2324" CreationDate="2011-05-23T02:24:23.787" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it does. You manage people to a timeline for a deliverable. You can't manage tasks, you can manage the people doing the tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-05-23T02:24:23.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2324" CreationDate="2011-05-23T03:19:39.267" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Guide_to_the_Project_Management_Body_of_Knowledge&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMBOK Guide, v4&lt;/a&gt;, page 6 (not literally):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to the project requirements. [...] Managing a project typically includes: identifying requirements; addressing the various needs of the stakeholders; balancing the competing project constraints, incl. scope, quality, schedule, budget, resources and risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing where project management is concerned about people is where we see &quot;resources&quot; in the sentence above. Managing people is just 5-10% of project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-05-23T03:19:39.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2302" CreationDate="2011-05-23T03:59:07.860" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Addressing more of the &quot;how to fit preparation phase into Scrum&quot; aspect (per your comment :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found two approaches work, but selecting between them is less about the situation and more about the team and &quot;what they need&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprint 0 approach&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; - I've found taking one sprint to dive in and really try to &quot;unwrap&quot; the idea or concepts that a customer wants.  In this, it is -critically- important to actually get the customer in house or at least someone who is prepared to act totally like the customer (risky).  Each day in the sprint looks like:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;customer presenting the idea (1 hour - yes, the customer must speak for the hour... 5 minutes won't cut it... this forces the customer to get specific)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Q&amp;amp;A on the idea/concept (1 hour - timebox and manage the time on this... it can run over very easily!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Break&quot; - (2 hours) the customer can go away and refine the idea based on the questions (or take a much needed break!) and the team can begin to outline possible solutions.   I like using the &quot;Risk based approach&quot; from old &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Spiral&lt;/a&gt;&quot; life cycle model where key risk items may get storyboarded or otherwise &quot;mocked up&quot; and then...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Presentation to the customer by the team(s) - present the prototypes and get feedback.  (2 hours) Facilitation skills here are key - take lots of notes and be prepared to parking lot items.  You always have &quot;tomorrow&quot; for difficult items!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Close out and set expectations for the next day (get feedback from the teams and agreement from the customer on what the customer will present the next day)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this way, over 4-9 days (depending on sprint duration) you get to review the concept and have prototypes the customer has reacted to.  Warning - This is a -very- draining phase.  Customers might not be prepared to be hammered with the questions and teams might not be prepared to do &quot;one hour prototypes&quot; So tread lightly and be supportive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Prototype and Iterate&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; - I'm pretty sure this is what &quot;the books&quot; say to do with Scrum... Start with something that can be built, and build it.  Begin iterating on the product delivered.  The amount of work required by the Product Manager/Customer varies, but it is helpful if -some- concept of the system exists.  I like using care examples, so imagine the customer said &quot;build me a car, but all I can describe for you is the bumper&quot;  Well, build the bumper and begin iterating.  If the team and customer are mature enough, they can deal with the stress of not having a complete architecture and the need for constant refactoring and design as the project progresses.  In some cases, this is the only option you might have.  The customer might really not know or be able to answer questions until they see something.  These projects take longer and cost more as the discovery progresses, but that is true any time this situation exists.  Take care to coach the team on it being &quot;100% okay to not have an optimized solution for the build&quot;  the goal is always to get something in front of the customer that works and elicits more feedback.  That is worth more than &quot;good design&quot; initially.  Even for experienced teams, it can feel like &quot;bad engineering&quot; (and it might be... but it is decent project management! :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-05-23T03:59:07.860" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2302" CreationDate="2011-05-23T14:49:56.130" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you considered the leanStartup/XP way of defining a feature by releasing small increments of it to customers as an experiment? When you have an epic that's poorly defined and you have little agreement among customer reps, maybe you can produce a bit of it and see if the customers actually use it and recommend changes or spot problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1302" LastActivityDate="2011-05-23T14:49:56.130" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2285" CreationDate="2011-05-23T14:51:09.230" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's reverse the question and ask &lt;em&gt;Why would PM give a bonus for a work?&lt;/em&gt; I am not sure what is your suggested reason for doing it, so let's consider some commonly used reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To motivate employees&lt;/strong&gt;. Well, lack of money can be a very good demotivator. Adding more money doesn't bring motivation, it rather removes demotivation (final effect is similiar), but it works only to a certain point (where employee feels comfortable with base salary). Above that &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2011/01/money-doesnt-motivate.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;money doesn't motivate&lt;/a&gt; or does it very very poorly. Of course many people are subjected to wishful thinking that more money =&gt; more motivation, inc. productivity, better quality etc. It's wishful because we would like to receive more money for better motivation, more work or better quality. The reality is different and bonuses/rewards go to the better politics, better sellers, better negotiators. If one wants to mess with motivation, she should know &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;another point of view&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To bond employees with the company&lt;/strong&gt;. The concept is: you work on the project - you receive a bonus, so you will more likely to work with us next time. It looks nice, but it's a monster with no legs. In the long term employees will much likely to choose better/nicer work environment with better motivation and cooperation. They can be easily bought by higher rewards of the competing company. And last, but not least it does not consider status of the project and indolence of the developers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To achieve the goals&lt;/strong&gt;. I am not a fan of &quot;selling&quot; the goals. A healthy team shares the goals and tries hard to achieve them. PM shouldn't expect them to work over hours because it affects the long term productivity. But ok, there are moments when I can understand it. PM didn't notice some patterns early enough and she needs to deal with it. She needs to pay for every extra time or set a reward for achieving a goal. Maybe she promised something at the moment of better mood. It's maybe not the best choice but it works from time to time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Because she can&lt;/strong&gt;. In this case, a bonus is not meant to influence the motivation, &lt;em&gt;it is not a salary&lt;/em&gt; for work, and it is not a tool that helps achieving the goals. Not something that is &quot;payed instead&quot; or &quot;payed for&quot;. It is a bonus - it is payed despite the other factors and it express the company's financial situation or particular happiness with project outcome. Like a gift.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: To answer @Jonas question in comment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't even touch the motivation-subject because it is vast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The motivation system can be connected with financial rewards (generally speaking - something company must pay for) but it should not play a major role as it doesn't have such influence on a employee's motivation. Design of such financial rewards in most cases will strongly depend on developer role in the organization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: if developer is heavily involved with relations with customers (gathers requirements, provides support, install upgrades and makes customizations) and the overall image of the company depend mostly on developer's actions then a share of profits seems as a reasonable reward. &#xA;But if developer is involved only in back-office actions and she works mostly in a team (like in Scrum) then the most suitable would probably be a reward based on the team performance or on the extraordinary teamwork events. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one 'feels' a financial part should play more important role in a motivation system, then one probably needs to think about how comfortable she feels about her base salary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastEditorUserId="927" LastEditDate="2011-05-24T11:15:39.543" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T11:15:39.543" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2384" CreationDate="2011-05-23T15:45:26.523" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it's not worth the effort to get MSProject to fine tune this level of resource work. For a short time period I just use my brain and keep track to make sure no one is really over booked. That said, if you do need to manage your resources to a fine level of detail, David's solution is the way I would do it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-05-23T15:45:26.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2395" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2408" CreationDate="2011-05-23T16:29:59.247" Score="4" ViewCount="358" Body="&lt;p&gt;My boss has always operated on fixed pricing projects; where we rarely see a profit on. &#xA;I'm on board with selling our clients hourly rates on large projects. We have yet to get a client willing to buy our services on an hourly basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some good persuasive arguments for helping clients see the value of an hourly estimate as opposed to a fixed price budget?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My boss argues that he could sell an hourly budget but no one has a sense of it providing more value. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1253" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T09:29:08.917" Title="The Case for Hourly Estimates" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;business-improvement&gt;&lt;sales&gt;&lt;pricing&gt;&lt;fixed-price&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2396" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-21T08:51:06.723" Score="7" ViewCount="551" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am going to lead a small team for the first time in my career and I am determined to not subject my team to the same issues that I perceive to have been subjected to as a programmer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is about one such issue. Some managers that I worked with usually assigned one task at a time and assigned the next task only when I completed the task at hand. Some managers used to assign a few tasks at a time, along with their priorities and left me to tackle them in the order that I liked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like the latter method, since it allows me to take a break and work on another task, if I hit a wall on any one task. But the managers who preferred the former method probably did so for a good reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, how do I choose, as a manager, the right way of assigning tasks? If you feel your personal experience as a manager or programmer assigning or getting assigned tasks contributes to the answer, please share it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an engineer I tried to look at it as a operations research problem, but I just want to ensure that if there is anything more to it, I don't overlook it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="t-away0" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2011-05-23T23:32:58.940" LastActivityDate="2011-05-23T23:32:58.940" Title="What is the preferred number of tasks to assign?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2396" CreationDate="2011-05-21T09:47:26.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My opinion on this topic is: It depends.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It depends on the developer. For example, there are developers that like the freedom of the second method along with the additional pressure this method puts on the developer. It puts additional pressure on the developer, because he is not responsible for completing one task in time but several. I am such a developer, time pressure plus the freedom to achieve the goals in the order I like really makes me productive.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;There are other developers however, that can't cope with that pressure and get unproductive.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I want to say: There is no definite answer, it completely depends on your developers and you might need to switch your method for each individual developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Daniel Hilgarth" LastActivityDate="2011-05-21T09:47:26.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2396" CreationDate="2011-05-21T09:50:18.993" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently the scrum master on a small team working with Agile SCRUM, and have previously been the lead on larger teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's best to let people pick their own tasks - let people assign tasks to themselves - which I suppose is roughly analogous to assigning tasks to people and letting them drop them and pick up something else. Progress on a task - whether someone needs help, has chosen a task they can't complete, etc. can be checked in a quick meeting every morning where everyone tells the whole team how they're getting on. Letting people pick their own tasks allows them to be exposed to parts of the system they might not see otherwise, and empowers them to make sensible decisions about their own work and get on with it without having to ask you &quot;what's next&quot; every time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think being a given a task and being expected to complete it before being able to do anything else comes from a more waterfall approach. The idea there is that we've identified these tasks and these are the tasks we have to do and they have to be done in this order because that's what we planned. The problem with that is that when you actually come to writing code, it often (usually) turns out that the plan didn't cover everything and you need extra tasks, or not as many tasks, or different tasks, or the same tasks in a different order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum up: I think it's best to be flexible with people. But that's just my opinion :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Steve Wilkes" LastActivityDate="2011-05-21T09:50:18.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2396" CreationDate="2011-05-21T10:22:22.790" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter, you'll get it wrong anyway. Only the individuals themselves knows what's best for them, so I think it is a bit presumptuous thinking that you can do that better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer is: &lt;strong&gt;don't&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assigning tasks is bad for software development since it hampers creativity and creates negative stress among other things. Consider turning it around instead and have the team select tasks. That makes it a &lt;em&gt;personal commitment&lt;/em&gt; which is much more likely to succeed. It also creates a bit of healthy pressure because they have taken it upon themselves to complete the tasks, instead of having someone else do that for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also frees up time for you to spend on really important things, like prioritizing work and removing impediments for the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially this is going from &quot;push&quot; to &quot;pull&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1435" OwnerDisplayName="Martin Wickman" LastActivityDate="2011-05-21T10:59:57.830" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2396" CreationDate="2011-05-21T13:36:24.763" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Working on multiple tasks at the same time always pays for quality.&#xA;Assigning one task at a time and waiting for completion of that task before assigning another task also not a right option. Sometimes you will be stuck at a problem or working for long time on the same task make you exhausted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is to assign multiple tasks and tell him the priorities upfront. &#xA;Let developer has the freedom to choose between tasks as long as he is delivering with expected quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Nameesh" LastActivityDate="2011-05-21T13:36:24.763" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2396" CreationDate="2011-05-21T13:57:40.763" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Considered having a task list somewhere where people can sign up for things and then work on them as they have time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If overall too little progress for a person?  Unassign one or more items and put them back on the list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Modern bug-trackers can also handle tasks, making for great visibility on how things are coming along for others to see.  You want one which is integrated with your version control system so you can just put a marker in the commit message, that is automatically picked up by the task manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29429" OwnerDisplayName="Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen" LastActivityDate="2011-05-21T13:57:40.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2396" CreationDate="2011-05-21T14:35:43.927" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It vastly depends on your coders. Some need to be assigned tasks, others are only productive when they actually choose their tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also depends on the tasks: keep in mind that at some point you'll need to assign a few tasks that &lt;strong&gt;nobody&lt;/strong&gt; will want to do, but which still need to get done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to do is to have a reasonably complete list of tasks. Give some flexibility to your team members, in the sense that they should be allowed to split, when they feel it necessary, some tasks into smaller, bite-sized subtasks. This will give them a highly increased sense of having a say on what they're going to code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On this list, make sure it's clear who is assigned which task, and which tasks depend on other tasks. If one task is needed to complete other tasks, it needs to be clear to everyone who to help or nag (depending on whether the assignee is working or not).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As much as possible, you want your coders to commit to their own tasks (they'll be more productive), and to help each other out (they'll work better as a team).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So start by letting them choose a couple of higher priority items from your list; things that they want to do, make it clear to them how the tasks relate to others' work, and encourage them to communicate while they work on things that depend on each others' work. (Avoid plaguing their work schedule with group meetings: they'll be just fine discussing things around a coffee or at each others' desks when needed.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A point to keep in mind while doing so is to worry about the shier members in your team; they might be interested to work on this or that task but shy out of it because someone else with a bigger mouth wants to take care of it. Identify them quickly and force the odds a bit by periodically letting them choose their tasks first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your team will likewise include a few members who need to be assigned tasks. For these, proceed a bit like with the shy members (they'll frequently be the same ones, in my experience). The trick here is to know that, while most people dread making decisions out of the blue, they'll usually like to be faced with picking one option among a number of choices. what differs from a person to the next is the threshold. For some it's multitudes of options; for others it's as little as a single one. So, try to work out a number they're comfortable with. Then, in a first step, ask which among this, this and that task they'd rather do; and in a second, whether there is another task you hadn't thought of which they'd like even more. This will inhibit their fright and get them to choose their tasks without realizing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another point to keep in mind is that you need to occasionally be firm. At the end of the day, you're the boss and if nobody is volunteering for a task in particular, you'll need to assign it outright. There are of course polite ways to do it, which I'm sure you know by now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the same token, be flexible. Some tasks will never seem to get done, because whoever volunteered quickly finds it boring or hard or whatever, and starts focusing on something else. Monitor for this and (gently) remove these tasks from them if needed. Your team members will appreciate if it comes from you reassigning their tasks, rather than them loosing their face in public (&quot;sorry, I couldn't make it&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29416" OwnerDisplayName="Denis" LastActivityDate="2011-05-21T14:35:43.927" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2396" CreationDate="2011-05-22T04:42:43.033" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a board with all tasks in priority order.  The rules are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you don't have a task pull the top card off and assign it to yourself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If someone else on the teams knows more about the problem consult them, but do the work yourself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you run into a blocker bring it to me and move on to another task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you feel like your taking to long or stuck get a consult from me or another programmer.  If that doesn't work we treat it as a blocker (bring it to me).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You should only ever be working on one task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can skip cards only if your the one who knows the most about the problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You may pair program as needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All tasks are reduced to no more than 1-2 days worth of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This only works in a group that wants group ownership and don't have different highly specialized roles (ie. flash developer, dba, embedded device driver programmers, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1317" OwnerDisplayName="dietbuddha" LastActivityDate="2011-05-23T18:15:44.763" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2396" CreationDate="2011-05-23T19:33:36.247" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The approach that I took when I was leading a team (6 people, 18 month project), which worked out well and the team members seemed to happy with (it could have done with some better tools/automation, but we didn't have the budget to buy pencils, let alone a task management system), was to start out by identifying all of the tasks and subtasks that needed to be accomplished for an iteration, and assign a rough difficulty estimate with the whole team. Then I'd take that list back, refine it if necessary, prioritize tasks, and assign team members to specific tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each team member would then get sent their entire detailed task list, prioritized and with time estimates, deliverables for that task, etc, plus a shorter overview of what tasks the other team members were working on. Everyone had the opportunity to get back to me if they felt that the timelines needed to be modified, or the deliverables weren't clear enough, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each evening, the team members would send me an email with what subtasks they had worked on, and how far along that task was. This let me see how well our time estimates were, and to keep an eye on what people were spending time doing. If someone was spending a lot of time on something with a lower priority, while higher priority tasks were not being done, then I'd have a discussion with them as to why they felt they needed to be working on  first, and see if there was a way to juggle around tasks in order to ensure that dependencies were being finished before they were needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This worked out particularly well because the team members knew everything that was expected of them for a given iteration, which helped them make better design/implementation choices for their modules (we had an overall design, but the details were left up to the team members who were implementing a particular feature), and allowed team members to easily collaborate since they knew exactly who was working on what feature.  I provided guidance in terms of listing out priories and dependencies, but left it up to the team members on what order they wanted to work on tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="CodeninjaTim" LastActivityDate="2011-05-23T19:33:36.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2395" CreationDate="2011-05-23T21:06:03.740" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether you enter into a T&amp;amp;M type contract or fixed price depends more on the level of definition of the scope than it does to make a seller more profitable.  T&amp;amp;M contracts are more suited in outsourced type services, where the contractors become more of an extension of the organization's employees, or where the scope and its requirements are vague and too ambiguous to nail down, i.e., the buyer is not totally clear on what it wants or needs at the time of project start.  Under a T&amp;amp;M, the buyer owns the cost liability solely and, therefore, must manage costs in a very different way than on a cost plus or fixed fee contract.  If you are a seller in that arrangement, you lose control over that in its entirety.  If you feel you need a different skill set, more staff, less staff, whatever, too bad.  Not your choice under this arrangement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your work is such that the scope is well defined and requirements are &lt;em&gt;reasonably&lt;/em&gt; clear, a FFP contract can be a much better vehicle for you, i.e., you have more control and can be substantially profitable.  If, as you wrote, you have trouble making a profit, it is not the type of contract that is the issue but rather your organization's estimating capability.  Fix it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-05-23T21:06:03.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2029" CreationDate="2011-05-23T22:28:24.987" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quick and dirty (what below is just a simple first try) VBA approach could be something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Sub ColorBars()&#xA;' Colors bars according to the value of Text1 field&#xA;' Written on Mon 23/05/11 by Bartlomiej Garbacz&#xA;  Dim ts As tasks&#xA;  Dim t As task&#xA;  Dim color&#xA;&#xA;  Set ts = ActiveProject.tasks&#xA;&#xA;  For Each t In ts&#xA;    If Not t Is Nothing Then&#xA;      If Not t.Summary Then&#xA;      ' Excluding summary tasks&#xA;        Select Case t.Text1&#xA;          Case &quot;Team1&quot;&#xA;            color = ColorConstants.vbRed&#xA;          Case &quot;Team2&quot;&#xA;            color = ColorConstants.vbGreen&#xA;          Case &quot;Team3&quot;&#xA;            color = ColorConstants.vbBlue&#xA;          Case Else&#xA;            color = ColorConstants.vbBlack&#xA;        End Select&#xA;&#xA;        GanttBarFormatEx TaskID:=t.ID, GanttStyle:=1, StartShape:=0, StartType:=0, StartColor:=0, MiddleShape:=1, MiddlePattern:=1, MiddleColor:=color&#xA;      End If&#xA;    End If&#xA;  Next t&#xA;End Sub&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And when you define a shortcut key for your macro, you can have 'almost automatic' update of your schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To gain access to VBA remember to &lt;em&gt;Customize the Ribbon&lt;/em&gt; in your MS Project 2010 &lt;em&gt;Options&lt;/em&gt; and tick the &lt;strong&gt;Developer&lt;/strong&gt; tab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1315" LastActivityDate="2011-05-23T22:28:24.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2395" CreationDate="2011-05-24T01:35:45.683" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a fixed fee contract, all of the risk associated with costs are carried by the contractor and in an hourly contract, all of the risk associate with costs are carried by the client. That naturally makes clients prefer fixed fee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The architecture world, preliminary design tends to be hourly. because the scope is very vague or unknown. During the design, there is flexibility for both sides - the client can add or subtract scope, play with the endless &quot;what if&quot; scenarios, and play with the idea. That is the angle that you can use to &quot;sell&quot; the idea: Hourly = Flexible&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once there is a clear scope and it is time to dig into the guts of a project, you can switch to fixed fee and plan in some real profit margin to protect against unknown. You need to write in clear change management process, though, to ensure that your payment increases when they change their mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And stay away from an hourly-not-to-exceed contract. That is the worst combination for the contractor - all the risk and very little of the reward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T01:35:45.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2395" CreationDate="2011-05-24T01:42:27.230" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It doesn't sound like a good argument could be made that would make sense for the client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are losing money on fixed price projects then the client is getting much more than what they are paying for.  Why would they want to change?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T01:42:27.230" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2029" CreationDate="2011-05-24T04:23:51.643" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems to answer your question (without the need for VB)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmconnection.com/modules.php?name=News&amp;amp;file=article&amp;amp;sid=24&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pmconnection.com/modules.php?name=News&amp;amp;file=article&amp;amp;sid=24&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have Project 2010 to verify, but the solution shown makes sense and seems to do what you want(??)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T04:23:51.643" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2410" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2418" CreationDate="2011-05-24T13:28:06.350" Score="12" ViewCount="14846" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know a lot of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_manager&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Project Managers&lt;/a&gt; and they are all over 30 years old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are all project managers like that?&#xA;I mean, is this about getting more experience than at least 7-8 years?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Y1kLL.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or being a Project Manager is so hard? What do you think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1197" LastEditorUserId="927" LastEditDate="2011-05-24T14:31:07.537" LastActivityDate="2019-01-09T13:18:17.103" Title="Why Project Management is so hard?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;skills&gt;&lt;self-management&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="10" ClosedDate="2013-09-11T01:27:51.030" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2410" CreationDate="2011-05-24T13:37:29.553" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the fact that most PM are more than 30 is not really related to the hardness of the task, but either because in most companies, you become PM only after you have proven yourself as operative. For example, in the IT business, you will first have to prove yourself as a valuable engineer before any hope of becoming PM. And it's caused by the increasing price due to experience: the years passing by, you become gradually too expensive for a simple operative work, and so your company will want you to switch to more managerial positions, like PM for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the work itself is not so complicated: create the conditions to let your team do it's work, monitor schedules and, most important, contain pressure from above to avoid scaring your team...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastEditorUserId="152" LastEditDate="2019-01-09T13:18:17.103" LastActivityDate="2019-01-09T13:18:17.103" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2410" CreationDate="2011-05-24T14:18:13.650" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need broad experience (technical, personal, and organizational) before most companies will give you project management duties. Competent PMs can plan and oversee a project from beginning-to-end without burning out their team, which is rarely an easy task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Earning the respect of technical teams BEFORE you manage them also takes time. People need to believe you'll ask the right questions, help solve their problems, and understand why they make different technical decisions. Your graphic is a good illustration of why project management is &quot;hard&quot;--you need general expertise, not only know how to write code or create a MS Project schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="227" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T14:18:13.650" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2410" CreationDate="2011-05-24T15:05:07.023" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most Project Managers are over thirty because you cannot really learn to be a good PM from just training but from experience.  The more projects a PM has managed and the more diverse these have been, the more effective usually he/she is.  You use different methodologies through the years and you certainly learn from previous mistakes.  Project Management needs also strong leadership skills that usually you obtain through the years.  The older you get you can also see the bigger picture so you can take better strategic decisions.  Also you have dealt with a lot of different people so you are better in people management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1267" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T15:05:07.023" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2414" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2436" CreationDate="2011-05-24T17:39:47.993" Score="3" ViewCount="4160" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the course of helping teams understand how their own project / service is structured and managed, I often facilitate value stream mapping (VSM) sessions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What specific facilitation techniques are most effective when facilitating a VSM?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastEditorUserId="696" LastEditDate="2011-05-28T09:26:29.017" LastActivityDate="2020-07-23T18:07:41.497" Title="How to most effectively facilitate a value stream mapping exercise?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2410" CreationDate="2011-05-24T17:50:38.650" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not necessarily 'harder' than any other management discipline, but since it plays off of all the others, usually you need to have some experience in another area (mgmt or tech) before you can manage a project. For most companies a project represents a strategic component, so they want they to be sure whoever's running it is going to be able to do so successfully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there's no age limit. I started managing projects when I was 22. The key point around this though it that it's not about age, it's about complexity. I was managing projects, but they were relatively non-complex. It was only as I gained experience that I was looked at as being competent to handle more complex projects. By 30 I was handling both projects and programs, but only because I had the experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T17:50:38.650" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1465" CreationDate="2011-05-24T17:52:04.840" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A quick difference - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Project Manager manages a project. A Program Manager manages Project Managers. Two very different skillsets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T17:52:04.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2285" CreationDate="2011-05-24T18:30:30.023" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know my answer won't be complete enough, but I've seen some companies in Brazil rewarding the developers by the tasks they conclude.&#xA;Think about a bug tracker not only with bugs, but also with tasks, and the project manager can assign &quot;values&quot; for these tasks. It doesn't matter if the value is money or points that can be traded by money or something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you set tasks with values, the developers will be more motivated to complete them, since they're going to receive a bonus for it. Complex tasks wil reward more, and less complex will reward less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answering the question in a fast way: yes, I think you should give developers a bounty for his/her result. Even if it's not money. The sense of rewarding is something really valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1322" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T18:30:30.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2410" CreationDate="2011-05-24T21:11:59.443" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Communication is 90% of the job. The other 90% is keeping track of the bigger picture. It generally takes years of experience to see what needs to be done, make plans for it and effectively communicate that to a broad range of people involved on a project- from corporate stakeholders, customers and regulatory agencies to technical team leads and the technical implementation team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also tend to see a requisite degree of humility and confidence in plus 30 project managers that makes them more successful than younger pm's on larger projects.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind, project management is more than task management and scheduling. It's hard because the project manager is accountable for the overall success of the project and whether the time and money spent was put to good use.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T21:11:59.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2410" CreationDate="2011-05-24T21:36:48.867" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can only speak for myself on this, but I would have made a lousy project/program manager in my 20's. Why? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It wasn't a lack of attention to detail, a critical component in being a PM. &#xA;It wasn't a lack of technical knowledge, I knew the products I was working with very well. &#xA;It wasn't a lack of understanding of the product lifecycle, I helped create the one for the company I was at in my 20's. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was a lack of developed people skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It takes a lot of intense people skills to be a really great project manager. Few people have these in their early 20's (I applaud Trevor his success). It took me until nearly 40 to learn the difference between driving a team and leading a team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will be interesting to see how the up and coming crop of young project manager bachelors change the face of this. My guess is they will suceed or fail based on how much emphasis their degree work put on people skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best, JBC&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T21:36:48.867" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2414" CreationDate="2011-05-25T00:00:30.593" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sticky notes on flip charts, usually preprinted stickies, no more than 5-8 clients, try to get everyone engaged. 2-3 hours max.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have explosion to mark problem areas...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1324" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T00:00:30.593" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2421" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-25T00:18:14.233" Score="10" ViewCount="1949" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been involved in a couple of project for the past year, and I have been lucky to work with the brilliant team. I noticed that in each of these project there seem to be one or two persons who always have great ideas. One of them is what I like to call the technology champion &quot;Hey, why don't we use technology X to speed up certain processes or task in the project?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other one is what I like to call a process champion; they will point out insufficient processes in a project and propose new ways for improving it. For example, our test team had a difficult time doing regression test, and he proposed to automate some of the repetitive test task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We really see the value in their ideas, but somehow selling them to the upper management can be very very difficult. Are there any strategy that you like to use to obtain support from the organization for supporting innovative ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1257" LastEditorUserId="1253" LastEditDate="2011-11-22T17:29:48.037" LastActivityDate="2011-11-22T17:29:48.037" Title="How to Introduce innovative change in organizational processes when upper management defends status quo" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;&lt;innovation&gt;&lt;business-improvement&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2421" CreationDate="2011-05-25T00:41:19.153" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Documenting &lt;strong&gt;Lessons Learned&lt;/strong&gt; in projects is part of our organizational process. Its purpose is providing historical examples of innovative ideas that worked in projects and on the other hand ideas that turned out to be bad and caused problems. Process engineers (or may be PMs or relevant persons in your organization) meet regularly to discuss the lessons learned in all projects and share them. If they agreed they may even chose to make some of the idea a standard in the organization. If you introduce the idea of Lessons Learned in your organization, it will make what you want to do automatic and will relief you and the others from feeling that someone is imposing ideas into their projects and the resistance that may occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="681" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T00:41:19.153" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2423" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-25T02:18:14.460" Score="2" ViewCount="170" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the things I wish I did more often and better is follow through with the data collected during a Postmortem.  I'm looking for input on &quot;How do you ensure the postmortem data is followed up and dealt with -after- the project is done and you have moved on to another project?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, I'm looking for thoughts on &quot;Is it the PM's job to ensure the postmortem is acted upon, or does that responsibility transition to owners of the individual items or to the functional management team?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastEditorUserId="696" LastEditDate="2011-05-25T07:59:46.567" LastActivityDate="2011-05-27T04:44:32.457" Title="Transitioning Postmortem data after a project is done" Tags="&lt;post-mortem&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2424" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2430" CreationDate="2011-05-25T02:32:38.467" Score="6" ViewCount="139" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working in global outsourcing company (and therefore interacting with several cultures) for five years, and only a few months ago I realized (in the harder way, i.e. suffering) that is VERY important to understand and have clear the differences we have between cultures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not looking for labels, but some common sense about how to deliver a clear message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, the way we say something is not as expected can vary a lot, as well as the way the other- side will get the message. In some cultures, is highly accepted to say 'your performance is horrible' and still the two sides will understand correctly the message, whilst in some cases a feedback like this could be get as personal, creating a bad mood between the two parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your feedback and experiences are highly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-27T21:53:22.870" LastActivityDate="2012-07-27T21:53:22.870" Title="Is there any knowledge source (book, for instance) talking about cultural differences from a management point of view?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;culture&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-07-27T21:53:09.437" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2423" CreationDate="2011-05-25T02:46:19.983" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to your specific question will depend on the company and the culture. What I can say is often the project Post Mortem - or PIR, is often presented as value for PMs. If that's really the case, then the PM needs to take responsibility for making sure the results are available from the project he/she just finished and looking at lessons from previous project when initiating a new project. &#xA;I would argue that the lessons learned are valuable to anyone who is interested in the results, or improving performance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T02:46:19.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2421" CreationDate="2011-05-25T03:43:18.367" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is my strategy based on experience only. Sometimes my team has a few innovative ideas that could be implemented, but they need to be approved by the upper management. When this situation emerges, I usually ask for the team to collect evidence and successful cases of this idea working flawless in other companies and/or projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second step is to create a nice document (and presentation if needed) and arrange a meeting with the upper management, telling it's about something that will make the process faster/better/more lucrative, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The chances are, if this new &quot;idea&quot; is really good, the upper management will approve it. And, of course, you should credit your team/someone for having this idea, promoting the &quot;project champion&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1322" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T03:43:18.367" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2410" CreationDate="2011-05-25T07:52:32.917" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Project management is hard for two main reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First you generally evolve from a technical leader role where things are globally well defined to a role where things are sometimes hazy, unclear or ambiguous. It may take you sometimes to clearly understand what to be done (or not), what are the corrects goals (official or not)…  In the same times you need to give clear objectives to your team, so beginning a project is sometimes very anxiogenic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, Team management is the most difficult part (See how many questions you have here). You can do bad choices (technical, process, functional) and may correct them easily if you are a good leader and are followed by your team (they may alert you, or work harder and later), but when you did Team management mistakes you may demotivate people and all can fall over. Don’t remember that you need to define goals first, and depending experience of your team, not the way to do it (All people can have good ideas). Don’t forget to listen, listen and listen…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1325" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T07:52:32.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2423" CreationDate="2011-05-25T07:59:11.560" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I typically find large-batch post mortem data very difficult to act on because of its highly hypothetical nature. All too often, it's &quot;things we wish we would have tried&quot; rather than &quot;we tried this and had this result.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, I encourage teams to capture a &quot;process change log&quot; throughout the effort. Each time they hold a retrospective or kaizen event, I hope teams will capture notes about the PDCA cycle they go through as a result. As mentioned &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1578/different-ways-of-running-retrospectives/1652#1652&quot;&gt;elsewhere&lt;/a&gt;, retrospectives aren't effective unless action is an outcome, and the ongoing log of &quot;we had this problem, we tried this, with this result&quot; is incredibly valuable for future efforts, and much more easily mined than a single large event at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find most teams that capture information weekly or bi-weekly tend towards keeping them in a wiki, although I've also seen SharePoint and a living Google document as effective forms as well. Open access for viewing and editing seems to be the common trait that creates successful environments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T07:59:11.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2424" CreationDate="2011-05-25T08:49:19.183" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://vimeo.com/12021592&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This presentation&lt;/a&gt; from Robert Dempsey tackles the problem from practitioner's point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T08:49:19.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2423" CreationDate="2011-05-25T09:13:25.740" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would take a step further and ask: why are you doing retrospectives in the first place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer most likely is: because we want to learn (from our past experience)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And now we're coming to the point: who should feel accountable for learning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer: everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lessons learned, postmortems and retrospectives produce specific feedback, because usually it is very specific (project-related) and can't be easily applied in general. But then it is also feedback which is potentially applicable not only on PM level but also on organization, team and individual levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the basic answer for the question who should feel responsible for making use of postmortems is: everyone in these areas where it does make sense. PM should use it in project management activities, functional managers on team levels and individual contributors on their level as well. Stakeholders, especially those high in pecking order, should take care of conclusions regarding organization as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a cultural thing -- usually you're either a part of learning organization and such behaviors are rather common or your company does postmortems only because it is a part of their project management methodology and hardly make any use out of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is even more important in organizations where project teams are changing over time, and this is my impression on your company basing on the question. If PM is now in this project with these people and tomorrow works on another project with completely different people they just can't be the only role responsible for applying lessons learned. It just won't work that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T09:13:25.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2421" CreationDate="2011-05-25T09:23:03.333" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is said that it's better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every now and then, we believe we can't make decisions and are asking for permission and get rejected. The reality is we often can make these decisions as long as we take full responsibility for them. We can use technology X but if it ends up adding more mess to the project we should be ready to take bullets on our chest. When I say &quot;we&quot; I mean both: project leaders and project champions you ask about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach is like alcohol -- it should have &quot;use responsibly&quot; message attached, but it works very well. Senior managers most likely won't make many decisions on level you point in your examples unless directly asked. If you ask, don't be surprised you sometimes hear &quot;no&quot; as an answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T09:23:03.333" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2036" CreationDate="2011-05-25T10:45:52.370" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always add in the Kick off, the Initiation and the Close Down documents a detailed description of the Communication and Reporting format.  I state there a Weekly Project Team Meeting with the main developers and the main customers together.  The meetings/calls sometimes can last only 15 minutes but I religiously keep them every week because it makes the developers and the customers feeling very close as a team and always updated both sides.  You may have already tried it but it certainly works from my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1267" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T10:45:52.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2434" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2435" CreationDate="2011-05-25T11:23:17.287" Score="14" ViewCount="1153" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing that I noticed is that lots of employees forget to log the number of hours that they worked on a task. Is there a way to provide incentives for them to measure their work accurately? (either in time spent or progress on a specific task)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1284" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T20:21:20.997" Title="How do I encourage team members to accurately log their work?" Tags="&lt;progress-monitor&gt;&lt;timeline&gt;&lt;timekeeping&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2434" CreationDate="2011-05-25T11:48:22.493" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally I explain to my team members that time tracking is important element to improve the way we work and my incentive is to explain why  I ask them that: In short :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I split task into category (like realization, test, and deployment) and ask them to give accurate number in this category if they can’t do better&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I explain them that estimations are based on previous experiences and so I will consider that same work will take almost the same time and will give the same repartition between categories. So wrong or incomplete information, will give us a bad estimation. Sometimes it could be overwork to do; others times our proposition will just be too costly and we won’t work on an interesting project regarding competitors.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I explain them also, that analysis during (or at the end of) the project will help to understand where we must improve. By example, if the realization budget category is globally correct but we explode in validation, it may have 2 significations : &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a.  We didn’t finish correctly the work and so we paid it after in validation (by bug and overwork)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b.  Customers change his mind and it’s important to show it to management.&#xA;So by doing correct tracking they can preserve their work and their time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1325" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T11:48:22.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2414" CreationDate="2011-05-25T12:16:03.573" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most organizations, according to Gartner, are solidly cemented at low levels of BPM maturity.  At these low levels, these organizations are barely aware of the processes it uses to get work done.  There is typically a lot of work being performed that offers little to no value; work performed is often redundant, i.e., several roles or divisions performing the same work; ownership of a process or capability does not exist; and no one knows really what the other person is doing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jeff is right, in that the approach to begin scoping process and capability areas should be very simple and consistent with where they are in their maturity level.  Nothing works better at this stage then facilitating small, well represented teams using nothing more than sticky notes and a big wall.  Inundating your working team with a sophisticated modeling and simulating tool is a non starter.  They will got lost and overwhelmed by the tool and make no progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By definition, the value stream level is a process map at a very high level.  Therefore, begin decomposing your organization's capabilities top down.  To help to deconstruct your capability breakdown structure, work right to left, i.e., identify the outputs first, then identify the capability needed to create the output, then identify the inputs (raw materials) needed.  People naturally navigate left to right, but this proves to be a mistake.  The best way to identify value added work, and thus non value added work, is to work in the opposite direction.  You will quickly find a ton of work costing a lot of money that produces something no one uses anymore.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use verb-noun descriptions of your capabilities.  Instead of &quot;customer service&quot;, use &quot;service customers.&quot;  This will help you avoid breaking down your processes by organization structure and help identify capabilities that are shared across organizations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Define a capability as the combination of &quot;process, people, tools, and information.&quot;  These four enablers create a capability.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before beginning, adopt a mapping method.  Adopt a single way of capturing the work flow in terms of the symbols you will use.  Train the team before beginning the work.  This will help minimize re-work.  And keep it simple.  Remember that the value maps are a means to an end, not the end.  So adopt a method and mapping style that resonates with the people who are going to do something with it versus trying to be totally technically correct from some official standard.  HOWEVER, as your organization matures, you may end up deploying a rather sophisticated BPM tool; you would want the work you produce today to easily map to the tool's capabilities.  It is a balancing act between reasonableness and your future BPM strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, use a strong facilitator with known skills, someone who knows how to read and control the room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T12:16:03.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2421" CreationDate="2011-05-25T12:37:08.913" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a difference between ongoing incremental capability improvement and a material transformation.  The former is typically reserved for a mature (BPM Maturity Model) organization whose culture and current capabilities support this type of approach.  Metrics are captured and aligned to strategy and quickly show where these minor tweaks can occur.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latter comes down to ROI.  Build a case for change:  measure your current performance, compare it with where it &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be as evidenced by perhaps industry benchmarks, identify the gap between the two and the potential value capture for the organization, identify the required investment to get there, and finally calculate ROI.  This should resonate with any competent business person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2011-05-26T13:06:30.933" LastActivityDate="2011-05-26T13:06:30.933" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2434" CreationDate="2011-05-25T13:05:11.127" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never found a positive, constructive and team empowering approach to this... (so, I'm hoping someone else has a better answer!!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, team members get little value in their actual hours listed for a task.  People believe they can (perhaps mistakenly) get a good feel for over/under estimation based on the pain they have suffered in completing a task.  So, you are fighting a fair amount of apathy.  However, ff you can give the team a reason that -makes sense- to them, they will record actuals.  (rather than view it as &quot;useless busy work&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The best justifiable reason I have found is -&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;In the US, you can qualify for corporate tax breaks if so much of your activity is in &quot;R&amp;amp;D&quot; activities.  You need to keep books to back this up, and the breaks can be quite large sometimes.  (There also can be regulatory reasons why the company -needs- to record its employee's time...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The best way to ensure the actuals are filled in is -&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Have a morning stand-up (5 minutes) to review yesterday's activities and state today's plan.  As PM, you can gently (but effectively) ask/remind people to update their actual hours on tasks and you can have a 1-on-1 with team members who are chronically late in filling them in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T13:05:11.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2434" CreationDate="2011-05-25T13:29:00.620" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are their manager why not just tell them you are requiring it now as part of reporting that you need, or want, to do?  Have them each submit a sheet at the end of the day containing major milestone/project related accomplishments, other accomplishments that are part of a larger project, and significant roadblocks.  We just recently started tracking at this level.  The daily tasks of all employees will then be consolidated by the manager.  At the end of the year there will be 52 weeks of neat reports with each weeks major milestones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1328" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T13:29:00.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2434" CreationDate="2011-05-25T13:34:30.153" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make it a policy that they only get paid if they submit a complete timesheet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T13:34:30.153" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2434" CreationDate="2011-05-25T13:46:11.747" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, +1 to Michael on getting the value out and understood by people on the team. This is important for people to find value in it because if &lt;strong&gt;you don't care, they won't care&lt;/strong&gt;. If you're just bubbling it up because you have to, your team will sense that and agree with you... in the negative way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next thing is to &lt;strong&gt;make it easy and meaningful&lt;/strong&gt; to how they work day to day. It's good practice for me to break my tasks down incredibly small so I have very directed inch-pebbles against which to work. At the same time, I won't do this if I have to break it down that small for reporting purposes. Consider having people report on items that are larger... perhaps multiple days. This allows easy &quot;I worked 8 hours yesterday, and it was on this&quot; instead of &quot;I spent 15 minutes on this, 45 on that, and I think i touched this other thing, but forget it because I don't know how long I spent&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Finally, consider more balanced ways of aggregate reporting.&lt;/strong&gt; In Scrum teams, can you bill/report on overall staffing for a 2 week period instead of using individual time sheets (contractors excepted)? Allocation to R&amp;amp;D isn't too bad in those cases because you have the list of committed and delivered scope to use in justification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T13:46:11.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2442" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-25T14:41:06.980" Score="3" ViewCount="627" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working with larger and larger organizations adopting Agile. One discussion recently has kept me thinking about a challenge I hadn't been paying attention to heretofore. That is, how do we create approaches, working agreements, and technologies for knowledge flow across teams? I don't want to push &quot;standards&quot;. I do want to make team-level knowledge move outside the team. I'm torn about whether to find a &quot;push&quot; approach (i.e. here is all the latest &quot;stuff&quot; we've seen) or a &quot;pull&quot; approach (i.e. if you are interested, we've collected a lot of information.) Ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had an idea spring to mind yesterday. Wouldn't it be great to have an internal StackExchange!?  Thoughts for or against such an approach within an organization?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm still looking for something more specific. If we can't capture persistent knowledge a la StackExchange, what can we do? This can be larger than Agile. I just happen to be most curious about Agile knowledge flow given the sense of pulling emergent practices versus pushing prescriptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1117" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-15T17:30:25.513" LastActivityDate="2020-07-16T13:47:29.367" Title="Whose responsibility is it to encourage/ensure knowledge flow across Agile teams?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;knowledge-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2442" CreationDate="2011-05-25T16:25:33.200" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;We run regular &lt;strong&gt;'Brown Bag' sessions&lt;/strong&gt; where the company provides lunch (usually Pizza, nom nom) and people from teams can come and present cool new stuff they are working on.  Topics have included MVC, Facebook API, Deming's red bead experiment, dependency injection and so on, as well as more specific session on particular projects people are working on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These help share new engineering practices and ideas across the teams and the &lt;strong&gt;free lunch&lt;/strong&gt; usually guarantees a good attendance.  It's a reasonable balance between push and pull - &lt;strong&gt;people aren't forced to attend&lt;/strong&gt; but it provides a structured way for people to find out more about what their colleagues are working on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also run &lt;strong&gt;communities of practice&lt;/strong&gt; amongst the different disciplines (Dev, QA, BA, ScrumMaster).  These tend to be more focused on detail than the brown bags, e.g. informing devs of major changes that have been made to systems that everyone needs to be aware of.  More info on Mike Cohn's blog on that, in the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/cultivate-communities-of-practice&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cultivate communities of practice&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another point of knowledge transfer is &lt;strong&gt;'Scrum of Scrums'&lt;/strong&gt; which a member of each team attends once a week.  The intent is to keep other teams appraised of who is working on what to avoid conflicts/dependencies.  It's not as effective as it perhaps should be, something we need to look at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An initiative we've started recently is a &lt;strong&gt;fortnightly award&lt;/strong&gt; called 'Achievements in Agile' where teams can &lt;strong&gt;win a prize&lt;/strong&gt; (usually a night out or toys like Nerf guns) for stuff like trying innovative process improvements.  This is &lt;strong&gt;peer nominated&lt;/strong&gt; which means teams need to actively promote what they are doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teams also invite members of other teams to &lt;strong&gt;showcases&lt;/strong&gt; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, we're a pretty social bunch so there is usually a decent amount of discussion in &lt;strong&gt;the pub&lt;/strong&gt; about what is great (or not) about what we're working on at the moment!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-16T13:47:29.367" LastActivityDate="2020-07-16T13:47:29.367" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2309" CreationDate="2011-05-25T17:09:22.337" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your velocity dips because you are fixing bugs and paying off technical debt. That is a good thing. Your velocity is the measure of how much work your work system (culture) allows you to complete in an iteration.  Let it be that measure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fix all the bugs that matter. Clean up all the technical debt you can as you work. Plan based on velocity.  BTW: when you use &quot;pure velocity&quot; this way, then the question of &quot;how to accelerate&quot; is obvious, yes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1302" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T17:09:22.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2001" CreationDate="2011-05-25T17:13:28.080" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Best idea? Hire a coach (not necessarily me, but I am a professional coach).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The coach can work with business and with technologists and get them on the same page. It only takes a few months, and then you can usually take it from there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for a more direct answer: establish the engineering environment and engineering practices early, and simultaneously work with the product management side of things to understand how to deal with velocity, iterations, breaking down stories, and the shorter-term focus of continual integration and continual delivery. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few rough iterations before you hit your stride, but with a good start, sustainable pace,  and regular retrospectives you can push through it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1302" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T17:13:28.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2434" CreationDate="2011-05-25T17:21:37.787" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not enough context here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a contracting firm that bills by the hour/day, or is this a product development shop that makes money off of its wares? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the former, make it as easy for them as possible. It's an interruptive discipline, so you're working against climate. My company measures client work in days, with the understanding that a 10-hour day is no more valuable (and probablyless) than an 8-hour day. It simplifies accounting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are a product shop, don't bother. Seriously, don't measure individual employee's time on a particular task because it doesn't matter. It matters that they do things that make you money, and you're paying for the whole day of time anyway. Concentrate on doing the right things, not measuring the time spent in doing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also be aware that optimizing time-on-task is a bad idea for a development shop, because it lends itself to a culture of minimal time for effect; this in turns drives up defects and technical debt, which drives down productivity, predictability, and ultimately customer satisfaction. Be sure you really want to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1302" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T17:21:37.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2447" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-25T17:34:55.307" Score="5" ViewCount="299" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've worked on many teams, medium size (20+ developers) and smaller, and for the most part the project lead managed the project in terms of projections, collecting and reporting tasks and status reports, etc.  In no case was that the only thing they did, and even in smaller teams it was easy to see that sometimes the project management suffered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether that was due to poor PM skills, or due to lack of time is less clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are a few key indicators that will help a team understand when to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make project management a specific assigned task to a particular person (who may or may not be working on other aspects of this project)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make project management the only task that person works on (full time)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pull in a project management professional (ie, use someone who is trained specifically for this task, rather than someone whose primary skills lie elsewhere)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it may be easy to focus on problems during the project that indicate more effort is needed, it would be better if we had indicators that could be used at the outset to determine the priority and resources dedicated to project management so that such issues are less likely to occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1334" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2018-09-10T14:23:43.817" LastActivityDate="2018-09-10T14:23:43.817" Title="What are some indicators that a project may require a real project manager?" Tags="&lt;roles&gt;&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2447" CreationDate="2011-05-25T18:11:32.820" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;All projects, no matter the size or complexity, require the &lt;em&gt;role&lt;/em&gt; of project manager--both real and fake--filled in some way.  Even if the project is two resources large, a portion of the effort, while very small, needs to be devoted to PM-type things. That small portion can be filled by one of those two people or a third who &quot;jumps in and out&quot; of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Providing a PM on a project does not mean a fully allocated, full-time PM.  It means providing for the role of PM to the level of utilization consistent with what is needed for that project...the need is never zero, but it could be as low as an hour or two in a given work week.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T18:11:32.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2447" CreationDate="2011-05-25T19:58:51.173" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm interpreting your question as referring to PM who has experience, training, and (perhaps) qualifications, rather than someone who has picked up a few skills along the way and is prepared to take on the role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that the value that a PM brings is a rigorous approach, the ability to manage risk effectively, a strong planning capability, and the ability to react appropriately if anything is starting to fall off the track. If your projects exhibit a need for any of these abilities, then you need a professional PM. As David Espina says in his reply, this can be a part time role - very part time in some situations - but it will pay for itself many times over if your current project management capability is limited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM can work on other aspects of the project, but should be identified as the PM, and therefore the person who guides the project, reports on progress, and handles any disputes of direction and planning. He or she need not be the most senior person in the team (but often will be), and certainly does not have to be a subject matter expert. In terms of the time devoted to PM duties, it is difficult to be specific about that. I don't think I have ever worked on a project, either as PM or as a team member, where the PM was 100% dedicated to PM duties, but this was always the top priority in the event of time conflicts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T19:58:51.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2447" CreationDate="2011-05-25T19:58:57.047" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you'll find the &quot;Justifying a Project Manager&quot; question answers your questions. Justifying and When to add are just two sides of the same question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2260/justifying-a-project-manager/2262#2262&quot;&gt;The question is located here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T19:58:57.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2442" CreationDate="2011-05-25T20:06:49.713" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If we focus on whose responsibility it is to share knowledge/experience the answer is: everyone's.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, no matter how big, or small, the company is -- you can't have just one role responsible for sharing their experience or facilitating such exchange among teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's more about company culture: you either support open communication, transparency and information sharing or you prefer secrets, gossips and treating information as scarce resource. In the former case you don't need anyone being formally responsible for knowledge sharing; in the latter making anyone responsible for that won't work anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So while it should be everyone's responsibility to ensure knowledge flow I'd point management, especially senior management, as a special group here as these are people who are most responsible for building company culture.&lt;/strong&gt; If CEO and CSO treat every deal the company works on as a secret, why do they expect people down the ladder would behave differently with their knowledge, whatever it might be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T20:06:49.713" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2414" CreationDate="2011-05-25T20:30:49.433" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I take a very facilitated, &quot;low fidelity&quot; approach. My primary goal in facilitating a VSM session is to create the space for discussions. I personally do this by ensuring everyone understands WIIFM (&quot;what's in it for me&quot;) about the VSM work. I like to also stress that there are no wrong answers. I like to use large butcher paper on a wall. I encourage an initial consensus on boundaries of the map (&quot;what is in our sphere of influence?&quot;) as a starting point. I then encourage small group brainstorming. Each small group brainstorms items in the map, one item per sticky note. I stress, &quot;There are no wrong answers.&quot; Teams gather at the wall with their sticky notes and begin to map them out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use different color sticky notes to represent either classes of activities, or roles, or internal vs external dependencies. Colored dots on sticky notes can also provide additional categorization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My short answer. It's just a starting point. And it's all about the conversations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1117" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T20:30:49.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2421" CreationDate="2011-05-26T22:54:33.150" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Build a better relationship with upper management.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These kind of situations often depend on trust, history and personal credibility, rather than techniques and numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find opportunities where people can get to know yo and where you can get to know upper management.  It can start slowly and with your direct manager. Over time you can build up a reputation as someone who performs and has innovative ideas or, what can be more important, as someone who can cultivate and bring out innovative thinking from a team.  That is a very valuable skill in an organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-05-26T22:54:33.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2447" CreationDate="2011-05-27T00:56:12.957" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are my key indicators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you have no idea what you've gotten done, what you have left to do, or what you're dependent on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you're consistently failing to integrate timelines between two (or more) teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you're failing to live up to the expectations of your stakeholders. (Part of a PM's job is expectation management.) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When it can reduce your time to market by freeing up people capable of producing the work product. (Remove the admin burden from someone who could be productive elsewhere, like a lead developer.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1347" LastActivityDate="2011-05-27T00:56:12.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2456" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-27T01:06:24.650" Score="2" ViewCount="782" Body="&lt;p&gt;So far we've been very comfortable managing projects that have similar technical characteristics with our past projects. For instance we choose to get involved in python-based web application development because we have some Ruby and Java web based application on our hands.  It is definitely easier compared to tackling an ERP implementation, because we haven't done an ERP implementation before. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, we have to admit that getting our heads around the different problem domain in Python is a bit different compare to Java or Ruby.  In our project we are working under the assumption (which 90% of the time holds) that the organization provides a team lead/architect who has enough experience in building the application and the ability to set the technical foundation upon which the team to work. The team lead/architect acts as our deputy to translate the technical jargon or concepts from the developer to the PM team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We do note that this arrangement is often far from perfect. Technology develops in a pace with which no one person can cope. We often do our own networking exercise, getting acquainted with experts inside or outside the project/company who we can ask for help if we stumble across a problem in our project that our own people can't solve. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We just want to know of any other techniques that other PMs in this community use to bridge knowledge gaps within the team they they are leading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1257" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-01-09T16:51:11.933" LastActivityDate="2017-01-09T16:51:11.933" Title="Bridging the Knowledge Gap in Projects" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2456" CreationDate="2011-05-27T04:40:16.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bring in the right people to bridge the gap.  If your organization lacks capability in a certain domain then I would recommend bringing in someone who has already done what you want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are looking at longer time frame then I would also suggest looking at some of the literature on product development and product management for lessons on increasing your organization's capabilities.  I found &lt;em&gt;'Making Innovation Work'&lt;/em&gt;, M. Epstein and &lt;em&gt;'Winning at New Products'&lt;/em&gt;, R. Cooper to be helpful for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1118" LastEditorUserId="1118" LastEditDate="2011-05-27T04:47:53.590" LastActivityDate="2011-05-27T04:47:53.590" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2423" CreationDate="2011-05-27T04:44:32.457" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To be useful the postmortem data needs to be put into specific categories and added to the appropriate organizational assets or knowledge base. For example, updates to estimates should be in one place whereas process improvements would be in another category. That makes the information easy to find and gives it context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of responsibility, there will either be a corporate culture that grows/ exists that makes use of the organization's knowledge base or their will be individuals who take advantage of those organizational assets. But you can't &quot;make&quot; someone utilize them if they don't want to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the postmortem contains risks or issues that are part of the deliverables, it is the pm's responsibility to bring those up with whoever is taking over the deliverables in the maintenance and operations phase of the deliverable's lifecycle. Whether the new manager chooses to act on them or not is their call.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-05-27T04:44:32.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2459" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-27T06:34:33.917" Score="16" ViewCount="6692" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a developer on my team who is otherwise very productive but is getting more and more argumentative and disrespectful to the team and to the project managers.  For some reason (possibly culturally as she's from another country) she takes any decisions made by the PM's personally though will back down when her manager asks her to do something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like I said, I believe her to be a productive employee but I'm not one to allow unprofessionalism and disrespect to run rampant simply because that person is good at what they do.  I'm getting to the point of recommending her dismissal but I would like to exhaust all options to steer her in the right direction first.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1348" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T09:49:47.040" Title="How should I handle an argumentative team member?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2459" CreationDate="2011-05-27T07:09:08.793" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you pulled her aside and had a one-on-one with her? The way you explained yourself on here it sounds like you are capable to have a non-threatening but open discussion with her.&#xA;There is most probably some underlying issue that is frustrating this team member. I encountered this once before and it took a lot of patience to listen and not get annoyed with the person. Once I understood their problem I knew there is/was nothing that could be done to fix it (he was upset with the processes the company used). Once he vented and I sympathized with him he completely changed.....for about one or 2 months and then there was moments where he wanted to act up again but I could then easily pull him aside and ask him not to go there and that seemed to help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in summary, find a non-confrontational way to speak to this person alone and then just listen, you don't need to convince them or try to point out that their reasoning is wrong, just listen and let her vent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="103" LastActivityDate="2011-05-27T07:09:08.793" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2459" CreationDate="2011-05-27T08:06:54.613" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I lived the same thing 2 times. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first time I didn’t manage the situation very well and go to the conflict. I minimized impact by focusing him on his work (first do you work before arguing about other) but it was a bad option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second time I speak with him and point the fact that his talks offend people, and that he may be offend in the same situation. Frequent attitude can also consist on harassment (I suppose he like some people and dislike some others). Some people are bad tempered and others not, so I accept vigorous talk but some limits must be placed. No insult, no threat, criticism are allowed if they are based on fact and bring others answers. Using some example (like Scrum, IPAD,) I explained also him that success pass by regular improvement and not by a final solution the first time. At the end, I say that I clearly understand there are some others problem with the team, me or the company and &lt;strong&gt;he may speak with me or us more openly to find a solution, because we will both stay in a difficult and hidden conflict situation&lt;/strong&gt;. Because we got many open minded and peacefully discussion, I finally keep him in the team and give good feedback now. In the worse period, I was also watchful on his work to ensure he doesn’t messing up something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarise, why I do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don’t go more on the conflict (like in fist case, with bad techniques or artifacts)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don’t take too much time to the different discussions, that’s not the root of the problem and it’s just endless. Explain him how you want to work, not only in production but also in team management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be patient and factual.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you think you encounter your limit, ask his dismissal and explain that clearly to your team (and your management). Resume also the different way you tried to improve the situation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Beware to others also, other people may explode first. Talk briefly to them to understand their feeling. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That’s a difficult situation, and I think we still wait too long before firing someone (but I sometimes have a good surprise) so it’s always difficult, so Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1325" LastEditorUserId="1325" LastEditDate="2011-05-30T12:20:00.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-30T12:20:00.730" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2459" CreationDate="2011-05-27T08:28:23.207" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try to speak with her to understand her concern. Maybe the issue bothering her is a real point of improvement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, explain her she's here to make a defined work, that her feelings are important but not more important than the feelings of any other team member, or more important than work, and that it's part of her job to be able to work with the other team members without creating conflicts or a bad atmosphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastActivityDate="2011-05-27T08:28:23.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2459" CreationDate="2011-05-27T08:51:16.430" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can understand that sometimes cultural and language barriers can become a blocking stone in the working place. However, regardless of the country she's from, she works in an organization with a particular culture and policy, hence she needs to respect that and adjust her behaviour to these aspects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my personal experience I would recommend you the following;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Set up &lt;em&gt;1:1 sessions&lt;/em&gt; with her to discuss her performance and attitude to the team. These are completely different aspects but both are managed and assess by you (as her manager). You have to &lt;strong&gt;APPRAISE&lt;/strong&gt; where she has demonstrated a good performance but you also need to &lt;strong&gt;REPRIMAND&lt;/strong&gt; her where her attitude causes an issue in any area.&#xA;You can read more about these in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bruinleaders.ucla.edu/documents/BLP_samplebookreview.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The One Minute Manager&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Investigate&lt;/em&gt; her &lt;strong&gt;ATTITUDE TOWARDS OTHERS&lt;/strong&gt; by discussing with other team members and/or other managers. Does she respect and support other team members/managers? If the answer to this question is NO then this needs to be recorded.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Follow up&lt;/em&gt; your records and consider reviewing this with &lt;strong&gt;HUMAN RESOURCES&lt;/strong&gt;. HR is a great tool to understand the procedures you have available to improve this aspect of her behaviour. They will also advise you when the situation is unacceptable and measures need to be take (disciplinary letters, development freeze, or even lay off actions)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the problem is purely cultural, working with her in individual sessions to address your concerns and to provide her with examples of proper/accepted behaviour in your company should be enough to improve the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, you will need to measure whether this is an issue of arrogance and if it's worthy and manageable to keep her with your team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2011-05-27T13:44:16.513" LastActivityDate="2011-05-27T13:44:16.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2223" CreationDate="2011-05-27T09:58:52.247" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our company is 100% distributed, so we had to solve this first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My finding is that no type of questionarie or interview will reliably indicate how successful the candidate would be.  Neither would do a set of simple tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we did was to assemble a mock project with 10 tasks that would scratch about every major piece in the frameworks we're working with (python + django + jquery).  Accompanied with detailed howto on our development workflow, this now gives pretty good feeling how the candidate tends to work remotely, given sometimes imprecise or contradictory assignments and how good he is communicating with remote peers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="911" LastActivityDate="2011-05-27T09:58:52.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2421" CreationDate="2011-05-27T10:15:46.657" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would try to get your Senior Management to recognise your project as a &lt;strong&gt;Business Process Improvement&lt;/strong&gt; (BPI).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Business process improvement initiatives are frequently key projects within an organization – regardless of the size of the organization or, frankly, the size of the business process improvement initiative. Even if a business process improvement initiative is targeted at an individual department, the impact of the change will be organization-wide. By ensuring that the initiative is managed as a strategic project, there are increased opportunities for success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently the PM of an initiative that would support and improvement in the operational structure and performance of a department with offices across the globe. It has taken me few months to get Senior Management attention but now they love the idea and support this project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good argument to sell to your management is that &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Process improvement is a strategy and a tool to help an organization meet its long term goals and objectives&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. One key goal for all organizations is to meet the demands of their clients – both internal and external. Clients’ needs change – whether due to economic factors, new product introductions, mergers or acquisitions, expansion or contraction. Continuously reviewing processes for potential improvements and efficiencies enables companies to adapt effectively to their clients’ changing needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will need to document your idea and, ideally, present it with clear and simple diagrams of the current status and the potential future status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2011-05-27T10:15:46.657" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2459" CreationDate="2011-05-27T10:43:45.697" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there cultures that are inherently more argumentative than others?  I doubt there is any truth in that and would advise not holding on to that belief as a possible cause.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have answered similar questions like this with a 'remove and replace', to which I have received many negative scores.  While she may be individually productive, her non culturally caused behavior is threatening the productivity of the team, increasing your risk for project success, and has already consumed to a greater rate seriously constrained resources to date.  This is not an ongoing operations, where a manager has different obligations to his employees.  This is a project, a temporary endeavor, and you simply do not have the time or other resources to cope with this in some attempt to grow this employee.  There are many, many more highly productive resources (employees for those who do not like that word) out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HOWEVER, I keep coming back to the 'more and more' statement in this question.  The argumentative behavior is increasing, which I infer that she did not start out this way.  This is a clue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why has this behavior increased?  While you many not agree with her arguments, are her suppositions with merit?  Is she making a valid case notwithstanding the fact she might be all by herself in the argument?  The other suggestions about meeting this head on with 1:1 discussions are spot on but I would not approach it, at least not at first, with the intent on squashing this behavior.  My intent would be to understand her position, what she is seeing on the project that others might be missing, what she would do differently if she were in charge.  The 'more and more' is interesting to me and likely has merit.  Teams suffer from bandwagon effect, or group think.  Is the team headed to imminent demise and she is the only one that sees it?  That is a bit dramatic but there could be some truths in there that to which I would need to open myself up and rule out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-05-27T10:43:45.697" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2469" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-15T01:20:40.387" Score="3" ViewCount="680" Body="&lt;p&gt;We will soon start a &lt;strong&gt;research project&lt;/strong&gt; (longitudinal study for 2-3 years) with a team of 7 (+ interns).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I think these are pretty prototypical conditions for psychological research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;requirements clash with business-oriented &lt;strong&gt;project management&lt;/strong&gt; tools&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;flat hierarchy, so tasks aren't usually assigned by a superior&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;unusual working hours – most workers are student helps that work part time and a lot of our assessments (the main time-eating work) will take place after the usual 9to5&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;so we would try to find someone who is free that afternoon to conduct an assessment session quite often – this entails keeping people in the loop without email ie. text messages&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;we would like to track hours&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;we'll share a lot of scientific literature and might collaborate in tagging, excerpting etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;some custom stuff is needed&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're almost sure that we'll need to program our custom solution for organizing the assessments. We need all participants to choose possible dates and as soon as 4 participants choose the same date and someone is available to lead the assessment session, the date should be blocked, they should be notified and also reminded by text messages. It's kind of like doodle.com+tetris - probably to specific?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;my main question&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you know of a project-management tool that makes sense for such an environment?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are we better off &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;mixing&lt;/strong&gt; different &lt;strong&gt;purpose-built&lt;/strong&gt; web apps (we now use Gmail, GoogleGroups, Dropbox, Zotero, Google Calendar, Google Docs + would need some sort of time tracker), &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;risk redundancy&lt;/strong&gt; (Dropbox ∩ Docs ∩ Zotero ∩ Gmail) and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;lose integration&lt;/strong&gt; (it would be great to have something that is both calendar and time tracker, but maybe we should at least stay with the Google products that are somewhat integrated) ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a &lt;strong&gt;third&lt;/strong&gt; way? I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.charmproject.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Charm&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cloudhq.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cloudHQ&lt;/a&gt; which promise to integrate Dropbox and project management. Charm doesn't add much value and cloudHQ is still in alpha. But I generally like the idea to assemble my much-used tools into something less redundant and better integrated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1369" OwnerDisplayName="Ruben" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-08-13T07:22:39.337" LastActivityDate="2011-08-13T07:22:39.337" Title="How to manage a research project online?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2469" CreationDate="2011-04-15T17:00:36.323" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would use Redmine. And work using Scrum methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Weslei" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T17:00:36.323" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2469" CreationDate="2011-05-25T18:12:53.323" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We decided on using projecturf.com because it was quite cheap for one project and rather integrated with some of the services we're used to (dropbox, google docs). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the whole &quot;finding a meeting&quot; aspect won't be needed anymore.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;We didn't find anything who provided what we needed for this anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1369" OwnerDisplayName="Ruben" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T18:12:53.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2472" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2478" CreationDate="2011-05-27T19:46:17.350" Score="14" ViewCount="3082" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use Scrum with short sprints of 1 or 2 weeks and use peer reviews to improve product quality.  How do we best use code reviews as quality assurance tools?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;pre-commit reviews - hold tasks until the reviewer can finish them. Reviewer are on the critical path, and experience more pressure, the tasks take longer to complete. Developers may be idle developers if tasks are dependent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Post commit reviews risk code reviews dropping to low priority.  Feedback comes late (so comments and suggestions can be outdated) and in general it does not add much value since the code may be already released.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is the best &amp;quot;flow&amp;quot; for peer reviews? What is your experience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="116" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2020-07-16T14:02:23.287" LastActivityDate="2020-07-16T14:02:23.287" Title="How to use peer code reviews to improve product quality?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-01-07T01:06:41.567" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2472" CreationDate="2011-05-27T20:13:03.967" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the PM perspective I have only one answer: &lt;strong&gt;let the Scrum Team decide&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastActivityDate="2011-05-27T20:13:03.967" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2447" CreationDate="2011-05-27T22:22:12.057" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You would want a professional project manager when you want to improve the performance of your projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the deliverables, potential risks of not meeting the requirements ( eg regulatory, compliance or safety requirements) and amount of money being spent on the project are sufficient for your organization to want professional and dedicated management - a cost/ benefit type call on the part of the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the organization wants to change the culture and processes of how things are done to perhaps improve decision making, build organizational standards or a company wide store of knowledge that outlasts any group of people.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-05-27T22:22:12.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2459" CreationDate="2011-05-28T00:17:06.860" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tell her it's a problem and if she doesn't immediately correct herself she's gone. (Your HR department might have an official procedure.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing to remember is that you can't let one bad apple spoil the whole bushel. If you don't immediately correct this situation you're going to &lt;strong&gt;ruin&lt;/strong&gt; your whole team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spend your time and energy on the good performers. Dismiss the ones who aren't working out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1347" LastActivityDate="2011-05-28T00:17:06.860" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2459" CreationDate="2011-05-28T02:41:30.457" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You mentioned that she's &quot;argumentative&quot; and &quot;disrespectful&quot;.  Implied there is that she is not working well with others, or that she is reducing productivity.  But you did not actually state that.  Have you asked yourself the question of whether her attitude is actually making the workplace work?  Would your workplace be better if you replaced her with a less-productive milquetoast employee?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take this question seriously.  Humans are inherently biased against what we perceive as &quot;disrespectful&quot;, but at the end of the day &quot;respect&quot; isn't what you're getting paid for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1358" LastActivityDate="2011-05-28T02:41:30.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2472" CreationDate="2011-05-28T11:12:53.610" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel, the code review should be done before committing the code, you could ensure it by including it in scrum as well and allotting some minutes for code review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1361" LastActivityDate="2011-05-28T11:12:53.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2472" CreationDate="2011-05-28T14:04:06.590" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;With Distributed Version Control, you don't have to choose&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if the answer is to &quot;let the Scrum Team decide&quot;, that doesn't mean the question is not PM-related, or that no good answers can be provided here. &lt;strong&gt;It's perfectly within the purview of a good PM to provide their team with work-flow options that they've found have worked well in the past, or that other teams like.&lt;/strong&gt; That's the spirit in which this question should be answered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think &lt;strong&gt;it's a mistake to conflate when to do a code review with when to commit&lt;/strong&gt;. This sounds like thinking mired in a single-repository, Subversion-type mindset. If your team is using a distributed version control system (DVCS) like &lt;a href=&quot;http://git-scm.com/&quot;&gt;Git&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://mercurial.selenic.com/&quot;&gt;Mercurial&lt;/a&gt; then these are really two separate issues, or at the very least the trade-off the questioner is worried about is not longer an issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a DVCS, each developer has their own repository, and they should commit there as often as they have a changeset for which they'd like to store meta-data, or be able to revert to, etc., and this is independent of any code review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Team, or any small group of people working on different parts of a single solution, has a team repository. Each developer is responsible for pulling and merging the latest-and-greatest from the team repository into their own before pushing any of their new changes back. Then, when &lt;strong&gt;the team decides&lt;/strong&gt; their set of changes is ready for review, they should &lt;strong&gt;push their changes to a code review repository&lt;/strong&gt;. That way they can continue working (if necessary) in the team repository while code review happens on the baseline in the review repository. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the code review is complete, the changes (plus any revisions) are pushed to a stable repository, which is used to construct released builds. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This process enables commits to happen frequently. Commits should absolutely happen prior to the code review, as that's what sets the baseline of things to be reviewed. The beauty of DVCS is that this commit doesn't impact the version of the code from which released builds are made. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This process also solves the problem deprioritizing code reviews, because although the developers have pushed their code to the review team/process it is not yet released. So developers can continue working, but the code doesn't ship until the review is done and the code gets pushed to the stable release library. This should keep the pressure on the review process while not preventing the team from continuing to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This process is essentially what's described at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://hginit.com/05.html&quot;&gt;end of the 5th chapter&lt;/a&gt; of Joel Spolsky's &lt;a href=&quot;http://hginit.com/&quot;&gt;overview of Mercurial&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="360" LastActivityDate="2011-05-28T14:04:06.590" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2456" CreationDate="2011-05-28T17:37:14.330" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good point from Steve about bringing right people in. For me it is one of the many parts you need to provide:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Knowledge&lt;/strong&gt;. You can bring right people to a project in order to bring knowledge with them, but you may also cover the gaps with on-line resources, books or forums. For any given technology - which is popular enough - you shall find plenty of helpful resources.   &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Time&lt;/strong&gt;. Although one can hire the lead architect with all the knowledge, she alone will not be able to make all the work done. One must mind the learning curve and the time needed to learn. With enough time given, the team can train, prototype, refactor and improve the architecture. Time often plays important role in projects &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2011/05/the-role-of-time-pressure.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;and it is not only my experience&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The right people&lt;/strong&gt;. This time it is not about the knowledge. You will probably need &lt;em&gt;explorers&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;leaders&lt;/em&gt;. Most of the people do not like leaving their comfort zone. Working with technology they are not familiar with, is surely out of one's comfort zone. &lt;em&gt;Explorers&lt;/em&gt; are ones who like to work on such projects and thrive in such environment. They will probably do most of the research work so others can easily follow. You also need &lt;em&gt;leaders&lt;/em&gt; to overcome some harder obstacles. In such cases a team tends to loose enthusiasm and they need someone to push harder and say they surely can do it, someone who praises achievements and diminish failures.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Transparency&lt;/strong&gt;. It may be an agile process or a proper risk assessment. The most important is to be aware of the project's status at any given moment. It gives you ability to react in time and keep the project on track. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastActivityDate="2011-05-28T17:37:14.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2456" CreationDate="2011-05-28T18:10:29.857" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Gaps in knowledge, and other capabilities, will always exist in every project you ever pursue.  Finding the right people to close your gaps is an ideal solution; however, what &quot;right&quot; means is kind of ambiguous and can mean different things to different people.  It is more of degrees of right than something that is absolute.  The performance curve says most of your team, and those you are selecting to join your team, will be severely average.  Thus, you will simply have performance capability gaps no matter your best selection efforts.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Knowledge gaps are an area of uncertainty.  Your risk management process is the right tool with which to cope.  Identify those gaps, understand the drivers and areas of potential impact, prioritize the gaps in order of threat, and mitigate where you can.  It might be to continue to search for a specific expertise in a high threat area and be ready to pay for him/her, fund knowledge acquisition for your existing talent, or have a back up plan, funded by your contingencies, if the solution created fails.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mitigation of these gaps also includes the planning stages of the work.  If it is in an area where you have known knowledge threats, put your target schedule and budget further out on your probabilistic estimates such that you provide more runway for your existing team to figure things out.  For example, you may typically baseline the 65th percentile for normal project work where your knowledge threat is low or normal; however, in a high threat area, you may baseline the 80th to even the 90th percentile.  This simply means you have more time and budget to design, build, test, design again, build again, test again, etc., to you and your team &quot;learn.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Closing these gaps 100% is futile and holding out for the &quot;right&quot; people will mean your project will never start.  We simply work with constrained resources and that is project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2011-05-28T18:21:19.947" LastActivityDate="2011-05-28T18:21:19.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2414" CreationDate="2011-05-28T19:48:42.967" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Facilitating is primarily about listening and investigating and earning trust BEFORE the event ... good human intelligence is always necessary to win &lt;em&gt;important&lt;/em&gt; battles; you can never have good enough intelligence ... but trust will always be the most important asset of the facilitator.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carefully determine the scope of this exercise -- then use every trick in the book to meet, listen, understand and [attempt to] earn the trust of everyone who's work is affected.  When you leave people out, you will tend to create saboteurs ... don't worry too much about the naysayers and people who are immediately negative [without bothering to listen to you]; it's likely that everyone already knows about their negative outlook ... it's usually impossible to get everyone's buy-in; just make sure you spend most of your effort listening, earning trust; there's no substitute for trust.      &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost everyone who is qualified and who takes any pride in doing their job gets a little nervous when group of  uninformed idiots gets to jacking around with the &quot;cheese&quot; of their workflow ... it's not going to be any more palatable to them if you come up with a creative, color-coded form of collaborative performance art ... not everyone senses the same enjoyment when they see a deck of multi-colored sticky notes.  Do your homework, listen, get the human intelligence, earn trust BEFORE you channel your hyperactive creative inner child to put people through something meaningless, ridiculous or even dangerous that Scott Adams would lampoon in a Dilbert strip. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to do the tough work in the trenches, you need to have faith in what you are trying to accomplish.  Don't forget that what you are doing is important, will help people and will make the organization more successful.  Most people will give you more  latitude than you deserve as a facilitator [as long as they trust you] ... do not waste their time; do not squander their goodwill; do try to genuinely be of service ... everything will be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2011-05-28T19:48:42.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2410" CreationDate="2011-05-29T12:47:23.700" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;All of us have been managing projects since we were five-years-old.  The concepts are exactly the same whether you are building a replica of the solar system with your classmates or the next space vehicle working with NASA.  The complexity, rigor, formality, and impacts grow.  The point is, you take on projects consistent with the level of your competency and capability.  This can and does happen at any age of seniority.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Age is a red herring.  Most folks seem to equate years of experience with competency.  The assumption is made that, if you have been managing complex projects for fifteen years, you are more competent and capable then one who has managed the same complex projects for five years.  Banking on that assumption is at your detriment.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Skill, knowledge, and experience make up competency, with experience being the least reliable but upon which most folks rely.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PM of complex projects is difficult, but relying on someone's age and years of experience will not increase the likelihood of success in any reliable way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-05-29T12:47:23.700" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2459" CreationDate="2011-05-29T17:44:45.770" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pam, you say &quot;clearly she respects only the authority which can fire her&quot;, but correlation does not equal causation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your remarks it looks as if she is capable of doing the work you're asking her to do, and responds well to other people's requests to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say that she's getting more argumentative and disrespectful. How are the rest of the team responding? My experience of psychology tells me it's less likely to be the threat of firing and more likely to be personal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could be that she likes the team more than her managers, and feels free to offer up her opinion. Or, perhaps she feels that her opinion isn't listened to, and is seeking an audience for it, making her appear defensive and argumentative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, one solution might be to simply listen to her arguments and show that you've heard and understood them by playing them back to her. If you can do this, she will feel respected, and will probably accept any decision you make, even if it goes against what she would have done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, you have classified her behaviour as unprofessional and disrespectful. That you say it might be cultural too tells me you could be suffering from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error&quot;&gt;a fundamental attribution bias&lt;/a&gt; - that you consider her behavior to be innate in some way, rather than caused by something in her environment. Please take a moment to consider what she might be responding to, and how you can provide a different environment in which she will behave more constructively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-05-29T17:44:45.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2459" CreationDate="2011-05-29T18:23:42.710" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have noticed that dysfunctional behaviors arise usually because people do not feel heard and understood. That doesn't excuse the behavior; it just gives us a perspective that helps us think less emotionally about how to engage in the dysfunction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like a number of responses here especially @lunivore! Conflict avoidance is not the answer. Destructive conflict is not the answer. Active listening is critical. AND, being clear about your observations and concerns is critical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book &quot;Crucial Conversations&quot; is a phenomenal source for how to engage in such engaged conversations. Consider seeking guidance from this conflict management guide. You'll discover a dialogue approach that guides you in how to express what you clearly want and what you clearly don't want, all without attack or emotion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I want to say that, re-reading your post and replies, I find I am concerned for the rest of the team. This ongoing conflict will absolutely take a toll on all the other team members in ways you may not yet be able to detect. The damage is there nonetheless. The longer these behaviors persist, the deeper and more damaging will the impact on the team be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1117" LastActivityDate="2011-05-29T18:23:42.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2459" CreationDate="2011-05-30T17:29:26.963" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are great answers. For my the crux is in your comment - possibly cultural - you don't know why she's being this way. If you assume anything, then you close doors on solutions. Next time she gets argumentative, don't engage in the argument. Set up a meeting - a call is fine - and ask her how she thinks it can be resolved. Tell her what the affect is on the project, be clear there is no personal agenda.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this doesn't work, you need to talk to her manager. Ask for help in making this work without the manager stepping in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-05-30T17:29:26.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2447" CreationDate="2011-05-30T17:32:18.940" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume you mean by real, a full time dedicated PM. &#xA;You have lots of good answers here. I'll add that you get early indications when,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;decisions don't get made because no one understands who should make the decision &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;decisions get reversed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;no one cares if a deadline is met&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;no one can articulate what the project is supposed to accomplish&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-05-30T17:32:18.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-05-30T18:15:25.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Along the lines of a &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/19/what-is-the-project-management-book-that-left-the-most-impact-on-you/2216#2216&quot;&gt;previous answer&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0071401946&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Crucial Conversations&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0071446524&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Crucial Confrontations&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They aren't explicitly PM books, but after being in a situation where I was in a minor leadership position and seeing problems in communication, these books really changed the way I approach handling conflicts in a team setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-05-30T18:15:25.470" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-05-30T18:15:25.470" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2490" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2491" CreationDate="2011-05-31T00:18:59.060" Score="3" ViewCount="233" Body="&lt;p&gt;We will be working on an exciting new project that slightly blurs the line of PM and Consultancy. This organization is eager to introduce agile for supporting their existing applications, but they have not found the appropriate agile processes to support them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first stage of this project involving us to wear a hat of a consultant who will advise the senior management the appropriate agile processes, and later on be the actual PM in the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have different agile background, some of us have some involvement in Scrum, and some of us have involvement in XP. We all agree - and you guys are open to debate on this, that at the heart of introducing agile is a notion that : &quot;Every organization has its own specific processes that become the bottleneck in their software development group. We take note that the bottle neck can also exist outside the software development group, but in the client instead&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We decided that the first thing that we should do is to identify these bottlenecks, and put in place the appropriate agile processes, educate everyone on our plan, get their agreement, and kick off the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first phase, our approach is to conduct focus groups, or one-to-one interviews between managers, software developers to know what the bottlenecks are. Have anyone do similar exercise before? Does anyone have any good techniques to spot these bottlenecks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1257" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-15T12:33:01.810" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T12:33:01.810" Title="Transitioning into an Agile Project" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2490" CreationDate="2011-05-31T03:23:01.323" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that before identifying bottleneck you should identify a &quot;bottle&quot; - what exactly you're going to achieve. &quot;Agile&quot; is a very broad and vague definition. Instead of promising your client &quot;to make his organization totally agile&quot; try to give him answers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What metrics/measurements will be introduced&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are current values of these metrics &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How these values will be changed after your consulting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How they will affect client's business values&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the forecasted &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_on_Investment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ROI&lt;/a&gt;? In other words, how much will it cost.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T03:23:01.323" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2447" CreationDate="2011-05-31T11:04:38.233" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When the majority of the previous projects are delivered late and/or the customers are not happy and/or the software developers (or the team in general) do not seem to be focused on priorities then you definitely need a Project Manager.  A PM does not need to be a subject expert, actually being a subject expert can bring disadvantage to the project and should not be the line manager of the team members because then he/she will be line managing and not project managing.  Any project would benefit from a PM who can see the larger picture and can release the team from admin work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1267" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T11:04:38.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2490" CreationDate="2011-05-31T12:11:36.933" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I envy your remit!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd start by working out what the &lt;strong&gt;flow of work&lt;/strong&gt; looks like from initial idea through to a fully released and supported product.  Spend some time &lt;strong&gt;meeting and sitting&lt;/strong&gt; with each of the teams along that pipeline and identify what their inputs are (what material/information they need from upstream teams) and what their outputs are (what they hand off to downstream areas).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to find out how often people wait for inputs and/or how big their &lt;strong&gt;queue of inputs&lt;/strong&gt; is.  If they already measure this, get the data, if not, see if they'd be prepared to &lt;strong&gt;start measuring queues&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's important to actually &lt;strong&gt;visit and sit with people&lt;/strong&gt;.  It builds trust so if you later have suggestions that affect an area they're less likely to resist.  Most critically, it lets to see how the work &lt;strong&gt;actually&lt;/strong&gt; flows rather than relying on people telling you how the work &lt;strong&gt;should&lt;/strong&gt; happen if processes are all followed (which is what you tend to get if you just email/speak to people in a meeting).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've now got a pretty good map of &lt;strong&gt;how the work flows&lt;/strong&gt; through the system and hopefully some &lt;strong&gt;data on where the biggest queues&lt;/strong&gt; are.  I'd start by looking at the largest few queues and seeing what impact that queue is having on the team at the queue and the upstream and downstream areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some great books that look at these concepts more:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0566086654&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Goal - Eli Goldratt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0954618300&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Freedom from Command and Control - John Seddon&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1935401009&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Principles of Product Development Flow - Don Reinertsen&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastEditorUserId="1185" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T12:19:40.013" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T12:19:40.013" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2494" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2495" CreationDate="2011-05-31T19:08:18.833" Score="3" ViewCount="344" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not know whether I am reinventing the wheel, but I have never come across the following reporting method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I imagine that if I was to choose a single metric to report to upper management about a project, it would be the risk of the project not delivering something of the intended value, on time. I imagine that this metric could be used on something like a project webpage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the beginning of a project, I would, as as project manager, set it to a conservative 50%. The goal of the group is to to reduce the risk of failure. I imagine that on such a project page, there would be a deeper description of why it is set to its current value. This could be: Risk of misunderstanding between senior management and project manager, risk that a larger project in a different part of the organization will make this project obsolete, risk of not having the needed critical resources available throughout the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason why I believe that this is the single most important metric, is because it will quickly give senior management the one metric, which is important when deciding whether to use their capacities on the project, either by stopping it, redefining it, adding resources or something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this just old theory, or is it new?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="641" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2012-07-03T07:12:52.900" LastActivityDate="2012-07-03T07:12:52.900" Title="Would this be a good way of reporting?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;risk&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2494" CreationDate="2011-05-31T20:42:47.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem with this is that it lacks a formal definition of the actual value you will give. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a clear partitioning of your project into tasks, together with a task planning, then you can use a derivative of the value at risk. It means that you ensure that &quot;with confidence X% we will fulfill at least Y% of the planned tasks of the next period&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are interested, there is a nice entry for the value at risk on Wikipedia : &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_at_risk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_at_risk&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1378" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T20:42:47.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2496" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-31T21:01:13.273" Score="2" ViewCount="815" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have onshore project managers who are responsible for the following: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SL Management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Financial Management of Service &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Capacity Management &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Availability Management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;IT Service Continuity Management &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Overall Customer Satisfaction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Service quality assurance &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All based on systems-level tests that examine the behavior of service-oriented use cases across possible choreographies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since these items requires tasks for administration, monitoring and coordinating, we provided them a offshore pm assistants to do the daily monitoring, admin, and coordination. In order to have a metric, it should be owned by the associates which is not so I have a difficulty in coming up with a concrete measurement to understand mainly what is the value we are providing with the project managers. We do have a tool the organization uses to create the actions for tasks and the associates uses this to know the status of the task at hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This tool has a Start/ End date/ completed so we have the measurement of the success rate. However, I still want a concrete metrics that I am able to see that the associates are valuable to the project managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does someone have a good idea to measure value like the one I've pointed out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aal Izz Well - D&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="614" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T23:38:18.353" LastActivityDate="2012-10-21T11:03:49.847" Title="Service Delivery Metrics" Tags="&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-05-31T23:33:04.850" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't remember the title, it was given to me as part of course material. It was written as a story with the PM learning from his mother in law. I lent it to someone and they haven't returned it yet so I don't have the title. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T23:33:04.850" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-05-31T23:33:04.850" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2496" CreationDate="2011-05-31T23:38:55.140" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may not be what you were looking for because I had a bit of difficulty following the question. This is what I understood you meant. You have ongoing operational processes that have been projectized and the management is outsourced. You have a logging tool that shows when something is requested/started and when it's done. What you are missing is something to turn this into a metric. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's what you meant, then my answer is that you are missing a component. You need to set a service standard that the logged items can be measured against. For instance the service standard agreement might say X type of ticket will be acknowledged within 1 business hour with an estimate of the completion date. Each ticket will be completed within its estimated completion time. The gap between estimate and actual not to exceed 5%. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T23:38:55.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2499" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-31T23:56:21.730" Score="12" ViewCount="984" Body="&lt;p&gt;I continue to see Agile adoptions that focus on the R&amp;amp;D or Engineering team. There seems to be this acceptance that the core of Agile rests there. I'm absolutely not convinced. I think that if the business doesn't fully embrace the Agile transformation, it is doomed for failure. How can I effectively engage the business in our agile transformation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1117" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2020-07-16T13:06:56.933" LastActivityDate="2020-07-16T13:47:44.727" Title="How can I get our business leadership engaged with our Agile team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;&lt;business-case&gt;&lt;leadership&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2496" CreationDate="2011-06-01T00:29:31.147" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think very carefully about what you want measured and why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know your domain/context but my instinct tells me if you need to hire offshore support to measure activity, you're probably measuring the wrong activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T00:29:31.147" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2494" CreationDate="2011-06-01T03:00:18.603" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you may be trying to reinvent &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_value_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Earned Value Management&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EVM can provide meaningful metrics on the overall value of the work performed, encapsulated into one or more numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T03:00:18.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2459" CreationDate="2011-06-01T09:49:47.040" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are saying &quot;on my team&quot; so you are the team leader but as far as I understand you are not the direct manager of the person ? Am I right ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case I am wrong the answer is pretty straightforward : the behaviour of the person  is none of your business. You can simply warn your manager that there is a communication problem, no more no less. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I understood right, I think that you should first discuss with your common up manager. it is not a good thing to lead a team and not to have punishing and rewarding power on team members. Even in a matrix structured organisation each team should have a direct boss. If you are the team leader, your up management should delegate you managing powers (otherwise you are the leader of nothing, you are just a technical consultant or planner).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have real managing powers, then you should listen to everybody involved in the problem and then you should decide. It is not a discussion, it's &quot;I listen to everybody and I decide, and things are this way&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1378" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T09:49:47.040" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2494" CreationDate="2011-06-01T17:24:32.067" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's the problem I have with this concept - as the PM your job is to reduce, mitigate, or eliminate the risks. You're supposed to come up with a plan that will ensure the success of the project before you even start it. The reporting metric and examples you've used avoid all of this and imply that there's only a 50% chance of success before you even start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;risk of misunderstanding between senior mgmt and PM&quot; - if this is a risk, then it needs to be addressed and resolved BEFORE you start the project. I'm really struggling with the idea that you would start a project with possible misunderstanding still being a stated 'risk'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;risk that a larger project in a different part of the organization will make this project obsolete&quot; - then there's either not a strong enough reason for this project, or someone's not paying attention to what's going on. Either way, it calls into question the value of the project before it even starts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;risk of not having the needed critical resources available throughout the project&quot; - again, this should be done and assured before the project starts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess the real problem I have with this idea is this - all projects face one primary risk - the risk of failure. It's the job of the PM to navigate the project through that primary risk to success. But the way you're looking at it is you're setting up excuses for why it may not succeed, before it even starts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now it may be that I've misread it and these are just examples. If I have, you can disregard my responses to the specific items. The idea of risk management still holds though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other issue is the idea of a single metric for success. There is no ONE metric that is most important. Mgmt will want to know if it's on schedule, on budget, and providing the expected outcome with the defined qualities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T17:24:32.067" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-06-01T18:37:35.690" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0273720775&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Simply Brilliant, by Fergus O'Connell&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its Amazon reviews make it sound more like a management book than a PM book, but if Project Management is &quot;making things happen&quot;, then this is the best introduction to the subject I've ever read. It'll only take you an evening or two to read, and then you'll need to look elsewhere on this list, but if you're just getting started then this is the first book you should read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="302" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T18:37:35.690" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-06-01T18:37:35.690" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1802" CreationDate="2011-06-01T19:03:16.923" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the number of tasks is not a good measure since two project with the same number of tasks may need completely different PM effort to be completed (even if, independently, the tasks are supposed to be of the same complexity, completion time in both projects).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, if all tasks are independent, you can predict the exact effort needed : it is the sum of the time needed for each task. The real problem appears when there is a friction between two tasks. The usual illustration is the following : you are managing a SAP deployment, and you manage a team composed of two subteams A and B. A is composed of people from HR, accounting, etc. B is composed of engineering people. A and B can complete easily their tasks. The problem is to make A and B converge to a result with &quot;one size fits all&quot;. All the PM effort is then in decreasing the friction between A and B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a case like this one, a PM may need assistance even for managing a small team of 10 people involved in 2 tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my advice is to count the number of &quot;hard&quot; interfaces. If you have more than 4 or 5 of this hard interfaces, you probably need assistance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1378" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T19:03:16.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2499" CreationDate="2011-06-01T19:06:28.853" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Getting your business to adopt or accept Agile is the same as any other change initiative. You have to demonstrate the value of doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two points with that - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, you have to show concrete advantages that Agile provides (and can't be achieved otherwise). &quot;Everyone's doing it&quot; isn't good enough. It has to be right for the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second - you have to remember that Agile is not a silver bullet. Agile isn't applicable in all situations, and even where it is it may not be the best solution. So as Mark said, in some departments it just doesn't make sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T19:06:28.853" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2507" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-01T22:47:25.010" Score="2" ViewCount="1925" Body="&lt;p&gt;My company has adopted scrum two years ago, and I think we have been fairly successful using it.  I am currently facing the task of trying to restructure part of our development organization, and I wanted to get some input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We currently have 3 product teams which are developing web-based, client facing applications.  We also have an API team that develops an internal API which the other teams are using.  In the coming 2-3 months, the API team's backlog is going to become ever shorter since the team has delivered most of the features required by the product teams.  Product teams work is going to continue beyond that point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone will need to continue and support the internal API.  This work would include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bug fixes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Performance enhancements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;New features (only a few are expected)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are considering a few options of how to restructure the teams to better support this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduce the size of the API team to match backlog size and needed velocity, and have it continue to support the API as it did before.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Disband the API team, and embed it's members in the product teams.  The API would become a shared resource and all teams would add features and fix bugs as they see fit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leave only a core API team, and embed the other members in the product teams.  Product teams would add new features and fix some bugs they care about.  Core API team members would implement platform features like performance, instrumentation, etc.  They would also do code reviews for product teams, and shepherd any changes made to the API.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would love to hear any other suggestions we might be missing, and also get some insight based on experience anyone might have had using any of the methods above (good or bad).  My goal is to create a structure that reduces cross-team dependencies (and blocks), while still providing some supervision for the API.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any links to additional reading I should do on this subject is also greatly appreciated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="413" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T18:02:58.887" Title="Structuring an Internal API Team in an Agile Environment" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2472" CreationDate="2011-06-02T03:58:08.863" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There was an article and discussion here, &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110826153018/http://www.softwarequalityconnection.com/2011/04/does-pair-programming-obviate-the-need-for-code-review/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Software Quality Connection - Does Pair Programming Obviate the Need for Code Review&lt;/a&gt;, where I took exception to some assumptions in the math of the original (which I maintain was far wrong), but in which we discuss code review v. pairing v. both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1302" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-16T13:47:50.257" LastActivityDate="2020-07-16T13:47:50.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2472" CreationDate="2011-06-02T12:23:05.467" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We also do 1 week sprints and require code review.  Something about your post caught me as strange.  You mentioned that code review was required, yet you mentioned if you do the review post-commit the code may already be released.  I think that may be the key, it sounds like you need another branch in there somewhere.  Our developers commit their code to a common development branch, then perform code review on that branch.  Once a user story is accepted, all the code for that story can then be merged into trunk so that it can be released.  So the review happens post-commit in the development branch, but pre-commit to the trunk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1390" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T12:23:05.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2316" CreationDate="2011-06-02T12:32:27.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ken had some good advice.  We have found that the most important things to keep in mind are that...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The code should always be potentially shippable.  If there were a huge bug found today that took the entire application down, could you stop, fix the bug, and push to production?  It may mean there are some partially completed feature sets, but what everything that is there is high quality, tested, and complete.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You must have made demonstrable progress at the end of the sprint.  This is important when thinking of how to break the item down.  So maybe this piece by iteself does not provide &quot;value&quot; to the customer, but we can demonstrate this piece to the customer and use that to show progress towards the end goal.  As Ken suggests, definitely avoid splitting at process lines (develop then test) at all costs.  So it helps to think that a story must either provide value, or demonstrate progress towards providing value.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1390" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T12:32:27.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2320" CreationDate="2011-06-02T14:49:29.777" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having team members being aware of project management and sharing their opinion is very valuable for the project and the PM.  The PM is a human and can miss things that other team members can advise on.  All the team members must feel free to express their opinions.  What is also important though is for the team members to accept if their opinion is not adopted by the PM because he/she is accountable for the project so he/she may choose a different route for some reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1267" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T14:49:29.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2320" CreationDate="2011-06-02T16:49:05.417" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A great question. I think it helps for the team members to have some understanding of project management so they can see a bigger picture than just their task/deliverable. That said, differences of opinion on how to manage the project are best discussed one on one, not in a meeting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T16:49:05.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2494" CreationDate="2011-06-02T16:54:53.600" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;All good answers, but I think the main flaw is trying to report one metric. Only providing this one dimension is dangerous because it can look like you are hiding something when issues arise. Keeping it too simple for the executive view isn't providing them with what they want to know. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is to try to make a dashboard that can be reviewed quickly. For example, use the traffic light mode for status and then a one or two point about issues that are currently happening or recently resolves and risks that are emerging. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastEditorUserId="641" LastEditDate="2011-06-02T17:38:16.277" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T17:38:16.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2507" CreationDate="2011-06-02T18:01:23.597" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;While admittedly this isn't my realm of expertise, it sounds like you've almost made the decision as options 1 and 3 are basically the same. &#xA;From an outside perspective, since there are 3 independent teams that rely on the API, it seems like the best route is to leave a dedicated team to work on that. This insures that when any changes are made, the other two teams requirements and concerns are accounted for as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T18:01:23.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2515" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2584" CreationDate="2011-06-02T19:32:29.347" Score="4" ViewCount="214" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should all team members be formally trained when introducing Agile methods into a company, or is it sufficient to train only a handful of key people? If the latter, who should they be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-06-08T04:17:48.133" Title="Who should be trained when introducing Agile?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;training&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2515" CreationDate="2011-06-02T20:20:23.040" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You definitely want to train all team members.  You could potentially do a &quot;train the trainer&quot; type setup where a few key individuals get trained and then train the rest of the team, but your results will be much better if everyone gets trained.  You will also probably want to at least give overview training to anyone else that typically interacts with the team so they are familiar with the changes as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our agile adoption process was doing alright before we brought in an external coach, but once we brought in an external coach to formally train and coach the entire team and provide overview training to others that typically worked with the team, the team really took off.  It made a world of difference just taking that time to get everyone on the same page, and having the outside perspective as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1390" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T20:20:23.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2515" CreationDate="2011-06-02T20:39:57.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found one company with about 80 devs who trained themselves after sending five of their members to a Scrum Master course. They got themselves to the point where they were releasing code to production several times a day, and several teams had started using Kanban instead to be able to visualise the flow more easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I went to see them because I was curious about how they did this. It turned out they had the right culture in place; particularly, an academic, open-minded culture in which they were more interested in trying things out and working out what failed than in blaming people for the failure. They were also self-motivated, and the company made time for learning, so they were willing to pick up books, read blogs and go to groups in the evenings to ask questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can find people who have enough influence (not authority!) to create a culture in which Agile can thrive, it's enough to train those people, provided they're given training on the principles as well as on the practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, provide training or coaching for everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T20:39:57.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2518" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-02T20:50:16.277" Score="10" ViewCount="2752" Body="&lt;p&gt;My company has about 20 - 30 open projects at any given time, as well as 5 - 10 that have been approved and will start within the next few weeks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We currently use Basecamp to manage the projects and break them down by hours per area, i.e. 45 hours design, 200 development, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any good systems, preferably open source, that can help visualize hours that will be needed for all of these projects in the future?  Thinking of a 3 - 6 month future view. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been looking at the plugins offered by Basecamp but haven't been able to find anything that will show multiple projects at once using an hourly view. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1397" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2011-06-02T21:38:35.013" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T13:30:13.290" Title="Software tool for resource pipeline planning for multiple projects" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;open-source&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ClosedDate="2015-12-20T15:55:09.430" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2043" CreationDate="2011-06-02T21:20:28.250" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My opinion is that your method is not adapted for finding promising programmers to enter the program, nor to make newcomers adopt a good learning curve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;first, the economic context is good for programmers in most places. (full disclosure : I work as an associate professor in computer science/engineering, and a consultant in PM) Most of my current students (we are in june, they are completing their BsC and MsC in september) already found a job (mostly as programmers for BsC students). In fact we have far more job offers than students.&#xA;Offering a competition, thus the risk of not being confirmed in the job with probability 50% is not good enough for young programmers in this context.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Let's do what a PM should do : let's pretend we are these guys.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When two programmers discuss sufficiently together, they will quickly know who is the most capable amongst them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine that you are the worst one: why bothering to work hard and learn, you already know it will be a failure: if the other one spent the same time as you do, he will stay above you. The best thing to do is to make your CV and to search for a new place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine that you are the best one. If the only incentive to have a good learning curve is to be the best, you don't need to do that since you are already this guy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in both cases, no need to be competitive...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you should find another way to motivate ONE very good potential. To find this guy, spend a lot of time, with the assistance of a tech guy from your organization. Then make sure that the newcomer understand that if he learns quickly in the firt 3 or 6 months, he will be very well rewarded (money, time, responsibilities, interesting projects).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once this is done, mentoring is the best way to make sure that someone will learn efficiently (the mentor gives orientation in the training, fastening the process by separating the wheat from the chaff - what must be learned from what is not important).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1378" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T21:20:28.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2518" CreationDate="2011-06-02T21:43:36.600" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out some of the questions and answers on other project management software related questions  &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/pm-software&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/pm-software&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider using start dates as well as due dates when planning so that the blocks of hours have defined time periods to which they belong. This will also help you better schedule and control the work as the number of projects increases.  Here is a blog post describing the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vertabase.com/blog/why-start-dates-matter-on-milestones/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;benefits of using start dates&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T21:43:36.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2165" CreationDate="2011-06-02T23:07:29.157" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;CAPM first. This is basically the same exam as the PMP, but without the experience requirements that the PMP requires.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly ITIL and Prince2. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since your certification list appears to me to be UK specific, the following recommendations are more US specific for folks who might search for this topic in the future.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have any desire to work for defence contractors, you'll need to meet DOD 8570 requirements for &quot;information assurance managers&quot; (IAM in the specs), which is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/857001m.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;page 92 on this PDF&lt;/a&gt; (level 1 is 0-5 years experience, level 2 is 3-5+ years, and level 3 is 10+ years experience). I know that some large defense companies, such as General Dynamics, require all IT workers to meet these specs, even if not required (such as programmers being required to hold a Security+ cert; and GD also requires holding an ITIL foundation cert or getting them within 3 months of hire). This could be met by Security+ and later a CISSP. When DOD makes a standard, it tends to trickle down through the industries that standard touches. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T23:07:29.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2165" CreationDate="2011-06-02T23:11:25.007" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;With your experience in software development at a process-mature organization, and desire to be a deep expert, I'd recommend the PMP. (Wait until you have the required experience and read up, in the meantime.)  It will give you a thorough introduction to project management as a body of knowledge, as well as expose you to &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) theories which have created whole new methodologies (e.g. Theory of Constraints and Agile) and&#xA;b) further fields of study (like Quality or Communication).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an added bonus, the Project Management Journal put out by the PMI and Wiley is a fascinating professional research journal about project management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(You don't have to be a PMP to get it -but the fact that they put out such a great publication speaks to the quality of the organization and the goals behind the certification.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T23:11:25.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2518" CreationDate="2011-06-02T23:55:57.390" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We still use MS Project Server for the big picture of lots of projects all being juggled, then JIRA for the tactical, whats happening today, this week, this month. Have a look at FogBugz and SourceGear as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="689" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T23:55:57.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2524" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2526" CreationDate="2011-06-03T00:11:58.490" Score="4" ViewCount="723" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm facing a problem that is quite new for me, and want to discuss it. I have in my team a developer who doesn't take into account the directives that are given to him. He doesn't follow priorities that are given to him and sometime even specifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The person is competent in coding, motivated and well intentioned, so I'm pretty sure that we can come up with a way to work that work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me give a few examples to have a better understanding of the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We had a project that was almost ready to be published. However, a bug has to be fixed in a functionality, and another in the function that register customer account. We had another developer on the bug in the functionality, so I told him that fixing the one in account creation was absolutely critical, and he should spend his time on that. I tried to be as clear as possible: &quot;If we cannot register a new customer, we cannot sell our product, so functionalities, with or without bugs, are useless. This is the #1 priority&quot;. Obviously, I find out that he goes helping the other developer. He did good work, but that work was not the priority and was not what he was assigned to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On another project, we gave him technical specifications about a development he has to do. He comes up with something that works, but doesn't fulfill the specifications. We said to him to refactor his work to match the specification. This was better but still didn't match them. The specification was more complicated than what was needed to make his work, so he decided to make it more simpler. Which is good, except the fact that I'm responsible for that, so he should discuss with me when he takes decisions like that, and that we know that a future improvement of the software will need that specification (which he would have known if he had talked to me).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm pretty sure that the problem comes up not from the guy, but from the interaction between him and the way the management is done in the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So basically, how to get the situation to improve and make everybody walk in the same direction? What do you think we did wrong when managing here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1392" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-15T11:57:19.143" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T11:57:19.143" Title="How to handle somebody who does not take into account what is said to him?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;relationships&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2524" CreationDate="2011-06-03T01:07:16.283" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure I'm following your logic - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You said you told him what to work on (specifically) and he went and worked on something else, and you gave him 'specifications' (which are, you know, specific) and he built it the way he wanted to, and you're thinking it's due to a lack of understanding or interaction with management???&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is him, pure and simple. If you've been as specific as you say and are still getting this reaction, then it's time to re-evaluate his position with the company. Yes, he's a good coder, but there are lots of good coders that can also follow directions and work on what they're supposed to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a purely business perspective, he's costing you time and money. You paid him to work on a big fix he wasn't supposed to work on (which delayed release of your product) and then you paid him to work on what he should have been working on in the first place. Then you paid him to build something three times when he had the specs from the beginning, but chose to do it his way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And not to be too blunt, but it sounds like you (or whoever he reports to) might be part of the problem as well. If you're seeing these problems and still either saying it's not him, or that there must be some way to work with his behavior, well, that's a problem as well. &#xA;So what did you do wrong? You're excusing away his actions, which only tells him they're okay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the most difficult part of managing projects is managing the people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T01:07:16.283" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2524" CreationDate="2011-06-03T02:31:58.457" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see two approaches to the issue and from where I sit, I'm not sure which is the best approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Co-opt him:&lt;/strong&gt; From the description, he has pride in his work and he puts out quality code but he does it his way. You have to make him believe that your way has become &lt;strong&gt;his&lt;/strong&gt; way. Before you hand off the tasks, you have to spend time getting him &quot;into&quot; the current issue and he'll take ownership of the whole thing. The best technique for that will vary a lot and the whole process is likely to take a lot of time but you could end up with a valuable team member.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Go Formal:&lt;/strong&gt; When giving tasks, give ultra-clear targets, deadlines, checkpoints, and deliverables. Follow up and check in regularly on the the status and make clear to him that his missed deadlines is putting the project at risk. If he doesn't change behavior, you'll have to go up the management chain until someone does change his behavior or until they move him off your projects.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T02:31:58.457" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2524" CreationDate="2011-06-03T06:54:29.033" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often when a team - not just an individual - does the wrong work, it's because the constraints have not been made clear to the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first instance, did the second developer also know that your problem dev's work was a priority? Would he have distracted the first developer if he'd known that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second, why did the developer need to ask you about the reasons for the design and specification? Why wasn't he given all the information he needed for his work to make sense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds as if he would be absolutely perfect on an Agile development team. He's helping others collaboratively, keeping things simple, making pragmatic decisions and producing excellent software that performs for the capabilities he knows about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, these very tendencies which would work so well in Agile mean he is probably frustrated by more traditional processes, in which he doesn't get to use his creativity, collaborate, make decisions about how to solve problems (rather than just implementing solutions), etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it's not a matter of managing people correctly as much as spotting that their talents and strengths are not well-aligned to the task at hand. If you have any Agile pilot projects ongoing, I would suggest he's an excellent candidate. Otherwise, it may be time for him to leave - and that doesn't have to be a bad thing, for either of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T06:54:29.033" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2528" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2530" CreationDate="2011-06-03T09:34:13.837" Score="3" ViewCount="1103" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen that many websites claim that they have brain dumps for CAPM like they said they have for CISCO, Java and Microsoft. I am &lt;strong&gt;strictly&lt;/strong&gt; saying that I am not going to use those dumps and nor I recommend anyone to use that because they do nothing but decrease your knowledge. But I am curious to know this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will the study material for the CAPM certification be different than the study material for the PMP? What is the difference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does CAPM have a definite set of questions for the exam like CISCO, Java and Microsoft?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1198" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-09-15T18:14:51.603" LastActivityDate="2016-11-17T12:24:04.083" Title="Is there a difference between the PMP and the CAPM in terms of what to study?" Tags="&lt;education&gt;&lt;certification&gt;&lt;pmi&gt;&lt;capm&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2524" CreationDate="2011-06-03T11:57:16.657" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A high performing team means the individuals who make up the team are working in a collaborative, supportive way towards a collective goal.  The individuals on this team are all successful or all failures; there are no individual differences.  While you are citing some positive behaviors of this worker--probably because from an individual perspective they are positive behaviors that could produce some positive results--his behaviors are inconsistent with the teaming and the team's goals.  Focusing on how his behaviors are positive comes across more as trying to justify and excuse what he has done and, if you do this, you become his enabler.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Identify and tell him what he did &quot;wrong&quot; (I put that in quotes because it is a value judgment based on your particular situation, not necessarily his work ethic), tell him what is expected here on out, time box his improvement plan, evaluate his performance at the end of the time box, and then react accordingly up to and including removal and replacement.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On your side of this equation, you need to evaluate your communication channels.  While I am trying not to justify his behavior, I am picking up a broken communication link as the possible root cause.  He made a couple of &quot;executive&quot; decisions that were inconsistent with your directions.  Question one is: is there something about this guy, like his personality trait, that sort of causes him to avoid communicating.  For example, he is an introverted, heads down kind of guy, lost in his work, and he just attacks.  Question two is: have you disabled the two-way communication channel?  Is your office door open?  Do you listen--I mean, really listen--to your team and their messages to you?  If you fixed this link, would this problem magically disappear?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T11:57:16.657" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2528" CreationDate="2011-06-03T15:20:05.607" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;CAPM is based on the same information and knowledge required for the PMP, just not as in-depth. So any training or sample questions you find for the PMP will apply to the CAPM. For study, the primary text is the PMBoK Guide, and while PMI says it's not the only text, I didn't see anything in the exam that wasn't covered in the Guide. Rita Mulchahy's book is supposed to be pretty good if you find the Guide too dry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And no, no brain dump is required. If you know how to manage projects, then read the Guide, try some sample exams, and take the exam. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T15:20:05.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1597" CreationDate="2011-06-03T15:25:46.707" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.microsoft.com/project/en/us/default.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;project management&lt;/a&gt; software maybe the best way to address the types of issues you’re facing. We use Microsoft Project 2010 at our organization at it works well for us. It’s simple to use, helps with collaboration and reporting. There’s a free 30-day trial. So you could check it out to see how it works for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1037" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T15:25:46.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2518" CreationDate="2011-06-03T15:27:22.540" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like your biggest focus is resource leveling and planning. Most scheduling software can do this, you just have to make sure you plug in the right info.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another alternative is Critical Chain planning. While I'm not a huge fan, it does focus more on scheduling based on resource capacity than dates and times. There are several plug-ins for MSProject that adapt it to CC, and some stand-alone products as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T15:27:22.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2533" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2545" CreationDate="2011-06-03T16:15:08.067" Score="9" ViewCount="5412" Body="&lt;p&gt;From time to time, I get status updates from the technical team that a specific feature is &quot;done.&quot;  However, when I check it, it hasn't fully been tested or ux tested with common-sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you define done so that the technical team consistently delivers features that are truly ready for launch?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastEditorUserId="4574" LastEditDate="2014-03-28T11:52:23.197" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T11:52:23.197" Title="How do you define &quot;done&quot; on a project or task?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;definition-of-done&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2533" CreationDate="2011-06-03T16:45:26.733" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's part of defining the task at the beginning to me. I learned a long time ago that people often only see their part. It's done to a developer when it's written and they hand it off to the testing team. It's done to the testing team when they've tested it even if it fails. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion, be clear what you mean by done when the task is assigned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T16:45:26.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2533" CreationDate="2011-06-03T16:46:57.873" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This generally is different for every team as everyone's environment is different, so of course there is no one great answer.  We generally let the team define done with the guidance that it should include everything required to get that feature &quot;production ready&quot;.  The theory being that at the end of any sprint you could go live with those features in production.  In fact...if at all possible, you should, though there are many reasons why you may not be able to.  Some things that are common on our lists of done criteria are...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All automated unit and integration tests passing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Automated acceptance tests written and passing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All acceptance tests passing (automated or manual).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deployment scripts/instructions updated if required.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Exploratory testing complete, results documented.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No known bugs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, don't forget Product Owner/customer approval.  And of course, this list is a living document, so if things continually cause problems, something should be added to the list to address that.  In the same sense, some things may become second nature over time and can be removed from the list as it is no longer necessary to explicitly call them out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1390" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T16:46:57.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2533" CreationDate="2011-06-03T16:47:36.527" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no single, universal done definition. It will vary much between teams, depending on the product they work on (e.g. off-the-shelf software versus hosted web app), organization they're a part of (e.g. startup versus corporation), teams themselves (e.g. cross-functional versus functional), process (e.g. rapid and flexible versus heavy and formalized), etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The key thing is to have definition of done which is commonly understood among the whole project team.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It means the team should exactly know what is expected from them so they know that whatever they deliver should stick to these rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also it does make sense to build similar done definition on specific steps of the process, especially when team's done product it just a starting point for another team (e.g. development with code complete milestone which goes to acceptance testing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at it from a perspective you can say that you're done when you don't expect to do anything with the feature in future. However it would usually mean deployment is a part of the process. Then the only thing which can happen is unplanned, e.g. bug submitted which needs a fix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T16:47:36.527" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2533" CreationDate="2011-06-03T16:47:38.547" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with most things agile, I think it's usually better to do this as a team exercise.  I like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumalliance.org/articles/107-how-do-we-know-when-we-are-done&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Done List&quot;&gt;Done List&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumalliance.org/system/resource_files/0000/0451/Done_List_Creation_Exercise.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;exercise&quot;&gt;exercise&lt;/a&gt; that Mitch Lacey came up with.  It gets everyone involved and makes it more of a collaborative exercise than a mandate from on high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1403" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T16:47:38.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2524" CreationDate="2011-06-03T16:51:17.927" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't you just love people :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a performance issue, not just your project. If you have already talked to him and it hasn't made a difference, you need to talk to his functional manager. I've been on the client end of this behavior, and I have to tell you that it broke my trust with the team. I work very hard to make sure I don't treat my clients with the disregard this person does. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have good advice from others above about how to confront the problem directly, but don't forget to include the functional manager. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T16:51:17.927" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2533" CreationDate="2011-06-03T17:03:16.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;On my projects, we jointly develop with the customer evaluation criteria for each deliverable and product material.  These criteria are sort of decomposed requirements that explicitly detail tangible, verifiable elements of the product that can, to the degree possible, be objectively scored/evaluated.  It serves two purposes: 1) it helps define the initial requirements to a lower level of specificity that helps remove ambiguity that often exists in initial statements of work, and 2) it defines finish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the QM process, there are QC checkpoints that strategically distributed throughout the development life cycle that enables the team to measure its progress against the evaluation criteria, with in some cases marking off some of the criterion during development versus at the end.  The final QC checkpoint establishes that each criterion has been met, defects captured, and process checkpoints have been met.  The final review of the evaluation criteria is not the opinion of one but rather the collective opinion of the team.  This is established when it begins to appear that the benefit derived from continued development no longer exceeds the cost of doing so AND the risk of customer rejection has been mitigated to an acceptable level.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, the final approval of calling a product complete occurs in the scope verification and validation process, which includes the customer's review of the product and final disposition of rejection or acceptance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T17:03:16.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1429" CreationDate="2011-06-03T17:27:30.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dan, also being a newbie to Product Management, let me know if you find some really useful sites/materials.  I just wanted to add a few blogs to the list for you that I have found useful...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Obviously, Pragmatic Marketing is probably the accepted standard location to start with for Product Management.  I've been through their Practical Product Management and Requirements that Work seminars and they were very helpful.  They also have a lot of useful articles and postings on their website.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Eric Krock has a blog over at Voximate that has a lot of good material on it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scott Sehlhorst has a blog on Tyner Blain that is really good.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Of course, there is also the Cranky Product Manager.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Roman Pichler also has a great &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt; as well as a good book on &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0321605780&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Product Management&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. I would have included more links but apparently I'm still too much of a newbie here and am only allowed 2 hyperlinks. :(  The ones I didn't link should be easy enough to find by name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1390" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T17:27:30.693" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2533" CreationDate="2011-06-03T18:39:23.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to define done by collaborating to create numerous precise, concise examples of the feature in action. Then automate the examples as automated tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The collaboration is done with &quot;the three amigos,&quot; the product owner, one or more people who understand the technology (e.g. developers), and one or more people skilled at probing boundaries and detecting ambiguity (e.g. testers). The goal is for everyone to ask questions and pose scenarios to define the scope of the feature relatively comprehensively—what's in scope and what's out of scope. Collaborating helps to build a shared understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the group fleshes out its understanding of the feature, express that understanding with concise examples. This help to make the shared understanding concrete. I've had people tell me, &quot;With these examples, I have a much better understanding of what we're all trying to accomplish. So instead of just working on a feature, now I actually &lt;em&gt;care&lt;/em&gt; about it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Automating the examples helps to make them more available and more visible to the whole team. And they become a marker of progress. Each time the system passes another test, that's a clear sign of progress, and it's progress that someone cares about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be criteria that don't lend themselves well to concise examples and automation. So I also like to identify areas of risk or concern (again, collaboratively). Then, as soon as there is functionality to execute (even if it's not done yet), begin exploring the feature with exploratory test sessions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T18:39:23.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2542" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2543" CreationDate="2011-06-03T19:06:25.417" Score="17" ViewCount="5455" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in learning what types of metrics can be used in the following areas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Productivity &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Responsiveness&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customer Satisfaction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Employee Satisfaction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Predictability&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and what makes agile metrics different from other standard cost/quality/etc. metrics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1413" LastEditorUserId="1413" LastEditDate="2011-06-03T19:17:08.693" LastActivityDate="2019-04-30T09:57:03.887" Title="What are some agile (scrum) metrics?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="8" ClosedDate="2019-05-03T02:00:25.057" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2542" CreationDate="2011-06-03T19:26:34.477" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scott Downey has a lot of work on metrics and good information on his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rapidscrum.com&quot;&gt;site&lt;/a&gt;.  For productivity, the standard measure of velocity is a great one.  Scott adds in another of work capacity that is very useful because you can then use the ratio of work capacity to velocity for more comparisons.  One important thing to make sure you do here though is to ensure you set a &quot;keystone&quot; card so that your scale is anchored (a two is a two now and will still be a two in a year).  If you don't set a keystone card that you always reference your scale can tend to drift.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other items are much more difficult to measure.  If you are calculating any sort of &quot;value&quot; measure on user stories, than tracking the amount of value delivered per sprint similar to velocity would be a good metric to ensure not only are you developing faster but you are developing the correct things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1390" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T19:26:34.477" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2544" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2547" CreationDate="2011-06-03T23:21:05.880" Score="9" ViewCount="741" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are seeing more emphasis on the concept of Lean Software Development, especially by the Agile community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's definitely exciting to imagine that the software industry can be as productive, efficient and effective as other traditional areas where the Toyota Production System is used literally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to what extent the concepts of Agile are related to the original TPS? What points are equivalent? And what points differ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the most important question: can we achieve a truly lean software production, as the original Lean dictates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1419" LastEditorUserId="696" LastEditDate="2011-06-13T16:23:29.313" LastActivityDate="2020-08-26T13:49:04.230" Title="How much does Lean Software Development really has to do with the original concept of lean manufacturing?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;lean&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2533" CreationDate="2011-06-04T08:40:21.413" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The concept of &quot;Conditions of Satisfaction&quot; is one that I have applied at project level for many years, which requires all stakeholders to agree on what &quot;done&quot; looks like at project level. I have started to use a similar concept at task or deliverable level recently, using the same principles, but usually limiting the stakeholders to those who are interested in that specific deliverable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a software module, the &quot;Conditions of Satisfaction&quot; could be something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Code is signed off as meeting technical standards by (named development manager);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testing has been carried out to the satisfaction of (named user);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Interfaces operate as designed, as agreed by (tech architect);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User interface complies with corporate standards, and is accepted by (named individual).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't take long to define these &quot;Conditions of Satisfaction&quot; - it could even be a checklist - but it leaves everyone completely clear as to what is expected. It also means that where more than one person is involved in achieving the &quot;Conditions of Satisfaction&quot;, they share the responsibility of delivering against them. For example, a developer and a tester may be involved in satisfying the requirement for successful testing, and they have to work together to achieve that. Neither can achieve it in isolation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once all of the &quot;Conditions of Satisfaction&quot; have been achieved, the job is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-06-04T08:40:21.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2544" CreationDate="2011-06-04T08:55:21.143" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;General principles of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_software_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lean Software Development&lt;/a&gt; (LSD) are aligned with values &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_production_system&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Toyota Production System&lt;/a&gt; (TPS) are built on. In both cases you aim for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;limiting waste&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;making flow as smooth as possible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;making everyone's responsible for quality and quality improvement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main difference is matter of work in both industries -- in manufacturing we deal with tangible things, like parts, while in software industry we deal with intangible bytes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However if you think how waste was defined in TPS, e.g. inventory, it was probably as unintuitive for some as it is with definition of waste in software, e.g. code which isn't used at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specific rules of LSD and TPS apply of course to the specific industry. In manufacturing we typically build a lot of the same stuff, e.g. hundreds of thousands cars, while in software development each feature is different. The process itself naturally is different as well. However it also means it is impossible to compare productivity or effectiveness between one industry and another, so I don't think there is really an answer for one of your questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your last question is also vague as what exactly does it mean to &quot;achieve truly lean software production?&quot; Lean is all about the journey, not the destination. If you look at it for such perspective than the answer is definitely positive as we can apply general principles of Lean in software development. By the way we can do so not only with LSD but also with Kanban to take the most obvious example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-06-04T08:55:21.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2544" CreationDate="2011-06-04T11:02:59.170" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most focus for Lean Software Development has historically been on the production principles. However, there's now a new school of thought which suggests that those principles are somewhat limited where it comes to software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of software development is about producing something new; something which has never been produced before. Because of this, most software projects have natural variance and variability. Trying to apply the principles of Lean Production to create predictable, reliable delivery can actually stifle that variance and variability, reducing innovation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The new school of thought treats software not as a Lean &lt;em&gt;production line&lt;/em&gt;, but as Lean &lt;em&gt;product development&lt;/em&gt; - in that it's more like designing new cars than building the same car over and over again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;David Anderson's Kanban method, which @Pawel mentions, derives more from the new school of thought than the old. He gives &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20100706023451/http://www.agilemanagement.net/index.php/blog/Providing_Value_with_Lean&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the following guidelines&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Value trumps flow&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Flow trumps eliminating waste&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then eliminate the waste.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, if you can get something that's extremely valuable to the business into production, do it before anything else, even if it means other pieces of work hang around for longer. After that, do what's needed to keep work flowing through the system. This may mean having queues or buffers like &amp;quot;ready for development&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;ready for test&amp;quot;, even though those would be considered inventory, and therefore waste. After that, eliminate waste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're looking for work in the Lean Product Development space whose principles can be carried across to Lean Software Development, I recommend &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0684839911&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Don Reinertsen's &lt;em&gt;Managing the Design Factory&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/1563273276&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;John Seddon's &lt;em&gt;Freedom from Command and Control&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. Other works related to Lean thinking, like &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0385517254&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Peter Senge's &lt;em&gt;Fifth Discipline&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, may also be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For actual Lean Software Development, I recommend &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0984521402&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;David Anderson's &lt;em&gt;Kanban&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0321712471&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jurgen Appelo's &lt;em&gt;Management 3.0&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dan North's also spent some time looking at how to apply Theory of Constraints to this kind of variability, and has come up with the idea that ignorance is the constraint - that is, the speed at which you can learn relevant information represents the constrained machine in your pipeline. He calls the act of targeting that ignorance &lt;a href=&quot;http://dannorth.net/2010/08/30/introducing-deliberate-discovery/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Deliberate Discovery&lt;/a&gt;, and in my experience it's a very effective philosophy. It's also the backbone of BDD and Feature Injection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Toyota Production System was developed by applying Lean Thinking principles to the context of Toyota, and in that respect, Kanban is very similar: it applies Lean Thinking principles to the context of a particular team. It does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; apply TPS brute-force to that team, nor do most of the successful Lean Software Development outfits. (As a note, I hear that most production lines which have tried to replicate TPS have had limited success).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's only one place where we can truly achieve Lean Software Production in the same way as a production line, and that's in continuous integration and deployment, where we really are building the same thing over and over again. Software development generally doesn't work that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-08-22T16:45:45.467" LastActivityDate="2020-08-22T16:45:45.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2067" CreationDate="2011-06-05T04:39:00.140" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes basecamp is great. I have used it before. It's simple and easy to use. You can restrict people of projects - like you can group them to which projects or groups they can access. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also other great software packages aside from basecamp. You can check the list of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timedoctor.com/blog/2011/02/02/43-project-management-software-alternatives&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;project management software here&lt;/a&gt;. There is a short description of the list of software packages in the link and also you can open the spreadsheet for more detailed information. Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1438" LastActivityDate="2011-06-05T04:39:00.140" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-06-05T04:39:00.140" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2316" CreationDate="2011-06-05T22:25:01.043" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Clinging to user stories as the smallest planning unit is one of the abhorrent errors held by agilists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the user story for a bridge? Where is the construction of piers, spans, beams, etc. that make up the substructure taken into account? The construction of the deck (roadway) is of such minor consequence (relatively speaking), &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20130625070358/http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Projects/SR24/I82toKeysRd/Photos/I82Bridge.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;story&quot;&gt;in this narrative&lt;/a&gt; it isn't even detailed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How many user stories for a house involve the foundation and the roof? Yet they are the most expensive parts of a building.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User stories are a fundamental tool for scope definition and goal setting for the project but they are not the only tool to use. They help define the purpose for a project and when it is complete. They do not provide the entire scope of the effort involved. They help begin the planning process. They are not the final plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="164" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-19T06:59:11.710" LastActivityDate="2020-07-19T06:59:11.710" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1222" CreationDate="2011-06-06T14:10:51.953" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest trying &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.veraxsystems.com/en/products/apinikb&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Verax APINI&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Entering budgets is obligatory and you can see if meeting them is in danger&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project status is comfortably presented with dashboards&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quick fixes require reopening a project and booking hours on it; alternatively you can defy change requests&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deadlines are obligatory however you can change them (baseline and modified concept)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I suggest entering customer review as a task assigned to customer so you can easily control progress. (Tasks can be suspended too.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Priorities can be changed in runtime.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can always see planned cost of a project (baseline and modified) as well as its real cost.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deadlines which are in danger are highlighted; email alerts can be added on demand.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1452" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T14:10:51.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2557" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2562" CreationDate="2011-06-06T14:53:40.390" Score="6" ViewCount="223" Body="&lt;p&gt;Question for fellow product owners/product managers.  How do you prioritize your features?  We are currently trying to develop some common criteria (as objective as possible) that we can use to prioritize our features.  At the very least, we want something that will give us a good starting point and potentially things to look at when we get the inevitable question of why are we working on this instead of that.  Does anyone have some good suggestions?  How do you all address this problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1390" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T15:36:53.400" Title="Prioritizing Features" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;release-plan&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2557" CreationDate="2011-06-06T15:30:13.960" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was tasked with the same thing. In the end we used a matrix with two axis. One axis was frequency of occurrence (ie Feature xyz would be used by every user every time they used the application vs. Feature abc would be used by some users sometimes, etc, etc). The other axis was level of benefit to the user/benefit to the company/ROI (ie Feature xyz increases customer satisfaction vs. Feature abc increases company revenue).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Combining benefit and occurrence turned out to the most objective way we could come up with a baseline for what was &quot;High&quot;, &quot;Medium&quot;, &quot;Low&quot;, and &quot;Don't Bother&quot;. After that we took a deeper dive and pass through all the &quot;High&quot; cases. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'd be surprised how few cases make it into the &quot;High&quot; rating when you rate them objectively against all the others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, we ended up using a similar matrix for all of our bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1289" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T15:30:13.960" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2560" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2563" CreationDate="2011-06-06T15:30:33.030" Score="3" ViewCount="358" Body="&lt;p&gt;When conducting status meetings I feel they're inefficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About our meetings: They're once a week and they're in the morning at 9am. They were once at 3pm but the CEO finds it difficult to facilitate client meetings if they're in the afternoon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our meetings are intended to minimize interruptions and increase team interdepartmental communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel team leads should attend this meeting. I feel there isn't really a need to involve my other two development team members in this meeting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team leads should just funnel down information to their team and not have every team member present at the meeting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They don't really need to know the gory details of what another team member is doing when the project is a single department project (about most of our projects are this) and don't depend on another department to execute the tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this process more efficient with your experience or has it been more disruptive to team communication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Team size: 3 web developers, 2 SEO/marketing team members, our CEO and our office manager&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1253" LastEditorUserId="1253" LastEditDate="2011-06-06T15:50:49.650" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T22:56:34.833" Title="Team members in project status meetings ?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2557" CreationDate="2011-06-06T15:36:53.400" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest the following three criteria:  &lt;strong&gt;Value, Risk, Cost&lt;/strong&gt;.  Value can be further decomposed into two:  Benefit and Penalty.  Benefit and penalty combined create an overall value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Benefit&lt;/strong&gt; is the positive affects an added feature will deliver to the organization that can be objectively measured in some way, i.e., increased revenue or decreased costs, faster throughput, etc.  The particular criterion should be as objective as possible.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Penalty&lt;/strong&gt; is the more subjective criterion, where you will likely have stakeholder angst if a feature is not implemented.  In other words, the value of a feature climbs if a stakeholder group is upset in its absence, despite that it offers no objective value to the organization.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Combining the two creates your overall &lt;strong&gt;value&lt;/strong&gt; score.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Risk&lt;/strong&gt; is specifically the uncertainty you must assume and mitigate in delivering the feature.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cost&lt;/strong&gt; is the direct project cost in the feature's implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ensure that all of your features are decomposed to the same level of specificity to make sure the scoring is precise.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T15:36:53.400" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2560" CreationDate="2011-06-06T15:42:57.053" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do a RACI analysis for your meeting.  If you cannot classify a participant within this analysis, (s)he is not needed for that meeting.  If a meeting is more than just uni-directional, it has been shown many times that the size of that meeting should not exceed six or seven people.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since your team is small, however, I do not see the harm in including the entire team for the weekly meeting.  Because it is such a small team, I would worry about the excluded members feeling, well, excluded.  That would not occur if your team was large.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T15:42:57.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2560" CreationDate="2011-06-06T15:44:49.093" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on the size of your team, I would say &quot;Yes, everyone should be at the team meeting&quot;. Everyone should be up to speed with what is going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1289" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T15:44:49.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2524" CreationDate="2011-06-06T16:17:05.530" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm somewhere between the &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2524/how-to-handle-somebody-who-does-not-take-into-account-what-is-said-to-him/2526#2526&quot;&gt;opinion of SBWorks&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2524/how-to-handle-somebody-who-does-not-take-into-account-what-is-said-to-him/2525#2525&quot;&gt;opinion of Trevor&lt;/a&gt; on this. And I think it comes down to the level of unconformity you have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a 1st step, include him in the design process as much as possible in your project system. While doing so, listen hard to his opinion. Look for clues of hidden objection in him. If there are no disagreements, document your common decisions (highlighting his consent). There's a good chance you won't agree on everything though. Naturally, you decide after evaluating the possibilities, that's not new in any way. Just take care of documenting the minority report and the reason you choose an approach over the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you succeed, you're done and you got a valuable resource for future planning work. No problem on this branch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other option is that the same thing happens again. You ask him why he left the path you agreed on, he tells he always knew the path was wrong. At this point, you should refer to the agreements and the documents produced in step 1. I saw this happening a couple of times and I'm still not sure we handled them well...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think after two rounds of this still failing, I'd let him go. In that case he really needs a different process or work environment. (I have to say, I never fired anyone for this reason...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1456" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T16:17:05.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2067" CreationDate="2011-06-06T16:35:33.057" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Open Atrium: &lt;a href=&quot;http://openatrium.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://openatrium.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Customizable and runs on Drupal; an open source CMS. Self-hosting as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1253" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T16:35:33.057" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-06-06T16:35:33.057" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2570" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-06T21:56:07.830" Score="13" ViewCount="834" Body="&lt;p&gt;My company is still young, and our processes still inadequate.  I want to get the scrum process right from the start.  Would hiring an agile coach make that much of a difference even if I've done nothing but read and research implementation methods of scrum and other agile methods?  What are the typical rates for someone with these qualifications?  What is the usual process that goes into agile coaching?&#xA;I would love to hear from both someone who has been coached as well as an agile coach themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1413" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T16:29:35.383" Title="Will hiring an agile coach make that much of a difference?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;process&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2570" CreationDate="2011-06-06T22:27:42.023" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If I had someone experienced with the specific method, here: Scrum, in the team I would always choose them and not external coaches.&lt;/strong&gt; While coaches usually have vast knowledge about the method they know very little about specific of your organization and this is exactly the spot where success, or failure, of method's implementation is decided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have such person in your team we come to the question of time: &lt;strong&gt;how fast you want to get it more or less right?&lt;/strong&gt; From what you're saying I expect you want it rather fast and basing on an inquiry about coaching rates I guess you expect to pay for getting it right soon. &lt;strong&gt;In such situation I'd probably go with coaches.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if this time pressure is set only by yourself you may want to reconsider it -- &lt;strong&gt;there's much value in learning what works and what doesn't when the team experiments with the method to get it right finally.&lt;/strong&gt; As long as I have comfort to work this way I would allow that, even though it may mean visiting some dead ends along the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually you can mix these approaches -- you can allow the team to find there way but organize a coach who would help the team when they need them/ask for their help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also question value of coaches. &lt;strong&gt;Well, I assure you that even hard-core practitioners can learn a lot from good coaches.&lt;/strong&gt; They just have different perspective. They usually work with many different organizations and in many different environments. They notice patterns people working all the time in the same place can hardly imagine. On the other hand they rarely stay long enough to see the battle, often uphill one, for making changes sustainable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway I'd say the ideal tandem of people introducing new method in organization would be an experienced insider along with a coach. &lt;strong&gt;However, having comfort of working with the experienced, I probably wouldn't chase the ideal and stick to them and them only.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T22:27:42.023" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2570" CreationDate="2011-06-07T03:05:38.570" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;My opinion would be to hire the coach.  The right coach is definitely worth the money, especially if you don't have any scrum experience (research does not count) on your team.  If you have the experience of multiple past scrum teams on your team (either in one individual or several) you may be alright without a coach, but I would say if you want to get it right from the start the coach is definitely worth it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had been driving the scrum adoption process at my company for over a year.  We had definitely been making improvements, but we finally invested in a coach and the difference was night and day.  Maybe it also depends on your clout within your organization, but having the external justification of past decisions and the external nudge to make the hard changes that I had been suggesting for years was worth the cost alone.  That in addition to some of the additional coaching on practices we had been struggling to perfect made a huge difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am actually presenting the story of our adoption process which talks a little about the coaching experience at Agile 2011.  It was through the Insights stage so I wrote a paper to go along with it.  I would be happy to forward the paper along as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1390" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T03:05:38.570" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2570" CreationDate="2011-06-07T12:53:14.640" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The right coach can make a big difference but just like any profession you have to do your due diligence and make sure the coach is a fit.  As a coach it can be beneficial sometimes not to know too much but a good coach like a good physician takes time to understand you before making suggestions.  A firm conviction is essential but it needs to be coupled with humility and integrity.  Watch out for &lt;em&gt;seagulls&lt;/em&gt; who fly-in, make a mess and then fly-off.  If you interview a coach and they do more talking than listening then they are probably not a good fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1012" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T12:53:14.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2574" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2578" CreationDate="2011-06-07T13:44:52.227" Score="9" ViewCount="2080" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been on a relatively small project team (2-3 members) and found it difficult to sustain project momentum. The initial momentum was easily created when everyone is enthusiastic and excited about the new project. However, once the initial phase is over, the momentum is difficult to sustain. I have found this to be the case for projects with a long delivery time (4-5years).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="480" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-01T01:15:09.637" LastActivityDate="2012-07-01T01:15:09.637" Title="How to create project momentum and then to sustain it over a long period?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2574" CreationDate="2011-06-07T14:07:20.990" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yeah, 4-5 year delivery time would be very hard to maintain momentum.  Are there any milestones in that time frame?  The first thing I can think to suggest is to set some more frequent milestones that can be reached and &quot;celebrated&quot;.  Ideally these would be things that you could fully complete such that everyone can say &quot;okay, that part is done and we don't have to worry about it anymore&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1390" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T14:07:20.990" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2576" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2589" CreationDate="2011-06-07T14:57:24.020" Score="3" ViewCount="327" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've encountered 6-Sigma before at larger companies I've worked at/with.  They always seem to go the route of bringing in an expensive consultant and a fair amount of time spent on establishing a baseline of vocabulary, etc.  I'm working with a small team (8 people total) and was wondering if anyone has ever seen/heard of bringing 6 Sigma into suck a small team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Constraints:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At least one person would like to be &quot;belt certified&quot; (Green, as we can't dedicate anyone 100% to 6 Sigma stuff)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let's not get into &quot;why&quot; and &quot;are you crazy&quot; I realize 6 Sigma is, well, large and supports an ecosystem of consultants.  Also realize that in some cases RFQ's may request some level of certification (which based on my experience is easy to achieve &quot;de rigeur&quot; but not &quot;de jure&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-06-09T04:16:12.140" Title="Cheap way to bring in Six Sigma?" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;&lt;6-sigma&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2574" CreationDate="2011-06-07T15:03:29.803" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Positive reinforcement increases desired behavior.  People gravitate towards reward and recognition.  People go where they are paid to go.  These are truisms on which you can bank.  If you are having issues with maintaining project enthusiasm, it makes me ask about the project's inherent value.  Project excitement and enthusiasm trickle down from the top.  If you are seeing a drop in enthusiasm from your team, then I would bet you are seeing the same drop in the sponsor, customers, and stakeholders.  The questions become: has the perceived value of your project dropped? Have other project priorities replaced yours?  If those answers are yes, then whatever you do at the project level would have little to no impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Commitment is hard to maintain for long term projects.  We have a tendency to be myopic with severe attention deficit disorder.  If you are not or cannot show interim value for your project as you are progressing, then you run the risk of people losing interest, which will flow down to you and your team.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Periodically revisit the original business case and go through the exercise of validating and refreshing it.  In doing so, you could re-energize leadership and get them focused on your project and that will have the sequelae effects on your team.  You may also learn that the business case no longer justifies project spend causing the project to be terminated.  This is not a bad thing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if your enthusiasm drop is really related to morale, that is a different discussion completely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T15:03:29.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2574" CreationDate="2011-06-07T15:08:07.630" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few ideas how to keep momentum in long-term projects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Frequent releases.&lt;/strong&gt; Try to release often. You can introduce time-boxing, e.g. Scrum sprints, to create a sense of urgency within the team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Measuring performance.&lt;/strong&gt; Measures like velocity in Scrum or cycle time in Kanban shows basically how fast the team is running. If you measure it over time you can make a point in keeping the pace or even improving it over time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Continuous improvement.&lt;/strong&gt; Don't make it about project and project only. In one of my previous teams where we were working on a long-term project we focused on improving the way we worked which was a) motivating and b) helped us to keep momentum.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Try new things.&lt;/strong&gt; In long-term projects there are usually a lot of space to try new things out. Think where you can give people freedom to decide on technology, practices and methods they adopt. Make it great learning experience and not just building yet another project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bring fresh blood.&lt;/strong&gt; Adding some fresh blood usually helps to restore enthusiasm and often brings new ideas. This can affect people attitude pretty much. In such a small team it can be difficult be even short spell of some fresh faces can help much.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Move people out of their comfort zones.&lt;/strong&gt; Usually people end up doing tasks they're familiar with. One would focus on database the next one will deal with business logic and another will cover GUI (or however the work is split). Encourage people to work on  areas they aren't that familiar with. Maybe it's not about optimizing productivity but would bring some challenges to people, thus motivate them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T15:08:07.630" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2570" CreationDate="2011-06-07T16:29:35.383" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a dev team coach, I have some biases. There are three things I would recommend you think about before you go and hire a coach to get your &quot;Scrum right&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) What Are You Actually Trying To Accomplish&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After all. Scrum is a tool. Not a bad one by any means, but if you don't know what you want to actually do besides &quot;get your process right&quot; you're going to wind up with problems. Maybe start with a simple retrospective where you ask:&#xA;  * What hurt us this past month?&#xA;  * What made us happy?&#xA;  * What would we like to change for this coming month?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By just starting with that and encouraging open and honest communication you'll be miles ahead of &quot;doing scrum right&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Why Are You Trying To Accomplish It&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok this is kinda like question 1, but at a higher abstraction layer. Yea. We like doin' stuff. We may have an idea of what we want to accomplish, but why are we really trying to accomplish it? Are we concerned that growing to another 15 developers will decrease our productivity? Are you worried that you'll wind up mired in documentation hell where people &quot;communicate&quot; 95% of the time and get stuff done 5%? There's a reason you want to fix your process. Figure out what that is  and make it a big and visible goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I set a goal at one company I was at of  &quot;Polish&quot;. I wanted to make sure peoples minds were on going the extra mile to make things just a bit better/brighter for their customers and teammates.  Afterw e got good at that, we changed it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, these are the two things I would think about before just hiring a coach to get you scrum. A good coach will know these two questions and drive you to them; maybe in a different way and maybe phrased a bit differently than I did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1465" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T16:29:35.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2165" CreationDate="2011-06-07T20:21:20.920" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think about some &quot;project management in software development&quot;-related certification, like RUP, MSF, ScrumMaster. They are more valuable for a starter than heavy-weight all-in-one certifications like PMP and PRINCE2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T20:21:20.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2515" CreationDate="2011-06-07T20:57:24.350" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are starting from scratch then I think external training for all is a good idea.  You definitely want to have your training just-in-time and learners should be with the people they will be working with so I would advise training one team at a time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Expecting a few key people to pass the word on may be risky.  Internal trainers have superior context but there are some intangibles to having an external trainer.  External trainers will usually be more accomplished facilitators and presenters.  External trainers will have experienced many different patterns that they can share with learners.  For whatever reason, learners always extend external people more courtesy and this can be valuable in the early stages of the learning curve - there are some who learn through challenging and questioning and this can throw an inexperienced trainer off-balance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck Iain&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1012" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T20:57:24.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2576" CreationDate="2011-06-08T01:02:17.103" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start by figuring out if 6 Sigma is the right process for you. If you have highly measurable steps in your process and an ability to change out key steps then re-measure, it's good. If you are more about people doing processes, 6 sigma is less useful. I found 6 sigma to be a discipline rather than an approach, hence the need to bring in consultants and get certification. &#xA;I've used LEAN process improvement with some success and if you work with that you still need training but can tailor the approach to your needs. &#xA;So, question 1 is why are you considering bringing in 6 sigma?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-06-08T01:02:17.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2574" CreationDate="2011-06-08T01:06:29.287" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;People who work on projects tend to like change and long timeline projects get to be a grind. You have some great answers above. I'll throw in a couple of ideas from another perspective. &#xA;This type of issue is common in sales teams, they have an annual goal, but need to be motivated throughout the year. This is done by;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;breaking down the year end goal into shorter term pieces so achievement can be recognized frequently. &#xA;celebrating milestones along the way- often there's a celebration at the end of specific campaigns. &#xA;Realizing that the long term goal is met through a series of short term steps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-06-08T01:06:29.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2515" CreationDate="2011-06-08T04:17:48.133" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have mentioned, train the whole team.  It is hugely valuable to build a common language and common perspective early on for any process transition.  Agile especially can be a cultural level change that takes months (12-18) to change everyone's core behaviors.  It isn't as simple as learn the ABC's of a process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, train Sr. Management.  I can't stress this enough.  Having a single team in a company &quot;go Agile&quot; will create tension and conflict that needs to be managed by Sr. Managers.  If they don't know what to expect or aren't prepared, it will create problems almost immediately (&quot;well, you can do Agile, but Product Management will keep working the way they always have...&quot;)  You can't send them to the same class, so I would strongly recommend a trainer come in and spend 2-4 hours speaking to a significant portion of the Sr. Mgmt team and tailoring a course specifically for them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also also, find a few sympathetic/interested/motivated members of other groups/teams and get them trained as well.  Once you get some success with your team, having those seeds planted early will really help solidify things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-06-08T04:17:48.133" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2576" CreationDate="2011-06-08T15:26:38.970" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Six sigma is just a process, so team size is irrelevant. You can do it with an entire organization or with 2 people. It's about improving the &quot;process&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for belts, there is no one central authority or certifying body for SS, so really, anyone can 'certify' you as a belt. You can go through Motorola's training for US$12k, or you can find one online for less that than US$200. The difference will be the depth of training and understanding that you get out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;American Society for Quality (www.asq.org) is generally considered the leading certifying organization, and they outline a self-study program on their website, so &quot;training&quot; or a consultant aren't necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your organization is looking to bring in the processes (without a consultant) and still certify belts, then one possibility would be to study the processes, implement them on a designated SS project, and if the project leader feels they understand it, take the ASQ exam and get a belt. Another would be to have your team go through an online SS training. The better ones run US$500-$1500/person depending on the belt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also find a lot of great support online as you implement. LinkedIn has a great group for Lean SS with a lot of consultants &amp;amp; trainers that are more than willing to answer questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-06-08T15:26:38.970" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2588" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2609" CreationDate="2011-06-08T20:57:07.853" Score="2" ViewCount="929" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a tool which helps me keep the product backlog and the specification consistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider that I have specification from client. Based on the specification I create the user stories (the case can be in opposite way too). Right now it looks like everything works great. But it is important to have some a tool which shows that all cases are covered by user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next thing is that specification is not fixed and is changing over time. In that case we need to synchronize all changes in the documentation with the product backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know some tools on the market for such synchronization (mapping)? To make it simpler we can say that specification and product backlog are created in the MS Word and MS Excel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1477" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-15T11:47:18.237" LastActivityDate="2016-11-23T10:57:21.253" Title="Mapping user stories to specification" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-11-27T13:51:54.720" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2576" CreationDate="2011-06-08T22:11:21.293" Score="4" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Work with the budget you have ... everybody want's a bigger budget for training/consultants; few remember that the corollaries of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Parkinson's Law&lt;/a&gt; apply to budgets, especially training budgets ... most of us understand how it works, i.e. it's necessary to demonstrate significant proven hard dollar results from next to nothing in order to get a budget for a few nickels on the next project.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use your head to take advantage of available free resources; ask questions like the one you just asked.  As you examine the tools and ask questions about how to use them, realize that six sigma is ONLY a toolkit -- you don't need a consultant, but if you want to pass the certification exam you will need to be the one who selects the appropriate tool from the kit and APPLIES it appropriately to drive the verifiable results from an actual project.   Training [from a consultant] is not as important as USING the tools to make the lessons meaningful.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Get going.  Do a DMAIC project.  Pick something doable, but pick something noticeable that needs to be fixed and will generate support for the next project.  The first project MUST have a Champion (i.e. a manager who owns the &quot;mess,&quot; is ready to commit to small expenditure and may not assist in the project, but will provide the discipline [outside the project team] to move the project forward).  The project will be lead by the person who is willing to pursue GB certification, i.e. the project will be part of the basis of GB certification. If you can't find someone to be a Project Champion, wait until you can recruit a manager who is willing to be one.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ideally ... if your project Champion will agree to fund this ... you should engage a coach for weekly one-hour dedicated one-on-one teleconference webinars as you work through the D-M-A-I-C steps.  Outside professional perspective can be critically important, especially if you are not especially confident about using some of the tools -- confidence will come with results.  Yes, you are going to have to pay that coach for his/her time, but it's a lot less than bringing in a consultant, paying travel, lodging, per diem, etc.  {NOTE:  If you are looking for potential coaches, start with users on the Project Management StackExchange forum ... study your prospective candidate's responses to different questions, contact your candidate for an interview or email exchange and, if suitable, propose an hourly fee, e.g. $100 for a 45 minute weekly coaching session.  You can expect that a modest project will take 15 to 20 weeks; i.e. pick your project so that the demonstrated savings exceed this, but keep your expectations in check.}&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2011-06-09T04:16:12.140" LastActivityDate="2011-06-09T04:16:12.140" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2590" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2591" CreationDate="2011-06-09T02:35:36.233" Score="1" ViewCount="139" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking of building a virtual team of freelancers trough &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.odesk.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;oDesk&lt;/a&gt; or alike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My project needs few (2-3) php developers, a c++ developer or two and a project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering what agile team management methodology would you use in such scenario and why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1479" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-06-09T07:43:39.690" LastActivityDate="2011-06-09T07:53:52.657" Title="What is the most appropriate agile framework for teams of independent freelancers?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2590" CreationDate="2011-06-09T07:53:52.657" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Much depends on whether everyone in the team will be working full-time or it is rather a side arrangement for team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the former case you have more options as most of popular agile methods can be applied in distributed teams. &lt;strong&gt;Scrum&lt;/strong&gt; will help the team focus on achieving iteration's goals although you can find it hard to follow specific practices prescribed by Scrum, like daily stand-ups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also go with &lt;strong&gt;Kanban&lt;/strong&gt; and limit work per single team member, e.g. not more than a single task, or a couple of them, per a single team member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the latter case you need something which doesn't set many time constraints on the team as people would probably work irregularly, because of their daily jobs, private life arrangements etc. In this case I would go for &lt;strong&gt;Kanban&lt;/strong&gt; which set focus on the flow which is quite effective approach in such situation. It is also very light-weight and adds minimal formalisms on the top of what you already have, which is another plus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-06-09T07:53:52.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2592" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-09T09:24:20.963" Score="2" ViewCount="586" Body="&lt;p&gt;What do people think of this certification? Is it something to advertise if you have it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="189" LastActivityDate="2011-06-09T16:15:47.930" Title="Is Comptia's Project+ certification respected/respectable?" Tags="&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2592" CreationDate="2011-06-09T16:15:47.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on how you define respected. If you mean on par with a PMP or Prince2, then no, it's not on that level. Not because there's anything inherently 'wrong' with it, but simply because it's not as rigorous as the others, and the requirements to sit of it aren't as stringent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of it as a 'very' entry-level certification. But if you have it, there's certainly no reason not to advertise it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-06-09T16:15:47.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2588" CreationDate="2011-06-09T17:08:01.250" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure about &quot;mapping to a specification&quot;, but being able to map individual user stories back to the &quot;big picture&quot; is definitely something I struggle with as well.  I have not found any software that has been great at this, though I also haven't looked very hard.  I wouldn't be surprised if some of the larger ALM suites had this.  Personally, right now I am managing a &quot;Story Map&quot; which allows us to see how individual user stories fit into the big picture.  However managing that is a manual process, so nothing automated.  If you're interested in story maps you can check out some of Jeff Patton's material on them (http://www.agileproductdesign.com/blog/the_new_backlog.html).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1390" LastActivityDate="2011-06-09T17:08:01.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2588" CreationDate="2011-06-10T03:30:37.967" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, this is a well understood problem and a colossal headache any way you approach it.  If you need &quot;full, traceable and auditable mapping&quot; you should look at pulling the specification and the User Stories into the same tool.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These tools allow you to make an initial mapping from specification to requirements/user stories then help show you changes, discrepancies, gaps, etc.  They usually require a significant investment up front to pull in an initial specification then build the User Stories.  They also tend to not help -at-all- when you build a part of the spec once, call it complete, then the customer changes that part of the specification.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your best bet is to work with the customer to deliver portions of the spec and get them &quot;done and not able to change&quot; as quickly as possible.  Work in versioned releases (e.g. the build in Jan will be 0.6, the one in Feb will be 0.6, etc.) and build to 1.0 with your customer.  Don't be afraid to push things out of the current scope/project and into &quot;1.1&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some tools I've used that helped&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Caliber RM from Borland -  Used this 2003-2005.  We had 1200 requirements and a &quot;loose specification&quot;  I liked the mapping tools and the import/export functions.  It did a nice job of tracking the requirements, and decent enough at the specifciation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Roll your own SGML document format - Used this in the late '90s  Basically, we &quot;compiled&quot; our documents and the compiler would complain if there wasn't a mapping requirements tag.  It required a -huge- dedication to define the structure and maintain the links.  (It was a safety-involved product, so it kinda made some sense)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really, this is a huge headache.  If I were faced with this again, I would take the following approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For less than 750 requirements or less than a 80 page specification, I would keep a Spreadsheet mapping and maintain it myself&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For more than 750 reeqts or more than 80 page spec, I'd work with the customer to split them until they were small enough to work with in a Spreadshhet&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Barring that, I would map out my needs for this, spend 3-4 weeks selecting the right tool, and structure my entire project development process around that tool.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;hth&lt;br&gt;&#xA;and sorry the response is so long :-(&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-06-10T03:30:37.967" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2596" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2616" CreationDate="2011-06-10T14:05:14.693" Score="1" ViewCount="390" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a website that offers free goal management for simple tasks, in the shape of a to-do list. Something that can handle simple tasks with an option to &quot;check&quot; it and automatically archive and complex tasks that has several smaller tasks in it which could display a progress bar in the overview to help keep track of everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you happen to know any?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1503" LastActivityDate="2011-06-14T09:44:56.467" Title="Online Goal Manager" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;self-management&gt;&lt;goals&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2597" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-10T21:33:52.710" Score="9" ViewCount="1273" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to move toward Kanban-style project management, but I'm finding it especially hard for a project where some of the technology is new and the developers have to spend time researching modules developed by other people to see whether they'll work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They often don't know how long the research will take, and sometimes it doesn't lead anywhere. The task may be as vague as &quot;&lt;em&gt;figure out how to get solr to index the content of Excel files like this&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, where this is a particular requirement, or &quot;&lt;em&gt;see whether there's a Drupal module that will help us do X.&lt;/em&gt;&quot; These work items don't seem to fit very well into the minimal-feature-type structure of Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, where to fit the research or exploration related work items into our Kanban Board?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1506" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2012-07-03T12:38:30.537" LastActivityDate="2012-07-03T12:38:30.537" Title="Where to fit research/exploration work items into Kanban Board?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2469" CreationDate="2011-06-10T21:41:03.817" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We looked for a while for a tool that would help some of our research units schedule people, rooms, and other resources that all had to be available at the same time according to various rules (depending on the site and the resource), and decided we had to build our own.  I'd go with trying to integrate the tools you and/or your team are used to using.  Adaptations of  applications that the student workers are already using would be especially good, since they won't have the time or inclination to learn new software and it sounds like you won't often (ever?) have them all in one place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a programmer on your team, maybe s/he can eliminate some of the redundancy by automatically populating redundant fields in one tool with data from another.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Linda&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1506" LastActivityDate="2011-06-10T21:41:03.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2596" CreationDate="2011-06-11T01:32:30.000" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are looking for something very simple for personal use, or something at work that is really just for you, and you use Gmail or Google Apps, you could use the &quot;Tasks&quot; feature in Gmail/Google Apps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look below Mail and Contacts on the top left in Gmail, and you'll see an embedded popup window, similar to a Google Talk Chat, that has space for you to enter tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can email the completed task list to yourself, which archives it in Gmail for later retrieval.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will say that I wouldn't recommend this for large projects or projects where you're dealing with other people's tasks. this is simply something I'd suggest for personal use or for your own use at work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-06-11T01:32:30.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="829" CreationDate="2011-06-11T08:22:24.893" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you taken a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://eylean.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eylean&lt;/a&gt;?&#xA;It's a Desktop application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's local hosted (running on your local server). A really good tool for collaboration of distributed teams as changes made on one client immediately become visible to all the others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1319" LastEditorUserId="40167" LastEditDate="2020-04-02T11:32:23.043" LastActivityDate="2020-04-02T11:32:23.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2601" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2604" CreationDate="2011-06-11T14:36:05.980" Score="17" ViewCount="2197" Body="&lt;p&gt;If someone has written PMP on their resume. What can I assume that they know about project management?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would they know what is scrum, extreme programming, waterfall, etc?&#xA;Would they know which methodology to chose and when?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is safe to assume about a person with PMP Certification?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Alternate wording of the question is what is taught to a PMP and what are they tested against?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1279" LastEditorUserId="1279" LastEditDate="2021-03-10T17:01:51.623" LastActivityDate="2021-03-11T16:38:13.023" Title="What does PMP Certification guarantee about a person?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2601" CreationDate="2011-06-11T15:21:31.090" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;With the PMP credential, you are guaranteed that, at one point in his/her relatively recent past, (s)he took and passed the PMI test.  All else are uncertain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@Hasan in response to comment: I believe I answered the question and I meant exactly what I wrote.  The PMP test is knowledge base, psychometric test that touches a little bit on skill, based on basic PM principles and practices as indicated in the PMBoK.  A PMP certificate guarantees that the person has passed the test and had at that time the basic knowledge to pass it at the then passing score.  It guarantees nothing else, including whether that person has retained what (s)he learned to pass it or that (s)he really understood it, the latter indicative of boot camps.  To maintain the PMP, you are required to obtain PDUs, which I suppose provides a degree of confidence that the individual is maintaining or continuing to learn; however, there is really no oversight in terms of knowledge acquisition, master, and retention with those PDU classes.  So the degree confidence you might have is further degraded.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There has been no quality examination that correlates the performance to the PMP-certified practitioner.  None.  There is no evidence that a PMP performs better or worse than the non PMP.  Thus, you can generalize nothing from that, either, meaning you have continued uncertainty.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, a PMP guarantees only that a test was passed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2011-06-11T16:25:50.277" LastActivityDate="2011-06-11T16:25:50.277" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2601" CreationDate="2011-06-12T13:02:17.347" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hasan, David's answer is exactly correct. It guarantee's nothing. But if your question is more along the lines of what does it 'imply' a guarantee of...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It implies that the PM understands and uses commonly used processes and vocabulary that would be understood in most industries. It also implies that the PM knows how and when to use these processes correctly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately these are only implied, and neither true or guaranteed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what is tested against? WBS, EV, CP, the 9 Knowledge Areas, the 42 processes, good practice, ethics, etc., but ONLY as can be applied to ALL industry. So would they know scrum, XP, waterfall, etc.? Not to pass the PMP. Those are specific methodologies and the PMP does not deal with those. The PMBoK Guide (on which the PMP is based) was designed as a high level framework from with methodologies can then be developed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-06-12T13:02:17.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2605" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2010-11-28T06:40:29.323" Score="6" ViewCount="469" Body="&lt;p&gt;From reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the entry on Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, Capability Maturity Model is an abstraction of an existing system. I'm not sure when this abstraction is employed when analyzing an organization's data structure. Could someone please explain this to me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5266" OwnerDisplayName="stanigator" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2013-04-01T17:57:48.810" LastActivityDate="2018-04-08T17:46:10.893" Title="Can someone please explain when Capability Maturity Model is used when analyzing data structures?" Tags="&lt;cmmi&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2605" CreationDate="2011-06-12T13:39:09.237" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I understand it, the Capability Maturity Model isn't a step in a process to be employed at a particular point in time, but a hierarchy that an organization continuously uses to assess the maturity of their own information systems development and management processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The five levels are (from the Wikipedia article linked above): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Initial&lt;/strong&gt; (chaotic, ad hoc, individual heroics) - the starting point for use of a new or undocumented repeat process.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Repeatable&lt;/strong&gt; - the process is at least documented sufficiently such that repeating the same steps may be attempted.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Defined&lt;/strong&gt; - the process is defined/confirmed as a standard business process, and decomposed to levels 0, 1 and 2 (the latter being Work Instructions).  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Managed&lt;/strong&gt; - the process is quantitatively managed in accordance with agreed-upon metrics.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Optimizing&lt;/strong&gt; - process management includes deliberate process optimization/improvement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone in an organization using CMM would be constantly directing project managers to use the processes, tools, and methodologies that would advance the organization to higher levels of maturity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2011-06-12T13:39:09.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2605" CreationDate="2011-06-12T14:33:53.550" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Capability Maturity Model is a way to assess whether a business is doing all it can to improve its business processes.  It has been superseded by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model_Integration&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Capability Maturity Model Integrated&lt;/a&gt;, at least for software-related prcesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2605/capability-maturity-model-applications/2606#2606&quot;&gt;list of &quot;levels&quot; provided by Bill the Lizard&lt;/a&gt;, another part that defines the CMM(I) is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;list of process areas that the business needs to have&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CMMI defines practices that businesses have implemented on their way to success. Practices cover topics that include eliciting and managing requirements, decision making, measuring performance, planning work, handling risks, and more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The list of process areas that are addressed, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model_Integration#CMMI_model_framework&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;from Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;AR&lt;/strong&gt; - Causal Analysis and Resolution&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;CM&lt;/strong&gt; - Configuration Management&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;DAR&lt;/strong&gt; - Decision Analysis and Resolution&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;IPM&lt;/strong&gt; - Integrated Project Management&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;MA&lt;/strong&gt; - Measurement and Analysis&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;OPD&lt;/strong&gt; - Organizational Process Definition&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;OPF&lt;/strong&gt; - Organizational Process Focus&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;OPM&lt;/strong&gt; - Organizational Performance Management&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;OPP&lt;/strong&gt; - Organizational Process Performance&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;OT&lt;/strong&gt; - Organizational Training&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;PMC&lt;/strong&gt; - Project Monitoring and Control&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;PP&lt;/strong&gt; - Project Planning&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;PPQA&lt;/strong&gt; - Process and Product Quality Assurance&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;QPM&lt;/strong&gt; - Quantitative Project Management&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;REQM&lt;/strong&gt; - Requirements Management&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;RSKM&lt;/strong&gt; - Risk Management &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When applying CMM(I) to an organization for the first time, the usual first step is to conduct a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gap_analysis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;gap analysis&lt;/a&gt;. This would go through each of the process areas above and identify whether the organization already has any &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lean.org/workshops/WorkshopDescription.cfm?WorkshopId=20&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;standard work&lt;/a&gt;  detailing how each processes is carried out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are starting completely from scratch (i.e. your company has zero formalized processes), then each process area would be ranked level 1 (initial / chaotic / ad hoc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="569" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-06-12T14:33:53.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2597" CreationDate="2011-06-12T19:05:44.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few of ideas which you may find useful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don’t treat marketability of a feature as totally crucial thing.&lt;/strong&gt; We sometimes add a feature which we know won’t be marketable but we still see some value in building it. In you case just pull your research tasks as any other tasks through the board. In other words treat research as a feature on its own.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You may want to add a specific stage to show that specific feature/task is researched and not yet built.&lt;/strong&gt; We actually did that with our board adding design stage — you can see more in &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2009/12/kanban-story-kanban-board-evolution.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one of my posts on Kanban board&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you decide after research that you don’t want to build the actual feature just call it completed and move into done column.&lt;/strong&gt; You may want to mark it in a specific way so you know it hasn’t been built so you can filter it out when you analyze your cycle time/lead time or you verify what’s really been built.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And one final advice: don’t treat process described on Kanban board as a sacred cow. It should reflect how you work and not the other way round: the way you work should be a result of what you’ve scribbled on the board. If something doesn’t really suit the board decide whether it is just the example, and then treat it like one, or it might be a common situation so you might need to change your board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-06-12T19:05:44.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2588" CreationDate="2011-06-12T20:40:24.877" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember looking into a product called Telelogic DOORS for this type of tracking.  It seemed perfect, but I wasn't in a position to recommended it at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The product is now a part of IBM's Rational suite of tools, and I would assume has a hefty price tag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www-01.ibm.com/software/awdtools/doors/#&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IBM Rational Doors&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="986" LastActivityDate="2011-06-12T20:40:24.877" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2596" CreationDate="2011-06-13T16:22:44.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try Team Task Manager.   I use it daily to track projects and tasks, very intuitive and no learning curve.  The website is here -  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deskshare.com/team-task-management.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.deskshare.com/team-task-management.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1513" LastActivityDate="2011-06-13T16:22:44.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2601" CreationDate="2011-06-13T17:34:45.560" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a tricky question. It does guarantee that you know the theory of Project Management as defined by the PMI.  You will have a common language and you will know the basic flow of the project phases. You will have grasped the different knowledge areas enough to recognize them in practice. It also guarantees that you've put in a few years of project work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What it doesn't guarantee is a level of competence. I have worked with PMP certified PMs who couldn't manage themselves out of a paper bag. I've worked with non certified PMs who could manage a multi-million dollar project without breaking a sweat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the years I've achieved a number of certification (mutual funds license, Canadian Securities, etc). They have tended towards theory and knowledge rather than experience. PMP at least has experience requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;hope that helps.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-06-13T17:34:45.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2560" CreationDate="2011-06-13T17:40:24.587" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This one is hard to answer based on the size of your team. @Sloret is right in that everyone should be up to speed and @David is right in the fact that you have a team of 7 people and it could be easy for people who aren't included in the meeting to feel as though they are excluded. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is look at the reason for the meeting. If it's about project progress and issues, having the whole team there can be useful. People need to see the bigger picture and this is an opportunity to share information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your meeting is really a status update with the sponsor, you need to get the information ahead of time and present it yourself. Only have a team member in the room when it's possible more detail will be needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-06-13T17:40:24.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2613" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-13T23:19:07.577" Score="21" ViewCount="2209" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile focuses on developing workable codes from small user stories. Pair programming encourage developers to pair up, actively engage with one another to come up with the best solution for the problem. Design and code are actively reviewed, refined, until it reaches a state where everyone is confident that the software is maintainable and robust for the customers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile transforms the command and control mechanism, where architects dictate what the design should be, into a democratic process that gives everyone the autonomy for designing the system. This leads to the question, is a software architect still relevant in Agile? Does Agile slowly transform the role of an architect into something else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1257" LastEditorUserId="6825" LastEditDate="2013-10-17T20:53:39.217" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T20:53:39.217" Title="Is Software Architecture still Relevant in Agile ?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;roles&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2601" CreationDate="2011-06-13T23:58:15.497" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It proves they took the time and the initiative to achieve the certification. Neither the test nor the application paperwork are trivial, they both take considerable amounts of time and dedication to complete. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it does not guarantee their level of competence as a PM, it does guarantee that they were willing to do the work and the studying and that they were competent enough to pass the exam. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I doubt there is any written exam to prove someone's ability to manage people, money, risks, issues, customers, etc, etc all at the same time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1289" LastActivityDate="2011-06-13T23:58:15.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2613" CreationDate="2011-06-14T02:36:24.547" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great question and definitely something that doesn't seem to be addressed very well in the standard material that is out there.  I won't pretend to have all the answers as we are still struggling with this ourselves, but there is definitely still the need for an architect role in an agile environment.  It is almost definitely different than the typical role in a more waterfall approach, but still there.  It seems that, in an agile environment, the architect role gets much more involved in the backlog grooming portion.  They are a prime candidate to do rapid prototyping and other research to help with breaking large user stories down into smaller ones that will fit into a sprint.  Being a product owner, there are many times that I have a user story that is too large to fit into a sprint but isn't clear from a business perspective how to break it down.  This is where it seems to be very beneficial to get the delivery team involved to help.  During team backlog grooming meetings there will be discussion about potential ways to approach the problem and many times more research on these alternatives or some prototyping will need to be performed before a decision can be made.  This seems to be where the architect role fits best in agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a multi-team environment where there is a lot of shared code, this could be enough load to warrant a dedicated architect working with the product owner team to help provide this sort of feedback ensuring consistency across the teams.  In any case, as always, the goal of the prototyping and research is to gain just enough knowledge to be able to make a decision and move forward.  Any code from that effort should be discarded and the knowledge shared in another way.  This could be some light weight documentation, it could be some simple diagrams, it could simply be a conversation.  Generally speaking, if it was complicated enough to warrant the research, it is probably complicated enough to warrant some level of documentation, as long as that isn't used as a hand-off and accompanies a discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1390" LastActivityDate="2011-06-14T02:36:24.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2596" CreationDate="2011-06-14T09:44:56.467" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you tried Task Freak, it is self hosted -- I like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1136" LastActivityDate="2011-06-14T09:44:56.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2320" CreationDate="2011-06-14T10:02:48.050" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are targeting to a small team then I believe this would be benificial to include the opinion of the team members regarding project management, but when we work on the large scale with 1000+ resources and 10+ Project Manager it will become to messy and unorganizes to envolve developers/team member to contribute to the management of project. However, task related to the Project Management can be assigned and monitored by the project manager to the team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1198" LastActivityDate="2011-06-14T10:02:48.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2613" CreationDate="2011-06-14T17:03:20.603" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this could also be phrased as &quot;does design fit into Agile?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you develop a product, the architecture, design and implementation change each release.  How much depends on the needs of the project and the ability of the team to understand the scope of the overall solution.  You only build an architectural component or change the design based on needs, not &quot;what ifs&quot;  So, while you may have planned to have an abstracted, data driven business rule component as part of your architecture, you don't build it till you need it.  That way, if the scope changes, or not adding that in provides enough value to ship, then you have the option to ship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, Agile project benefit -much- more from having strong, very experienced architects as part of the project so they can make more informed decisions about &quot;when&quot; things are needed and &quot;what can be cut to make things simpler but still functional&quot;  Also, having developers with strong inherent design skills and experience can work with the uncertainty around the changing and ever morphing design in an Agile project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a &quot;single architect&quot; make the decision drops away.  Some teams discuss &quot;is this needed yet&quot; and having some experienced folks provide context and some inexperienced folks to challenge implicit assumptions seems to provide a good mix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I don't think it transforms SW Architecture as a discipline or a practice :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-06-14T17:03:20.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2597" CreationDate="2011-06-14T17:14:19.260" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a good question... Not sure I have a good answer, but here ya go...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you adopt the concept of a timebox and goal/question to answer to help the research tasks complete and move the project forward?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will never get the &quot;best&quot; answer&quot; but spending a fixed amount of time for something like &quot;see if there is existing code that will...&quot; can help move it forward.  Phrase it as &quot;Decide to build from scratch or include a 3rd party library into the product to solve X, Y and Z&quot; and give the activity 4 hours to make the call.  Someone can grab the card, do the 4 hours of research and then make the decision.  Once made, the next task should be to size the result of the decision (maybe that is included on the card?  I've seen it both ways...)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Continuing the example... If you decide to build from scratch but don't know how to implements it, then similarly create a first task that is &quot;create design sketch, 2 hours&quot;  Keep the timebox small and focus on moving to building something as soon as possible.  If your team really doesn't know how to approach something, nothing teaches like experience.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you are progressing toward building and someone realizes &quot;hey, I just read on Bob Loblow's Blog that there is already a solution to this...&quot; then you can evaluate with the new information if it is cheaper/easier to switch or continue building from scratch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is never such a thing as the perfect answer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build something ASAP&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change direction when you have new information that compels you to&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'm interested to hear more thoughts!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-06-14T17:14:19.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2588" CreationDate="2011-06-15T03:31:36.380" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www-01.ibm.com/software/awdtools/doors/#&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DOORS (Dynamic Object-Oriented Requirements System)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; is a requirements database tool specifically designed to manage requirement specifications. It is sold by IBM (by Telelogic before they were bought by IBM) and is heavily used in the US defense industry (and often even contractually mandated).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A little &lt;strong&gt;background on how DOORS works&lt;/strong&gt; is instructive in understanding how it might be used to link to user stories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The requirements from a given specification reside in a single module, with each requirement and it's associated meta-data stored in a separate object.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A group of modules thus form the set of specifications for a complicated system such as a satellite--starting at the top-level Prime Item Development Specification (PIDS) and flowing down through the lower-level specifications all the way to Software Requirement Specs (SRS) and the hardware equivalents.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The inter-relationship between requirements at these various levels is documented and managed with links. Links are connections between requirements (i.e. objects) that (typically) reside in different specifications (i.e. modeules).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Links are how you're going to map your mercurial specification to your backlog.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Links show parent-child requirement relationships. In your case, it appears as if you've received a spec from your customer and want to be able to trace the user stories to their requirements. Assuming that your user stories actually have a fairly straightforward mapping to parent requirements this should be easy to do. Each user story can be an object in a story module that links to a requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These links are then used during the design and development process to understand how requirement changes at one level of the hierarchy flow through the entire system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if a high-level performance requirement is changed, a simple report run on a properly linked set of specifications will enable the systems engineers to determine the comprehensive set of child requirements that now have to be assessed for impact. Or in your case, &lt;strong&gt;a requirements change can be instantly traced to the user story(ies) the change will impact&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DOORS will then enable you to run audits to see if there are any requirements not mapped to a user story, any user stories not linked to a requirement, and any other combination you can think of (e.g. requirements satisfied by several user stories, although this probably indicates the requirement is insufficiently decomposed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the code is complete and released, the meta-data for the user story and spec can be updated to show the requirement has been satisfied and reports generated to show overall progress and outstanding features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure there are other tools (probably less expensive ones) that have similar functionality, but DOORS is by far the most ubiquitous--at least in the aerospace and defense industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="360" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2011-06-15T03:31:36.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2622" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2623" CreationDate="2011-06-15T13:42:42.440" Score="5" ViewCount="1567" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is perhaps an addition to this question: '&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1063/how-do-you-convince-a-client-to-use-agile-methods&quot;&gt;How do you convince a client to use Agile Methods&lt;/a&gt;'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I was not 100% convinced by the answers on that question.&#xA;What I am asking myself is how to convince a client when you have to work to a very tight schedule?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I already know that by using SCRUM I can follow up the project on a day to day basis and that it has advantages compared to waterfall. But how do you convince your client to go in iterations, not knowing when exactly the project will end or what it will cost...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;i.e.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;A project has to be put in production on the 1st of January 2012, and it is now the 1st of July. How do we get our client convinced that a bunch of iterations will get us to the final result?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without knowing the exact timeframe or the budget to be spend, I find it rather hard to convince a client of going in to this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was in this situation at a client, in which they did developments without a specific method or framework. They did waterfall as they thought it worked best. In the end we convinced them of how Scrum works, who could do what roles, but they didn't do it because of the risk they saw in this. (no specific cost to execute it and deadline)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you have good ideas how to convince these type of clients...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T03:42:01.103" Title="How do I convince a client to use SCRUM in a tight deadline and fixed price project?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;deadline&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2622" CreationDate="2011-06-15T17:54:46.890" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As one of the respondents to the linked question suggested, it really depends on what the client's problem is.  If the client has a process that they are happy with and it is working for them, why are you trying to convince them to switch?  If it ain't broke, don't fix it.  If it is broke, you can tailor your message to address the specific pain points that client is experiencing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mentioned the client was using waterfall, what has their success rate with waterfall been?  There are studies that have shown vastly improved success rates of agile projects.  If the client's success rate of waterfall projects is the standard 15%, this would be a great metric to start with.  A few other potential discussion points...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have they ever gotten waterfall projects delivered that included features that were rarely or never used?  Likely they have, and if so that is waste.  You could explain how agile works to deliver them working software on an incremental basis starting with the most important features first.  This way, they can use and evaluate the working software and then determine the next most important feature.  In this setup, they can get to a point and decide that the features they have provide enough benefit that they are okay with leaving out the rest of the features to save money instead of paying for them anyway just because at the beginning of the project they thought they might need them.  Not only that, but with each deliverable, they could choose to begin using that in a production environment while additional work is completed if it would provide value over the current state.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do their waterfall projects usually run over schedule?  If so, by how much?  If this is a large number you can explain the benefit of the agile planning method using some analogies.  A common example is moving a pile of mulch.  Have the client imagine they have a huge pile of mulch, a wheelbarrow, and a shovel and need to move all the mulch from point A to point B.  Have him estimate how long that will take.  Now tell him you will allow him to go ahead and move 3-5 loads, and then estimate again.  Which estimate do you think would be more accurate?  Then you can explain how that relates to the method of planning and estimating used in agile.  So you may not know day 1 how long a project will take, but after a few sprints you can get a pretty good estimate and that estimate is almost guaranteed to be more accurate than the waterfall estimate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1390" LastActivityDate="2011-06-15T17:54:46.890" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="233" CreationDate="2011-06-15T18:24:26.610" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are stuck trying to balance future possible stability with current uncertainty and opportunity. No matter how interesting you make your project, if people think their future is at risk they will leave. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have some great answers above an how to deal with it. I'll throw in a different slant. &#xA;Ethics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you can absolutely guarantee things will get better, you have to ask yourself if it's ethical to keep trying to tie people to your project. &#xA;By answering this question, you can find your solution more easily within the great choices presented. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-06-15T18:24:26.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2622" CreationDate="2011-06-15T22:11:51.030" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aside from your desire to use Agile I'm not sure why you're trying to convince the client. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here'e the problem - if your client has a project, and you don't know how to explain that Agile or Scrum will bring their project in on-time and on-budget, then maybe they're not the right solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also said that Scrum has some advantages over waterfall, which is true. The reverse is also true though, like being able to project cost and schedule, which your client obviously values. You can (and should) follow-up day to day with both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So going to your question of how do you convince your client - first you make sure that Agile/Scrum is the right answer. If your certain of that, then the reasons why should be fairly easy to explain to your client and convince them. But if you're struggling for how to convince them, then maybe's it because they're not the right answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-06-15T22:11:51.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2613" CreationDate="2011-06-16T02:48:48.653" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question, I believe, is really two fold.  How does the concept of architecture fit into agile and is there a need for a dedicated or assigned role to perform the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I strongly believe that for complex projects, architecture planning and definition is critical for long term success.  There are cross functional aspects, like performance, that are difficult to add afterwards in an iterative fashion with a sprint by sprint only view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The role of architect seems to vary company to company, but common responsibilities are usually much deeper than defining the architecture of a single project.  They insure best practices are being followed, consistency between projects, insuring a project fits within the bigger picture within an organization and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So does an architect need to exist ?  Depends on your company/business.  If you have a complex infrastructure with a lot of projects that need to coexist and be supported over the long term, an architect or architectural team is probably needed.  If you are a small company with a limited number of development projects, maybe there is much less of a need.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just like any other specialty skill on a team, is there enough work to justify a dedicated resource or just spread out the work and live without the focus of a specialist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="476" LastActivityDate="2011-06-16T02:48:48.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2627" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-16T19:39:47.017" Score="2" ViewCount="5285" Body="&lt;p&gt;What book would you recommend for learning MS Project? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1531" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-27T04:37:32.170" LastActivityDate="2012-07-27T04:37:32.170" Title="Book recommendations for learning MS Project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2012-07-27T04:37:40.393" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2627" CreationDate="2011-06-16T19:56:26.660" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used &quot; PRINCE2 planning and Control using microsoft project&quot; by Paul E. Harris. Excellent book as it teaches how to create a PRINCE2 Project from the beggining using MS project: 2 things at once!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1532" LastActivityDate="2011-06-16T19:56:26.660" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2613" CreationDate="2011-06-16T20:09:20.527" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that design is still essential, regardless of the mechanism used to deliver the solution. There must be boundaries, especially in terms of defining the extent of a solution, and particularly around interfaces, integration, and simply avoiding straying into the space that other projects are attempting to cover - otherwise a strong PM / product manager could take the development in a direction that is completely wrong for the organisation or enterprise that is needing the solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A simple example may clarify what I mean. Consider a company that has a well designed, integrated, management reporting system based on a recognised tool, that works with industry standard databases. Within that company there is a small development that uses a different database, different data standards, and duplicates some of the functionality of other enterprise applications (including some management information). Not a problem... for the project team. But it is a problem for the organisation, as it now has multiple versions of the &quot;truth&quot;, and no-one knows for sure which one is right, because they will never be perfectly aligned. Why has this happened? - because there was no-one validating the design or setting parameters for the developers to remain within.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, software architecture is very relevant in Agile, especially in integrated, complex, enterprise-sized environments. But I would also argue for proper design in any development, as there is always merit in keeping at least one eye on the prize that you're shooting for, as well as creating the code for your next iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-06-16T20:09:20.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2613" CreationDate="2011-06-16T20:53:00.653" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Software Architecture involves planning the Components working together. Agile projects need planing too, without this I can't see a successful end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think in Agile way, this planning doesn't need to generate excessive documents. But planning the architecture is still necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="536" LastActivityDate="2011-06-16T20:53:00.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2627" CreationDate="2011-06-17T05:17:59.893" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found that the MS Project 2010 Step By Step book was incredibly useful.  It takes you through more of a tutorial approach.  I like this approach because you're not reading a textbook, you're actually working through a project that is already set up so you can learn as you go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here it is on Amazon.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0735626952&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Project-2010-Step/dp/0735626952&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1413" LastActivityDate="2011-06-17T05:17:59.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2115" CreationDate="2011-06-17T05:40:29.350" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The AdWords project at Google uses Scrum&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1536" LastActivityDate="2011-06-17T05:40:29.350" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2634" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-17T05:46:39.770" Score="4" ViewCount="1534" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm wanting to transition from the QA Lead in my agile company to a scrummaster role.  We're still in the process of getting the Scrum methodology right, but I think it's important to have someone that knows the process and can facilitate it.  Is it possible to do both? What are some experiences people have witnessed or been a part of that they might be able to share?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1413" LastActivityDate="2012-09-02T17:13:15.260" Title="What are some key takeaways from transitioning from a QA Lead to a Scrummaster?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2635" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-17T13:14:27.253" Score="19" ViewCount="2423" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering what useful leading metrics people might be using to predict failures/issues after release.  (I'm assuming SW projects).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are lots of lagging metrics that capture what has already happened after release (e.g. weekly number of defects reported by customers) and those can be used to build a predictive model themselves.  But I am wondering if anyone else tracks things like &quot;number of high level defects per total defects&quot; and uses that to predict (with some level of accuracy :-) the number of defects that customers will see/report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reason/context:&lt;/strong&gt; I'd like to be able to have something (measurable) in my back pocket in 12 months (the next big project) that says &quot;sure, we can lower the quality bar and cut $$$ for quality improvements, but it'll result in a higher maintenance budget by about x%&quot;  That is, start measuring now, validate the data and results then use it as a guide on the next project(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastEditorUserId="1125" LastEditDate="2011-06-17T18:05:54.667" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T19:57:59.530" Title="Leading (predictive) Metrics?" Tags="&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;quality&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2635" CreationDate="2011-06-17T22:10:52.570" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like what you're really talking about is some way to predict risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem here is that 'metrics' are things that are measurable (have happened), and the predictive part isn't absolute, especially since every project is different. so you would in effect be saying &quot;on project A we allowed for only X testing and found X bugs&quot;, but that would not necessarily hold true for future projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your only real approach is risk mgmt and assumption tracking on current projects, coupled with lessons learned, and then applied to future projects in the risk mgmt/identification process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-06-17T22:10:52.570" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2627" CreationDate="2011-06-18T14:58:30.860" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was &quot;deep diving&quot; into the inner workings of MS Project I found any of the &quot;overview books&quot;  like &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0735626952&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Step by Step&lt;/a&gt; to be a good reference guide.  They helped more as a reference when I wanted some in depth understanding of a particular feature.  The other book that I really liked was &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1932159878&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dynamic Scheduling with MS Project&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll also say that Gary Chefetz's entire series on MS Project Server was invaluable to me.  In my mind, these are -by-far- the best books covering the features of linking across schedules and the features of using Project Server.  I have the 2003 versions of his book (there were only 2 back then) but it looks like he now has &lt;a href=&quot;http://projectserverbooks.com/books/index.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;several&lt;/a&gt;.  I would not hesitate to drop the $$$ for his books if I was doing anything with Project Server (and I wouldn't run a big project with MS Project without using Project Server...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Final thought - build schedules.  Lots of them.  I really internalized things like Fixed Units and Fixed Time by trying to teach them and come up with simple examples that really pulled the differences out.  If you use Project to collect actuals and do &quot;wave planning&quot; where you update the schedule each week (or 2 or 3) then you really need to understand with a set of simple examples (not an actual project) how different task types behave across the different views and which views are better than others to make updates/changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;hth!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-06-18T14:58:30.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2634" CreationDate="2011-06-18T23:50:28.223" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, the two roles are completely different in terms of functional management. Second, the skills involved in development and QA are completely different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Management&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;QA Lead is typically a role that involves supervising other QA personnel. The QA Lead not only defines the QA policies and procedures, but he/she is also responsible for performance reviews of people on the team. This person is a functional manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Scrum Master, on the other hand, is not a functional manager. This role is also not typically a fixed position but may be a temporary title for a developer on a Scrum team. In another project, a different member of the team could be the Scrum Master. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master has no formal authority and is simply the facilitator of processes and the scrum meeting. The main responsibility of the Scrum Master is to eliminate distractions and help the team stay focused. Wikipedia says it best, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28development%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Scrum Master &quot;protects&quot; the team&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Skills&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shifting from a QA Lead to a Scrum Master might take getting used to. As a Scrum Master, you are not a team lead with formal authority. In fact, you're more like a project manager, except you're also a developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, QA personnel and development personnel have fundamentally different job duties. While a QA person strives to try to &quot;break&quot; the application and is more concerned with quality issues, the development team is more focused on production and getting the feature(s) completed. The separation of job duties makes it easier for a QA specialist to approach the project objectively, without knowledge of the internals (if black box testing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-06-18T23:50:28.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2635" CreationDate="2011-06-19T04:10:06.197" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's all about your own history and metrics. You should look into number of defects you have found in previous releases and that's typically the best prediction for your next release too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best if you do releases often, this allows you to see a trend and try to invest more into QA if you note that quality is not sufficient enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="190" LastActivityDate="2011-06-19T04:10:06.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1978" CreationDate="2011-06-19T04:13:31.120" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should try &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.programeter.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Programeter&lt;/a&gt;. It is exactly the product to build reports and metrics out of projects data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;disclaimer: I am the co-founder of Programeter  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="190" LastActivityDate="2011-06-19T04:13:31.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2622" CreationDate="2011-06-19T18:10:49.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to agree with Trevor. I'm not sure why you have to convince the client. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have problems with this, my clients trust me to find the best method to deliver the project. I tend not to use PM jargon with them, though. So, it may seem to them you are trying to apply a methodology for the sake of the methodology rather than the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some of the ways I discuss how we'll approach the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Given X and Z, I think it makes sense that we plan in detail to this deliverable and then we'll know enough to plan the next stage.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;We know a lot about the work involved. I think it makes sense to do some pretty detailed planning to the end so we can get a picture of the whole effort.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-06-19T18:10:49.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2635" CreationDate="2011-06-19T21:33:23.260" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did not use this myself but a process improvement consultant told me that defect rates in different project stages follow &lt;strong&gt;The Rayleigh Defect Model&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following papers may be good start point:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tataelxsi.com/whitepapers/SoftReliabilityPredictModel.pdf?pdf_id=SoftReliabilityPredictModel.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.tataelxsi.com/whitepapers/SoftReliabilityPredictModel.pdf?pdf_id=SoftReliabilityPredictModel.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.qsm.com/reliability.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.qsm.com/reliability.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="681" LastActivityDate="2011-06-19T21:33:23.260" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2644" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2650" CreationDate="2011-06-20T01:29:31.180" Score="1" ViewCount="130" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently studying the &quot;death march&quot; phenomenon, as it relates to project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(From my understanding, the term &quot;death march&quot; refers to a project which is evidently at high risk of failure, but which management continue to drive forward, resulting in overwork, loss of motivation among participants, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you suggest any sources for &quot;post-mortem&quot; information regarding projects which might fit this criteria?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or more generally, are there any resources (offline and/or online) for historical/biographical information about various projects that have been undertaken, how they were planned, how execution went, and what the results were?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1551" LastActivityDate="2011-06-20T15:06:06.830" Title="Resources for reviewing and learning from real-world projects?" Tags="&lt;post-mortem&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2645" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2646" CreationDate="2011-06-20T01:39:51.923" Score="10" ViewCount="331" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you recommend some good downloadable podcasts on project management? Either theory or current issues?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1551" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-27T22:13:58.037" LastActivityDate="2012-07-27T22:13:58.037" Title="Good podcasts on current project management?" Tags="&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="10" ClosedDate="2012-07-27T22:15:31.657" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2645" CreationDate="2011-06-20T08:15:28.153" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've asked quite a similar question some time ago on '&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/965/where-to-find-good-pm-documentation&quot;&gt;where to find good information&lt;/a&gt;'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally listen to these podcasts:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.project-management-podcast.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.project-management-podcast.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They do interviews with authors of books concerning PM (leadership, presentations, methodology, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and some other podcasts are :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.peopleandprojectspodcast.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;People and projects podcast&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pm411.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PM411.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.botinternational.com/thepmopodcast.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The PMO podcast&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilepodcast.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The agile podcast&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agiletoolkit.libsyn.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the agile toolkit podcast&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;on scrum:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hanselman.com/blog/HanselminutesPodcast23ScrumAndScrumResources.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.hanselman.com/blog/HanselminutesPodcast23ScrumAndScrumResources.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.richard-banks.org/2008/06/scrum-podcast-ken-schwaber-talking-with.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.richard-banks.org/2008/06/scrum-podcast-ken-schwaber-talking-with.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.botinternational.com/thepmopodcast_032.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.botinternational.com/thepmopodcast_032.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theagilerevolution.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.theagilerevolution.com/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Weekly podcast on evolution on Scrum / added on 15 Sept. 2011&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everybody owning an iPhone, iPod or iPad should definitely check out the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/whats-on.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;iTunes U&lt;/a&gt; (university). &#xA;It is filled with great courses of all leading universities on any topic you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-09-15T07:09:29.373" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2648" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-20T13:06:25.107" Score="9" ViewCount="1731" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've long argued that &quot;1 week&quot; makes a great iteration duration.  It forces the issue of getting SW Dev tools operating smoothly and effectively, it also makes it much harder to operate a &quot;dev then kick it over to test&quot; mentality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know the rule of thumb is &quot;2 weeks&quot; and I've heard iterations running as long as a month.  I've run iterations lasting both 1 and 2 weeks and listened to many reasons and factors being considered for selecting one duration vs. another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question: What factors do you use in selecting your iteration length (Sprint duration in Scrum)?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, have you found one duration that works better than another in practice, but I'm most interested in the factors considered when you chose a duration.  (I'm less interested in 1 week vs 2 week vs N week answers)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastEditorUserId="1125" LastEditDate="2011-06-21T15:34:16.017" LastActivityDate="2020-07-16T18:04:55.977" Title="Selecting the right iteration duration" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2020-07-16T18:38:27.717" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2648" CreationDate="2011-06-20T14:53:28.677" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me it depends on the type of project. If there's going to be a lot of experimentation with the direction of the product then I gravitate to 1 week, otherwise I prefer a 2 week iteration. Any longer than that is too long in my book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would be a good question for your team. i.e. What iteration length do they prefer and why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1502" LastEditorUserId="1502" LastEditDate="2011-06-20T14:58:38.017" LastActivityDate="2011-06-20T14:58:38.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2644" CreationDate="2011-06-20T15:06:06.830" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are any number of resources online. Just do a quick search with specific keywords, primarily around the types of failure or projects you're interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you read &quot;Death March&quot; by Edward Yourdon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two more good sources would be the IJPM (Int'l Journal of PM) from IPMA or PM Journal from PMI. Both provide a number of academic articles and case studies with these types of projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-06-20T15:06:06.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2648" CreationDate="2011-06-20T15:36:16.773" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We keep all iterations at 1 week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It only causes difficulties if the feature in the backlog doesn't fit 1 week (&lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; rare).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise 1 week seems the natural rythm and keeps everyone, including customers alert and communicative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2 weeks, in my opinion, would provoke &quot;I can make it next week&quot; thoughts, which are unwanted in rapid software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="911" LastActivityDate="2011-06-20T15:36:16.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2652" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-20T16:39:24.563" Score="0" ViewCount="1836" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can anyone recommend some project management software which has good resource management features e.g. resource allocation and levelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm really struggling to find to something that allows enough flexibility in this area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1555" LastActivityDate="2012-10-02T14:44:13.070" Title="Resource/project management software - with resource levelling" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-10-02T14:56:32.717" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2653" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-20T16:58:44.923" Score="1" ViewCount="296" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an Agile Scrum environment, how do you compute R&amp;amp;D tax credit?  In a 'waterfall' model, the 'Define' and 'Design' phases could be applied.  But in Scrum, how do you do that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1494" LastActivityDate="2011-08-06T21:56:09.420" Title="R&amp;D Tax Credit in Agile Scrum" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2652" CreationDate="2011-06-20T20:26:16.497" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not sure of your specific needs (size, number of users, etc.) but I've just started working with a company that provides a server based app called CrossPoint PPM. Still learning about it, but so far it's got the best resource allocation/leveling capabilities I've seen so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has both project gantt and resource gantt views, across projects, or the enterprise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;www.crosspointppm.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Might be worth a look to see if it meets your needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-06-20T20:26:16.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2652" CreationDate="2011-06-21T02:17:06.497" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm reading a bit into your question, so forgive me if I'm guessing wrong or assuming too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to have similar frustrations with resource leveling and the extreme frustration of tools not being able to make what I thought were reasonable decisions.  I spent a good deal of time &quot;building my own&quot; with Excel as a framework and started programming in VB to make passes through the Excel schedules.  Before I went crazy, I met the guy who would be my PM mentor.  He told me to level by hand.  Every week, after actuals were entered into the schedule, dig in and work with the data to build a new plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was right.  By doing this by hand, I had to -really- understand the schedule and dependencies.  Also, I had to make the decisions I needed to make.  When an activity ran long, I could look at the upcoming tasks and ensure we had the right priorities for the coming weeks.  Sometimes, I had to change priorities and some times I dropped entire sections because the team found a different way of doing things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got to the point where (with MS Project) I could level a project schedule for a team of about 40 developers in about 2-3 hours.  I could pull out decent metrics (I used Earned Value) and build a report for the project in another hour.  It was 3-4 hours &quot;out of the loop&quot; but I -really- knew the project.  The plan actually meant something because I sure as heck wasn't going to put up with meaningless tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point, I'd really worry about any software that took the decisions I was making out of my hands and trying to assume it knew how to move people around based on a set of relationships I set up.  Rather than try to model the interrelationships and maintain them each week, just build them explicitly and work directly with the data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;my 2 cents&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;again, I apologize if I am addressing the wrong question/issue&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-06-21T02:17:06.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2653" CreationDate="2011-06-21T07:40:36.597" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum is sometimes dubbed as waterfall in a pill, meaning that you reduce the whole waterfall model into a short, a couple of weeks long, iteration. This is of course a bit of simplification but it isn't far from truth either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You basically have define and design stages in each iteration of Scrum: planning meetings, estimation, etc. It will be likely a day or so per each iteration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you may want to do is to accumulate all that time from each iteration and you get Scrum equivalent for define in design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also if you use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.njamin.org/blog/scrum/iteration-zero-and-scrum-sprint-zero-65.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;iteration 0&lt;/a&gt; you can probably account all this iteration as define/design as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-06-21T07:40:36.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2648" CreationDate="2011-06-21T07:58:02.360" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I don't believe there is a single good iteration length or an ideal we should aim toward.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of setting iteration length probably the best advice you can get is: &lt;strong&gt;do what works for you&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are teams which adjust well to short iteration, hence one week. There also are people who work efficiently when they have a longer plan ahead, so three- or four week long iterations. Some people experiment with extra-short iterations, like one day long. More and more teams abandon time-boxing and go iterationless but it is usually interlaced with switching to Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can look at it from a perspective of &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20080830011503/http://forums.construx.com/blogs/stevemcc/archive/2008/07/29/agile-software-business-impact-and-business-benefits.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;flexibility versus predictability&lt;/a&gt;. The more flexibility you need the more you will lean toward short iterations. On the other hand if predictability is something your organization values highly you will find it both easier and more convenient to have iterations longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in short:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Think about the length the team feels comfortable with.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Think how much predictable and/or flexible you need to be to achieve your goals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remember there is cost attached to start and finish of each iteration (prioritizing backlog, planning sessions, demo, etc.) and plan for this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;And then experiment to find the right iteration length in your specific case.&lt;/strong&gt; This means you might want to change it and measure your productivity against different cadence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-16T12:57:24.560" LastActivityDate="2020-07-16T12:57:24.560" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2653" CreationDate="2011-06-21T09:47:47.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've worked on teams that have a 'define' column on their board.  This is where stories go while there are conversations taking place to generate acceptance criteria and any thing else needed to work on the story.  Measuring time cards are in this column would be one way of making this time visible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2011-06-21T09:47:47.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2659" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-21T11:23:49.090" Score="6" ViewCount="767" Body="&lt;p&gt;In terms of specifying the actual code/syntax style that all developers should use in a project, should the project manager do this?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Or would that be under the realm of a technical lead/lead developer?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Or would it vary from organization to organization?&#xA;Or all of the above?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask because I feel having uniform, readable, commented code is extremely important for a project's success because it makes debugging and maintenance &lt;em&gt;so&lt;/em&gt; much easier - so this seems like it'd be under the PM realm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1558" LastActivityDate="2012-04-22T18:37:06.297" Title="Would/should the PM define the code style for a software project?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2659" CreationDate="2011-06-21T11:44:35.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everything under a project is under the PM realm.  However, on reasonably large, complex projects, the PM simply does not know it all.  And making a decision like this, and many others, explicitly his/hers implies an authoritarian approach.  It is, in fact, explicitly his/hers simply because the PM is the accountable role for the success of the project.  But the PM needs to exploit the intelligence of the team to arrive at decisions such as these, even if the team result is counter-intuitive to the PM, no matter how uncomfortable that might be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think for something like this the PM's best approach is to facilitate the decision with the team, setting up the method of how to decide, working through conflicts and sticking points, removing whatever other barriers to a decision there might be, and pulling the trump card of overruling the team only as a last resort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-06-21T11:44:35.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2659" CreationDate="2011-06-21T11:46:06.833" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say it's the teams responsibility, probably under the guidance of a tech lead, to agree on syntax style.  That said, if a PM believes that it's just chaotic, they'd be within their right to raise it with the team as a potential issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2011-06-21T11:46:06.833" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2652" CreationDate="2011-06-21T12:22:50.817" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I prefer resource leveling by hand, as well.  It may be because I have not worked with a good leveling tool such as the one Trevor is suggesting, but I think it is more about the control of doing it manually.  However, that said, I also think the value of resource leveling is best only during the initial creation of the schedule and performance measurement baseline.  Chasing a leveled schedule thereafter is futile and I cannot see its value.  Proper scheduling decisions can be made simply by looking at the resulting resource utilization after actuals have been entered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-06-21T12:22:50.817" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2648" CreationDate="2011-06-21T12:23:31.557" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would also have to agree that 1 week works great for starting up a team or for addressing continuous issues.  As you mentioned it ensures the technical practices like automated testing and continuous integration (which are critical to a smooth agile process) are in place and working well.  I think 2 weeks is also a very good length and once any technical issues have been ironed out may be worth considering moving to.  If you have a product owner that needs to travel to meet with clients, 2 weeks may actually allow him/her to be more engaged with the team as it gives a slightly longer window for him/her to plan travel in and still be able to consistently make it to the planning, estimating, retrospective meetings since those would happen every other week instead of every week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not recommend anything over 2 weeks.  We started with 4 week sprints and we had a lot of troubles making commitments that far into the future.  You also got into the issue of things expanding to take as long as you have to complete them.  So we found that 4 week actually hindered predictability in contrast to what Pawel suggests, though it could have been specific to us.  Generally speaking, it is easier to plan smaller chunks of work over a shorter period of time, so if your team is consistently struggling with planning, my advice would be to shorten your sprint length rather than lengthen it.   Once the team starts getting consistent with planning and meeting commitments, if there are other reasons to lengthen the sprint you may try that, but in my experience, lengthening a sprint almost never helps with planning/commitment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1390" LastActivityDate="2011-06-21T12:23:31.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2659" CreationDate="2011-06-21T19:57:02.393" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rather than having the PM define the style, I would suggest that agreed corporate standards don't exist, a suitably qualified technical lead should be given a task to define the coding standards, quality expectations, etc. for the code. That way, the responsibility remains with the PM, but the technical decisions lie where they should: with the development / technical delivery specialists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, the PM should not be the one to check that the standards are being applied. That is the role of project assurance. The exception to this may be where the PM is also supervising the development, but in such a situation it is arguable that the PM is fulfilling two or more roles, and the quality assurance is being done as part of one of the other roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-06-21T19:57:02.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2666" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2667" CreationDate="2011-06-21T21:14:50.967" Score="1" ViewCount="777" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know a good method to measure which idea choose to get the maximal benefits. &#xA;The live is more easier when we have a customer which suggests some price and we can balance the cost to full fit the requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But please imaging the situation that we are the product owners and we would like to know what is attractive for the market. The question is what we can do in the situation that we have a few ideas what to do but we don't know what we should choose at first to do. My first way to make prioritization is to estimate the future benefits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know any model how to measure the benefits for new project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1477" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-15T11:40:14.417" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T11:40:14.417" Title="Which model of benefits measure is appropriate for a new projects" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2666" CreationDate="2011-06-21T21:59:16.390" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hope I've understood what you're asking OK...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People often struggle to articulate all the expected benefits of delivering a piece of work, it can help to think of benefits falling into categories.  I use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Increase revenue&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Sales or marketing people will usually be able to help you get an idea of what additional revenue you can expect to gain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reduce cost&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Will the idea mean you can avoid spending money you currently do e.g. maintaining an old system, reducing headcount etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Avoid cost&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Work that means you don't need to expand to cope with future demand or pay fines due to non-compliance would fit here&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reduce Risk&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;An opportunity to reduce the chance or impact (or both) of a future risk occurring.  For example, hardening network security reduces the likelihood that someone will gain access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using these categories helps to add some structure to conversations about expected benefits and gets your stakeholder thinking about things other than just their key objective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To prioritise, a simple method is to take your total benefits figure and divide by expected cost.  This ratio of benefit to cost can then govern which ideas you do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some other ideas about project prioritisation, I highly recommend reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0471292524&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Developing products in half the time&lt;/a&gt; which explores using cost of delay as a factor in choosing when to take a product to market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2011-06-21T21:59:16.390" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2666" CreationDate="2011-06-21T23:37:26.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two pieces of analysis and I am not sure which type you are seeking.  Choosing a project over another from an initial standpoint is typically done by developing a case that assesses your return, using methods such as ROI, IRR, NPV, and Payback.  However, the second piece, and I think this is to what you are referring, is assuming you have a case for each approved project and you are simply prioritizing, but eventually all projects will likely be completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The criteria I use to prioritize are Value, Cost, and Risk.  I break value into two: benefit and penalty.  Benefit is measurable, tangible, and objective and can be increased revenue, decreased cost, decreased risk, or a combination of these.  Penalty is intangible and subjective.  There are simply those things that are valuable to an organization or stakeholder group that provides no real benefit that you can count.  You cannot discount that simply because you cannot measure it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cost refers to the cost to undertake the project and risk is those threats--organic and discrete--caused by the project that threatens success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By taking the ratio of value over cost + risk, you can easily score each project resulting in a racked and stacked list.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-06-21T23:37:26.820" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2669" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-22T01:07:01.477" Score="3" ViewCount="871" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm taking project management class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is hard to understand the relationship between estimation, risk management, and project management. Could you explain it based on your experience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My lecturer said a good project manager must be a good estimator.&#xA;I don't know that sentence clear true, &#xA;because he also said estimation is guess so estimation is always wrong.&#xA;Those are not contradiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Must a good project manager be a good estimator as well and why?&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;And another: must a good project manager be a good risk manager and again why?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;This is part I'm finding hard to understand.&#xA;What is the relation between estimation and risk management?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I read my textbook, everything looks vague for me.&#xA;There is no clear explanation of the relationships (estimate, risk management, project management).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How I can approach these issues to understand clearly?&#xA;Could you recommend a book that has some explanation my curious?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1563" OwnerDisplayName="Donam. J. K" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-15T11:44:30.547" LastActivityDate="2019-07-28T16:58:12.480" Title="Should a good project manager be a good risk manager and a good estimator as well?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2659" CreationDate="2011-06-22T04:00:58.770" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While indeed everything on a project can be seen as the domain of the Project Manager, I like the &quot;captain of the ship&quot; analogy.  For a small boat, the captain may repair the engine, be responsible for packing and handing out sandwiches, etc.  On a larger boat, others specialize in these areas and the captain makes sure all the people function together.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the specific case of code standards and style, why can't you (as PM) simply state that you expect the team to have a set of standards?  You don't need to review them directly or approve them.  Stating what is expected, explaining why it is expected and empowering your team to deliver works really well in these situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are the company experts in coding standards, you might need to adjust your style a bit as PM.  Don't dictate the standards, but in communicating with the team ask questions that help them learn.  (e.g. &quot;How did you factor in transitioning the code to the maintenance team after release?&quot;) then if they have questions you can offer general suggestions, not solutions.  Let them discover the answers for themselves and learn by doing.  It might be painful in the short term, but it builds great teams that continue to learn and improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T04:00:58.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2001" CreationDate="2011-06-22T05:42:39.477" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;We don't push Agile, we expect clients and Teams to pull it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our fairly sizable yet chunky enterprise, we have a community of Agile champions. Our role is to help kick-start teams and organizations on the path to using Agile methods well. That includes indoctrination in various thinking, organization and action tools, as well as ongoing coaching to ensure a continuous improvement atmostphere gets established and then sustained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We start by forming communities of practice that include leaders at various levels, and involve the Agile coaches and mentors that will work with the Teams themselves. That works very well where leaders respect people and treat them accordingly. In situations where some managers view individuals as fungible resources, we politely say our goodbyes and if needed put in a word with some leaders further up the org tree - we're fortunate to have a sensible CEO now and some wise Vice Presidents (of various flavors), so that helps a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One interesting aspect is that we can help any and all teams improve their thinking and habits, regardless of the flavor of work process they use. Using Agile thinking is not like flipping a switch - Friday you were in a Waterfall Team, Monday you're in an Agile Team. It takes time and a fair amount of study for folks to adjust their perspective. It takes practice for people to master new habits. It takes trust for them to volunteer their better thinking and take charge of their own work processes. Communities of practice make the journey of continuous improvement sustainable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in some of our larger organizations, we start by gently and progressively improving all flavors of work processes. Once a culture of continuous improvement takes hold through its habits of inspection and adaptation, work processes can shift to their optimum spot in the spectrum as driven by client needs and investments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also always start by saying &quot;Why do you want to use Agile? Using Agile for Agile's sake isn't a good enough reason&quot;. That leads to some very interesting conversations with various leaders and managers. In short, we either reach win-win and proceed, or no-deal and go for the next opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1564" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T05:42:39.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2659" CreationDate="2011-06-22T06:29:25.473" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Standards are easy. They are very well documented by the standardizing bodies. The W3C has very clear definitions of what semantically valid HTML markup looks like.  Similarly, Oracle has very clear naming standards for classes, interfaces, and methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, every Software Engineering student should at one time be introduced to coding standards, if not throughout their entire University career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter what field we are in, the main goal of our education is to provide us all a foundation for communicating with other experts in our field. Coding standards are just one common way to ensure that a developer from a school in Maryland can step in and begin working on a very large, enterprise application developed by a developer in the UK, Oregon, California, or India.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Business Administration, many of the terminology is used from region to region, such as &quot;empowerment&quot; or :MacGregor's Theory X and Theory Y&quot; style management theories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Standards help make sure people are on the same page and have common ground. They also go far beyond communication into the realm of good application design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of Google App Engine development, Google Engineers build sample projects that describe what they -- the technical experts on their platform -- believe is the best approach to building a scalable, extensible application... on &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; platform.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Spring, the Spring developers post very detailed information in their documentation as well as in their blogs on how to approach situations, such as marshalling and unmarshalling objects from Java to XML/JSON and vice versa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know the other development platforms have similar standards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I want to know how to integrate with something a developer in our company built, I consult &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; developer, my colleague.  When I want to know how to properly store an Entity object in the Google App Engine JDO datastore, I consult the Google Engineers who designed and built Google App Engine. If I want to know how to properly deserialize an object back to Java, and I'm using Spring, I consult the Spring development community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the decisions regarding standards must fall on the technical experts, whether that be the PM, a developer of an external JavaScript library, such as John Resig of JQuery, or a developer who built a module within our company.  Anyone not following these professional standards has some serious explaining to do.  I won't say they're wrong, but they definitely should come prepared to explain &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; they are ignoring the wisdom of the experts and taking an alternative approach.  Best practices and coding standards shouldn't be dictated, but there are very real reasons why they exist. Ignoring them should not be taken lightly, and ignoring the need for them should be highly scrutinized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T06:29:25.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2669" CreationDate="2011-06-22T08:25:32.040" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You discuss a couple of areas, namely estimation and risk management which are a part of project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One is &lt;strong&gt;estimation&lt;/strong&gt; which is understood as effort to plan how much time, people and resources it takes to deliver a project in given scope. Yes, the easiest approach here is guess, but that's definitely neither the best nor the only technique you can use. You can find a few more ideas on estimating in &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1076/discerning-estimate-validity/1082#1082&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, estimating should be a collective effort, which means it isn't the sole responsibility of project manager but more a task for the whole team. Usually the base estimates are delivered either collectively by the a project team or individually by contributors who will actually be building specific parts of the application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMs responsibility is gathering all these low level estimates and building project plan basing on them, meaning arranging them in a reasonable way so people don't have conflicting tasks, anything which has to go first goes first, all dependencies between tasks are showed etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another area you mention is &lt;strong&gt;risk management&lt;/strong&gt;. For a reference you can start reading about &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/762/how-to-identify-risks&quot;&gt;identifying risks&lt;/a&gt; and them &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/17/how-do-you-measure-risk&quot;&gt;measuring them&lt;/a&gt;. With risk management it is again much of collective process. It means that every team member is entitled to identify and submit a risk and measuring them should use knowledge of the whole team and not only PM. And of course there are different people who are assigned tasks which allow to mitigate or avoid specific risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However typically, unlike with estimation, it is a project manager who does most of the work, keeping risk register updated, encouraging people to take part in risk management, checking updates for assigned tasks etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To summarize: both risk management and estimation are parts of project management.&lt;/strong&gt; As project manager is responsible for both it's way better if they are good estimators and good risk managers. However, since risk management and estimation should be treated as collective effort PM should manage even if he's neither great estimator nor great risk manager as long as the team plays their roles in the process, e.g. preparing reasonable estimates and taking active part in risk management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T08:25:32.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2669" CreationDate="2011-06-22T10:31:50.810" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every individual comes with strengths and weaknesses.  It stands to reason that each of us would present with some stronger strengths in one or two PM capabilities and weaknesses in others and maybe average strengths in most.  I see some PMs sort of take the generalist route and become decent in all areas but not necessarily experts in any, and I have seen PMs specialize in a given area, e.g., project controls, and they focus their careers there.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You used the value judgment &quot;good&quot; in your question and I think good means different things to different people.  As Pawel indicated, estimation and risk management are part of project management, so a degree of competence of a PM needs to exist for both of these areas.  They at the very least need to understand what is going on in these areas.  But if they choose, or cannot, grow their competence, then they need to identify how to workaround it, e.g., bringing in others who are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need to choose on which to focus, consider that risk management touches everything across the PM domain of knowledge.  There isn't anything you do that does not include risk management.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T10:31:50.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2675" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-22T12:22:37.450" Score="2" ViewCount="3329" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for a desktop application I can use for drawing a project timeline. It exists in SmartDraw but I'm guessing a open source alternative exists. I have open project as an alternative to ms project and it does the job, but I need something I can use for drawing a timeline - any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1568" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T16:09:57.997" Title="Drawing a project timeline?" Tags="&lt;timeline&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2012-08-18T02:28:38.657" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2675" CreationDate="2011-06-22T14:18:40.073" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm pretty sure the Draw app in open office has stencils for doing timelines.  Can't check now as I don't have it installed at work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T14:18:40.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2669" CreationDate="2011-06-22T15:49:56.813" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You asked some good questions (and Pawel and David have given some good answers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Must a good PM be a good estimator? No. But they do need to understand how estimates were derived (techniques, assumptions,etc.), confidence levels, and how their accuracy (of lack of) affects other tasks and the project as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Must a good PM be a good risk manager? Yes. At its base level, project management IS risk management, as all projects face the same primary risk - the risk of failure. Beyond that they face other similar risks - being late, being over budget, not meeting specs, etc. The PM's job then it assemble a team that can execute the tasks, and then his primary responsibility is to monitor the progress of those tasks and the risks that may cause problems, and to be prepared with a plan to deal with them (risk mgmt).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T15:49:56.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2669" CreationDate="2011-06-22T17:24:08.423" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like most of the skills needed in delivering successful projects, a PM needs to get familiar enough with estimating to understand whether he/she is getting realistic information. So for estimating, the answer is no, the PM doesn't need to be an expert estimator - the best estimates come from the people doing the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Risk Management, yes the PM does need to be a good Risk Manager. Rule of thumb - any time the word management is involved in a project, the PM needs to be good at it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hop that helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T17:24:08.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2675" CreationDate="2011-06-22T17:27:32.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of free timeline drawing apps available. I've used &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timelinemaker.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Timelinemaker&lt;/a&gt; (comes with a 7 day free trial). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2012-10-07T16:09:57.997" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T16:09:57.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2680" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-22T20:10:46.050" Score="0" ViewCount="119" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have team working over internet. In that case is very important to have a good information hub. The hub can be integrated with the task management system but this isn't required. My team is working in the scrum methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know some free solutions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1477" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-06-23T11:07:08.413" LastActivityDate="2011-06-23T12:33:37.620" Title="What information hub are you using in your work?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-07-18T05:15:59.773" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2681" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-22T21:14:54.813" Score="1" ViewCount="5044" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was asked to do a work plan at work for a simple flash based game, problem is I've never done anything like this, I googled and read about it but just to be 100% sure before I start writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyways my questions are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Besides the project's schedule, what does the work plan also include, bear in mind that this is for a simple flash game project? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anyone here knows of a good template I may use, didn't find anyone that suites my needs yet.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1570" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2012-10-30T09:30:58.037" LastActivityDate="2012-10-30T09:30:58.037" Title="Writing a work plan for a video game?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;templates&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2681" CreationDate="2011-06-23T01:04:20.257" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Who, what, where, when, why, and how.  Answer those questions and you have a plan.  Make it tactical and concrete such that, if you left, someone else can pick up that plan and continue on.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-06-23T01:04:20.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2680" CreationDate="2011-06-23T12:33:37.620" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the budget is a constraints something as simple as Google site can be used. If you have a gmail account explore &lt;a href=&quot;http://sites.google.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://sites.google.com&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;It allows you to upload documents, share information on web pages, create posts for periodic activity and a lot more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1575" LastActivityDate="2011-06-23T12:33:37.620" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2675" CreationDate="2011-06-23T13:00:26.427" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know of &lt;a href=&quot;http://inkscape.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;inkscape&lt;/a&gt;:  It's GNU Release open source vector drawing program. I've never used it but it looks good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1253" LastActivityDate="2011-06-23T13:00:26.427" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2267" CreationDate="2011-06-23T14:49:20.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My favorite tool for my scrum team right now is without question www.fogbugz.com.  I'm not a big fan of Jira because it just gets in the way too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1577" LastActivityDate="2011-06-23T14:49:20.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2687" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-23T16:25:36.343" Score="1" ViewCount="185" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a PM starter kit that the PM needs to know in order for him to take on any projects whether its complicated or not, from scratch or from any other project scenario?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="614" LastActivityDate="2011-06-24T21:29:03.203" Title="What is the PM's mindset who is facing a project from scratch and with no clear direction?" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2681" CreationDate="2011-06-23T16:59:59.840" Score="2" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Besides schedule, what does the work plan include?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any good plan arranges the work you need to do around limits in money, time, or equipment. I think a Flash game will share these needs, even one where just a few people do all the art, coding, and test work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your plan should list each main task, a ballpark duration, and available work time (probably as a calendar). You can then match each task to available time, taking care to separate any interdependent work: if you need to finish one task, like &quot;configure test system,&quot; before starting another, like &quot;run UI tests,&quot; don't overlap them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anyone know of a good template I may use?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've never planned a project before, I suggest using a spreadsheet (PC-based) or sticky notes (hand-written). List out your available work time and main tasks, then arrange them to &quot;fit&quot; the rough order of tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This 6min video demonstrates sticky note planning: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80c-LRRJ0W8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80c-LRRJ0W8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To turn this example into a game schedule, do a second round of sticky planning that adds people and estimated work duration. This creates a calendar of tasks that you can rearrange to meet money, time, or equipment limits mentioned above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="227" LastActivityDate="2011-06-23T16:59:59.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2681" CreationDate="2011-06-23T17:07:16.283" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure how simple a project a flash game is, but I would suggest you have a quick risk management session. What could go wrong, how are you going to deal with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-06-23T17:07:16.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2687" CreationDate="2011-06-23T17:57:54.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm hoping that I've understood your question correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before starting any project I would recommend that you request a formal project directive from your customer. This will probably help you in understanding what kind of project you are supposed to implement, and more importantly what you should NOT implement (Project Scope).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From that point, my advice will be to try to get the customer to be involved as much as possible in the process of determine goals, requirements etc. Don't be afraid of educating the customer in what is required for actually implementing a project with satisfactory results. Set up clear and defined decision points that will limit you and the customer from rushing into a project that is to undefined to succeed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-06-23T17:57:54.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2687" CreationDate="2011-06-24T01:33:42.367" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &quot;correct&quot; answer from the PMBoK is to start to develop a project charter. That really means writing down on paper a high level description of the project that everyone agrees on. Please note that &quot;write it down&quot; is &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; optional. You &lt;strong&gt;can't&lt;/strong&gt; do this by just talking to people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've started out a few projects where the key stakeholders involved all had completely different ideas about what the project was supposed to accomplish. Until I wrote it out and had everyone read the document, they had no idea that they didn't agree. When I did not do something like a project charter document, it did not turn out well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The charter only needs to be two or three pages long (if a document) or maybe 6 slides (if your company is overly addicted to PowerPoint)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-06-24T01:33:42.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2675" CreationDate="2011-06-24T10:57:56.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tomsplanner.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tom's Planner&lt;/a&gt; all the time for instant, easy Gantt charts. You can figure out how it works in seconds. It comes with a bunch of neat features such as inviting read-only users, or exporting the data as Project / Excel readable too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="448" LastActivityDate="2011-06-24T10:57:56.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2377" CreationDate="2011-06-24T13:03:40.583" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although it's a third-party development, there is a bridge to &lt;a href=&quot;http://tekdi.net/Blogs/CRM/SugarCRM-redmine-integration.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SugarCRM&lt;/a&gt;, which is self-hosted FOSS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't tried it yet, but plan to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1585" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2012-10-07T15:43:41.040" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T15:43:41.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1152" CreationDate="2011-06-24T20:29:56.920" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with all previous answers. I would like to add one additional suggestion. &#xA;Don't agreed any additional wishes as gifts because of late. Please try to move this things to next version or milestone.&#xA;From my experience gifts are really nice in case when project is going well. Please keep in mind that gifts have to be especially specified very precisely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1477" LastActivityDate="2011-06-24T20:29:56.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2687" CreationDate="2011-06-24T21:29:03.203" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start with a single sentence giving a high-level description of the project.  Something like &quot;'Project Management - Stack Exchange' is a Q&amp;amp;A website for expert and enthusiast project managers who have questions about managing projects.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then start gathering requirements - this doesn't have to be formal at first, but write down some things the project will and will not do.  You may even sketch up some design/interface ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After this, write up your charter and then you can start on the formal requirements and functional specs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1558" LastActivityDate="2011-06-24T21:29:03.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2696" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-24T21:49:44.700" Score="4" ViewCount="174" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I have plenty of project management &quot;booksmarts&quot; and a handful of PM experience, I don't seem to have enough experience to get the sort of job I want.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since &quot;I read another PM book/blog today&quot; doesn't really count, I was thinking I could find some free/open source software (FOSS) projects who are looking for/hiring project managers and see if there was anything I could volunteer for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of any FOSS employment sites where I might be able to find such projects?  Something similar to careers.stackoverflow.com.  I know I could just go to sourceforge/freshmeat and look around, but I was hoping to find some site that fills this need (and if any such sites exist, my google-fu is apparently VERY weak at finding them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1558" LastEditorUserId="1558" LastEditDate="2011-06-24T21:58:46.610" LastActivityDate="2011-06-25T21:01:31.893" Title="Places to find free software projects who need a project manager?" Tags="&lt;open-source&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2681" CreationDate="2011-06-24T22:33:42.760" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not exactly what you ask for, but a gaming specific example by Derek Paxton is found in the forums for Elemental in &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.elementalgame.com/401239&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you trust his extensive experience in the industry, it looks like simple templates should be easy to extract from his post, and since you're looking for &quot;a simple flash game&quot; you probably don't need anything overly formalized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastActivityDate="2011-06-24T22:33:42.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2696" CreationDate="2011-06-25T21:01:31.893" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that getting into project management is in some ways a lot like getting a job in construction, especially in smaller companies or volunteer positions. You simply show up and start doing some work, then the lead guy says &quot;Who the heck are you&quot;? and you say &quot;I'm the guy applying for your laborer job.&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, you could find your way into a project management role in a free software project by searching for new projects that have one or two developers who seem overwhelmed with feature requests, community outreach, and could use some relationship management between users and development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, just start helping. In every free software project forum, there are questions that get asked over and over again and support requests that are asked over and over again. You could start by acting as a buffer between the developers and the community and slowly grow as the project grows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also organize a timeline based on communications you've seen between developers and community, and you could even help find more volunteers for testing and other tasks that could free up the developers time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, to be successful, keep in mind that you are working &lt;em&gt;for&lt;/em&gt; the developers and their project and not the other way around. If you try to take over or take the project in a direction not supported by the developers and the community, you will fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a place to start, check out Google Groups. There are all kinds of free and open source projects there at varying stages. Look for ones that are starting to pick up steam and that seem to need some help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-06-25T21:01:31.893" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2652" CreationDate="2011-06-26T02:45:34.400" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend the only tool that I trust for resource management - LiquidPlanner. With LiquidPlanner you can quickly and easily see if your resources are overloaded and what tasks are at risks are at risk of being completed on time as a result. You can then drag &amp;amp; drop the tasks to re-prioritize and then watch all of the red alerts go away. It's a wonderful thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.liquidplanner.com/scheduling/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.liquidplanner.com/scheduling/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="184" LastActivityDate="2011-06-26T02:45:34.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2652" CreationDate="2011-06-26T13:22:31.367" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm using Merlin (http://www.projectwizards.net/en/merlin/) for mac. However just as David points out I'm using it just for the initial resource levelling, during the project I find it more usable to level resources by hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-06-26T13:22:31.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2267" CreationDate="2011-06-26T18:29:56.920" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My vote is for &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.targetprocess.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TargetProcess&lt;/a&gt;, which we use extensively at a company with 100 or so users. It's available for free if your team has 5 or fewer members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When selecting a tool, I think it's important to do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use it to run a toy project, for at least a month (or a release). All of the tools I've evaluated have annoying shortcomings which one only encounters after using them for a while. This means that ideally the tool should have a free version of sorts with unlimited duration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure you're not stuck with something inflexible. If you think you're going to need to tinker with things sooner or later, so make sure it has an API.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Circumstances change, so it's important to check that the price of a &amp;quot;pro&amp;quot; version won't make using the tool infeasible later on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pros of TargetProcess:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feature rich, but the interface is configurable so you can tailormake the UI for various users and roles in your company.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Easy-to-use SOAP API - a real life-saver if you need to make custom reports or integrate with other tools (e.g. source code management tools). They also provide a plug-ins API for tighter integration, but I haven't used it yet.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Free for up to 5 users&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Runs in a web browser, so it's perfectly cross-platform for users on Mac/Windows/Linux/etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Price compares very favourably with similar offerings by Scrumworks and VersionOne.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Excellent support: They have a helpdesk website which usually answers posts within a day, and also a &amp;quot;Live Chat&amp;quot; feature which you can access directly via the UI.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cons of TargetProcess:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The server must be hosted on a Windows box.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have a legacy Bugzilla system. TargetProcess provides a plug-in to synchronise between the two systems, but it's relatively basic. That said, Bugzilla's xmlrpc interface is pretty ropey, so perhaps &amp;quot;basic&amp;quot; is as good as it gets.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other options:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jira with Greenhopper: I haven't used it myself, but it's spoken very highly of by other project managers at my company.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fogbugz: Also haven't used it, but know a few product managers who swear by it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/293292/software-tool-for-agile-project-management&quot;&gt;More&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1594" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-20T13:36:31.707" LastActivityDate="2020-07-20T13:36:31.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2267" CreationDate="2011-06-26T22:08:32.837" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use Scrum and Kanban in my company at the same time. I would definitely recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://kanbantool.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://kanbantool.com&lt;/a&gt; if you are in a distributed team, no matter how big it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pros of KanbanTool&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;easy to use, nice UI - you need just a few minutes to start using it (learning and customizing)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;powerful - rich of features: real-time updates, swimlanes, CSV import/export, email notifications, API&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;amazing customer service ((they answered me within an hour!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;incredible visibility of progress to management (you know who and what is doing), control of the workflow, analytics&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;perfect for investigating and eliminating bottlenecks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;online (you may reach your board via web, iPhone, iPad etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;cheap (free for 2 users / pricing starts from less than about $3/user)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cons of KanbanTool&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;lack of file upload&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;only in English&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are co-located I would suggest:&#xA;WHITEBOARD&#xA;We have also tried whiteboard in the very begining before we had distributed team. It was also working well, but we missed analytics a lot. Now we can't use it anymore - our team is in Europe and US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1596" LastActivityDate="2011-06-26T22:08:32.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1152" CreationDate="2011-06-27T08:13:55.690" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As per the standrads, variation will fall under +- 3 sigma. If it is falling under that, then I don't see any objection from the organization you are working for. Perhaps, as a PM you need to forward the issue to the PMO which will reflect your accountability, honesty and respect towards the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you reported the issue, now you need to find the float in your project and determine the task/work pakages are on the critical path. If they are not on the critical path you can float them based on the leads and lags available to you in the precedence diagraming method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok, if the above is failed then your real challange starts. You need to communicate the issue to the sponsors and to the &quot;most effected&quot; stakeholders. Do not worry about less deviation. If you are able to explain them the issue you are half done with your problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not appropriate to force the development team or any other team to put extra effort to complete the task, that is definetly an action of a &lt;strong&gt;bad manager.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1198" LastEditorUserId="1198" LastEditDate="2011-06-27T08:44:17.170" LastActivityDate="2011-06-27T08:44:17.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="233" CreationDate="2011-06-27T11:58:13.580" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Appreciate them&lt;/strong&gt;. Trust me, nothing works better than that. Make them feel comfortable about coming to you with their future plans; these might be job security, salary, location, or knowledge area. In this way, you can increase the probability of their staying with the company. Arrange an &lt;strong&gt;open meeting&lt;/strong&gt; for each and everyone, so that they can contact you for almost any concern. They will come to you with their concerns and you will get a nice opportunity to know about their real issues (be they personal or professional). Employees should be the first preference as they can impact your business in a direct manner; they call it &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1422139069&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Employee First Customer Second&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably, we all know this risk and we keep it as &quot;&lt;strong&gt;known-unknown&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; (as suggested by ashes999) to maintain your risk register. I believe that these risks are already being identified in the planning process area. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1198" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-11-17T20:57:55.253" LastActivityDate="2016-11-17T20:57:55.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2706" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-27T12:05:43.967" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMI's Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM) credential is an entry-level certification for project practitioners. It is designed for those with little or no project experience, and focuses on the practitioner's ability to demonstrate his/her understanding of the fundamental knowledge, terminology and processes of effective project management. The theories and practices reviewed for the certification come directly from the Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an expiration date of five years associated with the credential, at which point the individual must either re-certify as a CAPM by writing the exam again, or he/she can attempt to obtain the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification using the skills and knowledge gained in the five years since initially entering the world of project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1198" LastEditorUserId="25755" LastEditDate="2016-12-30T12:09:17.097" LastActivityDate="2016-12-30T12:09:17.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2707" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-27T12:05:43.967" Score="0" Body="Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM) is a credential offered by the Project Management Institute (PMI). " OwnerUserId="1198" LastEditorUserId="1198" LastEditDate="2011-06-27T15:54:40.817" LastActivityDate="2011-06-27T15:54:40.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2708" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-27T12:08:22.853" Score="0" ViewCount="271" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/19/what-is-the-project-management-book-that-left-the-most-impact-on-you&quot;&gt;What is the Project Management book that left the most impact on you?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be a good text book for Project Management?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to read about your recommendations for a great Project Management text book.  I also would like to know why so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1598" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2012-07-27T19:32:35.617" Title="Project Management textbook" Tags="&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2011-06-29T00:16:29.900" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2709" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2725" CreationDate="2011-06-27T13:44:58.010" Score="4" ViewCount="1412" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would be interested in understanding the scenarios where a Project Manager can handle a project with no other roles involved apart from the Executive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What's the minimum number of roles required on any project?&lt;/strong&gt; I would be interested specially in small projects (low budget)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="32947" LastEditDate="2019-07-07T08:15:21.383" LastActivityDate="2019-07-07T08:15:21.383" Title="Minimum number of roles required in a project" Tags="&lt;roles&gt;&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2709" CreationDate="2011-06-27T16:20:28.287" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;All projects have a minimum of 14 roles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sponsor/Governing Body/Steering Committee&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PM &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scope Manager (Change Mgr/Config. Mgr) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Controls (Financials, Invoicing, EV, etc.) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;HR Manager &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quality Manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communications Manager &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Procurement Manager &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk Manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developer/Worker (I know IT stole the word, I am taking it back :))&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Subject Matter Expert &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Admin&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimator&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stakeholder (in most cases)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The size of the project is irrelevant.  Even if the project requires only two human beings staffed full-time, each of these roles will need to be filled by one of these two people who will spend some of their 40 to 50 hour work week devoted to fulfilling the tasks within these roles.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Response to comments:  I like the additional role of stakeholder but I am not sure they are a required role for every project.  For example, a small home project would not necessarily have stakeholders that must remain in some way informed.  I added anyway because I think in majority of the cases it is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2011-06-28T10:02:49.273" LastActivityDate="2011-06-28T10:02:49.273" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2709" CreationDate="2011-06-27T16:48:34.737" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with David. It's not the people involved, it's the roles that need to be fulfilled. That said. If it's only a PM and a sponsor, I question whether it's a project. Who is the PM managing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-06-27T16:48:34.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-06-27T17:57:45.420" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I enjoyed &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0470574526&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Management for Dummies&lt;/a&gt;. Though it may not be the kind of book you see in a classroom setting, I find with subjects that can be as broad as this one, usually the class or setting is more of a survey rather than diving deeply into specific aspects. For that reason, I think this book does a good job giving an outsider, or someone looking to step into the role, the information needed to have an understanding of what is expected of the manager, the team, the process, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1602" LastActivityDate="2011-06-27T17:57:45.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-06-27T18:47:35.727" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0130912972&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Quality Software Project Management&lt;/a&gt; is the best project management book I have every read. It covers all the competencies needed for PM and it's relation with quality and process frameworks like CMMi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="681" LastActivityDate="2011-06-27T18:47:35.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2709" CreationDate="2011-06-27T21:51:19.610" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The number of people involved in a project doesn’t really matter. The minimum required number (just as Ben points out) is one. This person needs to shoulder all the roles in the project such as Sponsor, PM, Developer etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the roles for a project, I would say that at least 3 roles are needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sponsor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PM&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-06-27T21:51:19.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2715" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-27T22:50:12.320" Score="12" ViewCount="12506" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every week I have a one-on-one meeting with my manager. This is a new thing we started at my workplace. I am not quite sure what kind of things can/should I be asking in this meeting. Can someone give me some leads on this ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1603" LastEditorUserId="3169" LastEditDate="2012-02-08T11:44:29.357" LastActivityDate="2020-02-16T11:57:10.543" Title="What is the purpose of 1 on 1 ?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2715" CreationDate="2011-06-28T00:05:24.550" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your manager lets you ask questions, all is well. They are genuinely interested in your well-being, ideas that you'd like to explore for your future career, difficulties you're encountering in your workplace and in carrying out your responsibilities which might be endemic, and, generally, in making sure you're in the right place at the right time, and learning. In this case, think about the people you'd like to emulate, or departments you'd like to be working, conferences you'd like to go to, jobs and tasks you want to take on - anything your imagination and ambition suggests - then ask how you get there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Occasionally - very rarely! - I meet a manager who's on a power trip. In that case, it doesn't matter what you ask or answer. They'll use it as a way to showcase their superior knowledge and experience and come away feeling more powerful. If you actually do know more than they do, bear in mind that they only came to see you to be able to feel superior - and if you don't let them do that, you leave with an enemy. If you think that your manager is doing this, this is a great opportunity to escape and find another job (unless your job involves meeting, and changing, those kind of people).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All people want to matter to the world, and most people are in the first category. Seriously, most people, including managers, are nice people who just want to do a good job and aren't sure how. You can ask them anything you like, as long as it's relevant, and you'll both learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-06-28T00:05:24.550" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2717" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2721" CreationDate="2011-06-28T02:01:51.890" Score="19" ViewCount="19582" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a software developer with five years of experience and I want to start a career as a project manager.&#xA;Today I'm seeking for a new job, related to management where I find myself much more valuable due to my communication skills. But it's kinda hard, because all the positions ask for previous experience, and although I have experience in project management (I'm the head developer on my team and we don't have a PM, so I end up being the PM and not coding at all) I don't have any explicit experience or course/certification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe many of you are project managers in IT companies, so I ask you: are there any known steps to go from a software developer to project manager? Have you seen any successful case? Should the developer start courses on the subject? Or it's easier to start acting as a PM and get experience from that (like I did)? The knowledge on software development is a plus?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;PS: I'm sorry if the question is not actually a question with only one possible answer, but I think some people here might share the same doubt. Feel free to close the question if you think it's off-topic or it doesn't belong here.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1322" LastActivityDate="2011-07-07T06:59:42.740" Title="Are there any specific steps to go from a software developer to project manager?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2717" CreationDate="2011-06-28T08:07:59.943" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my perception, it is the right time to jump into the PMP certification. People mislead PMP as an experience based exam but I treat it as an interest driven exam. You have ample experience for any certification, remember certification will not give you a jump start but it will help Job givers to select your resume from huge stacks. In fact, who don't want to keep certified people in their organization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2165/career-path-in-project-management&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; link to read other certification related to project management. I am also a software engg. with 2+ years of experience but from last 1+ years I am 100% dedicated to project management and soon I am appearing for CAPM certification, as I have no other choice because PMI has restricted the eligibility for PMP to 3 years, minimum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I is always a good practice to choose a proffesion in which you feel that you have interest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;are there any known steps to go from a software developer to project manager? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I doubt, it may be deepnd upon organization to organization. Microsoft now a days recommending each associate over 3+ years experience to go for PMP. It certainly give them a project life cycle knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Have you seen any successful case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I have seen many young people in the management side, only because they are talented and more because they &lt;strong&gt;love&lt;/strong&gt; the work they are doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should the developer start courses on the subject?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMI recommends individuals to start PMBOk which is written/contributed by project managers around the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The knowledge on software development is a plus?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will create a positive impact, indeed. But it is not mandatory for a project manager to be expertise in technical domain but a general understanding is must. For example: Let say you get a job in any soap making company then all your knowledge about software will be in vain. In that case, you need not require to know the chemistery behind &quot;soap making&quot; but all you need to understand that what is require for the project life cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1198" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-07-07T06:59:42.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-06-28T08:57:12.447" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It solely depends upon what you want to learn, if you are learning process/phases/document involved in a project then I recommend you to read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/PMBOK-Guide-and-Standards.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMBOK&lt;/a&gt;, but if you want to go for the qualitative analysis of each/small part of a project then you should read books written by various writers on project management. One of my favorite is &quot;Employee First Customer Second&quot;, it tells the importance of keeping employee happy to reach the zenith. Project management is a vast field and you need to decide where to start from. It's a on going process and will be continue till the last day you practice project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1198" LastActivityDate="2011-06-28T08:57:12.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-06-28T10:21:24.810" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really like &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0596007868&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Art of Project Management&lt;/a&gt; by Scott Berkun. This gives a good real world &#xA;overview of how to manage software projects. It is very readable and quite different from a standard project management text book. I think Scott has published an updated version called &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0596517718&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management&lt;/a&gt; which brings things a little more up to date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="788" LastActivityDate="2011-06-28T10:21:24.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2717" CreationDate="2011-06-28T12:53:18.670" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Getting a certification of some description is your best first step. Not only does this give potential employers confidence that you have a certain minimum level of knowledge, but it also gives you a chance to see where you are falling short in the on-the-job training you have been getting. While nothing is better at training you to be a PM than real world experience, you need either a mentor or training beforehand to avoid going down the wrong path. I started out in a start-up environment with a team that was trying hard but simply didn't know what we didn't know, and I had to spend a lot of time unlearning bad habits after I left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CAPM has been discussed by Chris. Another route is PRINCE2, I found this to be a good first certification that is complementary to my PMP but, at least for me, a lot more useful for immediate implementation in the workplace. This is because PRINCE2 is more of a framework for conducting projects rather than a body of knowledge, I found it relatively easy to take what I was already doing and fit it into that framework so that the projects became more controlled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Knowledge of the field is important if not essential. If you don't you may not be able to communicate in an accurate and timely fashion, you won't understand customer requirements or technical limitations, you won't be able to tell if the team is padding or shorting their estimates, you won't be able to identify risk triggers etc etc. If you have a mentor or a good team that is very proactive and reliable to support you then you can get away with limited knowledge, otherwise you are going to do a lot of learning from mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2011-06-28T12:53:18.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2715" CreationDate="2011-06-28T17:18:22.380" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;One on one meetings are one of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://manager-tools.com&quot;&gt;Manager Tools&lt;/a&gt; trinity. They are a weekly meeting with the goal of maintaining good, open communication, and continuing to build the manager and direct relationship. You should feel free to talk about anything you want to: your work, your family, your pets, your hobby, your challenges, your career. The primary focus of the meeting should be YOU.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a whole load more info on one on one meetings on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.manager-tools.com/manager-tools-basics&quot;&gt;Manager Tools website&lt;/a&gt; if you want to dive into more detail. The same website also has a good non-manager focused 'Career Tools' podcast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course there is always the possibility that your manager is doing something less structured than what Manager Tools suggests, but their goal is probably still the same i.e. to get to know you better and to understand what you are working on and what challenges (personal or work related) you have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS I don't have any ties to Manager Tools :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="788" LastActivityDate="2011-06-28T17:18:22.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2715" CreationDate="2011-06-28T23:52:08.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One on one meetings are an addition to the annual performance review in my experience. It's an opportunity to discuss current issues/ achievements. Engage in a dialogue about what might be helping/hindering. Coach the employee. Etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said you need to gauge the organization. If one on ones have just been implemented, you may find some managers who are unsure of the value. My advice is to ask your manager how you both can make this a valuable use of your time. Have patience, effective one on ones are like gold. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-06-28T23:52:08.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2715" CreationDate="2011-06-29T00:15:03.257" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best thing you can do for your manager is to inform him/her about your &lt;strong&gt;risks and issues&lt;/strong&gt; (what may go wrong and what is already wrong). This information will help the manager to manage you and the project more effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T00:15:03.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2709" CreationDate="2011-06-29T00:19:35.560" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project roles are defined in project management frameworks, like RUP, MSF, Scrum, PRINCE2, etc. Since your question is not related to software development, it's impossible to suggest &quot;the best framework&quot;. However, two roles are certainly present in any project: &lt;strong&gt;project manager&lt;/strong&gt; (money spender) and &lt;strong&gt;project sponsor&lt;/strong&gt; (money giver).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T00:19:35.560" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2726" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-29T12:47:44.397" Score="3" ViewCount="320" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a developer that is very important for an ongoing project planned to be finished Q2 2012. If he should decide to quit the whole project will be delayed and probably completed with lower quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe he is motivated but considering what is at stake I would like to give him something extra to motivate him and to make him stay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The simple answer is a bonus when the project will finish but I would like to hear if someone has got other ideas or experiences from similar situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1609" LastEditorUserId="1198" LastEditDate="2011-06-29T13:04:03.320" LastActivityDate="2016-11-13T16:55:32.360" Title="Motivator to keep employee" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2726" CreationDate="2011-06-29T13:03:01.667" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think a bonus at the end of the project and perhaps smaller bonuses at major milestones progressing to the finish are reasonable mitigating actions.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think your best mitigation to your threats of project delay and quality is to remove your single point of failure.  To have this single point of failure where you rely on the heroic efforts of an individual or a few people is never acceptable and represents an immature project capability.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have not done your job as PM if you have not set up an environment where everyone, including you, is replaceable.  While I will likely get negative points for this, the cold, hard fact of being a manager/leader is that you can replace a person from his job with another as easily as replacing a part on an engine.  Your soft skills, of course, will not make the person feel like that, but your hard skills says you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your estimates, processes, and tools should be such that you can enable your capability with average to slightly above average performance by a human, because that is what you will most likely get.  If those things require the superior performance of a human as you suggest, than your processes are broken.  I'd fix that first before worrying about how to keep this guy on my project, if I were you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T13:03:01.667" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2726" CreationDate="2011-06-29T13:22:00.620" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to provide addidtion support to the David answer, &lt;strong&gt;Motivation&lt;/strong&gt; can never be a entry in Risk management plan and to be dependent on one resource might cost you heavy if that resource left the organization or may be not available due to health reasons. On the other hand, this could be the major threat to the project. As a PM, you can not be careless to ignore this risk and planning process is the right time to decide an alternate for the risk rather than seeking ways to motivate the resource. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But still if you want to motivate that particular resource there is no other policy works better than &lt;strong&gt;appreciation&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;Appreciate&lt;/strong&gt; his/her work/creativity/task. Note that apprecation doesn't always mean to have a written mail communication/award, it could be a cup of coffee with the team member or may be by just keeping a big smile on your face and say him &quot;&lt;em&gt;you have done a fantastic job!&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1198" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T13:22:00.620" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2267" CreationDate="2011-06-29T13:32:02.533" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is really interesting to see the variety of tools out there.  I've used Team Foundation Server as well as RallyDev.  I'd definitely recommend the latter, as it is lightweight and the UI just works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="913" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T13:32:02.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2730" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2734" CreationDate="2011-06-29T13:36:47.083" Score="24" ViewCount="19398" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the value in Certified Scrum Master certifications?  I'll be quite honest in saying that I've never put a lot of thought into such certifications, but it seems like if you are interested in Agile and wanting to deepen your understanding, that the two day class + test is a worthwhile investment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the CSM valuable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="913" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-05-20T00:12:00.147" LastActivityDate="2017-07-27T13:09:11.823" Title="Is Certified Scrum Master valuable?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2731" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3388" CreationDate="2011-06-29T13:39:35.287" Score="8" ViewCount="32832" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am using MS Project 2007. I want to highlight overdue tasks in red color. Is there any way to do so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1610" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-01-13T10:29:14.193" LastActivityDate="2019-01-13T10:29:14.193" Title="how can I highlight overdue tasks in MS Project 2007" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2007&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2726" CreationDate="2011-06-29T14:01:11.383" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is a really neat video that hits home to the point of motivation: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&amp;amp;feature=related&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&amp;amp;feature=related&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="913" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T14:01:11.383" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2730" CreationDate="2011-06-29T15:09:24.280" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends mostly on your definition of 'value'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As someone who is both certified, and on the Boards of two certifying organizations - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No certification can attest to your actual ability. Primarily the certifications are used to show that you some level of experience and knowledge of the subject, and that you were willing to invest the time and effort in attaining the credential. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As examples, the two I'm involved in - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;asapm (IPMA-USA) offers several advanced, performance based certifications. These are fairly difficult to attain, and include providing documented evidence of your past performance. But this credential only attests to PAST performance at a certain level. It is no guarantee of future performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, the PMD Pro offered by PM4NGO's is a domain specific certification focused on the int'l development and aid sector. While still being developed, this certification attests to the holder understanding the specific contextual differences of project management within that sector. It does not guarantee that a project or pm will be successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So again, if by 'value' you mean it says you can actually DO the work, that may be stretching things. But if you mean that it signifies an interest and certain level of knowledge or experience, then yes, they do offer value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T15:09:24.280" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2730" CreationDate="2011-06-29T17:55:07.640" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most trainers have never failed anyone on a CSM course, and not all CST (Certified Scrum Trainers) are good at getting useful learning across. For this reason, I don't put much faith myself in the certificates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, managers in the industry do, so the certificate is valuable. If you can find someone who's recommended, or someone who's actually failed people on the course, then they're probably better than average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've got your CSM, be careful that you don't end up on a project where you're solely responsible for the Agile process with no support. A CSM is not enough. You'll need either some experienced Agilists or a coach around to help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Declaration of interest: I'm an Agile coach and make pretty good money sorting out the mess for people who've relied on CSMs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Since answering this question, the Scrum Alliance has adopted an exam to go with the course, so it's actually possible to fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2013-05-19T22:21:06.900" LastActivityDate="2013-05-19T22:21:06.900" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2726" CreationDate="2011-06-29T20:49:18.633" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What Chris said: Appreciation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And David, too: Ease your dependence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this: Ask, frequently, &quot;What do you need from me? How can I help?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if it seems appropriate: Put your engineer into contact with the actual people who will most directly benefit from the work. Nothing motivates me so much as knowing that some real person will benefit in some tangible way from the work I am doing. (But not everyone is as motivated by that as I am. And not every engineer plays well with users and customers. So: &quot;if it seems appropriate.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T20:49:18.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2193" CreationDate="2011-06-29T20:57:31.840" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find Cynefin useful for shaping how I look at situations without necessarily applying the framework explicitly. Their ABIDE model, for example, helps me think about the dynamics of a team and perhaps notice earlier when I stumble into one of their sore spots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1611" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T20:57:31.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2726" CreationDate="2011-06-29T21:03:12.353" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing to think about - people are motivated by many things. Hertzberg theory states that money is not a satisfier. People will be motivated by money for only a short period. My suggestion is to ask the person what makes them interesting in staying on a long term project. Whatever they answer will give you an idea of how to motivate them. &#xA;In the long run people move around and you need to have a fall back plan if this person leaves - what if they win a million dollars, you probably can't compete with that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thought is that by giving a preemptive bonus to this employee, you may end up losing more of your team because they don't think you value them. You should be trying to answer this question for all the team members. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T21:03:12.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2731" CreationDate="2011-06-29T21:04:41.543" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You format the text - I have a different version from yours but all versions have a way to do it. IF you can't find it in the ribbon, go to help and ask the question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T21:04:41.543" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2730" CreationDate="2011-06-29T21:22:09.200" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The value is in the training and that depends heavily on who the trainer is, how much experience they have, and how well their teaching style matches with the individual's learning style. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1613" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T21:22:09.200" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="55" CreationDate="2011-06-30T07:24:00.027" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;We live in the era where no mangerial work can run alone, it do need some supporting engineering background. In other work, project management is a iterative process in every phase and sub-phase of product management. Of course, that needs a surface understanding of technical knowledge and there is no + or - advantage of it because to run the process you need to understand it first, so, technical knowledge [&lt;em&gt;basic&lt;/em&gt;] is required to manage and run the project process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you said &lt;em&gt;team of developer with mixed experience&lt;/em&gt; you must seek for the &lt;strong&gt;Participative leadership&lt;/strong&gt; which involved each team member to provide input and you have the authority to give the final output.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's always a misconcept when people start &lt;em&gt;comparing talent with experience&lt;/em&gt;. When you said mixed experience it doesn't mean that a developer with less experience can't code better or faster than experience one. Study them and come up with a strong plan which will help you in deciding that who should involve with you in &lt;em&gt;decision making&lt;/em&gt;, in &lt;strong&gt;participative leadership&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1198" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T07:24:00.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2715" CreationDate="2011-06-30T10:00:42.443" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;face-to-face meetings are a good idea, but an every week meeting seems really to close, to me. I have a face to face meeting with my manager every 3 months, and sometimes, I can hardly bring something up to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't get out of sight that meetings are the right tool for taking decisions. If you need a formal meeting for regular info transmission, you probably have a communication issue in your company/service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="152" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T10:00:42.443" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2715" CreationDate="2011-06-30T10:45:53.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;1 on 1 meeting is an opportunity for you and your line manager to get together to discuss anything that is company related that would affect your work, or the relationship between you and your line manager. The affects could be good or bad, depending upon the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, I have a regular monthly meeting scheduled. That doesn't mean that we meet every month, but the time is scheduled if we need it. This works particularly well if your line manager travels a lot and is hard to catch for that &quot;water boiler&quot; chat, or if your line manager does not have much to do with your day-to-day work activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to keep project related issues out of the 1 on 1 meeting as these are more for discussing with the project manager (unless they are the same person). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="480" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T10:45:53.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2715" CreationDate="2011-06-30T11:13:22.420" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best answer for this question will be when you start thinking from the manager prospective that &lt;strong&gt;what a manager wants from an employee through 1 to 1&lt;/strong&gt;. It is as simple as that, he just wanted to be a resolver of your issue and problems and want you to be motivated and organized [in terms of your projects]. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are asking is more related to the relationship between you and your manager. You can open your thought as much as you find comfortable with him. In real worl, from my perception, &lt;em&gt;honesty may or may not be the best policy&lt;/em&gt;. Some people thinks that 1 on 1 is only to show your concern but when I checked the possibility in that I found that it could be related to the improvement in any process in the organization which you think needs to be changed for better functioning or you want to suggest new features. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1198" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T11:13:22.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1147" CreationDate="2011-06-30T11:23:28.037" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMBOK is always being approached and recommended for both CAPM and PMP. Perhaps, many people found that Rita's PMP guide is quite useful and juicy, it will be like a suppliment. &#xA;CAPM is not difficult in terms of examination and all questions will be straightforward as they assume that you don't have any practcal experience in the managerial line. One personal advice I want to provide you to &lt;strong&gt;Do not attemp too many mock test&lt;/strong&gt;, there are almost 1+ million PMP/CAPm questions are floating on the net. Rahter, you should attemp a test and see where and why you have mistaken while giving an the answer. Last but not least, do not forget to read PMBOK at least once to make sure that you are doing what you are expected to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1198" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T11:23:28.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="259" CreationDate="2011-06-30T11:34:32.670" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to that, all 42 process are subjected to apply only in the very complex project and it is necessay for a project manager to identify the process which are required for that particular project [We usually do it in &lt;strong&gt;Develop Project Managemenet Plan Process&lt;/strong&gt;].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be some process which you might be following from the last 10 years, may be not yet documented well. PMBOk defines no process different from the real world. Remember, &lt;strong&gt;PMBOK is not written by an indiividual, it is actually written by the real time project manager&lt;/strong&gt;. Even you and I can contribute in that. So, everything that is written in that reflects the real world example and procedures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1198" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T11:34:32.670" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1125" CreationDate="2011-06-30T11:45:32.823" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In these cases your &lt;strong&gt;honesty&lt;/strong&gt; reflects your &lt;strong&gt;accountability&lt;/strong&gt;, usually speaking truth might requires strength for a hour or long but the relief you will get after that will be priceless. I always believe that, &lt;strong&gt;Nothing is impossible to achieve&lt;/strong&gt; and if I fail then possibly I have missed the short path to the same destination. Don't hesitate while being honest, it might be not the best policy in some cases, and be optimistic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you spread the bad news and will come up with ideas to overcome it. Yes, they will trust you. Everybody knows, every project has risk and it may occur at anytime. So the baseline is , &lt;strong&gt;Spread bad news with ideas to remove/recover it&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. I am sorry to say that but spreading bad news cannot be a &lt;strong&gt;Win-Win&lt;/strong&gt; case. &quot;&lt;em&gt;Reality&lt;/em&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1198" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T11:45:32.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1169" CreationDate="2011-06-30T13:26:13.860" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a situational question and does require an instant reaction. &lt;strong&gt;There is no such relationship exits without trust&lt;/strong&gt;, whether it is a professional or personal world. Well, you need to think from the different perspective on analyzing &lt;em&gt;why he is not trusting PM (or vice versa)&lt;/em&gt; instead of &lt;em&gt;what to do when it happen&lt;/em&gt;. As I said, that this is a &lt;strong&gt;situational&lt;/strong&gt; scenario and may not have an specific answer. The &lt;strong&gt;worst case&lt;/strong&gt; in this is to include the &lt;strong&gt;third party&lt;/strong&gt; for neutral results. But yes, that is the third party involvement and it is doing the same thing which I want to suggest to PM/sponsor, i.e. &lt;strong&gt;negotiation&lt;/strong&gt;.  So, it’s always a better strategy to resolve the conflicts ASAP as they may appear as a major risk in your project.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1198" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T13:26:13.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2730" CreationDate="2011-06-30T21:34:30.687" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have attended a CSM training course and guess I was lucky because it was run by Mike Vizdos and I have thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Although I have to admit it wasn't a scrum primer for me as I have already had been working with scrum before. Also, much as it was an interesting panel for discussions and exchanging experiences and ideas it has not influenced much the way I worked with SCRUM. Other things have had much more significant effect for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From that perspective I would say that CSM is only as much valuable as the community it creates (assuming it creates a community of practitioners who are willing to exchange ideas and work together) but I don't see having a CSM as a prerequisite or even a strong enabler for such community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is a person who have achieved CSM any better as a Scrum Master than someone who doesn't have it - I honestly doubt. There are so many other ways to learn the basics of SCRUM and understand the principles that this is just one option. Perhaps CSM certification does provide some base, common level of knowledge. It's like asking if a certificate that you know all the letters of the alphabet (eg. you finished school) has value in determining if you're a good writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1618" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T21:34:30.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1125" CreationDate="2011-07-01T01:11:32.043" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Factually, clearly and with no hint of blame. And preferably with some solutions ready. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-07-01T01:11:32.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2751" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2759" CreationDate="2011-07-01T08:38:45.130" Score="4" ViewCount="1771" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working as a manager of the software department in our small sized company (~50 people).&#xA;I have three development teams, 3-4 members in each. One of the members in each team is in the role of the team leader.&#xA;One of the teams is mainly working an a single project and it happens rarely what they have to help out somewhere else. &#xA;The other two teams work on 2-3 projects (same for both teams).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My predecessor used no scrum or such, basically he just assigned work very loosely in a daily to weekly rhythm. Of course that lead to the absence of any project planning/controlling artifacts or processes. Nobody ever knew that could happen in the next time and nobody could predict when any task will be completed. You can imagine how the projects run.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll have the task to move on from here and I decided to start implementing scrum into the teams.&#xA;Of course I'm still very unsure about some things and I'm in need for some advice from people which traveled a similarly road much farther yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The roles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We have custom driven project with classic project managers and project engineers. Since they act already like product owners, I think best would be to keep that. Would you agree?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We have also some intern R&amp;amp;D like projects to improve our products or dev tools on our own. All kind of people can propose or push-start such projects. I usually manage them from start to end. I would be in the role of the product owner for them. Do you do the same?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Management of the collaboration and control of the different Teams. That is one of the main things the company does pay me for. I think of implementing a thing like scrum of scrums between me and the team leaders. I would be in the role of the scrum master here, which may or may not bite with the product owner role described above. Would you recommend it to me?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The procedures and artifacts:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I want to start slowly, making sure everyone is following on our path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The things I want to begin with is maintenance of release- and sprint-backlogs capturing user stories, sprint planning with cutting the stories into tasks and maintaining task boards, and daily stand ups.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If that works I would go on introducing estimations, burn down charts, measurement of development velocity.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Afterwards maybe measuring developers individual estimation optimistic-factors to improve project finishing forecasts.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Would you agree to that sequence or do something else?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The thing causing me the most head aches for now is how to do all that while working on different projects at the same time inside a matrix organization.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The backlog: Should I have a single one capturing all stories for all projects? That would probably lead to complicated sprint planning.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Or better a single backlog for each project? But how would I capture priorities between different projects then? For example story a of project 1 is most important, then comes story 1+2+3 of project 2 and then story 2 of project 1 and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As hard as the above is the imagination of the sprint plannings for me. Teams should pull stories from the backlog. But how should they do that if several backlogs would exist and the priorities are going zig-zag between them?  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last two points confuses me most, but I would have to solve them before being able to do even the first step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1620" LastEditorUserId="680" LastEditDate="2014-02-03T13:57:42.490" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T13:57:42.490" Title="Implementing scrum inside a real-world matrix organized software department" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2753" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-01T19:34:25.250" Score="1" ViewCount="4526" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I was wondering what differences and&#xA;relation are between process&#xA;management,  program management and&#xA;project management? I feel their Wikipedia articles do not give me a clear explanation. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More fundamentally, what differences&#xA;and relation are between process,&#xA;program and project?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="436" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-10-07T08:23:39.457" LastActivityDate="2016-07-25T12:47:27.950" Title="Process, program and project management" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;program-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2753" CreationDate="2011-07-01T20:14:54.303" Score="7" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A process is a defined set of methods and steps required for completing an action. The concept of a process is that it is a defined pattern/steps that needs to be followed (without any deviation - no uniqueness).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A project is a &lt;strong&gt;unique&lt;/strong&gt; set of actions and tasks that are combined to fulfil a specific goal(s) in a defined time frame. Meaning that for a project to actually qualify as a project it needs to have a goal, start /end time and be unique (for the performer).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A program is a set of combined projects aimed to fulfil a larger business goal or vision for the organisation. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastEditorUserId="1579" LastEditDate="2011-07-01T20:32:23.507" LastActivityDate="2011-07-01T20:32:23.507" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2753" CreationDate="2011-07-01T22:14:14.643" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Process management is all about ensuring that the business processes are carried out effectively and efficiently: this includes optimisation of the processes as well as their initial design and implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project management is the process of managing tasks and work packages to achieve a set of objectives, which are often (but not always) defined in terms of scope, quality, timescale, and cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Programme management is the mechanism by which multiple projects can be coordinated to meet corporate or organisational objectives which are larger, more complex, or have a greater span than would be practical within a single project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, a programme manager may oversee a number of project managers; a project manager may be responsible for implementing processes and perhaps even establishing the role of a process manager, but the process manager is likely to have an enduring role after the project (and possibly even the programme) are just memories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-07-01T22:14:14.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="779" CreationDate="2011-07-02T19:34:25.290" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently taken over a team of graphic designers and am currently facing a similar challenge with one of my team members. She has repeatedly shown a lack of commitment to the work she is expected to complete in the timelines given to her. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is how I am tackling it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 1:&lt;/strong&gt; Since she was already under an informal development plan (read without the intervention from the HR Team) with her previous manager, I did a review of her December Performance Review and the handover provided by the previous manager. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 2:&lt;/strong&gt; I then sat Ms. X and said this is the transition document that I have been given and in the month that I have been here, this is how I view your performance and status in the team. Then I gave her an opportunity to explain the challenges she is facing in understanding the expectations or meeting the timelines. I committed myself to helping her resolve these challenges as long as she commits to working with me. She did. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 3:&lt;/strong&gt; Here came in the mighty excel sheet. I created a docket where i documented the following-&#xA;- set up her previous year's performance review against each objective. &#xA;- monthly review against this year's review. She was asked to mark herself against each objective and evaluate where she stood. &#xA;- quality proofing tracker for each project through the check-ins&#xA;- designer tracker (timely updates, editorial misses, process misses etc.)&#xA;- 1:1 agenda (from her) and a summary of what she will be doing. Each Agenda included her own review of what she did with what we expected out of her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 4:&lt;/strong&gt; Since non of these daily/weekly/monthly check-in worked, I then sat down to write my formal (read- sent to HR) development plan for her. This document was shared with and signed by her in presence of an HR representative. The excel sheet came in handy to provide &quot;evidence&quot; of low performance against expected performance at the company. I was able to pin point exact project, dates, performance issues and her response for the lack of. This document specifically outlined that if this development plan did not work well, she will be fired. (it put the devil's scare in her, but it worked)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 5:&lt;/strong&gt; she has been on the development plan for 3 weeks now. The month long development plan finishes next week, but it looks like she will be getting a great review from me and the HR rep. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 6:&lt;/strong&gt; if her performance dips on quality and efficiency after this development plan, she will be &quot;dropped&quot;. There is nothing &quot;unprofessional&quot; about this. One bad apple spoils the rest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1629" LastActivityDate="2011-07-02T19:34:25.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2507" CreationDate="2011-07-03T01:43:33.317" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would probably go for solution 3, the reason for this is that you need to establish a clear and defined ownership of the product. This will ensure that needed work will be done (as pointed out by Trevor) and minimising unnecessary conflict scenarios. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second proposed solution might work, however it depends strongly on the teams involved, their motivation and workload. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One aspect worth considering when restructuring your development groups is how it will affect your team members from a psychological point of view. Reducing a team that is used to being a backbone to the other teams might lead to a decrease in motivation. &#xA;The people left behind in the core group might see it as if you think that they are not as productive or as good as their co-workers that got to work on the new product teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend reading in to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_dynamics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FIRO group dynamics model&lt;/a&gt; and how a change will affect your team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastEditorUserId="302" LastEditDate="2011-07-04T10:36:12.613" LastActivityDate="2011-07-04T10:36:12.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2758" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-03T17:32:27.080" Score="0" ViewCount="179" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am newbie in PM and I wonder &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how to create frame code for project  tasks of project manager.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;task of member&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;task of design graphic (web)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please suggest me any toturial or book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1562" LastEditorUserId="2401" LastEditDate="2012-10-07T08:17:03.443" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T08:17:03.443" Title="How to select design pattern for a project or struct code for a project and assign task code for members in project" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2011-08-15T06:06:33.627" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2751" CreationDate="2011-07-03T20:41:36.517" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you're asking the right questions and thinking in a reasonable way. As a coach, a couple things jump out as concerns for me: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The small size of the teams isn't always a good fit for Scrum. You might consider merging the second or third teams into a single team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You'll need to work with the owners to ensure that a single backlog exists for the teams to draw from, despite being from difference projects. This prioritization process is very hard at first, but is critical for the teams to have a fair chance of meeting their commitments. This is why Scrum recommends a single product owner... the team needs to trust the single voice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider using different colored sticky notes or a tag in your electronic tool to indicate which project the work is coming from. This should help with your recognition problems after planning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, &lt;strong&gt;just try it&lt;/strong&gt;... it will work somewhat, but not perfectly, and then you can work with the teams to make it better. This is why the retrospective is so important in Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, after giving it a fair trial and pushing hard for a few months, you're still not feeling it work well, you may consider trying out kanban, which seems to work better in environments where there's a lot of requests coming from different directions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastActivityDate="2011-07-03T20:41:36.517" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2758" CreationDate="2011-07-04T00:13:17.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The majority of number systems for tasks I have seen are related to the Work Breakdown Structure and and follow the [Top].[Next Level].[Next Level] pattern using simple integer numbers (i.e. 3.5.6, 2.1.15.3) that is standard for a lot of government documents (and the PMBoK itself).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-07-04T00:13:17.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2726" CreationDate="2011-07-04T00:23:56.977" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One option you have to increase his job satisfaction is to reduce any distractions that are impacting his day to day work. It can be seen as a form of appreciation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-07-04T00:23:56.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2507" CreationDate="2011-07-04T00:51:51.337" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't change the API team at all. Once you have a group of people that have become effective at working together, it's generally best to leave them together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, consider starting to slowly add non-API work into their backlog, starting with a low mix and steadily increasing until they become a fully-functioning product team that also are the API experts. This allows that capability to remain fully-assembled while also using the team in other capacities. You may find it helpful for cross-training if a somebody wants to &quot;trade spots&quot; from the API team to a product team, but this should be optional and truly a volunteer behavior on both sides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastActivityDate="2011-07-04T00:51:51.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1125" CreationDate="2011-07-04T07:00:08.377" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Conveying bad news over mail with relevent reasons and possible alternate solutions would be of lesser impact then converying over a conversation. That is what i believe as in the former case the person will have more time to comprehend what just happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1634" LastActivityDate="2011-07-04T07:00:08.377" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2675" CreationDate="2011-07-04T09:21:38.767" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did you consider using pen and paper as an alternative. You can draw the timeline really quickly and scan it in as a hard copy. Yet better, I would suggest to keep it up on a whiteboard or as a drawing on a wall to it provides useful point of reference for the team working on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1618" LastActivityDate="2011-07-04T09:21:38.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2765" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2766" CreationDate="2011-07-04T19:25:46.013" Score="157" ViewCount="93417" Body="&lt;p&gt;After using hours to estimate our projects for a long time and rarely coming within 20% of actual &quot;work-to-ship,&quot; I have been told by a handful of people that &quot;points&quot; work a lot better at gauging the complexity and estimated length of tasks within a project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How are story points better at estimating the work required for a project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1640" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-01-15T09:19:54.087" LastActivityDate="2020-03-19T16:20:24.903" Title="Why use story points instead of hours for estimating?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="19" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="111" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2765" CreationDate="2011-07-04T19:53:04.453" Score="160" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using points is one version of what is often called &quot;&lt;em&gt;Relative sizing&lt;/em&gt;.&quot; For a very highly recommended initial perspective, check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90Xx8QVnXRc&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt; and then come back. Most uses of story point estimation limit you to the lower end of the Fibonacci series: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 because the goal is to group things of similar overall size rather than to pursue a highly precise estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story points often take into account three different aspects when estimating: Complexity, Effort, and Doubt. This allows them to more effectively capture the sources of variation that will make an hour-based estimate wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Complexity&lt;/strong&gt; is the &quot;stuff we have to figure out.&quot; We know we can solve the problem, and we probably have a decent feel for how we'll approach it, but we still have to figure it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Effort&lt;/strong&gt; is the sheer amount of stuff that needs done. For me, that example is configuring SharePoint lists, because I knew exactly how to solve everything, and I knew how many there were, but it still took time to run through them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Doubt&lt;/strong&gt; is about the stuff we don't actually know if it can be done. We may suspect we're on the wrong track, that the technology isn't up to it, or some other factor that would cause us to churn for a while before we figure out if we can actually do the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most stories contain a combination of all three, and thus it's useful to have a common language so that when I say &quot;it's an eight&quot;, I can follow with &quot;because of the complexity of the foobar algorithm&quot; or &quot;because I'm not sure if our cache is set up to handle that yet.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final point estimate is just a way to say &quot;&lt;strong&gt;taking all of these things into account, I think this is bigger than most of the things we've called a three and smaller than most of the things that we've called an eight, so it must be a five&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastEditorUserId="2124" LastEditDate="2012-03-07T14:30:39.180" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T14:30:39.180" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2765" CreationDate="2011-07-04T20:01:20.747" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;As always there is no simple answer to this question. I would say that you should &lt;strong&gt;choose what works best for you&lt;/strong&gt;. However as you say working with hours doesn't work for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my team it was the &lt;strong&gt;psychological aspect&lt;/strong&gt; about working with points. When people are estimating in points they feel more comfortable, because there is no simple measure, that 1 point = 1 hour, so they won't be punished if it will take them more time to finish the task than they declared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing is that when working with points (1,2,3,5,8,13,20) or sizes (S, M, L, XL) you just define the complexity of the task. Velocity shows how many points you can put into the iteration, but &lt;strong&gt;velocity changes&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And than working with points is &lt;strong&gt;less frustrating&lt;/strong&gt; - if you estimated badly your velocity will go down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastActivityDate="2011-07-04T20:01:20.747" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2765" CreationDate="2011-07-04T20:02:46.750" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't say the points are better. This is a technique focused on a different aspect of estimation. It may turn out that your point estimation will suck more. Have that in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When estimating &lt;strong&gt;in hours&lt;/strong&gt; you focus on answering the question &quot;How long it may take us?&quot;. So basically it's more or less guessing, based on your previous experience.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When estimating &lt;strong&gt;in points&lt;/strong&gt; you focus on relative sizes or complexity of estimated tasks/stories/whatever. So you usually take some of your tasks and apply one of the point values to them, and later, for each other task, you try to answer the question &quot;How big is it in relation to those I've already estimated&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key thing about points estimation is that you need to actually measure how the estimates relate to time. After some initial time in the project (especially when you start with point estimations) you learn how many points you are able to deliver in each iteration or fixed period of time. This gives you the basis for planning the future releases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you will search this forum you will also find at least a few methods of estimating in points. Try it and see for yourself if it gets more accurate for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="435" LastActivityDate="2011-07-04T20:02:46.750" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2765" CreationDate="2011-07-04T21:04:03.077" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hour estimates usually can be converted into points, but points estimates cannot, usually, be converted back into hours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be careful, once you switch to points estimates, there won't be an easy way back to using hours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When would you switch to points, and other relative systems? When hours stop working for you. If you find that hours estimates aren't giving you a good handle on the time it will take to complete a project, you can still get an idea of relative complexity with points and other systems. This lets you &lt;em&gt;ignore&lt;/em&gt; the time dimension, and get some complexity information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, however, you'll have to get back to time estimates at some point, no matter what you're doing. So, if you're switching to points, figure out a way to also estimate time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="71" LastActivityDate="2011-07-04T21:04:03.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2770" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-05T00:48:10.090" Score="0" ViewCount="171" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm using trac for project management. I want to send my colleagues a daily summary email of the updates on tickets, so that they are aware of the progress. Is there any tool/script that does this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1641" LastActivityDate="2011-08-04T15:38:42.280" Title="trac daily update on ticket" Tags="&lt;trac&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2770" CreationDate="2011-07-05T11:17:57.077" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not exactly what you are asking for, but on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/TracNotification&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trac notification&lt;/a&gt; page you can find information about how to configure trac for sending updates when a ticket has changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also take a look at this &lt;a href=&quot;http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/FlexibleReporterNotificationPlugin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;plugin&lt;/a&gt; it might help you out. ( I haven't actually used it myself).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1579" LastActivityDate="2011-07-05T11:17:57.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2765" CreationDate="2011-07-05T13:32:50.560" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;For my team, they frequently got hung up when estimating hours in getting minute details absolutely correct, but take wild guesses at other tasks. The result was very high variability in the delivery of stories. When we shifted to points, the team started doing estimates of whole stories based on overall complexity and their velocity became much more predictable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1645" LastActivityDate="2011-07-05T13:32:50.560" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2770" CreationDate="2011-07-05T15:34:03.773" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest doing a custom report, it takes a bit of SQL knowledge but you will get exactly what you need. Go to view tickets and create a new report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 1 - To get changes to a specific ticket since a given date:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;SELECT date(tc.time, 'unixepoch'), tc.field, tc.oldvalue, tc.newvalue&#xA;FROM ticket_change tc&#xA;WHERE tc.ticket='$TICKET' AND&#xA;date(tc.time, 'unixepoch') &amp;gt;= '$DATE'&#xA;ORDER BY tc.time&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TICKET and DATE are variables for the report. For instance if this report is number 45 and I want to see changes made to ticket 1017 since 1-jul-2011 I will call: &lt;a href=&quot;http://trac/devel/report/45?TICKET=1017&amp;amp;DATE=2011-07-01&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://trac/devel/report/45?TICKET=1017&amp;amp;DATE=2011-07-01&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Join with ticket to track changes for a component, milestone or user...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 2 - To get changes to a specific milestone since a given date:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;SELECT date(tc.time, 'unixepoch'),t.id, tc.field, tc.oldvalue, tc.newvalue&#xA;FROM ticket t&#xA;LEFT JOIN ticket_change tc ON t.id=tc.ticket&#xA;WHERE t.milestone like '$MILESTONE' AND&#xA;date(tc.time, 'unixepoch') &amp;gt;= '$DATE'&#xA;ORDER BY tc.time&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here MILESTONE and DATE are the parameters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1609" LastActivityDate="2011-07-05T15:34:03.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2765" CreationDate="2011-07-05T17:49:27.947" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;The essence of estimating in points is that it is based on relative sizing, whereas hour is an absolute measure. My 10 hours task could be your 5 hours task but we both would agree that creating a normal user registration page is smaller task as compared to creating a shopping cart module, so this approach reduces variability in estimates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give points based on how big/complex the task/story is and how much of it there is, for example there is a task which is quite simple but it has to be done multiple times, then that task/story would be given more points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To start with, you would need to choose a couple of tasks/stories that are of medium/average complexity/size. Assign them some points from your selected range of points (usually Fibonacci series). These tasks/stories become your reference tasks/stories. Now assign points to the rest of the tasks based on how complex/big each task is relative to your reference tasks. Bigger tasks get higher points than the points give to reference tasks. At the end of estimation exercise (usually performed using Planning Poker) you sum up all the points to get the total estimated points for that project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After completing a couple of projects, you would have a history of how many points your team covers in a specific time interval. This will be the team's velocity. The key point here is that you don't change the team size. Team members can be replaced but not preferred. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2017-11-27T04:28:49.770" LastActivityDate="2017-11-27T04:28:49.770" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2717" CreationDate="2011-07-06T00:03:02.453" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For whom would you want to manage projects? If it is your company, then start learning how they manage projects.  Have a corporate mentor. Read management materials. Find out what materials are most widely respected in your field. Consider learning important high-demand disciplines like TQM, Lean, Agile, etc. Follow the best managers you know, and reflect on their successes and failures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Classes and certificates are all good and well, but the important thing is to &quot;get the goods,&quot; and be able to actually do the work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1302" LastActivityDate="2011-07-06T00:03:02.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="233" CreationDate="2011-07-06T00:16:40.930" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I understand things, the answer is probably not how to motivate them but how to stop demotivating them. Are there people left with whom they want to work? Do they have accomplishment and autonomy? Are they given fair compensation (enough to take them off the market)? Do they believe in the company &amp;amp; product enough to feel like they are doing worthwhile work? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cio.com/article/123406/Stop_Demotivating_Me_&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cio.com/article/123406/Stop_Demotivating_Me_&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a software developer, I find it to be wise for my own career, fiscal health, and reputation to not ride a failing company into the ground. It may be as mentioned above, that you need to communicating the end of losses and focus on building new successes. After all, human institutions all run on trust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes a key player is laid off, someone the team had confidence in and who made them want to come to work. This person likely had informal authority far out of proportion to any formal authority. Perhaps you had a rockstar who was a great &quot;draw&quot; but whom you've eliminated. This can devastate teams.  If that is the case, you might need to bring in a new local hero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1302" LastActivityDate="2011-07-06T00:16:40.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2777" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-06T09:07:19.107" Score="44" ViewCount="9153" Body="&lt;p&gt;Responses to this are likely to be subjective but I ask of you not &quot;to vent&quot; against your current/ex manager and instead respond to what you think is a managers failing point (or points). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the responses here will be &lt;strong&gt;a good resource for newly becoming managers with little experience&lt;/strong&gt; and will make their journey towards experience easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1647" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-27T04:24:37.680" LastActivityDate="2012-07-27T04:24:37.680" Title="What are the signs of an incompetent project manager?" Tags="&lt;skills&gt;&lt;measurement&gt;" AnswerCount="16" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="27" ClosedDate="2012-07-27T04:24:49.723" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2777" CreationDate="2011-07-06T11:48:04.150" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I think this is a great question for this forum.  Second, I think to analyze this one needs to remove the notion of incompetent versus competent, which implies a PM is one or the other.  If we are able to plot all of our performance on a frequency chart, most of us would be somewhere in between these two points.  Picture a bell curve.  Moreover, if you broke down PM to its components, each of us would present with strengths in some areas and weaknesses in others.  Although they are out there, few are simply incompetent across the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Signs of weaknesses (to start the list):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Micro versus macro management.  I am not of the camp that micro is always bad.  I think management needs to go up and down this continuum based on what is needed with the team at any given time.  For example, a new team that is just developing would require more micro-type managing techniques than a high performing team.  So a weak PM for me would be one that cannot adjust his/her approach to meet the needs of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lack of communication and transparency, including the art of listening.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Inappropriate delegation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-07-06T11:48:04.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2777" CreationDate="2011-07-06T11:49:40.717" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm right now dealing with a PM who claims to be fantastic but yet can't give me answers to the following simple questions: (note, this is a software project)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where is your detailed planning? I only got a delivery date that is 3 months out from now....so how does he know when the project is slipping?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where are your test cases and test results? I believe a PM should know that test cases exist and what the pass/fail ratio is in order to access the project state as well as quality.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What's the top 3 issues/bugs the dev team is struggling with at the moment?.....and how long have they been open?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have to force this person to have weekly project update meetings. I believe a PM should be out there like a used car salesman, talking to people and making sure everybody knows where they are, what is expected of them and when things need to be ready, continually distributing information but more importantly.....LISTENING! Especially when working on big projects (many people) or with distributed teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="103" LastActivityDate="2011-07-06T11:49:40.717" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2780" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2787" CreationDate="2011-07-06T11:52:20.073" Score="23" ViewCount="14616" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using wikis as a knowledge database becomes more popular since a few years. But now I realized that most of the knowledge is lost because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;articles are out-dated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there is more than one page for the same subject&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;one cannot find the right page, because keywords are used everywhere&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the actual setting at my workplace:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;each departement has it's own subsection for its products / services&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;other departements keep summarized (redundant) instructions about using someelse's products&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;but there are also some pages which concern more than one departement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I organize a wiki to keep it clean? How do You avoid those problems?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This is not directly about project management, but I think the project manager must be part of the solution.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1264" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-07-06T20:49:00.627" LastActivityDate="2021-03-15T14:51:26.543" Title="How to organize knowledge within a wiki?" Tags="&lt;knowledge-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2777" CreationDate="2011-07-06T12:22:19.687" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;An incompetent PM fails to go to bat for his or her team when the devs are right and the customer is wrong. This doesn't mean that we don't bend over backward to satisfy the customer's needs, but that the PM does have a spine and is looking out for the team's interests.  One example of this would be the customer demanding an unreasonable schedule that the team either can't make or can only make through unreasonable amounts of overtime.  It's the PMs job to shield the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Along with this, a PM who doesn't understand the political landscape or is ineffective in maneuvering through it will struggle.  Politics, office and otherwise, are a fact of life and a PM must be adept at building and using political capital for the good of the company and the team. A PM who says the wrong things to the wrong people at the wrong time and wastes the teams capital is incompetent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An incompetent PM doesn't know or care about the technology or details of the project. Unless the PM is also a developer, it isn't expected that the PM have the technical background to implement the project, but he/she should have enough to understand the team's problems (and solutions) and be able to accurately represent them to others in non-technical terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1650" LastActivityDate="2011-07-06T12:22:19.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2782" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3570" CreationDate="2011-07-06T13:32:12.327" Score="2" ViewCount="855" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have projects where I want a task to have a set number of hours charged to it. If three people are charging to the project, 8 hours a day, and I specify that the project can only have 40 hours charged to it. Then all three of them can charge the first day, and then two of them will charge the next day, but the third one will have to charge to another task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1652" LastEditorUserId="2124" LastEditDate="2011-10-06T16:24:03.833" LastActivityDate="2015-09-24T16:31:36.480" Title="How can you limit the hours entered for a specific task in Microsoft Project Server?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2782" CreationDate="2011-07-06T13:36:29.860" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why would you do that?  You are fudging your actuals to meet a goal.  Actuals are actuals.  Your team must charge what they work, all the hours they work it, and to the proper work package.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will have variances.  If you come in with a zero variance, you cooked the books.  The only caveat to that is an LOE task for schedule.  That is always a variance of zero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, if you do not collect honest actuals, you will not have the data you need to better your estimation in the future.  And the vicious cycle will continue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-07-06T13:36:29.860" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2780" CreationDate="2011-07-06T14:20:07.323" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, the main question is about what knowledge you intend to store on the wiki. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can only be useful if there are people who can actively contribute content and people who actively use that content. It also needs some sensible information architecture (to avoid duplication). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest you might consider&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;giving everyone full access to the wiki  (I assume that's the case)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ensuring there are no alternative sources of the same information&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;keeping the amount of the information to a minimum&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;actively removing content when it gets out of date or becomes irrelevant&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;having someone looking after the structure and maintenance of site (give them time to do it)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;automatically generating content if there are reference data sources (for example, machine names list from DNS configuration)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;on software projects, try to move as much information away from the wiki and closer to the code, idea in a executable format (that is, in tests) or combine the wiki and the testing platform using &lt;a href=&quot;http://fitnesse.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FitNesse&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1618" LastActivityDate="2011-07-06T14:20:07.323" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2777" CreationDate="2011-07-06T14:35:09.870" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my personal experience of working with Project Managers who added value to project and others, who didn't, signs of incompetent project managers might be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;using the word &lt;strong&gt;resource&lt;/strong&gt; when referring to &lt;strong&gt;people&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;attempts to control and direct members of the project team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;micro-managing people&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;withholding information to stakeholders or team members (any information)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;not telling the truth (regardless of what the truth is)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;not understanding the product that is being build or the technologies used&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;spending more time with documents than with people&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;running long meetings without clear agendas, goals or actions &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;lack of respect for people&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;poor listening skills&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;not understanding the process used to deliver the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;belief that they can control the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;relays messages between people rather than helping them work together directly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1618" LastEditorUserId="1618" LastEditDate="2011-07-06T15:10:56.330" LastActivityDate="2011-07-06T15:10:56.330" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2765" CreationDate="2011-07-06T14:43:11.360" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some time ago I wrote a relevant blog post: &lt;a href=&quot;http://marcin.floryan.pl/blog/2010/07/hours-of-remaining-effort&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Hours of effort remaining&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The essence is that we are unable to estimate actual time and instead think that we're estimating in 'ideal hours' but we can't abstract from the perception of time. It can also create a false impression that the number of hours remaining are 'clock hours' as opposed to 'idealised hours'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1618" LastActivityDate="2011-07-06T14:43:11.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2780" CreationDate="2011-07-06T16:29:42.910" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here in our project, we have around 20 ppl working in different continents, and having our knowledge database up to date is a key to our success. Some things I consider important to highlight, besides the ones pointed by @mfloryan:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First of all, understand that maintain a Wiki takes time. it sounds obvious, but someone will eventually take some time to work actively on it. Suggestion: Pick up that 'organization-maniac' guy who is eager to help but don't know how to do it. Ask him to review the structure and suggest what could be done. Merge / delete topics can cause confusion to the people already used to use some links.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the information is getting redundant across the structure, is time to review the tree structure used. I believe a good index needs to be clear enough to explicitly show where an information is supposed to be.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;During team meetings, discuss actively about the wiki. What has been added? What was redundant? Was you believe should be removed? The culture of adding information into a common repository is important. The culture of get rid of outdated information updating it, is even more important.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In case the information in one single page needs several scroll downs, think of break it into sub pages&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In case the information, even broken into small pieces is still big, maybe it's time to migrate it to a proper document. Here, we store presentations / spreadsheets / documents into SVN and then briefly talk about them in the wiki... pointing where in the SVN the document is. That's specially applicable to diagrams / UMLs that may not be presented as clear as in the diagram tool.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You must define owners in your team to keep track of Wiki's health. They may be the only ones with 'removal' access or to mediate oppinion conflits, for instance. It all depends on the structure of the wiki, but owners are a must (thanks @SBWorks for highlight this item).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2011-07-07T12:24:00.127" LastActivityDate="2011-07-07T12:24:00.127" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2717" CreationDate="2011-07-06T17:34:54.540" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am actually taking an interim approach.  I started off as a software developer (read: coder as I do believe there is a distinct difference between a coder and developer) and realized it wasn't my passion.  I have moved to the business analyst role in an effort to round off my skill set and as time progresses, possibly move into a PM type role.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, I'm really enjoying being a BA, working side by side with a great development team (so I'm not completely removed).  This also gives me a lot of hands on training working with a PM and utilizing them as an unofficial mentor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just my particular path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="913" LastActivityDate="2011-07-06T17:34:54.540" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2789" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-06T17:50:15.117" Score="3" ViewCount="303" Body="&lt;p&gt;Management has opened a new position on our 8-10 person team of C/C++ developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a team member, I've got a vested interest us actually finding quality candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone suggest some informal measures I might be able to take to locate quality candidates who might be interested?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The &lt;a href=&quot;http://careers.stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;http://careers.stackoverflow.com/&lt;/a&gt; service looks really great, but our HR department does not have an account. Though, they are looking in to it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(P.S. Would this question be better on the main &quot;Programmers&quot; site?  Not sure. Feel free to migrate.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1654" LastEditorUserId="1654" LastEditDate="2011-07-06T17:57:00.293" LastActivityDate="2011-07-10T15:53:28.970" Title="How to informally find a good programmer?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2789" CreationDate="2011-07-06T19:45:59.650" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you said &quot;informally&quot;, I'll mention my technique, which isn't fast. I organize a programmer's book club. It gives me a reason to socially hang out with developers outside of my office every once in a while. I figure next time some asks me if I know anyone who can write code, now I'll be able to say I do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose many of the people I have ever hung out with or met at a potluck are also programmers, but generally, when the expert who knows everything about C++ meets the expert who knows everything about SQL administration meetup each other, they talk about the weather and football games. They generally won't necessarily realize that the other is a programmer or if they're any good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1656" LastActivityDate="2011-07-06T19:45:59.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2789" CreationDate="2011-07-07T03:26:08.193" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's all about relationships these days. Recruiters and the like are good still, but if you are looking for people of reputation, you need to get connected with people who would know and recommend them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every programmer you know will know programmers from other companies. Find out where they gather, and especially where the best ones will show up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of C++ people, try some events like local users' groups, code camps or barcamps, hacking parties, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get some of your programmers involved in C++ open source projects, because those projects run on programming chops and reputation to a large extent.  Once you have some insider connections, the network will start to expand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1302" LastActivityDate="2011-07-07T03:26:08.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2793" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-07T09:45:10.937" Score="2" ViewCount="158" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am the development project manager for a web-based software product.&#xA;I have been asked the following question from my superiors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our product is facing increased&#xA;  competition from other solutions on&#xA;  the market  Can you describe a&#xA;  strategy to ensure that the product remains&#xA;  a competitive product?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without going into detail about the intricacies of the product and the competitors that we face, what should be my line of attack for answering this question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Let me know if you need more details via the comments) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1658" LastActivityDate="2011-07-17T20:06:31.313" Title="Reassuring boss that our product will be one step ahead of competition..." Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2777" CreationDate="2011-07-07T09:52:25.147" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A successful PM should be good a facilitator and information radiator. If project stakeholders (client, developers, testers, higher management) are not getting regular and correct updates related to the projects then there is a red flag. If tasks usually get stuck at PM's desk then that is not a good sign. If the PM is not verifying where the team/project is heading and if the work done is not of any value to the client then it shows that an incompetent PM is assigned to the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2011-07-07T09:52:25.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2777" CreationDate="2011-07-07T10:38:20.600" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's make it simple, an &lt;em&gt;incomplete manager&lt;/em&gt; will never learn from his &lt;strong&gt;mistakes&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nobody is the perfect PM, we all do mistakes but only those are successful who never repeat them again or at least know how to handle them properly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1198" LastActivityDate="2011-07-07T10:38:20.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2789" CreationDate="2011-07-07T10:49:07.317" Score="0" Body="&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Can anyone suggest some informal measures I might be able to take to locate quality candidates who might be interested?&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I once heard that some organizations are finding there candidates from &lt;strong&gt;social networking sites&lt;/strong&gt; like &lt;em&gt;Facebook&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Orkut&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Twitter&lt;/em&gt; etc. I am not sure how much it is affective but I have observed that many developers [who are really talented and do blogging stuff] genreally post there blog's link on Twitter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you have mentioned that you are looking for talented people, in that case I doubt about the other job searching website because you never know that what they have written in resume is really true or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1198" LastActivityDate="2011-07-07T10:49:07.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2793" CreationDate="2011-07-07T17:31:04.937" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I'd break away from the word ensure.  I am sure they did not mean this literally but, just in case, it should be clear you cannot guarantee anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your R&amp;amp;D and Marketing are the two business capabilities in which you need to invest to keep your product relevant, fresh, and in demand.  R&amp;amp;D to keep track of cutting edge solutions as well as to develop its own; marketing to watch for external threats, engage customers for wants and needs, and provide intel to R&amp;amp;D and other areas of the business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-07-07T17:31:04.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2780" CreationDate="2011-07-08T02:21:16.210" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Avoid department-specific categories.  Look at wikipedia, it's much larger than your company wiki and doesn't name pages as, say, /Animals/Mammals/Rare/Panda.  By avoiding such categories you remove the confusion about where to put content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1245" LastActivityDate="2011-07-08T02:21:16.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2777" CreationDate="2011-07-08T03:16:40.353" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The biggest red flag for me is dishonesty. A project manager that conceals, covers up, or intentional avoids telling people about problems or only tells people what they want to hear is going to be a major problem to your key projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-07-08T03:16:40.353" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2731" CreationDate="2011-07-08T05:26:27.153" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can get you closer but not all the way there. I figured out how to color code completed tasks but not late tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the gantt chart area, right click and select &quot;Bar Styles...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Under normal tasks, insert a row&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select an appearance you want for the bar&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the drop down menu under &quot;Show..For Tasks&quot; select &quot;finished&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, all finished tasks are color coded. I'm still trying to figure out the correct options for late tasks. It must be in there somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-07-08T05:26:27.153" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2777" CreationDate="2011-07-08T06:03:21.853" Score="14" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not communicating &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Being too scared to make a call on what functionality should get priority and what should&#xA;be postponed &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not planning for change &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not being flexible when requirements change &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not being able to push back on requirements if they are unrealistic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not being able to &quot;drive&quot; or inspire the team to give more than their average &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not likable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not hardworking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not putting the customer first&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1666" LastActivityDate="2011-07-08T06:03:21.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2777" CreationDate="2011-07-08T08:26:34.980" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;An incompetent PM thinks he or she has better technicals skills than any other team member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of PMs come from development and swith to project management some day. So he or she might be highly technical skilled in the first few months but - especially in IT - things are changing too fast. A good PM should stay informed about technology but also should trust in the skills of the team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1668" LastActivityDate="2011-07-08T08:26:34.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2804" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2806" CreationDate="2011-07-08T15:54:50.583" Score="1" ViewCount="2482" Body="&lt;p&gt;So my boss put forth a 'research and find out question' to me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there ANY (absolutely any, no matter the dumbest, but any) metrics for requirements management? Eg. Requirements completeness, consistency and productivity (being the most difficult to nail down i.e. what is meant by productivity).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar question with respect to design and architecture level metrics. I.e., do any exist and what are they if they do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's kinda fuzzy right now but I wanted to know what are the metrics that you have commonly used at these stages (if at all) and what have you found to be worthwhile. The notion is that most companies can (and do) come up with proprietary metrics to measure stuff related to the requirements/design/architecture phases but are there any 'commonly applicable' ones?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note&lt;/strong&gt;: I'm not looking for code related metrics like cyclomatic complexity or bugs/100 LOC or function points&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm aware of the product backlog in the agile community along with release burndown release burndown charts tend to give you a good idea of things but they don't work as well in a non-story-point estimation environment, IMO. They are good proxies to measure the aforementioned requirements consistency, completeness and productivity aspects but not sure about how well can they cater to that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm well aware of it being a hard problem, I'm not looking for a solution but mere opinion/view points on what have you used or seen/heard being used in this regard. Research paper references more than welcome too :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1119" LastActivityDate="2019-07-04T21:23:17.493" Title="Current best metrics related to requirements, design and architecture" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2793" CreationDate="2011-07-08T16:02:10.530" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you tried doing a simple QFD analysis using House of Quality? You should use it not for the six sigma implementation but only to have all this information in one place so you can actually &quot;visualize&quot; where do you lose out and where does your competition win and what could help improve the chances. I strongly suggest you at least try doing that. You can get the templates from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.qfdonline.com/templates/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.qfdonline.com/templates/&lt;/a&gt; Once you know what it is that you offer and where does your competition outshine you, you should be in a better position to take a strategic decision!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be immensely helpful: You have your current business goals (and customer delight aspects) on one dimension and the feature(s) or feature-sets on the other. Along with columns for competitive benchmarking (relative, no need for absolute). You can actually see a large scale comparison on many dimensions and have a better grasp of what all will the strategic plan entail. And as @David pointed out R&amp;amp;D and Marketing are you best bets to affirm your plans and engage the customers for wants/needs (the latter being the &lt;strong&gt;MOST&lt;/strong&gt; important, IMO).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1119" LastActivityDate="2011-07-08T16:02:10.530" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2804" CreationDate="2011-07-08T16:08:03.287" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In terms of metrics for a set of requirements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;number of requirements&lt;/strong&gt; is a good indication of system complexity (it may seem silly at first as not all requirements are the same &quot;size&quot;, but in aggregate it seems to work no worse than counting lines of code does for software complexity)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;number of TBXs&lt;/strong&gt; both in absolute and percentage of requirements that are not yet complete. It may also help to track the different flavors, as a TBD(etermined) is less mature than a TBR(esolved/reviewed) or a TBS(supplied)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;number of requirements with verification methods and methodologies&lt;/strong&gt;, as requirements that no one has thought about how to verify probably aren't that good yet&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;number of requirements flowed-down to lower-level specifications&lt;/strong&gt; or similarly the number of childless requirements in top-level specs or orphans in lower-level specs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're talking about measuring the efficiency of your requirements management processes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;hours charged per change request released&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;verification burn-down plan vs. actual progress &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;percentage of the specifications in the specification tree that are released and under configuration management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="360" LastActivityDate="2011-07-08T16:08:03.287" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2777" CreationDate="2011-07-08T17:23:10.117" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First note that there is a world of difference between a bad PM and an incompetent one...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An incompetent PM would suffer from one or more of the following  (mostly in decreasing order of importance...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lies, covers or misrepresents the truth (100% deal breaker all the way around) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doesn't understand the business context behind the project, why the project is important, what the success and failure criteria are for the business&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unable to control the scope of the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unable to convey progress or status internally or externally &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Isn't available or visible to the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unable to answer basic questions about the project (&quot;Do you have X?&quot; were X are like: &quot;a set of requirements, a list of risks/issues, a budget, a solution/product description, etc.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, only the first item is insurmountable.  Someone suffering from all the rest can usually get back on track if they are willing to learn and have someone to mentor/coach them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-07-08T17:23:10.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2789" CreationDate="2011-07-08T22:10:40.883" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Getting leads on good hire in a informal manner does not usually happen very quickly as it all depends on how good your connections are in the industry. By informal, I am going to assume you mean that the leads are from friends or peers in the industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that if your professional network is small, the chances of getting good leads are small. So a larger professional network will help out here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other aspect of the professional network is the strength of the network. If your professional network have strong bonds, you and the peers in your network will have implicit mutual trust and respect. This helps significantly when you are socialising the news that your are hire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore to establish these two aspects (and many more) of your professional network, it will take time and active effort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could tried some of the online social networks aimed at the professional like linkedin.com and plaxo.com. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Luck!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="480" LastActivityDate="2011-07-08T22:10:40.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2809" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2810" CreationDate="2011-07-09T10:10:19.440" Score="1" ViewCount="253" Body="&lt;p&gt;What measures can be taken to put a project back on track and roll-out on time, if it is currently facing issues like: loads of unexpected bugs appearing in system tests, less detailed user requirement documents? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also what are the essential skills a project manager should possess in order to complete a project successfully?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1674" LastActivityDate="2011-07-09T15:44:12.707" Title="Putting a project back on track tips" Tags="&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;&lt;scope-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2809" CreationDate="2011-07-09T15:44:12.707" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without knowing more about the specific issues, it is difficult to give precise answers to your question. However, if you have reached the point where you are clearly off track, there is no guaranteed method to get you back on the original track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to re-plan your project taking account of the situation that you now find yourself in, and agree with your sponsor / executive where compromises are acceptable. This may be in timescale, or cost, or scope, or quality - or some combination of these. My advice would be to avoid compromising on quality because this is the thing that will come back to bite you at a later stage - but having said that, make sure that the level of quality is appropriate for the project. Unless you are developing something that is either mission critical or safety critical, a few minor &quot;unexpected features&quot; may be OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honesty is the best policy in these situations. Don't pretend that all is OK just now and then present a disaster at the 11th hour. Far better to take a little pain now, work through it, and deliver against your revised plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on where you are in the project, you may be tempted to throw resources at it. Be very careful with this approach: it seldom works, and can often lead to further delays or problems. There may be scope to ask your team to work extra hours to make up time, but be careful you don't end up with an exhausted team that is too tired to deliver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You ask what qualities a PM needs: The top three for me are (in no particular order):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communication skills, to deal with all stakeholders (sponsors, customers, team, advisors, suppliers, etc);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Imagination, to both visualise the outcome of the project and to anticipate the risks that may be encountered, then to put in place the measures required to deliver the outcomes and/or mitigate the risks;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Persistence, to keep on pushing for as long as necessary to deliver the project (or persuade the stakeholders to kill it).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-07-09T15:44:12.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2811" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2812" CreationDate="2011-07-09T17:42:02.800" Score="5" ViewCount="839" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the best method(s) to keep software projects on track when the requirements are loosely defined?  (i.e.  Just general functional concepts provided).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="59" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2013-04-17T13:58:31.943" LastActivityDate="2016-03-07T10:00:40.583" Title="Software Projects with loose requirements" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;schedule&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2811" CreationDate="2011-07-09T19:25:54.240" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the requirements are loosely defined then there should be regular and frequent delivery of working software to the client. Wireframes and prototype may help but not that much as compared to functional system. By working software I dont mean that build everything but initially focus on those pieces that will provide most value to the client. Let the client play with what you have built for them. This will also clear up the requirements for the client itself and they will know more about what they need instead of what they want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2011-07-09T19:25:54.240" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2811" CreationDate="2011-07-10T15:05:57.723" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In terms of a methodology, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1556159005&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Steve McConnell's Rapid Development&lt;/a&gt; provides a table that shows which methodologies are appropriate for projects given certain project-level characteristics. For projects with &quot;poorly understood requirements&quot;, spiral, evolutionary prototyping, and the use of COTS software are rated the best among. Modified waterfalls and evolutionary delivery also appear to be suitable, but not as much. If you notice, these are methodologies that provide high visibility for both the customer and management into the work being done by the development team, allow for &quot;course corrections&quot; in the middle of the project, and are designed to assist in the management of risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are a number of criteria that McConnell uses to choose a methodology. This includes an understanding of the requirements and architecture, the desired reliability, risk management, the use of a pre-defined schedule, amount of overhead, customer visibility, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a copy of Rapid Development available, the table that I'm referencing is on pages 156-157. You would probably be interested in most (if not all) of Chapter 7, which discusses Lifecycle Planning. Chapter 6, which discusses McConnell's take on Rapid Development, might also be of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are going to be managing software projects, I would highly recommend not only this book, but also &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1572316217&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;McConnell's Software Project Survival Guide&lt;/a&gt;. Both books were (and still are) required reading in the software process and project management course that I took, and are highly rated when it comes to SE process books. They also focus on &quot;best practices&quot; that apply to a good number of projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2011-07-10T23:24:31.487" LastActivityDate="2011-07-10T23:24:31.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2811" CreationDate="2011-07-10T15:11:34.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd work out what &quot;on track&quot; means, first. Is there a minimum feature which needs to be delivered by a certain date? A business outcome which needs to be achieved? If so, this should help to provide a focus and vision for the project. If there's something small which can be delivered early, this is a great way to prove the team's ability to deliver, gain the trust of the stakeholders and buy time for later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the vision's been established, work out which aspects of it are least well known. Are there parts of the UI which nobody can envisage properly? Architecture which has never been tried? Hard-code the rest, and get feedback on these risky aspects as quickly as possible. Aziz's suggestions of regular showcasing is the best way I've found to do this. Remember that different areas of the project will have different stakeholders, so for instance, showcase any architectural learning to the architects; UIs to the users; business functionality to the departments which care about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than focusing on value, I tend to prefer focus on risk (remembering that areas of poor or limited knowledge tend to carry a bunch of risk you don't even know about yet), and then deliver the smallest valuable thing that will make a difference. This can be done repeatedly and incrementally until a larger vision is achieved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-07-10T15:11:34.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2804" CreationDate="2011-07-10T15:16:02.963" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although it's not exclusively related to requirements engineering or design and architecture phases, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.westfallteam.com/Papers/defect_removal_effectiveness.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;defect removal effectiveness&lt;/a&gt; can be used to find out how effective your requirements engineering and design activities, along with all any other activities throughout the lifecycle are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is that you create a table that shows where defects were found, where they were fixed, and where they came from. Using this information, you can find out how many requirements defects were found in requirements, found in design, or slipped all the way through to field deployment. You can track this per iteration (since every iteration will deal with requirements engineering through deployment) as well as per project. However, you need to complete a few iterations to have sufficient information as to the effectiveness of your practices at each phase and make corrections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other measurements and metrics would be related to rates of change of requirements, such as added, removed, and modified requirements. Also, relating requirements to implementation time or test coverage might also be suitable. I think that &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2804/current-best-metrics-related-to-requirements-design-and-architecture/2806#2806&quot;&gt;Adam Wuerl's answer discusses this pretty well, though&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-07-10T15:16:02.963" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2789" CreationDate="2011-07-10T15:29:03.813" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A relatively cheap method to find qualified talent that wants to work in your organization would be through employee referrals. This could come from personal connections, team members on social networking sites, or people that employees might meet at conferences. Regardless of where they come from, the idea is that your current employees personally and professionally know the person they are recommending for a position on their team, and that the person would be a good fit for the work and the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Direct applicants, either through referrals or applications to a job posting on the company website, lead to about 45% of all hires. People hired through referrals are typically vouched for by an employee, are qualified, and are at least somewhere interested in working for the organization. Direct applicants to postings on a company website are often strongly interested in working for the company (they hunted the organization down on their own, after all) and have at least some of the skills desired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recruiting through universities, especially local universities is also a good idea. University recruitment is a little cheaper than employee referrals, but you are often getting recent graduates and will probably get more resumes that need to be reviewed, candidates to interview, and so on (leading to a lower yield ratio). Having team members reach out to the universities that they graduated from might be another good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2011-07-10T15:53:28.970" LastActivityDate="2011-07-10T15:53:28.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2817" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-11T02:38:02.477" Score="0" ViewCount="730" Body="&lt;p&gt;Greets!&#xA;This might be a bit of a broad question but I'll try to keep it simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm working with a team of somewhat fresh game developers and we've already completed our first &quot;large sized&quot; project, so we've got some clear points regarding do's and don't do's.&#xA;Still, this project was done with virtually no project management and organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get to the point, I'd like to get into PM to help better organize our team on future projects. I should mention that I (nor anyone in the team) have absolutely no experience in PM. I've tried about two dozen PM programs and none seem to fit our requirements. As we're getting into the whole PM organizing, we'd like to start simple and small. Some features that I believe we would need are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A very simple and clear visual, interactive representation of the project (an interactive Gantt chart for example)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Online availability, offering all team members the ability to log in and view Gantt charts, calendars and reports with limited or no editing accessibility. Or, being able to export a graphical report in an HTML/XML or similar widespread format onto a shared server/mail list.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The ability to timely notify or remind each team member of the deadlines and a user-friendly way of graphically showing all the exceeding deadlines/problems for the project manager.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are just things that come to mind. Collaborative software options aren't really needed so far as all the artists, programmers and other members are at the same location with somewhat frequent meetings. I've read some of the other related questions here and they do indeed give some helpful insight into the matter, but it's still all looking rather intimidating and overly complicated at this time.&#xA;Seeing as we'll probably have about 30+ people (total, not at all times) working on a new game, organizing the whole project seems crucial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, any software recommendations, other forms of project management, tips etc. are more than welcome. Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1680" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T14:39:01.203" Title="PM Software for a medium sized game development team?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-06-22T04:57:43.107" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2648" CreationDate="2011-07-11T09:56:40.500" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are now on 2 week iterations, and thinking on switching to 1 week. But, we are distributed (stakeholders, devs, po -- everyone is in separate cities), hence communication IS issue. So we think switching to 1 week would: &#xA;1) higher our costs (travel costs, communication costs)&#xA;2) unable PO to investigate more before handling over stories to the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those are our reasons.... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;just my 2 cents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1681" LastActivityDate="2011-07-11T09:56:40.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2817" CreationDate="2011-07-11T16:32:38.103" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Team Task Manager might be what you are looking for.   We use it daily to track projects and tasks, very intuitive and no learning curve.  Inexpensive, and a free trial is available on their website -  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deskshare.com/team-task-management.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.deskshare.com/team-task-management.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1682" LastActivityDate="2011-07-11T16:32:38.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2820" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-11T17:59:01.940" Score="13" ViewCount="12485" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use MS Project to manage a project. Although I know that MS Project is just a scheduling tool, we use it to get the current state of the project. We update the % complete field at the end of every day for tasks and send the total project % complete to stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a software project and things were working fine until change requests started pouring in. Some of tasks were put on hold, some more tasks were added and some in-progress tasks were dropped. Now, MS Project does not give the right picture of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestion how can I organize my tasks so that it can reflect the right figure (% complete).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1610" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-01-13T10:28:54.757" LastActivityDate="2019-01-13T10:28:54.757" Title="How can I use MS Project to manage an agile project" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2820" CreationDate="2011-07-11T20:39:01.923" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think MS Project is the best tool to show such thing. You haven't pointed using it as a requirement so my advice would be to use something different, possibly something simpler.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing which comes to my mind is &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/132724/sprint-cumulative-flow-diagram&quot;&gt;Cumulative Flow Diagram&lt;/a&gt; (CFD). First, it naturally shows how much work has been completed (done state), so if you need % complete in any given point of time you can compare work completed to all work at that time. Second, you get a nice tool which shows how scope has grown over time and how it affected % complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To show % complete more precisely use sizing of tasks, e.g. T-shirt sizing, story points etc., in CFD so you know that completing a huge task brings you further to the end of the project than completing a tiny one. In the simplest form you can just count the number of tasks completed but you won't get such precision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To prepare CFD simple spreadsheet should be enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also check &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/yyeret/explaining-cumulative-flow-diagrams-cfd&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this presentation&lt;/a&gt; on CFD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:41:23.897" LastActivityDate="2011-07-11T20:39:01.923" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2811" CreationDate="2011-07-12T00:48:52.547" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I still believe that's not realistic to have a good tracking in a loosely defined project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I believe the other answers provide the best way to &lt;em&gt;turn around&lt;/em&gt; the problem, I'd still make clear with the stakeholders that we can't have clear deadlines without clear project milestones. It would make them share the blame for any delays that (eventually) will happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2011-07-12T00:48:52.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2811" CreationDate="2011-07-12T02:41:43.387" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, you must be sure to get a handle on the project.  A project loosely defined is loosely delivered, so change the starting state ASAP by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure you know the stakeholders and people who will be benefiting by the project.  Get them to be clear about what they want, or how they will be obtaining value from the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build an architecture/design sketch to get buy in from stakeholders and the development team.  Don't leave it fuzzy, use the solution view to drive discussion about impacts of certain decisions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set a preliminary budget -and- timeline.  You can change them later, but use these to start saying &quot;with these constraints, we will have to start restricting scope&quot; and use that to drive discussions about what is most important.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To keep things on track as you progress, get in the habit of saying &quot;we are looking to call this feature/component done this release (before the next status report) and are looking for final feedback/comments&quot;  It really helps to adopt a periodic release schedule where the product is &quot;potentially releasable&quot; at the end of each release period (e.g. Scrum)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep the project divided into &quot;things we know and can commit to develop by a certain date&quot; and &quot;things we don't know well enough to scope other than by the number of releases we should budget to complete it&quot;  That way you will always have one project you can control/monitor and report on.  Keep enough work in the well defined portion of the project to keep the team buffered while you and maybe a tech lead work to bring definition to the other portion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-07-12T02:41:43.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2648" CreationDate="2011-07-12T03:06:48.030" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Factors I use to determine iteration duration&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Amount of infrastructure needed for each feature&lt;/strong&gt; - some products require a deeper vertical slice through three or more technology layers.  These can take longer to develop a feature and so I tend to favor 2 week iterations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Number of external systems interfacing with the product&lt;/strong&gt; - the more external systems that are needed the more I tend to 2 week iterations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Customer feedback turnaround time&lt;/strong&gt; - some customers take 3-4 days to provide feedback on releases, others can do it on a moments notice.  Longer customer turn around time tends to the 2 week timeframe.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Degree of homogeneity of the team&lt;/strong&gt; - If the team is made up of multiple different specialists then an iteration might need to take longer to spread the knowledge/experience across the team.  If the team is made up of generalists, then it tends to lend itself to shorter iterations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Degree of integration with SQA&lt;/strong&gt; - If the existing tendency is to dev then hand to test, I've noticed a shorted iteration forces this to change and have the team realign the SQA and Dev teams to be more tightly integrated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure there are others, and I'd appreciate more people providing answers based on their experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-07-12T03:06:48.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2820" CreationDate="2011-07-12T16:03:12.583" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think MS Project is the right tool for what you want to accomplish, try Team Task Manager would work better for you.   We use it daily to track projects and tasks, very intuitive and no learning curve - and it gives a simple % complete indicator.  Inexpensive, and a free trial is available on their website -  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deskshare.com/team-task-management.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.deskshare.com/team-task-management.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1689" LastEditorUserId="1689" LastEditDate="2011-07-12T16:10:36.503" LastActivityDate="2011-07-12T16:10:36.503" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2827" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2831" CreationDate="2011-07-12T21:39:19.373" Score="5" ViewCount="259" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually a team members have different skills of work (coding, communication, analyse and others). What PM can do to minimize the difference of skill in the team? Especially to grow average of skills level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1477" LastActivityDate="2011-07-13T15:35:15.260" Title="How can PM take care about a team members skill?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;skills&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2067" CreationDate="2011-07-13T00:35:05.507" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Latitude (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.latibiz.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.latibiz.com/&lt;/a&gt;) - customizable project management software package with CRM and billing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can track clients and their information, manage projects and documents, and can create invoices and user timesheets can be exported to accounting software for payrolls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can restrict access to some data and can assign which users can access it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1691" LastActivityDate="2011-07-13T00:35:05.507" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-07-13T00:35:05.507" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2829" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2830" CreationDate="2011-07-13T03:25:23.660" Score="14" ViewCount="264" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a hard time trying to get the client to focus. X likes to talk a lot. Sometimes give too much information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes X talks x-self into circles and i forget what the question is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I try my best to formulate succinct direct questions and i don't want to interrupt him too much; as i feel it may be impolite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to politely direct him to pick a conclusive answer? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put this in context, I was trying to elicit important information about his interests in pursuing a feature and X wanted to talk about x's business and how they're growing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1253" LastActivityDate="2011-11-25T14:12:30.003" Title="Client has hard time focusing" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;clients&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2829" CreationDate="2011-07-13T04:36:48.050" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is more an art form than a science, and one that is hit and miss for me. Pretty much it depends on your relationship with the client, how close you are, how formal it is but the basics are the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The reasons they do this&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They don't know where this fits into the bigger picture ... so they talk about the whole picture in order to orientate themselves.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They don't know what the answer should be.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They are scared to make the wrong decision, it could be their job or their business on the line (or it may feel like it is).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They don't completely trust you. If you're a marketer or project manager then you probably don't know enough about the details. If you're a techie they don't understand what you're saying (but if they did they probably would trust that you know what you're saying)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So what can you do about this&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Setting it up right&lt;/strong&gt;. Most of your ability to guide the meeting is happens before you walk in the door.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Targeted meeting with defined goals: &quot;I want to meet with you to get a decision on X&quot; over &quot;I would like to meet and discuss stuff&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Defined time frame, &quot;this should take about half-an-hour&quot; (or whatever)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Guiding them back on track&lt;/strong&gt;. Once you have set up the goal of the meeting you can use this as the point to draw their attention back to. &quot;That is very nice (etc), getting back to the focus of today's meeting&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Providing structure&lt;/strong&gt;. If its features / workflow then diagrams and pictures or a list of options to choose from. This gives you something to point at while saying &quot;that's nice, getting back to the goal of today's meeting&quot;. It also gives them a context to understand their decision in, vague handwavy stuff or a lot of words is very hard for most people to grasp and feel safe with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Providing a logical default&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is a lot of writing about logical defaults and how setting up the right default will lead you to the right outcome. I recommend listening to a few of the BayCHI podcasts on the issue as well as tech nation podcasts ... there was a good example about organ donations, countries who are &quot;opt in&quot; have 7% donation rate compared to &quot;opt out of donating&quot; have a 93% donation rate ... purely because the default is provided that way. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you go into the meeting with &quot;this is the default choice, but your welcome to change it&quot; then in 80-90% of cases your default will be the option which is selected. This is especially true if you are a trusted advisor / domain expert ... they have to be pretty sure if they want to disagree with you ... &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Remove the fear&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're not the domain expert, bring one and give them the instructions to be an observer until asked. Work out with them before hand the best way they should phrase the answer ... be ready to head them off as they dive into the detail, techies can't help themselves, (I know, I'm one of the worst offenders).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have the key benefits AND drawbacks of at least your default option. If they can see and understand then the fear is reduced significantly. If the benefits are visible then the real driver to make the decision can overcome the fear of the wrong decision. eg. &quot;you're currently loosing $10,000 per day, this change will stop that bleeding because ...&quot; suddenly there is a clear reason for a decision.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Basically&lt;/strong&gt; as the consultant it is your job to set the scene, give the client enough information, remove the obstacles to them making the decision and keep the meeting on track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I get this right somewhere between 60 and 70% of the time, really it's preparation and practice mixed with building a good relationship with the client so you can say &quot;seriously you're getting side tracked, can we focus now so we can go down the pub&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="689" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-11-25T14:12:30.003" LastActivityDate="2011-11-25T14:12:30.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2827" CreationDate="2011-07-13T07:24:34.860" Score="2" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Usually PM doesn't have direct superior-subordinate relation with a project team so they can't just tell people to improve specific skills. What you can do is you can encourage people and try to convince them it would be good for them. After all they do grow as professionals that way, don't they?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can also propose practices and techniques which are valuable for a project and at the same time they foster learning process among team members. Code review is something which comes to my mind in the first place. It helps to share knowledge about project itself but is also a great platform to exchange technical experience.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, you can't force people to adopt specific practices. As long as they don't see value for themselves they will either skip the practice or do it just for the sake of doing it, which basically makes it worthless.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Of course you can try to talk about the problem with functional manager(s) of discussed people. They have more power and often more authority over people so it's easier for them to convince people to adopt specific methods. Having the same background, e.g. a development manager who was once a developer, also plays its role here.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, I'm not sure you set the right goal. Personally I wouldn't try to minimize differences between people's skill sets. Actually vast majority of teams can leverage skills which are completely different. I would rather look for methods to help people to excel in their areas of competency than look for get everyone on average level with everything they do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-07-13T07:24:34.860" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2829" CreationDate="2011-07-13T07:47:55.873" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Politely ask him to write, not talk&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-07-13T07:47:55.873" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2833" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-13T09:21:36.323" Score="1" ViewCount="3284" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been looking to get myself certified for Prince2. I already have a PMP, but was wondering if I should do Six Sigma or Prince2. A friend of mine recommended this company called &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.firebrandtraining.co.uk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Firebrand Training&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, who claim that they certify you in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.firebrandtraining.co.uk/courses/management/prince2.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Prince2&lt;/a&gt; in just 3 days! What do you reckon? Too good to be true? Will it be a &quot;brain dump&quot; or can it be done? They do guarantee that we pass the exam, but I just wanted someone else's opinion if they've been on a course with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks,&#xA;Gary&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1693" LastEditorUserId="2618" LastEditDate="2012-01-29T15:00:47.833" LastActivityDate="2016-08-19T07:16:53.123" Title="Prince2 course in 3 days?" Tags="&lt;certification&gt;&lt;prince2&gt;&lt;6-sigma&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2016-08-21T02:26:00.970" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2827" CreationDate="2011-07-13T10:19:03.353" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Training and practice with a good feedback loop can grow competencies to some degree.  Each of us presents with varying limitations, motivations, and personalities so results can vary to no growth to a lot of growth in some or more areas.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But like Pawel, I question why you want to do this.  All projects should have some training aspect to it, but I think a PM smartly limits its scope to training only those things necessary to do THAT project at THAT time, e.g., project's methods, processes and procedures, not a general growth in a person's skill set.  They would get that as collateral damage, but that should not be a PM's goal.  An operations manager would have that goal, but a PM is dealing with constrained resources, including time.  It is a make or buy decision and, for projects, I think in most cases you buy it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your team comes with varying strengths and weaknesses.  You would get more bang for your buck by simply aligning your work with the strengths of your team, allowing one team member to make up for a weakness of another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-07-13T10:19:03.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2835" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-13T11:16:05.933" Score="0" ViewCount="4466" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering how many different Project Management schools of thought exist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it specific to the type of project you manage, to region, country etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where could I find some resources about it, advantages/disadvantages, when use one style when the other, this kind of stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1695" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-11-18T02:19:01.870" LastActivityDate="2012-11-18T02:19:01.870" Title="Project Management &quot;Schools of thought&quot;" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;skills&gt;&lt;culture&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-11-18T17:56:04.743" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2833" CreationDate="2011-07-13T13:28:11.730" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Anything that guarantees you certification in an area where you have no experience in only 3-5 days can only be a &quot;brain dump&quot;. They'll teach you 'to the test' and the tricks to pass, but it's highly doubtful that you will remember much afterwards, nor be able to properly function in that arena. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know Firebrand, but since you have your PMP - did you do a &quot;boot camp&quot;? If so, how did it go, and how much did you retain? If not, why not? That should answer your questions about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-07-13T13:28:11.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2835" CreationDate="2011-07-13T13:32:22.710" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There as many schools of thought as there are PM's. Each one of us has a slightly different take on things, each one thinks a different aspect is 'most important', each one sees the role a little different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think trying to find information is going to be dependent on your particular interests. If you're interested in Agile, then start by focusing on books, forums, etc. that are Agile focused. If it's just PM in general, then dive in to it all; LinkedIn groups, pmStudent, books, podcasts, Gantthead, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a wealth of information out there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-07-13T13:32:22.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2827" CreationDate="2011-07-13T15:35:15.260" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Find out what people are good at - the areas in which they are strong, rather than weak or merely average. Then encourage them to grow their strengths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will help them to know that you value their skill, rather than their weaknesses, and will make them feel safe. Safety helps learning!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because they will be growing their strongest skills, others will get to see those skills in action too - so even weaker team members get stronger as a result. Weaker team members will have role-models for those skills, and will be able to act as role-models in the skills in which they are good, so confidence will grow too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than minimising the difference in skills, I would focus on maximising the overall skill of the team - which means using the strongest skills appropriately, and letting those strong people share their skills. Encourage teaching and mentoring (especially novice/expert pair-programming if you're in software). Allow the team to admit their weaknesses and use other team members to cover them. For instance, I am awful at estimating. Rather than being better at estimating, I would ask others how long it would take. Their better estimating skills make up for mine, and allow me to be free to do things I am better at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one project, we put up a list of skills and areas of code, languages, etc. and allowed people to write in other team members' names if they thought they were good, so that everyone knew who they could learn from if they needed help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also has the side-effect of letting the team bond and self-organise. Bonus!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you would like to read more, I wrote about &lt;a href=&quot;http://lizkeogh.com/2009/08/13/building-experts-using-the-dreyfus-model/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;building experts with the Dreyfus model&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-07-13T15:35:15.260" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2833" CreationDate="2011-07-13T17:48:31.960" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 3 day period is typical of what I've seen for PRINCE2 Foundation training. Most providers guarantee a pass for this, though many in the fine print are clear it may take more than one try. The Practitioner certification (which is really the one that counts IMHO) usually takes another couple of days. Pass rate for this I think is similar to that for PMP, i.e. about 70-80% of candidates will typically pass. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did my PRINCE2 prior to getting my PMP. My training was online through Advantage Learning (www.advantagelearning.co.uk), which worked well with my schedule and was about one third the price of in-class training. There are any number of providers for this. My overall effort was probably about 60 hours over three months, the vast majority of that running through practice exams. But I passed first time on both exams so I figure an ounce of prevention was worth a pound of cure....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have PMP you should do fine, though some of the nomenclature is different so you may have to unlearn a couple of things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2011-07-13T17:48:31.960" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2829" CreationDate="2011-07-13T18:42:02.413" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see a few options open:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find a different point of contact - tell the person that you need 'a lot' of one-on-one business time and obviously this person is not available due to their hectic schedule etc.  Offer a few names from the company that you feel has the knowledge and focus.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Timing - time your meetings prior to lunch, reinforce that you need the info prior to lunch and you can chit-chat at lunch time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Charge them - your time costs, pass it on, if not with the current project (fixed costs?) than with the next one.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="458" LastActivityDate="2011-07-13T18:42:02.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2835" CreationDate="2011-07-13T18:54:44.383" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are as many 'schools of thought' as there are project managers but two 'schools' are the foundation for how most project managers work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thinking that you know (nearly) all the scope beforehand, i.e. Waterfall&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thinking that you know little to no scope beforehand, i.e. Agile&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's two supporting links describing variations and context:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brighthub.com/office/project-management/articles/67087.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.brighthub.com/office/project-management/articles/67087.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize some of the key characteristics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Waterfall assumes that the project is operating in a well-defined or regulated domain (think government, accounting, software ports, or large enhancements to an existing system). It places an emphasis on defining a lot of requirements and design decisions upfront, and basically executing the work until completion. Any new requirements or scope generally will wait until the originally designated scope is complete, and then a new project is initiated to address new requirements. Documentation and pre-determination are highly valued.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agile assumes that the project is in a new space or domain that doesn't have well-prescribed rules. The PMBOK likes the term &quot;rolling wave&quot; to basically say that there's stuff you know ahead of time, and plenty of stuff you don't. As you do work to investigate the stuff you don't know, that becomes part of the stuff you do know. Then, frameworks like Scrum will designate a role to prioritize and manage that stuff into bundles of work in order to deliver functioning products/services continuously instead of in a big bang. Team dynamics and incremental delivery are highly valued.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advantages and disadvantages really reside with the stakeholders; that is, do you have folks who are willing to effectively write you a Time and Materials contract (go for Agile), or do they insist on a Fixed Price contract (go for Waterfall)? Whichever way your stakeholders are willing to go will dictate which 'school' you ought to follow. At the end of the day, project management is really about managing changes to the project's journey, and delivering something at the end. The 'school' you follow provides nothing more than templates to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="458" LastEditorUserId="1489" LastEditDate="2011-07-18T18:57:22.157" LastActivityDate="2011-07-18T18:57:22.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2820" CreationDate="2011-07-13T21:45:55.000" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the others in that MS Project is not best for agile project management. You should use a tool like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pivotaltracker.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pivotal Tracker&lt;/a&gt;, which is built online strictly for agile project development.  Many startups and tech companies use them, and they were built by the agile development team, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pivotallabs.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pivotal Labs&lt;/a&gt;, to handle such projects so they know best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1683" LastActivityDate="2011-07-13T21:45:55.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2820" CreationDate="2011-07-14T02:52:58.900" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have to use MS Project (we have to), then I believe it is possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What aspect of MS Project is not working anymore?  I could probably help more if I knew that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe you can do an Agile project in MS Project, because once an iteration is started, the stories or tasks should be fixed (or at least that's what Scrum says).  You could track either at the story or task level.  It really depends on which Agile methodology you're following - stories are an XP terminology.  But since teams are supposed to be self-directed, MS Project does make that awkward - even with MS Project Server - so the project file would serve more of a reflection of an in-person process rather than the tool to accomplish the job itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="933" LastActivityDate="2011-07-14T02:52:58.900" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1125" CreationDate="2011-07-14T09:23:31.900" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interesting Question...Thanks for asking it...&#xA;Delivering bad news needs tricky communication skills...No one likes bad news..&#xA;When you deliver a message that starts with &quot;We have a Problem...&quot; raises panic button to some person...of course there are other people who prefers direct communication...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where as if you start your sentence with &quot;We have a situation here...&quot; that gives the other person to understand the situation first and then you can tell the impact of situation...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To deliver any news that can impact the project or business you can communicate the mesage in three parts:&#xA; 1. Explain the situation what has happened.&#xA; 2. Explain how you feel about the situation and what you want the situation to be.&#xA; 3. How the situation will affect the Project Sponsor and Business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I created an detailed article based on this question:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmsutra.com/2011/07/deliver-bad-news-project-sponsor/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Deliver bad news to Project Sponsor&quot;&gt;How to deliver bad news to Project Sponsor&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1705" LastActivityDate="2011-07-14T09:23:31.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2846" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-14T09:39:46.790" Score="1" ViewCount="62" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have lots of reusable component [software] in our organization. I have a task to explain/define/elaborate in them a document [probably, a reusable component document]. But I am unable to get such kind of document on Internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone of you have a document in which I can document reusable component [technically/functionally]?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1198" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-16T15:01:24.153" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T15:01:24.153" Title="Document for component manangement" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2846" CreationDate="2011-07-14T13:11:10.190" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't mention the language, but many have tools like Java's Javadoc.   Some of these are stand-alone and relatively language agnostic. This allows the documentation to be placed in the code where it has a better chance of being up to date.  Automated tools then scan the source code and generate output (usually web pages) that can be read by developers and others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2011-07-14T13:11:10.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2469" CreationDate="2011-07-14T16:25:22.547" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My basic instinct has always been to go in light and be open to change - from programming to project management (basis for agile approaches).  Get the communications and planning tools in place that are easily used and cheap, integrate only those tools when and if the integration will provide true value NOW.  Specific to your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;mixing vs. purpose built? - mix them and only invest in purpose built as a last resort (let others pay the cost of better tools)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;risk redundancy? redundant for you or your team?  set a standard, but don't enforce it on everyone unless you can ensure they are not losing productivity &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;loose integration - absolutely, just like programming, don't over complicate the tools, the focus is on the project, not on the tools to manage it  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="458" LastActivityDate="2011-07-14T16:25:22.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2849" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-14T18:32:48.100" Score="7" ViewCount="309" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a student assistant, who only works 10 hours a weak, mostly from home. She only comes to my office when there is something we need to discuss. Her contract specify the amount of work hours, and we track it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When she was here last time, she got a message. Her grandmother lay in dying. She was so distressed, I just sent her home to call her family. The next day, she sent me an e-mail. She had flown to her family, and wouldn't come back before the end of the week. As she has exams the next two weeks, she won't be able to work before the 26. this month. She promised to eliminate the resulting hour debt next month. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What she probably forgot is that I am going on vacation and after that on conference, starting on the 29, and will be away for a whole month. So not only will it be hard for her to work enough next month as she would soon hit a point where she won't be able to proceed without me, we'd need to meet before I go, so I can give her as much work as possible to work on. I understand her decision and feel for her loss, but I still have to communicate with her now in order to arrange a meeting for this short time window between the 26. and 29. I can't leave it out and expect that she will just come to my office when she is back, because this is not how we work. And I find it very hard to do write it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, it has to be an e-mail. With her away, I have no other means to contact her. This is already unpleasantly impersonal. But second, it just feels awful. She is home, waiting for her grandmother's death or maybe already mourning, and probably feeling guilty for abruptly leaving her work and collecting a debt in work hours, and then comes an e-mail from me arranging a meeting. I just don't know how to write it without appearing cold-hearted. Any ideas what I could do to avoid it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And third, I don't even know what social conventions to follow. Of course, I would want to include some supportive words to show her that I care and understand. If she had had a message about the grandmother's death, I could have sent her my condolences. But this would probably be terrible if the old lady is still alive, in a critical condition. On the other hand, a wish for speedy recovery also sounds terribly mocking. I can't find a way to formulate it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am very inexperienced in such a situation. Not only is this the first time I am managing somebody, I have also never lived through a death within my closer relations, and neither have I been part of a team with a co-worker losing a relative. How should I handle the situation now? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1150" LastEditorUserId="106" LastEditDate="2011-07-14T19:06:00.490" LastActivityDate="2011-07-14T22:14:19.980" Title="How to communicate about work with a team member living through a family tragedy?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2829" CreationDate="2011-07-14T18:53:05.537" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have some great answers, here. I have a couple of tips I developed when working with someone who was more interested in talking about the next idea than making decisions on the current project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make a point form list of what you need to get before you leave the meeting and try not to have more than 5 objectives&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;listen to them talk - they need to do this because it's their communication style. And, yes if it's an external client they are charged for your time no matter what they do with it. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;use phrases to focus them back on the topic. &quot;That's sounds really cool. maybe we can look into it when .... Now, about this decision.&quot; or &quot;I'd love to hear more about that, why don't we get through this list and then we can get back to it.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Always remember you don't want to turn the meeting into a struggle for control. This is your client, they are paying for your service and you want more work from them. But, you have to get what you need from the meeting. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-07-14T18:53:05.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2849" CreationDate="2011-07-14T19:03:17.647" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start with &quot;I'm sorry that you are going through this right now. It must be very difficult for you and my thoughts are with you&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to be a human being about it first. As someone who lost her father a few months ago, I can assure you that any expression of sympathy is welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Then put it in terms of her point of view&lt;/strong&gt;. E.G. Please take the time you need, but let's try to connect before I go on vacation (add the date because she's probably forgotten) so you have something to do while I'm gone. Let me know if it will work better by email or give me at time when we can talk on the phone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you are waiting for a response, draft up an email with the instructions and put it aside. You will need to send it to her even if you talk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, be available when you are away in case she has questions. Either set up a call time in the evening, or a time when you will read and respond to emails. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's very likely she wants to do a good job for you while she's there for her family. Make it easy for her to do that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perry &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="131" LastActivityDate="2011-07-14T19:03:17.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2849" CreationDate="2011-07-14T19:05:06.107" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Each and every single one of us will experience a death in the family while our work demands continue.  Although a student assistant, she still has obligations and responsibilities that she must meet no matter the life stressor with which she is dealing.  She has a responsibility of setting things up so work can continue while she is absent and you have the responsibility of helping her do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be compassionate, empathetic, kind, and flexible and tell her what has to get done and when.  But be flexible enough so she can work it out as smoothly as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a manager, you have an obligation to keep things going while balancing the very human needs of your team.  Sometimes, your alternatives simply feel awful.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-07-14T19:05:06.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2849" CreationDate="2011-07-14T22:11:01.900" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe it's a matter of find the balance between the commitment with her duties and her relationship with Family + study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I totally agree with @PerryWilson, &lt;em&gt;be human&lt;/em&gt;. Do not pretend to be someone you aren't, a best friend or a cold hearted. Be sincere and supportive, offer all the assistance she needs, but once the situation is over, remember to keep professional. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the fact that &lt;em&gt;she's a student, working 10h / week, most from home&lt;/em&gt;, I assume that she's not delivering a highly critic/risky/heavy new tool to keep airplanes landing safety... so, the deadlines may accept a delay of a couple of weeks (for valid reasons).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, you also mentioned she has two weeks of exams. I believe that here lies the window for discussion. Ok, she's taking some days with her grandmother, you fully accept - and make clear, you support - it. There's nothing worse than someone asking for a 'missing signature in someone's document' when you're thinking on your family tragedies. Let her take her time, that extremely important. It would be a relief to her hear that &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; want her to be there because you know how &lt;em&gt;important&lt;/em&gt; it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there's still a contract in place, and if you were already prepared for having her off during this two exam weeks, she could find some margin here. It needs to be reviewed once the situation with her grandmother is ended, not before, not during. At least some hours for some calls to prepare and define her steps once you're off on vacations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, you need to evaluate her emotional situation. Is useless to try to make commitments with her is her mind is far away on her other issues. As @DavidEspina stated, eventually everyone will face this scenario. It's a matter of maturity defining how (and when) to get over it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;bottomline:&lt;/strong&gt; Give her her time to be with her grandmother. Doesn't matter what you do now, her mind will be there. Once the tragedy is over, professionally discuss about how to overcome the open gaps, even that she needs to take some time from her exam's week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You did your part supporting her with her problem. She might understand it and help you back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2011-07-14T22:11:01.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2849" CreationDate="2011-07-14T22:14:19.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should leave her alone and find an alternative way to get the work done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like she is a young person who has never experienced a loss like this.  She is likely still a granddaughter/daughter first, student next then somewhere down the line, a student assistant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give her space and see things through the eyes of her priorities.  It will set a precedence for her perceptions on managers and the larger world, in general, for her entire life&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a project management angle, this is a risk for which you need to have a risk response. It is not her fault that there isn't a contingency plan in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-07-14T22:14:19.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2855" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-15T07:00:13.970" Score="4" ViewCount="5063" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some backdrop about my team, just so that you can make your answers relevant -&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;We are a &lt;code&gt;Web Application&lt;/code&gt; development team, with Team strength being &lt;code&gt;5 members&lt;/code&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are 10 simple things we can do to improve our process ?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These &quot;things&quot; could be tools , these could be basic fundamentals that a newbie project lead does wrong, could be observations you have made through all your years of experience etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1708" LastActivityDate="2011-07-20T06:55:24.003" Title="10 things that I can do to improve my Team and our Process" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;process&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2855" CreationDate="2011-07-15T11:22:21.443" Score="6" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define your processes.  Organizations, projects, and teams with weak capabilities usually begin with a lack of definition.  Define where a process begins, ends, inputs, outputs, the rules that govern it, where to find which piece of information about the process and in the process, roles including quantity and required skills, and tools.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Document #1.  Writing it down makes it real, enables everyone to know and understand it, and serves as intellectual capital.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;While doing #1 and #2, look for redundant processes, steps within a process that seem wasteful, similar outputs produced by two different processes that could be combined, and outputs no one is using anymore.  Update #1 and #2 accordingly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define roles.  Organizations, projects, and teams with weak capabilities often times have ill defined roles -- lack of boundaries, lack of accountability and properly placed authority.  A good structure to help define the role is BART: boundary, accountability, responsibility, and task.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Document #4.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a high performing team.  This is a process and takes time.  All new teams, no matter the brilliance of the individuals, are low performing, immature, and dysfunctional.  It takes time with active interventions to build a cohesive team and a sense of collective success/failure.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assess the skills and strengths of the individuals on the team.  Based on people's strengths, align them to the roles you defined in #4 to the degree possible.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;While the ultimate goal was likely given to you, let the team develop its own objectives and way to get there, keeping in mind #6.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Celebrate successes early and often.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Repeat steps 1 through 9.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2011-07-15T11:27:52.470" LastActivityDate="2011-07-15T11:27:52.470" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2855" CreationDate="2011-07-15T12:11:42.223" Score="4" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communicate with your team - get away from your computers, go outside and talk about issues, risks, what needs to be done today to meet the schedule down the road&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communicate with your client - find out what is happening in their business that could affect the project, their careers that could affect yours and keep setting those expectations of what will be delivered and when&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communicate with 3rd party vendors - ensure that those groups supporting your efforts are up to date with any changes and ready to support you as needed - this includes employment and consulting agencies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Establish your near future plan - what needs to be done today and this week&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Establish your long term objectives/goals - what you driving towards and what are the big steps to get you and your team there&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a Risk list - what could potentially happen, what could be the impact and at what point in the project is the risk most likely to occur? and how will you handle it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a beer at the end of every milestone and ensure the team is properly recognized and rewarded&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Social Bonding - Create social glue early on to help your team handle the tough situations at work. Have various outings and other activities that are entirely non work related to help your team communicate, enjoy each others' company, and allow for healthy conflict.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;9 and 10 - buffer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="458" LastEditorUserId="1442" LastEditDate="2011-07-20T06:55:24.003" LastActivityDate="2011-07-20T06:55:24.003" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2858" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2859" CreationDate="2011-07-15T07:46:47.317" Score="13" ViewCount="2907" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are in the process of preparing a skill matrix for a relatively young IT organization. We have been going through some templates and still do not feel comfortable with what we have found. Basically, the idea is to have something less cumbersome to maintain and to cover all levels of the organization ( TechLead , Senior Software Engineers , Software Engineers so on). Does anyone have any innovative ideas to share in this regard ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1721" OwnerDisplayName="Bumble Bee" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T03:45:33.047" LastActivityDate="2019-05-14T09:17:23.790" Title="Ideas for a Skills Matrix" Tags="&lt;skills&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ClosedDate="2019-05-14T13:02:25.860" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2858" CreationDate="2011-07-15T08:06:03.793" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you seen the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indiangeek.net/wp-content/uploads/Programmer%20competency%20matrix.htm&quot;&gt;programmer competancy matrix&lt;/a&gt;? Maybe it'll prove useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1713" OwnerDisplayName="karunesh" LastActivityDate="2011-07-15T08:06:03.793" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2820" CreationDate="2011-07-15T23:49:16.960" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are so many issues with this question I am not sure where to begin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First i will try to answer your question about MS Project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project is a great tool but it was not designed for daily reporting, it is a long term planning tool.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Day to day reporting in an Agile project is accomplished with the Burndown Chart and Task Wall. At best project can be used to report weekly but that is generally not worth the effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you still feel that Project is the only way to go depending on your Development environment there are tools that will create or update a project file with current status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is an agile project, it has a short (2-4 week) duration.  At the beginning of the iteration the Team &quot;accepts&quot; a number of stories and commits to complete them within the designated iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are having new stories (or tasks not related to committed stories) coming into an iteration you have a much bigger issue that MS Project not working.  If this is the case the team needs to determine to &quot;blow&quot; the sprint up and start over with the reprioritized backlog or get agreement from product owner and stakeholders that to accept this new work in something will have to move out, and it is very seldom an even trade.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, if the PO wants to bring a 3 point story in, there will be a cost.  Due to the overhead and disruption this causes during an integration it will probably cost 5 points to get the three point story in the current sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish you luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1711" LastActivityDate="2011-07-15T23:49:16.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2858" CreationDate="2011-07-16T10:44:56.770" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I certainly see no need to try to reinvent the wheel. If the programmer competency matrix (as suggested in the answer from karunesh)is not a good fit, what about SFIA - Skills Framework for the Information Age - see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfia.org.uk/&quot;&gt;http://www.sfia.org.uk/&lt;/a&gt; which can be taken further in the shape of SFIA Plus - see also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bcs.org/category/7852&quot;&gt;http://www.bcs.org/category/7852&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-07-16T10:44:56.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2793" CreationDate="2011-07-17T20:06:31.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One area to consider is the design of your product. You may wish to use a technical architect to advise on how to make the product as open to future development as possible, both in terms of the code being developed and the design of any underpinning data structures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also maintain market awareness of what your competitor products are doing, if you can, and prioritising your developments accordingly. Keep flexible: if a new idea brings more value than something that you are working on, then &lt;strong&gt;consider&lt;/strong&gt; putting current developments on hold to let you progress the new bits (but beware of chasing every new idea and never implementing anything!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although you are the project manager, you should not be expected to be the only person managing the flow of ideas. You will presumably have access to the rest of the company, and your sales and marketing people will be key stakeholder groups. Use them to help you to keep aware of what is important and what will give them a cutting edge. Get them into your project as formal members of the team!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-07-17T20:06:31.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2675" CreationDate="2011-07-18T05:53:39.887" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a link on how to make timelines and gantt charts w/ excel templates: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/excel-project-management-tracking-templates/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/excel-project-management-tracking-templates/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1720" LastActivityDate="2011-07-18T05:53:39.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1125" CreationDate="2011-07-18T08:30:24.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When problems arise, people care about two things:&#xA;1) how bad it is, i.e. what is the IMPACT on the project?&#xA;2) what you are doing about it, i.e. what is the SOLUTION?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when communicating bad news, be crystal clear about what it means and what options you have identified to resolve the situation. Project sponsors typically don't have a lot of time and don't appreciate being thrown a problem with no solution in sight. By articulating clearly what the problem means for the project (and the sponsor) and presenting  solutions, you give confidence to your sponsor that things can be resolved, you show them that you are proactive and can be trusted, and this is a very effective basis for getting them to actually help you (for example if you need them to make a decision or to exercise their influence to get things going).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of conveying the message, I think that especially in situations where the impact is high, face-to-face communications work best. When you talk to your sponsor, also remember to validate with him/her how the bad news (and the way forward!) should be communicated to the wider project stakeholders' audience (in some cases the message may need to come from the sponsor for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastEditorUserId="1722" LastEditDate="2011-07-25T18:48:25.680" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T18:48:25.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1125" CreationDate="2011-07-18T20:23:48.357" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with angeline.  Always deliver in person - please don't follow the email suggestion.  Yes it may give them time to think it over - or stew to their boiling point!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deliver the message clearly and concisely, accept responsibility, offer alternatives, and state your recommendation for moving forward.  It leaves the sponsor with the ability to make a decision - even if it is to accept your recommendation - so you have buy-in and support going forward.  Offering alternatives and a recommendation tells the sponsor that you have done your homework and are being proactive.  Delivering in person builds trust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach goes back to Harold Kerzner's first Edition of his text book, considered the bible in many circles!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1724" LastActivityDate="2011-07-18T20:23:48.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2867" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-18T21:04:33.187" Score="3" ViewCount="491" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for a start-up software company transitioning to Scrum.  We don't have dedicated positions yet, so I'm wondering what kind of repercussions (negative and positive) could come about if one person played the role of QA lead and product owner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1413" LastActivityDate="2011-07-19T20:34:44.397" Title="What are the repercussions for one person being the QA lead and product owner?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2867" CreationDate="2011-07-19T00:15:24.513" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Product Owner my role is to be forward thinking and prioritize the Product backlog so that the development team is always working on the most important issues and have enough detail about what is comming down the pipe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally the PO is someone from the Marketing Department, the visionary that knows what the product needs to do and when it needs to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a QA lead, my role is to focus on the current iteration and engage with the development team as early as possible to facilitate that the code will be testable and that the test that can be automated are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there is not a direct conflict of interest they are both full time jobs that would be difficult to do by one person.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;depending on the size of your company, you did say start up, it might be practical to gather your stakeholders (the people generating the stories, Marketing, Biz Dev, Sustainment) and have a product owners group.  I have seen this work, but there is one very important caviate, someone needs to have ultimate authority as to what is the most important issue.  That can be a rotating position made up of the stakeholders or someone they all report to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1711" LastActivityDate="2011-07-19T00:15:24.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2067" CreationDate="2011-07-19T02:02:10.590" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good to see LiquidPlanner in your list, I think it should be able to meet all of your needs re: permissions &amp;amp; privacy, and also give you an excellent task management &amp;amp; collaboration solution at the same time. LiquidPlanner just launched version 3.0 so I definitely recommend checking it out.&#xA;(www.liquidplanner.com)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="184" LastActivityDate="2011-07-19T02:02:10.590" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-07-19T02:02:10.590" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2855" CreationDate="2011-07-19T16:42:27.043" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest you do &lt;strong&gt;1&lt;/strong&gt; thing :): get your team together so &lt;strong&gt;you, as a team,&lt;/strong&gt; define what you need to do better. Ultimately you are the ones responsible for your own success and the ones who have the ability to drive to it. It's hard to give you 10 things without knowing what you do and how (well) you do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To do this I'd suggest you get your team together for a brainstorming/working session (if you can do it off-site it's great because you get away from &quot;operational&quot; distractions) - do some preparation so there is a structure to the session and set clear objectives on what you want out of it so there is an output you can work with afterwards. I'd suggest the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define the value of your process to the business (define your process by breaking it down in key areas and qualify the value each brings to the organization).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Map people to roles and responsibilities throughout your process (i.e. show who's bringing value where and how your team is organized to deliver).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis on your process and team. When doing so, try to look at it also from your customers perspective (if you can get feedback from them it's even better).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By doing the above you will be able to identify areas where you are good and those where you could/need to make improvements (for example: a part of the process where you feel you are weak as a team, a part of the process that is redundant or not clearly useful, some overlapping roles in your team, unclear responsibilities, etc.). Then make sure you take it forward: pick a couple of priority areas (you don't have to do it all at once) and agree as a team to work on it. Make continuous improvement a habit of your team management (for example you could have a monthly session to follow-up and identify new things to improve). By adopting this approach as a team you empower people to drive their own improvements and it's far more motivating for them if they take an active part in defining them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastEditorUserId="1722" LastEditDate="2011-07-19T19:40:28.357" LastActivityDate="2011-07-19T19:40:28.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2871" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2875" CreationDate="2011-07-19T20:06:26.783" Score="2" ViewCount="3689" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a situation where I can have multiple tasks run in parallel but I am short on resources.  So let's say I have only two people who can do work on a project. How can I set tasks so dates do not overlap if I use the same resource? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way project can link these dependent tasks based on the resource assigned to the tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a nut shell, if I have 10 tasks that take a day each and I have the two people able to do those tasks I want to have a chain of tasks that person A is working strung together with dependencies because some tasks will have to wait for others to be finished, since they all rely on the same resource to complete them all. As a result I should have two chains of five tasks in each person's chain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I don't want to set these dependencies manually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1009" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-07-20T06:57:09.480" LastActivityDate="2011-07-20T17:34:45.697" Title="How to balance tasks in Project based on resources?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="330" CreationDate="2011-07-19T20:16:13.793" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am having a hard time imagining why you would not want to do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am going to assume that you are using some form of Agile development, maybe I am wrong and if so sorry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bugs or defects exist only outside of an iteration, meaning any issue discovered within an iteration is corrected or it is discussed with the sponsor and he/she agrees that it ok to ship or not.  If not then the story is not shipped and it is reprioritized for possible acceptace in the next iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without complete visibility into the defects, how does the sponsor make informed decisions on the priority of issues in the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1711" LastActivityDate="2011-07-19T20:16:13.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2867" CreationDate="2011-07-19T20:34:44.397" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there could be a conflict of interest: As Product Owner you would be focusing of development and implementation, and may wish to cut corners to get new features of the product delivered. On the other hand, in the QA role you may find that you need to stop the development, or at least slow it down to allow quality issues to be resolved. Unless you are very good at segmenting your mind, you will compromise one or other of the roles - or possibly even both if you end up trying to avoid any internal conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would take a different tack. One person should take on the Product Owner role, and another person could pick up the QA role. It may be possible to combine these roles with some other suitable roles within the company where there is less conflict of interest. Even if this means providing some extra training for a couple of people, I reckon it would pay dividends, and in a start-up, I would hope that the people involved would be prepared to expand their horizons to take on new skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-07-19T20:34:44.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2765" CreationDate="2011-07-19T22:17:54.593" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two reasons I like points over hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hours have an implied precision and  tend to be looked at as 100% accurate, all humans understand what an hour is so if you say 10 hours it must be ten hours.  To compensate for this the person estimating will build in some &quot;extra time&quot; to compensate for the unknowns.  It is just human nature they don’t want to be held accountable for an estimate when they didn’t have all the data needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with this is the larger the task/story the greater the complexity and the more time it would take to develop a truly accurate estimate.  At some point it is just not worth the effort.  Especially when you are looking at work that will not be done for several months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Points on the other hand have an “acceptable” implied imprecision since they are relative only to each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By using the Fibonacci series: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 etc. the team is able to compensate for both the complexity of a project and the expected effort.  As the numbers get larger the fuzziness of the estimate is built in.  Time is not wasted trying to determine if it is a 9 or 10 or 11, if it is larger than what the team calls an 8 and smaller than what the team calls a 20 then it is a 13.  As the story gets closer to being accepted into an iteration it is further broken down and refined and the accuracy of the estimate improves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By using this method the near term work can be estimated with a high degree of confidence, the further out you go on the schedule the confidence drops, but the team still has a good idea of the effort involved without spending an inordinate amount of time breaking down a story that may never be done due to changing priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;jeff&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1711" LastEditorUserId="1711" LastEditDate="2020-03-17T22:11:11.917" LastActivityDate="2020-03-17T22:11:11.917" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2871" CreationDate="2011-07-20T01:07:56.717" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the specifics depends on the tool on which you working.  Generally, however, this is a leveling exercise using a fixed resource or fixed utilization constraint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the tool, set your work packages to &quot;fixed utilization&quot; rather than fixed work or fixed duration.  Set all work packages to &quot;start as soon as possible.&quot;  Link all work packages together in the predecessor/successor logic that makes sense, i.e., finish-start, start-start, finish-finish.  There is not tool smart enough to be able to automatically establish your hard and soft horizontal and vertical logic of your network diagram.  You will have to do much of the sequencing of work manually, allowing the tool to fine tune based on the fixed resource constraint.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leave no work package as an orphan; all packages need to be linked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Load your resources and assign the appropriate utilization level, e.g., 100%, 50%, whatever.  Assign your resource(s) to the package.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Allow your tool to level the schedule and examine the results.  The tool should alert you if it was unable to reconcile a conflict, meaning it scheduled but it may leave a resource over utilized.  You will have to manually adjust that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since it is fixed utilization, the tool will adjust work and duration to keep all resources at no greater than the assigned utilization factor, except if it was unable to resolve a conflict.  The results, however, may be clugy since the tool is only so smart.  Likely, you will have to manually adjust.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would strongly advise, however, not to chase a perfect schedule with no over utilized resources.  The second you press start and begin loading actuals, everything changes anyway.  So getting close enough is good enough for a PMB.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2011-07-20T17:34:45.697" LastActivityDate="2011-07-20T17:34:45.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2187" CreationDate="2011-07-20T03:14:19.087" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pivotaltracker.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pivotal Tracker&lt;/a&gt;. The open source version of the project is free to use and hosted on their site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decent Project tracking - Great UI, burn down charts, iterations, and icebox ready out of box&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum oriented UI - Check&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Open Source (or useful as Free version) - Check&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SVN integration - not sure about this one. I know there is a git integration and their are callback URLs as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Liftable on a win based server - well, you wouldn't have to host it, so this might work out for you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bugtrackers and Project Trackers aren't the same, Project Trackers could contain a Bugtracker - has bug tracking capabilities as they're handled in SCRUM, make a new task for them and associate them with previously created stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1442" LastActivityDate="2011-07-20T03:14:19.087" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2878" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2882" CreationDate="2011-07-20T07:08:16.523" Score="10" ViewCount="6520" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a small company working on a software projects - mainly medium-sized integration project for big clients from financial industry. There is a PM, a few developers, a couple of quality engineers, a system administrator, but they're looking for business analyst (BA) to hire. There's no one in the company working in that role at the moment and PM was given the task to run recruitment process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should be checked during interview with a candidate for business analyst role? I want to focus specifically on core BA's competencies. I assume the PM knows how to verify general soft skills on satisfactory level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2018-11-23T08:16:46.527" Title="Interviewing business analyst" Tags="&lt;interview&gt;&lt;business-analyst&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2878" CreationDate="2011-07-20T07:48:36.427" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am sure the reasons of hiring BA would describe her competences the best, nevertheless I can generalize a little.&#xA;BA's common competences are probably:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;identification of requirements&lt;/strong&gt; (stakeholder's, customer's, business strategy, functional, quality)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;translation of the requirements to the IT specialists&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;business value evaluation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above competences in terms of skills and attributes means:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;open minded&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;analytical thinking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;customer-centered thinking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ability to describe use cases / user stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;mediation skills&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It leaves us with business area skills unevaluated (if PM does not have the appropriate competences or does not want to examine it)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastEditorUserId="927" LastEditDate="2011-07-20T08:01:48.497" LastActivityDate="2011-07-20T08:01:48.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2878" CreationDate="2011-07-20T10:35:58.000" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Business Analysts are a vital link between technical team members and business representatives. They are the ones who need to define and articulate the business requirements, identify needs for improvements and translate that into functionality required in an application. I'd suggest you check for the following competencies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;knowledge and experience of business &amp;amp; process analysis techniques and tools (process mapping, process definition, gap analysis, process improvements definition).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;knowledge and experience of business processes specific to the financial industry: it's important to get someone who is familiar with how things work in your industry and is fluent with the language and terminology.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;experience in business and functional requirements definition and analysis, including requirements prioritization techniques and change management.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;experience with information gathering and analysis including workshops facilitation with business subject matter experts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;communications skills: BAs act as the bridge between the developers and the users so they need to have very good communications skills; ability to translate business needs into functional terms, ability to explain technical aspects to non-technical stakeholders, ability to handle a wide range of stakeholders (from the highly technical app developer to the demanding busy business representative).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;experience with user/business acceptance testing (BAs are often heavily involved in facilitating/supporting this type of activity).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;technical skills; BAs don't need to be highly technical and know how to code but they should have a firm grasp of the technology from a functional/user perspective and understand technical speak (what tools do they know/use, level of proficiency, etc.).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;documentation skills and tools used.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastActivityDate="2011-07-20T10:35:58.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2878" CreationDate="2011-07-20T13:45:47.437" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the first point that needs to be clarified is the BA level. Regardless of the kind of projects that the company works on the BA role may vary according to the field or area that is going to cover. For instance, there at least four tiers of BAs;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Planning Strategically&lt;/strong&gt; – The analysis of the organization's strategic business needs &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Operating/Business Model Analysis&lt;/strong&gt; – The definition and analysis of the organization's policies and market business approaches&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Process Definition and Design&lt;/strong&gt; – The business process modeling (often developed through process modeling and design)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4. IT/Technical Business Analysis&lt;/strong&gt; – The interpretation of business rules and requirements for technical systems (generally IT)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, this range depends on the level of thinking about business analysis and would also on the organization's core business. However, given the scenario, I will assume that this Company is planning to hire an IT/Technical Business Analyst (#4).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The role of the BA is focused, primarily, on capturing business requirements in some form of requirements management tool, whether a simple spreadsheet or a complex application. At an interview level the candidate should highlight the following core competencies;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ability to produce &lt;strong&gt;concise&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;objective&lt;/strong&gt; specifications of business need (both functional and non-functional requirements) and to articulate them in a way which supports Board level decisions across business, technical and financial management interests prior to initiating a project to fully define and implement a solution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Strong &lt;strong&gt;communication skills&lt;/strong&gt;, including good verbal, interpersonal, and written communication capabilities at all business levels. I personally consider this particular skill as key for successful liaison among functions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Business acumen&lt;/strong&gt;. The BA must have a fair understanding of the &lt;strong&gt;core business&lt;/strong&gt; (industry, trends, etc) and &lt;strong&gt;product/s&lt;/strong&gt; (target customers, competitors, etc). Although I tent to believe that this is NOT a MUST HAVE (anything can be learnt) it is always preferable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Management&lt;/strong&gt; experience/understanding to fully understand and support projects adequately - I would recommend the candidate holds a relevant professional body qualification or accreditation (for example ITIL or Prince2) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Strong candidates should be able to provide the interviewer with examples where the above items are (successfully) covered in detailed to demonstrate their ability as Business Analysts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, for IT/Process Design projects, desirable candidates should have certain level of knowledge/experience on &lt;strong&gt;Process modelling&lt;/strong&gt; through the use of including Data Modelling tools and structured analytical techniques, e.g. &lt;strong&gt;UML&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2011-07-20T13:45:47.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2883" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2885" CreationDate="2011-07-20T21:13:28.330" Score="3" ViewCount="231" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have had to hire a large number of temporary resources as part of a project. These resources were provided by third party professional services organisations, and were required to work alongside my employer's technical staff. The only criteria for selecting the suppliers was cost, and this was not open to debate (this decision was taken before I was engaged on the project, and I was obliged to accept it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project has progressed reasonably well, despite a few wobbles along the way, and I am now starting to think about documenting some &quot;lessons learned&quot;. One area that I want to focus on is the criteria for selecting the suppliers of these external resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to focus in on the individuals who were taken on, but I do want to look at the decision making that led to the service companies being selected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be effective ways to select these companies apart from cost? - recognising that the cheapest may only be cheapest because they provide lower grade resources, or fail to provide effective back-up services when things go wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-16T15:14:31.463" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T15:14:31.463" Title="How to evaluate suppliers of resources?" Tags="&lt;learning&gt;&lt;resources&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2883" CreationDate="2011-07-21T00:42:15.583" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is a common assumption that a supplier's low price would mean lower competencies exhibited by their staff.  But that could be very misleading.  There are countless reasons a supplier may offer heavily discounted pricing but would have nothing to do with the level of competency of staff.  A loss leader comes to mind, if the supplier is trying to show off its other value propositions without price getting in the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If able, I would evaluate the health of the pool from which the supplier identifies its candidates.  Statistically, most candidates would be rather average.  I would think the variety of avenues the supplier uses may increase the likelihood of finding better than average resources, even if only slightly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would evaluate how the supplier filters its candidates and what type of indicators its uses to predict future success.  If their hiring mechanisms are no more sophisticated than interviews, that would be underwhelming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the job, I would evaluate the supplier's responsiveness: how fast can they place and how fast can they intervene for under-performers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not ding them for placing under-performers; that is going to happen no matter their best efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2011-07-21T12:19:39.523" LastActivityDate="2011-07-21T12:19:39.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2883" CreationDate="2011-07-21T08:10:16.530" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some criteria you can use in addition to the cost aspect (in bracket the type of evidence/information vendors should provide for you to evaluate):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;level of experience of resources in your industry&lt;/strong&gt; (number of years of experience, number of projects worked on, by resource and on average)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;level of technical skills and experience&lt;/strong&gt; (number of years of experience, number of resources formally trained, technical certifications, number of technical experts)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;vendor start-up/staffing capability&lt;/strong&gt; (how many skilled/experience resources they have available for your project fitting with your timeframe, commitment of resources to duration of project)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;level of responsiveness and support&lt;/strong&gt; (how vendor manages resources throughout the project, their ability to address performance and resourcing issues and replace resources quickly)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;vendor staff turnover&lt;/strong&gt; (number of years resources have worked for the vendor)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;cultural fit&lt;/strong&gt; with your organization (values displayed by your vendor)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;vendor resources location&lt;/strong&gt; (where resources are located: this is relevant if for example the vendor needs to secure visas or if resources need to travel extensively to/from your project as this could affect their time spent on project).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition you can ask vendors to provide you with the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;proposed resources CVs (ask in a format that suits you), at least for&#xA;key roles &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;for critical resources (ex. if the vendor provides a resource responsible for major deliverables, for example a project manager or a development lead) I'd recommend you ask to interview them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastActivityDate="2011-07-21T08:10:16.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="92" CreationDate="2011-07-21T18:58:47.167" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;While many new project managers understand the project goal, many fail to understand personal objectives of those on his/her team.  Some people call this understanding personalities; others call it managing politics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within a team, team members may have different personal objectives including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shipping a product &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learning a new technology &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a reasonable work schedule so they can spend time with family&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The new project manager's challenge is to meet the project objectives while making sure members are engaged, motivated, and putting their best effort.  The only way to do this is to make sure the team's personal objectives are being met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1740" LastActivityDate="2011-07-21T18:58:47.167" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-07-21T18:58:47.167" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2887" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-21T19:09:29.407" Score="3" ViewCount="219" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please include links to their blogs, books, or articles, if possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1740" LastActivityDate="2011-07-24T11:25:12.787" Title="Who are the top thought leaders in the project management space? Why?" Tags="&lt;untagged&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2011-07-28T03:23:59.150" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2888" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-21T19:18:41.213" Score="0" ViewCount="1011" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw this article from Mike Cohn on using Microsoft Excel to build a spreadsheet-based backlog:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.mountaingoatsoftware.com/a-sample-format-for-a-spreadsheet-based-product-backlog&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.mountaingoatsoftware.com/a-sample-format-for-a-spreadsheet-based-product-backlog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It got me thinking: what are other PM best practices using Microsoft Excel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1740" LastActivityDate="2011-08-09T07:07:40.533" Title="What are project management best practices using Microsoft Excel? Please include examples." Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2887" CreationDate="2011-07-21T19:22:41.527" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ones I know and like a lot:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1563273276&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;John Seddon, &quot;Freedom from Command and Control&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0321712471&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jurgen Appelo, &quot;Management 3.0&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They might not be &quot;top&quot;, but they're worth reading. Jurgen in particular introduces a lot of other concepts which are related to his style, so if you're looking to find out what you don't know you don't know, read his first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-07-21T19:22:41.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2890" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-21T19:28:12.847" Score="27" ViewCount="50208" Body="&lt;p&gt;In project management, what criteria makes an effective email status report, and how often should a status report be sent to be useful? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1740" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-12-29T08:01:37.570" LastActivityDate="2017-08-14T13:33:31.727" Title="What makes an effective email status report? Why?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;communication-management&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2890" CreationDate="2011-07-21T23:05:03.100" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The status report that we use consists of just 4 sections: completed tasks, in-progress tasks, planned tasks, and blocking issues. It's just a Word document that's emailed to the supervisor by close-of-business every Friday (or, if you are taking time off, before you leave on the last working day for the week) and then archived, although with the new archival software, some people have begun to move to writing the status report in the email. If there are any important issues, you can also include a &quot;notes&quot; section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the format, it's just a bulleted list, referencing an ID (everything has an ID, from defects to tasks to documents) and a few sentences about what we did regarding it. The overall length of the document should be about a page - if the supervisor has any questions, they'll ask for more details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your time tracking policies (ours, being in the defense industry, are really strict, tracking time in 6 minute intervals and everything having a program and project charge number), you might also want to include that information. We don't, simply because our supervisors have access to our time cards. Some people still choose to copy the table generated by our timecard software into their weekly report, but it's not mandatory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for why this is effective, it's because it's on short intervals and it's kept short and to the point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are asked to report your status every week, you actually have a somewhat decent recollection. Not everyone keeps a log of what they do. I try, but between the various projects that I'm working on, meetings that I go to, people that I talk to, and other things that happen in the course of the day, my log isn't always 100% complete. However, on Friday afternoon, when I sit down to write this, my memory is usually good enough to remember what I did on Monday (even at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also short. My supervisor wants a page, and not much over that. It's just something that can be referred to later, if there are any questions as to what was happening. The time cards tell a story of what we worked on and for how long, but it doesn't answer anything about a &quot;why?&quot; or &quot;how?&quot; question. When you put your tasks in writing, you can keep track of why you did things, why you ran into problems, how you solved them, and so on. This is the kind of thing that's useful during performance evaluations and just to know how a project went during a retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2011-07-21T23:21:39.427" LastActivityDate="2011-07-21T23:21:39.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2890" CreationDate="2011-07-21T23:41:49.700" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is very dependent on the nature of your project and team. Generally, I try and highlight the areas of the effort that are highly variable. In software, this is typically open impediments, impediments discovered and addressed, and new work (stories) completed. I'll also include some graphs that convey budgeted burn vs. actual burn vs. total budget and historical current progress vs. expected total work (CFD report, for example)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, each of these, if not the overall report, is easily generated from an electronic tracking tool and requires little additional effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I tend to include a short paragraph of my interpretations of the information as the leading aspect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, as a template:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Project Name&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Synopsis&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short paragraph describing my interpretation of the current situation, as well as calling out anybody that deserves positive recognition. I never include negative attributions to a specific employee, these are borne by the team as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Open Impediments&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Issue one title&lt;/em&gt; - overview and ramification&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Issue two title&lt;/em&gt; - overview and ramification&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Resolved impediments&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Issue one title&lt;/strong&gt; - overview and ramification&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Issue two title&lt;/strong&gt; - overview and ramification&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Completed work&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story one title&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Story two title&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Budget charts/details&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-08-14T13:33:31.727" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2893" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2896" CreationDate="2011-07-22T05:43:07.967" Score="3" ViewCount="895" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need a comprehensive list of questions or at least basic idea of which questions to be asked to the client before customizing a cms for them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I may use Wordpress, Drupal, Sharepoint or anything, I am asking what should be the preliminary investigation questions like &quot;Who are the potential users?&quot; or &quot;How much load are you assuming on your site per day?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1741" LastActivityDate="2011-07-23T16:18:18.943" Title="Questions to ask to the client before making any cms for them?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;clients&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2890" CreationDate="2011-07-22T08:17:50.897" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;An effective status report tells your project stakeholders in a clear, concise manner where the project is at and how well it's going. Its main objective is to inform, and to be effective it needs to be factual, up-to-date, and easy to read and understand for your audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Medium&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;email is fine for small projects&lt;/strong&gt;, but for larger projects that have multiple streams of work it can be too limited: email calls for fairly short pieces of information (1 page or so), so works as long as you are succinct. Dedicated PM tracking/reporting tools or office documents (e.g. MSWord, MSExcel, MSPowerpoint) allow more details and more options in terms of presenting information (graphics, formatting, layout, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Frequency&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find &lt;strong&gt;weekly status reports work well&lt;/strong&gt;. Unless required to do so, nothing more frequent or you'd spend your time working on your status report (and wouldn't have that much to report on). Anything less frequent (like monthly) and your project loses visibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Content:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An effective status report requires to-the-point, factual and clear statements, regardless of the medium you are using. It is about what is happening now, so focus on what's just been accomplished and what's coming up, highlighting any key problem areas that may affect progress. Here is an example for structuring your content:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Report Header:&lt;/strong&gt; Project name/ID, PM name, Date of issue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project status&lt;/strong&gt;: a short statement saying where the project is at and how it is going against plan. You can also use a RAG (Red/Amber/Green) indicator to show progress (not to plan / at risk / on track). Show last week's vs this week's status so your reader can immediately see how things are evolving.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Key achievements this week&lt;/strong&gt;: list key tasks worked on this week and any milestones or task completion achieved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Key activities next week&lt;/strong&gt;: list key tasks to be worked on in the coming week and milestones to be attained.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Top risks and issues&lt;/strong&gt;: list any significant risks and issues that are affecting project progress. Try to keep it to 5 items or less, keep it short but always provide an indication of resolution plan/action for each problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other recommendations:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unless your are required to do so, I'd recommend you &lt;strong&gt;don't include budget information&lt;/strong&gt; in the status report; typically this information only concerns a few people, it may be sensitive data and you will often not have much update week-on-week (accounting is typically done on a monthly basis).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To be effective, the format and content of the status report need to &lt;strong&gt;fit its audience&lt;/strong&gt;. As Thomas said in his answer, his supervisor wants one page so that drives how things are reported. In other cases you may have stakeholders or supervisors who want to see a certain amount of details or content, in a specific format. It's good practice at the start of the project to validate with your supervisor/sponsor how you will report on your project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The status report is to inform, so &lt;strong&gt;don't use it to resolve issues&lt;/strong&gt; or address specific problems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't use the status report to announce bad news&lt;/strong&gt;: if your project is in trouble, don't wait to communicate about it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be disciplined&lt;/strong&gt; about issuing the report: it gives visibility to your project and also shows that you are on top of things. It's also very useful for you as a PM to keep track of how things are going and provides you with a formal, regular communication channel.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2011-07-22T08:17:50.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2895" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-22T13:01:15.810" Score="0" ViewCount="171" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a solution that would go from client/project creation through to timesheets and accounting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anybody have any recommendations on a solution combination?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problem is that at the accounting end, we need something that will output sage compatible data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, we need all the tools of say TeamLab or BaseCamp, pass client id, project number, invoice number, invoice etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1745" LastActivityDate="2011-07-28T21:23:16.930" Title="Project management, job bags, accounting" Tags="&lt;process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2893" CreationDate="2011-07-22T13:44:58.050" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, clients might want to build a CMS for a very wide variety of reasons, and not all of those reasons are necessarily good ones. Your job is to ascertain why they are really undertaking this project, and to deliver the best possible solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To most effectively render a good service, I would suggest the following approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Determine their business objectives.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What kind of business is this? What do they sell, and to whom? By answering these basic questions, you will be able to approach your solution with those objectives in mind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Determine the objectives of the project&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where does this particular piece fit into their puzzle? Do they really need a complicated thing with a ton of features, or could they accomplish the same thing with a far more simple solution? If you can bring them a better, more efficient, cleaner solution, you will demonstrate to them that you are an expert worthy of their trust (and money!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have encountered countless occasions in which someone thinks they want something big and complicated, when all they really need is an extremely simple solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Offer options&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, after determining objectives, there is not a single obvious solution, you may consider presenting two or three possible options. You need not bog them down in the technical details; you simply want to be able to give them a rough idea of the possibilities, and which ones are more or less complicated and expensive to implement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I have often been asked to provision a blog for a client that is just now getting around to having one (!!). By showing them two options, the &quot;Cheap, Simple, Basic Features&quot; route via a Tumblr/Posterous etc and the &quot;Powerful, Robust, Complicated&quot; route via WordPress or something similar, I can make it easy for them to understand the differences and the possible scopes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with all things in Project Management, it's all about healthy communication. The more you understand where they are coming from, the easier it will be to ensure you are rendering a service that will make them happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1746" LastActivityDate="2011-07-22T13:44:58.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2893" CreationDate="2011-07-23T14:33:52.590" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might want to check out the document &quot;Questionnaire.doc&quot; from &lt;a href=&quot;http://apps.topcoder.com/wiki/display/tc/Conceptualization+Documentation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the TopCoder.com project  documents list&lt;/a&gt;.  It gives a great series of questions to ask at the beginning of a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To paraphrase (and summarize):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the goal of the software?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are you replacing a legacy item? Describe it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are you creating a new item?  Describe it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who uses the software? What roles do they play?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What data does the software need to complete its intended function?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What effect does the software have when it has completed its intended function?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What external systems does the software need to interact with (computers, hardware, people) ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What reporting is required of the software?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What else does the software author need to know (deployment environment) ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why does this software matter?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's more, but I'll leave it there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="569" LastEditorUserId="569" LastEditDate="2011-07-23T16:18:18.943" LastActivityDate="2011-07-23T16:18:18.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2888" CreationDate="2011-07-23T23:44:40.027" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One Page Project manager is one: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.oppmi.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.oppmi.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also think status is best done with a cut and paste from an excel as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="522" LastActivityDate="2011-07-23T23:44:40.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2888" CreationDate="2011-07-24T11:21:48.027" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The NETWORKDAYS function in Excel is very powerful and can allow you to create spreadsheets showing tasks with start/end dates and durations.  You may need to get the Analysis Pack in older versions of Excel to use this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2011-07-24T11:21:48.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2887" CreationDate="2011-07-24T11:25:12.787" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Rework&lt;/em&gt; from the 37 Signals guys gives you a really different spin on Project Management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0307463745&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Rework-Jason-Fried/dp/0307463745/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1311506689&amp;amp;sr=8-1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2011-07-24T11:25:12.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="323" CreationDate="2011-07-24T13:16:36.183" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a manager, I would make a list of all the skills needed for the job - technical skills as well as soft skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The statement made by yegor256 is right. As a manager I need to be clear of what is needed in a resource to be able to make my project a success. So if the developer does not have enough experience, or enough brains to debug things, or enough teamwork to ensure they work with the team to produce good results - then it is my problem as a manager that I recruited this person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would immediately concentrate on what I 'can do' and get another developer, but first learn from my mistake of recruiting the other guy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some qualities I would look for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give them sample code to write in the interview and ensure they follow the coding standards that are important to my organisation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give them something to debug to test their persistence and that they dont give up at the first available opportunity &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give them some real life situations in my projects and check that they are good enough to face these&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test them on design patterns and other practices that my organisation employs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get a round of interview with the good developers so they can judge from their perspective&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is difficult to get good people, and even more difficult to retain them. Sometimes people who are good at what they do display an arrogant attitude. But not all people with an arrogant attitude are good at what they do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1753" LastActivityDate="2011-07-24T13:16:36.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2902" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-25T06:04:18.313" Score="4" ViewCount="151" Body="&lt;p&gt;IT PM to be assigned that I mean is 100% IT PM (as a job), not just a role. Could you please share how large or what size of the projects (e.g. project is long more than 3 months ect.) should have IT PM in place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1759" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2018-08-15T13:43:05.590" LastActivityDate="2018-08-15T13:43:05.590" Title="What size of the IT project that should have IT Project Manager?" Tags="&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2902" CreationDate="2011-07-25T09:51:20.973" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;it will always come down to budget, if you can afford a dedicated PM then don it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What size dev team? Well with only 3 or 4 devs you can get away with one of them doing the PM role as well but if you have a dedidcated PM, this is where you should start – get the team used to working with a PM and keep the pressure off your devs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How long? Well the project should at least be worthy of their effort but the PMs job doesn’t start and end with the dev cycle. The PM should be involved from around the time of project commitment from the client, they need to buy in to the delivery cycle and the client needs to know that they are the contact point for the duration of the project.&#xA;The PMs role ends after final acceptance from the client – this is normally long after the devs have left (because the testing happens after the devs leave right?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I would say, a full time PM should be involved in any project that runs about three months long (or 1 month of full time dev)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1151" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T09:51:20.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2902" CreationDate="2011-07-25T09:56:13.183" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally in IT, your PM LOE, which not only includes leadership and oversight but also other PM functions like risk, quality, and communications, is somewhere between 8% to 15% of your total LOE.  I've heard it a bit lower and a bit higher so I adopted this as a general heuristic in IT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on a duration of a year, assuming 1,950 hours as an FTE, I would staff a dedicated PM individual if the project was between 13,000 and 24,300 hours, between 7 and 13 FTEs, or between 8 to 15 individuals (which is consistent with generally accepted guidance for span of control).  For other durations, interpolate accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This assumes the PM has the competency to cut across all PM functions by himself to the degree necessary for that project.  You run the risk of a PM gap.  Staffing by roles is a safer way to go, generally speaking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2011-07-25T10:45:14.450" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T10:45:14.450" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2905" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2909" CreationDate="2011-07-25T13:05:22.757" Score="7" ViewCount="223157" Body="&lt;p&gt;Could anyone please give me a role description of an engagement manager? I think it should be the person internally responsible for getting a deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more detailed the better. References are also welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastEditorUserId="111" LastEditDate="2014-05-07T16:08:41.397" LastActivityDate="2018-09-27T20:43:18.697" Title="What is an engagement manager - what does (s)he do?" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;definition&gt;&lt;sales&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2627" CreationDate="2011-07-25T13:44:45.333" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found ms-project grate for presenting schedule information at meetings. But poor for helping with what numbers to use (estimation), providing feedback (tracking) or being updated (dependency analysis). Consequently it would provide a perpetual beautiful fiction of the project. The real scheduling was done using simpler and cheaper tools, as they got better answers with less effort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1762" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T13:44:45.333" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2905" CreationDate="2011-07-25T13:47:14.687" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I encountered the term &quot;engagement manager&quot; in a discussion around the gamification. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Engagement Manager would be the person who plans and manages user engagement in the company's profile. She should be responsible for taking actions and activities in order to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;call the user/customer attention&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;plan user activities around the company (for example around products)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;maintain customer engagement (long, and short- therm) and loyalty &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;keep the quality and joy of the engagement compared to the competition&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is growing in importance because of the rising impact of social media in the company's marketing campaigns. In larger companies, engagement manager could as well relate to a person who &quot;manages&quot; engagement of employees in their private life around the company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some googled links:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tinyurl.com/3tbaasa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Microsoft's EM Role description&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pmtips.net/engagement-management-project-management/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;quite nice point of view on EM role&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastEditorUserId="927" LastEditDate="2011-07-26T06:23:04.017" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T06:23:04.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2902" CreationDate="2011-07-25T14:33:39.093" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even small projects can benefit from having project managers.  If the projects are sufficiently small, the PM can work on a number of them in parallel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T14:33:39.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2905" CreationDate="2011-07-25T14:59:23.543" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a different experience and  perspective to what an engagement manager (EM) does and I expect the term means different things depending on context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, on large projects where part of the work is outsourced to a third-party vendor, the EM is the person from the vendor organisation responsible for managing the relationship with the client and monitoring services delivery throughout the project. &lt;strong&gt;His/her focus is on the management of the contractual relationship between client and vendor rather than the management of the project itself.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Main responsibilities include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;managing the relationship with the client throughout the project duration and acting as the main point of contact between client and vendor organisation;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ensuring the services delivered by the vendor are conform to what has been contractually agreed between client and vendor and monitoring the delivery of said services against agreed schedule, quality, scope and budget;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;managing vendor resource planning and addressing resources performance issues;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;managing the financial aspects of the contract (billing for services, following-up on payments etc.);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;acting as the escalation point when issues arise with vendor's resources / services and managing any dispute or conflict;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reporting internally within vendor organisation on project performance (services delivery, progress, economics, etc.).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of additional notes (based on my experience):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the EM is often not the person who got the deal (this is typically done by Business Development managers): the EM is concerned with the execution of the contract and although is ideally involved in the pre-sales stage, doesn't necessarily drive it. He/she however is often expected once the project has started to identify further business opportunities for services to the client.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the EM is often not full-time on the project or physically present with the project team. He/she tends to get involved in a mediating capacity when problems arise and manage the contractual aspects of the services, not the actual day-to-day delivery. It is important for all parties to be clear up-front as to what the EM does and how he/she will actually be involved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T14:59:23.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2910" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-25T15:38:53.403" Score="11" ViewCount="949" Body="&lt;p&gt;Context: &#xA;I'll admit, I've recently transitioned to a PM role at a new company, and the atmosphere is slightly different than the previous firm I worked at.   I was a 'Project Manager'  (note the quotations) at my previous role, but it wasnt a position that had enterprise-wide visibility. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my current role, I've got quite a handful - I like challenges - and I'm loving it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem I'm finding right now is that with some of the projects I'm handling, I find that I'm the only one who's talking in the team meetings.   Its not that I'm afraid of speaking up in front of people, but I really really want to foster communication and get the whole group-chatter going. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I foster this?   I frequently pause and ask for any questions/ feedback, I encourage people to interrupt me or criticize me, and I've got a pretty friendly personality overall.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yet, I'm just coming off project kick off meeting this morning that barely lasted half an hour.   Due to the nature of the project (its a program, really), I couldnt get into risk assessment or planning the schedule, but I'm finding that my meetings frequently last &amp;lt;30 minutes, whereas other PMs can easily stretch it into 60 minutes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a fan for short, to-the-point meetings, but sometimes I wonder if I'm making the meetings too short to cover everything that could/should be covered.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering if its because I'm new to the company and may not know some specific history (pertaining to the project) or of the various groups.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any tips/ tricks you guys use to improve / foster group chatter? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="847" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T03:44:34.063" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T03:44:34.063" Title="How do I foster communication in Project Meetings?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2910" CreationDate="2011-07-25T16:57:23.113" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Spend time ahead of the meeting thinking about questions you can ask specific team members.  Then think about people you can ask to comment on the responses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sally, what are your thoughts on risk ?&#xA;John, Sally said her biggest concern was .  Do you agree?&#xA;etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the people are shy or just introverted, you'll need to do more than you are accustomed to in order to get them talking.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T16:57:23.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2910" CreationDate="2011-07-25T17:55:26.180" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are couple ideas on how you can increase group chatter (aka get groups to share information):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Roundtable updates&lt;/strong&gt;.  Go around the table and have each person share what they completed last week and what they're doing this week.  Ask if there are any issues/obstacles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Invite guest speakers&lt;/strong&gt;.  Have guest speakers present to the team what they're working on.  Include Q&amp;amp;A time.  Bonus points if the guest speakers come from the immediate project team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Morale event&lt;/strong&gt;.  Shared activities help foster trust and closeness with one another...and encourages people to open up and share information.  Simple, inexpensive morale event ideas include happy hour, watch a movie, or board game night.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general theme: introduce stimuli that will intrigue the team...and get them talking.  Hope the stimuli suggestions help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1740" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T17:55:26.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1907" CreationDate="2011-07-25T18:09:01.847" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For those of you who are interested in RedCritter Tracker, here's an article I found which includes a video and screenshots of the gamefication functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gigaom.com/collaboration/redcritter-tracker-agile-project-management-with-gamification/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://gigaom.com/collaboration/redcritter-tracker-agile-project-management-with-gamification/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1740" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T18:09:01.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="330" CreationDate="2011-07-25T18:22:22.330" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, though there should be a way of making an issue private or a comment private so that developers do not fear being honest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;It's a bit of a hack, but we think we can get away with storing the password in plain text for now&quot;, while not good, is better than not mentioning anything.  The PM can still see that and decide whether to take action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1245" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T18:22:22.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2910" CreationDate="2011-07-25T18:47:38.380" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most people actually have got the opposite problem (over-running meetings!) :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Assess the impact of the lack of communications&lt;/strong&gt;: running long meetings has never been a sign of good (project) management so the fact that your meetings are shorter than other PM's isn't a problem per se. However as you feel this is causing issues, it could be helpful for you to clarify how this is actually impacting your projects. Do you think people withhold information from you? Do you feel that people don't trust you or are intimidated? Are you concerned that you're missing some important things as a PM? Could this lead to project failure?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Openly address communications with your team&lt;/strong&gt;: make communications a topic of discussion and ask people what they expect and need when it comes to project communications, how you as a team could improve in this area, etc. You can do this either as a team exercise or one-on-one if you feel this would work better. This could help you identify why people are not talking.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get people to actively participate in meetings&lt;/strong&gt;: prepare agendas (with meeting objectives) and ask people to contribute to the discussion by presenting a topic or bringing their questions/issues to the table. If people are not naturally inclined to talk in front of others, beware of putting them on the spot, so give them the opportunity of talk on a volunteer-basis only. Identify the people who would be more at ease to talk; once one starts, this will encourage others to join in. Thank people who contribute.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ensure your meetings are productive&lt;/strong&gt;: share meeting minutes and follow-up on actions and items in subsequent meetings. This will give continuity to your communications and help people appreciate that things get done thanks to these meetings (so there is something in it for them).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get another perspective&lt;/strong&gt;: if you can, find a peer (another PM in your organisation) to support you;  ask to attend one of their meetings and/or for them to attend one of yours. This will give you a sense of how things go elsewhere by observing others (you may witness some good techniques or different ways to go about running a meeting) as well as getting external feedback. Since you are new to this company there could be a case of organisational culture where people are not accustomed to talk in meetings, so this would be a way to find out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get people to talk outside of meetings too&lt;/strong&gt;: if meetings are currently the only forum where you get to talk to those who work on your projects, create other opportunities to chat, such as informal corridor chats, coffee breaks, or morale events like those suggested by Lewis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T18:47:38.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2918" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-26T09:58:10.673" Score="3" ViewCount="6020" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work as software engineer, with a Masters in Computer Science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is about PMP certification. I heard that the prerequisites of PMP certification include 4500 hours of project experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I have developed a major software project, can I specify that as &quot;project experience?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1772" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-16T15:30:43.413" LastActivityDate="2017-05-26T18:19:11.637" Title="Does developing a software project count towards the prerequisites for PMP certification?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2918" CreationDate="2011-07-26T10:07:18.433" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, that's the idea.  You want to document and describe your project experience and indicate in which of the categories your experience falls.  This is an auditable statement, so be sure there are other folks who can confirm what you're saying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T10:07:18.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1597" CreationDate="2011-07-26T14:10:34.807" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Falling to plan is planning to fail&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The worst thing that can happen to a project is missed requirements. Using any project management tool or even an excel will do. But document the requirements in full details. There is no alternative to that. When ever you start a project list down every detail info you have and have that approved by client. Keep that as the baseline and continue updating that as new info arrives or new requirements arise. Your query sheet will be based on this. Your test case should be built on this requirement doc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand, sometime during the course of the project client send in bits and pieces of information and its very hard to keep track during actual development. Unless you have a consolidated requirement doc to refer back/fallback to. Unless you follow the process rigorously, no tool however smart can save you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1776" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T14:10:34.807" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="330" CreationDate="2011-07-26T14:57:30.200" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer in terms of giving access to the sponsor is yes since the sponsor pays for the project and (under standard project contracts) owns what is being produced as part of that project (including project documentation like an issues list). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the key however is in &lt;strong&gt;understanding why your sponsor wants to have access&lt;/strong&gt; so you as a PM can offer him/her the best solution to meet his/her needs and expectations. For examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(s)he may want to see the issues because currently there is no visibility on the level of quality of what is being developed. In this case, it would be more efficient for you agree with the sponsor to report regularly on the level of bugs than your sponsor going through an issues list by him/herself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;perhaps there is an issue of trust; the sponsor is being told everything is going well but heard a comment that the system if full of bugs so wants to have a look at the list to form his/her own opinion. In this case the PM should address this with the sponsor and ensures that communications are clear and straightened.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;maybe the sponsor is naturally curious and in fact very keen to understand how things are being done, which is a positive thing, so access may actually help to keep him/her involved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you agree to give access, make sure your sponsor understands how to use the system and that your team knows about it. I believe in most cases read-only access should be sufficient unless the sponsor actually has a agreed responsibility to identify or manage issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T14:57:30.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="330" CreationDate="2011-07-26T15:07:58.407" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the sponsor requests access, provide it.  If not, don't.  There is a huge difference between a working tool in which all kinds of un-scrubbed data are going in and out and a client-ready report.  There is already a very human resistance in the escalation of issues and risks, as if by doing so you are advertising your inability to manage things.  We all know intellectually it is quite the opposite; however, the resistance continues.  If your client has access, my bet is that resistance will be exacerbated.  Further, what is supposed to be your working tool will become a client-ready deliverable.  You will see your issue management (and risk management) capability come to a grinding halt.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not confuse what I am writing as if I am suggesting you should be withholding information from your client.  I advocate running as transparent as possible; however, there is a naturally applied filter you use during the escalation and reporting process.  Not a filter to hide things the client should know but a filter to hide things about which the client does not need to worry.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T15:07:58.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2923" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2925" CreationDate="2011-07-26T16:17:40.023" Score="5" ViewCount="299" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, I'm a fresh CS graduate, who wants to build a system for his dad's road transport business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the issue is, whenever I go to ask to him about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;who are the people involved in his business?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what's their routine work?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;or how their business actually works?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... then he avoids my questions, and says, &quot;Just give me a system by utilizing your knowledge, to ease my transporting business, and rest all you think.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I had brainstormed about it, but I still feel the need of my dad's point of view, as he is actually in that business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence: How can I get business requirements from him ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="377" LastEditorUserId="132" LastEditDate="2011-07-28T03:22:51.053" LastActivityDate="2011-07-28T03:22:51.053" Title="How can I gather requirements from those who don't want to give time for interviewing?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;business-case&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2923" CreationDate="2011-07-26T18:23:59.730" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Draw a prototype.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have - at least - a small comprehension of his needs, I'd suggest you to draw a prototype and have sessions with your client on a timely basis. This way, you'll have at least a starting point to discuss with him about expectations and requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a fresh CS graduate you'd expect to fulfill all that software engineering documentation we learn in our classes; however, in the real world, our clients aren't as available as we'd expect to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, put down your ideas in a draft prototype and present to him. Sometimes, the art of getting business requirement is a kind of mixed with client's mind reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T18:23:59.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2923" CreationDate="2011-07-26T18:58:38.370" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask him what his biggest problem is that he thinks software or technology might be able to solve, and what would change if you solved it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's your requirements, in a nutshell. For the rest, don't make your dad the only point of contact. What existing software does he use? Do you know his drivers? His secretary? His accountant? You can also ask them for help. As much as possible, save your dad's time for the &quot;expert&quot; questions that only he can answer. Look for any existing open-source code which might help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, think about where your biggest unknowns are. Those are the places you're most likely to get things wrong. Create a prototype as Tiago suggests, then make sure you show him the places where you're wrong, and ask what he got wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he doesn't give you any feedback, tell him you're done and ask him to use the software until he's able to tell you otherwise. If he still doesn't use the software, he wasn't really interested in it in the first place. That sometimes happens, especially if you're doing it for free (not an assumption but a possibility).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T18:58:38.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2926" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-26T19:16:21.707" Score="19" ViewCount="1976" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just started as an intern for a big company, so this obviously doesn't immediately apply to me.  I love programming, however, I'm still considering potential career paths I may be most suited for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read a lot of stories on here about people moving up to management, regretting their choice and moving back to programming.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What personality traits imply that project management is the right route for a programmer?  What types of people make the best managers and enjoy the role?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1448" OwnerDisplayName="Casey Patton" LastEditorUserId="2618" LastEditDate="2012-02-11T11:13:29.487" LastActivityDate="2012-02-12T13:02:37.770" Title="What personality traits suggest that a person should move towards project management?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;personal-skills&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2923" CreationDate="2011-07-26T20:03:55.687" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;who is going to use it? Your dad or does he have employees? If there is another potential user find out what they do for their job, how they doe it, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Othewise as suggested by the others... find out what problem he is trying to solve. Start with a small piece and build a prototype.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More importantly just build a couple of non functional screens... if you father is being the classic &quot;I'm too busy&quot; it probably means he has a very poor grasp of what he needs and/or how to express it. So visuals tend to help that sort of person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1781" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T20:03:55.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2926" CreationDate="2011-07-26T20:06:08.697" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ability to communicate (written and verbal) big time. Be able to listen &quot;actively&quot; to figure out what people are saying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An ability to live with chaos... the constant adjusting to and adjusting of peoples expectations, requirements etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh then there is process and methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1781" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T20:06:08.697" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2926" CreationDate="2011-07-26T20:12:38.363" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here in our company, we have two paths to follow: Delivery (i.e. analysis / management) / engineering. There are some details that highlights each profile. I'll share some of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Communication:&lt;/strong&gt; I believe the greatest watershed between these two careers. A Manager basically keeps the communication flowing. An engineer doesn't need as much communication skills as a manager.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problem approach:&lt;/strong&gt; While engineers needs both focused and (at least a kind of) broader vision, understand the big picture is always a must for a manager. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Organization:&lt;/strong&gt; An engineer needs to organize his own agenda. A manager needs to know what most of the people is doing (in a general manner).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Patience and Leadership:&lt;/strong&gt; It's funny to have both words as a synonym... but a manager needs to listen carefully and put himself in other people's shoes to know the best way to handle problems. Engineers usually aren't that worried about someone else's problems. And in some cases, they're causing relationship conflicts.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Edit 1: &lt;strong&gt;Passion for technology:&lt;/strong&gt; Although we expect managers to understand the newest technologies and be able to discuss about them with the development team, in my experience I've seen that people REALLY passionate by technologies (specially &lt;em&gt;new&lt;/em&gt; techs) aren't likely to want to do managerial tasks (fulfill documents, as they say).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apologies if a comment may be misunderstood by an engineer. I need to make clear that, although our development guys aren't very communicative, they're just amazing doing their jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2011-07-26T21:33:48.093" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T21:33:48.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2926" CreationDate="2011-07-26T20:13:59.487" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of aspects to project management; it is not just the leadership skill.  Many personality types are attracted to the role, or pieces of the role like project controls, where they will specialize in a certain area like Earned Value.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you were to use MBTI as the method to categorize personality types, you may find ENTJs and ENTPs more attracted to the leadership role, but are not necessarily better at it.  Different types approach leadership differently, excelling in some areas while falling short in others.  There are likely extreme personality types that are simply not conducive to the PM role, but I suspect that there are many variations of MBTI types that work well in the PM role, just differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be careful to try to identify specific characteristics that would lead to a better PM.  It would most likely be based on a false belief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T20:13:59.487" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="330" CreationDate="2011-07-27T02:50:09.393" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a great question. On the one hand if the issue tracking is in the hands of a sponsor who will pick through each and every bug and add comments, call you and ask for status on a specific bug (when it's right there in the tracking tool), copy and paste details of the issue into outside emails to other stakeholders and create bad blood...then he/she probably should not be allowed access. But then, if you have a sponsor like this then you'll have headaches throughout the project for other reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I agree with those who said that the sponsor should be allowed full access to the issue tracking tool, and in most cases these people wouldn't even have the time to pick through each issue. But, if he ever did want to get more information on something, the details are there for him. Access to the issue tracking system should be granted with the understanding that the project manager makes decisions regarding priorities unless the sponsor is consulted specifically. Also, the sponsor should understand that any communication should continue to go through the PM, if he posts notes to the developers directly through the issue tracking tool, this will be much less productive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like some who mentioned, it would be ideal to have control over what issues the sponsor sees. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.liquidplanner.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LiquidPlanner&lt;/a&gt; is an excellent option for those who want this ability, the client portals will give the team control over what the client/sponsor can see and not see. This should help create a happy balance for all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="184" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T02:50:09.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2910" CreationDate="2011-07-27T03:02:30.213" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible that your group might prefer instant messaging or some other form of communication for team collaboration? Not to say you should never have a meeting but maybe all you'll need is quick check in meetings and then carry on the rest of the communication via collaboration tools (skype chat, AIM, collaboration site like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.liquidplanner.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LiquidPlanner&lt;/a&gt;).  Some engineers I've worked with find themselves so deep in their 'zone' that they are resistant to stopping for a meeting. And, I can understand this, it's not always the most productive thing for them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="184" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T03:02:30.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2933" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-27T03:14:44.733" Score="5" ViewCount="14100" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question has recently come up at my organization. When it's time for the client to review and accept either a large ecommerce implementation or a smaller feature enhancement, will your QA team write the test cases for your client to use or will you leave this for your client to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concern is that the client either will not have the time or focus to be able to write the test cases and do a full system test. But maybe this is ok, if we agree that the purpose of Client Acceptance Testing is for the client to poke around in whatever way s/he is accustomed to and see if anything breaks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What have you done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="184" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T08:32:33.970" Title="Who writes the test cases for your client when it's time for Client Acceptance Testing?" Tags="&lt;quality&gt;&lt;clients&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2926" CreationDate="2011-07-27T06:06:08.570" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to add one more point in addition to what others have mentioned above. A person has to have the ability to think from customer's perspective too. He/She should be able to move out of the 'developer mindset' and see/use the system as a customer. Developers usually tend to achieve excellence in writing the best piece of code that would provide the most flexibility in the system. But they often forget to analyze if this added flexibility is required by the client or not. Will this extra effort really add any value to the system or is it just making the system more complex that will be hard to maintain in the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T06:06:08.570" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2933" CreationDate="2011-07-27T08:32:33.970" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Client (or User) Acceptance Testing (CAT or UAT) is a critical phase of system implementation projects and should be well planned, structured and documented. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;About test cases (or test scripts):&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test cases are detailed step-by-step instructions that allow to &lt;strong&gt;validate how the functionality works from an end-user perspective&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They should cover all user requirements in scope for the project as well as business processes supported by the system.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The best way to write a test case is to base it on a business process (eg. place an order) and validate related requirements as part of that process execution (eg. modify product specification as part of the order).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Who should write test cases:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test cases should be written by project team members &lt;strong&gt;who have a good command of the system's functionalities as well as client's business processes&lt;/strong&gt;. So depending on your project team structure, this could be a Business Analyst or a Functional Lead (or even a Developer on small projects though that's less common). On large system implementations there are dedicated test teams who are tasked with writing up the scripts as well as preparing and managing the test cycles. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Usually it is not the client or end-user who writes the test scripts, unless the client has actually assigned resources to the project to do that. In any case, &lt;strong&gt;to maintain the integrity of the test process the person who writes the test case should not be the person executing the testing&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Additional recommendations:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't let your client loose&lt;/strong&gt;: I advise you strongly not to agree to a &quot;do-as-you-like&quot; testing. Although this stems from a good intention (giving freedom to the client), this will likely get you a into a problematic situation: not only the system will not be thoroughly tested but you will likely see your client raise issues and questions that are not valid (e.g. &quot;this doesn't work&quot; because client doesn't know how to use it, or &quot;this doesn't do X&quot; because it wasn't a requirement in the first place).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Always do regression testing&lt;/strong&gt;: when you deploy a new system or go through a significant upgrade, you have to test the entire application. However for small enhancements, there isn't a need to put the same amount of effort into testing. You should test for new/modified functionalities (either through new test cases or existing updated test cases) and also test critical &quot;regular&quot; functionalities to ensure enhancements haven't affected the normal utilisation of the system. Hence it is a good idea to identify amongst your test scripts a set of critical test cases that you can use going forward for your regression testing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Optimise the effort going into your tests cases&lt;/strong&gt;: Test cases can take some time to write depending on the complexity and the scope of the functionalities developed. However since they are designed to validate how to use the system, they can also be used as a basis for developing training materials (particularly if they are written based on business processes). So this is a way to leverage the effort going into test scripts for another area of your system implementation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T08:32:33.970" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2923" CreationDate="2011-07-27T12:46:24.483" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your problem is your scope is too broad.  Narrow to a specific pain point the business has and solves that.  When you tell people, &quot;Hey, you know this thing that's really annoying and time consuming?  I'm going to make that easier.&quot;  they will be HAPPY to talk with you and help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T12:46:24.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2938" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-27T13:06:21.097" Score="11" ViewCount="567" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our mid-size development team is doing a multi-year project. We always had major technical concerns that were never resolved. Now we find ourselves part of the way over a cliff: the architecture direction is misguided, the business plan doesn't make complete sense, and the team is overly scattered and not focused on the same goals. But the project already has significant momentum, and management doesn't see the danger or feel concern about the problem. Although the warning signs of low quality, continuing arguments, and fuzzy requirements are showing. As a project manager in the middle of the project, how should I work to prevent what i think is a train wreck in progress? How can I protect the development team, and the project, from what I think will be painful major changes and throwing away of work, in the next 2-3 months. How do I save a project that is starting to run off its rails?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1786" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T03:44:26.327" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T03:44:26.327" Title="How can a PM prevent a train wreck in progress?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2923" CreationDate="2011-07-27T13:33:55.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have bigger issues and risks than just gathering requirements.  A new system in any organization means a transformation from the way they currently do business to the new way.  The change all by itself is a source of major angst and change resistance of any organization, even of the project is moving along well.  One of the major critical success factors in organization change management (OCM) is an engaged sponsor, as indicated by level of participation, commitment of resources (human, funds, space, etc.), and other favorable behaviors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gathering requirements is the beginning of it all and will likely dictate the rest of the project.  If your dad is exhibiting this behavior now, it will likely only get worse, and then get exacerbated when your best assumptions of what is best for the business are wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your solution is not to find ways to arrive at getting your requirements.  You need to fix the underlying issue first because this will wreak havoc on the rest of your project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to talk about sponsorship with your dad, what it means, the commitment, follow-through, etc.  He needs to understand what it means to charter a project, to develop the scope statement, to put in place a PM and a dedicated team, to fund it, to stand behind it, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On your side, you need to learn the fundamentals of OCM.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T13:33:55.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="92" CreationDate="2011-07-27T14:17:43.893" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The biggest problem I have encountered is that organisations send people on PRINCE2 training and then expect them to be able to manage projects. The mistake the newbie (PRINCE2 trained) project manager makes is trying to go it alone in the forlorn belief that PRINCE2 is all they need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1787" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T14:17:43.893" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-07-27T14:17:43.893" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2938" CreationDate="2011-07-27T14:25:46.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you need to go back to planning and (with the project sponsor's input) clearly define the objective and deliverables for your project.  Then get everyone on your scattered team focused on those deliverables.  If you need to make major changes and throw away work, it's best to do it as soon as possible.  Better to change direction now than let your team members continue working on activities that will be thrown away in the next few weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T14:25:46.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2938" CreationDate="2011-07-27T16:08:15.357" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great things have been developed out of seemingly chaotic environments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use your risk management and escalation processes.  Assuming these processes are reasonably performing for you, your risk folks should have these threats--with root cause and triggers--well documented and analyzed.  Assuming you report to the project's governing body on some frequency, make this a top agenda item and present to them your threat assessment with several alternatives with benefits, costs, and risks of each.  Facilitate a decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they choose to do nothing, then you have a decision to make.  Do you jump off the train or persevere?  There is a ton of missing information, e.g., are you a supplier or employee, type of contract under which this work is being performed, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T16:08:15.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="92" CreationDate="2011-07-27T17:19:15.013" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make sure that you nail down the scope of the Project at the very beginning. Get confirmation from the key stakeholders that their view of the scope is in line with yours. Get early sign off to your Project Management Plan and draft your stakeholder plan (including a RACI) as a first priority. Thereafter stakeholder management (and hence engagement) should be straightforward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1789" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T17:19:15.013" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-07-27T17:19:15.013" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2938" CreationDate="2011-07-27T20:09:27.713" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As pointed out by David and Bill...&#xA;Right away list the current issues/risks and how the impact the project.&#xA;Prioritize that list... then figure out 2 or 3 mitigation options for the top issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the hard &quot;fun&quot; part... you have to talk to the stakeholder/manager who is responsible and can make decisions. Essentially point out the top issues you see and what options there are for correcting them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For architecture &amp;amp; design issues maybe some war rooms, maybe finding 2 or 3 top requirements, break those down with the team and deliver them in iterations...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially it sounds like everybody was handed chunks that were too large with out enough direction as to where things are supposed to fit in a big picture. Fist warning is that you mentioned this is a multiyear project. That, imo, pretty much means it'll go off the tracks unless you have a well defined set of milestones (your choice of doing it iteratively, fixed dates, whatever.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1781" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T20:09:27.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2910" CreationDate="2011-07-27T20:21:18.413" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A side piece of advice... If you ask the group a question, or really need a response to a statement, and nobody is stepping up... do a slow count to 10 or 15 (inside voice of course. :-) )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a fairly common trick I was told by a friend who is a prof. at a local university. Essentially the silence eventually gets to somebody and they &quot;break&quot;. Also prevents you from moving on too quickly in case somebody is taking a bit longer in digesting the issue before responding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1781" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T20:21:18.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2938" CreationDate="2011-07-27T22:38:07.710" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Go back and get buy-in...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a project gets off track, I always go back and ask myself two questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did we set the right goal?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did we get buy-in for this goal?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's absolutely reasonable to revisit these questions...especially as you and your team get new information about the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the buy-in is absolutely critical.  If you can't get the right buy-in, you and/or the executive sponsor need to resolve that before moving forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1740" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T22:38:07.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2947" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2957" CreationDate="2011-07-28T02:55:54.470" Score="2" ViewCount="353" Body="&lt;p&gt;I run a small - 2 Full time employee - web development company, with me being programmer and developer at the same time. We service a small number of clients (&amp;lt; 10), of which there is usually 1-2 new ones and the others are ongoing maintenance and upgrades for existing clients. Our billing model is purely time based, but a significant percentage of projects are fixed price based on a certain amount of scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a pipeline of booked work of ca 900h, this includes:&#xA;- marketing overhead (small and automated)&#xA;- administrative overhead (small, automated and outsourced)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ca 180h of these are not &quot;closed sales&quot; however from experience I know that there will be an equal amount of unknown emergency work that will pop up to close the gap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also ca 80h of &quot;technology debt&quot; that we are committed to working off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We had this (pre-)load of work for about 1 year now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of project management:&#xA;- we create written scope documents at the beginning of each project, most of our technology debt has been caused by a lack of scope formalisation&#xA;- we track time very accurately (www.workflowmax.com&#xA;- we track bugs and scope changes, but only internally and informally by email with clients&#xA;(www.mantisbt.com)&#xA;- we have just started to use www.liquidplanner.com, which has actually made visible how much work we have on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically on Liquidplanner, I only irregularly load new work on and review progress on existing work every 1-2 weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main concern is to create very predictable deadlines for our open work, so that we&#xA;- manage client expectations and even longer booked out work pipelines&#xA;- hire at the right time&#xA;- predict cashflow better&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What area of project management would you recommend to focus on to improve on predictability &#xA;of when work gets done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More accurate capturing and estimation?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;more frequent/ more formalised progress tracking?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;more formal change management?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;else?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="747" LastEditorUserId="132" LastEditDate="2011-07-28T03:19:51.570" LastActivityDate="2011-07-28T14:54:30.513" Title="Which skill should a self-taught, overloaded project manager deepen?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;skills&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2938" CreationDate="2011-07-28T03:09:27.773" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a political question, with all due respect to the (solid) answers that are already here. The answer is to be found in a deep understanding of the goals, motivations, relationships, and psychology of the important players, from management on down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since your question contains no insight into the politics, we can't possibly answer it. The only possible way you can save this project is by getting people to start behaving in a different way than they are behaving now. That's politics. It depends dramatically on the people. No two people are alike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start by thinking about the top manager. What motivates that person? What does the top manager want?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="132" LastActivityDate="2011-07-28T03:09:27.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2949" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-28T10:10:45.583" Score="1" ViewCount="147" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a project that has multiple tasks and we are trying to show a roadmap / project plan.  The challenge is that each task is very &quot;long tailed&quot;, meaning that most of the task will get done in, let’s say 2 months, but then there is 5% of that task that will take much longer to close out (let’s say 9 months before every final bit is closed out) due to the complexities of some exception cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I treat the whole thing as a single item going out 9 months, it doesn't reflect that breakdown. If I put 2 months, then it ignores that fact that it really won't get fully closed out for 9 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to represent this type of task on a roadmap, project plan?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1087" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-16T15:22:59.647" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T15:22:59.647" Title="what is the best way to show long tails for a project" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2949" CreationDate="2011-07-28T10:52:39.493" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Break your work down into its components.  That is what the WBS is for, to break your work down into more manageable chunks or elements.  And the rule as to how far down you break your work is: until these kinds of questions are answered, i.e., break it down until you are comfortable with your ability to manage it.  (The further you break it down, your admin costs climb but your insight into the work grows; find your balance and ignore others' rule-of-thumb inputs.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you break it down just one more level and show the first package duration as two months, you can load your resources--both materiel and human--into it and show the budget at completion to be 95% of your total.  You next package will span seven months with a finish-start dependency to the first, loaded by the proper resources that will exhibit 5% of your total budget.  If you chose to break the work down further, sequence and load and strike your baseline.  You can even split a package to show passage of time where no work or labor is being burned, e.g., waiting for concrete to cure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your BCWS (budget cost of work scheduled) or PV (planned value) will be properly laid out if you were doing earned value.  Your gantt chart will exhibit the waterfall schedule.  And most importantly, you can manage to it properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-07-28T10:52:39.493" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2947" CreationDate="2011-07-28T11:01:14.040" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scope, Cost and Schedule, and Risk Management.  Within scope, cost, and schedule are estimating and planning.  All of these tie together and are the processes that control where you establish your milestones and deadlines and your ability to get there with the highest probability (risk management).  Based on your write-up, I would choose these as my next focus area to study and learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-07-28T11:01:14.040" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2947" CreationDate="2011-07-28T11:30:57.983" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might want to take a look at Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is actually created to give transaparancy and clear view on the work executed, work to be done, and issues you are dealing with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't try to implement it correctly (you cannot do that with 2 people) but the iterations, daily meetings, etc.. will definitly bring added value to your projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;for estimation I recommend you take a look at planning poker that I mentioned in this answer: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1076/discerning-estimate-validity/1077#1077&quot;&gt;Discerning estimate validity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As your main concern are the deadlines, Scrum will definitly bring you more transparancy on that point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A second option might be Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kanban, pronounced /ˈkɑnˈbɑn/, is a method for developing products with an emphasis on just-in-time delivery while not overloading the developers. It emphasizes that developers pull work from a queue, and the process, from definition of a task to its delivery to the customer, is displayed for participants to see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a look at both of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-07-28T13:43:35.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2953" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2955" CreationDate="2011-07-28T12:41:55.123" Score="7" ViewCount="42780" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like the task id field to increment in the same order as the start date, but I have added tasks between existing tasks, so when I sort by start date, the task ids go 1, 8, 15, 2, 4, 5, 7, etc.  This is not a big deal but it would just be nice if the task ids were consecutive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-09T16:36:55.363" LastActivityDate="2020-08-28T23:26:06.783" Title="In MS Project 2010, is it possible to renumber the task ids?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2949" CreationDate="2011-07-28T12:50:41.390" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you create a series of milestones that show the edge cases? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sept 1 - code complete except for 7 edge cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nov 1 - edge case 7 complete&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jan 1 - Edge case 2 complete &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and perhaps even have go-nogo meetings along the way to see if it makes business sense to resolve these edge cases? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is to front-end load the display of business value and completeness, so you can show progress, then partition the other things.  Perhaps they'll even be done by a different group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2011-07-28T12:50:41.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2953" CreationDate="2011-07-28T13:48:56.093" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have found in most cases when the task IDs are listed non-sequentially (the numbers in the left column are out of order) it is because the task list has been sorted.  IF this is the case, you can open the Sort By dialog (Project | Sort | Sort By), select (place a check mark in) the Permanently Renumber Tasks option and click the sort button to renumber your tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Note that if your project IDs are out of order because the task list has been sorted, the sort options in the Sort By dialog should correspond to the way your tasks are currently sorted.  If for some reason this is not the case, sorting could mess up your carefully crafted task structure.  I STRONGLY RECOMMEND backing up (saving) your project before trying to sort or renumber your tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I quote Bob Segrest, PMP&#xA;Microsoft Project Blackbelt&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastActivityDate="2011-07-28T13:48:56.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2949" CreationDate="2011-07-28T14:48:19.740" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As David said, you haven't broken it down (decomposed) enough yet. It seems you're saying 'task' when you mean 'deliverable'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-07-28T14:48:19.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2947" CreationDate="2011-07-28T14:54:30.513" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given you're trying to get better at predicting when work (a task) will be finished, I'd also through in Lessons Learned. &#xA;It sounds like you've actually got a good handle on the management side of things, so I'd go back and look at past work to see how things were done (and how long they took), where missteps were made, and where improvements could be made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your historical performance is going to be your biggest factor in projection and estimating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-07-28T14:54:30.513" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2926" CreationDate="2011-07-28T20:29:43.210" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many distinct aspects to project management, but focusing on the 'management' aspect, there are two clear sets of competencies that I would want to consider. One focuses on managing the process and the technical aspects of the project, and the other is associated with managing the people. These are not mutually exclusive - far from it - but the emphasis placed on each will vary according to the way that your organisation is set up to run projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the PM is also a line manager, the ability to work with staff in a long-term relationship is vital. The skills required to do this are quite different from those of a PM who pulls in staff in a 'matrix' structure, with a separate manager looking after the long term needs of the staff. I suggest that you identify which model your company uses, and see how your skills map against the needs of the role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if you are happy working with uncertainty and are able to see the big picture despite short term 'noise', you may be well on the way to being suited for project management. Don't expect instant gratification or constant positive feedback, but if you can thrive in an environment where there are high demands on your time, constant interruptions, and new challenges on a daily basis, while being able to stay in control and keep your people motivated, you are well on the way to being a practical and successful project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-07-28T20:29:43.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2959" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-28T21:07:47.940" Score="1" ViewCount="603" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our team does both new project work as well as ongoing work like bug fixing etc. I am looking for ways to track them separately so as to distinguish new projects from ongoing ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1802" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T03:44:17.340" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T03:44:17.340" Title="Tracking new projects aside of ongoing projects" Tags="&lt;tracking&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2895" CreationDate="2011-07-28T21:23:16.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really like and use Basecamp with Freshbooks for accounting. There is a Freshbooks / Sage connector out here, but I have no experience with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2011-07-28T21:23:16.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2961" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2969" CreationDate="2011-07-28T21:31:46.853" Score="4" ViewCount="1983" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I approach integrating multiple project plans from different departments into one master plan? Here are the details in this situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All teams are ultimately working on the same product, but each team works on their own smaller pieces.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have around 200 people working together.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Knowledge is constantly being shared between departments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each department (six total) has its own supervisor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I anticipate a challenge keeping the task information current, accurate, and useful for each department.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For our IT development (25% of our overall project time), we have scrum sessions (no waterfall).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Due to the nature of the work we do, the project planning must be rolling wave.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We use Microsoft Project 2010 for project tracking. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1547" LastActivityDate="2012-11-05T20:33:38.710" Title="How to Integrate Multiple Project Plans in a Weak Matrix Organization?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2961" CreationDate="2011-07-29T01:36:20.357" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Microsoft Project Server &lt;strong&gt;could&lt;/strong&gt; provide a centralized place for people place their MS Project 2010 files and share information. The system does have some pretty good consolidated master schedule views. I'm not in love with that solution, however, because there is some complexity in setting up a server.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.microsoft.com/project/en/us/on-demand-hosting.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;some hosted solutions&lt;/a&gt; available but I have not yet tried any of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-07-29T01:36:20.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2918" CreationDate="2011-07-29T01:36:31.690" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/Certification/Project-Management-Professional-PMP.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this page from the PMI about the PMP Credential&lt;/a&gt;, it's not 4500 hours of &quot;project experience&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A four-year degree (bachelor’s or the global equivalent) and at least three years of project management experience, with 4,500 hours leading and directing projects and 35 hours of project management education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to qualify, you should have 4500 hours in a leadership position for a project. I would have to look deeper into what this means, but I interpret this as serving in a position of responsibility. I would equate this to your organization's equivalent of what I've often seen called a software lead, a technical lead, a software manager, or a project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a software engineer myself. Even though I've worked closely with others, and sometimes have stepped up with additional responsibilities. However, just being part of a team doesn't mean you were a leader. Unless other people took instructions, direction, or mentoring from you, I wouldn't consider it a leadership role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2011-07-29T01:36:31.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2938" CreationDate="2011-07-29T01:48:37.147" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a two level approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tactical:&lt;/strong&gt; Start document where you are right now. In a complicated software project, you often have pieces that are working well and others that are completely worthless. Also, dig through the fuzzy requirements and try to identify a handful of key problems that need to be addressed. Makes sure that you, your bosses, and the stakeholders have that information for when they re-do/re-plan/re-build a project. If you don't have that information handy, they are likely to start off on the wrong foot (again).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Strategic:&lt;/strong&gt; Time to start talking to the key bosses and stakeholders. I find that an approach of &quot;we have risks and we need your input&quot; is better received that &quot;we have problems&quot;. If you can avoid the blame game for past mistakes and instead concentrate on what should be done from now on, you might get better responses. However, you still need to be clear that current work is not going to produce a solution that meets people's expectations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-07-29T01:48:37.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2384" CreationDate="2011-07-29T06:41:39.077" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can switch to MS Project Server, you should be able to have a more complete view of resource availability.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2011-07-29T06:41:39.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2918" CreationDate="2011-07-29T07:29:15.090" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thomas is correct: &lt;strong&gt;PMI requires project management experience, not just project experience.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;To clarify:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need &lt;strong&gt;4500 hours of leading and directing project tasks&lt;/strong&gt; OR 7500 hours if you don't hold a Bachelor's degree or equivalent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What this means: you don't need to have had sole responsibility for entire projects or have held the title of &amp;quot;Project Manager&amp;quot;, however you need to demonstrate that you have been responsible for conducting one or more project management processes as defined by PMI, i.e.:Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring &amp;amp; Controlling, and Closing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Examples:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are part of a large project and are leading the development effort, you are responsible for managing resources, managing the development plan and effort, the development budget, etc. so this counts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have managed a project but not people (you didn't have direct report), but you were responsible for planning, budget, scope, etc. this counts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you were a developer on a project without management responsibility (even if you spent 2 years on the project), this doesn't count.&#xA;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Recommendations:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is in your interest to comply with pre-requisites since this means you will be more likely to succeed the exam. Also there is a (small) chance you get audited so it's important you document your credentials.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;List all projects you have worked on and ask yourself &amp;quot;did I have management responsibilities?&amp;quot;. The type of project (software or other) doesn't matter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you don't meet the pre-requisites, the Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM) may be an alternative for you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2011-07-29T07:29:15.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2918" CreationDate="2011-07-29T11:03:13.343" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I disagree with both Thomas and Angeline.  PMI has never defined what it meant by &quot;leading and directing.&quot;  PMI has accepted many applications for folks assigned on project tasks but not necessarily responsible or accountable for cost and schedule in the same way a lead or PM would be.  A developer x 2 years would likely qualify.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PMP was originally intended to be an entry-level certificate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-07-29T11:03:13.343" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2961" CreationDate="2011-07-29T13:03:35.360" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The fact that you have different depts, teams and supervisors says that you're talking about a 'program' of sorts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You haven't indicated what your role is in all this (PM, team member, CEO, etc), but it looks like the first step is putting someone in the role of Program Manager. Someone who's job is specifically to coordinate and track the various pieces as they relate to the whole. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As there are already dept supervisors you will face the authority (or lack of) issue, and it likely that the PgM will not have the needed authority to push certain aspects, but just having a central hub for tracking and reporting will go a long way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-07-29T13:03:35.360" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2938" CreationDate="2011-07-29T13:16:04.277" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some good advice so far. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First question to ask - does anyone else on the team see it that same way as you? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Joel said, in situations like these it's largely a matter of politics and approach, so the more team members that you have that see it the same way, the more credibility you'll have. Have a review meeting with those doing the work and compare expectations with progress - is what we're doing going to provide the expected outcomes? If not, then as SB said, document why, and what the issues are, and what needs to change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then follow David's advice and bring it to mgmt in a risk review meeting. Present your opinions and the threats as you see them, the solution options, and let them make the decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on their response, you will then have to determine, according to your own feelings, your next move.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But from a pm perspective you will have done your part. You managed the project, and you brought issues to the Sponsor for input. Ultimately it's their project and they get to direct it their way. If it doesn't work, at least you were responsible in your actions and did what you could to correct it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-07-29T13:16:04.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2971" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-29T14:21:47.347" Score="3" ViewCount="157" Body="&lt;p&gt;It happened to me recently, I'm kinda newbie on PMing, so I ask this to an experienced community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A potential client contacted me through the guy (intermediary) who offered the job to me. But to define if I can do it, I need to do some pilot testing with the things that I've been asked to integrate. By doing this I could get more realistic budget, and time/work estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The wisest thing I could think of is talking to the mediator to ask for the elements to do those tests, and then define if we can do this on time. It's actually doable, but depends on the team (and myself) having a time rate of understanding fast, so it could be affordable to the client. And by saying this of course it's clear I still didn't tell them my price. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our team's usual market is web IT, and I'm asked to develop a desktop HHRR controller with some hardware control devices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But doing this could lead to the client expecting of us to get to work, or at least give him hope of we will do that soon enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And last but not least; those tests require some hours of work by the team and myself,&#xA;What do I do with those hours? Are they paid? Should I let it pass by putting from my pocket to see if I can take or not this project? What if the project is not worth taking and people has worked on its viability?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="823" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T10:42:47.200" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T10:42:47.200" Title="How to decide to take a project when it's depending on a tool your team doesn't know?" Tags="&lt;clients&gt;&lt;budget&gt;&lt;business-case&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2971" CreationDate="2011-07-29T15:09:02.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some factors to consider: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the client in question large enough that there could be follow on work?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the technology being used in demand, or would this be a one-off project where you'd never use these new skills again?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are people on your team interested in acquiring this skill?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on factors like these you'll need to decide whether the client should be billed for your learning curve, or whether it makes sense to eat these costs to grow your staff and your business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2011-07-29T15:09:02.627" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2971" CreationDate="2011-07-29T19:57:27.390" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If this technology is indeed in demand in the market place and could mean a viable opportunity for your team to expand your market base, then it sounds like you should pursue.  There is always some learning that takes place on projects for which the sponsor pays; however, this is brand new to your team.  So I do not think it is the type of project learning that is appropriate for someone else to pay.  I think it needs to be an investment on your part to acquire the competency needed.  This means that you have done the analysis that says your return from the opportunity exceeds your investment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should you take this particular job?  What is best for this client?  Can you gain the competency fast enough to do a credible job for this client?  Or is this going to be part of your learning where you are putting your client at too much risk?  Can you buy the competency such that you bring to bear the people who already experts and then the rest of your team can learn from them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-07-29T19:57:27.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2888" CreationDate="2011-07-29T20:04:40.873" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a software development budget plan excel sheet (it's an HTML but Excel can handle it):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://projectcodemeter.com/cost_estimation/images/files/pcmreports/development_budget_plan.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://projectcodemeter.com/cost_estimation/images/files/pcmreports/development_budget_plan.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1812" LastActivityDate="2011-07-29T20:04:40.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2817" CreationDate="2011-07-29T20:15:34.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you're asking for is quite simple and can actually be done with any groupware, i'd recommend FengOffice. I'd advise adding some good productivity measurement software as well (like ProjectCodeMeter), and of course a version control system like SVN (if you don't already have one).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1812" LastActivityDate="2011-07-29T20:15:34.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2971" CreationDate="2011-07-29T23:42:24.567" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tooling can help, but assign the first sprint to a learning exercise that you will throw away before starting the real project. This will pay itself back very quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make up a similar domain, very small scope, few screens/functions that will exercise the key points of the tooling ... Don't aim for all of it as this could take months to master ... Your goal is simply to get over the initial WTF stage so you can make intelligent / informed decisions on the real project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="689" LastActivityDate="2011-07-29T23:42:24.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2977" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2988" CreationDate="2011-07-30T17:47:31.653" Score="2" ViewCount="418" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually in an agile process such as scrum we don't do an initial analysis as in waterfall model. How to identify project risk in agile process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1815" LastActivityDate="2011-08-02T02:38:02.383" Title="In an agile project how should PM try to find risks upfront and if yes how?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;risk&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2977" CreationDate="2011-07-31T00:51:52.987" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just because the software is being developed using Agile doesn't mean there can't be a parallel project management effort - which will likely spam several sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2011-07-31T00:51:52.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2977" CreationDate="2011-07-31T13:28:42.073" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No matter what development methodology you are using there are a number of risks that can be known up front.  These need to be identified and mitigated.  During the project it is likely additional risks will be identified.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the risks are fairly standard, and have known solutions.  Identifying them and putting mitigating practices in places is important.  Here a list of some of the risks you may want to consider.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Web design has a number of risks including SQL injection, insecure logins, cross-site scripting and others. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://wwhttp://www.sans.org/top20/2007/w.sans.org/top25-software-errors/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SANS: CWD/SANS TOP 25 Most Dangerous Software Errors&lt;/a&gt; for some examples.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cyber security risks, see SANS: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sans.org/top-cyber-security-risks/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Top Cyber Security Risks&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sans.org/top20/2007/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SANS: Top 20 Internet Security Problems&lt;/a&gt; for some details.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Failure to adequately secure payment data. Compliance with &lt;a href=&quot;http://Payment%20Card%20Industry%20Data%20Security%20Standard&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard&lt;/a&gt; is a starting point.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are additional project specific risk which need to be dealt with on a per project basis.  These include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical risk in implementing new functionality.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Staffing/skills risk for the team.  The team may not have all the skills it needs.  You may have a limited number of team members with a critical skill.  Agile may make it easy to develop and/or transfer skills.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The risk of missed or unnecessary requirements.  Agile may help mitigate this risk.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scope creap risk (additional out of scope requirements added during the project).  Agile may help accommodate/deal with the problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2011-07-31T13:28:42.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2980" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-22T23:31:38.053" Score="2" ViewCount="178" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/584/please-advise-on-project-management-software&quot;&gt;Please Advise On Project Management software&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assume I work as a part of a small team (2-3) people who are all remote from each other. We build web applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*) I use a project management web application to manage bugs/resources/specs etc&lt;br&gt;&#xA;*) passwords are managed using keepassx and dropbox&lt;br&gt;&#xA;*) we use git for version control and codebase/github&lt;br&gt;&#xA;*) we use screencast and jing for screenshots and screencasts to share  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;..and my questions..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) can I improve the above?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2) should I add a new layer - central dev server for testing application (using capistrano)?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;3) real time collaboration solutions that don't cost $100,000/hour?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;4) anything else you want to add?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd really appreciate some help. I've been taking on some increasingly large projects recently which demand some effective project management and workflow tools. Any advice or criticism is welcome!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="417" OwnerDisplayName="Zenph" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-08-13T07:23:50.240" Title="Please Advise On Optimal Project Management?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2012-08-17T14:38:22.503" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2980" CreationDate="2011-07-29T20:26:52.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For realtime collaboration it doesn't get any simpler and cheaper than Skype. I'd also advise adding some developer productivity measurement software like ProjectCodeMeter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Josh G." LastActivityDate="2011-07-30T15:36:56.077" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2980" CreationDate="2011-07-29T20:56:36.413" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could consider using something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkerapp.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.talkerapp.com/&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://campfirenow.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://campfirenow.com/&lt;/a&gt; or IRC to keep an ongoing shared chat running with the ability to share large pastes, images etc. That's what we do and we're not even remote, we're all in the same office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="nicolaskruchten" LastActivityDate="2011-07-29T20:56:36.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2980" CreationDate="2011-07-31T16:33:53.987" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The biggest change when projects get larger is the need for a more robust methodology/techniques and not necessarily the tools.  Without the right structure, even the best tools will provide little value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start by defining the areas in which your current tools/processes are falling short and what the &quot;ideal&quot; process would look like. From there, research and learn techniques that can help you get to that ideal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-07-31T16:33:53.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2984" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2987" CreationDate="2011-07-31T17:04:43.457" Score="15" ViewCount="2110" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently read an article that had my stomach churn. A &quot;Project Management Professional&quot; said that he does not believe &quot;self-managing&quot; teams are possible. They &quot;need to be managed at some level.&quot; - This just reeks of old school Management 2.0 techniques and management theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any substantive articles, research, or white papers that show that teams and individuals desire to have &quot;mastery, autonomy, and flow?&quot; (Taken from Dan Pink's book Drive)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can share personal experiences... but it would be nice to see some hard 'evidence' per se...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1124" LastActivityDate="2013-04-01T08:29:47.080" Title="Self-Managing Teams - Reality or Myth?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2984" CreationDate="2011-07-31T20:32:41.637" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may like &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0321712471&quot;&gt;Jurgen Apello's &quot;Management 3.0&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. One of the chapters focuses on empowering teams. He describes seven levels of empowerment - from delegation, to advising a team, to being part of it, to commanding the team - and points out that different decisions are often made on different levels. He has some exercises that managers can do to find out in what ways the team are empowered, and helps us easily identify places in which they could be more empowered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, he also points out places in which it would be unusual for a team to make the decisions, and does support the idea that there are &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; aspects of team interaction which should be managed. For example, teams will not normally get to decide on the project vision, the budget, deadline, and may not be able to decide on language, technology choice, etc. He makes a compelling and intelligent argument, and links to lots of research and other work throughout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-07-31T20:32:41.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2984" CreationDate="2011-07-31T20:52:50.270" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think when a manager/leader adopts a specific theory or school of though on management has much to do with his/her personality as well as the type of work, people, and environment over which (s)he is managing.  To discount this person's opinion as &quot;old school&quot; is not likely fair.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is true that, through study, there is evidence that whittles away at older theories, e.g., scientific management theory, bureaucratic management theory, they do not entirely go away or pieces of the theory prevail and survive over time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is very smart to understand these older theories, how they were developed, what the working environment was like, if you want to understand how contemporary theories have evolved.  Contingency theory is just that: this management type is true if this work environment is true.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-07-31T20:52:50.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2984" CreationDate="2011-07-31T21:41:15.000" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe we may have functional* teams &lt;strong&gt;without managers&lt;/strong&gt;, but never &lt;strong&gt;without management&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A non-managed team will hardly deliver anything acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think we need to define what's &lt;em&gt;self management&lt;/em&gt; and what are the minimal &lt;em&gt;tasks&lt;/em&gt; someone needs to do to be considered a &lt;em&gt;manager&lt;/em&gt;. Getting deep on this discussion, we also need to define what we consider as a &lt;em&gt;project&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For medium/large projects, a dev lead might not have the necessary knowledge to perform all business related tasks, specially the ones where there are values involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For small and well defined projects, however, I do believe it's possible. Let's think someone hires two developers to build a website. The client provides the the info required (layout, content, blablabla) and agrees with them the costs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A manager wouldn't be required to be kept on developer's shoulders checking their progress, as long as the developers have the required maturity to keep their clients aware of the progress. Notice that &lt;strong&gt;keeping the clients aware of the progress&lt;/strong&gt; is a managerial task... so we're now back to my opinion: we have here a &lt;em&gt;self-managed&lt;/em&gt; project, without a &lt;em&gt;manager&lt;/em&gt; properly 'entitled' as you said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Real cases? I believe that at least some of the home-made-website-development-companies we have around are good cases for this, at least when they're starting up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rgds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;*&lt;/code&gt; Functional Team as a team that &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; delivers something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2011-07-31T21:41:15.000" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2977" CreationDate="2011-08-01T02:18:11.050" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I disagree with the statement,that in SCRUM risk analysis is not done upfront &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about --&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Risk analysis when a story is groomed &amp;amp; estimated during SPRINT plannnig ---&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering &amp;amp; factoring in risks ( and considering mitigation - new stories ?? , &quot;story is too big and risk -- break it down &quot; , &quot;no test to catch regression -- can not committ to this story unless regression tests are written &quot; etc etc ) when story is groomed ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering &amp;amp; factoring in risks when story points are being estimated ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not think one is implementing SCRUM properly if formal risk analysis is not part of   the SPRINT planning process ! &#xA;I would be very nervous as a PM,if risks are not analysed,discussed and mitigations proposed before committing a story to the board&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastActivityDate="2011-08-01T02:18:11.050" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2499" CreationDate="2011-08-01T04:39:37.123" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile has been recently adopted by my organization (moving on from a part waterfall and part continuous integration dev model) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the way the consultant (who were selling Agile) approached it was: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Learn &quot;why&quot; do you want to adopt Agile and what currently ails the organization which you are trying to solve through Agile. In our case it was little predictability in delivery, continuous integration detrimental to sustained quality levels, people being pulled in different directions, hardly any knowledge transfer and lack of deliverable vision.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Explain and prove &quot;how&quot; Agile is going to solve the above problems and meet the business needs. Again in our case, it was through case histories, training, sample SPRINTs with the actual team and most importantly bringing the conflicts out in the open and relating the conflicts with the problems mentioned in the point above.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Empower the team and implement the changes required. It was partially done through a pilot couple of sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-11-09T11:20:18.773" LastActivityDate="2011-11-09T11:20:18.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2984" CreationDate="2011-08-01T13:54:40.523" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple of responses to your question (and I'll probably take some heat for this) - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First - You use the PMP in an almost sarcastic way, as if to say that a PMP just doesn't get it. I know a substantial amount of PMP's that are not only Agile/Scrum practitioners, but also trainers. Just because one has a PMP doesn't mean they all think alike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second - personal opinion only: while I'm not  big supporter of self-managed teams, I do think they're possible - within the team (ie: doing the work). But all teams, self-managed or not, need management of some type on a larger scale (on an organizational level). Once directed to complete a task, then they can self-manage. But until then...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third - the question of scale plays a part. A small team can be self-managed. But the larger the team becomes, the less viable self-management is. And most businesses don't operate on a small-team basis. This may be in part where your colleagues view was coming from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last - Re: &quot;Mastery, autonomy, flow&quot; - I think this is something that most, individuals as well as teams, want. You don't even really need the studies or articles to believe that. And to a point that freedom should be allowed. But not always. To assume that all teams, or even most, are in a better position to self-manage their work, or that not believing in it is &quot;old-school&quot; is as naive as believing that self-managed teams are not possible at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-08-01T13:54:40.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2977" CreationDate="2011-08-01T13:59:16.933" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem isn't that risk management is not done upfront in Agile software development processes.  &lt;strong&gt;The problem is that risk management is not done explicitly&lt;/strong&gt;, that is, risk management is implied in Agile processes so teams don't have the same notion of risk management as traditional project management expects.  This is not to say that explicit risk management and agile cannot work together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The SEI's Continuous Risk Management paradigm fits very well with agile processes.  The best way I know to combine CRM with Agile is to perform a &quot;mini&quot; Software Risk Evaluation workshop using the SEI's risk taxonomy-based questionnaire as a guide.  Mini-SRE's take anywhere from a few hours to a day to complete and not only teach a team what they need to know to identify and manage risks but also creates the initial risk backlog necessary to move forward with other parts of Agile processes.  Such a workshop should happen during Sprint 0 and act as a guide for helping the customer decide which things to work on first, and other non-development things the team should be working on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springerlink.com/content/w7h060834844632v/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Explicit Risk Management in Agile Processes&lt;/a&gt; is an experience report from XP2008 on using Mini-SRE and CRM with Scrum&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sei.cmu.edu/library/abstracts/reports/93tr006.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SEI's Risk Taxonomy-Based Questionnaire&lt;/a&gt; includes a set of questions and process for the software risk evaluation workshop (the whole process, not the mini version)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1630" LastEditorUserId="1630" LastEditDate="2011-08-02T02:38:02.383" LastActivityDate="2011-08-02T02:38:02.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2777" CreationDate="2011-08-01T15:10:17.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One that forgets he/she is working with people and instead treats them like raw material on a production line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When your team individuals are nothing more than friendly names of resources in a Gantt diagram (Resource1 is code name John, resource2 is code name Diana and so one) with no empathy involved whatsoever, then the manager is one big incompetent dude/dudesse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1818" LastActivityDate="2011-08-01T15:10:17.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="871" CreationDate="2011-08-01T17:31:29.013" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have completed my PMP certification in Oct-2010 and have few comments regarding its worth&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In a world moving from waterfall to lean and agile the 42 processes and 9 knowledge areas may not make sense in all project management scenarios. That's the reason why I think PMI has realized it and has come out with an agile certification.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Having said the previous point I still believe for a technical person moving to PM role it provides a very structured learning methodology where you can understand and appreciate the different facets of project management especially topics like risk management and cost management which no one teaches you otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also in the end any certification help you differentiate yourself from the persons with similar skill set, and demonstrate that you have invested time and effort in getting yourself benchmarked against some industry standard.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1815" LastActivityDate="2011-08-01T17:31:29.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2777" CreationDate="2011-08-01T21:53:04.400" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;An incompetent project manager dictates, rather than leads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They talk about themselves and their plans, rather than inspire, listen and learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They default to their estimates and deadlines, rather than factor in the voice of the people doing the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-08-01T21:53:04.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2995" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2997" CreationDate="2011-08-01T22:35:04.400" Score="7" ViewCount="11028" Body="&lt;p&gt;Which tool(s) do you use for creating good project timelines? I don't mean Gantt charts, but timelines that summarize the milestones so the team / others can have an overview of the plan ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1823" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-03-07T14:11:57.137" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T14:11:57.137" Title="Which tool do you use for creating good looking project timelines?" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;&lt;timeline&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2995" CreationDate="2011-08-02T06:11:08.877" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm using Visio. I'm lucky enough to have access to a large format printer, so I make this diagram in D size paper divided in 10 columns. Each column represents a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I manage a team that is responsible to implement stories related to hardware design, electronics design, firmware and normal software development. Each area has a different icon, and then I have items distributed into sprints (columns).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also have red vertical lines in future sprints defining hard deadlines (shows where the product is going to be presented, etc)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As sprints go by, I draw a big green checkmark on top of the stories that were successfully delivered on demo day, and a red cross otherwise. I print one of such plots at the begining of each sprint. It also helps visualizing the velocity adjusting itself as time goes by.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1692" LastActivityDate="2011-08-02T06:11:08.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2995" CreationDate="2011-08-02T08:52:14.243" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have used the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most of the time for high-level timelines I use &lt;strong&gt;MS PowerPoint&lt;/strong&gt;. I find it works really well if you are well-versed with the software well but I wouldn't advise it if you are a &quot;beginner&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Visio&lt;/strong&gt; (there is a built-in layout for timelines).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;MS Project&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if you have a version older than 2010, what you can do is limited, but to draw and print a high-level timeline I use a custom column to identify the activities/milestones I want to show, then filter on that column and use the formatting options available.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the MS Project 2010 version has a “visually enhanced timeline” feature: see more info in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/tech-manager/create-the-timeline-view-in-microsoft-project-2010/5245&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article on TechRepublic&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Additional note: I have written a post on the subject of communicating about plans/timelines (it includes an example of a high-level timeline done in PPT) on my blog &lt;a href=&quot;http://projectmanagementcommunications.com/2011/07/14/communicating-about-project-plans/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastActivityDate="2011-08-02T08:52:14.243" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2998" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-02T08:59:33.737" Score="2" ViewCount="1214" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for an evaluation method and criteria for determining if a project can be conducted using the Agile method (over traditional/waterfall). I would welcome examples (&quot;definitely Agile&quot;, &quot;definitely not&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastEditorUserId="1722" LastEditDate="2011-08-02T13:22:35.117" LastActivityDate="2011-08-05T18:30:12.590" Title="How do you evaluate if the Agile method is the right one for a specific project?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;evaluation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2995" CreationDate="2011-08-02T14:39:43.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;you might want to check out: &lt;a href=&quot;http://sprintr.com/tour/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://sprintr.com/tour/&lt;/a&gt; especially created to enhance agile methodologies, you can generate timelines, burndowncharts, maintain the backlog and stories etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1377" LastActivityDate="2011-08-02T14:39:43.063" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2998" CreationDate="2011-08-02T15:32:02.377" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My experience in project management so far has been only in software engineering and therefore I will try to answer from that perspective only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best place to use Agile is where you are expecting changes in the future. Since agile is lightweight and welcome changes, you may be in a better position to respond to changes (market demands, requirements change, feature updates etc) if you use agile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As agile guru Martin Fowler suggest  &lt;a href=&quot;http://martinfowler.com/articles/newMethodology.html#ShouldYouGoAgile&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://martinfowler.com/articles/newMethodology.html#ShouldYouGoAgile&lt;/a&gt; moving to agile also requires a mindset change from all stakeholders and will be succesfull only if everybody is fully committed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also to continue to stay agile requires a lot of discipline (follow continuous re-factoring, TDD etc)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That leaves us with is Waterfall dead or is there still are some valid case for waterfall. My view is projects or disciplines where requirements are not expected to change, projects where a lot of initial analysis and design is required are still good candidates for waterfall. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1815" LastActivityDate="2011-08-02T15:32:02.377" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2998" CreationDate="2011-08-02T16:49:23.390" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To do Waterfall, you have to have a reasonable certainty of getting things right up front.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of this, you can only do projects which are very low risk, ie: ones where the vast majority of it has been done before. See &quot;Waltzing with Bears&quot;, Tom de Marco and Timothy Lister, for why these projects may not be particularly useful, especially in software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile isn't just about keeping things responsive to change. It's also about keeping things responsive to &lt;em&gt;learning&lt;/em&gt;, so in any situation where you've got a high amount of unknowns - people who've never used the technology before, or a new GUI that hasn't been tried, or an architecture that might not work with the legacy app - I would use Agile. Many of the traditional Agile practices, like stand-ups, showcases, retrospectives, etc. are there to get feedback, learn from that feedback, and share the learning, thus reducing the risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even on a project where the requirements have been analyzed to death, the chances are that learning and discovery will be taking place. Agile practices which allow that learning to be shared can then be useful, even if the analysis practices are discarded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only danger of this is the transparency which it introduces, which often causes the people who asked for the requirements to ask for changes, in which case you should probably have gone with something a bit more Agile...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Configuring and installing a standard business package: Waterfall. Get the experts in to do it, don't do it yourself, or if you do, use Agile.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Greenfield project with no existing codebase: Agile.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Incremental move from legacy app: Agile.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Complete rewrite of legacy app: Agile.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Small changes to existing app: Agile*.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fixed price, scope, budget: Waterfall might protect you a bit, maybe, but you'll still benefit from Agile learning practices.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*This is actually a good one to start Kanban with, which is related to Lean rather than Agile. Most stuff is suitable for Kanban if it's suitable for Agile methodologies anyway; they have more in common than different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2011-08-02T16:56:01.373" LastActivityDate="2011-08-02T16:56:01.373" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2998" CreationDate="2011-08-03T00:52:26.567" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two areas which I would consider waterfall most appropriate.  This will be expensive to produce, and should have a fully functional change management process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Highly regulated software where software must be to specifications, and all changes controlled.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Software where failure may be deadly (aircraft fly-by-wire software, nuclear reactor control systems, medical systems, etc.).  All changes will need to be approved. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A third case where waterfall might be appropriate would be a project with low risk, and known solution.  Most of these should be candidates for off-the shelf software.  These project might benefit from some use of agile processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point in my career, I would consider most other projects as candidates for Agile processes.  Things that I would classify as definitely Agile include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Highly competitive environments.  (May need to release new version on short notice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Projects with a high degree of uncertainty.  Agile techniques can be used to drive towards certainty.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Projects with lots of nice to haves.  Develop core functionality, and add nice to haves based on priority or discovered importance.  It makes it easier to delay non-core functionality until needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look to the other methodology for things that will increase your certainty.  Agile can be used to clarify areas of uncertainty or risk for a waterfall methodology.  Waterfall can provide a stable platform underneath an Agile project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the areas I have seen lacking in many projects is a good base to develop from.  I would expect a consulting organization to have defaults for these, but I haven't seen it in practice.  This includes things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Choice of tools where important: language(s), database(s), hardware platform(s), version control, change/bug tracking, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Organizational/project standards and best practices.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team organization, roles, and backup resources.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2011-08-03T00:52:26.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2995" CreationDate="2011-08-03T10:57:06.107" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;An MSProject GANTT chart can be made useful at a higher level by creating summary tasks, and then just showing the highest level of outline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2011-08-03T10:57:06.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3005" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-03T13:28:14.067" Score="6" ViewCount="6461" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently got a conversation with my team leader. He told me that I'm currently not solution-oriented and not self-organized. And that I have to do something about it. I'll try to do better, but that feels aimless to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are common trainings for those soft skills?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.: I went to university, studied computer science and I'm working for two and a half year until now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Answers:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for your answers. I try to find out what's behind my team leader's arguments. Sadly he didn't tell me examples about what I do wrong. I like JonAlbs answer the most, because he included some pratical advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(SE ist unusable without registration. I can't comment, vote up or accept your answers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1834" LastEditorUserId="1863" LastEditDate="2011-08-09T09:54:15.210" LastActivityDate="2012-11-05T14:36:59.667" Title="How to become solution-oriented and self-organized?" Tags="&lt;skills&gt;&lt;learning&gt;&lt;personal-skills&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3005" CreationDate="2011-08-03T13:37:09.223" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sorry, for me this is WAY too open-ended a question. Can you clarify?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WHY does your team lead feel this way? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Not solution-oriented&quot; - Does this mean you only complain when you find a problem? Do you just bring problems to someone else for an answer? Are you just not experienced enough to find answers/solutions yourself? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Not self-organized&quot; - Again, why this feeling? Are you not getting your work done on time? Do you lose things, are you late, do you forget information, etc? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would agree with you; trying to fix it is 'aimless' until you know exactly what traits you're trying to address.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-11-02T17:06:45.790" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T17:06:45.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3005" CreationDate="2011-08-03T14:09:45.097" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Trevor is right.  Management 101 says, when providing feedback, to give very specific, concrete, and measurable examples of work behaviors that both need to continue or need to disappear.  Tell your team leader he needs to do something about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These two examples are value interpretations of a set of behaviors.  You cannot do anything with that.  He owes you more information.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-08-03T14:09:45.097" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2995" CreationDate="2011-08-03T15:39:57.797" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I go with post-it notes and a sharpie!  That said, either Visio or the Draw app in the open office suite have timeline stencils.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2011-08-03T15:39:57.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="63" CreationDate="2011-08-04T02:12:58.220" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I second, wait THIRD the recommendation for LiquidPlanner. I was first attracted to LiquidPlanner because I love how they allow for ranged estimates. This allows you to create a schedule that you can really depend on and not have to go back and update all of the time. There's also great reports, a whole suite of collaboration tools, time-tracking, mobile app and more. Definitely check it out!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="184" LastActivityDate="2011-08-04T02:12:58.220" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-08-04T02:12:58.220" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="871" CreationDate="2011-08-04T02:21:01.520" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I actually wrote a blog post about it. The summary of it is that I think it's worth it for me, but depending on your situation it might not be the best thing for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.liquidplanner.com/blog/2011/3/10/pmp-certification-is-it-really-worth-it.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.liquidplanner.com/blog/2011/3/10/pmp-certification-is-it-really-worth-it.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="184" LastActivityDate="2011-08-04T02:21:01.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3011" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-04T05:12:31.457" Score="8" ViewCount="523" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am the scrum master for a project that involves not only software, but firmware development, electrical engineering and industrial design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some tasks involve a small amount of time from a team member, let's say 1 story point, but the definition of done for that story involves ordering parts that have a certain lead time that might span one or two sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to you represent that knowledge (or don't) in your product backlog? That info is vital for long term planning, but nowhere I look (I'm using Microsoft TFS for scrum automation) I see support for lead times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1692" LastActivityDate="2020-07-14T16:10:42.057" Title="In Scrum, how do you account for tasks with lead time?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3011" CreationDate="2011-08-04T08:47:17.357" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the ideal world, you'd work with your supplier to help them become more Agile so that they could fulfil your requests more quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the real world, pragmatism rules. We normally identify elements with long lead-time - usually computers and servers for testing, in our case - and get those elements in place. It can help to have visibility of the full, high-level backlog so that the team can identify these elements more easily. You can do this by listing the business outcomes and user / system capabilities that need to be achieved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're using a tool which only covers discrete concerns, add a small story to remind yourself about the lead times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't order the items &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; far in advance, though. &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120921111833/http://decision-coach.com/lean-and-real-options/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Real Options&lt;/a&gt; may be helpful in working out when the last responsible moment is, and how you can pay to keep options open if appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, most useful Agile practices are based on extreme forms of common sense. We can still use the less extreme forms where applicable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-12T14:41:37.910" LastActivityDate="2020-07-12T14:41:37.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3013" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3015" CreationDate="2011-08-04T17:34:24.863" Score="12" ViewCount="11174" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lets say someone is still in university, so they still require 7500 hours of project management experience to applying for PMP. Would it be worth their while to do the CAPM or to simply wait until they get sufficient experience for PMP?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if they wish to do internships in the field of Project Management would it give them an edge over someone (a student) who has a bit more experience in project management, but no certifications?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;7 years later&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;: So I did end up getting the CAPM in 2012 and landed an internship at Microsoft as a Program Manager. Haven't looked back since. I don't know if CAPM was the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; thing that led to the internship but I'd say it probably played a role in getting me the interview. To the Answers below saying a piece of paper can't compare to experience: yes but a &lt;code&gt;piece of paper + no experience&lt;/code&gt; is still better than &lt;code&gt;no piece of paper and no experience&lt;/code&gt; IMO. For other students looking to get into Project / Product / Program management, I would highly recommend trying to get an internship no matter how less it pays as long as it provides good experience. If you're unable to find a relevant internship, I'd supplement it with getting a CAPM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1843" LastEditorUserId="1843" LastEditDate="2018-08-10T16:23:44.090" LastActivityDate="2018-08-10T16:23:44.090" Title="If someone doesn't have enough experience to get the PMP, should they get the CAPM instead or wait until they have enough experience for PMP?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;capm&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="63" CreationDate="2011-08-04T18:07:58.767" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jira&lt;/a&gt; is really good for agile software project managing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1845" LastActivityDate="2011-08-04T18:07:58.767" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-08-04T18:07:58.767" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3013" CreationDate="2011-08-04T18:26:55.957" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If someone is doing a university degree which does not include a formal project management subject/course and wants to get into the PM field, I believe it would be beneficial to have the CAPM (rather than wait to get the experience required for the PMP certification):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it shows the applicant's motivation and eagerness to get into PM and demonstrates initiative;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it shows (s)he is familiar with a specific theory/methodology (PMI) and can be expected to have a reasonable grasp of PM concepts, processes, terminology, etc. even though (s)he doesn't have the practice;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it would help her/him perform PM work;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it would actually help her/him get their first PM-related job (over not having any certification at all).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it would get this person noticed and get them considered for an entry-level position in PM. Whether it gives the edge over someone else who has experience is difficult to say because there are many other things that come into play when hiring someone, not the least the specific role (and associated requirements) applied for. CAPM is an entry-level point into PM so would likely lead to project coordination / support roles to start with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this person can still decide to do the PMP exam once (s)he has the required experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastActivityDate="2011-08-04T18:26:55.957" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3016" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3055" CreationDate="2011-08-04T19:57:32.197" Score="0" ViewCount="643" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a person is in enrolled in Software Engineering in university and wishes to get into software dev. related project management, would it be better for them to finish their software engineering degree and do project work/certifications on the side, or to switch to a business degree. That is, for software related project management, which degree would help better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1843" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T03:43:24.063" LastActivityDate="2012-05-21T10:33:11.037" Title="Which undergraduate degree is better for software development related project management" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2012-07-03T03:52:18.177" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3017" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-05T00:03:05.827" Score="24" ViewCount="16432" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use a scrum-based agile development process. But where should design get incorporated? Separate user stories? Tasks on stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We currently think of design as a separate task and break it out as a separate user story with estimated points.  The problem I have with this is that the &quot;development user stories&quot; then have these dependencies on other stories which we generally try to avoid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should we be incorporating design work in user-stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1640" LastEditorUserId="2124" LastEditDate="2011-09-23T16:34:20.313" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T22:08:29.240" Title="Where should design be incorporated in an agile process?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;design&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3016" CreationDate="2011-08-05T18:01:47.983" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Study what interests you.  By the time your career evolves to leadership roles, no one will care where you went to school or what you studied.  At that point, proven results and demonstrable skills become the focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-08-05T18:01:47.983" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2998" CreationDate="2011-08-05T18:30:12.590" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;See the diagram on page 3 of this classic: Balancing Agility and Discipline by Barry Boehm - &lt;a href=&quot;http://agile2003.agilealliance.org/files/P4Paper.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://agile2003.agilealliance.org/files/P4Paper.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have 5 dimensions: Personnel, Criticality, Culture, Size, Dynamism. It's more like '5 dimensional' graph and the 'size' of the polygon should give you a visual que if Agile is more suitable or Process intensive. You can increase the number of dimensions are per your company's view point and add more dimensions...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1119" LastActivityDate="2011-08-05T18:30:12.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3017" CreationDate="2011-08-05T19:24:22.707" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is something my team struggles with as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this caused me to ask a different question to my team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;If you don't know what the design is how can you task out the story and accept it into the iteration&quot;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can guess, this question was greeted with blank looks and stunned silence.   We just do was the final answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately I think the best way to handle this question is by having clear and defined coding and design standards that the team adheres to with an almost religious fervor.  As the story is reviewed in the backlog via weekly grooming meeting it is updated and a rough design is agreed to based on the teams accepted standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this process is followed your Sprint/iteration planning meetings will go much more smoothly.  This should also increase your velocity and lower the number of stories that failed to gain acceptance because they could not be completed due to found work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are talking about Graphics and UI I have always found it helpful to have this effort broken into two or more stories, the first story delivers the functionality without any of the bells or whistles, this gives the design team something to iterate on and come up with a final design in a following iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally all the design elements are extracted into resource files so that they can be updated without having to re-deploy the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jeff&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1711" LastEditorUserId="1711" LastEditDate="2011-08-08T16:02:43.187" LastActivityDate="2011-08-08T16:02:43.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2648" CreationDate="2011-08-05T19:52:01.740" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel there are three issues to consider;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the level of automation available&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the maturity of the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;built in overhead of Agile Ceremonies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short iteration cycles are dependent on high levels of automation&#xA;1.  Automated Build&#xA;2.  Automated Deployment&#xA;3.  A high % of automated testing both functional and regression&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If these system are not in place you will very quickly get to a point where your velocity drops because the code base has reached a point where it takes so much time to do all these steps manually that there is no time to develop new features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The maturity of the team and the overhead of agile ceremonies are interrelated.  If a team is new to Agile it takes longer to groom the backlog, task out stories for the iteration planning meeting and get through the review and retrospective meetings.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Ken Schwabers book “Agile Project management with Scrum”,  He suggests time boxing your Sprint Development Meeting to 8 hours, your Sprint Review to 4 hours your Retrospective to 3 hours and your daily stand up to 15 minutes a day.  Added all up you have just spent over 40% of your development time in meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Granted when he said this he was talking about an iteration length of 4 weeks or roughly 10% of the available development time.  While I agree that smaller iterations require shorter meeting times I don’t believe nor have I ever seen all these ceremonies compressed to fit the 10% time commitment suggested in Ken’s book and this delta between optimal and actual is larger the less mature the team is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I would not want to go smaller than two weeks but if the team wanted to try a week I would be willing to try.  I just think that the value derived would be smaller.  I guess I will have to try it and develop some numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be interested in hearing your results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1711" LastActivityDate="2011-08-05T19:52:01.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2499" CreationDate="2011-08-05T20:21:06.257" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am puzzled by the responses by Trevor and Mark and would be interested in what “Agile” means to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me Agile (the philosophy)  and its various incarnations XP, Scrum etc. are only a way to address the issue of what should I be working on and when.  They are a framework to focus your team (and I don’t care if you are a developer, accountant, or lawyer) on what is the most important work and communicate your progress or lack thereof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don’t think anyone could argue that communication is a good thing and that is what is the bedrock of Agile processes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The  value of a backlog of work items that the whole company can see can’t be overstated, it allows &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An understanding of what is important to the company and in what order &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What part each division of the company has in making that goal a reality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Visibility into the cross functional dependencies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And perhaps the most important, the ability of the individual to see how they are contributing to the company which has the effect of increasing both the quality and quantity of work produced.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1711" LastEditorUserId="2880" LastEditDate="2012-02-29T13:43:52.450" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T13:43:52.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3023" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-05T20:58:43.167" Score="7" ViewCount="5976" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you use basecamp's fairly rigid tools for facilitating the scrum PM framework?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1640" LastActivityDate="2020-07-12T13:15:36.967" Title="How do you make Basecamp work for scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3024" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-05T16:11:21.477" Score="10" ViewCount="829" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’m a long time programmer (15 years), who likes his work, but I see that a lot of people have changed their career after few years and moved to management. I never liked management, and most of all I think I don’t have any skill at all to be a manager. Is it possible to improve management skills in a short term or should I give up and stick to the keyboard?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="jefrainmx" LastEditorUserId="2124" LastEditDate="2011-09-20T21:57:20.630" LastActivityDate="2011-09-20T23:26:57.887" Title="How can I improve my management skills in preparation for a potential career shift from programmer to manager?" Tags="&lt;skills&gt;&lt;personal-skills&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="829" CreationDate="2011-08-06T05:41:21.467" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just released, yesterday, a desktop product that might suit you.  It's not Kanban, but Story Mapping instead.  Might suit you well tho, since it's still a visual board, and it saves its data to a file on your disk/network. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tactyle.net/docs/how-is-tactyle-different/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.tactyle.net/docs/how-is-tactyle-different/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1850" LastActivityDate="2011-08-06T05:41:21.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3026" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-06T06:38:44.800" Score="1" ViewCount="2120" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1307/how-do-you-share-lessons-learned-from-a-post-mortem&quot;&gt;(Related question).&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have recently landed myself a product engineer role.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The software product is a server based product with a front end GUI in the browser.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;We have a number of clients, but the product is still growing and the developers/product manager are still working on bug fixes and enhancements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have around 20 staff that will go out to our existing or new clients and help roll out the product within their environments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I can see, the methodology is to just go in there and get the job done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need a bit more experience with implementing the product outside of the lab, but already I feel there would be a lot of benefit if there was a better system in place:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Methodology (apart from the manual) to get the product installed. I.e. A tick-list on things to check before leaving the site.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Retrospective (is this the right word?) for each implementation to gather what went right/wrong. This would then be shared on our internal Wiki (Confluence).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does anyone have any good resources, such as templates, that I could use to get started?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1658" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2017-02-28T16:29:22.907" Title="Retrospective templates for implementations?" Tags="&lt;post-mortem&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3024" CreationDate="2011-08-06T06:57:03.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First there is nothing wrong continuing doing what you like (you can consider yourself lucky since there are lots of people stuck in jobs they hate), and you shouldn't do something just because you see others do it (as this would likely get you into work you don't like!). So I would advise you to do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;be honest with yourself and clarify your goals and what you want out of your career (and if it's to go on programming that's perfectly ok), what you like and what you don't.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;list the reasons you want to improve your management skills (eg. to get into a management role, to make your current job more interesting, to help you perform your job better, to get more money, etc.).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;list which specific skills you believe you are lacking (eg. Project management, communications, financial management, team leadership, etc.):  try to get feedback from people you work with (your manager especially). Perhaps the company you work at has an HR department that can help you with this. If you are working as a freelance, there are career/professional development advisors you could consult with (they can run skills assessments and evaluate your specific needs).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;investigate options for you to get these skills (in-house training provided by your company? external courses? Self-study, etc.).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastActivityDate="2011-08-06T06:57:03.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3017" CreationDate="2011-08-06T10:14:41.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When working with software, I believe design done right is always going on. I look at stories as business/user focused, not development focused. A story like &quot;Get statuses from the database.&quot; is development focused and will lead to many problems. A story like &quot;Display the status of the order.&quot; is more business/user focused. If you choose to slice up that story into tasks (something I actually do not recommend) then I would slice it up so that each task incorporates all layers of your architecture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When your team gets used to doing this they will find design considerations early and if your team has good communication (a big key in my book) then design decisions will be discussed at the right time as the discussion will happen dynamically and be unplanned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="522" LastActivityDate="2011-08-06T10:14:41.907" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2817" CreationDate="2011-08-06T16:12:06.287" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The really important thing not to underplay is that you have a team that has already been successful in delivering a non trivial project. It sounds like there are things that you want to improve, but it should be possible to tweak this process with small incremental steps rather than needing to resort to wholesale changes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it a requirement that &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; is available on line? Since everyone is co-located I'd suggest avoiding formal management software until you absolutely have to. The lighter weight you can make the tools the more adaptable your solution, this makes it more likely that your tools will mirror your process rather than your process be dictated by your tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest using something as simple as a wiki or an online spreadsheet for shared persistent state with white boards and post its for day to day task management. Daily stand ups for functional team keeps everyone on the same page and provides a quick way to identify risks to the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you eventually decide upon will be specific to your situation - here's a description of a light weight method for task tracking using a Kanban board that might give you some ideas. &lt;a href=&quot;http://fragile.org.uk/2010/01/kanban-in-practice/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://fragile.org.uk/2010/01/kanban-in-practice/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neil&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1852" LastActivityDate="2011-08-06T16:12:06.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3017" CreationDate="2011-08-06T16:53:22.707" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three reasons for estimation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To work out how much the team can take on each sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To work out how long a release will take to be complete, given the team on hand&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To allow the team to reach a common understanding on the scope of the work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They're not really about the size of the work, but more about how much you can fit through your development pipeline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this reason, I tend to encourage teams to worry about the development effort, rather than also including analysis, UI design, testing, etc. Development normally forms the most constrained part of the pipeline. There's a lot that developers can do to help analysts and testers, if they become overworked, but unless a team member can code there's not much they can do to help the devs - so I focus purely on development points. Focusing on development points alone is enough to get all these three things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regard to working collaboratively rather than having dependencies, I've usually encouraged the analysts and designers to work a sprint ahead of the developers, making sure that enough is done for the developers to have an idea of the scope of the work they're taking on in the planning meeting and estimate it with as much confidence as they can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found it useful to get designers to think of what might be easy to change later - text, colours, placement, etc. - and focus on sketching out a wireframe that devs can use to get the right controls onto a page or screen. They can then work collaboratively, in the later part of the sprint, to get the fine details correct. I've found this also a useful approach with analysis and details like validation, error messages, or with architecture and the actual content of HTML / XML messages, RESTful keywords, etc. Keeping things easy to change later makes the pre-sprint analysis very much more lightweight, and can help teams to collaborate more effectively, regardless of their role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-08-06T16:53:22.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3031" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-06T16:59:45.980" Score="5" ViewCount="6627" Body="&lt;p&gt;We tend to do our retrospective on the final day of the sprint and have found that by the end of an hour and a half, launching into a planning session is not ideal at all.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When do you hold your sprint planning meeting to walk through the newest batch of stories and  begin to work out the details so points can be estimated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1640" LastActivityDate="2011-08-11T13:57:48.420" Title="When should you do sprint planning?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3031" CreationDate="2011-08-06T19:02:53.810" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I note in your question you refer to the &lt;em&gt;retrospective&lt;/em&gt; rather than the &lt;em&gt;review&lt;/em&gt; session.&#xA;First of all, I just want to check you're not confusing the two: the review is where you demonstrate delivered backlog items to stakeholders, the retrospective is for the team to discuss and improve the process itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always leave at least an overnight, and preferably a weekend, between the sprint review and the planning session.&#xA;The review is when feedback and new ideas get tossed around - yes, ideally they'd already be in the backlog, but in reality this is what seems to happen. Having a good break between the two sessions gives the team (and everyone) a chance to mull over the comments and come back ready to discuss them properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, ideally (and it's not always practical when you have multiple teams) I have sprint review on friday afternoon and planning on monday morning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the retrospective, that &lt;em&gt;tends&lt;/em&gt; to happen straight after the review session - but that's flexible depending on how the team is feeling and how draining/difficult the review has been. Definitely not immediately before the planning session though - if necessary I'd even rather defer it until AFTER the planning session (although that would obviously preclude improving the planning session itself!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1851" LastActivityDate="2011-08-06T19:02:53.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2653" CreationDate="2011-08-06T21:56:09.420" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for a pretty large organisation that makes a sizeable claim - so managers, team leaders and some senior devs have had specific training on what can and cannot be counted.&#xA;We therefore simply tag all tasks in the backlog according to whether they can be counted or not, and run off a report when required. If this all sounds really organised, I should add it's taken us years to get to this stage :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also add that allowable activities for R&amp;amp;D tax credits go beyond simply define and design. &lt;em&gt;Anything&lt;/em&gt; that is &quot;either 'directly contributing' to seeking the advance in science or technology, or as 'qualifying indirect activity'&quot; can be included (http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/cirdmanual/cird81300.htm) - this certainly includes the actual development/programming activities to &lt;em&gt;prove&lt;/em&gt; the definition and design of the &quot;invention&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that even such things as building costs and overheads can form an element of the overall claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on how much you spend on &quot;R&amp;amp;D&quot; it could certainly be worthwhile consulting a specialist accountant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1851" LastActivityDate="2011-08-06T21:56:09.420" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3031" CreationDate="2011-08-06T22:47:45.523" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've done retrospective and planning on the same and separate days.  My preference (and it is a very slight preference) is to do both on the same day, back to back...  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pro : the &quot;what we want to improve&quot; is fresh in everyone's mind&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pro : Gets all the &quot;overhead&quot; meetings done in one day&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Con : Scrum Master must do -lots- of prep work so that the planning session is ready to go&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Neutral : Team can go to lunch together and talk about the retrospective/whats upcoming for an afternoon planning session&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spreading them across days is nice for the Scrum Master since they only need to prep one intense meeting (instead of two) but I think this isn't a huge issue.  I would let the team decide and even try a few different approaches, I don't think there is anything magical about when to have the meetings, and you might find one team prefers one structure and another team prefers a different one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-08-06T22:47:45.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3035" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-07T04:27:05.010" Score="3" ViewCount="214" Body="&lt;p&gt;I previously headed up a support and training team for a home-grown software product.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I have now moved into a product engineer/specialist role, within same company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My background has been purely technical. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to be as ready as I can to move into this new role.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I have picked out some of the key duties from the job description, and &lt;strong&gt;I would like some advice on how I can prepare myself for this role.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;e.g. Books, web-resources to read, experienced advice, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Act as a product evangelist&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assist with onsite delivery of product.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Analysing client requirements and developing software specifications based&#xA;upon these&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Experience in Iterative (e.g. Scrum) software development models and methodologies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide support to business development on tender responses&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide business analysis services around product development&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Develop consistent &amp;amp; high quality product documentation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Develop product training materials&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will be reporting directly to the product manager.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;1 dev lead, 4 devs, 2 testers, 10 in support, a marketing team and a bunch of people that will go on site to install the product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1429/how-and-what-to-learn-new-to-product-management&quot;&gt;Related Q&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me know if you need more details via Comments and ill edit/re-phrase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1658" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-07-27T19:30:20.113" Title="Product Engineer - How and What to Learn?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-07-27T19:31:48.113" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3024" CreationDate="2011-08-07T11:23:47.830" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although there are lots of great books that you will find useful I think that Setting the Table is one of the best (&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0060742755&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Setting-Table-Transforming-Hospitality-Business/dp/0060742755&lt;/a&gt;). The whole first half is more about this guys life and restaurant philosophy but second half really encapsulates much of what it means to manage and lead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1854" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-08-10T13:11:50.347" LastActivityDate="2011-08-10T13:11:50.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3037" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3038" CreationDate="2011-08-07T13:06:01.960" Score="0" ViewCount="241" Body="&lt;p&gt;After digging through Google, it appears that Edward Yourdon has done most of the original writing on this topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any other writers who have covered this, or a similar topic, related to project failure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to strive for an objective viewpoint, it would be great to get the opinions of some writers other than Yourdon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1551" LastActivityDate="2011-08-07T15:15:36.020" Title="&quot;Death March&quot; projects - any writers apart from Yourdon?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;failure&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3037" CreationDate="2011-08-07T15:15:36.020" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do a google search on my friend and colleague, Tom DeMarco, and track down his page on the Atlantic System Guild's website. I'm pretty sure that he (perhaps along with Tim Lister) have written about the futility and idiocy of death-march projects... Tom's advice is, basically, &quot;just say no!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1856" LastActivityDate="2011-08-07T15:15:36.020" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3031" CreationDate="2011-08-07T15:22:05.993" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually ask my team how they would prefer to do the retrospective and planning.  Usually the asnswer is on the same day as alhtough, recognising these sesisons as important, they prefer to get to the next iteration as soon as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may wish to consider things such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;length of iteration&lt;/strong&gt; - longer iterations will tend to lead to longer retrospective and planning sessions, which may be too long and draining to get the best value form the sessions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;team experience&lt;/strong&gt; - experienced teams may be able to get the best value from these sessions in less time and with less strain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;product complexity&lt;/strong&gt; - a very complex product will require more retrospective and planning time, again meaning that the sessions maybe too long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above is not exhaustive, the point is to examine how you do things and try and make sensible decisions that suit you and your team.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, you can inspect and adapt this process too, so you can try different approaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1855" LastActivityDate="2011-08-07T15:22:05.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3017" CreationDate="2011-08-07T16:00:49.017" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are trying to estimate general UI and Architecture at the beginning of the project, consider if you are going to base them on previous projects or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, I would use separate user stories and assign a high priority and perhaps risk to them.  I would ask myself why previous UI or architecture designs aren’t suitable anymore?    This will help you write stories that make sense to the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you decide that the UI or architecture is going to be similar to previous projects then a separate story is probably not required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that a good definition of DONE is useful in this case.  My team will know that if they mark a user story as DONE, it should be analysed further, designed, implemented, refactored, tested, peer reviewed and integrated into the build - the story is potentially shippable.  Notice design is in there.  Their estimates reflect this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also helpful if your team develop software that has a decoupled presentation layer (meaning that the UI is coded seperate to the logic).  This tecnique will reduce the dependency between most stories.  Perhaps ask your team if this is the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, like most things in Scrum, there is no right or wrong way.  You need to consider many factors and decide what works for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1855" LastEditorUserId="1855" LastEditDate="2011-08-07T16:44:13.033" LastActivityDate="2011-08-07T16:44:13.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2938" CreationDate="2011-08-07T20:15:35.197" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sit down with your team collectively and then individually and ask them what they think. If their views/opinions align with yours, then that's a good sign. If they don't, then maybe you should communicate with them more often about what matters? Regardless of whether their concerns match up 100% with yours, ask them how they can help you, and you them, to get the project on track again. Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1857" LastActivityDate="2011-08-07T20:15:35.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3005" CreationDate="2011-08-07T23:53:24.507" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like your team leader wants you to get more focused, my first suggestion would be to get into another conversation with him and ask him what he means but these are my thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Solution Orientated:&#xA;Developers can often get for problems rather than solutions, its a natural trait we get into.  Rather than looking at the hurdles look at what can be achieved, look at the bigger picture and what can be do to make it better.  Just looking at the issue in detail might fix the small issue you have encountered but in some cases by looking at the problem in the context of the entire system might lead to to an alternative solution that is better for the customer and perhaps quicker to achieve.  Rather than being problem focused (negative), you become more positive and solution focused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not Self Organised:&#xA;Seems a little harsh to say you aren't organised at all, but it suggests this is an area for improvement.  You should look at time management techniques.  I find using a paper based diary and notebook helps me.  Make sure you plan each week and especially each day before you start work.  Write down everything you want to achieve this week/day and plan out which hours in the day you will do each bit of work.  As you achieve the work in the day tick/cross out of each task in the diary.  At the end of the day roll over important things to the following days.  This way you will produce a log of everything you do and you will know what you should be doing.  One of the biggest wastes of time if jumping between tasks, people can only effectively do one thing at a time so make sure you have a nice list of single pieces of work you are working through.  The biggest waste of time is jumping between tasks so by planning your day this way you are getting rid of alot of wasted time.  If the task if big break it up into smaller manageable chunks and tick each one as you achieve them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really want to impress your line manager send a summary of the tasks you achieve each week to them, you will be surprised how much work you do (and how much more you will do when you plan your time more effectively)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1859" LastActivityDate="2011-08-07T23:53:24.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3017" CreationDate="2011-08-08T15:20:40.790" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've struggled with this too.  This kinda summarises our journey, that's not to say the same things will apply to you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Design work is done in sprint&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This used to be OK when we were doing long sprints (4 weeks) and there was time for some back and forth, between the designer, UX and Marketing about what the final design should be.  Even in long sprints though, if we were doing very different design to what currently existed (i.e. brand redesign), stakeholders would want more time to think than there was in the sprint.&#xA;I think this approach can work if your sprint length is reasonably long, you're working to strict brand guidelines and your PO can sign off designs themselves without having to go to other stakeholders&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As our iterations got shorter and we got burnt by more stories being blocked awaiting design sign off, we tried:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Design as separate stories&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This enabled us to bring the work in sooner, allowing us to better plan when we needed to start design work in order to ensure it was signed off in time to work on the story.&#xA;This has worked OK but it does cause some issues with velocity and estimation (see Lunivore's answer) and I was never keen on having dependent stories in the backlog (design is valueless without the dev, dev cant be done without the design).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're now doing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Design is part of our definition of ready&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a ready for sprint column on our board - stories can only move from the backlog to ready if they are sized appropriately, have acceptance criteria and have completed, signed off designs.&#xA;This still gives us visibility of forthcoming stories that we need designs for without having 'design for xyz page' separately in the backlog and the design work is done outside of the sprint so it doesn't affect estimation or planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, we do still have some stories that come through where we end up doing dev to wireframes to get stuff in the right place and end up doing the CSS a week or two later when we've got the actual designs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastEditorUserId="1185" LastEditDate="2012-06-25T22:08:29.240" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T22:08:29.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3026" CreationDate="2011-08-08T15:39:25.073" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few ideas here::&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agileretrospectivewiki.org/index.php?title=Retrospective_Plans&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://agileretrospectivewiki.org/index.php?title=Retrospective_Plans&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really recommend reading 'Agile Retrospectives' - lots of great ideas for a variety of situations.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pragprog.com/book/dlret/agile-retrospectives&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://pragprog.com/book/dlret/agile-retrospectives&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2011-08-08T15:39:25.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3045" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-08T16:38:24.203" Score="6" ViewCount="3240" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any statistics or at least some industry consensus on what are commonly acceptable quality levels for various kinds of software? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am certainly &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; talking about space shuttles or life supporting machines where the answer is more or less obvious. Rather, I am talking about such things as casual games, enterprise apps, e-commerce websites etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, it is pretty obvious that even with these types of apps, defects causing loss of money or similar severe consequences are unacceptable. But what about crashes,  intermittent malfunction, and defects having an awkward, but still a workaround?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please bear with me here, as I've seen a number of internal apps that are slow, buggy, ugly as hell, but are nevertheless successfully helping to run businesses and &lt;strong&gt;are&lt;/strong&gt; actually used despite all their deficiencies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, I've seen cases where customers were intentionally not willing to pay for good quality: absence of major/critical defects was all they needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it always helps to ask for a specific customer's expectations, but having some reference points/examples would greatly facilitate such a conversation as well as help properly plan the amount of prevention and appraisal efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1281" LastActivityDate="2011-09-25T16:36:29.497" Title="What are acceptable quality levels for various kinds of software?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;quality&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3045" CreationDate="2011-08-08T17:04:45.673" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a decision that should be made early on in the planning process.  &quot;What bugs are we willing to ship with?&quot;  Your question clarifier (&quot;we're not talking about human-rated, life critical software&quot;) is something that cannot be repeated too many times when talking with QA or Management, who might have unrealistic expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2011-08-08T17:04:45.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3045" CreationDate="2011-08-08T17:29:50.997" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a SW guy so I am putting my answer in from a generic perspective.  Like Scott indicated, spec limits are/should be predefined.  This is true for even life critical products; the tolerance variation would be less, but there is still variation, e.g., defects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where no predefined spec was indicated, it comes down to risk and decision analysis.  The cost of repair compared to the expected economic impact (probability x financial impact) going at risk.  The cheaper one wins.  Next time you board an aircraft, think about that!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-08-08T17:29:50.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3045" CreationDate="2011-08-08T19:20:45.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I worked for a company a few years ago as the PM who was required to implement a whole set of new software systems for retail stores and a distribution warehouse, and lead the implementation of new business processes to allow the clever software to do what it had to do. The project was a massive success in business terms, despite problems with the software that impacted on its usability in some areas, gaps in functionality in others, and very limited management information provided as standard reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What made the whole thing work was the attitude of the software company, who guaranteed that the underlying functionality would be completely OK; they promised to fix major usability problems as a priority over developing new functionality; they would develop new functionality ahead of cosmetic changes, and they refused to develop a reporting capability, saying from day 1 (before we bought the system) that it was our data: we had to develop our own reports (but they did give us tools to help).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Astonishingly (in hindsight) they convinced us to buy their system, and provided a great deal of support, but they also provided excellent liaison and built lasting relationships with our technical guys and, even more importantly, with the system users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's a long way of saying that if the data is right, you can put up with a lot of problems as long as you feel that the developers care about you. I suppose that they were using a sort of agile process, although neither they nor I ever thought of it in that way, but their developers were quick, accurate, and understood the business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite that amazingly good experience, I would be nervous about deliberately going down that same road again, as I think I just struck lucky, but the principles of good data, OK processes, and the ability to quickly change the user interface probably define my philosophy toward development priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not sure whether that answers your question, but it is a practical example of how imperfect systems, developed in the right way and with appropriate levels of care in the key areas, can be massively successful. We certainly would not have turned the company around if we had waited for perfection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-08-08T19:20:45.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3049" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3081" CreationDate="2011-08-09T00:54:28.590" Score="9" ViewCount="1508" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm pretty new to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/tags/scrum&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt; thing. I'm reading more and more of it. I'm very enchanted by the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I visited this page about the &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110307152124/http://www.rapidscrum.com/Framework.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;12 points of the Scrum framework&lt;/a&gt; by Scott of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rapidscrum.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rapid Scrum&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the &amp;quot;Physical Information Radiators&amp;quot; that he's referring to under the &amp;quot;Three Best Practices&amp;quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1253" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-14T14:31:03.703" LastActivityDate="2021-05-13T02:24:27.750" Title="What is the &quot;Physical Information Radiators&quot; in the context of Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3049" CreationDate="2011-08-09T01:03:04.473" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://alistair.cockburn.us/Information+radiator&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;information radiator&lt;/a&gt; is a scoreboard that shows anyone/everyone what is going on. Some other &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2005/03/automated-continuous-integration-and-the-betabrite-led-sign.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;examples&lt;/a&gt; include using an &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20151112162521/http://blogs.msdn.com:80/b/mswanson/archive/2004/06/29/169058.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ambient orb&lt;/a&gt; to show colors (red, yellow, green) very easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2021-05-13T02:24:27.750" LastActivityDate="2021-05-13T02:24:27.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3023" CreationDate="2011-08-09T02:59:02.177" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used basecamp with scrum for over a year.  It was wonderful and I wish I could go back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Excellent writeup here &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110923153209/http://highnotes.posterous.com/how-to-do-scrumxp-with-basecamp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;how to do scrumxp with basecamp&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;The key ingredient is the burndowngraph.com tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With modifications to that, here's how we ran it...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I kept one todo list as the product backlog. (When things were very crazy at first, we used a spreadsheet, but use what works for you).  For those that required more description we would use the comments to add what we needed.  Normally this was acceptance criteria, mockups and &amp;quot;gotchas&amp;quot; that we didn't want to forget about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During each sprint planning meeting, we grab the stories from the top and break each out into its own todo list.  Then for tasking we would create a todo item for each task and use the &amp;quot;6h&amp;quot; method of marking the estimate so burndowngraph.com would pick it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprint planning summary, retrospective, and items completed were all logged as messages.  For very detailed items, we would sometimes use a writeboard to log the &amp;quot;spec&amp;quot;. An attached word doc would work just as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1373" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-12T13:15:36.967" LastActivityDate="2020-07-12T13:15:36.967" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3024" CreationDate="2011-08-09T06:19:40.630" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you said you want to &lt;strong&gt;improve&lt;/strong&gt; your manage skills you made it clear that you believe that you have &lt;em&gt;management&lt;/em&gt; skills. That's what my answer would target on- &lt;em&gt;To be positive and trust yourself&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been said that &lt;em&gt;person with will can do anything he/she really wants&lt;/em&gt;. Word &lt;strong&gt;Skills&lt;/strong&gt; itslef indicate that it can be developed or improved. Yes, on the other hand I agree on the fact that management skills can't be developed overnight.. you need to pay attention and don't stop &lt;strong&gt;learning&lt;/strong&gt; both from your success and failures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have ample experience in programing and it's always being an advantage for a project manager to have a technical expertise. Don't afraid to jump to the next level.. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1198" LastActivityDate="2011-08-09T06:19:40.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2888" CreationDate="2011-08-09T07:07:40.533" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found that CBT nugget series and Lynda Excel 2007/2010 video tutorials are very useful both for understanding excel and to get the best practices out of it. Probably, they teach you the simplest and most efficient way to get your work done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1198" LastActivityDate="2011-08-09T07:07:40.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3016" CreationDate="2011-08-09T18:37:22.437" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To be the best Software Dev Project Manager - in my opinion - it is helpful -  but not mandatory -  to have worked as a developer or otherwise be intimately familiar with the work that you'll be managing.   A few years of software development would give you that experience, and you would only need your current degree.  Then, perhaps you could pursue a masters degree in Project Management if you want more formal education.  I could be wrong, but I don't think it would be possible to start out - fresh out of school - as a software dev PM.  I think it would be a miserable experience, because without any experience with the business world first, you would have only theory to go by.  It would also be hard, I think, to get the respect of the developers if you had no experience in either Project Management or Softwared Development under your belt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I actually think there is value in education.  I just received my Masters in Management of Programs and Projects.  It wasn't the degree itself that helped me with my career - it was the content of the classes.  I applied the concepts I learned to my job and voila - I was recognized and moved progressively more into project management roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="933" LastActivityDate="2011-08-09T18:37:22.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3056" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-09T20:19:11.520" Score="6" ViewCount="991" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm impressed with kanban from a team perspective, and I'd like to suggestions on how to implement kanban from a personal perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1740" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T09:04:38.813" Title="How to implement kanban principles into one's personal life?" Tags="&lt;personal-skills&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3057" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-09T21:49:21.113" Score="5" ViewCount="1435" Body="&lt;p&gt;A team member no longer feels their contribution makes an impact on the overall company.  How should I motivate this person?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1740" LastActivityDate="2011-08-10T11:17:02.503" Title="How do I increase morale of a team member?" Tags="&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3056" CreationDate="2011-08-10T00:02:11.260" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There was a great podcast on this about a year ago ... where a developer introduced it into his home life and the kids were able to get out of the house more effectively in the morning ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... After some searching its &lt;a href=&quot;http://elegantcode.com/2009/08/31/code-cast-31-agile-for-families/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Elegant code #31 - Agile for Families&lt;/a&gt;. Great discussion on applying the same principals within the home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="689" LastActivityDate="2011-08-10T00:02:11.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3057" CreationDate="2011-08-10T07:20:01.903" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are really unlimited possibilities for motivation; I will try to conceptualize few of them&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;On the spot admiration&lt;/strong&gt;: Everyone knows how to admire for a good work but it is actually all about timing. Some words like &quot;&lt;em&gt;thanks&lt;/em&gt;&quot;,&quot;&lt;em&gt;great work&lt;/em&gt;&quot; or anything else. Let him know instantly what he has just achieved.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Involvement in brainstorming&lt;/strong&gt;: Involvement in different phases of project where inputs are required from the team member will encourage team member to concentrate more on project. The simplest way is to &lt;em&gt;involve him in a brain storming session&lt;/em&gt;, ask his opinion and ways to improve procedure/process. You are not forced to use his opinion but asking them will not going to harm you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't compare&lt;/strong&gt;: Don't compare with other projects running in the company but show them what they are contributing to the organization. Make them understand that even a single penny counts and &lt;em&gt;little drops will make the ocean&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Motivate by example&lt;/strong&gt;: Motivate your team members by examples (real) not just motivating stories. Hmmm.. I just read a tweet by twitter that they registered 246 tweets on 24th June 2006 which in now days happened in 1/10th of a second. What if the developers/management people on june,2006 has decided that they are not contributing to the organization? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be creative&lt;/strong&gt;: Encourage your team member to be creative and come up with ideas. Ask them to surprise you. Appreciate them on their work, teach them if they are going wrong. &lt;em&gt;Creativity can never be neglected&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Communication&lt;/strong&gt;: Communication is an important tool. Give them a chance to share their issue whether professional or personal. &lt;em&gt;Be a good listener&lt;/em&gt; and a friendly adviser. Help them shaping their professional life. Set challenges and goals for them. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There could be several other ways to motivate team member, nothing works better than &lt;strong&gt;Self motivation&lt;/strong&gt;. Do some sessions/learning for self motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't forget to grab the &lt;strong&gt;feedback&lt;/strong&gt; from them in some way or another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1198" LastActivityDate="2011-08-10T07:20:01.903" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3057" CreationDate="2011-08-10T07:52:55.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Show Them the ROI&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming their contribution actually does make an impact on the company, show them what it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or take an &amp;quot;It's a Wonderful Life&amp;quot; approach, and illustrate to them what the company might be like without them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="40" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2011-08-10T07:52:55.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3057" CreationDate="2011-08-10T08:16:19.650" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;saying well done and congratulate when they do something well or get something right.  You need to work at it in little steps and get them out of a negative mindset.  I find negativity can breed more negativity so its a good idea to nip it in the bud before it spreads&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1859" LastActivityDate="2011-08-10T08:16:19.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3062" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-10T10:32:13.267" Score="2" ViewCount="138" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our company we recently have more and more teams which consider using SCRUM. They want to learn/get a feel of it so looking how other teams work is very helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They'll be joining our daily standups and probably planning meetings. The question I have is what do you think about having someone play a chicken on a team retrospective? Does it break all the rules or can this be acceptable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our particular case it would also force us to use English rather than the native language to have any value for the visitor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="625" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-16T17:03:34.550" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T17:03:34.550" Title="Should we allow people learning/considering SCRUM to our teams retro?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3062" CreationDate="2011-08-10T10:47:07.003" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the only thing you can possibly do here is ask the team. If any one of them objects for any reason then you shouldn't allow it. The retrospective is THEIR meeting and you should invite &quot;chickens&quot; only if everyone is entirely comfortable with it, and only if you're confident you'll be able to avoid disruption.&#xA;Allowing other teams to see an effective retrospective could be a really valuable learning tool - but it's not worth the cost of &quot;breaking&quot; the retrospective for your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1851" LastActivityDate="2011-08-10T10:47:07.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3057" CreationDate="2011-08-10T11:17:02.503" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, validate that this low morale exhibited by a single individual is not systemic throughout your organization.  Look at your turnover, your sick days, productivity, etc.  If you conclude you have a systemic issue, you can introduce some interventions to help, keeping in mind the current school of thought of critical motivators: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.  Break those down into concrete examples and find out how your organization's culture is inhibiting them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you conclude that this is limited to just this person, then I suggest there is little you can do.  The &quot;I feel my contribution does not make an impact...&quot; is either his self diagnosis of his morale and, therefore, not likely to be accurate, or is what he was willing to tell you, which will certainly not be accurate.  Either way, the roots of low morale at the individual level is likely deep inside of him versus anything you can offer at the job level.  Even if he blamed his low morale on being passed up on a promotion--something you can control--that is usually the cause of being disappointed but not the cause of low morale.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By introducing some of the interventions indicated here, you may see a blip--and he may report improvement--but the sustainability of that is not likely to be long lasting.  That would be more of a Hawthorne effect or observation bias at play.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have the luxury of an Employee Assistance Program or perhaps some extended leave, suggest that to him so he can do a bit of self examination.  Other than that, keep your expectation of his performance high and protect the rest of your team.  Low morale is an airborne virus (not literally).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-08-10T11:17:02.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="389" CreationDate="2011-08-10T11:30:52.180" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bother the development methodology has its own benefits and limitations. So it completely depends on you which way you would like to move or hybrid of both to redefine the development methodology. Waterfall model is still good for developing many big projects, that have all the steps clearly defined initially. Agile development is being adopted these days but has not superseded Waterfall model that helps to develop a project with clear project steps defined and there is no need to go back. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1870" LastActivityDate="2011-08-10T11:30:52.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3056" CreationDate="2011-08-10T11:59:18.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might try &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.personalkanban.com/pk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;personalkanban.com&lt;/a&gt;. The site is dedicated to applying Kanban in personal life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1871" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-08-10T12:39:50.840" LastActivityDate="2011-08-10T12:39:50.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3062" CreationDate="2011-08-10T12:36:10.483" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the main cons could be that you are &lt;strong&gt;forced&lt;/strong&gt; to use English. This probably  would be my main consideration. I would ask the team do they accept chickens like Steve proposed. But this language issue is more important in my eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1808" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-08-10T12:45:53.173" LastActivityDate="2011-08-10T12:45:53.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3062" CreationDate="2011-08-10T12:58:14.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First, having chickens on retro doesn't break any rules.&lt;/strong&gt; What more, I would say that seeing how good retrospective works is way more important than attending just a few of standups or even planning meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Second, you should consider the impact of having chicken on retro (or any other meeting) on the team.&lt;/strong&gt; One issue is of course the language. If everyone's English is fluent enough that you will be able to communicate everything (even if it takes more time) I wouldn't consider that a big issue. However if switching to English means someone would be effectively disabled from active participation in the meeting it may be something worth considering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another aspect of the same case is who will be a chicken. I was a chicken once or twice when I was a superior for the whole team and people were all stressed and it didn't work well. If you face the risk that people would censor themselves that's another issue to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Third, think about the big picture.&lt;/strong&gt; There is of course the context of the team but there is also the context of the whole organization. Even though having chickens on your retros may introduce some difficulties for the team it still can be a worthy investment company-wide. Try to judge the impact of doing such thing in wider perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Finally, you can treat it as an experiment.&lt;/strong&gt; You can just try it once or twice and if it doesn't work just don't do it anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said all that you shouldn't enforce your ideas on team. Try to convince them, but show them the whole context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-08-10T12:58:14.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3035" CreationDate="2011-08-10T13:23:31.247" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well for a crash course as it were... &#xA;ManageIT - &lt;a href=&quot;http://pragprog.com/book/jrpm/manage-it&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://pragprog.com/book/jrpm/manage-it&lt;/a&gt; - is a good resource. Though more geared to becoming an IT manager, it has a lot of good basic info. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;also PM Crash Course by Rita Mulcahy is a good quick reference for more &quot;pure&quot; pm tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a Scrum point of view... try to use your Product Manager as the Product Owner to develop the backlog of applications &amp;amp; features. Hopefully they can act as the main decision maker for prioritizing work from a business point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also get you dev lead and testers involved early on in the requirements and design phases. The testers should be used to create validation tests for what is being designed so you can map requirements to tests, a way of making sure the devs are on the right track in the long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the initial 2 cents...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1781" LastActivityDate="2011-08-10T13:23:31.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3070" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3075" CreationDate="2011-08-10T14:38:53.480" Score="4" ViewCount="472" Body="&lt;p&gt;When gathering requirements often clients are looking to build feature a,b,c,d,f - z. They get almost too excited about features. They almost become feature hoarders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They want all those features. But it's hard to elicit from them what is of the greatest importance to them. They often seem to communicate this and this is important to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often, a common mistake of ours is that we discover what's important to them only when the project is near mid-phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any exercises one could do or techniques of organization to understand prioritization of their requests? Or what ways do you go about to do this before the project gets started?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for an answer that can be either beyond what type of project management method: agile, waterfall, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1253" LastEditorUserId="1253" LastEditDate="2011-08-10T15:05:28.577" LastActivityDate="2011-08-12T14:41:48.600" Title="Ways to get client to provide information about prioritization" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3071" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-10T14:46:24.777" Score="7" ViewCount="1371" Body="&lt;p&gt;We continue to struggle with how to improve our QA and Testing processes in the sprint.  We run a two week sprint and find that the QA and testing gets left late in the process and ends up rushed with the beginning of the next sprint spent fixing bugs.  Not ideal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One solution we have tried is mandating all stories must be complete by day 8 of 10, but this has proven too rigid and really didn't change things much anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have 6 developers and don't have a QA position (we have the rest of the company help test on the staging server each sprint).  I don't see us adding a dedicated QA position any time soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given this scenario, what can we try to improve the quality and reliability of what we are releasing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1640" LastActivityDate="2011-12-08T18:52:14.990" Title="Incorporating QA and Testing in a Startup running Scrum" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3071" CreationDate="2011-08-10T15:02:30.190" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Basics first. Do you have acceptance tests attached to your requirements? If not then how are you testing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How, on a 2 week sprint, do you define done for an item on the sprint backlog? If testing all the way through QA isn't part of that &quot;done&quot; then you need to step back and rethink your process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2 week long sprints are fine but why the rush? I realize as a startup you're trying to get stuff done and out the door. However if your team is ending up doing a lot of bug fixing than in reality you're not saving any time at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So from the top: get somebody to at least come up with acceptance tests, get an automated build server in place, get you devs to do rigorous unit testing. And then, track it all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Managment might balk, but point out that delivering buggy code and spending time to fix it is going to cost them more. It always does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1781" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-12-08T15:53:37.153" LastActivityDate="2011-12-08T15:53:37.153" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3070" CreationDate="2011-08-10T15:38:39.243" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Facilitate a prioritization workshop with a small team, around five to eight impacted stakeholders, that represent well the user demographics.  Conduct several workshops if the user population is huge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Design a scoring method with which the workshop attendees agree and a method of capturing the data, e.g., majority, consensus, etc.  Present the results and facilitate a promotion/demotion using the same rules.  You need to have the stakeholders agree that the results of this exercise become your prioritized requirements baseline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have used both a choice analysis, which is not much more than scored six to 10 weighted criteria for each alternative, and a value/cost/risk analysis, with value decomposed to both benefit and penalty.  Both methods have worked well and produce a rather credible prioritized list.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-08-10T15:38:39.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3074" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-10T16:07:50.393" Score="10" ViewCount="419" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are currently implementing Team Foundation Server as our source control, and this has lead to more research into project management, as it offers many features in that arena.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We currently believe Sharepoint Foundation Server is too cumbersome even though it integrates with TFS. I am now checking up on Microsoft Project 2010, but I'm not sure if it is as useful without the Project Server portion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking for free to relatively cheap solutions, but all suggestions are welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our team make up is 2-3 project managers, and 14 developers. We each have 2-5 projects that we are always working on, and 90% of the time, it is one team member per project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you in advance for your help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1874" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T09:44:34.143" Title="What are some good options for Project Management for a development team of 14 who generally work 1 team member to a project?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3070" CreationDate="2011-08-10T18:36:53.830" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a common situation and it is often hard for clients to make a choice on requirements (understandably if someone comes up with requirements, (s)he is unlikely to then say they're not important). I would suggest the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make prioritization part of requirements definition&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;When your clients define requirements, get them to also define their business value (e.g. what will this enable? how will it impact our ability to execute a business process?). Focus on tangible benefits rather than loose improvements (eg. &quot;will allow to reduce data entry errors by 90%&quot; vs &quot;better data quality&quot;). By doing this upfront as part of requirements definition, you will have information that will directly support the prioritization process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Define a prioritization process and rules (in agreement with your client)&lt;/strong&gt;: this can be a scoring method or a simple grading process (eg. &quot;nice-to-have&quot;, &quot;future release&quot;, &quot;important&quot;, &quot;critical&quot;). Work with your client (with representatives who are empowered to make decisions) and facilitate the evaluation by providing helpful information such as business benefits and estimated effort.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Guide and support your client in evaluating the importance of requirements&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;Whilst your client is best placed to understand the impact of a feature on the business, they often need help in putting things in perspective. Business Analysts are typically well-placed to support this process, and the PM can help facilitating the exercise (and should be able to challenge the client when necessary).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Define your governance model and identify an arbitrator (your ultimate decision-maker)&lt;/strong&gt;: You may end up in situations where you are stuck (no one will give in, too many &quot;critical&quot; items, etc.), so it's important to have one person (from the client) who's empowered to make the last call.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Remain flexible and offer options&lt;/strong&gt;: downgrading a requirement doesn't mean that it will never be done, and a way to deal with many nice-to-have features is to look at a potential implementation further down the line (rather than a &quot;now or never&quot; approach). This takes clients' needs into consideration, whilst providing the opportunity to get some lessons learnt with the first set of baseline requirements: this will help the team re-assess these requirements with better hindsight and see how they actually fit into a working solution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get the base requirements list signed-off.&lt;/strong&gt; This will mitigate the risks of conflicts half-way through the project. Your prioritization process should be used throughout the project and be integrated with your change management process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastActivityDate="2011-08-10T18:36:53.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3074" CreationDate="2011-08-10T19:33:52.070" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would start with a question what exactly your problem is. We don't introduce project management methods for the sake of introducing them but to organize our projects better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In environment you describe I believe the first problem is coordinating different projects and not managing any single one of them. If most of your projects are covered by only a single developer most of the time your project management effort should be focused on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;planning&lt;/strong&gt;, as that's what tells a developer what to do&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;monitoring&lt;/strong&gt;, as that's what tells you how well (or bad) you're going&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;risk management&lt;/strong&gt;, as that's what helps you to avoid issues&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one-man project either of those can be dealt with using very simple methods and rarely project management tools would help you much with them. Good plan isn't built thanks to a tool but is merely written down using one. Monitoring with one person can be as simple as daily water-cooler chit chat. Same with risk management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I see &lt;strong&gt;the key challenge here is coordinating different projects/tasks among the team&lt;/strong&gt;. A very simple solution which can help you here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_%28development%29&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt;. You can pretty easily visualize and organize tasks you have among different projects. You can adjust the method to the way you work. Even if you don't apply every principle, like limiting work in progress, Kanban should help you to coordinate team's effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the best thing is it costs you nothing as long as you have whiteboard/cork board and a bunch of sticky notes. I assume here that the team is co-located. It you are distributed you will likely need software Kanban board, but that should still be pretty cheap solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-08-10T19:33:52.070" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3071" CreationDate="2011-08-10T19:52:18.140" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would first ask a question why it happens so that all stories are completed late. Is it possible that all stories need 9-10 days to be completed? If not than probably developers are focusing on starting building another story avoiding mundane task of testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Limiting work in progress&lt;/strong&gt; can be something which can help to change the focus of the team. This is one of concepts of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_%28development%29&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt;. It basically is a limit which tells you that you shouldn't have more than x stories on a specific stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case it can be not more than 6 stories being developed at the same time. Having such limit enforces people either to push stories further down the development process, e.g. start testing instead of building another story from the backlog, or help other developers to finish their stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make a simple example: if every single one of your developers is developing a story and you have a limit of 6 on development stage, the situation when someone starts building a new story before the old one is finished shouldn't happen. What more, if you set one limit of 6 for both &quot;under development&quot; and &quot;development done&quot; columns your developers will have to start testing finished features in the first place before they are able to work on a new story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course limit shouldn't be arbitrary set on the number of people in the team. It will vary depending on a process, team, the way you work (e.g. if you pair program you effectively have 3 &quot;work units,&quot; not 6), etc. Try to experiment to find right limits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-08-10T19:52:18.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3078" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-11T05:34:05.830" Score="24" ViewCount="1987" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am supposed to manage a person who tries to give many excuses to avoid work. I talked to her several times that she needs to change her behavior and tried to give her a task to improve her understanding and make her capable of taking some tasks and help the project. But all in vain. Please suggest me what would be the better approach to handle such resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1717" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-08-11T07:57:17.897" LastActivityDate="2011-09-28T23:51:07.103" Title="What is the best way to manage a person who shows very little interest in work?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3078" CreationDate="2011-08-11T06:44:10.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you looked into &amp;amp; discussed with her,the reasons  behind her lack of interest &amp;amp; poor understanding are ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it pure incompetence ?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lack of motivation ?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;personal or health problems ?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;peer pressure ?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;project pressure ?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;your leadership ? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my view the first step is to find the &lt;strong&gt;real&lt;/strong&gt; reasons behind the situation and then tackling the &quot;where to go from here&quot; part....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastActivityDate="2011-08-11T06:44:10.593" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3078" CreationDate="2011-08-11T08:22:09.647" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First thing is common understanding.&lt;/strong&gt; You say that you were talking the problem through with the discussed person and it didn't help. I wonder if she understands the issue the same way you do. Is it possible that she feels you're picking at her? Anyway you should start with making sure that you both understand the problem the same way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Second thing is understanding why the problem is happening.&lt;/strong&gt; Unless you know root cause of the issue it is unlikely that you'll find successful solution. Techniques like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys&quot;&gt;5 whys&lt;/a&gt; can help you to find the source of the problem. This part should definitely be done by both of you, as there will be many questions you won't be able to answer. Note: you should avoid bias as much as possible. In such situations there is always a risk that we consider specific people useless and just trying to find an excuse to get rid of them. With this mindset you won't come up with anything reasonable so try to avoid it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Third thing is finding a solution.&lt;/strong&gt; Once you know what the real problem is (the_reluctant_tester proposes some possible ideas) you both need to find a way to work on it. Again it should be bilaterally agreed what has to be done. If you enforce the solution she doesn't believe in chances are good it just won't work. When setting the plan try to make it measurable and objective so after given time you can say whether you're going according to the plan and whether goals are achieved. Although personally I'm not a big fan of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria&quot;&gt;SMART goals&lt;/a&gt; you can treat it as a reference what should be taken into consideration when setting goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fourth thing is verifying results.&lt;/strong&gt; When you have plan and goals set you should monitor whether goals are achieved and changes are applied as planned. There's no value in doing all above unless you really are going to get yourself involved in the long run. With no long-term engagement from your side it is likely that any changes will be soon abandoned and you'll be back to the situation from the very beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fifth thing is adjusting the plan as you go.&lt;/strong&gt; No plan is perfect so from time to time you should evaluate it. You should both talk the thing through: what is changing and why, whether it is something you expected or not really, what else can be done, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;And the most important thing:&lt;/strong&gt; I assume here good will of both sides and that it is possible to change the given behavior. However, at any of stages above you can realize that, for whatever reasons, you're going to fail. Then it's your managerial responsibility to take care of the team, which means you may need to get rid of such a low-performer form the team to avoid taking hit on everyone's morale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-08-11T08:22:09.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3049" CreationDate="2011-08-11T08:42:01.897" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Physical information radiator is pretty much anything which:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is visible by pretty much anyone in the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;shows meaningful information regarding the project/team/application/etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;isn't software per se, which means you don't need a computer to access it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few examples of radiators:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Task board.&lt;/strong&gt; Probably the most canonical and most common example. Board where you show tasks being done during sprint. Usually there are stages to how where a story is (e.g. development, testing) and some indicators who is doing what.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Burn-down/burn-up charts.&lt;/strong&gt; It shows how the team is doing against the sprint plan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Build information.&lt;/strong&gt; Often teams presents results of build in some way. It can be either fancy orb as Tangurena suggests or just a monitor showing statuses of projects built on a build server.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Critical situations.&lt;/strong&gt; Some teams use distinctive indicators whenever something really bad is happening, e.g. there is a critical bug to be solved. Often such information is shown on a task board.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Commonly needed information.&lt;/strong&gt; In one team we had the architecture of application drawn on a whiteboard. As we were changing the architecture rapidly the drawing were becoming more and more complex but that was the easiest way to refer to it and to adjust it until it stabilized a bit and we moved it a document.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-08-11T08:42:01.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3078" CreationDate="2011-08-11T08:43:57.590" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is going to sound harsh, but in my opinion you've been let down by her previous managers who didn't deal with this - and you don't want to do the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;I should note that I have read some of the other answers and assume you've already discussed with her any basic underlying problems that might be affecting performance as suggested there and concluded that this is simply an attitude/capability problem&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion you need to begin managing her performance very closely, with a view to removing her from your team/company if it does not improve. If you have an HR department, you should consult with them on the procedures for doing this (and there will be legal differences between companies).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Failing that, give her a very clear set of specific tasks to complete&#xA;over a reasonably short period (ideally a week).  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The tasks should be such that you could expect someone in her position to complete if&#xA;they were performing to expectations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You should do this for a period of 4 weeks, meeting with her weekly to assess progress and assign new tasks. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If she does not complete the tasks satisfactorily over the that period you should give her a formal warning. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Repeat the process, and if she still can't meet expectations then you need to get rid of&#xA;her.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again this might sound harsh, but you cannot overestimate the destructive power of someone who cannot or will not do their job on the morale of your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also cannot stress strongly enough that you should consult with an HR specialist in your country if you are looking to fire someone for performance issues and ensure you comply with all local legislation, otherwise you could end up in a very costly place.&#xA;And make sure you document &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1851" LastActivityDate="2011-08-11T08:43:57.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3078" CreationDate="2011-08-11T08:50:30.637" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you want to change a way an individual performs, especially when they perform below expectations, you can do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Clarify the impact of their poor performance&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Establish the actual effect their performance has on the project: does it result in delayed delivery? higher costs because of the need to fix/redo the work? impact on other team members' workload and morale? etc. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Share this with your team member: often people are not aware of their own impact and realising it can trigger a behavior change. Give them concrete examples to make it tangible (e.g. &quot;&lt;em&gt;your documentation was not complete so it was difficult for the programmer to finalise the code in time&lt;/em&gt;&quot; rather than &quot;&lt;em&gt;you are delaying the project&lt;/em&gt;&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Establish the reason for their poor performance&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two things to consider: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;CAN they? This is about ascertaining their ABILITY to perform the work. Look at things like their level of skills to perform the tasks, their level of workload, the level of direction/support they need, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;WILL they? This is about looking at their MOTIVATION to perform the work. Look at things like their level of interest in the work/project, rewards, working environment, external factors, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Identify ways to help them improve their performance&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To address a problem related to ABILITY, there are lots of things that can be done depending on the root cause; you could get them more skills training, rebalance their workload, adapt their role &amp;amp; responsibilities, give them more support on a more frequent basis, get someone in the team to buddy/mentor them, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If it's a question of MOTIVATION, work actively with them to understand what will help them; more recognition, participation in other tasks, perhaps they have difficult personal circumstances that need to be taken into account, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Involve them throughout and make a decision:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can't tell someone to change, but you can tell them you/the project need them to change. The change itself though has to come from them so it's vital you work together on this.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Engage them into this process (which is continuous): adopt a coaching-style approach by asking them how they think they perform, what they believe they need to improve, how they think they could do that, what help they need from you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a PM you need to assess whether you can and will put in the time and effort in helping this person through change. Sometimes project pressure, time constraints and so on can limit how much you can do. And as a PM you sometimes need to make some tough calls.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastActivityDate="2011-08-11T08:50:30.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3078" CreationDate="2011-08-11T10:54:09.470" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume you are a PM and this is a project.  I have suggested this advice on similar questions and have learned that it is unpopular for reasons that I do not understand.  Nevertheless, I'll say it again:  You are on a project.  It is resource constrained.  You simply do not have the luxury of time to institute multiple interventions to get a resource--yes, I said resource--to function at expectations.  I read you have already instituted several interventions but &quot;all in vain.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cut bait.  Replace her so that you do not have to cope with any more unfavorable variances in the performance of your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-08-11T10:54:09.470" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3078" CreationDate="2011-08-11T13:32:46.143" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a saying where I come from -- you were stitched up like a kipper.  Nobody likes dealing with problem employees and the temptation to ignore the problem is high, your colleagues obviously did nothing about it and now you've inherited the problem.  Your only solution is to sit down with HR and get her put on a performance improvement program, where the expectations are fully documented.  She will either sink or swim at this point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have done this twice in the past.  The first employee resigned and went elsewhere shortly afterwards and the second did pick up her game and is now doing a more than satisfactory job.  Either way, I got the required results.  You owe it to your project and your team to nip it in the bud I'm afraid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1878" LastActivityDate="2011-08-11T13:32:46.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3024" CreationDate="2011-08-11T13:39:58.693" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you never liked management, question strongly why it is you want to move into it.  A lot of management is skill based, and as such can be learned and, with practice, improved upon.  Then there's the percentage that is down to your own personal charisma and abilities of persuasion that can't be learned (imo).  You also need the intrinsic interest and joy in management, just as you do to be a great developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry if this sounds harsh, but the world is full of bad managers.  If you still think you have little interest in management, then I'd stick to your technical work.  The world &lt;strong&gt;needs&lt;/strong&gt; good technical people that want to remain technical and there should be no stigma in doing that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1878" LastActivityDate="2011-08-11T13:39:58.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3031" CreationDate="2011-08-11T13:57:48.420" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do them in the following order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Review -- this is where we do the &quot;show and tell&quot; to the stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Retrospective -- the team does this post review so we can incorporate the review feedback into the retrospective.  This is a team-only meeting and I don't allow anybody else in the room.  This gives us space for the sometimes frank discussions that need to occur.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Planning -- the only disadvantage of not doing the planning straight after the review is it can occasionally be difficult to get the right stakeholders in the room after they've been shoved out for the retrospective :-)  But as I tell them, if you don't help us plan the next sprint, we'll do it without you.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1878" LastActivityDate="2011-08-11T13:57:48.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3011" CreationDate="2011-08-11T14:04:19.177" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd make the lead time requirement a story in its own right with a reminder that this needs to be done in, say, (n) sprints ahead (n giving you enough time + buffer to get the order delivered) of the development story.  Although not a real story, I do this with other systemic constraints in projects all the time.  If the story card is clear enough it just won't get lost.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1878" LastActivityDate="2011-08-11T14:04:19.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3024" CreationDate="2011-08-11T15:32:52.420" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two quotes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I never liked management&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I don’t have any skill at all to be a manager&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why would you &lt;em&gt;ever&lt;/em&gt; think about becoming a manager? Because other people around did the same?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might be a great engineer, a tech enthusiast, someone who's always amazed by sit in front of a computer and make amazing and complex programs working when no one else can. So, why bother?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a similar question &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/2926/430&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; that may help you out about your internal personal discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe you need to know why would you think about moving to management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is that about work? (definitely not, as per your comments).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is that for money? A great engineer can be well payed as a great manager, IMO&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is that because of environment? If you're pushed to become a manager, is a whole new story&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is that for routine? Believe me, managers also work overnight...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you know this answer, I believe the answers you'll have here will help you further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2011-08-11T15:32:52.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3074" CreationDate="2011-08-11T22:51:36.493" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Prior to looking for a piece of project management software I would start by looking at how your team works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do your project managers interact with your customers?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do your project managers communicate requirements to your developers?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you measure success?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not uncommon to have multiple irons in the fire, and there are processes and techniques that a team can implement to better manage their activities. Pawel mentioned Kanban and I will mention &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28development%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SCRUM&lt;/a&gt;. If you don't choose either that is fine, but prior to moving to a piece of software to manage your tasks start with paper &amp;amp; a whiteboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a separate thought, has your company or team considered splitting your &quot;one development team&quot; into smaller dedicated units? A team of 14 can be split several ways but two teams of 4 and a team of 6 along with a dedicated PM for each seem like it could be a starting point.  It's easier to manage tasks with a smaller group of dedicated resources. Your teams will be faster along with making higher quality software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastEditorUserId="1885" LastEditDate="2011-08-12T14:18:20.867" LastActivityDate="2011-08-12T14:18:20.867" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2959" CreationDate="2011-08-11T23:44:31.407" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always seem to find my way back to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;JIRA&lt;/a&gt;. You can customize an issues workflow for specific projects, or even issues types. This allow you to handle bugs differently than lets say tasks or features for a new project. The GreenHopper plugin is also quite nice if you are working on a Kanban or Scrum team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastActivityDate="2011-08-11T23:44:31.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2959" CreationDate="2011-08-12T00:57:22.220" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use project management software or an excel spreadsheet, as opposed to bug tracking software.  Create categories for the work that you are doing e.g. Bug Fixes vs New Development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-08-12T00:57:22.220" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3074" CreationDate="2011-08-12T00:59:24.620" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out some of the answers for the &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/pm-software&quot;&gt;PM-Software&lt;/a&gt; tag. They provide good lists of applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-10-04T22:31:12.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3024" CreationDate="2011-08-12T02:09:33.470" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't move into management if it's not something you actually want to do.  You'll hate your job and wish you could be a developer again.  But you can certainly improve your management skills, and this will help you as a developer too (because even as a developer, you need to present, influence, plan, budget and estimate - all management skills).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2011-08-12T02:09:33.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3071" CreationDate="2011-08-12T14:33:04.930" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;On a side note, if &quot;all&quot; of your stories are taking 8-10 days to complete, IMO your stories are too large. I realize it is not always possible to slice some stories into smaller chunks of deliverable business value but it potentially could be worth the time to ask the question of &quot;why&quot; do our stories take 8-10 days to complete? Has this been brought up within any retrospectives?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also recommend trying out a few one week sprints. I've found a shorter sprint helps teams focus on tasks at hand &amp;amp; ultimately slice stories differently than they would in a two week sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last point / question I would make is, how are you testing that bugs are fixed? Are automated regression tests built which follow the same pathway that found the bug? If there aren't I wouldn't accept that the bug has been &quot;fixed&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastActivityDate="2011-08-12T14:33:04.930" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3070" CreationDate="2011-08-12T14:41:48.600" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not often that I will recommend reading a book on eliciting requirement from customers, as it is a task that can only be learned by truly doing. In a little different direction from the other answers have you considered a planning game? They are generally less formalized than something that in title has been called a workshop and you &quot;see&quot; the business value that customers place on features as the game is played vs an arbitrary number that they assigned to feature x &amp;amp; y.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://leadinganswers.typepad.com/leading_answers/files/release_and_iteration_planning_with_innovation_games.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;good summary&lt;/a&gt;, but I would also recommend buying and reading the book Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastActivityDate="2011-08-12T14:41:48.600" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3097" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3100" CreationDate="2011-08-12T14:13:55.853" Score="13" ViewCount="1088" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to determine if there's a way to use Agile with a team of developers that telecommute. Imagine you have a team of 6 to 12 developers working often from home via VPN. How can they organize their work efficiently without meeting very often (let's say, every two weeks)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a counter-example, Scrum isn't compatible with telecommuting, because every day you should do a daily scrum, where the developers meet and tell what they have done, what they do and what are current problems. One way perhaps could be to use something like Skype for every meeting, but it's not the same as if you meet personally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could FDD be an alternative? Or is there some other procedure model that could be used?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1901" OwnerDisplayName="martin" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-16T17:09:06.230" LastActivityDate="2019-06-26T08:53:17.327" Title="How can I use Agile in a telecommuting environment?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3097" CreationDate="2011-08-12T14:49:03.003" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have worked in this situation.  We did daily conference calls similar to a stand-up, and also had a Skype chatroom for all the developers.  If we needed to do a more in depth discussion, we could have a private IM chat, voice call and/or screen share.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not as effective for communication as being in the same room as the developers - but nothing is.  I think it was as good as you can get, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1896" OwnerDisplayName="MattBelanger" LastActivityDate="2011-08-12T14:49:03.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3097" CreationDate="2011-08-12T15:28:09.787" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you prioritize your developers work? Are they assigned a &quot;project&quot; and they break it down themselves? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would argue that SCRUM is very compatible with telecommuting. There are many great &quot;virtual&quot; scrum board products that make daily meetings seem as if they were in person. Check out pivotal tracker. Heck, I've seen people have daily meetings with a web cam pointed at the scrum whiteboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't expect any type of process to succeed if your only meeting once every two weeks. That needs to change regardless of what practice your implementing. At the very least meet twice a week for example Tuesday &amp;amp; Thursdays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastActivityDate="2011-08-12T15:28:09.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3097" CreationDate="2011-08-12T15:29:12.267" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try to keep in mind that Agile is all about &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;values&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.devadept.com/2011/07/agile-and-power-of-feedback-loops.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;communication&lt;/a&gt;, not specific implementations of specific practices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conducting a daily standup in person does not make a team Agile. What makes a team Agile is embracing the Agile values, and doing whatever it takes to live up to them. Commonly, this results in a daily standup meeting. Maybe, for another team, it won't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the importance of communication is understood, one must accept that fact that face-to-face communications will be more effective than any alternative. But does that mean that alternatives won't work at all? Of course not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrum.org/scrumguides/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Daily Scrums improve communications, eliminate other meetings,&#xA;  identify and remove impediments to development, highlight and promote&#xA;  quick decision-making, and improve the Development Team’s level of&#xA;  project knowledge. This is a key inspect and adapt meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can that be accomplished by a remote team? Certainly. Is there anything in the Scrum Guide that says it has to be done face-to-face, in the same room? No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to do everything you can to maximize the ease and frequency of communication, because that is what is at the heart of Agile and Scrum. There are a multitude of communication options out there, you just have to consistently take advantage of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1890" LastActivityDate="2011-08-12T15:29:12.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3097" CreationDate="2011-08-12T16:28:15.360" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I worked on a distributed team of approximately 10 developers for a while. There was no &quot;office&quot;. Here is what we did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We ran and IRC channel, and the developers idled in there all the time. This gave us the equivalent of the team room where you could say, &quot;Who knows X&quot; and get an answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We used screen heavily. Pairing sessions would consist of Vim on a shared screen session, done over skype.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We kept a wiki page for our daily stand-up meetings. They were at 11am every day. By 10:30, everyone was expected to have put a line on the page of what they are doing. The meeting leader would add a list of the scheduled stories, and their status. This would be pulled up on a screen session in a text editor, and everyone would attach to that session. The meeting was a conference call, and the meeting leader would go down the list and ask if people had anything to add. The usual response was &quot;as written.&quot; This worked just like a daily stand-up, and usually took about ten minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Retrospectives and engineering meetings were done similarly. Sometimes we used &lt;a href=&quot;http://meetingwords.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;meetingwords&lt;/a&gt; to keep notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1892" LastActivityDate="2011-08-12T16:28:15.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3035" CreationDate="2011-08-12T18:08:22.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your background was on the support and training side of the business I think you are going to be well armed for your new position. I have added a few comments and questions I would ask myself for some of the items you mentioned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Act as a product evangelist ( What is the vision of the product? What&#xA;is the 6 month goal? What is the 1 year goal? What is the five year&#xA;plan? Work with the product manager to ensure that you have a clear understanding of these concepts. You can't get somewhere if you don't know where you're going.) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assist with onsite delivery of product. ( Communication &amp;amp; follow up. Is the customer satisfied? How do you measure success? )&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Analysing client requirements and developing software specifications based upon these ( Build what you need....Not what you think you need. If you find yourself building the wrong feature..STOP. )&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming you have some knowledge about SCRUM &amp;amp; as you stated I'm making another assumption that it was from the development side of things. If you haven't had much experience writing stories or gathering requirements I would highly recommend reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/books&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mike Cohns User Stories Applied book&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only other thing that comes to mind is that while documentation is important, it is NOT the most important part of your job. Relish the contact you have with people in your organization, with your customers, with your management team....this interaction is more important than any process or documentation tool you have at your disposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastActivityDate="2011-08-12T18:08:22.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3103" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3106" CreationDate="2011-08-12T18:31:33.513" Score="5" ViewCount="238" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently changed roles ( 4+ years ) as a product manager within an organization with previous years spent as a business analyst within a mid-sized agile software development firm and I have gone back to my development roots and have taken a job as a software developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Observations of the company in which I am currently employed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has only recently deemed the development staff and application they build and support are an investment as the product produced is a competitive advantage and not a &quot;cost&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Develops software with &quot;cowboy coding&quot; ways and not as a team &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Legacy code (&quot;in terms of not tested&quot;), no CI, no project or development process, no automated deployment...etc..you get the idea&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I took this job as I wanted to see if I had what it takes to bring change to the way they do things. I want to bring change and am slowly building a list of suggestions and things to try. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't broken any of this to my manager yet. This actually I think will be my largest hurdle and I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on how to broach this subject?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you point out current failings in the way things are done?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you start by highlighting things to try?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you show the value of how current practices and methodologies would not only help the team but the entire organization?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastActivityDate="2011-08-13T20:07:20.100" Title="Driving process change within a company that only has recently viewed its software as a competitive advantage" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3097" CreationDate="2011-08-12T19:14:04.523" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pay attention to Eric's excellent answer. Remember that Agile covers a wide range of ways to work, Scrum being just one possibility. Most agile methods are in fact merely a collection of techniques that you can pick and choose, pick up and drop as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I see no value in daily stand-up meetings; reporting status can be done via tool (e.g. basecamp) or email and most of the information reported is of little or no use to the rest of the team. IF your team is virtual across several time zones, a daily standup becomes a huge inconvenience for everyone - if you insist on doing it, you should be able to prove that it adds value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, with a highly skilled team there's little return (and a lot of waste) doing pair programming, much less remote pair programming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ability and facility to do these things when they are necessary must be there, but always doing them as a habit when they don't pay off is not wise. Sometimes you may want/need to have a standup, so Skype (or for small teams, Google+ Hangout) or similar is useful for this. But try a sprint without standups and see if things fall apart - they probably won't. Same for pair programming - great to have the ability for programmers to assist one another, can be a terrific waste of productivity for some teams to do it all the time. Try doing without it for a sprint and see if your velocity changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Test and measure&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't think of agile as a formula that must be followed. Try pieces of it, keep what works, use/discard the rest as appropriate for your team and project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="40" LastActivityDate="2011-08-12T19:14:04.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3103" CreationDate="2011-08-12T19:23:26.313" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say it all depends on people. Personally I would adjust the way I act in general with specific focus on bring all these problems out to the specific decision maker I would be talking to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If your manager is a guy who is willing to improve but for whatever reason failed to do so up to this point&lt;/strong&gt; bring it all to the table: current failings, areas worth improving, proposed priorities of actions (you can't do everything at the same time), practices other companies are using, etc. Then discuss all that content openly with the manager. You probably don't know many things they do, as you aren't around for a longer time so use their knowledge when preparing a plan. Anyway in this case you should probably quickly come out with a few good ideas to implement, maybe a couple of quick wins which would help you to convince the rest of organization as well.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If your manager generally doesn't give a damn about the improvements&lt;/strong&gt; you can try similar approach although I'd limit a range of discussed issues just to a few biggest pains at the moment. It will help you to decide whether you're free to act and whether you can count on any support from the manager. If you can work on improvements try to start with a quick win so you can buy other people within the organization as well. Odds are the manager would like to join success and you'd get some (additional) support. On the other hand you can learn that manager's indifference is just the attitude which covers unwillingness to change. In this case we're moving to the next case.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If your manager is against any changes as they like status quo and feel unsafe with changing it&lt;/strong&gt; you definitely don't want to bring all the problem openly to them. What you need to do is to prove the situation can be better for them somehow. In this case the best strategy is bringing only a single thing to the table at once, possibly the one which isn't very painful, e.g. doesn't require significant changes, and brings significant and visible value for the organization. In this scenario you don't want to choose the most important changes at first but those which will bring results pretty fast and would stick. One of examples of such changes is introducing standups. Then you move to the next low-hanging fruit and then another and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you don't know what kind of person you deal with&lt;/strong&gt; try rather more conservative approach. It's pretty easy to become more radical in applying changes when environment supports you while it's hard to change others' opinion once you're labeled &quot;radical.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-08-12T19:23:26.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3103" CreationDate="2011-08-12T19:41:18.673" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;How you come about introducing (the idea of) change depends a lot on your relationship with your manager (and peers) as well as the organisation culture. Here are some suggestions to go about it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Start with an informal discussion&lt;/strong&gt;: when you say you have to &quot;break things&quot; to your manager it just sounds like you're going to give him/her bad news, and no-one likes to hear them... Have lunch or coffee with them and ask their thoughts on how things are done, what painpoints they have, where they need help, etc. Show that you are interested in the organisation/team and in what (s)he thinks too. This will help you gauge his/her level of responsiveness to the idea of change.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make the discussion constructive and engaging&lt;/strong&gt;: Don't focus on the negatives only: share what you think is great about the way things are done. Make it a real two-way discussion rather than a unilateral &quot;&lt;em&gt;I have thought about this on my own and here's a list of everything that is wrong&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. This will help in getting things looked at in a positive, contructive manner, particularly if your manager is currently change-averse.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Leverage the fact that you are new to the role&lt;/strong&gt;: This grants you a certain legitimacy in suggesting change; your previous role as a BA gives you a different perspective. You also had some personal objectives in taking up the role; hopefully your manager is aware of them and if so (s)he will appreciate what drives you to suggest change.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pick one &quot;easy&quot; change idea/initiative&lt;/strong&gt;: you mention you have a list of things. In organisations/teams that are reluctant to change, going big-bang with new ways of doing things can quickly back-fire (plus it takes a lot of effort that may not be readily available). Identify a specific change you are comfortable in driving forward and propose to your manager a way to go about it (covering the why/what/how/who) and how you would verify the results once the change is implemented.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Involve others&lt;/strong&gt;: try to get other team members engaged in this process as soon as possible: have informal discussions, facilitate an internal workshop, or use a slot in your regular team meetings to discuss the subject. Having others involved upfront and supporting your ideas will put you in a much better position to drive change successfully.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Focus on the value of change and make it tangible&lt;/strong&gt;. Relate changes to concrete benefits that are meaningful to the organization. For example, you mention the organization has acknowledged the value of its software as a competitive advantage, so a tangible benefit of having automated deployment would allow your organization to release products more quickly and efficiently and increase that advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastActivityDate="2011-08-12T19:41:18.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3107" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3110" CreationDate="2011-08-12T20:48:33.353" Score="3" ViewCount="388" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to be in charge of administration/communications in a small project (16 programmers in total including myself).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're all fourth year computer engineering majors, and we'll be developing for a certain client using c#/silverlight. We're following a heavyweight Unified Process approach (hw use case driven model), and I need to set the communications framework and the first iteration plans. The problem is I haven't met with the client yet, and I won't meet before I need to hand in this documentation. I'm trying to be as clean and thorough/traceable as possible but I have really no idea what I need to do for the communication framework, so I'm asking what are the most important things regarding this? I figure we must have an 'official', traceable internal communications channel where we can resort in case something is not clear (i.e. dispute over responsibilities, for example I could manage a system where all official communications were CCed to my mail) but after that I really don't know what is expected of this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just spend some time googling, and lots of things come afloat: internal/external channels, internal communication hierarchy, etc. How am I supposed to give a meaningful answer to all this questions if we don't even know how we're going to divide the work? The only thing so far we have established are roles: administration/communication  (me), software architect, SQA, verification, documentation, UI, SCM, analysts (5), tech specialist (4).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I'm interested to hear from experienced PMs for advice regarding common newbie mistakes, so I can incorporate this to my own experience without having to fail myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1894" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-08-13T07:15:24.013" LastActivityDate="2011-08-14T04:23:59.033" Title="Organizing communication in project" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;communication-management&gt;&lt;rup&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2959" CreationDate="2011-08-13T06:26:00.617" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm curious as to why you'd want to track them separately.  Both &quot;types&quot; of projects require management, it's just that the tasks being done are slightly different as the lifecycle goes on.  Management gets a little more difficult when the tasks are popping up in an ad-hoc manner (bug reports), rather than having a large net of tasks that are all defined and just need to be done, but the difference is more in managing expectations rather than managing the prioritisation and assignment of tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1898" LastActivityDate="2011-08-13T06:26:00.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2817" CreationDate="2011-08-13T06:38:55.403" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you're going about this backwards.  Don't invest in &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; project management software until you've codified what worked (and didn't work) about your previous project.  As neilj said, you've already delivered something, and that's no small feat, so obviously you're 90+% of the way to Ultimate Success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll get far better results if you look at your recently-completed project and identify what went well (and, just as important, what sucked).  Then take the top few practices and ideas that worked really well and codify them (&quot;this is how we do X&quot;), and identify the few worst problems and try and come up with ways to eliminate or mitigate them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If at some point you think that a software program might help in a particular way, then go looking for one.  One of my favourite management books (&quot;Up The Organisation&quot;), has a great quote about premature automation (it probably sounds a little outdated, but you've got to account for it having been written in the 60s):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'ver never known a company seriously injured by automating too slowly but there are some classic cases of companies bankrupted by computerizing prematurely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with premature automation is that when you commit a process to the tender ministrations of the computer, it's made incredibly rigid and inflexible.  Sometimes that's great, but when you're not &lt;em&gt;sure&lt;/em&gt; it's the right thing to do, it can become a terrible rod for your own back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1898" LastActivityDate="2011-08-13T06:38:55.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3107" CreationDate="2011-08-13T09:43:20.097" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the scope of your communication capability just your project team of 16 people?  If so, that is a very small, easy plan.  Weekly and ad hoc meetings with minutes, risk and issue registers, and a place to store and archive the outputs.  Don't over think this as your team is quite small and keep it simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if your communication requirements extend beyond the project team, which I expect they do, then you cannot delivery your first iteration until after you have met with your client.  In fact, you will have to likely meet with multiple people from your client so that you can do a credible stakeholder analysis.  A communication plan is nothing without that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your stakeholder analysis consists of understanding who everyone is, why they are important, and what kind of impact they are experiencing secondary to your project.  Once you understand the universe of your stakeholders, you need to tier and segment them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tier&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Think of a bulls-eye target.  The bulls-eye, or Tier 0, is typically the project team, both client and supplier.  Tier 1 can be the directly impact stakeholders from your client.  Tier 2 might be the rest of your client community and maybe vendors.  Tier 3 might be your client's customers.  Tier 4 might be your general public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Segmented Categories&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Segment your stakeholders into meaningful groups.  By meaningful, I mean categorize them based on how they are similar in some way.  Categories can span Tiers, e.g., a category can include stakeholders from Tier 1 and 2.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have this finished, answer for each tier and segment who, what, where, when, why, and how.  Who will be the messenger, what do they need to hear and what do I need to hear from them, where are they or where do the communications need to take place, when (and how often), why do they need to hear from me and why do I need to hear from them, and how will I get communications to them and from them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bring all of the answers together and draft your plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your challenge is this: communications are EXTREMELY important but they are also time consuming and expensive.  And the trap of communicating for the sake of communicating is huge; you need to avoid that because you will train your communication targets to ignore your messages.  You have to find that balance for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-08-13T09:43:20.097" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3097" CreationDate="2011-08-13T10:40:38.450" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you can &quot;reuse&quot; some of the tips from Fowler's article &lt;a href=&quot;http://martinfowler.com/articles/agileOffshore.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Using an Agile Software Process with Offshore Development&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For the last four years ThoughtWorks has operated a lab in Bangalore India to support our software development projects in North America and Europe. Traditional approaches to offshore development are based on plan-driven methodologies, but we are very firmly in the agile camp. Here I discuss our experiences and lessons learned in doing offshore agile development. So far we've discovered that we can make it work, although the benefits are still open to debate... etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1900" LastActivityDate="2011-08-13T10:40:38.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3103" CreationDate="2011-08-13T20:07:20.100" Score="3" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Start small&lt;/strong&gt; so you can demonstrate success.  Look for the biggest pain point and see what you can do to address it.  The more success you have, the more momentum you'll build behind your campaign and the less you'll look like a cowboy yourself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask Questions&lt;/strong&gt; rather than making statements.  &quot;What if we were to try this?&quot;  &quot;Why don't we do it this way for a month and then compare results?&quot; etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Watch your attitude&lt;/strong&gt; - I'm concerned that you're thinking of yourself as the smartest guy in the room.  The entrenched methodologies might have problems, but they've also contributed to the success of the organization and gotten it where it is now.  Be respectful as you suggest making changes to improve things.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2011-08-13T20:07:20.100" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3107" CreationDate="2011-08-14T04:15:53.790" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you discussed with your &quot;team&quot; how you will be communicating internally?  Stamping out how you are going to track project progress, how you are going to communicate requirements, how you measure success, how you measure defects essentially can become your communication framework. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your looking for a document template to distribute updates to your team and client, I'm personally a huge fan of project status quadrant reports. Here is an example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sebasolutions.com/downloads/ProjectStatus-RevB.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sebasolutions.com/downloads/ProjectStatus-RevB.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, that this is an excerpt from the book, The Handbook of Program Management by James T Brown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastEditorUserId="1885" LastEditDate="2011-08-14T04:23:59.033" LastActivityDate="2011-08-14T04:23:59.033" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3107" CreationDate="2011-08-14T04:21:36.833" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apologies for the duplicate answer but I this was in response to your closing comment and wanted to address it separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;__&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also, I'm interested to hear from experienced PMs for advice regarding&#xA;  common newbie mistakes, so I can incorporate this to my own experience&#xA;  without having to fail myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, that failure is one of the greatest ways to learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I not so long ago was leading a team of business analysts and project managers. I expected my team members to occasionally make incorrect decisions. I never berated them over making the wrong decision, I berated them when they never &quot;failed fast&quot; and acknowledged that they made a mistake. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially I'm trying to say that you should not be afraid of mistakes. We all make them from  time to time. However, when you do make a mistake, TAKE OWNERSHIP OF IT.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastActivityDate="2011-08-14T04:21:36.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3115" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-14T09:10:21.657" Score="2" ViewCount="1031" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just started as a product engineer for a web-based product that we have around 150 clients, spread out across a large country.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;- In short, it is a mapping application that lets you mashup your business data onto maps.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to kick things off by putting a survey together to get a better grasp on what they want out of the product.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;- This will be a 1st step, afterwards I will plan workshops and I am also looking at implementing &lt;a href=&quot;http://drupal.org/project/ideatorrent&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IdeaTorrent&lt;/a&gt; to catalog what features they want in the product, but thats later.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have two questions (but I think it makes sense to include them both into this one Q)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q1 - What Questions should I be asking our clients?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Q2 - What is the best platform to ask these Questions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;- Our organisation usually uses SurveyMonkey, and I see they have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/use-cases/product-feedback-surveys&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;template&lt;/a&gt;  for product feedback that I could use as a starting point.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was reading an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/10/are-features-the-enemy.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;old blog post from Jeff&lt;/a&gt;, about how over time, cramming loads of new features into a product leads to a degradation in the product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For every new all-singing, all-dancing feature, WinAmp becomes&#xA;  progressively slower, even larger, and more complicated&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has definitely happened for our product, and it has actually been fueled from all our different clients asking for this, and we bolt it on, and now the product could do with a bit of a clean up.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Therefore, although I am interested in new features they might want, I would like to try and focus their attention more to other areas such as:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- which existing features do they struggle with?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- how can we improve the user experience for them?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- get an understanding on their workflows and where the product slows them down.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1658" LastActivityDate="2012-09-02T14:23:19.660" Title="How to gather client feedback?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3115" CreationDate="2011-08-14T10:26:33.013" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a high level view, it sounds like the organization is aware of some type of problem for which they chose this mapping application solution.  However, from the lower levels, I infer from your question that you are unaware of lower level problems and, therefore, have no solution design.  This is the perfect scenario in which using &lt;em&gt;Issue-Based Methods&lt;/em&gt; may work for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This method is a controlled way of developing theories, hypotheses, and tests so that, at the end of it, you will have defined lower level problems and a direction for a solution, i.e., you will know what your customers are worried about with this solution and what they will want to see from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;General Outline&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Problem Statement&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.1  Questions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1.1.1 Hypotheses&#xA;&#xA;      1.1.1.1  Test Questions&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1 and 1.1 are essentially what you theorize are things your customer would like to see in this mapping application, or said another way: problems you think this mapping application will solve for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.1.1 are testable statements or &lt;em&gt;the answers you think the customer will give you.&lt;/em&gt; and 1.1.1.1 are the questions you need to ask to either support or reject your hypotheses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Set-up&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will need to conduct several brainstorming sessions with your team and maybe with a few customer representatives to arrive at at your initial problem statement(s) and set of hypotheses.  Once done, you will clearly see the types of questions you will need to ask in your data collection methods.  This serves as a structured way to get to your questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Data Collection&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no best way to collect this data and do not let anyone tell you there is.  You must use several methods and treat each of those methods equally.  Surveys, focus groups, one on one interviews, town hall meetings.  Use all of them that your budget and environmental constraints allow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understand that the Issue-Based Method is iterative.  You may uncover additional theories and, thus, hypotheses as you move along and you may discover that an initial theory or two was almost immediately rejected.  You do need to iterate your set of theories but do not get wishy washy with it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-08-14T10:26:33.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3115" CreationDate="2011-08-14T14:53:49.143" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you mentioned that you are just starting out, I would mention that you don't listen to &quot;only&quot; just your client feedback and build &quot;only&quot; those features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there features that you can add to the product that your clients don't know that they need?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have any competitors in the area of your product? Can you build any parity features? How about differentiators?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, over time reviewing customer care issues are another great way of eliciting feedback. I'm very fond of zendesk (zendesk.com).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastActivityDate="2011-08-14T14:53:49.143" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3115" CreationDate="2011-08-14T15:25:16.730" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a whole area called &quot;Usability Testing&quot; that attempts to answer some of these questions.  A good primer to get you started is this book by Steve Krug: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0321657292&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Surgery-Made-Easy--Yourself/dp/0321657292/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1313335497&amp;amp;sr=8-1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2011-08-14T15:25:16.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3119" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-15T06:56:20.673" Score="1" ViewCount="301" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't used project gamification so asking from a newby perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am interested in understanding how you manage and sustain this process &lt;strong&gt;over time&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how do you measure the success and benefits of gamification throughout the project?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is it common to have a surge of interest at the beginning and then see the enthusiasm drop? if so, how do you keep the momentum going (e.g. do you update or introduce new rewards on a regular basis)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;most theories of motivation widely recognize that intrinsic rewards outweigh extrinsic ones, especially over time. How do you use gamification to keep people motivated long-term?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastActivityDate="2015-08-03T14:57:31.563" Title="Is project gamification sustainable over time?" Tags="&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;gamification&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3119" CreationDate="2011-08-15T07:33:34.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think only you know the answer to that based on your team make up and dynamics.  I am loathe to introduce any practice that I'm not prepared to sustain.  It makes introducing future practices (ones that I &lt;strong&gt;am&lt;/strong&gt; prepared to practice long term) that much harder as teams have long memories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also have to be careful about how you approach it.  To some people this stuff if gimmickry, and an insult to their intelligence.  Others find it fun and behave accordingly.  I guess that goes back to the first point -- know your team and think about their likely reactions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1878" LastActivityDate="2011-08-15T07:33:34.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3121" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3123" CreationDate="2011-08-15T09:46:38.443" Score="9" ViewCount="309" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have put this in SE-PM as in my eyes, it affects Project Managers the most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have just landed a role as a product engineer for a software product in a mid-sized company (around 100 staff across about 6 offices).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After nosing about with the marketing, sales, support, licensing department, developers, implementation teams, I am shocked out how disconnected the whole company is, not only by team, but also by regional office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example - I asked for a list of all the people that have our product and no-one could give an accurate answer.  To me, that's ridiculous. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our Sales team will go and sell the product to clients.  There will be an invoicing system somewhere, but even their prospective customers do not appear to be centralised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The implementation team will install the product and store docco (not consistently) on office servers showing the architecture of the install and other key info.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Support team use one system, but never catalog what version of software they have or details about their environment each client has, so have to keep asking the same Qs each time they raise a call.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The license team also gets license requests for the product and these also come into a separate system.  Evaluation licenses are also recorded here, but no follow up for Sales to chase them after.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could go on.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;When I ask each of the departments about the need for a centralised document mgmt system they all agree, but of course its someone elses job to implement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know our IT team is also messing about with SharePoint and I know we have &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; client information in SAP as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What course of action would you recommend I take to get upper mgmt to see how things could be improved and that this will result in happier clients and a ROI?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does anyone have any good evidence or backup (perhaps workflow diagrams, or case studies with software like SharePoint) to help strengthen my case?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please let me know via the comments if you need more info, or if the Q needs re-phrasing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Not sure if it's deemed ok to edit my Q so long after asking it.  But based on your advice and some further research I have put together a document, highlighting some struggles I have had with gathering key client info, and made some recommendations on how to proceed (meeting with some key people to share notes, internal survey, bring in an expert, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if this email sounded ok, aimed at some upper mgmt:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dear All.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its early days in my new role as Product Specialist.&#xA;I have spent much of the first week talking to the different departments and trying to find out some more information about our clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all honesty - it has been quite hard to gather up some key client information - not because of people -  but because of how we record information about our clients, and how our systems are setup to pull that information out again.&#xA;Just as an example, no-one can give me an accurate answer to 'Who are our clients?' &#xA;- This is critical information that should be easy to retrieve and 100% accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I imagine a lot of time has gone into the design of the current systems, and they seem to work fine otherwise we would not be where we are now.&#xA;I fear that I may be seen as being too critical too soon - so please bear in mind that I am new to the role, and it might just be that I need to familiarize myself more with these systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, I would like you to take a read of the attached document which documents my struggles with answering some basic questions about our clients.&#xA;- Although I am looking for answers to these Qs, the main point of the document is to provoke some discussion if we should perhaps be looking at improving how we store information about our clients. (i.e. A Customer Relationship Management system).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main intention here is to make internal workflows more efficient, better internal sharing of information, and as a result of these = happier clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope I have not overstepped my mark putting this report together – very happy to discuss on the phone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1658" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-16T17:33:34.610" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T17:33:34.610" Title="Make them understand we need a DMS" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;communication-management&gt;&lt;distributed-team&gt;&lt;customer-service&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3122" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3124" CreationDate="2011-08-15T10:37:28.417" Score="21" ViewCount="30971" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you define a successful project?  Is success contingent on the overall value that the product or service yielded for the organization?  If the project was successfully delivered, that is the requirements were met as specified and verified and validated by the project sponsor, and cost and schedule were met, but the product failed to meet its business case, has the project failed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the product met or exceeded its business case but the cost and schedule targets of the project were exceeded, has the project failed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if the cost and schedule targets were placed in the 30th to 40th percentile, and the actual results were in the 60th percentile, has the project failed?  If so, if the same project had targets placed in the 80th percentile, but actuals came in at the 70th percentile (10% greater than the first example), is this project a success?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a project was delivered successfully by all accounts and the business case return was not expected for five years, if after the five years the organization learns its expected return was not met, is the PM and team accountable for that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2014-08-21T10:04:25.807" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T10:04:25.807" Title="Definition of Project Success" Tags="&lt;definition&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3121" CreationDate="2011-08-15T10:55:51.170" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before you go up to management to propose a DMS system, I think you need to understand the problems, and priorities, better. You have already identified lots of disconnects and areas for improvements, and assessed the organization needs a DMS. Actually one of the key issues you mention is the lack of client (prospective and actual) knowledge and information, and that points a lot more to the need for a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solution. A DMS is not going to help you evaluate sales opportunities, track orders, measure customer profitability or run digital marketing campaigns, all of which being examples of CRM processes that can bring huge business benefits when improved. So it's important you don't pick the solution before you have nailed down the problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of going forward, I would advise the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Take your pick&lt;/strong&gt;: your chances to implement a centralised system (or more likely, several) that gathers all information for everyone are pretty low because the change involved would be massive (and costly). So it's important to identify a specific problem that you believe can be fairly easily solved. Try to pick a high-value, low-effort initiative that will be quick and easy(ish) to implement. This will help securing an early success and pave the way for further improvements and initiatives.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Identify change agents&lt;/strong&gt;: when you pick a specific initiative, take into account your likelihood of succeeding with the people affected and the support you will need. You have talked to a lot of people, so try to identify who has the best means (willingness, interest, influence, skills, budget, etc.) to drive change forward (e.g. the Support Team Manager) and get them involved early on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Show value of change&lt;/strong&gt;: you have already the right idea for this since you talk about happier clients, ROI and so on. Demonstrating a business case is vital when trying to secure support from others, particularly management (especially if you're asking for money). Once you have picked the specific problem you want to address, then look for existing business cases to support this particular project (you are asking for this here but I think you need to narrow down the problems first).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Communicate early and clearly about your intentions&lt;/strong&gt;: talk to your manager and secure support around you in going forward with ideas for improvements. Find out who the decision-makers are and try to establish an informal rapport with them early on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: you may also want to review the following question and answers which does address some of your queries regarding the ways to take up ideas for improvements and change with a manager: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/3103/1722&quot;&gt;Driving process change within a company that only has recently viewed its software as a competitive advantage&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-08-15T10:55:51.170" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3122" CreationDate="2011-08-15T11:34:19.453" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;A project can only be successful if the success criteria were defined upfront (and I have seen many cases of projects that skip that part..). When starting on a project, it's essential to work actively with the organization that owns the project to define success across three tiers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tier 1: Project completion success&lt;/strong&gt;: this is about defining the criteria by which the process of delivering the project is successful. Essentially this addresses the classic &quot;are we on time, budget, on scope, quality?&quot; (adapted to whichever PM method you might be using). It is limited to the duration of the project and success can be measured as soon as the project is officially completed (with intermediary measures being taken of course as part of project control processes). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tier 2: Product/service success&lt;/strong&gt;: this is about defining the criteria by which the product or service delivered is deemed successful (e.g. system is used by all users in scope, uptime is 99.99%, customer satisfaction has increased by 25%, etc.). These criteria need to be measured once the product/service is implemented and over a defined period of time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tier 3: Business success&lt;/strong&gt;: this is about defining the criteria by which the product/service delivered brings value to the overall organisation, and how it contributes financially and/or strategically to the business. For examples: financial value contribution (increased turnover, profit, etc.), competitive advantage (eg. x points marketshare won), etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;=&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Overall success&lt;/strong&gt;: As per the examples mentionned in your question, you can be successful on one tier but not others. Ultimately I think tier 1 matters little if tiers 2 and 3 are not met, and the overall success needs to be defined and agreed as part of this exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to &lt;strong&gt;accountabilities for success&lt;/strong&gt;, they should be assigned according to tier:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 - Project completion success: PM (and project team).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 - Product/service success: Product/Service Owner.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 - Business success: Project Sponsor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The process of &quot;success definition&quot; should also cover how the different criteria will be measured (targets, measurements, time, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastEditorUserId="1722" LastEditDate="2011-08-15T11:39:34.343" LastActivityDate="2011-08-15T11:39:34.343" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3126" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3135" CreationDate="2011-08-15T19:57:55.677" Score="5" ViewCount="13957" Body="&lt;p&gt;What type of details typically go into a project scoping document?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, how much detail should you go into? Since, the requirements are still being decided upon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project scoping document usually is provided to the person doing the decision-making on the client's side. Typically, this could be the marketing director, and in some cases the president.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1253" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-10-31T13:15:48.043" LastActivityDate="2018-10-31T13:15:48.043" Title="Project Scoping Document" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;scope&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2959" CreationDate="2011-08-15T21:05:59.433" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is it that you track, and which aspects do you want to track separately?   If you tell us what's not working for you right now, you may get more responses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1506" LastActivityDate="2011-08-15T21:05:59.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3126" CreationDate="2011-08-15T21:16:27.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Who is the audience for your scoping document?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A scoping document typically describes the planned project in terms of the current business problems it will solve.    Its role is not just to outline what the work products will include, but in particular what they won't include.   If you understand the current workflow well enough to enumerate the steps or draw a use case diagram, do that and then note the steps/use cases that you are not going to address.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to describing the scope of the problem to be solved, consider also characterizing the scope of your team's effort?    For example, are you going to deliver software?  Documentation?  Data?    If you're expecting that the customer or someone else will coordinate user acceptance testing, I'd include that info, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1506" LastActivityDate="2011-08-15T21:16:27.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3130" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-15T21:51:13.950" Score="1" ViewCount="382" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I have teams that think there is little point to being ahead of schedule. I try to convince them that things will inevitably come up that will take up precious time to sort out, so we need to hustle, as described in &lt;em&gt;The Mythical Man Month&lt;/em&gt;. They understand the need to finish on time, but not the necessity to work harder than necessary to do so even if something goes wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I convince them that hustle is important? Should I yield to their stubbornness and let things proceed on schedule, but not ahead of it? Is it okay for a manager to allow their project to progress such that they would not have enough time to deal with any minor catastrophe and still finish on schedule?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Feel free to give software-specific answers, but I'm looking for as generic an answer as possible as this isn't a software team.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="175" LastEditorUserId="175" LastEditDate="2011-08-15T21:57:27.170" LastActivityDate="2011-08-16T18:29:28.637" Title="How can I convince my team that they delays are inevitable and that they need to hustle in order to actuall get done on time?" Tags="&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3130" CreationDate="2011-08-16T00:05:24.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are trying to build up schedule capital to use for contingency.  That is an interesting approach but implies a schedule target on the outside of your probabilistic estimate.  For example, if we can assume your project has a beta or triangular schedule distribution with a minimum duration of eight months, a maximum of 15, and a most likely of 11.  An outside estimate might be a 13-month duration target for your schedule baseline.  This represents somewhere in the 80th percentile, meaning you have between an 80% likelihood of finishing at 13 months or less.  This is a non risky schedule and represents a long runway for your project.  See the graph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/frc1r.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Parkinson's Law and Student Syndrome take over and you have a team whose work op tempo is nice, calm, and relaxed.  Thus, you feel the need to somehow get them to hustle.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My supposition is, if you set your schedule target baseline aggressively, say around the 10- or 11-month duration in this example, your team's op tempo would be at the expected level where getting them to &quot;hustle&quot; would not be of concern.  It is a riskier schedule but you would have your calculated contingent reserves ready to deploy if you start to slip to the right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both favorable and unfavorable schedule variances accrue in a stochastic or random way.  Trying to &quot;create&quot; the variance will likely cause you more grief than its worth, i.e., your efforts will not likely produce much.  I'd focus on the more aggressive targets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-08-16T00:05:24.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3126" CreationDate="2011-08-16T00:09:42.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe your scoping document is your WBS.  Your WBS details everything and service required to deliver your project, and nothing else.  That your requirements are not finished or you are driving them down to a lower level may require some iterations.  How much detail?  As much as you need to properly manage your project and to make very clear what is in scope and what is not in scope, to the point where you are comfortable that the ambiguity is minimized or removed in its entirety, and to the point where your risk of challenge is minimized and acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2011-08-16T00:25:56.313" LastActivityDate="2011-08-16T00:25:56.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3133" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3200" CreationDate="2011-08-16T05:55:09.220" Score="2" ViewCount="357" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say a contracting company is hired by a parent entity to complete a given piece of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a fixed-fee project with a specified deliverable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The work is critical to the overall project, and the project's success or failure hinges on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it correct to include those in charge at the contracting company as project stakeholders?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1551" LastEditorUserId="5557" LastEditDate="2015-09-12T11:15:56.757" LastActivityDate="2015-09-12T11:15:56.757" Title="Do contracting companies, whose services are key to the project, count as stakeholders?" Tags="&lt;stakeholders&gt;&lt;subcontractor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3133" CreationDate="2011-08-16T06:51:11.360" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't say so. They are just delivering what they were contracted for, especially when they do it for a fixed fee. The same way teams at the parent company are delivering their parts for a fixed fee (their paycheck).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More... The parent company is their stakeholder as the parent company has requirements and pays the bill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This of course does not mean excluding them from all kinds of communication. There is even bigger need for good communication and transparency, but that does not have much to do with being a stakeholder in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="435" LastActivityDate="2011-08-16T06:51:11.360" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3126" CreationDate="2011-08-16T07:27:35.960" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your scope statement or scoping document defines the perimeters of the project across a number of dimensions. It's typically used to support project effort evaluation and planning, as well as detailed requirements definition, so the idea is to define what will be done/delivered (and what won't be).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What to include in a scoping document:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Functional scope&lt;/strong&gt;: the key functionalities the product/service should perform/deliver. Though requirements may not be all known at this stage, the aim is to include/exclude functionality &quot;blocks&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Data scope&lt;/strong&gt;: this applies to IT projects and defines the scope around data migration, data archiving, data set-up, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Technical scope&lt;/strong&gt;: the key technologies that will be used to deliver the project and the product/service. Include/exclude tools, apps and hardware, including versions where you can.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Geographical scope&lt;/strong&gt;: if your project is covering a diverse geographical area (e.g. several regions or countries), you should specify in the scoping document what is included and what isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Organisational scope&lt;/strong&gt;: the scoping document should specify who (roles, numbers) in the organization is in scope for the project (eg. all Marketing employees or only Marketing Managers).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Responsibilities scope&lt;/strong&gt;: this applies when the project team will execute most, but not all, of the project work, and intends to specify who will be responsible for what. For example, it can be in scope for the project team to perform data migration, but not in scope to do data cleansing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other recommendations:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In scope vs. not in scope&lt;/strong&gt;: you don't have to specify for each item that is in scope, what is not in scope! You can say upfront in your document that what is not mentionned as being in scope is implicitely excluded. However in practice people tend to make a lot of assumptions so it helps to identify those big-impact items where you think there may be expectations or assumptions from stakeholders that they can be included later on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When it comes to the &lt;strong&gt;level of details&lt;/strong&gt;, the more you have the better, but you don't need to have all the requirements. You need to have a reasonable level of comfort that there is a solid and comfortable framework within which you can deliver the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Include an &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Assumptions&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; section: this is important as it will provide the rationale for what has been included/excluded in scope as well as protecting the project team from uncontrollable major changes. There can be changes, but then they will be recognized as formal baseline changes and addressed through the change management process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Include a &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Risks&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; section. If you have known risks on your project, this is a good place to highlight them as it provides context to the scope definition.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastActivityDate="2011-08-16T07:27:35.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3126" CreationDate="2011-08-16T11:16:22.637" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Finish the requirements first, then indicate in the scope statement which of the requirements you're implementing in this project.  (For instance, if it's a 4 week sprint, you might only implement requirements 1-5.  If it's a full release, you might implement all the functional requirements, but only on platform A in environment B, or something like that.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2011-08-16T11:16:22.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3133" CreationDate="2011-08-16T11:48:38.497" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.  They are a stakeholder.  Using a tiered approach for segmentation--think a bulls eye target--the epicenter, what I usually refer as Tier 0, is the project team.  A piece was outsourced to another company; its output is part of the project.  Thus, they are part of the project team, albeit once removed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-08-16T11:48:38.497" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2187" CreationDate="2011-08-16T13:37:21.157" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used TFS for quite some time and enjoyed its integration with source control.  However, it is not open source...and it has almost lead me to a different direction.  Although the concept of tying SCC to the task tracking, it almost became more of a chore for the development team.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started to wonder what benefits I was actually getting from tying the source control to the reporting utility, etc.?  What are your main goals for this integration?  Is it just one interface &lt;em&gt;IDE&lt;/em&gt; that everyone can use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really like using tools like RallyDev (free up to a certain size team) and VersionOne...basically easy to use interfaces that have a pretty strong community behind them.   I know it isn't what you requested, but wanted to: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Understand your needs to SCC integration and &#xA;2) Provide you with a couple of other options that might work for a smaller team for free (RallyDev)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="913" LastActivityDate="2011-08-16T13:37:21.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3130" CreationDate="2011-08-16T13:56:17.643" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sorry, this may hurt a bit - &#xA;I think the problem is less with your team, and more with your schedule. If I understand correctly, you developed a schedule (presumably with input from those doing the work), and then are asking them to work faster than the agreed upon schedule; in case something comes up (risk management).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the PM, your schedule should already include that contingency/buffer time, and the duration estimates should have been discussed and compressed as much as possible during the schedule creation, to then allow for contingency time to be added in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's two issues with your request - the first is that you're really not sure of the risks involved, so you're hedging your bets instead of identifying them. The second is the presumption that your team gave you inflated duration estimates and can finish faster because they weren't realistic in the beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at it this way - imagine you gave your boss a realistic schedule that said you'd complete the project by Jan. 1, and he agreed. Then after you began work, he came back and said &quot;you know, you really need to finish it sooner. Not because anything's changed, but &quot;just in case.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would your response be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-08-16T13:56:17.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3122" CreationDate="2011-08-16T14:02:45.407" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Success or failure is determined by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one viewing the project, and what their criteria for 'success' is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The metrics by which one is being judged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also a difference between project success and project management success. The PM team should only be judged on that which they have control or influence over. So if they weren't involved in the project selection or business case, then they can't be held for responsible for the benefits realization (or lack of). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-08-16T14:02:45.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2959" CreationDate="2011-08-16T16:08:41.487" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can try Team Task Manager.  We use it daily to track projects and tasks, it's very intuitive and there is no learning curve.  Free eval is here -  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deskshare.com/team-task-management.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.deskshare.com/team-task-management.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1916" LastActivityDate="2011-08-16T16:08:41.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3130" CreationDate="2011-08-16T18:29:28.637" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;After reading through your question a few times it seems to me as though your confusing two separate aspects of project &amp;amp; team management:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team motivation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I agree that you want your team to &quot;Hustle&quot; on every project they are working on... However, you can't use if's and but's to make sure a team is moving as fast as they can be. The age old excuse &quot;we have to hurry to get this done in case something unexpected happens&quot; simply doesn't fly. In fact attempts to use this as a &quot;motivator&quot; will generally act as a team de-motivator. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How should I convince them that hustle is important?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, it is less about convincing and more about showing them the way. In fact this is one of the most important concepts of building an empowered and productive team IMO. If you find yourself not knowing what to do next, I would recommend reading &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0449002829&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Zapp! The The Lightning of Empowerment&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. It is one of the most enlightening books I have read throughout my career and should provide you a solid foundation to start from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastActivityDate="2011-08-16T18:29:28.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3145" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-16T21:13:29.183" Score="0" ViewCount="760" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am interested if anyone has tailored prince 2 to this purpose as many aspects of the project process do not seem applicable.  Such as assigning project board as this is done at the point of sale before I am involved and initiation doc etc.  any examples of tailored down method or advised would be appreciated&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1920" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T13:15:36.303" Title="How to tailor a prince 2 project as a software supplier and the PM" Tags="&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1197" CreationDate="2011-08-16T22:35:14.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's always fine to revisit estimates, whether or not a PM change is introduced.  New information is presented, resources change, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be brave, be courageous.  If you need to present new estimates to your management, don't hesitate to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1740" LastActivityDate="2011-08-16T22:35:14.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3147" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-16T22:38:50.180" Score="9" ViewCount="9013" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking for something that provides a good introduction into the topic as well as how to introduce it to an organization and how to apply it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1740" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-27T19:00:25.673" LastActivityDate="2020-07-23T18:07:59.443" Title="Is there a list of good kanban books?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="8" ClosedDate="2012-07-27T19:06:20.003" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3147" CreationDate="2011-08-17T01:15:05.673" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is one of my favorite &quot;getting&quot; started guides: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/minibooks/kanban-scrum-minibook&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.infoq.com/minibooks/kanban-scrum-minibook&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, that it also touches on SCRUM as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I came across this list last night, and thought I would update this thread. I have read through some of them and it seems to be a fairly comprehensive list: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.targetprocess.com/blog/2009/05/lean-and-kanban-software-development.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.targetprocess.com/blog/2009/05/lean-and-kanban-software-development.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastEditorUserId="1885" LastEditDate="2011-08-17T15:04:31.490" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T15:04:31.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3147" CreationDate="2011-08-17T07:13:37.497" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two canonical books on Kanban:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;David Anderson's &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0984521402&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban, Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Henrik Kinberg's and Mattias Skarin's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/minibooks/kanban-scrum-minibook&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban and Scrum - making the most of both&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(updated) Henrik Kniberg's &lt;a href=&quot;http://pragprog.com/book/hklean/lean-from-the-trenches&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lean from the Trenches&lt;/a&gt; is great both at describing how to scale Kanban up but also as a practical guide to Kanban implementation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also find answers to &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1847/scrum-agile-kanban-looking-for-for-dummies-type-of-information&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; useful although it is definitely broader. One of sources which is definitely worth recommending is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.limitedwipsociety.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Limited WIP Society site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also a great set of resources on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.kanban.university/#resources&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lean-Kanban University site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-23T18:07:59.443" LastActivityDate="2020-07-23T18:07:59.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3150" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3153" CreationDate="2011-08-17T09:45:24.073" Score="9" ViewCount="507" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, let me tell that I'm a freelancer and don't belong/have a company and work on my own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The context:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have a big client that asked me for a cost estimate for a big&#xA;project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The project involves technical aspects that I don't master (nor want&#xA;    to, because of its size), but am really comfortable doing my&#xA;part, so&#xA;    in this case I will have to get a technical parter (a company&#xA;for&#xA;    sure, because of the dimension of the project).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The project will go on after I finish my part, and the partner I&#xA;    suggest will remain on the project doing the maintenance.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One important thing is that I don't want to (and can't) be the head&#xA;    of the project (because of the time I would spend on just one&#xA;    project, I wouldn't have time to other projects, and also&#xA;because it&#xA;    would make me take all the responsibility from both my work and&#xA;the&#xA;    partner's work (which I wouldn't mind, but the real problem is&#xA;that&#xA;    all the payments, invoices and taxes would have to be supported&#xA;by&#xA;    me, and not being a company is bad in this case)).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This means that there will be two suppliers, me and the suggested&#xA;    partner, each doing their job, as a team, but invoicing&#xA;separately&#xA;    and having split responsibilities. I've done countless projects&#xA;with&#xA;    this method and works well, the only difference is that in this&#xA;case&#xA;    I am getting the partner.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Finally the question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it ok for me to ask/request a commission (maybe a percentage of their cost estimate) to the partner I'm suggesting? (my logic is that I'm giving them a big project).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to be (or sound) greedy and first I need to know if this is the correct thing to do, and what could be the normal rates/percentages, and how to protect me in case they want to &lt;em&gt;stab me in the back&lt;/em&gt; (like stealing the project from me).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="751" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T03:40:43.693" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T03:40:43.693" Title="Partner suggestion to a big project, is it ok to ask for a commission?" Tags="&lt;external-project-members&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3150" CreationDate="2011-08-17T10:54:06.653" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like a kick-back.  In the public sector, you would go to jail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  If what you are suggesting does not cross the line (if you were in the public sector in the USA), take a look at appearances.  How would your customer view it if they learned there was a monetary transaction that took place between you and this potential partner?  If it were me, I'd ask is this partner really any good or did they provide the largest commission?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way I see it, if there is a piece of the work you do not want or cannot do, recommend the other company to your customer and step aside.  Let them work a deal between themselves.  If you are worried about this company stabbing you in the back, my guess is if you are providing value to your customer and have a strong relationship as a trust advisor and partner, their attempts would make them look bad and would fall on deaf ears.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2011-08-17T11:31:11.303" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T11:31:11.303" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3150" CreationDate="2011-08-17T11:00:53.583" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can look at it from two perspectives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As a salesman&lt;/strong&gt; you have a project (a big part of it actually) to sell to your technical partner. From this perspective asking for a commission would sound reasonable, as it's basically you who have something potentially valuable (project to build and to get money for) and are in power to make a decision who will be a partner.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As a project manager&lt;/strong&gt; you need a partner, and a proven one, otherwise you won't be able to complete the project. From this perspective your first focus would be looking for a trustworthy company to partner with you as your work won't be judged completely separately. In this case I would rather look for building win-win relationship and not maximizing my personal profit.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would choose the second path although I know many people who would choose the first. You should probably consider whether you're going to build long-term relationship with your technical partner or you just don't care and prefer to suck them out if possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you choose the salesman approach a common commission is about a small few per cent (less than 5%) of the services price. I mean if the part of the contract is hardware delivery hardware prices aren't counted as base to estimate commission. Otherwise in contracts where the value of hardware is like 2/3 of the whole and margin on hardware is close to non-existent wouldn't be very fair for vendors in terms of paying commissions to salesmen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And one more thing: if you do consider your approach think about value, or lack of it, you deliver for your tech partner. If hypothetically tech partner was chosen by the client and you didn't even have a chance to earn any commission at all, would the game be different at all? Probably not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T11:00:53.583" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3150" CreationDate="2011-08-17T11:36:36.490" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Commercially, I think there are two options available to do this (that would make it legal and protect you):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;find out if the partner company you are thinking of has a &lt;strong&gt;referral fee program&lt;/strong&gt; (this could be a fixed fee or a % of business, and normally it's a capped % and/or amount). If they do you will be able to find out how much they would be ready to pay out and may have a little manoeuvre for negotiation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;hire the partner company&lt;/strong&gt; (they become a sub-contractor to you). This would be the most effective option financially (contracting agents who place resources can ask take as much as 15-20% of resources rate), however from what you say it doesn't seem to be something you'd be willing to take on. It means indeed taking responsibility not just for the delivery of the work but all the administration and liability around it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all cases, as soon as there is an exchange of money between you and another party, make sure there is a contract signed by both. This contract can include a clause around you retaining exclusivity for part of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, make sure your client is aware early on that you are looking at bringing a partner and get them to approve partner choice - this will help you build a stronger, trusting relationship with all parties as well as strengthening your position with your client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T11:36:36.490" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3150" CreationDate="2011-08-17T15:34:10.857" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way you protect yourself is by having a contract that prevents them from taking your customer, not by asking for a kickback.  Maybe you'd like &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt; to be the general contractor, and make yourself a subcontractor.  In any event, if you can get to an agreement, the win for you is that you get to take on a project that is way too large for you to handle yourself, and you build credibility with a partner who might take you on for future projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T15:34:10.857" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3150" CreationDate="2011-08-17T16:15:39.323" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know someone who faced the same situation few years back. The solution they worked out was that he introduced partner company to the client. The partner company took the whole project and he worked his part for the partner company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The commercial relation between him and his partner was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He got a fixed percentage (salesman approach) on the current project to bring the project to the company.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also, he made a contract that he will have a percentage (very minor) in all future projects between client and the company. This was the royalty for establishing a relationship between client and partner company. (This came really handy when there was a conflict between the partner company and client. At that time he played the role of mediator to resolve the conflict.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today he has good relation with both client and partner company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know the legal aspect of this arrangement in a particular country. But this relationship works well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1610" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T16:15:39.323" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3147" CreationDate="2011-08-18T08:26:30.163" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BOq3I.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1563273454&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Custom Kanban - Designing the System to Meet the Needs of Your Environment&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;by   Raymond S. Louis    ISBN:  9781563273452  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Productivity Press   Copyright Replenishment Technology Group, Inc. ©  2006 (254  pages)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Designed to help you develop and implement a correct and successful kanban system for your company, this compelling book explains appropriate kanban techniques based on specific environmental factors and company needs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5zqd3.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0814407633&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Kanban made simple - Demystifying and Applying Toyota's Legendary Manufacturing Process&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;by   John M. Gross  and  Kenneth R. McInnis    ISBN:  9780814407639  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AMACOM   Copyright John M. Gross and Kenneth R. McInnis ©  2003 (259  pages)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Using Toyota as an example, this is a step-by-step guide to incorporating the ingenuity of the kanban system into any manufacturing environment.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastActivityDate="2011-08-18T08:26:30.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3157" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-18T17:13:41.873" Score="2" ViewCount="149" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working in Mexico for a financial company.  Some months ago I got a task to develop all the software needed in the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a 3 person team dedicated for developing the company software. We're using Scrum and I think we are doing a good job. However, sometimes I feel I need more people in order to move faster so I was thinking about internships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do you manage internships? What kind of tasks should be assign to these people?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I caught the idea, I can't use internships to accelerate the project,  I will use it to cultivate new talent instead.  My biggest problem is that in my town there are not as many developers as I wish, so it's a problem to hire talented people, and not many people like the idea to come to this town, they prefer the big cities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1735" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-16T17:40:02.917" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T17:40:02.917" Title="Working with interns" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;internships&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3157" CreationDate="2011-08-18T18:40:55.490" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What level of interns are you planning on hiring? Generally when you bring a new person onto a team (regardless of which practice you are following) you will move slower over x number of iterations until the new hire is up to speed on your processes, development practices and business knowledge. The time it takes to get a person up to speed is very much dependent on their skill level and ability to learn. Generally an intern will take exponentially longer to get &quot;up to speed&quot; than an individual who has several years of experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I have never managed intern's any differently than I have managed salaried employees. They are part of your team and should be treated as such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of tasking it is entirely dependant on their skill level. You probably don't want an entry level position assigned a task to architect the framework of a financial piece of software.....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to move faster (sooner vs later)...hire experienced developers ideally with some interest or knowledge of SCRUM and agile processes and a few years of experience in the technology your team is using.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastActivityDate="2011-08-18T18:40:55.490" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3145" CreationDate="2011-08-18T18:52:36.517" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wonder whether you are trying to look at this as a single project, where perhaps it should be considered as two?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Developing the product that will be sold;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Implementing the product in the client's environment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I am right in my assumption, then you certainly can tailor each of these separately: just be sure that you keep a clear focus on the deliverables for the two different clients (internal and external) that correspond to the project that you are running.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the point of sale, the client should be creating the project board, and you, as PM, will be invited to be involved, but remember that in a Prince 2 environment, the Project Board is responsible for the project, and the PM is the conduit through which delivery is achieved... This is not how it works using different project models, where the PM is solely responsible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-08-18T18:52:36.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3160" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3166" CreationDate="2011-08-18T20:20:09.147" Score="3" ViewCount="506" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two part question -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First&lt;/strong&gt; - I have a basic understanding of Earned Value Management (EVM), but the example I've found so far on applying seem vague. So any suggestions on understanding EVM more? I'm mainly trying to find examples on how best to calculate the Projected Value and the Earned Value (e.g. real world example showing how milestones are mapped, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Second&lt;/strong&gt; - Any suggestions on how something like Scrum could be mapped to EVM? Thinking iterations and story points could be mapped back, but again need help visualizing it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1781" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2011-09-28T19:02:52.033" LastActivityDate="2011-09-29T18:32:17.503" Title="Good resources on applying Earned Value Management" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;evm&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3161" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-18T20:28:40.810" Score="2" ViewCount="4183" Body="&lt;p&gt;I made a Gantt chart for my computing project at university. I am writing up the thesis at the moment and I am wondering where I should put my Gantt chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I currently have my Gantt chart taking up a whole page in my &lt;strong&gt;Project Management&lt;/strong&gt; chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you put it in an appendix of the project report or just leave it where it is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I ask is that because of its size, it sort of breaks up the flow of the person reading the report I think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1939" LastEditorUserId="2124" LastEditDate="2011-09-23T16:34:36.270" LastActivityDate="2012-02-03T03:06:30.980" Title="Where should one put a large Gantt chart in a project report?" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2995" CreationDate="2011-08-19T00:18:20.457" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the goals of our gantt chart product is to create presentable gantt charts.  One option for distributing the schedule to a team is to send a permalink to the project, reading permalinked gantt charts is free and does not require login.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://gantto.com/features/share&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://gantto.com/features/share&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before gantto I either used print-screen and MS Project or I manually drew gantt charts out in Powerpoint or Illustrator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1942" LastActivityDate="2011-08-19T00:18:20.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3163" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-19T01:39:49.737" Score="4" ViewCount="656" Body="&lt;p&gt;Last month I was assigned my first job about project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I realized that honestly, I have a problem with time management. I feel always stressed and anxious. More time thinking about things that I should do, than doing it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This mixture of anxiety and stress is basically killing me psychologically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I guess I need some advice (article, blog, book, etc) to start fixing myself about time management, I think this should reduce a lot my anxiety and stress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance for your help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1943" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2014-10-15T15:58:53.950" LastActivityDate="2014-12-12T09:15:30.540" Title="Personal time management challenges causing Stress &amp; Anxiety" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;training&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3163" CreationDate="2011-08-19T06:42:30.787" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you look for a book I would start with &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0142000280&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Getting Things Done&lt;/a&gt;. You can also check &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.davidco.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;author's website&lt;/a&gt; as there are some resources there as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in terms of being productive I find a couple of simple rules very useful. Focus on a single thing at any moment, which means you don't lose time on context switching and actually start doing, and finishing, tasks. To get yourself into the flow you can start with tasks which are easier to complete and then move to bigger ones. BTW: I sometimes work that way and call it &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2008/02/do-it-now-day.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;do it now day&lt;/a&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-08-19T06:42:30.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3160" CreationDate="2011-08-19T08:28:12.033" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Probably the best source of practical knowledge on EVM is &lt;a href=&quot;http://herdingcats.typepad.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Glen Alleman's blog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of articles which you may find useful to understand EVM better:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://herdingcats.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/08/minimum-elements-of-an-earned-value-system.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Minimum Elements of EVM&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://herdingcats.typepad.com/my_weblog/2011/05/alert-earned-value-is-not-the-same-as-business-value.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Earned Value is not the same as Business Value&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a couple more on using EVM in agile context:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://herdingcats.typepad.com/my_weblog/2010/11/what-does-it-mean-when-someone-says-agile-evm.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;What does it mean when someone says Agile EVM&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://herdingcats.typepad.com/my_weblog/2011/05/agile-and-evm.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile and EVM Part 1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://herdingcats.typepad.com/my_weblog/2011/06/agile-and-evm-part-two.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile and EVM Part 2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will find more in the archives of the site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-08-19T08:28:12.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3157" CreationDate="2011-08-19T08:44:55.157" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Internships are usually a way to find inexperienced people, train them and sometimes decide whether you want to bring them full time. For an employer it is a low-risk occasion to verify intern's skills and for intern it is a great way to learn new things and see how their potential employer works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hardly know any situation when an experienced professional went to internships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering all that, when you think about interns you should assume you will probably need to spend more time with them than you would with experienced professionals. It is so basically because they're less experienced so the gap between their skills and your expectations it just bigger. It also means that statistically you need more time to develop interns into full-blown specialists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand internships are usually a worthy investment as first, you can teach interns things you want or like, fine-tuning their skills to your needs. They also likely cost you a bit less even once they are developed specialists. Finally, it is a very good way to verify whether they suit your team or not -- you ground your decisions with a couple of months of work instead of a couple of hours of interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, I would decide on internships basing on your specific needs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you need someone adding value fast or you have comfort of working in a longer perspective?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have enough money to bring up developed professionals or you need to count every penny?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is a time perspective of projects you're talking about? Few months or a few years?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What would be the impact on the project of the wrong decisions in recruitment? Would it harm the project much or you can deal with consequences?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much time you can spend supporting new people in the team?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Basically if you have enough time to invest in internships and you think about longer perspective it is usually a good idea. On the other hand, treating interns as a rescue team most of the time makes a situation only worse.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-08-19T08:44:55.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3168" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3178" CreationDate="2011-08-19T09:03:43.390" Score="5" ViewCount="2361" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a freelancer with +15 years of experience in the multimedia design field and sometimes I struggle with the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have several projects, and most of the time I can do them in a sort&#xA;of multi-tasking way (like I do parts of project A, then parts of&#xA;project B and so on).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The problem is really when the priorities change (because of the &#xA;client asking for something else on a different project that I'm not &#xA;working at the time) and I have to swap project importance and also&lt;br&gt;&#xA;swap the project I was working on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This has probably to do with &quot;real&quot; project management, since I&#xA;should stick to the &quot;plan&quot; and even with a new request I should tell&#xA;the client to wait, but unfortunately I can't do that, since my&#xA;&quot;trademark&quot; is availability and clients love to be &quot;pampered&quot;, i.e. I&#xA;try to please, and if the current project can be put on hold, I will&#xA;do it, and take the newer request.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What I have found out is that if a project is very big, I can't&#xA;really just work on it until the end, because I have other projects,&#xA;but sometimes it does feel like concentrating on just one project at&#xA;a time would be best, because it them would &lt;em&gt;pave&lt;/em&gt; the way to the&#xA;others.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The main problem I face with the multi-task way is that sometimes I'm&#xA;working on project A, but am worried about Project B or C. And&#xA;sometimes I close the email, phone and any other means of comm. and&#xA;concentrate on the project I feel that is stuck and was &quot;blocking&quot;&#xA;the other ones, until I finish it!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Finally the question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it best to concentrate on just one project? (and put every other on hold)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is there a better way to solve the priority swapping (and focusing on the project at hand) and achieve a nice multi-tasking pace?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="751" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T03:39:48.483" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T03:39:48.483" Title="Multi-task or concentrate on one project at a time?" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3168" CreationDate="2011-08-19T11:14:59.510" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The ability to multitask is individually specific.  Different personality types are better than others; even gender has been shown to matter.  My guess is you know exactly how well you tend to multitask and can answer this question, for the most part, yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the project management side, however, that is a calculated answer.  For each individual project, you promised a delivery date that gave you so many days in duration for a planned level of effort, i.e., you told customer A you will deliver the widget in 25 working days because, in your head, you planned about 30% of your time.  For each of the projects you have in the air, you made a similar promise.  Therefore, so long as your targets were reasonable, e.g., aggressive but not unrealistic, there is no reason why you cannot manage multiple projects at any given time, bouncing from one to another &lt;em&gt;based on your schedule.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your prioritization will change during the course of the work based on 1) progress you are making, 2) threats and issues that are popping up, and 3) change requests from your customer.  But here again it is another calculated answer: how you measure your performance and predict your future performance, the cost and risk you have telling customer B that his widget will be delayed because of something you have to deal with customer A, etc.  You calculate your overall benefit of the re-prioritization against your costs and risks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your availability trademark is an oxymoron.  Making yourself available to one customer means you must make yourself unavailable to another customer in an equal way.  There is no way around that.  It is a house of cards; the more you try to protect this so called value proposition of yours, the more flimsy it becomes and will crash.  You need to know how to say no and set realistic expectations with your customers.  They will care less than you think.  The hidden message you tell your customer when you drop everything else for them is that you will drop them when another customer comes calling.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pampering is a project killer.  It leads to scope creep, gold plating, over promising and under delivering, and other unsavory things.  Customers do not need it, nor do they want it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-08-19T11:14:59.510" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3157" CreationDate="2011-08-19T11:46:36.150" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Internships are a fine idea for creating a &quot;try before you buy&quot; experience for both the hiring manager and the candidate in question.  However, you should go into the situation realizing you will need to make a substantial investment in the individual, and in the short term, it will likely slow you down and drain resources.   It's not appropriate as a way to accelerate your project; this should be done by hiring experienced people (possibly on a contract basis) who can hit the ground running and don't need supervision or coaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2011-08-19T11:46:36.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3171" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3173" CreationDate="2011-08-19T15:00:55.960" Score="12" ViewCount="514" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a project manager, what are some ways to improve one's effectiveness in leadership on a team? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly it may depend on the context; but, generally speaking is it naturally the role of the project manager to lead the team ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, what exactly is effective leadership in terms of projects? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1253" LastActivityDate="2011-08-31T00:57:03.590" Title="Improving leadership skills for project managers" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3163" CreationDate="2011-08-19T15:07:10.607" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found a personal Kanban board very useful. Kanban allows you to limit your work in progress. I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://leankitkanban.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LeanKitKanban&lt;/a&gt;, and restrict myself to 3 things on the go at any time, with 6 things (about a week's work) in a backlog. Ongoing concerns take up one of my &quot;in progress&quot; slots. I also have a &quot;waiting&quot; column which I limit to 4, which means that if I want to wait for someone else I have to chase up an existing problem to free the space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This really helps me to finish one thing before I start another, and to say &quot;No&quot; if I'm already booked up or have too many ongoing concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LeanKitKanban has icons and different colours, so I can also visualise deadlines, things which have slow feedback loops but will come back to bite me later, small tasks vs. big projects, tasks which need to be expedited, repeating tasks, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;+1 for Pawel's suggestion of &quot;Getting Things Done&quot;, which amongst other helpful suggestions says that if it takes 5 minutes, just do it (and don't put it on the Kanban board).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These two posts can be helpful in terms of pointing resources on personal Kanban:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/3056/how-to-implement-kanban-principles-into-ones-personal-life&quot;&gt;How to implement kanban principles into one's personal life?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2009/does-anyone-use-a-personal-kanban-scrum-board-for-project-management-activities&quot;&gt;Does anyone use a personal Kanban / Scrum board for project management activities?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-08-19T18:05:05.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3171" CreationDate="2011-08-19T17:58:35.933" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can answer with a question: what do leaders do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They help to plan actions of the group and execute these plans.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They react for changing situation and help to deal with unexpected.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They delegate responsibility and power according to individual predispositions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They defend the group.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They make others willing to follow them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically the best way to become an effective project leader is to show leadership in practice. If you start from nothing probably at the beginning you need small steps. No one would believe in your huge plan designed up-front until you prove that you can successfully plan a small thing. No one would believe you can carry the team through big problems until they learn you're dealing with everyday small issues flawlessly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Basically a leader is a person who helps the rest of the team shine.&lt;/strong&gt; It means they can use a potential of the team, i.e. find the right place for everyone, give them enough power to execute their tasks, give them enough freedom, etc. At the same time the leader tries to keep conditions possibly close to ideal for the team, i.e. defending the team from unfair attacks or destroying optimal work environment, isolating them from unnecessary buzz, removing obstacles all over the way, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With such attitude people start considering a person someone they know they can count on whenever a tough time comes and someone they want to have around. They're willing to follow such leader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-08-29T07:05:28.880" LastActivityDate="2011-08-29T07:05:28.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3174" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3176" CreationDate="2011-08-19T19:53:44.137" Score="6" ViewCount="1051" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been reading about agile methodology and while discussing it with colleagues the question of interchangeability of roles came up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scrum-master role is not an easy burden, so some proposed to do a bi-weekly rotation over all team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wouldn't that contradict the specificity of that role and what it entails?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1947" OwnerDisplayName="Dan" LastActivityDate="2011-08-24T03:04:01.497" Title="Should the role of scrum master be played by the same person every time?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3174" CreationDate="2011-08-19T21:14:38.137" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Vast majority of teams have the same person playing the role of Scrum Master each time as it's not that easy to play this role well. It's not without a reason. If a team has little experience with Scrum it's better to have just a single, more experienced person being kind of mentor. Also, as you point, that's not the easiest or the most intuitive place to be which is another point for having the same Scrum Master over and over again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rotation is sometimes proposed in teams where no one is willing to take responsibilities of Scrum Master. In teams which are familiar with Scrum and have decent experience working with the method it shouldn't be a big issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: that it is also pretty common thing to observe that teams which are fluent with Scrum need less support from Scrum Master as people collectively overtake some of Scrum Master tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, I would say that Scrum Master rotation can be useful in limited number of cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-08-19T21:14:38.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3174" CreationDate="2011-08-19T21:15:37.623" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our company went &quot;agile&quot; about 4 years ago and we've been constantly adjust/trying things that could work better than existing stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not claiming that this is 100% (or even 50%) correct answer, but In my experience, a scrum master, should be a dedicated person.  At a minimum, it should be a person that WANTS to be the scrum master. If there are two people on a team who enjoy that kind of stuff, by all means, maybe they can rotate within each other, but I believe making the entire team rotate is not a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a scrum master (SM) is a completely different role, than being a technical team lead (TL) which is a different role than being regular developer and it takes different personalities to be good at each one.  SM must stay on top of multiple issues which are constantly popping up.  If management wants to change requirements or discuss yet another &quot;special side project&quot;, SM should take ownership of these distractions and let the rest of the team focus on delivering the iteration.  SM must also keep track of what each person is doing and coordinate effort between team members.  TL's focus on much more technical stuff, but 25%-66% of their effort still goes into coordinating team member effort, but from technical point, not scheduling.  Unlike SM and to lesser degree a TL, regular developers are not people who juggle other people's activities in their head.  Instead, regular developer is happy and works best when he is isolated from external noise and is allowed to focus on details of the code that he is working on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If regular developer is rotated into an SM role, he will be forced to pay attention to so many new things, that he will start losing track of the important details at the code level.  At the same time, when he is rotated back, he will find code that was a) potentially done without knowledge of his details and b) it will take time for him to reacquire the lost level of detail that he possessed before switching his attention to schedules/people/issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also people perform best when they enjoy what they do. If you take a developer that loves coding and make him attend all the SM meetings, a) he won't really be into paying attention and his interest will be in getting back to the code rather than coordinating team activities.  In the past we had people who attempted to do both roles (manage and code) and at the end they failed at both.  Now we have dedicated SMs, TLs and regular devs.  I guess our team was lucky because we had two developers who actually prefer paperwork, meetings, leading and overseeing over coding, so they were happy to transition into their new roles.  By HR standards, they are considered first-level management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1948" LastActivityDate="2011-08-19T21:15:37.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3168" CreationDate="2011-08-20T01:32:23.750" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In spite of all the hype, the research is now showing that multi-tasking doesn't work.  If you are working on project A and have a worry or idea for another project make a note of it and get on with project A.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most projects have times where you end up waiting for someone else.  Note where you are and get on with the next project.  Or take a break, then review your efforts and, plan your next work.  You should find that you get more work done focusing on one project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your have multiple projects on the go, you will need to allocate time between the projects.  If you tend to get in the flow, you should schedule accordingly.  If you have large projects, it is usually best to stick to the one project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interruptions will cost you time.  There is a good reason that many professionals have fairly large billing unit.  Besides the time the interruption takes, it takes a while to get back to what you were doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I work in interrupt driven environments, it usually takes until Wednesday or Thursday to finish Monday's work.  Stuff planned for later in the week rarely gets done that week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2011-08-20T01:32:23.750" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3163" CreationDate="2011-08-20T01:46:18.200" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Expect to be a little stressed.  You are doing something new and unfamiliar, and you are out of your comfort zone.  As you get experience you will become more comfortable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are lots of books on Time Management.  Some may work for you and other will not.  Stop by your local library and browse their offerings.  While you are there, review their offerings on Project Management.  Don't be afraid to ask the librarian for assistance, they may be able to suggest other useful resources. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting Things Done is quite popular, but it can be overwhelming.  However, the techniques may help you track and organize what you need to do.  Try to use it for incoming stuff, and gradually add in your backlog.  The two minute rule may help in deciding whether to do it now or later.  There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://gtd-vsg.blogspot.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;podcast&lt;/a&gt; study group on GTD that you may find helpful, it is available for iPhone or iPad. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to limit the major things you plan to do on a give day to a very short list.  Gather smaller task of similar types as a group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2011-08-20T01:46:18.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1590" CreationDate="2011-08-20T11:32:49.740" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nothing compensates experience. As all others before me have said, you would want to do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Work with your line manager (if you have one) and ask him if you could assist him in his project management on top of your regular work : that will help you get some hands-on knowledge of project management&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A certificate from PMI (PMP) helps you take a project and run it in your organization. It is widely practiced here in India. PMP qualified programmers / leads are often given the chance to manage a small project&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Learn the different methodlogies / frameworks of project management: A PMP certificate , PRINCE2, SCRUM/AGILE would take you through the next steps&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once having had a few years of experience managing projects, you would be better able appreciate what the Stanford program provides. Because, this program is essentially for managers who would be managing complex projects and/or large programs/portfolios where strategy , cross cultural experience, change management, customer relationship management , advanced finance management topics would be of use and relevance.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the very best, hope I havent confused you here :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1955" LastActivityDate="2011-08-20T11:32:49.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3168" CreationDate="2011-08-21T11:03:35.227" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is inevitable that you will have to multi-task to some extent, so the key is finding a model that works for you. Some people can apparently flit effortlessly between a whole bunch of different things, while others seem to take time to get up to speed every time they move from one piece of work to another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What works for me is to think of each project as a series of tasks (work packets, units, or whatever you want to call them). I try to set these tasks at a size that means I can do three or four in a day with none being more than a half day. Clearly, they don't all need to be the same size: in a given day I may have one at half a day, one at two hours, and two at 15 minutes each. That leaves some time for unscheduled interruptions. I then try to plan my time so that I don't allow myself to be diverted from any one of these: if an interruption come in via email, I ignore it until I have a spare slot, or if the interruption comes from a phone call or someone stopping at my desk, I tell the caller when I will get back to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on this model, I can estimate when I will work on a project, and therefore I have a reasonable idea of when I can take on new work. I try not to say &quot;no&quot; when asked to do anything, but I have no problem with giving a date that is well into the future, then negotiating if necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hardest thing is to tell someone that their brand new top priority task is not at the top of your priority list: that's where you may have to be flexible - but so must they! It's easier if the same person is your only client, as they can control the overall priority list, but this doesn't sound practical in your case. If you cannot help the client within their timescale, they may choose to give you the work anyway, accepting that you can't meet their target, or they may choose to take the work elsewhere. Either way, as long as you can maintain a good, positive relationship with the client and don't always have to knock them back, they should come back to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-08-21T11:03:35.227" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3182" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3190" CreationDate="2011-08-21T23:49:41.093" Score="1" ViewCount="421" Body="&lt;p&gt;Imagine that a project has failed due to processes not being followed, which in turn, was due to under-resourcing and a shortage of experienced personnel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some examples of specific kinds of analysis or planning which, if performed at the outset of the project, could have alerted the management team to the shortage in resources?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1551" LastActivityDate="2011-08-23T21:38:40.790" Title="Method of determining whether resourcing is sufficient?" Tags="&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1004" CreationDate="2011-08-22T03:01:52.070" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My former employer had the most effective note taking setup that I've seen.  Each meeting room would be equipped with two projectors.  One computer would project the presentation, while another computer would be projecting notes (which were being taken in real-time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It ensured that the person taking notes wouldn't not be slacking off since all eyes would be on his projector.  Also, for participants in the room who weren't paying attention, they could quickly scan the last few notes being transcribed to see what they missed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1740" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T03:01:52.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3184" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-22T03:18:58.020" Score="3" ViewCount="4244" Body="&lt;p&gt;My current role is more on IT operations but there is a lot of overlap between operations and project management. I am looking for a project management role and looking a company that is better fit than my current company, and trying to see if the role is a better fit for learning more project management than my  current role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will be having an interview for a project manager role. I wanted to see if I am a good fit for the company and role. We all know that those companies have different definitions about project management. How would I know if the company is a better fit for learning more project management? What SPECIFIC questions should I keep in mind to ask the employer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="614" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-16T17:35:39.527" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T17:35:39.527" Title="What questions would you recommend to ask to a potential employer for a project manager role?" Tags="&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3184" CreationDate="2011-08-22T06:02:42.890" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are a couple that I tend to ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For a typical project, who approves the budget and who approves expenditures against the budget?&lt;/strong&gt; This is a good way to see how &quot;projectized&quot; the organization is. I have yet to work at a company where creating and approving the budget completely belongs to a project manager, but if individual expenditures are controlled by functional managers, that can be a red flag to check. I find that if you are having to ask permission to spend pre-approved money from the budget (contractors, special software, etc.), then your &lt;strong&gt;actual&lt;/strong&gt; level of control as a project manager is going to be fairly low and that company is going to be weak-matrix or functional organizations. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For a typical project, who is involved in selecting the team?&lt;/strong&gt; The way that a company approaches assigning a team will show how they handle projects and project management. If only functional managers are involved and all team changes require review by the &quot;real&quot; boss of that person, that also indicates a weak-matrix or functional organization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, if you want to learn more about project management and you enjoy the challenges of project management, aim towards a balanced matrix, strong matrix, or projectized organization. The PMBoK talks about the organizational structures in section 2.4&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T06:02:42.890" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3182" CreationDate="2011-08-22T06:17:51.360" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;After some further reading, it seems that Activity Resource Estimating would serve this purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Activity resource estimating is a process in which the project team carefully compiles a thorough listing of the resources that will be needed in completing a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://project-management-knowledge.com/definitions/a/activity-resource-estimating/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://project-management-knowledge.com/definitions/a/activity-resource-estimating/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1551" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T06:17:51.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3182" CreationDate="2011-08-22T07:06:03.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For any project, human resource brings various &lt;strong&gt;risk&lt;/strong&gt; to the project. A resource, who is very experienced and can be a key resource can split or refused to give his/her % to the project due to various reasons like &lt;em&gt;internal disputes, health factor, natural desistor&lt;/em&gt;. Perhaps, these factor should be mentioned in the Risk Management plan and so does it's mitigation too. &#xA;In real life example, I have found few average resources performed extremly well in certain project due to time management, task management, motivation factors, recognization etc. which makes the job for the manager difficult to estimate the resource capabilities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are various methodology followed to keep track for resource estimation, like if you have prepared a nice &lt;strong&gt;WBS&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;strong&gt;Work Breakdown Structure&lt;/strong&gt;) with &lt;strong&gt;100% rule&lt;/strong&gt; you can come up with resource estimation and divide the task based on their experience. The primary tool for resource estimation is &lt;strong&gt;expert judgement&lt;/strong&gt; other things to rely on is &lt;em&gt;hard copy data, past experience&lt;/em&gt;. &#xA;In brief, estimation can never be easy if the &lt;em&gt;scope is not baseline&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1198" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T07:06:03.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3171" CreationDate="2011-08-22T08:36:54.113" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Leadership means different to different people but they do solve the same purpose. As said, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right&#xA;  things.- Peter Drucker&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A true leader is focused and problem solver&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. The one who is &lt;strong&gt;more constructive&lt;/strong&gt; than his/her team and knows excatly how to manage them. Make team stand on the comman ground, &lt;strong&gt;provide them the same opportunity&lt;/strong&gt;, give them the strength &lt;strong&gt;to work as a team but not as a group&lt;/strong&gt;.  Ideal leader is suppose to treat everyone fairly in nature and must obey to what is right, like Peter Drucker has mentioned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not into leadership speech, but I can try to summarize the quality I see which is must for a leader:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Good communication skill&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk taker&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fairness&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Knowledgeable and active&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Constructive/Creative&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team player&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Problem solver&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Little sense of humor. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I add point 8 because I, personally, believe that humor brings activeness and keeps your mind open also let your team to be more participative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1198" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T08:36:54.113" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3184" CreationDate="2011-08-22T10:03:23.117" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To find out information about an organization's take on Project Management and what they can offer you in that space, you can orientate your questions along the following axis (I am not suggesting you ask every single question there, but try to cover each area):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) Level of organization's project practice&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will help you understand whether this company can provide you with access to an interesting range of projects. Sample questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many projects do you currently have running?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many dedicated Project Managers do you have?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the average project size (budget, team size, project duration, etc.)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the current/upcoming important projects?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) Projects organization&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will give you a sense of how the company organizes itself when it comes to projects: the more projectized the organisation, the more chance you have to be in a full-fledged project-driven environment and get support as a Project Manager working there. Sample questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How are projects typically organized (e.g. who is accountable, who do project resources report to, etc.)? Who do Project Managers report to?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have a Project Management Office?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are projects consolidated under program management and portfolio management?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do your projects have strong business sponsorship and representatives involvement (other than IT)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3) Project methodologies and tools&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will help you get a sense of how seriously the organization views Project Management, and whether they truly see it as a competency in its own right. The more emphasis on methodologies, harmonized PM processes and tools, the more mature the organization is with PM as an area of expertise. Sample questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does your organization have a specific, common PM methodology used across all projects? Which one (eg. PMBOK, PRINCE2, Agile, in-house methodology, etc.)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do PMs in your organization hold specific PM certifications? Which ones?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What PM tools do you use? Are tools used consistently across all projects?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4) Career development for Project Managers:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will help you understand how much this organization invests in their project managers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which projects could I expect to work on to start with, with what kind of responsibilities?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What type of Project Management training do you provide (in-house training, external courses, etc.)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you support PM certification programs?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you evaluate performance for people working on projects?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the typical career path for an aspiring Project Manager in your organization?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T10:03:23.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3182" CreationDate="2011-08-22T10:21:06.090" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would immediately challenge your conclusion that &quot;processes were not followed&quot; due to resource limitations in either numbers or expertise.  It does not require numbers or expertise to follow a process.  It requires rules, discipline, and leadership / management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to answer your question, risk management is the process and analytical tool to understand and do something about your estimates and human resources threats.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term shortage of resources implies there is a number of staff at which the task is perfectly sized--that is, one less and the task has a shortage issue.  In fact, there is a range of resources--or cost and schedule--that more represents the degree of risk and likelihood of success. &#xA;Unfortunately, during estimation, we too often use a deterministic approach--a single point--to estimate.  That is, we look at a task and say it will take six people.  The true estimate, however, might be four to nine people and six may represent the 40th percentile or so.  Understanding the true non deterministic estimate is the key to understanding your risk.  This will allow you to derive mitigating strategies, such as strong process control :), to maximize your chances and to put away some contingent funds to bring in additional folks if you need it.  This, by the way, is an organic project risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Risk management is also the tool with which you understand your discrete human resource risks.  Humans are terribly unreliable and suffer from severe performance variation.  Further, while your target might be six resources but you can find only four, or you find six but skill sets with a proven record are unavailable or you cannot afford them.  Tons of scenarios but here again, risk management will allow you to identify what these threats are and what to do about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T10:21:06.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1004" CreationDate="2011-08-22T12:09:52.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been using an iPad to take notes in meetings for a couple of months now, using EverNote.  For me, the iPad is much less of a barrier between meeting attendees than a laptop would be but has the major advantage that minutes/actions are distributed straight after the meeting, not hours or days later.  With EverNote you can record the meeting whilst you're taking notes and you can also take pictures and attach them to notes, so capturing drawings on whiteboards, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall I've found it surprisingly useful.  I was a bit skeptical when I got it and expected to use it for a few days then revert to pen and paper but in fact I find it's not just replaced pen and paper, it's pretty much replaced my laptop too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1960" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T12:09:52.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3145" CreationDate="2011-08-22T15:08:03.610" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remember that PRINCE2 is a method/framework for you to work within. The only thing that is absolutely required is to work within the principles of PRINCE2 (focus on products, continual business justification, manage by stages, manage by exception, defined roles/responsibilities, learn from experience, tailor the method to your needs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The specifics of tailoring would have to be geared to your project, but the PRINCE2 manual has a good section on tailoring of the method that could give you guidance. If you don't need so much control or the project is of lower risk/criticality you could, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Merge roles within the project board (e.g. executive and senior user could be same person)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Merge roles within the project team (e.g. PM and project support could be same person)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tailor the detail and/or formality required in managment products (e.g. checkpoint and highlight reports)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the Project Board, also remember that membership does not have to be static. If it makes sense to change one or more members you should. The important thing like Iain said is that all interests (user, supplier and executive) are represented. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T15:08:03.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3168" CreationDate="2011-08-22T15:22:49.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You will be far more productive focusing on one project at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, whether you have the luxury to do that or not depends on cash flow and how well you can set-up a system to manage all the projects. And, perhaps more importantly, manage client expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T15:22:49.543" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1004" CreationDate="2011-08-23T02:44:32.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find it funny that people think using a laptop is more distracting and will evoke less respect from your team members than using an ipad. In my opinion, distraction can come from anywhere...even from a notebook if a meeting is boring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use a laptop at all of my meetings, and when possible I project my screen for everyone in the room. The main part of my screen is the status report or whatever we're viewing, and then in a corner I will take my notes on an application like Evernote and then upload it to a web based collaboration tool right after the meeting. This allows people to see the notes in real time, and I think it brings confidence to my team members because they can help contribute to the notes and ensure that they are of the quality that they need. I don't think I could do this any better with an iPad, but of course if someone handed me an iPad I would not refuse it. ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I've also been in meetings where people who are not facilitating the meeting will come with their laptop (or iPad!) and multitask the entire time, coming in and out of the meeting discussion. So really, the distraction can come from anywhere, it's all about what type of value you bring to your team. If they see the value of your note taking by what you circulate during and afterwards, then nobody will bat an eye if you sit in a meeting with a laptop. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="184" LastActivityDate="2011-08-23T02:44:32.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="77" CreationDate="2011-08-23T03:56:46.780" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Risk Identification, Analysis and Mitigation planning is also important for project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1967" LastActivityDate="2011-08-23T03:56:46.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3115" CreationDate="2011-08-23T12:03:03.420" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;With my experience of clients from different regions I can conclude that you should be &lt;strong&gt;precise&lt;/strong&gt; with the feedback form. Don not try to put everything in a document which eventually irritate the customer and will not gurantee you the reliable feedback. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have done an experimental feedback for our product and our service to the product from our clients in USA, UK, Denmark and Germany and I was shocked that people from Denmark and Germany are not willing to fill the form until we shrink the number of questions. Where as, customers from UK has filled everything we asked, with a little exception. Lesson I learned to keep the feedback form/doc &lt;strong&gt;as simple as it could be to get the geniune response&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is an online feedback than make sure user need not to scroll more than once. make it &lt;strong&gt;objective rather than subjective&lt;/strong&gt;, it becomes easier for user to answer the question. Always provide an &lt;strong&gt;optional text place&lt;/strong&gt; for user to suggest anything regarding that question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In brief, &lt;strong&gt;feedback should&lt;/strong&gt; be&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Precise&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More objective than subjective&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1198" LastActivityDate="2011-08-23T12:03:03.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3133" CreationDate="2011-08-23T12:16:52.370" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The answer is simple&lt;/em&gt;: &lt;strong&gt;Anyone who directly or indirectly has a stake in the project will be called stakeholder&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That could be a single person or a group/organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All you need to do is to categorize them based on their power and impact&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kwe6a.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1198" LastEditorUserId="5557" LastEditDate="2015-09-12T11:14:41.343" LastActivityDate="2015-09-12T11:14:41.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3115" CreationDate="2011-08-23T15:29:41.450" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like the project could benefit from having the sponsor clarify or define the goal of the project.  That is, what is the business case, value or problem you are trying to solve for the organization that is paying for the project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding features in itself is not a goal. It is the means to a goal.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal will provide context to your decisions and help you (and the team) make decisions on what to include and why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A useful tool to consider is a requirements traceability matrix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-08-23T15:29:41.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3202" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3267" CreationDate="2011-08-23T19:12:10.260" Score="29" ViewCount="1534" Body="&lt;p&gt;I consistently underestimate my work. I'm gaining a bad reputation for it. I want to get past it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the main problem is that I don't fully outline every step that needs to be taken. The first development agency I worked for wasn't big on this. They preferred to just get started, but they still wanted reliable estimates for their clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I better estimate my work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1972" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2013-04-12T11:00:28.243" LastActivityDate="2013-04-12T11:00:28.243" Title="How do I stop going over my estimates?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3202" CreationDate="2011-08-23T19:35:43.780" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well... maybe not fully outline each step but at least break the work down into discreet chunks that are easier to estimate. For example instead of Login Screen - 1 day... try breaking that into UI (just the pretty part), back end code to handle the UI, code to communicate with a security service, etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be a bit of an art, because you have to figure out the degree of decomposition you need to get too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another approach (based on the Personal Software Process) is to try to track metrics on your self. Get some hard numbers as to how long it takes you to do various parts of a task. Then use that for base estimation in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course this can be expanded to teams, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1781" LastActivityDate="2011-08-23T19:35:43.780" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3202" CreationDate="2011-08-23T19:37:17.493" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You hit the nail on the head.&#xA;Start by listing items that will need to be delivered to complete the work (work packages). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They should be detailed enough that you can estimate the amount of time it would take to do them, but not so detailed that it becomes a task list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then estimate away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To improve your estimates over time, keep track of the original estimates and compare them against the actual amount of time it took to do the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-08-23T19:37:17.493" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3202" CreationDate="2011-08-23T20:02:42.650" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you talking about your estimates or your target?  These are two different things.  We set our targets using a single-point value, that is we say we will finish this task in x days with y dollars.  That is a deterministic target.  Sadly, we live in a non deterministic world, where our performance for said task will be in the neighborhood of x-a days to x+b days with some probabilistic curve that sits on top of that.  And your performance under this curve is largely dictated on random events--stochastic noise--over which you have little to no control.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; evaluate your performance on a single project, or even 10 projects, as to whether you did any good or not cannot be done comparing your actuals to your target.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is why:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you estimate a task will take between 10 to 25 days with a most likely of 15, and you consistently set your target at 12, you are creating an aggressive schedule where most of your likelihood is beyond 12 days.  What is better?  Setting a target at 12 and getting 15, a 3 day unfavorable variance, or setting your target at 23 and getting 23, a zero day variance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The unfortunate fact is PMs are evaluated on their performance against targets, no matter where they fall on the probabilistic curve.  This incents PMs to set their targets on the fat and happy side of the curve, thus increasing their likelihood of success.  This gives the PM a win, but customers lose because they end up paying more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, while breaking down your work and using various techniques of estimating are great, I would suggest that all of your estimates, including the contribution of your staff, be in ranges versus a single point, if you are not already doing this.  This will give you the best insight on your schedule/cost risks and, if you bust them, will give you confidence in your true performance overall.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep your actuals, but don't chase them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-08-23T20:02:42.650" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3202" CreationDate="2011-08-23T20:25:05.690" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have a bad reputation for underestimating, do you also overestimate as often? If so, you may not realise it - we're wired to notice the things we do wrong, more than we celebrate the things we do right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're doing this, it may be that you're simply picking work with a high degree of uncertainty. You may even be underestimating because of this even if you don't feel that you ever overestimate to match, since work expands to fill the time available, and there will be plenty of people to take advantage of any free resources you have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say you want reliable estimates for your work. Why do you want them? To gain the trust of your clients? I know plenty of agencies and individuals who underestimate deliberately in order to win contracts, then make it difficult for the client to change their minds about anything - and people will always change their minds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you more flexible than others? Are you more responsive to change? Do you keep your projects responsive and able to change? Do you share the things that you learn as you do the job? Do you keep options open until a decision is really needed? Can you sell yourself on those skills, instead of your ability to estimate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you trustworthy? Are you genuinely trying to give a good estimate, based on what people have said without contingency for learning and discovery, when other people are padding theirs? Do you refuse to cut quality when the deadlines are tight?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you need to provide the estimates yourself? Could you work on a project that someone else has estimated? What skills would you need from someone else to be successful? Would you be willing to share that success with them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plenty of industry evidence shows that individuals who concentrate on their strengths are more successful than those who concentrate on their weaknesses. Where are your strengths?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-08-23T20:25:05.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3161" CreationDate="2011-08-23T20:37:33.087" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since this is a PM StackExchange, I'll try to answer it in a way that I'd help a PM. Your thesis is a project, after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your main stakeholder is your professor. You will no doubt have other stakeholders - a review board, perhaps - who have their own preferences. Have you asked them what a top-marked report looks like, and what they valued in it? If not, perhaps you have a chance to do so before it's due.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The university probably has a stake too - they will want anyone who graduates from them to be a good representation of their university. How can you help them with that? Can you show evidence that the resources, teaching and support that they've provided you have helped? If they didn't, can you suggest what you would have liked or done differently yourself next time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main purpose of a Gantt chart is to identify major milestones and to give a rough outline of a project at the start, before the real risks, difficulties and pleasant surprises have been discovered. What did you discover along the way, and will it be of interest to your professors? Do you have any comparisons between the original Gantt chart and the real project timeline? Will they be interested in the learning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will a professional, high-level manager outside of the university be more impressed by someone who can show evidence of good computer programming, or someone who can show evidence that they've understood their stakeholders' need and vision, and delivered accordingly? How can you do that best?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you can answer these questions, I think you'll understand where to put your Gantt chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-08-23T20:37:33.087" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3182" CreationDate="2011-08-23T21:38:40.790" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rather than prescribe a fixed process, perhaps blend it with something more practical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let the team work on the project for some small proportion of the time available. Encourage them to attack the riskiest bits first - the bits where they know least, or where you or the product manager can envisage risk. Try to find the unanswered questions, and the ones you didn't even know you had to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then ask the team whether they have everything they need to succeed, and what they would like to have if they could.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll need to create a safe, transparent environment in which they can do this. If they're collaborating to meet a vision that they all understand, and they feel safe voicing their opinion, they'll tell you if they're short of skills, resources or experience anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-08-23T21:38:40.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3209" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-24T01:07:13.163" Score="3" ViewCount="17510" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've run into a problem with my Microsoft Project 2010 file. Whenever I try and open it I just get a blank screen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of the alternative views (e.g. network diagram, resource sheet, tracking gantt, etc...) show anything. When I open the project information dialog boxes it appears to be more or less correct. When I open the 'Change Working Time' dialog box I can see that my resources are shown there but none of the standard resource views show anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the title bar of the main window just shows &quot;Microsoft Project&quot; whereas normally it would also include the filename.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of my colleagues only use MP2007 and some still way back on MP2003. So it's quite possible that I've saved the file in MP2007 format somewhere along the way but I don't know for certain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen several posts on the web reporting similar behavior but so far I haven't seen any solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really don't want to redo all the work that went into this project file so I would appreciate any suggestions no matter how far fetched they might be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1973" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-13T10:30:03.133" LastActivityDate="2019-01-13T10:30:03.133" Title="Project 2010 opens with blank screen" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3174" CreationDate="2011-08-24T03:04:01.497" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard a very good example from Mike Cohn during my ScrumMaster training.  He believes and I would concur, that this role should indeed stay static.  However, with everything, there are exceptions (e.g, if this is a brand new team, it might be worthwhile to rotate to find out who the best person suited for the position will be, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in general, his metaphor was at home, his wife does the cooking.  She is an excellent cook and has the skills to handle that role.  He, however, does not have the same skills, nor do his daughters.  If they would rotate out, often times, they would have toast for dinner.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not every person is suited for the job of ScrumMaster and as mentioned above, I do believe this should be a dedicated role.  By rotating a person in and out, you are also belittling the position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="913" LastActivityDate="2011-08-24T03:04:01.497" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3212" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3213" CreationDate="2011-08-24T07:51:35.867" Score="5" ViewCount="239" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm 6 weeks into a 15 week website/ web development project with a non-profit organisation. With this client I deal with&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the internal IT manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a key administrative assistant&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an in-house designer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the CEO &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The internal IT manager is the most technically skilled, reasonable and appears to have the best long term knowledge. Interactivity with the CEO has been minimal, largely on a &quot;trust establishment&quot; level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The IT manager has just told me she will be away on annual leave in weeks 9,10,11. This is something I hadn't taken into account, in fact I specifically asked if anyone will be away travelling for 1+ weeks when the project scope was written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project is largely divided into:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Website upgrade (40%, ca 75% complete): we are upgrading a Joomla website including a wide range of &quot;hacks&quot; that we re-apply and a module that we replace with a custom written one.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Website re-skinning (40%, ca 5% complete): The clients in-house designer has updated the look and feel and we are producing HTML and integrating it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;New module development (20%, 0% complete): We build and integrate a new module&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would you think are key areas of risk management that we should establish an agreement on with the client before this annual leave? My concerns are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;administrative assistant is not as focused as IT manager and may take more of our time testing and need test guidance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;administrative assistant may not know all &quot;hacked&quot; functionality and what original intention was (we don't know 100% either, but have reeingineered hacks with SVN diff)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decisions that may cut into budget may need to be deferred as budget is always a concern with non profits&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am less worried about the reskin tasks, as the in-house designer had the lead on how it looks in any case and it is clearer to decide what is correct and what is not because it is visual&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="747" LastEditorUserId="1198" LastEditDate="2011-08-24T09:53:53.467" LastActivityDate="2011-09-09T08:49:28.980" Title="How to manage risk of most technical client contact going on leave" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3212" CreationDate="2011-08-24T10:22:49.880" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what you write I would make a few assumptions (some of which you point directly, so they aren't that much of assumptions):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In terms of IT manager absence risk areas are website upgrade and new module development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There shouldn't be many problems with re-skinning the site even if you don't have IT manager at hand.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At current pace you should be able to complete website upgrade before week 9 which will enable further work on re-skinning and new module.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is also possible to do most of the work on new module after the IT manager is back.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering all that I would try to organize work in a way that most of tasks done during weeks 9, 10 and 11 are connected with site re-skinning. To do that I would focus on finishing website upgrade as soon as possible, which is already happening from what I see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another idea which may be useful is to define the least vague parts of the new module -- basically things which are obvious for everyone -- before the manager leaves. It will allow to push the work in this area as well, while limiting risk of building the wrong thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the top of that I would:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ask for pointing who will be a substitution for the manager during their absence (even though it won't solve many knowledge-related issues it should help a bit with decision-making problems)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;encourage client's team to work on exchanging knowledge on the project so there are knowledgeable people during the manager's absence&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;try to define in more detail plans for weeks 9, 10 and 11 up-front so you rule out possibly many of your doubts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;prepare more tasks than can possibly be done during these three weeks which would build a work buffer you can use anytime you need to defer work on a specific tasks because of the manager's absence&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ask for some kind of emergency contact, so you can catch the manager whenever you need important and quick decision from their side (note: I would try hard not to overuse this)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-08-24T10:22:49.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3209" CreationDate="2011-08-24T13:25:21.900" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what the root cause was but I managed to fix the problem by doing the following. Under the 'View' menu, I clicked on 'Arrange All'. (&quot;Arrange All&quot; is an icon in the &quot;Window&quot; section of the &quot;View&quot; ribbon). At that point the Gantt chart popped up and I once again had visibility to everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1973" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-26T21:19:52.640" LastActivityDate="2012-07-26T21:19:52.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3202" CreationDate="2011-08-24T18:32:57.663" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I've seen in my field the rule that 80% of requirements take 20% of the time to implement holds true. Where we get our problems with preparation timelines is that the amount of time to go from 80% of what the client wants to 90% to 95% to 100% increases exponentially. This can totally blow our time estimates, as the search for perfection takes a loooong time before it gets called off out of frustration. You can try to avoid this by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Planning in detail to your planning horizon only and communicating ASAP when the overall project plan is no longer realistic. If this happens make sure you have a good reason that the client can understand the issues even if he isn't happy about it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Keeping customer expectations aligned with what you are going to deliver at each stage of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Being open about your contingency reserves so that you are providing your client so that they can have an early and late date for delivery. Also be honest with yourself to avoid treating the contingencies as extra time - always strive for the early date.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Learn from your past experience - which I think you are already trying to do based on the fact that you are asking the question in the first place :-)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2011-08-24T18:32:57.663" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3202" CreationDate="2011-08-24T18:38:11.203" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The whole idea behind building a WBS is to create bite sized pieces of work that can be more accurately estimated.  If you're having trouble estimating, then break down the tasks you have listed even further until you can get a better handle on what needs to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimating is &lt;em&gt;hard&lt;/em&gt; - don't beat yourself up about it too much.  Work on gathering data that can help you build more accurate future estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2011-08-24T18:38:11.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3202" CreationDate="2011-08-24T19:00:45.073" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about creating your own estimates, then getting a peer review - maybe having a discussion with someone whose judgement you trust? That way you will learn from the experience of others, and while you don't have to accept their input (they may also be poor estimators), there is a high likelihood that you will have a discussion and that will lead to a better overall estimate at the end. And if you can get a couple of different people to help you with your estimating, then you have an even better chance of including everything that you need to include, and making the estimates realistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Never be too proud to ask for help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-08-24T19:00:45.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3218" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3222" CreationDate="2011-08-24T19:49:18.583" Score="1" ViewCount="356" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently reading Steve McConnells &quot;Survival Guide&quot; and am thinking of how I can  improve our processes on requirements development. The book seems to have very strong ideas about using prototypes and I'm not sure if they are quite right for us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As background, we are 2 fulltime staff and we usually work on projects of 4-6 man months size, while we are also doing often significant amounts of maintenance on existing clients sites. About 80% of projects have about 1/2 man month of web design involved, which is usually done by an external contractor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We develop in-house software for owner operators, largely based on CRUD generated admin interfaces using Symfony, which we often combine with a Joomla CMS website system (WYSIWYG and configuration type entry screens)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My thoughts on requirements development are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I was to build a prototype it would be fastest to actually just generate the CRUD interface in Symfony, unless it is a complex interface, then a paper storyboard would be faster. I would however see no reason not to re-use the data model for the final CRUD generation - McConnells advised strongly against this.&#xA;The reason why this is fastest is that we don't have good mockup and design skills in-house and it seems likely quicker to write a quick, rough data model and produce the output by copying in past clients HTML and buttons.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For some users it may be sufficient to showcase another project, then to just tell them what field we are going to have  in which screen&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many CMS problems could also be modelled by example of case studies, then describing fields.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing a user manual seems to be the most productive way to gather requirements as it can be used at the end&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is: are CRUD tools a good way to build prototypes or am I tricking myself? Is anyone else here using CRUD tools for prototyping? Or alternatively, how long should it take me to learn mocking up prototypes by copying existing screens/ rows/ fields/ buttons around with Gimp/ Photoshop?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="747" LastEditorUserId="747" LastEditDate="2011-08-25T09:00:23.833" LastActivityDate="2011-08-25T11:18:36.523" Title="using the prototype for live when building CMS/CRUD systems - wrong?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2017-12-24T15:43:03.107" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3219" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3223" CreationDate="2011-08-25T06:35:29.197" Score="25" ViewCount="9436" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question might sound a tad silly, but I'm actually trying to solve a real problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our team room has a glass wall, which we also use as our kanban board with hand-written swimlanes (= status) and sticky notes (= tasks). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The glass wall also has a door, and oftentimes when someone enters the room, sticky notes fall to the floor (it actually happened while typing this).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At best, you simply put them where they were. At worst, they end up in a different swimlane.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, which sticky note is the stickiest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1980" LastActivityDate="2015-10-28T15:33:24.187" Title="Which sticky note is the stickiest?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3202" CreationDate="2011-08-25T06:48:19.970" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, you need to figure out why you're estimating. You might throw a lot of time at something that yields little or no value, and makes you feel like a failure at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anna Forss has a great blog post, where she outlines the need of estimation in kanban and scrum: &lt;a href=&quot;http://annaforss.wordpress.com/2009/06/07/kanban-estimates/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://annaforss.wordpress.com/2009/06/07/kanban-estimates/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1980" LastActivityDate="2011-08-25T06:48:19.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3219" CreationDate="2011-08-25T06:51:55.630" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, 3M's official post-its, by quite some margin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, they're stupidly expensive in the UK - don't know what the price is like wherever you are. You might be better off with index cards and blu-tack. You can also get index-card holders, and some teams have used the little holders you get for photograph albums to keep them in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-08-25T06:51:55.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3218" CreationDate="2011-08-25T07:12:05.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To make it more clear for the ones who don't know Symfony: It's a PHP framework that can be used to create web applications, and in my opinion is a very good one. It's comparable with Drupal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using Propel or Doctrine it becomes easy to create CRUD (Create, Retrieve, Update, Delete) forms to be used in a administration or even in the frontend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the forms that are created are initialy an exact copy of your relational database table, it will create only the basic CRUD form and most of the time misses a lot of the requirements. Of course it is possible to modify the form as you want...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I understand your question correctly, you have an issue to know in advance what your form should look like, so it covers all requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few options are possible, or a combination:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A good way for you to work (at least that's how I did that and worked pretty well) is to create mockups of the final screens and how they should look like. Visualizing the forms does a very good job and shows you exactly where the missing fields are.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another option is to create all possible user stories so you have all requirements in advance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creating forms in a backend or frontend isn't an easy job, having examples from other projects is good and can be used to get ideas, but in the end, a mockup of the actual screen is in my opinion a very good way to discuss possible issues or missing fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;update&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;In addition to your changed question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;creating the CRUD forms themselves takes way too much time, don't forget, in order to generate them, you first need to create a database etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please do not use Photoshop or Gimp to create all your mockups, they are far too complex to do these easy things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are tools out there way better to create those mockup screens. You'll be able to create them really really fast and almost no learning curve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://gomockingbird.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://gomockingbird.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jotform.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.jotform.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;some are free, others are paying, your choice to make...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastEditorUserId="591" LastEditDate="2011-08-25T11:18:36.523" LastActivityDate="2011-08-25T11:18:36.523" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3219" CreationDate="2011-08-25T08:04:05.400" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMHO the &quot;Super Sticky Notes&quot; by 3M are the best. They may not be the cheapest but they are worth the price. You can find them here: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://solutions.3m.co.uk/wps/portal/3M/en_GB/Post-Its/Post-It/Products/StickyNotes/&quot;&gt;http://solutions.3m.co.uk/wps/portal/3M/en_GB/Post-Its/Post-It/Products/StickyNotes/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1982" LastActivityDate="2011-08-25T08:04:05.400" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3219" CreationDate="2011-08-25T14:42:39.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you ever come across &quot;Magic Whiteboards&quot;?  These were showcased on the Dragon's Den TV show in the UK, and thereafter went into production.  They're expensive but they are fantastic for sticking to glass in particular.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought they were hugely gimmicky until we put an order in.  Our project teams use the large ones for collaborative brainstorming, dynamic action plans etc and I can highly recommend them - but they also do the same in post-it note size.  In fairness, I haven't used this size and I can't comment on whether they become less effective with lots of repositioning (we don't reposition our larger sheets regularly) but perhaps someone else has?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.magicwhiteboard.co.uk/magic-sticky-notes/order/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.magicwhiteboard.co.uk/magic-sticky-notes/order/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use super sticky post-its on my refrigerator for shopping lists - can recommend these highly though they don't weather lots of re-sticking.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1984" LastActivityDate="2011-08-25T14:42:39.120" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3225" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-25T15:27:33.387" Score="5" ViewCount="612" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently where I am employed (as a developer) we have two programs to track tasks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One tool (Ace Project) for larger project that groups several tasks below it, allows for some attachments, and commenting.  And is supposed to be used to plan projects, however, it's large, slow, and just a pain to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other (RMTrack) is used for maintenance and feature additions to completed projects.  It's quicker, and closer to bug tracking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We don't have defect tracking or bug tracking software... which I have tried to recommend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the more I read about Project Management the more I like the idea of simply having a whiteboard with a grid for a project.  Names down the side, and SDLC groups across the top (Requirements, Design, Development, QA, Release...etc) and using sticky notes with the task, and moving it around on a whiteboard to keep track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, there is no way that we will get whiteboards in the offices for this use.  Our work areas are too open, and &quot;clean&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would like as an alternative is a virtual whiteboard we can setup and use in the same way.  With the added benefit of being able to attach links/documents to the sticky notes.  Track their movement.  And be very open and flexible so devs, pms, qa, managers, execs, can look at it, and even edit/move things if they want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any software out there like that already?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I could find something and sell it as a way to organize the other two tools we use and be a portal into them, we might be able to better keep track of workloads and statuses.  And not run into the issues we currently do by trying to keep track of progress in excel spreadsheets scattered about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1414" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2011-08-25T21:29:28.837" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T13:16:39.780" Title="Keeping Tasks Organized" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3157" CreationDate="2011-08-25T16:00:17.237" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've used interns/co-op students in the past, they only do well if you put them in a position where they can't cause much damage. Their best use is doing menial, tedious, repetitive work that needs to get done so that you can free up more talented/experienced personnel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need more bodies but don't have many applicants a better approach could be to work as a virtual team with experienced personnel at remote locations. You will take a bigger hit up front in terms of costs than by hiring an itern, but I will bet you will save so much money, time, corporate reputation etc etc in the long run that the virtual team will pay for itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also think carefully about make-or-buy decisions for your company's software requirements. If you can buy something off the shelf it will reduce overall workload so you should be able to deliver what is on your to-do list more efficiently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2011-08-25T16:00:17.237" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3225" CreationDate="2011-08-25T18:08:39.860" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what you describe &lt;a href=&quot;http://leankitkanban.com/Home/Features&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LeanKit Kanban&lt;/a&gt; should work well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your requirements are pretty typical for software Kanban boards so probably most of such application would be fine, although I propose LeanKit Kanban as one of most mature tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if the team is co-located a physical board will always trump the software one, so if possible I'd challenge your office rules in terms of having whiteboards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-08-25T18:08:39.860" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3225" CreationDate="2011-08-25T20:01:05.673" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The closest I've seen to what you're suggesting is &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilezen.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;AgileZen&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;AgileZen draws on an idea from lean manufacturing called kanban — a Japanese word that literally means visual card. In an AgileZen project, work is organized on a kanban board, which has a number of columns that represent the phases that work has to go through in order to be considered complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="569" LastActivityDate="2011-08-25T20:01:05.673" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="55" CreationDate="2011-08-26T01:19:16.353" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;How technical&quot; could manifest in different forms. Based on my experience in project management and development management, a project manager must be technical in the sense of competent in problem solving in the domain of the project. It usually requires past experience of development in the related domains, for example, for software/hardware development, such problem solving skills could come from being a senior architect, senior software/hardware engineer, etc. The key is not the detailed knowledge of particular subject, but the maturity acquired from having solved complex enough problem before. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In another sense, being technical could mean more on the meta level, a good project manager should be an explorer, and researcher to abstract out of chaos of unknown to define the right problems for the team to solve. By this definition, such good project manager may not be expert in the  domain, but expert in problem solving in unknown domains, expert in defining the right problems for the other experts to solve. In this regard, I witnessed many math major could do very well as project manager. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, a good project manager can take advantage of being not too technical in a particular aspect to see the big picture, and earn the excuse to ask &quot;stupid&quot; questions that the experts overlook, or are afraid to ask. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in conclusion, project manager got to be very technical in project management! I see the danger of some project managers behave as a secretary, or administration assistant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1986" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T01:19:16.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3202" CreationDate="2011-08-26T03:53:04.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Going over your estimates or under-estimating? How would you handle the situation if the problem were short estimates, and not long execution? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember Tom DeMarco's discussion on estimates? A good one is as likely to go under as over, whereas the earliest time with a non-zero chance of completion is not an estimate at all. I don't pretend to know what your estimates are like or how you arrive at them, just wanting to offer an alternative definition of the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1302" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T03:53:04.850" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3232" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3234" CreationDate="2011-08-26T07:35:37.290" Score="2" ViewCount="7728" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been considering taking the Professional Scrum Master I (Fundamental) Assessment? I am considering paying the $100 and taking the assessment without attending a course. &#xA;scrum.org Suggests that: &quot;This course is recommended but not required for those who feel they are prepared to take the Assessment.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I live in Cape Town, South Africa and Africa does not even have its tab on the list showing the course schedule :-). There are one or two companies here that offer training, but they are also quite expensive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess what I am really asking is: How realistic is the self-study option? And how will I know if I am ready to write the exam as each registration only allows for 1 attempt?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1172" LastEditorUserId="1172" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T08:51:33.367" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T19:38:05.963" Title="How difficult is the Professional Scrum Master I (Fundamental) Assessment?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3232" CreationDate="2011-08-26T18:29:14.797" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I asked a co-worker of mine who has taken the test (not the course). Essentially if you've read up on Scrum (e.g. Schwaber's various books) and have read through the guide you should be able to pass the initial assessment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a practice test on the site that you could use to gauge how much you currently know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1781" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T18:29:14.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3235" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-26T13:37:57.950" Score="15" ViewCount="380" Body="&lt;p&gt;We often have group projects (CSCI grad school), and I'd like us to be efficient. Should we explicitly vote for a leader? What are tips for making sure that it isn't only one person doing everything?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I appreciate any tips or advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Adel" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-08-29T09:48:41.377" LastActivityDate="2011-11-07T21:53:29.483" Title="Should a group of three students working on a big programming project have a leader?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;project-leader&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3235" CreationDate="2011-08-26T13:47:35.543" Score="11" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should we explicitly vote for a leader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a so small number of people probably a leader isn't necessary. You can decide everything together with a simple voting system. A leader probably will make the other two feel not so happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are tips for making sure that it isn't only one person doing&#xA;  everything?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should try to share the work based on your singular capabilities and excels. If there is someone among you excelling in something in particular, let him do the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can opt for having each person do a different task, or helping each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, for only 3 people I would suggest to focus on different aspects of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember though, that &lt;strong&gt;everybody is part of the project&lt;/strong&gt;, no matter which things he/she is doing or how much of it. &lt;strong&gt;Every opinion o suggestion has the same importance&lt;/strong&gt; as those of other people involved in the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the most important thing to respect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2004" OwnerDisplayName="Jose Faeti" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T14:54:41.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3235" CreationDate="2011-08-26T14:00:09.520" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the scope of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For homework assignments that are going to take you a few days or a week, it probably won't matter much beyond having someone say, &quot;hey dude - your part finished?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However&lt;/strong&gt;, if you're starting a massive, semester long project that will be taking dozens or hundreds of man-hours for each team member to complete, you &lt;strong&gt;definitely&lt;/strong&gt; need to elect a project leader. That doesn't mean &lt;em&gt;dictator&lt;/em&gt;, but there should be someone coordinating the efforts of the team as a whole, and following up with individual team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such a situation, I would even look into setting up a bug tracker that also doubles as a good project management tool - most vendors offer a free version for students working on school projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will give you all experience in being in a structured team (which is what you'll likely find in the real world).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with your project!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1919" OwnerDisplayName="Jarrod" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T14:00:09.520" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3235" CreationDate="2011-08-26T14:02:48.000" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even if you decide not to have a leader or vote for one then you will find out very quickly that the person with the most type A personality will naturally take charge of the group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't mean that person is power hungry or more valuable, but development teams naturally need a lead to help organize tasks, increase efficiencies, tear down roadblocks and communicate the general status to people outside the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7106" OwnerDisplayName="maple_shaft" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T14:02:48.000" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3235" CreationDate="2011-08-26T14:06:54.797" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was developing my undergraduate senior project (2 semester project worth 2 class credits) I was a part of a 3 person team.  We started without a leader and work progressed haphazardly.  When we decided that we wanted someone to be a leader of the group we specifically were looking for someone who could break ties when opinions differed, understood the scope of the project and could be objective in splitting the work among the group and would take responsibility for setting deadlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The leader, in our case, was not the &lt;em&gt;boss&lt;/em&gt;, but rather was a team member who helped the group maintain initiative.  Our leader let the group pick the jobs they wanted and tended to look after the left over tasks (merging documentation, maintaining the repository, preparing reports and presentations generally).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our experience, it worked out very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2003" OwnerDisplayName="Stephen" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T14:06:54.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3235" CreationDate="2011-08-26T14:15:38.933" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, absolutely!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone needs to be responsible for being sure the project is on track and it is meeting its milestones.  This may not be a 'leader' or someone who is 'in charge', but you do need someone who is paying explicit attention to whether or not you're on track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're using agile, then a scrum board with tasks and points could help to keep everyone on task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you're not using 'agile', then I still recommend putting together a kanban or scrum board with all the associated tasks and their status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2006" OwnerDisplayName="George Stocker" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T14:15:38.933" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3235" CreationDate="2011-08-26T14:43:25.410" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Three relatively equally responsible people should be able to manage themselves. Divide up the tasks and have everyone agree on their area of responsibility. Each member can come up with estimates and everyone should vote on when certain milestones should be reached and the quality of the code (take turns reviewing each other's work).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a shared space or document will make this easier. Each person is responsible for keeping the other two informed. Lots of ways to do this; make it simple. A shared spreadsheet should handle it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your team was 5 or more, I'd suggest having someone in charge of coordinating task tracking, making simple decisions and having the final vote on strongly debated topics. You can't let discrepancies go on too long; someone may have to make a decision. The more people there are the increase in variation and likely-hood someone will fall through the cracks. You don't need the greatest system in the world, but it is nice if there is some consistency on how things are done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11948" OwnerDisplayName="Jeff O" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T14:43:25.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3235" CreationDate="2011-08-26T15:00:16.613" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel that you are looking for a leader because there are some conflicts that is not easy to solve. Even if you have a leader in situations of conflict, the leader will not really get a chance to decide on the conflict. He will just be looked as a bully or overthrown(mentally), resulting in other two working more closely. The whole idea of a leader of same experience age group is not good for the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is some classic management solution&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The first solution is vote and accept. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If that does not work go and do more research on which helps. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you still cant reach a solution, go to a random 4th party for a vote in your age group.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you still cant reach a solution, go to a random 4th party for a vote from elder people.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can even use StackOverflow or StackExchange applications to resolve your conflicts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: And yeah. Best of luck on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="arunmur" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T15:00:16.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3235" CreationDate="2011-08-26T18:45:46.370" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's the thing.  The team may not need to be led, but the &lt;strong&gt;project has to be managed&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You guys may be able to manage the project collectively, but there is risk.  Even if you are not OK with putting someone in charge of the project team, you should put someone in charge of managing the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, the project manager is also the team leader and so does task assignments, sets deadlines, and makes decisions, but that it not required.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project Management, at it's most basic, entails: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having a process for assigning and keeping track of &quot;who is doing what by when&quot;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having a process for reporting status and issues to the stakeholders, superiors, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having a framework for making decisions when there is disagreement. Typically, a team leader will resolves disagreements. You could have the PM responsible to facilitate decisions by the group rather then making them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having a process for communicating in an organized manner among the group and with relevant outsiders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planning the project well beyond the current tasks and looking forward for future issues, risks and problems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0974935425&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bare Bones Project Management&lt;/a&gt; by Bob Lewis as a place to start. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2048" OwnerDisplayName="tomjedrz" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T18:45:46.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3235" CreationDate="2011-08-26T19:39:02.413" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having a leader on a group project is a bad idea. In the normal work world the leader, or your supervisor will be held responsible when the whole group fails, not each individual person. Since this is a group project you are all considered equally responsible for all things related. Therefore you need consensus among everyone involved when it comes to important decisions such as: application design, development process, and workload balancing. If your group has an even number of people in it, you may need to appeal to a higher power when the group is evenly divided on which approach to take for something. I recommend, in that case that before each discussion, one person be appointed to be the tie breaker (choosen via drawing straws, rotation, etc.) to eliminate arguments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have said, this does not preclude the need for a project manager. This can be done as simply has having a list of tasks to be done and moving them through the stages (open, in development, dev review, qa, closed) via a whiteboard and notecards. It does not require a specific person to stay on top of this task if you all have agreed to how this process works beforehand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And last, but not least. Communication is going to be your biggest factor of success, most processes breakdown at some point, and you will need to communicate with each other to get past those points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2000" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T19:39:02.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3245" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3462" CreationDate="2011-08-26T21:22:23.323" Score="2" ViewCount="134" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the study guides, books, and the online codes from InAct through my local PMI chapter.  Due to a myriad of reasons (and excuses) I wasn't able to schedule my PMP exam until after the 31 Aug change.  Generally I have done very well on online practice exams, but I want to make sure I keep my PMI hat on and proficiency in the exam taking.  Does anyone know if the online InAct codes will allow me to access updated study material?  I have not used those codes as of yet and been doing practice exam on other sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1017" LastEditorUserId="1017" LastEditDate="2011-09-02T22:47:13.363" LastActivityDate="2011-11-20T05:32:05.190" Title="Validity of InAct study codes with PMP Exam Change coming" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3246" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-27T20:45:29.337" Score="5" ViewCount="1325" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read some books about Scrum, but they seem to only be about product backlog, sprints, user stories, the scrum team, and timeboxing — but nothing about vision, roadmap, estimation, and other important things for a top level management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do these things fit into Scrum? Is it part of the Scrum Master role? Can anyone give me a &quot;how do I?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2007" LastEditorUserId="2124" LastEditDate="2011-09-26T14:47:37.550" LastActivityDate="2020-07-10T11:38:44.967" Title="In Scrum,  who has the vision and the roadmap documents?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;vision&gt;&lt;roadmaps&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3225" CreationDate="2011-08-27T20:55:17.550" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been developing a business case for the last year for a pm software solution within our company. After  some research I have to say that there are very good solutions not only for agile pm but any model of project management, project execution respectively. Here are the best or at least what I have seen:&#xA;project insight (self hosted also possible)&#xA;attask (self hosted also possible)&#xA;clarizen (cloud only)&#xA;daptiv (daptiv)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of the above also have issue tracking integrated what i understood is one of the key points you are looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2008" LastActivityDate="2011-08-27T20:55:17.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3248" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-27T21:08:57.210" Score="17" ViewCount="4741" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can the scrum master be a programmer on the team and take the role of scrum master just for now? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As is done in the time you must make a plan?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2007" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2011-08-28T09:41:28.657" LastActivityDate="2017-09-30T00:38:32.257" Title="Problem with scrum master and developer role?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3248" CreationDate="2011-08-28T05:20:09.777" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, this is possible, however ideally I personally believe the scrum master role should be a dedicated role per sprint. If developers want to pass around the role of Scrum Master on the team that is fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to &quot;dual role&quot;, there some some pitfalls to be aware of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't let your development duties take precedent over scrum master duties. As the scrum master it is your responsibility to ensure that your team's hurdles &amp;amp; road blocks are being removed. Don't neglect that because your busy constructing software.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't over commit the team within a sprint. As you are the scrum master be aware that you are the teams facilitator and may get busy over the course of the sprint and &quot;neglect&quot; a dev story that you picked up. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't let the fact that you are the scrum master, take precedent in team discussion and planning sessions. Just because you are wearing two hats doesn't mean you have &quot;two votes&quot; on a team discussion&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastActivityDate="2011-08-28T05:20:09.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3246" CreationDate="2011-08-28T09:53:41.320" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum doesn't really cover the strategic part of planning. In terms of building a vision and a general roadmap Scrum itself won't help you much. However, at this level planning doesn't really differ from what you know, or should know, from other methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So unless you know, in general, what you want to build don't bother with going deep into any method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimation is a whole different thing. Once you you have a vision and a general plan you definitely want to be able to say what you're going to build in what time. Here is an excellent two-part video of Mike Cohn talking about agile estimation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fb9Rzyi8b90&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Part 1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeT0pOVg0EI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Part 2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should dispel your doubts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also check &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0131479415&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mike Cohn's book&lt;/a&gt; dedicated completely to this subject (thanks Jesse for the comment).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-08-31T07:17:25.353" LastActivityDate="2011-08-31T07:17:25.353" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3248" CreationDate="2011-08-28T10:16:13.360" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technically yes, they can. Unlike Jesse, I don't have any preset preference whether the roles should or should not be mixed. I would more look at the context and current team's needs and then decide whether you need have your Scrum Master (SM) full time or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If the team is new with Scrum&lt;/strong&gt; an experienced person acting as SM is: one, a very good idea and two, will have a lot of work coaching and mentoring the team. In this case I'd probably tend more into exclusive SM role.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;However, if we take the same situation but &lt;strong&gt;have no one experienced is Scrum&lt;/strong&gt; you may want to reconsider. I mean there will be as many questions as in previous case although inexperienced SM can be way less helpful, rendering the idea to have him as an SM full-time not so wise. In this case I'd likely have the roles of SM and developer mixed and look for some support from outside of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If the team is mature and they are fluent with Scrum&lt;/strong&gt; there's usually significantly less work for Scrum Master, which means there will be probably quite a lot of spare time between different SM's tasks. In this case I'd either have a single SM working for more teams or assign SM other tasks, e.g. development.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If the team is small&lt;/strong&gt;, e.g. of 4 people, you probably don't need SM full-time even if people aren't experienced in Scrum. There just isn't enough work for such person. In this case I'd act depending on the context: I might use experienced SM in different teams or have them working on development. If my SM is inexperienced I'd probably have them working on development.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;strong&gt;team grows&lt;/strong&gt; there's also more work for SM. Naturally coaching and mentoring tasks scales up with the number of people. Also bigger team usually means bigger throughput which means longer meetings (planning, retros) to facilitate and more time needed to prepare to such meetings. With a bigger team you may end up needing SM closer to full-time. Note: Scrum teams (most teams really) don't scale up well beyond 7-8 people so you may prefer to have two smaller teams and a single SM working for both.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In every case remember: &lt;strong&gt;some experimentation will definitely be helpful&lt;/strong&gt;. Start with one approach, see how it works and don't be afraid to change it or tweak it to see whether another setup isn't better. You will also notice that situation changes over time and you should adapt to it on organizational level, which means you might want to change your approach over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-08-28T10:16:13.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3252" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3253" CreationDate="2011-08-28T11:49:20.707" Score="3" ViewCount="1332" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may look a bit weird, but I stuck with the problem of sharing the project plans with team.&#xA;The main purpose I try to achieve (though not sure if it's right) is that everyone should know what to do next (and do not ask about this every time he ends with current item) and to see the full picture of upcoming tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a list of approaches with their cons I see:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Board. Problem - when priority (and even entire list) of tasks is changed it's difficult to re-write it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project management software. (we use Goplan currently). Problem - not all tasks/small projects are managing here, sometimes it's not possible/easy for a member to recognize the right priority.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Google docs spreadsheet. Problem - not sure how to be with e-mail notifications so the team know when something is changed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also I'd like to reduce the number of software/instruments I use in project management (currently, it's web-based project management software to collaborate with customers, assigning tasks/tickets + my mind maps + one of the above things) to concentrate more on other aspects and not just do the copy-paste from program A to program B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this helps, the team size is 3-4 people now, the projects are websites/web-systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPD:&lt;/strong&gt; The point is I'm not sure what's the most efficient approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;say, every morning, tell everybody the list of tasks/bugs to be done this day&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;give a schedule of tasks for a week/month&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;task by task. When the work on task A is completed, tell about the task B.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPD2:&lt;/strong&gt; I guess I haven't clearly clarified this, but the problem is that requirements changes every day (and even during the day) and new important tasks/issues may arrive at anytime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this clarifies the initial question a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1994" LastEditorUserId="1994" LastEditDate="2011-08-28T14:27:21.057" LastActivityDate="2011-08-29T19:21:10.963" Title="How to share project plans with the team" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3252" CreationDate="2011-08-28T14:31:32.743" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everyone works differently, and everyone wants different things from the manager. Some want to be given a task, then complete it, then be given another task... and so on. Some want to know the big picture and be left to manage their own time and priorities within it, and only be told when something material changes. And others will be at different points between the two extremes. No tool can resolve this for you, because you are dealing with people who don't fit into with an idealised model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would do is have a regular but short team session. 5 to 15 minutes should be plenty. Have this daily if that works for you, or less frequently if you prefer. If you are using an agile methodology (scrum) then you should be doing this anyway. At that meeting, give the headlines, listen for warning signals, and as appropriate, hand out the day's tasks. Follow up specific issues and concerns on a one-to-one level outside the meeting if necessary. By the way, if you are accepting revised requirements or changing priorities on a daily basis, something is wrong with either the team's work, or you have a flawed relationship with your customers, or you need to think again about the way that you react to external influences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question: do all issues and change requests come through you, or direct to the person in the team who is best able to deal with them? If they all come to you, ask yourself why. Why should you act as a buffer? Wouldn't it be better to set out guidelines for the team to help them to prioritise, and let them work within these guidelines, without you having to get involved all the time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you must have tools, try using a spreadsheet of &quot;must do&quot; tasks that you print out and stick on the wall every week. Have sufficient slack within this to allow you to accommodate new, unplanned demands, and use sticky notes to capture these and move them around as priorities change. Software solutions are possible, but the physical act of moving yellow stickies around a sheet of A3 paper gives a sense of ownership, for reasons that I can't quite understand. It also conveys a sense of urgency if they all start piling up against Friday afternoon...!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-08-28T14:31:32.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3246" CreationDate="2011-08-28T17:09:16.577" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you come across &amp;quot;Feature Injection&amp;quot; at all? It works very well with Scrum and other Agile methodologies, and helps you to draw out the backlog from your initial project vision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/articles/pulling-power&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article on it&lt;/a&gt;, or you can also &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.lulu.com/en/au/shop/chris-matts/real-options-at-agile-2009/ebook/product-1k8rr8m8.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;read Chris Matts' comic&lt;/a&gt; (he invented it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a short summary, it helps you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify a vision&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify the goals of various stakeholders that need to be achieved to deliver the vision&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find user and system capabilities (with business-focused outcomes) which can deliver the goals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create features which allow users and the system to have the capabilities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Split features into stories for fast feedback&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and now you're in Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a note, I'm using &amp;quot;capability&amp;quot; where I used to use &amp;quot;theme&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;feature set&amp;quot; because I've found it makes more sense; we're allowing users to achieve some business outcome, or allowing the system to do something valuable (eg: security, performance).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that Scrum should be collaborative, so even though these might read like analysis phases, conversation is more important than documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also want to consider estimating the entire release backlog at a capability level, rather than splitting it up in advance. Every team I've seen who breaks the backlog down up-front ends up spending significant time &amp;quot;grooming&amp;quot; it. Dan North's article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://dannorth.net/2009/07/01/the-perils-of-estimation/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the perils of estimation&lt;/a&gt;, and his other article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://dannorth.net/2010/08/30/introducing-deliberate-discovery/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Deliberate Discovery&lt;/a&gt;, may help with understanding why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can split up high-level backlog items as you get to them, or during the planning meeting. If you do this and re-estimate with stories, it's likely that &lt;a href=&quot;http://lizkeogh.com/2009/11/30/estimation-anti-patterns/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;fractal estimation&lt;/a&gt; will cause your scope to go up. That's fine; just use a burn-up instead of a burn-down chart; the scope usually rises at a fairly constant rate, so you can still see if you're going to make the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-10T11:38:44.967" LastActivityDate="2020-07-10T11:38:44.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3252" CreationDate="2011-08-28T22:44:53.850" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep it simple. Make sure your team knows where they are headed, then let them figure it out.  I am a huge fan of formal processes to optimize flow, efficiences, and productivity.  A small team like yours has a way of creating this almost naturally.  They will create the path of least resistance. If a new requirement comes down, give it to them and then let them go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At all costs, don't introduce another tool.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-08-28T22:44:53.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3256" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3278" CreationDate="2011-08-29T04:26:52.860" Score="14" ViewCount="4422" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to discuss with you a special case of requirements management. I call it “requirements management for mere mortals”. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had worked as a project manager in a small web development company. &#xA;Significant part of my daily job was talking with our clients to &#xA;translate their wishes into the tasks for our developers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem I faced is that most of the approaches and tools I used &#xA;previously simply did not fit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The root cause is that I had to work with &#xA;completely non-techie stakeholders who do not care about &lt;em&gt;requirements&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another issue is a large volume of data. I had to organize info on dozens of small projects each month. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I have adapted to the process in general there is an issue that I did not manage &#xA;to overcome – software. It seems that there is no such thing as &#xA;“RQ management software for mere mortals”. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are tools like DOORS, Polarion and ton of other RQ systems targeted to &#xA;enterprise (read terribly expensive and complicated) but there is nothing for a small business. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a list of my wishes for a simple RQ management system: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Web interface&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each RQ is a separate entity with unique ID&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each RQ is versioned (I should be able to see who changed what)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;RQs have tags for easy navigation/grouping&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A list of RQs (current state of RQ document) can be tagged/baselined&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Instant full-text search through all versions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Primitive access control (as simple as “read/write” permissions)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Built-in comments/chat to quickly discuss RQs in context&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simple markup language support like Markdown instead of bloated rich text editor. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Integration with email (i.e. I can discuss RQ via email but the message will be imported/stored in the system)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Export of RQ document to the PDF or other commonly used format&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There should be no &lt;em&gt;traceability&lt;/em&gt; or other features that regular user has no idea about. Basic links (i.e. &quot;related RQs&quot;) between RQs would be enough.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Extremely minimalistic and straightforward UI so any user familiar with GMail will be able to use/understand it from the first sight. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize, I want something like Basecamp but targeted exclusively to requirements &#xA;gathering process from regular people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did some of you experience the problem described above? &#xA;Do you find yourself in a need of such software or you are perfectly fine with MS Word/Excel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Edit: in response to angeline answer&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I totaly agree with your recommendations but I do not have an issue &#xA;with customers not getting RQ management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am having problem on my side - it is hard to manage RQs when working &#xA;under certain conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if there is no strict process (e.g. I am an independent IT consultant and decide for myself) you still have to take RQ management serioulsy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, right now I have 350+ email messages regarding one of the projects.&#xA;Now I need to find some specific RQ to take a decision. Even with &#xA;smart features like labels and buit-in search in GMail it is incredibly hard&#xA;to work with. Note that this is not a single issue - there are different problems with small projects as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have an Excel or Word document you will face with another issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Changes tracking - can you effectively see who changed what in an Excel sheet?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Versioning - having 10 version of a document doesn't make you life easier&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You still can't prevent customer from sending you info via email which quickly &#xA;makes your document out of date.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collaboration - tossing MS Word document around is not a joy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, software described above can solve all of these issues. On customer side &#xA;it will be either plain old email messages or some simple web UI like one we have on stackexchange.com sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The obvious benefits are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;all information will be in one place and I will be able to &#xA;easily manage it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there will be little or no effort for customer to use this system&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Edit 2: in response to Adam Wuerl comment:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, I am using Redmine for requirements management. I think that bug tracker is the closest approximation of ideal tool described above. The problems with bug trackers is that they are either non-customizable (to the degree I need) or too flexible (read complicated). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked this question in the LinkedIn Requirements Engineering group and of the members has recommended to use &lt;a href=&quot;http://trac.edgewall.org&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Trac&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless there is a simple RQ management system available, customized bug tracker would be a good choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="667" LastEditorUserId="667" LastEditDate="2011-09-01T03:22:08.453" LastActivityDate="2021-01-20T13:33:49.980" Title="Requirements management software for mere mortals" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3257" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-29T07:41:36.967" Score="3" ViewCount="19302" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going in for my second round of interviews for a technically-minded business analyst position tomorrow.  The first (phone) interview went great, and they seemed to really like me, and I really like the job.  I have the feeling I've already passed all of the &quot;tests&quot; to determine whether or not I'm qualified, but is there anything specific I should know about interviewing for this particular type of position in person?  Especially since a large part of the job is working with customers (and thus requires &quot;people skills&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1558" LastActivityDate="2017-01-11T09:47:38.103" Title="Tips for a business analyst job interview?" Tags="&lt;interview&gt;&lt;business-analyst&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3258" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-29T08:03:33.377" Score="2" ViewCount="2269" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had recently obtained my PMP certification, currently I am already doing Project Management work but I would like to work in an environment where I could gain maximum exposure to project management, perhaps in a projectized organisation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would appreciate any advice on where would be a good place to start, thanks in advance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2017" LastActivityDate="2019-09-23T07:02:56.647" Title="Where would be a good place to start a project management career?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;job-allocation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2019-09-23T10:58:28.987" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3256" CreationDate="2011-08-29T08:16:29.123" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;No tool is going to solve the issue of stakeholders not understanding what a good requirement is and why it is important. It is the process you need to work on - if you have bad requirements, no matter how fancy and sophisticated your software is, you will still get bad requirements (rubbish in, rubbish out).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personnally I find that MS Excel works perfectly fine. I like to keep things simple and avoid over-engineering things - I find that unless you are in an organization/industry that demands stringent control over requirements definition/validation there are a lot of features you mention that you can do without (and some of them can be done in MS Excel).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some recommendations:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Educate your stakeholders on requirements definition&lt;/strong&gt;: organize a workshop and share with them principles and ground rules of effective requirements gathering, using examples of &quot;good&quot; and &quot;bad&quot; (and &quot;ugly&quot;!). Get them to work with sample requirements - don't take their own requirements as examples, try to use requirements from a different project so your stakeholders can look at them and practice in a neutral, objective manner.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use techniques that help your stakeholders define requirements&lt;/strong&gt;: use imagery, visualisation techniques, process mapping, mind mapping, user case or user stories to help your stakeholders define and articulate their needs. Help them write good requirements by suggesting appropriate wording.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get them to focus on value&lt;/strong&gt;: when defining requirements, make your stakeholders put a value (business benefit) on each of them: e.g. what will this enable? how will it impact our ability to execute a business process? how will it help us improve what we do? etc. Focus on tangible benefits rather than loose improvements (eg. &quot;will reduce time to produce analytics by 80%&quot; vs &quot;faster reports&quot;). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be clear about roles in the requirements definition process&lt;/strong&gt;: business requirements should not be defined by the technical team because they are not be technical requirements. The fact that your stakeholders are not technical is actually an advantage because when you have stakeholders who are  (or think they are...), you often end up with people thinking about the solution before the need (eg. &quot;we need a button to click on to do X...&quot;). You can however educate them on basic technical terms and concepts. Conversely it is not up to your stakeholders to define tasks for the developers; it is the project team's job to translate business needs into tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Prioritize &amp;amp; validate requirements&lt;/strong&gt;: include a prioritization process as part of requirements gathering and definition, and get stakeholders to sign-off on requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastActivityDate="2011-08-29T08:16:29.123" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3257" CreationDate="2011-08-29T11:00:24.623" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should find the &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2878/interviewing-business-analyst&quot;&gt;question and answers on interviewing business analyst&lt;/a&gt; useful. It touches the same subject but from the other perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short answers point 3 general areas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communication skills&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business acumen&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Managing requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find more details in answers to the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-08-29T11:00:24.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3257" CreationDate="2011-08-29T11:02:26.937" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Congratulations on passing the first interview! Some advice on interviewing in person and preparing for a second-round interview for the role you mention:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;On interviewing in person:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure you know where to go and when (plan to arrive a little early), and that you present well (if you can, find out their dress code; in doubt, go conservative).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take along copies of the job description and your resume, a notepad and pen (it may sound obvious but I have seen candidates turn up for interviews &quot;hands in their pockets&quot;, which doesn't look very professional).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give a brief, firm handshake, wait to be seated (or ask where you should sit); adopt a positive body language (smile, look people in the eyes, don't cross your arms, etc.); if offered, accept a glass of water (you will do a lot of talking).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the room where you are interviewing has things like flip-charts or boards and you see a chance to use them (and are comfortable in doing so), go ahead (ask your interviewer(s) if it's ok first) - it helps breaking down the formality of the interview, shows you have confidence to stand up and speak in front of people, and also as a BA, actually demonstrates you are good at illustrating points and answers (through simple diagrams, charts, etc.).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;On second-round interviews for a BA role:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prepare a list of questions you would like to ask yourself and haven't had a chance to discuss yet (about the role, the organization, the projects you'll work on, the types of customers they have, etc.), or follow-on questions from things discussed during the first interview.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are right to note that they must like you already! In a second interview, you may get the same questions again, but perhaps from different people (see next point), and likely more in-depth. You have identified that key qualities for this type of position are people skills and the ability to work well with customers. So spend a little time thinking about potential questions you may be asked in relation to this (eg. how do you manage difficult customers? how do you deal with non-technical stakeholders? how do you manage requirements and relate them to business value? etc.), and be ready with some concrete examples highlighting your strengths and experience in that area, so you can show you are competent both on the technical and the people sides.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Usually in second-round interviews, you get to meet different people, often more senior people than during the first interview, so try to find out something about them (such as their role in the organization and in relation to the position you are applying for). For example if you are going to meet technical and non-technical people, be ready to adapt to your audience and speak their language.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are likely one of a handful of people who have made it through to the second round (it's possible you are the only one, but assume you are not). Try to find out how many other candidates they have put through (you can just ask during the interview) and be prepared to answer questions that will position yourself as the best candidate (eg. you could be asked &quot;what makes you different to/better than other BAs?&quot;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Second-round interviews are also often the place to discuss salary, terms and conditions, so be prepared to address these items. Also make sure you clarify what the next steps are.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Last but not least, you like the job so make sure you convey your enthusiasm in person (positive body language, smiles, positive statements, etc.). Follow-up after the interview with a short email thanking people for their time and reiterating your interest.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastActivityDate="2011-08-29T11:02:26.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3258" CreationDate="2011-08-29T11:49:22.357" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could explore the following avenues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your current place of work&lt;/strong&gt;: are there opportunities where you work right now to take on more PM work? Does your organization have full-time PMs and a lot of projects (you don't have to work in a fully projectized organization to be a PM)? You could talk to your manager about opportunities to formally move into a PM role.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your immediate network&lt;/strong&gt;: identify the people (from your personal and professional network) who are already in that field and could provide advice and access to a PM position. Talk to people to get a better understanding of what types of PM roles might be the right ones for you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Extended professional network&lt;/strong&gt;: you can join PM groups like PMI chapters or LinkedIn groups to access PM professional opportunities in your area.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Classic job search&lt;/strong&gt;: survey the market for PM roles in your area, get in touch with recruitment agencies specializing in this type of role. You are not saying what industry or function you work in, but if you are looking for your first PM job, it is better to stick to the industry/function you already have strong experience in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whichever avenue(s) you follow, make sure you build on your strengths and experience - you're talking about starting a career in PM but you are already doing PM work and are PMP certified (and in theory you can only be PMP certified in you have already a few years of project work under your belt). Don't downplay what you have already done, so look at it in terms of &quot;advancing your career in PM&quot; rather than &quot;starting a career in PM&quot;. Clarify for yourself what kind of PM role you want (e.g. technical project? small team? what responsibilities do you see yourself taking on? what kind of companies? etc.). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also check out the following question &amp;amp; answers on &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/3184/1722&quot;&gt;What questions would you recommend to ask to a potential employer for a project manager role?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-08-29T11:49:22.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3219" CreationDate="2011-08-29T19:00:14.350" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I only buy &quot;Super Stick&quot; 3M notes for this reason, however they all eventually lose their &quot;stick&quot;. While your question is specific to stickies, I also wanted to recommend the idea of a make shift magnetic board, which is what I went to as we started to lose stickies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Large piece of foam core board&#xA;2-sheets of metal duct siding from home depot or lowes&#xA;Duct tape&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tape the metal siding to the foam core and you have a magnetic silver surface that you can still draw on with white board markers, stick post its too, but now, also use magnets on to keep up those stubborn notes. And, its also portable if you choose it to be now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastActivityDate="2011-08-29T19:00:14.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3258" CreationDate="2011-08-29T19:06:47.793" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Despite the basic PM framework and best practices, every company has set up their own rules and processes. The bigger challenge here is really finding a company where you resonate with their approaches and find you fit with their project management culture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, how heavy process oriented do you prefer to work in? Corporations or startups? Agile or Traditional? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every company uses some sort of process to manage their projects, the hard part is finding the approach that you fit with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe do some information interviews with other PMs you know to try and learn about the different type of project management environments and challenges to narrow your search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastActivityDate="2011-08-29T19:06:47.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3256" CreationDate="2011-08-29T19:14:14.587" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a tough question because I see lots of underlying questions/assumptions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Requirements management is huge and often over complicated. It is one of the main reasons for the huge focus on prioritization and user stories in the Agile methodologies and approaches, so that we keep teams and customers conversations focused. A lot of times, the behavioral change and approach change can often make the requirements management easier in itself because the group is focused on the highest priority section of the list instead of the full thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why I say this is a tough questions is because if your project is run more traditionally, the is a much bigger conversation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer the tool question in specific, I would search for some Agile requirements management tools, like Rally or VersionOne where you can at least save your conversations and requirements as well as start trying to stack rank them to increase focus on the highest priority items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastActivityDate="2011-08-29T19:14:14.587" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3252" CreationDate="2011-08-29T19:21:10.963" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I noticed that you felt using a &quot;board&quot; was a con when tasks have to get rewritten. I don't see that as a con. I think the biggest think you can do for the team is help them visualize the work. I have found boards to work best for this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The teams work in &quot;sprints&quot; and fill in the board with their expected tasks and priorities every two weeks, if things are added/removed/changed along the way, then fine, we have probably learned something. One thing we do differently though is that every task is associated with some larger feature or priority and so our daily updates are more focused on how we are moving forward to complete the feature, which may be a task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes this also helps the team get used to thinking about what they need to do as a team, instead of individuals, so they can look at the board and see where they might help someone else with the current priorities instead of asking what to do next. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the tools comments, we also use a few different online/electronic tools for collaboration, but we bring them all together on the board for a single priority list and daily discussion. We have found this to be one of the most valuable parts of using a board. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastActivityDate="2011-08-29T19:21:10.963" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3202" CreationDate="2011-08-29T19:29:22.810" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Humans are no good at estimation. This is why Agility frameworks like Scrum use things like Story points, velocity and/or throughput to help the business and teams better PREDICT how long its takes to develop features. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't beat yourself up about your estimates. I spent a lot of years doing traditional earned value and knew in general how much people were off, but it was never used appropriately by the business and we always ended up playing schedule games where we would try to tweak this and that and waste a lot of valuable development time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest doing some research on Agile, Scrum and Kanban and having a conversation with the person asking for these estimates about the difficulty and futility of your search for improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastActivityDate="2011-08-29T19:29:22.810" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3256" CreationDate="2011-08-30T00:11:13.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The closest product that I can think of that matches a large portion of your list is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pivotaltracker.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pivotal Tracker&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, that this tool is an agile project management tool, however I think you may be able adapt it to fit your needs. At the very least you can signup for a free trial and check it out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastActivityDate="2011-08-30T00:11:13.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3258" CreationDate="2011-08-30T13:52:46.530" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best place to develop PM skills? Look for the companies that are contractors in your field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find a company where their ONLY business is managing/building projects for other companies. These are the companies that are doing it right (regardless of methodology, name, process, etc.). Their very survival is based on their experience and knowledge both in how to accurately bid a project, but how to also bring it in successfully. Because if they can't do those two things then they won't get more business, or they won't survive very long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So find a contractor that's been around for a while. You'll learn very quickly what's really important. You'll also most likely have both the authority (and responsibility) needed to get it done, which brings it's own set of learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-08-30T13:52:46.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2890" CreationDate="2011-08-30T14:17:37.460" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience on the &quot;work&quot; side of the equation (ie, implementation, not management), the most common format I have used and been asked to use is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Subject - [project] [time] status [date] {detail (could be a subproject)}&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Greeting&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Status&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;bulleted list of accomplishments of the day&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Pending&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;bulleted list of issues that are upcoming or may impact the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Issues&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;bulleted list of open cases (if appropriate) or open problems - subbullet as needed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Incidentals&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;bulleted list of related-but-semi-off-topic items (schedule interruptions, work arrangements, etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Plan for [date|period]&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;bulleted list of what is expected to be done the next day or week (week if the last status of the week)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, a sample email might look like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Customer Name EoD status 05 Dec 2010&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Good evening&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Status:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Servers provisioned&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Storage allocated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Media staged&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pending:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Network allocation for server move&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Power not ready in new rack&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Incidentals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Company-wide picnic Friday afternoon&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Plan for 06 Dec:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Get power to new rack&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;VLAN allocation complete&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Move servers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Install {product}&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="167" LastEditorUserId="167" LastEditDate="2012-04-26T21:07:17.150" LastActivityDate="2012-04-26T21:07:17.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2890" CreationDate="2011-08-30T17:09:52.643" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As has previously been mentioned audience is key to the template &amp;amp; frequency of reports. Don't be afraid to ask for feedback from you audience and make changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your looking for a document template I like quadrant reports. They provide the ability for a person to quickly scan a document and see a project status visual via a traffic light. If the audience so desires, they can read about a certain area. Here is an example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sebasolutions.com/downloads/ProjectStatus-RevB.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sebasolutions.com/downloads/ProjectStatus-RevB.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, that this is an excerpt from the book, The Handbook of Program Management by James T Brown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastActivityDate="2011-08-30T17:09:52.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3256" CreationDate="2011-08-30T17:12:27.850" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is this an accurate summary of why you need a system?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;We can't find information we need&#xA;&#xA;because&#xA;&#xA;There is no single repository of information to refer to&#xA;&#xA;because&#xA;&#xA;There are lots of emails and documents with scattered information&#xA;&#xA;so&#xA;&#xA;We need a system to centralise information from emails and documents&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If the answer was yes, I understand how you got to the &quot;I need a system for this&quot; solution.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But what if we keep going?...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;We can't find information we need&#xA;&#xA;because&#xA;&#xA;There is no single repository of information to refer to&#xA;&#xA;because&#xA;&#xA;There are lots of emails and documents with scattered information&#xA;&#xA;because&#xA;&#xA;There are frequent changes in requirements&#xA;&#xA;because&#xA;&#xA;Customers aren't yet sure what they want&#xA;&#xA;so&#xA;&#xA;I need to help my customer develop their wishes into something I can work on.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even then, there is probably another layer (or more) of &quot;because&quot; that you need to get to.  Solving it might mean the problem of constant change and the associated emails and document revisions goes away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastEditorUserId="1185" LastEditDate="2011-08-30T17:26:20.990" LastActivityDate="2011-08-30T17:26:20.990" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3219" CreationDate="2011-08-30T17:58:34.153" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the moment we are using blue-tac on cards rather than sticky notes. The cards are more robust than a sticky note, but we have only been field testing this solution for about two weeks. It is working well so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2030" LastActivityDate="2011-08-30T17:58:34.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3248" CreationDate="2011-08-30T18:08:39.797" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there is nothing to prevent a programmer from being the scrum master. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When one of the programmers on the team taks on this role it is important for them to have a good appreciation for the amount of time that they will be committing to the role. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they are doing it full time it is important that they don't assign any tasks to themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they try to do a 50/50 split give them the time to find out if they are allocating enough time to themselves to do their development tasks. A good way of checking this is to have regular post-mortems after each sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2030" LastActivityDate="2011-08-30T18:08:39.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="344" CreationDate="2011-08-31T02:22:18.103" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One point not covered above is sprint length. With newer teams I've generally found that shorter iterations work well with a small and newly minted scrum team ( 1-2 weeks ). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With longer sprints, I find that;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;team members tend to &quot;forget&quot; about roadblocks encountered during the sprint and those items are lost within the sprint retrospective&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;planning / estimation meetings can eat up a lot of time when kicking off a new sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if you have a bad sprint your laundry list of things to try can be quite extensive&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;depending on the project &amp;amp; your customers, you may have &quot;injection&quot; fever where items are brought into a sprint because the customer simply can't wait until the next sprint. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastActivityDate="2011-08-31T02:22:18.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3256" CreationDate="2011-08-31T11:40:00.370" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you considered re-purposing bug tracking software? I've never used it, but based on the marketing materials it looks like the web-based &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fogcreek.com/fogbugz/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FogBugz&lt;/a&gt; could probably do everything you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could make each RQ a &quot;bug&quot; in the database. They're taggable, searchable, have a unique ID and version control. (I think) there are access controls (e.g. full, read-only), email integration, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure about PDF export.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="360" LastActivityDate="2011-08-31T11:40:00.370" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3279" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3282" CreationDate="2011-08-31T12:14:43.413" Score="19" ViewCount="3057" Body="&lt;p&gt;My organization has been doing waterfall for many years, but we are dipping our toes in the agile pond currently.  So far we have had a couple successful projects using agile so everyone is gung ho about it.  However, upper management has some concerns about the lack of individual accountability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In waterfall, it is very easy to see that there are tasks with due dates that are assigned to individuals that are either delivered on time or not.  And this data is used in part for end-of-year reviews, bonuses, etc.  Agile shifts the accountability away from the individual and toward the team.  The team either delivers the stories for a given sprint, or they don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Management is having trouble figuring out how to get the individual performance metrics they want out of the agile process.  They need a way to see which people on their staff are high performers and which aren't.  But the only place where individual assignments are made in agile is a sticky note on a Scrum board, which doesn't have any upward visibility or historical tracking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the techniques for tracking individual accountability when using agile?  Will this level of tracking hurt the team mentality that agile seeks to create?  How can we meet the needs of management of knowing the relative strength of their staff members, while still focusing on the team accountability with agile?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2034" LastEditorUserId="2034" LastEditDate="2011-08-31T13:55:57.827" LastActivityDate="2018-02-01T19:16:48.757" Title="Individual accountability on agile projects" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2377" CreationDate="2011-08-31T12:33:53.413" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could use my CRM plugin (Contacts plugin) for redmine (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redminecrm.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.redminecrm.com&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Managing contacts relations (CRM)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Native redmine interface&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tagging and mutlitag filtering&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Managing deals workflow and controlling sales funnel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resolve duplicates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contacts avatars (include gravatar.org service)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contacts task management (integration with issues)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contacts across projects &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Support for MySQL, SQLite and PostgreSQL&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2035" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-10-01T08:47:07.460" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T08:47:07.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3279" CreationDate="2011-08-31T16:07:30.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While, I have never worked for an organization that rewarded bonuses to individuals on a SCRUM team for their &quot;individual performance&quot; I can think of a few ways to try giving your upper management this visibility:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hours Estimated vs Actual&lt;/strong&gt;: When team members are breaking a story down into development tasks have them place an &quot;hour&quot; estimate on how long they think the story will take. This number number could then be compared to the actual time put into the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last team I worked with was a 100% pair programming SCRUM team. We always put down hour estimates more on our tasks but we never compared this to the &quot;actual&quot; time taken on a story. After writing this I'm actually note sure if this would have an adverse affect on the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;360 Peer Reviews&lt;/strong&gt;: Have your team members evaluate each other. There are many different ways a peer review can be performed but the information gathered within the review process is a great tool for not only giving feedback to team members, but a great way to get a feel of a team feels about an individual. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again I will mention that I have only used 360 performance reviews for team building and feedback exercises...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask the team&lt;/strong&gt;: Like all things subject to change, have you had a brainstorming session with the team? What are are their thoughts on how to give your management this visibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastActivityDate="2011-08-31T16:07:30.800" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3279" CreationDate="2011-08-31T17:38:17.593" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually this is one of the reasons why we need managers in agile teams. The team's responsibility is to back up weaker members and deliver. It doesn't mean however that poor performers should have an easy life in agile teams. One thing is to get the job done, another is to tell who did heck lot of work and who was just standing on the side watching how work is being done by others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let the team do their work and manager do theirs. Actually if we discuss Scrum teams (this is my assumption here, as you don't state it explicitly) you probably have 7 +/- 2 people in any team. This means that manager, working full-time should easily be able to share reasonable feedback about any of the members any time. Considering managers have fewer other tasks, as the team deal with many of regular issues it should be even easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer is: if you need to judge individual accountability ask the manager. They should know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="2210" LastEditDate="2011-09-26T14:47:56.893" LastActivityDate="2011-09-26T14:47:56.893" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3258" CreationDate="2011-08-31T18:34:29.407" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;VOLUNTEER- In Silicon Valley, the local PMI chapter has used this to great effect. Like most chapters, they have many volunteer opportunities with helping the chapter. What sets them apart though is they also work with non-profits in the Bay Area and match up PMs willing to do volunteer work with non-profits needing project management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a great way to get practical PM experience and also looks very good on your resume because of the volunteer work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best, Joel BC&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2011-08-31T18:34:29.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3284" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-31T19:43:55.033" Score="5" ViewCount="630" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_value_management&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Earned Value Analysis&lt;/a&gt; is great on paper. However, I'm having difficulty using it for programming projects that tend to change dramatically from week to week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a milestone is &quot;complete test plan 2 on accounting package&quot;, however, in the first half hour of the test plan, the tester discovered an unrecoverable bug. Fixing the bug is 3+ weeks worth of work that was never in the work break down structure. The programmer says, &quot;oh yeah I forgot to include that task&quot; when we made the task list. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how do you handle this? Do you create the chart so that your project is now a month behind schedule and a month over cost because the WBS was incomplete? Hard to swallow when the entire project is 6 weeks long. Or, do you adjust the planned value to include this new 3 weeks worth of work thus creating a new project plan?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To further extend the question, how do you handle disagreements about the meaning of a work item. The programmer says it's done. The stake holder explains why the three legged cat is missing a leg and the programmer says, oooh you wanted 4 legs?? Well, that's going to take an additional 3 weeks. The new cat will have more value with the extra leg... but the project will take 3 weeks longer than estimated. How do you handle this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2037" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2011-09-28T22:08:03.353" LastActivityDate="2016-12-09T12:30:30.970" Title="How do you handle new tasks in an earned value analysis chart?" Tags="&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;evm&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3284" CreationDate="2011-08-31T20:30:40.123" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;That is called a variance.  It is not a missing task. It is work in scope but not planned.  This means you cannot claim EV on that package until the extra effort is finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will accrue an unfavorable SV and CV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The four legs example is iffy. If you had explicit requirements about the three legs, then you have a change. Add it and strike a new baseline. If not, you have an issue.  Likely, you will have extra effort and more bad variances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-08-31T20:30:40.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3279" CreationDate="2011-08-31T22:51:32.137" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Effective agile development requires an environment in which an individual is safe to put the &quot;we&quot; before the &quot;me&quot;. As such, the idea of &quot;individual accountability&quot; is capable of fundamentally breaking agile teams, preventing them from making the teaming transition from &quot;Forming, norming, and storming&quot; into &quot;performing.&quot; As such, I typically encourage teams to have a reasonable 360 peer and stakeholder review process, but not for the results to be &quot;used&quot; in any way by management other than meaningful career guidance. Instead, teams should share a standard reward where everybody gets a (for instance) 4% increase instead of trying to sort the team into different levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does, unfortunately, fly in the face of many performance-based reward systems and MOST corporate reward systems that currently exist, and requires a very careful balance between enlightened use of the information and punitive use of the information. It's complicated by the fact that people outside the team, even managers very close to the teams, are often unable to see the benefit offered by connectors, activators, and a number of other strengths (See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.strengthsfinder.com/home.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;StrengthsFinder home page&lt;/a&gt;). Unfortunately, members of the team are often unable to articulate these capabilities, and resort to &quot;Things just go... well... better... when John's around.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately, mature agile teams are often self-policing, and non-contributing members of the team will often vote themselves out or be brought before management by the team itself, although this behavior takes time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastActivityDate="2011-08-31T22:51:32.137" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3287" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-31T23:47:00.890" Score="2" ViewCount="199" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/3291/is-there-any-project-planning-software-out-there-for-windows-that-doesnt-look-u&quot;&gt;Is there any project planning software out there for Windows that doesn&amp;#39;t look ugly?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize this may sound biased, but I really like Windows in some respects. I just have been spoiled by Apple for so long that if something looks like it was designed by a programmer instead of a designer, I can't bring myself to use it on a daily basis. I've looked at all kinds of options, even the expensive ones like Microsoft Project. They all boast the same sparse interface, populated with thin, hard-to-see bars that are drawn in flat colors from a very limited palette. Has anyone found something that they enjoy using that looks a little more... I don't know... together? Professional?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2038" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-09-16T20:13:05.717" Title="Is there any project planning software out there for Windows that doesn't look ugly?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2011-12-16T01:13:38.793" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3225" CreationDate="2011-09-01T02:12:33.010" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've used RallyDev in the past and I'm currently testing out VersionOne.  Both have free versions for small teams, etc.  In the end, paper seems to always hold people a bit more accountable simply due to its visibility.  It is up front and personal, where one can easily hide behind a monitor, forgetting to check in...takes discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also been using FogBugz and this seems to be a great, lightweight tool to track your tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="913" LastEditorUserId="913" LastEditDate="2011-09-07T14:11:36.547" LastActivityDate="2011-09-07T14:11:36.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3279" CreationDate="2011-09-01T08:11:18.547" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everyone brought up valid points so far. Two more things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can measure hours contributed to a project against % complete for a task to gauge effectiveness for individuals. Some people put in lots of hours for very little gain and vice versa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can look at efforts at self- and team-improvement across a time period like courses, mentoring, training within or across teams to add value. In the thick of development we don't always leave time for raising our game. Those agile team members who do and get their work done well are exceptional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2043" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T08:11:18.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3292" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3299" CreationDate="2011-09-01T13:41:41.103" Score="8" ViewCount="335" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a silo in an organization of under 20 people. Actually, it's about five silos that everything needs to go up to approval for, come back down with revisions, go back up... and we keep running in circles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The silos exist because that's the way it's always happened-- I've attempted directly asking to stop this madness, but it exists because they're afraid of quality being poor, and have no faith in anyone. I see everyone trying to point fingers in a polite way the moment anything goes wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I break all these vertical management silos and have a straight-forward flow that we don't need three managers and two staff working on 100 words at a time, when they see (only one aspect of) quality being so important? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my specific case, it's emails that get sent out to small mailing lists of under 20 people (ie, thanks for coming to this event). Nobody has formal training in writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="213" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T21:01:29.163" Title="How do I break silos that exist because of culture, and make them flow horizontally?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;process&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3284" CreationDate="2011-09-01T14:32:00.607" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;David is correct, you simply have variances that will be unfavorable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's part of the problem as I see - you're trying to use EV, which assumes (and requires) an accurate level of detail in work package breakdown, and an understanding and agreement on what 'done' looks like. As long as you have situations where you're arguing about three-legged cats, EV will be worthless as it will ALWAYS be unfavorable due to that addition of new tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T14:32:00.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3294" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-01T14:42:08.870" Score="1" ViewCount="578" Body="&lt;p&gt;When managing a team of 40-50 team members, are there good processes and templates to monitor project progress?  We do daily standup meetings and weekly email reports, but we're looking for more inspiration.  We still feel that sometimes our team is not always sharing information optimally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1740" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T03:59:14.907" Title="Are there good templates and processes for monitoring project progress?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;communication-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3294" CreationDate="2011-09-01T15:20:43.660" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many great processes to monitor and control a project.  It begins with the planning process to include estimation.  It includes risk management, quality assurance and control, cost and schedule control using things like EV or critical path management, scope control to include change management and configuration management, verification and validation processes, and communication to name a few.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T15:20:43.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3292" CreationDate="2011-09-01T15:41:08.223" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Luck?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seriously though this is a tough one... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thoughts/options (based on working in large financial institutions w/similar issues) - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find an ally high up on the chain of command who you can use as leverage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Meetings, oddly enough. Break the email chains by making decision makers &amp;amp; stake holder meet. Same for developers if they are not talking.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rigorous reporting. Be brutal in the status reports... don't name names but name departments (e.g. late, waiting for approval from Dept A.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't be afraid to flag items &quot;red&quot; if they are late&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially your left with communication... You need to stop the finger pointing by raising issues right away and get people to make decisions. Overall it's not easy and might even be impossible. In our case we still have silos, but are getting things to move forward by constantly poking and prodding (via reports, meetings, calls, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1781" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T15:41:08.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3292" CreationDate="2011-09-01T15:59:42.550" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not culture.  It is the structure of your command and control system.  Your colleagues are being incented to behave this way.  As long as you have a line of authority established, where someone is being held accountable for another person's work, you will have this up and down approval thing to some degree.  If you want it to change, break the current structure and reestablish a new one.  Easier said than done.  It is a significant change even for the size of your organization and you can expect a good dose of adverse sequelae.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T15:59:42.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3279" CreationDate="2011-09-01T16:21:36.753" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of good answers here, so rather than pile on, I thought I'd provide one that is razor focused on management's perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Businesses are more successful to the extent that they make good decisions&lt;/strong&gt; and effectively follow through on them to successful outcomes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Agile teams are more successful to the extent that the people closest to the work (the team) make the decisions&lt;/strong&gt; about how the work is going to be done, who is going to do what parts, and when it will mostly likely be completed (forecast).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did you notice the conflict? Managers in pre-Agile organizations traditionally have the key decision making skills (measurement, analysis techniques, etc.) as well as follow through tools/skills (bonus control; sticking to good, but tough, staffing decisions; etc.). Teams may not have those tools/skills and yet Agile calls for the teams to make the decisions and turn them into positive outcomes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During an Agile transformation, managers have the right and responsibility to insist that important decisions continue being well made but the more decisions you can transfer to the folks closest to the work, the better. For decisions being transfered to the team, the team needs to understand the business' perspective on the relative value of comparison criteria for each type of decision. &quot;That's uncomfortable&quot; is generally not highly valued as a decision making criteria from the business' perspective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Agile coaching will prepare the team for this additional responsibility; it will give them the techniques they need to work through these tough decisions. Good coaching will also prepare managers for the fact that the team will reach different conclusions than the team's traditional managers... and that they may use a more qualitative approach (Eric's &quot;Things just go... well... better... when John's around.&quot;) in contrast to management's traditional quantitative one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team's perspective on this individual tracking issue should ideally sound something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We understand that it's critical for the business to maintain high productivity. We recognize that individual performance is a key to overall productivity and that our team members will need to be paired with work that matches their skills. When the business' expectations of our team cannot be met with its current capability, individuals may need training or coaching in certain areas, and there may be situations where it's necessary to remove or replace a team member. We will be fully transparent regarding mismatches between current expectations and capabilities so that management can identify opportunities to provide resources, assistance, or intervention. We ask that you trust us not to shirk this responsibility and to collaborate with the team to devise a plan to satisfy this critical business need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the bonuses, year end reviews, etc. ideally, your management would allocate your bonus portion to the team and the team decide how to divvy it up. As Eric says, management's relationship with individual team members becomes less of evaluation and more about career guidance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2044" LastEditorUserId="2044" LastEditDate="2011-09-01T16:26:37.793" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T16:26:37.793" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3292" CreationDate="2011-09-01T17:20:35.597" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The madness will stop when one person is held accountable for the results -both good and bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T17:20:35.597" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3292" CreationDate="2011-09-01T17:41:21.990" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question isn't clear on where you sit in this silo'd group. If you are at the top, you have a bit more influence. That said, the techniques are going to be pretty much the same no matter where you sit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't use role power to change something like this. So even if you are at the top, you can't just make it change. It is happening for a reason. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing you need to do is understand why. Why does this culture of communication exist. The why is is critical. You have to define the present condition in detail. If you don't know where you are, you can't draw a map to where you want to go. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, look at your oganizational influences. Companies/People/Countries/Cultures/Groups have goals, values, priorities. These can have a major impact on your organization and effect how you make changes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you are done with this, then you understand where you are and what influences are impacting where you want to go. Now you can start going. I agree with edgaralgernon that meetings are a vital part of this. But they have to be the right meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meetings need to be effective and result oriented. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- Define the purpose and goal of the meeting: A meeting invite with just a subject line is a meeting people are not incented to attend. You need to define what the purpose of the meeting is. You need to define what the high level outcome goal of the meeting is (a decision on test strategy for the Q3 release) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2- Agenda: You need a time boxed agenda published before the meeting. Then you need to post it. Time boxes should be clock based, not time based. At 1:00PM Meeting Starts, at 1:10 QA presents current status, At 1:15 we discuss options, At 1:40 we review options. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3- Understand the difference between a &quot;Choice&quot; and a &quot;Decision.&quot; One of the biggest problems I've run into is this problem. Companies are really good at choosing a direction. They are horrible at deciding a direction. The difference? A decision defines &quot;Who, What, When&quot; Before leaving a meeting, you need to determine these three things and document them. Otherwise you just chose a direction, but it can be chosen again at the next meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend the Manager-Tools podcasts on &quot;Effective Meetings&quot; and &quot;Making Decisions Effective.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best, Joel BC&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T17:41:21.990" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3292" CreationDate="2011-09-01T21:01:29.163" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;David &amp;amp; Mark both made great accountability comments. I would also add that trust plays a large role. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do your silo's not trust the work they are each doing? The answer to that question may help with enforcing accountability and enabling your &quot;silos&quot; to trust the work they are each performing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T21:01:29.163" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="278" CreationDate="2011-09-01T23:19:44.507" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;ROI is vague as one may deliberately use it to compare almost anything:&#xA;1. Revenue/capex?&#xA;2. PBIT/opex?&#xA;3. CPU/cost?&#xA;4. you name it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another approach is by using DROI (Discounted Return on Investment). It is simply NPV over capex. Because NPV is used, DROI recognizes time value of money and can be used to rank e.g. projects. However, this also has drawback as one has to really sure these projects are comparable. Also there are rule of thumbs on how big is &quot;big&quot; and how small is &quot;small&quot;and they differ among industries (and projects). For example, offshore deep water oilfield development in concession fiscal regime with more than XXXMMstb reserve needs to have DROI ranging from 0.2-0.5 to be deemed viable (note how I clearly specify the explanation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regards,&#xA;Ady&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2049" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T23:19:44.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3256" CreationDate="2011-09-02T01:09:05.867" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me you should give Google Docs a real try in this capacity. It seems to address all your concerns in your first Edit section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With it's new issue-like comment system that integrates with email it can really help track the consensus process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've actively contributed to documents with over 5 concurrent people editing and commenting and it seemed &quot;natural&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I wish was better was search and navigation of the revision history but the raw rev tracking is good and hopefully they continue to improve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2050" LastActivityDate="2011-09-02T01:09:05.867" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3305" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3306" CreationDate="2011-09-02T05:48:09.677" Score="50" ViewCount="15705" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm curious as to what kanban is. I just learned about it seconds ago reviewing another question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(a) What is involved that would consider it Kanban? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(b) Also how does it different from other processes?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I looked through a lot of threads and the only one related to this topic on PM.SE would be the one asking: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/3147/is-there-a-list-of-good-kanban-books/3843&quot;&gt;Is there a list of good kanban books?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1253" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T09:56:54.467" Title="What is kanban?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;definition&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="31" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3305" CreationDate="2011-09-02T06:05:48.060" Score="51" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kanban is a method for developing products with an emphasis on just-in-time delivery while not overloading the developers. It emphasizes that developers pull work from a queue, and the process, from definition of a task to its delivery to the customer, is displayed for participants to see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5 core properties:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;visualize the workflow&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;limit work in progress&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;manage the flow&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make Process Policies Explicit&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improve Collaboratively (using models &amp;amp; the scientific method)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/minibooks/kanban-scrum-minibook&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this mini-book&lt;/a&gt; is one of the best and fastest introductions to Scrum and Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example of a whiteboard to be used in Kanban&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eibeR.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2013-04-19T14:20:36.497" LastActivityDate="2013-04-19T14:20:36.497" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2648" CreationDate="2011-09-02T14:26:10.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our project there are lot of stake holders. Getting requirements can easily take 1 week, as there is lot of discussions to understand what they do. Build and deployment process takes about 2 days. We started with 3 weeks Iteration. &#xA;The client expects waterfall results. We have changed this to 5 weeks. A weeks worth of testing. &#xA;Now we can build almost bug free functionalities in 5 weeks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2052" LastActivityDate="2011-09-02T14:26:10.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3309" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3313" CreationDate="2011-09-02T18:27:59.430" Score="10" ViewCount="392" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a project's &lt;em&gt;inherent&lt;/em&gt; uncertainty prevents accurate planning or resourcing of task effort more than a month into the future, how can project managers best communicate, coordinate, and track employees' progress on a weekly basis without this constant planning/communication becoming a time burden? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1547" LastEditorUserId="2618" LastEditDate="2012-01-13T02:36:34.017" LastActivityDate="2012-01-13T02:36:34.017" Title="Communicating weekly goals amid uncertainty" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3279" CreationDate="2011-09-02T20:51:29.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has been mentioned already in a few other answers but, unfortunately, it was along side other points which I don't completely agree with. I will add it on its own because I feel it is the only effective way to gain a good understanding of individuals' performance on an Agile team. I will use SCRUM roles in my explanation for simplicity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;360 Peer Reviews&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Have &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of the members of a team review each other regularly. By all, I am including scrum masters and product owners in this process. The team will spend most of its time working collaboratively within its own bounds so why would you look anywhere else for a good understanding of everyone's effectiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This works especially well when team members are working together on tasks (pairing). Make the reviews anonymous and private (except for the manager who needs to read them) so there are no hard feelings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I said SCRUM masters and product owners should be included but this may involve including outsiders of the team into the review process because these team members may work with people external to the team. Like POs will interact with customers and SMs will work with other SMs, at least in a distributed Agile environment. Why not ask the customer to evaluate the PO? Why not ask the other SMs to evaluate the one in question? And vice versa of coarse too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point is that higher-level management cannot determine this things algorithmically by using metrics or anything of that sort. This is a people process just like Agile itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2056" LastActivityDate="2011-09-02T20:51:29.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3309" CreationDate="2011-09-02T22:02:49.610" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't try to over-decompose your milestones. Track and manage progress against the milestone without going lower than can given the information you have.  This is the tricky part of rolling wave planning but also the elegance of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The increased definition of the work packages themselves becomes progress and is a mark of progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Constant communication is a necessity on projects -regardless of the level of uncertainty. It's a fact of pm life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-09-02T22:02:49.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3309" CreationDate="2011-09-02T22:46:47.047" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As simple as it sounds, the daily scrum and a whiteboard are the two best tools for managing this kind of uncertanty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the start of the week plan out what you think you need to get done, given that it may change daily and introduce the plan to your team at your daily scrum meeting on Day one (Monday or whatever day your planning week starts on) and put the plan on the whiteboard for all to see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure the whiteboard contains this week's plan as well as the high-level plan for the next 4-6 weeks so everyone knows what is coming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the plan changes and as people get tasks finished, visibly change the plan on the whiteboard but don't interupt the team, they can see you get up to change the plan so they know somethings up and they can either read the board, come to you for more details or wait till the scrum the next day. Obviously if it directly affects their current work, you should speek to them directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Especialy if your whiteboard is in a noticeable spot in the office, like on the way to the coffee machine, you will soon see that almost everyone has a great high level view of where things are at and what is coming up next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now of course, you still need to keep the detail somewhere, like your tradditional project plan so you (and management know) the overrun, nitty gritty details etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1151" LastActivityDate="2011-09-02T22:46:47.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3309" CreationDate="2011-09-03T11:44:23.230" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Planning and communicating results always takes time, but both are valuable, necessary, and the alternative--no planning or communicating--will take up way more time.  The first thing that struck me was the &quot;weekly reporting&quot; for a month's worth of work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are relying on the frequency of one week for a month's worth of a detailed plan, then you have too much time in between reporting periods.  I recommend increasing the frequency to three business days or even less.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you must be thinking I am crazy, that you are already complaining of a time burden and I am recommending something that will make it worse.  However, I think the results of my recommendation are counter-intuitive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a month's worth of work, you have a lot going at a high op tempo coinciding with the plan of your next month's work.  A week within that time frame is huge, where you have a lot of work (relatively speaking) that occurred, a lot of issues to work through, that I think is exacerbating the time burden.  In fact, if you lessened the period in between, you may actually bring your time burden down--less to talk about, dealing with issues and risks faster, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if your time burden does not go down, reporting weekly on a month's worth of work is like reporting quarterly for year's worth.  Would you do that?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-09-03T11:44:23.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3305" CreationDate="2011-09-03T15:41:58.347" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;What @Kennethvr said. If you're familiar with Scrum or other Agile methodologies, the big differences for me were:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Visualise what's &lt;em&gt;actually happening&lt;/em&gt;, rather than what you want to happen (so represent reality over the ideal) - so your initial board might be much more complex than this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get people to help finish existing work in progress rather than starting new work - the limits in WIP help to drive collaboration - so your board will start to lose columns as the team start to blur phases together.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Manage the flow&quot; means &quot;Work out what slows you down and how to get feedback faster&quot; - but you're looking at the whole shebang from initial idea through to production, rather than just the development part. &quot;Done&quot; really does mean &quot;making money&quot; or whatever your business value is.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you see something that isn't represented by your visualisaton, and it's part of implicit process, &lt;em&gt;make&lt;/em&gt; it part of what you visualise. The team can't improve what the team can't see.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other large takeaway is that teams who learn to improve themselves actually do better in the long run than ones who rely on someone external to change - so small changes driven by the team may be more effective for you than a big-bang change like Scrum. My small experience with Kanban, and with applying these principles even within a loose Scrum framework, bears this out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastEditorUserId="591" LastEditDate="2011-12-15T10:45:53.357" LastActivityDate="2011-12-15T10:45:53.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3317" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3320" CreationDate="2011-09-04T01:06:08.833" Score="3" ViewCount="249" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the usual way to estimate costs in the first weeks of this kind of high risk projects where there is no specialist knowledge of the technologies you need to use in a development team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case I need to estimate the time it would take to integrate several GIS features and map providers with a GIS GUI software and an optimizer engine, and it has proven to be very hard to estimate any reasonable time frame for completion (other than basing on previous estimated completion times). In any case, it has made me think about the difficulties of this problem and I would like to know what are the parameters of time and resources used in this cases. I haven't found a consistent methodology to account for this. All i can see is pure risk, even though I understand what could or could not happen and the amount of time if this or that happens. It varies from 'completely unfeasible' to 'solved in a week'. Any advice will be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1894" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-09-04T08:10:49.167" LastActivityDate="2011-09-04T11:13:01.887" Title="Early stage risk/cost/time estimaties when working with unstable/beta software integration" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3317" CreationDate="2011-09-04T07:24:33.237" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can't accurately estimate things you never done before. Unless you try to use the technology to solve real problem it is a pure guessing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the risk is clearly unavoidable try to minimize its impact. Intstead of providing some estimate or commit to a whole project start with some prototype or feasibility study with your engineers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes customers do not mind to pay for the research phase and even if they don't it is better to start with something small to see how many issues arise from using new technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to convince your customer to work with small iteration instead of commiting to fixed requirements/deadline. Having shallow requirements or complicated technology might be an advantage - you can implement a lot of simpler stuff (which is usually 80% of the project) which will give you a way to negotiate on more complicated features. E.g. if you are close to deadline and 80% of the project is completed and shining then it would be easier for customer to simplify remaining features rather than going behind the deadline/budget. Of course it depends on customer, importance of the features, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="667" LastActivityDate="2011-09-04T07:24:33.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3202" CreationDate="2011-09-04T08:44:33.573" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the interim, if people are getting pissed with you, double up on everything. If you think an hour say two, if you think two weeks, say four. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its better to under promise and over deliver. You are always going to have to battle/bull shit on a job, so do it at the start rather than the end. Then, when you get the work in early everyone will be happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I run an agency and it is about reliable estimates for customers but it's more about keeping them happy, that's the big goal. If I tell them two weeks, and deliver it in 1.5 I can either discount the work or add to the work make it better, everyone wins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Development is a service based industry, not product based. You need to remember that there is a difference between duration, estimated work and actual work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry if badly written, done on my phone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1938" LastActivityDate="2011-09-04T08:44:33.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3317" CreationDate="2011-09-04T11:13:01.887" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can accurately estimate this.  This is not the first time projects have used new technologies or embarking on something that has never been done before.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use all available techniques.  Use a multidisciplinary team to provide the analysis and input.  Do NOT use single-point estimates.  Rather, have your team provide probabilistic values and assume a triangular distribution, i.e., optimistic, most likely, pessimistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work top down, break your work down and go up, use Delphi technique, examine the extremes and eliminate, use historical values where you can, use parametrics where you can, and most of all iterate your work several times as you approach CONSENSUS.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you break the work down, you will likely find much of the scope familiar and rather easy to estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have sequenced your work, simulate your schedule based on your probabilistic estimates and evaluate the results.  Because this is new work, I would set my targets--the single point value that gets priced and baselined--on the heavy side of the curve; that is, I would target somewhere in the 80th to 90th percentile versus the more competitive 50th to 60th.  By doing so, you are building in both schedule and cost contingencies in your targets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You did not mention the type of contract under which you will perform this work.  It is not appropriate for a firm fixed price vehicle.  If you did that, you would add another contingency value and it would be huge for this type of risk, e.g., three to five times your price.  It just does not make sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a T&amp;amp;M or cost plus type contract.  You need to advise your client to build both management reserve--funds available to you to fund in scope but unplanned work--and contingency reserves for your client's use to fund anything else that bites him.  The contingency reserves need to be rather healthy for work like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is doable because you can rule out the extremes rather quickly.  For example, from a top down perspective, will it take you ten years to do this project?  Five?  Three?  Two?  Do the same thing from the optimistic side.  Will it take you a week?  A month?  Six month?  Year?  You can see how ten years and a week are laughable.  When your team stops laughing, you have begun to establish either side of the probabilistic estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-09-04T11:13:01.887" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3321" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3326" CreationDate="2011-09-04T18:33:26.180" Score="12" ViewCount="1387" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know if Agile and Scrum are proprietary names and methods, and if any company can freely use them as part of their marketing, and sell them - I am thinking mainly of consulting services and training providers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Regarding Agile:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have come across the Agile Alliance, the DSDM certification, as well as the new PMI Agile certification. Which ones (are there others?) are deemed worth taking and is there a &quot;best&quot; one? (By &quot;worth taking&quot;, I mean certifications that have some value recognition in the industry and are sought by employers)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There seems to be a fair number of Agile training providers out there: are they supposed to be affiliated to some kind of alliance or institute, or can anyone call themselves an Agile coach?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: I have reviewed questions already asked on this site about the value of PMP and Scrum Master certifications, my questions above are about Agile specifically.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Regarding Scrum&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the Scrum Alliance (www.scrumalliance.org) the sole official body governing Scrum training and certifications such as CSM, CSPO and CSP (is it to Scrum what PMI is to PMBOK/PMP)? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do companies and consultants providing Scrum training need to be registered education providers, particularly with regards to Scrum certification preparation courses?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastEditorUserId="1722" LastEditDate="2011-09-04T20:44:34.897" LastActivityDate="2020-07-10T11:38:34.680" Title="Are Agile and Scrum proprietary names and methods, and who is entitled to sell them (train &amp; certify)?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;certification&gt;&lt;training&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3322" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-04T19:07:13.517" Score="5" ViewCount="429" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, the question is the title. Are there any active channels for discussion about PM? i'm currently hanging on irc.freenode.net and it would be great to have a place to ask questions live.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1894" LastActivityDate="2011-09-04T20:17:06.763" Title="Is there an active IRC channel dedicated to project management?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3322" CreationDate="2011-09-04T20:17:06.763" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This channel is for people involved in building project management software for the community:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;#PMS ← Project Management Software Channel where pms activity is published in real time&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see many channels targeting Project Management in general; however, this page does offer some tips on how to find IRC channels that you may be interested in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rbose.org/wiki/IRC/Channels&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IRC Channels&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-09-04T20:17:06.763" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10" CreationDate="2011-09-04T20:32:03.940" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is advisable to have a good time tracker for your group to be more productive and organize. I suggest you look for a time tracker that tracks your worker's hours real time. You can &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timedoctor.com/biz3.0/why-100k-developers-are-dead/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;try reading about time doctor&lt;/a&gt;, this is a more enhanced time tracker. It tracks your employees' hours real time plus it also provides task management so that you will know what task are worked on a specific time. In doing so, this could provide you a more efficient and productive team members that can increase the company's outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2071" LastActivityDate="2011-09-04T20:32:03.940" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3321" CreationDate="2011-09-04T22:14:41.230" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Agile&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone can call themselves an agile coach.&#xA;No idea how the courses out there compare, which is best probably depends on your objectives.  I've never seen a company require (or even list as a nice to have) any agile (rather than scrum specific) qualification.  They might be worth doing to learn but I doubt they'd have much impact on your resume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only Scrum Alliance Certified Scrum Trainers (CST) can run the Scrum Alliance Certified Scrum xxx courses (CSM, CSPO etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't believe there is anything stopping anyone else offering scrum training, provided they don't brand it as CSM etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g.  scrum.org offers Professional Scrum xxx course  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrum.org/scrummaster/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scrum.org/scrummaster/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to be a registered education provider to offer training (in the UK at least).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastEditorUserId="1185" LastEditDate="2011-09-04T23:58:27.813" LastActivityDate="2011-09-04T23:58:27.813" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3321" CreationDate="2011-09-04T22:52:09.000" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't tell whether you're looking to train others yourself or looking for training, so I'll answer both ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Agile&amp;quot; is simply a word that the manifesto authors chose. Anyone can call themselves &amp;quot;Agile&amp;quot;, and anyone can be an Agile Coach. However, coaching requires a different set of skills to merely being an Agile expert - think Life Coaching skills, NLP (the bits that work), also Systems Thinking, and probably more that I'm still missing. There are certificates you can get in various coaching skills. I survive as an independent coach without any formal certification, so it's not essential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're looking to become an Agile coach yourself, the best way to get involved is to meet other coaches. You could try Agile conferences, local events, etc. - there's more work out there than we can handle, so we tend to be more supportive than competitive. You'll also find us willing to pass on good books, training tips, etc., and help you find good coaches in your area. The Agile Alliance doesn't offer any formal training itself (AFAIK), but is a &amp;quot;community home&amp;quot; where you can find trainers and events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen companies require CSM certification. This is only a 2-day course, so if you've got reasonable experience in a genuinely Agile team you may be able to persuade the company to take you on anyway. I prefer teams with experienced Agilists to those who've just been on a course - it's never quite as simple in real life! CSMs are qualified to act as Scrum Masters. This is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the same as coaching or training a team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're looking for a reasonable training provider, try asking them how they apply Agile principles &lt;em&gt;in their own work and practice&lt;/em&gt;. Lots of training providers are capable of talking the talk. Fewer actually adhere to the principles they espouse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding Scrum certification - in theory, anyone can teach this. However, there's quite a lot of difference between Scrum and other Agile methodologies, so if someone hasn't been formally trained, they probably aren't teaching pure Scrum. This may not be entirely a bad thing, as Scrum relies on a particular context that can be hard to achieve (everyone co-located, cross-functional team, engaged product owner who understands all stakeholders' needs, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://groups.yahoo.com/group/scrumdevelopment/message/38213?threaded=1&amp;amp;p=20&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Scrum Alliance have been known to throw their weight on occasion&lt;/a&gt;, so I'd look for legal advice before trying to set anything up in this space. Other Agile / Lean coaches may offer a mix of different methodologies, including XP, Kanban, DSDM, Crystal Clear, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum.org and the Scrum Alliance both offer Scrum training. The Scrum Alliance has the CSM / CSP / CST certifications that you're probably most familiar with. Scrum.org has &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/about&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;splintered off recently from the Scrum Alliance&lt;/a&gt;, so much of the material is likely to be the same, but named &amp;quot;Professional&amp;quot; instead of &amp;quot;Certified&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many in the Agile community are wary of certification. It's no substitute for experience. The PMI certification requires experience rather than just attendance on a course, so it's likely to be more valued and valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-10T11:38:34.680" LastActivityDate="2020-07-10T11:38:34.680" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3327" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3330" CreationDate="2011-09-04T23:09:24.820" Score="4" ViewCount="791" Body="&lt;p&gt;Now that I'm working at higher levels within companies, I come across different groups and people with high-level responsibilities - bodies responsible for funding decisions, governance, CEOs, CIOs, Heads of IT, programme managers, department heads, etc. I've got a vague picture of a pyramidal hierarchy in my head, but some of these groups don't seem to fit exactly into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any information out there on how large companies are traditionally structured? I'd like to be better able to spot when a company is structured differently to the norm, particularly as relates to Lean / Agile transformations, so any information about common variations would also be useful. I'm also particularly interested in the lifecycle of software projects - not just in the development space, but as relates to funding decisions, go-live decisions, etc., and the different groups responsible for those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-09-07T10:33:22.363" Title="Any information on traditional company structures and variations?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;lean&gt;&lt;enterprise&gt;&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3327" CreationDate="2011-09-05T00:03:19.640" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is actually a right or wrong answer as to how large companies are structured. The short answer is: It depends on the company culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take Apple, for instance. Steve Jobs was involved in every decision at every level and is at the center of the hierarchy. If you look about halfway down &lt;a href=&quot;http://a2mac.org/2011/05/fortune-publishes-the-unknown-facts-about-apple/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; you will see that the hierarchy at Apple was organized so that each person is only a few levels from Steve Jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HSzWb.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Apple Hierarchy Before Steve jobs left&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At Google, engineering projects are managed more strategically. For instance, when I went to Google IO this year, I really got the impression that the 13 engineers and product team members at the App Engine Fireside Chat had a large degree of decision making authority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Infrastructure/Top-20-Percent-Projects-at-Google/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Top 20 Percent Projects at Google&lt;/a&gt;, Gmail and Google Talk are two major successes that came from a less traditional hierarchical structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, I've never worked at two places where the hierarchy was the same. There was always some difference whether it be at the higher executive levels or all throughout the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-09-05T00:03:19.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3327" CreationDate="2011-09-05T06:11:59.813" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most organisations have both formal and informal hierarchies, where the formal one is the one that is shown on the org chart / structure chart, and the informal one represents the influence that individuals have. Don't try to reconcile the two - it can seldom be done. I worked in one small company where a trainee was the son of a friend of the managing director, and was pulled into all sorts of strategic projects where he had influence way above his formal position. And it happens in large companies too!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is to try to understand the informal structure, and get close to the key decision-makers wherever they are in the organisation. They will know the buttons to push and levers to pull to get decisions that they want. It's called office politics, and you have to be very good to play the game properly (and it can be very dangerous if you get it wrong!). I am &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; suggesting that you will get support for poor decisions, and nor should you, but you may be able to find ways to fast-track good decisions within whatever governance structure the organisation has adopted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-09-05T06:11:59.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3327" CreationDate="2011-09-05T13:35:30.090" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look into Functional, Matrix and Projectized organizational structures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PMBOK Guide has a good description of the three (and permutations/blends of them) in Chapter 2.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-09-05T13:35:30.090" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3327" CreationDate="2011-09-05T16:51:58.240" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The field of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_behavior&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;organizational behavior&lt;/a&gt; includes (among many other things) how people within an organization structure themselves and how that influences behaviors and attitudes. It also encompasses the scientific study of human resources and management. It sounds like what you are most interested in is the concepts of organization structure and organizational dynamics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I only took a single organizational behavior course, and it was a survey. I can't recommend any single books on these topics, but hopefully knowing the name of some academic fields of study might point you in the right direction of finding books, magazines, journals, or websites that have more about what you're looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2011-09-05T16:51:58.240" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3332" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-05T20:51:20.453" Score="12" ViewCount="26765" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently to our group joined a new member. We usually plan a team meeting to introduce ourselves. In the round we tell a little bit about our position in the team, what we do and what we love. But that is really boring at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any methods to make it more interactive and vivid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1701" LastActivityDate="2015-08-03T14:55:23.907" Title="Creative way to introduce new team member" Tags="&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3332" CreationDate="2011-09-05T21:28:08.913" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you really need anything more that what you have now?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I was a new member, I wouldn't want anything more than being introduced to the team quickly, then jumping into work. I was hired to work on project(s) and support the goals of the team and organization, not to be your friend - I don't need long, drawn out or gimmicky &quot;fun&quot; or &quot;vivid&quot; introductions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the cost associated with this special &quot;meeting&quot;. Adding special introduction events will take the entire team (and perhaps others, depending on who you invite) out of their work. When the team isn't working, they aren't contributing any effort to the completion of the project, yet you have to pay them for their time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other alternatives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give the new hire a brief (~30 minute) tour of the office, led by the project manager or supervisor. Introduce them to not only the team, but also other people of interest. Perhaps the IT staff who support your team, the front desk/security staff, the administrative and support staff that works with your team, and so on. Make sure these people know ahead of time, so they can tell you if they will be busy or unavailable. Make it fairly quick, though - you don't want to keep them away from their work for too long (time is money).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team could have lunch together, either in the office cafeteria or at a restaurant. I'm sure most people on the team take a lunch break, so why not make it a constructive, team-building activity? As long as it's kept professional, it would be a good experience to let everyone get to know each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2011-09-06T12:39:23.407" LastActivityDate="2011-09-06T12:39:23.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3332" CreationDate="2011-09-06T07:28:41.677" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;To introduce a new team member, I wouldn't especially set up a meeting to do that: as you say, it gets tedious for everyone and as @Thomas rightly points out it has a cost to it. A good introduction is important though, and you should aim at making sure the new team member is comfortable and at ease with not only the team but how they will fit in, and that your own team is clear on this new person's role. Some of the things you can do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;take the new person on a quick &quot;&lt;strong&gt;say hi&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; tour so they meet the people they will work with on a regular basis. If you have a small co-located team, they will pretty much know everyone in a matter of hours, if it is a large, spread-out team, they will need a bit more time, but they don't necessarily have to know every single person straight away.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;integrate the new joiner straight away in  normal project activities - use your regular meetings (eg. status meeting) to &lt;strong&gt;briefly introduce&lt;/strong&gt; your new team member. Don't make everyone introduce themselves, your new team member won't remember half of it anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;provide new joiners with a &lt;strong&gt;who's who&lt;/strong&gt;: this can be in the form of a team org chart, a physical board, a slide deck, the project social network page if you have one, etc. Basic information should include people's names and roles and a short one-liner about themselves. Photos help too, particularly if you have a large team or people are not co-located. It's helpful for the new joiner to visualize where they fit in.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;make sure the new person has &lt;strong&gt;appropriate support&lt;/strong&gt; on their first day: they should have the technical set-up (computer, tools, logins, etc.) ready for them, some form of induction pack (HR information, project background information, etc.). Make sure you or someone else is available to go for lunch with them, show them around, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;inform your team&lt;/strong&gt; beforehand of the new arrival: this can be a simple email with the person's name, their role, a little background and what they will do, or a quick verbal announcement. I have seen projects where new people join with the project team having no clue that someone new was coming in, which makes it quite awkward and counter-productive for all parties.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastEditorUserId="2086" LastEditDate="2011-09-07T11:59:14.827" LastActivityDate="2011-09-07T11:59:14.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2499" CreationDate="2011-09-06T16:59:52.860" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A great way to introduce agile &amp;amp; xp methodologies to the &amp;quot;business people&amp;quot; in your organization is to have a workshop and play the &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20180827190557/http://www.xp.be/xpgame.html/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;xp game&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, that each team should have a coach who also doubles as the teams customer. Break out groups of &amp;quot;business / sales / developers&amp;quot; into a common area where  several teams can be created. Have fun with it but make sure you are touching on key principles of your agile adoption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business Value&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Velocity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Priority&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acceptance Criteria / Assumptions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an example of the last game I played with a group of such people. Iteration 1 was folding paper to look like a hat, Iteration 2 was building a plane, Iteration 3 was blowing up balloons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Iteration 1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anything goes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be easy on them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Iteration 2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make it harder or easier given the blank stares you get from iteration 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requirements / acceptance criteria&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Iteration 3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inject stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;High value stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hats&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Must sit on head&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3 folds&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Needs company logo&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Must look like a hat&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Planes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Must look like a plane&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Distance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Non - parabolic trajectory&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stunt plane&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Company logo&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Balloons&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Logo / Size&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Color(s)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Size&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rubber ring&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Something in it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other great ideas can be found here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://tastycupcakes.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://tastycupcakes.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole goal of this exercise to help people outside of your agile teams see the benefits of agile methodologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-16T12:57:41.383" LastActivityDate="2020-07-16T12:57:41.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3336" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3338" CreationDate="2011-09-06T20:40:44.707" Score="2" ViewCount="177" Body="&lt;p&gt;How to always be updated and manage information only useful to me? Don't want to waste time in my life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I mean I don't want to waste my time reading ads and other things which aren't useful to me&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2083" LastActivityDate="2011-09-17T11:14:51.963" Title="How to always be updated and manage information only useful to me? Don't want to waste time in my life" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;career&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3336" CreationDate="2011-09-06T21:30:25.437" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short of employing someone to filter everything for you, or refusing to accept anything that is not explicitly what you asked someone for, I'm not sure there is a way to achieve this. No-one wants to waste time but we all have to make best use of the resources that are available to us. Everything has the potential to be useful or useless, including ads, depending on your attitude toward them. Ads could be a distraction, or they may be a way to learn about what is available in the marketplace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you lose the blinkers and get a large helping of reality. And if that sounds rather blunt, it's because by your definition, I have just &quot;wasted&quot; two minutes of my life answering a question that is not even slightly useful to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-09-06T21:30:25.437" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3336" CreationDate="2011-09-07T06:37:51.183" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your question is very bad phrased, but I will answer the question as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I be updated and informed about latest technology in my field of interest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I think the most important is to start looking around for following items in your field of interest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;blogs of the leaders in that field, (subscribe using rss to skip all adds and commercials)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;podcasts on the topic you desire,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;follow the twitter accounts of the leaders in that field,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;read books (alot of books),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;video's of conferences and talks on Youtube-like channels.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you have gathered a number of interesting resources, you will still get to read things that are not of your interest. But over time, you will see an evolution in the resources you think are good and skip out those that are crap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What resources are the best for you is up to you to find out! &#xA;You have to build a community around you that enables you to gather important and usefull information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what is interesting for you, only you know!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastActivityDate="2011-09-07T06:37:51.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3327" CreationDate="2011-09-07T10:33:22.363" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For anyone else reading this, Richard Durnall just gave me this excellent booklist:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1861978022&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Guide to Organization Design&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0198293755&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Modern Firm: Organizational Design for Performance and Growth&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0470190701&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Age of Heretics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0071462228&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Human Side of Enterprise&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0932633366&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-09-07T10:33:22.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3225" CreationDate="2011-09-07T12:22:21.413" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've been using the Leankit Kanban product that has been suggested by Pawel. Works pretty well, allows hyperlinks to other systems (for example a Sharepoint site). One drawback is that it's externally hosted (I don't think they have an on-site license offer) and that might not be acceptable to your employer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also seen a similar implementation in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/en_UK/software/jira/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jira&lt;/a&gt; where a plugin provided the features you're looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers,&#xA;Wim&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2086" LastActivityDate="2011-09-07T12:22:21.413" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3332" CreationDate="2011-09-07T17:52:24.280" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only thing I would add to what @Angeline has stated is to schedule a team lunch a couple of weeks after the person has started.  This will allow them get started and feel productive before socializing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2011-09-07T17:52:24.280" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3336" CreationDate="2011-09-07T23:09:47.497" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem with a question like this, is that how do you know what's useful or not, unless you've read it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, no one wants to read ads, but beyond that, you're the only one that can decide what's useful, so you just have to set up whatever filtering or information/input you feel comfortable with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-09-07T23:09:47.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3343" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-08T13:11:03.340" Score="5" ViewCount="2599" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm specifically thinking about the relationship between &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_item&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;action items&lt;/a&gt; and various methods of organizing tasks in agile methodologies, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_story&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;user stories&lt;/a&gt;. I think this requires a little bit of a leap, but I don't think it's too off-base.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My understanding of an action item is that it is something that needs to be done. It could be a task to write a document, review a document, implement functionality, write a test case, prepare a presentation, send an email, sign a document, and so on. An action item is also something that can be handled by (and is assigned to) a single individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I understand it, a user story is a requirement in the form of &quot;As a {role}, I want {output} so that {benefit}&quot;. Quite simply, it's a representation task. Usually, user stories are used to capture the functional requirements of a system, and then someone will use this requirement to implement a solution. However, I see nothing in this definition that precludes it from capturing non-functional requirements (&quot;As a user, I want this program to respond to {input X} within 1 second so that I can complete this task within the deadlines.&quot;) I also don't see a reason why stories can't be written for internal tasks as well (&quot;As a project manager, I want a regular status report on the health of this project to determine scheduling, budgeting, and risks.&quot; -&gt; realized through things like daily standups or weekly status meetings).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I came across the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_%28mnemonic%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST mnemonic&lt;/a&gt; when searching about this relationship between action items and user stories. It means that user stories must be independent (self-contained), negotiable (changed up to the time they are added to an iteration), valuable, can be estimated, appropriately sized (4-40 or 8-80 rule?), and testable. I disagree that all stories must be independent (some features or tasks do depend on others existing first) and testable (you can't necessarily &quot;test&quot; a presentation in the development sense, but it can be reviewed and assessed, so it might be close). It seems like with the exception of independent and testable, the same rules should apply to an action item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, the question is: Are &quot;user stories&quot; and &quot;action items&quot; (and any other methods of task identification and tracking) generally interchangable? It seems like a good task is a good task, regardless of how it's presented, and the only significant difference between the two is how they are formatted and presented. Is the only consideration which presentation of tasks bests suits the project and team, and maintaining consistency (in the format used to express tasks) throughout the project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2011-09-08T19:10:37.570" LastActivityDate="2011-09-20T07:32:03.273" Title="How do &quot;action items&quot; relate to various task identification and tracking methods used by agile methodologies?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3344" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-09-08T16:24:37.620" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-09-08T16:24:37.620" LastActivityDate="2011-09-08T16:24:37.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3345" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-09-08T16:24:37.620" Score="0" Body="Questions about time management in the context of Project Management. See also http://productivity.stackexchange.com/ for general time management questions." OwnerUserId="158" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2011-09-08T17:15:07.683" LastActivityDate="2011-09-08T17:15:07.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3343" CreationDate="2011-09-09T01:54:18.307" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitely not interchangeable.  A user story can be looked at as a high level requirement of sorts.  The user story can be used to estimate a relative level of complexity...however, real work has to be done on this story...e.g, tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance you could break a single user story into multiple tasks, which would give you the level of granularity you'd need to assign time estimates to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!  If not, I can go into a lot more detail =)  Check out slide 30: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/system/presentation/file/85/Cohn_EstimatingAndPlanning.pdf?1267636342&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/system/presentation/file/85/Cohn_EstimatingAndPlanning.pdf?1267636342&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will say one thing, I guess if you break up the user story to the smallest actionable piece, you would then be using story and task interchangeable.  I just tend to think of a story as a group of tasks (e.g, ill create the tasks once it gets prioritized and ready to enter the sprint backlog)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="913" LastEditorUserId="913" LastEditDate="2011-09-09T02:02:24.663" LastActivityDate="2011-09-09T02:02:24.663" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3347" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3351" CreationDate="2011-09-09T07:07:19.363" Score="5" ViewCount="1167" Body="&lt;p&gt;A colleague and I had a discussion a few days ago on where a PM in a Prince2 project would be placed when the product delivery is done using Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder what your thoughts are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;who should the PM communication be to, taking into account the different roles in Scrum?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much or in what way should the PM be involved in the product delivery?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastActivityDate="2013-01-27T11:04:18.733" Title="How does a PM in Prince2 fit in the Scrum story?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3347" CreationDate="2011-09-09T11:32:10.523" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is: it depends much on the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you can apply Scrum by the book and you have a client willing to undertake their role and a team is somewhat experienced with Scrum&lt;/strong&gt; there may be a little place for PM as it is understood in Prince2. I consider there is a Product Owner on client's side who takes part in planning sessions and demoing the app, is a go-to person whenever the team has any doubts regarding stories etc. I also consider that the team deals with the work rather well. In such environment PM role is split among all the team members and the client so PM themselves don't suit the picture well. It is however pretty rare situation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If the client doesn't want to change the way they work and expect the project to be delivered &quot;the good old way&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; you can still organize production according to Scrum but you will have gaps everywhere when you expect direct engagement of the customer, the biggest one being Product Owner role. In such situation PM is the best candidate to play as a sort of bridge and/or translator of both worlds: agile on vendor's side and formalized on client's side. Whenever the team needs an input from PO they ask PM who is mimicking this role and they get all the answers from the customer like typically PM would do. In this case there is probably also an expectation from the client to have a specific set of formal requirements fulfilled (like documentations, project plans etc.) which again is a common task addressed to PMs. Note: in this case I pretty much assume teams is fairly familiar with Scrum and they know how they are expected to work and organize their process.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The last case is when the teams struggles with Scrum.&lt;/strong&gt; Then it might be worth considering having PM as a Scrum Master. It isn't a sure shot idea though. I would carefully consider whether PM believes in success of the method, knows it and is able to help the team in a way that SM is supposed to work, meaning not telling the team how exactly they should work but more facilitating team's discussions in order to remind them principles. Because of the specifics of PM role it might be a good idea as PM rarely has a direct power over the team. However I find it also risky as it is often tempting for former PMs just to tell people what to do and not just advise them. In this case communication would happen pretty much the same as in a typical scenario with SM.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-09-09T11:32:10.523" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3343" CreationDate="2011-09-09T15:41:11.350" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Aaron, that stories and tasks should not be used interchangeably. However, I do have a few comments: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The invest mnemonic is essentially a check list to run down while writing stories. Good stories are ones that generally meet all of the criteria within that check list. For example, you should strive to have stories that are independent (while being aware that sometimes it just is not possible). Just because a story depends on another &quot;to be able to release the product&quot; doesn't mean that the story can't be developed and tested separately. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wish to read a little more in depth about INVESTing in good stories, Kelly Waters has a nice series here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allaboutagile.com/invest-in-good-user-stories/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.allaboutagile.com/invest-in-good-user-stories/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't forget about story Acceptance Criteria. Your example of a task imo is actually acceptance criteria:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user, I want this program to respond to {input X} within 1 second&#xA;  so that I can complete this task within the deadlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acceptance criteria can be part of a single story and the story must meet this criteria to be considered done. You can also have such criteria at the project level in the form of a teams definition of done. All teams should have some form of a definition of done that each story should meet before it can be called done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastActivityDate="2011-09-09T15:41:11.350" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3347" CreationDate="2011-09-09T16:43:51.100" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer may depend on the nature of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the project is purely around delivery and technical implementation of a software product, then perhaps there is no place for a PM in the role that would be recognised within Prince 2 - although that is arguable, as I suspect that there are few projects that exist to deliver only software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, as may be more likely, the project encompasses substantial business change, procurement and implementation of hardware and software infrastructure, development and delivery of end-user training, financial management, project and programme reporting, risk management, and benefit realisation, alongside the software development, then I do believe that the PM has an important role. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM should not be the Scrum Master, in my opinion, nor should he be the Product Owner. The PM in Prince 2 can be quite divorced from the technical delivery. The role should focus on ensuring that the delivery teams know what they are expected to deliver, then keeping on top of risks, benefit planning and realisation, quality, and progress. In such a role, the PM may be managing several small projects simultaneously, or one large project that needs a high level of coordination and reporting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question asks about communication to and from the PM: this should probably be with the Product Owner, who in Prince 2 terms could probably be considered as a Team Manager. You also ask about the level of involvement that the PM should have in day-to-day delivery: I believe this should be very limited indeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-09-09T16:43:51.100" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3343" CreationDate="2011-09-12T00:37:58.077" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;,I find most non functional requirements are best represented by acceptance criteria (in the case of something that is a 1 hit does or doesn't happen).  As Jesse points out, your example is a good fit for this.  More long term NFRs (e.g. &quot;page weight must be below x&quot; or &quot;app complies with security standards&quot;) should be considered part of your definition of done which should be checked whenever a story is completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for sub tasks for stories; in my experience, most tasks can be re-written, or the story they come from can be broken down differently to express them as perfectly good stories.  Can be tricky on back end stuff though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2011-09-12T00:37:58.077" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3353" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-12T06:07:33.020" Score="3" ViewCount="4189" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do I change the milestone sign in the gantt chart to be larger?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2112" LastEditorUserId="2876" LastEditDate="2012-09-30T07:49:47.770" LastActivityDate="2015-05-21T12:05:28.537" Title="How can I set the milestone size in ms-project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3353" CreationDate="2011-09-12T06:22:26.933" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following works in MS Project 2003 (I know it's an old version, don't blame me, blame the company :-) )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right click on the milestone icon and click 'format bar'&#xA;You get a popup screen in which you can select the icon you want to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think it possible to make it bigger though, only change color, shape or type...&#xA;Personally, I don't think it makes any sense to make it bigger, as it is the whole Gantt chart you zoom in/out... not a specific symbol...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps in later versions of MS Project, this is possible...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastEditorUserId="591" LastEditDate="2011-09-12T06:31:27.567" LastActivityDate="2011-09-12T06:31:27.567" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3355" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3357" CreationDate="2011-09-12T10:31:30.650" Score="6" ViewCount="618" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been &quot;promoted&quot; from a software developer position to a project management role in a solo little project (about 200h). All the development work will be done by me, and also I'll talk to the client, document the project, make the estimates, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read the that the worst mistake new PM make is they don't manage project risks. The problem is that I don't know where start. How to detect the risks? What I have to do with them? Any example?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2114" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-09-12T12:54:43.170" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T06:56:47.063" Title="How to manage risks in a solo project?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3355" CreationDate="2011-09-12T12:47:45.907" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What questions do you or others have that are still not answered?  What assumptions have you or others have made that have not yet been tested?  What can be done better?  Where you have a prediction, what is not 100% certain?  What do the post mortems indicate on previously completed, similar projects?  What is keeping you up at night?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, listen carefully to your stakeholders.  They will not say, we have these risks.  They will clearly tell you what they are afraid of and what the threats are in very roundabout ways, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Risk management is a part of everything you do. Every action you take, every problem raised, every decision made...risk.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-09-12T12:47:45.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3355" CreationDate="2011-09-12T13:22:18.290" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Risk management in solo project will be pretty different than risk management in typical projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simplifying things a bit a risk is something which can possibly go wrong, although you can't be 100% sure about that. Odds of materializing a risk can be as high as almost certain or very, very low and of course everything between those two. The impact of the risk will also vary meaning that we sometimes are willing just to accept that a specific risk become real and do nothing about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway typically we identify risks, then we &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/17/how-do-you-measure-risk&quot;&gt;assess them&lt;/a&gt; so as to learn which risks have the highest negative impact and then we try to mitigate those few which are biggest threats for the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the specific of a solo project:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Identifying risks.&lt;/strong&gt; Typically we invest much effort to make risk identification a collective activity, meaning we want to learn what everyone in the team considers a risk. Usually PM won't be aware of low-level technical risks until they're called by developers and developers rarely care about organizational risks. In a solo project it should be much easier as you're one and only project team members so join knowledge of the whole team is basically your knowledge. Another nice thing is that you should be aware of different perspectives of a project (technical, organizational, business, etc.) which will make it easier to point risks which are on the border of two different areas, e.g. client doesn't understand the way we work which can affect the project as we need their input in planning sessions during every iteration. Basically you should try to list any potentially negative situations, well the reasonable ones at least, which can affect your project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Assessing risks.&lt;/strong&gt; Again, risk assessment should be easier in a solo project as basically all the knowledge regarding how probable it is for the risk to materialize or how much the project will be hurt if that happens should eventually be in your head. I say eventually as correct assessment may require some inquiries from you to verify goals of stakeholders etc. There is also a chance (a risk I should say) that being the only person in the team you will undervalue or overvalue specific risks and you will have no one to challenge you. On the other hand you will definitely avoid futile discussions over risks' impact as it would be just your arbitrary decision. Remember to assess risks on regular basis.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mitigating risks.&lt;/strong&gt; This is basically what we do to avoid risks or reduce their negative impact once they materialize. And this part actually doesn't differ that much.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also read my old article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2006/08/msf-risk-management-basics.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;basics of risk management&lt;/a&gt; which can be helpful&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-09-12T13:22:18.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3355" CreationDate="2011-09-12T14:04:11.587" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend talking to some of your Development and PM peers that had simillar projects, be this by the delivery model or by technology and see their lessons learned or their risk logs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="634" LastActivityDate="2011-09-12T14:04:11.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3359" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-12T15:15:12.220" Score="5" ViewCount="9064" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are project management offices the exception or the rule in most organisations? Does every organisation need one? Do YOU see value in having one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2117" LastActivityDate="2011-09-13T05:09:52.880" Title="What are some of the pros and cons of having a Project Management Office?" Tags="&lt;organizational-structure&gt;&lt;pmo&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3359" CreationDate="2011-09-12T18:54:00.117" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are project management offices the exception or the rule in most organisations? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMOs are becoming more frequent, and particularly as you look at large organizations, they are definitely no longer an exception (I'd say they are becoming more of a norm than a rule though). They still tend to exist mostly within IT departments (IT being heavily project-driven), although some industries see other business functions starting to implement PMOs too (e.g. organizations doing R&amp;amp;D). PMOs typically sit at the corporate level, with project management oversight across the whole organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does every organisation need one? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on the organization. Basically the more projectized the organization, the more sense it makes. However the size of the organization also matters: you have to reach a certain scale (in terms of number and size of projects, project resources and so on) to justify the cost of a PMO. In smaller organizations, PMO processes (like providing a standard method for delivering projects, having common templates or reporting across projects) can be done by existing teams without having to create a special unit called &quot;PMO&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do YOU see value in having one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is value when the pros outweigh the cons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The main con of having a PMO is that it costs money (staff, tools, organizational changes, etc.). Other cons that are often cited are a heavy administrative focus, a lack of agility and flexibility that may be perceived as slowing down projects, or a lack of practical support for project teams - but these are consequences of an inefficient PMO.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The biggest pro of having a PMO is that it can save money by creating process efficiencies (time and effort savings) across projects (e.g. by standardizing process, methods and tools to deliver projects; optimizing project resources utilization; providing support and training to project teams). There is also a strategic dimension which is harder to measure, but one of the key benefits is to be able to support business goals (e.g. by helping to select the right projects, providing a consolidated big picture that supports decision-making, aligning project portfolio management with financial objectives). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastActivityDate="2011-09-12T18:54:00.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3359" CreationDate="2011-09-13T05:09:52.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree withsngeline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are two points I think I can add:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cons: it waste a lot time for the &quot;working people&quot; - who usually cant see the benefit of the pmo. They consider it to be the big brother that monitors every break they take and telling the CEO every &quot;secret&quot; they have. So it cost the time of many people who are busy filling reports project plan instead of working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It takes really good pmo and a considerable time to make value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having this said. Planing is time and money savers and quality improving. With the exception of small / simple project - by the time you'll finish planing you will run out of budget and you will not know much more than you did without the pmo&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a pmo and I don't want to know if at the end of the day I was profitable to the company or not because this is the one employee In the company I don't want to layoff but if you need a rule of thumb - see how many deadline you miss and how close your budget estimation to the actual cost. If you are on time and on budget you dont need a pmo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2112" LastActivityDate="2011-09-13T05:09:52.880" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3355" CreationDate="2011-09-13T15:41:07.850" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start by making a list of everything that could go wrong with the project in terms of missing deadlines, being more expensive and not being able to deliver the desired end-product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then decide how bad it would be if each of those risks happened and what is the chance of them happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those that have a high chance of happening and a big impact, plan, in advance, how you would address that risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then keep an eye out for those risks happening.  Make sure to report to your stakeholders when a risk has about a 50% chance or greater of happening. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is the advance planning for risk occurrences that makes the biggest difference in risk management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-09-13T15:41:07.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3363" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-13T17:48:02.243" Score="1" ViewCount="156" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to seek your advice in negotiating a salary for PM position. Below are some of the roles and responsibilities of the position&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Directs and coordinates activities of an assigned project to ensure that budget,&#xA;goals or objectives of the project are accomplished within the prescribed time frame.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Confers with project staff to describe the scope of the project, outline workplan and to assign duties and responsibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Manages and tracks activities of project to ensure project deliverables are on schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assists the team to implement and improve project management methodology.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I remember when negotiating? What is the best thing to do to get a win-win situation both parties?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="614" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-10-05T05:04:33.570" LastActivityDate="2014-10-05T05:04:33.570" Title="To get the best offer both employer and employee, what is the best approach in negotiating a salary for PM position?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3364" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-13T17:53:42.327" Score="3" ViewCount="191" Body="&lt;p&gt;In budgeting cost of the overall project, what should the PM remember? What are the do's &amp;amp; don't s when dealing with the budget of the project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="614" LastActivityDate="2012-09-06T12:14:32.393" Title="What lessons in budgeting a project a PM should remember?" Tags="&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-09-07T00:49:51.047" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3355" CreationDate="2011-09-13T18:10:06.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the &quot;risk&quot; that I have found occurring is not stepping back to take an overall view of the project, especially when the project is in full swing and you deep in its execution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know any other way around this other than strict self-discipline in doing a weekly report and status report. The status report must be as close to the facts as possible. I am saying this as it is difficult to do. It is much easier to assess it via third hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="480" LastEditorUserId="480" LastEditDate="2011-09-14T06:56:47.063" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T06:56:47.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="92" CreationDate="2011-09-13T18:10:42.647" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As many have answered the question from their point of view I am not going to repeat them but add one more that I thing is prevalent widely in IT. &lt;strong&gt;Micro management.&lt;/strong&gt; I know the PM is new or it may be his/her first project, and they try to constantly ping the team for status, being opinionated on every task the team members complete and over motivating the employees. They too need their space and time to think. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2121" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-09-30T16:08:48.557" LastActivityDate="2015-09-30T16:08:48.557" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-09-13T18:10:42.647" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3367" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-13T19:14:43.957" Score="7" ViewCount="436" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the right approach in pushing back a specific request to the customer? The request might feature a complexity to the project in the long term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="614" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2012-07-19T06:07:34.897" LastActivityDate="2012-07-19T06:07:34.897" Title="What is the best approach in saying  &quot;No&quot; or pushing back to the customer for a certain request?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;customer&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3367" CreationDate="2011-09-13T19:47:00.067" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it all depends on the approach you are taking.  I prefer to track everything on a backlog and have the product owner prioritize these features.  In that aspect, you really aren't telling him no, you are just capturing the data and allow them to prioritize the importance of this particular item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also think due diligence is needed to understand that &quot;complexity&quot; as you scope it out and do your complexity estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="913" LastActivityDate="2011-09-13T19:47:00.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3367" CreationDate="2011-09-13T19:58:47.023" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way I've found to address scope creep like this is to first simply state that X is outside of the current scope of the project and that if it can be accomodated it can/will impact cost, schedule, risk etc. Usually this raises red flags for them and they'll back off. If not, get a clear idea of what the customer wants and go back to your team for a feasibility and impact assessment, then present these back to the customer. It is then up to the customer to decide if the change adds value for money, but at least everyone is going in with their eyes open.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2011-09-13T19:58:47.023" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3363" CreationDate="2011-09-13T19:59:57.863" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Consider the overall package, not just the salary&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The salary is the basic compensation you get, but there are usually other things that top it up (depending on where you work and your employer), so look at the overall package which can include bonus scheme, pension plan, medical insurance, travel expenses, company car, tax benefits, vacations, shares schemes, memberships, etc. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sometimes it can be worth compromising a little on the base salary if benefits are great. They are also negotiating point (for example if the employer is set on the base salary, you can ask if the would be willing to negotiate on benefits, like a higher % bonus.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be clear about what you want and be prepared to say it (and back it up)&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be clear about the kind of salary you would be happy with for the job and your limits; you are going to have financial boundaries (you decide the minimum you need) but also consider how much you want the job  and why: even if the salary offered is lower than expected, you should still look at the big picture of how this fits in your life. This will help your work out what you are prepared to compromise on and how much.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do as much research as you can to find out the typical compensations for a similar job in a similar location as this will give you a reference point to justify your expectations. You can look at other job adverts, get in touch with recruitment agencies dealing with PMs, or leverage your local PM network.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When asked about how much you want, say a range (between X &amp;amp; Y) rather than an amount, as this will give you more room to maneuver and also shows that you are prepared and opened to discuss.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be ready to explain your rationale for it (e.g. I feel this is a fair salary for the type of responsibilities the job entails, for my experience and qualifications, etc.). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you can though, try to get them to tell you first what they are offering; in any negotiations it's much easier for the party who goes in &quot;second&quot;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Engage in a positive and constructive discussion&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You talk about win-win, and it's a good thing to actually say that at the beginning of the discussion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stay away from &quot;hard&quot; negotiations techniques, don't go into bargaining, and don't use aggressive or confrontational language.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't push your prospective employer into a corner (with statements like &quot;it's this or nothing&quot;, or &quot;I have other options&quot;). If you happen to have another job offer from someone else, be careful how you use it - I would only bring it up as a last resort and in a non-threatening way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clarify with the employer the next steps. Ideally you can come to an agreement there and then, but if not, you should be clear on what happens next.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastActivityDate="2011-09-13T19:59:57.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3363" CreationDate="2011-09-13T22:36:10.903" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Negotiating salary is like negotiating anything else.  You are better off if you have relevant and timely research and data, e.g., comparable salaries for similar PM jobs in that area at this time.  And, establish alternatives; know your BATNA, your best alternative to a negotiated agreement.  If you are out of work and have no other alternatives, getting your best salary should not be your primary goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-09-13T22:36:10.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3367" CreationDate="2011-09-13T22:47:25.363" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wait, what?  Why would you say no?  If my customer had a request, I'd gladly sell him a solution.  I'd break his request down into requirements, develop a WBS around it, estimate and price it, incorporate it into the original WBS, update my schedule and rebaseline, and get to work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-09-13T22:47:25.363" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3367" CreationDate="2011-09-14T00:24:49.057" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tell them it increases the long-term, lifecycle cost of the software. The cost may come in the form of higher support, more bug fixes or making it more costly to maintain and build off of in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T00:24:49.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3364" CreationDate="2011-09-14T00:28:59.877" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make sure the budget covers 100% of the scope and includes risk contingency and management contingencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T00:28:59.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3367" CreationDate="2011-09-14T01:08:36.723" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't take this the wrong way but if you're pushing back a request because it &quot;might feature a complexity to the project in the long term&quot; then you're pushing back for the wrong reason. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, I was your customer and found out that feature x &quot;couldn't be accomplished because it might have caused complexity down the road&quot;, I would be telling you to take a hike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Build what you need, not what you think you need:&lt;/strong&gt; As David, pointed out break the feature down into requirements / stories / tasks etc... and get an estimate on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastEditorUserId="1885" LastEditDate="2011-09-14T01:37:16.853" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T01:37:16.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3376" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-14T05:38:46.250" Score="11" ViewCount="3226" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know this is likely to fail almost by definition, but I don't really have an suitable alternative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently we are working almost exactly the opposite way, with a 8 items work plan, but we are losing control over the work to be performed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have the material to come up with such plan ( we have spent 2 weeks or so looking at the requirements and we have so far a 300+ list of activities to perform ) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice would be appreciated&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2125" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2012-07-19T06:08:45.113" LastActivityDate="2012-07-19T06:08:45.113" Title="My customer is pushing me very hard to come up with a fully detailed fine grained almost by hour work plan" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;customer&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3364" CreationDate="2011-09-14T06:13:37.290" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be realistic. Don't be tempted to trim costs to make them meet some arbitrary target figure or to help with the benefits case: you cannot guarantee to negotiate discounts or avoid elements of expenditure. But equally, don't pad out the costs with artificially inflated numbers to make yourself look good when you come in under budget. Better to have a solid baseline with a declared contingency for risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And once the budget has been set and agreed, monitor the spend, report on it, and if necessary, make a case for changes, allowing plenty time to get through whatever governance processes are in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, keep a small reserve to pay for a party when the project delivers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T06:13:37.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3376" CreationDate="2011-09-14T06:49:07.307" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It seems the root issue here is lack of trust between client and your company.&lt;/strong&gt; They don't trust you will deliver the solution, whatever it is, according to a general roadmap you have. I assume that you have one. What more they don't trust you know what you do in short term. Basing on what you wrote (&lt;em&gt;&quot;we are losing control over the work to be performed&quot;&lt;/em&gt;) it doesn't happen without a reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway it this situation you can choose a couple of solutions, which with a bit of luck may end up in almost the same place:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Try to convince the client to more agile approach.&lt;/strong&gt; I don't mean here &lt;em&gt;&quot;we know only 8 next work items which will be done&quot;&lt;/em&gt; but rather setting up a general roadmap along with priorities, e.g. we aim to deliver the app on such and such date, general functions will be this, this and that, we have these other milestones and so on. Then you need some kind of proof to show the client you know what you do, meaning you plan your iterations or just a shortlist of the next n most important features but you can show how it brings you toward high-level goals stated in the roadmap. In other words you need product management or product ownership role on your side. Someone who would verify whether short-term tasks are aligned with long-term goals. If you're lucky you should end up with slight changes in the way you build software, yet effects of changes around (long term plan, product ownership) can be pretty significant.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Try to adjust to client's wish but do so in possibly most reasonable way.&lt;/strong&gt; It is impossible to deliver reliable project plan going down to granularity of hours. Well, it is possible to build such plan but it won't survive the contact with the reality. If the client insist they want a fine-grained plan prepare the best possible, yet reasonable, plan you can. It probably means it will be fine-grained at the beginning and pretty coarse-grained at the end. However it still gives the client a pretty good tool to track your progress. I mean we can perfectly measure one-day slip when we think about the next week but if we discuss the next year? Come on, there are thousands of things which will change and the best thing we can do is to regularly fill the plan with more details as we go.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said both ways can end up in the same place. &lt;strong&gt;In both situations it is equally crucial to show the client that you are able to deliver what you plan as this is the only thing which will build trust to you and your software development and project management methods.&lt;/strong&gt; If you fail to keep your word, don't be surprised the client will try to formalize plans as much as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course you can end up with the client insisting they still want to have the plan done their way. Then you basically have two choices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do what they want, knowing it possibly is a piece of crap, and then live with it. It probably means rugged cooperation with the client from now on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Walk away, stating that you don't want to work under such conditions. Contrary to many others I am well aware that this option might actually be impossible to execute, although I know companies which do that.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T06:49:07.307" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3364" CreationDate="2011-09-14T07:54:16.190" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Get your budget formally approved and signed-off, and define the budget change management process (know where to go and how when you need additional budget).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T07:54:16.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3225" CreationDate="2011-09-14T12:15:01.527" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Trello is a new product anounced today, but it looks like it matches your requirements: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.trello.com/launch/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://blog.trello.com/launch/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2127" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T12:15:01.527" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3364" CreationDate="2011-09-14T14:36:09.683" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do:  An estimated budget and a target budget are two different things.  When estimating, you should conduct it in a non deterministic way; that is, you need to estimate the probabilistic distribution of the budget--or time--the pessimistic, optimistic, and most likely values.  A &quot;realistic&quot; budget is any value under that curve, even at the 1 percentile, just not very likely.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The target estimate is the single-point value you choose under that probabilistic distribution, against which you will establish your performance measurement baseline.  Start around to 50th to 60th percentile and go fatter if you have a lot of uncertainty or go leaner if the project is run-of-the-mill in nature.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Establish your budget against a baselined product/deliverable-oriented WBS so that it is crystal clear that your target budget is associated with that WBS and nothing more.  Any new introduction of scope will constitute a change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't:  think you are going to hit your target with a zero variance.  If you have a zero variance, either you were extremely lucky and that performance will never ever happen again in your lifetime or you cooked the books.  And I'd put my money on the latter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as Mark indicated, fund your reserves.  Where your target falls under the probabilistic curve will give you a clue as to how healthy your reserves need to be.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T14:36:09.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3376" CreationDate="2011-09-14T19:19:21.380" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would think about looking at a backlog of things to.  So, think about big bits of work, their parts and further the work that will be done in the next iteration/unit of time.  You've lost the client, that is obvious, but you can get them back by building trust which you do like this: say you will do something and then do it.  Repeat that process until all the work is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, top of my head, prepare a meeting and invite them to it.  Say that you feel that trust levels are low as per the request for a detailed list.  Tell them you plan to do something about that and explain why the detailed breakdown is silly (you had better do your homework here as your articulation has to be spot on).  Then tell them what you will be doing in the next unit of work, then make sure you do it.  Repeat this process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask this question: do they want to suceed?  If they do, then your job is to coach them through this.  Start that by turning things inside out and leading this.  Don't let this client bully you for everyone's sake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jamie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS - good luck!  Things will clear up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2133" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T19:19:21.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3367" CreationDate="2011-09-14T19:31:19.263" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't be a dick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK, just kidding.  Well, have a good relationship and then just explain.  Articulation, articulation, articulation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why don't you start by telling us about this complexity?  What is it?  Why is it complex?  Will it cost money?  What did you mean by 'might'?  Don't you know?  Had better find out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider this image: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ud.vg/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/squareLawOfSpreadsheets1.gif&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ud.vg/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/squareLawOfSpreadsheets1.gif&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the effect of your 'complex' feature?  Does it lead to exponential costs?  Linear costs?  What are the risks?  I think your story needs to be straight and then you tell them customer and they make the decision.  You cannot, and should not want to, short circuit this process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jamie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2133" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T19:31:19.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3384" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-09-14T20:31:43.957" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-09-14T20:31:43.957" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T20:31:43.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3385" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-09-14T20:31:43.957" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for questions about the recording, management and mitigation of project risk related to budget, schedule etc. " OwnerUserId="158" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2013-01-10T15:43:47.473" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T15:43:47.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3376" CreationDate="2011-09-14T22:29:24.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have indicated you have a 12-week project with essentially three milestones against which to measure.  At the 2nd milestone you would have exhausted roughly 66% of your project before you can make an assessment how you are doing.  Your ability to recover would be seriously compromised!  I am with your customer: you need way more detail than what you are proposing.  I'd take a measurement weekly or semi-weekly for such a short duration, which means you need to break the work down further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hours is probably too much but that might be a reaction to the fuzzy approach you suggested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T22:29:24.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3376" CreationDate="2011-09-15T00:21:45.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like things are getting out of control and the client knows it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have a professional project manager or even a designated project manager to manage the work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-09-15T00:21:45.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2731" CreationDate="2011-09-15T02:13:58.940" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found the best approach is to use small colored icons in a number column: blue/green/yellow/red.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How I set it up&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On an existing number column (e.g. Number1, etc), right-click and choose &quot;Customize Fields&quot; then select the individual field by name. Then, at the bottom of the form, click &quot;Graphical Indicators&quot; and set up ranges for each color icon, then choose the color icon itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I wrote a custom formula (see below) that sets the value of Number1 based on the current date and the Finish date of each task. Then, using that value, I set up the Graphical Indicators to show a blue dot for complete, yellow for in progress, green for future, and red for overdue. Unfortunately, it's a bit of setup, but once it is done, it updates automatically. No macro or coding needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Custom Formula Setup&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paste the following into the Custom Attributes / Formula for any Number field (&lt;em&gt;make sure it's all on one line&lt;/em&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;IIf([% Complete]=100,(ProjDateDiff(now(),[Baseline Finish])/480),IIf([Baseline Finish]&amp;lt;now(),(10000+(ProjDateDiff([Baseline Finish],now())/480)),IIf(([Start]&amp;lt;(ProjDateAdd(now(),7))) And ([Baseline Finish]&amp;gt;(ProjDateSub(now(),7))),(5000+(ProjDateDiff(now(),[Baseline Finish])/480)),IIf(([Baseline Finish]&amp;lt;(ProjDateAdd(now(),7))) And ([Baseline Finish]&amp;gt;now()),(5000+(ProjDateDiff(now(),[Baseline Finish])/480)),IIf(([Start]&amp;lt;now()),(5000+(ProjDateDiff(now(),[Baseline Finish])/480)),(ProjDateDiff(now(),[Start])/480))))))&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Display Setup&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under Tools | Customize | Customize Fields..., set the display to &quot;Graphical Indicators.&quot; Set it to &quot;Nonsummary rows&quot; and add the following tests:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is greater than or equal to -- 10,000 -- image: red circle&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is greater than or equal to -- 5,000 -- image: yellow circle&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is greater than or equal to -- 0 -- image: green circle&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is less than -- 0 -- image: blue circle  [&lt;em&gt;N.B. not shown in screenshot&lt;/em&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5jn8k.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what it looks like in practice. &#xA;Color coding:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Red = late&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blue = done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Empty cell? That task is either a summary task or a task that has not been baselined&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/66jUH.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2137" LastEditorUserId="2137" LastEditDate="2013-01-22T19:07:41.723" LastActivityDate="2013-01-22T19:07:41.723" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3393" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-15T11:13:20.397" Score="4" ViewCount="3236" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to get your opinion on how you think, intuitively, 'lag' on a depency between two tasks works or should work. To make my point I will start with some examples that are no problem, and hopefully when I get to the one that my question is about, it will demonstrate where the disagreement between me and my collegue is :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let say we have two tasks, A and B, and B can only start one week after A is finished:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/b2xOF.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is, I think, not controversial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now a variation: B should start 1 week &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; A will finish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jRWSy.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not controversial either, I think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now a bit more complicated: B should &lt;em&gt;end&lt;/em&gt; at the same time A ends (end-&gt;end relationship).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KL48D.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now we come to the point where I disagree with my collegue. When there is lag between when A ends and B ends, how should the sign of the lag be interpreted? E.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/psG37.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZDIDp.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To explain in words: do you think, intuitively, that the 'direction' (in time) of lag between two tasks depends on the type of relationship (end-&gt;start and start-&gt;start go 'forward' in time, start-&gt;end and end-&gt;end go 'backward') or should a 'positive' lag always go forward in time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(replaced ascii art with screenshots because it doesn't seem to work on IE)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2145" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-09-17T17:18:37.110" LastActivityDate="2012-09-15T16:44:44.387" Title="Interpretation of 'negative lag' between tasks" Tags="&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;dependencies&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3393" CreationDate="2011-09-15T11:40:31.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends how exactly you definite this relationship. I mean technically you can do it both ways. Exactly as in the first two examples you share. In the first one you have &quot;positive&quot; time shift in the second one the shift is &quot;negative.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the last to examples (those in question) it works the same: in the next to last you use &quot;positive&quot; and in the last you use &quot;negative&quot; time shift.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: first define the relation and then the case will be completely clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-09-15T11:40:31.303" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3393" CreationDate="2011-09-15T12:11:41.453" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is how I am interpreting your question.  You need task B to end exactly one week after task A ends.  If this interpretation is correct, then I see no intuitive or direct dependency in the start of these two tasks.  It sounds to me like either task can start whenever; in fact, task B might be able to start before A if you chose to do it that way.  I also, intuitively, do not see a relationship with the end of one task and the start of the next because, again, your example comes across as if these two tasks are not directly related or dependent upon each other.  I am reading the constraint you have is that task B must end one week after task A perhaps because, at the end of that week, something else has to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I'd schedule the two tasks with a start-start relationship with a x days lag in order to baseline task B finishing one week after the end of task A.  I use x days because it depends on the target duration of task B and you did not supply that in your example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; use a finish-start constraint with x days lead and get the same schedule results; however, since you are asking intuitively, start-start seems more appropriate since you will have variances in task A.  In other words, if task A starts to slip, that would delay task B.  If task A starts to come in, then the start of task B will also start to come in.  And since it sounded like you had a must-end, you need task B to start independent of what is occurring in the way of variances for task A.  So if you are slipping in task A, you will still start B at the right time in order to finish at your must finish date.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technically speaking, there is no such thing as a positive lag.  That is a &quot;lead.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  As I am re-looking at your two examples, I now am seeing you have a finish-finish relationship between the two tasks, i.e., there is some constraint in this project where these two tasks have a dependency where it is important these two tasks finish in some type of order.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is the case, the intuitive approach for me would be a finish-finish constraint.  Now, if you want Task B to finish one week BEFORE Task A, it would be a finish-finish + x days LEAD (FF-xdays).  If you want Task B to finish one week AFTER Task A, it would be a finish-finish + x days LAG (FF+xdays).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2011-09-15T12:18:27.870" LastActivityDate="2011-09-15T12:18:27.870" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3376" CreationDate="2011-09-15T13:49:35.467" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've dealt with this situation and I agree with Pawel that that problem is lack of trust. In our case the lack of trust was due both to a failure to deliver in the past and to the client's personal need to feel in control.  Despite our best efforts, there was a lot of tension between the development teams (2) and the client for the duration of the project.   However, we maintained enough communication and respect that the same teams were awarded another contract from the same client.  That was a mixed blessing, but that's another story!  :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has the client seen your list of 300+ activities?  It might be reassuring just to know that you've broken things down into more detail than the 8 items in the current plan.   It may also help to indicate whether each task is low (~1 day), medium (~2-4 days),high (~1-2 wks) or very high effort; again, that shows that you've thought a bit about the details, and it assures both the client and you that all of these activities can be accomplished in the time allotted.  (Or it shows both of you that they can't, in which case the problem is different.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Try offering the client options for how to proceed.&lt;/strong&gt;   All of the options should address the client's concerns in some way, and you should be frank about the benefits and disadvantages of each option.   For example :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We can make a plan that assigns each of those 300 activities to a specified week, and at our weekly meeting report on the ones that were finished.   Advantage:  a full, clear plan from the start.  Disadvantage:  you spend a lot of time making the plan, and a lot more time each week reorganizing the plan to account for unexpected issues that have arisen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We can make a plan that assigns tasks for the next 2-3 weeks, and leave the other tasks all listed, assigning a new week's worth of tasks as we finish each week.  That way the client has a rolling 2-3 week window of plan, and you have more flexibility to organize as you go.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rolling window greater than 2-3 weeks but less that the whole duration of the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may think of other kinds of options that are more appropriate to your situation and to the way your team works, and you may have to adjust as the project proceeds, depending on how long it is.     No matter what your options and decision are, you need to make sure the client has regular reports of progress and a confident, clear explanation for why you fall behind, if you do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1506" LastActivityDate="2011-09-15T13:49:35.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3397" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-09-15T17:58:09.277" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-09-15T17:58:09.277" LastActivityDate="2011-09-15T17:58:09.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3398" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-09-15T17:58:09.277" Score="0" Body="&quot;PRojects IN Controlled Environments 2 (PRINCE2) is a structured project management method endorsed by the UK government as the project management standard for public projects&quot; -Wikipedia" OwnerUserId="158" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2011-09-15T22:33:45.063" LastActivityDate="2011-09-15T22:33:45.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3399" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-09-15T17:58:48.713" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-09-15T17:58:48.713" LastActivityDate="2011-09-15T17:58:48.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3400" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-09-15T17:58:48.713" Score="0" Body="Questions about getting actual certifications (e.g. PMP) rather than how to do the work. If you are asking about a specific certification, use that tag instead. Avoid subjective questions (e.g. will x certification help me?)." OwnerUserId="158" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2015-03-12T11:01:20.410" LastActivityDate="2015-03-12T11:01:20.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3401" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-09-15T18:00:40.007" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Management of a product that will be sold, rather than management of a project or process; what the product should do, rather than how the product does it.  Not synonymous with Project Management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-06-06T01:47:53.130" LastActivityDate="2015-06-06T01:47:53.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3402" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-09-15T18:00:40.007" Score="0" Body="This tag should be used for questions about Product Management roles and responsibilities within a Project Management framework or context. Questions about the Product Management profession unrelated to project management are off-topic for this site." OwnerUserId="158" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-06-06T02:01:16.657" LastActivityDate="2015-06-06T02:01:16.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3364" CreationDate="2011-09-15T18:34:35.160" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make sure your budget includes money/time for project startup (esp. if your programmers haven't worked together before and your company doesn't have standard dev. environment, coding conventions etc) and for meetings.   (You may have a lot of them with the customer even if your team doesn't have long meetings.)     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1506" LastActivityDate="2011-09-15T18:34:35.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3367" CreationDate="2011-09-15T18:35:49.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;David's correct. This is simply Scope &amp;amp; Change Control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the client is asking for changes, well... it's his project. Even if it adds complexity. As long as he pays for it, why wouldn't you do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimate the additional work and costs, present them to the client, and explain all of the impact the change brings (schedule, risk, complexity, etc.). Then let them decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-09-15T18:35:49.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3364" CreationDate="2011-09-15T18:39:15.420" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Understand the difference between 'estimate' and 'budget'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An estimate is cost of what you think it will take to provide the project the the client. this includes direct costs, indirect costs, profit, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A budget is what you work toward internally, and is a more defined cost plan than the estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-09-15T18:39:15.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2307" CreationDate="2011-09-16T00:13:57.413" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A startup company is much like a multi-variable search. It's a search for a viable product, a viable business model, a viable company culture, a viable sales model, a viable team, a viable set of processes.... And all of this is being done at break-neck speed, in a rush against time and money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with all other things, a startup is likely to begin from scratch when it comes to process work. That is a good thing - it's a part of a strategy to remain mobile and flexible, as Pierre has said. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A process is a proven, repeatable set of steps, which bring about a reliable, predictable result - when the company is just starting, there are few places where they belong. There isn't much that's still reliably repeatable. And it's going to take some time before you can be certain that a given set of repeatable processes is the correct one, or incorrect one, or required but not discovered yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, you'll see lots of best practices ignored/not practiced at startups, as a trade-off for flexibility and the ability to discover. That client running in and requiring something be finished tonight is not normally appropriate when you're fairly certain your SCRUM process works in this industry, and can produce good results for most people. But maybe a SCRUM process is not appropriate. Or maybe the tradeoff between burning out developers tonight and losing your only customer isn't something you can afford - maybe this is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hail_Mary_pass&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hail-Mary&lt;/a&gt; moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it's generally accepted in startup culture that being enthusiastic about doing urgent work on the spot, and avoiding experimenting with processes, are both signs of a properly working startup. The savvy entrepreneur and early company builder, will have his wits about him and know when the tradeoffs are worth it, and when they're not. Either that, or he will fail, and learn in the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="71" LastActivityDate="2011-09-16T00:13:57.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2307" CreationDate="2011-09-16T04:37:00.507" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No! In simple terms: its for any one who wants a streamlined chaos less life. But as the numbers(people) drastically increase, its better we stick with efficient process and procedures else its gonna get messy! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2152" LastActivityDate="2011-09-16T04:37:00.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3408" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3423" CreationDate="2011-09-16T10:39:46.797" Score="4" ViewCount="717" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am noobishly new to Git version control system having used Tortoise Svn, VSS. I thought of contributing my code as open source work on github[moving by crowds voice], i did open a account and create a repository for the project. Only later did i know the beginner tuts/Getting started on Github used the command line and man that's not the way i liked source control system to be, So headed out to SO for answers i got many and did give me extension GUI for managing it &lt;strong&gt;but still What next?&lt;/strong&gt; How do i propogate my new project to Git through Gui and What about readme file does it have to be really &lt;code&gt;ReadMe.MD&lt;/code&gt; file. The kind of project is custom extenders, custom controls on asp.net(c#) i would like people downloading the dll[final outcome of project] &lt;strong&gt;but i should be the one who decides who joins me in the project&lt;/strong&gt; and i think this is what github means by Private Repositories[None for free account]. So my question boils down to two points,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does this kind of project need to be a Private Repository?[not a suggestion/poll kind of answer, i want someone to brief me the problems they faced doing such a thing and benefits]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do i get started, Google didn't give me Full answers to this there are bits thrown all over the place with little info in them. Provide me a source&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2153" LastActivityDate="2011-09-18T19:20:51.613" Title="Managing a Visual Studio Project on Github(Git DVCS)" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2011-09-21T03:24:22.067" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2307" CreationDate="2011-09-16T12:21:14.860" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have a look at some of the articles on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kaizen&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work for a small company and as we've grown I have found adding a little process to recurring tasks invaluable. It doesn't have to be too complex, checklists and template are an easy first step.  If you find they are valuable you can then expand with supporting documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Case study:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;When I implemented Change Management in the past I got an immediate reduction in MTTC and revenue on paid work went up.  It was a 2 page document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2144" LastActivityDate="2011-09-16T12:21:14.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3410" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-16T19:05:50.063" Score="1" ViewCount="159" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just wanted to get your opinion on how you would utilize $1,000 by the end of the year for training?  I'm a big agile fan and have received my CSM.  Would it be beneficial to get a CPO as well?  We have a use it or lose it type system when it comes to our training budget, so I want to ensure I maximize this allowance by the end of calendar year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've considered the PMP certification, CPO certification, CBAP (business analyst) etc, but just start questioning myself and wanted to hear some other's opinions on the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="913" LastActivityDate="2012-07-04T12:56:32.177" Title="Remaining Training Budget" Tags="&lt;training&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2012-07-05T04:12:12.080" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3410" CreationDate="2011-09-16T21:52:18.250" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you looked into any Agile work groups / seminars / conferences in your area?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Attending such types of events for the material provided along with the ability to network with others, is in my opinion more valuable in the long term than certification programs like CSM or CPO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On that note, Agile 2011 has come and gone, but as you mentioned that you are an agile fan have you considered attending Agile 2012?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastActivityDate="2011-09-16T21:52:18.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3336" CreationDate="2011-09-17T11:14:51.963" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a world of too much information and limited time you need to develop a personal filter system. This is a 3 step process:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Decide what's important&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;You need to consciously decide what topics you are professionally and personally interested in.  To help in selecting your topics take a look at your life goals and see where you have gaps in your knowledge.  Information in of itself has limited value but applied to a goal becomes knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Filters&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Now you have an application for the information you can start filtering.  Don't confuse tools (wiki, blogs, twitter, etc) with filtering.  What you have to look for is curation, people who have real experience or who have taken the time (that you don't have) to uncover the valuable information relevant to your life goals&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't worry about general knowledge or information not linked to a specific goal.  If it's important it always finds you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Review&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Nothing stays the same, your priorities change, goals are achieved or abandoned, source of knowledge go stale.  You need to periodically review both why you are interested in a topic and the quality of the filters.  Look to your exiting, curated, source for clues on improving your own filter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That all said be sure to throw in a wild card every now and then.  Again look for suggestions from people you respect (curation again) or inspiration from life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For help on goals I recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gettingthingsdone.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GTD&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.stephencovey.com/7habits/7habits.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Steven Covey&lt;/a&gt; series of books &#xA;On simplifying life, which includes information filters I suggest the blog &lt;a href=&quot;http://zenhabits.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Zen Habits&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2144" LastActivityDate="2011-09-17T11:14:51.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3332" CreationDate="2011-09-17T11:33:58.077" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask them to prepare a 90 second introduction using a webcam or smart phone&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They can do it in their own time, taking as many &quot;takes&quot; as they like.  Encourage them to make it light hearted, if the feel comfortable doing so.  The introduction can then be posted on what ever collaboration tool you use or simply emailed around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also have the advantage that a new member can look at the other teams introductions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2144" LastActivityDate="2011-09-17T11:33:58.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3414" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3416" CreationDate="2011-09-17T13:29:41.600" Score="21" ViewCount="60381" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you give me an example of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependency_%28project_management%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Start to Finish dependency&lt;/a&gt;? Wikipedia describes it like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start to finish (SF)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A SF B = B can't finish before A starts&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gZuan.png&quot; alt=&quot;&amp;quot;A SF B&amp;quot; dependency diagram&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2160" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-02-01T13:17:55.813" LastActivityDate="2020-03-06T17:54:49.473" Title="&quot;Start to finish&quot; dependency example?" Tags="&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;dependencies&gt;" AnswerCount="23" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3414" CreationDate="2011-09-17T15:28:19.530" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;A SF dependency will look exactly like a FS dependency with a lead in units of time if you are looking at the network diagram (notwithstanding the arrows).  The difference comes down to the logic of the constraint.  For example, the FS dependency with a two day lead is saying that task 2 is scheduled to start two days before task 1 is scheduled to finish.  The assumed logic with this schedule is task 2 &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; start within two days of task 1 finish, but it can start earlier if resources allow and can start later if you are slipping for other reasons.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a SF dependency with a two day lead, task 2 &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; start two days before task 1 finishes; else, task 1 cannot finish.  The assumed logic here is a must versus a can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A rough example might be the use of a crane to hoist a heavy object onto the 35th floor of a building under construction.  The work package that contains the resources--human and equipment--to operate the crane is task 1.  It successfully hoists the object up to the 35th floor and has successfully positioned itself for transfer.  However, the next work package, task 2, which contains the receiving resources--both equipment and personnel--are not there and are not ready to start.  Task 1, although it has completed it target action on time and is ready to transfer, will remain &quot;active&quot; until the next package starts.  The output of package one and the input of package two must occur together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-09-17T15:28:19.530" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3414" CreationDate="2011-09-17T16:21:11.250" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think I have ever used this, but I have generally thought of a Start - Finish dependency as being used where an agree period of handover is required between two activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the following scenario:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a system implementation project, it would be quite normal for project personnel to provide a level of support for a system for a settling down period after go-live. At some point, responsibility for support must transfer (in our hypothetical example) to an in-life support team. For a defined period - let's say two weeks - both the project resources and the in-life resources are delivering support, while a handover takes place from one to the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a Start - Finish dependency, because the In-life team have to start to support the system before the Project team can finish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-09-17T16:21:11.250" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3414" CreationDate="2011-09-17T19:12:10.197" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both David and Iain have given good examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As David said, it's the logic that's driving the dependency. Most tasks are FS - task B can't start until task A is complete, and task dependencies are looked at as straight hand-offs. SF simply inverts the logic - task B can't be considered complete until task A has started (the hand-off has occurred.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-09-17T19:12:10.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3367" CreationDate="2011-09-18T10:53:30.993" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whenever I used to conduct PM trainings and the question popped up, I use to say: &quot;The immediate answer is:&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'll be happy to check.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... And afterwards, record the request, prepare an analysis (impact on schedule, cost etc.), and leave the &lt;strong&gt;YES/NO&lt;/strong&gt; decision to the responsible or requester (depending on whatever tolerances we have).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, you manage scope, you don't say &quot;No&quot;. The Customer decides (or rather - the Steering Committee, Project Board etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2142" LastActivityDate="2011-09-18T10:53:30.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3367" CreationDate="2011-09-18T12:07:29.800" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rather than pushing back, get the customer involved in the decision process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Outline the costs and risks associated with the change&#xA;2) Explain if it will will displace or replace any planned work, especially if there is a fixed delivery schedule for the remaining work and something would have to be moved out of the delivery to accommodate it&#xA;3) Discuss that potential impact on later features (in terms of cost or risk)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then help them make the decision that is right for them. The project exists to solve a problem they are having, so if they truly need this (even if they need it in order to understand that they don't need it) then it is your job to help them figure out how to build it in. Right now you only know they want it, what all of this information will do is give them the ability to make an intelligent decision on how badly they want it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they chose to move forward with the addition, document it, determine any delivery changes or deliverable changes that have to occur coming out of this, and move forward knowing you are building something that more closely fits your customers priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2164" LastActivityDate="2011-09-18T12:07:29.800" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3410" CreationDate="2011-09-18T12:27:30.673" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some other ideas that occur to me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bring in a speaker for part of a day (not sure of usual rates)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plan a day or half-day trip to another company nearby that uses Agile practices and would be willing to compare and contrast, use the money for transportation and lunch for coworkers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build an Agile library*&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pay a consultant to come in and do an assessment of whatever $1000 is enough for, with the understanding that your going to be riding along for training (two stones, one bird)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the money to host a local UG meeting or somethign similar&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile Library Idea: $1000 could afford a cheap reading chair, lamp, bookshelf, wall lettering, collection of Agile/Lean/Whatever books (buy as many used as possible), checkout sheet. I doubt your company wants people actively reading during the day, the purpose of the extra furniture is to give the area identity and a title. It's easier to move a bookshelf into the basement, harder to move &quot;The Agile Library&quot;. Later training shortfalls can then be invested in expanding the books in the library, you could start a book club, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have already used training budget money to improve your own skills or knowledge, it might be worth trying to use the remainder to affect as many people as possible. You not only receive good experience and training out of it for yourself, you also promote it amongst others AND gain more leadership experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2164" LastActivityDate="2011-09-18T12:27:30.673" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3367" CreationDate="2011-09-18T14:32:38.947" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll focus my answer to this question in the Project Management area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the best way is being honest. In my case, if a customer ask me for doing something new, or not included at the intial scope I always estimate how it impacts in the triple constraint (scope, time cost).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a good Change Management method, it'll help you justify saying no to the customer. However, if it's possible to acomplish new scope, this kind of processes (Change Management) will help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2166" LastActivityDate="2011-09-18T14:32:38.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3408" CreationDate="2011-09-18T19:20:51.613" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, I would recommend watching &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Linus Torvalds on Git&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, a Google Tech Talk by the creator of git. It's an hour long, but it's a wonderful introduction to the philosophy behind distributed version control, especially git. It's not a how-to, and it's not even particularly technical. It's actually mostly about project management, and it's quite entertaining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The core principle to understand is that &lt;strong&gt;everyone has their own copy of the repository&lt;/strong&gt;. People collaborate by sending and receiving sets of changes. Grabbing a set of changes from somone and incorporating them into your repository is called &quot;pulling&quot;. Sending a set of changes from your repository to another one is called &quot;pushing&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does this kind of project need to be a Private Repository?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a free GitHub account, your project's source code and its history are public, viewable by anyone. Anyone can click the &lt;a href=&quot;http://help.github.com/fork-a-repo/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Fork&quot;&lt;/a&gt; button and make their own copy of your GitHub project. Their copy will be clearly labeled as a fork of your original. (For example, take a look at the upper left corner of &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/daxelrod/pod-pseudopod&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt;, it says &quot;daxelrod/pod-pseudopod&quot;, and then under it, &quot;forked from allisonrandal/pod-pseudopod&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By default, &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; are the only one who can submit changes to &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; copy of the project. If someone else has made an improvement to &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; copy of the project, they can send you a &lt;a href=&quot;http://help.github.com/send-pull-requests/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pull Request&lt;/a&gt;; that is, a request that you incorporate their improvement into your copy of the project. It is entirely your decision whether you accept a pull request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the admin of your copy of the repository, you can add collaborators, if you wish. A collaborator is a specific person who you trust to submit changes directly to your copy of the project. This is entirely optional, and most GitHub projects do not have collaborators; they simply accept pull requests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A paid GitHub account gives you the ability to create private repositories. A private repository is only viewable and forkable by specific people you have chosen to be private collaborators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What about readme file does it have to be really ReadMe.MD file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's enough to commit a plain text file named &lt;a href=&quot;http://help.github.com/create-a-repo/#_create_a_readme_for_your_repo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;README&lt;/a&gt;. If you want to get fancy with formatting, you can make a README.md file and use Markdown in it; the same syntax that you use to format Stack Overflow questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Google didn't give me Full answers to this there are bits thrown all over the place with little info in them. Provide me a source&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Allow me to editorialize for a moment. Git is, at heart, a command-line program, and so most of the reference you'll see involves interacting with it from the command line. I personally recommend you learn git using the command line. That way, you'll understand what's going on, and you'll be able to use the vast majority of help and documentation. I only recommend using a GUI once you know how to use Git from the command line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do want to learn command-line git, &lt;a href=&quot;http://progit.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pro Git&lt;/a&gt; is a fantastic resource. It's available either as a book, or free online. Honestly, even if you're not learning command-line Git, it may be a good introduction to the concepts and workflows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you insist on a GUI, however, take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://nathanj.github.com/gitguide/tour.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;An Illustrated Guide to Git on Windows&lt;/a&gt;, which uses git-gui. If you do this &lt;strong&gt;please don't be scared off by documentation or tutorials which use the command line&lt;/strong&gt;! Their principles still apply, except that you're clicking on commands rather than typing them. (And yes, I know that's an oversimplification.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your initial GitHub workflow to create a project, commit your first change, and push it, is &lt;a href=&quot;http://help.github.com/create-a-repo/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;detailed here&lt;/a&gt; - again, with command line instructions. The basic idea is that you have a repository on GitHub, and a clone of it on your local hard drive. You commit changes to your local repository, then you push them to the one on GitHub when you're ready to share them.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2163" LastActivityDate="2011-09-18T19:20:51.613" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3424" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3430" CreationDate="2011-09-19T00:36:38.463" Score="3" ViewCount="4712" Body="&lt;p&gt;As PMO, my manager is requiring me to measure both delivery and quality metrics.  I can easily measure delivery by monitoring slip rates.  I am having difficulty on measuring quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2169" LastActivityDate="2011-09-19T23:03:11.740" Title="How can I add quality metrics in my project?" Tags="&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3427" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-19T03:03:55.413" Score="3" ViewCount="211" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on an open source project, and we are looking to make changes to the way we do version control. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to propose several systems, and have the developers vote. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be a good platform for doing this, where the developers would not need to create an account to vote on something...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Does anyone know of a system that either implements with GitHub or Google login, or allows me to block repeat IP ranges, refreshes, etc.?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2170" LastEditorUserId="2170" LastEditDate="2011-09-19T17:51:14.097" LastActivityDate="2018-09-24T16:00:55.810" Title="What software can I use to make it easy for developers on my project to vote?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;open-source&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2018-09-26T19:54:30.253" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3428" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3432" CreationDate="2011-09-19T07:06:05.727" Score="-2" ViewCount="400" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for a small company and am usually tasked with front-end things such as design/UI/UX with some light php/mysql/ajax/javascript programming. I have done some pseudo-project management in the past for some small-scale projects but have a larger project looming. I was informed that I am going to be heading up a project in a few weeks and was wondering if anyone had useful resources on someone just starting a mid-sized project management &#xA;I was just informed &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2171" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-27T19:24:20.993" LastActivityDate="2012-07-27T19:24:20.993" Title="First time project lead for web development. Need resources" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2012-07-27T19:23:52.167" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3424" CreationDate="2011-09-19T07:45:55.797" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are not sure how to measure quality then you should start simply and plan to improve the quality of your quality measurements. For instance, maybe you have little or no documentation. A quality metric might be something dumb like &quot;Number of pages of documentation.&quot; Its ridiculous I know, but it is a starting point. If you have no pages of documents, then you have 10, then 100, then I'm sure your quality is increasing. Later you can change the metric to measure the content of the documentation (e.g. measure updates to the documentation per day, per month - whether  more or less updates are good....?)&#xA;Not a complete answer but maybe a starting point. Don't be afraid to adopt and drop metrics as you learn more about them. Continually improve them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2127" LastActivityDate="2011-09-19T07:45:55.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3424" CreationDate="2011-09-19T10:30:49.487" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The worst thing you can do is measure something for the sake of measuring something.  It is a waste of time, no one will care, and you will quickly train people to ignore you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sources of things to measure are all ready all around your project.  And of those things, you should take the time to measure only those that are of concern or of significant threat and you should be flexible enough in your quality program to remove a metric when it becomes stable and pull in another.  Things change during a project, areas of focus change, and so should your metrics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources are: Statement of Work, Proposal, Plans, Processes and Procedures, Risk Log, Issue Log, Service Level Agreements, and your project team after you interview them (what worries them, what are they already tracking, on what are they reporting).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are looking for promises made, assumptions made, and places where performance variability exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find yourself &quot;making up the metric,&quot; throw it away.  The metrics are already there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, your delivery and quality metrics are the same thing.  So time is a quality metric.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-09-19T10:30:49.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3428" CreationDate="2011-09-19T14:11:09.077" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a big fan of Mike Cohn's writings.  I came from a Web development background (.NET development) to a more of a BA role.  His books and Website really helped me navigate the terrain.  It is well written and logically organized. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="913" LastActivityDate="2011-09-19T14:11:09.077" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3427" CreationDate="2011-09-19T14:14:34.610" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are all on the same Exchange server, just use the Outlook voting options.  Otherwise, something like Google Forms would be a great idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="913" LastActivityDate="2011-09-19T14:14:34.610" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3427" CreationDate="2011-09-19T16:43:13.457" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest that, rather than voting, you work with your developers (or just senior developers if the team is too large) to get a consensus on how to amend the way you do version control. The reasons for this are (in no particular order):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The rest of the team may have good suggestions that you haven't come up with.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Voting tends to be a win-lose situation, and if you have more than one alternative likely more than half of the team isn't going to be in favor of the solution chosen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Voting isn't necessarily going to reflect serious thought on the part of the voter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that your developers are key stakeholders, just like your customers. In fact, if you look at changing the version control system as a project in and of itself, they &lt;strong&gt;are&lt;/strong&gt; the customers. Engaging them in a discussion and achieving a consensus on why changing the version control system is beneficial, precisely what should be changed, how it should look at the end etc is IMHO better than presenting them with a short-list of alternatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2011-09-19T16:43:13.457" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3435" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3437" CreationDate="2011-09-19T17:33:43.690" Score="15" ViewCount="648" Body="&lt;p&gt;I &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/3305/what-is-kanban&quot;&gt;recently learned about kanban here&lt;/a&gt; and followed some of the links and read some of the recommended sites and PDFs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks interesting, but one thing keeps confusing me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In its original sense, the kanban method is about signaling production needs as part of a complex manufacturing process, with the basic goal being to optimize production by using &quot;pull&quot; signals rather than push. A big focus is on keeping inventory levels from ballooning when they needn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The current project-management sense seems to be about using a board with limited slots in each position (for example: to-do, on dev, on qa, release). These slots fill the limiting function of the kanban cards in the manufacturing process (while the cards &lt;em&gt;in&lt;/em&gt; the slots are sort of like the manufactured product).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To my limited understanding, the latter seems to be basically using the former as a poorly-aligned analogy; the similarities are that both have just-in-time as a goal and both focus on limiting work (but in a very different way).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I missing something that ties the two together, or is it fair to say that the kanban project management methodology is &lt;em&gt;named after&lt;/em&gt; the lean manufacturing concept but is not really the same thing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2124" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T15:47:31.237" Title="How does &quot;kanban&quot; for project management relate to kanban in manufacturing?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3435" CreationDate="2011-09-19T19:29:48.813" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You aren't missing something. Analogy isn't that direct, although on both worlds we use the same roots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In IT world we don't really deal with inventory whatsoever. What more, contrary to manufacturing, we don't build the same thing (a product) over and over again. Instead, we build new features, different from everything we built before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the basic concept is the same: we don't want to have too much work in progress. You can use a following analogy. You don't want to have too many unfinished cars in a factory as it costs you money to store them, it also cost you money to buy all the parts, and you can't possibly sell them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the same token you don't want to have many unfinished features in your project as they raises complexity of a code base, raise maintenance cost and make it harder, and more expensive, to deploy. And obviously unfinished features don't bring any value whatsoever to customers so you can't possibly sell them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also appears that in both cases limiting work in progress, and fine-tuning these limits, improves throughput meaning the whole unit/team/whatever is more productive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can refer to the name itself too, which means signboard and it exists in both worlds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this perspective I see the same source for both concepts even though in details their implementations differ. However it is pretty much expected as in IT we don't really deal with the physical matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: Kanban for IT (I don't set a limit for software development only) and for manufacturing are different tools, even though they're named identically. However I'd be very far from naming it &quot;a poorly-aligned analogy.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-09-19T19:29:48.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3424" CreationDate="2011-09-19T20:16:03.137" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First you must clearly define what you want to measure and then the appropriate metric.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What to measure&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;In PRINCE2 you have the concept of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_description&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;product description&lt;/a&gt;.  Part of the description is the measure of quality. It is usually described in the context of the project and well understood by all involved.  This is critical for your reporting.&lt;a href=&quot;http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/prince2-product-description-project-management-TC030009487.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sample&lt;/a&gt;.  Once you have an &lt;em&gt;agreed&lt;/em&gt; definition of quality you now know what to measure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Metric&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;The tighter you link the metric to the project and product (deliverable) the more real it is.  I find the easiest place to get this is from the &quot;senior user&quot;, the person who represents the final users of the system or product.  They are usually expert in their domain and  will usually tell you what to the users is the important measure of quality and progress.  This avoids abstract measure (lines of code, man-hours, etc)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would close by saying that the measure of quality in a project will usually be different from project to project simply because what is important to the stakeholders in one project will not be the same in another. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2144" LastActivityDate="2011-09-19T20:16:03.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3024" CreationDate="2011-09-19T21:33:47.620" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I has a similar question and I wrote down everything I liked about my past managers and everything I hated.  I reversed the things I hated to make them positive and this is the list I use to judge good managers.  Hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;A Good Manager ...&#xA;&#xA;... is respectful, consistent, trustworthy, honest, direct and a mentor.&#xA;... has a vision, a positive attitude and a sense of humor.&#xA;... is respected, smart, organized and a good communicator.&#xA;... doesn't micromanage, waste time, assign busy work or share personal problems.&#xA;... gives good advice, good feedback, good training and good compensation.&#xA;... sets clear expectations, appropriate priorities and reasonable deadlines.&#xA;... solicits help, ideas and suggestions.&#xA;... makes plans, makes decisions, protects the team, plays politics with integrity and maintains team morale.&#xA;... expects his team to communicate honestly, strive for success, learn from setbacks and work together.&#xA;... will be flexible with personal time, praise in public, correct in private and be intrested in the teams work.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2182" LastActivityDate="2011-09-19T21:33:47.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3024" CreationDate="2011-09-19T23:00:32.307" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, management skills can be studied, learned and applied. (In fact, the definition of project management, according to the PMBOK, is the application of tools, techniques and processes to projects.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be effective, though, you have to want to learn them and apply them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0061345016&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Peter Drucker's&lt;/a&gt; work provides a constructive and positive light in which to view management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-09-19T23:00:32.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3424" CreationDate="2011-09-19T23:03:11.740" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Measure the amount of time spent doing bug fixes or number of bug fixes after release. This can be as simple as counting number of support tickets after you go live.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-09-19T23:03:11.740" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3427" CreationDate="2011-09-20T05:58:43.767" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You never get the best answer by voting. Because not all your developers are experts in version control systems. It is better to get a group of the most competent developers and let them achieve a consensus. No software is required for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2139" LastActivityDate="2011-09-20T05:58:43.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3428" CreationDate="2011-09-20T05:59:37.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps one of the things you can start doing is getting to know the different methods and frameworks that exist:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum&lt;/strong&gt; : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrum.org/scrumguides&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kennethvr.be/blog/2011/08/19/scrum-resources-what-and-who-to-follow/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;What and who to follow?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Kanban&lt;/strong&gt; :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/articles/hiranabe-lean-agile-kanban&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban applied to software development&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crisp.se/henrik.kniberg/Kanban-vs-Scrum.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban vs Scrum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To improve your development and programming itself, or that of your colleagues, I want to recommend my personal bibles: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cc2e.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Code complete 2&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/020161622X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The pragmatic programmer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This book helped me a lot and improved my coding the most over the years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Podcasts&lt;/strong&gt; on PM can be found in a previously asked question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2645/good-podcasts-on-current-project-management/2646#2646&quot;&gt;Good podcasts on current project management?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tools&lt;/strong&gt;: Take a look at tools to use like Jira with grasshopper plugin, MS Project, the good old whiteboard, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-09-30T09:58:00.877" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3435" CreationDate="2011-09-20T06:39:23.450" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A direct answer to your question might be found on InfoQ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Kanban1  is a physical card used in Toyota Production System (TPS) to support non-centralized &amp;quot;pull&amp;quot; production control. It has spread to the manufacturing industry all over the world as a tool of Lean Manufacturing. Now in Agile software development the visualization of projects, such as posting task cards on a wall, is a commonly seen practice, which is sometimes called &amp;quot;Software Kanban&amp;quot;, or &amp;quot;Task Kanban&amp;quot;. Now we even see some product maintenance teams utilizing Kanban systems in a waterfall-like process model. So what is Kanban? Why is it used in the context of software development?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this article, I first explain what a Kanban system is in the context of Lean manufacturing, especially in TPS, and gather insights from the practices and principles in that mature industry, identifying concepts that can be applied to software development. Secondly I look around our software development projects and point out examples of Kanban applications. Then, I analyze commonality and differences between Kanban systems in production and in software development, and try to give ideas on how to effectively apply Kanban system to software development, including an introduction to the recent movement of &amp;quot;KSSE - Kanban System for Sustaining Engineering&amp;quot; emerging on the kanbandev 2  discussion list. Finally, I give a big picture of TPS, the original context for which Kanban's use as a tool, and from which software development can still learn more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/articles/hiranabe-lean-agile-kanban&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Read More&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2011-09-20T06:39:23.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3343" CreationDate="2011-09-20T07:32:03.273" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Action items are similar to the tasks within user stories, but they do need to be handled differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often they are process improvements or other &quot;meta&quot; tasks that come out of sprint retrospectives: they don't directly add value to the customer so how can they be part of a story?  Here are some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prepare training for new starter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Move codebase to new build system&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Generate class documentation automatically during build&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give presentation on what was learned at recent conference&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; all &quot;just work&quot;, so it's useful to represent these tasks visibly on the whiteboard rather than in a separate list somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've put a couple of extra &quot;pseudo-story&quot; rows on my board for tasks like these, called &lt;em&gt;Non-project work&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Improvements and technical debt&lt;/em&gt;.  The product owner doesn't have to care about them, and they don't score story points, but at least they are visible and the team can move them to &lt;em&gt;Doing&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Done&lt;/em&gt; as they would with any other task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1931" LastActivityDate="2011-09-20T07:32:03.273" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3435" CreationDate="2011-09-20T08:54:39.297" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to what @Pawel Brodzinki has said, I'll explain how the signalling works:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In its original sense, the kanban method is about signaling production needs as part of a complex manufacturing process, with the basic goal being to optimize production by using &quot;pull&quot; signals rather than push. A big focus is on keeping inventory levels from ballooning when they needn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a software kanban, our signal comes from the &quot;holes&quot; on a Kanban board - the gaps in which the limit hasn't been reached, which &quot;pull&quot; further work through. If we were to put a big red card in each hole or slot, that would become our signal card.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrast this with other board approaches, in which work is pushed through to production, and a developer can keep coding even when testers are overwhelmed. In a kanban system, developers see the problem and can go to help (and analysts can become testers, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a production system, we're trying to limit the amount of inventory and get things through to a finished state as quickly as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Done well, a software kanban system lets us limit the number of things &lt;em&gt;on which we haven't got feedback&lt;/em&gt;. I find the assumption that we're trying to get things into production quite dangerous in software development, as it's too easy to produce the wrong thing, especially in climates where we no longer do the massive up-front work of Waterfall-style analysis. Our goal is to get the &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; thing into production, as quickly as possible, until we have enough feedback that it's good to move onto the next thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The longer we spend without getting feedback on the work we've already done, the more our knowledge degrades and the harder it will be to adapt to that feedback once we receive it. This is the equivalent to cars rusting away out in the lot. We can't maintain knowledge half as easily as cars, which makes the kanban signal and the faster throughput it creates even more important and relevant than it is in manufacturing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-09-20T08:54:39.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3427" CreationDate="2011-09-20T13:11:00.033" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do a &lt;strong&gt;Brainstorming &amp;amp; Painstorming&lt;/strong&gt; meeting to gather the requirements and problems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do a research&lt;/strong&gt; and find possible solutions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make a presentation&lt;/strong&gt; to share a research results with the others&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do a survey&lt;/strong&gt; / voting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And for activity #4 I would suggest &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.surveymonkey.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SurveyMonkey&lt;/a&gt;. I use it in similiar situations and it also has a &quot;Other/please specify&quot; option (in case you really do not want to stick to researched solutions only).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastActivityDate="2011-09-20T13:11:00.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3449" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-20T14:10:58.903" Score="4" ViewCount="3032" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to help better organize the activities of our group. We're largely a service organization (working with faculty and students at an academic institution), but we're a tech group and we do software development and integration as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We had previously tried a &quot;tools-first&quot; approach to project and task tracking, and that wasn't terribly successful — the tools became a burden rather than an aid. So I'm trying to think things out from first principles. I don't really have a background or training here, so I'm struggling a bit with the naming of things, and hope you can help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's my conceptualization of the different types of activities we do in a generic sense. There's a lot of ways to divide up activities, but this one is prompted by thinking about the differences in needs for organizing and tracking. Event response needs a ticketing system; that same ticketing system might not be the best for project tracking, or for the &quot;blue&quot; category as explained below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chs=600x300&amp;amp;cht=p&amp;amp;chco=FFFF00|00FF00|0000FF|FF0000|FFFFFF00&amp;amp;chd=s:CGHFB&amp;amp;chdlp=b&amp;amp;chp=0.1&amp;amp;chl=Exploration+Learning|Project+Development|Daily+Operations|Event+Response|Unavailable&amp;amp;chtt=Group+Time+Budget&amp;amp;chts=676767,16&quot; alt=&quot;activities pie. mmm, pie&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Event response&lt;/strong&gt; is activity prompted by something external: an e-mail for help or walk-in request, or, a system disk failure or security breech. Either way, these are hard to plan for except as estimates; they tend to be short lived, and require immediate response of some kind. (Making sure time and people are budgeted for these things is important, though, since they really do serve our group mission and mustn't feel like distractions or interruptions.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Unavailable&lt;/strong&gt; is something the higher-ups thought looked badly on the chart, but basically is an acknowledgment that people have sick days and vacation and other interruptions. It helps &lt;em&gt;me&lt;/em&gt; to keep that in mind, even if it ultimately doesn't go into presentations of what our group does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Exploration/Learning&lt;/strong&gt; is training and individual exploration of new technologies and ideas. We need to be up on these things as a group so this is important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project development&lt;/strong&gt; is where we work to enable new services or improve existing ones. We also do some consulting-style work which seems best managed as small projects. We have work to do in areas around process here, but I've got a lot of good ideas on how to move forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, &lt;strong&gt;Daily operations&lt;/strong&gt; are where I keep running into a language problem. I mean &quot;the stuff one does as part of keeping our services running&quot;, but not just in a technical sense. Some of this is reading logs, checking server status, and so on, but I also mean for it to encompass teaching a seminar, meetings with our users. And I &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; mean it to include many of the things that are generally included under &quot;operations&quot; in the IT sense. Racking a server, for example, is probably part of a &lt;em&gt;project&lt;/em&gt; to deploy some new or upgraded service; changing a failed disk is event response. A general characteristic of things in this category is that they are continuously ongoing, but are not externally prompted. We can usually ignore or avoid working on these things for a time, at a cost of accrued technical or social debt — we can avoid reading logs, but may need to suddenly pay when there's an incident later which we weren't aware of. We can avoid scheduling meetings with faculty with no immediate consequences (but probably serious longer-term ones).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what's a good thing to call this last category of activity? I really want to avoid &quot;operations&quot;, but can't think of anything better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2124" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T09:42:46.737" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T17:56:08.673" Title="What's a more generic, less-loaded name for &quot;operations&quot;?" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3427" CreationDate="2011-09-20T16:11:26.313" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are two voting solutions that I like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.trello.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt; (created by founders of Stack Overflow) - allows users to vote items up and down&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/moderator/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Moderator&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1740" LastActivityDate="2011-09-20T16:11:26.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3449" CreationDate="2011-09-20T16:11:39.010" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally I would substitute &quot;daily operations&quot; with &quot;Business as usual&quot;. I would also ensure ensure that your &quot;higher ups&quot; understand that this activity indicates &quot;normal execution of operations&quot; within your business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastActivityDate="2011-09-20T16:11:39.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3449" CreationDate="2011-09-20T16:46:20.413" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would remove &quot;unavailable.&quot;  Your pie should be representative of available utilization, with it being known that it represents the net after you remove normal work absences.  I would label operations as productive administration and unproductive administration, with productive being time spent on admin duties directly related to the function of your business and unproductive being admin duties related to the organization, like company-wide training or all hands meeting, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-09-20T16:46:20.413" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3453" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3458" CreationDate="2011-09-20T18:20:14.540" Score="8" ViewCount="268" Body="&lt;p&gt;Imagine a small software development team (say, 5 members). Having done your homework as an Agile manager and closely following Jurgen Appello's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.noop.nl/2009/11/choosing-authority-levels-for-team-members.html&quot;&gt;suggestion&lt;/a&gt; of &quot;the more you empower your team, the better&quot;, you one day find your team having progressed so far that it doesn't seem to need you any more at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my point of view, Jurgen's proposal: &quot;Level 7: Delegate: You leave it entirely up to the team to deal with the matter, while you go out and have a good time.&quot; ... of going home might not be feasible, since it could have a bad impact on general team motivation when the PM just stays away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you clearly don't want to look over everybody's shoulder all the time, micro-management a bad thing and so on. You also don't want to take away the tasks that your team members chose themselves already, right? Spending the day on farmville doesn't seem a smart move either ... so I wonder, what else to do? Should you stay with the project directly, or better move on instead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="699" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-02T14:29:39.277" LastActivityDate="2019-01-02T14:29:39.277" Title="What to do when you have successfully delegated all the work and nothing is left for you?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;micro-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3427" CreationDate="2011-09-20T20:01:07.033" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you consider something long term as well, I would propose two options, both open source:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://drupal.org/project/ideatorrent&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://drupal.org/project/ideatorrent&lt;/a&gt; (example -&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sourceforge.net/apps/ideatorrent/notepad-plus/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://sourceforge.net/apps/ideatorrent/notepad-plus/&lt;/a&gt;) - haven't&#xA;tried it, but it's worth considering for its simplicity. Slightly like Dell's IdeaStorm&#xA;(http://www.ideastorm.com/).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.limesurvey.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.limesurvey.org/&lt;/a&gt; - a different animal as this is primarily a survey platform, but it certainly has the measures you'd mentioned. A very useful thing - seen it work with surveys of 1K respondents and more.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing you can consider is checking with CMS/wiki software. Perhaps you have something already. I'm sure about Joomla (easy survey module), and I'd be astonished, if Drupal didn't have an add-on for that too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2142" LastActivityDate="2011-09-20T20:01:07.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3455" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-20T18:49:31.930" Score="-1" ViewCount="240" Body="&lt;p&gt;Google, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Tumblr, Wordpress, Flickr? It goes without saying that Agile is best for some, not for others, but I'm just kinda wondering... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The developers in my organization has the leadership drunk on releasing quick products and apparently I'm the only one who cares about the quality of the products we're releasing b/c I want the necessary time to research, concept and wireframe. Why? Because I care about your experience with the product I'm designing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The process &gt;&gt; let's release a product, as quickly as possible, without researching our users, without concepting out ideas, without wireframing the flow, design by committee to which not even the tagteam of Jakob Neilson and Edward Tufte could explain their way out of, develop it speed racer style, release it to actual users (little to no testing), then make revisions (sorry, iterations...1.1, 1.2, 1.3, etc) based on actual user feedback. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Man, I bet you guys can't wait to use our products! I promise they're going to be the supa rad ultra fantabulous singleclicker to the webosphere!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every mine listed is what I'm experiencing. It's super fun time.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/bringing-user&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/bringing-user&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Pixelist" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-11-08T08:40:10.887" LastActivityDate="2020-07-10T11:38:52.107" Title="What's a successful website/software that has been released and/or sustained using the Agile/SCRUM process?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2020-07-10T12:18:52.610" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3455" CreationDate="2011-09-20T19:25:37.407" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you describe is not a proper agile environment, which does have multiple releases of small functionality, but does not mean that you release to the public poor and untested code. In fact, quite the opposite - untested or failing code doesn't make the release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there is a question in here that fits to UX - for example, how do you manage UX work in an agile environment. It can work, but it needs to be done properly, not just an excuse to put out poor and untested work. So I think you need to apply proper agile/scrum techniques, not some half baked version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Schroedingers Cat" LastActivityDate="2011-09-20T19:25:37.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3455" CreationDate="2011-09-20T19:40:19.170" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yeah, just to reiterate what has already been said, what you are describing is not &quot;Agile&quot;. Agile development focuses on delivering set units of work in a set unit of time using a specific methodology. It does NOT mean delivering a new &lt;em&gt;product&lt;/em&gt; with each cycle, or even something that would qualify as a &quot;version 2.0&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On your side (UIX), remember that what you do can still be broken down into estimate-able units of work. You might be delivering mock ups, prototypes, user testing results or something else during your sprint, but it still comes down to units of work that you have committed to completing in X time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="ThatSteveGuy" LastActivityDate="2011-09-20T19:40:19.170" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3453" CreationDate="2011-09-20T21:42:43.167" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I strongly believe in being with a team. Let's consider a simple example: your team faces a critical issue. People are trying to track down some technical glitch but they struggle to catch it. Anyway, they decide to stay late. Still nothing. Another day the situation is the same: they decide to stay late. Now, where a manager should be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The manager won't help them to deal with a technical issue whatsoever as his tech skills are totally rusted. He can freely come home as the team has really no use of him. Um... except this vague feeling of sharing everyone's pain. And another one of knowing that this kind of important guy is at hand so whenever they need to have a phone call made to be allowed to restart server in production environment or wake up someone from client's team or order a pizza he's there waiting to help in any possible way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the same rule works even when there's no emergency whatsoever. The best you can do is to make their lives easier. If you have no other idea just learn how to be a better manager, however if you come to the point when there's really nothing to fix in terms of team organization, unblocking tasks, getting top management support, finding time for people to unwind themselves, creating occasions for knowledge exchange, encouraging them them to learn, etc. then well, I genuinely want to work with your team and in your organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: manager's job is to make the team's life easier and I don't know any organization where there's nothing else to do in this area. If you don't have quick answers just spend some time looking for them, asking right questions and with the right attitude. You'll quickly learn there's load of work to be done which can make the team's life at least a bit better. And that's exactly your task as a manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-09-20T21:42:43.167" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3024" CreationDate="2011-09-20T23:26:57.887" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many good points have been already mentioned - the &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; is really important. Especially that you seem to have mixed feelings on the whole matter. Perhaps a new challenge would be sufficient (i.e. new work environment, new project or platform)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing comes to mind though... &lt;em&gt;If&lt;/em&gt; it is to be management, the basic question is pretty simple:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;Do you like people?&lt;/b&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2142" LastActivityDate="2011-09-20T23:26:57.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3461" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-21T01:07:20.387" Score="18" ViewCount="67184" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am ready to start preparation for the PMP and wanted to get your opinion on the resources you've used (outside of the PMBOK to prepare).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am really interested in a self paced online course, and one or two books.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The books seem fairly straight forward based on Amazon reviews: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.com/0972967346&quot;&gt;The PMP Exam: How to Pass on Your First Try, Fourth Edition&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.com/1932735186&quot;&gt;PMP Exam Prep, Sixth Edition: Rita's Course in a Book for Passing the PMP Exam&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Online courses seem to be a dime a dozen.  Definitely want a reputable company that you all might have some experience with.  Also, this is more of an opinion question, what is a good length of time to set aside for studying for the exam?  6 weeks, etc?  The latter might not be a good question for this forum, but thought I'd pose it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="913" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2013-06-13T15:49:12.817" LastActivityDate="2019-01-02T14:11:41.947" Title="What's the best way to prepare for PMP Certification?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="14" ClosedDate="2019-01-13T02:05:49.930" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3245" CreationDate="2011-09-21T04:37:03.877" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did you ask your local PMI Chapter (the same place where you got the codes)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-09-21T04:37:03.877" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3461" CreationDate="2011-09-21T06:21:01.637" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Head First PMP - By far the best book, and one of the best series as well. It might seem a bit silly at the beginning, but the hands on approach and explenation with images is really great in these books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/V8n17.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Head First PMP: A Brain-Friendly Guide to Passing the Project Management Professional Exam&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Head First PMP offers 100% coverage of The PMBOK® Guide principles and&#xA;  certification objectives in a way that's engaging, not tedious. This&#xA;  book helps you prepare for the PMP certification exam with a unique&#xA;  method that goes beyond answers to specific questions and makes you&#xA;  think about the big picture of project management. By putting project&#xA;  management concepts into context, you will be able to understand,&#xA;  remember, and apply them-not just on the exam, but also on the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2019-01-02T14:11:41.947" LastActivityDate="2019-01-02T14:11:41.947" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3461" CreationDate="2011-09-21T07:13:09.630" Score="9" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I prepared for the PMP exam doing &lt;strong&gt;self-study&lt;/strong&gt;, just using the PMBOK plus Kerzner's book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0470278706&quot;&gt;Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling&lt;/a&gt; (the PMBOK is light in that area). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When it comes to resources for PMP preparation, it's very much down to your &lt;strong&gt;individual learning style&lt;/strong&gt;: if you have experience as a PM and are disciplined at self-study, you don't actually need any courses.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One thing that I found very useful however is &lt;strong&gt;using exam simulators&lt;/strong&gt;. There are a lot out there, and I used &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whizlabs.com/pmi-project-management-professional/pmp-certification-exam.html&quot;&gt;whizlabs&lt;/a&gt; which I found very close to the real exam.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Timing-wise&lt;/strong&gt;, I gave myself 3 months to study: I actually booked the exam before I started to study so I had a hard deadline to work towards. The first couple of months I studied a couple of times a week (say 6 hours per week) then ramped up in the last couple of weeks with more intensive study sessions (my last week-end before the exam was dedicated to it). In total I estimate around 70-80 hours (as a comparison, instructor-led trainings usually take 5 working days so say 40 hours). I spent a lot of time at the beginning in working out how the PMBOK was structured, how the exam worked and how to prepare for it, which I would think is covered in a very short time when you do an online or instructor-led course. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I would advise you to &lt;strong&gt;do a sample exam to see where you're at&lt;/strong&gt; before starting your study as this will help you identify any weak areas and determine what resources you need. You can just google for terms like &quot;PMP sample questions&quot; or &quot;PMP free exam&quot; - just be careful that the questions are for the current version of the PMBOK, not an old one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastActivityDate="2011-09-21T07:13:09.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3449" CreationDate="2011-09-21T09:12:35.580" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could use &quot;Ongoing Services&quot; or &quot;Daily Services&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever word(s) you choose to use, make sure you educate your audience on what they mean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Small point: I find that a bar chart sorted by activity type would be more effective than a pie at it would show more clearly where your group spend most of its time.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastActivityDate="2011-09-21T09:12:35.580" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3449" CreationDate="2011-09-21T11:11:37.347" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen &quot;daily operations&quot; referred in several executive summaries as &lt;strong&gt;Operations&lt;/strong&gt; (single word). Sometimes as &lt;strong&gt;Business Processes&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;Administration&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The word Operations is highly used in my organization representing all the activities that &lt;em&gt;must be undertaken, measured and controlled to ensure the continuity of the business&lt;/em&gt;. As you mentioned above, we do not use this term to refer to IT Operations but to all the tasks that need to executed on regular basis (daily, fortnightly, and so forth).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2011-09-21T15:43:57.080" LastActivityDate="2011-09-21T15:43:57.080" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3461" CreationDate="2011-09-21T13:09:55.263" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Welcome to the club then, Aaron! I'm following such a path myself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These questions have a lot of viable answers out there. Let me propose a few sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pmstudent.com/&quot;&gt;http://pmstudent.com/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/mobile/pmpodcast&quot;&gt;http://www.slideshare.net/mobile/pmpodcast&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.squidoo.com/pass_pmp_exam&quot;&gt;http://www.squidoo.com/pass_pmp_exam&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cornelius-fichtner.com/index.php/pmp&quot;&gt;http://www.cornelius-fichtner.com/index.php/pmp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;And here is a more direct answer...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I am reading the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B004MME6HK&quot;&gt;PMBOK&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; guide &lt;strong&gt;first&lt;/strong&gt; (please note there's a free PDF copy for PMI members on the pmi.org site).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the language of this book is rather dry, there's a lot of highlighting and notes in my case. While adding notes, I relate to my personal work experience and known theory (PRINCE2). This helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My &lt;strong&gt;second&lt;/strong&gt; resource is the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B002T6V4XA&quot;&gt;PMP Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; by Kim Heldman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why? Because it had many positive reviews and was available for the Kindle. I needed a more practical (lively ;-) ) companion to the PMBOK too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My &lt;strong&gt;third resource&lt;/strong&gt; is the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.project-management-prepcast.com/&quot;&gt;PM PrepCast&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why? Because I needed something to listen to (or watch, for that matter) while commuting. The price is reasonable and I respect &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/#!/corneliusficht&quot;&gt;Cornelius Fichtner&lt;/a&gt; for what he does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In all cases, make sure you choose the 4th edition of the framework.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the study time required... Some insight can be found at the locations mentioned above, but I'd say... &quot;it depends.&quot; Depends on whether you currently have a daytime job, whether you have kids (judging from the picture - you do :-) ). I aim for at least 30 pages a day for the primary material. Have in mind that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.pl/m/url?client=safari&amp;amp;ei=eeB5TuD0Isvrjgez_gE&amp;amp;hl=pl&amp;amp;oe=UTF-8&amp;amp;q=http://www.pmi.org/Certification/~/media/PDF/Certifications/pdc_pmphandbook.ashx&amp;amp;ved=0CBcQFjAB&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNEIpp3M2YD3p9DtkENaRS2iQA3-gA&quot;&gt;application process&lt;/a&gt; might take some time as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And while we are at it, planning the learning (chunks), and crossing out whatever is done, really helps. Nothing new, but a friendly reminder. One useful resource might be the Pomodoro Technique (free book and cheat sheet &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/products.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck and let's keep in touch! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2142" LastEditorUserId="2142" LastEditDate="2011-09-21T13:21:24.830" LastActivityDate="2011-09-21T13:21:24.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3461" CreationDate="2011-09-21T13:17:07.863" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should adopt a strategy of reading and studying different topics of project management to become a better project manager.  Passing the PMP test becomes a positive side effect.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-09-21T13:17:07.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3461" CreationDate="2011-09-21T14:09:35.883" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rita's books (your second choice) are excellent and a valuable resource.  Read the PMBOK twice, read one of her prep books, and you'll be all set. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2011-09-21T14:09:35.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3449" CreationDate="2011-09-21T17:32:36.383" Score="0" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Overhead&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keeping the lights on&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Daily Activities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Continued Activities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Continuous Activities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Baseline Activities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Baseline Services&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-09-21T17:32:36.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3472" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3473" CreationDate="2011-09-21T19:10:39.483" Score="13" ViewCount="593" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my current project team, I try to encourage an open atmosphere and discussions. In general, I have the impression that we are on a good road in that regard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of a post-mortem after each iteration was well received, except for one colleague who refuses to express opinion when asked for the first time. Common responses might include &quot;I may not say&quot; or &quot;this is not important now&quot;. I think it is important to add that I experience him as quite introverted a person in general, and that this might simply reflect his personality. At the same time, I'm very convinced that actually he is willing to improve things, and that he does have something to say. Several times I got quite constructive responses already, once I was pushing (i.e., 'Indeed I &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; think it is important, please share your thoughts' or something like that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering what makes him feel so uncomfortable about openly telling what he thinks right away. I really hope I've demonstrated several times already that there is nothing bad to be expected from honest and constructive feedback. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe he also thinks that entire discussion is for naught. However, from my point of view they are the best way of discussing what went wrong this time and thus improving in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way or the other, the key question is: Should I insist on getting some feedback, with the best intention of improving something both for him, the rest of the team and the client, or rather accept that somebody is not willing to share his thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, I could never avoid that anybody just says 'all fine for me', but I strongly feel that once somebody expresses that he has something to say, he also should do so instead of holding back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="699" LastEditorUserId="2124" LastEditDate="2011-09-22T10:43:14.010" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T10:30:29.170" Title="Should you insist on getting feedback from every member of your team?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;post-mortem&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3472" CreationDate="2011-09-21T19:53:58.283" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a manager you should be clear with your team what you expect from them, and support them in working up to these expectations. You can't force someone to talk, but you can encourage them and remove barriers that stop them from contributing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would have an open and frank discussion, one-on-one, with your team member about this. Don't try to guess why he's not contributing, and ask him how he feels about it and what may stop him from contributing, or what would need to be done differently to get him to share his thoughts. &#xA;Once you understand from him what the issue is, you will be able to address it. The other thing I would tell him is that his holding back is impacting the team as you are missing out on helpful improvements, and that his contribution could have a really good impact on everyone. Show him the value he can bring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastActivityDate="2011-09-21T19:53:58.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3472" CreationDate="2011-09-21T20:26:19.863" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a prevalent, systemic culture that affects many organizations and institutions where honesty is not appreciated or awarded.  Even when there is a published open door policy, there really isn't.  Sadly, I think a true open environment is more of the exception than the rule as it takes strong, confident leaders to be able to open themselves up to scrutiny that postmortems require.  Over time, it has been taught and we have learned quite well that honest communication in an open forum is not likely to be met without consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, I think there is some logic to that.  If you open the door for criticisms of leadership and leadership decisions, you are exposing the possibility of losing authority and respect and increasing the likelihood of your future decisions to being challenged.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want real honest feedback from someone who you think can give it, go behind closed doors and do it one on one.  Otherwise, expect some who will remain silent, others who will provide only a$$ kissing feedback, and still others who will carefully spin their words to the point where the feedback does not offer much value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-09-21T20:26:19.863" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3475" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3477" CreationDate="2011-09-22T07:21:12.527" Score="15" ViewCount="3430" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently introduced Kanban in our software development team, but I'm struggling with some things. The main problem I have is &lt;strong&gt;how to handle 'small tasks'&lt;/strong&gt;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me explain some background: We develop some products which are used by several clients. Some clients use our generic product, and some clients have some customized things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take a practical example from this week. We released the beta version a web-application to a client of us. This client did a test run, and delivered us all his little remarks. In total about 30 point or so. But this points are really small like 'move the logo 10px up', 'change the order of the list'..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I handle this on my Kanban board? This is how our current board looks like. The green card is a feature (to be defined userstory), the yellow ones are tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GQrr9.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Our kanban board&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I create a task for every point of the client's feedback, my board will be overloaded (I have a WIP of 6 in the selected column). The separate tasks will only take some minutes to fix. And also, is it bad to skip some steps of the Kanban board? It doesn't need an analysis or so..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is: do I need to bundle small tasks into 'fixes client x'? Or how to handle such things?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2186" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-08T01:31:32.327" LastActivityDate="2020-07-26T08:28:41.033" Title="How to use Kanban with small tasks?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3475" CreationDate="2011-09-22T07:58:55.353" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;All situations are unique, and depending on what's requested you might need to take a different approach every time, but in similar cases we usually group smaller tasks into larger stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also let the our WIP limits count toward stories - splitting the story into tasks is optional and is often done under analysis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2193" LastActivityDate="2011-09-22T07:58:55.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3475" CreationDate="2011-09-22T08:14:42.527" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;From you board it isn't obvious how your deployment process look like. Is it possible to deploy the app rapidly, e.g a few time a day? It so it should be possible to move small tasks through the board, and just mercilessly move them to the right edge of the board. However even then it would be sort of pain in the neck as the whole process of moving something 10px up will take like 15 minutes or so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually the better idea is to solve such issues independently. The concept I really like is to prepare a dedicated log for such tasks once they're assigned to someone. The log can contain only an id of issue and the id is crossed out once the issue is fixed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20200120183311/http://joakimsunden.com/2011/06/one-way-of-handling-small-tasks-on-a-kanban-board/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Read more about this solution on Joakim Sunden's site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using this approach you get two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can still sort of keep track of what's happening as you probably put this log right next to your Kanban board.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whenever &amp;quot;quick fix&amp;quot; appears to be &amp;quot;not so quick after all&amp;quot; you can easily move it to the board for example at the end of a day and just signal the fact somehow in the log.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more thing which is nice, although it may be useless in your situation, if such small tasks pop in every now and then you can track how many of them you have, when they are submitted, how many of them eventually end up on the board etc. If it is just one time situation however you probably don't need such analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-26T08:28:41.033" LastActivityDate="2020-07-26T08:28:41.033" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3449" CreationDate="2011-09-22T08:54:34.223" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend &lt;strong&gt;System and User Support&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-09-22T08:54:34.223" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3475" CreationDate="2011-09-22T13:08:17.143" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two separate suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that these small changes still need to go through the same processes as initial development, then it probably makes sense to batch multiple changes to a single interface as multiple yellow cards under a new green card. This helps ensure that you stick to your defined processes, while at the same time reducing the number of times the same interface has to go through your Acceptance step.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another thing you may want to consider is to add a separate category for these small changes (likely using a different color card on your kanban). Then you can specify a WIP limit for that category that is separate from your existing WIP limits. You can also specify whether this category of work item needs to follow the same rules as your yellow cards or whether the process behaviour is different for them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, we have found that keeping these small changes on the board is important as it helps give a visual indication of whether these small changes are actually overwhelming the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastActivityDate="2011-09-22T13:08:17.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3480" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-22T19:34:28.523" Score="2" ViewCount="498" Body="&lt;p&gt;All. I work in an environment wherein programmers get their tasks from a queue and resources are being managed by a line manager. I use an application to log the work needed for the project and the line manager is responsible for the distribution of the work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Project Manager, I do not have the authority over the resources but only the logged work by assigning it their team queue. This is very challenging on my part because they cannot provide an ETA accurately for deviation happens such as delays, resource allocations, unexpected changes, prioritization from upper management, and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best approach in managing the customers expectation when things are not going as planned? I know communication plays a critical role but is there any other way to turn around things.&#xA;In situations like this,what should I remember and keep in mind?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="614" LastActivityDate="2011-09-22T20:41:29.450" Title="What are some approach in making the customers happy If deadlines are not met and I cannot provide accurate updates due to internal process?" Tags="&lt;timeline&gt;&lt;timekeeping&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3480" CreationDate="2011-09-22T20:11:12.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several aspects to be considered in suggesting an answer to your question. These include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Getting better control of the resources;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improving the estimates to recognise the reality of your situation, where task duration and task effort are potentially quite different;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The relationship that your company has with its customers (at all levels);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your authority to make things happen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting better control would require that you can agree with the line manager some form of guaranteed level of resource availability. Even if this is significantly lower than 100%, you would have some comfort that you would have at least a minimum level of resource availability.  If such an agreement &lt;strong&gt;can&lt;/strong&gt; be reached between you and the line manager, you may wish to consider publicising the agreement to senior management and explaining the benefits of this to them, to encourage them to honour the agreement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Improving the estimates may require that your resources provide you with an estimate of the &lt;strong&gt;effort&lt;/strong&gt; required, while you apply a scaling factor to convert this to a &lt;strong&gt;duration&lt;/strong&gt;. For example, if you anticipate that your resources would only be available 70% of the time, and they have suggested that they can do the work with 7 days of effort, you should estimate 10 elapsed days for the work. This may seem too simplistic, but it may help. Your estimates will potentially improve over time as you build a better set of metrics, which may vary from person to person or skill to skill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The relationship between your company and its customers is key to this. If you are having to justify slippage, and your customers are complaining when you fail to meet deadlines, is there an opportunity to escalate these complaints to your own management? Do your managers have to deal with the customer complaints, and if so, do they then take steps to resolve the causes of the complaints? If they don't meet with the customers sufficiently often, then perhaps they need to be invited to customer meetings - but don't just drop them from a great height. Brief them in advance so that they can support you and hopefully help you to work through some of the issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, as a project manager, you need to have sufficient authority to make things happen. If this isn't the case, you may have to have a heart-to-heart discussion with your own line manager, and see what can be done to give you the necessary authority. Bear in mind that one part of the PM's role is risk management, and it seems to me that you may not be carrying this out effectively - if at all. Anything that is a risk to the success of the project should be flagged as a risk and managed accordingly, and escalated as necessary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be possible to make a significant improvement in a positive way, without breaking any existing good relationships. You don't need to become an ogre to make things happen, but you do need a level of management support. If this is not forthcoming, then you have a different problem...!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-09-22T20:11:12.537" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3480" CreationDate="2011-09-22T20:13:22.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best approach is to be proactive and build in time in your initial plans to address these kinds of issues, either as contingency reserves for individual tasks or as management reserves for the key deliverables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you haven't been able to plan for these kinds of problems my only suggestion is to be as honest, forthcoming and timely as possible with your customer. Make sure you provide estimates that you know you can meet. Every time you change your estimates you will lose credibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2011-09-22T20:13:22.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3480" CreationDate="2011-09-22T20:41:29.450" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the environment you describe, their ability to provide an ETA is not relevant to you.  You are in a production environment, which means you can measure their performance.  The &quot;deviations&quot; about which you wrote are likely nothing more than normal process variances that occur in your environment.  If the metrics are already available, pull them out, graph them and see what it is telling you.  Then you can set realistic expectations with your customers and monitor their performance to make sure you see no out of control signals.  This is better than their ETA every day of the week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-09-22T20:41:29.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3472" CreationDate="2011-09-23T01:45:03.297" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;On a totally different note, I have never like the word &quot;post-mortem&quot; for post iteration discussions. Literal translation is &quot;occurring after death&quot;. Did your project die? Often the very wording of our meetings can induce negative view points or comments from individuals in attendance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Retrospective's&quot; on the other hand should be look forward to by the team as it's an opportunity to tune the team's engine and adjust behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A little off topic but wanted to mention it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T01:45:03.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3161" CreationDate="2011-09-23T06:35:49.707" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Considering the fact that it is more a disturbing factor in the layout of your report, why not add it as an appendix in total.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you can give a summarized version with only the 'important' parts in the content of the document, higlighting all the points you want to make in your report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking in consideration that your content and it's quality has the highest priority, &lt;strong&gt;layout is something to take into consideration at any time&lt;/strong&gt;! &#xA;Perhaps you will not gain any points with it, or get higher grades, but it will definitly give your report a good 'extra'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good layout doesn't make the content better it enables you to higlight certain aspects better. Bad layout has far more influence in a negative way: it makes people less enthuusiastic to read your report and it will be harder to highlight important aspects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-02-03T03:03:34.510" LastActivityDate="2012-02-03T03:03:34.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3475" CreationDate="2011-09-23T06:49:58.337" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0131479415&quot;&gt;Agile Estimating and Planning by Mike Cohn&lt;/a&gt; and he describes a solution to the problem you are having.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, like in your case, a lot of user stories are just to small and in planning are estimated with 0 story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that case, you might want to bundle a number of user stories and bundle them together in one package, so they have a 'weight' and can be planned in as a bundle...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can write them down on seperate post-it notes, just bundle them together by &lt;strong&gt;using a paper clip.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Advantages&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You gain space on the Kanban board&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can put them in a proper planning as they have an actual size...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T06:49:58.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3472" CreationDate="2011-09-23T10:30:29.170" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First I suggest you rename this stage end activity to &lt;strong&gt;Lessons Learnt.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether the project went well or not this is an invaluable activity so is worth a little effort.  That said it differs from company to company and culture to culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's Official&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;First make it an official project task, you need to send out the message that this is not optional and everyone's input is expected.  The level of detail and in some cases they may have little to add but you need to get everyone's input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What you are looking for:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;If you state your request as &quot;lessons for future projects&quot; it is more constructive and people are more inclined to respond.  It also gets away from the blame culture, especially on difficult projects&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More of Less off:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;You need to get a balanced response, I recommend you ask your team to frame their response  in terms of &lt;em&gt;What would we do next time, What would we not do.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Publish&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Finally publish your learnings.  Let everyone know their input was valued and senior management know processes are improving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2144" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T10:30:29.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3017" CreationDate="2011-09-23T13:15:02.007" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a &quot;pre project&quot; before the real project starts. In this project the US's are finalized, smart uses caes are created and the wireframes are made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way we have a start point for when we start the &quot;real&quot; project. The designer can work on converting wf's to designs, frontend can do there frontend thing and the .Net and SQL developers can do there work. The whole team together in one SCRUM team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ofc there is still room for change and improvement in the &quot;real&quot; project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1473" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T13:15:02.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1429" CreationDate="2011-09-23T16:06:01.187" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Technical Product Manager, I find that I can frequently apply Project Management skills and techniques to my job. However, Product Management varies greatly from one company to another. At my company the PM performs the role of a technical resource, project manager and as the lead on continual improvement for a product once it is out the door.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case nearly 100% of the skill set I need is Technical/IT or Project Management techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please let us know what skills you've found useful since you first posted this. Are you finding Project Management skills valuable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2199" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T16:06:01.187" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3449" CreationDate="2011-09-24T05:52:34.900" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the Windows Live division at Microsoft they call this &quot;Service Excellence&quot; (although perhaps &quot;Service Engineering&quot; would be less pretentious), and in each feature team instead of a pm/dev/test triad, they have a pm/dev/test/SE quad driving the feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2202" LastActivityDate="2011-09-24T05:52:34.900" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3449" CreationDate="2011-09-24T07:55:59.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your daily operations is similar to the IT Service Management in ITIL. I would call that category as &quot;service delivery&quot; for you are delivering and providing the daily needs of your services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="614" LastActivityDate="2011-09-24T07:55:59.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3492" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3496" CreationDate="2011-09-24T12:13:04.083" Score="3" ViewCount="1850" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you think &lt;em&gt;attention to detail&lt;/em&gt; skills inhibit, enable, or does nothing for one's ability to be an effective project manager / leader?  And why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  @Angeline and Ian: What about the intrinsic skill or innate ability of attention to detail?  By personality, some of us are weed thinkers, some tree thinkers, and some forest thinkers, meaning we have intrinsic strengths to be naturally in one of these categories.  While each of us to some degree can choose to move up and down in our thinking, is there anything around the constitutional personality trait that would either enable or inhibit our ability to be great leaders?  Or do nothing to enable or inhibit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2011-09-26T11:14:15.663" LastActivityDate="2011-09-28T16:34:10.947" Title="Your opinion: Attention to Detail Skills and PM" Tags="&lt;skills&gt;&lt;leadership&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3493" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3508" CreationDate="2011-09-24T21:19:32.703" Score="10" ViewCount="905" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently been taken on in a Programme Management role for a software company. There are several definitions of Programme / Program Manager out there - my role encompasses, amongst other things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Managing scheduling across the company's projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Managing resource availability&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Making accurate projections as to when future projects will be likely to go-live &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My former experience is working in a Project Management role with a dedicated team solely working on one project at a time, but I'm now in a position of needing to juggle the priorities across multiple projects, with resources shared between those projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the biggest challenges I face is that it's simply not practical for the team to accurately estimate projects that aren't due to commence until two or three months time. But there is still a need to timetable the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any methods / approaches that can be applied here? I'd welcome any thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2134" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-09-26T14:48:53.663" LastActivityDate="2011-09-26T21:38:27.383" Title="How can I make company-wide scheduling and resource allocation decisions?" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;program-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3494" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-25T03:37:31.270" Score="3" ViewCount="189" Body="&lt;p&gt;My girlfriend an I are currently both IT consultants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been thinking whether there have been any successful cases of couples developing applications that actually have made it big.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone can advise on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2207" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T03:38:28.453" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T03:38:28.453" Title="Are there successful stories of couples developing application together?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3494" CreationDate="2011-09-25T07:20:06.503" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure whether the fact that other couples have made it or not matters (there are many family-run businesses that work well and many that don't...): all couples are different and &lt;strong&gt;it's down to your combined individual skills and how you function as a professional team&lt;/strong&gt;. In developing applications you will need to have a combined skillset that includes project management, business analysis, technical skills, financial management, communications, problem solving and decision-making, product development management, sales &amp;amp; marketing. Ideally you each have different strengths that complement each other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would advise you to do the following: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;list down your skills and strengths and assess whether you two, as a team, are competing with or completing each other.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;assign responsibilities accordingly. For example one is focused on technical development, whilst the other leads the marketing side. It doesn't mean that only one of you programs, but that one of you has responsibility for it. It's about being clear about who leads and who supports in which area.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;honestly look at how you work together and be candid about what works and what doesn't, and address any issues. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;one of the challenges you may face as a couple could be around leadership and decision-making, unless it is already clear for both of you there is a natural leader. It's important not only for you as a team so you can move efficiently through problems and decisions, but also for your customers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;remember to draw the line between home and work: establish clear rules and don't bring home issues and problems to the office, and vice-versa.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastEditorUserId="1722" LastEditDate="2011-09-25T07:29:04.077" LastActivityDate="2011-09-25T07:29:04.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3492" CreationDate="2011-09-25T08:09:27.660" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the saying goes, the devil is in the detail, and &lt;strong&gt;an effective Project Manager must be able AND willing to pay attention to detail &lt;em&gt;when necessary&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would consider the following aspects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;in terms of the project management processes and tasks directly executed by the PM, many inherently require attention to detail, whether it's to schedule resources or track a budget. It's difficult and risky to stay &quot;high level&quot; for these type of tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;for other aspects of project delivery though, details should be handled by relevant resources competent in that particular area. For example in a building construction project, fire safety aspects would be handled by a fire protection engineer, and the PM wouldn't be expected (or have time!) to know all the details in that particular area. They would need though to plan for fire protection work, track it and be ready to go down to a detailed level if issues arose in delivering this part.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the notion that attention to detail can inhibit efficiency is legitimate when a PM spends too much time on specific details at the detriment of other more important tasks, or when they get so caught up in details they lose sight of the overall project. The challenge for the PM is therefore to know which detail to spend time on and when.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would say that attention to detail is an important PM skill and &quot;pays off&quot; when:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it is balanced with the ability to look at the big picture.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it is combined with effective priority management, i.e. the PM can effectively assess when and to what extent he/she should go into the details. In other words, when there is value in paying attention to detail.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it helps support the project team in delivering their work and resolving problems. I think it also helps building team spirit and confidence when team members see that their leader understands and is interested in what they do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;To address @David's question's edit&lt;/em&gt; : I personally think that the innate ability of attention to detail is part of effective management and leadership. But it's not enough on its own: I think what makes leaders is actually the ability to look at all the different levels (weeds, trees, forests and all!); that's what gives them the ability to see something others don't. To use another metaphor, to me a leader is eagle-eyed: able to see the big picture, yet spotting the small but critical things in it! And to use a real-world example: Steve Jobs = amazing global vision + incredible attention to detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastEditorUserId="1722" LastEditDate="2011-09-28T16:34:10.947" LastActivityDate="2011-09-28T16:34:10.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3427" CreationDate="2011-09-25T12:39:12.070" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another long-term solution is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osqa.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.osqa.net&lt;/a&gt; It satisfies all your requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2208" LastActivityDate="2011-09-25T12:39:12.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3494" CreationDate="2011-09-25T15:53:05.477" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agilezen.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Zen&lt;/a&gt; was founded and is still run to this day (even after acquisition by Rally Software) by Nate and Niki Kohari. They have a good working relationship and it doesn't seem to negatively impact their personal life. Niki has a razor sharp sense of what Zen users need and Nate is has been able to bring it to life in an elegant implementation. This is an example of complementary skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm helping my wife with her mobile app development and she has helped me with my development projects in the past, while she is primarily a stay-at-home mom. Our working relationship is more an example of similar skills and making more rapid progress by working together, than one of complimentary skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know of one other husband/wife team at Rally Software in a Developer/Product Owner role split. Another couple I know runs their head hunter business together. It works for them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also know of another couple who tried it and had to change the situation before it ruined their relationship... in the end they broke up anyway and it may have been that working together was not the source of their difficulty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that's the main point. It works if it works... but it may not. Go into it with an open mind, but make a commitment that if it's hurting your relationship, you'll make an adjustment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2044" LastActivityDate="2011-09-25T15:53:05.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3045" CreationDate="2011-09-25T16:36:29.497" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Capers Jones has been publishing information about defect density for various kinds of software for years. Unfortunately, you have to pay to get their reports, but there are a few folks who have quoted the summary numbers. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sei.cmu.edu/library/abstracts/news-at-sei/wattsnew20041.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is one from Watts Humphrey's article fittingly entitled &quot;Defective Software Works&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to that data, &lt;strong&gt;the least disciplined class of development tends to produce software that has on average 10 defects per 1000 lines of code (KLOC). The most disciplined 1 defect per KLOC on average&lt;/strong&gt; but that varies wildly. I've seen safety critical systems shipped and never have a single customer reported defect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of different ways to think about defects. You can categorize them into functionality shortcomings, UI quirks, with workaround versus without, data corruption Y/N?, etc. However, I tend to try to &lt;strong&gt;boil it all down to economics&lt;/strong&gt;. What's the risk that buggy software will hurt sales? The answer will depend largely on who the decision maker is. If it's a $5 app downloaded from an App Store, then a trouble free experience is key. If you are building enterprise software where the decision maker is not an actual user, then you'll have a different model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using this economic thinking, one of the key factors to keeping the cost of defects down is to &lt;strong&gt;remove them as early as possible&lt;/strong&gt;. The traditional model says that removing a requirements defect during a requirements elicitation activity is 1/10 the cost of doing so during design, and 1/100 as expensive as removing it during implementation, and 1/1000 as expensive as fixing it after the software has shipped. This argues for requirements review, design review, code review, etc. While there are still appropriate levels of review, the Agile mindset has a different way of thinking about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Agile argument is that if you focus on making your software easily evolvable, you can push it out early and get better feedback from actual users than you do from requirements/design/code reviewers. &lt;strong&gt;Quantity is its own form of quality.&lt;/strong&gt; It's cheaper and you end up with a better result if you get something out there and replace it several times than it is to think long and hard about how to make it perfect the first time. Let the users tell you what is important and unimportant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2044" LastActivityDate="2011-09-25T16:36:29.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3492" CreationDate="2011-09-25T19:15:41.663" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Getting into detail because you &lt;strong&gt;need&lt;/strong&gt; to is a good thing. Getting into detail because you &lt;strong&gt;want&lt;/strong&gt; to, because you can, because your background allows it, or because you reckon that you have more technical skills than the person who &lt;strong&gt;should&lt;/strong&gt; be looking after the detail, is probably a bad thing. Knowing the difference is critical, and it is essential to be honest enough with yourself to know the real reason why you are getting into the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However... The above was written before David's edit, in which he asks for comment on intrinsic abilities. I'm no psychologist, but my instinct is that the great project manager needs to be focused on delivering against a set of agreed outcomes for most of the time. At the risk of mixing my metaphors just a little too much, from time to time this will require a rummage through the weeds to find out what is going wrong or to pick up the pieces, while at other times it will require a quick trip in the helicopter to make sure the forest is still more or less the same shape as it was when the project started. However, most of the time will be spent working with individual trees or small plantations within the forest, nurturing, protecting, felling, and extracting the timber as appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm trying to say is that there is a difference between the &lt;strong&gt;role&lt;/strong&gt; of the technical specialist, the &lt;strong&gt;role&lt;/strong&gt; of the project manager, and the &lt;strong&gt;role&lt;/strong&gt; of the corporate strategist or corporate leader. Some people clearly have the ability to carry out two or even all three of these roles, but they are fulfilling different roles at different times. But, as I say, I am no psychologist, and these are purely my views based on many years of observing colleagues, and taking an interest in trying to understand what works and what doesn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastEditorUserId="301" LastEditDate="2011-09-26T20:19:28.387" LastActivityDate="2011-09-26T20:19:28.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3493" CreationDate="2011-09-25T23:40:30.410" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;To borrow from Stephen Covey, I think you're focusing too much on the urgent, at the expense of the important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're trying to manage/juggle multiple projects (and the resources that are both needed, and will be needed). But you say it's not 'practical' for your team to accurately estimate. I note you didn't say it's not 'possible'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at it this way, your team is going to have to give you an estimate, now or later. 'Now' gives you time to project the projects needs and start allocating resources (you know, your job :) ). 'Later' you'll still have to do it, but in fire-fighter mode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your team may not like having to do it now (since it seems impractical), but later when everything is already planned and allocated for they'll appreciate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-09-25T23:40:30.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3246" CreationDate="2011-09-26T01:05:46.610" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ken Schwaber has said that &quot;The minimum plan necessary to start a Scrum project consists of a vision and a Product Backlog&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is responsible for the overall product and should lead the creation of the vision.  This should happen through close collaboration with the team.  Conversations with stakeholders that have appropriate experience in business analysis and marketing is helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The vision, of course, should also involve the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2210" LastActivityDate="2011-09-26T01:05:46.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="955" CreationDate="2011-09-26T01:57:09.733" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It makes no difference whether you know Python or not to use Trac just like it makes no difference whether you know PHP or not to use Wikipedia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest gap of Trac's implementation is one that only a project participant on multiple projects would see, namely that each project must be in a separate Trac instance. That means you would have no unified view of all issues from all projects. For us, that hasn't been a show-stopper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have modified Trac's workflow to model our actual workflow. Our clients get accounts on Trac and we use the ticketing system as a &quot;ball in court&quot; system where we bounce issues back and forth between our team and the client's team until we arrive at resolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a client might open a ticket that describes some feature request. Invariably, the client will be looking for an estimate of effort on that feature. By default, all new tickets are assigned to the PM. The PM gets notified by email with a summary of the ticket, logs into Trac, and accepts the ticket. Optionally, he might accept the ticket and assign the ticket. The assigned party might not have information in the ticket to provide an estimate of effort. There might be other critical pieces of information missing so that person will ask questions of the client, set the ticket to &quot;need_info&quot; state and sets the owner of the ticket to the client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At every state change, Trac will notify the reporter, the owner, and by default, the PM so everyone who needs to know is kept informed. Additionally, we have the option of cc:ing others on the ticket, which we sometimes do as necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The client answers the questions, sets the ticket to &quot;info_provided&quot; state and sets the owner back to the party who had bounced it over them. Assuming we don't have to do another round of Q&amp;amp;A, the owner will comment on the ticket and estimate the effort, set the ticket to &quot;needs_approval&quot; and set the owner to the client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the client has enough information to make a decision and they want us to implement this new feature, they set the ticket to &quot;approved&quot; and bounce it back to us. If they don't want to proceed, they can close the ticket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we're ready to start working on that ticket, the team member who will be implementing the feature will set the ticket to &quot;work_in_progress&quot;. That gives the client an indication that this issue didn't just disappear into a black hole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the developer has finished, he'll set the ticket to &quot;ready_for_qa&quot; and set the owner to someone on our QA team. The QA person can either bounce it back to the developer as &quot;needs_work&quot; with comments or bounce it over to the client as &quot;ready_for_user_acceptance&quot;. Again, the client can bounce it back as &quot;needs_work&quot; and explain why or they can accept by closing the ticket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use Trac's milestones roughly as SCRUM cycles. We split each month into the first half and second half so we have two cycles per month. We two special milestones: &quot;Not Scheduled&quot; and &quot;Special Projects&quot;. I wanted to explicitly see &quot;Not Scheduled&quot; to emphasize the fact that the ticket is in the backlog so we created &quot;Not Scheduled&quot;. &quot;Special Projects&quot; are bigger projects for which we don't have funding yet but we'll eventually get to once we do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trac's excellent reporting makes it easy for project participants to know who is responsible for what at any given time and gives everyone an idea of the progress (or lack thereof) in the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trac's wiki is quite good. we use it for project documentation. The wiki syntax is quite simple and can be used everywhere. We have Trac integrated with Subversion and Mercurial so we can reference the changeset in the ticket and in the commit log, reference the ticket in order to have that audit trail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use PostgreSQL behind Trac so the occasional time we have to do mass changes on tickets, such moving a bunch of tickets from one milestone to another, it's very easy to do it in the back-end. The data model isn't very complicated so it's easy to figure it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2211" LastActivityDate="2011-09-26T01:57:09.733" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-09-26T01:57:09.733" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3504" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-26T14:21:21.920" Score="3" ViewCount="157" Body="&lt;p&gt;Next week, I'm going on a road trip to make a presentation of our current application on several places. Essentially, it well be two of us doing the presentation, but circumstances (among them, HR,...) demand to bring a third colleague with us. I think that's a good idea for team building purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I cannot quite think about any task assigning to that third member. His personality, character and knowledge about the application to be presented don't quite suggest him presenting as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, which valuable task could I assign to him? I think it's important to give him the feeling that he can contribute something valuable as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="699" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-16T18:00:07.857" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T18:00:07.857" Title="Valueable task for team member during presentation?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3504" CreationDate="2011-09-26T14:55:23.860" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rather than looking for a task in order to make him feel valuable, why not use his lack of knowledge as an asset?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could use him to get feedback on your presentation, either by running it past him before hand or by asking him to sit in the audience and make notes. He'll be able to bring a fresher perspective to your work, and get up to speed with it at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He could potentially learn more about presenting well, and maybe even pass that knowledge on to you. Books like &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0596522347&quot;&gt;&quot;Slide:ology&quot;&lt;/a&gt; helped me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've also mentioned his lack of knowledge and that his personality and character aren't suitable for presenting. What &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; he do? Is there a way to use his existing skills valuably?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-09-26T14:55:23.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3504" CreationDate="2011-09-26T15:26:41.307" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find a lot of value in the non-visible tasks during an event. Focus on the logistics, smooth operation, pulling people into the booth's sphere of influence through networking, owning quality (presence, editorial, fitness, etc) for all printed materials. As somebody who speaks on behalf my company, I find a HUGE value in having somebody &quot;looking out for me&quot; so that I can focus on what's important. When I'm not speaking, I do that for whomever is in the light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it's not &quot;during&quot; the presentation, but &quot;around&quot; the presentation that I would look for opportunities. Too many people on stage are distracting, but a well-executed event is still a team activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastActivityDate="2011-09-26T15:26:41.307" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3493" CreationDate="2011-09-26T16:18:19.200" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your team's aren't delivering work in a similar fashion then putting together a time table of estimates down the road is going to prove to be challenging. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, with that caveat out of the way here are some things to try for generating high level estimates. I say high level as I have found it more efficient to generate a high level estimate for roadmap projects that are further down the road. This doesn't apply to all software projects or companies however, it seems like it may fit for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, please keep these notes in mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your teams should be the one providing these estimates to you. They are the ones eventually going to be doing the work and as such should have input into the estimation of the tasks and the length of time they will take.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As the program manager responsible for communicating these estimates, you need to keep in mind that they are an &quot;estimate&quot;, not a commitment of roadmap work to be delivered on dates x, y and z.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Break down the project into its larger pieces of deliverable business value with the team (functional requirements, epics, modules...etc..) Have the team estimate each of these larger pieces of work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prior to putting an estimate, the team should be clear on what each piece of work contains. They don't need to discuss the technical implementation of what each module does or will do but rather the desired outcome of the module.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The estimate can be in weeks, months, developer days, story points. As your not following a specific methodology you will need to try and find out what works for you and the teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sum the estimates on the large deliverables of the project and fit that into your roadmap.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep track of historical data:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have historical data for work previously completed? This data can be very valuable when determining estimates on future projects. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make the roadmap an expected range:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As you haven't broken these projects down into a find grained estimate, you can estimate with a range. Project alpha is starting in 4 months and we estimate it will take between 4-7 weeks to complete. As you get closer to working on the project and the requirements are estimated in greater detail, the goal would be to say, given our current scope and resources project alpha will be be completed within 3-5 weeks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In closing, again I will mention that if your teams's aren't following any specific methodology and are all over the map, that is the first thing I would change in discussions with your development managers and teams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastEditorUserId="1885" LastEditDate="2011-09-26T21:38:27.383" LastActivityDate="2011-09-26T21:38:27.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3504" CreationDate="2011-09-26T17:05:44.707" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Who is paying for this guy to be at the presentations, the clients to whom you are presenting?  If so, and (s)he is not doing anything of value AS PERCEIVED by the client, that's a risk.  Will you end up outnumbering the clients' numbers?  If so, that's a risk.  The presence of a single individual can materially change the dynamics of a presentation / work group--sometimes for the good; other times, bad.  You are at risk for the bad side, which I think is more likely.  There's a good reason why we take time to determine who really needs to be at a meeting, e.g., RACI analysis, which is to maximize the benefit of these things that have a ton of risk of going south quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you are taking into consideration the suggestions from Lunivor and Eric, you might want to simultaneously examine why there is a demand for this person coming along and if there is any wiggle room to leave him/her behind.  If this is a dead end, a most commonly forgotten role to which (s)he could be assigned is scribe.  Documenting what happened is always good and you can immediately influence your client's perception that there is some value in his/her presence.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-09-26T17:05:44.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3494" CreationDate="2011-09-27T10:42:52.453" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The poster-kids for couples who have founded a tech start up is  Kevin and Julia Hartz founders of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eventbrite.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;eventbrite.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0s9UYy77_8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one interview&lt;/a&gt;  of the many interviews you'll find on line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2144" LastActivityDate="2011-09-27T10:42:52.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3475" CreationDate="2011-09-28T07:27:53.973" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just want to point out that bundling tasks together usually backfires, Nist of the time, you may receive all the tasks together but very quickly they each go off in their own direction. One ends up being put on hold, one is impossible to do or just a bad idea, one requires more communication with the client and a bunch are quickly done and are ready to be removed from the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't use kanban and so couldn't follow everything written here but I'll just say that for small tasks we started using a google sheet. That way everyone can access it, edit it and we have different columns to express who is responsible, what stage it's at and how urgent it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's simple and it's working very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2223" LastActivityDate="2011-09-28T07:27:53.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3078" CreationDate="2011-09-28T07:41:43.677" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It can become so aggravating having to repeat things many times (I happen to believe that the need for repetition is totally fine and legitimate but only to a certain extent, of course) and start micromanaging a team member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can get into the psychology of the matter, of course. You can ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a problem specifically between me and her or is she a problematic worker in general?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is it really about? Is she generally unhappy with life and so doesn't have the drive to work hard?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it actually more about you than her?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a project manager, you really need to know how to deal with all kinds of workers. Some need closer attention, others need more space. Some mesh well with your personality and others don't at all. But I agree with some of the other people who replied here that at some point you've gotta cut your loses and find someone who can do the work for you without causing you that much aggravation and too many resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2223" LastActivityDate="2011-09-28T07:41:43.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3494" CreationDate="2011-09-28T09:21:44.860" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;lanyrd.com was developed by Simon Willison (@simonw) and Natalie Downe (@natbat) while they were on honeymoon. They are co-developers on the project, it has succeeded in getting Y combinator funding and they are currently starting to hire their first set of employees. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2030" LastActivityDate="2011-09-28T09:21:44.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3514" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3515" CreationDate="2011-09-28T10:59:06.957" Score="1" ViewCount="381" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have used Microsoft Project previously, but not in any great depth. I have oversight for a number of projects and have created a master project file that includes the top level work items for each project along with the resources responsible for that work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each project is represented by a parent task with a number of indented sub tasks for the work involved in that project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difficultly I have is maintenance - resources are shared between projects, so in order to effectively level the project file there is a large amount of shuffling backwards and forwards to get everything appropriately positioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then reality hits...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work is delayed due to unforeseen issues or an entire project is moved back by a few months, due to changing client priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment it feels as if I will be constantly having to build the master project file from scratch in order to properly assess it's validity, as moving a project out / extending the tasks within that project will cause over-allocation in other areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What am I doing wrong? Presumably Microsoft Project is designed to solve these very issues. Are there any hints and tips for creating a robust schedule that can be easily manipulated in line with day to day changes in priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2134" LastActivityDate="2011-10-28T13:20:14.273" Title="Creating an easily maintainable file for multiple projects within Microsoft Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;program-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3514" CreationDate="2011-09-28T12:40:15.923" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It reads like you are chasing a baseline.  Are your project schedulers and project control folks centralized or dispersed within the projects?  Chasing a leveled resource utilization plan is a waste of time.  You level your resources to a degree (read, not perfectly) at the initial schedule planning and baseline.  After that, forget about it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you using the import function of MSProject?  Or did you create a separate integrated master schedule trying to marry it up with the projects' schedules?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do not have a centralized schedule/control function, say within a PMO, you might want to consider that.  That way, you can implement and enforce a set of standard capabilities to estimate, plan, schedule, baseline, and change your IMS and PMB (integrated master chedule and performance measurement baseline).  MSProject has functionality weaknesses but it can be done with standard processes and controls.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-09-28T12:40:15.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3516" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-28T16:37:40.680" Score="3" ViewCount="359" Body="&lt;p&gt;Projects have different tasks. As PM, you need to measure how effective the team member with the task he/she is executing. What if the team member multitasks? How do you measure multitasking? I have no idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="614" LastEditorUserId="2618" LastEditDate="2012-01-24T06:53:28.247" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T06:53:28.247" Title="How do you track and measure multitasked work and deliverables between different teams?" Tags="&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;measurement&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3516" CreationDate="2011-09-28T16:55:45.953" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the team member is multitasking, then his or her work falls into one of two categories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work that you have handed out;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work that you have not handed out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you hand out a task, you should ensure that you agree a delivery date for that work, and monitor whether that delivery was achieved. Initially, at least, you can probably ignore the work that you have not handed out (unless the team member is taking work on without authority, which is a completely different issue.) Over time you will get a good understanding of whether the team member is usually achieving what has been agreed or not. If he or she is, then you have no real problem. However, if not, then you need to investigate whether the other manager (ie of the other team that has a call on the team member's time) is also concerned. At that point, it becomes a discussion between the two managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One further concern is that the team member could be playing the two teams off against each other, so even if the work is being done, you should probably still meet with the other manager to establish whether you both think you are getting a fair day's work from the person... If not, you may have to start monitoring performance on a more regular basis to find out what is happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-09-28T16:55:45.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3516" CreationDate="2011-09-28T17:20:08.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you doing EV on your projects?  If not, implement it.  With it, you can measure your cost and schedule (to a point) performance of your work packages.  Analyzing your indices, you can narrow down where you are over or under performing and then dig deeper from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-09-28T17:20:08.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3279" CreationDate="2011-09-28T19:20:42.380" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Calculate velocity on an individual basis.  This requires you dive into the task level of the project and also requires discipline (and if need be force put on people by managers) in order to keep people accurately tracking their output on a task by task basis and a project by project basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can come up with running velocity averages for the indivdiuals (and the team).  With these averages you can see what teams are performing and which teams are not...then also see which individuals on those teams are performing and which are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jacobsingh.name/content/velocity-tracking-agile&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.jacobsingh.name/content/velocity-tracking-agile&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will need to custom tailor a solution for your business, but so long as you some how track these velocities, and review past data, your team will get better because each individual will get better...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2226" LastActivityDate="2011-09-28T19:20:42.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3078" CreationDate="2011-09-28T23:51:07.103" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I talked to her several times...       ...But all in vain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the best solution for everybody is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fire her.&lt;/strong&gt; Fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll be with a better worker very soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She'll &lt;strong&gt;finally&lt;/strong&gt; learn how to be a better worker. Very soon too. Or not. Not your problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Faster solution to both of you.&#xA;Maybe sounds agressive, but some people only learns this way. Sometimes is dumb to waste more time on people who really don't want to keep the good job up. It's not a easy decision, for sure. But procrastination can harm you too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2229" LastActivityDate="2011-09-28T23:51:07.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3522" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-29T15:51:12.110" Score="15" ViewCount="1004" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm finding that outside of the Scrum Master duties and responsibilities, I'm not filling my day at work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We run a two week sprint cycle, daily I do the standup with developers and write up the notes from it. Then I do a standup with business stakeholders and write up those notes. Then I manage the Kanban Board and move things along. Check the sprint Backlog and how items are progressing, do daily Team Velocity and individual velocities and the same for burndowns. Also I run round checking and chasing impediments to the developers and managing changes and new requests from Product Owners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second week of the sprint I prepare the product backlog with the Product Owners for the next sprint. Manage and plan the sprint planning and estimation with the developers and plan and run the retrospective. First half of the sprint is sorting and managing the sprint debt items and reallocating them with in the backlog and negotiating with Product owners about their completion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may sound like I'm very busy but there are gaps in my day and I'm wondering if there is anything I am missing or should be doing that I'm not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2233" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-09-29T16:40:22.173" LastActivityDate="2020-07-10T08:24:53.363" Title="Additional Scrum Master duties outside of team" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3522" CreationDate="2011-09-29T16:56:27.933" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually in vast majority of teams I know Scrum Master is either as additional role for one of team members, which means that SM does regular project work and on the top of that does what you do, or a single SM works with a few teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't share your background, but basing on a fact you don't do any project work I consider you're more of a &quot;specialized&quot; Scrum Master. In this case I'd advise to start working with a second team and then possibly with another if you still have empty gaps in your schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another obvious idea is to pull some work items for yourself as long as you're competent enough to deal with development/testing/whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS. I would rethink whether everything you do is actually needed. I don't say it is not, although managing Kanban board for the team or measuring individual velocity sound like overkill. Maybe the team needs it - you definitely know better than me - but don't try to be control freak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually filling your schedule to the point where you are short of time should help you to decide which activities are really needed or add value and which may be skipped with no difference whatsoever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE (basing on comment): If your main goal is to mentor the organization, do that. Look for opportunities to teach. Maybe there are other development teams. Even if there aren't you have much work to do not only in marketing and customer services but also among senior managers. As long as they insist on measuring individual velocity my guess is they don't really get what agile is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: if you spend more time with a team you just make them more efficient with their new tools. However, if you spend more time building the widespread understanding of agile concepts among the whole organization you teach them that their new tools enable new methods of building things as well. They don't need to bring it all down to individual performance. Basically Scrum set focus on team performance and team accountability instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW: a mixture of top-performers doesn't necessarily make a top-performing team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-09-29T19:26:07.103" LastActivityDate="2011-09-29T19:26:07.103" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3160" CreationDate="2011-09-29T18:32:17.503" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An interesting article regarding Earned Value and Agile is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mgmt-technologies.com/Earning%20Value%20the%20Agile%20Way.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Earning Value the Agile Way: Using Story Points to generate EV Metrics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It provides a good comparison of EVM and Agile, the difference between CPI and Velocity etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise I second Glen Alleman's blog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-09-29T18:32:17.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3522" CreationDate="2011-09-30T06:00:26.227" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have a look at these websites:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrummasterchecklist.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scrummasterchecklist.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agileconsortium.blogspot.com/2011/08/joes-unofficial-scrum-checklist.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://agileconsortium.blogspot.com/2011/08/joes-unofficial-scrum-checklist.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I bet there are things in those lists that might help fill your days&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2238" LastEditorUserId="10465" LastEditDate="2014-07-07T21:49:26.437" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T21:49:26.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3526" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3528" CreationDate="2011-09-30T10:07:10.070" Score="5" ViewCount="306" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a final year undergraduate student studying software engineering. 1 module for my final year consists of a development project of approximately 6 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm completely new to this level of project management or even duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last year on industrial placement the longest a personal project took was 23 days, I was provided a specification for a bespoke &quot;add - on&quot; and returned a solution, with details of the testing I'd carried out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm curious as to whether defining the approach I want to take upfront is really that important, having never used a specific &quot;branded&quot; approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I do need to declare a methodology and an approach none of them seem to have a point at which they identify they may not be the most suitable. I'd rather put my hands up and say &quot;Ok, xyz hasn't worked out for me. I'll try this....&quot; rather than get stuck in a series of increments, iterations, flowcharts and not really make the most of my time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. There doesn't seem to be a &quot;homework&quot; tag as per SO to indicate this is related to a study project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2241" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-16T18:04:48.620" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T18:04:48.620" Title="Is it important to have a clearly defined methodology from the outset of a project?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3522" CreationDate="2011-09-30T10:22:29.340" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It may sound like I'm very busy but there are gaps in my day and I'm wondering if there is anything I am missing or should be doing that I'm not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's a fairly complete and concise list of the ScrumMaster responsibilities.  Add the following things to your responsibilities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Educate management on benefits of Scrum.  You said that you track individual velocities because &quot;&lt;em&gt;management wants metrics&lt;/em&gt;&quot;.  However, most agile process experts recommend against tracking at the individual level. One of your roles must be to protect the team and allow it to be self forming.  Management needs to understand why it's a bad idea for you to provide them metrics on individuals.  If they want that data, then explain why they need to get it without you.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take time to visit with team members.  Everything you described was Scrum101 - by the books.  However, none of that matters if team members are unhappy or unmotivated.  You are one of them and they should see you that way.  Schedule social events, talk privately with members who may be struggling more than others.  Be genuine and be helpful. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take time to understand the product.  Find key weaknesses and work with the team to develop stories that improve them.  Then help the product owner understand the benefits.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2210" LastActivityDate="2011-09-30T10:22:29.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3526" CreationDate="2011-09-30T10:58:06.667" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not only is it important, it is required.  It is impossible to plan your project, that is to determine who you need, what you need, when you need it, how much it will cost, how long it will take you, if you do not have a method of attack.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A simple analogy: if you want to travel across the country, can you do so if you have not yet determined the method of travel?  If you want to see the country by car, a plane ticket will do you know good.  If you have to get across country in a few hours, walking is not an option.  If you want to really experience the vibe of middle America (or wherever you live), doing so at flight level 350 would not meet mission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mission dictates methods, which dictates the plan, which dictates the resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, a method is not to be deployed without consideration.  You do not take a prescribed method, post it on a wall, and say, 'everyone, go do that.'  A method must be tailored for your mission and environment.  In fact, this is how methods evolve and new methods are found.  A good rule to follow: NEVER implement a method as prescribed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do bring up a great point: what happens when your method is not working out as you thought it would.  It is unbelievably difficult (read, it feels impossible) to back out of your chosen approach when you are way into it.  It is a sunk cost bias, where we have a tendency to stick to something because of the investment already made.  Sunk cost should never be one of your criteria, but it almost always is.  Can you imagine going to your customer and telling them that the method you proposed $1.5M dollars ago is failing and you need to go in another direction?  It happens and is the right business call, but incredibly hard and risky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So chose your method wisely and after significant critical thought.  Modify it to fit mission and environment.  And be flexible enough to abandon it if you erred in judgment or other factors are interfering with success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-09-30T10:58:06.667" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3529" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3530" CreationDate="2011-09-30T11:39:26.657" Score="18" ViewCount="797" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our team made a mistake in software code and that caused the customer lose a lot of money. Now they ask us for that amount to give them back as compensation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to deal with that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2232" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-09-30T13:09:33.750" LastActivityDate="2011-09-30T13:09:33.750" Title="How to cope with a client expecting compensation for mistake your team made?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;clients&gt;&lt;customer-service&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3529" CreationDate="2011-09-30T12:28:40.820" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;For any project, there is a process of verification and validation of scope and acceptance of delivery.  Before that occurs, the seller of services is on the hook to 'get it right.'  After this occurs, there is a formal, legal, and real transfer of accountability from the seller to the buyer.  This process could be a moment in time, like when you take the car off the lot, or could be a process over time, like when you create your punch list over a year for the builder.  Whatever that process is, it is final.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming this transfer took place on your project, your customer assumed responsibility for the product and went to market.  A defect surfaced and they got hit.  This is the risk of all business decisions as there is never a guarantee of perfection or success.  They do not really have the right to try to transfer this risk and accountability to you, EXCEPT if they can show some sort of negligence or malpractice in some way and a mistake does not necessarily meet this standard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, you are not free of risk or cost.  The threat of suit is there, for which you have to defend and this costs money and time.  You have the threat of your reputation, which has an unknown cost to you.  And of course you will not be a candidate for future work for this client, either, which might already be the case anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a benefit / cost decision.  What are the costs to give the money back, the cost to fix the bug, the cost of possible legal defense (win or lose), and the cost of your reputation.  There is no single answer that any of us can provide here.  &quot;Sue me&quot; is a viable and realistic answer as coughing up the money is, or somewhere in between.  Your organization, including legal, will need to sit down and conduct this analysis carefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-09-30T12:28:40.820" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3526" CreationDate="2011-09-30T18:56:04.017" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Ok, xyz hasn't worked out for me. I'll try this....&quot; rather than get&#xA;  stuck in a series of increments, iterations, flowcharts and not really&#xA;  make the most of my time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, that your comment about xyz not working, I'll try.... is one of the greatest concepts surrounding iterative development &amp;amp; planning. Don't be fearful about getting stuck in a pre-defined project plan. Relish change if it is required, tweak your process, make changes to be faster and more efficient. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define the problem definition. What are you building? Why? Let the problem definition describe the goal or problem rather than dictating a solution. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set milestones, break out pieces of deliverable functionality. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plan for increments that deliver these pieces of functionality. Try and deliver the &quot;riskier&quot; pieces first in the event there are un-forseen issues encountered&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the end of an iteration or increment review how things went. Are you on track? Can you do something differently? Can you try something new?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Record your progress. If you don't know what you completed, how will you know if your on track or if your improving?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every project has course corrections throughout its duration. That said you want to mitigate the number of corrections and the size of them. You also want to balance the number of new things you are trying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastEditorUserId="1885" LastEditDate="2011-10-01T00:14:20.390" LastActivityDate="2011-10-01T00:14:20.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="955" CreationDate="2011-10-01T21:08:56.220" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might want to take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jira&lt;/a&gt; from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Atlassian&lt;/a&gt; and its complete set of products for project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The starter license for small companies with a small number of users has a negligible price. It can help you get started in having your projects under control and will be equally useful and up-to-the-task if the number of projects and employees in your company increases in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2248" LastActivityDate="2011-10-01T21:08:56.220" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-10-01T21:08:56.220" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="955" CreationDate="2011-10-02T01:04:48.527" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I couldn't see it already mentioned. I've started using agilesoup&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;for the limited usage I've had its been perfect, it does also offer reporting on iterations and time spent&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a pretty handy android app.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilesoup.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.agilesoup.com/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;I think the only point I haven't found a solution to is the invoicing elem&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2241" LastActivityDate="2011-10-02T01:04:48.527" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-10-02T01:04:48.527" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3534" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-02T08:03:48.270" Score="5" ViewCount="178" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm developing a list of milestones for a hypothetical software development project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two of the milestones I've come up with are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xA;  MILESTONE              DUE DATE    STAKEHOLDER   ACCEPTANCE CRITERIA&#xA;-------------------------------------------------------------------------------&#xA;3 Development completed  15/05/2012  Development   All development tasks have a &#xA;                                     team          status of 'Done'.&#xA;4 System tested          15/05/2012  Testing team  Intranet system fulfills all &#xA;                                                   of the test cases.&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've given both milestones the same completion date, as I can't see how one activity can be complete independently of the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If development is complete, then testing must be also, because testing might reveal errors which required further development to resolve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If testing is complete, then development must be also, since the fact that the system is fulfilling all of the test cases means that the software is doing its job, hence no further development is required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this seem normal? Or is there some mistake in the milestones I've defined?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Parenthetically, do the milestones seem to break the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SMART criteria&lt;/a&gt; in any way? Personally I think they are fine, unless I'm misinterpreting the SMART criteria somehow.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1551" LastActivityDate="2011-10-02T17:17:55.523" Title="Is it normal to occasionally have two milestones with the same completion date?" Tags="&lt;milestones&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3534" CreationDate="2011-10-02T10:42:44.360" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generically speaking, there is nothing ever wrong with two, or more, milestones finishing together.  In some cases, the logic says they MUST finish together, in which case you would create a FF (finish-finish) constraint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The logic you state above makes sense, too; however, (and I am reading into this as we do not have insight into the rest of your schedule) you may have your decomposition at a level of abstraction that you lose sight of when work is triggered, i.e., how is the testing activity triggered and when will you know the testing activity is starting late?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the decomposition is too abstract, you may not know your testing will be late until it is actually late.  If you are monitoring your schedule, forecasting, and predicting performance, you want to know way before that.  So creating the next level down where you have initial development, then testing, then subsequent development for fixes, enhancements, etc., could serve you well for schedule control and prediction.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-10-02T10:42:44.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3534" CreationDate="2011-10-02T17:17:55.523" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;While your approach is possible.  It may be better to define development done as &lt;em&gt;Ready for Testing&lt;/em&gt;.  This should have development completing ahead of Testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will need an additional item for Defects Resolved.  It has been my experience that test failures fall in to three categories.  Only one of these categories would require work on the code. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Application failure, incorrect code.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test failed when it should have passed. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Incorrect requirements. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it may be preferable not to release code with bugs, it is frequently done.   If testing discovers bugs which are not going to be fixed before release, then the code released to testing can be considered done.  These bugs should be recorded as known defects.  (It was common for Unix man pages to contain  a Bugs section listing cases which would fail.  For instance, awk would fail on lines larger than 1024 characters.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you are following a zero defects approach, I would argue that you may still need to release with known bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once development is complete, you may want a maintenance resource in place to repair any bugs found in testing or after release.  This can be the original development team if they are working on the next release of the product.  It that case, make sure bugs are fixed appropriately in both releases.  This may result in two different bug fixes, but often the same fix can be applies in both releases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2011-10-02T17:17:55.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3538" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-02T23:07:02.690" Score="1" ViewCount="1915" Body="&lt;p&gt;we're about to move from TFS server 2008 to TFS 2010 and I'm working on the details of the setup we want in 2010.  We are using Scrum and we need to decide what Process Template to use in our new TFS 2010 setup.  The choices seem to be between the Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 and MSF for Agile Software Development v5.0 process templates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know to what extent Microsoft is supporting these templates in future releases of TFS?  Can anyone recommend what they think is the best options for a Scrum project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One complication is that we want to add original, remaining and complete hours fields for estimates and time tracking which the MSF Agile 5 template already has.  Also, that template seems to have some good reporting built in.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3751148/difference-between-vs2010-scrum-v1-0-vs-msf-for-agile-software-development-v5-0-o&quot;&gt;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3751148/difference-between-vs2010-scrum-v1-0-vs-msf-for-agile-software-development-v5-0-o&lt;/a&gt; which says that the agile template doesn't have a release burndown report however from playing with it in our sandbox I see it has a burndown and burn rate report which can cover multiple iterations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-nz/library/hh301775%28v=VS.110%29.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview MSDN article&lt;/a&gt; on creating the backlog Product Backlog item is used in the screen shots (although the MSF Agile template is also mentioned) which makes me wonder if building on the Scrum 1.0 template is the direction Microsoft is going in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in what other people think and in feedback from others that have made the choice one way or the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks,&#xA;Pete&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2249" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T11:33:46.223" LastActivityDate="2012-01-01T10:25:19.300" Title="Scrum 1.0 vs MSF Agile 5.0 Process templates in TFS 2010" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3538" CreationDate="2011-10-03T08:23:21.760" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you have seen in the Developer Preview, the Scrum template is now going to be shipped with the product - v1 was an template which you have to download. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The new Dev11 scrum template (v2) has the same reporting capabilities as the Agile template. So if you create in Dev11 new project, it does not really matter which one you take. The are pretty similar, but the Scrum template uses the scrum naming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, Visual Studio11 is not out yet and therefor you have to use the Visual Studio 2010 templates. You are correct that the reporting on the Scrum v1 template is not great. If reporting is important to you, then use the Agile template. If the naming and workflow conventions of Scrum are important, then choose Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Visual Studio 11 there is - as you have seen during //BUILD/ - the new backlog and board capabilities. These work for the Scrum and for the Agile template: it is configurable, so that does not make any difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2251" LastActivityDate="2011-10-03T08:23:21.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3540" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-03T14:01:15.740" Score="9" ViewCount="22638" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for an easy to use project management tool that has the following features:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multiple projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multiple clients&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multiple employees&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Integrated in Outlook 2007/2010/2011 (calendar, email)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;‘zoom out’ to watch all projects overview&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time tracking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On premise installation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried some of the other tools that are recommended on PM, but they don't offer Outlook integration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inloox.com/&quot;&gt;InLoox&lt;/a&gt; for example does have much of the functionality, but the process looks too complicated (such as manually synchronizing tasks between Inloox and Outlook). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another one is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.missinglinkprojectcenter.com/&quot;&gt;MissingLink&lt;/a&gt;, however I don't know if it allows me to assign tasks and view an overview of all projects. &lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; I've tested MissingLink, but it feels slow and acts a bit weird in Outlook 2010 (clicking the dashboard link shows me the contacts, for example)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1203" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-07T14:49:02.603" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T12:38:38.683" Title="Looking for a project management tool that integrates with Outlook" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3541" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3546" CreationDate="2011-10-03T15:38:43.170" Score="6" ViewCount="638" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently listening to David Snowden talking about complex adaptive systems (a team producing software counts).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Agile software coaching and project management, I've heard that one of the useful ways to get a team to change is to have a sense of urgency to which the team needs to respond, or to create one. The theory is that this will allow the team to self-organise around the sense of urgency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In real life, if there's a crisis, someone often takes control and is quite forceful about holding that control until the crisis has passed. This is also the recommendation which I believe David Snowden makes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a difference between the way a PM and team should act in a real crisis from a crisis generated in order to drive change? Is it useful to create or fake crises for the purposes of change, or should we be waiting until there's genuine need? In either event - what's the best way to help a team work within a crisis situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-10-03T21:41:50.600" Title="Is it useful to create a &quot;crisis&quot;, and how should you guide a team?" Tags="&lt;change-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3541" CreationDate="2011-10-03T16:24:23.067" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem with using crisis as a change management tool is that people only focus on the crisis, and not the change. So whatever changes are made to deal with the crisis most likely won't hold over time. The team will regress to the old pattern once the crisis is gone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Real (sustained) change comes from addressing the root cause of the problem, not simply fire-fighting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And once you start down the path of &quot;crisis as CM tool&quot;, how do you deal with the next crisis that is simply a crisis and not a CM event? How do you communicate to the team that this one isn't supposed to have lasting effects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-10-03T16:24:23.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3541" CreationDate="2011-10-03T17:20:43.183" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;sense of urgency&lt;/em&gt; is one of the nine or 10 critical success factors to a successful change.  It is aligned with a &lt;em&gt;compelling reason to change&lt;/em&gt;, i.e, they go hand in hand.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To use the words, 'create a sense of urgency or crisis,' is odd to me, however.  That implies an almost artificial scenario, smoke and mirrors through which your targeted group under going the change would easily see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the urgency or reason to change is not naturally evident, then I might question the need to change at all.  Seems like your money would be better spent elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, to drive change, I opine that communicating the urgency and need for change are two critically important components that will help enable change, reduce resistance and risk, and facilitate sustainability.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-10-03T17:20:43.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3540" CreationDate="2011-10-03T18:32:46.243" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my organisation we are using &lt;strong&gt;SharePoint Enterprise 2010&lt;/strong&gt; to manage projects by setting up workflows. This is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_SharePoint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MOSS&lt;/a&gt; as Outlook which can be perfectly integrated and synchronised with the relevant project team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With SharePoint we produce and manage &lt;em&gt;Dashboards&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Metrics&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Risks Logs&lt;/em&gt;, etc... that are used not only to communicate the status of the project to the Project Board but also to our external stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, since this is Microsoft (which tends to be the preferable option for many organisations) you can integrate other applications like InfoPath, Projects, Visio, OneNote, and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have added few links underneath which contain supportive information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ff819861&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Technet&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-foundation-help/synchronize-sharepoint-2010-content-with-outlook-2010-HA101881295.aspx?CTT=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Office.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sharepointmonitor.com/2010/01/building-approval-workflows-with-sharepoint-server-2010/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SharePoint Monitor&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/getrichieb/managing-projects-on-sharepoint-rich-blank-july-2010&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Projects on SharePoint&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NEW CONTENT ADDED:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have kept an eye on other PM products and services that are integrated with MS Outlook. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.attask.com/feature-list&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;AtTask&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; is online project management software that comes with turnkey integrations for Microsoft Outlook. If you check on the Feature List link you'll find in the Product Integration section that: &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;AtTask integrates seamlessly with all business-critical applications empowering managers with all the information they need to make informed and accurate decisions.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are currently reviewing this product with our IT Team and are considering to acquire it specially for its integration to MS products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional sources have also recommended &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.productdossier.com/TouchBase_PM.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TouchBase-PM&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; which also seems to be compatible with MS products. However we have not had feedback from IT yet on this one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2013-11-25T22:57:09.687" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T22:57:09.687" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3541" CreationDate="2011-10-03T19:07:08.540" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would strongly resist the urge to manufacture a crisis, but equally strongly advocate using a real crisis to drive change. My belief is that you need to start by articulating in simple terms why the status quo is not an option, and then explain in equally simple terms a clear and compelling vision of where you need to be (and this should include the timescale that has to be met). Next, find the resources (human, financial, intellectual, and technical) that will allow you to make the change, and finally present a plan that everyone buys into. The sum of this lot should be greater than the natural resistance to change: if it isn't, then you have to go back and strengthen any part of your preparation that is weak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you start to drive the change into the organisation, hold firm. You will meet opponents. Don't lose sight of your compelling case for change, and either take them with you or be prepared to move them out. (I like the phrase &quot;lead, follow, or get out of the way&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will need a leader. If you can't personally take this role on, then work with someone who can. And after the crisis has passed, make sure that the change is embedded in the new culture of the organisation otherwise people will drift back to their old  ways, and the second time round will be harder than the first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, don't expect to be Mr Popular. Bear in mind the quote from that old master, Nicolo Machiavelli: &lt;em&gt;&quot;It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, then to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastEditorUserId="301" LastEditDate="2011-10-03T21:23:23.757" LastActivityDate="2011-10-03T21:23:23.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3541" CreationDate="2011-10-03T19:11:21.953" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find that &lt;strong&gt;any&lt;/strong&gt; successful Agile transition I've see has a sense of urgency built in. The client is making the change to improve something. Usually its Time to Market or Quality. I find that the &quot;crisis&quot; around this issue is usually enough to drive things forward. If it isn't enough then additionally crises usually arise all on their own: botched production deployment, production bugs killing productive development time etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the best reading/thinking I've seen on this - I like John Koetter's - A Sense of Urgency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FYI I don't think I've ever had to generate/create a crisis - just focus attention to one that is already there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2254" LastActivityDate="2011-10-03T19:11:21.953" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3541" CreationDate="2011-10-03T21:41:50.600" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do not manufacture crises. This will backfire on you as badly as in the parable of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Who_Cried_Wolf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Boy Who Cried Wolf&lt;/a&gt;. I've worked for bosses who thought that their workers performed better under a crisis than when one planned ahead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of these are bosses who cannot distinguish between &quot;urgent&quot; and &quot;important&quot;. To them, &lt;a href=&quot;http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?FourQuadrants&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;quadrants 2 and 3&lt;/a&gt; don't exist (quadrant 3 is treated as quadrant 1, and quadrant 2 is treated as quadrant 4). For them, a copy of &lt;em&gt;The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People&lt;/em&gt; would be something you'd need to tie them down to read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of these are bosses who think that &lt;a href=&quot;http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?DeathMarch&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;death marches&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.igda.org/why-crunch-modes-doesnt-work-six-lessons&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;crunch mode&lt;/a&gt; are great. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the reasons that many folks like to hire younger developers is that younger developers are likely to fall for the manufactured crisis ploy than someone who has seen it happen multiple times. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Is there a difference between the way a PM and team should act in a real crisis from a crisis generated in order to drive change?&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the same question as &quot;is there a difference between lieing and telling the truth?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2011-10-03T21:41:50.600" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3540" CreationDate="2011-10-04T06:07:53.713" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Microsoft Project has integration with Microsoft Office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/H8US9.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;more information can be found on this url&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project-help/explore-the-microsoft-office-project-add-in-for-outlook-HA001084228.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project-help/explore-the-microsoft-office-project-add-in-for-outlook-HA001084228.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastActivityDate="2011-10-04T06:07:53.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2499" CreationDate="2011-10-04T07:27:54.773" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I appreciate that your question is about creating engagement with the Agile team, not getting the business to be Agile. I recommend that you start from a mindset of there not being any difference between the business and the teams. Choose to believe that both groups are fully aligned against a single vision... then address the bits that don't match your internal reality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adopting this mindset that there is no border helps me to avoid mistakes I've committed too many times in the past:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Selling Agile&lt;/strong&gt;: It's not about &quot;Agile&quot;, it's about better business results through the consistent delivery of high quality software, assuming software solves the problem. Using outcome-based language rather than our agile lingo helps the business to easily see how much I care about the organization's success, and becomes much less threatening as a result&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Silo-based thinking&lt;/strong&gt;: I can't solve a problem from inside the box. When I'm focused on a border between groups from a mindset of being &lt;em&gt;inside&lt;/em&gt; one of the groups, I'm always going to use &quot;Us&quot; vs. &quot;Them&quot; language. Instead, I'm going to see a single group that is doing a few things that don't make sense.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Opaque Goals&lt;/strong&gt;: A full transparency about your objectives goes a long way towards building trust. This requires having moved beyond the silo-based thinking, though, because that bias will come through in your language as you are transparent, and listeners will easily detect the misalignment between your words and your beliefs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a lot of ways it just comes back to the core Scrum values: Commitment, Focus, Openness, Respect, and Courage. Demonstrate these in the course of purposeful engagement, and people will come to share those values and return the engagement and attention you offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="696" LastActivityDate="2011-10-04T07:27:54.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3551" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3553" CreationDate="2011-10-04T10:25:44.057" Score="5" ViewCount="712" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should the structuring of tasks in a WBS be according to vertical &quot;features&quot; of a product or horizontal &quot;aspects&quot; of a product?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, say I'm developing warehouse software with 3 modules:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Orders&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inventory&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shipping&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And suppose there are two stages of development:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Development&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be appropriate to structure the WBS like this?...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xA; PROJECT&#xA;   Orders module&#xA;     Requirements&#xA;     Development&#xA;     Testing&#xA;   Inventory&#xA;     Requirements&#xA;     Development&#xA;     Testing&#xA;   etc...&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or this?...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xA; PROJECT&#xA;   Requirements&#xA;     Orders module&#xA;     Inventory module&#xA;     Shipping module&#xA;   Development&#xA;     Orders module&#xA;     Inventory module&#xA;     Shipping module&#xA;   Testing&#xA;     etc...&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or does it not matter much?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or should I be choosing one way or the other based on some particular aspect of the project, and if so, which aspect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1551" LastEditorUserId="1551" LastEditDate="2011-10-04T11:55:25.277" LastActivityDate="2017-06-15T15:15:38.367" Title="Structuring a WBS" Tags="&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3551" CreationDate="2011-10-04T11:02:23.403" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you break your project into requirements, then development, then testing, you won't get feedback on your requirements until development begins, and won't get feedback on the development until testing begins. Nor will you have the option of shipping one component early and starting to get value from it while developing the others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you develop using vertical slices you can get feedback more quickly, while the knowledge of how to correct things is still fresh. The bugs will be cheaper to fix while the developers still remember what it was they were working on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can slice up your vertical slices even more finely, you can get feedback even more quickly. This is one of the practices at the heart of Lean and Agile software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-10-04T11:02:23.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3551" CreationDate="2011-10-04T11:16:05.600" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your WBS is not a schedule.  It is not a breakdown of the how or when, but rather a break down of what.  After you have broken your product down to the size that to which you think you can manage, the leaf level serves as your work package, under which actions are identified and then scheduled.  But those actions are not part of your WBS; they are part of your schedule.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-10-04T11:16:05.600" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3554" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3556" CreationDate="2011-10-04T13:09:28.407" Score="1" ViewCount="1257" Body="&lt;p&gt;I own a small software company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have many projects going on at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Microsoft Project, we can create project plan and keep track of resources (developers) at a project level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know if I can see employee allocations at company level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1969" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T17:50:54.670" Title="Is it possible to track resources at company level using Microsoft Project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3555" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3559" CreationDate="2011-10-04T13:22:29.887" Score="2" ViewCount="7299" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to enter company holidays in the default working calender in Microsoft Project. &#xA;But everytime I create new file, I have to re-enter holidays again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to save the holidays, so that when we create new projects, we don't have to define it every time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1969" LastEditorUserId="2401" LastEditDate="2012-10-06T04:46:35.470" LastActivityDate="2012-10-06T16:24:43.463" Title="How to enter holiday calender in Microsoft Project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3554" CreationDate="2011-10-04T14:35:06.083" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If all the projects are independent you should be able to cut &amp;amp; paste them all into a single Project file without introducing any errors. So long as there is a standard nomenclature across projects for the different resources you should be able to get a clear idea of who is doing what when.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your projects are interdependent you are probably keeping a program/portfolio level gantt in order to flag when problems in one project impact another. You may need to introduce more granularity into this kind of gantt to track individual developers and tasks, depending on how much detail you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2011-10-04T14:35:06.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3555" CreationDate="2011-10-05T02:00:52.457" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;With Project 2003 and 2007, the only way I have been able to accomplish this is by changing the working calendar on a project, saving that project as a template, and then sharing the template.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-10-05T02:00:52.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3560" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-05T08:07:58.623" Score="4" ViewCount="302" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a lead software developer, and I have just been tasked with revamping our software development process. Part of this will be to implement a system with the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source Control Build automation Project management/ reporting Unit Testing Bug tracking Continuous integration&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now on the face of it, MS Team Foundation Server seems like the most obvious choice, especially as we are generally a MS software team, using Visual Studio and VSS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the snag is that solution would ideally be used by the whole IT department for Project Management/ reporting and Issue management, and as far as I know TFS is really aimed at software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question(s) is: Does such a set up exist? Is TFS flexible enough to facilitate more generic IT project ? Would it be better to implement Trac, SVN etc (because at Trac may well suit the IT department generally), and we could bolt on svn, Nunit, and other tools to meet the requirements list?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for reading - any ideas would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2259" LastActivityDate="2011-10-14T14:36:29.133" Title="IT Project Management tool aimed at developers, but still generic enough for general purpose use?" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3561" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-05T10:20:06.430" Score="3" ViewCount="995" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, I had a following problem on my team: One team member was going for vacation and he had two critical tasks assigned. He wasn't able to finish them before leaving. So we had a discussion whose responsibility should it be. Team member's, team leader's, no ones - team should just handle this issue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will add that we try to utilize agile and Kanban methods. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the people who were capable to take over those tasks are sitting in one room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastEditorUserId="1253" LastEditDate="2011-10-05T14:26:10.210" LastActivityDate="2019-04-17T17:33:38.130" Title="Who is responsible for passing a task when going for vacation?" Tags="&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;team&gt;&lt;responsibility&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3561" CreationDate="2011-10-05T11:15:14.690" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The responsibility of allocating resources, be it human, money, tools, materiel, or time, rests with leadership.  I doubt you would ever see &quot;allocate resources&quot; as part of the role description of a team member.  So if your resource allocation needs to shift for whatever reason, a leader needs to make those decisions.  After all, managing a project is all about balancing constrained resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, however, especially on a high performing team where you have evidence of synergy, collective success or failure, decreased intra-competition, etc., a bit of the transfer can occur in the ranks with little overall threat.  While a manager can delegate that to some degree, it cannot occur in a vacuum; it must be ultimately approved by the lead and the team to ensure another area of the team did not break in the process, i.e., evidence of a lack of coordination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-10-05T11:15:14.690" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3563" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3604" CreationDate="2011-10-05T12:38:04.793" Score="2" ViewCount="3507" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the title is pretty self-explanatory, but let me clarify. I'd like to send a mail to each member of the development team each Monday, which outlines the tasks that they should focus on for the week, along with completion dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like something automated, but the team is small enough that I can do some manual work if needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or perhaps someone knows of a better way to ensure everyone knows what they are supposed to be working on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2262" LastActivityDate="2011-10-11T13:28:06.403" Title="How to send weekly priorities email from MS Project" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3561" CreationDate="2011-10-05T13:49:02.860" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It pretty much depends on rules you have in a team. If we discuss a mature team I would expect people would take responsibility for handing the task over and I mean here both: person who will be absent and those who will undertake the task and complete it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The former should plan for their absence and verbalize somehow the need for help. The latter should volunteer to finish the tasks. That's what I would expect from mature teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we discuss less mature team I believe the more responsibility goes to the leader. I mean in every case the leader should actually be aware of the situation and act when the result of team self-organization isn't going to end up well. With less mature team it's just more likely that leader's action will be required to sort things out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't say the leader should directly tell people who does what. A bit of encouragement and direction can be enough. Actually the less the leader is involved the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also mention that you use Kanban. Depending on the process policies you have the problem can sort of solve itself. I mean if the task is &quot;abandoned&quot; and the team knows how to act in such case their reaction may be perfectly fine even when a task isn't formally handed off. However probably you should signal one's absence in some way on the board in this case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-10-05T13:49:02.860" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3561" CreationDate="2011-10-05T18:41:02.320" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think both David and Pawel gave great answers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Self-organizing or not, the answer is the same. It's up to the team member to make sure his work will continue, but it's also the responsibility of the team leader to ensure that that does happen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is where I tend to struggle with the idea of self-organizing teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, someone has to be responsible, and accountable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-10-05T18:41:02.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3566" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3567" CreationDate="2011-10-06T01:17:57.640" Score="5" ViewCount="2678" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a study assignment, which involves creating a WBS and GANTT chart for a 6-month project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I'm supposed expedite one of the tasks by increasing resources to it, thus decreasing the amount of time required to perform it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I add another resource to one of the tasks, and give both resources an even share of the time, so that the amount of time the task will take halved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the assignment claims that I should able to reduce time &lt;em&gt;and costs&lt;/em&gt; by doing this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can see how it reduces time, but how can it reduce cost, when I still have to pay the same amount of money for both resources per unit of work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Broadly speaking, is it ever possible to reduce the overall cost of a project, purely by using crashing techniques?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1551" LastActivityDate="2012-08-06T19:47:52.497" Title="Is it possible to reduce costs by crashing a project?" Tags="&lt;gantt&gt;&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3566" CreationDate="2011-10-06T02:21:07.190" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This would be possible in a project that has an overhead cost that is calculated by a fixed rate over the entire length of the project. One example I can think of is a building construction project. The job trailer, on-site temporary utilities, and on-site security fencing is a dollar-per-day rental cost. If you crash the schedule, then the total cost of those items will be reduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, these general overhead costs are quite low so I doubt you would save that much money but it &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; a cost savings&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-10-06T02:21:07.190" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3561" CreationDate="2011-10-06T02:57:18.143" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the teams I've been involved with, vacations and time off were known well in advance and just rolled into the schedule from the beginning so the task hand over was sort of assumed. However, I did find this piece of advice that seems relevant:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Determining the team’s capacity is critical to a successful planning&#xA;  session. This should be the first activity in the planning meeting.&#xA;  Two best practices for determining the team capacity are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1) The total&#xA;  capacity of the team should be based on the number of team members&#xA;  times the number of days in the iteration times (no more than) 6&#xA;  hours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) Start the planning session by establishing who has vacation&#xA;  time planned for the upcoming sprint, and capturing that information&#xA;  in a vacation story. The vacation story has tasks for each team&#xA;  members’ time away, which account for some of the team’s capacity when&#xA;  stories are being committed. As the sprint progresses and the vacation&#xA;  days are hit, the burn-down chart reflects these time-away tasks being&#xA;  completed along with any other tasks. This prevents the burn-down from&#xA;  falsely indicating a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.3back.com/planning/perfect-planning-%e2%80%94-best-practices-for-successful-agile-planning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.3back.com/planning/perfect-planning-%e2%80%94-best-practices-for-successful-agile-planning&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-10-06T02:57:18.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3569" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-06T03:04:36.080" Score="3" ViewCount="2302" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am but 1 month in my new company. My position is Web Content Provider, so it would be managing web content, creating contents for the website, publishing, SEO and stuff. Then came a point that I had to handle social media (from another team), esp Facebook of our various clients and do weekly reports to client and to VPs of our company. Now I am faced with doing weekly presentations to Vice Presidents and create strategies and seemingly marketing our client's Facebook account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I love my web content job but the other job i was asked to do gives me stress all the time as I now report to second degree bosses (btw, my boss is the web architect). Moreover, creating strategy is something which I am not really fond of. Any advice please.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2265" LastEditorUserId="1722" LastEditDate="2011-10-06T07:24:08.183" LastActivityDate="2011-10-06T11:20:09.093" Title="How do I manage requests to work on tasks outside of my job?" Tags="&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;responsibility&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-09-17T06:16:00.980" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2782" CreationDate="2011-10-06T05:18:07.017" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot find any way to do this in Microsoft Project Server 2007. I do not have a Microsoft Project Server 2010 installation so I can't tell you for that system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, In my experience tightly linking your project management tracking system to your billing system like this not a good idea. I have always viewed project management systems as ways to estimate, track my estimates to reality, and improve my estimates for the next time. Client billing and getting paid for my work was a discrete process. Even when the team's time sheet system was used to track project execution, I would adjust the billing and not the project tracking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-10-06T05:18:07.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3569" CreationDate="2011-10-06T07:18:35.430" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is my advice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Address this with your direct boss:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a one-on-one discussion with your direct boss. Don't make it too formal: for example you could have a chat about this around a coffee or lunch, so it gives you a comfortable, friendly environment to discuss in (no point going in with HR and a copy of your job description at this point).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Since you have been in your job for a month, this is a good time to simply say to your boss &quot;I would like to catch up with you on how things are going and get your advice/thoughts&quot;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be honest: tell him how you see things, the fact that you love the web content work and that you are really keen to focus only on this. Ask him how all the other stuff fit in with your job (the one you were hired for). Be candid about what you want to do and your ability to do it. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gauge his reaction and ask him for support : it's normal you don't feel able to say no to these other bosses, and it's your direct boss's job to assign your workload. The other thing is to look at how this may impact your ability to perform your official duties: is this other stuff taking too much time from you at the detriment of your web content work? If yes, then this is impacting your boss's performance too.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Before you talk to your boss, consider also the following:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's actually a mark of recognition of your professional abilities and potential that you are already being asked to create strategies and present in front of senior execs. Are there tasks that you would actually enjoy doing if it was formally recognized as being part of your job and/of if you were getting support for it (like dedicated time assigned to it)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look at the company culture: in some organisations it's normal to ask people to work outside of their official duties; is this the case in your company and are other people in the same situation? If so, you will need to find a compromise between accepting enough &quot;external&quot; work to fit in this culture whilst not letting it affect your ability to do and enjoy your original job.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastEditorUserId="1722" LastEditDate="2011-10-06T09:11:09.463" LastActivityDate="2011-10-06T09:11:09.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3540" CreationDate="2011-10-06T08:08:36.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could try Clarizen, has a nice Outlook integration (and with many software) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clarizen.com/Resources/Downloads/outlookaddin.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.clarizen.com/Resources/Downloads/outlookaddin.aspx&lt;/a&gt; It's cloud based and with the right set of tools to control and execute any kind of project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1282" LastActivityDate="2011-10-06T08:08:36.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3574" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3575" CreationDate="2011-10-06T08:31:25.667" Score="6" ViewCount="4728" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it within the scope of a Risk Management Plan document to include a Risk Register?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or should a Risk Register be created separately, and the plan merely state that a register will be created?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1551" LastActivityDate="2011-10-07T08:09:36.877" Title="Should a Risk Management Plan include a Risk Register?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;risk&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3574" CreationDate="2011-10-06T09:19:17.717" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your &lt;strong&gt;risk management plan&lt;/strong&gt; lays out the method, process and tools you will be using throughout the project to manage risks. It's a document you do at the beginning of the project and that should get signed-off. It should cover how you will identify, assess and track risks and will also include things like responsibilities, governance and decision-making processes related to risks. It should mention the tool you will use to track risks (i.e. the risk register) as well as things like how risks will be reviewed and reported (e.g. as part of a dedicated regular meeting, or through the regular status report).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the &lt;strong&gt;risk register&lt;/strong&gt; stems from the the risk management plan, but it is a separate and live document where you record information about risks as and when they get identified. Usual information in a risk register includes risk ID, name, description, project area or workstream, severity, likelihood, ownership, action/mitigation plan, dates (registered, closed, etc.). See also &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/9/1722&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; on what to include in a risk register.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-10-06T09:19:17.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-10-06T10:02:41.240" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Mythical Man Month. A classic with lots of lessons that are timeless. Even after a lots of years the knowledge that that book stores proves to be a very useful material in the world of Project Management, especially so when dealing with Software projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2248" LastActivityDate="2011-10-06T10:02:41.240" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-10-06T10:02:41.240" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3574" CreationDate="2011-10-06T11:03:41.203" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I differ a little bit in definition from Angeline but would result in pretty much the same.  In my view, the risk register or log is part of the risk management plan.  However, we end up using different tools, creating two different artifacts.  The plan is developed using a word application like MS Word while the register is created using another, more conducive application like a spreadsheet or database, allowing for easier data entry, analysis, and reporting.  In this case, the register would be incorporated into the plan by reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is prudent to consider the risk plan and register to be a single subordinate Project Management Plan (PMP).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-10-06T11:03:41.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3569" CreationDate="2011-10-06T11:20:09.093" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think most organizations want to be in some sort of growth mode, which means its people need to be in growth mode, too.  Managers, when looking at their team, typically can only identify a small portion who exhibit those traits that make them candidates for growth.  Most perform adequately and another small group are candidates for removal.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you are in the first group, where your boss feels safe to delegate rather important tasks your way with reasonable risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you let your boss know that you really just want to pull the levers and push the buttons that you were hired to do, I think you need to be prepared for some possible negative effects down the road.  As requested, you will be pushed aside and not be asked to do other tasks outside of your job as typically expected but they will also recognize that you are sitting in the seat where someone else could sit who is eager and hungry to grow.  At some point, you will get too expensive--even if just a inaccurate perception--for the value you bring to the table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also advise that you reset your expectations of the score(s) you would receive at performance evaluation time.  Top scores would not be in your future, I would suspect.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-10-06T11:20:09.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3566" CreationDate="2011-10-06T14:49:05.997" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on how you define &quot;costs.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, crashing a project increases your OUT OF POCKET costs (labor overtime, more machine failures, etc.) Call these extra costs X.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time has a cost, that's often not explicitly stated. If crashing the project saves a number of hours or days, then the time savings should be reduced to a cost savings amount, Y.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to the question of &quot;savings&quot; is then found by comparing X to Y. Hopefully, the relationship is X &amp;lt; Y.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2269" LastActivityDate="2011-10-06T14:49:05.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3566" CreationDate="2011-10-06T15:23:57.637" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Indirect costs are the only costs subject to the POSSIBLE savings as a consequence of crashing your schedule.  Direct costs will climb with absolute certainty.  Crashing is a schedule reducing intervention, not a cost reducing intervention.  Hoping for a cost savings sequel to a crash is akin to wishful thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am surprised, actually, your class would teach that a cost savings can be achieved through crashing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-10-06T15:23:57.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3581" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-06T18:09:26.623" Score="0" ViewCount="2592" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a project processed in Microsoft Project (in fact I am creating a template), tasks are connected on to another as I need them to be. I would like to add two new columns, namely start and finish day throughout the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me illustrate what I do need it for. I do have start and finish dates set and since all tasks are connected, I only need to set the first start date and all the others set automatically. These columns are going to be presented to team members as they do care about dates when they need to deliver the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast, if I am presenting projects structure to a client, he/she cares about duration of a project in terms of man-days or days instead of some date (notion that task 1 happens from day 1 to day 10 of a project, after 16 days of a project tasks 5 and 6 are going to be executed are more important). So basically, I need a formula for new column (custom_start_field, custom_finish_field) which will take predecessors custom_finish_field fields (if not exists then 0), find out the latest and add 1 to it (now it is a custom_start_field), and then add duration of task + 1 and it becomes custom_finish_field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can any of you who are more experienced with MS Project help me? I would be grateful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2272" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-01-25T03:47:26.317" LastActivityDate="2015-02-18T16:26:20.273" Title="MS Project formula with access to predecessors field" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3582" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-07T00:57:27.747" Score="4" ViewCount="15163" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Jira projects we have a project task called &quot;Project Admin Tasks&quot;. It has a start date from the date of the project inception right through to the end of the project i.e. when the project completes and is signed off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of this task is so that the team can log ad hoc time for non-development tasks, e.g. meetings, telephone calls, project admin tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for a week long project we would allow 6 hours time for these types of tasks but the start and end dates would be say 17-Oct-2011 to 21-Oct-2011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to create a similar type of task in &lt;em&gt;MS Project 2010&lt;/em&gt;, but despite my efforts I am can't seem to work out how best to implement this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a standard way to express this type of task in a project plan where the permitted allocation of time is less than the task duration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2273" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T19:53:33.447" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T19:53:33.447" Title="How do I create a MS Project task with less actual work than its duration?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3582" CreationDate="2011-10-07T01:28:52.497" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Set the task to fixed duration, manually set the work to the desired hours, and the tool will calculate the appropriate resource allocation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, you can manually allocate hours on each loaded resource under that package in the task usage view. Either works.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-10-07T01:28:52.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3584" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-07T05:19:57.633" Score="5" ViewCount="1173" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm developing a quality management plan as part of a study assignment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess I'm a bit lost on where to begin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What general structure should a quality management document have? Or will it look different for each project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should this document list specific measures to be taken in order to increase quality (e.g. testing all software components, acceptance criteria on all user stories, incorporating customer feedback, etc)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I be incorporating quality tools: SIPOC, CTQ, pilots, lessons learned, etc.?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I decide which tools should be used? Based on the particular quality needs of the project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1551" LastActivityDate="2011-10-14T02:20:40.030" Title="What does a quality management plan look like?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;quality&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3574" CreationDate="2011-10-07T08:09:36.877" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As each plan is in fact a prognosis, the PM should &quot;weigh items with risk&quot; while planning (i.e. write down risks immediately). And since you baseline your plan, describe assumptions etc., a similar thing is advised with any risks identified in the beginning. In that sense, keeping these risks in a charter or initiation document is advised. Whether this is a &quot;risk management plan&quot;, a &quot;project management plan&quot;... - this seems secondary and differs from framework to framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later on &lt;a href=&quot;http://pmtips.net/raid-logs-introduction/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a separate register / log&lt;/a&gt; (e.g. Excel sheet) is used typically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2142" LastActivityDate="2011-10-07T08:09:36.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3586" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-07T10:49:51.560" Score="3" ViewCount="625" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a plan with original dates that I would like to keep but then I have a project phase that is now delayed.  Are there recommended approaches when using Project 2007?  Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="997" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-01-13T10:29:10.403" LastActivityDate="2019-01-13T10:29:10.403" Title="How to add slippage to a project when using Microsoft Project 2007?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2007&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3586" CreationDate="2011-10-07T11:01:34.250" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;After an approved change, you can re-plan your next phase and strike a SECOND baseline. You can have multiple baselines in MSProject. Thus you can track your variances to several baselines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-10-07T11:01:34.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1004" CreationDate="2011-10-07T13:24:18.467" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I strongly disagree with Kenneth (sorry :) ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In presentation good practices, it is said that slides should carry only important info, as the people should focus on the presenter, no the presentation. Apple presentations are a strong example of this : each slide carries 1-2 main info, the rest is said by the presenter.&#xA;Bottom line : not all relevant information is in the slides (even if many people including me still write novels in their slides ;) ), so people &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; take notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking notes serves 2 population: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;for the note taker themselves&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the note taker may take notes on behalf of the meeting participants&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the later case notes are meant to be broadcasted, and that's were you find the limits of pen and paper, as transcribing can literally take hours. If you have let's say 3 meetings in a row, you may only be able to send your notes 1-2 days later, which is often quite late.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Digital note taking is a solution, and as such one must accept that people may bring a laptop/tablet for actual work and not just for answering emails during boring moments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2275" LastActivityDate="2011-10-07T13:24:18.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3589" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-07T14:00:09.823" Score="1" ViewCount="1258" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm evaluating the use of iPad for meeting minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS : I've read this question : &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1004/how-effective-will-be-an-ipad-to-take-meeting-minutes/3702#3702&quot;&gt;How effective will be an iPad to take Meeting Minutes?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is here HOW to use an iPad effectively (which app, etc...) and not IF an iPad is a suitable tool to do this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Current tooling and process :&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;strong&gt;presenter&lt;/strong&gt; : I use my laptop to present the powerpoint, and I take notes on a notepad (pen&amp;amp;paper). I then do retranscriptions of the minutes on MS OneNote and I send the minutes in a mail. I also publish the notes on MS Word 2007 format for storage on network drive / sharepoint to allow access to third parties.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As an &lt;strong&gt;attendee&lt;/strong&gt; : I use my laptop with MS OneNote directly, and follow the same publishing process as above. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Drawings : from time to time I need to draw, for which I exclusively use my notepad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far I rank this usage as follows : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;++Digital notes allow me to search my notes. I have to do a lot of business interviews, and this saves me a lot of time when trying to retrieve info in the mass of data I've gathered&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;++OneNote provide quite good organization&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;++Notepad offers good versatility for drawing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;--still relying on paper notes for meeting where I'm the presenter, so still wasting time to do retranscription&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Future :&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering regarding the iPad, and I have the following questions : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I would need to sync notes to my laptop (over 3G or mail), so evernote seems to be a very good choice. Are there other ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you recommand a specific keyboard (I'm afraid manual notes will be unreadable, and I type faster than I write&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is stylus worthwhile for drawing ? Which app do you recommend for drawings ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2275" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2018-09-27T13:11:02.127" Title="Which apps / accesories for efficient meeting notes taking with an iPad" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2018-09-27T13:12:06.997" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3590" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-07T14:52:45.880" Score="1" ViewCount="660" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently handling a project. In the implementation phase of the project, they have 2 business units. the first BU is responsible for the technical requirements, the second is for the admin like billing, etc. From my company's perpective, we only see them as one and we will bill them as one but it looks like they have a conflict. How can I help them streamline their process? What is the best suggestion here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="614" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T03:38:18.453" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T03:38:18.453" Title="What is the best approach to handle a project with different sub projects?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3584" CreationDate="2011-10-07T16:32:52.080" Score="1" Body="&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;What general structure should a quality management document have? Or will it look different for each project?&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Structure is always important when it comes to documentation &amp;amp; planning. That said each project will have different requirements. Don't force each project to look the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Should this document list specific measures to be taken in order to increase quality.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Should I be incorporating quality tools&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tools, yes. Lessons learned no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;How do I decide which tools should be used? Based on the particular quality needs of the project?&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, each project is different. What works for one project doesn't always work for others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I myself have never worked within a corporation that generates quality management plans for projects, rather we've incorporated such plans directly into our development &amp;amp; business processes. However, if I was to generate such a plan I would create a document that looks something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quality Management Approach&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quality Management Objectives&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Quality Control&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team Roles &amp;amp; Responsibilities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quality Tools&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastActivityDate="2011-10-07T16:32:52.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3590" CreationDate="2011-10-07T17:16:13.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I am understanding your question and clarification correctly, your company will deliver a technical solution and then you will bill the client for the work. Your concern appears to be that the people within the client's company who will accept the technical part are not interested in the billing: they only want the technical solution. On the other hand, the people who will pay for the solution may disagree with their colleagues about the technical need (or the technical solution). Please correct me if I have misunderstood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that you anticipate having to act as the mediator between the two parts of your customer's business: this cannot be a good place to be, and you risk being criticised from both sides, or worse. In reality, if the client has internal issues, you can help to guide them, but it should not be your responsibility to solve them or to suffer as a result of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without knowing the specifics, it is difficult to give specific advice, but in principle, I would recommend that the customer should nominate a single point of contact for the entire project. This person would then take ownership of the end-to-end communication between your client and your company (from the client's perspective), and your company should consider providing a similar single point of contact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Handling the situation may require considerable tact and sensitivity. Your client may not like you suggesting how they should organise themselves, and you may be accused of overstepping your remit, so think about the approach and tread very carefully, even if they recognise the issues themselves. If you can sell the concept in a way that will benefit the client (as well as benefiting you), you are more likely to get a positive outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-10-07T17:16:13.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3593" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3600" CreationDate="2011-10-09T08:42:07.153" Score="8" ViewCount="4744" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you apply them in practice?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What tools do you use / what would you recommend?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2142" LastActivityDate="2011-11-04T15:54:50.420" Title="Buffers, tolerances - how do you approach them in your project management practice?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3593" CreationDate="2011-10-09T12:15:07.243" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen rather unsophisticated approaches, e.g., add 20% to all of your estimates, to a very rigorous quantitative risk approach using expected value analysis, non deterministic distributions and Monte Carlo simulations.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I prefer the more rigorous and calculated approach.  Using rule-of-thumb buffers that you simply tack on is a rather unprofessional approach in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The application of your risk results in several approaches:  One, you can calculate contingent reserves (not held at the project level) in dollars that can fund both known- and unknown-unknowns that may be realized.  Second, you can calculate management reserves (held at the project level) that can be used to cover in scope but unplanned work.  Third, you can target your budget and / or schedule within your probabilistic distribution that satisfies the level of risk you wish to assume.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some common simulation tools are: @Risk, Oracle's Crystal Ball, and Deltek's WelcomRisk.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-10-09T12:15:07.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3560" CreationDate="2011-10-09T23:54:58.027" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume that you're on a fairly Agile project if you're into continuous integration and automation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The move from VSS to SVN will already make you very popular with the kind of developers you want to keep on your team. Do it. My developer friends will kick me if I don't mention &lt;a href=&quot;http://mercurial.selenic.com/&quot;&gt;Mercurial&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://git-scm.com/&quot;&gt;Git&lt;/a&gt; too, but honestly, SVN's pretty simple and a really good start. &lt;a href=&quot;http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/&quot;&gt;TortoiseSVN&lt;/a&gt; is a useful graphical interface.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For keeping track of ongoing work and bugs, electronic boards like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rallydev.com/&quot;&gt;Rally&lt;/a&gt;'s and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.versionone.com/&quot;&gt;Version One&lt;/a&gt;'s are very popular (Rally aims to be useful for developers, while PMs seem to like the control that comes with Version One, so it depends who you're using it for). This could either be stand-alone or mirror a physical board for the team. They can also be useful for keeping track of whole project portfolios, and I believe both provide free trial licences for single teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll need a different tool if you also have to triage user complaints / bugs, etc., and if it suits your context better it's perfectly OK to play a bug-tracking tool alongside a board. Trac is fine. I've used Jira. Others who've tried to use the Grasshopper plugin as a project management tool / electronic board have struggled, so I can't advise doing that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For continuous integration, TFS hasn't had the best reviews from developers. You may want to try something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://cruisecontrol.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;CruiseControl.NET&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jetbrains.com/teamcity/&quot;&gt;TeamCity&lt;/a&gt;, or even start with something lightweight like &lt;a href=&quot;http://jenkins-ci.org/&quot;&gt;Jenkins&lt;/a&gt;. Move to a more powerful build tool if you really need to - most of the learning devs do here is about what needs to go where in what form, rather than the build tool itself, so it should be reasonably quick to change if required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another good thing about most of the tools I've mentioned here is that they're &lt;em&gt;free&lt;/em&gt;. As with any big movement to a new tool set, I recommend that the developers try some different things out on a typical project and see which one suits them best. You also avoid tying yourself to a single platform, so if any one aspect of this doesn't work out for you, you can change it later. You may also be able to play some of these into TFS if you choose to go down that path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a note to yourself and anyone else reading this, please try to help the developers pick the tools which suit &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt;, and ask their advice about this too (you may also want to try this question on &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;programmers.stackexchange.com&lt;/a&gt;). If you have to work around their tools a bit to get the information you need, at least you know they'll be more effective as a result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-10-09T23:54:58.027" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3596" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4479" CreationDate="2011-10-10T04:56:11.310" Score="0" ViewCount="94" Body="&lt;p&gt;My appspot projects are growing and I'm making an SDD (&quot;system design document&quot;) and an RAD (&quot;requirements analysis document&quot;) for every larger project I deliver (currently 2 and 2 others are also growing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I doing the right thing? I follow the structure for the documents as mentioned in the book Object-Oriented Software Engineering by Bernd Bruegge and Allen H. Dutoit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2107" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-01-25T03:42:57.960" LastActivityDate="2012-02-25T14:41:42.847" Title="Documents to make for larger appspot projects" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1004" CreationDate="2011-10-10T12:12:49.580" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The iPad aside, it's interesting how much answers differ. As in many cases - there seems to be no &quot;silver bullet&quot;. To the list of possible approaches, I would only add that co-editing a note might be useful. In practice, I'm referring to a flipchart or whiteboard, where participants jot down actions, decisions, diagrams (with dates, responsible etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some benefits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More likely all participants are on the same page&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Encourages &quot;visual thinking&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another way to engage everybody (technology tends to be an obstacle for some)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Flexible - we can write/sketch freely, add post-its, draw a table, mindmaps etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fast - one of the participants takes a picture with mobile camera / distributes immediately&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2142" LastActivityDate="2011-10-10T12:12:49.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3593" CreationDate="2011-10-11T03:06:45.237" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of risk management approaches that use impact x probability = buffer style approach. But I take my own minor deviation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are working with a project with limited historical information, you are relying on a series of estimates. There are a lot of people who have had success with Optimistic/Most Likely/Pessimistic formula from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_Evaluation_and_Review_Technique&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PERT&lt;/a&gt; where Estimate = (Optimistic + 4x Most Likely + Pessimistic) / 6&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like that approach for the WBS and that generates my first critical path. I then go through my critical path and identify the tasks that appear to have the biggest &quot;gap&quot; between the most likely and pessimistic estimates. In my experience, these seem to be my problem children. I use the gap as the &quot;impact&quot;, take an estimate on probability (as a percentage) and that becomes my buffer along the critical chain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: Task A has the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Optimistic: 10 days&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most Likely: 15 days&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pessimistic: 30 days&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Initial estimate is 16.7 days. That 15 day gap between most likely and pessimistic is a big deal so I would talk. with the person who did the estimate and a couple of other people involved the project (regular risk management type brainstorming). Maybe that task depends on an outside consultant or some internal team and we would guess that there is a 20% chance that they the really worst thing would happen. Then that would mean a 15 days x .20 = 3 Day buffer.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I'm only doing this to my first critical path, I know I'm going to be missing some risks and missing some buffers. However, this this is pretty fast and gives some reasonable buffers to work with. I tend &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; to assign the buffer to the specific task, though. I normally &quot;roll up&quot; the buffers per phase/deliverable/milestone and treat them like a contingency reserve. Once the project gets rolling and you can get tell if your estimates are on track, you can revisit your first analysis.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastEditorUserId="150" LastEditDate="2011-10-12T03:31:26.243" LastActivityDate="2011-10-12T03:31:26.243" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3560" CreationDate="2011-10-11T05:06:37.607" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't say that TFS would be an immediate choice simply because you are using Microsoft Dev tools.  In fact I would strongly encourage you to take a look at TeamCity (as Lunivore already has mentioned). The professional edition is free to try and is very flexible.(SVN / test runners are both easy to setup and running)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In regards to issue tracking &amp;amp; project management tools (I have used / demoed / researched many) and I always seem to come back to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;JIRA&lt;/a&gt; coupled with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/greenhopper/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GreenHopper&lt;/a&gt; plugin. The customization you can apply to workflow's and JIRA's contained projects make it a very powerful tool for each team using it. (SVN plugin can be setup enhancing the visibility of work committed against an issue)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rally and Version One are bother great tools, but I always found myself working the way the tool wanted me to work, vs using the tool as an aid to my project &amp;amp; planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastActivityDate="2011-10-11T05:06:37.607" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3602" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3603" CreationDate="2011-10-11T08:03:28.610" Score="5" ViewCount="416" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was asked to estimate my time for building a database engine, which would be a session-aware engine, in order to persist in memory the objects of the db.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing is that I had a code, an engine depended on Spring &amp;amp; Hibernate which didn't do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While people asked me how much time should I need, the thing is that I already had refactored and reprogrammed parts of the code and seems to me now it is working as expected. I said it took me 20 full time days.&#xA;It seemed to them long. Was it? How can I know? How can I measure that?&#xA;The tools, were Spring/Hibernate an already made code, some spaghetti code inside, in Java, for a distributed application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2289" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-16T18:08:02.433" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T18:08:02.433" Title="Database build up estimation for time" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3602" CreationDate="2011-10-11T10:26:09.190" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether you are providing an estimate for something to happen in the future, or reporting your actual costs/time, the only way to address the value judgment that it seemed too &quot;long&quot; is to understand the comparison group against which that judgment is being made.  So your first question to them is, 'based on what?'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you understand that, you can dissect the similarities and differences between your estimate/actuals and the comparison group.  Then you can make a similar value judgment as to if your 20 days is too long, too short, or just about right.  Also, you will be able to explain to your customer the justification of your 20 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you cannot ignore the stochastic nature of work.  If you did that exact same project a thousand times, you would have a range of results.  It is not unlike your commute to work.  Sometimes it takes you 35 minutes; others, 2.5+ hours.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2011-10-11T10:58:37.747" LastActivityDate="2011-10-11T10:58:37.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3563" CreationDate="2011-10-11T13:28:06.403" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do something similar as required (biweekly or thereabouts), alerting the team to tasks coming up in the next 2-3 months on an 18 month project. I notify the entire team and hgihlight who should be doing what manually rather than automatically since (a) our team is small enough to handle this and (b) I find that humans pay more attention to other humans than to automatic notifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To do this, MS Project has a function that allows you to filter tasks based on start/completion dates. In Project 2007 you'll see a combo box at the top right of the screen, probably defaulting to &quot;All Tasks&quot;. Choose the date range you want with the info you need and send this to your team along with any encouraging words that you need to motivate them. I usually highlight them as well as a visual reminder to myself when I'm updating the Gantt based on current progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2011-10-11T13:28:06.403" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3560" CreationDate="2011-10-11T19:58:47.980" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can go the route of best-of-breed but you'll have the integrations over head (manual or plugins) which is a serious barrier to adoption by your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To start I'd simplify your search by dealing with Source control as a separate requirement.  SVN hosted would be my recommendation unless you have huge code bases to deal with when I'd host it on it's own server in house (not a VM).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Draw up your feature list (take inspiration from the product you have evaluated already) and look for the solution that has most, not all, of them.  From the context of your question (growing either in size or complexity) the products I'd recommend you look at are OnTime from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.axosoft.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Axosoft&lt;/a&gt; or possibly the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fogcreek.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FogCreek&lt;/a&gt; suite of products.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OnTime in particularly blends bug tracking, feature requests, PM and work flow very well.  The UX is good also just host it on it's own server, it's a little chatty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2144" LastActivityDate="2011-10-11T19:58:47.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3606" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-12T00:50:29.033" Score="3" ViewCount="1224" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if this question has an answer that could help me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What procedures do you follow to manage risk?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They don't have to be perfect answers, but something in couple of sentences so I could get an idea or guide me in the right path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2293" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-16T18:13:10.867" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T01:36:38.723" Title="What procedures do you follow to manage risk?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3606" CreationDate="2011-10-12T08:11:33.963" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To go about managing project risks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Define you risk management approach/plan:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is about defining what risks are (essentially a potential event that will have an impact on your project if it materializes): it's important that you and your team have a common understanding of what a risk is.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use a risk management plan to define how risks will be managed throughout your project (method, tools, responsibilities, etc.): see this &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/3574/1722&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Identify and track risks in a risk register:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify the risks currently known about your projects (you can do this with your team as a brainstorming exercise).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Log all risks into a risk register; this will be your ongoing working list of risks where you add and update risks. It should include information such as impact, likelihood, severity, owner, mitigation/action plan, etc. See this &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/9/1722&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk management is an on-going process, so you need to regularly review, update &lt;strong&gt;and act&lt;/strong&gt; on your current risks list.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Communicate about risks:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From the project onset, make sure your team and stakeholders understand what project risks are, how they are identified and managed, and who is responsible for risk management (normally the PM is responsible for the process, although different risks might be owned by different people).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Include reporting on key risks as part of your regular project status report and make sure your stakeholders are informed when a critical risk arises or materializes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;You can also review the questions already asked by the community under tag &quot;risk-management&quot;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-10-12T08:11:33.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3606" CreationDate="2011-10-12T10:48:23.757" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Angeline outlines a good risk process approach.  Simple and straight forward, which is what you want.  I will add an approach that I use based on what I have observed when the risk process is actually practiced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many know how to talk a good risk game, i.e., be able to articulate why risk management is a good thing and what its value would be on any given project.  However, in practice, there seems to be a reservation, denial, or complete avoidance on those things that constitute a threat to a project's well-being.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can only speculate as to why this occurs.  It might be a mix of optimism bias, something that is well documented in project managers and teams, with some kind of fear of exposing those things that could threaten your success--like if I expose this I will be replaced.  It might be the type of personalities that are attracted to and excel in project management, the type A, everything's under control, failure is not an option personality.  It might be the reaction of project sponsors, customers and PM bosses when a threat is raised, causing an intense amount of reporting and extra controls that do not really help.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the individual(s) whom you assign to be your risk manager and coordinators need to be trained to &lt;em&gt;hear&lt;/em&gt; the risks, their exposures, and actions during the normal course of work.  When NOT asked 'what are your risks,' people freely let you know why they have trouble sleeping at night.  When asked, people clam up and say all are good!  So, a stealth approach in the identification of risks might be a good intervention if you are experiencing this, as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, another area of responsibility for the PM is to control to the degree possible the reaction of sponsors and customers when threats are raised.  When someone does escalate a possible threat or an area of uncertainty, that has to be rewarded, not punished.  Easier said than done, but a must nevertheless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-10-12T10:48:23.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3611" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3612" CreationDate="2011-10-12T11:26:40.247" Score="12" ViewCount="1142" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of our developers has gone on holiday with some tickets associated with them on the Kanban board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We were faced with the following two options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Keep the work in progress limit the same for that team, and keep those tickets on the board, but not have them move until the developer returns.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Park the tickets off the board, and reduce the work in progress limit for the duration of their holiday.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end we determined which tickets were needed by the respective project and reassigned some other tickets in that team's column. The decision above forced us into having those priority discussions, but I am interested in hearing how others deal with this kind of issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2030" LastActivityDate="2016-01-13T11:47:11.260" Title="How do you deal with developer holidays on a KANBAN board?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3611" CreationDate="2011-10-12T13:18:49.340" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;David Anderson suggests, &quot;Make process policies explicit.&quot; Part of your process is that developers go away, leaving work unfinished and in progress. While the developer is on holiday, his/her knowledge will degrade, so the policy may not actually be a good one, but it's happening anyway!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, make that process policy explicit by leaving the work on the board. Now everyone can see that the policy may not be useful and address it. Parking the work off the board hides the implicit policy, so the team can't act to improve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've not been faced with this particular situation, but in general I find it useful to make the board reflect reality rather than what we wish reality was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-10-12T13:18:49.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3611" CreationDate="2011-10-12T13:20:53.613" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen this problem a couple of times. First of all I think it is good to address this in a retrospective to see how the team wants to deal with issues like this. You might already have done this though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In teams I coached team members came up with the following solutions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is still plenty of time after his vacation: parked it in a buffer column. Kept the WIP limits (this one worked best when there was not much (or no) time preasure)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Made an exception to WIP limits. Clutters the board. Same effect as the previous one, but the board got much messier&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(Team members had their own wip limits aswel) Lifted a personal limit. This didn't help that much because the person started multitasking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since it is a team effort i would always prefer the team solved the problem without having to tamper with priorities. You can always use classes of service to determine if you can expedite them...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Cheers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2295" LastActivityDate="2011-10-12T13:20:53.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3611" CreationDate="2011-10-12T19:07:39.057" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For my teams, we always leave the tickets on the board, and generally keep the WIP limit the same. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, over time, the team has learned to be aware of when each other are planning vacations, and will usually work to ensure that an item can be handed off to someone else rather than the item being blocked by the vacation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, this solution depends upon a lot of factors coming together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastActivityDate="2011-10-12T19:07:39.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3617" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-12T20:57:53.237" Score="7" ViewCount="345" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for recommendations, ideas and experiences of others on how to integrate a hard of hearing team member into a scrum/standup meeting process.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, I'm asking for my own edification as the one with the hearing loss.  I can hear well enough for face to face conversations, but standup meetings just don't work.  I can comprehend perhaps 10-15% of what is said, and really don't walk away with much of an understanding about what is being worked on, what people's questions are, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2297" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-07-08T12:13:10.430" LastActivityDate="2019-07-08T12:13:10.430" Title="Standup meetings and a hard of hearing team member" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3617" CreationDate="2011-10-12T21:29:48.507" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm also hard of hearing. I just let people know that I'm hard of hearing, and if I can't hear them I tell them and ask them to speak up. I've found most people are quite sympathetic and willing to speak more clearly when you ask them to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've occasionally found that noise close to the stand-up area has made it harder to hear, and I've simply moved away from the noise to the other side of the group. You might also ask if there's any chance of having it in a quiet room away from others; that has also made it much easier for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also move so that I can see whoever's speaking. When I can see the person's lips move it sounds more clearly (the way the brain works is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFPtc8BVdJk&quot;&gt;just weird&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, whenever I tell someone that I'm hard of hearing and they say, &quot;Pardon?&quot; I give them the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/04/10&quot;&gt;Look Of Death&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-10-12T21:29:48.507" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3619" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3620" CreationDate="2011-10-13T03:24:06.533" Score="19" ViewCount="1672" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question has been stuck in my head for a long time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To become a project manager in the IT sector, should one have development experience, or a strong focus on general project management skills? Which one is better and more suitable? Are there any relevant reasons for both?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2260" LastEditorUserId="2277" LastEditDate="2011-10-13T14:00:07.503" LastActivityDate="2016-07-09T12:36:08.143" Title="Is development experience required to become a PM in the IT sector?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="17" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3619" CreationDate="2011-10-13T06:33:38.723" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, you don't need development experience (i.e. having been in a developer role) to become an IT project manager:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical development and Project Management call for different skillsets. A good developer does not necessarily make a good PM and conversely, a good PM can do a great job without having any development skills.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other roles can lead to IT PM: Business Analyst is a common one, or test managers/leads, quality manager, infrastructure lead, etc. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That said, a sound understanding of technology is important in a IT PM role, so if you have never worked in IT it's pretty difficult to get and do an IT PM job, even if you have done project management before.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastActivityDate="2011-10-13T06:33:38.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3611" CreationDate="2011-10-13T08:21:43.577" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend combining it with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules/collective.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Collective Code Ownership&lt;/a&gt;. And if you do it the best solution would be &lt;strong&gt;leave the tickets where they are&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anyhow during the vacation you will reach the limit another person would have to &lt;strong&gt;continue the task&lt;/strong&gt; started by the member who is already on vacation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact if you read the Kanban board &lt;strong&gt;from right to left&lt;/strong&gt; another team member should just take this task because it is already &lt;em&gt;opened&lt;/em&gt; and is more to the right than another item in the todo column.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastActivityDate="2011-10-13T08:21:43.577" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3619" CreationDate="2011-10-13T11:00:11.213" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This has been argued on many forums and I have never seen a consensus emerge.  In fact, people dig in their heels and success becomes predicated on the presence or absence of this single variable, when in fact the prediction of PM success is EXTREMELY hard to make and due to thousand of variables, many random and unknown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are too many stories of people jumping industries and domain with great success, not only in project management but also other business disciplines, to rule in that one must be of a domain or industry in order to be successful.  Similarly, there are many stories of someone growing up in an industry / domain only to fizzle out as a leader or manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All projects are unique, performed at different times under different circumstances and environmental conditions.  To assume a single flavor of PM will be successful in all of those projects is a bit of a stretch.  And to assume there is such a thing as a single flavor of PM is equally a stretch.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would best served to remove this notion of an absolute predictor of success from your thinking, e.g., the presence of industry expertise guarantees success while the absence guarantees failure.  And, remove the idea that this complex process of prediction of success can be made with a single variable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2011-10-13T11:33:05.227" LastActivityDate="2011-10-13T11:33:05.227" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3619" CreationDate="2011-10-13T13:59:24.553" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, development experience is not required.  A solid understanding of project management techniques and skills is generally more important than direct experience with development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However... the two can complement each other.  Experience with development, or technology in general, can be helpful in obtaining a position as a PM in the IT sector.  It can also provide some useful insight into the project resources, team roles, and team interactions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good PM can succeed quite well without development experience, but I've seen mediocre PMs who made some significant blunders that would have been avoidable if they had a better background in development processes (or, in fairness, a better understanding of PM principles).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2277" LastActivityDate="2011-10-13T13:59:24.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3619" CreationDate="2011-10-13T14:32:23.427" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having made the transition from a developer to a project manager and having also worked for project managers that do not have development experience, I would say it is possible to be a project manager without being a developer.  However, I think you are much more respected by your team and can make more educated decisions if you have previous development experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team I was on with a project manager who was never a developer did not trust any of the decisions the PM made.  He was making decisions based on non-software project experience.  Many of his decisions did not work in the software realm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="58" LastActivityDate="2011-10-13T14:32:23.427" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3590" CreationDate="2011-10-13T15:57:54.267" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This actually sounds like a pretty straight-forward Change Management issue. Your contract 'should' identify both who's responsible for acceptance of the deliverable, and who's responsible for payment (and those terms). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the absence of that language, I would respond to your clients wishes about who to bill by sending a Request for Clarification to your client identifying the issue and asking for specific guidance. Explain that there seems to be some disagreement or ambiguity about who's responsible for what, and you need to clarify it before you get too far. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, as a contractor, your primary job is to make sure you and your company get paid for supplying the project to the client (and in a timely manner). And you need to make sure that any issues that might hinder that are out of the way -- BEFORE you deliver the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-10-13T15:57:54.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3593" CreationDate="2011-10-13T16:07:09.030" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both David and Matthew gave good answers, but I would also add - &quot;it depends&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How complex is your project? How many vendors, new (unknown) vendors, stakeholders, etc.? Is this a new technology or one you routinely do? How long will your project take, a month, five years? All of these are factors, and will help decide how rigorous your risk management will be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As David said, there are a number of avenues, from quick and dirty (projects where we have a lot of experience and fairly good 'expert judgement'), to far more complex projects that require a more focused and calculated approach.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-10-13T16:07:09.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3581" CreationDate="2011-10-13T20:45:37.000" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project 2007 defaults with columns for duration, start date and finish date for each task. I am not clear based on your question why this isn't adequate to meet the needs of the project team and sponsor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2011-10-13T20:45:37.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3617" CreationDate="2011-10-14T02:00:35.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three things that I believe should be communicated in a standup:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What I did&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What I'm going to do&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What I need&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every day these are the same three things that meeting attendees need to communicate.  If a team member is hard of hearing and really it's not a bad practice regardless:  Have your developers type these out ahead of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One may argue that this will take time.  I argue that these are supposed to be short meetings anyways and by knowing what you're going to say ahead of time, you've already vetted that your information is brief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will this work for every group?  Like all things Agile, no.  In this case, I believe it would be the most effective way to communicate with someone hard of hearing while keeping the process essentially the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2303" LastActivityDate="2011-10-14T02:00:35.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3584" CreationDate="2011-10-14T02:20:40.030" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An important thing to note, in addition to what Jesse said, Management Plans are living documents.  There are things that should be addressed but if something isn't working, change it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things I have in the current Management Plans worth noting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Configuration Management (Even just a snippet if there is a larger stand alone document)&#xA;Risk Management (Same as above)&#xA;Test Approach (Unit Testing, Iterative Testing, Alpha, Beta, descriptions of testing phases)&#xA;Methodology (Scrum, XP, Waterfall, Kanban, anything)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should this document list specific measures to be taken in order to&#xA;  increase quality (e.g. testing all software components, acceptance&#xA;  criteria on all user stories, incorporating customer feedback, etc)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of your examples are included in categories above and I believe they are important to the plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also always include a Document Revision table on the second page of these documents and update it whenever I make changes (ok, maybe only when I make big changes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2303" LastActivityDate="2011-10-14T02:20:40.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3593" CreationDate="2011-10-14T04:08:07.540" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Critical Chain Project Management it is common to remove all buffer at the task level and instead add a buffer at the project level that is equal to 1/2 of the critical chain of tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage of this approach is that all of the uncertainty in the project is pooled. As the project proceeds, the objective is to finish tasks as quickly as possible to avoid consuming buffer. However, buffer is available to absorb uncertainty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2305" LastActivityDate="2011-10-14T04:08:07.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="955" CreationDate="2011-10-14T04:28:45.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are delivering source code to your client at some point, and as a web developer I'll assume you are, then &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.github.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Github&lt;/a&gt; may offer most of what you're looking for. It'll help you with #1, #3, #4, and #5 on your requirements list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Github features include an issue tracker, wiki, software configuration management (Git), code review tools, and the really awesome &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/blog/39-say-hello-to-the-network-graph-visualizer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;network graph visualizer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Github also allows you to either make projects public or keep them private.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only downside to Github is the lack of forecasting capability to help clients and team members understand when the project will be completed. However, you can use other tools to help estimate remaining time on a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For relatively small teams, the network graph visualizer is a powerful tool that can be used to help synchronize and prioritize the work of team members, which can help prevent rework and bugs. It also provides a loose timeline view of the project, although probably not quite enough to meet requirement #2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2305" LastEditorUserId="2305" LastEditDate="2011-10-14T04:35:02.437" LastActivityDate="2011-10-14T04:35:02.437" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-10-14T04:28:45.580" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3619" CreationDate="2011-10-14T04:59:35.883" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although, I believe, there is no absolute definition of PM role in IT sector, it primarily includes activities like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leading the team in figuring out what the project is. Planning, scheduling, and requirement gathering.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shepherding the project through design and development. Taking care of communication, decision making, and mid-game strategy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Driving the project through to completion. Leadership, crisis management, and winding up.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A PM must also be responsible for representing all the three perspective, Business, Technology, and Customer,  of any project. These three points of view should always overlap. The PM plays a key role in making this happen, by proactively using his &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;GENERALIST&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; nature to unify all three views into one. PMs with strong inclination towards development, normally, miss the other two perspective, which doesn't do any good for the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1786" LastActivityDate="2011-10-14T04:59:35.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3619" CreationDate="2011-10-14T06:17:29.233" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A successful PM will need to have &lt;strong&gt;some&lt;/strong&gt; basic developer knowledge but probably not much more than the hobby-dev level (know the correct terminology for open source vs. MS dev, know what source code management really means, that AJAX is not for cleaning sinks, etc.). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exact level of knowledge needed depends a lot on the size of the company and the &quot;techie&quot; level of key leadership. If the top bosses are all developer types, then your lack of developer skill is &lt;em&gt;likely&lt;/em&gt; to be seen as a weakness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if most of the key leadership are &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;business&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; people, the ability of a project manager to act as interpreter will be much more important than development skill. If you can understand business needs, explain the business needs to developers, understand developer feedback, and translate that back into business terms, you are much more valuable than your developer &quot;cred&quot; might make you look.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-10-14T06:17:29.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3635" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3636" CreationDate="2011-10-14T09:44:38.850" Score="7" ViewCount="329" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our company has five distinct process competencies: UX, web, desktop,&#xA;data-mining and QA with a fixed number of engineers in each role. The&#xA;tools that each of these uses are quite different: photoshop, PHP,&#xA;QT/C++, Hadoop, Watir/Sakuli.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been trying to set WIP limits on each of these roles based on&#xA;development capacity, but we realise that our engineers are also&#xA;involved in the specification phase, but not in a clearly defined way.&#xA;On a given day a dev will be doing work on a specified ticket, and&#xA;also working with a product manager on creating the specification&#xA;backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm guessing that in the end the important thing is to visualise the&#xA;work in flight, the flow and to see where there are constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My understanding is that Kanban is a map of the software production&#xA;process, and as with any map it has to leave out some fine grained&#xA;details. The important thing is that it must give a good&#xA;representation of the aspects that are critical to delivery. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should I be overly concerned about the split nature of the work that&#xA;our devs are doing?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2030" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-07T05:55:32.030" LastActivityDate="2020-07-23T18:07:55.123" Title="setting WIP limits when devs are multi-functional" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3635" CreationDate="2011-10-14T10:48:44.717" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing you should remember, when working with Kanban is that &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2011/10/kanban-board-reflect-reality.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban board should reflect the reality&lt;/a&gt;. In your case not only are engineers working on their regular stuff but also on tasks (specs, product management etc.) This basically means you should show this, which probably ends up having your limits a bit more loose, so I as an engineer can work at the same time on php task and helping product manager with the specs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you get it working you may think whether and why to change limits, or generally board design, so you change people behavior for the better. What more, you may want to experiment a bit with your board trying to see what works for you and what doesn't. You may end up finding a way to limit multitasking a bit, but it's also possible that specifics of your process requires a lot of multitasking and you're perfectly fine with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Either way, don't make the board lying to you, representing something different than you really do in your team.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way: for dealing with different types of tasks on Kanban board you might want to use &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160418224216/http://www.dennisstevens.com/2010/06/14/kanban-what-are-classes-of-service-and-why-should-you-care/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;classes of service&lt;/a&gt;, which is basically design dedicated to deal with such situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-23T18:07:55.123" LastActivityDate="2020-07-23T18:07:55.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3637" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3657" CreationDate="2011-10-14T11:18:44.867" Score="4" ViewCount="352" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm keen to know the perceived best way of sharing a company wide schedule of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some key considerations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I want the team to be able to see what is upcoming in the next 1-6 weeks and the key tasks that need to be completed so they have a sense of what's coming&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The schedule is very prone to change, therefore I'm keen to avoid having a paper printout that I will be forever reprinting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't want to point people to an MS Project file on the network as I suspect this will never get looked at&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I send out a weekly priorities currently - but it's the horizon of what's coming up that I'm keen to circulate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What process should I use to select a tool that would effectively solve this problem and what type of tool should I be looking for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2134" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-09-16T18:50:14.787" LastActivityDate="2012-09-16T18:50:53.443" Title="What's the most effective way of sharing the schedule with the team?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3637" CreationDate="2011-10-14T12:53:30.520" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first question would be: how big is the team? Depending on the number of people and, consequently, tasks you would be able to work on different level of details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing which is important is whether you're co-located or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in each setup your situation begs for &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2009/11/kanban-story-kanban-board.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kanban board&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. Depending on a size of the team you would go with more coarse-grained or fine-grained information. Then, if your team is co-located I'd strongly advise physical Kanban board, while in dispersed teams you'd probably need to go with software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, one of purposes of Kanban board is to &lt;strong&gt;visualize what is happening in a team/an organization/etc&lt;/strong&gt;, which is basically what you're trying to achieve here. If you go with hand-written sticky notes, you don't add hassle connected with printing whatsoever. Kanban board by design supports frequent changes. It is also easy to show any additional information you might need, like priorities, task assignments etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need more details I can recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/tag/kanban-board&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a series of posts on different aspects of Kanban board on my blog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-10-14T12:53:30.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3637" CreationDate="2011-10-14T13:14:33.237" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It does not seem to make a lot of sense to me to create another communication artifact to show resources the schedule, tailored to the point of view of a resource, other than what you already have available to use.  If you point to the schedule, perhaps in the gantt view or something, and they do not look at it, that might mean they neither want nor need to look at it--in which case that would be a valuable datum that says do not waste your time or money communicating something about which they do not care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Work Authorization Document (WAD) is a typical tool to communicate what piece of work is next.  The WAD is not only a required document if you stood up an ANSI-certified EVMS, but is also an easy to use tool to communicate to each resource the work ahead.  It not only authorizes a person to when to begin turning wrenches and thus accruing costs, but also relays valuable information such as expected inputs, expected outputs, other requirements, expected time and cost targets, risks, dependencies, etc.  You can create this WAD as simple or sophisticated as you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If something changes, a WAD is reissued with the updated information.  It requires you to have such a capability to administer this WAD, but this is the cost of doing business in a controlled way.  In other words, this is part of your PM LOE and you would / should have budgeted for it accordingly.  It does NOT have to be overly complicated and formal, either.  You can create this capability to be consistent with the size and complexity of your project.  But leaving home without is ill-advised.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-10-14T13:14:33.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3619" CreationDate="2011-10-14T13:15:57.533" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, good project managers &lt;strong&gt;understand the people and domains involved in their project&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some development experience could help an I.T. project manager understand the developers they work with, and would guarantee some knowledge of I.T. as a domain. But it’s equally possible to understand developers and I.T. really well without having been one, and to &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; understand your developers, or much about I.T., even if you’ve been one yourself for 20 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I.T. project managers also need to understand the customer, company bosses, and everyone else who sticks their oar in, so the absence of development experience definitely doesn’t preclude someone from being a great I.T. project manager. But they will need to find other ways to gain  domain knowledge and developer insight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="426" LastActivityDate="2011-10-14T13:15:57.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3643" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3647" CreationDate="2011-10-14T20:33:24.313" Score="2" ViewCount="235" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a tech background but a friend and coworker of mine was an English major (and former English teacher) and was hired on as a document editor/proofreader working with a team of tech writers.  However, he's quickly finding his responsibilities shifting to working directly under two project managers and he's now quite overwhelmed with mentions of CMMI, Scrum, Agile, etc.  I have a book or two myself from college that's now probably slightly outdated, but it's very much geared towards software developers and probably wouldn't be a good fit&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a nice book (or even better, a nice free website) detailing and explaining a wide variety of software development processes and terminology from a layman's perspective?  This would need to assume little or no experience in software development, programming, or even general corporate business, as my friend is freshly removed from the very different world of liberal arts Academia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1956" LastActivityDate="2012-08-29T20:59:15.753" Title="Rescuing a Friend Besieged by Buzzwords" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2012-08-30T03:30:43.210" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3644" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-14T21:51:53.333" Score="5" ViewCount="279" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a &quot;product suite&quot; that is comprised of 3 main products with separate code bases, 2 C projects, 1 Java.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The engineers have been placed on the same scrum team in the name of having a cross-functional team, since the three products make a complete product stack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, engineers cannot cross code bases. It would be too much, each code base has its own architecture and purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This creates a situation where engineers cannot swarm or work as a team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, most of the stories are product specific.. However.. occasionally there are stories that &quot;Unify&quot; the 3 product stack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should a Scrum Team be comprised of Engineers from different code bases? Pros / Cons?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2310" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2020-03-20T18:35:56.117" LastActivityDate="2020-03-20T18:35:56.117" Title="Should a Scrum Team be comprised of Engineers from different code bases? Or is that irrelevant?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3644" CreationDate="2011-10-14T23:36:14.570" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First of all, common sense.&lt;/strong&gt; I mean you can force C developers who see Java for the first time in their lives to code Java, same as you can have me writing your C code. Does it make sense? Depends on a goal. If the goal is to teach them new technologies it might perfectly be a case. If the goal is get the job done, not so much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What more, &lt;strong&gt;the idea standing behind cross-functional team isn't to make developers from different roles exchange each other but to gather different project roles, e.g. developers, quality engineers, product managers/owners, release managers, etc. in one team.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case my question would be: what do you actually gain long-term from having developers from different worlds working in one team? Do you want them to switch to just one technology. Or maybe we discuss a team of 3 where exchanging people when someone takes a day off is tricky? Or it works just fine the way it is? If the latter is true don't try to enforce change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other way is whether it is a good idea to have them in one team. Actually I'd say that more likely it is than it isn't. It's not because you want them to take tasks from each other in a random manner. What you get gathering them in one team is you actually improve communication between them, which is important especially when they work on a single stack of software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: it doesn't have to automatically mean that they swarm over their tasks or pair program. They still can be a team. Actually a definition of a team isn't &quot;they can swarm&quot; or something. Specialization isn't a bad thing. If it does make sense, allow people to focus on tasks they're fluent with. You can still call organize them in one team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-10-14T23:36:14.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3643" CreationDate="2011-10-15T06:38:19.650" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0596517718&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Making Things Happen&lt;/a&gt; by Scott Berkun. Although the central theme of the book is Project Management, it can very well serve the purpose of introduction to s/w development processes and terminology without bogging down somebody with details.&#xA;Unlike textbook coverage of software engineering, this book is heavily situation - and narrative - focused. Apart from  design procesess, and software engineering this book combines business theory, psychology, and management tactics, in whatever way necessary to offer advice on the outlined topics.&#xA;I am sure your friend will find it interesting and useful read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1786" LastActivityDate="2011-10-15T06:38:19.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3644" CreationDate="2011-10-16T01:36:14.997" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;However, engineers cannot cross code bases. It would be too much,&#xA;  each code base has its own architecture and purpose.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would challenge the notion that this means engineers cannot swarm or work as a team. I've worked with teams of developers who have very silo'd skills - each one having knowledge of a particular system written in a particular language - and who are still working towards a single purpose very effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mostly they do this by working out what the downstream service needs from the upstream; collaborating on interfaces (service, application or library interface), changing the information provided or the information processed, and &lt;em&gt;talking to each other&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I saw that the team had come together when one showcased some work to the stakeholders, saying,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Last week, you saw Y's work on this application. I also showed you how my service would save your information. This week I'd like to show you how they work together.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It isn't the technologies or understanding of it which makes a team. It's the desire to ensure that each person's work contributes to the work of others, building into a greater whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this worked because they had a specific problem to solve. You can't create a team just by putting people of different abilities and experience together; instead, put a team together that has appropriate skills for the problem they're trying to solve, and allow them to learn or ask for help if they need it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do this well, it's not a matter of putting them on the same team. They &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; the same team, as soon as you allow them to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-10-16T01:36:14.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3644" CreationDate="2011-10-16T13:39:09.233" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There can be substantial benefits from having members of the whole team working as a team.  If your can get them working effectively as a team the interfaces between the levels of the stack will work better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some projects have a simple architecture and having a fully cross-functional team can be more of reality.  You will and should have people on the team who are the go-to guy (or gal) for particular questions.  Having one backup for them is good, two or more is heaven. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a project such as yours you won't get as much cross-functionality as others.  What you should be aiming for is the team members on both sides of the interfaces between the layers understand the interfaces.  For the two C projects, the members should understand the code on either side of the interface.   Likewise, for the interface between the C and Java code bases.  C and Java are similar enough that the engineers on either side should be able to follow the code. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PROS:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team will have a better understanding of the stack.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stack layers should work together better.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inter-layer interfaces may be simpler.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cross-stack stories won't require add-hoc co-ordination.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Overall product quality should be better.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Idle engineers from one stack may be able to assist engineers on other stacks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Good development practices can be shared across the stacks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CONS:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum team members will spend time on issues which are (or appear) irrelevant to their stack. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Functionality may leak into the wrong stack.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Security issues may be set aside because of trust between stack teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2011-10-16T13:39:09.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3650" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3655" CreationDate="2011-10-16T16:38:55.280" Score="17" ViewCount="2829" Body="&lt;p&gt;I made a few searches for such a question and I did not discover any. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So... have you tried implementing and actively using a software that is tracking employees time spent on different assignments? If so, could you please refer me to some useful ones? I also would appreciate very highly some brief reviews on your end. Why those helped and why are you satisfied using them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a project manager in IT Company specifically producing websites, so I am trying to implement a time tracking software for lots of tasks over different projects. Other kind of requirement - it should be nice looking and with some smooth interface. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks a lot for your input, guys. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2320" LastActivityDate="2012-07-26T19:19:46.140" Title="What time tracking / time management software do you use?" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="7" ClosedDate="2012-07-03T02:05:41.400" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3637" CreationDate="2011-10-16T17:25:08.623" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend something simple we do at our weekly resource planning meetings. We use the white board in a conference room to hand-draw charts, similar to what you might see in project management and scheduling software. Then next to each project we annotate the charts with each team member's tasks for the next few weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, to improve visibility and commitment, we add photos of the team and additional information on each employee's performance so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may be slightly old fashioned, but we've found that physically gathering and discussing the board is an excellent motivator and boosts team spirit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2320" LastEditorUserId="360" LastEditDate="2011-10-20T07:33:18.870" LastActivityDate="2011-10-20T07:33:18.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3650" CreationDate="2011-10-16T22:12:53.803" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As we endeavor to use the simplest tool that could possibly work we have decided to use a simple spreadsheet. Each project is a column each person is a row. Sick leave, training, annual leave are a &quot;project&quot; as well. Projects can be internal or external. They can be unpaid or paid work and they can be support related or new development. Whatever we need to track separately for commercial reasons has a separate column. We also track bug fixing effort separately for each major release as an indicator for our quality improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give you an indication of the size of the spreadsheet: Overall we have about 40 to 50 columns and about 20 to 30 rows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have one spreadsheet per month and it's available on our local network. Each member of the team enters their time on a monthly basis. For commercial purposes we then total the effort up in each column, e.g. for writing invoices to customers or for reporting to the board of directors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using a spreadsheet gives all team members an easy to use interface, regardless of whether you use Excel, Open Office, Google Docs, etc. Of course it might well be that a spreadsheet may not be an option in your scenario as you may have other factors influencing your choice of tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2318" LastActivityDate="2011-10-16T22:12:53.803" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3650" CreationDate="2011-10-17T06:55:01.723" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend looking into something that integrates time tracking properly with projects and everything else you need to manage, that way you can bypass the need for additional apps and integrations (which is nothing but headaches and high costs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WORKetc is pretty powerful and it integrates time tracking, project management, contact management, knowledge bases (basically wikis), calendars, internal/external blogs, as well as billing tools. Under one app your'e capable of managing essentially everything you need to- and it's all integrated at the core. You can attach items together, integrate into Google apps (the google docs integration and Gmail integration is particularly awesome), and do things like convert timesheets directly into invoices through WORKetc alone, which is great for contractors etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read about it here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worketc.com/features&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.worketc.com/features&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2322" LastActivityDate="2011-10-17T06:55:01.723" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3650" CreationDate="2011-10-17T16:08:56.527" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have had success with the time tracking app: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tsheets.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TSheets&lt;/a&gt;. It was easy to learn and its functions allowed me to to track several employees time spent on a variety of tasks (i.e. marketing, development, sales, website, etc) from all different locations (different laptops and iphones). It would be worth checking out their free trial to see if it's as user friendly and nice looking as I've found it to be. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2324" LastActivityDate="2011-10-17T16:08:56.527" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2187" CreationDate="2011-10-18T06:48:32.247" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would highly recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilefant.org/wiki/display/AEF/Features&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agilefant&lt;/a&gt;. We use it for scrum at our company, and so far it has worked great. It is web based, and can easily be installed on a internal server. It is MIT licensed. It was developed based on research made by the Aalto University's Software Process Research Group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2255" LastActivityDate="2011-10-18T06:48:32.247" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3637" CreationDate="2011-10-18T10:46:40.110" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Go for something as low tech and obvious as possible. You want people to not be able to walk past the team without seeing it. Some type of Kanban board or just a whiteboard with post-it notes would work really well if the team is co-located.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they are distributed then you'll need something more high-tech. This could be an electronic kanban board (we use Jira to track all the development tasks and this generates a kanban board automatically), but it could be more simple, for e.g. if you have a project web site or central place that people will often go to, why not post a simple image that shows the key info?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are trying to do is create something that is simple to keep up to date and simple to understand, don't try to go to clever or formal!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also don't disregard something that is a little effort for you, as PM, to keep up to date if it adds value to the entire team. For example, duplicate status info on a whiteboard manually rather than working out an automated way to do it. This will take you a few minutes each day and will be a hassle but you will get that effort back with interest once the team start improving because they know what is coming up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="788" LastActivityDate="2011-10-18T10:46:40.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3658" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3664" CreationDate="2011-10-18T11:10:39.083" Score="1" ViewCount="286" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are in the middle of developing iPhone app. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;iOS 5 is recently released. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now if we run the same codes in iOS 5 we get lot of errors / crashes. Should we charge the client to get the code upgraded to iOS 5? Because when we agreed on the contract there was no mention of upgrade to iOS 5. Or is it our responsibility to give code which is working fine? Although iOS 5 upgrade was not in our control. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We did not spend time in testing the code in iOS 5 beta because we thought it would be duplication of efforts if we have to test the code again after iOS 5 release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please let me know how you would handle this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1969" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-10-05T05:03:47.970" LastActivityDate="2014-10-05T05:03:47.970" Title="Who should bear the cost of upgrade? Client or Provider?" Tags="&lt;scope&gt;&lt;contracts&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3644" CreationDate="2011-10-18T11:39:31.517" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a very similar situation, where there are 4 projects that are all independent but need to integrate together seamlessly at the end of the projects. And it is a bit of a nightmare to manage! :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key here is to keep the projects/products separate and worry about the integration stories separately. If the majority of your stories are product specific, it sounds like there is little benefit combining the developers into a single 'team'. Keep them separate and focused on their products. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next is how to deal with the cross-product dependency stories... this is more challenging. What we do, is for each cross-product story, add the story to one 'owner' project. For us, this is the one which has the most investment in the feature, or logically owns the feature, not necessarily the one that has the most work to do. For e.g. if the story is to integrate functionality X from product A into product B so the customer of product B can achieve something, then product B would own the story because they need to demonstrate that feature in their product, even though most of the integration work could be with product A. Does that make sense?&#xA;Once the story is in a project, we need to track it in other projects so it does not get forgotten. To do that we add technical stories into the other projects to ensure that it is not lost. At that stage, the technical teams have had initial discussions about how this could be implemented so have enough knowledge to create appropriate stories in the relevant projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To track this, we have a weekly meeting of the project leads (similar to a Scrum of Scrums) to discuss progress and impediments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to work quite well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="788" LastActivityDate="2011-10-18T11:39:31.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3658" CreationDate="2011-10-18T12:40:13.003" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I must admit that it's really a complex situation!! It appears to me that this is a fixed-cost contract. Even then I'll go forward and start conversation with the client and making them agree to share the cost of fixing the code-base. I will keep following points in my mind while doing the negotiation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a development team, it's my responsibility too to anticipate the changes. Due to that I would lower my prices for providing the fix. May be, no profit - no loss.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'll try to figure out whether the client see the relationship long-term or short-term. If they care to  maintain the relationship they shouldn't mind paying extra for the effort I am going to put to upgrade the app. And if they don't care I would deny to produce the changes. I will take the risk, risk of losing them and they doing bad-mouthing about my organization. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'll be ready with the high-level estimates for the fixes before starting the conversation. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1786" LastActivityDate="2011-10-18T12:40:13.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3661" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3696" CreationDate="2011-10-18T15:17:30.443" Score="1" ViewCount="557" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found it really hard to find decent materials that clearly explain what Microsoft Project Server 2010 does, everything I've discovered is drenched in Microsoft business waffle such as &quot;Extensible and programmable platform&quot;, &quot;Drive accountability and control with governance workflow&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I want is a tool that will enable me to share a high level project plan with my colleagues (read only) so they can see what they are currently working on and what is coming up + a list of the tasks that are currently assigned to them with the ability to record time spent and task status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does Project Server 2010 allow me to do this? My organisation has Microsoft Certified Partner status therefore I already have access to this tool if I want to implement it - it's been dropped on a server and I'm currently at the juncture of deciding whether or not it's worth pursuing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2134" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-13T10:32:06.630" LastActivityDate="2019-01-13T10:32:06.630" Title="To what extent can Microsoft Project Server 2010 assist me with sharing the project plan and sharing tasks / task status" Tags="&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-07-03T02:07:56.420" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3663" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-19T04:58:51.170" Score="5" ViewCount="443" Body="&lt;p&gt;I searched other questions and still can't figure out how we can manage a project that uses the Scrum methodology with tools like Microsoft Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are a big software company using Microsoft Project Enterprise, and we control our project with daily report of team members with Project Web Access. The problem is we want to use Scrum in some of our products, but we have to plan and report our work in daily basis. In Scrum, we don`t assign every task at the beginning, and every person is free to choose what he/she want to do. So we can't schedule the whole sprint with specific resources! Also, our PMO wants to have at least a one month plan for every person!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm really confused. On the one hand we want Scrum and on the other we must meet our PMO's request. How can we do both?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2331" LastEditorUserId="2124" LastEditDate="2011-10-20T07:33:38.947" LastActivityDate="2011-10-20T13:48:32.400" Title="How can I manage a Scrum project and meet the requests of the PMO while using Microsoft Project?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3658" CreationDate="2011-10-19T10:02:16.813" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me, this is a simple answer.  It is a change, and it does not matter if it was predicted or not.  The original requirements and scope were developed based on the earlier operating system.  The scope to be delivered is on the earlier operating system.  So if the customer wants the application on the new operating system, estimate the effort, price it, get it under contract, and go to work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an analogy: You hire a construction team to build your dream house on a plot of land.  Construction begins and the foundation is laid.  You learn later the plot of land is toxic or over an ancient burial ground, whatever, and you have to stop work there and move your house 50 yards to the west.  Will the construction team absorb those costs?  Never!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lessons learned for both of you, however, to make this type of change explicit in your contract in terms of how to deal with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-10-19T10:02:16.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3663" CreationDate="2011-10-19T12:52:20.727" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nobody who's interested in those kind of reports is interested in the fine detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of reporting on stories and tasks, work out what the capabilities of your system are - the things that it allows users to do, or the things that the system delivers to other systems. You're looking for a large-scale overview with business-valuable outcomes (we had about 30 on a 1-year project).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've already got stories, you can map the stories to the capabilities / outcomes and come up with them that way (search for &quot;Story Mapping&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will enable you to plan and provide an overview of expected milestones, etc. It's enough to let you talk about integration issues with other teams, budget, high-level feedback, release cycles and the like without having to commit to anything lower-level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can then provide all the tracking based on those capabilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; We had a much easier time on that project after we invited someone from the PMO to come and see how we were working and decide what kind of tracking he'd like. He liked the atmosphere in our team area so much he ended up sitting with us most of the time! PMO people are human, too...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2011-10-19T13:19:47.740" LastActivityDate="2011-10-19T13:19:47.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3658" CreationDate="2011-10-20T05:15:44.647" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the things I learned through the years was having a good &quot;platform specifications&quot; document in place that is version controlled and associated with each particular release of a product. This becomes part of the specifications in that you can point your customer to it and say that so long your environment is listed in the &quot;platform specifications&quot; you are fine. If not then it is a new requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example we include the operating systems on which our software runs. If an operating system and/or version thereof is not listed we don't provide support of it. Initially that took some learning from our customers but now that we have established this it works very nicely. Of course customers expect that we add new platforms to the specs. But by the same token we retire old platforms that are no longer supported by the respective vendor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result we have a much better defined target environment and can set the expectations appropriately. Our interactions with our customers have become much better because of this approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically to your situation, you may not have the platform specs yet. However, if you haven't listed iOS5 initially when you shipped the software then your software has not been designed for it and you definitely haven't tested it either. Your customer would need to pay for making it work on newer or other platforms. You may have other commercial factors, though, that influence your decision about how you want to handle this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2318" LastActivityDate="2011-10-20T05:15:44.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3669" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-20T13:26:27.710" Score="1" ViewCount="911" Body="&lt;p&gt;I actually just answered a question for someone who was curious about Project Charter Templates and the rest of their question included things like PIDs, SOWs, and Project Proposals, and I decided that those are things that I don't know much about but would be very interested to learn about. So if you have any basic information on these topics or any references then I would be very appreciative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2338" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-23T23:28:12.447" LastActivityDate="2012-06-23T23:28:12.447" Title="Project Charter Template" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;project-charter&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2012-06-23T23:29:21.917" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="350" CreationDate="2011-10-20T13:33:03.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I am not sure which project charter template that you are using, but if it is anything like mine then you are going to want to include basically what you are going to need in order to make the project come to fruition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may use some use case diagrams if you would like, but basically this is an attractive document that you are putting together before the planning stages of the project that says that you are going to start planning and implementing on the project. Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2338" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-23T23:25:57.647" LastActivityDate="2012-06-23T23:25:57.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3663" CreationDate="2011-10-20T13:48:32.400" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, the organization should invest in understanding Scrum before using it.  For example,use of words like &quot;control&quot; and &quot;report of team members&quot; is not Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, to answer your question directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In your Microsoft Project, create line items for each sprint showing the dates for each Sprint Planning and each Sprint Review.  Set effort as Story points and then create a Team Velocity chart.  This is doable in Microsoft Project. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide the product backlog and explain to the PMO that it's ordered by &lt;strong&gt;customer&lt;/strong&gt; priority.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Invite the PMO to the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;daily&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; stand-up to listen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Invite your customers to meetings with the PMO to show that the Scrum projects have backing from the people who matter most.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the PMO insists on &quot;controlling&quot; the Agile team and you are unable to convince them otherwise, then suggest a trial run using Agile methods to help with buy-in.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line, the problem is not the tool you use, the problem is attempting to mix two very different methods. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2210" LastActivityDate="2011-10-20T13:48:32.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3672" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3678" CreationDate="2011-10-20T18:14:06.957" Score="3" ViewCount="1287" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have people who work on half a dozen projects at a time (tech writers, testers, etc.).  What's the best way to do time planning for resources like this if you have six separate MS Project Plans for the various projects they are working on? I have heard MS Project Server solves this problem, but is it worth the grief? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastEditorUserId="4574" LastEditDate="2014-07-03T11:08:15.977" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T11:08:15.977" Title="How can I show scheduling for shared resources?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3669" CreationDate="2011-10-20T18:15:37.433" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A number of good templates are available at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prince-officialsite.com/Resources/Resources.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UK OGC site&lt;/a&gt;. These are geared towards the PRINCE2 standard but should work for most cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2011-10-20T18:15:37.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3672" CreationDate="2011-10-20T18:18:08.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There was a similar question a while ago &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/3554/is-it-possible-to-track-resources-at-company-level-using-microsoft-project/3556#3556&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. If you are with a big company something like Server may be your best option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-10-20T18:18:08.430" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3675" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3762" CreationDate="2011-10-20T22:53:31.600" Score="4" ViewCount="211" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm starting a one dev project (me) and it's going to be a short one (Approx. 4 weeks).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such a short term scenario, I still went through the requirements with the Product Owner (PO), prepared all the user stories, and setup a board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A first prototype will be released in 2 weeks, and the final release in 3 weeks, with an additional week for user training and some bug corrections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As it always happens with these things, having a full backlog growing throughout this phase, will hopefully identify some requirements for a potential Phase 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the estimations, it being a one man job, I just went with T-Shirt sizes to make it easier for everyone to understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that I've described my scenario, here go a few questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you still go through the exercise of having the PO giving a business value to all the stories, knowing that at least 90% of them at this stage are absolute must have, or would you leave that for whatever remains pending after the first prototype?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, any comments,suggestions or best-practices references you might have for such micro-scenarios, would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks,&#xA;JC&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2345" LastEditorUserId="2318" LastEditDate="2011-10-21T09:35:57.170" LastActivityDate="2011-10-29T03:50:38.993" Title="One Dev One month - What elements of agile would you use" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3675" CreationDate="2011-10-20T23:43:27.400" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would you still go through the exercise of having the PO giving a business value to all the stories, knowing that at least 90% of them at this stage are absolute must have, or would you leave that for whatever remains pending after the first prototype?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A backlog of prioritized stories typically means that you do pick up as many as you can complete within the release cycle or iteration. In other words your scope is (somewhat) flexible as you may not be able to fit all of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand you say that 90% are &quot;absolutely must have&quot;. In other words your scope is fixed (at least for those 90%).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience you can't have both, flexible scope and fixed scope. ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To resolve this I would suggest the following approach: For any pair of stories ask the Product Owner (PO) which one she/he would want if she/he can have only one of them. That way you don't need the business value for each of them but you still get a relative priority based on business value as perceived/estimated by the PO. Then see how many you can complete in the release cycle and tell the PO. Alternatively you would look into other options (reducing scope, extending timeline, adding a second person).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2318" LastActivityDate="2011-10-20T23:43:27.400" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3675" CreationDate="2011-10-21T00:43:40.190" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Frankly I've never been a big fan of having a PO assign &quot;business value&quot; points to stories. If you desire to place such a number on a card I would recommend doing it at the &quot;epic&quot; level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why you ask? First lets look at why you would want to put business value on a story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to be able to measure the amount of business value delivered to a customer or organization &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;for prioritization at sprint planning meetings when you can compare the value of each story and its cost against one another&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, lets look at why I think its a waste of time to assign business value at the story level:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The value of a small deliverable is quite often seen as the value of the entire project. For example let's say you were building a boat for a PO. What is the value of the propeller? Well, the customer doesn't want a boat that doesn't have a propeller so its value is that of the boat.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assigning value to small stories or features (often which are intertwined and occasionally have dependencies) is often quite difficult and time consuming to put a value on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assign business value to your epic's / core features. From their you can break down the &quot;high value&quot; epics into stories &amp;amp; plan accordingly into sprints (as you have already done). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wish to read a little more on business value and stories, here is one of my favorite all time blog posts: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.nayima.be/2009/12/30/how-do-you-estimate-the-business-value-of-user-stories/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.nayima.be/2009/12/30/how-do-you-estimate-the-business-value-of-user-stories/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastActivityDate="2011-10-21T00:43:40.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3672" CreationDate="2011-10-21T10:59:07.190" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are the projects in any way linked or dependent upon each other, other than shared resources, e.g., is an output of one project an input to another?  Also, I assume these projects start and stop in a seemingly random way, not coordinated with each other, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If both of these questions are true, then it sounds like the issue you need solve is to ensure your human resources are and remain leveled at the utilization level at which they were hired, e.g., 50%, 100%.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leveling is important but it can become a waste of time quickly.  As a project, or projects, progress, things change and your resources are no longer leveled.  To chase that is to chase your tail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the same phenomena would apply here, especially if these projects are not in any way integrated.  The effort to pull them into an integrated master schedule (IMS) would quickly exceed any benefit you get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, I would maintain a separate human resource calendar, in which I would document who is assigned where and at what utilization level (planned, not actual).  For a FTE, I would assume maybe 75%, maybe 80%, leaving 20% to 25% of non productive, normal activities in an employee's life to include vacations, training, uncertain sick leave, education, etc.  It also can be a bit of contingency if a project finds they need to crash a bit and increase an employee's op tempo for a time being.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then when a project is being scheduled, they will estimate and plan based on what utilization level they have for a specific labor category.  If you have 15% remaining for your tech writer, than that is what you use in your time estimate to arrive at a duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote above planned, not actual, because a plan value is the independent variable; you control it.  The actual variable is dependent; you measure it.  If variances are starting to accrue unfavorably including your over time expenses, i.e., your utilization estimates were too optimistic, then you can intervene and make the tough decisions to slow a project down or hire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2011-10-21T11:11:42.323" LastActivityDate="2011-10-21T11:11:42.323" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3679" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-21T11:15:06.100" Score="6" ViewCount="689" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am interested in hearing experiences from others having experience in doing remote PM work.&#xA;As it is very important for a PM role to have direct, face-to-face communication with the team members and the stakeholders. What kind of PM activities can be performed virtually? Can those activities be fun to do and value add for the project? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1786" LastActivityDate="2015-06-28T20:50:53.003" Title="What type of PM work can be done remotely?" Tags="&lt;work-environment&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3680" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-21T12:10:28.620" Score="0" ViewCount="599" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for a project management tool that has support for the following analytics-related requirements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be able to see the historical progress or trend (red/yellow/green) of the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be able to visualize how often the scope of the work increased and how it impacted the project dates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At any given point, be able to visualize or see the overall completed work and remaining work. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How often were resources pulled out of the project?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks,&#xA;Murali&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2346" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2011-10-26T15:29:45.467" LastActivityDate="2015-04-15T06:46:17.887" Title="Project Management tool that helps in retrospective/analytics" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2015-04-19T14:11:54.447" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-10-26T15:29:45.467" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3675" CreationDate="2011-10-21T12:19:23.530" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would you still go through the exercise of having the PO giving a&#xA;  business value to all the stories, knowing that at least 90% of them&#xA;  at this stage are absolute must have, or would you leave that for&#xA;  whatever remains pending after the first prototype?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also, any comments,suggestions or best-practices references you might&#xA;  have for such micro-scenarios, would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For stories with real end user value, you absolutely should go through the business value process.  It's not the BV number that matters.  What matters is that you and the PO and hopefully the customer are &lt;strong&gt;talking&lt;/strong&gt; about what is and is not important. Assigning BV is one tool used to facilitate that conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best Practices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agree with the PO what a story is and is not.  Tiny details are probably best left as tasks in the appropriate story.  Stories should have no dependencies on other stories and should be potentially releasable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work hard to keep the number of non-user value stories to a minimum.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agree with the team (you, PO, customer) on the iteration length.  In a project lasting only one month with one developer, you might suggest daily or weekly iterations to keep communication agile.  Remember, agile typically suggests a daily stand-up with other developers that allows the PO to listen.  Having a daily stand-up with you and the PO will allow you to focus and allow the PO to see progress.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2210" LastActivityDate="2011-10-21T12:19:23.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3675" CreationDate="2011-10-21T13:04:23.690" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would you still go through the exercise of having the PO giving a&#xA;  business value to all the stories, knowing that at least 90% of them&#xA;  at this stage are absolute must have, or would you leave that for&#xA;  whatever remains pending after the first prototype?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you know which 90% are the must haves.  Anything beyond that is not necessary in this case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also, any comments,suggestions or best-practices references you might&#xA;  have for such micro-scenarios, would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this is one man show, I'd use a simple personal Kanban to track stories with WIP limits on development and testing.  On such a short schedule there really isn't time for the traditional ceremony of iterations but you still need some way of providing structure to your work to make sure you're moving in the right direction.  Something like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilezen.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;AgileZen board&lt;/a&gt; would even calculate some metrics to help you make adjustments as you work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1630" LastActivityDate="2011-10-21T13:04:23.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3683" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-21T13:49:21.833" Score="9" ViewCount="2868" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm remotely managing a team of about 10 persons, and it becomes difficult to track every task and its status. I'm looking for a solution for task tracking. There are already a few of such applications which seem to respond to my needs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.todoyu.com/&quot;&gt;todoyu&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.getsmartq.com/&quot;&gt;smartq&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wrike.com/&quot;&gt;wrike&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hitask.com/&quot;&gt;hitask&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://taskant.com/&quot;&gt;taskant&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any experience using these products? Do you know alternative solutions (preferably not SaaS)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2347" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2011-10-26T15:28:41.147" LastActivityDate="2012-02-04T11:01:40.073" Title="Software for task tracking" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;" AnswerCount="13" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="8" ClosedDate="2012-09-16T19:01:20.447" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-10-26T15:28:41.147" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3683" CreationDate="2011-10-21T13:58:52.277" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on my own experience I would recommend Jira or Mantis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/&quot;&gt;Jira&lt;/a&gt; is a paying solution but is by far the best I have used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has agile plugins like greenhopper, ideal for visualising the workflow on cards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A free solution that might work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mantisbt.org/&quot;&gt;Mantis&lt;/a&gt; is a open source bug tracking solution that works very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastActivityDate="2011-10-21T13:58:52.277" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3683" CreationDate="2011-10-21T14:53:15.150" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been hearing good things about &lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt; from Fog Creek.  Clean, simple, and useful interface for getting things done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="106" LastActivityDate="2011-10-21T14:53:15.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3683" CreationDate="2011-10-21T16:04:59.657" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.collab.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CollabNET&lt;/a&gt; , the makers of Subversion provides a paid project collaboration solution using Agile methods. You can start off with a hosted solution in a few minutes and then move over to onsite deployment if you want to. For a team of 10 people, I would just keep it hosted. Cost is reasonable. The software isn't very useful for planning but, it provides a path of least resistance for developers / analysts / QA to collaborate with each other and with other stakeholders with automatic tracking, notifications and action items. It has significant amount of monitoring capabilities and dashboards. It also allows you to setup projects in a parent child relationship where you can assign membership on a project basis and expose only what you need to, on a role basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not related to CollabNet in any way. I just administrated CollabNet for a team of about 50 people and a few smaller projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2349" LastActivityDate="2011-10-21T16:04:59.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3637" CreationDate="2011-10-21T16:24:57.523" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Size of your team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are they geographically dispersed?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it on a project basis or on a continuous basis like managing product releases?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are right no one wants to ponder over MS Project file that keeps changing. KISS principle works best. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It helps to distill your plan and create a view that contains only the information which is of interest to a particular group of people. If that means creating multiple views then, so be it. This view should not be more than a click away so, I am thinking something like a wiki page that people can bookmark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2349" LastActivityDate="2011-10-21T16:24:57.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3680" CreationDate="2011-10-21T16:32:22.003" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not aware of any one software that does it all and it would be very unusable if it did it all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some items like impact analysis and scope of work are subjective and change dynamically. This stuff is best handled in phases where you capture a snapshot at the end of each phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.open.collab.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CollabNet&lt;/a&gt; can help you monitor the progress (red/yello/green) and also the overall completion and remaining work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2349" LastActivityDate="2011-10-21T16:32:22.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="350" CreationDate="2011-10-21T16:50:52.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following are the Most important things to include in the Project Charter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Problem Statement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Major Phases and Measures of success&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stakeholders, Roles and Responsibilities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Issues, Risks and Assumptions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Move everything else to Inception and later phases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2349" LastActivityDate="2011-10-21T16:50:52.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3679" CreationDate="2011-10-21T17:36:39.763" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not recommended for short projects because of the time required to overcome infrastructure and collaboration issues. However, if you are working on a product then, with a proper setup, it can all be done remotely. I have been remote for about 6 years now with team members all over US, China and India. Yes, it can work out. When we do meet face to face, it is usually more fun than work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2349" LastActivityDate="2011-10-21T17:36:39.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3693" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-21T19:05:16.403" Score="1" ViewCount="485" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to get some feedback on a methodology I would like to try with my team. Two problem areas I want to try and adapt this process to addess are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A mix of time-critical (contracted deliverable) features mixed with other features&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Measuring the relative value of effort by different team members and developing incentives&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently we have been using a basic Scrum style process. I like the idea of Kanban but I think in a development environment the WIP and team organization should be a lot more flexible. So I have been thinking about what I'm tentatively calling Reverse Auction Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the basic summary form the Product Owner would basically put forward items that they think are ready or needed to be developed as if they were a standalone project. Engineers and QA could then bid on the work. The lowest bidding engineer or engineering group would then get the work assigned to them and would then need to deliver the work. Part of the ongoing incentive is that MBO/bonuses could be given based on the total points of work delivered by an individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Say I need a new screen developed. Maybe a senior web developer thinks it is worth 100 points. But perhaps a but maybe a junior developer wants more experience with web development. So he can bid 80 points to get the work. Because we release monthly I do not really care if the senior developer could do the feature in two days compared to the junior guy's three.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Same situation but now say the customer needs this page in 1 week. Now the Senior developer raises his price to 200 points and the junior doesn't think he can get the work done in time. But the junior developer talks to the senior developer to place a joint price of 150 (The senior would take care of some of the tricky things and let the junior fill in the rest)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Features that have a high value to the business could be given a higher starting bid price. So in the above examples perhaps the Product Owner looks at past point values for page development and sets the starting price at 200 points. But in the second example the page would start at 500 points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner and other managers would be the arbitrators of the delivered product and accept the work at which point the points bid would be credited to the engineers. Over the course of a project or year the managers can keep track of the total points spent by the individuals and then award bonuses or other incentives to people who have done the most points of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are people's thought on this model and what are some of the challenges or benefits you could see with such a model? Where does QA fit into a model like this? Would they be involved with every item as a team member or perhaps as the acceptance committee?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for sharing your thoughts,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jason&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2353" LastActivityDate="2011-10-22T15:41:55.437" Title="Reverse Auction &quot;Kanban-like&quot; methodology for agile development" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3679" CreationDate="2011-10-21T19:48:50.930" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently managing some infrastructure work where the Unix specialist is in India, the Middleware specialist is in one city in the UK, and the hardware is installed in a different city in the UK. I am in the same city as the Middleware guy, but in a different office. This actually works surprisingly well as long as we have a daily audio conference to monitor progress and align our plans. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On this basis, I would suggest that planning and monitoring can be done remotely, and that as long as everyone understands the need for a disciplined approach, the work can be both effectively managed and fun to do. We don't usually need long daily meetings - it's more like a scrum meeting - but it is important to talk every day, and use emails and instant messenger as well as audio to keep on top of issues or to share detailed plans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-10-21T19:48:50.930" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3693" CreationDate="2011-10-21T21:37:12.053" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interesting concept, but I honestly I don't think this type of a model will work and could have serious consequences on your staffs motivation and productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A distraction&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;: During an iteration you want your team working on the highest priority items that have been added to the iteration by the product owner (at least I do). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A points based system will have people bidding on what they &quot;want&quot; to work on which in most cases is not the highest priority story / work item in the iteration backlog. Trying to figure out who &quot;won&quot; the bid, not to mention the bidding process itself is only going to distract your team from the iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Individuals and Interactions&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;: If you want to hand out incentives to staff, yes I'm down with basing it off of performance. However, don't base it off of how many story points or &quot;completed bids&quot; were accepted by the PO over the course of the year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team leader and team members will know who is performing and who is not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have regularly scheduled one on ones with your team members.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have your team complete peer 360 reviews&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, note there are many different types of performance. Take for example your senior developer and junior developer scenario. Have the two &quot;pair&quot; on the story / issue. When completed let the junior developer burn the story up as it's only going to boost their confidence and ability. You can't measure the value that senior developers who can impart knowledge like this and work with team members in such a fashion bring to a team&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Working Software&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;: The end goal of every iteration should be working software. Burn down / burn up / velocity etc..charts are your guide to knowing if your on track throughout a project or iteration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your customer doesn't care which developer won the most bids and completed the most story points. They care that the software is delivered on time, without defects, at the cost negotiated and works as expected. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its a team game....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastEditorUserId="1885" LastEditDate="2011-10-22T15:41:55.437" LastActivityDate="2011-10-22T15:41:55.437" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3661" CreationDate="2011-10-22T16:55:21.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, Microsoft Project Server 2010 will allow you to create a project plan, publish it and let your colleagues see the project schedule at a detail level or high level rollup.  Resources who are assigned to tasks can see which tasks they are assigned to and even update tasks directly through the website.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Microsoft Project Server 2010 runs off SharePoint Server 2010.  It requires 64 bit server hardware, regular maintenance and helps when you have someone who knows what they are doing not just someone with good tech skills.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project Professional 2010 is a desktop tool and its used in conjunction with Project Server to create and publish project plans.  Most people who are project managers are familiar in some way shape or form with this tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Managing this tool on a day to day basis can get complicated.  If you just want to keep some basic project plans with some basic information you can do that pretty easily.  Don't get caught up in all of the high end features like Strategy, Business Intelligence and Workflow approval as those features and functionalities take much more care and feeding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you decide to take Project Server to the next level, I would definitely recommend engaging a local consultant to help you get set up properly.  Disclaimer- I am a Project Server consultant and I'm often called in to fix in-house project server deployments so find someone local through Microsoft Partner Point IF you really want it to work right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2354" LastActivityDate="2011-10-22T16:55:21.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3679" CreationDate="2011-10-23T16:34:09.503" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;That is an interesting question. I personally think most of the PM work could be remotely done. It today's technologies you could meet via video conference calls, discuss, plan, control and every other aspect that PM work is described with. I think that is not a problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I could see the problem and your concern... it is harder to get to know your team with distant communication. Being able to be a good PM you have to know your team and know each member's work habits. The other way around you are just a planner and controller. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are able to earn people's trust and commitment via distant communication, then there is nothing to worry about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's my opinion as far as I openly say that I do not have a lot of experience managing distant teams. I more often work with clients that are located around the world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2320" LastActivityDate="2011-10-23T16:34:09.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3683" CreationDate="2011-10-23T17:12:13.950" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently did wrote a question about Time Tracking software that would be useful in situation similar to yours. &#xA;You could find the post &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/3650/what-time-tracking-time-management-software-do-you-use&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. A few helpful answers did come out. Most of those people answered suggested a software that's exactly for your needs (time tracking plus task tracking, financing, invoicing and so on). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that one will turn what you are looking for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best Regards,&#xA;Sve&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2320" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-10-23T17:12:13.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3669" CreationDate="2011-10-23T17:21:51.187" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am PRINCE2 certificate. I could give a bit of clearance for PIDs and other PRINCE2 documents but I am not sure how much that would be of help. What I mean is that a template itself is nothing but a few lines of reminders what you should do. If you use a template that is some methodology's standard it will not be very much helpful because it's the methodology that makes the difference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if PID is presented to you, the rest of the steps for successful project laying behind PRINCE2 (per say) will be those that will help you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway... if you are interested in PRINCE2 specifically, say so and I will try to help you with what I am able to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2320" LastActivityDate="2011-10-23T17:21:51.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3650" CreationDate="2011-10-24T02:00:38.830" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had great success with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.metacommunications.com/products/workgroups/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Workgroups&lt;/a&gt;. It has many workflow and scheduling management features which make time tracking very easy. Overall I found the software very flexible and easy to integrate into any system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2358" LastActivityDate="2011-10-24T02:00:38.830" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3701" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-24T07:37:53.253" Score="1" ViewCount="126" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am thinking of improving project management in our small international advocacy group (&amp;lt; 10 people spread in several countries). We currently do everything by e-mail. We are already using free Google Apps and there are quite many project management apps, I am at loss which one to choose. Our requirements are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;free &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it's for non-programmers - as simple as possible, minimal number of fields - just task description, assignee(s), task status&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;google apps integration, including simple way to convert email-&gt;task&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2-level structure 1. projects 2. tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(optional) people from outside our domain can access it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have our webhosting where I can install apps if necessary, but I'd prefer ready to use hosted solution. It would help me much if you can share recommendations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2359" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2011-10-24T19:55:51.477" LastActivityDate="2011-10-24T19:55:51.477" Title="PM web-app for non-programmers with google apps" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-12-20T15:53:57.350" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1004" CreationDate="2011-10-24T07:38:48.633" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since my post has been closed (while it was not exactly discussing the same matter, as I was more focusing on the &quot;how&quot; but anyway) :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm evaluating the use of iPad for meeting minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Current tooling and process :&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;strong&gt;presenter&lt;/strong&gt; : I use my laptop to present the powerpoint, and I take notes on a notepad (pen&amp;amp;paper). I then do retranscriptions of the minutes on MS OneNote and I send the minutes in a mail. I also publish the notes on MS Word 2007 format for storage on network drive / sharepoint to allow access to third parties.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As an &lt;strong&gt;attendee&lt;/strong&gt; : I use my laptop with MS OneNote directly, and follow the same publishing process as above. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Drawings : from time to time I need to draw, for which I exclusively use my notepad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far I rank this usage as follows : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;++Digital notes allow me to search my notes. I have to do a lot of business interviews, and this saves me a lot of time when trying to retrieve info in the mass of data I've gathered&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;++OneNote provide quite good organization&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;++Notepad offers good versatility for drawing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;--still relying on paper notes for meeting where I'm the presenter, so still wasting time to do retranscription&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Future :&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering regarding the iPad, and I have the following questions : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I would need to sync notes to my laptop (over 3G or mail), so evernote seems to be a very good choice. Are there other ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you recommand a specific keyboard (I'm afraid manual notes will be unreadable, and I type faster than I write&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is stylus worthwhile for drawing ? Which app do you recommend for drawings ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2275" LastActivityDate="2011-10-24T07:38:48.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3704" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3723" CreationDate="2011-10-24T07:46:29.980" Score="3" ViewCount="181" Body="&lt;p&gt;So we need to perform a feasibility study of one of our initiatives and need to present it to the 'higher ups' - It needs to incorporate numbers (estimates) both from the perspective of tangibles and intangibles. I'm pretty good with the intangibles but what I'd like to know is what to include in a typical software business case from an 'economics' perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know I'll show the ROI/IRR (Internal Rate of Return). But I want to know what dimensions of various 'economic' aspects should I also focus on? What are typically the dimensions on which one would base such a feasibility study?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a 'complete' example so to speak - I mean it could be with just headings of what to consider but I'm NOT looking for templates. We are going to be preparing it in Excel to help with the numeric calculations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is then this: When making a business case what economic drivers should we consider? E.g., cash flow instances/streams are one but what else? (Drivers that directly impact the (predicted) bottom line would also be appreciated e.g., expect market share increase etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm basically trying to understand what 'quantifiable' aspects to include in the business case...yes I'm also discussing this internally but wanted to the views of the community too :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1119" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-16T18:24:40.730" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T18:24:40.730" Title="What 'economic drivers' should be part of our &quot;software business case&quot;?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;&lt;business-case&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3683" CreationDate="2011-10-24T08:24:38.450" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you wish to track completion, and focus on delegation, &quot;portfolio&quot; of tasks, and grouping of tasks (on projects or subprojects), advanced task managers can do the trick.&#xA;For more advanced needs I would say Jira as well&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personnaly tried :&#xA;- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.getflow.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.getflow.com/&lt;/a&gt; : really nice, but not free&#xA;- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.6wunderkinder.com/wunderlist/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.6wunderkinder.com/wunderlist/&lt;/a&gt; quite nice, free, cross platform&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2275" LastActivityDate="2011-10-24T08:24:38.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3679" CreationDate="2011-10-24T08:29:21.687" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've done this a lot in my previous assignments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My feedback : everything can be done remotely, with some areas of focus :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ensure at least 1 face to face meeting / event occurs soon during the project : this single point I believe has the most impact on people willingness to collaborate : anyone is more likely to help someone they know than just a voice over the phone. It also provide great phone conversation starters, as you can start by 30sec not related to work, which eases the thing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;depending on maturity of remote resources, organize frequent follow-up meeting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;when you check up status, ask open questions, to force correspondant to phrase their mind (especially in some cultures, saying no is not a good thing, so you don't get &quot;honnest&quot; answers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be wary that with phone meetings, you only get 30% of the message as people don't see you. Be careful with jokes, with positive / negative feedback. Feedback is very delicate matters : if you give negative feedback, it may sound very very negative on the phone...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2275" LastActivityDate="2011-10-24T08:29:21.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3704" CreationDate="2011-10-24T09:17:34.863" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may like to consider, for initial year and subsequent ones&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gross Margin              &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cost Reductions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Capital Investment                &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Costs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Working Capital Impact   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cost Avoidance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1786" LastActivityDate="2011-10-24T09:17:34.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3593" CreationDate="2011-10-24T09:48:45.053" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aside from how you compute your buffers for each tasks, I've had an interresting presenting around the idea of buffer aggregation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following the student principle (people always do things at last minute), and another law which name I forgot that says : People always take all the time given to perform an activity, the rationale is to group all buffers into one large put at the end of the phase of your project (ie just before your milestone)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only PM and some stakeholders know the exact content of the buffer, and you reajust its size after risks reviews, etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefits are :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;only one task in your project to manage buffering. Since this task is at the end you have no rescheduling hassle.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you reschedule only when you have to, ie only when someone is late. If everything goes by the plan, you don't have to reschedule&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;higher productivity as you hide buffers, so people are more likely to use the unbuffered time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2275" LastActivityDate="2011-10-24T09:48:45.053" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1277" CreationDate="2011-10-24T09:57:51.777" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on previous XP : dedicated PM (ie specially appointed person, even if not working 100% on PM) when total workload above 50 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I'll answers as everyone above : &#xA;- PM = 15-25% of total workload&#xA;- Project management is needed all the time, depending on the size of the project it can be more or less formal and complexe. If no full time PM is required, either the PM can work on many projects at the same time, or one of the team members can be acting as PM (and have dedicated time for this).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2275" LastActivityDate="2011-10-24T09:57:51.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3679" CreationDate="2011-10-24T10:26:47.777" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;All PM work, all project work, all business, and any activity can be done remotely...&lt;em&gt;so long as you have the &lt;strong&gt;capability&lt;/strong&gt; of working remotely and you have no adverse sequelae.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This includes that the work does not require in any way work to be performed co-located.  A simple example of this requirement is if the product being built cannot be easily shared across the team, e.g., a building.  Another example might be if the customer simply requires it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proof is in the result, not in our opinions and experiences.  If you are experiencing issues that can be directly or indirectly tied to, in total or in part, working remotely despite your capability to do so, then working remotely is likely not a great solution for that project at that time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-10-24T10:26:47.777" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3704" CreationDate="2011-10-24T14:47:55.083" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Include indicators of economic activity that directly affect your business (e.g. forecasts on auto sales if you are in the auto sector) as well as indicators that are proxies for economic activity that affects your business (e.g. forecast on new home prices if you are in the home remodeling business).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-10-24T14:47:55.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3683" CreationDate="2011-10-24T15:48:34.320" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can try Team Task Manager.  We use it daily to track projects and tasks for 20 employees. The software is very intuitive and there is no learning curve.  Free eval is here -  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deskshare.com/team-task-management.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.deskshare.com/team-task-management.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2366" LastActivityDate="2011-10-24T15:48:34.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3589" CreationDate="2011-10-24T18:38:17.327" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Note, that I have never used an IPad for meeting notes but I think EverNote will meet your current and future requirements: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.evernote.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.evernote.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your current needs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Evernote's search feature is amazing. It has a very flexible search system that searches for text by keyword, tag or even printed and handwritten text inside images.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Very flexible in terms of oranization ( i switched from onenote to evernote ). You can organize by notebook, tags etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has a drawing tab where you can draw &amp;amp; take handwritten notes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paper notes if you so desire can be scanned into the app and you can rely upon the image textual search feature&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your future needs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;out of the gate, evernote automatically will sync across all your devices. It comes with multi platform (mac pc) desktop applications, along with smart phone access (ipad, iphone, android, blackberry). If that isn't enough it also has very robust web access.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I can't speak for keyboard / drawings as I don't use an Ipad for meeting notes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastActivityDate="2011-10-24T18:38:17.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3589" CreationDate="2011-10-24T18:47:10.057" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A little off-the-question but hope it's helpful...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been testing a Motorola Xoom (Family edition) for these type of use cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has a direct HDMI port and Mini USB for hooking up to projectors, presentation software and can sync to evernote as well as other similar products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-10-24T18:47:10.057" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3701" CreationDate="2011-10-24T18:48:32.143" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pivotal Tracker may meet your requirements. Note, that they have recently changed their pricing structure but I think you may qualify for their free plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Very simple web interface&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has a good google apps integration: &lt;a href=&quot;http://pivotallabs.com/users/dan/blog/articles/1861-pivotal-tracker-and-google-apps-together-at-last&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://pivotallabs.com/users/dan/blog/articles/1861-pivotal-tracker-and-google-apps-together-at-last&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Supports your 2 level project structure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Open to as many people as you want to invite to a project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the very least, you can sign up for a free account and give it a try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastActivityDate="2011-10-24T18:48:32.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3680" CreationDate="2011-10-24T23:35:49.573" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on how you manage contacts, billing, time tracking, and other needs - you would likely benefit more from an integrated solution. Something that allows you to manage projects in the same place that you manage your business contacts, sales, timesheets, and overall business collaboration. This way you can save on subscription costs by keeping the number of apps you're using low. Also, workflow efficiency drastically increases when everything you need to manage operations is in one place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WORKetc puts a powerful set of project management features into an online app that you can also use to manage CRM/time tracking and billing. The project management features include multiple project views (including Gantt, project trees, activities by people involved, etc), as well as detailed reporting across your business. Managing timesheets in the same app also allows for some added reporting functionality as well as a lot of saved time - and you can attach items together, such as attaching a timesheet, todo, document, and contact within a project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WORKetc is also Google Apps integrated and just released mobile apps: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worketc.com/project_management_tools&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.worketc.com/project_management_tools&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2322" LastActivityDate="2011-10-24T23:35:49.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3680" CreationDate="2011-10-25T08:27:32.917" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/?gclid=CMT2mp6zg6wCFcSIDgodKg-VLQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jira is an issue, bug and project management&lt;/a&gt; tool that if used correctly can give you a great view on all of the points that you mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending of the type of project you are dealing with or the organisation and environment you are working in a choice should be made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But Jira, in my opinion, covers a wide range of projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are having a project on a software to develop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By using Jira, you can create software versions and within each version create and assign issues, bugs, tasks, improvements, etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Together with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/greenhopper/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Greenhopper plugin&lt;/a&gt;, this will give you a great view on the status of the executed work within each version and a lot of statistical data and graphs to represent all this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm working on this and use it as a base for my retrospective as well as review to management, and it works great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure there are free solutions as well for this...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastEditorUserId="2854" LastEditDate="2012-01-04T22:30:00.117" LastActivityDate="2012-01-04T22:30:00.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3720" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-25T11:07:20.390" Score="5" ViewCount="1876" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just had a bad project experience. I was a subcontract programmer of a subcontract software house. I've been assigned as a single developer to build an application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the development process, I suffered a rather severe illness which greatly decrease my ability to complete the project. My team leaders knew this condition very well since they visited me several times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite the above condition, my team leaders didn't come with any solutions such as providing assistant programmer nor replace me with another programmer. Instead they keep pushed me to finish the job. The job was completed; however it was a few months late behind the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that the job was done, I had difficulties in getting my fee. It appears that my leaders blame me for the late completion. Yet, they still use my application as it is now online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are common penalties for exceeding project deadlines? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are your opinion about my case? Do I still had a chance to claim my fee?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2369" LastEditorUserId="591" LastEditDate="2011-10-27T07:15:22.330" LastActivityDate="2011-10-31T17:59:20.510" Title="Denying payments as a project deadline penalty" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;deadline&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3720" CreationDate="2011-10-25T12:35:17.277" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Penalties and awards attached to fees MUST be clearly indicated in your contract.  There is nothing common about this.  It is simply an agreement between two parties as to how they wish to incent performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your contract does not stipulate such an incentive, then you are owed your fee so long as you met all the applicable Ts&amp;amp;Cs.  Their claim to your fee must be tied to damages, which they would have trouble proving since they are using your work.  Being &quot;late&quot; would not likely meet the standard of damages, though they could try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should engage an attorney and get some advice on this.  The likelihood of winning compared to the cost of pursuit needs to be analyzed and considered.  But your side of the story sounds like you have some good issues to pursue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-10-25T12:35:17.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3720" CreationDate="2011-10-25T13:33:17.493" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try escalating it to their boss.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As David mentioned, this is not common &quot;business&quot; practice. However, it doesn't sound like there is much legal recourse.  I would try making your case with someone higher up in the company or someone who knows them and may have some influence on their decision making.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-10-25T13:33:17.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3704" CreationDate="2011-10-25T20:43:27.010" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The two main measures that I have used in the past are Internal Rate of Return and Cash Flow forecasts, both using discounted future values and in absolute terms. There's nothing too novel about these and I guess that you will have models for whatever your company requires.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In calculating the benefits, you might consider some or any of the following, depending on your industry sector:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increased sales;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduced costs;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shorter time to market (hence higher market share / competitive advantage. Probably hard to evaluate, but not impossible)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduced stockholding (maybe not relevant for your business)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Higher stock turnover ratio (also perhaps not relevant)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increased efficiency therefore capacity to grow your output without additional staff. The other side of this is the ability to maintain the same level of sales with lower staff levels&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduced training requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Opportunity to increase prices and thus margin, if functionality is increased&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lower maintenance costs through better quality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ability to attract additional customers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A further consideration is that some would say that there is no such thing as an intangible benefit: only tangible ones that have not yet been properly evaluated. I'm not sure that I agree with this, but an example that has been quoted to me goes like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;One benefit that is claimed is the increased publicity that will come about through a successful project. This provides high visibility and reputational benefits for the company. This is, on the face of it, intangible, but it can be made tangible by asking the managing director / chief executive how much he or she would be prepared to pay to a PR company to get this level of exposure. That is then the value of the tangible benefit that can be claimed.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A further reason for intangibles is that they are too inexact or too vague to put a value on. Using the example above, it is perhaps the case that the CEO would be unable to place a value on the publicity - but he may be happy to say that he would pay between $500 and $10,000 for it. Use a high / low range and do the calculations based on both, to give a range of benefits. The likely outcome will be somewhere between the extremes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-10-25T20:43:27.010" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3724" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-26T05:31:00.417" Score="15" ViewCount="2274" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a project manager who always thinks we are able to handle more workload.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to handle this kind of project manager?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also always ask us what are we doing and despite we telling him the tasks we are working at he still think we are able to take on more workload&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advise anybody?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2373" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-18T17:16:45.580" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T17:16:45.580" Title="How to deal with project managers who like to overload you with work?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3683" CreationDate="2011-10-26T07:30:32.930" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're trying to track all the tasks, I'd recommend using AgileZen, Pivotal Tracker or Trello.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AgileZen/Trello are both 'cardwall' implementations. I've not used Trello yet, but it looks like it's a bit slicker than Agile Zen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AgileZen is much closer to a true kanban implementation; allowing work in progress limits, blocks, and ready to pull state. However it doesn't allow me to put rules of engagement on the board in an easy way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because you can expand the size of the board horizontally as far as you want, AgileZen/Trello are both good choices when work has a lot of hand offs (say your designer needs to do some work, then hand it to the executive, who rubber stamps it who hands it to the tech lead who designs it who gives it to the developers who code it who give it to QA who confirm it who give it to ops to deploy it)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously that scenario is sub optimal. Thankfully kanban systems allow you to track how long cards stay stuck in different parts of the work flow. Now instead of wondering why it takes 3 weeks to get something from design to production, you can see where tasks are getting stuck! Hooray!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pivotal Tracker is great if you are already running super lean. If you take a task and deploy it within a few hours to a day, then you should just use pivotal tracker. It's super smooth and clean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2374" LastActivityDate="2011-10-26T07:30:32.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3724" CreationDate="2011-10-26T07:55:40.757" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Provide him with a list daily of what your working on. Provide him with a longer term view of what is lined up over the next couple of weeks. You will need to include your task time estimates. Also refer him to previous work and show how long that took so he can get a better understanding of task duration. Eventually he will understand your capacity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile project management is good in this regard as you can plan out all the hours of your week in full view of the Agile PM. 40 hours in a week, then that is what will be planned for you in your iteration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially your problem is a combination of communication and possibly the pressure he faces from the business. He may need to push back on the business or get more resources to handle the workload.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2375" LastActivityDate="2011-10-26T07:55:40.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3724" CreationDate="2011-10-26T13:11:14.330" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First, bring the discussion down to facts.&lt;/strong&gt; It's not that you don't want to deal with another task or you feel you won't handle it but you &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; it and you can support it with &lt;em&gt;hard data&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Until you start discussing facts you may be facing the issue that PM is just adding things to your backpack and wait until it's clearly seen you have too much. There can be many reasons of such attitude, starting with a lack of trust and finishing with lack of will to make difficult decisions on task priorities. Either way with no data you won't solve this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Second, visualize that.&lt;/strong&gt; If you tell me that you're overloaded and you have dozen tasks in backlog it doesn't say as much as your task board would say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't say it &lt;em&gt;has to&lt;/em&gt; be task board or Kanban board. It can be whatever visualization tool which works fine and shows data you want to discuss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Third, use &lt;em&gt;meaningful&lt;/em&gt; historical data.&lt;/strong&gt; Backup your point with experience from the past. Find similar situations and show how overloading team with tasks ended up in late delivery or random choice of tasks or chaos in priorities. Show how effectively you could work at times when the team wasn't overloaded with tasks etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I want to stress is data should be meaningful, meaning it should be about this very team, in similar and comparable situation etc. It shouldn't be some made up information which just show what you want it to show. You have to believe in value of the data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fourth, show consequences of not changing PM's attitude.&lt;/strong&gt; If nothing else works I retreat to a discussion like this: if you don't set meaningful priorities or give us enough information how we should choose priorities we would end up choosing tasks mostly randomly, as we aren't equipped well enough to make reasonable choices. Is that what you want? In other words &lt;em&gt;if everything is equally important, everything is equally unimportant as well&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, even such argument doesn't change the approach and you basically have to deal with the situation by yourself, trying to make right decisions while facing insufficient information. You can consider good old escalation to someone higher in a pecking order - either your boss or PM's superior. Depending on a person it can help, although basically the discussion would look the same. The only difference would be person taking part in it would hold more power and more authority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-11-07T08:37:09.573" LastActivityDate="2011-11-07T08:37:09.573" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3724" CreationDate="2011-10-26T14:13:17.173" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Politely, and professionally decline all extra work that you can not handle at that moment. If you are a professional, you can only work correctly on a single task. Giving it all of your focus, expertise and care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most humans are bad at multi-tasking &lt;strong&gt;knowledge&lt;/strong&gt; work; i.e. you might get away rapidly splicing your attention across two or three jobs, but both will take longer and will be of poorer quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So say No and turn the tables around. Finish what you are working on (giving it all of your focus, expertise and care) and then go back to the PM &lt;strong&gt;asking&lt;/strong&gt; for the next job to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully the PM will realise that you are a professional and you complete the tasks assigned to you and you can start to communicate and collaborate better on how to give/get tasks that suit both of your needs. (cfr the other posters, Agile PM)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2376" LastActivityDate="2011-10-26T14:13:17.173" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3669" CreationDate="2011-10-26T15:31:55.120" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://marketplace.pmi.org/Pages/ProductDetail.aspx?GMProduct=00101095501&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-10-26T15:31:55.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3730" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-26T16:04:05.133" Score="4" ViewCount="421" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our small software development team is looking for a way to track our requirements.  Our development team uses Fogbugz and we are considering that option.  Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2378" LastActivityDate="2017-05-18T09:43:08.323" Title="As a project manager, how do I use Fogbugz to track requirements?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3724" CreationDate="2011-10-26T16:07:11.093" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;On a project with baselined scope, plan, and schedule, it should not be a surprise to anyone on the team the work that comes down.  If it is a surprise, either the work is completely out of control or the PM is hiding what (s)he should not be hiding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's assume the work is known, baselined, and under control.  If the PM is observing unfavorable trends in variances, it can not be considered unexpected that the team might start to feel over burdened.  After all, the PM is crashing or fast tracking the schedule in the hopes of correcting the trend.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not a yes or no, accept or reject situation.  The team needs to make the PM aware of the expected trade-offs with the assignment of additional work.  Priorities change, risks develop, other issues are cured, it's a balancing act.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take the new work and let the PM know your prediction of expected impact and let the PM make that balancing act decision.  The new threats might be more acceptable than what (s)he is trying to cure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-10-26T16:07:11.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3724" CreationDate="2011-10-26T16:38:00.670" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This typically happens if:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The PM is not clear on your current workload. He might know WHAT you are working on but might not understand how much longer it will take. Let's say you tell him you are working on a User Registration page and you are already into the second day, he might assume that you are almost done. Cases like this can be handled pretty easily with better communication. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He might know what you are working on, considers the progress too slow and heaps on another job just to remind you that there IS a lot of work left in the backlog. Cases like this are also easy to solve with better communication. Some PMs don't like to openly question individual productivity levels unless they REALLY have to and resort to doing this instead.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are you guys understaffed? If you are, he could be doing this because of delivery pressure from management. It doesn't really help the process as much as he would like to believe but he might not know that. Try to bring it up in weekly meetings, ideally getting a more senior colleague to raise the subject and when management is NOT around.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different PMs have different styles. Unless you have a clear system in place to monitor projects so everyone can know what's doing on, it is VERY hard to say what the problem is. If you can't figure out the WHY part, it's pretty much all speculation when it comes to finding a solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Believe it or not, most PMs aren't out to bust your balls (even though it often does feel that way), its ineffective, bad for relationships and lowers morale. So unless you are dealing with a totally incompetent one, there must be some reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1849" LastActivityDate="2011-10-26T16:38:00.670" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3733" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3735" CreationDate="2011-10-26T21:42:30.553" Score="6" ViewCount="721" Body="&lt;p&gt;[University Project]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to adopt as many practices from agile project management as I can for a university project. I've decided that the actual development approach will be based upon an &lt;a href=&quot;http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Fdd_process_diagram.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FDD (Feature Driven Development) model&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to tie my features to a user story. When I have my two weekly meetings with a supervisor I can talk about which user stories I plan on integrating on the next iteration, which I've not finished, which need breaking down into smaller tasks etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There in lies the problem, I don't have a user. I could &quot;be the user&quot; but I think there would be a conflict of interest seeing as I'm managing and developing the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions on how to cope with a situation where a particular user hasn't been identified?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For reference, project notes are available at &lt;a href=&quot;http://imat3451.blogspot.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;imat3451.blogspot.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2241" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-16T18:31:53.080" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T18:31:53.080" Title="Creating &quot;User Stories&quot; without a user" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3733" CreationDate="2011-10-26T22:33:11.897" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One option you may want to consider is this. For each feature write the stories that you think make sense. Once you are finished, e.g. all stories for one feature, then try to collaborate with a different student who has to run a project themselves. They can review your stories and you can review their stories. Both of you will learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively you could ask a person who you trust and who has experience to review your stories. Maybe you have a friend, an acquaintance or maybe a mentor who can help out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Software engineering is very much about communication in my experience so all of the above will help you beyond the project at hand. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2318" LastActivityDate="2011-10-26T22:33:11.897" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3733" CreationDate="2011-10-27T04:48:50.627" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just because &quot;user story&quot; is titled as such,  doesn't mean that user's write them. Rather user stories are captured / written to capture user behavior or &quot;the story&quot; of what the user wants to achieve. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have 3 hats on this project. The role of the PM, the role of the developer and the role of the user:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put your user hat on and think about what the problem is, that you want a&#xA;solution for.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put your PM hat on. Start at the &quot;epic&quot; level and think about the&#xA;larger blocks that will make up your project and provide&#xA;a solution to the problem you as a user have. Break out these larger&#xA;pieces into &quot;user stories&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep you PM hat on and plan your first iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put your development hat on and double check / accept the work &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;have in your iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your new to the &quot;agile&quot; scene I would highly recommend INVESTing some time upfront in what it takes to write a good story. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allaboutagile.com/invest-in-good-user-stories/&quot;&gt;invest mnemonic&lt;/a&gt; is in my opinion one of the most fundamental aspects of writing good stories that often gets overlooked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Independent&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Negotiable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Valuable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimatable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Small &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Testable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastActivityDate="2011-10-27T04:48:50.627" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3733" CreationDate="2011-10-27T09:54:07.937" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't have users you can talk to, identify types of users you can target stories at.  For instance, if you were making a website where people could post reviews of products, you might have users like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reviewer (someone who posts new reviews of products)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consumer (someone who reads reviews and posts comments)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Moderator (someone who can edit or remove inappropriate reviews or&#xA;comments)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thinking about a feature from the point of view of of these users can help you focus on what is important to that type of user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can even use your user roles to prioritise what order to do your features in - perhaps as a fledgling review site, I'm most interested in attracting reviewer type people to build up my content so I'll prioritise those features that are geared towards those users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2011-10-27T09:54:07.937" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3738" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3739" CreationDate="2011-10-27T14:30:01.723" Score="3" ViewCount="923" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ISSUES&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Microsoft Project isn't cutting it as a project communication tool: I have a copy of Project 2010 and so do many other employees, but they cannot be expected to learn how to use this program. Staff could care less about project management and planning, it's not their field. I  can't make it show tasks clearly to most people (even to me). My current Project file is 500 rows of tasks and subtasks. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Our work is interdisciplinary, uncertain, and dependent and affected by outside forces. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Supervisor wants issue / project tracking not only for staff needs but for tracking and reporting to higher management. It would be great to present the project info to the supervisor in an easy to interpret format for this purpose. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Different software might be the only option, but I would need to test it with the team. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have a portfolio manager that is smart and supportive but has no formal power over team managers and is not a project manager by trade. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We're not IT, so we don't need bug tracking.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;GOALS&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Easily inform both managers and staff on task progress.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nice to have: move beyond just listing tasks and become more predictive.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nice to have: attach a resource to each task, but detailed resource management is unnecessary. We're a team of about 15 people. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I tame this communication problem? I'm not sure if I'm even asking the right questions / looking for the right thing / or just trying to find a silver bullet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1547" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-09T16:35:38.443" LastActivityDate="2018-11-09T16:35:38.443" Title="Communicate a project easily without MS Project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3738" CreationDate="2011-10-27T15:35:33.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you tried a product table or milestone list briefly sumamrizing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product name&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product purpose&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Person responsible for completion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Date started&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Date due&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Current estimated date of delivery&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Issues causing (or that may cause) item 6 to deviate from item 5&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that each product being made can account for a number of tasks/sub-tasks. The granularity of the list should be tailored to the audience (i.e. less granularity for execs compared to line managers). Update this at intervals appropriate to your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2011-10-27T15:35:33.280" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3738" CreationDate="2011-10-27T18:50:40.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Issue #1:  MSProject, or any other scheduling tool, is not a communication tool.  It was not designed for the purpose.  There are some generic reports resident in the tool, but I do not find them that useful for communicating progress to leadership.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to extract and input the data from the scheduling tool into your reporting tool, whatever that might be.  That way, you can design your report to show the right amount and level of information that your specific audience needs to see.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Issue #2:  All projects suffer from this, but this is not relevant in terms of one's ability to report progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Issue #3:  I would hope so.  I would label this as a strength.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Issue #4:  Yes, you need a communication tool.  But a template created in .ppt, .xls, or .doc work just super.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Issue #5:  Ok.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Issue #6:  Ok.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-10-27T18:50:40.820" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3720" CreationDate="2011-10-27T20:40:46.063" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quick answers to your specific questions - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the common penalties? ONLY what's written into the contract BEFORE you start work. Unless there are specific penalties or clauses in the agreement, they have no basis for withholding your fee. Even if you did cause them to incur some fees or lose revenue, it's incumbent on THEM to protect themselves beforehand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have a chance to reclaim your fee? Absolutely!! Unless they can show where in your agreement you were BOUND to a completion date under penalty of loss or forfeiture, they owe you the money. Additionally, the fact that they're using your application says they found value in it, even if delayed, so they owe you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One added thought - this scenario falls under the category of proper Change Management. Even if penalties or delays aren't specifically spelled out in your contract, it's ALWAYS in your best interest to communicate changes (in both schedule and cost) in writing, so there's no misunderstanding. When you get sick, send them a quick note letting them know that there will be a delay. That way you have written proof that you gave them notice &quot;prior to&quot; the delay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-10-27T20:40:46.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3730" CreationDate="2011-10-27T22:02:40.393" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can set up requirements as milestones and place programming objectives or tasks under the different milestones. This means you can not only see what which items you still need to work on for each requirement, but you can also see how long until each requirement is fulfilled based on your estimates for how long each task will take to carry out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastActivityDate="2011-10-27T22:02:40.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3680" CreationDate="2011-10-27T22:14:31.267" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find that FogBugz works great for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Joel Spolsky goes into detail about how the evidence-based scheduling in FogBugz works in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It easily solves the first three points that you require. See the section &quot;Scope Creep&quot; for details on the second point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not so sure that it satisfies your fourth requirement, although the section on slope creep would allow you to see how simplifying your project on a given day impacts the projected ship date. It also lets you see your projected ship date based on how many levels of priority you complete. If you want to pull resources from the project, you can simply demote these tasks or requirements to the lowest priority level and disregard them. Likewise, you'll be able to see how removing these items affects your ship date simply be comparing the estimated ship dates if you satisfy items with this level of priority or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastActivityDate="2011-10-27T22:14:31.267" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-10-27T22:14:31.267" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3680" CreationDate="2011-10-28T01:23:53.933" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may want to take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://alvazan.com/demo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this predictive project management tool&lt;/a&gt; and play with the scope/speed/schedule to get new projections on when the project would be completed.  I believe it is actually free right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2383" LastActivityDate="2011-10-28T01:23:53.933" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-10-28T01:23:53.933" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3161" CreationDate="2011-10-28T01:39:42.040" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, this is a marketing question and should be treated as such.  In Project Management, there are many times when we need to do a bit of marketing to sell the project for funding and attain it.  A thesis sounds just like this.  In general, follow the typical marketing rules of keeping things simple for the reader and allow them to drill down if they want to, such as placing a summary gant chart with a more detailed chart in an appendix.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2383" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-02-03T03:06:30.980" LastActivityDate="2012-02-03T03:06:30.980" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2499" CreationDate="2011-10-28T01:48:41.697" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally have seen both business not doing agile and business doing agile(the teams doing agile) and they both work.  Most of the time, the team doing agile can be a precursor and can seep into the business starting to do agile but sometimes this does not happen.  Agile derives from two main principles buried in Agile, &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120428122225/http://blog.alvazan.com/80/the-one-most-important-agile-principle/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;inspect and adapt&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120106024534/http://blog.alvazan.com/82/the-2nd-most-important-agile-principle/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;let the team decide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see many concepts that are like this software you are using....you like this stackexchange interface....well, they can swap the whole implementation and keep the interface the same.  Same with teams and the business...the interface to the business does not have to change(though I prefer to change it as it is a competitive advantage to be more flexible and agile helps with this).  So I would say yes, Agile can still work without the business doing Agile, but it would be better for the business to embrace agile as well in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2383" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-16T13:47:44.727" LastActivityDate="2020-07-16T13:47:44.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3748" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3751" CreationDate="2011-10-28T01:57:06.073" Score="3" ViewCount="195" Body="&lt;p&gt;Over at &lt;a href=&quot;http://alvazan.com/demo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://alvazan.com/demo&lt;/a&gt;, we have been thinking about a feature to get developers to estimate on time.  What do PM's think of having the ability to turn on an annoyance feature that emails the developers and warns them to get their estimates and of which if you turn it on, it would keep emailing them and then start emailing them faster until the item was estimated over the course of 3 days since the item was put in the backlog/requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least that is one example.  I am curious if anyone has any ideas or likes the above idea which is just one example of what we are thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;thoughts? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our system is currently free for use if you register in the next 2 months by the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2383" LastActivityDate="2011-10-29T03:59:53.943" Title="creating a PM system and what's best way to get developers to estimate?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="372" CreationDate="2011-10-28T02:10:02.227" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One GREAT rule in estimation is about managing customers.  If you tell your wife you will be home at 5 and come home at 6, she gets mad, BUT if you tell her you will come home at 7pm and then get home at 6, in the end, she is happy.  weird but true...basic psychology.  Soooooo the most important part in giving an estimate is to make sure it will be higher than what you will deliver and if the PM is unhappy with the estimate, stand by it anyways and deliver it quicker!!!!!!  in the end, he will be happy you delivered it early (and most likely will say start estimating better).  It is better to be on time then late anyways from the business perspective as they nailed down dates with lots of external parties and want to deliver on those dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2383" LastActivityDate="2011-10-28T02:10:02.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3733" CreationDate="2011-10-28T11:11:36.680" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well in our case we had a user, however our approach has been for team to do, say 2 days of research on the features w.r.t trends, competition, how is it implemented generally, best practices and what we as a team think, has to be minimum stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Planning session, a lead provides context with benefit of doing such a feature. Team will write their views on what stories should be done to achieve that benefit on post its. Lead categorizes the stories (post its) on a wall into high level categories and removes all duplicates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We prioritize the remaining stories in each category and schedule them in sprints. Effectively who ever has come up with the idea or have view into vision/goals can become the user and drive it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You did talk about a developer may struggle to fill in user role, however with a combination of whole team sitting in planning will neutralize this with majority voted stories taking the top seat. Needless to say however you do and what ever you define as story should clearly provide you with value. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2384" LastActivityDate="2011-10-28T11:11:36.680" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3748" CreationDate="2011-10-28T11:26:01.920" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not really sure emailing until estimation is done will work. It will be explicit force on the team. Again my views :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead if something can be done in following lines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. Tool automatically identifies who is set to complete their work and is going to have some levy or time in following 3 days then assign stories for estimation to those developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b. Tie that up with points system providing bonus points to members who do the estimation in time and deduct points on ones who do not. May be a points dashboard will help which is quite visible to the organizaton. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c. This points system need not just be restricted to estimation but other engagements as well where people are supposed to take initiatives within the team to close the work items like &quot;Reviews&quot;, &quot;Own Software Demos&quot;, &quot;Build &amp;amp; Config Ownership across sprints&quot; etc and others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2384" LastActivityDate="2011-10-28T11:26:01.920" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3730" CreationDate="2011-10-28T11:34:24.280" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apart from what Jason has mentioned already FogBugz advanced features allows following&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customizable workflows&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customizable case-types&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customizable statuses&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So why not ceate a workflow for requirements, Customize case-type to say &quot;Requirement&quot; and provide a status customization as well as you need it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2384" LastActivityDate="2011-10-28T11:34:24.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3748" CreationDate="2011-10-28T13:31:18.367" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Developers will write estimates when it becomes easy and relevant to do so. They will not estimate just because you email them. In addition, emailing developers as individuals will be likely to result in individual estimates: made in isolation, without consulting the group, and with all the resulting anti-patterns which come from rewarding / punishing individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also likely to get devs' backs up. At best, they'll simply filter the emails out. At worst, this will result in conversations like, &quot;Oh, sorry, I missed the meeting invite - too busy dealing with the estimate emails.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will make PMs / SMs happy only in the very short term, until they realize the side-effects of the feature and turn it off. Please, please don't do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to help developers estimate, focus on letting the developers know - through broadcast, rather than through push - that a particular task needs to be estimated. This could be done with a normal card wall and a small piece of text or an icon (I'm not seeing such a card wall in your product, but that's the right place for this IMO). It needs to be optional as some teams only estimate when they pick up the story or (in the case of Kanban, for instance) use recorded data for estimation purposes instead of guessing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also focus on making it as easy as possible for developers to add estimates, or to read them automatically from whatever tracking tool they're using. That will help more than any number of emails. Wherever possible, assume that people want to do useful things and put your energy and creativity into making it easier for them to do so, rather than &lt;em&gt;forcing&lt;/em&gt; them to do so through other features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-10-28T13:31:18.367" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3754" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-28T14:04:58.243" Score="14" ViewCount="1463" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can I say Agile is &quot;not&quot; Lean and both Agile and Lean are totally different concepts or philosophies? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I take lean principles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Self Organization&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Kaizen or Cont. Improvement&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Quality Assurance&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Pokayoke or Fail Proof&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Mudha or Waste Elimination&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see Agile definitively meets first two and a bit of 3 with feedback loop, but not the rest. Does this make Lean methods like Kanban more superior. No intentions to undermine any particular principles but wanted a logical clarification to have a clear understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2384" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2013-05-13T12:11:01.500" LastActivityDate="2018-12-19T12:57:01.857" Title="Is Agile Lean? Or are Agile and Lean totally separate philosophies?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;definition&gt;&lt;lean&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3754" CreationDate="2011-10-28T14:56:28.567" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most agile methodologies call for self-organizing teams and a focus on continuous improvement of the process and product. However, I would also make the argument that agile incorporates waste elimination and poka-yoke, and quality assurance to some extent, depending on the specific methods. Examples of this being You Ain't Gonna Need It/YAGNI and Test Driven Development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Test Driven Development adds to quality assurance practices by ensuring that all features have test code and test procedures developed, and by developing tests that fail and then writing code to pass the tests, you are working toward fail-proofing your system. Together, YAGNI and TDD reduce waste by enforcing that only the essential code is produced. YAGNI can also be extended to documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can be lean without being agile, but it is very difficult, if not impossible to be agile without being lean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_software_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lean Software Development article on Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; is pretty informative, overall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2018-12-19T12:57:01.857" LastActivityDate="2018-12-19T12:57:01.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3219" CreationDate="2011-10-28T15:14:37.097" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been looking for a solution to this, as i do consulting and work on value stream maps for several clients every week (and sometimes every day!). The best things I have found so far is a set of magnets on Amazon. They come with a book (not useful for experienced users) some markers (blah) and the real useful part, which is a complete set of magnets that you can write on with dry-erase markers. They are reusable over and over again. I just clean them with the stuff I use for cleaning the white board. And I found it very convenient that the kit comes with a full set of icons in jpeg format, so that after configuring the vsm process I can quickly convey it to a powerpoint presentation. Here's the &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B005XG23ZG&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;place&lt;/a&gt; I bought them from. Hope this helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2386" LastActivityDate="2011-10-28T15:14:37.097" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3754" CreationDate="2011-10-28T15:19:06.420" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile and Lean have different roots but to some point they are overlapping. The former bases on &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt;, while the latter has its roots in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Production_System&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Toyota Production System&lt;/a&gt;, but in many areas both movements are aligned and are often treated as similar concepts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find a bit more elaboration on the subject in &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1847/scrum-agile-kanban-looking-for-for-dummies-type-of-information/1850#1850&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; and specifically in &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1847/scrum-agile-kanban-looking-for-for-dummies-type-of-information/1850#1850&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you talk with orthodox people they might insist Agile and Lean are completely separate concepts, but since I'm far from such attitude I would say that, in general Agile is pretty much Lean and the other way around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few words of comment: I don't agree with reducing Lean just to Lean Software Development (which is just one of lean methods applicable to software development) or Agile to specific techniques, like TDD, or methods, like Scrum. Both Lean and Agile are &lt;em&gt;general concepts&lt;/em&gt; and Kanban, Scrum, Lean Software Development and whatnot are just specific &lt;em&gt;implementations&lt;/em&gt; of these concepts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also you can't say this or that method is superior over others. You will want to use different methods depending on a situation. Sometimes Scrum (labeled &quot;Agile&quot;) will be better and sometimes you'd prefer to go with Kanban (labeled &quot;Lean). My advice here: stop thinking bout labels and think what is the most reasonable method in each specific situation. You don't get points for being more agile or more lean, but for finishing your projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you treated adoption of specific methods as a reference whether you are lean or agile, which is wrong, you would still find much of overlap. And of course you can be agile/lean even if you don't use any named method. It is about about following principles and not following the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at the subject from this perspective Lean and Agile will be pretty close to each other and you definitely can't say they are &quot;totally different.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-10-28T15:24:19.360" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3738" CreationDate="2011-10-28T15:50:36.007" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems one of visualization tools like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/scrum/task-boards&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;task board&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2009/11/kanban-story-kanban-board.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kanban board&lt;/a&gt; would be a good solution. The basic idea is to gather important data about the project in one &lt;a href=&quot;http://alistair.cockburn.us/Information+radiator&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;information radiator&lt;/a&gt;, possibly a physical one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your team is co-located or at least visits the same place (kitchen maybe?) it should be possible to go with physical board. If the team is dispersed there are many applications simulating task boards/Kanban boards. I can mention &lt;a href=&quot;http://leankitkanban.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LeanKit Kanban&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://kanbanery.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kanbanery&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.targetprocess.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TargetProcess&lt;/a&gt; as one I know and can recommend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The board should be updated collaboratively which means it can be treated as non-intrusive status reporting tool as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Granularity of information you store on the board may vary, depending on a situation. However, you should be able to adjust easily to your needs. Visualization works great in terms of sharing information and you can get high-level overview of what is happening in matters of seconds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more advice if you want to try it: start simple and add relevant information only as you learn that you need it. Otherwise it is easy to clutter the board which makes it way less useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look for ideas how to visualize different situations in you project you may find my presentation on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/pawelbrodzinski/visual-management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Visual Management&lt;/a&gt; handy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-10-28T15:50:36.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3748" CreationDate="2011-10-28T17:08:35.157" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think this requires a soft-&lt;strong&gt;ware&lt;/strong&gt; solution so much as a soft-&lt;strong&gt;skills&lt;/strong&gt; solution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to get team members to provide estimates in a timely manner is to make it in their best interest to do so. Get the team engaged enough to do the work you need in the timeframe you need it in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have the power to provide rewards or penalties make sure they are aware of what the consequences are. If you don't have the power then get whoever does (e.g. functional group managers) on your side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2011-10-28T17:08:35.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3754" CreationDate="2011-10-29T03:46:34.973" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lean was there first, before the Agile movement started. Toyota has been working on their TPS (Toyota Production System) since the end of world war two. Conceptually it's still work in progress and always will be. The &quot;Agile&quot; movement in software engineering is much younger. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way I see it, both share a lot of similar concepts. One of the most prominent examples would be the school of thought led by Mary and Tom Poppendieck (more details &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_software_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.poppendieck.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). There are, however, a number of different approaches that fit under the umbrella of agile methodologies, e.g. XP, Scrum, FDD, Crystal, and others. From that perspective you could say that Lean is just one more of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand there are practices that are part of Lean thinking that are not yet as wide spread in the Agile mainstream, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilealliance.org/programs/lean-agile-a3-community-program/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A3 thinking&lt;/a&gt;. However, this is starting to change as well, and I suspect the reason is that more people are looking for further Lean techniques that could be leveraged for software engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically to the five items you list, my view would be as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Met by agile software development (you already answered this yourself)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Met by agile software development (you already answered this yourself)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Met by agile software development, e.g. TDD but others more, e.g. frequent iterations and small releases combined with feedback&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Met by agile software development. Fail proof can be achieved by Simple Design, TDD, and others&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Met by agile software development. Waste elimination can be accomplished by techniques such as merciless refactoring, simple design, &quot;The simplest thing that could possibly work&quot; and YAGNI (&quot;You ain't gonna need it&quot;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2318" LastEditorUserId="2318" LastEditDate="2018-11-08T23:00:09.143" LastActivityDate="2018-11-08T23:00:09.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3675" CreationDate="2011-10-29T03:50:38.993" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are in a short project, and that too a solo one. For this situation I would eliminate most of the overheads that are usually there in an agile project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the changes I would do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimation (even T-shirt) is not required, since you aren't going to be doing any long term planning. It's just a one month project, the schedule is fixed, scope is limited, so the estimates are not going to help you in any meaningful way&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assigning numbers to business value is too much overhead. Talk with the PO instead&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do get the backlog in order of importance. Even if you plan to complete everything within one month, things happen and you may not be able to do so. It is critical that you do the most important stories first&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be in constant communication with the PO. It doesnt matter if your code is not complete or not releasable. Show your results daily if possible and incorporate the feedback. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no need to have formal sprints, and sprint planning, and formal demo sessions. You can be doing the equivalent of daily sprints. Plan for the day, build something, show the PO in the evening (or every couple of days) and repeat.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get a piece of chart paper on the wall, write your backlog on post-it notes, stick it up. This is your PM tool.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, I'd suggest a very lightweight process &lt;a href=&quot;http://toolsforagile.com/blog/archives/777/extreme-kanban&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;as shown in this video&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2392" LastActivityDate="2011-10-29T03:50:38.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3748" CreationDate="2011-10-29T03:59:53.943" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why don't you just stick the entire team into a single room and play planning poker? Even if you choose to size each story using estimated effort in hours, you'd get things done. Timebox the meeting, e.g. 1 hour, and if one meeting is not enough have a session in the morning and another in the afternoon or schedule one per week. In a weekly meeting you could look at just the new stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't necessarily need the entire team. A somewhat scaled down version could be a cross-functional team, e.g. consisting of a business analyst, a test and a developer. The three need to agree on sizing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a distributed team, set up a conference call and share a desktop. Present the stories using whatever software works best for you. Then go through the stories one at a time and size them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience using email for something like this won't work. No tool will solve a problem that boils down to people and their behavior. You can change attitude only with good leadership. Only once that is in place and the processes are established (incl. estimating) tools should be introduced to support or speed up the processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2318" LastActivityDate="2011-10-29T03:59:53.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3683" CreationDate="2011-10-30T09:27:17.307" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Best tool we use for Task tracking - which is not necessarily issue tracking or bug tracker but rather general purpose task tracker - is Manymoon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a free App -that comes bundled with Google Apps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It allows set of people profiles to be maintained (built-in with Google Apps)&#xA; - it allows projects to be created and associate different users to be part of different mails. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has a social networking kind of feel for collaboration and one can issue tasks from email itself with follow up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;try: &lt;a href=&quot;https://manymoon.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://manymoon.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dipan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2393" LastActivityDate="2011-10-30T09:27:17.307" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-10-30T09:27:17.307" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3754" CreationDate="2011-10-30T14:56:49.413" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lean, Kanban, Agile are just tools what matter are principles. The Guy who taught Toyota was actually an ... American unknown in his own country until former Ford CEO rediscovered Edwards Deming. He is mentionned in Sutherland seminar and in this Forbes video &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gfcvIUmdZU&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gfcvIUmdZU&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You cannot really use any of these tools without understanding the principles. In fact these tools do not matter so much after you understand the root of things, you should be able to create your own adapted to your organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXVgsPxQR54&amp;amp;feature=player_embedded&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXVgsPxQR54&amp;amp;feature=player_embedded&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHvnIm9UEoQ&amp;amp;feature=player_embedded&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2394" LastActivityDate="2011-10-30T14:56:49.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3720" CreationDate="2011-10-31T17:59:20.510" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My personal opinion is that you are due ALL fees, unless there was a written contractual agreement describing late conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I also think if you could prove the following two conditions, that you would have a pretty damn great case:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;While being aware of your condition, and as a result the project state, they have not communicated any concern, warning or discontent, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Like you stated, instead they kept pushing you to finish the job (which to me is 'business as usual')&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the law would more than likely be on your side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also note that depending on your jurisdiction and monies due, you could take them to small claims court (if inferior to $6K), for which they would have to present themselves as individuals and their lawyers would not be allowed in the court room.  In Canada, you'd be surprised on how many companies are scared of this and just settle right away.  There is almost no cost to the individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastActivityDate="2011-10-31T17:59:20.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3767" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-31T21:41:59.483" Score="4" ViewCount="299" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a lone developer who built a billing system for a customer as moonlighting job.  We had worked together previously on a number of occassions and as a reults no contract was ever signed between the two of us, no were any precise requirements given up front. The customer supplied some very high level requirements and I worked with him to extract more detailed requirements as the system was built.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The customer has been successfully using the system for a few months now for it's exact indended purpose and it meets all of his requirements that were outlayed when the project began (a fixed price quote was given). He has paid the full amount of the software about 6 months ago.  The customer hasn't yet accepted the software as 'live'.  He has sent me two small defects in that period since he stared using the system for it's intended purpose.  On both occassions I had a fix installed with two days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After not hearing form the customer for over a month, I spoke with him yesterday, as he was wanting a quote for new work.  I informed him that I am not taking on new work as I do not have time.  At this point he told me if I do not do this work for him, for which he will pay, he will ask for his money back on the existing system.  He rationale was that a system that cannot be supported is of no use to him.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He owns all intellectual property for the system and has all source code.  When I mentioned that any developer could support the system, he said he wants the original developer to support it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a very bad business relationship with this customer, after a number of refusal to pay invoices, and both do not wish to continue working with him, or doing any moonlighting of any type for any one, as I no longer have the motivation or the time, with a young family to look after.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering what the best way to handle this situation would be.  I expect I'll need to seek legal advice.  Is the customer entitled to his money back?  ...even though he is using the system for it's intended purpose and he has generated considerable invoices from it (well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, money he would not have been able to make without the system) and he yesterday said there are no problems with it.  If push comes to shove I am now prepared to return the money.  What about getting compensated for the work to build the system?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question of providing ongoing support was never raised before an agreement to do the work was made.  This has now been going on for 3 years, when it should have been a three month engagement.  The system was completed, awaiting UAT, 3 months after we worked out the detailed requirements in September 2008.  Since then I have made small paid changes and a number of free changes, as the customers business evolves, but he still hasn't formally accepted the system is live, even though I've told him it is Live and it meets all his initial requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really not sure what to do as the experience has put me off software development.  A problem, as it's been my career for the last 10 years and the sole source of income for my family.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2397" LastActivityDate="2011-11-03T04:27:59.880" Title="Can my customer ask for his money back?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3683" CreationDate="2011-10-31T22:22:38.437" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend TSheets (http://www.tsheets.com). It looks like a task tracking software that might work perfectly for your team... good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2400" LastActivityDate="2011-10-31T22:22:38.437" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-10-31T22:22:38.437" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3767" CreationDate="2011-10-31T23:05:27.823" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tell him to pound sand. He is using the solution. He has zero case. You owe him nothing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-10-31T23:05:27.823" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3767" CreationDate="2011-11-01T01:15:15.620" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You appear to have provided the contracted services, and as a result the client has a working system.  Maintenance of the system is a different issue.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normal cost of ongoing maintenance contracts, when available, has tended to be in the range of 10 to 20 percent of the original development or purchase costs.  This often does guarantee fixes will be provided, only that the problems can be reported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your client got what he paid for.  If he wants on-going support, he should be prepared to pay for it in advance.  You might be able to suggest someone who can support the existing software on this basis.  Don't feel obligated to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point you have no obligation to provide on-going maintenance.  He has the source code, so the software can be maintained.  In this respect, he is much better off than many clients who have had software developed for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2011-11-01T01:15:15.620" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3683" CreationDate="2011-11-01T08:07:41.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've tried different solutions and always end up back at Google Docs. We have a template we use in a spread sheet and find it's so easy to communicate through there with columns for things like: Date added; Who added the task; Assigned to; Element; Issue; Screen shot; Link; Status; Priority... It works really well for us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2223" LastActivityDate="2011-11-01T08:07:41.377" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-11-01T08:07:41.377" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3772" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-01T08:13:17.290" Score="3" ViewCount="314" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of our Sprints are 2 weeks long, but occasionally, we want to meet a special deadline in less time (2-5 days). So, we do a special &quot;short&quot; Sprint that is a bit different from our normal routine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have any advice for these Sprints? Are they okay, or should we eliminate them somehow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2404" LastActivityDate="2011-11-22T12:41:44.013" Title="Advice for Special Short Sprints (2-5 Days)?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2036" CreationDate="2011-11-01T08:54:04.237" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the beauties of clients is that they feel the need to tell us how rushed a project is and then the delay happens on their end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often when a client hesitates answering our questions, it's because they are concerned about committing to one direction. Their website is VERY important to them and suddenly, when they're in the process and it isn't theoretical anymore, they are nervous about how final their decisions are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We find that emailing is not good enough. We must phone clients, talk to them, walk them through the decision-making process. Usually then they're OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2223" LastActivityDate="2011-11-01T08:54:04.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3772" CreationDate="2011-11-01T10:18:35.777" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend you should keep them if they work for you. Why fix something that isn't broken?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously measuring how much work you can take on is easier if all stories are of similar size and all sprints are of same length. However, in my experience shorter or longer sprints are not bad as such, even if you throw in a larger or a smaller sprint once in a while. Just make sure you always have a good reason for why you change something. I would recommend not to change for the sake of change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will also find that planning in particular for short sprints is easier if your stories are on the smaller end of the spectrum, e.g. a few hours and up to a day to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2318" LastActivityDate="2011-11-01T10:18:35.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3772" CreationDate="2011-11-01T10:25:35.773" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, you should &lt;strong&gt;understand what sprints are for&lt;/strong&gt;. Sprints were introduced as one of methods which helps teams to limit amount of work being done in a specific time. In sprint we commit that we're going to finish a bunch of tasks in some time -- 2 weeks in your case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However sprint isn't the only method of limiting work in progress. Another concept which deals with the same issue but differently are &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanagement.net/index.php/Blog/the_principles_of_the_kanban_method/&quot;&gt;limits introduced by Kanban&lt;/a&gt;. In this case you just limit haw many tasks can be in progress in any given time and you don't introduce cadence for your production cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases &lt;strong&gt;the goal is to avoid big chunks of project being started and not completed&lt;/strong&gt;, even though concepts are different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, coming back to your question: there are teams which typically work with a week long sprints and they're perfectly fine. The style of work is pretty much the same as with 2 week long sprints. It does mean however that &lt;strong&gt;they're working on pretty small tasks as they're able to build, verify and deploy features in a week&lt;/strong&gt;. From this perspective 5-day long sprint isn't that different -- if your tasks are small enough it may work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand 2-day long sprint is a sort of extreme. I don't know any team that is doing such short sprints on a regular basis. &lt;strong&gt;My question would be: what is so important that you don't want to wait till the end of the week?&lt;/strong&gt; Note: I consider a week long sprint as an alternative here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you just have to deliver under such short deadlines, e.g. you have SLAs or you focus on maintenance projects, that don't really suit your regular sprint schedule &lt;strong&gt;you may reconsider having sprints at all&lt;/strong&gt;. Some elements of Kanban (limiting WIP, no time-boxing and visualization) can be a better approach in such situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few things you may want to take into consideration:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How fluent the team is with the current process.&lt;/strong&gt; The more smoothly things work, the less you should rush to introduce huge change.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How often there is a need to have this unusual sprint.&lt;/strong&gt; If the anomaly happens every now and then you should think on rearranging your process. On the other hand if it happens twice a year you can probably live with it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How much current process is adjusted to the specifics of work you do.&lt;/strong&gt; For example, time-boxing-based approaches aren't the best tools if you deal with a lot of maintenance work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answering to these questions should help you to decide whether short sprints are the way to go or maybe you should reconsider using time-boxing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the last final advice: &lt;strong&gt;a bit of experimenting with your process is always a good thing.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-11-01T10:25:35.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3778" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-01T12:46:17.417" Score="10" ViewCount="326" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a team of 5 guys. I am newest one among the team and a starter (been with them for about a year already)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have two issues here: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Whenever I try to voice my ideas/opinions during meetings they are abandoned/ignored. The team is dominated two senior people who just discuss among themselves wok which is to be done while the other two are dormant. That makes the situation very demoralizing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We have the most senior member of the team, who often ends up writing all code himself and has no idea on how to handle pair programming. At the same time our manager always wants us to work in pairs. Whenever it ends up that I need to work with him, he just asks me to work on something else and shows no interest.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should be the best course of action I could take to resolve these issues?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2406" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-11-02T13:21:56.890" LastActivityDate="2011-11-02T13:21:56.890" Title="Working with team members" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3778" CreationDate="2011-11-01T13:43:02.227" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looks like you got into really toxic environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On one hand I can understand that it takes time to gain respect from senior team members however on another hand simply ignoring junior team members is not a way to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seems to be also communication issue over there since it seems like senior team members don't understand why company asks them to pair-program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend discussing both issues first with these senior team members in some informal meeting (over lunch or coffee break) just to get better understanding of why they work in this way. Perhaps all they need is more awareness of your ambitions to become really valuable team member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that won't help, I would recommend sharing your concerns with your manager because otherwise it doesn't seem like you're going to get too far in this job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2407" LastActivityDate="2011-11-01T13:43:02.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3778" CreationDate="2011-11-01T15:20:36.577" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Team dynamics are the result of the culture and environment in which a group of individuals are placed.  In other words, what you are experiencing is the direct result of what the organization has created, nurtured, rewarded, and reinforced.  So while the personalities of the two senior folks are a major contributor, the organization and the boss--knowingly or otherwise--are enabling the behavior and, in some way you may not recognize, find it valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going to your boss is certainly an alternative you have.  Keep in mind, however, that as you talk with him/her, informing him/her about the behavior of these two senior folks, you are also putting him/her on notice of your disagreement with the way the team is being managed.  Conscious or unconscious, (s)he will feel that sting.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your best alternative, besides finding a new job, is to continue to find ways to add value to the team in its current form.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-11-01T15:20:36.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3781" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-01T18:05:21.957" Score="0" ViewCount="134" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for a company that conducts modeling and analysis work on large 3D CAD and GIS datasets. For each project we work on, we can have hundreds of individual &lt;code&gt;.las&lt;/code&gt; files (LiDAR point cloud data) that combine to cover the entire spatial area we wish to work on at one time. We find it is very difficult to track what data has been delivered and determine when complete spatial coverage for an area of interest is complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have investigated various Product Lifecycle Management and Product Data Management softwares, but I found these are mostly meant for physically manufactured products and not necessarily suited for data products. I have also investigated various project management softwares, but these seem to track data about costs and schedules and do not track that raw data that is necessary for conducting analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize this question is very broad and it is meant to be. I am unaware of any potential solutions to the data management problem and I am hoping others may be able to provide some insight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To Recap: Our workflow requires several different types of data from various sources covering various spatial (geographic) extents. Are there software packages/systems out there for managing raw data collection and determining when the next step of a workflow is ready to proceed based on the types and amount of data currently available?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance for your help. I'm finding it difficult to describe what is need in a simple way as I have not found any examples of this problem elsewhere, so please ask questions to help clarify the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2410" LastActivityDate="2012-01-01T15:25:23.370" Title="How to efficiently track raw data deliveries" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3782" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3784" CreationDate="2011-11-01T19:25:54.670" Score="4" ViewCount="26061" Body="&lt;p&gt;Few years ago I looked into getting the PMP and main reason I didn't was that the &quot;experience verification form&quot; required that all hours listed be within the past five years. Looking at their site today I'm unable to find this stated as a current requirement or on the forms to apply; though I am able to find old reference to the &quot;with the past five years&quot; requirement, see:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=%22within+the+past+five%22+site:pmi.org&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.google.com/search?q=%22within+the+past+five%22+site:pmi.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was the window for experience removed? Along the same lines, is there a window of time that applies to PM training experience hours required for the &quot;contact hours&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2412" LastEditorUserId="1885" LastEditDate="2011-11-01T19:41:43.980" LastActivityDate="2015-09-15T04:37:08.920" Title="PMP Experience &quot;within the past five years&quot;" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3782" CreationDate="2011-11-01T20:07:09.550" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having applied about a 3 weeks ago and taking my test in another week... at the end of August they simplified the forms overall... But essentially (going from memory) you now have to list 3 years worth of relevant experience and it can not be older than the last 5 years. Plus unlike ages ago when you had to have a certain percentage in each process area, now you just have to demonstrate some knowledge in each area. So Project A could apply to 3 areas, while project B could overlap A in areas and apply to 2 other areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's all there, you just might have to dig down in the certification area of their web site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1781" LastActivityDate="2011-11-01T20:07:09.550" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3782" CreationDate="2011-11-01T20:16:57.303" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the PMP online application form:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Management Experience&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You are required to document experience you've accrued leading and&#xA;  directing projects under general supervision within the constraints of&#xA;  schedule, budget and scope. The project management experience being&#xA;  documented should indicate you can appropriately apply a methodology&#xA;  to projects that have reasonable well-defined project requirements and&#xA;  deliverables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Minimum of 4500 hours of project management experience.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Project management experience dating back at least three years from    application submittal date.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Project management experience not dating back further than eight    years from the application submittal date.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Minimum of 36 months of project management experience (gaps in    experience and overlapping experience will not be counted).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Project management experience is required in each of the following    process areas when all projects are totaled, but not on each project: &#xA;  Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring and Controlling, Closing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Management Education&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Minimum of 35 contact hours of formal education in project management&#xA;  (one contact hour is equivalent to one actual hour of training or&#xA;  instruction received). There is no timeframe associated with this&#xA;  requirement, therefore, candidates can document all project management&#xA;  education, regardless of when it was accrued. However, the coursework&#xA;  must be complete at the time of application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the next few sections we will be asking you to document your&#xA;  project management work experience and education to meet the above&#xA;  requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2413" LastActivityDate="2011-11-01T20:16:57.303" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3767" CreationDate="2011-11-01T21:35:19.610" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Can my customer ask for his money back?&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People can always &quot;ask for their money back&quot;. You don't have to give it to them. I'm reminded of a quote from Henry IV: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for&#xA;  them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, the spirits from the vasty deep need to say &quot;sod off&quot; when a polite &quot;no&quot; is insufficient. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Is the customer entitled to his money back?&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under US laws, under the circumstances you've outlined - no. Your profile lists you as living in Australia, things may be different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;If push comes to shove I am now prepared to return the money.&lt;/em&gt;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have personally done this to get rid of certain types of annoying customers. As you may discover, there are some customers that will treat any form of payment as an irrevocable marriage. Only &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; know when it is time to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_44/b4056431.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fire your customer&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2011-11-01T21:35:19.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3115" CreationDate="2011-11-02T12:04:49.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote an article answering that first question, which questions should be asked&quot;? &lt;a href=&quot;http://digitalartsuk.com/news/six-questions-you-should-be-asking-your-clients-design/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://digitalartsuk.com/news/six-questions-you-should-be-asking-your-clients-design/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2418" LastActivityDate="2011-11-02T12:04:49.913" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3781" CreationDate="2011-11-02T13:55:14.857" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understand your question correctly, you receive datasets which you aren't certain cover 100% of the data. You need some kind of system to be able to confirm that the datasets are complete and otherwise meet your acceptance criteria so that they can be handed off to the next unit, e.g. for analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm in the pharma sector, so we have to ensure for our studies that data is accurate for regulatory reasons. This is typically done through quality control checks on the data, followed by quality assurance checks to make sure QC worked as advertised. This can be made more efficient by using electronic data capture systems, but ultimately there has to be some level of human intervention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to use a naming convention for your files so that it would be relatively easy to manually review them to identify obvious gaps?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2011-11-02T13:55:14.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3781" CreationDate="2011-11-02T14:15:47.950" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the level of project management you should not work with data, but only with metrics on top of them. Instead of trying to control the data - configure a mechanism of instant metrics collection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such a metrics collection instrument can be created by your in-house programmers. I don't think that you should/can find anything off the shelf.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-11-02T14:15:47.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3767" CreationDate="2011-11-03T04:27:59.880" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It looks like you have this solved, but it looks like you have all the power in the current situation. The client is paid up on their invoices and have paid for the system. In the last 6 months there have only been minor updates needed, it's being used, you have emails documenting acceptance or approval of the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have no contracts stating it is a 'work for hire', legally you own the copyright to what you produce and own the code / intellectual property for the project as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears from a legal perspective you are looking good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2423" LastActivityDate="2011-11-03T04:27:59.880" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3791" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3795" CreationDate="2011-11-03T06:55:13.330" Score="20" ViewCount="85658" Body="&lt;p&gt;What the difference is between a methodology and a framework? And where does the process come into that story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And perhaps, it would be good to have this comparison explained by using methodologies like Prince2, Framework like Scrum, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastEditorUserId="27043" LastEditDate="2017-01-12T09:56:11.067" LastActivityDate="2019-08-14T10:03:46.980" Title="What is the difference between framework vs methodology?" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3791" CreationDate="2011-11-03T13:45:59.393" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A framework is a structure, a logical way to classify, segment, categorize, or maintain something.  I think of it as a noun.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A method is an action, a way of doing something.  It would describe a process or set of procedures, activities, and a series of outputs along the way.  This is more of a verb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A framework might be something to which you aspire.  The method will get you there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-11-03T13:45:59.393" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3794" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-03T14:18:14.433" Score="0" ViewCount="22677" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it a new way of saying 'project'? If not, can you provide an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2427" LastEditorUserId="2427" LastEditDate="2011-11-03T14:47:27.707" LastActivityDate="2017-10-02T13:21:57.370" Title="What is meant by the term, 'Task and Finish'?" Tags="&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3791" CreationDate="2011-11-03T15:14:08.437" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;A methodology is a set of principles, tools and practices which can be used to guide processes to achieve a particular goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A framework is a loose but incomplete structure which leaves room for other practices and tools to be included but provides much of the process required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we look at the software equivalents, for instance, where applications are analogous to methodologies: Rails and Spring are two code-based frameworks which work with custom code to produce an application. GMail &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; an application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the same way, Scrum could be considered a framework, as it leaves room for teams to choose their own technical processes, development roles, etc. XP might be considered a methodology, as it provides guidelines for all the same things that Scrum does, along with relevant technical practices. I'm not familiar enough with Prince2 to comment, but you get the picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-11-03T15:14:08.437" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3794" CreationDate="2011-11-03T19:16:04.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The definition of what it means when a task is finished can change depending of the project. You can determined at the start of the project that the task will be Finished when the programmer has done programming it. Means that the task is not still tested, corrected and approved. &#xA;I prefer to specify in my project that a Task is Finished when a Task has been programmed, tested, bug reported, corrected and approved. This means that the whole team is included in the measurement of finishing tasks. When you do your report with that definition of Finished, this means you quickly have to consider the time your team takes to test and approve the tasks.&#xA;This definition can change a lot the way you report the progress of the work to your clients and the way your team is dealing with unfinished tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2431" LastActivityDate="2011-11-03T19:16:04.573" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3791" CreationDate="2011-11-04T03:52:51.537" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMBoK 4th Edition, glossary, page 437:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Methodology&lt;/strong&gt;: A system of practices, techniques, procedures, and rules used by those who work in a discipline&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term &quot;framework&quot; is used over 20 times in the PMBoK but is not in the glossary. I find that somewhat odd...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since we don't have a PMBoK authority reference, I prefer the defintion from &lt;a href=&quot;http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci1103696,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;WhatIs.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In general, a framework is a real or conceptual structure intended to serve as a support or guide for the building of something that expands the structure into something useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like the part about &quot;expands the structure into something useful.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2019-07-30T13:30:24.823" LastActivityDate="2019-07-30T13:30:24.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3800" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-04T11:47:13.577" Score="2" ViewCount="284" Body="&lt;p&gt;Within my organisation we have a project that is largely about adding new content/chapters to an existing piece of software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The content providers for this work often provide content in dribs and drabs. Therefore from week to week, my colleagues working on this project do not have a clear sense of what they will be working on as it all comes down to 'what has come in'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I plan, drive and track progress on a project of this nature? I sense that some sort of framework needs to exist to move things forward effectively - and I need to be seen to be tracking this work. But it's difficult to know how to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2134" LastEditorUserId="2134" LastEditDate="2011-11-04T11:52:24.240" LastActivityDate="2011-11-07T06:30:13.483" Title="Planning / tracking work which is sporadic / irregular in nature" Tags="&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;program-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3801" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-04T12:29:20.917" Score="5" ViewCount="1956" Body="&lt;p&gt;As one of the senior guys in our development team, I would like to start moving into a lead position. The team leads I have worked with in an Agile development environment have been pretty good, but few of them have been exceptional. I have worked with some exceptional developers, but they are rarely natural team leaders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Naturally there has been a lot of talk on this topic before, but I would like to go one step beyond good/fair/average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would appreciated if you could share some practical examples of the habits exceptional team leads exhibit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2433" LastEditorUserId="2433" LastEditDate="2011-11-14T09:54:39.483" LastActivityDate="2011-11-18T16:29:03.590" Title="Habits of an exceptional Team Lead: Practical examples" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="4" ClosedDate="2012-07-04T23:30:47.267" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3803" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-04T14:17:17.243" Score="0" ViewCount="641" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently researching software project management tools for a team of 12 developers. In addition to project management, we'd like to handle help desk tickets and a SOX compliant change management process. I've used Atlassian JIRA in the past (and loved it), but it was for a smaller team with simpler requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Key features we're looking for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project Management&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time tracking by task&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multiple resources per project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allow requesters (users within our company) to track task progress, preferably without a user license (may be deal killer for JIRA since we have hundreds of users and JIRA requires a user license per login)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Help Desk&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allow requesters (users within our company) to track task progress, preferably without a user license (may be deal killer for JIRA since we have hundreds of users and JIRA requires a user license per login)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Escalate ticket if assigner does not respond within a certain time frame&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Change Management&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Workflow that allows a request to be approved by multiple team members (Lead Dev, DBA, Dev Manager, Dept Manager of requester, etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Audit trail that gives us SOX compliance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone successfully used a single product for software project management, help desk support tickets and change management? If not a single product, what do you use and why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2434" LastActivityDate="2019-06-27T18:19:12.347" Title="Looking for recommendations for Project and Change Management tools" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2019-06-29T14:15:35.400" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3161" CreationDate="2011-11-04T15:45:49.027" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have a long-ish Gantt chart, it is common practice to report on the major milestones form the Gantt chart in a project presentation and leave the actual Gantt chart out all together.  You might want to consider something like that, but since this is for a class, you might want to keep the milestones on a page and integral to the report and leave the full Gantt chart as an appendix to prove you've done the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also - One thing I always wrestle with is &quot;what should I show on the Gantt chart&quot;  Dependencies are nice, critical path is good to highlight, and you might also want to show effort in addition to calendar time.  You only have to start using these in anger a short time to realize that you can run out of room on 11x17 paper quickly :-)  (which is why I loath printing them out - they change too frequently once actuals are incorporated and each audience wants to see different data or the data differently presented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have fun in class!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-11-04T15:45:49.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3593" CreationDate="2011-11-04T15:54:50.420" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Add buffer (visibly!) to any major external deliverable.  Commit to the buffered date, and work with the team to deliver to the un-buffered date.  Share both with your stakeholders and explain your approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually add one (and only one) buffer task/item to these milestones.  It reflects the overall risk of delivering that milestone.  It also acts as a &quot;bank&quot; you can draw down from when problems arise.  As your project progresses, the bank will likely contract (sometimes it gets bigger as good things happen!!)  Just keep it updated and use that as an indicator of the &quot;health&quot; of the milestone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have two teams (for example Dev and QA) don't forget to include time for both teams on the project even if only one is active.  (e.g. Dev needs to fix a bug and QA is blocked for 2 weeks while that happens.  You either need to find other work for the QA to bill against for those 2 weeks, or you need to allocate their time in the buffer as well.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for tolerances... Not sure I understand what you are asking enough to know if more is needed on this or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2011-11-04T15:54:50.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3800" CreationDate="2011-11-04T16:03:34.943" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a very similar problem; current 'normal' projects were relatively easy to divide up into sprints and backlogs but one regular customer could have any number of irregular shaped jobs to complete every two weeks. I adopted a Kanban board with a daily Scrum (&quot;Scrumban&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I set up a board with a &quot;To Do&quot; column, &quot;In Progress&quot;, &quot;In Testing&quot; and &quot;Ready for Live&quot;. Dates for when the next deployment was due were also clearly visible. As each item was requested it was estimated in hours, written up on an index card and added to the To Do pile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a team member becomes available they select the work and pull it into the In Progress column, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a manager you can hold a daily scrum to evaluate the outstanding pile of work, make sure everyone is kept busy if there is a job awaiting action, and also watch for things not progressing across the board the way it should. If there are queries or blockages you can take ownership of those at the scrum to help get questions answered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will also know how much available time each team member will have in a development cycle and can &quot;tick off&quot; their available time as they select a task. You can then see how efficient their estimating is, as well as how stretched they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team felt more motivated by this as they could see the workload and critically could see it moving across the board to completion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This site has some good resources for reading further: &lt;a href=&quot;http://leansoftwareengineering.com/ksse/scrum-ban/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://leansoftwareengineering.com/ksse/scrum-ban/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="448" LastActivityDate="2011-11-04T16:03:34.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3801" CreationDate="2011-11-04T16:09:06.747" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the biggest things I've seen in exceptional leads is being aware of the rest of your team members. This includes where their abilities currently are at, where their strengths and weaknesses are, and what their state of morale is. If you can do that consistently, you are much more likely to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide explanations / instructions to individuals at a level that they can comprehend without being over their head or sounding patronyzing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure that architectural decisions that you make are able to be implemented by the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Know what areas to provide guidance in to help the individuals grow&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Know when issues need to be resolved&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastActivityDate="2011-11-04T16:09:06.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3808" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-04T19:30:26.843" Score="1" ViewCount="139" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have come to a situation where I have to choose around 10 individuals to do sales for our company. A salesman per department (e.g electronic, cosmetic and so on).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My concern is that the salesman are getting &lt;strong&gt;immense&lt;/strong&gt; flexibility. They are given the right for an entire department, % of commission as their salary and the free to manage it the way the want as long as they comply with our policies.&#xA;They are pretty much given such flexibility, that could be considered as if they where starting their own business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the Project Manager for this new tactic, what is the best way I can continue given they have this freedom and flexibility without decreasing the probability of sales? &#xA;How can I manage what would be consider contractors, that aren't obligated to report to the team leader? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2439" LastEditorUserId="2439" LastEditDate="2011-11-05T01:30:26.803" LastActivityDate="2012-01-05T21:28:34.313" Title="How to choose and manage a sales team that are given great flexibility?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;sales&gt;&lt;contracts&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3803" CreationDate="2011-11-04T19:54:08.527" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before choosing a software, you should ask yourself some questions. How big is your team? Who will manage the software? Who will host? What is your budget?.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are a small-mid size firm, more features in the long run become more of a hassle. The best thing is to keep it simple and straightforward (KISS). For that I recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectpier.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Pier&lt;/a&gt;, it is open source, so it is free, easy to install, and easy to use. Unfortunately it does not have all the features you require, but you could easily take it to a programmer and modify the software to your firm needs.&#xA;Google is your best friend when searching for tools and software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2439" LastEditorUserId="2439" LastEditDate="2011-11-06T19:56:45.967" LastActivityDate="2011-11-06T19:56:45.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3801" CreationDate="2011-11-04T20:10:57.280" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of let me recommend a great mentor, Dale Carnegie. He might be over rated but his teaching are outstanding as long as you are able to implement them correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a leader is not about being the smartest member with power and strength. Instead a leader is a friendly person, someone who is able to overcome worry and help other to overcome theirs and cultivate strong mental attitude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes a leader does not have to do &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt; the work, except attracting the right people. Think of the success of Steve Job, he cultivated a strong mental attitude and culture within his company, he attracted the right people and has managed to impact the world and technology industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the time being a leader is just about knowing how to handle and work with people. You have to be able to understand people, and put yourself in their shoes. &#xA;A leader itself is very emotional and humanistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are not asking how to be a good manger, so I am not giving you technical advice such as keep logs, organize this and that and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2439" LastActivityDate="2011-11-04T20:10:57.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3803" CreationDate="2011-11-04T21:03:13.137" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interesting feedback....write users vs. read-only.  Alvazan, Inc will have to incorporate that.  If you like this type of read status &lt;a href=&quot;http://alvazan.com/demo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Alvazan Demo Status&lt;/a&gt; on a project by project basis, we would be able to do X write users per price and allow as many read only users as you like.  Either way, thanks for the feature idea!!!!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dean (&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.alvazan.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.alvazan.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2383" LastActivityDate="2011-11-04T21:03:13.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3808" CreationDate="2011-11-04T21:56:49.577" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;flexibility is good as long as rewards are tied to performance(ie. pay for performance).  Freedom can help salespeople sell more when setup correctly.  I don't however understand your question &quot;I am wondering, what is the best way I can continue given them that freedom and flexibility will reducing any losses?&quot;...let me say you asked &quot;what is the best way I can continue given they have this freedom and flixibility without reducing your losses?&quot; but I am not sure what losses you are talking about?  Can you elaborate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People skills are obviously going to be very important and you want to track progress so get your boss's buy-in first with a plan and then roll it out gathering data from these salespeople...don't command it from them, but just act as the gathering point and hopefully you can also gather data that is useful for them to know as well as then they are more willing to give it. .....sort of like the polls on the internet..you have to feed your data in before you get to see the accumulated data so make it something they would be interested in as well.&#xA;later,&#xA;Dean Hiller (&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.alvazan.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.alvazan.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2383" LastActivityDate="2011-11-04T21:56:49.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3800" CreationDate="2011-11-05T12:18:21.903" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a fan of simple approaches I would start as simple as possible. Definitely any method based on time-boxing isn't an option as they expect steady input flow of work. From your description it isn't the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_%28development%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt; would be a very good match for your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, it bases on pulling work, which basically means that the team adopts the way they work to reacting to changing scope of work. In short, they start working on whatever is the most important thing at the moment, but at the same time they limit work in progress so they can &lt;strong&gt;easily react to rapidly changing priorities&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, it gives you visualization, which not only is a good tool to &lt;strong&gt;assess current status of work&lt;/strong&gt; but also &lt;strong&gt;helps you to change and improve the process&lt;/strong&gt; you follow. Visualizing work, possibly on a &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2009/11/kanban-story-kanban-board.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kanban board&lt;/a&gt;, would give you quick high-level overview of a project pretty much any time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, there is measuring the flow. With simple measures like &lt;a href=&quot;http://leanandkanban.wordpress.com/2009/04/18/lead-time-vs-cycle-time/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cycle time or lead time&lt;/a&gt; you can learn &lt;strong&gt;how fact you react to new tasks&lt;/strong&gt; which appear in the queue and &lt;strong&gt;how much time you need to get them done&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the top of that, Kanban is very easy to implement and adds very little hassle to use it, especially that &lt;strong&gt;with Kanban you don't change your initial process&lt;/strong&gt;. You work as you used to, and then &lt;strong&gt;improve gradually as you learn more&lt;/strong&gt; about the way you work and the work itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to read more here is a description of &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanagement.net/index.php/Blog/the_principles_of_the_kanban_method/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kanban principles&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/minibooks/kanban-scrum-minibook&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;free minibook&lt;/a&gt; which can be downloaded presenting Kanban more extensively (and using Scrum as background).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-11-05T12:18:21.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3801" CreationDate="2011-11-05T12:36:32.160" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Leadership has many names. As I was looking how to define leadership in different situations and different contexts I came to Mary Poppendiecks's quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Ability to attract followers is exactly what makes you a leader.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This definition can be applied no matter what kind of team you're going to lead, whether they're going to be software developers or soldiers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It isn't a direct answer, I know, but the one which can be applicable in the situation, considering a limited description of it. However it also means that there are very different means that lead you to a role of leader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The interesting observation is that you should more think how to build on your strengths, and not try to cover your weaknesses at all cost. It is because you can't build leadership on mediocrity -- you need excellence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So ask yourself what &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; strengths are, why people may consider you a leader, what makes them believe you are a right person to follow. Don't look for these answers in general context -- look for them in a very situation you're in, as you will inspire different people with different traits/methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more elaboration please refer to a presentation titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2010/11/being-leader.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Being a Leader&lt;/a&gt;, which I built over the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-11-05T12:36:32.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3815" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3829" CreationDate="2011-11-06T18:02:30.383" Score="9" ViewCount="5345" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing I constantly see project management books talk about is the necessity of a method of tracking progress. One you break down the big picture into many smaller tasks, it becomes easier to see how quickly you're moving forward, which helps organization and moral. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But how exactly are software projects broken down into smaller pieces to measure progress? Would you have tasks like, 'complete database helper class' or 'write this part of the business logic in methods'? I assume test cases are often used to determine when a task is actually completed, but how are they grouped? Is there a test case for each class, each package, each concept of business logic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone provide some examples of how a real world project was broken down into smaller, monitorable units of progress?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="175" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2011-11-08T15:20:28.210" LastActivityDate="2019-08-02T07:51:54.453" Title="How can I learn to break down a big software project into more manageable tasks in terms of progress monitoring?" Tags="&lt;progress-monitor&gt;&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3808" CreationDate="2011-11-06T20:19:36.590" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see your role as managing the recruitment process, then establishing whatever processes are needed to ensure that the salespeople are complying with whatever rules the company has chosen to apply. On that basis, you need to understand the rules, define the expectations of the salespeople, define the job roles, then (probably with professional HR assistance) carry out the recruitment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless the business model is based on total freedom with no accountability and no constraints on what these guys do - which sounds like a recipe for disaster - there must be someone who they report to. Get that person to validate your project plans before you go ahead to implement them. As PM, your responsibility is to deliver an agreed outcome, so get it agreed before you act!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider such matters as: discounts they can give, and how they have to account for them; targets, ethical guidelines (I expect you don't want them lying, badmouthing your competitors, or getting your company sued); forecasts that they have to make, etc etc.  - I imagine that once you get under the surface of the job, they &lt;strong&gt;will&lt;/strong&gt; have to follow some processes and won't have 100% total flexibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-11-06T20:19:36.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3661" CreationDate="2011-11-06T20:34:39.353" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you need is Clarizen.Their task management software (cloud based, SaaS) allows you to collaborate really easily with your team. You make a plan and list all the stages along the way. Assign tasks to each member of the team and deadlines for those tasks. Each morning, the program will tell you what urgently needs to be done that day. You can track progress and the team can communicate easily with each other using email, notes or chat. And, because it's cloud based you can access it from nay computer. Clarizen's online task management is user friendly and won't speak to you in &quot;microsoft waffle&quot;. If you are a project manager, you should defintely have a look &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clarizen.com/ProjectSoftware/Features/TaskManagement.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.clarizen.com/ProjectSoftware/Features/TaskManagement.aspx&lt;/a&gt; and take the free tour.&#xA;Good luck with your project!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2445" LastActivityDate="2011-11-06T20:34:39.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3794" CreationDate="2011-11-07T00:51:18.500" Score="3" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task and Finish = Project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task and Finish Group = Project Team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since &quot;task&quot; can also be used as a verb, it is similar to &quot;Find someone to delegate this to and take care of it&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this is a &quot;British-ism&quot; and more commonly used in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/support/planning-change/mission/strategic-planning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;government&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.all-acronyms.com/TFG/Task_and_Finish_Group/1189873&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;terminology&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since most project management terms are influenced by American English so it might sound odd. I'm not sure how reliable my answer is, however. This is based on the fact that Google search for &quot;task and finish&quot; leads to more .co.uk sites and I'm an American with British parents so I find oddities in language all the time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-11-07T00:51:18.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3815" CreationDate="2011-11-07T19:52:37.347" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Instead of writing my own answer, I am going to provide you with an article that, I feel, is perfect for your situation.  The concept is you write a User Story than define one to many tasks associated with that particular story (think parent child).  Tasks are defined in the article as something that can be accomplished in a very specific time frame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.mountaingoatsoftware.com/sprint-and-release-planning-should-be-in-different-units&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.mountaingoatsoftware.com/sprint-and-release-planning-should-be-in-different-units&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This process of breaking it down is known as Sprint Planning.  This is related to the Scrum methodology in particular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="913" LastActivityDate="2011-11-07T19:52:37.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3782" CreationDate="2011-11-07T21:20:18.867" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few years ago I wanted to get PMP certified as well.  Having always been autodidact at all my undertakings (and being great at each), I figured that this would be a great career move.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To my amazement and surprise, you practically need to be a Project Manager in order to qualify for the PMP.  So I wrote their association to let them know my concern about such 'requirements'.  I pointed out that I have extensive project management experience, unfortunately which was almost impossible for me to quantify on paper (never officially held the title, but always worn the hat type of scenario).  I explained that I had (self) learned SO MUCH in the project management field in the last decade that I know I could pass their exams with flying colors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I explained to them that it made no sense for me to seek my PMP if I already was a project manager or had so many thousands of hours of project management experience (chicken-&amp;amp;-egg scenario).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their response was pretty void and a repeat of what they post on their web site.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some reason they fail to realize that thousands (if not tens of thousands) of individuals could pass their PMP exams with flying colors in order to prove their knowledge.  In my opinion they are trying to 'control' who is a member by putting these ridiculous requirements.  By doing this, they are essentially locking out SO many qualified candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've neglected negotiating the formal titles/salaries during the path of my career due to my HUGE passion for actual software development, design and architecture.  Now it's hard for me to compete -- having 20+ years of experience under my belt, most of which I lead teams/projects -- with these new graduates that come to the industry and with only a few years experience all they want is to become instant project managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I figured that with the PMP, this would give me leveraged, but like I said, PMP refuses to allow individuals like me into their 'club'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastActivityDate="2011-11-07T21:20:18.867" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3801" CreationDate="2011-11-07T21:34:14.263" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make sure everyone else can do their job as quickly and efficiently as possible. Usually you do this by figuring out what the barriers are to a project moving forward and mitigating them. This might be through better organization, splitting up a task into many subtasks, working towards a verdict to a big decision, etc. But ultimately your skill as a manager all comes down to how well the people below you can do their jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="175" LastActivityDate="2011-11-07T21:34:14.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3822" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-07T21:38:46.990" Score="4" ViewCount="2538" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard a lot about Scrum and Agile, but what, in a single sentence, do they do to help projects? Are they a general suggestion to the recipe for success, or do they get into specifics of organization and time distribution? Why are they in such wide use today? What negative factors do they combat and mitigate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(obviously elaboration is more than welcome, but summing their reason for existence up in one sentence would be highly desirable as well.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="175" LastActivityDate="2011-11-08T04:08:10.700" Title="What are project development methodologies and why should I use them?" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="759" CreationDate="2011-11-07T21:46:22.487" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Management through fear of negative consequences is going obsolete. Its even seeing decreasing usage in the military, which is where you would think it would prevail. Ultimately it adds far too much stress which is very detrimental to progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, your group should be motivated enough that you don't have to provide tangible rewards for them. If you must provide rewards, complements are probably the best, followed by project related rewards like the privilege to help in project management. But punishment should virtually never be used with employees you'd like to keep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="175" LastActivityDate="2011-11-07T21:46:22.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2777" CreationDate="2011-11-07T21:50:23.527" Score="4" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not listening to others. This is usually the best way to get a true idea of where the project stands.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not being conscious of employee morale when necessary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not making sure others can do their jobs by resolving any problems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Being too afraid to take initiative to get things done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="175" LastActivityDate="2011-11-07T21:50:23.527" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3235" CreationDate="2011-11-07T21:53:29.483" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;With 3 people I highly doubt you'll to specify one person as the leader. Since each of you only has to keep in mind the progress of the 2 other people and not entire departments, you should be fine in terms of communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are able to get together regularly enough to perform the duties of a leader as a group (keeping track of project, maintaining communication, planning out and distributing tasks, etc.) then I see no need to designate them to just one person. :D &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="175" LastActivityDate="2011-11-07T21:53:29.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3826" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3831" CreationDate="2011-11-07T22:40:17.257" Score="3" ViewCount="164" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing a paper on leading virtual teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any certain leadership practices/theories/approaches that are unique to virtual teams? I've skimmed a few books on the topic, but I just realized that many of the books talk about leadership practices in general, nothing really unique about leading virtual teams. Are there certain approaches to leading virtual teams that you don't find elsewhere?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2449" LastActivityDate="2011-11-08T08:15:50.620" Title="Leading Virtual Teams" Tags="&lt;leadership&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3822" CreationDate="2011-11-07T22:53:08.247" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Contemporary Project Management Methodologies can be classified as Planned and Adaptive.  In the Planned camp you find the traditional waterfall and all the derivatives of it.  In the Adaptive camp you will find Iterative and all the derivatives (UP, Agile, Scrum, Kanban). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;THe main difference is in natural occurrence of the requirements.  On projects that are very stable and predictable, Planned processes are more efficient (e.g. developing a drug).  In volatile environments Iterative processes are better (web store).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why they are better or not is just a natural response to evolution.  Some time back it was impossible to iterate on a project since it was very expensive and time consuming to get through processing time (IBM 360 time).  With the advent of inexpensive and powerful computing devices, it was not only possible, but also more effective to iterate with the final customer to achieve a more precise outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2450" LastActivityDate="2011-11-07T22:53:08.247" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3815" CreationDate="2011-11-07T23:03:51.197" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It all depends on what approach you are following for your Project (Waterfall, Iterative, Hybrid).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, what matters is that is not as granular to create overhead for the team or so high level that it is not even useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of rolling wave (from PMI) is a good approach that can be applied in general (adopted by the Agile community).  If you start with your high level WBS (feature, deliverable, module, or any other high level) you can start by providing your best guess on completion times.  This conversation goes something like this: &quot;We should be starting Feature CX sometime in the beginning of the next quarter and should be completed by the end of the second quarter&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you worry about the immediate high level and break it down into very precise tasks.  If you are following time-boxing (i.e. scrum, xp) then your tasks should not be larger than the period between scrums.  This way your burndown charts are up to date.  If you are not using time-boxing then use your best judgement to setup the tasks so that you can track them easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently managing a project with tasks that span several weeks, with the team providing weekly updates.  This is a very successful multi-million dollar project currently in its second phase of a potential 10 year run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2450" LastActivityDate="2011-11-07T23:03:51.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3815" CreationDate="2011-11-08T03:45:42.667" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is what we do, and it may or may not work in your circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the size of a project we break it down into one or more features. A feature is a piece of functionality that can be shipped in isolation without dependency on other features that may be worked on or that may be planned for the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For each feature we break down the steps into what we call &quot;stories&quot;. There is a lot to say about stories so for simplicity reasons let me define them as a piece of functionality that is required to deliver the feature. However a single story often cannot be shipped in isolation. Some stories may be &quot;technical stories&quot; which are not even visible to the end user, e.g. &quot;Refactor/extend the upgrade process&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once we have all stories for each feature we then estimate the stories. We use story points but you can use other metrics, e.g. NUTS (nebulous units of time), brownie points, gummy bears, or - if you must - hours of effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To track progress we then limit the work-in-progress (WIP). We don't want a team member to work on a dozen things in parallel. Instead we want them to focus on as few as possible and complete them faster. We track progress by counting the stories that are complete and the stories that are not yet complete. &quot;Complete&quot; needs to be defined. We mean by this that no further work is required by anybody in our team other than shipping the software. Also we focus on as few features at a time as possible. We believe it is better to have 3 features complete and shipped rather than having 10 features half-way complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned at the beginning of my answer: You may have other factors that are at work in your circumstances so a different approach may work better. However, for us this approach has allowed us to plan and track our progress in such a way that we have shipped more than 95% or our about 300 releases in the last three years on time. We have received very positive feedback from our customers on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2318" LastEditorUserId="2318" LastEditDate="2011-11-08T20:52:50.237" LastActivityDate="2011-11-08T20:52:50.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3822" CreationDate="2011-11-08T04:08:10.700" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile is a methodology for handling changes in requirements midway through the project. This is achieved by focusing on developing the application piece by piece and getting feedback. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is useful when&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is uncertainty in what the final application should look like&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The market has changed during development and you need to respond (eg: competitor introduced a new feature that you need to match, or new govt regulations during development)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In traditional &quot;phase&quot; based processes, there is significant overhead to changing requirements. Lets say you are in the testing phase, and some new features are needed. Then you have to go back and redo many parts of the requirements and design and development phases. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other problem is that if you build the whole application and only then show customers, when the feedback comes it will a) be too late to incorporate easily b) you will again have to do significant rework&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile processes get around these by focusing on incremental development and rapid feedback.&#xA;The basic idea is to implement few of the features, then show it to your customers/users and get their feedback. Then take the learning and make changes to your project direction. Because the feedback comes early on, it is much easier to incorporate into the application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also have the option of changing the requirements more easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you decide from early feedback that you dont need feature C which is planned for later on, then you can just drop it. Since you haven't started any work on feature C, you haven't wasted any effort on this feature. This makes you more flexible in the direction you take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, the main point of agile processes is to give you flexibility and adaptability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2392" LastActivityDate="2011-11-08T04:08:10.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3826" CreationDate="2011-11-08T08:15:50.620" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally I don't know any specific approaches which are applicable in dispersed teams but not in regular ones. The main difference is that you need to adjust they way leaders, and whole teams, work if they don't have a chance to meet in person. Usually it means heavier use of different tools to support communication and collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a pattern you will see if you look at people speaking on the subject. For example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilebyexample.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/DevPractices.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jutta Eckstein covering agile practices in dispersed teams&lt;/a&gt; focused exactly on that. How we can adjust practices and techniques we'd use in co-located team to the situation where people are spread all over the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I had to point things which are happening in virtual teams and not in co-located ones I would say that some companies invest time and money to bring everyone to a single place to get everyone meet each other. It really fosters collaboration as you work differently with someone you know in person than with someone who is just a nick on Skype. I could bring this one to adjusting standard practices which you get by-design in co-located teams too. After all when you work in the same office you actually are meeting each other, aren't you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-11-08T08:15:50.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3832" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3834" CreationDate="2011-11-08T09:41:42.363" Score="3" ViewCount="6311" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently transitioning responsibility from one team to another. All tasks that are handled by team A will be in the future handled by team B. The tasks are mostly support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any check list that should be followed in such situations?&#xA;What are the most common problems in such situations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="455" LastEditorUserId="2618" LastEditDate="2012-01-16T12:16:00.607" LastActivityDate="2012-01-16T12:16:00.607" Title="How can I best facilitate the transition of responsibilities from one team to another?" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;transition&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3832" CreationDate="2011-11-08T11:33:07.167" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The principles of both teams need to work together to establish a transition plan so that everyone is crystal clear on how to answer the who, what, where, when, why, and how the transition will work.  I would bet the three biggest risks you will face is a severely constrained timeline in which to conduct the transition, stakeholder grief due to the imminent degradation of support services that WILL occur because of the transition, and the new team not have all and/or the right resources--human and otherwise--ready to go.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this change due to a re-compete loss?  If so, the new team should expect a transition partner that might range from what looks like lazy to downright sabotage.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think having a readiness checklist is critical, and it should be derived from the plan above.  You might use the risk breakdown structure to help brainstorm those things that need to be on the checklist: Technical, Security, Equipment, External, Financial, Organizational, Contractual....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I had to choose the highest priority in the change, it would be the impacted stakeholders, the teams' customers, creating early and ongoing communication setting the expectation that services will be less than desirable for time to come.  These would be the highest priority risks on which I would focus during and after the transition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-11-08T11:33:07.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3832" CreationDate="2011-11-08T12:21:51.850" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although everybody suggest that we should have documents, having a 100% coverage of the system we support, in reality it never happens. Few of the following things may help&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have somebody from team A to shadow team B for some period. This will help to solve those support issues, where it's not easy to discover secret recipe for solutions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Compile the list of most frequent support tickets and make sure your team spend some time to understand those area, even if there is no actual ticket.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communicate about this transition to all the stake holders. They may feel some degradation in the support services for some time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure to maintain the morale of the team. Team members may feel bad about themselves when not matching customers expectations.  Moreover users, with their urgent issues, will be creating pressure to get there things done and that's where you need to pitch in and save unnecessary trouble for your team members.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1786" LastActivityDate="2011-11-08T12:21:51.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3832" CreationDate="2011-11-08T15:05:32.007" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are numerous templates online for transition responsibility (e.g. from one team to another or from development to maintenance/support).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I Googled around and found this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epmo.scio.nc.gov/library/docs/TRANSITIONPLAN.doc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one template&lt;/a&gt; from the North Carolina government. I'm sure you could find others that would be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-11-08T15:05:32.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3815" CreationDate="2011-11-08T15:22:00.347" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like you are looking for tips on creating a Work Breakdown Structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a link to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectmanagementdocs.com/templates/work-breakdown-structure-wbs.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one template&lt;/a&gt; but there is a ton of information online about WBS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-11-08T15:22:00.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3837" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3838" CreationDate="2011-11-08T16:04:46.247" Score="5" ViewCount="3904" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had read somewhere that you can receive a discount on the PMP exam fee if you are a PMI member, but this seems debatable when you consider that you need to pay for the membership.  Other than a digital copy of the PMPBOK, have any of you found benefits in having the PMI membership?  Also, is it required to join a local PMI chapter when getting a membership?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="106" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T20:26:03.110" Title="Are there advantages to joining PMI before paying for/taking PMP exam?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;pmi&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3837" CreationDate="2011-11-08T16:17:32.147" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To register for the exam as a non-member, it costs $555.  To register as a member, it is $405, so the $150 difference is more then the $129 member registration.  You are saving $21 and getting a membership for free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You get a digital copy of the PMBOK, which can print if you prefer.  You also get a subscription to their magazine either digital or print edition with project management articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do not have to register for a local chapter.  It make sense to register for the national membership simply because you are saving $21.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="58" LastActivityDate="2011-11-08T16:17:32.147" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3837" CreationDate="2011-11-08T16:48:06.597" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You also get access to the Practice Standards i.e. additional material on everything from estimating to scheduling. Very helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2013-04-30T20:26:03.110" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T20:26:03.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3455" CreationDate="2011-11-08T17:53:17.193" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is this unfortunate myth in agile circles that you should do &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; upfront work and you should deliver something by sprint 1. Thats not a good idea. Fortunately, there has recently been some interest in integrating UX with agile. Here are some links to get you started&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jpattonassociates.com/emerging_best_agile_ux_practice/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Twelve emerging best practices for adding UX work to Agile development&lt;/a&gt;: An old article but still a useful guide on how to incorporate UX on an ongoing basis over the life of an agile project (rather than doing all UX upfront)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read about the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.piecemealgrowth.net/working-with-user-story-mapping&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;User Story Mapping technique&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finally, take a look at the slides for Jeff Patton's &lt;a href=&quot;http://t.co/uuGpWAsW&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Product Discovery&lt;/a&gt;. Its a bit tough to understand with the slides alone though.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key really, is to do &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; upfront planning, but not too much. Just keep it lightweight and keep integrating it along the lifetime of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2392" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-10T11:38:52.107" LastActivityDate="2020-07-10T11:38:52.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2499" CreationDate="2011-11-08T22:11:27.417" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the end, I think the agile transition comes down to &lt;strong&gt;adoption benefits&lt;/strong&gt; vs &lt;strong&gt;agile phobias&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;adoption benefits are mostly relevant to the team (improved quality, communication, etc...) and I think somewhat also easy to get for the business (time to market, improved ROI, customers satisfaction, etc...).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;agile phobias are strong in the management departments (unable to make commitments, incompatible with distributed team, don't scale, I will have nothing left to do as a manager, etc..)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But from my experience business executives are often really tied to management executives. So it's a 2 versus 1 situation where Scrum teams often stay undercover as you described. You might want to look closely at your situation if you're not mistaking the business resistance with what's really behind: &lt;strong&gt;management resistance&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, if you don't address those mistaken belief about agile or Scrum from the management, than eventually the adoption will fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possibles suggestions includes: provide training, promotion, create dissatisfaction with the status quo, creating the sense of urgency, addressing individual fears, let time run its course, fire the saboteurs, praise the right behaviour, involve people, etc, etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2456" LastEditorUserId="2456" LastEditDate="2011-11-08T22:25:17.197" LastActivityDate="2011-11-08T22:25:17.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3147" CreationDate="2011-11-09T01:09:36.957" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;All great answers above.  I believe David Anderson will be releasing a version II of his book over the next year or so.  After reading the Anderson's book and or Kniberg/Skarin's book, you should really follow the kanbandev yahoo group for the most current information.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also suggest subscribing to &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanagement.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;David's blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This video is also a good resource to share with people who don't know much about Kanban but have worked in a Scrum environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EIMxyFw9T8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum applied to Kanban&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2458" LastActivityDate="2011-11-09T01:09:36.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3801" CreationDate="2011-11-09T06:35:06.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some traits a leader should possess, IMHO:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, she generally doesn't look down on people but sees each person as a regular individual, no matter her status in regards to them. This means that she is open to hearing thoughts from the team - feedback, ideas, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, she is always evolving, always open to feedback on how she is as a leader. She seriously looks at her performance and tries to improve where necessary. This means cultivating her positive traits and yes, also, very importantly, her negative traits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, she is very communicative. She gives feedback, follows up, asks questions...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2223" LastActivityDate="2011-11-09T06:35:06.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3846" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-10T01:10:14.467" Score="4" ViewCount="212" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently heading three different projects which are all composed of students from various universities and colleges around Toronto, ON and Waterloo, ON.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In each of these projects I am facing issues with communication with the team members, issues with meeting deadlines, and issues with healthy project collaboration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The three projects I'm leading are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A redesign of a website for a university student-run synthetic biology organization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An advertising and recruiting campaign for the same organization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A project to get quality speakers for a business conference.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these teams consist of three to four students and no one lives close to each other. All meetings are generally done over Skype and our main forms of communication is email and Facebook messages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Communication is hard because of distance and the lack of frequency of which we communicated (about three times a week). During the week where there's little communication, assumptions form about direction and responsibility and random delays occur as a result slowing the team. Deadlines, which I set, are hard to meet for each team for the previous reason and because each of us has full-time coop placements or school to deal with as well as any other commitments. Collaboration is very hard because of both of the previous and as a result of poor collaboration the quality of our product/service is declining. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really just need help to make all of these projects work. I figure that since there are similar issues in each project and since I am the common factor I must be the problem. I'm willing to change whatever I need to to become a better project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2466" LastEditorUserId="2523" LastEditDate="2011-11-18T20:51:47.073" LastActivityDate="2011-11-27T15:37:29.657" Title="Leading Student Teams" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;process&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3846" CreationDate="2011-11-10T05:31:54.597" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might get more views/answers on this if you change the emphasis slightly - it's actually more a problem with a distributed teams rather than students per-se.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Toronto and Waterloo aren't that far apart, it would be worth setting up a one-time physical meeting for each project - it sounds like people have only been communicating online; they'll gain a much better understanding of each other and a clearer idea of individual responsibilities in a physical meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also worth reviewing &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/3826/leading-virtual-teams&quot;&gt;Leading Virtual Teams&lt;/a&gt; - I suspect the links will be helpful to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1052" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-11-10T05:31:54.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3846" CreationDate="2011-11-10T07:49:45.570" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First and foremost - YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY WITH THIS PROBLEM. It’s a real challenge to work in a distributed team. And some time frustrating too. Geographical separation has so much effect on team dynamics that everybody in the team seems to forget the basic tenet of working together. The Basic Tenet, which suggest, &lt;strong&gt;Shared Goals&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;Transparency&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;Team Spirit&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;Respect&lt;/strong&gt; for each other, looks too good to be true.So, I suggest that there is no need to be on the guilt trip. But yes, there are few things you should try to make the situation better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It looks creating an environment which allows your other team members to take more responsibility will help in overall problem. Build an ecosystem, which provide a concise set of strong principles to stimulate intelligent, and responsible behavior. This may lead to better commitments from everybody.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At least co-locate the team once. It helps to build a shared context and shared ownership. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Progress measurement should be transparent. Everybody should have a clear sense about where they are heading and it helps to create ownership.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In your team meetings you can start evaluating the good and bad happened so far. The intention is to remove waste and to improve upon communication, process and technology.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Forming a &quot;single team&quot; is really a tough task. A single team, where we need to create an environment of rich communication, shared responsibility, and same goals. This is an environment where associates do the same work and are dependent upon each other for the team’s success. This is an environment where team members strengthen each other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1786" LastActivityDate="2011-11-10T07:49:45.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2777" CreationDate="2011-11-10T08:19:46.767" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Micromanagers - who feel or know that they are potential overhead. And think that compulsive involvement is one convenient way to try and compensate for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1786" LastActivityDate="2011-11-10T08:19:46.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3850" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3853" CreationDate="2011-11-10T14:47:52.013" Score="5" ViewCount="193" Body="&lt;p&gt;A saying is (at least here in Germany): Adding new people to a late project makes it even later. That is true, because the additional work to introduce the newbies to the project destroys productivity of the established team members for some time. But we all know that more staff from the beginning would conclude the project faster (at least most of the time). So adding people at the beginning would help the project, adding them late would hurt the deadline. At what point in the project is it too late to add new members where you will not jeopardize the deadline further?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="57" LastEditorUserId="57" LastEditDate="2015-06-22T07:25:55.747" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T07:25:55.747" Title="When is the latest opportunity to add new team members to improve schedule performance?" Tags="&lt;deadline&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3850" CreationDate="2011-11-10T15:30:47.437" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it would be a mistake to look for some arbitrary % complete where adding to the team would, &lt;em&gt;with absolute certainty&lt;/em&gt;, exacerbate the delay.  Brooks Law is compelling, but it is not a true physical law.  Crashing your schedule at any time in your progress could help, could hurt, or do nothing at all.  It requires analysis and risk assessments and the answer would be different for each project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-11-10T15:30:47.437" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3850" CreationDate="2011-11-10T18:39:14.753" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that adding people can slow the project, and this is especially true if they are the wrong people. Adding the right people can speed the project up, especially if they have specific domain expertise that is missing or weak in the original team,and they are being brought in to support the team rather than taking over and destroying morale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that the time to bring in any new blood is at the start of new phases of the project, based on either the introduction of a new technology, a move from one stage (e.g. design) to another (e.g. development), or as soon as you identify that something has gone horribly wrong and you don't have the right resources to fix it. If you have already identified the root cause of a problem and are working on the resolution, then unless it is clear that the resource level is a major contributory factor, trying to beef up the team to speed up delivery is very unlikely to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An interesting book that illustrates some aspects of this is &quot;Show Stopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft&quot; which is a bit out of date now, but illustrates how a project can grow massively and change shape to an incredible level. Definitely worth a read, though!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastEditorUserId="301" LastEditDate="2011-11-10T18:44:58.753" LastActivityDate="2011-11-10T18:44:58.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3279" CreationDate="2011-11-10T20:00:03.140" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Individual velocity is a dangerous measure.  I worked on a team once in which the dev manager wanted to measure individual velocity.  She intended to use this for raises, meaning she would both compensate those with the highest velocity AND look for consistency in each person's delivery rate.  This was a disaster.  Devs stopped pairing, they were less willing to help one another with issues, they didn't want to help BA's write stories, they didn't want to work on defects, etc.  Basically, anything that would decrease their individual velocity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2474" LastActivityDate="2011-11-10T20:00:03.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3855" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3856" CreationDate="2011-10-24T20:07:12.907" Score="2" ViewCount="553" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a scrum master, how do you keep a burn down chart up to date without forcing your team into become 'plan-driven'?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(What does 'plan-driven' mean?)&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120617021325/http://www.matincor.com/Documents/Plan%20vs%20Agile.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Plan vs Agile&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our team is currently keeping a scrum burn down chart for our project.   I, however, want to avoid over planning.   Any advice that you could offer would be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3734" OwnerDisplayName="Michael Rosario" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-06T08:21:54.907" LastActivityDate="2020-07-06T08:21:54.907" Title="How do you maintain a product burn down chart while not being plan driven?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3855" CreationDate="2011-10-25T11:37:55.983" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to point one thing out with the question itself.  The Scrum Master is by no means responsible for actually maintaining a burn down.  The team is responsible for coming up with a plan for delivering on the stories chosen for the sprint.  They may well use a burndown as part of that plan, but the team is responsible for it happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is certainly a balance.  The team and more importantly the Product Owner will know through the inability to forecast effectively (yes we forecast) when they are not grooming the backlog often enough/effectively.  Adjust.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Scrum Master can and should remind the team of their duties of transparency and coach the organization that, yes they are right in asking for forecasts from the product owner.  The Scrum Master is not responsible for and should not /make/ the team do these things.  [S]he is not a project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the team has an appropriate forecast of a few months out or enough to guide the rest of the organization, you probably have enough.  There is no right answer though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Ryan Cromwell" LastActivityDate="2011-10-25T11:37:55.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3850" CreationDate="2011-11-11T01:02:22.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you can get close by estimating lost productivity from &quot;spin up&quot; time. Based on these assumptions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;New people will need some time to get familiar with the project before they are productive&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Existing team members will have lower productivity whey the new person get's familiar with the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, estimate the amount of time one person will take to get up to speed, estimate the amount of time other team members will less productive, then you will have a cost-benefit estimate that you can apply. If the &quot;cost&quot; of lower productivity makes a set of task run longer than than the &quot;benefit&quot; of having more people to do the work, then you shouldn't add people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, @Iain9688 advice of adding people and major phase breaks is a better answer. Since, in theory, everyone is at the same level of productivity when there is a major change in tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-11-11T01:02:22.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3850" CreationDate="2011-11-11T06:20:16.713" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It all depends on the your project. Look at the network diagram of the tasks and see where adding resources or running tasks in the parallel can make a difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-11-11T06:20:16.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2029" CreationDate="2011-11-11T13:16:53.517" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like the VBA solution above, but it's going to be slooow for large projects.  Using a combination of Custom Flag Fields and Custom Bar Styles is the traditional way to do this.  A tutorial for doing this is shown &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wiseowl.co.uk/blog/s113/conditional_formatting_in_microsoft_project_gantt_charts_part1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2481" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2012-11-07T09:06:58.883" LastActivityDate="2012-11-07T09:06:58.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3865" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-11T08:33:31.560" Score="4" ViewCount="384" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our business uses Mercurial for SCM and use it's integrated server for push and pull operations. We are also familiar with Apache+PHP and Tomcat+J2EE applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking out for a project management software that integrates with Mercurial (and takes in the PUSH/PULL operations with authentication).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking for something that isnt &lt;strong&gt;too much hassle to setup&lt;/strong&gt; and also on a platform that I am already familiar (Apache or Tomcat) with. Redmine loses here as I need to know to setup Apache+mod_passenger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please mention choices that are either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;easy to set up and use&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;matches my familiarity with PHP and Tomcat&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30461" OwnerDisplayName="aitchnyu" LastEditorUserId="1172" LastEditDate="2011-11-16T16:58:59.940" LastActivityDate="2011-11-16T16:58:59.940" Title="Project management software with Mercurial support that runs on PHP/JSP servers" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3650" CreationDate="2011-11-11T16:14:27.203" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;https://projecthamster.wordpress.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hamster&lt;/a&gt;. It is a Linux program to use with Gnome. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some articles about it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lifehacker.com/5362829/five-best-time+tracking-applications&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://lifehacker.com/5362829/five-best-time+tracking-applications&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/easily-track-time-and-generate-reports-with-hamster-linux/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/easily-track-time-and-generate-reports-with-hamster-linux/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gnomejournal.org/article/73/tracking-your-time-with-project-hamster&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://gnomejournal.org/article/73/tracking-your-time-with-project-hamster&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="899" LastActivityDate="2011-11-11T16:14:27.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3867" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3871" CreationDate="2011-11-12T14:24:55.260" Score="14" ViewCount="7430" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking to make and maintain a Gantt chart, but I am unable to find any suitable solutions. It should be a cloud (meaning online) solution, so there can be several collaborators. It should also have normal features like linking tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have already tested a Gantt solution integrated in Google Spreadsheets, but it was too immature to be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="641" LastEditorUserId="641" LastEditDate="2011-11-12T23:40:14.997" LastActivityDate="2019-08-11T13:40:38.070" Title="A good cloud solution for making Gantt charts" Tags="&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="5" ClosedDate="2019-08-11T22:49:52.043" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3865" CreationDate="2011-11-12T20:24:06.100" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projelead.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Projelead&lt;/a&gt; is a web based project management software, PHP based, that can run on tomcat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Projelead comes in two versions standard (open source) and enterprise (commercial).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;take a look at it and see if it can match your needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Link: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projelead.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;www.projelead.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2490" LastActivityDate="2011-11-12T20:24:06.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3867" CreationDate="2011-11-13T08:19:08.090" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gantt_chart&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gantt Chart&lt;/a&gt; is an outcome of &quot;Develop Schedule&quot; process, which gets a list of Activities as an income. Thus, I would suggest you to try one of those tools that allow you to maintain a list of Activities online (with multiple collaborators) and then automatically generate a Gantt Chart from them. &lt;a href=&quot;http://trac.edgewall.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trac&lt;/a&gt; is one of the examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you still need a pure Gantt Chart drawing tool - consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://gantter.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gantter&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-11-13T08:19:08.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3865" CreationDate="2011-11-13T08:21:06.327" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://trac.edgewall.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trac&lt;/a&gt; has Mercurial support: &lt;a href=&quot;http://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/TracMercurial&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TracMercurial&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-11-13T08:21:06.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3867" CreationDate="2011-11-13T09:00:54.677" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ummm ... Did you try out Google Docs' Gantt chart making feature?&#xA;I recently used it for a project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This tutorial on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.officetimeline.com/gantt-chart-google-docs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Making a Gantt Chart with Google Docs&lt;/a&gt; might help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although there are better, quick and easy cloud products for making Gantt charts available on the Internet, I feel this feature of Google docs is much convenient to use as most of us are well-versed with Google Docs, as also for my project, the entire documentation was stored in Google Docs, which made things easy to manage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2492" LastEditorUserId="2492" LastEditDate="2016-08-16T15:26:58.673" LastActivityDate="2016-08-16T15:26:58.673" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3872" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4222" CreationDate="2011-11-13T22:08:36.537" Score="0" ViewCount="114" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a small open source project, hosted on Google Code, and I'd like to be able to get a sense as to where and how the project is being used (besides the visitor info I can get from Google Analytics, and the download counts).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As it is open source and does not contain any 'powered by' or tracking code, I realize this is pretty much impossible, so I am trying to figure out how to have the user's of the project volunteer this information. All I can think of off of the top of my head is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Starting a discussion thread that people could post links to the sites they've used the code on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions as to the best way to get any insight into this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2493" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-27T04:17:49.810" LastActivityDate="2012-07-27T04:17:49.810" Title="Suggestions on tracking open source project usage" Tags="&lt;measurement&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-07-27T04:15:34.587" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3874" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-14T02:13:00.933" Score="6" ViewCount="1966" Body="&lt;p&gt;We just hired a contractor for a project, and the pay is based on hours. I just wonder if there is any way (e.g. software, website, etc) to track/verify the actual amount of time he spends on working the project, so we don't end up paying more/less than we should. Many thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="skyork" LastEditorUserId="2505" LastEditDate="2011-11-16T01:10:09.060" LastActivityDate="2011-11-18T21:18:59.200" Title="How to accurately track the time a contractor spends on a project?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3874" CreationDate="2011-11-14T02:42:29.500" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can't help with paying to much, but a good time tracker I am using is toggl.com.  I really like it.  As for making sure you are getting your money's worth, that will come down to having someone on your side that can evaluate what they are producing and deciding if what they are producing jibes with what it &quot;should&quot; take.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also get firm estimates when possible and if they keep missing, maybe it's time to renegotiate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Bill Leeper" LastActivityDate="2011-11-14T03:09:59.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3874" CreationDate="2011-11-14T23:25:43.140" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Verify&quot; still will be big problem, but for tracker you can use (hosted or own installation) &lt;a href=&quot;https://timetracker.anuko.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Anuko TimeTracker&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another solution can be to create project on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.assembla.com/home&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Assembla&lt;/a&gt;, select needed tools (in addition to Time Tools), f.e Tickets, Files, Scrum, Milestones... and perform most tasks of ALM in this project &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2503" LastActivityDate="2011-11-14T23:25:43.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3874" CreationDate="2011-11-15T04:15:27.773" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;They should submit their time every week. If you are not satisfied with their output, fire them. Otherwise, you are paying them to sit in a chair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;doug&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2506" LastActivityDate="2011-11-15T04:15:27.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3885" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-15T12:23:58.787" Score="6" ViewCount="3042" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm already PMI certified PMP, and would like to appear for the CSM training. Can you suggest whether I should go for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prince2.com/what-is-prince2.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PRINCE2 certification&lt;/a&gt; or CSM certification?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know about the value and need of both certification, but when we look at the industry where do we see a huge demand for which certification?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2508" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2012-09-05T00:50:33.080" LastActivityDate="2012-09-05T14:21:11.657" Title="PRINCE2 certification vs. CSM certification" Tags="&lt;certification&gt;&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3874" CreationDate="2011-11-15T13:14:35.020" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I'm sure there a number of good tracking tools, let's back up a second. Are you paying for number of hours, or work produced?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going into hiring the contractor you should have had a budget of what you were willing to spend, and then the contractor, once presented with the work desired, should have given you an idea of how long it would take/cost (estimate). As long as his/her estimate is within your budget, then it doesn't matter how many hours they're working, as long as the work is being performed and delivered. If it takes them less time (but they still deliver as promised) then they get to keep more. If not, and it takes them longer than they anticipated, then it's on them and doesn't cost you anything for their mistake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paying by the hour presents two potential problems - one, they may be fast but sloppy. Two, they may be great but slow. Chances of getting great AND fast are probably slim. So shoot for 'smart' and use a budget and estimate, not simply hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-11-15T13:14:35.020" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3885" CreationDate="2011-11-15T15:34:42.030" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Which is better for you depends entirely on what you are doing now and where you plan to be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do agile without much emphasis on Prince2 then go for CSM first. If you are in a Prince2 organization that dabbles in agile then go for your Prince2 first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are looking to the future Prince2 may be more portable if you leave an agile environment. In North America Prince2 is more government work, but even there jrosell is right that PMP is much more common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2011-11-15T15:34:42.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3865" CreationDate="2011-11-15T15:38:29.963" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rhodecode.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;RhodeCode&lt;/a&gt; - not PHP or Tomcat (Python, Pylons-based), but nicely fit to req. 1 &quot;easy to set up and use&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2503" LastActivityDate="2011-11-15T15:38:29.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3874" CreationDate="2011-11-15T20:14:18.490" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The threat of being charged extra hours is always there, similar to shop lifting if you were a retailer.  All you can do is deploy various types of controls to help mitigate.  If your scope is known, well defined, and you predict few changes, then securing your contractor under a firm fixed price (FFP) agreement will remove all threat of erroneous hours.  Your risks are limited to the schedule and quality under that scenario; however, you have to pay for the luxury of transferring the cost risk to your contractor.  The price WILL be inflated to cover your contractor's risks and contingencies.  It is almost certain that you will pay more under a FFP arrangement then under cost plus or T&amp;amp;M with some evidence of erroneous charging.  So, consider that carefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your scope is a bit ambiguous and you secure under T&amp;amp;M or cost plus, then you do have risk of erroneous charging but you also have control over who is doing what and when.  If you have your own estimates of the work before you authorize a start, you can track and control progress against hours claimed and actual costs.  When unfavorable variances start to accrue, you can intervene and correct the situation before the costs become out of hand.  This includes the possibility of unearthing erroneous charges and removing the source.  If your contractor or a select few of resources are constantly on the fat side of your estimates, you can ask why and intervene.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you &quot;should&quot; pay is the agreed upon target dollars plus or minus a reasonable variance.  But this does not come as a surprise.  You should know way in advance using standard tracking and control methods like EV where you are and where you are headed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-11-15T20:14:18.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3891" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4208" CreationDate="2011-11-15T20:25:38.067" Score="0" ViewCount="768" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have familiarity with both &lt;a href=&quot;http://gotoadvantage.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Webvantage&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redmine.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Redmine&lt;/a&gt;, where do they overlap?  Where do they compliment each other?  Which do you prefer overall, and which features do you prefer of either?  Do you have a workflow that uses them both?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2511" LastActivityDate="2011-12-29T17:02:26.770" Title="Webvantage vs. Redmine" Tags="&lt;redmine&gt;&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3892" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-16T07:47:14.837" Score="3" ViewCount="364" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to update our project management templates and tools for 2012 and looking at all the available online resources and tools. Most are obvious matches (project charters use a word processor, budgets need a spreadsheet, etc.) but I can't decide what is the best way solution for the stakeholder register.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you find the most easy to use and easy to maintain? Word? Excel? Custom web-form?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-12-18T16:49:42.347" Title="What format do you use to store your stakeholder register?" Tags="&lt;stakeholders&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3893" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4260" CreationDate="2011-11-17T02:41:35.743" Score="2" ViewCount="364" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have experience with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.examcentral.net/pmp/question-answer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Exam Central&lt;/a&gt; practice exam web site? Since there was just a change in the version of the test and such, I was wondering how accurately this site represents what I would see on an exam if I were to take it. I am also open to suggestions and advice on other websites that offer good current exam practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1017" LastEditorUserId="1172" LastEditDate="2011-12-29T19:04:22.890" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T10:05:06.103" Title="Specific Practice Exam Website Question (Quality)" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-06-09T19:58:00.183" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3894" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3906" CreationDate="2011-11-18T13:46:53.870" Score="10" ViewCount="1589" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a software developer, and most companies I've worked for are organized in a system that is a middle ground between functional and matrix. Much more functional than matrix, indeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The structure is something like this: there are several teams in the company, each one being responsible for a specific function. But one of these teams has a special characteristic. It is also responsible for a product and works in a project-oriented manner. Let's call it the &quot;product team&quot;. All projects that this team carries out are intended to maintain or improve their product. As such, the product team is the project &quot;driver&quot;, so to speak, requesting services from the other teams as needed. In general, the product team is responsible for programming functions, and requests services from Data Analysis, DBA, User Interface, Test, Deployment and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly, from my personal experience, I have only seen problems with this approach. To list some:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Individuals in the &quot;service teams&quot; lack long-term commitment to the product or the project. Their mindset is to finish the service as quickly as possible and, once delivered, it becomes somone else's problem. Obviously, this is not their fault. They are only reacting to incentives, because if they do otherwise, they will probably be punished (or, at least, not be rewarded).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For the same reason as pointed out in the previous item, the service team members lack contextual information that would help them to see the big picture. They may be able to perform their services well, but they are not able to suggest alternatives or challenge wrong assumptions. Hence, the overall performance is sub-optimal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Since the activities are inherently coupled to each other (the separation into functional teams is somewhat arbitrary and artificial), some problems are faced over and over by different teams, as the project evolves. Each team will have to learn the business rules from scratch, for example, and will probably have the same basic questions, which will demand the same basic answers. All teams will go through the same learning curve.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;From a management perspective, coordinating the schedules of all those teams is a very hard problem. It is very common to have to wait some weeks to get a job done because the members of some service team are all busy fulfilling requests from other teams.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Depending on how the teams are partitioned, sometimes different teams have conflicting goals. For example, a good project team will have a high throughput (let's say, number of software features per month), which necessarily leads to changes in the production environment. The deployment team normally has the opposite goal: to maintain the production environment as stable as possible. So, they will create all kinds of obstacles to the deployment of those features. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A certain &quot;tribal&quot; behavior emerges from this setup. Probably this is just human nature, but when people are separated into different groups with conflicting goals, they will start to see each other as rivals and not as co-workers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;em&gt;edit to include another problem I remembered&lt;/em&gt;] Due to the arbitrary nature of this kind of partition, some problems that are experienced by one team can only be solved by another team, either for technical or political reasons. But such problems may be evaluated differently by each team. For the one that has the problem, it may be top priority. From the &quot;solver&quot; point of view, however, it may be less important. As a consequence, it will never be solved at all, or it will generate an enormous level of political conflict between the involved functional areas.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite all the drawbacks listed above, this kind of team organization seems to be overwhelmingly common. Why is this? Is there some big, obvious advantage that I'm missing, that surpasses all the problems I pointed out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2524" LastEditorUserId="2524" LastEditDate="2011-11-21T12:08:30.103" LastActivityDate="2011-11-22T01:41:10.577" Title="Why is the middle ground between functional and matrix organizations so common?" Tags="&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3801" CreationDate="2011-11-18T16:29:03.590" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are few quick, concrete suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get to know your team as individuals&lt;/strong&gt;. What motivates them? Do those things more. What de-motivates them? Don't do those things. People respond very well to leadership and management when they feel like you know them and act like you care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Say &quot;thank you.&quot; And mean it.&lt;/strong&gt; More than financial rewards or taking the guys out for beers, humans like to be recognized and thanked for their hard work. Jack Welch, legendary CEO of GE was awesome at this. Send a thank you note or thank individuals in front of others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Set clear expectations.&lt;/strong&gt; Ask the team what is expected of you, and exceed those expectations. When a team respects your work, you can be demanding of them, and they won't think twice about doing good work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be human.&lt;/strong&gt; Acknowledge the human elements of a team/project while being practical about the business' needs. Admit when you make a mistake. Don't punish others for their mistakes. Always focus on the positives and what can the team do to move forward. Say things like, &quot;I'm really sorry, I screwed ABC up. What do you guys think about this plan to move forward with XYZ?&quot; Or, &quot;I know it sucks that the company decided blah, but we have an opportunity to help the bottom line and look good doing it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't waste people's time.&lt;/strong&gt; Do standup meetings if your methodology calls for them, but only if they add value to the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know these are all over the place. As others have pointed out, there's a lot that goes into being a good leader, but these are a few things I have put into practice that have really helped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2011-11-18T16:29:03.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3892" CreationDate="2011-11-18T16:34:32.310" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think most &quot;register&quot; artifacts lend themselves to spreadsheets. Simple. Organized. Sortable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2011-11-18T16:34:32.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3894" CreationDate="2011-11-18T16:53:28.960" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a historian by any stretch of the imagination, but here's my completely unscientific theory:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say most business started off as functional. Think about your most primitive teams. Men were hunters. Women were gatherers. Other specialties evolved, and over the centuries, teams and companies grew to business as we know it. Somewhere along the way, some really smart MBAs probably got together and decided matrix organizations were cool, and companies gravitated to the new fad. Some succeeded, some failed, most fell somewhere in between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here we are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2011-11-18T16:53:28.960" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3894" CreationDate="2011-11-18T20:36:03.477" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a lot easier for people to &quot;get&quot; a functional structure compared to projectized. &quot;I am a developer and my boss is a senior developer and we are in the development group&quot; is more intuitive to most people than &quot;I am a developer and my boss from an HR perspective is different from my boss from a technical perspective and by the way the latter can change when I start new things&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deviating from your original question, some suggestions for mitigating the issues you raised:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Individuals in the &quot;service teams&quot; lack long-term commitment to the product or the project. Their mindset is to finish the service as quickly as possible and, once delivered, it becomes somone else's problem. Obviously, this is not their fault. They are only reacting to incentives, because if they do otherwise, they will probably be punished (or, at least, not be rewarded).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The essence of a project is that it is temporary - it isn't necessary for a project team to have a long-term commitment to the product once the project is over. Realization of benefits is at a program/corporate level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Commitment to the project is another issue altogether. My experience is that it isn't the team member so much as his manager that you have to worry about losing commitment to the project. Engage those key stakeholders early and often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For the same reason as pointed out in the previous item, the service team members lack contextual information that would help them to see the big picture. They may be able to perform their services well, but they are not able to suggest alternatives or challenge wrong assumptions. Hence, the overall performance is sub-optimal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found it helpful to have end-of-stage meetings shortly before a key milestone is met so that you can go over upcoming tasks, acceptance criteria, assumptions, lessons learned, risks, etc with those individuals that are going to be working on the next stage's products. More work for me in the short run but less rework in the long run&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since the activities are inherently coupled to each other (the separation into functional teams is somewhat arbitrary and artificial), some problems are faced over and over by different teams, as the project evolves. Each team will have to learn the business rules from scratch, for example, and will probably have the same basic questions, which will demand the same basic answers. All teams will go through the same learning curve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There should be &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; level of consistency during a project (e.g. same project management team), if this doesn't exist the new team needs to make a point of talking to the old team during the handover process to avoid rework. Develop institutional knowledge and share lessons learned as much as possible. Make a point of asking questions when you get moved onto a new project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From a management perspective, coordinating the schedules of all those teams is a very hard problem. It is very common to have to wait some weeks to get a job done because the members of some service team are all busy fulfilling requests from other teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, end-of-stage meetings and engaging stakeholders can be helpful. Provide teams scheduled to do work with the plan (that they would have agreed to up front) and find out what has changed and what might prevent them from keeping to the plan. If you organization has many projects that are competing for resources you need to advocate for your project with your executive management. If a business case for why your project needs top priority for resources can't be made then management needs to accept that it will run late.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Depending on how the teams are partitioned, sometimes different teams have conflicting goals. For example, a good project team will have a high throughput (let's say, number of software features per month), which necessarily leads to changes in the production environment. The deployment team normally has the opposite goal: to maintain the production environment as stable as possible. So, they will create all kinds of obstacles to the deployment of those features. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best that we can do is to have a clear and shared vision of what the end product has to look like, what the acceptance criteria are, etc. If everyone is working towards the same, clear objective you should be able to minimize conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A certain &quot;tribal&quot; behavior emerges from this setup. Probably this is just human nature, but when people are separated into different groups with conflicting goals, they will start to see each other as rivals and not as co-workers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No good solution for this, other than trying to set the example of someone who sets the interests of the project and team first and departmental goals/ambitions second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2011-11-18T20:36:03.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3894" CreationDate="2011-11-18T21:46:44.397" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a career development perspective most people's development follows a functional model.   People develop within a functional career stream; accounting, marketing, project management, software development...  This works well for developing resources, but it doesn't always support a business's needs, especially for projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The matrix model allows resources with the appropriate skills to be assigned to the appropriate tasks.  This works for a number of cases.  If you have a bunch of plants to manage, you need a plant manager for each plant.  Functionally, these belong to the same group but are assigned to different units.  It would be possible for someone to develop a career withing a plant, but in many roles there would be no functional peers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Projects work the same way, but have a much shorter lifetime.  A project should never be a career.  However, a project usually needs people from a number of functional groups.  This is why you see the matrix model used.  Some of the problems you pointed out result from the short term nature of projects.  Scheduling resources for projects is always difficult, and scare resources often cause problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Managing resources within a matrix model is difficult and as you have noted not without its risks.  Many organizations have trouble developing and retaining the appropriate corporate knowledge.  Matrix management can make this more difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The requirements of production and development are very different.  Production needs reliable processes, when tends to lead to a preference for stable processes.  Development needs change and can disrupt production processes.   Techniques that work well in development can be totally destructive in production.  (Developers can recreate a new database at will, a process which is not possible in production.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite its drawbacks, the matrix model makes projects work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastEditorUserId="529" LastEditDate="2011-11-18T22:11:22.170" LastActivityDate="2011-11-18T22:11:22.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3905" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-18T22:12:22.023" Score="2" ViewCount="735" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/3894/why-is-the-middle-ground-between-functional-and-matrix-organizations-so-common&quot;&gt;previous question&lt;/a&gt;, I said that, from my personal experience, it seems that most software development companies adopt a functional-like organizational structure. But, of course, this is just a biased observation and I may be completely wrong. So, I would like to get a more scientific picture of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any recent research showing what percentage of software development companies adopt each model (functional, matrix, project, and possibly other models in-between)? I'm looking for data that include large and small companies from all over the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2524" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2011-11-19T21:43:53.120" Title="What percentage of software development companies adopt each type of organizational structure?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3894" CreationDate="2011-11-19T12:24:49.317" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience as an operations consultant, organization design is sloppily performed, if performed at all.  Most organizations, I think, are very immature in its design of its structure and is more a result of reactions to adverse business results than a thoughtful design.  When things are not going well, what is the first thing many orgs do?  Re-organize!  They will do this even if the organization had little to nothing to do with the result because it shows an active intervention and is seemingly easy to do (mostly because they do not do it well).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would bet this middle ground you are observing was not created purposely.  You have a lot of things going on here: reaction to marginal business performance, a great idea from a business manager who read a book and is trying to experiment, a other managers trying to build their fiefdom, to name a few.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Org design is a complex task, rooted in deep analysis, theory, culture, environment, and politics.  It is no less complex than designing your business processes and system solutions.  But I can guarantee that, in most cases, the effort behind it pails in comparison to the other two efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-11-19T12:24:49.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3905" CreationDate="2011-11-19T21:43:53.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience, you will find mostly a matrix structure in larger organizations.  All the large organizations I have worked with have followed this model.  This may be in part because I have worked in companies involved in multiple projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Small organizations are often able to use only a functional model.  This may be looser than you find in a larger organization as some people may work in multiple functional roles.  Their projects tend to be small enough that they don't require a project organizational structure.  If they do have a large project, it tends to involve the entire company, so that it can be run without a separate organization structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I noted in my previous response, career development is usually managed using a functional organizational structure.  Some people in the organization will move from one functional role to another.  The organization may encourage this in people they are grooming for management.  In other cases, people may decide that they would prefer a different role, either temporarily or permanently.  Some functional roles like project management may not have entry level positions, so people need to start in a different functional role initially.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Projects requiring a team usually have their own organizational structure.  Many projects require resources from various functional streams, so that they are difficult to manage within the existing functional organization structure.  Large projects can run for several years, and develop their own organizational structure.  However, by their very nature projects end, so this is not a good organization structure for a company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well managed organizations use their functional organization structure to share information and skills across projects.  Other start each project as if they had never done a project before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2011-11-19T21:43:53.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3908" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-19T23:55:17.923" Score="8" ViewCount="5644" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been offered one of my dream internships for this next summer.  I'll be working as a &quot;Program Manager&quot; for a top notch software company. For some examples of what I mean by PM, take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/03/09.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Joel's article&lt;/a&gt; as well as &lt;a href=&quot;http://careers.microsoft.com/careers/en/us/tech-software-internships.aspx#urswintern-3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Microsoft's PM internship description&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is my first internship in this position.  Up until this point, I've been working as a developer.  This is sort of a change of paths, but I feel like it's a great opportunity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to spend a lot of time preparing for this internship before I get there.  My goal is to be a valuable member of the team as quickly as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what I already have on my agenda:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0671723650&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How to Win Friends and Influence People&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1594484805&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DRiVE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0596517718&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Making Things Happen&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Review development methods (Scrum, agile, etc.), focusing on the method that my team uses&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How else should I prepare to be the best Program Manager I can be? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1448" LastEditorUserId="1448" LastEditDate="2011-12-12T22:46:17.807" LastActivityDate="2012-01-11T23:32:57.883" Title="How to effectively prepare for a Program Manager internship?" Tags="&lt;program-management&gt;&lt;internships&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1451" CreationDate="2011-11-19T23:58:23.757" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a way, yes. The principles get lost, as team members, and especially Scrum Masters, focus more on &quot;doing the planning meeting right&quot;, &quot;sticking the post-its on the board at the right column&quot; and so on. But this is not a problem with Scrum itself. The problem is that some people don't even care about the principles, in the first place. This is particularly true on companies used to heavy processes. When Scrum is adopted, they tend to see it as yet another process, with its own rules, rituals and procedures, not attending to the rationale behind them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The very idea of &quot;welcoming change&quot;, one of the cornerstones of the agile philosophy, faces a great deal of resistance. So, for example, if someone proposes that stand-up meetings should not be done in a certain project (for whatever good reason) some people will object: &quot;but this is against the rules of the process!&quot; The right way to deal with an agile method like Scrum is to treat it as a set of general guidelines and use your best judgment for the particular circumstances of your projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2524" LastActivityDate="2011-11-19T23:58:23.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3908" CreationDate="2011-11-21T12:43:31.707" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The purpose of an internship is to learn - you get to learn about the company and the profession and the company gets to learn about you and your abilities as a potential full-time employee. You aren't expected to know everything right off the bat and be able to jump right in and make the big difference. After the interview, they believe that you already have enough knowledge and skills to be able to function in the position and to learn the things that you don't yet know, but need to know. I wouldn't be worried so much about trying to learn everything in advance, but just gain some overview in areas that you are personally interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the description of the job on the website, you might be interested in software project management, requirements engineering, software systems architecture and design, usability, and communication. I can recommend a number of books in these areas: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1556159005&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1572316217&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Software Project Survival Guide&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0735618798&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Software Requirements&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0735622671&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;More About Software Requirements: Thorny Issues and Practical Advice&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/032171833X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Software Systems Architecture: Working With Stakeholders Using Viewpoints and Perspectives&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0321154959&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Software Architecture in Practice&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0465067107&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Design of Everyday Things&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0143118447&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0143118757&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Getting to Yes&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0553371312&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Getting Past No&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't recommend running out, buying all of these books, and reading them all, though. This is supposed to be a learning experience. Use it as such. If you really wanted to learn things in advance, I would suggest starting with Rapid Development and Difficult Conversations. I think that these would have the most impact and relevant information, regardless of company or position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2011-11-21T12:43:31.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3908" CreationDate="2011-11-21T17:09:00.687" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would add another item to your &quot;reading list&quot; and that is &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0449002829&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Zapp! the Lightning of Empowerment&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion as, as a Program Manager your most powerful day to day tool will be in the form of written and verbal communication. You will be talking with customers, team members and other teams. Essentially you will be filling the communication gap that exists between them. Fill this gap and empower your team providing direction, suggestions &amp;amp; feedback. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As this is an internship:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't be afraid to ask questions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn from mistakes made &lt;strong&gt;and more importantly&lt;/strong&gt; take responsibility for your actions and decisions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have fun and get to know your collegues&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastActivityDate="2011-11-21T17:09:00.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3913" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3914" CreationDate="2011-11-21T21:26:58.450" Score="12" ViewCount="660" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to convince my manager and (probably) his manager that a project needs to be scrapped and we need to purchase an off-the-shelf solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somehow it was recommended that, rather than use a pre-built solution like FogBugz to do our task/issue tracking, we should roll our own. Now, this is definitely not a core service for us. The current price to purchase an unlimited site-license for FogBugz for our server is $15,000 USD for the Kiln-integrated version. $10,000 for the standalone version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the current rate we charge per developer hour we have now spent $35,000 on our project which is nowhere near as useful or complete. Even if you're just looking at &quot;actual&quot; developer cost (just our salary) we've spent at least $17,500 USD. I know there are other related maintenance costs, but they'd be closer to $2,500 than $20k. Of course our system isn't even &lt;em&gt;close&lt;/em&gt; to as full-featured as FogBugz.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now here's the real issue - I'm an extremely junior developer (&amp;lt; 6 months, fresh university graduate) at my company, and employees who've been working since before I went to college are the people who made the recommendation that we do the development in-house. A system that has close ties with our project is my direct manager's baby, and I'm not sure how much he emotionally has invested in this - he did do some initial leg work before we started the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm worried that my junior position makes me fairly vulnerable, but more particularly that I'll come off looking like a snotty-nosed know-it-all. I know that I might be discounting some of the other expenses here, such as servers (cheap!) and administrators (not so cheap) to maintain the system, but I'm almost 100% certain that I'm not discounting it to the tune of around a half-years' salary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a fairly good repoire with my manager, so I'm sure that will help. I'm also aware of decision fatigue, so I'll make sure to bring it up in the morning or right after lunch. What other skills/data should I bring to the table to increase the chances that I'll be taken seriously?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2544" LastActivityDate="2011-11-22T12:45:51.710" Title="What techniques are necessary to convince (upper) management to abandon a project once time has been invested?" Tags="&lt;personal-skills&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3913" CreationDate="2011-11-21T22:15:35.733" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In no particular order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure you understand clearly what your intention is, and convey that at the start of the discussion as an opener. It helps if your intention is tied minimally to your own emotions, and has the company's interests in focus.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even if your environment has an open door policy (come in and talk any time), send out a meeting request with what you want to discuss. That way you know your manager isn't going to be in a rush to get to something else. And it lets them not be blindsided.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You've got a clear idea of how much has been spent, do you have an idea of how much it is going to cost to fix the issues that remain with the in-house solution? What has already been spent is gone. It is important to compare the costs going forward on each path.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be willing to honestly listen to their side, don't interrupt. You may pick up some information you weren't aware of. And if not, at least you have been polite.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;See if any of the more senior developers agree with you. If none of them do, see if there is a pattern to why not. If you find an ally, it can be beneficial.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastActivityDate="2011-11-21T22:15:35.733" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3913" CreationDate="2011-11-21T22:38:17.107" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Build vs Buy discussion is one that I hope would have taken place for something as common as an issue tracking system. Prior to booking a meeting or lunch meeting with your manager I would dig a little deeper into the &quot;somehow we built this...&quot; aspect of your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are their aspects of the tracking system you are building that are very specialized to your core business needs? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there aren't I would book a meeting keeping the points that Kyle already mentioned in mind.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastActivityDate="2011-11-21T22:38:17.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3913" CreationDate="2011-11-21T22:42:41.933" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it often appears folks up the chain of command do not know what they are doing, in most cases, they have information you do not and they do know what they are doing despite the seemingly glaring contrary evidence.  Being just less than six months into your career, you have at least five more years of some significant learning before you would have an ounce of credibility to challenge decisions made, and even at that time you would be advised to tread carefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were you, I'd keep my mouth shut except to ask questions with the intent to learn, not to challenge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-11-21T22:42:41.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3894" CreationDate="2011-11-22T01:41:10.577" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I've seen, there is one common reason:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is easier to budget&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The finance people have a lot of influence over organizational structure due to the way that they sort, categorize, and track expenses and they are normally non-technical. Since a specific function is easier for a non-technical outsider to identify, your financial people are more likely to group cost by function ($XX for e-mail, $YY for network connectivity, $ZZ for telephony, etc.) and then count and track &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; expenses along those lines - including staff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This tends to match the management thinking, too. If there is an internal CRM tool, they want to know how much it costs to run it, program it, and manage it as a &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;whole&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; so it makes sense to place the ops, dev, and managers for that tool all together in a single pot. You can then use that in discussion/negotiation with other business groups, too - &quot;Your CRM is costing us $XXX and is supporting your team of YY people, so we would like to take $ZZZ of your annual budget&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cross-team, cross-function opportunities, costs, and associated friction get lost in this mode of thinking, as your question points out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-11-22T01:41:10.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="139" CreationDate="2011-11-22T02:55:38.420" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding the first part of your question, i'd assume it is even less important than when you're doing other kind of projects, say refactoring or migrating codebases... in those cases you probably need at least knowledge about both platforms, compilers (for language migrations) and databases (in general) to grasp what's happening and what can go wrong, etc. The more prepared you are, the better you'll be able to handle tricky situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1894" LastActivityDate="2011-11-22T02:55:38.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3913" CreationDate="2011-11-22T04:55:46.963" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given your level of experience, and that you've only presented your view of things, we have no real way of knowing if you're correct. So in this case I would suggest you heed David's advice and err on the side of caution. You're in no position to &quot;convince&quot; anyone of anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, there's nothing wrong with pursuing this, but you must do it from the right perspective. You DON'T know the why's, so ask. Ask if you can talk to your manager, with the stated intention of learning more and understanding the decisions. Tell him that you realize you're new at this, and from where you sit it doesn't make sense, so there must be something YOU'RE missing, and would he help you understand it? Most people are happy to walk you through their thought processes and explain how they got to some conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And who knows. Maybe you're correct in your thinking and a conversation like this turn on a light bulb in them. But only if you're genuinely doing it from the postion of learning and trying to help, not arrogance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2011-11-22T04:55:46.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3913" CreationDate="2011-11-22T08:37:07.937" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general such a question should be more of &quot;What to do now ...&quot; than about &quot;How to tell management...&quot; that changes everything. Here is what i would recommend. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Be very clear about the &lt;em&gt;problem&lt;/em&gt; - initially, i would rather raise the questions only about existing approaches. Point out all laps and issues that are arising that are measured/observed by everyone and agreed upon issues. If what you see as issue, is seen by others as &lt;em&gt;great way or only way&lt;/em&gt; to do things- chances are suggesting alternatives is looked like trying to fix what ain't broken!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Focus on CORE issue. I mean here, is that what is &lt;em&gt;one fundamental&lt;/em&gt; (try maximum 3) reason why things are wrong. My boss here always puts a point as &quot;give me one reason to change things - not 10!&quot;. The reason is at times there are so many reasons to change things but none are significant to affect the status quo; that doesn't help. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make sure that &lt;em&gt;the reason&lt;/em&gt; you find is generally an accepted problem by all. When people disagree that such a problem exists, it would backfire. When finance people disagree that project is &lt;em&gt;unwanted cost&lt;/em&gt; -management won't take anyone's advice. And unless customer's formal complain piles up people wont believe that services are not delivered properly. This is generally a case, because whenever there are certain things supported, there has always been long running beliefs in the favor of the project. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In no way, a suggestion should look a counter prejudice about promoting some other project. (In your case FogBugz) Else usually, the argument might go against the alternative you are suggesting rather than the core issue.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most important - make sure to be objective. Any discussion, debates, one must stick to agenda of a clearly defined objective and purpose. When people perceive you to be biased, no further argument from your side might ever help.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might sound as if putting management on the darkest side of the work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2393" LastActivityDate="2011-11-22T08:37:07.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3921" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3928" CreationDate="2011-11-22T12:38:43.220" Score="3" ViewCount="406" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working as Scrum Master on a large software project. We are currently running Scrum. We have about one month left in the development phase before we are supposed to end our implementation phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am strongly considering switching to Kanban (Or GTD) for the last couple of weeks due to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have an absolute deadline&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is very hard to plan two (or one) week ahead now that we are this close to the end. The agenda, priority and outstanding tasks changes almost each day. We daily find new tasks we must remember to do before we can say our development phase is finished.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kanban let me easier identfiy which tasks are waiting for reponse, which tasks are waiting for verification etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anybody have experiences with this? Is this a good idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our sprints are not entirely pontensial shippable increments (I know they should have been, but thats not what I want to discuss here)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2545" LastActivityDate="2011-11-23T07:49:23.377" Title="Going from Scrum to Kanban near “release”" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3772" CreationDate="2011-11-22T12:41:44.013" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend using Kanban for these short periods to avoid &quot;destroying&quot; your standard scrum setup. If your team has great success in your regular sprints butstart failing in these short sprints, they soon lose confidence in their regular sprints as well!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2545" LastActivityDate="2011-11-22T12:41:44.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3913" CreationDate="2011-11-22T12:45:51.710" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do the management of the company have a history of shelving projects which won't pay back for themselves?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they do, then you'll probably find that they are already considering this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, then you're not just talking about getting one project cancelled - you're talking about &lt;em&gt;changing the culture of an entire company&lt;/em&gt;. There may be all kinds of things which you're not aware of that cause the anti-pattern you're seeing: management bonus schemes, a culture of blame, a desire for control over the code, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To increase your chances of being taken seriously, go in with an attitude of curiosity, rather than a desire to change. Ask your manager what he thinks, and empathize with what he says. If the project is cancelled, will he still have a job afterwards? How about &lt;em&gt;his&lt;/em&gt; manager? What other benefits are the team getting from being able to code this themselves? Are they learning useful skills? Are there any other projects that they could be working on that might be more valuable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you decide that you'd like to try changing the culture, then what could you do to create an environment in which change, learning and experimentation were accepted? Small things can be powerful. Can you run a workshop? Arrange for you and your peers to attend a conference? These are the kind of things you probably have the authority to do. Once development teams start to value learning, managers will start to listen and you'll have the backup you need from your peers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also benefit from reading books like Robert Cialdini's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/006124189X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Influence&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, the Heath's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1400064287&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Made to Stick&quot;&lt;/a&gt; or Mary Lynn Manns' and Linda Rising's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0201741571&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Fearless Change&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've worked for a while now as a change agent, and the first thing to do is to listen, appreciate the context, and only then start to create an environment in which change can happen. Also, appreciate that change comes slowly. &lt;em&gt;Really&lt;/em&gt; slowly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're probably not going to be able to do anything about this project - but you could help prevent the next one from going the same way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-11-22T12:45:51.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3924" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3925" CreationDate="2011-11-22T13:46:13.920" Score="2" ViewCount="319" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some projects are not able to be planned, because they depend on innovation not yet available. As an example; the race to the moon. Kennedy said they would bring man to the moon, but at that moment in time, it was not clear what would be needed to do that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the US did it, and did it in the timeframe Kennedy was giving. How can you make such estimations, with so much unclear yet? Are there some ways to plan the unplannable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="57" LastEditorUserId="1885" LastEditDate="2011-11-23T13:48:31.953" LastActivityDate="2011-12-06T11:56:41.867" Title="How to plan projects that are not able to be planned?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3924" CreationDate="2011-11-22T14:05:44.020" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could look at rolling wave planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under rolling wave planning, you only have a detailed plan for a small block of time, perhaps as little as two weeks. You also maintain a &quot;cloud&quot; of tasks that you know that you eventually need to do, but you don't know how to do them, when they need to be done, or dependencies between them. Tasks can be added or removed to this cloud throughout the project. You also have milestones and a final goal that you keep moving toward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a continuous basis, you revise your detailed schedule using known information. How you maintain that detailed schedule is up to you - it could be a WBS, a Gantt Chart, or something else entirely. However, it only contains a small segment of the project, that which is known at the time. As you gain more information and it becomes possible to do new things, you can move tasks out of the cloud into the detailed schedule, add tasks to the cloud, or delete tasks that aren't actually necessary from the cloud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can couple this with a stage-gate approach. A stage could be a time boxed interval or at the completion of a milestone, in which you review progress and determine if it's feasible to continue the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some blog posts about rolling wave planning: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jrothman.com/Papers/rolling-wave-planning.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Johanna Rothman&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://pmcrunch.com/project_management_process/rolling-wave-planning-and-progressive-elaboration/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PM Crunch&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://project-management-knowledge.com/definitions/r/rolling-wave-planning/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Management Knowledge&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2011-11-22T14:05:44.020" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3921" CreationDate="2011-11-22T14:26:44.317" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kanban won't help you to identify tasks, but it will make it easier to visualise and address them. I don't know how much you know about Kanban, but here are my hints and tips.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest advantage for me is to make my Kanban board reflect reality. You may find it's more helpful to start by identifying and clustering the work that needs to be done, and then drawing the board up to reflect that work. If work is in different stages of verification, try to reflect those phases as close to production as you can - this will help you identify what needs to be done and who needs to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, we finish what we &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt;, and we don't start anything new - even if we need it - until we've finished the needed work that's already in progress. That helps us limit our work. It sounds like you've already exceeded any WIP limits that might help; however, you can work out who's busiest and help them (especially your testers!) and encourage the team to help each other finish before starting anything new. If you manage to get a flow of work going, put WIP limits in place at that point, but don't forget that the work needs to make it all the way through to production-ready.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're getting new tasks every day, you'll need access to your business experts more frequently than you used to in Scrum. Are they ready for that? You can have a separate cadence for engaging them, retrospectives, showcases, etc. - you don't have to be tied to sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If at any point the team seems resistant it may be worth rethinking. Learning new things tends to slow a team down at first, and you may not have time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, it may be possible at this late stage that nothing you do can result in a successful release - Kanban isn't a silver bullet. Best of luck with it, and I hope your project release is a pleasant surprise for everyone!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-11-22T14:26:44.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3921" CreationDate="2011-11-22T15:07:28.570" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would be hesitant to switching to a different methodology in the &quot;crunch&quot; of a deadline. Generally when you make this type of change the team slows down for a few weeks until they get into the groove. By the sounds of it you don't have that option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you considered moving to a one week sprint increment given that your scope is in flux for the remaining work of your project? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the scrum master have you talked with the teams delivering the work and ask them how they feel about the scope and what &quot;could&quot; be done to assist them in delivering on time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastActivityDate="2011-11-22T15:07:28.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3921" CreationDate="2011-11-23T07:49:23.377" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even though I can be considered a Kanban proponent I would think twice before making such move.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On one side:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Kanban deals very neatly with rapidly changing task priorities. It is a good answer for environments where classic time-boxed approach, here: Scrum, doesn't work very well.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Introducing simple Kanban system doesn't require much effort.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Kanban itself isn't an approach to software development and/or project management and should be put on the top of something. However, it seems that you already have this &quot;something&quot; as, at the moment, you have your project organized.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Adding new tool to your toolbox always adds some hassle and, since you are at the end of the project, it may not be such a good idea to add the hassle now.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Kanban, as pretty much any other tool, will give you value if and only if you get team buy-in before introducing it. I mean Kanban board is useless unless it is updated by everyone in the team regularly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are fluent with what you do, namely following Scrum, resigning from a part of it, namely time-boxing, may have a negative impact on team's productivity. At the same time it'll take some time before you get familiar with a new method, so there can be a question when you're going to get value of switching to other method.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, I would definitely consider Kanban to such work as it gives you pretty good visibility and high flexibility in a situation where priorities are changing all the time. However, I wouldn't say that, in your case, it is a sure-shot decision. If you planned for it in a bit longer perspective it would be a no-brainer to try Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I'd probably try anyway and treat it as an experiment. If it works you keep doing it. If it doesn't you retreat back to what you are good at and eventually try Kanban in another project with a bit more preparation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-11-23T07:49:23.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3924" CreationDate="2011-11-23T09:23:16.163" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When the project depends on innovation, it sounds like impossible to manage schedules. This is usually a well observed phenomenon. However, what is even more important to realize is that you should &lt;em&gt;not even try&lt;/em&gt; to manage schedule! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, that sounds counter to any project management practice. But i will elaborate. On a normal day when you commute, you iterate over a few possible paths initially that tries to minimize the time it takes from reaching your source to destination. But when you are on a trekking, much more important than reaching home back in a &lt;em&gt;predictable time&lt;/em&gt;, than to really worry about the fact that you don't carry any unwanted injuries; and definitely you want to bring predictability in schedule at the cost of such injuries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not to say that you allow arbitrary lack of discipline for crucial projects; but rather you re-define what is important. The most important things you try to control and track is &lt;em&gt;risk&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;total cost&lt;/em&gt;. Eventually you will see that while you could not predict schedule, you would still end up with what would have been your best case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some pointers to think about: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Measure and manage &lt;em&gt;risk&lt;/em&gt; - in research projects, we track what is the next biggest bottleneck which could potentially turnout to to be a show stoppers. Sometimes, even if the risk is not going to be a show stopper, it can be potentially be a cause for making a huge section of work irrelevant time and money to put is a waste. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Experiment and learn - when uncertainties are abound one must try out somethings with a small elements and validate the proposition. Do not put any (or put least possible) effort and money which may or may be relevant in the light of above validation.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Track total cost that schedule - time wasted is sometimes new learning so it is either cost or investment. But what is important is that efforts which has been made which is neither productive nor result in any learning, usually means money and time both wasted. Tracking only &lt;em&gt;time&lt;/em&gt; against results in an unpredictable results often misses this point. which is very crucial. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Plan often and plan to throw away plan - since new learning will transform how you think about the whole thing, iteratively keep planning again. In fact, most often, you should only plan for the next milestone. Yes, in many cases, customers won't be happy but you will realize that your plan needs to be very accurate till next milestone, where as next milestones are a bit hazy because they depend on the outcomes of the first one. So it is best as that you can provide gradually reducing list of milestone. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Over communicate - when things are at stake, and world is uncertain, the worst night mare could be that you tie up yourself in the room alone. Many decisions needs to be taken, and as much as you invite all others in making decisions, and provide them the potential consequences of each decisions, it would benefit to digest (and recover from it) the potential disasters as and when happen. Also, adding more perspectives in decision making and communication helps over looking potentially disastrous problems. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2393" LastActivityDate="2011-11-23T09:23:16.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3924" CreationDate="2011-11-23T11:43:29.287" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Plans, like work, have layers of abstraction.  If you have some grand, huge idea that is so complex and/or depends on things that have not yet been invented, it is as plan-able as planning a small landscaping project, just in a more abstract way.  As you progress, you decompose those layers, driving your plan to a more tactical, more precise level of abstraction, to the point where you can execute.  Using progressive elaboration as discussed earlier, your making pieces of your plan more tactical as you become more in the know, while leaving other portions of your plan still abstract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can set an abstract schedule, as well, just like Kennedy did.  It is called a Rough Order of Magnitude target, one that has a known plus or minus variance.  That schedule becomes more precise as you move along, moving to a notional estimate, then to a tactical target against which you would measure your performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-11-23T11:43:29.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3931" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3933" CreationDate="2011-11-23T16:17:28.603" Score="5" ViewCount="13430" Body="&lt;p&gt;Could someone give me the information about how one structures the s.c. &quot;work packages&quot;? I have never done this before but that's my task now. I need to describe use-cases, preliminary definitions, example workflows of the application, goals, I/O of the application, requirements etc. Does someone have a sample document with &quot;work packages&quot; or a link to some corresponding resource in the Web?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is for a software development project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2553" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-10-05T05:01:06.970" LastActivityDate="2014-10-06T11:05:27.727" Title="How to structure a &quot;work package&quot;?" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3931" CreationDate="2011-11-23T17:44:32.697" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The default PRINCE2 template is located at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prince-officialsite.com/Resources/Resources.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this location&lt;/a&gt;, just click on the link to &quot;Download the PRINCE2 Templates&quot;. This will open a zip file that includes work package documentation among others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2011-11-23T17:44:32.697" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3931" CreationDate="2011-11-23T20:25:30.643" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A work package is typically the lowest level of your WBS.  It is the level at which you are able to adequately estimate the required resources:  human, materiel, time.  The package itself is usually described in the WBS Dictionary.  This artifact would detail for a package its target costs, the planned start date and finish date, dependencies, inputs and outputs, verification and validation criteria, who is accountable, resources involved, and risks and mitigation / contingency information.  Information that goes into the dictionary are the things the package manager needs to know.  Keep it simple and short but make sure it is comprehensive enough such that a replacement package manager can read it and go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this what you are talking about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-11-23T20:25:30.643" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3908" CreationDate="2011-11-23T21:31:27.583" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was a PM at Microsoft for 7 years + 2 internships.  Great experience especially for folks like you who are anxious to grow/learn/change-the-world.  2 best things to read are this blog post: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2011/04/19/summer_intern_field_guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2011/04/19/summer_intern_field_guide.html&lt;/a&gt; and a book called &quot;the art of project management&quot; written by another former Microsoft PM.  An excerpt from that book is at &lt;a href=&quot;http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480154.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480154.aspx&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2556" LastActivityDate="2011-11-23T21:31:27.583" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3935" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3937" CreationDate="2011-11-23T21:51:19.610" Score="51" ViewCount="15510" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given that you have a feature tracking through your Kanban board, the dev marks it done, it's pulled into QA, and the dev pulls in new work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;QA fails the item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now what? You can't move it back into the dev stream as it's full. You can't move it forward into Deployment as it's not working properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where does it go? Or does it go all the way to the left to approved tasks with a high priority, for analysis to pull in and add any details to it, and then for devs to pull in from there? Assuming your flow looked something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Backlog -&gt; Start -&gt; Analysis -&gt; Dev -&gt; QA -&gt; Deployment -&gt; Done&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1414" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-11-24T10:14:20.907" LastActivityDate="2020-07-23T18:07:51.340" Title="Kanban, moving items back? Or how do you manage mistakes?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3935" CreationDate="2011-11-24T03:43:43.900" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many ways to deal with this. But before that, remember that there are no 'rules' in Kanban -- it is just what your team decides. For example, you say you cannot move the card back because the WIP is full. Well, if your team creates a policy that you can override the WIP when a defect is found, then thats your team policy and now you can move it back :) (just make the policy explicit so that everyone understands and agrees to it)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the options&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I mentioned one option above - move the card back. You can agree on a team policy that defects can override the limits in upstream lanes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another option is to mark the card blocked and leave it in the QA lane. If you look at the board right to left, then the first action is for team members to swarm &amp;amp; resolve the block in QA before continuing with the existing work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Third option is to mark the card blocked, and create a new card (maybe in a different colour) to track the impediment. &#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The new card can move through the same lanes,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;or it could jump certain lanes (analysis may not be needed for example), &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;or you can create a swimlane just for the impediments to flow, maybe with columns Not Started-&gt;In Progress-&gt;Done. If you create a separate swimlane, you can use that to track any impediment, not just defects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which option you choose depends on your situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you choose to block the card in the QA lane, then the card will be occupying one spot in your WIP limit. So while the block exists, you may have a tester free. If the team is cross-functional, that person could perhaps help out upstream in the system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you prefer not to block up the WIP in QA (ie, have the testers continue testing other cards at full WIP), then Option 1 might be for you, as it frees up the QA lane.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a tight cross functional team, swarming might be the best option. The card gets blocked, tester &amp;amp; dev pair up, the defect is fixed, and it moves on. Shortest lead time. If you have handoffs, then Option 3 gives you more visibility. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing here is to implement one of the options and then keep taking steps to improve the system. Don't be content to just say, okay we can now handle defects on our kanban board, and leave it at that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you have handoffs and implement Option 3 to get visibility into the time taken to fix bugs, then look at that and ask: How can we shorten this feedback loop? Can we bring testing &amp;amp; development into closer collaboration? If you see a lot of defect cards generated at the QA lane, then ask: Why are we generating these defects, and how can we fix it? Should we implement acceptance tests up front? .. and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2392" LastActivityDate="2011-11-24T03:43:43.900" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3935" CreationDate="2011-11-24T10:12:45.360" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since one of Kanban rules is to make policies explicit you should define what exactly &amp;quot;QA&amp;quot; stage in your process means and what kind of activities it covers. One of common approaches is that such stage covers both testing and fixing bugs, which means that it is perfectly normal to work on the code, namely fix bugs, when a feature is in QA stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you can choose an isolated approach as well, where unless feature is fully tested and decision is made whether it is good or not nothing in code changes. Note however that such approach basically hampers the flow as you create formal, and possibly multiple, hand-offs during testing/bug fixing stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Thus, my first advice would be to treat your QA stage as the one covering both testing and bug fixing which basically renders the problem of moving index cards anywhere irrelevant.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, since basically you should first deal with the features which are closer to completion a team member should first deal with any bugs they do have in features being tested and only then move to new features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: that I don't necessarily consider that a feature, which we found bug in, should automatically be blocked. If this is rather common situation I wouldn't do that. If you overuse blockers they don't have that much of value anymore. Besides, the question is: do you really need to treat it as emergency and swarm over a feature when just a couple of bugs are fund there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other ideas to deal with the problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You may think of &lt;strong&gt;moving cards back&lt;/strong&gt; but personally I don't recommend it. It just adds a lot of hassle. You can have policies that you can violate limits in such situation (as Siddhi suggests) but still I'd say the chaos it introduces isn't worth the value you may gain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You may &lt;strong&gt;&amp;quot;park&amp;quot; features&lt;/strong&gt; which didn't pass testing. You may have dedicated subcolumn where you put such features so everyone knows that they require bug-fixing. Additionally you may decide whether these features count to your limits or not. &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2010/10/kanban-moving-cards-back.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;I wrote more on such approach here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You may just &lt;strong&gt;visualize status of testing&lt;/strong&gt;, e.g. testing started, testing passed, testing failed, with additional visual signal and keep the index cards in QA column. You get the same information you'd get with moving cards back but it doesn't introduce chaos to the board. &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2011/08/map-process-to-kanban-board.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;I mentioned and described such approach here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You may &lt;strong&gt;deal with bugs using additional information radiator&lt;/strong&gt;, usually not a full-blown Kanban board. Then, again, you keep the index cards in QA stage but you deal with bugs independently. &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20200120183311/http://joakimsunden.com/2011/06/one-way-of-handling-small-tasks-on-a-kanban-board/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Joakim Sunden shares a neat method to deal with such tasks&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way my advice would be to start with a simplest possible method which seems to work. You probably neither want nor need a complex tool to cope with the problem, thus the first idea to just define the process in a way that makes the issue non-existent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way: QA comes from Quality Assurance which is way more than testing or QC (Quality Control) which is what you seem to do in your QA stage. &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/666/how-quality-assurance-is-related-to-testing&quot;&gt;Read more here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-23T18:07:51.340" LastActivityDate="2020-07-23T18:07:51.340" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3908" CreationDate="2011-11-24T16:49:37.237" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PMI's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/PMBOK-Guide-and-Standards/Standards-Library-of-PMI-Global-Standards.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Practice Standard for Program Management&lt;/a&gt; is a wealth of information on the general components of program management and the various moving pieces involved.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like all standards, it is not a methodology, but an inventory of possible elements in a program and a conceptual framework of how they all hang together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-11-24T16:49:37.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3939" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3940" CreationDate="2011-11-24T17:42:39.013" Score="11" ViewCount="1822" Body="&lt;p&gt;The company I work for has recently greenlit a large project to completely rewrite our software product. As PM, I have championed using Scrum on the project and the company have been very supportive of the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Howevever this is the first time I, or any of the developers, have been involved on a Scrum project. We've are in the middle of our fourth sprint now, but I have a ton of questions (I'll just stick to my top three for now!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) Estimating in Story Points.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This is probably the number one thing we struggle with during our planning sessions. At first I got the team to estimate in Ideal Man Days since the concept of Story Points was too alien. However, from the third sprint onwards I've tried to shepherd them into using Story Points (based on effort not time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even after two sprints using Story Points I still get the question, &quot;what does one story point mean?&quot;. Despite the hours of online research I've put in, I myself feel unsure how I should answer this question. I tend to fall back to the Ideal Man Day since it's the easiest thing for everyone to understand, but I would really like to give a definitive answer to the team that isn't fluffy or vague. Unfortunately, almost every explanation I've come across on the web suffers from this. Am I to presume that a Story Point means different things to different teams?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) Breaking stories down into tasks&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;My question here is how much of the story should be broken down into tasks during the planning session? We have been generating an average of four tasks per story, but some of these could be broken down even further. While I understand that too many tasks is a bad thing, I get concerned when I see the same task in progress for more than a day or two. So I'm a little torn as to how granular the tasks should be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I've found breaking down a story too much during the planning session was digressing into a design discussion. When I raised this with the team they countered that they needed to fully explore the story in order to generate tasks and help with with the estimatation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3) Technical Stories&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;From what I've studied, stories should cover a feature of the product that adds value to the business. However, since we are at the beginning of the project, most of our stories tend to be techincal in nature. An recent example of this is, &quot;As a developer, I need to be able to create a MuleESB app and integrate it into our build environment&quot;. This kind of story adds no value from a business point of view, but is crucial in laying the foundation for the work to come.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is whether it is ok to have techincal stories and assign them points. I am concerned that if I don't, then the team's velocity will be very low and it will look like they've not been doing very much; at least in the early phases of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastActivityDate="2020-07-12T07:32:42.777" Title="Help with stories in Scrum" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3939" CreationDate="2011-11-24T21:34:13.117" Score="9" Body="&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1) Estimating in Story Points.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A common criticism of story points is that they will mean different things to different teams. So yes, you are correct in your presumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimating in story points in my opinion is not only faster than estimating in developer days but will become more accurate over time. That is of course you get by the initial learning curve of estimating in these units.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, you need to recognize that story points are an estimate of effort...not complexity. You had mentioned this is what you were driving for but your team members need to understand that difference as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To combat the &amp;quot;what does 1 story point mean syndrome&amp;quot; take a story from a previous sprint that everybody on the team has a good understanding of. The story should have an an estimate of &lt;strong&gt;2&lt;/strong&gt; assigned to it (assuming you are Fibonacci numbers, if not I would recommend looking into it). This is now your &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;keystone&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;!!! Frame it and take it to every single estimation meeting. Every estimate the team makes should use this keystone as a reference point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does two things for a scrum team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your estimates will have an anchor, so that you can confidently say that from estimation meeting to estimation meeting your estimates will mean the same thing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can now measure improvement. If your estimates are anchored then you can see if your team is getting faster / slower and your burn up/down charts will be that much more accurate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also will answer the question of what does one story point mean. It is any story that will take less effort than the keystone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;2) Breaking stories down into tasks&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are breaking stories into developer tasks within an estimation meeting then you have found yourself more than likely a poorly written user story (most often to large in size). Kick the story from the sprint and break it down for the next estimation meeting. Leave the break down of story either to when it is picked up from the board and designed or if your team prefers at a design meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, developers do not need to break down a story into tasks to estimate it. Is it more effort than the keystone card? Smaller, the same? Do they understand the story after a brief discussion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answer those questions and move on! Estimation meetings should be quick. The scrum master on the team needs to ensure this discussion doesn't dive into the nitty gritty details of design!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;3) Technical Stories&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories should always be taken back to business value. If you're developing a story that has no business value than you should question why is it in your sprint? Again, this can be attributed to a poorly written story. Why does the developer need to write a MuleESB app? What benefit does it have on your project? The company? The foundation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing that should not have a story point on it (in my opinion) is a bug that was a result of a previously released iteration and you have found it on your board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Writing Good User Stories&lt;/strong&gt; As the PM (product owner scrum role) you need to be writing good user stories. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170301070224/http://www.allaboutagile.com/invest-in-good-user-stories/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;invest mnemonic&lt;/a&gt; is in my opinion one of the most fundamental aspects of writing good stories that often gets overlooked. INVEST in good user stories!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the good user stories front, if you haven't read Mike Cohn's book I would highly recommend it: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.ca/User-Stories-Applied-Software-Development/dp/0321205685&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.ca/User-Stories-Applied-Software-Development/dp/0321205685&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-12T07:32:42.777" LastActivityDate="2020-07-12T07:32:42.777" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3939" CreationDate="2011-11-25T05:51:20.127" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding &lt;strong&gt;Technical Stories&lt;/strong&gt;, there will always be a need for these in Agile projects, such as R&amp;amp;D or architectural enhancements, etc. These are different from &lt;strong&gt;User Stories&lt;/strong&gt; and are referred to as &lt;strong&gt;Spikes&lt;/strong&gt;. Spikes are time-boxed but may not be add business values and may not be potentially shippable. Spikes are part of Sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem I see is that you have mentioned, &quot;most of our stories tend to be technical in nature&quot;. This could mean that your team has failed to identify and write good stories. My recommendation for the team would be to refresh the concept of &quot;user story&quot;. Lets take your example, &quot;As a developer, I need to be able to create a MuleESB app and integrate it into our build environment&quot;. First of all, &quot;as a developer&quot; is going against the Agile mindset. A good user story starts with the &quot;target system user&quot;, such as, &quot;As a portal admin, I want to ... so that I can ...&quot; or &quot;As a premium user, ...&quot; or &quot;As an accounts manager, ...&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, your client does not want a MuleESB app. So this can not be a user story. Lets say, client wants to see the historical data, present in legacy system, on the web application interface. To deliver this user story, technical team may have to create a MuleESB app so that data can be transferred from the legacy system to the web application. Think why do you need to create MuleESB app? for which user function? Creating MuleESB app could be a task of this user story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Important part here is that the MuleESB app should be programmed to fetch the required data only, even though you know that more integration points will be required for other stories in future but do not implement those in this sprint. This is the &quot;art of maximizing the amount of work not done&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you have created a vertical thin slice of the required system in this particular user story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2011-11-25T05:51:20.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3939" CreationDate="2011-11-25T11:17:00.820" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many of the cases, it´s very difficult to shows that a technical US can add value to the business ! Most of us have the mindset that something that can't give some ROI to the company must be removed from the backlog. But if this spikes - as Jesse used to describe technical US - could aggregate some value to the team, and this value can let the team be more efective and do the things more quickly, than you are adding value to your company since you can be more productive and put more quality in what your team delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2568" LastActivityDate="2011-11-25T11:17:00.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3939" CreationDate="2011-11-25T12:00:34.267" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) Estimating in story points&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try estimating with T-Shirt sizes: Small, Medium, Large (S, M, L). Anything which is an Extra Large (XL) can be split up into smaller stories. You can then correlate these back into relative points - 1, 2 and 4 work well for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also alternatives to estimates. It might be worth looking at Lean / Kanban's measurements of Lead Time and Cycle Time, and definitely read &lt;a href=&quot;http://dannorth.net/2009/07/01/the-perils-of-estimation/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dan North's post on the perils of estimation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) Breaking stories into tasks&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a think about &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; you break stories into tasks. Is it just to show progress? Or is it to allow the team to collaborate? Does it help the team to estimate the stories they're doing? When you understand the benefits that the tasks are providing, you'll have a better idea about the granularity you need. &lt;a href=&quot;http://lizkeogh.com/2011/08/23/splitting-stories-into-tasks-when-why-and-how-or-not/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;I also wrote a post about it recently which might help.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3) Technical Stories&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only reason this is confusing is because we refer to stories as &quot;User Stories&quot;. They're not! Often stories aren't created for the benefit of the user - they're created for &lt;a href=&quot;http://lizkeogh.com/2010/02/02/theyre-not-user-stories/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the benefit of some other stakeholder&lt;/a&gt;. For instance, think about adverts on a website or a CAPTCHA box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technical stories are also usually done for the benefit of some stakeholder in the project. Perhaps they're there for a security specialist, or for performance, or for maintainability going forward. If you can find the business benefit, you can phrase technical stories accordingly. I like to put the &quot;so that&quot; at the top:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;In order to keep the site up under peak load&#xA;As the head of advertising&#xA;I want as many pages as possible to be cached.&#xA;&#xA;In order to start the app in less than 10 seconds&#xA;As a user&#xA;I want the initial data load to be done asynchronously.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that the advertising head and the user don't understand what it is they want is beside the point - their overall goals can easily be understood this way, and the business benefit is clear. &lt;a href=&quot;http://lizkeogh.com/2008/09/10/feature-injection-and-handling-technical-stories/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;I wrote a post about this too&lt;/a&gt;, with more examples of technical stories that you can look at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2011-11-25T12:00:34.267" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3945" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4001" CreationDate="2011-11-27T09:33:35.267" Score="10" ViewCount="1120" Body="&lt;p&gt;What strategies can I take to write a good project proposal document?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far the way I write them is that I include 3 main sections:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical Details &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Delivery Items &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cost Estimation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My understanding is that this should be a document that describes in general how you plan to deal with the project. &#xA;Should I go into as many details as possible so early? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="750" LastEditorUserId="927" LastEditDate="2011-11-28T14:34:21.917" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T06:37:24.317" Title="Writing the perfect proposal" Tags="&lt;initiation&gt;&lt;project-proposal&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3945" CreationDate="2011-11-27T12:09:15.423" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot depends on the audience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Figure out who has the biggest say (and its not always the boss) and who WILL read the report. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then tailor the proposal for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should always cover all the bases anyway just for completeness sake, but figuring out who has the most input in the decision making process and focusing on them tends to work best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1849" LastActivityDate="2011-11-27T12:09:15.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3945" CreationDate="2011-11-27T12:54:17.087" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are competing, then it is less about the project and your approach and more about why you and your company. Once the approach is described, the language needs to become about benefits to the buying organization and why it is your company that can deliver them. Proof points become important. Ghosting, where you in a professional way degrade your competitors, becomes important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proposal outline should mirror the buyers SOW or RFP. that way they can easily map your prop back to their requirements. Since labor is part of the deal, you can also include a summary on key personnel you plan on deploying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-11-27T12:54:17.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3846" CreationDate="2011-11-27T15:37:29.657" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to go a slightly different direction on this one. All of the above responses are great and deserve a +1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what I'd suggest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google+ - Honestly, I think I can describe in very few steps just how well using google's social platform would help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create a circle for the team members, this way you can share content with everyone in the team, everyone no matter where they are can be notified of new content being shared, everyone can comment on it - easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use a hangout (webcam and mic) to get everyone online and talking together, virtual meeting with everyone involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Portability, the mobile application supports push notifications so if you need to say something while a team member is off attending a lecture they can respond quickly and effectively without having to find a computer and log in to some project management software which is often expensive and they may not have access to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wanted to go one further you could create a board on trello but I don't think for the scope of this project it would be of as much benefit as google plus could be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2241" LastActivityDate="2011-11-27T15:37:29.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3949" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-28T03:59:33.570" Score="5" ViewCount="577" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to build an IT infrastructure based on a &lt;em&gt;free&lt;/em&gt; / affordable &lt;em&gt;online&lt;/em&gt; services (GitHub, BitBucket, etc)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To facilitate collaborative work of a group of independent remote developers (2-5) I need&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a Version Control system to store the code&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an Issue Tracking system to manage tasks and progress and communication (preferably agile, some sort of virtual task board would be great)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a CI server to build and deploy the solution&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the moment we don't have any of those. And we are very sensitive for price. I am considering options and I really need a piece of advice here. Any ideas? What might be a good set up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2584" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T07:29:20.377" Title="VCS + IssueTracking + CI for free?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;work-environment&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2012-10-18T03:15:26.640" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3949" CreationDate="2011-11-28T23:06:47.167" Score="4" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://github.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Github&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Git for Version Control&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Issue tracking with milestones&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://travis-ci.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Travis-CI&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Continuous Integration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of these are hosted for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of these have host-yourself options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2590" LastActivityDate="2011-11-28T23:06:47.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3951" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-28T02:32:52.230" Score="5" ViewCount="471" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work with a geographically distributed team (different timezones) with people from various cultures and background. Some of us have never met each other in person but we communicate with each other over phone, chat and email almost on an hourly basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of our meetings and discussions are dead serious and boring. What's worse, any attempt at humor is not very well received because of cultural differences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel that we are all taking our work a bit too seriously. We don't shy away from painful arguments, nasty emails and heated discussions when things go wrong but never attempt to develop camaraderie or friendships in better times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know your experiences with such situations and what, if anything, did you do to lighten things up at workplace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Rahul" LastActivityDate="2011-12-06T22:37:43.223" Title="What can I do to encourage teams to lighten up?" Tags="&lt;work-environment&gt;&lt;culture&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3951" CreationDate="2011-11-28T03:10:21.967" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Working with remote teams from different cultures always has difficulties. Over the years I have developed strong professional relationships with developers in various remote offices. These a build on professional respect first and foremost. You say &quot;lighten up&quot;, but from what I have read in your question, &quot;behave professionally&quot; would be the first step. Drill down and finds out where the animosity is coming from - are your deadlines too tight, are you expecting too much from others, or they too much from you. Be honest. If they are 'idiots', accept it and work within their capabilities. If your the 'idiot', let them know what you can and cannot do.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Develop a culture of keeping emotion out of non-verbal communications. Use the phone instead of email where possible, follow up detailed or complex email discussions with phone calls. The more verbal communication you have, the more of a person, and less of a machine you will perceive the others to be (and vs versa.). That said, ensure all verbal agreements are followed up with emails summarizing decisions made.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smile when you talk on the phone - it makes a difference even though the other guy cannot see you, but keep it professional. As a rule, jokes etc should be avoided untill you have a strong professional relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do have a chance to meet them, make sure you go out to a meal or drink together, and avoid talk about work. Bump into the them at the water cooler if you have to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="mattnz" LastActivityDate="2011-11-28T03:10:21.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3953" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-28T22:53:05.563" Score="36" ViewCount="2996" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for a small web company that deals with a lot of projects, a few at any given time are development heavy for us (400-1500 hours or more) and I've been noticing developers get extremely burnt out on a project after 150 hours or so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been toying around with the idea of working some form of rotation/rest so when someone reaches the threshold, they at least get some time off of working on that project. Is there an industry standard approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Shawn Dalma" LastEditorUserId="2602" LastEditDate="2011-11-30T03:21:45.363" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T11:31:39.227" Title="How can I avoid team burnout?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="25" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3953" CreationDate="2011-11-28T22:57:58.320" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on how many hours they do in a week. Overworking because of deadlines often leads in stress for the developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="José Valente" LastActivityDate="2011-11-28T22:57:58.320" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3953" CreationDate="2011-11-28T23:25:01.743" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some common reasons for this may be (one or more of the following):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Developers are not fluent enough in the technologies used and they spend time learning on the job, so they have to work more to deliver as expected&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lack of good analysis and lots of re-work&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The customer keeps changing the requirements&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Unrealistic goals/time set by Project Management or in the project plan&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lack of a process approach to development, tasks are not streamlined&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Under utilization of good tools&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Insufficient re-use of common code&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lack of focus, with 1 developer assigned several unrelated tasks&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Unlimited overtime pay - The more you work, the more we pay you&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Management insistence on compliance to standards such as CMM without providing time in the project plan for the documentation effort&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Resolving some of the causes should improve the situation. Examination of each developer's case would also help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2595" OwnerDisplayName="Emmad Kareem" LastEditorUserId="2602" LastEditDate="2012-03-15T19:17:27.570" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T19:17:27.570" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3953" CreationDate="2011-11-28T23:37:38.073" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have identified a pattern, you should probably follow up on it.  Pre-emptive time off to prevent burnout is certainly a viable idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, 150 hours does seem to be a pretty short amount of time to start burning out, and 40-45 hours a week is not excessive, so you might want to examine what it is in your work conditions that is causing the burn-out.  @Emmad Kareem suggests some good possibilities.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go out and listen to what the developers are talking and/or complaining about--are there any patterns there as well?  Are the ones who work multiple projects complaining about constant context switching?  Is the management driving them nuts?  Good, constructive communication is the best preventative for burn-out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2593" OwnerDisplayName="Matthew Flynn" LastActivityDate="2011-11-28T23:37:38.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3953" CreationDate="2011-11-29T00:04:40.447" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As many have said, 1 month of work is, is too soon to for one to get  burnt out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My guess is you have an issue with low morale. Not a &quot;Burnout&quot; one.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't even begin to guess why that is, but i think it is something you should look in to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="535" OwnerDisplayName="Morons" LastActivityDate="2011-11-29T03:03:12.617" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3953" CreationDate="2011-11-29T00:54:49.477" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;People &quot;burn out&quot; because they're getting &quot;burned.&quot;  As others have said, if they're only pulling normal work weeks (40-45 hrs) during normal hours (not any forced third shift goofyness, which has proven health detriments), then you need to find what's missing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you have many short-ish projects, I'd suggest something as simple as one milestone party (lunch catered in), and maybe a end-of-project party (again with catered food) and the Friday of that week off.  Food is good- you'd be surprised how far a box of donuts every Friday morning will go towards morale.  Basic human psychology- if you have a full belly of decent food you start your day a couple points happier :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="anon" LastActivityDate="2011-11-29T00:54:49.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3953" CreationDate="2011-11-29T02:16:22.370" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In every point below I aim to provide usable options for &quot;How can I avoid team burnout?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although there is often no single cause to this, given &quot;extremely burnt out on a project after 150 hours or so.&quot;, I would look at all possible areas.  Make it a &quot;project&quot; and present it up (mgmt) and down (team) to get both resources and buy-in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found that burnout does not so much happen &quot;at&quot; a specific point and it varies from person to person.  For some it's 300-400 hours.  For others it's 1000-5000 or more as you note.  Regardless of the hours, burnout builds over time and reflects many things.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Without knowing the specifics, from both yourself AND (confidentially - hah!) your staff I would suggest the following as areas to examine and focus on.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;A lot of the things that can make a different are subtle intangibles - but they add up.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The following summary is what I have learned from decades of development and would need to be tailored to your company/budget:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The Team:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Listen First !&lt;/strong&gt;   Ask your team.  Ask again.  Ask every week &quot;what can I do to help you - it's my job!&quot;.  Seek first to understand and then to be understood. :)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be honest&lt;/strong&gt;.  Programmers, like most folks, can sniff out falseness quickly and it's a very demotivating !  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't focus on hours (long or short) focus on dedication and &lt;strong&gt;output&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Encourage, reward and promote developers who want to use &lt;strong&gt;best practices&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Give developers as much &lt;strong&gt;autonomy&lt;/strong&gt; as possible.  Allow mistakes (sometimes) when not critical.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Give developers &lt;strong&gt;variety in&lt;/strong&gt; the &lt;strong&gt;projects&lt;/strong&gt; they are working on concurrently.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Provide &lt;strong&gt;general training&lt;/strong&gt;.  Developers need to continue improving skills in a variety of areas to stay current.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Provide &lt;strong&gt;specific training&lt;/strong&gt;.  Developers need the skills to do the specific tasks at hand, or they are forced to learn on the job, reducing the time to do the job (let alone well) which is frustrating and stressful.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Send developers to &lt;strong&gt;conferences&lt;/strong&gt; in relevant technologies.  They improve their skills and you can benefit. Developers are often much more willing to work on 'boring, burnout; stuff if they also get to attend a couple of fun conferences a year and other get other forms of training.  Travel here is good too as it can be a cool benefit itself. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Address &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt&quot;&gt;Technical Debt&lt;/a&gt;.  Understand it and acknowledge it publicly with your tech team and with management when it exists.  Spread knowledge about why it is bad and &lt;strong&gt;better practices&lt;/strong&gt; to address and avoid it.  Technical Debt can be very discouraging to your best developers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Encourage a good attitude and &lt;strong&gt;lead by example&lt;/strong&gt;.  Go to training YOURSELF on better management.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Acknowledge,  praise and encourage good work by your team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use humor (carefully, considering the people) to defuse tense and difficult situations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The Workflow&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If there is a lot of bureaucracy or slowness in the organization, avoid boredom by compensating for 'downtime' with a &lt;strong&gt;variety&lt;/strong&gt; of other work, education, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Developers working with Users sometimes have conflicts due to different perspectives and areas of expertise. Encourage greater &lt;strong&gt;communication&lt;/strong&gt; to address this.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use good tools for project/feature/bug tracking, e.g. Pivotal Tracker.  Pick a tool that your team find easy and helpful to use.  Agree on the usage patterns and appropriate naming, categorization of issues (severity, priority), etc. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Define&lt;/strong&gt; the &lt;strong&gt;workflow&lt;/strong&gt; with clear meetings, communications, messages, etc.  Make sure everyone is on the 'same page' as to what the direction is.  Don't assume they are.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Address issues&lt;/strong&gt; with regular scheduled meetings and never assume that everything is ok.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The Technologies:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Provide &lt;strong&gt;quality equipment&lt;/strong&gt;.  Don't pay a developer 70,000 (or a lot more) and then skimp a few hundred dollars on equipment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Give developers &lt;strong&gt;variety in&lt;/strong&gt; the &lt;strong&gt;technologies&lt;/strong&gt; they are using to keep them fresh.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Provide quality tools.  Quality work by craftsmen and craftwomen requires quality tools, as with all industries.  Give people tools they they find a pleasure to use.  Not a pain and frustration.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Keep a constant supply of cool &lt;strong&gt;tools, technologies and toys&lt;/strong&gt;.  The kind of developers you may want often love this stuff more than $$$.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Encourage developers to specialize in technologies they are most interested in and &lt;strong&gt;enjoy&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Seek out and implement technologies that automate repetitive tasks such as running tests, building code stacks.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use tools that report on code quality and use the output from these tools to be guide and help on making better quality code so the case for doing so doesn't have to just be a conversation, stats can be powerful.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The Things (Physical Environment):&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Provide &lt;strong&gt;a great workplace&lt;/strong&gt; that encourages developers to come into the office (still best for groups working together) rather than work remotely with:- coffee, snacks, juice and a cool environment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Provide quality workstations and quality chairs.  Provide the option of stand-up desks which some enjoy.  Cardboard ones (that work) are available.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Provide a building and rooms with good a/c and heating.  Make sure there are good window blinds and lighting for all.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Provide multiple big screens for each developer and a Big Visible Charts screen to show rotating images of key indicators (build successes, project tracker tickets, New Relic Report, Google Analytics on site visits, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Encourage &lt;strong&gt;breaks&lt;/strong&gt;.  Find fun activities both team and inter-team (outside IS).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Respect&lt;/strong&gt; people's &lt;strong&gt;habits&lt;/strong&gt;.  Some folks need peace and quiet sometimes. Others don't notice noise ever.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Examine the team makeup, is one member (even if competent technically) consistently &lt;strong&gt;'toxic'?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If possible, locate the development team in a 'geek' friendly &lt;strong&gt;location&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Encourage &lt;strong&gt;healthy habits&lt;/strong&gt; with gym membership, on-premise site showers (if possible) for exercisable commutes, healthy snacks (granola bars, fruit, healthy cereal, etc. as opposed to pizza, donuts, baked goods.  If people want other stuff they can still buy it anyway!)  Healthy body = healthy brain &amp;amp; less sick time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Support&lt;/strong&gt; local &lt;strong&gt;User Groups&lt;/strong&gt; for the technologies you use.  Items like this can be subtle but they are basically like image marketing - you buy pizzas for a local user group, or host a meeting, your company looks good and supportive and people feel better working there.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Final comment: realize omg this a full-time job with little time for&#xA;  development and run out with your hair on fire.  Oh yes, comedy and a&#xA;  sense of humor help A LOT. Best Luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2602" OwnerDisplayName="Michael Durrant" LastEditorUserId="2602" LastEditDate="2014-06-20T11:31:39.227" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T11:31:39.227" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3960" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-29T06:31:53.193" Score="4" ViewCount="2154" Body="&lt;p&gt;May I know some points to keep in mind while playing as a Team Lead in a Software Company? What should make me a good leader from the point of Technology, Management skills, Personal behavior etc  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2596" LastActivityDate="2016-12-25T15:38:45.307" Title="Qualities of a Team Lead" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3961" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3965" CreationDate="2011-11-29T07:07:48.793" Score="7" ViewCount="28088" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to know what are all the things need to add for one man hour costing. How to calculate / estimate it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2597" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T03:36:58.113" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T03:58:27.000" Title="How to calculate / estimate the cost for one man hour?" Tags="&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3960" CreationDate="2011-11-29T07:19:00.873" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A team leader is a coach and a model for his team. So AFAIK following qualities are most important for team leader,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communication&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Delecation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Negotiation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Integrity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Confidence&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Respond immediately to any problem and arrive at a solution before it escalates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make every team member believe that he belongs to the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Listen to everybody views and then take decisive action.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;good motivator&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the full capabilities of your team members&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Develop a sense of responsibility for the team members&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn how you need to build Success&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2597" LastActivityDate="2011-11-29T07:19:00.873" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3961" CreationDate="2011-11-29T08:38:47.950" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can't possibly answer this question without knowing (very) specific context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things you should take into consideration:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Salaries of your people. And I don't mean gross salaries only but also including all the salary-related taxes, e.g. in Poland where I live employer's real cost is about 1,2x of what employee's gross salary is (and about 1,7x of what employee's net salary).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All the costs not directly related with salaries, meaning renting office space, paying for media, amortization of all the stuff you buy etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many people actually do billable work. After all they should earn enough to cover all the costs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Expected profitability.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Potential risks, e.g. forfeits.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All these factors would be specific for each individual situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an alternative you can just take overall cost of running the company, estimate how many billable hours you're going to do, and you pretty much have your bottom line cost of man hour. Then add mark-up which makes you feel comfortable and voila.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, you won't avoid talking to accountants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-11-29T08:38:47.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3964" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-29T09:49:23.250" Score="23" ViewCount="11106" Body="&lt;p&gt;Considering that we work on a project with fixed deadlines and fixed budget and we use Scrum: what are best practices we should use to make this setup successful? Since Scrum wasn't directly designed to deal with such projects, what changes we should apply to standard by-the-book approach? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2598" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-11-29T14:06:02.620" LastActivityDate="2020-07-06T06:25:32.900" Title="How to apply Scrum in fixed date, fixed budget project?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;fixed-price&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3961" CreationDate="2011-11-29T11:38:19.713" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have to build the rate up from the ground.  You are going to have both a cost rate and a sell rate.  Start with cost.  You need to bundle your resources into labor categories.  To determine your cost rate, you need to determine all the direct salary and benefit costs of a particular labor category, including the average hourly rate plus benefits.  As Pawel suggested 1.2, in the U.S., I find it closer to be 1.5. This rate will can have two values, one for work on your site, the other for work on the customer's site.  These two values represent your base cost rate.  Your further burden this with general and administrative costs and overhead costs.  This has to be calculated based on your historical costs and then spread evenly across your labor.  That value represents your burdened cost rate and is the rate against which you can measure your gross profit margin per individual or labor category.  Your sell rate is established based on the gross profit margin you wish to have and can go up and down based on competition.  Here's the math for an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hourly rate for labor category:  $34.00 (assuming a salary of $70K or so)&#xA;Rate with benefits assuming 45% add on:  $52.31 ($34/.65)&#xA;On site include 10% add on: $58.12&#xA;G&amp;amp;A assuming 12% add on: $66.04 &#xA;OH assuming 5% add on:  $69.52&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;$69.52 is your fully burdened cost rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming a 40% gross profit margin: $115.87 would be your sell rate ($69.52/60%)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The percent add ons I have here are completely made up.  You have to work with your accounting department to arrive at these.  These are true costs spread across labor based on how you categorize your business costs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-11-29T11:38:19.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3964" CreationDate="2011-11-29T13:04:49.227" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You'll probably have to juggle the fixed scope part of your project (since fixed budget is usually just means a fixed team and fixed delivery date means when this team stops working).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends mostly on how much consensus you can get from stakeholders, product owner etc. Usually this boils down to making compromises on functionality (again thinking about how defined is the scope and how important are the stories you can't afford to deliver for any reason or maybe the justification for replacing these stories for different ones).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest paying more attention to your product backlog, and making the fixed scope part of the project a bit flexible in the sense that you want to leave out as much technical details as possible for interpretation and better implementation later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2601" LastActivityDate="2011-11-29T13:04:49.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3964" CreationDate="2011-11-29T13:52:22.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find that scrum is usually part of an agile approach and as pkoval implies, having a fixed date is not very scrum-like.  I would start with bare-bones functionality that you can do in HALF the time.  Deliver that and then start delivering features one-by-one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would work on additional education of senior management if necessary about all the pieces of scrum and agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum and it's implications have to be well understood by all, not just 'applied' on top of an existing system to try and push 'faster' results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2602" LastActivityDate="2011-11-29T13:52:22.160" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3964" CreationDate="2011-11-29T17:46:48.500" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe DSDM Atern, which is another agile methodology, explicitly deals with fixed time and fixed budgets. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By prioritising the requirements using the MoSCoW method, it is understood that some things will not make it into the final release. It is up to the Business Visionary to identify which requirements are flexible in this manner. Although there is a ratio that is advised, else everything becomes a Must Have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastActivityDate="2011-11-29T17:46:48.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3949" CreationDate="2011-11-29T18:13:42.127" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Atlassian suite may fit your needs. All of their products start at $10 and they cover the full range of tools that you've asked for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jira&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bug Tracker and Issue Tracker&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;With &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/greenhopper/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Greenhopper&lt;/a&gt; plugin, adds Agile taskboard and project management tools&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/fisheye/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fisheye&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Source Control tool, similar to GitHub, BitBucket, etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;With &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/crucible/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Crucible&lt;/a&gt;, allows code review&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/bamboo/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bamboo&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Continuous Integration tool&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a hosted version of all of the products, although I'm not sure if the cost is too great. The integration between all of Atlassian products is really slick and fairly well thought out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastActivityDate="2011-11-29T18:13:42.127" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3964" CreationDate="2011-11-29T19:59:14.970" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are multiple solutions possible depending on the type of uncertainty and the type of project. As always, there is no single correct solution. Look at the various options and see what fits into your context:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In some projects, there is uncertainty, but it is well understood. For example, website design, has some back &amp;amp; forth before you finalise on the output, but this is well understood. Usually you know how much time will be spent in revisions and you can buffer that time &amp;amp; cost into the fixed price when you make a quote.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In some projects, you dont understand where there will be uncertainty. In this scenario, you need to prioritise your work, delivering the higher value stories first. When you get feedback or changes for the higher value features, create new stories for those changes and remove an equal amount of lowest value stories from the bottom of the backlog. Basically, you are trading one story which is more valuable for another story which is less valuable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In new innovation work, where there is going to be a lot of uncertainty, then negotiate for the time &amp;amp; material contract. It is in your own customers interest to do time &amp;amp; material as it is likely that a lot of changes will be required before you end up with the right software that your customer actually wants. If you do fixed price, the delivered software will mostly not meet customers needs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The various contexts where these can be used:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First is the &lt;strong&gt;fixed-price fixed-scope&lt;/strong&gt; scenario. Choose this for commodity software which you have delivered many times before and you understand well. Not only about the product you are building, but also which are the likely areas of uncertainty and duration to resolve them. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Second is the &lt;strong&gt;fixed-price variable-scope&lt;/strong&gt; scenario. Choose this for reasonably well understood software where you understand the product you are building, but dont know the time it will take to resolve uncertainty.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Third is the &lt;strong&gt;variable-price variable-scope&lt;/strong&gt; scenario. Choose this when you are doing something new, and expect a lot of uncertainty in the product direction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2392" LastActivityDate="2011-11-29T19:59:14.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3964" CreationDate="2011-11-29T23:47:24.453" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum works best when there are known quantities because you can easily compare expected's to actual's. With the scope and deadline already determined, you can basically list out all the features, break them up into 2-week iterations, then as you move forward, you'll be able to gauge whether you're scheduled to complete the project before the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the folks signing the checks, this can be a HUGE benefit because they will be able to see progress every step of the way, and be able to make immediate adjustments as necessary to get the project done within those constraints.  If the project is falling behind, they'll be able to see that almost immediately, and determine if they need to allocate more resources, cut features, or scrap the project altogether (hopefully before they've lost 100% of their investment).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently working on a project with similar constraints, and the business loves the Scrum model because although the requirements for the product we are building haven't changed much since Day 1, they are still involved at every step, and they feel confident that what we are building will meet their needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is really just to keep them involved, and show them how their money is being spent.  Then, if the project does end up a bit over-budget or over-time, they will feel more comfortable making adjustments, instead of writing a blank check for an unknown delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2610" LastActivityDate="2011-11-29T23:47:24.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2067" CreationDate="2011-11-30T05:49:07.097" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt; is a collaboration tool that organizes your projects into boards. In one glance, Trello tells you what's being worked on, who's working on what, and where something is in a process. Best of all it's free to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2613" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2012-11-05T20:35:51.280" LastActivityDate="2012-11-05T20:35:51.280" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-11-30T05:49:07.097" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3951" CreationDate="2011-11-30T06:08:11.960" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two ways to get work done in a distributed set up&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Black Box - The offshore team is responsible for a sub set of work. In software development, most of the time, coding or testing. The offshore team has less say in overall design, architecture, and processes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One Team - The distributed teams have shared responsibility, share the same set of standards and equality in the team is maintained. This model is more than taking Cost advantage, it is based on getting the best/suitable team members anywhere in the world. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe you need to evaluate, which category your team falls in. And if somehow you feel your team belongs to 'Black Box' model, it's going to be a lot of work for you before you actually create the team environment you are looking for. My advice, in that case is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Motivate your team to know more and more about the project/product/work you are doing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If possible, do more than what you have been assigned.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work hard to add value, where ever you see things are not so good. Every project has areas of improvement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By doing this, chances are that you will gain more trust and respect, which will eventually lead to somehow Lightened-up workplace. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not understanding jokes from other culture will not be a big deal if you are able to create an environment of rich communication, shared responsibility, and same goals. This will be an environment where associates do the same work and are dependent upon each other for the team’s success. This will be an environment where team members strengthen each other. This will be an environment where Joy and Enthusiasm lives everywhere!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1786" LastActivityDate="2011-11-30T06:08:11.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3951" CreationDate="2011-11-30T07:50:58.263" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask yourself WHY you want your teams to lighten up&lt;/strong&gt;. It's important to think about this, because it will help you clarify existing team collaboration/communications problems and how this may affect your team: beyond the fact that yes, it is nicer when people are friendly and share a joke or two, how does the current situation actually affect your project? Are people not sharing information, not collaborating efficiently, don't feel free to speak and raise issues, are at risk of leaving the project, etc.?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Talk to your team about it&lt;/strong&gt;. Once you can articulate reasons for changing the way things are (eg. &quot;if we build collaborative, friendly, positive relationships, we will be able to go through difficult times in a more effective way&quot;), address it directly with you team. Do it in an informal way, one-on-one. Ask them how they feel about the way things are going, what would they like to do differently when it comes to team collaboration and why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Create opportunities to introduce collegiality&lt;/strong&gt;. It could be making things more personable like having a directory of people with photos and a little about themselves, using social media to help people connect quickly and in a more informal way, congratulating people for resolving a problem or completing a task together, celebrating project successes, wishing happy birthdays or personal congratulations, showing a funny or inspiring video (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TED&lt;/a&gt; is a good source) or sharing an anecdote as an introduction to a topic, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be funny and respectful&lt;/strong&gt;. Humour can be difficult across borders, and even between different personalities. Something funny to someone may be disrespectful to another. Work out who will share a joke and who won't and when using humour, stay clear of the un-politically correct stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastActivityDate="2011-11-30T07:50:58.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3951" CreationDate="2011-11-30T08:44:37.833" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If, by any chance, you can meet your team face to face at least once it would totally change the game.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, it is easier to go harsh over someone when it is just a signature under email or voice on Skype than it is when you've actually met the person and possibly have had a couple of beers with them (or whatever is acceptable way of collective leisure activity in your group). It is easier to be correctly understood when you throw in a joke, when others had a chance to see you joking in real life, when they hear the tone of your voice, see your mimic etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it can be costly for the company and difficult to organize, especially when a team is spread over several different locations but it's well worth the effort. Such team retreat in the same physical place pays off in the long run, thus I'd start convincing my bosses to allow me to organize such thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only would your &lt;strong&gt;atmosphere be improved&lt;/strong&gt; but also people would be &lt;strong&gt;more open and transparent&lt;/strong&gt; with each other, &lt;strong&gt;more willing to help&lt;/strong&gt; and would generally &lt;strong&gt;act more like a team&lt;/strong&gt; and not as a set of individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that isn't possible at all, then angeline gives a good answer with ideas you might find useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-11-30T08:44:37.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3960" CreationDate="2011-11-30T11:21:41.540" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;DO&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;be a leader and a coach&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;foster an environment open to collaboration &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;encourage discussion, technical and team focused&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;encourage improvements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;support them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;remove organizational impediments (if possible)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;be a teacher&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do NOT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;be their manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;fall into the trap of making commitments for them when asked&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;assign work to them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;decide HOW something is done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;take on all accountability for the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;be a teller&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best and most highly respected team leads I have worked with are collaborative leaders that support the team. Much like the ScrumMaster role in Agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-12-01T09:25:33.740" LastActivityDate="2011-12-01T09:25:33.740" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3978" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-30T11:45:15.207" Score="18" ViewCount="1641" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm new to a situation where a development team refuse to estimate anything until they have a fully defined spec. My angle to obtain estimates is to provide just enough of a spec so they can provide an estimate that has a degree of confidence behind it for e.g. 6 months development time plus or minus 10%. Then I want to refine it over time and set the stakeholders expectations so that they know the estimate will improve. What other techniques could be used in a situation such as this where a lot of discovery is required up front on a large project with a team that pushes to only estimate when they have everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2617" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-11-30T12:10:41.880" LastActivityDate="2018-01-03T14:07:06.437" Title="Estimating when the development team won't estimate" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3978" CreationDate="2011-11-30T12:45:47.097" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the team doesn't feel like they have enough information to estimate, you should probably listen to them. Especially if you're trying to get +/- 10% on something the size of 6 months. Talk to them and see if there are specific concerns they think need to be addressed, or if they feel like there is insufficient information across the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible (even likely) that the team has been asked to do estimates like this in the past and has gotten burned by it. They've likely seen instances where lack of some details in the requirements has lead to drastically different understanding between what they thought needed to be done and what the stakeholders actually expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you haven't already done so, consider spending a couple days putting together story maps, including stakeholders as well as at least some portion of the development team. The development team can ask the questions where they see holes, and the stakeholders can fill them in. It helps ensure that everyone has the same vision of what is actually expected to be accomplished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team thinks there are still significant risks, be willing to accept that either +/- 10% may not be achievable, or you are going to have to decide whether you can ensure that risks and scope are managed correctly during development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastActivityDate="2011-11-30T12:45:47.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3978" CreationDate="2011-11-30T12:50:25.557" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Per the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.construx.com/Page.aspx?cid=1648&quot;&gt;Cone of Uncertainty&lt;/a&gt;, you won't be able to get estimates that have deviations of plus/minus 10% until much later in the project, at least after requirements engineering is complete. For a more agile approach, you would be able to estimate the sprint within this amount of accuracy after detailing the requirements to be implemented in the sprint. For a more plan driven approach, you need to finalize the spec first and even get into system design before you approach this level of certainty. The team also needs to realize this - it's very much acceptable (and well documented by experts such as Barry Boehm and Steve McConnell) for estimates to vary by 200-400% if you just have a concept and a portion of the requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are looking for estimation techniques, there are plenty. If your development team consists of experts in the technology and domain, consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wideband_delphi&quot;&gt;Wideband Delphi&lt;/a&gt;. It was first described in &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0138221227&quot;&gt;Software Engineering Economics&lt;/a&gt;. The idea is that you get your experts and have them estimate, then discuss and refine their estimates to come to a concensus. It's rather similar to techniques such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_poker&quot;&gt;planning poker&lt;/a&gt; from Extreme Programming. Steve McConnell's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0735605351&quot;&gt;Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art&lt;/a&gt; discusses a number of other techniques and tools for estimation, as well as working with both clients and development teams on estimates, schedules, and deadlines. Although it's geared toward project managers and technical leads, it is consumable by developers as well and I would highly recommend a copy of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For overcoming the team's lack of desire to estimate without a spec, I would work with them to explain why it is important that they at least try, even though you know there will be great uncertainty. This is a conversation and even a negotiation to come to an agreement, and there have been many books written on these subjects, and I have to recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0143118757&quot;&gt;Getting to Yes&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0553371312&quot;&gt;Getting Past No&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0143118447&quot;&gt;Difficult Conversations&lt;/a&gt; as three leading books on how to have these conversations and discussions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2011-11-30T12:50:25.557" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3978" CreationDate="2011-11-30T12:52:07.757" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, it is a safe assumption that &lt;strong&gt;in software development industry you won't have precise estimates if you trying to plan 6 months ahead&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, despite of all the uncertainty of half-year-long estimates, and even more uncertainty attached to estimating incomplete or vague requirements, in vast majority of cases &lt;strong&gt;stakeholders need to know a general time span and general cost of a project&lt;/strong&gt;. Is it going to take days, weeks, months or years? Do we need one developer, whole team, a few teams or the whole division? These questions are always valid, even if your approach is that you avoid estimating whenever possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such case I would &lt;strong&gt;start with trying to understand why a development team refuses to estimate before full specs are delivered&lt;/strong&gt;. I mean you will address the situation differently when they actually &lt;em&gt;believe&lt;/em&gt; they are going to have their estimates right when they get the full specs than you will if they refuse to estimate as they've been constantly hit because they didn't have their estimates perfect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, to have anything to start with &lt;strong&gt;I'd ask the team for just a &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2009/02/whats-use-of-wild-guesses-instead-of.html&quot;&gt;coarse-grained estimate&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, also known as wild ass guess, just for the sake of building general insight how much it can take to build the whole thing. Note: I would go either with multiple-point estimate, meaning it would take something between 3 and 6 months, or estimate with probability attached to it, meaning we have about 80% chance to complete it in 5 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember: development team has to be sure that if they are wrong, for whatever reasons, on this coarse-grained estimate no one is going to shot them. Otherwise they'd refuse to make any estimates at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then your actions would depend on a situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the team believes that they can deliver perfect estimates if the specs are detailed enough I'd try to &lt;strong&gt;deliver such specs but gradually&lt;/strong&gt;. Only one part of the project, one that the team is going to work on next, at time. At the same time I'd try to educate them that requirements are changing over time and even if you had full specs at the beginning of the project there wouldn't be much of value of even the perfect estimate as conditions would change, thus estimates would need to follow.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the team had bad experience with their previous estimates, I'd try to &lt;strong&gt;avoid estimating at all&lt;/strong&gt;, besides coarse-grained ones that is. To give you insight how you're doing I'd focus on completing specific features as soon as possible and verifying how you're doing against the plan. One of examples of such approach can be measuring &lt;a href=&quot;http://herdingcats.typepad.com/my_weblog/2010/07/physical-percent-of-planned-progress.html&quot;&gt;percent complete&lt;/a&gt;. This would allow you to discuss with stakeholders progress of the project and steer their expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In each case I would &lt;strong&gt;gather and use historical data&lt;/strong&gt;, regarding how fast the work is being done, what is the pace of the team etc. Depending on a method you choose it can be called velocity, throughput, etc but either way you want to know how many features of roughly this or that size you can build in given time. It means that you need to use some method of sizing features, for example T-shirt sizing (S, M, L, XL, XXL), and then you need to gather data on how much it took to build the feature. I would also add how much time elapsed since you started working on tasks until it was done (lead time), as opposed to how much real work was done on the feature. Knowing that data and learning about trends can help you to tell how your team is doing even if they don't estimate at all or they estimates are worthless.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-11-30T12:52:07.757" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1693" CreationDate="2011-11-30T13:05:49.277" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Head of PMs that is aware of the customers/projects and known by the customers eases everything for all sides, especially in the case of “emergency  situation“.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Also, Head that informs the customer and introduces new PM to the customer in the case of changing/ shifting the PM to another project will prevent weakening the relation with the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Except the above or similiar conditions, the customer’s contact person should be the related PM only in order to complete the project as required without any &lt;strong&gt;chaos that is caused by multiple info from multiple sources.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;M0N4K0&lt;/em&gt; explained in detail SPOC very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2618" LastActivityDate="2011-11-30T13:05:49.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3953" CreationDate="2011-12-01T03:03:41.617" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Clearly I'm not familiar with your company or its environment and policies, so only the most general suggestions are possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering if there are some motivators other than a nice environment and perks, and maybe demotivators beyond 150 hours. In a lot of companies, people are happy working on the same product for months on end and 45 hours doesn't seem abusive at all. So, maybe this ia a good time for some five-whys root cause analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the meantime:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you considered the motivators in Drive (Daniel Pink)? Do the developers feel like they're making progress, or just churning out product? Take a few minutes to check this video: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&lt;/a&gt; See if it speaks to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe if they were able to spend time retooling to make future projects easier and more fun? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the way of removing demotivators, consider this list: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cio.com/article/123406/Stop_Demotivating_Me_&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cio.com/article/123406/Stop_Demotivating_Me_&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Theory X managers in the past have considered burnout a sign that they're getting maximum work out their resources. I think it's great that you're aware of motivation and burnout and interested in doing something about it. Godspeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1302" LastActivityDate="2011-12-01T03:03:41.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3953" CreationDate="2011-12-01T03:18:18.920" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try creating a standard process for the way things are done -both technically and workflow-wise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will increase their confidence in leadership (they'll see someone is steering the ship) and let them focus on doing their work/getting projects done rather than reinventing the wheel each time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, improve the communication channels. Spend time talking with people. It lets them vent and you can learn ways to make their lives, and therefore your projects, better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-12-01T03:18:18.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3978" CreationDate="2011-12-01T03:25:08.593" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Change the consequences (real or perceived) of the team over or under estimating.  It sounds like they feel they will be held to the estimate with dire consequences if they get it wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are producing fixed price quotes for clients based on those estimates, you will get burned (particularly with only 10% - 6 months ahead you should factor in a minimum of 50% deviation). This creates a huge disincentive for the team to estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider moving to hourly pricing, build in higher margins/reserves and improve your requirements gathering process.  All of these will change the environment in which the estimates are produced and therefore change the dynamic between the pm and the team doing the estimating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-12-01T03:25:08.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3978" CreationDate="2011-12-01T03:25:30.323" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please consider the games presented by James Grenning: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.renaissancesoftware.net/blog/archives/36&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.renaissancesoftware.net/blog/archives/36&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;In particular, deal-and-slide has done me well.  These games really seem to take a lot of the time out of the exercise and make it more fun. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of the trouble you're having is that the team is afraid that any number they give is a hard commitment, or will be seen that way by managers further up the chain of command. If you pull them together to get rough sizing with the intent of making estimates later, you might have more success. Of course, if a number of &quot;size one&quot; stories are done and all take two days, you'll have a sense of what &quot;size one&quot; stories are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1302" LastActivityDate="2011-12-01T03:25:30.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="456" CreationDate="2011-12-01T09:48:30.427" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This appears to be a classic case of scope creep. A couple of &quot;tests&quot; I suggest you put your project too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have you documented your requirements (SOW, ToR, etc) and has it been &lt;strong&gt;signed off&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When was the last time this document was updated?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a signed off Change Request (including impact, cost, schedule, etc) for each direction change?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a deadline and how &quot;hard&quot; is it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found that once the true impact of a request is analysed and made visible to all stakeholders there are considerably fewer raised or approved.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should not be viewed as bureaucracy or admin, it is the single most effective tool in defending scope, schedule and budget in a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2144" LastActivityDate="2011-12-01T09:48:30.427" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3988" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3989" CreationDate="2011-12-01T12:36:32.063" Score="20" ViewCount="20537" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently added a QA tester to our new Scrum team. The tester comes with a lot of experience in automated testing and is capable of scripting, light coding, etc. He will be using automation tools, such as Selenium, to assist with the QA process. However, I am a little unclear where to draw the line in his responsibilities. Also, how do I incorporate QA into the whiteboard?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) Role and Responsibilies&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should he be involved in helping the developers identifying what unit tests to write for a given module?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should he be involved in determining code coverage for testing?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should he be responsible for the Continuous Integration tool?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is he the person who declares a story as &quot;Done&quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is he in charge of making sure that a story is testable, and therefore valid?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) QA on the Scrum Whiteboard&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should there be a separate column for QA on the whiteboard? Or is it better to mark a story in some other way to show that it is being tested?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should bugs be identified as tasks within the story, say on a red post-it, or should they be a separate story unto themselves?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-07-12T17:12:51.300" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T08:47:32.770" Title="What is the role of a QA tester on a Scrum team?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3988" CreationDate="2011-12-01T13:31:38.433" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experiences, the quality assurance staff typically handles system and acceptance testing, so I think that this would be a good place to start. This includes both manual and automated tests of the system against the requirements (functional and non-functional). Given how you describe the background of the individual, it sounds like this is an appropriate set of responsibilities for him. Because of this, yes, he would be the person who decides if and when an implemented requirement is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would involve a quality assurance specialist at every phase of the lifecycle, from requirements through release. This would mean reviewing your requirements to ensure that they are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requirement#Characteristics_of_good_requirements&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;good requirements&lt;/a&gt; and to provide early exposure to build test cases from, designs (with an emphasis on the testability and correlating design decisions with requirements), documentation (especially that which is shipped to the customer), code and tests, and released packages of material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He could also be involved in measuring product quality through the use of appropriate measurements and metrics. These would include cyclomatic complexity, test coverage, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halstead_complexity_measures&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Halstead complexity&lt;/a&gt;, defects, lines of code, and so on. He could then report on these for each iteration, identifying modules that are high in complexity (indicating that a possible refactoring is in order), have low test coverage (indicating that perhaps more unit or integration tests are needed), and defect density. Since he has some experience with writing code as well, he would be able to look at the code base, understand it, and be able to comment on its health in a manner appropriate for both technical and non-technical audiences, even if he isn't actively developing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other tasks would vary, and depend on the team, the project, the schedule, and the workload of the individual. You need to make sure that he can actually accomplish his tasks in the course of a normal week, as working overtime is generally seen as an antipattern in the agile community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as managing QA on your project tracking system, it depends on what your team is comfortable with doing. In something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt;, when a developer feels that the feature is implemented and developer tested, it would get moved to QA. However, you might choose to only maintain a product backlog, a sprint backlog, and a set of completed items. In that case, it would remain in the sprint backlog until QA calls it &quot;done&quot;, at which point it's moved to completed and you get your points. There might be some other system that your team develops that works better, as long as it makes sense for how you work and doesn't get in the way of everyone doing their job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2015-05-14T08:47:32.770" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T08:47:32.770" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3990" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3991" CreationDate="2011-12-01T15:00:58.063" Score="13" ViewCount="4241" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every so often, we find ourselves with a story that, for some reason, does not get completed during a sprint. This could be for a variety of reasons, such as a tricky bug, but the end result is that the story is not done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that unfinished stories can be an indicator of bad story writing, but despite our best efforts though we do come across an unfinished story from time to time. So far, we have just carried the story over into the next sprint.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this the right thing to do? Also, are the full points earned upon completion in the next sprint or will this skew the velocity of that sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-01-29T00:19:37.187" LastActivityDate="2020-07-05T10:23:22.267" Title="Unfinished Stories in a Sprint" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3990" CreationDate="2011-12-01T15:17:17.260" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of reasons for an unfinished story. Perhaps it was poor estimation, and more work was needed than the team thought at the beginning. Maybe it was too large and should have been broken up into smaller stories. Perhaps a team member had to take an emergency leave, leaving the team with fewer contributing members for a day or two. It does happen from time to time, so you should be tracking why it's happening and taking corrective action if you can. That's something to discuss at your retrospective meetings and postmortems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, now, you have an unfinished story. That means you didn't get any points for it in the iteration that just finished. Assuming the priority of the story hasn't changed, it gets moved into the next iteration. Since your velocity for the previous iteration was lower, you now take fewer points into the next iteration. If your velocity in the prior iteration was X and the unfinished story was worth Y points, move the next (X-Y) points into the current iteration. Alternatively, you could use Yesterday's Weather and base the velocity of the upcoming iteration on the average of the last few completed iterations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You now have a full backlog that you will be working on for your iteration. However, one of the stories is actually partially completed. One of two things could happen. You might finish all of the points before the iteration ends. Or, depending on how much work needed to complete the story, you might finish on time. If you finish all points at the end, calculate your velocity and plan the next iteration. However, if you finish early, you have a few options. You could move another story into the iteration, beginning design and implementation, with the understanding that it might not be finished. Or perhaps you'll give your team some time to do corporate-mandated training. Or maybe just do some refactoring or write a few extra test cases that you've meant to get to, but weren't a high enough priority to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, don't worry about skewing velocity. It's all about using your time appropriately. Velocity normalizes over time. You might have deviations in different iterations, but your retrospectives can explain why it happened and what you are doing to correct it for the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2020-07-05T10:23:22.267" LastActivityDate="2020-07-05T10:23:22.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3988" CreationDate="2011-12-01T22:23:49.297" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum teams are made up of cross-functional members. It's dangerous to categorize one individual as the QA person (or DBA, or security expert etc.) You should strive to integrate this individual into the team so that they can share their expertise with others as a &lt;em&gt;member&lt;/em&gt; of the team, not a specialized resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The entire team is responsible for determining an acceptable level of code coverage, what type of testing is done and what helps contribute to the official definition of done. Leave it up to the team to determine how to show testing effort on the board. They should be using their information radiators for their own benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2628" LastActivityDate="2011-12-01T22:23:49.297" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3990" CreationDate="2011-12-01T22:31:13.263" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the end of the sprint, any stories which are not complete are put back into the backlog. At that point, the normal routine of backlog grooming and prioritization can take place. If the story is still a high enough priority, it will make it into the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't get too caught up on re-estimating the story, but what you can do is to split the story into smaller pieces where some of the resulting smaller pieces become completed stories and the rest become new stories representing what's left. Again, probably not worth going through the trouble to do this very often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2628" LastActivityDate="2011-12-01T22:31:13.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3122" CreationDate="2011-12-02T08:13:39.697" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A successful projects should deliver in three areas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Benefit realisation:&lt;/strong&gt; This is why a project has been initiated and&#xA;run.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project delivery:&lt;/strong&gt; Deliver the project on time, within budget,&#xA;on quality and on scope.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Organisational project capabilities:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Organisations run many projects. It is therefore important, that&#xA;delivered projects also increase the confidence and capabilities of&#xA;an organisation to deliver future projects successfully.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prime-project-method.com/successful_projects.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.prime-project-method.com/successful_projects.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2633" LastActivityDate="2011-12-02T08:13:39.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3990" CreationDate="2011-12-02T15:52:38.947" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good answers from Clayton and Thomas.  I like how Clayton mentions that you do not automatically rollover the story into the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would add a couple of thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The story may not be finished because the team is so focused on their individual work that they forget about the team commitments.  Having too many stories in progress can put you at risk of not finishing some stories.  If you're not already doing so, consider limiting your work in progress and having the team collaborate on stories so that stories get completed earlier and if you have under-estimated your sprint backlog your incomplete stories will be fewer and perhaps not even started.  This will also help you pull extra stories into the sprint if you have over-estimated.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some teams (likely not yours) are just not that good at breaking down stories.  It could be that your unfinished story is made up of child stories and by splitting the story at the end of the sprint there is something that you can deliver.  Don't make this a habit though and never split a story across the process dimension (analysis, design, build, test).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1012" LastActivityDate="2011-12-02T15:52:38.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3945" CreationDate="2011-12-02T15:55:15.183" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another important aspect is your past performance.  You should list some similar projects you have completed with a brief description as well as contact information for the project customer.  That way the person reviewing your proposal can check your &quot;references&quot;.  If you have previously created something easily accessible such as graphics or a website, it is good to include a link to allow them to see a portfolio of your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="58" LastActivityDate="2011-12-02T15:55:15.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3951" CreationDate="2011-12-02T16:05:55.690" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your meeting are &quot;dead serious and boring&quot; you cannot fix that by introducing humor and I think it may even hurt more than help.  Humor cannot be designed in, it needs to happen naturally.  You first need to do some root cause analysis.  People will be bored if: a) they are not passionate; b) they are not included; c) they are not respected and many many other reasons.  Use your retrospective to explore this topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like Pawel's suggestion a lot.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also like to investigate the facilitation skills of those running the meetings.  Poor facilitation can really impact your meetings.  This is a topic that is too large for a simple post but you might like to investigate the Art of Focused Conversation by Brian Stanfield; Collaboration Explained by Jean Tabaka; Project Restrospectives by Norm Kerth or Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is no passion in the team then perhaps the team is not understanding or buying-in to the vision for their product.  This is a difficult one to fix and may need active support from senior management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1012" LastActivityDate="2011-12-02T16:05:55.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2067" CreationDate="2011-12-02T16:33:35.653" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use Assembla for SVN/Trac hosting, and Asana for general project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2637" LastActivityDate="2011-12-02T16:33:35.653" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-12-02T16:33:35.653" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3999" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4000" CreationDate="2011-12-02T17:42:19.350" Score="2" ViewCount="221" Body="&lt;p&gt;What typical legal and technical documents do you provide with a solution as a software vendor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Documents would be like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SLA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Privacy Policy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Terms and Conditions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you are responding to a proposal which documents do you typically include?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2379" LastEditorUserId="2618" LastEditDate="2012-01-19T15:44:36.333" LastActivityDate="2012-01-19T15:44:36.333" Title="What are typical legal and technical documents that you would provide with a solution as a vendor?" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;project-proposal&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3999" CreationDate="2011-12-02T22:06:28.220" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A proposal can include the following technical and legal information: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Technical information:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;High-level technical solution: this is to provide the client with information that's detailed enough so they get an understanding of what technologies will be used and how and what design approach may be taken. It shouldn't be too detailed though - your goal is to convince the client you can provide the right technical solution, not to give it for free!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When providing technical information as part of a proposal, it is always subject to assumptions made about the client's needs, constraints and objectives. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The detailed technical information (such as detailed functional/technical design, infrastructure, code, etc. on an IT project) only becomes final during the execution of the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Proposed SLAs. Once agreed, these will become legally binding.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Legal information:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your usual terms &amp;amp; conditions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your policies regarding proprietary information, non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements, and information privacy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Often in a proposal these are added as an appendix to the main document, but will form part of the contract.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have a legal department in your organisation, they are the people who should provide this information for you to include.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NOTE&lt;/strong&gt;: A proposal is not a legally binding document until it gets discussed/negotiated, agreed and signed by both parties: typically this is done under the form of a separate document, the contract (which may refer to the proposal but will include other legal elements). In fact, to avoid any misunderstanding with your client, it is good practice to say that upfront in the proposal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastActivityDate="2011-12-02T22:06:28.220" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3945" CreationDate="2011-12-03T17:39:27.117" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking at this from the other side, as someone who has tended to be on the buying rather than the selling side, here's what I want from a proposal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A clear indication of the scope of work, which should reflect what I have asked for (but not just a cut and paste from my words). I want to be sure that you understand my requirements, and also understand the context of my request... i.e. I want to be sure that you appreciate how the project's success or failure will impact on my business.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The cost that I will pay, clearly described in terms of whether this is an estimate, a firm quote, what the components are (hardware / software / labour / project management / etc etc etc). - And also what criteria would cause a variation from the cost. I don't want to be paying for your team to get trained on the specific technology because I am the first customer  that you have tried  it on. And don't forget to mention the ongoing costs of licences, support, etc. That is as important to me as the up-front capital cost.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some indication of the experience of your team. I want a team that has proven skills, at least across the main players. I will accept some less experienced people as long as I am not paying full rate for them... perhaps. I also want to be sure that you are not going to put people into the project up front, then pull them off when a new project comes along, substituting less experienced people or making me share them with another customer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your technical approach. If I have asked for a particular technology, you should reflect this back to me, or explain why you think you have a better solution. If I have not been specific, I want to know what approach you will take. I need to be sure that it is consistent with my strategy, or if not, how it will impact on me and my team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I would also like to know something about your organisation: who I will be dealing with and where any issues can be escalated to if necessary. I need to know why I should use your company rather than your competitors, and how you will help me to sleep at night without worrying whether I made a poor decision.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proposal should be well structured, perhaps mirroring the 5 points in my answer, and relatively concise. Please don't pad it out with multiple testimonials or elaborate resumes of everyone in the company. Just tell me what I need to know. It should be spell-checked, and grammatically correct. And if you are emailing it to me, don't fill it with elaborate graphics that will clog my mailbox, or use unusual file formats. A simple MS Word document or a PDF file will do nicely!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with your proposals. And by the way, I have written this answer based on the assumption that you are selling your services to an external customer, but I suggest that the same principles would be equally valid for an internal customer, but with perhaps a different emphasis or weighting applied to the different parts of the document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastEditorUserId="301" LastEditDate="2011-12-03T17:46:11.530" LastActivityDate="2011-12-03T17:46:11.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3945" CreationDate="2011-12-04T04:37:51.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are a few key areas to include in a project charter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Goals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Deliverables&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How the Deliverables Meet the Goals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anticipated Team Members&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimated Costs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimated Durations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assumptions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Constraints&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Past History / Track Record&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-12-04T04:37:51.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2961" CreationDate="2011-12-04T08:48:25.087" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my company have gained a lot of experience in directing complex projects in weak matrix organizations. Please read through the white paper: &quot;Who is your manager?&quot; on the subject. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.matan-consulting.com/uploadimages/PDF/Who%20is%20your%20managerWP.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.matan-consulting.com/uploadimages/PDF/Who%20is%20your%20managerWP.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2647" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2012-11-05T20:33:38.710" LastActivityDate="2012-11-05T20:33:38.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4004" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4012" CreationDate="2011-12-04T11:37:55.083" Score="6" ViewCount="23617" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am part of a Scrum team and we are constrained to use Microsoft Project (MSP). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that MSP is not primarily an Agile project management tool and I would very much to use something like VersionOne or Rally's tool. However, that is not possible right now and we are bound to MSP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know there is a Microsoft provided &quot;Scrum Starter Solution&quot; for MSP 2010 (http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/P2010Scrum) but it really isn't that comprehensive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know the experience and techniques that others using Scrum (or for that matter other Agile processes) had in using MSP. How did they map or customize MSP to bring in all Scrum artefacts and practices (e.g. Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog with tasks associated to say a user store from the Product Backlog, defining Sprints). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1546" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T19:47:21.430" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T19:47:21.430" Title="Using Microsoft Project for managing a Scrum project" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="214" CreationDate="2011-12-04T15:21:45.840" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't be worried about it at all. Projects get cancelled all the time and they often have very little to do with what you do on a day to day basis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had this happen to me just recently and it was because behind the scenes there was a massive power struggle between two differing teams across continents. Suffice it to say, my project was cancelled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leverage what you learned from it and I'm sure there was a ton. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a read on the following website and do a search for what you are looking for...you will find a wealth of information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://svprojectmanagement.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://svprojectmanagement.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2648" LastActivityDate="2011-12-04T15:21:45.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4004" CreationDate="2011-12-04T22:05:27.463" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In once case I used a spreadsheet for the development team to plan, estimate and track all backlog items. This spreadsheet also included the burn-down graphs and similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We used MS Project only for the communication with external stakeholders. It didn't contain all the nitty, gritty details but only things like a sprint as one line item, or a release as a milestone. We had to be somewhat creative to assign resource and level resources but it was doable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result the team worked internally the way that worked best for them while at the same time working with outside stakeholders, including customers, they way those stakeholders wanted the team to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course we continuously pushed for improvements and eventually we were given more and more freedom with regards to the toolset. In the end we just published the burn-down graphs to our stakeholders to report progress and we dropped the use of MS Project. Naturally I can't say whether this would also be an option in your scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2318" LastActivityDate="2011-12-04T22:05:27.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3960" CreationDate="2011-12-04T22:37:06.063" Score="3" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Effective Communication - listening more than talking, making sure everyone understands each other&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Clear Vision of what needs to be accomplished on each project and why&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Commitment to the Truth -in good times and bad&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Knowledge and skill to apply project management techniques&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-12-04T22:37:06.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3964" CreationDate="2011-12-05T02:13:14.803" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good approach to managing this is suggested in Steve Tockey's &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20130308184423/http://www.construx.com/Page.aspx?nid=266&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Return on Software&lt;/a&gt; - You should initially prioritize all the stories that are envisioned before the start of the first sprint. Now for each story come up with its best and worst (story point) estimate. Also have some estimate of the velocity - either use judgement (team based - you could use planning poker for this too :) or use past data - but be realistic. That should give you an initial guess as to how many story points can you deliver (PSPD = planned story points deliverable)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Starting from the most important story, in that order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take the sum total of all the 'worst' estimates - once that exceeds PSPD, Stop. (Remove the last story so that you are below PSPD. You need not but may). These set of stories are definitely &amp;quot;in&amp;quot; (= DIN i.e., will be developed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do the same for the 'best' estimates. Once you exceed PSPD, Stop. The stories &lt;em&gt;left out&lt;/em&gt; (i.e., not considered by this step) are definitely &amp;quot;out&amp;quot; (= DOUT).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the set {Best - Worst} (i.e., the stories that only belong to best, but not to worst. It's the minus set operator) are the ones whose 'fate is uncertain' for now. All you can say is that few of the highest priority features will be delivered and few of the low priority ones won't be. The rest is contingent upon (business/technical) knowledge gained at the end of each milestone. Re-estimation at subsequent milestones would then repeat the above process but on the &lt;em&gt;Uncertain set = {Best - Worst}&lt;/em&gt; to know the new DINs and DOUTs (and of course the new uncertain set)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should allow the management to see a realistic plan of action as well as gauge the level of uncertainty at every milestone (i.e, end of sprint) and see what is DIN/DOUT/Uncertain and decide accordingly!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is by &lt;strong&gt;a&lt;/strong&gt; book approach :) Hope this helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1119" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-06T06:25:32.900" LastActivityDate="2020-07-06T06:25:32.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3964" CreationDate="2011-12-05T11:59:32.993" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should watch the video &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tvprojectmanagement.com/project-estimating/agile-fixed-price-projects/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Fixed Price Projects&lt;/a&gt;&quot; that discusses this exact topic&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1828" LastActivityDate="2011-12-05T11:59:32.993" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4011" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-05T15:25:48.177" Score="9" ViewCount="5377" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've been using &lt;a href=&quot;http://acunote.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://acunote.com&lt;/a&gt; to manage our work queue. It's great for the planning phase, because you can nest stories. This makes it easy to outline an MVP within a given sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that we are a startup, we frequently have to juggle multiple projects back and forth within a given time period. For example, this week we have to update a partner website, develop the backend for our main product, as both web, iOS and android clients. The three clients have different engineers working on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to use a kanban board to visualize our current sprint. I find that they allow me to more easily see progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how to manage the fact that we have multiple clients. It seems like it would make it hard for our mobile guy to know which mobile tasks are remaining. They might not be next to each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also like that we have little mini-MVPs within a given sprint. Normally, if we finish one, we can start working on the next one, but we want to get them released in between. They don't line up with sprint boundaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I use separate boards per mini-project? Per web/iOS/Android clients?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a good digital kanban that allows you to order individual boards like a backlog?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2655" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-07T04:58:13.860" LastActivityDate="2020-07-06T06:26:08.823" Title="Kanban for multiple projects" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4004" CreationDate="2011-12-05T18:00:53.680" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what level of detail is required in your MS level project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is my suggestion: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't try to track sprint tasks in MS project. That is low level and is for the team to help coordinate their sprint commitments, so they should be kept someplace the team can continuously seem them and update them, like a standard sprint board if you are all co-located or a shared google doc if not. This is the low tech way. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then use MS project as the backlog management tool along with release management. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Divide work into sprints with start and end dates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;create a new column for the story point size, do not be tempted to add story durations or estimates, you could make them all 2 week durations for examples to try and avoid this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Drag and drop stories per priorities into sprint buckets or into release buckets&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manage via the total of the custom story point column and the avg velocity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it can be done, if you work hard to only use it to get the value you need for planning and tracking in the context of Scrum and be careful to not go beyond this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vA71y.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Example MS Pro Setup&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastEditorUserId="1766" LastEditDate="2011-12-05T18:12:02.223" LastActivityDate="2011-12-05T18:12:02.223" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4013" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4023" CreationDate="2011-12-05T23:01:43.673" Score="8" ViewCount="470" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're looking at a candidate who has 20 years of experience (largely consulting) who we're thinking of hiring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our hiring manager thinks we shouldn't check references saying things like &quot;It's not prudent to check references for someone with over 20 years of experience. They're mainly intended for younger candidates with a limited track record&quot; and &quot;It's a little bit like asking for GPA. It's not something you do for people with that much experience. It's partly offensive and partly not all that useful.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally disagree with him and don't think we should make exceptions for any candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you do reference checks regardless of experience? If so, what are some arguments in favor of it? If not, why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Slight modification&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for the replies - I'll select an answer soon but I'd like to get some more input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His argument now is that somebody who has had many years of experience &lt;em&gt;and been promoted more than once&lt;/em&gt; does not need reference checks because their history of promotions tells you that they are a good employee, and the references they supplied would most likely be people who promoted them. Arguments against that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2657" LastEditorUserId="2657" LastEditDate="2011-12-06T21:22:50.013" LastActivityDate="2011-12-06T21:22:50.013" Title="Should I do reference checks on an experienced candidate?" Tags="&lt;human-resources&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4013" CreationDate="2011-12-06T00:03:36.600" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. A reference check can include checking for a history of non-desirable behavior like theft or creating a hostile work environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-12-06T00:03:36.600" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4013" CreationDate="2011-12-06T00:31:41.620" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does your hiring manager believe that 20 years experience guarantees a high performer?  If so, get a new hiring manager. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-12-06T00:31:41.620" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4011" CreationDate="2011-12-06T06:31:27.967" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use FogBugz with &lt;a href=&quot;http://stefan.rusek.org/Posts/Kanban-FogBugz-Plugin-v2-0-3-7/25/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Stefan Rusek's&lt;/a&gt; excellent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fogcreek.com/fogbugz/Plugins/plugin.aspx?ixPlugin=15&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kanban plugin&lt;/a&gt;. While it only has one &quot;board&quot;, you can filter things by project or Milestone, which effectively allows you to &quot;switch views&quot; quickly. FogBugz also has a backlog plugin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1191" LastEditorUserId="1191" LastEditDate="2012-03-12T12:13:59.877" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T12:13:59.877" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4013" CreationDate="2011-12-06T06:31:49.160" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitely you have to perform basic checks regardless of the CV length. He might have been just sitting pants all those years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A similar example: recently we interviewed a guy who had at least 7 years of software development in C++ on his CV. We rolled in &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/15623/587&quot;&gt;FizzBuzz&lt;/a&gt; - he spent three minutes and solved it incorrectly. Now if he was writing in 5 languages at the same time, that could be forgiven. If he spent 10 minutes but did it right, it could be forgiven as well. Yet he was only writing C++ and he couldn't solve the simplest practical task in reasonable time with reasonable quality. This simplest test tells more that an hour of interview talking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2658" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:31:53.287" LastActivityDate="2011-12-06T06:31:49.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3924" CreationDate="2011-12-06T06:55:07.920" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;High uncertainty projects&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are talking about are ‘high uncertainty projects’. All projects are unknown to some degree, some to a high degree. Medical research projects are a good example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dealing with uncertainty is different from dealing with risks. And you still can and should plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, there are three different types of high uncertainty projects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where the &lt;strong&gt;end of the project is not clear&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;The first stages are clear the later stages are not. In this type of projects you still can plan the stages but there might be some major re-planning at a stage gate.&#xA;An option in this type of projects is to make two projects out of one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Research projects.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;These projects normally deal with the ultimate uncertainty. In such projects you want to drop the project plan and only work with stage plans. This obviously impacts on the requirements for the stage gates.&#xA;Key here is to manage expectations as it is not unusual that 9 out of 10 projects fail. But the one successful project is worth all the other ones.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Projects with a feasibility study.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;There are two types of feasibility studies. A) Feasibility studies to confirm that you are heading in the right direction. This is similar to projects where the end is not clear. B) &#xA;Feasibility studies to identify different options. In this case making a specific feasibility project can be helpful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to be careful in chosing your project method. Some well known methods fail with high uncertainty, others force you to complicated work-arounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PRIME® offers you an add-on PowerPack to deal with high uncertainty projects. For details:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prime-project-method.com/prime_powerpacks.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.prime-project-method.com/prime_powerpacks.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2633" LastActivityDate="2011-12-06T06:55:07.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3924" CreationDate="2011-12-06T11:56:41.867" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends, if the uncertainty is part of your project.&#xA;If you can influence it, you have a lot of good advice already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you depend on inventions or progress of unrelated persons/companies, don't do a project based on this.&#xA;Do a project with what is available now, and if something new becomes available, improve your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2660" LastActivityDate="2011-12-06T11:56:41.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4011" CreationDate="2011-12-06T14:49:42.410" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can think of a &quot;client&quot; as just another variable to display on your board.  Since it's just another variable, all you need is a way to distinguish one client from another visually.  You can do this with (off the top of my head)...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;location&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;shape&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;color&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;orientation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;size&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;something else... &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could put clients in their own swim lane.  Or assign each a different color.... etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most digital boards support at least a few different visual variables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1630" LastEditorUserId="1630" LastEditDate="2019-02-07T21:47:26.047" LastActivityDate="2019-02-07T21:47:26.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4013" CreationDate="2011-12-06T18:19:37.093" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One question.  Have you ever given a prospective employer a number to call that you thought would be a bad reference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References are for praise as far as I'm concerned.  If you want to see if they are a criminal force a professional background check and drug test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other then that no matter how many checks you put in you really won't see what type of person they are for about 2 - 4 weeks of actual work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also agree with sharptooth.  Give them tests as part of the interview.  Easy and extreamly hard and sit behind or close to them so you can monitor there reactions.  This will give you the best information if you know how to read people fairly well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2661" LastActivityDate="2011-12-06T18:19:37.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3960" CreationDate="2011-12-06T18:25:22.103" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, you should perhaps reconsider what you are doing if you feel that you're playing the role of the &quot;team lead&quot;. You're either leading the team or you're not....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be a great leader you need to understand some key principles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide support to your team members without removing responsibility for action!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maintain or enhance self esteem&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Listen and respond with empathy &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Share thoughts feeling and rationale&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask for help and encourage involvement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are uncertain on any of these principles I would highly encourage you to read: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.ca/Zapp-Lightning-Empowerment-Productivity-Satisfaction/dp/0449002829&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Zapp! The Lightning of Empowerment: How to Improve Quality, Productivity, and Employee Satisfaction&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a great starting point for new team leads!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastEditorUserId="7018" LastEditDate="2016-12-25T15:38:45.307" LastActivityDate="2016-12-25T15:38:45.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4013" CreationDate="2011-12-06T19:16:10.010" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe reference checks for more experienced candidates count more than for inexperienced ones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, the fresh out of college or inexperienced hires do not cost or impact your organization at joining as a person with 20 years experience would - in all likelihoods he would be getting in a reasonable important position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, the inexperienced new hires are relatively new in their careers and their behaviour and habits can be more easily moulded - may not be so easy with an experienced candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When hiring, the information you get through interviews and evaluations on-site is a thin slice. Checking with reference (listed or otherwise) is where you can really get the 'real' data. Either way, most of the hiring at any level is preferred to happen through references. It, in my opinion, just becomes more important at a more experience level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1546" LastActivityDate="2011-12-06T19:16:10.010" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4031" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4034" CreationDate="2011-12-06T22:20:40.967" Score="2" ViewCount="181" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently worked on improving our development processes by working through McConnells &quot;Rapid Development&quot; and &quot;Software Project Survival Guide&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One area of weakness I've identified here is software design - we either skip it completely or  only do it from a modularisation perspective. Once I had this awareness, I found numerous examples of bus that would have been found by designing first, ie. creating mock functions, files etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have however difficulties formalising this for myself and (expectantly) difficulties to transfer the knowledge to my employee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone recommend books in this area that could be helpful. We are working in an environment of web based applications, mostly within the Symfony and Joomla frameworks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="747" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-27T03:16:21.040" LastActivityDate="2012-07-27T03:16:21.040" Title="Book recommendations on software detail design" Tags="&lt;training&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;design&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2012-07-27T03:16:06.470" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3951" CreationDate="2011-12-06T22:37:43.223" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it were me? I'd create a &quot;walled off&quot; area, and use it myself. Then let people know it's out there, and try and get at least one other person to post some content there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Maybe do stuff like: &#xA;  - a &quot;show me a funny picture from the web you saw this week&quot; thread&#xA;  - a &quot;what cultural holiday is coming up soon near you&quot; thread&#xA;  - a &quot;I can't believe they call this junk **news**&quot; thread&#xA;  - a &quot;pretty pictures from the area I live in&quot; thread&#xA;  - a &quot;crazy weather photos from the area I live in&quot; thread&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and other plain, boring attempts at lighthearted communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really, the best folks can post offensive, horrible things and just laugh at it...but if the group is how you're describing them here...&lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; do anything like that. Just stick with &quot;funny animal&quot; videos and it'll be enough to at least start an effort at reaching out to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2664" LastActivityDate="2011-12-06T22:37:43.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4031" CreationDate="2011-12-07T08:36:28.403" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could refer: Use Case Driven Object Modeling with UML: Theory and Practice by Doug Rosenberg and Matt Stephens and Design Driven Testing (same authors).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They walk you through to a very step by step approach to go from use-cases to robustness diagrams to sequence diagrams and then to code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latter book also focuses on the testing aspect and adds details about how to to 'test smarter'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both are great books for improving the development process. They are generic books but the way to approach software development is beautifully explained and are worthwhile books on a developer's bookshelf. The most valuable concept is that of robustness analysis IMHO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1119" LastActivityDate="2011-12-07T08:36:28.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4035" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4275" CreationDate="2011-12-07T10:00:42.530" Score="2" ViewCount="482" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a tool to aid in managing the development and maintenance of a single web app. It will mainly be used by one project manager and one or two external developers. Until now we have been mailing an Excel spreadsheet back and forth for tracking tasks and progress, which is not sufficient for a number of reasons. This project has no formal development methodology, and the tool shouldn't require a lot of knowledge on any methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tool should:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be simple to adapt to&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allow the follow operations on tasks: categorizing, activating/inactivating, prioritizing, estimating time needed and scheduling expected completion and required completion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Offer email alerts for new critical tasks or changes to critical tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be web based, hosted&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be cheap or free&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allow exporting data for safekeeping&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bonus: Powerful enough for future expansions of the team and operations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2667" LastEditorUserId="2667" LastEditDate="2011-12-07T12:05:10.100" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T12:56:39.087" Title="Software development management for small disconnected team" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4037" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-07T12:34:31.320" Score="9" ViewCount="1067" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for a smallish outsourcing company of about 30 people, nearly all of them developers. At any given moment we have 6-9 projects in development for various clients. Most of the projects are developed by 3 programmers and one tester and last around 6 months, but we have also some long-running projects lasting up to two years. We have been practicing Agile methodologies for a couple of years, and now we use Kanban more and more. Most of our developers are highly-skilled and while we have only a couple of &quot;real TDD&quot; practitioners, everybody does at least &quot;test-after&quot;. We don't pair a lot, but instead rely on hallway testing and code reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem we have encountered is that after having been acquired by a corporation, which has in the past outsourced all of it's programming work to India, we now handle multiple projects with very significant technical debt, almost all of which will probably run for quite a long time. This is a problem, because morale of the people working on those projects is very low (some people already quit), and the programmers are getting burned out quickly. It has been said that it feels like a prison sentence to be a part of those teams, especially with no end in sight for those projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are looking for a way of increasing morale of the unlucky employees who have to handle the worst projects. One of our ideas is to start rotating people regularly between projects, so that even if someone ends up in a really nasty project, they know that they only have to endure this for a couple of months, and not as long as they work for our company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have looked into this idea before, because we think it might be a good way to improve knowledge transfer, shared code ownership and encourage pair programming, but now we have a much stronger incentive to pursue this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know of two companies that practice rotating people among projects: &lt;a href=&quot;http://thinkrelevance.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Relevance&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://pivotallabs.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pivotal Labs&lt;/a&gt;. Relevance has posted an &lt;a href=&quot;http://thinkrelevance.com/blog/2010/09/20/rotation-and-the-customer.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;entry on their blog&lt;/a&gt; about rotating people, and Pivotal hints about it in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linkedin.com/jobs/jobs-Ultimate-Agile-Developer-2197139&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;some job offers&lt;/a&gt; and it was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-valuable-lessons-that-developers-who-study-at-Pivot&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;mentioned on Quora&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know any other companies that apply this technique (I'm especially interested in any experience reports)? Is it a good or a bad idea in our situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After reading the responses, I have come to the realization, that I might have over-stressed the burnout/prison-projects angle a little bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, as I have mentioned above, we have had the idea of rotating people regularly before, and the reason for that is that we expect this to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Promote knowledge-sharing, because people who are experts in various fields (DB, JavaScript), will have chance to work with a larger subset of other employees.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Improve code quality through continuous code review: when a new person enters a project, it will be a fresh set of eyes looking at the code and pointing out the faults in the design/code itself.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Foster collective code ownership: if people are expected to rotate off the project, the code, which they wrote will be maintained by other people. In order to not be left with maintaining a completely unknown, &quot;untouchable&quot; piece of code written by someone else, the developers will have to share the responsibility for various parts of the system.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Foster pair-programming: I believe that pair-programming is a good way of developing software. In a team, which periodically welcomes new members, pair-programming is the most effective way of introducing new people. If programmers spend a lot of time pair-programming with new people, hopefully they will be more likely to pair program with other team members on normal tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am really interested in learning about other companies that have tried rotating people across projects. Has anyone worked in an environment like that or has heard about some company practicing this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2670" LastEditorUserId="2670" LastEditDate="2011-12-12T13:59:29.397" LastActivityDate="2011-12-12T13:59:29.397" Title="Do you know any companies that rotate developers between different projects on regular basis?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4037" CreationDate="2011-12-07T13:39:37.650" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without knowing how frequently you are thinking of having the regular rotation, it is hard to say what the real impact would be. But unless the projects have either a shared technology or domain (preferably both), I would actually suggest against rotating people on a regular basis. Instead, only rotate the people that have shown signs of burn-out. No matter how good your developers are, there will be some amount of re-learning when they rotate from project to project. And that can easily be just as frustrating as being stuck if it is happening too often. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And really, the rotating will only work for so long unless you address the real problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;large technical debt&lt;/strong&gt; - I would suggest tackling the technical debt problem head on. Talk to the people in charge of the budget, and point out the problems the technical debt is causing. Ask for a certain amount of budget per month to start dealing with it, and have the developers give their input on what debt is most important to tackle. If the developers are actually allowed to make some headway (even if it is just taking care of small things that are annoying them), it will help.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;no end in sight&lt;/strong&gt; - This may be in your control or something that you need to take to a higher level. If the feature set that the team is being asked to work on doesn't seem to have a focus, they can feel like it is just a case of churning out small bits over and over. Make sure that there is a focus to the changes being implemented, and help provide the team with milestones that mean something to them and allow them to feel like they've accomplished something. This could be as simple as focusing for a quarter on a certain type of user whose experience you want to make better, or targeting a specific section of a website to be made better. But make sure the team knows what the current goal is (and what impact they are having).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to tackling those, I would take a step back and think about whether it is just the work that has changed since the acquisition by the corporation, or has the culture been impacted as well? Are the developers still feeling appreciated? Do they hear praise for their work? Do they get a chance to celebrate when a phase of one of the long-term projects does wrap up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastActivityDate="2011-12-07T13:39:37.650" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4037" CreationDate="2011-12-07T14:25:59.920" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a benefit-cost-risk analysis where the answer will be very specific to your organization at this period in time under your current working environment and constraints.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefit you are seeking is a morale booster.  You may also experience some unintended benefits, as well, like some performance improvement in development cause by no other reason than having new blood looking at the problem.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cost-risk is the removal of tacit intellectual capital on a specific work stream or project every time you rotate.  Ideally, your capabilities are so streamlined and under control that replacing a human resource would have no affect on performance.  Sadly, that is rarely the case.  Also, you have some probability that the rotation will have little to no affect on morale, but the costs still occur.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-12-07T14:25:59.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4035" CreationDate="2011-12-07T15:30:42.840" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can setup one of the free &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_issue-tracking_systems&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;issue tracking systems available on the web&lt;/a&gt;. Bugzilla and Trac are probably the most popular free systems. On the plus side they have task categorization and support email alerts, but they require some effort to setup and maintain. These systems are designed primarily for programmers and helpdesk employees and integrate well with popular development software. This means that the programmers will probably find it easy to use, while it may not be entirely suited for the project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want free software that focuses more on project management take a look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_project_management_software&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;project management software listed on Wiki&lt;/a&gt; (Note: list contains both commercial and free software).&#xA;Unfortunatly, I have no experience with this so I cannot recommend anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The simplest solution may be to convert your Excel spreadsheet to a Google documents spreadsheet. This is free, web-based, simple to adapt and allows you to track changes to the spreadsheet. You can also send an email to all the document's collaborators, but you have to do that manually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2635" LastActivityDate="2011-12-07T15:30:42.840" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4037" CreationDate="2011-12-07T16:47:23.723" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Companies' takeovers happens all the time. It's a matter of accept / get used to their drawbacks or search for a new company. It's not something we can choose, it just happens. When these developers joined the company, the culture was different... now, the company changed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not realistic to expect no changes after a company takeover. Not on IT or anywhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a project level, is important to remember that's part of the game to have better and worse projects, and eventually someone needs to keep the &quot;dark side&quot; up and running.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Now, about the dev rotation suggestion:&lt;/strong&gt; I totally agree with David, rotating peers &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; increase morale but you &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; have costs associated to it. The point is: does it worth? I think that's your real question... but, that's &lt;em&gt;yours&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not clear, however, what's required from your team on these prison-like applications. Are they pure maintenance projects or there's room to improve things? You mention they're supposed to be run for quite a long time... so I know that there's &lt;em&gt;time&lt;/em&gt; for improvements. Is there budget as well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, since these applications have been &quot;inherited&quot;, is there any new hire joining the company or only the developers leaving their prior projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Depending on the above, I see two possible approaches for a PM:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Opportunity approach:&lt;/strong&gt; In case you have space to improve the applications, it's a good opportunity to train new hires, pairing them with skilled peers that would present them real-world cases of do-NOT-ever-do-it programming. There are varions of it, depending on the room / budget you have for such.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pessimistic / realistic approach:&lt;/strong&gt; There's no way to improve the mess in place. All that power and knowledge your developers gathered during all those years will be wasted into clumbersome applications. They'll leave the company, eventually. Is important to remember that if that's the case, then new low-skilled hires will be required, and then we're back to the opportunity approach.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Two last things:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Understand clearly what are the expectactions for such applications (lifecycle, demand, future replacements). Maybe, on the long run, there'll be requirements to build replacements for these applications and their business knowledge will be essential.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Avoid shortcuts to increase team's morale. Face the problem in a wide open approach with the team, once you're aware of what's expected on such applications. When a problem is in place, you must keep everyone aware of the opportunities. If today is bad, let's focus on the promising future (if there's any).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope you success! Once you take your decision, please share with us the outcomes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2011-12-09T10:47:15.007" LastActivityDate="2011-12-09T10:47:15.007" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4035" CreationDate="2011-12-07T17:33:19.757" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://trello.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt;, a relatively new tool developed by Joel Spolsky's company Fog Creek (the powers behind StackOverflow and the Stack Exchange network).  I'm using it to manage special tasks with several of my employees, and it works very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1234" LastActivityDate="2011-12-07T17:33:19.757" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4043" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4052" CreationDate="2011-12-07T21:51:48.263" Score="1" ViewCount="138" Body="&lt;p&gt;I develop software and release it under a simple license that allows people a free copy as long as it remains for personal use only. I was thinking of setting up a registration server where the software would connect, obtain a license and then proceed on. By having the user do this, I could log the IP address of the registrant and based on the amount of registrations I receive from a particular IP address, I could gauge if they were using it for personal or commercial use. I know logging IP addresses can be controversial as some people believe it's as good as a real name or home address on the Internet, or get scared if you say you have their IP address, but frankly the moment the connect to my website, Apache logs their IP address in the main log. Would logging the IP addresses of users for registration purposes contradict most privacy policies? Would this method be non-appealing to users? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is an alternative method for enforcing non-commercial use of a product without making legal threats or other unpleasant statements, I'd love to hear about it. This idea just came off the top of my head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2679" LastActivityDate="2011-12-08T03:45:05.413" Title="Is it wrong to collect user's IP addresses for registration purposes?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;customer-satisfaction&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2011-12-16T01:57:24.043" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4044" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4259" CreationDate="2011-12-07T22:08:48.600" Score="2" ViewCount="2371" Body="&lt;p&gt;We need to perform a good deal of Monte Carlo analysis on some of our project plans - basically creating tornado diagrams, sensitivity analysis and follow it up with Monte Carlos. I am aware of commercial tools like @Risk by Palisade, Risk Simulator, Crystal Ball etc., &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything which is free and good? (i.e., can consider a large number of distributions and also help perform the aforementioned analyses). What has been your experience with them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1119" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T22:10:51.183" Title="Good (possibly free) tools for running Monte Carlo Simulations?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-12-20T15:53:19.687" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4045" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-07T22:52:07.003" Score="4" ViewCount="318" Body="&lt;p&gt;We build software. We use MS Project. We have projects where someone is booked 100% which really turns out to be 80% with meetings, more meetings, some side meetings, corporate meetings, etc that suck up at least 2 hours a day. So here is the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example A. We assign Billy to Task A for 8 hours. Project thinks Billy can accomplish this in one day since there are 8 hours in a day. However, Billy has three non-schedule related meetings on this day so it actually takes Billy 2 days to accomplish this task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example B. Billy has Task B which takes 6 hours. He finishes it today but had several more meetings and whatnot that took up the rest of the day. Now Project wants to start Billy on Task C when he is doing non-schedule related stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project deals well with Billy taking time off but blocking out hours/day is a challenge (or I am dense).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="389" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T03:36:50.827" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T05:13:54.613" Title="Dealing with non-scheduled time in Project" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4004" CreationDate="2011-12-08T00:20:46.740" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should try a burn up chart for your stake holders form xcel.  With xcel you can easily get something like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://alvazan.com/demo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Alvazan Demo&lt;/a&gt; for free though you have to update it manually every two weeks yourself....you can even draw a projection line to see if you are on target or not.  Stakeholders have loved the simplicity of that one chart.   Just one option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.alvazan.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dean's Blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2680" LastActivityDate="2011-12-08T00:20:46.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4045" CreationDate="2011-12-08T00:42:32.717" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are easy fixes with several alternatives depending on what makes the most sense.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First option, you can reduce the units per resource on the resource page.  So, if you have a person who also performs non project related stuff on an uncertain basis, estimate what remains.  No one is ever really 100% available.  So, using 60%, 70%, or 80% is appropriate.  If you did it this way, then you need to set all of your tasks as fixed unit.  Plug in your target hours and project will calculate the appropriate duration.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second option, if some of those meetings, both scheduled or ad hoc, are project related even in the most remote way, then either up your work estimates to include that work or up your duration.  For example, if you have your task as 'fixed work', you plug in 8 hours, extend your duration to 1.5 or 2.0 days, and project will calculate the resource utilization to something less than 100%.  Or, make your task fixed duration, manually enter 1.5 or 2.0 days, keep your resource at 70% units, and project will calculate the hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find using fixed duration the easiest and keeping the resources either at 50% for part-time or 100% for full-time.  I manipulate the duration such that I am providing enough time for wrench turning (full productivity) as well as all the other stuff that pops up.  The down side in doing it this way is you have to watch the utilization for each person to ensure you are not over burdening his/her day.  It requires some leveling.  But MSProject is quirky and this seems to be the best way to overcome its constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  When you estimate time for a task and enter it into a scheduling tool, you are taking a non deterministic estimate and choosing a single value, a deterministic value.  For example, you may estimate 3 to 8 days for a task with a most likely finish of 5.  You cannot schedule a range so you choose a target that represents the level of your risk appetite.  Five or six days is reasonable and that is what you schedule.  However, that inherently means you have some risk of exceeding your target up to 8 days in this example, due to all kinds of interruptions like ad hoc meetings, your people getting pulled on their other projects if they're shared, unexpected issues, etc.  This does not make the schedule wrong, it causes variances against which you have to manage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The schedule does not run you; you run the schedule.  If your scheduling is saying a task starts now but your resource is not there, that is called a late start.  Plug it in your tool as actual start date and keep going.  Your schedule will NOT come true with a zero variance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2011-12-09T13:27:06.480" LastActivityDate="2011-12-09T13:27:06.480" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4011" CreationDate="2011-12-08T02:34:43.167" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://leankit.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LeanKit Kanban&lt;/a&gt;.  Its has tremendous amount of flexibility and will allow represent your different projects with your choice of visualizations or using swimlanes within a single board. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2681" LastActivityDate="2011-12-08T02:34:43.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4043" CreationDate="2011-12-08T03:45:05.413" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, there is nothing wrong as far as figuring out things based on IP addresses. Many organizations do that for their analysis, evaluations and security. For example, Google puts up the local Google search based on IP addresses. Google Analytics does all kinds of analysis based on IP address origins. IP is an identifier for a user and is available for a web server to do the evaluations. There are even services like IP2Location (http://www.ip2location.com/) that takes an IP address and lets you know where it originated from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, note that most of these analysis are generic or aggregative in nature. I don't think it's a technically sound idea to permanently link an IP address with a user. Static IPs are not very common now and generally every time we connect to internet, we are assigned a new IP (though it would be in a fixed range of IP addresses).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So bottom line, you should be okay using an IP address to do your evaluations (e.g. evaluate license abuse) but don't assume that the same user will always have the same IP address every time he visits your software. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1546" LastActivityDate="2011-12-08T03:45:05.413" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3071" CreationDate="2011-12-08T18:52:14.990" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your team needs a slight adjustment in their &quot;Agile mindset&quot;. It's a cultural shift that needs to happen early phases of Agile adoption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Testing is not necessarily an activity that can only happen after the implementation is completed. Testers don't need to be only involved after the 'programmers' are done. It is important that testers get involved as early as possible, possibly bring part of design discussions, User Interface and usability finalizations, doing reality checks on UI and possibly design and architecture. This not only helps them in getting better understanding of the stories/features being worked on in the sprint but also provide useful input during the actual development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This obviously is part of their effort - they can spend the time during the implementation time to understand the Acceptance tests, preparing testing environment etc. After a few Sprints, however, teams 'stabilize' and the testers would always have some stories to test or bugs to verify while others are coming in the pipeline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The core issue at heart is not scheduling (IMHO) - it's changing the traditional testing approach and mindset.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1546" LastActivityDate="2011-12-08T18:52:14.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3960" CreationDate="2011-12-09T08:32:29.360" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most 'effective' thing a team lead can do is to empower and make the team effective. Help them grown professionally, facilitate them, remove obstacles in their way - all the activities that are people focused and that help them do their job in a better way. Many leaders fail when they can't make the transition from 'technology focused' to 'people focused'. Note that as team lead your success is a function of success of the team and it's members (and vice versa). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should review the Jim Collins 5 levels of leadership model: &lt;a href=&quot;http://leadership.atwork-network.com/2007/05/23/jim-collins-and-level-5-leadership/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jim Collins and Level 5 Leadership&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1546" LastEditorUserId="7018" LastEditDate="2016-12-25T15:38:39.520" LastActivityDate="2016-12-25T15:38:39.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4045" CreationDate="2011-12-09T08:52:18.007" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's always good to assume and set a buffer for every team member. If the 'additional' meetings are known and can be reasonably predicted then one option is to represent them in Project plan (e.g. Non-project meeting - 2 hours). Other option is to simply add a buffer time (e.g. 10-15%) in every team member's tasks when you enter them in the plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, just taking a step back, I see any tool as 'facilitating' my project work and not 'dictating' it - it looks like you are too bound with the tool focusing on making the tool work rather than having it assist you. Just my opinion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1546" LastActivityDate="2011-12-09T08:52:18.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3949" CreationDate="2011-12-09T08:59:08.087" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I once worked in a software development house where the project management strategy goes along these lines. This might be a little expensive but some of the options are free for any developer to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tortoise SVN (Client) and Visual SVN Server (Server) for Version and Source Control.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hudson or Jenkins for Continuous Integration.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bugzilla for Issues Tracking and Management.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fortify 360 or Sonar for Static Source Code Analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2688" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2012-10-12T13:18:25.450" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T13:18:25.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4058" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-09T09:18:41.027" Score="21" ViewCount="1105" Body="&lt;p&gt;Has any one in the community used 'evidence-based scheduling' by Fogcreek's fogbugz to come up with estimates and schedules on your real projects? I understand the basis of this technique (well covered by Joel here &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html&quot;&gt;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html&lt;/a&gt;) but I am interested in knowing the actual experiences of folks who have used fogbugz on real world projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1546" LastActivityDate="2011-12-16T07:32:37.433" Title="Fogbugz Evidence Based Scheduling" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4045" CreationDate="2011-12-09T09:33:16.653" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may also think of going lean and ask your organization 'Do we need so many meetings? What can we do to reduce amount and time of those meetings? What can we do to reduce Billy's time spent on meetings?'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be careful with buffers, they are almost always too small :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastActivityDate="2011-12-09T09:33:16.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4060" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-09T11:19:39.147" Score="6" ViewCount="1114" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand this may apply to very few but I hope there are some who can give me good advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know what project management tools &lt;em&gt;embedded software&lt;/em&gt; engineering organizations/groups/teams have been using - and why? Embedded Software development imposes it's own requirements for projects and their management so keeping those in mind, if you had a chance to work towards selecting your tool, what were your criteria? Also, if you are already using one, what are the features they lack specifically due to your requirements or preferences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1546" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2012-01-19T17:22:20.627" LastActivityDate="2012-01-19T17:22:20.627" Title="Project Management Tools for Embedded Software Professionals" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4045" CreationDate="2011-12-09T13:17:44.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;AdHoc meetings are planning killers. I'd say that trying to adapt your planning to the unpredictable will only bring you more headaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you have enough proof that those meetings are negatively impacting your team's performance and / or management, wouldn't be possible to review if Billy really needs to attend all these meetings? If these meetings are at company level, maybe the managers aren't aware that those meetings, although useful, can lead to project-tracking nightmares. Has this topic already been broadly discussed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides follow David and Ather's buffer suggestions, I don't see much things to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the project I'm currently working on, we had in the past several meetings across the week with the whole team. On a management level, We agreed that, although they were valuable, we could be more concise and productive having review meetings only with specific attendants rather than several meetings with the whole team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I'd suggest you to make yourself the question: &lt;em&gt;Does all these meetings adds any value into Billy's work to pay off this planning change?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2011-12-09T13:17:44.717" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4062" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4067" CreationDate="2011-12-09T17:56:26.277" Score="4" ViewCount="1977" Body="&lt;p&gt;The biggest problem I have right now is the team is unable to commit on the stories and tasks planned during a sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, we wanted to implement a new database, which is very complex and we have a number of possibilities. We knew we had to find out how we could implement the database, and searched for awhile, but after three weeks during the sprint demo we had nothing to deliver and it was communicated only at that moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They don't seem to comprehend that they have to deliver what was talked about in the sprint planning, that they have to talk about the fact that they can't deliver something during the daily stand ups, and that they can change or not respect the scope of the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I get them to understand that they should commit on what they planned during the sprint planning, so that they are more capable of planning their next sprint and respect what they planned?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I tried putting up a visible burndown chart with post-its but it takes so much time to write all the user stories...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Force them as a team to create the tasks during the sprint planning (before the last sprint, I would be showing them jira on a projector and a team member would tell me what they would do, while the others would not be listening).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm also trying to put shorter sprints (from 3 weeks to 2), but I'm receiving a lot of challenge from my team lead: he says at 2 weeks they are not able to deliver anything, but in my opinion they are not able to deliver enough in 3 weeks sprint also.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stef&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1922" LastEditorDisplayName="user1922" LastEditDate="2011-12-10T16:41:40.437" LastActivityDate="2011-12-10T16:41:40.437" Title="How to encourage the commitment on a sprint for a team" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4062" CreationDate="2011-12-09T19:54:40.100" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To begin with, I would like to point out that in the newest &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrum.org/scrumguides&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, we are not talking about commitment in a way where we ask the team to deliver a certain quantity of features, but rather to commit on deeper meanings like the quality of these features or working with business people on a daily basis. It's a subtle, yet meaningful difference. Suggested reading: &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilepartnership.com/blogit/2011/07/26/is-commitment-dead/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Is commitment dead?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the situation you are in, I would like to ask if you, as a ScrumMaster, have done everything to avoid this situation? Were you aware of the situation but hoped for the team to find a solution before the deadline? Or have you actively tried to find someone (a DBA for instance) that could try to answer any technical questions (or the Customer for any business questions) the team might had in order to clarify what is their best option? Was there any reason why your Customer was informed quite late about the problems and not before?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a ScrumMaster, your job is to do that. Not to simply be there on Scrum's artefact meetings and remove any requested impediment, but also the one the team cannot communicate to you specifically. You need to be aware of what's happening and try to make it better or simpler. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teams will fail to deliver some features, that's bound to happen in every company. The best approach we can have when a team fail is to inspect what happened and adapt to prevail. And I hope the ScrumMaster of this team will also try to inspect and adapt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know I may seem harsh over you, but I lack more information on the reason why the team failed (and I know for sure the problem is not only on how you handled it). Reading on how they are acting on your Sprint Planning, I would be tempted to say you are not dealing as a team but a collective of individuals. You may want to try to have some team building activities with them to begin with. Suggestion further readings: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0787960756&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Five Dysfunctions of a Team&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0787976377&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you'll have a team, maybe things will become easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2692" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-12-10T16:27:23.457" LastActivityDate="2011-12-10T16:27:23.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4062" CreationDate="2011-12-09T22:24:35.330" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you're not getting the feedback that you need during your daily Scrums.  Status on critical deliverables should always be communicated through out the Scrums.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When first adopting Scrum, teams tend to over commit, and will scale back to a more realistic amount of work each sprint as they learn what their true velocity is.  The team should get a better handle on how and what they can commit to with each sprint retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2693" LastActivityDate="2011-12-09T22:24:35.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4066" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4073" CreationDate="2011-12-10T16:14:51.907" Score="4" ViewCount="512" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the most effective methods/strategies which will help in the setting of realistic deadlines within projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2696" LastActivityDate="2011-12-21T18:20:58.880" Title="Strategies for Setting Realistic Deadlines" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;deadline&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4062" CreationDate="2011-12-10T16:22:13.547" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You can't possible &lt;em&gt;force&lt;/em&gt; people to &lt;em&gt;commit&lt;/em&gt; to something.&lt;/strong&gt; Commitment should be, by definition, a voluntary act. I believe that it is possible to do something and I know I'll do my best to do this thus I commit to achieve the goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think about forcing people it's not a commitment any more - it's just getting the monkey off my back. Want to hear that this will be ready in 2 weeks and not going to leave me be? OK. Here, I said this. Happy now? Just don't tell me it is a real commitment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you can do to get what you want is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First, learn why they avoid any commitments.&lt;/strong&gt; They might have been punished for not keeping their commitments in the past so they learned to avoid them. Or they just might not understand why it is important for the rest of the organization. Or something else. Unless you know what is the root cause of this situation it would be hard to act reasonably.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Second, help them to understand why you, and others in the organization, need this commitment.&lt;/strong&gt; Explain how it affects planning, decision-making, allocating people and resources etc. Try to put them in your shoes so they will see why it is so important for you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Third, address any problems the team has with committing to anything.&lt;/strong&gt; If they don't want to be punished when they fail, assure them they won't be. Explain that the goal is to have them doing their best and that you understand that everyone fails occasionally. If there's some other reason address it as well.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fourth, try to teach them to achieve their goals step by step.&lt;/strong&gt; Start with small and easy-to-achieve commitment so they see they can do it. You also set up a good track-record this way. If your goals at the moment are too ambitious or too challenging either look for something smaller/easier, or cut them. Maybe not a full report on possible data bases but just comparing a set of crucial features, or performing a set of basic tests etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fifth, communicate frequently.&lt;/strong&gt; If at the end of the week you learn that nothing has been done it is your problem as well as others'. It means that you don't communicate frequently enough or the quality of communication is low. How could such thing slip through all the stand-ups?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sixth, avoid, by any means, forcing people.&lt;/strong&gt; This way you aren't going to end up with a real commitment at all. Quality of information you get from the team will be poor as well. You won't be able to plan anything basing on &quot;commitments&quot; in such situation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-12-10T16:22:13.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4058" CreationDate="2011-12-10T16:51:06.373" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I didn't use FogBugz although I did adopt the method itself in one team I worked with as I had all the needed data in my task tracking tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First, the story&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We were splitting our stories, and later features, to so-called development tasks. For each of such tasks we were making estimates in real hours, meaning that we were trying to take into account all the time spent on distracters, context-switching, etc. Then, when a task was finished we were writing down the real time spent on it. Now, whenever we needed to estimate something in detail we could do WBS make our estimates and, basing on historical data, do Monte Carlo analysis (in Excel sheet) and come up with a result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Second, the issues&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had two problems with such approach. One, to get reasonable results you should keep the same granularity of tasks both when you collect data and when you make estimations. While the former is easy as we did it anyway, splitting few-month-long, multiple-people project into tasks which take 8 hours on average is huge effort. Besides it requires quite an effort to design the whole thing up front.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another problem is accounting all the time spent on task during later stages, e.g. bug-fixing, to the original task. It is tricky as you think not only about regular tests but also about issues you get from production etc. Eventually, we ended up having another task, one per feature, dedicated purely for testing. Its original estimate was 0 and real time was whatever was spent on unplanned tasks, such as bug-fixing. Theoretically it suited the model, although it wasn't really telling you anything about the quality of someone's estimating skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Third, the conclusions&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the method produced pretty good results, whenever I actually used it, it wasn't applicable too often. As we used agile approach to development we didn't want to design in much details up-front, especially that we worked in environment where priorities were changing pretty rapidly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand I could get pretty decent coarse-grained estimates using more generic data (&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2010/05/kanban-estimation.html&quot;&gt;read more about the approach&lt;/a&gt;). Also I realized that most of the time I didn't need such exact estimates as I could get using Evidence Based Scheduling, thus we mostly abandoned the method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-12-16T07:32:37.433" LastActivityDate="2011-12-16T07:32:37.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4066" CreationDate="2011-12-10T20:51:45.670" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the business's preference is to have fixed time for a project, then I would use a method that allows for prioritized and flexible scope, so that when we reach the set deadline there is better chance we have 80% of the features 100% done, instead of 100% of the features, 80% done. I am assuming also that money/resources is also fixed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile methodologies are great for this (ie. Scrum, Kanban)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These methods would also allow you to better &lt;em&gt;predict&lt;/em&gt; what set of features would be available at the deadline if the team is allowed to find their rhythm. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastActivityDate="2011-12-10T20:51:45.670" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4060" CreationDate="2011-12-10T20:56:59.020" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We did not find an issue with any special requirements for embedded software projects that were different from any other software projects when it came to methodologies or tools. I used MS Project to show embedded software projects and dependencies with the hardware schedules and non embedded software projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, I would use a simple prioritized backlog in any Agile tool. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastActivityDate="2011-12-10T20:56:59.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4045" CreationDate="2011-12-10T21:00:45.900" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find out impossible to guess a % overhead and would set one initially, but use Earned Value to better predict through the project how individuals overheads were different. I was also careful to to use this as a hammer to judge if one person was 90% and another 50%. We found that this gave us valuable learning to see how different people were used on and off the project. In most cases everyone's average overhead from earned value was realistic for keep the business running and getting new features developed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today I use Agile methodologies that specifically measure the feature output of the team that overtime factors in the team overhead, so this issue and frustration goes away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastActivityDate="2011-12-10T21:00:45.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4072" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-11T12:06:18.580" Score="11" ViewCount="4289" Body="&lt;p&gt;My friend from UK - Richard Newton - has published a very interesting article which tries to answer this question. However, I don't think he managed to look at all the angles and give appropriate answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I would like to ask you: &lt;em&gt;Do we really need project managers?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking forward to some interesting perspectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: The article I mentioned can be found here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://corporategeek.info/why-do-we-need-project-managers-positive-justification&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Why Do We Need Project Managers?&lt;/a&gt;, in case anybody is interested in reading it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="409" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-10-05T04:59:21.920" LastActivityDate="2015-01-30T13:14:07.567" Title="Do we really need project managers?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;roles&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ClosedDate="2015-02-03T08:44:46.803" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4066" CreationDate="2011-12-11T12:14:02.137" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First you need to define what you mean by realistic.  If you were to do the same project 1,000 times, you would end up with quite a range of finishes.  For example, a project could end with finishes that range from 40 days to maybe as high as 100 days.  That entire range is realistic since it was observed.  Or, realistic might mean something that has a higher probability than 1/1000.  But my point is, how you and your stakeholders define realistic is very important and should be your first strategic action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, use estimating techniques that allow for you to arrive at that range with the probabilistic density that sits on top of it.  Avoiding allowing estimators to use single point estimating.  A team of estimators need to look at a work package and understand what might result if everything ran perfectly and what might result if trouble was around every corner and what will most likely result.  Use historical stats if you have it.  And run a simulation so that you can see the effects of on the total project if you ran it 1,000 times.  Then, using your definition developed in step one, you can pinpoint the interval that represents realistic to you and likely represents the highest probability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, understanding that distribution will allow you to educate your stakeholder and set appropriate expectations, that despite choosing the highest probable finish, there is still natural risk of exceeding that time frame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-12-11T12:14:02.137" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4072" CreationDate="2011-12-11T12:28:49.220" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you throw 10 random people together and assign them a complex, challenging task, with no other direction than 'go', these individuals will naturally evolve and gravitate to certain roles.  This is a very natural phenomena and is defined by Belbin and others.  Even if there is conflict with a certain role, it works itself out as the team gels with little to no outside intervention.  (Yes, some &quot;teams&quot; have self imploded.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of these roles is a leadership role; Belbin defines this as Monitor Evaluator.  This is the de facto PM.  Another role that emerges is the Coordinator, the de facto PMA or project controls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a natural result of people working together.  So the answer to this question goes beyond some induced theory.  Whether you think you need a PM or not, one will emerge anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-12-11T12:28:49.220" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4075" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4085" CreationDate="2011-12-11T16:04:59.250" Score="1" ViewCount="1620" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know feasibility studies are recommended by a number of project management methodologies i.e. The Waterfall Model, but would a feasibility study be method for project management?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2696" LastEditorUserId="2696" LastEditDate="2011-12-11T18:01:51.183" LastActivityDate="2011-12-12T12:16:25.033" Title="Is a Feasibility study considered a method?" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4072" CreationDate="2011-12-11T16:48:02.100" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;YES AND NO&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on the definition of ‘project’.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an organisation, not every (bigger) task needs to become a project governed by a project method or approach. An organisation should think if a task should be managed as part of day-to-day business or as a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is a project it needs a project manager to deliver the project. Project management is a skill set as is financial management or marketing management. That does not mean that every project manager role is a full time job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is just a task it still needs a person (or manager) who delivers this task. But as it is now part of the day-to-day business no specific project management skills are needed. Frequently managers leading a larger task are called task force manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2633" LastActivityDate="2011-12-11T16:48:02.100" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4075" CreationDate="2011-12-11T17:43:09.327" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No and No&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a look at the definition of a feasibility study (e.g. in Wikipedia): ‘A feasibility study is an evaluation of a proposal designed to determine the difficulty in carrying out a designated task.’&#xA;Hence a feasibility study can be part of a project.&#xA;Feasibility studies are not part of a methodology. But some methodologies give advice on how to handle projects which have feasibility studies as they introduce a higher level of uncertainty and uncertainty makes planning more difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2633" LastActivityDate="2011-12-11T17:43:09.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4078" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4080" CreationDate="2011-12-11T18:23:43.053" Score="19" ViewCount="20953" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the typical project reporting model are you using in your project team? When I say reporting, I am talking about both reporting externally to stakeholders and internally to all team members. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you use an 'active reporting' mechanism like everyone sending out status emails, or project manager going around asking for updates, or a daily status update call - or you use a passive reporting mechanism, like the project management system itself generates reports in an automated way based on normal project tasks updates entered by team members? How much of your reporting is individualistic and how much is tool dependent? Is it daily or weekly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know what has worked best in your situation (please mention your context - like a co-located team or geographically distributed). There is obviously no one-size-fits-all answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1546" LastEditorUserId="2618" LastEditDate="2012-01-19T02:30:32.120" LastActivityDate="2019-11-18T00:51:56.643" Title="How do you report project status?" Tags="&lt;reporting&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="8" ClosedDate="2019-11-18T01:30:31.997" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2011-12-11T18:27:31.453" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/073561993X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Project Management with Scrum&lt;/a&gt; by Ken Schwaber&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1546" LastActivityDate="2011-12-11T18:27:31.453" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-12-11T18:27:31.453" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4078" CreationDate="2011-12-11T23:22:59.647" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some guidelines on status reporting which have worked well on projects I have worked on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Adopt an &quot;active&quot; approach&lt;/strong&gt;: passive reporting is not productive because when it comes to project status, what matters is to tell people what's important for them to know at that particular point of time in the project. Passive reporting carries the risks of people ignoring the communication (if they have to go and get it themselves) and misinterpreting what's important. It's the role of the PM to sieve through the project information and pro-actively share the current status in a meaningful way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Adapt the frequency to your project&lt;/strong&gt;: generally weekly reporting works well, but some projects may grant more frequent updates (e.g. projects with very short timeframes may require daily status report). If going daily, you have to keep it very short and simple at the risk of spending your entire time doing status reports. With Agile projects, daily stand-ups work well (though external stakeholders may not need the daily update).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get the status from the task owners&lt;/strong&gt;: whatever frequency you report at, and whichever tools you use, the people who own the tasks need to update the status. Establish upfront a process with your team whereby people understand their responsibilities (what they have to update, how and when). As the PM issuing the report, it is then up to you to keep that process going and aggregate the information you want to convey in your status report (e.g. your team members are responsible for reporting status on their issues, but you make a call as to which issues you report on to your wider audience).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also review the following question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/2890/1722&quot;&gt;What makes an effective email status report? Why?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-12-11T23:22:59.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4075" CreationDate="2011-12-12T04:25:03.940" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No,  it is a decision making tool. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-12-12T04:25:03.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4078" CreationDate="2011-12-12T09:16:08.457" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/articles/agile-kanban-boards&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kanban Board&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; as our main reporting tool. Every team member can go to the board and see &lt;strong&gt;current work in-progress&lt;/strong&gt;. He can also see the backlog and todo list so he is able to see how much &lt;strong&gt;work we haven't started yet&lt;/strong&gt;. If a PM comes and wants to know current status we usually bring him in front of the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also do &lt;strong&gt;daily stand-ups&lt;/strong&gt;, to communicate status and problems to each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We report &lt;strong&gt;to&lt;/strong&gt; the &lt;strong&gt;client&lt;/strong&gt; with &lt;strong&gt;excel&lt;/strong&gt; spreadsheet &lt;strong&gt;that reflects the board&lt;/strong&gt; and we let him align the priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;And now the context: co-located team of 10-16 with many maintenance projects and one big new project in-progress&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastActivityDate="2011-12-12T09:16:08.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4078" CreationDate="2011-12-12T11:06:36.640" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team is co-located, working in a department of 6 small project teams (4 dev, 1 QA, .5 BA) and a dev ops team.  We do a mixture of Scrum, Kanban and XP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For the team&lt;/strong&gt;, our &lt;strong&gt;story board&lt;/strong&gt; is our main tool.  It shows what's on our backlog for the next couple of weeks, what we're planning to do in the current week and we have a burn up chart that we print and stick on it to show progress towards our next releasable feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We invite our &lt;strong&gt;department management&lt;/strong&gt; (CIO, CTO, Dev and Ops managers) to our &lt;strong&gt;morning meeting&lt;/strong&gt; once every couple of weeks.  This allows them to get a feel for progress and gives us a forum for raising risks and blockers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For &lt;strong&gt;project stakeholders&lt;/strong&gt; (users or user proxies) we run regular &lt;strong&gt;demo sessions&lt;/strong&gt; to show what we've been working on, get feedback and guide our backlog planning.  This may involve marketing people too if there is going to be any external marketing activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the wider group of &lt;strong&gt;interested parties&lt;/strong&gt; we do some &lt;strong&gt;email comms&lt;/strong&gt;, this is usually a once a month email detailing all of the features released that month by all of the IT teams to avoid bombarding people with loads of emails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2011-12-12T11:06:36.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4078" CreationDate="2011-12-12T12:13:57.410" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The stakeholder segment defines the how, what, when, where, and why.  It is a mistake to define a 'way' to report project status and to assume it will be appropriate in all cases against all stakeholder segments.  While there might be similarities across projects, it would be a mistake to assume one size fits all, as you indicate in your original question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I purposely avoid having a predefined method for communicating project status.  I 'discover' it for each project during the stakeholder analysis effort and I actively modify to correct error in my earlier conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-12-12T12:13:57.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4075" CreationDate="2011-12-12T12:16:25.033" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer is, it can be.  A feasibility study can be part of your overarching project approach and can be further described in your PM methods, in terms of the description of how you would do one, the outputs, timing, estimated costs, required roles and expertise, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-12-12T12:16:25.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4078" CreationDate="2011-12-12T15:00:19.647" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask the different people involved how they would like information reported, what information they would like reported and how often they would like to receive the information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-12-12T15:00:19.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4088" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4091" CreationDate="2011-12-12T18:53:49.117" Score="11" ViewCount="1203" Body="&lt;p&gt;Year end is approaching, and on the company I'm working (and pretty much all other IT companies) it's time for year's &lt;strong&gt;performance evaluation&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evaluating people is always a sensitive and insightful task, specially on IT where deliverables depending on numerous factors. It's hard to define what has been 'accomplished' and what's not (like what we have &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/214/430&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During project's concepts / planning / development, there are objective skills to be evaluated. But what about the maintenance phase? In case there's no development at all but mainly investigations raised by end users (&lt;em&gt;why X is like this and not like that?&lt;/em&gt;), how to evaluate our peers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are the basics, like 'communication' and 'investigation' skills... but as an IT company, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to keep our team improving their tech background on a project where no complex technical skills are required?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to compare them with people working on pure development projects?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you faced similar scenarios? Any thoughts / experiences to share?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-12-21T18:13:56.270" Title="Maintenance Project: How to evaluate team's performance?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;maintenance&gt;&lt;performance&gt;&lt;evaluation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4090" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-13T09:23:18.433" Score="9" ViewCount="4311" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll be interning as a Program Manager this summer.  During my interview loop, I noticed that one of my interviewers had an MBA.  This is considered a &quot;technical&quot; management role, and I hadn't realized that people in this position commonly got MBAs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is an MBA valuable for furthering one's career? What are the benefits of getting an MBA as a Project Manager and is it worthwhile for this position?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you were already a Project Manager at a good company, would it be worth taking a break to pursue an MBA at a top ten school?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1448" LastEditorUserId="1448" LastEditDate="2011-12-14T07:38:04.443" LastActivityDate="2012-01-29T22:29:07.300" Title="What are the benefits of getting an MBA and is it worthwhile?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;program-management&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4088" CreationDate="2011-12-13T09:54:15.470" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a team where our main goal is to maintain large projects. I pay attention to numerous things connected with technical skills in my team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tests&lt;/strong&gt; - Is this person writing tests? How do they look? Does he tests before, or after? Does he write tests for bugs reported by client? We've decided that automated tests are crucial to sleep well and not to spend whole weeks in debug, so programmers should focus on writing tests.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Helping others&lt;/strong&gt; - Is this person helpful? Is he interested in others' tasks, problems, etc.? In team of 14 people there is no chance to have deep knowledge about every line of code, so we have to help each other when somebody works with code he is not so familiar with&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not adding crap&lt;/strong&gt; - When we modify the system or when we add new feature is this person doing it according to SOLID principles, does this code have tests? Are the methods short? Are the names readable?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not using copy/paste anti-pattern&lt;/strong&gt; - Is this person using copy/paste method to add functionality or is he rearranging existing code into resuable units, avoiding duplication.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Understanding the code&lt;/strong&gt; - Does he understand what the code is responsible for before modifying it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Breaking builds&lt;/strong&gt; - How often does he commit changes that cause the build to fail because of compilation errors or tests failures&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Attention to details&lt;/strong&gt; - Does he pay attention to details like providing proper data in delivery e-mails (contact phone number, application version, changes despriction), adding comments to changeset, changing status in issue tracking system, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Refactoring&lt;/strong&gt; - Is he changing the code leaving the code base a little bit cleaner than when he got there&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Automation and improvements&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I help you&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; *&lt;em&gt;attitude&lt;/em&gt;* - Is he delivering ideas what can be done better with the solution, what can be automated, how can we make some areas less error prone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure there are more aspects I take under consideration, but those came to my mind right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastActivityDate="2011-12-13T09:54:15.470" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4092" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4130" CreationDate="2011-12-13T10:37:32.857" Score="3" ViewCount="803" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new in software field. I have done M.C.A. and haven't done any deal with client. Now i have one client who has a requirement of C++ software. I can cope up with requirement but I don't know how to deal with him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how to give him estimation of payment?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how to give him time to deliver a software?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2707" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2011-12-13T14:22:09.727" LastActivityDate="2011-12-17T01:34:07.637" Title="how to give estimate to client about payment?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4090" CreationDate="2011-12-13T10:58:34.137" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although I believe that the content discussed on MBAs might vary a lot across institutions, here's my feelings about MBA (I'm currently doing one in Brazil, focused on Project Management):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Knowledge:&lt;/strong&gt; It's kinda obvious, but always worth studying. On my course, there's what's called a 'common axis' across all specializations, where's discussed topics like economics, finance, marketing amongst others. This knowledge, gives you...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A broader vision of a company:&lt;/strong&gt; Specially for being in touch with some other folks from other areas / realities, you'll notice that every sector within a company has it's importance (remember that HR people we think that are wrong most of the time? Maybe, &lt;em&gt;we&lt;/em&gt; are wrong...). It helps you to understand some company's decisions, specially when working for global companies (because you'll understand better the market rules). And of course, you'll...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Expand your networking:&lt;/strong&gt; Depending on the MBA you do, you'll have the opportunity to met and discuss equally with CEOs, great leaders and managers, company owners and so on. Even on 'low profile' MBAs, you'll eventually meet new people which help you build bridges for your career.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bottomline:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; it (even if you want to go for a technical career)? Maybe not, and you could spend some time on other trainings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it &lt;em&gt;worth&lt;/em&gt; it? Definitely.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="1094" LastEditDate="2012-01-25T15:18:39.380" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T15:18:39.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4090" CreationDate="2011-12-13T13:12:17.857" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, completing some type of graduate study is becoming more and more important just to gain entry into job competition.  An undergraduate degree is not much more in substance than a high school diploma was 20 or 30 years ago.  So pursuing post-graduate work for someone in the early stages of a career is almost mandatory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The MBA, however, has become less of a differentiator due to several things.  First, it is a very popular degree so &quot;everyone&quot; has one.  Hiring managers are needing other qualifiers to weed out candidates.  Second, there are a plethora of 'stayinyourpjswhileyoustudy' schools that have popped up offering this degree so it brings to question with what knowledge/skill set are these candidates presenting.  Third, it is becoming more clear that the performance difference between MBAs and non MBAs are not significant, if any.  There is a growing school of thought that the value of the MBA is overrated.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You cannot grow wrong with any education; however, you might want to look into other other alternatives that may help to differentiate you from the crowd and quite possibly be more aligned with your core interests.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-12-13T13:12:17.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4092" CreationDate="2011-12-13T15:32:44.803" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The leading books about software project management and software estimation are Steve McConnell's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1556159005&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1572316217&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Software Project Survival Guide&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0735605351&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from reading these books, and other software project management or software estimation resources, I agree with David Espina and Tiago Cardoso's comments - this is a very complex topic and a lot has been written about it, both in a number of books, papers, and other questions here in the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/estimating&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'estimating'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;estimating&lt;/a&gt; tag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2011-12-13T15:32:44.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3650" CreationDate="2011-12-13T16:50:39.070" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Searching for some other time tracking tools, found your question... and worth to have a look at &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.toggl.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Toggl&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, a very simple, ease to use, CSV / PDF report generator and cross plataform time tracking tool, all for free. It also offers some further pro-funcionalities, such as project billing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use the free version and have no complains about it at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2011-12-13T16:50:39.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3650" CreationDate="2011-12-13T17:02:47.620" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have used SAP extensively for enterprise level time tracking&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1546" LastActivityDate="2011-12-13T17:02:47.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4090" CreationDate="2011-12-13T21:52:34.930" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some companies require an advanced business degree to get promoted above a certain level (in the management track). Usually folks go for an MBA when working at companies such as those. The technical guys I know that have gotten MBAs did so because of three major reasons:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The company was paying for it.   &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They thought they'd be moving out of tech jobs into management.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The people above them had them, so they better get one if they wanted to get promoted. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of the popularity of MBAs, many schools charge more for them than for other Masters degrees in business. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What are the benefits of getting an MBA as a Project Manager and is it worthwhile for this position?&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The primary benefits are the networking connections one makes as part of the learning. My advice is to skip it - unless you can get into one of the top 10 schools. A more reasonable degree might be along the lines of MIS or CS. At my university, there is a course aimed at PMP background, but it is an MIS track course. A minor advantage to being a PM with an MBA would be higher credibility in meetings with managers because they'd see you more as &quot;one of them&quot; than as a technical nerd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2011-12-13T21:52:34.930" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1871" CreationDate="2011-12-14T03:03:32.050" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One great way not yet mentioned is a formal mentoring program offered by a local chapter. I know that the Southern Ontario Chapter (Toronto, Canada) and Technology Triangle Chapter (Waterloo, Ontario) both offer programs that get you between 40-60 PDUs over the course of a year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It requires that you have regular (usually weekly) meetings (in person or by phone) with your mentor. You get a lot of great advice, built a great relationship, and get tons of PDUs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Highly recommended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[edit] Unfortunately most of the links are behind login screens, but if you're a member of PMI-SOC, go to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.soc.pmi.on.ca/displaycommon.cfm?an=7&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.soc.pmi.on.ca/displaycommon.cfm?an=7&lt;/a&gt; and click &quot;Mentoring Program&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Various other chapters' mentoring programs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmisac.com/drupal/node/79&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pmisac.com/drupal/node/79&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://stlpmi.org/content.php?page=Mentoring_Program&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://stlpmi.org/content.php?page=Mentoring_Program&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi-portland.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pmi-portland.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi-lakeshore.org/mentor/mentor.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pmi-lakeshore.org/mentor/mentor.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably best to contact your local chapter to see what they offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2713" LastEditorUserId="2713" LastEditDate="2011-12-14T19:16:37.783" LastActivityDate="2011-12-14T19:16:37.783" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4090" CreationDate="2011-12-14T03:07:44.600" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having an MBA can definitely help you: a) move into management, or b) move up higher in management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Benefits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Connections / Networking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prestige (especially from a &quot;brand name&quot; school)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Drawbacks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cost (more expensive the more well-known the school is)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time (full-time programs can sometimes be 2 years)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2713" LastActivityDate="2011-12-14T03:07:44.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4090" CreationDate="2011-12-14T09:46:32.883" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;MBA is really ambiguous and today is just a general term, that by itself won't get you anywhere. If you are looking at top 10 MBA programs in the States, you have to consider the time (around 2 yrs for most of the full time programs) and money (depends, but is a lot, usually) investments you will have to make. For a PM an MBA could be a stepping stone for larger project, positions, influence etc., a top tier school also gives you connections, in your case probably giving you access to more interesting projects/programs to manage and basically giving you the freedom of choice and possible bargaining power in terms of salary, conditions, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A (top tier) MBA is a great investment in your long-term career. But beware, business schools are now a lucrative business and they will promise you all kind of things (switching tracks, more money, etc) to get you to sign up, just be rational and keep your expectations under control. Also you have a great deal of choice, even if you look only at top business schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are quite a lot of specific MBA programs, e.g. HBS has an interesting 2+2 program ( &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hbs.edu/mba/admissions/2+2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.hbs.edu/mba/admissions/2+2/&lt;/a&gt; ) for college seniors, or Sloan, from MIT ( &lt;a href=&quot;http://mitsloan.mit.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://mitsloan.mit.edu/&lt;/a&gt; ) focused more on high tech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you are looking for specific track in Project/Program Management, perhaps you should also look at the Project Management Institute: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/en/Certification/Project-Management-Professional-PgMP.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pmi.org/en/Certification/Project-Management-Professional-PgMP.aspx&lt;/a&gt; , a specific certification for Project Managers (in this case for Program Managers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if time&amp;amp;money is not an issue - go for HBS/MIT/top MBA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you look specifically at PM with lower time&amp;amp;money cost - go for a PMP&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2601" LastActivityDate="2011-12-14T09:46:32.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3305" CreationDate="2011-12-14T16:10:35.513" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe you can go through materials on slide share? There is a new presentation about kanban - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/kanbantool/kanban-in-4-easy-steps&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;kanban in 4 easy steps&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2717" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-15T09:56:54.467" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T09:56:54.467" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4107" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4115" CreationDate="2011-12-14T19:33:12.107" Score="18" ViewCount="917" Body="&lt;p&gt;I realize many articles have been written about generational differences in the workforce, but I'd like to know specific things you've done to help motivate younger team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I belong to &quot;Generation X&quot; where it's just natural to work as hard as you can, all the time, until you keel over and die.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next generation, born approximately 1980 or later (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Y&quot;&gt;Generation Y&lt;/a&gt;, Millennial, etc.) is much more focused on &lt;strong&gt;&quot;work-life balance&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; -- sometimes to the detriment of a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what have you found that helps keep Generation Y members &lt;strong&gt;engaged&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;motivated&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Members of Generation Y are free to respond as well :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2713" LastEditorUserId="2618" LastEditDate="2011-12-28T16:16:11.400" LastActivityDate="2011-12-28T16:16:11.400" Title="Motivating younger (Generation Y) members" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4107" CreationDate="2011-12-14T19:43:32.527" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you interview every generation for the last one hundred years, they will say the exact same thing about the generation following them, and then worse things about the generation following that one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any discussion about difference is pop psychology at best, substantiated with nothing but anecdotal, weak evidence designed more to sell books.  Ignore that, and research what real I/O social scientists are currently thinking about human motivation.  And most importantly, challenge your belief that generation x has some intrinsic work ethic above and beyond other generations before and after.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS What do you fly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-12-14T19:43:32.527" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4109" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-14T19:36:57.983" Score="29" ViewCount="937" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working as a project leader in a team of 5 developers and myself and taking the role of analyst. Within the company, we've been applying the agile principles for several years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the principles I value most are self-organization and self-improvement, probably because I did work in a strong hierarchical environment before where higher levels were thinking for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But my team doesn't seem to be bothered too much about it.  They like the way they are working. Missing deadlines, going over budget, poor quality, it is always caused by others, solutions are never searched in the team itself.&#xA;Retrospectives often lead to endless discussions about blaming others but introspection on our own team-performance is lacking.  In bad days I think that my developers are just spoiled kids not remembering how it was in the old &quot;waterfall&quot; times where developers were just code monkeys.  But then I sound as an old man, isn't it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first reaction is to switch in micro-management mode which I know is probably the worst solution, but are there better ways to encourage my team to be more organized?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2757" OwnerDisplayName="zweefs" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-02T14:28:17.427" LastActivityDate="2019-01-02T14:28:17.427" Title="How can I get my team to value self-organization and self-improvement?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;career&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;micro-management&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4109" CreationDate="2011-12-14T19:56:19.977" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would start with one-on-one meetings with the team members individually.  Highlight concrete examples of where the blame rests with the member and not on the external sources.  And in general discuss any areas where there is opportunity for personal growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quality issues are a great example.  These should lead right back to the contributor who created the defect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall team goals are not necessarily their concern (in a healthier environment they should be, but the blame game makes it your problem, not theirs).  Budget/deadline issues ultimately fall on the project manager.  Again, these would need to be related back to specific areas of concern with the individual and how they contributed to the problem (such as underestimating a task, lost productivity, impact of defects, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2723" OwnerDisplayName="Tevo D" LastActivityDate="2011-12-14T21:44:55.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4109" CreationDate="2011-12-14T19:57:52.973" Score="10" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Ownership&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a programmer takes ownership of a project, they desire to see it succeed--they look for ways to improve it and make it better--they try to tackle the tough problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like the problems you are having are stemming from a lack of ownership of the project.  When this happens, a developer will blame others, not care about the project, not work well with other team-mates, not communicate, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, you'll need to get the team to have a sense of ownership in the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/33460/is-individual-code-ownership-important&quot;&gt;A related post about team ownership&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Richard" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2011-12-14T20:21:16.517" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4109" CreationDate="2011-12-14T19:59:49.617" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whatever you do, &lt;strong&gt;do not micromanage&lt;/strong&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is the single worst thing you could do.  You will put a lot of stress on them, on yourself, you will kill the potential productivity of the team, and you make yourself the bottleneck on the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not saying your team is a bunch of whiny kids, and I certainly am not saying that they are useless, but my experience is that about 4 of 5 developers in the field today are not self-motivating, self-starting and need strong leadership and guidance to be productive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are likely not feeling strong guidance on requirements or they are lacking technical leadership or both.  The fact of the matter is that they are blaming others because a leader isn't present to take charge of the situation and none of them are willing or ready to step up and assume that role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of it is human nature too.  A strong individual with a penchant for growth is introspective and can admit his/her faults and consider how to improve them.  A weak person does nothing and blames outside forces out of their control for all of their failings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need a stronger team, or a really strong leader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7106" OwnerDisplayName="maple_shaft" LastActivityDate="2011-12-14T19:59:49.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4109" CreationDate="2011-12-14T20:13:37.377" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're on the team too.  If you can see specific issues, why not bring them up?  If you want others to be introspective, show them how by being introspective yourself.  It's a little ironic to complain about how others complain about others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact is, there &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; a lot of factors outside a software development team's control.  Recognizing what those are and bringing them to the surface is important.  However, the next step is to identify constructive ways to mitigate those factors.  For example, if someone you need input from is unreliable, move tasks that involve them up in the schedule and follow up with them more than normal.  People can deal with things outside their control if they know they've done everything they can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="40773" OwnerDisplayName="Karl Bielefeldt" LastActivityDate="2011-12-14T20:13:37.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4109" CreationDate="2011-12-14T20:52:17.143" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no consequences for not performing in your organization, so what do you expect? There can be valid reasons for a project being late. They should be presented to the leader when they are recognized, so you can do something about it before it is too late.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The leader has to know what is going on and be able to spot excuses. If you have too many execuses for not getting your work done, then maybe the underperforming developer and your team need to part ways. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile has nothing to do with it. If this is making their job more enjoyable than the 'waterfall days', then they should be motivated to work harder/strive to be improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look for those doing the right things and acknowledge it. No need for &quot;Employye of the Week&quot; posters or stickers on their cubicles. Get your work done; good things happen. Don't get your work done; bad things happen. This is life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11948" OwnerDisplayName="Jeff O" LastActivityDate="2011-12-14T20:52:17.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4107" CreationDate="2011-12-14T23:53:25.777" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer the question in a different way, I find that employee motivation varies dramatically from person to person and generational tags have little value. When dealing with younger workers, there are a few common traits, however, and I have had &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; success with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Explaining the big picture:&lt;/strong&gt; A lot of younger workers want to be part of something that actually produces something useful. If they think that the assigned task has no real value, then you are wasting their time and energy. When you assign something with no immediate value, make sure to explain how that work will fit in the next level. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ensuring a career path exists:&lt;/strong&gt; Unfortunately, a lot of companies no longer promote from within. If you were hired as Generic Front Desk Clerk, you will remain as a clerk. If they need a new manager, they go hire a new manager. Younger workers have either experienced this directly or seen a friend work hard and get passed over so there is lower tolerance for &quot;make work&quot; or &quot;scut work&quot; tasks. If you see a future for this employee, make sure that you &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;tell&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; them or they will assume that you are just as bad as the rest.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get HR to lighten up:&lt;/strong&gt; Flexible work schedules, telecommuting, working from a coffee shop, and a relaxed working environment are considered normal in many locations - especially the west coast of the US. Now that I've been working in a more traditional environment (Japan) for four years, I realize how soul crushing and creativity killing rigid environments can be.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, younger workers have no &lt;strong&gt;built-in&lt;/strong&gt; loyalty to their current company. They won't &quot;take a bullet&quot; or give it their all just because you pay them. They can see that most companies don't actually care about them (no pension, no career path, benefit reductions, outsourcing, cost cutting, etc.) so they don't automatically care about the company. If you want them to work hard and pour their energy into the company, then you have to build trust and earn that loyalty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find the stereotypes of Gen X, Gen Y, and other generational tags to be inaccurate when dealing with employees. The main reason is that the majority of research easily available online (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessweek.com/managing/blogs/first_jobs/archives/2009/09/bad_economy_has.html&quot;&gt;Bloomberg&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505125_162-38940551/gen-y-insists-on-worklife-balance-despite-recession/&quot;&gt;CBS News&lt;/a&gt;, etc.) is based on interviews with &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;students&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; and not current workers. College campus life is quite different than the rest of the world so I rarely trust something based on student attitudes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study of current employees was conducted by JBA in the UK that was quoted in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/samantha-parent-walravens/gen-y-work-life-balance_b_1028740.html&quot;&gt;a couple of blogs&lt;/a&gt; and the results are quite a bit different. Unfortunately, the original is not readily available. There are no current articles available on PMI.org, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2011-12-14T23:53:25.777" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4116" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-12-15T10:59:50.777" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This tag includes questions about communication-related topics like information flow, meetings and reporting, as well as all of the challenges that a PM or PM team can face in regards to communication issues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question could involve how to use communication software effectively, how to deal with different communication styles or cultural issues, or how to reduce communication paths. Any question that describes a problem faced in Project Management communication, or where there are problems due to communication, are a perfect fit for this tag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some questions that have been asked on this site under the communication tag:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/4848/good-idea-for-a-client-to-also-be-the-project-manager&quot;&gt;Good idea for a client to also be the project manager?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/4254/how-to-virtually-co-locate-operating-across-two-offices&quot;&gt;How to Virtually Co-Locate: Operating across two offices&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/3738/communicate-a-project-easily-without-ms-project&quot;&gt;Communicate a project easily without MS Project?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/3472/should-you-insist-on-getting-feedback-from-every-member-of-your-team&quot;&gt;Should you insist on getting feedback from every member of your team?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-02T19:42:49.440" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T19:42:49.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4117" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-12-15T10:59:50.777" Score="0" Body="This tag includes questions about communication-related topics like information flow, meetings, and reporting; communications plan development and management; and challenges that a Project Manager or project team can face in regards to communication issues." OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-10-08T21:09:25.623" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T21:09:25.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4109" CreationDate="2011-12-15T14:51:38.807" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Create an incentive structure that rewards them for solving problems. &#xA;Then give them the responsibility and opportunity to succeed (or fail).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-12-15T14:51:38.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4119" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4121" CreationDate="2011-12-15T15:09:28.410" Score="12" ViewCount="340" Body="&lt;p&gt;What's the best way of planning for the possibility that a key member(s) of the team &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; want to take leave at some point during a project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand one solution is to buffer the project sufficiently so that the project / task can soak up this time without affecting key milestones, however - it strikes me that building in this sort of buffer as standard for all tasks in the project will very quickly start to add a significant amount of bloat into the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also find that buffer time &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; become &quot;dead time&quot;. For example, our validation department operate a fairly tight timetable, therefore if you assume a task has a two week buffer after it - and validation has been booked after that two week period - what happens when that buffer isn't needed (the task runs to time) - that leads to a two week delay before moving to the next activity (the validation team isn't available until the week it was booked for).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this just basic project management stuff - i.e. if the buffer isn't used, great - the team move onto something else for two weeks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would welcome thoughts on this topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2134" LastActivityDate="2011-12-21T18:03:23.480" Title="What techniques are useful when factoring in the likelihood that one or more members of the team may take leave during a project?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4119" CreationDate="2011-12-15T15:14:27.950" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_chain_project_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Critical Chain project management&lt;/a&gt;. It uses total buffer as a fungible commodity that can be moved around the entire project lifecycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-12-15T15:14:27.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4119" CreationDate="2011-12-15T15:38:15.920" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an organic risk of projects, i.e., it is always there, it has always been there, and it will always be there.  Trying to dissect this and calculate some type of contingency or buffer is a HUGE waste of your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The probabilistic distribution of any task is created by a plethora of random variables that can both favorably and unfavorably affect that task.  Resource &lt;em&gt;things&lt;/em&gt; make up some of those variables.  These things include having less resources than planned, having a skill set gap you did not anticipate, and having a higher than normal attrition.  Other things could also be favorable, like having an experienced team who are used to working together and have performed this task 20 times before.  Most of these variables are considered stochastic where it is unwise and wasteful to try to chase and control.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the target time you ended up choosing for this task, which falls somewhere on that distribution, already has built into it time to handle these unplanned things that will hit you from time to time.  Where you fall in that distribution is a function of your risk appetite.  Therefore, if you have some concern for this, move your target time to the right a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of your PM responsibilities is to build project capabilities that have redundancies and no single point of failure.  This means you have capabilities that are running smoothly, predictably, and, if something unplanned happens, you can remove and replace the capability component--human in this case--and keep going with nothing more than a blip on your performance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reality is, we all have key resources.  Ideally, we would have none.  Try to move in that direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  Re. &quot;Text book PM scenario...&quot;  It may very well be.  Projects and ongoing operations rarely grow their capabilities much above level two of a five-level maturity scale.  This is because most organizations do not know how.  The only recourse is to rely on the heroic efforts of a few key resources, and if one of them leave, it sends a ripple effect across the organization.  So my advice might be ideal and rarely achieved...so try anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2011-12-18T01:30:33.777" LastActivityDate="2011-12-18T01:30:33.777" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4122" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-15T15:53:12.180" Score="1" ViewCount="1122" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my company most of the projects are within the same TFS (team system) team-project. Though a more general overview is necessary for execs or cross-application services (IT, DBA and such).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and we need to see that in MPP Gantt chart. If I'm trying to export to project a multi-project query (i.e. a DBA that takes part in all team projects)- it does not allow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone advise/assist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2729" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T03:35:47.833" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T03:35:47.833" Title="Exporting a multiple project query from TFS to Project? " Tags="&lt;gantt&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4123" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-12-15T18:20:52.293" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-12-15T18:20:52.293" LastActivityDate="2011-12-15T18:20:52.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4124" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-12-15T18:20:52.293" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for questions about exercises designed to bring the team together as a cohesive unit, as well as how to resolve interpersonal conflicts. This tag is not for questions about hiring team members." OwnerUserId="2723" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-12-16T05:37:57.803" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T05:37:57.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4109" CreationDate="2011-12-16T10:55:09.770" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a great for programmers, called &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0137081073&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Clean Coder&lt;/a&gt;. It's very motivating, and calls for taking responsibility for what you write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2737" LastActivityDate="2011-12-16T10:55:09.770" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4122" CreationDate="2011-12-16T21:10:04.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, it is not possible pull in a query that goes across multiple team projects into MS Project with TFS today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One workaround -- is to create a project plan and then add sub-project plans (the individual plans that are connected to the team projects) and form a &quot;master plan&quot;.  This can act as a high-level report that you can share with the executives.  You can find the option to insert one plan into another from the Insert menu.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps,&#xA;-Siddharth&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2740" LastActivityDate="2011-12-16T21:10:04.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4107" CreationDate="2011-12-16T23:47:47.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking I might be the generation you speak of, born 1989 so my take on things might be a little different to that of the above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're finding your workforce aren't motivated enough I have no idea why you are still employing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of the twenty close friends that graduated last year with degrees across a range of subjects and all in the age range 23 - 25 only one has found a job they wanted and has worked exceptionally hard to get it, the others are working exceptionally hard in jobs they don't even like so they can pay the rent and bills, they're pulling unpaid overtime, working 6 days out of 7, they have all been expected to work for free to gain experience and are still getting in early and going home late every day. Right now is a great time to be employing as lots of people are looking for work, and even better people are reluctant to leave jobs they don't like for fear of not finding another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Heres some interesting statistics based on the generation of which you speak &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.totaljobs.com/img/GraduateInfographicFinal.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;infographic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2241" LastActivityDate="2011-12-16T23:47:47.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4109" CreationDate="2011-12-17T01:20:51.730" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you may want to take a look at this question, really similar. It does not cover the part of considering you're already in a wrong situation, but more about the motivation on the self-improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://productivity.stackexchange.com/questions/1206/how-to-motivate-people-to-self-improve-themselves&quot;&gt;https://productivity.stackexchange.com/questions/1206/how-to-motivate-people-to-self-improve-themselves&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2391" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:52:19.170" LastActivityDate="2011-12-17T01:20:51.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4092" CreationDate="2011-12-17T01:34:07.637" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it all C++? I mean is the entire application in C/C++ only? Either ways here are some techniques you can apply at an 'early stage'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do a function point analysis to gauge the size of the software and then use parametric models like COCOMO II to get the amount of time it'd take to complete this in man-months. Divide that by the number of the people on the project and multiply that by their salary - should give you a number. The tool also gives you pessimistic and optimistic estimates - so you basically get a range. At an early stage that's pretty much all you can do. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If FP-analysis seems alien do SLOC based estimates - tools like COCOMO take both metrics. Repeat everything else from step 1. (good if the application is written in a single language)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You could also do 'story point estimation' from the agile world - take a high level breakdown of the desired feature-sets, guess their size (magnitude), guess your speed of development (velocity): Time = magnitude * velocity. Use the same man-month+salary based calculation as above to get the overall cost&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a work break down structure and provide an estimate (you can find some details here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.onstartups.com/q/33791/8167&quot;&gt;http://answers.onstartups.com/q/33791/8167&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read books and figure out what works best and what you want to try like what Thomas has suggested.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short - read/research/apply - if you fail, you'll learn, if you succeed, you'll still learn so be brave!! :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1119" LastActivityDate="2011-12-17T01:34:07.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4131" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4133" CreationDate="2011-12-17T01:43:25.510" Score="2" ViewCount="1676" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading Steve Tockey's book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/032156149X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Return on Software&lt;/a&gt; and he mentioned it's quite beneficial to have such estimates. Let's say I have an oracle that spews out 50/50 estimates of cost/schedule/budget/size (function-point, story point etc.,) for a software project. You are equally likely to overshoot as you are to undershoot the estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is, is such an estimate really worth it? Why or why not? Intuitively it seems to make sense, but &lt;em&gt;upper management&lt;/em&gt; would want more confidence for their planning - but you can only get that from widening your range and maybe from historical data! But that is only a 'sense of security' and maybe totally false, since you can't really say if you overshot it was 10% likely and hence it's justified since you really don't know what that 10% even means, to be honest (I've seen people claim only 10-15% risk and don't even know where the percentages came from or what do they signify).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could increase my confidence by widening the range substantially but it doesn't give anyone much information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if I were to put forth a 50/50 estimate of things would my life be any better?? How would/should a PM manage for such estimates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE&lt;/strong&gt;: I would like to clarify a point: It's not that we are just using the 50/50 estimate and basing everything on it. You could say that is our 'mean estimate' i.e., based on past data of actuals vs. estimates. We then specify a range using n-standard deviations depending on our required confidence. So the point is that our 'initial estimate' is the 50/50 point (the mean) - we are equally likely to be under/over it (it's an estimate!). Now having such a point and the +/- range around it how worthwhile is this estimate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1119" LastEditorUserId="1119" LastEditDate="2011-12-22T22:03:37.847" LastActivityDate="2011-12-28T11:03:28.257" Title="As a project manager how worthwhile is it to have 50/50 estimates of certain metrics?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4131" CreationDate="2011-12-17T10:48:47.227" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've run into this type of dilemma more than a few times in my career and unfortunately it’s next to impossible to speak directly to a generalization like the 50/50 scenario you've articulated. I would say that assumptions; such as your 50/50; have little or no value. Instead, I prefer to try and embrace the reality that this is stuff we don’t know and stuff we do know. &#xA;What we really want to do is give everyone the same picture (&lt;em&gt;mental or otherwise&lt;/em&gt;). As the picture starts to crystalize amongst the larger group, we often find that it changes. This is because various stakeholders can; ideally; help each other fill in the gaps; reassure issues related to risks, etc…  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example... What were your assumptions (&lt;em&gt;what’s known/unknown&lt;/em&gt;), things you’re worried about (&lt;em&gt;risks&lt;/em&gt;), approaches you’re considering (&lt;em&gt;patterns/designs&lt;/em&gt;), resources you feel you may need (&lt;em&gt;people/things/money&lt;/em&gt;), etc… I like to use Planning Poker as one tool to shed light on things like this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more details you can shed light on openly (&lt;em&gt;and early&lt;/em&gt;), the better your chances will be of having the larger group of stakeholders better understand what to expect, what to watch out for, and/or how to mitigate the bad stuff. In the end, that's really the essence of what any estimate process is trying to accomplish. Sure, there are budgets to work through, schedules to define, staffing issues, milestones to plan, etc... But those can only be accomplished 'after' the earlier bits are well underway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also written a few things on my blog about estimating which may provide some other ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2620" LastActivityDate="2011-12-17T10:48:47.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4131" CreationDate="2011-12-17T13:34:46.037" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having a general rule of targeting at the 50th percentile of your probabilistic density is not helpful.  First, the 50th percentile may not be the likeliest result.  If your density is skewed, then your mode average is not equal to your median (50/50); therefore, targeting at the 50th will not be your highest probability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, where you target within your probabilistic density is more a function of your risk appetite.  If you were pursuing a firm fixed price contract, for example, targeting more to the right of the curve would be a smarter move so that you are providing contingency for uncertain events.  On the other hand, if it is a project that you have performed many times before for this customer in a rather stable environment, moving to the left of the curve, i.e., a more aggressive and risky target, would be a reasonable business decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-12-17T13:34:46.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4136" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4137" CreationDate="2011-12-19T08:35:35.283" Score="12" ViewCount="424" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am relatively new to my current job, but I have a lot of ideas of how to improve the current working environment in terms of productivity, software quality and performance. I aim to be having a meeting with the bosses of this small company, in which I hope to convince them to invest in some new, professional software that would make development a lot easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: how do I approach this meeting so that I can convey the best benefits of the software without seeming to be demanding anything?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2327" LastActivityDate="2011-12-22T18:17:26.597" Title="How to approach convincing employers to invest in software" Tags="&lt;meetings&gt;&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4136" CreationDate="2011-12-19T09:38:22.413" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Essentially your asking them to spend more money. What they may hear is &lt;strong&gt;more expenses&lt;/strong&gt;. What you want them to hear is low risk &lt;strong&gt;investment&lt;/strong&gt; opportunity. These may sound like the same thing (&lt;em&gt;and they are&lt;/em&gt;) but stating things in the later form will usually be more successful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put yourself in the shoes of your manager and ask &amp;amp; answer questions from their perspective. Specifically, focus on things that answer the question... &quot;&lt;em&gt;What is the return on investment?&lt;/em&gt;&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Articulate what you predict will be the return on their investment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I (&lt;em&gt;or we&lt;/em&gt;) will be able to be more productive and will be more likely to deliver on schedule (&lt;em&gt;possibly sooner&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I (&lt;em&gt;or we&lt;/em&gt;) will have lower defect rates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I (&lt;em&gt;or we&lt;/em&gt;) will have greater capacity for &lt;strong&gt;XYZ&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;X&lt;/strong&gt; automation will lead to reduced expenses in &lt;strong&gt;Y&lt;/strong&gt; area over &lt;strong&gt;Z&lt;/strong&gt; period&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Etc...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2620" LastActivityDate="2011-12-19T09:38:22.413" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4136" CreationDate="2011-12-19T12:36:32.343" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You cannot sell anything without an established problem, want, or need.  The SW is a solution; benefits of it does not necessarily mean the organization has a problem, want, or need.  JoeGeeky outlined how to present the business case for your SW solution; however, you have a step before this.  You need to build a case to build a case for the solution.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, you need to get buy-in that there is a problem, the first step in any sales call.  And you need to show how this problem is affecting their goals as it rolls up, e.g., affecting adversely revenue and profit.  And you should approach this solution agnostic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-12-19T12:36:32.343" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4136" CreationDate="2011-12-19T15:30:06.843" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once you have a reputation of success, it will be much easier to ask them to spend money.&#xA;Build a track record of solving problems that doesn't require them to spend more money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-12-19T15:30:06.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4131" CreationDate="2011-12-19T15:43:30.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the goal for the estimate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As David points out for a FFP contract or for defining your critical path you will likely want more confidence in your estimates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, 50/50 estimates are one of the premises of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.focusedperformance.com/articles/cc01.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;critical chain management of projects&lt;/a&gt;. If you assume all the tasks in a project are equally likely to be over/under the planned duration/cost they should balance out in the end. Tasks running over time/cost just consume the feeding and project buffers that you've put in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2011-12-19T15:43:30.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4088" CreationDate="2011-12-19T18:12:31.393" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The task you described looks like application management - solve users' queries, fix small bugs, create reports and change small parts of the code. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This requires developers but the work is not as fancy as &quot;creating&quot; new code... it is just maintenance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a system to record all requests from your users, you can start measuring the performance of your team - number of tickets solved, satisfaction level, re-opened requests, complains... - and use this to evaluate and motivate the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your organization has room for new projects, try to get the maintenance team involved, even in smaller projects. Maintenance is not too challenging, and the standard developer profile usually does not fit in a maintenance team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2462" LastActivityDate="2011-12-19T18:12:31.393" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4119" CreationDate="2011-12-19T18:42:05.847" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What about agreeing with your stakeholders a list of must-have and nice-to-have tasks? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adopting this approach, your team will have planned tasks for the whole project life as well as will have narrowed down beforehand what is accepted to be postponed for next releases, in case of any unexpected scenario change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, you'd be mitigating the problem, without having spare time at the end of the project cycle (although we know that even &lt;em&gt;consider the possibility&lt;/em&gt; of having a 'spare time' at the end of the project is a kind of over optimistic approach).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some further details on this idea (which I've already used in the past) can be found &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/1329/430&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2011-12-19T18:42:05.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4131" CreationDate="2011-12-19T22:16:31.653" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Off the bat, it's not that useful. I haven't found it to be true that you're as likely to be under as over. More often than not (almost enough to make it a rule), you are going to be over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Upper management wants you to deliver what you say you will deliver within the schedule and budget you said you would. Your best path is to go with your best estimate of what it will take, plus a large margin of error  (erring on the side of needing more time and money) then making that your baseline schedule and budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Projects have their own life, regardless of your best plans and estimates. During project execution focus on keeping upper management in the loop on how things are going. Experienced managers know that plans change when the rubber meets the road.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-12-19T22:16:31.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4109" CreationDate="2011-12-20T14:41:48.623" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thank you for the great answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have taken a number of actions based on them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm considering my contribution to the team and how I can improve&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I appointed a new lead developer bringing lot's of experience into the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I scheduled a one-to-one meetings with the team members.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2757" LastActivityDate="2011-12-20T14:41:48.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4146" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4148" CreationDate="2011-12-20T17:10:07.930" Score="5" ViewCount="228" Body="&lt;p&gt;A colleague of mine asks to be cc'd on my communications to our boss.  However, he does not cc me on his communications to our boss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are on the same level in the org chart. He has seniority and was originally my manager. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our boss has asked me to maintain and build a deeper relationship with this colleague (and thus include him in my communications). But I am concerned he will use the informational advantage to my detriment.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Added fact: our boss will sometimes forward my emails to my colleague anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-12-21T01:14:37.200" Title="How to Deal with a Request for Asynchronous Communication?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;politics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4146" CreationDate="2011-12-20T23:54:44.837" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can think of three scenarios according to your comments. All of them might be far away from reality, but there's always a slightly chance that some of them may become real.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Realistic:&lt;/strong&gt; Your boss (I'll call him 'Sam') wants your former manager ('Bob') to help you out, coaching whenever is possible, due to his experience. Sam asked you to cc Bob on your mails to improve the information flown and to discuss about your performance. And, as Bob is acting as your coach (and not the other way round), there's no reason for having you cc'ed on his mails to Sam. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Optimistic:&lt;/strong&gt; (a long shot, but anyways...): isn't there any possibility of having Sam retiring and passing things on to Bob? Maybe Sam decided that Bob was the best person to succeed him, and Sam knows how important is to have Bob and you getting along well to uphold the company.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pessimistic:&lt;/strong&gt; Sam or Bob believes you may need a coaching / closer monitoring, even without having you asking for such. Maybe there are higher plans for you and someone is not quite sure you're 'the one'.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion:&lt;/strong&gt; In any case, you're being requested to do something without knowing why, and that's the first step to think of a thousand of possibilities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I was in your shoes, I'd go for your boss, tell him I'd be glad to help in anything he'd like me to do, but would feel more comfortable doing so if I understood better the reason behind this request. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be objective, there's nothing better than a clear communication, as you taught us in several posts across PMSE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2011-12-20T23:54:44.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4146" CreationDate="2011-12-21T00:32:52.983" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is how I would tackle this situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Talk to your colleague&lt;/strong&gt;: set up a honest discussion with him, ask him how he feels about communications right now and how they could be improved. Tell him how you see things as well. I would also ask him why he wants to be copied on all emails (does this help him do his job better?) and whether this is the best way for you two to communicate, or if there are other things you two could do (such as having a regular meeting or catch up, or limiting the cc:ed emails to particular topics that concern both of you). Engage him to find a common solution to this problem that will work for all of you (you, him and your boss).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Build trust&lt;/strong&gt;: perhaps your colleague wants to see all the messages because he feels threatened or isolated if he doesn't know what's going on. If there is an underlying trust issue, it needs to be addressed. And from your own side as well: you mention your concern about him using the information at your detriment: what can he actually do that would have a negative impact on you? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get support from your boss&lt;/strong&gt;: your boss asked you both to communicate better, but it's his problem too. If you have evidence that your colleague is not following the agreed rules (whether that cc:ing you on emails or anything else you may have agreed to), and is not responding to your requests to do so, take it up with your boss and ask him/her to step in. It's particularly important if this is impacting your ability to deliver and perform (and that impacts your boss too).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastActivityDate="2011-12-21T00:32:52.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4146" CreationDate="2011-12-21T01:14:37.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a political minefield, which you know, and it appears you are the only walking through it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I'd do the opposite of what Angeline advised and run deep and silent, meaning I'd likely keep up appearances to the degree possible but find ways to 1) cover myself to ensure my colleague cannot undermine my position or authority and 2) find ways to marginalize him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To bring it up, you'd come across as a bit paranoid.  Why would he do anything to your detriment simply because you CC'd him?  Yet, we all know how games are played.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This guy is your equal in rank but is coming across like he is your superior.  I think your best play is to placate him, sort of keep your friends close and your enemies closer type mentality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not the best political player so feel free to ignore me....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-12-21T01:14:37.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4109" CreationDate="2011-12-21T11:50:39.853" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openagile.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.openagile.com&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Should help with teamwork and general problem solving skills&#xA;by promoting repeated cycles of Action-Reflection-Learning-Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also check out &quot;Software for your Head&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://liveingreatness.com/the-core-protocols.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://liveingreatness.com/the-core-protocols.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team = Product (your product has whatever qualities your team has)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decider (move a group immediately and unanimously towards results)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resolution (how to get unanimous decisions in a team)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perfection Game (replace negative feedback with positive feedback)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2766" LastActivityDate="2011-12-21T11:50:39.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4072" CreationDate="2011-12-21T17:44:19.263" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;We need people to manage projects, but we don't need people with the &quot;Project Manager&quot; job title, unless it suits to have them. The role exists, whatever you call the person doing it! And the more complex the piece of work, and the greater the level of governance required, the more you need someone to take control and make sure that everything is being done correctly to protect the people, the organisation, and the wider stakeholder community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-12-21T17:44:19.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4119" CreationDate="2011-12-21T18:03:23.480" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could ask your team members to schedule their time off in advance so you could plan for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2770" LastActivityDate="2011-12-21T18:03:23.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4088" CreationDate="2011-12-21T18:13:56.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to measuring the basics of &quot;it's only maintenance&quot;, how about encouraging those who go above and beyond and help the company make money?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for example a typical change request might be &quot;we are going to add a new color widget to our product line and the color is vermillion but the input box on the form only takes 9 characters&quot;. Programmer A might just expand the field and the database (if required) and be done with it - in other words do the minimum necessary to satisfy the specific requirement. Another programmer B might start doing the same thing and discover that the way the color change procedure was coded against the database it was not properly updating the online catalog so that website visitors were not seeing the new colors. He then comes to you and offer to fix that &quot;oversight&quot; while he is in the program making the first change and the firm sells more widgets as a result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2770" LastActivityDate="2011-12-21T18:13:56.270" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4066" CreationDate="2011-12-21T18:20:58.880" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The biggest suggestion I would make is to ask the people doing the work to make the estimate. When someone makes an estimate then they have a vested interest in living up to what they stated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand when the estimate is made by someone far, far away with no input from the team the results are often disastrous. Think back to a time when a boss cam to you at 3:00 PM and said &quot;Marketing just told a customer we would have this change done by 9:00 AM tomorrow&quot; and it was a big, multi-day effort. Did you feel like working all night on it while the marketing guy went out that evening to a party?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2770" LastActivityDate="2011-12-21T18:20:58.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4072" CreationDate="2011-12-21T21:56:23.750" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A project manager facilitates communication across different roles on a team and across the different stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A project manager helps coordinate efforts and resolve conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A project manager adds leadership and inspiration when it is needed, backs-off when it's not and, importantly; blocks other people from thinking there is a leadership vacuum and prevents people from misdirecting/inhibiting project performance.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-12-21T21:56:23.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4136" CreationDate="2011-12-22T02:13:09.960" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing to identify are the current &quot;pain points&quot; of the bosses. For example did they not get a bonus last year because a software project was late? Did they have to come in and work a holiday weekend because of a system problem? In other words, if they have no problems, why should they change? Remember that in general people are change adverse. Change is generally associated with uncertainty and at least some pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next consider how your proposal(s) will address those pain points, what is in it for the bosses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally remember that this is not simply a money problem, it is a multi-dimensional change. At a former employer we spoke of the hexagon of change; the 6 areas which must be addressed in any plan. Namely:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business Process&#xA;– Organization&#xA;– Location&#xA;– Application&#xA;– Data&#xA;– Technology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for example the Organization domain would address any training which would be required as well as changes to job descriptions or team re-structuring.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway cross all the Ts and dot all the Is before the meeting and you have a much greater chance of success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2770" LastActivityDate="2011-12-22T02:13:09.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4131" CreationDate="2011-12-22T02:23:30.647" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The real question is do you have a documented track record (statistical basis) to believe the 50/50 estimates? In other words did 50% of the projects in your firm come in under budget and ahead of schedule last year?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If to the contrary you find that the actual outcome bear little if any relation to the estimates (of whatever kind) spewed out by your oracles, the first step is to inform them that you would like statistical evidence of the quality of their estimates prior to accepting them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a look at Joel Spolsky's blog post on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Evidence Based Scheduling&lt;/a&gt; to see how easy it is to use historical data to get much better estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2770" LastEditorUserId="2770" LastEditDate="2011-12-22T02:40:14.347" LastActivityDate="2011-12-22T02:40:14.347" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4136" CreationDate="2011-12-22T18:17:26.597" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;All answers provides very good insights, but I noticed most of them are attached to the idea that &lt;em&gt;investing&lt;/em&gt; means &lt;em&gt;buy&lt;/em&gt;... so, two things that could be clarified:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;when you mean &lt;em&gt;invest&lt;/em&gt;, you'd like to suggest to the owners of this new small company you're working on to &lt;em&gt;buy&lt;/em&gt; new productivity softwares or you mean investing &lt;em&gt;man-hours&lt;/em&gt; developing new softwares? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have you searched for free similar softwares?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My point is:&lt;/strong&gt; there's a slightly possibility of having your bosses hearing your suggestion not as &lt;em&gt;more expenses&lt;/em&gt;, but as something that could add value into your daily work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see you're a person that's called a 'prophet', a people who thinks beyond the ordinary things. However, there are barriers to cross from a prophet to become a builder... and the first one is to prove that what you're thinking really applies to the scenario you have in place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd go for something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Brainstorming&lt;/strong&gt; the idea with some teammates (or maybe part of the idea, in case you're afraid any of them could 'steal' your ideas) and pick some that buy it in;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once you have some people, startup a &lt;strong&gt;pilot&lt;/strong&gt;, probably applying a free version of the softwares you want to suggest to your bosses;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After a while, you'll have the first experiences and &lt;strong&gt;outcomes&lt;/strong&gt; of your suggestion... and will have something to be based on when getting back to your bosses beyond 'I have an Idea'. At this stage, you'll have an idea &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; some proofs that your idea really works.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, only after you're comfortable your ideas really worth, I'd go for the meeting with the bosses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2011-12-22T18:17:26.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4172" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-22T13:39:32.387" Score="6" ViewCount="1825" Body="&lt;p&gt;Specific Goal (SG) 1 of the Project Planning process area in CMMI (assessed at CMMI Level 2) is to establish estimates. One of the Specific Practices (SPs) that is recommended to achieve this goal is to estimate the scope of the project. In all of the CMMI literature that I have access to, it explicitly calls out the creation and maintenance of a work breakdown structure (WBS) to achieve this goal. However, not all projects have a clearly defined scope at the outset, making the creation of a WBS (or any type of project-level estimation) difficult. I'm aware that the CMMI is a process framework that's designed to be tailored, but the frequent and explicit mentions of the use of a WBS, rather than the use of example tools, to achieve this goal is rather confusing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The use of a WBS, specifically &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_breakdown_structure#100.25_rule&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the 100% rule&lt;/a&gt;, appears to me to be difficult to achieve in many such environments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The 100% rule states that the WBS includes 100% of the work defined by the project scope and captures all deliverables – internal, external, interim – in terms of the work to be completed, including project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile methodologies are best suited to this situations, when the project requirements or scope are not well understood. If you don't fully understand the requirements and/or scope, it's not possible to create a 100% complete WBS for the entire project scope. A WBS is better suited in a plan-driven project where the requirements are less volatile and the scope of the project is well defined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One possible option would be to create and continually refine the WBS to accurately reflect the current understanding of the project, that seems to go against &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilemodeling.com/essays/agileDocumentation.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the principles of agile/lean documentation&lt;/a&gt;. In terms of the overall process, the existance of the WBS adds no value to the development team and producing and modifying it is wasteful. Another option might be to create a WBS on a per-iteration basis (especially if the iterations are longer), but this would be capturing the same information that might be captured in the form of the product backlog, stories, use cases, and just reformatted to &quot;check the box&quot; of having a WBS, which again doesn't seem very agile/lean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodagile.com/resources/SCRUM_AND_CMMI_MAPPING-1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one academic paper (PDF)&lt;/a&gt; that appears to suggest that the appropriate mapping from Scrum to this process area is to indeed create a WBS at the beginning of each sprint. However, some aspects of this paper make me question if the authors have a good grasp of Scrum as a project management framework. For example, the authors write &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are not explicit orientations in SCRUM to establish, for&#xA;  instance, size and/or complexity of items of Product Backlog and&#xA;  Sprint Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is true, however individual teams generally develop a consistent process for determining these values. For example, a common method is using Planning Poker to determine the Story Points associated with each User Story in the backlog. The Scrum framework allows teams to choose what works for them, and encourages consistency when peforming such a task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also a few other instances of similar questionable statements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm well aware that the identified Specific Practices (SPs) in CMMI are a model for organizations to follow. An organization can develop their own practices, as long as they meet the Specific Goal (SG) of the area. Many of the SPs are written to be along the lines of &quot;best practices&quot; for projects, process, quality, and continuous improvement and can be applied to any project. In addition, the SPs provide examples of tools, techniques, and methodologies that might be used to carry out the practice to achieve the goal. However, SP 1.1 (Estimate the Scope of the Project) is something that can't (easily) be done on a number of projects with vague scope, yet must be addressed somehow to achieve/maintain CMMI Level 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What techniques have organizations used to achieve this goal on projects with a poorly-defined scope in a manner acceptable within the CMMI framework and reach or surpass CMMI Level 2? Are there any issues with introducing alternative means of producing estimates during an audit? What feedback has been provided by the SEI or CMMI auditors  to companies regarding what should be done regarding projects with vague scope? Is this a practice that can simply be neglected in projects that are difficult to estimate as a whole unit, as long as the specific goals of establishing estimates for work and tasks, defining life cycles, and smaller scale cost/effort estimations are maintained?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" OwnerDisplayName="Thomas Owens" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2011-12-23T14:08:07.110" LastActivityDate="2011-12-23T21:30:02.980" Title="How do unknown-scope projects achieve project-level estimation with regards to the CMMI's Project Planning Specific Goal?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;cmmi&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4172" CreationDate="2011-12-22T13:56:53.907" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Funny you ask this because this is something that we discussed in PM training the other day.  My instructor didn't have a satisfying answer for me, but mostly because his background didn't involve project management of Agile projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My take on this is that the WBS really doesn't have a place in Agile, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it is not important.  You are right that it shouldn't mean anything to developers, but it should help define the initial project estimates which is important for management to know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many Agile projects operate in the realms of a fixed deadline, (fixed scope?) arena where sprint releases to clients are still important, but merely from an evaulation or testing perspective on their end.  The contract is signed, they already have a ROUGH idea about what they want delivered, and when they want it.  Requirements can and do change, but the high level deliverables tend to stay the same, as they are usually detailed out in the contract.  The WBS can play an important role of summarizing all the high level deliverables as described in the contract, and can form the basis for the original set of user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7106" OwnerDisplayName="maple_shaft" LastActivityDate="2011-12-22T13:56:53.907" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4172" CreationDate="2011-12-22T14:04:28.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Project Management process area &#xA; is clearly focused on waterfall methodologies.  It doesn't apply to Agile projects as stated.  Feel free to ignore it.  Or better, modify it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't try to specify the broad, vague overall scope.  It doesn't work well, because it ignores the Agile principle of delivering value.  The PP area shifts focus from value to schedule (something the user's have no interest in.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you shift PP to be Sprint Planning you'll be a whole lot happier.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the most important lessons learned over the last few decades is that all projects change their scope.  That change in scope can be labeled as a &quot;failure to meet the original scope&quot; or &quot;a change in scope that emphasizes delivering value.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm not sure how reliable this is, as I disagree with some of their conclusions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Reliable&quot;?  That doesn't make much sense.  Explain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please identify the specific conclusions you don't agree with, otherwise, there's no possible answer to this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What techniques have agile organizations used to achieve this goal and reach CMMI Level 2 (or greater)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on sprints and backlogs instead of some vague and hard-to-define overall scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are there any issues with introducing alternative means of producting estimates during an audit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="S.Lott" LastActivityDate="2011-12-22T14:04:28.063" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4175" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4177" CreationDate="2011-12-23T00:40:42.700" Score="3" ViewCount="173" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding to management of a multi-task IT project;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;How to deal with technical group manager who risks the completion of the project in time by not respecting weekly work-schedule?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2618" LastEditorUserId="1885" LastEditDate="2011-12-23T02:16:36.257" LastActivityDate="2011-12-23T11:11:40.497" Title="How to deal with inhouse technical group manager?" Tags="&lt;schedule-risk&gt;&lt;dependencies&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4175" CreationDate="2011-12-23T04:19:25.510" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you can do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Deal with the risk first&lt;/strong&gt;: you have identified a clear problem impacting your project so if you haven't done so, formalize risk identification and qualification through your controlling processes/mechanisms (e.g. record the risk in the risk log, evaluate impact/likelihood, assign it to the technical group manager and communicate to the relevant people). Address the risk with the group manager to verify (s)he is aware of it, its impact and what his/her options are to mitigate it (more time, budget, resources, technical knowledge, etc.?), what kind of support (s)he needs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Keep it neutral and factual&lt;/strong&gt;: especially if you are an external resource managing the project with inhouse project team members, you need to be careful not to antagonise or alienate the latter. Keep the problem management to facts: what the problem is, how it affects the project, how to resolve it. Try not to make it a &quot;I have problem with this person&quot; kind of things.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Escalate the problem&lt;/strong&gt;: if the group manager is not willing to address the risk and you don't have authority over him/her, you need to escalate it through your decision-making channels (e.g. your boss or your project sponsor) so that people with the appropriate authority level can help resolve the problem. Keep the group manager in the loop though - again, stick to facts, stay away from making it a personal thing and follow your process.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastActivityDate="2011-12-23T04:19:25.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4175" CreationDate="2011-12-23T11:11:40.497" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;...not respecting the weekly work schedule&quot; implies a malicious intent by this group manager.  Is that true or is he &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;unable&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; to comply with the schedule.  If the latter, was he part of the estimating, planning, and scheduling process?  If the former, does he have buy-in with the project itself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Angeline offers great advice, but on top of this, if he was not part of the scheduling process as he should have been, do not hesitate in returning to the planning process and establishing a new schedule with his input and buy-in this time, go through the process change control process and cut a second baseline.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not rare for someone to maliciously sabotage a project with which they do not agree; however, my dollars are on the fact the he cannot meet the schedule given his other priorities.  Rescheduling is a bit more win-win in this situation, IMO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-12-23T11:11:40.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="623" CreationDate="2011-12-23T11:18:24.713" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might be interested in DSDM Atern, which is an Agile methodology that is essentially Prince2-made-Agile. In fact, most training centres for Prince2 also run DSDM courses since they both share the same roots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've personally found DSDM to be brilliant around everything except the actual development process itself. I use Scrum to fill this hole, but the framework that DSDM provides wraps neatly around Scrum and provides all the checks and balances that my company requires.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as the development team are concerned, however, we only use Scrum. They don't even see or care about the DSDM wrapper that keeps the Business satisfied the project is under control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastActivityDate="2011-12-23T11:18:24.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4172" CreationDate="2011-12-23T14:17:28.787" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe Agile development is perfectly compatible CMMI. What is key to properly define the &quot;project&quot;. If you define the current project to be the current sprint rather than the &quot;total project&quot; you have no problem. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28development%29#Sprint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sprint&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A sprint is the basic unit of development in Scrum. Sprints tend to&#xA;  last between one week and one month,[6] and are a &quot;timeboxed&quot; (i.e.&#xA;  restricted to a specific duration) effort of a constant length.[8]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Each sprint is preceded by a planning meeting, where the tasks for the&#xA;  sprint are identified and an estimated commitment for the sprint goal&#xA;  is made, and followed by a review or retrospective meeting,[9] where&#xA;  the progress is reviewed and lessons for the next sprint are&#xA;  identified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of it like going out to dinner and the waiter taking your order. When you start you may have a good idea that you will have a drink followed by an appetizer, main course and desert. When the waiter takes your drink order you probably have no idea what you want for desert, or even if you will skip desert. This does not in any impact the waiters ability to execute a &quot;plan&quot; to bring you your drink.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this level a WBS and project plan is easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2770" LastActivityDate="2011-12-23T14:17:28.787" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4172" CreationDate="2011-12-23T21:30:02.980" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The items in the WBS should be thought of as control accounts. It is common practice to create an estimate based on the level of information available at the time. Then, as more information is learned, to progressively elaborate/decompose the control account into finer levels of detail, refining the estimates along the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unknowns can be accounted for in the risk register and reserve accounts. These are refined, as well, as more information becomes available over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of these processes can be well documented and create artifacts that support CMMI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2011-12-23T21:30:02.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4182" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-24T22:43:08.183" Score="7" ViewCount="3446" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have years of experience in the IT (I started as an IT developer and made my path up to the Business Analysis).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, after 6 years of BA, I'd like to take my career to the next level.&#xA;I was wondering if Project Management is the only option that I have or there is something else I could aim at (perhaps more suitable for a BA background).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2785" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2012-10-07T15:44:09.700" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T04:52:41.173" Title="Senior Business Analyst: What's next?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-01-20T08:22:53.693" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4182" CreationDate="2011-12-25T13:33:28.307" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that Project Management is not the only option open to you - and in some respects, it is arguably not the best option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A business analyst / senior business analyst will have many attributes in common with a PM: organisational ability, influencing skills, some technical knowledge, and a really good understanding of how business works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly, in the banking sector in the UK, there are many roles for Change Managers (as well as PMs), and I wonder whether a business change role would be a more suitable career route? Although fundamentally very similar to a PM role, such a role is often located within the business or user community rather than in the technical community, and it could potentially lead to senior business-side positions to permit further career development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2011-12-25T13:33:28.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4182" CreationDate="2011-12-25T14:58:13.753" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look at your chain of command in your organization.  What are those people of higher rank doing and how did they get there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are roles that a few folks obtain where they essentially act as deep subject matter experts, but most of the higher ranking roles, IMO, are in management, managing organizations and capability.  It does not have to be a PM, but leading something is likely your next evolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-12-25T14:58:13.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4185" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4188" CreationDate="2011-12-26T13:19:04.873" Score="3" ViewCount="146" Body="&lt;p&gt;When customer requires list of technical staff that will be involved in the project;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the proper method to give the info  of the sub-contractors/freelance workers that will be involved in the some stages of the project ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2618" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2012-07-19T06:07:51.807" LastActivityDate="2012-07-19T06:07:51.807" Title="What method to use to inform customer about sub-contractor/freelance workers?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;clients&gt;&lt;external-project-members&gt;&lt;customer&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4185" CreationDate="2011-12-26T17:44:22.710" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As a rule of thumb: transparency and openness can go really far in terms of building trust between you and a customer. And trust is definitely kind of relation you want to build with your clients.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering it is an important piece of information for the customer or they directly asked about it I would just openly state that some people in a project team are part of staff and others work as contractors/freelancers. It isn't that uncommon in our industry to be afraid to say this, and transparency definitely helps to build trust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other approach would be to treat this information as irrelevant and just not share it at all unless directly asked, but for some reason you are asking about it, thus you believe it is not the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I do consider that there aren't and formal (or informal) agreements in place between you and the client which state that you aren't allowed to have contractors/freelancers working on this very project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-12-26T17:44:22.710" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4182" CreationDate="2011-12-26T18:14:42.910" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's hard to answer such question concretely without knowing your specific context. &lt;strong&gt;The first thing you should start with is asking yourself what &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; would like to do.&lt;/strong&gt; I mean, if it happens that the next role on the ladder is something you're going to hate would you really pursue the promotion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about your strengths, which you may exploit, and weaknesses, which would make the transition harder. Think about your potential to grow, which means you can become good in a new role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you've already worn different hats (you mention developer and BA) you know what kind of different roles you can think of - which of them suit you fine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Then, there is also a context of your organization.&lt;/strong&gt; However, in this case you shouldn't limit yourself to your organization only. Actually focusing on hierarchy of your organization only would be a mistake, as there are different companies pursuing different values out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start with considering what kind of organization you'd like to be a part of. If you like your current employer, that's perfect. But be aware that different firms bring different cultures, different responsibilities and different roles. I personally know people who switched from senior management position to software engineering and their main driver was organizational culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Once you know what you would like to do and what kind of organization you'd like to work for you may try to think about specific roles.&lt;/strong&gt; Unfortunately, at this point it is so heavily dependent on a specific context that it is hard to come up with details as they may differ vastly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember though that the same role, say project management, in different companies can mean very different jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definitely on a list of roles you may want to consider, there are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project management. You mention this one. Actually I would say that this is one of pretty common paths in big, formalized organizations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product management/product ownership. Focus on product which, with your experience as a BA, you should have pretty good background for.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People management. Leading a software development team or one of teams supporting software development process might be another idea.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sales. Actually best salespeople I know in software industry have roots in technical departments. Their biggest advantage: they know how things they're selling are built.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that most of these roles look differently at vendor's side and at client's side and this is also an important variable in this equation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And one more thing: sometimes an answer to a second question (where would you like to work at?) will make above definitions irrelevant. If you decide to run a startup you will be fulfilling a number of different roles simultaneously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2011-12-26T18:14:42.910" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4190" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-27T17:27:52.983" Score="2" ViewCount="1118" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been placed in a new position, to manage &quot;projects&quot; for a help desk/tech support organization. Some of the projects on my list have arbitrarily been removed, because they were not considered a project. For example, one was to use Microsoft SCCM to push out an update of a newer version of software, to about a dozen computers. No justification for this decision was provided. I assume it pertained to 'project' size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to define criteria, attributes, etc to help me provide something we can use, to determine which of the work we perform would be considered a 'project'. Any suggestions ideas would be appreciated. Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2796" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-12-30T08:57:34.100" LastActivityDate="2012-12-03T12:02:37.320" Title="Disregard PMBOK. How could I define a Project?" Tags="&lt;definition&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4190" CreationDate="2011-12-27T18:11:36.577" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While in theory about anything could be defined as a project (get coffie, buy a pencil etc.), as a practical matter it is just not worth the overhead of managing small tasks as projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you would like to define &quot;small projects&quot;, that is tasks that will not be managed as full blown projects using criteria such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Time&lt;/strong&gt; - can in be done in x person-hours or less.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Duration&lt;/strong&gt; - will it be done in x days or less.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cost&lt;/strong&gt; - will it require the expenditure of more than x dollars.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Number of people&lt;/strong&gt; - can it be done by one person (or x people).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Outside involvement&lt;/strong&gt; - will it require resources from or impact anyone outside the firm.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Safety&lt;/strong&gt; - are there special safety concerns like protective clothing, reporting requirements etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Legal&lt;/strong&gt; - is there a potential legal liability to the firm.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other&lt;/strong&gt; - whatever else is important to you&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2770" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2012-12-03T12:02:37.320" LastActivityDate="2012-12-03T12:02:37.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4192" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7998" CreationDate="2011-12-28T03:02:58.237" Score="9" ViewCount="4064" Body="&lt;p&gt;What exactly is a spiral module in terms of  projects management methods?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does it entail? Is it a loosely formed term akin to agile as well (as there are various variants)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, In which criterion would it be ideal for it's application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1253" LastEditorUserId="2618" LastEditDate="2012-01-24T07:03:31.180" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T08:36:33.127" Title="What is the spiral method of project management methodologies?" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;definition&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4192" CreationDate="2011-12-28T03:53:39.503" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The spiral method is one of the proposed solutions to the problems with the waterfall method.  It arranges the steps of the waterfall method in a circle.  During the first pass a small amount of the project is developed. As the project progresses each of the steps is revisited.  Representing percentage complete as distance from the center of the circle results in a spiral graph. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another term which may be applied in this case is progressive approximation.  Agile practitioners tend to distance themselves from the waterfall methodology and may not approve of the the spiral method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The spiral method is good for projects which require formal specification, but for which the specifications can not be fully defined in advance of development.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  What is traditionally understood as a the waterfall methodology was a straw-man methodology presented in a paper which built significantly on that waterfall.  The traditional waterfall is only really applicable in cases where there is very little uncertainty in any of the steps and no need to feedback to any prior steps.  (Few software projects meet this criteria.)  The first improvement was to provide feedback to the previous step.  This was then enhanced to allow feedback to any prior step.  Finally a prototyping step (iterative approximation) was inserted which was intended to flesh out and develop those components with the most uncertainty (as much as a third of the project).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compared to the fleshed out waterfall a simple spiral methodology would be a step back.  I believe the agile methodology well follows the fleshed out methodology but ends at the prototyping stage.  As the prototyping stage includes all the steps of the methodology, this is not so bad.  If components are properly picked, value is gained immediately.  Stopping a spiral or agile project early may help reduce creeping feature-itis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastEditorUserId="529" LastEditDate="2012-10-30T13:13:55.887" LastActivityDate="2012-10-30T13:13:55.887" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4194" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4203" CreationDate="2011-12-28T10:17:03.920" Score="16" ViewCount="532" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working for a startup company where there are only a few employees (5 programmers).&#xA;I'm senior in terms of my time with the company and experience even though I'm only 23 years old. I have no experience in leading a team other than the college project groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I'm most experienced, I was told to train the newcomers and one of them was assigned to my team for a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can any one tell me how can I train them while handling project pressure myself?&#xA;I want to share my knowledge with them but at the same time I want to avoid spoon feeding them or let them go astray in programming (became weak or clueless). What is the best approach to interact with them? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Boss them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Treat them as peers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Something else&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I expect to manage more than a single person soon so I look for methods which would work in the long run and not only in this specific situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2799" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-12-28T16:26:57.513" LastActivityDate="2012-04-20T09:53:03.397" Title="Training methods in small team" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;training&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3949" CreationDate="2011-12-28T10:38:40.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assembla have full set of PM&amp;amp;VCS tools (some plans are rather cheap), external CI tools can be  integrated with the help of Assembla's WebHooks and FTP&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2503" LastActivityDate="2011-12-28T10:38:40.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4194" CreationDate="2011-12-28T10:43:20.030" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Possibly unlike many other PMs who only swear by methods they've learned (PMI, IPMA, etc...), and considering your structure, I'd advise you to stick with the basics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you try to learn how to coach people, how to drive a project, while doing all this at the same time, you will drown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stick with your mission : a project is getting something done. Given a scope, you have to achieve a certain level of quality, under a certain cost, with a given time (all this is sometimes summurized as QDC : quality-delay-cost&#xA;==&gt; focus on managing these 4 items : your scope (clarify what needs and does not need to be done), the quality that is expected, the budget you have (budget can be a number of many days you have, it's not always money) and the time you have (when should it be finished ?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding training your team : do you mean programming training, ie technical training, or training for working in a project way ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's project training, in your situation I'd also recommand to stick with the basics : your team members work to achieve completion of the project. As a result drive them with deliverables : a deliverable is a preferably small measurable amount of work delivered within a given timeframe. Eg : develop feature X for Friday. Teach them to respect deadlines, and associate them with progress made on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll find that it works best when you associate people in estimations. A good way of doing this for programmers is card estimation : whenever you need to estimate the time to deliver something, break it in smaller chunks, then organize a meeting with all programmers. Explain each chunk, and have each dev &quot;vote&quot; for the amount of days they think it would take to do it (vote is made using cards from 1 to 20 usually, you may use chalk boards, postits, whatever works for you). After votes are revealed, you take the lowest one, the highest one, and you ask these 2 voters to explain the rationale of their vote, then you make a second vote. A consensus should emerge from the second vote (you may average the second vote scores). This way people feel they will have a say in how the work is assigned to them&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I may risk one remark, you've been put under quite some pressure considering your relatively low experience. Point this fact out to your boss, and require some coaching from them as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By all means focus on deliverables, especially on a startup&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2275" LastActivityDate="2011-12-28T10:43:20.030" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4190" CreationDate="2011-12-28T10:51:58.440" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For what it's worth, in my former company a Project was anything above 50 man.days...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rule was as follow : &#xA;For projects with 50+ man.days : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;must be managed by a PM&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;must follow PMBoK in-house variant methodology&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;full fledge reporting, etc...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For project with a smaller workload (cunningly dubbed as &quot;small projects&quot;) :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;could be managed by PM if any available, but could be managed by developers, or any operational person&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;we had a &quot;small projects&quot; variant of the methodology with a lot less artifacts&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;light reporting&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my view, the rationale is that under a certain complexity / size, project methodology puts too much overhead compared to the benefits. In other words, if there are 10 days of work for 2 people, putting a project methodology in place will not greatly improve the odd of wining / losing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2275" LastActivityDate="2011-12-28T10:51:58.440" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4131" CreationDate="2011-12-28T11:03:28.257" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The whole issue is that you'll never know until the project is done if you were indeed on a 50/50 balance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To solve this issue, I like to use project methodology with gates, where you refine the cost at each gate, thus reducing the uncertainty as you go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to work with a method where the beginning of the project would split in inception phase, concept phase, then final conception phase, and only at the end of this phase PM were expected to give an accurate budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer OP directly : I think this is useless, as you can't manage (ie take decisions) anything with that level of uncertainty, and your management will never accept it either. Iteration is the key here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;YMMV, so I'd be interrested in reading how this kind of estimate helped to take any kind of decision&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2275" LastActivityDate="2011-12-28T11:03:28.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4194" CreationDate="2011-12-28T12:01:35.343" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you are under the gun, and an answer like &quot;take time off and go study project management&quot; make no sense. There is one thing I would recommend you do however, and that is read &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0201835959&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Mythical Man-Month&lt;/a&gt; by Fredrick Brooks. It is a classic written in the late 1960s and is a short, easy read describing all the pitfalls of project management for software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular it describes how when you add people to a project the rate of output for the project slows down rather than increasing because senior people need to stop programming in order to train the new people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;but can any one tell me how can i train them while handling project&#xA;  pressure myself&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short answer is you can't, no one can. There are no free lunches, it takes time to properly train new people. The key is for you, and your management, to understand the issues involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: This is the source of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Brook's Law&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;which says that &quot;adding manpower to a late software project makes it&#xA;  later&quot;.&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0201835959&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; It was coined by Fred Brooks in his 1975 book The Mythical&#xA;  Man-Month. The corollary of Brooks's Law is that there is an&#xA;  incremental person who, when added to a project, makes it take more,&#xA;  not less time. Brooks adds that &quot;Nine women can't make a baby in one&#xA;  month&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2770" LastActivityDate="2011-12-28T12:01:35.343" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2902" CreationDate="2011-12-28T12:14:50.430" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No matter what the size is, all projects need to be well managed to meet the customer’s needs as  business ethics  as well as for the sake of the company , because any “crack” in relation with the customer may cause some other suppliers to take over the existing/future projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Big sized /Large accounts project  = PM to handle&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Important customers/Big companies = PM to handle, regardless of the size, as outcome of good performance on small projects may open the path to big sized/large accounts projects &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Small /Medium sized/accounts project   = PM handling more than one project as &lt;strong&gt;&lt;code&gt;Scott&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; explained&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2618" LastActivityDate="2011-12-28T12:14:50.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2622" CreationDate="2011-12-28T13:39:57.740" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are 2 main issues :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;can you at all suggest a change in project methodology ? (large customer tend to have corporate official way of doing that is mandatory for everyone)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;what is the customer stance regarding to scope ? Do they understand that fixed price mean that the scope is the variable of adjustment (unless you make addendum to the contract to pay more)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer is no to at least one of these questions, then don't bother, it's a lost cause&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2275" LastActivityDate="2011-12-28T13:39:57.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4202" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-28T20:12:05.970" Score="15" ViewCount="8839" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for some good team building exercises for a small (7 people) software development team.  We are just in the forming stage of our group and looking to bond a bit more.  It doesn't have to be related to the project mission or vision (although that could work) but something that involves a common (fun) task that will show different personalities and leadership skills.  Any great ideas out there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2378" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T13:14:15.303" Title="Team Building Exercises" Tags="&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4194" CreationDate="2011-12-28T20:46:39.230" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, I'd like to congratulate you for being worried about the quality of your relationship with the newbies. It makes me assume (and believe) you're on the path to be a good lead on the long term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things I believe you must have clear in your mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;- You cannot do two things at once:&lt;/strong&gt; as @JonnyBoats stated, you must not expect to be a dev leader plus coacher at once with the same quality as if you were doing any of them separately. Take this lesson as a bottomline (and honestly discuss about it with your managers), otherwise you'll get very frustrated quite soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;- You will fail:&lt;/strong&gt; Calm down, I don't mean the &lt;em&gt;project&lt;/em&gt; will fail; I mean that eventually something will go beyond your hands. Get prepared for it... specially because when acting as a leader, you'll be the focal point (i.e. the person to be blamed) from both managers &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;- Training takes time:&lt;/strong&gt; Again, have on your mind that any learning curve starts on debt, and can easily take months to go for a 'credit' state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;- Training needs patience, persistence:&lt;/strong&gt; Don't get frustrated or upset because someone doesn't understand your explanation; remember that making someone understand some concepts depends on both sides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having these items fresh on your mind, I'd go for this approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;- Know and assess your peer's knowledge:&lt;/strong&gt; That's the first thing you will need to do to make a plan of how much training someone needs / how detailed this training needs to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;- Make a plan:&lt;/strong&gt; It might take some time, but try avoiding have someone 'studying'. You can even take a book and have some exercises about specific chapters, but having someone only reading (without discussing about what was read) will add less value / knowledge on the long term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;- Keep an open communication channel:&lt;/strong&gt; Talk openly to your peers; Don't be shy in case you don't know something or in case someone knows more than you about something. There's a reason for having you leading the team that might be beyond your understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;- Give feedback:&lt;/strong&gt; Whenever is possible, congratulate your peers as well as correct them when required. You need to find the mid term between being too soft and too hard (a tip: congratulate publicly, correct privately).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;- Treat them as people, not resource:&lt;/strong&gt; Be a leader, basically. &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/3171/improving-leadership-skills-for-project-managers&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; question might give you some hints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And one last thing: when you're not sure about something, there will be always PMSE here to help, as well as for having you sharing your experiences with us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that the above is a good start for the oncoming questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2012-04-20T09:53:03.397" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4202" CreationDate="2011-12-29T16:05:46.910" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the team is working in any type of agile environment, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://dpwhelan.com/blog/uncategorized/learning-scrum-through-the-ball-point-game/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ball Point Game&lt;/a&gt; is a fantastic way to learn about iterations, inspect/adapt and self-organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A great resource for other games is &lt;a href=&quot;http://tastycupcakes.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TastyCupcakes.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2628" LastActivityDate="2011-12-29T16:05:46.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4202" CreationDate="2011-12-29T16:31:09.397" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've three games to propose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One&lt;/strong&gt;. The first one is really easy to play and the objective is to explain the team auto-organization. Follow this steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Organize a room with chairs and tables causally arranged&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Form teams composed by two members&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One is the manager and one is the worker&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The manager can give the following commands: turn left, turn right, step forward, stop&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The worker must only walk following the commands above&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The objective is to complete 60 walking steps in 90 seconds&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually this objective is not reached. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second session all people are workers. Let's do the same. Usually all complete the 60 steps in less than 1' and some time a pattern is formed (all people walk in a circle following each other).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Two&lt;/strong&gt;. Each team member build a paper airplane, and perform 3 launches with the objective to land near a target, place 5 meters away, with the approximation of 50cm and count how many time the objective is reached.&#xA;After that lets perform a 5Whys analysis and create a Lean A3 sheet. From the outcome of the A3 implement the actions and redo the experiment. Usually team improves by 50-70%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Three&lt;/strong&gt;. Last one is an experiment: Agile - The Board Game. It's a board game based on Scrum and Lean that uses Lego during the build phase. More details here &lt;a href=&quot;http://isolasoftware.it/tag/board-game/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://isolasoftware.it/tag/board-game/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2812" LastEditorUserId="2812" LastEditDate="2012-01-02T16:13:51.690" LastActivityDate="2012-01-02T16:13:51.690" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3891" CreationDate="2011-12-29T17:02:26.770" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all redmine is free and written in ruby - we can change anytime we want -, but has no real support. It can be integrated with different version control systems, but frankly I have never used this particular feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly, I've never used webvantage, but I was unable to find any usable information about it in 10 minutes, so this means something to me. I'm using redmine for almost 6 months now, and it is the best tool I had used in the last 7 years. It has it's problems, but it is flexible, reporting and issue handling is in one place etc. If you have any specific question please let me know so that I can answer your question more precisely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2011-12-29T17:02:26.770" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4202" CreationDate="2011-12-29T17:04:00.200" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is not tremendous evidence out there that team building exercises actually do anything.  So while your team is going through its first steps in its evolution, spending time and money on extra activities will likely have no value in terms of bonding faster, going through the first stages of team development, or having any real change in performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will likely get the same result having a few team lunches and dinners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-12-29T17:04:00.200" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4202" CreationDate="2011-12-29T20:59:33.737" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Get a current Mensa Brain Puzzlers daily calendar and put it by a whiteboard.  Encourage them to work the problems together.  It only takes a few minutes each day, provides a quick break, and allows people to solve a problem together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0761161333&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Mensa-Brain-Puzzlers-2012-Calendar/dp/0761161333/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;amp;ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1325286188&amp;amp;sr=1-1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MindTrap or other little puzzlers are good too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="735" LastEditorUserId="735" LastEditDate="2011-12-30T23:02:48.220" LastActivityDate="2011-12-30T23:02:48.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4211" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4216" CreationDate="2011-12-30T03:05:26.187" Score="2" ViewCount="155" Body="&lt;p&gt;We want to get a project justified, using ROI and/or NPV, but it seems to be difficult:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are a company that sells products on our internet site, and now we want to implement a system that give special offers of our products that can be scheduled to be active during specific period of time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We logically think this system will help us sell more, the question is how to get to convince the finance people with a ROI&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2813" LastActivityDate="2011-12-30T15:13:05.840" Title="help using ROI/NPV to justify a project that allows you to sell more" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;business-case&gt;&lt;initiation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4212" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4213" CreationDate="2011-12-30T09:56:35.320" Score="5" ViewCount="1176" Body="&lt;p&gt;The project I'm running is very exploratative in that I don't know very much detail about features in advance. My boss will tell me that he wants feature A and that after feature A is finished, he'll come up with say a dozen refinements, A1 - A12.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm now trying to plan our second 3 month release. The first release went very well and we learnt a ton about running an agile project, but this refinements mess things up in terms of a longer term plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My thoughts for this next release follows some ideas from Mike Cohn's &lt;em&gt;Agile Estimating and Planning&lt;/em&gt; whereby, say 30% of a release plan will a feature buffer. So as refinements come in, they we will decide whether they are more important than things in the feature buffer and either swap something out with the equivalent story points or leave the refinement out of the release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is that before we can decide whether a refinement goes in the release or not, we need an estimate of its story points. So far we'd only been estimating new stuff in the interation planning meetings, but this means:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We can have up to 2 weeks delay before we know the estimate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If we estimate in the same meeting as the iteration plan, I don't have any time to work with my boss to figure out the priority based on the estimate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The refinements start adding up and we could end up spending way too long just estimating for hours on end.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had two ideas to deal with this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put some time aside to estimate each day for any new stories that might have come in. Possibly during the standup, but perhaps as a separate event. I like this because planning poker has been working really well for us, but I don't want developers to spend any more time in meetings than they have to.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a planning poker system, i.e. a web page or something where developers can put in their estimates for a story in their own time. This would only work for very simple tasks where everyone agrees. As soon as people's estimates diverge, we'd do it in person. I like this because it removes the need for more meetings. But I don't like that we're not talking about stories in person, so there's much more potential for misunderstanding etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, how and when do you guys estimate story points (or whatever measure you use) after you receive a new story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2815" LastActivityDate="2011-12-30T16:15:06.007" Title="What is a reasonable strategy for estimating story points for new stories?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;release-plan&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4212" CreationDate="2011-12-30T10:32:46.747" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;From what you write you estimate features because you need predictability&lt;/strong&gt;, namely you want to know how many and which features you can pack into the next release. At the same time you understand that &lt;strong&gt;requirements are changing over time which means that your estimates are going to change as well&lt;/strong&gt;. You try to cope with it estimating and re-estimating in details as you learn more about features or changes in them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another, different approach would be to measure just a coarse-grained size of features and then track down how much time you've spent on a feature in reality. For example, you can start with T-shirt size estimation (S, M, L, XL, etc) and then look how much of variability there is in real effort invested into building these features. (see 2 and 4 in sources)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should quickly learn that there are ranges of effort spent on building each size of features. Now you may use this historical data to roughly say how many features of each size you can pack into the next release. You will probably end up with a bunch of scenarios: optimistic (most features are smaller than average of their size bucket), average (basing either on average or median size of features in each of size buckets) and pessimistic (most features are bigger than average). &lt;strong&gt;Actually multiple-point estimate which you're going to get this way is better than a single-point estimate.&lt;/strong&gt; (1)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basing on this you may come of with a list of features that are going to be, likely to be, not likely to be and definitely not going to be in the next release. (3)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your perspective it should &lt;strong&gt;significantly decrease amount of effort you invest into estimation&lt;/strong&gt;, as you're just going to assign every new feature to one of general sizes instead of busily estimating story points for each of them. What more, in retrospect you can either choose to assign time spent on feature and its refinements separately or jointly. I would probably go with the latter as it means you're going to estimate how much time you need to finally get a feature ready to release instead of getting the first version of a feature which is going to be adjusted several times. Anyway the choice is yours here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What more, in the long run you should get better results this way as instead of basing on guesses (entry mechanism for planning poker &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; guessing) plus discussion &lt;strong&gt;you will use your track record to improve quality of data&lt;/strong&gt;. (5)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: it may be difficult to kick off without having historical data at hand so you may want to use the current method for some time while you're gathering data and then eventually switch to a new approach. By the way, it would allow to compare results from both methods too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE: Sources/further reading:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For some basic ideas on estimation I strongly recommend Steve McConnell's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0735605351&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For understanding how estimation based on historical data works I recommend Joel Spolsky's article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Evidence Based Scheduling&lt;/a&gt;. Although I don't propose to apply the concept directly it will help you to understand why and how it can improve the quality of your estimates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deciding what gets, what can get and what doesn't get into a release is pretty popular concept and is covered for example in Mike Cohn's book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0131479415&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Estimating and Planning&lt;/a&gt;, which by the way you probably know.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Variability of work and how it influences planning is pretty well described in David Anderson's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0984521402&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business&lt;/a&gt;. Note however that the main goal of the book is introducing Kanban and not discussing variability. Nevertheless the book is worth recommending anyway as it can help you with other areas of organizing software development as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I described a bit similar approach I used in my team in a post on &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2010/05/kanban-estimation.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Coarse-Grained Estimation&lt;/a&gt;. A related topic was &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2011/05/kanban-standard-sized-features.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;standardizing feature size&lt;/a&gt; which you may or may not find useful or even feasible in your case.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2011-12-30T12:02:26.223" LastActivityDate="2011-12-30T12:02:26.223" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4194" CreationDate="2011-12-30T11:06:15.463" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I'd in you I would start to define team ground rules. For examples: where documents are stored (wiki?), how manage source code (git, svn, ...), how to perform tests (xunit,...) and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that I would give a pace to the team work: periodical meetings (time boxed, once a day and one retrospective each week?) and periodical releases (jenkins?). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third step should be to introduce a visual task management like a Kanban board - &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_(development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_(development&lt;/a&gt;) adapted to your process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that way all team members are aware of the projects objectives and each other commitments. This creates an environment of trusting and transparency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your are the facilitator and coach of this process giving the freedom of the auto-organization and helping to correct the direction when is needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that way you can share your knowledge without imposing activities like a boss. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2812" LastActivityDate="2011-12-30T11:06:15.463" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1871" CreationDate="2011-12-30T15:11:47.090" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is to partecipate as volunteer at PMI and PMI Chapters initiatives. It's free and really useful: it is possible to learn a lot participating to PMI communities!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2812" LastActivityDate="2011-12-30T15:11:47.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4211" CreationDate="2011-12-30T15:13:05.840" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mig, that is the inherent issue with building all business cases.  How do you know what will happen in the future? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With your team:&#xA;1.  Capture your set of assumptions; these are things you think are true, based on your intuition, expertise in your market place, theory, and speculation.&#xA;2.  Capture what you know for a fact; these things could be similar results from a similar implementation either at your org or another, customer suggestions or feedback, etc.&#xA;3.  Capture the questions you need answered; many of these will come from your set of assumptions, too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't get married to your idea.  Look for evidence NOT to do it versus evidence to do it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the largest obstacle in building a case is that most people are uncomfortable dealing with uncertainty.  Get comfortable working with ranges of results, costs, and risks, and with probabilities.  Build a non deterministic pro forma versus a deterministic one and simulate if you are able.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2011-12-30T15:13:05.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4212" CreationDate="2011-12-30T16:15:06.007" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have successful used what I call a &quot;Piling&quot; exercise to do a one time establishment of story point sizing and to size a backlog in one pass without having to argue over each individual story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have the team print or write out each story/feature onto a card/piece of paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;take some post it notes and spread them across the table and label them XS, S, M, L, XL, to identify 5 possible story piles (you can obviously have more than this if you want)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask the team to put each story into one of the piles, with discussion and clarification if needed (sometimes some good things are discovered)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;after the piling is complete, label each pile with one a story point value (3,5,8,13,21,ect.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rejoice!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From here I found that the team easily starts to level set on what a &quot;5&quot; means and what an &quot;8&quot; means and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastActivityDate="2011-12-30T16:15:06.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3147" CreationDate="2011-12-30T20:32:39.040" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you've got a Kindle, I wrote one which is designed as a first stop introduction to Kanban and priced it at the lowest point Amazon allows, $1. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to really understand Kanban, read David's book. For a better introduction to the theory of lean software development, read Mary and Tom's book from 2003, &quot;Lean Software Development.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2820" LastActivityDate="2011-12-30T20:32:39.040" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3872" CreationDate="2011-12-30T22:32:35.723" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you tried &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ohloh.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ohloh&lt;/a&gt;?  It will gather certain statistics about your project, including downloads and allow users to indicate if they &quot;use&quot; your project or not.  Might be part of what you are looking for anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2817" LastActivityDate="2011-12-30T22:32:35.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="195" CreationDate="2011-12-31T13:11:00.533" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good list. One thing I would add is Change Management. You have to evaluate every change to your original concept. Every change introduces additional risk. You have to evaluate the change in terms of risk, budget, schedule, and scope. Once you have made an objective evaluation you can determine whether to implement the change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2824" LastActivityDate="2011-12-31T13:11:00.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4224" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4248" CreationDate="2011-12-31T18:45:15.880" Score="2" ViewCount="163" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it always important for developers to know about the entire product before they get their hands on to develop a certain module of it? Let's say that if the customer wants to keep the product confidential then how can we go about letting the development team know what they are suppose to come up with? I'm seeking for effective approaches and ways to handle such scenarios.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2826" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T03:35:34.667" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T03:35:34.667" Title="How strictly can we differentiate the importance of Project Scope and a Product Scope for developers" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;scope&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4202" CreationDate="2011-12-31T20:18:20.317" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try a variation of Scavanger's Hunt. Divide your folks in 2 or 3 groups and conduct it inside the office and outside as well. This actually helps the team members bond together while working at common goals. Also, there can be a debriefing at the end where the team can draw and summarize lessons. The entire activity can take around 3-4 hours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1546" LastActivityDate="2011-12-31T20:18:20.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4224" CreationDate="2012-01-01T03:51:40.587" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My suggestion would be to find &amp;amp; appoint a customer advocate ,to handle this. someone whom the customer can trust with the confidential information ( could be a direct customer rep) AND can speak developer lingo &#xA;I would make this person responsible and accountable for making sure that development team understands deliverable details. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastActivityDate="2012-01-01T03:51:40.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4227" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-01T07:48:57.667" Score="24" ViewCount="69198" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm still confused with the title 'Program Manager' after I went through this site and searched over threads. Actually I haven't seen many 'Program Managers' in practice.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it a regular role in PM?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What's its definition and role?   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2771" LastEditorUserId="2618" LastEditDate="2012-01-13T12:41:08.650" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T00:15:22.833" Title="What's the exact definition of &quot;Program Manager&quot;?" Tags="&lt;roles&gt;&lt;program-management&gt;&lt;definition&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4224" CreationDate="2012-01-01T14:39:33.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is virtually never important in very large projects that individual teams understand the entire project. It may be nice, and it may make people happy to &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; they understand the entire project but that is another matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the development of the atom bomb or virtually any other top secret military project. Clearly such projects get done and produce successful results; it is also clear that as few people as possible even know the goal, much less the scope and details up front.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way this is done is to segment the work with each team dealing with a particular segment on a strictly need to know basis. Taking again the case of the original atom bomb in WW II, clearly they needed an airplane to fly the bomb, but when they requested an airplane the company that built it did not need to know what the payload would be, only it's size and weight in general terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even when there is nothing secret about a project, it is still often parceled up with the various teams only having a general understanding of the entire project and not &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; understanding the other pieces. Consider when they design and build a new ship. There will be an engineer designing the propeller. That engineer will probably know that there is an engineer working on the electrical systems, but the propeller engineer probably doesn't understand what the electrical engineer is doing (unless he is curious about that).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2770" LastEditorUserId="2770" LastEditDate="2012-01-01T23:01:11.340" LastActivityDate="2012-01-01T23:01:11.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4227" CreationDate="2012-01-01T18:46:55.587" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tend to go by the definition made by James T Brown, within &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0071494723&quot;&gt;The Handbook of Program Management&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A program manager is first and foremost a leader. In fact, the program&#xA;  manager's main leadership duty is to turn chaos into clarity for the&#xA;  team. Any leader who allows chaos to exist or just passes chaos down&#xA;  to the team without clarification is not exercising leadership. People&#xA;  need clear direction and circumstances that allow them to be&#xA;  successful. The program manager must establish such direction both&#xA;  within and outside the organization through a variety of means.&#xA;  Additionally, the program manager may have to accept calculated risk&#xA;  when he or she is unable to obtain clarity from the organization and&#xA;  then define clarity in his or her own terms. Accepting chaos, allowing&#xA;  chaos to exist, or passing down chaos all signal a lack of integrity&#xA;  and this does not create a culture conducive to successful projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The primary difference between a program manager and a project manager&#xA;  can be summed up in the words create and comply. The program manager&#xA;  is responsible for creating the business environment culture the&#xA;  project manager complies with to execute. The degree of the program&#xA;  manager's direct control of that culture can vary, but through direct&#xA;  authority or organizational influence he or she is responsible for&#xA;  establishing the framework in which the project manager operates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The project manager is judged on the triple constraint of time, cost,&#xA;  and scope of the project. The program manager also is judged on these&#xA;  three elements but at a level that is cumulative for all the projects&#xA;  and operations within the program. This aggregation of&#xA;  responsibilities for a variety of projects and operations means the&#xA;  program manager must make frequent trade-offs between business targets&#xA;  and project/operational performance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Program management decisions are both tactical and strategic in&#xA;  nature. The strategy aspects of these decisions must consider&#xA;  multidimensional impacts beyond the near-term delivery dates of the&#xA;  project. Conversely, the project manager is challenged to deliver&#xA;  projects within the boundaries and framework established by the&#xA;  program manager. Typically, the project manager is and should be more&#xA;  delivery and execution focused whereas the program manager has to also&#xA;  be concerned with the overall health and effectiveness of the program&#xA;  over the long term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brown, James T (2007-11-15). The Handbook of Program Management (Kindle Locations 149-166). McGraw-Hill. Kindle Edition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastEditorUserId="1457" LastEditDate="2012-01-03T11:46:46.183" LastActivityDate="2012-01-03T11:46:46.183" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4202" CreationDate="2012-01-02T11:29:26.427" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I joined a team as a Scrum Master I did a simple step: I asked everybody to share some private information about himself, i.e.: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you spend time after work? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What did you study? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tell a story about your life-adventure? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What was the strangest work you've ever did? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Share your One Little Secret.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience shows, that sharing some private stuff is a good ground to build relations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other idea, which I will definitely do if I build team again, is to ask to draw a metaphor: &quot;you and the team&quot; and then I ask for interpretation. Some questions during presentation: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who are you on this drawing?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What does this color mean?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is your role in a team?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What does this object (i.e. a ball, a boat, whatever there is on drawing) represent?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and so on...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastActivityDate="2012-01-02T11:29:26.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4232" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-02T23:50:55.710" Score="17" ViewCount="4587" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are currently using Scrum within our organisation but are considering moving to Kanban (or Scrumban). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As part of our Scrum process we normally take into consideration size and complexity of features by assigning appropriate story points. I've briefly spoken to a few people doing Kanban and they say they don't do estimating meetings and sizing of features any longer. This must mean that all features must be of approximately the same size/complexity. In our environment, we have features which may require very little development/testing while others may be light on development but heavy on testing. For us, it doesn't necessarily work in all cases to set general queue sizes and limits. I think one of the reasons for this is that our development pipeline  always have a mixture of new features (small and large), bug fixes and legacy system improvements etc.  One idea I have is to continue estimating features with story points and introducing additional columns on the Kanban board to limit the number of medium and/or large features that can we worked on at a given time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found the following article about &quot;standard-sized features&quot; quite interesting. However, I don't think this approach suits us due to the problems I describe above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2011/05/kanban-standard-sized-features.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2011/05/kanban-standard-sized-features.html&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I handle my Kanban board in this scenario where there are differently-sized tasks?.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2831" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-01-07T14:16:52.723" LastActivityDate="2019-06-13T19:09:11.557" Title="Kanban and feature size" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;scrumban&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4232" CreationDate="2012-01-03T03:09:58.860" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can get rid of the specific story sizing points and drop to a more basic level of S, M, L (T-Shirt sizes). Then, you can measure the throughput and cycle time (time needed to complete a feature) on each size, so over time you would learn that a &quot;S&quot; takes X days on average and a &quot;M&quot; takes X days and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will also learn about variability of size within different clusters of features, e.g. variability of size of big features is likely to be bigger than one of small features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, that using T-shirt sizing instead of story point estimation should take you less time as it is more coarse-grained method. However basing on historical data (throughput and cycle time and variability) should improve quality of your estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't change your WIP limits in the columns though. The goal is to drive items through, not to allow the team to take on more just because they are all &quot;S&quot;. Then you are just back to context switching. Note however, that especially big features would negatively affect the flow and cycle time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe from this, you start learning how to better get stories you are brining on, broken down in to pieces that are all &quot;S&quot; or &quot;M&quot; and decide the &quot;L&quot;s have to much variability in their throughput. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2012-01-03T11:55:44.280" LastActivityDate="2012-01-03T11:55:44.280" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4232" CreationDate="2012-01-03T10:53:41.290" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, get some data to help make the decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd continue sizing stories as you do at the moment but start working in a pull based way rather than committing to a certain amount of points each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a month or two, monitor both points completed per week and stories completed per week.  Hopefully, you'll find that the ratio of stories to points per week is pretty consistent - this should give you the confidence to stop sizing and just track number of stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another bit of data you'll want look at is story size distribution.  Sample a few previous sprints.  If you find most of your stories fall in range x to y but you occasionally get a much bigger (or smaller) story come in, you might want to consider approaches such as swim lanes or different coloured cards for large (or small) stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;David Anderson's Kanban book has some good practical examples along these lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-08T01:48:44.863" LastActivityDate="2012-06-08T01:48:44.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4236" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-03T16:41:49.437" Score="4" ViewCount="454" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have completed the feature implementation for new release of a product. &#xA;The product is strategic for the company with a large customer base and making good revenue.&#xA;The product has had lifetime of more than 10 years. Needless to say millions of lines of code and multiple technologies used. The original designers and architects have long left. The team is young and not so matured in required skills.There is not much discipline in development standard also not enough unit test cases. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was a major release and lot of changes have happened. This has led to lot of defects being continuously reported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team has got into fix -test -fix cycle where for every fix some new defect is reported or something else is broken. The confidence of management is really low on product quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the short term(immediate release) and long term measures(future release) that can be taken from project management perspective to improve the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1815" LastActivityDate="2012-01-05T19:38:19.777" Title="Measures to get out of fix-test-fix cycle" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;defect-fixing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4237" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4238" CreationDate="2012-01-03T17:06:23.807" Score="7" ViewCount="464" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm managing an upgrade project and I asked my assistant to do some preliminary research and come to me with some ideas on how to approach the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This particular project affects a large number of people and has one significant stakeholder pushing for change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My assistant went ahead and interviewed this stakeholder and got a good idea on how to approach the problem, but doesn't know company policy (he's still new), and he came up with good ideas, but suggestions that will simply not work for this project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here in lies the problem. My assistant (while I was away on holidays) went ahead and submitted his ideas as a &lt;strong&gt;formal proposal&lt;/strong&gt; to the stakeholder. This person loves the ideas, but doesn't grasp the ramifications of them since this is a technical plan and he's not a technical person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I go ahead and correct and direct my assistant (not punish), and set things back on the right track to success? I'm fairly new to project management and employee management myself, so any advice will be hugely appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2839" LastEditorUserId="2839" LastEditDate="2012-01-03T19:04:16.233" LastActivityDate="2012-01-04T02:39:56.717" Title="The right way to correct a new employee who accidently stepped on your toes" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;training&gt;&lt;politics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4237" CreationDate="2012-01-03T17:28:32.793" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your assistant did nothing wrong.  You wrote he does not know company policy.  You cannot hold him accountable for what he does not know.  He, while you were on vacation, kept the ball rolling.  He made a decision and he acted.  He should be commended for his eagerness and willingness to put his neck on the line for what he thought was a super idea.  Those behaviors need to be rewarded.  At the same time, he can be coached in some of his thinking to maybe realign his thinking about what kinds of decisions he can make at his rank and what decisions on which he should wait.  But that message needs to come across in a very non punitive way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The error rests with you.  To fix this, you need to call in your stakeholder and put everything on the table, including the benefits of the proposal, the costs, and the risks and ramifications.  It can be spun such that your stakeholder never has to know, nor should he know, that a deviation occurred in your internal processes.  Then, have your stakeholder make a more informed decision and move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-01-03T17:28:32.793" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4236" CreationDate="2012-01-03T19:25:37.870" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;First on my list would be to take some time reviewing your recent bugs and doing a root-cause analysis on how the bug made it in. That can help you decide on which solution(s) make the most sense for you to implement. As far as things I would likely implement in a similar situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Design reviews - As a short term solution, I would suggest simply having a developer writing down their thoughts about how they will implement a change, and having someone else on the team take a look at it for any concerns that they have prior to the code being written. As a long term solution, I would set up some expectations of what should be in the design document (use cases, tests to use to validate, etc)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Code reviews and/or pair programming - both of these can be short or long term, the basic idea is that getting multiple eyes on the code can definitely help catch bugs. But, these only really work if your people know what kinds of things to look for. My biggest suggestion on doing code reviews is to keep the amount of code being reviewed at a single time relatively small. The larger the amount of code there is, the more likely something will be overlooked.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Unit tests - (properly done) these can be a good way to ensure that working pieces do not get broken again. These can start out as manual tests that get performed by hand, and eventually get automated as time allows. But whether automated or manual, the tests will only be useful if the people doing the testing or writing the tests know what is important to test. As a starting point, any time there is a new bug, write up a test for that bug. And if time allows, flesh out the testing to the behavior surrounding the specific failure case.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ad-hoc testing - have someone not on the development team use the product and see what they turn up. Sometimes when you are too close to the code, you start thinking down paths that prevent you from seeing obvious exceptions to the expected behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You say that the original designers and architects have long left. Are the designs they left behind well documented and up to date? Are they understood by the current team? If not, they likely do not have a good understanding of how changes in one area of the code can cause problems in other areas. It is probably worthwhile to allow some time and budget to have someone on the team dive into things and gain that understanding. If the entire team is young, I would suggest seeing if a more experienced person that you trust can be added to the team to do this. Their experience should help them pick up on any design/architecture patterns that are in place, and hopefully convey that information to the rest of the team. The person/people that gain this knowledge also become your experts for doing the design and code reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastActivityDate="2012-01-03T19:25:37.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4224" CreationDate="2012-01-03T19:43:40.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any benefits to keeping the developers in the dark other than the assumption that some amount of knowledge will be kept secret? Keep in mind that if your developers are smart enough and have enough clues, they might just figure out what the whole picture looks like anyways. And the air of secrecy might make them more interested in putting the clues together. My suggestion would be that if there is no NDA in place, that there should be one. And if you don't trust the developers with an NDA, then you should consider other developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the developers do know the shape of the overall project, they:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;will be more likely to give more accurate estimates for larger pieces of the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;will make smarter implementation decisions, leading to less rework&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;will be better able to ask the right questions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;can point out when a detailed item they've been requested to do goes against the overall goals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;can point out when two (or more) pieces of the larger project can be handled using common code&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastActivityDate="2012-01-03T19:43:40.850" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4241" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4244" CreationDate="2012-01-03T20:26:36.647" Score="33" ViewCount="6144" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboy_coding&quot;&gt;cowboy coder&lt;/a&gt; in our team i.e. he likes to take advantage developing some new features or tools that are not always requested nor useful. We use scrum/kanban for development, and it is quite common that when he gets an item from the board, he takes a long time to finish it and comes out it the solution and &quot;something more&quot;.&#xA;Now thinking by the human side, I always try to fit someone to do what he/she likes the most, so I would like some advices on how to make him feel motivated doing the stuff he likes, at the same time that he delivers useful features and share his &quot;something more&quot; stuff development with the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2352" LastEditorUserId="2866" LastEditDate="2012-01-06T15:48:36.610" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T13:19:04.387" Title="Advice for dealing with a cowboy programmer in an agile team" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4194" CreationDate="2012-01-03T20:27:11.673" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to what the others have suggested (especially Tiago's list), if the team is more than just you and the newcomer, then have someone else on the team be responsible for training the newcomer. By this I mean the day-to-day training, not necessarily training on a specific topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the past several years I've had at least a dozen cases of bringing new people onto a long term project (usually summer interns, but new hires as well). Looking at the successes and failures, one of the common threads I've seen is that the most successful experiences have been those where someone with about a year of experience has been the trainer for the newcomer. There are several aspects that I've seen play into this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unless you are really good at teaching, it is often difficult to bridge the knowledge gap between your experience and the newcomers. You'll usually start talking at a certain knowledge level, and it can be easy to miss the clues that there is something basic that you need to cover first. This can lead to frustration on your side (having to repeat yourself because &quot;they just don't get it&quot;) as well as frustration on their side (&quot;he makes it sound like it should be so simple, why don't I understand?&quot;). With a newer member of the team, they are likely talking closer to the same level as your newcomer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it helps reinforce knowledge in your trainer - if they are being asked questions, they are getting reinforcement on the same knowledge. And if there is something that the trainer can't answer and has to come to you for, you wind up answering the same question for two people at once.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it helps your trainer see some of what you have to deal with on a larger scale, helps build a trust between you and the trainer, helps the trainer work on some skills that will help them in the future, and based on the questions they bring to you may help you understand where the team as a whole could use some training &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it helps free up your time taking care of the other things already on your plate (let's be honest, this really should be considered. If you are the senior member of the team, you likely have a dozen other things that &quot;only you can do&quot; - though those also ought to be looked at to see what can )&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that I'm not saying that the need for you to train others goes away, it just changes who it is that you are training. You should be training your most experienced people and help them bringing up those on the path behind them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastActivityDate="2012-01-03T20:27:11.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4241" CreationDate="2012-01-03T20:58:00.987" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you had a fully automated task that &quot;takes a long time to finish it and comes out it the solution and 'something more',&quot; would you tolerate that?  Or, would you find the offending component and fix/replace it?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good things &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; come from a rogue human resource but many bad things &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; come from him, too, things like scope creep, gold plating that is ultimately rejected, increased schedule, increased costs.  So you are balancing what might happen good with what will happen bad.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not worth it, in my opinion.  Find the offending component, fix or replace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-01-03T20:58:00.987" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4241" CreationDate="2012-01-03T21:50:05.463" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;By the sounds of it you have isolated this issue to the developer and that (imo) means you need to modify your process to ensure issues like this don't continually occur or modify the interactions with this developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a side note, don't count out the tasks / stories on the board as being a potential cause of this scope creep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scope creep is resulting from a poorly understood user story:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_%28mnemonic%29&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt;'ed in writing good user stories? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do your stories have clearly defined acceptance criteria (Acceptance criteria are the requirements that have to be met for a story to be assessed as complete) ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your answer to these questions is yes, then you may want to talk to the team about modifying the process when a team member picks up a task from the board to include a discussion with the Product Owner (or whom ever is representing the PO).  This discussion is simply intended to make sure the developer has a clear understanding of what &quot;Done&quot; means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scope creep is a symptom of the developer and not the process:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to have a candid discussion with this individual. They need to know that the scope creep they are adding to the stories they work on is affecting the project and the desired outcome of the story. If they have &quot;ideas&quot; you should encourage that they bring them forward but not blindly code them into the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If their behavior does not change after having this discussion then I would remove them from the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scope creep is a symptom of the teams definition of done:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How are stories accepted as done on your team? By the sounds of it you are saying that when the story is moved to &quot;done&quot; is has a large amount of bloat added to it, but it is still moved to done and &quot;accepted&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On any team I have worked on, if the &quot;bells and whistles&quot; did not add to the user story (or sometimes even if they existed) I would have rejected it and moved it back to in progress until the acceptance criteria had been met for that story. You do this a few times and it become pretty evident to individuals they should be developing the bare minimum that meets the stories acceptance criteria&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scope creep is a symptom of the individuals design:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is design being vetted by the team prior to a developer coding on the story? If not, this could be something you add to your process in the form of a design session. Be sure to include the PO or PO representative to ensure that the proposed design is the bare minimum to meet the stories acceptance criteria. Note, that this design session could simply be an ad hoc discussion in front of a whiteboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastEditorUserId="1885" LastEditDate="2012-01-04T04:47:37.457" LastActivityDate="2012-01-04T04:47:37.457" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4237" CreationDate="2012-01-03T22:28:58.647" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Work with your assistant, laying out the company policy and technical issues that are sticklers in his proposal.  Have him come up with ideas for how to make this still work, within the contrainsts that he didn't know.  Encourage him for him keeping the ball rolling, and have him continue to be part of the now modified solution.  With any luck, he'll have some good ideas for how to modify the proposal to the stakeholder.  He'll also learn more company policy and will understand the effects his jumping the gun has caused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, as David Esprina says, bring in the stakeholder and put everything on the table, including the solutions that allow you to provide what he wants within the constraints that you have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="735" LastActivityDate="2012-01-03T22:28:58.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4241" CreationDate="2012-01-03T22:32:58.740" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Individuals and interactions&lt;/strong&gt; over processes and tools&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would have a conversation with individual, bring it up in retrospective or perhaps even standup. Don't spend too much time trying to figure out how to solve this problem via the process. For all you know this person might be doing all this gold-plating because he thinks it's required to &quot;look good&quot; in the eyes of management. Don't assume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest pairing (pair programming) with this individual the next time he grabs a story off the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2628" LastActivityDate="2012-01-03T22:32:58.740" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4241" CreationDate="2012-01-03T22:49:31.623" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Last time I was working with a cowboy coder I let her take full responsibility for the &quot;&lt;em&gt;something more&lt;/em&gt;&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;she had to integrate, deploy and release it &lt;strong&gt;alone&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;when somebody else was unable to test, integrate or deploy her solution, the team stopped working, so did she, and she had to fix the problem&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;when management asked us about the spent time she had to explain the &quot;plus&quot; including the delays I mentioned before&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may sound harsh, but &lt;em&gt;cowboy coders&lt;/em&gt; feel that they can do whatever they want to do, while in the background somebody else does the legwork. As soon as they have to do the legwork they &quot;calm down&quot; and be part of the team or they ask for leaving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-01-03T22:49:31.623" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4224" CreationDate="2012-01-04T02:06:31.753" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If we're talking about a complex and long project, it's common to have developers working on pieces of the project. They will need to understand thoroughly... what impacts on their job. JonnyBoats gives the perfect example for this case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there's a possible that the project be relatively small, with a few people working on it. I'd say that's the case, otherwise you wouldn't be asking. So... as several questions around PMSE, the most accurate answer would be... 'it depends'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Size:&lt;/strong&gt; If it's a small piece of work (a confidential &lt;em&gt;Hello World&lt;/em&gt;, let's say), it's almost impossible to keep things covered for developers. The piece of work he needs to do explains the project itself. Just re-added here what was explained above for cleanliness (and for the few people who jumped straight into the bullet list).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Structure:&lt;/strong&gt; Ok, let's say it's a fancy-revolutionary &lt;em&gt;Hello World&lt;/em&gt;. There are four developers allocated plus two testers and a project manager. I'd say, as long it's possible to break down the work, only the project manager will have the complete view of what's being built. It will be pretty much one developer to define a string, another to type the code to print that string, two testers testing and the manager keeping sure everything is fine. Ah, the other two developers were fired / moved into another ultra-secret project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project documentation:&lt;/strong&gt; 'This project is intended to build up a nuke'. Well, regardless all your efforts to keep things hidden, you'll need documentation to help you out. If the project documentation given to the PM is clear enough to break down into pieces (and specially the interfaces between them) it's fine.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having this in mind, that's what I'd do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have the project clear in you mind:&lt;/strong&gt; It sounds obvious, but remember that only the PM (i.e. you) will be the only person to understand the goal, you'll need to understand that no one else will be sure about what's doing, unless you confirm it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Split things up:&lt;/strong&gt; Obvious again; my tip here would be to think of interfaces between pieces rather than any other 'splitting' method. Specially when explaining to the developers what they need to do... I believe that if you tell them what they receive and what they should provide is better than saying &quot;you're doing the interface to receive secret data&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use mock+fake data:&lt;/strong&gt; Eventually you'll need to populate tables for testing; use codes, numbers, words... anything but a data related to the table itself.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Take a deep breath:&lt;/strong&gt; As Kyle stated, developers are curious; making something classified will only excite them even more to figure out what they're doing. Because of it, the last tip would be:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Trust in your team:&lt;/strong&gt; Ok, you won't tell them what they're building, you're 100% sure that things are harder to manage / build / test / sign when working like this and there's still the possibility of information leakage. So, have a team you'd be confident to work with even if they had the whole vision of the project. There's always a possibility that, further down the road, they do.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well Maxood, I hope you have success on your journey and hope you have the opportunity to share some thoughts and experiences with us in the near future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-01-04T02:06:31.753" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4237" CreationDate="2012-01-04T02:39:56.717" Score="5" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Now&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't give you perfect advice on how to solve the current problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;David and thursdaygeek seem to have covered this well enough, and I agree with thursdaygeek that getting your report involved in fixing their own mistake will be rewarding for everyone involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'd definitely shield them during and after the process, and take the mistake upon myself.  The best managers create a bubble in which their reports can succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Going forward&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A favorite adage of a good dev manager in our company is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask for forgiveness, not for permission&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is good to foster this, as it quells analysis paralysis, and when people have frequent victory, it will greatly boost their morale and productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like your report is succeeding at that.  I'd try to beef up their knowledge of the unknowns that caused this SNAFU, and make sure to set them up in similar &lt;em&gt;more guided&lt;/em&gt; and hands-on situations so you can re-enforce the correct behaviors.  Give them more chances to fail or succeed at similar scenarios.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bad way to respond to this is to try to re-enforce the missing process knowledge group-wide.  It ends up being the equivalent of public shaming (due to the always-present rumor mill), and I've seen it drive people to stall-out and eventually quit.  If you feel a strong enough need to make sure it doesn't happen again, I wouldn't send out e-mails.  I'd talk with each person one-on-one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2841" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2012-01-04T02:39:56.717" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4241" CreationDate="2012-01-04T10:14:19.323" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read the answers and I have a feeling there is some little insight you should be aware of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Investigate. What is the source of a cowboy coding behaviour?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a manager you are supposed to know your team(s) and peoples motivation. One of the possible problems was mentioned by @&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/1885/jesse&quot; title=&quot;Jeese&quot;&gt;Jeese&lt;/a&gt; and it may be the most probable one. But please remember that in order to find proper solution you should be sure what you want to cure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(alternate motivations: cowboy like to show herself in a good light / she is a creative person / she cares for the users more that product owners / your organisation lacks care for inventions and she finds it the only way to introduce some / etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make it a win-win&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/1885/jesse&quot; title=&quot;Jeese&quot;&gt;Jeese&lt;/a&gt; also said a very important thing: &lt;em&gt;If they have &quot;ideas&quot; you should encourage that they bring them forward but not blindly code them into the story.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be that there is nothing wrong with the task scope, but the coder is a very highly creative person. The worst thing would be dumping her joy of work and her creative output. You could not stop creativity, it will happen not matter what. But she can create other stories for the ideas and separate the current work from additional improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Measure and decide&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/574/david-espina&quot; title=&quot;David&quot;&gt;David&lt;/a&gt; said important thing: &lt;em&gt;Good things could come from a rogue human resource but many bad things will come from him&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... and I would add that: probably many good and bad things are already coming from her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over a time you should decide if your total ballance is a possitive or negative one. You are the one to decide if you have a time for making it win-win in your project's situation. What are the costs of the problem, is there a good outcome and what are the forecasts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-01-04T10:14:19.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4251" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4252" CreationDate="2012-01-04T12:01:04.590" Score="96" ViewCount="92273" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why do some teams use numbers from the Fibonacci sequence as story points? Is it just a preference, or is there something more to it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2847" LastEditorUserId="17615" LastEditDate="2015-06-28T09:31:27.183" LastActivityDate="2020-04-28T05:01:44.883" Title="Why would teams use the Fibonacci sequence for story points?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="36" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4251" CreationDate="2012-01-04T12:32:05.900" Score="93" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some teams also use powers of two, or have a scale like 1, 2, 5, 8, 20. The idea is that the larger the story is, the more uncertainty there is around it and the less accurate the estimate will be. Using the Fibonacci sequence helps teams to recognise this uncertainty, deliberately creating a lack of precision instead of wasting time trying to produce estimates that might also carry a false degree of confidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dan North's blog post, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dannorth.net/2009/07/01/the-perils-of-estimation/&quot;&gt;&quot;The Perils of Estimation&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, explains this very effectively IMO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2012-01-04T12:32:05.900" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4251" CreationDate="2012-01-04T12:59:01.267" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the answer of Lunivore:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimation can be done by using the Fibonacci sequence: 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, ... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the sequence we use most of the time is:&#xA;0, 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, 100 and ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;0&lt;/strong&gt; indicates a user story that doesn't take up any time at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;0.5&lt;/strong&gt; indicates a task that is smaller then the smallest task previously estimated. This often results in changing the previously estimated items to a higher value so the task voted 0.5 gets a value of 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;20&lt;/strong&gt; replaces 21 because the estimation can't be accurate to +/-5%, and 21 seems very precise, whereas a nice round number like 20 seems like what it - an estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;bigger than 20&lt;/strong&gt; in my opinion, all tasks bigger then 20 should be split up into smaller user stories, as they are too big to be estimated with any accuracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;?&lt;/strong&gt; is used when people don't know understand the user story or more info is required&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastEditorUserId="591" LastEditDate="2012-01-25T07:01:43.800" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T07:01:43.800" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4254" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-04T15:47:35.353" Score="15" ViewCount="359" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apologies if this is the incorrect exchange to post this on but none of the others seemed appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are currently investigating the possibility of opening a second office. We are a web development house. Currently we are 5 full time employees. We operate from a small town and due to continued success we are looking at opening up in one of the larger cities. One of our employees, possibly me, will lead the city office with either a current or new employee joining if the expansion is successful. It may be as simple as renting a desk in an office to trail it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our success I believe is because we are a very tight team who work closely together. My question really is how do we continue this across two offices? Our project management software, accounts, email is all done online so there is no issue there. I am more concerned that the ability to have an input into the day to day minor decisions (which together can make major differences) may be lost. The ability to just speak out loud and get instant feedback from colleagues is priceless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I am looking for (but have been unable to find) is perhaps some blog posts where other small companies have documented their experience of opening a second office. Any links are appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2849" LastEditorUserId="2739" LastEditDate="2012-01-11T21:15:26.843" LastActivityDate="2014-03-23T22:12:21.683" Title="How to Virtually Co-Locate: Operating across two offices" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;business-improvement&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4254" CreationDate="2012-01-04T17:25:42.357" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have friends who have successfully maintained a high degree of co-location by having an open skype video chat for hours.  Next best thing is to use chat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to look out for, though, is that you won't be able to really know when someone in the other office is busy so interrupting workflow can start to become an issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-01-04T17:25:42.357" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4251" CreationDate="2012-01-04T17:37:06.010" Score="46" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would add that having the scale non-linear helps with making decisions. It's much easier to say: &lt;strong&gt;it's more 8 than 5&lt;/strong&gt; than to say &lt;strong&gt;it's more 8 than 7&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastActivityDate="2012-01-04T17:37:06.010" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4251" CreationDate="2012-01-05T08:02:09.167" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try this simple exercise: What's the difference between stories with consecutive scores like 5 and 6? And that between 3 and 5 or 5 and 8 or 8 and 13 or 20?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that these 'buckets' are further apart imply that you are forced to make a choice between the less/more uncertain stories and choose which bucket is the most appropriate one. The human mind 'sees' a perceptible difference between 5 and 8 story points (or 13 and 20) than it does with 5 and 6 or 10 and 11.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And since the stories are relatively estimated (i.e., 20 is 4 times as much as 5) it's quite difficult to ascertain the 'ratio' of difference between a 5 and 6 than a 5 and 8 (say)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact of the matter is this: Increasing the interval between the numbers forces the mind to 'see' a visible difference in magnitude. More so, the variance (standard deviation) would be more pronounced than a linear scale allowing the discussions of differences to be more explicit - i.e., there wouldn't be much difference/discussions if the estimates were 4,5,6 but would be otherwise if they were 3,5,8 (say). The latter has a much higher variance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1119" LastActivityDate="2012-01-05T08:02:09.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4044" CreationDate="2012-01-05T19:02:01.563" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could build it into excel. There are a few different tutorials online and some add-ins. Here is a link to one that looked well written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vertex42.com/ExcelArticles/mc/MonteCarloSimulation.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.vertex42.com/ExcelArticles/mc/MonteCarloSimulation.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastActivityDate="2012-01-05T19:02:01.563" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3893" CreationDate="2012-01-05T19:11:08.463" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not have experience with Exam Central, but here are a few of the resources I used. I passed it the first round. I really took as many free tests as I could find so that I did get variations. I never stuck with one practice site. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM-Prep Cast Team makes great stuff, but it isn't free. I'm sure that they would have their site updated.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pm-exam-simulator.com/&quot;&gt;http://www.pm-exam-simulator.com/&lt;/a&gt; ($90)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my favorite books and approaches to teach the material was from Head First. If you don't want to buy the book, the have a free_exam here. Probably not updated.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://headfirstlabs.com/PMP/free_exam/HeadFirstPMP_PracticePMPExam.pdf&quot;&gt;http://headfirstlabs.com/PMP/free_exam/HeadFirstPMP_PracticePMPExam.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rita Mulcahy's Materials were always the most popular when I took the exam. They are offering a 7th edition now that says it is updated for the new test. &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rmcproject.com/product/pmp-prep.aspx&quot;&gt;http://www.rmcproject.com/product/pmp-prep.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastActivityDate="2012-01-05T19:11:08.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4254" CreationDate="2012-01-05T19:20:52.303" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Google hangouts are also an option for this. Allows people to come and go from the video chat a little easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I also second leaving up a chat window, but this often only useful once a conversation has started, not to get one started, when people are heads down on a task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastActivityDate="2012-01-05T19:20:52.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4236" CreationDate="2012-01-05T19:38:19.777" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to Kyles list:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Automated builds with &lt;a href=&quot;http://jenkins-ci.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://jenkins-ci.org/&lt;/a&gt;. We used auto-build triggered after each commit to main repository. Jenkins checks codding standards, triggers unit tests, functional tests and emails errors to team leader.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Automated deployment. We use scripts to update production files. If something goes wrong we can use rollback, revert changes and fix bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2861" LastActivityDate="2012-01-05T19:38:19.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4265" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4266" CreationDate="2012-01-04T16:20:44.297" Score="12" ViewCount="11356" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simple question. How do you run the Sprint Review and Sprint planning? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2456" OwnerDisplayName="xsace" LastActivityDate="2020-07-04T11:50:19.920" Title="What do you do if the Product Owner is ill?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4265" CreationDate="2012-01-04T16:29:04.553" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is something that the project's risk management plan should address. If you haven't identified individuals at either the project or iteration level that are crucial to success and methods to continue work when they are unavailable, this is the perfect time to do so, as soon as the team is around. One of the things that you should do is identify alternates for roles so that no position is one-deep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the meantime, the entire team should be able to carry on, for the most part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master can facilitate your Sprint Review. If you can have any customer or user representative available, that would be beneficial as you demonstrate your features to the stakeholders and receive feedback. Since the Product Owner is not present, it could be a good idea to make a recording of the meeting somehow - a video recording, audio recording, screen capture, and notes - and present them for review upon their return.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your Product Owner is involved in your Sprint Retrospective, I would also continue that as planned, only without the Product Owner. You are, after all, reflecting on your team's performance and how you handled problems and met successes. The Scrum Master, as the keeper of the process, should be aware of the goals in terms of story points, features, and problems that arose. Again, since a critical stakeholder isn't present, I'd recommend capturing some kind of outline of the discussion and findings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective are one meeting, anyone who is not involved in the process directly should not participate in the retrospective. For example, I mentioned that a different representative of the customer or user group might be a participant in the Sprint Review instead of the Product Owner. If this person has not worked with the team closely, they would be asked to be a silent observer of the retrospective (which may be useful for training them as an alternate Product Owner) or leave the room entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Upon the Product Owner's return, I would recommend that the Scrum Master and perhaps one Development Team member brief them on the results of the sprint review and sprint retrospective. With adequate recordings and meeting notes, the Product Owner should be able to read those and have a short discussion with the Scrum Master and team member if there are any questions or concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as sprint planning, the Product Owner's job is to continually update the product backlog with new stories and maintain the priority. At any given moment in time, the product backlog should be prioritized. Your Scrum Master should be able to take historical project data and lead the team in the estimation process of stories. Then, the team can pull down the appropriate number of stories based on previous sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" OwnerDisplayName="Thomas Owens" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2020-07-04T11:50:19.920" LastActivityDate="2020-07-04T11:50:19.920" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4241" CreationDate="2012-01-06T03:16:26.247" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about employing an integrated carrot/stick methodology:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stick:&lt;/strong&gt; explain to him that stories taken from the board need to be implemented as described, in as timely a manner as possible. If an enhanced/expanded version of the story is implemented, not only does it skew the estimation, it creates a testing/deployment/maintenance overhead that the project as a whole has to bear. Put pressure on him to finish the task within the estimated time, and if he still manages to do more than is required, push down the estimates. Give him a hard time about running over the estimated time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Carrot:&lt;/strong&gt; explain that if he thinks of any additional functionality while he's implementing the story, he should make a note of it and present it at the next story meeting. Encourage this behaviour with praise for good ideas, discussion of their merits, etc. Make him and his idea the centre of attention for a few minutes, and make sure that at least one or two of them actually get implemented, even if only in an amended form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully he will get more out of contributing the stories in a public forum than he currently gets out of implementing them on his own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="302" LastActivityDate="2012-01-06T03:16:26.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4268" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-31T11:19:30.847" Score="13" ViewCount="3561" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a report which requires the analysis of performance of each individual team member in my team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is for a software development project developed using the Unified Process (UP). I was just wondering if there are any existing group appraisal metrics used so I don't have to reinvent the wheel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8232" OwnerDisplayName="user559142" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-03-30T13:18:51.687" LastActivityDate="2017-03-30T17:28:57.723" Title="How to measure a team member's performance?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;performance&gt;&lt;evaluation&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4268" CreationDate="2011-04-07T10:37:28.963" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please don't measure individual performance - the team succeeds or fails as a unit. Measuring individual performance is somewhere between difficult (How do you deal with pairing? How do you measure the contribution of architects, designers or other non-coders compared to coders?) at best to divisive and counterproductive at worst, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.softwarequalitymethods.com/Papers/DarkMets%20Paper.pdf&quot;&gt;&quot;The Darker Side of Metrics&quot;&lt;/a&gt; by Douglas Hoffman for examples of what happens when you try to measure software productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team performance is already adequately covered by existing XP or dX methodologies. If you want to do Agile with a UP foundation, as a previous RUP consultant I strongly recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.objectmentor.com/resources/articles/RUPvsXP.pdf&quot;&gt;&quot;dX, a minimal RUP process&quot;&lt;/a&gt; by Grady Booch, Robert C. Martin and James Newkirk. It is no coincidence that 'dX' is 'XP' upside down! :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Fox" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T10:37:28.963" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="4270" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-06T15:47:13.327" Score="6" ViewCount="648" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work as a software developer at a small non-IT company. One of the challenges we face is receiving timely feedback to questions and the testing of the programming assignments we handle. The root cause of this is that there is usually one project requestor per department who will review/test our software and this requestor will frequently have multiple projects they are involved in at any given time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure if we have an employee resource allocation problem, or if a particular project management method might help the situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the staffing side, we seem to have multiple programmers working on multiple projects for one requestor. At times, the requestor ends up very overwhelmed and feedback on a given project can take weeks to months to be received. Not a good situation for anyone. However, it seems there are plenty of times when it is possible for someone to handle the review/testing of multiple projects as not everything is ready for review simultaneously and things can progress forward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the project management side, we do not follow any true methodology, unless chaotic-waterfall is an approach. Would an agile/scrum methodology help this situation? I guess my confusion on the scrum approach is the allocation of someone to review/test the software produced and answer questions for the programmer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like my company could make some nice improvements to how we do things, but I am struggling with a direction for us to research/consider. Since we are a small company, and not software-focused, it is challenge to find the best improvements to make. If anyone can provide some direction, it would be greatly appreciated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastEditorUserId="302" LastEditDate="2012-01-09T23:04:31.903" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T13:09:12.977" Title="What are effective strategies for dealing with project bottlenecks?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4270" CreationDate="2012-01-06T16:51:50.633" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regardless of methodology, it sounds like the principle of limiting work in progress would help you a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than undertaking several projects for one requester, would it be possible to focus efforts on the most important one and deliver that before moving onto the next?  The requester will be able to focus better on just one project rather than juggling several which in turn should improve their availability for answering questions and reviewing work.  Equally, the people who will be using the software will get value quicker as your developers are able to complete work more rapidly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, consider how much work the requester is having to test in one go.  If they're having to test several weeks worth of features in one go, it'll be harder for them to find the time to do it.  Reducing how much work you are batching up by getting them to test (for example) once a week might help you get feedback sooner and make doing the testing a less onerous task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastEditorUserId="1185" LastEditDate="2012-01-06T16:57:28.907" LastActivityDate="2012-01-06T16:57:28.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4270" CreationDate="2012-01-06T17:46:38.617" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is Business Process Management (BPM).  It sounds like your processes are haphazard, non standardized, and out of control.  It does not require a ton of sophistication to fix this; you do not need an expensive BPM tool and the smallest changes will bring a ton of value at your level of maturity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It requires an internal project to be sponsored by your bosses.  You need to convince them that an investment of its resources and a few months will bring a lot of value in the work you are doing.  It requires you and your team to think about how work flows through your organization now, where you have sticky points and non value-add steps, and then a simple redesign of the flow.  You can achieve this redesign with nothing more than sticky notes on a wall to facilitate this analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-01-06T17:46:38.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4273" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-06T20:37:24.340" Score="1" ViewCount="330" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Sorry if it's not really appropriate to ask this question on this website.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The web application is targeted to software companies with at least two developers in the team and not to freelancers, who wish to implement agile methodologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're basically trying to implement WordPress' business model which is to offer an open-source, self-hosted version of the web app. and also to create a commercial service for companies who do not wish to host the application themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Would you rather pay for the service (given the fact that the price is ideal for your company) or host it for yourself?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2847" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T18:58:37.757" Title="Business model for Scrum / Kanban based web app. targeted to software companies?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4273" CreationDate="2012-01-06T21:25:48.637" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Would you rather pay for the service (given the fact that the price is ideal for your company) or host it for yourself?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, organizations pay for service in the cloud. My main driver for on premise hosting is related to security. If sensitive information is at play then I prefer to not host off site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your business model&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to put a damper on your startup, but have you taken a serious look at what products are already out there in this space?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is extremely competitive and the market is already saturated with some top performing applications that are targeted at agile teams. To name a few:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Atlassian&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pivotal Tracker&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;versionone&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rally Dev&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mingle &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On that note, some of these applications are created by some of the top &quot;agile&quot; companies in the world. What makes you think you can even compete against these products?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastActivityDate="2012-01-06T21:25:48.637" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4035" CreationDate="2012-01-06T23:58:25.910" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are serious about your second bullet ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Allow the follow operations on tasks: categorizing,&#xA;  activating/inactivating, prioritizing, estimating time needed and&#xA;  scheduling expected completion and required completion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;..which I think includes MUSTs for me, regardless of one team to manage sanity of a large list of items, I would look to one of the agile backlog tools that are built around the idea of variable scope and prioritization instead of schedules. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't get to overwhelmed with all the extras on some of the bigger options, since they can do the basics very well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I would recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rallydev.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rally&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.versionone.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;VersionOne&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pivotaltracker.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pivotal Tracker&lt;/a&gt; as they do offer a free version for up to some number and one project, but obviously you can then move up if you grow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't rack your brain to much on which one is the &quot;best&quot; since your team will pick one up and you will figure out how to make it work for you, especially for the basics. You would also be setting yourself up to start measuring your velocity or thru put as communicating progress and amount that can be done in a period of time become more important (if it isn't yet)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would avoid any spreadsheet application that requires you to cut and paste to reprioritize instead of drag and drop motions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2013-02-26T12:56:39.087" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T12:56:39.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4270" CreationDate="2012-01-07T00:07:31.497" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I actually think that this may be a classic case of a missing &quot;Product Owner&quot; or &quot;Customer&quot;. No process will help you with this. I think you already identified the issue that the person reviewing and accepting your work is overwhelmed and not available. In Scrum, for example, this is why they are so adamant about the importance of the Product Owner role, to ensure that the team always gets fast feedback, focus and vision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Changing to methodology like Scrum or Kanban will not fix the issue, but will make it hugely obvious and painful and then you will have to hope the &quot;powers that be&quot; choose to help fix it instead of ignoring it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastActivityDate="2012-01-07T00:07:31.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4273" CreationDate="2012-01-07T02:32:09.667" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your question for the purpose of a data point: yes, I recommend services in the cloud when possible (security issues/sensitivities being one reason to bring SW in-house).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But much like Jessie's answer I would really question an attempt to enter this market given the wide array of mature applications and services already available (not to stifle innovation, but a new player really needs to bring some serious differentiation/value added to the table!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2864" LastActivityDate="2012-01-07T02:32:09.667" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4270" CreationDate="2012-01-07T16:34:53.087" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Could I suggest that you consider bringing in an external help for a few days - and I mean a few, not weeks on end. Don't go for a major consultancy - a small company that has been involved in dealing with companies of similar size to yours will almost certainly be more in tune with your thinking, and possibly at a substantially lower cost too. Get them to suggest a small number of improvements - between two and four will be plenty to start with - that will have a big impact. Make sure they talk to the business people as well as to the IT team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the consultant is any good, the improvements will pay for his or her fees in a very short timeframe. Once you see an improvement, get them back in after a few more weeks to see whether there are other significant improvements they can now suggest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would love to offer my services, but being based in Scotland when you are in the United States just wouldn't make any sense!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2012-01-07T16:34:53.087" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4268" CreationDate="2012-01-07T23:59:33.503" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with @Fox that the individual performance evaluation might be dangerous and unfair, but if you still would like to do it - or you have to do it - then check on the 360 degree evaluation feedback (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/360-degree_feedback&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;). We used it with the addition that the evaluators had to put an ordered list together with the names of the team members including themselves. After &lt;em&gt;merging&lt;/em&gt; the different lists and opinions together we had a clear view on the team members' relative (to each other) performance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-01-07T23:59:33.503" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3885" CreationDate="2012-01-08T00:08:28.793" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would go for prince2 and SCM after&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Updated after Brian's comment:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all I'm not a great fun of certificates, but if I had to choose, my order would be prince2 and SCM after because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;prince2 is a general while SCM is only for software development, so it values more&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Although SCM is very popular nowadays I believe that quite soon there won't be as many Scrum practitioners as today - organisations are changing from Scrum to Kanban or Scrumban or Scrumbut -, so it's value will decrease, on the other hand, there always will be a need for project managers, so the value of prince2 will be the same&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both certificates cost a lot of money, so I would go for the valuable at first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2012-01-10T21:14:29.250" LastActivityDate="2012-01-10T21:14:29.250" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1772" CreationDate="2012-01-08T00:44:58.860" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to add my humble view about this situation. Like asoundmove's answer implies, I think there is &lt;strong&gt;a communication problem&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, I think we should&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;make the information clear&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;for all the related sides: you and him (and higher management also, but a little later).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, &lt;strong&gt;make sure that the specific person understand WHAT the rule is, WHY you need it accepted, and WHEN, WHERE, HOW you expect it will be performed&lt;/strong&gt;. This should be an open-talk or a video conference, based on the real condition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Second, make sure that you understand their REASONS&lt;/strong&gt;. After you present your view, let him express his motivation. Well, people gather in team so as to complete project goal, but they may also have their own goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Third, focus on facts&lt;/strong&gt;, not the person. I think you may be well-familiared with this, but even the most professional PM sometimes falls on the traps of personal critics.. This can be state simpler: never criticize a person, just get focus on how the problem could be fixed. Here's an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Good: I see you don't report daily to me. As a PM, I have the responsibility to guarantee everything go on track. If you don't do this, the result will be...xyz... and the project will be affected. Would you mind explaining to me why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bad: You are unreasonable. I requested you follow our team rules, and stop acting like that (focus on person)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Good: I'm worried if we continue like this, it will affect other members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bad: I don't agree with your behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2012-01-08T00:44:58.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4283" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-16T18:08:11.757" Score="6" ViewCount="996" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm designing an IT project sheet for my department. I have a certain methodology in mind, but i'm trying to translate it into Project's configuration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what I'd like to do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I want to set max untis for each resource in my department to a % of their 8 hour day (i.e. 40% of 8 hours each day for projects, or 3.2hrs / day)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then I want to manually estimate the amount of time a task will take to complete (backup accounting data - 8 hours)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then I want to assign a resource to a task, and based on the estimated amount of time for that task relative to the max units (hours/day) the assigned resource can spend on that task, I want project to auto-adjust the duration and the start/finish times&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was under the impression that I could accomplish this by setting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Work Times - m-f 8a-12p &amp;amp; 1p-5p (8 hours/day, 5 days a week)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Default Task Type - Fixed Work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Max units for resource - 20%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manually set 'Work&quot; column to estimated hours for task&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assign resource to task&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then 'Duration' &amp;amp; 'Start/Finish' columns should auto-adjust based on preset criteria&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For whatever reason this seems to not be working, or possibly working in a way i'm not understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I indicated a task would take 8 hours, and I assigned a resource to it with max untis 40% (3.2 hours / day), but for that specific task assigned the resource's 'Units' at 100% (i.e. I want this resource to spend 100% of their 3.2 hrs/day on this task alone), and yet the duration column states 1 day, and the start/finish columns both have the same day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given my assumptions, I would expect the 8 hour task to be broken up into 3.2 hour increments per day based on max units% for the resource, so the duration should be 2.5 business days (8 divided by 3.2 = 2.5) and start finish should reflect that based on the defined project work week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know what/how I need to configure my project to accomplish this? What am I missing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="I.T. Support" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-09T16:36:19.510" LastActivityDate="2018-11-09T16:36:19.510" Title="Microsoft Project 2010 - Need Project Design Advice" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4254" CreationDate="2012-01-08T21:32:42.470" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I honestly think the only way that this works is travelling often between both locations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2879" LastActivityDate="2012-01-08T21:32:42.470" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4285" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4298" CreationDate="2012-01-09T01:05:09.500" Score="5" ViewCount="4034" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems the world is doing a good job at managing functional requirements for a system - you can link them to benefits, prioritize them and manage their implementation schedule (let's assume an ideal world :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now consider 'ilities' like modifiability, usability, adaptability, reusability, security, reliability, availability etc., etc.,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technically one can link them to potential end benefits and also prioritize their importance for a business - but just HOW should one manage their implementation? Assuming you prioritize the functions and the ilities in the same 'pile' so to speak, it's possible that availability may be lower than 'booking tickets' feature-set (for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agilists may argue that the design should reveal itself and that they can 'refactor' availability or security etc., later. Honestly, &lt;strong&gt;everything&lt;/strong&gt; can be added to the system by refactoring but the costs may be prohibitive and &lt;strong&gt;that's why&lt;/strong&gt; one must spend some time (may be more) upfront when accounting for such ilities IMO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is this: should you preform a separate prioritization for ilities? Should they be in a separate 'pile' (or backlog) of their own? What should be a good sequencing order when implementing the system? If you indeed perform two independent prioritization activities then how can you compare amongst them and convince the stakeholders that you are indeed doing valuable things first? Basically how would you justify doing ility-management/planning/design over feature-set designing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since ilities have tradeoffs associated with them you must be able to balance them well and thinking about it later or following YAGNI (You ain't gonna need it) won't suffice. What do you suggest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1119" LastActivityDate="2012-01-09T22:18:05.847" Title="How to handle 'ilities' (or non-functional requirements) for a project planning/prioritization/work-allocation?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4285" CreationDate="2012-01-09T02:20:32.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd handle them in the same backlog as all your stories.  We usually tackle non functional requirements in 3 ways (in order of preference):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As part of our &lt;strong&gt;Definition of Done&lt;/strong&gt; where it is applicable to the entire application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our &lt;strong&gt;Acceptance Criteria&lt;/strong&gt; for those that only apply to a story or subset of stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As a Story&lt;/strong&gt; where they can't be neatly considered as part of the first two but we don't want to forget them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2012-01-09T02:20:32.593" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4285" CreationDate="2012-01-09T09:21:01.677" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Always have a single backlog and let the business needs dictate priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Non functional requirements are usually trickier to iron out vs functional requirements and whether to prioritize then over or under functional requirements,is a question you would need to ask stake holders or the product owner&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The prioritization order entirely depends upon the context/business needs of your product .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work in testing embedded systems for public safety organizations and for a patrol cop (our typical user) reliability of the product is paramount and is miles ahead in terms of priority versus new feature set that the product has to offer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastActivityDate="2012-01-09T09:21:01.677" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4285" CreationDate="2012-01-09T09:52:37.517" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;should you preform a separate prioritization for ilities? Should they be in a separate 'pile' (or backlog) of their own?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other answers here are on the right track. Features for developers should be in the same queue as features for other business stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will allow you to track dependencies between business-related features and &lt;code&gt;ility&lt;/code&gt; features.  It will also help with your next question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What should be a good sequencing order when implementing the system? If you indeed perform two independent prioritization activities then how can you compare amongst them[?]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you treat all features the same way, you can prioritize them the same way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost%E2%80%93benefit_analysis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cost/benefit analysis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Budgeting vs predicted business need - not just for this sprint, but for the next quarter or year&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(or however long your backlog is)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...[how can you] convince the stakeholders that you are indeed doing valuable things first? Basically how would you justify doing ility-management/planning/design over feature-set designing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On teams I've worked on, we used the term &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Technical Debt&lt;/a&gt; to help business stakeholders understand the importance of housekeeping the code base.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2841" LastActivityDate="2012-01-09T09:52:37.517" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4289" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4312" CreationDate="2012-01-09T10:37:22.420" Score="6" ViewCount="525" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been working as an agile coach for little over one year for one team. Recently I became a line manager for the same team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So now I'm agile coach and line manager in one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can people change knowing that in the end you will be the one that decides about salaries? What to do to avoid unwanted consequences? How to prepare for it? How to take advantage of it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastEditorUserId="1021" LastEditDate="2012-01-09T11:26:41.013" LastActivityDate="2012-01-11T08:37:21.043" Title="From ScrumMaster (or any agile coach) to a direct line manager - how do people change their behavior?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4289" CreationDate="2012-01-09T12:02:03.500" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think that's a healthy combination of responsibilities.  People behave differently with their line manager in the room, particularly if you have responsibility for setting salary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be possible to swap line management responsibility with someone else so you line manage the team they are Scrum Master for and vice versa?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2012-01-09T12:02:03.500" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4291" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4327" CreationDate="2012-01-09T15:47:05.810" Score="3" ViewCount="1008" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in a web agency that is trying to implement from Waterfall to Scrum, so we have old habits that I need to change to go to a more Scrum way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my problems is the functional analysis document that my developers and QA rely on. We have a functional analyst committed full time to write those documents, get them approved by the product owners and then transfer the information to the developers, which in their turn ask their lot of questions to both the functional analyst and the product owners. The QA writes his test cases according to the functional analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I replace their need for documentation and get rid of the analysis document while keeping the approbation of the client?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The later I am thinking about the agile contract and/or the DOD document, but I would be curious to hear what others would suggest in a similar situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1922" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-12-31T11:36:24.483" LastActivityDate="2012-12-31T11:36:24.483" Title="Analysis document in Scrum" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;analysis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4292" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4293" CreationDate="2012-01-09T17:46:56.457" Score="9" ViewCount="14318" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps not the best wording of a question title, but it more or less sums up what I'm trying to ask. Basically, say you work for a company and do x, y and z to improve various aspects of the company; but after a period of time and an acquisition of standard pay rises, what if you feeling you are being underpaid for your work? My question is: how would you convince your employer that you are, indeed, being underpaid; and what would a project manager or employer be looking for in your approach to the topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2327" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2012-01-09T19:41:48.173" LastActivityDate="2012-01-11T10:21:10.917" Title="How to convince an employer you're worth more than you're being paid" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;skills&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4292" CreationDate="2012-01-09T18:47:51.657" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a difficult and touchy subject. You may open up a Pandora's Box, so be absolutely certain that this is a big enough issue for you to push.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have a very clear listing of how you are adding value to the company. If you can't clearly say why you deserve more money you won't convince anyone. I've had an employee (&quot;X&quot;) demand more salary just because he had been with the company longer than employee &quot;Y&quot;, even though &quot;Y&quot; had a different and more senior position and did more work at a higher quality than &quot;X&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Be flexible in your approach. You think you are adding a lot of value to the company. If they can't give you more money is there something that you value that they could give you? For example: an extra week of holiday per year; or an office rather than a cubicle; or a better parking space; or an extra year or two seniority towards your pension; or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you aren't willing to take &quot;No&quot; for an answer, have a fall-back plan in place. Preferably a job offer from another company in your hand. I wouldn't necessarily use another job offer as leverage as it could kill the relationship you have with your boss. But sadly, with a lot of employers the only way to make them realize your worth is to get a job somewhere else. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastEditorUserId="2889" LastEditDate="2012-01-11T10:21:10.917" LastActivityDate="2012-01-11T10:21:10.917" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4289" CreationDate="2012-01-09T18:53:42.757" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To learn to be an effective line manager, the material at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.manager-tools.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.manager-tools.com&lt;/a&gt; is great.  It has made a world of difference to me and my team.  Start with the &quot;basics&quot; podcasts for best results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1490" LastActivityDate="2012-01-09T18:53:42.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4292" CreationDate="2012-01-09T19:17:56.370" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may sound unusual, but it might work: leave for a week without telling anybody what they are supposed to do while you are away. The idea behind is that the managers don't want to pay more for the same job, unless the absence of person causes troubles and they want to avoid the further problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I work with young team leaders I often ask them to do same; leave the team - in your case your organisation - alone for a while and see how they operate without them. In case of team leaders, if things start happening then they did their work properly, if everything stops then they still have to learn things, because the team depends too much on them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your case is the other way around: if your absence causes trouble your management will see the value in your work. There is an old saying that you don't value anything until it is gone and I think it may work in your case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand let's say I'm an employer/manager...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I see the situation from the management point of view you are in a bad position. As an employer/manager my goal is to keep the key persons inside the organisation while paying them not too much, because in that case, they'll work for the money not for the challenge, for the company etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If somebody comes by and asks for more money and I, as an employer, gives her the money what guarantees that the person won't come back in six months and asks for more? What guarantees that she'll do the same work for the company? What happens if the other employees come by and ask for the same?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's why wise managers do not give pay raise to employees and would rather help them with their professional career (trainings, conferences) or personal life (more vacation days) which doesn't cost that much, and ties them more to the company. In your case I would ask for something like trainings, conferences, books or I would look for another job where you get the salary you have in your mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-01-09T19:17:56.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4292" CreationDate="2012-01-09T19:44:02.833" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Clearly demonstrate how you have contributed to the company's bottom line.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be open to constructive dialogue. This might be the first time they become aware of the work that you're doing or that you want to contribute more and be paid more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have another opportunity ready.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-01-09T19:44:02.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4292" CreationDate="2012-01-09T19:48:20.917" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your feelings on the matter are irrelevant.  What does matter is the salary and wage data for your position in your area and your best alternative to a negotiated agreement, balanced against your employer's set of alternatives.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you choose to make this approach, you need to come armed with data.  What is the salary range and distribution for your role across your defined geography, where do you fall within that distribution, and what value and measurable benefits have you delivered to your employer that is &lt;em&gt;ABOVE AND BEYOND&lt;/em&gt; what is expected?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this needs to be balanced against another opportunity that is already available to you.  If you have no other opportunity ready to go, then you are getting paid exactly what you are worth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And remember that the benefits you receive from this job is not just your pay.  Bring that into your analysis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-01-09T19:48:20.917" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4285" CreationDate="2012-01-09T22:18:05.847" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Non-functional requirements, 'ilities', or (the better name for them in my opinion) &lt;strong&gt;quality attributes&lt;/strong&gt; have significant influence over the architecture.  Since quality attributes aren't really something that your system &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; but rather something that your system &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt;, you should treat them differently than functional requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is for this reason that it is not appropriate to treat quality attributes in the same way you would other items on your backlog.  Putting them in the backlog implies that they can be &quot;done&quot; which can never happen since many quality attributes have influence across many features across many iterations -- something like testability or scalability or maintainability isn't something a customer can pick for a sprint, so don't treat it like a feature on the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So my question is this: should you preform a separate prioritization&#xA;  for ilities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. Quality attributes are usually recorded as as a scenario.  These can be &quot;formal&quot; 6-part scenarios or simple use stories.  The most important thing is to record the stimuli, response, and environment.  The more specific and measurable the better.  The best thing to do is to collect the big ones, the most important ones at the beginning using a technique like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sei.cmu.edu/architecture/tools/establish/qaw.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Quality Attributes Workshop&lt;/a&gt;.  The outcome of the QAW is a prioritized list of quality attribute scenarios.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should they be in a separate 'pile' (or backlog) of their own?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/82763/why-bother-differentiating-between-functional-and-nonfunctional-requirements/82895&quot;&gt;Quality attributes should be tracked separately&lt;/a&gt;.  Two reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can't test quality attributes in the same way that you test features.  Often times you will need to reason about the architecture to understand whether a specific system property is appropriately promoted or inhibited.  As the system is developed, some kinds of quality attributes may become testable (e.g. performance, or reliability -- influences dynamic structures), others won't (e.g. maintainability, modifiability -- influences static structures).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many Features will influence (potentially many) quality attributes.  For example, security is not simply a feature that you add at the end -- &quot;Let's do security this sprint!&quot; -- but something that needs to be built into, potentially, every feature you create.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What should be a good sequencing order when implementing the system?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The catch to this is that you can put discrete Technical Debt stories in the backlog (with some customers).  That is - discrete tasking that directly influences specific quality attributes.  An example: &quot;The XYZ module has a lot of bugs because the code is poorly written, we need to refactor to make it more maintainable.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many strategies for dealing with debt -- low hanging fruit, squashing &quot;bug farms&quot;, &quot;zippering&quot; debt with features to ensure you're staying on top of things...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you indeed perform two independent prioritization activities then&#xA;  how can you compare amongst them and convince the stakeholders that&#xA;  you are indeed doing valuable things first?  Basically how would you justify doing ility-management/planning/design over feature-set designing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be trade-offs within a design -- for example, security is more important than performance -- which is why it is so important to know the big ones up front.  &lt;strong&gt;Remember, quality attributes &lt;em&gt;influence&lt;/em&gt; the design; they aren't the artifact being delivered.&lt;/strong&gt;  You don't &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; security, this is a property of the software you build.  Agreeing on this up front is the only way to ensure that the features you deliver achieve the &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; quality.  There could be a million ways to solve a problem -- but only a few with the desired properties.  Miss these and your features will be rejected every time. &quot;Yes, it calculates the XYZ correctly... but two minutes is just too long...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1630" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:31:53.287" LastActivityDate="2012-01-09T22:18:05.847" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4292" CreationDate="2012-01-09T22:21:44.807" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Presumably your company likes to think it pays its employees at market rate (or thereabouts), so you have to prove that you've paid less than the market values you at. So go and get yourself a job offer (or, preferably, more than one) at a higher salary from another company. This has the bonus that if you employer still doesn't think you're underpaid, you can leave and walk into a better paid job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="302" LastActivityDate="2012-01-09T22:21:44.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4292" CreationDate="2012-01-10T01:26:00.950" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Talking about money in an employee-employer relationship is like talking sex in a romantic relationship. You can't just start with it, you've got to develop the relationship slowly with smaller things first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing you need to do is test your relationship with your boss -- first see how do they do with resolving smaller conflicts. Bring up that you're dissapointed you didn't get to work on project X or that you've been stuck doing Y for a while, or you'd really like to grow doing Z. Test the relationship. Gather data. Then move forward. If your boss is good and receptive they may not be able to solve your problem, but you can get a good feeling for how empathatic they are and how willing they are to fight for their subordinates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK So you've tested the waters a little. If things are going well, keep the communication line open. Continue to do amazing and excellent work but let them know in subtle ways that they shouldn't take you for granted. Tell them know you're passionate and really want to continue growing and learning. Let them know what you've enjoyed doing at your current job that has let you grow. An example of this might be at a performance review -- Boss asks how you've liked working at the company, you say something like &quot;I really was enjoying myself when on project X, but project Y I'm not growing anymore and growth is a very high priority for me.&quot; See if they get the hint. Maybe be a little more blunt -- &quot;I really like working here, but challenging myself is of utmost importance. I want this company to do well, but I really value learning and growing.&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can escalate the language slowly all the way to the nuclear option -- another job offer if nothing is happening. And frankly if they can't help you with the smaller things, then maybe you want to be somewhere else anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they fear losing you and really value you they'll compensate for the stuff you're complaining about with good raises. Good relationships of any kind are a constant negotiation. Neither side should stop communicating about the issues in the relationship.  Even if they can't be resolved, you can find other ways ot be compensated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="579" LastActivityDate="2012-01-10T01:26:00.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4292" CreationDate="2012-01-10T05:50:32.860" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very elaborative topic. Once can discuss on this for hours to gether. But to put it short&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-&gt; I would say out and out manager is a person who should recognise your efforts and give you a decent hike. For that see to it that every minute and pivotal task that you do goes noticed by the manager. Once he recognises the number of activities that are being handled by you then surely you would be recommended for a better perks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-&gt; See to it that your direction is apt. If you are working as a team lead, then make sure your presence adds all the values needed. Any issue in the team and any kind of problem with any dimension, you should be able to solve it or atleast be ready to solve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-&gt; Have atleast one module totally depended on you. If you are not there in office for one day, nobody in the team should be in an easy position to solve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2887" LastActivityDate="2012-01-10T05:50:32.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4291" CreationDate="2012-01-10T06:03:59.000" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is the developers who finally does the development of all the functionalities. So, it is always recommended for developers to do the functional analysis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way you are increasing the multi-faceted attribute of the developers also. And, they need not reiterate between functional analyst and manager to get things clear while developing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But after developers do the initial functional analysis, always desginated person can ratify the result. This way everyone develops the dimensional view of the product being developed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2887" LastActivityDate="2012-01-10T06:03:59.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4270" CreationDate="2012-01-10T06:15:05.457" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This scenario is little cumbersome. But following steps can be taken to alleviate the depth of impasse&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-&gt; First of make sure you deliver the project in modules. There should not be a single large delivery done at the end of a month or a quarter. If you break them up, ideally you should be delivering once in a week. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-&gt; And, make sure that you appoint one internal candidate as a sub-requester. He should be unbiased and behave and see the product with the vision of a project requester. He should go through all the modules developed and give an instant feedback on it. That way you are reducing the work of Project requester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-&gt; Once most of the issues and feeback given by sub-requester are solved and are upto the mark, then you will anyway deliver it to the Project Requester. So, you will be assured mostly the product is upto the mark and in the mean time when you sub-requester is verifying the project details, you can start scheduling the appointment with the main Project-requester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way you can mitigate the risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2887" LastActivityDate="2012-01-10T06:15:05.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4292" CreationDate="2012-01-10T06:33:02.773" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to what Doug B have said. If you already know how much you would like do earn, go for couple interviews and make sure that the market is ready to pay so. Knowing that (I assume that market is ready for your salary) go to your employer and follow steps a,b,c by Doug. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why so? Because doing this you &lt;strong&gt;make yourself confident&lt;/strong&gt;. That will be visible in your body language and audible in tone of your voice. These may be very convincing :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastActivityDate="2012-01-10T06:33:02.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4305" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-10T06:41:33.587" Score="12" ViewCount="596" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working as a Senior Software Engineer. I am also a module lead and am leading a team of 2. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the guys is very abrasive and shows a reprehensible and arrogant attitude towards the fellow team mates. This goes on always. I tried to appease with him, but even with me he shows the same head-weighted attitude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is causing a great problem with respect to the harmony of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But my manager (project manager of our team) is unaware of his attitude. He keeps applauding and lauding this guy just because he is a good performer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such with PM this arrogant guy behaves properly and with very kind and ethical manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have an opportunity to expose his derisive behaviour to the manager during appraisals. But I am not sure how far my PM would accept my feedback. He is so very biased to this guy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how to handle this kind of a situation.  I am really feeling very bad for my team is really hardworking and good team players are not getting that recognition. But this mean guy just because he sits next to the manager he keeps getting all the attention and appreciation in the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2887" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2012-01-11T21:16:47.900" LastActivityDate="2012-02-07T17:25:54.147" Title="What if project manager is appreciating an undeserving team member?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4305" CreationDate="2012-01-10T07:21:27.360" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume that you've already had one-on-one with 'the guy' and it didn't bring expected results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wherever the root cause of this situation is (it may be in your behavior, your boss behavior, organization rules etc) the good way is to analyze problematic situations from the &lt;strong&gt;expert position&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Expert doesn't blame anybody, he talks about &lt;strong&gt;facts and it's consequences&lt;/strong&gt;. He uses tools (i.e. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crisp.se/henrik.kniberg/cause-effect-diagrams.pdf&quot;&gt;root-cause analysis&lt;/a&gt;) so to make sure, that the problem is thoroughly analyzed and as impartial as possible. Even if expert want to say something personally, he puts it impersonally, i.e. instead of &quot;you often say that Peter is lazy&quot; he says &quot;there are often situations when Peter hears he's lazy&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what would I do is to &lt;strong&gt;convince PM to arrange a meeting&lt;/strong&gt; where &lt;em&gt;everybody&lt;/em&gt; (it's a must) from the project can state their issues, so you may present your observations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the problem lies actually in guy's behavior, then this should easily come out and PM should help resolving it. If the PM doesn't react then I think you have to escalate (reporting the same observations of course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastEditorUserId="1021" LastEditDate="2012-01-10T08:17:07.097" LastActivityDate="2012-01-10T08:17:07.097" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4305" CreationDate="2012-01-10T07:52:06.980" Score="4" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Gather facts to prove your observations/allegations&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Gather facts &amp;amp; data to prove how it has been detrimental to the team's outlook and morale &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Loaded with these facts approach the person , and try and convince him to make changes to his behavior &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If that does not help,it is time to bring conflict into the open and hold an open house discussion in front  of the PM,him and all the persons involved in the observations/allegations &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastActivityDate="2012-01-10T07:52:06.980" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4289" CreationDate="2012-01-10T13:55:08.807" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure that you can be a coach and a classical line manager in one. If I understand your questions correctly the line manager role at your organisation has a command &amp;amp; control background (I assume this from the salary related question), which means a vertical structure, while coaching is more likely a horizontal approach. They are in a contradiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can people change knowing that in the end you will be the one that decides about salaries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a close relationship with your colleagues it won't happen, sorry. The'll see you as a &quot;&lt;em&gt;buddy&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, unless you state it clearly that you are their boss now. In this case, if you put your &quot;&lt;em&gt;coach&lt;/em&gt;&quot; &lt;em&gt;hat&lt;/em&gt; on, and you give some advice they see it as an order not an advice. So I recommend not to put too much emphasis on this issue. I imagine that you have some management problems and the &quot;&lt;em&gt;salary&lt;/em&gt;&quot; approach may help you solve it. Try to find out why you need this &lt;em&gt;management tool&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What to do to avoid unwanted consequences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always make it clear which &lt;em&gt;hat&lt;/em&gt; are you wearing at the moment. For example, start a sentence like &quot;as a coach I recommend to do this ...&quot; which will show that you are giving an advice - later on you can leave the &quot;as a coach&quot; - and start a sentence like &quot;I want you to do this...&quot; when you ask for something as a manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to take advantage of it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a line manager you can achieve things a Scrum Master will never be able to: you can get budget for improvements, protect the team from external issues, escalate issues sooner and more effectively etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My general advice is to be a line manager outside of the team and be a Scrum Master inside the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-01-10T13:55:08.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4305" CreationDate="2012-01-10T14:05:33.923" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let it pass.  Don't get involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A wise friend of mine once said to never wrestle with a pig. The only thing that happens is the you get dirty and the pig has a good laugh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-01-10T14:05:33.923" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4310" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4311" CreationDate="2012-01-10T22:40:19.280" Score="11" ViewCount="5461" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have hired a new team member who lives in another country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not like a team split across 2 locations - he is alone there. What things should we consider doing in such a case:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in order to keep our daily standups short.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to help him visualize our physical Scrum board.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to make him participate in our review/retro/planning meetings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have experience with this kind of situation and can you recommend any Do's and Dont's? Is it unrealistic to try to involve him in the Scrum process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2456" LastEditorUserId="2618" LastEditDate="2012-01-25T00:49:37.143" LastActivityDate="2012-08-06T15:08:26.030" Title="How to integrate a remote person in a Scrum team?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;distributed-team&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4310" CreationDate="2012-01-10T23:22:03.923" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid that it won't be that easy. One of the core principles of Scrum is the co-located team. Having a colleague &quot;outside&quot; of the team generates an unnecessary boundary inside the team. I had a similar setup a couple of times and it never ended well, unfortunately. Due to the communication costs and slow reaction times we decided not to do it again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless here are the dos and don'ts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;always communicate with video feed&lt;/strong&gt;. This is the most important: video chat makes the other person part of the team - like she is there -, and video is much more effective than voice only: the parties cannot do anything else, because they are visible. Usually, when people are talking on the phone they tend to do something else, which eventually will lead to another call, because they miss things. You'll have more problems do not add another to the list&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;have a physical board for the team and an up-to-date electrical one&lt;/strong&gt; so that the external colleague can see how things are going and the team knows what she is doing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ask for a daily summary&lt;/strong&gt; from her which should arrive before the daily standup (the same applies for retrospective)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;send out a summary&lt;/strong&gt; about the daily standup to her&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;have a webcam and microphone for everyone&lt;/strong&gt; so that the team members can communicate anytime they feel appropriate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;after the task break down anybody should be able to work on any task without further help&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;make processes and policies accessible&lt;/strong&gt; to anybody so that the overhead of misunderstanding is kept low&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;keep regular code reviews&lt;/strong&gt; via skype or other IM tool&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;talk to the external colleague twice or three times a day&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;really &lt;strong&gt;prepare for the planning meeting and have a video conference&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;try to have a personal meeting once or twice in two months&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;do not have a conference call for stand-up&lt;/strong&gt;: at least spend the actual team's time well. Calls just slow them down. See summaries in dos&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;don't let the team members &quot;outsource&quot; maintenance and test work&lt;/strong&gt; to the external colleague (developers consider those tasks as something which can be done alone)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;don't let the team members ignore the opinion of the external colleague&lt;/strong&gt; because she is not there&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see there is a huge communication cost. I hope you can make it happen&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="2739" LastEditDate="2012-01-11T21:15:14.563" LastActivityDate="2012-01-11T21:15:14.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4289" CreationDate="2012-01-11T00:56:09.747" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unlike colleagues, I would not be so pessimistic in assessing the situation. Yes, this is not a simple case. It's even slippery. I can imagine multiple scenarios depending on your company's culture of work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't believe it can happen in a harsh environment with a very strict, hierarchical management style as no one can fit two different personalities in one person. But as well, I don't believe such management style could work for a long term agile software project. So let's assume you have rather soft relations and your team is driven mostly by intrinsic motivations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cons are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You will not have enough time for both roles&lt;/strong&gt;. Each one is a demanding one and you will most likely sacrifice some quality factors or will be forced to delegate some tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You will need to check what hat are you wearing&lt;/strong&gt;, need to check it frequently and also make sure it is clearly understood by people you are communicating with. Even if you manage to do it, it may be difficult for others to switch their thinking so often. And it is like being an AA, it never stops, it is never over.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You will be empowered&lt;/strong&gt;, so it will be easy to switch hats and danger is that you will want to use the manager's decisiveness to solve the problems of a coach. Bang! A Joker card!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;They will try to make you make decisions&lt;/strong&gt;. From time to time there are problems to solve or difficult decisions to make by the team. You may be involved and think you gave just an advice to consider, but later you will hear &lt;em&gt;&quot;We talked, and YOU decided...&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. So, avoiding micro management and giving a (shared) responsibility is not simple task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand there are also pros:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Both roles can have a common goal&lt;/strong&gt; - to help the team. Not every manager remembers about that and not every manager is so much aware of the problems as Scrum Master is.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You will be empowered&lt;/strong&gt; and it is rather a good thing if used wisely. As Zsolt said: &lt;em&gt;...you can get budget for improvements, protect the team from external issues, escalate issues sooner and more effectively ...&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The close relationship&lt;/strong&gt;. I don't agree it won't work. You can set goals to achieve, give some harsh feedback, make unpopular decisions and maintain the relationship. But some managers go for short-cuts and they forget about honesty, openness and trust. Maybe it is easier to lie, feel omnipotent and make empty declarations but don't blame the relationship. It gives you a chance to know people's true motivations, receive their feedback and have a healthier atmosphere. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, about the advices...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As a coach ask questions, clarify the rules and give examples&lt;/strong&gt;. I would avoid sentences like &lt;em&gt;I recomend...&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;I would like having it that way&lt;/em&gt; etc. Avoid stating your will, instead ask the questions and give examples: &lt;em&gt;Let's consider the possible solutions...&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;What would be better...?&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;What are the pros and cons...?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let them think, a coach makes people think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be a manager when you supposed to&lt;/strong&gt;. Manager is an observer on a daily stand-up meeting and on a retrospective. Scrum Master is supposed to talk, let the other hat be silent. &#xA;But then, management is supposed to remove the obstacles, give someone a feedback, shield the teams from the outside (and do many many more). You can not end your work where SM would.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastEditorUserId="927" LastEditDate="2012-01-11T08:37:21.043" LastActivityDate="2012-01-11T08:37:21.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4289" CreationDate="2012-01-11T02:30:06.963" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think, more than how people would take it , a larger questions is as to how you would cope with two heavy responsibilities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I dont think it as not doable , but in order for people to react positively to the change , you would have to - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have clear demarcation of roles you play as a coach &amp;amp; line manager &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not let one role's responsibilities influence decision making in other areas or blur/bias your thinking&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Align &amp;amp; balance both roles , so that the business/organization mission is not compromised. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastActivityDate="2012-01-11T02:30:06.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3056" CreationDate="2012-01-11T06:46:33.797" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can also get a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://agileandfamily.blogspot.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this blog on Agile and Family&lt;/a&gt;, especially assigned to implement agile in our family with our kids.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also a great book called &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B005C2097A&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Agile Kids&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2895" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2012-10-07T15:50:28.173" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T15:50:28.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4310" CreationDate="2012-01-11T06:49:01.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best thing you can implement is to include him via telephone in all the calls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such most of the communication these days happens through mails. We execute projects successfully even if the customer is another country right. The same way we can manage this scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only thing is take care that the person who is in another country is assigned as much independent task/module as possible so that there would be very few dependencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2887" LastActivityDate="2012-01-11T06:49:01.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4265" CreationDate="2012-01-11T07:26:34.000" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is obvious that when PO is not available nothing will be same. But of course team should make an effort to  decrease the damage to sprint. I think SM should lead the team such that team can work on &lt;strong&gt;clarified&lt;/strong&gt; tasks and leave the &lt;strong&gt;unclear&lt;/strong&gt; tasks to time PO is available.&#xA;In scrum way, the project continues step by step by leaving some parts to be decided later. So maximum availability is critical. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2896" LastActivityDate="2012-01-11T07:26:34.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3056" CreationDate="2012-01-11T10:47:47.767" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Or just have a board and start doing it like my friend did (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bit.ly/mFCee3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://bit.ly/mFCee3&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ug1hS.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-01-11T10:47:47.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4320" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-11T15:14:37.097" Score="29" ViewCount="5613" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for a pretty small company employing less than 150 people, for the last 35 years this company has never had any sort of project managers and every project that they have had has always come over budget and over the deadline. Two years ago, the company hired a new director who quickly started putting in place project managers. I was hired about this same time frame as a programmer on one of these new projects.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few weeks ago, the director and my department head decided to put me in charge of the project that I have been part of for the last 18 months. They decided to go down this route because the project needs to be completed on time; which is 4.5 months away. The previous project manager was overwhelmed and they did not think he could get the job done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem I am coming up with is that I have asked for the deliverables of the project and the previous project manager does not have them in writing from the sponsor or know of them.  The culture of previous projects in the company is to wing it and hope that everything falls into place in the end. Since he did not know the deliverables (or would not tell me), I went to his boss to find the answers. His boss had a meeting with him and ordered him to get them from the sponsor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the last couple of days I have started to receive them; it has been a slow process. After I had received some of them, I have found out that the sponsor wants more than what we have been programming for. How do I handle a situation like this?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2899" LastEditorUserId="2327" LastEditDate="2012-01-26T12:24:07.323" LastActivityDate="2012-01-26T12:24:07.323" Title="How to go about taking over a failing project?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;&lt;deadline&gt;&lt;scope-management&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4320" CreationDate="2012-01-11T18:09:13.067" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;After I have received some of them, I have found out that the sponsor wants more than what we have been programming for. How do I handle a situation like this?&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of what you need to do is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triage&quot;&gt;triage&lt;/a&gt; the project: what can be finished, what can be finished only by scaling back and what cannot be finished in the time allowed (and needs to be dropped in &quot;this release&quot;). One book that gives examples of dealing with this sort of situation is called &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0321336623&quot;&gt;Catastrophe Disentanglement&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The culture of previous projects in the company is to wing it and hope that everything falls into place in the end.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've worked for people like this. I have not found any simple strategy that is effective at planning that can survive them (indeed, I've had bosses who believe that planning is &quot;evil&quot; and will intentionally undermine any effort to react with anything other than last minute crises), and it takes more skill than I have to work around active intereference. The book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/013143635X&quot;&gt;Death March&lt;/a&gt; describes some of the rationale behind &quot;wing and a prayer&quot; project management, but more importantly deals with how you should cope with it (because sometimes the only rational response is to quit).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Death March is a quick read (like an evening), and your local library may have a copy. Catastrophe Disentanglement is a harder and longer read, it will require some effort to think about the techniques it explains and to sit down and trim your deliverables. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastEditorUserId="534" LastEditDate="2012-01-11T18:50:03.143" LastActivityDate="2012-01-11T18:50:03.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4310" CreationDate="2012-01-11T19:50:31.950" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your goal is full integration of the remote team member with the team, include the remote team member in all meetings in some way. Video conference would be ideal, if you have the technology available. Phone conferences are a good backup option. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another good way to keep the engineers talking to each other is to have an IRC or similar chat channel going all day long. The co-located engineers will have to make an effort to communicate in chat rather than in voice, but it pays off by including the remote engineer in conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2739" LastActivityDate="2012-01-11T19:50:31.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4254" CreationDate="2012-01-11T20:03:26.917" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for a large company with two offices. Nearly every engineering team at the company is split between the two offices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very challenging to maintain a &quot;very tight team&quot; that is split across offices. Some techniques that help are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maintaining a constant chat interface that everyone participates in. Even if two engineers are sitting next to each other they should talk in the chat instead of out loud so that the whole team can listen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make every meeting a video conference if possible, or a conference phone call if not.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Travel between the two offices as often as possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2739" LastActivityDate="2012-01-11T20:03:26.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4320" CreationDate="2012-01-11T21:16:28.087" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;When taking over a troubled project, one of the very first things you need to do is to slow or stop the train.  If you let it continue to move, you will most likely continue on the same path and unable to introduce any meaningful intervention.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to get the sponsor at the table to redefine the project as if it is a new project.  This means the sponsor owes you a new project charter.  From here, develop the scope, which sounds like has never been done; the plan; the schedule; the required resources; and literally start over.  This could mean the 4.5 months remaining could very well be a fantasy, and it is YOUR job as PM to relay this specific news.  To do this, you need to get behind the fact that what has been done is a sunk cost and you &lt;em&gt;NEVER&lt;/em&gt; chase sunk costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, essentially, from your perspective, treat this is a new project that just so happens to have some artifacts of which you can take advantage.  And the project sponsor(s) need to give you this latitude or else don't accept the job (if you can).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-01-11T21:16:28.087" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4320" CreationDate="2012-01-12T01:19:44.370" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since this is a software-related project there are several books available like the the ones referenced by @Tangurena and I recommend Business @ the Speed of Stupid by Dan Burke and Alan Morrison, too. Before making any major changes or having a heart-to-heart with management, I would do the following prep work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update Current Status:&lt;/strong&gt; Talk to the team and review where they are, what they are working on, and what they are all planning to do over the next few weeks. You really need this  information on hand for any real future planning. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Gap Analysis:&lt;/strong&gt; Compare the information you received from the project sponsors and summarize all the things your are doing and all the things you are now aware of.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Phasing or Chunking:&lt;/strong&gt; Depending on the type of software system you are developing, there might be very clear functionality breaks were you can partial deploy a system (back end vs. front end, back-office vs. client facing, etc.) and you might be able to take advantage of that. Delivering partial functionality that works is better than delivering nothing and you need to have those points identified.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully, this research has given you a couple of ideas about how to proceed. Now, you need to find out what your management and the project sponsors think in the best thing to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;NOTE: Stopping the project should &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; be on the table. It might be the right decision.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; the time to have a meeting and say &quot;You didn't tell us you wanted Feature X so we won't do it&quot; and you'll kill any chance of success if you try to assign blame. I have had success with a &quot;We've apparently had uneven communications in the past about what you wanted and we may have moved forward with misunderstandings but we want to clarify things now&quot; attitude. Blame games, couldda-shouldda-wouldda, and if-only-we-knew conversations rarely fix projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start the discussion with a status summary and then move to the gap analysis. That way everyone know where the team is, where the team is currently going, and what features will exist at the end. Then the actual discussions of scope/schedule/resources/goals can start from a common understanding. If you've found a good functionality break point, you can use that as phase-break to get the project back on track. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you found that the back-end work was much cleaner and has fewer problems or missing features. You could try: &quot;Since the client-facing section might change, why don't we concentrate on finishing the back-end and administration section? We can then re-evaluate the client-facing portion, clarify the requirements, and then start that portion of the project with a better plan?&quot; You can then break the scope statement, schedule, and WBS into phases and restart the planning process for this section phase while the project team continues work on the other phase. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a side note, you are probably already at your maximum &quot;burn rate&quot; in terms of people assigned to the project. Make sure to keep them working on something beneficial while doing all of this assessment and planning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, been there, done that, at least a dozen times over - it's not all bad news. All I can say is that things probably will turn out better than you hope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2012-01-12T01:19:44.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4291" CreationDate="2012-01-12T11:46:20.423" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Replace documents with conversations and aim for shared understanding rather than knowledge transfer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My team (Devs, Analyst, QA, PO) meets for 30 mins every day or so to discuss upcoming stories, their acceptance criteria and how we're going to test them.  This gives everyone the opportunity to ask questions and for the Product Owner to be confident everyone understands what they're asking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree that it's good to involve devs in analysis activity too, particularly any meetings with stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is to ask what purpose the docs fulfil.  Approval of scope, knowledge transfer to devs and QA input into testing can be handled by involving the customer in discussions with devs/testers and making sure the requirements are captured in the form of acceptance criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are other reasons for the docs to exist, it's good to try to examine why they are needed and where possible deliver the value of the doc in a more collaborative way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not always easy with 3rd parties with limited availability.  An analyst can make a good customer proxy in these cases.  Getting them pairing with dev/QA is better than getting them to write a doc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastEditorUserId="1185" LastEditDate="2012-01-12T22:30:55.863" LastActivityDate="2012-01-12T22:30:55.863" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4320" CreationDate="2012-01-12T17:51:06.417" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no way the project will be done on time nor to the sponsor's expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make that clear to the sponsor and start from scratch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of focusing on completing this project, focus on creating a new project. Prioritize what the sponsor wants and start delivering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-01-12T17:51:06.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4320" CreationDate="2012-01-12T22:14:42.663" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would stop the project until,  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1-  Letting know the situation to related people/managers inhouse since they should be aware of the situation clearly (if they are not yet)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2-  Clarifying what the sponsor required&lt;br&gt;&#xA;3-  Clarifying what has been done so far.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you involved in the project for the last 18 months, it may be easier for you to sort out what’s asked/ what’s done . If some additional works need to be done to the existing work(what has been done so far), then you don’t need to start all over the project again (hopefully).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After sorting everything out and deciding how much time it will take to complete the project, a meeting could be arranged with the sponsor and could be asked for extra time to complete the project with explaing the reasons (preferably one of the related top managers to attend the meeting as well).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2618" LastActivityDate="2012-01-12T22:14:42.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1354" CreationDate="2012-01-12T23:12:26.453" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;you can find online &lt;a href=&quot;http://skillforge.com/courses/project-management/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Management Training&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://skillforge.com/courses/category/project-management/microsoft-project-and-project-server-training&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Microsoft Project Training&lt;/a&gt; at several online sites. Most offer introductory Project Management theory classes as well as training in software tools for project management. Some sites are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;www.skillforge.com &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;www.iil.com &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;www.learnquest.com&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2904" LastActivityDate="2012-01-12T23:12:26.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2067" CreationDate="2012-01-13T17:22:50.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A project management software I'd recommend for your specific needs is Projecturf: &lt;a href=&quot;http://projecturf.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://projecturf.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It allows you to set restrictions for users by section and they also have Bug Tracking. Data added can be marked private as well. Permissions can be set on each file, task, etc. They have a lot of extra features as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option I've used which is already included above is Basecamp: &lt;a href=&quot;http://basecamphq.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://basecamphq.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It lets you create separate permissions for an outside company. Maybe not to the same level as Projecturf, but there is a decent amount of control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2908" LastActivityDate="2012-01-13T17:22:50.117" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-01-13T17:22:50.117" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4332" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4687" CreationDate="2012-01-14T11:15:51.110" Score="2" ViewCount="381" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would love to see a succinct and clear description of how all the different project management approaches, methodologies and frameworks relate to each other, what they share and what is different between them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would one go about situating approaches like PMBOK, Prince2, CMMI, TSP, Agile, Lean, XP, Scrum, Kanban in relation to each other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking of something that is an attempt at a taxonomy of all the different approaches with approaches grouped into sets of defining characteristics.  Possible splits would be between Waterfall/Agile and between Formal Methodology/Flexible Framework &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A diagram, if it is possible, showing these relationship would be even better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this something that has ever been attempted? And if so where would one find it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1172" LastEditorUserId="1172" LastEditDate="2012-01-15T12:12:11.893" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T21:50:14.023" Title="How do all the PM frameworks and methodologies relate to each other?" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4333" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-14T11:30:31.533" Score="12" ViewCount="18458" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like wikis for knowledge gathering / sharing but the usability of many of them could be better in my opinion (for example, MediaWiki is popular but has quite complicated and verbose syntax which can put some people off).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OneNote, on the other hand, is fairly easy to use and also can be viewed as a kind of wiki. However, I have only experience with OneNote as a single user on a local PC. I'm not sure about these things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a version history stored for every page? Can I do diffs between revisions?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can OneNote &quot;wiki&quot; be hosted as an intranet website, i.e. something like a self-hosted OneNote Web Application? Or are Microsoft services like Office 365 or SkyDrive the only ways to view OneNote pages in the browser?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can OneNote pages have their URLs I could link to?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, do you think it is viable to use OneNote as an enterprise wiki? What advantages and disadvantages will it have?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2910" LastActivityDate="2017-04-02T23:32:56.733" Title="OneNote as an enterprise wiki?" Tags="&lt;knowledge-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4320" CreationDate="2012-01-14T17:52:06.030" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every project has the well known triple constraint:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;money&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;deliverables&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you only constrain two of the three factors, you can generally meet the third target. So given unlimited time and money you can produce about anything. Similarly given little time and money, you can generally produce something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem comes when when you have a realistic plan and someone asks you to dynamically change one of the three in the wrong direction. For example you have a plan to build a new website that will take 1 month and require 1 programmer for that month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now someone asks: Could I have the same website in a week? (Perhaps if you give me more money to hire 4 programmers and pay them overtime)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case it looks like they have fixed the budget and time and want to change the deliverable, otherwise known as feature creep. You need to get agreement with your manager that when the deliverable is changed, expanded etc then the deliverable date and budget need to change as well. Changing the deliverable without allowing for more time is neither realistic nor fair and does not benefit the company in any way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2770" LastActivityDate="2012-01-14T17:52:06.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4335" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-01-14T21:48:33.437" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-01-14T21:48:33.437" LastActivityDate="2012-01-14T21:48:33.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4336" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-01-14T21:48:33.437" Score="0" Body="Questions related to project team and/or a member(s) of the team involved in the project." OwnerUserId="2618" LastEditorUserId="2618" LastEditDate="2012-01-14T22:35:38.180" LastActivityDate="2012-01-14T22:35:38.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4333" CreationDate="2012-01-14T23:45:23.150" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll tackle your specific bullet-point questions to the best of my ability and then try to give an answer as a PM using such a tool.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Version history is per user per page; this is a different function than the Show Revisions functionality (and is an action in a different group in the ribbon, too)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;OneNote files are viewable in the browser only in conjunction with the &quot;Share to Web&quot; functionality which works with other MS services like OneDrive, OneDrive for Business &amp;amp; SharePoint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When shared online in this manner (as above), I believe the URLs are at the file level.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a PM, or as part of a team that does a lot of collaborative editing and document sharing, I would not use OneNote in the way that you've described &lt;em&gt;unless&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your environment already has a good deal of OneNote use&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your systems/IT folks are ready to support this sort of collaborative work (which may include the installation of additional services in-house, such as SharePoint)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strike&gt;No one in the org or on the team uses a Mac, because OneNote is not in the Office for Mac suite.&lt;/strike&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a PM, I look for collaborative tools that are easily adoptable, easily supported, and have collaborative elements already built in...and that typically ends up being a wiki -- either standalone or built into other document- and knowledge-management tool suites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2864" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-03-13T03:28:27.727" LastActivityDate="2015-03-13T03:28:27.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4338" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4351" CreationDate="2012-01-15T16:51:31.347" Score="10" ViewCount="4152" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recognizing uncertainty is fundamental to an Agile mindset. When leading the transition to a more agile mindset, how do you tell your customer that you, as a development team, generally operate in a world of uncertainty, when they have always looked to you to simply &quot;get the job done? &quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2012-07-19T06:07:22.743" LastActivityDate="2012-07-19T06:07:22.743" Title="How to Introduce Uncertainty without Scaring a Customer?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;&lt;culture&gt;&lt;customer&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4338" CreationDate="2012-01-15T17:18:28.027" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it comes down to selling the benefits of the approach. Using the agile approach, your customers still get what they want, and they start getting some value sooner, and they don't need to have all of the details hammered out before you start. So you are giving them a better experience with delivery starting in a shorter timeframe, and more opportunities on their part to control the scope of the work - and hence the spend - over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be difficult to put all of this into a proposal to the customers, however, if it hits them &quot;cold&quot;. If they are used to getting a fully-costed proposal, and you present them with something that is not what they expect, they are going to be uncomfortable, which is not what you want them to be. So, you really should be thinking about warming them up to your preferred way of thinking, well in advance of producing your next proposal to them. Consider developing a presentation that explains the approach and the benefits (from the customer perspective) and then sitting down with your customers to see what they think of the way ahead. Be prepared to be challenged, and don't expect a rousing success the first time out - but keep the door open for ongoing discussions on the subject. Some ideas take a while to sink in!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they are still reluctant to accept what you are saying when you have to make your next proposal to them, you still have the option of producing a conventional (some would say old-fashioned) proposal that won't upset them, and you should be able to retain the customers' business. If the feedback from the customers is more positive, and they are happy to  buy in to the Agile approach, you have a win-win result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2012-01-15T17:18:28.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4338" CreationDate="2012-01-15T21:19:20.097" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is rare for a customer to cope with the notion of uncertainty in a typical buy-seller relationship.  Most of us to some degree suffer from a serious case of &lt;em&gt;illusion of control&lt;/em&gt; in ourselves, wherein we have a tendency to believe--really believe--that we can control our environment.  The notion of random results affecting our own performance is foreign.  Accepting it when we buy services from others is even less appetizing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the really savvy buyer with strong business acumen and with a buyer-seller relationship that moves towards a trusted adviser and true partner, then the introduction of uncertainty is possible.  Without these two variables in place, I think most customers would think the seller is trying to make up excuses early to blame uncertainty and the randomness of results for their poor performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most cases, I think the notion of uncertainty is best left with the seller and its risk management processes.  You are left with active mitigation, early communication, great customer service, and hope your customer can tolerate you when work randomly falls to the unfavorable side of things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly, though, this works against the customer.  This sort of forces sellers to pad their estimates, to push their targets to the right side of the curve, causing the schedule and cost to grow.  While this increases the likelihood of success, the customer pays for every piece of it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-01-15T21:19:20.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4338" CreationDate="2012-01-16T00:38:24.030" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to use a commuting analogy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You know it normally takes between about 40/45 minutes to get to work, so there's a basic level of uncertainty there: 40 to 45 minutes, but you don't know whether it'll be 40 minutes, 45 minutes, or somewhere in between. So you allow 45 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But on a bad day (e.g. when the traffic is unusually heavy, or a train is cancelled), it can take up to an hour. This only happens about once a month, but if you want to be certain you'll arrive on time, you allow an hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But maybe once a year there's a horrendous delay (e.g. multiple car pile-up, two trains cancelled and the third one delayed), and it takes an hour and a half. So you have to decide whether you want to allow 90 minutes every day, and get in 45 minutes early most days, or accept that you'll be late every so often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want, you can take this further by drawing a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Normal Distribution graph&lt;/a&gt;, with percentage bands, explaining that increasing certainty has a cost, and ask him what level of certainty he would find acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="302" LastActivityDate="2012-01-16T00:38:24.030" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4342" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4355" CreationDate="2012-01-16T03:23:03.403" Score="6" ViewCount="296" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lately we've been looking at growing our organisation, and I've been looking at the possibility of either getting a contract Scrum Master to help us grow, hiring a new full-time Scrum Master or training someone internally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm curious to know is when is it better to get a contract Scrum Master on board, and when is it best to try and train or hire a full time Scrum Master? Does anyone have experience with this? Is there a rule of thumb I should follow to decide when a contractor or internal Scrum Master would be better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1126" LastActivityDate="2012-01-17T09:47:16.650" Title="When should I use a contract Scrum Master?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;subcontractor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4342" CreationDate="2012-01-16T08:18:45.273" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My choise would be to train someone as a Scrum Master from within an organisation. And the reason for that is that a contract Scrum Muster would have to learn an organisation's culture, procedures, principals. He would have to be &quot;introduced&quot; to the organisation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2915" LastActivityDate="2012-01-16T08:18:45.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4344" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-16T08:41:33.020" Score="10" ViewCount="935" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.versionone.com/state_of_agile_development_survey/10/page3.asp&quot;&gt;this survey&lt;/a&gt;, the most common concern about Agile adoption is a &lt;em&gt;loss of management control&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the different arguments one can bring to address this specific concern? How do you help the management trust Agile process and give up this control they like to have on their teams?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2456" LastActivityDate="2015-08-27T15:22:21.847" Title="How do you address the fear of control loss from Agile adoption" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-08-30T14:29:46.820" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4345" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-16T09:42:52.577" Score="1" ViewCount="223" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the management of a network project which covers the stages of structured cabling, LAN and WAN from design to installation which is,   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Design of LAN &amp;amp; Cabling&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Design of WAN&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Installation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any methodology to track the status of the process at each stage?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Web pages including case studies will be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2618" LastEditorUserId="2618" LastEditDate="2012-01-20T18:55:32.497" LastActivityDate="2012-01-20T19:21:08.423" Title="Any methodology to track the stages of a network project?" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3885" CreationDate="2012-01-16T10:01:36.797" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum and Prince2 operate on a completely different level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see in this post: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1079/can-prince2-and-scrum-work-together&quot;&gt;Can PRINCE2 and SCRUM work together?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prince2 is on a PM level and Scrum is on product delivery level, so the position you are in, the environment, organisation and geographical position could be all factors that have an influence on your choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One isn't more valuable as the other, if you don't take into account the position you are in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my experience I would say (only indicative list, more options are possible):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choose for Prince2 if you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;are geographically positioned outside of USA (although it is growing there as well)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;want to know about PM, the terminology, the processes, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choose for Scrum if you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;are using Scrum or any derivative like Scrumban &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="591" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2012-01-16T10:01:36.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4344" CreationDate="2012-01-16T11:05:55.573" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main problem with surveys is that &lt;em&gt;people say you what they know and - at the end - you know what they said...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pointed &lt;strong&gt;survey describes the normal state of affairs&lt;/strong&gt;. At the beginning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there is no experience with agile methods&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;company philosophy/culture is different than agile &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some people naturally oppose to change&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the knowledge about agile is limited&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the company will not overcame the problems they will appear in the &lt;em&gt;leading causes if failed agile projects&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they succeed in dealing with it, the problems will appear in the &lt;em&gt;barriers to further agile adoption&lt;/em&gt; section. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concern about &lt;strong&gt;loss of management control appears because one's knowledge about agile is limited as well as agility in the company culture is limited&lt;/strong&gt;. Therefore, it may difficult to imagine what agile management must be, and how agile changes the management scope. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at the other concerns: lack of upfront planing, lack of documentation, lack of predictability... In environment where requirements change often:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;one can not upfront plan much&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;maintaining the documentation is the pain in the ... or is pointless at all &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the predictability one have is an illusory one&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same is for loss of management control. Agile shifts management from tasks one probably didn't want to do anyway (direct task assignments) or tasks that were almost pointless (most of upfront planning) into a more strategic release plans and productivity improvements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastActivityDate="2012-01-16T11:05:55.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4345" CreationDate="2012-01-16T12:02:11.833" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not aware of standard methodologies for that but I could advice to track directly on the Network design schema.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can color different zone of the schema with 3 colors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Red for risk&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Green for done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blue for in progress&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this way you have a qualitatively and really intuitive way to track the progress of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can add more colors as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2812" LastActivityDate="2012-01-16T12:02:11.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4345" CreationDate="2012-01-16T12:28:30.253" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Critical Path Method, Earned Value and Earned Schedule are three methods to track progress against your schedule.  Earned Value is the weakest method as there are flaws in the measurement of schedule variance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each requires a well developed Work Breakdown Structure, where scope is decomposed to the level at which you can measure tangible pieces of scope.  It requires a logical network path with both vertical and horizontal logic, predecessor / successor established relationships.  And it requires a means to validate finish above and beyond someone saying so, i.e., tangible materials.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-01-16T12:28:30.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4344" CreationDate="2012-01-16T14:44:16.800" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do you help the management trust Agile process and give up this control they like to have on their teams?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only solution I've found so far is that &lt;strong&gt;you have find a manager who has a good press inside the organisation, but likes to try out new approaches&lt;/strong&gt;. You don't need the most open minded one, because she may not be that well connected, which is wrong for the purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the managers I had the pleasure to work with never believed in organisational changes which came from their developers. They only considered ideas from top or from a trusted member of their network. So the first step is to find the right person with a middle sized network inside the organisation. After you find her, do a small Agile &lt;em&gt;experiment&lt;/em&gt; and when &lt;strong&gt;it is successful&lt;/strong&gt; make it visible to others and to the executives and keep going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a while, the manager who started the experiment will become more popular and successful inside the organisation and the members of her network will come by and ask for the recipe. &lt;strong&gt;They'll find out that the popularity and the success weren't achieved with control, but with empowerment&lt;/strong&gt;. Some of them will try it out some of them will never.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The funny thing is that developers talk to each other and will learn that there are projects where they can make a difference, be better at what they are doing etc so they'll ask for a transfer and the managers who still want to use control as a management tool they'll have less manpower in quantity and quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, I know an IT manager who is using empowerment and almost everybody from his organisation want to work with him, so the other managers have started to learn more about empowerment, because they don't want to lose their people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The network is very important. I knew company where the change manager wasn't really popular and nobody really cared what he was doing, but right after having a different guy in position with better connections, things started to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2012-01-19T08:03:01.937" LastActivityDate="2012-01-19T08:03:01.937" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4338" CreationDate="2012-01-16T16:38:22.737" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;While not being a trained expert on the Agile ways, I would try to not bother the customer with uncertainty in the way of &quot;you might not get what you asked for&quot;, but rather give him certainty that something (and be it just confirmation of the viability of a solution) can be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think agile methodologies can help here. Take Scrum. Your team should commit to certain things for the upcoming sprint. You don't want to commit something you might not be able to deliver due to uncertainty. So I would try to phrase the commitment differently, to state that the goal for this sprint is to identify possible solutions for this problem. And another story later is to implement one of them (or some workarounds).&#xA;Of course those risky, critical points have to be identified as early as possible in a project, so that the investigation &quot;stories&quot; can be done soon enough (especially if there is a risk that the entire project might fail because of them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that investigative stories like that might not be proper Scrum stories. But personally, I don't care :)&#xA;I believe it's easier to sell a story like that to the customer than tell him that you will do Story A in the next sprint, but it might not work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2921" LastActivityDate="2012-01-16T16:38:22.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4344" CreationDate="2012-01-16T17:35:32.100" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;These people never had control in the first place, it was just perceived control.  Losing control is not really what people fear, they are scared of change, they are scared of trying something new, of taking a risk.  The best way to answer this question is to change the question and to help people realize that success is not about control it is about value and the best way to reinforce that is directly without being but it will go away once you start delivering value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1012" LastActivityDate="2012-01-16T17:35:32.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4333" CreationDate="2012-01-16T21:40:19.230" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team is using OneNote informally in a way similar to what you describe.  It works for us, but probably won't scale to more than a dozen or so.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/2864/jcmeloni&quot;&gt;jcmeloni&lt;/a&gt; makes some good points worth thinking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're sharing OneNote notebooks on a shared drive.  It does very well at multiple users at the same time, and flags changes since last entry to the notebook for each user. We don't use a web browser, although there are URLs that can be pasted into various Office objects (tasks, calendar entries, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The version history available has worked for us, but hasn't been a big deal, either.  We're a small team (6) all located in the same office, easy to get up and go ask someone what they did and why if necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The really big advantage we see over the wikis we've used is the easy of including screenshots.  With OneNote running, WINDOWS-S lets you capture part of the screen, and it is very easy to paste directly into a OneNotej page. No intermediate steps of creating an image file and then uploading.  Having easy screenshots has saved us a lot of time in UI discussions and defect notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1490" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2012-01-16T21:40:19.230" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4268" CreationDate="2012-01-17T07:22:59.133" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Measuring individual performance is critical, and part of an individuals measurement must be their own performance AND importantly how well they contribute to the team. The output and behaviour of the team is an aggregate of the output and behaviour of the individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should not blindly use metrics and I would agree with the other posters that blanket metrics use eg: lines of code per hour or number of defects per hour is a fools game. But, you need to measure their performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A team is a collection of individuals. If you treat your top performers the same as the bottom performers, your top performers will become disgruntled and leave while your bottom performers will get a free ride.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2924" LastActivityDate="2012-01-17T07:22:59.133" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4342" CreationDate="2012-01-17T09:29:16.643" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe finding a ScrumMaster from outside is very beneficial, especially if you do not have any inside your organization at this time. It allows them some honeymoon period to ask some tough questions about why you do certain things or struggle with certain Agile aspects. Maybe they have an idea or experience of how to solve it from past company. I would also hope that they become a member of your team, not just a part time consultant that is considered temporary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are often misconceptions about the role of this person and so people often throw the role on someone internally (often after a 2 day class) and then do not get the full benefit of the ScrumMaster because that internal person has no mentors, unless you plan on complimenting the internal growth, with a Scrum Coach to mentor this new role. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a ScrumMaster, this person would be committed not only to the meeting facilitations and impediment removal, but to help the team, product owner and stakeholders to continuously improve the agile process, especially if you are &quot;in transition&quot;. They are an agile evangelist, always looking for new ideas on how to improve, not just support the basic scrum process. This is also why it is important to recognize that not only knowledge, but the personality of the person put in this role is very important, since much of the job is dealing with people, not the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastActivityDate="2012-01-17T09:29:16.643" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4342" CreationDate="2012-01-17T09:47:16.650" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;All that depends on the team. If you feel there is sufficient bandwidth with the team, then you can well choose one of them as scrum master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a less numbered team than required, then in that case it is always suggestible to get the scrum master from external source as professionally he would be dedicated to this job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2887" LastActivityDate="2012-01-17T09:47:16.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2073" CreationDate="2012-01-17T09:51:51.060" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very tricky situation these days, majorly in the product based organization. I believe it is always better to plan a task in such a manner that one sub contractor and one permanent employee are involved in the development of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the total dependency of the module is given to the sub contractor, then definitely there is a chance of liquidity in his manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, from next time onwards involve 2 people in an assignment and one must be a permanent employee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now coming to the current scenario, it is better you try negotiating with you vendor. If the discussion won't fructify then you can go for a better vendor and this time make sure you have properly signed SLA which will accomodate all these extreme scenarios.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2887" LastActivityDate="2012-01-17T09:51:51.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4358" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-17T22:09:19.583" Score="4" ViewCount="88" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any methods or tools available to facilitate the creation of a R&amp;amp;D technology roadmap that will fulfill the vision of a company, in a sense, create links between vision and roadmap(s)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2929" LastActivityDate="2012-01-19T05:03:13.177" Title="Is there a guide or methods available to link a company vision to its R&amp;D Technology Roadmap" Tags="&lt;roadmaps&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="259" CreationDate="2012-01-17T23:04:27.203" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a huge difference since there are real people in real projects. You will be facing issues with motivation, morale, stubbornness and a lot more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the processes can guide you through a project. You probably have to figure out the rest yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2930" LastActivityDate="2012-01-17T23:04:27.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4344" CreationDate="2012-01-17T23:05:55.760" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a project manager, you can continue to give management the control they are looking for in the form of governance and feedback loops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to use Agile for your development team but management still wants reports and metrics, put a governance wrapper around your agile process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find out what kind of metrics they want and how they would like to communicate feedback back to the development team. Then, craft a set of artifacts and processes that will meet their needs while still allowing your development team to operate with Agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-01-17T23:05:55.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="566" CreationDate="2012-01-18T03:17:15.570" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might also need to improve your time management skills. Look at your work style and see where you're sloppy with your time management. Usually people waste time by not focusing well, or giving in to unnecessary interruptions, or checking email too frequently. There are probably four or five bad habits you have relating to time management that you can get rid off and learn to work smarter-not harder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2931" LastActivityDate="2012-01-18T03:17:15.570" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="566" CreationDate="2012-01-18T06:43:01.057" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Learn to release the pressure from manager, and try to learn from the work, even you work 100% load the whole day, there should be always some time you can learn from your manager/colleagues and process, try to think positive and fined ways to do you job more effectively and efficiency. that should do some help. And do remember, even you do not have time to systemic learning some thing you interest, you should convince yourself to learn off work!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2932" LastActivityDate="2012-01-18T06:43:01.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4363" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4368" CreationDate="2012-01-18T13:56:44.550" Score="4" ViewCount="299" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a project in which almost everyday we get new requirements that need to be done ASAP. Probably, this is what the client wants. &#xA;I am curious to know if this is call &quot;Agile&quot; project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In these kinds of projects, which documents need to be prepared and how do I maintain change requests and issues in existing applications?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2469" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T03:45:06.917" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T03:45:06.917" Title="Documents needed for everyday changing requirements" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4364" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4370" CreationDate="2012-01-18T14:04:12.187" Score="8" ViewCount="376" Body="&lt;p&gt;We do have around 50 PMs in the organisation and they all manage different projects; for different clients; different technologies, different teams. So they are a bit isolated from each other. The integration is quite good within a team, but not as good between PMs. I wonder how to integrate them. Not only to have a beer together, but also to encourage knowledge transfer between the projects. If one PM finds out a great solution to a problem, I would like other PMs to at least know about it... or maybe use the solution if they have a similar problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I can think of now is kind of a &quot;Project Open Day&quot;. So everyone is invited to come, have a beer and ask &quot;how do you manage this?&quot;, &quot;How do you manage that?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my intentions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;social aspects oriented&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;knowledge transfer oriented&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have your favorites way to achieve this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2915" LastActivityDate="2012-01-26T17:28:06.827" Title="How to integrate Project Managers within an organisation" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;culture&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4364" CreationDate="2012-01-18T14:19:55.137" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Create a PM Center of Excellence, a volunteer organization within your company that enables development of intellectual capital, knowledge sharing, training, internal certification, and help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your company needs to incentivize its PMs to take advantage of something like this.  I have seen these types of things flop if the incentive is not there or the PMCoE provides little value.  So resources need to be dedicated for this for it to have any chance of taking off.  But if/when it does, it can be quite beneficial.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-01-18T14:19:55.137" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4364" CreationDate="2012-01-18T14:20:04.367" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start a PMO whose focus is on culling and propagating best practices.&#xA;It can start with a 1 or 2 day retreat to share knowledge and build a community of practice within the organization. Then continue through periodic events and communications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-01-18T14:20:04.367" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4363" CreationDate="2012-01-18T14:34:14.473" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not &quot;agile&quot; project management. This is either a service department doing work as needed (e.g. an IT group supporting an existing application or legal department fielding questions on an as-come basis) or; this is a project without control and structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to maintain change requests is to formalize a submission/approval/status process. It can be through paper documents or a simple online utility like a wiki or message board for the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-01-18T14:34:14.473" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4363" CreationDate="2012-01-18T16:36:30.097" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile Manifesto says that you should value &lt;strong&gt;Responding to Change over Following a Plan&lt;/strong&gt;, however it doesn't mean that you should include every Change Request demanded by Client ASAP. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at &lt;strong&gt;Scrum&lt;/strong&gt; - you have &lt;strong&gt;Iterations&lt;/strong&gt; and when you decide upon stories that would be acomplished during the Iteration the &lt;strong&gt;scope is frozen&lt;/strong&gt; and you can prioritize tasks for the next Iteration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at &lt;strong&gt;Kanban&lt;/strong&gt; - you are trying to &lt;strong&gt;limit Work-In-Progress&lt;/strong&gt;, so if you have started a task, you try to finish it before starting another one (newer, more important) and another (even more important). &lt;strong&gt;Customer can change priorities&lt;/strong&gt; of the features that haven't been started yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a lot of new requirements and this is a problem for you maybe you could find a person responsible for managing the change and showing the Client that if requirements are changing so rapidly maybe he should &lt;strong&gt;rethink the big purpose for the system&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to &lt;strong&gt;documents&lt;/strong&gt; we estimate every task that is done and wasn't estimated before and charge customer for it and we keep a &lt;strong&gt;track of such items in a spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt;. We also maintain a big &lt;strong&gt;document&lt;/strong&gt; which contains &lt;strong&gt;all the requirements&lt;/strong&gt;, we update it in &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;review mode&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; and we send to the Client for approval.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastEditorUserId="452" LastEditDate="2012-01-18T20:34:24.810" LastActivityDate="2012-01-18T20:34:24.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4369" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4403" CreationDate="2012-01-18T16:52:53.703" Score="12" ViewCount="1003" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: At first I wrongly posted this question to the original Stackoverflow site&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say that for a software project I have: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a complete project plan;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a software requirements specification;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a software architecture document;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a lead developer;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and (me as a project manager).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need to hire 1-4 freelance developers to get different parts of the project done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My plan is to use odesk, elance, etc. to find the needed workers. Then I will set up Redmine or JIRA to organize the workflow (tickets, deadlines, etc.). I am also going to introduce daily email reports on what has been done so far (required from each worker).&#xA;I will use escrow for payments to these freelancers. I am not going to hire the cheapest freelancers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But before I do that, I would like to know:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;are there any special things I need to know and to do before I start working with freelancers?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;are there any best practices to manage such a distributed team of freelancers effectively?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;does my overall plan look feasible and realistic? (from your experience). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2936" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2012-01-20T09:20:48.423" LastActivityDate="2012-06-22T09:39:28.877" Title="How to work with freelancers in a proper way?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;external-project-members&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4364" CreationDate="2012-01-18T17:01:51.487" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the above answers,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend a monthly bulletin/newspaper prepared and published inhouse which aims technical news propagation as well as covering social aspects of the organisation. Some parts of the bulletin/newspaper can be dedicated especially to innovations/new ideas/new solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, periodically seminars/trainings/workshops would be arranged for inhouse information transfer in the manner of a social event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2618" LastActivityDate="2012-01-18T17:01:51.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4369" CreationDate="2012-01-18T17:06:38.980" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First thing to keep in mind is that the freelancers are not full time employees. They don't have to respond to your emails in a timely manner, they don't have to send you reports, etc.  They are likely freelancing because they like the freedom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind, it is not realistic to have a completed project plan or schedule yet. Even PMBOK would tell you the schedule can only come after you've gotten input from the team members who are going to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be flexible. Have sufficient buffer built into your delivery dates to accommodate hiccups, non-responsive team members or plain old iterations of work.  Be prepared to cut functionality and features in order to focus on the core offering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a good idea to try out each person on a smaller project or task and build from there. You will learn a lot. Like building any new relationship, it takes time. Each person is an individual with their own habits/styles and, most importantly in a freelance situation, each person has their own lives independent of doing work for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-01-18T17:06:38.980" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4369" CreationDate="2012-01-18T17:44:32.867" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to Mark's draft, especially the first paragraph, you need to avoid the risk of dual employment.  There are criteria, tests if you will, with which you need to comply so that there can be no confusion on the type of relationship you have with these freelancers.  Companies have had to pay dearly when these lines are blurred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, consider the type of contract under which these are guys will operate.  Are they &quot;a set of hands&quot; under your direction or are you carving out scope and outsourcing to these guys?  Make sure your Statement of Work clearly defines how this work will be conducted, how they will deliver, their obligations and yours, evaluation criteria, payments, award fees and penalties, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-01-18T17:44:32.867" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4369" CreationDate="2012-01-18T22:46:43.360" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have a full answer to your question, but in my experience there are two things you really should think over before starting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your code review process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your testing process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a great and reliable test system with a well documented coding guideline (part of the review process) is a win-win situation: they'll know what and how to do, and you can be sure that their delivery matches your expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, if you have 4 freelancers and one lead developer, the lead developer will spend his time with communication, synchronization, bug fixing and integration. That's from my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-01-18T22:46:43.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4358" CreationDate="2012-01-19T05:03:13.177" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, so here goes: This technique is called results chains and you'll at least need to have a 'list' of the strategic goals of your company - so you know what all to link to ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say you have an R&amp;amp;D Project 'A' say. Write down: &lt;em&gt;'implement/design/research... Project A'&lt;/em&gt;. Now, start by asking the question '&lt;em&gt;so-what?&lt;/em&gt;' - you'll get an answer. Ask '&lt;em&gt;so-what?&lt;/em&gt;' again and you'll get some answer. Note down these answers and connect them with arrows. Keep repeating this process till you hit a strategic goal like '&lt;em&gt;increase growth' or 'increase loyalty' or 'increase brand value'&lt;/em&gt; etc., (let's assume the graph goes left to right, i.e., initiative on the left and strategic goals on the right)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything in between the initiative i.e., 'implement Project A' and the strategic goal are called &lt;em&gt;intermediate outcomes&lt;/em&gt;. Now, for each intermediate outcome ask 'so-what?' (or &lt;em&gt;what else?&lt;/em&gt;). You may/will get another 'branch' to follow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Continue the above process for each such intermediate outcome and make the relevant connections. It's okay for one intermediate outcome to feed into an existing intermediate outcome or strategic goal, so don't worry about whether it's legal or not. Everything is legal as long as it makes sense in your context :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now all the nodes on the right-most end of the graph should be your strategic goals (they won't have any outgoing edges). This will give you a very holistic view of what are the intermediate outcomes through which the R&amp;amp;D project will help contribute to the overall strategic goal(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that's not all. For each intermediate outcome identified you must also identify the key initiatives that need to be undertaken to realize those benefits i.e., what concrete actions need to be taken to help bring the intermediate outcomes to fruition - it may be advertising or word-of-mouth publicity or training or outsourcing or door-to-door selling or seeking early buy-in etc., - a good heuristic is initiatives start with a 'verb' so that you can associate some action with it (English grammar IS useful :P)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As before, one initiative may help realize multiple possible outcomes (or feed into other initiatives). There will not be any initiative linked to a strategic goal (quite rare, but if there is one it's usually questionable, since you should just do that to achieve the end goal :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, for each initiative you should also identify who are the key stakeholders who'd be responsible/accountable to help deliver on the corresponding benefits. Note, this is NOT for playing a blame-game - it's only to acknowledge accountability - developers are responsible for delivering the project with directly correlated benefits. They can't be held accountable for not contributing to overall profit margins (unless that is indeed true). Get the drift?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are few things you could add on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risks: For each benefit you could identify the risks or you could write them down 'on the side' of the graph if it's getting too clutterd&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assumptions: These are the 'business' assumptions on which you are basing the 'confidence' of the project. E.g.: Time to delivery is a key criterion for increasing number of orders (i.e., the project has something to do with helping decrease time to delivery - could be researching algorithms, or increasing speed etc.,). Having a set of these assumptions ensures that they need to be validated throughout the way so that the project stays on track.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, given this 'model' you can either choose 'the best path' through the graph and decide which path(s) to take, if they can be executed mutually exclusively. For each benefit you can associate a corresponding metric of how to track it (a form of KPI). For each initiative you can peg a cost (since it's an action, it will be done over time and since time = money you can estimate a cost).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This 'model' should be revisited at every milestone to see how much of each benefit has been realized and the assumptions still hold and risks are mitigated or if any new benefits have been identified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Show this to your management and trust me they'll kiss your hands and feet - more so if you can supplement everything with numerical estimates!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(FYI - this is similar to the 5-WHY's technique - you may also ask 'why' continually till you hit a strategic goal :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The graphical layout shows the causality between the nodes and helps understand how they link together. So if you are failing to deliver on the end goal, traverse the graph backwards and see which benefit is not being fulfilled - so you know where to look :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1119" LastActivityDate="2012-01-19T05:03:13.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4078" CreationDate="2012-01-19T07:04:07.440" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For different people you should chose different report frequency, for top management such as stakeholders or steering committee, better report once a month.  To the management group as your line manager should be weekly review, as you will need different support and resource from them. As the program manager, you should highlight the program risk/cost/schedule to let management team know your challenge and your chance, what ever, just keep the program transparent to all involved people, that will make things better than you can expected!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2932" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2015-10-01T05:24:50.657" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T05:24:50.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4060" CreationDate="2012-01-19T16:20:05.773" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In terms of managing the project, there's not that much that separates embedded software projects from other software projects. The same tools, techniques, and principles can be applied. If you are working in a multi-disciplinary environment, you also need to account for the time and schedules of the other engineering teams and dependencies between software tasks and other non-software activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are some considerations that might be useful to keep in mind. Two that come to mind are dependencies on hardware and productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There might be dependencies on hardware. This will affect estimation, scheduling, and risk management as you need to account for the availability of the system and time-sharing. Risks include the system not being constructed (or in a functional state) when software is ready to perform integration tests or deployed. Depending on what other engineering or manufacturing activities exist, you need to appropriately budget time and money across the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also a difference in productivity that depends on the type of system. From the work of Putnam and Meyers, the nominal LOC/Staff Month of an embedded systems project ranges from 60 LOC to 300 LOC per month, depending on the size and scope of the project. If you are using historical data to generate estimates and schedules, you need to be aware of the type of projects that the historical data came from and factor in the differences in productivity between the type of system being built.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2012-01-19T16:20:05.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3683" CreationDate="2012-01-19T18:05:46.167" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you checked out Asana?  Group task tracking?&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://asana.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://asana.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="913" LastActivityDate="2012-01-19T18:05:46.167" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-01-19T18:05:46.167" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4378" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4406" CreationDate="2012-01-19T19:30:59.443" Score="11" ViewCount="3768" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a colleague who will never accept he made a mistake or that his idea is just wrong. He thinks he is &quot;the next best thing&quot;. He is also arrogant in his way of talking to people around him in general. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only person that he accepts listening to his ideas is the only guy in the group that has been hired before him. All the others are non factor in his mind. He knows a lot about the enterprise domain but everything he codes is very hard to maintain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have coped with it for a little more than a year but it just gets harder and harder to work with. We do not have a project manager or such a position we are just a team of developer working together on tasks given by upper management. I do not want to take that to the management as they will not do a thing about it and also because the trade union is very powerful. I have tried to talk to him but it leads nowhere as he pretty much laughed at me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How would you handle this kind of situation?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2777" LastEditorUserId="2777" LastEditDate="2015-05-01T01:35:36.187" LastActivityDate="2015-05-02T05:52:05.850" Title="How to deal with programmer that thinks they are &quot;The next best thing&quot;" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3683" CreationDate="2012-01-19T19:54:55.503" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a good list where you can start (filter non web)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_project_management_software&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_project_management_software&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have used Assembla for a while and loved it but it is web based.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2777" LastActivityDate="2012-01-19T19:54:55.503" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-01-19T19:54:55.503" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4378" CreationDate="2012-01-19T20:48:12.580" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would talk to the guy ( who was hired before him ) and see if &quot;the next best thing&quot; listens to him . &#xA;Key here is to make him understand that his behaviour is turning out to be detrimental to the team and to his relationships as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that does not work and if I am still disturbed by his behaviour , I would approach management , not wanting him to get fired but to make them aware of this situation &amp;amp; since you guys dont seem to have leadership or middle level management , I would suggest to management that we need to hire someone externally ( a coach or a soft skills consultant or send him to a relevant training course ) to talk to him and sober him down .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastActivityDate="2012-01-19T20:48:12.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4378" CreationDate="2012-01-19T22:47:18.347" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Grin and bear it.  Or, find another position.&#xA;Nothing you can do to control him or modify his behavior. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, why spend your energy trying to change him. Use it to do something you want to do, like a cool project or learning something new, or, expend it on someone who appreciates you giving them attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-01-19T22:47:18.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4378" CreationDate="2012-01-20T01:08:24.727" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As much as it isn't a great situation to be in, @Mark's answer of &quot;grin and bear it&quot; or to find another position is probably the best you can hope for unless you really get your managers on board and invested in trying to modify the behavior of this one person...and that likely isn't going to work. However, if you (or a group of your colleagues who agree with you) go to your manager with some good reasoning and examples of how the behavior is detrimentally affecting your team and its productivity (and morale), then maybe the individual could be assigned to tasks that did not have so much direct (negative) effect on the rest of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although this doesn't sound like a situation of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboy_coding&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cowboy coding&lt;/a&gt;, the individual sounds like he shares some of the traits of sometimes associated with &quot;cowboy coder&quot; (in a negative way; sometimes cowboy coding is a necessary and positive thing).  To that end, it might be worth looking at &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7217/frankly-do-you-prefer-cowboy-coding&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; on Programmers.SE because some of the answers contain commentary on how people manage to work with cowboy coders or developers with some of the negative traits.  (note: unfortunately, I don't think your question fits the the Programmers.SE mold, because your problem really is a generalizable one -- people are arrogant jerks no matter the field).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, though, you're going to have to choose whether or not it's a place you can continue to work, especially if management is unwilling or unable to make moves for the good of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2864" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:31:53.287" LastActivityDate="2012-01-20T01:08:24.727" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4383" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4390" CreationDate="2012-01-20T08:41:39.283" Score="2" ViewCount="635" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for software for organizing a &quot;workout routine&quot;. Not weights but things in general where I want an organized plan of action to accomplish a long term goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially I want something that lets me give a list&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do X&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do Y&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do Z&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But of course more &quot;supped up&quot;(the more features the better). I do not necessarily want to tie this to time since I may not start each thing at the exact same time or may have to miss things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to be able to add notes, possibly even links to pdfs and show images.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the software I have looked at tend to be for the profession and is organized generally in time. I want something that I can use to refer to so I can organize my &quot;workout&quot; in a coherent and consistent way each time I do it and not skip around or miss things unintentionally. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be clear, I have a set of tasks I want to accomplish per day and per week. The tasks have no specific time frame(I may start them at 9am or 1pm) but generally should be sequential but not always. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially a mix of a &quot;to do&quot; list and project management. The main thing is to be able to present the tasks in a nice way and easy to follow with possible side information(pre and post information such as info about the task and &quot;success&quot; of the task).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pagico.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pagico.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seems to be about the closest I have seen. It should be a modern program and not something from win3.1. Most of the software I've seen looks quite dated and their web sites look like they came straight from 1999.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2945" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2012-01-20T14:03:46.983" LastActivityDate="2013-07-02T04:13:33.260" Title="Task planing/Scheduling software" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-07-02T04:14:08.107" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4378" CreationDate="2012-01-20T09:43:38.787" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agree with Mark. His behaviour will not change. Without a team leader or someone in charge of quality, there is no accountability. I would strongly suggest to management that you need to appoint a team lead. Perhaps the guy appointed before him if he is mutually respected amongst the other team members and is happy to do so. Best practice methods can then be employed across the team so the issue is not just about what he does, but how the whole team collaborates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2946" LastActivityDate="2012-01-20T09:43:38.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4344" CreationDate="2012-01-20T10:24:05.147" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd start improving &lt;strong&gt;Software Quality&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Automated builds&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Automated test&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Transparency on ongoing development (for example jenkins)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Measure the quality before the Agile adoption and after and improve it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the software is becoming more reliable and aligned within the business requirements the management is much more secure about the project control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2812" LastActivityDate="2012-01-20T10:24:05.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4386" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-20T13:42:28.533" Score="-1" ViewCount="204" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to know what is the approximate cost of a software department (Product + R&amp;amp;D) in a typical startup (20 employees)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, considering the others departments are sales, accounting, marketing, human resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2456" LastEditorUserId="2456" LastEditDate="2012-01-20T14:14:23.347" LastActivityDate="2012-01-20T18:19:49.917" Title="What is the cost of a Software Department in a Software Company?" Tags="&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2012-01-22T02:27:39.650" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4378" CreationDate="2012-01-20T14:59:27.400" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Changing the way he thinks about himself is of no use to the team and probably not possible.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would only concentrate on actual behaviors like being arrogant to the team, writing code  that is hard to maintain and confronting with actual bugs. Feedback is very important, and he should be made aware how he is perceived by the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the important role should be played by the guy that was hired before him, maybe he should be made into a team lead if he approves of becoming one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also people up the chain should be made aware of this situation, as someone earlier wrote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="375" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-01-22T02:37:32.910" LastActivityDate="2012-01-22T02:37:32.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1761" CreationDate="2012-01-20T15:10:20.873" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In SharePoint 2010 there is a list template called &quot;Project Tasks List&quot;. This will then easily synchronise with you MPP file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But be careful - if you customise your list, not all data types synchronise with MPP properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2915" LastEditorUserId="2915" LastEditDate="2012-02-01T13:40:00.247" LastActivityDate="2012-02-01T13:40:00.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4378" CreationDate="2012-01-20T18:06:52.293" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few points, in the order they should be taken:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find a issues in which you can help him, make him respect your knowledge and abilities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Listen to what he says, show him that you consider his views.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you are sure you are right - be stubborn, show that you have confidence in your opinions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Form a coalition - find people that can listen to you and understand and use the coalition to show that you do not have isolated opinions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go over his head, find someone in a superior technical position e.g. chief architect, project manager that can enforce policies and ask them to publish a company/department wide development quality policy - mention that you are aware of low quality code that justifies such a policy. If there isn't anyone with such a position, alert management to the lack of technical supervision in your team/project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1094" LastEditorUserId="1094" LastEditDate="2012-01-23T10:01:05.783" LastActivityDate="2012-01-23T10:01:05.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4383" CreationDate="2012-01-20T18:12:08.247" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could use something to install yourself on a server like Redmine, Trac, or other open source project management tools (just check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_project_management_software&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or try out one of the many SaaS (software as a service) task/TODO list tools out there, like Remember the milk or &lt;a href=&quot;http://alternativeto.net/software/remember-the-milk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;similar tools&lt;/a&gt;. Or more project management oriented tools like Wrike or &lt;a href=&quot;http://alternativeto.net/software/wrike/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;similar&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even professional tools used in software development, like Mingle, JIRA and others might just work for your purpose (and are fairly cheap or even free for small teams).&#xA;Or, if you don't mind using Eclipse for this, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://eclipse.org/mylyn&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mylyn tool&lt;/a&gt; comes with a task list with scheduling and free integrations with many open source issue trackers. But that's very much focussed on development area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought one of those SaaS providers linked above would be suited best. Having a browser interface just works great for using it on any device you want. Even Windows 3.1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2921" LastActivityDate="2012-01-20T18:12:08.247" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4386" CreationDate="2012-01-20T18:19:49.917" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer depends mainly on the average salaries of the employees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The average salaries of the employees depends on the EXACT location (the city), the level of skills and experience required, the domain of the project (i.e. does the project require domain knowledge that is hard to find or that is in high demand).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Startups are less stable - higher risk, so if you require average or above skills or experience the salaries should be higher than in most stable companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also you did not mention - out of the 20 employees how many are R&amp;amp;D (minus management, marketing, sales, tech-support and etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1094" LastActivityDate="2012-01-20T18:19:49.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4344" CreationDate="2012-01-20T18:37:36.837" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Ken stated - the management only has an illusion of control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To produce quality code, the developers have to do what they know is right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Non-agile development is often an illusion of order...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have design, implementation, testing, but wait - the requirements need changing a bit and then a bit more, until finally the life cycle management in unreal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile management simply accepts the truth - projects change as you work on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile also allows you to &lt;b&gt;control&lt;/b&gt; when the project will be complete - something traditional ALM does not allow...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A tradional ALM requires time-buffers to address uncertainty and the projects often still take longer than planned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile lets you decide what is most important to implement at each iteration and stop with a work product at any point - far more control than any non-agile method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile provides many organised points of intervention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of the self organization of the teams - if you want an efficient team then this is a must.&#xA;In fact even in non-agile ALMs the teams self organizes in some ways as a natural process of formation and maturation of the team - each team member shows what he is good at and the members find ways to communicate and work together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For completion, I recommend getting management to read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/presentations/91-getting-agile-with-scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Getting Agile with Scrum&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1094" LastActivityDate="2012-01-20T18:37:36.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4393" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-01-20T18:38:17.437" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-01-20T18:38:17.437" LastActivityDate="2012-01-20T18:38:17.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4394" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-01-20T18:38:17.437" Score="0" Body="This tag is for all questions about problems that are likely to occur during the progress of a project related to any aspect of the project, including stages of the project, tasks, equipment, documentation, and/or inhouse/external people involved in the project directly or indirectly. " OwnerUserId="2618" LastEditorUserId="2618" LastEditDate="2012-01-21T16:12:27.630" LastActivityDate="2012-01-21T16:12:27.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4395" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-20T19:10:23.183" Score="2" ViewCount="174" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have been using a popular project tool, Pivotal Tracker. We have decided to break up our product team into 3 separate teams, each focusing on features with a particular theme. There is some debate about whether each team should have its own tracker, or whether we should use one integrated tracker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The teams will stay together for at least a quarter of the year. It is all going into one codebase and in one source repository. We share demo and staging environments as well. We are also all in the same room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice in either direction? My inclination is to keep it all in one tracker and use labels to differentiate, but I wonder if it's useful to have separate velocity calculations for each time. Any thoughts would be welcomed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2944" LastActivityDate="2012-01-22T02:30:33.717" Title="Should we use different project trackers for different teams working on the same product?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4345" CreationDate="2012-01-20T19:11:14.757" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Netformx has a few products that are meant for this including &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.netformx.com/design-xpert&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Design Xpert&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.netformx.com/mpls-designer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MPLS Designer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use these tool to design, quote and create reports for networks.&#xA;You can also add custom information to devices in the design (then include them in your reports).&#xA;I suggest you contact the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.netformx.com/contact-us&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sales department&lt;/a&gt; to inquire further on how you can use these products to cover what you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.netformx.com/Case-Study&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Case studies available here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. I currently work at Netformx (in R&amp;amp;D).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1094" LastEditorUserId="1094" LastEditDate="2012-01-20T19:21:08.423" LastActivityDate="2012-01-20T19:21:08.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4378" CreationDate="2012-01-20T19:19:31.857" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe your problem is half internal, and half external.  From what you say, this co-worker doesn't respect your opinions as you're not the one other co-worker he listens to.  This means that you feel hurt and insulted by your belief that he does not find your opinion valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you broadcast another person's motivation, what you're really broadcasting is your interpretation of what your feelings make you believe.  I question your attempt to appear unbiased and find it slightly suspicious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider this: if he is such a pompus jerk, why does it bother you that he is a pompus jerk?  Why do you need him to admit to mistakes?  Why does he need to be nicer to people he works with?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think he's within his rights to treat people however he wants, and you're within your rights to realize that you can control how you feel about him, and you have the ability to make it not affect your work and your life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Perhaps if you were his boss and not colleague, this would need solving)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2950" LastActivityDate="2012-01-20T19:19:31.857" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4395" CreationDate="2012-01-20T19:23:23.803" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My inclination matches yours; I can't think of a situation from my own experience in which I would create separate trackers for the same project but for different teams &lt;em&gt;except&lt;/em&gt; a situation in which the calculations or reports you are trying to produce &lt;em&gt;cannot be done&lt;/em&gt; at the tag or component level, or in any other easily-determined-per-team way.  It seems to me that focusing your tools on the construction of the team would be more about managing the different teams than managing the project itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2864" LastActivityDate="2012-01-20T19:23:23.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4399" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4402" CreationDate="2012-01-20T19:38:39.217" Score="3" ViewCount="151" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a project manager in a functional environment, focused on helping one of the key technical teams deliver products on time/budget/scope. The team consists of several very talented, very dedicated people who take real ownership of the work that they do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately this often gets taken a bit too far in the sense that, in my opinion, there is a lot of over-processing of work. This leads to an almost constant sense of crisis, causing unnecessary stress and risk of team burn-out. Depending on the product being developed, the team leader (to whom I report) is one of the prime culprits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to balance the team's disposition to taking ownership while convincing them (and my boss) that sometimes &quot;good enough&quot; is all you need and the product doesn't need to be &quot;perfect&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T22:37:26.077" Title="How to balance ownership and overprocessing?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4395" CreationDate="2012-01-20T19:39:56.083" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;If&lt;/b&gt; the teams are working on different parts of the project that can be considered as autonomous sub-projects that together form a larger project then consider the division.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your description is sounds more like one big team working on the same project divided by areas of expertise for the sake of conformity and interchangeability between the developers within each sub-team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1094" LastActivityDate="2012-01-20T19:39:56.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4399" CreationDate="2012-01-20T19:54:11.600" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short, constant-time development iterations, where you have to make the deadline could help. If the issue needs improving and the priority of the improvement is high enough - then improve it as a task in a future iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if the developers feel that the result is not usable/stable, then they should have the freedom of either improving it or not publishing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There should be a balance between quality and speed.&#xA;- A perfect product that doesn't reach the market on time will probably be a failure.&#xA;- A product that makes the market on time but is unusable will also probable be a failure.&#xA;Try to explain this to the team leader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, the project manager or owner should have the final decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1094" LastActivityDate="2012-01-20T19:54:11.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4399" CreationDate="2012-01-20T19:57:39.790" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are dealing with a specific personality type.  Trying to 'change' him/her or get him/her to see the error in his/her ways is futile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, look at the process.  In each of step in your process, you have entry criteria and exit criteria.  When the work nugget finishes a step, it is not considered finished until it passes each criterion test.  Same thing at the end of the process itself.  Also, you would have a control there, at each step and at the end of the process, where there are rules about how verification and validation of the work piece is performed, who has the authority to sign it off, and allow it to continue in your supply chain.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like your work processes are not defined in this manner, which allows human intervention to run amok.  Attempt to introduce this in your processes, established evaluation criteria, definition of finish, roles who are allowed to say finish, etc.  Typical BPM 101 rules.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-01-20T19:57:39.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4369" CreationDate="2012-01-20T21:35:06.053" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the key aspects of working with freelancers you need to address (and the earlier, the better) is their level of availability and commitment to your project. Although there is always a risk of a team member (whether they are employees, consultants or freelancers) moving on or having to work on other things, the risk with freelancers tends to be higher so you need to plan for it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Acknowledge the risk&lt;/strong&gt;: formally address the risk through your risk management process and evaluate it (e.g. what is the risk if freelancer A quits the project or freelancer B is no longer 100% available?). Assess the impact on your project (would it put the project on hold? would you lose work done?).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Plan for knowledge sharing and transfer&lt;/strong&gt;: define and implement good configuration management (e.g. frequent code check-in, clear version controlling, etc.) and documentation processes. You could also implement peer reviews (i.e. a team member reviews/tests another team member's work) to promote knowledge sharing amongst your team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Facilitate team communications&lt;/strong&gt;: daily reports are good because they will help you keep track of things and also ensure that your team is working as planned on your project. Make it easy (pick a simple tool/process) for your team to report status back to you though so they don't waste time on putting a report together. You can also set up regular team meetings (video or conference calls if your team is not co-located). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make your way of working clear and part of your contractual relationship&lt;/strong&gt;: You're the PM but also the person who pays so you're both a leader and a client to freelancers. Make it part of your formal relationship that (e.g. required availability, access, etc.). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Select and hire the right resources&lt;/strong&gt;: make sure that part of your selection process addresses what you need from your future team. If you need people to work 100% on your project, find out if they have already committed to other projects. Look for people who can demonstrate a genuine commitment to your project. Set your expectations with them clearly (e.g. the way you want the team to communicate with daily reports, their availability, etc.).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastActivityDate="2012-01-20T21:35:06.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4404" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-20T23:33:41.100" Score="2" ViewCount="401" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for a small plastics manufacturing company. We have 14 employees total but only 3-5 to start would be using Project to organize our projects. To this point we have only used excel and other rudimentary ways of handling our project management and are looking to get more sophisticated.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I downloaded a free trial of MS Project because it is suppose to integrate well with the ERP system that we will be getting by the end of the year.  After working with MS Project for a while there are several questions that I need to have answered so that we can determine the best system for us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what we are looking for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3-5 people to start that can work on own and simultaneous projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Eventually my have up to 9 people using it on a regular basis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a system that multiple people can see and make changes to as the project evolves&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manager has access to see what items are on track or overdue&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Individuals be able to see all projects they are on and at a glance see what needs to be completed that day (a task list perhaps)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Receive email notices to let individuals know that they have something due coming up or if something is pass due on a project they are heading up&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Track costs of resources and overlap of resources on different projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these things that can be handled and what is most cost efficient?  Each individual has it on their desktop with something like drop box keeping the files for people to open or is there a server or web cloud type application that is more cost effective for our size company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2952" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-01-13T10:31:33.167" LastActivityDate="2019-01-13T10:31:33.167" Title="Does Microsoft Project fullfill my needs for project management software for less than 10 people managing projects?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4399" CreationDate="2012-01-21T04:14:17.207" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is 2-part solution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Business (project/product management) has to assert (in a sensitive manner since it is already a performing team and you dont want them to take it negatively) the fact that they are happy with good enough. Then they should make the stopping point visible, something like &quot;ok guys here is where we stop...&quot; This could be timeline, test coverage, functional coverage, UAT tests pass or whatever is relevant to the project. The earlier the end point is visible in the project the better it is.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To compliment the first part and to keep the team fresh and challenged, leadership has to come up with the next to do project/task for the team and try and make it visible towards the end of the current project/task. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully this could keep the team motivated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2012-01-21T16:28:44.950" LastActivityDate="2012-01-21T16:28:44.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4378" CreationDate="2012-01-21T06:55:13.840" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;A simplest way I dealt with one similar a guy is by reviews and leading by example. The guy who initially joined a small team like mine had always had an impression that he was far superior than other team members because he worked in a big company etc., &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we did was to assign him a task and ask for his estimates. We give our estimates, but finally leave him to work with his work estimate. He would always be late and it took some time for him to realize his mistake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also we did strict peer code reviews, our code reviewers simply read code and tests line by line. And he could not but bow down and come to normal levels. .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now he is another good team member I have!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2486" LastActivityDate="2012-01-21T06:55:13.840" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4395" CreationDate="2012-01-21T08:33:34.330" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the 3 teams were all working on completely separate projects, I would be tempted to treat them as 3 separate entities and 3 separate experiments.  When you give small teams the freedom to operate independently, it frees them up to experiment and find methodologies that help make them the most successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one team makes a discovery that fires their productivity into the stratosphere, the other teams may decide to adopt it and vice-versa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in this situation, there is a very strong likelihood that the 3 teams will need to work closely together. After all, they're all building the same product. If you set the precedent that it's okay to diverge from the group and use different tools, then it may be difficult to merge the teams later on, and it may be difficult to create cross-functional teams during integration periods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this situation, if at all possible, my suggestion would be to pick a single system, and stick with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-01-21T08:33:34.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4404" CreationDate="2012-01-21T09:16:38.453" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Microsoft Project, in conjunction with Microsoft Project Server, will give you the ability to collaborate on projects. As I understand, collaboration and simultaneous access is one of your concerns. It will also fulfill the other requirements (task list, alerts, etc.). However, I'm not sure if it is the best choice from the cost perspective for an organization of your size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2915" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-01-22T02:29:29.287" LastActivityDate="2012-01-22T02:29:29.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4395" CreationDate="2012-01-21T09:22:01.583" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the above, if you break it into a few systems, there is a risk that you will lose good visibility of your product's state and progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2915" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-01-22T02:30:33.717" LastActivityDate="2012-01-22T02:30:33.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4395" CreationDate="2012-01-21T13:38:52.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Integration takes time and costs money.  It'll require effort, and money, to keep each project synced in a single tool.  If these teams will have a lot of back and forth, dependencies, and coordination, this would be money well spent.  If the team if simply off on their own and they will deliver their piece of the pie when they are finished, then I would question the cost of integration.  Intuitively to me, it seems more logical and simpler to use one tracking tool.  But we do not improve if we do not challenge the status quo.  If there is debate on the team, then a few members are seeing a benefit there that should be examined.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the first I would look at is cost.  Second would be integration and how easy it would be for me to really know the status and health of the teams and the overall project.  Would it be better for me to mistrust one tool, or three?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-01-21T13:38:52.753" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4399" CreationDate="2012-01-21T17:01:59.047" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There isn't any direct relation between ownership and overprocessing. What I believe you look for is limiting overprocessing in a way that doesn't harm ownership and not a balance between one and the other. Actually, I'd say that you just look for a way to just limit overprocessing. Period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that one thing you miss in your team is &lt;strong&gt;common understanding of your goals&lt;/strong&gt; or, which would be even worse, common goals at all. I mean, you, team members and team leader should all understand where you are heading and what is at the end. &lt;strong&gt;You should all share the same view of what is the outcome of a the project and of what quality it is. And then, what is needed to get there.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of such discussion you may end up either agreeing that pursuing perfection is something you want, but you will also be aware that it doesn't come without cost. Another outcome, and the one you expect, is that you set the bar too high and you aren't willing to pay such high price within this project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Either way everyone involved would understand what the goal is and what is needed to achieve it.&lt;/strong&gt; Bearing that in mind everyone in the team should find it easier to fine tune their activities in a way which brings you closer to the goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be even easier considering that you work with people who have the sense of ownership. As long as they, as a group, own the goal their actions will likely adjust their behavior in a proper way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of it this way: let's say that the goal is to have the first version of the app live before some date because otherwise something bad happens (your app doesn't follow law changes, a competitor gains the attention of early followers or whatever). If everyone in the team understands this, they will also understand (and see) that pursuing perfection with one of many features simply increase the risk of not making it on time. If such situation happens for the first time its impact may be ignored but delay built every time something similar happens would be hard to accept by anyone. I assume understanding this would simply change the attitude toward overprocessing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2012-01-21T17:01:59.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4399" CreationDate="2012-01-22T01:06:02.043" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is entirely in the customer's hands.  Good enough is only good enough if it meets the customer's needs/provides value to them. Turn the delivered work over to the customer. There word will settle all differences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-01-22T01:06:02.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3672" CreationDate="2012-01-22T01:25:13.213" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of online project management tools that do resource allocation across projects. The answers to other questions on &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/pm-software&quot;&gt;project management software&lt;/a&gt; from this site might be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-01-22T01:25:13.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4404" CreationDate="2012-01-22T09:51:59.293" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even for a small company, tracking a project/status would be quite crucial as you cannot keep things using some good tool, but ultimately we should take care that this doesn't become an over kill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at your scenario, I don't think you will need a comprehensive system but a simple tool  would do. I would go for &lt;a href=&quot;http://sourceforge.net/projects/openproj/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OpenProj&lt;/a&gt; which is an opensource MS-Project like tool and it is free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2486" LastActivityDate="2012-01-22T09:51:59.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4378" CreationDate="2012-01-22T22:27:58.240" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would tell him that a mistake is always the start of a genial idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2964" LastActivityDate="2012-01-22T22:27:58.240" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="566" CreationDate="2012-01-22T22:33:51.037" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My father used to say that the best holidays are changing work. I do not mean resigning, but to do a completely different activity that takes your mind out of work, an activity that you really like and fits in with your personal and family life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2964" LastEditorUserId="15972" LastEditDate="2015-05-26T10:13:32.180" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T10:13:32.180" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4338" CreationDate="2012-01-22T22:39:44.647" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make them dream, I mean share your vision for them to see the final result in their imagination. If the customer is uncertain, it is because he thinks you are not able to acheive what you are saying you want to achieve for him. &#xA;Simon Boulanger, BAA MBA Bth ACS FLMI&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2964" LastActivityDate="2012-01-22T22:39:44.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4338" CreationDate="2012-01-22T23:00:20.993" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thank you for your reference to my book &quot;Making Sense of Agile Project Management&quot;.  You're on to something very important, in my opinion.  The level of uncertainty in a project is one of the most important determinants of the project management approach (either agile, traditional, or hybrid).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example I've used in some of the talks I've given to PMI chapters is an example of building a bridge across a river...it would be ridiculous to take a very agile approach for that kind of project...&quot;let's build the first span, see how that comes out, and then we'll figure out how to finish the rest of the bridge&quot; - that doesn't make any sense at all!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mistake many agilists make is assuming that the customer doesn't have a clue of what they want and that you need to start from scratch as if there were complete uncertainty and it's futile to develop a plan. That is rarely the case - I’ve never worked with a customer where there was no expectations about what the project would cost and how long it would take to complete it.  There’s generally an expectation that you will do the best you can to develop a plan based on whatever information you have about the project and continue to refine that plan as the project progresses.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases, where the uncertainty is low, you may be able to develop a fairly accurate estimate and plan (e.g. building a bridge).  In other situations where the uncertainty is high, the plan may be very thin and sketchy and subject to a lot more adjustment as the project progresses; and of course, that needs to be mutually understood with the customer.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a model I’ve developed called “Managed Agile Development” that consists of two layers: a plan-driven “macro” layer and an agile “micro” layer…the plan-driven layer can be thick or thin depending on the level of uncertainty in the project.  It has worked great in several situations I’ve been in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to getting this to work is developing trust with your customer.  If you don't have trust and credibility with the customer, it will be very difficult to get this to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that helps...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chuck Cobb&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2966" LastActivityDate="2012-01-22T23:00:20.993" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4404" CreationDate="2012-01-23T00:07:17.063" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;MS Project also is very focused on linear project work. Even when this works, managing multiple projects is rather difficult. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've just started using a freememium product call Trello. It's a good task based system that can have multiple people assigned and easily allows for multiple task boards. Might be worth looking at. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2012-01-23T00:07:17.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4404" CreationDate="2012-01-23T00:43:59.860" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a lot of good information in the different questions under &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/pm-software&quot;&gt;the tag for pm-software&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2012-01-23T00:43:59.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4378" CreationDate="2012-01-23T01:00:29.333" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't try to change him, change the team. I think Muthu has a good start of an approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Management principles have shown that if you focus on your top performers, over your bottom performers, you bring the whole team up. This can work even when you are part of the team. Focus on the relations with the other team members and the whole team will improve. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work on your relations with the other team mates, work on clear communications, agree on clear acceptance criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also do some thing to work on the problem team member. Peer feedback, which focuses on behaviors (what you say, how you say it, your body language, your work product), is the best way to raise an issue. When he denies it, then you just say &quot;Okay&quot; and walk away. He knows, you know, nothing else needs to be said. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also turn a weakness into an asset. I've seen a lot of success from teams that took their crumudgeon and turned him into an elder statesman. &quot;You know this stuff, can you help the newer guys understand it better?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't do anything with the problem team mate until you have the rest of the team working well together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2012-01-23T01:00:29.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4422" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4423" CreationDate="2012-01-23T07:03:00.413" Score="4" ViewCount="288" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an IT student and have been working on team-based projects for several years. I have read some papers about CMMI and SCRUM, and this is really interesting to me and I would like to know what kind of jobs involve improving processes inside an organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What kind of studies can lead someone towards these jobs? Management? What's the idea? Management as a topic to be studied? And what other topics could be studied to lead to a job using such methodologies and frameworks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2968" LastEditorUserId="302" LastEditDate="2012-01-23T23:48:36.210" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T17:10:54.227" Title="CMMI and SCRUM related jobs" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;cmmi&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4422" CreationDate="2012-01-23T14:55:12.673" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;CMMI, SCRUM and other methodologies or standards are generally implemented or touched be by the following departments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Compliance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CIO/CTO's Office&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PMO&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Audit&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PM&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of organizations, companies that deal with the Federal Government, operate in a regulated environment or are in the supply chain of large multinationals tend to be most involved with setting and maintaining methodologies/standards.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-01-23T14:55:12.673" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4422" CreationDate="2012-01-23T15:13:47.220" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the move to standards and methodologies comes from the top, sometimes from the bottom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Selecting the standard or methodology to be used by a company may be made prior to your hiring, therefore you will not have much of an opportunity to decide which one they will use. In order to become certified to these standards, a company must invest time and money to be audited. This reduces the opportunity to switch standards once the process has been completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to what positions are involved in improving processes inside an organization, it could be any job. The goal is to have the processes of the organization formalized. This can only be done by the people in those positions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to be involved, you will have to get hired by a company that has this as a part of their culture. Another approach is to gain experience, and then become a process improvement consultant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2947" LastActivityDate="2012-01-23T15:13:47.220" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4425" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-23T16:09:18.860" Score="53" ViewCount="11430" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an employee who was put under my supervision this year after being a supervisor of another team for a trial period that failed.In addition he is the longest serving employee at the unit. He did a semi-good job this year, completing a number of complex tasks and people seem to get along really well with him and he is always willing to help. However, I do a simple self eval (as part of a official yearly eval to HR) that asks over the last year what projects did you like, what goals did you accomplish, and what did you learn. He put down 3 small projects, he has accomplished no goals, he did not learn anything, and he failed to finish many of the larger projects he was on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wasn't going to be to negative on him in my official eval, but to me it is like he is asking to be fired. I've never had anyone rate themselves so negatively. The rest of my team were positive in their self-evals, and I'm open to the idea that maybe I'm managing this guy the wrong way. He never asks for help. He does his best to help everyone.  Now it seems unavoidable to come down on him and start being more hands on. How can this be handled without demoralizing the employee even more and without losing a valuable team member that everyone loves?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2970" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T12:58:40.583" Title="Employee gave themselves very negative self-evaluation - how to handle the situation?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;" AnswerCount="20" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4268" CreationDate="2012-01-23T16:44:54.200" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The are a few kinds of contributions e.g:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Analysis of problems and translation to UX, requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The production of design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The production of working code and unit tests&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Creation of integration and system tests&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pairing up with another developer on his/her machine&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Guiding another developer or reviewing others' products&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Debugging bugs and fixing in any code (by any author)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, any developer should be able to get his hands dirty in any code, to get the work done - so &lt;b&gt;measuring by metrics on area of code is wrong&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Measuring by lines of code is completely idiotic (sorry to have be the one to tell you this). &lt;a href=&quot;http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2007-11-27/&quot;&gt;See example here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;b&gt;The quality of the code matters - not the quantity&lt;/b&gt;. In fact shorter is often better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Measuring by number checked-in components is wrong&lt;/b&gt; - doesn't account with non-coding work and pair programming (which happens all the time, even if not officially). Also this ignores quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;The ultimate bottom line is team work, not the work of individuals.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The time spent guiding others is often more important than the time spent working alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you reward individual performance you will be ruining the team work and making your projects fail in the long run. (See &lt;a href=&quot;http://projectmgr.net/blog/?p=103&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What &lt;b&gt;you should measure&lt;/b&gt; is things like (not a full list and not in any specific order):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research and Innovations - self learning, solving (design or code) problems using unique thinking, introducing others to new technologies and methods&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;System vision (seeing bigger picture beyond single tasks)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quality of design (maintainability)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quality of code (readability, test coverage)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Completion of personal commitments on time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Responsibility - does the developer make sure outputs are usable and depended tasks aren't stuck and help others complete depended tasks when necessary&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Guidance - does developer help others when possible if they need help or to maintain quality of teams outputs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adaptability - willingness to consider changes and new ideas&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does developer take on tasks upon himself beyond his personal responsibilities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communication - does developer communicate well with team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above are important factors in deciding seniority, accomplishments, rewards and etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team leaders should be chosen by &lt;b&gt;team leading skills&lt;/b&gt;, not by coding skills. E.g:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Analysis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;System vision&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Guidance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;People skills&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ability to listen to anyone&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ability to drive others, whether subordinates, bosses or neither&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1094" LastActivityDate="2012-01-23T16:44:54.200" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4422" CreationDate="2012-01-23T17:25:34.273" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I would like to know what kind of jobs involve improving processes inside an organization.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On IT, almost (to don't say all) roles are related at some level to methodologies. Ideally, all roles would be 100% aware of what are the available methodologies, but that's another story...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What other topics could be studied to lead to a job using such methodologies / frameworks?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being interested to methodologies / frameworks will always add value on your career. I don't believe, however, that there's a silver bullet like &lt;em&gt;get used to Agile and you'll rock&lt;/em&gt;. So, I believe that the best way to get in touch with methodologies is what you're already doing, i.e., visiting forums like PMSE :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you browse through questions, you'll see a lot of very good discussions about n methodologies / frameworks. Do not bypass a specific question just because you're not aware of that topic. Instead, read it carefully and you'll be already studying!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(A question I'd add myself) Who's supposed to bring methodologies to the table?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you're about to join a company with already well defined methodologies, you'll hit the ground running. On such cases, the methodology will come from Mark's (very well stated!) path;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you're joining a company that's starting and is still living in a fuzzy environment, you'll be able to help your project suggesting and introducing best practices. Here, you'll have the opportunity to be the one adding value to the team / project  company.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-01-23T17:25:34.273" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4425" CreationDate="2012-01-23T17:31:26.793" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before he was your employee he failed at being a supervisor. It is possible that this negative view started in his previous position. He may be asking &quot;what role do I have in the organization?&quot; If you value his input to the rest of the team, you might look at formalizing that mentoring so that it can be seen as a goal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do assume that his goals were rewritten after his last transfer. This is important to do not just on an annual basis. As the needs of the organization change, so should the goals of the employee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start the conversation with: I should have communicated your role better, and I should have done more to strengthen your view of your importance...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2947" LastActivityDate="2012-01-23T17:31:26.793" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4425" CreationDate="2012-01-23T17:48:32.603" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like they are not happy with their current position. Have management (whoever moved him under your supervision) tell him that even though he is now under your supervision that he is still very valuable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should communicate to management that he is valuable. Find out his longer term goals and see if you can arrange a roadmap for him with management on how he can meet his longer term goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-01-23T17:48:32.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4425" CreationDate="2012-01-23T17:58:47.357" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is he keeping track of his achievements on a regular basis? If an evaluation spans an entire year (or even half a year), I know that I find it difficult to remember everything that I have have accomplished. This is especially true if the evaluation is happening in a more difficult period, when the project might not be going to well. Keeping track of everything - good or bad - on a more frequent basis (weekly or biweekly) than evaluation time is probably a good idea. My supervisor also keeps these weekly updates and uses them during evaluation time as well, since they highlight major accomplishments and difficulties over the past year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, consider using &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/360-degree_feedback&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;360-degree feedback&lt;/a&gt;. This should help you weed through biases of individuals, including the employee himself, you, or an individual team member. Having feedback from a range of individuals who work with this person should provide a much more comprehensive view of his abilities, skills, and weaknesses. You do have to weigh the feedback appropriately based on the interactions with the person doing the feedback and the person being assessed, but it should provide weight against his negative contributions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you are doing your evaluations of him, be honest. If you think he's a good employee, add those comments during the evaluation. Don't base your evaluation on his evaluation or the evaluation of any other individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I would recommend talking to him. Try to figure out what the problem is and correct it. Although I think the first three options would improve things a great deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2012-01-23T17:58:47.357" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4344" CreationDate="2012-01-23T18:03:23.903" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In reality agile enables management to have more control not less control although as the report documents this is not necessarily how management feel. You can change these management feelings but it does take time. I suggest the following&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the review sessions to get management engaged in the process and really show that the team is making progress on the high value features. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use prioritisation by business value to demonstrate that the team are working on the highest value tasks first, this will start to show that the team understands that the project is about delivering value rather than ticking off requirements. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Actively seek out management feedback on the deliverables so far and add their suggestions to the backlog of things to implement - try to deliver some of these in the next iteration to demonstrate that they have input into the process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Produce documentation as you go along, user documentation, technical specs, UI mockups and &lt;strong&gt;show&lt;/strong&gt; that these are being produced. This will remove the 'lack of documentation' concern and help to build management buy-in to the process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use burn charts to show predicted release dates based on actual data, make these really visible and display current progress against these. Management will really like the predictability and forcastability (not sure that is a word) of the timelines. The burn chart based forecasting of dates is a great way to gain management trust in the process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately it is not the self organising nature of agile teams that worries management it is the apparent lack of forward planning. You need to use the tools in your agile kit to show that you have a clear plan for the future, albeit based on having a fixed cost/time rather than fixed scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the self-organising team concept is really a problem, you could try to temper that down and have the agile project manager (be that a scrum master, product owner, domain expert, whowever) take a slightly more lead role in helping the team organise. Looking at an agile process more like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dsdm.org/dsdm-atern&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DSDM Atern&lt;/a&gt;  may also help if you have a real problem, as that provides a more structured project management role onto an agile process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Changing how people &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; is always a long and painful process so this will take time but nothing works better than being able to demonstrate successful delivery of a project that solves a business need on-time and on-budget. So above all else, make sure your project delivers. If you nail that even the most worried manager will become a convert.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="788" LastActivityDate="2012-01-23T18:03:23.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4422" CreationDate="2012-01-23T18:05:32.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I would like to know what kind of jobs involve improving processes&#xA;  inside an organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some organizations, especially those in industries that rely heavily on process and quality certifications, there will be process engineers and engineering process groups. From my own experiences in the defense industry, nearly every defense contractor has people who specialize in engineering process, as well as engineers from various disciplines that support ongoing process improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What kind of studies can lead someone towards these jobs? Management?&#xA;  what's the idea? Management as a topic to be studied? And what other&#xA;  topics could be studied to lead to a job using such methodologies /&#xA;  frameworks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I studied software engineering, emphasizing the engineering process and quality courses. I also minored in business management. Within the first 6 months of my first post-college job, I was already working on the engineering process group within my organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some kind of business or engineering management background is probably useful, since many process improvement opportunities are a balance between maintaining or achieving a certification and the needs of the business. However, engineering process groups might not be just process specialists, but also contain those knowledgable in the business and engineering disciplines of the company, who serve to ensure that the processes in place work within the context of ongoing projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2012-01-23T18:05:32.760" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4425" CreationDate="2012-01-23T18:18:27.277" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When talking about evaluations, there are always two sides: &lt;strong&gt;the optimistic and the pessimistic&lt;/strong&gt; / realistic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having this in mind, the first question to be clarified is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has he accomplished any goals? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has he learned anything?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has he successfully finished any projects he was on?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the answers of these questions, you can open an honest communication channel with him. Sometimes, people cannot see the bright side of things... and even if they have a glance of it, it's obfuscated by all problems happened during the period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, he might be being over critic with his own performance, expecting you to present him his qualities that he wasn't able to see during the period. I tend to prefer to have around over-critic persons rather than what I call &lt;em&gt;Disneyworld-mind&lt;/em&gt; programmers (who really seems to live in Disney land, thinking that a couple of codes would deserve a promotion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, it's hard to believe that he &lt;strong&gt;failed&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;didn't learn a thing&lt;/strong&gt;. These concepts are &lt;strong&gt;opposites&lt;/strong&gt; and can't exist at the same time... if he failed, he learned a lesson. Maybe, he needs to be introduced to concepts like 'lessons learned'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my point of view, is also important to highlight that if someone performed poorly during the period, &lt;strong&gt;part of the problem falls into his coach&lt;/strong&gt;, who didn't action in a timely manner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bottomline:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a communication gap between you both. Sit down with him and align your expectations for the next period, letting clear his highlights, identifying his flaws and making a plan to track them for the next period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-01-23T18:18:27.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4425" CreationDate="2012-01-23T18:20:22.227" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you think he did a pretty good job this year regardless of what he said in his self evaluation, so you need to tell him that. Regardless of what he has written, if you believe he has achieved things this year worthy of mention you need to mention them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be that he just could not really be bothered to spend the time looking back over an entire year to think of achievements. Maybe he doesn't believe that the appraisal process has any value - he has been at the company for a long time so maybe in his experience it makes no difference what he writes down in his self assessment. Is the self assessment a new thing? Was it clear what you were expecting? Does what he writes make any real difference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He may just be a bit bored in his current role. If he has been there a long time he can probably do what he needs to without too much effort so maybe he needs another challenge. That is clearly not a supervisor role (not everyone makes a good line manager!) but maybe a technical lead role (I presume he is a technical person). Maybe he would be a good line manager but needs more mentoring so he has the right experience before trying a supervisor role again?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately you need to speak to him to find out what he wants to do and whether he is happy. There is no reason to change your appraisal of him negatively because he has been negative in his self appraisal. In fact you should probably go the other way (at least in the face to face meeting part).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may also be a catalyst to meet with him (and the rest of your team) more frequently one on one. A regular one on one meeting would enable you to find out more about what excites him and how to best manage him. It also gives a great opportunity to give him regular feedback on his work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh and no one really asked to be fired they generally just quit so I doubt that is the reason for the negative self appraisal :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="788" LastActivityDate="2012-01-23T18:20:22.227" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4283" CreationDate="2012-01-23T18:48:37.577" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want the resource to spend 40% of their 8 hour day on a task you need to set their % allocation to 40% not 100%. Setting it to 100% tells Project that you want them to spend 100% of their day on that task. The % allocation value tells Project how much of their work day they can spend on the task. This relates to the resource max allocation in that if you manually allocate a resource at 100% to a task but their max allocation is set to 50% in the resource sheet they will always appear over allocated. The max allocation is how much of their day they are available for the project (i.e. the rest of the work day is taken up with some other non-project work).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want the same resource to work on 2 tasks on the same day then you will need to set this up differently. In this case set your resource max availability to 100% which allows Project to schedule them for the entire day. Then for each task set their allocation to 40%. This seems to work ok in 2010 but in older versions of Project, it really struggled with this and the resource always appeared over allocated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think you need to do as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EITHER&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set the max allocation to 40% in the resource sheet&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manually set the work column to the amount of effort needed to complete the task&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assign the resource to a task at the default 40%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project will auto set the duration to (work * 40%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;OR&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set the max allocation to 100% in the resource sheet&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manually set the work column to the amount of effort needed to complete the task&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assign the resource to a task and manually change the allocation from the default 100% to 40%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project will auto set the duration to (work * 40%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also make sure that your tasks are Auto Scheduled rather than Manually Scheduled otherwise none of this will work! The Task Mode column shows this (by default it is the 2nd column in the Gantt View).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="788" LastActivityDate="2012-01-23T18:48:37.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4283" CreationDate="2012-01-23T19:11:13.453" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on your write-up, you need to set the task up as fixed units, which will then allow the schedule to commit those resource up to the maximum you indicate in the resource pool.  Then manually plug work hours and the duration should adjust for you.  The way you had it, it still calculated duration based on the eight hours and &quot;over allocated&quot; your resources based on the resource pool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-01-23T19:11:13.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4425" CreationDate="2012-01-23T19:18:11.120" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Who set goals with this employee for the year?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How many projects he was assigned to and did not complete were due to a change in management focus?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you meet with him weekly to keep up on how things are going with him, and to update progress on goals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How many of his assignments are given to him because he's the one who has always done that kind of work?  And filling his time so he has none available to do other things?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you considered that your other employees are inflating their self-evaluations, and this one is being absolutely as candid as he can?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to answer those questions here, but think about them in relation to any additional data you have about his behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case you can't tell, I've been in his shoes, at least from what you've described.  I got over it via management changes two levels above me.  Once the incompetent Manager Once Removed was released and my team distributed, it took a year to regain some confidence.  And then I got a team again, and we've been highly productive since, without the jerking around from above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend Manager Tools (http://www.manager-tools.com) as a great source to help you connect with him better.  Find the podcasts on One On Ones in the &quot;basics&quot; feed, and start there.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1490" LastActivityDate="2012-01-23T19:18:11.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4425" CreationDate="2012-01-23T19:20:36.443" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;He is communicating a message to you that has nothing to do with the self appraisal or what he thinks of himself.  You asked him to fill out a form, and he returned it to you with three small, inconsequential items and blanks everywhere else.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/4429/2600&quot;&gt;Mark&lt;/a&gt; hit it: he's not happy about something and he is letting you know.  It could be as simple as he is not happy in his current role or something more cancerous like your appraisal of him is immaterial and he is barely paying attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I'd advise not to approach it like, 'you don't think you accomplished anything last year?'  Instead, open up a dialogue and find out what is on his mind, bigger picture.  This would be about you asking questions and letting him answer, with most of the talking coming from him.  How are your listening skills?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T13:41:03.370" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4425" CreationDate="2012-01-23T19:47:06.860" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps he is unaware of his worth and contributions or thinks that they are not-worth mentioning. Or maybe he is judging himself negatively due to reasons he could not control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try letting your employees know when they are doing a good job instead of waiting for reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe something was in his way in the failed project. Let him know that he should tell you if and when something is preventing him from completing an assignment and do not count assignments that got were not completed due to reasons that the reviewed employee can not affect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. other tasks on which that task was dependant not being completed on time or in a satisfactory way, bureaucracy, problem with tools, insufficient definitions of requirements, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, make sure you ask &quot;what do you think needs changing&quot; in the periodic reviews - not everyone brings up issues if not asked to and the answer to this question can let you know if something is preventing your employees from working efficiently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Include non-personal tasks in the review - helping others is just as important. See my answer &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/4426/1094&quot;&gt;here for details on this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, periodic reviews enable both employees and organizations the chance to reflect and self improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1094" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-01-23T19:47:06.860" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4440" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4458" CreationDate="2012-01-23T20:43:01.900" Score="18" ViewCount="25450" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to use agile methods for large IT infrastructure projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am working on a large project where the development team uses agile methods, while the infrastructure (which is where I am involved) is being established using waterfall methods. We recently debated whether agile could be used throughout the project, but failed to reach a conclusion. If anyone has practical experience, what were the pros and cons of the approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastEditorUserId="301" LastEditDate="2012-01-26T20:48:15.260" LastActivityDate="2019-02-25T14:11:57.530" Title="Can (and should) Agile be used for Infrastructure projects?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;infrastructure&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4425" CreationDate="2012-01-24T00:02:51.267" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot give any other answer than talk to him, but as a manager you got yourself to a minefield. &lt;strong&gt;If I were you I won't make a move until I know more about the circumstances&lt;/strong&gt;. Talking to other colleagues, check earlier reports everything (but don't spy on him, because it is not ethical :-)).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I read your question I pictured your colleague as a man who is sad at the moment. Since there were no other prior indicators of a bad performance so it can happen that you had the evaluation discussion simply at the wrong time. Your task as his supervisor is to find out whether it is really sadness or he is desperate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you approach him and ask more questions he will be more sad, may stay in the organisation but his performance will drop. On the other hand, a desperate co-worker might leave your organisation which is also a disaster. If you just leave him alone will bug you all the day/week/month/year. &lt;strong&gt;You cannot really solve the situation without proper preparation.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I suggest to give him a week or two, see how he behaves and performs, offer him a beer after work, get to know him better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had a colleague like him a while back. He did his job, but his evaluation showed a low self-esteem. There was nothing wrong with him, it was his nature, and he just wanted to do his job, and he was never satisfied with his work; his own bar was set too high. His former managers tried to &lt;em&gt;motivate&lt;/em&gt; him with every possible technique one could find in management books and none of them worked. It took some time till someone had a hunch about his character - nobody will come by and tell you that he has low self-esteem -, and we started to work with him accordingly; we simply let him do his job which he liked. No meetings, no evaluations nothing. Just work. And it worked...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T00:02:51.267" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4425" CreationDate="2012-01-24T00:03:47.573" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question that comes to my mind is in regards to the age of this person. If he's been there a long time as you say, then he's likely a Gen-Xer instead of a Gen-Yer.  Generation X people tend to like to be left alone and may view self evaluation type things as something someone might do in a therapy session or something one might do in high school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is indeed his view, it doesn't necessarily make him a bad employee, he probably believes that his record should speak for itself and there is no need to waste his time on something that is really trivial. (Okay, it's not trivial for you, but in the big picture, it's not something that affects the outcome of his work or how happy the customers are with the products or services he works on.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know older people who are like this, and they have very cynical attitudes when it comes to this type of management. In summary, you can't manage GenX-ers the same way you manage Gen-Yers, and I believe this is true of any generation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like others said, the best way to approach this is to talk to him, give him the room to be frank, and don't judge him if he opens up and tells you it's a waste of his time. Everyone brings value to the organization in some manner, and it sounds like he's proven himself enough to where he's outgrown the need to fill out self-evaluation forms. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T00:03:47.573" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4440" CreationDate="2012-01-24T04:26:43.573" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The big difference between software projects and infrastructure is lead time. For example if you need to build a new datacenter it might take years. Even something as simple as ordering disk drives right now may be long lead because of the floods in Thailand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile is great, and if you think about it, that is what using cloud servers is all about. For a firm that operates primarily on hosted cloud servers, then I see no reason why agile methods would not work. On the other hand if you keep your infrastructure in house then you need to insure that you do longer term planning to accommodate lead times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2770" LastEditorUserId="2770" LastEditDate="2012-01-24T12:16:20.307" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T12:16:20.307" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4444" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4457" CreationDate="2012-01-24T10:11:48.857" Score="8" ViewCount="543" Body="&lt;p&gt;In almost every company I've been to, pay is decided by a yearly review using feedback garnered from colleagues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has a lot of negatives associated with it. People save feedback until the year end, instead of giving it regularly. They end up only asking friends for feedback to get &quot;good marks&quot;. The review itself inevitably ends up focusing on people's weaknesses instead of their strengths. There's a lot of data to show that tying reviews and feedback to pay is a really, really bad idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What alternatives exist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I'm really looking for alternatives to reviews, not better ways to do performance reviews or better ways to tie pay to it. I pretty much share &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.estherderby.com/tag/annual-reviews&quot;&gt;Esther Derby's feelings about formal review processes&lt;/a&gt;, and am looking for different ways to manage pay scales. It's possible to create environments in which feedback is given freely and informally. In that situation, a review process is irrelevant and harmful... except that I don't then know what to do about the pay. This is why I'm asking. I would prefer even to have pay not tied to individual performance &lt;em&gt;at all&lt;/em&gt;. What alternatives out there exist? Has anyone tried anything different?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For reference, Joel Spolsky's article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000070.html&quot;&gt;&quot;Incentive Pay considered Harmful&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, in which he quotes HBR:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... at least two dozen studies over the last three decades have&#xA;  conclusively shown that people who expect to receive a reward for&#xA;  completing a task or for doing that task successfully simply do not&#xA;  perform as well as those who expect no reward at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/hbsp/prod_detail.asp?93506&quot;&gt;[HBR Sept/Oct 93]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2012-01-24T12:08:59.617" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T03:33:17.710" Title="What are alternative methods of deciding how much employees get paid?" Tags="&lt;feedback&gt;&lt;pay&gt;&lt;reviews&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4425" CreationDate="2012-01-24T10:35:41.173" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have no experience in project management whatsoever but my first thought was symmetry:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine before he was a supervisor he never &lt;em&gt;truly&lt;/em&gt; tried to envision what a supervisor exactly did, he just did whatever he had to do as someone below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then he became a supervisor. Immediately or only after a while things went wrong (and typically different people have different ideas of what exactly went wrong, so assume he knows more details of whatever went wrong back then than you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now let me freestyle:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine there was one (or less probable but certainly possible more than one) person in the team he supervised, and with whom there were problems (communication, execution, &lt;em&gt;whatever&lt;/em&gt;) &lt;em&gt;and that he realized there was a problem&lt;/em&gt;. Back when &lt;em&gt;he&lt;/em&gt; took the self assessments he was probably hoping to possibly find out more (just like you do now). Instead, he got a similar result you now &lt;em&gt;enjoy&lt;/em&gt;. Time passed and things got screwed up as he failed to find out the &quot;but why?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He is put out of the supervising position, and probably agrees rightly so: He knew and knows that there was a problem and did not find the way to solve it. However, ever since he was appointed supervisor (and now still), he realized his previous disinterest in what a supervisor really does was a bit closed minded. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He is actually very assertive and willing to learn. He is not angry, just curious &lt;em&gt;how a good supervisor would handle it&lt;/em&gt;. Hence, he is complimenting you (he thinks youre a good supervisor else he would not &lt;em&gt;consult you in vivo&lt;/em&gt;). By giving you the same treat (think like the movie &quot;The Ring&quot;) he hopes to learn from his mentor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2989" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-01-25T03:17:30.903" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T03:17:30.903" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4444" CreationDate="2012-01-24T11:46:46.037" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your draft implies that employees' pay is determined solely based on colleague feedback.  But I would guess you meant that is one of several different inputs or information that is used to determine an employee's status.  Is that right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you say reviews and feedback to pay is a bad idea, are you referencing the notion that pay has been shown NOT to be tied to motivation and performance?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conduct formal and informal reviews at a greater frequency.  We conduct a document review 1) after a phase of a project is complete, 2) at the end of a project or the end of the employee's role on a project, 3) mid-year, and 4) end of year.  An employee could receive at least two but up to many of these reviews in a given year.  These assessments are completed by the employee's project boss and is delivered to the employee's organization boss and HR file.  They are all standard reviews with a five-level, ordinal scale across defined dimensions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also conduct formal mid-year and end-of-year face-to-face reviews conducted with the employee's organization boss.  These are documented, as well, using the same scale and dimensions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I agree that money does not motivate performance, I think a program tied to the previous year's performance is appropriate.  We have two yearly pay increase programs, one tied to the market, the other tied to performance.  So the employee's pay is compared to where they fall in the pay range for his rank and where the entire range falls within industry.  He would receive a pay adjustment so that he approaches a particular percentile of the range (currently, we push to the median).  Then, he would receive some percentage tied to his yearly score based on performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Far from perfect and we certainly have our issues, but maybe there's something here you can capture and try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T11:46:46.037" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4444" CreationDate="2012-01-24T11:55:53.183" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some methods to get the feedback from the people and to pass the feedback to individuals. Try to implement a system to evaluate co-workers. The methods I use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.custominsight.com/360-degree-feedback/360-delivering-feedback.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;360 degree evaluation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ranking evaluation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In those methods, the co-workers evaluate each other, but &lt;strong&gt;it is the PM who passes the feedback to everyone individually&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The very important thing is that the team understand the evaluation process the same way and it is fair. Assuming I have the scale: 1 (junior) to 5 (expert), I explained it this way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;You can all mark your co-workers as experts, so you all get good money, but I will treat you as experts and I will expect you to solve difficult problems. So, if you are not experts, we'll have a problem&quot;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;You can all mark your co-workers as juniors, so I won't have much expectations from you, but your salary will not be as good as you would wanted it to be.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the 360 degree method, the team focus on both: good and bad marks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2915" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T11:55:53.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4404" CreationDate="2012-01-24T12:49:04.373" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another potential option would be to use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jira&lt;/a&gt; to track this work. It is not really a traditional project management tool, instead it is focussed more for the people doing to work to keep track of it and log time against tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has a bit of a learning curve to get the most from it but I think it would meet all the requirements you have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can get it as a on premise or cloud solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best thing with Jira is that it puts the focus on the people doing the work to create whatever sub-tasks they feel are necessary rather than with Project where it pushes the PM to create the work breakdown and assign out the tasks. Once you have your team comfortable with Jira it is a great tool to distribute the overview to senior management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="788" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T12:49:04.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4444" CreationDate="2012-01-24T13:19:58.190" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Creating an environment where&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;feedback is given freely and informally&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;does not preclude annual appraisals. In fact they are still a really important mechanism for reviewing the entire year. Continual feedback is great, and I am a proponent of it, but it is very transient. That is, you tend to provide small amounts of feedback on minor points all year around (like the adjustments you make on the steering wheel as you drive down a straight road). Having the annual review is a great way to look back over the entire year and see what it was like as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should be careful about not linking pay to performance at all, because that would mean someone who worked above and beyond all year gets no more reward than someone who just turned up. I guess this could work if everyone got a standard % salary increase and the &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; people got a separate bonus award. But then you are back to the original question - how do you decide who gets a bonus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, as a manager, you instinctively know who in your team are doing a really good job and who are poor. The challenge is ranking the people in the middle. You could do the pay reviews instinctively but this is very opaque to the team and you run a risk of rating people you like higher than they should be, so you need to be more quantitative about it, or maybe make the whole process overtly random, for e.g. the wheel of fortune pay review process:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Get the entire company in the same place, order pizza, then bring out a wheel of fortune with various % increases on it (make sure there is one big number). Each employee takes turn to spin the wheel and whatever number is lands on is their pay review for the year. This could be quite expensive for the company I guess but if you aren't linking pay reviews to performance at least it makes it clear what the process is and everyone has a laugh.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think linking pay reviews to performance is better though :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="788" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T13:19:58.190" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4444" CreationDate="2012-01-24T15:09:31.740" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems like you are reviewing the wrong things in the wrong way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reviews should be about self and manager evaluation and not about popularity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reviews should be periodic but should not replace feedback whenever it is relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reviews should primarily be used for improving the organization's processes and structure and for employee self-improvement and carrier-paths, bonuses and advancement should be a side effect and not the main reason for reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/4268/measuring-team-members-performance/4426#4426&quot;&gt;this answer and comments&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Besides reviews&lt;/strong&gt;, you should &lt;strong&gt;also introduce periodic salary increases&lt;/strong&gt; to match salaries to market value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1094" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T15:09:31.740" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4090" CreationDate="2012-01-24T18:03:56.833" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You know I am from a different culture with a different perspective. The complexity of an answer is not always the best way to share experience and advices. I have an MBA from Laval University in Quebec City. My professors, at my first semester, told us that, at that level, it was more important to &quot;shape our way of thinking&quot; than only get some technical habilities. They pushed me and my fellow students to open our mind to multiple management theories and how to apply them any kind of situations. With time, you integrate a new way of perciving the &quot;business reality&quot;. You have like a 5th sense on how to make a managerial diagnostic and find new creative solutions. It becomes, in a way, part of you. But that, of course, depends on the implication you are willing to have in your studies and how dedicated you are. If you have the time and the money to do it, I would register right away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2964" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T18:03:56.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4452" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4455" CreationDate="2012-01-24T18:40:58.877" Score="5" ViewCount="754" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently part of a project team evaluating the products of a vendor to develop an integrated solution to several of our legacy systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not the project manager on this particular project, but the designated project manager and I have a very good professional relationship, and I know that she values my feedback on project management issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our main problem is the volunteer we are working with.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our parent organization is a non-profit, membership-based organization with a small core of full-time and temporary staff.  However, it is common for these staff members to delegate decisions or even entire projects to volunteers from within the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have been told by the parent organization staff member (let's call him Bill) who brought this volunteer (we'll call him Mike) on board that he (Bill) &quot;doesn't understand the technical details&quot;, so Mike was brought on to &quot;tell him if our plan makes sense&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the volunteer sees things very differently.  He has made it very clear that he feels he is the project manager, and attempts to take charge of every meeting, regardless of whether it is an internal meeting or one with our vendor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have repeatedly asked Bill to speak with Mike and clarify his role, as Bill consistently tells us that Mike's role is simply to act as a SME.  Each time Bill says he'll talk with Mike, but after every conversation where this has supposedly been &quot;fixed&quot;, Mike demonstrates the exact same type of behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it might seem easier to simply let Mike lead, it has become very clear that doing so would be a disaster.  His background is from a relatively small IT environment (albeit in a leadership role), but his project management skills are non-existent.  He has yet to fulfill his role as SME, and has literally wasted months of project time by providing irrelevant documents, attempting to radically redefine the scope of the project, and generally causing problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have already told my management team that I do not believe the project can succeed until the problem with Mike is fixed.  Both my supervisor and the project manager agree with that statement and openly support it.  However, due to the politics it seems like we have to proceed anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any strategies that can minimize the damage that Mike will do, while acknowledging the political necessity of not insulting him?  I keep holding out hopes that he'll be pulled from the project, but it seems unlikely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2277" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-02-08T01:14:05.260" LastActivityDate="2012-02-08T01:14:05.260" Title="How do you minimize the impact of a politically necessary &quot;poisonous&quot; team member?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4452" CreationDate="2012-01-24T19:15:02.007" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The project manager needs to have an open and frank conversation with Mike. You will need to set down clearly what expectations are, what he should focus his efforts on, and where he will be able to make the most meaningful contribution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally do this informally and try to spin the conversation so that he isn't being blamed for not understanding his role, for example by starting by saying &quot;Mike, I may not have clearly defined team roles as well as I should have....&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember to be considerate about his perspective. If he has experience limited to a small company he probably just doesn't know what he doesn't know. It can be hard enough re-educating someone who has bad habits, let alone one who hasn't had a good role model in the past. The vast majority of people are rationale and reasonable. Mike almost certainly has a good reason for why he is doing what he is doing. Once you establish that you can work with him rather than against him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T19:15:02.007" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4452" CreationDate="2012-01-24T19:25:59.767" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel your pain.  Politics with volunteers can be very tough because oftentimes there is an unknown, hidden element at play that you may or may not be aware of. For example, perhaps &quot;Mike&quot; is somehow affiliated with a large donor to your non-profit and your management is simply allowing him to volunteer as a favor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since he's a volunteer, and since your boss has affirmed repeatedly that &quot;Mike&quot;, is just the subject matter expert, my suggestion would be to use him as the subject matter expert, but stand firm in any decisions you make and be very clear when you disagree.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming you have a project manager on the project.  If you and &quot;Mike&quot; do disagree on something and cannot come to an agreement, casually suggest pushing it back to the project manager and ask him/her to make the decision. Just be sure to do it professionally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T19:25:59.767" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4452" CreationDate="2012-01-24T19:34:21.173" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mike is doing exactly what Bill asked, as evidenced by, &quot;tell him if our plan makes sense,&quot; and reinforced by several role confirming, fixing conversations that have changed nothing in Mike's behavior.  In fact, with the order of &quot;tell me if their plan makes sense&quot; as his mission, Bill has given Mike some accountability of project success and, with it, authority.  Therefore, you can expect no change from Mike's behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a common symptom of role ambiguity; or role sharing; or unclear, blurry scope lines between roles.  There is only one fix:  remove one of the roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I guess the PM's alternatives are 1) to do nothing and continue plugging along with the project's success and her reputation at severe risk or 2) to escalate in a very formal way--face-to-face meeting with all required principles, documented--with the outcome of role clarity, e.g., he or she goes away, as a desired result.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternative #1 is not really an alternative with a good ending so I think escalation is your best bet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T19:34:21.173" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4452" CreationDate="2012-01-24T19:52:47.873" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lyssa Adkins provides advice to agile coaches on how to handle conflict in a team. the short form is, it's not the agile coaches job. This extends further, it's not the manager's job, it's not the project manager's job. It's the teams job to resolve. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a team member comes to an agile coach with a complaint (she uses really bad body odor as a great example), then you ask them a series of questions. &#xA;1- Have you shared your concerns an feelings about this with &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;? &#xA;2- &lt;strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;__&lt;/strong&gt; should know of your concern. Would it help if I go with you? 3- May I tell &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;_&lt;/em&gt;__&lt;em&gt;_&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; that you have these concerns? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point here is the only people who can resolve the issue with &quot;Mike&quot; is you and the project manager (who in this case is part of the team as well as the PM). You can talk to &quot;Bill&quot; all you want, but that's going to filter any message through him and we've seen that doesn't work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you sat down with &quot;Mike&quot; and discussed roles and objectives? The team needs to make sure they are all on the same page (We are building a Ford Pickup truck. &quot;Wait, I thought we were building a Chevy SUV?&quot;) and need to understand clearly what everyone is doing (&quot;I thought you were picking William Shatner up from the airport?&quot; &quot;Me, I thought you were.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good project manager or coach can facilitate these conversations but in the end, only the team can solve them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Buy Mike a cup of coffee and have a chat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T19:52:47.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4444" CreationDate="2012-01-24T19:58:29.877" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't give you a solution that eliminates reviews, sorry. What I can offer is something one of my Agile mentors helped a large company put in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem they had was that the company had chosen to go agile, but this didn't mesh with the review process. At the end of the year, everyone was being called out on what they did individually. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They did two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overhauled the Individual Goals Setting process - They brought the manager, employee relationship back a few decades to a time when managers had a heavy focus on how to improve their directs. Goals are ways for the direct to improve their career path. This made up 50% of an employees review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instituted a team level review - This focused on the team and only that team. This wasn't a &quot;team A did 50 more stories than team A, as that doesn't work.&quot; They created a value based system using the Agile Values and Principles and entire teams were rated against this. This made up the other 50%. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are in their first cycle of this new model, and everything is pointing to a very positive change in how things are working. The teams don't have to compete with team mates anymore and the team productivity has shot up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-01-25T03:33:17.710" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T03:33:17.710" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4440" CreationDate="2012-01-24T20:03:25.903" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile is a new term on decades old concepts. I've blogged on this very topic recently with a blog titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://thegorillaisnamedhogarth.blogspot.com/2011/10/gorillas-can-be-agile-with-any-project.html?m=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Gorillas can be Agile with any project&quot;&lt;/a&gt; (PMI recently reposted this on their Agile Community of Practice). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My blog isn't just an opinion. I used agile principles at the program level in a hardware company that had both Japanese business practices and a legacy of IBM practices. I helped the team increase products shipped per quarter by orders of magnitude. All I did was focus on agile values and worked to make the organization a team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And when every anyone says to me &quot;Agile doesn't work in hardware companies.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just respond with one word...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Toyota&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="21039" LastEditDate="2016-05-30T02:34:19.383" LastActivityDate="2016-05-30T02:34:19.383" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4090" CreationDate="2012-01-24T20:14:20.257" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're already a project manager at a good company, then I wouldn't recommend it. MBAs strike me as important if you're in the job market, but if you're already set (so to speak) then it's not going to help you do your job better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Better, that is, than spending the same amount of time learning more at your current employer. I would recommend making a concerted effort to expand your value there. (Note: I am a technical manager, not a project manager. I don't have an MBA and I have no plans to get one.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="249" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T20:14:20.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4452" CreationDate="2012-01-24T20:42:30.037" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would seem that what you have not addressed is &quot;why is he poisonous ?&quot;, is it because he is attempting to sabotage the project or is it because there are fundamental differences as to what is to be done? You state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He has yet to fulfill his role as SME, and has literally wasted months&#xA;  of project time by providing irrelevant documents, attempting to&#xA;  radically redefine the scope of the project, and generally causing&#xA;  problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you have not stated the exact goal of the project, lets hypothetically assume it is to build a new datacenter. Further lets assume that you are attempting to build a traditional datacenter. Lets also assume that for whatever reason (like perhaps that is what Bill wants) Mike is intent that the datacenter have a zero carbon footprint and be powered entirely with renewable energy.  In a case like this isn't it entirely possible that you would end up in a quite similar situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mike would be wasting your time with &quot;irrelevant&quot; documents like how to use wind turbines and solar energy (which have nothing to do with YOUR datacenter). Then when you come in with project plan for your building he would attempt to &quot;radically redefine&quot; the building materials being used pushing for renewable materials like wood instead of plastics etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your comment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this case, from our perspective the project (which we have&#xA;  initiated, and are funding) is a software/database implementation.&#xA;  From his it is a &quot;technology plan&quot; that involves components that have&#xA;  no relation to the vendor, project, or the stated interests of any of&#xA;  the stakeholders, such as cell phones and printers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to work on methodology for a major firm and one of our key concepts was the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sstc-online.org/proceedings/2002/SpkrPDFS/WedTracs/p709.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;hexagon of change&quot;&lt;/a&gt; in which we stated that virtually any project would involve six domains to a greater or lesser extent, namely: process, organization, location, data, applications and technology. One of the things we would ofter observe was that firms would undertake to implement new systems without providing adequate planning or funding for training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case you are viewing this as a &quot;software/database implementation&quot;, and it may very well be that your stakeholders are viewing it in an equally narrow way. That however does not change the fact that there may be (I am not saying that there are, I do not have enough information) other factors which are critical to overall success of the organization and it's mission. Is there perhaps a legitimate difference of opinion between you and Mike as to the importance and relevance of these other factors which you consider to be &quot;out of scope&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2770" LastEditorUserId="2770" LastEditDate="2012-01-24T21:36:37.000" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T21:36:37.000" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4461" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-24T20:56:51.773" Score="5" ViewCount="236" Body="&lt;p&gt;Within our organization, from time to time, we need to promote a person to become a Project Manager / Project Leader / Team Leader. The promotion used to be done based on someone's intuition or opinion, like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;This guy is communicative, he'll manage,&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;This guy has 'people skills', he'll manage.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We've changed that approach by introducing &quot;internal PM school&quot;. That is the background. Now, here is the problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do we evaluate their skills after such internal training? I can imagine that it is quite easy for hard skills (risk management, planning, etc.), but what about the soft skills? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can you evaluate which candidate can handle stressful situations better?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which candidate can communicate with clients better?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which candidate can build a real team from a bunch of people?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main question is this: Are there any strict pass / fail criteria for PM recruitment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2915" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-01-25T03:29:40.743" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T03:29:40.743" Title="What are pass/fail criteria for internal PM recruitment" Tags="&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;skills&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4425" CreationDate="2012-01-24T21:33:01.653" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an introverted individual, I feel the need to punish myself when I make a mistake.  Some of my introverted friends have confessed to the same compulsion when they've let themselves (or others) down.  Sometimes, the way we punish overselves can be very damaging.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case that you describe, I could see myself behaving in a manner similar to your employee.  Having been given a position of trust and responsibility, I must now admit that I was not capable of holding the position.  At once, this would cause me to doubt my ability and it would cause me to want to atone somehow, perhaps by giving myself a bad review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I know neither of you, I cannot say whether this personality profile matches your employee.  However, if you judge that it might match, I would suggest that you attempt to acknowledge their negative review.  Like a biblical character atoning for their sins by whipping themselves in public, the fastest way to get people like me out of their &quot;public spectacle&quot; phase is simply to acknowledge it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After this, you can get to the heart of the matter: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You still made positive contributions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team still holds you in high esteem as an individual contributor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's important that you learn from this experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let's generate goals that will lead you to success this year&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, the compulsion to punish oneself or publicly atone can be unhealthy.  I am not saying it is good.  I'm only attempting to describe what could be happening: good, bad, or other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3030" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T21:33:01.653" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4425" CreationDate="2012-01-25T00:06:45.327" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Going to answer twice from different perspectives.  This is the first one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I wasn't going to be to negative on him in my official eval, but to me it is like he is asking to be fired.&#xA;  ....&#xA;  Now it seems unavoidable to come down on him and start being more hands on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You require a self evaluation, you get one that is less than glowing and now you want to either give the poor bastard that gave you an honest opinion the boot or hammer him with &quot;hands on managment&quot;.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go ahead and fire his ass, you should do so as publicly as possible while proclaiming that it was because his self evaluation revealed his secret desire to be fired.  That way at his next job he'll know to blow smoke up his boss's butt instead of trying to answer honestly, and your other employees will know the importance you attach to their feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;God forbid that you simply have a conversation with him to find out why your evaluations differ....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3015" LastEditorUserId="3015" LastEditDate="2015-04-18T15:39:31.757" LastActivityDate="2015-04-18T15:39:31.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4425" CreationDate="2012-01-25T00:22:35.897" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer.&#xA;Sounds to me like the failure to lead another team has made him feel trapped in his role, like he no longer has any potential for advancement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've actually felt this way in a position before and had a similar self-evaluation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Having done well doesn't matter, I'm going nowhere, so I'll be honest about how much I actually feel I can do here.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;find out what goals he had that didn't get accomplished, what he'd like to learn. If he could change anything about his career with the company or otherwise, what would that be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3037" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T00:22:35.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4425" CreationDate="2012-01-25T00:23:25.457" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Answering twice from different perspectives, this is the second one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A self evaluation is either a bit of communication, or a waste of time.  Which it is depends upon what you do with it.  A negative self evaluation isn't something that has to be handled, it may lead to the discovery of a situation that needs to be handled, but at the moment all you have is a bit of communication.  The self evaluation that you describe certainly isn't glowing, but it's neither a request or grounds for termination.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this evaluation concerns you (and apparently it does), then talk to him informally, expand upon this bit of communication.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, he says he completed a couple of small projects, and didn't mention the complex tasks that you feel was more worthy of mention.  Ask him about that, ask why he included the ones he did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically just talk to the guy.  Either that or admit that the self evaluation is a waste of time and ignore it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3015" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T00:23:25.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4461" CreationDate="2012-01-25T00:51:47.593" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;What if you gave each 'candidate' a smaller project to manage as a 'test drive'? As they gain experience it is easier to assess how good they are at the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or take an even more radical approach: Why not try taking turns on being project manager within the team? That way all team members start acquiring skills and you are never short of a person who can manage a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have used this approach in two different companies with about a dozen different teams. The results are very encouraging. Of course, you wouldn't have the biggest project being managed by the person fresh from university and who joined you just yesterday. On the other hand, I have had graduates (first year after they left university) manage small projects (2 to 4 people for up to 3 month) and it was amazing to see how well they did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2318" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-01-25T03:06:52.357" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T03:06:52.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4461" CreationDate="2012-01-25T03:09:15.037" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Instead of thinking about project management as an actual position, think of it as a role.  Many organizations have goals they want to meet that don't necessarily involve needing to hire a full time person yet still need someone to own the process and see things through, which includes planning, communication, and other project management tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the project is completed, things return to normal, except now you know more about your pool of possible full time, &quot;official&quot; project managers, if that's really what you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T03:09:15.037" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4468" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-25T08:03:14.237" Score="9" ViewCount="5000" Body="&lt;p&gt;About 6 months ago I had to manage a project in a Government Organization where there was a strict hierarchical origination that was part of the corporate culture. No one would act with out being directly told what to do. It was difficult to get the project team to make decisions. I wanted the team to have greater ownership and make more decisions independently. I had a hard time breaking down this barrier. What techniques would you suggest that could help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3040" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-01-26T13:33:05.150" LastActivityDate="2012-01-29T00:11:54.000" Title="How do you make a project team take greater ownership and initiative within a project?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;leadership&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4468" CreationDate="2012-01-25T09:08:01.033" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what you write I guess that this strict hierarchical origination made it very formal environment. In that case I would make &quot;Project Team Responsibilities&quot; document and (after receiving all needed approvals) present it to Project Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would start with small steps so I wouldn't overwhelm the Team, starting with 5 minor points such as &quot;Presenting all problems (to me) with grading impact on 1-5 scale&quot; or &quot;Resolving problems which can be solved within 45 minutes time-frame&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a while, when team got used to grading problems/raising incentives I would add point like &quot;Resolving problems within 4 hours with impact below 3&quot; and (once again after receiving all approvals) inform the Team about the change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In non-formal environment I would make Team to trust me, and then ask them to &quot;Act as they think they should act&quot; while showing them my full trust and support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that such problem is difficult to tackle and is very time consuming but can be very rewarding. Also - I would like to note, that I haven't ever resolved such problem and I cannot guarantee the outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3042" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T09:08:01.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4468" CreationDate="2012-01-25T11:34:17.157" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My experience in this regard was like this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lots of offline/informal discussions which builds great rapport among members&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Listening to the team members and really incorporating their suggestions. This shows that the manager is sincere.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not Micro managing all the times. But enforcing standards and reviews rigorously. Especially the manager has to show sincerity in doing reviews and follow them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Giving the team members their personal space to think, make mistakes, learn&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coffee break meetings, free pizzas&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really look at it, most of them are a form of informal enforcement of things. I have seen a fair success with this method, in making people own up tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even money sometimes cannot buy these. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2486" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T11:34:17.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4425" CreationDate="2012-01-25T11:35:06.420" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't mind my being direct, I think you need a relationship with him, and you need to give him much more regular feedback on his performance both good and bad? The fact that you are misaligned in his and your understanding of his performance is for me the red flag. Since you state you are open I will provide a frank suggestion - I think you have the bulk of responsibility in addressing that as the manager - my tip is to start here with the &quot;basics&quot; series - www.manager-tools.com. From this will follow all the other advice in other responses - get to know him, learn his goals, learn his history. He sounds like he is a good achiever and you should work to retain him. It's now your opportunity to grow as a manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2924" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T11:35:06.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4468" CreationDate="2012-01-25T11:51:58.477" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose.  These things have been shown to be the most critical drivers in motivation.  Sounds like the employees of your organization have none of these.  Learn really what these are and how to build a culture that nurtures them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T11:51:58.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4468" CreationDate="2012-01-25T13:43:35.613" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When faced with this problem you have to realize that the task of breaking down the barriers might be impossible. If the corporate culture is very hierarchical , and they believe that their next project will be back to the status quo, they will never adjust to the way you want.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I worked with a team that was supposed to use agile, but would only remember they were supposed to complete a task when the meeting minutes went through several cycles of revisions. Every 1 hour meeting needed a 4 hour pre-meeting...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was no effort by management to put together a team that was prepared to breakout of the corporate culture, therefore they never did. One thing that did work was to bring the team together to a sort of hack camp. The close quarters while working, and driving to achieve something by the end of the day, started to break some people out of their hierarchical mindset. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2947" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T13:43:35.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4468" CreationDate="2012-01-25T16:46:38.827" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can see there is a lack of empowerment of the employees in your organization that's pretty much inherited from its own nature (governmental). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Decision making in this kind of organizations tends to fall into a bureaucratic hole that usually ends up in the hands of the same people (Senior Managers, Directors, dominant shareholders...) with a rigid mindsets towards any change that could derived into an unpredicted effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's very difficult (don't want to say impossible) to change this structure and allow non-managerial staff to make autonomous decisions without consulting a manager. However, if you are the manager within an organization of this nature you can approach the level of involvement of your team via the following two strategies;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://humanresources.about.com/od/employeeempowerment/Employee_Empowerment_How_to_Empower_Employees.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Employee Empowerment&lt;/a&gt; - giving your employees the means for making important decisions, and making those decisions the right ones.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://r-johnson.hubpages.com/hub/Employee-Accountability&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Employee Ownership &amp;amp; Accountability&lt;/a&gt; - this is more related to the support you provide your team to improve their performance by making them accountable for several decisions/actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a look at this link for some additional tips on this last topic: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.halogensoftware.com/resources/reference-library/improving-employee-accountability-for-goals.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.halogensoftware.com/resources/reference-library/improving-employee-accountability-for-goals.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always encourage managers to promote the level of involvement of their teams. This usually brings to their groups new points of view or ideas that can help to run the team and/or a project. Depending on the level of agreement you can get from your management you'll be able to define which can of strategy suits your team best. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notwithstanding, please bear in mind that regardless of the level of decision making your team members have you are the ultimate responsible for their actions so please plan what you really want to achieve with them before empowering them (just in case anything goes against the company's policies or principles).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T16:46:38.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4468" CreationDate="2012-01-25T19:39:03.237" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two simple things I've found that can help any team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1- Opinions lead to Ownership:&lt;/strong&gt; The act of asking a person their opinion creates an ownership relationship. It’s practically an unconscious response. You are investing yourself in your opinion and that then extends to whatever the opinion was made against. I've used this with very resistant engineers, who thought the product itself was a lousy idea. Even when their ideas didn't make it into the final product, they became some of the biggest supporters of the product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a tool to team enablement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2- Understand how people communicate:&lt;/strong&gt; Jeff is a brilliant engineer. He probably recodes Linux kernels in his sleep. Jeff is also what would typically be called &quot;deathly shy.&quot; You don't ask Jeff his opinion in a twenty person meeting. You meet with him for lunch and talk to him one on one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've used the DISC profile model to great effect. I got a job by using DISC to understand who I was interviewing with and adjusting my communication style to theirs. I was speaking their language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T19:39:03.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4320" CreationDate="2012-01-25T20:37:18.663" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;With what I understand from your situation, its seems more than only a &quot;one project problem&quot;, but a complete organizational culture that you have to try to change. Congratulations! If you were chosen to do it, it is because the higher management finaly realized that you have everything needed to be a great project manager. As my collegues said (answers up); you should gather all the information concerning that project; but my point is that you should seize this occasion to make it a waking call to the higher management. They could increase their profits with a tighter management of all aspects of their projects (unless they do not care about that?). You should propose yourself to make a demonstration of your abilities and of your new way of managing a project. I would ask the higher managment to give you more time than the 4 1/2 months that you have. You could do the same with your customers (I do not know your situation exacltly). I would join 3-5 new people in your team (that have the same spirit as you) and motivate them to prove than, as a team, you can do better. And you will have a great time inovating to the benefit of all. Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2964" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T20:37:18.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="829" CreationDate="2012-01-26T13:39:03.683" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;My actual personal favourite is trello by fog creek software: &lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/&quot;&gt;https://trello.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-01-26T13:39:03.683" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4369" CreationDate="2012-01-26T13:42:06.557" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am glad that I am not the only one how posted a question on the wrong site once! What strikes me the most in the word &quot;freelancer&quot; is the &quot;free&quot; part of it. Usually, if someone insists to work as a freelancer, it is because he or she do not want to have a boss! If you try to impose one on him or her, the freelancer can become a &quot;loose cannon&quot;. But that is just an image I am giving you. I would convoque a meeting with everybody at the beginning of your project, and agree on a way of communicating regularly with the members of you team (I concluded that you will not work at the same workplace). Let them feel that you trust them, but that you want to know regularely if they need something or how far they are in their progress or meeting their dealine. Make them understand that it is not a way of controlling them (that you are not a control freak), but just to have a good time working with each other and avoid a last minute rush. Usually, a freelancer is somebody with great abilities and potential, but that never found a place where he could belong. Who knows, you may become friends along the way and do more business together. Have a good day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2964" LastActivityDate="2012-01-26T13:42:06.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3596" CreationDate="2012-01-26T14:10:48.470" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;you are doing the &lt;strong&gt;right&lt;/strong&gt; thing when:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your colleagues read the documents you wrote and find it useful&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reuse the knowledge written done in the upcoming/next projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;customer asked for it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you are paid for it - this is your full time job&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;customer support finds it useful&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you are doing the &lt;strong&gt;wrong&lt;/strong&gt; thing when:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;create documentation because a book said so&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you are only one who contributes and cares&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-01-26T14:10:48.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4468" CreationDate="2012-01-26T16:55:54.657" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often this can be very hard when you are the &quot;manager&quot; of the teams, especially because of the past hierarchy. As hard as you might try, they will continue to act in the same way because of the assignment and nature of manager and subordinate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;BRING IN HELP: In these cases, I have often seen bringing in an outside coach/peer&#xA;that they can feel comfortable telling the real &quot;story&quot; to can often&#xA;break down these barriers. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;SHOW, DON'T JUST TELL: But, actions will also work on breaking down these barriers over&#xA;time as well.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;MANAGEMENT 3.0: One great resource for you may be &quot;Management 3.0&quot; by Jurgen Appelo.&#xA;He explains a tool he calls &quot;delegation poker&quot; to help create some&#xA;visibility and discussion around roles and responsibilities between&#xA;managers and knowledge workers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastActivityDate="2012-01-26T16:55:54.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4364" CreationDate="2012-01-26T17:28:06.827" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an MBA in management from Laval University in Quebec City and I have integrated what I have learned in my own way of thinking; so sorry to be &quot;my own inspiration&quot;. &#xA;I am still reflecting on how to share information within managers or project managers within an organisation. &#xA;In our current world, individualisme is the law. Some call it the &quot;law of the jungle&quot;. To my own point of view, the main problem for information sharing within a compagny is the &quot;promotion factor&quot;: if you share a very good idea to a collegue to help him or his team, will he use that idea to have a promotion to your own expense? So the &quot;non written&quot; law is: keep you own ideas. Everybody knows that. But, in fact, you ask how to increase the trust between your projet managers. &#xA;The best answer I have found so far is to have a very objective promotion process based on objective criterions. Now a day, it is very rare. It is the &quot;who knows who&quot; process. Trust is difficult thing to earn, but it is very easyly lost. I think you should be an example on how to do it and inspire your project managers to do the same. &#xA;If the promotion process you have or you will built is fair and everybody agree with it, you will witness a big change in your organisational culture. But the human nature will remain the human nature. &#xA;Having said all that, I agree that it is much easyer to give advices than to do the job! But the most important think is not to quit if you believe in what you are doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2964" LastActivityDate="2012-01-26T17:28:06.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4468" CreationDate="2012-01-26T18:11:58.377" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in exactly the same position. With regards to the personnel that are full time, (i.e. the government employees) it comes down to incentives. At my organization, there are no bonuses or paid overtime. What there is, could be recognition and or the opportunity to take the skills and leverage them somewhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortuntately, it's a very tough place to be in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2648" LastActivityDate="2012-01-26T18:11:58.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4468" CreationDate="2012-01-26T20:27:27.650" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When people don't make decisions, it is often because they have a fear of making mistakes, which may reflect the culture of the organisation. You have an uphill battle if this is indeed the case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Encourage people in the team to try new ways of working, where they can use their imagination to solve real problems, without the fear of criticism if they &quot;fail&quot;. You may have to work hard to break down big problems into smaller ones that your team feel comfortable solving, but as they gain confidence and experience they should be able to take on bigger ones in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Encourage innovation - even in small areas of work - and never shoot down any well-intentioned ideas. It's not easy - I know that from experience - but it is very rewarding when it all comes good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And after everything else, you have to make sure that you don't reinforce their old habits by praising people who always keep their heads down and continue to follow the organisation's old culture. Instead, praise innovation, welcome mistakes as long as there are learning opportunities from them, and try to introduce a bit of fun into the team. It's amazing what that can do!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2012-01-26T20:27:27.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3953" CreationDate="2012-01-26T23:12:17.367" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did my MBA essay on burnout, especially with managers. I did my research with a questionnaire and statistics in an hospital.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My conclusion was that when in a work place the expectations are most of the time higher than what people can give, you create a work environnement that in short term becomes more and more stressful. That is evident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unnecessary stress becomes rapidly unproductive. You pay for sick leave benefits for example. That is very costly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What helps a worker to avoid burnout is social support from the boss, co-workers + autonomy in the decision making. In other words, if your employees feel in charge of their situation (empowerment) you will avoid many burnout case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But nowadays, many high level managers do not simply care about if an employee break down or not (you just have to replace him or her). But if you do a tight cost inquiry, you will always find out that, in long term, it is much more costly to manage that way. Also hiring and training employees is the most expensive task in an organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2964" LastEditorUserId="1094" LastEditDate="2012-01-30T21:36:43.733" LastActivityDate="2012-01-30T21:36:43.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3990" CreationDate="2012-01-27T12:05:16.697" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just a note about velocity ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unfinished stories count for zero velocity in this sprint.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yes, this means that your velocity is particularly low for this sprint, however it evens out on the sprint when you do include this partially finished story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Velocity should really be shown as a moving average over a number of sprints in order to &quot;smooth out&quot; the lumps and bumps - just take the average of the this sprint and the previous 2 or 4 sprints and next sprint take the average of that sprint and the previous 2 or 4. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3074" LastActivityDate="2012-01-27T12:05:16.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4468" CreationDate="2012-01-27T13:33:41.177" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is many different theories of leadership. I do not mention any because anybody can find great resume of them in most management books. But usually they go on a spectrum from giving almost complete autonomy to your employees to a very authoritarian and controlling management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest mistake I witnessed in my career was managers giving a very high level of autonomy to their team members, thinking they will be more productive. But I witness than, in fact, it had the opposite effect. Most of the time there is a feud to &quot;elect&quot; a new informal leader in the team in a conflictual way. Many manager undermine the fact that taking initiative is not a natural process for many employees. They have to be coach by their boss to do so. But that way the manager get implicated in the process and if something goes wrong, he or she can be blamed for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also undermind the importance of the manager personality on the way it manage a team and inspire trust and initiative. An autoritarian person can difficulty implant a participative management; and a consultative person may not be the right manager in a crisis situation either. I stongly believe thas having clear, basic and fair rules helps employees feel secure and learn how to grow and take initiative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am disapointed that the best type of leadership to my point of view : managing as a family father (we could say as a good family mother), is so much undermined nowadays. A good manager (a mentor) can help you grow and help you achieve your own potential by taking more and more initiatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2964" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-01-29T00:11:54.000" LastActivityDate="2012-01-29T00:11:54.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2910" CreationDate="2012-01-27T17:13:56.163" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Get people to talk outside of meetings too: if meetings are currently&#xA;  the only forum where you get to talk to those who work on your&#xA;  projects, create other opportunities to chat, such as informal&#xA;  corridor chats, coffee breaks, or morale events like those suggested&#xA;  by Lewis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm all for Angeline's answer. Also, review your previous meetings and try to understand if the team thinks that meetings are beneficial for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMHO, it's generally good that you are aiming to make the meetings short and oriented towards specific goals. One thing to take care about is that, if the meeting is too short, team members may not be able to express their opinions or give suggestions. Key point here is to enable the team to give you feedback. Try asking each team member separately, during the meeting, what is her or his opinion on specific topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I frequently pause and ask for any questions/ feedback, I encourage&#xA;  people to interrupt me or criticize me [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is usually the reaction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, try to get to know these people - if you are new to the company, they may naturally keep some of the project related discussions to themselves. Are you aware of their day to day work and responsibilities or not? Do they actually need your input during their daily responsibilities? Or maybe they just want to attend the meetings to get information about any needed changes and strategy, get a confirmation from the project manager that they can continue their work as usual. Your goal would be to show, that you can be helpful for them during the execution of the plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was once on a team, which was assigned new project manager. At the beginning, as long as we were able to get customer's opinion or some infrastructure work done by ourselves, we were not using manager's help with such tasks. The meetings were also kind of boring, cause we spent more time explaining the issues to the manager rather than discussing important things about the project. Try to understand whether it is the case or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also - try discussing some of the topics with one team member, separately after or before the meeting. Ask her or him what should be covered during next meeting - this may give you more feedback about the team's expectations than asking whole group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, don't loose the main idea - the goal for the meeting is not to last 60 minutes; the goal of the meeting is to cover important decisions, resolve current impediments and continue the work productively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3075" LastActivityDate="2012-01-27T17:13:56.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2910" CreationDate="2012-01-27T18:26:30.100" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Angeline gave a great answer, I fully support it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would build on it with two things-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- Daily Stand Ups work even outside of agile: Three questions and everyone has to speak. The PM's job is just to keep the conversation moving and doesn't talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2- Understand the communication styles of your team. Bob is a brilliant engineer, but he's completely uncomfortable in a group setting. Talk with Bob one on one to get updates, don't ever put him &quot;on the spot&quot; in a meeting with &quot;What do you think, Bob?&quot; I recommend the DISC communication model as a great tool for understanding how people communicate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2012-01-27T18:26:30.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4489" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4493" CreationDate="2012-01-27T22:48:12.150" Score="10" ViewCount="904" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the sake of this discussion requirements = user-stories (since I'm not differentiating any process per se and would like to get rid of any ambiguities).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's quite common to have a set of about 100-500 requirements for small-medium systems. It's but natural that it takes a while for one to figure out which requirements are conflicting (more so when &gt;1 stakeholder is involved). Either they are capture using Excel or index cards/post-its or maybe in some project management tool. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So just how does one go about conflict identification within requirements? What are the practices that you have employed and found useful (w.r.t. time/effort expended and conflicts identified).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is conflict identification even worth it or is it preferable to resolve it 'when you get there' since it could lead to an expectation mismanagement if resolved later?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm NOT talking about -ility conflicts. Those are but obvious and should be clarified earlier IMO. I'm talking about conflicts between various functional requirements along with functional vs. non-functional clashes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Terminology conflicts - i.e. different terms used to refer to the same concept&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Structure conflicts - classic one being 'Date' - referred to as MM/DD/YY and as DD/MM/YYYY somewhere else&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Direct conflicts - giving one requirement will be known to not satisfy another e.g. for a calendar app &lt;em&gt;participants time slots will be private&lt;/em&gt; vs &lt;em&gt;the meeting organizer should be able to see the meeting time of all participants before deciding on a meeting slot&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latter (direct one) may or may not be negotiable, but identifying it early on will be quite worthwhile IMO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's quite cumbersome to go through each requirement at a time to identify conflicts. The best is to divide the effort and speed it up. Another strategy is to analyze the requirements hierarchically, but that may hide certain conflicts which would occur in the lower 'nodes' (and those are the ones that come to bite you later IMHO :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not aware of any tools/techniques/best practices that would help one identify conflicts with minimal time/effort overhead and hence the question. The above manual step is the best I know of. Yes, in an ideal world it'd be great to have the tool spew out potential conflicts but I don't know if any tool does it (or even a reasonably good job. Help?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in an ideal world (without natural language capable machines :) what's the best technique to apply for conflict identification (assuming it's human intensive) and what's been your experience in doing so? If it's not worth it, please elaborate on that too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1119" LastActivityDate="2012-01-29T13:39:50.960" Title="What are the best practices/methods/tools/techniques for conflict identification in requirements?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;conflicts&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4489" CreationDate="2012-01-28T23:36:09.240" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can address this type of situations as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conflicts related to processes&lt;/strong&gt; such as the ability to perform an action in the system. You need to structure and group your requirements or stories in a logical way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;=&gt; You can structure your stories on multiple levels: for example by functional area (eg. calendar functionality) and process area (eg. creating appointments &amp;amp; meetings). This allows you to slice and dice your stories to identify conflicts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;=&gt; You should also map your processes as this allows you to walk through your story end-to-end: this way you can identify conflicts but also refine/clarify stories. In your example,  &quot;&lt;em&gt;participants time slots will be private&lt;/em&gt;&quot; could be instead &quot;&lt;em&gt;my time will show only as available or unavailable to others, with details of my appointments and meetings private&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, and for &quot;&lt;em&gt;the meeting organizer should be able to see the meeting time of all participants before deciding on a meeting slot&lt;/em&gt;&quot; could be instead &quot;&lt;em&gt;as a meeting organizer, I can view participants 'availability&lt;/em&gt;&quot;). This will also help facilitating decisions on business rules when such conflicts arise (here, is people's availability public or not?).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conflicts related to reference information or data&lt;/strong&gt; such as terms &amp;amp; definitions, data formats (e.g. numbers, currencies, dates, phone numbers, etc.) or list of values (e.g. dropdown lists, default values, etc.): create a Reference Data Dictionary (RDD) that acts as a centralised document and socialize it amongst your team. Whenever a new requirement/story is identified, if it involves reference data, the RDD is your checkpoint to make sure there are no conflicts from one story to another (such as the one you mention). Bear in mind the RDD is an evolving document so you update and complete it as you build the stories. It's also a very important document for developers when coding the system, and for user training.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note&lt;/strong&gt;: you will likely still have conflicts that can subsist and only become apparent when coding or testing the system, but the above would address most of them, and importantly, the big conflicts that need to be resolved before you start coding the story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastActivityDate="2012-01-28T23:36:09.240" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4489" CreationDate="2012-01-29T02:34:40.647" Score="2" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Terminology conflicts -- this can be resolved by creating a dictionary for the project.  Make it widely available to all stakeholders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Structure Conflicts (dates) -- ignore the requirements from a system perspective and/or add a requirement to make it allow dates to be configurable.  Having different date formats displayed to the user really isn't that big of a deal... what could be a big deal is having multiple formats across the backend your system.  Implementation details shouldn't be in the requirements, so make things make sense in the areas of the system in which you have control&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Direct Conflicts -- The key assumption to this question seems to be that all of the requirements must be known and correct up front.  The reality is that 500-some requirements will need refinement overtime for a variety of reasons.  You may not even end up implementing some of those features which may conflict so is there really a point in worrying about them now?  &quot;Fixing&quot; requirements incrementally will not only make it easier to analyze them but also draw a line in the sand, creating a reference point for refining future requirements.  Pick the high-value requirements first and design the system with modifiability in mind for features that are at high risk for requirements conflict/thrashing (good risk management plays a key role here).  Try to stay an iteration ahead with requirements analysis, much beyond this is a waste for typical IT projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1630" LastActivityDate="2012-01-29T02:34:40.647" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4492" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-29T08:20:42.927" Score="1" ViewCount="150" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a reliable training provider in Australia for PRINCE2, preferably one that has flexible delivery (online/distance &amp;amp; face-to-face) training available and want to put together some good criteria for selecting one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do I need to take the exam on-site with the trainer? This could be pricey travel-wise and is something I'd like to avoid.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As far as other costs go, is there anything that is missing or other things I should take note of?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3084" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-27T03:59:48.910" LastActivityDate="2012-07-27T03:59:48.910" Title="Getting Training from a reliable Australian PRINCE2 training provider" Tags="&lt;training&gt;&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2012-10-26T01:22:00.050" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4489" CreationDate="2012-01-29T13:39:50.960" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Conflicting or inconsistent requirements are not just part of an IT project but span across all types of projects.  You can be certain, no matter how hard you try not to, that you will create a requirements baseline with a host of inconsistent or conflicting set of requirements.  On top of that, the solution derived to meet a requirement could break another solution for another requirement or make a third requirement an impossibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find no value, i.e., money not well spent, to try to minimize or eliminate this phenomenon.  The reason?  Because as you deconflict a set of requirements, you are introducing other conflicts or inconsistencies on another set of category and class of requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Requirements conflicts are certain, and so is change.  This is why every project needs to have a change management process, so that when conflicts arise, and the team gets smarter, a change can be processed and approved.  So through iterations and progressive planning, requirements are deconflicted, made to be consistent, or removed and replaced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So instead of trying to build a capability to avoid these conflicts, build a powerful capability to deal with them when they materialize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-01-29T13:39:50.960" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4090" CreationDate="2012-01-29T22:29:07.300" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &quot;Should I or Shouldn't I?&quot; question on an MBA is a very difficult question, since it involves probabilities (Some benefit in some situations, others don't) and a lot of individual characteristics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll address 1 aspect of the original question, &quot;For example, if you were already a Project Manager at a good company, would it be worth taking a break to pursue an MBA at a top ten school?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer here is, &quot;It can, but ideally you want top 5, not top 10.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a top 5 school, you can be reasonably assured of doing something different for 2-3 years post-MBA.  For example, 2-3 years of strategy consulting, or marketing, or banking, or whatever.  And you'll have a very deep network.  Add this to your already strong Project Management skills and there is a lot you'll have to offer the world.  But if you do this at a weaker MBA program, it'll be harder to get the incremental experience, and you'll find yourself in a similar job with more debt on your hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just know - having a good job and the ability to consider education is a good problem to have in life.  :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-01-29T22:29:07.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2910" CreationDate="2012-01-30T01:32:29.383" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think about a root cause of this situation. If they don't talk - they don't need to talk. It means that there is something wrong in entire project management situation. &quot;People talking on meetings&quot; is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; your goal as a project manager. If it is - you're in trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2012-01-30T01:32:29.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4369" CreationDate="2012-01-30T01:37:32.963" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No matter who your project team members are (freelancers or full-time employees) - you should start with &lt;strong&gt;Human Resource Management Plan&lt;/strong&gt;. This document should define rules of the game and should address all important aspects of the project, regarding people and their interconnections. Once this document is in place and you baseline it with your team - their location or status won't matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2012-01-30T01:37:32.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="821" CreationDate="2012-01-30T11:44:34.670" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Very good comments from others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2 points to add:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) You have to watch when the same person is planning and executing the test.  If it is Time and Materials they may plan for too many tests.  Fixed cost too few.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) the testers can't control the quality of the code so you may need a per cycle or per case charge.  Otherwise you may reach the quantity of agreed to tests but still have more work to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.5) Medium term you should consider owning test definition, if not execution.  This may not be feasible short term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-01-30T11:44:34.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2777" CreationDate="2012-01-30T17:21:20.490" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of Project Managers feel that their job is simply to schedule meetings and maintain a spreadsheet of tasks and issues and then nag developers until the job is complete.  But that is just doing the administrative portion of the job.  The real value-add of a good project manager is to think.  To ask questions and draw out answers from developers and analysts.  This helps identify risks, detail accurate timelines, and manage dependencies.  Doing these tasks enables the project manager to deliver on time and on budget without having to kill their staff or have last minute fire drills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3089" LastActivityDate="2012-01-30T17:21:20.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1590" CreationDate="2012-01-31T01:28:35.577" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most PMs I know have gotten there by soon the PM work when nobody else wanted.  Maybe people didn't like travel, working with testers, or whatever was peculiar to the situation.  They didn't get it by certification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good PMs stay busy by word of mouth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have interviewed a lot of candidates weak on PM skills.  I told HR to only pass on people with certification.  They were no better.  In the end, people become good PMs by struggling through tough projects, and then reflecting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coursework is nice, especially you are curious, but it's no silver bullet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-01-31T01:28:35.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4500" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-31T04:43:04.470" Score="5" ViewCount="301" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've been using Pivotal Tracker on a software library project for well over a year.  I'm the (admittedly not great) PM.  The team is very good about writing notes on the story cards as things progress, but sometimes we start having whole discussions as story comments as new realizations occur concerning the topic of the story.  I have a feeling that when too much discussion is taking place, it means the story needs to be refactored, but the following are not clear to me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What kind of criteria to use to decide when something should be done?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What actions are possible: create one or more stories, and maybe (or maybe not) retitle the existing story as part of that?  Are other options possible?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who should be doing that?  The story owner?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you handle reallocation of points?  Do you add more points to the new stories? Do you adjust the points on the original story?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, I'm looking for tips about how to detect when it's time to do something about a story, and what to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2698" LastEditorUserId="2698" LastEditDate="2012-01-31T05:05:23.233" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T17:31:15.243" Title="How do you refactor a story?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4500" CreationDate="2012-01-31T06:00:32.347" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure refactoring is the word you are looking for. Reading your description I would call it either &quot;rewriting&quot; or more likely &quot;decompose&quot; the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What kind of criteria to use to decide when something should be done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team is confused, then something should be done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What actions are possible: create one or more stories, and maybe (or&#xA;  maybe not) retitle the existing story as part of that? Are other&#xA;  options possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a story is confusing, it is often to big. This is probably your number one issue. It is very common. See my suggestions below. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Who should be doing that? The story owner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The product owner and the team. Ideally this work should be done during Sprint Planning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do you handle reallocation of points? Do you add more points to&#xA;  the new stories? Do you adjust the points on the original story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to defer to better experts on scrum level implementation for this. My mentors have always cautioned against changing story points in the middle of a release. If you can break the story down into tasks, not full stories, then usually that is just the break down of the story and you don't story point the tasks (but many folks will man hour the tasks)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are four steps I have learned for breaking down vague stories into concise stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Find the Conjunctions:&lt;/strong&gt; This is the first stage to user story break down. Take an existing story and find all the conjoining phrases (and, for, or, so, but, either, both, after, before, until, etc.). At each conjunction, break the story. Flesh out the one before the conjunction and move on. You can end up with several new stories from just a single user story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Generic Words:&lt;/strong&gt; “The user Logs In” can be a very generic statement. If your product supports multiple OS types and even mobile devices, then each one of those is its own user story. Anytime there is ambiguity in a word “Large,” “Easy,” or something you can’t test for, then narrow down the ambiguity. Often this will result in conjunctions (As a user I want to log in from my iPhone, iPad, Android, Mac and PC) and then you can break them down into their own stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reverse the Acceptance Criteria:&lt;/strong&gt; One of the advantages of applying acceptance criteria on even the vaguest user story is you then have a basis to dive into more information. Exploring having a masseuse for your day spa could quickly lead to both new users – As a private person I want the masseuse to come to my room, as an active person I want the day spa close to the beach and other water sports – and new stories – Mobile masseuses, Satellite location by the beach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The truly helpful result is when the acceptance test gives you even more detailed user stories. The “Facial Treatment” acceptance criteria can lead to user stories to cover mineral treatments, mud masks, acupressure massage and so on. Each of these becomes the foundation of a new user story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Time Line:&lt;/strong&gt;  The last in the line, this technique is particularly useful if you haven’t done Story Mapping on the product. Time line looks at a user story from the perspective of it being done and the team is asked to envision how it would work when done. This creates a timeline of events. Each event can then be turned into a user story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="1457" LastEditDate="2012-01-31T14:12:57.090" LastActivityDate="2012-01-31T14:12:57.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4502" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-31T15:30:48.913" Score="10" ViewCount="2952" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a contractor, who is a programmer, that has successfully performed his duties in the short time and I'd like to receive feedback from him on our organization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I prepare for such a meeting and what kinds of questions are okay to ask without being inappropriate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3096" LastActivityDate="2012-02-01T08:29:34.890" Title="How to conduct an exit interview with an external contractor?" Tags="&lt;interview&gt;&lt;feedback&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4502" CreationDate="2012-01-31T16:12:30.407" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to read the rules for your country that separate an independent contractor from an employee.  Certain questions asked could blur those lines.  I have no idea what the rules are in Sweden but in the U.S. not following those rules could result in rather stiff penalties.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some questions can blur those lines, as I wrote above.  The manner in which the contract between your organization and the contractor was administered is probably okay to ask, e.g., timely payments, scope verification and validation, other T&amp;amp;Cs, etc.  Other questions about your organization, including his/her opinion of the state of the project on which he served, may be none of his/her business and his/her opinion should not be queried.  In other words, limit the scope of your questions to those things to which he/she was a party.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-01-31T16:12:30.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4502" CreationDate="2012-01-31T16:34:47.010" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure about other countries but I am based in the UK and don't know of any laws that would prevent you asking a contractor the same questions as a permanent employee. Having said that in my experience you do not get the same response as a permanent employee so may not get what you are expecting. Contractors do not interact at companies in the same way as permanent employees. By that I mean, they tend to focus on the specifics of the work required by their contract and don't get involved in other aspects of the company like the future of the project or how well person X interacts with some other projects. These things matter for permanent employees as they have a vested interest in how well the company does in the future, for a contractor this is much less of a concern. This is one of the side benefits of contract employees - they tend to get involved in the office politics as much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest focusing on questions related to the specific project they worked on or the people they worked with, e.g. how did you find the team dynamic, is there anything you could suggest that could be improved, what work is outstanding from your original scope, do you have any recommendations of improvements that should be made, how did you find working with team X?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said all this I am not sure you will get a huge value from these questions, especially if they have only been working at the company for a few weeks or months as they will not have enough background info to give an informed decision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not have exit interviews with any of my contract employees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="788" LastActivityDate="2012-01-31T16:34:47.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4502" CreationDate="2012-01-31T17:10:29.740" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The purpose of an exit interview is to gather employees' feedback on the work experience in order to improve working conditions and retain employees (specially in organizations with a high turn around of personnel). This can be handled by the &lt;em&gt;Functional Manager&lt;/em&gt; since it gathers non compromising information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other cases the exit interviews are focused on improving work productivity, providing an early warning about potential harassment, workplace violence and discrimination issues and measuring the success of diversity initiatives. These should be managed by &lt;em&gt;neutral parties like Human Resources&lt;/em&gt; since some questions (and honest answers) may be really sensitive and not recorded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There several sites that provides you with specific details and questions &lt;a href=&quot;http://humanresources.about.com/od/whenemploymentends/a/exit_interview.htm&quot;&gt;to conduct them&lt;/a&gt; depending on what you'd like to achieve; e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessballs.com/exitinterviews.htm&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;transfer of knowledge to other employees&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have listed below few samples of the most common exit interview questions that we have usually asked in my organization to departing employees:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is your primary reason for leaving?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did anything trigger your decision to leave?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What was most satisfying about your job? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What was least satisfying about your job? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did your job duties turn out to be as you expected?    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did you receive enough training to do your job effectively? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did you receive sufficient feedback about your performance between merit reviews? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did this company help you to fulfill your career goals? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What would you improve to make our workplace better? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Were you happy with your pay, benefits and other incentives? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What could your immediate supervisor do to improve his or her management style? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did any company policies or procedures (or any other obstacles) make your job more    difficult?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did anyone in this company discriminate against you, harass you or cause hostile working    conditions?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you are looking for a generic feedback you can conduct the interview using several generic questions related to the working environment and experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, as David Espina has mentioned on his response, you should get an understanding on what you are allowed to ask since the rules may vary according to the organization's nature and policies. If you are not clear it's better to involve HR.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-02-01T08:29:34.890" LastActivityDate="2012-02-01T08:29:34.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2777" CreationDate="2012-01-31T19:46:39.390" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me when everything looks fine, executives are happy, projects seem to be finished, but the employees find it hard to get up and go to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-01-31T19:46:39.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4507" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-31T19:47:44.210" Score="0" ViewCount="354" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a few projects and I want to prepare/update and send reports about them. Could you suggest me any tool/application/web-site which can do the following things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Describe a project's current status&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set percent of completed work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set status of a project (Idle, In progress, Closed etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need to find any useful tool which can help me not with creating, assigning and tracking tasks. But with creating reports about projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3070" LastEditorUserId="2618" LastEditDate="2012-02-01T01:11:50.763" LastActivityDate="2015-04-13T13:30:53.303" Title="Tool to manage projects reports" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;progress-report&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-04-19T14:11:43.607" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4507" CreationDate="2012-02-01T04:55:31.157" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Excel and PowerPoint- &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've yet to find a single tool that can be tailored to the needs of all the stakeholders. To often I waste a lot of time futzing with the tool and not enough doing real work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I joined a company, they had this massive status report slide deck. Less than eight projects being reported on and it probably ran close to 100 slides. Had to be updated every single week and my boss spent a whole day on it each week. And it was pretty much useless. It gave so much detail and not enough perspective that people just glazed over. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I replaced it all with a spreadsheet, with four pages. Within a year I was tracking over twenty projects on it and anyone could look at it and quickly know the status and high points of each project. Took me maybe an hour a week to update. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key was I didn't start with the tool. I started with what people needed (not wanted, needed) and found the easiest way to deliver that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try the butter knife in your drawer, before going an buying the $100 Swiss Army knife.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2012-02-01T04:55:31.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4507" CreationDate="2012-02-01T05:25:17.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Slide is OK for the report to top management. Keep it to just 1 page but include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the program schedule(only the milestone)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cost analysis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;program risk&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;next step action&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Top management only needs to focus on the Cost, quality and schedule of the project, so just update them to the status quo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And do remember, be a program manager, you should update the program risk to let top management know what the risk is and what is your mitigation plan, also what kind of help you want to ask from them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this can help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2932" LastEditorUserId="2947" LastEditDate="2012-02-01T12:37:26.453" LastActivityDate="2012-02-01T12:37:26.453" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4510" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4514" CreationDate="2012-02-01T13:05:08.667" Score="9" ViewCount="1780" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to figure out &lt;strong&gt;if&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;how&lt;/strong&gt; to help people who become Project Manager / Project Leader for the first time. Not sure if it is a good name, but I'm trying to create kind of a &quot;mentoring system&quot; for new PMs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your experience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you know any mentoring system for new PMs? Have you tried one (either as an experienced PM or as a new one)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What would you recommend: An experienced PM to work closely together with a new one for, let's say, a month, so they can discuss and / or react on daily basis? Or rather, they work separately (on their own projects) and meet once a given period of time (a few weeks?) just to talk, explain problems and provide solutions?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2915" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-02-03T02:49:28.807" LastActivityDate="2015-08-22T05:30:47.567" Title="Mentoring for new Project Managers" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;learning&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-08-30T14:30:03.507" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2652" CreationDate="2012-02-01T14:02:33.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try Spider Project: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spiderproject.ro/en/downloads.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.spiderproject.ro/en/downloads.php&lt;/a&gt; . It's interface may be clunky at times, but feature wise it's the best I've seen (resource &amp;amp; financial management included).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3107" LastActivityDate="2012-02-01T14:02:33.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4510" CreationDate="2012-02-01T14:40:09.887" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not think mentoring a PM is any different than mentoring any other profession or trade.  Nor do I think there is a one size fits all approach.  This notion of mentoring really falls on a scale that could range from intensive supervision and oversight to something more like a strategic adviser, with all the points in between those two extremes.  And the level of control, supervision, and frequency are tailor made based on the needs of the mentoree.  I think this is one of those things you would be wise not to over think or over engineer.  Let the mentor and mentoree design something that makes sense to them and satisfies their needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-02-01T14:40:09.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4513" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-01T14:53:56.193" Score="9" ViewCount="4021" Body="&lt;p&gt;After several years of agile and scrum hype around, I'd expect the first well-known reactions from &quot;bullshit!&quot; to &quot;magical!&quot; to be gone and I should be able to find some really elaborated articles that question the highly praised benefits of those modern management techniques. But I don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aren't there any? Is scrum really &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; great? Is there a conspiracy going on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3109" LastActivityDate="2020-07-09T18:44:36.170" Title="Why can't I find well elaborated criticism on agile/scrum on the web?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="4" ClosedDate="2020-07-09T20:11:12.017" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4510" CreationDate="2012-02-01T14:56:51.693" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;1- Two tools I would suggest for advice on mentoring: &#xA;- Manager-Tools.com has several podcasts on mentoring. Very good for a traditional style of mentoring.&#xA;- Lyssa Adkins' &quot;Coaching Agile Teams&quot; is another excellent resource. Mentoring and coaching are not the far apart in ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2- Like David says, it depends. My high level thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are working on long projects, that change slowly and are using traditional project management styles. Then using the Manager Tools model with weekly to monthly meetings are fine. You're focused on the PM's career long term, not the day to day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are working on short projects, or high change projects, then try the agile coaching style. It starts with very high touch and then pulls back. It focsuses much more on the doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2012-02-01T14:56:51.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4515" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4552" CreationDate="2012-02-01T15:06:21.200" Score="4" ViewCount="419" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am running a training session for external users of our software product soon, and am currently planning how to approach it. I have a good idea how to run through the specifics of our platform (sustainability data management and analysis), but how can I ensure that I keep it clear, relevant, and address all the needs of the audience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1 - Does anyone know of any guidance out there on running such a session? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2 - Does anyone have any tips or tricks that can bring the session to life?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any previous experiences or advice would be amazing, thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for the answers. After thinking on this and a little research, my current feeling to getting people to understand and remember the process of performing certain tasks is... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1 - start with the background, why they are here, what the benefit of the product is to them. make it relevant and important to them to get their attention.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2 - bring them up to speed with progress so far so they get the context, then explain what's next (the step they are involved in).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;3 - introduce the main tasks they will be performing. explain all of the 'why' and 'what' now. this is key so that they can then concentrate solely on the 'how' when you....&lt;br&gt;&#xA;4 - ...run through visually and verbally the process for them to observe, keeping it simple and not distracting them with caveats or clauses.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;5 - provide handouts and get them to run through a few exercises themselves, whilst helping and assisting.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;6 - group questions, so that they can all benefit from each others first experiences.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;7 - recap, then move onto the next task.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this seem like a good approach and structure? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3110" LastEditorUserId="3110" LastEditDate="2012-02-06T12:11:10.740" LastActivityDate="2012-02-06T13:10:41.817" Title="Running training session for a software product" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;training&gt;&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4515" CreationDate="2012-02-01T17:21:35.103" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make sure that you use examples that relate to their situation. If they are using projects loaded with thousands of items make sure they can see it in action. Make sure you cover a few warts so that they can see how to overcome them. Give them time to play around with their own test cases or data. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Determining the length of the class is tricky, nobody wants 2 hours of material stuffed into an 8 hour day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learn to stand behind the computers during the class, that is the quickest way to see how they are progressing during the exercises.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Watch for a wide spread of skill sets. Some have used your software for a few weeks, others have never seen it in action. You must be able to satisfy both groups. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2947" LastActivityDate="2012-02-01T17:21:35.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4515" CreationDate="2012-02-01T18:21:28.447" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to hire an experienced trainer.  This is quite a specialized role that cannot be taught on this exchange.  And, if you fail, you will lose your external users, who WILL reject your solution and resist the change.  In fact, I'd argue that, with an experienced trainer and a proven syllabus, the risk of knowledge transfer failure is still quite high.  Without it, failure is just this side of imminent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-02-01T18:21:28.447" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4515" CreationDate="2012-02-01T18:50:23.630" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find it helpful to work through the product acting out several different scenarios.  Essentially demonstrating stories, if you manage your requirements that way.  &quot;Imagine you are a {usertype} that wants to {supportedAction}.  Here's how we do that with this product.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a couple of those, working through various feature sets is useful, to show people options available.  Then finish up with more complex situations, and/or responding to questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That has worked for me, the once a year or so I present new features of the product I work on to user group meetings.  Caveat, I'm a development team lead, not a trainer, there's almost certainly other ways that would work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1490" LastActivityDate="2012-02-01T18:50:23.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4510" CreationDate="2012-02-01T19:20:31.243" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a &quot;project manager&quot; per se, but as a youth scout leader, I often ask myself the question as to how I can help the patrol leaders in the troop become better leaders, and by extension plan for summer camp, klondike (the big competition between scout troops), and similar things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I've learned over the past few years I've been trying to help my fellow scouts is that the first rule is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tell them that if they have a question, the &lt;strong&gt;can just ask me&lt;/strong&gt; (or one of the other, more experienced scouts) anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second is like it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you notice they have a problem, talk to them at the patrol leaders council (think of it as a department meeting of sorts), counsel them - but don't take over their &quot;project&quot; (in the case of scouts, their project being getting ready for the next campout, planning the meetings etc). Just give them advice, and if they ask for more assistance, or tell you to shut the heck up and let them do their job, do what they say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Let them fail, but do help them get back up on their feet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dinner sucked last weekend on the campout? Well, help them get back on their feet for the next campouts dinner. Again, be there for them, help them, but don't do their job for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1976" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-02-03T02:52:13.217" LastActivityDate="2012-02-03T02:52:13.217" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4513" CreationDate="2012-02-01T21:35:07.470" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, scrum isn't that &quot;great.&quot; It is just another framework. It may or may not work for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the reason I think it hasn't become a &quot;Mac vs PC&quot; war is the agile community knows that. There are few people in the agile community that will say agile is the one and only way. Most of those don't tend to stick around long as it pretty much flies in the face of the tenets of agile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much of the agile community is in the camp of &quot;give it a try&quot; and not &quot;you must convert.&quot; A low barrier to entry, and a generally welcoming community means less conflict. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Me personally, I've always maintained it is just one of the many tools in my tool box. I find I reach for it more and more, but it still sits in the same box as the PMBoK, Conflict Management training, Manager-Tools, Customer Service Training and other tools. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2012-02-01T21:35:07.470" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4513" CreationDate="2012-02-01T22:43:04.173" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I should be able to find some really elaborated articles that question the highly praised benefits of those modern management techniques...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, Scrum has nothing to do with management techniques. It's a framework which tells you how to do the software development. Regarding managers, it says that a &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; team doesn't need managers, it needs people who keep away those who want to disturb the team. I have no idea why people thought that managers would let themselves be put aside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there a conspiracy going on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My version: The original idea of Scrum was great, but after that came the consultants and turned a good initiative into business. You can attend to courses and workshops for a lot of money, but they won't really help you with the challenges of the job. Until there's money in this business, you won't read any elaborated article about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is scrum really that great? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main problem is that Scrum is taught as the ultimate solution for every possible problem in the software industry, but &lt;strong&gt;there isn't a good way to scale it, use it for maintenance or handle cases when team are changing often&lt;/strong&gt;. It says that the teams should be kept together almost forever, or if you test well you won't need maintenance, etc. Tell this to you boss and there is a good chance that he'll finally have a good laugh. It is unrealistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can understand that an organization wants to change because it feels that things could go better, and thanks to the hype, they'll find Scrum. &lt;strong&gt;Instead of trying out Scrum they should find out what their real problem is.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, it is a good thing to have a look at successful companies like Fog Creek, GitHub, 37signals and find out what their secret is (none of these companies do Scrum or follow any other Agile framework. They do certain techniques, but it is a different story).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-02-03T02:46:59.060" LastActivityDate="2012-02-03T02:46:59.060" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4515" CreationDate="2012-02-02T02:55:55.703" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume that you're asking here because you work at a small company and there isn't anyone there to ask...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) You are there to provide technical information don't try to turn this into a stand up routine...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now for all the &quot;soft&quot; things that make a training meeting go well....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) You should have a 3-ring notebook with b/w copy of any presentations so that the students can make notes on slides. (3-Ring notebook should have company logo, or at least insert with company name.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) At very start of class discuss what happens in event of fire drill? Where should people exit? Where to meet so that you can count noses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) Where are restrooms? Any phones or computers that students can use? Where to hang up coats? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(4) What to do about lunch? If folks go out it can turn into a two hour wait easily. Bring in food if you can. If you have a lunchroom can you reserve a table so all the students can sit together?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(5) If this is a small company, can you have president stop by to say hi? or for lunch? Some other executive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(6) Anyone else in company that students might have dealt with regularly? Have them stop and say hi. (Eg someone from software support...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(7) If folks will be staying overnight have a list of nearby restaurants and directions. Give some idea of price for local restaurants that are not chains. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(8) If folks will be away at lunch be sure that room can be locked. If a customer has something stolen it will be a very very bad situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(9) Have pens, and paper available for notes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(10) Diskettes, CDs,  zip drives to take home &quot;dummy data sets&quot; if appropriate. (So I set up some spreadsheet to do a calc as part of the class. Let me save my work so that I can take it home...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(11) Hard candy and bottles of water are nice for table. Pastries/Coffee in am? Sodas &amp;amp; cookies for pm snack at break?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(12) If folks can get some sort of continuing education points for this be sure to have some sort of certificate. (I'm a project manager, and this is a class on MS project with 3 days of class room time or 24 contact hours...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(13) Some sort of feedback sheet on class, and facilities for feedback. (Folks may or may not give any useful answers but give them a chance. Optional to give name..)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(14) If this is a small company be sure that everyone that the students will come in contact with knows that these are customers. Everyone in your company must be using &quot;company&quot; manners. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(15) Tent cards for names. Badges/Name tags?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(16) Don't tie up class discussing a weird problem one customer is having. Tell customer you'll talk after class. (Eg Customer wants to dump something then format it to put it into their XYZ system. Unlikely that anyone else has XYZ.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(17) Make firm commitment to end class on time on last day. (Folks may have plan to catch to get back home...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(18) Do you intend to give out manuals for product? If you have a lot of stuff some sort of bag to hold all the junk. Ideal would be some sort of bag with your company's logo. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(19) If folks are coming from out of town do you have some hotel recommendation ready. Need directions from airport to hotel (or through town) and hotel to site. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(20) Don't try to do class alone. It is great to have someone else listening even if you do all the talking. It is very hard to listen and think about what to say at the same time. So second person can really help listen to customer's questions to be sure that questions get answered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(21) Don't be afraid of asking &quot;Did that answer your question?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(22) No matter what happens, don't let them see you sweat. Stay calm. Very calm. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(23) Don't disparage anyone in your company about anything. It just makes you all look like a bunch of idiots. (Fred didn't get network set up for class? Ream Fred out of ear shot of student's...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(24) Some other sort of company logo'ed trinket? Mouse-pad? Mug? Pens?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(25) Don't be afraid of saying &quot;I don't know. I'll check and get back to you...&quot; (Nobody knows all features of product.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(26) Be sure screen for presentation can be placed so that all students can see it. Can room be darkened enough?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps...&#xA;Herb&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3117" LastActivityDate="2012-02-02T02:55:55.703" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4523" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-02T06:41:24.680" Score="4" ViewCount="10454" Body="&lt;p&gt;Due to heavy attrition rate my project team usually get new developers at various stages of the projects and sometimes even in the maintenance phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are currently following an informal way of knowledge transfer and it differs from person to person and team to team. Now we are planning to build a formal process for knowledge transfer with sufficient documents and information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to get your expert opinion on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="151" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-04T19:54:36.650" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T19:54:36.650" Title="What are the effective Knowledge Transfer recommended processes" Tags="&lt;knowledge-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1426" CreationDate="2012-02-02T08:52:02.453" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to add to @thousandtyone very good answer an element which contributes to its point #5 : a word that is not yet present in this page -- &lt;strong&gt;leadership&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would have a single definition for leadership / leader : &lt;strong&gt;someone you like to work with&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;It seems a bit tautologic, but it's plain clear to me that leadership is not the product of a recipe, but rather entails some genuine human attitude.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two best project managers i worked with simply had this leadrship, and when i try to analyze why they were much appreciated, I find : competence, attitude to share, showing by exemple, humour.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3119" LastActivityDate="2012-02-02T08:52:02.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4523" CreationDate="2012-02-02T11:26:13.670" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any documentation you create will probably become out-of-date. The harder it is to write the documentation, the more likely this is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lightweight ways of documenting projects will have the highest chance of being updated. I've found that wikis are a great way of keeping anything that can't be kept in code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, consider using the code itself as documentation. Well-written unit tests, BDD-style scenarios and self-commenting code are all great ways of ensuring that the purpose, value and behavior of code is well-understood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend that the devs should particularly be familiar with refactoring techniques (read Martin Fowler's &quot;Refactoring&quot;) and unit testing (read Dan North's &quot;Introducing BDD&quot; which talks about how to do BDD well at a unit level).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from that, the best way to deal with the knowledge leaving is to work out why you've got a heavy attrition rate and sort that out. If your developers are leaving in droves then it's likely that you've got processes or an environment which are making it hard to get their work done, and which may also make the advice I've given above hard to implement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2012-02-02T11:26:13.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4523" CreationDate="2012-02-02T14:18:17.110" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some time ago we had the same discussion in our organization. The knowledge was unevenly available among the team members. Senior personnel would hold the majority of the knowledge for obvious reasons (they have been there longer than you and know the historic issues and/or background of that area) whereas new personnel would struggle to assimilate such amount of information to step up and execute their roles efficiently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We decided to introduce the &lt;strong&gt;Knowledge Management&lt;/strong&gt; concept into our department to manage all relevant information and make it available to all our personnel (new and existing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Knowledge management is essentially about getting the right knowledge to the right person at the right time.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within broad field we have been working specifically on &lt;strong&gt;Knowledge Sharing&lt;/strong&gt; (on which we also included &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Knowledge Transfer&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Knowledge sharing is therefore perhaps the single most important aspect in this process, since the vast majority of KM initiatives depend upon it. Knowledge sharing can be described as either push or pull. The latter is when the knowledge worker actively seeks out knowledge sources (e.g. library search, seeking out an expert, collaborating with a coworker etc.), while knowledge push is when knowledge is &quot;pushed onto&quot; the user (e.g. newsletters, unsolicited publications, etc).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our situation the first initiative led us to the creation of a central location to store all the available information (already created or updated by team members) using SharePoint 2010. We structured the Team Site in multiple &lt;em&gt;Site Centres&lt;/em&gt; depending on the business area covered and subsequently by &lt;em&gt;Document Libraries&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, several &lt;em&gt;logs&lt;/em&gt; were created to allow users (team members) to record their issues and update them with their findings and experience. This would allow other visitors to scan through for similar issues and &lt;em&gt;learn from the experience&lt;/em&gt;, reducing timing and duplication of efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The site includes sections for &lt;em&gt;links&lt;/em&gt; to affiliate sites or online training (specially for material that's managed by a third party).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a framework that is producing satisfactory results in our department. However, &lt;em&gt;this is only one example of tons of available options&lt;/em&gt;. I would recommend investing some time researching your target so you can decide which strategy, processes and framework work best for your organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a go to this site to gather a bit of information regarding &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.knowledge-management-tools.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Knowledge Management&lt;/a&gt;. I'm quite positive that it will provide you with some tips to improve this process in your organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-02-02T14:18:17.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4523" CreationDate="2012-02-02T14:51:44.867" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You state you have heavy attrition, which is never a good thing. In particular it will mean that you will have very few, if any, subject matter experts (SMEs) with years of experience. Many would argue that it takes 10,000 hours to get &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; good at something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway your organization is what it is, so what you want to look for is best practices for knowledge transfer in organizations with high turnover, which is not the same as organizations with lots of senior people. Perhaps the absolute best organization at training people that will only be with them for a short time is the military. Think about it, who else can take someone 18 years old and within one year trust them with nuclear weapons? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is much different than the medical profession where a surgeon will spend five years as a resident in training &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;after medical school and an internship&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; before becoming fully qualified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The military needs to focus on the essentials and clear communication in writing while the medical profession can spend much more time on mentoring and experiential learning. In your origination with high turnover you can not afford to have your best people spending hundreds of hours mentoring someone who is going to leave within a few weeks or months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should focus on using as many external training resources as possible, many of which are free or low cost on line, to train things that are not unique to your firm (good coding practices, security, database design etc.) while your internal documentation should be in writing (used loosely to include PowerPoints etc, any re-usable asset) an along the lines of an Army training manual. That way you can hand your manual to a new hire and not take the time of your most senior people to do one on one training. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2770" LastActivityDate="2012-02-02T14:51:44.867" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4507" CreationDate="2012-02-02T20:12:15.460" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a simple, free, online solution, I would use a Google Doc that is then permissioned for a set of people. You could treat it as a sort of dashboard that you update or make a new one weekly so there is an archive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on how dynamic or static you want the data to be would determine which Google App you use. (spreadsheet vs. doc vs. presentation)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-02-03T17:33:29.867" LastActivityDate="2012-02-03T17:33:29.867" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4492" CreationDate="2012-02-02T20:24:11.943" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should be able to train with anyone world-wide. You do have to sit the exams in person, but the exams do NOT have to be proctored by the trainer. APMG group is the certification body and are the ones who arrange for the exams. If you wanted to you could buy the text book, self-study and then talk to APMG to set up an exam location and date. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ensure that an online trainer includes sitting both the Foundation and Practitioner exams in their costs. It works out to about US$500 or thereabouts for each exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The website for the Australasian arm of APMG is on the web &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apmg-international.com/apmg-australasia/home-aus.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. They should be able to provide you with more details about sitting the exams. If you are the first in your city to sit these exams you may need to help them find a facility that will agree to proctor the exams. Typically they use the local public library system. In my case they worked with a local community college.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what it is worth I went through &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.advantagelearning.co.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Advantage Learning&lt;/a&gt;, their non-EU online training costs are about A$1,250. Overall a good experience for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-02-02T20:24:11.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4510" CreationDate="2012-02-03T03:40:21.547" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's 10% classroom training and 90% mentoring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The classroom training gives the standards of the organization.  Is it PMP?  6 sigma?  Deliverables based?  Standard workplace?  You shouldn't skip this step but it's just an entry point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next step is a 6 month mentoring period.   Ideally you start 3 months before the promotion, giving the mentee PM tasks under heavy supervision.  Every document is explained and reviewed in detail.  After promotion the mentoring is still frequent but more on an as requested basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of the mentoring is transmission of judgment.  There is no short cut in the classroom for transmitting this wisdom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-02-03T03:40:21.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4533" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-03T08:53:28.760" Score="1" ViewCount="214" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I found some interesting articles about salary politics (1), (2).&#xA;I also believe that equal salaries makes life more simple and I generally favor simple and transparent solutions. I believe that when you pay good enough people can focus even more on their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what is more interesting to me is not pros and cons of this concept, but rather how to move the organization from the state of differentiated salaries to the state of equal ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have any ideas how to do it? Let's assume that differences between salaries for the same positions could reach 30%. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One problem that I see is that when salaries will grow to the highest for the position the company budget will suffer. On the other hand when I would make it Robin Hood way - take from the rich and give to the poor - I'm afraid that good people would leave the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.crisp.se/2012/01/11/anderslaestadius/stop-using-differentiated-salaries&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Stop using differentiated salaries - Crisp's Blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) &lt;a href=&quot;http://hbr.org/2012/01/tackling-business-problems/ar/1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Stop Tying Pay to Performance - HBR&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2012-02-03T10:36:59.653" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T22:21:19.147" Title="How to get from differentiated salaries to the equal ones for the same position in company?" Tags="&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;politics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4533" CreationDate="2012-02-03T11:52:31.883" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of the discussion around untying pay to performance is still largely induced theory, softly correlated to some evidence.  Definitely there are some strong arguments to consider, but plunging into this school of thought is quite risky.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to approach a single salary level or a very small range perhaps, I would not shoot for any salary level that already exists in your organization.  You still have the ongoing problem of attracting new talent and mitigating existing talent from leaving.  Therefore, I would analyze the market and establish the range and frequency distribution for a particular job family, then establish a salary target on whatever percentile makes sense for my organization, a value that will still attract new talent from my competitors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you discovered that for job family A the salary ranges from $31K to as high as 65K, the MODE is say $52K.  I might choose to be in the 80th percentile which would put the salary around $55K.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Setting the target based on external actual data will level set everyone's expectations, be a standard set from reasonably objective data, and remove any sense of unfairness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From there, I would begin a program to start moving people towards that value, either in increments or in one move.  I would NOT move higher paying people towards that value.  That would have to change through attrition.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the proponents are right on this, this method could cure those internal issues they cite; however, I cannot see how you would remain competitive in the market place when finding talent.  The market, supply and demand, is dynamic and in constant flux.  This single salary method will, in my view, completely disable you from being agile enough to respond to changing market demands.  If it becomes a buyers' market, you would end up being the highest salary provider and that will make you too expensive to compete for business.  If it becomes a sellers' market, you would become the lowest salary provider and you will lose all of your talent and attract no one.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-02-03T11:52:31.883" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1004" CreationDate="2012-02-03T12:35:38.043" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't totally know your circumstances - whether you are the meeting organiser or a participant who simply want to get things done.  However, either way, if the organiser (you or someone else) doesn't have a structure to the meeting (ie have a goal that is clear and an agenda that is designed to get to that goal) then there's not really any magic way to achieve productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are the organiser, then you have to create an outcome goal and an agenda to get there.  That way you will actually have some chance of achieving something and your note taking will be less reliant on the ability of the tools at your disposal, and more on your ability to stick to the agenda.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're the unlucky meeting invitee to a meeting where there's no clear direction ... your best bet is to insist on an agenda up front to justify your attendance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as tools go, in my experience (I don't use an iPad but some of my colleagues do)- the iPad is less intrusive in that it creates more of an open table environment, and it's harder to actually be detached from the meeting behind an iPad than behind a laptop.  However if you are the meeting facilitator/lead, then you shouldn't really be writing notes during the meeting anyway - that should be delegated to someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3133" LastActivityDate="2012-02-03T12:35:38.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4507" CreationDate="2012-02-03T14:17:48.600" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our company uses &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redmine.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Redmine&lt;/a&gt; to handle projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I don't know how you want to present the report, but with Redmine we give fine grained access* to our clients where they can follow the actual state of the project, they can see what tasks are done or blocking other tasks, and while every task (done/open or closed) is commented, they get an rather detailed inside on the status of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And with the version control of project steps (Roadmap), they get a detailed list of how much overall is done in percents and expected date of release (or how much time overdue).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So all you asked in your question we do with Redmine. If you're looking for an hosted solution, there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plan.io&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;planio&lt;/a&gt; who host Redmine installations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a look on those, maybe you'll find thzm as useful as we do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* fine grained means that we give not access to all the tasks concerning the projects. Some tasks are internal and don't concern the client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're not affiliated with either mentioned links.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3135" LastActivityDate="2012-02-03T14:17:48.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4523" CreationDate="2012-02-03T18:02:17.293" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our organization, we have training departments whose job it is to transfer knowledge to new team members. They don't limit themselves to just one form of communication medium. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We employ a mixture of one-on-one training or group training, which can be conducted either on site or through video calling tools such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/tools/dlpage/res/talkvideo/hangouts/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Hangouts&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skype.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Skype&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, we've created hosted video tutorials, which we follow up with quizzes to help the employee test their knowledge. The quizzes give the employee the opportunity to go back into the video and review anything he or she may have missed, and they also give our trainers feedback in regards to who may need more individual coaching or mentoring.  The training videos are put together using open source desktop recording software such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://camstudio.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CamStudio&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, we host the videos in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://sites.google.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Site&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MediaWiki&lt;/a&gt;, depending on departmental choice. The former is obviously much easier to setup, as it only requires a Google Account. Organizations using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/group/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Apps for Your Domain&lt;/a&gt; can easily share Google products with members of their organization using Google accounts but with administration roles delegated within the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The videos hosted on the Google Site are generally supplemented with documentation, step-by-step instructions, and much more detailed information that one might find useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our goal is to not only provide our employees with a way to obtain knowledge, but also to ensure that the knowledge is transferred using the method that will maximize knowledge acquisition in a manner that is fun and interesting and that also acknowledges the fact that not everyone learns the same way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developers typically go through different classes with different senior developers where they work on smaller projects until the senior developers feel they're ready to take on more responsibility and work more independently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The key though is to create a work environment that reduces the amount of turnover. Without a great work environment, it will be difficult to attract and keep good people. My suggestion is to also spend some time trying to determine why people are leaving. Patching the hole in the bottom of the boat may yield the best results for your particular situation.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-02-03T18:07:37.410" LastActivityDate="2012-02-03T18:07:37.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4523" CreationDate="2012-02-03T19:19:48.753" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few main issues that need consideration:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Knowledge transfer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Training&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maintainable products&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Moral&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Knowledge transfer&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Since you have a lot of departures, have each departing team member spend his last month training an existing team member (not a new one) with his core knowledge.&#xA;The trainee should document the training for future reference for others.&#xA;Any new assignments during this final period should be done in a pair with someone.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Training&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Since your teams absorb a lot of new member, you will want them to assimilate quickly, therefore, you should invest in mandatory professional courses for new employees. These can either be from external training companies or from a training department.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Maintainable products&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;a. Make sure you product can be divided to independent components that can be developed and tested separately (e.g. for software use inversion of control and dependency injection wherever applicable).&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;b. Make sure your products are developed with full automated tests&#xA;(e.g. unit tests, integration tests, system tests and acceptance tests for software or electronics).&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;These will enable maintenance with minimal unexpected breaking of old features.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Moral&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Since your team structure fluxuates a lot, you should consider providing frequent off-site team activities to help unite the team and keep the spirits up. After all, team work is critical to success.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides theses you should find ways to improve your attrition rate, but that is the topic for another question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1094" LastActivityDate="2012-02-03T19:19:48.753" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4540" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4543" CreationDate="2012-02-04T06:48:47.010" Score="4" ViewCount="1049" Body="&lt;p&gt;In academia we constantly need to write project proposals and apply for funding. Sometimes it helps to read what others have already tried or written in order to learn from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder whether there is somewhere a repository or database of freely available project proposals that research groups or companies have written when they have applied for funding to some funding agency (seventh european framework in Europe, National Science Foundation in USA, in industry I do not know, etc), and of course, that have been successful. Also would be great to access to unsuccessful proposals and to understand why the failed in the call.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2356" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T14:57:46.603" Title="Database of project proposals" Tags="&lt;organizational-structure&gt;&lt;budget&gt;&lt;project-proposal&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="955" CreationDate="2012-02-04T10:58:34.883" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It hasn't been mentioned yet, so I'll throw it in the ring - my (albeit small) team are very happy using Unfuddle &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unfuddle.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;www.unfuddle.com&lt;/a&gt; - it is a software dev management tool with tickets, built in Subversion repository, milestone tracking, and general collaboration area.  It's pretty cheap too.  We really like the way you can link tickets to commits by simply adding in the ticket number into the commit notes - and it's become the defacto way we document our code now - including the ticket number that can be cross-referenced easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3133" LastActivityDate="2012-02-04T10:58:34.883" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-02-04T10:58:34.883" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3683" CreationDate="2012-02-04T11:01:40.073" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, it's SaaS, but we love it - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unfuddle.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Unfuddle&lt;/a&gt;. Tickets of work, custom reports, milestones, simple collaboration tools (notebooks and messages) and subversion repository built in.  And it's pretty cheap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3133" LastActivityDate="2012-02-04T11:01:40.073" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-02-04T11:01:40.073" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4540" CreationDate="2012-02-04T17:38:36.040" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;US federal funding agencies such as the NSF, NIH, NEH, and NEH-ODH  (these are the ones with which I have personal familiarity) with all at least have the following publicly available on their web site: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;abstracts of funded projects (taken directly from their project proposals; see the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NSF's&lt;/a&gt;, for example)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a sample proposal for each award program (in several cases, these are actual proposals only slightly anonymized); search &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=NSF%20sample%20proposal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;NSF sample proposal&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=NIH%20sample%20proposal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;NIH sample proposal&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=NEH%20sample%20proposal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;NEH sample proposal&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, etc in Google and you will find numerous examples - bear in mind that proposals or &quot;grant narratives&quot; require specific structures that are outlined in each agency's &quot;guidelines&quot; sections of their sites. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a number of very thorough guides (as well as workshops to attend; although I know that's not what you're asking, agencies do provide this service) and tips for preparing a proposal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2864" LastEditorUserId="2864" LastEditDate="2012-02-04T23:24:34.003" LastActivityDate="2012-02-04T23:24:34.003" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4544" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-05T04:07:59.437" Score="4" ViewCount="1543" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have a business process re-engineering project where I need to schedule and conduct interviews with business participants and stakeholders in a short period of time (4 weeks).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to get the participants and stakeholders to commit to and adhere to such a schedule?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&#xA;I will be working directly with the sponsor on the project, so that should help.  Any specific advice on how to work with the sponsor to drive this project with the tight schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3145" LastEditorUserId="2618" LastEditDate="2012-02-10T11:44:10.217" LastActivityDate="2012-02-10T11:44:10.217" Title="Scheduling interview with stakeholders" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4544" CreationDate="2012-02-05T05:02:09.473" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Find your sponsor (VP of XXX??) and his business case (Save X by Y by doing Z) and have him drive it.  Give them carrots for helping, but use the stick of your sponsor if you need.  There's a limit to your power as an external, but be reliable and utilize whoever hired you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-02-05T05:02:09.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4533" CreationDate="2012-02-05T05:09:59.633" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without tackling the issue of whether or not it's the right (good cases on both sides - what's right depends on corporate culture), here are some thoughts...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1)  Transparency and consistency is key.  Tell everyone what you are going to do, and follow that plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2)  It's better to do it quicker rather than slower.  If you tell the firm, &quot;Paying everyone the same by level is consistent with our values&quot; and 2 years later have discrepancies because you are equalizing over time, people won't believe you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3)  People react very bad to nominal wage cuts.  If the range of a position is 100k to 140k, you can't put everyone at 120k.  All the good employees between 120k and 140k will be looking to leave.  You have to go to 140k, and moderate future raises if you need to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4)  The more junior the employee, the less room they have for surprises.  Sometimes it's hard to remember being 22 or 23, but a lot of these folks live paycheck to paycheck.  It's not fair to surprise them, or leave them in the dark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5)  Be prepared to lose a couple folks over this.  If this is truly in line with your corporate culture, you have to accept this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-02-05T05:09:59.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4544" CreationDate="2012-02-05T05:32:31.147" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've successfuly used the Manager-Tools &lt;a href=&quot;http://manager-tools.com/2006/11/jump-starting-internal-customer-relationships&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jump Starting Internal Relationships&lt;/a&gt; format for stakeholder meetings. The podcast outlines a 30 minute meeting and five questions that I've found just as well for stakeholder as for internal customers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sample email also works very well. One of the keys is, don't use Outlook calendar except for just the meeting invite. send an email with the information and the intro slide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like it wouldn't do anything, but a simple 1/2 hour meeting, set up right has done wonders for creating lasting internal relationships. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2012-02-05T05:32:31.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4544" CreationDate="2012-02-05T12:05:43.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your first step would be to include client obligations in your contract, explicitly articulated in terms of who, what, where, when, why, and how a customer is supposed to do something.  Explicit obligations that, if not met, you are held harmless of the results (read, you can point to something to argue your case to protect yourself to the degree possible).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, push the scheduling to your customer.  Since this is YOUR job, you are the one with nearly 100% flexibility to meet their scheduling demands.  Since this is secondary to their job, they need to be the ones to demand.  But, if they own the scheduling, then you should have increased the likelihood (not remove) to a good degree that they adhere to it with minimal changes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, plan a plan B.  Have back-up dates, have other facilitators and BP modelers at the ready to crash the work if necessary, prepare the sponsor early if you are experience unfavorable variances to the schedule or the results of the meetings...and whatever else you can think of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-02-05T12:05:43.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4510" CreationDate="2012-02-05T16:04:26.560" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mentoring is the best way for a new or junior project manager to develop and acheive his own potential and trust his own abilities. Work experience is sometimes more valuable than money in an organization. Having a mentor aslo facilitates the integration of a new employee in an compagny, I mean better and faster integration. It is easier to have more social interconnections within the system. I would built a team of your most senior project managers. They could meet everytime they witness in their work place that somebody could benefit from a mentor or ask for it. My advice would be to keep that structure very light, with no formal meeting schedule. Try to make the personalities fit too. The manager should give some time to the mentor and to the junior project manager to meet and discuss, unless the work performance pressure will end the mentor-junior project manager relationship very rapidely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2964" LastActivityDate="2012-02-05T16:04:26.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4550" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-05T16:35:41.580" Score="2" ViewCount="691" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently writing a paper regarding project management, and was wondering if anyone with experience could answer the following questions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What are the steps involved in creating a testing process? (Are there a standard set of steps, as after searching the internet I could not find any)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How can one refine cost estimation when in the design stage of a project?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the first question, would the following be a valid explanation, or is this not a test process? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Design test cases&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Prepare test data&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Run program with test data&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Compare results to test data&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3149" LastEditorUserId="3863" LastEditDate="2012-04-27T19:34:43.110" LastActivityDate="2012-04-27T19:34:43.110" Title="Estimation and testing in project management" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4550" CreationDate="2012-02-05T21:12:33.357" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking at your answer to question 1,I think you are confusing test process with test execution .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Test process is a bigger umbrella activity that usually serves the following two purposes -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Guides/explains the test team on how to - design,execute,report,advocate  - tests,test results,risks&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Provides project or business management with the outputs they need to make business decisions based on test information.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that software testing being such a complex activity which involves continuous exploring,learning and improvisation (according tp project dynamics) , it is hard ( and rather not advisable) for a testing process to be more than a bunch of easy to understand &amp;amp; concise documents , providing guidance rather than  carved in stone instrcutions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastActivityDate="2012-02-05T21:12:33.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4515" CreationDate="2012-02-06T13:10:41.817" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could organize your session over a weekend with a 3 days schedule: friday evening, saturday and sunday (ending sunday around 4 pm). Avoid to much magistral teaching : somebody who speaks for a long time with non interaction from those who listen. You can do some kind of simulation or work team, dividing the participants of your session in small groups to do a specific task. Then there could be a period where a representative from each team can explain to the others what they found or did. You should have some questions and answers periodes. You can watch a video. You can also do an auto evaluation, mid session or/and at the end of the session to verify if you are on the right track. You can chose 2 or 3 people who can share their own experience to the participants, just for 5 minutes for example. Plan long break times, especially at the beginning of the session to facilitate socialisation. You can have a kind of a game going with the theme of you session to break the ice. So, in summary, use many different pedagogic way of teaching and keep track on the receptiveness of your participants. Also turn every unplanned even into an unexpected occasion of learning something new: do not be afraid to go somewhere you did not planned to go if its is in the best interest of your participants and if the majority agrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2964" LastActivityDate="2012-02-06T13:10:41.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4553" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-06T15:05:21.243" Score="4" ViewCount="566" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would need an online team collaboration (project management) tool very easy to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't need a lot of features, just these ones:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;assign tasks to team members&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;comment on tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;give time estimation to tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;mark tasks as done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;categorise tasks by projects, releases, tags&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What software would you recommend? An hosted solution would be ideal. We are a medium-size company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3154" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-02-09T06:21:51.477" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T19:51:20.633" Title="Easiest online team collaboration tool" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ClosedDate="2013-05-05T21:11:31.627" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4544" CreationDate="2012-02-06T16:12:35.397" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend having your project sponsor arrange for someone in management who is above all the participants to send a memo to all concerned that this is a project of critical importance to him/her and requesting their full cooperation it supporting the project and meeting the timeline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is nothing quite like knowing the the CEO is personally watching you to get people to take an interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2770" LastActivityDate="2012-02-06T16:12:35.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4553" CreationDate="2012-02-07T01:40:06.297" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend &lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/&quot;&gt;https://trello.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have been using it for tracking activities of my team ( size - 10 testers) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is straightforward, not too clutter or complexity , is free and should tick the boxes from your question&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastActivityDate="2012-02-07T01:40:06.297" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4553" CreationDate="2012-02-07T02:36:30.893" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't mind paying, then Flow is an excellent option: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.getflow.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.getflow.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can assign/delegate tasks to team members, comment on tasks, mark them as done, and categorize using tags for your projects and releases.  It also has due dates, recurring tasks, a calendar view that you can subscribe to, and even attachments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing I don't see from your list is the ability to add estimates, although that could be easy enough using custom tags, a naming scheme, or just the description field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has a great iPhone app and simple little Mac app for quick entry and Growl notifications. as well.  Highly recommended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3160" LastActivityDate="2012-02-07T02:36:30.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4550" CreationDate="2012-02-07T04:28:58.773" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1.) What are the steps involved in creating a testing process? (Are there a standard set of steps, as after searching the internet I could&#xA;  not find any)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For the first question, would the following be a valid explanation, or&#xA;  is this not a test process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;-Design test cases&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;-Prepare test data&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;-Run program with test data&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;-Compare results to test data&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a feeling that you are actually asking on how to implement a proper Test Process in an organization. As for your initial question - to create a testing process, one needs to agree on a given workflow and requirements regarding the way the product should be tested in a given company. Be it a software workshop or for example a factory, which creates umbrellas. It's the middle of the night over here, so let me hyperbolize a little.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stop here for a second and try to investigate what Quality Assurance would really mean for the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here you are, managing the production process for the example &lt;em&gt;Umbrellas Incorporated&lt;/em&gt;. You have a set of requirements describing how the final product should work and also, possibly need to agree on how good a product should be, before you will release it to final customers. Thus, you need some &lt;strong&gt;standards&lt;/strong&gt;. Also, you would like to know what happens during production and what happens on site. How should your Quality Assurance department tackle any tasks? When should they start the testing procedure and how should they report? Also what if a final customer calls you saying that the umbrella is  leaking water, not working correctly at all or needs some fixes right now for one angry customer standing in front of some luxury hotel in Paris, who demands immediate changes to the umbrella, cause his product is not working correctly given rain conditions on-site? Thus, you need a proper &lt;strong&gt;organizational workflow&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, think about what happens when the production line is not working correctly? What should the Quality Assurance department do? Are they allowed to influence the production process strongly? Are they allowed to stop the production process? Thus along with the &lt;strong&gt;workflow&lt;/strong&gt;, you'll need &lt;strong&gt;guidelines&lt;/strong&gt; for exceptional situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now following the question - we now know what is needed to effectively implement a test process. The actual execution of the tests is just part of it. What we do now is to ensure that the test process can work effectively for our &lt;em&gt;Umbrella Incorporated&lt;/em&gt; company? Let's create a document describing our agreements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Standards&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Describe the areas of the product required to be verified.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Describe the artefacts used during a  test process (documents, bugs in some tracking system, test data)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agree on a possible list of priorities/severity values for issues found during tests; for example: small severity being issues with the UI (bad colour of the material used during the production of an example umbrella), medium ones being some nuisances in the way the product works (problems with the springs used in the umbrella), and highly severe issues being problems blocking users from accessing the product's functionalities (canopy cannot be opened at all)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Describe the list of reports to be provided after the execution of tests&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Workflow&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agree on a workflow, include proper description of responsibilities in a project or project portfolio. Incorporate the Test Process into the current Production Process. Determine the possible information exchange points between the production team and Quality Assurance. Let it be a list of issues, or some IT tool to handle the project  information. Agree on a proper policies for introducing new functionality. Determine when the Test Cases are being written and whose responsibility is it to manage the Test Cases in accordance to user's requirements. Determine what different test scenarios are being used. Be it regression testing or tests for new functionalities. Agree on what &lt;em&gt;fully tested and verified&lt;/em&gt; product means. Include the information on tests used during the product's lifetime - determine example processes, which you described (Example: &lt;em&gt;After a new requirement is created, prepare a list of test cases, prepare the test data and add said test case to the lists of tests/test scenarios to be performed during the production cycle, after the internal releases and after final customer-ready releases&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Determine the roles for the team members - describe who is responsible for starting the test process, who is allowed to report problems and issues. Who is responsible for creation and acceptance of test scenarios.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure that all the information is readily available and the team understands what is involved during the Test Process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Describe possible situations, which may involve immediate reaction of the Quality Assurance. It must be clear, whether the test process can block the release or not.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agree on the needed service level to be delivered. Describe how the issues are being selected to be fixed. When should the fixes be introduced to the product.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Execution of tests - as you initially noted in your question, you need to also create a detailed description of steps needed in the process. The points you listed are just subtasks used in the whole process, but obviously, one needs them to eventually perform the tests.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: &lt;em&gt;these is not a handbook or theoretical definition - just my opinion and my feeling on how this question can be answered.&lt;/em&gt; Also, I'm in no way associated with any company possibly involved in production of umbrellas, and myself am rarely using ones, just couldn't resist after reading the_reluctant_tester's proper description of what a Test Process is ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2.) How can one refine cost estimation when in the design stage of a project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting the cost estimation appropriately is highly connected to the schedule and tasks' estimation of the given project. When the project is in a design phase, the most effective way of overcoming any complications is to describe the desired output better. One can assess tasks more effectively if given more specific details about the product to be created. One way to achieve this is to extend the phase responsible for gathering of the requirements and then scheduling team's work to estimate lower level requirements. Such solution is not always possible to be introduced, given software development - it depends on the customer's strategy, how advanced the vision for the product is, etc. In my opinion there is no really easy way to improve the estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One can also use some estimation techniques to improve the assessment - like using FPE (Function Points Estimation) or WBS based estimation (Work Breakdown Structure based estimation). If possible, the desired development team should also help during the estimation, but keep in mind that developers do tend to either underestimate or overestimate the tasks they will work on. IMHO, expertise and experience are the key factors during the estimation process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3075" LastEditorUserId="3075" LastEditDate="2012-02-07T04:43:15.043" LastActivityDate="2012-02-07T04:43:15.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4452" CreationDate="2012-02-07T13:52:35.380" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see two possibilities to understand Mike's behavior (keeping in mind that he is a volonteer): 1: Mike is &quot;blinded&quot; and is not able to evaluate his own competence, potential and abilities as a project manager. Maybe then refer him to a mentor if it is possible. He could joint another team after a training session. Maybe hire him. 2: He really wants to have his chance to take more responsabilities. Maybe he had a bad experience in the past and want to have a second chance, pushing a little bit. The other thing would be that your senior manager wants to influence your project, using Mike to destabilize your planification: a kind of an ideas shock. I would put Mike in charge of a part of your project. Keep an eye on him and coach him (become his mentor). Maybe there is a chance that you can seize in your situation and improuve what you have in mind (what you wanted to acheive with your project before Mike's arrival) with Mike's and others input (participative management). It is more work, but the degree of motivation and innovation will increase rapidly in your team dynamic. We all deserve a break, someone to give us our first chance in the business world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2964" LastActivityDate="2012-02-07T13:52:35.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4305" CreationDate="2012-02-07T17:25:54.147" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;How you deal with this depends so much on the PM's personality and your relationship with him. But if it's open enough and you feel like you can trust him, probably what would be best is to first go him privately and bring up the issue from the perspective of &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; having a difficult time working with the team member and discussing it with the PM in order to try to help yourself figure out how to make &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; work environment more pleasant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't suggest making it sound like you're telling on your coworker. That probably won't make you come off looking too great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, that's where I'd start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2223" LastActivityDate="2012-02-07T17:25:54.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3202" CreationDate="2012-02-08T00:01:44.333" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a developer who is now a manager, estimation is hard. As &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/1752/scott&quot;&gt;Scott&lt;/a&gt; said, you really mustn't beat yourself up about it; it's just &lt;em&gt;hard&lt;/em&gt;. Frustratingly, the way to get better at it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; through practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally (and your brain may well work differently), I find that the bigger something is the less accurate the estimate. &lt;strong&gt;Break everything down&lt;/strong&gt; so that you aim for half-day chunks or smaller -- instead of &quot;build login functionality&quot;, try &quot;build login form + build lost password form + build login database&quot; and so on. For some context, I estimated a Facebook application for a client today and the largest line-item in the spreadsheet we use was two days, when the project duration is two or three weeks build.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that &lt;strong&gt;nothing ever goes smoothly&lt;/strong&gt;, so take a guess as to how risky each task is and vary the quote accordingly. For the sake of argument, let's say that low-risk tasks should be inflated by 10%, medium risk tasks by 50% and high risk tasks by 150%. (I'm making these numbers up as I type, just pick something that feels right, then increase it some, to make sure you're not being too optimistic again.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use our bug tracking software (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jira&lt;/a&gt;, but any would probably do) to track work items too, and to log time against them. (This has the advantage of allowing project managers to see how you're doing against their expectations.) You don't necessarily need to do all of that, but it's a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; good idea to &lt;strong&gt;keep track of your estimates, so you can go back and compare your performance against them later&lt;/strong&gt;. That will allow you to gain an idea of the kinds of tasks that you underestimate and by how much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main thing you need to work out, I would guess, &lt;strong&gt;is in what way are you underestimating?&lt;/strong&gt; Are you just generally being optimistic, are you underestimating the complexity of certain tasks or are you not taking account of the things that might get in the way (other work coming up, that meeting you need to allow a couple of hours for, that hangover you're gonna have after taking your partner out for Valentine's night, the time you're gonna have to spend googling how to get MVC to play ball with the data model you're passing in from this controller, whatever). Finally, what about amends time? In my day job, all our dev work goes through a QA team, who come back with bug reports. Those bugfixes are usually around another 15% of the build time, all told. So a project that's a week's build will probably have another day of bugfixing once it comes back from QA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that said, &lt;strong&gt;for the project you're on at the moment, stop where you are and review what's left to achieve.&lt;/strong&gt; Divide that up into discrete tasks and re-estimate it. Then take a look at those risk factors and inflate your estimates accordingly. Then, when you're done summing that up, add some contingency (we apply 30% contingency to most projects, because shit just has a habit of coming up when you don't want it to).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention that you have some colleagues, but that they're not big with the up-front planning. Do you think they would be able to &lt;strong&gt;help you validate those estimates&lt;/strong&gt;? Remember, when asking them, that they will work at a different velocity to you, so if you say that something's a 2-hour job and they think they could do it in an hour, what's important is how long it will take &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; to complete the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said at the start, though, &lt;strong&gt;don't beat yourself up over it&lt;/strong&gt;. Development estimation is hard. And building something in a new context (a new framework or language or whatever) is doubly hard. Good luck with it. And don't worry: C#, .Net and MVC do get easier. And so does estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3169" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2012-02-08T00:01:44.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4553" CreationDate="2012-02-08T09:34:23.803" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smartsheet.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;www.smartsheet.com&lt;/a&gt;.  The look and feel is similar to a spreadsheet, so it's quite easy to use without much training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1666" LastActivityDate="2012-02-08T09:34:23.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4553" CreationDate="2012-02-08T10:47:36.400" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The new one, on the market is wunderkit. Its free but advanced features require you to pay. &#xA;Here:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wunderkit.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.wunderkit.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3176" LastActivityDate="2012-02-08T10:47:36.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4425" CreationDate="2012-02-08T13:28:26.730" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the time, it is the case. People are severe in their self-evaluation because they do not want to appear too challenging to their boss. But what is the point of a self-evaluation? It is to get a feedback from an employee on how he percieve the achievement of his objectives set by his manager (and him?) at the beginning of the project. Some say that there is no point on doing a self-evaluation or that it is not an objective way to evaluate an employee. I do not buy that. Most of the self-evaluations I did in my carreer were a way to express how I felt doing the job. What were my good and bad points. I would add a section in your self-evaluation form called &quot;Employee comments&quot;. In that section the employee can write anything he wants, so his manager can be aware of a situation that he could ingnore. If you have an evaluation process on a 100 points base, I would dedicate only 10 points to the self-evaluation. That way you are sure to have a feedback from your employees and keep the global evaluation process fair for all employees. But now a day they are few compagnies who apply an objective and fair evaluation process, but that is another question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2964" LastActivityDate="2012-02-08T13:28:26.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4564" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4568" CreationDate="2012-02-08T14:37:10.013" Score="2" ViewCount="1613" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, my company has finally decided that we need some type of project management solution for the entire operations team (~10 people). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have personally been using Basecamp to track new feature/enhancements requests and bugs. However, it doesn't have the reporting components my boss would like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, I've begun searching for a solution that can offer the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It must be incredibly easy to use &amp;amp; intuitive&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It should have basic reporting capabilities so we can see how long a bug has been in the queue, etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The closest solution I've come across is Zoho Projects, but my boss views it as being clunky. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also tried Asana, Teambox, Flow, GoPlan, and Trello... but was disappointed in their reporting capabilities (or lack thereof).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried AxoSoft OnTime but thought it wasn't very intuitive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The closest solution I found was JIRA, but it seems like it focuses much more on development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a developer, I'm willing to use whatever is easiest to use for the rest of the company so it will be adopted quickly. So far, though, it seems like it's become impossible to find a solution that's very simple for anyone to start using but also have a nice admin side for reporting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3171" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-03-12T18:59:05.360" LastActivityDate="2016-04-18T14:02:11.980" Title="Project Management Software for Developers and Non-Technical Users" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ClosedDate="2016-04-19T16:06:57.587" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2715" CreationDate="2012-02-08T15:15:36.460" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen several different reasons for having a 1-2-1 meeting, and it only reinforces my belief:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The only person that can really tell you what's the purpose of these one-to-one meetings between you and your manager... is your manager.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1-2-1 meetings can be used for anything. Most of the answers we have here (specially Perry's and dlongman's) are, &lt;em&gt;in general&lt;/em&gt;, the best answer for 1-2-1. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In short&lt;/strong&gt;, these meetings are supposed to be used for any topic that's not expected to be openly discussed with the whole team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do agree also that there might be lots of 1-2-1 meetings being wrongly conducted / misused, as Lunivore mentioned with the fresh manager who has just taken the 'wand of power'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, you can &lt;em&gt;expect&lt;/em&gt; to have in these meetings what's already discussed in other answers. But you will only know and understand &lt;em&gt;for sure&lt;/em&gt; how to take the best of them asking it to your manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Suggestion:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;During next meeting, I'd suggest you to clarify, on a very direct and objective way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What's the purpose of these meetings?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What's the level of detail you'd like me to use?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the topics to be discussed during these meetings? Project? Company? Career? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who came up with this idea (that's a sensitive question but might help you to understand the big picture)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Am I allowed to ask you about any topic I'd like to?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe having direct answers for these questions will give you support to a candid approach during next meetings. If you get only evasive answers... then something is wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-02-08T15:15:36.460" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4564" CreationDate="2012-02-08T16:51:28.733" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While JIRA is (as you say) focused on development, I do not think it is so much so that it cannot be used for non-development projects.  It's integration with Confluence is simply brilliant, as it allows you to tie whatever tasks you are tracking in JIRA to collaborative documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend trying a pilot with it, at any rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2593" LastActivityDate="2012-02-08T16:51:28.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4564" CreationDate="2012-02-08T17:57:20.720" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I very strongly recommend &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pivotaltracker.com/?gclid=CPLxn4v6jq4CFQRN4Aodizjwdw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pivotal Tracker&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've used Jira, Trello and many others and they were all kinda 'yeah, kinda'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But Pivotal Tracker I really love.  When I started using it for my own personal projects and my life I knew it had met the acid test!  For fans of others tools - do you use it personally and love it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's very modern, many activites are drag and drop rather than clunky old forms.  It handles bugs, features and chores really well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bets of all, as time passes, it reports your 'velocity' for completing stuff, so in the future you can base estimates on how long things REALLY take, not just how long you wish they would take !!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As your requirements are for an incredibly &lt;strong&gt;easy to use&lt;/strong&gt; tool, &lt;strong&gt;reporting capabilities&lt;/strong&gt; and a nice &lt;strong&gt;admin area&lt;/strong&gt;, I think Pivotal Tracker would meet your needs nicely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2602" LastActivityDate="2012-02-08T17:57:20.720" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4564" CreationDate="2012-02-09T06:19:25.847" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While there are advantages to having a company-wide project management solution, there are also disadvantages. As you've mentioned, JIRA is a good choice for bug tracking or for project management but may not be optimal for other areas.  Conversely, Trello may be great for managing really small customer service oriented projects, it may not be great for a large development project. In short, everyone may feel that the solution falls short in one area or another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is to find out what works best for each department and let each area innovate independently. Not only will each group's shoes fit their feet, but also you'll have several experiments running that will increase the likelihood of finding the most optimal solutions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T06:19:25.847" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4550" CreationDate="2012-02-09T11:13:21.200" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will try to answer to question #1&lt;br&gt;&#xA;To me, you basically answered your question, but I would add (with a project manager perspective):  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1/ Testing is checking the conformance to requirements (this is the definition of quality in ISO 9001 : conformance to requirements). As a results, before going to design test case, your need to plan the work starting from the list of requirements and organize testing to match this list (one way or another). This will be usefull for (eg) rating the quality of the product you test : % of requirements fullfilled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2/ You need to make sure that product is testable. This has impacts on product design and development.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I will try to illustrate with a simple example: if you test a web application with Selenium, it will help if DOM elements are identified by specific #ids so that you can assert (or reuse) values.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Lesson : test design may have impacts on design/dev and must be tackled early in the project (at least your test strategy).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(one step further : you could consider that your test scripts must be available before dev, so that they are used as the &quot;living specification&quot;. This goes back to TDD).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3119" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T11:13:21.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4570" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-09T11:17:17.807" Score="21" ViewCount="9152" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have one on one meetings with manager and senior members of our company. They raise points in meetings and I note down on paper. Can anyone tell me what are the formats to note minutes of meetings? Which points should give more emphasize and which points one neglected in meetings? Please give day to day example so that it is easy for me to understand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a trainee and recording minutes during meeting hours creates bad impression because they may think I'm neglecting them. So, when to record minutes? while meeting or after meeting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3179" LastEditorUserId="10342" LastEditDate="2014-07-28T09:49:48.450" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T09:40:53.003" Title="How to take minutes of meeting effectively?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4571" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-09T11:18:15.873" Score="19" ViewCount="9136" Body="&lt;p&gt;Each week I issue a personalised email to everyone in the business (there are only 17 of us) with the following headings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can you provide a brief status report for this week based on your assigned priorities (in this section I ask for status + estimated days remaining on the task).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did you need to divert onto anything else this week not in the priorities listed above (if so can you list briefly below along with an approx. estimate).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can you confirm your main priorities for next week?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The email relates to a 'Priorities' email sent out on a Monday morning detailing everybody's objectives for the week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I started doing this (I have been in my current organisation now for around 5 months) I had the following outcomes in mind from this email:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I could capture progress and get a sense for what is moving forward and what tasks are  'stuck' and not getting completed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By asking for next weeks priorities I can populate next week's 'Priorities' email (I also suggest items here related to our overall company schedule that I oversee...) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By tracking interruptions I have a metric of what has caused delays in the project and where we can make improvements to limit these going forward.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But... these are the downsides:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's a big effort to get together each week (composing, sending out, receiving, transferring into next week's 'Priorities' email) - I'd estimate the whole process takes me around 5 hours a week.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People forget to reply to it as they are engrossed (quite rightly) in their every day work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sometimes I'm out of the office or have other priorities that prevent me from getting it out (I've never failed to, but have come close)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It feels sometimes as if 'the tail is wagging the dog' - i.e. I am collecting peoples priorities for the upcoming week, only to tell those people the following week what they have already told me..!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm concerned that the status report is felt to be an unnecessary distraction by the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are developing our tools internally for project management and have recently introduced time tracking tools etc which I hope may mean I can begin to drop this rigid weekly status reporting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anybody else employ a similar status report process, is it effective? Would you modify anything about my approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2134" LastActivityDate="2015-05-28T08:47:18.470" Title="What alternatives are there to a weekly status report to collect team members' progress on assigned work?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;progress-report&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3619" CreationDate="2012-02-09T11:33:55.300" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;After tens of years of experience in IT, as PM and developper before, I feel that the most difficult thing to do is &lt;strong&gt;workload evaluation&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you consider agile methods (and even though), it is at the root of any project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get this workload evaluation, you have to discuss with developers, argue with them, not pushing for lower cost, but instead trying to explore difficulties. You can't have this dialog if you didn't get designing / coding experience.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, &lt;strong&gt;in general as the question does not state any specific context&lt;/strong&gt;, I definitively vote for yes : it is very important to have that experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3119" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-29T01:26:37.410" LastActivityDate="2012-06-29T01:26:37.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4571" CreationDate="2012-02-09T12:42:47.850" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Communication is critical on all projects.  The risk of 'getting it wrong' is rather high.  So, the energy, costs, time, and effort that go into it is simply the cost of doing business.  Hopefully, this was considered as part of the required effort so the time and costs are built in to your targets.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the communication vehicle can come in different types.  Right now, you are choosing a written summary of weekly events and your team is relatively small.  Perhaps you can save some time by holding a end of week or beginning of week 'stand-up.'  For example, every Monday morning at 8:00 am, the team collects in the war room and you conduct a round the room update.  Fifteen minutes, you capture the key messages, and you move on.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are opponents to non structured face-to-face meetings so you have to consider those cons.  I, too, do not like non agenda meetings; however, I have used this method in the past and it worked well.  It just has to be well facilitated and controlled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T12:42:47.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4570" CreationDate="2012-02-09T13:34:10.843" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, let me say that if taking minutes in the meeting is your assigned task, then I highly doubt that your superiors will think badly of you for writing things down -- for that moment, it is your job, and unless they told you that you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; either memorize everything or record the meeting and produce notes afterwards, do not be worried about making a bad impression.  If you are still worried, simply ask your boss how he or she prefers that you go about performing this task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are talking about taking &lt;em&gt;personal notes&lt;/em&gt; during a meeting, for your own benefit and not for publishing after the meeting, then you should take notes in whatever way is beneficial to you.  Since you are a new employee, you might say &quot;Do you mind if I take notes?&quot; before the meeting begins, and if anyone raises an objection you'll have your answer.  Although I personally have never experienced a situation in which a manager did not allow or appreciate note-taking during the meeting (unless it was a super top secret meeting in which the information was never to leave a room), the only way you are going to know if that is the case is to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is always going to be a balance between writing too much and not writing enough, and &quot;enough&quot; depends on the type of meeting and whether the notes are for your personal benefit or for the benefit of the team and external stakeholders.  Many people use paper and pen, and many people bring a laptop or iPad -- it depends on what makes you the most productive.  Some people underline important points, some people circle them, some people type them in bold.  It doesn't really matter as long as when you sit down after the meeting to produce the &quot;final&quot; version -- either for yourself, if you do that, or for others, you know what you meant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to precisely &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; to write down, again it depends: if it's just for you, write enough so that you remember what was said.  If it's for more people than just yourself, err on the side of writing down too much -- you want to be able to produce an accurate record of the important points in the discussion.  If you are producing minutes for more a larger audience, then be sure you send your minutes to the group for review and edits -- if not to everyone who was in the meeting, then definitely to your superior and to those people who said something &quot;on the record&quot;, to ensure you accurately captured their points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you might take a look at this Productivity SE post: &lt;a href=&quot;https://productivity.stackexchange.com/questions/2162/not-okay-to-take-notes-at-meetings&quot;&gt;&quot;Not okay to take notes at meetings?&quot;&lt;/a&gt; as well as other posts on that site tagged &quot;note-taking&quot;, for the particulars of &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; to do it in the most productive way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2864" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:52:19.170" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T13:34:10.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3619" CreationDate="2012-02-09T13:36:13.680" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that development experience can be helpful while managing IT projects, but it can be also an obstacle to be a good project manager. Being a developer you think like developer, this is ok. But manager who thinks like developer is not good because then he focuses on code, application, technical issues and not on people and their work, need, satisfaction, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no clear answer &quot;yes&quot; or &quot;no&quot; because it depends on many factors. For instance, the biggest team, the more 'human issues' arises so manager must focus only on that matters. It would be good to have lead developer who is responsible for technical issues and can help developers, so manager doesn't have to play that role. If the team is small then manager with development experience is a good option, because then he can help his developers in technical problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more experience you have the better (development too). But use this knowledge wisely - be a manager and think as a manager even if you were a developer before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2939" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T13:36:13.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4576" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4589" CreationDate="2012-02-09T15:36:01.013" Score="12" ViewCount="1262" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our BAs (Business Analysts) have an annoying habit of providing us with system requirements, rather than business requirements.  Often times, they don't even know what the business requirement is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It infuriates me, because I see a list of requirements, and it will be tied to the way it should be implemented, rather than the problem that should be solved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A very contrived example would be, &quot;System should email customer an order confirmation.&quot; instead of &quot;The customer needs to be informed that the order is confirmed.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Granted, in this case, it will likely be an email.  However, there is a chance we make a business decision to be more personable and want to follow up orders with phone calls to verify they found everything they were looking for, etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other examples are more insidious.  I was working with something that handled reallocating distribution to different locations based on sales.  The order is initially placed sending $X amount to store X, $Y amount to store Y, and $Z amount to store Z.  However, 6 months had passed from the initial order, and we see that store Z is now outperforming store Y, who's sales have dropped.  We want to swap the goods we are distribution between the stores.  The business rules I were given were tied very closely to the implementation, and in many case, where X-&gt;Y, Y-&gt;Z and Z-&gt;X no swaps would occur, even though our eyes can see that we are literally just shuffling goods between stores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I suggested a new approach, queu up the orders we have, sort them, sort the stores based on sales, and then rematch the lists that way.  Ensuring the best selling stores get the largest orders.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, because I don't actually know the business rule, and just know the shuffling algorithm I was given, which seems incorrect, fixing it involves going back to the users, and getting the business rules...which should have been done in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm asking is, is there a trick to gathering good requirements that are based upon business rules?  How can I get the BAs to do this, when they aren't already.  I'm having a hard time know explaining the difference between business and system rules...and they clearly aren't grasping it.  How can I educate, and improve their abilities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1414" LastActivityDate="2018-09-24T19:14:38.737" Title="How can I get our BAs to provide business requirements, and stop confusing them with implementation" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;business-analyst&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4570" CreationDate="2012-02-09T15:44:11.800" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have done it many times. Usually nobody wants to do it. So when there is a new commer like you, or like I was at the time, most managers are happy to give us the job. You rarely have to write down every word that is said during the meeting (one on one or many people. Usally you have to write down the decisions, consensus, agreements that are reached. The most important thing is to ask and write down who is going to do the follow up of every decision. Usually it is the task of the one who leads the meeting to do that; but sometimes he or she forgets about it or it is simply not clear. So, then, ask the question &quot;Who is going to do the follow up on this issue?&quot;. On the next meeting, everybody will be able to veryfy if the job was done by the person responsable of it. You can type directly on your laptop or take notes on a sheet of paper and type your minutes report afterward, depending on what is the fatest for you. Writing down the minutes in a meeting, for a new commer, is a very good way to earn the trust of your managers and to know your compagny better. You will also meet the decisions making people. Read it many times and correct it until it is perfect, especially for the first time. Watch you english too. Just seize your opportunities in your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2964" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T15:44:11.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4576" CreationDate="2012-02-09T15:51:17.363" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no trick.  Writing a requirement with the appropriate wording, at the right level of abstraction, without including the solution require a bit of skill, analysis, and thought.  It is what the BA is supposed to do for you.  Grasping the concept is simple, actualy writing it is a bit more difficult.  If your employee in this role cannot even grasp the concept, then you have the wrong person or persons.  Take a look at your knowledge/skill requirements you have for this role, rewrite them, then go find new talent.  Looking for a &quot;trick&quot; is a non starter.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I might be in favor of kicking back the work.  In a process, the next step is triggered by the output of the previous step.  The previous step has finish criteria that says the work here is finished.  Similarly, the next step has entry criteria, against which the input from the previous step is tested to ensure fit for service.  If it fails, it is rejected and the subsequent step does not start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kicking the BA's work back will likely cause a bit of a stir in your organizaiton, but it is a symptom of a problem in your process and might be the fastest way, albeit politically risky, to get it fixed for good, e.g., BA is replaced.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2012-02-09T16:01:57.413" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T16:01:57.413" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4576" CreationDate="2012-02-09T16:47:24.023" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not sure whether you would have the chance, time and resources to reject existing requirements and get them rewritten based on a more business usage perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have the opportunity, try to work with the relevant manager and build together a &lt;strong&gt;Business Request / Change Request Form&lt;/strong&gt; (depending on the type of action) &lt;strong&gt;Template&lt;/strong&gt; for future demands. This template should incorporate all relevant information from the requester's name, dates, specifications required and end user expectations. You can add as many fields as you need to gather the information that is convenient for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to focus his attention on the &quot;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;end usage&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; or &quot;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;business expectation&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; sections where the analyst will have to describe concisely the expected output. Get this manager to agree the format with you (so in the future it will not consider a rejection as something personal) and provide examples of desired input in the template so they just have to overwrite it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they submit their requests via email attaching the form properly populated at least you'll get a robust mechanism that can enable you to rejected straight forward any request that does not meet the agreed criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just bear in mind that the improvement won't happen from one day to another and you need to work with them so they provide you with the right information, but providing to them a feasible solution will help to achieve what your goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found an article related to documenting business requirements that includes additional insights:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.klr.com/articles/Articles_BA_DocumentingBusinessRequirements.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Documenting Business Requirements&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-02-09T20:37:11.253" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T20:37:11.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4422" CreationDate="2012-02-09T17:10:54.227" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;QA Engineer&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I &lt;strong&gt;do not mean testing&lt;/strong&gt;. Testing is &lt;em&gt;Quality Control&lt;/em&gt;, while &lt;em&gt;Quality Assurance&lt;/em&gt;  (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.diffen.com/difference/Quality_Assurance_vs_Quality_Control&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;QC vs QA&lt;/a&gt;) is more broad area which includes everything you mentioned (establishing best practices such as CMMI, ISO, COBIT, etc) and is focused on software processes improvement (SPI) - not only testing, but also project management, release management, reporting, etc (full list of QA responsibilities is the list of CMMI process areas). And the most important thing comparatively to other position that might involve software process/quality improvements, &lt;strong&gt;QA Engineer has software processes and quality as its primary responsibility&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;This has been &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/134229/44188&quot;&gt;cross-posted from P.SE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2834" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:31:53.287" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T17:10:54.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4581" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4598" CreationDate="2012-02-09T17:13:11.850" Score="13" ViewCount="4007" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some time ago I was involved into a so called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_march_%28project_management%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;death march project&lt;/a&gt;. In spite of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Brook's law&lt;/a&gt;, I was hired when project was in the yellow zone. Several weeks after I started on my new job, I've been asked and pushed to work overtime even though I didn't have chance to get a grip on the project (actually, it was a probationary period). Even though I didn't have the whole picture of the project, almost from the beginning I started to realize that project was savagely mismanaged. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not diving into the causes of mismanagement (there are chances that several unpleasant risks might have been triggered all at once putting project into the yellow zone and manager just had to cut the corners), I would like to know what is the project management's ultimate responsibility for the failed project? There's been a discussion about &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/35293/failed-project-when-to-call-it&quot;&gt;whether it worth considering project failed or not&lt;/a&gt;. But let's assume that top-level decision has been made and this decision makes it clear that project has failed. What will be the responsibility/punishment of project manager for the failure then? Probably this should be covered before project is started (even written down, sealed, signed, whatever), but what if the responsibility for the failure has not been discussed and agreed? What is the default option in this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible answers are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Damaged reputation (both person and company)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dismissal &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shutting down the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Torments of conscience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that seems to be in some way incomplete and each solution might not be applicable in many cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe project manager is not the only person who should be responsible for the failure? If not, then who else? Team as a whole, architect, business analyst lead, qa lead? How the responsibility could be shared in this case? After all, who decides?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to get a clear understanding of how to deal with project manager who failed the project due to the mismanagement. Are there any best practices or any case is individual? Should there be some kind of investigation done by upper management in order to reveal mismanagement? If there are some generally accepted measures against people responsible for failure, especially project managers, I would like to hear it from you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2834" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:31:53.287" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T03:35:08.613" Title="What is the project manager's responsibility for the failed project?" Tags="&lt;failure&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4544" CreationDate="2012-02-09T18:11:03.340" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are the consultant, then you need to drive, present and offer SUGGESTED timelines but let the client determine the dates. You can only bring them to the watering hole. You can't make them drink. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the responses on this thread sound a bit irrelevant (i.e. putting in a contract)...that's CYA to you and a failing attitude in the event they fire you, you can land on the contract's language and say &quot;I told you so&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more important thing is if you want to be successful, do the best you can in a structured and systematic fashion. No one can blame you if the client is unwilling o &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3188" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T18:11:03.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4553" CreationDate="2012-02-09T18:13:39.857" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clockingit.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;clockingit&lt;/a&gt;. It's free, has everything you need + more but it's still not complicated at all to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3190" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T18:13:39.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4544" CreationDate="2012-02-09T19:52:31.650" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Assumption:&lt;/strong&gt; We are talking about an internal initiative&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As there seems to be little space for errors, I'd make sure I have clarity on the final deliverable and the key success factor(s). Best — prepare something like a “dummy result” briefly or its outline to discuss with the sponsor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd write an introductory e-mail for the sponsor to send out, endorsing me on the one hand, shedding some light on the “why,” the required result, and timeframe (advised embedded picture of timeline / no attachments), and inviting the stakeholders to an early morning, 30-minute meeting ;-) Best, in the sponsor's office ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During that meeting... I thought it would work best to do a short presentation (alignment), leave a moment for Q&amp;amp;As (individual expectations), and most importantly — ask the participants to suggest their preferred meeting slots for appointments (commitment). The latter would be the risky part. You could take a big piece of paper (say, a typical “brown paper”), draw day columns and hour slots, and ask the participants to put their names on them. In case of “I don't have a calendar with me” arguments, you could always say — “Please suggest several options, and provide me with your phone number. I will be happy to get in touch after the meeting.” You could then put this information in the minutes / embed in your e-mail, and send out for final confirmation /w deadline, followed by individual appointments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this will give you some ideas to consider at least :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Oh, and if you haven't got a recurring appointment with the sponsor scheduled yet, you might want to consider doing so.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2142" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T19:52:31.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4581" CreationDate="2012-02-09T20:40:21.033" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well there are a couple of ways to approach this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First you can take the attitude that the Captain always goes down with the ship and that he is ultimately responsible for everything that happens on his watch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lots of places take this approach, great for everyone but the PM since that can smugly say that it's not their fault. This however really doesn't help or get the origination to a better place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other approach is do engage in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_cause_analysis&quot;&gt;root cause analysis&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Root Cause Analysis is any structured approach to identifying the&#xA;  factors that resulted in the nature, the magnitude, the location, and&#xA;  the timing of the harmful outcomes (consequences) of one or more past&#xA;  events in order to identify what behaviors, actions, inactions, or&#xA;  conditions need to be changed to prevent recurrence of similar harmful&#xA;  outcomes and to identify the lessons to be learned to promote the&#xA;  achievement of better consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The practice of RCA is predicated on the belief that problems are best&#xA;  solved by attempting to address, correct or eliminate root causes, as&#xA;  opposed to merely addressing the immediately obvious symptoms. By&#xA;  directing corrective measures at root causes, it is more probable that&#xA;  problem recurrence will be prevented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster&quot;&gt;Challenger Space Shuttle disaster&lt;/a&gt;, where the rubber O-rings failed in the cold weather. In this case NASA suspended space shuttles for 32 months to determine what &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; went wrong and how to prevent it from happening again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The house committee concluded &quot;the fundamental problem was poor technical decision-making over a period of several years by top NASA and contractor personnel, who failed to act decisively to solve the increasingly serious anomalies&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in your case, the real question is does your organization have a sincere desire to improve which will permit them to examine the systemic problems that doomed the project to failure before you were even hired or are they like most firms who would simply prefer to blame it all on the PM?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2770" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T20:40:21.033" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4586" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4609" CreationDate="2012-02-09T20:45:59.870" Score="2" ViewCount="311" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've looked into many different types of tools, but I'm not finding one that can:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create multiple project calendars&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;See a Master View of All Project calendars&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unlimited filtering options for multiple views&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tracking dependencies and constraints&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not looking for an agile ALM tool, or something like that. Is there a powerful standalone calendar tool out there???&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1124" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T03:34:58.083" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T03:34:58.083" Title="Is there a powerful Multiple Calendar Tool out there?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4581" CreationDate="2012-02-09T21:47:27.540" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Best way to deal with a &quot;failed&quot; project manager is to &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give him a chance to provide an honest post mortem and extensive analysis of the reasons which lead to the failures &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.Give the people responsible(and accountable) for those failures to explain themselves &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3.Give the management leaders a chance to lay down a road map in front of the people in 1 and 2 above , to make sure that the holes are plugged and improvements/changes are made &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avoid &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pulling the plug on the project or the project manager until organization leaders have  fully understood the reasons and given the points/people of failure a chance to redeem .&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T21:47:27.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4581" CreationDate="2012-02-09T22:50:59.107" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Question can be looked at in two ways, if you are the program/project manager in questions, if you are above the PM in the management chain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you are the PM:&lt;/strong&gt; The short, painful, answer is &quot;you are responsible.&quot; Why? Because ethics say so. I wrote a blog on this (The Responsible Authority Gorilla), which delved into us PMs being in a leadership role even if we don't have the authority of a functional manager. If we are going to be in a leadership role, then we need to act like leaders and leaders don't look for scape goats. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not to say we should fall on our swords without a word spoken. It is also our responsibility to guide the team to doing that root cause. What failed, why, how do we not make it fail in the future? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A failure, well addressed and faced head on can be your greatest success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you are the PM's boss:&lt;/strong&gt; You are responsible for the failure as much as your PM is. Same rules really apply. If you've been working with your PM like a responsible manager then you'll know if the failure is due to incompetence or to the mass of events. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't shoot the messenger. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Agile&lt;/strong&gt; A closing note is on agile and retrospectives. In agile the value is looking forward. How do you make the next time better. Don't conduct a witch hunt and try and find someone to blame. Instead get everyone moving towards how to make it work better the next time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T22:50:59.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4576" CreationDate="2012-02-09T23:14:59.863" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Change the format. Traditional functional requirements are pretty flawed and have decades of focusing on the &quot;what&quot; and not the &quot;why&quot; or the &quot;who.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User Stories and User Persona based requirements focus on the &quot;who&quot; and the &quot;why.&quot; While agile is the most obvious user of this today, it's not a new concept. I first learned about this concept through a product management methodology from the 1990's call &quot;Building a Market Focused Organization.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take US Banks in the 70's and 80's. In their efforts to become more competitive in post deregulation era they went out to their customers. They didn't start with what to do, they started with asking the customers questions. Then they looked at what the customers said &quot;Longer hours, more tellers.&quot; and asked how they could solve this (without spending the $ on longer hours and more tellers). The outshoot was to leverage a technology that had been around since the mid-60's but had languished as a gadget without a true market. And so came to pass ATMs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So use User Personas and User Stories. Mike Cohn has published two very good books on this topic that I highly recommend. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently did a two part blog on using agile practices at the product requirements level, to drive useable requirements. If you're interested in it, my blog is linked in my profile. Look for the &quot;Garbage in, Gorilla out&quot; and &quot;How much is that gorilla in the window&quot; blogs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T23:14:59.863" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4571" CreationDate="2012-02-09T23:21:09.260" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll echo what David said with a real life experience. Face to face meetings, with clear information radiators are the hands down best way to do this. If you can't be face to face, then get on a conference call and use Webex (or other similar), really use it to be your information radiator. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I joined a past company, the status report was this mammoth Power Point deck of close to 100 slides and over 20MB. My boss spent an entire day updating it every week and half that was usually hounding people for their updates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I scraped the PPT and set up a one hour, weekly meeting. I then made an information radiator using an Excel spreadsheet. Clean tables, formatting and colors made it easy to understand and I could update it right in the meeting. By the end of the meeting, I usually only needed a few minutes to finalize the status for the week. This was posted on my cube, handed out to all the key people and emailed to a wider audience. The PPT slides were still used for formal program reviews, but only got updated about once a month. The spreadsheet became the gold standard by which the entire division ran. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T23:21:09.260" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4570" CreationDate="2012-02-09T23:25:29.347" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Manager-Tools.com has a couple of great podcasts on effective note taking. Really changed how I took notes and made them a lot more effective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The really simple boil down is that business isn't college and you're not taking notes to study for a future test. Instead your notes should focus on two things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- What was decided: If everyone agreed that you'd use Ruby, and then document that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2- Who, Does what, By when: Action items are the other key take away. And a decision isn't a decision until you have decided who will do what with the decision by when. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By focusing on just those key things, you spend a lot less time writing and a lot more time understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T23:25:29.347" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4586" CreationDate="2012-02-10T09:58:26.460" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I maybe do not understand your question properly. But from what you are describing Microsoft Project could work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2633" LastActivityDate="2012-02-10T09:58:26.460" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4581" CreationDate="2012-02-10T10:44:01.017" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Responsibility:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;The project manager is responsible for the operational aspects of the project delivery. The project board has the overall responsibility.&#xA;If a project fails that is also where the responsibility is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Turn-arounds:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;When taking over a project in the &quot;yellow&quot; managing stakeholder perception accordingly is key. Turn-arounds are challenging and have increased risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Risk/Rewards:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;To be fair, one cannot expect to earn the credentials of saving a project if this person is not ready to take the risk of the consequences if the project fails.&#xA;There is the risk that a scapegoat is needed. Politics are reality. I always say: A successful project has many fathers; a failed project has only one mother.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Learning organisation:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Now punishment is something different. An organisation should assess why a project failed and learn from it. If in the course of this assessment the project manager’s capabilities and skills are found to be below a certain threshold then this should raise some further questions and likely lead to clear consequences.&#xA;On the other side you have learned a great deal and this could help the next project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally you have to consider your credibility within the organisation and if to stay or maybe to move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2633" LastActivityDate="2012-02-10T10:44:01.017" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2715" CreationDate="2012-02-10T13:22:02.867" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you haven't taken a listen to &quot;Manager Tools&quot; then I highly recommend it. They are spot on with a lot of their advice and I know a VP that switched his one on ones to this format and got very positive feedback from everyone who worked with him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are two links to the &quot;one on one&quot; basics to get started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.manager-tools.com/2005/07/the-single-most-effective-management-tool-part-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.manager-tools.com/2005/07/the-single-most-effective-management-tool-part-1&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.manager-tools.com/2005/07/the-single-most-effective-management-tool-part-2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.manager-tools.com/2005/07/the-single-most-effective-management-tool-part-2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastEditorUserId="19156" LastEditDate="2017-07-02T12:37:15.847" LastActivityDate="2017-07-02T12:37:15.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1426" CreationDate="2012-02-10T18:11:05.850" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;With what I read and witnessed in my carreer, my conclusion is that money is not the no 1 factor in motivating an employee, young or not. With the economic crisis, one can estimate himself lucky only to have a job! The main factor motivating an employee is the quality of his work life including a positive work ambiance. Having an high salary can keep somebody on the job, but will he or she be motivated to do it in a proper way or in an outstanding way? I had a professor who was also a consultant, he used to visit enterprises asking employeurs: &quot;Are your employees happy?&quot; He usualy did not get an answer. More and more work places are difficult places to be in because there is little team spirit. Everybody is going after his own little glory. Those who try to bring a team spirit are often marginalised. My hope is that with the economic crisis we will invent a new way of doing business that is more human. But the key to achieve that is to have a fair and objective way of giving promotions. Unless everybody will reach for his own goals and not for those of the organization as a hole. We have something to learn from what we used to call &quot;the american way of doing business&quot;. Let's take contact with our roots again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2964" LastActivityDate="2012-02-10T18:11:05.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-10T20:07:59.707" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Taking a risk is making a decision not knowing exactly how it will turn up. A decision that could have an impact on the quality and the results of your project. You can miss money, time, human ressources; you can have to deal with an human mistake, etc. The main risk in managing anykind of projects is bad planning. You realize a little bit too late that you will not respect your deadlines for example or that you do not have the ressources to do it. Some people are better planificators that others. You can witness that in their personal life. Some see the problems comming in advance, others only when they hit their nose. You can try to take a calculated risk, meaning that you have a fair chance of knowing how things will evolve. To my point of view, the critical period in a project is the beginning. Most people do not feel any pressure at the biginning, while other starts organizing and planning every steps of their project. The best way to respect a deadline and avoid risk is to have a precise idea of how to do every steps of your project in the biginning. My personal way is to have a rush at the beginning and not at the end; and evaluate well the complexity of my tasks and what kind of ressources I will need to reach my goals (human, material, etc). Finding that too late, is the biggest risk you can take. Some like to work under pressure, working almost round the clock at the end of their project. They get tired and sometimes make mistake or overevaluate their potential. I prefer to have some over time at the end. Some time that give you an opportunity to innovate and do something not planned that add greatly to the final value of your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2964" LastActivityDate="2012-02-10T20:07:59.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3650" CreationDate="2012-02-10T23:30:59.970" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We made an ad-hoc system using MySQL, integrated with project management data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because it is on a server, it's easy for multiple access without the &quot;who's got the cookie&quot; problem of multiple-updaters that you have with a shared spreadsheet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because it's integrated into our project management system, we can instantly see the labour that's been billed to a project or profit centre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.EcoReality.org/wiki/Yellow_house_skylights&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;example project.&lt;/a&gt; Scroll down to see time tracking and time summary roll-ups, which are standard SQL queries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the schema for our &quot;timelog:&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `s_timelog` (&#xA;  `id` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment,&#xA;  `mw_user_id` int(11) unsigned NOT NULL default '2',&#xA;  `in` datetime NOT NULL,&#xA;  `out` datetime NOT NULL,&#xA;  `project_id` int(11) unsigned NOT NULL,&#xA;  `activity_id` int(11) unsigned NOT NULL,&#xA;  `accomplishment` varchar(255) character set utf8 NOT NULL,&#xA;  `Paid` enum('yes','no') character set utf8 NOT NULL default 'no' COMMENT 'hours that are compensated',&#xA;  `Class_B_qualified` enum('yes','no') character set utf8 NOT NULL default 'no',&#xA;  `updated` timestamp NULL default CURRENT_TIMESTAMP on update CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,&#xA;  PRIMARY KEY  (`id`),&#xA;  KEY `mw_user_id` (`mw_user_id`),&#xA;  KEY `in` (`in`),&#xA;  KEY `project_id` (`project_id`),&#xA;  KEY `activity_id` (`activity_id`),&#xA;  KEY `out` (`out`)&#xA;) ENGINE=InnoDB  DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COLLATE=utf8_bin COMMENT='EcoReality time log.' AUTO_INCREMENT=13955 ;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;where:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;mw_user_id points to the user performing the labour&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;project_id points to a definition of the project the labour is on&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;activity_id points to a definition of an activity the labour is on&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &quot;project&quot; looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `s_project` (&#xA;  `id` int(6) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment,&#xA;  `profit_centre` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',&#xA;  `name` varchar(62) NOT NULL,&#xA;  `URL` varchar(255) default NULL,&#xA;  `need` varchar(255) NOT NULL,&#xA;  `description` text NOT NULL,&#xA;  `super_id` int(11) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',&#xA;  `type` enum('capital','operations') NOT NULL default 'operations',&#xA;  `duration` enum('fixed','ongoing') NOT NULL default 'fixed',&#xA;  `status` enum('abandoned','agreed','cancelled','completed','on hold','ongoing','requested') NOT NULL default 'requested',&#xA;  `start` date NOT NULL,&#xA;  `end` date NOT NULL,&#xA;  `completed` date NOT NULL,&#xA;  `depends_on_id` int(6) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',&#xA;  `budget_expense` decimal(7,2) NOT NULL,&#xA;  `budget_effort` decimal(7,2) NOT NULL,&#xA;  `effort_units` enum('minutes','hours','days','weeks','months') NOT NULL default 'hours',&#xA;  `steward_id` int(5) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',&#xA;  `private` enum('yes','no') NOT NULL default 'no',&#xA;  `updated` timestamp NULL default CURRENT_TIMESTAMP on update CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,&#xA;  `notes` text NOT NULL,&#xA;  PRIMARY KEY  (`id`),&#xA;  UNIQUE KEY `name` (`name`),&#xA;  KEY `duration` (`duration`),&#xA;  KEY `status` (`status`),&#xA;  KEY `super_id` (`super_id`,`depends_on_id`,`steward_id`),&#xA;  KEY `depends_on_id` (`depends_on_id`,`steward_id`),&#xA;  KEY `steward_id` (`steward_id`),&#xA;  KEY `profit_centre` (`profit_centre`)&#xA;) ENGINE=InnoDB  DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COMMENT='EcoReality (and other) projects that require resources.' AUTO_INCREMENT=140 ;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Projects can be nested and have dependents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Activities are typically things that end in &quot;ing,&quot; and can be hierarchical:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `s_activity` (&#xA;  `id` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment,&#xA;  `name` varchar(31) character set utf8 NOT NULL,&#xA;  `super_activity` int(11) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',&#xA;  `description` varchar(255) character set utf8 NOT NULL,&#xA;  PRIMARY KEY  (`id`),&#xA;  KEY `name` (`name`),&#xA;  KEY `super_activity` (`super_activity`),&#xA;  KEY `description` (`description`)&#xA;) ENGINE=InnoDB  DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COLLATE=utf8_bin PACK_KEYS=0 COMMENT='activity names' AUTO_INCREMENT=42 ;&#xA;&#xA;INSERT INTO `s_activity` (`id`, `name`, `super_activity`, `description`) VALUES&#xA;(1, 'Administering', 0, 'Basic administration and management activities.'),&#xA;(2, 'Agriculture', 0, 'Activities related to growing crops.'),&#xA;(3, 'Designing', 0, 'Developing designs for systems, processes, structures and machines.'),&#xA;(4, 'Educating', 0, 'Performing an educational activity.'),&#xA;(5, 'Managing Information', 1, 'Performing an information management activity.'),&#xA;(6, 'Maintaining', 0, 'Repairing or sustaining the condition of an artifact, process, structure, or system.'),&#xA;(7, 'Planning', 1, 'Making plans for future projects and activities.'),&#xA;…&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3196" LastEditorUserId="3196" LastEditDate="2012-02-10T23:52:11.427" LastActivityDate="2012-02-10T23:52:11.427" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4581" CreationDate="2012-02-11T01:31:40.123" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who is responsible?&lt;/strong&gt; The Project Manager.  Either the project succeeds, or he has left a clear and well understood communications trail on what was needed that is missing.  Ultimately the PM has to do what it takes or go down trying.  Many things are out of the PM's control, but the PM who stops as soon as soon as blame can be passed is not even half a PM. The PM may not have enough resources, knowledge or empowerment, but if not them, then who?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What to do?&lt;/strong&gt;  This depends on the nature of the task, culture of the organization and cause of failure...  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you hang the PM after every failure, you will find your best folks taking easy projects or leaving.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the task was insurmountable and the PM did everything correct, give them another shot.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the project failed, but had sufficient warning and was under control on the way down, you may reward them.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it was due to poor skills or job mismatch, train or reassign.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it was neglect or poor ethics, let them go.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastEditorUserId="2834" LastEditDate="2012-02-12T08:34:54.097" LastActivityDate="2012-02-12T08:34:54.097" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4599" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-11T12:58:45.867" Score="9" ViewCount="1990" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is planning software necessary? Can you plan your project without one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2964" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2014-04-03T11:25:05.713" LastActivityDate="2019-12-03T06:12:27.173" Title="Is planning software necessary?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;deadline&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;" AnswerCount="16" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2019-12-03T13:10:44.687" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4581" CreationDate="2012-02-11T13:02:54.547" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on how it failed and it depends on the metrics against which the project was measured that caused the value judgment of &quot;failure&quot; to be applied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We generally speaking are a very results oriented.  How we get there seems to be secondary.  Yet, in all cases, the results are dependant upon what we do.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The stochastic nature of our work is minimized or ignored.  The awesome results luckily achieved through marginal performance are hailed and revered while less than great results despite stellar performance are deemed a failure.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were evaluating a PM's performance where the project came up short, I would look at what (s)he did.  I would look at the planning, the controls, the risk management capabilities, the communications.  All of these things would yield evidence of the degree of control (s)he had.  If the project proved to be under control, then capture the lessons learned and move on.  Remember, success is a crappy teacher.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It comes down to the prediction of success.  What people do is a better predictor of future success than what results were achieved.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-02-11T13:02:54.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4599" CreationDate="2012-02-11T22:48:20.213" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tools have nothing to do with planning. They don't add too much to the cause. You have to know&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the exact expectation of your customer &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the exact deadline along with a known and understand set of requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the available resources (both human and physical)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and the list goes on&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing is that there isn't a tool on the market which can do the planning and preparation for you. You can have an spreadsheet for &quot;tracking&quot; but tracking comes after planning and preparation. This is something you have to do manually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-02-11T22:48:20.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4599" CreationDate="2012-02-12T01:22:57.030" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, absolutely necessary. One hundred years ago, projects were planned and managed without software. So it can be done without.  As with many things, technology has made things easier, faster, more precise, and less expensive to the point that, if you are not using technology, you cannot compete. So, yes, absolutely necessary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-02-12T01:22:57.030" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4599" CreationDate="2012-02-12T03:18:07.000" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on what you mean by software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't seen many people pull off using MS Project well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen a lot or folks do wonders tracking with Excel - much easier to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen small projects succeed on email but nothing over a few months or a hundred mandate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The importance isn't just defending the schedule, it is to manage dependencies, the critical path, and action items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-02-12T03:18:07.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4576" CreationDate="2012-02-12T03:23:50.533" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lead by example.  Either do a few good ones yourself to share, or hire a rock star.  You also have to figure out why these folks are lacking.  Many BAs do the job because they love the business they are in.  Others do it because they aren't technical enough to program.  The latter group focuses on how rather than what or why because they don't know better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-02-12T03:23:50.533" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4581" CreationDate="2012-02-12T03:47:51.780" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is very rare that the failure of a project relies only on the shoulders of one person. However, human nature often trys to find a person on whom to put all the responsabilities of the failure. It is easier to manage. We can fire that person on not give him or her a promotion. But that is what we call the scapegoat who is lost in power conflicts and battles. That seems pessimistic, but that is the behavior I witness the most in my career and personal life. Understanding the failure of a project or of a part of it is a complexe analysis than many want to avoid because if we find something that went wrong we are in a way obliged to fix it. Most of the time the failure relies on a not well adjusted procedure that people applied by the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastActivityDate="2012-02-12T03:47:51.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2926" CreationDate="2012-02-12T13:02:37.770" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a business (BAA-MBA) and theology background (Bth). Sometimes in my answers both sides of my training shows. I do not like the way most managers manage now a day (including me). We often see short term visions, minimal team spirit, quest for high salary and bonuses, etc. It is nobody's fault, we were trapped in a system that nobody knew how to change (or did not want to change). With the economic crisis that system falled apart completely. Right now, we need managers who are not afraid to take risks to rebuilt America's economy and the world economy in a proper way, an ethical way for it not to fall apart again in 70 years from now. But I am far away from your question. I still believe that to have a management status in a compagny it is the law of &quot;who knows who&quot; that applies most of the time. I mean that with equally competent candidates, the higher management will choose the person that fit the most in their vision on what will be their company in the next 10 years. You have to listen to your heart to really know what you want in your work life or in your personnal life. You have to identify your dreams and choose the ones you want to achieve; and then never quit. Those who succeed are not always the best one, but the one who work the hardest and never quit on their dreams because they feel inside that it will come true one day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastActivityDate="2012-02-12T13:02:37.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4571" CreationDate="2012-02-12T13:31:21.577" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I started my career, emails did not exist... Nor cell phones... We had some computers without a mouse... We would call each other; talk with each other when we would meet unexpectedly; or plan a meeting. Emails are a very great improvement in a business environment. But I have noticed that some people hide behind emails and technology (sometimes simply by not answering some of them). It is a way of not being too much involved in a problematic situation, putting aside the emotional side of it; even protecting his or her own authority. I do not think you or your team members are doing it. I just made a general statement. Your point is that you do it to know where your team members are in meeting their deadlines and to provide them with the help they need. Some people see that as a control task. They call us &quot;control freaks&quot;. But it is the most important task that you have to do as a project manager. The one that will determine if your project will be successful or not. So, you say that you are in a small company or department; I would send one last email saying to your team members to get in touch with you if they need anything. But when you will meet them unexpectedly, in or out of work, I would ask them: &quot;Is everything alright with your part of the project?&quot; It is not a way of controlling them, but a way a showing you care about them having everything they need to be happy and succeed as a team. If they need something, then deal with it by email. That is the best way to build a team spirit I have ever known. A mentor taught me that many years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastEditorUserId="1931" LastEditDate="2012-02-21T20:07:27.900" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T20:07:27.900" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4599" CreationDate="2012-02-12T14:36:42.943" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can plan a project without a software tracking tool, you can't plan a project without communication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tools is just that, a tool. You use it to help you get what you want done. A hammer won't build a house, but it will make building the house a lot easier (using rocks to pound in nails is hard on the hand). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as Zsolt says, tracking tools do nothing to help with planning. An architect doesn't even need to know how to use a hammer to plan a house. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the tool is stifling the project, then the tool isn't working. Zsolt and MathAttack have already pointed to the humble excel. I managed a division that shipped a million units a quarter with just a spreadsheet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2012-02-12T14:36:42.943" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4586" CreationDate="2012-02-13T04:42:55.277" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I doubt it will work for your needs, but I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://tungle.me&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://tungle.me&lt;/a&gt; to consume some calendars and expose it on the web.....can integrate business gmail and personal gmail, etc and it just shows what's blocked off.  I doubt it is what you are looking for, but at the very least it is nice for exposing your personal calendar to other businesses out there(not the details, just the times you are not available).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2383" LastActivityDate="2012-02-13T04:42:55.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4610" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-13T04:48:49.543" Score="1" ViewCount="134" Body="&lt;p&gt;We had a customer come back to us and ask to be able to expose the backlog of our system to their customer in an easy fashion, as well as allow the customer to simulate deleting requirements and seeing the cost go down or increasing the due date and watching the cost go up.  They also added proposed requirements where before new costs are given they are sent to the company for estimates; afterwards, they're replied to or sort of automated in summary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a waste of a feature or very useful feature?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2383" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-10-07T08:14:29.920" LastActivityDate="2012-10-08T23:14:52.067" Title="Input on new project management system feature, exposing to customer" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4611" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-13T05:43:26.903" Score="1" ViewCount="266" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some background: In our organization we develop statistical product and there are big team of statisticians. They often changed specification due to change in clients' requirements. We have n number of statistical tests and plots. The software is too big and programming effectively and efficiently is challenging. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how do you handle similar complex projects effectively in our organization? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Agile they have a method called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilemodeling.com/essays/initialRequirementsModeling.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Envisioning&lt;/a&gt;, that means look into clients brain in advance to predict requirement. For any software development specification and requirements are learned in advance. I our case specification and requirements are changed often, so development changed too. can we tackle situation smartly to use programming hours effectively and increasing productivity? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3179" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2012-02-15T19:01:13.280" LastActivityDate="2012-03-16T20:12:10.080" Title="Statistical Product: How to handle projects effectively" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4553" CreationDate="2012-02-13T07:36:15.180" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jira&lt;/a&gt; easy to use .. free to use up til 10 users .. and a lot of expansions if you need more sophisticated functions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3205" LastActivityDate="2012-02-13T07:36:15.180" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4571" CreationDate="2012-02-13T11:51:48.070" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;email reporting is good for noting things down, but nothing is better than the face to face weekly meeting. Face to face does not have to be a physical, it can be conducted over the net. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually have a net session running (WebEX, TeamViewer or NetMeeting etc). On that, I bring up last week's status meeting and run through it. Making notes as the team members takes turn reporting their status. The notes are made directly on the meeting minutes. Importanly, any agreements and decisions are also noted directly into the meeting minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the meeting is finished, I would quickly go through it for grammatical/spelling errors and email it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The focus is for the key decisions, status on key tasks and key events to be noted and communicated.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="480" LastActivityDate="2012-02-13T11:51:48.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4616" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-13T14:35:23.070" Score="0" ViewCount="1937" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am rather new to PM and have done a lot of research on RUP. I am having a bit of a hard time structuring a software project plan using the RUP methodology. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project has 4 distinguishable modules, each of which have different levels of difficulty. My current strategy has been to structure it as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inception&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shared Tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Module 1:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;List of Tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Module 2: &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;List of Tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shared Tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Elaboration&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Iteration 1&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Module 1:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;List of Tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Module 2:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;List of Tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feedback&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Iteration 2:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Module 2:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;List of Tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feedback&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Construction&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Iteration 1&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Module 1:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;List of Tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Module 2:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;List of Tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feedback&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Iteration 2:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Module 2:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;List of Tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feedback&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testing&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Iteration 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Module 1:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Execute&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fix&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Module 2:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Execute&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fix&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You get the point. The structure is divided first by phase, then by iteration, then by module.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this the right strategy to use? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My concern is that the Iterations will leave tasks behind that are not completed and it will be rather difficult to deal with tasks that haven't been completed from Iteration 1, when we should be (formally) in Iteration 2, because Iteration 2 could have dependent tasks on Iteration 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3208" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T22:37:46.850" Title="Project Plan using RUP implemented in Microsoft Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;rup&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4617" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4619" CreationDate="2012-02-13T17:43:31.763" Score="1" ViewCount="839" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are looking for a new Collaboration-Software. Especially for collaboration, monitoring, reporting, project management, bugtracking, time management, agile software etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I am interested in your choice? Which software do you use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3210" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-02-13T20:49:53.237" LastActivityDate="2012-08-21T09:19:10.663" Title="Which Collaboration Software Do You Use?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ClosedDate="2012-08-21T19:55:07.340" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4610" CreationDate="2012-02-13T18:00:06.293" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understand correctly, you are a sub-contractor to another company which is delivering a product to the customer. The customer wants to be able to run through whatever scenarios they want to dynamically in order to get the best balance of cost/scope/time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Silos are for grain and not project teams. It is better to have a discussion with all parties present rather than having one party go off by themselves and try to figure something out. Suppliers and customers are key stakeholders in any project and need to actually talk (not email or text or whatever) about these things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are cornered and have to use this kind of feature then:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;COST - Probably feasible. If you have a pricing structure like in the&#xA;construction industry (i.e. $X per road lane mile built) you could do&#xA;this, or if your pricing specifies the costs for individual modules.&#xA;You can work with the customer to find out the granularity that they&#xA;want. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SCOPE - Probably feasible. I'm assuming that you have clear&#xA;acceptance criteria for the final product and that each sub-component&#xA;is completely independent. You will need to clearly define any&#xA;inter-dependencies of the sub-components so that if the customer&#xA;takes out X he isn't making Y worthless.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;TIME - Probably not feasible. Since the customer's project is likely&#xA;not being done in complete isolation from other projects, I don't&#xA;think you can say &quot;If you add/remove X from scope you will&#xA;delay/shorten delivery by Y weeks&quot; without looking at the other&#xA;projects. If customer is trying to do this by themselves dynamically&#xA;you would either have to provide them with info that they have no&#xA;right to see or have them work under a set of assumptions that might&#xA;not be very robust.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-02-13T18:00:06.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4617" CreationDate="2012-02-13T18:38:46.163" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are quite a bit of different tools you mentioned up there.  So I will just hit on a couple of tools that I use: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Card Wall.  Yes, I know it is low tech, but the visibility and collaboration this brings to team is great.  Otherwise, you are expecting someone to log into a piece of software every day to perform some actions.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Software that I really enjoy: &#xA;Agile - RallyDev, Mingle, VersionOne&#xA;Task Management: Asana (Free) &#xA;Other: Trello (Free)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other's I've heard, but have no experience with: Jira, BaseCamp&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="913" LastActivityDate="2012-02-13T18:38:46.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4620" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4621" CreationDate="2012-02-13T18:26:10.540" Score="4" ViewCount="2360" Body="&lt;p&gt;My boss has asked to be project manager. I am not afraid of the challenge expect that. I don't know where to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a legacy server where a couple of apps and a lot of code is hosted. The goal is to have our operations support group take ownership of the whole thing, which would include 24x7 support and coding the occasional enhancement requests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick chat by the water cooler with a couple of guys from Ops support ended up in &quot;no way&quot; and &quot;you're nuts&quot;. Not good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you go about defining a project strategy that keeps everybody focused on what matters? I thought of something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;These are my commitments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide detailed code documentation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide detailed Standard Operating Procedures documentation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduce Business Intelligence stake holders and ensure communication all across&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Propose a schedule for hand-off.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I would like to work with your team to &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assess the required resources for ongoing support&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define the proper escalation process for enhancement requests&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finalize the timing for an official hand-off.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Too simplistic? I welcome your input. Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3212" OwnerDisplayName="Chris" LastEditorUserId="1119" LastEditDate="2012-02-13T23:54:32.357" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T06:03:02.483" Title="How to define a project strategy?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;conflicts&gt;&lt;vision&gt;&lt;goals&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4620" CreationDate="2012-02-13T19:28:50.370" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess you're getting off on the wrong foot here - Your goal needs to be validated first (for realism :) - and the water cooler chat showed other signs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, assume everyone from all the teams you want/have to work with gave a list of &quot;&lt;em&gt;my commitments&lt;/em&gt;&quot; to you. You laid them all out on the table, what are they chances that they would be in perfect sync, perfectly reconcilable and &lt;em&gt;happy-happy&lt;/em&gt;? Quite low, right? (Think of it as each person flipping a coin and &lt;strong&gt;everyone&lt;/strong&gt; gets a heads! That's 1 out of 2^n, n = # members!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess you need to have a session with all the relevant (success critical) members/stakeholders. Have them in a room and tell them the goal/problem. Ask each one in turn what they expect or what is it that would make them 100% committed toward achieving the goal. Note it on a post it and stick it up on a wall. Once everything is done, try getting rid of the duplicates if you can. Else, just read each one in turn and see if anyone finds a problem with it - if not, put it on one side, else stick a different color post it to write the &lt;em&gt;issue&lt;/em&gt;. Do the same for all post-its. For each of the issues see what are the options to resolve them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the isolated post-its are something with no issues, pretty much what everyone 'agrees' to - (if there IS a disagreement, it has an issue!). Put a tick mark on it these 'agreed' ones. Go through the options and see which ones are agreed to by the group. Put a tick on the option and the post-it and move to the other side with the agreed ones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once this is done, everything on the wall should be agreed to and you'd have reconciled everyone's differences and made everyone feel a &quot;winner&quot; i.e. they got something out of it that would make them 100% committed towards its realization! Having a &quot;shared&quot; goal/commitment/vision is what it'll take to succeed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a simple value equation - if they see value in the initiative they'll work towards its realization. So spend some time in the meeting/workshop to articulate/capture value and the related goals of achieving it. Only THEN do the above, else it'll be a waste! (Write that down on the side of the white/black board or flip chart, so that everyone can see it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should help you tremendously, it works in practice and I've tried this with numerous teams and have seen consistent results!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: The discussion may lead to more post-its when you are discussing issues/options or other post-its. That's totally fine and expected AND valuable!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1119" OwnerDisplayName="Nupul" LastEditorUserId="1119" LastEditDate="2012-02-13T20:33:42.497" LastActivityDate="2012-02-13T20:33:42.497" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4620" CreationDate="2012-02-13T20:47:05.263" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Who, what, where, when, why, and how.  Answer those question and you have a strategy.  Answer them with specificity, and you have a plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-02-13T20:47:05.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4617" CreationDate="2012-02-13T21:11:30.747" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use the BaseCamp suite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We had used Trac and a variety of other applications as well - but we ended up sticking with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BaseCamp, Highrise, Backpack and Campfire&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Campfire as a chat system for intercompany chat is very useful and it logs all the transcripts so they can be referenced in projects and cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The structure of the suite is intended to get the menial tasks of documentation out of the way and get down to getting stuff done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3195" LastActivityDate="2012-02-13T21:11:30.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4624" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-14T00:46:41.453" Score="12" ViewCount="422" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will &lt;strong&gt;TRY&lt;/strong&gt; to keep this simple. I was brought on this project approx. 1/2 way through to fill the role of CM DB SME(20+yrs broad based experience). The PM (non-technical by his own admission) repeatedly asked me to fix project docs etc. during first 3 weeks as he &quot;realized my knowledge and experience will be vital to project success.&quot; The team was reluctant to provide me any information regarding their &quot;area of expertise&quot;(expected when you're the new-guy). I found out this is because they have no tangible deliverables/solution after 6 months of work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM went on vacation at which time the client informed the Acct Mgr that they lost faith in his ability to lead the project. They also stated that they had observed my performance and wanted me to step into the role of PM as they felt that I wouldn't B.S. them and could get things back on the correct path. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Changes were made to the teams structure as requested by client and I assumed the role of PM. Acct Mgr IMO informed the team &quot;CM DB is pulled from project plan, so now Mr. X (PM that I was replacing) will be leaving and Mr. O (me) will be PM&quot;. I'm sure the team is as confused about this as I, the Acct Mgr's attempt to &quot;save face&quot; is an obvious untruth and completely illogical. I am working round the clock to gather the data necessary to rebuild the project plan and resume things, however this time in the correct manner. Now the Acct Mgr is attempting to circumvent me by allowing a member of &quot;our team&quot; to send documentation (planned CMDB doc-area I was brought in to handle) directly to the Project sponsor (client) without my knowledge. I found this out when the Project sponsor's only response was to forward the email immediately to me, I appreciate that they wanted me to know what was being done without my knowledge. Additional issues similar to this are being brought to my attention and I now believe the Acct Mgr is actively trying to push me out of the picture to replace me with another team member. Most likely the one that will gladly &quot;puppet&quot; whatever he is told. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am uncertain how to proceed so if anyone has any advice or suggestions, it will be greatly appreciated!  Thank you for your time and consideration in this matter.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regards, &#xA;&quot;Mr. O&quot;            &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3213" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T14:23:51.277" Title="PM learns deliverable is vaporware, team has been hiding it from the client &amp; want PM to lie to client also." Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4617" CreationDate="2012-02-14T03:54:50.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redmine.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Redmine&lt;/a&gt; (free and open source) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;JIRA&lt;/a&gt; (paid) as I've used both before and find they help improve collaboration and project management as well as offer issue tracking, reporting and SCM integration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2775" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T03:54:50.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4611" CreationDate="2012-02-14T04:02:57.680" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try planning your work better using approaches such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28development%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt;. You should be breaking down large tasks into smaller, more manageable tasks that you can better estimate and deliver in a timely fashion. Plan for a month's worth of tasks in advance and assign them to your teams accordingly. Changing requirements are a given, you just need to learn to adapt and prepare to handle change as required. Good management is key.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2775" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T04:02:57.680" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4624" CreationDate="2012-02-14T04:24:38.690" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not an easy situation you describe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my view it is important to stick to someones values. For me this includes telling the truth and insisting on being honest with the customers. If you - as a company - stuffed up the project then it is just a matter of time that the customer will find out. In my opinion it is better to share the bad news sooner rather than later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your particular case I suspect that the first step needs to be to clarify roles and responsibilities within your company before you interact with the customer again. As long as this has not been sorted interaction with the customer is likely to be a waste of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without knowing further details maybe one option could be that you start inviting the Account Manager to talk directly to members of your team while making sure you are in the driver seat. For example you could be that proactively sets up regular meetings with the account manager and your team to have the tough discussions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option you have is having a very open conversation with the account manager, potentially with your manager or your joint manager. This conversation should be behind closed doors. This could even feel like a fight. All of that is good if at the end a new basis can be found one which to work together instead of against each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are describing sounds like a broken team. Only if the leaders - yourself, the account manager, maybe others - speak the same language will the rest of team fall into place. Leadership starts from the top.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the account manager is not open to address and resolve the apparent issues, if you don't get any support from your manager, then it might be the indication that nothing will change and that maybe the best option for you is to leave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2318" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T04:24:38.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4610" CreationDate="2012-02-14T04:51:42.547" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The feature request &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;appears&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; to reasonable but the implementation would be quite sticky. Since the resulting costs and schedules are based on estimates you would have to show how reliable a particular estimate would be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'd need to show dependencies and how some things can't be adjusted. You would you need show tasks that have some sort of fixed start date. You would have to have a way to show contingencies....... That is a lot of messy variables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you would need to plaster &lt;strong&gt;huge&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Very Dramatic!!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; warnings on the output about how unreliable the output would be. I'm not sure how much real value the customer would actually get out of it even if it was executed perfectly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T04:51:42.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4624" CreationDate="2012-02-14T07:12:56.623" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would appear that the account manager is part of a sales organization - is that correct? Based on his actions, he appears to completely focused on closing a sale or keeping a income stream going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that is true, then the best approach I see is to talk to the account manager or his boss and have an honest discussion about the project - something similar to &quot;Look, I know you want our company to look good now but this project is going to have difficultly delivering something good later. We are at [Position X] and maybe in [time period] we can get to [Position Y] but if you promise more than that we probably can't reach it. How do you want to handle this?&quot; That allows a discussion about risk, benefit, and future plans instead of rehashing current issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a possible approach that would help (sub-contract a portion, buy a component, add people etc.) then bring that to the meeting. That would help by pointing toward solutions instead of past actions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this looks like a bit of an uphill climb. I totally agree that you need to work on internal dynamics before discussions with the client. Good luck... and know when to cut and run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T07:12:56.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4570" CreationDate="2012-02-14T09:35:41.917" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;as trainee, I assume you are doing something like orientation. think of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some information is already written, ask for a copy of the material if&#xA;possible rather than writing them again.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I agree with what jcmeloni mentioned: set the expectations&#xA;right, tell them that you need to take notes as part of your&#xA;learning. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you may read what you have written to them to confirm.&#xA;also, sometimes it gives a positive impression that you value what&#xA;they are saying.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is a normal meeting with a boss:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;use abbreviations to speed up your writing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;also I agree with Joel Bancroft-Connors: note down the actions with some details. Dates and do-ers are very important.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;write down the answers to questions that you raised. so you don't ask again unnecessary :)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;try before you leave to review your main notes with the attendees. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;your problem may not be note taking, it is in creating an impression that you are not distracted from the attendees. I think people like to be treated as important (writing down what they say is an example) it is just how you show it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;good luck with your career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3220" LastEditorUserId="3220" LastEditDate="2012-02-14T09:41:10.573" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T09:41:10.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4617" CreationDate="2012-02-14T10:28:27.763" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've used &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pivotaltracker.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pivotal Tracker&lt;/a&gt; for a number of projects, which is a software for scrum management. With backlog, planning poker, iterations, user stories, burn down charts, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2915" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T10:28:27.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4611" CreationDate="2012-02-14T11:09:20.543" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Agile they have method called Envisioning means look into clients brain in advance to predict requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't recommend to do this. You'll never predict what the customer has in his mind. I've seen organizations spending millions of euros based on similar predictions. It's a dead end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;can we tackle situation smartly to use programming hours effetively and increase productivity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you can. If I understood correctly, you develop statistical products which may consist of different diagrams and data. If you have the slightest doubt that the customer wants something different, create a drawn diagram with fake data behind it. After showing it to your customer she can give feedback and you'll know whether you are on the right track or not. If you have to show some data, just put together a snippet by hand and ask the customer about it. &lt;strong&gt;The key is to frequently show something to the customer and ask for feedback&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an interesting approach: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pretotyping.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pretotyping.org/&lt;/a&gt;. We were using this approach for web development. We put together a website with simple html+css and fake database so that we could show our customer how the site will look like. It turned out that she had something else in her mind. So we saved a lot of unnecessary effort with a small investment of the pretotyping. The hardcore folks won't even bother with html+css; they'll draw something on paper and use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T11:09:20.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4624" CreationDate="2012-02-14T12:03:19.960" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say that the main problem in this specific project is the lack of clear roles for each participant. I tend to agree with John on it (+1, John!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you'd need a quick answer, it would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's not a problem you will solve by yourself; it's somewhere in the company's &lt;em&gt;Modus Operandi&lt;/em&gt; that needs to be addressed by your superiors. Your duty is to highlight it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if you have some more time... let's get into some further details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that's important to bear in mind that, here on PMSE, most of the posts will crucify the Account Manager (Mr $)... as he's the one to seems to be &quot;manipulating&quot; everyone (and maybe that's the case). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you take it for granted, then go for John's answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, let's try to have a big picture of it... but instead of offering a 'solution' for your problem, I'd propose some questions that (hopefully) will clarify things up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the Acct Manager being sincere?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that the Acct Manager made things up to choose the PM in his project. Would you know someone more seasoned on your company that you could chat with and understand how went other Mr $ projects? When asking it, remember that his duty is to make the cash flowing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was there any other PM before your former PM in place?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM turnover on the project might be giving signals of some deeper problems. Maybe there's a culture in place of 'cutting some heads' to the client as a blood offering for the delays. They need a scapegoat to justify their delays... and maybe you're the goat now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How complex is this specific client?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe the client was unhappy with the previous PM. Maybe the client was expecting something intangible. Maybe the client was expecting too much too fast. Try to know the client, specially if that's the first project with him in the company. Get some background on it and you'll understand things better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bottomline:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mr $ duty's is with the contract and cash; your team's duties is with the deliverables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conflict clashes are -unfortunately - expected. When they're impacting negatively in your job, you need to take the big picture, understand what's going on, and raise a flag. A candid meeting between delivery and accounts with proper meeting minutes would fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T12:03:19.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4624" CreationDate="2012-02-14T12:35:32.223" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not be so quick to try to diagnose all the things that have happened or seem to be going on that got the project to the point it is today.  Not that these are not important, but a lot of troubled projects are caused by a plethora of variables that evolve over time, sort of into its own sub-culture that picking them a part will prove to be a waste of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, approach this as if it is a brand new project.  Costs spent are sunk, the original performance measurement baselines are irrelevant, finding fault will not get you to the finish line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The train is clearly not on the right track.  So stop the train.  Literally.  Stop the project.  Have everyone freeze what they are doing, archive the product materials in whatever state they're in, and bring the principles into the room and redefine the project from the ground up, exactly as you would do a brand new project.  Check the past at the door.  Make it clear what has happened and who caused it are immaterial now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start with the project charter, high level scope definition, roles and responsibilities, rules of engagement, and then begin decomposing from there.  The clear message for everyone that whatever happened in the past is dead.  This is a new project, you will be interviewing your team from scratch, you are starting over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be a political nightmare and a very scary thing for your client to undertake.  But the likelihood of you moving a high speed train wreck and getting it on the right track (pun intended) is low at best and impossible at worst.  By accepting this path without a major intervention like I described, you are walking into a hornet's nest naked.  And since you are new on the team and not politically invested, you are the right person to do it.  And, if they do not bite, consider rejecting this role and go find something else.  Because by accepting it as it is now, you become part of the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T12:35:32.223" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4635" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-14T13:55:37.613" Score="15" ViewCount="527" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've moved our group's workflow to a scrum-based approach, with a lot of success. We're getting things done, people are more engaged, and we're more focused on our actual user community's needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because we needed to work on processes over tools, we're using physical cards on a backlog board and a task board. This works pretty well, although we're probably going to move to an electronic version eventually as we're starting to get more remote team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This works very well for &quot;right sized&quot; user stories. But how do we deal with things that are really too small for a user story? Sometimes these are bugs/defects, or sometimes they're just really small feature requests or enhancements. For example, our Gitorious installation appends a superfluous &lt;code&gt;s&lt;/code&gt;  to repository names when one makes a clone. It'd be nicer if it didn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; write user stories for every thing like this (which is what we do), but a) it feels overweight and not at all &quot;agile&quot; and b) such stories inevitably get scheduled below bigger, more important things, even though they're often low-hanging fruit (small effort for small but noticeable results).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, one could have a separate issue tracker. However, that suddenly goes from one place to look for work — the scrum task board — to having two tools. Is there a good way to integrate these things so they don't act in opposition to each other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, one could just leave these things out of the process and shout them at each other across the room. There's a serious risk of this becoming the &lt;em&gt;de facto&lt;/em&gt; process if I don't fix this. When this works, it's basically fine, but it's problematic because a) it can disrupt productivity when people get distracted from their other work by unscheduled interruptions and b) when these issues aren't immediately fixed, they can (as the question title) get dropped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2124" LastEditorUserId="2124" LastEditDate="2012-02-14T18:04:09.937" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T15:28:16.100" Title="With Scrum, how do you keep from dropping the little things?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;defect-fixing&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1009" CreationDate="2012-02-14T14:45:15.323" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check to see that the tasks of the subcontractor are indented correctly. Then test it out on a dummy project and make sure that is what you are looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3223" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-09-30T02:37:14.927" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T02:37:14.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4635" CreationDate="2012-02-14T15:31:06.773" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You say you need to work on processes over tools. Generally with successful Scrum, the individuals and interactions are even more important than the processes and the tools, so if the team are just calling out bugs to each other, and that's working, why not carry on doing it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment, the lightweight nature of the interactions is probably giving you a lot of benefits - at a guess, perhaps the speed of response, the feeling of being part of a team, and the fact that it's not written down so it has to be fixed before people forget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the benefits, what are you hoping that the processes will give you? Are you looking to track quality (remembering that the lightweight communication is helping to improve it anyway)? Who for, and what are they really interested in? Who cares about the little things being tracked?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or are the little things actually being dropped? If so, have you communicated the impact to the team, and asked them to come up with solutions? They might actually consider having two tools or a bit more heavy-weight documentation worth putting up with for higher quality - but you won't know unless you ask the guys on the ground, and they'll know what the balance is better than anyone here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T15:31:06.773" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4635" CreationDate="2012-02-14T16:53:17.473" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have an index card on our board, that permanently sits in the Backlog, labelled &quot;Technical Debt&quot;. Any team member can grab a post-it note and write down T.D. they think we are collecting. For example, if they know that a coding decision could have complications later down the line, we stick it on the Technical Debt card.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the beginning of every sprint we review all of the post-it notes accumulated. If we feel that there is some debt we can clear in the new sprint, and it is not in itself a proper story, we add those as Chores. We also double-check if any of the Debt collected will impact the stories to be worked on in the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quite often some of the &quot;little things&quot; that you mentioned end up in the T.D. section. We tend to knock out a handful of them in each sprint just to make sure we are keeping on top of things. We don't assign points to them (since they are Chores, not Stories), but large pieces of work are avoided unless absolutely critical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I prefer using post-it notes. It is more tactile and interactive than a software tool (although I do maintain a spreadsheet for my own sanity). The team tend to shuffle through them out of curiosity when they are at the board. I doubt they would take the time to browse a software tool at their desks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastEditorUserId="1537" LastEditDate="2012-02-15T09:38:44.550" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T09:38:44.550" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4635" CreationDate="2012-02-14T17:53:29.243" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A scrum is to my point of view a theoretical model to be adapted in your own precise situation. You have guidelines to follow, rules and responsabilities like the scrum master for example; but you can change them is your team thinks it would work better another way. I would keep it simple; have a meeting with your co-wokers and settle yourself what is the best way for you to organize your daily work procedures: what to keep or what you change in that model. Invent something that fit perfectly to who you are and what you are doing. I am sure that you all have great ideas. Just share them with each others. You will see your motivation and your quality of life at your work place increase a lot. You will have great fun innovating. I think that the goal of any management model is to be adapted to a precise work environment. I your question, I deducted that the Scrum model do not apply perfectly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastEditorUserId="3268" LastEditDate="2012-02-21T14:49:17.613" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T14:49:17.613" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4620" CreationDate="2012-02-14T18:10:46.153" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a difference between a management strategy and a tactic. In fact, you have your management vision that includes a plan, and that plan include strategies and tactics. (to put it simply). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A strategy is a general way of doing things, whereas a tactic is a specific task that helps you acheive your strategy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could have for example a strategy like: I want people to communicate daily what they need to do their job. The tactic is to find a specific way to do it: Emails, twitter, talking to each other, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Becoming a project manager with a programmer background is very good because you will understand very well what your team members are doing daily. But the trap is for you not to have a general view of what is going on. You have to pass from technical side to the management side. Reflect daily about the big problems that you face as a team or will have to face, and let the technical stuff to your team members. You can help them once in a while, but you have to keep in mind always a broader perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-02-24T06:03:02.483" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T06:03:02.483" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4611" CreationDate="2012-02-14T18:21:35.623" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understand your situation well, the clients cause the programming changes in the software you are talking about. With what I read, you seem to be the last to know... (or almost). I would not try to anticipate the changes because if you get them wrong, you will have worked for nothing (and that is a lost of money). Is there somebody in the statiscians team that you could get in touch daily or weekly, depending on your situation? With projects and clients, most of the times you see last minute changes difficult to predict. But my point is that you have to find a way to buy time. You have to find a way to push regularely for you to have the information in time for you to programm properly and for the clients to be fully satisfied. You could even refuse once or tow times to do the changes because you do not have the time; that could be a waking call for your statisticians collegues to take into account your deadlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T18:21:35.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4635" CreationDate="2012-02-14T20:14:51.010" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's all about choosing priorities and visualizing your work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your scrum board doesn't have to be restricted to sized stories only. And, please, don't try to size non business value work. Many forget that the velocity is meant to measure the &quot;business value&quot; being delivered from the product backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that it is limited by all the other &quot;stuff&quot; or &quot;overhead&quot;. But that doesn't mean that when it comes down to prioritizing the work that you don't merge ALL lists of work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One team I have worked with chooses to fix a few bugs in-between each story. These are on our board, stack-ranked, but unsized. Our PO prioritizes them along with the stories. We then watch our bug trends to measure if we are keeping up or knocking down our tech debt at a desired rate, while delivering the user stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While we do have a post it note board, we also use Rally, which allows us to have a Prioritized Backlog and Prioritized defect list, it allows us to merge these into one Sprint Backlog during planning. We also include other &quot;little things&quot; like missing unit tests or CI. We have another set of working agreements when a &quot;severity 1&quot; issue needs to be taken care of during the sprint as well. It also goes on the board. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ANything we want to see, goes on the board and is prioritized. Its great for everyone because we aren't in any sort of constant conflict between tech debt and business user stories. We balance them every sprint with the help of our PO and we learn a lot about how we manage all our work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T20:14:51.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4643" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-14T21:35:46.387" Score="0" ViewCount="2741" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given a set of high level epics what's the best 'guestimate' we can come up with to scope the software system appropriately given a time-to-market window? What are some good/best practices for this high level estimation (I know it'll be way off, but atleast be better than &quot;&lt;em&gt;I don't know&lt;/em&gt;&quot;). So we don't yet know who (i.e. which teams) would be developing this system, so we can't just drill down all stories and play planning poker with them. I'm looking for an initial and a somewhat SWAG at this level of granularity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some of the techniques and their criticisms (IMO):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Play a high level planning poker along with tech leads in the company - have scores of 40, 80, 120 etc., &lt;strong&gt;Issue&lt;/strong&gt;: No one knows what the heck they are talking about IMHO - it's easy to state whether a story is 1,2,3,5, 8 etc. but not many seem to understand the difference between an 80 or a 120 - folks would rather just go with higher estimates to be conservative (better to just guess a random number)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use parametric modeling tools like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COCOMO&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;COCOMO&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putnam_model&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SLIM&lt;/a&gt; and the like. &lt;strong&gt;Issue&lt;/strong&gt; - input is either SLOCs (which are just pure guesses and even more difficult with disparate technologies) or Function Points (FPs - not quite easy to do either). Although they may give good estimates as outputs, they are only as good as their inputs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work/Epic Breakdown Structure - I feel this is the best 'right' balance between the above two extremes i.e. breakdown epics, top-down into features to get an idea of scope. (one can also quickly come up with high-level one line stories for each feature (or if feature = story, in your case, then high-level features). Since stories usually range from 1 - 13 in the fibonacci scale (i.e., quite common IMHO to see stories in this range), just give every story/feature a score of 5 and aggregate them to get the score of the epic for a rough initial estimate (since there will be quite a few less than 5 as there will be more than 5, I feel 5 is a good &lt;em&gt;mid-point/average&lt;/em&gt; to go by). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last bullet method is what I'm leaning towards but am more than welcome for suggestions/inputs on what have you practiced and been sufficiently happy with and avoiding estimation paralysis - yes the estimates will be refined later on, but we still need a very high level view to balance expectations and plan accordingly :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1119" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T10:41:56.947" Title="What's the best way of estimating initial software size using '(agile) epics', given a time-to-market but not knowing who the developers will be?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4533" CreationDate="2012-02-14T22:21:19.147" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very sensitive issue. Touching one's pay check can trigger very passionate reactions... But I am asking myself: &quot;Why is there some different salaries in your work place for the same tasks; maybe there was a merger or something like that?&quot; If you want to reduce the highest salaries, you are going to start a war. The only possibility is to get a higher salary raise every year or every 6 months for those who earn less. However, to be fair, I would base your judgment on the amount of years of service in your compagny: raise the salery of those who are the oldest first and quicker. That is a fair way that everybody will accept. If you do the same task and that you do it for longer that the others, you should be a prioritiy for the management.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T22:21:19.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4399" CreationDate="2012-02-14T22:37:26.077" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hold your grounds. A boss will push as long as you say yes. I would say no 1 or 2 times and tell him or her why you can't get perfection: give him or her a fair explanation on how you and your co-workers do your work. Explain why you can't do more. Mention how people feel: stress, on the verge of burnout, etc. If your boss do not agree, ask for additional workers. It is not a confrontation, it is a way of reflecting to the management the limits you have as human beings. Explain that if you loose somebody for a sick leave, for example, it will be very costly for the compagny + hiring new and temporary employees. Challenge your boss with a no, but politely and with truthful explanations. If he or she is a good manager, he will listen because it is in the best interest of his compagny. Explain to him or her that they will make more money that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T22:37:26.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4646" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-14T22:51:08.630" Score="23" ViewCount="3499" Body="&lt;p&gt;I ask this question because I have noticed that in our community, we have some new project managers. We have also very experienced project managers. I would like our more experienced collegues to share their very valuable experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-12-01T00:27:10.267" LastActivityDate="2015-09-10T15:43:33.893" Title="What are the best 3 pieces of advice you would give to a new project manager?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="20" ClosedDate="2012-06-20T06:13:55.327" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4610" CreationDate="2012-02-15T00:27:39.057" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a problem I deal with pretty much on a daily basis (and I like to tackle it too :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have two techniques at your disposal - you may use either or both depending on the situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;So-what's/Why's: keep asking so-what (or why) noting the intermediate answers. Repeat them on the intermediate answers till you hit an end goal - the real need. Feel free to branch out, no need to be linear (if thinking in terms of a graph). But don't get to over-bowed by this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now that you have a real need/goal try quantifying it in any means you can either relative value (1-9) or actual money gained/retained as a result of time saved/retained etc., Get your team of developers and ask them to estimate the cost of this feature - either relative of absolute ($). A simple Value/Cost ratio should be able to tell you whether it's worth doing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal that you got from the first step should also help you identify the &quot;value&quot; metric to use. It's entirely possible that you (and your stakeholder) feels it's worthless after the first bullet itself with a back-of-the-envelope calculation. That way no need to do step #2!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This technique has always proven useful to me in practice, helps the stakeholders understand if the benefit is really worth it as well as what's the true need and is it 'economically' worth getting it fulfilled/satisfied. Relative numbers work better than absolute, but absolute ($) may hit the point home better at times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, I can't say whether the feature is really worth it since value lies in the eyes of the beholder, but I can give you some tools to help elicit that value and re-articulate the &lt;em&gt;worth&lt;/em&gt; to the stakeholder(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1119" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T00:27:39.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4646" CreationDate="2012-02-15T01:34:07.477" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a set of five core principles that drive my project management/ management philosophy. I've had them for many years, even predating my adoption of agile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;People, not projects:&lt;/strong&gt; If you focus on the team, the team will do better. Better team, is a better product. I spend every day of my job trying to make myself obsolete by enabling the team and helping them grow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Communication is 100% of your job:&lt;/strong&gt; PMI says communication makes up about 80% of a PMs job. I call it 100% and the big thing is you have to be adding value. As a PM you are the ultimate translation point for the project. It's your job to facilitate all the communication and enhance it along the way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Process is a Tool, not a roadblock (sub-concept: There is no &quot;one right way&quot;):&lt;/strong&gt; Don't ever let process take control of your project. If a process does not contribute value to the end user/ end goal, then look at getting rid of it. And if something has to be done, be open to if there is an easier way to do it. Inspect and Adapt. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is no &quot;one right way&quot;:&lt;/strong&gt; I rolled this into &quot;Process is a Tool, not a roadblock&quot; but it really is its own principle. If I want to go from San Francisco to New York there are dozens of options (Different airlines, drving, train, cruise ship, even biking) and any one of them could be the right way for me, depending on my goals and contraints. Anytime you hear &quot;That's the way we have to do it&quot; ask &quot;Why?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;All roads lead back to the customer&lt;/strong&gt;: It's one of my guiding mantras, rooted in my original high tech job in customer support. If you can't map what you are doing to some impact to the customer, then you should be asking why you are doing it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="147" LastEditDate="2015-09-10T15:43:33.893" LastActivityDate="2015-09-10T15:43:33.893" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4643" CreationDate="2012-02-15T01:42:41.177" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've become a big proponent of Business Value Estimating, which is leveraged off the Team Estimation game created by Steve Bockmann. At the highest level what this does is take your user stories (at whatever level of detail they are at) and does a comparison against the other stories in the stack. Is &quot;As a homeowner I want a color matching garage door (painting the garage door), so my house looks good&quot; a bigger or smaller than &quot;As a homeowner I want a front door that is safe and secure (mount a solid core door with security lock), so I feel safe&quot; and are either of them bigger than &quot;Put a new post in for the mailbox&quot;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be done at the product owner, technical architect/dev manager level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing this rates all the stories in the project against each other. From there is very likely one or more of those stories are something your technical people are familiar with. A rough projected velocity can be factored to give you a rough schedule. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Run two or three sprints and your schedule will narrow down and become more firm. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I posted a blog that has a step by step process on playing the Business Value Game. You can find it at &lt;a href=&quot;http://thegorillaisnamedhogarth.blogspot.com/2012/02/how-much-for-that-gorilla-in-window.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T01:42:41.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4635" CreationDate="2012-02-15T01:52:10.590" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Lunivore and durzagott give some great advice. The Technical Debt tracking is very smart. If something doesn't rate more than a 1, you don't really need to over plan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of thoughts to build on what they said (go read their posts if you haven't yet). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- What is your Business Value? You mention how many of these things are low priority. One thing I've noticed is sometimes in our focus on user value we forget user cost. When assigning value to a bug, it's not about what it will give the user, it's about what will the impact be to the user if they encounter this. This is anti-value and needs to be factored. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2- Never load up 100%. Many agilists promote this concept. Don't let your teams pile on so many stories they have no flexibility. Something will go wrong, it always does. Leave some un-tasked time in the sprint to handle these spikes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3- Fix now vs Fix Later: The ScrumShortcut blog has a really good post on this. The concept is that if you find an issue before the story is marked &quot;Done&quot; then fix it right then. It's part of the acceptance criteria for the story and it's not done until fixed. If the bug is found after the sprint, then you schedule it to the backlog (durzagott's idea of the Tech Debt area works great here.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T01:52:10.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25" CreationDate="2012-02-15T02:25:19.340" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just a precision: begin small and grow accordingly to the new needs you will discover along the road. Watch your team members work, analyse their non verbal language: you will see easily if they have some spare time or not. For example, if they are regularely talking about their weekend on the jod, I guess they would accept another task...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T02:25:19.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3590" CreationDate="2012-02-15T02:36:11.790" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A precision: you have to deal directly with the department of the technical requirements (I understood that your are doing something technical for them, you do something for them if you bill them?) Let that department contact their own billing department and settle their tension/conflict; ask them to settle it before you bill them. Ask for a name and address to send your bill. But no matter what, when you bill, you charge the hole compagny (with the compagny name on your bill); but their accounting/billing department will make you the payment of your bill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T02:36:11.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4550" CreationDate="2012-02-15T02:49:51.627" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A precision concerning the cost estimation: a cost estimation is very difficult to get exactly right. You can consult the reports of similar already completed projects with the same tasks or so, to see their own estimations. That can give you a good idea where you are going. When your estimations are done, add an account not link with any task: an amount for the unexpected or the non planned events. I can be 5% (for example) of the total budjet of your project. So, if a problem surface you will have a way to adapt to it without your hole project going over budjet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T02:49:51.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4646" CreationDate="2012-02-15T02:58:23.050" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some quick ones off the top of my head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Understand the state your team is in&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mature/self organizing teams - Focus on individual relationships and generally just get out of the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stable/improving teams - Give them options to learn whatever team skills they are missing to get to the &quot;Mature&quot; state. Set constraints but pretty much let them try different (often non technical) stuff. Be prepared to stick by them when things get rough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chaotic/stuck in a mess - Put your foot down and restore order asap, everything else is secondary. Get them to the stage where the workload and deliverables are in a manageable state so they can start to get stabilized. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Great teams are built, not hired&lt;/strong&gt;. You cannot hire your way to a great team, the only way to get there is to build it up yourself one person and one relationship at a time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Own your team&lt;/strong&gt;. The team is yours, period. Never cede any control to management because it never comes back. Always remember that YOU are the one responsible for the team's  failure or success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1849" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T02:58:23.050" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4655" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-15T06:22:47.370" Score="2" ViewCount="6725" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any formula to define team size for small project. I had read fibonacci sequence number formula for rating. So can we apply some logic to define teamsize? I mean we have two subprojects in a big project. What is ideal way to distribute manpower? Any reference related to same topic is welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3179" LastActivityDate="2017-04-10T07:29:35.193" Title="How to determine team size?" Tags="&lt;team-building&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4655" CreationDate="2012-02-15T09:04:51.567" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there can't be any formula. The size of the team can &lt;strong&gt;depend on experience and skill of particular members&lt;/strong&gt;. For example I have a friend who can deliver 4 times more and better quality code than many good programmers I know. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing is that &lt;strong&gt;9 women won't bore a child in one month&lt;/strong&gt;, so increasing size of the team won't solve all problems you may encounter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If both projects are interesting maybe you could &lt;strong&gt;let people choose&lt;/strong&gt; on which they want to work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also recommend two things: &lt;strong&gt;sit together&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;communicate, communicate, communicate&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T09:04:51.567" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4643" CreationDate="2012-02-15T10:41:56.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take a look at Dynamic Range Estimation:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://itkanban.com/framework/estimation-2/dynamic-range/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://itkanban.com/framework/estimation-2/dynamic-range/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a good technique for getting high level estimates out and visualising areas of uncertainty.  Involving a couple of developers from different teams would help mitigate no knowing who will be working on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T10:41:56.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4611" CreationDate="2012-02-15T12:04:26.897" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The software is too big and programming effectively and efficiently is challenging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sound like the problem is a software architecture problem and not a project management problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Requirements will always change. The ease of applying theses changes depends on the architecture of your software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inspire towards a flexible architecture with separation between reusable infrastructure and applications built upon it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thicken the infrastructure layers continuously, so that the application-only code will be as thin as possible, yet write the infrastructure wisely and in a highly flexible and maintainable manner, so it can be expanded over and over. Keep app-specific or rapid solutions in the application layers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1094" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T12:04:26.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4655" CreationDate="2012-02-15T12:49:35.560" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a fact in management that when you have more than 8 to 12 people around the table; a consensus is impossible. So if an organization try to reach a deal with 70 countries around a table (like for global warming for example), it is simply imposible to find commun grounds. To my point a view, I would never go over 7 people. It is better to have a number like 3, 5, 7, 9,... If there is a vote, it will not end up as tow sides equal. The best teams I have been in were 5 people team to organize an even; and 3 to deal with a minor issue. You can start small and add co-workers along the way if it is needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T12:49:35.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4270" CreationDate="2012-02-15T13:09:12.977" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A project management software is a tool. It can't plan and execute the task or your project. The sofware will do what an human being will asks it to do. I still am septical to implement some costly project managment softwares or management systems. But do not get me wrong, we all need a techinical support to do the repetitive tasks more quickly. Organizing projects management in your compagny should be done by the managers of your compagny. But you are saying that they do not seem to have a very good sens of planning and organizationing? I would call a meeting of the main managers involved and put the main problems you are talking about on the table. Maybe put a manager in charge to clean up things. But that person should have all the time he or she needs to do this new job (and not being added to his or her current tasks).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T13:09:12.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4661" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-15T13:13:42.223" Score="2" ViewCount="216" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today, I have found a new technique for Agile Development named &quot;Effect Mapping&quot;, developed by Gojko Adzic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gojko.net/effect-map/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://gojko.net/effect-map/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main idea behind it is about building the map tree of a project, before starting with the first agile story. It helps creating the eye bird view of the entire project, so you can start stories with a minimum viable plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How would you mix effect mapping with agile stories?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;for people not using effect mapping, that i think is 99% of people, how do you approach the eye bird project view before starting with the first iteration? I feel really fustrating when you are dealing with a forest of stories before starting the first iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3236" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T10:59:22.687" Title="Effect mapping and agile development" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4241" CreationDate="2012-02-15T13:19:04.387" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You just found a great candidate and a futur manager. That man has his own ideas. His has the caracter to sand for them. He is not afraid to do what he thinks his the best thing to do. He his not afraid of taking some heat, etc. I wonder if he is simply bored and if he needs a new challenging projects or tasks? You should challenge him. Give him something very difficult to do or nearly impossible. Give him a short deadline to do it. Plan an honest reward if he succeed and tell him in advance. I would talk to your manager about that man and appoint him a mentor. If he collaborate with all of that and prove his abilities; he will be a great asset to your team and compagny.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T13:19:04.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4646" CreationDate="2012-02-15T13:47:23.023" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;welcome to PMSE!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's a good question, and I'd like to share my top 3, in despite of my low experience in comparison to our more seasoned colleagues... I'll try to focus on &lt;strong&gt;Manager's&lt;/strong&gt; top three instead of &lt;strong&gt;Leader's&lt;/strong&gt; top three (which would make another good question).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclosure:&lt;/strong&gt; All other answers are quite great as well, so I'll take use of it and, instead of repeat them, I'd add three new.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Learn how to say no:&lt;/strong&gt; Sometimes, most of the team smell things are getting out of track, but are too afraid to confront counterparties (clients, stakeholders, sales). It's expected the PM does so.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Deadline is based on each subtask's estimate, and not the other way round:&lt;/strong&gt; I've faced this scenario before: there are plenty of tasks to do, and a specific deadline. Task's estimates were done 'fitting' them into the deadline. It just won't work. It's ridiculous. It's unfair. And still... it happens all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You will fail:&lt;/strong&gt; As Jack Welch says in his 'Winning' (great book, I'm enjoying it a lot!), you will fail eventually, but you cannot be ashamed of it. Actually, failures are one of the best teachers you'll ever have. For instance, both tips above came from huge failures I had in the past. But again, as a manager you'll need to be resilient. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T13:47:23.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4655" CreationDate="2012-02-15T15:11:23.390" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Welcome to PMSE, Abhijit!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was discussing about this very same topic with a more seasoned manager here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you might see in some answers I share here in PMSE, I'll put another question that might help you to reach your solution (this one, based on some PMBoK tips; PMI masters, please correct me if I'm wrong!):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have you already applied a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_breakdown_structure&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WBS&lt;/a&gt; into your project to understand clearly what's this project about in details?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have you already done some estimates (in man/hours) for each sub task in the project?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have you already realized how many of these sub tasks can be done in parallel (a activity sequencing diagram could help you on it)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having the answers for these questions, you'll have a better picture of where you could allocate better your resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice these tips applies basically if you clearly know beforehand what has to be delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bottomline:&lt;/strong&gt; There's no magic formula to give you the answer. There's a topic around PMSE that Joel Spolsky highlight it in a very objective manner (if someone knows the topic, a link here would be nice). You first need to clearly understand &lt;strong&gt;what&lt;/strong&gt; needs to be done to define &lt;strong&gt;who&lt;/strong&gt; / &lt;strong&gt;when&lt;/strong&gt; it will be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T15:11:23.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4646" CreationDate="2012-02-15T15:52:47.097" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Learn to trust your team and your team's trust in you&lt;/strong&gt; - being able to trust your team ensures that you have confidence in your team and their deliverables. That goes both ways. Nothing is more toxic than not having any trust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Allow for change&lt;/strong&gt; - The one constant in a project is that it changes or it evolves, some big and some small. So  be prepare for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Open up the communication channels&lt;/strong&gt; - Communication is usually key to the project's success. If there is a communication road block, lets open it and let the dialogue flow. A project manager is usually in the right position to do the opening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="480" LastEditorUserId="480" LastEditDate="2012-03-01T09:38:46.473" LastActivityDate="2012-03-01T09:38:46.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4655" CreationDate="2012-02-15T16:11:46.087" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do not look for a formula.  A formula will yield a single result.  But an estimate is a range of possible results, over which a probabilistic distribution resides.  For example, for task A, the size of your team can be a range from 4 FTEs to as high as 10 FTEs.  The right answer for this task at this time lives somewhere in there.  Staff experience and availability, environmental issues, luck, time of the year, etc., are all random variables that will favorably or unfavorably affect performance, none of which you can fully control or control at all, all of which will disallow you to arrive at a more deterministic value.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not mean, of course, you would staff 4 to 10 people.  You have to choose.  Risk management and your risk appetite play a heavy role in this decision.  If you are confident, get close to 4.  If you are unsure, climb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you arrive at the estimate?  Bottom-up, top-down, expert input, historical data with parametrics if you have it, and SWAG.  Iterate it until everyone is nodding their head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T16:11:46.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4667" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4668" CreationDate="2012-02-15T16:57:10.590" Score="4" ViewCount="1366" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a development team that works on multiple &quot;products&quot;. We create a unified user-stories backlog, and effectively treat the multiple products as different feature areas of the same virtual big product. Each iteration &lt;em&gt;ideally&lt;/em&gt; focuses on related user stories, so that doesn't, in practice, get too crazy — although there's often high-priority unrelated items which make the cut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My organization is growing to the point where it's no longer sustainable for there to be just one scrum team. I'm thinking about how to make this work so that the user stories are divided in a way that is a) functional for the teams and b) keeps all work focused on the overall priorities of the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We want to keep one overall backlog for the multiple teams; keeping our whole organization working on unified priorities is part of the point of this whole thing. (And &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrum-institute.org/Multiteam_Coordination_and_Planning.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;I've seen council that this is the right way to go&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One obvious division is functional responsibilities. Product A and B go to Team 1, while product B and C go to Team 2. I expect that that's how most people do it. The problem with this is that sometimes products B and C might &lt;em&gt;just not be a priority at all&lt;/em&gt;. (Since we work to an academic schedule, that is often the case at certain times of the year.) In that case, we end up with Team 2 working on items from further down the backlog which don't really match the priorities of the organization as a whole, just because hey, that's what their job says to do. A possible solution is to make the teams fluid, with team members shifted from Team 2 to Team 1 when Team 1's products are the current priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another approach is to have the first part of the sprint planning meeting involve both teams. There would be a group discussion about which user stories go where, and how much each team can commit to. The clear problem with this is that it's hard to scale — but I've heard of people &lt;a href=&quot;http://agile2009.agilealliance.org/node/3075/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;doing it nonetheless&lt;/a&gt;. One solution is for each team to only send delegates to this part of the planning meeting. These delegates would have the responsibility of negotiating a reasonable selection of user stories for their team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which approach is best, and why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the model where the teams have different areas of responsibilities but the team composition changes each cycle, &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; are the reassignments made and whose responsibility should that be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the model where the planning meeting includes all team members from all teams, how does one make that work effectively? Consensus is very difficult when there's more than a few people involved!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the model where the initial part of the planning meeting is attended by delegates, how much authority should those delegates have and what happens when their commitments have a mismatch with the team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a refinement of these ideas or a different model for multi-team scrum that I should be looking at?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2124" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T00:03:14.243" Title="How should an organization divide user stories between scrum teams?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;job-allocation&gt;&lt;multi-team&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4667" CreationDate="2012-02-15T18:28:10.783" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would add an additional option: allow your scrum teams to select whatever they want off the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have given the scrum teams a prioritised overall backlog and they know what they are capable of delivering. If you allow the teams the complete freedom to take whatever stories they want to into their sprints then the overall process &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; deliver optimal results. This only gets complicated if the scrum teams hold separate sprint planning meetings simultaneously...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a product owner, as always, you only need to intervene if the scrum teams are not taking your highest priority items into their sprints. If not, you need to establish why in dialogue with the scrum master(s) and together agree some action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3233" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T18:28:10.783" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4581" CreationDate="2012-02-15T18:56:22.993" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project Manager has two responsibilities :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make best use of the ressources allocated to the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide visibility on the project progress&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If PM does not do that, he is (at least partially) responsible for project failure.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If he does that, I would be glad to keep working with him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;( comment :&lt;br&gt;&#xA;PM cannot make suicide of the project.&#xA;It is the PM's boss responsibility to periodically assess project viability and decide whether to carry on, stop, change PM, allocate resources, etc ...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;PS: I leave aside discussions on &lt;strong&gt;initial workload evaluation&lt;/strong&gt;, although it has a clear impact on project difficulties. That is a full topic by itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3119" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T18:56:22.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1152" CreationDate="2012-02-15T19:16:58.183" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You alread have a lot of wisdom in all posted answers.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I will add : take the current shift in delay and extrapolate in the future. You will have a better estimate of the real deadline. Don't count you will recover the delays neither stabilize the delays.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, we all know that what you described is quite a common situation, and it is time to earn your PM salary. You have to :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make best use of available resources&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;provide visibility on true status of the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;propose realistic options to stakeholders&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Options are as usual :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;more resources (? refer to the mythical man-month)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;negotiate delay&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reduce scope&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can do that, you did your job.&#xA;If you can't (because your boss don't want to hear about it), you will reduce test phase which will proove a bigger catastrophe.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3119" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T19:16:58.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4617" CreationDate="2012-02-15T21:09:04.690" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hyperoffice.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;HyperOffice&lt;/a&gt;, but it comes more from the collaboration side than the project management side. You get document management, project management, workflows, web forms, pages, wikis etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3239" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T21:09:04.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4672" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4673" CreationDate="2012-02-16T06:13:56.107" Score="11" ViewCount="2509" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been interviewed yesterday as a team leader for a start-up, and I was asked this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose you have a deadline for a client tomorrow and there is much pressure on your team to finish it and deliver the product on time. However, there is a client of yours that he needs an emergency support/fix otherwise he can not operate, run his business until it is fixed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would you do in this situation?&#xA;Summarizing what I said, I would look all of my options, discuss with the team if there is a way to do both. If the answer is positive but we must work more hours today then I would choose this. If the answer was negative and I was sure that there is nothing we can do (even splitting the team is not helping), I would contact my new client telling him that the project will be delivered tomorrow and offer him an extended support or a discount/offer for our mistake. The team will work on our existing client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He told me that there is no correct or false answer but there is a way to handle this better. I didn't ask why, and I need your opinions on what would be a better way to handle this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the record, I will have my reply soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3241" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2014-07-17T23:25:21.967" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T23:25:21.967" Title="What you would do in this situation? Support a critical error for a client or observe your deadline with the other?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;risk&gt;&lt;maintenance&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4672" CreationDate="2012-02-16T08:51:57.237" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Deadlines are missed all the time. While it is a badge of honor to hit it, there are acceptable variances where the schedule can still be claimed a success. Further, it will likely have zero impact on your first client because it likely planned for a late delivery as contingency. Your second client is dead in the water. He is being severely impacted by the minute and if you delay help, you will most certainly lose him as a client forever. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T08:51:57.237" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4672" CreationDate="2012-02-16T09:28:49.423" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being an entirely abstract question there is, as your interviewer said, no absolute right or wrong answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a few other thingss I would take into consideration before making my decision:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there anyone else in the wider organization (outside my team) who can support the live user? If you're in an impossible situation don't be afraid to go for help higher up the managment chain.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What's the impact of late project delivery to customer A? What's the impact of downtime on customer B? In the abstract, downtime &lt;em&gt;sounds&lt;/em&gt; worse than late project delivery, but in practice it isn't always.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What is our relationship with the two customers? Are we in good standing with A and on red alert with B? If so, we can perhaps spend some of the goodwill from A to earn much-needed goodwill from B.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there a huge discrepancy between the commercial value of the two customers? Is A our highest profile, highest revenue, case study reference account? And B worth 1% of that?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd be very interested to hear what your interviewer expected to hear from you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3233" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T09:28:49.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4675" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-16T12:52:30.130" Score="6" ViewCount="255" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a SM I try to promote great environement for my team by encouraging collaboration and teamwork. &#xA;It works well for the work hours, but during lunch time 2 of them always argue against each other on political matters, which tend to deteriorate  the mood of the whole team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this something that the SM should solve by himself or is it beyond my role? I know the theory around solving conflict by creating a shared identity. But they are extreme in their view and belief, and I can't see a shared ground here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2456" LastEditorUserId="2456" LastEditDate="2012-02-16T16:30:29.833" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T23:33:27.100" Title="Should a ScrumMaster step into political conversations?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;conflicts&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4675" CreationDate="2012-02-16T13:24:39.303" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that you should first evaluate if the team have a co-political view, or almost close to it. If it doesn't, it could be dangerous to go into it, because it would create a bad enviorement in some cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3244" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T13:24:39.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4675" CreationDate="2012-02-16T14:00:10.490" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In Scrum&lt;/strong&gt; you should bring this topic up during the retrospective meeting. If the topic really bothers the other team members they'll say so and the team will find a solution to the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Outside of Scrum&lt;/strong&gt; you should have a face-to-face discussion with the two colleagues and ask them to stop talking about disturbing not job related matters in public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T14:00:10.490" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4624" CreationDate="2012-02-16T14:23:51.277" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's time to stop the train and kick some butts (if they really want you to do something real).&#xA;The client wants software, executable code, something that they can see. So, basically, you want to follow these steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0321336623&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Catastrophe Disentanglement: Getting Software Projects Back on Track&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and get something done. So, find out what is the nearest to completion user story, finish it and deliver it. If in six months the team couldn't ship anything, start changing that. Keep focus on each user story at the (re)beginning, until you create a flow of delivered stories. The client and the Acct Mgr will notice the difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, for your team, they have nothing to do with the client. The only one responsible for lying (and you should never!) or not is you. Manage them to tell everything to you, good or bad news. Show them that you really want to satisfy the Acct Mgr and mainly the client, and that it cannot be achieved by lies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you or someone else is there only to act like a puppet, than your role is useless. Better find another job than being a tied escape goat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers and good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2352" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T14:23:51.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4675" CreationDate="2012-02-16T14:46:18.833" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the role of the Scrum Master is to remove impediments to efficient work and to ensure that the work process continues smoothly, then at the point where the personal discussions &quot;always tend to deteriorate the mood of the whole team&quot; you have the opportunity to exercise your role as SM.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with Zsolt's answer that you should bring this up in the sprint retrospective meetings, to determine if it really is an impediment to the work. If it is, it would be appropriate to have a sidebar meeting with the two parties to ask them to find a way to have their discussions such that it does not affect the team.  However, beyond that I would say that as a SM and not their manager, you're limited in what you can do outside of removing an impediment to work; you could have a conversation with their manager if the issues continue in a way that cannot be resolved within the scrum framework.  (If you are also their manager, then you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; have additional tools at your disposal to resolve the issue.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2864" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T14:46:18.833" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4680" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4683" CreationDate="2012-02-16T15:14:48.420" Score="4" ViewCount="2960" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the moment I'm Scrum Master for my place of work. We have one Scrum Team in our organisation which is split across two sites:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Site 1:&lt;/strong&gt; Scrum Master, Developer, QA&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Site 2:&lt;/strong&gt; Developer, Operational, QA&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We currently employ the following Agile practices, which we used to reduce our backlog:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Monthly Sprints&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Daily Stand ups&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Burndown&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Artefacts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business Product Owners&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Group Estimations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 monthly role swaps for the Scrum Master position within the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint Planning / Retrospective&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now over the past year this has worked amazingly and we now are looking at &quot;Agile Phase 2&quot; to improve the process further:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planning Poker&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User Stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Velocity (Using points)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Enhance our Sprint Planning with Stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduce the use of XPlanner+&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I have been reading the excellent book by Mike Cohen on &lt;em&gt;User Stories Applied&lt;/em&gt; for the stories part but i have a question concerning storyboards themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have Geo-Located teams within the UK, so i was going to have one Storyboard but upload pictures to a Sharepoint location for the other team who cannot access it. &lt;strong&gt;Is that the best practice?&lt;/strong&gt; We dont want to invest in digital boards just yet, we want to see how the physical board pans out first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other Questions:&#xA; - What size board is the best to use?&#xA; - Any advice of what type of physical board to get (Metal, etc)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for the time any advice is much appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3245" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2012-08-02T21:25:47.887" LastActivityDate="2012-08-02T21:25:47.887" Title="Agile Scrum Storyboards" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4617" CreationDate="2012-02-16T15:17:18.863" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the moment we are looking to implement an Open-Source kit, called XPlanner+:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://xplanner-plus.sourceforge.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://xplanner-plus.sourceforge.net/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment we are only using the standard Excel Planning template you can download for burning down work. Now we are looking into Stories, we have decided to use something alittle more sophisticated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3245" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T15:17:18.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4672" CreationDate="2012-02-16T17:47:52.097" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with David (+1!) the best is to keep the customers we have, as deadlines are subjectively known to be broken. And David's answers is pretty much the same as yours, focusing on the current customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The open question here lies slightly beyond:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How could this be handled better?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As already stated, if there's no right or wrong... how can exists better or worse? It's basically depends on one's opinion (and in the belief that his answer would be the 'most correct').&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thinking on it, I'd guess that the only slip on your answer would be to contact the client offering something your company may not be ready to, or maybe sales people should do this task of clearing things up with the client. But it will depend on the company structure... maybe you'd be doing the sales and my answer would be void. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, you'd need to understand the relationship and complexity of each client. If the client who's needing the project delivered tomorrow is paying you 1M for it while the other one has a few bucks contract... would be hard to think of delay a 1M contract. Besides, and if the new project is also a business stopper (like a new policy restriction being applied to a specific program)?. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of variables that aren't known (or at least, stated here)... and probably even the person who asked you could had all of them clear on his mind (for a past experience, for instance) but forgot to mention some important details of these relationships...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyways, please share with us once you have a 'better' answer :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T17:47:52.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4680" CreationDate="2012-02-16T18:38:26.937" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend Trello.com as a digital duplicate of your physical board. Trello is free, it's very easy to use and doesn't dive into too many bells and whistles. You can invite multiple people to a single board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the daily standup the SM can update the digital board from the physical. It also allows the remote team to make updates to their tasks and the change tracking means the SM can easily see these and update the physical board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the physical board. That's going to be what works for your team. I prefer cork boards and thumb tacks. My coworker prefers white boards and painters tape as they can make notes on the white board. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T18:38:26.937" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4675" CreationDate="2012-02-16T18:39:13.837" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regardless of your position as SM, you detected a conflict that's impacting the project; therefore, I'd suggest you to &lt;strong&gt;privately&lt;/strong&gt; have an &lt;strong&gt;objective&lt;/strong&gt; 1-to-1 with each of them, explaining your point of view and your concern that it may impact on the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They could be your superiors, they could be your subordinates. As part of the project, it's your duty to share your concern and put your efforts fixing it. Better safe than sorry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T18:39:13.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4646" CreationDate="2012-02-16T20:12:51.430" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;In trying to avoid duplicating the excellent comments in other answers, I have thought about some of the mistakes I have made, and offer the following - which probably says more about my own flaws than anything else!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Check your facts - never assume.&lt;/strong&gt; It's amazing how often your assumptions will be wrong - especially when you &quot;think&quot; someone is doing something or has &quot;probably&quot; completed a task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Trust your instincts - especially if something doesn't seem quite right&lt;/strong&gt;. If it feels wrong, it probably is. If you can't explain why you feel uncomfortable about something, don't accept glib easy explanations. Go digging, and you will either get a good explanation that you can understand and then support, or you will uncover something that needed uncovering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Support your team, but never defend the indefensible&lt;/strong&gt;. Your team needs to know that you will support them whenever they need support, but you should never confuse supporting them with accepting poor performance or sheer incompetence. You are a manager: you have to manage, and your team should also recognise that fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T20:12:51.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4672" CreationDate="2012-02-16T21:18:43.360" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;David nailed it. You first responsibility is to the client you already have or the product you've already supplied. So you take care of their issue first as it's ALREADY impacting them. The other client MAY be impacted, but it's not a given. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the &quot;better&quot; answer, the only thing that I can see that might even be remotely construed as &quot;better&quot; is if the interviewer (mgmt) was looking for you to escalate the issue to them and not field it yourself. But that wouldn't necessarily be better; just a preference of theirs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T21:18:43.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4332" CreationDate="2012-02-16T21:50:14.023" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Martin,&#xA;No, nothing like that has been attempted (on that scale), because it simply can't be done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be like comparing building a skyscraper to building a boat. Both involve &quot;building&quot;, but beyond that the similarities end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the most base level projects share a linear flow of actions - Initiate, Plan, Execute, Close. But once you try to expand past that you run into problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another problem is the use of some of these. The PMBoK Guide for example is a framework and not a method or approach. I could easily insert Agile and Scrum practices into the PMBoK Guides recommendations. But they would be a subset of that framework, not a different approach. The same with Waterfall and Agile or Flexible/Inflexible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T21:50:14.023" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4616" CreationDate="2012-02-16T22:37:46.850" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this the right strategy to use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not quite sure. Maybe I've spent to much time in Agile and Lean projects, so I think planning a project based on a tool (RUP) is not a good idea. Although in RUP on paper the first two phases - inception, elaboration - are smaller than the third one - construction -, but in the real life they are almost as long as the construction phase. So it can happen that you spend a lot of money on inception and elaboration, but you won't deliver anything useful. I would approach the problem from the module point of view if you cannot use anything else but RUP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;iteration 1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;module 1&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;task 1&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;inception&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;elaboration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;task 2&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;inception&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;module 2&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;task 1&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;inception&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;iteration 2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;module 1&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;task 1&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;construction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;task 2&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;elaboration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this approach after each iteration:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;you'll learn more about the work&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;your teams can work parallel&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;you'll have something, which works, after each iteration&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;you can refine your plan and make it more accurate&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would be the Agile approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My concern is that the Iterations will leave tasks behind that are not completed and it will be rather difficult to deal with tasks that haven't been completed from Iteration 1, when we should be (formally) in Iteration 2, because Iteration 2 could have dependent tasks on Iteration 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's absolutely true, plus it can happen that working on a task in iteration 1 brings up issues, which will delay iteration 2 etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to convince you to do Agile, but if you have some time for reading another book, you may find good ideas and hints on project management in here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0131479415&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Estimating and Planning&lt;/a&gt; by Mike Cohn&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T22:37:46.850" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4689" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-17T05:43:49.947" Score="1" ViewCount="203" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any software, preferably web based, that will allow a small group of people, a band, to communicate easily, share song lists and songs, and notes? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The song list is simply a list of songs with some information. Excel can represent it quite easily but it would be nice to have SVN like characteristics(so modifications can be made but reverted if necessary) and the ability to view as pdf.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be easy enough to for non-tech savy people to use it(but of course be able to surf the web, etc...). That is, no software to install(or very few dependencies) and no technical jargon needed to use... minimal interface, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is to get away from email which can be a hassle to manage and move on to something that is more centralized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anything like this exists?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2945" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T20:38:10.420" Title="Software to to work with band practice" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4689" CreationDate="2012-02-17T08:51:32.320" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://basecamphq.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;basecamp&lt;/a&gt; from &lt;a href=&quot;http://37signals.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;37Signals&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T08:51:32.320" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4689" CreationDate="2012-02-17T09:45:27.327" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that all the features you're looking for are available in Google Docs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simple UI&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collaborative editing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Revision history&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Save as PDF&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... and it's free!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3233" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T09:45:27.327" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4646" CreationDate="2012-02-17T11:17:53.720" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a few:  Don't separate the academics from how things really get done!  If they teach it in a book, use it.  Someone wrote the book because it worked on the job.  Business theories?  Apply them.  Someone induced a theory because it was observed on the job.  Or even better, someone tested it and found a correlation or cause and effect.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T11:17:53.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4694" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4697" CreationDate="2012-02-17T15:38:00.013" Score="4" ViewCount="319" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why is it difficult for people to accept the right solution coming from a person who is new to the organization? Like if you see a place where some changes can lead to greater improvement and your team lead is busy surfing internet rather than trying to improve process, you suggest a small change and all hell cut loose on you. Get resentment feelings from team lead because the suggestion didn't come from him/her, project manager gets red eye on you because team lead represents the idea in such a way that it looks like deviating from the current process and will create risk, other peers start laughing just because they don't get it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does it take to improve your chances to do the right thing without making people feel that you are trying to get upper hand on them?.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Replica of the situation:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have 20 cows. Farmer goes to the stable to milk cows in the morning. Each cow has a bucket assigned to it. Each bucket is numbered 1,2,3...20.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problem:&lt;/strong&gt; How do you know which cow's milk is in which bucket. Just because cows are put up in a queue, doesn't mean that first cow's milk in the bucket 1 and second cows milk is in bucket 2.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Current Solution:&lt;/strong&gt; Well, that is how it has been for 20 years and they know it by heart.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Proposed Solution:&lt;/strong&gt; Number the cows also so that you can tie a cow to a bucket and you don't have spend time thinking which cow's milk is in which bucket or even if you hire a new person, you don;t have spend time on training the person on which cow's milk goes to which bucket. Better maintainability and easy and simple way to improve the situation on hand.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.: i am not sure if this is the right place to ask this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3249" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2012-02-22T13:41:39.060" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T09:00:51.483" Title="How to have your opinion and idea listened by more senior people?" Tags="&lt;conflicts&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4694" CreationDate="2012-02-17T15:56:31.107" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It falls into one of the most common answers we have here in PMSE:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Communication.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Define 'right solution'. What's correct from one perspective may not be from another. Besides, usually upper level management have a more wide vision of the environment, so maybe it's a matter of not having all info needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, if you do believe you're trying to do things right while the current process is wrong, get prepared to be resilient and tireless... or look for another job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T15:56:31.107" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4694" CreationDate="2012-02-17T19:02:47.537" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The core of the issue is that you are new and not yet part of the team. You need to first earn the teams' &lt;strong&gt;TRUST&lt;/strong&gt; (and respect), then start to suggest serious changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Until the team trusts that your motives are in the best interest of the &lt;em&gt;team and not yourself&lt;/em&gt;, every idea you suggest will be taken as if you are only looking out for yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what is going on in the minds of the team: &lt;em&gt;Who the $@# is this guy? (I should have got that job!) He just got here what does he know about our process? What is he up to?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One of the biggest mistakes you can do as a PM is come in on day one and expect to make major changes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="535" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-02-17T23:16:35.973" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T23:16:35.973" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4694" CreationDate="2012-02-17T23:07:04.173" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may not be a popular answer, but I think you answered your own question just in the way you presented it. You basically said &quot;Why is it is so hard for people to just make the changes I tell them to?&quot; It's a sort of arrogance that says &quot;I know better&quot;, and it automatically puts people on the defensive. Even in your comment to David you dismissed their resistance as their  failing and reluctance &quot;to be challenged or come out of their comfort zone&quot; (their problem, not yours).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's never a good idea to walk into an organization and assume you know better than those already there (unless, see last paragraph). Sure, sometimes the new guy brings a certain level of clarity that those more entrenched may not have (being more removed from the history), but it's in how you present your ideas that determines whether or not you'll even be heard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project management is people management, so knowing how to interact and influence them is critical. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not sure where you fall as far as your role in this - your question suggests you're a team member, but your comments suggest you're a consultant. This as well makes a difference. As a team member you need to learn to work with the team. As a consultant you're asked for advice, but it's up the client whether they decide to implement that advice. Either way you get your fee, so if you're certain you're right and they still choose not to accept it, that's their problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T23:07:04.173" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4694" CreationDate="2012-02-17T23:20:51.270" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you may need to spend some time learning the corporate culture. No one, even consultants, can simply rush into an organization and start making major changes.  In order to be effective, you'll first need to figure out how the team will react to change.  You'll also need to spend some time prioritizing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You aren't going to win every single battle. Therefore, you'll need to decide what's most important to you, and start there.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you try to change everything all at once, encounter resistance, and continue to push, you'll be looked at as that annoying guy/gal who is always trying to &quot;shake things up&quot;, and as a project manager, I would view someone like that as someone who I, or my team, might have trouble trusting and working with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T23:20:51.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4675" CreationDate="2012-02-17T23:33:27.100" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If this were happening in the office while everyone is supposed to be working, then it's a problem that needs to be addressed by &lt;em&gt;someone&lt;/em&gt;, whether it be manager or scrum master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this is happening &lt;em&gt;during lunch&lt;/em&gt;, which in the United States is generally not paid time. The rules may or may not be different elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming lunch is personal time in your neck of the woods, it's up to &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; who you eat lunch with and associate with during your personal time.  If the political discussions are so disruptive to your mood that you can't concentrate once you're back to work, then maybe it's time to go have lunch with the cute girl in accounting instead of reluctantly participating in the political debates of the outhouse lawyers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like I said, the rules are different in other locales, so you should consider the rules and customs of your culture (corporate or country) when deciding how to proceed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T23:33:27.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4694" CreationDate="2012-02-18T00:26:55.237" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you know your solution is the right solution? Based on what data or reasoning is your solution the right solution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a newbie to a team it is never easy to blend in and at the same time start making your mark. When things appear to be obvious I understand that you are keen to promote your idea. However, could it be that there is a chance that those who have been on the team for longer have learned a few things along the way and therefore don't consider your idea as the &quot;right&quot; idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is it that makes an idea &quot;right&quot;? That it solves a problem? Maybe it does solve the main problem that you can see. But maybe there are other problems that are more pressing. Or maybe your solution would have a number of very nasty side effects that you are not aware of (yet) since you have joined the team only shortly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation would be to start communicating. Don't start selling your idea just yet even if - from your perspective - everything points towards your idea being the &quot;right&quot; solution. Instead try to understand where people are coming from. Try to understand their views, perspectives and experience. Just understanding does not mean that you have to agree to all of that. But it will give you more insight into how other team members think and what the team dynamics are. You can incorporate your conclusions into how you present your idea. Maybe you adapt your idea? Maybe you take a different approach to &quot;rolling it out&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience I have found that the innovator's ideas are not always welcome (if understood in the first place!). The more advanced/radical/innovative ideas are the more likely they are rejected. Inertia or complacency might be at work as well. In those cases it pays off to scale back and look for the pain points as described by other members of the team. Then offer a solution that addresses just that pain point. Your suggestion should be palatable but don't lose sight of your ultimate goal. As your ideas start to work their magic your influence on the team increases. Then you can work towards to ultimate goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen this technique work both for my own ideas but also for ideas of my team members. For my team members I serve as the mentor to help them make their ideas (or &quot;right solution&quot; as you called them) a reality. It's a learning process for all involved and some will need more time than others to change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2318" LastActivityDate="2012-02-18T00:26:55.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4701" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-18T11:08:54.150" Score="1" ViewCount="1701" Body="&lt;p&gt;New to MS project. Maybe I am not using it entirely to manage project, but resources. I wanted to plan installation dates of our technician. I know the tentative/estimated date. I can enter a task in MSP 2010, but how to differentiate it from confirmed dates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I wanted to see it in a report that for that task the date is not confirmed yet, and need follow-up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3253" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-13T10:33:35.887" LastActivityDate="2019-01-13T10:33:35.887" Title="MS project - tentative task date and followup" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4702" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-18T11:57:56.117" Score="0" ViewCount="526" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a magazine for IT PMs. I wonder if you subscribe to any of such magazine? If so, what are your recommendations? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd prefer a paper version rather that a digital version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea behind this question is: where do you learn from? There are books, experience, trainings / meetings with other PMs. I wonder if you learn from magazines, and if so, what magazines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2915" LastEditorUserId="2915" LastEditDate="2012-03-12T15:12:42.107" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T16:05:34.767" Title="What magazine / journal / paper would you subscribe?" Tags="&lt;learning&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-03-06T14:57:37.383" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4694" CreationDate="2012-02-18T12:23:45.210" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding your edit and example of the problem:  A lot of us have a tendency of using extreme and / or rare examples to prove a belief or argument.  The analogy you provided represents both a simple problem and simple solution, where any reasonable person would nod his head in agreement with you, which discounts all of the 'what do you mean by right' counter-arguments on this thread.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the problem you had that triggered this question was this simple, then my follow-up question would be: why do you care they rejected your simple solution?  If your job is to deal with these types of things, then you are not of the rank to question decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simple problems in business are rare or benign because 1) they are cured quickly or 2) there is little impact on the business and no one cares.  Mostly, we experience complex problems where root cause(s) are unclear or there are a ton of variables that are out of our control, and we experience complex solutions that live in uncertainty, in that solution 1 has a 30% chance of success, solution 2 has a 45% chance of success and costs twice as much, or the problem has 5 alternative solutions and the team--staffed with very smart, respected individuals--is divided on which way to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The comments here are very consistent.  Build trust; communicate your case with benefits, cost, and risks instead of how &quot;right&quot; you are; and accept the fact they may have information you do not that makes your approach less desireable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-02-18T12:23:45.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4701" CreationDate="2012-02-18T12:37:00.247" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For those tasks, milestones, or external inputs where the date is still unknown, leave those line unbaselined.  If the rest of your project is baselined, then the dates for the unknown lines will be blank.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: A baseline is more than a snapshot.  It serves as your commitment and an input for measurement using things like EV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once baselined, I do not think you can reverse it.  You can purposely baseline a select portion of your project, leaving control accounts and work packages unbaselined, which is essentially progressive elaboration, which is what you want.  When your dates become more certain, you can strike a baseline for those accounts or packages or milestones and begin working towards them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MSProject allows for multiple baselines, as well.  Or, you can rebaseline if a date changed and was approved through your change control processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole point behind a baseline is that it does not arbitrarily change.  Once set, it is set and you measure from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this helping?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2012-02-18T13:46:37.743" LastActivityDate="2012-02-18T13:46:37.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1004" CreationDate="2012-02-18T14:02:57.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;On my side I have an Ipad since day 1, have been using a lot Evernote for its syncing capabilities but it lacks meetings oriented feature such as actions, to-do and follow-up.&lt;BR&gt;&#xA;I'm always looking for a replacement App as I think we could gain a lot of time if it was done correctly.&lt;BR&gt;&#xA;I've tested nearly every notes / todo app on the Appstore in 2 years, I have to admit I'm still amazed how difficult they are to use in a Work environment.&lt;BR&gt;&#xA;I just discovered an App, &lt;a href=&quot;http://itunes.com/apps/bees&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Beesy&lt;/a&gt;, that seems to have understand note taking from a business perspective. I tried it for 2 days and for the moment I'm quite thrilled, even a bit too powerful at the beginning.&lt;BR&gt;&#xA;I particularly love the fast and nice Icons to add different kind of notes / actions and the instant meeting minutes you can send.&lt;BR&gt;&#xA;Another great thing I've been appreciating: it reuses my notes / tasks from the meeting in the To-Do manager, yes you read correctly ! Huge time saver.&lt;BR&gt;&#xA;Only drawback so far: a few glitches here and there, but nothing compromising the use of the App, the App still in v1.0 and the lack of iPhone sync at the moment but the devs at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.beesapps.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; &gt;BeesApps&lt;/a&gt; said they're on it for a future release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My 2 cents on this one&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3254" LastEditorUserId="3254" LastEditDate="2012-02-18T17:54:31.857" LastActivityDate="2012-02-18T17:54:31.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4706" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4742" CreationDate="2012-02-19T04:53:11.683" Score="4" ViewCount="405" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a 2 years of .NET experience in enterprise architecture. Plus I hold a Masters Degree in Management (Not MBA, 1st yr of MBA). Now I am moving to a software consulting company of less than 50 employees as PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What should I do (reading books/blogs etc.) to try to become a&#xA;successful PM.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this move logical? I know I cannot see myself as an architect&#xA;after 5 years.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any Advices?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3256" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2012-02-19T09:21:18.507" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T02:17:11.577" Title="2 years of Dev Experience to a Project Manager" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;skills&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4707" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-19T04:56:51.340" Score="80" ViewCount="29108" Body="&lt;p&gt;How a ScrumMaster does compare to a traditional project manager, and can either role coincide with the role of product manager or project sponsor / project owner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3257" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2016-03-02T10:16:19.760" LastActivityDate="2017-05-17T12:22:16.827" Title="Why can't the ScrumMaster and the project manager be the same person?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;roles&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="53" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4707" CreationDate="2012-02-19T08:38:57.640" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the guidelines for scrum, the ScrumMaster is accountable for removing impediments to the ability of the group to deliver the sprint goal/deliverables. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The product owner has other responsibilities, such as conveying the vision, organizing and prioritizing the product backlog, interviewing stakeholders to determine what they need the product to do in order to solve their problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one thing the product owner must not do is micro-manage the team.  Not only would handling product owner responsibilities &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; removing roadblocks be an impossible combination, the person trying to wear too many hats would likely end up doing just the opposite of what the ScrumMaster is supposed to do.  Instead of eliminating impediments, this person would likely &lt;em&gt;be&lt;/em&gt; the impediment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2016-03-02T10:29:43.200" LastActivityDate="2016-03-02T10:29:43.200" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4707" CreationDate="2012-02-19T08:41:12.447" Score="26" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why can't the scrum master and the project owner be the same person?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's simply the conflict of interests and focus. The project owner's main focus is on the success of the project, and make it happen, however the scrum master's main focus is on the team and its development. Two different things which cannot be done successfully by one person at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand there is the time issue. The project owner communicates with customers and stakeholders and reports to executive management and these activities are quite time consuming and I've never seen anybody who managed to take care of a team while doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do they compare to a traditional project manager?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need any connection to the traditional project management then the project owner is the project manager flavoured with a bit of architectural skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T08:41:12.447" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4706" CreationDate="2012-02-19T08:47:30.880" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What should I do (reading books/blogs etc.) to try to become a successful PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a very good summary: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1429/how-and-what-to-learn-new-to-product-management&quot;&gt;how and what to learn new to project management&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this move logical? I know I cannot see myself as an architect after 5 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure that there's a good answer to this question. If you plan to have a carrier and you don't have architect ambitions then it may be a good choice. &lt;strong&gt;The thing is that the line/project management is a one way street.&lt;/strong&gt; If you are a manager you won't be able to work as a developer/test/architect in the same organization again, unless you have very-very good connections. On the other hand, if you are an architect you can be a manager. I have no idea how this has evolved, but I see this all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T08:47:30.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4711" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-19T12:48:04.787" Score="17" ViewCount="60623" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am wondering for a person who wants to advance his career from the development to management level in IT sector, what will provide him the suitable foundation or knowledge for him?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MBA or PMP ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What will be the best choice for him to prepare for his upcoming career?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2260" LastActivityDate="2015-02-15T18:17:33.947" Title="MBA vs PMP to prepare for shifting to Management Career" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;" AnswerCount="14" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1004" CreationDate="2012-02-19T13:02:32.300" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience the LiveScribe pen is an in invaluable tool. You are not required to audio record, but can if you want. All your notes are transferred from the pen and transcribed automatically. The transcription is fairly accurate but there are some conventions that I had to change b/c the software just didn't get it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When playing back an audio recording, the way the written notes are synced with the audio is a nice feature too; it definitely helps with context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest drawback is having to buy the special LiveScribe notebooks,as they are expensive than your standard notebooks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3259" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T13:02:32.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4711" CreationDate="2012-02-19T14:53:50.410" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can get your PMP in a few weeks and 405$ assuming you have the 3 years PM experience Prerequisite. (and in this case &quot;the person&quot; doesn't)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An MBA takes years and 1000s of $...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really these should be two separate decisions as opposed to choosing one over the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="535" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T14:53:50.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4714" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-19T16:51:09.257" Score="1" ViewCount="65" Body="&lt;p&gt;Question to the braintrust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you handle whether to offload API programming and design when another consultant asks you? I'm in a situation where I have to do development against an API that I consult on. The consultant is developing an internal application but we have a natural touchpoint as he will need to send me objects so that it will persist in the vendor application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He doesn't have experience with the API. I do. I can develop this interface and the logic aroundi&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2648" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T20:24:30.437" Title="Consulting with other consultants" Tags="&lt;external-project-members&gt;&lt;subcontractor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4714" CreationDate="2012-02-19T18:33:32.967" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have time and the commercial details (payment, etc.) are acceptable to you, go for it. After all you already consulted on the API so you might be in the best position to also implement it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2318" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T18:33:32.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4711" CreationDate="2012-02-19T19:38:54.133" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The MBA &lt;em&gt;degree&lt;/em&gt; and the PMP (or similar) &lt;em&gt;credential&lt;/em&gt; can't really be compared in an either-or way, as they have different goals and requrements.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking very generally now, it is reasonable to assume that someone with an MBA and not a PMP credential may not have a skillset that reflects the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/PMBOK-Guide-and-Standards.aspx&quot;&gt;Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK)&lt;/a&gt;, and someone with a PMP credential and not an MBA may not have a skillset that reflects business analysis and operations (or another area of specialty).  Neither an MBA degree nor a PMP credential are &lt;em&gt;required&lt;/em&gt; for success and growth in IT management, although one or the other (or both) certainly provides more opportunities &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; of course provide you with more knowledge to better perform your the job at hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bearing in mind that you can't go get a PMP (or CAPM) credential &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; by taking a test -- there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/Certification/Project-Management-Professional-PMP.aspx&quot;&gt;time-in-service requirements as well as education requirements specific to the PMBOK&lt;/a&gt; before you can even take the credentialing exam -- you'll have to think about what &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; goals are, as well as the time and money you have available to you.  For example, if you are able to work as a PM in your company or another without PMP credential, then perhaps take that opportunity in conjunction with &lt;a href=&quot;https://ccrs.pmi.org/&quot;&gt;PM-specific education&lt;/a&gt; (webinars, seminars, courses at local colleges, etc)  and work your way toward gaining your credential; you can't get your credential without experience anyway.  If you want a broad and formal education in all things business, by all means get an MBA -- it would also open doors that a PMP credential by itself might not -- but that degree itself is not necessarily a path toward becoming a PM, especially if you're applying to jobs that still want that PMP!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give you a personal example, I've worked in IT/software development for more than 15 years now, and I have neither an MBA nor (yet) a PMP credential. About halfway through my career when I wanted to do more management and less development, I got a BA (not MBA) in Business Management to fill in some knowledge gaps.  Now, as I'm making a more definitive switch from SW Architect/Application Development Manager to more straight PM jobs, I filled in the gaps again with PMBOK-specific coursework and I'll soon take the exam.  I haven't been limited by my lack of MBA &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; PMP credential, but having the PMP as a representation of that knowledge I've gained through time as a PM and coursework I've recently taken &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; be more beneficial to &lt;em&gt;me&lt;/em&gt; than an MBA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2864" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T19:38:54.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4707" CreationDate="2012-02-19T23:50:31.013" Score="84" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum makes the distinction between supporting the team in WHAT work they do and HOW they do it. Trying to have one person play both of these would create a great deal of conflict. How do you choose in a stressful situation between negotiating features or helping the team grow and reach consensus. A scrum master is a facilitator, how can he/she facilitate if she owns the project too?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/noZrc.png&quot; alt=&quot;right way and right thing&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The Product Owner and Scrum Master roles complement each other; The Product Owner is primarily responsible for the “what” – creating the right product. The Scrum Master is primarily responsible for the “how” – using Scrum the right way. Only when the right product is created with the right process is enduring success achieved.&quot;&#xA;–Roman Pichler, “Agile Product Management with Scrum”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is my visual view between the tradition vs. scrum roles...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KzOYe.png&quot; alt=&quot;tradition vs. scrum roles&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://skipstoneconsulting.blogspot.com/2011/12/identifying-with-titles-or-what-happens.html&quot;&gt;http://skipstoneconsulting.blogspot.com/2011/12/identifying-with-titles-or-what-happens.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, to specifically answer &quot;Why can't the scrum master and the project manager be the same person&quot;? is because you can not (should not) ask one person to be responsible for HOW the team does their work and WHAT work the team does because under business pressure, the person will cave or favor one side of the spectrum. Mostly likely the &quot;What&quot; part. With some there watching over the &quot;high&quot; you ensure that quality and good team practices and more are also getting the focus that is needed to keep a healthy performing team, while the other is focused on making sure that healthy performing team is getting good focused input and vision from one source. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastEditorUserId="17733" LastEditDate="2016-05-29T17:29:57.750" LastActivityDate="2016-05-29T17:29:57.750" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4711" CreationDate="2012-02-20T00:02:03.310" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agree with both @jcmeloni and @morons on their take. Here's something to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheapest option with potential $ gains quicker? - Maybe ask your management what it would look like to take on some management roles so you can get your 'feet wet.' Look internally for some job opportunities. This would help because you would already know the environment, people, etc. The big PLUS is that you get job experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may find that you hate management! (I did). I was a developer for 3-4 years and then moved to management. I hated it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would have you say that experience will be your best learning tool on three fronts:&#xA;1. You may just learn that you're not really meant for management, or that you DO like it.&#xA;2. It won't cost you any upfront costs (unless you quit and find a management job)&#xA;3. You'll be better prepared for the future because your experience will be a big part of your future endeavors and future prospects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1124" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T00:02:03.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4711" CreationDate="2012-02-20T00:43:09.287" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;MBA, hands-down.  An MBA will open up new perspectives on management and entire new areas.  The PMP is focused on project management.  Of course, as others have mentioned, there is a massive difference in cost and time commitment.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T00:43:09.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4661" CreationDate="2012-02-20T10:59:22.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thanks for sharing this technique , it is really interesting &amp;amp; worth a try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't personally try it &lt;em&gt;yet&lt;/em&gt; but by reading the paper &amp;amp; watching the video I kind of an found an answer to your first question : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How would you mix effect mapping with agile stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By referring to &lt;em&gt;Iterative product release planning&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Focusing deliverables on business value increments&lt;/em&gt; sections will help you mix both user stories with effect mapping techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the second question &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;how do you approach the eye bird project view before starting with the first iteration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find this technique &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agileproductdesign.com/writing/how_you_slice_it.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;It's All in How you slice&lt;/a&gt; is really useful and effective to get an overview of your product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3263" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T10:59:22.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4646" CreationDate="2012-02-20T12:43:55.347" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe not three pieces of advice, but I always think of three things/personas when running a project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Team&lt;/strong&gt; (or People)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Customer&lt;/strong&gt; (or Outside World)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes you can make better all of them but more often this is like three-sided equation: by making on thing better or happier another one suffers. And you are in the middle of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example when you care too much about people than possibly you don't give enough time to customer. If you promise a lot to customer, your project will be very risky. If you do not know enough of project details, you can make wrong decision about your team or customer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply I always try to balance between these three things to make all of them 'happy' and stay happy myself too :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1726" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T12:43:55.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4706" CreationDate="2012-02-20T12:54:15.957" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this move logical? I know I cannot see myself as an architect after 5 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This depends on your preferences. There are in general two very different career paths in almost every company:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical or Engineering&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People/Project Management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are quite separated and almost always you have to choose one of them. It is very rare that you can have some mixture and I think it is good as goals of every path and position in it are quite different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it's your decision, but from my experience the change from technical to management is much more common (=maybe more logical).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1726" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T12:54:15.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4694" CreationDate="2012-02-20T13:46:49.357" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being in a new work environment, there is always a psychological factor that must not be underestimated. When you have a new job, some psychological theories say that you have to be accepted first by the group and only after that you can bring your new ideas. It is true. But, what I just said is not as important as the law of gravity! I mean that the way you adapt to a new work environment depends on the mission your compagny has or in what kind of market it is doing business. I consulted Mister Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, a few times in the past 2 months. Facebook is part of the social medias world on the Web. It has a very competitive external environment. Mark confirmed to me that he wants his team to bring constantly new ideas to develop quickly innovating projects, even if you make some mistakes along the way. His team, acting that way, made Facebook the most innovating place on the planet (and I easily agreed). That is, of course, included in global strategy or Strategic plannification process. But the slogan at Facecook is &quot;innovate or die&quot; (in my own words). Mark confirmed to me that innovation and creativity are the most important values in his compagny. So with this ensight from Mister Zuckerberg, who became as my own brother along the way, I understood better that the spectrum of possibilities is going from a very bureaucratic environment (where you can't change almost anything without being marginalised - I have no precise compagny in mind) or a very creative environment (where you will be challenge a lot to reach your highest potential as quickly as possible). Between those tow ends, that spectrum is in fact divided in many different shades of possibilities. I have to admit I was greatly inspired by the great American entrepreneur spirit of my new friend. He should write a book or something. So this is my answer, but inspired by some one who has a great an valuable experience of starting his own business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastEditorUserId="3268" LastEditDate="2012-02-21T22:23:11.097" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T22:23:11.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4646" CreationDate="2012-02-20T14:46:41.610" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I asked that question a few days ago; so thanks to ask it again because we have very high potential in our community and sharing advices helps us all. And that gives me a chance to give my advices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- Learn how to plan: figure out quickly if you are good at it or not. If you are bad at it and you can't improuve yourself; change job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2- Learn how to buit a team a spririt: really care about your team members. Learn how to mobilize them and motivate them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3- Quick and clear communication: learn how not to be percieved as controlling but as caring about the well being of you team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4- Have a clear and fair process to give promotions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T14:46:41.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4702" CreationDate="2012-02-20T14:57:56.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you prefer a paper version, perhaps you can qualify for free subscription. Have a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://reportergene.tradepub.com/category/information-technology/1207/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reportergene.tradepub.com&lt;/a&gt;. Several IT magazine subscriptions are offered for free. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3269" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T14:57:56.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4672" CreationDate="2012-02-20T15:04:54.363" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my career, in those kinds of situations, I always chose to do overtime till everything is completed on time; but I never imposed that on my team members; I would agree with them to do what they can't do because they can't do overtime (family reasons, something already planned, etc). I would ask my manager to have a day off later. I can't stand quitting especially at the end of a process. I would go all the way. But learn from that experience to avoid it again, to plan more efficiently the next time. In your plannings you could save some times for some unexpected evens like the ones your talking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T15:04:54.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4689" CreationDate="2012-02-20T15:18:57.497" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Facebook is launching 60 new apps now a day (really, I checked it twice typing &quot;Facebook news&quot; in Yahoo). Maybe not 60 as of today, but there are major innovations comming from the Facebook team soon that will happily surprise many Facebook users. They pushed Facebook to a new level keeping Mister Mark Zuckerberg initial vision to built a more opened and connected world. A great success to my point of view. Maybe some of those new applications (like Tickect Master for example) will help you and your band members to get your talent and dreams noticed more quickly and efficiently. Maybe you could have also a public page were your fans could click &quot;like&quot; and interact with them. You can even post your own publicity on the Facebook site. It is easy and fast. I am sure most Facebook users are in your &quot;market&quot; (pardon me that expression). You can adapt who will view it, depending how much you are willing to invest, etc. You will have a great impact with minimal cost. Do not miss your great opportunity if it fits with your own philosophy and dreams. But Facebook is a tool that can be adapted to any situation to my point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastEditorUserId="3268" LastEditDate="2012-02-22T20:38:10.420" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T20:38:10.420" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4714" CreationDate="2012-02-20T20:24:30.437" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This should always come down to the commercial arrangements between the parties. You should only do what you are contracted to do, but that should not stop you making an offer to do more, and then abiding by the decision after your offer has been made. You might like to consider making two offers: one for what you have been asked to do, and the other to do the whole job (with the other guy as prime contractor, probably). What you should NOT do is bypass the other consultant and go directly to the client: your reputation is worth more than the value of the business you will pick up, and you should avoid getting a reputation as someone who steals work that has been won by someone else's efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T20:24:30.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4740" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-20T21:51:29.290" Score="3" ViewCount="240" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in Australia for one of the world's largest companies. Our marketing team has a large budget for IT (information technology) projects but has very little direction or guidance in the way that money is spent (budgets and tracking costs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment, our IT department is very reactive; essentially, we work on whatever projects land in our lap (lack of strategic planning).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the next twelve months, I would like to define a strategy for each of our marketing departments to ensure that each project aligns correctly (and include those strategies in a global Strategic planning process on a long term basis). This will also ensure there is money and time left to research new ideas, and provide guidance to the business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone please provide me information on how I can start learning about strategic planning and where I can find additional informations (books, publications, web, etc.) Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3273" LastEditorUserId="301" LastEditDate="2012-02-22T20:29:46.990" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T20:29:46.990" Title="Developing a digital strategy" Tags="&lt;cost-management&gt;&lt;budget&gt;&lt;strategy&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4740" CreationDate="2012-02-20T22:23:51.833" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it were me, I'd answer the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the parent company's vision, mission, and guiding principles?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the parent company's top ten priorities for this year, next, and in five years?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the IT department's vision, mission, and guiding principles?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are its critical success factors?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What does the IT department's current SWOT analysis suggest?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who, what, where, why, and how will the IT department support the parent company's priorities?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would use five to seven critical thinkers to put to this together, including the nay sayers of the group.  It would likley target around 3 months to get this done and would keep it as simple as possible.  It would never be published as final, i.e., it would be a living document open to ongoing iterations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T22:23:51.833" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4706" CreationDate="2012-02-21T02:17:11.577" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;welcome to PMSE!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What should I do (reading books/blogs etc.) to try to become a&#xA;  successful PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@Zsolt's link is good, but I believe your question is far wider than this... therefore, for such a complex question, you won't find a specific answer. Nevertheless, I'd start with&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Daily visiting &lt;a href=&quot;http://pm.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;PMSE&lt;/a&gt; (oh wait, we're already doing it!);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Searching on youtube (I'd suggest &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/user/projectmanagervideos&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ProjectManagerVideos&lt;/a&gt; channel);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discuss about question with more seasoned colleagues;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Listening for PM PodCasts (like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.project-management-podcast.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt;);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, in the end, there's no better teacher than real life experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this move logical? I know I cannot see myself as an architect after&#xA;  5 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll find this discussion on PMSE as well. &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/2926/430&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;'s one link where we've discussed about something I believe falls into your question. Notice that, from my point of view, an architect would be the highest engineer (i.e. technical person) in a project, while the PM would be the highest person responsible for deliverables. So, if you don't see you as an architect, I'd say PM is your future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wish you success, and hope you have the opportunity to share your knowledge with us here!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T02:17:11.577" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4740" CreationDate="2012-02-21T02:31:44.197" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You chose the tag &quot;Team management&quot; and you are talking about a &quot;digital strategy&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, the strategies are included in a strategic plannification process you do every five years for example. It is a mid-term process (1 to 5 years) or a long term process (over 5 years). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Strategic planification process steps (summary):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1- &lt;strong&gt;Put your vision in one statement:&lt;/strong&gt; For example at Facebook they say : &quot;Being a more opened and connected world&quot;. That is your vision. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;2- &lt;strong&gt;Fix your goals:&lt;/strong&gt; what do you want to achieve, to reach; what are the result you want to have. Your goals have to be mesurable. You could have for example a goal to lower the cost of employees moving from a building to another. You can put an exact figure or a precise number to reach.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;3- &lt;strong&gt;Ask yourself:&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;How I am going to reach those goals?&quot;. So, you write down 4 or 5 strategies. A strategy is a general statement on how you will achieve or reach one of your goals. For example: &quot;We will concentrate all the team members of this project in the same work place or building to encrease the team effectiveness and the team spirit&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;4- &lt;strong&gt;Chose tactics:&lt;/strong&gt; Those are precise ways to implement your strategies. How you are going to do it precisely. For example, a tactic would be a way of moving effectively the employees without slowing down their produtivity. A specific moving tactic.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the job is done, or at the middle of it, for example; you can evaluated if you achieved and reached your goals; if not, your strategies and tactics have to be changed to have the results you expect or you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those guidelines can apply to all situations. You can develop them more or less depending on the size of your compagny and/or departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2012-02-21T03:04:18.253" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T03:04:18.253" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4635" CreationDate="2012-02-21T15:21:26.637" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Club them(such stories/tasks) together to form a lump which suits your team, according to relevant functional areas &#xA;Then relate &amp;amp; prioritize them according to business value. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would require a lot of technical insight and an ability from the tech guys to advocate &amp;amp; convince business/PO that these stories ( e.g. long term tech debt , ability to automate more where required , need to write unit tests , performance tweaks etc) &lt;strong&gt;really&lt;/strong&gt; do carry business weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastEditorUserId="879" LastEditDate="2012-02-21T15:28:16.100" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T15:28:16.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4750" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5286" CreationDate="2012-02-21T22:33:56.170" Score="5" ViewCount="8944" Body="&lt;p&gt;In software it is a best practice to store the source code in Version Control software (also called VC, Configuration Management or CM, SCM for Software CM). This lets one go back and look at 1) changes to the code 2) prior versions of the code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since Microsoft Project files aren't text files, doing this directly doesn't help with looking at changes. Is there a good way to do this? I'm thinking perhaps export the project in a text format that can be compared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: my goal is to answer questions such as &quot;When did that used to be due?&quot; and &quot;That seemed to have changed; did I add or delete a dependancy&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="158" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2012-03-03T00:41:45.717" LastActivityDate="2012-04-15T08:27:32.140" Title="Version Control for Microsoft Project files" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4694" CreationDate="2012-02-22T00:21:22.343" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;People won't listen to you just because you are &quot;right.&quot; They'll listen because they trust you or you have the answer to a problem they're having.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learn your way around. Learn what problem's people have that need solving. Learn how to present ideas in that team and work your way from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T00:21:22.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4571" CreationDate="2012-02-22T00:31:18.007" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Radically reduce the reporting burden and increase the frequency.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204652904577193460472598378.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Daily stand-up meetings are very effective&lt;/a&gt; (link is an article in the Wall Street Journal).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every morning, gathering the team together, standing up. Go around the room and everyone reports on a) what they accomplished yesterday b) what they are working on today c) what issues, if any, are slowing them down or standing in the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For 17 people, it should take less than 30 minutes. It should accelerate the pace, energy and problem solving of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T00:31:18.007" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4758" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4759" CreationDate="2012-02-22T17:59:56.343" Score="10" ViewCount="1723" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any difference between use case and user stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or are these totally different terms in the context of agile planning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1253" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T10:44:10.993" Title="Is there a difference between use case and user stories?" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4758" CreationDate="2012-02-22T19:19:08.917" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there is a difference as far as what a user story and what a use case is.  There are a lot of references on these online (search use case vs user story), however EITHER can be used in terms of agile planning.  I think what you'll find, at least in my opinion, that the user story is better suited for agile planning and development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is one of my favorite references for user stories: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/topics/user-stories&quot;&gt;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/topics/user-stories&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here is a great article on why user stories are NOT use cases: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/articles/27-advantages-of-user-stories-for-requirements&quot;&gt;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/articles/27-advantages-of-user-stories-for-requirements&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="913" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T19:19:08.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4760" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-22T20:50:15.550" Score="9" ViewCount="726" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the most common problem you face regularly and how you can avoid it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if we, as a community, will agree on the same thing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask for some short answers (just in a few words) to share our experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastEditorUserId="7677" LastEditDate="2014-07-23T12:58:41.233" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T12:58:41.233" Title="What is the main factor that makes your project not meet its goals most of the time?" Tags="&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;deadline&gt;&lt;conflicts&gt;&lt;budget&gt;&lt;failure&gt;" AnswerCount="17" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="9" ClosedDate="2014-07-27T22:49:08.863" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4760" CreationDate="2012-02-22T21:04:54.730" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Poor project kickoff, chartering:&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;One of my agile mentors, Ainsley Nies, has been a very successful retrospective consultant for the last decade. In more than 80% of the project level retrospectives she's facilitated the cause was traced to a poor project start (poor requirements definition, unrealistic constraints, team issues, etc). All things that could have been identified if the time was spent up front. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final validation? Ainsley and Diana Larson (Co-Author of a leading Agile Retrospectives) just published &quot;Project Liftoff,&quot; a book on agile chartering. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Eight hours of planning will save eight weeks of work.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T21:04:54.730" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4762" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4921" CreationDate="2012-02-22T21:26:55.220" Score="13" ViewCount="392" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience, in mid to large size software companies, agile most often grows out of the eningeering organization. Either grass roots up, from the team level, or exec sponsored from the engineering senior management. It means the development organization is often using agile well before the rest of the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The challenge is the product management organization is still operating in their traditional model. This can lead to a major roadblock to agile driven project adoption. The dev organization is trying to operate in an iterative style but requirements are still delivered in the old style requirements documents and all detailed up front. Resistence to going to the agile model can often be high. &quot;I don't care how engineering builds it, just build what I want.&quot; Product management orgs also rarely want to make the time commitment that a Product Owner needs to make. They are too busy running off to the next customer meeting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've know of two models for trying to get the product management org involved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Project Manager/Scrum Master acts as a PO interface: Works with the PM org to coach them and translate their requirements. Fills in for the PM as the PO in regular meetings. I've personally worked with this model and I don't think it works well. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Create a Product Owner office: I've heard of a mid-size company where the VP of Eng created a Product Owner office. This office is in engineering and is staffed by technical people with business knowledge. Product management delivers their requirements to this office and the normal agile process goes from there. No information on how successful (or not) this is. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="147" LastEditDate="2012-02-23T06:10:08.300" LastActivityDate="2012-03-01T10:20:23.397" Title="Product Owners- Tips for engaging non-Engineering in the agile process" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4707" CreationDate="2012-02-22T21:36:42.093" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most of the answers I read, many argue that the project manager does not have the time to micro manage the team. So we need a Scrum master to manage the team and the project manager takes the more major responsabilities like communicating with clients, etc. I never acted that way. I always managed completely the team I was responsable of. I would never implement a scrum, I would feel limited in what I want to do and how to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I prefer to talk about the:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;project manager&lt;/strong&gt; : the person in charge to make all management decisons.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;team&lt;/strong&gt;: those who who deliver the job.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;client&lt;/strong&gt;: the ones who pay the money to get a project done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is the traditionnal way to manage a project, but I think it is still the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zO4Qd.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem in any project is to communicate effectively. I prefer direct human relations to emails but not all the time. &lt;strong&gt;I am convinced that talking directly to your team members, to solve problems and to innovate, builts a better team spirit than anything else.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I prefer a lighter, self desinged model, that anyone could agree on after a meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Emails or planification sofwares should be used to do regular repetitive tasks to help the project manager do something else instead: manage his team and building a team spirit. It is a very personal view based on my own experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have learned to trust my own abilities, as all of us, and those of my team members, especially on innovating and getting the job done in time but mostly on agreeing together on how to do it. I have so much fun working that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I witnessed often people spending most or their time trying to implement a model that, in fact, was not that useful.&lt;/strong&gt; I find models to be sometimes very complex to do simple management tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I learned in my studies the basic dimentions of management for any kind of situation:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) &lt;strong&gt;Planning&lt;/strong&gt;: What are you going to do and with what kind of ressources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) &lt;strong&gt;Organizing&lt;/strong&gt;: Putting people together with material ressources to do the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) &lt;strong&gt;Directing&lt;/strong&gt;: Leading the team trough the process from the beginning till the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) &lt;strong&gt;Evaluating&lt;/strong&gt;: Constant feedback to evaluate if the goals set in step one are being reached.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5a4NW.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Those are the four dimentions of management for any kind of situations.&lt;/strong&gt; I always apply them, but finding a new and innovating way every time for any new projects. If the project is the same, we repeat one past succesful experience. I do not like being in a too rigid frame honestly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point of view is that any kind of project should have only a project manager, no other manager like a scrum master for example. In the Scrum model, I feel they divided in 2 or more the tasks of the project manager unnecessarily. It is a receipy for autority conflicts to my point of view based on my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastEditorUserId="3268" LastEditDate="2012-02-27T00:52:18.697" LastActivityDate="2012-02-27T00:52:18.697" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4760" CreationDate="2012-02-22T22:25:49.773" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Uncontrolled scope creep&lt;/strong&gt; - the project starts with the best of intentions. It is well defined and understood, but somewhere along the way, someone asks for an extra bit of functionality, or a new interface, or some additional management information. Sure, it's not in the original specification, but it is only a small change... But unfortunately it is one of many, and none has been through proper governance - so the impact on cost, risk, time, and quality have not been considered. The decision to include some of these minor changes may even be left to a junior technician, rather than being a senior management responsibility. Designs may change. Integration begins to get more complex. Cost rise, deadlines slip, and the benefits don't get delivered. All because someone kept on saying &quot;Yes, sure, we can just slip one more minor change into the project.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to avoid this? - Proper controls. Whether you are using traditional methods or more agile processes, make sure that the right person is making the right decisions, and for the right reasons. Consider deferring new  features until release 2 (or 3 or 4). Make sure that the focus remains on what you set out to deliver - or make the change deliberately, consciously, and with all due diligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T22:25:49.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4707" CreationDate="2012-02-22T23:58:45.877" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master is responsible for creating an environment in which the team communicates honestly and transparently and delivers to the best of their abilities. This also provides data on which the Project Manager can act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Project Manager is responsible for the success of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some projects &lt;em&gt;should not&lt;/em&gt; be successful. There &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; no recipe for enduring success. Some projects will never pay back for themselves, and despite the many claims, even Scrum won't make those projects successful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are often projects which are competing against existing products in the market, or against existing legacy products internally, and which need to provide minimum features from those products to be successful, so iterative delivery won't help in this respect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Done well, Scrum will show up the death-march or escalating budget early. This is often in direct competition with the Project Manager's goals, and that's why the Scrum Master role is useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a PM to be able to take on the role of an SM they would have to work in an organisation which allowed for transparent communication above the PM management layer, and for projects that ought to die to be killed off. This isn't the case in most organisations, so most PMs can't act as SMs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T23:58:45.877" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4760" CreationDate="2012-02-23T00:58:54.383" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Inaccurate or poorly communicated assumptions&lt;/strong&gt; - At the start of the project, the project sponsors, management, an other key stakeholders have a vision about what the project will do and how it will likely progress. To do that, they have to make some logical guesses on how things stand now and what will happen soon. Often times, that &quot;common understanding&quot; or &quot;obvious conditions&quot; are not really true. Even if they are true, they may not be communicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project team may launch down a particular path that does not match the pre-launch assumptions and a lot of time and energy can be spent doing thing that the stakeholders did not actually intend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T00:58:54.383" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4760" CreationDate="2012-02-23T01:03:31.690" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Enforcement/Commitment&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;All projects adhere to certain rules of conduct. When these &quot;rules&quot; aren't being enforced, things go down the drain rapidly. This can range from CEOs that ask for last minute changes twice a week without going through the normal RFC process to coders that say &quot;Lets do that unit test later&quot; or &quot;I'll document the stuff later&quot;. Once enforcement becomes lax, it quickly gets out of hand and creates a downward spiral. A big part of project management is accountability, once that gets eroded, it becomes very hard to get it back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure there will be times when this is inevitable, but these should be the exception and not the norm, no one should think that its &quot;ok&quot; or &quot;normal&quot; to short cut the system or the team will be dysfunctional eventually. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1849" LastEditorUserId="1849" LastEditDate="2012-02-23T15:01:19.810" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T15:01:19.810" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4762" CreationDate="2012-02-23T02:55:37.240" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically my preference would be to build teams around products, target customers or target markets. In that scenario product management would be just a different part of a team that also includes all the engineering roles. That, however, might not be feasible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some organizations, the one you describes seems to be one of them, are organized along functions, product management in one part of the organization and engineering in a different part. There are different techniques that I have used with varying degrees of success in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One option that worked in some cases is having one person on the engineering team interfacing to product management. This person would be the product owner from the engineering team's perspective. Even though product management would still write up everything in large batches, the product owner can then break it down into smaller pieces for the team. My recommendation would be to then make available to product management each smaller piece as it is completed, inviting them to review what has been accomplished and provide feedback. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first few of these &quot;review&quot; meetings can be very challenging. However, in my experience there are always members of product management who discover the value of having early insight into the progress of the project and having an early opportunity to provide feedback. Once they start seeing this as an advantage chances are product management will start pushing for more. As a result you have started a process of incremental improvement towards smaller requirements sets and towards a more agile process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2318" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T02:55:37.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4694" CreationDate="2012-02-23T09:00:51.483" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Indeed bringing change to an organisation is not easy.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;There is often a kind of resistance.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It is now well-known and called &lt;strong&gt;&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Change Management&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; : link to wikipedia among tons of other references.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, the exemple in your question is really interesting :&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Are you sure the &lt;em&gt;current solution&lt;/em&gt; is not the best one ?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;What is at stake ? are their some repeated example of bucket errors ? Is there a real need to add some extra process to this organisation ? Are you sure you can't rely on people and their knowledge ?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3119" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T09:00:51.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4760" CreationDate="2012-02-23T09:06:48.900" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read in different places, like in the introduction of &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0131489062&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Applying UML and Patters (Craig Larman)&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, that the main reason for IT projects to fail (hmm, maybe your question is not IT-related) is having bad requirements (as in vague, insufficient, full of implicit assumptions, etc). That is, not knowing what you want to get built or why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without getting into a waterfall-ish approach, it is crucial to know &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; needs to be built, for &lt;em&gt;whom&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt;. &#xA;Using techniques from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User-centered_design&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;User-Centered Design&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contextual_inquiry&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Contextual Enquiries&lt;/a&gt; can help &lt;em&gt;a lot&lt;/em&gt; both the &quot;client&quot; and the &quot;production&quot; sides understand what they really need and what expectations they have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A consequence of &quot;doing it wrong&quot; is feature creep and other usual problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3283" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T09:06:48.900" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4202" CreationDate="2012-02-23T09:44:56.247" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This exercise is not so much for team building but maybe more for &quot;breaking the ice&quot; in a group of people that will need to spend time working together but may have just met.&#xA;I participated in this during Red-Cross lifeguard training, and the trainer used it with fire-fighter teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Draw a thick line on the floor. The thickness should be a bit less than the length of your foot. Imagine it's a tree trunk laying on the floor (in fact, this exercise is usually done with a tree trunk)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make everybody stand across that line/trunk.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now tell everybody to re-arrange themselves in the &quot;trunk&quot; in alphabetical order, without &quot;falling off the trunk&quot; (or stepping out of the line)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this exercise, people need to ask their names in order to know whether they are in the right position or not, and there is physical contact in order to keep the balance and not fall off the &quot;trunk&quot; (or the line/rectangle on the floor). This is a great exercise to do on day 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might not work great with just 4 or 5 people, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3283" LastEditorUserId="3283" LastEditDate="2012-12-07T14:35:46.600" LastActivityDate="2012-12-07T14:35:46.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4760" CreationDate="2012-02-23T11:22:18.197" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;From experience turning around too many messy situations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Weak vision - poor understanding of the end goal.  (Symptom: focus on features over the business case)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Undocumented requirements - too much in peoples head.  (Symptom: new requirements in testing)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Poor metrics - lack of rigorous quantifiable progress updates.  (Symptom: late slips of large magnitude despite no red flags in status)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Narrow boundaries - not anticipating external interfaces. (Symptom: System works but can't pass acceptance testing or realize value due tonconnectivity issues)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;- &#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T11:22:18.197" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4760" CreationDate="2012-02-23T15:54:21.697" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some good answers, but the most important one seems to be missing, the one that addresses al of the others - the main factor that causes projects to fail is weak project management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at all of the answers so far, all of them can and should have been addressed and controlled by the PM. Scope creep, change control, project kick-off, assumptions, requirements - ALL are the responsibility of the PM. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's the PM's responsibility to be clear on all of these, and to make sure everyone's in agreement on them before the project starts, and to then monitor and adjust as the project proceeds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T15:54:21.697" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4760" CreationDate="2012-02-23T16:32:50.127" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I should pick one it would be &lt;strong&gt;poor or/and infrequent communication&lt;/strong&gt; in as many aspects as you can name. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Poor or/and infrequent communication&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;with client&lt;/strong&gt; leads to poor requirements, problems with scope, issues with prioritizing, decreasing feedback loop and many more, delivering different from what the client wanted&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;within the team&lt;/strong&gt; leads to code duplication, missing the main goal of the project, conflicts, poor architecture, poor understanding of the whole project at all&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;with stakeholders&lt;/strong&gt; leads to poor risk management, problems with managing change, inadequate people allocation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure you we (as a community) can name many more consequences of poor communication. Fill free to add more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T16:32:50.127" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4794" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4796" CreationDate="2010-09-04T23:46:37.677" Score="6" ViewCount="3176" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am curious to the information and level of detail that people are storing on Kanban cards?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or beter yet some templates of how they are put together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For reference here is a description of a Kanban Card &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_cards&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_cards&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3284" OwnerDisplayName="Simon" LastActivityDate="2016-01-19T18:39:10.277" Title="What information should be stored on Kanban Cards?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="4795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4794" CreationDate="2010-09-05T07:47:12.103" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just look at what others do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.be/images?q=kanban%20cards&amp;amp;oe=UTF-8&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;client=safari&amp;amp;um=1&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;source=og&amp;amp;sa=N&amp;amp;tab=wi&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.google.be/images?q=kanban%20cards&amp;amp;oe=UTF-8&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;client=safari&amp;amp;um=1&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;source=og&amp;amp;sa=N&amp;amp;tab=wi&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, i like to put the short description, category, different colors for components, and some details about key people. The rest of the area is used to write things like progress and others notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1280" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T10:33:36.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="4796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4794" CreationDate="2010-09-05T11:49:32.150" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why not apply Kaizen to your Kanban cards?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start with the smallest thing that gives you value - probably a title, so you can identify what the card represents. Get feedback from the team about the next most important thing that's missing. Add that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Repeat. Stop when adding information would no longer be an improvement. The team should feel comfortable with suggesting the removal of information when it's no longer needed, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also want to include the input of other stakeholders, if they use your board for status, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" OwnerDisplayName="Lunivore" LastActivityDate="2010-09-05T11:49:32.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="4797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4794" CreationDate="2010-09-05T22:43:46.973" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is: any information that is valuable and important enough to waste some place on the card. On every board it will be different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Name/very short description, as you have to identify what the card is all about&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project name/id, if you work on more than one; you can also use different card colors to show which project the card is related to&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Workflow-related dates, especially start and finish date so you can measure cycle time; you may consider more dates, like completing every stage on the board but it would make the card cluttered&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Id, especially if you keep in some system related data (like bugs or detailed work items) so you can easily relate to the card&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Due date, for tasks which you have hard deadline for, like bugs submitted under SLA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Priority, if it is crucial once the card makes its way from ready-ready column; useful for maintenance work when client sets formal priorities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also information you want to put on the card temporarily:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People working on a task, often marked by color pins, color magnets or color tiny sticky notes put on the card&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blocker, marked by big red thing (like small sticky note) attached to the card&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" OwnerDisplayName="Pawel Brodzinski" LastActivityDate="2010-09-05T22:43:46.973" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="4798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4794" CreationDate="2010-12-28T19:06:57.903" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Its all up to how big is your Dev Team and how they are comfortable with, kid of information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my point of view&gt; Agile &amp;lt; Kan-ban card don't have any set value to fill with the information. Default values are already discussed here. SO GO agile and using Kan-ban system at your ease level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="NaV" LastActivityDate="2010-12-29T05:11:40.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="4799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4794" CreationDate="2011-01-18T11:14:40.973" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just enough to uniquely and individually identify the piece of work. It's for &lt;em&gt;tracking&lt;/em&gt; purposes, not storage/archive purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Mark Gibaud" LastActivityDate="2011-01-18T11:14:40.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="4800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4760" CreationDate="2012-02-24T06:09:43.813" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience the single biggest problem is communication. With communication you can get everybody on the same page, agree on simplifications, avoid unnecessary work, identify problems, address problems, resolve issues, mitigate risk, and all the other ingredients of a 'decent' project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore more recommendation would always be: Fix the communication problem and you have can improve the chances of success substantially. (This could mean that you may have to replace people in some leadership roles.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2318" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T06:09:43.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4750" CreationDate="2012-02-24T06:34:02.470" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project files are big, bulky and opaque.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Version control systems work best on text files and so versioning something like Project or Word files will usually work poorly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's worth stepping back and considering what exactly it is you are trying to do.  Why do you want to look at historical versions of a file?  Is seeing an earlier version going to help you in a meaningful way?  You should probably be looking at tools which can generate historical reports rather than trying to do some visual comparison of a Project file.  It will save you a ton of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3285" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T06:34:02.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4802" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-24T09:28:18.327" Score="1" ViewCount="191" Body="&lt;p&gt;In mythical man month author mention that we can increase productivity by selecting proper high level programming language. If we select c or C++ then design of GUI is problem the we may use QT framework for GUI. If we use C# .NET then it has disadvantages like software codt and user should aware that .NET framework installed on their PC. If we use Java then quality of GUI is questinable. So which language to prefer for product and which is most used language today?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3179" LastActivityDate="2012-02-27T12:27:39.270" Title="Which Language to Select for a project?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-02-27T19:59:12.310" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4802" CreationDate="2012-02-24T10:27:11.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm pretty sure that there's no good answer to this question. Usually, &lt;strong&gt;the customer needs determine the details of a project&lt;/strong&gt; like the programming language. I recommend to talk to your customer - if you have any - and based on the response pick one. There are usual choices like Ruby on Rails for web apps, .NET for windows based requests, Java for general needs. If I were you I would learn more about the job and the team and find the language together with the and customer. Here are some points to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is there any performance requirements?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what kind of language the team knows and willing to learn?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;will you need support (e.g. in case of finding a DB companies like to pick those which have guaranteed support)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what's the platform the application will be executed?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;does the language have good test tool support?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's all I have now, but you got the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T10:27:11.810" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4802" CreationDate="2012-02-24T12:10:57.717" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually the choice of programming language can have a big effect on productivity &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; a domain specific language is available for the particular task at hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for example suppose one is attempting to solve a statistical calculation (like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_analysis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cluster analysis&lt;/a&gt;) and has two teams of programmers available for the task to choose from. One team is highly proficient in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.r-project.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;R&lt;/a&gt; and the other is equally proficient in JavaScript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since &quot;R is a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics.&quot;, it is highly probable that the team using R could solve this problem much faster than the JavaScript team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other domain specific applications that benefit from domain specific languages include specialized tasks such as programming &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-programmable_gate_array&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FPGAs&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2770" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T12:10:57.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4802" CreationDate="2012-02-24T12:42:46.867" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is a super question.  The type of questions that yields debate, argument, requires analysis and thought, and where there really is no right answer is where intelligence and learning begin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know nothing about languages.  When I read the title, I thought it was going to be about a multicultural project and you were debating between english, spanish, french...:)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do know about choice analysis and decision making techniques, however.  It seems to me that this choice will have ongoing downstream impacts, both favorable and unfavorable.  I suppose also that, once made and development starts, there is no going back without a ton of political/costly backlash.  Therefore, a more formal approach seems justified to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd bring in a team of developers and business analysts and facilitate a choice analysis workshop.  I'd develop with them a simple scoring method, using around five to no more than eight criteria that speak to benefits, penalty, costs, and risks.  I'd facilitate a consensus on weighting and then conduct a scoring session using a broader audience and maybe with techniques like the Delphi Technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd tabulate the scores that each programming language earned and the let the results speak for themselves.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2012-02-24T13:15:20.117" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T13:15:20.117" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4802" CreationDate="2012-02-24T13:07:35.057" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always thought that this question would be much more objective (and oddly enough, still broad) than the other answers presented (which proves I need more experience, hehe).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But basically, I believe that it depends on the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the client asking for a specific language? If so, then you got the answer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have a specific team already built to work on this project? If so, ask your peers, and you got the answer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any constraint for the development to be done? You can't build a web application using VBA. Take your project constraints and check which technologies fits to it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finally, you know the project and its constraints and neither your client is asking for a specific technology nor you have a team to offer you suggestions about what technology to use (a very very rare case, IMO).. then &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=best%20language&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; link and &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/99113/is-there-really-a-choice-of-the-best-language-for-a-specific-project&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; link could help you out. In the end, or this question or is too broad or has been asked on the wrong place.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:31:53.287" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T13:56:15.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4802" CreationDate="2012-02-24T14:17:24.327" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there is no correct answer to this question although I highly recommend you to read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thoughtworks.com/radar&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Technology Radar&lt;/a&gt; delivered from time to time by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thoughtworks.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ThoughtWorks&lt;/a&gt; company. It also doesn't give you the exact answer but can show you the trends and thoughts about the direction of technology development. I also recommend to read some past reports from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One  more thing - I believe that PM should have nothing to decide about this topic. &lt;strong&gt;It should be either team, or some architect/tech lead decision&lt;/strong&gt;. PM can ask for adventages, and disadventages, possible problems, obstacles, maintenance, cost and stuff like that, but the decision should be made by the people who will be implementing the project - it's better when they code in something they know/like/want to learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastEditorUserId="452" LastEditDate="2012-02-27T12:27:39.270" LastActivityDate="2012-02-27T12:27:39.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4707" CreationDate="2012-02-24T18:09:17.177" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The ScrumMaster and the project manager shouldn't be the same thing because the team needs to feel that they are accountable to the team (not the scrum master).  Daily Standups are reports to the Team (not the ScrumMaster).  The ScrumMaster is there to remove obstacles and impediments, not to manage the team - the team is self-managing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T18:09:17.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4750" CreationDate="2012-02-24T18:16:32.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe you are comparing apples &amp;amp; oranges. Source code is worked on by many different people on different parts concurrently in a fairly dynamic manner. A project plan (including budget, schedule, scope statement, risk manaegment plan etc etc) should be reviewed and changed in a controlled manner by a relatively limited number of people. So there should be documentation of the approved changes made at least at a high level outside of Project (e.g. project plan review meeting minutes, exception plan documentation, etc). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, one thing that I've found helpful to keep track of what I've done to a schedule in Project is to use the &quot;Notes&quot; section for each task changed to document what changes were made, who made them, and date they were made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T18:16:32.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4553" CreationDate="2012-02-24T21:14:41.490" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest taking a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.metacommunications.com/products/workgroups&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Workgroups&lt;/a&gt;. I've used the hosted system for quite some time at my current job. We use it to manage job tickets, proofs, digital resources, time and expenses, etc. Worth a look if you want something a bit more customizable and powerful then some of the free solutions out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3293" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T21:14:41.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4813" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-25T01:19:18.277" Score="3" ViewCount="969" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm relatively new to the industry and have spent the last year or so as a project COORDINATOR, helping out the project managers with their various contracts, billings, and assisting in any way that they need help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple weeks ago, I was given the opportunity to manage my own project... a redesign of our mobile website&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions, tips or advice on how I can succeed in completing this project on-time and in a manner that would help me get promoted to a project manager full time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3295" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-02-25T08:32:30.463" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T14:23:21.513" Title="How Can a Project Coordinator Assigned a New Project Complete the Project On Time and Get Promoted?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4814" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-25T04:21:33.097" Score="3" ViewCount="1415" Body="&lt;p&gt;As part of my interview process, I have been asked to kick-off a project to a pretend client. This is for an interactive agency in LA. There will be 5 people acting as stakeholders. I really want this job and want to leave an awesome impression. What things can I do to set myself apart? What are your tips for awesome kick-off meetings? I need to demonstrate my skills as a meeting facilitator and project manager. I am looking for anything that will set me apart including handing out candy / fruit, using an awesome slide deck, or simply facilitating a awesome kick-off. Have you seen anyone do something awesome in a meeting that wasn't borderline cheesy? I need to demonstrate imagination but also an ability to drive and get things done. Links or videos appreciated as well. Help me get this job!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3296" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-02-25T08:25:04.417" LastActivityDate="2012-03-01T10:38:34.050" Title="How to Simulate a Kick-off meeting For a Project Management Job Interview?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4813" CreationDate="2012-02-25T05:22:23.673" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without getting too into the details, some generic thoughts...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1)  Document and Communicate.  Repeat.  If the PM doesn't, it won't happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2)  Put yourself in everyone else's shoes - the user, the developer, the buyer, the manager...    They have different agendas.  Your job is to resolve this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3)  Keep the end in mind.  Keep everyone focused on why they're there, and for every task, ask, &quot;How does this support our goal?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4)  Force issues to be confronted and resolved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5)  Learn, Learn, Learn....  Learn the domain, learn the technology, learn PM techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;6)  Have a thick skin.  Be willing to accept blame even when it might not be yours.  Be willing to give away the credit, even when it's rightfully yours.  If you do the job well, people might even question why a PM was needed, since everything was so organized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-02-25T05:22:23.673" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4814" CreationDate="2012-02-25T05:28:36.700" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience a kick-off meeting takes place when the project preparation has been completed and the actual execution of the project is about to start. In broad terms I would suggest to go through the following with the participants (not a complete list, not in order):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project plan is in place and understood by all participants, in particular with a joint understanding of what the project's main objective is&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All participants understand their role in the project including responsibilities and authority&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All participants understand what they need to deliver and by when&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All risks are identified and mitigation plans are in place&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All required resource and have been secured for the project (what and when)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All dependencies between different project parts are identified and taken care of&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project governance has been defined and is understood by all participants including but not limited to&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reporting, when, what, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Meetings, e.g. of project teams&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of other factors that may be relevant to a concrete project. For example an offshore drilling project is different from introducing a new accounting software. Additional factors may come in when a project team is located across multiple sites, multiple time zones. The customer type may play a role. The US department of defense is a different type of customer than an online consumer in South America.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure I have missed quite a few elements. However, maybe the above list gives you a few ideas for how to prepare for your interview. And of course you can have the kick-off off-site and package it into a party for all participants. Even better: Make sure there is also an awesome get-away after successful completion! How about a Pacific Islands? All the best for your interview!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2318" LastActivityDate="2012-02-25T05:28:36.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4814" CreationDate="2012-02-25T11:01:09.447" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Avoid any risk of looking cheesy, at all costs. Avoid gimmicks and cheap tricks. That's not how you will run the project - I hope!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enough of the things to avoid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you should:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Understand who each of your stakeholders is, what each role is, and work out (if you don't already know) what they are likely to want. The financial guy will want to know how you plan to manage costs. The auditor will be interested in risks, so make sure you address that area, and so on. If the creative people will be there too, then you need to find a way of demonstrating what you can do, but don't be controversial just for the sake of it. They are business people, and you need to remember that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get your team involved, and ensure that each plays to his or her strengths. If someone is a great technician but a poor communicator, try to find a way that that person can demonstrate how he or she would deal with a particular problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look out for buying signs and capitalise on them - in other words, if someone is showing an interest in something that isn't on your agenda, take a few moments to ask about it, and ask whether your approach makes your proposition a winner.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look out for switch-off signs: if someone looks bored and starts to lose focus - move on. Don't keep explaining deep dark technical details if the client is yawning and checking his watch.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, stay alert, be aware of your client, plan your presentation from the client's perspective (ie focus on the client's needs). Make it memorable for what you will bring to the project, and stay professional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2012-02-25T11:01:09.447" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4813" CreationDate="2012-02-25T13:20:27.810" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have been managing projects since you were a kid.  When in doubt, don't.  Document it or it didn't happen.  Support your team.  Escalating risks and issues is a good thing; hiding them, bad.  Communicate (listen more than talk).  On time and within budget mean less than you think.  You will NEVER have all the information you need to make your decision, so build a cogent argument with what you have and stand proudly behind it.  Success is a terrible teacher, so don't be afraid to be wrong.  Delegate success to the team but own a failure.  Listen to your team, but the decision is yours.  Get comfortable with the notion that you have real control over about 10% of the variables affecting your project.  Plans are nothing, planning is everything (Eisenhower).  When things start to feel out of control, they are.  So stop what you are doing, take two steps back, and start again.  If a choice is not working out, abandon it (success, bad teacher); do not chase sunk costs.  Replan and go again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-02-25T13:20:27.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4760" CreationDate="2012-02-26T00:57:44.507" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Attempts to create certainty where no certainty exists.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This usually results in over-detailed specifications around new, complex areas, with the same detail then being carried into the simpler parts of the project which were already well-understood anyway - so, scope creep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it also results in managers trying to fit their employees to the model they already thought of, or architects trying to shoe-horn a project into some particular shape of stack /technology that they dreamt of ahead of time, or business experts specifying a project as if it will be successful when what they really want is a prototype to try out, or teams making assumptions about each others' interfaces without actually wiring them together to see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It tends to hide risk under the carpet until late on in a project, when it's too late to do anything about it. This isn't unique to Waterfall projects, either - I've seen it happen in Agile projects, with over-specified story backlogs and arguments about what can or can't be delivered happening way ahead of any reasonable data to support them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Human beings hate uncertainty. The only way to avoid pretending it doesn't exist is through education, by teaching them about this tendency, and exposure, by putting people into places where it's safe to fail and letting them see how experiment and fast feedback can help. Conversations are really great ways to run mental experiments and provide feedback, which is why they're so important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no way to avoid it in companies that don't make it safe to fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2012-02-26T00:57:44.507" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4750" CreationDate="2012-02-26T02:51:46.410" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer&lt;/strong&gt;: I've configured Mercurial so when I ask it to do a binary diff (e.g. .docx) it uses &lt;code&gt;docdiff&lt;/code&gt; to feed both versions to &lt;code&gt;MS Word&lt;/code&gt; in compare mode--allowing me to see both revisions and the compared version of the document. It doesn't work for PPT because that POS program doesn't support comparison, but the other answers suggest Project does support comparison. &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/q/7506900/539145&quot;&gt;Ostensibly, StackOverflow&lt;/a&gt; would be a good place to figure out how to properly configure Hg for comparing Project files.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long answer on why I think VCS is a must, even when working with binaries&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've use &lt;a href=&quot;http://mercurial.selenic.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mercurial&lt;/a&gt; to store binary files (mostly MS Office). Version Control Systems may be at their best with text files because it's so easy to &lt;a href=&quot;http://kdiff3.sourceforge.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;diff changes&lt;/a&gt; and so cheap to &lt;a href=&quot;http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/Presentations?action=AttachFile&amp;amp;do=view&amp;amp;target=ols-mercurial-paper.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;store deltas&lt;/a&gt;; nonetheless, I've found a VCS to be invaluable even for binary files. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me provide a couple of use cases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Working by yourself&lt;/strong&gt;: If you're the only author of a file and no one else can access your folder, it isn't that hard to maintain a canonical version of a file and dump old versions into an archive folder neatly organized by filename.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;ground rules v01 20120102.mpp&lt;/code&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;ground rules v02 20120102.mpp&lt;/code&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;ground rules v03 20120105.mpp&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The downsides are that you have to be a little OCD to keep this up and there's no easily accessible record of what's change from version-to-version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you put the same file in a VCS the commit comments can summarize what you changed. Obviously this isn't as precise as being able to see the diff, but it's remarkable how useful even a sentence or two will be in narrowing down &lt;strong&gt;exactly&lt;/strong&gt; what version you're looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Working in a shared folder&lt;/strong&gt;: This example will either sounds like an insane straw-man or you'll be nodding your head in silent commiseration. Absent a version control system, yet still gripped by fear of throwing away data, binary files in a shared folder proliferate like bacteria in a petri dish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lVmSh.png&quot; alt=&quot;Fileserver hell&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Truly solving this problem requires a cultural change on your team, but you can do a lot better even if you're the only one using the VCS. I keep a repo locally, manually merge changes from multiple sources, check in revisions, and clone the repo to the server. It keeps the folder clean and all the old stuff can always be retrieved quickly thanks to the meta-data. The best part is no one even has to know it's a VCS; they just see a clean folder with an obviously current version of the file. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately the merging is done manually, but that's a curse of binary formats without merge-tool support (&lt;a href=&quot;http://wuerl.calepin.co/a-world-without-Word.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;and why I advocate moving away from them to marked-up text&lt;/a&gt; for documentation). (Not really an option for MS project files though.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another nice thing about this workflow is that because Hg tracks changesets and not revisions, people can edit &lt;em&gt;different&lt;/em&gt; files all they want, and you can even check them in directly on the server repo. As long as the changesets don't stomp on the same binaries they'll pull and merge into your local repo no sweat.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line is there may be a way to configure Hg or some other VCS to push two versions of the same &lt;code&gt;.mpp&lt;/code&gt; file into project so you can compare the changes, but even if not, the benefits of storing the binaries in a VCS are incomparable, and with the good use of commit comments you should see a significant benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="360" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:41:23.897" LastActivityDate="2012-02-26T02:51:46.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4760" CreationDate="2012-02-26T04:46:12.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;LACK OF VISION AND FOCUS&lt;/strong&gt; (often misinterpreted as scope creep)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More than anything else, using scrum/agile specifically always seems to uncover the lack of real business vision and focus and how often the team is left confused or misdirected. Often what is uncovered is how often we are asked to change direction (this could also be accounted towards &quot;scope creep&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastActivityDate="2012-02-26T04:46:12.473" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4813" CreationDate="2012-02-26T04:50:03.890" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quick advice is to make sure you understand what corners of the &quot;iron triangle&quot; are really be held by the business. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say schedule, which means you have people and scope to manage, but I usually assume whatever people you have is what you get, which means you really need to make sure that you are set up to manage the scope. Focus on pushing through highest priority features first. Don't end up at the end with 100% of your features, 80% done, instead have 80% of your features, 100% done. Don't get stuff assuming you can fix cost, time and scope. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You didn't mention what type of development approach you use, but many people use Agile techniques for this very reason of scope management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastActivityDate="2012-02-26T04:50:03.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4823" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4851" CreationDate="2012-02-26T08:31:35.020" Score="7" ViewCount="2166" Body="&lt;p&gt;The story started with my &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/4709/468&quot;&gt;discussion&lt;/a&gt; with @Ben on whether or not a project manager should have architect skills. We have different views on this and I'm wondering what others about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in your opinion, &lt;strong&gt;should a project manager have architect skills&lt;/strong&gt; (know a bit about the application, language it is implemented, the platform it is running on etc)&lt;strong&gt;?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2012-06-05T10:59:39.090" Title="Should a project manager have architect skills, or it is not necessary to be successful?" Tags="&lt;skills&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4823" CreationDate="2012-02-26T09:16:55.583" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project management is a separate skill to software design so there is no reason why a project manager needs to be able to architect software. However, it does make the job much easier if they have an good idea of what is being built. For e.g. a good construction project manager would probably be able to competently manage a software project but it would be much more work for them than if they knew something about software design. The general project management skills are the same regardless of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, project management is about leading a team of people to a single goal. Part of this is ensuring that the project team has the right split of skills to ensure a successful end result. If the project manager thinks of themselves as the expert in any one area, it makes building a good team difficult and makes it more difficult for the project manager to look at the whole project objectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="788" LastActivityDate="2012-02-26T09:16:55.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4823" CreationDate="2012-02-26T09:24:40.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In pure PM terms, I suggest that the answer is &quot;no&quot;. There is a school of thought that says that a PM should be able to run any project, in any domain, as the role of the PM is to plan, coordinate, and lead the team, while the team should consist of sufficient domain specialists to provide all of the technical inputs, including architecture, design, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, I don't believe that this &quot;purist&quot; model is entirely appropriate or sustainable. The PM has to be able to talk in the same technical terms as the rest of the team, needs to be able to challenge unreasonable estimates - both low or high - and must also have sufficient knowledge to help the team to overcome difficulties. That's why so many PM job ads specify the experience that the successful candidate must have, in terms of architectures, business sectors, and technical areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Architecture is just one of the skill areas where some awareness is helpful, but deep knowledge is not normally a requirement. If the PM is fulfilling the role of architect on a project, then it is important to recognise that the role is split, and when doing &quot;architect&quot; stuff, the person is not acting as a PM, and vice versa. This needs careful handling and I would not encourage this approach in most cases, unless there is no alternative. The roles are quite different!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2012-02-26T09:24:40.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4813" CreationDate="2012-02-26T11:22:07.897" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;How to complete the project on time: Plan, plan, and plan again. Listen to people with more experience that you have, assess their advice, and act upon it. Communicate the plans and give clear (documented) requirements to the technical resources that you have available. Never hide bad news, but re-plan and offer solutions and alternatives, including changing (reducing?) scope, delivering the project in phases, extending the duration, or increasing the resources (but be aware that increasing resources is often counter-productive).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to get promoted to PM: Deliver this first project, and maybe a second one if you have the opportunity, then you have a track record and can make a case for promotion. Don't chase promotion until you are ready for it - and don't align everything you do to achieving promotion, because that will not help your project, and hence will not help your case. Be great at what you do, and do the right things to deliver your project (and especially to deliver the benefits that it will bring to your employer). That will get you noticed in a good way, and make it an easy decision to promote you to PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2012-02-26T11:22:07.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4823" CreationDate="2012-02-26T11:48:48.703" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you take the SCRUM roles as an example, you have a SCRUM Master and Product Owner. These roles are very different and even contradictory and can not be fulfilled by the same person.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;One is in charge of the process and schedules and the other is in charge of the vision and the quality of the outputs.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product Managers and Architects are &lt;strong&gt;similar&lt;/strong&gt; to those two SCRUM roles, in respective order. (Similar but &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; the same.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically from your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;know a bit about the application, language it is implemented, the platform it is running on etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM should know a lot about the application - its requirements, use cases, target platforms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Architect should what the architecture is, what technologies are being used in the implementation, how the application is being tested and also the requirements, use cases and target platforms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&gt; Your definition of an Architect is in accurate, which might explain the disagreement you have with Ben.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1094" LastActivityDate="2012-02-26T11:48:48.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4823" CreationDate="2012-02-26T12:08:51.237" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The skill, knowledge, and experience of every role on the team is chosen to allow the highest likelihood of success.  Every project (even the same type of project done at different times) is different, with differing requirements, a different sponsor, and most importantly a different environment.  The analysis of the environment is critical.  If the sponsor and stakeholder environment are hostile, you would want a PM who is skilled to be able to cope with that.  If he so happens to have some knowledge of the technology, wonderful.  If not, who cares; his abilities to handle the customer are what is needed for THIS project at THIS time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are a small company and you need to explode this one project into new business, the right choice in your PM might be someone with demonstrated salesability.  If the technology is extremely difficult, i.e., you are doing something that really has not been done before to your knowledge, then a strong technologist might be your guy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another factor is project size, which likely has multiple types of technologies.  The PM on a case like this will never get his/her hands dirty.  They are running a business and need the skills to do that successfully.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is, we make these decisions balancing benefits and costs.  What does this project need at this time?  Those that answer yes or no to this question do so to their detriment.  There is rarely a cookbook solution that solves every problem every time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And think about this: this question is essentially trying to define success against one attribute.  That is, all persons with this attribute will be successful and all persons in the null group will fail.  The cognitive processes that allow one to answer this question is the same used to disqualify a group because of their age, sex, color of skin, religeous affiliation, etc.  It is a very discrete answer against a broad brush question.  What makes this more palatable is that no one is born into the group.  But don't fool yourself into thinking it is not the exact same set of biases and prejudicial thinking that will yield the exact set of results the xxxisms produce above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2012-02-26T13:48:08.697" LastActivityDate="2012-02-26T13:48:08.697" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4760" CreationDate="2012-02-26T13:55:11.843" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience a common  failure theme is &quot;promise&quot; failure &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.Makerting over promising to customers without bothering about&#xA;   technical feasibility or achieveability &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.(And often in turn) Project management falsely &amp;amp;/or meekly promising to deliver (such) unrealistic schedules or deliverables .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3.Delivery team  in this situation are rendered messengers or manisfestation of the bad news .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to avoid - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do the hard research and learning early on and resist every new shiny thing &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;PMO and Delivery leadership in general needs to be fearless in saying No. Loud and persistent.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastActivityDate="2012-02-26T13:55:11.843" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4830" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-26T16:07:38.887" Score="1" ViewCount="1209" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know of a long-standing program where a particular format of project status chart has been in use for more than a decade. It was originally created to status the assembly sequence of a complex device (M) and thus acquired the name &quot;M&quot; Assembly Sequence Chart (MASC).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although this chart format has since been re-purposed to status all sorts of projects with complicated dependencies, the acronym has stuck and MASC is all I know it by. &lt;strong&gt;Does this type of chart have a common industry name?&lt;/strong&gt; I'm trying to learn more about it and look for tools to help me create automatically and status them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8ug6c.png&quot; alt=&quot;Clean MASC&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it looks similar to a classic &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_Evaluation_and_Review_Technique&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PERT chart&lt;/a&gt;, but I see a few key differences and am wondering if these particular specializations are codified in their own variant. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The PERT chart focuses on spans, which is useful for generating a schedule and understanding the critical path. The MASC is used once the schedule has been established and is used to show progress against dates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The MASC uses color codes to show progress, rather than schedule data like critical path&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In practice, when estimated or actual start and finish dates don't line up with the plan the old dates are not removed but &lt;s&gt;struck-through&lt;/s&gt; and the new date put above (although this isn't shown in the example).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="360" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-26T07:22:34.000" LastActivityDate="2012-06-26T07:22:34.000" Title="Is there a name for this PERT-like project management status chart?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4830" CreationDate="2012-02-26T16:14:50.037" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This appears to be a cross between a schedule network diagram and a swimlane process map.  Both of these views do different things.  I am wondering what the value is trying to breed them.  Also, I have never seen anyone report status against it.  Very interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-02-26T16:14:50.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4832" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4835" CreationDate="2012-02-26T17:23:39.773" Score="13" ViewCount="7879" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am still a student. My formation and my personal thirst for knowledge led me to learn a lot of different things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Programming experience in several languages (low level ASM to higher level JAVA)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Professional experience as network/sys admin&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Participed in SCRUM like projects for 4 years&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 year teaching experience in network and programming&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Self taught: security, project management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I want to highlight here is that I have a variety of knowledge and experience that I would like to use in real life to the fullest. The problem is this: Before getting to any project management interesting position, I am expected to have some years of professional experience in the same field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My goal is to get to a position where I can use all of these skills, learn and face challenges, and without passing by the coder phase. I don't want to do something that any coder can do, I want to be able to express myself and supervise others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What to do in order to achieve this goal? I need a fast and efficient solution. What career path to follow and what competence do I need to acquire now? I am really willing to learn anything that can lead me there, I just despise doing something that I know I can do (coding, maintenance, ...), it would kill my motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for helping me make a very important decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: I am sorry if I am off topic, I think this is the best choice to ask here since you may relate to my story and help me with your experience as project manager. Project manager is not the only job that would motivate me though, but you might be able to help me still.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I really appreciate all of your answers, you seem to have so much to say about it and every bit of information is precious to me. Thank you !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT2: I earned a badge through this question and I would like to add a few more details on my new experience and how I can relate to the answers given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I accepted David's answer because it matches perfectly what I experienced for the past 2 years. Managing projects is a big word, well it was, I used to be the shadow guy who actually articulated a few key projects following rough guidelines from my manager. We actually worked hand in hand, splitting tasks and raising issues to each others as the project went on. Although he is a PMP, we had no time to actually plan and execute the project, we had to dive in something new and deliver quickly. It involved training of frontend/backend teams (finance, sales, IT, Support, etc.), adjusting the systems, ordering improvements, raising bug defects, testing, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this to say, my way into PM was that of necessity, I helped until I became an unofficial PM and as I write this now I am leading alone a project scaling on several countries. Visibility and recognition happens naturally as we interact with our colleagues and communicate on achievements. I feel much more involved and I am deploying my own vision for the direction to take from now on many fronts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does it take for going to PM? To me:&#xA;- Competent HR and managers&#xA;- Impeccable and accurate communication&#xA;- Dedication, passion and hard work&#xA;- Commitment to the success of the company&#xA;- Curiosity and engaging everybody&#xA;- Deliver and be &quot;Impactful&quot; (&gt;relevant, &gt;successful)&#xA;- Communicate during reviews with your management your will to evolve&#xA;- Stay very well organized, empower yourself (OneNote, Outlook rules/config, Excel skills, presentation skills, organization methods, etc)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I look back and feel that I was too focused on my own job and on my own technology to evolve in my previous job. I came to this one with an open mind, a learner mind and my curiosity made me a candidate for the internal leadership program in HR to groom future leaders of our company. I am continuing my road with great achievements and rewards. Thanks again to all who answered here, this helped me go through that process and grow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2968" LastEditorUserId="2968" LastEditDate="2016-05-21T08:23:45.617" LastActivityDate="2016-05-21T08:23:45.617" Title="How Can I Obtain a Project Management Position With No Professional Experience In The Field?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4832" CreationDate="2012-02-26T18:00:16.250" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You mentioned that you're still a student. I don't know what you are studying, but I assume it's Computer Science or Software Engineering.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are not involved in internships or side jobs that involve programming, maintenance, and/or software development, then this is a great way for you to gain more experience as a programmer. Most organizations will not hire you for a management position unless you can prove that you have experience in the area where your expertise will be needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mentioned you've participated in scrum projects and have worked on several programming projects. Were these paid positions or internships?  If not, you'll need to demonstrate that an employer actually hired you for a paid position or internship in exchange for your services. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, I strongly advise you to look for project management opportunities. It's tougher to find paid positions without experience. So in this case you should look for volunteer opportunities or volunteer to take on part of a project management role. Having the experience and references can help you obtain the position you seek.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, you must also understand that experience is something that is only obtained from actual experience. So if you've never actually worked a role where there was a project management component, then you have no experience even if you &lt;em&gt;studied&lt;/em&gt; project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have 3 to 5 years experience in a professional environment, then employers may be hesitant to put you in a position of trust until you first prove that you have the skills needed to understand how software is developed. Don't get discouraged if your first job isn't exactly what you're looking for. People switch jobs all the time, and once you have more experience under your belt, you'll be in a better position to bargain with your potential employers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-02-26T18:00:16.250" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4832" CreationDate="2012-02-26T19:46:19.173" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;jmort253's answer is already very good in my view. Let me add a little.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do you want to supervise others? The answer to this question may not be as easy as you think. If it is just for the sake of it, I would recommend don't go there. Leadership is much more than supervision or being the boss of someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience you need a large amount of skills and experience to be successful, most of these are soft skills. Although it doesn't hurt to have technical skills as a leader in a technical environment at the end of the day you work with people. Your team consists of human beings and not of computers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being able to work with people to understand their strengths and weaknesses, making use of their strengths while helping them to improve or mitigate the weaknesses, dealing with difficult people within your team but also outside of your team, conflict resolution, and more are soft skills you generally don't learn at university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Add to that the occasional lack of enough sleep, time zone differences, angry customer calls, impossible deadlines, an unreasonable boss, a political board of directors, ... Are you up for all of that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to scare you away. These things don't necessarily happen (at the same time or at all). But they can happen. Can you handle them? How did you handle situations of extreme stress and pressure in the past? Now ask yourself again, why do you want to supervise others?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2318" LastActivityDate="2012-02-26T19:46:19.173" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4832" CreationDate="2012-02-26T20:20:46.050" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before it became a &quot;profession,&quot; it was a job function.  Many still argue it is still a job function and not a profession at all.  Personally, I'm more in that camp, but that's not relevent here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you are studying, go get an entry-level job there.  As you climb, you will either continue down the track as a technologist, becoming more of a subject matter expert, or you will break off and join management.  So just enjoy the ride and figure it out as you go.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are entry-level PM roles, but these positions are more around project controls, like EV schedulers, or risk managers, or HR managers.  Typically, I find these people getting stuck in project controls.  Well, &quot;stuck&quot; is kind of harsh.  I think many enjoy it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Projects come in levels.  All of us have been managing projects since we were kids.  You could find yourself as the named PM of a small task as an entry-level whateverroleyouendupwith.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-02-26T20:20:46.050" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4836" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-02-26T20:55:57.463" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For questions about identifying, designing, implementing, controlling, or monitoring processes within a project management context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-10-08T21:02:52.440" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T21:02:52.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4837" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-02-26T20:55:57.463" Score="0" Body="The process tag is for questions regarding how to best accomplish a goal or handle a specific scenario." OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-02-26T20:55:57.463" LastActivityDate="2012-02-26T20:55:57.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4838" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-02-26T20:58:50.923" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-02-26T20:58:50.923" LastActivityDate="2012-02-26T20:58:50.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4839" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-02-26T20:58:50.923" Score="0" Body="This is for questions regarding improving motivation or handling motivation problems in the team. This tag also applies to motivation issues with project managers and other stakeholders. Avoid poll-type questions." OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2014-10-11T08:55:37.533" LastActivityDate="2014-10-11T08:55:37.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4840" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-02-26T21:00:47.987" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-02-26T21:00:47.987" LastActivityDate="2012-02-26T21:00:47.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4841" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-02-26T21:00:47.987" Score="0" Body="This is for questions where corporate or company politics are involved that generally relate to the culture of the organization, client, or other aspects that may influence or challenge a project's ability to be successful." OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-02-26T21:00:47.987" LastActivityDate="2012-02-26T21:00:47.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4842" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-02-26T21:01:55.520" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schedule_(project_management)/%22Wikipedia%22&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; says &quot;In project management, a schedule is a listing of a project's milestones, activities, and deliverables, usually with intended start and finish dates.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2014-10-19T13:20:47.677" LastActivityDate="2014-10-19T13:20:47.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4843" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-02-26T21:01:55.520" Score="0" Body="This is for task scheduling or resource allocation questions." OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-02-26T21:01:55.520" LastActivityDate="2012-02-26T21:01:55.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4844" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-02-26T21:08:59.443" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is for questions that involve management of the change that can negatively affect a project if it gets out of control. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the questions that have been asked under this tag include topics such as success/acceptance, uncertainty, and handling vague requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-02-26T21:08:59.443" LastActivityDate="2012-02-26T21:08:59.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4845" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-02-26T21:08:59.443" Score="0" Body="This is for questions that involve management of the change that can negatively affect a project if it gets out of control. " OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-02-26T21:08:59.443" LastActivityDate="2012-02-26T21:08:59.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4846" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-02-26T21:14:12.400" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This tag is about documenting risk, handling risk, risk estimations, cross-team project risk, and any other risk that may affect the outcome of a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some great questions that have been asked under this tag include the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pm.stackexchange.com/q/1411/34&quot;&gt;What is the Procedure For Handling High Risk Involving Another Team&amp;#39;s Conflicting Goals?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pm.stackexchange.com/q/233/34&quot;&gt;How to manage employees leaving the company?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pm.stackexchange.com/q/3212/34&quot;&gt;How to manage risk of most technical client contact going on leave&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pm.stackexchange.com/q/2793/34&quot;&gt;Reassuring boss that our product will be one step ahead of competition...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-02-26T21:14:12.400" LastActivityDate="2012-02-26T21:14:12.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4847" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-02-26T21:14:12.400" Score="0" Body="This tag is about documenting risk, handling risk, risk estimations, cross-team project risk, and any other risk that may affect the outcome of a project." OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-02-26T21:14:12.400" LastActivityDate="2012-02-26T21:14:12.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4848" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-27T00:54:17.533" Score="1" ViewCount="115" Body="&lt;p&gt;A while ago I took on a freelance web programming project with a company I'm already familiar with. My boss (also the company owner) typically pairs me with one of his PM employees for each project I work on, but there was one case that made the exception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a freelancer I could work potentially from anywhere with only the obligation to show up on-site for the weekly client meeting, but I usually work in the office because I can concentrate better. When I told my boss that in most cases, I'd rather report to the PM because it's easier and more accessible, that's when he informed me that the client &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; the PM!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can see the advantage of having no middleman for the project, but in this case the client/PM was unavailable during most of the week. I would rather wish there was a PM that I can just talk to every day face-to-face to have a better assessment of our short term progress. Plus, the company's own PMs are much more web-literate than the client so they would do a better job at communicating problems and suggestions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So are there any cases where doubling up the client as a PM would ever be a good idea? If any of you ever faced this situation as someone working for a PM/client, how did you handle it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3308" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-02-27T01:55:27.770" LastActivityDate="2012-02-28T19:09:48.217" Title="Good idea for a client to also be the project manager?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;clients&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4848" CreationDate="2012-02-27T01:05:02.020" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is necessarily a single, catch-all, right or wrong answer to this question. The short answer is that it just depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage of working directly with the client is that you've eliminated a communication path, which could lead to misunderstandings.  The more communication paths there are, the harder it is to manage them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another advantage is that you get the information directly from the source. If you have doubts, you can clarify them directly with the client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe this model works better for smaller projects than larger projects, and I'm guessing that you are the single engineer working on this project. Thus, it's safe to say that your current situation is more agile than waterfall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it sounds like the biggest problem that you're facing is the lack of a daily meeting. In an agile model, frequent communication is more important. You need to find out a way to get your client to meet with you more frequently or at least be available for quick questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lucky for you and your client, we live in the modern era where collaboration tools are at our fingertips :)  One of the ways that I personally overcome these challenges is with chat. I use Google Chat, as well as Skype, to communicate with clients. It does take some convincing, but if you keep pressing them you can convince them to keep one of those chat services up and running. We actually found that one of our clients &lt;em&gt;preferred&lt;/em&gt; to use chat once we convinced them to use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try asking the PM what chat software he/she uses normally, and explain that you like to use it to field quick questions. Also, in your next meeting, continue to remind the client that your progress would be a lot faster if you had access to answers to questions that you have. Be polite yet persistent, and I'm sure you can make this work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-02-27T01:05:02.020" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4823" CreationDate="2012-02-27T06:12:11.360" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a living example of not being a technical expert, instead being a team expert. I have worked across a broad swath of high tech for twenty years and also applied my project skills to very non-technical endeavors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard the arguments for domain knowledge:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;How will you know if the estimate is false?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; - If I can't look at my team and know someone is bluffing, then I'm not serving the team. My job is to know the team and help them. More importantly, my job is to trust the team. Give them trust and be amazed what they give back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;You need to know what the technology is to understand the project.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; - I need to know what the value is. I need to know how it will impact the customer and the stakeholders. I need to trust the team that they know the technology. My job is to help the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;You can't step into something you've never done before and lead a project.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; - I had zero manufacturing experience and my knowledge of HDDs was mostly at the level of &quot;unscrew it and put a new one in.&quot; I took over all program management for a consumer products HDD group and was fully integrated within three months. I didn't focus on the technology. I focused on the team. That team saw their projects go for four per quarter to thirty, with no new headcount. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;We're a start up, we need to focus&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; - This only carries so far. If you're engineers are spending half their time on non-coding, then that's a lot of wasted resource. If you have a ten person dev team and need more resources, hiring one more dev will be of limited value (law of diminishing return, time to bring them up to speed on the specifcs of the tech, etc.) You hire someone devoted to all the project aspects (a chief of operations if you will) and you remove most of the non-dev work, then I believe you will get a lot more productivity out of the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Caveat 1: The portability of project management (team facilitation, scrum master, etc) does have limits. Crossing a major domain gap (software to bridge building) is not a one to one transfer and in some instances may not be possible. Some domains have very specific requirements, typically related to safety or government regulation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Caveat 2: You can't be a complete domain virgin. This is similar to Caveat 1, but more talks to your adaptability. I am not a technical expert, I've never coded, likely never will. That is not to say I'm lost in the high tech world. I've worked in customer support, product marketing, product management and project management. I've worked in consumer electronics, enterprise software, consumer software, virtualization, etc. What I am really good at, is learning just enough to understand and trust the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2012-02-27T06:12:11.360" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2765" CreationDate="2012-02-27T12:38:40.947" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is all rather misleading. The fact is, in our head we tend to convert the points back into hours once we know our velocity. Purists can talk about points all day long but it's just people trying to be hoity-toity. Really, the key here is to encourage people estimating to think in relative terms; e.g., this project is about as complex as that project and that project took &lt;code&gt;x hours&lt;/code&gt; so this project should take &lt;code&gt;y hours&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might think you're pulling off some cool psych trick but if your people are worth anything they're doing the mental math in their head already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3320" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2016-07-25T19:28:05.037" LastActivityDate="2016-07-25T19:28:05.037" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4848" CreationDate="2012-02-27T13:54:37.857" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;welcome to PMSE!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So are there any cases where doubling up the client as a PM would ever&#xA;  be a good idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a good idea as long as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's a small project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's well documented&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The developer team (i.e. you) knows clearly what needs to be done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is, usually the project changes as the time goes by. It seems that the main concern here is that the client does not have PM skills (otherwise you wouldn't be here...), and things eventually might fall onto your head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If any of you ever faced this situation as someone working for a PM/client, how did you handle it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bearing the above in mind, that's how I'd proceed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Arrange a periodic meeting.&lt;/strong&gt; If the client is the PM, he needs to have time for you. Then, you'll be able to gather all questions you have to a single shoot session at a specific time. If the client has no time for such meetings, you'll have enough arguments to have a proper PM instead of the client inheriting this task.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Start documenting everything.&lt;/strong&gt; I liked jmort suggestion to ask for the client's tools (although I believe the client itself won't be used to PM tools). Instead of going against the client, look for ways to go along with what's already in place. Chats and calls are a must do to solve quick questions; project direction, though, needs to be properly addressed. Meeting minutes, properly stating what are the next steps might give you some coverage in case the train get off the track.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Look for tasks that can be done in parallel and agree them beforehand.&lt;/strong&gt; You need to know what can be done in case you reach a dead-end that needs client's assistance.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-02-27T13:54:37.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4856" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-27T16:13:00.093" Score="6" ViewCount="126" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm attempting to build a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_reality_tree_%28TOC%29&quot;&gt;future and current reality tree&lt;/a&gt; regarding changing policy and procedure to data access, but we're being given undesirable effects that are entirely divorced from reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, we're asking for a list of locations for all the fire hydrants in a municipality, and one objection brought up was that if this data is made public then &lt;em&gt;&quot;we've given vandals the power to find every fire hydrant and destroy them&quot;.&lt;/em&gt; Another similar objection was that we can't have real-time tracking of bus data because this will &lt;em&gt;&quot;empower stalkers to harass and follow people around.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I deeply, deeply wish these were made up. I really do. I also wish running away from these &quot;reasons&quot; was something we could do, or shoving my fingers in my ears screaming &quot;na na na na poo poo I can't hear you,&quot; but the fact of the matter is I really need to figure out the genuine UDEs that are causing them to bring up these absurd scenarios. They're scared of something, and I can't make a negotiation or draw a plan that makes both sides happy because they won't actually tell us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I get to the bottom of this and make everyone happy? Is using intuition suitable in this case to try and &quot;dream up&quot; their actual UDEs? I find myself painting them as evil or corrupt when I do so, which I know is probably the wrong way to go about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="213" LastActivityDate="2012-02-27T22:14:44.510" Title="Can't build reality tree of undesirable effects as objections are absurd" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;politics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4857" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-02-27T18:01:14.187" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Constraints#The_TOC_thinking_processes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;theory of constraints&lt;/a&gt; (TOC) adopts the common idiom &quot;A chain is no stronger than its weakest link&quot; as a new management paradigm. This means that processes, organizations, etc., are vulnerable because the weakest person or part can always damage or break them or at least adversely affect the outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The analytic approach with TOC comes from the contention that any manageable system is limited in achieving more of its goals by a very small number of constraints, and that there is always at least one constraint. Hence the TOC process seeks to identify the constraint and restructure the rest of the organization around it, through the use of five focusing steps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="213" LastEditorUserId="213" LastEditDate="2012-02-28T01:59:01.247" LastActivityDate="2012-02-28T01:59:01.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4858" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-02-27T18:01:14.187" Score="0" Body="Theory of constraints is a thinking process designed to improve global results rather than local optimums." OwnerUserId="213" LastEditorUserId="213" LastEditDate="2012-02-28T01:59:07.800" LastActivityDate="2012-02-28T01:59:07.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4856" CreationDate="2012-02-27T18:37:11.410" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need that top cover to pull the complainers into the process. This is what needs to be done:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Express their objection in written form. (this makes sure you have a fixed complaint instead of a constantly shifting one)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The complainers must also include the source of the comment. Customer feedback, Public Law, internet search, their own experience...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they are seen as a trouble maker their role in the process is over.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they are seen as cooperative, and wanting to cover all the issue from all angles, assign them to a small group to work on the issue. Give them a few days to create a couple of page paper on the topic. This paper should discuss the issue, and possible solutions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the complainers won't assist you in this effort, the top leadership needs to address the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other concern is that maybe the request from leadership is flawed. You may not be able to tell until you can find the real concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2947" LastEditorUserId="2947" LastEditDate="2012-02-27T22:14:44.510" LastActivityDate="2012-02-27T22:14:44.510" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4832" CreationDate="2012-02-27T23:03:26.557" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Experience as a member of several project teams is an absolute must. Experience is to project management as location is to real estate.  Experience, Experience, Experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will set yourself up for failure if you are able to jump into a position without adequate experience.  ( Note this is true in many fields -- if you want to own a restraurant, you must work in a restaurant as a waiter, cook, etc for at least three years before you own one. ). In every field there are tricks of the trade that make the difference between success and failure, and you will not find the important tricks in any textbook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why so many businesses fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3329" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-02-28T01:55:08.477" LastActivityDate="2012-02-28T01:55:08.477" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4861" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-28T02:43:58.087" Score="1" ViewCount="151" Body="&lt;p&gt;In today's world, is there any place for manuscript documentation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can manuscript be used nowadays? Some people still favor paper over digital media, then how to document such things? If developer develops some code then up to which extents documentation should be done? How to store it? In some cases even self explanatory code is hard to understand, then how to properly document it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering attrition in organization, how to keep code and documentation self explanatory so that new programmer easily get it? References to some case studies is welcome. Please give practical examples instead of principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3179" LastEditorUserId="2368" LastEditDate="2012-04-25T21:33:17.320" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T21:33:17.320" Title="Is manuscript (handwritten documentation) used in project management?" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2765" CreationDate="2012-02-28T06:01:20.427" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the comment Blaze a little bit but I will try and make a happier case for it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Truth be told, it usually is length of time for a task that you are interested in, so that you can estimate how long future projects, of similar complexity, will take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is how you end up using the velocity as mentioned.  After a few development iterations which take x amount of time and have y number of points allocataed, you can get your velocity and then use that to plan for the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a great thing to be able to do that and a really useful tool for developers, management and product owners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3330" LastActivityDate="2012-02-28T06:01:20.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4011" CreationDate="2012-02-28T11:21:03.473" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://eylean.com/kanban&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eylean Board&lt;/a&gt;. It allows you to represent several projects on one board using rows. All the rows may be visible at a time or you can remove selected ones from the scope. Another solution may be task grouping and filtering by categories - then all the tasks can be represented on one board and row, but attached to different categories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-06T06:26:08.823" LastActivityDate="2020-07-06T06:26:08.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4861" CreationDate="2012-02-28T12:09:02.183" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think to answer your question all you need to do is examine how work has changed over the past, say, 200 years.  No one hires scribes anymore.  No one hires a typing pool anymore.  If you know someone who favors paper and manuscripts, I would be more than interested to hear the cost-benefit argument on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-02-28T12:09:02.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4866" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4868" CreationDate="2012-02-28T12:18:30.873" Score="1" ViewCount="156" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new to MS project and afik, for each task we can add detailed notes to it. But is there a way I can capture more information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I need to store the details of the task in one note and further need to capture the progress. I don't need just the completion progress, but email exchanges and comments, etc. How do you do this? Is a custom field the answer? Is it possible to have rich text attached to a custom field?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3253" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-01-13T10:34:21.483" LastActivityDate="2019-01-13T10:34:21.483" Title="What Kind of Options Do I Have in MS Project For Storing Detailed, Formatted Notes and Comments?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2765" CreationDate="2012-02-28T12:22:44.753" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's all about abstracting away from a false reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Points are better than hours because they force everyone involved, especially non technical stakeholders, to internalize that building your own software is not like shopping for features in a store.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For better or for worse, business stakeholders almost always want to know &quot;how much will each of my features&quot; cost.  Of course they usually start with such high level descriptions of features that any price estimate, in hours or dollars, is going to be laughable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile in general and the points system in particular, force stakeholders kicking and screaming into the process of going from a high level business request to an iteratively refined implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3334" LastActivityDate="2012-02-28T12:22:44.753" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4866" CreationDate="2012-02-28T15:22:47.720" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not a direct answer to your question, but I think with your use cases you hit the limit of MS Project. It's a project management tool, but has very very limited task tracking ability.&#xA;For your needs you might want to reevaluate what you need from the tool. Maybe a change management system or an agile project tracker is better suited than MS Project. E.g. Trac, JIRA, Mingle, all of them free or cheap enough to try out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I for example constantly deal with a few bigger (few months) projects and lot of smaller ones (few days upwards) in a small team. I use an agile tracker to do my task management (whast you described you want to do with MS Project), plus collaboration (task management systems usually have good discussion capabilities, comments, attachments, those things).&#xA;When it comes to resourcing and other project management things, like scheduling, I switch to MS Project. But I have one single project file there, with a task for each of my projects representing the entire project. So all I need to do is take the time remaining from each of my projects, and can tell when resources get freed up, how a new project impact my team's delivery and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2921" LastActivityDate="2012-02-28T15:22:47.720" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4848" CreationDate="2012-02-28T19:09:48.217" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the client is his own project manager, why does he not hire directly some people as his team? Why does he take that responsability if he does not have the time to do it? This is a confusion of roles that can undermind greatly the project you are talking about. I wonder if their could also be a conflict of interests. Responsabilities are not the same for a project manager than for a client. If you mix both, some legal questions could be addressed if the project goes over costs or if it fails. I would always avoid that situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastActivityDate="2012-02-28T19:09:48.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4760" CreationDate="2012-02-28T19:17:46.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you, your team and the client don't do their best, at being their best&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3338" LastActivityDate="2012-02-28T19:17:46.060" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4832" CreationDate="2012-02-28T19:24:24.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is what we call the &quot;transferable competences&quot; concept in human ressources management. You have a job experience that is not the one requiered, because it was not in the same field or not exactly the same work. You have to be able, then, to prove to your new potential employer that some or more of the tasks you were doing in your previous workplace can apply to the new one. You &quot;transfer&quot; your competence from a field to the other. It is much simpler than it looks. But it is a question of trust and selling yourself and your abilities, proving you can do the job as anybody else. But the most important points to succeed in any job is judgment, dedication and the sense of responsabilities. Those you can't buy or be trained to get them. You have them or not. It is part of your personality, of who you are. Having new and innovative ideas is a good points too, if your new employer is open minded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastActivityDate="2012-02-28T19:24:24.940" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4814" CreationDate="2012-02-28T19:38:56.637" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The golden rule is that you have to do your homeworks first:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- Read about the compagny.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2- Go on their web site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3- Know who work there: who is responsable of what.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4- Find an organigram to know how the compagny is structured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5- Financial informations in financial reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you know what you are talking about, they will be impressed and you will give some great answers. But you are talking about a simulation: to act as if you meet some clients (stakeholders) to kick off a project. Before beginning, set some rules with the people you are with: what role will they play exactly in your simulation, how long it will last, prepare some documents to give them; then play the game and your role in it. If you are well prepared, 75% of the job is already done before your simulation begins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastActivityDate="2012-02-28T19:38:56.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4873" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-28T19:49:01.787" Score="9" ViewCount="2784" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a team member, or as a programmer, would you accept a boss like that? If he wants to learn and he is interested by programming and what a programmer does? Can somebody with not programming background understands quickly how an IT environment works?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastEditorUserId="2368" LastEditDate="2012-04-25T21:33:05.433" LastActivityDate="2013-07-30T09:37:02.047" Title="Would you hire a project manager with no programmer background in an IT environment?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4873" CreationDate="2012-02-28T21:17:16.897" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd hire the person who is smart and can demonstrate that they can get things done. If he happens to have the IT background, wonderful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-02-28T21:17:16.897" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4875" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4885" CreationDate="2012-02-28T21:27:22.727" Score="13" ViewCount="10882" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say, you are a Scrum Master and your team is in the middle of a Sprint. You see that all planned stories can't be completed till the end of the Sprint, that's for sure. What action will you perform?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3340" LastActivityDate="2012-03-10T19:57:39.807" Title="What actions will you take when Iteration/Sprint goals are in danger?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4875" CreationDate="2012-02-28T21:30:32.210" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have to either cut low priority stories or abort the sprint and start over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also continue to the end of the sprint which leaves you with low velocity for the next sprint. This would allow you to do a better job of estimation next time around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the point where many orgs simply abandon the core principles of scrum and start to add scrum-buts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3341" LastEditorUserId="3341" LastEditDate="2012-02-28T21:40:12.663" LastActivityDate="2012-02-28T21:40:12.663" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4760" CreationDate="2012-02-28T22:09:23.660" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have done 10 full life-cycle large IT (SAP CRM) implementation projects in the past fifteen years and the conclusion I get from both successful projects and projects ended miserably is always the same, it's the people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course the higher you look on that ladder the more it matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing is &lt;strong&gt;the people&lt;/strong&gt;, point, if you have a great team of experienced professionals you have great chance of success. As Gary Klein greatly explained in a final chapter of his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sources-Power-People-Make-Decisions/dp/0262611465&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;great book&lt;/a&gt; a good team read each other mind. Sure, you must have good communication in place, you must document what you are doing, you must adopt the right tools to support you, you need to know how to manage change, how to manage the customer, how to cope with adversities... But all these things are always there, what makes a difference? The team, the people. As &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/bright9977/warren-buffetts-36-pearls-of-wisdom&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Warren Buffet once said&lt;/a&gt;: &quot;Surround yourself with people better than you and you will drift in that direction...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second thing is &lt;strong&gt;PMO&lt;/strong&gt;, which is not just that guy the project manager, it's a culture, it's an habit, and it's not a methodology or any methodology, it's &lt;strong&gt;keeping things simple but under control&lt;/strong&gt;, all things, every thing, every little detail. It requires time, and usually is underestimated, it's often boring, and often seems there are more important things to do than update a gantt, a to-do list, or write the documentation.&#xA;And often people do these things just because they thing they have to, or they are asked, or because it's a deliverable. In some other cases it's overdone, that's true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which drag me to the conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a matter of &lt;strong&gt;finding the right compromise&lt;/strong&gt;; the perfect project doesn't exist, the perfect people does not exist, the perfect customer does not exist, the right time doesn't exist.&#xA;You need to find the right compromise given the resources, time and money you have at your disposal, you need to do not take things too seriously, but seriously enough, you need to have &lt;strong&gt;the sense, and the sensibility&lt;/strong&gt;. You need to have all these things, all these great people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course chance are you will fail anyway... :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's a damn perilous path...&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3342" LastActivityDate="2012-02-28T22:09:23.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4875" CreationDate="2012-02-28T22:47:30.273" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're just talking about completing stories, I think you really only have two choices, alter the scope of the current stories or work more hours to finish the current stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get back to your question, if I were the Scrum Master of a team who found themselves in this situation I would ask them what they think should happen and help them discover a solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2628" LastActivityDate="2012-02-28T22:47:30.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4875" CreationDate="2012-02-28T23:17:46.400" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Raise an impediment for the team to problem solve on how would they handle this risk to business outcome, their credibility and planning depth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3343" LastActivityDate="2012-02-28T23:17:46.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4880" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4931" CreationDate="2012-02-28T23:50:57.680" Score="1" ViewCount="914" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BACKGROUND:&lt;/strong&gt; Have a client that has terabytes of transactional data and they would like to begin leveraging the data they have, but beyond the knowledge it's possible, and the belief that an analytic system would produce value, they do not appear to have a solid starting point and have mainly been looking at the problem in the context of what technology is able to do, instead of what their business requirements really are, and I'd like to move the analysis away from what tools are able to do, and to how discover, prioritize, and iteratively deploy business intelligence solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.meta.stackexchange.com/a/280/2412&quot;&gt;As requested on meta&lt;/a&gt;, this update is a response to the current current answers. First, thanks, my guess is that the fitness of the questions is directly related to how clear my question is. I have reviewed all of the answers a number of times, and to my knowledge all address general business requirements gathering, not &quot;Business Requirements Analysis for Business Intelligence&quot;, which to me is not the same thing. More to the point, the best example of a source that speaks to this is a recent book by Lawrence Corr titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=TRWFmnv8jP0C&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;amp;dq=Agile-Data-Warehouse-Design-Collaborative&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=nBVOT57dMKT50gG9nu3RAg&amp;amp;ved=0CEsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=Agile-Data-Warehouse-Design-Collaborative&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Data Warehouse Design&lt;/a&gt;. While so far, this to me seems like the best answer, I had hoped that I'd either get &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/277/is-my-question-a-bad-fit-for-pm-se&quot;&gt;feedback on the question itself&lt;/a&gt;, or another perspective via an answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2412" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T15:46:53.307" LastActivityDate="2012-03-02T11:27:19.720" Title="What is the best way to discover, prioritize, and iteratively deploy business intelligence solutions?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;business-case&gt;&lt;business-analyst&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4873" CreationDate="2012-02-29T01:49:51.833" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMs don't need to be very familiar with the IT environment to be successful. It helps but its not critical since most of the work he will be doing won't be of a technical nature anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMHO, You have more problems with those clueless ones that THINK they know IT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key thing about dealing with non technical PMs is to have a strong technical team leader to act as a bridge between the team and management. If you are missing a good team leader as well then things can get messy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1849" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T01:49:51.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4873" CreationDate="2012-02-29T03:33:20.150" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind the Project Management isn't Functional Management.  The Project Manager needs to be aware of and familiar with the -types- of problems and issues that might arise on a project, but won't be expected to resolve them.  More typically, the Project Manager will benefit from more &quot;paperwork&quot; and &quot;interpersonal&quot; skills than anything IT related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a team member in this environment, if the PM is willing to learn, then it might be a better situation as the PM may approach situations with an open mind and be receptive to good feedback from the team, rather than try to use their background and experience to &quot;drive&quot; the team to a course of action. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T03:33:20.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4760" CreationDate="2012-02-29T03:50:31.533" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Avoiding conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either with the customer/stakeholder or the team.  Builds up a backlog of issues that only get resolved in the 11th hour and with inevitable pain and dissatisfaction from all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T03:50:31.533" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4875" CreationDate="2012-02-29T07:01:16.337" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's wise not to interfere with the team inside sprint. Failure is healthier than a forced succes. Retrospective of a failed sprint is more interesting that a success sprint one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PO should be warned but only if he dosen't have authority and opportunity to put pressure on the team. For him/her, a planned failure it's way more better than an unexpected one, even more if is a outside company client involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure that information radiators are properly updated, and trust in your team until the last minute of the sprint! Any complains before the sprint ends may be seen like a lack of trust. When the fail it's declared stand by your team as it's your fail too. Don't look for guilty persons and don't let the team start this charade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work hard with stakeholders to create a tolerance for failure. The team should be ashamed not afraid to fail. If you don't have any tolerance for failure your team will force success by eroding quality and adding technical debts. You don't want that. NEVER stop a sprint because it may fail. It will be a living proof that you don't trust your team, and you'll be screwed as a ScrumMaster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learn to be patient.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3346" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T07:01:16.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4873" CreationDate="2012-02-29T07:07:11.503" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well I'm developer and I would n't accept a project manager which wasn't a developer at least for a short time. Somebody without this experience doesn't know what the typical problems of a developer are. &#xA;I don't want him to solve the technical problems, but I think he should be able to see from the perspective of his developers to know when it's necessary to interfere and when not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3100" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T07:07:11.503" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4875" CreationDate="2012-02-29T08:15:24.497" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't abort the sprint, because this will demotivate the team (&quot;Oh, just another sprint we couldn't finish.&quot;)!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Better: Inform the steakholders/POs about the situation and stories that might not be finished by the end of the current sprint. As you might have more than one story in a sprint and a given priority you should have at least a few other stories ready for release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Important: Address this topic during the retrospective at the end of the sprint. Why didn't we (as in team) manage the finish the sprint - i.e. finish all comitted stories? Did we have an impediment? Did we have technical blockers? Did we just underestimate a bigger story? If so, restimate this story and take this one as reference story for the next estimation meeeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And last but not least: Learn to be patient - as Radu said in his very good answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3347" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T08:15:24.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4680" CreationDate="2012-02-29T08:28:57.053" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe a bit late, but you should also checkout TinyPM - &lt;a href=&quot;http://tinypm.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://tinypm.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm using TinyPM in most of my projects now and love it. It's more than just a digital Scrum board, and can/should also be used by POs to input and manage the user stories. It comes with such nice things like a backlog management, burndown charts, print view of story cards (for the reals board ;)), and can handle multiple sprints and scrum teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most common way is to install TinyPM on a local machine, then you can obtain a free license for up to 5 users. Perfect for testing. But you can also go for a hosted version - however, never tried the hosted way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the real life board I preffer cork boards. Size depends on team size, mostly something around 180cm x 120 cm (widthxheight). Recently I saw magentic flipchartboards at a client's office. The developers using magnets with their photos on top to stick the tasks. Also very nice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advantage of the magentic version: At the end of the sprint you cannot say which developer finished a specific task, because you don't have to write names on the tasks. How can that be an advantage? So, without a name, the whole team is responsible - as it should be in scrum. You avoid things like POs going directly to a developer: &quot;I saw that you did this task. It's totally (place your word here)&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3347" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T08:28:57.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4873" CreationDate="2012-02-29T08:33:31.417" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would prefer a strong people manager to a brilliant programming leader as my boss. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somebody who takes it on the chin for the team,understands &amp;amp; resolves people issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as IT background goes,in my experience I have seen non &quot;technical&quot; project leaders/managers (who have the skills to interview &amp;amp; elicit information from tech people and who created a culture of trust and fearlessness in the team) fare much better than ones from a hard core &quot;technical&quot; background (leading purely from a technical aspect).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is (as I mentioned above) is the ability to &quot;understand&quot; tech speak &amp;amp; tech peoples's egos, make sure that there are no impediments in their way :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T08:33:31.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4875" CreationDate="2012-02-29T09:10:41.527" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd do nothing. Our sprints are one week long. At the end of the sprint and when we prepare the next one we reflect on the old sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, as the team hasn't met the sprint objectives, it needs to learn from it and do a better job in the next time. As the team discusses the reasons for the failure, potentially moderated by a coach, they identify options for what they want to try out to do better next time. Over time the team will become better at achieving the sprint goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course if your sprints are much longer you may decide to choose a different option. In my experience interfering with the current sprint is usually the worst option and I try to stay away from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2318" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T09:10:41.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4873" CreationDate="2012-02-29T13:01:37.890" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a fresh project manager, who grew up from developer.&#xA;I noticed in my company, that knowledge of technical issues really helps me manage complex technical projects.&#xA;It allows me to better understand developers , and when dealing with a client I can understand a lot more technical and business issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I noticed that pm's in my company, who don't have even a basic technical knowledge have a harder situation with many problems, because they simply do not understand them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not you hire someone who does not have technical knowledge depends on the specifics of the project and the competence of that person in your company. &#xA;If he/she wouldn't have to make decisions that require such knowledge, or will have for example the production manager, that will be able to give him such information - then OK. &#xA;But personally I think that it is better that the person had at least a basic knowledge of technology that will have to work with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2955" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T13:01:37.890" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4880" CreationDate="2012-02-29T13:39:25.403" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am answering this because I saw a comment on meta.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are faced with a classic problem, a customer has a big pile of data, and has no real plan for working with the data. What you need to do is propose a several week project to do the meta analysis. During this time you will work on playing with the data, and proposing solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is the product you deliver, a plan for the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2947" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T13:39:25.403" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4873" CreationDate="2012-02-29T13:55:33.513" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing needs to be clarified here; &lt;strong&gt;the PM's role is NOT to develop any code&lt;/strong&gt;. One role is the programmer, developer, etc... so I would hire people with technical skills required to do that role, and another different role is the Project Manager's. For this role, I would hire the person with the strongest capabilities to lead the project (if he or she has technical skills on top of project management expertise then good, but it's not the core competency I would be focus on)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Project Manager is the person responsible for capturing customers requirements, estimating, planning and communicating to the Team Members, Stakeholders and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good PMs can handle multi-disciplinary projects regardless of the field/industry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to ensure that both PM and Team can successfully work together and deliver the agreed outputs is &lt;strong&gt;COMMUNICATION&lt;/strong&gt;. If you, as a programmer, come across certain issues with infrastructures, testing or anything related to your area of expertise, you need to have the back up support from your PM. He/She needs to understand your issue, estimate the impact (with your help, of course) to the product/output, and communicate delays or additional requirements to the stakeholders. I really don't think you need a person that knows different programming languages to understand that for X reason you cannot deliver and therefore the project may be delayed. On the other hand, a manager that understand that you have issues and supports you by communicating clearly and effectively with clients/sponsors and gets you additional resources/time/funds I believe it's more efficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation is to keep your mind open and support your manager. A solid working relationship will be more beneficial to you during the project's cycle life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2012-02-29T21:56:42.387" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T21:56:42.387" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4880" CreationDate="2012-02-29T14:08:13.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a question of perspective. You have to take off and fly a little bit; and take your clients with you. You have to help them have a global perspective on their business. The technical side of a project is very fun and interesting; but some seem not able to have a brother perspective. It is the same thing as a manager who does not have any tehnical backgroud and who is not able to inter the technical world. Maybe you should meet half ways. I would make them a 5-10 min speach of basic management concepts to open their mind to give them the passion they need to have a brother perspective on what they are doing business wise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T14:08:13.687" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4880" CreationDate="2012-02-29T14:08:32.310" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with mhoran that this is a classic problem.  But I do not agree that you should conduct a meta analysis.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We get lost with the bells and whistles of technology.  Not only do you see this in business, but in personal aspects too.  Watch buying behavior when Apple puts out new technology.  It is a feeding frenzy and we buy.  We buy whether we need it or not.  We design our lives around the technology versus the technology around our lives, mostly because it is really cool.  Apple does not ask us what we need, they tell us, then we evolve, or devolve, our lives to be consistent with the new need that Apple just told us we now have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need is a strong facilitator, a person that can speak the business language of your client, who can check the technology at the door and focus on the direction of the business, the value props of the business, the mission, and its vision.  Once your client can agree on where it is going, then it can focus on what data it needs, how it needs to be synthesized, and then what solutions you will need to synthesize it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do it the other way around, then you will end up altering the business to meet the needs of the solution.  Sadly, we do this all the time.  You need to remember, the IT solutions exist because of the business...not the other way around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T14:08:32.310" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4813" CreationDate="2012-02-29T14:23:21.513" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do not go too fast. Step by step. You have a chance to prove you abilities; to show you can be trustworthy. Focus on your project, do not count hours. The key of your success is an efficient way of communicating with your team members. Built a team spirit. If you make some mistakes or slitly go over budget; but everybody had a great experience, that is a very good point for you. If you have a major problem for example not meeting the deadlines, go see your manager to propose a new an innovating solution or just to take his advices. The fact that you ask the question on how to do it, is a very good sign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T14:23:21.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4861" CreationDate="2012-02-29T16:46:47.953" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As &quot;information radiators&quot; handwritten artifacts are way more powerful than standard computer generated ones. Because they are linked with a person, reflect a creation effort and are more human. Even more, the mind easily capture a draw sketch rather than perfectly shape forms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, for storage and distribution of that kind of drawings a digitized solution is used. My Agile team use often the whiteboard and markers. When a drawing iteration is complete, we take a snapshot with the iPhone. I also use whiteboard capture pro sometimes to make real whiteboard drawing more like a sketch. This way we can also have &quot;versions&quot; of a software architecture sketch. This pictures are posted on wikis or distributed on email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My Kanban board contains only handwritten post-its. When a client needs a project update or some estimations I just take snapshot of the board and send it by email. Never receive a complain about the form of the information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it's a handwritten-to-digital solution. We use it because of human flavor and because of speed. No matter how good you are in PowerPoint or whatever, it's faster to draw some boxes and arrows with a marker. It doesn't matter that they are not perfect, don't care. The most important is the content, not the form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there are some limits. Not everything worth to be handwritten but Agile PM may rely on some handwritten artifacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3346" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T16:46:47.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4873" CreationDate="2012-02-29T18:01:19.747" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer the headline question: Absolutely. If the person has the right skills, I would take him or her on regardless of programming background or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You imply that an IT environment equals a programming environment. That's an interesting side issue: I work in an IT environment and always have. In my current role I work alongside about a dozen other environment and infrastructure PMs, and the majority of us have never written code as a professional programmer, and we don't manage programmers either. We deliver infrastructure, we manage testing, and we coordinate implementations. Other PMs manage the programmers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also ask whether a programmer would accept a non-programmer as a boss. Well, having been a non-programmer who managed programmers in the past, I have to say that this can work, but both  groups have to accept that the skill sets and the knowledge bases are quite different, and they have to work through the inevitable challenges. This can bring benefits to both: the PM can often see non-technical solutions to a problem, while the programmer may be able to offer better ways to achieve an end result than had been put forward by the PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your final question is also interesting: whether a PM without a programming background can understand how IT environments work. I believe the answer is yes, although it may take a little time to get up to speed. Deep detailed knowledge should not be required, although a general understanding is helpful. As a PM who has moved from one business to another, and one technical environment to another several times, I find that honesty about what I know or don't know is the best way to progress. One of the most powerful questions is &quot;Can you explain that in easy, layman's language&quot; - which forces the technical person to really think about his answer, and can uncover a whole load of assumptions or identify things that are done &quot;because we have always done it that way&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T18:01:19.747" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4880" CreationDate="2012-02-29T19:06:21.617" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;May I suggest a practical solution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your client believes that there is value in the data, so that would be my starting point. Identify some benefits, ideally in tangible (hard cash) terms, but if these don't exist, start with intangible benefits then get your client to put some values around them. That's stage 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choose the top handful of benefits, and work out which pieces of data are necessary to allow these benefits to be realised. That's stage 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stage 3 is to evaluate your options for analysing your data. It could be that there is some standard tool - perhaps already used by your client's competitors or others in similar industries, or maybe already being used alongside similar transactional systems to those that your client uses. Consider these, and decide whether they meet the requirements. If so, great; if not, get out into the market and see what else is available. One word of caution: keep your wits about you, and don't buy the glitziest, flashiest tool in the marketplace unless you need it and know exactly what it will do for you, that cannot be done by low cost alternatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stage 4 is to implement the tool and get some real value out for your client. Stick to the original set of benefit areas, and control the scope of your deployment to get the benefits out quickly. That way, the tool will start to pay for itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stage 5 is to use the knowledge that has come from the first iteration, identify more benefit areas, and do it all again. You may need to think about using a different tool, or even better, you will be able to further exploit the tool that you have. Either way, you will have gained a lot of knowledge that will make the second and subsequent rounds slicker and easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go round the loop as often as necessary, but stop when the benefits no longer outweigh the incremental costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T19:06:21.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4913" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-29T19:14:26.193" Score="8" ViewCount="4410" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am talking about a personality conflict, between two people or more, that builts up tension in the team, ruins the team spirit and worsen the quality of life at work. Most of the time, those are not open conflicts, but unspoken; but you can sometime feel the heat. How to deal with those kinds of situations before they get worse. Do you apply a process or do you have a personal way to solve interpersonal conflicts? What works the best? I am talking about a situation where everybody suffer about it in the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastEditorUserId="150" LastEditDate="2012-03-01T05:10:49.633" LastActivityDate="2012-03-02T02:19:51.003" Title="As a project manager, how do you manage interpersonal conflicts between your team members?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;conflicts&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4707" CreationDate="2012-02-29T19:39:56.493" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;if you see the problem in terms of conflict, focus, different goals, WHAT, HOW and segregation, yes SM and PO can't be the same person unless it has dual personality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but, if you see things from collaboratively teamwork, cross-competence and passion to deliver value to the customer (Agile) I see no point why SM and PO should not be the same person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;if you see at micro level in term of tasks and responsibilities, yes, it's a huge difference. but if you look from macro level perspective changes considerably. it's a matter of opinion where you set your perspective.&#xA;I've learned this lesson from a great dude, that actually creates something for Agile community that it calls &quot;dude's law&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also must admit that the second perspective it's very hard to be achieved in high hierarchical, segregated, non-Agile companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3346" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T19:39:56.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4913" CreationDate="2012-02-29T21:43:38.847" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interpersonal conflicts happen all the time.  I find many wash out in the normal process of teaming; as the team gels, so do its members.  When it does not, there is no fancy process.  Throw the offending parties in a room, timebox a discussion, and facilitate a resolution.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are on a project, you have limited resources, and there are a ton of threats jeopardizing your success everyday.  There really is no time to horse around with this type of garbage.  And I think that message needs to come across to the offending parties, with the underlying message being that the grinding components will be replaced with new ones if this lubricant does not help.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T21:43:38.847" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4707" CreationDate="2012-02-29T23:33:21.817" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The team should agree on a Product Owner and a Scrum Master and &lt;strong&gt;nothing should constrain the team in picking the best people - or person - for those roles&lt;/strong&gt;.  If the team trusts a single person to do both and the stakeholders are satisfied with the value delivered by the team, then we're done here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Empowering the Development Team is the essential core of Scrum.  Both the Product Owner and the Scrum Master need to understand that their most important job is to stay out of the team's way and allow, or even force, the team to learn to solve its own problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is accountable to stakeholders for the content of the backlog and the value delivered by the team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master is the team's resource regarding the rules of Scrum, and also helps ensure that managers, stakeholders, the PO, and the SM him/herself do not interfere with the team's ability to self-organize.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's nothing incompatible about those responsibilities, and neither one is necessarily a full-time job (especially as the Scrum Team becomes experienced), so &lt;strong&gt;there's no reason they can't be performed by the same person&lt;/strong&gt;.  Since neither one of them gets to tell the team what to do, conflict of interest shouldn't enter into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Traditional/hierarchical job titles like &quot;product manager&quot; (or &quot;dev lead&quot;) are irrelevant to Scrum and should be ignored by the team.  Those individuals might be PO or SM or they might not.  There's a specific risk in picking &quot;managers&quot; or &quot;leads&quot; for Scrum roles, which is that the team may be in the habit of deferring to those people, which undermines self-organization.  In that case, significant effort is needed to ensure that the team manages itself and takes responsibility for its own work!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1167" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T23:33:21.817" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4913" CreationDate="2012-02-29T23:49:36.680" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on the severity I and speaking very generally, my approach consists of two stages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stage one is to talk to each of the involved persons one-on-one to find out what happened and how emotional the problem is. The vast majority of the cases can be addressed and resolved with just one such conversation with each individual. In some cases I speak to one or more of the individuals several time. Depending on the situation I try to provide recommendations and advice. Having these conversations offsite, e.g. over a coffee at a nearby cafe, gives it a somewhat less formal tone. Choice or location and wording depends heavily on the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stage two is getting people into a single room and see how that works out. In my career I had only very, very few cases where this was required. Sometimes a meeting like this needs to be facilitated. In that case I think it is important for me as a manager to stay as neutral as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only in one case I then had to develop a plan to work with a person to continue their career in a different team. Last thing I heard was he was doing just fine in his new role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from the above I find - and that would be my advice - that in most cases interpersonal conflicts can be avoided or minimized by interaction with all team members so that all people have a sense of being respected, contributing to the team work and participating in the success. Communication is essential!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course there are a gazillion other factors that influence how I handle conflicts and my approach in specific cases can be substantially different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2318" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T23:49:36.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4913" CreationDate="2012-03-01T02:19:42.937" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since we are dealing with people the combination of issues that can arise are endless. As such it's really hard to answer without some context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While every business/team is unique and all our operating environments are different, I think that in general the following will often apply:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Management is a continuous effort&lt;/strong&gt;. Most teams like to keep it within themselves so if you so much as get a whiff of something that smells bad, start digging. Ideally it is you who goes down to the team level and start the tweaking before it even gets to your level through the normal protocol. That way you can nip it in the bud. When issues get brought up to you through the normal chain of command, its often reached a stage where resolution is hard or even impossible and egos will often be bruised. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's not just two people&lt;/strong&gt;. When interpersonal issues come up, the entire team is affected. There will be whining and venting on a member to member level so odds are the other people will have taken sides in the issue as well. You need to make sure you weigh the impact of your decisions before you make a stand. Having to keep the team in mind means you may not always end up making the morally right decision. I know it sucks, deal with it.  When its an inherited team, you might have to swallow it now just so you can change the team composition later. This is inevitable.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be firm but fair.&lt;/strong&gt; Other team members will be using this to judge how much they can trust you. Trust is the most important commodity and you don't want to lose all credibility by appearing biased. Juggling this and point #2 is often the hardest part of the entire process. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Try to fix it the first time around.&lt;/strong&gt; Nothing is worse than dragging it out. If the issue isn't one that can be resolved swiftly and permanently, transfer one of the members to another team in a graceful way, making sure that everyone knows you aren't just dumping him. While these things MIGHT work themselves out in the long run, you shouldn't be betting the well being of you team on a possibility. This will send a clear signal to the members that you really do value the team concept. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other factors to consider as well but this topic is probably is little too wide to allow for clear and concise answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1849" LastActivityDate="2012-03-01T02:19:42.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4873" CreationDate="2012-03-01T05:19:47.173" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your company has a management style similar to the type that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/02/the-management-team-guest-post-from-joel-spolsky.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Joel Spolsky recommends&lt;/a&gt;, where technical decisions are made by the front-line technical people, then a non-IT person who happens to have good people skills should work fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your company has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/08/08.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;command and control&lt;/a&gt; management style or a place were technical decisions get escalated &quot;up the chain&quot;, the chances of a non-techie project manager being accepted by the project team and be an effective leader is quite low. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2012-03-01T05:19:47.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4762" CreationDate="2012-03-01T10:20:23.397" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would approach the situation from the &lt;em&gt;change management&lt;/em&gt; perspective. What you described is a common problem and happens all the time and not just with Agile. The change comes from inside the group - from developers - and instead of adapting the groups chooses to fight against the new norm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need is something shown in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW8amMCVAJQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt;. There's a guy who starts dancing - a funny one -, and for a while he dances alone. A bit later the early adapter joins him, he shows him how-to dance and they dance together, while others are watching. After a couple of minutes the rest joins and they dance together. For me the first dancer is an &lt;em&gt;open minded PO&lt;/em&gt;, the dance is the Agile, however things won't happen that fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The TODO list for starting something similar:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;find the &lt;em&gt;open minded PO&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;help him to become a initiator&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;use behaviour to change an organization&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Finding the right PO is a hard task&lt;/strong&gt;, but there must be a guy who was a developer before, or is curious about new things. I'm pretty sure that he exists. Without him the change won't happen, so you have to find him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Helping him to become an initiator&lt;/strong&gt; means that you should work with him to become a great PO. There's no good recipe, but I believe that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://alistair.cockburn.us/Shu+Ha+Ri&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;shuhari&lt;/a&gt; method is the best for this kind of action. First (&lt;em&gt;shu&lt;/em&gt;) he has to learn what Agile means, second (&lt;em&gt;ha&lt;/em&gt;) he has to make his version of Agile and third (&lt;em&gt;ri&lt;/em&gt;) he continues his journey alone, be a master and spread the word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last step requires him to know how to &lt;strong&gt;change an organization using his behavior&lt;/strong&gt;. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/yYEI7X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Influencer&lt;/a&gt; book is the best start. It describes how to change anything by behavior. The PO needs this knowledge, because a funny dance attracts more people than a fancy hard to adapt software development methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I talked to a successful project manager once who led the most successful organization in his former company. He introduced empowerment in his organization. He lived with the norms required to make it happen and after a while his colleagues showed up and asked for the recipe. And the change started to happen. &lt;strong&gt;Of course not everybody followed, but after reaching the critical mass they wouldn't have other choice&lt;/strong&gt;. I'm aware that this is not an agile story, but it's about the change, so I think it applies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-03-01T10:20:23.397" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4814" CreationDate="2012-03-01T10:26:02.303" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You say you really want this job.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;But why do you want this job ?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Are you convinced you are the right one for this job ?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If so, rely on your own experience. You should then know how to handle a project kick-off. And remember behind this &quot;kick-off&quot;, the real thing is to sell &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt;. That is what people will want to know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are not fully convinced, you can still try : be honest, show you skills; the company might not find better than you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3119" LastEditorUserId="3119" LastEditDate="2012-03-01T10:38:34.050" LastActivityDate="2012-03-01T10:38:34.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4760" CreationDate="2012-03-01T14:54:46.847" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;old but still valid: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectperfect.com.au/info_it_projects_fail.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;why IT projects fail&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Poor planning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unclear goals and objectives&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Objectives changing during the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unrealistic time or resource estimates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lack of executive support and user involvement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Failure to communicate and act as a team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inappropriate skills&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2456" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2012-03-01T14:54:46.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4924" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5552" CreationDate="2012-03-01T21:19:49.113" Score="3" ViewCount="2625" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a 2 month old PM came out as a developer. One thing that I am facing issues here in my company is how to keep track of time per task per developer. Like we are using TFS and we are creating BLI (Back Log Items/Tasks) etc. Plus we are using ClickTime (Online software for billing and tracking time in projects). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now when I see this as a developer stand of point, I am like this is PIA. 2 time tracking systems...DARN !!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am trying to push my team into TFS and updating it to sharepoint. Which is working great so far. How should I link it to my MS Project? Or will MS Project really be helping me in this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3256" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T03:33:52.220" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T18:02:03.787" Title="Keeping track of time per developer per task using TFS" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4913" CreationDate="2012-03-02T02:19:51.003" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best, most practical piece of advice I can give is to take the people out to lunch and talk to them about it.  Don't bring up the issue directly, just ask them &quot;How are things?&quot; and &quot;I've noticed you seem to be distant/pensive/frustrated/whatever&quot; and let them speak.  Don't judge, blame or take a position.  Ask questions like &quot;Do you think the team feels stress?&quot; and see if they can articulate about the situation.  Usually after about 30 minutes, you end up talking about the problem because they have raised it.  (Of course, you planted the seeds to let them open up about it...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lunch is a great way to approach the subject in a low impact way, plus it lets you develop more of a personal relationship with the person (be sure not to talk only about work!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2012-03-02T02:19:51.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4646" CreationDate="2012-03-02T02:27:41.210" Score="2" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Actively expand your skill set.  Read books/articles on Project Management.  Try things, fail and then strive to understand why you failed&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Be clear and strong in your communication.   Over communication is &quot;just enough&quot; communication.  But be pithy and to the point.  Get fantastic at summarizing documents, memos, meetings, goals, objectives, agendas, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Every quarter/half/year, pick a functional domain to &quot;dive into&quot;  For example, in Q2, allocate 40 hours of your time to be a Functional Tester.  Work with the test team not as their leader, but as their apprentice.  You won't be able to give them 40 hours a week, but you can set aside an afternoon or a morning for four solid hours of giving them your full focus.  Get your hands dirty.  Do the work, user their tools, etc.  you don't need to be good at it, but you need to be sincere and give it your best effort and not be afraid to look foolish.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2012-03-02T02:27:41.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-02T03:06:42.487" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definition of Risk is &quot;The possibility of suffering a loss&quot; but that is pretty non-useful (IMHO)  better is to describe the key elements of a risk.  That is, when you can fill in each of these fields, you have a decent handle on &quot;what is the risk?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Condition&lt;/strong&gt; - what is the circumstance, situation or setting that is causing concern, doubt, anxiety or uncertainty&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Consequence&lt;/strong&gt; - what is/are the possible outcomes of the current conditions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From there, additional elements can be attached, but getting each risk into the condition/consequence form helps find the essence and keeps the risks well scoped/managed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example: &quot;&lt;em&gt;the programmers miss their estimates&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would get the person who raised that to focus first on the condition: &quot;The engineers aren't good at estimating&quot; is different than &quot;We don't understand enough of the system&quot;  Get them to be specific about the situation.  Also, keep scope small... what is the hardest part to estimate?  Is there anything that is less uncertain to estimate?  10 small but manageable risks are better than 1 risk that &quot;the whole project is doomed&quot;  After they have the situation, then the consequence can be identified.  In general these boil down to &quot;cost, time and quality&quot;  (e.g. cost increases)  Don't mix these tho.  If the programmers miss their estimates, then the schedule is impacted (costs too, but the schedule is the primary impact and is what you will be managing directly) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Getting buy in&lt;/strong&gt;: A few points... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;only add risks that can be managed.  &quot;The project is doomed&quot; is&#xA;unmanageable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the risk register to build a buffer that you&#xA;expose and manage visibly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;review the risk register (top 5-10) periodically (each week/2 week/month period)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;be relentless about closing risks and asking the team &quot;what can we do about this risk?&quot;  the team will care if you care&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best risk reference I've ever encountered is the SEI's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sei.cmu.edu/library/abstracts/books/crmguidebook.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Continuous Risk Management Guidebook&quot;&gt;Continuous Risk Management Guidebook&lt;/a&gt; tough to find, but a great reference book!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2012-03-02T03:06:42.487" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4928" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-02T03:42:58.413" Score="6" ViewCount="2780" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a newbie in PM role right now and would like to know that what are the various levels of growth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am 25 in age and 2 months veteran in PM role. What would be my goal in next 2 years?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When should I make a switch (after how many years of experience in PM role)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3256" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-02T07:34:52.487" LastActivityDate="2012-03-03T21:12:01.710" Title="Growth of Project Manager in Software Development" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;goals&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4929" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-02T03:59:49.983" Score="3" ViewCount="842" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have lot of tasks with similar names and hard to identify them in the to do list report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to show the outline number next to the task name. (In report, I could see it in Gantt view by Format -&gt; Show/Hide -&gt; Outline Number)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3253" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-02T07:33:36.187" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T21:30:46.683" Title="MS project - outline number in to do list report" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4928" CreationDate="2012-03-02T06:16:08.770" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Welcome to the ranks of project management! You're in an interesting place a lot of us are not going to have direct correlation to. For example, I had already been working in various high tech roles for over a decade when I backed into project management. We're really only seeing project management as a career path starter recently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first major question is, what do you want to do? In ten years, what do you want to be doing? Is PM an entry to high tech, or a career path? Is the company you're at where you want to stay for a long time? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is to develop breadth of skills. Work on as many different kinds of projects as you can and learn about every aspect of the business you can. The nature of project management is not disimilar to general operations. A strong PM, with good interpersonal skills and broad knowledge of how a company runs could easily become the COO of a company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for the next two years, focus on being the best you can be in the role you are. Develop good people skills and understand how everything works. If in two years, people come to you because they know you'll know the answer, then you've become valuable. Valuable is what will take you to the next step. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't worry right now on if you want to go the path to manage a team, stay an IC, or even move job roles. Focus on the soft skills and overall knowledge while focusing on the project team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And learn. Learn for all of us that have made the mistakes already. I write a blog on that concept, and several others around here are great sources of wisdom to learn from. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2012-03-02T06:16:08.770" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4880" CreationDate="2012-03-02T11:03:27.557" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Defining business requirements for BI is a challenge because people tend to think just about data and reports or dashboards (and rapidly get overwhelmed by the near infinite potential for analysis that terabytes of data bring), losing sight of what that information can do for their business. Good BI is not about bringing complicated reports or cool dashboards to end-users: &lt;strong&gt;it's about understanding how well your business is going so that you can make the right decisions.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is how I would recommend you go about defining BI requirements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 1: Identify which KPIs drive the business&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Basically what this is about is working out what tells us the business is performing well (or badly) and what we base our decisions on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To identify these KPIs, you can look at the WHO (who needs BI information?), WHAT (what information do they need?), and SO WHAT (what are they going to do with it?). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;As a Business Unit Manager (WHO), I need to know how our products are currently selling against this year's profit targets (WHAT), so that I can take actions such as retiring a poor-performing product and concentrate resources on high-performing ones (SO WHAT) &#xA;=&gt; In this example the KPI would be product profitability.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 2: Define how KPIs will be measured&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is about putting clear definitions and formulas behind the KPIs and working out which transactional data is actually required to provide the result.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is also the step where you define dimensions (e.g. time dimensions such as Fiscal Year, Months, Days, etc.) and units (e.g. $, %).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the example:&#xA;&lt;em&gt;You could define profitability as ratio of profit on revenue. Then this number can be calculated for for year to date, month to date, variance against target, rolled-up by product lines, etc. This tells you which data you need (sales revenue and cost), how you need to calculate the KPI and the dimensions you would need to include&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 3: Define how results will be presented&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is where you look at ways for information to be accessed and presented (static or dynamic reports, dashboards, etc.) and how you can leverage a particular technology.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, when it comes to prioritisation, it should based on which KPIs drive high-impact decisions. Start with a few and do them well (get the definitions, formulas and dimensions right) - in any case you can't effectively make good decisions using 50 measurements, it's better to have a few but of high quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, as for other projects, I'd recommend you facilitate this exercise as part of a workshop with key business stakeholders and make sure people have ownership for driving this to successful completion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastActivityDate="2012-03-02T11:03:27.557" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4646" CreationDate="2012-03-02T20:31:20.890" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Read &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this book&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be as much &lt;strong&gt;open&lt;/strong&gt; as you can, but whenever you find yourself thinking &lt;strong&gt;&quot;should I do that?&quot; don't do it&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do things which make sense, don't do things just because you think someone is expecting you to do them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read, study, learn, but at the end do what you feel is right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one is going to bring you the solution, you have to find it yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMO, PMO, PMO, avoid complex charting but keep a basic gantt updated, keep up-to-date tasks list, assignment and due date; &lt;strong&gt;you MUST constantly be able to&lt;/strong&gt; tell what each one of your team is working on and when he/she is supposed to finish, constantly, point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's never too late to recognize a mistake, start from the assumption &lt;strong&gt;you will make two or three mistakes a day, accept it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make your people happy&lt;/strong&gt;, it's your team, bring croissant in the morning, be nice and understanding, invite people to coffee, lunch, dinner, check if anyone need anything done and make it happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the rest is secondary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3342" LastActivityDate="2012-03-02T20:31:20.890" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4933" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4937" CreationDate="2012-03-02T20:50:20.253" Score="4" ViewCount="2170" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had an initial meeting with my project stakeholders and was able to define a strategy based on goals that everyone agrees with. The goals are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Data access&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Data storage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Data validation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Analytical solutions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Real time support&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All five goals translate to real, tangible tasks like firewall access, code design, database design, report writing etc...As a coder , I would structure my project plan from a standpoint of &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inception&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Analysis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implementation &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I sense it would miss the mark by doing so. I am thinking on using the five goals above as phases of my project plan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you agree? How would you structure this project plan? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3212" LastActivityDate="2019-09-06T06:26:39.767" Title="How to structure a project plan" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4934" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4936" CreationDate="2012-03-02T21:00:12.113" Score="13" ViewCount="1268" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have 1 project under me and looks like we are ahead of time in this. We told client that the project will be completed in a month, and the developer completed it in 2 weeks. What should you do in this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3256" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-03T01:51:09.617" LastActivityDate="2019-01-01T09:57:32.607" Title="Our Team Finished Our Project Before The Deadline!  What Now?  " Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;deadline&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4934" CreationDate="2012-03-02T21:29:01.950" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Polish, refine, and deliver something beyond your own expectations and standards of quality. You could easily spend another week or two testing and improving (without adding unrequested features) every little detail and still deliver it ahead of time. For example, testing on additional platforms/browsers, fixing bugs that may have been acceptable before, running through additional validation tools, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3335" LastEditorUserId="3335" LastEditDate="2012-03-05T14:41:13.850" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T14:41:13.850" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4934" CreationDate="2012-03-02T21:30:15.387" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start with a high-5 all around! :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meet with your customer. Let them know you think you've completed the feature and give them a demo. Ask them if it meets their acceptance criteria. My bet is the customer will have some tweaks or changes now that they have seen it. By circling back to them right away, you've got a chance these changes can be made without impacting the customer's final delivery date. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frequent communication with the customer will ensure you are going in the right direction and allow for changes as reality intercedes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you really are done, then celebrate. Success is something to be recognized. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="147" LastEditDate="2012-03-03T04:59:53.103" LastActivityDate="2012-03-03T04:59:53.103" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4933" CreationDate="2012-03-02T22:36:59.340" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree on half of what you submited. Planning also includes, budgets, human ressources, deadlines, material ressources, etc Those are specific tasks, but very good ones. You have to ask yourself other questions, depending on the nature of your project. What do you start with? What do you do second, etc. You have to reflect on a brother basis, with a global view. You have to understand what is your role. Are you the project manager? Will you use the Agile or Scrum models or you own? In one word, you have to figure out how you are going to organize yourself with the team and money you have for your clients to be fully satisfied on time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastActivityDate="2012-03-02T22:36:59.340" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4933" CreationDate="2012-03-02T22:44:19.667" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you're talking about is a Work Breakdown Structure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your first five are not phases, but rather separate deliverables or work packages. Break them down that way, with the requisite tasks, and then follow the process or progression you would normally follow for each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-03-02T22:44:19.667" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4934" CreationDate="2012-03-02T22:46:21.490" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;No offense, but it looks like something too good to be true! Did you clearly understand what your clients asked? Did you miss a part of it? Sorry to be a skeptic, but usually you have much more work than you can handle. Unless you planned wrongly at the beginning. I would call your clients as soon as possible to validate with them if what you did corresponds to what they asked. If it is yes, congratulations! But do not expect to leave something like that every time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastEditorUserId="6209" LastEditDate="2015-04-06T14:43:22.720" LastActivityDate="2015-04-06T14:43:22.720" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4928" CreationDate="2012-03-02T23:04:17.897" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not think about that most of the time. I would, every day in my work as project manager, prove you can handel the pressure and especially that you are an effective planner. You will be noticed that way. Being dedicated and have a good sense of responsabilities helps. If there is some objective evaluation rules or process in your compagny, lucky you. You can go to your human ressources department and ask what they are. But you will always have to prove your abilities. But your manager went through it already, earlier in his career, so he or she knows what you are going through and will have an eye on you. So, if you face some difficulties, do not hesitate to counsult him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastActivityDate="2012-03-02T23:04:17.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4928" CreationDate="2012-03-03T00:31:11.473" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make sure you have metrics.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally these metrics should be based on business value because it's the easiest way to demonstrate competency that the business people will understand. At the end of the day, they will be the ones deciding if you get your promotion or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So don't make them guess. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1849" LastActivityDate="2012-03-03T00:31:11.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4875" CreationDate="2012-03-03T02:02:46.537" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;During the teams stand-up when it becomes apparent that stories aren't going to be completed during the sprint I want to know:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it because the story was improperly estimated? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it because there was found work within the story? Was the found work due to complexity of the story or because in order to complete &lt;code&gt;task A&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;task B&lt;/code&gt; must also be complete and &lt;code&gt;task B&lt;/code&gt; was missed during design.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are there impediments holding the team up that have not been brought forward? If so what are they and what can be done to remove them?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found that adding a 4th question to a teams stand up can help with identify when a sprint is off track. It also increases the teams communication and raises awareness of the sprint commitment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;How many points did we achieve yesterday on story xzy? (If nothing was completed, why?)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use this question alongside the standard SCRUM standup questions and in my opinion your one step closer to a more productive team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What was achieved yesterday?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What was achieved today?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is anything blocking progress?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastActivityDate="2012-03-03T02:02:46.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4875" CreationDate="2012-03-03T02:46:09.040" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure the team is aware of this (and agrees with your assessment)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask them how they want to handle this.  Be sure you act as the &quot;judge&quot; reminding them of their definition of done, that keeping work open in parallel is &quot;bad&quot; and focusing on having a potentially shippable product at the end of the sprint (don't leave defects in the system)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Before retrospective, collect the data, information, etc. that will help the team determine what to adjust for next sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the answer really depends if this is the team's first sprint, or fifteenth together.  If it their first, then it is probably more important to learn and understand why.  If it is the fifteenth, you may just need to help the teem prioritize and ensure the sprint activities are well prioritized&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2012-03-03T02:46:09.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2115" CreationDate="2012-03-03T07:04:01.213" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Street Fighter IV heres the link: &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160927133125/http://agilescout.com/street-fighter-game-built-using-agile-and-scrum/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;street fighter game built using agile and scrum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and the games by Wooga: &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160831163251/http://agilescout.com/monsters-built-using-kanban/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;monsters built using kanban&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3362" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-20T13:36:46.703" LastActivityDate="2020-07-20T13:36:46.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4945" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-03T07:58:15.847" Score="2" ViewCount="14909" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems all the two do just one thing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;breakthrough the works that we must do in our project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2300" LastEditorUserId="2834" LastEditDate="2012-10-18T19:57:20.287" LastActivityDate="2012-10-18T19:57:20.287" Title="What is the relationship between WBS and Gantt chart?" Tags="&lt;gantt&gt;&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-10-11T14:28:40.517" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4934" CreationDate="2012-03-03T10:28:28.420" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd echo Joel's answer about checking with customer and also simpixleated's about polishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few other thoughts though, on the lines of &quot;are you sure you're finished&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a month project, developed in 2 weeks.  Is there any plan for testing the software that has been developed?  Either from a functionality point of view or other less visible aspects e.g. performance under load, security, usability, accessibility etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the deployment method understood and tested?  If it is software to run on the client's PC has it been installed and tested on PCs other than the developers to prove there are no unknown dependencies?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is user acceptance testing or usability testing planned - this can flush out unexpected needs or problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find depending on the client items such as above can be greater effort than the actual development&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3365" LastEditorUserId="3365" LastEditDate="2012-03-07T19:29:55.747" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T19:29:55.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4947" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-03T11:31:17.147" Score="3" ViewCount="1064" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a problem: in my team we are currently using bug tracker for project planning, issues backlog and exceptions. It doesn't scale well. We have about 2000 issues there and it's unwieldy to manage them. The problems are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have too many exceptions. Probably they should be handled in a special way&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have high level milestone features. There are a few of them and they are main focus of the work of the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have user feedback features which we aren't going to fix in the near future but which we don't want to loose. (These are project backlog).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On my previous project we had quite a different situation. There were about 20000 issues and it were too hard to work in bug tracker on them so we had a special google docs document for milestone features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which light weight project management tool(s) will solve these problems?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3366" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-01T07:41:06.853" LastActivityDate="2020-11-01T21:58:20.437" Title="What Lightweight/Project Management or Bug Tracker Software Can I Use to Manage Exceptions, Milestones, and Old Bugs?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4945" CreationDate="2012-03-03T13:48:16.783" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The WBS breaks down what you are building for the project into smaller, more manageable components.  In most cases, the WBS should be things, not actions.  The leaf level, the lowest decoposition of the WBS, is your work package.  The work package, and the activities and resources--both human and materiel--are scheduled for deployment.  You can include the entire WBS in the schedule or start with the work packages as your level one.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once scheduled, the Gantt chart is a visual view of the schedule, which can be summarized to show a higher level schedule for executive review or decomposed to lower levels for a more tactical analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The WBS shows what you are doing and the Gantt chart shows when you are doing it.  You would use the WBS for scope control, including change management, and you would use the Gantt chart for schedule control.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2012-03-03T13:59:54.413" LastActivityDate="2012-03-03T13:59:54.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4928" CreationDate="2012-03-03T15:25:18.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am 1 year &lt;em&gt;veteran&lt;/em&gt; in PM role so I can say in quite similar position as you are. I will not give you any experienced advice, but just to share my perspective of what I am trying to achieve, learn, how to progress, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First and I think most important, before any thinking about what after two or ten years, is to stay focused on simply made my projects successful! If I don't make my first couple of projects successful I will not have any chance to have other projects. And I don't want to say that plan for future move and direction of carries is not important, but I think in first year or two, this is just the other think, not the most important one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While 'taking care' of point one, I am trying to learn as much of new things as possible. It means if there is some project, activity or anything that you have not done before, just take it. And there is a lot of them, which are boring and unpleasant for senior PMs, so you can get them for free. I am sure that at 90% these will be boring and unpleasant for you too, but you will hopefully learn a lot from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After some time - for somebody it could be one year, for somebody else 5 years - you get into daily routine in PM and just before this happens, it's a time to think about some move. I intentionally wrote 'just before this happens' as I think everybody has some instincts that say it to yourself before it actually happens. Where to move its completely upon your preferences. Some of the possible moves as I see them are as follows: director or site leader, product manager, PM in different area or of course back to position before you have become PM :) I hope that the last item will not happen to you...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1726" LastActivityDate="2012-03-03T15:25:18.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4947" CreationDate="2012-03-03T15:32:06.540" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would take a browse through the pm-software tag as there are many great Q/A within that relate to this topic: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/pm-software&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/pm-software&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, more specifically to your question I have had great success in using JIRA / GreenHopper for managing Bugs / Releases / Milestones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not exactly &quot;light weight&quot; but it would be worth a review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-03-03T15:32:06.540" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4947" CreationDate="2012-03-03T16:29:41.170" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, it sounds like you need to cleanup that backlog. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/a-new-artifact-the-long-term-product-backlog&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt;'s a concise article on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doesn't seem like you need a very lightweight solution (ie your bugtracker, spreadsheet, or basecamp).  That being said.  It seems like you need something that at least has the ability to separate items into types (bug, exception, feature, etc).  I would argue that you simply need  to prioritize them - but categorizing may help that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be un-stack of me to say, but here are a couple I would recommend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend assembla (tickets feature), jira, or fogbuz.  Assembla is the lightest of these.  I would also recommend trello, and pivotal tracker though they are rather workflow based (new, in progress, ready to test, done) and you didn't mention that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1373" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2020-11-01T21:58:20.437" LastActivityDate="2020-11-01T21:58:20.437" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4875" CreationDate="2012-03-03T18:31:28.043" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;@Radu&#xA;Impediment is poor nomenclature by me. Yes, meant for it to be solved at retrospective time. Apologies.&#xA;Disagree with the rest of your post although it provides valuable insight and perspective on how some teams could react to scrum masters who do not &quot;toe the line&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The past 18 years of mine have been spent working for stock exchanges and investment banks globally and the delivery cadence demanded by that business context is much faster than that generally provided by Agile methods (2-4 week sprint). Add to that, the dynamic of traders whose persona &quot;overnight is long term&quot; and margin for error is not that high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My intersect with Agile is via Nonaka's SECI, Boyd's OODA and more recently Snowden's Cynefin and Ken's scrum. In my experience, most agile teams look at the practices as an end in itself without considering the dynamics of the business context and consequent impact on system design and service delivery design. This results in practicing agile without having the agile mindset and service orientation. As Kent Beck says, Agile is custom to the team that adopts it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teams should understand that failure to sprint goals is not about Agile but about a negative business outcome. Providing them the opportunity to learn about it is really a result of prevalent culture (Hoffstede, Schein, etc) more than the Agile process per se. Yes agile provides a forum via the retrospective, but content and outcome therein is really about deeper underlying triggers. Understanding the theory behind the process ensures we do not blindly apply what agile books tell us... i.e. without considering context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3343" LastActivityDate="2012-03-03T18:31:28.043" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4945" CreationDate="2012-03-03T21:04:59.660" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The WBS is a time independent decomposition of the work requires to compete a project.  After you assign owners and sequence the tasks, one output is the Gantt chart.  The Gamnt is uaully at a much higher level.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-03-03T21:04:59.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4928" CreationDate="2012-03-03T21:12:01.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project Management can be a lifelong career.  Several career paths within the domain:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do similar sized projects in new domains.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do larger projects.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lead teams of project managers in support of larger programs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first two are reasonable for you in 2 years.  The third may take a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few things to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is a big focus on Doing.  PMs that just measure lack respect jn the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even if Project Management is your specialty, you need to develop knowledge of the area you are managing.  If not you won't be able to make good decisions.  A content plus B PM skills beats B content and A PM skills.  If either area is a C, you're in deep trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have fun and jump into what interests you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-03-03T21:12:01.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4957" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4960" CreationDate="2012-03-04T03:03:33.383" Score="5" ViewCount="434" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just started doing some small contracts for the first time, and I'm working on a project with a person responsible for dealing with the client and analyzing requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, there was a slight incompleteness in one of the project requirements, and this small change makes a huge change in the time that will be needed to implement the requirements (perhaps doubling or tripling the workload).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who is at fault? Is it the customer for not specifying the requirement, the requirements analyst for not being explicit, or the programmer for not poking holes in it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More importantly, who is responsible here? Will we have to implement the new requirement without asking for extra compensation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If it changes anything, nothing has been signed, there is only a verbal agreement).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3371" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-04T04:16:40.570" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T16:23:28.717" Title="Project Estimation is off by 50% or More! Who is Responsible for Vague Requirements?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4958" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4963" CreationDate="2012-03-04T03:11:48.763" Score="6" ViewCount="213" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is (or should) a project &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; be performed with the intention of achieving business change?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(And if so, does this mean that anything that isn't producing this change must be Business-As-Usual and not part of a project?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1551" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T03:33:33.000" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T23:05:45.860" Title="Are projects always intended to achieve business change?" Tags="&lt;business-improvement&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4958" CreationDate="2012-03-04T03:49:38.490" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Change in a business environment can be a friend or an enemy. There is always some - change resistance - always. Having a good and new idea is not sufficient to guarantee the success of your innovation. There is the selling part. You have to prove your point, to put it across. Sometimes it is easy, sometime it is difficult. Sometimes your idea is stolen. Sometimes you are the trend of the month. Everything depends on the open mindedness of your managers and if they fear competence and innovation or welcome it. This is part of the global business culture of your work place. A non innovating business culture is very difficult to change, because innovators are perceived as trouble makers. In a very innovative environment, change is the daily bread of everybody (I have no company in mind for both examples). If I were a newcomer in a company, I would be careful. Some say you have to be accepted by the group first, but there again some companies will not understand why you are waiting to give your new ideas. Change disturbs habits mostly the old habits that became traditions. But, if no one dare to change anything in our current business reality in Québec, Canada and America, we will continue to go down the drain...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastEditorUserId="301" LastEditDate="2012-03-04T10:06:54.043" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T10:06:54.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4957" CreationDate="2012-03-04T04:01:13.133" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, consider yourself lucky that you haven't yet signed the formal agreement. It's a lot easier to bring up bad news to a client early on than it is at the end, when the client is ready to take delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At such an early stage, you shouldn't need to just eat the cost. At this point the client hasn't lost anything. If they want to get the project done cheaper, they could choose to go with another vendor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, even if you had signed the agreement and were 25%, 50%, 75% of the way to what you believed to be project completion, it's still best to immediately let the client know the situation so that they can let their stakeholders know the situation and adapt their plans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't focus on who is at fault, focus instead on communicating the issue to the client and getting on the same page. Focus on solutions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, since your question is about who is at fault, it's everyone. The client is just as responsible as you are to make sure that the details are hashed out. They're paying for the project, and if there are details that were omitted, they are partially responsible. After all, it's their money, so they should make sure it's being spent wisely and that the value they receive is fair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not to say that you're not responsible either. You're getting paid for the work, and it's your responsibility, and your colleague's responsibility, to make sure you get compensated fairly and can follow through with the requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-04T04:07:48.927" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T04:07:48.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4957" CreationDate="2012-03-04T04:03:20.033" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When we face any kind of problems, there is always a trap: finding a person responsable. Human nature turns often that person into scapegoat paying alone for a collective misunderstanding or mistake. So I would avoid trying to find a responsable right away. I would concentrate now on finding a solution. I would talk as soon as possible to the person who is in charge of contacting your client or/and even call the client myself. Understanding clearly the requirements of a client seems easy, but sometimes you think you know what the other person think. Or you agree on something that is percieved very differently from either sides. So do not be afraid to insist and ask as many questions as you like. Make your client understand that you want to get it right at first. Having a good start in your project is the key of your success. I prefer having a rush at the biginning that in the end. It is a nightmare to find to late you need something you did not planned at first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T04:03:20.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4958" CreationDate="2012-03-04T09:52:45.230" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My view is that a project should always be performed with the intention of achieving business &lt;strong&gt;benefit&lt;/strong&gt;. Change without benefit could be good or bad. One of the keys to having a successful project is to know what the desired outcome is, and to ensure that the project outcomes are 100% aligned to the organisation's goals and objectives. It is also a good idea to include benefit realisation within the scope of your project if you can: don't just deliver the tools and hope that the benefits will follow, but consciously and deliberately drive the benefits out of the project and into the business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The corollary of this is that when the project stops delivering benefit, the project should stop. Knowing when to say &quot;enough!&quot; is one of the hardest, and yet most valuable, skills of a successful project executive (PM, sponsor, or whatever). And the other thing is that the project should also stop even if it will deliver benefits, where these benefits are outweighed by the costs. You should also challenge &quot;nice to have&quot; features within a project, if they don't contribute directly or indirectly to benefit realisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One final comment for the moment on benefits: they do not need to deliver only direct financial returns. There are  techniques for evaluating non-financial benefits and relating those to the costs, so you should look at the total benefits case, and not just the purely financial benefits case, when deciding to start, continue, or shut down a project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to what constitutes BAU: different organisations view this differently. For me, BAU can also deliver change (and again, this should be beneficial change). Developing a new report from a system may be BAU, but if it delivers information that allows the organisation to make better decisions, that is a change but it probably is not a project. Introducing a minor business process improvement may also be BAU, but may also fall short of being counted as a project. However, to directly answer your question, if something is not producing business change, it could be Business As Usual (an active statement of intent), or it could be just inertia (passive, and not being challenged).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastEditorUserId="301" LastEditDate="2012-03-04T10:03:48.430" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T10:03:48.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4958" CreationDate="2012-03-04T11:28:20.660" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not always to achieve business change.  Some projects are a case of running to keep still e.g. refreshing out of date software to latest versions.  Or introducing extra data-centres for disaster recovery purposes (no immediate business change, but brings benefit in the form of insurance)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is similar to trying to run up the down escalator.  There's a certain amount of running you have to do just to stay in the same place.  If you want to get to the top of the escalator (increase market share / deliver more shareholder value), you then need to perform business change projects (e.g. launch new products, create new markets, new initiatives, cut costs etc.) to deliver these benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3365" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T11:28:20.660" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4957" CreationDate="2012-03-04T12:18:02.317" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Missing or incomplete requirements is one of about 1,000,000,000 random variables that will impact you during the course of a complex project, both favorable and unfavorably affecting your cost and schedule estimates.  Many of these variables, you won't even see and, thus, will not have any opportunity to ask who is at fault on this exchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why there are tools and techniques to cope with stochastic variations in our work.  First, this is exactly why you should not be providing single point, deterministic estimates.  Provide instead your best case, your worst case, and the probabilistic distribution that rests on top of that range.  Second, analyze your project with all of those probabilistic distributions using simulation.  Third, do risk management analysis so that you can schedule in your mitigation and contingency items--and their costs--for known unknowns.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We target and price a single point when we pass it along to the client, but you will know where that single point is on your distribution and you will have the resources to cope if things do not go your way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who is at fault?  No one!  None of us can predict with any degree of accuracy the future.  There is always variability in our performance.  And there is always uncertainty in our plans.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, focusing on this nit is a waste of your time.  It sounds like you have more interesting issues on which to work with your estimating, planning, and risk management processes and techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T12:18:02.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4958" CreationDate="2012-03-04T12:27:27.440" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess the counter question would be: why would you spend valuable and limited resources on a project if you were not looking for a change?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's just take RSM maintenance on a real property as an example.  A real property would require restoration, sustainment, and modernization maintenance over its life.  Each type would be a project.  With restoration, there was some type of damange that occurred and the project would return the real property back to its original state--a change.  With modernization, this type of project would cause the real property to achieve a new state, e.g., an updated, more modern kitchen--a change.  With sustainment, this type of maintenance project will cause the real property to maintain its original state.  With this type, it seems like there was no change.  But there really was.  You are taking a component of the real property and changing what has deteriorated over time.  So there is still a change, still a benefit and return, even though the real property maintained its original baseline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T12:27:27.440" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4680" CreationDate="2012-03-04T13:27:22.863" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might want to consider using a tool like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pivotaltracker.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pivotal Tracker&lt;/a&gt;. It gives you a way to have a digital board that you can share with another team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say you want to stick with a physical board, but obviously that is impossible since you're dealing with teams that are not in the same office. You can continue to use physical board as the main tool, but instead of uploading images of the physical board, mirror all the data on the digital board. This will give the remote team a high fidelity representation of the board. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will require a bit more work than just taking a picture of the board, but it would give the remote workers the ability to read the cards, see the back of the cards, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the size of the physical board -- my company uses boards that are around six feet wide, which is a decent size. I definitely wouldn't go smaller. Make it a whiteboard with a metal backing. This allows you to write on the board, obviously, and with a metal backing it's easy to attach magnets for whatever reason. For example, some of our teams use different colored magnets for each team member, and they place the magnets on the cards they are working on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3189" LastEditorUserId="3189" LastEditDate="2012-03-04T15:34:53.250" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T15:34:53.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4967" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4969" CreationDate="2012-03-04T14:26:59.873" Score="3" ViewCount="522" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know what Knowledge Management best practices that you follow in your organization?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1969" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T03:33:04.793" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T03:33:04.793" Title="What are the Knowledgement Management best practices you follow in your organization?" Tags="&lt;knowledge-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="871" CreationDate="2012-03-04T14:35:53.670" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found getting a PMP is worth it to have if you think that the certificate will allow you to move up in your current company or you think that you would look for another position in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I have found that solid experience is much more valuable than a PMP certificate, it certainly opens doors for you when job searching!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information, you can check out a few articles I've written here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://clevergems.com/pmp-certification-for-healthcare-it-project-managers-is-it-worth-it/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMP certificate- is it worth it?&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://clevergems.com/what-you-can-expect-applying-preparing-and-taking-the-pmp-exam/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;What to expect applying, preparing, and taking the PMP exam&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3372" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T14:35:53.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4967" CreationDate="2012-03-04T19:45:32.917" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've worked for several different organization and the &quot;&lt;strong&gt;write a wiki page&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; was the solution for all the knowledge management related problems. I believe that a good set of wiki pages can solve every basic knowledge management problems. However, there are some things which should happen in order to have it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;all the pages should be editable by everybody&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;all the pages should be reviewed and maintained&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;teach the colleagues how to use wiki&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;set categories properly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the starting page should contain the information about the structure (where to find certain pages, how to create a new one - avoiding duplication)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;everything should be on the wiki. Again, everything (even plans, events, ideas, design documents etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;backup&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you follow this, you'll have a place where you can find everything you need for your work/job/assignment etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I was working on a prototype, and instead of various documents we used a wiki page. The prototype was thrown away, but all the data we came up was there and our customer was able to find it after years and use it for a different purpose. Actually, he liked our wiki more than our other projects and applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T19:45:32.917" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4971" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-03-04T20:07:58.707" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Knowledge Management involves several strategies that an organization may use to educate, train, share experiences, document processes and procedures, distribute information, and keep that information up to date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Special software is usually used to store the information. Some companies use wikis, others use cloud-based tools like Google Sites or Google Docs. Some use Wordpress. There are many other ways an organization can store information that lets users contribute to its expansion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Knowledge management can also involve media other than written communication. Some strategies involve the use of videos, screenshots, images, or audio. The choice of media oftentimes depends on the difficulty level of the subject, the audience of the subject, and the frequency of updates required on the topic. Some strategies utilize a healthy mixture of these different media to help the audience improve their recall and recognition of the subject matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More information about the topic of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Knowledge Transfer&lt;/a&gt; can be found on Wikipedia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-04T20:07:58.707" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T20:07:58.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4972" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-03-04T20:07:58.707" Score="0" Body="Knowledge Management involves several strategies that an organization may use to educate, train, share experiences, document processes and procedures, distribute information, and keep that information up to date." OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-04T20:07:58.707" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T20:07:58.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4958" CreationDate="2012-03-04T22:29:29.997" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience if there is no business value you don't start a project (or any other work). Whether or not that results in a business change is a different question. However, I think it is sensible to assume that a project without business change won't result in any business value. If a project does not change anything, why would you want to spend time and effort?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some teams work using projects some don't because all work items are so small that the overhead of a 'project' is too much. Some teams use projects for running certain initiatives more formally. Different companies have different ways for using projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general I would say that a project should not be started if it doesn't provide sufficient business value. I would also state that a desired business change may trigger a project rather than the other way round saying 'let's start a project' for the sake of it and sometimes this may result in a business change. Maybe the distinction between business value and business change helps to clarify this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2318" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T22:29:29.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4957" CreationDate="2012-03-05T01:10:45.030" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has been my experience that the best requirement documents specify all the requirements (except for those that aren't specified).  Other specify the important requirements and leave the rest unspecified.  In either case, it is usually the unspecified requirements that increase the cost (however measured).  The design process should be padded to allow for a reasonable amount of unspecified requirements.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scope creep is another way that requirements get added to an existing project.  After all it won't cost much to add the new feature now, but it will cost a lot later.  I've seen a developer work a solid month programming a screen so that the reset button was disabled if the screen was edited back to it original content.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unstable requirements also increase costs.  The worst case I saw was when the same feature was added Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  (Tuesday and Thursday the feature was removed.)  This occurred 18 months into a 6 month project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A fourth area of requirements change is when the original requirements were incorrect.   This should be dealt with quickly to ensure the project gets back on track with minimal rework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all cases you are dealing with requirements change.  As other have noted, this should be managed and communicated to the client as soon as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T01:10:45.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4957" CreationDate="2012-03-05T06:23:50.503" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with others, I agree that it is no one's fault. The blame could easily be spread around like a nice layer of peanut butter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as with others, I agree that figuring out who's at fault is the wrong approach. Finding out who left the barn door open is not going to get the livestock back in the barn. Cowboy up and get out their to herd them all back in. Focus on the solution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To this I want to add two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- What will you do differently next time?: One of the marks of a great project management leader is that they look ahead to the next time. They ask &quot;how do we make sure this doesn't happen again.&quot; We all know the old saying &quot;fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.&quot; Failure is OKAY! What isn't is not learning from it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2- As the PM it is our fault: No, I'm not saying you should toss yourself on the sword. But in the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thegorillaisnamedhogarth.blogspot.com/2011/02/responsible-authority-gorilla.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Responsible Authority Gorilla&lt;/a&gt;&quot; I talk about how we PMs need to step up and take responsiblity. Even when we are not &quot;in charge&quot; we have a responsiblity to lead and make the project suceed. So when their is a failure, we need to look long and hard at ourselves and find out how we can make sure we don't miss this failure in the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T06:23:50.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4976" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-05T12:41:35.887" Score="4" ViewCount="4893" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should a project Manager include his own cost when costing a project? I have included the cost of resources I have hired to work on the project, but should I include my own cost to the business in the resource costs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3375" LastActivityDate="2017-04-22T05:44:37.403" Title="Should a project Manager include his own cost when costing a project?" Tags="&lt;cost-management&gt;&lt;budget&gt;&lt;resources&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4976" CreationDate="2012-03-05T13:10:43.027" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course, your business should be interessed in the overall cost of project (in terms on time, resources, money, ...). It is common to split the cost of project in two category: &quot;Inner cost&quot; and &quot;direct cost&quot;. Responding to your question, PM's cost should be part of the &quot;inner cost&quot; of your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3221" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T13:10:43.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4976" CreationDate="2012-03-05T13:35:20.907" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think in most cases this is already decided by contract or corporate policies, so PM is just following it. From my experience in most cases PM cost is part of project cost, mostly indirect cost...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1726" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T13:35:20.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4976" CreationDate="2012-03-05T13:47:35.273" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should a project Manager include his own cost when costing a project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The cost of project management is in the project of course, but as far as I can tell the project costs are rarely decided by project managers&lt;/strong&gt;; the customer decides how much he is willing to pay for a certain project. Then executives calculate a bit and end up with a budget for the project. Of course, a project manager can help them making the decision based on his experience, but being involved in the decision making process is rare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the &lt;em&gt;project manager costs&lt;/em&gt; sound like a &lt;em&gt;cover budget&lt;/em&gt; for me: it can cover a lot of things, which is not transparent, and eventually will lead to unpleasant discussions. &lt;strong&gt;I suggest to be more specific on this when you put this information into a plan.&lt;/strong&gt; For example, you might not be able to use project hours for traveling, visiting the customer etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know companies, where executives calculate 10% of management cost per team member, so if you have a team with 5 people, then you, as a project manager, can spend 50% of your time with the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are looking for a different way of budgeting, have a look at Bjarte Bogsnes's &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/x8XUib&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Beyond Budgeting&lt;/a&gt; book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T13:47:35.273" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4976" CreationDate="2012-03-05T14:04:33.523" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;All labor and materiel resources required to successfully deliver a project are part of the contract budget base.  This would include project management processes, which typically is between 5% to maybe as high as 20% of the total budget base, depending on industry and other factors.  PM processes include the PM role, as well as project PM control roles.  So, yes, project costs include PM labor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T14:04:33.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4976" CreationDate="2012-03-05T15:46:19.793" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is one of those questions that is best answered with &quot;it depends&quot;.&#xA;It depends on how your particular company looks at, and charges for, projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two ways for a PM to be costed - as a 'direct' cost; a cost that is a direct cost of doing the project (project resources, subcontractors, etc.), or as an 'indirect' cost; a cost that is 'associated' with the project, but wold still be there if the project wasn't (rent, utilities, office supplies, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some companies will look assign a PM to a single project, for the specific and only job of managing that project. In these types of cases the PM cost will most likely be considered a &quot;direct&quot; cost and be built into the budget as a separate line item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other cases though, the PM may be assigned to multiple projects, or have another responsibility as well as the project. In these cases the the cost of the PM may be considered  and &quot;indirect&quot; cost and be covered under the Overhead cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So really it's where do you fall in relation to direct or indirect costs, and can you justify your expense in the project to the client?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T15:46:19.793" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4976" CreationDate="2012-03-05T15:51:12.750" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As previously mentioned, You have to specify internal and external budget. &#xA;Selling a product, we are presenting to the customer offer on a particular product. Customer is interested in the price and delivery time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project is implemented by a team, part of which can be developers, analysts, designers and also project manager.&#xA;Hence, all the costs of individual team members should be included in your internal budget and final price should incorporate all of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are able to specify the fixed costs of communication, such as transfers to the customer, or accommodation if the project requires them, you can include them in the external budget as part of the offer. But you can also increase the price of the project - then client doesn't have to deal with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a time when the worktime of all team members is estimated and internal budget is created, you can specify a concrete offer for the customer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PM's work should be included there for sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2955" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T15:51:12.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4958" CreationDate="2012-03-05T16:07:36.913" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, business projects are done with the goal of business change. There are a number of areas there projects are done with a goal of improving the lives of others. Non-profits or international aid/development for instance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But outside of that, if you consider that anything outside of general operations or routine assembly line type work could be considered &quot;business change&quot; or trying to improve the current state, then you could say that all projects are done with the goal of some type of business change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And without that outcome or goal, it probably can't be considered a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T16:07:36.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4957" CreationDate="2012-03-05T16:23:28.717" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will agree with JMort that you should count yourself lucky that you caught this so early. In this case you do still have the ability to go back and renegotiate without it being contentious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for who's at fault - the blame lies with both you (your company) and the client. Somewhere in the process parties from both sides got together and negotiated this. And at some point the client said &quot;we've told you everything and explained our requirements completely&quot;, and someone from your side said &quot;thanks, we understand completely and have no more questions&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why it's SO critical that going into a project you have a written agreement and a detailed scope document, so that later when these issues come up (notice I said 'when', not 'if') you have something to fall back on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T16:23:28.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4976" CreationDate="2012-03-05T16:43:55.087" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project management activities are part of the scope of the work of a project. The budget for a project should capture all costs associated with the entire scope for the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly the baseline plans for schedule, risk, resources and quality should all capture the entire and complete project scope, including PM activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T16:43:55.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4986" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-05T18:59:01.907" Score="3" ViewCount="2167" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been using JIRA for my project management since about a year. Before, I used Basecamp which was pretty useful, but someday I found out I needed time management and other more complex features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take the fact that I'm the ONLY user on my JIRA instance into account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been trying Nirvana2 today, and it reminded me that all JIRA's complexity has became more of a &quot;time hog&quot; than a quick and efficient GTD utility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd just need simple stuff like, project management, task management (maybe with tags or something that makes the sorting easier). Attached file management, time management and reporting capabilities would be a good plus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question I'm asking myself today is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For a freelance software and web developer, what would be better to use? A complete Agile solution such as JIRA and Redmine, or a simple tool like Basecamp, Nirvana2, etc?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for shedding me some light of yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;edit: I discovered Nirvana2 and Teambox which seems to be awesome...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1461" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T03:06:45.623" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T11:19:15.950" Title="Most suitable project management tool for a freelancer" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ClosedDate="2015-09-30T22:26:33.843" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4987" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4989" CreationDate="2012-03-05T20:29:47.043" Score="16" ViewCount="779" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today's news is that a developer &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/blog/1068-public-key-security-vulnerability-and-mitigation&quot;&gt;hacked&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://github.com/&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;. He found a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/GitHub-security-incident-highlights-Ruby-on-Rails-problem-1463207.html&quot;&gt;vulnerability&lt;/a&gt; in Ruby on Rails, reported it and since nothing had happened - he was ignored and considered as a troll -, he used the vulnerability and hacked the second most famous service which uses Ruby on Rails (github).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although, this incident has nothing to do with project management, it got me thinking; there are lot of developers who lack the necessary communication skills and they act instead of talk. I know a handful of developers who would act the same way as the guy who hacked github: they would cause harm, just to prove that they are right. Their intention is questionable for sure, but they are good at what they are doing, but they lack some useful soft skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How would you help (coach) such a developer so that he won't act and will do the &lt;em&gt;right thing&lt;/em&gt;? I used &lt;em&gt;help&lt;/em&gt; on purpose, because firing someone is an easy answer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let's say that you find a critical error in your customer's application, but she doesn't listen. What is your best practice to persuade her so that she'll take the problem seriously?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T03:27:30.417" LastActivityDate="2012-11-30T16:15:18.527" Title="GitHub Hacked? What to do When the Ignored Developer Strikes Back?" Tags="&lt;risk&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4987" CreationDate="2012-03-05T21:58:12.140" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 1:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the event, you may have limited scope to &amp;quot;help&amp;quot; the developer, especially if he has acted in any way that could be considered illegal. In such a case, the best you can hope for is to talk the issue through with the developer, show what damage has been caused to your company as a result of the developer's actions, and ask him to give his perspective on the options that are available to you. You may still have to part company with him, unfortunately, to protect yourself and your company, no matter how reluctant you may be to go down that route.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To prevent a similar situation in future, consider introducing an acceptable use policy within the company, which explicitly states that such behaviour is not acceptable and, importantly, explains why. Make sure this is communicated to all existing and employees, and that they have the opportunity to discuss this at team meetings / one-to-one sessions, or whatever feels right to you. Explain that this is to protect them as well as protecting the company, and encourage your employees to talk about the need for this. Cover this at induction sessions for new employees too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 2:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that the first action is to put your concerns into writing, and raise a formal project risk if that is possible. That should get her attention. Follow it up with a phone call or even a face-to-face meeting, in which you spell out the worst that could happen if the error is not fixed. At the end of the day, it is her responsibility to act to repair the fault, but you have a responsibility (which you have already recognised) to communicate this. However, having made your case as strongly as possible, and suggested solutions if you can, the final responsibility lies with the customer. You have one further decision: if the issue is so serious that it could also damage your reputation, you may wish to walk away rather than being associated with the issue, but hopefully it won't come to that, and your alternative might be to quote for a fix for the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T02:57:57.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4987" CreationDate="2012-03-05T22:01:34.233" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;1: First of all, make the &lt;em&gt;right thing&lt;/em&gt; as easy to do as you can and make sure it's well understood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this particular instance a Github spokesman responded:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We haven’t been as clear as we should have been on how to responsibly&#xA;  disclose security problems, and for that I’m sorry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, think about what the &lt;em&gt;wrong thing&lt;/em&gt; would be, and consider that there may be &lt;a href=&quot;http://codebutler.com/firesheep&quot;&gt;different degrees&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;em&gt;right thing&lt;/em&gt;. For instance, you could invite people to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geekosystem.com/bender-school-board/&quot;&gt;come and hack your site&lt;/a&gt; in a safer environment, for reward or prestige. Or you could just be forgiving to people like Egor - who didn't really cause any harm, though he could have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think it was Egor who lacked the necessary communication skills in this instance. He was providing information, for free, and the Rails community didn't have the communication skills to encourage him to share. The onus to communicate effectively is on the person who will benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2: Be persuasive. Do other things to help her trust you. Tell stories about other people who didn't listen. Then, if talk doesn't work, act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T22:01:34.233" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4987" CreationDate="2012-03-05T23:05:55.183" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;So the developer felt ignored when he escalated a threat, so he showed 'em and showed 'em good?  Organizations have every right to either mitigate their threats or simply accept them and continue on. It's a business decision based on threat level and costs to mitigate and other considerations. They do not need to have a risk escalator prove them wrong by making a threat with a probability that is less than certain into a reality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you imagine replacing developer with TSA agent and hacking into a bomb?  'Boom!&quot; &quot;See, I told you!&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fire him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T23:05:55.183" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4986" CreationDate="2012-03-06T03:12:25.960" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are the only person working on the project, use a simple tool designed for one person or smaller teams.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our organization uses JIRA, but we have a lot of people with different needs, so for us, JIRA makes sense, but when you're one person and you don't have hours to sit and be the JIRA administrator, you need something that works with you without feeling like you need to hire an assistant just to keep your project updated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basecamp is a great tool for smaller teams. So is Trello. In some cases, you may even be able to get by with a Google Doc or a Spreadsheet. They're free, and can be configured for almost any purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do freelance work as a side job, and I've never used any paid software, unless the client provided it.  Of course, what you use ideally depends on the complexity of what you're working on and how many people you're communicating with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter what you choose, go with something simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T03:12:25.960" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4045" CreationDate="2012-03-06T04:49:32.433" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always created a separate task for each team member called &quot;lost time&quot; that they could book time to that they felt wasn't directly related to producing one of the main deliverables or main activities.  As a project manager, that gave me something to track each week when actuals came in.  I make it clear that billing time to this isn't bad in any way and part of naturally working on a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep tabs on this and it gives you a handle on the demands on the teams's time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, to address the other aspect of your question, I don't know of any good way of working with MS Project that doesn't have you reconciling the hours of the team as they book them and re-adjustiing the plan manually.  If you do this weekly (e.g. ask for hours on Friday, then replan Friday afternoon/Monday morning) it will take 1-3 hours but you will have a very good feel for the project &quot;by the numbers&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T04:49:32.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4987" CreationDate="2012-03-06T05:25:52.743" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I were Egor's project manager, I would consider myself to have failed Egor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My second principle is &quot;Communication is 100% of your (the project manager, scrum master, coach) job.&quot; This issue falls right into this maxim. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As project manager's it is our job to understand everyone on our team. In any endeavor with creative minds (software coding is definitely one of those) you are going to have brilliant people who are not good at communicating in ways that most people will follow. As project managers we can't demand that the team all talk in one syllable worded PowerPoint slides that the CEO will understand. Instead it is our job to listen to the team and translate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've made use of the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DISC_assessment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DISC&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; profile system for this, with great effect. In a hyper nutshell, DISC is a communication model based on people's &quot;default&quot; communication style. Ds are your storm the hill Generals, short, to the point. Is are your glad handing sales persons, &quot;enough about me talking about me, why don't you talk about me&quot;. Ss are the team mom, &quot;can't we all get along?&quot; And the Cs are the data crunchers, &quot;That would be illogical.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My bet is Egor would rate as a High C with High S tendencies. He's going to provide you with a twenty page written report on everything he's found wrong with Ruby. He also won't start with the point, instead he'll start at the very beginning and explain everything, step by step. Your average CEO's head would have exploded by page two. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project managers (scrum masters, coaches) have to be better than your average CEO. We have to learn to listen in the way that our teams communicate. We have to know how to take that information and then translate it into something anyone else can understand, &quot;Hey, CEO, loss of customer trust resulting in total revenue meltdown and negative press that will leave the company without enough money to fund your golden parachute.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were Egor's project manager, I would feel I had failed both my team mate and my company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; This is a hyper condensed and generalized concept of DISC and communication translation. This is not a specific recommendation of action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2012-11-30T16:15:18.527" LastActivityDate="2012-11-30T16:15:18.527" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4986" CreationDate="2012-03-06T07:02:03.530" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use Plantasker.com myself and freelance about four to five projects a month. It integrates with Google Apps which is a value add for me and is scaleable as well so when I do need to work with colleagues I can. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a firm believer in simplicity and this system keeps me on track without all the bloat and unnecessary features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3380" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T07:02:03.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4986" CreationDate="2012-03-06T08:32:38.183" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've tried a bunch of different solutions as a freelancer working alone or with small teams.  I haven't found an integrated tool that isn't too complex for my needs.  Redmine was a lot of work to set up and felt clunky and slow even when running locally, so I stopped using it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use several different apps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basecamp for almost every project, but always the client's instance rather than my own. I tend not to keep my personal Basecamp updated when I'm working by myself.  Too much work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For scheduling/estimating I'm using SG Project, which is pretty good, pretty stable, and not too expensive.  Sadly there is no demo - it's only available through the Mac App Store.  I've used OmniPlan off and on but the latest version crashes constantly (it will crash every time you Undo), and loses data, so it's basically unusable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For time tracking, reporting, and billing I have been using Freshbooks.  Of all these tools, it's the only one that has without a doubt saved me time and effort.  A client made me sign up for it nine months ago and I've been happily using the free tier since then.  It is pretty bare-bones as a time tracker but you can easily convert your tracked hours into an invoice and it keeps a running total of the money you've earned which is a nice motivational tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tried Harvest for this as well, but I didn't like it nearly as much.  It was less friendly and just felt like another burden.  It didn't help that the iPhone app would consistently screw up my timesheets.  Haven't used it since March 2011, so they may have improved it since.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3383" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T08:32:38.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4947" CreationDate="2012-03-06T10:04:38.053" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;2000 issues for 5 persons (which means 400 bugs per person) to be fixed in the current project/release seems a big number either way you look at it. To me it seems more a process rather than a tools issue. A tool supports and optimizes your process, but cannot fix an inherently unoptimized or broken process. The best you can do is to have a tool that filters, searches and prioritizes the bugs decently so any team member can have effective visibility into what is in their backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1546" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T10:04:38.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5008" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-06T12:02:38.163" Score="5" ViewCount="210" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a scrum/agile system student, I find the situation where you have to write up a user story in the classical form and at the same time, describe the behaviour of parallel workflow, very hard. As a very simple and general example that can describe the situation, we can write this user story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user that wants to purchase an article, I want to be able to pay with MasterCard, so that the purchased order can be set to status 'to deliver'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On this user story, there are tons of different &quot;user task alternate workflow&quot; or situations that can define different processes (not necessary errors), like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;While a customer places an order, their credit card failed&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;While a customer places an order, their user session times out&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;While a customer uses an ATM machine, the machine runs out of receipts and needs to warn the customer&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;While a customer places an order, their credit card number doesn't exist&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;While a customer places an order, the PIN failed&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(maybe are not the best examples, but just for describing side effects).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Agile/Scrum system, you can only describe the desired behaviour, but not the side effects/parallel workflows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do you advice me to put in the backlog stories that covers these situations?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do you advice me to create stories that follow a &quot;Task Process Workflow Diagram&quot;? (this second question is different but related)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3236" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2019-05-31T08:33:27.257" LastActivityDate="2019-05-31T14:13:28.053" Title="how to cover details (side effect not desired workflow) with scrum user stories" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5008" CreationDate="2012-03-06T12:53:00.957" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of nice techniques teams use is &lt;strong&gt;writing user story verification criteria on the back on a sticky note&lt;/strong&gt; or in additional information of user story (if you use electronic tool). All these detailed scenarios you mention work well as verification criteria and using them as such means that you don't lose this additional information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I wouldn't advise making them separate user stories as you would go to so much details that you'd have to face much hassle juggling all the stories, although one could consider it a viable alternative as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And most of all, &lt;strong&gt;don't get too attached to a specific format of user stories&lt;/strong&gt;. If you need and want additional information just write it down and attach it somehow. Your goal should be common understanding of the work which is to be done and not following book definition of user story. User story is just a means to achieve common understanding goal, so as long as team understands story's influence on alternative workflow you get it right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T12:53:00.957" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="456" CreationDate="2012-03-06T13:08:48.927" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it is a sales-focused company, you're in for pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have no sense of accomplishment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They don't care. Just get it done. They have $£€ signs on their eyes knowing they will be able to sell that wrist-watch that is also a big-ben transformer that can make coffee while playing music.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;but it is passable as a wrist watch.&quot; instead of explaining and insisting on the &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; approach. (&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/3972/3283&quot;&gt;Michael Durrant&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does it mean the &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; approach? Are you just one of those guys that want to do things &lt;em&gt;by the book&lt;/em&gt;? As long as it sells, who cares? They cannot wait 3 months for you to refactor and to it &lt;em&gt;the right way&lt;/em&gt;. They want to start selling it next week; they already made the brochures and promised it to some customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, maybe the &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; way would make it easier to expand the product later, or make it more efficient, or whatever, but they probably don't even know what new crazy idea they might come up with tomorrow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel your pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: Yes, I know this doesn't really &lt;em&gt;answer&lt;/em&gt; your question.. and it's full of assumptions. I'd like to know how close I was, though ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3283" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T13:08:48.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5011" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-06T13:19:58.910" Score="13" ViewCount="2012" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am really interested in expert opinions about my approach on UX/UI design and Agile software development. I hope someone with expertise on this field could help me with my doubts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my perspective, in order to create a backlog (collection of user stories) for an MVP (Lean development), you first need to build up a basic &quot;Information Arquitecture&quot; project, where you can design a &quot;Task Workflow&quot;, &quot;Site Map&quot;, &quot;wireframes&quot; and &quot;Interaction Design&quot;, so that you can study and design the behaviour of a user, what he/she has to do to achieve certain tasks, web page flows, how is the real and expected flow from beginning to end, or how to make the &quot;user experience&quot; better, such as with less clicks, being more understandable, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you have gathered all this information needed for your MVP, you can start creating &quot;epics&quot; and its related &quot;user stories&quot;, so that you can accomplish &quot;user tasks&quot; (business value tasks). Obviously, this &quot;UX/UI specification&quot; will change among the project, but the basic picture will remain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you think about this software development approach? We could name it &quot;predesign UX/UI MVP&quot;, so after that, you can start your &quot;Lean Agile software development&quot;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this approach, you have double a bird's eye view. Light UI/UX predesign (flow tasks, sketching interaction, etc), with no &quot;High Fidelity prototyping&quot;, and user stories backlog, so developers have better knowledge and design can be up front.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Another doubt is where to locate &quot;Art Design&quot; and &quot;High Fidelity UI prototyping&quot; :-)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3236" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-07T02:55:51.190" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T03:00:01.513" Title="What first, UX/UI or Scrum Backlog to create a MVP?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;lean&gt;&lt;design&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4702" CreationDate="2012-03-06T13:58:07.393" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never subscribed to such a magazine but as a result of your question I have become curious if there is any good magazine and I have done small research/look-up for such.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have use following criteria:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;should be about project management in general&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;at least some content focused on IT area&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;more popular one than academic one &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;something for reading on evenings at home&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on above I have found these two interesting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmtoday.co.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;project manager today&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;management today&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this will help you a bit. I will possibly subscribe to one of them so I will hopefully add some real life experience at some time later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1726" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T13:58:07.393" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-10-16T19:15:49.630" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5011" CreationDate="2012-03-06T13:58:42.430" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a good question, and there's a great set of answers and comments on the UX SE: &lt;a href=&quot;https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/15728/at-what-point-in-the-development-process-should-ux-come-into-play-in-an-agile-wo&quot;&gt;At what point in the development process should UX come into play in an Agile work environment?&lt;/a&gt;, and here in PM SE there's &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/3017/where-should-design-be-incorporated-in-an-agile-process&quot;&gt;Where should design be incorporated in an agile process?&lt;/a&gt; that also has good information.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience leading development teams and managing projects, it's important that &lt;em&gt;if your dev team does not include UX&lt;/em&gt; that the UX team also be running Agile in parallel and there's good cross-talk to ensure that the stories are communicated as appropriate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I try to do, though, is ensure that UX &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; part of the overall dev team/project team and we're all operating in the same Agile environment. In that case, your description of a process seems generally fine to me, with a few notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't let the UX group slip into waterfall when they're supposed to&#xA;be doing Agile; don't let them produce enormous amounts of wireframes&#xA;and and other documentation up front but instead find the balance&#xA;that allows them to produce something meaningful but keep the process&#xA;moving.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remember that UX is going to be iterative as well; this initial work&#xA;should not be the last time they're involved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally don't make a distinction between &quot;UX work done before technical dev happens&quot; and &quot;Agile software development.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2864" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T13:58:42.430" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="456" CreationDate="2012-03-06T14:17:12.393" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It feels to me that your project manager do not accept &quot;your autority&quot;; he (or she) is not listening at all. I am talking about your team member autority. Your project manager will make you pay the price of your collective failure. Your are both fighting an useless battle. You should have an explanation with him; an honest one. If he does not listen again, he will be responsable of the collective mis-organization of your project. If you face a wall, I would talk to the boss of your boss. He won't like it; but you will save a bondel of money to your compagny. You should be the project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T14:17:12.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4045" CreationDate="2012-03-06T14:27:28.513" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I call it the &quot;meeting mania&quot;. You have many meetings to organize yourself and be more efficient and effective in your dayly tasks; and you end up having less time or no time to do them! I don't like meetings that much. It makes me fall asleep most of the time; I prefer unformal communication on the floor. Your situation look to me as there is no boss to decide or to make a final decision. To much consultations; not enough quick decisions. A receipy for burnout of the team members. Someone should be put in charge of cleaning up those unefficient process a little.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T14:27:28.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4702" CreationDate="2012-03-06T15:00:33.107" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/Knowledge-Center/Publications-PM-Network.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PM Network&lt;/a&gt; has many articles relevant to IT PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the PM Journal (put out by Wiley and PMI on a quarterly basis) has tons of good material -though it is more on the academic side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T15:00:33.107" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-03-06T15:00:33.107" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4702" CreationDate="2012-03-06T17:06:45.227" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend Inc.com (it has a paper version too).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1546" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T17:06:45.227" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-03-06T17:06:45.227" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4702" CreationDate="2012-03-06T18:47:20.557" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I realize this isn't a IT PM mag but... Harvard Business Review would be my vote. Good take on the management side of things, case studies, etc. to help develop your soft skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1781" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T18:47:20.557" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-03-06T18:47:20.557" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5011" CreationDate="2012-03-06T20:17:43.160" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What do you think about this software development approach? we could name it &quot;predesign UX/UI MVP&quot;, so after that, you can start your &quot;Lean Agile software development&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm usually not that pessimistic, but I don't think it would work. The &lt;em&gt;Lean Startup&lt;/em&gt; approach and &lt;em&gt;Agile Software Development Methods&lt;/em&gt; may have common roots, but their ways are different. If you publish an MVP then you have to follow the process of the &lt;em&gt;Lean Startup&lt;/em&gt; process, which depends on the feedback given by the customer on the MVP and the measured data. &lt;strong&gt;How would you like to deal with this feedback and data?&lt;/strong&gt; You cannot simply create a backlog, because it will contain several items; however, in &lt;em&gt;Lean Startup&lt;/em&gt; there are only two choices after an MVP: Continue with the next feature, or pivot. Having a backlog is a waste of time and resources in this case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a project highly depends on the user interface you can have a prototype, which is just fine. The customer can give feedback, but every feedback will be a new user story, and they have to be prioritized, or forget about &lt;em&gt;Agile&lt;/em&gt; and do the development as it is described in &lt;em&gt;Lean Startup&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-07T03:00:01.513" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T03:00:01.513" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4986" CreationDate="2012-03-06T23:09:34.343" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like others, I agree that it's best to keep it simple. I would take a second look at Basecamp since they just updated their UI and added a slew of new features. While it may not have everything out of the box, it's extremely flexible. Need better time tracking/invoicing? Integrate it with Freshbooks or Harvest (I've used Basecamp/Harvest in the past and was extremely pleased). There are even some solutions for reporting capabilities: &lt;a href=&quot;https://37signals.com/extras#basecamp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://37signals.com/extras#basecamp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I understand it's not &quot;one&quot; app in one place, it may be beneficial. When you're in Basecamp, you can focus just on the project/tasks without the clutter of everything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As said, when I was a freelancer I used Basecamp/Harvest and loved it. However, I now work for a company and just rolled out JIRA, and while it's more complex than Basecamp we can finetune it exactly to the company's needs (with &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/software/bonfire/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bonfire&lt;/a&gt; being a big part of that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3171" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T23:09:34.343" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5021" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5022" CreationDate="2012-03-06T23:35:15.007" Score="4" ViewCount="211" Body="&lt;p&gt;I met with the project stakeholders. I documented their goals into a standard WBS structure and a project plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I present my project plan to the stakeholders and ask them for input/feedback on things I may overlooked or durations I may have under/over- estimated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it a big no-no?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3212" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-10-05T04:58:05.570" LastActivityDate="2014-10-05T04:58:05.570" Title="Can I ask the stakeholders to review my project plan?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5021" CreationDate="2012-03-07T00:33:18.413" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;More communication? Yes! Always.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Especially if you can't come up with any reason not to.  The worst thing that could happen is that you actually find problems and have to fix them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as estimates, be careful.  Don't let non-technical people try to bargain with estimates.  (Hopefully)Those estimates were created by the technical people who will be doing the work with good reason.  Just because a business person doesn't like the estimate, doesn't mean it should be changed.  They may however reconsider some piece of functionality as not as important if it comes at a much greater cost than they anticipated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1373" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T00:33:18.413" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1856" CreationDate="2012-03-07T01:51:23.590" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer depends on the use case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If the spec is part of a larger project&lt;/strong&gt; then you're probably going to have to link the SRS requirements to parent requirements in a higher-level spec. The best way to do this is with custom built tools that are designed for requirements management and traceability. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www-01.ibm.com/software/awdtools/doors/?cn=agus_rtnlrd-20100514&amp;amp;cm=k&amp;amp;csr=google&amp;amp;cr=ibm_rational_doors&amp;amp;ct=AGRAK616&amp;amp;ck=ibm_rational_doors&amp;amp;mkwid=s5SoErOAC_14791201774_432dt32930&amp;amp;cmp=109HG&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DOORS&lt;/a&gt; is a standard in the Aerospace and Defense industry (and potentially others as well, but I don't know about them). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it's a custom and specialized product and it can take significant effort to procure, properly configure, maintain, etc. It requires training and super users to extract the full functionality and thus is probably pretty expensive. If you really need this type of a solution it's available, but honestly it sounds like you don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If the spec is stand-alone&lt;/strong&gt; and/or the project is small (which sounds like your situation), then I suggest a lower-overhead method. Try storing the content of the text in a plain text file and using your version control system (VCS) for configuration management. I see several benefits of this approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you are writing software, so your developers should already have a VCS that they know how to use and like&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;plain text files are easily diffed so it will be easy to see changes as the requirements evolve and mature&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;plain text files can be easily merged, so several people can be working on the document at the same time; this is especially true if you have enough of an organization structure on your team and in the document to prevent people from simultaneously editing the same sections of the file&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;because text files don't support it, your people will be less inclined to spend time doing non-value-added work like formatting the spec to make it look pretty&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the last benefit is also the biggest downside: text files are relatively ugly when they're printed out. If this is going to be a problem for your team (e.g. you need to deliver the spec to a customer or post it to a website and want it to look pretty), then have one of your devs write a script or something that operates on the raw text file** and outputs something with the necessary formatting in a format like &lt;code&gt;html&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;pdf&lt;/code&gt;, or &lt;code&gt;docx&lt;/code&gt;. You can store this script in the VCS as well, so between the script and the text file(s) you can lock down not only the content but how it looks in final layout. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;** &lt;sub&gt;One obvious option here is to write the script in Markdown--the same mark up language used on Stack Exchange. Then you just have to run your text file through a Markdown parser and feed it up with some CSS.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="360" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T01:51:23.590" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5021" CreationDate="2012-03-07T03:58:11.737" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The real questions are &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; you ask, &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; should you ask, and &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; you should ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I totally agree with Jody, but here are some things I've picked up in regards to involving the client in project planning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I almost lost a client because I was too technical and he thought that meant the final product would be too technical.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I went 2 months over a deadline with another client, and they told me daily that they trusted me and were confident that it would be worth the wait because I &quot;understand what we're looking for.&quot;  This confidence was because I asked for feedback on their business model and operations more often than the UI or data model. When I did have techy questions, I could frame them around relevant use-cases of their business.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One of the reasons the aforementioned project went so far past the deadline is because I let their business model and use-cases drive the project &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the statement of work was signed and the project had started, leading to significant changes in scope.  So  definitely review your project plan &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; starting the project. They will want you to change things with delivered project no matter what, so wait until it's over for feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A fellow engineer once told me &quot;Don't &lt;em&gt;ask&lt;/em&gt; them what it should do, &lt;em&gt;tell&lt;/em&gt; them what it &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; do.&quot; It sounds very technocratic, but he told me this because I went into kickoff calls with 10 options that I thought were all valid and expected the client to choose one, while he went in and said &quot;As I understand it, you need this, and here's what I have in mind,&quot; and then confirmed that it meet requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long story short: know your audience, read the room, and remember that they will have more confidence in the project if they feel you have listened and understand their needs, but ultimately they hired you for your expertise or else they would do it themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3395" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T03:58:11.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4045" CreationDate="2012-03-07T05:13:54.613" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If tasks have been measured in hours and I know that that entire team will working on the project &quot;part time&quot;, I have had pretty good success with reducing the workday for the entire project. However, that does not seem to match your case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T05:13:54.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3016" CreationDate="2012-03-07T06:53:57.043" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no degree out there which can turn a person into software project manager, although there are multiple Project management certifications and Master in Business Administration. But frankly in my experience you could good make use of these certifications only if you have good experience of few years in engineering under your belt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMHO there is only one way to become a good software project manager the hard way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spend some years in engineering.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Observe how the project management is done in your team what are the mistakes made what are good practices.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn to communicate well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep enhancing your knowledge in PM practices.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whenever an opportunity for PM comes throw yourself (at this point certifications may help) &#xA;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improve/learn by doing yourself, from your peers and from seniors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1815" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T06:53:57.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5027" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-07T13:32:46.313" Score="6" ViewCount="726" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have an organization where we're moving to &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/4667/how-should-an-organization-divide-user-stories-between-scrum-teams&quot;&gt;two scrum teams working on different parts of our our backlog&lt;/a&gt;. I understand the idea that each team should be a complete cross-functional unit, and shouldn't have other distractions. That seems like a perfect ideal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our case, we have a team member whose skills could be useful to both teams, but where both teams usually don't have full-time work for her. To make this concrete, she's a web designer (and web is not our main product), but the same thing could apply to anyone with a specialized skillset. And she's very good at what she does, so saying &quot;well, work on this one team and find other ways to help — write some docs or something&quot; is both suboptimal and unfulfilling for her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a good way for her to contribute to &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; teams without feeling like she has double the meta-work and conflicting priorities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, how best to handle this? What if there's &lt;em&gt;four&lt;/em&gt; people who feel this way rather than just one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, what to do instead? The approach I'm leaning towards is making sure all user stories are split such that everything which requires some web design can be handled entirely by her team, but I don't know how well that will scale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2124" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T08:37:54.063" Title="Is it possible for someone to be a member of two Scrum teams, and how can that be made to work most effectively?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;skills&gt;&lt;cross-functional&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5027" CreationDate="2012-03-07T15:08:03.577" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have her contribute to each team sequentially. It is not ideal. But, it is better than having her multi-task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T15:08:03.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5027" CreationDate="2012-03-07T15:13:39.983" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Scrum, it is not possible, but in the real life it happens time to time, and it is a good thing and it is working. Make sure that she can attend both stand-up and planning meetings so that she can organize his work, know what will come and the teams know what to expect from her. I don't see any other good solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T15:13:39.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4958" CreationDate="2012-03-07T15:20:52.617" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A project may or may not introduce a business change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A project &lt;strong&gt;must always&lt;/strong&gt; have a valid business case throughout the project life-cycle and must deliver real benefits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T15:20:52.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5027" CreationDate="2012-03-07T16:23:28.173" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see this happen all of the time with System Architects. Their specialized skills are needed by multiple teams, but no single team consumes all of their time during the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best solution I've seen for this type of situation is to have the group of specialized individuals (architects, designers, whatever) operate as their own scrum team making commitments based on their capacity to fulfill the needs of the other teams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By doing so you ensure that the specialized group/individual can make an honest commitment and you expose the problems with having the teams reliant on a specialized resource allowing you to inspect/adapt to solve or mitigate those problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2628" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T16:23:28.173" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4958" CreationDate="2012-03-07T17:53:21.423" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.  A project is a way of organizing resources to get something done. The format of using &quot;projects&quot; as a form of doing work, does not specify a particular purpose (e.g. it doesn't have to create fundamental change). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T17:53:21.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5033" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5034" CreationDate="2012-03-07T18:56:36.207" Score="3" ViewCount="312" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an infrastructure PM, providing and managing technical environments for testing a large, complex new application which will then be put into production. I have to produce a plan for a project where I know the skills and numbers of people that I am likely to need, but cannot accurately estimate the start date or the duration of the project because the development team that will provide the code has no history within the company to give me a feel for quality of code (and hence duration of testing) or timeliness of delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need to provide an estimate of cost and duration for my part of the project, so I need to find a way to present my estimate with sufficient caveats and assumptions to cover a wide set of variables. Can anyone help with specific advice as to how to do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T20:50:09.103" Title="Resource planning with uncertain dates and durations" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5033" CreationDate="2012-03-07T19:41:11.487" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've typically handled this by documenting the risk of lack of available resources in the project plan's risk matrix, allocating contingency reserves to the schedule to address that risk, and revising the project plan as the planning horizon changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To determine how long a contingency reserve task should be, ask each of the groups on the project team &quot;&lt;em&gt;What are your best, worst and most likely lag times to be able to start work on this project if the go-ahead was given tomorrow&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. You can then use a weighted average (e.g. PERT) or your best judgement to estimate how much reserve to add to the schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also factor in some time immediately after code receipt to get a high-level evaluation of the quality, and schedule a project plan review meeting immediately afterwards. Your testing team lead should be able to say at the review meeting they will complete testing in XX weeks. Go over the schedule with other team leads and revise it as necessary. Then communicate any changes to your sponsor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T19:41:11.487" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5033" CreationDate="2012-03-07T20:49:26.817" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lacking (some) information is unfortunately a reality in all projects and often we need to get going without having that information. Here is what I do in these cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I communicate efforts and dates always based on the information available. I clearly list the items that are unknown at the time and how they can influence the ball park figure I have provided. I also make clear that how we are working on getting the remaining information and by when we expect to have it. Further I explain how the additional information may influence the outcome. You don't know what you don't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then as I executed the project I try to work in very short cycles (or increments or whatever you want to call them). As my team works through the different items we address the high-risk areas first, e.g. the areas that we don't have enough information about. For example by providing early (pre-release) versions of a solution you may be able to assess the quality level before implementation is complete. Another option is the use of spikes for questions nobody on the team has an answer yet. A rough answer from a spike is always better than not having a clue at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience working in short iterations has been an extremely effective technique to address the uncertainty. By short I mean one or 2 weeks, sometimes even shorter. As we refine the estimates based on newer information we reduce or even eliminate the uncertainty. Each time we have a better estimate we communicate this clearly to stake holders, which I think is very important, too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure your stake holders always know what is going on. You cannot over communicate. In almost all cases I have found that stakeholders are then very reasonable or even fun to work with. They have their experiences, too, and they understand that you don't necessarily have all the information at the beginning of a project. They just want to see a structure approach from you how you address that challenge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2318" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T20:49:26.817" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5033" CreationDate="2012-03-07T20:50:09.103" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Doug gave you a great answer. One other suggestion would be to break your project into milestones and build your contingency into the rolled up tasks rather than the individual tasks. Then be clear in your initial plan presentation, status updates, and risk monitoring that these milestones are based on the B,W,ML scenarios are suggested by Doug. And then revise and update accordingly as your project progresses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you're using a Gantt chart or similar scheduling tool, be VERY clear on the dependencies, predecessors especially, and that one can't start until the other is finished, and that finish date isn't definite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T20:50:09.103" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5037" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5038" CreationDate="2012-03-07T21:02:12.747" Score="10" ViewCount="694" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a X dollars project under my belt. It supposed to start on Monday. But client refused to go forward and I waited for them for a week. How do software consulting firms deal with this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a contract project and the client cannot pay me due to resources. For suppose 80 hours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3256" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-18T17:04:16.080" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T17:04:16.080" Title="What do to if a signed project got cancelled?" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5037" CreationDate="2012-03-07T21:30:12.430" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what you've described, it sounds like the best thing to do is move on. The project involved you doing X hours of work for Y units of compensation. Since the project was cancelled before you started, that means you've done X=0 hours of work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, it seems justifiable that you would receive Y=0 units of compensation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're a consultant, your ability to make money and generate revenue for yourself most likely depends on not just your technical skill level, but also your level of trust, ability to network and form personal relationships, and your ability to understand that the loss of one opportunity could segue into another opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could push the issue and try to get some portion of your 80 hours, but at what loss? Is this person going to want to do business with someone who is inflexible when they need flexibility? Are they going to refer you to a partner or other business in need of services? Will you be spending time and energy on something that isn't lucrative when you could be spending that energy networking and searching for other opportunities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that the main reason businesses hire contractors is for the same reason contractors love being contractors:  Flexibility. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T21:30:12.430" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4958" CreationDate="2012-03-07T23:05:45.860" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Projects typically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make Money&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Save Money&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Protect Money&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a project isn't satisfying one of these, it usually shouldn't exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2628" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T23:05:45.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5040" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5049" CreationDate="2012-03-08T02:58:55.547" Score="1" ViewCount="589" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you will see, I'm completely new to PM. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to write 100,000 words in 6 months. Let's say that is 548 words/day. I would like to know how to calculate a daily target of words needed to complete on time. What method do I use to calculate this moving target based on my performance in each previous week while spreading out/smoothing(?) the required load over the next week in order to avoid difficult peaks in demand and still reach my target? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To add further complexity, how would I control the daily rate/smoothing based on the average velocity achieved in the previous week?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry I cannot describe this in statistical/PM terminology, I simply couldn't find the name of this function/problem/method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3404" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T14:14:58.783" Title="How to calculate moving performance target?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;performance&gt;&lt;milestones&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5027" CreationDate="2012-03-08T08:37:54.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum by the book, states that team members need to be neither in different teams nor in different projects.&#xA;This is an ideal situation, but if a company is transitioning to scrum/agile it may take a while to be able to get project resources structured in a scrum way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would start with having them on multiple teams and projects, even if this is not ideal, but reduce the simultanious splits as much as possible. &#xA;Then, in the retro's you need to be alert to how the team and project is working. If everybody is happy, cool. If not, work with management to provide for a better situation. This might be having a junior architect on your team for the whole time, or even doing the &quot;architect as a scrum team&quot; idea by clayton.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deliver first, if management see good results, it is easier to talk them into the changes needed for even better results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't be affraid to &quot;make a shitty start&quot;, scrum is about improving your process, not about getting it right from the get go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3397" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T08:37:54.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5042" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5086" CreationDate="2012-03-08T09:23:32.533" Score="3" ViewCount="2254" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for a small web development company and for a few years now we have managed our time tracking through basecamp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the recent news that basecamp will no longer be supporting time tracking in the next version, what are some alternatives or solutions to tracking work done on projects while still being able to use basecamp as a project management solution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thoughts of migrating completely from basecamp are a little terrifying at the moment and I would like to transition to the new system without too much interruption to the development team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3368" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-08T21:26:06.953" LastActivityDate="2012-07-29T20:20:39.853" Title="Time Tracking in basecamp no longer supported. What are some alternatives?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2012-07-16T13:13:39.670" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5043" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-08T09:42:06.370" Score="7" ViewCount="2419" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a newbie PM.&#xA;I am a programmer before. So, what document/diagram is needed or better to have in a software project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2300" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-08T20:56:05.380" LastActivityDate="2012-07-08T20:56:05.380" Title="What document/diagram is must have for a software project?" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ClosedDate="2012-07-12T20:16:06.657" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5043" CreationDate="2012-03-08T10:12:08.143" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is of course a lot of documents that are MUSTs in software project, but the one that is in the center and in my perspective the most important one is &lt;strong&gt;Product requirements document (PRD)&lt;/strong&gt;. All other documents as software plan, implications, shipping criteria are based on what is in PRD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PRD should contain following information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Overview - short description what is the project about&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Glossary - to be sure that everybody is thinking about the terms used in PRD in the same way&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Actors - who is who in the project&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;owner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;approvers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;project team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requirements - possibly most important part, but should not be the only one as all other parts of PRD make the &lt;em&gt;picture&lt;/em&gt; complete&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Functional&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;System&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Legal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Constraints or Implications - what other project are affecting or are affected&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time-line - just high level, another document should contain detail plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Links to other documents - PRD cannot contain everything, but should at least point to everything important&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other - mostly information specific to organization&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course every company or project could have different needs and subsequently section in PRD, but every PRD in a company should have same or very similar structure so everybody can understand it very quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1726" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T10:12:08.143" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5045" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5115" CreationDate="2012-03-08T11:10:15.497" Score="4" ViewCount="676" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any free webpage/web application for managing project development with these requirements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing &lt;strong&gt;public posts&lt;/strong&gt; of news about project (new version, new logic&#xA;etc) - can be as blog posts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simple public bug reporter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Private (for developer team) articles about developing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Page for downloading binaries of project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;suitable for Closed source app.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Must be Web based.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Optionaly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Managing TODOs as the developing plan - it can be as a standalone main article that will be edited and formated for TODOs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discussions for developer team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Comments on public articles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3406" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-18T17:11:51.633" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T17:11:51.633" Title="Where can I find a free website for managing closed source project development?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-12-20T15:53:42.900" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5043" CreationDate="2012-03-08T11:40:29.100" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, what document/diagram is needed or better to have in a software&#xA;  project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, &lt;strong&gt;Those ones that helps you.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could write down all available documentation and generate all possible diagrams... and if you don't know how to use them / keep them updated, it will be a waste of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say that maybe the inner question would be &lt;code&gt;what's the most important document a newbie PM needs to worry about?&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On this sense, I believe that having the project scope properly documented (including specially what will NOT be included on the deliverables) would be first thing you'd need to go for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T11:40:29.100" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5047" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5078" CreationDate="2012-03-08T12:10:50.910" Score="3" ViewCount="400" Body="&lt;p&gt;How many user stories does it roughly take before a product owner has a basic fluency in writing user stories?  Meaning that the idea of writing user stories has moved beyond theory, rough execution, and the product owner naturally knows what to do when writing user stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to be clear, I'm not just asking how long it takes, but how many real stories it takes. Meaning to me, saying how long is not as meaningful as how many stories, though that might be flawed, and if so, then I guess the best answer would explain why, and what would be the best measure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, my assumption is that the product owner would be engaging a team that already knows what they're doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2412" LastEditorUserId="2412" LastEditDate="2012-03-08T14:52:09.257" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T21:10:02.813" Title="Learning curve to writing user stories in the real world" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5037" CreationDate="2012-03-08T12:26:46.760" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You did not say whether you are part of a &quot;larger&quot; company that can absorb such a loss or if you are independent and you brought on help for a week.  If the latter, 40 hours of compensation for the guy you hired and your fee are pretty significant to absorb.  If you have a contract in place, fully executed, then you may want to consider action on this.  Consult an attorney and see what your options are.  You have to weigh the risk between winning and getting your loss back plus legal fees to losing that plus legal fees and the probability of falling somewhere in between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The attorney might just say walk away but I think you are well justified in researching this avenue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, this is a HUGE lessons learned for you.  Before we do business, we conduct a credit check on our potential clients to ensure they have the resources to pay and a history of satisfying its debts.  If you are able to do that, do it.  If not, you may consider pulling in a retainer before work starts, that being a part of the contract.  It may make you a bit less competitive or attractive to some customers, but if the customers don't pay, the business was not worth anything anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T12:26:46.760" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5040" CreationDate="2012-03-08T12:39:50.440" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your target is not changing.  But you are expecting performance variances, right?  Assuming a straight line plan, you are expecting 548 words a day over six months.  Simply graph that cumulatively over the six months.  For each day, enter the actual words, also cumulative, and compare the plan with actual.  The calculation for your performance variance is actual words - planned words.  Your schedule variace can be calculated by comparing where you are on a specific day with where you should have been.  For example, on day 32, your plan says you should have been at 17,536.  However, your actual is only 15,344, which is day 28 performance.  This would mean that you are accruing a 4 day unfavorable variance at completion.  You can use Earned Schedule techniques to estimate how many days late you will be assuming the same level of performance.  You can also calculate from here what you need to perform to catch up.  I do not think you have to make it any more complex than this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2012-03-08T13:02:25.797" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T13:02:25.797" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5040" CreationDate="2012-03-08T13:56:06.273" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your plan also doesn't account for editing that may reduce the number of words (or lines of code!) Days like this may need to be included in the calculation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might be better off with a more coarse measurement to track completeness, such as chapters.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2947" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T13:56:06.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5040" CreationDate="2012-03-08T14:14:58.783" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just wondering... wouldn't you be searching for a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_value_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Earned Value&lt;/a&gt;-like technique?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T14:14:58.783" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5052" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-08T14:44:24.790" Score="2" ViewCount="1139" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have 10 scrum (agile) teams and all of my teams have remote members in different locations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need the following feature but not necessarily at the same time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Works and easy to set up for everyone (this is my biggest issue)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Audio&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Video&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;See and speak with all members in &quot;Brady bunch&quot; style&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Share desktops&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;not crazy expensive&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have tried &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Microsoft Live Messenger (great for one on one video/voice)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Google+ Hangout (great for the &quot;Brady bunch&quot; view but can be flaky &amp;amp; screen share is too small)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fuze (buggy, pricy, have to download a plug in EVERY TIME it is used)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Join.me (my favorite for ease of use but only supports screen share)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3407" LastEditorUserId="147" LastEditDate="2012-03-09T00:00:55.403" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T13:17:25.423" Title="What is the best video conferencing / meeting tool for scrum teams?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2012-08-31T07:06:45.193" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5037" CreationDate="2012-03-08T16:29:34.907" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are the kind of lessons to learn early, and it sounds like you've learned it for a relatively small amount of money (cheap price for a great lesson). I know people who have had this happen on 6-7 figure projects. It can really suck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure your next contract has a cancellation clause in it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On your next project, make sure you understand the risks (i.e. not getting paid) before expending resources (hiring another developer for a week).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Think about other risks, other bad things that can happen (e.g. the customer being unresponsive, wanting delivery before payment, asking for support for free, the project taking longer than expected, the contractor raising their rates, etc) and act accordingly to protect yourself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T16:29:34.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5047" CreationDate="2012-03-08T16:36:32.570" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer will be &quot;it depends&quot;. There are a lot of variables to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has the product owner been trained to write user stories, or just given an example and thrown into the deep end?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does your organization have clear standards/guidelines for user story content, or are you corporately just winging it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the new product owner have someone available to help coach them?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How often will the product owner have to write user stories? Does (s)he have time to abosrb lessons learned and implement improvements?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How complex are the products that need user stories? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the product owner have the knowledge/aptitude to ask the team the right questions to get a useful user story?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T16:36:32.570" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5055" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-08T16:59:34.683" Score="0" ViewCount="791" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/3650/what-time-tracking-time-management-software-do-you-use&quot;&gt;What time tracking / time management software do you use?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know/use any 'activity report' software? I mean an application, where employees sign in, and report how many hours they worked every day in a month (possibly also a description of what exactly have they done, or a list of tasks completed)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3408" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-03-30T13:14:58.287" Title="Activity report software/web application" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-11-30T15:09:10.453" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5047" CreationDate="2012-03-08T17:21:17.947" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is absolutely answerable and measurable.  But it will take some serious effort on your part to gather the data.  Build a survey instrument and querey those that do this activity.  Control bias in your survey tool to the degree possible and ensure you have an adequate sample size.  Ask questions that drive to when they perceived a degree of competence in performing this activity and when they perceived they hit &quot;expert&quot; level.  I would also use focus-group discussions, as well, to supplement the incoming data.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since it is a survey, where there is a ton of error, you cannot finish here.  It'll likely give you a good starting point on the range of user stories and a rough idea of the frequency distribution.  From here, you need to validate this by your own observations taking newbies and begin training and practicing.  However, the survey results, if done well, are likely strong enough from which you can estimate and plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T17:21:17.947" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3650" CreationDate="2012-03-08T17:21:39.427" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vertabase.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Vertabase project management software&lt;/a&gt; has integrated time tracking.  There is also a &lt;a href=&quot;http://timer.vertabase.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;free time tracking widget&lt;/a&gt; that can be used as a stand alone or with a server component.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: As per the faq, I am affiliated with Vertabase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-26T19:19:46.140" LastActivityDate="2012-07-26T19:19:46.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5052" CreationDate="2012-03-08T18:40:24.333" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid to say that's unlikely to have a silver bullet tool to fit all these requirements (maybe a good niche to work on?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, I'd say that the best would be a pairing of some of the best ones listed on your own post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope I'm wrong and you find your software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ps.: I was intended to put it as a comment, but then I realized it would eventually become the most probable answer...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T18:40:24.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3650" CreationDate="2012-03-08T19:03:00.437" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use &lt;a href=&quot;http://getharvest.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://getharvest.com&lt;/a&gt;, which is a great time tracking web app. It includes and API and has Basecamp integration right out of the box. Harvest also allows you to do project estimates and invoices, clients can even pay the invoices electronically&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3412" LastActivityDate="2012-03-08T19:03:00.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5061" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-08T23:55:48.017" Score="2" ViewCount="947" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for a consultancy firm and it happened (rarely) that the project got cancelled after 1 week of the day it should be starting. No work has been done, but the allocation of the developers were being made. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, how should we word Cancellation Clause in the contract? Any advice? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3256" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T16:54:15.993" Title="How to frame 'Cancellation Clause' in the contract?" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5052" CreationDate="2012-03-09T01:28:23.570" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would give skype a try.  There is a business edition with group video conferencing.  It's not crazy expensive - it should be within a business budget.  It does all of your bullets.  Screen sharing may be in beta still - I'm not sure.  Just pair it up with join.me if need be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1373" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T01:28:23.570" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5061" CreationDate="2012-03-09T01:51:30.227" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One option you have is considering on the commercial side, e.g. a down-payment. Without the down-payment the project won't even get scheduled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is to add a notice period that also applies even when the project hasn't even started. In your example you might have a 2-weeks notice period, so if the project was cancelled one week after the start you would still be entitled to payment for the effort planned for the first three weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure there are other options and a lot depends also on how good your position is in negotiating terms and conditions for this contract. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2318" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T01:51:30.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5061" CreationDate="2012-03-09T02:24:48.127" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having a contract is critical to ensuring that both parties understand and agree to expectations.  Unfortunately, there are many things to consider, when writing a contract, that can add a lot of doubt and uncertainty.  The laws differ from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and some language in a contract may not be enforceable if it violates local law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I've used &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lawdepot.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LawDepot&lt;/a&gt; to help draw up some contractual agreements. They have out-of-the-box templates that you can use for a variety of different cases, and the templates are tailored to your jurisdiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you're really looking for though is just a way to come to a very clear understanding with your clients &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you commit any resources. As long as you communicate really well with your clients and they communicate really well with you, you shouldn't have any misunderstandings.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing this down is one way to ensure both parties agree, and if well-executed, you shouldn't ever have to exercise this clause of your agreement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DISCLAIMER: I am not qualified to give you legal advice, and the purpose of this site is not to give legal advice. Use this information at your own risk.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T02:24:48.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5052" CreationDate="2012-03-09T04:32:42.387" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have lots of distributed teams, and used Skype a lot. But the main problem was missing group screen sharing (which has been added now, did not yet evaluate though).&#xA;We then evaluated Webex and Goto Meeting (the new one has group video as well), and found Goto Meeting overall better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Skype seems to be doing the best job to keep audio&amp;amp;video in sync, and also allows up to 10 video feeds (maybe more now?). But Goto Meeting also has a phone bridge, which is more reliable, as well as many external people (non-technical people) still prefer classic phone cal;ls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With Goto Meeting, at times the video is a bit out of sync, but screensharing works in good quality, audio is most of the time great, group video (I think up to 6 feeds) is ok as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2921" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T04:32:42.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5052" CreationDate="2012-03-09T06:01:23.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lync.microsoft.com/en-us/Pages/unified-communications.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Microsoft Lync&lt;/a&gt; is an application by Microsoft that has screen sharing, audio, video conferencing, and it works well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not free, but there is a trial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3419" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-10T01:15:26.700" LastActivityDate="2012-03-10T01:15:26.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5042" CreationDate="2012-03-09T10:32:19.880" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check &lt;a href=&quot;http://letsfreckle.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;freckle&lt;/a&gt;, has a good set of features and a great UX/UI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3221" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T10:32:19.880" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5061" CreationDate="2012-03-09T12:06:05.833" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not think the language has to be too onerous.  The incident you described in the other thread, and you validated it here, is a rather rare event.  So while you want a safeguard in place, keep it consistent with the rarity of the event.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are a larger company (no, I'm not sure how I'd define it in this context), then I might pursue the capability of doing credit checks on potential clients, and leave the language out of the agreements.  If you are a smaller company, like by yourself or just a small group of developers, then I might pursue a small retainer to seal the project, maybe 25% or slightly less of your estimated costs for your first month of work, just something to help offset my risk and sort of get the client more committed.  This is not unprecedented so it should be well received.  However, if you get push back, I am not sure you should make it a deal breaker.  After all, the contract itself is the binding arrangement.  The issue is, you have to go get it and that's costly of and in itself.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this is the risk of doing business and asking for a small retainer is an appropriate mitigation that will not make you look as if you are trying to operate in a risk free environment.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T12:06:05.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3953" CreationDate="2012-03-09T12:57:25.597" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ship code.  Developers can feel like they're in one long gym session that only ends when their code hits real users and they can move on to the next task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People feel more demotivated and even depressed (burnout is depression) when their labour appears to bear no fruit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1245" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T12:57:25.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3724" CreationDate="2012-03-09T13:12:56.543" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Work on one thing, complete it, then go for the &lt;strong&gt;newest useful&lt;/strong&gt; item in your list.  You'll soon find the older items disappearing from the PM's radar.  If you believe it's actually important that those tasks get done, raise it with the PM and ask if they can be given to someone who has a lighter workload or might complete those tasks quicker than you due to differing skillsets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get a second opinion&lt;/strong&gt;.  The PM is not always the right person to decide whether a task actually needs doing and maybe has an agenda that doesn't match with the rest of the team or the client.  Just checking some details about the work with someone else from the team or the client can be enough to trigger a &quot;we don't actually need that anymore&quot; or &quot;that's already covered by FooBarBaz 2.0&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1245" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T13:12:56.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5055" CreationDate="2012-03-09T13:16:37.350" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jira&lt;/a&gt; from Attlasian. You can assign work hour estimates per task. &#xA;Developers can burndown the hours for a task, an you can see which task took longer as planned.&#xA;So this is a: &quot;Jack worked 4 hours in Issue TEST-13, TEST-13 now has 5 hours remaing estimate&quot;&#xA;kind of report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also the &quot;activies&quot; view, wich is more like a blog roll of everything that happened in the project. &#xA;So more of a. &quot;Jack stopped working on TEST-13. Jack closed TEST-12 with a comment 'works for me'&quot; mind of report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our Team, we don't use the hour estimates, but whenever I was away for a day I allways look at the &quot;activities&quot;to see what has been going on. This is no replacement for talking to the team of course, but it helps me framing some questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3397" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T13:16:37.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5072" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-09T13:34:58.560" Score="0" ViewCount="1639" Body="&lt;p&gt;All the gantt tools I have tried make all tasks concurrent, until I specify start date or dependencies. I do not yet know the start date, and not all tasks have dependencies (well not enough to fully define the sequence). I specify the recourses but if just overloads them to n hundred percent (where n is number of tasks).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I missing something?&#xA;How can I say do one thing (per recourse) at a time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional notes:&#xA;Currently trying Kplato, openproj and ganttproj (previously seen problem in MS-project)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine this project: Make a sandwich.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Cut bread -&amp;gt; Butter bread -&amp;gt;&#xA;        Cut cheese        -&amp;gt; put cheese on bread -&amp;gt;&#xA;        Cut tomato        -&amp;gt; put tomato on bread -&amp;gt;&#xA;                                                    Put second slice of bread on top&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now this as a dependency graph is ok, there is no care as to weather you do cheese, tomato or bread buttering first, or whether the tomato is ready when you put the cheese on the bread, or weather you do tomato before cheese. So we don't want to specify any of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when we add time, we can not (with one resource) do two things at once. We need it to be sequential, not to dictate the order (the dependency graph does that ), but to predict the end date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3424" LastEditorUserId="3424" LastEditDate="2012-03-12T16:21:36.667" LastActivityDate="2019-03-29T04:28:51.390" Title="Project Management Gantt Tool makes All Tasks Concurrent" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5073" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5130" CreationDate="2012-03-09T13:56:37.830" Score="5" ViewCount="3169" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd love to see Atlassian's JIRA/Greenhopper Rapid Board in action, i.e. actively used in a Kanban project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far I have not been able to find a public one. Do you know any (e.g. open source) project teams using Greenhopper for Kanban projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance for any hints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S: I know I can register for a test account and play around, and already did so, but I would like to see a real world example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3425" LastActivityDate="2012-05-16T15:33:44.110" Title="Where do I find public JIRA/Greenhopper instance used by Kanban project teams?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5072" CreationDate="2012-03-09T15:39:58.873" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't know dependencies, can you create some milestones and use those in your dependencies to serialize things?   Or just make dependencies out of the tasks themselves which need to be serialized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T15:39:58.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5072" CreationDate="2012-03-09T15:58:37.567" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use the start and end dates as placeholders and make the tasks sequential. Or, depending on the tool, fix the durations and make the end dates sequential. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Gantt tool is trying to map a network diagram so it needs more information than a task name. It needs to somehow put those tasks in an order either by time or their relationship in a production/development process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T15:58:37.567" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5072" CreationDate="2012-03-09T16:41:00.013" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;All tasks have dependencies.  Remember, there are both hard and soft dependencies.  Hard dependencies are those that the successor task cannot start until the predecessor finishes.  A soft dependency exists simply because you CHOOSE to put them in a certain sequence.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, create your network diagram with both of those types of logic and sequence away.  Put leads and lags if they make sense.  Get used to linking every package to each other no matter if it is counter-intuitive.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have only one start date to worry about; everything else will be established based on the network diagram you create and the estimated duration you are targeting.  If you start late, the entire network diagram will go out.  If early, it will come in.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, when you have hard coded dates in your schedule, it will mask any finish variances you are accruing, because the constraint will override the slip.  Therefore, it is best to leave all of your work packages constraint free!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T16:41:00.013" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5061" CreationDate="2012-03-09T16:54:15.993" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like jmort I'm not qualified to give legal advice, I can only speak to what I've seen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my area (pharma) it is fairly common to have a payment schedule where some proportion of the total project cost is due upon signature of the contract. This becomes a formal milestone in the contract and project plan rather than a &quot;down-payment&quot;, though the effect is the same. I've seen this range from 5% to 50%, depending on the amount the two parties trust each other and the total value of the contract (usually lower value contracts require a higher proportion of the value paid up-front).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also heard of (but not seen) &quot;lost opportunity&quot; clauses, so if the client cancels work the vendor can get some dollar value because resources/equipment/whatever can't be efficiently moved to another project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T16:54:15.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5047" CreationDate="2012-03-09T19:23:32.127" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different people are good at different things. There is no way to tell how long (or many whatevers) it takes for a specific person to learn something. It is no different with learning to write user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the PO has a hidden talent as an author or a blogger, he will catch up pretty fast. If he has a tendency to be very structured, he might never get it, because he might never grow above the &lt;em&gt;&quot;as a ... I can ... so that ...&quot;&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On top of that, learning something new not only takes practise, but also time.&#xA;So if I answered: &quot;It takes 1000 stories&quot;, it is of no use to lock him up in a cellar, to write the first 1000 stories. New things need time to sink in (a bit like: &lt;em&gt;it takes one  mother 9  months for 1 baby, how long do 9 mothers need?&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 3. and I think the most important factor is real-life feedback. If the PO is constantly hanging out with the team, he will get direct and indirect feedback for his stories every standup. If this is handled equally well in &lt;strong&gt;retro&lt;/strong&gt; your PO might write good stories for this particular project and team in 2 to 3 sprints. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there's your answer: 3 sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question: how good are the feedback skills of your team and scrum master?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3397" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2014-06-10T21:10:02.813" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T21:10:02.813" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5045" CreationDate="2012-03-09T19:32:47.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found two answers over at stackoverflow.com:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/297153/can-you-recommend-a-svn-closed-source-project-hosting-site&quot;&gt;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/297153/can-you-recommend-a-svn-closed-source-project-hosting-site&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/683600/free-closed-source-svn-hosting&quot;&gt;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/683600/free-closed-source-svn-hosting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The questions are about sourcecode hosting, but the suggested sites all have project management tools included. &#xA;Most of the time the free plans are limited, but it might be a good starting point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3397" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:41:23.897" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T14:13:20.507" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5043" CreationDate="2012-03-09T19:51:20.063" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends very much on what project management method you plan on using. The minimum set of required documents scales from &lt;strong&gt;&quot;just a Kanban board with task cards pinned to them&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; (for doing minimal Kanban), to &lt;strong&gt;Project Backlog&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;Sprint Backlog&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;Burndown Chart&lt;/strong&gt; (for scrum), to that what Juraj wrote and way, way more beyond that (prince 2 comes to mind).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Documentation is important for: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;project managers, for defining project scope, and prevent scope creep&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;stakeholders, for getting progress information&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the team, for knowing what to do next&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the support people, for knowing how to answer customer questions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the developer 3 years from now, because he needs to know where to start if the software needs to be updated, or fixed, and you are not around anymore&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about your project, and think about it's context in the systems allready running at your company today. How are those systems affected by your project, what will be different, what is no longer possible, once your project is deployed. Start by documenting that, and many more ideas will follow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3397" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T19:51:20.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5081" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-09T21:58:01.747" Score="0" ViewCount="891" Body="&lt;p&gt;In MS Project, is there a way to customize the calendar view where the value of a task level enterprise custom field drives the background color of the task?  The GanttBarFormatEx method seems to be limited to a few basic task types - milestones, critical tasks, External, marked, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3431" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-10T01:17:23.157" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T14:31:46.647" Title="How To Format Calendar Views in MS Project so a Custom Field Controls the Background Color?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5055" CreationDate="2012-03-10T06:58:01.080" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used &lt;strong&gt;redmine&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/4208/468&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/4208/468&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2012-03-10T06:58:01.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5084" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5129" CreationDate="2012-03-10T12:40:09.373" Score="4" ViewCount="1992" Body="&lt;p&gt;My understanding is that a requirement to apply for the Project Management Professional (PMP) certificate is to accumulate &lt;strong&gt;35 Contact Hours&lt;/strong&gt; (also referred as PDUs by other sources) prior to the application. Check this reference video &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1085&amp;amp;p=1429#p1429&amp;amp;utm_source=twitterfeed&amp;amp;utm_medium=twitter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;here&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was hoping to confirm whether you can claim the PRINCE2 Training (Foundation and Practitioner certificates) and Scrum Master Certificate as Contact Hours since both trainings have not been gained via the Project Management Institute (PMI). Does that really matter? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several supportive questions in the Site about PMP and its requirements but I haven't found references to specific certificates and their conversion into Contact Hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anybody have any guidelines to follow? &lt;em&gt;How have you claimed your Contact/PDU Hours prior to  your PMP application?&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-07-31T06:02:58.690" Title="Can the PRINCE2 and Scrum Master Certificates be claimed as Contact Hours?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;certification&gt;&lt;prince2&gt;&lt;pdu&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4875" CreationDate="2012-03-10T17:18:13.390" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Immediately communicate up and down.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Down (team members). Ask what the problem(s) are that lead to this - don't assume you know the full picture.  Ask how these came up.  Ask what solutions people would recommend.  Would priority would developers put on items? Which ones 'could' they do given the circumstances.  A lot of these skills will be leadership skills in how to listen to your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Up (management).  Tell management about this.  Say this YOU made a mistake on the previous estimates (rather than 'explaining away with other 'reasons').  Ask management to look again at the priorities and determine which they want to do in the sprint given the circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 'up' and 'down' &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be done together but that's really going to depend on a ton of disparate factors about both the organization, its structure and the people involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Future.  Try and make the take-away be that &quot;things always happen&quot; and, going forward, use this knowledge in future estimates to make them more realistic.  Stuff ALWAYS 'comes up' and a good project manager accounts for this in time estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2602" LastEditorUserId="2602" LastEditDate="2012-03-10T19:57:39.807" LastActivityDate="2012-03-10T19:57:39.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5042" CreationDate="2012-03-10T20:48:17.177" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have a look at the recent blog post of 37signals: &lt;a href=&quot;http://bit.ly/xIZjSw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://bit.ly/xIZjSw&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems there won't be any time tracking until the understand why customers need it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Before we can commit to saying yes or no to adding time tracking in a future version of the all new Basecamp, we need to understand the problem better. It’s time to observe, study, learn, and understand how and why our customers track time.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By filling &lt;a href=&quot;http://esurveynow.com/esurvey/index.php?sid=22614&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this survey&lt;/a&gt; you can help them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-03-10T20:48:17.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5052" CreationDate="2012-03-10T21:20:02.173" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're a Microsoft shop Lync fully integrates into the environment, gives you presence across your other MS tools (Outlook, SharePoint, etc...) and is feature rich giving you text chat, video  and voice and any combination of those. Beware, it requires a real investment in infrastructure. MS is telling me we have the most fullsome implementation in Canada right now but it didn't get done overnight, we've had resources on this on and off for a year. Wealso  use it to deliver all our user voice telephony, a complete VoIP based system. It &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; slick though, my teams are mobile and we can communicate as if we were all in the office together but be far apart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3435" LastActivityDate="2012-03-10T21:20:02.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5043" CreationDate="2012-03-10T23:35:28.393" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Very few universals in Project Management.  The tools and temates depend on the project, team and manager.  An experienced manager building a space shuttle uses different tools than a new manager building websites with creatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With all that said, here is what I use almost every time...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Issue, risks and actions lists in Excel with owners and dates.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Staffing plan listing roles and responsibilities. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;High level scope, which ideally contains the business case.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;High level plan with critical path dates.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many times I use more, but rarely do I have less than a high level version of the above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-03-10T23:35:28.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5089" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-11T00:26:39.530" Score="10" ViewCount="1715" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have managed to get through the phone screening and have an in-person interview for the position of a Project Manager with an e-commerce company. I have a strong background in project management (5+ years), but it is in the Construction Industry. I have no background whatsoever in IT or Software development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I am familiar with the tools, techniques, culture and processes of the company I am interviewing with (I know someone who works there and is helping me out). So, I know one of the main question I will be asked is, how will I bridge the IT domain knowledge gap. I am very serious about making this move and getting this job, so I have been reading up a lot about SDLC and Software development and have also prepared my answers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it will be a steep learning curve for me, but I am willing to work hard and do what it takes. So I would appreciate if you could provide some advice on how to answer the knowledge gap question. Would also appreciate any advice on what courses/reading material I can read, not just for the interview but to advance my knowledge in software development projects so I can be an effective project manager in the IT/Software Development industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Tina" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2012-06-05T11:00:53.470" LastActivityDate="2012-07-31T19:34:30.810" Title="Interview tips for a Project Manager Position, with no IT background, but strong PM Skills" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;skills&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5089" CreationDate="2012-03-11T00:56:12.927" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you should go with what you've written down: you're studying to bridge that gap.  Short of learning to program yourself, you're doing what every PM does, implicitly or explicitly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never interviewed for such a position, but when you do, maybe you should say, &quot;I've read X, Y, and Z, taken online course Q.  What else would you (the interviewer) recommend I do/read/watch to fill in any gaps?&quot; A &quot;Beginner's Mind&quot; (in the D.T. Suzuki sense) can go a long way towards getting things figured out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Bruce Ediger" LastActivityDate="2012-03-11T00:56:12.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5089" CreationDate="2012-03-11T01:18:08.297" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;To my mind, &lt;strong&gt;any&lt;/strong&gt; PM position comes down to understanding what has to be delivered, in what order, when, by whom and with what permissions.  In construction, things are more concrete (excuse the pun!) perhaps than in e-commerce, but those fundamentals do not change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading about software development life cycles is good, but what you need to understand is that most companies do not follow any of these religiously.  What that means is that any person from outside the company is at a disadvantage until they get up that learning curve for how the company &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; operates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What tips?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Focus on your PM strengths. Give real examples of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How you fixed or worked around road-blocks in previous projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How you managed to bring in a project under budget / on budget.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How you managed to bring in a project under time / on time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Show you understand &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_value_management&quot;&gt;EVMS&lt;/a&gt; or other project management methodology.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Admit you are learning how to apply PM to e-commerce. But give examples of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How you learnt something new in the construction PM game.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How you manage difficult people.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How you understand e-commerce customer priorities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How you understand the e-commerce company's market / product.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How you understand the underlying concepts in their SDLC (Agile? Waterfall?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="569" OwnerDisplayName="Peter K." LastActivityDate="2012-03-11T01:18:08.297" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4986" CreationDate="2012-03-11T01:44:29.387" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Excel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can't do lots of advanced things the other systems mentioned can, but it's universal.  Every client you have knows it.  Many won't have heard of the others, let alone used them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a freelance, ubiquity is the most important thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer changes if you are a long term employee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-03-11T01:44:29.387" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5093" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5094" CreationDate="2012-03-11T01:47:40.383" Score="15" ViewCount="3126" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently been offered my first position as a development manager. I would be taking over a team of 4 at a small software development shop with the mission of creating structure, and improving efficiency/process. I'm seriously considering the offer, and would like to hear your comments or additions to my list below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First day? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Meet the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;introduce myself and my values&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;start positive relationships.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First week? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn about the product, and employees, both developers and&#xA;executives.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get a feel for the way things currently work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First month? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decide which agile methodologies are best suited for the environment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;install and configure tools to track progress and improve quality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Train management and staff on Agile principles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a backlog as Stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Run first sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3437" LastEditorUserId="2864" LastEditDate="2012-03-11T19:07:23.750" LastActivityDate="2015-08-01T05:49:32.590" Title="As a development manager, what are your first steps joining a new company?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;process&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5093" CreationDate="2012-03-11T05:32:41.000" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;With no prior experience this is likely to be a tough ride. Listen, listen, listen to your team and others. There is a lot to learn for you. No two teams or companies are the same. Even with prior experience there is not cookie cutter approach to being a development manager or a project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I typically do when I start working with a new team is this, and these are also my main recommendations (there is a universe of other things to learn and know in that position):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure the team gets to know you. Try to be neutral at the beginning, e.g. by saying that you have no intention to fix something that is not broken.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the first three months mostly listen to your team but in particular to stake holders. Continue doing what the team did in the past. Try to identify the biggest pain points. Address these carefully, always involving your team and the stake holders even if you have the final word on all decisions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As you learn &quot;how to drive the team&quot; you will get more experienced and confident. Still always work on the biggest pain points.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And don't try to introduce Agile methods for the sake of it otherwise you will be seen as the one fighting a religious fight even if that is not your intention. Introduce Agile techniques if and when there is a concrete problem where it makes sense to try them out at a small scale. If they work do more of them. If they don't try something else.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Always keep in mind that the commercial aspect rules. Without a commercial link to all decisions you won't be in business for long. Just because a tool or a technology looks good on your resume doesn't mean your team or your company will be successful. Always link all decisions to (pressing) commercial requirements. Be customer oriented and obsessive about that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general try to stay flexible and adaptive and learn as you go. Communicate a lot, within your team, outside your team. Don't give up as it will take time become really good in this job. Sometimes you will have to take steps back. That is fine as long as you work with the team and not against it. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2318" LastActivityDate="2012-03-11T05:32:41.000" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5089" CreationDate="2012-03-11T06:38:42.383" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good project managers don't require good IT skills.&#xA;But project management for a software development company can be a bit different to other industries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Joel Spolsky has some very good articles in regards to project management in general, I would arm yourself with a lot of the basic ideas he shares.&#xA;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000034.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt;'s a good start)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also there are many industry standards and certifications, that you might not have time to master and obtain before an interview, but some general knowledge about them might help. (depending on where you are: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Management_Professional&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PMP&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;Prince2&lt;/strong&gt; and quality standards like &lt;strong&gt;ISO 9000&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3436" LastActivityDate="2012-03-11T06:38:42.383" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5093" CreationDate="2012-03-11T07:47:45.253" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would give more than 1 week to &quot;Learn about the product, and employees, both developers and executives. Get a feel for the way things currently work.&quot; , in fact it would take much more than that to, I would give atleast a month for the following things - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Listen to your team, listen long &amp;amp; hard and learn their greiviances , what do they expect from you as a leader ,, what do they expect from the organzation ? what they want changed and why ?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You will need time to understand each team member's working style ? , you would need to make personality profiles in understanding them , talk to your boss &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You will need understand  what are the business needs and expecation of the management from you and your team , what are the gaps between these needs ? why are these gaps ?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If possible,It would certainly pay to spend sometime with your predeccesor &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only once you have got a handle of these things , you can move into the &quot;change implementation&quot; phase , as reffered as point 3 in your plan.&#xA;I would not be &quot;biased&quot; towards A process until I have been through a step 2 of your plan , exhausitively &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;good luck &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastActivityDate="2012-03-11T07:47:45.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5093" CreationDate="2012-03-11T08:12:24.247" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose in step 2, the &quot;learning about the product&quot; phase and the &quot;get a feel for the way things work&quot; phase, you find out that the culture isn't agile-friendly or that the product has some aspects of it that rule out agile as a good methodology?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose you find out that things are working really well as they are?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the last step, you've proposed solutions and taking actions without knowing what the problem is. To me, that's very concerning, and if you take that approach, you're likely to kill the very first goal you mentioned, building positive relationships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that and your very short timeline, I think you get the right idea. Your job is to learn. Learn how things are done, learn what the problems are, learn what works, and learn the culture. However, don't rush in there with big plans to force the team to stop doing things that are already working just because you happen to like Agile methodologies or Basecamp, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, don't force them to adapt to you. You must adapt to them. Doing otherwise will create a lot of tension, distrust, friction, and push-back. Do learn and listen, and find out from the team what &lt;strong&gt;they&lt;/strong&gt; think works and doesn't work and what could solve the problems. Any changes implemented should happen gently and slowly, over time, and should appear to be made by the team and not by you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-03-11T08:12:24.247" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5093" CreationDate="2012-03-11T08:13:27.107" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot add too much to the previous two answers by @the_reluctant_tester and @John, except 2 things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I got the impression that this will be your first job as a leader. If so, &lt;strong&gt;I strongly recommend to find a mentor in your organization&lt;/strong&gt;, because without a mentor it will be a tough job. Maybe the guy who gave you this job can be a good candidate or a fellow development manager, but it cannot be a team member. A mentor can help you with the colleagues, technology and corporate network.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;By the way, &lt;strong&gt;networking&lt;/strong&gt;. Besides working with the team try to focus on building &lt;strong&gt;good relationships&lt;/strong&gt; inside the organization. If have a new idea or plan you won't be able to follow through without them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-03-11T08:13:27.107" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5089" CreationDate="2012-03-11T08:34:58.030" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most of the cases a manager doesn't need an IT background, but in order to have &lt;strong&gt;respect&lt;/strong&gt; from the colleagues you should have know a couple of things about what and how they are doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concerning your interview, if I were you, &lt;strong&gt;I would highlight the people skills I have&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;I would give a couple examples of projects where I planned something and followed it through&lt;/strong&gt;. Focus on the how. Nowadays, IT industry needs people who can manage programmers - not an easy task - and can deliver in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also benefit from following these guys:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scottberkun.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scott Berkun&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://theitriskmanager.wordpress.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chris Matts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pawel Brodzinski&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Joel Spolsky&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are more great guys out there, so the list is not complete (comment if you want to see somebody else on the list, and I'll update it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you can also benefit from mentioning this during your interview, so that the interviewers see the you started to learn more about IT and you are really dedicated to the cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-03-11T08:34:58.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5089" CreationDate="2012-03-11T11:06:04.647" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be very honest about what you do and don't know during the interview.  A candidate with humility will perform better than someone who claims they have never had a project miss a deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you are in the job you will need to learn.  PMs who don't know IT can't adequately mange risk.  They wind up as glorified secretaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-03-11T11:06:04.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5089" CreationDate="2012-03-11T12:23:06.080" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For some reason, there is a huge bias in IT around core IT knowledge and success as a PM.  I think the bias exists in other industries, as well, but it seems to be elevated in IT.  The fact that the IT shop exists solely because of the business in which it supports seems to be lost.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bad news is, the largest hurdle you face is this bias.  The good news is, this bias is not based in truth.  There are a plethora of required attributes--knowledge, skill, personality traits, experience--that leads to a PM with a greater chance of success.  To be sure, IT knowledge is an attribute, and a valuable attribute, but it is only one of many.  In many IT shops, it seems to be the most heavily weighted--and, sadly, in some cases an absolute requirement--and that is what you have to overturn.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not talk about what you have to learn, talk about what you can do.  Focus on those other attributes that lead to success--things like communication, salesability, holding the customer's hand through change, analytical abilities, leadership skills, confidence, teaming abilities, facilitation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There isn't a leader in the world that knows every aspect of his/her organization.  Many CEOs come from the sales side and have no idea how to build product.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This garbage that you have to come from IT to be a PM in IT is more about competition for the coveted PM role.  It is an easy way to filter out a bunch of your competitors.  Simply watch a PM in action of a successful project.  (S)he is not developing, coding, testing.  (S)he is selling, controlling, measuring, facilitating, building a team with high morale, working financials, working legal issues, removing environmental barriers, keeping the customer happy!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-03-11T12:23:06.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5102" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-11T12:55:50.237" Score="5" ViewCount="1784" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my project we decided to use Kanban. We started with trello, the application is very nice but it has too few features. It doesn't support:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;WIP limits&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Class of service&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multiple swim lanes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which application can you recommend us to use? Are there any open source solutions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3366" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-11T16:36:02.797" LastActivityDate="2020-07-23T18:07:48.273" Title="Electronic kanban board" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ClosedDate="2012-11-23T08:10:14.520" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5089" CreationDate="2012-03-11T15:47:46.840" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is great to see that you are working hard to hone your IT skills but the bottomline is that you will never reach the levels of technical skills that other core IT people might have in your team, &#xA;In my view your biggest weapons should be - trust (in your senior tech people) and an ability to elicit &amp;amp; understand technical information,risk management,leadership and creating a happy project environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that you develop and market your skills around these areas rather trying to build technical skills from scratch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which 5+ years of non IT project mangement experience behind you,if you are able to draw parallels,exhibit general system levels skills and apply basic PM princicples to an IT project and have the above skills to augment that,then I believe you would be very effective as a PM. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastActivityDate="2012-03-11T15:47:46.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5089" CreationDate="2012-03-11T16:24:17.620" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some good answers and advice so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion would be to focus on what it is you bring to the organization. They're not interviewing you for an internship or on-the-job training, so stay away from what you need to learn, or how you're going to learn it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately the PM is supposed to be the leader of the team, so focus on explaining how you're going to effectively lead a team when your understanding of the technical details is limited. Explain how you're going to foster communication and collaboration, how you're going to keep an eye on the big picture so the project's successful while others get into the minute details. Explain how you're going to work with the technical people to get an understanding of what they're doing, and that you're not there to tell them what to do, but rather to help them plan out their work, and to watch the job form the company's overall perspective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stay away from how much you don't know, and stick to how much your current abilities are going to come into play to bring the project in successfully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-03-11T16:24:17.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5102" CreationDate="2012-03-11T18:13:08.427" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like whiteboards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Corkboards are nearly as good, but harder to reflect changes in process on, IMO. While pinned index cards don't fall off as often as stickies, if your stickies are falling off you might want to look at how long it's taking to get them off the board in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also seen cupboard doors, table tops and windows suborned into the role. These also work well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have no board, no wallspace, no cupboards, table tops or windows then I guess you could use &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.planview.com/products-solutions/products/leankit/get-leankit/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LeanKitKanban&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.getapp.com/project-management-planning-software/a/agilezen/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;AgileZen&lt;/a&gt;. They're free for 1 user and pretty cheap for large teams. I don't know of any open-source solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise... whiteboard is the way forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-23T18:07:48.273" LastActivityDate="2020-07-23T18:07:48.273" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5107" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-11T20:35:15.283" Score="5" ViewCount="9937" Body="&lt;p&gt;this is my first question on this board as I've stumbled over it on my internet search for my question...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm pursuing my PhD in Biomedical Engineering, have done a several industrial internships (overseas and in Canada) and I've supervised two summer and three project/honours students, I had to do some budgetting and I did all my experimental design and time management myself and I was VP Finances (budgetting) of our graduate students' association.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4500 experience hours equal about two to three years worth of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would all the work that I've done so far count towards the necessary experience to go into the PMP exam?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3443" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-11T21:09:32.453" LastActivityDate="2016-11-29T20:19:29.430" Title="Does a PhD degree enable one to take PMP exam?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;certification&gt;&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ClosedDate="2016-11-30T01:54:34.670" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5108" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-11T21:00:41.233" Score="3" ViewCount="3664" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the Scrum Framework is built interactively, I'd like to know if Scrum offers specific guidelines to define the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_document&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Vision Document&lt;/a&gt;, which is usually defined based on the utmost client need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should the Product Owner build up the Vision Document? Is there any defined set of principles to be followed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3444" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2014-06-10T20:15:21.877" LastActivityDate="2020-07-05T10:05:44.847" Title="How to write a proper Vision Document for a Scrum project" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5107" CreationDate="2012-03-11T21:18:10.327" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it can, should it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't underestimate the lessons from the school of hard knocks.  If you shortcut your way to a credential, you may set yourself up for trouble on the other side when the employer has higher expectations.  Think about someone smart who gets their Phd from a mail order diploma mill, then struggles when the employer expects them to do original research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-03-11T21:18:10.327" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5102" CreationDate="2012-03-12T09:32:18.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://eylean.com/kanban&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Eylean Board&quot;&gt;Eylean Board&lt;/a&gt;. It is fully configurable, you can limit WIP, add as many swimlanes as you need, provides various reports including Lead and Cycle time. It also has a great User Interface. Download free trial &lt;a href=&quot;http://eylean.com/Download&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="3332" LastEditDate="2012-11-23T08:01:42.307" LastActivityDate="2012-11-23T08:01:42.307" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4702" CreationDate="2012-03-12T10:41:43.907" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just seen an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inc.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Inc&lt;/a&gt; advertisement. They have different kind of magazines even printed versions, and based on a couple of articles I've seen so far they cover pretty good topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T10:41:43.907" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-03-12T10:41:43.907" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5107" CreationDate="2012-03-12T11:13:00.907" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scientific studies are projects.  There are certainly PMs in pharma, bioengineering, medicine, and research and development.  Not sure if the studies you did or are doing for your PhD and your dissertation would contain all of the facets required for the PMP application, but it would seem to me you could try.  Worst case is some of the hours will not be approved.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T11:13:00.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4011" CreationDate="2012-03-12T11:49:44.667" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jira with the Greenhopper plugin have &lt;em&gt;&quot;Rapid Boards&quot;&lt;/em&gt; (atlassians vesrion of a kanban board)&#xA;You can use it to display tasks based on searchqueries and simple customizable filters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could create multiple projects in jira, and have all tasks displayed in one board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/GH/Using+the+Rapid+Board&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; to atlassian, and another &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRwp4WUJscY&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; for a youtube demo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3397" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T11:49:44.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5045" CreationDate="2012-03-12T13:35:27.513" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;So i found a sollution after a while - &lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Sites&lt;/a&gt; and they dont force you to have open source app.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;They allow to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;create posts as announcements - public, private, something between&#xA;that&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have todo lists - public, private...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;discussion - linked &lt;a href=&quot;https://groups.google.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Groups&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dashboard like News page&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dowload page&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Comments on pages or announcements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;plus many more feature as live view of google docs, Google calendar, widgets etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only the bug reporting is missing (or i didnt found), but it can be solved in the discussion or comments&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3406" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T13:35:27.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5102" CreationDate="2012-03-12T14:00:51.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If cost is an issue for you, a decent open source option is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.kanbanpad.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;kanbanpad&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not as full featured as some of the other options, but it is free and I think it addresses your three concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3090" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T14:00:51.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5108" CreationDate="2012-03-12T15:26:26.440" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum has no rules about how the required documents are created. I've seen &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;mindmaps&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:VisionBoardExample.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;vision boards&lt;/a&gt; and plain word documents as a basis for the project kickoff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PO should consider the audience the document is for. Sometimes it is enough to sketch something on a napkin, other times you might need a full project proposal document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to read &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120601194436/https://www.scrumalliance.org/articles/115-the-product-vision&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; (scrumalliance.org) on product vision. It also has a few pointers to some books at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3397" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-05T10:05:44.847" LastActivityDate="2020-07-05T10:05:44.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4702" CreationDate="2012-03-12T15:45:31.563" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As for periodicals that have a paper version and some emphasis on management/project management within an IT context (some with lighter coverage than others), I read the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cio.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CIO&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inc.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Inc.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fastcompany.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fast Company&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hbr.org/magazine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Harvard Business Review&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do, however, read all of those online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other online periodicals that I read regularly come from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMI&lt;/a&gt; itself; these are all worth the price of membership (to me):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/Knowledge-Center/Publications-PM-Network.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PM Network&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/Knowledge-Center/Publications-Project-Management-Journal.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Management Journal&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To continue answering your question &quot;where do you learn from?&quot;, my answer is that while I &lt;em&gt;glean&lt;/em&gt; information and accumulate knowledge from always paying attention to what is circulating around me (such as by reading these periodicals), I &lt;em&gt;learn&lt;/em&gt; the most in conversations with others through local meetings and presentations, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.michaelgreer.biz/pmfreebies/?p=812&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;#PMChat on Twitter&lt;/a&gt;, and the articles/information shared via membership in PMI Communities of Practice.  Specifically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agile.vc.pmi.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile CoP&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://is.vc.pmi.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Information Systems CoP&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://itt.vc.pmi.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IT &amp;amp; Telecommunications CoP&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize several of my answers are specific to PMI membership (which is different than PMI Certification -- you can be a member and have access to all of these benefits but not be certified) but that's my answer &lt;em&gt;for me&lt;/em&gt;.  I am sure that other organizations have similar benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2864" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T15:45:31.563" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-03-12T15:45:31.563" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4702" CreationDate="2012-03-12T16:05:34.767" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.baselinemag.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Baseline&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cio.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CIO&lt;/a&gt; are my first choices for paper magazines. I also agree that Harvard Business Review and Fast Company are great resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3090" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T16:05:34.767" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-03-12T16:05:34.767" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5108" CreationDate="2012-03-12T18:05:34.557" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found conversations to be most effective.  The artifact can be subject to interpretation and later, to debate.  Building a relationship and opening a channel for conversation will get the whole process started on the right foot (and keep it there as things change).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T18:05:34.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5107" CreationDate="2012-03-12T18:08:01.403" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The hours do sound like they would qualify, but there are a few other requirements that must be met (e.g. 35 contact hours of training).  Check on the PMI's site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T18:08:01.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5122" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5128" CreationDate="2012-03-12T18:35:30.280" Score="4" ViewCount="1482" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a recommended process for handling two people from different teams who cannot get along? Should I start with their managers, and work my way down? It seems like a simple problem that requires a simple solution, but the office politics involved makes it much more complicated than I anticipated. I have already attempted one on one meeting with both men, with no success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3090" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2012-07-19T06:08:27.580" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T11:34:07.387" Title="How do I handle a personality conflict between a vendor and customer's employee?" Tags="&lt;customer&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5122" CreationDate="2012-03-12T20:41:28.337" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would advise to try to understand both view points as well as possible. Then meet with both people and make them understand they are on the same side and the common problem is on the other. &#xA;The best solution would be if you manage to find a win-win situation for the conflicted parties. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2320" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T20:41:28.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5122" CreationDate="2012-03-12T21:30:29.340" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try to find out the problem behind the problem you are observing. Like the tip of an &lt;a href=&quot;http://mowgli.org.uk/knowledge-centre/skills-centre/leadership-skills/the-iceberg-whats-going-on-below-the-surface&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;iceberg&lt;/a&gt;, the behaviour you see is motivated by many invisible factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the right questions and enough empathy you might get down to the real problem.&#xA;Going top down via management could make matters worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3397" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T21:30:29.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5072" CreationDate="2012-03-13T01:00:12.510" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that the tools you are using can't make any assumptions about what the activities are or are not.  So, if you create a list of tasks, say Task1 to Task24, then the tool will all have them start on the project start date because it doesn't know what else to do.  If you  start to assign dependencies, then it knows to put those task in relative order.  If all the tasks aren't dependent, but you assign them to people to work on, then ask the tool to &lt;strong&gt;level the assignments&lt;/strong&gt;, it will &lt;strong&gt;space the tasks out based on people's availability&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One question to ask yourself: Why are you using the tool?  Do you just want to create a picture of the plan based on when the tasks will start/finish?  If so, you really don't need a Gantt tool (a drawing tool, or Excel will do fine!).  If, instead, you are looking for the tool to help you manage the tasks, then it makes more sense to spend the (significant!) amount of time to really understand the tasks and activities on the project, look at who is going to do the work, and create a plan that reflects how the work will be done.  Then, each week (I strongly recommend each week!) open the plan and readjust based on what was done that week.  For example, you planned to finish Task7 in Week 4, but it is taking longer than planned, you need to adjust the project schedule to reflect how you are going to handle this.  Are you going to re-arrange tasks, move people around, slip the delivery date?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using a tool can be a big help in managing a project, but it can't work magic.  Scheduling tools don't know anything other than what you enter in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastEditorUserId="3424" LastEditDate="2012-03-13T12:36:34.563" LastActivityDate="2012-03-13T12:36:34.563" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5037" CreationDate="2012-03-13T08:58:13.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because of this type of situation we have two steps that must be completed in order for a project to be considered officially ordered:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The client must sign the contract&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The client must make a down payment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only once both those steps have been completed do we move forwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easy for a client to sign a contract, but making a payment is less so. We could theoretically go after clients who sign a contract, committing to the relationship and payments, but never move forwards. But that's a hassle so we assume a contract isn't the real deal until payment comes through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3457" LastActivityDate="2012-03-13T08:58:13.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5122" CreationDate="2012-03-13T09:15:03.727" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because you mention customer and vendor the situation is tricky as, depending on your specific situation, you likely have limited options in terms of confronting guys and working this through with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way I would start with &lt;strong&gt;understanding what are the sources of the clash&lt;/strong&gt;. I would talk individually with the guys not to straighten things up but to learn what their problems are. Commonly it's not an answer you're going to get instantly and you'd need to dig deeper. Techniques like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;5 whys&lt;/a&gt; may come handy in the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may or may not have complete knowledge about the issue when you're done talking. I'd even say that the latter is more likely. Either way you probably heard two different things or two different interpretations of the situation. &lt;strong&gt;If you can find common ground with the guys it's the best place to start.&lt;/strong&gt; In this case you can show them potentially beneficiary way for both of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it may not be that easy. By this point you could have heard two completely different stories with basically no common points whatsoever. In such case some kind &lt;strong&gt;confrontation would be needed to move further&lt;/strong&gt;. As harsh as it may sound in such situation sometimes you need make things worse to make them better later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick is to &lt;strong&gt;facilitate the meeting in a way that it follows a constructive path&lt;/strong&gt;. How you do that is a completely different story, but basically what you want to do is be a neutral arbiter, who isn't choosing a side, but is calling foul every time they see it. If the discussion is dominated by one side it's your job to create a space for the other to state their points as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole thing with the meeting is that &lt;strong&gt;it's way easier for us to complain, pursue conflict or even fight if we don't do it face to face&lt;/strong&gt;. It's easier to go with angry email than stating the same thing personally in their faces. The only risk is, that in the middle of hot discussion we tend to get carried away, and this is why facilitator's job is crucial here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully this will allow you to make the way out of the situation. Of course your goal should be to find a solution which is at least satisfactory to both parties. Otherwise chances that it will be respected are thin. &lt;strong&gt;Note: you don't aim to see the guys love each other but to cooperate with each other professionally.&lt;/strong&gt; Nothing more but nothing less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the method fails it's time to escalate things to managers of these folks. &lt;strong&gt;I definitely wouldn't start with escalation as using it as default solution would only make the situation more difficult to solve.&lt;/strong&gt; After all, no one likes to see people complaining about them to their boss. If the escalation happened from this point it's more responsibility of respective managers, although it's always worth to monitor the situation and remind people about their jobs if they don't do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2012-03-15T13:29:28.203" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T13:29:28.203" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5084" CreationDate="2012-03-13T17:54:24.403" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am absolutely sure that a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/About-Us/Customer-Care/Contact-Us-Form.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMI Customer Care&lt;/a&gt; person would be able to answer this in a second, but I'm not one.  However, I did a little investigation using the PMI search engine for &lt;a href=&quot;https://ccrs.pmi.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;courses offered through Registered Education Providers&lt;/a&gt; and found over 150 courses having to do with PRINCE2.  This leads me to believe that PRINCE2 training absolutely counts...but &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; you show that is going to depend on where you took your training classes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, I don't think you would be able to say &quot;I have the PRINCE2 Foundation and Practitioner certificates and get &lt;em&gt;automatic&lt;/em&gt; credit (that's what Customer Care could probably clarify right away), but you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; say &quot;I took a PRINCE2 Foundation and Practitioner course from PROVIDERNAME&quot; and if that provider is a PMI provider you'll get credit for the equivalent number of hours (some are 35, some are 59, etc -- depends on the course).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2864" LastActivityDate="2012-03-13T17:54:24.403" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5073" CreationDate="2012-03-13T18:06:38.583" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Apache Software Foundation uses JIRA + Greenhopper and you can &lt;a href=&quot;https://issues.apache.org/jira/secure/VersionBoard.jspa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;see their installation in action&lt;/a&gt; without being a committer or having an account. The views should give you an idea of how it's being used in the real world, beyond dummy demo data. It may or may not have all the views you're looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2864" LastActivityDate="2012-03-13T18:06:38.583" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5102" CreationDate="2012-03-14T02:56:23.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My company develops &lt;a href=&quot;http://toolsforagile.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://toolsforagile.com&lt;/a&gt; which is a visualisation based tool. It supports WIP limits, swimlanes, classes of service, due dates etc etc. You can take a look at the features here - &lt;a href=&quot;http://toolsforagile.com/silvercatalyst/features/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://toolsforagile.com/silvercatalyst/features/&lt;/a&gt; (scroll down the page for the kanban features)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2392" LastActivityDate="2012-03-14T02:56:23.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5122" CreationDate="2012-03-14T06:52:11.643" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remove the people from the situation (in your mind) and try to understand the situation for what it is. Understand what the project-related issue is that requires the two to interact with each other. Address the issue. If that doesn't work, try to find alternative ways that the two can interact more productively. Do not attempt to resolve any personality conflicts. Your job as a project manager is to get the project-related task done. Not to facilitate friendships. Trying to get the job done with impartiality and fairness is best achieved by letting the task dictate the action rather than the people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3459" LastEditorUserId="3459" LastEditDate="2013-02-13T11:34:07.387" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T11:34:07.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5043" CreationDate="2012-03-14T15:22:39.807" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The correct and precise answer depends a bit upon the size, complexity and specific phase of the project, and there are few arguments against what has been mentioned in other answers. However imho the one document that integrates all your PM activities, independent from any method you will use,  is a &lt;strong&gt;(deliverable focused) Work breakdown Structure&lt;/strong&gt; (together with a WBS dictionary).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will help you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define the &lt;strong&gt;scope&lt;/strong&gt; of your project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Plan&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;budget&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Determine required &lt;strong&gt;resources&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;determine &lt;strong&gt;risks&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;quality&lt;/strong&gt; assurance requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and most of all, it will help you to &lt;strong&gt;communicate&lt;/strong&gt; in a structured manner all of the above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2012-03-14T15:22:39.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5134" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5136" CreationDate="2012-03-14T18:12:35.050" Score="2" ViewCount="522" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to create a form that request for information from a prospective client, this form will have to work for all kinds of industry (business, construction, design, programming...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most cases you generally need for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Company Background&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Overview&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requirment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Timeframe&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Budget&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet people who submit this kind of forms only submit (even if you notify them to specify the information), example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overview: I need a website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a process I can take them to submit more relevant  and enough information to give it to my team members and start the project ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3461" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-10-05T04:56:51.390" LastActivityDate="2014-10-05T04:56:51.390" Title="Get enough information from client to start project" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;clients&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5134" CreationDate="2012-03-14T18:34:04.167" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on your question I assume that the project has been approved by whatever level of authority is appropriate, and you are trying to give the project team a reasonable idea of the &quot;big picture&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking you want to document (in no particular order):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The business case for the project.&lt;/strong&gt; Why is the project important? How does it add value to the end user? What is the benefit for your company? What is in it for the team other than hard work &amp;amp; grief?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A description of the project-level product.&lt;/strong&gt; What are the component sub-products? Which sub-products are made by your team, and which are coming from outside of the project?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A list of key team members.&lt;/strong&gt; Who is the PM? Who is the project champion? Who is the customer? And probably most importantly - who is in charge?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An idea of timescales.&lt;/strong&gt; When is planning going to be completed? When do we start work? When does the product have to go to quality assurance? At what stages will the project plan be reviewed and revised in a controlled manner to reflect the reality on the ground?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An idea of how this project will be better than previous ones.&lt;/strong&gt; What were key problems/issues with similar projects in the past and how to avoid them? What did you do right in the past that you want to repeat?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this is about the minimum information that the entire team needs in order to build team spirit and feel like they are involved in something greater and better and more important than their functional unit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exactly what you include will depend on your target audience and the size/scale/criticality of the project. You should scale your documentation as appropriate. Most of my points below can be met with a couple of sentences or a hundred pages, your choice :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-03-14T18:34:04.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5134" CreationDate="2012-03-14T18:55:26.637" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are talking about a project that has already been approved and is in the pipeline, then I defer to @Doug B's response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you are talking about a form that sits on your company's website, used by prospective clients to contact you because they are shopping for an agency to meet their needs, then there's a balance between asking for enough information to be useful to you and not asking so many questions that they get frustrated and move on (although they'd have to answer the questions anyway at some point in the project!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is becoming more common for agencies to provide a &quot;Project Planning&quot; document up front, rather than/in addition to the basic contact form that typically only receives the &quot;I need a web site&quot; responses. Smashing Magazine's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/11/26/web-design-questionnaires-project-sheets-and-work-sheets/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Web Design Questionnaires, Project Sheets and Work Sheets&quot;&lt;/a&gt; article links to several in that arena; my favorite has always been the &lt;a href=&quot;http://v2.happycog.com/contact/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Happy Cog example&lt;/a&gt;, because in addition to eliciting important information, it sets the stage for the ways in which the client &lt;em&gt;needs to be involved&lt;/em&gt; for the overall success of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2864" LastActivityDate="2012-03-14T18:55:26.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5134" CreationDate="2012-03-14T19:18:13.440" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure of the intent here - you want a form that a customer just fills out that gives enough information that a project team can just take and begin the project? And you want it to be cross-industry?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're missing WAYYYYY too many steps here. You're missing the estimate, the planning, the charter, the stakeholder ID, just off the top of my head. It sounds like you're trying to remove the PM/Client interaction, which is a recipe for disaster. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the most often cited reasons for project failure is inadequate understanding of the project requirements up front. And that's for projects with a lot of face-to-face communication. Trying to reduce that to a form is only guaranteeing failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that's not even tackling the issue of cross-industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-03-14T19:18:13.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5052" CreationDate="2012-03-14T20:43:23.900" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you tried &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bluejeans.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Blue Jeans Network&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;We support all of the functionality you are looking for and then some. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DISCLAIMER: I am involved with this organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3462" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-14T20:46:21.303" LastActivityDate="2012-03-14T20:46:21.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29" CreationDate="2012-03-14T22:45:13.197" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely - The DSDM Atern approach assumes a fixed deadline and fixed price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The flexibility comes from the prioritised requirements list. If new features are added, the customer is required to look at that list, and remove features that he/she is willing to lose in their place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3246" LastActivityDate="2012-03-14T22:45:13.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5052" CreationDate="2012-03-15T01:29:50.823" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I do generally is that I log in via Skype and share my OneNote to my clients. If they are located in some other region, then GoToMeeting is good so far. Screen Sharing: I can do it either Skype or join.me &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my cents: You have to evaluate and decide. It would be cool to integrate all these things into one and still fit in our pockets. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3256" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T01:29:50.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5141" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-15T04:08:38.927" Score="6" ViewCount="3067" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know that how I can climb up the ladder in Project Management. Right now I am new in PM and had 2 years of Software Development experience in my back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, I want to become the SVP/VP/CTO of some company someday. I possess Master of Science in Management and Bachelor of Engineering in Comp Sc. Is my path towards my goal is correct? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do I like: I like PM so far. Its challenging and you see more client side of view rather than Visual Studio 2010 all day. I like Software and LOVE it die hard. Like how new technologies emerge in coming days and want to update myself everyday with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want some key advice from experienced PM`s here. Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3256" LastActivityDate="2015-08-21T20:09:30.273" Title="Becoming CTO/SVP/VP - Application Development from Project Manager/Analyst" Tags="&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5142" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5145" CreationDate="2012-03-15T04:20:17.587" Score="4" ViewCount="2880" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have this title in my company. Inside our firm they call me a PM but on my business card it says: Project Manager/Analyst&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am curious, what exactly does Manager/Analyst mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3256" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-16T01:21:55.707" LastActivityDate="2012-03-16T01:21:55.707" Title="What exactly does Project Manager/Analyst mean?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;roles&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5142" CreationDate="2012-03-15T08:38:17.173" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The card means that you have two roles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Analyst&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are responsible both for managing a project or projects, and for helping the business to analyze what they're doing and what they should do next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The word &quot;Project&quot; is almost certainly associated with &quot;Manager&quot; rather than with &quot;Analyst&quot;, so read it as (Project Manager)/(Analyst) and it might make more sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if you don't think that these two roles are what you're actually doing, you might want to discuss that with someone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T08:38:17.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5142" CreationDate="2012-03-15T09:40:23.557" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only answers you can get here will be generic, because Project Managers and Analysts terms can represent different levels of roles and responsibilities from one organisation to another. If you want to know &lt;strong&gt;exactly&lt;/strong&gt; what this means, talk to your manager to get some clarity as to what this combined title entails in &lt;strong&gt;your&lt;/strong&gt; organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T09:40:23.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5142" CreationDate="2012-03-15T11:30:58.647" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if that's the best way to say but, titles means almost nothing nowadays. That's not myself stating it. Take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mpdailyfix.com/job-titles-2-0-brilliant-bullshit-or-both/&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; article, for instance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important - and I believe that's what you're trying to do - to understand what are your roles within the company. So, based on it, I'd go for angeline's (+1!) answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your company - &lt;em&gt;that gave you the title&lt;/em&gt; - is the only one able to clarify you your roles.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a very goood article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/the-8-qualities-of-remarkable-employees.html?nav=pop&quot;&gt;INC&lt;/a&gt; that states 8 qualities of remarkable employees. Take a look at number one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understand and enjoy your new role, in despite of the title it has.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T11:30:58.647" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5042" CreationDate="2012-03-15T14:09:49.497" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have a look at our &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.paymo.biz&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Paymo time tracking&quot;&gt;time tracking app - Paymo&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;It's a platform that combines time tracking with project management and billing. It can be synced with the old Basecamp (we plan on supporting the new Basecamp too once they open up the API).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3468" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T14:09:49.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5042" CreationDate="2012-03-15T14:25:52.280" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use &lt;a href=&quot;http://toggl.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;toggl&lt;/a&gt;. It has a built in api to basecamp. Over time I've grown to like their interface and mobile time tracking tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1253" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T14:25:52.280" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5141" CreationDate="2012-03-15T15:06:03.857" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no one path to becoming a Chief Technical Officer (CTO) or Senior Vice President (SVP).  Case in point, I'm just about to take a CTO position and my personal history looks like this: BA in English, then BA in Business Organization, MA in English, PhD in English with 18 years in development and project management concurrently with those latter degrees, and I haven't even sat for my PMP certification exam yet.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, while your degrees will provide you with a great foundation of knowledge to perform well in your jobs, don't think they're automatic qualifiers.  You must still &lt;em&gt;do something&lt;/em&gt; with that knowledge, over time.  Usually a lot of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of those things is to gather enough experiences over time to be able to bring together a deep knowledge of business with a deep knowledge of technology, because as an executive position in a company, the person will be driving the technological strategy in order to align with overall business goals both now and into the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I like to use Peter Kretzman's short post &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.peterkretzman.com/2007/10/02/career-tips-for-the-ctocio-path/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Career tips for the CTO/CIO path&quot;&lt;/a&gt; because it highlights the &lt;em&gt;non-specific&lt;/em&gt; steps along the way, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get broad (gather a LOT of related knowledge, either formally or&lt;br&gt;&#xA;informally)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get mentored (there are experts inside and outside your company: find&#xA;them)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get involved (in internal and external areas of the business)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep up (&quot;It’s a fire hose out there, trained at your eyeball.&quot; is my&#xA;favorite line.  Take a look at answers to &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/4702/what-magazine-journal-paper-would-you-subscribe/&quot;&gt;&quot;What magazine / journal /&#xA;paper would you subscribe?&quot;&lt;/a&gt; for how some people here at PM SE&#xA;stay informed in at least a few areas of their jobs)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever the path you take, just keep moving it forward -- including failing forward (making mistakes and learning from them)!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2864" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T15:06:03.857" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5142" CreationDate="2012-03-15T16:37:29.707" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like you are tasked with studying the value of particular projects then implementing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, PM could be your actual job and Analyst represent your &quot;rank&quot; as it were, within the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T16:37:29.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="343" CreationDate="2012-03-15T19:41:27.467" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum and Critical Chain are intended to solve different problems.  With Scrum, you are dealing with a poorly defined product.  Agile methods are intended to develop, as efficiently as possible, a product that is poorly understood at the start of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With Critical Chain, you have a well defined product/goal of your project, but a great deal of uncertainty in how long the individual steps  will take.  Because of this, in large projects keeping your critical resources busy becomes difficult, as the results of work by other resources may not be ready when the critical resource needs it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Critical Chain solves this problem using techniques from Goldratt's theory of constraints.   Goldratt's original book is rather old, and the understanding of the technique has improved considerably since he published.  However, the new results remain scattered throughout the specialist literature.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh yes, the divide by two thing simply comes from the common practice of taking your best estimate for a task duration and doubling it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3471" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T19:41:27.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5052" CreationDate="2012-03-15T20:07:33.717" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend polycom's (http://www.polycom.com/) solutions. They are quite expensive but provide the best possible video and audio quality. I think they have the best coding and the best algorithms in the industry. There's a desktop version which isn't as expensive as standalone appliances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AFAIK, Google uses the same solution for their inter-office video conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3366" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T20:07:33.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4044" CreationDate="2012-03-15T22:10:51.183" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are not afraid of a command line, I suggest R, which can be integrated into Excel &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3473" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T22:10:51.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5042" CreationDate="2012-03-16T04:41:37.503" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Disclaimer: I work with the guys at Apollo, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apollohq.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.apollohq.com&lt;/a&gt; )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think Apollo is a good choice, and not just because I am biased. It does everything, and it also has a great Basecamp importer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our basecamp importer has been working overtime lately... I wonder if Basecamp Next is the cause!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bye,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Merc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3474" LastActivityDate="2012-03-16T04:41:37.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5155" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-16T10:05:55.630" Score="3" ViewCount="10733" Body="&lt;p&gt;I got client requirement now i want to design strategy and criteria to measure success and failure of project please help me to do this actually i m developer now i got work of project manager so please help me ..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3475" LastActivityDate="2012-03-20T17:32:23.230" Title="how to define success and failure criteria of project?" Tags="&lt;failure&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5156" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5229" CreationDate="2012-03-16T10:13:37.243" Score="5" ViewCount="2385" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need a simple way to share texts, links to frameworks, videos and, of course, actual project data with multiple people. Things that come to mind are blog, wiki and public Facebook page. I also presume there is some software that could be used for this. Multiple people should be allowed to share. When someone shares/posts, he should be able to write a short description and the link. Being able to add some keywords/categories that could be used for searching would be nice, but it's not a must. The idea is to have a basic knowledge database that is searchable and available to all instead of hoarding it all on one computer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2150" LastActivityDate="2012-04-12T19:37:11.740" Title="How to share information found on the internet with the team?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5157" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5161" CreationDate="2012-03-16T10:34:47.800" Score="15" ViewCount="2075" Body="&lt;p&gt;In kanban, there is a hard work-in-progress limit that stops a discipline working on too much at once. In &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20111012092411/http://www.crisp.se/kanban/kanban-example.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this example kanban board&lt;/a&gt;, the WIP limit includes work listed in the &amp;quot;done&amp;quot; column.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why, for example, can the analysis discipline, which has concluded one of its tasks, not pull another task from the Next column and begin working on it? What if analysis completes all work but development still can't pull any? Should they stop working?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't seem like an efficient way of working. You can say, &amp;quot;management should make sure development aren't holding up flow&amp;quot;, but when this occurs for the first time, management are going to ask analysis to break their WIP limit while they try to improve development, not down-tools to hold to some process ideal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3476" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-26T10:10:28.240" LastActivityDate="2020-07-26T10:10:28.240" Title="Why does the WIP limit for a kanban discipline apply to completed work?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;workload&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5155" CreationDate="2012-03-16T10:52:09.450" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While there is some debate around this, I suggest to clearly separate product success with project success.  In my view, there is a clear demarcation line between the two, with different roles having accountability of each.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project sponsor gets to define the weight of each of the criteria in terms of what is more important to him/her.  No two sponsors are a like and each has his/her own tolerances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the highest level, a PM is delivering scope that meets requirements against target dollars and against a target period of time, which is nothing more than the project triangle.  Because there is variability in everything we do, each of these goals has some level of tolerance both favorable and unfavorable.  From here, break these down into lower level objectives, ensuring that each lower level objective maps directly to only one of the three goals and that is supports it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product success criteria should be established in the business case, which is developed by the project sponsor and organization.  It is not your concern as the PM.  Whether or not the product does what it is supposed to when they developed the case is irrelevant to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  Iain9688, your example is a good one and I think, at least from my point of view, displays the ambiguity of role accountability that we often see.  I'd make a case where there are two roles at play here with two different sets of accountability: a PM who is responsible for delivering the system and redesigned set of business processes that show efficacy at least through simulation; and, once done, an Operations Manager--this is a retail store, an ongoing concern--who would take ownership of the capability for continued improvement, monitoring, adjustments, etc., to eek out the overarching business goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2012-03-16T22:39:56.960" LastActivityDate="2012-03-16T22:39:56.960" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5157" CreationDate="2012-03-16T11:00:28.807" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The done column is limited, as you pointed out, so that the &lt;em&gt;flow&lt;/em&gt; keeps flowing: colleagues shall pull from the second,third... latest done column from the right. The goal is to have a lower inventory, avoid &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.manufactus.com/lean/8-types-of-waste/en/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;overproduction&lt;/a&gt; and deliver value. Finished analysis work has no value, until it is implemented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the analysis discipline finishes more work than the development do then there is a problem with the organization:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;either something is wrong with the development, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the business doesn't need that much work to be done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole done+pull concept in Kanban comes from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_in_time_%28business%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Just in Time&lt;/a&gt; principle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I'm not quite sure that management should intervene until the organization doesn't know where the problem is. Maybe the development department is slow, or they have test/environment issues, or they are simply undersized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-03-16T11:00:28.807" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5157" CreationDate="2012-03-16T12:09:58.400" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It doesn't &lt;em&gt;seem&lt;/em&gt; like an efficient way of working because we've all been trained that we should all be utilised as close to 100% of the time as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the example you give, it's not desirable for your analysis function to keep completing work over the WIP limit because you'll create a queue of work that the developers will not be able to keep up with.  This queue will continue to grow and the analysis will grow stale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much better for the analyst to help with dev, QA, doing demos or other work that will help remove upstream blockages and get work flowing across the whole workflow, not just their slice of the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;tl;dr WIP limits encourage optimising the system, not just a process step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2012-03-16T12:09:58.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5157" CreationDate="2012-03-16T12:25:11.713" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;WIP limits are designed to show bottlenecks so management can FIX them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the limit is being hit in the &quot;Done&quot; area and the upstream guys can still keep going like nothing has happened, management might not know about it because it is no longer obvious.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The very act of &quot;stopping work because I hit the limit&quot; is the mechanism that triggers the notification process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is cumbersome. BUT it works. A lot of people don't like to talk about work flow hold ups because they think it reflects badly on them or they can't dump that &quot;whining snitch&quot; tag mentally, the WIP limit takes it out of their hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the long run, your team relationships will be less stressed because it's no longer personal, just the stupid board. :-P&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1849" LastActivityDate="2012-03-16T12:25:11.713" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5155" CreationDate="2012-03-16T12:29:45.863" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a purely practical point of view, start by taking a blank sheet of paper and writing down a list of criteria which you believe will define the success if the project. Make sure that these are at the right level, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project is delivered by (date);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The total cost is no greater than (some number);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project meets its funtional objectives, as agreed by (named person);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The system passes non-functional test criteria: performance, security, resilience, (list these in whatever level of detail you can).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be others, around delivery of benefits, or company image, or integration capability, etc. Get them all down, but take care to be realistic. Then present these to the person who is commisioning the project, and ask for feedback. Hopefully there will be agreement; more likely there will be changes required. Either way, you have made progress towards an answer to your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastEditorUserId="301" LastEditDate="2012-03-16T19:49:51.680" LastActivityDate="2012-03-16T19:49:51.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5163" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-16T13:41:31.750" Score="4" ViewCount="5529" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know more about OneNote. I am impressed with the capabilities it has. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I make notes of my Daily Scrum meetings, project meetings n stuff. Anyone else who is using this tool and what other things you do with it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3256" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-18T16:51:45.117" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T16:51:45.117" Title="Who is using MS OneNote here?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-12-20T15:54:59.300" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5157" CreationDate="2012-03-16T13:42:45.177" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the other great answers here, I would like to add that analysis can not be done to far ahead of time. (Alltough the limit of 2 and 3 seems a bit low)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that were the case, the project would be more like waterfall and less agile.&#xA;Waterfall and Kanban do not get along very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3397" LastActivityDate="2012-03-16T13:42:45.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5156" CreationDate="2012-03-16T13:49:48.463" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;We can narrow down your question to &lt;code&gt;how to share information?&lt;/code&gt;. The fact this piece of information has been found over the internet or somewhere else doesn't matter (as long as the source is properly documented).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on it, I believe you already know the answer... that's the basic idea of a Wiki. The most important thing here, however, is not to have a common place to share information... but to ensure the available information is up to date. That's discussed in another &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2780/how-to-organize-knowledge-within-a-wiki&quot;&gt;TOPIC&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within the wiki, you can keep the tree structure you want, adding keywords for faster searching, add comments, keep track of page's history, copy / paste volatile content (from links that may get broken in the future) and a lot of things more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, in short:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go for a Wiki.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2012-03-16T13:49:48.463" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5156" CreationDate="2012-03-16T13:55:22.123" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any of the basic collaboration tools/platforms out there should do the trick. This includes those hosted in the cloud as well as those you can install on your servers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google docs, wiki's, message boards, etc.   All can do what you're looking for. Big differences will be in what kind of notifications and permissioning are available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start by finding out what kind of tools your team is used to using and pick the one that best fits in with their style (while still getting the job done).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-03-16T13:55:22.123" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5155" CreationDate="2012-03-16T15:05:49.727" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, the project is only a success if the client thinks its successful.  Ask them what &quot;success&quot; looks like for them.  Then keep asking them over the course of the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you deliver work and work together, both you and the client will learn more about the project and the final product.  &quot;Success&quot; can change over time.  Make sure you and the client stay on the same page throughout the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the client is not happy at the end of the project, saying that you met all of the requirements isn't going to change how they feel. That's why its important to keep the relationship and communication going throughout the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-03-16T15:05:49.727" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5163" CreationDate="2012-03-16T17:04:52.167" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been using OneNote, since I discovered it was so tightly integrated in Office 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It makes for a seamless workflow for taking notes from Outook meetings, then putting some of those notes into tasks and reminders. Great way to catalog meeting minutes and flagging things for follow-up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3478" LastActivityDate="2012-03-16T17:04:52.167" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4611" CreationDate="2012-03-16T20:12:10.080" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Envisioning is neither about &quot;looking into a brain&quot; nor &quot;predicting requirements&quot;. Envisioning is about you and your team doing a hands on worskhop with your client to understand each other, the business and project requirements better. If the team has zero business knowledge, and this is the first project for the client, you might need to get together frequently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sit in one room, have enough drinks and food, and have loads, really LOADS of time to spend. Get to know each other, if someone talks about his last holiday, talk a bout holidays for a few minutes. Don't try to squeeze this an 2 hour meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your client changes requirement frequently, scrum might be a very good method. Get an experienced scrum master. Because the project is allready under way, and is going down hill, it  might be too late to start doing agile by &quot;learning by doing&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3397" LastActivityDate="2012-03-16T20:12:10.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5155" CreationDate="2012-03-17T00:53:15.683" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The project's success or failure depends on the degree to which it meets the requirements.  Note: no extra points for gold plating!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T00:53:15.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5163" CreationDate="2012-03-17T01:56:31.443" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I also was a user of OneNote but I switched away in favor of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.evernote.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;evernote&lt;/a&gt;. On of my favorite features of onenote is the image-text recognition. Very helpful, when you have attached whiteboard pictures to meeting notes and are able to search upon text within those images.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have used evernote from everything from helping plan a wedding to planning vacations. Rather than explaining my usage, the evernote blog does a very good job highlighting the applications flexibility: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.evernote.com/category/tips_stories/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.evernote.com/category/tips_stories/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1885" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T01:56:31.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5163" CreationDate="2012-03-17T13:18:10.093" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as taking notes during any meeting, my preference is always of a tool where I can categorize my notes (for easy referral back), search items and finally easy to share with other team members. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sharing or collaboration part is important for me - OneNote does well in that you can create a shared notebook that others can also view and edit. In addition, OneNote's formatting and structuring seems more enhanced than Evernote. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If sharing or collaboration of notes is important, Google Docs is another viable tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1546" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T13:18:10.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5052" CreationDate="2012-03-17T20:37:59.353" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;ooVoo is another option, though I am not sure if screen/desktop sharing is supported. But it's a handy tool. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oovoo.com/home.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.oovoo.com/home.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1546" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T20:37:59.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5141" CreationDate="2012-03-17T21:22:00.443" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Foolproof process to becoming a CTO/VP/SVP:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a great idea.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start a company with a business-oriented friend.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be successful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;TA-DA, you're whatever you want to name yourself now.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seriously, traditional Project Management will be long dead in software development by the time you will be old enough to climb the corporate ladder this high. It is right now being replaced by agile methods everywhere. Better learn them now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="511" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T21:22:00.443" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3953" CreationDate="2012-03-17T21:27:47.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;stop counting hours, hours don't matter, software does,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ship only software developers &lt;strong&gt;can be proud of&lt;/strong&gt;,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;don't buy into illusion of &quot;people working on couple of things at the same time&quot;, context switching hurts and costs - I bet the developers who work on one project for longer periods of time are less complaining about &quot;burn out&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some great points about environment, gyms etc. above but key is: make sure people love the code they do. And don't drive them too hard for a couple of bucks more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="511" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T21:27:47.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5176" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-17T11:55:32.413" Score="8" ViewCount="488" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been negotiating recently with a client who is... well... a bit difficult to work with, to say the least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was the first to contact me and request my services. He wants me to build an enterprise class app for his company but he is very unwilling to divulge information and the requirements regarding the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked him to tell me more about the project (as I have no idea what we're building) but he claims it's &quot;sensitive information&quot;. I even signed an NDA and assured him I had no interest in stealing his idea, but he still won't relent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He's been giving me very incomplete pieces of information and is expecting me to give him a quote for the project based on what little information he shared. I told him that I can't build something and if I don't have a specification and unless I know what exactly I'm building, but he's still being extremely secretive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't work like this. There's a lot of money in this project but I can't work like this. It's like asking a construction company to build you a house exactly according to your plans but then refusing to give them the plans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I just give up or try to work with the guy? This seems like one of those projects that might become pure hell somewhere down the road.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Nathan J" LastEditorUserId="2864" LastEditDate="2012-03-17T23:56:21.067" LastActivityDate="2012-03-19T15:51:18.417" Title="Trust issues with a client" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;contracts&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5176" CreationDate="2012-03-17T12:27:14.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many clients don't know what they want. You're no better off working with them or a client who supposedly knows what they want but won't tell you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You sound like an honest person who takes pride in their work. Your quuote must be based on the information you have. Your competition isn't any better off. What is the going rate for enterprise apps in this industry and how long does it take to build? If you've never done this before, you're at a disadvantage. A competitor is going to blow smoke and proclaim they build apps like this all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estmate the number of hours and the rate, but indicate this may change if the specifications change. And they will change. If the client doesn't agree with your new estimates, get paid for time served and move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11948" OwnerDisplayName="Jeff O" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T12:27:14.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5176" CreationDate="2012-03-17T12:37:48.707" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;(I asked a professional programmer, so not my knowledge but I agree)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tell him flat out that your(and &lt;strong&gt;anybody else's&lt;/strong&gt;) quote will be widely inaccurate unless enough information is supplied. Try to ensure that the time is flexible in your contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not sure of your abilities, then it's better staying away from this... If you later realise that the project is beyond your abilities, you'll be in trouble. Unless you keep a clause in your contract that allows you to withdraw at any time. Though I doubt he'll agree..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3507" OwnerDisplayName="Manishearth" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T12:37:48.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5176" CreationDate="2012-03-17T13:45:07.937" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing in your power to solve the problem of his secrecy. But you could make some profit regardless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make your guesstimate and be honest that it is guess because of the lack of information. The contract should protect you against the uncertain time length. Have written into the contract that work is charged per-hour. To be fair, give him the ability to back out at any time, but still owe you for the hours you worked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have the contract.... he'll be forced to give you whatever info you need and then you can make your good estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Lord Tydus" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T13:45:07.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5176" CreationDate="2012-03-17T14:05:29.067" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without detailed requirements the only way to work with him without taking a huge risk is if you are paid on a time and materials basis. Just offer your skills at $X per hour, if he insists on a fixed price then he is probably trying to rip you off and you should leave it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Tom Squires" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T14:10:37.437" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5176" CreationDate="2012-03-17T15:01:57.187" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest giving him some options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He gives you sufficient information for you to be able to give an informed estimate. (Remind him that everything will be covered by the NDA and that you have no desire to spend the next few years going through the courts.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give him the option to have a fixed-cost estimate on the insufficient information supplied so far, with the stipulation (to be included in &lt;strong&gt;writing&lt;/strong&gt;) that whatever is delivered on that basis is deemed to be accpetable, regardless of how well it actually meets his requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He employs you on a time and materials basis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Mark Bannister" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T15:01:57.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5183" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5195" CreationDate="2012-03-18T03:28:10.417" Score="5" ViewCount="6819" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are some tips for writing good release notes? Any best practices or examples? My audience is both my QA department and the executive team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3165" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T09:55:53.097" Title="Release Notes Best Practices" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5157" CreationDate="2012-03-18T18:03:25.730" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You say this doesn't seem like an efficient way of working. Remember that kanban isn't for optimizing the work of each individual. Rather, it is for optimizing the overall throughput of the system. Sometimes that means a person needs to stop and/or help some other team rather than pull another task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3189" LastActivityDate="2012-03-18T18:03:25.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5183" CreationDate="2012-03-18T18:45:57.560" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What do the two departments / teams say that they'd like to see in the release notes? What kind of things would make them glad to see the notes in their inbox?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally the best release notes I've seen have almost been adverts for the releases - &quot;This is why you want to upgrade to the new release. Here are the new business and new capabilities we're providing.&quot; For the QAs, you might also want to advertise any improvements in your processes which provide the quality control as well as the actual changes made. It depends on what they'll find interesting, and that will depend on your domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is also your opportunity to showcase how well the project team has done too, so you might ask them if there's anything particular they want to include.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2012-03-18T18:45:57.560" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5107" CreationDate="2012-03-18T21:53:55.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a hiring manager at Google, I was never able to hire a PMP certified candidate.  Hiring committees do the deciding, and as far as I could tell, PMP certification worked AGAINST candidates.  Having a Ph.D. was seen as a plus, at least for the roles (Technical, Technical Parter Management) I was hiring for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3488" LastActivityDate="2012-03-18T21:53:55.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5176" CreationDate="2012-03-19T04:51:06.407" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could try one technique that is pretty common in the architecture world (as in buildings). Sign an hourly time and materials contract to develop a scope and use that scope as the basis for a real contract. Since the current process is open ended, T&amp;amp;M is about the only way to go. It places the client in the best position, too, but not everyone seems to agree with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this is not looking so good. Make sure you bill regularly (twice a month) and don't let the odd communication pattern place you in a spot where you could get sued or not paid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2012-03-19T04:51:06.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5176" CreationDate="2012-03-19T05:13:21.403" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I support the other suggestions for Time and Material. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your potential client is likely to not like this idea and one way to mitigate this is to create rapid delivery cycles. I.E. go to an agile release style. Start with something simple like a part of a user interface he wants, something you think can be done in a week or two at the most. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then deliver. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then ask &quot;is this what you wanted?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From here you end up with two likely courses of action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- He'll ask for tweaks and slowly give you more requirements. You'll charge him Time and Materials and eventually build him what he wants. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2- This builds mutual trust and he'll be more open with the project. Then you can do some planning and estimating from there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this kind of client, small bites, quickly delivered are your best bet. He's likely to change his direction as you implement and he realizes reality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2012-03-19T05:13:21.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5157" CreationDate="2012-03-19T05:20:35.183" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was taught a great game that really stressed this concept. It's the paper airplane production game. What it brutally shows is waste when something unexpected happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say you're building five airplanes for a customer. Let's look at two scenarios. In both cases you are paid as each airplane is produced. Once a plane goes to the customer you get paid for that plane. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- You build them in the classic style. For some reason, the cockpit assembly is taking forever. You get one plane delivered and four more are done except for the cockpits. At that point the customer decides they don't really want these planes and cancels the contract. The cancellation fee doesn't even begin to cover the cost for the four partially built planes and lost man hours. Hope you can find another customer soon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2- You build each plane under Kanban. Because of the hold up in the cockpit construction, you only have one plane in production when the customer cancels the order. The cancellation fee covers that one plane's cost and if you manage to sell the plane soon, you'll end up ahead out of the deal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="147" LastEditDate="2015-07-17T23:38:30.797" LastActivityDate="2015-07-17T23:38:30.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5176" CreationDate="2012-03-19T13:40:15.150" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main point is the trust between you and your client. Trust goes in different directions here: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the client trust your capabilities?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the client trust you not to run away with information?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do you trust your client to pay?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do you trust your own capabilities?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way I read you question, the client puts a lot of trust in your capabilites, but he has no way of communicating his idea to someone so that the idea can become a reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You, on the other hand, trust your capabilities, but are afraid, rightfully so, of scope creep. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You wrote &quot;i cannot work this way&quot; twice, I think this is very important for you to get this accros to your client. Make it clear that, if he wants his idea to become a reality, he will have to talk details at some point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he wants a fixed price project, you need scope and details to plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another posibilty is to build up more trust, while doing the project. In Agile/Scrum you commit to deliver a working increment every XX weeks. Your client will get something working fast, and can add features as he likes, as long as he pays. If one of you backs out at some point, the client will still have some kind of working software, doing at least what he paid for 2 weeks ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talk, try to find out what your client is afraid of, and be honest if you have not enough information to make a fixed price quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3397" LastActivityDate="2012-03-19T13:40:15.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5183" CreationDate="2012-03-19T13:59:19.603" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, release notes follow a format like the one below. You may or may not include all of these sections, depending on what is relevant to your product type and what your stakeholders deem necessary/useful for information dissemination both for them and for your customers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Name&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Version Number (Be consistent with major.minor.revision numbering in your releases)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Release Date (name, version, and release date often repeated in the document footer)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Type of Release (e.g. &quot;This is a developer release for internal evaluation only.&quot; or &quot;This is a public production release.&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Major announcement (Not often used, but important when you need to note &quot;This release corrects a major flaw in XYZ from the previous release. Please upgrade as soon as possible.&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What's New (A List of major enhancements visible to the user, in user-friendly terms, e.g. &quot;increased response time&quot; versus &quot;manipulated line 9 of widget #745 to change algorithm&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Installation Instructions (Often is a list of system requirements with a link to a full installation document, but if there are compatibility issues or deviations from previous version instructions, note them.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Headings for: Additions, Removals, Changes, Bugfixes (The first three mean additions, removals, changes to functionality; the latter means fixes of anything. The info under each heading can come right out of your bug-tracking system and should be simple bullet points like &quot;FIX ### Title_of_Bug&quot;.  This assumes tickets are given meaningful titles.  Bonus if you can link users to the bug-tracking system so they can see the entire ticket and commentary.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Known Issues (List of open bugs slated for next release, or prose describing known issues; this depends on your audience and what the company wants to make transparent, and how.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Additional Documentation (&lt;em&gt;links&lt;/em&gt; to user guide, administrator's guide, other relevant documents)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a starter guide; working with your stakeholders will help massage the list into a template that works for you and for them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2864" LastActivityDate="2012-03-19T13:59:19.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5196" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-19T14:50:32.807" Score="1" ViewCount="305" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reading through PMI's PMBOK and Rita's exam prep guide this morning, I'm failing to see if and how they advocate requirements to be tracked through in project deliverables. How does a stakeholder know and verify that their requirement has been met? (or that the requirement was deferred from the project)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mentioned is a &quot;traceability matrix&quot; that relates requirements to project &lt;em&gt;business&lt;/em&gt; objectives and charter - but how are these requirements tracked in the &lt;em&gt;deliverables&lt;/em&gt; - how does the WBS or WBS dictionary track the satisfaction of requirements?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;~ Kevin&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3478" LastActivityDate="2012-03-19T17:34:17.663" Title="PMP-ers: How does PMI recommend tracking of requirements through to project deliverables?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;pmi&gt;&lt;pmi-framework&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5196" CreationDate="2012-03-19T15:10:44.960" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Making sure that deliverables are tracked is a universal thing, but &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; you do this should be tailored to your project's needs. Don't fall into the trap of using a one-size-fits-all approach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, delivery and acceptance of a very complex/critical/expensive product obtained from a subcontractor will likely be documented through an exchange of formal, legal correspondence so that the contract can be closed and money paid. On the other end of the spectrum, this would be overly burdensome for delivery of a simple/non-critical/cheap internal product, which could be documented in a note in the project file. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-03-19T15:10:44.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5176" CreationDate="2012-03-19T15:30:46.680" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the comments seem to focus on how to ensure you get paid, and if that's your concern then you've already gotten some good advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it sounds like you're as concerned about doing quality work and seeing a finished project deployed as you are about getting paid, in which case you need to get this resolved up-front, BEFORe you do any work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is that lay it out for him, and explain WHY you won't be able to build what he wants unless he's a bit more trusting with info. Use your building/plans example. Spell it out for him - &quot;I can make it do X, but if you want it to do Y also, then I need to know Z. &quot;I can't make it do something if I don't what that something is supposed to be.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also use the T&amp;amp;M issue here - explain that there are several ways to pay for something like this, T&amp;amp;M being one of them. But without more information, he's going to pay you build something, then pay you more to modify it once he see's it and it doesn't do exactly what he wants (due to lack of up-front info), and in the end, if he's not more forthcoming, he could end up spending money for something that is ultimately scrapped. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And one last argument - make it clear that ALL (good) programmers are going to want this info, not just you, so he needs to make a decision now as to whether he's going to let go of this info.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-03-19T15:30:46.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5176" CreationDate="2012-03-19T15:32:20.827" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I first read your question a quote popped into my mind: &quot;&lt;em&gt;Run away dude, run far, run fast!&lt;/em&gt;&quot; (from a Big Bang Theory episode). The thing is that there's a serious trust issue as the others highlighted. Based on the information you shared I don't see a chance that your customer will change its mind in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was working a little bit in an environment where the customer didn't trust us at all, and I'm just happy that we left that project. I suggest to leave and don't put too much effort into a project which will leave to a nightmare. One example: what happens if you want to use a third party product? I assume, you'll spend some time explaining to your customer that this tool won't share any information about the project. You'll end up working on the customer not on the project. Just a huge waste of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you can spend your valuable time working with somebody who pays less, but trusts you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-03-19T15:32:20.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5196" CreationDate="2012-03-19T15:36:44.830" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tracking is not a separate exercise. It's is done through each of the Process Groups. That's why they were designed that way. Each Process Group repeats through each phase of the project, so with each new phase you go through the processes of initiate, plan, execute, close. So as you close one phase and initiate the next you should be reviewing work to date to verify not only adherence to the specs, but also the validity of the project itself. These phase changes are where you decide to continue, or kill, the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-03-19T15:36:44.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5176" CreationDate="2012-03-19T15:51:18.417" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had a few of these and unfortunately, they can be extremely stubborn. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After I give up digging for information, what I normally end up doing is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to at least get a ROUGH idea of what he wants and walk away if this is not possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Offer to do the basic stuff (e.g. login, maintenance screens) first for a fee and make sure he is willing to pay for these non value generating stuff.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pray that after he sees the skeletal structure, he's confident enough to tell you more so you can proceed with the next step. He has some &quot;buy in&quot; at this point and your odds are exponentially better.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If he gives me some &quot;real&quot; info, do those screens for a fee&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Demonstrate the product and ask for more input, making sure you are paid.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rinse/repeat steps 4 to 5 if you are lucky, 2 to 3 if you are not :P&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the work is ok and he get's a little more confident in you, things might pick up speed QUICKLY. Once the dam breaks its normally an avalanche. He'll tell you lots of stuff and expect all of it to be done YESTERDAY because every second of delay is causing him extra anxiety (if you leaking info is his primary concern, and it normally is). When that happens, feel free to charge a little extra for refactoring. Once he spills it, he's normally willing to pay. If not, just say you'll think about it, walk away and wait, they normally call back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't go easy on the fees if you get to the 2nd part. These projects are ALWAYS full of spec changes and time pressure. Make sure you bill what you are worth or it's really not worth doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1849" LastActivityDate="2012-03-19T15:51:18.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5196" CreationDate="2012-03-19T17:34:17.663" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First and foremost, PMI does not recommend anything.  The PMBoK is not a method, it is a body of knowledge.  The &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; is up to us.  However, it talks about techniques to capture requirements, the matrix to maintain requirements, the requirements management plan, and how all of these are inputs into the scope definition.  The process of defining your scope is the WBS, which results in your deliverables.  So everything should be linked.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, how you choose to track and control is up to you.  The PMBoK can definitely serve as an input, along with other sources, to help you develop your PM methods.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-03-19T17:34:17.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5155" CreationDate="2012-03-19T20:14:41.940" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all I confirm previous answers, that most important is to have defined and confirmed by client, the success criteria of the project. The criteria can be divided into mandatory and optional - nice to have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When changes requests arrive during the project, you have to carefully evaluate the impact on success criteria, and/or receive client acceptance to criteria changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, above will grade the project as seen in black and white, ie. success or failure. But in reality, there are also other situations....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might consider to define KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) of the project success, which are based on above mentioned success criteria. For example exceeding budget by 5% might mean only minor failure, but by 15% as critical failure, which might carry serious consequences. Similar KPIs might be applied to schedule and quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3491" LastActivityDate="2012-03-19T20:14:41.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5043" CreationDate="2012-03-19T20:41:33.737" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume it is rather small project, not a space shuttle ;-), so I quote Tiago, only those documents that are really needed. But the question remains, which are needed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For sure &quot;Success Criteria of the Project&quot;. Having such a document, you will know, what is really important for the project and client. Based on Success Criteria you will decide, if for example timing is crucial, if so, then you definitely need detailed schedule. The same applies to each particular point of the success criteria list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tricky might be only risk register. Newbie PMs usually forget about this document, and it might seem unnecessary, but its worth to spend some time on it, at least to identify most important risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3491" LastActivityDate="2012-03-19T20:41:33.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5207" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-20T05:35:17.313" Score="6" ViewCount="729" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just recently got laid off from the role of PM in a software consulting firm. Should I include this experience on my resume? What are the pros n cons of this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am only looking for entry level PM jobs. Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3256" LastEditorUserId="3256" LastEditDate="2012-03-20T16:52:54.443" LastActivityDate="2012-03-21T07:13:52.767" Title="Worked in software consulting firm for 2 months, should I put this on my resume?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5207" CreationDate="2012-03-20T06:14:54.130" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Leave it out, but mention during the verbal interview (personal or phone). A two-month long period is really short, I don't think you'll benefit from it when you are looking for new PM jobs. &lt;strong&gt;When companies are looking for PMs they expect years of experience&lt;/strong&gt;, because this job simply requires experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is another aspect. When &lt;strong&gt;HR&lt;/strong&gt; looks through CVs they are processing a lot of information from different sources so they are using patterns to find suitable candidates. One pattern is the length of previous jobs. &lt;strong&gt;If you spent only a short amount of time in a certain position they'll rank you lower&lt;/strong&gt;, because you don't have the experience, and you may not spend too much time at the company in the future either. If you don't put it there, they &lt;strong&gt;may&lt;/strong&gt; get interested in you, and ask why you even applied for the job. This is your chance to explain it. Here is advice: if they write you an email don't write back, try to call them, because an email - like a CV - can be interpreted in different ways, and managers talk/call, they don't write emails in important situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-03-20T06:14:54.130" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5207" CreationDate="2012-03-20T10:13:41.507" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on the length of your resume and what you want to tall about.  If your resume is short, or it's your only PM experience, include it.  If your resume is long and there's not much to talk about, leave it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-03-20T10:13:41.507" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5207" CreationDate="2012-03-20T11:07:11.283" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind that one question you will certainly be asked is &quot;why do you want to leave your current position?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an interviewer, I'd be a bit suspicious of you if at interview it turned out you'd not mentioned your most recent job on your CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2012-03-20T11:07:11.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5207" CreationDate="2012-03-20T12:42:52.523" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You highlight in your resume what will substantiate your capabilities for the specific job you are seeking.  Do not try to find rules to create a generic resume; in fact, do not create a generic resume.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an inherent bias for those job seekers that are currently under- or unemployed.  Including or excluding this piece of information will do nothing to curb that bias.  It is what it is and you simply will have to overcome it.  Maximize your chances through network rather than cold calling.  You have to do both, but focus your resources on the former.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The great thing about a PM job is that it is for projects.  Projects start and end.  Some last for a month, others for five years.  It is SOP for hiring managers in consulting and project management to review resumes from candidates with non standard job durations, as there are a ton of independents out there who jump from job to job with weird gaps in between.  It would not work for a bank manager, but it does work for a project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you say you are seeking an entry-level position.  Don't over think this.  It is entry-level.  Focus on substantiating that you are smart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-03-20T12:42:52.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5155" CreationDate="2012-03-20T14:39:03.350" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are multiple types of success - that of the development team, that of the organization building the software, and that of the organization paying for and/or using the software. Each of these successes are also independent of each other, as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The success of the development team is often technical success. It might be building a system that meets the operational requirements, both functional and non-functional. It might also be building a product with a low number of defects. Or it might be overcoming some kind of technical challenge and building a type of system that has never been built before (either by the team or ever).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success in the eyes of the developing and/or sponsoring organization are often business successes. Although they want a high quality product that meets requirements, they also want a product that is delivered on time and on budget. Budget and schedule overruns (depending on the amount of overrun) are failed projects, while achieving goals or beating goals are successful projects. In the eyes of the end recipient, there's also the concepts of value-added and return-on-investment that might be used to judge the success of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although it sounds like you're probably more interested in the business successes in terms of adding value, maximizing return-on-investment, and meeting budgets and schedules. These are addressed in &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/5158/30&quot;&gt;David Espina's answer&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/5203/30&quot;&gt;Hubery Chylewski's answer&lt;/a&gt;. However, no answer addresses the technical success factors. Even if a project fails from the business sense, there could be technical successes that help other projects succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good example of this is in &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0321117425&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Robert Glass's Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering&lt;/a&gt;. A project overran schedule by 200% and budget by 400%. From a business perspective, this project failed. However, the development team delivered a low-defect product in a technically challenging environment, and therefore saw this as a successful project. In addition, if the developing organization acts on their lessons learned for future efforts, the reasons why the schedule and budget overran can be prevented, making this an investment for future efforts to improve organizational performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point in all of this is that, in addition to setting business objectives, any measure of project success should also contain inputs from other people, from engineers to quality assurance to support staff. When you conduct your postmortem, be sure to consider all of your measures of success when analyzing the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2012-03-20T17:32:23.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5207" CreationDate="2012-03-20T16:33:45.447" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, don't put it on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;REASONING: &#xA;Puts you in a position of describing why you were only there for two months. You want a potential employer to focus on you, your skills, capabilities, what you can offer, etc.  This is particularly true for an entry level job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Employment history for an entry level job is there to show that you can hold a job, have worked for someone before and generally didn't lazy-about for your student/pre-professional life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-03-20T16:33:45.447" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5214" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-20T23:20:38.900" Score="4" ViewCount="536" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been looking for an issue-tracking system for some time.  Our workflow is not software development. Rather we track changes to documentation across groups of people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't need project management, gantt charts, a wiki, or anything else. I just need an issue-tracking system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, I want completely customizable forms. I want to be able to start with a blank form and build it up manually.  I don't want a &quot;subject&quot; or &quot;description&quot; or &quot;start time&quot; or anything.  Our process is extremely well-defined, but we've come to the point where we need to start storing our data in an easy-to-access and -- more importantly -- easy-to-manipulate format to help with reporting efficiency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd love to be able to wire up the business logic myself.  The form data just needs to get inserted into the database.  If there's a way to wire up business logic, I can do that.  (I am a s/w developer when required.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My frustration stems from the fact that all issue-tracking systems seem to think that you are developing software and that all workflows are approximately the same.  We have need of a documentation defect-tracking system, but almost all of the normal fields are unnecessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: This needs to be a non-cloud, fully-controlled, server-based installation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3499" LastEditorUserId="3499" LastEditDate="2012-03-21T01:16:16.603" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T16:08:20.883" Title="Completely customizable issue tracking system?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5207" CreationDate="2012-03-21T07:13:52.767" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I go along with the general view that you shouldn't include this job unless it added some weight to your resume. However, do be aware that some employers look for continuity or at least an explanation of gaps. I am currently working in a bank where this is the case, and every gap of more than a month has to be explained. If your resume and your explanation are out of step because you have excluded a job (no matter how short the duration), you won't get through the pre-employment security screening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2012-03-21T07:13:52.767" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5214" CreationDate="2012-03-21T12:27:10.173" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;look into &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;jira&lt;/a&gt; from atlassian. While the defaults are sensible for software development, you can customize tasktypes, workflows (per tasktype if you really want), input forms/layouts (per transition), attributes, whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The package might seem complicated at first, but it is very powerfull and customizeable. If you need some details, they have good support, and a thriving community. Otherwise feel free to ping me, details are in my bio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3397" LastActivityDate="2012-03-21T12:27:10.173" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5214" CreationDate="2012-03-21T20:06:52.743" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check ClearQuest from Rational as well. We can customize the workflow and customize the tool very well suit your requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are working on a big product development using feature driven development (agile) last 6 years and we have implemented Clearquest related to several project management workflow successfully using Clearquest including feature management, issue tracking, ticketing, approvals to name a few.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3409" LastEditorUserId="3409" LastEditDate="2012-03-22T13:51:52.577" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T13:51:52.577" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5219" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-22T11:54:18.680" Score="9" ViewCount="2052" Body="&lt;p&gt;From doing Agile and Scrum are there any lessons you can pass on from your experiences?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any approaches that work better than others?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Which of the many parts of the theories have you found the most important in real-world situations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any good books, tutorials, videos, guides, etc. available on common Scrum/Agile mistakes, lessons learned and best practices?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3509" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2012-03-24T18:21:50.317" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T23:49:57.457" Title="Agile and Scrum:- approaches, problems, common mistakes and lessons learned" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5219" CreationDate="2012-03-22T13:47:53.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This books addresses Agile and Scrum adoption mistakes. Agile Adoption Mistakes You Must Avoid &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/GAjml8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://amzn.to/GAjml8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3510" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2012-03-22T14:35:43.087" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T14:35:43.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5214" CreationDate="2012-03-22T14:17:41.783" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redmine.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;redmine&lt;/a&gt;. Existing information on redmine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/3125/time-managing-multiple-projects&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/3125/time-managing-multiple-projects&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/737/bug-task-tracking-software-best-practices&quot;&gt;What are best practices for bug tracking?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/3891/webvantage-vs-redmine&quot;&gt;Webvantage vs. Redmine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can try it out &lt;a href=&quot;http://demo.redmine.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T14:17:41.783" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5223" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5257" CreationDate="2012-03-22T14:31:19.690" Score="3" ViewCount="3806" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my current project, I felt the lack of a sound platform for tracking our tasks, as in my previous project we were using Atlassian's Jira. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chatting with development managers, they mentioned that the tool they're using for 'tracking' is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www8.hp.com/us/en/software/software-product.html?compURI=tcm:245-937045&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;HP's Quality Center&lt;/a&gt;. As I'm not used to this platform, I'd like to ask you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Did you have had any experiences in the past using HP QC for task tracking?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I can see, HP QC offers an environment focused more on the testing phase of a release, rather than analysis / development... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T10:05:56.187" Title="Is it possible to use HP Quality Center as a task tracking tool?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5219" CreationDate="2012-03-22T14:33:20.843" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most common mistake is that organizations want Agile to change their business, and the goal is not a better product, but a successful transition. And it is wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's like training a soccer team to pass a lot and possess the ball. They may have a lucky victory, but in general they'll play nice, but loose: their goal is to pass and posses not to score. On the other hand if a team is trained to score goals, they most probably going to win, and in order to do that they have to pass and posses the ball.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T14:33:20.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5163" CreationDate="2012-03-22T14:34:23.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use OneNote for about a year and at this moment I cannot imagine working without it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I keep there a lot of information cataloged in a way that is most transparent for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have several notebooks for different purposes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Project - each of my projects has its section there. In these sections I keep lots of notes, such as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Important informations about the project,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A list of contact persons,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Arrangements with clients. I export e-mails directly from the Outlook, including both findings and attachments, which are always available form me, when I need them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Documentation of the projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of these sections is divided into the archive and current area. Then it's easy for me to see what is happening at the moment in each project.&#xA;The fact that in OneNote, you can easily group your notes, makes the big image realy clear.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Meetings - Here goes a lot of information about the meetings. Often, I'm preparing the meeting agenda dividing the subjects to talk on a separate notes, and then during the meeting completing them with what has been established. Then immediately after the meeting I have full information about what has happened there.&#xA;Additionally, for clients with whom I meet often - there are sections named Next Meeting, where I throw everything what I would like to raise at the next meeting. Once it is established, I have all the topics that I would like to talk about.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ideas - Notebook was created to store my ideas that I would like to implement, but I still need to think about. During some free time I can go back  and rethink them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Important E-mails - Previously, when I did not know OneNote often i was opening important emails I left them for later. It happened sometimes that something has gone wrong and my &quot;list&quot; disappeared after the computer restarted. Now all that important but not urgent mail lands here and in the meantime all the issues can be handeled.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working with OneNote makes work easier when you rethink exactly what you want to store there. I think that everyone is able to adapt this tool to their needs and over time expand it more and more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good integration with other components of Office causes that you can easily flip through the informations to OneNote. In addition, the ability to send e-mails from notes directly from OneNote really makes life easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tool itself really supports work. I also integrate it with the information contained in my personal Kanban board. Since the beginning of working with these tools, my job has become much more efficient and organized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really recommend it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2955" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T14:34:23.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5226" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-03-22T14:45:09.190" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-03-22T14:45:09.190" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T14:45:09.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5227" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-03-22T14:45:09.190" Score="0" Body="This tag is intended to enclose all tickets related to methods or softwares used to manage team's tasks." OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2012-03-22T15:01:50.520" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T15:01:50.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5156" CreationDate="2012-03-22T14:57:41.093" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try MS SharePoint. As far as I know it could be configured in the way you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2955" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T14:57:41.093" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5156" CreationDate="2012-03-22T15:25:29.577" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you tried &lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;trello&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's good for project management and also for sharing information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="105" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T15:25:29.577" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5223" CreationDate="2012-03-22T17:12:01.347" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It certainly is possible, and HP's ALM suite is more suited for that than just HP QC as far as I know.&#xA;Usually to use it for task tracking, especially for developers, more integration with the development tools might be useful (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://tasktop.com/connectors/hp-alm-quality-center.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://tasktop.com/connectors/hp-alm-quality-center.php&lt;/a&gt;, but disclaimer, I work for Tasktop, so totally biased here).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There for sure are advantages and disadvantages given your use cases to using HP QC (or ALM). Bottom line: if you got the licenses already, why not give it a try. To purchase license for it because one needs it simply for task tracking? Maybe there are other alternatives with better matching features and/or pricing, but that has to be decided based on the individual needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2921" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T17:12:01.347" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5231" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-22T17:50:49.490" Score="5" ViewCount="1238" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am planning to write a technical specification document / functional specification for my personal project. Can anybody suggest any useful links / tools / templates that can help me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am mainly looking for tools (preferably freeware).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3512" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2012-03-23T08:57:05.760" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T07:15:24.440" Title="Technical Specification Tools" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ClosedDate="2017-01-08T21:04:51.087" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5231" CreationDate="2012-03-22T20:33:42.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many free templates available, search on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?aq=f&amp;amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;q=technical+specification+template&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;technical specification template&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.docstoc.com/docs/17803814/Technical-Specification-Template&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;docstoc has a technical specification template&lt;/a&gt; that looks clean and professional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I don't know of a tool that will do it automatically. When done right, doing it by hand, while cumbersome, can be really beneficial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-03-22T23:15:53.653" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T23:15:53.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5214" CreationDate="2012-03-23T04:21:51.690" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen at least a few places that build out such tracking forms using InfoPath with or without SharePoint. Control fields, add logic, and have it integrate with email. Maybe the Google Docs, InfoPath, and other &quot;form editing&quot; tools would be a better fit than issue tracking software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A step simpler could be spreadhsheets, where you add calculations and graphs within the tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3515" LastActivityDate="2012-03-23T04:21:51.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5236" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5237" CreationDate="2012-03-23T12:04:49.273" Score="24" ViewCount="3409" Body="&lt;p&gt;We know that risk management touches every PM process, from planning through execution through closing.  It is taught in the most basic of PM classes and, if you were to ask, most would likely indicate its importance to project success.  However, in implementation, I find there seems to be resistance in participation in the process.  There is almost an implication that, if I were to raise threats about which I am worrying, then I must not be managing my work very well.  There is an implication that escalating risks is '&lt;em&gt;airing your dirty laundry&lt;/em&gt;.'  In a seller-buyer relationship, the seller seems to be hesitant in raising risks where the root cause may be the buyer.  There is, of course, the resistance if the root cause was something the seller caused or should have handled better in the past.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is ongoing confusion, I find, with folks truly understanding what a risk is and how to analyze their complex environment to discern the threats from current issues.  That's an ongoing problem but my question really is about overcoming risk resistance.  What techniques have you applied on your projects that seem to overcome this phenomenon?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2012-03-23T12:30:56.323" LastActivityDate="2019-05-21T18:53:01.200" Title="Risk Management: How do you overcome risk resistance?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5236" CreationDate="2012-03-23T13:38:33.443" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's a great question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that one of the reasons for the attitude towards risk - washing your dirty laundry in public, if you like - is the way that risks are expressed. Typically, you will see risks in a risk register (if one exists) being expressed in terms such as:&#xA;Lack of resources;&#xA;Insufficient funding;&#xA;Poor quality testing;&#xA;Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By deliberately phrasing the risk in a different way that has real meaning to the senior people around the project, I believe that the appetite for risk management (and hence the resistance to accepting risks) will change dramatically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try this:&#xA;Start every risk statement with the term &quot;There is a risk that... &quot; then explain the risk in very specific business terms. For example:&#xA;&quot;There is a risk that the funding available to the project will be inadequate to purchase resilient hardware, thereby causing a reduction in sales and thus profit during any interruptions to service.&quot;&#xA;The business can then make a decision based on the likelihood and impact of the risk, as well as an analysis of any mitigating factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, this does work, although it does sometimes take a while for the early resistance to subside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2012-03-23T13:38:33.443" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5236" CreationDate="2012-03-23T14:04:38.823" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Taking a stab at the kind of world you might be operating in... cost containment can be an effective way to position risk management.  The project will be cheaper and more predictable if risks can be forecast, addressed and a risk response planned for, ahead of time. The earlier the cheaper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-03-23T14:04:38.823" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5236" CreationDate="2012-03-23T18:53:12.983" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One trick that can work is to provide the team with some risks about the PM processes and general project risks. For example, there is a risk that one or more key stakeholders aren't identified, or that resources could be taken away, or that product acceptance criteria change, or whatever. That helps to get the ball rolling and shows that you ask of yourself what you ask of your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I find is actually more challenging than getting the initial risks listed is making sure there is regular follow up from the team to update/retire existing risks and add new ones as the project evolves. For that I use planned project review meetings with risk assessment as one of the agenda items - and then harp on it remorselessly in the three weeks before the review meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-03-23T18:53:12.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5236" CreationDate="2012-03-24T04:43:35.510" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found 2 ways to make it work...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1)  Give each PM a budget to attack risks.  If a project is estimated at 2000 mandays, the PM tacks on 200 of contingency and 100 of risk management.  Then they estimate the likelihood and damage of risks, and assign people to work against the risks with the highest Expected Cost (probability * cost if incurred) out of the risk budget.  In this case, it's a preventive form of spending contingency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2)  Create a culture of &quot;Issues are bad if they could have been anticipated but weren't.  You aren't punished for well documented risks with agreed upon contingencies.&quot;  In the end it's a cultural thing. The only thing more painful to a culture than risk management is having to explain cost and schedule overages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It isn't easy though!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-03-24T04:43:35.510" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5242" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5245" CreationDate="2012-03-24T06:05:23.330" Score="6" ViewCount="417" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know questions about setting your own deadlines have been asked before, but I think I'm in a unique situation. I have many software development projects, and one of the managers (though &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; my manager) keeps constantly asking me &quot;when are these going to be done,&quot; and I constantly keep having to tell them &quot;I don't know&quot; because these are not my primary responsibilities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As IT Support, my primary responsibility is to anything that is broken. If a computer or printer on the production floor is not working, then that comes first. If the network is down, that comes first. I cannot choose when things work and when they don't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to this, I have many more responsibilities that also cannot be scheduled which take priority over any software development project that I may have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I have a terribly difficult time predicting when a project will be completed because I honestly don't know when I will have time to work on it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The manager that is asking me about the completion dates of the projects has to track the progress and report it to the CEO of the company who apparently does not like being told you don't know when a project will be completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I deal with this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3519" LastActivityDate="2012-03-24T18:56:29.363" Title="Setting your own deadlines when your primary responsibilities cannot be scheduled" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;deadline&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5242" CreationDate="2012-03-24T06:32:53.510" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds pretty messy but I would start by trying to at least clear up your section of the mess. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way to do this is to start by setting your own deadlines first. Odds are they won't be accurate because of how chaotic the situation seems to be but it won't matter, set them anyway. Without a deadline of your own, there is no reference point and you are just contributing to the mess. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will have to adjust your deadlines often because of issues beyond your control but that's NORMAL, everyone goes through that. If you have to move the deadlines, just so it. Then when someone needs to know how you are doing, just tell them &quot;My original deadline has been extended by by 14 days because Dept X can't deliver Y in time....., they asked for another &lt;strong&gt;week&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; or &quot;I set a new deadline because ......&quot;. Whether you extend it or create a new one depends on your corporate culture and isn't significantly different. What's important is the word in bold (&lt;strong&gt;week&lt;/strong&gt;). Always ask for a date when something happens that causes a delay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key thing is to document how your deadlines are changing, why they are changing and how you came up with the new date. Before you set your deadlines, there is no documentation. No documentation means management can't step in to help fix things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your documentation shows that the deadlines are always moved because of Dept X or some other chronic issue, point it out to management and get THEM to fix it. Most managers won't step on toes unless you give them reason to. If you want them to help you solve the mess, make it EASY for them. This is where the documentation helps. Bit by bit, the mess around your end clears up and you will be able to breathe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, if you KNOW you are going to miss a deadline (especially if its because of some external issue), bring it up BEFORE it happens. The manager will thank you for giving him time and a chance to fix it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1849" LastActivityDate="2012-03-24T06:32:53.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5242" CreationDate="2012-03-24T13:07:14.597" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are right: &quot;I don't know&quot; is not acceptable, because it means you are incapable of planning.  Your situation is not uncommon.  This is an estimating and risk management challenge, which is the essence of all project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First and foremost, understand that your plan is a plan.  You will not make your plan head on, with zero variance.  So get real comfortable with that concept.  You are after precision, not accuracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, planning for the project work is based on the utilization of human resources--yourself in this case--who are not 100% dedicated to the project.  While your operations work has variability to it, you need to draw a line in the sand that says you will be committed to the project work x% of time, leaving y% to your operations work.  That is the basis of your estimate for the project work.  However, since your operations work has variability, i.e., supply will fluctuate with demand, so too will your project performance.  This is an organic risk of this type of set up, it needs to be documented, and it needs to be communicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, your project work, based on your estimates, has a minimum, maximum, and most likley number of hours required to complete it.  This is hours, not duration.  Depending on where you want to fall in that hour probabilistic distribution, you can calculate the duration.  Example, you are dedicated to the project at 20%.  The hours estimate is 200 minimum, 600 maximum, and 450 most likely.  Since you may want to be a bit risk averse, let's use 500 hours as your target.  The duration formula is: Duration = Hours / Utilization, or Duration = 500 / 20%, or 2,500 hours or 313 days.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, you tell that manager you will complete this project 313 days from now plus or minus a 10% variance.  You build your schedule, your track your performance, you watch your critical path, you capture your variances, you escalate early any unfavorable variances, you mitigate where you can, and deliver when you are finished.  If it takes you 325 days, you are well within your stated variances and you can consider what you did a success.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really want to get sophisticated, you can add to this problem your probabilistic utilization distribution, too, meaning you will be dedicated to the project from 4% to 20%, most likley 12%.  Run a simulation between that and your hours distribution and see what happens to duration from a pure random perspective.  Then, you can base your duration plan on that result and on how risk averse you are.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a sample simulation results using the numbers above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vYlcB.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This suggests your project will run anywhere from 150 days to as high as several years, but your MODE, your highest probability is 300 days.  So set your target somewhere there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a rather extreme example so the results are a bit comical, but hopefully you can see how it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-03-24T13:07:14.597" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5242" CreationDate="2012-03-24T13:35:59.727" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a tough situation I admit. In a situation like this &lt;strong&gt;I would try to say which is the latest situation when I'll be ready with something.&lt;/strong&gt; You are working in an IT environment so I assume you have similar activities so you can &lt;em&gt;measure&lt;/em&gt; how much time you need. Here is an example by &lt;a href=&quot;http://maccherone.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Larry Maccherone&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bZH1w.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here you can see how much time his team needed to finish something. You can read the diagram like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a tough week your cycle time increases accordingly you can say you manager that you'll 32 days to finish, but during a calmer period you'll need about 12 days. &lt;strong&gt;You must emphasize that it is just a plan, not a full commitment. I think your manager will understand it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.screencast.com/t/oYHRBYx0bE2d&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;screencast&lt;/a&gt;, you may find it useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several month ago my former team had to give an estimation to sales about the possible date of certain deliveries. We were using &lt;em&gt;lead time distribution&lt;/em&gt; in order to answer his question (my slides about it are available &lt;a href=&quot;http://slidesha.re/wOhnOg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fLcKY.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before, we had no idea what to say, so we gave him the lead time 9 because it was our average, sort of say. Then we learnt more and measured a lot so we told him that we would need maximum 5 days to deliver a new request. Maximum means that it is either 1,2,3,4 or 5, but nothing above (+1, we were using median because it was more accurate than average). And it worked pretty well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2012-03-24T13:35:59.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5219" CreationDate="2012-03-24T14:44:42.653" Score="15" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The most common mistakes with Agile are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Using it to try to 'push' development faster in the &lt;strong&gt;short term&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Thinking of Agile as 'quicker'&lt;/strong&gt; rather than 'more nimble' and 'better'.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Focusing too much on the technique(s)&lt;/strong&gt; and not the reason for doing them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not getting key long-term estimation benefits by &lt;strong&gt;failing to look at velocity&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not using &lt;strong&gt;good tools&lt;/strong&gt; that support the processes such as Pivotal Tracker, Trello or Trac, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The most common mistakes with Scrum are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not being consistent&lt;/strong&gt; with the approach of same time, say day, same place.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A lack of longer meetings&lt;/strong&gt; to complement Scrum and provide analysis for bigger picture reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Forcing developers&lt;/strong&gt; who are less comfortable in a group setting to be in one.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Suggesting quick solutions that &lt;strong&gt;lack analysis&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Senior developers &lt;strong&gt;dominating discussions&lt;/strong&gt;, intimidating junior members.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also I present: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Durrant Test.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Similar to Joel but for all jobs!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;To the company in question:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Summary:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1.&lt;/strong&gt; Are you well organized?&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;strong&gt;2.&lt;/strong&gt; Do you have good production processes?&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;strong&gt;3.&lt;/strong&gt; Are you actively making progress in my area?&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;strong&gt;4.&lt;/strong&gt; Do you track defects?&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;strong&gt;5.&lt;/strong&gt; Do you fix issues before making new ones?&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;strong&gt;6.&lt;/strong&gt; Do you update a shared calendar?&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;strong&gt;7.&lt;/strong&gt; Do you document needs?&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;strong&gt;8.&lt;/strong&gt; Do you value focus?&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;strong&gt;9.&lt;/strong&gt; Do you value good tools?&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;strong&gt;10.&lt;/strong&gt; Do you test your ideas and practices?&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;strong&gt;11.&lt;/strong&gt; Do new candidates do actual job tasks?&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;strong&gt;12.&lt;/strong&gt; Do you share information freely internally?&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;strong&gt;13.&lt;/strong&gt; Do you have retrospectives?&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;strong&gt;14.&lt;/strong&gt; Are your scrums short and on-time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Details:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Are you organized?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Do you have one system for stories and features (Microsoft Project), another for tracking bugs (Trello), another for tracking releases (a good doc spreadsheet) ?  All these systems might be good, but the multiplicity of them is not good and it would be better for everyone to use one system, e.g. Trello or Pivotal Tracker (which is my favorite).  Other items:  Is an online shared calendar used by everyone?  Are file shares and directories set up with good names and do they avoid duplicity of data?  Does everyone know where to find the wireframes, the requirements and other important documents.&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;strong&gt;2. Do you have good production processes?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Are your production processes well documented?  Have the documents been compiled by multiple parties and also reviewed by others?  Are roles and responsibilities clearly spelled out? Do you have documented procedures for emergency situations?&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;strong&gt;3. Are you making demonstrable progress in my area?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;For the area that you'll be working in, the progress being made currently?  How fast is that progress and are there any major issues?  What evidence of the of progress can be shown in the project tracking system, recent releases, dates of recent changes, etc.&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;strong&gt;4. Do you track defects?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Do you encourage everyone to enter defects in a commonly used system.  Does the company base performance metrics on the number of bugs entered / resolved? This can be very counter-productive.&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;strong&gt;5. Do you fix issues before making new ones?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;How large is the current list of bugs?  How long have items been there?  Is the list growing or shrinking and at what rate?&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;strong&gt;6. Do you update a shared calendar?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;As with other tools this makes co-ordination easier.&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;strong&gt;7. Do you document needs?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Even in an Agile environment you can still benefit from documenting requirements.&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;strong&gt;8. Do you value focus?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Do developers have the ability to work in quiet and isolation in order to be able to be productive?&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;strong&gt;9. Do you value good tools?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;What tools has the company spent $ on.  What machines? What screens?&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;strong&gt;10. Do you test your ideas and practices?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Does the company do prototypes and get input from industry experts?&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;strong&gt;11. Do new candidates do actual job tasks?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Are candidates asked to do tasks during interviews that they would actually be doing in the course of their everyday job?&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;strong&gt;12. Do you share information freely internally?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Is it an open culture?&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;strong&gt;13. Do you have retrospectives?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This is an incredibly important part of Agile, taking time to review what you've recently done and what worked well and what didn't.&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;strong&gt;14. Are your scrums short and on-time?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;It helps to be rigorous and start on-time, not 5 or 10 or 15 minutes late.  It's also important to be done in no more than 5 or 10 minutes.  Any detail or extended discussion should be taken 'off-line' and done after scrum is over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2602" LastEditorUserId="2602" LastEditDate="2013-04-26T23:49:57.457" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T23:49:57.457" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5242" CreationDate="2012-03-24T18:56:29.363" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A very simple approach would be to assess the proportion of your time that you spend on each type of task over a number of weeks: Let's say this comes out at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Support: 55%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Projects: 30%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Installations: 10%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Training: 5%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in an average week, based on the available data at that time, you will have about 30% of your time available for projects. If you can estimate your project effort (in hours or days), you can then work out how many weeks it will take &lt;strong&gt;on average&lt;/strong&gt; to complete the project. Use this as your estimate, and caveat it with the fact that it will vary according to your other workload.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Continue to monitor your workload. As the quality of your data improves with time, you may find that your average project time changes - so it may drop to 20%, or increase to 40%, or it may fluctuate close to the 30% figure. Whatever it does, use this new figure to re-estimate the duration of your project. Highlight any major issues that have caused a major deviation from your plan, and flag up your new estimates to your managers, with proper explanations of any variances from the previous estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that you may need to think about is how to deal with multiple projects that you may have on your list at the same time: do you address them in parallel, or sequentially? I don't know your business, but I would suggest that a sequential approach would be better if that is possible. You may have to get someone to prioritise between projects, but doing a couple of hours a week on each of half a dozen projects almost guarantees that none of them will ever get to an end, whereas working on one project for 12 hours will allow good progress to be made, even if that 12 hours is split over the 5 working days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your manager may not like all that he hears, but at least you are providing a reasoned picture of how you &lt;strong&gt;think&lt;/strong&gt; things are likely to progress, rather than saying &quot;I don't know&quot;. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2012-03-24T18:56:29.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5219" CreationDate="2012-03-25T01:09:13.083" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The biggest problem I've seen with Scrum in general is that its treated as the least agile of all the agile methodologies. People adopting it tend to like it because it has a lot of rules, and they feel comfortable with that as it's the same as the old systems they're trying to get away from. You see, agile is about what works for you and your team and the kind of work you're doing. There are no descriptions that are perfect for this combination, the best you're going to get is examples of what worked for other teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, remember to always follow the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; and think of all the methodologies as guidelines, ones that can and should be broken if you feel like it. Never treat them as fixed-in-stone sets of rules that you must follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good guide to see if you're falling into the old traps is to remember the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.halfarsedagilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;half-arsed agile manifesto&lt;/a&gt;. See yourself following these babies and you know you're doing it wrong/&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="330" LastActivityDate="2012-03-25T01:09:13.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3163" CreationDate="2012-03-26T13:03:08.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not exactly on Time Management, but on stress that you are facing. &lt;strong&gt;Try to work less&lt;/strong&gt;. I know that it may sound a little bit odd, but thinking and / or working more and more will make you less efficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go for a walk, go swimming, go to a gym, have a beer. Go to bed earlier instead of working late. Physical activity will relax your brain after a hard day and you will see that the following day you will work more efficiently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2915" LastActivityDate="2012-03-26T13:03:08.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5141" CreationDate="2012-03-27T02:08:04.793" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Get good at results.  Not technology, not process, not eCommerce, not social media, but results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CEO hires a CTO to get things done.  It's the results that matter.  All the tools, technology and process just support this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T02:08:04.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5252" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-27T05:32:27.443" Score="2" ViewCount="527" Body="&lt;p&gt;In project management, How might you adjust the project if you don’t have resources when you need them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3529" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-10-05T04:54:47.173" LastActivityDate="2014-10-05T04:54:47.173" Title="In project management, How might you adjust the project if you don’t have resources when you need them?" Tags="&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5252" CreationDate="2012-03-27T05:56:41.650" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In project management, there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a magic triangle&lt;/a&gt; of time, cost and scope that influence each other. If you are running out of costs (resources) you can reduce scope (eleiminate features) or increase the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes a 4th dimension, &quot;quality&quot;, is added to that triangle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="418" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-10-06T02:21:52.570" LastActivityDate="2012-10-06T02:21:52.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5252" CreationDate="2012-03-27T06:19:35.750" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apart from the time / cost / scope triangle that k3b refers to, you may be able to re-plan to deliver something outside the sequence that you had planned, using whatever resources you &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt; have available. For example, your plan may say that you should be creating a database design first, then building the database before developing the necessary front-end screens. If you don't have a database administrator (DBA) available, can you still make some progress on the screens?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that you have at least some resources available, ask them what is the &quot;art of the possible&quot;. They may be able to come up with innovative options to make progress - and if they are multi-skilled, perhaps they can make progress even in the absence of some of the resources that you thought you needed. Just be prepared to deal with the situation if someone else feels that their role is being taken away from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T06:19:35.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5252" CreationDate="2012-03-27T07:11:15.890" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a more practical point of view:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have to communicate with the sponsor/steering group that you don't have the necessary resources to continue working.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look at your plan (especially the critical path) and try to re-prioritize items: can you start working on something else?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the project is underway, write a change request and/or put it in your next status report. Make sure the message gets through to all the stakeholders, and that you have it in writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chances are you it will come back and bite you if you don't raise the issue promptly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3106" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T07:11:15.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5223" CreationDate="2012-03-27T10:05:56.187" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;On a rather large integration project someone came up with a similar idea for tracking actions / dependencies. The idea was that these could be raised as Dependency Defects, which were essentially the same as normal defects but with a root cause of Dependency defined. Any actions blocking the completion of a test script could then be failed against that dependency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sounds good on the face of it, but in practice it became a management and administrative nightmare. This is partly down to the process the programme chose to follow (ie. dependencies centrally administered) but also down to the fact that the testing workflow preferred by HP QC doesn't lean that way so easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Key issues we encountered:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unclear ownership: People were unsure where to assign tasks when the action was no longer with them. We found that we'd need to increase our license coverage in order for more and more people to be added in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Duplication: Quite often we found that we had a task defect raised that also covered the actions within a bona fide code defect. This meant that we were getting updates added inconsistently depending on which defect a person was aware of.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Administration: Due to point two, there were defects of all kinds cross linked and referenced all over the place. It required a team of people just to administer that and keep it tidy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice would be that if you are using a project in HP QC solely for tasks, you should be fine. If you will be mixing defects and test management functions as well, I'd think twice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3545" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T10:05:56.187" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5258" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5261" CreationDate="2012-03-27T10:40:27.623" Score="13" ViewCount="676" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the practical way to estimate the time required for a project ( I am a web developer working alone most of the time) I find difficulties in estimating tasks and projects,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3544" LastActivityDate="2012-03-30T07:22:31.263" Title="A practical way to estimate a project cost ( I mean time cost)?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5252" CreationDate="2012-03-27T10:49:29.190" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In any complex project, you have both hard and soft predecessor-successor logic that created your initial network diagram.  In fact, soft logic likely prevails over hard in terms of what governs the sequence of project work, but even if it does not, you have a ton of sequencing with which you can play based on available resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hard logic contains those packages that must go in a certain order, e.g., you cannot paint the wall until after you sanded and taped the drywall, which you cannot do until after you have hung the drywall.  Soft logic contains those packages that can go in whatever order but you placed them in a sequence due to other business needs or simply because you chose one over the other.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And like Magnus wrote, look first on your critical path since changes there will alter your finish date immediately.  It will create a new critical path so you have to make sure you didn't buy greater risk as an unintended consequence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And before you go off and change your schedule, make certain that your unavailable resources are actually causing unacceptable adverse effects on your schedule delivery.  If the late resources are causing a late start on a package NOT on your critical path, or even on your critical path but not to a degree that exceeds your variance threshold, &lt;strong&gt;I'd leave it alone&lt;/strong&gt;.  Your schedule is in constant flux, where late starts and early starts are constantly occurring and your critical path is constantly changing.  There is an acceptable level of variance that can and should be ALLOWED to occur before you go off and make some serious changes.  Changing your schedule will have benefits, but it will also have its costs, penalties, and risks, some of which may be blind to you until it smacks you.  Further, making a change may exacerbate other random variables that are affecting your schedule, making things worse.  So analyze this carefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T10:49:29.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5258" CreationDate="2012-03-27T10:58:05.887" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start breaking the project into sub tasks. Break up to a level, where no sub task is of more than 4 hours. In the beginning of the project you may find this a daunting task. As your understanding about project will grow with time, the best thing will be to revise your older estimates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1786" LastEditorUserId="1786" LastEditDate="2012-03-27T11:12:27.583" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T11:12:27.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5258" CreationDate="2012-03-27T11:01:15.290" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am wondering what you mean by practical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no easy way out of estimating and there is no way of estimating that will yield 100% accuracy 100% of the time (in fact, it'll yield 100% accuracy about 0.00003% of the time).  It is an iterative process using ALL available resources and methods that pretty much point to a general area of where you should end up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Break your work down into smaller chunks; use historical data from similar projects; use rule of thumb parametrics if you have them and they are reliable; use multiple people from multiple disciplines to contribute their opinions; &lt;em&gt;avoid single-point estimates at all costs&lt;/em&gt; in favor of multi-point, probabilistic estimates; use simulation if you can; and most importanly iterate your work several times until you have a group consensus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot stress the single-point estimate enough.  A single-point estimate is NOT an estimate; it is a target.  That should be done AFTER your multi-point, probabilistic estimate.  There is never a case in our very stochastic world where a single-point estimate is acceptable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T11:01:15.290" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5258" CreationDate="2012-03-27T12:56:43.613" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some suggestions in no particular order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Figure out what your planning horizon is and schedule plan review meetings for when you anticipate that the plan will start to break down. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to only estimate for simple tasks with clearly defined products deliverable by one person or functional unit. Where you have complex tasks decompose them until they are simple.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where possible use past experience (yours, the company's, the SME's) to guide your estimate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Challenge the estimates from your SMEs, but remember that they may be underestimating instead of overestimating (depending on the personality of the SME). Time estimates should be made by the person(s) actually delivering the product generated by a given task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remember that people aren't 100% efficient. Make sure time estimates assume that a person working &quot;full time&quot; on a project will only be productive e.g. 75% of the time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you get time estimates ask for &quot;best&quot;, &quot;worst&quot; and &quot;most likely&quot; cases for each task. Use either the &quot;best&quot; case to develop your critical path, use the difference between the &quot;best&quot; case and somewhere between the &quot;most likely&quot; and &quot;worst&quot; cases as contingency reserves. Alternatively, use the &quot;most likely&quot; case for the critical path and the difference between that and the &quot;worst&quot; case for contingency reserves.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Factor in your own management reserve to account for the fact that SMEs tend to use a goodly chunk of their contingency reserves. Have more management reserve as the number of tasks on the critical path increases, or when you have a large number of tasks outside of your planning horizon.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make sure to associate a name/role with each task to make sure everyone is clear on who does what when and can be held accountable.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T12:56:43.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5263" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-27T13:03:59.207" Score="8" ViewCount="3164" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm the product manager for two of my company's application sets, and I've been running into some difficulties trying to manage future releases and how best to move them around.  If I have version 2.2 currently in development, I have versions 2.3-2.5 already plotted out in Bugzilla.  However, we are now planning on bumping a few items from 2.2 and adding a couple of other small items to make a quick release which will be called 2.3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I keep following my current system, I will need to update all 2.5 tasks to 2.6, 2.4 to 2.5, and 2.3 to 2.4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've thought about doing something like Future.10, Future.20, Future.30 - this would allow me to add in Future.15 or anything else in between.  I feel like this is a problem that has been solved already, but I just don't know how.  Is there a better, more generic way to plan out release order that won't require me to adjust every single future release if we add a release in or move things around?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For clarification:  This question is purely about &lt;strong&gt;pre-development organization&lt;/strong&gt; of several groups of features (&quot;a release&quot;) and the best way to reorder releases without changing all tasks each time I change around the intended order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2368" LastEditorUserId="2368" LastEditDate="2012-08-07T16:43:12.057" LastActivityDate="2012-08-07T16:43:12.057" Title="How to organize multiple releases/feature sets" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5264" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5265" CreationDate="2012-03-27T13:15:23.187" Score="16" ViewCount="1417" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've asked this before in other places, and I'm now turning to you guys to see what sort of advice you can offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some background: I'm a project manager at an offshore company. I’m in no way the best that’s out there. Most important (or so I believe) is that I am just as good as my team is. I've been at it for the last 3 years. &#xA;I don't get to choose the people I work with (can't hire or fire people). We are using all sorts of methodologies (agile, scrum, waterfall, RUP, you-name-it). We are holding both weekly and milestone meetings in which we are trying to learn what went wrong/right. So,this is not a question of motivation (my employer is paying them more than fair, they get full employment benefits, etc ), nor one of simply teaching them new skills. This is more about addressing a problem within the mind-set of the average developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've worked with a lot of people both good and bad during the years. There were a few of them exceptional, but most of them were less-than average. Most of the times I'm usually confronted with guys that are getting stuck way to often, guys that are skipping solutions as they are not careful enough to see past their own coding mistakes and guys that are simply drifting away from the tasks to wherever their day-dream takes them. &#xA;I was wondering if (and how) can they be determined to properly pay attention to their work, to be able to determine solutions and to unstuck themselves without me having to check on their work 24/7. &#xA;I would really love to worry myself that I'm intervening in their work too much, that I'm always giving them the solution without letting them think. But at this point, I can't see this happening&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some ways I've been suggested to try so far are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make them read &lt;a href=&quot;http://pragprog.com/the-pragmatic-programmer&quot;&gt;“Addison Wesley – Pragmatic Programmer”&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;and &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0132350882&quot;&gt;&quot;Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship&quot;&lt;/a&gt; – hold periodic meetings for each chapter and discuss what they have learned so far.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hold some sort of &quot;Quick&amp;amp;Great Code of the Week competition&quot;, using a new/unknown language for implementation – given that this would be a new language for everyone, this should give me/us an idea over who is missing what.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Get the rest of the management team to analyze &quot;a great TED talk about motivation by Dan Pink&quot; and see if we find anything that works for further motivating them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I'm now wondering: is there anything else? would this approach work? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also worried that even though I'll eventually set them on the right track, once the current project closes and the development team gets reassigned, they'll revert back to their old habits. How can I make the knowledge &quot;stick&quot; and prevent this from happening?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3546" LastActivityDate="2018-08-17T11:02:13.080" Title="How to make better software developers out of less-than-average ones?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5264" CreationDate="2012-03-27T13:57:58.083" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what you are saying the issue is with attention to detail, review, and scope creep? Whilst the points you mention above are useful and provide insight they won't give your team the kind of skills they need to master the development points you are raising. That comes over time with the right direction (&lt;em&gt;I'm assuming the resources you're working with are relatively junior, here&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also say that, whilst it's great to have a knowledge of the various methodologies you mention, it could be confusing to the developer as to what mode they should be operating in. For example, the behaviours I'd expect from a programmer in a scrum environment would be very different from those expected in a more rigid ITIL based methodology. Be careful not to confuse or give mixed messages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I suggest a few things that have worked for me in the past? The key to all of them is to make them regular and reliable. Repetition emphasises importance, and it will also ensure that the knowledge sticks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work at hand / scope review: A once weekly session to review the work for the week, where it is assigned and, importantly, relate that back to the agreed scope. This gives developers the 'big picture' view that they need in addition to the direction that limits their scope. It also shows how what they do interacts with the work of those around them. Minute that session so that people can refer back to it. The disadvantage with this is that people tend not to shout up if the work defined in that session is completed early ;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Peer review: People will learn greater attention to detail if they are encouraged to perform regular peer reviews of work. We generally create checklists for particular deliverables to kick start this for resources who are already not quite hitting the required standard (eg. Common mistakes to look for in every technical specification). This should also start helping you with reducing your involvement over time as they improve.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;360 feedback: Feedback to anyone should be instant in order to have the greatest effect, and should be delivered in a constructive way. Easier said than done, and requires some effort on your part to be willing to be direct. Your developers, depending on the culture in which you are based, may feel less comfortable giving feedback to you, though. Part of making this work is allowing them to let you know what their issues are. You'd be surprised how often there's another reason for poor attention to detail and you should seek to tease this out of them in order to ensure your team is more effective.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3545" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T13:57:58.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5264" CreationDate="2012-03-27T16:02:15.547" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first question I have back at you is, what benchmark are you using to establish &quot;average.&quot;  You say, 'most are below average.'  I would bet the performance of your most is your average.  I would further bet that your population of workers fits nicely into the standard performance curve, which means your MODE = Median = Mean.  I am going into this not to teach you statistics but to get you to re-examine your expectations and the stick against which you are measuring performance.  This is absolutely critical!  Because if you are measuring against a false stick, you will never get your team to improve; in fact, you may have adverse consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the deal, the performance curve and probabilistic distribution say that you most likley have an average team with average individual performers.  Every now and again, you will get lucky, but you will also get unlucky and get a dud.  But you should plan assuming average performance by your human capability enablers.  Planning assuming otherwise will result in a likley too optimistic, unachievable plan and is not much more than wishful thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And since you cannot pick 'em, then you need to accept the level of performance you are getting and build internal quality controls to control defects and incrementally improve performance over time.  Throwing a ton of money into trying to make a change under this dynamic is a waste.  Any blip you might see may be nothing more than stochastic, with a return blip back to the mean (regression to the mean).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the three leading drivers to performance are purpose, autonomy, and mastery.  Make sure you understand what these are and starting building a culture that enables them.  If you are experiencing a special cause in lower performance, this may help.  (Making your team read a book, by the way, is not an enabler of any of these three.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T16:02:15.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5156" CreationDate="2012-03-27T21:50:12.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about some kind of microblogging services designed for collaborating with your team? Great example of it is Yammer (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.yammer.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.yammer.com/&lt;/a&gt;) which is very simple in use and should cover your expectations (at least I hope so, basing on what you've written here).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried it in my team just because of curiosity (didn't really need that) and it seemed to be pretty useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2943" LastEditorUserId="2943" LastEditDate="2012-03-28T23:19:18.247" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T23:19:18.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5263" CreationDate="2012-03-27T22:15:48.090" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about calling this quick release you mention 2.2.1? Or are there any external restrictions which do not allow you to do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2943" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T22:15:48.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5269" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-27T23:25:48.287" Score="7" ViewCount="21307" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working in one of the very big petrochemical project from IT construction to startup.   I'm still working there. I have been working in the operations department, not exactly in project department, and not as a project manager or a leader, but the fact is that I covered a lot of project activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I apply for PMP, and do I need any evidence of my abilities from  my present employer or manager?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I require it, can anyone give me the format for the experience letter which I need to take from my present employer, which will be acceptable by PMP(PMI)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3551" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2012-03-27T23:40:32.120" LastActivityDate="2019-07-30T20:50:42.587" Title="Evidences and experience letter for PMP" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;qualifications&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5269" CreationDate="2012-03-28T00:17:26.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't worry about it until you're asked.  You may not be audited, in which case you don't need anything.  If you are, they just send a form for your supervisor or colleagues to sign stating that what you said was true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know how this works because I was audited when I applied for the credential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T00:17:26.550" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5102" CreationDate="2012-03-28T06:44:48.503" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a previous team, we used Jira with Greenhopper to track all development and most QA work in a team distributed across 2 continents &amp;amp; 3 cities.  It worked VERY well, so I highly recommend you look into it as a possibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nice thing about Jira is its workflows are very customizable - so even though it is designed to work for Scrum teams out of the box, I'm sure you can make it do the job for Waterfall if you really wanted to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/greenhopper/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.atlassian.com/software/greenhopper/overview&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3554" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T06:44:48.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5263" CreationDate="2012-03-28T07:39:13.107" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I feel like this is a problem that has been solved already, but I just don't know how. Is there a better, more generic way to plan out release order that won't require me to adjust every single future release if we add a release in or move things around?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, there is way and it is called &lt;strong&gt;one track&lt;/strong&gt;. It means that you have only one version and you deploy always that version and you don't maintain different versions. It may sound a bit far-fetched, but actually it is possible to do. I was working for a company which had the very same issue you are having now, but they introduced a one track solution. There were lots of discussions about customers, versions, and deliveries. After a while - a couple of months - the customer understood that it was something good for him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my suggestion is to have only one track and deliver always from this track. In the long term it is worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't seen any other solution on the market. The situation with your current approach is completely understandable. Customers don't want to upgrade because of a fix or a fancy feature, because they think that it'll cost them money. Try to have a discussion with your customers and check whether a one track solution could work for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T07:39:13.107" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5258" CreationDate="2012-03-28T08:54:14.560" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the above: learn from your past estimates. I think this is the most efficient method for developing the skill. Make it as simple as possible, that is: use a simple table with four columns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task name&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimate (before doing the task)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work effort (after doing the task)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deviation (in any form)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you will need a few months to see that your estimates are getting better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Needless to say - you need to be very consistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2915" LastEditorUserId="2915" LastEditDate="2012-03-30T07:22:31.263" LastActivityDate="2012-03-30T07:22:31.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5274" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5280" CreationDate="2012-03-28T09:30:04.850" Score="5" ViewCount="714" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say there are two people working together. Person 1 has more knowledge and skills than person 2. Say person 2 suggests a way to do things. However person 1 sees a better way to do it. Person 1 explains to person 2 why his way is superiour. Person 1 uses his knowledge and skills to demonstrate that. Person 2 doesn’t understand it because he lacks some background knoweldge and skills. Person 1 starts a detailed explanation, but it took person 1 a long time to get this background knowledge, and he cannot explain everything to person 2 in that short time frame. Thus, in the end person 2 still may not understand it and may even perceive person 1 as argumentative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option 1: Person 1 disagrees and does it Person 1’s way. Person 2 feels resentment. The quality of the product is better, but their relationship is worse. (aka bad team work)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option 2: Person 1 agrees and does it Person 2’s way. Person 2 feels happy. The quality of the product is worse, but their relationship is better. (aka good team work)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is the right choice? Option 1 or option 2? Is there a 3rd option?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2057" LastActivityDate="2012-05-05T20:17:40.297" Title="How to resolve conflicts in team work?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5274" CreationDate="2012-03-28T10:09:23.907" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Option 3: Person 1 and Person 2 discuss the problem/task/topic and possible solutions/ways as well the background. They choose together the best way to do things. The quality of the product is better, and they actually did team work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point here is that the persons in questions communicate and both of them will probably learn something from it. Both persons have a different knowledge set and will share their knowledge with the other person. So this option will not only find the best way to go about things, it will increase skills and knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2833" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T10:09:23.907" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5274" CreationDate="2012-03-28T10:43:46.133" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have a meeting with Person1 and Person2 first separately and then together. If there is a chance that they may be able to work together, then give them what they need in order to do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Set a deadline for yourself, when you revisit the problem - let's say a month - and check whether they are on the right track or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they don't show any sign of possible cooperation in the future, or after the deadline they still cannot work together, take one of them off the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me the team's integrity values more than an individual. I'd rather work with a good group, where there's only average developers than with an inefficient group where there are a couple of &quot;&lt;em&gt;heros&lt;/em&gt;&quot; and &quot;&lt;em&gt;wizards&lt;/em&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T10:43:46.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="829" CreationDate="2012-03-28T10:49:37.700" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can have a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://fastandsteady.wordpress.com/2012/03/24/personal-kanban-on-the-desktop/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;my naive implementation&lt;/a&gt; using Stardock fences. &#xA;The advantage is the workflow is always in your face on the desktop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3555" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2013-03-13T02:17:49.830" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T02:17:49.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5269" CreationDate="2012-03-28T11:28:17.277" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you apply for the PMP, and it is time to document your 4500 hours (if you have a college degree) or 7500 hours (if you do not have a college degree) of leading or directing project tasks, you will be asked to indicate the number of hours in each of the domain areas (Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring &amp;amp; Controlling, Closing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, let's say you are using three different projects as proof of your experience of 4500 hours:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project A, 1000 total hours&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project B, 2500 total hours&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project C, 1000 total hours&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will be asked to provide a short summary description (300 words max, I believe) of your work in each project, and the hours-per-domain for each project.  It could look like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project A, 1000 total hours, 200 each in all 5 domains&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project B, 2500 total hours, 800 in Executing, 1500 in Monitoring &amp;amp; Controlling, 200 in Closing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project C, 1000 total hours, 100 in Initiating, 200 in Planning, 700 in Monitoring &amp;amp; Controlling&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, you only need to indicate experience in all 5 domains across all projects, not in each project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way you will be asked to prove this, at the time of your application, is by saying so on the form.  No upfront proof is needed; it's expected that you are completing the form truthfully (and ethically).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you are randomly selected for audit&lt;/strong&gt; (I was), then you will be asked to have the contact person for that project (which you will have indicated on the application already) review and sign off literally on that exact same delineation of hours and summary description of your work on the project (it will be a printout of that part of the application). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2864" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T11:28:17.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5263" CreationDate="2012-03-28T11:53:05.263" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the great things about software development releases is that you can name them whatever you want, and follow whatever pattern you want, as long as they're consistent and make sense in the context of your own workflow.  You see this a lot with version numbering, where in general the numbers-between-the-dots-and-dashes (e.g. 2.4.1 or 5.4 or 1.3-patch) mean different things to different organizations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your specific issue of what do with &quot;quick&quot; releases is often addressed by using the &lt;code&gt;major.minor[.build[.revision]]&lt;/code&gt; numbering (or just &lt;code&gt;major.minor[.revision]&lt;/code&gt;. In this case, your project planning would be around &lt;code&gt;major&lt;/code&gt; (2) and &lt;code&gt;minor&lt;/code&gt; (3, 4, 5), but leave the space (in the documentation, the workflow, etc) for revisions (1, 2, etc) in between those minor releases. This is an area in which talking to your technical lead may prove helpful, because more likely than not, the developers are working in a branching model within the software version control system that would align well with what you need to do with the plan and documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are guidelines and models for specific types of versioning -- one in particular is &lt;a href=&quot;http://semver.org/&quot;&gt;Semantic Versioning&lt;/a&gt;, which has very clear guidelines for, well, all sorts of changes throughout the development process (for example, &quot;Bug fixes not affecting the API increment the patch version, backwards compatible API additions/changes increment the minor version, and backwards incompatible API changes increment the major version.&quot;)  I'm not saying you go that route (although I personally find it very useful), just that there's one of more than a few places where best practices are all spelled out and can be easily followed by workgroups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2864" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T11:53:05.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5274" CreationDate="2012-03-28T17:05:05.207" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally wouldn't feel the relationship is better if I contributed to putting out a crappy product when I know the solution is suspect. So option 2 -- going with a less than ideal solution -- is something I would have a lot of trouble with and might likely make &lt;em&gt;me&lt;/em&gt; feel a bit resentful for having to work with someone who is unteachable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, it's important to pick your battles. Is this a critical crossroads in the project or is this something non-critical? Is this an area where it's okay for person #2 to make a mistake and learn from it or is this a mistake that could significantly bring down the project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would let the answer to those questions be your guide in deciding what to do. If person #2's mistake is something that can be fixed later, maybe let person #2 learn from it. However, if it's a really bad idea, then stick to your guns and continue to find ways to communicate the solution to person #2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of being a great developer is learning from mistakes and having room to make those mistakes. It's a delicate balance between project success and individual growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T17:05:05.207" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5274" CreationDate="2012-03-28T18:25:46.233" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Neither is an option.  These are more signs and symptoms of a team that has not yet matured.  It is a classic description of what occurs during the storming stages of team development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you need to look at teaming basics: role description with boundaries, rules of engagement, increased control on tasking, more of an authoritative stronghold by the team leader than what you would have later on, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your team is exhibiting these kinds of things, you are not yet a team.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T18:25:46.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5283" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5284" CreationDate="2012-03-28T20:21:51.690" Score="1" ViewCount="219" Body="&lt;p&gt;I joined a firm as a PM (having 2-3 years of Software Dev experience). I made a dumb move by switching career in a different company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This company did not like my PM skills or what not and laid me off. Now I am back to square one, I suppose in Developer role (but a mid-level). I so want to dive into PM roles but its hard to find opportunity like it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The company I am working now is small (4-7 devs, but overall it has 5000+ employees). What should I do, I am really confused at this moment :\&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3256" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T21:20:00.127" Title="From 2 months PM experience to .NET Developer: AGAIN" Tags="&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2012-03-29T12:58:17.127" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5283" CreationDate="2012-03-28T21:20:00.127" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not quite sure if I understood your situation. You've been demoted to dev position in the new company, or if you went back to the previous?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first case I think that your chances are very poor - I suggest to keep looking new company.&#xA;In the second one you can try to convince your superiors that you want to learn and that you'll be good at this position..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should think about whether your company is truly a place where your abilities are adequate. You wrote that it is a big company, but there are just a few developers.&#xA;PM's work is to manage the project- not a team - and the job is completely different than it may appear. I know because I went through the path similar to yours and became PM from dev.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find that you feel good in this role and really want to do it, I recommend you talk to your superiors, and convince them to your idea.&#xA;Otherwise,  to do some training on the side such as PRINCE2 or PMBoK and then take off to another company with documented skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck - fingers crossed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2955" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T21:20:00.127" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5285" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5306" CreationDate="2012-03-28T21:39:33.097" Score="4" ViewCount="126" Body="&lt;p&gt;For some time, I wonder which team PM can consider as his own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see at least few areas of membership:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Production teams which  he works with,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PMO - among other PM's&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team of stakeholders in the project,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, probably the closest one is my production team, with which i run the largest number of projects. I call them my team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time I feel the connection to the PMO, but rarely have the opportunity to directly work with other PMs so it isn't a strong feeling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder how it looks in other companies - whether it has an impact on Your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2955" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T14:43:14.970" Title="Which team PM can consider as his own?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4750" CreationDate="2012-03-28T23:00:50.460" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As @jcmeloni, I used Project&gt;Compare Projects, at least in the 2010 version. That showed the old and the new schedule by default. Linkages were more difficult to see changes in, but since they often changed the timing, that helped find them. This plus git gave me what I needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="158" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2012-04-12T18:29:06.037" LastActivityDate="2012-04-12T18:29:06.037" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5236" CreationDate="2012-03-29T01:32:26.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two critical insights will help create a culture where the identification and management of risks is a positive aspect of project management and not whining or &quot;airing dirty laundry&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Properly phrase the risk&lt;/strong&gt;. Lain has a good suggestion, but I've seen the the if/then format be just as effective. If/then formulates the risk as an event that might occur and the impact if it does, and it is more difficult to write overtly negative risks. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our awesome webapp, which helps people easily post LOLCats to social networks, relies on an undocumented Facebook API. &lt;strong&gt;If&lt;/strong&gt; Facebook deprecates or modifies the API &lt;strong&gt;then&lt;/strong&gt; our service will be down until we can engineer a work-around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A poorly worded risk might focus on the limited funding that cause the developers to use a hacky backdoor or the lack of coding standards and is more likely to be taken as a personal attack by those involved in the original decision. If/then focuses the risk on factual statements and assessments of what could go wrong and the consequences. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have a &lt;strong&gt;mitigation plan&lt;/strong&gt;. The mitigation plan embodies the advice to have a solution when pointing problems. The mitigation plan describes the concrete steps that will either reduce the likelihood or the consequence of the risk, ideally quantitatively and with an estimated cost and schedule to implement. This approach diverts the focus away from the problem and focuses it on the solution, which is more productive and less about airing issues and more about proposing solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our LOLCat example the obvious step is to not use the API, but just thinking through mitigation steps can lead in unexpected directions. For example, what if we expanded to Tumblr, G+ pages, and Twitter. This would mitigate the risk of this or any other Facebook issue completely taking down our service. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A well worded risk prevents people from immediately tuning out. A good mitigation plan helps to move the team away from dwelling on issues and towards focusing on solutions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="360" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T01:32:26.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5289" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5290" CreationDate="2012-03-29T06:59:09.977" Score="51" ViewCount="28737" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to implement KPI for employees of my company.&#xA;One of the KPI have listed is the quality of code, as measured by bugs created by developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now my problem is: I am planning to give 40 points (my scoring system) to a developer, if he/she creates bug free code.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There can be bugs which are severe, medium and low in nature. How do I rate my developers and give points based on number of bugs that they create?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1969" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-24T23:12:25.540" LastActivityDate="2018-05-14T10:13:21.840" Title="How do I measure employee (software developer) performance based on bugs created?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;performance&gt;&lt;kpi&gt;" AnswerCount="25" CommentCount="24" FavoriteCount="36" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5289" CreationDate="2012-03-29T07:36:12.533" Score="143" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please be careful when using these kind of measurements as KPIs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do this, I predict the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;arguments about whether bugs are caused by development or by poor quality analysis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;arguments about which developers caused which bugs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;defensive programming, which will increase the maintenance costs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;developers slowing down (no code means no bugs!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a lack of collaboration between developers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and the beginning of a blame culture, if you don't already have one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.estherderby.com/2018/05/an-alternative-to-the-annual-review-originally-published-in-2004.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article by Esther Derby&lt;/a&gt; suggests alternatives to using KPIs in pay reviews. There's a growing body of evidence that suggests that using performance as a way of measuring pay is destructive. My experience is certainly that it encourages heroism and a blame culture rather than team work, particularly when the KPIs are measuring unwanted items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2018-05-13T10:25:18.443" LastActivityDate="2018-05-13T10:25:18.443" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5289" CreationDate="2012-03-29T08:08:18.813" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;To be honest, I believe you shouldn't. In my opinion there is no fair way to measure this. No programmer, no matter how experienced he is, will create bug free code. Sometimes bugs are obscured by other bugs. Sometimes bugs evolve from interaction of two separate pieces of code that on their own are free of bugs. Maybe really severe bugs will stay undiscovered for months or years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe this is as faulty as trying to measure performance by number of lines of code produced per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2833" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T08:08:18.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5289" CreationDate="2012-03-29T09:31:17.743" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Performance reviews based on bugs is a pretty bad idea imho. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even in best case scenarios where testers are assumed to be doing perfect work, it's very hard to implement some sort of bug tracker that doesn't produce side effects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you might consider is using some sort of metric for re-work hours. That tends to work better because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You aren't telling them to do the impossible, which is to erase bugs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's easier to quantify&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That's the ACTUAL business impact the company is suffering.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Move the emphasis from bugs to better performing software, it just makes more sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1849" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T09:31:17.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5289" CreationDate="2012-03-29T09:49:42.553" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Setting a target like number of bugs is something easy to trick, and it is easy to find somebody who the others can blame. This will kill your team cohesion. &lt;strong&gt;Please don't measure people by the bugs they introduced. If you do so, they won't commit anything until they are 100% that it is bug free, and you'll never have a release.&lt;/strong&gt; While I wrote this answer I came up with 7 different ways to trick this KPI, so I'll look like a pretty good developer, while I'm doing nothing good for the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a different proposal. &lt;strong&gt;Look for reoccurring problems&lt;/strong&gt;. When you evaluate employees &lt;strong&gt;focus on their progress&lt;/strong&gt;, and award those who are constantly improving, let those go who aren't improving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say we work together, and I do a lot of coding mistakes. We agree on that I learn more about the language we are using. You'll check my progress and when my coding style improves you award me. If not, then we have something to talk about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T09:49:42.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5289" CreationDate="2012-03-29T11:12:24.167" Score="11" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am planning to give 40 points (my scoring system) to a developer, if he creates bug free code. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about asking the programmers how much (money) they will fork out if somebody could show them how to create bug free code? Professional coding is no easy task and there are much better ways of judging good programmers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is some reasons one ends up with buggy code:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.Management decides to have some new features that would contradict some other features previously implemented. I mean who doesn't want new features?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.Management would want these in the next release, but no time to refactor and clean up the existing code, I mean if the customer is not gonna see anything new, what is the management gonna present? We have no new features in this version but now everything works as it was suppose to? yeah try saying that in front of an audiance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you really need is called code review, it is done by professional programmers going through the code in pairs and fixing the issues, but for this to work you need to have at least one good programmer. These a days anyone who can type is considered a programmer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS : The above comments are made from the view points of both a prgrammer and a manager, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="981" LastEditorUserId="981" LastEditDate="2012-03-29T11:21:01.690" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T11:21:01.690" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5289" CreationDate="2012-03-29T12:02:30.680" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The objections all of the contributors are on target and these are true with all KPIs.  You establish a metric to increased desired behavior, that desired behavior is &quot;paid for&quot; by the removal of other behaviors, some of which are also desired.  This is why establishing your KPIs is very challenging and you need to do so with care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A balanced approach is called for here, where if you are measuring the reduction of defects in quality, you need to also measure, and reward, those other behaviors that will likely be affected, too.  For example, if I am being measured on quality, I am going to slow down and double check my work.  So you have to counter that with a measurement on time.  I'd also take less risks, which in many environments you do not want.  So you have to counter that.  You have to also be careful with cause and effect, the relationship between the independent variable (what you manipulate) and the dependent variable (the result).  What seems intuitive, logical, and even &quot;common sense&quot; is too many times not true.  You would think increasing someone's wage would have positive effects on morale and work effort.  In fact, morale is not touched, or it actually drops, and work effort will eventually decrease as the labor supply curve suggests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be that scoring defects is not the solution to increasing quality but rather scoring those behaviors that lead to quality, i.e., leading indicators.  We know increased skill should mean higher performance, so perhaps there is a KPI or two that will motivate skill acquisition and mastery.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2012-03-29T12:54:32.860" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T12:54:32.860" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5289" CreationDate="2012-03-29T12:53:38.507" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you are just going to aggravate your colleagues and make some enemies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bugs should be picked up by tester. If that tester feels that certain employee is breaking things constantly, then it makes sense to speak to that employee and see how his performance can be improved. Rather than making everybody paranoid and insecure about their job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3571" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T12:53:38.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5289" CreationDate="2012-03-29T13:05:20.833" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quality is a process and not a simple measure of &quot;defect&quot; rates.  You improve quality by creating a better process, from start to finish, stretching across all levels of the organizations.  Penalizing one role in the value chain will not help you accomplish your goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T13:05:20.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5289" CreationDate="2012-03-29T13:11:33.367" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you tie someone's compensation to any numerical scoring scheme of any kind, you push that person to work to the scoring system rather than working to actually achieve business results.  &quot;I get full points if I don't write any bugs? Cool! I won't write any code!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The corollary to this rule is that you can't come up with a scoring scheme that can't be &quot;gamed&quot; in some non-useful fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a system that is sufficiently complex to do real work of value, you will never, ever have bug-free code. You'll have less-buggy and more-buggy code. But there's going to be a bug in there somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3579" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T13:11:33.367" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5289" CreationDate="2012-03-29T13:12:44.920" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I once worked in that kind of environment and guess what? I left this place with rage and in very bad terms. And that is what you're going to suffer from if you indeed try to measure your developer's proficiency based on their bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're doing it all wrong. Here's how we fixed it back in the days:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make a complex yet short printed list of the most important points.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did you check that code for exploits and critical security holes?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did you commented it well so if someones else go in there he or she could fixes it right away.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone does NOT check that list before releasing THEN you can blame him or her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is how things should go. Because if you start measuring bug, you'll gain very bad &quot;karma&quot; from your employee, everyone will hate you and act with you as if you were a dictator. And also you will give credit to those who does absolutely sweet-nothing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone makes mistakes and there's always THAT little thing that we don't remember before releasing, and this is why &lt;strong&gt;hotfixes&lt;/strong&gt; exist!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1461" LastEditorUserId="1461" LastEditDate="2012-03-29T13:18:50.967" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T13:18:50.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5289" CreationDate="2012-03-29T13:13:33.657" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you're also missing a few KPIs...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Negative points every time a Product Owner changes a requirement.  They should have know what they wanted before development started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Negative points every time a tester puts in duplicate points.  Perhaps they get positive points ever time they find a bug?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Negative points to HR every time a &quot;good&quot; developer leaves to go work somewhere else.  And positive points every time they can talk a developer into coming to work for you b/c that's gonna be a tough one ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3578" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T13:13:33.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5289" CreationDate="2012-03-29T13:14:17.790" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with everyone else so far, I'm pretty much against this. A couple reasons come to mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Outside Pressure&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most companies allow business to pressure/control software development. What I mean is very few places ask a developer how long it will take to do something, and then let him have that long. You give a timeline that the product owner doesn't like and you're likely to face pressure from them to get it done earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it's still the developer writing bugs, there are a lot of forces at play. He doesn't want to get dinged for not meeting business demands. But if they keep pressuring him to write a feature in 1 day that should take 1 week, you can bet there will be bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Multiple Tiers&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With multiple tiers or layers of software, a bug could be found in the upper layer but actually caused by something lower down.  Additionally, &quot;bugs&quot; could be introduced because the layers misunderstood what the other was doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Decrease in productivity&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actual productivity will tank as you now not only have to QA the project, but also take time to figure out the true root cause and person to blame.  While this might seems simple, I'd wager that it will blow up into something bigger.  If my performance is based on me not getting any bugs and you're trying to assign a bug to me, you can bet I'm going to argue that it's not.  This isn't going to be a simple email that says &quot;This was John's fault not mine.&quot; Because now John is going to respond.  In the end, you'll be sitting in hours long meetings at least once a week trying to sort through all the bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Developers need to be professional&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Approaches like this tend to diminish the professionalism of developers. Think of CEOs, they're often evaluated on the overall growth of the company, right? If they lost a $100k a year customer, that might be bad, but it's often downplayed if they still grew the company by $500k that year.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plans that try to tie developers to metrics like these (number of bugs released, or number of lines of code written, features released, tests written etc) take developers from the realm of a professional employee and place them in the category of hourly worker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine you have an hourly worker mailing letters. His goal might be 100% accuracy, and you decide to dock him 1 point for each letter he screws up.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's essentially what you're doing to developers. You're taking a group of people who are typically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Creative&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dedicated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Innovative&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Passionate about their work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you're turning them into factory workers.  They'll start &quot;punching the clock.&quot;  They'll start looking quickest easiest way to do something RIGHT NOW with no thought to how it will play out in the future.  After all, why build an entire sum routine when I can just hard code the values for 1*1 to 12*12.  That way I know there are no bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Caveat&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that in mind, however, I am &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;NOT&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; saying that developers should not be held accountable.  I absolutely think they should, and honestly, any developer worth keeping around isn't going to want to release bugs. If you have developers that don't mind releasing bugs, you should fire them right now (seriously, do it before lunch.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot think of any other professional environment or occupation where people try to apply these types of metrics to one another.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a manager cannot tell who his top performers are and who is bottom performers are then that person should not be managing software developers, because he/she is clueless.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you apply a metric, you need to spend a LOT of time getting the right one, or else you risk running off your top performers since they don't want to be treated like little kids or assembly line workers (and in the end you might decide to not have metrics.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3573" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T13:14:17.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5156" CreationDate="2012-03-29T13:43:52.567" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could create an account for an online bookmark service like delicious.com. Either tag the bookmarks with a special keyword or share the account data with the other people in the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pros: cheap, easy to use&#xA;Cons: Doesn't work if security is important&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3594" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T13:43:52.567" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5289" CreationDate="2012-03-29T13:49:25.687" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good developer will be the kind of person who cheerfully tells the testers and QA team, &quot;Please - I &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; you to find bugs with my code&quot;. He'll actively encourage testers to try to break his code, so that he can improve it. His motivation is to find all those bugs &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; it's released to Production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you motivate the developer to minimise the number of bugs reported, do you think he'll be so keen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3595" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T13:49:25.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5289" CreationDate="2012-03-29T14:12:31.233" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Empower your developers, instead of measuring them with random yardsticks. Look into &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile&lt;/a&gt;. Bugs are not a metric of good work, bugs happen. Happy customers are a metric of good work, but you can't really measure happiness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic idea of Agile is that the developers have their objectives, they've divided the work among themselves, and they work towards workable features in small increments. They're responsible, directly, for what they do. And the best part is you don't have to keep tabs on the points!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many books and websites on Agile, and your developers will like you for taking on that approach, if it's well implemented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3598" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T14:12:31.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5289" CreationDate="2012-03-29T14:35:50.010" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is about the worst way to establish any kind of camaraderie.  What if someone could judge you on, say, the number of poorly written requirements or missed milestones?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3606" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T14:35:50.010" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5285" CreationDate="2012-03-29T14:43:14.970" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems like you're looking for a single group to associate yourself with, yet you are also a member of more than one group. A group of project managers may not directly work together on the same projects, but there can definitely exist a solid camaraderie between all members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your fellow project managers may have mentored you or you may have mentored them. Perhaps you bounce ideas off each other when you encounter a PM problem you're stuck on. While you don't succeed or fail together on the same projects, you may definitely have a bond because of your shared problems and similar roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, you also have a bond with the production team. The production team is getting their hands dirty, literally or figuratively, in order to meet the schedule you've given them. Your roles are drastically different, but you all are part of a cross-functional team that succeeds and fails together. While your relationship with the production team may be different than with other PM's, you may still have a strong bond with that group because of your shared goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the stakeholders may be a group you associate with because, in a way, you have a stake in the project as well. Anyone who loves their job or takes it seriously has something to gain from the success of a project. While it's not the same gain that a management-level stakeholder or client may experience, you may share in that experience when a project succeeds. The time you've spent working with stakeholders to ensure your project is successful may bring you closer together just as your time spent with production and PMs brings you closer to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your role as a PM is enhanced by being a part of all of these teams, and to try and segregate yourself into one group or another may alienate the PM team, the production team, or stakeholders. Since you already feel a part of the 3 groups, embrace that! It will help keep you successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T14:43:14.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5289" CreationDate="2012-03-29T15:22:07.247" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking the only thing that might be worse is paying developers based on the number of bugs they fix.  I can almost guarantee that if you pay based on the inverse of the number of bugs created, it will be a LOT longer before any code sees the light of day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll be better off creating a culture and processes that fosters fewer bugs.  Break the build, you get a bit of good-natured, public shaming -- and get to fix it. Use TDD to drive design and code development so that you know you have tests that cover the features you're working on.  Use code reviews/pair programming to get more than one set of eyes on the code.  Things like this foster good practices but don't weigh people down and cause paralysis like &quot;you'll get docked money for each error you have.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reward the team for doing good work, for accomplishing things - getting projects out the door quickly with happy customers.  Reward individuals for going above and beyond in improving their skills and contributing to the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1650" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T15:22:07.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5289" CreationDate="2012-03-29T16:11:33.300" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a bad idea on so many levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lets list the ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Builds blame culture:  everyone will be trying to blame everyone else for bugs that are found because it will affect their review&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Encourages people not to take responsibility.  If you do accept responsibility (it's my bug) then you get penalised&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hurts inter-team relations.  Developers and testers don't usually get on, but can you imagine the animosity the developers will feel towards testers if every bug a tester finds effectively damages a developer in their review.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Slows velocity and costs more.  Each spec is going to need to be written in huge detail or the developers won't touch it.  There will be a massive increase in developer testing in order to ensure there are no bugs (and this probably won't work anyway).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk-averse culture.  Nobody will want to try anything new because new means risky.  Forget about new techniques, new technologies, new organisational mechanisms.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Flight to safely.  Nobody will want to work on the &quot;hard&quot; parts of the system because they will be more likely to introduce bugs.  Everyone will want to write the admin screens, nobody will actually want to code the core functionality.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The behaviors you want to encourage are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Responsibility.  People who take responsibility for problems and fix them should be rewarded.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Proactiveness.  People who come up with ideas to make things better should be rewarded&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Experimentation. We find out what works well by trying different things and learning new technologies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Velocity.  At the end of the day, everyone has the same goal: to get the project done and delivered.  You want to do this as fast as possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I think you're doing the wrong thing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You shouldn't be having this discussion with us, you should be having it with your developers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Continuing down this path will do 3 things for you: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reduce the morale of your development teams&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Increase staff turnover as they look for work in more sensible development environments&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reduce the speed of delivery for your clients.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You now need to choose how to proceed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3620" LastEditorUserId="4742" LastEditDate="2017-11-10T20:17:01.543" LastActivityDate="2017-11-10T20:17:01.543" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5309" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5310" CreationDate="2012-03-29T16:39:36.780" Score="1" ViewCount="3521" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do I make MS Project (2010) distinguish between different kinds of dependencies?  For example, consider the following two kinds:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some tasks I mark as dependent on other tasks due to the nature of the tasks themselves (to use a concrete example: if you're building a house, the task to lay the foundation must come before any of the the tasks to put in the windowframes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other tasks I mark as dependent on each other due to resource constraints (e.g. the task to put in the living-room windows comes before the task to put in the kitchen windows, but only because I have a single carpenter.  If I had two carpenters, the work could happen in parallel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3554" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-09T16:36:46.587" LastActivityDate="2018-11-09T16:36:46.587" Title="MS Project 2010 resource dependencies vs task dependencies" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;&lt;dependencies&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5309" CreationDate="2012-03-29T16:56:39.690" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the difference between hard and soft predecessor/successor logic.  There are more than just resource dependencies as to why you sequence packages together, too.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not think there is a way to mark it in project; however, you can indicate the type of constraint in your WBS dictionary.  And you can explain rather briefly how the constraint was determined.  For example, I may draft in the dictionary a code like: soft FS+5 task A.  So, if you need to fast track or move things around, that &quot;soft&quot; in the code will clue you in that this package might be able to move.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T16:56:39.690" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5289" CreationDate="2012-03-29T17:52:15.113" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the only Q that matters: &lt;strong&gt;Is it good enough?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any industry, &lt;strong&gt;perfection is expensive&lt;/strong&gt;. Look for code that can be easily maintained. It's okay if there's bugs, as long the coder's style made it easy to fix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3634" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T17:52:15.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5289" CreationDate="2012-03-29T18:25:09.847" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's impossible to measure performance just only from bug rates from developers work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why?&#xA;Bug free apps doesn't mean the developer had built easy to maintain code, and it does not guarantee there is no hard-coded script in their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my point of view and what I've done, I measure developers' performance by using status when he/she submitted their works to testers, how many the code being returned to developers and how long they submit their works after the related tasks is assigned to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incentive? They will get it &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; they could exceed or meet the target assigned by me. I worked 8 years as a software developer, and every task I gave to my developers, measured first by difficulties and the complexity of business process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3637" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-04-01T02:50:43.020" LastActivityDate="2012-04-01T02:50:43.020" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5289" CreationDate="2012-03-29T19:12:34.613" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wait, the original poster didn't say which way this would go.  Perhaps more bugs is better.  Obviously the more bugs a developer produces, the more productive he/she is!  If they have the average bug production rate, then the more bugs, the more code they wrote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, incentivizing more bugs is not a good idea either, since it would be rather easy to deliberately include bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know a fun one.  How about you incentivize some of your developers to create devious bugs that can make it through as many levels of code checking, inspection, and testing as possible?  Then you can expose flaws in that process ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3644" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T19:12:34.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5289" CreationDate="2012-03-29T19:14:08.923" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For starters, as others have suggested, be careful if you are considering tying compensation to &quot;performance.&quot;  Before you go down that path, watch Dan Pink's TED talk on the surprising science of motivation:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not that metrics are useless.  However, these sorts of metrics are more useful for teams than individuals.  The team here is the entire team involved in delivering a product:  this includes developers &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; testers (and product managers, project managers...).  Development and testing should not be adversarial.  Measure a lot of things, and use them to get a rough idea of your team's progress.  Don't kid yourself that all or even any of your metrics will be truly objective.  Bugs are each subjective, so a number of bugs is even more subjective.  Your metrics will be more accurate if there are incentives to report them truthfully.  Such incentives may be intangible and ideally will be intertwined with a company culture of openness, cooperation, learning, and improvement.  Most metrics will also represent tradeoffs with cost or ultimately profit.  Reducing customer incidents to zero is likely cost-prohibitive, as is 100% test automation coverage.  Usually expert opinion is more valuable than a metric.  Goodness, ask your team how they're doing -- if the company culture is good they will report their performance truthfully.  If you have an agile process, hopefully you do this already in your retrospective meetings.  If you use metrics in combination with expert opinions and in a context of open communication and collaboration, I believe they can be valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A product/service development team's metrics might include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Velocity (average features/story points per unit time)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Monthly cost&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Frequency of release or downtime&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cost per release or duration/cost per downtime&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customer incidents&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Average cost/severity of customer incidents&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Automated test code coverage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manual test code coverage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manual test feature/story point coverage (more subjective)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Average time from QA bug report to resolution&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Average time from customer incident report to resolution&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Software performance benchmarks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Users&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sales&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3645" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T19:14:08.923" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5289" CreationDate="2012-03-29T20:13:41.287" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen this happen. A typical new PM that came from the business (in this case retail multinational) had thought every department is the same - if there is a problem then slap the wrong doer and keep everyone lese on their toes. Never works with IT.&#xA;Most projects that require a PM at all mean multiple coders, and sys an, bus an, user support, architects, etc etc etc. All with their oars in the water.&#xA;Scope creep, task movement, delays, milestone constraints, upstream/downstream system changes, staffing/sickness/leave/reassignment/contract changes, external system issues, hardware issues, domain/envirnment issues, set up issues, legacy code/systems, poor code coming in to the project as the base (i.e. initial code requiring ammendment) the list is almost endless - so many things cause things to change at the coal face. Good dev teams will compensate, do the extra hours, go the extra mile - and throw their contingency out the window. This means bugs. This is not a problem in itself, it is part of the process - its not like a chair manufacturer making a crap chair that goes in the bin, bugs can be fixed. &#xA;If you want to run KPI's do it on the number of bugs fixed as a team, not raised. Otherwise, bugs will be hidden or &quot;merged&quot; - blame will be fired in all directions (including upwards!). It will also make for a restrictive environment. As a Dev lead, if you came to me mid project and pushed for a change I'd tell you to wait until the next phase - there would be no scope creep at all unless you are willing to write off all bugs and take the KPI hit instead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This appraoch will back fire on you big time - think again!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3652" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T20:13:41.287" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5289" CreationDate="2012-03-29T21:27:06.120" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to add to the list of what will happen:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Programmers will hide the fact that they have a bug in their own code.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It often happens than on a second look, perhaps during next feature enhancement, same programmer will find their own bug.  I suppose you can protect against it, by not charging them points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What happens if they don't want to tell-tale on their friends?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, you do not want to stop programmers from exposing bugs.  And I think that is all you're going to achieve with this type of approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is coming from a programmer, with 12 years experience, but only worked in 1 company.&#xA;Competent managers shouldn't have an issue with identifying good and bad performers, and this system seems like an attempt to automate management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3656" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T21:27:06.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5274" CreationDate="2012-03-29T22:32:06.410" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, I agree with David Espina here. A good PM will resolve this by carefully manipulating a meeting - that is, question both (not interrogate) in the nomal way, play the dolt if necessary to get them to explain in a way that you as a (supposedly) less technical manager can comprehend, this is a great way for them to explain to eachother the merits of what they are thinking. I spent over 20 years as a developer, I am pretty experienced and it can be annoying when someone comes in at the same level and does not understand to the same technical level - its just human nature. Explaining to someone that should know/understand is one thing, explaining to the boss who is not as technical is another kettle of fish. Fresh minds often do have something to bring to the table, sometimes what sounds great is just unworkable in the long run (we have all seen this!) and the long-in-tooth guy may pick up on this before the e3xpense of discovery halfway down the line. This surely is the most important part of a PM's job, controlling his/her team, keeping production up, but balanced with morale and in the long run, making the deciding decision when the ball's in his/her court. Worse case scenario, get a third ear in on it, another techie (hopefully one they both respect) and let them pitch their cases. &#xA;As to letting them fail as a learning experience, I'd not. Failures will certainly come - as will experience - I do not want the rest of the team to suffer for one person's training session - and that goes double for my users and my management.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3652" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T22:32:06.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5264" CreationDate="2012-03-29T22:56:49.640" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First things first, decide on a methodology - many of those you mention are opposing and would not play well together. TDD, Agile, SCRUM - choose one (TDD may help here, but it can be a mind set change) :D&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, it seems that QA is your real issue. This means you need to bring in some basic process changes. Look at old fashioned code walkthroughs - impliment a rules based &quot;cop&quot; to standandise code (many &quot;cops&quot; out there these days - and VS has it built in). If using VS, impliment a testing process in build, too (test cases can be built at coding stage and tested on the fly - some extensions even check as the code is keyed!). Make sure test cases are written by a different person than the coder, preferably a sys an/prog and with some experience (a good dev lead will help with this - if you don't have a dev lead, think about making one even if it's a no-payrise position from within the ranks), get more user involvement if possible to keep things on an even keel. Give the Dev Lead the responsability of ensuring the sec is fulfilled and test scripts are set up - let them work directly with the sys/bus analyst as well as mentoring the coder(s). Make users sign of designs/test scripts and &quot;pay&quot; for any scope creep. Have QA done within the team and signed off by you, that way the QA analyst, tester and coder all know that they are being monitored (fairly) - it also makes bug fixes cheaper as they will be caught earlier in the dev cycle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coders get better by experience and by learning good practices (via mentoring and osmossis) - if the team has no one of that calibre on it, maybe you need to push for a hiring of a dev lead position (or borrowing one from another project perhaps) to do just that - the PM can push, but it takes another coder to show how it should be done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3652" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T22:56:49.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5263" CreationDate="2012-03-29T23:13:01.537" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Long term plans are always subject to change - shuffling is therefore almost ineviatable. I have found from an internal perspective it's easier to talk about phases of a release - i.e. 2.2 Phase I, 2.2 Phase II etc. Semantics I know (2.2.1?, 2.2.2?), but it's easier to merge and bump phases than versions, at least its easier to get away with it with management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this doesn't help for shrink wrapped products (i.e. ones that go external to clients rather than internal for business). In which case, it is sometimes easier to have a list of enhancements rather than cemented-in versions - by that I mean only linking a deliverable with a release when there is a more definite decision. These &quot;deliverables&quot; don't need to be left floating, they can be plotted against a timeline or a dependency list. E.G. Version 2.2 will include....bla bla bla....future releases 2.3 end of Q3 2012, 2.4 Q2 2013.....perf. enahncement 6 in dev Q2/12, win2008 version in dev Q3/12, OSX Port Q3/12, Unix Port Q4/12...etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, all this is really down the policy of your company and way/how they deliver (and to whom).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3652" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-04-01T03:19:19.027" LastActivityDate="2012-04-01T03:19:19.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="309" CreationDate="2012-03-29T23:25:57.217" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think its a great idea to do this with friends for a start - it often ends up badly. Best to start a new team with people that fill the skill set you require with responsabilities and roles set out clearly from the off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will be no mean feat as you need to find such people that are willing to carry you (as you say you are a young software developer - suggesting not much experience). You might find it better to get more experience, especially using the contract market - move about a bit sector wise, make contacts and learn the ropes on the business side (after all as a private dev team you will need to pitch for contracts against other mature teams). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not an easy task - been there several times and each time ended up going alone in the end in each case. It's a lot to carry, dev work and the business side on top - add management to that and its crippling (and not overly financially beneficial either as a lone contractor can top a part dividend of a team anyway - and pay a lot less tax into the bargain).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3652" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T23:25:57.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5258" CreationDate="2012-03-29T23:36:20.713" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If its for a pitch, do not forget contingency. In the real world first hit estimates often carry 50-100% contingency. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you do more work, you will see things come up more often and you will have something close to base it on. Until then, as said, break it into small tasks, work out dependency and any delays that are set in stone (such as waiting for a server build etc), over estimate everything (within reason of course) - much safer than underestimating. Work it out over your personal man hours (if working alone) per day minus 2 hours (so if you work 10 hours a day, call it 8). Put in estimates based on various scenarios/requirements. Review it, resist chipping (oh I could probably do that in 1 day if I don't have a lunch break and work hard), review it again. Then add your contingency. You should be giving a range rather than a date usually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;//Edit: To Add =&gt; Oh, and if you have written something similar before and have some code ready, do not take the build time away for doing that piece of work unless you are not interested in getting paid for it (i.e. you are happy to give it away) and you are very sure you need to make no changes to it and that it will work seemlessly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3652" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T23:36:20.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5289" CreationDate="2012-03-29T23:47:17.580" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a prime example of &quot;measurement disfunction&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any attempt to reward or penalise an employee based on a hard metric will fail. The employee will be smart enough to game the metric, and usually to the opposite effect that was intended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's been covered very well by Joel Spolsky in these blog posts: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/news/20020715.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Measurement&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/08/09.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Econ101 Management Method&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Joel's articles includes many examples, including the topic of this question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Suppose you decide to pay a bonus to the developer with the fewest&#xA;  bugs. Now every time a tester tries to report a bug, it becomes a big&#xA;  argument, and usually the developer convinces the tester that it’s not&#xA;  really a bug. Or the tester agrees to report the bug “informally” to&#xA;  the developer before writing it up in the bug tracking system. And now&#xA;  nobody uses the bug tracking system. The bug count goes way down, but&#xA;  the number of bugs stays the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Developers are clever this way. Whatever you try to measure, they’ll&#xA;  find a way to maximize, and you’ll never quite get what you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3670" LastEditorUserId="3670" LastEditDate="2012-03-30T06:39:14.837" LastActivityDate="2012-03-30T06:39:14.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5326" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-30T06:43:43.613" Score="2" ViewCount="122" Body="&lt;p&gt;We all know how to use Iteration Velocity parameter. However, there are situations during an iteration that one takes an unexpected day off, or there is a bank holiday, or there is another reason for one not to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such situations, you can use Iteration Strength which is kind of a &quot;normalised velocity&quot; that takes into account actual man-days during iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you use Iteration Strength in your projects? Is it valuable information for you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea behind the question is that I've heard two opinions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I don't care about the strength, it will all be visible in the velocity after a few iterations&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;yes, it is the actual team performance&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and I wonder how you feel about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2915" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-18T16:45:13.590" LastActivityDate="2015-12-27T02:28:42.910" Title="Is Iteration Strength a valuable parameter for you?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;performance&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5326" CreationDate="2012-03-30T07:41:54.907" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Velocity is based on guessed values, and a median over the last few sprints/iterations.&#xA;Therefore, the value is not exact as such, but it is &quot;exact enough&quot; for looking into the future of the next few iterations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a team of 8 people working in two week iterations, you would accumulate 80 man-days of &quot;working power&quot;. If you want to recalculate the velocity based on 2 or three missing people for a day, you vary the velocity in ranges of 2 to 4 percent, which is a kind of white noise deviation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if the iteration timeframe crosses Christmas and New Year, and more then half of the team is gone, you might consider that your velocity will be halved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But my experience is that in this case velocity will not be halved but close to zero, because key people are missing, and those who show up are thinking about other things. :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity is not some linear scaling factor and as such is not so good for standard calculus methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3397" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-04-01T03:29:57.357" LastActivityDate="2012-04-01T03:29:57.357" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5329" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5355" CreationDate="2012-03-30T08:24:01.503" Score="10" ViewCount="349" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are in our 10th Sprint right now, and I can see a pattern during dailies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a person is doing his or her speech which involve no one else and when his work is a little bit difficult to grasp technologically, then no one really cares about what is being said by him/her. If no one really pays attention then it defeats the whole purpose of the session.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you make to keep this meeting intelligible for everyone? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2456" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-04-01T03:38:02.043" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T21:16:05.333" Title="How to make daily Scrum more accessible to participants?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5214" CreationDate="2012-03-30T13:09:18.153" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mantisbt.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MantisBT&lt;/a&gt; - originally a software bugtracker, but easy adaptable to any workflow in any areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2503" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2012-10-07T16:08:20.883" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T16:08:20.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5055" CreationDate="2012-03-30T13:14:58.287" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Anuko &lt;a href=&quot;https://timetracker.anuko.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Time Tracker&lt;/a&gt; - fast, easy, usable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2503" LastActivityDate="2012-03-30T13:14:58.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5329" CreationDate="2012-03-30T13:50:35.597" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try focussing on issues or blockers, rather than just talking about what people have done the day before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g. &quot;I'm stuggling with XYZ story and need some help&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This encourages people to listen out more for things they can help with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2012-03-30T13:50:35.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5329" CreationDate="2012-03-30T14:06:56.570" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's assume that your daily scrum is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;timeboxed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;limited in discussion to: blockers, today's plan, yesterday's accomplishments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it's in a huddle to avoid issues of communication over distances&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;everyone's standing up together (there's nowhere to run! :) )&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all that is true, and one (or more) people are &lt;em&gt;telling stories&lt;/em&gt; AND/OR there is problem-solving going on &lt;em&gt;inside this timebox&lt;/em&gt;, then the scrum master needs to keep each person on point (or, on those three points).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no reason anyone should be going into great details &lt;em&gt;in the meeting&lt;/em&gt;.  If the information is important to other development, or could potentially be a blocker or otherwise cause issues for other team members, then the person could simply say &quot;I worked on X, it is a bit complicated and affects the work of team members A and B, so we need to have an conversation after scrum.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scrum master might need to reset the ground rules for the whole group, or could just have a quick chat with the person who is talking far too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2864" LastActivityDate="2012-03-30T14:06:56.570" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5329" CreationDate="2012-03-30T14:14:08.760" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is very common. I came across people who liked to talk &quot;geek&quot; during scrum as it made them feel more important or they were frustrated with something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This needs to be avoided as testers, designers and other team members who are non-developers may be present during the scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum should go on for few minutes (depending on size of your team) and it should highlight problems (if any). We have 12 developers and morning scrum goes on for about 3-5 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If somebody wants to talk &quot;geek&quot;, then maybe it makes sense to organize &quot;mini-scrum&quot; within front-end, server side or database teams. This way they can all discuss their problems and share their achievements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some may say that it's important share your achievements and plans for the day, but from what I have seen, database team doesn't care about front end achievements, front end team has no idea about reporting, both front-end and database teams can't care less about new deployment script for server team, so just leave it out of morning scrum :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3571" LastActivityDate="2012-03-30T14:14:08.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5335" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-30T14:46:33.743" Score="1" ViewCount="77" Body="&lt;p&gt;We operate a quarterly planning horizon and yet we have a very healthy order book. Detailed plans only stretch out as far as 3 months. How do I tell a customer who has just ordered when they will be likely to go live?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2134" LastActivityDate="2012-03-30T16:00:38.893" Title="What's the best way of making projections about go-live dates that fall outside of your planning horizon?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5274" CreationDate="2012-03-30T14:50:40.290" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you considered using code reviews? Let weaker developer do their job. Review their code and give them structured feedback. Give them time to make changes based on your feedback and re-evaluate their deliverable. If after a certain period of time you start seeing improvements, then you are on a right track and weaker developer will eventually get better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is assuming that weaker developer fully understands that he is less experienced and he can take all the structured criticism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3571" LastActivityDate="2012-03-30T14:50:40.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5335" CreationDate="2012-03-30T15:01:07.537" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You use the same planning / estimating process you use to arrive at your three-month detailed plans and schedules.  The steps and the inputs are exactly the same, only at a higher level of decomposition and with more uncertainty or variability built in.  What you end up with is a ROM (rough order of magnitude), which has a +50%, -30% expected variance, which is also communicated to the customer.  You have to be careful because even though you tell them the variance, it'll be long forgotten.  So make sure you say that several times and have it part of your written estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-03-30T15:01:07.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5335" CreationDate="2012-03-30T16:00:38.893" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It comes down to amount of work that needs to be done on the project, divided across days available by the people who are doing the work, with a fudge factor for uncertainty/changes/risks and taking into consideration the amount of time it takes to get feedback back and forth from the customer or other people involved with the project (like 3rd party vendors).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a more Agile approach, it is done when it is just good enough to provide the value/functions that customer is looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-03-30T16:00:38.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5339" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5341" CreationDate="2012-03-30T21:03:47.197" Score="6" ViewCount="594" Body="&lt;p&gt;The product owner wants to keep track on how much &lt;strong&gt;points&lt;/strong&gt; are spent on bugs during a sprint. This can raise some issues, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Scoring a task that is already done. Surprisingly even with it done, there are sometimes discussion and divergences.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Scoring many small tasks with 0 points that at the end actually sum up to something meaningful (a bunch of fast fixes).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Counting points spent on bugs as available points for new features in the next sprint, alongside with new bugs that eventually will show up.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with him that it is important to track the time spent on it, but points doesn't seems to play really well in this case. So what are the best approaches and practices in this case? Count the hours spent on each one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2352" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-04-01T03:22:10.783" LastActivityDate="2020-06-30T11:02:14.493" Title="Tracking points spent on bugs during sprint" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5339" CreationDate="2012-03-30T22:02:10.180" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most Teams do not give any points for resolving technical debt. Thing is, if you attach points for resolving bugs in code which had already been estimated with story points, you are assigning story points for &quot;doing work&quot; and not for &quot;achieving results&quot; which can be a subtle but important difference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity and Story points are a way to measure how fast a team can create new working features in releaseable working increments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a project this might lead to a team who'se velocity will get lower and lower over time, because all time is spent on resolving technical debt. This is good in some weird way, because it shows that the current code base is not able to deliver new business value in form of new features in the near future. This will lead to a rewrite, and the lessons learned will lead to a more scalable architecture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not every kind of pain is bad. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3397" LastActivityDate="2012-03-30T22:02:10.180" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5339" CreationDate="2012-03-30T22:07:24.653" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing to remember is that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilebok.org/index.php?title=Relative_Sizing_and_Story_Points#What_are_Story_Points&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;points != time&lt;/a&gt;; points are a relative estimation of complexity.  While you &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; get a sense of hours-spent-per-point using the length of the sprint and velocity, that's not the purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tthe way I typically handle sprint planning for an environment in which customers will inevitably be reporting bugs against software in production is to &lt;em&gt;assume&lt;/em&gt; n number of points per sprint &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; be spent on bugs.  This goes along with &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/should-story-points-be-assigned-to-a-bug-fixing-story&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mike Cohn's example&lt;/a&gt; in which one might write a story like &amp;quot;As a user, I want at least 15 bugs fixed&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best situation is when the reported bug doesn't warrant an immediate fix, &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; your sprints are short, so that the &amp;quot;bug&amp;quot; can actually just be counted as a story for the next sprint.  But &amp;quot;best&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;common&amp;quot; are not the same...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd really try to get at the heart of what the product owner is after -- is it a need to see that bugs are getting fixed? A need to see if more effort is spent on bugs than features? -- and plan accordingly from that, rather than try to find what could be a wholly artificial answer to &amp;quot;how many points are spent on bugs&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2864" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-30T11:02:14.493" LastActivityDate="2020-06-30T11:02:14.493" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5342" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5343" CreationDate="2012-03-31T13:57:28.803" Score="18" ViewCount="26989" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to measure performance of my developers using KPI (Key Performance Indicators).  Which KPI would best help me distinguish between good and &quot;needs improvement&quot; programmers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1969" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-07-20T12:01:02.927" LastActivityDate="2018-09-21T15:15:47.633" Title="Which KPI should I use to measure performance of software developer?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;kpi&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5342" CreationDate="2012-03-31T14:08:14.680" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;For any measurement you use, programmers will figure out how to game it. The only true measure is whether they are delivering quality software on time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you're better off just being an active part of the team. Don't rely on numbers, rely on actual observation of how they perform, perhaps combined with comments from their peers. If you have a well functioning team, it should be obvious which are the high performers and which need improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3189" LastEditorUserId="3189" LastEditDate="2018-09-21T04:29:26.653" LastActivityDate="2018-09-21T04:29:26.653" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5345" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-31T21:01:12.010" Score="16" ViewCount="569" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some background on the project:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I recently completed a project for a company. The project was a fairly&#xA;  large line of business web site. The customer was a company with no&#xA;  prior experience producing software applications. There was no prior&#xA;  infrastructure, web server, database servers, code repository or&#xA;  formal product owner. I was given a list of requirements and a 6 month&#xA;  completion date. The scope included integrating the web site with&#xA;  their enterprise data ware house, designing the back end database,&#xA;  creating specifically layed out Pdf files on the fly. It also needed&#xA;  to work in english, spanish and mandarin.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was told their was another developer in-house I would be working&#xA;  with.  Once I got a month into the project I found the other developer&#xA;  had no prior web or application development experience. I had to build&#xA;  the infrastructure from scratch. There were issues with the network&#xA;  that cause the application to run slowly. I also completely&#xA;  underestimated the amount of time it takes to create applications for&#xA;  more than one language. I soon realized I was not going to meet the&#xA;  6th month deadline. I told the I.T. director that there was no way the&#xA;  project would completed on time. I said it would take at least 9&#xA;  months for a single person to complete the project. She said they&#xA;  couldn't afford to pay over time and just do the best I could.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A smart person would have left the project at this point. I did not do the smart thing. I completed the project within 9 months. I worked 60 hour weeks because I wanted to complete the project and move on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many lessons were learned but I still have a dilemma. The company is very small and does not have an in-house developer to support the application. I continue to support the application on nights and weekends.  I have asked the company to hire someone to support the application as part of their job but they say they cannot afford it. The application built serves the purpose it was made for but I see absolutely no way it can be maintained. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are my options? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel I really did them a dis-service by creating something for them they cannot maintain and the users don't really want. The project is not getting used as much as it should because I requires a great amount of data entry, the users wanted data to be migrated from an existing file maker application. The data migration was not a part of the scope of the project. Advice needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3709" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2012-04-02T16:12:07.747" LastActivityDate="2012-04-02T16:23:34.533" Title="Project complete but does not really satisfy the end users. Business owners unhappy" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;deadline&gt;&lt;subcontractor&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5345" CreationDate="2012-03-31T22:20:14.457" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, it is not entirely your fault that the project went over schedule. As they asked, you did the best you could given the resources available. You told them the risks, and they agreed with it. The only points you should have taken more care of is that you took one month (1/6 of the time available) to figure out that the other guy had no prior knowledge of web development, and that the web site, once done, would require someone else to give maintenance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, if the data migration was not part of the scope, you don't have to worry about how they plan to use it. I know it's hard to take pride apart on something that you gave your best efforts to accomplish and it's barely used, but you got paid for that job (I presume), whether they use it or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, you can start passing the burden of maintenance to the in-house guy. If it was planned that he would be assisting you on the project, he had 9 months to learn something about web, and 9 months is far enough time to learn it. You can expect him to struggle sometimes, but try to assist him solving the problems, instead of you working over nights. If it's still not an option, try having a conversation and make it clear that you won't keep working like this. They will be forced to find another solution, instead of relying on you to maintain the service, because they know you'll fix it every time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I strongly recommend you to take a look at Steven McConnel's book Rapid Development, mainly this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stevemcconnell.com/rdenum.htm&quot;&gt;section #27&lt;/a&gt;. It's a nice read and will help you find out these kind of project overrun earlier, and how to solve and avoid them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2352" LastActivityDate="2012-03-31T22:20:14.457" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5345" CreationDate="2012-04-01T03:24:08.073" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many issues here.  I will just dwell on a few.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) It is clear there is a disconnect between IT and the business.  Not the first time this happened in the world.  It is your job force conflict if avoiding it harms the project.  This is necessary but not easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) You have to balance who is paying you (your immediate loyalty) to the overall harm to your reputation if the project flops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) There is a rate where supporting the system is worth your time.  50 an hour?  500 an hour?  Somewhere in between?  Don't be affraid to ask for it. If support wasn't in your original agreement, put a price on your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-04-01T03:24:08.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5345" CreationDate="2012-04-01T09:30:20.600" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two thoughts come immediately to my mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the project must have had a justification up front, otherwise it would never have been commissioned. Has the company looked back at this to see whether the anticipated benefits have been met? - I suspect not. It sounds as though you were taken on to deliver the system, and not to deliver the benefits. You have done your part. It is now the responsibility of the business to make the system work, and if that requires data, then that's what they have to provide. It is not your job, unless you want it to be, and if it is your job, then you should be paid for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, you need a way out of this difficult situation. However this is to be achieved, it is not going to be easy, so don't expect an easy, cosy chat with your client. I think you need to put down in writing the issues that need to be addressed. Steer away from emotive or emotional statements, and stick to facts...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The system requires maintenance. Option 1: they give the maintenance to the in-house person. Option 2: they hire someone. Option 3: they pay you to do it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Data migration is required. Option 1: You develop the capability in return for money. Option 2: they hire someone to do this. Option 3: they handle this manually.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;... and so on. You will know the list of key factors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Present the list to them and ask for a meeting to discuss it after they have had time to review it and digest it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, you need to protect yourself, and you need income. Working crazy hours for no money achieves neither. My advice is that if they won't pay you, give them a week or two of advance warning, then walk away and don't look back. It may sound harsh, but it might just be the wake-up call that they need. And actually, they probably know this, but have simply been taking advantage of your better nature and desire to do a good job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2012-04-01T09:30:20.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5345" CreationDate="2012-04-01T13:51:00.060" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is great example of why there is a difference between product success and project success.  Your accountability begins and ends with the delivery of in-scope requirements.  It sounds like you were not part of the development of the original business case.  Therefore, you cannot be held accountable for its eventual demise.  Could you have rendered an opinion of the product in its totality somewhere earlier in the project?  That's debatable.  Perhaps you could have rendered a rather high level, sort of knee-jerk expert opinion, but to do a cogent analysis and argument, you would have had to take time and money to examine the issues and arrive at a substantiated conclusion.  You did not have that time.  You were &quot;given&quot; six months and were already over utilized to get it done in nine.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not gray; it is a hard black line that separates product success and project success.  The only caveat to that is if you were brought in from the very beginning to build a successful product where the initial business case is part of your scope.  But in this case, you were not hired until after these decisions were made.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like they embarked on this with a mission to do it on the cheap.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-04-01T13:51:00.060" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5345" CreationDate="2012-04-01T17:21:33.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First things first, do they still owe you money? If they do, everything you do should be based on whether or not you get those debts cleared. Stop servicing, stop EVERYTHING until the balance is settled. Play hard ball if you have to because there is no point getting stuck deeper than you already are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming they don't owe you money, your options are pretty simple imo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try to determine if they are REALLY broke and don't take their word for it. Some customers will take advantage off you just because they can. It's not nice, but it's not rare either.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If they are really broke, you need to decide if you want to continue doing this. We are all different creatures but if I were you, there would be zero guilt with stopping. However, the fact that you haven't cut your losses and are posting here probably means you are feeling some guilt. As the others have mentioned, this guilt is not justified so get over it imho. Helping them get over the hump won't result in anything beneficial. In the long run, you would have just taught them that they can expect help for free and they will have taught you that free help is worth exactly zero bucks in the bank account. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1849" LastActivityDate="2012-04-01T17:21:33.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4440" CreationDate="2012-04-02T03:54:46.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Add to the lead times, last minute changes to architecture can be quite costly compared to either software projects or Toyota. Most internal IT organisations do not/cannot have a warehouse that is always full of parts. &#xA;In Toyota (even if they do have inventory that comes in Just In Time like Boeing) they become part of a finished product that goes off the factory. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Data Centers can go easy on this as the equipment can be re-used for another project/customer easily. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3719" LastActivityDate="2012-04-02T03:54:46.980" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4440" CreationDate="2012-04-02T09:32:46.437" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hardware infrastructure can be implemented in phases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimate how the requirements will grow over time and see if you the infrastructure you require can be implemented in phases.&#xA;E.g. Start with 10 servers, add 10 more and etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be managed using an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iterative_and_incremental_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;iterative life cycle&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the phases are short enough then you can use an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;agile life cycle&lt;/a&gt; (agile is based on shorter iterations than &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Process&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the original UP&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Software infrastructure, as any software, can be developed using an agile life cycle. However, it is important to keep the end vision intact, so that the software will be able to function as an infrastructure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1094" LastEditorUserId="1094" LastEditDate="2012-04-03T09:18:13.673" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T09:18:13.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5326" CreationDate="2012-04-02T10:02:36.997" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think that there is a difference between velocity and iteration strength. Both are for the teams so that they can make a more realistic commitment at the sprint planning. If you have less team members on board your velocity will decrease, if not then you found a bottleneck. If you are using velocity for release planning then it is a different story. In that case revise your plan with the latest velocity number, because that is the more realistic one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="2915" LastEditDate="2012-04-02T11:52:37.197" LastActivityDate="2012-04-02T11:52:37.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5345" CreationDate="2012-04-02T13:50:09.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a testament to your character that you want to keep the customer happy beyond the scope of the project.  However, it is not your responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to help the company at this point (granted, we're only seeing one side of the story) is to let them develop the vision, infrastructure and management capacity necessary for I.T. to meet the company's goals.  You aren't helping the company by providing a band-aid.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They need to take responsibility and decide whether and how to move ahead with this line of technology. Step out of the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-04-02T13:50:09.047" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5329" CreationDate="2012-04-02T14:07:22.210" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technical people like to talk about technical things. If they are asked to tell something with unknown purpose, they often drift into technical meanders, as they feel safe in it. So I assumed that people didn't feel if it's valuable to the others of what they say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I did was a little workshop on what to tell during the standup. On the workshop I asked each team member to answer the question &quot;what would you like to hear during the standup, so it would valuable for you?&quot;, and write it on a post-it. Then we sticked all post-its on a wall and grouped by similarity. It turned out, that there were 4 valuable pieces of information for everyone, 1 only for tester and 1 only for architect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I printed those 6 questions and sticked in a visible place, so everyone could see it during a standup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastActivityDate="2012-04-02T14:07:22.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5345" CreationDate="2012-04-02T16:23:34.533" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with most of the opinions expressed by our peers on the other answers, so I'd try to offer another view of this very same scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First, &lt;strong&gt;don't blame yourself (too much)&lt;/strong&gt;. Problems happens all the time, unfortunately. On the other hand, as more problems we get in a project, as more lessons we learn. So, take this case as an exercise for your next projects. You already mentioned several lessons you learned, so is time to take them and move on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Second, &lt;strong&gt;stick to what has been agreed&lt;/strong&gt;. As David mentioned, there's a huge gap between project success and product success, and you cannot take all the blame if things got wrong. But you need to know what was agreed and follow it. Was there any clause talking about the maintenance phase of the project? We know you want to do your best and your client wants to pay as less as possible... that's normal. So, if there wasn't any clause talking about the maintenance, both sides may need to reach an agreement IN ALL LAYERS, i.e. payments, worked hours, scope of the maintenance and so on. I'm not sure about the contract aspect of it, but I believe that in case something is not clear, lawyers may be required to clarify things up. &#xA;Either way, be formal and be candid.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Third, &lt;strong&gt;formally agree with the client the next steps&lt;/strong&gt;. This way, there will be sound boundaries both sides will need to respect, avoiding that 'cloudy' area where lies what each part needs to do.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-04-02T16:23:34.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5357" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-02T20:20:15.797" Score="5" ViewCount="229" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new to Project Management. I am coming in on a project that was just implemented and is now in Post Implementation. The roles do not seem to be fully understood be everyone. Now, when something goes wrong, the world is emailing the world; consequently, everyone is spending their days going through emails instead of getting to the root and solving the problems. I need to streamline this process. My plan is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ID the Stakeholders &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ID their roles &amp;amp; responsiblities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a communications plan where we ID the communications needed as well as their frequency, delivery method and who is responsible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a master Issue Log that we can use to keep track of and prioritize issues as well as assign them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, once a given issue arises, I still feel like there will be 50 emails batted back and forth before it is understood and decided who it will be assigned to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any recommendations on how to cut down on the communications?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3726" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-04-03T00:53:46.377" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T11:29:32.297" Title="How to I cut down on all of the communications?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5357" CreationDate="2012-04-02T21:54:31.407" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Any recommendations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If possible, deal with each issue directly, face-to-face.&lt;/strong&gt; Direct communication makes it so much easier to set the expectations and explain reasons why these expectations are actually set. To some point it is against your idea to sort things out, document them and then follow the plan, but at the same time you will be building relationships which will likely prove to be invaluable when the next crisis comes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Follow the plan of yours (or other similar) to sort out the communication.&lt;/strong&gt; At the same time you may see value in showing everyone how communication buzz hurts the project team (although it doesn't have to be the case). Once you have it set up be ready to deal with consequences, because there likely to be some, meaning some people will expect to get some information even though it won't look like this basing on your communication map. Then, you can always retreat to the rule no 1: deal with it face-to-face.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering you are willing to listen to people having different opinion, these two should build the atmosphere of cooperation on one side and, on the other, at least support the trust in a way that limits cross-checking, thus reduces the volume of formal communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2012-04-02T21:54:31.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5264" CreationDate="2012-04-02T22:11:53.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that most important thing is to answer question why do you need to make developers better. Is it because you want development to be realized better and more efficiently or do you want to have better developers that by the way will be doing development better?&#xA;If only first one then there are two way of achieving this:&#xA;    a. Improving performance of team   - which I believe is easier task - lot of methodologies - let's take SCRUM as example, might help in that case&#xA;    b. Improving performance of individuals - which apparently you want to do and what I believe is much harder&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let us assume that you want to achieve b. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion you should start from assuring that developers themselves feels need of improving their own way of work if they see that then your job Is lot easier, if not you need to change it. It is very hard to suggest way of motivating them, probably each team member is motivated by different factor. For sure I am not convinced that they are motivated because they are paid more than fair , in lot of situations money is not everything quite often it is responsibility, self-realization, having things under control, concrete and clear vision of future and so on..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having people motivated to improve themselves you have more than half job done. Then lot of techniques mentioned in other answers should work quite nice.  From my perspective  two most important are:&#xA;    a) Frequent feedback - that comes from peer review, application demo, retrospective meeting or any other meeting/discussion that is about what happens in future and how can we improve it. &#xA;    b) Delegation of responsibility - initially you might be main feedback-giver but it should change rather quickly and team itself should organize around self-improvement.&#xA;    c) Slack - learning is painful process, and lot of errors must be done during that time, You must be patient and You shouldn't demand high performance and learning at the same time, idle time is necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="936" LastActivityDate="2012-04-02T22:11:53.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5360" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5368" CreationDate="2012-04-02T23:27:07.593" Score="3" ViewCount="5221" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every now and then MS Project screws me over.&#xA;I use it to manage multiple projects, to solve resourcing for our services organization. I don't manage tasks, but use one MS Project &quot;task&quot; for each project (or each part of a project).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, that worked for a while now. I had projects (MS Project tasks) have a certain number of days in &quot;Work&quot; (the estimate of the whole project), and I adjusted the &quot;Remaining&quot; work so I always have an accurate sense on when team members become available. So far so good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But today, out of the blue, when I adjust the number of any task (e.g. a task having 20d in work and remaining, it hasn't started yet) in the Remaining Work columns, the Work column gets adjusted to the same number, too (effectively saying 0% complete). Even though I want to say out of 20d total only 5d are left, it changes the whole task to 5 total. [edit] If I adjust the &quot;% Work Complete&quot; number, it has the desired effect in that it leaves Work as it is and adjusts Work Remaining [/edit]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am puzzled by how this can suddenly change (yes, other people have write access to that file, too), and fail to find a reason for that (and of course have failed to resolve it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anybody got an idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2921" LastEditorUserId="2921" LastEditDate="2012-04-02T23:35:20.780" LastActivityDate="2013-06-25T10:49:18.440" Title="MS Project: adjusting &quot;Remaining Work&quot; also adjusts &quot;Work&quot;. why?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3013" CreationDate="2012-04-02T23:45:40.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off I agree with the author that a PMP is really a waste of time and money.... Lets say you have 20 years PM experience and a degree in management.... What can they teach you that you don't already know. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been a manager of a PMO for 10 years and a PM with over 20 years experience, I have hired PMP people and non PMP people with experience. Let me tell you that a piece of paper you pick up on a weekend cram class isn't worth it and neither are the people who hand them out... Of the 300 people I have hired those with the PMP designation were the most incompetent and difficult to work with. First they think they are entitled and second they have no real world experience.... HR people WAKE up your throwing away a lot of good talent for a piece of worthless paper.....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second people with PMP designations do not make more money..... Thats misleading in fact if you had one I would pay you less because you were not qualified in most cases to manage sanitation workers...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would gladly put 5 of my best experienced Project Manager against any PMP and I will guarantee they will get any project done faster, safer and for less money than someone with a PMP...  So a gain human resources managers wake up and realize that your getting ripped off and short changed by those who have PMP's. Management is an art and a science as much as it is a people skilled profession...... They teach you those things on the job and not in a three day classroom or from some PMBOK.... I read that book twice and its pretty weird if you ask me.... as is the PMP dont waste your time get experience and work with companies who's HR people know real talent!!!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3727" LastActivityDate="2012-04-02T23:45:40.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5357" CreationDate="2012-04-03T02:36:25.183" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Pawel's suggestion (+1!), which is basically use emails for what they're supposed to be (in this context), i.e. making everyone aware of &lt;strong&gt;decisions / agreements&lt;/strong&gt; rather than &lt;strong&gt;discussions&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice that communication is something inherited by company's culture, so if you're intended to buy in this fight, make sure you have enough time (and patience).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I`m used to a similar scenario, where an incident appears involving several third party partners. On such cases, no one wants to be held accountable for the issue. Usually, to sort things out, we have &lt;strong&gt;conference call bridges&lt;/strong&gt;, hosted by a neutral moderator / facilitator where everyone has the opportunity to explain his/her sides and then an agreement is reached. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the meeting's agreements, the moderator sends minutes to all attendees with &lt;strong&gt;decisions&lt;/strong&gt; instead of &lt;strong&gt;discussions&lt;/strong&gt;. Is it possible to also have several bridges from time to time until the problem is sorted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on your concerns of having communication flowing properly, you could step up and suggest to be the bridge host (as long as you can be candid with everyone on it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-04-03T03:33:06.500" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T03:33:06.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5357" CreationDate="2012-04-03T06:43:41.290" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it has moved to a post-implementation phase, you probably need to have some sort of ticketing system or bug tracking system. There are a variety of off-the-shelf software solutions that can be used to get a handle on who is working at what, tracking, e-mail alerts, dashboards, etc. If you added some detail on what industry, project, and other details, I'm sure people around here would have some solution ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T06:43:41.290" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5357" CreationDate="2012-04-03T09:19:00.833" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would organise a meeting/conference call between all the heads of departments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would then discuss the issue with department heads and suggest that all communication comes through them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way I'll enforce kind of a &quot;filter&quot; and delegate some of the responsibilities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally I would insist that we all agree on how we are going to report on these problems. I.e. come up with a simple document template that can be accessed through some kind of document sharing tool, such as Sharepoint or Evernote. Office 365 is fairly cheap for this (£5 per user per month).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3571" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T09:19:00.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5357" CreationDate="2012-04-03T10:12:20.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your goal is not to cut down the communications. It is a symptom of a lack of a process to escalate problems, which is amazing that you went live without it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You did not say what the project or tool is but a problem management process is quite extensive, is not cheap, and you can get a lot wrong if you don't build it well. You have to design the work flow, the controls, the service levels, how you will measure performance...all while keeping those costs at a minimum. All of this should have been done long before the project went live. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you try to control comms now without a viable alternative IN PLACE, you risk creating other, more severe issues for the company and its work. This is a &quot;fix one thing, break two others rule. For example, trying to have the communications flow through a single source, especially if that source filters, you risk a bottleneck, inappropriate filtering, bypassing, and most importantly exacerbated user rejection.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So do not focus too much on the symptoms. Stop the bleeding, but focus on the source. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2012-04-03T11:29:32.297" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T11:29:32.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4750" CreationDate="2012-04-03T10:49:26.990" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you took periodic baselines, you can see the task variations side by side in the Tracking Gantt view. However, in a complicated project, that could get very confusing, very quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T10:49:26.990" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5357" CreationDate="2012-04-03T11:09:40.713" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would also add - nominate a single point of contact. That way new problems do not get lost in discussions about existing ones. That SPOC should also be responsible for alerting the stake holders and arranging update meetings. Stakeholders wanting urgent meetings have a place to go and the same email dowesn't end up in 20 email boxes and then get forwarded in 20 different guises as each responds to all!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, as this is in post production, there should be a problem management/support team at least starting to trake control of this project. They would/should have such processes in place already. At the very least it needs to be controlled in a Live System context - it is no longer in dev.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3652" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T11:09:40.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5360" CreationDate="2012-04-03T11:39:53.157" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remaining work is a calculated result based on what you loaded in as work and the percent complete you indicate.  For example, if you originally target 100 hours of work, you complete 15%, it calculates 85 hours remaining.  If you adjust the 85 hours, as if you did a bottom-estimate of remaining work or latest revised estimate, and reduce the 85 to 75, it will take the same off of the work column and reduce your 100 to 90.  It HAS to do that in order to make its calculations throughout the rest of the tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you open up the column called &quot;baseline work&quot;, it will continue to show the 100 hours since this is the performance measurement baseline.  It will never change unless you re-baseline it.  So, it is a good thing for the tool to recalculate your work estimate if you change the remaining work, but you will never lose your original targets in the baseline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T11:39:53.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5369" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5370" CreationDate="2012-04-03T14:04:22.583" Score="7" ViewCount="504" Body="&lt;p&gt;My question is related to groups, motivation and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Y&quot;&gt;millennials&lt;/a&gt; - aka generation y. I had a colleague who was a real millennial: he was really driven, he was always looking for new challenges, and was unable to sit tight for an hour. He was a good guy, but once a month he wanted to quit, because the job wasn't challenging enough for him. My boss managed to find something for him every time, so it seemed that the problem has been solved. However, the moral of the other team members (mostly generation x) started to decrease, because he did all the good stuff, and they started think about quitting. Unfortunately, we couldn't fire him, because he did the job well, we couldn't afford to lose a colleague and it was really hard to find new employees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've started to think that our approach wasn't good enough, because we tried to motivate on a personal level, but we should have worked on the team level instead. All the resources I managed to read focused on the employee not on the team, but I don't see how to have a working team when it consists of generation x and y employees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This situation might not be that urgent, but the millennials will start to work, and they'll work with generation x, so their &quot;integration&quot; needs to be solved soon, and I've read somewhere that the generation z has appeared on the horizon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a good example, or rule of thumb how to integrate millennials into an existing working environment without firing them and keeping the old employees?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there such thing as motivation on the team level?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If so, how can it be aligned with the personal level?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-04-05T04:49:35.110" Title="how to integrate millennials into an existing working environment without firing them and keeping the old employees as well?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5369" CreationDate="2012-04-03T14:13:40.123" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, we couldn't fire him, because he did the job well&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everybody can be replaced, no matter how good they are. I believe it's better to work in a team where everybody is roughly on the same level, rather than a team where there are few geniuses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have previously left a company because I felt bored - it wasn't challenging. I thought I was quite valuable and I was, but they have replaced me by hiring few more people. This has taught me a lesson - everybody can be &quot;disposed of&quot;. I'm now working in a better, more challenging environment, and my old work colleagues are also doing well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3571" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T14:13:40.123" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5369" CreationDate="2012-04-03T14:23:16.773" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This generation x, y, z, and whatever else are not much more than a broad-bush sweep of attributes based on stereotypes, generalizations, and very little science.  It is about as reliable as trying to predict work behavior difference between men and women, introverts and extroverts, black and white, and the religeous and atheists.  In other words, a big waste of time.  Certianly, the signs of the times and subcultures influence some grain of truth in these stereotypes, but to rely on them to predict future performance is a non starter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on team building, well developed roles, and motivators based on leading theories of today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T14:23:16.773" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5369" CreationDate="2012-04-03T15:28:05.380" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You describe a specific situation and I prefer to relate to it instead of generalizations based on theories (generation X, Y and so on). If you prefer to focus on generalizations I would say that you will see plenty of examples in pretty much any company around as it basically means that people of the age 30+ and 30- working together. I guess such setup is true for vast majority organizations around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coming back to the point, it seems that handling the person from your story ruins teams morale so my first question would be about the cost of maintaining the situation as it is. Assuming it is high I'd analyze what does the organization gets by such actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My challenge: I wouldn't automatically assume that it is the only way to keep the Y-gen guy motivated.&lt;/strong&gt; The simple fact that he said he wasn't motivated doesn't mean management can't help him find motivations in tasks he does. Sometimes we just don't see potential of our role/position/task and right perspective can help us that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, there is playing in the team. Both the guy and the team should understand who is chosen to do sexy tasks and why it is so. Ideally, these decisions should be transparent, meaning that management should be ready to face the team explaining why it is so and not the other way around. Usually such transparency sends a message: the decisions are fair so we aren't afraid to discuss them publicly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is basically the approach to integrate the guy with the team. &lt;strong&gt;Either he sees the value of being team player or, well, he isn't a part of the team because he plays his own agenda.&lt;/strong&gt; In this case, no matter what kind of specialist he is you may consider finding him other place in the org or even letting him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0787960756&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Five Dysfunctions of a Team&lt;/a&gt; if you want to dig deeper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You ask another question about motivation. If you follow &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.ted.com/2009/08/24/the_surprising/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dan Pink's ideas on motivation&lt;/a&gt; (which I do) you don't consider extrinsic motivation effective. Basically everyone needs to find their own drive - something which keeps them running.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this context it's even hard to answer the question about aligning one's motivation with motivation on team level. &lt;strong&gt;It is more about about finding a common goal or purpose (that's what defines a team) and finding intrinsic motivation to pursue this goal.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From such perspective motivation of individuals can differ, e.g. my guess is that Wikipedia authors are motivated by different things (fame, knowledge sharing, interest in specific area, competition, etc.) yet they pursue a common goal: creating best encyclopedia of this time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0143145088&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Drive&lt;/a&gt; to learn more about motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T15:28:05.380" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5042" CreationDate="2012-04-03T20:29:13.013" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer:&lt;/em&gt; I am the creator of PMRobot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can offer a product I created after being disappointed with the old Basecamp many years ago: &lt;a href=&quot;http://pmrobot.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://pmrobot.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It combines the collaboration of Basecamp with true issue/bug tracking, and full time tracking and job costing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2713" LastEditorUserId="2713" LastEditDate="2012-07-29T20:20:39.853" LastActivityDate="2012-07-29T20:20:39.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5264" CreationDate="2012-04-03T20:39:26.540" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I realize you don't have hire/fire authority, but sometimes the really bad ones do need to be let go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a look at the similar question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/779/handling-unskilled-unmotivated-team-members&quot;&gt;Handling unskilled / unmotivated team members&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2713" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T20:39:26.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5376" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-04T02:01:20.977" Score="23" ViewCount="2679" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently trying to create an estimate for a software proposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this context, we are requesting a fixed cost amount of funds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally lean toward Agile development practices. I, however, can not find a way to negotiate a &quot;not fixed cost&quot; contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have received some recommendations to not estimate the project using user stories and &quot;done conditions.&quot; (BDD style)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My gut tells me that not having all requirements in advance creates too much risk. I personally want to know what &quot;done&quot; looks like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I collaborate with my customer to document user stories to help define the project scope? Or should we just bid the project based on very vague feature requests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3734" LastEditorUserId="32641" LastEditDate="2018-07-02T10:56:34.850" LastActivityDate="2018-07-02T10:56:34.850" Title="Is estimating a project without basic requirements or user stories a good idea for a fixed cost proposal?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;scope&gt;&lt;project-proposal&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5377" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-04T02:44:01.000" Score="4" ViewCount="1704" Body="&lt;p&gt;My problem is simple: I am the only software developer in an organization trying to start organizing projects for me. Management directors don't care and ignore EVERYTHING about corporate governance or project management. I only present some documentation to cover my back but I know they don't read anything I've sent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to have a template for my project, a simple workflow to follow for small software projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read some books which talks about: &quot;Calculating the communication channels&quot;, &quot;Calculating the critical paths&quot;, &quot;Cost estimating&quot;, &quot;Quality policies&quot;, etc. and I have nothing against these good practices, but I'm alone and I have to minimize my time investment, specially when I have people asking for immediate results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there some simple project management steps or workflow (must-have) for lonely developers? (I don't need a software, just a generic template).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0972380175&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Computer Repair with Diagnostic Flowcharts&lt;/a&gt; is a book which contains workflows for typical simple problems with computers. Is there something like that for PM and specifically for my scenario?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3735" LastEditorUserId="3571" LastEditDate="2012-04-15T11:37:27.317" LastActivityDate="2012-04-15T11:37:27.317" Title="Software project workflow template for the lonely programmer?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5376" CreationDate="2012-04-04T03:00:48.750" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;welcome to PMSE!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's split your question into sub questions...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is estimating a project without basic requirements or user stories a&#xA;  good idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, it's not a good idea at all, but sometimes we have to dance to the music. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My gut tells me that not having all requirements in advance creates&#xA;  too much risk. I personally want to know what &quot;done&quot; looks like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your guts are correct, I'm afraid. Project risk is directly proportional to the lack of clear requirements... which means in your case the risk is huge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, what can I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As there are no clear requirements but clear budget (and deadlines, I'd assume) I believe you'll need to discuss a lot with the client in order to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_breakdown_structure&quot;&gt;break down the project&lt;/a&gt; as much as you can. Having a first PBS, define rough estimates for each piece of work to be accomplished, their dependencies and also clearly define priorities between each piece. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The estimates will be updated as the project goes by, their dependencies will help you defining the project path on the future and the priorities will be used in case things get out of track and you need to cut things off. Sorry, when dealing with projects we always need to be ready for worst case scenarios.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, in short:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be honest&lt;/strong&gt; with your client, explaining that as clear the project gets, the less risk you both will have (here I'd suggest to avoid saying &quot;the unclear the project gets, the more risk we'll have&quot;, as it can leave a bad impression);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Draft&lt;/strong&gt; with the client a rough &lt;strong&gt;PBS&lt;/strong&gt;;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Agree piece's priorities&lt;/strong&gt; with the client &lt;em&gt;before you provide your estimates&lt;/em&gt; (just to avoid bias on the client's decision);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Formally agree&lt;/strong&gt; (by mail, contract, you name it) all the above, taking special care to the details about what's going to be delivered and what's not.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-04-04T03:00:48.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5377" CreationDate="2012-04-04T07:21:52.813" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not saying that I 100% understand what you need, but maybe your are looking for something similar to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.personalkanban.com/pk/personal-kanban-101/&quot;&gt;Personal Kanban&lt;/a&gt;. It&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;provides/&lt;strong&gt;visualizes&lt;/strong&gt; you and your manager your actual status&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;can help you see your activities as a whole&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;helps you find your &lt;strong&gt;limitations&lt;/strong&gt; (WIP), in other words how much tasks you can do in parallel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;provides your manager the possibility for &lt;strong&gt;prioritization&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can have four different phases like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Queued&lt;/em&gt;: the place for your new tasks&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Implementation&lt;/em&gt;: the place for your ongoing tasks&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Validation&lt;/em&gt;: where you check whether your solution is the one your were asked to deliver&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Done&lt;/em&gt;: what you accomplished/finished/delivered&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-04-04T07:21:52.813" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5376" CreationDate="2012-04-04T07:54:21.357" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to estimate the projects based on what you have so far you can do it by providing a range of dates instead of a fixed date. This is called &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.construx.com/Page.aspx?cid=1648&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Cone Of Uncertainty&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. The basic idea is that the less you know the less accurate your estimates are, so you should include that error in your dates. However, I understand that the client always want to have the fixed date, so you should explain to him where the ranges came from. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plus add a buffer to include changes and another buffer to include risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2915" LastEditorUserId="2915" LastEditDate="2012-04-04T08:27:04.903" LastActivityDate="2012-04-04T08:27:04.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5376" CreationDate="2012-04-04T09:14:49.780" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's start with obvious observation: &lt;strong&gt;the moment that we know least about a project is at its very beginning&lt;/strong&gt;. Unfortunately, for fixed-priced projects it is also a moment when we usually requested to say how much it's going to cost, thus to estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such situation I would focus more on improving estimate quality than on choosing this or that estimation technique. In other words I don't see why you &lt;em&gt;shouldn't&lt;/em&gt; estimate BDD-style (if that worked for you that is).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talking about improving estimate quality:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use multiple-point estimates&lt;/strong&gt; (as Zbigniew points; +1). This approach is used in many methods, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_Evaluation_and_Review_Technique&quot;&gt;PERT&lt;/a&gt;, even if at the end we get a single-point estimate. There's one trap related to multiple-point estimate. If you work on fixed-price contract you don't have multiple-point pricing, so eventually you need to translate multiple-point estimate into single-point price. Either way it is still better to be aware of range of possible estimates than just a single one.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Probability.&lt;/strong&gt; Alternatively, instead of choosing a range, e.g. from 80 to 120 man days, you can use probability, e.g. we are 60% certain that it will take 100 man days. See how Monte Carlo analysis is used in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html&quot;&gt;Evidence Based Scheduling&lt;/a&gt; to learn more how you can apply this technique.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use historical data.&lt;/strong&gt; Probably the biggest game changer in terms of estimation. The best we can do to improve our estimates is to verify how we did against our estimates in the past. What you need to apply this technique is you need to gather data how you estimated and how it eventually went. Then you can learn how much wrong you typically are and use this knowledge to adjust your current estimates. After all, if you consistently underestimate your tasks by half why suddenly you expect to be exactly on target this time?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Avoid estimation at all.&lt;/strong&gt; This is radical, I know, but it isn't that far from what I proposed above. If you can split your project to roughly similarly-sized pieces (e.g. see: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2011/05/kanban-standard-sized-features.html&quot;&gt;Standard-Sized Features&lt;/a&gt;) and you have reliable historical data you can use to learn your delivery rate, i.e. how frequently you can deliver such feature, you can base on these values to estimate the amount of work needed to complete the project. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2010/05/kanban-estimation.html&quot;&gt;this example&lt;/a&gt; to learn how you can do that.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And most of all read Steve McConnell's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0735605351&quot;&gt;Software Estimation&lt;/a&gt; book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In terms of estimation there is no silver bullet&lt;/strong&gt; so basically knowing different techniques you can improve the quality of estimates in a way that is feasible in your case. For example your team can be organized ad-hoc for a project and it may not be possible for you to have reliable historical data, etc. The trick, as always, is to use right tool to the right problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2012-04-04T09:14:49.780" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5377" CreationDate="2012-04-04T09:23:57.930" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest something like a physical whiteboard(laid out as a grid) in your lonely castle, public enough for others to view in case they ask for progress .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The entities that it could cover is - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your development/test work broken down into atomic tasks as rows of the grid .&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The workflow stage as the columns of the grid -In queue, started/thinking , coding , Almost done/testing , Done , Blocked &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A separate area to highlight blocked tasks/issues &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Something like this  to indicate quality status of your tasks/software release as a whole to make ship/no ship decisions - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.satisfice.com/presentations/dashboard.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.satisfice.com/presentations/dashboard.pdf&lt;/a&gt;  (slide 8)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;good luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastActivityDate="2012-04-04T09:23:57.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5376" CreationDate="2012-04-04T10:17:08.047" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have to estimate without requirements, you need to be very clear in stating precisely what you will do for the fixed cost payment you will request.  So rather than accepting &quot;the job&quot; (which is some loosey-goosey handwaving specification), you will list specific deliverables that you can accomplish.  Make it very clear that the deliverables will only include what is written, and additional work will come at additional cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2012-04-04T10:17:08.047" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5376" CreationDate="2012-04-04T10:39:37.053" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fixed price contracts and ambiguous scope do not belong together ...ever. You cannot go down the path of even saying clearly what you will do because no one knows what needs to be done. You cannot plan to handle it with change requests because a CR is a change to scope...and you don't have any scope. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a time and materials contract. This is not debatable. A FP contract under these circumstances is unfair to both the seller and buyer of services.  For the seller, you are taking on a degree of risk that is unacceptable and unmitagable.  You would have no choice but to load the price with a ton of contingency, which in turn makes it unfair for the buyer by cause the price to be two, three, or four times what it could have been under another arrangement.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2012-04-04T12:14:49.183" LastActivityDate="2012-04-04T12:14:49.183" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5376" CreationDate="2012-04-04T10:44:24.877" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please don't try to specify everything using BDD. You'll end up with a horribly fine-grained backlog that takes ages to maintain and which will still bear no resemblance to the real project that emerges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something I've done - and which works very well with BDD later on - is to look at the high-level &lt;em&gt;capabilities&lt;/em&gt; which the system needs to provide. A capability is something that a user will be able to do, or which the system can do. This obviously means business capabilities, but it  can include technical capabilities, such as performance, integration with 3rd party systems, etc. As a guideline, we had about 30 cards for a 2-year enterprise project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, put a big red dot on anything which is new or unknown. These are your most risky areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to, you can roughly estimate the relative size of the capabilities in points, the same way you would estimate stories, but bigger (use multiples of 10 at least). I started with the smallest at 20, then the biggest at 400, then found one in the middle and went from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you're done, double everything with a red dot unless you can think of why the risk isn't that bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will give you a really good idea of how complex and risky the project is compared to similar projects you've done, and you'll be able to estimate the approximate cost much more easily. It will also let you spend your money and the customer's on producing software instead of arguing about scope. If you have trouble estimating it, find some people who've done similar projects. You can also use the capabilities to define a minimum release, which will be easier to estimate and also represent less risk and faster return to the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My last piece of advice is to work with reasonable customers who would rather produce useful stuff and address the real risk together than argue about who is responsible for defining the nebulous future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For further reading, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/articles/pulling-power&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this is an article I wrote a while back&lt;/a&gt; on this technique (we were referring to &lt;em&gt;capabilities&lt;/em&gt; as &lt;em&gt;themes or feature sets&lt;/em&gt; then). Please also read Dan North's posts on &lt;a href=&quot;http://dannorth.net/2009/07/01/the-perils-of-estimation/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Perils of Estimation&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://dannorth.net/2010/08/30/introducing-deliberate-discovery/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Deliberate Discovery&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2012-04-04T10:44:24.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5376" CreationDate="2012-04-04T12:12:40.900" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It can be a risky decision to accept project. it is advisable to go thru customer requirements, and most risky part is if customer explained project in one line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;fixed cost project can be acceptable in following conditions&#xA;- if solution/project is clearly defined from developer side&#xA;- if you have strong feeling that customer will definitely satisfy wiht your solution/work&#xA;- if customer is very know to you.prior work experience with him&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3741" LastActivityDate="2012-04-04T12:12:40.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="737" CreationDate="2012-04-04T15:14:32.903" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lots of great recommendations in this thread.  The mere fact that you're migrating to bug tracking (versus using email and whiteboards) will be a great step forward in your quality management process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one thing that seems to be missing from the answers so far is software version information.  If you're doing multi-stream development or supporting n releases back from the current release, it will be very helpful for you to have &quot;Found in&quot; and &quot;Fixed in&quot; fields so you can track this sort of thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2012-04-04T15:14:32.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5390" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5393" CreationDate="2012-04-04T15:42:13.553" Score="2" ViewCount="1464" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a project gets closer and closer to handover to QA, I find myself tracking a list of outstanding items that need to be completed before the software is completely ready for testing.  I'm trying to think of a way to do this that's more rigorous and visible - so that everyone is aware of what needs to be done and so things don't fall off the table.  One possibility I'm considering is simply logging problem reports (trouble tickets) on the items which are outstanding.  Would it be better to add them as explicit tasks to the project plan or is there a better way still? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2012-04-05T10:20:22.250" Title="Tracking punchlist items in a project plan" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5390" CreationDate="2012-04-04T15:53:47.440" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try a bug tracking application or issue tracking application.  Many people have given great suggestions on the site under the PM Software tag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-04-04T15:53:47.440" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5390" CreationDate="2012-04-04T19:37:28.300" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me the answer is hidden in a question. You want to make these things visible? Well, make them visible. Visualize your punch list, possibly on a physical medium and in a place which is frequently attended by the project team, be it a room they share, a hall or the place next to a coffee machine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using physical medium - a whiteboard or flipchart serves two purposes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It gives a big picture to everyone.&lt;/strong&gt; If the list is in bug tracker or something I likely filter out items which aren't assigned to me, thus I don't see what others have on their plates, thus it's unlikely that I consider helping them. With a physical board I want it or not I see the whole thing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It makes the message more accessible by everyone.&lt;/strong&gt; Whenever people are walking by the board they will take a quick look at it and possibly learn that something has changed or there is a problem with one of items etc. It is sort of learning &quot;in the meantime.&quot; That's why the more crowded the place is which you put your board in the better.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also a few pleasant side effects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Physical board is extremely flexible. You can draw a picture if you like, or attach a sticky which means something, e.g. a blocker, or have cool avatars of people who are assigned to tasks, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It serves as a continuous reminder what else there is to be done. You can forget to log in into the app which stores your list when under heavy workload but you will eventually take a look at this big thing on a wall.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the board is in a room the team works in you get additional information - everyone sees that someone comes to the board and changes something, thus they get an update in a very non-intrusive way.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is a place where you can meet during project meetings to discuss most important and urgent things to deal with.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It gives you the place where you can do some brainstorming without losing a context. You can just use the empty place on the board.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is fun. Definitely more fun that yet another bug tracker.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2012-04-04T19:37:28.300" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5369" CreationDate="2012-04-05T04:49:35.110" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds less like a GenX/GenY problem to me and more like a maturity level issue. I would be very wary of continuing to invest in someone who constantly threatens to quit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you threaten to leave an organization, you permanently and radically change your relationship to your employer and colleagues. Employers, and colleagues, may look at you as someone who isn't invested in the long run success of the organization. This is a huge risk to any long term project or any roles that require project/product specific knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be tempted to keep this person somewhat at a distance. I might assign them high value projects, if they're good, but never one that is long term, as his/her investment in the organization isn't reciprocated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This person, in my mind, would be the first person to select in a layoff situation, regardless of how much of a superstar they think they might be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-04-05T04:49:35.110" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5376" CreationDate="2012-04-05T10:19:06.803" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the other answers that it is impossible to estimate without knowing what the requirements are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you could do, based on the information you have now, is to offer a Fixed Price Contract for a &lt;strong&gt;requirements analysis study only&lt;/strong&gt;. You could include a rough or detailed functional and even technical spec if you are familiar with this type of project. Add some important screen prototypes so the customer can get a feel of what he is going to get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When this is done, and it doesn't have to take that long,  you can add your best price for the remainder of the project as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ensure you have a qualified customer representative working with you the whole time. Not only to make sure your analysis is to the point, but als to build relationship with this client. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Requirements do change over time, so make sure this is clear to your customer as well and add appropriate process for changes in the remainder of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can sell this to the customer with the idea that what DONE looks like is clear for both parties, but that they can use it to go shopping elsewhere. This is where the relationship thing is important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2012-04-05T10:19:06.803" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5390" CreationDate="2012-04-05T10:20:22.250" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does everybody need to be aware of what must be done? I think this might cause you more troubles if you have nearly completed development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding issue tracking. If it's a bug/defect/issue, then it should be formally logged, analysed and then tasked up. E.g. I found a bug on the live system. I have logged it. Front end senior developer has picked it up and analysed it. Another web developer knows how to fix the bug, so he then tasks it up, gets it approved by relevant parties and then starts development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's just a task/feature, then it needs to be analysed in exactly the same way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter at this stage whether it's in a bug tracking application, document sharing application or excel. As long as it's consistent and clear - you'll be fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relevant stakeholders must be aware of this feature/task/bug, NOT everybody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3571" LastActivityDate="2012-04-05T10:20:22.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5236" CreationDate="2012-04-05T12:16:30.603" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems people just want to start doing things to &quot;Get things done&quot; instead of first taking the time to 'Think things through&quot;; they favor 'issues' because they can immediately jump at them to resolve them, instead of doing things to prevent something that might or might not happen in the future. I am often amazed at the short planning horizon some people seem to have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, I think people are already overwhelmed with the first part of a journey (or a challenging project), that they don't whish to think much of the second part that is still so far away, is still much of a black box and so it seems to frighten us even more. If there are any problems we will get to them then; right now I already have enough things to think of thank you very much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it is always like &quot;&lt;em&gt;we'll see how we get across the river when we get there&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, instead of &quot;&lt;em&gt;we'll cross the bridge when we get there&lt;/em&gt;&quot; :-).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it is a cultural thing: point 2) of MathAttacks answer was spot on. I also think it is inherent to some people's personality type; maybe MBTI or some other personality indicator can give some answers there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As it is, to apply risk management well, it needs &lt;strong&gt;constant education&lt;/strong&gt; of your stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some actions I apply:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once more, the &lt;strong&gt;WBS&lt;/strong&gt; is my closest friend here. The visual aspect of the WBS helps eliciting and assigning potential risks more easily. People are much more likely to react wen they see individual elements that they are more familiar with. When they see some risks defined on other elements, they'll think about their own subjects more closely. &lt;strong&gt;Color-coding&lt;/strong&gt; WBS elements in terms of risk-status is a positive trigger as well, and will often result in replies like: &quot;why is there nothing on this thingy here, didn't you know that ...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Giving lots of &lt;strong&gt;examples&lt;/strong&gt; and the way they were handled (or not) in the past.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explaining the &lt;strong&gt;consequences&lt;/strong&gt; in a measure your target audience can understand . The answer of Iain9688 is key here. So for instance discuss the risk of incomplete data-conversion with your customer in terms of overall project delay and additional cost, and with your team in terms of the extra hours (possibly overtime) of manually correcting the data in the database ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Treat risk-review as a fixed topic on the agenda of your status/progress/steerco meetings the same way as you would manage your issue list. The point is to keep the risk-owners aware of their responsibility.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discuss risks during individual talks or one-on-ones with your team and stakeholders; not everybody wants to share possibly bad things in public.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a mantra I repeat sometimes when I feel people are reluctant to discuss possible risks and progress (it is not mine, but I don't know its origins):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;     &amp;gt; No news = bad news&#xA;     &amp;gt; Bad news = good news&#xA;     &amp;gt; Good news = excellent news&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sooner a risk, lack of progress, possible roadblock is communicated, the sooner something can be done about it ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2012-04-05T12:16:30.603" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5399" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5402" CreationDate="2012-04-05T19:00:11.070" Score="10" ViewCount="6368" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always feel difficulty to face my project manager and don't know how to handle him. There are many situations in which I feel very bad because of his behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) While discussion about time required to develop project he always gives very less time. He doesn't consider practical scanario and always think and explain things in a very simple way. As in my company all processes are not followed and requirements are also not too clear at time of discussion I am also not confident about time requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Once development started and we come across some difficult situation he tried to avoid by just giving some unusual or not practical solutions. He doesn't allow us to talk and only speak, and if we try to speak stop us by saying &quot;Let me finish first&quot; . If any call comes he get busy at that call and ignore discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) With schedule task he give some other task also and don't consider or forget time spend for that work and after some days while deadline comes for scheduled task he only ask why this not happened and after that told any how we have to give it to this friday etc. so we have to sit late and complete this work as there is lot of pressure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are solution for this situations. How to handle it as job security is always first priority for us and bad relation with boss always creates difficulties in professional life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3752" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-10-05T04:53:36.660" LastActivityDate="2014-10-05T04:53:36.660" Title="How to handle difficult Project Manager" Tags="&lt;relationships&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5399" CreationDate="2012-04-05T19:49:53.900" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a project manager he appears to be (a) failing to work with all stakeholders to develop an achievable project plan, (b) failing to communicate or provide team leadership, and (c) failing to adequately control and document scope. These are all key issues that greatly increase the likelihood of project failure. He has also managed to make the workplace toxic enough that you avoid him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only real solution is to talk to him in a non-confrontational manner. Try to put yourself in his shoes and figure out what is motivating him to behave this way. Is he getting pressure from his bosses? Is he trying to impress to get a promotion? Is he poorly trained as a Project Manager? Does your corporate culture ruthlessly punish failure to meet timelines? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't have a discussion with him, or if you don't see the situation improving, you need to ask yourself what the value is for you in remaining with your current company. Job security is great but there comes a point where it is not worth the cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-04-05T19:49:53.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5399" CreationDate="2012-04-05T20:40:37.930" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of all the managers to whom you report, you will likely have two, maybe three that you will always remember as a great leader. Most you will easily forget, and then you will have one or two or three whom you hope you will never see again the rest of your life.  The PM is the accountable one; (s)he has to manage the way (s)he knows how.  Sadly, his/her choice may end up producing lousy results, but that is a lesson to be learned by him/her later.  As a team member, you need to support the PM and the team the best you can.  This means, without emotion or blame, you advise the PM the threats and issues you see, some alternatives, some ideas, in a way that the PM will not feel threatened but instead supported.  If your advice conrtradicts something the PM said already in public, then take it behind closed doors.  If the PM refuses your counsel, then execute per direction the best you can.  Do not sabotage, do not bad-mouth, just do your job as cleanly as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the mean time, create other alternatives for yourself.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-04-05T20:40:37.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5399" CreationDate="2012-04-06T01:29:21.543" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can offer some advice on the time estimating portion of your question because I have and many clients and managers who were always pushing the schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Try to do it in writing:&lt;/strong&gt; Making decisions in face-to-face meetings may not work well for all participants (especially with non-native speakers). When you can write out the reasons why you think Task A will take X days and Task B will take Y days, you get the opportunity to think about things more thoroughly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Always document your concerns:&lt;/strong&gt; If your PM gives you an impossible deadline, always send a politely worded e-mail to the PM saying that you'll do your best but you are not entirely sure that you can finish in the time allotted. This may seem like just protecting yourself (which it might do) but it really is part of the history of the project and it needs to be documented at some point. Lessons Learned / Project Reviews &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; actually help other people in the future.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use a formal methodology:&lt;/strong&gt; If you can explain your estimate with some sort of methodology, your recommendation might contain more weight. I find that the &quot;if everything goes well = X weeks but if things go wrong = X+10 weeks but X+3 weeks seems reasonable&quot; is a great place to start. Many PERT books use that as a basis of a formula &lt;code&gt;(Optimistic + 4x Typical + Pessimistic)/6 = My Estimate&lt;/code&gt;. It wouldn't hurt to try it a couple of times and see if it gets more traction.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my work in architecture (as in designing buildings), pressure to reduce costs was greater than the pressure to accelerate schedule but in the technology/software fields, pressure to reduce schedule seems to be the goal of every project manager and boss. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2012-04-06T01:29:21.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="92" CreationDate="2012-04-06T13:44:55.150" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not using task management software!  It is very important for those involved on a project to have a 'home base' to refer to.  Emails work to an extent, but can quickly pile up into a chaotic mess of info with important elements slipping through the cracks.  Having an organized task entered into a task management program can efficiently display all important info, revisions, attachments, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3757" LastActivityDate="2012-04-06T13:44:55.150" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-04-06T13:44:55.150" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5404" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5406" CreationDate="2012-04-06T14:13:25.600" Score="5" ViewCount="176" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel that if I publish a project plan that shows completion on date X, I can't very well push for completion at date (X - 3  weeks).  But If I publish a plan that shows date (X-3 weeks), how can I track the &quot;most likely&quot; completion date (which is likely date X)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2012-04-07T23:47:18.013" Title="Is keeping two project plans ever appropriate?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5042" CreationDate="2012-04-06T14:43:50.723" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always thought that Basecamp is perfect for huge enterprises. I also work for a small IT-company and we are using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.teamlab.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TeamLab&lt;/a&gt;. It has the time-tracking feature in the project management module. You will find other features of TeamLab &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.teamlab.com/features.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. The offer a smooth transition of projects from Basecamp by the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3758" LastActivityDate="2012-04-06T14:43:50.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5404" CreationDate="2012-04-06T14:55:21.537" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you build an estimate, the end result is a range of finish dates, or costs, with a probabilistic distribution that sits on top of that.  When you set a target, the end result is a SINGLE number that lives somewhere in that distribution.  You would establish that target based on risk appetite.  Move it to the left, like your X-3 scenario, to challenge the team and take on a more aggressive stance.  Move it to the right and make it consistent with your most likely.  Or move it even further right if you need to build in contingencies due to a ton of environmental unknowns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On most scheduling tools, you can set multiple baselines.  Your baseline zero can be the official one that is priced and sold to your customer.  You can set baseline one, using a more aggressive target as your team challenge, and set measurements and awards based on that.  During the course of the project, measure against both.  I would not &quot;punish&quot; the team for missing the challenge under any circumstances.  This would be an award-type scenario and I would set it up to be more fun, competitive, and a morale boost versus anything else.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-04-06T14:55:21.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="92" CreationDate="2012-04-06T15:02:49.700" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not using task management software at all is undoubtedly a big problem. However the usage of a tool that doesn't fully correspond to the needs of the company might turn out to be even a bigger problem. Project managers have to be very careful when it comes to choosing software. Bare in mind the size of your team, your budget and the features that your business needs in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3758" LastActivityDate="2012-04-06T15:02:49.700" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-04-06T15:02:49.700" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5404" CreationDate="2012-04-06T19:17:57.883" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I second David's answer, and would like to add a simple method to implement this in your planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When estimating time for each task, you should do a very aggressive estimate without any slack built in. The slack for each task is then combined into one big &quot;buffer&quot; block you put at the end of your plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Simplified Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Traditional &quot;probable&quot; estimates without buffer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Task01[10days] &amp;gt; Task02[3days] &amp;gt; Task04[7days] &amp;gt; END&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aggressive estimates with buffer added:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Task01[7days] &amp;gt; Task02[2days] &amp;gt; Task04[5days] &amp;gt; Buffer[6days] &amp;gt; END&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the project, you keep the final date static but change the buffer duration according to progress; i.e. if a task is completed before estimation, you add to the buffer, and if a task goes beyond, you subtract from the buffer period. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This gives you a single 'health' metric for the project to communicate, and create bonus/incentives around. This also makes it simpler to make tough decisions earlier in the project. If you've used 33% of your buffer, during the first 25% of you project, you can easily communicate and discuss this issue with team and project owners.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3705" LastActivityDate="2012-04-06T19:17:57.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5410" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-06T19:20:36.290" Score="4" ViewCount="2304" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a newbie project manager, I am leading an effort to transition data from one department to another. My counterpart in the other department acts as interface with their development staff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am having a really hard time getting any traction on this project. Action items I get  her to commit to either fall thru the cracks, remain in hers or the developer's work queue for days without update or get delivered half complete or incorrectly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I called my counterpart to get a feel for the situation and she told me flat out &quot;I am the problem&quot;. Trying to keep a neutral and positive attitude, I told her that my goal is to get this done for the company's benefit and I will do my best to help her get anything she needs to get the work done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In spite of that, nothing has changed. I understand that her group is understaffed but that should be an &quot;excuse&quot; for failing to deliver. My weekly status reports to her are ignored. And my boss's attitude is &quot;figure it out&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3212" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-10-05T04:51:57.110" LastActivityDate="2014-10-05T04:51:57.110" Title="How do I get traction on my project?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;relationships&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5410" CreationDate="2012-04-06T19:51:50.953" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Action items I get her to commit to....&quot;  There is a lot that goes into getting a project underway when using shared resources where the PM has very limited authority and control over necessary staff to get this done.  One of the biggest sort of enablers to help get the team onboard and committed is to get them involved in a very real way in the planning of the work.  If they helped plan it, helped estimate it, designed how things would get done, were part of creating the rules of engagement, roles, responsibilities, etc., then buy-in is much much much more likely.  The sentence I captured in quotes indicates/implies a separation between you and the rest of the team.  Notwithstanding she &quot;committed&quot; to the action items, I question the the degree of commitment.  It could be more, I'll say what you want to hear so you'll get out of my office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go back to the drawing board, pull your team in, and get them involved in a real way.  It'll be a first step towards teaming with a sense of collective success and collective failure.  Without that, you're spinning your wheels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-04-07T02:47:48.187" LastActivityDate="2012-04-07T02:47:48.187" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5410" CreationDate="2012-04-07T02:53:49.083" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like there is a lot of separation between the two teams, which may contribute to an &quot;us versus them&quot; type environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience working on cross-team projects, I've found that things get done much faster when an actual cross-functional team is formed. The cross-functional team could consist of members of your team and members of the other team. Perhaps you could even get them to sit together in the same office part of the day. If the teams are remote, a Google Hangout may help bring the people together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Collaboration by working together may help build the rapport necessary to get people to rally around the schedule you've created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, keep in mind that even as a cross-functional team, you won't have formal authority, and as a PM you'll have to work on building the personal relationships necessary to lead the team to success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-04-07T02:53:49.083" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5410" CreationDate="2012-04-07T05:57:22.750" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When working with people in other departments, it's generally better to get things done with their support rather than going over their heads.  Find out what your counterpart's incentives are, and how this project can help or hurt them, and relate the action items to these incentives in the language of her department.  Until you do this, you can't assume that she is incompetent or just being difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now let's say walking a mile in her shoes doesn't work, and you HAVE to go over her head....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First decide if the bigger issue is just attitude, or if it's competence too.  If it's only attitude, you can win by being hyper-organized, keeping everything agreed to in meetings notes and an easy to understand spreadsheet.  Copy her boss and yours on everything.  If need be, copy the junior-most person with joint responsibility for your departments too.  The attitude may not change, but the follow-through will.  She won't be happy, but the work will get done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If competence is an issue, it's tougher.  And I mean &quot;Competence that training can't solve.&quot;  Here you have talk her management (possibly through yours) into finding someone who can do the work (possibly an external?).  It could mean you have to do her side yourself.  Ideally people get fired for incompetence, but that's probably beyond the task at hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-04-07T05:57:22.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5399" CreationDate="2012-04-07T08:42:46.790" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I resonate with @DavidEspina that you need to support your team and the PM. If you really care about bringing changes, you have to &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Somehow, you need to worry less about the job security. Our circumstances and commitments bring lots of fear about loosing the job. But if you are skilled and hopeful, your employability may not be as bad as you think.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Commit yourself to your organization to bring changes. It's going to be challenging but very fruitful and learning experience for you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Device a feedback loop to check whether the &quot;practical scenarios&quot; you want to bring in are not outcome of your personal need for perfection. Whatever changes you want to bring in, should be aligned with the organization's problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, specifically, for the problem mentioned in the third bullet -&#xA;Create a work item list (if you already don't have). You can use any tool, may be simply a google doc. Keep on adding the tasks in the list, whenever something new arrives. Along with that estimate and schedule those tasks. If your manager want to prioritize the new one, do it with lowering the priority of the current task. You can also document the risk of breaking the rhythm of your current work by increasing the estimate of the task you are leaving in between. Even if your PM doesn't agree on swapping the priority your efforts will be visible to everyone. I hope with this visibility you'll make some impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1786" LastActivityDate="2012-04-07T08:42:46.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5410" CreationDate="2012-04-07T09:36:50.623" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your boss' attitude is very interesting, because in my opinion he is one of the key player in this case. He should help you to learn how to handle similar situations since you are new in this position. Can you talk to him face to face and discuss this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I would use &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assertiveness#Communication&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;assertive communication&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; if were you. Organize a meeting with your boss and counterpart and express your concerns, and ask them for their help. Tell them that &lt;strong&gt;you feel that the project will fail&lt;/strong&gt; if we continue like this and you together should share responsibility for the project. Prepare for the discussion and try to keep them in the meeting until a decision is made which satisfies your needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, these situations happen all the time mostly with remote projects. There are different agendas you might not know and even if you try everything, nothing will happen. Making these agendas disappear you need a help from higher management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-04-07T09:36:50.623" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5404" CreationDate="2012-04-07T10:29:09.933" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try to implement the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;evidence based scheduling&lt;/a&gt; in your first project. If you collect the &lt;em&gt;evidence&lt;/em&gt; quite regularly and update your schedule, you'll see when you can start your next project. They key here is the &lt;strong&gt;regular update&lt;/strong&gt;. Don't commit to the second project - &lt;strong&gt;try to defer your decision&lt;/strong&gt; using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/articles/real-options-enhance-agility&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;real option&lt;/a&gt; - until you feel safe to set the finish date of the first project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-04-07T10:29:09.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5417" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5429" CreationDate="2012-04-07T11:25:31.657" Score="15" ViewCount="3254" Body="&lt;p&gt;At a recent interview, a candidate couldn't write a small piece of code on a whiteboard.  The answers she had given up to that point had also been weak, so rather than have her spend more time talking with other members of the team, I decided to terminate the interview early.  Is this acceptable, and if so, what are the best ways of doing this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2012-04-14T23:03:39.263" Title="Is it acceptable to terminate an interview early?" Tags="&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5417" CreationDate="2012-04-07T11:43:34.367" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMO, I don't find anything wrong with ending an unsuccessful interview early.  Time is money for both the interviewer and interviewee.  However, I wouldn't be so quick to do that.  Interviewing is a hugely weak predictor of future performance.  It is extremely unreliable and clouded with bias.  It is said that an interview gives you about a 50/50 chance of getting it right...coin toss.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, if things are not going well, I may change up my interview approach to see if there is another perspective I can capture.  This individual could interview poorly for no other reason than stress and anxiety--crumbling when feeling tested--but be a rock star performer.  Or, the bias could have been yours, where cues she delivered triggered an expectation of her personality and future performance that were simply wrong.  We never really know; all we know is interviewing is a terrible predictor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I'd pull the end early card but would do so rarely.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-04-07T11:43:34.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5417" CreationDate="2012-04-07T13:53:33.783" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I terminate interviews early all the time but that's mainly because my HR department sucks.....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the candidate is CLEARLY unsuitable (e.g. in house work is all based on the Microsoft stack and HR gets me a fresh graduate with no .NET knowledge and from a school that only does Java), I will just tell them politely that things probably aren't going to work out pretty early. Management doesn't believe in total training from scratch so I know its not going to work. In cases like these, there really is no reason to waste everyone's time or even worse, lead them on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The downside to doing this is we might miss the occasional genius that just needs some help but then it's going to take a LOT for me to stick my neck out and vouch for his future progress. Every failed &quot;project&quot; that I let into the team results in more work for everybody with absolutely zero return. Even if my success rate is 1 in 20, modern staff turnover rates and the resources invested hardly make it a worthwhile endeavour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1849" LastActivityDate="2012-04-07T13:53:33.783" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5417" CreationDate="2012-04-07T15:24:01.397" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitely.  Fortunately, I haven't had to do so.  I would just stop the interview process, and politely state that the person was not a match for the current position.  Conclude with any of your normal post-interview follow-up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have had a candidate terminate a interview early when it became obvious that his career goals and our needs were not a match.  It clearly wasn't a question of skills as he clearly demonstrated that he had the desired skill set.  I appreciated the fact that he did not waste our time nor his time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2012-04-07T15:24:01.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5417" CreationDate="2012-04-07T15:38:15.357" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most cases people have many job interviews and when visiting your company, this is only one part of their search for a new job. When you end the interview early and there is a good reason for it, you save much time for the both of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But at the other hand, this should not happen that often. Ask yourself why you had to end this interview that early and why you have invited him/her. Did you express your requirements to an applicant clear enough when searching for a new employee?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there might also be the chance that you miss someone special. I have seen many cases where the job interview went wrong, but he/she was invited for a second time for a trip through the company and talking to some employees. It sometimes turns out that this specific applicant is not that bad at all!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So maybe you include more in your job interview: not only talking, but also walking through the company and letting the applicant getting in touch with some of your valuable employees. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3766" LastActivityDate="2012-04-07T15:38:15.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5417" CreationDate="2012-04-07T21:17:20.057" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I generally screen first on a separate day because I reject 75+% that come through HR.  If I want another opinion I might get one more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It costs a lot of time (equals money) to take an hour from 6 or 7 schedules.  The moment I know someone isn't a fit I politely ask if they have any questions and have them out in 5 minutes.  No need to waste anyone's time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-04-07T21:17:20.057" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5404" CreationDate="2012-04-07T23:47:18.013" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It takes courage and perseverance, but you can keep schedule contingency separate from the critical path.  The hard part is your customers will fight for a commitment to deliver at the earlier date.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case it means working to a T-3 and keeping the 3 weeks on your back pocket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is more efficient than distributing the slack because you will most likely need it for one or two big areas rather than all over.  (If every estimate was missed you have a bigger problem.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-04-07T23:47:18.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5424" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-08T01:24:01.490" Score="1" ViewCount="1047" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are BRD and FRD documents required for non-systems/non-IT projects? We are involved in services migration project moving managed website hosting services from a fully-managed external vendor to in-house so we can manage these ourselves. Because this is a transition project which does not require the development or building of any IT systems or infrastructure (we already have the servers to support the website), it can be compared to a construction or engineering project where BRD and FRD documents don’t usually exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, the requirements are based on Business Objectives and then functional and non-functional requirements are based on requirements. If this is a transition project which is moving a service from Provider A (external) to Provider B (in-house), is a BRD really required?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The primary business objective is to transition the managed services externally to in-house. If we look at the actual tasks and the work pieces involved in the project to successfully achieve the business objective, a few of these at a very high-level include: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Documentation: Identifying and transferring support documentation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;HR: Employing new staff or employing existing vendor staff to manage the hosting serviced internally.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Processes: Obtaining from the vendor and introducing new processes to provide the same managed service. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The primary constraints, or non-functional requirements if this were a systems/IT project, would be: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No loss in service delivery during transition.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adhering to company processes and SLAs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are BRD and FRD documents required, or would a series of plans (implementation plan, transition plan, continuity plan, SLA, etc.) be sufficient?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; thank you so much for the replies and comments so far. I am calling for more viewpoints and comments that can contribute, as such projects are not uncommon but there is scarce information online to refer to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3768" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-18T16:33:45.693" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T16:33:45.693" Title="Non-Systems/Non-IT BRD" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;business-analyst&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5424" CreationDate="2012-04-08T01:28:41.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The point of these documents is not to meet a process requirement (although you may be required to do them by your process) - it's to clarify what needs to be done and get everyone on the same page.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The documents you mentioned in the conclusion of your question (implementation plan, transition plan, continuity plan, SLA, etc.) are useful, but the documents that allow you to declare &quot;done&quot; are your requirements documents.  I would encourage you to do them, whether or not your stakeholders insist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2012-04-08T01:28:41.580" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5417" CreationDate="2012-04-08T04:10:15.310" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two things&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adding phone screening in hiring process increases the chances of getting better candidates. And may help to avoid this situation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If terminating interview early, I'll take care of not creating a wrong impression about my organization. For example, the candidate may think that I haven't asked him enough questions, and can blame me for not taking his interview seriously. Ideally, I shouldn't give any room to the candidates to talk with his friends, negative about my organization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1786" LastActivityDate="2012-04-08T04:10:15.310" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5424" CreationDate="2012-04-08T09:31:14.627" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest that without some form of requirements document, you don't have a clear statement of expectations, so it makes a great deal of sense to develop even a high level document that says what you will do within this project, and define some criteria by which the project will be measured - conditions of satisfaction, if you like. On the type of project that you describe, you will have expectations about performance, cost, reliability, and functionality. Even stating explicitly that the performance, cost and reliability will be the same or better than the current outsourced service, and that the functionality will be identical, is a good start. Otherwise, you may find that your technical teams start making changes within the scope of the project, just because they can, and because there is nothing to tell them not to do so. (And if the business does want to allow changes, you can use a change control process to manage this.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, you need some structure to define what is in and what is out of the project, and then you either work within that, or modify it consciously and deliberately. Either way, you have a starting point from which you can keep the project focused on delivering the business value that is anticipated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2012-04-08T09:31:14.627" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5410" CreationDate="2012-04-09T03:24:27.990" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Joe Friday would say, &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Just the facts Ma'am.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Some good ideas have been brought up on how to try and get your counterpart more engages at a peer to peer level. This should be your first go to, try and solve the problem yourself.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this fails, then you have to be very careful about escalating. Especially true in a politically charged environment like you describe. When escalating you need to focus on the facts and the behaviours. You also need consistency. This is done through clear, consistent reporting. You don't go to senior management just when you're red, you have to have a communication dialogue in place. And this dialogue needs to show clear accountability. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: A few years back I was working to get a global support team ready for the launch of the companies biggest deployment ever. This required working across a half dozen support teams as well as an equal number of external teams including IT and Finance. The possibility for train wrecks was extreme. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I put together a weekly status report that called out all the major deliverables. This report included the major deliverables, the major dependancies, the current status, a trend arrow on risk and, most importantly, who is responsible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This did two things- &#xA;1- Everyone knew what was being tracked and who was responsible. &#xA;2- When things went bad, you saw it coming as the risk trend increased. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Factual, regular, and consistent reporting up meant that everyone knew it I wasn't throwing anyone under the bus. When IT failed to deliver a key component, everyone knew before they failed it was in trouble. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2012-04-09T03:24:27.990" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5417" CreationDate="2012-04-09T12:16:33.913" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the things we do when the candidate arrives is that we lay out an agenda for the day and lay down a couple of ground rules of the day with them. The biggest of those is that by the end of the day we want to be sure whether we want to hire them or not, and we want them to be sure whether we're a good place for them or not. To go along with that, we tell them that if they realize that we're just not the place for them, that they should bring it up and we can end the interview early and save everyone time. We also say that on the flip side we'll end the day early if we realize that they just aren't a fit for us. We also will wrap things up early if we decide that they are a must hire and further discussions aren't worth the time (but they'll definitely know which category they fell into if we wrap things up early).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, feel free to end the interview early. But it can help to lay the groundwork for that possibility at the start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastActivityDate="2012-04-09T12:16:33.913" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5430" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5432" CreationDate="2012-04-09T13:59:00.380" Score="10" ViewCount="2148" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a PM. I'm a developer working on a large project with a small team at an 18 person company. The &quot;team&quot; is just me and the project manager. The project isn't the largest my company has ever had but it's right up there within 5-10% of the largest in both cost and complexity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project was already underway when I came on board. I was hired to fill the shoes of the previous developer who left just after the project kickoff. The developer I replaced had only billed about 80 hours to the project before he left. The PM had been doing requirements gathering and writing up a applications specs document along with wireframes and a giant spreadsheet with 135 functional requirements prior to me coming on board. All without a developer or even another person to consult with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I first came on I went to a lot of meetings and did about 50% dev work and 50% meetings, talking with the customer, trying to figure out what our datasets were, figuring out if there was documentation for ancient databases etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now we are 2/3rds through are billable hours and I estimate only about 30% done on the project. This includes the rest of the development work as well as other deliverables like documentation, training, as-builts etc. Additionally the customer is a little bit upset that it has taken us as long as it has to get a functional prototype to them even though they didn't even get us access to their databases until 4 months into the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering what I could or should have done earlier in the project to help the PM identify some of the risks better or refine the requirements so that we would be more on track. I had some misgivings when I first came on but the PM has been with the company for 13 years and had done all the requirements gathering already as well so I assumed that he knew what he was talking about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3557" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T00:36:15.973" Title="What went wrong - project going off track" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5430" CreationDate="2012-04-09T14:21:00.213" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to what you could or should have done depends on the scope of the role(s) to which you were assigned.  A well developed role has a boundary description the clearly defines what is in scope and what is out of scope for a particular role.  Since there were only two of you assigned to this project, likely you had multiple roles; however, none of them may have contained any scope to control schedule or cost.  None of them may have had any scope related to the requirements gathering or the health of the requirements gathered.  All roles can certainly escalate issues and risks observed, but whether you 'could or should have' really depends on the expectation of the role(s) you assumed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think some would advise that, especially with a small team like yours, a successful team has a notion of a collective win and a collective loss, so anyone member should step out of his/her role for the greater good of the team.  There is truth in that; however, there are also costs and penalties with that, too.  So, I prefer a well articulated role to avoid the ambiguity and the question of what you could or should have done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-04-09T14:21:00.213" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5430" CreationDate="2012-04-09T15:03:50.013" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Contrary to David, I believe that if we feel responsible for project success it is not the question of the description of our job and we could and should undertake actions which can bring us closer to project success, even if it wasn't explicitly listed on our task list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With such approach you could:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Deliver working prototype as soon as possible.&lt;/strong&gt; I don't mean here a prototype covering all the functionality or even specific set of features. I mean anything that works and shows some ideas and choices you've made throughout the development. Basing on the prototype it would be way easier to discuss whether the course you've chosen is good or not, what needs to be adjusted etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Deliver iteratively or continuously.&lt;/strong&gt; Basing on client's impatience it is a safe assumption that each time you'd delivered something they would have checked it and delivered some feedback on it. This way you'd have more insight on how you're doing against client's expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Agile approach to requirements.&lt;/strong&gt; Basing on your story I assume that requirements weren't specified in details up front. What you could do is to start with high-level requirements frame them in &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.mountaingoatsoftware.com/stories-epics-and-themes&quot;&gt;epic stories (or themes)&lt;/a&gt; or something like that and then specify more details as you go whenever you start working on new features.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Collective decisions on priorities.&lt;/strong&gt; Meet the client to decide what are the most important features to build. This way you will be able to deliver most value possibly soon, so even if not all the scope is delivered on time you reduce the negative impact the client would suffer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reduce time spent on meetings.&lt;/strong&gt; Actually if you are the only developer in a project 50% of your time spent on meetings seems like overkill. I mean unless the very meeting really helps you to gather more knowledge on a project I would feel perfectly safe to question the reason my need to be there.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the goal would be to shorten the feedback loops between the project team (meaning you and a PM) and better understanding of priorities and value of work you do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2012-04-09T15:03:50.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5430" CreationDate="2012-04-09T15:13:58.383" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many a client/supplier relationship has soured due to a lack of mutual understanding of the toll-gates in the project. A toll-gate in a project represents a &quot;Thou shall not pass, until this is ready&quot;. Usually a toll-gate exists to ensure sign-off is given from necessary parties, where those sign-offs carry specific requirements. This seems to be missing in your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, there should have been at least one well-defined toll-gate for your teams' requirements to progress, and this should have been clearly communicated to the client from the onset. &quot;I'm sorry, but it is impossible for us to progress in a meaningful way, unless we get access to the databases. If that isn't possible now, we can look at deferring the project to a later date, or progress with the limited information we have, acknowledging an increase in total hours used, due to inefficiency&quot;, is what should have been said when reaching this toll-gate. But, that requires the toll-gates to be part of the client contract from the onset. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any client/supplier relationship should be legally and practically condensed into &quot;We can deliver X if you supply us with Y&quot;. If the client can't supply &quot;Y&quot;, then the basis for the project changes, and actions to remedy that should be taken at once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A framework like PRINCE2 is extremely heavy on toll-gates (detractors say that's ALL PRINCE2 is :)), in part because it was developed as a means to ensure satisfactory delivery of very expensive projects covering anything from construction of bridges to Healthcare IT systems. It probably is overkill to implement PRINCE2 as your PM framework, but it is definitely worth taking a look at for it's structure of toll-gates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not your job to tell the PM how to do his work, and most corporate environments are sadly not friendly towards sub-ordinate friendly advice :) But if you want to help him rescue this project, you have to help him realize the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He needs to go on the offensive with the client, and &lt;strong&gt;draw up BOTH parties' requirements for a successful delivery&lt;/strong&gt;, citing the exact and specific consequences for each lacking requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He needs &lt;strong&gt;better metrics&lt;/strong&gt; to manage his projects. 30% work done in 66% of allotted time is a catastrophe in PM. This tendency should have been caught much earlier, so actions to remedy could have been taken at a more appropriate time. The project plan should be updated with progress daily, using a maximum of 10 mins of production resources' (your) time. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Projects don't &quot;Just work&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;. That sentiment equates to having a strategy relying on luck. With a bespoke PM framework based on your specific challenges and opportunities, you can make it seem like they &quot;just work&quot;. But consistent good results, only comes from hard and smart work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3705" LastEditorUserId="3705" LastEditDate="2012-04-10T13:58:06.047" LastActivityDate="2012-04-10T13:58:06.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5435" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5437" CreationDate="2012-04-09T16:49:20.517" Score="16" ViewCount="3674" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Briefing:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a new employee at a small company that has a lot of talent but seems to have gotten by with ad-hoc processes simply because they've had mostly small projects and repeat customers who are friends with the company executives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some background:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently started a new job at a 20-person custom (per contract) software company. The first project I was assigned to is still in progress and is not going well (I asked &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/5430/what-went-wrong-project-going-off-track&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; question before registering here). I don't know if I was unlucky and started on the 1 in a 100 project that is poorly managed. What I'm afraid of is that stumbling around with unclear requirements, unrealistic expectations and no toll gates put in place for hard customer-provided dependencies is standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I don't care what the norm is. All I really want is to make sure that the I don't end up on a project like this in the future and the only thing I can think of is to help my company implement the tools and processes to accomplish that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, we just kicked off our biggest project in the history of the company. It's 4 times as big in terms of cost than our largest previous project. We just had a call this morning where the president said that everyone in the company would be involved in the project in some fashion (compared to the standard 1-2 devs and a part time PM per project).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems like a perfect opportunity to help my company out. I've got some ideas but like I mentioned, no PM experience. I have no desire to get PM experience either but I'll do what it takes to improve my company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Here's what I've come up with so far:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Implement source control&lt;/strong&gt; - currently no project or developer uses SC&#xA;except myself. I have a a SC server running on my personal dev box&#xA;that I use to track changes, create branches for testing new&#xA;functionality etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Put up a wiki&lt;/strong&gt; - A few weeks ago I found out that another developer&#xA;had spent a day trying to get a particular technology working that I&#xA;had just got up and running myself. He would have saved a few hours&#xA;at a minimum if he could have gone to a central knowledgebase where&#xA;I could have recorded my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use some sort of PM tool&lt;/strong&gt; - The CEO just signed up for a Basecamp&#xA;account. I use it to keep track of todo lists (translated from the&#xA;functional requirements excel spreadsheet). No one else in the&#xA;company except the PM on my project uses it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Implement a bug tracker&lt;/strong&gt; - The bug tracker for my current project is&#xA;a text file on the server that feedback requests get logged to. That&#xA;and long email chains from our client that often start with &quot;Such&#xA;and such doesn't work for me&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be a crusader&lt;/strong&gt; - I've tried preaching the benefits of all these tools&#xA;and techniques but have been met with an attitude of &quot;Don't spend&#xA;too much time on it. Just work on coding&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see most of my ideas involve some sort of new tool or technology (new to my company anyways). How can I point out flaws in my company's processes without seeming like a know-it-all? I've only been here for a few months and just want my projects, team and company to be incredible. I love what I am doing at my new job. I just don't love how we do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3557" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T16:53:43.647" Title="How to suggest project improvements in a rigid / narrow-minded environment?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5435" CreationDate="2012-04-09T18:49:32.030" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need metrics above anything else for this crusade, and you need to choose your battles wisely. There's no method or tool that can hold strong against misuse, so your suggested improvements are easy to &quot;prove wrong&quot; by people involved but not 100% on-board. So go for some easy wins to win trust from management, and most importantly, the team-members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start with something small, that is easy to make reliable before/after measurements on. Make a plan for improving this area, and stick to your guns; don't accept a &quot;kinda woulda shoulda&quot; version of your plan. By keeping your first improvement small and cheap, this should be easier to swallow for everybody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you succeed in making a measurable improvement, you'll create an opportunity for everybody else to believe that change is possible, and you will see suggestions pouring in from all corners. You aren't the only one in the company who knows that things could be better - but you're probably the only one who believes it's possible. This is the most important change your proactive attitude can instigate :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3705" LastActivityDate="2012-04-09T18:49:32.030" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5435" CreationDate="2012-04-09T19:26:09.017" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are definitely in a tough position, and I applaud you on trying to make things better for your group. One thing I'd suggest is that you not try to tackle everything at once. Look at the specific problems you face, decide on which ones to tackle first (maybe based on how easy it is to convince the rest of the team, maybe based on which ones you can get statistics for). Once you have some successes, it will help make your case for future changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't mention whether your team is at a single location or distributed. Most of my suggestions below are targeted towards co-located groups, but you can adapt many of them for distributed teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some suggestions (not in any particular order):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make sure to talk to the rest of the team in one-on-one situations. Perhaps other people are seeing the same issues or having the same pain. Try to gain a bigger picture of everything.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't be afraid to improve your own practices, even if the team isn't going to follow one of your suggestions. Consider implementing it for your own piece of the work, unless you are told not to. Definitely talk about it with the PM though (don't just do it on the sly). It sounds like you are already doing this with source control, but don't be afraid to implement other things as well.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Speaking of other tools/practices to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;design reviews (even informal over-the-shoulder reviews are better than nothing)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;code reviews&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;automated unit testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;automated build server&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Adapt a practice of developing small units of functionality at a time. Make sure you can check in working code on a daily basis (give or take). Make sure that you are always moving forward, even if it is just a small step. Talk with the PM about applying this across the team as well.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once you've gotten to the point where the code is &quot;always&quot; in a working state, suggest to your PM that your team adapt a regular schedule for meeting with the client to show progress. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;These reviews can help ensure that your team is building the right solution. It is much better to find out that a week or two of time has been on the wrong path, than to find out that 6 months have gone the wrong direction.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The client will likely be more comfortable with your status as they will have visually seen where you are at&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;These meetings can be a great time to discuss priorities (what to tackle next) as well as any issues that have arised or risks that are likely to materialize in the future&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Visual reminders and process controls. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does everyone on the team know what the core goals of the project are? I don't mean &quot;get this product done by date X&quot;, but more like &quot;make sure that users rate our product 4 stars or better&quot;. Make sure the team understands these goals, and put them up in the project area. Or just up on your cube/office wall if there isn't a team area.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does everyone on the team have the same view of the development process? Consider implementing a work item tracking board that shows your team's development process. While I'd probably suggest a kanban board (and the process that helps drive), this could simply be a reflection of where things are currently and what things are coming up. While an electronic version of this is better than nothing, having it visible to the whole team on a big whiteboard seems to have more of an impact in my experience&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;once you've got this in place, start having short (15 minute or less) daily meetings with others on the team in front of the board. Focus the talk on areas that people need help with, or problems that they see coming up.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if the team isn't up for it or if there isn't an area for a team version of this, at least consider putting one up for things that have been assigned to you, and spend a few minutes each day reviewing it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;additional team communications methods - Some of these serve overlapping purposes, you can mix &amp;amp; match to fit your team&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;wiki&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you've got this&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make sure to encourage others to add to it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if you receive info that is useful to the team (think email traffic that says how to do something), start copying it to the wiki &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;email distribution list&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;good for sending out info that the whole team needs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;needs someone responsible for getting new team members added in a timely fashion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if information is important to save for later, someone needs to get it into the wiki&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;internal chat server &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;great way to fire off quick questions without worrying about sensitive info going outside the company&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;as above, someone may need to copy the info to the wiki&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Q&amp;amp;A server&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;basically, an internal version of Stack Exchange&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;answers might wind up referencing the wiki&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;answers might need to get copied to wiki&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start a book club - focus on books that apply to problems your team actually sees. Hopefully, the people that have been at your company longer will wind up talking about how they can see the book applying to what they've experienced in the past, which gets them thinking about it more as well as giving you more insight into the situation. Off the top of my head, some suggestions for book topics would include: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;implementing change within companies (Fearless Change)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;agile and lean methodologies (too many to name)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;development practices (Pragmatic Programmer, Code Complete, The Developer's Code). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastActivityDate="2012-04-09T19:26:09.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5435" CreationDate="2012-04-09T19:32:10.053" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Believe it or not, most organizations, whether it is about PM capabilities or other business capabilities, are low on the maturity scale.  Gartner estimates something like 70% to 80% of organizations are either level 1 or 2 of a 5-point scale for BPM.  Before you implement any change, or even before you propose change, stand up a competency / governing body, a group of like minded resources that will include those with rank, to begin problem identification, opportunity identification, research, training, building a case for change, etc.  This group may evolve into a PMO-like organization or may dissolve down the line, but it is nearly essential to get the ball rolling.  We have found in our BPM consulting that this is almost law.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, your ideas notwithstanding, take a step back and look into the idea of this PM competency group.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-04-09T19:32:10.053" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5439" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5444" CreationDate="2012-04-09T22:10:21.637" Score="9" ViewCount="689" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're trying to introduce some new/updated ways to quantify developer productivity, and we want to include our Project Managers' thoughts.  What do you think about allowing PMs to &quot;grade&quot; or apply some sort of &quot;rating&quot; to a developer's task?  The grades would be based on things like the number of bugs that were found, code performance (does it run slow vs. fast), adherence to requirements, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would developers get upset about PMs grading them on a seemingly arbitrary scale?  How can I do this in a way that won't rock the boat?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2951" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-08T20:58:12.647" LastActivityDate="2012-07-09T16:54:29.890" Title="Allowing PMs to grade/rate developers" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5439" CreationDate="2012-04-10T00:38:40.217" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You say you are looking to &quot;apply some sort of rating&quot; based on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;number of bugs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;speed of code&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;adherence to requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;only the last one of those has any sort of subjective part to the measurement and even then depending on the rigor and granularity of your requirements tracking that may be up for debate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is why make this something the PM's rate? why not just make it automated? look up the number of bugs, the performance metrics on the nightly tests etc. for each developer's code and keep a running average or something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course if you make it an automated metric you risk having the developers game the system. If you make it a purely subjective measure of the project manager's opinions of the developers code then it's a rather worthless measurement unless your PM's are all developers as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a developer and I would not take kindly to a non-technical person rating my code on some arbitrary scale. It's hard for me to offer a better solution without knowing what you are trying to accomplish or if there is an underlying problem you're attempting to address.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3557" LastActivityDate="2012-04-10T00:38:40.217" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5439" CreationDate="2012-04-10T01:12:28.280" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project managers should absolutely have input into the performance reviews of the people on their teams.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2012-04-10T01:12:28.280" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5435" CreationDate="2012-04-10T01:25:04.270" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are all excellent ideas.  What you need to be careful about is how you present them.  Not, for example, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I can't believe you IDIOTS aren't doing source control!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm exaggerating for effect here)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but rather: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've read about some organizations that have implemented source control, and they've really been able to save time and money ... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Talking about time and money will cause your boss' ears to perk up.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2012-04-10T01:25:04.270" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5439" CreationDate="2012-04-10T08:10:40.047" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bugs:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Programming generally involves taking many vague or abstract concepts and then tying them together to build something great. Judging developers based on the number of bugs in the code perhaps one of the worst ways an organization can shoot itself in the foot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a world where everything is so pro-Agile, there is no blueprint to follow. We're not building houses -- the purest form of waterfall model possible -- where we know every stud must be 16 inches apart because that's how we built the last 15 houses. Every software project is fundamentally different in some significant manner from other software projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, bugs are just a fact of life. All software will have bugs, because many times developers are tying things together that have never been tied together before. Don't base performance on bugs, unless your goal is to demoralize and beat down your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Speed of Coding:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some developers can code very quickly, but then 6 to 12 months down the road; suddenly, the progress comes to a grinding halt due to all of the shortcuts and bad decisions made in the code. Programmers aren't typists. You don't measure success by how quickly they can spew code into their editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other developers are methodical, patient, and detail-oriented. They take the time to think about what approach will ensure the success of the product. Their decisions ensure that the product can still be supported years from now. They make sure that when one part of the system changes there isn't a domino effect created that reverberates through the entire codebase, knocking everything else out. Their code is well-commented, readable, engineered, and easy to maintain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand why we as project managers want to measure this, but we must understand that this is a very delicate, possibly immeasurable balance, and it involves good judgement and decision-making by the technical people on the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developers are generally paid on salary because their jobs involve the ability to make decisions and judgement calls, not produce little round widgets on a minimum wage production line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Adherence to Requirements:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Software development is a creative process. It's also an engineering process. The engineering process comes into play when the developer has to make sure he or she understands what it is that should be built. Using logic, good documentation, sometimes formal methods and planning, a developer should be able to have a clear picture of what he/she must build.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The creative part comes into play with the actual solving of the problems that will ultimately arise during the development process. This sometimes occurs in other fields as well, like in construction. Perhaps there is some reason why the last two studs can't be 16 inches apart, so some creativity must be put into finding a safe and sustainable solution. With software, sometimes developers run into walls, and he/she must find a way around that wall by taking the things he or she knows about several different programming concepts and then bring them all together to come up with a great solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the creativity part of software development doesn't mean the developer should go off an build whatever he or she wants to build; instead, the developer must still adhere to the requirements. The creative part is in the &lt;em&gt;approach&lt;/em&gt; to solving the problem, not the actual problem itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, sometimes engineers come up with creative ideas that can enhance the product. However, whether or not those items are implemented depends solely on who the product is intended for. At a startup, the engineer is likely to have a lot of freedom to innovate and create something that will instill passion in people. On the other hand, in a big corporation building custom software for a client, the goal is to deliver what the client wants, and that may leave little room in the requirements for unsolicited change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, the first two points are items that just don't make sense to measure. Bugs are a fact of life. Just look at them as unfinished features or part of the enhancing process. Speed of coding may not be a function of project success because coding is an engineering process, not a manufacturing process. Finally, requirement adherence may change from project to project and may not be measurable or important in some projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, focus on evaluating the people. Is he easy to get along with? Does she help motivate other team members? Does she help collaborate with the team and generate problem-solving ideas? Do you trust this person to deliver what he or she says he's going to deliver. When bugs are found, does he take responsibility and passionately dig in and fix the unfinished feature (bug).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By it's very nature, software development is a subjective process, and you cannot use objective evaluation criteria to evaluate positions such as this without undermining yourself, your team, and your organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-04-10T08:10:40.047" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5439" CreationDate="2012-04-10T08:22:08.410" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First, every appraisal, no matter who does it, is arbitrary to some point.&lt;/strong&gt; If someone isn't fine with that they should find a place where there's no appraisals at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Second, for someone who is looking for feedback, more feedback should be always better than less feedback.&lt;/strong&gt; I mean, even when I don't fully agree with someone's opinion it can still be very valuable because it shows how others see my work and, arguably, what I can do to change their views.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From these perspectives finding a way of incorporating feedback from pretty much anyone somehow connected with developers' work to their appraisal is good. And PM is definitely a person whose work is &quot;somehow connected&quot; with development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talking about that, &lt;strong&gt;PM has a pretty different perspective of a project, thus their feedback will be even more valuable.&lt;/strong&gt; If we keep feedback just within a functional group, here: developers, and developers' functional manager we get pretty homogeneous view of a project. Bringing other point of view, especially from someone working closer with a client, would definitely help to make it better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: In my answer I'm focusing on feedback in general and not on a specific grade, rate, mark or however you call it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is because in terms of appraising people any rating system is tricky by default.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to incorporate feedback delivered by PMs but avoid any direct rating of developers. If functional manager isn't all defensive when it comes to their people they should be able to deliver such feedback to people in a valuable way. &lt;strong&gt;Such approach however requires trust between pretty much everyone around: PM, a manager and a team member.&lt;/strong&gt; PM trusts that their feedback will reach a developer. A manager trusts they get honest, straightforward, possibly fact-based, feedback. A developer trusts no one tries to run them down, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your organization's standards it may be a standard way that people are rated on a scale and if it is so I don't say you should avoid that at all cost. Do remember that PM's feedback is just a part of the whole judgment on one's work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If people (here: PMs) never delivered feedback to other team members, rating system may be a good way to standardize the way they construct their feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand please avoid any automatic measures, like a number of bugs, lines of code etc. &lt;strong&gt;It has nothing to do with feedback&lt;/strong&gt; and it will only drive measured numbers down or up (depending on a goal) with no direct influence on quality, e.g. if you measure a number of &lt;em&gt;submitted&lt;/em&gt; bugs, you may be pretty sure that people will stop &lt;em&gt;submitting&lt;/em&gt; bugs; it doesn't say much about a project quality and even fogs your visibility more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2012-07-09T16:54:29.890" LastActivityDate="2012-07-09T16:54:29.890" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="531" CreationDate="2012-04-10T11:54:53.277" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A much better option in Office 2010 is &quot;Request Delivery Receipt&quot;. That way you have confirmation that your email was sent, and hit their server (for the most part), but do not appear unprofessional to the client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HfVKQ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3090" LastActivityDate="2012-04-10T11:54:53.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5439" CreationDate="2012-04-10T13:11:24.983" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not think being a developer is relevant in answering this question.  We live in a world where we are measured for our performance, no matter the activity or work we are doing.  Being measured and compared with our peers are consistent with setting goals and achieving them, healthy competition, and weeding out those who do not belong.  How one feels about it is immaterial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The measuring stick you use should be a decomposed version of the stick used to measure the organization's performance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There will always be unintended side effects to a metric.  In many cases, those side effects are of no consequence to the organization.  In other cases, the metric you choose will cause a behavior shift you did not want.  So you approach it smartly.  Don't measure something simply to say you are measuring.  Measure it because you have goal you need to meet and that you have an eye on unwanted behaviors it may also produce.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-04-10T13:11:24.983" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5430" CreationDate="2012-04-10T15:30:44.230" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's always risky to start a job if the project has already started without you, especially if another person is leaving the company. This should sound an alarm and you should find out as much as possible prior to taking a job. I once made a mistake of taking on a project without physically meeting a business owner. I was 18 at the time and much has been learnt since.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;135 sounds like a scary number, but I personally would look at this as an epic story with few smaller stories (each story having multiple tasks). Yes, I would probably use this in my defence to try and emphasise on how big the project is, but it's not going to solve the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If project manager concentrates on requirements and doesn't promise any estimates, then it's absolutely fine. It's their job to establish requirements and its developer's job to give them estimates. However, even then I don't agree that estimating work in such a way is a good thing. I would probably look at estimating using t-shirt sizes or alternative methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meetings are good, they help you understand the requirements, so I don't think that problem is in time spent on meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on what you have said regarding deadlines and my experience as a developer, I think that your project can easily over-run by two if not three times. A lot of the time is normally taken by integration, testing and quality assurance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that this is mainly PM's fault. Fact that they have been a PM for 13 years, doesn't make them a better PM. Some people achieve in six months what others have achieved in six years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3571" LastActivityDate="2012-04-10T15:30:44.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5435" CreationDate="2012-04-10T15:53:12.877" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are ambitious, that's good - I'm just like that. I have worked in a start-up software house, then I kept moving through larger organizations over the period of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each time I wanted to make a change by automating a process. Eventually I came to realise that  the majority of small companies that are not working on enterprise solutions will be mainly concerned with the time to market (making money). They might not exist in the next year or six months, so they generally think that better quality and automation is a luxury that they want, but can't afford.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will need to justify the spending to your management, and I found that it isn't easy to do. They will generally agree with you, and say it's good, but it can wait until it's really needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm now working for a successful software house (still relatively small company) where everything is driven by automating processes (Continuous Integration). It's now part of our culture but it took us a while to get here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, regarding the tools that you have mentioned - yes, I think that they are good and you can generally get them up and running within few days. But this is only a tip of an iceberg, maybe it makes sense to find a working environment with a different culture?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My answer is based on what I have previously experienced. I've suggested to change a working environment because I have previously tried to automate processes in smaller companies, but I have failed because all they were concerned with was time to market. All they wanted to do was to get the system out of the door and not worry about what might happen in the following six months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding current company I work for, a technical director knows how the software engineering company is supposed to function. He has hired the right people, broke us down into departments (front-end, back-end, db, server side, testers, &quot;process maturity&quot;, quality assurance leads etc). Our processes are driven by continuous integration and I can get into details of what we have achieved/failed to achieve. We are quite good, but our Capability Maturity Model (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model) is still somewhere between two and three, it's good, but there is a very long way to go. In your organization, it sounds like it'll take quite an effort to move from level one to level two. Hence why I have asked you whether you've considered changing a working environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3571" LastEditorUserId="3571" LastEditDate="2012-04-11T08:00:00.710" LastActivityDate="2012-04-11T08:00:00.710" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5435" CreationDate="2012-04-10T16:15:58.937" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It can be counter-productive to enter into this with the perspective that the organization you are trying to change is &quot;rigid&quot; or &quot;narrow-minded.&quot;  Those terms carry negative connotations which can undermine any positive changes you are trying to make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend taking a step back and looking at all the things the company does right.  For example, they seem to be making enough customers happy that they can grow, hire people and pay their salaries (not to mention rent and other expenses).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understanding what they do right will help improve the delivery of these changes and will provide a deeper understanding of how to make the changes and which changes will have the most chance of success. It will also help you grow the number of people interested in making change since there are likely a lot more people who want to help the company than there are people who want to &quot;rebel.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not to sound to zen about it, but there is no one-size-fits-all set of recommendations. The kind of improvements you are looking to make come from trust relationships and a respectful understanding of the current company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-04-10T16:15:58.937" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5450" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-11T09:11:07.150" Score="3" ViewCount="2009" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am recently promoted to team lead, with this, my organization has also recently started to following the process of software development life cycle, but so far not too many things are streamlined. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, I am getting Business Requirement Specifications (BRS) from the product team, and it is the base document we are using for our development. As a technical team lead, what document should I prepare before starting the coding(SRS, FRS etc.)? I like to use some new technology components and features in application, so how can I make sure that project development will work smoothly and doesn't collapse at the end movement?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3752" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-08T20:51:23.203" LastActivityDate="2012-07-08T20:51:23.203" Title="Project Management Document to prepare for Technical Team Leader" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5424" CreationDate="2012-04-11T10:04:40.533" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that every project/feature/task, no matter how small they are, should be planned for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if one of the sites that you are about to migrate relies on a third party which you are not aware of? If you have your requirements in a document, you can circulate it to relevant people and get their approval (sign-off). This will not only cover your back, but it might also give you a better understanding of a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you know when the project is complete if you haven't said anywhere what counts for &quot;complete&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Documents that you have mentioned is what I would refer to as analysis document. Analysis document should provide enough information to somebody new to pick-up the task in the event that you decide to leave company. If it's a few page document, then I'd simply call it an analysis document. If it was a forty page document, then I would consider breaking it down into smaller documents. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3571" LastActivityDate="2012-04-11T10:04:40.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5156" CreationDate="2012-04-11T10:08:33.290" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that blog is the answer. We have two blogs within a company: technical and non-technical. Technical blog is great as it allows senior developers share their ideas, achievements in automation of our processes etc. It also encourages other developers to contribute. This works well in medium to large size organizations, as certain people tend to specialize in different areas. E.g. our system architect might write a blog on how our framework will change in the coming six months, when our quality assurance lead might give an insight on how quality assurance processes have improved within last few months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Information can be shared, linked and easily accessible, but it doesn't mean that people will go and read it. It's just like going to Wikipedia - you go on it when you want to find something specific. If you want to encourage knowledge sharing within your organization, then blog might work better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3571" LastEditorUserId="3571" LastEditDate="2012-04-12T14:18:09.780" LastActivityDate="2012-04-12T14:18:09.780" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5453" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-11T10:23:19.107" Score="12" ViewCount="8333" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have got a R&amp;amp;D department within our company. It consists of a few 'core team members' who work full time. They are open-minded technical people who jump into new ideas and try to do whatever they come up with. Also there are a lot of ad-hoc / part-time members who want to do something else than their normal projects or want to try some new technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The process, in general goes like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;idea -&gt; research -&gt; prototype -&gt; sandbox -&gt; project / product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first step: ideas is fine; there are lots of ideas, which is good ;)&#xA;The last step is also fine because when an idea becomes a project it goes out of the R&amp;amp;D and falls into a &quot;normal&quot; management and processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problem&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem we have is with those three steps in the middle. As I said, there are too little core team members to cover all ideas by themselves and this is a bottle neck. On the other hand, when the other ad-hoc staff want to help, they can usually only spend a few hours a week so the progress is very slow and it is very hard to plan their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Questions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a third way? To have a reasonable progress without queuing the ideas? How to organise their work so everybody is involved without the trade-offs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2915" LastActivityDate="2015-11-26T14:26:39.760" Title="How to manage R&amp;D projects in a R&amp;D department?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;&lt;innovation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5453" CreationDate="2012-04-11T11:45:41.447" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few ideas that might help to find you an approach which is suitable for your organization:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;20% time.&lt;/strong&gt; The approach &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2008/thoughts-on-googles-20-time/&quot;&gt;used, among others, by 3M and Google&lt;/a&gt;. Of course it might be something different than 20%. The idea is that everyone can work for some predictable amount of time of their side project. With such approach you basically base on people responsibility - since they consider the idea &quot;theirs&quot; they will likely use much of their 20% time to work on it. On the other hand it might be problematic if you want to pursue ideas that are thrown at people. In other words if some of ideas are of kind that no one really loves to work on them they can be starved.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DEV/FedEx+Day+FAQ&quot;&gt;FedEx Day&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt; Well, maybe not exactly FedEx Day &quot;by the book&quot; but similar initiative constrained by choice of subjects to these you'd like to work on. This way you gather a bigger group of people willing to invest their time to develop some of the ideas you have. On the plus side you can count the intent to deliver something after 24h and possibility of building bigger groups that can push project way further than an individual. On the other hand it can be tricky to split the work among bigger group of people. And again you have rather short sprint of work (one day) and not long-time effort.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Slack time.&lt;/strong&gt; If you introduce &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2012/04/what-slack-time-is-for.html&quot;&gt;slack time&lt;/a&gt; in your project teams in a consistent way, meaning that in the long run you have rather steady slack, you can invest it, among other things, into developing your R&amp;amp;D ideas. Tight WIP limits are one of ways to achieve that. Another idea is to &lt;a href=&quot;http://agiletrail.com/2012/01/16/slack-to-the-rescue-harder-than-it-sounds&quot;&gt;constrain slack in longer time periods&lt;/a&gt;, like year. Depending on the way you choose you can get different specifics of people availability to your R&amp;amp;D project: either frequent short slots spread among different folks or rare long periods when people can focus on a task for a week or even a few of weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Strengthen R&amp;amp;D team.&lt;/strong&gt; As obvious as it might sound: if developing your ideas is important for you and you find it hard to get enough time from project team for that consider adding people to your R&amp;amp;D team. Do it especially if any of above methods doesn't really work because project work always gets higher priority than R&amp;amp;D side projects and you don't expect the source of ideas to dry out.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Temporary spells in R&amp;amp;D team.&lt;/strong&gt; This one is variation on the previous idea. Instead of having someone to permanently join R&amp;amp;D team you can have a &quot;loan&quot; from project team to R&amp;amp;D group for a specific period of time, like a couple of weeks or a couple of months. It leaves you flexibility (the person would go back to their project team after all) and gives you some ind of guarantee that you will be able to work on an idea for a longer time. It usually is a nice motivator for a loaned person as well, as they can work on something &quot;cooler&quot; than typical project work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course all of these approaches can be mixed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2012-04-11T11:45:41.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5377" CreationDate="2012-04-11T12:26:17.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you tried &lt;a href=&quot;http://trello.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt;? It is simple web application that can help you organize your projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are 3 functions in this application:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Board: you can create &lt;em&gt;Board&lt;/em&gt; for each project&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;List: every &lt;em&gt;Board&lt;/em&gt; have some list. If you create a new &lt;em&gt;Board&lt;/em&gt;, it will automatically create 3 &lt;em&gt;Lists&lt;/em&gt; such as To Do, Doing, and Done. You can add a new list later or modify the existing ones.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Card: the discussions go here. You can also add Checklist, Attachment, Due Date, and so on...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3786" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2012-04-11T20:57:45.760" LastActivityDate="2012-04-11T20:57:45.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5453" CreationDate="2012-04-11T12:50:40.900" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pawel offered some excellent ideas but I am going to approach this question in a completely different way:  Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While having zero experience in an R&amp;amp;D environment, I'd suspect that majority of the ideas generated in any given R&amp;amp;D organization in any industry are non starters.  I would suspect that the queuing process, the racking and stacking of ideas based on some set of criteria that suggest some likelihood of viability, is a valuable step in the R&amp;amp;D process and for the organization.  It costs money to go through your middle three steps so I think it would be prudent to analyze viability against your costs and risks, which would occur in the queuing process.  So trying to work &quot;all&quot; of your ideas without a bottleneck seems like a bad business choice.  I would use the bottleneck as a filter so that I would maximize the the value of every R&amp;amp;D dollar spent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, your goal of &quot;without tradeoffs&quot; is like a goal of perfection.  It is unachievable.  Nothing you can do in business, no choice, no action, will deliver benefits WITHOUT costs and penalties somewhere.  There are always tradeoffs.  Indeed, there is a way to organize work to maximize efficiencies and throughput; however, it has to be paid for somewhere somehow.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-04-11T12:50:40.900" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5450" CreationDate="2012-04-11T19:41:00.963" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I like to use some new technology components and features in application so how can I make sure that project development will work smoothly and didn't collapse at end movement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm pretty sure that there isn't any documentation, which will ensure that the work will go smoothly. Usually, it doesn't go smoothly anyway, but using &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/scrum&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt;, DSDM, &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/lean&quot;&gt;Lean&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/kanban&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt; can help you to make it less risky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cannot introduce a new way of working, have &lt;strong&gt;a high level documentation, which defines what&lt;/strong&gt; has to be done, and &lt;strong&gt;let the team find out the how&lt;/strong&gt;. Have a weekly discussion where you check on the progress and update the documentation if something interesting or useful comes up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Over-documentation&lt;/strong&gt; - which may happen in your case, because it is your first project and you don't want to fail - &lt;strong&gt;can kill a project&lt;/strong&gt;. If you write down everything how the work should be done, the developers cannot really use their skills to deliver a great product. They won't bother with important details, because it is your documentation so the responsibility is yours. They will implement that is written down, and nothing more. Having a goal - the &quot;&lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt;&quot; - gives them perspective and the only thing you have to take care is that they are using the right &quot;&lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. Instead of documenting this &quot;&lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt;&quot; be there with them and provide as much help as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-04-11T19:41:00.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5453" CreationDate="2012-04-11T20:03:50.047" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may want to take a page out of Pharma's book when managing R&amp;amp;D projects. Although making drugs is far more heavily regulated than writing code, the key ideas are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Regular and frequent kill points&lt;/strong&gt;. From 10,000 good ideas you'll get one drug to market, and the best way to do this efficiently is to kill the 9,999 ideas that won't work as early in the process as possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Prioritization of winners&lt;/strong&gt;. Put your time, effort and money on the horses that are winning rather than keeping the worse performers &quot;on track&quot;. The faster you get the winner done the faster you get more money to spend on the other ideas.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't get emotionally involved&lt;/strong&gt;. Keep the decision makers for an idea separate from those that are advocating the ideas so that when an idea no longer gives value for money it can be killed. If your key decision maker has a personal stake in the project continuing you can bet it will continue - possibly to the detriment of the company.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-04-11T20:03:50.047" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5453" CreationDate="2012-04-11T22:41:03.203" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You said &quot;there are too little core team members to cover all ideas by themselves and this is a bottle neck.&quot; And really this is the key. If you don't have enough people to do ALL of the projects, then you have to pick which ones you DO have enough people for, and let the others fall to the ad-hoc teams that show up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have enough resources, then you have to prioritize. The core members can work on some of the more important projects full-time, and provide oversight and guidance on the others as other team members become available to make sure they make some progress. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-04-11T22:41:03.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5450" CreationDate="2012-04-12T11:33:12.787" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using a Dev approach (or SDLC) is one thing, there are still some fundamental &quot;Project&quot; questions you'll need to make clear for everybody involved. A basic &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Project Charter&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; or &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Project Initiation&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; template can help. There are hundreds to be found on the web.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based upon the description you gave us, some questions come to mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scope&lt;/strong&gt;: you will get a BRS document. But will you deliver all requirements? What exactly is in and out of scope? What is nice to have? How will you manage changes eg will you work with a backlog that is prioritised by the customer at the begining of each sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Budget&lt;/strong&gt;: has a budget been allocated? If so, is it sufficient for the required scope? When will you know?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Time&lt;/strong&gt;: Is there a deadline? Or will it depend upon your planning?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Team&lt;/strong&gt;: you are the teamlead: will your team be 100% allocated to the job, or have they other things to do as well (support?). Make sure the impact on your schedule is clear. Make sure the priorities are clear.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will you have other people from outside your technical team on the 'project team' as well? What is your authority towards them?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will you only do development? Or will you do the &lt;strong&gt;roll-out&lt;/strong&gt; as well? If not, who will? Who will write user manuals? Training materials? Who will do support afterwards? Who will train them? …&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who will make the important decisions? The SteerCo? Do you have one? Your talking about new technology: who will make the desicion to use them or otherwise rely on some proven technology? Are there Go/No-go decisiopns to be made during the project? When are they scheduled? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What about hardware? Who is reponsible for that?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you need to &lt;strong&gt;procure&lt;/strong&gt; something? Who is empowered to sign the order?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stakeholders&lt;/strong&gt;: who is involved and needs to be kept informed? By whom? How will you report progress?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;New technology also involves &lt;strong&gt;risk&lt;/strong&gt;: how will you handle this risk? Do you have a plan B? are there other risks that need to be handled to ensure &quot;project development will work smoothly and didn't collapse at end movement&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All basic stuff, and I could go on and on. If everything is clear, so much the better. You may safely discard this post. But think it through. I won't promise a 'smooth' journey, but it will do for a 'smoother' one for sure ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2012-04-12T11:33:12.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5156" CreationDate="2012-04-12T12:45:38.053" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.evernote.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Evernote&lt;/a&gt; and it works very well, easily sharing documents, videos, links, etc.. Everyone on my team uses it, and everything we share is available on all of our devices and computers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3090" LastActivityDate="2012-04-12T12:45:38.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5464" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5473" CreationDate="2012-04-12T12:59:22.407" Score="10" ViewCount="340" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been on multiple projects where the project leaders have not involved themselves in the project enough to even learn what the project is really doing.  Other times the project leaders didn't even schedule progress sessions throughout the project.  One of the worst experiences I had is where I (as a developer) kept the project on track, ended up getting the team to produce an implementation plan and then executed that implementation plan by myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, how do I hold a project leaders feet to the fire without offending?  I have been bitten in the past for being too honest with my feelings when project leaders drop the ball (like not recording requirements changes and then having to discuss the same things multiple times... or helping write extremely poor requirements in the first place).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2226" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T11:39:00.263" Title="How to communicate with project leaders when they are doing poorly" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5464" CreationDate="2012-04-12T15:38:10.197" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;When there is a void in leadership, the remaining team will fill it in some way, sometimes smoothly, other times after a bit of disruption, but it either will be filled or the team will implode. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your leadership has distanced itself from the project activities, then take it as a signal that they are prepared for a new leader to emerge. I suggest you be that person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you asking this question makes me infer that perhaps you do not feel ready for that role, in which case you need to let your boss know that the team needs his closer guidance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are ready, then go for it. Lead the team, learn new skills, get promoted, retire. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-04-12T15:38:10.197" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5156" CreationDate="2012-04-12T16:10:32.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have an intrawiki that we use as an entire company for sharing information: We put contact information, instructions for various tasks, links to important information, etc. Departments and teams have their own sections on the intrawiki, and can even get as specific as information pertaining to small projects. Anyone can create and edit pages so it's easy for people to add their own information and update when necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use Confluence, which is not free: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/overview&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Media Wiki is also available: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2012-04-12T16:10:32.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5156" CreationDate="2012-04-12T19:37:11.740" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another option would be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.socialcast.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Socialcast&lt;/a&gt;, which is designed for Intranet-based social networking.  This is good for link sharing.  If you want longer-term knowledge capture, I agree with an earlier poster who suggested putting up a Wiki.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2012-04-12T19:37:11.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4750" CreationDate="2012-04-12T19:45:51.387" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Other posters are suggesting version control, which I agree with, but don't be afraid to keep a revision history in the Project itself by adding a note to the project summary task.  You can make it just a few sentences or as complex as a separate Word document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the instructions for MSProject 2010: &#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/awgbp.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2012-04-12T19:45:51.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5464" CreationDate="2012-04-13T00:58:41.700" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do I hold a project leader's feet to the fire without offending? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't try and tackle this publicly (at first), you will end up grabbing him by the tail!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hold an honest 1:1 chat with him, explaining that his lack of leadership/vision is causing &lt;code&gt;this&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;this&lt;/code&gt;, and &lt;code&gt;this&lt;/code&gt; to the project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't get personal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Explain that the team and other younger people are looking up to him or her as a leader and &lt;code&gt;this&lt;/code&gt; is what they are missing/expecting from him or her. Realization!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the situation is still not salvageable, then I would suggest working towards putting your weight behind getting a replacement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-04-13T04:24:06.350" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T04:24:06.350" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5464" CreationDate="2012-04-13T01:59:56.607" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You will have to first figure out whether it is a problem with the individual (project lead) or it's an organizational issue. If it's just the lead, start with a personal 1-1 session (as suggested by @the_reluctant_tester) and give honest feedback about what the consequences can be for lack of his engagement. If you can take a lead role to fill in the leadership void, consider this as part of that. If that does not work out, talking to the lead's boss is the second option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's an organizational level issue, then really you can't do much other than raising it appropriately at different levels and just making sure that you are getting your part done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1546" LastEditorUserId="1752" LastEditDate="2012-04-13T11:39:00.263" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T11:39:00.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5464" CreationDate="2012-04-13T05:44:39.880" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use the carrot and stick approach - Pick up a small issue that would not hurt him too much, and specifically ask him to take care of it. If he shows proper leadership and resolves the issue, or even shows good leadership with some other issue, give him a couple of compliments without being condescending, something like, &quot;You showed good leadership they way you handled so and so issue&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2867" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T05:44:39.880" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5464" CreationDate="2012-04-13T06:59:22.407" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The consistent factor across all the projects is &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;. Your behavior is currently enabling theirs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're using negative language to describe what's happening, but I wonder - do the project managers even know that you don't enjoy picking up after them? A lot of project managers delegate responsibility, and if they're ever overworked this may be the right thing to do. Have you told them that you don't enjoy it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than phrasing it as &quot;dropping the ball&quot;, I'd ask what balls they're juggling. You might find that requirements and implementation is the least of their worries. Perhaps they're about  to lose their whole budget, or the department is looking at making redundancies, or the main stakeholder who was interested in the project in the first place has left. If they're not busy managing the project, what &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; they doing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've often found it useful to give feedback to project managers by asking for help. Instead of phrasing it as &quot;Here's what I need from you,&quot; you can ask, &quot;How can I help you more effectively, given that XYZ keeps happening?&quot; You could also do this by running weekly or bi-weekly retrospectives, which will bring up common issues the team is facing and avoid the situation where one strong voice overrides the rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also consider that you have an opportunity here. If you're backing up the project managers and might enjoy it in different circumstances, maybe you could just ask for more recognition of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T06:59:22.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5475" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5482" CreationDate="2012-04-13T17:55:51.873" Score="15" ViewCount="7249" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're using Agile and Scrum methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this iteration a coworker had to finish her Development task, which was carried over from last iteration. We thought it will be done in two days and we can start black box testing on it. So we had two tasks: one assigned to her for finishing up the development and one assigned to me to run black box testing on her project. But her task almost took the whole iteration - one day left - and obviously it is impossible for me to do my task now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what do you think? What do I suggest to project manager? I do not want my name to be on a task, that for the whole iteration I have been blocked from doing! We can still partially finish like 3 of 20 of those test plans from that task, but definitely not all of them at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3797" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-04-15T20:23:47.937" LastActivityDate="2012-04-15T20:23:47.937" Title="What should we do with a task that has been blocked" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5475" CreationDate="2012-04-13T21:21:49.837" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you are using Scrum, you should be using &quot;cross functional team members&quot; to develop vertically - the testing of a user story should be a part of the user story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the user story is broken up into smaller tasks and the tasks are dependant, then putting them in the same sprint can cause delays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could break up the black box testing into smaller testing tasks, then complete a few of them in this sprint and postpone others to another sprint. However, it may be better not to commit the code behind the original task to the integration branch if you feel it has not been tested enough. (Does it have white-box unit tests?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1094" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T21:21:49.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5475" CreationDate="2012-04-13T22:29:37.223" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lots of different things could be tried to improve this in future iterations. My answers are more in questions since we don't know the specifics of your team, technology or culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Swarming&lt;/strong&gt; - Why was there only one person on the task? Is everyone working on individual tasks that are separate. How about trying a couple of people on one task. Especially if they are taking multiple days&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More granularity&lt;/strong&gt; - I like to give teams the goal of breaking down tasks into things that can be accomplished in no more than a day. This way we are checking things off every day. Many believe that the more granular your tasks are the more predictable you can become with scrum and kanban&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pair programming&lt;/strong&gt; - should there have been two people? Was it a touch technology or part of the code that having two people on would have reduced the risk and delay?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Retro&lt;/strong&gt; - what comes in the retrospective for the sprint? What action items did she come up with for next time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Team Effort&lt;/strong&gt; - each feature is a team effort. are you helping each other reach the finish line or only concerned with what is assigned to you? Are you assigning out individual tasks in planning? What if you picked them up during the sprint and drove each feature to completion with some of the suggestions above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T22:29:37.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5475" CreationDate="2012-04-14T01:29:53.120" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This answer may be more from a development perspective, but building software using object oriented techniques and MVC can also help dissolve issues such as this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You and your coworker should have taken 30 minutes to spec out what the output from her part of the project would look like and what your input would look like. You then write stubs that simulate hard-coded output from your coworker's module. This means you can work on your part of the project and work up to the point where your coworker is complete with her part. Then you integrate the two pieces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without knowing all the details, it's hard to give you a solid answer, but even if you were working on frontend components, pieces of the UI can be stubbed out and hard-coded data can be used as placeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This concept is of course a lot more successful if you follow Erin and Danny's suggestion to break things down into more granular components. Not only does this make it easy to develop independent modules, but also it makes it a whole lot easier to test those components.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-04-14T01:29:53.120" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5475" CreationDate="2012-04-14T08:27:23.283" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question suggests several &lt;em&gt;Scrum smells&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your colleague was working on a single item and &lt;strong&gt;it turned out only at the end of the sprint&lt;/strong&gt; then you are doing something wrong. I strongly suggest to bring this issue to the team and spend some time finding the root cause during the retrospective&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are doing Scrum, then you shouldn't worry about your name being on a task, because &lt;strong&gt;the shared responsibility&lt;/strong&gt; it is not only your problem, it is a team problem. Again, a great retrospective material&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Scrum the &lt;strong&gt;Scrum Master should talk&lt;/strong&gt; to the project manager in situations like this, you are safe&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We had problems like your all the time and our solution was to &lt;strong&gt;stop doing everything else and put focus on the blocked issue as a team&lt;/strong&gt;. Of course, there are cases when it is impossible to work on a task with 7 people. In that case, the rest can help out with those item which were interrupted by the blocking item. Even if you are not finished before the end of the sprint, you did everything you could in order to solve an issue. If you improve yourself so that this won't happen again, then you are agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back to the &lt;em&gt;Scrum smells&lt;/em&gt;: spend some time solving those issues, because they will happen again, and the later you solve them the more painful it will be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-04-14T08:27:23.283" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5475" CreationDate="2012-04-14T09:29:26.953" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you have a bigger problem than the particular task blockage scenario. If a task was blocked for so long, did it come up in the daily scrum and did the Scrum Master do anything to remove the impediment? If the external dependency was not possible to remove, the team should be updated and there should not be any concern on why your dependent task could not start. Also, the very discussion of individual responsibility and you-vs-me mindset is contrary to the team ownership that Scrum promotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1546" LastActivityDate="2012-04-14T09:29:26.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5475" CreationDate="2012-04-14T22:43:47.930" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Development task which was carried over from last iteration and we&#xA;  thought it will be done in two days&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the task got carried from last iteration, then I would say that the task is too large and it should probably be re-analysed and broken down into smaller tasks. You are now looking at a single task running over two or more iterations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;her task almost took the whole iteration - one day left - and&#xA;  obviously it is impossible for me to do my task now&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There might be a lack of communication here. I find it alarming that you are saying this a day before the end of the iteration. Do you already have a test plan in place and you are saying that one day isn't enough to test the feature, or do you not have a test plan yet? Our tester normally raises such an issues three to five days before the end of iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;what I suggest to project manager? I do not want my name to be on a&#xA;  task that for the whole iteration I have been blocked from doing it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First point I'd like to make is regarding impediments. If you knew that you were impeded by an &quot;unfinished feature&quot; on Monday, then I would state this to my project manager or senior developer on the same day. We have a whiteboard where we write down our name, date and time as well as a person or a third party that we are impeded by. So you could make this clear few days before. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A member of team keeps a track of impediments and analyses them on a weekly basis. This allows them to explain certain holdbacks to the business and make improvements within a team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developer should have communicated with their team lead or project manager and make them aware that they are behind. At some point we were running SCRUMs and what we had to close X amount of hours per day. Say I have a task estimated at four hours, and I spent eight hours on it already. Project manager would then run statistics on daily basis and after few days it would be clear to the PM that I'm running behind by 20 odd man hours. So I can say that PM is equally responsible for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;we can still partially finish like 3 of 20 of those test plans from&#xA;  that task but definitely not all of them at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now this is probably the most important point. Three out of twenty is 15%. Assuming all your tests pass, you'll be at the most, 15% confident that feature is working. Would you drive a car if you knew that breaks work 15% of the time? You see the point I'm trying to make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would personally recommend not to release this feature, gather relevant team members and get some feedback prior to making any changes or going into next iteration. You need to find out what's going wrong and fix it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarise, I think that multiple people are responsible for this issue, including project manager, developer and yourself. This is based on my experience as a software engineer, not a project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3571" LastEditorUserId="3571" LastEditDate="2012-04-14T22:49:38.890" LastActivityDate="2012-04-14T22:49:38.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5417" CreationDate="2012-04-14T23:03:39.263" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is acceptable, assuming it's done in a polite and professional fashion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be few sides to the story here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Job agent (assuming there is one) didn't explain the role properly to the candidate. Candidate could have been expecting something different. On few occasions we had PHP developers, who had to sit a .NET test. They've walked out with 0%-10% for a test.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Candidate is trying their luck to lie through the interview and get a job. If this is the case, then they have already insulted your business.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some interviews are arranged by agents who only care about their commission. They send anybody to the interview hoping the candidate will be lucky enough to get a job. This is of course this might be a stereotype, but I have seen this quite a lot within small companies in the UK.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the solutions, is to ask candidates to go through a two-three phase interview:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Phase 1&quot; would ask the candidate to complete basic programming test. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Phase 2&quot; would require candidate to interact with a senior developer, which will hopefully allow the senior developer to see what technical expertise candidate has to offer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Phase 3&quot; would then try to establish how well the candidate might fit within the company and what hobbies, interests and ambitions they have.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3571" LastActivityDate="2012-04-14T23:03:39.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4750" CreationDate="2012-04-15T06:14:08.033" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;EDIT: my goal is to answer questions such as &#xA;  &quot;When did that used to be due?&quot; and &quot;That seemed to&#xA;   have changed; did I add or delete a dependancy&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just for the the first question I think using the baseline feature of Microsoft Project would help.  You can create baselines to take snapshots of the project schedule over time.  I have actually never used this feature but I think it is what you are after.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3801" LastActivityDate="2012-04-15T06:14:08.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4750" CreationDate="2012-04-15T08:27:32.140" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ms Project files, as you mentioned, are binary and therefore can not be merged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is value in version control of these files, however, the checkouts must be exclusive to prevent merges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider using Sharepoint for version control of Ms Office files instead of the version control you use for source code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1094" LastActivityDate="2012-04-15T08:27:32.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5486" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-04-15T13:09:49.387" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-04-15T13:09:49.387" LastActivityDate="2012-04-15T13:09:49.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5487" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-04-15T13:09:49.387" Score="0" Body="Performance is a measure of how well (or poorly) an individual, team or project is doing.  " OwnerUserId="1752" LastEditorUserId="1752" LastEditDate="2012-04-15T14:34:08.593" LastActivityDate="2012-04-15T14:34:08.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5488" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5489" CreationDate="2012-04-15T20:14:05.193" Score="8" ViewCount="727" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project plans don't update themselves, sadly.  So I'm trying to figure out what I need to do to keep them up to date.  I can update &lt;em&gt;work complete&lt;/em&gt; as tasks get done, but what should I be doing to ensure that we're on schedule according to the plan? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-14T15:13:52.440" LastActivityDate="2019-01-14T15:13:52.440" Title="What should I do in my weekly updates to project plans" Tags="&lt;tracking&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5488" CreationDate="2012-04-15T20:22:47.457" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have estimates for each of the tasks, you could use that information to estimate the progress (the measure of time of tasks completed) against the total estimated time (the estimation of all tasks). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, you could look at completed tasks and calculate the difference between estimates and actual time and then pad the remaining estimates with the average. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could then tell you approximately how far off schedule or on schedule you might be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as keeping the project plan up to date, this takes discipline, and you'll need to make sure that you set aside a specific amount of time everyday to update this information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-04-15T20:22:47.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5488" CreationDate="2012-04-15T23:10:51.483" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Schedule statusing and analysis should occur on an established frequency based on the length of your project, primarily.  This type of control work is expensive so you want to do it as infrequently as possible.  Not only this, but the more you dig in, the more you will compelled to chase variances, which is often nothing more than stochastic ebbs and flow, which you never chase.  If your project schedule was two years long, even a year, weekly statusing is an overkill.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use Earned Value, Earned Schedule, and Critical Path Management to monitor your performance against cost and schedule.  There is a lot to each of these methods--too much to explain on this exchange.  These methods are proven and well known so the results are credible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you use the word &quot;updates&quot;, it implies you are actively altering the schedule.  Unless a change goes through a formal process and is accepted, your schedule should be baselined and unchanged.  If you constantly change it, you will never get a clean picture of your variances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there is a huge difference between estimate and target.  Your estimate is probabilistic; your target--upon which your schedule is based--is deterministic.  This means you will have variances.  Some of these variances are unimportant, i.e., the package was not on the critical path and had zero effect on your schedule.  Using the methods I indicated above will help analyze that and calculate your probabilistic estimates at completion.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-04-15T23:10:51.483" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5492" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5494" CreationDate="2012-04-16T12:57:09.830" Score="6" ViewCount="277" Body="&lt;p&gt;We all know that in management, the communication with the client (product owner or sponsor) is one of the key factors. It's good when both sides understand the communication aspect. However, from time to time, you have a client that just doesn't pay attention to you emails. In a time and materials model, the team gets frustrated. In a fixed price model, you lose time and money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that Skype would be better than emails; face 2 face meetings would be better than Skype, but my question is about formal agreements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I'm considering adding a point to my formal agreement that states something like &quot;&lt;em&gt;both sides are obligated to answer emails within one day&lt;/em&gt;.&quot; Will this make any difference?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2915" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-11-28T03:00:20.167" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T03:00:20.167" Title="Is including &quot;communication&quot; aspects in formal agreements with clients critical to have?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;clients&gt;&lt;contracts&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5493" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-16T13:22:20.957" Score="10" ViewCount="7226" Body="&lt;p&gt;What reports do you use to track progress of several projects? In particular, what progress visualization techniques do you use? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3340" LastEditorUserId="3340" LastEditDate="2012-04-22T13:20:09.640" LastActivityDate="2012-04-22T20:24:31.760" Title="How do you visualize projects progress?" Tags="&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;progress-report&gt;&lt;visualization&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5492" CreationDate="2012-04-16T13:31:53.623" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think a clause like that would be beneficial. It works both ways. You could end up answering e-mails all day long ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding communication I have used clauses for &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change management: how the change process is supposed to run and how many days before the contracting partner should react on them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;warranty period (more like an SLA for support: resolving of bugs etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scheduled Steering Committee meetings (and how the minutes (incl. status reporting) are distributed): when they are contractually binding it makes sure that they occur regularly and that you have a formal forum to address your (partner-) issues. No excuses like &quot;he's travelling&quot; or &quot;he's on holiday&quot;: if that happens, a representative with equal decision authority must attend.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Escalation procedure when the SteerCo is unable to come to an agreement: it is something like the final step where the CEO's of both parties try to resolve the issue between them before the Lawyers come in&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cannot resolve this communication issue directly with the persons concerned, I think you have to address it with your Steering Committee and get it formerly resolved and documented asap. Not discussed; resolved and agreed upon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2012-04-16T13:31:53.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5493" CreationDate="2012-04-16T14:06:31.297" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually I can think of two approaches here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Individual reporting for each project combined in a single place.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tools like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=burn-up%20chart&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;prmd=imvns&amp;amp;tbm=isch&amp;amp;tbo=u&amp;amp;source=univ&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=eCKMT-WDELDa4QSogrngCQ&amp;amp;ved=0CDIQsAQ&amp;amp;biw=1228&amp;amp;bih=610&quot;&gt;Burn-up chart&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.paulklipp.com/images/cfd.png&quot;&gt;Cumulative Flow Diagram&lt;/a&gt; (CFD)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;may come handy in this case. Putting them all on a single board/monitor can tell you much about projects status, although information will likely be hard to consume.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A better idea for me is visualization on project portfolio level.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case you may use following tools:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2012/01/project-portfolio-kanban-first-changes.html&quot;&gt;Portfolio level Kanban board&lt;/a&gt;. While it easily shows general project status, you may find it too coarse-grained to give you meaningful information.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alexsbrown.com/wp-content/uploads/ryg-status.pdf&quot;&gt;Red-Yellow-Green reporting&lt;/a&gt; is another very general approach, even more coarse-grained than the previous one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2011/11/alternative-kanban-board.html&quot;&gt;Alternative designs&lt;/a&gt;. Don't stick to standard methods of showing project status on a board. Such designs may come handy especially when your process or value stream isn't homogeneous and often differ among projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a rule of thumb on project portfolio level you will likely see pretty coarse-grained data. If you need more detailed information it may be a good idea to combine both techniques, e.g. attaching burnup charts/CFDs to portfolio level board (CFD as an index card possibly?). However, from my experience we rarely need such level of details to analyze project portfolio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2012-04-16T14:06:31.297" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5492" CreationDate="2012-04-16T14:06:48.983" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I doubt it will work (although I don't have any data points). My gut feeling is that people who wont respond without it, will do the same with such a clause (or, if forced, will not actually pay attention too much).&#xA;What I usually do is having a sentence indicating that any milestone and delivery date is subject to change if it's blocked by certain artifacts (and communication is part of that) not being made available in a timely manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall though, those are things you never want to use, but rather keep pushing when you feel the project is going down that road to avoid it. Maybe it's my lack of really bad experience, but I would think if I ever need to call out on things like that, the project has bigger problems than just an email not being answered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stephan's comments are really good, I can second to describe a Change Management process (and maybe the escalation stuff can be in a simple process like that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2921" LastActivityDate="2012-04-16T14:06:48.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5497" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5501" CreationDate="2012-04-16T14:54:45.970" Score="10" ViewCount="1393" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have implemented and closed user story X but found out later that the implementation is too slow and we need to improve performance. I think it was a mistake not to have acceptance criteria for performance in the first place but it happened and the question is what to do now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can theoretically do one of these things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reopen the user story&lt;/strong&gt; (we use JIRA and it is technically not a problem), add acceptance criteria and let the development &quot;fix&quot; the software.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Create a new user story&lt;/strong&gt;, like &quot;make the user experience of feature X smoother&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create something that is &lt;strong&gt;not a user story&lt;/strong&gt; (in JIRA, probably an issue of type &quot;Task&quot;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a best practice telling what to do in such case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2910" LastActivityDate="2017-03-30T03:53:46.670" Title="Improve performance of feature X - should that be a new user story or something else?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5493" CreationDate="2012-04-16T15:21:16.637" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What do you think about this visualization?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BLQlq.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3340" LastActivityDate="2012-04-16T15:21:16.637" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5497" CreationDate="2012-04-16T16:03:37.567" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, ask yourself whether this situation is common or it happened for the first time and you don't expect it to happen more often than very, very rarely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If this is just a rare special case you can do pretty much anything as long as you fix the problem. No need to introduce specific rules to handle such situation.&lt;/strong&gt; We can totally leave special cases as they are - special. If they start happening every now and they you can come back to the problem and find a systemic solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering you want to have some sort of standard way of dealing with such cases think of a way that would eventually show how things really looked like when you analyze historical data in future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My preferable way of doing things would be &lt;strong&gt;reopening the ticket/index card&lt;/strong&gt; as eventually you would be able to update any data you gather (completion time, time spent, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you go with a separate ticket eventually you may treat it as another regular user story instead of a special case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you decide to add a different type of task don't forget to update user story with any relevant information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;And finally don't forget to ask yourself (I mean the whole team) why it happened that the story isn't done and what you want to do with your &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2533/how-do-you-define-done-on-a-project-or-task&quot;&gt;definition of done&lt;/a&gt; against future stories.&lt;/strong&gt; In fact this is way more important than sorting Jira tickets out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-04-16T16:03:37.567" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5497" CreationDate="2012-04-16T16:27:36.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are already working with user stories and tasks. Normally user stories represent business requirements and they come from business. Each user story consists out of one or more tasks. Each task should take no longer than a day (our tasks normally take between 30 minutes and 4 hours), otherwise it needs to be broken down into smaller tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming that your initial user story was to develop a feature. You've met business requirement by developing that feature. The feature went live. Now business wants to make improvements to the feature by optimising its performance. This is a new user story (requirement) from the business perspective. Just like any requirement, it needs to be analysed and tasked up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that you should not re-open an existing user story. It's easy to do and it will cause problems further down the line. At what point are you going to say that it's enough and it's time to create a new user story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Performance improvements can go on for months. You might be optimising your framework, front-end site or database access. If this is likely to be an ongoing task, then I would create an epic story for performance improvements. I would then create a new story each time I want to make an improvement in some part of a system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I strongly believe that task should be always linked to a user story. If you are working on a task that doesn't belong to a user story, then you are working on something that business didn't ask you to do. You can make rare exceptions if the task takes less than 15-30 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3571" LastEditorUserId="3571" LastEditDate="2012-04-16T18:37:16.317" LastActivityDate="2012-04-16T18:37:16.317" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5497" CreationDate="2012-04-16T17:27:13.657" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is technically possible in the tool is not so important here. I personally use the following rules regarding such cases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If such issue is &lt;strong&gt;found during&lt;/strong&gt; the sprint/iteration/before the official demo of a story, then I just use a simple task or comment for a story as the work is still in progress.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the &lt;strong&gt;story is done and has been accepted&lt;/strong&gt; then it is already a past. I don't update such stories. It's like it was on my board one day, but has already been put into the trash bin. I simply create another story. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case it can simply look like &lt;em&gt;&quot;As a user I want feature X to be faster, so that I don't loose my time to do the job that brings me some value&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. I don't believe that performance improvements do not provide value. If they don't then you actually do not care about performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case such an issue is a bug (but I would not treat this case as a bug), you can decide if the bug is big enough that it deserves a story or if you can just put it as a task in some shared story called for example &quot;Bug fixing&quot;. But bugs are just another story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do not follow iterative development, but rather some kanban-like method, then I would imagine that there will be some point/state in your flow where you do not move the cards back (like deployed or accepted already).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would agree with @Paweł Brodziński that you may consider adding performance considerations to your definition of done, but as you say you don't plan to test performance for each story, you may just treat such cases as stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="435" LastActivityDate="2012-04-16T17:27:13.657" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5503" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5575" CreationDate="2012-04-17T09:24:09.530" Score="3" ViewCount="268" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I've heard about ROWE (Results-Only Work Environment), but I am unable to find any descriptive material about it's rules and principles of such approach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do you know (and could share) any material describing how do they do ROWE?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, how do they:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;split work-to-be-done into a measurable tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;set task value&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;track results&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T04:45:22.573" Title="ROWE - a buzzword or working strategy?" Tags="&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;reward&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5504" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5506" CreationDate="2012-04-17T09:47:42.027" Score="3" ViewCount="4141" Body="&lt;p&gt;They are not projects, as one project contains more groups of deliverables. Is milestone a correct term?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope the chart below explains it a little.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/IoWpl.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3809" LastActivityDate="2012-04-17T12:16:39.830" Title="How is a group of deliverables called?" Tags="&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5504" CreationDate="2012-04-17T10:40:25.580" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hammock&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Control Account&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Parent Deliverable / Activity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sub-project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Group of deliverables&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-04-17T10:40:25.580" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5504" CreationDate="2012-04-17T10:45:14.867" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Bartosz writes in the comments, there can be multiple levels between the top and the lowest level of your WBS, and the number of levels of each sub-tree depends upon the deliverable itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the first level often depends upon how you wish to structure your WBS: it could be by project phase (if each phase has distinct deliverables) or by product. We often use the release number, if the project contains multiple releases, besides the other main deliverables. This makes it easier for the customer to see what they will get in each release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We just call the first level the &lt;strong&gt;&quot;main&quot; or &quot;major&quot; deliverables&lt;/strong&gt;, and it is broken down into sub-deliverables. The lowest level are called &quot;Work packages&quot;, as normally you don't break them down any further but define the tasks needed to realise them. Tasks belong in your schedule, however. I prefer to keep the WBS free of tasks, so as to make it &lt;strong&gt;deliverable-focused&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my first level would read &quot;website&quot; or &quot;planning board&quot;, and it would be broken down from there up till the level that I wish to manage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A milestone is part of a schedule, and indicates that a deliverable is completed at a certain date like &quot;Website released&quot; or something like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="927" LastEditDate="2012-04-17T10:59:44.420" LastActivityDate="2012-04-17T10:59:44.420" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5504" CreationDate="2012-04-17T12:16:39.830" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately I don't seem to be able to view your chart, but how about calling the group either a phase, stage or a work package?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3246" LastActivityDate="2012-04-17T12:16:39.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5492" CreationDate="2012-04-17T12:17:01.530" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I disagree with Thomas - communication problems are able to pull the project down very drastically. No solution to this problem can lead to serious delays, caused not only by the time of waiting for a reply. The answer may not be accurate as well, or not everyone got it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very often in offers for the customer I include a chapter about communication channels. There are clearly described methods of communication, which  will be used during the project, and under what circumstances you should use them.&#xA;There is no information about response time, but are described procedures about how to change the channel of communication, if given (eg e-mail) starts to be problematic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Records about the time appear in the maintenance or development agreeament. If the information is incopllete and you sent request to the client, the response time (specified in the contract or SLA) is suspended until the client response to the questions provided.&#xA;Under this assumption, I have never had a problem with some delay, because date of delivery was dependent on the customer response time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The contracts often contains information, that when there is no end information about the project (such as end of testing or product acceptance) by the customer, after a certain number of remindes, we can accept them for the customer. Often quoted mobilizes the client to act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's good to create a communication plan (most project management methodologies recommends it). If required you can put there an information about  response times. All interested parties should sign below it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you have SLA, there you can determine response times for both sides, or a statement that the reaction time is dependent on customer response. If the SLA does not exist, such records should be included in a contract.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For new orders, or extensions, you can put the information that if there is no response in the context of reception of the work, you can accept  work for a customer and demand payment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All these things you should have on paper, signed by all parties. Then you have something to refer to.&#xA;If you don't have such rules written anywhere - you can only fight with the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2955" LastActivityDate="2012-04-17T12:17:01.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5493" CreationDate="2012-04-17T14:28:46.663" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Each project has its own RAG status for Time, Cost, Scope, Team and Risk and a calculated overall project status. Based on this we generate RAG &lt;strong&gt;dashboards&lt;/strong&gt; from our PMIS, together with some other info like actuals against budget etc. But these report status, not progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a number of reviews in our project Lifecycle (Project apporoval, enterprise, functional &amp;amp; technical reviews; approved for release and close), and we have a &lt;strong&gt;Kanban&lt;/strong&gt; board to follow up and manage on which project is where in the process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We still use a fair number of &lt;strong&gt;Gantt charts&lt;/strong&gt;, both for individual projects as for the portfolio's. These are mainly oveviews of the duration of all projects with the major milestones. We use this to manage interdependencies and overlaps between projects (eg to manage common release dates), and to report on progress (slippage of milestones).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each project (and project manager) uses its own ways for reporting on specific progress, and this is dependent upon the subject and/or development method, and could be things like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Burn down charts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simple graphs and statistics like conversion or migration numbers from one environment or application to another, number of users trained etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SPI/CPI graphs (Earned Value)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test coverage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bugs fixed / discovered …&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no way to aggregate all these different kinds of data; earned value could be an option here but it is not yet applied on all projects or even in a consistent way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So apart from milestone tracking, we're still far away from consistent progress reporting on an aggregate level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2012-04-17T14:28:46.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4667" CreationDate="2012-04-18T00:03:14.243" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all making your team functional you'r violating agile/SCRUM rule and you already described why it's bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, you could allow teams to pick US from common BL, but it could lead to situation where single team will pick up first N highest priority USs. It's possible that at the end of the sprint they won't deliver one of USs and you will miss something important. It's OK if you've got another sprint, but if it's release date ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everybody know the rule - &lt;strong&gt;don't compare teams velocity&lt;/strong&gt;, but it means that we shouldn't &lt;strong&gt;compare teams estimates&lt;/strong&gt; as well, so results of &lt;strong&gt;gathered estimation is useless&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My proposal will be to restrict single team to pick up top of the backlog or spread this risk manually. I'll suggest you to not involve all teams or teams representatives into estimation, they will give you aggregated estimates, you could prioritize common backlog and spread it across the teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&#xA;If you've got 2 scrum teams and prioritized common BL you could spread it in the next way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;US_1 -&gt; team_1&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;US_2 -&gt; team_2&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;US_3 -&gt; team_1&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;US_4 -&gt; team_2&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each team will estimate their own backlog and priorities will be along with overall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3812" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T00:03:14.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5339" CreationDate="2012-04-18T00:43:21.023" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looks like your team plays two roles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;scrum team which goal is to deliver US&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;support team - do &quot;fast fix&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimation technique could be used for both, scrum team estimates before iteration, in support you've got 1 day iteration instead of 2 weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hard to estimate support tasks compare to  usual US, they are much more smaller. You don't compare US against support task, so why you are trying to do that in opposite direction ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to &lt;strong&gt;estimate support tasks against support tasks&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3812" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T00:43:21.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5488" CreationDate="2012-04-18T02:14:09.210" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;best&lt;/strong&gt; solution would be to have an easy-to-use time sheet/tracking system that was linked to your project tracking system. In my last company, we had to track billable hours and every time sheet entry was tied to a client already. They added a project management module that allowed you build a WBS, phases, tasks, and dependencies. As a first version, it really wasn't that bad, and it made tracking project status really simple. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It worked for us because everyone was already used to entering detailed time sheets. You will need a way to allow people to easily and quickly update their list of tasks in your tracking system. Since you tagged this question with MS-Project, I assume you are using that as project planning tool. I have not found a decent solution to this, yet, so I can't point you to a specific tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T02:14:09.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5514" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-18T12:26:33.503" Score="4" ViewCount="290" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you know of any tool (or plugin for such tool) with following features:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manage Requirements (like Redmine, DOORS, Borland Caliber and many more...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Link Requirements with parts of a PDF or HTML file (not linking the file itself, but linking stuff within the file)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Examples for the files&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Diagrams like an overview for customer (PDF)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wireframes of the UI (PDF)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Webpages of the web application at certain stages of development (for customer reviews at milestone meetings) (HTML)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen in DOORS the ability to link methods in C++ code with Requirements. &lt;em&gt;They're saying, that enables high traceability.&lt;/em&gt; So, maybe there is something similar for a more &quot;visual linking&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am also fine with experimental/scientific tools or just clues where to research harder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt; So far I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugherd.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BugHerd&lt;/a&gt;, which is a webservice that offers flagging parts of HTML pages. BugHerd flags can be &lt;a href=&quot;http://support.bugherd.com/entries/20419122-redmine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;synced with redmine&lt;/a&gt; via a plugin.  I haven't tried it yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/10518/let-tester-directly-click-on-web-site-to-report-bugs-similar-to-bugherd&quot;&gt;BugHerd alternatives&lt;/a&gt;. However, the tools discussed there are more focused on tracking bugs with a nice on webpage screenshot editor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3814" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:32:23.503" LastActivityDate="2012-06-20T15:02:31.427" Title="Link requirements within PDF or HTML files to increase traceability" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;redmine&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2659" CreationDate="2012-04-18T13:10:08.443" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every IDE has a key combination that applies a code style to the current file. In most cases, this will be the coding standard for the particular programming language.&#xA;There are also tools that suggest the right (according to standards) naming and casing of code. I have seen that with ReSharper e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I would just encourage all developers to use this shortcuts and follow these suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those features can be adjusted to the company's standard also. Then make sure, that all developers are using the same config file of the company's standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3814" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T13:10:08.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5488" CreationDate="2012-04-18T13:19:52.160" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everything depends on the team, their inputs, their responsibilities and collective effort. I generally track the project progress frequently during the initial days of the phases - for example how and when each milestone is being worked upon by the responsible. It creates a general feeling on how each facet of the project is progressing. &#xA;In a web development project, I felt the designer could take +-5 days for each milestone, so I generally did not update the project plan everytime he gave me an update, only when a milestone meeting were held. But in the case of the developer, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2121" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T13:19:52.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5517" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5520" CreationDate="2012-04-18T13:52:12.540" Score="17" ViewCount="3744" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just finished running a retrospective of a team I doesn't manage usually (they don't have a dedicated ScrumMaster), and it appears that there is a conflict of opinions in the team (which is relativelly small in members).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The majority of the team rate themselve as doing poor in term of synergy and collaboration. They think it's their main weakness and think they should take actions on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But on the other side, one of the member think they are fine in this regard and this is not an important aspect to be taken into account for the overall team performance. He says communication is fine, that they talk enough already and that bug tracker is sufficient. He says he perform better working alone and that disruption from more collaboration would deteriorate his productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's obvious to me that the synergy of this team is indeed bad, and this case is an obvious example. So I'd like to address that without hurting the feelings of anyone. But during the retro I couldn't come up with a quick and elegant solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice on how to solve such a case? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2456" LastEditorUserId="2456" LastEditDate="2012-04-18T17:21:22.327" LastActivityDate="2020-07-05T10:05:47.840" Title="what to do when one team member doesn't value collaboration?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5492" CreationDate="2012-04-18T15:11:50.273" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never included these topics within a contract/statement of work. However, I do include them in the formal project management plan (and referenced communication plan). This outlines the conduct of the project. I make it standard practice to have sign-off on this document before the conduct of the rest of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3811" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T15:11:50.273" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5517" CreationDate="2012-04-18T16:26:00.507" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I see this scenario more often nowadays. My friend had the very same issue last week, although he hasn't done anything with it yet. I asked around and talked to several successful team leaders and this is the common way to handle situations like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask the person to join you for a &lt;strong&gt;face to face conversation&lt;/strong&gt; immediately. Share your observation with him and tell him about the values of the company and the values which are required now. So, start from your personal view, move to the company's view afterwards. After that, he can share his vision and try to find out &lt;strong&gt;why he doesn't value the same things&lt;/strong&gt; that you are doing, and what is &lt;strong&gt;motivating&lt;/strong&gt; him.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let's say find the reason why he behaves like this and &lt;strong&gt;offer your help&lt;/strong&gt; so that he can start changing. Don't make it optional. You need him to change, and you need it now. Help him as much as you can. &lt;strong&gt;Have a deadline&lt;/strong&gt;, and have the same conversation again and see what has changed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you don't see a chance to find his motivation and he still behaves like before after your meeting, then &lt;strong&gt;get rid of him&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A personal story. I had a developer who wasn't contributing as much as he could do and he really slowed us down. We had the face to face discussion where I told him my observations - I was really gentle - and asked for his view. We agreed that is a problem and he wanted to change. I told him that I was here to help him, but if nothing was going to happen in a month, I would find a new team for him. It helped, because I was told that he is in the top 5 at the moment. He needed a &lt;strong&gt;wake-up call&lt;/strong&gt;, some &lt;strong&gt;help&lt;/strong&gt; and a &lt;strong&gt;consequence&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My rule of thumb: &lt;strong&gt;I value teams more than individuals&lt;/strong&gt;. Everybody is replaceable. I don't let a person poison my team, even if he is the best programmer you can find on the market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2012-04-18T17:14:45.110" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T17:14:45.110" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5517" CreationDate="2012-04-18T16:46:16.270" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the saying goes, your team is as strong as your weakest link.  A high performing team is about collaboration and communication and a sense of collective success and failure.  And an individual who &quot;prefers to work alone&quot; can disrupt that process and inhibit that teaming dynamic you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HOWEVER, leaders of teams also know that the team is made up of individuals, each of whom has unique personality attributes.  Some personality types are simply more conducive to 'working alone' than on a team.  And there are specific team roles where this type of personality is a FAVORABLE CONTRIBUTOR to the team and the teaming process.  Said another way, if you examine each type of role (use Belbin's definitions as an example) each role brings with it a set of strengths and a set of weaknesses.  This is the challenge, to exploit the strengths you want while 'paying for it' with acceptable weaknesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it can be too myopic to assume this person is a team poison!  It might be that this person does not want to collaborate in the manner in which YOU define collaboration; however, if he fulfills a team role where his personality is a fit, then by definition he is collaborating to the benifit of the team, despite how it looks on the surface.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SO BE VERY CAREFUL HOW YOU LABEL THIS PERSON'S BEHAVIOR!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some possible roles this type my fit: specialist, evaluator, investigator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T16:46:16.270" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5521" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5525" CreationDate="2012-04-18T18:46:41.843" Score="4" ViewCount="765" Body="&lt;p&gt;My project has to deliver middleware components that will support a large, complex system development spanning multiple phases. My phase is due to implement in 6 weeks, with future phases being implemented in 6 months and 12 months from now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of my work is well on track, but we have one component that we are just starting to put in place. We know what is needed to support the current phase, and are confident in our plans to deliver that. However, we don't have a clear view of how the future development phases will be implemented, and so we have not been able to plan our implementation with the future phases in mind. Carrying out the necessary analysis would cost us a couple of weeks, which would delay the overall implementation of the current phase by a week overall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is this: should I opt for the quick implementation that fully meets the current requirement and meets current targets, but does not guarantee an easy future implementation, or should I request a delay to the project, with potential (but unproven) future benefits through avoidance of rework?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are using a waterfall-based approach, rather than agile, and the technology is relatively new to the organisation. Does this make a difference to your answer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T14:54:06.757" Title="Quick win or long term sustainability?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;infrastructure&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5521" CreationDate="2012-04-18T19:23:21.300" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would try to go for the long term win. Why? You mentioned that additional time for the analysis and a &quot;better&quot; implementation would cause a week delay. In comparison to 12 months this is very little. So it sounds to me like a small investment with potential big benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what is more important...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;we don't have a clear view of how the future development phases will be implemented, and so we have not been able to plan our implementation with the future phases in mind&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The analysis will give you the big picture. That means you'll understand the requirements better which is a great value for the project and for the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2915" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T19:23:21.300" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5521" CreationDate="2012-04-18T19:30:28.373" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would go for the long term solution. Even you aren't doing Agile you can do the &lt;strong&gt;&quot;fail soon fail fast&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; approach. If you fail do deliver at the beginning there will be some heat from top, but at least you won't have to redo a quick solution. You can save some time and money. Usually, &lt;strong&gt;quick solution means dirty solution&lt;/strong&gt;. Build a system right from the beginning and &lt;strong&gt;keep the technical debt low&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The additional 9.5 months should be enough to be on track after the first milestone, but it is definitely not enough to redo a quick solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T19:30:28.373" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5492" CreationDate="2012-04-18T21:14:07.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Within the contract, some of our deliverables will delineate specific requirements related to communication time (i.e. feedback on the prototype will be received within X days, etc.). But it is very specific to the deliverable, and not general in nature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These requirements are meant to keep the project in motion, and avoid any delays. If we provide a deliverable, and then hear back several weeks later that something is wrong, then our staff have already moved on to something else and may not have bandwidth to re-engage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3493" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-11-28T02:56:28.850" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T02:56:28.850" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5521" CreationDate="2012-04-18T21:47:19.047" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless you have some indication that the work you do now may cause serious issues down the line, finish your scope now. There is too much uncertainty with which to cope trying to figure out what may happen in the future. Finish it, then get to work on the next stage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T21:47:19.047" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5517" CreationDate="2012-04-18T22:37:54.130" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know my answer is late, but some of the back and forth made me want to add a new comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;During the retros do you not only identify issues but also come with Action Items or something to try just for the next sprint. This is a good way to let people with differing opinions try something out and then talk about how it did or didn't work. If they aren't running a facilitated retro, here is a quick guide for one.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120614095943/http://www.skipstoneconsulting.com/index.php/blog/8-blog/1-do-you-have-a-retrospective-agenda&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Retro How To&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I would also run some team building exercises. Is this really a &amp;quot;team&amp;quot; OR just a group of people assigned to the same project. Often these are confused. There is no quick fix for building a team, but you can start by looking at some coaching exercises or other visualizations or good old fashioned lunches together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Get this team a Scrum Master. It seems like in a later comment that you identified a lot of the &amp;quot;issues&amp;quot;, but there is no one there to support the team in &amp;quot;how&amp;quot; they work. Get them a coach to help them through the game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-05T10:05:47.840" LastActivityDate="2020-07-05T10:05:47.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2017" CreationDate="2012-04-19T01:59:57.013" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently looking for a tool to share status updates on projects easily with multiple stakeholders.  I came across this site, &lt;a href=&quot;http://knowapp.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://knowapp.com/&lt;/a&gt;, which looks promising.  It's not free but could be well worth its costs if it saves me on the multiple meeting needed to update on projects especially those in the queue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me know if you have used it or know something similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3817" LastActivityDate="2012-04-19T01:59:57.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5521" CreationDate="2012-04-19T08:52:18.813" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I am aware that answering with questions may - at first - look not like an answer at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, you are making the decisions, and (as I understand) you are asking for &lt;strong&gt;additional insights&lt;/strong&gt; which would allow you to make one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much will cost the delay? How easily can it be accepted?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is your previous experience with this team with investments in code quality? Did it prove to be worth the effort? Did it meet the expectations?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the likelihood that you will be executing the future phases?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What will be the difference in technical debt if you consider both approaches?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do you prefer: take a technical debt or financial one (reallocation of resources or resource time)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the other question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do you really need to take such costly analysis?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any other ways to make quicker, but still valuable assessment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastActivityDate="2012-04-19T08:52:18.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5529" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-19T18:04:08.677" Score="3" ViewCount="633" Body="&lt;p&gt;TFS's CMMI for Process Improvement process template has a Word template called RiskCategoriesandSources.dot for registering risk sources and categories but there aren't any fields in the Risk Work Item Template for defining Source and Category.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How are the risks sources and categories used to inform the Risk work item if at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3745" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T10:13:44.300" Title="How to implement CMMI RSKM SP 1.1 Determine Risk Sources and Categories in TFS?" Tags="&lt;tfs&gt;&lt;cmmi&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5530" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-19T19:34:21.323" Score="2" ViewCount="307" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are three partners and have also hired couple of interns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our project is a article based website. Or more simply its a blog or News Media Website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We would like to discuss on article topics or any other ideas and keep working on them and delegate specific task to each other. It would also help us to keep track of each others progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you suggest what kind of project management software (web based) should be used to collaborate and delegate tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="616" LastEditorUserId="2368" LastEditDate="2012-04-25T21:32:35.137" LastActivityDate="2012-07-02T06:44:00.890" Title="Have you used any Project Management software for Bloggers or News Media Website?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-07-03T02:08:40.070" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5530" CreationDate="2012-04-20T00:01:48.233" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're keeping the scope of your tool search to something that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;allows easy task assignment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;allows comments and discussions on task assignments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;shows dependency and timeline views of assignments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;shows to-dos/overdos&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I would recommend the SaaS-based product &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wrike.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wrike&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That list is not all that you can do, but it does those specific things very well, and it is quite lightweight and easy to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given a list of tasks, it also produces some great visualizations of the work, such as:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zfjcu.png&quot; alt=&quot;this nice chart&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth at least &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wrike.com/tour.jsp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;taking a tour&lt;/a&gt; to see if it would work for your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2864" LastActivityDate="2012-04-20T00:01:48.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1047" CreationDate="2012-04-20T10:07:38.077" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wonder why all people discourage you from development such a tool. Definitely there is a market. And yes, it is quite crowded. However, that should be not a show stopper. Maybe you have unique vision with clear focus. Maybe only you can create best app in this category. I would not listen to such advices, but rather think about &quot;do I really want to create such an app?&quot;. If answer is yes, you should go ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3340" LastActivityDate="2012-04-20T10:07:38.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5530" CreationDate="2012-04-20T10:18:29.123" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.trello.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt; will be a perfect fit. It is free, you can setup required flow, assign tasks to each other, discuss them. There are various examples how Trello can be used. It is a general purpose collaboration software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wrike or any other similar tool will be an overhead for sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/board/trello-development/4d5ea62fd76aa1136000000c&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;See Trello board in action&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3340" LastActivityDate="2012-04-20T10:18:29.123" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2017" CreationDate="2012-04-20T19:18:26.427" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do you collect and share status?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When gathering and sharing information you will have to decide between large target audience with little attention to detail and small audience with a much greater attention to detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Collecting data&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Option 1: Developer emails you status update. You read status and ask developer to clarify few points. Developer sends another email with clarification. You repeat the process for 10 developers. You then aggregate data, re-type it into a shorter summary and then share it with stakeholders. Problem here is that you'll be sending a number of emails, you'll be spending time reading emails and spending more time writing up a summary. This is a lot of work, if all that you want to do is collect and share status.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Option 2: You have a one-to-one conversation with developer. You take notes of what you believe is important. You ask developer to elaborate on certain points. You then repeat this process for 10 developers. This should take less time. It will also improve your professional relationship with your colleague as well as give you an opportunity to find out about their fears and beliefs. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sharing Information&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Share the right amount of information with relevant stakeholders. Don't bore flash developers with a data warehouse migration update. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find the right feedback process for the size of your organisation. There is no point in sending an email if there are five people in a department, just like it's pointless to have a meeting with twenty people in a room.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some PM's think group status meetings are a waste of time and prefer&#xA;  to collect status in one-on-one's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There must be a strong justification on why it's a waste of time. Points that I have made above can be easily used as an argument to this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do you collect updates on various tasks and share it across the&#xA;  team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We don't. Developers know what they are working on and if something is unclear then they ask their colleagues, seniors or a project manager. We are a team of over twenty developers, QA lead, CI lead and few designers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3571" LastActivityDate="2012-04-20T19:18:26.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5521" CreationDate="2012-04-20T19:35:59.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read your question quite a few times, and I would normally say that a long term win is a way forward, however, on this occasion I think that &lt;strong&gt;quick&lt;/strong&gt; implementation that meets the current requirement &lt;strong&gt;is a right way forward&lt;/strong&gt;. I'll try to justify this with the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You are not going to avoid re-work.&lt;/strong&gt; It's a natural process of software development and you are unlikely to get it right the first time. If it was up to our technical director, then we would never release software.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What if you are wrong?&lt;/strong&gt; As you have said, it's a first time that you are using a waterfall approach, so what are the chances that you will identify further improvements two months time? Will you request a further extension and re-work everything, or will you draw the line?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How are you going to justify a delay in deliverables to the business without proven future benefits?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Worst case scenario.&lt;/strong&gt; What is the worst case scenario if you don't carry out the re-work?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long term impact.&lt;/strong&gt; What is a long term impact of not doing the &quot;re-work&quot;? In our company we are sometimes forced to cut corners, but then business pay tens of thousands for every minute the system is down.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;6 months is a very long time in system engineering.&lt;/strong&gt; I think that in 6 months a lot will change, and there are chances that your re-work will require further re-work, or might not be needed at all.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3571" LastEditorUserId="3571" LastEditDate="2012-04-20T19:43:01.043" LastActivityDate="2012-04-20T19:43:01.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5517" CreationDate="2012-04-20T19:58:52.503" Score="4" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Retrospective is a dangerous place for discussing team collaboration. A one-to-one meeting is a better alternative for addressing this specific issue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Somebody's feelings will be hurt. Ideally, their professional work ethic will make it easier for them to improve and move on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assuming you are correct, you need to establish why this hasn't been brought up before. Their manager (SCRUM master) might well be responsible for this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some people are rather influential as well as destructive. These people are capable of causing great damage to the department. Identify them early and ensure that you either keep them happy or make them redundant. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's risky to make a decision based on an outcome of a single retrospective. Gut feeling is normally correct, but it's by no means enough to make a decision.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Just because there are more people that agree on X, doesn't mean that they are correct. I have previously worked in a team where less experienced developers blamed lack of collaboration, when it wasn't a problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Regardless of whether majority or the minority are right, you'll have to overrule one of the sides. If one of the side fails to accept their loss, then further actions should be taken. Otherwise it'll have a negative impact on entire team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3571" LastEditorUserId="3571" LastEditDate="2012-04-20T20:05:39.610" LastActivityDate="2012-04-20T20:05:39.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5538" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5556" CreationDate="2012-04-21T00:42:14.270" Score="16" ViewCount="6602" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the process of hiring resources for testing team. I have none currently. &#xA;What should be the number of testers if my developers are 10?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any rule of thumb which specifies how many testers should be there for given number of developers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please let me know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1969" LastEditorUserId="2368" LastEditDate="2012-04-25T21:32:24.543" LastActivityDate="2012-04-26T21:14:35.767" Title="What should be ideal ratio of developers and testers?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5538" CreationDate="2012-04-21T01:49:00.317" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are WAY too many unknowns here, but I'll give some food for thought....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things you should ask yourself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How experienced are the developers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How well defined are the requirements?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What's the cost of failure?  (Website vs Space Shuttle)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How easy is it to automate running the program?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it more important to test usability or functionality?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are you custom developing, or writing one size fits all software?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the current quality problems?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even answering these won't get to a rule of thumb, but at least it's a start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to find out the optimal # is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hire 1, and come up with metrics on where defects are found, and come up with a rough cost of finding them at that level.  (Example:  A user finds a problem is a $10,000 mistake.  Fixing it after finding it in system test is $5,000, catching a problem during a design discussion is almost free)  The #s don't need to be exact as long as there is some basis behind them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Over a few months, watch how the metrics change, and see how the tester is pushing the identification of issues earlier and saving money.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Base testing decisions on predictions on what will happen.  &quot;If we automate tests, how much do we think it will save?&quot;  And then measure it.  &quot;If we hire another person, how many user defects can we find in system test?&quot;  And then measure it.  &quot;If it takes 2 weeks to do system testing with one person, how much can we cut off our release cycle if we add another tester, and what's the benefit to the company?&quot;  And then measure it.  &quot;If we hire a usability tester, how many issues can we push to design discussions?&quot;  And then measure it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea isn't to get too crazy into measurement, just to realize that testing should be thought of as any other business decision.  For the low hanging fruit, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B000NXYOM4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;quality is free&lt;/a&gt;.  Hiring someone usually will save costs in other areas if done right.  Measuring things helps justify cost, because there's always pressure to just hire one more developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-04-21T01:49:00.317" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2659" CreationDate="2012-04-21T01:52:21.763" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would have to be a very technical PM to force the specifics of a standard.  This seems to fall under the realm of telling someone too many details on how to do their job.  If there's a technical lead, you should leave it to them, though it is fair to require some kind of standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of it this way...   You're the head of an event planning committee.  You want to be sure that the 5 star chef you hired will make the best dinner possible.  It's ok for you to ask for a list of ingredients to be sure they are thinking of making the right amount of food, but you wouldn't suggest what those ingredients are.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-04-21T01:52:21.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5541" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5543" CreationDate="2012-04-21T02:53:39.410" Score="3" ViewCount="2260" Body="&lt;p&gt;I got the following question for homework but I am confused on what is being asked. I'm not looking for you to give me the answers I am just wondering what non-functional quantitative requirements are? I thought non-functional requirements, such as as usability, maintainability, etc., were qualitative?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Specify and comment on seven non-functional quantitative requirements for an e-commerce application. You should choose one sub-characteristic from each of the main characteristics [from ISO 9126].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3827" LastActivityDate="2012-04-21T06:41:22.407" Title="What are non-functional quantitative requirements?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5493" CreationDate="2012-04-21T04:04:53.087" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use very basic metrics, inspired by earned value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the very least I try to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Divide my budget amongst all the deliverables.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;List when they're expected to be done (or possibly when they are on the critical path)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then as the project proceeds, I track progress against the schedule (only counting when things are 100% done) and budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can chart progress on a simple graph.  X axis is time, Y axis is cumulative budget earned.  One line is plan, the other is actual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have some other measure rather than effort, you can use that instead.  For instance if I'm in a test, and I know I have 3 passes of 100 cases each, I create a schedule listing how many complete each day to be &quot;on track&quot;, then track against it.  I try to bake in the typical S curve:  the first few days are slower, the next are very productive, and the last few test cases take a while.  Again I have a simple graph of plan versus actual.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a No BS system to give you a measure of how things are progressing, and strips out our tendency to be overoptimistic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-04-21T04:04:53.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5541" CreationDate="2012-04-21T06:23:06.017" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quantative requirements are defined in terms of numerical values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ISO9126 is a software quality model, which has the following characteristics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Functionality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reliability&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Usability&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Efficiency&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maintainability&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Portability &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Few examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Efficiency.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;System must be able to handle 10,000 concurrent users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Usability&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;System must be available in two languages: English and French.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sqa.net/iso9126.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sqa.net/iso9126.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't believe they make people pay for this: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=22749&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=22749&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wish my homework was that interesting at a time. Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3571" LastEditorUserId="3571" LastEditDate="2012-04-21T06:28:57.617" LastActivityDate="2012-04-21T06:28:57.617" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5538" CreationDate="2012-04-21T06:37:07.277" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume that we are talking about functional (acceptance) testing here, therefore integration and unit testing are not applicable here as they are carried out by developers, rather than dedicated functional testers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on what I have seen, I strongly believe that there isn't a rule of a thumb, but I would  consider hiring an additional tester when:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are continuously releasing software. If you have a single tester and they are off-work for some reason, then your continuous delivery will be impeded by that tester&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quality of released software starts to decline. This would require you to have quality metrics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tester gives you a solid argument that they need more resources. Once again, this requires metrics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You know there is a large project in a pipeline that would require significantly more resources. Requires product and team knowledge. This decision can be normally made by software managers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3571" LastEditorUserId="3571" LastEditDate="2012-04-21T06:55:19.987" LastActivityDate="2012-04-21T06:55:19.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5541" CreationDate="2012-04-21T06:41:22.407" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Non-functional requirements are defined with numbers. For example, a system cannot be down more than 6 hours in a year. This is a reliability non-functional requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-04-21T06:41:22.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2659" CreationDate="2012-04-21T07:03:20.367" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Try not to introduce guidelines or styling that can't be automatically enforced.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project manager should have nothing to do with this, even if they posses required technical knowledge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding comments. This will vary from organisation to organisation. Our culture is that we don't comment the code. Code must be clean and if it needs comments, then we probably need to re-factor. We are a team of over 20 developers working on a large enterprise system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following people should be involved in defining code guidelines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lead developers (front-end, server side as well as database) must be involved to specify guidelines which they believe will improve code quality within their departments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CI (Continuous Integration) or somebody who is responsible for build cycle must implement a mechanism that would enforce these guidelines. For example: build must be failed if there are more then three violations in specified guidelines. In .NET this can all be achieved with StyleCop and TFS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3571" LastEditorUserId="3571" LastEditDate="2012-04-22T17:49:39.847" LastActivityDate="2012-04-22T17:49:39.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5538" CreationDate="2012-04-21T11:19:30.393" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no magic ratio, and as other have said there are a lot of factors that go into determining how many testers to hire (and when).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your software development methodology happens to be Agile, in my experience one UAT (user acceptance tester) per Scrum Team (and ON the Scrum Team), where the team size is 7 +/- 2, works out pretty well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The downside to a UAT on a Scrum Team is that you sometimes run into a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumsense.com/coaching/uat-on-a-scrum-team-part-2-of-2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;testing bottleneck or other impediments&lt;/a&gt; such as testing at inaccurate stages of story development and completion, but these are all issues that a good Scrum Master can work through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is one tester for 10 developers a good ratio? Maybe, maybe not, but it's a fine starting point to determine that for yourself based on metrics you can clearly measure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edited to add, prompted by Pawel's answer, that my scrum team example is one of a group that strives for good build practices using a number of automated and integrated testing tools. Since that's been my experience for so long, I momentarily forgot that's not a &quot;no-brainer&quot; for everyone, &amp;amp; should've been included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2864" LastEditorUserId="2864" LastEditDate="2012-04-22T13:34:14.617" LastActivityDate="2012-04-22T13:34:14.617" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5538" CreationDate="2012-04-21T12:16:22.873" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There can be a heuristic for this and I would find it terribly helpful in estimating my work. I do not know the answer but it can be determined by simply analyzing past projects. No heuristic is a magic number. But it does serve to ground your thinking and as a great basis of estimate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Out of curiosity, I looked at my current program and found my ratio to be 10:1, a datum to begin this discussion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-04-21T12:16:22.873" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5538" CreationDate="2012-04-21T13:07:15.260" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you using something like Kanban to visualize your flow? If you aren't, you should consider finding ways to make the processes and bottlenecks more apparent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have some visibility it's a matter of adding one then shuffling things around before deciding if you need another. In a pinch you can schedule some coders to help test as long as it's work that was done by someone else and the impact on your velocity isn't significant. Once again, this depends on whether or not you are measuring or visualizing the impact of these assignments. If you aren't then there really isn't any basis for comparison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the project is important and budget isn't an issue, consider getting two since there really is no way to tell if you are getting a competent tester or if they can even integrate with the team properly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1849" LastActivityDate="2012-04-21T13:07:15.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5538" CreationDate="2012-04-21T17:02:10.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think a good rule of thumb is 1 tester for every 2-3 programmers, though that number can vary wildly depending on how critical the software is, how experienced the programmers are, and even what methodology you use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I had 10 developers, as a baseline I'd probably put them in two scrum teams and give each 2 testers.  If I were doing software for medical devices or nuclear reactors, I'd add more testers. If I were writing a casual game, I'd probably use fewer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3189" LastActivityDate="2012-04-21T17:02:10.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4924" CreationDate="2012-04-21T18:53:44.453" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our project manager does the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write a query to filter tasks/stories in TFS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Export results into Excel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Run statistics on the spreadsheet.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you considered this option? I'll speak to our project manager to get more details, but I'm fairly certain that we are now moving away from TFS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3571" LastActivityDate="2012-04-21T18:53:44.453" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5553" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-21T20:42:40.007" Score="0" ViewCount="172" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not sure if this is the right place to ask, but I've read some survey data which suggests that young adults are no longer interested in tackling some of the toughest global problems (such as inequality and partisanship), and are instead going into narrowly-focused finance jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if someone could speak to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why this phenomenon was happening&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What can be done to resolve this issue?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3831" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-08T20:38:31.440" LastActivityDate="2012-07-08T20:38:31.440" Title="How to motivate young adults to pursue socially-conscious jobs" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2012-07-08T20:38:55.073" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5553" CreationDate="2012-04-22T07:48:56.403" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two related questions, you are going to find great answers there:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/5369/468&quot;&gt;how to integrate millennials into an existing working environment without firing them and keeping the old employees as well?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/4107/468&quot;&gt;Motivating younger (Generation Y) members&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-04-22T07:48:56.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5493" CreationDate="2012-04-22T09:01:27.997" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is an attempt to visualize Teams availability based on their projects. Problem described by Pawel at &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2012/04/project-portfolio-kanban-standard-board-not-good.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2012/04/project-portfolio-kanban-standard-board-not-good.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here we see &lt;strong&gt;projects grouped by Teams&lt;/strong&gt; (so each team can work on several projects). Project have end date (it may be a challenge to nail it down, but stil we need something at least barely accurate to forecast anything). We can add planned projects and see spaces (free slots). Also we can add more info on this visualization about project progress, blocking problems, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6qOjE.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Teams and Projects timeline&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3340" LastActivityDate="2012-04-22T09:01:27.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5538" CreationDate="2012-04-22T09:21:10.250" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I worked in teams that had anything from 1 tester per 1 developer through 1 tester per 10+ developers to no testers at all. Each of these was able to release software of expected quality (not each did but that's a different story).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short answer is of course it depends. However looking through the answers that are already here I found much about cost, type of software and methods of &lt;em&gt;testing&lt;/em&gt; while nothing about practices related to &lt;em&gt;building&lt;/em&gt; software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we think of &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/666/how-quality-assurance-is-related-to-testing/668#668&quot;&gt;Quality Assurance&lt;/a&gt; the responsibility for quality starts far earlier than testers kick in. Or even better, if your team understand quality assurance you should start talking about a &lt;em&gt;role&lt;/em&gt; of tester and not a tester's &lt;em&gt;job&lt;/em&gt;. In such environment everyone in the team, especially developers, should fulfill the &lt;em&gt;role&lt;/em&gt; of tester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With such attitude one of key factors would be &lt;strong&gt;a set of engineering practices you use to build software&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Methods like &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2260/what-is-test-driven-development-tdd&quot;&gt;TDD&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://testobsessed.com/blog/2008/12/08/acceptance-test-driven-development-atdd-an-overview/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ATDD&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilecoach.typepad.com/agile-coaching/2012/03/bdd-in-a-nutshell.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BDD&lt;/a&gt; help you to automate testing during development, basing on test scenarios that are possibly close to real usage of the app&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://martinfowler.com/articles/continuousIntegration.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Continuous deployment&lt;/a&gt; meaning that you release to production (or possibly close to production) environment as often as possible on one hand forces the team to automate as much important stuff as possible (not only testing) but also make increments small enough that risk and cost of releasing with a bug is typically very small.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_review&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Code reviews&lt;/a&gt; and/or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules/pair.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;pair programming&lt;/a&gt; (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/11/pair-programming-vs-code-reviews.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a nice comparison of them&lt;/a&gt;) help to improve the code quality significantly before it even goes to functional testing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Automated testing with tools like &lt;a href=&quot;http://smartbear.com/products/qa-tools/automated-testing-tools&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TestComplete&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://seleniumhq.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Selenium&lt;/a&gt; or similar helps you to cover gaps that can't be easily covered with test written in the code and serves similar purpose: fewer regressions, higher quality, less need to test manually.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know teams that were able to go to 0 testers using such approach. Note: I say about 0 tester jobs, not that no one ever fulfills this role. Pretty much the opposite everyone does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is another factor which is crucial, which is &lt;strong&gt;expected quality&lt;/strong&gt;. Not every piece of software is expected to be of the same quality. Another social website can fail with little to no consequences while we definitely don't want to see bugs in military software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talking about this it is worth to ask how fast we can fix the problem and the answer may be in continuous delivery I've already mentioned. If we are prepared to update the software instantly the potential consequences of bug sliding through testing won't be as big.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said all that, I personally feel safer when someone takes a look at software before releasing it so no matter how automated process we have I prefer to have at least on tester in a team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:41:23.897" LastActivityDate="2012-04-26T21:14:35.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2659" CreationDate="2012-04-22T18:37:06.297" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;PM should never ever set coding guidelines. Only development team is responsible for that and it will be demotivating for the team if PM set this guidelines from the top. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, PM can insist on coding guidelines existence and demand them from development team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3340" LastActivityDate="2012-04-22T18:37:06.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5493" CreationDate="2012-04-22T20:24:31.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is how coming tinyPM 3.0 visualizes projects portfolio (screenshot is taken from early mock, so a few details may differ in the final version, but you get the idea).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FQnoG.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="435" LastActivityDate="2012-04-22T20:24:31.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5553" CreationDate="2012-04-23T01:25:42.180" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not view the situation as you do and I don't expect we will find an answer to your question since it is a large and opinionated topic, but in my experience I see more and more of today's generation pushing back and refusing to work in the &quot;old way&quot; because it is not socially responsible or does not respect their desire for mastery, autonomy or purpose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ready Daniel Pink's Drive or watch the youtube video about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastActivityDate="2012-04-23T01:25:42.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5553" CreationDate="2012-04-23T10:20:02.413" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing I would question are the surveys.  &quot;Young people&quot; would be a population that would be tough to capture a unbiased sample.  So likely the results are skewing that conclusion.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have argued in the past that these attributes applied to labels like generation x, y, AA, whatever, are broadly swept generalizations that sell books but do not really aid in predicting future behavior.  But, I do think some beliefs or things that a specific generation may find important cycles a bit due to the signs of the times.  I would not be surprised if some of the answers the surveys yielded were secondary to the economic issues our world is facing now.  If that's true, it will not be a sustained belief.  It will cycle back, like everything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-04-23T10:20:02.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5561" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-23T15:38:06.660" Score="0" ViewCount="680" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a team with around 4 to 5 concurrent major projects, 10 minor projects and about the same number of BAU projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any tools that you use to manage and visualise your departments work and pipeline in similar situations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a visual representation of resource allocation over time. Really like a product roadmap but for multiple products. At the moment I'm using a combination of MS Project &amp;amp; excel but wondering if there's anything else out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T00:32:28.537" Title="Project &amp; BAU Pipeline/Portfolio tools" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2017-05-30T09:41:06.267" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5562" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5564" CreationDate="2012-04-23T19:22:03.860" Score="3" ViewCount="1179" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have developers in Quebec and in Ontario, and each province has different holidays.  In MS Project 2003, I selected Tools/Working Time and created two calendars called Ontario and Quebec and filled out the holidays appropriate for each.  In my resource sheet, I made the base calendar for each developer match their province.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in place, I created a task for a Quebec developer that takes 9 days and scheduled it as Must Start On Monday June 18th.  There is a holiday in the Quebec calendar for June 25th, so I assumed that the end date would come out as Friday, June 29th, but it shows up as Thursday.  MS Project seems to ignore the resource calendar when scheduling this task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shouldn't MS Project notice that the specified resource is not available on June 25th in this case?  Or have I misunderstood how the resource calendar works?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks,&#xA;Mike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3837" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-10T23:56:14.147" LastActivityDate="2018-11-10T23:56:14.147" Title="Resource Calendars in Microsoft Project 2003" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2003&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5563" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-24T00:17:00.473" Score="1" ViewCount="1365" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_equation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Software Equation&lt;/a&gt; is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9kHGM.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E is effort in man months or years. &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;P is the &quot;productivity parameter.&quot; &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;B is the &quot;special skills factor.&quot; &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;t is length of project measured in months or years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I'm thinking that since E is in man-months, it's equivalent to n&lt;em&gt;t, where n is the number of people working on the project.  Substituting n&lt;/em&gt;t, and solving for LOC gives me this equation: LOC = (n*P^3*t^5/B)^1/3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't seem right because of the t^5 factor. It seems to be saying that the rate of output in LOC increases as time goes on, and the opposite seems to be true in real projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What am I missing here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3839" LastEditorUserId="1119" LastEditDate="2012-05-14T17:44:46.713" LastActivityDate="2012-10-15T13:21:14.223" Title="Can you use the Software Equation to get LOC output?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5562" CreationDate="2012-04-24T08:17:57.010" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When the 'Task Type' is set to 'Fixed Duration' (see Task information -&gt; advanced), the duration will not change, even if there is a holiday planned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check out the Resource usage view, and you will see that the resource is not scheduled on the holiday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With task type equal to &quot;Fixed units&quot; or &quot;Fixed Work&quot;, the duration should indeed take an extra day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2012-04-24T08:17:57.010" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4283" CreationDate="2012-04-24T13:58:52.807" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you are right to set the &quot;Work&quot; column. I've found the way project copes with this a little shakey. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main thing to get the work / duration calculation to work is to have the task Auto scheduled. It's still annoying that you get the green box tip with every change but it does work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastActivityDate="2012-04-24T13:58:52.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5566" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-24T14:52:00.807" Score="10" ViewCount="2114" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a programming/engineering freelancer working as a consultant for a mid-sized corporation. This mid-sized corporation has many clients, including a very large financial company (one of the top 10 financial companies in the world), who we will call &quot;Client X&quot;. Years ago (before I started working here), my client created a custom fulfillment website for Client X.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was originally hired to simply implement a new design over the website's existing infrastructure, but soon, I was being given new tasks - bug fixes, small enhancements - and then larger projects - new applications for the website, etc..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The majority of these tasks and projects have been managed using very rudimentary spreadsheets, email communication, and the occasional meeting. I have continually asked for Functional Specifications and/or Business Rules documents from Client X, but they never respond with either. Instead, I'm given a list of one-line tasks/projects and deadlines for each (which are usually unreasonable).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to this, Client X rarely helps with any User Acceptance Testing, and instead expect me to simply take their requests, create them, and deploy and have everything work exactly as they requested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When bugs occur, their feathers get very ruffled. They complain about the bugs, and about the time it takes to fix them, etc..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I know that as the sole software engineer for my client, I am responsible for the bugs. However, I feel without proper Project Management, it is more difficult to create bug-free code. As a result of lack of assistance from Client X, I've had to make myself responsible for performing all of the following tasks for each project:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing Functional Specifications&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Creating Mock-ups&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing Technical Specifications&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Programming&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;QA Testing &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User Acceptance Testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deployment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bug fixes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project/Task Updates to the client&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;among other things....&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, don't get me wrong, I enjoy each step of the process - I'm a perfectionist, and I like to be organized. However, I have to admit, that I'm not a great QA or User Acceptance Tester. I'm not a &quot;normal&quot; user of the website in question, so I can't think of every scenario to test. Also, the time it would take to properly test each feature takes away from time that I could be working on other projects for Client X. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a catch 22: they want their tasks/projects done quickly and bug-free, but they don't realize that those two things don't always exist together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first step I've taken is to start writing Testing Scripts, and to run through these for each task/project I work on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, there are drawbacks here as well. I'm being paid as a Programmer/Software Engineer. I have no problem being paid my existing rate to test applications/features, but it seems ridiculous to me to pay me as much as they are for this aspect, when they could be paying someone a lot less (idk, $15-20/hour?) to be a tester. Client X complains about the financial implications of me working on bug fixes, but to me, it would just make sense to hire a tester for a lot less money to run test scripts, and free up my time to write code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried explaining these things to my supervisor, who is 1. the liaison for Client X 2. the original programmer for the website, and 3. a VP for my client, but he sticks to the old adage of &quot;the customer is always right&quot;, and thinks that if they don't want to write Functional Specifications and they don't want to help test and they don't want to use proper Project Management, that WE have to deal with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what are some ways I can &quot;deal&quot; with this environment/client?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2995" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T04:23:41.787" Title="How can I handle a client's client who is upset with bugs but refuses to use any kind of Project Management?" Tags="&lt;clients&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5566" CreationDate="2012-04-24T17:04:23.253" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you've got several different things that you would like help with. I'll try to give some guidance on a few of them, but the basic answer is to start collecting metrics (if you haven't already) and present your information with real $ numbers attached to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Testing&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may have already gone down this route, but if so I didn't see it in your question. Have you tried to put together the business case to your supervisor that it is worth hiring a tester? It sounds like Client X doesn't want to hire a tester, but what about your direct customer? Can you put together the following kind of information and present it to your surpervisor:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Number of bugs that slipped through in the past 6 months&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Total / Average Time (and cost) spent fixing those bugs that slipped through&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Average Time (and cost) spent fixing bugs when you find them before release&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimated cost if a separate tester was hired&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimated savings (schedule time and $) if those bugs had been caught during test&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;New features that have not been completed due to time spent fixing those bugs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first three of those will likely be a bit more straightforward for you to capture the information for than the latter ones. But those last two are what will really help make your case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Requirements / Shared Understanding&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have any of the bugs in the past 6 months been due to a disconnect between what Client X wanted and what you implemented? If so, consider going through an exercise similar to the above (replacing testing with requirements capture). Make sure Client X understands how what you are asking for directly relates to them getting a better quality product in a shorter time frame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you gotten any requests for changes / additions in the last 6 months that have caused you to go back and make large changes to existing code that you had recently touched for other changes / additions? Being able to capture this and put a $ value against it can help make the case for them talking with you about their full goals rather than piecing out individual changes at a time. And if you have better understanding of their end goals, you can better advise them about whether certain features are connected and should be undertaken together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider looking for alternatives to formal Functional Specifications to capture requirements in. Look into options like using user stories that allow Client X to convey what they want in language that may be more comfortable to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Overall Project Management&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you should have a frank talk with your supervisor. If your &quot;team&quot; is supposed to be handling the management of the project (because that is the expectation of Client X), then it needs to be clear who is supposed to be filling that role. Is it supposed to be you? Then your schedule and deadlines need to reflect that the role takes a certain amount of time to be done correctly, even on a small project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastActivityDate="2012-04-24T17:04:23.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5566" CreationDate="2012-04-24T19:06:42.010" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have more issues here than just a missing PM method.  But then again, it sounds like this is the way your client and client X have been operating for &quot;years.&quot;  I am getting the impression they do not want to invest a ton of money in the capability you build and perhaps it is just cultural to complain and complain.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bug free delivery of anything is impossible and, unless Client X are staffed with monkeys, that notion is known.  So I get the impression they just complain as a way of managing their vendors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the likelihood that you will get any change here is quite low.  It seems this set up is the level of capability and maturity they want for your area, i.e., the level of investment is consistent with their expectations of return.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-04-24T19:06:42.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5566" CreationDate="2012-04-24T21:01:28.397" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to adopt an &lt;strong&gt;Agile/Iterative&lt;/strong&gt; approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the complexity of the system and the changes you're making, it might not be necessary to employ a full, traditional Waterfall methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, make sure you have adequate &lt;strong&gt;source control&lt;/strong&gt; and some sort of &lt;strong&gt;change tracking system&lt;/strong&gt; (even if it's just a spreadsheet for now).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If what they're asking is unclear, &lt;strong&gt;ask more questions&lt;/strong&gt; until you understand it, then make the changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Explain to them that you'll &lt;strong&gt;release early and often&lt;/strong&gt;, and will test the software yourself, to the best of your ability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From there, it can be the end user's responsibility to &lt;strong&gt;verify&lt;/strong&gt; that what you've done is actually what they wanted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a short release cycle, you'll be able to take that feedback, turnaround the changes quickly, and &lt;strong&gt;make them happy!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I put together a whole mini-site with some additional tips that might also be helpful: &lt;a href=&quot;http://doingitwrong.jasonhanley.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://doingitwrong.jasonhanley.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2713" LastActivityDate="2012-04-24T21:01:28.397" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="389" CreationDate="2012-04-24T21:09:12.130" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Will the software ever change&lt;/strong&gt; after its first release?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Waterfall is for building &lt;strong&gt;bridges&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;houses&lt;/strong&gt; -- physical, rigid things that you don't expect to change much over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Agile&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Iterative&lt;/strong&gt; approaches fit naturally with software development and its fluidity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should &lt;strong&gt;expect&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;embrace change&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand not everyone agrees with this, but using a Waterfall process is #1 on my post about the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.pmrobot.com/2012/04/top-5-software-project-management.html&quot;&gt;top 5 software project management mistakes&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It surprises me that Waterfall software development is still taught and practiced so widely after all these years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2713" LastActivityDate="2012-04-24T21:09:12.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3016" CreationDate="2012-04-24T21:40:46.540" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that someone who wants to get into managing of any sort should at some point get a degree in communication. Yes I think you should get your certification in development and master those skills before becoming a manager at all. In terms of being in control of a team though, I think the most important aspect of that is communicating with your team and knowing how to handle certain situations. Completing a certificate in communication would look very good for someone who is trying to make it as a manager or leader of any sort. If you're interested I would check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.degreeincommunications.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.degreeincommunications.net&lt;/a&gt; that is a great resource to programs you might be interested in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Along with communicating I do agree with what #2 answer said and that is you should be familiar with what you are managing. Many managers struggle because they teach a certain way but don't know the most affective process to get projects done. In all, I don't think you can go wrong with comm degree or going further with your development certifications, as long as you focus on whats best for your team as a leader and not what you think will work best for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3842" LastActivityDate="2012-04-24T21:40:46.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5566" CreationDate="2012-04-25T04:23:41.787" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;What are some ways you can 'dea' with this environment/client?&quot;  Quite simply - learn to do it their way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I understand your frustration, especially as a perfectionist myself, the fact is you're a third-party hired consultant. Your job is to do what they hired you to do, and to do it within their environment. 'You' have to adjust, not them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you've pointed out, the two companies have a history, and good or bad, right or wrong, it works for them. So you're not going to change it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as David suggested - accept that this is how they do business, and learn to work within that model. Just don't expect to get them to change their methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And maybe you'll get lucky along the way and at least get them to adopt 'some' of your suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T04:23:41.787" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5503" CreationDate="2012-04-25T04:45:22.573" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;ROWE is concept created by two former employees of Best Buy. They've since left and started their own consultancy to help implement the concept at other companies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find more info here - &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gorowe.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.gorowe.com/&lt;/a&gt;  (their consultancy)&#xA;try the About tab, and then the Resources tab&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and here&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROWE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROWE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To your questions, those things are still tracked and viewed the same as any other company. The only difference with ROWE is that they're removing the 'requirement' that work be done at a certain time or from a certain place (ie: the office). In essence, ROWE is simply another way (catchphrase?) of describing tele-commuting. Work where you want, when you want, but get the job done. In reality it's not really that revolutionary. It's the realization by the company that they're not paying you for hours spent in an office, but for getting a job done.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T04:45:22.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5553" CreationDate="2012-04-25T04:51:20.973" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suspect that, every generation for the last 200-300 hundred years could produce a survey that says essentially the same thing - &quot;These kids today, they don't care about/appreciate/take seriously things the way we used to/do.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T04:51:20.973" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5521" CreationDate="2012-04-25T04:59:45.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, you're attempting to make a decision that isn't yours to make. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have your scope and it's approved, so the current correct path is to continue toward completion as planned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you've identified a potential issue that may adversely impact the end-result project down the line. Your correct course of action as a responsible PM is to bring this issue to the Owner/Sponsor and ask for direction. Explain it the same way you've explained it here - short-term vs long-term, possible (but unknown) ramifications, possible delays,etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then let them make the decision on how you proceed. &#xA;Their project, their money, their decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T04:59:45.127" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5529" CreationDate="2012-04-25T05:08:19.063" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try this - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2004cmmi/CMMIT2WedPM/1142WarrenScheinin.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A Comprehensive Survey or Risk Sources and Categories&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-15T10:13:44.300" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T10:13:44.300" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5579" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-25T12:21:40.723" Score="5" ViewCount="641" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, we introduced a physical board to visualise work progress in one of our projects. In the first few iteration the team was very excited about it and used the board very often. We saw true commitment and team spirit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, however, they just stopped using the board and move the sticky notes from time to time, when poked by the PM. They must have seen the advantages of the physical board in the first iteration and &lt;strong&gt;I wonder why they don't give attention anymore&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks to me like they just don't want to stand up and move the sticky notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2915" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2012-04-25T21:30:30.943" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T11:34:45.483" Title="How to encourage people to use a physical board?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5579" CreationDate="2012-04-25T14:41:40.880" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your board probably lost its purpose...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;strong&gt;What do I mean by that?&lt;/strong&gt; Well having the board is not the purpose itself. I've worked with a team like this once. We were maintaining the board perfectly at the beginning, but then it started degrading. What happened? You create the board to make something visible, to track the progress. You may even detect some problems just by using it. But the questions you need to ask yourself are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who is supposed to read the board? How often do they actually pay attention to what's there?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are we looking for at the board?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the board helping the team in anything or are we just maintaining it for somebody else?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So maybe your team just does not need any of the information on the board. But find out why? Or better find out what information would they be seeking on the board in the first place? They need to find it useful and valuable for themselves otherwise why should they bother?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were you organizing meetings by that board? If so maybe the problem is in the meetings (this was the problem in my case). It may turn out that the team does not find the meetings any helpful. Find out why? You may also find the concept from &lt;a href=&quot;http://pawel.wrzesz.cz/blog/?p=89&quot;&gt;http://pawel.wrzesz.cz/blog/?p=89&lt;/a&gt; interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the team supposed to provide the same information the other way (any reports, spread sheets, etc.)? Maybe they just know that nobody looks at the board actually. Why do the fake moves if the information is read somewhere else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally you may find the blog about Visual Management interesting. It may provide you some inspiration about how to make the board itself more interesting. Take a look at:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xqa.com.ar/visualmanagement/&quot;&gt;http://www.xqa.com.ar/visualmanagement/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So the first thing you need to answer is what do you need the board for.&lt;/strong&gt; It needs to provide a value to the team maintaining it. Would you maintain anything that is useless?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="435" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T14:41:40.880" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5521" CreationDate="2012-04-25T14:54:06.757" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think Waterfall / Agile has bearing on this, but as PM's, we're are often critised for looking at the short term &quot;Get it in ASAP!&quot; solution.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So although I believe the last gent is correct in saying it's not a PM's decision to make but in your position I put both solutions with their pro's and cons to your sponsor and strongly back the long term solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T14:54:06.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="389" CreationDate="2012-04-25T15:07:07.957" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Pawel's answer is great and would +1 you if I could!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To add to his list.&#xA;You would use waterfall where:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have a hostile customer or one that refuses to engage&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I say this only because it does happen sometimes. The customer doesn't really want change and it's being imposed on them by an owner or group, but they have ownership of the project. Its rare but Agile needs engagement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T15:07:07.957" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5584" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-25T15:42:19.477" Score="8" ViewCount="848" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been having many issues getting bug/tasks provided with the correct information in them.  And other points where a task is handed off along the workflow require the recipient to get certain bits of information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For tomorrows meeting our PM has asked us to identify what checklists we need to create, and what we feel should be on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a developer, I know what I require when getting tasks from the BA&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Detailed steps to reproduce (preferably on dev)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Actual result&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Expected result&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attachments of emails/screenshots where applicable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And any differences found between dev/prod/staging when attempting to reproduce if they exist&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally I just get a vague description, and need to ask for these things...I get them verbally, and they sometimes get written in, sometimes not...but since they are always needed they should be provided up front.  Which is why we want to incorporate a checklist that the communicator must double check before passing on a task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our workflow typically goes as follows&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Anyone can identify an issue to the BA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Detailed steps to reproduce&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Screenshot if applicable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;BA creates Task and passes to PM for Approval.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Detailed steps to reproduce (preferably on dev)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Actual result&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Expected result&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attachments of emails/screenshots where applicable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And any differences found between dev/prod/staging when attempting to reproduce if they exist&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;PM assigns Task to Developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Same as above&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Developer passes to Tech Lead for Tech Review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Location of source, including changeset numbers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;List of db modification&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tech Lead passes to QA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Same as Developer requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;QA passes to PM for Implementation Approval.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User Signoff&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;PM assigns to Tech Lead for Implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tech lead passes back to BA or QA for Health Check.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you all think should be required items in a checklist at these points of contact?&#xA;I've added what I think are required.  I add points from the perspective of the recipient, it doesn't mean the communicator is the one providing it, but they need to ensure it's there before moving it along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1414" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T10:46:21.197" Title="Communication/Handoff Checklists" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5585" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5598" CreationDate="2012-04-25T17:51:18.923" Score="14" ViewCount="4567" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a 'do it myself or leave it for the team' dillema for some sort of tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me introduce an example, to be clear what I mean: there is a team, which uses jira* as a task container. Every sprint tasks are created in this tool. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After technical planning meeting, where team divides stories into tasks, there are plenty (15 or so) of them to create. Sometimes there is nothing to describe within them, but there are also more complicated, which require some additional technical information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other example are admin tasks. In most cases they have to be done for the sake of new features hence are created by dev teams. Admins are outside of dev teams and it is one of their duties, to resolve tasks that concern infrastructure. Sometimes admin tasks are known before sprint is started, sometimes they appear during a sprint. In each case they need to be well described, to make sure that responsible admin will know what to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There could be many similar tasks to the ones mentioned above. My intention is to find a pattern (as I believe that there is no the only solution) when they should be created and described (not performed) by Scrum Master and when by the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I'm wondering what administrative tasks should I as Scrum Master do for the  team and what are rules should I follow in this regard? My own purpose is to minimize team dependency (ie Scrum Master is not in the office on planning day, and the sprint is dead on start). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;* Jira is a must, because it's a part of larger tool, which automatically delivers code on test environment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastEditorUserId="1021" LastEditDate="2012-04-26T15:02:15.477" LastActivityDate="2017-11-13T18:25:22.383" Title="As a Scrum Master, what sort of administrative tasks should I do and what should the team do?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5579" CreationDate="2012-04-25T17:54:03.680" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Providing information is a chore, and providing information that no-one really uses is frustrating. I guess that at first, the team may have believed that the board would make a positive difference to their work, but time has passed and .... it hasn't. It may even have made things worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all you did was to introduce a board with some headings and lines drawn on it, the team will be unable to see value in using the board. Perhaps you need to show them how they benefit from the board, by changing your other processes so that you get most of your information from the board. Eliminate duplicate recording of information. Get the team to put information on the board, and encourage them to stop keeping their own progress reports / activity logs / bug reports / etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make it easy to use. Get the team to redesign it. Provide different colours of sticky notes that they can use for particular purposes. Be seen to be using the information, rather than asking the team for answers all the time. Refer to it during meetings. Don't worry if it gets untidy - as long as it is meaningful. And use it yourself as a communications medium - not instead of talking to people, but to provide the hard facts to back up what you say in team meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, you have to make it work for the team, as well as expecting the team to make it work for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T17:54:03.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5585" CreationDate="2012-04-25T19:46:07.160" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The team owns the sprint backlog, and they should be collectively committed to succeed with the sprint. This means they should also take responsibility for adding necessary tasks to whatever tool is being used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps it is more efficient to let the scrum master do some administrative tasks to facilitate for the team, but this doesn't mean the scrum master is &lt;em&gt;responsible&lt;/em&gt; for the sprint backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding administrative tasks to Jira sounds like a small task, and if doing this becomes a problem (people refusing to do it) it seems like you have more serious issues to deal with. I suggest you bring it up on the next retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing is to come to an agreement everybody commits to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3106" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T19:46:07.160" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5588" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5590" CreationDate="2012-04-25T21:26:05.257" Score="9" ViewCount="687" Body="&lt;p&gt;I keep seeing articles about the uselessness of working more than 40 hours a week, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/stop-working-more-than-40-hours-a-week.html&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; for example but I remember I read the same on Forbes and others. &lt;strong&gt;Does this estimate include the time spent on open-source or external projects?&lt;/strong&gt; Reading these articles it seems to me that the reason is that &quot;you burn your brain&quot; and what you produce in the overtime has no worth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However this is not my personal &quot;perceived&quot; experience. I still feel fresh to work on a different project where I'm not moved by deadlines or client requirements, but the simple quest for &quot;perfection&quot; or to learn new stuff. I find difficult to think that everybody working in opensource do it inside their 40 hours, or that they're jeopardizing their payed-job productivity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further more, not all the jobs are the same, and none of these articles go in details about the different duties, whether you're a broker or a teacher, the limit is the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastActivityDate="2012-04-27T22:04:12.907" Title="40 work hours a week is said to be the limit for productiveness, does it include open-source?" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;open-source&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5579" CreationDate="2012-04-25T21:28:09.777" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Updating is another accounting tasks for people, thus sometimes the attitude you describe pops up. What more, pretty often information that is on the board is duplication of data that is somewhere in this or that app.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer to &quot;What's in it for me?&quot; for most of the team is &quot;nothing&quot; don't be surprised. Then it's another &quot;beloved&quot; system like that dreadful time tracking app many companies have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way: I wouldn't assume that they had seen board's value in one iteration but didn't later. It might have been just another cool to try. Such attitude quickly wears out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reason may be fear of transparency. With the board in the room everyone instantly see it when someone has little or no progress. It creates aversion to the board and not updating it is a simple way to get rid of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice what one could do would be combined of different actions (use those which sound appropriate):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Create opportunities for team to update the board &quot;in the meantime.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; E.g. daily stand-up organized around the board is a good occasion to catch up the status of the board with whatever is happening. I know that's not a good as having the information in time, but still better.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Move the board to possibly convenient and accessible place.&lt;/strong&gt; The less hassle with updating the board the better. If I have to go to another room odds are I'll decide not to and wait for another occasion.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Show the team that decisions concerning them are made at the board.&lt;/strong&gt; They may not be seeing this dependency, thus see little to no value in keeping the board up to date. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have a &quot;board policeman&quot; who frequently starts discussions on task status basing on what is on the board (even if they know it isn't up to date).&lt;/strong&gt; This helps to build a behavior of updating the board.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hold a board-related retrospective.&lt;/strong&gt; Discuss the problem with everyone, find a root cause, address it, adjust the board accordingly. Look for value for team members (as Marcin points, +1).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Experiment.&lt;/strong&gt; Tweak the board. Throw it away for a while and see whether there is any difference. Redesign it from scratch. Bring fresh air. Maybe such experiment will show you that without board you do equally well and the team doesn't need it. Maybe they will instantly ask to bring it back.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask them to keep the board updated.&lt;/strong&gt; As simple as it may sound, openly stating what you expect may solve many problems, this one included.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Show where the board, or data gathered from it, helps the team.&lt;/strong&gt; One common case that instantly comes to my mind is estimation, but of course that isn't an issue in each and every team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Verify whether the board reflects the reality.&lt;/strong&gt; If the value stream drawn on the board is different that the one you really have it will create problem and bring confusion, thus raise reluctance to do anything with the board.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simplify the board.&lt;/strong&gt; One of common mistakes is overengineering the board. Make it simpler so information is easily accessible, the board itself more useful, thus people more likely willing to use it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Adjust WIP Limits if you have them or introduce them if you don't.&lt;/strong&gt; WIP limits drive behavioral change. WIP limits influence how people work. And to keep WIP limits working you need to keep the board updated. It might be an indirect motivation to update the board regularly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bring in some fun.&lt;/strong&gt; This one is tricky. Actually I don't care much whether the board is very nice and aesthetic or just easily readable. However if you can make using the board more entertaining, definitely go for it. It can be adding some cool avatars instead of boring magnets or adding a small celebration when the task is done (e.g. team member who finished a work item gets some sweets). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However always remember that you don't have to keep the physical board in the team at all cost. Eventually you may realize that it's not going to work and abandon it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T21:28:09.777" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5588" CreationDate="2012-04-25T21:54:59.320" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;These types of articles are talking about the &quot;Law of Diminishing Returns&quot; as it relates to productivity - the longer you work  on any one thing, the less impact you're going to have as the time lengthens. The key point is 'one thing'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I think this holds true for anything, including open-source. The important factor as to why you feel refreshed is that, as you said, you're working on a 'different project'. In doing that, you've broken the chain of the 40 hours and started over on something new. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the logic that 40 hours is the limit for 'work' period, then in effect they'd be saying that as we hit the 40 hour mark, we no longer have capacity for family, friends, etc. But the opposite is true. Even after 40, 50, or 60 hours, switching to something else, especially something that we enjoy or that holds value for us, we re-charge and begin anew. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T21:54:59.320" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5585" CreationDate="2012-04-26T10:11:29.917" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The purpose of the Scrum Master is to enable the team to perform at its highest levels by managing the process. The common tasks associated with this role include working with the Product Owner to ensure that the backlog is properly filled with appropriately written user stories, to ensure that the team doesn't overload with too many story points or underload with too few story points for a sprint (balancing workload with projected value added), guiding the retrospective and planning meetings, and generally resolving any roadblocks that arise during the project to make sure that the team can move forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The optimal solution would be to integrate the system administrators and IT staff into the Scrum process as part of the cross-functional team, with associated stories and tasks in stories. Another solution might be to treat the administration team as a black box that must complete assigned tasks, and the Scrum Master would just ensure that the team has what is needed to complete each story within the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How the stories get added to the backlog doesn't matter that much. Those that are known at the beginning can be added to the sprint backlog immediately during the planning meeting. Like you mentioned, some tasks might not be known at the start. The person who needs the task can ensure that it gets added, and could probably do a better job of describing what needs to be done to properly meet the requirement and deliver the feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Scrum Master, your first job should be to make sure that stories get added and tracked by the person or people who are best capable of writing them. That could be the Scrum Master, that could be a developer. Then, the Scrum Master needs to follow up with the administration team to make sure the tasks are getting done on schedule. All of these would fall under &quot;helping the Development Team to create high-value products&quot; and &quot;removing impediments to the Development Team's progress&quot;, both of which are services that the Scrum Master provides to the Development Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/tag/scrummaster&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;posts about the Scrum Master position on the Mountain Goat Software blog&lt;/a&gt;, if you want to read more about the role itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2017-11-13T18:25:22.383" LastActivityDate="2017-11-13T18:25:22.383" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5588" CreationDate="2012-04-26T13:09:40.143" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the Law of Diminishing Returns, when applied to people, somehow evolved to the notion of getting tired, both physically and emotionally.  That may play into it a little bit but that is not what the diminishing law is really about.  The law states that there will be a diminishing return on the measured dependent variable--the output--if you change a single independent variable--in this case &lt;em&gt;time&lt;/em&gt;--while maintaining the same levels of the other independent variables that may be involved.  So the law can apply long before anyone gets tired.  And it can occur at different hour marks depending on the activity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The notion of analysis paralysis comes to mind as a great example.  A team can study a problem and in the first, say, six hours they induce a plethora of theories and hypotheses to explore and test.  This team can stop the analysis here and begin the next phase of planning and recovery design.  Or, the team can continue for another six hours to see what else they can induce.  It is likely in the next six hours, substantially less productive output would be created by this team.  That would be diminishing returns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People do get tired.  But the notion of 40 hours is a result of labor law, not because there was any definitive study that showed that is all we have in us.  Our history shows us that we can work the 2nd and part of the 3rd shift for years and years and years without negative sequalae.  (I do not mean to say fatigue is not a factor in diminishing performance.  It has been shown in aviation and medicine to be a critical factor.  But I do mean that with proper rest periods strategically placed within the work time can mitigate fatigue to a great extent where this 40 hour per week notion becomes a non sequitar.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-04-26T13:09:40.143" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5588" CreationDate="2012-04-26T16:13:27.823" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Until the additional work motivates you, do it. Try out and see what's going to happen. However, there are a couple of things you should keep in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you plan to work on company projects, you might not get paid for it. It might also happen that other team members won't be able to follow you, our in the worst case they won't want to work with you. You'll develop more, and in order to keep up with your speed, they should spend more time with the project and I'm pretty sure that not everybody wants to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-04-26T16:13:27.823" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5561" CreationDate="2012-04-26T20:43:39.317" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We make a tool specifically targeted towards product development called OneDesk &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It allows an overview of all projects in roadmap views, as well as being able to track and visualise resource allocation over time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEo58_q4EN8&amp;amp;feature=plcp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;See the roadmapping functionality here&lt;/a&gt;, and sign up for a free trial to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.onedesk.com/lp/product-roadmapping-software/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;create product roadmaps&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTE: As per the guidelines in the FAQ, I disclose that I'm the Community Manager of this product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3854" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-26T02:16:31.477" LastActivityDate="2012-06-26T02:16:31.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5588" CreationDate="2012-04-27T10:58:41.167" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's another article from the industry: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.igda.org/why-crunch-modes-doesnt-work-six-lessons&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.igda.org/why-crunch-modes-doesnt-work-six-lessons&lt;/a&gt;. Basically it says, that sooner or later you will burn out when working overtime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2915" LastActivityDate="2012-04-27T10:58:41.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5588" CreationDate="2012-04-27T22:04:12.907" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK, let's look at my life, I work a 40 hour week, 20 hours a week on my Doctorate, and 5-10 on various open source projects.  I'm constantly swapping out what I am working on, I haven't had a problem with burning out (exhaustion, well...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine did a study on just this subject for her Doctorate, the results were as many of you have pointed out, the more time  you spend on a single project, the less you get done.  As the question was adding an open source project on top of a 40 hour week, as long as the OS project wasn't the same as work, there should be little problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3847" LastActivityDate="2012-04-27T22:04:12.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5585" CreationDate="2012-04-30T11:48:18.307" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me the answer depends on your actual role and future plans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you consider yourself as a &lt;strong&gt;by the book Scrum Master&lt;/strong&gt;, then raise this issue after a team meeting - possibly after the daily gathering - and let the team care of the administrative tasks. Unfortunately, software development is not just about writing software, there are other tasks one has to take care of. It is their task now.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you consider yourself as &lt;strong&gt;Scrum Master, who is part of the team&lt;/strong&gt;, then you also have to raise the issue saying that this may not be the best assignment for you. However, it may happen that you'll still have to do the tasks, because the team may decide that you are the best person to do it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are a &lt;strong&gt;coach&lt;/strong&gt; who has happened to be called a Scrum Master, then find out whether the task creation adds any value to the team's work. If the answer is 'yes', then find a way how to mentor the team so that they can do the minimum of these activities by their own - I somehow feel that these tasks don't add too much value to the whole.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-04-30T11:48:18.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5585" CreationDate="2012-05-01T12:11:44.793" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In every team, there's usually one role which is the busiest. In software teams, in my experience, it's either been the developer, or the tester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To help the team be as effective as possible, get as much of the work out of the way of the busy role as you can (Theory of Constraints). If the devs are always busy, and they don't need to do some piece of work themselves, then they should feel able to pass it off to whoever has time. Similarly with the testers, if they're the constrained role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be some administrative tasks that they feel they need to keep - for instance, writing technical details may help them to clarify what they need to do in their own minds. However, forcing busy people to do something that's of no benefit to the work being done is wasteful. Ask the team which tasks they'd like you to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're looking for a pattern that will help you work out &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; the developers have time or &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; the testers have time, consider implementing a pull system like Kanban, with its limited work in progress. Cumulative Flow Diagrams (aka Finger Charts) are also a good way of spotting a widening gap which indicates a constraint. You can even put the Scrum Master and Admin tasks on the board, so that developers can see if the work starts piling up and you become the constrained role, so they can take some of the work back for themselves - but I've never seen the Scrum Master become the constrained role yet!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T12:11:44.793" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5584" CreationDate="2012-05-01T17:19:58.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your initial items from 1 to 4 pretty much sums it up for 99% of all organizations.  The problem is that even though you tell your testers 'what' information is needed, I find the content is usually very poor (spelling, unclear, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for other checklist items, it will probably depend on your actual company and product being tested (hardware model/revision), firmware version, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But one thing that I like (or strongly encourage) people to do is to keep it in 'simple' innumerate sentence form, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;A. Post Conditions:&#xA;&#xA;   1. Screen 'Some Name' has been loaded&#xA;   2. The 'Some Name' panel is showing along with the proper ID label&#xA;&#xA;B. Steps To Reproduce:&#xA;&#xA;   1. Select the ID label&#xA;   2. Start typing another label ID&#xA;   3. [...]&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way, it keeps things very simply organized, step-by-step (compared to a bunch of text in paragraph form).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, in the bug report, it's a lot easier to reference a step by saying &quot;Can you elaborate on step B.2?&quot; rather than trying to refer to a specific step in a part of a paragraphs, especially if the referred item is repeated several times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When someone wants to add their two cents, they can also write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Try this workaround:&#xA;&#xA;B.2.a. Select the existing ID&#xA;B.2.b. Press on the 'clear' key&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It becomes instantly clear to everyone as to where the recommendation is being suggested.  And again, everything is in point-form rather than paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T17:19:58.373" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3589" CreationDate="2012-05-01T19:23:00.400" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;By far may favorite method for note taking is &lt;a href=&quot;http://goodnotesapp.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GoodNotes&lt;/a&gt; with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.studioneat.com/products/cosmonaut&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cosmonaut&lt;/a&gt; stylus.  I find handwriting to be faster and more effective for my means than trying to type on the iPad.  That stylus is key, I can't recommend it highly enough, it's actually usable and a proper analog for writing on paper versus the several other ones I've tried.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried several apps (&lt;a href=&quot;http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bamboo-paper-notebook/id443131313&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bamboo Paper&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fluidtouch.biz/noteshelf/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Noteshelf&lt;/a&gt;) and always return to GoodNotes.  I think it's the best for me (most of that is experience, some of that is selection bias). I create agendas for every meeting and &quot;print&quot; them to a .pdf file.  Sync that with dropbox and now I'm following my agenda and making notes along the way.  If I need to send out meeting minutes I can email my handwritten notes on the agenda to an admin, or I can update the agenda I sent with my notes and send them off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I only do mild (and I'd add poor) drawing, and then I've used &lt;a href=&quot;http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sketchbook-pro-for-ipad/id364253478&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SketchBook&lt;/a&gt; (which is overkill), or just in a GoodNotes page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sync everything through Dropbox, which is another key in my workflow.  The one time you've called a meeting, everyone shows up, and there's a question about say &quot;how many units are we forecasting to sell next year&quot;, instead of &quot;I'll send that to the group afterwards&quot;, you pull up the document that you've already saved in Dropbox and keep moving.  Some things you can handle by searching your email on the spot, but I find that having a folder dedicated to each meeting and the corresponding documents inside of that solves questions faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/microsoft-onenote/id410395246&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OneNote&lt;/a&gt; app is pretty great, but doesn't work for me when I'm running a meeting.I keep a synced OneNote notebook on my iPad as well that syncs back to my laptop.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3807" LastEditorUserId="3807" LastEditDate="2012-05-01T20:33:12.577" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T20:33:12.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1856" CreationDate="2012-05-02T02:10:43.060" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on my experiences, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dannorth.net/whats-in-a-story/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;What's in a Story?&quot;&gt;user story&lt;/a&gt; works best. We use it as acceptance tests too. User story must be understand by both technical and business (non-technical) side, in that order we create user story together with our customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2715" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T02:10:43.060" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5609" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-02T09:54:20.043" Score="0" ViewCount="623" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working in that IT service industry, with 5.6 years of experience.  I was involved in many projects, of very small duration (less then 2 months),  even though i understand the basics of project management, and has a experience of handling such projects, Am I eligible to take up PMP certification?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks,&#xA;Veena&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3878" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T12:09:22.450" Title="Am I eligible to take up PMP" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-05-03T12:09:41.017" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5584" CreationDate="2012-05-02T10:46:21.197" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I consider check lists a bit dangerous because they are hard to change and I see what should be there, but I usually have no clue what is missing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were you I would &lt;strong&gt;write a script&lt;/strong&gt;, which could collect all the information I need to fix the issue: log files, system information and screenshots. If you have a script, you no longer rely on unnecessary human interaction and possible errors. If you have a checklist the writer of the issue may forget something and you have to ask. A script doesn't forget. We reduced our response time with 3 days using a script like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next thing I would do is &lt;strong&gt;write steps in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber/wiki/Gherkin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;gherkin&lt;/a&gt; format&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Given I am on the login page&#xA; When I enter my password&#xA; Then I want to see its strength&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use these steps for writing &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cucumber&lt;/a&gt; scenarios which can be executed against the system. We used this approach when we were dealing with defects. When I found a problem, I wrote my scenario and committed to version control. The developer who pulled the task, and started to work on the issue. He knew that when the scenario turned green it was fixed. So you can use these scenarios for &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;describing steps&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;fixing issues&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T10:46:21.197" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5609" CreationDate="2012-05-02T11:14:05.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me it more like a philosophical question. When I first read your question and answered I got the impression that you are not ready yet. @David pointed out that &lt;strong&gt;there is a difference between being ready and being eligible&lt;/strong&gt;. For me, being ready is a higher state of mind than being eligible, and for an unknown reason I had &lt;em&gt;ready&lt;/em&gt; in my mind not &lt;em&gt;eligible&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm pretty sure there is a site - see @Mark's answer - which provides you the minimum requirements for starting the certification process. Based on your details you may have the necessary experience to start, so you seem to be eligible. However I don't know whether it is enough to get the certificate. It is like &lt;em&gt;schrodinger's cat&lt;/em&gt;: &lt;strong&gt;you won't know until to go there and start the process&lt;/strong&gt;. I'm pretty sure that these processes cost a lot of money and more importantly take a lot of your time. So check whether you are ready - dedicate enough - to carry through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2012-05-03T12:09:22.450" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T12:09:22.450" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5609" CreationDate="2012-05-02T14:48:08.587" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It appears &quot;being involved&quot; or being responsible for specific work packages is no longer sufficient; you have to prove that you were indeed the assigned project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See the post &lt;a href=&quot;http://pmstudent.com/pmp-eligibility-requirements-changed-on-april-17-2012/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; on PM Student for more info.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you spent 4500 (or 7500 depending on your degree) managing projects during those 5.6 years, then you can apply. Note that some PM training hours are also needed to apply; just understanding PM concepts might not be sufficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T14:48:08.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5618" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-02T16:29:18.147" Score="10" ViewCount="504" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have some product teams for improving/maintaining the current line of products; but there are also &quot;innovation teams&quot; which try to plan/shape/design the next-generation products. The former teams usually look at short-term goals (small improvements, time frames between few days and few months) while the latter teams do long-term research and development (years?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My fear is that the short-term improvements will be superseded by the long-term overhauls made by the innovation team; ie. the manpower put into short-term improvements must actually pay off before the next-gen product is out... I think this heavily limits what tasks the short-term teams can start, and I'd like to change that. So is it possible to direct both teams in a way that short-term improvements are not lost? Or is that not generally impossible, and we should try harder to keep the short-term tasks really short?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is there existing research on this topic? Under which terms would I find this research?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;should short-term teams and innovation teams work closely together (to improve idea flow in both directions, or to improve idea flow in a specific direction), or should they be separated (to avoid disrupting the teams with useless information)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3884" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T19:20:03.133" Title="How can short-term product development co-exist with long-term innovation projects?" Tags="&lt;innovation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5618" CreationDate="2012-05-02T18:54:03.317" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. Why would the long-term innovations limit the short-term improvement? If anything, I would think that the short-term improvements would be influencing the longer term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of it as an operating system - MS or Apple release a new OS (innovation), and then continually release updates (small improvements) until the next version. That next version will not only (hopefully) innovate, but it will include all of those updates that were seen as valuable and necessary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your second question - the teams should definitely be communicating and working together. For an example (warning?) of what happens when they don't, look at Microsoft and how they sometimes end up with redundant or competing offerings, primarily because one side didn't know what the other was doing until release. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T18:54:03.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5618" CreationDate="2012-05-02T19:20:03.133" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a fair bit of research on the topic of Software Release Management that can help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T19:20:03.133" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5609" CreationDate="2012-05-02T19:23:01.663" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is the PMI page with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/en/Certification/Project-Management-Professional-PMP.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;list of the requirements&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T19:23:01.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4929" CreationDate="2012-05-02T21:30:46.683" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Insert the WBS column on your Gantt view, this column has the same value used for the outline number. The report should then include that new column and now you can identify the tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3886" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T21:30:46.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5624" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-04T11:14:23.503" Score="1" ViewCount="8605" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any online or free tools for drawing Critical Path using the CPM method?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I already calculated all ES, EF, LS, LF and other parameters, now I'm looking for a tool to draw it. There doesn't appear to be any results after searching for &quot;draw CPM&quot; and other search keywords in Google.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3349" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-13T00:44:59.127" LastActivityDate="2017-08-07T17:23:54.287" Title="Is there any online or free software to draw CPM?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;critical-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2017-08-08T12:45:41.627" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5624" CreationDate="2012-05-04T15:17:29.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many online and free tools for project planning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LiquidPlanner, TomsPlanner, GanttProject (do a Google search for links) are some of the most popular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of these will offer a free trial period, or limited number of projects, so you can get a feel for them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-13T00:47:32.103" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T00:47:32.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5628" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6151" CreationDate="2012-05-05T06:04:18.940" Score="1" ViewCount="45868" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to export the Network Diagram View in Microsoft Project 2010 to an image format including &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the image contents, not just what's rendered in the screen? I've tried the Task, Copy, Copy Picture but only copy what fits in the screen, very disappointing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also interested in learning if it's possible to export to another format. The PDF export breaks in several pages, such as the Gantt diagram, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3893" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-09T16:37:19.377" LastActivityDate="2018-11-09T16:37:19.377" Title="How to export the Network Diagram View to an image in Microsoft Project 2010" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;&lt;visualization&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3256" CreationDate="2012-05-05T21:03:47.967" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;zAgile's Wikidsmart PM seems to match up with the request. It enables requirements management within the Atlassian Confluence wiki by offering structured wiki templates for Requirements definition that are then tied to JIRA for task management. It's open source and free to download at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zAgile.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;www.zAgile.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I'm affiliated with this company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3895" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2021-01-20T13:33:49.980" LastActivityDate="2021-01-20T13:33:49.980" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5631" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5638" CreationDate="2012-05-06T10:28:40.970" Score="5" ViewCount="447" Body="&lt;p&gt;This maybe a bit of a noob question to you client facing PM's out there, but I'm a PM with a pre-sales background, so please bear with me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm used to working on projects where you have an initial scope (high level) and you work with the customer to define their requirements, forming some sort of a functional specification. Sometimes there may be an RFP, but it's usually not contractual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently started a new job working as a PM for a vendor dealing predominantly with government clients (IT). My first project is rather big, with a mix of off the shelf and in-house (customised) software. We won the project in response to a tender, in which was included a set of general / functional specifications - two documents labeled exactly that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, it's a fairly complex project; thus, there will be many days of requirements gathering. But as I understand it, we are contractually obligated to deliver (within scope) what is defined in the specs. In fact, the original specs are quite detailed (user should be able to hover over link and see a preview of the image, etc..)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm supposed to eventually (after all our requirements gathering sessions) come up with a functional specification that is somehow derived from the conversations we have with the users, plus the original specifications, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that, after reading functional specs (and other project documentation) from other project managers in my company, I see that there is rarely any link back to the contractual tender specification. I feel that there is something missing, i.e when the client eventually signs off on our specs, surely they will check to make sure they conform to the original tender specs? Where our functional spec does not conform, surely they will ask questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose my point is this: After speaking to the end user, some points of the original tender specs (contract) may become invalid, may change, or there may be additions (within scope). So, should there be a matrix in between the two documents (original spec and end functional spec) to track all this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many thanks for any information on this. I just feel like there is a big gap somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3899" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2012-05-09T17:29:48.123" LastActivityDate="2012-05-09T17:29:48.123" Title="Do I Need to Match-up the Functional Spec with the Spec in the Contract" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5632" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-06T10:38:07.767" Score="22" ViewCount="1417" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our team(s) have agreed upon timelines both by the team themselves and the clients, including a bit of extra padding in case of any mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the CEO of the company consistently sends requests down to these teams and wants them done immediately.  While the team has no problem to complete them, and understands the hierarchy of the company (CEO request comes from the top), there are questions about how to manage the existing agreed upon timelines for our clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you consider to push back the client deadline to work immediately on the CEO request? Usually the CEO requests are 1day-1 week tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you try and explain to the CEO that their requests must follow the same workflow as a client request?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you hire/&lt;strong&gt;train&lt;/strong&gt; more resources to take care of these spontaneous requests?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3900" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-13T00:54:30.270" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T00:54:30.270" Title="How to handle CEO &quot;priority&quot; requests that affect existing client deadlines?" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;deadline&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5632" CreationDate="2012-05-06T13:28:11.777" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interference of your planned work is part of the stochastic uncertainty of all project work and should be part of your estimates and targets, to which you alluded with the &quot;extra padding&quot; message.  I would not recommend that you tell your CEO his requests will have to be sequenced with all the others.  However, if you are able to show that lowering the priority of his request will benefit his company, then by all means do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The better way to handle this is to build more uncertainty into your estimates and targets, which means assume your resources are available at a lesser utilization rate than what you first thought.  In other words, if you scheduled assuming your resources are productive 75% of the time, reduce that to 50% and schedule accordingly.  Or, extend your deadlines further right on your estimate curve.  Either approach produces the same result: longer durations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, investigate whether additional resources are justfied based on your current op tempo of work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With your clients, be transparent to the degree possible.  Communicate early your risks and your schedule variances, mitigate where you can, set appropriate expectations.  If you worked your client appropriately in the beginning, then your client should have already been aware of the risks associated with the chosen deadlines.  Nothing is ever 100% certain; as business people they should know this and understand their deadlines had risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T13:28:11.777" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5632" CreationDate="2012-05-06T18:25:41.807" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking at your question and your comment to David, you actually have two issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first issue is the one you asked - 'how to deal with requests from 'on high'. The second is how your team is handling those requests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your first question, when the requests come in, you need to evaluate how they impact the existing work, and then bring that to management and ask for them to decide priority. &quot;If we take on this new task, our client's project will slip by x days. Is that acceptable, or can this one wait?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second issue - you asked if you should &quot;suggest that the CEO go through PM instead of directly to the developers.&quot; This suggests a break in the appropriate chain of command. Yes, the CEO should be going through the PM with new requests, but if he's not, then the developers should be going to the PM and letting them know if a new task was requested. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As David said, let the CEO know how his actions are affecting his company. If he's taking you (the PM) out of the process, then he's not letting you do your job, which in the long run is costing him and the company money. Explain that 'all' requests, internal and external ned to come through the PM so they can be evaluated against the current work in progress. It' sonly in this way can you ensure that the critical things are done on time, and it's the ONLY way to avoid scope creep (which equals lost revenue).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T18:25:41.807" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5632" CreationDate="2012-05-06T18:30:29.797" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to sit down with the CEO and tell him exactly the same you told us? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he keeps sending adhoc requests to your teams, you don't have other choice than mark &lt;strong&gt;him as a risk&lt;/strong&gt; and schedule the customer projects accordingly: less resources for the customer and more for the adhoc situations. &lt;strong&gt;Be honest with him, and discuss the situation&lt;/strong&gt;. I don't know him, but based on my experience, CEOs are reasonable persons: if you tell them that their actions may risk customer deliveries they are open for suggestions and change their way of working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other way is to understand the circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why he asks your teams to do these tasks?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are those tasks necessary for the projects?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who funds these tasks?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What would happen if you down prioritize these tasks?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;+1: no matter what happens, never ever tell the customer about these issues. It is something internal and you and your company may look bad if you tell the customer that you will deliver later because of your CEO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T18:30:29.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5636" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-06T19:57:08.940" Score="2" ViewCount="81" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to organise a podcast with some friends, with a gradual release schedule. We're about 6 people who meet up personally, but we can't get productive enough in our meetups, so we decided to use online solutions for sharing our speech's sketches and similar things, all regarding the podcast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Until today, the only thing we have seriously tried is Google's collaborative tools, but they seem to be really distracting, and way too complex for the kind of organisation we need, which is rather simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What software should I use to interact with all the colaborators, including occasional guests (having in mind that not all of them are tech-savvy)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3902" LastEditorUserId="3902" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T20:35:18.193" LastActivityDate="2012-05-07T09:02:54.410" Title="How should I organise my podcast project?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2012-06-28T08:51:02.627" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5636" CreationDate="2012-05-06T21:20:03.690" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;During the last couple of years (enterprise and startup) the google docs + skype was the best combination I've used and seen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T21:20:03.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5631" CreationDate="2012-05-07T02:14:57.930" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I were in your shoes, I would surely feel the need to track any changes made to the spec. When the client reviews what you have and makes changes, whether they be additions or removals, it would be wise to clearly document this, as it's very possible that all stakeholders representing &quot;the client&quot; may not be all on the same page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, if the client's people doing the reviewing are in a different department than the client's people who drafted the original spec, there could be a misunderstanding later on as to why features A, B, and C weren't implemented when they were clearly listed in the original spec drafted by the client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage of having a matrix, or some other documentation highlighting the changes, is that you could have this sent out to all stakeholders for review, including other contacts you may have that work for the client and internal stakeholders, such as executives, other project managers with a stake in the project, and developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may be an overkill, but I'm not familiar with your company culture or the client's company culture. However, it's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-05-07T02:14:57.930" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2496" CreationDate="2012-05-07T08:06:14.750" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I have understood from your question is, &quot;Do we need project managers and project associate when there is a well established tool that serves the purpose?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My answer is, yes, you need a Project Manager and Project Associates. The company has to decide how many Project Managers and Project Associates are required. If you believe that your projects are small and manageable with small numbers then you can go ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project Managers are required as they drive the projects through fully. A tool is then driven with human knowledge and common sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without this human knowledge and the applicatio of common sense, no tool is great! There is one casual quote on tools; a fool with a tool is still a fool. So tools just enablee the workflow and kee track of what is being done. Project Managers decide how to use your tool efficiently and make decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, coming to Project Associates. They are required to do the task follow-ups - low level, low complexity activities. Again, the size matters. To decide how many resources you need for these project management activities then you have to use some simulation methods. One of the best simulation methods is Monte Carlo Simulation. This helps you in understanding the right resource level and future needs. Predication modeling enables you to understand the current state and design your future state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3904" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2012-10-21T11:03:49.847" LastActivityDate="2012-10-21T11:03:49.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5636" CreationDate="2012-05-07T09:02:54.410" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;a shared &lt;strong&gt;Dropbox&lt;/strong&gt; (or similar service) might be an alternative. With the desktop client, is syncs between the service and each individuals computer, so everybody has all info readily available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2012-05-07T09:02:54.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5632" CreationDate="2012-05-07T13:16:41.193" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would you consider to push back the client deadline to work&#xA;  immediately on the CEO request? Usually the CEO requests are 1day-1&#xA;  week tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This really depends, but in general no I wouldn't.  Here is why.  Ultimately, your client is the one who generates income for your company.  No client, no business.  Yes, it's the CEO, but unless there is a specific reason for him bumping client requests, then it needs to go through the proper channels.  If you make clients angry by pushing deadlines, then eventually they are going to go someplace else.  It makes you and the company look bad by not being able to deliver something you promised. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would you try and explain to the CEO that their requests must follow&#xA;  the same workflow as a client request?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes I would.  Now sometimes the CEO just won't listen, but in truth if you phrase it in terms of this is is going to affect the relationship with our clients, then he should understand.  Processes exist for a reason, and the CEO should understand and respect that.  Now if the CEO complete ignores this idea, then it's time to think about finding a new job.  The company won't exist for an extended period of time with a mentality like that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3872" LastActivityDate="2012-05-07T13:16:41.193" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5642" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-07T15:23:33.500" Score="7" ViewCount="5579" Body="&lt;p&gt;When setting up a project, what are the advantages and disadvantages to using Summary Tasks vs Detail tasks as predecessors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it matters, I am experimenting with MS Project 2010 as a tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T18:55:04.933" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T18:55:04.933" Title="Should Summary Tasks or Detail Tasks be Predecessors?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5642" CreationDate="2012-05-07T15:40:14.790" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personal preference, but for me, I only group them by like kind (summary to summary, detail to detail). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary tasks are seen as separate work packages, ie: they summarize all of the tasks necessary to complete that particular part of the project. So if I link a Summary task to anything, it will be to another summary task (work package).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also helps in the rollup view, as I can see how the various summaries (work packages) link together, with no linkages lost in the view.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-05-07T15:40:14.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3256" CreationDate="2012-05-07T16:15:46.337" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;After reading the whole question and the answers so far, I can find no reason not to suggest &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Atlassian's Jira&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it's paid software, but it really is worth the price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latest version I used (&lt;em&gt;v4&lt;/em&gt;) had a fancy interface, was straightforward enough for our clients and enough customization for our management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe it's worth your time to take a look at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="4518" LastEditDate="2012-08-28T16:00:05.927" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T16:00:05.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5642" CreationDate="2012-05-07T16:24:10.507" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I second Trevor's answer but would remove 'personal preference.'  The schedule logic rests at your leaf level of the decomposition.  Everything that matters to you as a PM occurs at this level; at the summary levels, things become hidden and your critical path becomes clugy.  If you mix your predecessor-successor logic between levels, you will, not may, lose sight of accrued variances.  They will not surface until later and you want to know these things earlier.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-05-07T16:24:10.507" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5646" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-07T16:32:23.420" Score="10" ViewCount="2667" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently my company insists that the PM should be strongly engaged in sales activities like writing offers, negotiating with clients, supervising the sales process.&#xA;Sometimes it happens that the PM leads the process from client request to order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the one hand it is good because when the project is starting PM knows what kind of work it will be, and also he develops his skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, such operations sometimes interfere with actual PM's work, forcing him to do tasks, which in my opinion does not fall within the competence of Project Manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if it's a good direction in PM's work, and how common it is in the IT industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is it correct / valuable to have the Project Manager also conducting sales activities for the same project? What are the benefits or caveats on this approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2955" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2012-06-14T12:42:52.200" LastActivityDate="2015-11-25T17:39:19.363" Title="Project Management and sales activities" Tags="&lt;roles&gt;&lt;sales&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5646" CreationDate="2012-05-07T16:44:42.017" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PM role should not be selling.  But the individual who occupies such a role will likely also occupy a sales role, too.  A one trick pony is no longer a relevant or an appropriate type of employee in today's competitve work environment.  If you are not selling, there is no work for a PM to do.  If this individual does not have the competence to play in the sales cycle, then (s)he is no longer competitve.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-05-07T16:44:42.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5632" CreationDate="2012-05-07T17:00:07.617" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, no problem, we can do those tasks for you :)&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then ask them just to direct such requests through you - or at the very least cc you -  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, ask them to &lt;em&gt;please answer just one question:-&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Which of the current client task(s) / deadline(s) should I adjust in light of&#xA;  this new work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This puts the emphasis back on them to make a 'real' decision (one that takes into account all factors, not just an immediate desire).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not 'just' hire more staff, because they will get new scheduled tasks and the CEO will likely just do the same, interrupting them in the same way.  More staff can certainly help, but only in conjunction with other changes, especially things going through you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2602" LastEditorUserId="2602" LastEditDate="2012-05-07T17:05:19.083" LastActivityDate="2012-05-07T17:05:19.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5646" CreationDate="2012-05-07T17:10:00.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tend to agree with David, that nowadays we need to do all at once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I see a point (not specifically a caveat, but something similar) to be taken into account when going for this model (as far as I can see): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Usually salesman is the person who tells the client that a couple of people will do magic in  half a month, while the PM is the person to halt and remember that the work will take at least 4 people and also doubling estimations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, having the sales person also managing projects will make projects being sold less attractive (mainly because they'll be more realistic than optimistic) BUT also with higher chances to meet the agreements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-05-07T17:10:00.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5439" CreationDate="2012-05-07T21:42:26.437" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project managers should focus on the management of time an resources to meet the deadline. I would think no matter what the discipline, a PM should be able to rate how team members participate in project initiation (did they participate), how well they plan (did their lack of planning or lack of skill in planning adversely affect schedule) did they execute (did their estimates match their actual output or burn down rate?) and how well they monitor and control (correct work within their area of influence) and did they close out the project properly (commit lessons learns, submit final contractual deliverables, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the premise and specifics of your question to the area of software development (number of bugs, etc.) is, I think, wrong minded. PMs should focus on the areas of discipline they know. While I think as a team there could be metrics defined that match the PM knowledge areas (e.g., classic PMI knowledge areas &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;mapped to whatever the programming team&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; thinks makes a matching metric for that area) I would avoid influencing and managing a programmer or programming team unless you were teaming and part of the team affected by the measurement(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3910" LastActivityDate="2012-05-07T21:42:26.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5646" CreationDate="2012-05-08T03:24:56.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the industry, and how you define 'sales'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a construction PM, I have always been involved in the bidding/estimating, and contract negotiation process. Part of this reason is that I have the expertise and past experience in the construction process that the sales/business dev guys may not. The second, and most important, is that once the contract is negotiated and signed, I'm the one that has to live with it and bring the project in per the terms. My being involved insures that I'm in agreement with what we're committing to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;True that this may not be a direct comparison, but it illustrates that sometimes there are a lot of overlaps between the PM's job and the other processes involved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T03:24:56.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5652" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5656" CreationDate="2012-05-08T13:43:27.900" Score="0" ViewCount="6948" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a list of tasks, each measured in days. The hours-per-day setting on the project is incorrect. When I update it, the tasks change accordingly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is that it's only the hours-per-day that is wrong; the length of each task is correct in terms of days, so I do not want it to change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;8 hours per day:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Example task - 2 days&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Change to 7 hours per day:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Example task - 2.29 days //undesired&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's many tasks so updating them individually is obviously impractical. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3912" LastEditorUserId="3912" LastEditDate="2012-05-09T14:16:43.193" LastActivityDate="2012-05-09T14:16:43.193" Title="How do I change hours-per-day without affecting existing tasks?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5652" CreationDate="2012-05-08T15:24:41.767" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Change your task to fix duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T15:24:41.767" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5646" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:36:14.273" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I consider it beneficial when the PM is deeply involved in the sales process.  Quotes, contracts and statements of work all define the environment in which the project will be done and therefore what the PM will be dealing with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being able to be part of it from the beginning increases the chances of being successful.&#xA;Here is a short blog post speaking specifically to being &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vertabase.com/blog/dont-leave-contracts-to-the-lawyers/&quot;&gt;involved with contracts&lt;/a&gt;, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T16:36:14.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5652" CreationDate="2012-05-08T17:00:06.070" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I copied the task duration column to excel and multiplied by appropriate factor to undo the operation project applied, then copied it back. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3912" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T17:00:06.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5628" CreationDate="2012-05-08T18:49:39.823" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For my purposes Project's network diagrams are not very user-friendly. I've found it much more helpful to create my own (e.g. in Project). Although this can be laborious, it has the distinct advantage of forcing you to go through your schedule line-by-line and identify all the inter-relationships between tasks. I can't tell you how many errors I've found  (i.e. wrong/illogical/missing successors/predecessors) in complex Gantt charts that have slipped past any number of reviewers just by creating network diagrams manually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T18:49:39.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5658" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-09T14:06:22.593" Score="7" ViewCount="2013" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a PMO project coach, I am often asked to review the time schedule of projects. Some are detailed schedules in MS Project while some are high level (capacity) planning in a spreadsheet. There are waterfallish types of projects, as well as projects using sprint planning, like (Scrum) or Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though few projects are alike, I try to be objective by reviewing the following items:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Exhaustive WBS and scope: Is there a big chance on surprises or big changes?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How reliable are the estimates?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resource availability checked.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any external dependencies?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have other risks and risk mitigation plans been taken into account?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The overall aim of course is to improve predictability and coach junior or new PMs with best practices. But all this doesn't come cheap, and I need to be able to scale this process (although the number of projects is growing, current staffing of the PMO needs to remain constant). So short of rebuilding the schedules myself, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What would be a standardized, minimal and methodical check for a schedule review?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would it be possible to assign a score or metric, some kind of quality evaluation of the schedule that could serve as an early warning sign?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And finally, is there an easier way to compare the original plan against what actually happened (analysing the five bullets above, taking into account the impact of changes and management decisions), without getting lost in the finer details of project life but good enough to be used as Lessons Learned? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hmm, now that I have written out this question, I am even more skeptical :-).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-14T03:02:57.797" LastActivityDate="2012-06-14T03:02:57.797" Title="Project schedule reviews" Tags="&lt;quality-management&gt;&lt;pmo&gt;&lt;schedule&gt;&lt;reviews&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5631" CreationDate="2012-05-09T14:20:22.803" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is fairly common with government contracts as they use a lot of 'boilerplate' specs for tenders, and then adjust as the project progresses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really what you want is the Change Control process that the tender describes. Requests for Change, Requests for Information, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure that your contract is clear on who has the ability to sign off on changes, and who's approval is needed to implement those changes. Then, as you find these gaps, send a Request for Clarification to get some direction, and once you've got that, send a Request for Change to document the approved change/discrepancy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This process, while lengthy, provides you as the contractor three distinct advantages - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It gives you a way to formally inform the client of the gaps you're finding&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It gives you clarification as to what's really wanted&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It provides a paper trail of the decisions made, and who made them&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having done a number of government projects over the years, the only real way to handle it and protect yourself it to make sure that EVERY decision is documented with the correct signature. The Tender specs may be loose, but the Contractual and Procedures specs most definitely aren't. Any change you make from the original request that isn't documented will be treated a s deviation from the contract and you will be required to correct it at your expense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry if this sounds alarmist, but on some projects I have literally spent years arguing over the wording in a single line in the contract in order to get paid for work performed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-05-09T14:20:22.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5658" CreationDate="2012-05-09T14:31:54.833" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think you can assign a metric that would hold or be useful against all of the project types, but I think you're list here is a good start for the review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would use a checklist with your five points, delving a little deeper into each one - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WBS - show how the WBS was arrived at, who had input, why was it structured that way, etc? This will give the PM's some insight into the process and may point to gaps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimates - how were they estimated, do they include O,ML,P ranges, is this work that's been done before or new tech, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on. I think that if you build a simple checklist, and then have the PMO run through it with the PM providing answers and supporting info as to how the schedule was built you'll get a good read on the reliability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for Lessons Learned - best practice there is to do it at the end of each phase and compare actual to planned (both schedule and plan), and document as you go. That way decisions are fresh in the mind, and lessons learned on hase 1 may be able to be implemented on Phase 3 to avoid similar issues. At the end of the project it's really too late for LL. Everyone's spent, trying to move on, and if it didn't go well they're looking for where to pass the buck. Get the lessons before there's that protective need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-05-09T14:31:54.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5658" CreationDate="2012-05-09T15:51:50.257" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A standard approach to conduct audits will quickly turn into a useless control that everyone will be scared to stop using but no one will use the data from it.  If I were you, I'd develop my audit approach consistent with the goal I am after as well as the project and its unique set of issues and risks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can see a checklist to sort of bang any project against at the highest level, but any depth of analysis would require a unique approach, in my opinion.  And it is NOT cheap; therefore, you would want a unique approch in order to get the biggest bang for every audit dollar spent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-05-09T15:51:50.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5658" CreationDate="2012-05-09T17:44:11.087" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a high level review I would compare the amount of uncertainty against the amount of &quot;buffer&quot; in the schedule. More specifically, how much room is built in before scope x needs to be delivered by date y.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This relies heavily on experience and a general feel for the range of what could go wrong and a feel for stakeholder tolerance/parameters to accept change in the schedule, scope, cost...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-05-09T17:44:11.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5663" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5666" CreationDate="2012-05-10T07:21:03.437" Score="8" ViewCount="1277" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the situation in our office and I would need a recommendation which tool to you to facilitate our work. At the moments, things are slowly slipping out of my hands. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we have:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;many projects with its own tasks  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;many people working simultaneously on multiple projects and tasks  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;people are paid per project and per tasks, but we also have internal milestones  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to track all of this? Which tool to use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please let me know if you need more details as I am not sure what else to say. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3922" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2012-05-10T12:02:08.563" LastActivityDate="2012-07-08T20:35:43.767" Title="Tool suggestion to manage multiple projects / people working on several projects at once?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2012-07-09T17:15:34.077" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5663" CreationDate="2012-05-10T08:54:59.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From your description it follows that the tool itself is not enough. You need to implement a project management methodology. You can then select the appropriate tools to support established processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case the most suitable is agile approach as Scrum or Kanban.&#xA;People are paid for tasks and projects, so with this approach, engagement should be very good. In addition, dividing the work into areas you'll be able to manage the involvement of individuals in separate projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to tools, it is good to start the simplest, like todo lists, schedules, simple charts. But in my opinion the best tool is an taks board (both physical and electronic). Properly constructed allows a very efficient way to present the state of the project, and information about the time of implementation, priorities and other key indicators can help monitor what is happening and to draw conclusions for the next stages of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the management, You will need tools such as MS Project, or any other offering similar functionality. Here you can track the progress of the project, and plan many different scenarios.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can see that there is a big challenge in front of you - good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2955" LastActivityDate="2012-05-10T08:54:59.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5663" CreationDate="2012-05-10T10:21:10.420" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use the humble MS Excel to track projects, tasks and resources. With a few formulas and/or pivot tables you should be able to see a variety of reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3459" LastActivityDate="2012-05-10T10:21:10.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5663" CreationDate="2012-05-10T11:30:30.707" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your situation &lt;strong&gt;I would use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zsoltfabok.com/blog/tag/kanban/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt; and a physical board&lt;/strong&gt; for visualizing the current situation.  Have a look at this board (I don't have a good picture at the moment so I'm using &lt;a href=&quot;http://davidjellison.wordpress.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;David Jellison&lt;/a&gt;'s board):&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/52ful.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the left side you can see the new work items. The rows are the so called &quot;&lt;em&gt;swim lanes&lt;/em&gt;&quot; and they define projects. So &lt;strong&gt;you can track multiple projects at the same time&lt;/strong&gt;. The different colors represent different kind of tasks. I think the rest is self-explanatory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since all the available information is there it is very easy to know &lt;strong&gt;what is going on&lt;/strong&gt;. You can extend your board with &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zsoltfabok.com/blog/2010/06/more-kanban-numbers&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;avatars&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; so that you can see &lt;strong&gt;who is doing what&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1PfQ7.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see two colleagues were working on two different tasks when the picture was taken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If people are paid per finished task, just &lt;strong&gt;write their name on the work item&lt;/strong&gt; and sum them up at the end of week. This is what I'm doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-05-10T11:30:30.707" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5632" CreationDate="2012-05-10T16:52:36.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try showing the CEO a list of all the projects and tasks the teams are working on and ask him to provide guidance on how to prioritize them, including the most recent tasks that he may have requested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-05-10T16:52:36.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5668" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5669" CreationDate="2012-05-10T18:12:00.183" Score="7" ViewCount="278" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my understanding, planning poker involves the development team or the executors of the project and the project manager or the project owner. I recently had a debate with our project manager on this issue about whether or not to include a client in this activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the arguments for both sides:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cons:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I advocated against this because i feel if a client is in the room there is the possibility of changing our estimates and making them more optimistic than they are because the client is in the room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pros:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if the client is in the room they could provide and clear up requirements and let them understand the process and the value it could provide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My Question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, my question is the following. In the best interests of estimation accuracy (i know it is almost impossible to be accurate), which it be best to include a client on this activity or preclude them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;edit by said PM: Should be noted that in this case the client is both the project owner and sponsor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1253" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2012-07-19T06:08:37.267" LastActivityDate="2012-07-19T06:08:37.267" Title="Should a client/customer be in the room or participating during planning poker?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;customer&gt;&lt;planning-poker&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5668" CreationDate="2012-05-10T18:35:03.523" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regardless the methodology used for estimates, I wouldn't suggest to have the client involved in the process of estimations. Some further reasons, besides the ones you mentioned:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Clear up  requirements:&lt;/em&gt; Estimation meetings are long enough only discussing about estimates. Discussing the cleanliness of a requirement would only add another level of complexity in the meeting. I'd say that's better to take note of the requirements that aren't clear and discuss in an appropriate meeting with the client.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Time wasted&lt;/em&gt;: No one likes to waste time. The client is likely to get upset with some discussions going back and forth about things that are 'obvious' from a business perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Estimations biased&lt;/em&gt;: Having a senior client in the room may compromise the estimates for several reasons, like shyness of junior developers raising points they may not be sure how relevant are. Besides, who'd say 'padding' having the client in the meeting room?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Point of view&lt;/em&gt;: The client sees the final product, and you guys are thinking of the whole project. How can both things be discussed, and what value would it add? I've never been invited to discuss about the structure of the car I'm intended to buy... but I clearly know the characteristics I want to have in the car. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of other reasons, and I'm looking forward to see other peer's opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-05-10T18:35:03.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5668" CreationDate="2012-05-10T18:55:08.233" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the team is mature enough to not be influenced by the presence of the client in the room, sure, why not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You overstate the value of the client in the room for the sake of better defining requirements. Estimates are guesses and you're not going to get a lot of value out of being slightly better at guessing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2628" LastActivityDate="2012-05-10T18:55:08.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5668" CreationDate="2012-05-10T21:30:18.787" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that if you have a Product Owner that is the true representative of the business, then you would not need the &quot;client&quot; in the room.  However, this would be the pure definition of a product owner, one that is dedicated to the prioritization and understanding of the product (read: SME).  This person should have enough information to answer any question that the team has for them and if not, how would one be able to truly estimate the size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concern about involving the &quot;client&quot; (again i put these in quotes, because the product owner can be viewed as the client) would be wasting time during the estimation process by thinking about additional ideas.  If this is the case, I'd skip the story and move on to the next one that can be fully defined :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="913" LastActivityDate="2012-05-10T21:30:18.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5668" CreationDate="2012-05-10T21:59:19.797" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The term client suggests a buyer-seller relationship. If there is a contractual relationship with a monetary transaction, then the client has zero business in the estimation process. The client would wisely conduct its own estimation process to prepare for negotiations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To include them is like playing poker with your cards faced up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-05-10T21:59:19.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5563" CreationDate="2012-05-11T01:58:05.227" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your formula modification is a bit off, since I got:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LOC = [P(n * t&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;)&lt;sup&gt;1/3&lt;/sup&gt;] / B&lt;sup&gt;1/3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3928" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2012-10-15T13:21:14.223" LastActivityDate="2012-10-15T13:21:14.223" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5668" CreationDate="2012-05-11T12:53:58.107" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You probably should not have the client in the room, Tiago and David have given some good reasons for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you do need to have user/client interests represented in some way in order to make sure assumptions around the estimates are reasonable, contractual requirements are met, etc. Ideally whoever the representative(s) have a clear understanding of the business case as well as technical requirements. Their role wouldn't be to veto estimates or massage them into something palatable (&quot;The client will not like that&quot; syndrome), but to help raise flags, start discussions to find solutions, and proactively come up with answers to likely client questions on the estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-05-11T12:53:58.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5668" CreationDate="2012-05-11T14:36:16.050" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have said - No, the client should not be in the room or involved in the estimation or planning process. Those are internal processes that should be done by those actually 'doing' the work, and who have the experience and expertise to make those estimates. Regardless of the relationship between the team and the client, the team will feel some sort of pressure to estimate on the optimistic side if the client is in the room. If the client is actually 'involved' in the discussion it will be even worse, as they will undoubtably attempt to skew the estimates lower. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, this doesn't mean the client can't or shouldn't have a say in the final decision. This is known as 'value engineering' in other domains. Once the planning poker is finished and the estimates and total duration are known for the current requirements, then you can (and should) go back to the client and show them the results. Let them see what can/can't be done, and how long it will take. At that point, they then have the option of modifying the requirements if they need something faster or different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a routine process in many projects, especially construction. Once the estimate and schedule are completed from the original drawings/blueprints, it's not uncommon for the Owner to say &quot;is there any way for us to cut the time or budget?&quot; At that point the contractor can either go back and look at options in-house (substituting materials, new methods, etc.) and revising the estimate, or include the Owner in discussing options and things to either modify or eliminate to reach their goals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key here though is that you have to start from a base estimate where you're sure that if the client syas 'go ahead', you can complete as promised. And the only way to get there is to have those doing the work, and only those doing the work doing the estimates. For me, this has also meant excluding our sales or account reps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-05-11T14:36:16.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5663" CreationDate="2012-05-11T21:00:52.507" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming I'm reading the situation correctly, I'm going to follow a bit on Pawel's response, and say that you may be putting the cart before the horse. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you might first need to wrap your arms around the projects and priorities, and then find a way to better allocate the tasks based on priorities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you start managing multiple projects, make sure that you have a solid plan for each project as a stand-alone entity. Once you have those, then you can start merging them and adjusting priorities based on how the various milestones (internal &amp;amp; external) interact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do this, then figure out where you are in relation to this plan for each of the projects (current state), and what remains (should be). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From there, allocate tasks based on this plan. Don't let external demands dictate the work process. I realize that some of your people are paid per task, but I would stay away from letting their availability dictate when tasks are released. That's the fastest way to lose control, and it makes the project planning process pointless. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've done this, pretty much any tool will help you track these. The kanban board is a good suggestion, provided the project complexity and resource allocation between projects isn't too restrictive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if I've misread the situation, I apologize in advance. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-05-11T21:00:52.507" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5668" CreationDate="2012-05-12T04:22:14.850" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From my understanding, planning poker involves the development team or the executors of the project and the project manager or the project owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on what exactly you mean by planning. If you're in the requirements gathering phase where you're meeting with the client to document what they want, then obviously you'll want the client to be there. This should of course have nothing to do with estimates as no one technical has actually had any significant time to actually sit down and calculate real estimates (not &quot;gut-feeling&quot; estimates)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the development team is meeting with the PM to determine estimates or how to proceed in turning the functional requirements into working code, then the client shouldn't be involved in this. This activity is technical in nature and is the job of the development team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-05-12T04:22:14.850" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5678" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-12T13:55:54.443" Score="2" ViewCount="6404" Body="&lt;p&gt;Within my projects I would like to have two different notions of time for a task:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many hours of actual work the task is expected to take&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A time frame for the task that the above hours should be done in&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My reasoning behind this is that the people working on these tasks should be very loosely managed and have a lot of independence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general time frame will allow me to use the start date as a way to remind them of the tasks, and check in with them to make sure that they can meet the end date. I also figure the general time frame will allow me to leverage the convenience of auto scheduling. The actual work hours will make sure that I am not asking to much from any one person at a time (across multiple projects).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a more proper vocabulary for what I am describing here?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can I do this with MS Project 2010?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accepting the idea of loose management as a correct premise, is there anything beyond that from what I am describing that could be a major pitfall with this methodology.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-09T16:37:06.557" LastActivityDate="2018-11-09T16:37:06.557" Title="How to have the time a task would take and duration for a task in MS Project 2010?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5678" CreationDate="2012-05-12T14:40:56.357" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are describing the difference between &quot;work&quot; and &quot;duration&quot;.  Work is in hours, and is typically the target number of hours that will be burned doing direct work for that task.  Duration is a period of time, typically in days, in which that task is to be done.  Therefore, you can have a task in which you estimate 40 hours of work, but you are estimating a duration of three weeks.  That could be because you only have part time resources, or you have dependencies where you have downtime, or you are simply choosing to schedule in such a manner for whatever other business reason you may have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When it comes to Microsoft Project 2010:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In the task view, duration is already there and is described as: &quot;The total span of Working Time&quot;. The &quot;Work&quot; column can be added by right clicking the column and choosing &quot;Work&quot; which is described as &quot;The Work field shows the total amount of time scheduled on a task for all assigned resources, the total amount of time to which a resource is scheduled on all assigned tasks, or the total amount of time scheduled for a resource on a task.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="2" LastEditDate="2012-05-13T01:01:23.900" LastActivityDate="2012-05-13T01:01:23.900" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5681" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5682" CreationDate="2012-05-13T11:16:57.467" Score="13" ViewCount="6031" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a scrum master I will join new development team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some additional information about environment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The team works iteratively, but they don't do any retrospectives,&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Previous scrum master (I'd rather say project manager) was quite authoritative,&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The product owner is also the direct boss to all team members at the same time. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was present on a few standups as a guest and have some reflections on it; thus, I would like to ask the team some questions about it. This is why I want to introduce retrospective meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I informed the product owner -- the boss of the team members -- that I'd like to spend 1 hour weekly on such meetings. He agreed. I also told him that retrospectives are for the team and he doesn't have to be present on all meetings. Then he didn't agree. He wants to be present on all meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion his presence may cause retrospectives to be biased - people will not behave naturally, hiding some information for political reasons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I right? What are important repercussions of such a configuration? What should I be aware of? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-05-13T19:09:15.483" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T01:32:18.413" Title="Should Product Owner be present on all retrospectives?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5681" CreationDate="2012-05-13T11:34:25.647" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the book the product owner shall be present on the retrospectives, because he can provide very valuable information how the team performs from a business perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your fear is valid: if the boss is around the team members won't behave naturally and most probably &lt;strong&gt;their findings or ideas will favor the boss' expectations&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could have a pre-conversation with him and &lt;strong&gt;be his proxy to the team&lt;/strong&gt;. You tell his findings and observations the team, but I'm pretty certain that he shouldn't be there at this time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got the impression that your organization is open for a change. If I were you I would tell my boss to be a proxy for a while and when the team is a good Scrum Team and can find improvements and implement them, then he can join a couple of meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;+1: most probably &lt;strong&gt;there is a reason why your boss wants to be at that meeting&lt;/strong&gt;. Try to find out why. If you know his motivation you have the information you need to talk him out of being in the meeting. For example, my old managers lost the trust in my teams and I had to spend some time with the teams to build up the trust again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-05-13T11:34:25.647" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5681" CreationDate="2012-05-13T11:47:01.227" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many ways to facilitate these and you have to choose the one, or a combination, that suits your environment and culture.  No single answer exists.  By excluding a role, you are introducing another type of bias.  So you fix one bias, introduce another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find another way to solicit information if your culture is such that your team may filter their thoughts.  Capture up front information anonymously, perhaps, so that those piece of information that might be filtered will pass through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This requires strong facilitation and ground rules.  Everyone needs to be clear that the good, bad, and ugly must come out for the overall benefit of the project.  So it would be your job as facilitator to ensure that no one gets bashed for being honest.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-05-13T11:47:01.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5681" CreationDate="2012-05-13T18:08:25.447" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have said, there are many ways to structure the core meetings in a Scrum environment.  I am a Product Owner and the overall manager of the development group (among others) although there is a &quot;team lead&quot; between me and the developers (he is also the Scrum Master).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Product Owner, I am present for all Sprint Retrospectives.  It is important for me to be there because when the team discusses the Three Questions (what worked well, what didn't work well, what should we start doing), I need to listen and ensure that I know what to continue doing that worked well, what to change if something didn't work well and it's my fault, and to ensure that I am aware of something that will be starting (if I can help the Scrum Master facilitate the change, or adjust my expectations, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in my organization, the answer to &quot;Should Product Owner be present in all retrospectives&quot; is &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt; because it adds to the continue trust-building and overall product/team cohesiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That may or may not be the case in other organizations. In the situation you are entering, even though there are many ways to do Scrum, I am going to venture to guess that the team is not very cohesive and probably does not function as well as it could, because of the lack of retrospectives and a previous authoritative Scrum Master. The latter is a big problem; a Scrum Master is to be a facilitator and a trust-builder rather than a task-master.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that your team is likely not used to working in a trusted, open, honest environment where problems can be aired and solutions found, your concern that &quot;people will not behave naturally hiding some information for political reasons&quot; is valid &lt;em&gt;but that would be independent of the product owner being there&lt;/em&gt;.  In other words, without strong facilitation and understanding that the retrospective is ultimately &lt;em&gt;for them&lt;/em&gt;, I doubt that the Product Owner being there or not would change the likelihood that the team responds honestly and openly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/5682/2864&quot;&gt;Zsolt's statement&lt;/a&gt; that there's likely a good reason the Product Owner wants to be at this retrospective -- and the change of Scrum Masters is a good hint as to why.  However, even if there &lt;em&gt;wasn't&lt;/em&gt; a good reason, to my mind he should be there anyway.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a great opportunity to reset the way that the team functions -- good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2864" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2012-05-13T18:08:25.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5632" CreationDate="2012-05-14T03:00:15.263" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most CEOs would love for their organization to be able to give them trade-offs involved with decisions.  They prefer to decide by data versus hunch.  Most organizations lack the Project and Program Management maturity to do this.  &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;If&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; you have one of these CEOs, you need to be ready with information.  Be organized, and show what the cost of the request is.  Be up front to them, and show what damage to the existing projects&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If your CEO does not want data&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; then you need to find ways to influence them early on before the decisions get made.  Perhaps it's just a more political organization, but you have to deal with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In both cases&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; you need to plan for this.  If you're spending 10% of your time reacting to CEO requests, you need to save 20% of your capacity, because you never know when the request will come from above.  Many times the requests are valid, so it's not reasonable to expect it to never happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-05-14T03:00:15.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5646" CreationDate="2012-05-14T03:03:43.590" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider yourself &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;lucky&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; to be included in pre-Sales discussions.  Most problem projects are set up to fail from the beginning.  Whether it's an unrealistic budget, or forgotten requirements, bad things happen when the PM is not involved in pre-Sales.  You want to be involved in these discussions, and find a way to invest the time for it.  If you save 40 hours by skipping the early pre-signature customer meetings, plan on spending 400 hours down the road.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-05-14T03:03:43.590" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5681" CreationDate="2012-05-14T06:58:32.250" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say PO attendance is &lt;strong&gt;optional&lt;/strong&gt; and whether it is a good idea that he/she participates in the retrospective depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the PO much more senior than the other team members?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the PO very authoritative?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does he/she tend to &quot;occupy&quot;/take control of meetings?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A dedicated PO will of course want to participate in retrospectives, and in the perfect of all worlds, should. However, if it inhibits other team members it might be best for the team if he/she does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; participate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One possibility is to split the retrospective into two parts, and let the PO participate half of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3106" LastActivityDate="2012-05-14T06:58:32.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5688" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5690" CreationDate="2012-05-14T07:55:30.653" Score="2" ViewCount="241" Body="&lt;p&gt;Few days ago, I encountered a new tool that in essence makes people write 5-minute reports every week/month, of which their managers send the important things up to their managers and so on and so forth up untill the CEO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anybody know the name and website? I can't stand that I forgot what it was... :s&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is a tool like that actually beneficial for a project manager?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3938" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-08T20:33:15.987" LastActivityDate="2012-07-08T20:33:15.987" Title="Project management tool that bubbles up from employee to CEO" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-07-09T17:16:13.000" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5681" CreationDate="2012-05-14T12:10:13.207" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Retrospective gathering is a team event (team members + ScrumMaster). &#xA;The general agenda of a Retrospective have three standard points (but not limited to):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What was good in the sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What was bad in the sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can we improve&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Retrospective should be process improvement related and not product related (like Sprint kick-start meeting or Demo meeting). Therefore, the presence of PO is optional. The best choice is that PO should be available and should attend only if it's invited by the team. If the team decides that some process problems needs to be discussed in the presence of the PO then, PO must attend the meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the presence of PO at retrospective inhibit a lot of talk from team members. &#xA;On the other hand, SCM should actively monitor discussions and if they go into PO area without PO presence should moderate and recommend to review the debate in the presence of PO so multiple points of view and opinions to be taken into consideration. All decisions made by the team inside Retrospectives should be transparent inside company, so that everyone could be aware about impediments, commitments and decisions inside the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summing all above, there is no need that PO should be in all Retrospectives but should be available to join when team requests. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3346" LastActivityDate="2012-05-14T12:10:13.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5688" CreationDate="2012-05-14T14:41:05.437" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Was this it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://15five.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://15five.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interesting idea, but in asking EACH employee to do this, then every for 12 employees on a team, the manager has to spend an hour reading the reports, then distilling information. Has some benefits, but could get unwieldy for some depending on number of direct reports. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-05-14T14:41:05.437" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5691" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5698" CreationDate="2012-05-14T17:32:01.290" Score="5" ViewCount="2079" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been assigned as PM to an ongoing project that had a few issues when I started. It looks like these have been resolved but the team will have to review and update the project plan to address changes in scope, delays that have occurred to get to the current state, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've scheduled a couple of initial planning meetings with the key players doing/involved with the work coming up in the short term. I'd like to use the &quot;sticky note&quot; approach to work our way through each of the deliverables, identify their component products, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What recommendations are there for the info to capture on the sticky notes? I'd like to keep what is on each note brief (allows the team to see what is on each from the other side of the room) so was thinking things like Title, Owner, Duration. But how to avoid losing info on predecessors, successors, risks, assumptions, resources, etc which I'm sure will come up during the discussions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-05-15T21:30:47.870" Title="What Information to have on project planning sticky notes?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5691" CreationDate="2012-05-14T21:16:04.360" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Work Breakdown Structure sticky note approach is designed to give you and the team a high-level view of the tasks involved in meeting the goals of the project. This approach is not really designed for lots of details as that would make the notes difficult to read. This would reduce any gains that would otherwise have been made from utilizing this approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general idea of this approach is that you break down tasks into related packages, and each sticky note has the name of a package followed by sticky notes representing broken-down tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, this approach is not designed to convey task details as it is intended to give you and the team a high-level snapshot of all of the tasks required to complete the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a more visual idea of how to approach this planning task, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80c-LRRJ0W8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Planning with Sticky Notes&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-05-14T21:16:04.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5646" CreationDate="2012-05-14T21:32:29.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, I find it very important to be involved in the process of creating an offer and talking to the customer. In many cases a sales representative does not have a complete overview over the project and there are only questions which can come from a tec guy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my eyes the involvement should be limited, though. I don't spend more than an hour for small and not more than 3 hours for larger offers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3766" LastActivityDate="2012-05-14T21:32:29.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5694" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-14T21:36:30.933" Score="1" ViewCount="185" Body="&lt;p&gt;What tools do you use for the whole chain of talking to a customer, creating an offer, doing project planing and actually creating a project within a software so you have a stable work basis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently looking for an integrated solution which is capable of doing each of those tasks.&#xA;In my dreams, such a tool also imports parts of the project planning from the original offer to the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: We are a Linux company, offering a various spectrum of solutions to our customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3766" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-11-23T03:18:41.773" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T03:18:41.773" Title="What tools do you use for creating an offer and project management?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2013-05-04T19:05:48.240" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5691" CreationDate="2012-05-14T21:42:36.923" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;While this suggestion might not satisfy all of your needs, I still recommend to write down the results of your meeting in an Etherpad document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://etherpad.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Etherpad&lt;/a&gt; is a collaboration tool and allows editing a text document simultaneously. We use it for basic project planning, brain storming and keeping track of notes/results of meetings and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need structure in your document, you can use ASCII art, such as &quot;*&quot; for a new menu point or blanks for indentions for marking a new part of the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3766" LastActivityDate="2012-05-14T21:42:36.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5691" CreationDate="2012-05-15T11:18:20.797" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tricky one, if your board is being used for planning and estimation or as a focus for design discussion, I would keep the sticky as brief and salient as possible, eg Social Network Buttons. Get people to go old school and have notepads and pens, get them to jot down what they need to, to describe what is needed or the intent or to ask for aditional information or just a plain old idea. Collect up all the notes and clip them together and stick the sticky on the top and hang then on a washing line once that sticky has been completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3942" LastActivityDate="2012-05-15T11:18:20.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5694" CreationDate="2012-05-15T16:02:33.063" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Probably not the answer you were looking for, but - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I'm sure they may be something out there that incorporates all of those items, I question real usefulness of it. You're talking about a single program or suite that does correspondence, document tracking, scope definition, estimate development, proposal submission, project tracking/gantt charting, resource allocation &amp;amp; management, change control, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's a lot to ask of one suite. Chances are, at least in my experience, that it will 1/3 of those things outstanding, 1/3 okay, and 1/3 horribly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even the larger enterprise level packages can't do it all (at least not well). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion would be to stick with a) what works best for each of those various needs, and b) the ones that you and your team will actually use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-05-15T16:02:33.063" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5691" CreationDate="2012-05-15T16:10:39.993" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some thoughts - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First I would reassess your initial approach. You said that 'your team needed to update things'. As the PM that's not only your job, but something critical that you need to be aware of. So rather than having your team update things to 'current state', I would look at the original plan, and  then track through to where you are now and how you got there. Just having your team update things based on delays and changes and telling you where you are now, with no background or history, is going to leave you hanging if anything else goes south.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;While I'm all for collaboration, as the PM, first focus on the information YOU need, and how you're going to track tasks, predecessors, successors, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once you know where you are and where you're going, and you know how you're going to get that info, then just ask the team what information they would like to see on the stickies. As long as you as the PM have a way to track it for your needs, then you can put whatever info on the stickies that they find helpful/useful. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-05-15T16:10:39.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5694" CreationDate="2012-05-15T20:40:58.367" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering about this question since yesterday, and I'd say that if you get a few answers so far may not be because the question isn't interesting... but is likely that there's no objective answer to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A project is very market-dependent (in my case, our documentation is financial-market focused), and although some companies are likely to have their own templates (as we do), I've never heard about a 'silver bullet' pack of templates to track a project from the scratch till having a deliverable that could fit every market. Besides, these templates are (hopefully) build over several years of company's experience, and I wouldn't say one would simply share this competitive knowledge with the rivals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, &lt;strong&gt;there are several 'concepts'&lt;/strong&gt; (rather than tools) that you might already know &lt;strong&gt;that are quite useful for every project, like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_breakdown_structure&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WBS&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_charter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Charter&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/strong&gt; which are highly valuable when dealing with the customers to clarify things up... but a 'tool' capable of taking inputs in one side and build up the charts on the other side is unlikely to exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, I hope you have other answers (and thus I'm wrong), pointing to specific tools. Otherwise, open an Excel spreadsheet and start working on it. &lt;strong&gt;In the end, the information itself (and not where it is stored) is what matters the most.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-05-15T20:40:58.367" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5700" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5709" CreationDate="2012-05-15T20:53:31.127" Score="5" ViewCount="3079" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a project manager I catalogue a group's tasks, definitions, dependencies, milestones, resources, and similar other elements of a project. The managers use this to report up, estimate project health, and anticipate problems with deadlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This feels like a passive experience. What can a project manager do that adds value beyond simply maintaining the project document?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1547" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T13:27:48.007" Title="How to add value beyond collecting tasks and their dates?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;career&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5691" CreationDate="2012-05-15T21:30:47.870" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A post-it from an old project:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Gy1jk.png&quot; alt=&quot;our post-it&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;id in redmine for more information about the task&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;short description for better understanding and tracking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;statistics after done like spent time and lead time for metrics &amp;amp; improvements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;number of times the task has been rejected + reasons&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;we delivered later than we promised (SLA): warning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;queued, started, done dates - we were doing Kanban&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;original estimation in T-shirt size&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;actual T-shirt size after done for improving our estimation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-05-15T21:30:47.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5700" CreationDate="2012-05-15T22:42:18.970" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you are describing is a Project ENGINEER's job not the Project MANAGER.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the Manager, it's your job to make the client's intended outcome happen. You do this by having a clear understanding up-front of what they want, and then continually monitor progress against what's expected. In doing this you may find ways to improve something, or a way to correct something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One earlier question here was from a PM asking how he should handle a situation where he found a problem that, while not affecting his project, could affect the product of the project several years down the line. That is adding value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have been entrusted with money, time, resources and authority to bring to fruition something they think will benefit them in some way. So focus on being responsible with what they've given you and trying to make sure that the project delivers as hoped. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-03-03T11:08:12.057" LastActivityDate="2016-03-03T11:08:12.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5700" CreationDate="2012-05-16T00:07:44.300" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Get closer to the team and solve their problems &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project Manager's key value addition comes from the fact that she is responsible for ensuring the project's success and in addition to reporting,estimating and highlighting , &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;actually solving the team problems,suggesting/soliciting trade offs to ensure success,managing an efficient budget,keeping the team's and team leader's morale high are some high value tasks which a project manager should do !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastActivityDate="2012-05-16T00:07:44.300" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5646" CreationDate="2012-05-16T01:21:58.920" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having a PM involved in sales and pre-sales engineering is extremely useful for the client, the company, and the PM but I am concerned by this portion of your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the other hand, such operations sometimes interfere with actual PM's work&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this sales related activity has been added as an afterthought to someone who is already fully loaded with work, this could be a very bad idea. Sales related work has urgent deadline after urgent deadline with really unpredictable workflow. That can easily lead to burn out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the company finds the PM involvement useful, they need to add people or shuffle job duties to accommodate the workload.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2012-05-16T01:21:58.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5668" CreationDate="2012-05-16T06:51:04.240" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For an inexperienced PM (which I was that time), having the client in the room was not good because we ended scoring exactly what the client wanted us to score. So, when we said &quot;5&quot;, they said &quot;2&quot;, we always stopped and &quot;2&quot;. In the long term, we had a very poor scoring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But maybe, for an experienced PM it could be a chance...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2915" LastEditorUserId="3397" LastEditDate="2012-05-16T14:36:01.047" LastActivityDate="2012-05-16T14:36:01.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5668" CreationDate="2012-05-16T14:53:02.773" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like the general consensus is that the client should not be in the planning meeting. I really don't understand this - surely in order to have a good planning session you need to understand clearly what is needed. For this wouldn't the client be the perfect person to clarify the stories? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I appreciate that this is supposed to be the role of the Product Owner, but given that there is a client (singular rather than plural) suggests that the project is to deliver something bespoke for a single customer. Having them available during the planning to answer any queries and assist the team getting to the right solution sounds to me like a better match than the Product Owner, who will always be relaying a second hand perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe I have the wrong end of the stick, but I cannot really see any downside to having the client in the room as long as they are made aware of the process you are following so know what to expect. Ultimately the story point estimates are just estimates and are used to help scheduling rather than directly determining the contract end date so I would not be too concerned with the presence of a client affecting the estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the estimates are wildly different between the client and team, and after discussion you are unable to come closer, I would side with the team since they are the people who need to deliver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="788" LastActivityDate="2012-05-16T14:53:02.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5073" CreationDate="2012-05-16T15:33:44.110" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't spent much time checking this but the Atlassian development teams have public Jira systems, some of those must be using the Rapid Board views. Suprisingly, the Greenhopper team do not appear to have any public Rapid Views available from their project site, but I did find some via the Angry Nerds project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://jira.atlassian.com/secure/RapidBoard.jspa?rapidView=96&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://jira.atlassian.com/secure/RapidBoard.jspa?rapidView=96&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can browse all the Atlassian projects &lt;a href=&quot;https://jira.atlassian.com/secure/RapidBoard.jspa?rapidView=96&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; there &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; be some examples of best practice in there, &lt;em&gt;surely&lt;/em&gt; :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="788" LastActivityDate="2012-05-16T15:33:44.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5700" CreationDate="2012-05-16T15:39:58.377" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The real value added by the Project Manager is the running ahead of the team making sure any potential roadblocks are removed before the team stumble on them. This could involve making sure other teams know when to expect your teams deliverables so they are ready, or it could mean making sure stakeholders know how things are going so they don't get suprises. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The collation of the task information and progress is the paperwork side of being a PM that gives you the information needed to do the looking ahead and preparing work as above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a good PM is more about communication than updating Gantt charts&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="788" LastActivityDate="2012-05-16T15:39:58.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5700" CreationDate="2012-05-16T16:27:29.183" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Trevor; it sounds like your role is more of what I think the PMBoK references as a project coordinator or expeditor, or what Trevor captured as the project engineer...not the project manager role at all.  Someone else must be serving in the role but under a different title.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project manager is the leader.  There may not be tactical tasks you can align with the role.  PMs lead, motivate, facilitate, hand-hold, babysit, teach, coach, block, decide, analyze, console, remove, buy...on and on.  Simply put, you know a leader is there when things are being led.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have always opined that the best leaders become more and more bored as the team becomes high performing and the capabilities become mature.  I find a correlation with hard working leaders and a ton of hours with weak capabilities, dysfunctional teams, and general chaos (notwithstanding new teams and new projects, that is!).  So this notion of passivity, under the right circumstances, could be a very good thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-05-16T16:27:29.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5646" CreationDate="2012-05-16T17:56:05.080" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Where I work, 95% of the time a PM is involved with a project as soon as it gets past the point of introducing a prospective client to our company. This includes (at various levels depending on the project) product discovery, requirements gathering / analysis, proposal writing / reviewing, and wrangling estimation (actual estimation is done by developers). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just a few of positive side effects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;better continuity in client interactions, client can talk to the same&#xA;person throughout the life of the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;client's generally feel more comfortable knowing that the people making the promises are those that will have to meet them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;fewer handoffs of knowledge leads to fewer cases of dropped information or corrupted information&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PM is able to bring up questions (and identify risks) early in the discussion process rather than when implementation time comes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PM gets a better feel for the overall shape of the project, more of the &quot;whys&quot; behind requirements, and what the client's true goals are - all of which lead to being able to make better decisions during the life of the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only real downsides:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;we have a harder time filling these roles (whether hiring from outside or training people into the role)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;we have to understand that this extra work does take time (I don't know whether this is truly a &quot;downside&quot; as much as a basic fact)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastActivityDate="2012-05-16T17:56:05.080" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5712" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-16T22:03:56.240" Score="5" ViewCount="197" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the event a manager takes on a particularly ambitious project, it is quite possible s/he has done so with a lack of understanding of the level of expertise or time needed to complete the task. It's also quite possible the manager may not be receptive to the input of a 'naysayer'. As a stakeholder in the performance of said manager, how might you advise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: original question stated &quot;confront&quot; instead of &quot;approach&quot;. I am not implying that I would like advice on how to be confrontational.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3954" LastEditorUserId="3954" LastEditDate="2012-05-18T02:22:56.477" LastActivityDate="2012-05-18T05:41:28.493" Title="How to approach a supervisor about the high risk of failure of his/her project?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;risk&gt;&lt;failure&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5713" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-16T22:30:47.563" Score="2" ViewCount="272" Body="&lt;p&gt;The obvious action would be to not play favorites from the get-go. However, if members of a team voluntarily communicate with their manager at different frequencies/levels, soon enough there will be a self-selected discrepancy in employee engagement. This might not be an issue, but it could sow the seeds of contempt in a workplace under pressure. How to mitigate this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3954" LastActivityDate="2012-05-22T11:53:46.173" Title="How can a manager dispel speculation of favoritism among employees?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5712" CreationDate="2012-05-16T22:34:44.940" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, pointing out a problem is only partially helpful. Suggesting possible solutions usually elicits better responses. So in addition to pointing out the risks, please come up with mitigation plans and contingency plans for each risk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quantifying the probability and impact of the risk will help. Does this project have a project risk register? Have any risks been identified at the time of starting the project? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3459" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-05-18T05:41:28.493" LastActivityDate="2012-05-18T05:41:28.493" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5713" CreationDate="2012-05-16T22:46:44.703" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You've combined two different issues - favoritism and engagement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree that the employees will communicate at different levels and frequencies, leading to more or less engagement. But frequent engagement isn't the same as favoritism. Favoritism can be displayed even in limited engagement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the key is that, regardless of the frequency of engagement, the manager needs to be cognizant of the &quot;quality&quot; and &quot;type&quot; of engagement, and make sure that he/she is being objective in that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even here, nothing is really ever fair and equal. Besides the frequency of engagement, the  team will self-select based on abilities and actions. The manager will have to navigate that bias as well, in the same way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-05-16T22:46:44.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5716" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-17T00:28:34.777" Score="9" ViewCount="2518" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been recently asked to teach Scrum to a graphic design office. Why? Because they want to turn their services into quick deliverable products, and not lose focus on the current project they're working on. They want discipline, commitment and flexibility. So I thought of Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've only read about Scrum so far, I must say. Also, my experience in project management is fairly poor. So I feel a little lost about when and where to apply Scrum procedures to effectively take the best from the framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider we are 4 graphic designers: Who can be the P.O.? The Master? Should I consider parts of a Branding project (Stationery, Identity, Folder, Website, etc.) as different sprints? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can scrum be used in a Graphics design office?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3955" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-12-10T14:17:08.480" LastActivityDate="2018-12-10T14:17:08.480" Title="Scrum approach to Graphic Design office" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;design&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5713" CreationDate="2012-05-17T12:07:54.080" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that whenever favoritism happens, is &lt;strong&gt;because there aren't candid and objective processes&lt;/strong&gt; to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assess people&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allocate people&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build up people&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having that said, any people-related matter is liable for bias, therefore bear in mind that some bias will always exist. Is your duty to reduce it as much as possible, and some &lt;strong&gt;actions could be taken&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get to know the 'outer circle' people&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Evaluate how much value and information the appraisal process currently in place adds &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Think of having lower risk opportunities to work with people you never worked with&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe these are good paths to follow towards lowering bias and all its derivations (favoritism, engagement, commitment... you name it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-05-17T12:07:54.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5712" CreationDate="2012-05-17T12:38:48.393" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;With data.  This is risk management.  Identify the threat, assess its drivers and triggers, analyze its likelihood and downstream impacts, and escalate pursuant to the risk procedures outlined in your project management plan.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are pollyanna personalities out there.  If your PM is one of those, then it is your job to overcome that to the degree possible in a non emotional way.  The other side of that spectrum are those who are constantly negative and are confident the sky will fall at any minute.  Where are you on that spectrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-05-17T12:38:48.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="77" CreationDate="2012-05-17T13:03:04.680" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using the skills described in the other answers (technical ability, leadership, communication, organisational), a project manager must have the ability to focus on the goal of the project, and keep all of the project team also focussed on that goal until it is delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would also include a belief in delivering a product of good to high quality (and using this as motivation for the project team).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3915" LastActivityDate="2012-05-17T13:03:04.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5716" CreationDate="2012-05-17T13:47:43.333" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a little confused as to why you've been asked to teach a method you've only read about, from a field you have limited experience in? Nothing personal against you in particular, but that's usually a recipe for failure. It's one of the reasons so many 'methods' get a black eye - someone with limited experience tries to implement it, and it doesn't work because they didn't know how to do it correctly, then they say 'we tried Scrum/Agile/Lean and it doesn't work&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given how you've described it, I would forget about &quot;Scrum&quot; in name, and instead focus on what in your office needs to change to accomplish their goals (regardless the name). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is primarily a software dev methodology. Unfortunately the Agile/Scrum idea has been co-opted and seen as a general pm methodology. It's not. Certainly you can borrow some of the concepts (iterations, sprints, etc.) but I think what you're looking for is just a better way to manage and complete your projects. That could include tools for, Scrum, Agile, Waterfall, Lean or any number of other pm/management concepts. Don't get hung up on a name or method. Look at what needs to change in your current process to achieve the new goals, and use whatever you can find. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said all of that, if you're still committed to Scrum, then I would suggest finding an experienced coach to teach it correctly. There are too many nuances that are critical to success to think you can do it. I have 20 in the pm world and I understand the Scrum processes, but I wouldn't try to teach it to anyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2012-05-27T10:06:58.543" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T10:06:58.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5722" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5725" CreationDate="2012-05-17T19:26:52.950" Score="2" ViewCount="395" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're a team of 10 developers working in a virtual office. It basically means that we're not located in one office but in different towns and countries. All of us are in the same timezone and only one is in timezone 5 hours ahead of us. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a specific project management methodology for offices like ours?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should you need more info from me, please ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3922" LastActivityDate="2012-06-01T17:44:20.323" Title="Best project management methodology for virtual office" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5712" CreationDate="2012-05-17T22:23:27.227" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That you're using the word &quot;confront&quot; suggests that you expect the manager to be defensive. If you approach with that expectation, it's likely to happen. Do you have any evidence that the manager reacts defensively to the kind of advice you're suggesting? While it's possible that the manager may &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; be receptive, it's also possible that s/he will. What evidence do you have either way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a manager is defensive to feedback and suggestion, that's a different problem to the one you're trying to address, and I would suggest working on that first. If someone is defensive to feedback, this is the &lt;em&gt;most important feedback to give them&lt;/em&gt;, especially for people in management. It's far more risky IMO to have a manager that can't take feedback than to have one with optimism about risk, since the first will lead to the second &lt;em&gt;plus&lt;/em&gt; a whole load of other problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, you can use standard feedback techniques - anchor the things you value about the manager; show the evidence for your concern, including any previous experience you have; explain the impact that makes it your business; and above all, treat it as a journey to the place you want to get to, rather than an argument in which you've already taken one side of a confrontation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2012-05-17T22:23:27.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5722" CreationDate="2012-05-18T00:37:42.363" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Methodologies are usually dictated or necessitated by either the type of project, or the company/PM's, not where you're located. Whether co-located or not, any of the well-known methods across the spectrum can be used, from Agile to a more Command &amp;amp; Control type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What determines the method used it what will get your project done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-05-18T00:37:42.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5722" CreationDate="2012-05-18T06:21:47.560" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Trevor that you can use every methodology, but you have to adapt it to your specific situation - there is no best solution, you should choose one methodology and try to consider how it can work in your team (how you &quot;see&quot; it working). There are many tools that may help you in that case, for instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if you like to have Kanban, then try to use electronic version of the board,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if you need to have stand-ups every day (or for project meetings, poker planning), try to use tool for video-conferences (Cisco Jabber Video for TelePresence, Lync, ...). The advantage of some of the tools is that you can record the session and play it every time you want.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;use any of the instant messengers to talk with people regularly, so they won't feel &quot;forgotten&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The big minus of dispersed team is that face to face mettings are impossible so you  lose all advantages of it. If it is possible, then plan a regular visit to your team members (once a month or rarely).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2939" LastActivityDate="2012-05-18T06:21:47.560" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5726" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-18T14:24:45.953" Score="5" ViewCount="2109" Body="&lt;p&gt;We aren't necessarily using Agile, but we aren't using the Waterfall approach either; it's more of a hybrid of both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was told that Microsoft Project is great for the Waterfall method, but it's not really good to plan out iterative projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any good tools (preferably free) out there to look at?  I do have Project 2010, which is why I'm not looking to spend too much more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3961" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T19:45:36.450" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T19:45:36.450" Title="What is good PM software for an iterative system development approach?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5726" CreationDate="2012-05-18T15:37:00.787" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;MS Project is fine for iterative development as well. We used the 2i model (iterative and incremental) and managed all project plans using MS Project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the specific challenges you are facing with MSP?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3459" LastActivityDate="2012-05-18T15:37:00.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5728" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-18T16:55:52.723" Score="10" ViewCount="271" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming that your team does a great job building its estimates and using a probabilistic approach versus a deterministic approach, and finds that the scope of work will take between 12 to 18 months to complete with their most likely estimate around 14 months, is it better to target closer to the 18 months to build in some degree of assurance of meeting it or would it be better to target closer to 14 or even 13 months...and why?  What are the pros and cons to either the seller or buyer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not one of those questions that has a ready answer and probably violates the rules, but I think it is an interesting and relevant topic to PM worth some debate and argument, so I'm asking it anyways.  :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addendum:  Notwithstanding an initial risk evaluation, is there value in &quot;forcing&quot; a more optimistic target than what one might find comfortable?  Can this be a productive and healthy challenge for the team?  Can this be an effective way to control Parkinson's Law and Student Syndrome?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2012-05-19T12:19:06.383" LastActivityDate="2012-05-21T09:05:38.183" Title="Estimation, Targets, and Performance" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5728" CreationDate="2012-05-18T18:57:21.987" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would probably use either the most likely estimate (14 months) or a weighted average (e.g. PERT = 14.33) as the target with the difference between that and the worst case as project buffer (if in a critical chain environment) or split among tasks as contingency reserves (if in a critical path environment). My logic is that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People have the best of intentions and are usually optimistic in their estimates. Unless you have a lot of supporting data the 14 months is probably a low-ball of the most likely case.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using less than the most likely estimate as a target could demotivate the team (&quot;we told them what we could do but they aren't listening...&quot;) unless they buy into the critical chain environment where target delivery dates assume a 50% likelihood of being met.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fate has evil intentions that conspire against the project so it is better to make everyone aware of the worst case early so that managing expectations later is easier. Inclusion of buffers/reserves gives you date ranges for completion to help with this. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inclusion of buffers/reserves to get date ranges also fits in better with your assumed probabilistic estimation.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-05-18T18:57:21.987" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5728" CreationDate="2012-05-18T21:07:14.823" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would use the 14 month Most Likely estimate, for a few reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anything less puts undue (and unnecessary) pressure on the team. The team gave you the estimates and showed what was 'most likely. Asking for more is essentially saying &quot;we appreciate your input and thoughts, but do it faster&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shrinking the schedule to the Optimistic is ignoring any risks. The Optimistic estimates are &quot;perfect world', and we rarely (never) see that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversely, using the Pessimistic is saying the opposite - that ALL of the risks identified will happen. This isn't realistic, And is also de-motivating. It tells your team that while you appreciate their estimates, you have no real confidence in their abilities to come through as promised. You're expecting the project to go south. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in this instance, I would use the Most Likely, and inform the Owner of the possibility of the Pessimistic, but that your risk management will counter for that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-05-18T21:07:14.823" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5728" CreationDate="2012-05-19T09:32:50.960" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interesting question...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that this can best be answered if you know your customer well, and have a clear understanding of the customer's expectations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the customer expects you to meet your deadlines and will not accept any deviation, then go for the long end of the range... maybe not the full 18 months (as this does assume that all risks will arise), but perhaps somewhere between 14 and 18 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, on the other hand, your customer understands that the estimate is just that, and is prepared to accept time and cost variations if risks come to fruition, then go with the shorter end of the spectrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whichever way you decide, make sure that the team understands the basis of the figures provided to your customer, and don't allow motivation to slip because either &quot;We have plenty time&quot; or &quot;It doesn't matter if we slip - the customer expects that&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2012-05-19T09:32:50.960" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5732" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-19T09:06:51.490" Score="3" ViewCount="89" Body="&lt;p&gt;To create a movie database website for a regional language industry, I would like to know whats the best way to acquire/build a large collection of movie synopses for my site.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Currently I have thought of 2 ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hire a small team of writers who have extensive knowledge on our regional movies and also hopefully contacts with production houses. The drawback would be it will take quite some time to build a considerable list of movies and the data might not be accurate always.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a community edition wiki portal that would allow masses to&#xA;contribute, just as Wikipedia. But the drawback is I am not sure how&#xA;much I can trust the community on the data submitted.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to manage this project successfully, I need to know the pros and cons of each approach to document on my Risk register. Which method is likely to be the most cost effective? Which one would be more accurate? How could I mitigate the risks and lower costs of each approach? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3672" OwnerDisplayName="Reddy S R" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-05-19T20:56:46.087" LastActivityDate="2012-05-20T18:56:54.480" Title="Creating synopses of existing movies - hire a team, or crowdsource?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;risk&gt;&lt;distributed-team&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5732" CreationDate="2012-05-20T07:11:34.910" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Crowd-Source.  With a similar system to the one used here, merits and demerits  could boost agreed upon information to a higher rank, calculated alongside a reputation value bestowed upon the actual user who submitted the data. The users should have incentive to participate and interact, like the badges offered here.  Vanilla Forums are a great open source solution, they have an active enough developer community, and i know for certain there are already plugins to handle most of what i've mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3965" LastActivityDate="2012-05-20T07:11:34.910" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5732" CreationDate="2012-05-20T18:56:54.480" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remember to include opportunity costs in your cost/benefit analysis of either approach. While the price to get raw information might be lower for crowd-sourcing (for example), it may take more time to validate the data, standardize the format and get the website off the ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It strikes me that you could mitigate risks by hiring a subject matter expert like a professional editor and/or writer of film reviews or film history. They could also facilitate decision making on which route would be the best for building your database.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-05-20T18:56:54.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5728" CreationDate="2012-05-21T09:05:38.183" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would use the &lt;em&gt;lead time distribution approach from Kanban&lt;/em&gt; and see how the team's estimate correlates with the actual data. We have something similar here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/5245/468&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/5245/468&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I would go with the 18 months, because this is a better estimate than the 14 months according to that answer. The 4 month difference is not a buffer here. I see it as a guarantee of delivery on time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, I did an experiment a while back. We had an estimation like this 14 months and we stated that we can do better so we committed to 13 months and used a -1 approach on each requirement we had to deliver. Unfortunately, this kind of &quot;improvement&quot; had no effect on our way of working at all and made it even worse. It turned out that the original number - the 14 months - was the best we could do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-05-21T09:05:38.183" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2012-05-21T16:34:22.887" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0787960756&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Patrick Lencioni - The Five Dysfunctions of a Team&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A great book that shows a live example of how bad can happen when inside the team and at the interface between the team and PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After reading this book I had many thoughts about how to work with the team and I began to see the source of the dysfunctions in our environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that reading the book made a lot of good things to the way I work, so I highly recommend it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2955" LastActivityDate="2012-05-21T16:34:22.887" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-05-21T16:34:22.887" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5726" CreationDate="2012-05-21T18:51:02.610" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have recently started using Jira with the GreenHopper plugin by Atlassian (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/greenhopper/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.atlassian.com/software/greenhopper/overview&lt;/a&gt;).  Great for agile.  Easy to assign points, track issues and plan sprints, see velocities, burn down charts, cumulative flow, ect.  They offer both cloud based and self hosted options.  Wonderful wiki if you also get Confluence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3927" LastEditorUserId="3961" LastEditDate="2012-05-21T20:39:59.597" LastActivityDate="2012-05-21T20:39:59.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4440" CreationDate="2012-05-22T03:35:55.743" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have successfully used a blend of Agile and PRINCE2 in large,complex IT infrastructure and construction projects, with a budget of up to $140M and a total team of 167 persons.&#xA;If you accept that Agile is an adaptive framework, ie not a fixed or prescriptive process, then you should be able to implement it in any type of project.&#xA;It is regrettable that our mindset has been conditioned to believe that Agile can only succeed in software development projects, with the project team being accommodated in one room for most of the project's duration. The reality is that today's project teams could be based in disparate locations around the world ... so why not use a virtual Kanban board, for example?&#xA;Come on, open up your minds ... be adaptive ... give it an honest and fair try!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3972" LastEditorUserId="3972" LastEditDate="2012-05-22T03:43:03.967" LastActivityDate="2012-05-22T03:43:03.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5726" CreationDate="2012-05-22T15:50:37.523" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start by implementing the process, not software.  Are you all located in the same space? Go old school and use notecards and post-its.  That is how we started our iterative dev team off, and it works quite nicely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you must use software...&#xA;How big is your team? Mingle from Thoughtworks is good, but expensive ($400 a user annually).  It is free for &amp;lt;5 users.&#xA; Jira is ok if you've never used ALM software before, as some folks have a hard time to transition from &quot;cards&quot; to &quot;issues&quot; (as Jira calls everything).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would avoid MS Project at all costs.  It is not collaborative, clunky to use, and a windows-fat-client. All things a nimble team doesn't need to have hanging around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with your agile implementation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3974" LastActivityDate="2012-05-22T15:50:37.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5745" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5754" CreationDate="2012-05-23T06:15:18.210" Score="-4" ViewCount="297" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been promoted to PM in an agile environment and I would like to know what are the current typical s/w,tools PMs use to do the following:&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reporting risks, impediments, sprint and release progress to POs/management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Defining project tasks and resource requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing project plans and scheduling project timelines&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tracking deliverables&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reporting project progress, problems and solutions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Evaluating projects and assessing results&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Managing Profit &amp; Loss of projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Linking actual document examples for any of these would be very helpful as well!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3976" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-12-01T00:37:09.990" LastActivityDate="2013-12-01T00:37:09.990" Title="What are common tools used in an agile environment?" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-09-24T22:05:22.143" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5746" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-23T07:41:30.530" Score="2" ViewCount="488" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm doing my final year project, and I'm going to develop a website. I'm interested in using an Agile methodology such as Scrum. Could you please help me in providing the possible steps which I can follow to apply Agile or Scrum in my web development project? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3977" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-11-23T03:18:34.117" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T03:18:34.117" Title="Could you please help me in providing the phases that i should follow to apply Agile / Scrum this web development project?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5746" CreationDate="2012-05-23T08:36:57.533" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In case you are working alone you don't really need Scrum, because it is for teams. Have a look at eXtreme Programming, because it has a great set of ideas how to work effectively with software. You can skip the internal cooperation related ideas, because I assume you can work with yourself without any problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you develop web sites I strongly recommend to do &lt;a href=&quot;http://ruby.railstutorial.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the rails tutorial&lt;/a&gt; even if you have a different platform. It will show you how to develop a website in a smart an effective way, using enough testing, thinking about deployment, source control management etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T08:36:57.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5746" CreationDate="2012-05-23T10:24:31.987" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even on your own you can apply sound project management and agile principles to organise and plan your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start with thinking through the scope of the whole project by creating a &lt;strong&gt;Work Breakdown Structure&lt;/strong&gt; (WBS); discuss these with your teachers so you have a good agreement with your stakeholders&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can use a (Personal) &lt;strong&gt;Kanban&lt;/strong&gt; board to track your progress; breakdown the WBS into appropriate user stories or tasks and fill up the board; a daily stand-up is a bit silly on your own, but do keep the board up-to-date as it will help you plan your work and keep you motivated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plan the development into &lt;strong&gt;sprints&lt;/strong&gt; with a defined (finished) deliverable; this will improve the management of your progress; if possible demo these to your teachers and discuss the next sprint scope when changes have to be made.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take changes seriously; don't just add them to your to do list because you're just on your own; add them to the backlog instead of rushing into them; reflect how this might impact the sprint or the (agreed) end-result and plan them accordingly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have a &quot;retrospective&quot; at the end of each sprint; either on your own or also with your teachers or maybe with a peer student: reflect on what went well and what can be better and apply your findings in the next sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do some lightweight documenting of your project approach (WBS,spint-planning; pictures of the Kanban Board; proofof sprint deliverables ...); this will improve the professionality of the end result (but of course won't do you any good if there are issues with the website ;-) )&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T10:24:31.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5746" CreationDate="2012-05-23T12:35:30.367" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Stephan, Personal Kanban in this project is perhaps the most appropriate solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only you can track work progress, but also after the end of each stage, you can pick up some stats from which you can see if and where you have problems in the project, if your tasks are well planned, or which takse most time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For everything that is written by Stephan I would  recommend collecting some information about the tasks like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start and end time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimated time of execution&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deadlines&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Categories of tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will allow you to check where you are with your project&#xA; and if something in your work should  be changed. You can use it during the retrospectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend looking at the following materials:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isixsigma.com/tools-templates/kanban-tool/personal-kanban/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Personal Kanban [Video] - With Jim Benson&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2011/09/with-personal-kanban-you-can.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Personal With Kanban you can! - By Vicki Davis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urbaninfluence.com/brand-blog/jim/personal-kanban-journey&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Personal Kanban: A Journey - Article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may help you understand the idea of this approach,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2955" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T12:35:30.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5726" CreationDate="2012-05-23T12:59:06.623" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Referring to the first answer, I would first check if you realy need a &quot;software&quot;.&#xA;Looks like you need some help on methodology, whereas I would recommend a agile one. Eg kanban or scrum.&#xA;If you start from scratch, if you have to deliver something and if you can't afford external help (eg a scrum master), start with kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google for &quot;personal kanban&quot; for Webbased tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend JIRA as well. We using it for 2 years now for agile PM. 10 user for 10 bucks. You can use it for kanban as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: from my opponion waterfall is not the right approach for web...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3980" LastEditorUserId="3980" LastEditDate="2012-05-23T13:07:22.570" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T13:07:22.570" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5751" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-23T13:04:08.027" Score="1" ViewCount="354" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been task to recommend an Agile tool for my team. I am still a month away from my recommendation due date, but I wanted to get started on my due diligence. Our organization have some restrictions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can pick between: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Version One&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum Works&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not ware of any other option we have available. The option of using one of these tool with a wall or something physical is also possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not including a third option (MS Project), because I already determine is out for this recommendation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastEditorUserId="2955" LastEditDate="2012-05-24T13:09:05.023" LastActivityDate="2013-02-08T15:05:56.780" Title="What features every Agile software tool should have?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-02-13T20:55:47.037" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5752" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5755" CreationDate="2012-05-23T13:06:15.140" Score="4" ViewCount="10825" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although I prefer regular meetings, communication and updates as a method for informing the client of the project status; my client wants an overall RAG status for each of their projects. I was looking at an objective way of combining risks, issues and progress against milestones to do this. What method have/would people use(d) to do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3915" LastEditorUserId="3915" LastEditDate="2012-05-23T13:19:04.513" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T18:12:19.627" Title="Applying an overall project RAG (red, amber, green) status" Tags="&lt;progress-report&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5752" CreationDate="2012-05-23T13:40:39.107" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We don't do RAG status updates for our stakeholders, but I have a Kanbanboard setup in Jira (attlasian calls this a rapid view) which tracks only issues tagged with &quot;project_board&quot;. That way, stakeholder, not interested in the details, can have a simple highlevel overview of the project status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For our team, we do storypoint estimation for tasks. If we compare our velocity whith the remaining storypoints and days, we have a good guess about being able to fullfill our commitment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I had to do a RAG report, I would base this on the storypoints and velocity. This covers your progress and issues somewhat, but I have no idea how to fold &quot;risk&quot; into the equation, sorry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3397" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T13:40:39.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5745" CreationDate="2012-05-23T13:48:10.897" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on my knowledge, real &quot;&lt;em&gt;agile projects&lt;/em&gt;&quot; don't really have exactly that kind of tools you are looking for, unfortunately. Items from 1 to 6 are covered with a &lt;strong&gt;backlog&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;iteration backlog&lt;/strong&gt; and a &lt;strong&gt;psychical whiteboard&lt;/strong&gt;. In most of the cases the backlog is a spreadsheet, or a collection of issues in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;JIRA&lt;/a&gt; or in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redmine.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;redmine&lt;/a&gt;, or just a couple of post-its on a wall. Mike Cohn has several blog posts about backlogs. Here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/make-the-product-backlog-deep&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one interesting&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your list is great, but the agile approach is so different from the usual project management methodologies that it is hard to map the two. For example, &quot;Managing Profit &amp;amp; Loss of projects&quot; is handled a bit lightly in Agile: &lt;em&gt;we continuously talk to the customer, and we don't commit to more than we can deliver. With this approach, the customer won't loose money over development and since we don't commit more we can do, we don't really loose anything&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, this is how I would do the mapping between your list and my view on Agile:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Reporting risks, impediments, sprint and release progress to POs/management&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible risks are discussed during the planning meeting and during the daily &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zsoltfabok.com/blog/tag/stand-up/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;stand-up meetings&lt;/a&gt;. If the PO sees a risk, he should immediately go to the customer and talk about it. Some POs put the risks into the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Defining project tasks and resource requirements&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Agile, the PO creates user stories based on customer requirements and tells these stories to the team. The user stories are kept in the backlog. After the team understood what needs to be done, it creates tasks and put them into their sprint backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Writing project plans and scheduling project timelines&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is in a backlog. There is a possibility to have a release backlog, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/why-there-should-not-be-a-release-backlog&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;but not everybody agrees on this&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tracking deliverables&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The result of a sprint is visible in its sprint backlog as a done item. Unfortunately, the sprint backlog is usually destroyed after a successful sprint, because the customer got what she asked for, why keeping records? Fortunately, there is a change here. Teams started to store their tasks and user stories in an issue tracking system - like JIRA or redmine - and they create versions there, too. So you can see what was delivered and when. (We could have saved some money if we had something similar when I started with Scrum)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Reporting project progress, problems and solutions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There isn't much reporting. These items are discussed during the daily stand-up meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Evaluating projects and assessing results&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The product owner &quot;reports&quot; to the customer and provides feedback to the team during the retrospective about the recent sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Managing Profit &amp;amp; Loss of projects&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mentioned this earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T13:48:10.897" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5752" CreationDate="2012-05-23T14:17:58.597" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The thing to remember about RAG status indicators is that 1) they're not objective, 2) they're different for every project, and 3) they're different for every company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you set up the status report you need to find out what those indicators mean to your client. For some clients a 10% deviation from plan is Amber, and others it may be Red. It's going to be based quite a bit on their particular risk tolerance. The more significant the project is in terms of how it fits into their company, the more risk averse they're going to be, so they're indicators will trigger sooner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the PM, you're going to need to discuss this with them and find their tolerance levels to set up the status basis. From there, as you approach a change in status you'll need to keep their view in mind, and temper it with your experience to reassure and inform them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T14:17:58.597" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5751" CreationDate="2012-05-23T16:00:25.963" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might be worth just using a physical board initially until you understand what features you might want from a software product (or even whether you really need software).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as other tools go, I quite like Agile Zen.  You might also want to take a look at Mingle and Rally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T16:00:25.963" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5757" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5761" CreationDate="2012-05-23T17:55:23.097" Score="25" ViewCount="12288" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been struggling in a peculiar situation since a while ago and would like your inputs on it. In our project (which is a maintenance project), there are some tasks that are done from time to time (on a weekly basis) and, although simple, needs to be done carefully to avoid the usage of wrong information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are some cases where a couple of lower level fellows &lt;strong&gt;repeatedly commit the same mistakes&lt;/strong&gt;, over and over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Task details:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This task itself is fairly simple (check the data in an Excel Spreadsheet, compare what is currently in place in the database, generate the inserts based on Excel data)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's extensively documented and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I've done so many meetings to openly discuss about these very same issues that I lost my count.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;this specific task is a kind of 'special copy and paste' where some SQL insertions are generated (for the sake of avoiding some heart attacks, this process is being automated)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This task is in place for over one year, and we had at least one every month (usually a lot more)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know such routine processes are boring, but still one needs to understand (and I've reinforced it n times) that any information being changed in production, needs to be done carefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of now, we have some higher level peers reviewing the data (and in most of the cases, raising flags), which is a waste of efforts... but that's the only solution we found so far to avoid bogus data going live.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you deal with such cases?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-01-01T03:06:30.073" LastActivityDate="2014-04-11T19:33:33.117" Title="Dealing with a coworker who keeps making the same mistakes over and over" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;training&gt;&lt;personal-skills&gt;" AnswerCount="15" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5758" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-23T18:39:13.097" Score="9" ViewCount="11145" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to define the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_indicator&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;KPIs&lt;/a&gt; which will help me to say if software coming out from the project is good or bad. I mean does it fulfill quality KPIs which were targeted or not. The question of course is what KPIs can be defined for software development project. What quality KPIs do you use in your software development projects? How you interpret them?&#xA;Thank you all in advance for help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Change management in my project we use MS Team Foundation Server 2010. All processes are very loosely based on CMMI.&#xA;The project is similar to SAP. We have a modules which are the core of the system, lower levels are common for smaller parts of stakeholders or customize. We are working in a mode of support of current released system versions (fixing bugs, adding users etc.) and also creating new futures. The project is web application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We work for internal client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="878" LastEditorUserId="22766" LastEditDate="2016-05-23T08:51:46.423" LastActivityDate="2016-05-23T08:51:46.423" Title="What software quality KPIs do you use?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;quality&gt;&lt;kpi&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5757" CreationDate="2012-05-23T18:55:30.643" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would start with answer &quot;&lt;em&gt;talk to the person and explain the importance of the task&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, but mentioned that you had done it, so I won't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such case, I see two solutions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the person has some software background and the case allows you to do so - &lt;strong&gt;automate the process&lt;/strong&gt;. As you mentioned, routine processes are boring and automation is a creative approach to boring tasks,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fire the person&lt;/strong&gt;, so you stop wasting your time and effort.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2915" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T18:55:30.643" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5757" CreationDate="2012-05-23T20:25:16.423" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;If there was a cog in your manufacturing machine that was well worn and slips and causes the rivets on your widget to be out of specs and tolerance levels, what would you do with the cog?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;rbwhitaker:  &quot;but people aren't cogs....&quot;  This is the challenge, isn't it: treating people well, making them feel needed, wanted, valuable, while make the unpopular, non emotional decisions treating us human capability enablers exactly like tool enablers, system enablers, process enablers, money enablers...because that is exactly what we are.  The hard, unpopular truth is companies, and their projects, do not exist so people have some place to go everyday.  We are there to enable a capability, and we go away when we are no longer needed.  We may not like how that sounds, but our feelings are not relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The performance curve, if you believe it is normally distributed, says you will most likely have very average people on the job.  Current thinking says the curve is not normally distributed at all, but instead skewed to the left, i.e., positively skewed.  This means few produce the most; most produce little.  These few individuals who &quot;repeatedly&quot; perform poorly are very unlikely they will even approach the MODE much less climb to be a high performer.  They could, just not likely.  It's a hard, crappy decision, but you're the PM.  You HAVE to make the tough decisions.  And you HAVE to consider what we know about human work behavior.  And you have to deliver the goods.  This means, act like a leader and replace the cog and turn the machine back on and deliver.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2012-06-01T01:10:50.773" LastActivityDate="2012-06-01T01:10:50.773" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5757" CreationDate="2012-05-23T20:50:31.453" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;While we all like to trust that our team is going to do what they're supposed to, it doesn't always work that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given your previous comment to Zbigniew about automation and firing, this is a good instance to institute checklists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write up a simple checklist of the steps that have to be followed (including what/how info to update), and make the employees check the boxes as they go, and sign off when they're done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While seemingly a retreat in trusting people, sometimes you have to go that route. This system will give you some immediate benefits - you're know who didn't do the task correctly, you'll have supporting documentation if you have to escalate with the employee (if it doesn't improve), and you'll make them responsible (and more importantly - accountable). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T20:50:31.453" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5757" CreationDate="2012-05-23T21:04:53.050" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some alternatives I can think of are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Establish metrics that tie into performance evaluations/bonuses. Target an error rate of X% to qualify for top rating, X+Y% for second highest, etc. Or better yet, target a decrease in error rate over time to give them incentive to improve.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have them deliver early so that their work can be QA'd. If you find more than X errors in an hour send it back to them to redo.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manage your own expectations. Anything with manual intervention is going to have errors so don't expect perfection.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T21:04:53.050" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5763" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5766" CreationDate="2012-05-24T07:23:53.197" Score="4" ViewCount="3876" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me they both seem to be issues that negatively impact the project. So how to tell the difference? When identifying these 'issues', how do project managers determine whether or not it is a risk or an impediment? What are some real world examples of each and why they are categorized as risks or impediments?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3976" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T14:06:06.083" Title="distinguishing between impediments and risks" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;risk&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5758" CreationDate="2012-05-24T08:18:55.440" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, I'm using only two KPIs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;number of users/customers&lt;/strong&gt;: as a goal, we define how many users or customers we would like to have during a certain period. For example, we want 30,000 new customers in this year&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;the time we need to deliver a new feature&lt;/strong&gt;: in other words the &lt;em&gt;lead time&lt;/em&gt;. We check our actual lead time and see check whether this time is enough to stay on the market. For example,  we want to reduce our current 10-day long lead time to 9 days in this year, because the competition became faster then us&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see these KPIs/goals are about the trends: &quot;&lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt;&quot; customers and &quot;&lt;em&gt;less&lt;/em&gt;&quot; time spent. Additionally, the set numbers are not achievable with our current way of working, so the organization has to work and improve in order to achieve them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;We have automated tools to get the data above and we regularly check on our indicators whether we are on the right track or not.&lt;/strong&gt; If not, we change our way of working, try out new stuff etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I no longer use KPIs like number of defects, or lines of codes, or test coverage, because&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they don't help to sell more product or stay on the market&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they are hard to set on a whole organization (e.g. sales cannot do anything about coverage)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they narrow down what employees shall do, and they won't bring their creative ideas into the organization&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I give you an example. In my friend's organization one of the main KPIs is the number of defects in the system. As far as I remember, the goal is to have maximum 10 defects. They keep this number, even if it is not necessary. Their customer can live with 20 or 30 defects, he wants to have a system with fast reaction time, but the developers spend time on defect fixing and not on making the system more faster. There is chance that they'll lose this customer over this. If they had the KPI &quot;&lt;em&gt;number of customers&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, each team could set its own goal/action to see what to do in favor of this KPI and keep the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T08:18:55.440" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5688" CreationDate="2012-05-24T09:15:31.527" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interesting comment on this type of functionality on Manager Tools Blog&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.manager-tools.com/2012/05/not-communication&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This is not Communication&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T09:15:31.527" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5763" CreationDate="2012-05-24T10:15:48.310" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;An impediment or issue is something that is impacting the project &lt;strong&gt;now&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A risk is something that &lt;strong&gt;might occur&lt;/strong&gt; in the future.  Typically, we look at risks in terms of the likelihood they will occur and the impact on the project if they do occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the impact/likelihood of a risk is high enough, we'd usually try to mitigate it in some way.  This might involve a significant change in direction in the case of a high impact/high likelihood risk or just having a plan B for less critical risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T10:15:48.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5767" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5772" CreationDate="2012-05-24T12:20:48.967" Score="4" ViewCount="126" Body="&lt;p&gt;In software development, when you near the time for delivery, there's often a huge amount of feedback. Testers report bugs, customers ask for minor and major tweaks, designers have last-minute improvements etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One solution is to make each feedback item a separate story (in JIRA or on a kanban board, for instance). However, then you end up with a huge and unwieldy list of things where nobody really gets the full picture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, some of this feedback will arrive when there's no real forum to make priorities - say you have a priority meeting with the customer on Tuesday, you're due to release on Friday, and you get a rush of feedback on Thursday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some good ways to handle this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3184" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T18:00:42.550" Title="Handling detailed feedback from many sources" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;feedback&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5767" CreationDate="2012-05-24T12:44:40.530" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all if you have a release on Friday, and you received a list of changes from customers on Thursday you have to decline them or decline the release time. Obviously that changes what were added at the last minute can't be stable. After that we have reports from QAs and designers. Well, we definitely pay attention to QAs' reports than designers' ones. It's because QAs' reports have our mistakes and problems, when designers just added some graphical improvements. Only one situation when we have to look designers' reports it's when those reports have fixes for our graphical mistakes, not improvements/changes.&#xA;Hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3070" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T12:44:40.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5763" CreationDate="2012-05-24T13:11:06.860" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Risks are always in the future and are not certain.  Issues or impediments are either in the future, is occurring now, or has happened in the past with ongoing adverse sequelae.  To distinguish a risk with a future issue, it comes down to degree of certainty.  If it WILL happen, with 100% certainty, it is an issue.  In addition to this, an organization may define an issue with something less than 100% certainty.  For example, a risk averse organization may find it prudent to define the issue for those risks with greater than 75% likelihood.  The reason for this would be the rule to allocate recovery resources.  When it is a risk, you compare the expected impact value with the cost of mitigation and make a decision whether it is prudent to mitigate or simply accept.  As an issue, the use of resources would be different, in that a PM would be able to gain access to funding in a faster, more easy way.  Therefore, that is why you may define a risk as an issue with a high probability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T13:11:06.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5763" CreationDate="2012-05-24T14:06:06.083" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Risks you can mitigate. Impediments are impediments, so, your project can't go on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In Software industry&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk example: You don't know if some technology fits your needs. You can mitigate doing a prof of concept.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Impediment example: You need a impossible thing, like modifying/integrating with a closed software solution (non open source software) that has no integration API.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="536" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T14:06:06.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2472" CreationDate="2012-05-24T14:32:29.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From developer perspective:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Commit change(s) to private branch, then send them to review. While waiting for review, work in an another private branch on an other issue. When review is complete, fix issues and then push your changes to main branch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3982" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T14:32:29.627" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5767" CreationDate="2012-05-24T14:39:05.780" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In software projects, whether they be waterfall or agile projects, there is a development lifecycle of some form. For Agile projects, usually, these lifecycles are broken up into tiny versions of the waterfall model.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At some point before you're release, what you need is a feature freeze. No more new features will be added to the release. This means design improvements, additional features, and you must hold all stakeholders accountable and be prepared to say &quot;no&quot;, even to the client. Don't actually say &quot;no&quot; though. Instead say, &quot;We are planning to implement that for you in the next release. We want to stay on target for release 1.0 and want to be sure to provide you with a quality deliverable.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, this is then your time to focus on bugs. Again, bugs aren't new features, and bugs aren't design improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, bugs are defects in the software that were introduced that were not part of the spec, and the spec includes both functional bugs as well as bugs in the usability of the software or the designers original design. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, consider that part of a Web designer's job is to think about &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; the user is going to interact with the software. The best designers put quite a bit of thought into every minute visual detail, and they engineer the user interface the way they do for a reason. Their goal is to make people &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to use the software, and I've personally seen the same product sit stagnant, with poor usability, or throttle its number of users into the stratosphere with good attention to detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, developers don't always see this perspective clearly and sometimes don't implement the UI correctly. Therefore, it's up to the project manager to work with the team (designers and developers) to determine what the highest priority is for the immediate bugs, the ones that &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be fixed prior to release, and the bugs that, when fixed, will help ensure success of the release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T14:39:05.780" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5757" CreationDate="2012-05-24T15:07:27.230" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why is it that the higher level peers can spot the problem but not the lower level ones? Does it require domain knowledge to tell if the data is right? If so, then I'm not sure that this is really a people problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mistakes happen all of the time when people do stuff manually. For example, I mistyped a half dozen times while typing this answer. But I have the domain knowledge to recognize a typo so I caught the errors and fixed them. If domain knowledge is required then you need to get these people trained in the domain or create a quick and dirty verification app or some sort of verification procedure that these people can run prior to claiming being done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IOW, without knowing all the details of your particular situation, I question your placing the blame on people who possibly haven't been trained enough to know whether their work is accurate or not and not providing them any tools to verify their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OTOH, if these people are just plain careless then why wouldn't you want to simply get rid of them or at the very least not assign them to tasks that require precision?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T15:07:27.230" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5774" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-24T15:37:05.650" Score="2" ViewCount="79" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question comes from the perspective of a business analyst at the project site who identifies/tests issues which are fixed by a remote group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say we receive a patch for issue A which resolves issue A yet causes issue B (which was previously working functionality). It seems like we have two options (or suggest something else) which are either accept the patch and create a new issue B, or reject the patch since it introduced the regression issue. Assuming that both issues are of equal severity, is there reason to prefer one of the options?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3983" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T17:23:52.810" Title="Should patches which cause regression issues be accepted?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-07-03T04:30:42.403" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5774" CreationDate="2012-05-24T17:23:52.810" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically you'll reject the patch, since the issues are of equal severity.  You have a known issue already, but patch A gives you issue B, which could have other side effects (devil you know vs the devil you don't).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps, let me know if there are questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3928" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T17:23:52.810" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5767" CreationDate="2012-05-24T18:00:42.550" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;the other answers you've gotten are right on the money, and the advice holds true for any domain, not just software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It comes down to priorities, and actually 'managing' the project. At some point you're going to have to ship, so as you approach that point you need to be clear on what the priorities at that point are. In you example - the bug reports take priority and have to be fixed. That's part of the original scope, and quality control. The major &amp;amp; minor tweaks - those get sent through the Change Control process to evaluate their impact and let the client decide priority. That's a scope change and not necessary to release. And the &quot;last-minute improvements&quot;? Sorry, you had the whole project duration to come up with that. As Jmort said - next iteration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T18:00:42.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5777" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-24T18:06:33.497" Score="13" ViewCount="1035" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience I can see that Project Manager/Team Leader is often responsible for many tasks not directly connected with his day to day job. For example he often takes part in sales meetings. On the other hand he has to persuade his team or his supervisors to some decisions and ideas. In many different situations he is speaking in front of the audience, which can be small but can contain decisive people from higher job positions than his own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should a project manager spend some time sharpening his public speaking skills? What is the best way to do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="452" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-10-05T04:50:41.983" LastActivityDate="2014-10-05T04:50:41.983" Title="Should a team leader/project manager be a public speaker" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;personal-skills&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5752" CreationDate="2012-05-24T18:12:19.627" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you can set RAG status for budget, schedule and scope. As already Trevor mentioned, agree with your client on a clear definition of your ranges. Also, take a look at the resolution of your status indicator: per project, per phase, per milestone... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take into consideration that by applying such status indicator, you will need to be very strict on measuring the variables, otherwise you will end up with discussions like: &quot;Is it amber or red? Can we say... orange?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2462" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T18:12:19.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5777" CreationDate="2012-05-24T18:35:16.687" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is necessary. As a team leader you have to speak in front of your team, at meetings, at special occasions, like customer visitation or open house and the list goes on. It really makes a bad impression when a team leader cannot speak for 5 minutes. It shouldn't be a commencement speech, but &lt;strong&gt;I think a good team leader must be able to give at least an entertaining lighting talk (5-10 minutes)&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend the following books:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/JuEQAs&quot;&gt;Confession of a Public Speaker by Scott Berkun&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/K0bYD4&quot;&gt;Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some blogs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/category/public-speaking/&quot;&gt;http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/category/public-speaking/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://presentinenglish.com/&quot;&gt;http://presentinenglish.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/&quot;&gt;http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, &lt;strong&gt;practice a lot&lt;/strong&gt; by watching and doing. For example, if you have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://meetup.com/&quot;&gt;meetup&lt;/a&gt; somewhere in your neighborhood, go there and give a short talk, or give a talk at workplace about the topic your are the most interested in. The university is also a great place to give talks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start with something short, and select a topic which you know the most, because &lt;strong&gt;while giving a talk there are two challenges: the content and the performance&lt;/strong&gt;. If you have no problem with the content, you can pay more attention to the performance. After you learnt everything about how to give a great talk, you can try to talk about stuff you don't know that much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T18:35:16.687" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5751" CreationDate="2012-05-24T19:19:49.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;VersionOne while feature-rich, has a hideous, productivity-limiting user experience.  Things you expect to &quot;just work&quot; take dozens of clicks, with popup browser windows appearing not related to the task at hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish I could get my company to adopt Team Foundation Server.  Does everything VersionOne can do and much more.  The non-browser clients are highly functional (unlike VersionOne, whose Visual Studio add-in is a joke).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not as much an &quot;answer&quot; as my opinion drawn from actual recent experience.  Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3844" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T19:19:49.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5777" CreationDate="2012-05-24T21:45:46.700" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll take the opposite position than Zsolt and say no, a PM does not need to be a public speaker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I agree with his premise, my view is that the PM needs to be a 'leader' more than a speaker. So the PM needs to spend their time honing their leadership and influence skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Public speaking is sometimes a part of this, but I've known some great leaders that weren't very good speakers. The key was that in small groups and one on one you 'wanted' to follow them. And for the most part, your team interaction will be far more often in these settings than in a public speaking situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T21:45:46.700" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5782" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-24T23:22:02.957" Score="6" ViewCount="1507" Body="&lt;p&gt;Advice is needed, please. I'm a learning student and very new to project management. I was thinking about a project but I want to be sure that it can be considered as a project :&#xA;the title is close to  ( sorry for my English ) : ''Reduction of rejects in factory (where I'm working) for the year 2012 '' &#xA;A quality control procedure will be established to achieve that goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3987" LastEditorUserId="1752" LastEditDate="2012-05-25T14:16:01.643" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T14:16:01.643" Title="Can this be considered as a project?" Tags="&lt;learning&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5782" CreationDate="2012-05-24T23:54:21.140" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does this 'project wannabe' &lt;strong&gt;has a clear objective&lt;/strong&gt;, i.e. something will clearly be achieved or built? If so, &lt;strong&gt;you have a project&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thinking broadly, I believe that as long as you can conceive an expected output, it's a project. &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1646/definition-of-software-project&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; question talks about specifically Software, but might help you. There's also &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1859/is-a-project-without-defined-completion-criteria-really-a-project&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; one who goes in another direction but might also put some lights on your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T23:54:21.140" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5784" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-25T02:47:27.683" Score="0" ViewCount="341" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking to improve my digital agency's workflow (about 10 people - web design, graphic, photography, etc), and hopefully it'll be something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mails sent to contact@myagency.com are piped through a ticket management system, and everyone in the team can answer it, or assign it to him to work on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A user may create a project and this would create a natural way of communication with the client.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some kind of dasboard exists.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Clients can be invited into his project workspace without additional registation, etc..&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I saw how some people are using Gmail to build some kind of customized app (http://kainoto.com/bug-tracker-in-gmail-ticketing-system.aspx)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any tips?&#xA;Thanks &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3988" LastEditorUserId="3988" LastEditDate="2012-05-28T01:39:59.443" LastActivityDate="2013-03-21T13:02:34.397" Title="Looking for a tool that has ticket management, user/client profiling and project task assignments" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-07-03T02:06:58.747" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5782" CreationDate="2012-05-25T05:17:10.947" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;project&lt;/strong&gt; is something with a clear start and end.  A &lt;strong&gt;process&lt;/strong&gt; is something that lives forever.  Sounds like a project to me.  Creating the procedure is most likely a project, while running it on an ongoing basis isn't.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with your &lt;strong&gt;project&lt;/strong&gt; - sounds like you will learn a lot!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T05:17:10.947" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5777" CreationDate="2012-05-25T05:23:16.900" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's good to differentiate between charisma and communications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be effective, a PM must be an effective communicator.  I have never seen a good one that isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the good PMs I've seen have been excellent written communicators.  I can think of one or two exceptions, but managing projects usually involves a large paper trail of commitments.  Not all the good PMs I've seen have been great speakers.  Most communicate effectively verbally in small groups, but being a dynamic public speaker isn't a requirement of being a good PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to answer your direct question - it's one useful skill of many.  If you have time, it can't hurt.  Warren Buffett recommended the Dale Carnegie series of classes.  I've seen a lot of people swear by Toastmasters.  In both cases, it's about focused practice.  Public speaking is a learnable skill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T05:23:16.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5658" CreationDate="2012-05-25T05:29:50.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Budget versus actuals isn't too hard if you have a formal estimation model, but can be difficult otherwise.  For instance, I've seen organizations do analysis of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Model Estimate (Original Scope) -&gt; 200 mandays&#xA;Actuals = 300 mandays&#xA;Model Estimate (Actual Scope) -&gt; 275 mandays&#xA;Mis-estimate = 25 mandays&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without a formal model, this is hard to do.  Even with a model, sometimes PMs get lazy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a prior life at a large consultancy, the general experience was estimates were over-run because of unplanned work, rather than mis-estimated work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For early checking of plans, I currently use dual checklists - one that contains a bunch of questions related to how known is the scope, the other related to how complex it is.  The goal of these is teasing out how much you don't know going in, or what surprises you might have.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T05:29:50.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5782" CreationDate="2012-05-25T05:54:06.817" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Creating a new procedure&quot; certainly sounds like it could be a project. The PMBoK definition is &lt;strong&gt;a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A project has a start and an end so based on your title, you have a project. This assumes that your project has a document as final product that will be used by someone else in day-to-day operations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually using that new procedure in day-to-day operations is not a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T05:54:06.817" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5782" CreationDate="2012-05-25T07:51:17.093" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If something is a 'project' depends on the definition of 'project'. For various context, people and methodologies 'projects' can mean diffent things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Others allready pointed to some Project Management Context type of definitions, so here is the GTD (David Allens personal producivity method Getting Things Done) defintion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;David says: &quot;If it takes more then one step to complete, it is a project.&quot;&#xA;Put another way, if you can answer the questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what does &quot;done&quot; look like?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what does &quot;wild success&quot; look like?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what is the (single) next step to get closser to DONE&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you have a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, put in a GTD context, you have an &quot;area of focus&quot; probably for the next 3 to 12 months with a myrad of projects contained in it.&#xA;In a project management context, you certainly have a (big) project on your hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3397" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T07:51:17.093" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5751" CreationDate="2012-05-25T09:45:21.347" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have been through a very similar exercise recently and there are a couple of things that stuck out for us - if you are looking at version 1 you may be like us, a little more enterprisey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have quite geographically distributed teams so good tools for our product owners and our test teams are crucial. Of all the tools we looked at only version 1 and Rally Dev measured up  on the test management side, with my vote for Rally simply because of the ease of seeing current test status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have stated, would help if you mentioned a little about your company setup.&#xA;To be a little clearer myself - we have agile teams with members spread between two countries (cross functional) and we have some product owners in a third country to make it a little harder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2885" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T09:45:21.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5791" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-25T10:39:04.773" Score="0" ViewCount="430" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are evaluating RTC as a primary project management / development framework tool.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular we follow a high number of concurrent projects with mutable teams. Our main problem are that we need:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To obtain a clear view of resource availability, resource scheduling, task estimated time at completion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be able to share the tool with other teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I use this solution for task/resource scheduling in this manner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2512" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2012-07-24T12:51:22.700" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T13:00:52.627" Title="Rational Team Concert for resource scheduling" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5716" CreationDate="2012-05-25T17:41:27.680" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As another responder, Trevor, has said, it would be ideal to get consulting from someone experienced in Scrum to lead your graphic design office in taking up the most useful aspects of the methodology. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I recognize that not all companies and organizations have the resources, and smart people CAN learn from books and from others. So to that end, some thoughts towards answering your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Why would you apply this to a design organization?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The heart of Scrum lies in the constant inspection and iteration. The reason for this is to combat the problems that arise when a large software project is planned at once and executed subsequently, and then at the end when the users finally use the software they realize the planning was misguided. It is far better to inspect the product regularly and adjust the plan along the way. If you have the following issues, I imagine Scrum could help with your design work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have issues that arise when you make an early design plan, apply it to a large amount of deliverables, and then discover the client doesn't like the design in the first place? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is designer productivity regularly hampered by frequent incoming requests and changes from the client? Do all designers suffer equally from hazarding these requests?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a lack of communication that misses opportunities for all designers in your organization to learn from each other?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When there are roadblocks to getting something done, do designers have an efficient method to get past them?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about those questions first, and depending on the numbers of &quot;Yes&quot; answers you give, decide whether it makes sense to continue investigating the application of Scrum to your design group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, let's say you still want to. Let's also assume for now that for various reasons you must work with the team you have and are not able to add and remove members to fulfill the different roles in Scrum. What next?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How would you apply the constant inspection principle to a design group?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You probably would want to pick a small deliverable that would give a sense of the design style chosen, deliver that to the client before engaging resources in the follow-up deliverables, and then adjust your plan according to the client input. In your example of folder, stationery, identity, website, etc., you may start with one of those that can be completed in a deliverable format in one sprint, and then iterate after you get feedback on that first one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Who should be the Product Owner?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For it to make sense for your organization to model the Scrum behavior, you would want someone on your team who can &lt;strong&gt;represent the needs of the clients&lt;/strong&gt;. This person would then be doing the vast majority of the client interaction, from gathering requirements to sharing mockups to delivering products. Is there currently a person in your organization who does this, or do you all share this responsibility? If you all share it or it doesn't make sense for one person to be this point of contact, then this part of SCRUM may not make sense for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Who should be the Scrum Master?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this part to make sense for your design organization, you would want to &lt;strong&gt;make use of someone's skills in organizing, planning, and communicating&lt;/strong&gt;. In a software project a major part of the Scrum Master's role is to be the gateway to the dev team, increasing their efficiencies by reducing interruptions and keeping them focused. If that will be beneficial to your design process, then you should have one of the designers take the lead in triaging incoming requests from the PO and in facilitating the execution of tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3710" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2012-05-27T10:08:06.747" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T10:08:06.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5784" CreationDate="2012-05-25T21:50:34.043" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I've never used it, a friend of mine uses &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.teamworkpm.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Teamworkpm&lt;/a&gt; for his digital ad agency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He showed me a video walk-through of the tool that he put together for his clients and I think it did everything you asked about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Worth a look.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2013-03-21T13:02:34.397" LastActivityDate="2013-03-21T13:02:34.397" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5795" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-25T23:03:36.087" Score="19" ViewCount="909" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apologies for the long post, but I'm not sure how to handle this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a development team of 3 situated in another city. The lead developer has been around for 6 years and the other developers have joined for &amp;lt; 6 months and both grads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last project left everyone frayed due to poor communication, constantly changing requirements and what looks like poor development practices/process. One part which I found contentious was where developers saw their job was to 'code' and it was the job of the business to 'test'. This meant unskilled helpdesk staff had huge test scripts and were testing by hand functionality that could have been automated and testing took twice as long as the 'development' part. They also insisted that it was blackbox testing so we were likely testing things they had already tested. The lead developer would break down work into tasks tracked in their development tool however refused to let anyone know what the tasks were or reveal how he estimated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scenario:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been brought on to oversee development of the next version. Management doesn't want to spend any money  and have never come across any software development process other than picking up the phone and shouting down requirements. I want to move to an Agile methodology but no one, including developers, has come across anything like it before. As a result, I've aked for some small changes first:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A move to 2 week iterations to avoid changing requirements mid-way&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing down headline requirements rather than verbal agreements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developers do more testing before QA &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Loose estimation of work and tracking by project manager in consultation with stakeholders&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To date:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lead developer has accepted: (2) writing down requirements, and now wants everything written down as a complete specification. Even with this, developers refuse to test according to this exhaustive spec because 'it's the job of the QA team'. I feel like I am being held hostage as management has seen the benefit of this, however is not interested in making further changes because getting involved in the argument is 'too much effort'. &#xA;(1) was rejected as they refuse to estimate, lest they are held to that estimation. (3) was refused because their job is to 'develop' and the QA team's job is to find bugs. (4) was rejected because estimation 'takes too long' and they don't want to be held to it. As the lead developer has termed it: it's a matter of trust and we should trust the number they provide is the date they will have the software done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We now have a process where time is broken down into: x (writing specs) + x ('developing') + 2x (testing) - development is sitting around for half of this time waiting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Recap:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apologies for long post, but I'm not too sure what to try. I feel as though I am being held hostage, and what I felt were small changes have all been 'too hard' for everyone involved?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3992" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-06T05:47:29.483" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T10:00:38.597" Title="Implementing new software development process" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5795" CreationDate="2012-05-25T23:31:38.630" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;welcome to PMSE!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, I tend to prefer a clear and thoughtful topic than any two line questions from people who doesn't even know what want to know. You instead, offered a lot of details on your situation, which might lead to great and accurate answers that (hopefully) will fit into your scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading all problems you presented, I'd focus my efforts on &lt;strong&gt;how to handle the 'developer only codes' behaviour&lt;/strong&gt;. Thinking of Agile, the concept of people doing only one role is ridiculous. In Agile, everyone uses several hats, especially developers*.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the key would be to &lt;strong&gt;understand why developers have such culture&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd wonder some &lt;strong&gt;causes&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The company always accepted them like this, and changing one's culture is a tuff job;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They're simply lazy and don't want to work a minute more than the minimum required;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They're boycotting the company / project for a reason you aren't aware of;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They aren't comfortable with the current structure in place (maybe they'd like to have a dev lead, use another technology, etc.);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They'd like to have / were expecting some kind of acknowledgement;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This list could be huge... but I'd say that a &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2715/what-is-the-purpose-of-1-on-1&quot;&gt;one on one meeting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; candid &lt;strong&gt;conversation with your developers&lt;/strong&gt; to understand why exists the culture of 'developers are only (poor) coders'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other problems, from my point of view, are collateral. The root problem is the quality of the developers you have at hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Important to highlight that also the &lt;strong&gt;QA concept is wrong&lt;/strong&gt;: QA, as the name says, is to assure the quality of the deliverable. A QA team is not a test team. Ideally, no bugs would be detected by QA, but usually QA finds only a few bugs. Not most of them. That's developer's task, for sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Important to also highlight that, when the time arrives, you may prefer to &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/5289/how-do-i-measure-employee-software-developer-performance-based-on-bugs-he-crea&quot;&gt;evaluate the team as a whole&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Remember:&lt;/strong&gt; Trying to move to Agile having this developer's mentality will be a waste of efforts. One of basis of Agile is everyone doing everything. So, forget about 'sprints' for now. I'd say that a mix of Agile + Waterfall could lead to better results (and less waste of resources, like the devs playing card games while the 'QA' tests their codes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'* Disclaimer: MY Agile knowledge is highly limited, so Agile-guys please correct me if I'm wrong!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T23:31:38.630" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3619" CreationDate="2012-05-26T10:39:55.917" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question at the root of this discussion thread is not sufficiently specific. There are project managers specializing in software development and/or implementation projects, there are project managers specializing in the implementation of infrastructure projects and there are project managers who feel at home in both contexts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of specialization, it is paramount for the project manager to have extensive hands-on expertise in the respective subject matter. According to the Prince2 manual there is no need for the project manager to have specialist skills. After nearly 40 years in the IT industry, including 25 years software development, 10 years hardware design and 20 years project/program/portfolio management, I can vounch that the manual is wrong. A project manager with strong specialist skills will constructively challenge the lead designer and will push him/her to higher performance. A project manager with strong specialist skills knows that software developers have a tendency to either significantly underestimate or overestimate the effort to deliver a certain product, and will more accurately estimate the duration and resource requirements. A project manager with strong specialist skills is more likely to make the right decisions in crisis situations. However, infrastructure and/or software development skills are not the only type of skills important for an IT project manager; the project manager needs to have top business analysis skills, along with all project management and all the soft skills for successful delivery of projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3999" LastActivityDate="2012-05-26T10:39:55.917" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5795" CreationDate="2012-05-26T23:01:20.773" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My approach would be focused on persuading your lead developer to accept that- &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Although writing code &amp;amp; detecting bugs are specialist jobs but &quot;quality&quot; is everyone's responsibility &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Better quality does not always means catching bugs and fixing them but also includes writing unit tests,exerting due diligence while checking in risky code changes,working closely with the test team in ascertaining impact ,developing test automation to reduce test cycles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And I am looking upto my lead developer to lead this . This is not purely technical work , it is leadership &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think, it just boils down to maintaining this discipline and a person leading this change.&#xA;Before bringing in any other winds of change through a process , I will start with these 'cultural' changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need someone who believes in this and can persuade/enforce thee changes , lead developer ? an architect ? or you ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastActivityDate="2012-05-26T23:01:20.773" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5716" CreationDate="2012-05-27T09:47:29.793" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to say some words to adoption of graphic/creative work and Scrum, because I work in a Scrum enviroment as a single UX designer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me it didn't work well with Scrum. For several reasons and the major, I guess, is, as mentioned from Trevor, &lt;strong&gt;Scrum is a software development method. Not one for creative work&lt;/strong&gt;. Its about take a task, do it, done (which is represented by its columns). Thats how you code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Design is mostly about doing something, forget it and look with new eyes on it - for getting a more objective taste. (Btw thats my way of working, others may differ) Thats not represented in Scrum. You can do this sort of iterations, but its supposed to be done next sprint, which is 2 or 4 weeks to go. And not a day or two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually my design tasks were sticking around at in progress column, because it needed a day left. It was ridiculous and not good Scrum style, but I have no idea how to solve this problem. Even that often mentioned Lean UX doesn't help as its about making less paper, but not about doing UX on Scrum board. Having a lot of talks with my teamleader (who is Dev) couldn't help either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I found an interesting agile approach, which is more close to design work and its called Kanban. Coming from manufacturing (Toyota), it covers analysis, raw design and fine design as well, because you can add as many columns as you want ;) I couldn't implement it at work so far, so no idea if its so promising as Im saying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check some of these threads and the links inside for more about Kanban: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/3305/what-is-kanban&quot;&gt;What is Kanban?&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/3147/is-there-a-list-of-good-kanban-books&quot;&gt;Kanban books&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/kanban&quot;&gt;Kanban threads&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2747" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T10:14:48.300" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5777" CreationDate="2012-05-27T11:52:46.930" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a whole host of skills needed for a role of PM. How each of these skills presents in an individual varies, with no evidence that there exists some single blueprint.  Further, each project is unique, deployed under unique environmental circumstances. One project may require significant public interaction while the same project done at another time and location may require little. Therefore, whether this skill is advantageous or not simply depends on need. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of us can claim we are experts at all of the skills desired for this role, yet we have advanced in our careers despite this. How is that?  Many skills, despite our best efforts, simply will not grow much. In fact, many suggest to ignore your weak skills and focus on your strengths, making those even stronger. We get by because we learn to cope with our weaknesses, finding work arounds, buying the skills we don't possess. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success of a project manager is never contingent on a single skill. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T11:52:46.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5777" CreationDate="2012-05-28T00:50:52.203" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on my experience, public speaking skill can be extremely useful to successful project management &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;but&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; I don't think it should be considered a blanket statement for all PMs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you take classes or read books about public speaking, there are a lot things that you can learn that are useful for other venues, too. You get advice about preparation, creating a clear message, improving your visual aid, and other communications tools and that kind of learning can be useful in other communications channels. Creating a good collection of charts and graphs with a clear message, for example, will help in a status report just as much as a presentation in front of a large audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Should a project manager spend some time sharpening his public speaking skills?&lt;/em&gt; Yes, I think it is worthwhile expenditure of time and effort. Normally has good return value.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;What is the best way to do it?&lt;/em&gt; I have had good success with university/college level evening classes. They tend to be small group lessons with good quality instructors at reasonable prices. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T00:50:52.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5784" CreationDate="2012-05-28T02:35:41.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure how accurate will fit a software for your needs... but I'd give a try to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Attlassian's Jira&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it's a paid software, but it really worth the price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latest version I used (&lt;em&gt;v4&lt;/em&gt;) had a fancy interface, was straightly enough for our clients and enough customization for our management. I really like this tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T02:35:41.593" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5795" CreationDate="2012-05-28T10:58:39.307" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wow, it sounds like you have your work cut out here Jeff!! I agree with Tiago, I don't think a wholesale move to agile will work well in this situation, as it really needs the entire team to function as a cross functional unit as much as possible, and you are not there yet. There are a lot of agile techniques and artifacts that you can bring in over time that may help improve the short term situation though. It sounds like the primary issue is the development team mindset rather than the process itself (although there are a few issues there too!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have already done the right initial steps by trying to get development to take more responsibility to the testing/quality role, but that was unsuccessful. I wonder whether you could try again by coming at it from the unit testing side? Perhaps the development team will be more open to improving the unit test coverage (since that really &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be part of a developers role). You could then use this as a way to get them a little more onside with the concept of quality assurance being something that happens throughout the project. Once they are more actively creating good unit tests, you could suggest they assist with some form of automated UI testing. My team have just started creating Selenium keywords for all new functionality as part of the development &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumalliance.org/articles/105-what-is-definition-of-done-dod&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Definition of Done&lt;/a&gt; criteria. They were hesitant at first but are now quite pro the idea as it has been the fastest and most productive way to create them. For your team, I would stick to automated testing that involves some element of writing code, as that will be an easier sell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the documented requirements, this is an area that agile may be able to help. If you use the user story format and push the fact that the stories themselves are just aide memoirs for a proper conversation, that may help get the development team and the business communicating more closely. The user story format is an easy format for the business to create, and since they are short (because a lot of the detail is in the actual conversation) the activation energy needed to persuade the business to create them should be low. You can extend this by listing the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.b2bee.com/2010/05/conditions-of-satisfaction/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Conditions of Satisfaction&lt;/a&gt; for each story and get the developers to demo these in a regular demo. This will push the developers to at least do some level of testing before it is 'ready' for QA. This is clearly not perfect but it is a baby step towards nirvana.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the 2 week iterations and estimation, could you push towards using story points as an estimation mechanism? These are not time based but do give a way to track progress. I'm not 100% confident that this will work too well without a good working relationship between the QA and development teams, but it could be worth trying. I presume the reason the developers are so anti-estimating is because they have been burnt historically by being held to estimates. You need to work hard to ensure this does not happen. Story points are a good way to try something different as a kick starter, but once you have some estimates you have to make sure they are used carefully. You don't want to lose the teams trust, as it sounds like it will be difficult to get back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in summary, I suggest the following steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Push unit testing with the development team. Once this is established, try to extend this role to include more testing, but stick to automation testing initially so that at least the testing involves cutting code.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try using user stories as a way to document requirements. However, make sure everyone knows that the real requirements are captured in a conversation still, and the stories are just a reminder of the conversation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use Conditions of Satisfaction and a regular demo of progress to push developers to engage and perform some level of feature testing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try using story points for estimating the effort required, but make sure you are careful about how you use the estimated progress.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck, it sounds like you have a fun few months ahead of you. Changing peoples' mindset is not a quick thing to do, so don't rush this process. If you can only improve one aspect, don't worry at least you've improved something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="788" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-05-28T20:55:06.540" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T20:55:06.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5805" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-29T02:08:51.727" Score="1" ViewCount="821" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any significant differences between &quot;Monitor and Control Project Work&quot; process versus other control processes e.g., control scope, control schedule, control cost, perform quality control?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I understand is that Monitor and Control Project Work which falls under integration knowledge area just ensures all the control process activities are monitored and contolled in an integrated manner. I think all other control processes are sufficient without having Monitor and Control Project Work process, but I am quite confused and am hoping somebody can explain this to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4004" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-05-29T04:28:10.160" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T16:51:28.130" Title="PMBOK 4th Edition - Monitor and Control Project Work versus other Control Processes, what are the differences?" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;pmbok&gt;&lt;contracts&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5806" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-29T02:26:56.203" Score="1" ViewCount="2836" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the customer issues a Letter of Award or service order and asks us to provide a service in the form of a project, can it be considered as a Project Charter? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4004" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-05-29T04:26:13.847" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T16:37:47.290" Title="Can Letter of Award (LOA) or Service Order be considered as a Project Charter?" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;project-charter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5806" CreationDate="2012-05-29T04:25:21.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, a Letter of Award is not the same as a Project Charter. The scope of a Letter of Award is tiny in comparison to that of the Project Charter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While they are very similar, they are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Letter of Award says that you've &lt;em&gt;won&lt;/em&gt; the bid on the project, while the Project Charter authorizes the Project Manager to begin work on the project, among other things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below is some information that helps differentiate between the two types of documents:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Letter of Award:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.howtowritealetter.net/Letter-of-Award.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How to Write a Letter.net&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A letter of award is a letter that is sent to a bidder on a business related contract that has been awarded the contract. This type of letter is very common in auction situations, where multiple parties are bidding on the same job. For example, if a company was taking bids on contactors to expand their factory, they would send a letter of award to the contractor they chose to complete the job for them. Essential information to include in a letter of award include the following:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Amount of award – the amount in monetary terms that the contract is for&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Award date  - the date on which the award was made&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Contract sign date – the date on which the final contract will be signed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This information can be summarized in a simple, one page letter. See the example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.howtowritealetter.net/Letter-of-Award.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Letter of Award&lt;/a&gt; for an example of what this letter might look like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Charter:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mastering-project-management.com/project-initiation.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mastering Project Management&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;According to the PMBOK® Guide, the content of the Project Charter should include, either within the document or as a reference to other documents, the following:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Business needs, high-level project description, or product requirements that are the focus of the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Specific customer and other stakeholder project needs or expectations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Project purpose or justification&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Assigned Project Manager and authority level&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Summary milestone schedule&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Stakeholder influences&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Functional organizations involved and their participation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Organizational, environmental, and external assumptions and constraints&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Business case justifying the project, including a return on investment (ROI) and preliminary budget summary&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's quite possible that you'll know a lot of this information &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you win the bid, and it's quite possible that you'll be working on the Project Charter while negotiating; however, the two documents are not the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T04:25:21.430" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5808" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5812" CreationDate="2012-05-29T07:58:20.183" Score="1" ViewCount="330" Body="&lt;p&gt;Other than Microsoft Project what are some of the other programs out there that are great for making gantt charts, the best I could find is GanttProject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4006" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2012-05-29T11:10:49.527" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T08:06:30.220" Title="Programs for making gantt charts" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-05-30T09:55:10.263" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5809" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-29T08:08:13.443" Score="0" ViewCount="409" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMBOK has defined 42 management processes. Yet, not all the processes are relevant or some are less important according to the organization's size. I am doing a survey which objective in mind is to identify which process is important for Small Medium Enterprise in performing software project. I believe that there are too many processes in the PMBOK that SMEs need to adopt. In your opinion which processes are important for SMEs? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4004" LastEditorUserId="4004" LastEditDate="2012-05-29T17:21:40.127" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T18:33:32.340" Title="Among 42 processes as outlined by the PMBOK, which process is important for SMEs?" Tags="&lt;pmbok&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5758" CreationDate="2012-05-29T08:43:45.577" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several KPIs -what we call a quality model- you can use to measure a software product quality. One approach, and a good starting point is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_9126&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;standard ISO 9126&lt;/a&gt; that recommend to measure the internal quality, the external quality and the quality in use of your product and based on the different metrics you can gather infer the different aspects of quality: maintainability, functionality, usability, portability, efficiency and reliability of your software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are commercial and non-commercial products that can help you calculate the aspects using static code analysis and integration with testing platforms for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the underlying metrics include level of compliance to predefined coding rules and best practices, intrinsic metrics like cyclomatic complexity, size metrics like lines of code or function points, etc. The previously mentioned number of users and time to deploy new features alone, I don't think measure the real quality of your product. At most they can help to calculate some of the aspects, like usability, but the view they give is very limited. You need a more holistic view and for that you need more data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to mention that measuring the real quality of your product throughout the development life-cycle pays off. You will have less defects in production and your maintenance cycles will be shorter. This is proven.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4008" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T08:43:45.577" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5811" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-29T10:44:11.770" Score="4" ViewCount="1290" Body="&lt;p&gt;Estimate size is the process of approximating the size for of the products and parts to be produced for the project. Is it important to estimate the size, especially for the software project? Does the PMBOK address this aspect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Size of software product e.g., Lines of Codes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4004" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-01T03:58:04.630" LastActivityDate="2012-07-12T14:45:52.657" Title="Is it important to estimate the product size for software project?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;pmbok&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5808" CreationDate="2012-05-29T10:53:11.000" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ganttproject.biz/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GanttProject&lt;/a&gt; is indeed an option. Apart from that you could test drive &lt;a href=&quot;http://sourceforge.net/projects/openproj/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OpenProj&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ca.com/us/collateral/demos/na/ca-open-workbench.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Open Workbench&lt;/a&gt; (the latter acquired by CA). These are more or less sound options from the &quot;free stable&quot;. Personally, I'm usually drawn towards OpenProj.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are quite a few paid options, the most popular being MS Project (mentioned already) and Primavera (popular in the construction industry especially). If you're into mind mapping and don't need much sophistication, you could also consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mindjet.com/products/mindmanager/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mindjet's MindManager&lt;/a&gt; which is becoming more and more useful for PMs (Gantt charts too).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2142" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T10:53:11.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5784" CreationDate="2012-05-29T12:19:11.487" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Question requester deems the below analytical information is less applicable now that the requester would like to narrow requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a shocking open source web based and email capable request management application i just found for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bestpractical.com/rt/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://bestpractical.com/rt/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is FREE - check&#xA;Dashboard feature - check&#xA;Email feature - check&#xA;non user self service-  check&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like that there are O'Reilly book on it for you to get the support you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*It let's you reply out of inbox, it is web-based so it goes across mobile platforms as well, non-user self service logging interface, organizing around projects/categories... almost too good to be true. I'd be very curious to hear your trial result if you decide to try it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shockingly also, great organizations use it: NASA, Merill Lynch, Kayak.com, Nike, MIT (spells out respectful and versatile to me)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't find any info on image integration yet... which sounds pretty useful for your industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sounds like there are three major requirements (ticket lifecycle processing should be included) : &#xA;1. a ticket logging email notification mechanism&#xA;2. dashboard&#xA;3. client engagement and participation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's actually difficult to get all three things together. It's very easy to have a cheap notification system, even if it is a simple Google Form to get the ticket logged and distributed to all members. Then a CRM or a ticket management system can take care of the ticket processing lifecycle from open to assignment to close etc (generally included). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to specifically check Dashboard feature because most only have very basic table / excel like reporting. Dashboard can be an expensive feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally client engagement is even harder because you need to give them access to your ticket management system, involves a lot of user right specification and you need to train them how to... gets pretty messy&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say since your team is still relatively small, try software-as-a-service providers then you don't have a to pay a high premium. If you want all your features together, may be salesforce.com CRM type of ticket and relationship management can be a good fit. I think their newly acquired Chatter is especially interesting that allows multi-staff collaboration and also can invite clients to join the chatter thread and view progress and get involved. But it may comes with quite a price tag. Their sales team can be aggressive in pursuing you during or post a trial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4009" LastEditorUserId="4009" LastEditDate="2012-05-29T15:01:29.460" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T15:01:29.460" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5814" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-29T14:35:10.907" Score="1" ViewCount="586" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anyone knows of any project management framework/methodology that has been developed specifically to cater to very small enterprises?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that Waterfall presents a serious overhead that cannot be tolerated by small enterprises. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4004" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2012-05-29T15:45:08.590" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T16:28:41.793" Title="any project management framework or methodology which is best suited for a very small enterprise?" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5814" CreationDate="2012-05-29T15:49:59.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;welcome to PMSE!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you had a look at &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;? It's a group of methods often used for small &lt;em&gt;projects&lt;/em&gt; and / or rough requirements. Worth to read about (and then make your question more specific).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice that I don't believe there's such framework/methodology based on the company's size. We can have a huge company with tiny projects as well as a (relatively) small company with a (relatively) huge project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T15:49:59.753" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5814" CreationDate="2012-05-29T16:28:41.793" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you're misunderstanding the waterfall concept. Waterfall simply means that the project is sequenced, and that certain things must be done before other. In truth, all projects follow a waterfall process to some extent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for a small business, there's no specific methodology tailored to a type of 'business', methodologies are designed for types of projects. So what would be most applicable to you would be what suits your project best - software dev, then maybe Agile of Scrum; IT, maybe PRINCE2, const or fixed scope, then more waterfall/CPM. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T16:28:41.793" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5811" CreationDate="2012-05-29T16:31:05.707" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it's important to estimate size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How else will you be able to determine approximate man-hours, budget/cost, duration, etc. of the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless your project has no deadline, and an unlimited budget (and no performance goals), then you need to estimate work required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T16:31:05.707" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5806" CreationDate="2012-05-29T16:37:47.290" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Project Charter goes by a lot of names, and can be anything that authorizes the project AND outlines what the project is. So in this case, the LOA WITH the project proposal would count as the Charter. It's the two combined that create the Charter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The LofA by itself wouldn't be sufficient as it (most likely) doesn't include all of the detail necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T16:37:47.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5805" CreationDate="2012-05-29T16:51:28.130" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;They are both basically the same thing, for a few reasons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Monitor &amp;amp; Control Execution is first and foremost a Process Group, not a Process. The 42 Processes fall under the 5 Process Groups. These 5 Groups get repeated during each phase of the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Project Integration Management Knowledge Area of the PMBoK Guide was inserted as a catch-all for the various processes that didn't specifically fall under any one specific Knowledge Area, primarily because they cross all of the Knowledge Area (so M&amp;amp; C couldn't be listed under Cost Mgmt when it aslo applies to Time Mgmt.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the other Process being sufficient without M &amp;amp; C - kind of. They're sufficient in and of themselves in that they can be separated from the others, but they still need to be Monitored &amp;amp; Controlled, hence the Project Integration KA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And remember, the Process Groups repeat during each phase, and M &amp;amp; C runs the duration of each phase. M &amp;amp; C is what gets you from Initiate to Close. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T16:51:28.130" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5795" CreationDate="2012-05-29T17:31:29.827" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure where your authority lies in this, but it's not a methodology problem you have, it's a responsibility/accountability problem. And until/unless management gets involved, nothing will change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that you have a group of people who are determining what their job is, and what they're willing to do, even if they're told different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way to correct or change this is to demonstrate 'why' management must get involved. Outline the problems form the last project. Show how the suggested changes will improve things. Show them how much this attitude is costing them (re-work, delays, bug-fixes, etc.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Explain to mgmt that you have a team that is unwilling to estimate how long something is going to take because they dont' want to be help to that. Mgmt is paying for that time, so how can they forecast anything or track unless they're given something at the outset? anything less means the dev team has an open budget to take as long as they want. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line, until you can find a way to force mgmt to see the problems and act, nothing will change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T17:31:29.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5809" CreationDate="2012-05-29T17:37:12.313" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, it is a mistake to try to identify what processes would be important for &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; type of project or business, no matter the attribute, through a survey like this.  You stand up and deploy those processes that you need.  And the need is dictated by what you are producing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work right to left instead of left to right.  What are you producing?  What do you need to produce in order to produce what you are producing?  Once you identify the outputs, then choose the processes you need to develop them, then identify the inputs you need.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every project is unique.  One process would be terribly important on one project, then completely irrelevant another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2012-05-29T18:33:32.340" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T18:33:32.340" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5822" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5824" CreationDate="2012-05-29T20:27:39.280" Score="6" ViewCount="488" Body="&lt;p&gt;My unit manages business change projects. In order to flesh out what a project is (i.e. what are we trying to accomplish, what is the scope, how do we define success, etc etc) we tend to get bogged down in a time consuming, iterative process that is frustrating for everyone concerned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone out there have any suggestions for ways to efficiently and effectively manage definition of project scope in the early &quot;starting a project&quot; phase when you have a good idea of where you want to get to in terms of benefits but don't have a good idea of what the end product will look like or how you would get there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2015-02-17T13:53:13.990" Title="How to better manage definition of project scope for business change projects?" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;scope-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5823" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5826" CreationDate="2012-05-29T21:13:58.473" Score="2" ViewCount="206" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am interested in a psychology-related issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's imagine that we have a consulting company (and let's call it BusinessSoftwareInc) which does small and medium software projects for its clients. Some projects can be so small that they can be accomplished by one or two developers. By design of the BusinessSoftwareInc company the clients do not have any direct contacts with the company's developers (they do that via company's project manager).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's also imagine that the BusinessSoftwareInc company hires a remote employee (a developer or a web-designer, i.e. a person who never needs to visit the office) to do those software projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There can be some times when a client demands an NDA for a software project and our company should adhere to that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that case the developer is given a task to develop a software project, but he/she will never see it live in production (simply because the client will use it internally and the NDA does not allow to put the software project into our company's online portfolio or create a demo).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is:&#xA;Can that negatively affect the morale of a developer and if yes, how this undesirable effect can be reduced or avoided?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point is that if a developer does not really see the result of his/her work in production, that can lead to some kind of 'moral burnout' on his side, because if you do not see the thing that you has put your time in that can be very disappointing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. The only thing that I could imagine is to tell the developer something like &quot;The client was very pleased with your job&quot;, but I tend to think it is a weak trick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2936" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T01:02:23.517" Title="Remote developers: does seeing a result really matter?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;distributed-team&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5822" CreationDate="2012-05-29T21:20:59.200" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to break it down into several sub-discussions, each with a different goal. Then try to keep everyone to the one topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of suggestions - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, it sounds like your unit manages change for other units? Then the first step is to identify the relevant stakeholders, and get their input - what do they want, how do they define success, what does 'done' look like, etc. If this is for your own unit, then the same questions apply really, but the key part is making sure you stick to the &quot;why&quot; of the project first. Scope comes later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, once you've defined the 'why', now you move to the what - 'scope'. What's needed to accomplish this goal, what's included and what's not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you have the 'why' and 'what', then it's on to the how - planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By breaking it down this way and separating the different aspects, you can keep the discussion moving - if it starts to drift you can always bring it back with &quot;great point, but's more scope related, and first we need to define X&quot;, or that's more planning related and first we need to define the sope to se if that's even going to be necessary&quot;, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T21:20:59.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5823" CreationDate="2012-05-30T00:50:17.313" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are an infinite number of examples of people who never see the completed result of their work.  It would be a unique individual who would suffer morale issues secondary to this and would likely be due to other things.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are three things that have been found to motive us: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.  I cannot see how not seeing the &quot;final&quot; product adversely impacts any of these.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your company is like most companies, there are probably 50 things you can change today that are known morale detractors and much more compelling...and you can probably list the 50 off the top of your head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T00:50:17.313" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5823" CreationDate="2012-05-30T01:02:23.517" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would tend to think that the dev would know going in what the situation was, and accepted that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if not, even then I think that there are other far more motivating factors - quality of work, the challenge, the demonstration of ability, getting paid, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;for Jmort's 'pm perspective', there are any number of domains where team members never see the finished product (const for ex), they just know they did their part right and went to the next site. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T01:02:23.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5827" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-30T02:29:36.697" Score="3" ViewCount="101" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a web development company, we are developing highly customized and complex websites based on a popular open source platform (Joomla). I see that 4 of our clients have an overlapping problem, so I have an idea to solve this problem for them. I have pitched the idea to get 40h of work funded by each of them for this project and had generally quite positive responses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question here centers around how to manage scope for the development, as these clients are used to get (and pay for) exactly what they want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The current idea is to make a very detailed plan for half of the available funding and reserve the half to make 4 very specific customizations to the project for each client. Obviously the exact needs could be researched much more deeply as well, to split the funds 60%/40% etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a reasonable idea to manage scope? What is the most correct way to manage this scope?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="747" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-05-30T05:18:06.843" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T14:41:57.117" Title="Scope in 4 party sponsored open source project" Tags="&lt;scope&gt;&lt;open-source&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5827" CreationDate="2012-05-30T05:16:41.727" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;From jdog:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The current idea is to make a very detailed plan for half of the available funding and reserve the half to make 4 very specific customizations to the project for each client. Obviously the exact needs could be researched much more deeply as well, to split the funds 60%/40% etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're allocating the funds in an appropriate manner, splitting the initial cost for both clients at 50/50 and splitting the remaining customizations at 50/50. This is a great place to start negotiations. Depending on requirements overlap, this may change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Project_Management/PMBOK/Scope_Management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WikiBooks PMBOK Scope Management&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scope refers to a project’s boundaries: it determines what work will be completed during the project lifecycle. This includes identifying the work that won’t be included in the current round of product/service development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're going to ask two of your clients to split the cost of a portion of the project, you're going to need to know exactly what requirements both will agree on and exactly what requirements will be paid for and worked on separately. You must clearly define those scope boundaries; disagreements in agreed-upon requirements, changing requirements, and scope creep that heads in completely different directions is a huge risk to the combined projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you're aware, your job in managing scope is going to be a lot tougher than if you're dealing with only a single client. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, you need to make it clear to both clients that the items that they agree to split cannot be changed without revisiting the entire scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, theoretically, 50% of the work is split for the same requirements and 50% of the work is directed towards differing requirements, and client A decides to change a requirement from the shared category, then does that mean that Client B then picks up the costs of the abandoned requirement, or do you hold Client A to that cost?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll need to get an agreement up front as to how to handle these scope changes to determine who pays for them. Despite the clients being used to getting what they want, you'll need to clearly define the scope and hold them to that. In the Project Charter, pay special attention to details such as Project Manager authority in changing the scope and clearly define the budget for both sets of requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Communication and negotiation skills are a “must-have” as well. Project managers need to educate stakeholders about the project impacts of some requirements. Adding complexity to a project may require more staff, time, and/or money. It may also have an impact on project quality. Some aspects of the project may be unfeasible – stakeholders need to know this so they can adjust their vision or prepare for future challenges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, you may discuss with the clients to gauge their tolerance for cutting features, if necessary. If Client A absolutely requires that you expose an API to allow them to integrate one of their databases, and they're not willing to pay more, then come up with a plan for what features are lowest priority from the non-shared 50% category to make up for the differences in time or cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, it's up to you to ensure that the scope is realistic and that you can meet the needs of each client, and this will involve some negotiating on your part as well as drawing from your past experiences as to what is and isn't doable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, if these clients are known for changing requirements or pushing for changes that add scope creep, you may want to consider both of these as separate projects. The costs will be higher for both of the the clients, and some work may be duplicated, but it may be easier to guarantee that both clients get exactly what they want as the risks will be lessened and more transparent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T05:16:41.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5795" CreationDate="2012-05-30T06:37:45.557" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jeff,&#xA;Implementing new process is a complex task. Too complex - I believe - to describe it in one PMSE answer. Moreover, implementing is not the goal, &lt;strong&gt;the goal should be sustaining the new process and making the change stable&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the short term, you can make some improvements and changes, but in the long run you need to change the culture in both management and dev team. &lt;strong&gt;I never saw a change, forced by a middle-level management only, which succeeded.&lt;/strong&gt; That means you need to sell the concept to the management and developers, which involves politics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Situation you described, I would paraphrase like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You have a bunch of co-workers who had a good time sitting in their comfort zone, pushing their job on the shoulders of others or not doing it at all. For example management didn't manage the changing requirements and developers didn't care of quality. Now you can make them realise the situation and earn the support OR decide if you want to work in a mess...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My department moved from &quot;no-process-at-all&quot; to Agile so feel free to contact me in case you need some &quot;offshore support&quot;. Also, you will find many short term solutions on this PMSE site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T06:37:45.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5808" CreationDate="2012-05-30T08:06:30.220" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edrawsoft.com/EDrawMax.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Edraw Max&lt;/a&gt; is one option that you can look into. It is helpful for not only Gantt Charts but also allows a range of custom diagrams to be made. Basically this comes in helpful in creating clear and distinct diagrams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4015" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T08:06:30.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3619" CreationDate="2012-05-30T09:36:02.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will say from my personal experience and the answer would be that no in general you do not need to have development experience under your belt to become a project manager. There is a totally different role for that and it is called technical lead, architect, SDS (software development services) head. I have been a project manager myself for almost over 2.5 years yet I am not a developer. Having said this however do keep in mind that apart from the general qualities a PM must have such as strong communication skills, optimal decision making, excellent project scoping and resource management etc the PM must atleast:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have basic technical know how&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;knows how to handle SVN and version controlling&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;should be sound enough to know which tasks needs what amount of time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4015" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T09:36:02.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5827" CreationDate="2012-05-30T09:54:50.267" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interesting idea, but I can't see it working.  Controlling multiple stakeholders froma single organization is a challenge already.  Multiplying that by four seems like you are closing in on the impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, your company should make this an investment project.  You fund this to get an 80% solution, then sell it to each with additional work to close the gaps and make it company specific.  I think you would increase the odds of completing it and might make more money out of it, and you will almost certainly save each customer as a customer for future business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T09:54:50.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5757" CreationDate="2012-05-30T10:08:08.510" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you asked them &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; they get it wrong so frequently?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do they think they're just careless when they do it or do they believe there is an underlying issue that causes them to not pay it as much attention as they should?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could be that they're frequently task switching or feel under a lot of pressure to get these sort of tasks done quickly to move onto other work.  There may be other reasons (genuine or perceived) that cause them to not pay full attention to the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T10:08:08.510" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5795" CreationDate="2012-05-30T13:13:23.140" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your first step needs to be a culture change with your developers.  I'm actually dealing with a similar problem, where many of my developers (I was until very recently a team lead) considered - like yours - it their job to write the code, QA's job to find the errors, and theirs to fix them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are - slowly - trying to change that culture so that it becomes the developers responsibility not to write code, but to produce a product that meets the requirements, which obviously includes that it meet whatever quality standards you have.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing we've started doing is to instruct QA that if they ever find (for example) 5 bugs in 5 minutes on a project - or one very obvious bug in that time - they stop testing, and send it back to development to have them fix it.  This is a pretty strong motivator, because it's embarrassing to be told your work is so bad it's not even worth testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1896" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T13:13:23.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5757" CreationDate="2012-05-30T13:29:55.490" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the higher-level peers are spotting the problems, they must be using some kind of heuristics, tests or monitoring to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest pairing up your higher-level peers with the lower-level people next time they check for problems, so that the lower-level people will understand how to test and monitor their own work. Once they have that understanding, they may want to test each other's work in order to avoid blind-siding themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even better, understanding the tests that are used may give them a better understanding of the purpose and value of their work, which may lead them to find better ways of doing it accurately, be that automation or otherwise. I find telling people to follow a process is rarely as effective or interesting as asking them to meet some particular test or goal or to deliver something valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they still don't get it right, it may be that this kind of work is completely unsuited to their strengths. For instance, they might be highly creative and responsive people without the mental rigor needed for repetitive tasks (most software developers are like this). If that's the case, you may want to train up someone with a different mindset who will have the patience and tenacity you need (a tester, for instance).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If on the other hand they were hired specifically to do this kind of task, you may want to take a look at your hiring practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you decide, dealing with the people involved will only deal with the symptoms, not the real cause which sounds as if it's systemic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T13:29:55.490" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5827" CreationDate="2012-05-30T14:41:57.117" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll take a slightly different approach than the others - Really what you have are two projects. I would split the scope into two projects and then deal with the clients separately based on that split.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project 1:&#xA;As I read it - you have 4 clients, each with a problem (4 problems). But they're the same problem, so you only have one problem to fix. You could in fact solve the one problem, then charge each individually for the fix (sort of what David suggested).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you don't want to do that, so what do you do? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tell them you'll fix the one common, base problem for all of them and they can split the costs. Sounds like you've already done that on they're on board. That's the first part of the scope - fixing the one part that's common to all of them. This is the Fixed Scope. You know what it will take, and what has to be done for all 4, and you include only those changes that apply to all 4. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project 2:&#xA;Then the second part of the scope - individual customization. The first, common part of the problem has been fixed, and they've shared the cost equally (at a huge discount were they to do it separately). That was one cost. Now the group project is over, and you deal with each separately on their individual customization, with each paying for what they want. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point they can ask for whatever they want and you can deliver as they're paying for it, and it doesn't affect your other clients. And no matter what they ask for, it's still cheaper than if you had handled the clients individually and charged them each for the fix. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T14:41:57.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5757" CreationDate="2012-05-30T15:10:48.703" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would NEVER assume that peer review is a waste of efforts. On the contrary, it saves you a lot of time fixing bugs that otherwise could go into production and cost you a lot more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, I would force peer review even before the SQL is executed. Make someone else (better two) look at it before executing. Catching an error in a query is faster and more reliable than in data scattered all along the database.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the answer about the guy, I can't totally agree with the cog example suggested by Espina. You can't just fit any cog wherever you want. As you said, this job is boring as hell, maybe he will be more motivated working to automate it. As a leader, you should try to take these boring and demotivating tasks away from the team, do it yourself for a while and delegate them a task to automate it. You will have more confidence on the data being pushed into production (since you are doing it) and the automated solution would be implemented faster, since the team doesn't have to bother with these kind of monkey jobs anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And always remember, if you care for bugs going live, peer review is the key.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2352" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T15:10:48.703" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5822" CreationDate="2012-05-30T21:28:26.307" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you tried using a Work Breakdown Structure?&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80c-LRRJ0W8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80c-LRRJ0W8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2352" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T21:28:26.307" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5757" CreationDate="2012-05-31T04:00:48.470" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If he is making the same mistake again and again , &#xA;are we sure that the peers who are reviewing his work or him , not applying the same(and not working) measure to guage him again and again&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the review process working for the person in question ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, has someone looked at why is this happening repeatedly ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lack of skill, motivation,grudge or general lethargy ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has he been asked &quot;have you been given the amount of support and guidance(that you want) to get it right the next time ?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;if yes , and if he gets it wrong the next time , then maybe it is time to relieve him of the current role , unfortunately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastEditorUserId="879" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T06:34:31.367" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T06:34:31.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5842" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-31T07:47:37.250" Score="2" ViewCount="195" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some projects have feedback from many sources (testers, designers, customer, developers). You can easily get more than 50 different items that need to be prioritized. Some of them are huge, critical bugs; others are of the type &quot;move the drop shadow on button X 1 pixel down&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's a good way to organize this feedback so that it's easy for the product owner to prioritize items? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: This question is similar to the unanswered part of &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/5767/handling-detailed-feedback-from-many-sources&quot;&gt;Handling detailed feedback from many sources&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3184" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-06-08T20:43:22.623" Title="Collecting, structuring and prioritizing details" Tags="&lt;backlog&gt;&lt;feedback&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5726" CreationDate="2012-05-31T10:11:22.830" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can try &lt;a href=&quot;http://kanbantool.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;KanbanTool&lt;/a&gt; . It's a webbased application based on kanban. It has an intuitive drag &amp;amp; drop interface and the number of useful features such as: tasks visualization with colored cards placed on kanban board, card template customization, kanban board adjustment with swimlanes &amp;amp; columns sizes and names,  synchronization with calendars, RSS feeds, API integration, breakdown charts, cumulative flow diagram,results exportation to Excel file and real-time updates.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4026" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T10:11:22.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5842" CreationDate="2012-05-31T13:35:59.000" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've used a simple grid to prioritize e.g. risks, brainstorming ideas, etc. For detail prioritization you could use a 3 x 3 grid, one axis being cost/effort (rate as low/moderate/high) and the other being need (&quot;Nice to have&quot;/&quot;Need to have&quot;/&quot;Critical to have&quot;). Ask the sources to independently rate the items they gave you using these criteria, collate the results and put them up on the grid. An example from a risk management exercise is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nhp1k.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should get a good idea of what you should prioritize at a macro level doing this, and you can modify the results a bit based on your business rules (e.g. customer's criticals come first) to make a sensible final list. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also develop rules for which details will be addressed and to what degree. In the risk example a business rule might be to accept risks in green boxes, mitigate those in yellow and actively avoid those in red. In your case, a low utility/high cost item would be scoped out, high utility/high cost items would be assigned your top tier developers, etc.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T13:35:59.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5846" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-31T15:16:58.927" Score="2" ViewCount="185" Body="&lt;p&gt;Purpose : Need to make a few business decisions.  There are 2 ways to go about it.  Each of these have multiple ways to go about.  So, it is a randomly nested decision flow path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Need a system with following features&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a workflow with all the paths.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assign the probability of success at each event.  (Min., Best guess, and Max)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The software tells me the best possible path. Is something like that possible, and what are the advantages and disadvantages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4027" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T20:03:23.897" LastActivityDate="2012-06-05T03:03:00.550" Title="Can decision making software be used to supplement or replace decision making?" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5757" CreationDate="2012-05-31T16:10:22.927" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your question : move them to another team.  So that they get a fresh chance to prove themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My thoughts : Making a technical guy do this kind of routine work is not good.  You should get this whole thing automated.  If your boss / you is not convinced that a small investment is not needed in automating this, then I feel sad for your juniors.  If you are convinced, and there are some other genuine constraints, fine, I can understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the best thing a computer can do is to match if the data from source A is same as B.  If so, insert this set of queries.  A human, being made to do this processing every time taxes the brain to do useless stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do agree the employees need to know how the process works, and why is it is there.  But I dont agree that is of greater importance than applying is mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4027" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T16:10:22.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5846" CreationDate="2012-05-31T16:16:43.483" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Brain?  Not really software, but soft matter.  :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T16:16:43.483" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5846" CreationDate="2012-05-31T16:45:12.303" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd have to agree with David. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no substitute for expert judgement. What you're asking for would require a number of variables to be identified and entered, that by the time you got all of that done you'd probably have enough information to just make the decision yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plus, on the psychology side, making the decision yourself is going to put more weight and belief behind it than just doing what a computer told you to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T16:45:12.303" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5846" CreationDate="2012-05-31T16:50:43.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know of a piece of software that will solve this for you, but you can apply routing algorithms (if you don't mind a bit of math).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest a whiteboard and a hand drawn tree, then you can use &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijkstra%27s_algorithm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dijkstra's algorithm&lt;/a&gt; to determine the best path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the other comments, using your brain is fine, but it tends to offer you perspective of the whole, and it makes it harder to analyse each piece individually, then combine them as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3928" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T16:50:43.223" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5795" CreationDate="2012-05-31T22:10:30.500" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a software developer myself, I can tell you with 100% certainty that no matter what development process you are using (agile/waterfall/RUP/hacking) it is the software team's job to test that the software they deliver works. This not only includes unit tests but also (at a minimum) software integration testing. It very well may not be practical for the software team to do system level testing because of hardware resource and/or providing dedicated hardware resources to the software team but they very well should be able to perform software acceptance tests which meet ALL of the software requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, if you have no management support then you are really hosed. However, if you do have some management support (even a little) the single thing I would push for is requiring the software team to pass software acceptance test procedures prior to passing the software on to QA. This means, all the requirements being implemented for the particular release have to be tested in some way. If the software team doesn't want to write the procedures then that is fine, but after their software continually fails the acceptance tests then they will eventually gladly take over that duty. Then it simply becomes a matter of somebody verifying that their procedures do indeed test the intent of the requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="322" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T22:10:30.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1539" CreationDate="2012-05-31T23:20:18.307" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quality is a measure of how well a product serves its consumers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the consumer is a machine, then quality is likely very quantifiable and measurable. Issues like duty life, certified correct answers to anticipated questions, lack of defect, timing, etc are all relatively straightforward to measure for many cases, if hard to guarantee generally (but that's engineering).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the consumer is a human or a human business, then quality starts well before product development, and will be measured in the pirate metrics (&lt;a href=&quot;http://market-by-numbers.com/tag/pirate-metrics/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;AAARR&lt;/a&gt;), and can be measured by a series of experiments on the working system, such as registering uses of features, customer ratings, monitoring social networks, usability studies, alpha test cycles, A/B testing of features, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The development process can likewise be measured to see how well it serves its participants, such as with timely delivery, sustainable pace, non-turbulent flow of product, innovation, simplicity, component defect testing, product feature testing, and trending of productivity over time. These are all hard enough to do, but there is a lot of research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are we talking about software projects? There are volumes written, and many products for testing the quality of software (complexity, duplication, memory use, defect density, churn, and on and on).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1302" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T23:20:18.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5853" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-31T16:12:25.293" Score="5" ViewCount="768" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a web developer who is part of a three-man team that has been tasked with a rather large and complex development project. Other than some direction and impetus from management, we're pretty much on our own to develop the new website. None of us have any project management experience nor do my two coworkers seem like they would be interested in taking on that role, so I feel like it's up to me to implement some kind of structure to the development process in order to avoid issues down the road. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can I do as a developer without project management experience to ensure that our project gets developed successfully and avoid the pitfalls of developing a project without a plan?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4038" OwnerDisplayName="Raven13" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-01T01:50:44.950" LastActivityDate="2012-06-30T10:23:52.373" Title="How can I ensure our project gets developed successfully, without having any project management experience?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5853" CreationDate="2012-05-31T16:35:39.313" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a simple advice I can give you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do one thing at a time, and do it right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Split the whole shebang into chewable parts&lt;/strong&gt; (things your team can do in a few days) and &lt;strong&gt;focus on one part at a time only&lt;/strong&gt; until this part is done. And by done I mean that it has been quality tested and is properly implemented. Avoid doing many things in parallel, for it will cause a buggy mess and you will probably miss deadlines because with such development practices, when you think you're 90% done, you've not even reached 50% and probably have a low quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Track the parts in a Ticket Management system or an excel list, for a small team, that should suffice for a start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personal advice I want to give you: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As the Team Lead, don't act selfish. You're all sitting in one boat and you need to work together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.koellay.com/2009/05/difference-between-boss-and-leader.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt; for further information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Falcon" LastActivityDate="2012-06-01T01:34:33.763" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5853" CreationDate="2012-05-31T17:06:32.993" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some things you need to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your Time&lt;/strong&gt; - how much time will you really have to manage the project along with your programming responsibilities? There isn't going to be time for formal training, but that doesn't mean you can't develop something that is better than what you currently have (Which is nothing.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Team Buy In&lt;/strong&gt; - You're not in charge. Even if you were a certified PM, you're working with a team that is going to &quot;need&quot; planning for the first time. Hopefully they recognize that this project isn't like the others (they each worked on small projects on their own), so a plan is in order. Discuss what are the problem areas and how much everyone is willing to contribute. The first step in solving a problem is recognizing you have one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Communication&lt;/strong&gt; - Are you going to have regular meetings? How much documentation of specs is everyone willing to create and maintain? Will everyone just email you what they are working on and you'll update the project plan or will everyone learn how to do their own entries? What is management going to expect? Do you have to do a presentation or submit some type of schedule? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start with a project milestone that is reachable and will give you some idea of how fast your team can build this thing. Avoid trying to come up with a final date too early. Your team has nothing to base an estimate. Get something working and go from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11948" OwnerDisplayName="Jeff O" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T17:06:32.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5853" CreationDate="2012-05-31T17:33:05.013" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I firmly believe that every project needs some kind of version control. Bitbucket allows free private repos, so I would use that to host your code. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, every project needs some kind of structure. You might consider running your project using Agile principles--if so, I recommend reading &quot;The Art of Agile Development&quot; as a starting point, and asking your coworkers if they are willing to buy into that methodology. Obviously, with just three of you, certain things like pair programming aren't going to work, but other ideas (like a card wall) might work well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend using something like XP for two reasons: first, it's really easy for the team to see where they are. Second, it's really easy to communicate to management where you are. Other advantages include having a common vocabulary to achieve agreement: rather than say, &quot;I'm going to futz around with jQuery for a couple of days&quot;, say &quot;Let's run a spike to investigate jQuery, timeboxed to two days.&quot; That work gets captured and documented, which is helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But regardless of what project management technique you decide on, try to stick with it long enough to know whether you need to change it, and get as much buy in from your team as you can for whatever project flow you come up with. Since you aren't their manager, you need to all reach consensus before anything can be done anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="philosodad" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-01T01:51:11.800" LastActivityDate="2012-06-01T01:51:11.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5853" CreationDate="2012-05-31T17:55:18.473" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, the conditional probability of your project succeeding given the information in the question - isn't good.  However, it's far from impossible to succeed and there are different degrees of failure, and you probably have a fair amount of control over the degree of success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the ever present risk that you just don't implement very well, you have to manage things that are probably bigger risks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developing without requirements is a really big risk.  Do everything you can to find out the requirements.  It doesn't have to be very formal necessarily, but get as much feedback as you can about what they want.  Try to understand their goals, rather than only what they say they want, since you may at times have a better idea how to realize those goals than they do, and knowing their goals will help considerably in guessing when you have to guess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fail as quickly as possible.  There will be times when you are wrong about what they want (or they will - sometimes what they asked for won't be what they want), so fail as cheaply as you can.  A question is cheaper than a screen drawing, which is cheaper than a spec, which is cheaper than a prototype, which is cheaper than a fully implemented UI connected to a mock model, which is cheaper than a full implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do things in order of priority.  When time suddenly starts running out on you it may be possible to get by having only 30% done if it's the right 30%.  This probably means your pet features won't make it.  Note that 30% of the features 100% done (tested, documented if documentation doesn't get tossed, build-able, deploy-able, etc.) might work, 100% of the features 30% done is a boondoggle.  Finish all of each feature. If you are working with outside QA, documentation, marketting, whatever, get them in as soon as possible since that's effectively part of being 100% done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually the actual development process isn't too hard to work out on a team of 3.  It's working with everyone else that usually is tougher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly, one more thing I'd be remiss not to mention - cover yourself.  Get what you can in writing, and when you have a verbal discussion send an email summarizing what you believe was agreed upon.  You are going to be really busy trying to get this project done, and if it isn't a success and people start looking to hand out blame (hopefully your company doesn't do things this way), you won't have as much time to play politics as most of the other people involved.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something more productive you can do to cover yourself is to set realistic expectations and try to keep everyone up to date on your progress.  Don't try to hide problems.  Give management the chance to change direction if things aren't going as planned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's a bit of a grab bag, but there are books written about this stuff.  You could start reading some of them if you have time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4415" OwnerDisplayName="psr" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T17:55:18.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5811" CreationDate="2012-06-01T03:10:52.747" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer here has nuances. In general, yes, you need to have a basic sense of size - you would likely be making awful business decisions if you didn't know whether a project would need 1 developer for a month or 20 developers for a year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is not so simple as &quot;How many lines of code do you think this would be?&quot;, because lines of code is loosely correlated, at best, with effort required and quality. For example, an elegantly refactored code base might cut down code by 10 % and improve performance or ease of future programming, but actually take MORE resources and effort to develop. Additionally, lines of code would be difficult to estimate at the outset of a project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you really need to know is an estimate of the level of effort required to get to the minimally viable product, and how many iterations you would need beyond that to really reach your vision for the product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3710" LastActivityDate="2012-06-01T03:10:52.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5811" CreationDate="2012-06-01T12:31:50.873" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer to this question is another question: do lines of code AFFECT cost and time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to capture the inputs that move the cost and time variables.  If you are painting a room, the size of the room is pretty evident that your cost and time variables will move.  The color of paint is not likely to move cost and time very much with the exception of a popular color that may carry a higher price tag.  How about paint quality?  That could affect cost and time because of how well the paint covers and number of coats required.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is, there are no standard set of inputs required for the estimation process.  It requires critical thought and it starts with that question above: what will affect my cost and time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-06-01T12:31:50.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5853" CreationDate="2012-06-01T14:23:42.483" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're actually dealing with two separate issues - development &amp;amp; project management. One is about the actual work being done (dev), and the other is about making sure that work is done in the right order, on time, etc. (pm)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The development part I'll assume you have pretty well covered (you know how to dev software) since that's your job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the pm side, it's really not that difficult, regardless of how some pm's make it sound. Just remember that planning is 90% of the battle. Spend a big chunk of your time up-front breaking the project down into manageable, understandable pieces. Figure out how long each of those 'should' take, and what order they go in. Walk through the process with your other team members and talk it through, look for potential issues, delays, roadblocks, missing info, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then start working according to that plan and tracking progress. Keep in mind that no plan ever survives in it's entirety - things happen. The plan is a map, not a rule. So keep an eye on what you're doing doing, and adjust accordingly with an eye towards getting back to the original plan.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-06-01T14:23:42.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5722" CreationDate="2012-06-01T17:44:20.323" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;10 people already is a lot for a team, so roles need to be clearly assigned on a project basis.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend that you choose a leader for individual projects, you can then kick of the project in a synchronous manner (webcam or chat). From there on you have to use all the tools you have and use the advantages of being a virtual team. So asynchronous work, clearly set milestones and deadlines, once everyone did their work make sure you choose a person who puts it all together.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;When finalizing the project it is once again important to meet synchronously, this will stimulate exchange!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you are developers also make sure that your workflow is standardized. Use tools such as github or bitbucked to manage code. A shared task management tool I can recommend would be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.teambox.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;teambox&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A great book I can recommend on virtual teams is:&#xA;Cristina B Gibson, S. G. C. (2004). Virtual Teams That Work: Creating Conditions for Virtual Team Effectiveness&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Happy working&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4037" LastActivityDate="2012-06-01T17:44:20.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5853" CreationDate="2012-06-02T05:15:02.267" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple high level thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Begin with the end in mind.  Figure out what you need to get done.  A lot of this is asking, not telling or demanding.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put agreements and decisions in writing.  Don't delegate the note taking.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Divide the project into manageable tasks, with clear starts and ends.  (Turn the project into mini-projects)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Back in to the deadline.  &quot;I need this piece last.  It will take a week.  It's dependent on these two items, which will take two weeks each.  This other piece...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be brutally honest on progress reporting.  Things are either done, or not done.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you've learned the hard way, you can review the Project Management Body of Knowledge.  Without practical experience, the theory will be useless.  (What to apply and what to avoid isn't just a theoretical exercise)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-06-02T05:15:02.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5758" CreationDate="2012-06-02T05:19:45.147" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For progress reporting I'm a big fan of Earned Value.  This is the most honest method for tracking schedule and budget, but may not reach the Quality metric you're looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moving away from Earned Value, for custom and enterprise systems, I try to work back from the business case.  If the business case is, &quot;Save 15 minutes per user per day&quot; then I track how much of this I've demonstrated completing.  &quot;We've knocked off 5 minutes, we've achieved 1/3 of the business case&quot;  (This may sound like Earned Value, but it's actually different)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In between the business case and the schedule are other quality metrics.  I like to know where defects are being found by release, sorted by severity.  Are the end users finding them?  Are we getting them in system test?  Unit test?  Are they centered around certain parts of the application?  The metrics alone aren't perfect, but they can help you look.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-06-02T05:19:45.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5867" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5894" CreationDate="2012-06-02T09:13:24.527" Score="2" ViewCount="284" Body="&lt;p&gt;Within duration of project I often have to communicate various things to the clients. The projects I'm working on are very flexible, so often I receive from the client set of changes to implement and I estimate, provide and report on them. The forms of the documents sent back and forth are similar, but are not the same. Currently, I create those manually which I find very tedious, time-consuming and error prone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried iReport but think it's overkill for the task and requires more effort for learning and using than it is worth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to eliminate risk of inconsistency in the documents that I send out to clients. Also, if I keep all the data within spreadsheets and generate documents on the fly using a document-generator, will that be a good solution to this problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is a good desktop-based solution to this problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3042" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-27T03:10:09.830" LastActivityDate="2012-07-27T03:10:09.830" Title="How to select a good Project Documents generation solution?" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5853" CreationDate="2012-06-02T11:33:13.273" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;On top of the excellent suggestions in the other responses, I believe that scope management is a critical factor in success. It is unrealistic to say &quot;Absolutely no change is permitted&quot; to your scope, but it is not unrealistic to set up a process that must be followed to allow changes to the project to be accepted. Every change should be subject to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prioritisation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Evaluation / Challenge / Justification&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Analysis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Impact Assessment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agreement on the above by yourself and the client (management, in your case).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to implement something early and often - whether using Agile in a formal sense or not - that's a great way to avoid scope change, as it is easy to replan a later phase and deliver the new functionality then. Also, avoid heroics. Recognise that if it would genuinely take x days to do y work, you should not expect to absorb z and deliver y + z in the same x days, no matter what your client tries to tell you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2012-06-02T11:33:13.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5853" CreationDate="2012-06-02T13:07:40.003" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;understand the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;gathering requirements properly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;divide project in smallmodule&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;develop each small module by small team together &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;test finally &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;for any further modification or enhancement if client need recycle now this time fast &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;successfully  deliver the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4041" LastEditorUserId="2864" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T15:00:02.533" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T15:00:02.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5853" CreationDate="2012-06-02T14:12:17.403" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have more experience managing projects than apparently you are giving yourself credit for.  We start project managing as a small child.  We do more formal projects during elementary school and through high school.  You do all kinds of projects around the house.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This so called formal PM profession and its training is a lot of putting a name around what you have been doing all along.  Providing some formal techniques that, likely, you have already been doing but maybe not with all the finer techniques.  This PM has been around since for ever and has been a job function longer before it ever became a named profession.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pick up a PM basics book and have a quick read.  It will bring a bit of formality to what you likely know to do intuitively anyway.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-06-02T14:12:17.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5757" CreationDate="2012-06-03T14:09:10.853" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you need to do is an Ishikawa diagram (aka fishbone) with the involved team members.  This will help you find the root cause and address it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;people&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;materials&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;equipment &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;environment &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mentioned automation, but you don't seem to think process is the problem.  You mentioned repeated training, so you don't think management is the problem.  You have suggested people are the problem, so you may be able to find a sub cause and address it there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sugest you leave all options open and do some form of root cause analys, both individually and as a team. We simply don't have the contextual knowlage to do it for you.  Once you have the root cause, you will which of the sugestions offered will be of most help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4046" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T14:09:10.853" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5846" CreationDate="2012-06-04T00:05:55.367" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you need to run a series of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Carlo_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Monte Carlo experiments&lt;/a&gt; on a network diagram. This will help you make a more informed decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-06-04T00:05:55.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5757" CreationDate="2012-06-04T10:38:05.443" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another way to look at this is, if work allows, to give the job to two people - one to QA. If the same people do this, then they could be swapped around each time. At least this gives two sets of eyes. When keying boring data, errors are bound to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm pretty long in the tooth now, and when I got my first IT job back in the early 80's at a high street retail bank, they still had data keyers (they still had punch card readers but that's another story). They were called Data-Prep. They were a team of girls (all female, all under 25 - so we spent a fair deal of off time up there :) ) who sat at number keypads typing in cheque numbers at a blur. Their job was mind numbingly boring and prone to error (due to speed and monotony), so everything was keyed at least twice (in this case by random people from the team) and compared. Errors were thrown away and thrown back in the pot to be rekeyed again (twice). What I am saying is that, if possible, finding a way to compare data entry from two sources highlights errors before committing (it's easy to make a mistake, but hard for two people to make the same mistake in the same place).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, looks like it is not unreasonable to put more pressure on getting that automation in - after all you have the higher-up peer group on your case, so use them to push for resources - a year for something so minor compared to production risk is nuts IMHO. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it may also be cost effective to get some temps in to do any keying (data entry) - techies are no good at monotony - and will hate you for it too!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3652" LastEditorUserId="3652" LastEditDate="2012-06-04T10:43:16.967" LastActivityDate="2012-06-04T10:43:16.967" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5846" CreationDate="2012-06-04T10:47:05.943" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume that you'll need a human being to input the data that the software would need:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Create a workflow with all the paths.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Assign the probability of success at each event. (Min., Best guess, and Max)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend looking at &lt;a href=&quot;http://opmexperts.com/A%20Leader%27s%20Framework%20for%20Decision%20Making%20-%20HBR.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;David Snowden's work on complexity thinking&lt;/a&gt;, including the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cynefin model&lt;/a&gt;, to find out whether your domain is complex (in which patterns will be emergent and probably a machine program will not be able to deal with the complexity) or complicated (in which it might be possible to provide a machine with a certain amount of expertise). He also mentions other domains, including the chaotic, in which you will want to act quickly rather than plug numbers into a machine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the decision is one which is made again and again, with well-understood data - for instance, whether and how to trade based on current risk profiles - then, yes, it may be possible to create software to help make that decision. Even then, though, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Flash_Crash&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;human intervention may occasionally be required&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, the biggest problem with decision making is not making the decision as much as finding the information needed to make the best decision in the first place. Also, human beings are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~camerer/Ec101/JudgementUncertainty.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;awful at handling probability&lt;/a&gt;, so our guesses for min, best and max are likely to include significant bias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you actually create a computer program to collate this data for you, anything you write will have to work with the same flawed data that we do. The best decisions are often those designed to keep as many options as possible open until later; deciding &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; to make the decision rather than making it early with incomplete information. &lt;a href=&quot;http://decision-coach.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chris Matts and Olav Maassen&lt;/a&gt; have done quite a lot of work on the principles of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/articles/real-options-enhance-agility&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Real Options&lt;/a&gt; which may be helpful for understanding why and how this works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2012-06-04T10:47:05.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5876" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5882" CreationDate="2012-06-04T13:13:49.850" Score="16" ViewCount="301" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently participated in a discussion where we wanted to find out what kinds of open-source software we can use in our production system. The corporate guidance is not clear, and the project members had a very different understanding on the topic. For example, the mentioned guidance stated that in most cases the license applies when one downloads an open-source project. Which is non-sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, the situation is similar to the risk management, although a risk usually harms only the project, but a law suite harms the whole company. So it is a bigger deal. &lt;strong&gt;This suggests that the license handling is a project manager task&lt;/strong&gt;, however no-one can expect a project manager to know every single third party library along with their licenses, which are used the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have two examples. First, a developer downloads a third party library, adds it to the build system and to the product. Second, a developer finds a great algorithm with google and adds it to the production code. In both cases the company can face serious law suites if the license agreements are not met, which must be prevented. Of course, the developer can be accounted for this action, and serious new regulations can be introduced in the process, but &lt;strong&gt;whose responsibility is to prevent this from happening?&lt;/strong&gt; And, &lt;strong&gt;how to do it?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2012-06-04T22:07:18.047" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T20:57:54.717" Title="Who is responsible for the proper license handling in a software project?" Tags="&lt;risk&gt;&lt;responsibility&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5867" CreationDate="2012-06-04T13:29:17.500" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is a good desktop-based solution to this problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never seen any. As far as I remember, we had a general template using MS Word. It had a basic structure following our V-Model. I don't quite remember the whole document, but its TOC was something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Document revision and template revision&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Document history&lt;/em&gt;: who changed what and when. It was a simple table&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Template history&lt;/em&gt;: who changed what and when in the template. It was a simple table&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Requirement description&lt;/em&gt;: one chapter per requirement. One paragraph for the description, a table for common issues, market share, risk assessment, solution proposals etc. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Development description&lt;/em&gt;: one chapter per requirement. The document had to be started with a class diagram, and followed by several paragraphs as an explanation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Test description&lt;/em&gt;: how to test manually. A single table with three columns: pre-requisites, steps and expected result&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every chapter had a description on how to fill it out. There weren't too many rules concerning this document, but there was one really important: &lt;strong&gt;one could delete any chapter, but never add a new element to the template&lt;/strong&gt;. For example, I had to write a test report, I took the template, deleted the rest of the chapters and filled out the test report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were you I would create a general Word document, make it available for everybody and set some basic rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-06-04T13:29:17.500" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5842" CreationDate="2012-06-04T14:06:02.120" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out the cost of delay approach (original article is available &lt;a href=&quot;http://agileconsulting.blogspot.fi/2011/03/using-cost-of-delay-functions-to.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although, the approach was designed for features, it also applies to defect prioritization (highest comes first):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Minimum to launch&lt;/strong&gt;: those defects which practically blocks the delivery, or causes high customer dissatisfaction. For example, the application cannot be started, or the bill generation is wrong&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Required to stay in business&lt;/strong&gt;: those defects which the longer stay in the system the bigger damage they cause. For example, every tenth request fails. In nine cases it is fine, but after a while the failing request will cause some trouble&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bug/Feature to win/loose market share&lt;/strong&gt;: those defects which has no harm at the moment, but will turn to &quot;&lt;em&gt;required to stay in business&lt;/em&gt;&quot; after a while. For example, the twitter sign in doesn't. It is not a big deal now, but after a while we can loose important twitter using customers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Design investment&lt;/strong&gt;: usually this is the category for improvement. For example, bad code quality related defects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Collect your defects and categorize them accordingly. &lt;strong&gt;Follow the business needs and the effect of the defects on the business&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is how it looks like with images:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JPmkX.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-06-04T14:06:02.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5879" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5881" CreationDate="2012-06-04T14:12:40.263" Score="6" ViewCount="662" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to manage a team which developers themselves now support the software produced. Developers are the only people who know how to fix the problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that when something goes wrong the customer calls me as PM and want me to solve the problem asap. Sometimes I try to fix it myself and sometimes I should find other senior developer to solve it. And this is bothering especially when I (or the developer) am at home or on holiday! In most cases the problem cannot be postponed to the next working day and should be fixed immediate. Some can be solved temporarily (for example by resetting the service) and some need more knowledge. &#xA;Now I think a support team is needed but I don't know how to define the roles. What they should do ? What they should know about the software ? Should they have the knowledge like developers? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4031" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2014-07-17T23:26:16.277" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T23:26:16.277" Title="How can I organize an on demand Support Team for a customer-facing project?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;customer&gt;&lt;maintenance&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5879" CreationDate="2012-06-04T14:39:14.317" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Support Team should have all the knowledge and access required to solve the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this sounds vague - in my opinion and based on my experience it's quite easy to implement (and there is a lot of possibilities). The methods I have experience with are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Throwing support member into the problem and control him until he/she learns to do the job&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Preparation of support knowledge base after solving problem using current resources&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first method is more expensive (You need to spend full wage even before the support member is capable to answer the calls), but is much faster to implement. From my own experience support request can be categorized using Pareto Principle, and those 80% of the problems can be taught pretty quick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second method is cheaper, but on the other hand takes much longer to implement. Preparation of support knowledge base takes time and need to be verified before it can be handed in form of manual to new support member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3042" LastActivityDate="2012-06-04T14:39:14.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5879" CreationDate="2012-06-04T14:44:21.040" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can justify a support team, this will help your development effort by reducing the impact on them, as well as (hopefully) providing a better experience for your customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The support team should have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Access to as much documentation as possible, including outline and detailed designs, screen layouts, etc.  These artefacts must be up-to-date and correct, otherwise they are useless - possibly even misleading and harmful. After the initial handover from developers, it is up to the support team to ensure that these remain up to date;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Access to source code, an awareness of the coding standards used, and knowledge of using whatever language(s) the system is written in;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agreements with the developers over roles and responsibilities. Do the support team make software changes to fix bugs, or not? (I would prefer not, as the developers should be the only ones making changes, to ensure integrity, version controls, etc).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Given my previous comment, the support team may require access to development resources, perhaps on a rota basis rather than always calling out the PM;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The support team also needs to have a relationship with the customer. After all, they will be the point of contact at weekends, overnight, or during holiday periods, and they should know what the customer does, what his hot-spots are, and enough about his environment to be able to make suggestions for resolving problems without always making code changes at 3 o'clock in the morning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2012-06-04T14:44:21.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5876" CreationDate="2012-06-04T15:45:35.463" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very interesting issue, but in many companies often underestimated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my experience, developers often do not realize that usage of a library or third-party code without checking a license can bring very serious legal consequences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An additional issue, besides usage of a particular piece of code, are patent-protected solutions. Often a person is unaware that a solution from the internet can be protected and other company may demand payment for its use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not able to identify one person who could watch over the use of such components, but it seems to me that during the entire project life cycle such issues should be reviewed by different people:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Developer - who should be aware of these issues (defined by some internal procedures), and every idea of using the library / code / solution should involve at least the notification of such fact to the person who can verify the legal status, or if he can - do it by himself,&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Internal Auditor - if such person exists, should check if any protected by license / copyright elements were used, &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lawyer - should provide support for all the people in deciding whether a license / patent agreement does not jeopardize the interests of the company,&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project Manager certainly should not be the person responsible for this type of work. Of course, he should be aware of these issues, but at the management level and arrange inspections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand he is an excellent person to raise awareness of these issues among people producing software. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2955" LastActivityDate="2012-06-04T15:45:35.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5883" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-04T18:02:00.077" Score="1" ViewCount="248" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently doing my masterthesis in computer science. The project is about the design and development of a software editor in the cloud (a bit like &lt;a href=&quot;http://c9.io&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;c9.io&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I started this project I made some choices like which programming language or technologies should I take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to produce some documents a bit like a software engineer should do (not sure if PMSE is the right place to ask this question...). Documents like architecture, class diagram, database diagram ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I made some important choices before I started to code the project, like programming languages. Obviously they affect the software design. But I'm not sure if thoses choices belongs to the design phases of a software project or to the implementation phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise lots of libraries I needed was chosen during the implementation and does not really affect the design of my software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry if my question is not clear, I'm not a native English speaker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4051" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-06-04T19:55:25.827" LastActivityDate="2012-07-05T03:41:17.797" Title="Which Phase of a project belong Choices of programming Language, Technologies and Libraries?" Tags="&lt;design&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2012-07-05T04:05:30.887" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5883" CreationDate="2012-06-04T21:51:15.773" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The whole question/answer depends on your definition of design. If it means, &lt;strong&gt;user interface design&lt;/strong&gt;, or &lt;strong&gt;high level concept with use cases&lt;/strong&gt;, or &lt;strong&gt;high level architectural design&lt;/strong&gt;, then you can choose a programming language during implementation phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the other cases, the programming language depends on the design. For example, if you need something fast, you can use C, or C++, or you need something portable, you can use Java, or you need something asynchronous you can use Javascript/node.js. &lt;strong&gt;First you must design your application and check, which programming language is the best for your needs&lt;/strong&gt;. Of course, it can happen that your design was wrong and have to redo the whole stuff with a different design or with a different language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My suggestion is to have a basic idea what you would like to do, and implement a couple of prototypes&lt;/strong&gt;, maybe using different languages. This kind of experimentation can give you a better overview and understanding on your design and possibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-06-04T21:51:15.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5883" CreationDate="2012-06-04T22:52:22.613" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you asked on a PM site, and you've already picked the language, we'll focus on the pm side of things - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a strictly pm perspective, for your project you selected the language during the &quot;Planning&quot; phase. The first phase (Initiate) was developing the idea, and getting approval). Then came Planning, where you decided how to progress, and selected the various tools to use (to most ensure success). After that you'll move to 'Implementation' using the tools you selected in 'Planning' (language).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-06-04T22:52:22.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5879" CreationDate="2012-06-05T01:19:16.753" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;welcome to PMSE!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It isn't clear how you 'inherited' this maintenance project... The takeover from the development phase to the maintenance phase is a vital part of the process - in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Technology_Infrastructure_Library&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ITIL&lt;/a&gt; it's the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Technology_Infrastructure_Library#Service_transition&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Service Transition&lt;/a&gt; phase; Really worth to take a look! - some definitions are important to be highlighted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Define a Grace Period:&lt;/strong&gt; There's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_period&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Grace Period&lt;/a&gt; after the Go-Live where the Dev team support the project. If the project just went live, you can reach an agreement with the development team to define this period. Based on your project load, you can have specific agreements. Ex.: Your project has a higher demand in a specific period of the month. You can have an agreement between parts to have a Grace Period enclosing 1 full month plus 6 month-ends (if the month end has the higher load).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Define a Knowledge Transfer agenda:&lt;/strong&gt; Once the project is live, the knowledge needs to be shared across the maintenance team. A proper knowledge transfer plan (including all the documentation) is a must. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Define SLAs with key users:&lt;/strong&gt; In order to know if your maintenance if on track or not, you need to know how much time you can spend in your investigations. To clarify this, you can have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service-level_agreement&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Service Level Agreement&lt;/a&gt; between you and your client. The client will always push for support as fast as possible, that`s normal. The bottomline here is to clearly define boundaries to ensure that if a support is required during weekends / holidays, both sides agree on the service (and of course, on the costs).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Define support roles:&lt;/strong&gt; You need to know what's the level of knowledge is expected from your team. Eventually the dev team will also support the application, the important point is to define which issues are expected to you guys take care of, and which ones must be forwarded to the dev team. To make things easier, both you and the dev leads can sit and draft the a top service request catalogue. Based on this catalogue, you look for an agreement of what belongs to your support, what belongs to dev. Notice that the dev team must provide the details to solve issues, I believe isn't logic to throw  bunch of people into a new project and have them digging the code for something that a developer could answer in 2 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case you're interested in more details about how to proceed, I'd strongly suggest you to take a serious look at ITIL... it will worth every minute you put on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-06-05T01:19:16.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5883" CreationDate="2012-06-05T03:02:48.843" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let the techies choose the tech. Insist they make the case, but don't prevent them from making the choice, and encourage the use of technologies they can get into and out of cheaply. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product management has a lot more to do with what, when, how much, and not that much to do with how the code is written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider minimal design, evolutionary design, minimal marketable features, and low-feature/high-quality frequent releases. If you do continual (or darned frequent) release, then you don't worry about phases. The team is continually analyzing, designing, testing, developing. It takes a lot of stress out of the process, and lets you show results much more often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember: a system that works is invariably found to have been grown from a simple system that works. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1302" LastActivityDate="2012-06-05T03:02:48.843" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5846" CreationDate="2012-06-05T03:03:00.550" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Human  intelligence is higher priority in decision&#xA; making . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;software decision  making system makes decision on the basis of intelligenc &#xA;    programmed  in software  . while according to &#xA;    time, information and situation changes .there&#xA;      are number of factor varies according to time &#xA;    where decision making software not fit  for making &#xA;    right decision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;human brain and its intelligence  is right for&#xA;decision making .&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4041" LastActivityDate="2012-06-05T03:03:00.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5891" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5892" CreationDate="2012-06-05T12:49:48.650" Score="5" ViewCount="7846" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are trying to put some statistics together internally to get a better handle on how long it takes to complete pre-project work for business improvement projects. This work includes work corresponds roughly to the &quot;Starting-Up A Project Phase&quot; from PRINCE2 and the &quot;Starting the Project&quot; part of the project lifecycle described in PMBOK. During this phase we are defining scope, high-level description of the project product(s) and high-level identification of resources so that we can develop documentation comparable to a project charter or project brief. We want to put stats together so that we can try to better time-box this phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that all projects are different, are there any official statistics or anecdotes for how much time should be spent on pre-project work compared to actual project work? We would use this information to help us gauge whether or not our processes are more/less time consuming than they should be at a high level (e.g. if there is enough opinion out there that for a hypothetical 10 month project you should spend 2 months prior to this doing pre-project work, we would revisit our processes if our pre-project work took on average 5 months to complete).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastEditorUserId="1251" LastEditDate="2012-06-06T12:30:27.990" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T12:30:27.990" Title="What is a &quot;typical&quot; duration for how long it takes to start up a project?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5891" CreationDate="2012-06-05T15:57:44.283" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately no, there are no 'typical' times - at least in the sense you're asking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you correctly pointed out, each project is different, but beyond that, each team is different as well so that's going to factor into the time as well. Is it a co-located or dispersed team, are the team members on just this project or multiple projects (dividing attention), what's the priority of the project, etc. Each of these factors is going to play into how long it takes to get up and running as they will determine response and communication time (both internal &amp;amp; external). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you won't find generic 'typical' times, what you WILL be able to find after a few projects are typical times for 'your' company. And that's all that really matters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-06-05T15:57:44.283" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5891" CreationDate="2012-06-05T19:15:39.047" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing to keep in mind is that your methodology will impact the amount of upfront time. A waterfall approach will have a lot more upfront as you seek to reduce risk and uncertainty.  An agile approach will begin on deliverables sooner, reducing the upfront time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-06-05T19:15:39.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5867" CreationDate="2012-06-06T08:23:34.810" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you allow me to ignore your desktop-based requirement, I would like to throw a hat in the ring for Wikis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might sound strange, but Wikis are actually quite useful for project documentation. You get a lot of features out of the box. Especially the historization and user management make it very easy to track changes. Many wiki engines also provide templates and the cross-linking possibilities are endless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Allowing customers to access the wiki makes it easy to communicate without wondering about things like &quot;Is this the most current version of this document&quot; or having to deal with concurrent changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4034" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T08:23:34.810" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5795" CreationDate="2012-06-06T10:00:38.597" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A central point, I think, is that you shouldn't try to persuade the team to do anything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've got a low-trust culture, a newly-formed team, and the developers see you as an extension of management trying to force them to change their ways, you'll have a hard time improving the process. However, if you are able to 1) get the team to suggest their own improvements, and 2) follow through on this to the best of your ability, then you're building the confidence needed for the team to grow and learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3184" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T10:00:38.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4232" CreationDate="2012-06-06T14:34:04.233" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience you should stay with the way you worked so far - I mean with story points. Too many changes at the beginning of the transition can make your movement to Kanban/Scrumban more difficult. I would recommend to find a Kanban Tool that supports story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4064" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T14:34:04.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3935" CreationDate="2012-06-06T14:46:42.277" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have similar situations in Sales and Marketing department in my company. When a salesperson was trying to sell our services.&#xA;We dealed with it by dividing Done column into: Failed and Accomplished.&#xA;This way we could get more information from analytics.&#xA;We have also tried to archive tasks in the column when something with the sale didn't work out and to create another task/card with a special tag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4064" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T14:46:42.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3635" CreationDate="2012-06-06T14:49:32.547" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might try dividing your board into swimlanes and set up a separate WIP limit for each swimlane.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4064" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T14:49:32.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3475" CreationDate="2012-06-06T14:53:32.800" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my company we create to-do lists for quick tasks like you  described. This way you do not waste time for creating separate card for each task and just mark/tick is as done on a list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4064" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T14:53:32.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5903" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8196" CreationDate="2012-06-06T16:39:09.420" Score="2" ViewCount="265" Body="&lt;p&gt;Working on a multi cultural environment, one of the problems that's haunting some projects we have are the differences between two countries' laws. I know that there are as much laws as there are countries, but I'd like to know if someone has already seen a kind of 'quick guide on law differences' somewhere on the Internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being more specific inside labor laws, there are some differences between the laws related to vacations that I'd need to clarify. In case there's no material available (at least to use as a template) I'll need to write down mine from scratch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, a guide not explaining differences, but giving an overview of each country's law would be great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; What I'd expect to find would be something like a 'guide' explaining the differences in different labor aspects for each country, like working hours, vacation processes, overnight payments and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, the objective is to proper plan and estimate the costs for projects split in different countries by the same managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit #2 (Problem background):&lt;/strong&gt; When working for a multinational company, the manager needs to be capable of proper planning the project in despite of the different rules applied to each country. Turn out that sometimes, it's quite complex to do any planning when you're not sure about the different labor laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example #1: Vacations&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some countries (A) where the vacations can be taken one day at a time, let's say 30 different Mondays in a year. There are other countries (B), however, where vacations can be taken enclosing at least 10 days straight (that's how vacations works here in Brazil). It means that, eventually, this person will be taken 'vacations' including weekends (since it's not possible to take 10 days straight without including a weekend on it). Therefore, practically speaking, this person might have 2 days less of vacations (and two days more to work, yey!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, there's another problem related to vacations that's the way you get eligible to take them: Some countries count them based on a (A) calendar-year basis, other countries (B) based on the day the employee joined the company. This means that, if one joins a company in (A) in 30/Nov/2012, this person will have (total days vacations in a year / months * months actively worked) (30/12 * 1) = 2 days to take off. However, when another one joins a company in (B) in the same day (30/Nov/2012), this another employee will only be eligible to take vacations after a full year after the hire date (i.e., 30/Nov/2013).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'd expect, when asking for 'labour laws', in this sense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somewhere, briefly stating how vacations are taken in each country. It would be something like (apologies if this is wrong, I'm just making up some data):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;US:&lt;/strong&gt; 20 days vacations, taken all at once, days counted per calendar-year&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UK:&lt;/strong&gt; 30 days vacations taken whenever wanted, days counted per calendar-year&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BR:&lt;/strong&gt; 30 days vacations taken in slices of at least 10 days, max 2 slices, days counted by hiring date&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CH:&lt;/strong&gt; 10 days vacations, only weekends, days counted by hiring date&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Example #2: Working Hours&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some countries where there's no much labour restrictions. The bottomline is to make things work, having the freedom to arrive to the office 6AM and leaving 6PM, with 30 min lunch time. No in-out controls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some other countries (B), however, where the laws demands everyone to have at least 1h lunch time and 40h week journeys. Anything beyond that will need to be payed off as extra-hours. Check-in / check-out controls in place to know how many hours one 'worked'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd expect a similar mapping as the one presented for vacations, containing how many week hours each country has and what are the restrictions in each country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Example #3: Overnight work&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rules applied to pay an employee working during overnight also changes from country to country. I believe I don't need to enter in details here, I'm just raising this as another topic that for sure has different laws across each country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe there might be other examples that would be valid to have clear, but I'd say that these listed above are the most important for a PM working with overseas teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2012-12-05T12:48:50.400" LastActivityDate="2012-12-05T20:08:01.343" Title="Is there any 'pocket guide' with the differences between countries' labor laws?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;relationships&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-12-19T10:29:35.417" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5903" CreationDate="2012-06-06T19:38:53.307" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use International Labour Law of Prof Blanpain.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ielaws.com/blanpain.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.ielaws.com/blanpain.htm&lt;/a&gt; and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kluwerlawonline.com/toc.php?area=Looseleafs&amp;amp;mode=bypub&amp;amp;level=6&amp;amp;values=Looseleafs~~IEL+Labour+Law~International+Monographs~International+Labour+Law&amp;amp;raw=true&quot;&gt;http://www.kluwerlawonline.com/toc.php?area=Looseleafs&amp;amp;mode=bypub&amp;amp;level=6&amp;amp;values=Looseleafs~~IEL+Labour+Law~International+Monographs~International+Labour+Law&amp;amp;raw=true&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was also my Prof in International Labour Law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4067" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T19:38:53.307" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5905" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-07T01:04:22.947" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_chain_project_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia Article on Critical Chain Project Management&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Critical chain project management (CCPM) is a method of planning and managing projects that puts the main emphasis on the resources required to execute project tasks. It was developed by Eliyahu M. Goldratt. This is in contrast to the more traditional critical path and PERT methods, which emphasize task order and rigid scheduling. A Critical Chain project network will tend to keep the resources levelly loaded, but will require them to be flexible in their start times and to quickly switch between tasks and task chains to keep the whole project on schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example Questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some example questions with this tag include questions such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/343/integrating-critical-chain-into-scrum-agile-practices&quot;&gt;Integrating Critical Chain into Scrum/Agile Practices&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This question may need to be reviewed. It's an early question with a polling vibe&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/566/how-do-you-deal-with-continuous-work-pressure&quot;&gt;How do you deal with continuous work pressure?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Differences between CCPM and Critical Path Analysis:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The main features that distinguish the critical chain from the critical path are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The use of (often implicit) resource dependencies. Implicit means that they are not included in the project network but have to be identified by looking at the resource requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Lack of search for an optimum solution. This means that a &quot;good enough&quot; solution is enough because:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;As far as is known, there is no analytical method of finding an absolute optimum (i.e. having the overall shortest critical chain).&#xA;  The inherent uncertainty in estimates is much greater than the difference between the optimum and near-optimum (&quot;good enough&quot; solutions).&#xA;  The identification and insertion of buffers:&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;project buffer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;feeding buffers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;resource buffers. (Most of the time it is observed that companies are reluctant to give more resources)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Monitoring project progress and health by monitoring the consumption rate of the buffers rather than individual task performance to schedule.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-07T01:04:22.947" LastActivityDate="2012-06-07T01:04:22.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5906" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-07T01:04:22.947" Score="0" Body="Critical chain project management (CCPM) is a method of planning and managing projects that puts the main emphasis on the resources required to execute project tasks. It was developed by Eliyahu M. Goldratt. This is in contrast to the more traditional critical path and PERT methods, which emphasize task order and rigid scheduling. " OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-07T01:04:22.947" LastActivityDate="2012-06-07T01:04:22.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5909" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5923" CreationDate="2012-06-08T03:58:54.027" Score="4" ViewCount="477" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is well known that any appraisal process is biased. Measuring one's characteristics (and specially, comparing them) is far from a objective and clear science. Still, measuring one's performance will be required at some point. I'm taking into account that measuring one's performance and forgetting about the project performance is not good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, thinking of personal appraisals / promotions / salary adjustments, there are some skills / abilities that (I believe) are straightly measurable, like certifications. One has or has not a certification. It's binary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that a certification &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/2601/430&quot;&gt;doesn't prove much about a person&lt;/a&gt;. But at least, comparing two people (say A and B), where A has a certification 'X' and B without certifications, is clear that A at least &lt;em&gt;spent some time to testify his knowledge&lt;/em&gt;. It is possible that B's knowledge in 'X' is greater than A, and thus wouldn't be hard to both having certification 'X', in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, here goes the question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are the advantages and disadvantages of linking the certifications one has to his appraisal?&lt;/strong&gt; Obviously, thinking of certifications within the knowledge area his working for. A Linux certification values (almost) nothing for a pure-windows project. An inner question here is if &lt;em&gt;is fair to promoting A instead of B because A has proven he has knowledge in 'X'.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Let's assume the company will pay any certification exam to whoever wants to submit to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-06-14T02:23:06.060" Title="Evaluation Process: Pros and Cons of binding (at some level) the appraisal to Certifications" Tags="&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;performance&gt;&lt;evaluation&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5909" CreationDate="2012-06-08T06:23:45.400" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;is fair to promoting A instead of B because A has proven he has knowledge in 'X'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Proven by a certificate - no, it is not fair. Proven by his work - yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, on one hand there is a risk, that people will get the certificates because they know that they may get a promotion. I guess, people are different, so on the other hand, one may get a certificate to &quot;force&quot; himself to learn something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you link the certificates with the evaluation process, you should know what one's motivation was of getting them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2915" LastActivityDate="2012-06-08T06:23:45.400" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5746" CreationDate="2012-06-08T08:33:27.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend Kanban method for your web development project. Have a look at this page to grab more information about applying Kanban in a web development process: &lt;a href=&quot;http://kanbantool.com/kanban-library/devops-kanban&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DevOps Kanban&lt;/a&gt;. I'm sure that you will find here all you need. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4026" LastActivityDate="2012-06-08T08:33:27.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5912" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5914" CreationDate="2012-06-08T10:55:48.460" Score="3" ViewCount="1191" Body="&lt;p&gt;For scope that is reasonably explicit, many customers choose to purchase services under a firm fixed price contract in order to remove cost risk.  It is essentially transferring risk to the seller as a risk course of action.  For this luxury, customers can typically pay a multiple somewhere between 10% to maybe as high as 50% than they would have paid under a different type of contract where cost risk is still borne by them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under this scenario, the seller now holds this risk.  If they performed a proper probabilistic estimate on the work and conducted a thorough risk analysis, the seller would likely target and price more conservatively and capture in the price contingent dollars for unknowns.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can work be bound such that there is a point where the seller's loss can be stopped?  If the seller estimates between 12 and 25 cycles of work to produce the widget, most likley 15, and the seller conservatively targets and prices 18 cycles of work, would there be a way to include in the contract that anything above 20 cycles would require a change request?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you had a stop loss for the seller, would it not be fair to have a stop loss for the buyer, e.g., if cycles only took 11, 12, or 13, the buyer gets a discount?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it that, once a FFP is agreed upon, the seller has the risk no matter what and the only &quot;stop loss&quot; mitigators would be explicit finish criteria, firm buyer obligations, and a strong risk process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answer this question under the assumption that scope is under control and that changes to scope causes a change in both schedule and price; that the buyer's obligations are being met in full, meaning the increased cycles in work cannot be tied to something the buyer is or is not doing; and in an industry agnostic way.  Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-24T00:28:09.323" LastActivityDate="2012-06-24T00:28:09.323" Title="Firm Fixed Price Contracts and Binding the Work" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;contracts&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5909" CreationDate="2012-06-08T11:58:20.143" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A relation between an evaluation process and the appraisals is complex, especially in an agile environment (for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.poppendieck.com/pdfs/Compensation.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.estherderby.com/weblog/2004/11/alternative-to-yearly-performance.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;some other article&lt;/a&gt;). So, I will not go any deeper on that subject without knowing what is your &quot;setup&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surveys show &lt;strong&gt;what workers usually want&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To &lt;strong&gt;earn adequately&lt;/strong&gt; (to market value of their position)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To have &lt;strong&gt;tools and autonomy&lt;/strong&gt; needed to reach goals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To &lt;strong&gt;progress&lt;/strong&gt; (and know how to progress)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To have &lt;strong&gt;clear and transparent rules&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To receive &lt;strong&gt;regular feedback&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To be under fair and &lt;strong&gt;just judgement&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;So, I believe any rule is fair as long as it is transparent, known upfront, reachable and fairly judged.&lt;/code&gt; One can have multiple levels of expertise with progression related to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time / Experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Knowledge / Skills&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Achievements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Relation to other workers (reviewing work, coaching)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Engagement &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Achieving the lower levels of expertise may &lt;strong&gt;provide&lt;/strong&gt; a compensation, also in form of support in trainings, certificates, while higher levels of expertise may &lt;strong&gt;require&lt;/strong&gt; such certificates. Of course, such requirement doesn't mean it's the only criteria of an appraisal...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastEditorUserId="927" LastEditDate="2012-06-13T09:05:46.663" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T09:05:46.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5912" CreationDate="2012-06-08T14:33:02.177" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you've described exists (in most part), but it's not a FFP contract, it's a &quot;Cost Plus&quot; or &quot;GMP&quot; (Guaranteed Maximum Price) type of contract. In this type of contract, the two parties agree that the Owner will pay the actual costs, plus a fixed price to the Contractor, up to an agreed upon maximum price. This price ceiling is generally the result of the Contractors estimating process and includes their risk assessment and contingency. Basically it's their belief that regardless of which risks present, they can complete the project under this price ceiling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under the GMP contract, the Contrator is still assuming the risk, as any cost overruns beyond the ceiling are absorbed by them (assuming they're not scope or change related). And because the contract is cost plus a fixed price, if they complete the contract under that ceiling, they only get the agreed upon fee, and any savings are retained by the Owner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the increased cycles, you could just as easily negotiate the contact on a fixed number of cycles of attempts, with contingency for additional ones. There would need to be specific language that triggered the additional (why, cause, risks, etc.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But again, this moves away from a FFP contract and into a Cost-Plus type. The FFP contract is used primarily to give the Owner a cap on the price - &quot;it's going to cost us X&quot;. Adding in a contingency for additional cycles eliminates this and says &quot;it will cost X, or maybe more, depending on how things go.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-06-08T14:33:02.177" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5909" CreationDate="2012-06-08T14:46:30.757" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no advantage to including them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As has been discussed numerous times, certifications are not an indicator of proficiency or competence (and I sit on the boards of two certifying organizations). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certificates verify a minimum level of knowledge (minimum as relative to passing the exam), but do nothing as far as indicating how that knowledge can/would be applied. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other problem with including certifications (of any type) is, where do you stop? In your scenario, one must then also include college degrees, continuing education, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The performance appraisal is just that - an appraisal of 'performance'. It's to review how well the employee is performing the duties of the position against the required (and documented) duties. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only situation where the certification should ever be included is if the certification is a requirement of the position. For example, there are a number of job openings that require a PMP or &quot;the ability to attain one within 6 mos. of hire&quot; or something to that effect. In that situation, since it's a requirement of hiring, then it could be included. But otherwise, no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-06-08T14:46:30.757" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5263" CreationDate="2012-06-08T20:29:54.563" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't use numbers or names that have any semantic meaning. Think about the Google Android releases. I believe one was called Ice Cream Sandwich. Using generic naming allows you to reprioritize releases without worrying about rearranging numbers. Future.10...n works, but you are still somewhat restricted by the dot number. So, try to develop with generic release naming, then when you release you can rename the release with the public release version number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4077" LastActivityDate="2012-06-08T20:29:54.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5842" CreationDate="2012-06-08T20:43:22.623" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Google has an interesting methodology for test planning that can lend itself to prioritizing the backlog. It is called ACC, shorthand for Attributes-Components-Capabilities. By defining your ACC and scoring the capabilities by risk, business value or whatever, you can develop a matrix that gives you visiblity into what you should work on first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://code.google.com/p/test-analytics/wiki/AccExplained&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://code.google.com/p/test-analytics/wiki/AccExplained&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4077" LastActivityDate="2012-06-08T20:43:22.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5912" CreationDate="2012-06-08T20:50:45.733" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the seller has signed off on such a contract and scope is under control they are stuck delivering what is within the scope of the contract. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The seller should be targeting a price that will be profitable the vast majority of the time, the corollary being that they are accepting a loss on a minority of their contracts. This loss would be more than made up for over a population of several projects, assuming all contracts are of similar dollar values. In the real world FFP costs for high-value contracts are heavily padded to ensure that the company doesn't take a big proportional loss on a single project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-06-08T20:50:45.733" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5919" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5920" CreationDate="2012-06-09T09:20:37.787" Score="3" ViewCount="190" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum by the book says &quot;Interactions over processes and tools&quot; which kind of implies that tools should be avoided. This is plain easy when the team is co-located but how does it go when a team is spread over two to three countries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4081" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2012-08-02T21:23:41.190" LastActivityDate="2012-08-02T21:23:41.190" Title="Scrum interactions for distributed teams" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;communication-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5919" CreationDate="2012-06-09T10:18:24.410" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It doesn't mean tools are to be avoided. The actual text of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt;, from which &quot;interactions over processes and tools&quot; is taken, says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we value individuals and their interactions more than we value processes and tools, but we still find value in processes and tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your process or tool is intended to help individuals interact, I say, go for it. Electronic chat programs, Skype, wikis, forums and email have all worked well for me in those situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2012-06-09T10:18:24.410" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5921" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5922" CreationDate="2012-06-09T10:24:33.057" Score="0" ViewCount="397" Body="&lt;p&gt;Which tools do you guys use for your distributed scrum teams? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have had a look at Jira, Teamspace, Scrumworks and wanted to know if there any others used in the community. If possible please state the good and the bad of the tool you are using.&#xA;Thanks you in advance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4081" LastActivityDate="2012-06-09T13:07:06.130" Title="What tools do you use for distributed scrum backlog/board" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;distributed-team&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-06-09T17:02:56.087" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5921" CreationDate="2012-06-09T13:07:06.130" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a similar question/answer where you may find more ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/4617/468&quot;&gt;Which Collaboration Software Do You Use?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tool is one thing, and how you use it is a completely different one. Doing Scrum with distributed teams is more than challenging. Even the CSM trainer said that it was not possible. He suggested to have two teams, separate boards, and a well organized product backlog so that the teams wouldn't block each other. If you believe in this you won't need a tool for a shared board, but you'll need a something for the backlog, which can support concurrent access. We are working like this at the moment, and our backlog is in JIRA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I know a team, where the team members are working remotely and they are using trello to keep in sync. There a small communication overhead for them, which is still cheaper than working together in an office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2012-06-09T13:07:06.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5909" CreationDate="2012-06-09T15:28:47.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your appraisals, the metrics that go into them, need to be linked to promoting the work behavior desired and demoting / extinguishing work behavior not desired.  If it was found that the average performance of a certified practitioner out performs the average performance of a non certified practitioner, then maybe you can include it in the appraisals but with a weak weight.  However, if that is not substantiated above and beyond anecdotal observations, which are useless, then exclude the certification from your appraisal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now promotion or money can be a bit different.  It goes to salesability.  Certificates sell.  Buying organizations rely on them for comfort, trust, and some perception of reduced risk in predicting that practitioner's future performance, notwithstanding there is nothing behind it.  So, if A took the time to study and get it and is now more marketable than B is, then the organization benefits for the certificate and so too should A.  Whether it comes down as a salary differential or a bonus or something else, I don't think that really matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-06-09T15:28:47.580" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5924" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5926" CreationDate="2012-06-10T08:47:51.457" Score="1" ViewCount="348" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to find some software that allows the following workflow:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a wbs with effort.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plot wbs items onto a Gantt chart to see when items should/could be&#xA;completed by and build a schedule.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Update the items with real world data for how long a task took, and&#xA;progress and rebuild the schedule to account for this (so push items&#xA;back).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should hopefully allow me to have some view of how long the project should take and allow a post mortem at the end to assess my estimation skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although one piece of software may not be applicable, I'm open to combinations. Most importantly is the ability to enter in the real world numbers next to the estimates for evaluation purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4084" LastEditorUserId="2864" LastEditDate="2012-06-10T20:51:44.643" LastActivityDate="2012-06-20T10:45:07.847" Title="Software to help estimate effort and record effort for timeline purposes (one man team)" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;&lt;timeline&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5925" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-10T23:53:45.650" Score="8" ViewCount="1717" Body="&lt;p&gt;Research prior to asking this questions -&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/389/when-to-use-waterfall-when-to-use-scrum&quot;&gt;When to Use Waterfall, When to Use Scrum ?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not focus on pure waterfall vs pure scrum conversion. I am more incline of solving the following problems that are being caused by our very rigid waterfall implementation. As everything in big corporations, there is a little of fault in red tape and additional politics, but at heart of the problem is the Waterfall methodology that we currently follow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the symptoms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business Requirements have very little quality since they hand-off these requirements at the beginning meeting a date for IT to start the software analysis. This frustrates the IT teams and use some of the development time to clear some of these bad requirements. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Because Business requirements are not completed on time or have little quality, development usually develops the wrong thing, causing re-work. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Because rework is necessary, and changes are unavoidable the QA team usually end up without the time to do proper work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In order to get anything in a release we have to estimate without requirements, this causes a list of things that the business wants but is unattainable because time to develop is inflated (mainly politics issue)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This department of 40-50 IT pros, have been trying to step out of waterfall into scrum for a year now, but is causing a lot of issues. Issues like (1) people using scrum to hide on the fact that requirements are not ready (2) other IT departments that don't use scrum complain about the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have decided to try a 12 weeks scrum pilot. Shoot for a strict scrum implementation where that team will have a product owner that will be responsible for what is important. I think this will be the key of having a successful implementation. Right now the business is not accountable for their deliveries, and I think they should be. I will split these 12 weeks in 3 sprints of 3 weeks with 2 weeks of planning the pilot and 1 week of releasing to production. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The questions: In your experience - is there a MUST DO before I try this pilot with a very large organization?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="70" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-06-12T22:49:27.933" Title="How to implement scrum on an Waterfall enterprise?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;enterprise&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5924" CreationDate="2012-06-11T05:16:23.530" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;evidence based scheduling&lt;/a&gt; from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fogcreek.com/fogbugz/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fogbugz&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fogcreek.com/fogbugz/evidence-based-scheduling/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.fogcreek.com/fogbugz/evidence-based-scheduling/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-06-11T05:16:23.530" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5925" CreationDate="2012-06-11T12:02:41.313" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For implementing in a large organization I would say that well trained scrum masters and a shorter training on scrum for everyone that will be affected by it (from Project owner(s) to developers to QA) - mainly so that everyone knows what to deliver (and when) and what to expect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our 12-20 person organization (with 3-5 teams) we did it by reading the book by Kniberg and with someone with previous experience, but that was a slight uphill travel to get it working even in a organization of that size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also (I see it) prioritized requirement are an important part of successful scrum so make sure you are able to get that - it should be possible by education (that points out that only the most important requirements needs to be set up before each sprint). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4003" LastActivityDate="2012-06-11T12:02:41.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5925" CreationDate="2012-06-11T12:15:02.323" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a tough question because the scrum framework exposes, supports and helps with many business behaviors, cultures and dependencies, but what part you struggle with and how you actually adopt it may be different than others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation for you is to bring in an agile coach (not just a scrum master) for your pilot project that can help guide you through the new practices and even help negotiate some of those initial pain points with other stakeholders. Sometimes the internal influence can be too great for the folks already there inside the culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastActivityDate="2012-06-11T12:15:02.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5925" CreationDate="2012-06-11T12:20:44.780" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To make the transition, you are going to need the full buy-in across the organisation. If you try and implement without high level support, then as soon as you start treading on the toes of those with a vested interest in staying waterfall, you're going to encounter problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum affects so much more than developers/pm teams, so you're going to have to get as much goodwill as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe read Succeeding with Agile by Mike Cohn...it should give you some worthwhile pointers as it directly discusses overcoming barriers to implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, (and you may have already considered it), what is making you choose scrum over other agile methods? Dynamic systems development method (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_systems_development_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DSDM&lt;/a&gt;) might be worth looking at if you encounter resistance...it's an agile approach, but it might be less stressful to organisations that are steeped in Prince2/waterfall approaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3246" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2012-06-11T13:10:57.453" LastActivityDate="2012-06-11T13:10:57.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5924" CreationDate="2012-06-11T13:26:04.943" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many different software packages that will do what you are looking for.  You could use good old Microsoft Project to do all of that.  You could even use Microsoft Excel if you wanted, the Gantt chart would just be a little more work.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3860" LastActivityDate="2012-06-11T13:26:04.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5909" CreationDate="2012-06-11T13:34:09.837" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written a blog post about my views on certifications.  You can find it here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://bit.ly/MuBVI2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://bit.ly/MuBVI2&lt;/a&gt; but I will give an overview of my feelings. The short version is, it depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are going to include them on performance reviews, it should not be to prove some level of knowledge mastery.  Many certifications simply prove that you are able to study some set of material and pass a test.  My post discusses the importance of certifications to some organizations because of the benefits that they gain from them, i.e. Microsoft Partner Competency leves.  If you created a development plan for an employee and asked that he take and pass a certain number of exams for the organization, then yes you should include them as meeting, or not, as development goals.     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3860" LastActivityDate="2012-06-11T13:34:09.837" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5925" CreationDate="2012-06-11T13:47:43.503" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although I highly believe that having Agile methodology in place might solve your problem, I'd suggest to slightly change the focus here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might have already tried it, but still, changing the methodology (specially when reducing the rigidness of the process) in a big company has two main roadblocks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It needs buy-in from everyone involved (as other folks already mentioned)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It may offer the idea that the problem is with the methodology, which is not the case. The problem is with the requirement's quality.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, Agile may be the answer for the wrong question.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you go for the meeting telling the stakeholders something like &quot;hey, the approach were using here isn't working, let's split the deliverables into smaller pieces&quot; they may be interested (because it will reduce their frustrations as well) but you'll be relying on the methodology to do the trick. Further down the road, if the root problem isn't solved, you'll be with the same scenario (poor requirements), under a different methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion, in this case, would be to &lt;strong&gt;have a good Business Analyst capable of converting better the requirements between IT &amp;lt;-&gt; Business.&lt;/strong&gt; If happens that this person is also a Scrum Master or something like this, perfect! But I'd say that's better having a good BA with some Scrum skills rather than a Scrum Master (or any other Scrum-role) with some BA skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, if the requirements aren't good enough, agree (formally) with the stakeholders what / how the deliverables will look like. It might take most of the schedule, but as you already said, better to spend time on defining the tasks rather than on rework. We had a similar problem like this in the past that was solved with a proper BA + signoff on the functional / tech specs signoff from both IT + Stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-06-11T13:47:43.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5925" CreationDate="2012-06-11T14:48:05.817" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As usual, I'm going to go a slightly different way than the other answers - from your description, it's not the methodology that's the issue, but the process. Changing to Scrum isn't going to fix anything (okay, maybe it will, I'll address that at the end).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at your comments, they all flow back to one specific cause - poor requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Business requirements have very little quality...&quot;, &quot;frustrates the IT teams and use some of the development time to clear some of the bad requirements.&quot; &quot;Because business requirements are not completed on time or have little quality, development usually develops the wrong thing, causing re-work.&quot; Because re-work is necessary, and changes unavoidable the QA team usually end up without time to do proper work.&quot; &quot;...we have to estimate without requirements.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these comments go back to a single issue - poor or incomplete requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to your question of &quot;is there a MUST DO before I try this pilot&quot; - yes, you MUST get accountability for the requirements phase squared away and assigned.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Waterfall isn't really the problem here, nor Scrum necessarily the solution. The process is failing because there are no requirements to work from . Even Scrum needs requirements of some quality to work from. Certainly the cycles are shorter and faster, but with poor requirements, it just means you're going to fail faster, and more often. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going back to my earlier comment - Scrum may be able to help, but only if you first get the accountability for requirements handled. Waterfall definitely needs the scope fairly well defined to work, but Scrum is also somewhat of a waterfall process (one thing has to be done before another - requirements are needed before development, which is before QA, etc.) So even switching to Scrum the requirements will need to be better defined than what you're currently getting. With Scrum you can probably get away with looser requirements that a full waterfall process, so it's probably a better methodology for your application, but until you get the other part fixed, you'll keep seeing the same results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-06-11T14:48:05.817" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5925" CreationDate="2012-06-11T16:47:30.940" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Geo, it's really, really hard to change the process used by an entire organisation, especially a large one. I work for a company with around 300 people with software delivery making up about 50% of that. For the last 18 months I have been running projects using Scrum (the rest of the organisation run an in house process that is more waterfall or iterative). My experience is that although there are problems with the current in house process and despite my Scrum based projects delivering on time and with less resources than equivalent non Scrum projects, there is still a significant lack of interest in moving more of the organisation towards Scrum. This is primarily because it is a big change and people are scared of big changes, there is never a good time to make the jump (we always have a big project in the pipe!). Also our current process has been through multiple successful audits and there is a concern around how well Scrum will audit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, you should still try to change things to improve the process. I did and it is working well, it's just going to be a much longer process than I expected (and I am in a fairly small company!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I am an advocate of Scrum and think it will ultimately help your situation, I also agree with the other answers that your issue is not the process but the requirements. I would focus initially on trying to get the requirements better quality early on. One thing that may help is to use user stories, these tend to be easier (less effort) for the business to write and that increases the chance that they will write them. Having follow-up conversations with the business to clarify the detail in the story will mean your developers and testers have some idea what needs to be delivered. You may not have a complete copy of the detail written down, but I believe 80% of the game is making sure that the people doing the work know what needs to be done, the documentation is a useful safety net for when people forget (or change their mind without telling anyone!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately one of the goals of agile is to speed up the development process by talking rather than writing (favour working software over comprehensive documentation), so you could make steps towards this by working in a more agile way. You may decide that running a pilot strict Scrum project is the best way to approach this (at least it gives a clear differentiator between this project and others), but I would focus on getting the technical and business people to communicate requirements and features better as a starting point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="788" LastActivityDate="2012-06-11T16:47:30.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1075" CreationDate="2012-06-12T03:05:42.063" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0738207683&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Business @ the Speed of Stupid: How to Avoid Technology Disasters in Business&lt;/a&gt; has quite a few examples but most of them have been made anonymous so they don't match your needs. It does make for very good reading, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2012-06-12T03:05:42.063" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-06-12T03:05:42.063" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5925" CreationDate="2012-06-12T14:41:01.783" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like your Business Analysts don't do their job properly, that they've become mere scribes.  Maybe they're new, or in need of training.  Why not involve a developer earlier in the process, before any requirements sign-off happens?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the developer isn't immediately sure because they've never done this type of work before, give them time to work with the requirements as they are even up to the point of producing a prototype.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I face some of the same issues, mainly because of staff rotation among BAs, but because the work I want to be doing doesn't involve BAs I'm not following my own advice here.  If all your work comes from them I think it would be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1245" LastActivityDate="2012-06-12T14:41:01.783" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5925" CreationDate="2012-06-12T15:23:12.443" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the answers here are excellent. I don't think you need high-quality written requirements, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two types of things we build in software:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stuff that's new and differentiating&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stuff that's similar to things we've done before and is well understood.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the first of these, it may be the case that it's new to the business, as well. Rather than clarifying all the requirements clearly, they may simply want to try something out. Feedback is more important here than getting the requirements nailed down precisely. I often find that just getting a GUI working, even with hard-coded data, is a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the second, a domain or business expert will be able to give the team the knowledge they need. However, trying to do this in a one-way form (like a document) is very difficult; developers can't ask questions and clarify the requirements, or even give feedback on their quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here's your &quot;Must do&quot;: get better engagement with business experts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A product owner is a really good idea - check that they're genuinely interested in championing the product. He'll need to know what's different between that product and similar ones, because that's where the team will need to get feedback (early if possible, the end of the sprint if they can't). It's unlikely that everything will work first time, so rework is inevitable; the faster they get feedback, the quicker it will be. The team shouldn't wait until the end of the sprint if they don't have to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, look out for other stakeholders whose goals need to be met too, and make sure that the product owner has good communication with them (might be legal, security, architecture, operations, etc.) - he'll need to understand their concerns too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best thing you can do for the team is get everyone co-located - testers, the product owner and the devs - so that they can talk to each other, ask questions, get feedback and respond to it quickly. Again, the developers don't have to wait for the sprint to show their work to testers or to the product owner; the quicker they can do this, the easier it will be to fix any rework that needs doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, check the KPIs in your organisation. If people are being rewarded for heroic or individual behavior - testers for the number of bugs they find, or developers for lines of code, for instance - then it's going to get in the way of them acting as a group. You may need to have a chat with HR if this is the case. These kinds of KPIs are usually pretty detrimental anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't by any means enough to guarantee success (nothing is) but along with the other suggestions this should get you started. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2012-06-12T15:23:12.443" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1075" CreationDate="2012-06-12T17:22:30.233" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I began my first project a friend sent me &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.it.uu.se/edu/course/homepage/acsd/vt10/SE3.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, and it really stirred my imagination and while it is full of general observations and conjecture, it is still a decent example of a failed project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3090" LastActivityDate="2012-06-12T17:22:30.233" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-06-12T17:22:30.233" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5925" CreationDate="2012-06-12T21:09:38.957" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask all the participants to read:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.halfarsedagilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.halfarsedagilemanifesto.org/&lt;/a&gt; for a week.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Then schedule a 2 hour meeting to talk about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above resource highlights the following points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Manifesto for Half-Arsed Agile Software Development&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have heard about new ways of developing software by&#xA;  paying consultants and reading Gartner reports. Through&#xA;  this we have been told to value:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Individuals and interactions over processes and tools&#xA;  and we have mandatory processes and tools to control how those&#xA;  individuals (we prefer the term ‘resources’) interact&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Working software over comprehensive documentation&#xA;  as long as that software is comprehensively documented&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Customer collaboration over contract negotiation&#xA;  within the boundaries of strict contracts, of course, and subject to rigorous change control&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Responding to change over following a plan&#xA;  provided a detailed plan is in place to respond to the change, and it is followed precisely&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;That is, while the items on the left sound nice&#xA;  in theory, we’re an enterprise company, and there’s&#xA;  no way we’re letting go of the items on the right.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2602" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-12T21:47:43.467" LastActivityDate="2012-06-12T21:47:43.467" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5925" CreationDate="2012-06-12T22:49:27.933" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Switching to scrum &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; implementing a tight sprint duration of, say 1 to 2 weeks might help the poor requirements get sorted out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since there is a &lt;strong&gt;functional&lt;/strong&gt; product at the end of each sprint, the business will quickly see the fruit of their requirements. When you do your (bi-)weekly sprint kickoff, the business will set the stories for that sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The danger of such a setup is that it is easy to drift off track with scope creep from hell. As the PM, it is your job to gently guide the ship away from the rocks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get buy-in from your developers, one thing I do is implement fast and effective standups:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Meeting runs for 10 minutes, no exceptions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Everyone gets an equal share of time to state&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what they did yesterday, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what they're doing today and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;any issues. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The timer beeps and the next person goes (most of the time, we have time left over)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any and all discussions are not allowed (people can meet after the standup if they want). Just keep saying, &quot;let's take that off-line.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will make your devs happy, because they only waste 10 minutes a day (in the AM) on a short meeting. Of course the sprint kickoffs and lookbacks are longer, but we try to keep them as productive as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;strong&gt;CAN&lt;/strong&gt; change your &lt;em&gt;local&lt;/em&gt; culture. You &lt;strong&gt;don't&lt;/strong&gt; need much buy in*. Just start doing scrums and sprints and tell your customers that they're going to start getting a working product sooner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*From personal experience doing this very thing at a 100+ year old crusty fortune 500 company. It can be done, and that's what politics is fer!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="117" LastActivityDate="2012-06-12T22:49:27.933" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5909" CreationDate="2012-06-12T23:47:25.233" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are 2 major theories about credentials: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_capital&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;human capital theory&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;signaling theory&lt;/a&gt;. Under HCT, certifications, degrees and licenses show that you have accumulated a credible amount of knowledge, and demonstrated it to a third party. Under signalling theory, certifications and licenses are signals to show to others that you are different.  One interesting comparison of the differences of HCT and ST is &lt;a href=&quot;http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/02/the_career_cons.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Career Consequences of Failing versus Forgetting&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While many in IT have a disdain for degrees, certifications and licenses, not everyone else in the business world feels the same way. One interesting dissertation (your local university library might be able to get for you) is titled &lt;em&gt;&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/directory/rivera_lauren.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hiring and Inequality in Elite Professional Service Firms&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/em&gt; This dissertation interested me in that it was a sociological survey of some top consulting companies and it measured how they actually selected candidates in contrast to how they said they selected candidates. The mismatch could only be explained in terms of signals and not in terms of human capital. You may know just as much as another person, but the one of you that passes some hurdle signals to prospective employers that the hurdle passer is the better candidate. This is because hiring a person is trying to predict future behavior/success with limited information, and many people use signals as heuristics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, the way you phrased your question, you are looking at certifications from the viewpoint of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observational_bias#Observational_bias&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;streetlight effect&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The fundamental error here is summed up in an old joke scientists love to tell. Late at night, a police officer finds a drunk man crawling around on his hands and knees under a streetlight. The drunk man tells the officer he’s looking for his wallet. When the officer asks if he’s sure this is where he dropped the wallet, the man replies that he thinks he more likely dropped it across the street. Then why are you looking over here? the befuddled officer asks. Because the light’s better here, explains the drunk man.&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://discovermagazine.com/2010/jul-aug/29-why-scientific-studies-often-wrong-streetlight-effect/article_print&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; collect this data, I suspect that you will find it useless for project appraisals. If you manage to find a statistically significant correlation with project success/failures, then you have the material to write a number of academic journal papers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a decent text on metrics used in software, I recommend  you read &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0534956009&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Software Metrics&lt;/a&gt;. I've used this in a university course on metrics, and it has a number of recommendations on what you probably should be measuring instead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Let's assume the company will pay any certification exam to whoever wants to submit to it.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the company I currently work at, passing Microsoft and Oracle certifications gets you $500 (per test) plus the cost of the test and study materials. Even with such a large bonus, I am the only developer taking advantage of the program. Our company is a &quot;partner&quot; with both Oracle and Microsoft, so it is in the company's financial interest to have employees pass the certification. When I've asked the other devs why they didn't feel like earning an easy $5k/year, they stated a number of reasons from &quot;I don't have time to study&quot; to &quot;$500 isn't enough&quot;. The resistance to certification is not something that you will be able to overcome merely by throwing money at the problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="66" LastActivityDate="2012-06-12T23:47:25.233" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="974" CreationDate="2012-06-13T06:56:17.870" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a decent list of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category%3aFree_project_management_software&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Free project management software&lt;/a&gt; over at wikipedia. There is also a fairly comprehensive &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_project-management_software&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;project management software comparison&lt;/a&gt;, which  describes the features of each platform (includes proprietary software).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/open-source-project-management-software.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;basic comparison of some of the more popular open source PM software&lt;/a&gt; by nixcraft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4093" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T06:56:17.870" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-06-13T06:56:17.870" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5944" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5947" CreationDate="2012-06-13T08:52:49.877" Score="1" ViewCount="3399" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a single task (of type Fixed Work) with a total Work estimated to 160 hours. When I assign two full-time resources (let's call them Alice and Bob) to it, Duration of the task is 80 hours, as expected. Neither Alice nor Bob have any other tasks assigned. However, when I change Units of Alice to 25%, Duration of the task changes to 320 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This totally baffled me at first, but then I realized the reasoning (correct, I hope) behind it. Apparently, MS Project wants for each resource to spend exactly 80 hours on the task. Since Alice can only spend 2 hours (25%) each day on the task, it takes her 40 days to ramp up 80 hours and that is the reason Duration of the task is 320 hours (= 40 days).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way for Bob to be able to spend more than 80 hours on the task, so that he can compensate for Alice? In other words, I would like the resulting Duration to be 144 hours (= 16 days, during which Bob works for 8 hours each day and Alice 2 hours). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4095" LastEditorUserId="4095" LastEditDate="2012-06-13T09:38:36.203" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T10:45:56.053" Title="Multiple resources for one task in MS Project" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5946" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5969" CreationDate="2012-06-13T10:38:57.300" Score="3" ViewCount="3440" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am participating in a ~2 years &lt;strong&gt;OpenSource computer science project&lt;/strong&gt; involving my school, we are &lt;strong&gt;8 students&lt;/strong&gt; joining the development team and contributing to the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Half of the members didn't produce any output for a few months, some almost one year. I tried to monitor every week their advancement, they often ignore my emails or reply saying that they are trying but it's hard, or they advance other personal problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are not getting paid, only our degree depends on this project. This is different from any real world situation where people are either involved or getting paid. It's a challenge beyond my skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best solution: kick them out, or ignore idle members and reassign them to other tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2968" LastEditorUserId="2968" LastEditDate="2012-06-13T13:54:27.077" LastActivityDate="2012-06-17T14:04:20.547" Title="How To Manage Inactive Team Members In A Non-Professional Environment?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5944" CreationDate="2012-06-13T10:45:56.053" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try setting the units before allocating to the task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T10:45:56.053" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5946" CreationDate="2012-06-13T14:35:32.297" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you pointed out, they aren't earning anything to commit to the project. Well, there's the other side of the coin on it that they aren't realizing, though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In real life, why a manager would put lots of efforts to keeping the whole team progressing? There are several reasons, that could be summarized as &lt;em&gt;it's complicated to let people go&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, however... I see no reason for keeping people around if they aren't adding value to the project (actually, they're negatively impacting on the project, since you're spending time chasing them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Suggestion:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a &lt;strong&gt;candid conversation&lt;/strong&gt;, explaining how the team is progressing and how much everyone is progressing. Explain that, from a project perspective, there's no reason for keeping the current structure.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Define goals&lt;/strong&gt; for each one to contribute to the team (with deliverables and target dates). If they don't meet, they'll understand why they're invited to step down from the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had a similar case in a MBA project where one of our team members had a low attachment to the project tasks plus had several issues during presentations. We had a frank and objective conversation, telling him we weren't happy with his performance. We passed on some tasks to him, no progress was perceived, I personally told him we were removing him from the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not easy at all, you'll be dealing with people's emotions. But that's a first opportunity to get used to make people go. Better a neat team doing a fair project rather than a big team doing a poor job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T14:35:32.297" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5946" CreationDate="2012-06-13T17:39:05.127" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I sounds a bit mercenary, but treat this situation like any job. The point of school is to teach you, and to prepare you for the working world. Here you have a prime example of how that works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You said you're not getting paid - that's not quite true. You're getting paid by earning your degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't really any different than &quot;any real world situation.&quot; My advice is to treat this like any other professional obligation. The team members need to work together to accomplish the task. If someone chooses to slack off, then it threatens the whole team (project success), and isn't fair to the rest of the team. In an normal business situation these people would be replaced. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Explain that this is a team effort, and that you have a lot riding on this (as do they.) They need to step up, or be moved out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any team effort, someone eventually has to step into the lead role. That appears to be you. Look at this as an additional learning opportunity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T17:39:05.127" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5950" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-13T20:34:49.150" Score="7" ViewCount="8324" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What exactly is an impediment?&lt;/strong&gt; I know that Scrum say that and impediment is something that stop the team from performing the best it can. So basically it can be everything? But where goes the magical line where it becomes and internal improvement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example. We want to have more realistic test data in our databases, &lt;strong&gt;is that internal improvement or impediment?&lt;/strong&gt; We as a team could try to solve it in the sprint along with the other stories directly, or we could say that it's an internal improvement that needs to be a story and go into the product backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As I see it we have three options:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Handle all internal improvements as stories in the backlog and make the PO prioritize them. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work with them along regular stories in the sprint. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Big things goes in as stories and small stuffs we can do directly in the sprint without it effecting the velocity much.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which is the correct option?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4100" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-14T02:30:09.287" LastActivityDate="2012-08-02T10:36:34.363" Title="What is an impediment, and how to handle them and internal improvments in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5951" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-13T21:11:24.737" Score="5" ViewCount="4362" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was recently given the task of creating an implementation plan document.  When I asked for an example of one that I could look at, I was told to look at the Project Plan that had already been created an use that as a base.  I'm still a bit confused on what I should be creating.  Can anyone point me to a good example out there or to something that explains what this is and details about what it should contain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4101" LastActivityDate="2012-06-14T09:12:52.640" Title="What is an &quot;implementation plan&quot;?" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5950" CreationDate="2012-06-14T00:07:57.047" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Impediments can certainly stem from areas of your development environment that require improvement - no doubt about it. But challenges such as your test data are &lt;em&gt;known challenges&lt;/em&gt; and will - of course - be allowed for during estimation: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Oh, this story is a 13. It would be a 5 if we had realistic test data.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, in the example you give, I don't see that as a legitimate impediment. It needs fixing, but the process of estimation &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; have accounted for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, per your other question, I'm used to seeing improvements get written up as stories and added to the backlog. But really, it's situation-dependent and will ultimately be determined by factors such as whether such efforts are considered development costs or infrastructure costs and which departmental budget will account for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3170" LastActivityDate="2012-06-14T00:07:57.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5951" CreationDate="2012-06-14T02:13:31.517" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Implementation = Deployment in most of the companies I have worked with. We include the following sections in our current template:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;BRIEF DESCRIPTION | What is Covered in this Deployment Plan?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;OBJECTIVES | What Needs to be Accomplished?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SUCCESS CRITERIA | How Will Others See We have Succeeded?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;POLICY/PROCESS | Are there Policies and Processes?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ORGANIZATION | Who is Involved in this Deployment?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;DISTRIBUTION | How do you Plan to Distribute the Solution / Application?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CHECK READINESS | Is the Infrastructure ready for the Deployment?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SUPPORT | How Will You Prepare the Support Team?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;TRAINING | To Whom and How Will You Provide the Training?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PILOT PHASE | Limited Deployment &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;COMMUNICATION | Identify all Communication Vehicles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SCHEDULE | Project Estimated Effort/Duration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;RISK ANALYSIS | What Could Go Wrong?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2012-06-14T02:13:31.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5909" CreationDate="2012-06-14T02:23:06.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some situations, there is clear benefit to the business to have more people with certifications. For example, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://mspartner.microsoft.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Microsoft Partner program&lt;/a&gt; offers additional &quot;rewards&quot; when your organization has a certain number of Microsoft Certified Professionals. &lt;strong&gt;In that case&lt;/strong&gt;, mentioning certification progress in reviews and linking appraisals would be acceptable - it is behavior you want to reward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2012-06-14T02:23:06.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5950" CreationDate="2012-06-14T02:56:40.553" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumology.net/tag/agile-project-manager/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Definition of impediment from Scrumology&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;impediment&lt;/strong&gt; – &lt;em&gt;a hindrance or obstruction in doing something: “an impediment to progress”&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example: Realistic Test Data:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The example you cite, the need to have more realistic data in the database, could be construed as an impediment to progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An impediment is not necessarily something that needs to be resolved to complete the project. Instead, an impediment is something that &quot;impedes&quot; or hinders your team's progress. With enough time in the budget, an impediment may not necessarily need to be resolved. It's up to you as the project manager to determine if the productivity gain from removing the impediment is worth the opportunity cost of spending time removing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But where goes the magical line where it becomes and internal improvement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's up to you as the project manager to determine where that line is. If an &quot;internal improvement&quot; doesn't speed up the project team's progress, then you could argue that it's not really an &quot;impediment&quot; and not really necessary that the issue be resolved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Options for Handling Small Tasks:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, it's easy to let those little things distract you from the most important tasks. All too often, I've seen myself and others get lost in minor details that we tackled because they appeared to be the low hanging fruit. This led to issues later on where we scrambled to resolve the more important larger tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, go with option 1. &lt;code&gt;Handle all internal improvements as stories in the backlog and make the PO prioritize them.&lt;/code&gt;. If the tasks aren't important, push them to the bottom of the list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if you estimate that you'll have room at the end of the sprint and the next most important task won't fit within the current sprint, go down the list and find the most important smaller task that will fit within that sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-06-14T02:56:40.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5951" CreationDate="2012-06-14T03:00:59.220" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The implementation plan specifies how to implement the software.  If you are installing into a corporate data center, you should work with team that will be operating the software.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take care to ensure you are following existing standard for deployment locations.  On UNIX/Linux there is &lt;code&gt;hier&lt;/code&gt; document which explains what should go where in the directories.  Windows has similar standards.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the implementation is to multiple servers, the implementation plan becomes more complex. It can also introduce issues of which components need to be deployed when.  On upgrades this may introduce version incompatibility issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever platform(s) the implementation will target, prerequisites should be documented.  Try to state minimum versions rather than specific versions.  (This will allow important security updates to be applied.)   This may require code changes if specific versions are checked for in the software.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@SBWorks has provided a good list of sections to consider.  Depending on the the implementation some sections may not be applicable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2012-06-14T03:00:59.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5957" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5962" CreationDate="2012-06-14T05:31:18.163" Score="5" ViewCount="11952" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a typical project lifecycle, as a manager you are expected to have a risk plan which (please correct me if I'm wrong) consists of identifying, assessing and prioritizing all potential risks of the project.  However, I don't understand how these things are done in Agile development since many people say it is implicitly managed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if that's the case, then does that mean during the lifecycle of an Agile project, there is no risk planning? I'm confused as to how this all works. Or more specifically, how does the entire area of Risk compare with traditional and agile development?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3976" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-14T14:52:25.487" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T02:31:00.487" Title="How is Risk Management in Agile Development Different From Risk Management in Waterfall Model?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;risk&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5957" CreationDate="2012-06-14T09:11:30.017" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;does that mean during the lifecycle of an Agile project, there is no risk planning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When people say it is implicitly managed, they hopefully mean it is managed &lt;strong&gt;continuously&lt;/strong&gt; throughout the project. This is done by discussing risks at sprint planning, retrospectives, and so on. The Scrum Master also has an important role removing risks/impediments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Continuing with Scrum as an example, it does not prescribe explicitly how risk is managed. However, Scrum is a framework and not a full-blown project management methodology: you have to define how to manage risks depending on your needs. Indeed, it is not uncommon for product owners and teams to keep lists of risks that are evaluated continuously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3106" LastActivityDate="2012-06-14T09:11:30.017" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5951" CreationDate="2012-06-14T09:12:52.640" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As said above, its a more detailed plan about the installing of software/hardware with respect to making the project live (although there may be a development and various test system rollout imp plans too). A backout plan is almost always a required sibling to the imp plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project Plan will help, but is likley to be to high level. You will need to look for any earlier releases (or similar releases if none exist or the topology is significantly changed), the operation team that will be using the live project, capacity planning (if you have one), any harward/database/etc teams if relevent. It is something that you should really be mentored through first time - perhaps grab the lead analyst or architect on your project for some help - chances are they will have something that you can modify. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;//Edit: Typo&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3652" LastActivityDate="2012-06-14T09:12:52.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5957" CreationDate="2012-06-14T14:29:25.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not an Agile expert - but I think two of the things that may cause it to look like no risk planning is done are the language, and how it's done in practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the language, I see most Agile practitioners and references refer to &quot;impediments&quot; rather than risks. Same thing really, but it can create the illusion that risk management isn't done, when in reality, impediments/risks are discussed every day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the practice side - in a typical (waterfall) project scenario you're going to do risk planning up-front, primarily because you've got a longer duration project, and you're looking at the entire span of the project for potential risks. So you could be trying to identify risks that may be 6-8 months out. Additionally, you may be dealing with outside vendors (parts being manufactured or deliveries) which bring another type of risk and are down the road a bit.&#xA;So you do 'risk' identification, planning and management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an Agile environment, this specific type of risk management isn't always necessary due to the processes used. In a 2-4 week sprint you're going to have a shorter time frame to look at. Also, if you're doing some type of Scrum variation then you may have the daily stand-up meetings, where risks can/will be discussed daily. In a larger type of project these may only get reviewed/updated during the weekly status meetings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-06-14T14:29:25.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5957" CreationDate="2012-06-14T16:44:44.617" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are correct in saying that risk management is typically not explicitly addressed in Agile projects.  That is, the process designers intended for typical project risks to be addressed through the practices outlined in the process.  As a result, Agile teams traditionally do not use any kind of intentional risk management approach.  This works for many teams and many projects, but I have found that ignoring risk is a huge missed opportunity and tends to increase project costs by learning through failure.  Further, many projects are different enough from the 'ideal' scenario for a process that it is worth being skeptical about implicit risk management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a great experience report published at the XP2008 conference (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springerlink.com/content/w7h060834844632v/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Explicit Risk Management in Agile Processes&lt;/em&gt; by Nelson, Taran, and Hinojosa&lt;/a&gt;) outlining one team's success incorporating the SEI's (Software Engineering Institute) Continuous Risk Management paradigm with Extreme Programming.  A past XP team I was on had similar success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When incorporating risk management practices into Agile teams I've found that there are some key things to keep in mind (some of these are summarized in the referenced paper):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remember that agile teams are democratic and self-organizing.  There should be an appointed &quot;risk manager&quot; role, but the responsibility for identifying and prioritizing risks lies with the team.  The risk manager is really just an enabler and facilitator.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep the risk register public.  Wikis work well for this as do other mediums.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Focus on practices that provide maximum value.  In my experience, &lt;a href=&quot;http://neverletdown.net/2010/05/the-reality-of-risk-exposure/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;using multi-voting for prioritizing risks is just as effective as ranking by exposure&lt;/a&gt;, takes a lot less time, and is an inclusive activity (good for Agile teams).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the Mini-Small Team Risk Evaluation workshop instead of the full-blown workshop from the SEI.  The mini version takes a day or less while the full version requires about 5 days.  If your team is well versed in risk management, you can do even lighter weight workshops and still remain effective.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The current thinking in the Agile community is that risk management &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; important.  Most of the Agile thought leaders have gone out of their way to talk about the importance of risk management with respect to agility.  That said, I haven't seen much work done to make risk management more accessible to agile practitioners and there is still a wealth of popular literature available that completely ignores the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1630" LastActivityDate="2012-06-14T16:44:44.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5957" CreationDate="2012-06-14T18:05:50.657" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have mentioned Agile modifies risk management as compared to Waterfall.  A well managed project will include looking at risks outside the scope of the project, and these should be handled more or less the same.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are areas of risk that Agile methodology should help mitigate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time to Market / Scheduling Error:  In a waterfall project it can be months or years before you release.  With Agile you should have something that can be released every few weeks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Budget Risk:  Waterfall projects tend to have significant budget risk as the timeframe to deliver is so long and estimates are often not accurate.  While the cost of an agile project may not be estimated any better, it is easier manage to budget.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cancellation Cost: If a waterfall project is cancelled late, there may be significant costs with no product.  The waterfall methodology may significantly delay the discovery that a project is impractical.  A cancelled agile project should produce some functionality if it has run for any length of time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scope Creep:  Waterfall projects tend to run into scope creep problems as missed requirements get added to the project without removing other requirements.  Agile projects should add the missed requirements to the backlog, push off lesser value requirements, and drop unnecessary requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requirement Error:  Waterfall projects specify the requirements long before they are delivered.  An incorrect requirement can generate significant costs before it is discovered, and more costs in correcting or removing the requirement.  Agile fleshes out the requirement when it is being implemented providing much more visibility and a shorter time frame to increase costs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technology Risk:  Waterfall projects may specify unproven technology, and it may be several months before problems with the technology are discovered.  Agile projects should reduce the time frame before problems are noted, and make adaptation simpler.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Security Risk:  Waterfall projects don't provide a product that can be tested for security until well into the projects.  Agile projects produced testable product every few weeks.  If security issues are discovered, it may be possible to address them early in an agile project.  If necessary, and agile project can adapt its process to deal with discovered security issues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I missed the risk of gold plated requirements.  It is much easier to end an Agile project when sufficient functionality has been developed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastEditorUserId="529" LastEditDate="2012-06-18T02:31:00.487" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T02:31:00.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5946" CreationDate="2012-06-14T19:57:31.220" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you've tried to work with your non-performing team members and they haven't responded. Your simplest solution is to not assign them further work. This is a bit different in semantics from &quot;firing&quot; them or &quot;removing them from the team&quot;, but the end effect is the same. If they complain be honest with them and tell them they aren't reliable and the team isn't going to rely on them anymore. If the rest of the team complains that the non-performers are going to get credit for everyone else's work tell them that was what was going to happen in any case and it isn't fair to you or the performing team members to chase after the non-performers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the explanations the non-performers have, ultimately they need to learn the lesson taught to me by a sergeant-major a lifetime ago:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Excuses are like a..holes - everyone has one and they're all full of s..t&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure that if they don't learn it in school they'll learn it the hard way....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-06-14T19:57:31.220" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5964" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5965" CreationDate="2012-06-14T23:40:43.843" Score="2" ViewCount="3723" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm running a project that lasts about 2 years in total, made up of many tasks, some of which are handled by other teams who report back to me. Some tasks can only run when the preceding tasks have been completed but some run concurrently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best solution I've found to track my project is a Gantt chart but due to the timespan of the project, it is somewhat unwieldy (i.e. my spreadsheet is extremely wide and doesn't translate well if printed out).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things that are important:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Easy to understand&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Easy to see exactly where in the project cycle we are&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can be replicated in an Excel spreadsheet&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lists tasks and sub-tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shows roughly when a task occurs and how long it takes (accuracy of a week is fine, say Week 36 for 2 weeks)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shows who is working/worked on the task&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can scroll down through 100's of tasks/sub-tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can easily hide large chunks of time where nothing is being worked on&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bonus: Can somehow display Completed, In Progress, Upcoming etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things that aren't important:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Minute/hour/day time tracking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tracks every single detail&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Alerts/reminders&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess it's a cross between a calendar and a to-do list and a Gantt chart is nearly perfect but I'm hoping there may be alternatives that offer something different that I can explore. If not, I'll stick to my trusty Gantt! Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4109" LastActivityDate="2013-08-11T18:37:05.180" Title="Methods to track a project (lots of tasks and over a long period of time)" Tags="&lt;tracking&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5964" CreationDate="2012-06-15T01:48:52.413" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oh boy....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There isn't anything easy about managing a complex project with a lot of tasks and a lot of time to monitor your costs and schedule.  The Gantt chart is not a tool for management.  It is a visual of your schedule used for reporting.  It will not help you, even if you think it is, to manage your schedule.  You will have no idea where you are...you may think you do, but dollars to donuts you don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You must invest into and learn how to use a sophisticated scheduling tool, such as Primavera or MSProject.  MSProject is not that expensive and is a decent tool; however, it has its quirks when doing things like earned value, but it can be used for complex projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your project is complex with many packages and a ton of time and a ton of money, saving money in your investment of a scheduling tool is the most expensive decision you'll make!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-06-15T01:48:52.413" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2820" CreationDate="2012-06-15T07:07:40.987" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take a look at this about Scrum add-on in Project 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gantthead.com/blog/Agility-and-Project-Leadership/3388/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.gantthead.com/blog/Agility-and-Project-Leadership/3388/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ciao&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4111" LastActivityDate="2012-06-15T07:07:40.987" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5967" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-15T07:26:56.060" Score="4" ViewCount="227" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a question regarding PMP implementation in our projects.  Should we apply all methodology/approaches mentioned in PMBOK/study guide in our projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my career I have seen estimation is not done properly in so many projects and if done, its not accurately done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4112" LastEditorUserId="1185" LastEditDate="2012-06-15T10:34:01.267" LastActivityDate="2012-09-17T06:21:48.820" Title="Do we really apply all methodology/approaches mentioned in PMBOK/study guide in our projects?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5946" CreationDate="2012-06-15T08:57:31.507" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I faced a similar problem when working on a group project for my degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing I'd question is if you actually have the authority to remove people from the team, especially if the project has been underway for more than a year. Are you in a supervisory position? Do the terms of your assignment allow you to democratically remove other team members? If you decide to go down this route, fully consider all possible consequences, as the people being 'removed' will presumably object to this, and might take actions against the other team members in response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, consider that regardless of other outcomes, the assignment will definitely look like a failure in at least one respect ('person management', 'good teamworking' etc) if the team is broken up in this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And - although it's difficult when some people are clearly doing far more work than others - in the absence of objective proof, I think you have to give people the benefit of the doubt if they claim to have personal problems. If nothing else, consider how bad it will look if you remove someone from the team, and they then provide evidence of (eg) health issues or bereavement to your academic supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With all that in mind, our solution was to call a 'clear the air' meeting where everyone discussed their concerns, with an emphasis on how to solve the problem, rather than blame or accusation. We also agreed that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As far as practically possible, the work was reassigned into independent 'chunks', and poorly-performing members were teamed together when assigning the chunks. That way, we ensured that continued failure by one or two people couldn't jeopardise the entire project; their section might end up missing, but other parts could proceed unaffacted. This also gave them the motive &lt;em&gt;and opportunity&lt;/em&gt; to 'pull their fingers out', as it increased transparency regarding who was responsible for chunks that were delivered (or weren't).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the end of the project, every group member provided an evaluation of the group as a whole, and of each member's contribution to the project, as part of the submission. This gave us an opportunity to give credit where it was due, and allowed us the chance to explain to our academic supervisor why certain parts were more successful than others.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefits of the above were that it kept the team together (which is a success in itself), that it treated all members of the team equally (everyone still had the same opportunity to succeed, if they wanted to, but with increased individual accountability; and the same opportunity to critique other members at the end), that it did not give anyone cause for grievance or 'appeal' etc, and that (IMHO) it was the most morally correct solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The outcome was that some (although not all) of the lesser-performing members improved considerably, the project was broadly successful (ie in terms of the specific 'academic' targets), and got a good mark. Also, it greatly reduced the personal tensions within the team for the remainder of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if all the above will be relevant to your particular situation, but hopefully it provides some points to consider, at least. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4113" LastActivityDate="2012-06-15T08:57:31.507" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5967" CreationDate="2012-06-15T10:15:04.707" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PMBoK defines no methods or approaches.  It is a body of knowledge.  It is not meant, nor should you use it, as a method.  The PMBoK, and other sources, can serve to inform your method, i.e., use components of it to develop your methods.  So the answer to your question has to be &quot;no&quot; since it does not fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And to answer the intent of your question, the answer is also a no.  Even if you had a well thought out method, you would never deploy it without some tailoring to fit the project at hand, in that environment, at that time.  A non tailored deployment is evidence of a marginally capable PM and would threaten success.  As a side benefit, the tailoring you do would serve as your method evolution, too, meaning the process of tailoring may cause a change that gets adopted as method.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-06-15T10:15:04.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5967" CreationDate="2012-06-15T10:15:12.990" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't throw every technique in the PMBOK at a project just because they're available.  Part of the skill is knowing what tools and techniques you should use for which situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the pocket edition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;What is it not? it is definitely not a 'project management recipe book'. the project manager and the team remain ultimately responsible for deciding what good practices shall be applied to the specific project at hand&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-09-17T06:21:48.820" LastActivityDate="2012-09-17T06:21:48.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5972" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-15T12:11:13.720" Score="2" ViewCount="1550" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are lots of small / mid sized software companies and there are lot of small / mid sized projects in this world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project management techniques we read in books are best suited for bigger projects. As we can not spend much time in PM related stuff that much, what technique best suits small / mid sized projects and takes less time for management. (Risk management part can be tolerated)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4116" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-15T15:16:42.757" LastActivityDate="2012-06-15T17:00:42.997" Title="Project Management for small / medium size project" Tags="&lt;small-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5972" CreationDate="2012-06-15T14:14:06.827" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;The project management techniques we read in books [sic] are best suited for bigger projects.&quot;  I think you made an erroneous conclusion here.  The PM techniques are size and industry agnostic.  What you seem to be missing is the tailoring of these techniques to fit the project and the environment in which you are working.  What might change with size is the formality with which you would implement a PM capability, or perhaps the rigor.  But the PM work is still performed.  For a large project, I may develop a Project Management Plan and subordinate PMPs with over 200 pages.  For a small project, the plan might be resident in my head.  But in both cases, I planned my work.  For a large project, I may deploy an ANSI compliant EVMS capability.  For something small, I may use MS Project and an excel sheet to do the same thing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The techniques and methods are scalable and tailorable.  You need to do both always.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-06-15T14:14:06.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5972" CreationDate="2012-06-15T14:56:24.380" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;All successful projects comply with a relatively short list of principles/themes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the project make sense from a business point of view? If no then the project should be terminated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are team roles and responsibilities clearly defined? If no then confusion will ensue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are plans in place that are feasible, achievable and realistic? If no then expect stakeholders to be annoyed and the team to be frustrated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are plans, risks and issues reviewed regularly in a controlled manner? If no then expect to be putting out fires because of issues you didn't see coming.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the team clear on what the end goal/product of the project has to look like? If no then expect scope creep and dissatisfaction with the end result.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the team apply lessons learned from this and other projects? If no then expect wasted effort as you reinvent the wheel.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there open, proactive communication between the stakeholders, PM and project team members? If no then expect differences in assumptions, delays, rework and added costs. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of the details of tools, techniques, methods, processes, etc in order to implement these principles and themes see David's excellent answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-06-15T14:56:24.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5967" CreationDate="2012-06-15T16:11:48.220" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Couple of things - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there's no such thing as a &quot;PMP implementation&quot;. The PMP is a credential/certification, not a method. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the actual name is A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge. This title was chosen because it was understood that no book could include the entirety of project management, so the goal was to create a guide to the most common/good practices found. But as David pointed out, it's a Body of Knowledge, not a methodology.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the first page of the first chapter states &quot;Good practice does not mean that the knowledge described should always applied uniformly on all projects; &lt;strong&gt;the project team is responsible for determining what its appropriate for any given project&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last - regarding estimating - if it's done poorly, throwing more methods at it will only make it worse. You need to step back and figure out WHY the estimates are poor, and then correct that. Inexperienced estimators, no historical data, optimistic estimates, etc. There are any number of potential causes. You need to identify what's at issue for your particular situation, and then address that. Like anything else, estimating is a skill. You get better at it with time and experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-06-15T16:11:48.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5972" CreationDate="2012-06-15T17:00:42.997" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project management really boils down to a few simple concepts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Decide what needs to be done (scope).&#xA;How much do we have to spend (cost).&#xA;When does it have to be done by (schedule). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anything beyond this is defined by your individual project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimating, risk management, change control; all of it is dependent on your situation. Short term project where you control most of the input? Probably not a lot of risk or risk management to worry about. History of similar projects? Estimating (both cost and task duration) is probably going to be straightforward. Requirements and/or scope fairly well defined, or limited number of stakeholders? Change control will be pretty easy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's as each of these factors increases in complexity that you have to start getting more in-depth in terms of processes. But at the base level, if you have a way to track tasks, cost, and schedule, that's all you need. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-06-15T17:00:42.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5964" CreationDate="2012-06-15T17:39:22.943" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll second David's response here. Your situation is the reason project management software was created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tracking a project of this size on an Excel gantt chart can be done, but by one person it's going to be difficult. If you have to run this project using Excel, then you're going to spend all of your time updating and managing the schedule, and not the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your comment to David you said you thought a Gantt was so that you could lay out the schedule and others could see where you were in the process - yes and no. Yes, it's a visual representation of the schedule, but starting at Day 2, unless you're constantly updating for 'actuals' (real world progress/status), that chart will be worthless. That's why the project mgmt suites/software are so valuable. They allow for quick updating and tracking of progress, and allow you to focus on other things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-06-15T17:39:22.943" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5978" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5982" CreationDate="2012-06-15T18:25:31.767" Score="11" ViewCount="1241" Body="&lt;p&gt;Where I'm currently working, I'm the only BizTalk/Integration developer.  Other developers are specialized in hand-held devices, others in Silverlight, and other in electronic devices.  I don't know what they know, and they don't know what I know.  How would SCRUM work in this type of environment.  Obviously, it would be good to cross-train and share knowledge, but I don't particularly want to be a hand-held developer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Isn't one of the theories of scrum is that all team members should be able to do each others work.  We don't have 7 (plus or minus 2) people of each specialty. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4119" LastActivityDate="2020-06-29T12:26:05.307" Title="Scrum with highly specialized developers" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3540" CreationDate="2012-06-15T21:57:31.307" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our solution, TrackerSuite.Net (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.TrackerSuite.Net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;http://www.TrackerSuite.Net&quot;&gt;http://www.TrackerSuite.Net&lt;/a&gt;) integrates with email systems including Microsoft Outlook. It can be surfaced inside the Microsoft Outlook, and provides functions and tools including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project dashboards.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task management.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Status reporting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Document management.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resource allocation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time reporting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It leverages Outlook for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project request and approval workflow.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Timesheet review and approval.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task assignments, schedule change notifications and status report reminders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also offers direct integration functions with Outlook, allowing users to drag-and-drop emails into a TrackerSuite.Net folder to create tasks and project documents.  TrackerSuite.Net also synchronizes tasks between itself and the Outlook tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A free demo is available, you can register here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.TrackerSuite.Net/request_demo.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;http://www.TrackerSuite.Net/request_demo.html&quot;&gt;http://www.TrackerSuite.Net/request_demo.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4120" LastActivityDate="2012-06-15T21:57:31.307" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5978" CreationDate="2012-06-16T05:51:27.397" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think this has anything to do with Scrum or any other management methodology/process. Yes, scrum suggests having a 'vertical skillset' but that's a guideline and not a rule. It does make things easy if everyone can do everything with varying levels of expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your specific case I guess you need to take extra care for knowledge sharing and put in extra time for knowledge transfer. So even if everyone can't do everyone's work at least they can &lt;em&gt;understand&lt;/em&gt; it in some detail so as to be helpful in debugging, system design etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could still use Scrum with the daily stand-ups, burn-down charts, sprints etc. However, you must decide, as a team &quot;how&quot; to do the work. If they are experts as you claim then let them do their job but spend more time on 'interfacing' - both human and code (latter more important from implementation POV). Have special meeting times about 1-2 times a week where each specialist holds a 2 hour session talking about their area and 'educating' everybody. Allocate time for this and adjust the schedule estimates accordingly. I'm sure everyone will know &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; about everybody else's code but not enough to make changes. But it's upto the team how to get rid of information silos - that's the only reason Scrum suggests everyone be able to do everything to prevent superstars or SPOFs (single points of failure).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess you need to discuss this with your team to figure out how best to address this 'risk' IMHO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1119" LastActivityDate="2012-06-16T05:51:27.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3540" CreationDate="2012-06-16T07:38:43.950" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We actually chose &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.liquidplanner.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LiquidPlanner&lt;/a&gt;. And I can recommend it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The planning can be viewed in Outlook (however, tasks are shown as all day events)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It has all sorts of smart information such as estimating a possible release date, and alerts when a release date is likely to be missed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It allows you to enter a 'Promise by' date. LiquidPlanner tells you how likely the date is going to be met&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A task can have a Delay Until date, for example when waiting for input&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resource planning (who's available when) is pretty well done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1203" LastEditorUserId="1203" LastEditDate="2012-06-17T11:53:25.230" LastActivityDate="2012-06-17T11:53:25.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5978" CreationDate="2012-06-16T15:19:02.027" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;A scrum team can very well be composed of more-or-less specialized members. This is the situation of almost every team and this can be a good thing IMO, as long as the team can self-organize itself to take advantage of its specialized members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please read these two articles for more information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20140804065326/http://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2011/january/specialization-and-generalization-in-teams&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Specialization and Generalization in Teams&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Balancing specialization&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The need for balancing specialization occurs when a team takes shared responsibility of all the work in a Sprint. As a result, team members need to learn a little bit of each other's specialization. This does not mean that all team members must be generalists, but that members move away from the other extreme -- being a specialist in exactly one area. Team members will learn multiple-specializations but probably not all of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20100506083200/http://www.scrumalliance.org/articles/92-wellformed-teams&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Well-Formed Teams&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4071" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-29T12:26:05.307" LastActivityDate="2020-06-29T12:26:05.307" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5946" CreationDate="2012-06-16T23:33:24.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might want to take it through your professor first, as you may get into serious disputes throwing people off a project that they have their degrees pinned to, even if they have done less than their fair share. The problem is they can claim that the project is a joint one and you have no right to claim it as your own; therefore, you either disband the whole project (ouch!) or drag them along. This is where you professor may be able to help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also look at splitting the project into two teams and put all the non workers on one team with its own deliverables - with no one to cover them they will have little choice but to get on or get out. This may benefit you if you are able to deliver a major part of the project (and it is stand alone) even if theirs fails to materialize. Take a step back and see if that is possible. Again, the  professor may be able to help and may officiate the break into two projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3652" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-17T01:32:50.560" LastActivityDate="2012-06-17T01:32:50.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5946" CreationDate="2012-06-17T14:04:20.547" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If team size is big then ať least  two three member must &#xA;be great in performance. Other are follwers of the active &#xA;members  another are  workless or least performer .so &#xA;assign task according to performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4041" LastActivityDate="2012-06-17T14:04:20.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5964" CreationDate="2012-06-18T07:45:57.680" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some project management tools out there, but the one is use is called Paymo (http://www.paymo.biz ). In short it does time tracking, project management and invoicing. It also has milestones, so you know how good or bad you're doing on your project and it even has a tool that records everything you do on the computer (that's a big plus for me).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a nice bonus, they also have a mobile app, so you can track time even on the go. Hope this helps, good luck with your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4128" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T07:45:57.680" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5950" CreationDate="2012-06-18T21:59:00.367" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;impediment&lt;/strong&gt; is something outside of the team's scope. For example, not having a special hardware for testing. In this case, the team cannot do much, because buying new hardware is usually part of the management's responsibility. So the team puts the item into the impediment backlog, and management pulls from there.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;internal improvement&lt;/strong&gt; is something a team can do in order to have a better product. For example, writing new test cases on the new hardware.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T21:59:00.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5924" CreationDate="2012-06-20T10:45:07.847" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are lots of software products that could fit your needs, as what you need is basically the ABC of a project management software. Maybe you should first  have a look at this Wikipedia article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Comparison_of_project-management_software&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Comparison of project-management software&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4071" LastActivityDate="2012-06-20T10:45:07.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5514" CreationDate="2012-06-20T15:02:31.427" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any requirements management system - professional or adhoc - should be able to link to specific HTML pages using anchors and do the same for PDF files hosted via web server. E.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yoursite.com/file.pdf#page=3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Page 3 Requirement&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3910" LastActivityDate="2012-06-20T15:02:31.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5991" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5992" CreationDate="2012-06-20T18:22:11.177" Score="6" ViewCount="3500" Body="&lt;p&gt;After a decade of managing software projects, I've found Gantt charts to have very limited use after the Planning phase. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the perceived benefits of Gantt charts, especially during the Execution phase?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2713" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-20T19:01:43.487" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T13:50:01.883" Title="What are the benefits of using Gantt charts during the execution phase of a project?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5991" CreationDate="2012-06-20T18:32:26.077" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to answer your question properly, I had to interview a lot of people, but I'm going to guess instead, because I cannot do it now. I think people love Gantt charts, because &lt;strong&gt;they give them a clear view on what is going to happen to them and when&lt;/strong&gt;. The problem is that they take the chart as something written into stone. The inventor of the Gantt chart (Henry Laurence Gantt) created the tool for visualizing the current status/schedule and show the progress. This was a revolutionary concept at that time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As usual, &lt;strong&gt;there's nothing wrong with the tool, it is the way we use them&lt;/strong&gt;. If you make sure that the Gantt chart is used and updated as it was designed you'll get a pretty good overview on what is going on in the project. If you don't update it, or set it up having wishful thinking then it will do harm. Again, charts usually don't set themselves up :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-06-20T18:32:26.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5991" CreationDate="2012-06-21T00:30:25.983" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Gantt charts have value in the execution phase if the work breakdown structure tasks are being updated as things are completed, delayed, or adjusted. The effects of schedule slip and the identification of tasks that were over or under-estimated can be really obvious when shown in a Gantt view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were to ask this exact same question to someone in the construction industry, you are likely get some very odd looks from managers who would question your sanity. Updating and tracking of construction projects using just a Gantt chart is extremely common. Since deliveries to to construction site have to carefully timed and renting certain types of equipment are extremely expensive, a construction site manager wants to see real data on how complete the predecessor steps are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick is keeping the history of the task completion up to date. In my experience in IT companies, the Gantt chart is built and then discarded which greatly reduces the value of the tool. And, unfortunately, few time tracking systems or issue tracking/ticketing systems feed directly into planning tools that people use to generate Gantt charts so that &quot;real time&quot; link is often missing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2012-06-21T00:30:25.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5991" CreationDate="2012-06-21T02:42:07.323" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many Gantt Chart views:&#xA;1、Gantt chart shows the dependency relationship between tasks&#xA;2、multiple baseline Gantt shows the variance between the baseline and current plan.&#xA;3、Tracking Gantt shows progress&#xA;etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4138" LastEditorUserId="4138" LastEditDate="2012-06-21T03:00:16.943" LastActivityDate="2012-06-21T03:00:16.943" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5991" CreationDate="2012-06-21T03:16:29.170" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The value depends on how the Gantt is being used and maintained. The perception of limited value is usually due to a poor implementation, and lack of proper usage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Gantt Chart is intended to be a visual representation of the project schedule. It gives you (and your team) a quick way to see how things are interrelated, how they are sequenced, dependencies, proposed dates, and ultimately, progress. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem comes when it's not updated regularly to reflect actual progress. You said the chart is useful in planning, but no plan ever survives actual implementation. As soon as you start the project things change. Unless you update the chart to reflect that reality, it will have no value after that first day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As SBWorks said, the construction industry lives and dies by the Gantt Chart, but in that domain those using it update it on a regular basis. In most const contracts, the sub-contractors are even required (as a condition of progress payment) to provide an updated schedule every month, which is reviewed and integrated into the master schedule. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what are the benefits? There are many. But only if used correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-06-21T03:16:29.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5991" CreationDate="2012-06-21T10:00:42.957" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We synthesize and display data in order to analyze it and to report it.  We do not create the Gantt chart so we have a cool looking thing.  We do so in order to help us understand what is going on with our schedule, draw findings and conclusions, and then make decisions.  Not only with our schedule, but we have those same choices for other data we are analyzing and reporting.  We can build tables or graphs and modify them in countless way to help us analyze it and report it.  We can make trend graphs using lines or bars, we can make histograms, pie charts, scatter grams, Paretto charts, and we can design our tables any way we want, and we can build dashboards with red, yellow, and green fancy indicators.  The point is, we synthesize and display so we can analyze.  Most, I find, stop at the display part, which is what it sounds like you are doing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The schedule by itself is a table and you can expose the data attributes of interest to you and arrive at the same conclusion as if you were looking at your tracking gantt, viewing pictorally your actual progress against baseline.  So, it is a choice of the PM and how (s)he interprets data and how (s)he best thinks (s)he can report it for easy understanding with key stakeholders.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I like pictures and graphs.  I find them easier to intepret and far easier to report.  I can see the inter- and intra-relationships between the work packages--the horizontal and vertical logic-- throughout the schedule whereas with the table I'd have to line by line see the relationships.  Much easier to look at a connector.  And, if I want to make changes in the schedule, e.g., fast track or crash, I can almost visually see what that would do the schedule in my mind, versus plugging in the new datum and watch the values change in the table cells to see what happened to my new finish variance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-06-21T10:00:42.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5997" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-21T11:40:39.797" Score="2" ViewCount="3782" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are using JIRA to manage our tasks and to allow our client to review the progress and decides what to do next. Our developers are logging their work pretty accurately. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally our workflow would be the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Client asks for a new feature.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We create a JIRA task, assign it to a free developer and do our time&#xA;estimation and also evaluate how much per hour the client will pay&#xA;(depends on complexity of the task and experience of the&#xA;developers).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After some period (a month, or maybe when the new stable version is&#xA;released) the client gets our report of how many hours each&#xA;developer has worked and how much the client has to pay.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there is no &quot;payment for hour&quot; field for the task (this field should&#xA;be visible only to project admins and the client).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there is no plugin or feature, which could use the logged hours&lt;br&gt;&#xA;multiplied by hour rate for each task and generate a report since the&#xA;date when the client did the last payment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of this, we did some parallel bookkeeping in Excel, but it just seems wrong and takes too much time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any JIRA plug-in (or any application which uses JIRA database directly) that could help us with such reports?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3279" LastEditorUserId="2340" LastEditDate="2012-12-05T09:09:55.010" LastActivityDate="2018-05-06T03:21:06.943" Title="JIRA - generating work log reports" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;pay&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5991" CreationDate="2012-06-21T13:53:41.133" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From having seen Gantt charts being used in various environments (such as project management, production scheduling, service management and logistics scheduling), I would say that there are two prerequisites for a Gantt chart to provide value in the execution phase. One had been mentioned earlier in this thread: the Gantt chart has to get updated regularly. Second, I would suggest that these updates happen in an interactive way so that all task owners of a project can interactively communicate with the schedule data, simulate them and change them so that execution and scheduling (which to me is the day-to-day granular planning) go hand in hand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is achieved, I can see the following benefits of using a Gantt chart in the execution phase:&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;1. Intuitive: Jump-start for everybody.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;2. Clarity: eases manager/employee communication.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;3. Reducing a burden: making reporting straight-forward.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;4. Increasing efficiency: documenting best practices.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;5. Providing insight: making dependencies transparent.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;6. Management relief: closing the “excuse department”.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;7. Cutting a Gordian knot: from detail to high-level and back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently elaborated these in my Gantt software blog and I hope that this provides some new food for thought: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.netronic.com/8-fundamental-reasons-gantt-chart-scheduling&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.netronic.com/8-fundamental-reasons-gantt-chart-scheduling&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4142" LastActivityDate="2012-06-21T13:53:41.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5999" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6000" CreationDate="2012-06-21T15:16:11.230" Score="0" ViewCount="261" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working in the middle level of a software company. My role is a software developer. I don't know what processes are to be handled in the Software Development company?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you explain me in detail? So many hierarchies are used in the Software Developement companies (i.e CMM Level Companies). Now I have 5 years of experience in software development, but I don't know what are the steps to be intially taken in the Software Development Companies. What are the designs handled in the Software Development companies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4059" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-06T05:55:27.103" LastActivityDate="2012-07-06T05:55:27.103" Title="What are the steps to be taken in the initial projects in Software Companies?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2012-06-21T17:48:22.007" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5999" CreationDate="2012-06-21T16:51:22.607" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you mean steps like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define vision&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research business&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implement document version control&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research initial requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write initial requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research high level architecture&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write high level architecture&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implement source version control&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implement build and test server&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perform iterations of collect requirements, design, code tests, optimize process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1094" LastActivityDate="2012-06-21T16:51:22.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5997" CreationDate="2012-06-21T16:59:13.323" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There really isn't a plugin that I know of that does quite what you need. Luckily, JIRA is very extensible. Here's a suggestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would recommend is to add a custom field in JIRA for Payment for Hour. You do this (in JIRA 5) as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click on the Administration link in the top right corner of the page&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Issues at the top then Fields&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add Custom Field at the top&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add a number type field&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put it on the screen/project you want, probably a special screen that can only be gotten to by admins&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you have the new field, populate it as desired. Then, when it comes time to run the report, do a JIRA search and whittle down the columns to the description, developer, time spent, and hourly rate. From there, export the output into Excel. It should then be quite trivial for you to add a new column with a formula to multiply the hours against the rate and even sum at the bottom. If adding the field is too much work, you may want to just to just add the rate in Excel directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the field isn't as &quot;admin only&quot; as you'd like, creating an admin only field is pretty much the first and most basic JIRA development tutorial out there:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://developer.atlassian.com/display/JIRADEV/How+to+create+a+new+Custom+Field+Type&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://developer.atlassian.com/display/JIRADEV/How+to+create+a+new+Custom+Field+Type&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be a plugin out there for admin only fields now, but it isn't too hard to do yourself if you have a bit of technical know how and can follow instructions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4144" LastActivityDate="2012-06-21T16:59:13.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6002" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-22T02:05:34.913" Score="1" ViewCount="777" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a project team with a project manager and 5 development resources working on a Web 2.0 web application. The current project the team is working on is for a long term client who commissioned a desktop and mobile website that they will use to build brand recognition for a new product line they will be selling on a mobile and web ecommerce platform, which the team will build using open source tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only two of the development resources have experience with building ecommerce solutions. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The other three development resources have never worked on an ecommerce platform. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project manager has noted this as a risk, since there is a financial component to ecommerce platforms that can have serious security implications.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project manager has completed the schedule and has loosely allocated most of the tasks to the 5 team members, with the highest risk items being assigned to the two ecommerce experts. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The software development methodology is closer to the waterfall model than an agile methodology due to the specific client and their need to avoid uncertainty.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The client has signed off on the project authorizing it to begin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problem: Hijacked Resources:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the last minute, another project manager of another team convinced senior management to move one of the expert resources from this team and replace her with an intern. This project manager has a strong relationship with senior management, goes to lunch with them, and even sometimes hangs out with them outside of work. This PM has an unofficial reputation for stealing project resources and throwing his weight around using his influence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the client having already signed off on the project and an agressive, 9 month estimate, the project team is concerned they won't be able to meet the deadline because of the huge learning curve for the 4 inexperienced team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After speaking with senior management, the request to move the expert back to the team was declined. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should the project manager reallocate the tasks that were assigned to the ecommerce expert who was replaced with an intern? Is there a specific strategy or methodology that should be followed to determine how the tasks should be assigned? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-22T02:20:35.103" LastActivityDate="2012-06-22T10:51:20.933" Title="What is the procedure for adjusting the project schedule when a team member is replaced?" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6002" CreationDate="2012-06-22T04:15:19.293" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile doesn't necessary means risk or uncertainty. In fact I would strongly suggest that you embrace this change, and start working with a pair programming approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will help you leverage your less experienced resources to higher levels of understanding of the platform.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may face a reduced head count, meaning that 2 developers will be seen as one, with the implications this might have in certain corporate cultures. Still it'll be a good practice given your case.&#xA;Also by implementing, let's say, Scrum, you could deliver the most valuable &quot;requirements&quot; first, leveraging the knowledge around the team so that for every sprint or iteration your team will know more and be more productive.&#xA;Still you'll need a good agile coach or have the ability to have a good lead who understand this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, I would split the tasks into pair programming couples. Speed might be impaired at first, but you'll win in quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4145" LastActivityDate="2012-06-22T04:15:19.293" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="703" CreationDate="2012-06-22T04:30:16.197" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually see broken relationships as motivational hazards. Meaning that there are mixed objectives that either parts are trying to achieve.&#xA;Sometimes relationships get broken or to a state of no apparent return. The very first thing you must do is hear all parties and understand what is the driver of the situation.&#xA;From there a course of action can be made and decisions taken, always having open communication channels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See for example the &quot;Drama Triangle&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karpman_drama_triangle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karpman_drama_triangle&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a nutshell, it's important to see the big picture and not just the isolated scenarios, realizing that all the parties are part of the resolution and need to be in a different spot (not as persecutors or victims or saviors). Neither more or less than others, just different and with different motivations. The &quot;here and now&quot; it's more important that what happened in the past. &#xA;Ultimately we are all here to be happy, and if that can't be achieved, then probably we are not in the right place... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4145" LastEditorUserId="4145" LastEditDate="2012-06-22T04:40:54.637" LastActivityDate="2012-06-22T04:40:54.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6002" CreationDate="2012-06-22T10:42:31.333" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This mitigation of this issue should have begun before your lost your resource.  Losing resources--human, materiel, money--is an organic risk of all projects and mitigation begins at initial planning.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My basis of estimate includes the assumption that all capability enablers, humans being one of them, are average performing.  I never plan around the perceived capabilities of the team or, worse, an individual.  People leave, people die, there is no way you can make certain that the team used for planning will be the team used for execution.  And, there is the often forgotten effect of &lt;em&gt;regression to the mean,&lt;/em&gt; which essentially states your planned high performer has probability of performing worse this time than (s)he did last time.  Finally, the word average means this is what is mostly observed and, therefore, what you will most likely get.  For these three reasons, it serves no purpose to plan your targets based on anything but average performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An intern is quite a replacement.  I'd work on finding another resource if you are able.  An intern is there to learn, not perform, so this would be an unacceptable replacement.  In fact, you cannot even consider this a replacement.  Essentially, you are now operating with one less resource on your project.  Everyone is replaceable, so there is a replacement out there.  If you are unable to hire for some reason, then raise the risk for a late delivery, mitigate where you can, then raise and communicate early and often that you will be late when it becomes imminent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, to the question of adjusting your schedule.  If you meant adjusting your baseline, the answer would be no.  This would be a cause of variance, not a condition to rebaseline.  In terms of simply reallocating your staff to your work packages, I would simply go through the pain staking analysis of skill requirements per work package and align the resource(s) who exhibit the best match.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2012-06-22T10:51:20.933" LastActivityDate="2012-06-22T10:51:20.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5791" CreationDate="2012-06-22T13:07:47.330" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would strongly suggest to contact IBM's Rational product team support if you haven't done so. Since you are paying for the tool, it would be wise to reach them for best partices, guidance, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4145" LastActivityDate="2012-06-22T13:07:47.330" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6012" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6013" CreationDate="2012-06-22T17:40:13.433" Score="9" ViewCount="396" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am the Infrastructure PM on a large project, working as part of a team of PMs with different responsibilities. These include Development, Testing, Environment Support, and Implementation. My remit is limited to delivering the hardware and middleware components required to support the application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main technology that I have to implement in the current phase of the project is IBM WebSphere. There is no new hardware: as far as infrastructure is concerned, we are simply adding new WebSphere components to the technology stack. I have access to two specialists in the WebSphere team, as well as other ancillary specialists for the other (less prominent) technical changes that I have to make. The problem is this: each of the other PMs also needs the WebSphere guys to support their parts of the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We work together to align our plans, and everything looks great on paper, but the fact is that we end up scheduling 100% rather than 70% or 80% of their time, so no slack exists. And then reality kicks in. Something goes wrong: one of the tests takes longer than expected, or one of the test environments falls over, or we need to deploy new code more frequently than expected, to resolve defects in test. Any of these can mean that our plans for these scarce resources immediately fall over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is this: What can I do to encourage my fellow PMs to build in a lot more slack into the project, and stop filling every minute of every day with planned work? No matter how much I try to do so, someone comes along with a new task, sees a couple of hours of apparently unoccupied time, and lays claim to it - with predictable (and disastrous) results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T17:51:03.170" Title="Resources used by multiple PMs" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6012" CreationDate="2012-06-22T18:17:40.267" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the short term can you change the business rules for the time of the WebSphere SMEs so that you &lt;strong&gt;can't&lt;/strong&gt; allocate them 100%? For example, if the current business rule is that they work 8 hours per day from 0900 to 1700, change the rule so that they work 6 hours per day from 1000 to 1600. Or block off &quot;me time&quot; from 1100-1300. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the longer term can you get the other PMs properly trained on project management and team leadership? It sounds like they have some problems with basic concepts like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resources aren't 100% efficient... 60-70% efficiency is more what you should plan on&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Switching between tasks/projects reduces efficiency... coordinate with the other PMs so that a resource only has to work on one project per day&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you treat someone like a piece of meat they will act like one i.e. they will not contribute to their full potential... or they will turn around and walk away and really leave you in the lurch&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, in the long term the SMEs should also be educated to push back on you and the other PMs when they are overtasked. They have to be part of the solution as well as the PMs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-06-22T18:17:40.267" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6012" CreationDate="2012-06-22T18:21:10.330" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;How are you building your estimates?  Deterministically or probabilistically?  Do you take advantage of simulation software to estimate?  There is no task in the world that take x units of time to finish.  Instead it takes between x - something to x + something to finish.  And the variables that cause you to finish somewhere early or somewhere late are many, random, and largely uncontrollable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are not conducting this type of analysis on your schedule, or your budget for that matter, then you are not really aware of the risk you are taking on and, therefore, not prepared to cope with variables that are unfavorable to you by way of contingency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-06-22T18:21:10.330" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6012" CreationDate="2012-06-22T18:32:59.690" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This looks like a &lt;strong&gt;utilization vs throughput&lt;/strong&gt; situation. Managers who believe in utilization will always schedule 100% of the working hours of their employees, and that's why they don't allow any slack in their systems. (on the other hand they live like this, unfortunately, and bring this standard to the workplace). I would try to explain the difference between utilization and throughput.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is to find bad examples from the workplace, when overburden employees made mistakes. I read about toyota that they didn't run their machines 100% all time because they were afraid that the machine would get broken. This is one of the waste they defined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I'm talking about this topic, I'm using the following arguments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;100% coverage means that the colleague won't have time to be creative&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;100% coverage doesn't mean that the project will be finished. It means that the colleagues will work the whole day. On the other hand, keeping the throughput in mind will actually make a difference&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;slack time != buffer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;having slack time doesn't mean that the colleagues won't work as much as they should be. Based on my experience they use the time wisely. Those who don't they find the way not to work even when the 100% coverage is in place&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;100% coverage makes us inflexible and slow. There is no place for change or fast reaction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-06-22T18:32:59.690" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6017" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6019" CreationDate="2012-06-23T23:51:47.623" Score="3" ViewCount="121" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a project manager who is trying to come up with a way to calculate EV under a specific situation where there is a project management system which allows different versions of project plans. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PMs starts with a initial project plan, cost are allocated to different tasks across different period, at the end of each month, PMs review their project plan and revise the plan according, this includes revising the project structure (adding/removing tasks) and project costs. During the running of the project, various cost are also charged to the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Here is an example of the project:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Revision 0 (cost/schedule plan): &#xA;&#xA;month  |  1  |  2 &#xA;task-1 | 100 | 200 &#xA;task-2 | 200 | 100 &#xA;&#xA;Revision 1 (revised at the end of month 1) &#xA;month  |  1  |  2&#xA;task 1 | 200 | 200 &#xA;task 2 | 200 | 100 &#xA;&#xA;Revision 2 (revised at end of month 2) &#xA;month  |  1  |  2&#xA;task 1 | 200 | 300 &#xA;task 2 | 200 | 100 &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Actual Project Cost:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;month  |  1  |  2 &#xA;task-1 | 200 | 300 &#xA;task-2 | 200 | 100 &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, how can the PM modify the formula (shown below) to calculate the EV in this situation? Is there a better formula to use in this situation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the formula the PM is working with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;PV= PV of previous plan &#xA;EV= (actual cost Todate)/(total cost of new plan) * (PV according to previous plan) &#xA;AC = actual cost to-date. &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T17:34:43.073" Title="How can an EV be calculated when there are different versions of a project plan?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3414" CreationDate="2012-06-24T05:12:51.663" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always liked the example of the the baby sitter, who wants to finish minding the child but cant finish until a parent returns ( and starts minding the child).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4160" LastActivityDate="2012-06-24T05:12:51.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6017" CreationDate="2012-06-24T11:42:23.117" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you are describing here is a complete violation of the procedures to do EV.  The baseline of yoru schedule and costs cannot change in this manner.  There are specific reasons for and methods to change the baseline but it can never be changed in the manner this PM describes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can strike multiple baselines and do EV monitoring against each baseline.  But you wouldn't mix and match data across baselines.  I have never monitored multiple baselines and am not really sure when one would want to do that.  Maybe someone else can think of a scenario where that would be appropriate.  So, if this is what the PM is trying to do, then each variable--PV, EV, and AC--would be captured separately for each baseline.  Each baseline would have its own PV and EV and AC data.  The total AC data might equal summed up; however, it would be applied against the work packages differently depending on how the work was decomposed, the WBS and activities, for each baseline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-06-24T11:42:23.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6021" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6039" CreationDate="2012-06-25T11:39:26.413" Score="3" ViewCount="2030" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_systems_development_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DSDM&lt;/a&gt; Atern&lt;/strong&gt; project delivery framework roles fit into the following three categories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Level&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Solution Development Team, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The diagram below shows how an Atern team is structure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MHRYg.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in the &lt;em&gt;Solution Development Team&lt;/em&gt; we have the roles of the Business Ambassador and the Business Analyst(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I appreciate that the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Business Ambassador's role&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; is more focused on the &lt;strong&gt;day-to-day communication between the project and the business&lt;/strong&gt; whereas the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Business Analyst role&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; facilitates the &lt;strong&gt;communication between the developers (technical roles) and other business roles&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many organisations that insist on assigning these roles to two different people. However, in smaller organisations where the resources are limited in all categories -i.e., there is no enough people to fulfil every business role; &lt;strong&gt;could the same person be assigned to both roles?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the risks or limitations of merging these two roles?&#xA;Are there any (other) roles that lend themselves to being covered by the same people?&#xA;Are there any that definitely &lt;em&gt;shouldn't&lt;/em&gt; be covered by the same person? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="1185" LastEditDate="2012-06-25T13:21:59.563" LastActivityDate="2012-06-26T18:35:36.750" Title="Can separate roles in DSDM Atern be handled by the same person?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;dsdm&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6021" CreationDate="2012-06-25T13:34:03.377" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a DSDM expert, but when you don't have enough people on board, &lt;strong&gt;you can give multiple roles to a person, until these roles are not in contradiction&lt;/strong&gt;. For example in Scrum, it is not advised to to be the Scrum Master and the Product Owner all at once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, according to this quote, the &lt;strong&gt;Analyst&lt;/strong&gt; has more responsibility than the &lt;strong&gt;Ambassador&lt;/strong&gt; (quoted from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dsdm.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/The-DSDM-Agile-Project-Framework-v1-1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DSDM framework 1.1&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;the Business Analyst ensures that the business needs are properly analysed and are correctly reflected in the approach the team adopts in order to generate the envisioned solution.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that the Analyst oversees the Ambassador's work as well, so there is a reason why it is not advised to assign these roles to the same person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are the risks or limitations of merging these two roles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll use an objective view on the quality of the requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there any other way to merge Business Roles to allow people to start working&#xA;  accordingly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most probably there is a way, but based on my experience there is always an explanation on why frameworks are as they are now. If you change, you'll face issues you don't foresee. Nevertheless, &lt;strong&gt;setting roles shouldn't stop you from starting to work&lt;/strong&gt;. Again, I'm not a DSDM expert, but maybe the Project Manager can take over some responsibilities from the Analyst...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T13:34:03.377" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6021" CreationDate="2012-06-25T15:15:34.553" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've taken a DSDM Atern course and I distinctly remember the instructor saying that you can combine roles. For example, he circled both Solution Developer(s) and Business Analyst(s) and said that this could translate into a traditional Product Manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I was told there are two roles that are never supposed to be shared: Business Sponsor and Business Visionary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T15:15:34.553" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6026" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6027" CreationDate="2012-06-25T15:24:18.867" Score="9" ViewCount="612" Body="&lt;p&gt;I lead a team of around 20 people, distributed around the world (different timezones, most of us haven't met in person).&#xA;Most of the projects we work on are short term (3-4 weeks) customizations with our own designer framework and are one-man projects.&#xA;Most of the developers have 2-3 projects that they work on simultaneously. &#xA;I'm having a hard time  trying to manage the resources and the projects. &#xA;The top 2 list of the problems I am trying to solve are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- Get control over what the resources are working on right now. I may have some people overloaded and some others with a lot of free time, but I cannot see it right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2- Since the projects are short-term (and with a fixed budget) any change in the requirements affects seriously the delivery date (and changes all the delivery dates that may come after that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For the first point, I am working on finding a good tool to manage my resources.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For the second point, I think I need to implement a project-management/development methodology.&#xA;I've beed reading about the different methodologies (agile,scrum, kanban, waterfall) but since I have  one-man short term projects, most of them don't  seem to fit for us.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which methodology is the correct one to use in this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4156" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-25T21:26:19.823" LastActivityDate="2012-06-27T02:00:24.070" Title="Which is the best methodology to manage a distributed team, working in several short term one-man projects?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6026" CreationDate="2012-06-25T16:20:28.467" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all I would start something simple, focusing on the communication factor, which is, what I can see, needs some improvement. I'm not going to talk about any methodology in particular, but bits of them that will suite your needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, are all of you developers sure of their agenda/schedule for the next day? 3 days? week? If they're not, you should probably work on that, by means of having a daily &quot;stand-up&quot; meeting (taken from Scrum) or if you can't be the one attending, layering the communication by having 3 or 4 Scrum Masters to do that for you and then following up with you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Difficulties here, the different time zones, but I've been there and there's always some time slot available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I even had a very small team send an email to me with the &lt;strong&gt;3 daily meeting questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What I did since my last email/daily?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What I'll be working on till next meeting?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any impediment I need help with?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I could decide what to do and who to reach. It's more time consuming for the &quot;manager&quot; but it's reliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the changes in the requirements, if they tend to happen all too often, then you'll be forced to embrace an agile approach. Waterfall will eventually fail, even for short projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest, since you are working with fixed budget contracts, to apply the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gerrykirk.net/money-for-nothing-deliver-more-value-for-your-client-and-you/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Money for Nothing, Changes for Free&quot;&lt;/a&gt; mantra (please read the link). It says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Changes in priorities are free if total contract work is not changed&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could work something like this with your clients!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line, start with a very simplistic approach, no tooling yet (you can use spreadsheets or even an email), and the organically grow according to your needs.&#xA;I would also suggest you to get an agile coach to guide you through the first steps, that way you'll evolve much faster and with less risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4145" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-27T02:00:24.070" LastActivityDate="2012-06-27T02:00:24.070" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5991" CreationDate="2012-06-25T17:05:33.350" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with some of the other benefits listed.  One additional one is to analyze the effect of changes.  Many projects experience scope changes (for example, &quot;we need to include this other feature into this software release&quot;).  That should entail another planning step which, if you are using Gantt charts, should result in an updated Gantt chart.  This helps to see the impact of the change to the original project schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4165" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T17:05:33.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6017" CreationDate="2012-06-25T17:34:43.073" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would agree with David. What you're describing isn't EV, but simply monitoring actuals, and doing a cost-to-complete calc each month. Whenever you adjust things in this way you're eliminating the purpose of EV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, I would suggest discarding the EV processes, and simply use a percent complete calc, and projected cost to complete. Both of these can be updated fairly quickly each month, and adjusted whenever tasks or costs are modified in the manner you're describing. EV is just an unnecessary step in this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T17:34:43.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6012" CreationDate="2012-06-25T17:51:03.170" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I agree in part with most of the other answers, the two things missing for me are 1) the (apparent) lack of a Program Manager, and the lack of anyone responsible for resource allocation/planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a project with multiple PM's there's no Program Manager or PMO to avoid this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, then I would suggest that you and the other PM's meet and decide on one of you to, not act as the PgM, but to at least be responsible for resource allocation. All of you plan your various parts of the project, and then pool the plans to find the overlap and over-allocation of resources so that you can avoid this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know you said you work to align the plans. I'm talking about aligning them, and then specifically looking for either over-allocation, or just allocated at 100%. Given your situation, this is as much risk management (for all of you) as it is resource allocation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T17:51:03.170" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6026" CreationDate="2012-06-25T18:00:09.243" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a number of tools you could use, but for me, I'd stick with a simple calendar system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was running 20+ construction crews, beyond the project schedules, I'd just use a calendar and draw out where each crew was going supposed to be for the next two weeks. In this way I could see where they were going to be, and which projects were or weren't being worked on, or which crew wasn't being used completely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had a quick overview of deadlines, who was doing what, when they'd be available for the next job, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T18:00:09.243" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="703" CreationDate="2012-06-25T18:30:53.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Answering your question on how to fix a broken relation, I prefer setting up a &lt;strong&gt;face to face meeting&lt;/strong&gt; and start it with saying directly that the relation is broken. Then, direct the conversation into a solution, not the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal of such talking is to understand, that &lt;strong&gt;both sides have the same goal&lt;/strong&gt;. Also, understanding each other's motivation of one doing (or not doing) something helps to understand each others perspective on the same goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Needless to say, that such a conversation is a very difficult one; some hints that may help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change the meeting place from a boring, everyday workplace to some creative area. Go for a walk, go for a beer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use good communications. Ask questions like &quot;what do you need... ?&quot;, &quot;what will make you happier?&quot;, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Drill down the issue with &quot;why?&quot; question. Ask it as many time as you really understand the issue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be calm ;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2915" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T18:30:53.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6033" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-06-26T05:29:19.197" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;DSDM is a generic approach to project management and solution delivery, which is an iterative and incremental approach built upon the principles of agile development. It includes continuous involvement from users/customers. The main idea is that costs, quality, and time are fixed. Additionally, it prioritizes the scope by categorizing musts, shoulds, coulds, and won't haves, which are used to adjust the deliverables to meet time constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DSDM was first released in 1994 as a way to provide some discipline to rapid application development, which was considered very unstructured. Many organizations just simply came up with their own process, as there was no agreed-upon standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DSDM is considered compatible with ISO 9000 and PRINCE2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The method was revised in 2003 and became a standard in 2007. Much of the material from the 2003 revision is still in use today and is considered valid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Great Example Questions With This Tag:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/6021/can-separate-roles-in-dsdm-atern-be-handled-by-the-same-person&quot;&gt;http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/6021/can-separate-roles-in-dsdm-atern-be-handled-by-the-same-person&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_systems_development_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia Article on DSDM&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-06-27T12:30:36.413" LastActivityDate="2018-06-27T12:30:36.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6034" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-06-26T05:29:19.197" Score="0" Body="For questions about the Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM) as defined by the Agile Business Consortium." OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-06-27T12:30:36.413" LastActivityDate="2018-06-27T12:30:36.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6035" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-26T11:40:26.147" Score="16" ViewCount="6253" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it right to escalate to senior leadership (CEO) if you feel the senior management is not doing the right thing or basing the decisions based on personal preferences rather than the goals of the organization. How should one go about it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4169" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2013-10-05T16:29:55.453" LastActivityDate="2019-04-24T01:31:52.680" Title="Escalation to Leadership about senior management" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2019-05-03T02:05:17.267" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6035" CreationDate="2012-06-26T12:10:44.140" Score="12" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How should one go about it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very very carefully.  The politics around this are huge.  What you do not know is if the actions by senior management are at the direction of senior leadership.  Decision are being made based on information to which you are not privy or of which you are not aware.  So what may not make sense to you may make perfect sense based on the direction they are choosing to go or the priorities they are choosing to address at the penalty of what you find important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if published &quot;open door policies,&quot; it is important to tread carefully.  If you choose to bypass your chain of command, do so in &quot;learning&quot; mode and do so with the full recognition of the risk of downstream effects, e.g., mistrust by your chain of command, you are likely to face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, for yourself, examine this notion of &quot;right thing.&quot;  What makes your opinion so right?  How often do we see in complex business problems something that is so right?  Isn't it more slightly more right or even the best of all crappy alternatives?  It is a red flag to me when some claims they are right and everyone else is wrong.  We all do it; I do it all the time, but in the back of my head I ask myself what am I not seeing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-06-26T12:10:44.140" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6037" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6045" CreationDate="2012-06-26T14:13:45.043" Score="5" ViewCount="957" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am the Product Manager for a software company.  We use an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iterative_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;iterative development model&lt;/a&gt; (similar to Agile) to separate out versions of our software (i.e. 7.3, 7.4, 7.5, etc.)  Prior to each version, we make a design plan based on a combination of customer requests and internal features that we draw up based on market research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this is definitely a better approach than the waterfall model, it is also presenting some significant challenges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is committing our development timeline for a long amount of time.&#xA;Right now if any of our customers make a development request,&#xA;depending on the priority level, we may not be able to get it to&#xA;them in a complete and tested version of the software for over a&#xA;year.  This is also affecting our ability to respond to changes in&#xA;the market.  We have added resources, but as we get more and more&#xA;requests, we are committing more of our time in the future.  &lt;strong&gt;What is the best way to ensure that our development timeline includes all of the items we are bound to complete for our clients, without overcommiting our future time?&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If we try to shorten the development timeline and get versions out faster,         this invariably leads to more versions that have to be maintained. Finding a bug in 7.3, for example, means that same bug would have to be identified and fixed in 7.4, 7.5, etc. &lt;strong&gt;How can we reduce the number of versions when there are more bugs?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your experience, what are the best solutions to these issues with the iterative development model?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4139" LastEditorUserId="4139" LastEditDate="2012-06-27T12:28:17.140" LastActivityDate="2012-06-29T13:40:31.090" Title="Issues with the Iterative Development Model" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6037" CreationDate="2012-06-26T14:32:16.460" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it necessary to have that many versions? Is there a way to change to &lt;strong&gt;one track&lt;/strong&gt;? (One track means that you have one main or master branch depending on your version control system and every change goes into that main or master branch, and there are no versions)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is not necessary, then I suggest to forget about the versions and iteratively deliver into that one track (branch). With this approach you can reduce the cycle time in your organization, but still do iterative development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is necessary, then try to find a way not to have them. Maintaining multiple versions is a huge overhead and the effort spent on maintaining branches and versions can be spent on new features. Try to find a way to talk the customer out of the usage of different version. If it is internally, then find out why was it introduced in the first place, and make it disappear. Or, you can have one track and tag them with the latest version number, but don't branch out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience 90% of the customers are fine with one track. The remaining 10% lost the trust and decided not to take new patches because of this. But, this is a different situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-06-26T14:32:16.460" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6021" CreationDate="2012-06-26T14:33:20.093" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, the Business Sponsor and the Business Visionary could be the same person, in some organisations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DSDM states that a role can be shared between more than one person, or one person may have more than one role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 1- you could have several people fulflling Business Advisor role, each with their own area of specialism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 2 - on a small simple project, one person could fulfil the Project Manager and Team Leader role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We would normally only expect a single Business Visionary (rather than several Visionaries, which could add confusion) - i.e. having one Visionary is &quot;normal&quot;, but having more than one could happen in exceptional circumstances&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We expect only one Business Sponsor. (I have never ever had a project with more than one Sponsor in 18 years of doing DSDM!!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no rule that says a Business Analyst and a Business Ambassador cannot be the same person. It is simply that this is an unlikely combination, since a Business Ambassador, with all their business experience, is less likely to have the analysis skills. But a good analyst / programmer might well fulfil the Business Analyst role AND the Solution Developer role (in an organisation where there are no Business Analysts)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4172" LastActivityDate="2012-06-26T14:33:20.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6035" CreationDate="2012-06-26T14:51:43.713" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This really depends on your organization structure and culture. Some companies have a very rigid escalation procedure that prevents certain levels to contact senior roles. So, David as rightly said, you have to be really careful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an existing &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.project-gems.com/Project_Management_Documents/Project_Escalation_Process.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Management Escalation Process&lt;/a&gt; within your organization? If there is, does it enable you to talk directly with the CEO without any other senior role involved?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming that your question is related to project risks and/or issues where you are struggling to get support from a member of the Project Board. You could take two approaches:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You could suggest the Board to include you in the communication procedure with the CEO (or other Senior level) to support any queries or concerns they might raise as a mean to interact with him/her. Nevertheless, I have to admit that is can be really difficult if not impossible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the other hand, you could accept that the Board has the ultimate interest in the project's outcome; so if you have already conveyed all your concerns, they have acknowledged them and they have decided to do nothing, the potential failure will be down to them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way you will have to ensure that your attempt to approach the CEO does not generate additional conflict or impacts your relationship with the Board complicating your project even further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-06-26T14:51:43.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6037" CreationDate="2012-06-26T16:20:19.083" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reduce scope, integrate testing into the release cycle (e.g. it's not done until it is tested and fixed) and release more often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-06-26T16:20:19.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6035" CreationDate="2012-06-26T18:15:56.210" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;How should one go about it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By making sure that what you &quot;feel&quot; is in fact &quot;true&quot;, and that you have supporting evidence to prove it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel (think) that senior management is conflict with the goals of the org, then match the decisions being made with the stated goals and show the conflict. Show how the decisions are detrimental or personally driven. Unless you have evidence to support your claim then you're nothing more than a disgruntled employee. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even then, as David said, be VERY careful. Even if the decisions being made ware wrong, they're probably not 'firing offenses', which means now you've called out your boss, and he's still going to be your boss. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first suggestion though would be to gather your evidence, and talk directly to the senior leader. Pose it as an &quot;I don't understand this decision&quot; type of inquiry to see if perhaps there's reason you don't know about. If you start from a &quot;I'm not privy to everything&quot; position rather than a &quot;they're wrong&quot; stance, you may get farther. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-06-26T18:15:56.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6021" CreationDate="2012-06-26T18:35:36.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reality is that in a larger organisation, the Visionary and the Sponsor are usually a different person, the Sponsor looking primarily at the finance and the Visionary looking at the future and strategy of the business. The Visionary knows where s/he wants the organisation to go but s/he needs to justify the finances (Business Case) to the Sponsor, who controls the purse strings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in smaller organisaions, it often happens that it is a single (typically senior) person who has both the business vision and the budget. e.g. one person weaing two hats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example : In one current organiation I work with, the company (medium size @ 300 people) has an entrepreneurial owner who owns the company outright and also has a strong vision of where he wants it to go. So on some projects he IS both Visionary and Sponsor. He can hardly have a conflict of interest aganist himself :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4172" LastActivityDate="2012-06-26T18:35:36.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6035" CreationDate="2012-06-26T23:34:12.980" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few thoughts: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Know your companies' protocols&lt;/strong&gt;. You need to know if you are even &quot;allowed&quot; to escalate issues at your workplace. In some companies, this could be an indiscretion that earns &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; a write-up and a &quot;personal-management&quot; plan. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Avoid making this personal&lt;/strong&gt;. Even if you work in an open-door setting, do not throw anyone under the bus. Talk about &quot;challenges that have not been overcome&quot; and &quot;project inertia&quot;. Be diplomatic and test the waters. Have evidence of issues - not of personal failures by managers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Understand the repercussions&lt;/strong&gt;. Individuals caught up in your reporting of the problem will quickly know where the accusation comes from -- don't kid yourself otherwise. They will not, in all likelihood, think favourably of you thereafter. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Know your senior management&lt;/strong&gt;. Will they care? And even if they care, will they act? Being told about a problem and acting on a problem are two different things.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Consider other avenues&lt;/strong&gt;. You say they are wrong and making decisions based on personal bias; can you challenge their decisions - to them, in project meetings - with facts? Industry standards, best practices, research -- it's all out there. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask yourself: &lt;strong&gt;Could I be the one who is wrong?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3170" LastEditorUserId="3170" LastEditDate="2012-06-26T23:44:42.277" LastActivityDate="2012-06-26T23:44:42.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6037" CreationDate="2012-06-26T23:47:17.290" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have good version control you should be able to cascade the bug fix from version 7.3 through all the releases up to current.  There should be little need to figure out how to patch the future releases.  If you have good automated test tools you just need to verify that the bug exists in each release, patch, and verify the fix.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this kind of release I would develop on the trunk, and branch on release.  Branch as early as required, and as late as possible.  I have seen projects where each release is its own code island.  It tends to introduce problems like you are encountering. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would split work on bugs in prior releases in to a separate maintenance stream.  The maintenance stream should have senior developers or you may introduce more bugs than you fix.  This group should be able to merge bug fixes into the current release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you find bugs, you may want to trace them back to the oldest supported release and fix it in that release.  Then move the patch through to the newest release that is broken. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Documenting the cause of the bug (how it got introduced) may be helpful in reducing the rate at which you introduce new problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reducing the number of supported versions would also help.  Consider like a maintenance schedule something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Every release is supported until two quarterly releases have been released. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quarterly releases are supported for a year. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Annual releases are supported for two years. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2012-06-26T23:47:17.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3619" CreationDate="2012-06-27T11:47:13.273" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From personal experience the answer is no.  I started my career as a mechanical engineer, became a project manager for engineering project.  Then moved into IT project management.  I've managed development projects, implementation projects and infrastructure projects - all very successfully.  I've been working in IT for almost 15 years and I still don't consider myself to be very technical.  IT projects are essentially business projects - they exist purely to service the business in some way.  I can talk to the business and understand their needs, many PMs from a technical background can't do that, although not all are like that  It's the PM skills that count, the fundamentals of managing people, expectations, analyzing problems, listening, scheduling, troubleshooting, etc. That are important, not the industry background.  A good PM can can apply their skills to any project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4180" LastActivityDate="2012-06-27T11:47:13.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3619" CreationDate="2012-06-27T13:29:36.553" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMHO, as much as you dont need developer skills to be a Project Manager you definitely need some of the knowledge base to help you with managing an IT project. As mentioned in an earlier post, your team will have more confidence in your decisions because they know you are making them based on knowledge and not just taking in what the developers tell you hook line and sinker. When developers do a technical review/assessment of requirements and provide their feedback you know that they are right in their assessment or when they provide time estimates you can tell they are not overestimating. So even though you dont need to be a developer to manage an IT project, the knowledge base will definitely help you in your decision making and in managing your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4182" LastActivityDate="2012-06-27T13:29:36.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6037" CreationDate="2012-06-27T15:27:22.383" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To make an iterative cycle work well, you need to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Increase the frequency of releases&lt;/strong&gt;, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Always be moving forward&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customers won't have to wait long for problems to be fixed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customers can be confident that newer version will be &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt; than old ones&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's fine to let a customer stay with an older version, but it's unproductive to have them expect that it will be maintained or patched for a long time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, to prevent upsetting your mainstream customers, build a group of &lt;strong&gt;&quot;power users&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; that get new version before everyone else, and help weed out the major problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2713" LastActivityDate="2012-06-27T15:27:22.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3619" CreationDate="2012-06-27T16:10:56.767" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't understand the &lt;em&gt;dynamics&lt;/em&gt; of software development, then you don't understand the project's risks. If you don't understand the risks, you can't be a good project manager. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you need other things to be a good project manager: the ability to write a charter including release criteria and stick with it, the ability to say no to work outside the scope of the project (features or the project portfolio), possibly negotiation and influence abilities because of your organization, and more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, you can't manage the project environment if you can't manage the risks. And you can't manage the risks if you have no idea what they are because you don't know about software development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; don't care how you acquire that knowledge. I only care that if you manage a technical project that you have that knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4184" LastActivityDate="2012-06-27T16:10:56.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6052" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-27T17:16:43.047" Score="1" ViewCount="2999" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our team uses Asana, and we're quite happy with it as it has excellent tools for team collaboration and personal task management. However it falls down a bit when trying to manage workflow in Kanban style for a team (something Trello might be good at).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering if any one has any advice on an optimal setup. We build websites and web apps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far we've created a new project which we use for our Kanban board, and it works, but it's not utilizing the power of tags, and it doesn't synch well with user's today/upcoming/later system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4164" LastEditorUserId="4164" LastEditDate="2012-06-27T18:26:42.473" LastActivityDate="2020-07-26T10:10:54.083" Title="Managing team workflow using Asana and Kanban principles" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2012-07-03T02:04:44.800" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6053" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-27T19:15:30.040" Score="3" ViewCount="27490" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our organization is changing their performance management system to be link to compensation. Right, wrong or indifferent, &quot;exceeds&quot; will be defined as the &quot;goals&quot; for the next year. We are looking for ways to define SMART goals for the corporate project manager, who is responsible for the Project Portfolio Management methodology, project management methodology, and management of corporate / strategic projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We don't want to limit the PM to &quot;successful delivery of projects&quot; because success may mean a recommendation of cancelling a project. We would like to figure out a way to attach a SMART goal to influencing or coaching at a variety of levels (staff, project, strategic, etc), or a SMART goal about involvement in culture change or setting up culture change, but are not sure how to word it. How can  measurements be set outside of &quot;on time, on scope, on budget&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4011" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-28T20:42:41.463" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T14:01:26.133" Title="Setting stretch goals for a project manager" Tags="&lt;performance&gt;&lt;goals&gt;&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6053" CreationDate="2012-06-27T20:35:15.080" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest trying to translate the organization goals into specific goals that could then be checked. 100% adoption of the specific methodology, implementation of a training program and number of people through it, specific new business processes rolled out, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at what the goals for org are, how the PM can/will influence those, and then nail them down for numbers or dates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, what does &quot;setting up culture change&quot; mean? Define the as-is and the to-be for changing the culture, and then set goals for the PM based on that. The measurements then become, it was done, or it wasn't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-06-27T20:35:15.080" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6052" CreationDate="2012-06-28T06:56:12.407" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never used Asana before, but checked out the website and the videos and I'm not sure whether it is possible to do what you would like to do. My impression is that the project management offered by Asana is based on individuals and projects. It is a &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;bottom-up&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot; approach. However, Kanban visualizes on &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20161009221025/http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2012/03/visualize-on-the-highest-level/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the highest organizational level possible&lt;/a&gt; and handles the projects accordingly. It is a &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;top-down&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot; approach. So two different approaches, which are hard to do at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have two ideas, though:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.personalkanban.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Personal Kanban&lt;/a&gt; for a project. The &lt;em&gt;priority headings&lt;/em&gt; will map to the basic columns of PK such as &lt;em&gt;Backlog&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Doing&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Done&lt;/em&gt; and when something changes you drag and drop the task from one section to another&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20161020175751/http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2011/05/kanban-on-organisational-level/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;separate company level Kanban board&lt;/a&gt; where you track the ongoing projects physically and use Asana for projects. When Asana updates, you'll update the board&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A personal and probably off-topic comment&lt;/em&gt;. When something is hard to achieve with a tool like Asana, there's a good reason: the tool is used for something else then it was designed for. This raises some questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why do you need Kanban?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What kind of additional value will the usage Kanban give to your organization?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there something wrong with the project management feature of Asana?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-26T10:10:54.083" LastActivityDate="2020-07-26T10:10:54.083" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6053" CreationDate="2012-06-28T07:36:56.203" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For project managers I would set a goal which is &lt;strong&gt;in connection with the customers&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have two real life examples. &lt;em&gt;As a project manager we expect you to deliver&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;a feature which attracts 10,000 new customers&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;a feature which 90% of our existing customers are satisfied with&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think these examples matches the criteria of a SMART goal. The measurement is tricky in the second case, but it is possible: satisfaction can be an extraction of usage, found defects, feedback and surveys. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-06-28T07:36:56.203" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6057" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6059" CreationDate="2012-06-28T10:24:48.100" Score="15" ViewCount="11246" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a ScrumMaster, what techniques would you recommend to gather feedback from the Team Members?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What criteria should the Team Members, the Product Owner and, other stakeholders take into account in order to assess the performance of the ScrumMaster?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2016-10-07T19:41:56.173" Title="Gathering feedback on performance as a Scrum Master" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;performance&gt;&lt;feedback&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6053" CreationDate="2012-06-28T10:52:40.867" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We all set results as goals since in business we tend to be results oriented.  And I like Trevor's decompostion of goals from the organization down to the individual.  That creates a natural alignment.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, results oriented goals many times create behaviors you don't want.  Behaviors that might achieve the goals, but not in a manner that meets your business's values, maybe not even legal, certainly not predictable, and maybe not even sustainable.  The reason this happens, I think, is that results are driven by not only what an individual does but also by a plethora of random events over which the individual has no control.  Therefore, (s)he has to find other creative ways to achieve those results.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A true anecdote around this: an organization sets very high sales targets for their employees.  They award based on those targets being achieved.  The intra-competition was so severe that any collaboration that was needed to make sales disappeared.  People were avoided, sabotaged.  And if you did bring someone else in, it was like mob negotiations.  Everyone needed a taste.  Collaboration was just one of many positive work behaviors that disappeared or was diminished.  I think in the end, this inhibited success quite dramatically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The work behavior is the independent variable in this.  It is what we control.  The results are dependent; it is what we hope to achieve.  So, while you draft goals around results, which you cannot get away from, remember the behavior goals.  Find a way to measure what they do and reward it no matter the results from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-06-28T10:52:40.867" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6057" CreationDate="2012-06-28T10:56:34.813" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Evaluating Scrum Masters is one of the toughest challenges in my opinion, because if she does the job well nobody will really realize it, but when things go wrong, she will be first one held responsible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What criteria should the Team Members, the Product Owner and, other stakeholders take into account in order to assess the performance of the ScrumMaster?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How much did she do for the team?&lt;/strong&gt; If you ask around and Scrum Team members, Product Owners tell you stories how much a Scrum Master did &lt;em&gt;for the project&lt;/em&gt; then she is doing it wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The primary purpose of the Scrum Master is to make sure that the work is done according to Scrum principles and the Scrum Team continuously improves itself. The project delivery is the responsibility of the Product Owner and the Scrum Team. If the colleagues tell you how much they've learnt from the Scrum Master and the Product Owner acknowledges that the new knowledge helped to move forward the project then she did a good job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can the team use feedback in order to deliver quality product?&lt;/strong&gt; Scrum has a strong emphasis on the [fast] feedback and the Scrum Master's goal is to teach the team how to use feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if the Scrum Team is unable to deliver the commitment after the third Sprint and the next Sprint doesn't look good either then the Scrum Master does something wrong, because the Scrum Team failed to realize that something isn't going well and there are no positive differences in the way of working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a ScrumMaster, what techniques would you recommend to gather feedback from the Team Members?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would ask them to tell me - face to face - stories focusing on the two criterias from above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-06-28T10:56:34.813" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6053" CreationDate="2012-06-28T17:50:43.847" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is challenging because what makes a really good project manager tends to be on the soft-skills side, which by their nature are difficult to measure. So I agree with your trying to avoid the on time/budget/scope paradigm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you tried applying planning techniques to defining the behaviors you want to encourage? I would try to iteratively break these down into smaller components in the same way that you create a WBS so that the scope of the behavior is defined. That gives you the &quot;Specific&quot; of SMART, and the smaller components should be more amenable to being &quot;Measurable&quot; and being allocated to a particular individual who is &quot;Accountable&quot;. You should be able to map out dependencies between the smaller components so that you can see relative the order of how things need to happen, helping figure out what is &quot;Reasonable&quot; to achieve in the &quot;Time-box&quot; of the evaluation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: I want to encourage mentoring/coaching of staff. This can include among other things helping them to manage their career development. So maybe a &quot;SMART&quot; goal would be to collaboratively develop career goals and plans for achieving these for each subordinate in Q1, and reviewing progress on these quarterly and revising them annually thereafter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-06-28T17:50:43.847" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3619" CreationDate="2012-06-28T17:57:33.273" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question asks about development experience.  My answer assumes this references coding experience and, based on that assumption, my answer is no, I don't believe development experience is necessary or even a &quot;should have&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I lead a team of 25 IT project managers.  The vast majority have no coding experience or training and are very successful.  They do fully understand the software development life cycle and the usual risks associated with software development and delivery (if that's what is meant by development experience then my answer changes). Project Management is a profession with its own disciplines, best practices, tools and skill requirements.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps this isn't the best analogy, but when I had my house built my general contractor coordinated all activity while having no experience as a bricklayer, a roofer, electrician or plumber.  It didn't keep him from understanding the process, dependencies, budget tracking principles, risks and schedule.  Eighteen years after being delivered on time and to budget, I still have a home with quality brick, roof, electrical system and plumbing.   Quality professionals in each role are key.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4190" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-08T20:02:31.593" LastActivityDate="2012-07-08T20:02:31.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6062" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6063" CreationDate="2012-06-28T19:04:35.487" Score="12" ViewCount="946" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just launched a game with a small virtual team of three (plus myself). It was quite successful. We made some decisions like using email as our primary communication medium, and iRC as our primary chat mechanism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, three other new people have joined the team. (We're an informal collection, unpaid, collaborating on a common interest.) Some of those decisions, and others, are being challenged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that the right move is to remain with the decision, because I personally spent countless hours researching and reaching the same conclusion from different angles about these decisions. I cannot indulge in churn from re-opening old decisions every time someone new shows up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for now, the decisions are irreversible, barring unforseen circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I communicate this? I need ultimately to get buy-in from the team on any given decision, don't I? But it's a team of individuals with strong opinions -- some may buy in and go forward accepting it, and others may do so because it's required of them on the team, while still others may continue to challenge it at every opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-29T00:32:52.907" LastActivityDate="2012-07-03T19:10:54.437" Title="How to Politely Refuse Changing Decisions" Tags="&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;leadership&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6062" CreationDate="2012-06-28T19:28:58.673" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to build consensus, tell the new team members that this how the team currently operates. Over time, as the new team members become more integrated and you each learn more about each other, you may want to revisit the choices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If consensus doesn't work or it doesn't fit other constraints on the project (e.g. time), tell them that that's the way it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-06-28T19:28:58.673" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6062" CreationDate="2012-06-28T21:01:11.407" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A critical success factor for a team like this is for it to be high performing, a team whose members are in sync, collaborative, supportive, with a sense of collective success/failure.  The team roles, like if you use Belbin's definitions, need to be filled by the individuals, which almost naturally occurs with a bit of coaching and guidance.  If you buy into the teaming process--forming, storming, etc.--then you need to go through these stages to get to a high performing state.  The introduction of new members, a member leaving, or some other change can and most likely will cause the team to decompensate, returning to an earlier stage.  So when you go through this change, the dynamics of the team change, roles are up for grabs again, and the team starts over from the forming stage.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trying to squelch this because it is inconvenient will likely mean your team will never gel, members will be disgruntled, and eventually your team will likely implode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have the alternative of not altering your team and sticking with the original three.  If you must change it, then you must accept the decompensation and go through the process again, which means addressing rules of engagement, identifying roles, revisiting decisions made, and getting angry with each other.  But through that process, the team will return to its high performing state and, with the additional team members, may be even more productive than before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So either kick them off or invest the time to make them true team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-06-28T21:01:11.407" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6062" CreationDate="2012-06-29T01:13:17.223" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some questions I'd like to ask them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Software isn't free. Every change requires maintenance. If you have to stop spam or create security for two or four or ten channels instead of one, that will be expensive. How are they planning to ensure maintenance for these going forward, given that they're volunteers with no guarantee of being around?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Working on one capability always happens at the expense of another, and the only things keeping your software alive are the things which make you different to other competing products. Does this help you differentiate yourself? Or are you able to survive in your niche without it? Will it help you to grow your share of the market?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Because you're working as volunteers, you've done it out of passion and a desire to learn. The newcomers are approaching with ideas that you're not passionate about. What are they offering you in return for trying those ideas out? What are they offering you in return for learning on your code base?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chances are that the answers to questions like these aren't things they've thought about, but which will be behind your reluctance to adopt their ideas. Helping them to understand the cost of their ideas is a polite way to refuse them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also share the words you've written here - that you've already done a lot of research and that you don't want to indulge churn by re-opening new decisions. It might be useful to put those decisions into the backlog with a note about why they were made that way or (better) who to talk to about the decision, so that the team can understand that this isn't arbitrary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2012-06-29T06:40:44.450" LastActivityDate="2012-06-29T06:40:44.450" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6062" CreationDate="2012-06-29T03:37:51.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, I would think your question does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; really mean, how to refuse the ideas. Probably, you are thinking on what to do, and find good reasons for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Considerations&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should admit many factors and consider them very carefully:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developers tend to come up with ideas of dumping everything and &lt;strong&gt;re-writing from scratch&lt;/strong&gt;. It's just like things are, you cannot change it;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Time to market&lt;/strong&gt;. Often, a buggy program in a vacant market niche is more successful that perfect one that came a month later;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Motivation&lt;/strong&gt; of team members, both &quot;old&quot; and &quot;new&quot; ones; If you follow suggestions, you may demotivate your existing team members; If you resist, you demotivate the others.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your team is &lt;strong&gt;multicultural&lt;/strong&gt;, I would also consider this;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Development costs&lt;/strong&gt; for each decision, each individual task or assignment, as @Lunivore noticed. Not only coding itself, but effort of QA, Architects, and even Tech Writes should be counted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What can be done&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, when the factors are listed, one can find adequate solutions. Here are some:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Define costs&lt;/strong&gt;. It does not matter if you're unpaid. A simple tracker counting &lt;em&gt;work hours&lt;/em&gt;, not dollars, would be your friend.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Educate&lt;/strong&gt; your team. Even if they are &quot;just coders&quot; (I hate this word, but it's too much common), spend your time to teach them the major principles.&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In particular, they should learn about costs, quality, and time. Teach them about the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PM triangle&lt;/a&gt;;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It would be great to show your new team members the chart and say them, &lt;em&gt;&quot;the change you are suggesting would make these 50 man-hours obsolete. What do we get in return?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teach them about time-to-market. In my experience, many developers have never heard about it, perfecting their code.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Always &lt;strong&gt;record&lt;/strong&gt; all change requests in your issue tracker. The issue may even stay &lt;em&gt;Closed/Won'tDo&lt;/em&gt;, but it will never be forgotten and may have important discussions (versus searching it in mailbox).&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You may promise them a meeting &lt;em&gt;just after initial public release&lt;/em&gt; for re-considering those ideas (don't forget to keep the promise:).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Misc&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kicking them off is the last resort, and should be used carefully, simply because those who uphold their point may grow your next Lead Developer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As conclusion, all factors have different weight, depending on your very team and project. Here you may get some suggestions, but &lt;strong&gt;actual priorities are to be set individually, according your PM talent, expertise, and intuition&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3941" LastActivityDate="2012-06-29T03:37:51.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6067" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6076" CreationDate="2012-06-29T09:55:44.767" Score="6" ViewCount="1006" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a game for highlighting the wonders of working in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_slice&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;vertical slices&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; rather than horizontally?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are exploring techniques to represent &lt;em&gt;the sum of the work that has to be done in a particular layer that is involved in getting a specific feature working&lt;/em&gt; rather than using a row in the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2012-07-02T09:24:11.813" Title="Agile Games for working in vertical slices" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6037" CreationDate="2012-06-29T13:13:17.690" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;On point 1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your demand is outstripping supply causing a backlog of work that will trend to infinity.  It's hard to give specific advice to help fix that but I'd start with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Measure how often new feature/change requests are raised.  How often a bug is raised on an in production version.  Pay attention to levels of value demand (new things customers want that will encourage new business or increase spend) and failure demand (those requests caused by a failure on your part (e.g. bugs)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you properly understand where demand comes from and how often, look to match your supply side to the demand by removing failure demand and sequencing work to match value demand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more info, check out queuing theory.  There's a lot of material out there but I particularly recommend picking up 'Managing the Design Factory' by Don Reinertsen which has a really good section on queues (as well as being a generally awesome book).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastEditorUserId="1185" LastEditDate="2012-06-29T13:40:31.090" LastActivityDate="2012-06-29T13:40:31.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6069" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-30T03:24:51.093" Score="5" ViewCount="558" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work on a lot of small, agile software projects without huge up-front requirements; just ideas that I flesh out over time. Generally, development follows these stages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prototype (couple of days)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Figure out 80% of the features and put them in the backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Develop the product. Add stuff as you go along.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there's a huge spike of work added, and then small steps of scope growth regularly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I like is that I can change direction fast. What I don't like is that I cannot gauge the rough size of a project before I start working. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm looking for is some process or equation that will help me. &quot;Generally, you add 50% to your project scope after the major estimation part. So factor that in.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I gauge the rough size of a project before I start working? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-30T18:52:01.743" LastActivityDate="2012-07-02T17:27:20.833" Title="Accounting for scope growth in agile development" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;scope&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5853" CreationDate="2012-06-30T10:23:52.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your team must be know about Agile Methodologies well. It can make your project done eventhough you just have small team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I implement some method of Agile Methodologies like divide your project in small module ( backlog ) and create sprint backlog for each of it and sometimes I write about logic to get each of sprint backlog done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4197" LastActivityDate="2012-06-30T10:23:52.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6071" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-30T12:18:50.450" Score="3" ViewCount="833" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am experiencing difficulties in conveying my message when debating topics (mostly office-related issues) due to interruption by others. My nature is such that I carefully listen when others talk and wait for them to stop, but due to this nature, I am facing problems - even when logically I am in a strong position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In discussions, people around me just keep talking nonstop and if I try to interrupt them by sharing my views or by asking questions, still they continue to talk. It is difficult for me to behave in same manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue is that people around me focus on that person's views when I interrupt him or when he interrupts me. I am wondering what could be the reason. Is it due to my voice being quieter than others? Is it because I speak slowly as compared to others so they get the chance to interrupt me? Et cetera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3752" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-10-05T10:10:34.063" LastActivityDate="2016-10-06T16:08:04.527" Title="How to improve communication problem facing in corporate culture" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;career&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6071" CreationDate="2012-06-30T13:45:25.803" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pxe_TG43G0&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pxe_TG43G0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This little video was created by a man named Dave Wood from Canada.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would dig deeper into this issue as something more sophisticated than a communication issue.  This is more of a teaming issue, sounds like, and the way various personalities mix and work together and your communication issues are symptoms, likely among others.  This video so happens to focus on MBTI and the findings of MBTI work traits are very compelling.  There are others, as well, like DiSC.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The learning to take away from this is to find out how your personality make-up works within a team, look out how others are relating to you, and then find ways to overcome the inherent weaknesses of each personality trait.  In the process of teaming, these things begin to merge and gel where your complaint is either erradicated or minimized quite well.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many organizations pursue this where they hire a qualified tester to come in, measure everyone, then teach what the results mean and how to overcome challenges.  Maybe you can propose something like this to your chain of command.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you describe makes you sound like an introvert and you are dealing with extraverts.  (Caveat this that I just arrived at a conclusion from a short few lines and I am not qualified to make personality assessments in any way!! :))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-06-30T13:45:25.803" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6069" CreationDate="2012-06-30T15:46:29.867" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Measure the work.&lt;/strong&gt; As you point you work on a lot of different projects. Considering you gather relevant data on past projects you should be able to see some patterns, e.g. most of projects seems to work this way but there are non-standard cases which were driven by one thing or another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is hard to answer what brings variability to your work, but you will likely to be able to find root causes easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another idea you may like is &lt;strong&gt;sizing&lt;/strong&gt; not in terms of estimating how much time you need to build a project but &lt;strong&gt;how many features / stories / what have you it takes to build the thing&lt;/strong&gt;. Being able to estimate that a new project is roughly 40 features can tell you very much as long as you know how long it takes to build an average feature (end to end) and how many features you have in progress concurrently. &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2010/05/kanban-estimation.html&quot;&gt;See an example of such approach here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again it boils down to measuring your work. Another important flavor here is understanding variability. I mean if time needed to build a work item varies vastly, e.g. anything from 2 to 50 days, average or median won't tell you much unless you have &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers&quot;&gt;really huge sample of past records&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally, if you are able to work with your customers on &lt;strong&gt;time and material basis&lt;/strong&gt; you just get the issue out of the table. In such situation they just buy your time (along with your skills) and it isn't your risk directly when something new pops up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2012-06-30T15:46:29.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6071" CreationDate="2012-07-01T05:14:22.797" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can only second what David has said. Remember, only about 25% of the world communicates the same way you do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum up the issue I think you are having I would point to a great quote my Mark Horstman, of Manager Tools. He uses this quote to sum of Peter Druker's Communication Chapter in his management book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Communication is what the listener does.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am very familiar with the DISC model. I learned of it through &lt;a href=&quot;http://manager-tools.com&quot;&gt;Manager-Tools.com&lt;/a&gt; which has over 30 podcasts on practical use of DISC in team communications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put a personal perspective on this. DISC literally got me the job. I was out of work in 2009/10. I got an interview for a company in an industry I had zero experience in, so I knew I was already at a big disadvantage. When I recieved the list of interviewers I hit the web and researched each person (mostly LinkedIn). I was able to develop a solid guess at each person's DISC profile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the interview I used the Manager Tools guidance for how to introduce to each DISC style. Of the five people, I nailed four of them 100% and the last I was able to quickly adjust my style. I then used my understanding of DISC during the interviews to tailor my communication in a way that best matched the person I was speaking with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got the job. Every person who interviewed me gave a thumbs up glowing review. My boss hired me without any industry knowledge because he saw I had the ability to communicate and work across the entire organization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Communication is what the listener does. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2012-07-01T05:14:22.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6069" CreationDate="2012-07-01T05:22:13.427" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pawel talks about measuring your work. This is critical and key. One reason is looking back can help you look forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a term, often used in agile, called &quot;Yesterday's weather.&quot; The concept being that the weather today was probably a lot like the weather yesterday and will be a lot like the weather tomorrow (If you've ever gone to Los Angeles, CA USA this is scarily true). Usually this maxim is used when determining potential velocity of an agile team. If you did 30 points last iteration, then you probably will do about 30 points this one, so don't over book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concept can extend beyond this. If you track your projects, than over the course of several projects you can start to see what the norm is for you. You see, no formulae are going to solve the problem. People aren't mathematical formulae. So we can't be easily plugged into universal formulas. What we can do, however, is look at our own history. After doing several projects you will probably find there is are some norms you can look at to determine how much change you have from project inception to launch. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use your own metrics to determine your own potential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2012-07-01T05:22:13.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6067" CreationDate="2012-07-01T05:41:11.290" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might find games that highlight the &quot;Work in Progress&quot; issue might help. Not only will they help to show the value of vertical slices, they also help with highlighting the issues of multi-tasking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a simple one that uses two common agile games in conjunction to train the concepts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- Production Line vs Finished Product&#xA;Give everyone a stack of papers. Then walk them through how to fold a basic paper airplane. Once the plane is done, each plane also needs to be numbered and given a window (using pen) where the cockpit should be. Once the how to instructions are done, then tell them that must do each step on all their expected workflow before moving to the next step. So if they think they can make ten airplanes, they have to fold all ten sheets of paper in half before going on the folding the left corner down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have them each guess how many airplanes they will get done in two minutes. Then let them loose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never seen anyone get all their work product done on this. There will almost always be a lot of in process work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2- The Assembly Line &#xA;Next you create an assembly line. Ideally seven people in the line. Each person has a single and specific action they do in the line (e.g. one person’s sole job is to take a piece of paper off the pile and fold it in half). Each person also has three spaces in front of them. The space to the left is their incoming work pile. The space to their right is their completed work pile. The space in the middle is their doing pile (Expectation being the first and last person). No one is ever allowed to have more than one item in their completed pile. Until the item in their completed pile has been moved to next person's Doing pile, they can't put something new in. In the first run through, they aren't allowed to change anything from these base rules. There is also a final person, who is the inspector. They inspect each plane for how much it looks like all the other ones made and checks their flight ability (got to have some fun). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This game teaches two key things. The first is that by limiting flow, you increase production and decrease waste. The other is that by letting someone focus, their quality goes up. The planes that come out of this will almost always be of higher quality than those in the first exercise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2012-07-01T05:41:11.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6069" CreationDate="2012-07-01T18:19:45.363" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cone of Uncertainty&lt;/a&gt; - the longer you work with the project the more accurate and precise is your estimate of its duration and size (image from &lt;a href=&quot;http://construx.com/Page.aspx?cid=1648&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Construx.com&lt;/a&gt; website):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/J8Qnw.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;construx image of CoU&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMBOK suggests to re-estimate the project every time you have more information about its scope. You start a project with ROM (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.technoparkcorp.com/process/cost/rom&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rough order of magnitude&lt;/a&gt;) estimate and refine it at every milestone. I would also suggest to read Steve McConnel's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stevemcconnell.com/est.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Software Estimation: Demistifying the Black Art&quot;&lt;/a&gt; - it gives a good summary of existing estimating techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2012-07-01T18:19:45.363" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6071" CreationDate="2012-07-01T18:28:09.487" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me quote PMBOK v.4, page 255:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bCJDS.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you see, &quot;the sender is responsible for making the information clear and complete so that the receiver can receive it correctly&quot;. You fail this task, since you know that your receivers are not patient/educated/polite enough to listen to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest to use a different type of &quot;encoding&quot;. Instead of verbal communication use something different, for example texts, graphs, presentations, etc. &quot;Encode&quot; your messages in a different way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2012-07-01T18:28:09.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5530" CreationDate="2012-07-02T06:44:00.890" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/edit-flow/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Edit Flow for WordPress&lt;/a&gt; and its &lt;a href=&quot;http://editflow.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;editflow.org&lt;/a&gt; site. Its focus is editorial workflow. This has a few advantages over a generic project tool: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;using the language and conventions of publishing news, like an editorial budget.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;integration with WordPress increases accountability since tracking and control are just part of the CMS interface everyone uses, seen every day.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;integration with WordPress also ties management and the editorial conversations to the actual deliverables; you can see progress as it happens.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The blurb: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Edit Flow empowers you to collaborate with your editorial team inside WordPress. We've made it modular so you can customize it to your needs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Calendar - A convenient month-by-month look at your content.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Custom Statuses - Define the key stages to your workflow. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Editorial Comments - Threaded commenting in the admin for private discussion between writers and editors. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Editorial Metadata - Keep track of the important details. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Notifications - Receive timely updates on the content you're following. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Story Budget - View your upcoming content budget. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;User Groups - Keep your users organized by department or function.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4199" LastActivityDate="2012-07-02T06:44:00.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6080" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6084" CreationDate="2012-07-02T08:40:27.843" Score="10" ViewCount="451" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is vacation period again, and I was asked to help out with a project while my colleague was on vacation. I don't know too much about the project - unfortunately we aren't that transparent -, but I know the people involved - we are located in the same area -, and I know the technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way that I approach project management problems differs from the way  my colleague does it. There's nothing wrong with this, because I believe that an organization needs diversity on certain levels, but now this diversity will appear in a project and only for a short amount of time, and this concerns me a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, there's a meeting style in place, which I consider as not effective, but the colleagues are fine with it. If I change this, it will cause some disturbance in the projects life, which can be good for the project (they'll learn something new), or can be a risk (they'll slow down). This is not just about this particular meeting, there is the responding to emails, delegation, authority, saying no, saying yes and the list goes on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot switch between styles as fast as I would like, so I'm not quite sure how to proceed. Shall I use my style? Shall I follow my colleagues style, although I don't agree with it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="4224" LastEditDate="2020-09-29T10:44:47.413" LastActivityDate="2020-09-29T12:49:14.070" Title="Shall I use my project management style when I'm substituting for my colleague, while he is away?" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5784" CreationDate="2012-07-02T09:09:26.727" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://basecamp.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;basecamp&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://highrisehq.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;highrise&lt;/a&gt; from &lt;a href=&quot;http://37signals.com/svn&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://37signals.com/svn&lt;/a&gt;. They seem to be the ones you are looking for - I'm not an active user of any them, but follow their life-cycle. Now, you can have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3194-an-inside-look-at-how-we-use-basecamp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;look&lt;/a&gt; how the developer company uses basecamp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-07-02T09:09:26.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6067" CreationDate="2012-07-02T09:24:11.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crisp.se/gratis-material-och-guider/multitasking-name-game&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Henrik Kniberg's multitasking game&lt;/a&gt; may not be the one you are looking for, but it can help you and your team to learn&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how to set the right size for a vertical slice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what are the common pitfalls when delivering vertical slices to a customer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how to measure progress&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how to set WIP limits and use them properly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the power of batching&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-07-02T09:24:11.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6080" CreationDate="2012-07-02T10:01:19.953" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's one simple approach that usually is win-win.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Employ your style of running projects&lt;/strong&gt; as your basis as it brings fresh air to the way team works. They can appreciate different style or just pick a couple of things they like or prefer the other PM more and appreciate him/her when he/she is back. Either way it should be fine. See more about role of fresh blood in terms of triggering improvements &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2009/03/best-trigger-to-start-improvement.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2006/12/fresh-blood-in-team.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time &lt;strong&gt;respect any important and long-term arrangements that were made by the PM you are substituting.&lt;/strong&gt; You don't want to change team's course heavily. You don't want to mess with the work the other PM did with the team. For example I wouldn't try to start the adoption on a completely new PM approach, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever there's a conflict between these two I would rather let the latter win over the former and then eventually when the other PM is back start a discussion about the ideas you have on potential improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2012-07-03T05:43:58.310" LastActivityDate="2012-07-03T05:43:58.310" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6080" CreationDate="2012-07-02T10:28:23.553" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer is a little different than Pawel's. I'd advise to replicate the other PM to the degree possible and only in a crisis would I deploy what comes intuitively to me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I revert to my machine analogy. When you replace a part you need it to fit the machine. Else the machine will not run or run well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember teaming theory, too. When a member is replaced, the team and its performance suffers. If you change things purposely, you are exacerbating this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another factor to consider is the Hawthorne Effect.  This theory was based on a study that showed performance increases caused by some variable change, not because the variable actually caused the change but instead because the workers knew some change took place.  This gives a false cause and effect.  Eventually, the performance returned to its baseline state.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A change offered by the covering PM may provide a similar result, where performance increases or even the team claiming this is better, but in fact has no more efficacy than the original way.  This will set up the vacationing PM when (s)he returns and I don't think any of us would like to deal with things like that when we simply go on vacation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Status quo is your best bet with the best odds and is the most respectful to the vacationing PM!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2012-07-03T10:55:13.147" LastActivityDate="2012-07-03T10:55:13.147" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6069" CreationDate="2012-07-02T14:45:29.033" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile generally avoids the difficulties of knowing when a large piece of work will be done by not committing to doing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've got a six month piece of work (based on a finger in the air estimate), pick a small chunk that will give you value by doing it first.  It's generally easier to get a handle on how long a small thing will take than a big thing and releasing early allows you to get feedback from customers rapidly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chances are, once you've done one or two of these small slices, you'll be getting good feedback that will guide the rest of the work.  Don't doggedly deliver what you thought your scope was at the start, constantly re-prioritise feedback against the rest of your potential scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're kind of changing the usual question of &quot;when will we be able to finish by?&quot; with &quot;what is the smallest thing we can do which adds value?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Provided you're always weighing the value of all possible pieces of work you could be starting against each other and making sure you don't start things that are too big, it's actually not that important to get longer term estimation 'right', it's usually an illusion anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some more thoughts along a similar track can be found here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://decision-coach.com/lean-and-real-options/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://decision-coach.com/lean-and-real-options/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2012-07-02T14:45:29.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6069" CreationDate="2012-07-02T17:20:55.837" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you measure projects' actual cost (in time) vs initial estimate (in time or in points) until completion/release (~= 1 / average velocity of product's backlog) over a few of the same team's projects you should see that it doesn't vary much between project and project. Using that factor, you can get a rough estimate of the actual time vs the initially estimated time for future projects with the same team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The actual time includes added, dropped and modified user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the team gives the estimates and does the work, it is important not to mix velocities between teams. If you are getting the change request from clients, try to compare with projects from the same client, as the choice of client will effect the measurements (you can think of the client is a part of the expanded team).&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;If you see an improvement over time, between projects, (e.g. due to the team getting used to working together (or together with client) more efficiently) then give more weight to the more recent projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a safer estimate, take the minimum and maximum factors (from previous projects) and use them to plot a cone of uncertainty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1094" LastEditorUserId="1094" LastEditDate="2012-07-02T17:27:20.833" LastActivityDate="2012-07-02T17:27:20.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6052" CreationDate="2012-07-02T21:54:17.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know Asana, but I have used a number of online and tablet kanban tools, both for Personal Kanban and enterprise-level work. I find that LeanKitKanban has excellent enterprise-level features, including multiple levels of boards for portfolio management and drill-down. It also has great lean flow metrics. AgileZen is a bit simpler, but is a good place to start for smaller teams. I also like it for Personal Kanban. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From experience, unfortunately, the Greenhopper Kanban plugin for JIRA is really cumbersome in the way it builds off JIRA filters and rules in a way that can really confuse people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4206" LastActivityDate="2012-07-02T21:54:17.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6080" CreationDate="2012-07-03T00:43:50.983" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend that don't make a change that will &quot;linger&quot; effect past the time you are filling in. Changing meetings styles = probably OK since they will just change back... changing the status reports or PKIs = probably not okay... change in team structure = definitely not okay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just don't be &lt;a href=&quot;http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1994-09-07/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this Dilbert comic&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2012-07-03T00:43:50.983" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6092" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-03T10:28:56.820" Score="0" ViewCount="85" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1024/&quot;&gt;Are Functional Managers or Project Managers Better Candidates for Executive-Level Positions?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been working as a software developer for a year now. I'm seriously considering PM as a career ahead. I actually have 2 questions here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After being a PM for 4-5 years, what's next? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, is it possible to reach senior executive/senior management positions after doing Project management for 12-15 years (or is it possible for a PM to become a senior executive at all)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4097" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2012-09-14T00:58:14.190" Title="What's next after Project Management?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2012-07-03T14:17:05.577" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1400" CreationDate="2012-07-03T12:30:55.910" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When there is dependency between a project and its suppliers, it is a good idea to &lt;strong&gt;shorten the release cycles of the supplier projects&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;integrate the solutions&lt;/strong&gt; and see how they are coming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not important to have finalized pieces from the suppliers, the idea is to have something new and see how it servers the projects purpose. We are using this approach - we have a huge platform dependency - and now we see what will come and how our solution works with the new features/changes. They are tested with our latest version - non of the is official yet - in a sandbox area, and at the end of the projects the official &lt;em&gt;integration&lt;/em&gt; goes more smoothly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this approach we don't have to spend a lot of time on integration and the received feedback from both size is very valuable. We know the exact state of our supplier and we also know what kind of &lt;em&gt;traps&lt;/em&gt; we are going to receive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-07-03T12:30:55.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1400" CreationDate="2012-07-03T14:12:45.613" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're asking about management of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procurement&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;procurement&lt;/a&gt;. I would strongly recommend to read about &quot;Project Procurement Management&quot; knowledge area from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Guide_to_the_Project_Management_Body_of_Knowledge&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMBOK&lt;/a&gt; and ask a more specific question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2012-07-03T14:12:45.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6080" CreationDate="2012-07-03T15:18:12.403" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A project manager should follow &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_plan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;project management plans&lt;/a&gt;, not his/her personal believes and ideas. That's one of the key principles of professional project management. How the project is managed should be explicitly explained on paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first question you ask your colleague before promising to help him: &quot;where do I find your project planning documentation?&quot; If the answer is &quot;I don't have any&quot; - strongly consider an option to help him/her &lt;strong&gt;to build such a documentation first&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2012-07-03T15:18:12.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6080" CreationDate="2012-07-03T16:34:30.303" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My suggestion would be to simply talk to your colleague who is going on vacation and work it out together.  Come to an agreement as to how you will run the project so that your colleague is not surprised when they return.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also ask yourself how you would want someone to perform if they managed your project temporarily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4165" LastActivityDate="2012-07-03T16:34:30.303" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6062" CreationDate="2012-07-03T19:10:54.437" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you have a defined governance strategy? Is it hierarchical, consensus, something in-between?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these &quot;cast in stone&quot; decisions well-documented as such? Or are they merely &quot;team folklore?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does your process for adding new people require them to agree to existing, documented agreements?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These questions may not help your current situation, but they will be useful to address before you do such a thing again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4211" LastActivityDate="2012-07-03T19:10:54.437" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3410" CreationDate="2012-07-04T07:47:29.660" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't that it is a good idea to take another course &lt;strong&gt;right after&lt;/strong&gt; the SCM. &lt;strong&gt;You'll need time to learn how to use the new knowledge in practice.&lt;/strong&gt; If you attend a new course, you'll have twice as much of knowledge before, but yet zero field experience. Let's say after the SCM, you spend about half a year practicing what you've learnt. With this experience, you can decide whether you would like to deepen your knowledge as a SCM, or you would like to do something similar to a PO role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I'm not a fan of certificates or trainings, but if you have a possibility to choose my recommendation would be &lt;strong&gt;user experience, testing and technical courses&lt;/strong&gt;, in this order. As a Scrum Master, according to the book, you are not involved in the daily work, but this rarely happens in reality. Therefore, it is very important to understand what the teams are doing and how they are doing it, hence you have to deepen your technical knowledge as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-07-04T07:47:29.660" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2414" CreationDate="2012-07-04T08:36:14.733" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple of month ago we did a series of value stream mapping exercises, and here are the steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do the value stream mapping of your organization&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Show how the information flows through the organization&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find out which phase is the most valuable and which generates most of the waste&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Generate an improvement queue based on the findings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read more about it here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20161020175129/http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2012/04/see-the-whole-flow-exercise/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;see the whole flow exercise&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-23T18:07:41.497" LastActivityDate="2020-07-23T18:07:41.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6100" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6101" CreationDate="2012-07-04T09:56:08.387" Score="19" ViewCount="74593" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a developer and I'm working in a small IT firm. I want to know what are common differences between a project lead and a team lead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My background: in our company we have only lead programmers and consultants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4215" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2012-07-04T12:14:42.893" LastActivityDate="2018-09-27T20:32:15.283" Title="What's the difference between a project lead and a team lead" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;roles&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6100" CreationDate="2012-07-04T10:32:53.320" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The roles can vary between organizations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A team may be working on several projects, each with its own &lt;strong&gt;project manager&lt;/strong&gt; and/or &lt;strong&gt;project lead&lt;/strong&gt; within the team (if the project is spread out between various teams).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team on the other hand has its own &lt;strong&gt;team manager&lt;/strong&gt; or team lead (a matter of title in the organization).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;In SCRUM each team works on one project (or sub-project), however, SCRUM teams still have two different roles*, **:&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product Owner - in charge of product vision and decides when the product at the end of a sprint is good enough to release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum Master - in charge of the process and making sure the team can work efficiently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(*) These roles are defiantly not identical to the &quot;traditional&quot; roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(**) I am intentionally only providing brief and partial definitions for the sake of the comparison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1094" LastEditorUserId="1094" LastEditDate="2012-07-05T10:48:38.653" LastActivityDate="2012-07-05T10:48:38.653" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3410" CreationDate="2012-07-04T12:56:32.177" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master, soft skills such as conflict management, management without authority and etc. should come in handy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1094" LastActivityDate="2012-07-04T12:56:32.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6103" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6106" CreationDate="2012-07-05T07:28:07.550" Score="6" ViewCount="482" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should I listen to the Team Leader or stick to my position?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is some background:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a repost of &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11336689/forced-doing-what-i-think-is-misleading&quot;&gt;this topic&lt;/a&gt;, as I think I've missed the site where I need to ask such questions. And I am not a project manager, I am software developer, but I want to ask project managers of their vision of my problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are team of 3. I'm doing some feature, and while doing that I came to design A. One guy of our team thinks, that this feature should be done with design B. I think his design will produce many bugs in the future. I do not quite understand his position about design A. He just doesn't like it. But let's say he also sees some problems in design A to have the situation more clean. Team leader supports this guy, and is forcing me to do it with design B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My position here: &quot;No problem, but I do not want to implement features with the code I'm already see problems in. If you want to do it with design B - you can do it yourself&quot;. He thinks that this is my task, and only I am who should do it. Such situations always repeating, it is not the first time we came to that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I right? Should I obey or stay with my ideology to the end? And should I consider job change in the future? This guy always cut down my designs, and never explains why, and the team leader always supports him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4221" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:41:23.897" LastActivityDate="2014-10-05T04:46:54.487" Title="Forced to implement what I think is the wrong solution" Tags="&lt;relationships&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-10-17T03:55:41.597" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6100" CreationDate="2012-07-05T08:38:09.380" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Team lead and project lead describe different &quot;dimensions&quot; in a company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A company consists of people, organised in teams, departments, resorts... (depending on how big the company is) These groups of people need some form of management or leadership. This is where a team lead comes in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What a company does (on a high level) consists of, daily work (in exsisting processes) or projects (to define new processes, or get better at them)&#xA;The project lead is responsible for getting the project over the finish-line, and he might utilize one or more teams to do this, or one or more people from differnt teams (to form a project team) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One is how a companie hierachy is organised, the other one is how &quot;work&quot; is organised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3397" LastActivityDate="2012-07-05T08:38:09.380" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6103" CreationDate="2012-07-05T08:54:23.303" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I kind of understand how you feel now, but don't think about quitting just yet. If you don't have the necessary background to support yourself without a job, you'll have to look for a job before quitting and you'll have to work in the very same environment in the mean time. So it doesn't look like a win to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were you I would &lt;strong&gt;find out why the team leader supports the ideas of your colleague&lt;/strong&gt;. It can be a trust issue, or something related to experience, or simply a personal thing. So, solving this issue may start with some discussions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Working in a team means that sometimes you have to give up your ideas and cooperate with the rest of the members, although you don't want to do it&lt;/strong&gt;, or you'll see that it will fail. A common reaction is to escalate and go and talk to the team leader's boss about the situation, but this won't solve it. It will make it harder in my experience, because if the case is a trust issue, then there's no way that they'll trust you after the escalation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is to &lt;strong&gt;work on &lt;em&gt;Design A&lt;/em&gt; and try to make it happen&lt;/strong&gt;, but don't forget about &lt;em&gt;Design B&lt;/em&gt;. Put down the basic concepts and keep it close to you. If something goes south with &lt;em&gt;Design A&lt;/em&gt;, you can immediately &quot;&lt;em&gt;pull it out of your hat&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, but please don't deliver it with the sub-content: &quot;&lt;em&gt;I've told you so&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. It won't help. You'll feel better, but the general situation will be the same or a bit worse, because you'll look like a &quot;smart-ass&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So a quick summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;talk to people and find out their motivations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;prepare your design solution&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cooperate and learn more about their solution and make it happen&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;show them your solution and be wise&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do the steps above for a couple of times&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if nothing changes look for a new job&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-07-05T08:54:23.303" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6103" CreationDate="2012-07-05T09:20:09.280" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few options you might consider although I wouldn't choose any of them as a preferred one. It depends much of your context and it's your choice to be made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do what you are told to.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know many engineers who would simply reject to do the work in a way they think is wrong. Yet it is easy to forget that we work in a specific organization and we are paid to do the job which is defined by our superiors. I don't want to discuss here whether telling developers exactly how they should do their work is right or wrong, but as long as such constraints are set they should be respected (to some point).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Discuss it through with everyone interested.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't go into details so I can as well consider that you've already done that and it hasn't worked, but anyway it is the part of the answer. Get everyone involved in a single room and go through the whole discussion once again. Be prepared though. If you can back your position up with authorities respected by everyone in the room (or at least by decision-makers) you improve the chances of making your point. Nobody is believed to be a prophet in his own town so if you're trying to come up with something new for your organization it may be really hard to convince people single-handed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask for forgiveness and not for permission.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to take risks, just do it the way you want to do it, and then ask for forgiveness after the fact. Actually, such approach often yields creative results. On the other hand if you're wrong be ready to take responsibility. If later the feature needs rework be ready and willing to run an extra mile to do this, etc. Note: in many organizations such attitude isn't encouraged or even is considered misbehavior. The context is very important here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Change the organization.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention that it is a systemic problem - it happens all the time. I would actually try to challenge that. Why is it so that developers don't have enough space to make their decisions on low level design? Are there any good reasons for that? Again, you can back this challenge up with what's happening in IT business, e.g. concept of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.noop.nl/2009/12/managers-are-not-game-designers.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;self-organizing teams&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Change the organization.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course if you fail to change the organization the other choice is, well, changing the organization. You aren't a slave so if the way your company operates doesn't satisfy you leaving is always an option. Don't waste your life in an organization that frustrates you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Challenge your assumptions.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last but not least, something that you should do, no matter which option of the above you're going to choose -- consider that it might be you who is wrong here. Maybe the guys are right and you can learn something. From what you write I expect you don't trust their judgement - that's OK. You still can bring detailed description to a problem to places like StackOverflow and confront the ideas with community. Rarely, if ever, there is only one good way of doing things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2012-07-05T09:20:09.280" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6103" CreationDate="2012-07-05T10:29:09.613" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;There is more than one way to skin a cat.&quot;  I can say this without knowing what you are working on and either design:  Both designs have its benefits, costs, penalties, and risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you are not in charge, your job is to design an alternative, conduct an analysis of alternatives, find risks for all of them, make a recommendation, then do what you are told and execute it as if your recommendation was the one chosen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, take a strong look at your designs.  Challenge them.  Try to find what you are not seeing.  If you are constantly in this position, while it could be political, it is most likely something about your designs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-07-05T10:29:09.613" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6108" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-05T15:15:09.023" Score="1" ViewCount="419" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a no frills, cheap/free online project management tool. Recommendations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4226" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-05T16:16:25.937" LastActivityDate="2012-07-05T16:16:25.937" Title="What is a good dead simple project management tool?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-07-05T16:19:44.870" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6108" CreationDate="2012-07-05T15:38:09.900" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An Excell spreadsheet stored on a common repository. I ran a million unit a quarter business (about 5-6 million quarterly profit) with a single Excell file that had four worksheets in it. 90% of the data  for all projects was in that file. It was simple, everyone understood it and I sent it out and posted it weekly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're looking for collaborative workspace, &lt;a href=&quot;http://basecamp.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Basecamp&lt;/a&gt; is a good tool and I think they have a free option. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A really simple Agile/ Kanban task board system, that can be shared, is &lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2012-07-05T15:38:09.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5757" CreationDate="2012-07-05T18:13:19.280" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is personal opinion of course, but in this situation, I would take the two lower level people and put them in charge of double checking each others work. Limit the amount of reviewing done by superiors, and give them some responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4230" LastActivityDate="2012-07-05T18:13:19.280" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6111" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6113" CreationDate="2012-07-05T18:51:12.500" Score="3" ViewCount="1382" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for a boss/project manager at a new company who is a total 180 from my former boss (which is why I picked him) and creates a completely different culture in the project team. He is very optimistic, and assumes that people want to do their best work until proven otherwise. If the work is slow, he tries to figure out what the reason is and address the reason, instead of getting more aggressive. He makes decisions based on what the pros and cons of his decision will be, and by thinking through what he wants to achieve. I like my boss very much, and have never respected someone I work for as much as I respect him. Besides being a very considerate and appropriate manager, he's a nice person who likes to have some kind of relationship with the people he works with, person to person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, because of past experiences at my previous job, I feel very anxious at work, and am oftentimes withdrawn from my boss and co-workers. While I like my boss and most of my co-workers very much as people, I am afraid to open up to them. I know my boss would like me to trust him more, and I know intellectually that he has given me every reason to trust him, but I am afraid to. I also oftentimes experience overwhelming stress, anxiety, and fear at work in which I am suddenly terrified of getting fired, and begin looking around for a threat, or something I could be in trouble for. This fear interferes with my work and slows down my progress. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe I am a valuable member of the team but am having trouble fully integrating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I better adapt to the culture of my new team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4231" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2012-07-06T00:32:25.837" LastActivityDate="2012-07-06T01:14:41.523" Title="How to Adapt to a New Team Culture?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;personal-skills&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6111" CreationDate="2012-07-05T20:04:42.283" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would encourage any team member to come to me with any issues that impacts the project or poses a risk to successful completion of the project (i.e. to scope, budget, time, quality, etc etc). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not encourage a team member to come to me in the expectation that I can act as a therapist because I am not one and would likely cause more problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may have less (or more) serious of a problem than you think, so you may want to seek out counselling from a trained professional. Or at least hash the issue out with trusted friends and family before going to your boss. If and when you to talk to your boss about this it would be good to have a solution to go with the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-07-05T20:04:42.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6111" CreationDate="2012-07-05T20:11:08.363" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would advise you NOT to disclose these types of issues. Instead, hire a therapist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the job, your boss is accountable for the successful completion of whatever it is your team builds or provides.  He is already coping with performance variability of his tools, his processes and controls, and his team.  He already knows the human fragility--physical and emotional--that threatens the performance of his team, making his team the weakest enabler of his capability to get the job done.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On one hand, it is great that you are open to take a serious look at emotional concerns/issues you have; many simply ignore it or over compensate in some unhealthy way.  However, your work place is not the place for emotional growth or recovery.  By bringing this up to your boss, you are putting on his radar screen the root causes for any performance degradation you will--not can, but will--exhibit from time to time.  And, there are prejudices and biases that accompany this.  Once you slap this label onto yourself, it is very hard to peel it off.  Finally, the old adage to 'your team is only as strong as your weakest link' has some truth to it.  You do not want your boss to think you are the weakest link in his capability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, since you are open to working on these things, seek out a mentor, a coach, a therapist, group support, even pharamcology.  Go work on these things that trouble you so you can get relief on the work site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2012-07-06T00:45:29.387" LastActivityDate="2012-07-06T00:45:29.387" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6111" CreationDate="2012-07-05T20:23:13.947" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As project managers, how would you feel about an employee coming to you with  personal fears that they feel interfere with their work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would listen to it but when I feel that it crosses the professional boundaries, I'll stop the discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is that a violation of professional boundaries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it appropriate to discuss fears like these with your boss/co-workers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they are your friends (they also see you as a friend) and are open to talk about this with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What would be reasonable for me to expect out of that conversation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No clue, I'm afraid nobody knows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How would you react if an employee came to you with a discussion like this one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would give you the opportunity to talk, until the discussion is kind of professional. Sometimes people would like to talk to somebody and then they are fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it looks like you have more serious issues, so this won't really help. I advise to talk about this with someone who is close to you (family, friends, but not co-workers). If the situation is not improving it may worth to talk to a professional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-07-05T20:23:13.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6115" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6123" CreationDate="2012-07-05T22:15:45.420" Score="5" ViewCount="1472" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been working in project management in software for a couple years now and loving it, but I'm now going to be transitioning over to a large project that's mostly hardware (still IT). I feel like most project management resources are either a) extremely general, or b) focused on software. (I've seen some focused on construction but that's not really what I'm going to be doing either.) I'm having a hard time seeing how to apply my software project management skills to a hardware project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2012-07-06T01:23:24.540" LastActivityDate="2012-08-04T09:48:55.693" Title="How Can I Apply My Software Project Management Skills to a Hardware Project?" Tags="&lt;learning&gt;&lt;resources&gt;&lt;infrastructure&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6111" CreationDate="2012-07-06T01:14:41.523" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Integrating into a new team and adapting to a new culture can always be challenging. However, over the long term, to be a productive member of the team you will need to find your place in the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are personal issues that are standing in the way of adapting or that are affecting your productivity, follow David's advice and find a way to resolve them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-07-06T01:14:41.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6115" CreationDate="2012-07-06T08:51:17.827" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;All projects go through largely the same types of phases. I'm not sure if you're existing experience is in waterfall, or agile techniques, but from a waterfall perspective, your project will go through the following stages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Idea (Terms of Reference)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Definition (High Level PMP, Business Case, Risk Assessment etc, Requirements, Functional Spec etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build (Technical spec, etc?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test (Scripts, plans etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implementation (Pilot, training)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Close (Handover to BAU)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the waterfall model, taking a look at PRINCE2 documentation would give you an idea of the framework/governance, and DSDM (Atern) could be useful if you're going to work iteratively. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3246" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-06T17:57:35.910" LastActivityDate="2012-07-06T17:57:35.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6115" CreationDate="2012-07-06T10:35:41.980" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is my advice: don't do anything different.  Apply the PM skills, knowledge, and techniques you already have and do and press go.  The transferability of PM skills across industries is huge.  Across products in the same industry, forget about it.  Just get to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-07-06T10:35:41.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6115" CreationDate="2012-07-06T14:31:01.997" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There should be no problem as the underlying principles of project management are universal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure there is a justifiable business case&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clearly define roles &amp;amp; responsibilities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clearly define and focus on what the end products of the project are to avoid scope creep&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manage the project in stages, progressively elaborating your plans as you move through the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define levels of authority within the project to allow for escalation of issues like cost/time overruns&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apply what you have learned on past projects to help current projects succeed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep communications open, accurate, proactive and timely&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tailor your approach to the needs of the project &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-07-06T14:31:01.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6115" CreationDate="2012-07-06T21:08:47.910" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're having trouble transferring certain skills, it's most likely that those are software DEV skills and not PM skills. PM skills (or fundamentals) are usually transferrable across all projects. That's not to say that you don't have PM skills, but that maybe you're looking at trying to transfer the wrong things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PM skills are about looking at the overall picture, and guiding the project; looking at the risks, the costs, the schedule, the expected outcomes, dealing with stakeholders, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't get hung up on names or methodologies, or whether it's hardware or software. Break it down into 'where are we now, where are we going, and what has to happen in the middle'? Identify that middle part, and make sure you have a way to monitor the progress so that you have all the information you need to make decisions. Look at what has to be done and ask, &quot;what don't I know here&quot;, and find a way to make sure that gap is covered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then as David said &quot;Just get to work&quot;. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-07-06T21:08:47.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6115" CreationDate="2012-07-06T21:38:52.627" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that the project management principles transcend software and hardware.  However, there are some differences.  Here is an interesting article I found that delineates those differences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maxwideman.com/musings/different.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;10 Ways Software Projects Are Different&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In comparing the management of different projects, the first trap that many people fall into is that they do not differentiate between managing the technology and managing the project process. Certainly there is a lot of difference between managing how concrete is placed and how the interface in a software development is placed on a computer screen. But how much difference does that make to managing either project in terms of scope, quality, time, cost, risk and so on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- &lt;em&gt;Quoted from Max Wideman&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, most of your role is focused on managing the process, not the technology or the implementation details. As a general rule, managing the process is the same no matter what type of project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some ways, managing a hardware project could be easier.  For example, you have something physical to just whether a deliverable is done or not.  In software, it is more cognitive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some of the differences that you may encounter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;People Management:&lt;/strong&gt; - Construction is very physical and regimented whereas software is more creative, less restricted, and requires thought. This may affect how you deal with the people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Definition of Done:&lt;/strong&gt; - The article mentions that it's much clearer what &amp;quot;done&amp;quot; means in a construction project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Estimations:&lt;/strong&gt; - Software estimates can vary widely between people, depending on the approach, and this is acceptable and expected. Software tends to involve more unknowns, and technology changes rapidly. Construction involves processes which don't change much, and the same basic techniques are similar from person to person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4165" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2012-08-04T09:48:55.693" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6115" CreationDate="2012-07-07T01:48:36.787" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both software and hardware projects have similar structures and stages...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Structure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;System&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Component&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define requirements for system&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Design system structure (products and integration points)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Define requirements for products&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Design product structure (components and integration points)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define requirements for components&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Design components&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implement (SW-code, HD-simulation, HD-rapid prototype, HD-manufacturing)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test components&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assemble product&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test product&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assemble system&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test system&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is important in both is to make sure the process is defined, the plan is and its stages are documented, the requirements are well defined and known to all stake holders, risks have been considered, time has been estimated, points and times of integration are in plan and etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The technological aspects can be very different, and you should learn the language that is used (mainly of the requirements and the integration points - not the actual details of how everything is implemented), otherwise miscommunications may occur. Consult with others that have the technical knowledge to make sure you understand things correctly and haven't missed anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take into account, that modifications in hardware can be much more expensive than in software, because you pay for both time and manufacturing, so the plan can not be as flexible and the number of test versions will probably be small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in hardware you have to take additional elements into account, such as, power consumption, heat, how components physically connect together, how the size and shape of the parts effect the ability to manufacture, maintain and use the products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1094" LastEditorUserId="1094" LastEditDate="2012-07-07T01:57:16.683" LastActivityDate="2012-07-07T01:57:16.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6115" CreationDate="2012-07-07T08:36:37.543" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Other responses identify the software development / project management split, and that the project management skills are transferable. It is certainly true that development management and project management are not the same thing, although there are overlaps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even concentrating on the transferable PM skills, I would highlight two particular issues from my own experience: credibility, and terminology. These are linked, and if you are coming from one area of expertise, you probably won't immediately understand the terminology that is used in another domain. As a software developer, you probably don't know too much about physical connectivity of hardware components (or even what these components do!), etc, and you may feel embarrassed to ask. My advice is to acknowledge your lack of expertise, ask about the things you don't know, and make it very clear that your role is to manage the project, not to manage the tasks of the people you will be working with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By being open and honest about what you don't know, as well as being clear on your role and its boundaries, you will build credibility, and you will gain the trust and cooperation that you require to succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2012-07-07T08:36:37.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3619" CreationDate="2012-07-08T15:22:44.427" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;not necessary. I joined as a project manager without any experience. It's all depend on your talent and how you present in front of all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I normally believe no experience is needed when you know how to handle clients and team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;always be specific&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4248" LastActivityDate="2012-07-08T15:22:44.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5342" CreationDate="2012-07-09T15:08:21.647" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a hard one. You shouldn't really rely on raw stats (as others have said), and relying on things like lines of code, number of bugs etc, don't really give the fully picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they are assigned specific pieces of work, I would measure productivity based upon whether they are delivering work according to client expectations (100% done, not 70% etc), and contributing to the work of the team as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can, of course, also measure sickness levels, timekeeping etc, but that's a slightly different matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3246" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-07-10T12:16:02.620" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T12:16:02.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3988" CreationDate="2012-07-09T20:36:08.080" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience it works best to have QA members as observers to the SCRUM team but not members. A good SCRUM team is usually small (3-4 members, but 2 is common as well) and pretty much interchangeable (i.e. Bill is getting behind on his User Story which is higher priority than mine so I'll stop doing mine and help him). In addition its not fair to ask QA members to story point development stories. In my experience what works best is to have separate QA SCRUM teams who work 1 sprint behind the development team. That does require a commitment to quality from development though since the code must be solid enough that calling developers back to fix bugs is not super common. I've found that what works best is to create each developer to create a wiki page for their User Story and describe their testing (hopefully automated, its impact on testing coverage and Find Bugs). This wiki is part of &quot;done done&quot; and is reviewed in code review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4253" LastActivityDate="2012-07-09T20:36:08.080" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6115" CreationDate="2012-07-09T23:30:15.860" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Trevor and David have provided great advice and I give them both nods for that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just want to back up their advice by telling you and can and is done. In the last decade project management has gone from being a tacked on job description we give engineers, to a subject matter expertise all its own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I heard an interview of the outgoing PMI president (Fall, 2011). He talked about how in the early 2000s he was trying to get colleges to implement PM studies. One Ivy League school told him &quot;PM isn't a discipline, it's a class.&quot; Today if you Google &quot;project management bachelor degree&quot; you'll get millions of hits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've based my career (and a lot of my blog writing) on this concept of project management being a subject matter expertise. I don't have a technical degree, I've never been an engineer. I've worked in customer support, product management, QA, business development and project management in industries as diverse as computer games, handheld devices, speech recognition, enterprise storage software, virtualization and hard drives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be done. Have faith in yourself and focus on the people, not the project. You'll do great. (How do I know? You asked for help. That's a big sign of a good PM). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2012-07-09T23:30:15.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6129" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-10T07:58:55.850" Score="10" ViewCount="354" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before implementation, we use experience to estimate the difficulty of requirement implementation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the code has been tested and implemented, I want to examine a metric to measure the actual difficulty of the requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which metric could I consider to do that? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1945" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-07-12T15:28:42.953" LastActivityDate="2012-07-18T21:04:08.267" Title="How do you retroactively measure the actual difficulty of a requirement?" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6129" CreationDate="2012-07-10T08:57:59.937" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Software &lt;strong&gt;requirements&lt;/strong&gt;' complexity is a matter of how long it takes to implement them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The longer it took (including coding, testing, fixing, testing and etc.), the more complex it was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The complexity of the actual code doesn't mean anything, since the implementation may have effected other existing code, which needed changing too, it may have been in a region that could effect multiple existing requirements, which required retesting all those requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum things up: Measure the time the requirement was worked on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1094" LastActivityDate="2012-07-10T08:57:59.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6129" CreationDate="2012-07-10T10:33:19.417" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will qualify my contribution firstly by stating that I am not a technologist; however, I think this generalizes to task complexity and performance no matter the specialty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Complexity is a metric itself.  However, it is qualitative and subjective.  So it sounds like you are looking for a quantitatively measured condition that is always present with complexity, so that if and how much the condition is present you can assume reasonably that the requirement was therefore complex.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time, by itself, does not cut it.  Indeed, a complex task will take time.  But there are factors of time that will skew the results and provide false positives:  Time is relative.  What is 'a long time?'  If you measure duration, other events can interfere causing the duration to expand.  If you measure work hours, then you have to somehow normalize it depending on the skill level of the resource(s) used or the typical op tempo one resource has over another, i.e., some people work quickly, others slowly.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, some easy tasks simply take a long time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know if you will find a single quantitative metric, but rather the presence of multiple conditions to indicate complexity, e.g., time, number of defects, re-work, need for consultation and extensive peer reviews, and finally the subjective opinion of those who worked it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After all, complexity is subjective.  You need to conclude complexity after human analysis of the total picture.  A quick, single measurement will not cut it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-07-10T10:33:19.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6129" CreationDate="2012-07-10T13:06:33.437" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid that the currently available tools cannot give you the data you are looking for. If you run any checker on the code, &lt;strong&gt;it will tell you how complex the implementation is, but it won't tell you anything about the complexity of the requirement&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a simple example. Let's say you have to group certain data by year and month in an ascending order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;ee.sort_by { |e| e.date }. group_by { |e| e.date.strftime(&quot;%B %Y&quot;) }&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you can have a quite complex solution with several lines of code&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;# several lines of code&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you run any checker on the implementations, I'm pretty sure that the second one will be more complex than the first one, and this will give you a false positive result, because the requirement wasn't that difficult after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you have a quick talk after the delivery of each requirement, where you compare the estimated efforts/complexity to the actual one and keep the result. When you have a new requirement, you compare this requirement to an already delivered one and use the result to set the efforts and difficulty of the new one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We used the following approach: we created three groups: S, M, L and categorized our finished requirements into these groups by their complexity (result of a quick discussion). When we received a new requirement, we checked which group it fit into. Let's say the new one was an '&lt;em&gt;M&lt;/em&gt;'. After delivery we checked it again, and when it was still an '&lt;em&gt;M&lt;/em&gt;' we put it into the '&lt;em&gt;M&lt;/em&gt;' group, if not, we marked the change - e.g. '&lt;em&gt;M&lt;/em&gt;' -&gt; '&lt;em&gt;S&lt;/em&gt;' - and put it into another group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-07-10T13:06:33.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6129" CreationDate="2012-07-10T14:24:06.720" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to differentiate between time (i.e. it was really hard and therefore took a long time) and difficulty (i.e. wow, that was much more challenging to solve then we thought it would be).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can track estimate versus actual time to get a sense of the first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the second, use a subjective survey. Have team members rate the difficulty on a scale of 1 - 5 (you can do that during estimation). Then have them take the same survey after it was done and see how the numbers compare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, if you are looking for some semblance of &quot;complexity&quot; there are a number of tools in the systems engineering world you can use to describe, model and measure complexity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-07-10T14:24:06.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6134" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6172" CreationDate="2012-07-10T14:28:31.253" Score="3" ViewCount="497" Body="&lt;p&gt;Much literature is dedicated to how a project manager should create an atmosphere for SMEs/team members to do their best work by clearing non-SME (subject matter expert)/non-project related work off their plate.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other literature discusses the role of structuring the team or organization so SMEs/direct reports can take work off the team leader's plate so the team leader can focus on the highest value added work they can produce.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can these two roles be balanced?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2012-07-10T14:53:27.797" LastActivityDate="2012-07-13T16:53:32.157" Title="How to balance conflicting leadership roles?" Tags="&lt;leadership&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6134" CreationDate="2012-07-10T15:51:14.663" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think these are two sides of the same coin. The key is finding an appropriate level of delegation of authority and cultivating the courage to stick to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally good delegation of authority will extend throughout the project hierarchy from the project sponsor/director through the project manager to the team leaders and team members, and will allow each to focus on work and issues that are appropriate for their level. That way people do the work they should be doing and not what someone else should be doing. What is considered to be an &quot;appropriate&quot; level of delegation depends on the criticality and complexity of the project, experience and expertise of the people in the different roles, organizational culture, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be more or less difficult to implement appropriately depending on individual personalities, e.g. a PM who has a strong coding background and is a PM only because that is the next step on his/her career path could have a tendency to get their fingers more into the team member's work than they should. You have to have a certain level of self-discipline to stick to your own responsibilities when you &quot;know&quot; you can do something faster/better/the-way-you-want if you do it yourself rather than let the new guy do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-07-10T15:51:14.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6136" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6138" CreationDate="2012-07-10T17:22:09.803" Score="1" ViewCount="1275" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a schedule baselined in MS Project 2007. We have identified, documented and obtained approval for a change to this schedule. I plan to save the new baseline as &quot;Baseline 1&quot; and keep the original schedule as &quot;Baseline&quot;, the idea is to better show at a glance the evolution of the schedule with MS Project rather than have to look at the schedule together with the change documentation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional columns that I have are &quot;Actual Finish&quot; and &quot;Finish Variance&quot;. By default &quot;Finish Variance&quot; equales &quot;Actual Finish&quot; minus &quot;Baseline Finish&quot;. Is there any way to change this so that my &quot;Finish Variance&quot; column corresponds to &quot;Actual Finish&quot; minus &quot;Baseline 1 Finish&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-09T16:35:53.240" LastActivityDate="2018-11-09T16:35:53.240" Title="How do I get MS Project to give &quot;Actual Finish&quot; using a new baseline?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;ms-project-2007&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6129" CreationDate="2012-07-10T17:29:56.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Presumably a more complex product will require more iterations to &quot;get right&quot;, so you may be able to get a rough idea of complexity by tracking the number and criticality of bugs in your code, the number and duration of iterations to resolve issues with the product, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of caveats to this approach, some of which are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It assumes uniformity in ability of people developing products. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It assumes uniformity in the complexity/criticality of issues that come&#xA;up&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It assumes requirements don't change over time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-07-10T17:29:56.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6136" CreationDate="2012-07-10T17:33:50.330" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Go to File, Options, Advance.  Under Earned Value Options For This Project, change the calculation field to Baseline 1.  All EV, as well as other variance calculations, should then calculate from Baseline 1 instead of baseline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-07-10T17:33:50.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6134" CreationDate="2012-07-10T18:38:45.297" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The difference is between &quot;Teams&quot; and &quot;Individuals&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a leader/manager of a team, you want to do everything you can to empower the team to get the job done. You take over the non-SME work, you facilitate communication, you clear roadblocks and you also make sure the critical processes are followed. This is you serving the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a leader/manager of an individual, you're job is to help that person excel and grow. One of the ways to do this is to delegate some of your work load to that person. Other ways are coaching and giving focused feedback on performance. Mark Horstman, of Manager Tools, says one of the best signs of a good manager is &quot;they get their people promoted.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These two activities can exist in a single instance though it is not that common for a Project Manager to be in the second role as they typically don't have direct reports, or if they do, it is a team of PM who work on multiple projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2012-07-10T18:38:45.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6129" CreationDate="2012-07-10T19:44:39.607" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;EDIT: Oops, I didn't read the question properly the first time.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Measuring &quot;difficultly&quot; after the fact is simple &lt;strong&gt;if&lt;/strong&gt; your developers log their time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is exactly proportional to the &lt;strong&gt;total amount of time spent&lt;/strong&gt; implementing that particular requirement and any dependencies it spawned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2713" LastActivityDate="2012-07-10T19:44:39.607" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6141" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6143" CreationDate="2012-07-10T22:29:26.450" Score="17" ViewCount="1254" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hawthorne effect&lt;/strong&gt;: the phenomenon in which subjects in behavioral studies change their performance in response to being observed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background&lt;/strong&gt;: I'm using Kanban as a tool to analyse and improve the team's internal process. After each sprint (2 weeks) the team suggests and implements improvements, some of them based on the data gathered with the cumulative flow chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that, what is a good time frame to analyse if an improvement made during a sprint really helps the team, without overlapping with the observed results of other improvements? What are the variables involved that can make the effect last longer or shorter? (project type, team structure, sprint duration, etc.) Should I try to make it last longer or it can damage the production with fake efficient processes in the long run?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2352" LastActivityDate="2020-07-26T10:10:48.180" Title="How to cope with the Hawthorne effect and sprint improvements?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6141" CreationDate="2012-07-10T23:14:57.363" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's generally possible to see which effects are from which causes &lt;em&gt;in retrospect&lt;/em&gt;. Something that I find beneficial is to try and shorten slow feedback loops. Cycle time - the time between getting an idea and getting feedback from trying out the idea - is an example of a feedback loop that's normally pretty slow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The effects from feedback are just information. Rather than trying to make the effects last - for instance, &quot;That feature worked!&quot; - I would look at what the causes and contexts were that allowed for the positive effect. How many times did things fail on the way? Did we succeed because we were comfortable with failure? What expertise or mindset did we hold that we would like to hang on to? (As well as continously improving, anchoring the things we already hold dear is important!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lean and Kanban tend to focus very much on getting things into production, but when you're doing product or software development rather than production line or continuous integration, I think we should be looking more towards learning and feedback as the constraint, and perhaps the goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2012-07-10T23:14:57.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6141" CreationDate="2012-07-11T00:17:38.893" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This simple answer is, you can't know.  When you implement a change and observe a result, it can be due to the change, be a false change like due to the Hawthorne Effect, your bias meaning you see a change but there is none, or be a random result.  The only way to know, to arrive at a deduced conclusion that stands up to scrutiny, is to conduct many observations in a controlled environment and with some statistical analysis to rule out randomness and experimenters' bias.  And when I say many, I mean many.  Not like two or three sprints.  Remember, you can flip a fair coin ten times and get eight heads.  That does not change the 50/50 likelihood to 80/20.  Observations can be trusted after hundreds of them, not just a few.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The take-a-way of knowing about Hawthorne, bias, and stochastic observations is about knowing how to apply a healthy skeptism of what you are observing.  In other words, stick to the null hypothesis until proven otherwise.  If you make a change and you observe some favorable results, the finding you walk away with is, 'this seemed to cause that,' not 'this caused that.'  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing to remember about the Hawthorne Effect is it was found in an operations setting where work was ongoing.  They found an increase in performance caused by a benign variable, that decreased over time.  With projects and sprints, you have a start - stop function.  Therefore, you will not observe a steady decrease back to baseline.  In this type of scenario, what you will likely observe is performance variability of up and down trends that may or may not be due to anything you implemented.  You will simply need many observations over quite a period of time to rule out random effects, Hawthorne, or bias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2012-07-11T17:53:09.070" LastActivityDate="2012-07-11T17:53:09.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6141" CreationDate="2012-07-11T08:15:56.933" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on my experience, you cannot do anything with the improvement ideas of a team, besides &lt;strong&gt;giving the team the possibility to implement their ideas&lt;/strong&gt;, until they support one thing: &lt;strong&gt;faster deliveries&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Faster delivery means shorter lead time - you can read this from the CFD - and if the improvements result in better quality, or process improvements etc., then it will be shorter, and &lt;strong&gt;it is a good thing to keep an eye on it&lt;/strong&gt;, so keep doing it. However, finding relation between an improvement and progress is very tricky, because there are too many variables and you may have a false positive result. Here are two examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We introduced code reviews in order to reduce the number of programming mistakes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We introduced Kanban in software maintenance maintenance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases we observed shorter lead times, but while in the first case it was really the effect of the improvement, in the second case we don't really know what has happened. One says that it was Kanban, others say that it was the new team setup. We tried to implement the same idea with a different team, which failed, and we tried to do something different with the very same team and it also failed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point is that when I tried to find a relation between an improvement idea and progress I failed. So, I came up with a list of advises for myself, which has worked so far:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm &lt;strong&gt;not judging&lt;/strong&gt; the ideas of a team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;team is responsible for implementing the idea&lt;/strong&gt;, the only thing I give is the possibility to do it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;team is responsible for measuring its progress&lt;/strong&gt;. If they measure by themselves it is their data, if I measure it is my data, which won't be accepted by them and nothing will happen&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I occasionally &lt;strong&gt;ask about the ideas&lt;/strong&gt;, but I &lt;strong&gt;never call them to account for doing them or not doing&lt;/strong&gt; them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the lead time is longer - the idea possibly introduced some waste in the system -, &lt;strong&gt;I gently warn them and ask them to do something about it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I &lt;strong&gt;never use bonus systems&lt;/strong&gt; to have more ideas or make them happen&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My last story. My old manager was obsessed with improvements, and he pushed the teams to have them and implement them. In order to make this manager happy, the teams came up with plenty of ideas, so he was happy. Unfortunately, nobody really cared about the lead time which became twice as longer as before thanks to these &lt;em&gt;fake&lt;/em&gt; ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-07-11T08:15:56.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6100" CreationDate="2012-07-11T09:44:42.793" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project leader will lead the whole project, which contain multiple tasks. &#xA;Project leader will do the people management activities.&#xA;Some companies project leader is equivalent to project manager. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whereas team leader will lead a team within the project. Team will be created based on related tasks within the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eg. Project leader will lead for whole multimedia project.&#xA;    Whereas team leader will lead team like Audio player team, Video Player team. &#xA;    Both teams are formed under Multimedia project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4266" LastActivityDate="2012-07-11T09:44:42.793" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6141" CreationDate="2012-07-11T13:54:31.437" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would use the amount of time it took to establish a sense of velocity as a baseline, then see if the improvement lasts longer than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, it often takes 3 sprints to get a sense of a team's velocity. See if the improvement lasts longer than 3 sprints. That would seem to suggest that it has made a lasting impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-07-11T13:54:31.437" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6100" CreationDate="2012-07-11T15:32:24.550" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you could easily get a million answers to this if everyone answered with their own/company's definition. However, to me the two are separated by context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A project lead looks after a (or a set of - usually related) project(s) and is interested in only the remit of that project and the people in his/her project (whetehr perminantly, co-opted or just on a task basis). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A team lead is the mentor/supervisor/manager who looks after a team of individuals - usually of a particular specialisation or area. For example a database team may have one or more team leaders (perhaps one per database platform or one over all) - yet the individuals may be working on the same, different or multiple projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A team lead may be under a project lead if the team works solely for one project - or may be hierarchically anywhere if they &quot;own&quot; a team whose members are co-opted onto projects or undertake project work on a task by task basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This happens a lot in large companies (with big IT depts) where there are often dedicated specialist (opeartional) teams that will undertake work for projects and that work is under the lead of the project manager (and transfer charged to them usually), but the individuals are still controlled and managed by the team lead who has to look across multiple projects that his team are working on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3652" LastActivityDate="2012-07-11T15:32:24.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6134" CreationDate="2012-07-11T16:48:28.160" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's a problem with these two roles coexisting at all. The PM's primary job is to set the priorities of the project, and to allocate and assign resources. This applies to him/her as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM needs to look at the responsibilities of the project, and everyone else's responsibilities and ask &quot;what the things that only I can do, that I as PM and Team Member must do myself&quot;. From there delegation can happen and the project can go forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the PM can decide what are the tasks/responsibilities that they can't delegate, and then look at delegating the rest. But they can also use this reflection to manage the duration. If the PM is the lead arch for example, and his/her work will take X time, then he/she needs to also account for how much time the PM side will take and factor in how that will affect their other work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately it comes done to not being an &quot;either/or&quot; question (team leder or SME), but rather a &quot;what's best for the project&quot; question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-07-11T16:48:28.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6129" CreationDate="2012-07-11T16:58:41.007" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;while others have mentioned it, I think time is truly the only measure you're going to be able to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You said you fist estimate the difficulty. So you'll compare estimated to actual. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, I don't think there's really any way to reliably measure it. Difficulty is subjective. What's difficult for one may be simple for another. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other issue is definition - how do you define difficult? What are the factors that would cause a requirement to look difficult? I know that in ranking projects on a complexity scale, many organizations factor in such things as environmental factors, political landscape, mgmt support, risk, external vendors, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you try to measure anything other than time, you'll need to get that definition understood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-07-11T16:58:41.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5628" CreationDate="2012-07-12T13:23:53.003" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Print as pdf file you can see the full network diagram.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 1: Download and install &lt;strong&gt;primopdf&lt;/strong&gt; free pdf convertor tool&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.primopdf.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.primopdf.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 2: Open the network diagram in &lt;strong&gt;MS project &#xA;View-&gt;Network Diagram&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 3: Right click on the menu bar and click &lt;strong&gt;Project Guide&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;(If project guide already available in tool bar ignore this step)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 4: Click the &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Report&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; in the Project Guide Tool bar&#xA;Click &quot;Print Current view as a report&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 5: Select Radio Button &quot;&lt;strong&gt;One Page&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; or &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Multiple Pages&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&#xA;Click Print (If you need to preview, Click Print Preview to see the preview)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 6: Select &lt;strong&gt;primopdf&lt;/strong&gt; as Name of the printer in the Print dialogue and click ok.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 7: In the pdf reader, you can + or - icon to &lt;strong&gt;view the Network diagram in single view and one page itself&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4266" LastActivityDate="2012-07-12T13:23:53.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5811" CreationDate="2012-07-12T13:40:54.470" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is always important to estimate the size of the software project. It will help the organisation in  many ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sizing will help &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To allocate budget&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To get the Manpower requirement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To get the hardware resource requirement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To quote the price for the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To compare the other project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To Select the best &amp;amp; valuable project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMBOK did not tell anything about project sizing. But it discuss about &lt;strong&gt;Earn Value Management&lt;/strong&gt;, which more helpful tool to measure &lt;strong&gt;Scope, Time, Cost&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;More info available here &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_value_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_value_management&lt;/a&gt; about Earn Value Management&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4266" LastEditorUserId="4266" LastEditDate="2012-07-12T13:45:56.337" LastActivityDate="2012-07-12T13:45:56.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5811" CreationDate="2012-07-12T14:45:52.657" Score="5" Body="&lt;h3&gt;&quot;Lines of Code&quot; Are Not Equal to &quot;Level of Effort&quot;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless one of your constraints is the size-on-disk of your source code, or the size of your source code repository, the lines of code for a project are &lt;em&gt;at best&lt;/em&gt; a proxy metric. In addition, unless you're reusing code from another &lt;em&gt;directly comparable&lt;/em&gt; project, an LOC estimate is likely to be pure fiction anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Estimate Effort Directly&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your real question is &quot;How complex is this set of tasks?&quot;, measure and estimate &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; rather than a proxy metric like projected lines of code. Once you've decomposed all your projected tasks, the development team or a subject-matter expert should be able to provide initial estimates for those tasks that you can use in your project planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-07-12T14:45:52.657" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6129" CreationDate="2012-07-12T15:17:18.850" Score="1" Body="&lt;h3&gt;What's the Underlying Use Case?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect this is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://mywiki.wooledge.org/XyProblem&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;X/Y Problem&lt;/a&gt;. In this particular case, the purpose of measuring the complexity retroactively seems like an attempt to solve &quot;How accurate were the complexity estimates?&quot; which is really yet &lt;em&gt;another&lt;/em&gt; proxy for &quot;How can I improve the accuracy of the team's estimates and/or the project plan?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Measuring Accuracy&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like the real measurement ought to be the differential in estimated time vs. &quot;wall clock&quot; time, or changes in team velocity over time. Small deviations are a part of life; large deviations usually mean a problem with a hidden process or inaccurate estimates. Either way, if your estimates are consistently off, then there's a problem to be uncovered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-07-12T15:17:18.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6155" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6160" CreationDate="2012-07-12T15:37:44.150" Score="2" ViewCount="142" Body="&lt;p&gt;A small project was launched, which was not expected to take more than a week. Gradually, many things were added. The project started six months ago, and it has really grown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No project management has been established, and it should be done now. Is there a specific approach to be followed in such cases?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="47" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-07-12T16:17:56.060" LastActivityDate="2012-07-13T14:46:35.790" Title="How can one apply a method of management to a project that was initiated without one?" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;scope-management&gt;&lt;project-charter&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3611" CreationDate="2012-07-12T15:44:48.010" Score="2" Body="&lt;h3&gt;&quot;Stuck&quot; Tasks Belong on the Board&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By definition, kanban is a pull model. If work is on the board, it is being &lt;em&gt;pulled&lt;/em&gt; by some person or process. If the work sits on the board because it isn't being pulled through the swim-lanes, then the kanban card is doing its job by making that issue visible. The fact that it's due to someone being on vacation is irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Don't Tamper with Visibility&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there's no one else to pull a kanban through the swim lanes, then that's a process problem that needs to be solved. If the kanban isn't actually critical enough to take up a work-in-progress slot, then it somewhat begs the question of why it's being tracked that way at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanbans should make work (and process bottlenecks) &lt;em&gt;visible&lt;/em&gt;. Please think long and hard before treating a kanban card like a fungible unit that can be swept under the rug when its presence is embarrassing or inconvenient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of it this way: if you're down a team member, &lt;em&gt;replacing&lt;/em&gt; the card is effectively increasing your WIP limit. The work is still in-progress (e.g. pulled by some process, but not completed) regardless of whether it's physically on the board or not. Why would you want to make that fact invisible to the team or to management? (Hint: There's never a good reason for that, so please don't.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-07-12T15:44:48.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6155" CreationDate="2012-07-12T16:21:59.550" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is clearly a case of scope-creep. However, you can handle this the same way you handle any project chartering exercise. Specifically, I would do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Determine the project sponsor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get the sponsor and project stakeholders to sign off on a new charter that takes into account the current scope as it stands today, and limits future scope.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure the new plan has some sort of finish line or project close-out in order to prevent additional scope creep.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specific methodology isn't what's important here. What &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; important is defining some sort of process to manage the remainder of the project and its deliverables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-07-12T16:21:59.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6155" CreationDate="2012-07-12T16:56:50.523" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What has happened to make you say that the project should have a project manager now?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First I would find out why the project needs a manager and act accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it hard to coordinate the work between the colleagues?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it hard to communicate with the customer or with the other teams?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you need somebody who understands economics?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway I've seen two approaches so far:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;a skilled developer becomes lead developer and project managers afterwards&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pros:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you have somebody who understands the domain&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;he knows the people and the environment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;he has a technical background&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cons:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you'll lose a valuable developer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;he has to learn how to manage projects and it can happen that he isn't a project management material&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;hiring someone&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pros:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;no project management learning curve&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;new ideas, new network, more funds&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cons:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;he has to learn the domain&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;might be expensive&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-07-12T16:56:50.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3988" CreationDate="2012-07-12T17:05:13.710" Score="16" Body="&lt;h3&gt;QA Must &lt;em&gt;Not&lt;/em&gt; Be Separate&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clayton's answer was close. However, I'd go further and say that any team that excludes QA from the team, or treats the QA specialists as second-class citizens within the Scrum team, has entirely missed the point of the Scrum methodology and how agile practices like XP work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The core concepts behind any agile methodology boil down to &lt;strong&gt;visibility&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;continuous communication&lt;/strong&gt;. If your QA team members aren't working alongside the developers, you end up with code that's thrown over the wall at some point in the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Engage QA&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you have a team where the individual members aren't cross-functional, the team as a whole should be. QA should be actively engaged at every step. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The QA folks should be in all planning and technical meetings so that they can help drive test-driven (or acceptance-driven) design.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They should be in all sprint reviews and retrospectives, so that they can contribute to the process improvement that lies at the heart of Scrum and XP.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They should be in every stand-up meeting, so that they know what new functionality is ready for testing, and can provide feedback to the rest of the team regarding technical issues or process roadblocks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Tracking User Stories in QA&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've acknowledged that QA is part of the team, you need QA's tasks need to be just as visible as the rest of the work on the project. &lt;em&gt;No invisible work--ever!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you track sprint tasks on a Kanban board, then you need to track QA on the board, too. Whether it requires its own column is an implementation detail that the team can determine for itself and refine through retrospectives. Many teams find a separate swim lane or column for QA adds value, but it's certainly not a &lt;em&gt;requirement&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;All the Rest&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything else in the original question is process for the team as a whole (including QA members) to define--and continuously refine--for themselves. As long as there's a &quot;definition of done&quot; that the entire team has agreed to, the implementation details don't really matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-07-12T17:05:13.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6155" CreationDate="2012-07-12T17:10:15.623" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will bet you have more project management going on than what you are giving yourself credit for.  The natural tendency of any group of individuals embarking on a task is to form a team, establish roles including leadership, establish rules, establish processes, and figure out solutions.  Since this has grown from one week to six months, it shows that this must have occurred, else your team would have imploded and you would not be asking this question.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That it is undisciplined, informal, and immature from a capability perspective might be true, your project is being managed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two alternatives come to mind:  1) Take what you have and begin formalizing.  This is the first step in growning your maturity level.  Document your processes, establish documented roles and responsibilities, create your charter, formalize your requirements, formalize your project controls.  The advantage to this is you are taking advantage of what has naturally started without stopping your project.  The disadvantage is, growth is slow moving, some resistance can be expected, and performance may degrade for awhile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Stop everything.  Grind everything to a halt.  Start over.  Re-establish your charter and go from there with the intention of establishing better project requirements and goals, plans, processes, teams, etc.  The advantage here is a clean start, automatically removing any existing bad habits from your previous projects.  And you are likely to arrive at a higher capability in a shorter time than with the first alternative.  The disadvantage is you are stopping everything.  This can cost you financially and politically and whatever else.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no formal back-up on any of this, just my opinion on two possible alternatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-07-12T17:10:15.623" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6161" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6167" CreationDate="2012-07-12T20:24:47.037" Score="3" ViewCount="333" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to my current experiences at a somewhat large tech company certifications are not essential to becoming a PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What evidence is out there to support the decision to either get certified as a PM or skip the certification process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4275" LastEditorDisplayName="user4275" LastEditDate="2012-07-13T14:18:41.930" LastActivityDate="2012-07-13T18:00:41.997" Title="Are Certifications Important to Becoming a PM?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6161" CreationDate="2012-07-12T20:40:33.060" Score="5" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Factual Answer&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know a truly canonical answer for this, as I have not researched it exhaustively. However, salary and market surveys can provide some factual answers, although you certainly have to discount for bias--especially bias based on who sponsored a given survey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, here's one data point:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumology.net/2011/05/12/csm-or-pmp-which-cert-earns-you-more-money/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scrumology.net/2011/05/12/csm-or-pmp-which-cert-earns-you-more-money/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This survey says that a Project Management Professional (PMP) typically earns 12% more than an uncertified counterpart, and that a Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) generally earns 6% more than a PMP. However, survey methodology, selection bias, and regional or industry variance are not broken out, so you should not take the stated results as anything more than a starting point for your own research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Subjective Answer&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certification might make you more marketable, and possibly give you some additional domain knowledge, but it certainly won't make you any smarter or any more talented than your natural abilities provide. There are many talented PMs without certifications, and many certified PMs who can quote book-and-verse but flounder in real-world scenarios.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not a PM certification has value &lt;em&gt;to you&lt;/em&gt; will depend entirely on how valuable you find it in the marketplace. Technical and PM certifications have always had extremely marginal value &lt;em&gt;for me&lt;/em&gt;, and I tend to discount them heavily when I'm in the interviewer's chair, but your mileage will definitely vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Knowledge, ability, and experience are more valuable than certification on the job, but education and certification are often used as proxies for measuring those things. With that in mind, having a few letters after your name rarely hurts, and it can be a great tie-breaker if all other things are equal when a gatekeeper is sifting the resume slush-pile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-07-13T12:28:50.740" LastActivityDate="2012-07-13T12:28:50.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4711" CreationDate="2012-07-13T02:51:31.623" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PMP&lt;/strong&gt; is focus only on Project Management. Project could be in any industries not only software or Information Technology. &#xA;&lt;strong&gt;PMP PMBOK&lt;/strong&gt; Book provides a guidance to manage any projects from initiation to closure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It talks about &#xA;&lt;strong&gt;5 basic process groups&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Initiating&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Executing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Monitoring and Controlling&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Closing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;strong&gt;9 knowledge areas&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Integration Management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Scope Management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Time Management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Cost Management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Quality Management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Human Resource Management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Communications Management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Risk Management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Procurement Management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whereas &lt;strong&gt;MBA&lt;/strong&gt; focus on different industrial streams&#xA;eg Information Technology, Human Resource Management, Financial Management, Banking, Quality Management, Project Management, Production / Operations Management, Marketing Management etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either PMP or MBA will help to situate from development to management vertical&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4266" LastActivityDate="2012-07-13T02:51:31.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1871" CreationDate="2012-07-13T03:14:35.433" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Project Manager, you can earn 5 PDU every year and 15 PDU within a CCR.&#xA;There are lot of REP provide free webinars, Each webinar will worth of 0.5 PDU to 1.5 PDUs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://aspeevents.webex.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://aspeevents.webex.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aspe-sdlc.com/pdu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.aspe-sdlc.com/pdu/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmcentersusa.com/KnowledgeCenter/LiveWebinarsSchedule.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pmcentersusa.com/KnowledgeCenter/LiveWebinarsSchedule.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectinsight.net/community/learn/article/training-and-webinar-calendar.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.projectinsight.net/community/learn/article/training-and-webinar-calendar.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.davidconsultinggroup.com/news/webinar.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.davidconsultinggroup.com/news/webinar.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More link from this website&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://freepmppdu.blogspot.in/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://freepmppdu.blogspot.in/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4266" LastActivityDate="2012-07-13T03:14:35.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="389" CreationDate="2012-07-13T03:15:48.407" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Waterfall isn't a methodology itself. Waterfall is just a lifecycle model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is an agile methodology. A methodology may describe a lifecycle, and provides a process to support that lifecycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4276" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-07-13T18:24:17.490" LastActivityDate="2012-07-13T18:24:17.490" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6161" CreationDate="2012-07-13T10:58:18.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, the decision to pursue and maintain one of the certifications is personal.  There is no legal restriction or prohibition from practicing project management without one.  But more and more hiring managers are using a certificate as a hiring filter, either a firm requirement or a heavily weighted one.  In the public sector in the U.S., it is becoming a requirement to lead projects and tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By May of 2010, there were a little less than 390,000 PMP practitioners.  The rate of growth is impressive.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no empirical evidence that suggests certified practitioners out perform non certified practitioners.  I found one study, a doctoral dissertation, that hypothesized a difference, and it showed that PMPs were more apt to deploy more formal processes--especially risk management--in terms of documented proof; however, found no evidence that suggested overall better performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Pros of pursuing it are: 1) it keeps you in the mode of learning, 2) it will help you bypass HR filters.  The cons are: 1) it is reasonably expensive, 2) no evidence that you will improve your PM skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anecdotally, I have observed no difference in knowledge or performance.  I enjoyed personally studying for it myself but I have no idea if it made me a better PM or not.  Around me, I have not witnessed better performance and have chosen to remove it as a filter for hiring...unless it is a requirement for my client.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-07-13T10:58:18.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6161" CreationDate="2012-07-13T11:21:48.983" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My general opinion about certificates (completely subjective):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Certificates increase the possibility to get into a certain position at a large company&lt;/strong&gt;. HR representatives are looking for these certificates and if you have them, you may be able skip certain questions during the interview process. You can even get the position if the interviewer accepts the certificate as an indication that you &lt;em&gt;master&lt;/em&gt; certain skills or at least you know about them. Large companies love the certificates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Certificates won't help you stay in a certain position even in a large company&lt;/strong&gt;. The theoretical knowledge you gained while getting the certificate won't help you stay in your position, unless you are well connected. The thing is to be good at what you are doing - no matter what the role is - you need the skills to apply the theoretical knowledge in practice. And this is what you learn on the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Small companies doesn't care about your certificates&lt;/strong&gt;. Small companies are very choosy when it comes to hiring, and they want to see what you know and not what others think you know (certification).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been interviewing candidates at different companies for a while now and &lt;strong&gt;we have never accepted anybody just because he or she had a certification&lt;/strong&gt;. We checked what the certification is about and validated that the candidate really knew what it is about and not just went there and got some papers. &lt;strong&gt;In my experience, companies are looking for practical knowledge and care less about certificates&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last one: they are expensive and takes a lot of time to be certified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is my advice for you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't go for a certification. &lt;strong&gt;Find a mentor instead, who let's you to stay close to him/her and let's you to learn how to be good at what you would like to do&lt;/strong&gt;. If you still want a certification after this learning period, it will be much more easier with some practical knowledge behind you. This is what I did when I wanted to be a good ScrumMaster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-07-13T11:21:48.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6161" CreationDate="2012-07-13T12:02:20.650" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In theory, someone who has passed an exam (example:  &lt;strong&gt;PMI&lt;/strong&gt;) knows a minimum of the Project Management Body of Knowledge.  In reality, I've interviewed people with PMI certification who knew very little.  For some HR managers, it's still one benchmark they put up as a &lt;strong&gt;minimum requirement&lt;/strong&gt;.  Very few people confuse this with being a real manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Becoming a good PM requires a lot more:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Domain knowledge&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Leadership&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Assertiveness&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Understanding project specific risk&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Interpersonal connection&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Customer focus&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This non-exhaustive list is above and beyond all the formal techniques (which are still important).  The best way to learn this is to find a great PM and work under them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastEditorUserId="3086" LastEditDate="2012-07-13T12:25:06.893" LastActivityDate="2012-07-13T12:25:06.893" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6169" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6170" CreationDate="2012-07-13T13:05:01.257" Score="7" ViewCount="362" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Salary Surveys and Comparisons&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an attempt to prevent a proliferation of questions about the utility of certifications, or questions about which certification improves marketability or wages the most, let's collect relevant salary surveys here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Why This Question Shouldn't Be Closed&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lists, especially lists of links, are generally off-topic on the Stack Exchange network. However, because this is such a frequently-asked question, it seems useful to have a single question to reference when duplicate questions are asked--and they will be asked, even if they're duplicates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, this question provides the community a single place to collect useful answers that can provide a starting point for &lt;strong&gt;additional research&lt;/strong&gt;. With that in mind, references should be targeted and factual, rather than generic links or pointers to opinion pieces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Caveat Emptor&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to note that the very nature of this question doesn't allow for a single objective answer (or even a set of objective answers) that will remain true in perpetuity, so &lt;em&gt;please&lt;/em&gt; don't take any of the data presented here as the &quot;final word&quot; on the subject. There's no substitute for common sense or critical thinking, especially on matters related to statistics or important career decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-12-23T16:24:02.317" LastActivityDate="2016-10-18T14:24:57.667" Title="How does project management certification (or lack of it) affect wages?" Tags="&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-07-15T02:01:27.483" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6169" CreationDate="2012-07-13T13:06:34.580" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please try to keep this list alphabetical by survey title, to make it easier for folks to navigate. Your objective contributions are welcome in maintaining this answer as a community resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumology.net/2011/05/12/csm-or-pmp-which-cert-earns-you-more-money/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CSM or PMP, Which Cert Earns You More Money?&lt;/a&gt;, Scrumology, 2011-05-02&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Certification=Certified_ScrumMaster_%28CSM%29/Salary&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Salary for Certification: Certified ScrumMaster (CSM)&lt;/a&gt;, PayScale, 2012-07-13&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Certification=Certified_Six_Sigma_Black_Belt/Salary&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Salary for Certification: Certified Six Sigma Black Belt&lt;/a&gt;, PayScale, 2012-07-13&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Certification=Project_Management_Professional_(PMP)/Salary&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Salary for Certification: Certified PMP&lt;/a&gt;, PayScale, 2016-10-18&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="26280" LastEditDate="2016-10-18T14:24:57.667" LastActivityDate="2016-10-18T14:24:57.667" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-07-14T17:40:33.173" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6155" CreationDate="2012-07-13T14:46:35.790" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know that the actions are necessarily different, it just may be more difficult to implement the actions.  If you need to implement project management, you need to implement it.  You need to get the scope down on paper and signed off by everyone.  You need a plan for how you are going to finish the work (and know you are done).  You need a process to follow for when someone wants to add to the work again (get it down on paper again, re-plan, estimate the impact, have everyone sign off again).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hard part will be re-teaching everyone how things work going forward.  The biggest challenge may be finding a champion - someone in management that will support your efforts and let everyone else know that this is how it is going to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4165" LastActivityDate="2012-07-13T14:46:35.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6134" CreationDate="2012-07-13T16:53:32.157" Score="2" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Define the Role&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the abstract, any leadership or middle-management role has a defined scope within the organization. It's worth a moment to analyze the organizational role itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your role says &quot;you are responsible for the delivery of X&quot; then you want people to whom you can delegate your responsibilities (e.g. take stuff off your plate). Ultimately, though, the responsibility is yours, because it's been defined that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your role says &quot;you are responsible for enabling the efficient operation of the development team and overseeing the project methodology,&quot; then you are being tasked with a coaching or servant-leader role where you are responsible for process and removing impediments to the process. In this case, the responsibility for &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; is yours, while the responsibility for &lt;em&gt;delivery&lt;/em&gt; rests with the remainder of the team because it's defined that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;A Matter of Style?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can a servant-leader delegate responsibilities? No, because most of the responsibility isn't his to delegate in the first place. Can a &quot;buck stops here&quot; authority successfully coach team members on process or clear impediments? Possibly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On some level, people are people. Personality and style always play a part. You can be an opinionated coach, or a laissez-faire manager, but the real question is one of efficacy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different roles generally require different styles of leadership, but any conflict between the two is generally a result of improper or informal definition of the leader's scope of responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The Solution&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since questions on this site should be practical, rather than abstract, we'll assume this is a situation you're actually facing. If so, here's a concrete suggestion: get clarification on your role, and the scope of your responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're being asked to wear too many hats, or hats that require antithetical leadership styles, then it's fair to ask for these things to be clarified. In some cases, it may turn out that redefining the role is enough; in others, you may need to split responsibilities among more than one person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is, incidentally, why the Scrum methodology requires that the Scrum Master not be a member of the development team or the Product Owner. The Scrum Master is a process referee, and being responsible for feature delivery or stakeholder management would be a conflict of interest and a distraction from the role's core task of ensuring that the methodology is successfully followed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-07-13T16:53:32.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6161" CreationDate="2012-07-13T18:00:41.997" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many certifications require some portion of continual education and/or involvement in a project management community outside of your organization. This creates an opportunity to learn material outside of your company and to hear points of view that are outside of your working world. This kind of diversity and education can be a benefit at companies that value innovation or out-of-the-box thinking/new ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line: it depends on the culture and nature of your company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-07-13T18:00:41.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6174" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6175" CreationDate="2012-07-13T21:01:16.183" Score="10" ViewCount="2462" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a fixed-sized team (with fixed-hours) and products, more than the team can handle. At any given time, while my resources are working on one product, requests keep flowing in about work on other products--most of them with conflicting timelines--and I find it difficult to predict when  we can take up the new task based on resource availability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to be able to answer the question &quot;Which resource is working on what product release till what time?&quot; at a glance. How can I do that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4274" LastEditorUserId="4574" LastEditDate="2014-07-03T11:08:19.063" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T23:37:33.397" Title="How can I track team member utilization across a range of projects?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6174" CreationDate="2012-07-13T21:43:42.057" Score="3" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Schedule Estimates with Kanban&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Utilization is less important than capacity. I would generally recommend measuring team capacity to see how soon a task can be added, rather than trying to determine the utilization of individual team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a large number of demand-queued tasks, you may want to consider Kanban as a both a project methodology and as an estimating technique. Kanban is a great system when you need to manage (and estimate) based on work-in-progress constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a gross simplification, if you have 6 members on your team, and a work-in-progress limit of 12, you might use a trailing average of past performance to determine that your team can generally handle 36 requests in a week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By prioritizing backlog items or measuring the total depth of your request backlog, you can estimate when task X can be pulled into the work queue, or how long it will take to &quot;empty the bucket&quot; of all pending tasks. Plus, the kanban itself (meaning the physical board) is a great at-a-glance visual tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-07-13T21:43:42.057" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="389" CreationDate="2012-07-14T01:22:04.673" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The waterfall is perfect for projects in which all the requirements are known in advance, up to the smallest detail and do not change and the entire design can be done up front without getting anything wrong and there is no need to test anything until the end, because the tests are just a formality and won't require changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that this can never happen, especially with large projects, or projects that have new aspects to them (from the point of view of either the clients or the implementers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even when manufacturing the same product over and over in an existing manufacturing chain, mechanical, electrical and human errors can cause faults and these faults are best detected and corrected as soon as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most companies that officially practice waterfall use some sort of incremental, or more realistically, iterative method behind the scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do they use a formal iterative method, such as UP, Scrum, Kanban and etc, or do they make it up as they go along.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do contracts have to be renegotiated after every need for change comes up, or does the contract already specify control points for changes or halting the project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the uncertainty (in requirements, technology, staff and etc) is large, then agile methods can lead to a more efficient process than larger iterations (e.g. UP).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1094" LastEditorUserId="1094" LastEditDate="2012-07-20T15:39:10.937" LastActivityDate="2012-07-20T15:39:10.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6178" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6179" CreationDate="2012-07-14T14:43:01.973" Score="8" ViewCount="1181" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm exploring &lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt; as a Kanban tool, and am hung up on how to track story points with it. This isn't something that Trello natively supports, so I've been re-purposing labels to carry this information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has a couple of significant short-comings. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There's currently a limit of six labels, so I can't carry the entire &lt;a href=&quot;http://store.mountaingoatsoftware.com/pages/faqs&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Planning Poker&lt;/a&gt; sequence.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It makes it hard to color-code blocked or pull-ready tasks unless I leave red and green unused, further limiting my available labels.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There's no obvious way to automatically calculate story points or WIP without digging into the API or writing an external utility.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I effectively track story points with Trello without creating side-effects as outlined above?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-01-08T16:05:09.237" LastActivityDate="2019-01-08T16:05:09.237" Title="How can I effectively track story points with Trello?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;trello&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6178" CreationDate="2012-07-14T16:17:40.780" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way we solved this problem was to use &lt;a href=&quot;https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jdbcdblgjdpmfninkoogcfpnkjmndgje&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum for Trello&lt;/a&gt; Chrome extension.  Yes, that means that anyone viewing Trello as a Kanban tool needs to do so via Chrome, but in our group that wasn't a problem -- your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the card level, the extension adds the ability to assign point value to the card:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/l44wE.png&quot; alt=&quot;Scrum for Trello - card view&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the list level, the extension shows the points for each card, and also calculates points for the list (for us, list == sprint):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/oKR1I.png&quot; alt=&quot;Scrum for Trello - list view&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This allows us to continue to use labels as labels, and eliminates the need to program against the API just to visualize points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; use points to guide us during planning (we plan up to a certain number), and as a check at the end of the sprint (how many did we accomplish).  We do not spend any more time than that (e.g. simple notation) calculating velocity or doing anything more with the numbers.  Therefore, the simple use of the extension to display the numbers, without the ability to export or report on these numbers, works perfectly for us.  Again, depending on your group and your needs, your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2864" LastActivityDate="2012-07-14T16:17:40.780" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6180" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-14T17:13:04.063" Score="10" ViewCount="1236" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work as an electrical engineer, and sometimes when work gets busy (read: most of the time) there are so many various tasks and things to remember to take care of later that it can get difficult to track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the past I've tried using a notebook, email, or outlook to keep track of tasks, but eventually it gets too unweildly and difficult to manage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lately I've been thinking about trying to use a bug tracker such as Mantis or Bugzilla to keep track of my tasks and work (instead of programming bugs). The reason I feel hesitant to do this is that all of these bug trackers are, well, designed with programming in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples I would track:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Oscillator takes too long to stabilize after power-up&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write documentation for user updates to software&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Measure the impedance on the input lines&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simulate the power circuit&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can a bug tracker be used as a task manager for things other than programming? Can a &quot;remember to check this later&quot; notepad be used for things other than programming? Would this be a viable long term strategy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4286" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-15T01:46:50.437" LastActivityDate="2012-08-06T08:36:00.190" Title="Can bug trackers be used for tracking tasks other than programming?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6180" CreationDate="2012-07-14T17:24:26.360" Score="3" Body="&lt;h3&gt;The Key is Prioritization&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a bit of an X/Y problem, in that the issue isn't really whether you can track tasks in a bug tracker (you certainly can), but what value tracking really provides to a given project. The underlying process issue you're facing is one of &lt;em&gt;prioritization&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any tool that lets you prioritize tasks by importance or due date, and that allows you to reorder those tasks as the metrics change over time, will likely be suitable for task tracking at the individual level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a project-level task tracking infrastructure, it may be better to leverage that--or at least, make sure your personal tool integrates with the project-level tracker--rather than re-inventing the wheel. However, if it impacts nobody but you, then you're certainly free to find the solution that works best for your individual workflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-07-14T17:24:26.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6180" CreationDate="2012-07-14T17:49:19.750" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you think about it a bug tracker is nothing but simple task management application with (a simple) workflow attached to every item. From this perspective it doesn't really matter whether a work item is a software bug, a task to perform or anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It means that you should be able to use bug trackers to achieve the goal you define.&lt;/strong&gt; I was personally using a bug tracker in such scenario to track down and record work on ideas for new products and it worked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However, if you asked would I choose a bug tracker now to such thing the answer would be different.&lt;/strong&gt; Now I would follow &lt;strong&gt;Getting Things Done&lt;/strong&gt; technique (as described in &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0743571657&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a book by David Allen&lt;/a&gt;) and choose tools that are suitable to the the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal favorite is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.personalkanban.com/pk/personal-kanban-101/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Personal Kanban&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, which actually is something more than just GTD technique, but for the sake of this argument it could work this way. You can &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1453802266&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;read more about Personal Kanban in Jim Benson's book&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case using bug tracker to track such tasks, especially in the context of a single person seems an overkill to me. I would rather look for simpler methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: GTD or Personal Kanban doesn't have to be all about sticky notes - there are software applications that provide such functionality too. In terms of Personal Kanban, any &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/5102/electronic-kanban-board&quot;&gt;Kanban application&lt;/a&gt; would do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2012-07-14T17:49:19.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6180" CreationDate="2012-07-15T01:54:26.683" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bug trackers can definitely be used to track tasks other than programming bugs. As an example, our organization has successfully configured JIRA to handle our customer service department. JIRA is hugely configurable, and the manager at the time spent several weeks creating components, and custom fields to handle everything from new client signups, client setups, billing issues, client complaints and work requests, all the way to cancellations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We've been doing this now for several years, and the sales, client services, and the account management and accounts receivable departments are extremely comfortable with the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A task is created for the client, and subtasks are created for each of the above issues that come up, whether it be the actual setup, work request, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, whether or not something like this will work for you depends on your exact needs. With the examples you gave, I know JIRA would work for you. However, in your case, if you're just needing something like this for you and you only, there are many free or cheap lightweight online task management systems out there that would most likely work better. See the &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/tags/pm-software/info&quot;&gt;pm-software tag wiki info page&lt;/a&gt; or check some of the open or closed questions under the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/pm-software&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;pm-software&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;pm-software&lt;/a&gt; tag or the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/tools&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;tools&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;tools&lt;/a&gt; tag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2012-07-15T01:54:26.683" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="908" CreationDate="2012-07-15T15:52:02.290" Score="4" Body="&lt;h3&gt;If Failure is Assured, Fail Early&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a project has failed, and isn't salvageable from a business perspective, then it should be canceled. This is a cost control measure, and certainly one of the objectives of effective project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it's better to identify at-risk projects early on in the process and take corrective action, once a project &lt;em&gt;has actually failed&lt;/em&gt; it means that no further business value can be realized. At that point, why continue funding it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Project Ownership&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, the Product Owner is responsible for terminating the project. In other methodologies, the responsible party may be the project sponsor, the steering committee, or whoever is specifically tasked with the decision in the project's charter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, the project manager is responsible for &lt;strong&gt;raising the visibility of risks&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;reporting project status&lt;/strong&gt;. In many organizations, the project manager is also responsible for project-related financial projections, but this varies in my experience. However, unless the project charter gives you authority to terminate a project, then the best you can do is offer your honest professional opinion to those who actually have the authority to make (de)funding decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Organizational Misperceptions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've overheard people say that project management is &quot;responsibility without authority.&quot; This stems from a common misperception of the role of project management. A good project manager is a &lt;em&gt;shepherd of process&lt;/em&gt;, not a task master, overseer, or project guarantor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't mean PMs aren't blamed when projects fail. Of course they are. However, that's a cultural and social issue within an organization, and part of a PMs job as a &lt;em&gt;process coach&lt;/em&gt; is to educate and inform management and team members of the scope (and limits) of your role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-07-15T15:52:02.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6186" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-15T18:41:28.343" Score="-3" ViewCount="133" Body="&lt;p&gt;What tools or frameworks exist to identify which features of a product would add the most value to a customer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4293" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2018-09-10T14:23:21.873" LastActivityDate="2018-09-10T14:23:21.873" Title="How do I discover the features of a product that are most valued by customers?" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2012-10-11T14:28:13.153" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2067" CreationDate="2012-07-15T22:21:34.233" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've interviewed more than 80 software consulting companies while building my own solution, &lt;a href=&quot;http://pmrobot.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMRobot&lt;/a&gt;, with very similar requirements to the ones you've listed above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most popular web-based tools for consultant developers are currently:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Basecamp&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pivotal Tracker&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Microsoft Project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(Spreadsheets)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMRobot has the concept of 'internal' tickets that are hidden from clients, but we don't allow a way to hide a developer ticket from another developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In just about any tool I know of, you'd need to break the project down into multiple sub-projects to have that sort of control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2713" LastActivityDate="2012-07-15T22:21:34.233" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-07-15T22:21:34.233" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6180" CreationDate="2012-07-17T06:08:24.110" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Can a bug tracker be used as a task manager for things other than programming?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. I have worked for companies where tools like Bugzilla were used to track, prioritise, and nag people on tasks such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;development&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;user experience design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;documentation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;quality assurance testing and documentation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;requirements gathering&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;system analysis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;architecture analysis and design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like any tool, success and failure is largely dependent on context, buy-in, and the quality of the team members using it. I've probably been lucky in that I've worked in multiple settings and seen Bugzilla (and Jira and others) used successfully. And yes, these were sometimes large, complex projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3170" LastActivityDate="2012-07-17T06:08:24.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6129" CreationDate="2012-07-17T08:19:24.777" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two good indicators are:-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Effort Deviation (for the particular requirement) is one way to measure the complexity. (Schedule deviation may also be employed for similar purpose)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Requirement volatility is another good measure to understand the complexity of the requirement. The reason I say this is, the more volatile the requirement is that means the less we were able to understand it comprehensively. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3459" LastActivityDate="2012-07-17T08:19:24.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6191" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-17T10:32:44.663" Score="6" ViewCount="1524" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Schedule Compression Ratio&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do you calculate schedule compression ratio?  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When and why would you do it? What does it tell you? What benefit does this bring to a project manager?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are there heuristics with the the ratio that are to be generally followed?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Since there is a bounty on this question, answers should cover all 3 bulleted questions and provide a thorough explanation.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="4766" LastEditDate="2012-12-31T08:34:40.340" LastActivityDate="2012-12-31T08:34:40.340" Title="How Do You Calculate Schedule Compression Ratio?" Tags="&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;schedule&gt;&lt;analysis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4425" CreationDate="2012-07-17T12:42:31.443" Score="15" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Misusing a Metric&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one else has really covered this, so I'm going to point out that this appears to be a misuse of a management metric. Specifically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He did a semi-good job this year, completing a number of complex tasks and people seem to get along really well with him and he is always willing to help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the summary of the actual &lt;em&gt;management metrics&lt;/em&gt;. That's what you should be using to evaluate someone for raises, retention, or termination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What Does the Self-Evaluation Actually Measure?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You haven't really articulated what the self-evaluation measures or how the metric should be used. If a self-evaluation is the core criteria for raises, promotions, or termination decisions...well, I'd like to join your company and self-evaluate myself a billion dollar bonus. --What? That's not what self-evaluation is for? What exactly &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; you using it for, then?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some companies, self-evaluation forms are a form of &quot;guess what I think of you&quot; game. If you get it wrong by evaluating yourself too high or too low, then there are organizational consequences--just like when you say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[I]t is like he is asking to be fired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Objectively speaking, his evaluation didn't match yours. That's &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the factual information you can glean from this metric; absolutely nothing else. The rest is your &lt;em&gt;interpretation&lt;/em&gt; of the metric, or your emotional reaction to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What Can You Actually Infer?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could legitimately infer that this person either has different values than you, or doesn't view the evaluation process the same way you do. You can also certainly infer that he doesn't perceive his role or job performance the same way you do. That is a call to constructive action on your part, which needs to start with opening a dialog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that someone who you describe as helpful and easy to get along with just gave you a big &quot;up yours!&quot; based on a single fill-in-the-blank form seems unreasonable. Even if that's the case, a project manager that's unwilling to evaluate whether a given process (in this case, self-evaluation) is a contributing factor to a perceived problem is &lt;em&gt;creating&lt;/em&gt; a morale problem, not solving it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Metrics and evaluations give people &lt;em&gt;things to talk about&lt;/em&gt;. So talk about them!&#xA;Until you do that, it's all just guesswork anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-07-17T12:42:31.443" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6141" CreationDate="2012-07-17T18:25:22.370" Score="3" Body="&lt;h3&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hawthorne Effect&lt;/a&gt;, if present, is &lt;em&gt;desirable&lt;/em&gt; in an agile framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Reasonable Question; False Premise&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the original question stems from a false premise. The premise seems to be that changes to observed behavior as a result of being observed are intrinsically less valuable than unprompted or spontaneous changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Continuous Improvement Through Introspection&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile practices are built around tight feedback loops and continuous inspection of the team's process. The whole &lt;em&gt;premise&lt;/em&gt; of agile is that improvement is driven by observing the outcome of a process and making continual adjustments to fine-tune the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Alliance &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/about-scrum/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;defines the framework&lt;/a&gt; as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is a simple &amp;quot;inspect and adapt&amp;quot; framework that has three roles, three ceremonies, and three artifacts designed to deliver working software in Sprints, usually 30-day iterations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you drive, you don't put your hands at ten-and-two, hold the wheel with an immovable death grip, and hope for the best. You make constant course corrections--generally minor, unless you're careening out of control or making a U-turn, but constant all the same. One might even say that one metric of good driving is the ability to make continual adjustments so that large corrections are not necessary--such as to avoid the fast-moving sequoia that just jumped in front of your car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum bakes a lot of this into the various required meetings, but the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-retro&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sprint Retrospective&lt;/a&gt; is the epitome of inspect-and-adapt. Since process is made up of people, process change is often dependent on behavioral change to succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Continuous Re-Inspection&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because Scrum is about continuously inspecting the process, and continually adapting the process to current circumstances, there are two obvious conclusions one can draw.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Behavior will be constantly observed. Unobserved behavior is an indicator of a hidden process, and needs to be made visible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Behavior change does not need to be permanent, or retroactively measured to any great extent. What matters is whether the &lt;em&gt;current&lt;/em&gt; process is supporting the team's &lt;em&gt;current&lt;/em&gt; objectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether the reason is the Hawthorne Effect or some other social driver, the constant adaptation to observation is a clearly-stated goal of agile frameworks such as Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-26T10:10:48.180" LastActivityDate="2020-07-26T10:10:48.180" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6129" CreationDate="2012-07-18T21:04:08.267" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe the consensus is that the metric you're looking for is really a very subjective thing. However, that does not mean you cannot get the data you want. @Zsolt's suggestion to have a conversation with your team afterwards is definitely a great approach to getting that metric.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The piece I would more explicitly add to that idea is to include some notion of relative sizing into the process. You can read about that in detail many other places, including &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilebok.org/index.php?title=Relative_Sizing_and_Story_Points&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; on AgileBOK.org. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;30-second version... The idea is to take values from previous work and use those as data points to give a value to either estimated or just completed work. This can be done regardless of the measuring scale you use. The T-shirt size above is often used, but also some form of &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9362286/why-is-the-fibonacci-series-used-in-agile-planning-poker&quot;&gt;Fibonacci sequence&lt;/a&gt; is popular. It's best to look at the X most recent completed work items since the scale will tend to change over time... it's all relative anyway! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The teams I've used this tactic with have also experienced other benefits other than just recording a metric. I've actually seen these conversations have an even greater advantage of getting a team much more on the same page about the intended scope of work when using this method for estimation. After the work is completed, this is also a really good way to reflect on the work that was done with those involved and look for ways to be better in the future. Done well and consistently, those discussions can provide huge gains in improving the team while killing multiple birds at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While relative sizing is used a lot in the Agile realm, there's no reason why you can't use it in other environments/methodologies. After a while, you can then also layer those relative sizes over the actual time taken. That's when you can start using relative sizes as an estimation tool without asking people for &quot;man-hour&quot; type estimates that most people loathe doing and are rarely, if ever, within a desirable margin of error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4302" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:41:23.897" LastActivityDate="2012-07-18T21:04:08.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6180" CreationDate="2012-07-19T08:02:01.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Probably although it strikes me as an an excessive tool for a simpler task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would use MicroSoft's OneNote as an option. I do, however, actually use a spiralbound notebook more frequently as a worklog and tasklist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1313" LastActivityDate="2012-07-19T08:02:01.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6197" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6200" CreationDate="2012-07-19T14:35:23.920" Score="5" ViewCount="450" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple of related issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My sponsor is visionary but fails to communicate the vision clearly enough to allow implementation. This leads to a lot of unnecessary rework.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My sponsor communicates with team leaders directly without keeping me (or other project team members) in the loop. This keeps me from managing change in a controlled manner, it is hard just to keep pace.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My sponsor is a VP who honestly believes that some aspects of a successful project (e.g. having a continually justified business case) is his business and nobody else's.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My sponsor is of the (all too common) type that wants work to start on a solution before an adequate plan (or even definition of what the solution will look like) is in place.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Needless to say we wind up with significant issues on projects with this sponsor, mainly a lack of defined plans, scope creep and changing requirements. I honestly don't think this sponsor understands or appreciates the value that a PM has, but beyond the long-term job of educating him about this are there any ways to mitigate the problems these characteristics cause in the shorter term?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-07-20T23:42:25.493" Title="How to deal with a challenging sponsor?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;project-sponsor&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6198" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6203" CreationDate="2012-07-19T14:41:39.167" Score="2" ViewCount="750" Body="&lt;p&gt;Earned Value Management is predicated on the creation of a Performance Management Baseline (PMB). The PMB can be thought of as a super estimate that defines what work is planned to be done by what date and at what cost. Many companies spend a tremendous amount of time creating these super estimates since contracts are written against them, customer expectations are set against them and a project can be judged to be a success or failure benchmarked against the PMB.  (And in a world of constrained budgets,  underperforming against the PMB can mean death for a project.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many Agile criticisms of creating this level of estimating.  For example, I was listening to an old interview with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mike Cohn&lt;/a&gt; on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.controllingchaos.com/?p=88&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Controlling Chaos&lt;/a&gt; podcast about Agile Estimating.  Towards the beginning of the interview he talks about the fear developer’s have of giving estimates. He said an estimate is pretty much used to beat a developer over the head with (as an attempt at “management.”) He also brought up the point that people spend too much time estimating assuming that an estimate is a firm a commitment -which it unfortunately does often get turned into.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that EVM is a requirement for many organizations, how can a contract be written or stakeholder expectations and stakeholder sponsorship be developed in such a way that accounts for the inherent uncertainty in the estimating process? How can PMB’s be made more realistic, while still giving stakeholders the governance they require?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-07-19T22:50:50.947" Title="Creating an Agile Estimate for an Earned Value Management PMB" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;evm&gt;&lt;theory&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6199" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6201" CreationDate="2012-07-19T14:53:59.370" Score="5" ViewCount="694" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an interesting discussion that has been reignited by Jeff Sutherland about the U.S. &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrum.jeffsutherland.com/2012/04/dod-goes-agile.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Department of Defense using Agile&lt;/a&gt; project management.  While it seems that there is broad consensus as to the value of using Agile on government projects, Glen Alleman brings up some &lt;a href=&quot;http://herdingcats.typepad.com/my_weblog/2012/07/federal-goes-agile.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;practical, contracting/regulations issues&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given those concerns, is Agile feasible for large DoD projects?  If so, how can the issues be addressed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-20T20:10:36.680" LastActivityDate="2012-07-20T20:10:36.680" Title="How Feasible is Agile in Large Department of Defense Projects?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;theory&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6197" CreationDate="2012-07-19T14:56:29.533" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One tool I'm using in different contexts is accounting the work splitting it among value-adding and waste (or non-value-adding; you may prefer to use this name as it doesn't sound so harsh). Definition of waste differ among teams but definitely all the rework is non-value-adding. If you say &quot;a lot of unnecessary work&quot; I ask: how much exactly? &lt;strong&gt;If can provide the data it is a good starting point for a discussion with your stakeholder. It is much harder to discuss with the facts than it is with opinions.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would back it up with all the situations that you can address to any specific issue you mention:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You weren't updated and as a result the team built feature X which was useless.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You started work without planning and you ended up with e.g. architecture that needed rework&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having value / waste data gathered you should also be able to show how much such &quot;practices&quot; cost the organization. At the same time, fixing some of them, like keeping people in the loop, costs close to nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Another strategy to deal with such situation may be following &quot;it's better to ask for forgiveness than from permission&quot; attitude.&lt;/strong&gt; Especially when you think about things that you do within the team, like planning. If you can take the pressure of starting instantaneously and do the thing you believe is right (planning) just do it. You take risks, but then it is really rare that people are blamed for doing good work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally, it is possible that no matter what you do VP doesn't change. &lt;strong&gt;Than it's your call: either you accept the fact or you leave the organization.&lt;/strong&gt; If you choose to stay there of course is a lot of damage reduction to be done, e.g. isolating the team from random decisions as much as you can or trying to introduce work organization that absorbs such things (small batches of work, tight feedback loops).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2012-07-19T14:56:29.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6199" CreationDate="2012-07-19T15:30:38.500" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe the work I did with US govt is transferrable to your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We had a lot of changes in scope over the course of our DHHS programs as we were doing pharmaceutical development which to a very large degree is iterative and subject to change... kind of like Agile but dragged out over months/years. This required endless contract modifications to amend scope, cost and timescales - not only between us and DHHS but also us and our subcontractors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Factoring in the costs of a FT contracts specialist isn't a big deal. What will cause you problems is the time to get the contract mods started. Your US govt contracting officer will need to have thorough documentation on what the impacts on time and cost are for each change in scope so that s/he can justify the changes. Depending on the contracting officer this can involve a lot of back &amp;amp; forth even to get to the point where they say &quot;We are OK with changes, you are authorized to proceed&quot;. If you need the contract mod in place before they will authorize it will be even longer. Bottom line is you will have to plan on your sprints being long enough to accomodate this type of discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-07-19T15:30:38.500" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6199" CreationDate="2012-07-19T16:07:40.963" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Doug and Mark,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only is agile feasible, it is already in use in many forms. Starting 2002, Lockheed Martin applied eXtreme Programming to the Atlas-V embedded flight control systems. A paper was presented at the SEI CMMI conference in Denver. I have a copy if you want. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many aerospace and defense contractors use iterative and incremental development processes embedded in Rolling Wave program management. Rolling Waves, incremental &quot;drops,&quot; emergent requirements are built into the DoD procurement processes in the form of the Integrated Master Plan / Integrated Master Schedule paradigm. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a briefing &lt;a href=&quot;http://slidesha.re/mq37vD&quot;&gt;http://slidesha.re/mq37vD&lt;/a&gt; on how to integrate agile with the FAR/DFARS procurement processes. It's the procurement processes that need to change. Ignoring the need to have credible agile processes in place. As well, Earned Value Management from the FAR/DFARS flow down ANSI-748-B Guidelines must also be in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much has been written on how to do this, but care is needed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Procurement guidelines come first, not agile development - you're spending the public's money.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Program performance meassured in Earned Value comes next (if applicable).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The management of capabilities and the derived requirements (all requirements are derived BTW), must be done with ruthless control. The open ended style of commercial software development has limited appeal in the DoD. There are instances where this is applicable, but most programs have a fixed &quot;launch&quot; date, with a fixed set of capabilities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There must be a &quot;master plan,&quot; similar to the Epic concept, where the needed capabilities are defined in enough detail to recognize them when they appear. From there releases, and the iterations within those releases fit nicely into the IMP/IMS procurement framework of DoD 5000.02.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be done, but rarely is it successful by trying to displace the existing processes - as is common in the commercial world. There are efforts underway inside DoD and the NDIA (National Defense Industry Association) for deploying agile methods for enterprise IT. The NDIA C4ISR group is where this effort takes place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4308" LastActivityDate="2012-07-19T16:07:40.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6198" CreationDate="2012-07-19T16:17:47.287" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing to address is the notion that estimates are used to &quot;beat&quot; the developers. This is simply bad management. Mike and others use this red herring many times as an excuse for not doing estimates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimating software development is an art, but also a straight forward process done all the time in complex embedded systems. Learning to produce credible estimates for development systems is independent of agile or the procurement processes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said the PMB usually has rolling waves, multiple CLINS, and other un-definitized work, much like agile projects. What is not usually in question is the final operational capabilities of the system under development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The application of EVM (Earned Value Management, EV is the numbers), to software development projects is not only possible it is being done. But the effort doesn't start with agile, it starts with a credible &quot;plan&quot; for the production of the needed capabilities, and the definition of the level of maturity of those capabilities. This is the Integrated Master Plan / Integrated Master Schedule process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the IMP/IMS in place, &quot;packages of work,&quot; - Work Packages, are defined with measurable outcomes - Measures of Performance and Measures of Effectiveness. These can be turned into to iterations and releases and agile applied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the difficulty for many in agile is the notion that the end &quot;capability&quot; emerges over time. This is actually the case in many DoD programs as well as NASA. The System Design and Development Milestone (SDD MS C) is the style of development where &quot;emergence&quot; is common. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Familarity with DoD procurement is the starting point for deploying agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4308" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-19T22:50:50.947" LastActivityDate="2012-07-19T22:50:50.947" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6180" CreationDate="2012-07-19T22:45:09.870" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bug trackers &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be used for other tasks, but you're better off using something designed for something more &lt;strong&gt;general purpose&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do these tasks involve other people?&lt;/strong&gt; If so, you're best using a tool with &lt;strong&gt;collaboration&lt;/strong&gt; built in. &lt;strong&gt;Trello&lt;/strong&gt; (made by the same folks as this site) is a nice basic, free option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If these tasks are &lt;strong&gt;just for you&lt;/strong&gt;, then you should use a system that feels natural and makes it easy for you to &lt;strong&gt;Collect, Organize, and Do&lt;/strong&gt; (the bare essentials of the Getting Things Done methodology).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2713" LastActivityDate="2012-07-19T22:45:09.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6197" CreationDate="2012-07-20T04:10:25.743" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few things I have tried, with varying degrees of success (but all certainly better than nothing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify the risks and state them as known constraints. When told to &quot;go&quot;, accept it, but make sure everyone understands the risks that are inherent in a under-analysed and under-planned project. &quot;We'll get right on it. Hopefully we can mitigate not knowing who the sub-contractor is and still end up with something workable.&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bring stakeholders (including users) front and center to test solutions (user experience analysis, user acceptance testing). You will (of course) be trying to plan these things early in the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bring the leaders together several times per week (every day if possible) for briefings. These can be as short as 15 minutes per day. This can be a touchbase to make sure everyone (esp. you) knows what everyone else is doing/has been told by the VP.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Track the rework and at projects-end have a lessons learned (ask the VP to attend). Have a clear breakdown of time and money for the re-work. At the same time, address UX analysis and UAT and make sure the VP understands how the solution was received.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3170" LastActivityDate="2012-07-20T04:10:25.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6206" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6225" CreationDate="2012-07-20T17:11:46.183" Score="18" ViewCount="32476" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team gets a pretty big corpus of requirement documents before each product... and by &quot;pretty big&quot; I mean roughly a hundred documents with 20-200 requirements a piece. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're moving to Jira for work/bug/sprint tracking (Agile team) and would like to keep requirements integrated in the Jira system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is a good tool for this? I'm eyeing Confluence, but don't see a good way to import all the req docs and provide linkable requirement objects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basic needs: link to requirements from issue, change the state of a requirement, see an overview of completed/in progress/obsoleted requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4313" LastEditorUserId="2340" LastEditDate="2012-12-06T08:21:55.887" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T12:15:41.603" Title="What's a good way to do requirements management in Jira?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="7" ClosedDate="2013-02-13T01:59:18.143" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6199" CreationDate="2012-07-20T18:30:07.650" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many excellent points are raised in other answers. Keep in mind that doing agile development really well mandates a culture shift. Everyone needs to buy in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For agile development, as envisioned in the Agile Manifesto, to succeed in the large, gov't project space, the procurement process would have to change. As Greg points out - &quot;you're spending the public's money&quot; so procurement rules must be obeyed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's a really tough nut to crack which is why I've avoided the federal government space for years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4314" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-20T20:06:11.863" LastActivityDate="2012-07-20T20:06:11.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6199" CreationDate="2012-07-20T19:37:15.673" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently work with DHS defining how agile will be adopted across the department.  We created our basic framework in a couple of months and there are now several level 1 and 2 (ie large multi million dollar) projects that are following it.  As part of that, we have had the opportunity to chat with several DoD folks (and to join the SEI group doing research at the DoD on agile procurement) and they are executing in an agile fashion.  They are incorporating some of the open source movement as well in forge.mil.  The procurement and systems engineering practices and processes came out of bending metal and were adopted to software initially.  Now there are at least a couple of schools of thought moving through the existing governance.  First is to rewrite and second is to interface.  While there is a movement to rewrite, it has not yet come to fruition.  Interfacing with governance is a more common practice.  Figuring out the proper places to run agile within the program, but be able to report out as needed for procurement functions.  The project I am working on now does exactly that and has been appluaded for the ways that we are using agile to comply with the procurement processes and been approved for all of the traditional &quot;gates&quot; while executing on the project in an agile fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4315" LastActivityDate="2012-07-20T19:37:15.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6197" CreationDate="2012-07-20T22:26:02.987" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Document, document, document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way to survive this type of sponsor is to document EVERYTHING, and then track it all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Presumably you have an original scope, budget and schedule, or a set of requirements. Start tracking the burn of the budget and showing where more is eaten up due to re-work, miscommunication, unclear direction, etc. You're right in that he doesn't understand the value of a PM, but there are ways to subtly educate him. Show him where overruns are, or where you could have saved money (and consequently made him look good) throughout the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And make sure your team understands how managing a project works, so they understand how critical it is that they let know of conversations with the sponsor. You can't stop him from talking to them, but you can get them to let you know if he does. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-07-20T22:26:02.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6197" CreationDate="2012-07-20T23:42:25.493" Score="2" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Make All Work Visible&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With issues like this, I like to reach into my agile toolbox and dust off my personal catch-phrase: &quot;No invisible work--&lt;em&gt;ever&lt;/em&gt;!&quot; Let's look at how this helps in an agile context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Re-work is Really Just &quot;Work&quot;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My sponsor is visionary but fails to communicate the vision clearly enough to allow implementation. This leads to a lot of unnecessary rework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No worries! The sponsor is solely responsible for the success (or failure) of the project. You can help the sponsor make the project an &lt;em&gt;eventual&lt;/em&gt; success by making sure that all rework is documented as &lt;em&gt;work&lt;/em&gt;. &quot;Rework&quot; doesn't get special treatment; if it's a task that consumes time, money, or project resources, then simply document it and add it to the backlog. The Product Owner will then need to prioritize the new work items, perhaps shifting other user stories on the backlog as a result, and the team will pick the new work off the queue whenever it reaches the front (top?) of the backlog and is ready to be pulled into the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will eventually lead to questions like &quot;Why is the project delivery date getting further out?&quot; This is good, and it will enable you to have a discussion about process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the process works for the sponsor, then the process &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; fine. Even if the process is sub-optimal, if the sponsor breaks the process, the sponsor gets to keep both pieces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Delegating Documentation of New Tasks&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My sponsor communicates with team leaders directly without keeping me (or other project team members) in the loop. This keeps me from managing change in a controlled manner, it is hard just to keep pace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your team leaders are handling change. That's great! Since they're already being delegated to by the sponsor, all you need to do is delegate them the additional responsibility to update the backlog with all new work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the sponsor talks to Joe, and suggests that an embiggening feature be added to the project, then Joe is responsible for adding the new user story to the backlog. If Joe doesn't want that responsibility, then he needs to refer the sponsor to the Product Owner or Scrum Master. However, Joe must &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; be allowed to obligate the entire team, nor to spend time working on &quot;invisible work.&quot; The work must be submitted &lt;em&gt;as work&lt;/em&gt; to the team, and visibly added to the work queue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at it this way: the process is only being bypassed because there's no clear benefit to Joe or to the sponsor for following it. If Joe or the sponsor realize that doing an end-run around the process means &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; work for them personally, then they will have an incentive to make the process work efficiently. On the other hand, if the process offers no value, then you should change the process until it does. That's a win/win for everyone!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;It's ALL Just Work&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My sponsor is a VP who honestly believes that some aspects of a successful project (e.g. having a continually justified business case) is his business and nobody else's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Awesome! Since your VP has identified a business need, he should be happy to allocate team resources to the task. That means that time spent collecting data for use cases, writing proposals and specifications, and other related tasks should be added to the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's work that the VP wants to do, then by all means add him to the team and let him pull user stories off the backlog into each sprint. If it's work that the VP wants to delegate, then the team will pull the tasks into a sprint when:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it's prioritized to the top of the backlog, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it fits within the upcoming sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since it's the Product Owner's job to prioritize the backlog, it's &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; job to refer the VP to the Product Owner if there's an issue with how the work is being prioritized. If the Product Owner agrees that updating a business case this sprint is more important than the sponsor's embiggening feature, then it's a value-based decision for the business. Everyone wins!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Cut Twice, Measure Never?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My sponsor is of the (all too common) type that wants work to start on a solution before an adequate plan (or even definition of what the solution will look like) is in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wonderful! Work for its own sake can be very rewarding. Of course, if it's invisible work, no one gets any credit for it, and no one faces any consequences for failing to plan or design even that minimal amount that agile processes need to succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The solution is the same as before: document all work. Building a new architecture because last month's solution was not well thought out? Add it as visible work. The unwise embiggening feature has caused the deaths of millions of your best customers? Add the cost of lawsuits, changing your identities, and moving to another country to your project's budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter what the result, good or bad, the &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; needs to have visible consequences to the entire organization. A good process will have net-positive natural consequences; a bad one will be significantly less wonderful for all involved. However, it all starts with making work &lt;em&gt;visible&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Add some sensible inspect-and-adapt points such as bi-weekly sprint reviews and retrospectives, and you may find that &quot;diving in&quot; is a strategy that works for your company. A little just-in-time planning can be very effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Measure once, cut once&quot; is the epitome of agility. You might even get away with &quot;cut once, measure once&quot; most of the time. However, &quot;cut twice, measure never&quot; is just silly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Summary&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of my response has been from an agile perspective, but you can ultimately do the same thing with any methodology. Just make the work visible!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, a good project manager is the shepherd of the project's &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt;, not the poster child for its ultimate success or failure. Your main job is to educate the organization--including the project's sponsor!--on the current process, and to help folks adapt the process (or implement new ones) in ways that enable them to get the job done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Protect the team. Educate management. Do whatever you need to do...but no invisible work, &lt;em&gt;ever&lt;/em&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-07-20T23:42:25.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3611" CreationDate="2012-07-22T00:30:31.717" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have someone work together with the developer that is taking a vacation a week before he takes off. That way, the one that stays can continue work without any interruption. As a matter of fact, take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://availagility.co.uk/tag/swarming/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;swarming&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules/pair.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pair programming&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4320" LastActivityDate="2012-07-22T00:30:31.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6214" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-22T05:32:28.267" Score="-8" ViewCount="283" Body="&lt;p&gt;Blogs related to project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1983" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-23T14:42:28.833" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T14:42:28.833" Title="Project management blogs" Tags="&lt;untagged&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2012-07-24T02:59:55.657" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-07-22T06:35:57.720" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6206" CreationDate="2012-07-22T06:13:59.993" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.optimizory.rmsis.plugin.jira-rmsis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;RMsis&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Key points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is built to manage large number of Requirements within JIRA ecosystem. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has reasonably good capabilities in terms of JIRA Integration / linking with JIRA Issues / Traceability.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Requirement states can be set and you can use filters to get an overview of the state of the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Supports versions / change control and requirement Baselines.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTE: I am affiliated with this product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4321" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-22T06:19:07.913" LastActivityDate="2012-07-22T06:19:07.913" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1102" CreationDate="2012-07-22T07:33:19.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, some stakeholder analysis has to be done. in case of negative stakeholders, it is important to understand what it is their influence on the project. I have found this analysis in &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B004FEF6LA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Lazy Project Manager&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Peter Taylor. I believe it is a very simple, yet effective way to put things. So, for a stakeholder considering:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Power&lt;/strong&gt; on the project or in the organization&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Interest&lt;/strong&gt; in the Project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, typically, a negative stakeholder with a lot of interest and a lot of power must be handled very carefully. For this kind of stakeholders, things like involving them in the product design or asking for feedback on a very early phase of the project might be used.&#xA;However the most important step is &lt;strong&gt;understand why they are negative stakeholders&lt;/strong&gt;, i.e. what do they have specifically against the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For other stakeholders, the one with not so much interest in the Project but considerable Power or -the other way around- lot of interest but not much Power, a good communication management is usually sufficient.&#xA;For instance, let us send them a report on the project -say- once every two weeks, or, even better, let's take the time to meet them personally and do a short report personally.&#xA;Sometimes much better than a dry E-mail in those cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other negative stakeholders, with less power and less interest, can of course be ignored, saving our time for most important tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4322" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-29T10:17:51.563" LastActivityDate="2012-07-29T10:17:51.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6214" CreationDate="2012-07-22T20:24:11.567" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;General Project Management&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pawel Brodzinski on Software Project Management&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A blog about software project management&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.brodzinski.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mark Phillips Project Management Blog&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A blog about project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vertabase.com/blog/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.vertabase.com/blog/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-07-22T20:24:11.567" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-07-22T20:24:11.567" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6214" CreationDate="2012-07-22T20:28:52.073" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Agile Focused Project Management&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Erik Willeke's Blog - Rediscovering the Obvious&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Blog about agile processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ericwilleke.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ericwilleke.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Agile Buddy Blog&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A blog about simplifying agile project management&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.agilebuddy.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.agilebuddy.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-07-22T20:28:52.073" CommentCount="4" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-07-22T20:28:52.073" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6186" CreationDate="2012-07-22T21:44:08.503" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Market research, analysis, and surveillance for high performing products and trends, various surveys and focus groups. This comes down to basic research, risk analysis, and product pro forma. Ask the customer what they want. That said, some of the highest performing products were from those trend setting companies that told us what we wanted and needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-07-22T21:44:08.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2091" CreationDate="2012-07-23T02:52:00.533" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In several different PMP related classes, the instructors pointed out that only two documents are described as registers - the Stakeholder Register and the Risk Register. According to several people, the term &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;implies&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; that contents of those two documents where intended to be handled differently and that language was proposed for the 4th addition that the information on these two documents were supposed to be kept private. However, the actual &quot;privacy&quot; language was not included. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is only 2nd hand hearsay, unfortunately. As far as I can tell, the PMPBoK is quiet on whether or not risk information should be shared or not shared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if the customer is also a project sponsor and part of the overall managing group of the project, then they should be informed as any other project sponsor would be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T02:52:00.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6221" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6222" CreationDate="2012-07-23T14:26:40.577" Score="4" ViewCount="2451" Body="&lt;p&gt;We finished planning a project a month ago and since then have had four formal changes pushing out start dates to the latest possible. Scope change isn't a factor, rather the root cause appears to be a general lack of resources for all the projects the different functional units are assigned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to figure out a way to avoid having so many project changes when the scope of the project isn't changing, it just seems like a lot of unnecessary effort. A couple of alternatives that I can think of are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define schedules based off of Late Start dates rather than the MS Project default of early start date. The pro here is that it is simple to interpret (only one date is visible to stakeholders) and reflects the likely reality; the con is that there is a reduced tolerance for delay as more tasks will get on the critical path and there is a human tendency to not start work before you &quot;have to&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define schedules with a range of possible start dates (Early to Late Starts). The pro here is that it gives more leverage to push the team to start work before the latest possible date; the con is that I am pretty confident at least some in project oversight positions will have a hard time buying into date ranges and I'm not sure people will actually start work before the Late Start date. (As an aside, I've used date ranges to report predicted deliverable completion, which worked well but I don't think I've ever had anything finish before the latest possible date....)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My goal is to get the schedule closer to what the end reality is most likely to be on the first iteration. Are these viable approaches? What other solutions would meet my goals? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-23T19:41:35.437" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T19:41:35.437" Title="How to manage a project schedule based on Late Start dates?" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6221" CreationDate="2012-07-23T18:00:05.103" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is risk management.  The same logic goes into determining your target start date as what goes into your target timeline and budget.  Based on your risk assessment, you have to draw a line in the sand and say this project is going to start on this date.  The early start and late start date for the rest of your work package network is calculated based on your target durations and your predecessor-successor logic.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you would analyze this as you do with all areas of uncertainty.  That is, under your best case, what is the earliest date the project has likelihood of starting; under your worst case, what is the latest date the project has likelihood of starting; and under your most likely case, what is the most likely date.  Once you understand your probabilistic distribution of the possible start dates, you can draw that line in the sand based on your level of risk aversion.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you choose, that is the date that is baselined in your schedule.  If you get delayed, you DO NOT reschedule the rest of your baseline.  This becomes a source of variance to which you manage, applying techniques where you can to bring your dates back in line.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T18:00:05.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6223" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-23T18:18:08.007" Score="17" ViewCount="36806" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm transitioning from a Project Manager to a Scrum Master, and I need to come up with some examples of SMART goals for the new role. The goals are for my Annual Performance Reviews where I will be assessed on 4 goals. As a project manager, I could say something like &quot;I will lead and execute X projects on time and in full with 95% satisfaction.&quot; What goals would be appropriate for a Scrum Master role?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4327" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-07-24T15:03:55.747" LastActivityDate="2020-06-30T19:52:25.563" Title="What SMART goals can I set for myself as a new Scrum Master?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;performance&gt;&lt;goals&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6206" CreationDate="2012-07-23T23:23:23.900" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider Jama Contour.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contour has a direct integration with JIRA.  This integration connects business teams responsible for product requirements and planning with development teams responsible for implementation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking to your &quot;basic&quot; needs, Contour can exchange information with JIRA to allow linking of the requirement to the issue.  It can adjust the &quot;state&quot; of a requirement based on the input from JIRA.  Allows for filters and reports to see requirements from different angles like status (completed/in progress/obsoleted) of requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can learn more about the integration here:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jamasoftware.com/contour/jira-connector.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.jamasoftware.com/contour/jira-connector.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4328" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T23:23:23.900" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6206" CreationDate="2012-07-24T08:17:21.717" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;We do this the other way around:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Requirements are handled in confluence (the wiki part of the atlassian suite).&#xA;In Jira, for each requirement, one or more Epics/Userstories are created, but only for the next 2 or 3 milestone releases.&#xA;Back linking from jira into confluence is done with a simple HTML link (confluence does autolinking if you cut and paste a URL) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After these are created, a reference to the jira issue is added to the wiki page.&#xA;This link, called a gadget, will show the current issue status, and provide a direct link into jira.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Works quite nice, but it is limited in the way of having a &quot;dashboard&quot; overview of all requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We like this setup because it keeps the backlog in jira relativly free from items which might, or might not, be tackled in the next 6 to 12 months. For us, this is good enough, maybe other tools are better, or more deeply integrated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3397" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T08:17:21.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6223" CreationDate="2012-07-24T14:59:09.813" Score="16" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Deconstruction of the Project Manager Goal&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a project manager, I could say something like &quot;I will lead and execute X projects on time and in full with 95% satisfaction.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Setting aside whether this sort of goal really fits the SMART criteria even for a traditional project manager role, it is not appropriate for a Scrum Master role. Here are some reasons why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A Scrum Master provides process/framework leadership to the team, but does not &quot;lead projects.&quot; The latter implies a form of command-and-control that is antithetical to the Scrum framework.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A Scrum Master does not &quot;execute&quot; anything. (Neither does a traditional project manager, for that matter.) The &lt;em&gt;team&lt;/em&gt; delivers the functional increments.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;With agile methodologies, increments are either &quot;done&quot; or &quot;not done.&quot; You can't provide partial completion, and by extension you can't provide partial satisfaction. As a result, terms like &quot;95% satisfaction&quot; should be replaced by more concrete measures of &quot;done.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Some Role-Oriented Suggestions for a Scrum Master&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some Scrum Master goals I've used for myself, cast as SMART goals. Perhaps they will be relevant to you in your new role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I will consistently encourage the team to keep the daily scrum to 15 minutes or less every day, and will carefully review how the meeting is handled if it exceeds 15 minutes more than once per sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I will strive for 100% visibility of all user stories, both from the product backlog and the sprint backlog, during each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I will ensure that &lt;em&gt;zero&lt;/em&gt; new work enters the sprint backlog from outside the team during a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I will request that the Product Owner terminate the sprint immediately and reboot Sprint Planning whenever the defined sprint goal cannot be met.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I will actively encourage team members to use the daily scrum as a self-directed task coordination meeting, and will measure my failure rate by how many times two or more team members look at me simultaneously during the scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are my personal top five, but you can either adapt them to suit yourself, or use them as a guideline for developing your own criteria. I would certainly recommend using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; as a guiding principle, and focusing on your ability to communicate about &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; when setting goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, Scrum is all about visibility and enabling self-directed teams. As a result, your goals should certainly focus on communications and people more than anything else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T14:59:09.813" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6230" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6232" CreationDate="2012-07-25T18:04:15.407" Score="24" ViewCount="18731" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my job, we're having a Scrum of Scrums meeting where all the Scrum Masters get together. This meeting is turning into a boring meeting where everyone gives their status update. I'm trying to make the Scrum of Scrums meeting more proactive, where Scrum Masters will be more involved with other Scrum Masters, and where it is more of a time for Scrum Masters to call out dependencies on other teams and agree upon a solution to remove those dependencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4337" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-01-21T21:07:03.450" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T22:55:05.940" Title="How to make Scrum of Scrums meetings more productive?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;scrum-of-scrums&gt;&lt;process-scaling&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6230" CreationDate="2012-07-25T20:09:51.940" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggests to change how the Scrum of Scrum meeting is facilitated. Instead of talking about usual stuff and about the &lt;em&gt;three questions&lt;/em&gt;, I would focus only on the following key points and have a discussion about them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which team is going to deliver today&lt;/strong&gt;: Here other teams shall know that something new (package, code etc.) will arrive at their desk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there a mentionable change in the burn-down charts&lt;/strong&gt;: Another indicator that a team will receive something earlier or later than expected.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any change in the backlog&lt;/strong&gt;: Again, an important global change.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is to &lt;strong&gt;focus only on those things which affect other teams&lt;/strong&gt;. In order to do it effectively, the teams shall discuss what to bring to the Scrum of Scrum meetings. It shouldn't be something the ScrumMaster finds out. If the team has nothing to say, that the SM shall say that there is nothing to add to the meeting. If it happens on multiple occasions, then something is going on at the team level, which is worth checking out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, there is something else which is worth checking out. &lt;strong&gt;How come that Agile people turn their own meeting into a status meeting?&lt;/strong&gt; Don't get me wrong, our ScrumMasters do it all the time, but you may be able to find a good reason and fix it. We still don't know why they do it, and neither do they.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2010/12/daily-stand-up-variations/&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; I blogged about some daily stand-up variants, you may find something useful there too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-26T04:09:34.540" LastActivityDate="2012-07-26T04:09:34.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6230" CreationDate="2012-07-26T13:03:02.757" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our team co-ordination meeting was getting really stale too so we did a few things to try and improve it which seem to have worked pretty well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We focus our team co-ordination meeting around a board, similar to&#xA;team standups.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each team has a swim lane and puts a card up stating what they're&#xA;working on now and next.  This gives teams an opportunity to question&#xA;each other when there is a dependency between them which is our&#xA;primary reason for running the session.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We track actions that have been taken by teams on the board and&#xA;review them each week.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have a process in place for escalating to the senior team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anyone can come but a senior developer from each team &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; be&#xA;present.  We introduced this because we were finding other team&#xA;members lacked the technical understanding of our platform to really&#xA;identify where teams were going to cause each other problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We keep cards for the previous 4 weeks on the board to provide a&#xA;quick reference for what people have been working on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/x0HAU.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Board Example&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above is an example of our board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-26T22:51:04.460" LastActivityDate="2012-07-26T22:51:04.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="29" CreationDate="2012-07-26T21:41:43.363" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working as a CTO, and we take projects on fixed price. Even when the client wants the price on hourly rate, he/she expects a cost estimation with deadline, eventually making it fixed price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I have teams in India too, we do projects from $500 and above. Now, Agile Scrum is philosophy and science both, and it means that we can use it by modulating its main parameters, that is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Involving Client in developing SRS (Software Requirements Specification) and charging him/her for that other than the development cost. DURING COMMUNICATION (pre sales) explain to him/her that if she/he feels that this going over her/his budget then wait until she/he can afford it. If not, tell him/her the features which are not important and remove them. Trust me, when you do that with honesty, he/she will come to you and only you when she/he has the money to do it, but do tell her/him that rate might increase in this many days, as your development cost might change.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Everything agreed you start development as per SRS. Make the Short one liners of complete SRS and allocate daily tasks to team. Ask them what will be complete in next 15 days, 7 days and today.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have daily meetings with what are the tasks in hand today, and we are going to finish everything today. Then ask each developer to smoke test it, and then check each others code on completion of a module, as defined in SRS.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Get it tested by QA. Define test cases. Once the issues are there, allocate people to resolve those. Developers tend to relax; keep them on high alert always.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Few more things, add time for R&amp;amp;D as developers are not Gods, Keep margins for issues, developers falling sick, and testing, UAT, and making the site live.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have delivered projects in time and have done so successfully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4345" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-07-29T06:24:02.907" LastActivityDate="2013-07-29T06:24:02.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6206" CreationDate="2012-07-27T16:04:48.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hi Hydrangea and Hulbert,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm from zAgile, the creators of the open source Wikidsmart platform that handles software engineering tool / ALM integration. Wikidsmart includes pre-built solutions to handle Requirements Management, Test Case Management &amp;amp; Automation and more, from within Confluence and integrated with JIRA. There is an import available so that you can pull in existing requirements (for example via a CSV file) from other systems. I can connect you with customers if you want to learn more about real world, first-hand experiences too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the recorded webinar from yesterday about Requirements Management.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7mEHZ1fI5E&amp;amp;feature=plcp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7mEHZ1fI5E&amp;amp;feature=plcp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-andrew&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4347" LastActivityDate="2012-07-27T16:04:48.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6235" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-27T23:33:38.400" Score="4" ViewCount="959" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been a developer for awhile. Recently, I got promoted within my team. Now I am responsible for application design and documentation, and am thinking of following the Scrum methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are starting a new project. As I am new to Design and Documentation, I am curious to know how many types of documents are required and in what order these documents must be written. Are there any references to required documents that I can look at?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3653" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-07-28T22:59:53.107" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T15:59:28.713" Title="What artifacts does Scrum require for application design and systems documentation?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;design&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1646" CreationDate="2012-07-28T20:26:48.913" Score="5" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Defining &quot;Project&quot; from a Practical Point of View&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I'm speaking as a project manager, a &quot;project&quot; is a formalized process with a defined goal and an attendant methodology. One can argue about how well-defined the goal should be, how formal the process ought to be, or how rigorous the applied methodology may be, but you can cut through a lot of fog by saying that any project isn't being &lt;em&gt;actively managed&lt;/em&gt; to complete a finite goal is simply not a project from a PM perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, ongoing technical support would not generally be considered a discrete project. On the other hand, forming a team tasked with delivering an embiggening feature for your therblig generator by the third quarter of next year fits the PM-oriented definition of a project rather well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;A Flexible Project Still Has Finite Goals&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original question states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Google search...isn't constrained by date or funding or specific deliverables...[and] R&amp;amp;D projects don't suit the definition well. Same with many startup projects which change rapidly along with their constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, &quot;Google search&quot; is not a project. It's a product line, a mathematical endeavor, and a business model. However, I'm sure that Google has many search-related projects, including R&amp;amp;D projects, that are being actively managed internally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, thinking of R&amp;amp;D as &quot;not a project&quot; is a mistaken viewpoint. R&amp;amp;D projects &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; have goals, even if the goals are exploratory in nature. I've never heard of an infinitely open-ended R&amp;amp;D project with no objectives, time or resource constraints, or a complete lack of process or methodology. In fact, research by its very nature requires rigorous methodology if the results are to be meaningful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, any project can be redefined, refactored, or re-envisioned along the way while still clearly being a project in the PM sense of the word. Agile projects are explicitly designed to do this through the application of a defined methodology and various inspect-and-adapt processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lack of flexibility in delivering business value should &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; be the hallmark of a project, although when &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/tech-manager/study-68-percent-of-it-projects-fail/661&quot;&gt;68% of projects fail&lt;/a&gt; (often through ossified processes, in my personal experience) one could certainly be excused for confusing inflexibility with &quot;project management.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-07-28T20:26:48.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6235" CreationDate="2012-07-28T22:46:58.223" Score="8" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Scrum Does Not Prescribe Development Practices&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is not a development methodology; it's a project management methodology. The Scrum process holds no specific answers for you from a requirements standpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Scrum Provides a Framework for Your Questions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, Scrum holds that the questions you are asking are part of the self-organizing that your team must do to be successful, including defining sprint goals and your team's &quot;definition of done.&quot; As a result, you will need to look to your team (specifically including your Product Owner) to determine what specific design and documentation artifacts you need to produce to meet your sprint goals, and the prioritized order assigned to each of those artifacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;See Also&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumalliance.org/learn_about_scrum/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum Alliance - What Is Scrum?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28development%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum (development)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2012-10-29T15:59:28.713" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T15:59:28.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6230" CreationDate="2012-07-29T02:52:27.067" Score="7" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Scrum-of-Scrums Defined&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of books on scaling Scrum, and I'm sure there are other definitions out there, but I'm going to share my personal definition with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A scrum-of-scrums standup is a &lt;em&gt;dependency-coordination meeting&lt;/em&gt; between scrum teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, a scrum-of-scrums should have a separate Scrum Master who isn't wearing the Scrum Master hat for another team. That person should be the referee who blows the whistle whenever the meeting begins to slide off the agile track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Human Kanbans&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of each Scrum Master attending the scrum-of-scrums standup as a human kanban. That person's job is to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Notify the other teams that a value-stream work element is ready to be pulled from that Scrum Master's team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Alert the other other teams that some work element is occupying an inter-team work-in-progress slot, and is stuck inside the Scrum Master's team because a defect or process bottleneck has been discovered.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, this &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be a short coordination and commitment meeting between Scrum Masters, rather than a status pull, review, or retrospective. However, without a designated Scrum Master to act as a process referee, and without a strong organizational commitment to inspect-and-adapt at the scrum-of-scrums level, meetings like the one described in the question are all too common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-07-29T02:52:27.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6235" CreationDate="2012-07-29T16:26:54.473" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;(I started this as a comment, maybe it should be just a comment)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;How detailed it should be&quot;... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the scrum answer would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;as simple as it can be so that all parties know what to expect from&#xA;  each other....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this does not help you much right now in the beginning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile is based on continous improuvement, and that's not only about code, but also about how code is created, documented. CI is also about the comunication in the team and between stakeholders. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is about finding the way with the least management overhead for your team to deliver results that satisfy your customer. Because this varies between teams, customers and countries, scrum does not give any details about how documents are created, only that &lt;strong&gt;at least 3 documents be created&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3397" LastActivityDate="2012-07-29T16:26:54.473" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1102" CreationDate="2012-07-29T17:10:45.807" Score="2" Body="&lt;h3&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Negative stakeholders&quot; are usually symptomatic of a process that lacks visibility, or lacks an objective methodology for evaluating project goals from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_thinking&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;systems-thinking&lt;/a&gt; perspective. Not to worry; CodeGnome catch-phrase #432 is: &lt;em&gt;There's an agile process for that!&amp;trade;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Who Owns Stakeholder Management?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, stakeholder management is the responsibility of the Product Owner. The Wikipedia entry on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28development%29#Core_roles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;core Scrum roles&lt;/a&gt; has this to say (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner &lt;strong&gt;represents the stakeholders&lt;/strong&gt; and is the voice of the customer. He or she is accountable for ensuring that the team delivers value to the business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Loosely translated, this means it is the Product Owner's job to actively manage stakeholder expectations, prioritize their requirements in accordance with organizational needs, and (by implication) to create sufficient buy-in for the project to succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master and the Team certainly have a part to play in all this through articulating process, providing user-visible functionality to stakeholders at every Sprint Review, and by providing stakeholders the management levers they require (through the Scrum process itself and through the services of the Product Owner) to effectively manage the project in a change-embracing way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the responsibility for managing stakeholders does not belong to the team or the Scrum Master. That responsibility is clearly defined as the job of the Product Owner, and by extension the project sponsors or steering committees that have imbued the Product Owner with sufficient authority to run the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Some Product Owner Tools&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Buy-in is more of an art than a science, but some agile or traditional tools for creating stakeholder buy-in based on organizational value include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Theme Screening&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Theme Scoring&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Relative Weighting of Epics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Success Sliders (e.g. constraints-based decision-making)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Traditional ROI calculations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Theory of Constraints discussions as they apply to the organization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time-to-market analysis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Budget, budget, budget.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those who like tools, the folks at Mountain Goat Software have some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;excellent online tools&lt;/a&gt; that you can use for free, or can use as a conceptual starting point for other quantitative ranking approaches to stakeholder requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Informed Consent vs. Enthusiastic Backing&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my personal experience, making sure everyone's vertical interests are at least &lt;em&gt;assessed&lt;/em&gt; by the project by a formal, documented methodology (when the methodology is generally agreed to be politically impartial) is the key to success. Even if individual stakeholders aren't happy with the &lt;em&gt;specific results&lt;/em&gt; of how their individual interests are prioritized by the organization as a whole, they are generally satisfied when they can see that the &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; takes their concerns into account and that they will see direct or indirect benefits from the project's overall value stream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that the prioritization is both visible and transparent to the stakeholders is the key. For example, as much as it may be important to &lt;em&gt;my&lt;/em&gt; team that a therblig embiggening function is added, I will be more likely to buy into the immediate value of a proposed lead-into-gold transmutation feature. The fact that the embiggening feature I've championed is still added to the backlog, albeit further down the list, ensures that my concerns aren't being ignored--they're just being put &lt;em&gt;into context&lt;/em&gt; based on the needs of the organization as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-07-29T17:10:45.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3540" CreationDate="2012-07-30T16:01:09.000" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’m very satisfied with Wrike’s Outlook addin. It just takes the interactive task view from the app and inserts it into Outlook. So your emails can be turned from simple “letters” into interactive tasks that are updated in real time and you can adjust task details or comment on tasks right from Outlook. As I’m quite a heavy Outlook user, this add-in saved me lots of time on switching between apps and I can track the work progress while I’m looking through my incoming emails&#xA;Here are more details: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wrike.com/blog/New-Outlook-Addin-Turns-Your-Emails-Live-Tasks-and-Discussions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.wrike.com/blog/New-Outlook-Addin-Turns-Your-Emails-Live-Tasks-and-Discussions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4355" LastActivityDate="2012-07-30T16:01:09.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6244" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-31T16:05:23.417" Score="14" ViewCount="2620" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say you have three projects. Two of these projects are end-user facing products (Project A and B). The third is an infrastructure project (Project I) where all the work will never be directly delivered to the end user. Instead the end-user facing projects will consume the infrastructure in order to be able to deliver there projects. All three projects are running under agile development and have their own, unique backlogs and reporting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does Project A reflect a story from Project I in its backlog? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this would be a dependency story, I'm just not sure the best way to reflec it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shows as a zero point story in project A's backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Just listed as a dependency to whatever Project A end-user story relies on it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some other way? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-07-08T10:08:02.343" LastActivityDate="2019-07-09T01:03:59.113" Title="Tracking external dependency stories" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;&lt;dependencies&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6244" CreationDate="2012-07-31T16:34:11.197" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few approaches you might consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1)  Don't start Project A or B until sufficient work (or the whole of) Project I is complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2)  Since Project I has no external customer value instead of doing it as a separate project, have Projects A and B pick up those elements of it they need when they need them for the customer facing work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Define the interface upfront.  If, for example, part of Project I is to create a service that A and B will consume, define what that service needs upfront and ensure that any changes to the interface are communicated between teams so they can adjust as they go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT - expanding on 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This works where the customer facing teams don't need the whole of infrastructure work but will just consume parts of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Infrastructure team is working on an account management system.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customer Service team is working on a system for customers to raise&#xA;support tickets.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finance team is working on a system to allow customers to see their&#xA;account balance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Customer service team agrees that the infrastructure team will provide an API that allows them to pass a customers email address in and will return some data about the customer account, conforming to an agreed schema that contains information about the customer account allowing them to route the ticket to the right internal team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The finance team agree that infrastructure will give them a pipe delimited flat file each night, delivered to a certain location via SFTP with a list of all account numbers and their associated balance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All teams now have a clear understanding of the interfaces between systems and can work under those assumptions.  The key with this approach is communicating if agreed dates won't be hit or if any team needs to change the interface for any reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastEditorUserId="1185" LastEditDate="2012-08-02T10:18:31.977" LastActivityDate="2012-08-02T10:18:31.977" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5089" CreationDate="2012-07-31T19:34:30.810" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One&lt;/strong&gt; - estimation - project managers with IT background have good experience and are better at estimation of IT project-simple. If my PM is not from IT I could get away with saying I need 5 days to do a simple java program that does I/O which is fulla-crap. Now it's true you need to know only when managing people and not during an interview, but what if you are asked these types of questions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main thing you need to know if you are not from IT background is to &lt;strong&gt;bone up the knowledge on the tools/practices that the company has&lt;/strong&gt;. That combined with your extensive PM experience will give you a better shot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not many CEOs come writing/developing code, thats because its lot better than managing/making people work and being behind them in making the project stick to schedule. Thats where people who could '&lt;strong&gt;communicate&lt;/strong&gt;' come in. They were the not-so-great nerdy programmers but knew how to answer the same questions asked by different types of people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last advise could be -again- knowing the domain/technology the company uses- whats it's strength, and weakness. Like for example using a multi-partitioned database for OLTP is a 'no-no'. You don't need to know how to partition a db, but &lt;strong&gt;knowing their strengths and weaknesses will make you understand the language the IT guys under you would speak&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2121" LastActivityDate="2012-07-31T19:34:30.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6247" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-01T03:20:05.493" Score="15" ViewCount="4105" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a project manager of a development team. Oftentimes, the deadline for the  development project is not met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;About my team:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have 4 people in my team, and they are older than me.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sometimes I feel uncomfortable instructing them because they are older than me&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 people are only part-time freelance workers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;About my project:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm developing a Web application using PHP; it's a recruitment site.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have 1 month to finish that project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;About me:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm a new project manager. I was a developer before this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My job is to make the schedule, create the project flow, and create the project environment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problem:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deadlines are missed because we're adding many functions in that Web application.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have people with not-so-good skills for that project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The people who are freelancers will only have a little time to work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried talking to my team about the missed deadlines, and they say they need more time to study the development environment. We choose to use &lt;a href=&quot;http://fuelphp.com/&quot;&gt;FuelPHP&lt;/a&gt; as our development framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How should I communicate with them so they can follow my instructions?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to giving spirit for my team?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What should I do with the people who don't have good skills?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks to the people who have given me suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4363" LastEditorUserId="4422" LastEditDate="2012-08-26T06:55:10.250" LastActivityDate="2012-08-26T06:55:10.250" Title="What Should a Project Manager Do If Development is Not Completed On Time?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;deadline&gt;&lt;communication-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6247" CreationDate="2012-08-01T05:51:03.740" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was a new project manager, I had trouble separating my previous role as a developer from my new role as a project manager. What compounded my problem was that it was a gradual move, as the project I worked on started out as just me as a developer, and eventually led to me working as a project manager and leaving the technical details to the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Developers Choosing Technologies&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've tried talking to my team about the missed deadlines, and they say they need more time to study the development environment. We choose to use FuelPHP as our development framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention that your team is a bit inexperienced and that your team is using a framework that they may or may not have chosen. Since they're older, it's possible that one or more of your team members are more experienced as developers but simply lack experience with this framework. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Experiment to see how experienced the team &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; is:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of choosing the framework yourself, involve the team in the decision.  Since your job as a project manager involves documenting and making stakeholders aware of risks, the chosen framework represents a risk that the team could  eliminate, simply by choosing a framework that is both right for the project as well as for the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, as a project manager, creating the environment may not be your job. Instead, delegate this job to the team. This will allow you to focus on taking their estimates and creating and managing the schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Deadlines Missed Due to New Features:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like some stakeholder in the project keeps adding in new features. Is your team estimating these features? Are you extending the project deadline as a result? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone keeps trying to add new features, you'll want to discuss this with the client and your managers. They'll need to decide which is more important, a timely delivery, or a recruitment website with all of the bells and whistles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Part-Time Workers:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your schedule should take into consideration that not every team member is a Full Time Equivalent employee (FTE). Instead, when creating the schedule, you'll need to take this into consideration. For instance, if you have two freelancers who both work only 50% of the time that the full time employees do, then you have a total of 3 FTE employees. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your schedule goes over the deadline, the answer is simple. You must talk to the client and other stakeholders and do one of two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Extend the deadline.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cut non-essential features.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-08-01T05:51:03.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6249" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6251" CreationDate="2012-08-01T11:32:16.700" Score="16" ViewCount="398" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been chosen to be responsible for rolling out Scrum in my small 5 man software development team.  I am also a developer at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have experience being in a non-agile team and having it rolled out and I know Scrum favours interaction over process and documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My boss has just emailed me and said he wants me to fully document the whole Scrum process for him and the team - this is something that doesn't sound needed or useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team understands the basic process why do they need powerpoint presentations etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2012-08-02T21:26:22.160" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T04:14:14.467" Title="Should I provide my boss and team with documentation about the Scrum process?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6247" CreationDate="2012-08-01T12:55:12.603" Score="21" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1.How to communicate with them so they can be follow my instructions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team shouldn't be following your instructions, they should be following a plan that they contributed to and signed off on. As a PM your job isn't to do or manage technical work, it is to make sure that the people who are responsible for the doing and managing are following the plan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need are clear accountabilities for the deliverables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2.How to giving spirit for my team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Continuously engage them in the project from the start, keep them informed and make sure you listen to and work with them to resolve issues when they come up. Let them know why the project is important, what the business value and vision are. Work with them to plan the project rather than presenting them with something you came up with. Let them come up with estimates and present a feasible plan to the project sponsor. Then go back to the team to amend the plan if it is not acceptable. This is a lot of work up front but saves you problems on the back end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3.What should I do with the people who don't have good skills?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Account for this in your planning. Factor in extra time/resource costs in their deliverables to address the learning curve, more than the usual number of bugs, etc. Document this as a risk to schedule/budget/resources/quality/benefits and put it in front of your sponsor. If your project is high enough of a priority you could use this to get leverage to get more appropriate resources, or at least change project constraints to account for the resources you have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-08-01T12:55:12.603" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6249" CreationDate="2012-08-01T14:05:06.770" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Full disclosure: I am no Scrum expert, nor do I use Scrum in my daily activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I get what you are saying, though. What may be beneficial to your team is creating a presentation that goes through real examples, and real pitfalls associated with the process. You could make this much more engaging than a drab design document or checklist. If you are really getting pushed for more 'official' writing, see if your boss would foot the bill for some assigned reading of a popular Scrum book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I would say that if Scrum had &lt;em&gt;no need&lt;/em&gt; for documentation, there wouldn't be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1/186-1160079-2835265?url=search-alias%3Daps&amp;amp;field-keywords=scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;books on it on Amazon&lt;/a&gt; ;P&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4365" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-10-05T04:14:14.467" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T04:14:14.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6252" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6255" CreationDate="2012-08-01T16:37:34.330" Score="28" ViewCount="38187" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a cursory survey, they &lt;em&gt;appear&lt;/em&gt; extremely similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this the case? Other than Projects tending to be short-term and Products tending to be ongoing endeavours, is there a difference in the two?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, what are the differences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="167" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-08-01T20:49:29.023" LastActivityDate="2018-11-21T13:24:53.350" Title="What is the difference between Project and Product Management?" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2012-08-01T16:41:48.447" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Soul of a New Machine&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracy_Kidder&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tracy Kidder&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It chronicles the experiences of a computer engineering team racing to design a next-generation computer at a blistering pace under tremendous pressure. The machine was launched in 1980 as the Data General Eclipse MV/8000. The book won the 1982 National Book Award for Nonfiction[1] and a Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The work environment described in the book is in many ways opposite of what is taught in business schools. Instead of top-down management, many of the innovations are started at the grassroots level. Instead of management having to coerce labor to work harder, labor volunteers to complete the project on-time. The reason for this is that people will give their best when the work itself is challenging and rewarding. Many of the engineers state that, &quot;They don't work for the money&quot;, meaning they work for the challenge of inventing and creating. The motivational system is akin to the game of pinball, the analogy that if you win this round, you get to play the game again; that is, build the next generation of computers.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  A running theme in the book is the tension between engineering quality and haste: the engineers, challenged to bring a minicomputer to market on a very short timeframe, are encouraged to cut corners on design. Tom West describes his motto as &quot;Not everything worth doing is worth doing well,&quot; or &quot;If you can do a quick-and-dirty job and it works, do it.&quot;The engineers, in turn, complain that the team's goal is to &quot;put a bag on the side of the Eclipse&quot; — in other words, to turn out an inferior product in order to have it completed more quickly.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Tom West practices the '&quot;Mushroom Theory of Management&quot; — &quot;keeping them in the dark, feeding them shit, and watch them grow.&quot; That is, isolating the design team from outside influences and instead using the fear of the unknown to motivate the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="167" LastActivityDate="2012-08-01T16:41:48.447" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-08-01T16:41:48.447" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6191" CreationDate="2012-08-01T18:37:11.350" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do you calculate schedule compression ratio?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From McConnell's book, Rapid Development, he describes compression ratios from researches involving hundreds to thousands of projects. So I think you can't just calculate the compression ratio of one or two projects, as you can't know how much the project would cost without the compression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another method that he cites, is to make a specific research with the same problem, and give different priorities to five teams, and compare them, but again, it's just for research purposes. Maybe a more useful method that you can apply is to gather your company's historical data and match projects of about the same size and compare their schedules length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When and why would you do it? What does it tell you? What benefit does this bring to a project manager?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would do it to verify the effectiveness of new process or tools that are not well known or don't have enough data to prove its effectiveness, mainly with the &quot;silver bullet branded&quot; ones. The benefit is that you can assert by yourself if the new process/tool really fits well in your project, or if it does't justify its costs and should be avoided in future projects of the same kind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there heuristics with the the ratio that are to be generally followed?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. Compression ratio is not an exact number, you can't say that a practice will compress your schedule by 18.32%. It may have compressed 18% in one project, 5% in another and none at all in another one. Again, based on McConnell's book, mainly in the Best Practices chapter, he describes compression ratios (potential reduction from nominal schedule) as &lt;strong&gt;possibly&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;None (0%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fair (0%-10%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Good (10%-20%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Very Good (20%-30%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Excellent (30%+)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it's better you classify the ratio by these heuristic statements, rather than by numbers, as it shows the inexactness of the ratio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2352" LastActivityDate="2012-08-01T18:37:11.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6252" CreationDate="2012-08-01T20:54:05.790" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Projects don't have to be short-term; they can be long-term.  The only requirement for a project is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it must produce something, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it must have an end.  If it takes 2 years or 2 weeks to finish it can still be a project, and fall under the domain of the project manager.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to think of product managers as being a special case of the project manager, a role that does do some traditional project management functions, but with a very-heavy emphasis on the marketing side.  So if you think in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/&quot;&gt;PMI&lt;/a&gt; terms, you have your traditional knowledge areas (e.g. HR Management, procurement), but to be considered a product manager, you need to have a management plan for an extra knowledge area: marketing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4339" LastActivityDate="2012-08-01T20:54:05.790" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6252" CreationDate="2012-08-01T21:57:53.513" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;While they seem similar, there are distinct differences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product Management has to do with the 'product' itself - design, features, audience, pricing, marketing, profitability, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project Management focuses on delivering the product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example - The intended market needs to be researched - the act of researching (who to research, how to conduct, what info to gather) is product related. The 'hows' would be project related - is there a timeline, a set budget for research, specific resources, etc. Project management won't tell you how or what to research. It will manage the research 'process' once those other questions are answered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So product management has to do with the decisions about the product itself, project management has to do with the decisions about delivering the product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-08-02T00:34:44.807" LastActivityDate="2012-08-02T00:34:44.807" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5950" CreationDate="2012-08-02T10:36:34.363" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to keep it pretty simple. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An impediment is anything that blocks the team from doing work that is outside of the control of the team.  It's up to the leadership of the team to go out and influence/coerce/cajole the external party to help them get past their issue, or, to change your implementation to work around the blocker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4369" LastActivityDate="2012-08-02T10:36:34.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6249" CreationDate="2012-08-02T13:59:08.863" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would think it the same way as a requirement. When planning, everyone understands it, when implementing, all sorts of things can happen if you don't have a nice user story written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taken from one of the core practices of Kanban:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make Policies Explicit:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Until the mechanism of a process is made explicit it is often hard or impossible to hold a discussion about improving it. Without an explicit understanding of how things work and how work is actually done, any discussion of problems tends to be emotional, anecdotal and subjective. With an explicit understanding it is possible to move to a more rational, empirical, objective discussion of issues. This is more likely to facilitate consensus around improvement suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, when dealing with &lt;strong&gt;processes and requirements&lt;/strong&gt;, I think it's better to have it nicely written down somewhere, and never assume that what you think is what everyone else thinks. And remember that &lt;strong&gt;no team come up immediately as a Scrum (or agile) team&lt;/strong&gt;, it's needed some time until everyone interacts well with the process and start making documentations and other things obsolete, you can't just drop all docs next morning, even more if it's something new to your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2352" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2012-08-02T21:14:00.463" LastActivityDate="2012-08-02T21:14:00.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6249" CreationDate="2012-08-02T16:57:37.700" Score="3" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Defining the Correct Roles&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have been chosen to be responsible for rolling out Scrum in my small 5 man software development team. I am also a developer at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an inherent conflict of interest. The Scrum Master role is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28development%29#Core_roles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;core role&lt;/a&gt; that is deliberately distinct from being a member of the Team. In my personal experience, agile projects that do not make this distinction often flounder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Clarifying Goals and Objectives&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My boss has just emailed me and said he wants me to fully document the whole Scrum process for him and the team - this is something that doesn't sound needed or useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the spirit of Scrum, you need to &lt;em&gt;clarify&lt;/em&gt; the objective. My personal interpretation is that you are being asked to provide the team with some training on the Scrum process and its associated roles. However, you will only discover the true objective of the task by opening a dialog with your boss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be useful (and certainly very agile!) to create a user story for this particular task. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a functional manager,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I would like a developer to provide some initial Scrum training to the Team&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that we have a starting point for adapting the methodology to our environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A user story like this will make the manager's goal clear to the team, and provide some scope to the information that should be conveyed in the training. It may also help explain why the manager feels the training is needed in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most important of all, the user story will start a &lt;em&gt;conversation&lt;/em&gt; about what Scrum means to both the manager and the team. A two-way dialog is an essential part of Scrum; without that dialog, the team will miss out on the core value proposition of the Scrum process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2012-08-02T21:13:33.723" LastActivityDate="2012-08-02T21:13:33.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6247" CreationDate="2012-08-02T18:57:21.353" Score="10" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Redefine the Problem&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You list several problems that you believe make your projects late. Specifically, you said that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Deadlines are missed because we're adding many functions in that Web application.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;We have people with not-so-good skills for that project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The people who are freelancers will only have a little time to work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These may be legitimate risks or project issues, but they are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the real problem. The underlying problem is that your job as a project manager is to &lt;strong&gt;manage risk&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;provide project visibility&lt;/strong&gt; to senior management. On-time delivery is an &lt;em&gt;organizational&lt;/em&gt; responsibility, not yours alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When risks or process issues impact a project's schedule, your &lt;em&gt;primary&lt;/em&gt; job is to raise the visibility of those issues and the level of schedule risk to management so that they can make informed business decisions about how to proceed. That may mean fixing the process, canceling the project, or making changes to the project goal or team team composition. The decisions are ultimately theirs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Managing Risk&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a project manager, part of your job is to identify and manage risk. Here are some ways you can do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are missing deadlines because of scope creep, you need to manage project scope more proactively. No one can meet deadlines when the &quot;definition of done&quot; isn't well-defined.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your team doesn't have the required skills to complete the project, you need to request training or additional team resources from senior management. Making the request is &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; job. Providing the resources is &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; job.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Matrixed teams frequently have poor performance. Task-switching overhead, part-time resources, and unfunded mandates are not elements of a successful project. Again, it's your job to identify requirements, estimate resource needs, and  request a sufficient level of dedicated resources from management to accomplish the project's objectives.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be successful, you will need to clearly identify your role in the project's planning and ongoing management. In addition, you need to involve your organization's leadership appropriately to manage schedule risk in ways that make sense for the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-08-02T18:57:21.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6191" CreationDate="2012-08-02T21:03:25.617" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think of schedule compression as the elasticity of the work. If you have zero compression opportunities, you have no slack in the schedule. Anything along the critical path slips to the right, all the activities along that path slip to the right.&#xA;What the manager needs to know about schedule compression when asked &lt;em&gt;What is your schedule compression&lt;/em&gt; is &lt;em&gt;how much slack do you have?&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;This means, how much can work slip to the right before you start bumping up against the delivery date?&#xA;There are several things to realize&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Schedules with no slack or zero compression, are going to be late on day one. No task duration can be credible without schedule margin, since all duration numbers are random variables.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Knowing where in the you can slip and by how much and where you can't is not a &quot;numbers&quot; game, it is a hands on management process. The PM has to &quot;know&quot; where this will take place and what to do about it if it were ever to come true. This is the &quot;get to GREEN&quot; discussion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having specific ratios alone is not too meaningful, since all margin is dependent on the specifics of the project. Three weeks may be a huge amount of margin on a one year schedule and on another three weeks margin is the same as being late.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You must always have schedule margin. In the presence of random values for duration, effort, cost, and technical performance, naturally occurring variances are - just natural. It's like commuting to work on the freeway, no matter what your navigation computer says, it NEVER takes exactly that long. You always need a buffer, a margin for variance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The best heuristics are the experience of those planning the project. Past Performance is a good heuristic. &quot;How long did it take the last 4 times we did this, or something close to this?&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reference_class_forecasting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Reference Class Forecasting&lt;/a&gt; is another approach, where you build &quot;models&quot; of the thing you're trying to estimate. But estimating itself is a probability and statistics discipline, so just making guesses is probably not going to be too useful. &#xA;McConnell speaks to estimating so does Mike Cohn (but be careful about the overly simplified distribution curves, real curves are never symmetric). The work at USC on COCOMO II is also a very good place for software estimating models (&lt;a href=&quot;http://sunset.usc.edu/csse/research/COCOMOII/cocomo_main.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Center for Systems and Software Engineering&lt;/a&gt;). These type models are used in places where being late and over budget is not allowed - Defense Department procurement. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;So in the end think about that commute to the airport, how do you know how much time to allow for a one hour drive? In LA (60 minutes), in Denver, CO (45 minutes) in Gunnison, Colorado (5 minutes). It depends. This is the role of subject matter experts and estimating processes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5302" LastEditorUserId="2352" LastEditDate="2012-08-02T21:24:19.263" LastActivityDate="2012-08-02T21:24:19.263" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6247" CreationDate="2012-08-03T01:01:04.223" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great answers before mine!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me add this:  I see the biggest driver to your schedule woes is feature creep.  If you focus on nothing else, focus on this.  When features are added like this, you get a new timeline against which to measure your schedule performance.  If you are not enforcing an appropriate change process, then being on time is near impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other contributors about which you wrote, in my view, are quite normal.  These are sort of organic risks of all projects, ie., variable skill sets, variable resource allocation.  These are simply inputs into your estimation and risk processes, such that you build in the schedule you need and have some contingencies in reserves.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Schedule is ALWAYS variable.  Sometimes you'll be on time, others ahead of it, and still others behind it.  That is normal variability caused by common cause.  Trying to control that is futile.  Feature creep, however, is a disease on the project and it needs to get cured.  Change is good and definitely entertain new features, but build in the impacts to a new baseline schedule and budget.  Instead of one month, you get 1.5, or even 2 months...all of a sudden, your team is not late any more, or is late within a tolerated variance level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-08-03T01:01:04.223" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6263" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-03T03:56:41.250" Score="7" ViewCount="1008" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a new project manager, and I have the authority to accept new employees who are still on probation. I'm assigning points to people in the following categories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attitude&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Skills&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teamwork&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything else I should add?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, how can I measure attitude, skills, or teamwork? I'm still confused about how to make this decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4363" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-08-03T16:47:27.117" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T22:35:48.003" Title="How should a project manager assess probationary employees?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6263" CreationDate="2012-08-03T08:08:20.423" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The criteria you will use for assessment depend on what you, as a boss, value, on what's for you, as a boss, important. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may create a long list of them (communication, honesty, humor, transparency...) , but people will get confused, so I'd limit to few, like 5 or 7, choosing the most important for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion more important than a list itself, is what do you mean under each of these criteria, i.e. attitude. Think of providing some examples of behavior that you expect, to make sure that the person that will be assessed knows your expectations. For example for Attitude you may write: focuses on problems not people, is willing to hear other people's opinions and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you introduce criteria &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the probation period begins! Otherwise it doesn't make sense - it's like playing a game without rules and in the end someone tells you that you have lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal advice: if you feel confused while making the decision, it means it's wrong one. &#xA;You may want to read those posts about gut feeling recruitment: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2011/04/gut-feeling-recruitment.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gut Feeling Recruitment&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2011/04/gut-feeling-recruitment-isnt-perfect.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gut Feeling Recruitment Isn’t Perfect&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2012-10-28T22:35:48.003" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T22:35:48.003" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6263" CreationDate="2012-08-03T10:44:36.303" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the goal to remove the bottom 10%, 15% of those on probation or is this simply a process everyone goes through before becoming a full employee?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the former, then you need measurable, hard criteria, not soft ones you listed.  It needs to be tied to what they do, something you can count and measure, and then the bottom 10% gets whacked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the latter, then I would suggest you have NO criteria, and by that I mean no special criteria other than the same ones you use for all employees for year-end reviews.  They have already passed your hiring criteria to get through the door, notwithstanding the extremely flawed interviewing process.  To know whether a candidate is a total right fit is going to be more an art than a science.  It's a 'you_know_when_you_know' kind of thing.  And in some cases, their performance at task is good but they are simply not a fit in the culture, which sort of degrades their overall performance, right?  Can you put a point to that?  Maybe, but I suspect your gut will be screaming the answer more than a point will show.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But here is the risk you need to mitigate: your personal biases.  These are very hard to control.  And the more you think you are unbiased, the more you are.  While you might be the final decision maker on this, you may want to use a panel approach, where two or three others also weigh in with their findings.  This will help keep your biases checked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  As I thought more about this, I think I need to mention the HR Department's perspective on things.  You MUST check-in with them to learn what the formal things are you need to accomplish.  Likely, you will have to conduct a formal employee review, just like the normal year-end reviews everyone else goes through, and rate the employee.  HR will need documentation to support removing an employee.  So while this might be a gut decision for you, your normal criteria for reviews will need to be used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2012-08-03T11:07:22.510" LastActivityDate="2012-08-03T11:07:22.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6263" CreationDate="2012-08-03T11:18:58.023" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I commend your attempt to &quot;objectify&quot; the evaluation.  Setting up the criteria improves the chance that you'll treat everyone fairly and reduce creeping bias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've got some misgivings about &quot;attitude&quot;.  I'm not sure I'd want to measure that.  Any situation I can imagine in which I would mark a team member down for attitude would reflect negatively on teamwork and other attributes.    You may wish to consult &lt;a href=&quot;http://managementblog.org/2012/03/16/you-cant-interview-for-attitude/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;You Can’t Interview for Attitude&lt;/a&gt;. His style is a bit artificial and he definitely has an agenda, but I think it is a useful resource for job evaluations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2012-10-28T22:04:02.490" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T22:04:02.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6263" CreationDate="2012-08-03T13:30:58.923" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is best to consult with the managers who have had the probationary resources working for them up to now. Presumably they will be the ones providing you with the ratings based on their experience with the resources to date. Be careful to ensure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All resources are evaluated on the same criteria. As David mentioned, your HR group may have policies/guidelines for these that you should follow. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All managers rating the resources have a common understanding of these criteria. Again, your HR group should have this under control.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All managers are giving at least approximately the same weighting to each of the criteria. More difficult to control here, there will always be some personal bias on what is most important. Ideally you will get input from more than one manager for each resource to help mitigate bias.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-08-03T13:30:58.923" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6263" CreationDate="2012-08-03T16:24:04.427" Score="5" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Project Success is the Metric, All Else is a Proxy&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Measuring skills or teamwork (whatever that actually means, assuming you can measure it at all) is really just a proxy for measuring whether someone is supporting the project and making a valuable contribution to the project's process. Even assuming that you're measuring something vaguely relevant (e.g. a person's level of expertise with database normalization on a data warehouse project), the only truly &lt;em&gt;meaningful&lt;/em&gt; metric is whether that person is helping the project succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;People Staff Projects, but Measure the Project Instead&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to take a different spin on this than the other answerers, and state that I believe a PM's perspective needs to remain focused on project metrics. To the extent that people staff projects, personnel management will matter, but be sure you use the right filter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your company has an HR department, involve them. &lt;em&gt;Your&lt;/em&gt; metrics, however, should be driven by the project's needs. In an agile team, individuals are not measured separately; the entire team &lt;em&gt;succeeds or fails as a whole&lt;/em&gt;. This is critical to the core concept of building successful, cross-functional teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I'd throw out your metrics and use something more measurable from a project perspective. Some examples (and I stress, these are only examples, although I use many of them myself) might be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the team's average velocity improve or decline when this person participates on a project?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does this person maintain commitments voluntarily made to the team, within the limitations of the team's process and subject to &lt;em&gt;force majeure&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the individual provide constructive work estimates within the expected variance for the team?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the person provide clear feedback within the team's process?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the person provide the team with &lt;em&gt;visibility&lt;/em&gt; into their individual work processes?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the person participate constructively in sprint reviews and retrospectives? (Note: &quot;actively&quot; and &quot;constructively&quot; aren't synonyms; quiet support of the process is valuable, too.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Don't Forget to Evaluate Your Process&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IT projects fail...a lot. &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9900455-16.html&quot;&gt;One essay cites a study&lt;/a&gt; reporting a 62% overall failure rate for IT projects. Make sure you look at the project goals, its processes, and its management before assuming that the cause of failure must be the members of the project team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-08-03T16:24:04.427" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6180" CreationDate="2012-08-06T08:36:00.190" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course you can use usual bug tracking software to track some other tasks that you are not able to track. The only trouble is to choose the right tool which should be a kind of universal. I advise you to try Comindware tracker which I use not only for programming bugs, but for all other tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4387" LastActivityDate="2012-08-06T08:36:00.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6244" CreationDate="2012-08-06T11:53:33.517" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually, dependencies won't just integrate and test themselves, so &lt;strong&gt;I would add an &quot;&lt;em&gt;integration [testing] with &quot;Project I&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&quot; user story - or user story series* - to the backlog of &quot;Project A&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; and handle as a typical user story: point estimation and priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say the first estimation is 3 on this integration user story. You find some issues and they will generate user stories for &quot;Project I&quot; and/or &quot;Project A&quot; depending on their nature (for example &quot;Project I&quot; has to change its API because of incompatibility issues). The next time when you estimate the next user story you'll use the data from the previous one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*user story series: there are reoccurring activities which the very same name and action, but in a different time like checking out the external dependencies. I like to create a new task for such an activities every time. It is easier for me to track and evaluate them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-08-06T11:53:33.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6244" CreationDate="2012-08-06T16:59:56.597" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of items to verify.  If the infrastructure team is delivering hardware/base components that need to be done for the other projects to complete or if they are delivering software interfaces.  I am on a project where we executed without the hardware/base software installation complete and had to make informed decisions that affected prioritization on both sides to allow progress forward.&#xA;If these are primarily software related, I would suggest that you need to make sure that there is good communication (scrum of scrum type) between the project I and A and B. Including the related projects in release/sprint planning as well as demos can provide a better understanding of the others who are dependent on you and what you can expect.&#xA;In terms of the backlog, I would not track it as a unique story, but note it as a dependency on the story that consumes what Project I creates.  That way you don't have something in the backlog that looks like it is free (from a point perspective) to deliver anytime.  Make sure that as you execute, the interfaces and when they need to be ready play a role in prioritization across all the teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4315" LastActivityDate="2012-08-06T16:59:56.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3566" CreationDate="2012-08-06T19:47:52.497" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is also possible to reduce costs if your second resource is cheaper and the primary resource could shed the lesser work to them. There will be a natural work increase due to communications... but that might be offset if say a $100 per hour resource is doing 50% $20/hr work. Then you add a $20/hr resource that does the 50% that requires less effort. We do this commonly by hiring an admin level resource to serve coordinator tasks for Project Managers for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4391" LastActivityDate="2012-08-06T19:47:52.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6252" CreationDate="2012-08-06T20:47:36.563" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;They can be the same and often times product managers are forced to take on the role of Project Managers, but I see the functions as fundamentally different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In relationship to projects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many times your Product Manager will be a project sponsor. They decide the change. They decide what to do, what the requirements are, what the business drivers are, and other heavily business oriented aspects. These are the visionaries and business drivers. They often act as a &quot;Super BA&quot; and, especially if project managers are weak or not present, are forced to be project managers. Most of the ones I know hate it when they are forced to project manage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project Management is executing change. Project managers help with planning the change, driving it through to completion, holding scope to the original vision, ect... Sometimes Project Managers are required to act as product managers, when the product managers are not present or are weak. In my experience, this can lead to stunted products as the project focus is on time, schedule, and scope, whereas the product focus is on the external business requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there are different certifications and training for both. I think the main problem is most people don't really understand what product management does. I certainly didn't even after years of working with them, seemed like a lot of guesswork to me. Then I worked with a crack product manager and got a solid glimpse of what they really do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4392" LastActivityDate="2012-08-06T20:47:36.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1395" CreationDate="2012-08-06T21:03:20.030" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Crashing can be successful. I've done it. But most people make several mistakes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They UnderCrash usually crashing takes 3 to 5 times as much cost to successfully overcome the problems caused by the inertia of brooks law. Most people severely under calculate the amount of resource required to crash a project. A project that is 25% complete at the halfway point will probably take five times as much resource as originally applied to get it back on track.(basic math says 3 times, but the inertia of brooks law has to be overcome)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They MissCrash, due to the massive acceleration of resources, only certain projects can be successfully crashed. If you don't have the workbench space to support all that extra resource required to overcome the inertia, it simply won't work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They Crash too late. Once you hit a certain point, all the resource in the world, organized perfectly isn't going to move that needle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They ignore the fact that the project has already failed. If crashing is required, you have totally missed your targets. The project has failed. You have to go back and figure out why you were off. If you still have unclear scope, poor sizing, and lousy communications, you can't successfully apply the resources to solve the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4392" LastActivityDate="2012-08-06T21:03:20.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="531" CreationDate="2012-08-07T11:12:00.820" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll take the contrarian view.  I (and my team) request read receipt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Aside: some people have complained that it is unreasonable to ask the principal to respond to each email message.  All of us have set &quot;read receipt&quot; to automatic. The system responds without our awareness.  My system then automatically files all read receipts in a special folder where they are available, but effectively invisible.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're widely geographically separated, we're bureaucratic (meaning decisions are slow) and we're contractors (which means we have no decision making power).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is however a work pattern that happens not infrequently.  We can't continue work until we've documented certain things for our principal.  If we have a read receipt from the principal, then that is evidence that we have communicated to the principal and that the principal has had a chance to object.   The read receipt is evidence of our due diligence.   If on the other hand we don't have a read receipt, then we need to make an effort to find out if the principal has been informed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The side benefit is that the read receipts serve as an indicator that the principal is actually at work that day.  There are other situations where we'd &lt;em&gt;like&lt;/em&gt; to reach the principal, but it isn't necessary.   If by mid-morning we have no read receipts, then we can conclude that the principal is offsite/sick/annual leave/.  That allows us to reschedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A third work pattern occurs when we're trying to contact someone new.  Read receipt means that they're aware of our attempt to contact.  Absence of a read receipt means that we probably have the wrong email address.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary:  If you set read receipts to automatic, and if the participants are aware of the conventions, then read-receipt can be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2012-08-07T11:12:00.820" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6279" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6281" CreationDate="2012-08-07T13:02:14.453" Score="1" ViewCount="13247" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am considering two positions, one a formal PM job, the other a supervisory role within a functional organization.  I have gotten the impression that people who actually hold the PM job title work many hours.  One guy said he worked 80 hours straight once over Thanksgiving weekend to finish a project.  Of course, the textbooks would say that unplanned overtime is the result of poor project management, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Let me rephrase, so that this question doesn't get closed: &lt;strong&gt;What's the average amount of weekly hours a project manager should typically put in?  How can I tell if I'm being taken advantage of and am working too many hours?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4339" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-12-01T00:33:49.083" LastActivityDate="2013-12-01T00:33:49.083" Title="How many hours a week should a project manager typically put in?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ClosedDate="2012-08-07T16:05:49.340" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6279" CreationDate="2012-08-07T14:31:58.187" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The inherent problem with this question is separating the individual and the title of PM with the role of PM.  Asking individuals what they work a week really doesn't expose what one could expect a PM on a particular project to work.  In other words, that an individual who is a full-time employee for some company who typically works between 40 to 70 hours a week does not mean a thing about how many hours he works on his project or projects.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although industry specific, you might find that a typical project would budget somewhere between 8% to maybe as high as 18% of total budget for PM &quot;stuff&quot;.  And then there is variability during execution: if things are going well, op tempo should fall; if things are going to crap, op tempo could rise.  If the project is small, the PM of record may oversee several projects at once.  If large, the PM of record might be full-time with other project administrators and controllers on staff to help.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-08-07T14:31:58.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6279" CreationDate="2012-08-07T14:41:03.390" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've worked in two industries (financial and pharma). I've made a point of being clear that I have a couple of little kids and won't work a huge number of hours on a regulard basis. I spend ~40hrs/wk working on average, sometimes ~50-60 when necessary. About 50-75% of my time is on projects, the rest is on other stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, this is going to be dependent on industry, company culture, project phase, project complexity etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are the PM in charge of part of the next game in the HALO series you will probably be working an insane number of hours, just because the games industry has that kind of culture (or so I've heard).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is more time spent during planning than during monitoring/controlling... at least until the wheels start coming off of the project...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you asked the hiring team what their expectations are? For example, will you be issued a cellphone and be expected to be &quot;on call&quot;? If YES then expect more work. Are they paying you a lot of money for the position? If YES expect more work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-08-07T14:41:03.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6252" CreationDate="2012-08-07T18:16:01.680" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main difference: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Projects are short-term endeavors, &#xA;Products are, most often, not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product Managers must have long-term, strategic focus for their work. They seek to answer the question: &quot;Leveraging this product, how do I meet corporate goals of revenue and/or market penetration?.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3493" LastEditorUserId="3493" LastEditDate="2012-11-27T13:44:37.720" LastActivityDate="2012-11-27T13:44:37.720" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6247" CreationDate="2012-08-08T05:33:09.380" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One month could be considered a very long time, or a very short time for such a project -- depending on the scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So take the scope (ie. &quot;features&quot;), and list items according how their importance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Start at the beginning. Do one thing at once.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds obvious, but oftentimes developers will start &quot;a little bit of everything&quot; all at once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Devs need to start &lt;strong&gt;one&lt;/strong&gt; feature, get it 100% working in a production environment, and only then should move on to something new.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be Agile&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is part of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Agile&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; methodology, and ensures that you have a &lt;strong&gt;working deliverable&lt;/strong&gt; all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you follow this, after a month, you'll have &lt;strong&gt;something&lt;/strong&gt;. It might not have every feature that you originally planned, but the ones you've done will work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;In theory&lt;/em&gt;, you could deploy the site at that stage, then continue working on the less important features. Which is much better than having nothing to show at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2713" LastActivityDate="2012-08-08T05:33:09.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3619" CreationDate="2012-08-08T05:41:10.133" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You need both!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...should one have&#xA;  development experience, or a strong focus on general project&#xA;  management skills?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After witnessing many technical projects (failed and successful) with both technical and and non-technical PMs, the best managers usually have &lt;strong&gt;both skill sets&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Which one is better and more suitable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the choice was binary, I would have to choose &lt;strong&gt;project management&lt;/strong&gt; skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though I come from a development background myself, PM experience can be broadly applied, and the technical domain can be learned -- probably quicker and easier than a developer can learn project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are there any relevant reasons for both?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one big disadvantage for non-technical PMs is that they typically don't understand the &lt;strong&gt;unique challenges&lt;/strong&gt; that are much different than other fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, they'll often assume it is like traditional engineering, and treat building software like constructing a physical building -- which doesn't work at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2713" LastActivityDate="2012-08-08T05:41:10.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6252" CreationDate="2012-08-08T05:45:45.993" Score="27" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Other than Projects tending to be short-term and Products tending to&#xA;  be ongoing endeavours, is there a difference in the two?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key difference is fairly simple:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product management:&lt;/strong&gt; is responsible for discovery and &lt;strong&gt;definition&lt;/strong&gt; of the scope.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project management:&lt;/strong&gt; is responsible for execution and &lt;strong&gt;delivery&lt;/strong&gt; of the scope.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2713" LastActivityDate="2012-08-08T05:45:45.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6286" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6301" CreationDate="2012-08-08T13:45:23.337" Score="9" ViewCount="1316" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a Scrum team of 3 developers, a scrum master, and a product owner.  Everyone works out of their home (except the product owner who works at his organization's headquarters).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the past, we have used formal inspections for peer reviewing design and code concepts to facilitate communication among the development team.  However, the peer reviews often get put on the back burner in favor of implementation.  The peer reviews turn into &quot;This is what I've done, let's document the review and move on&quot; instead of &quot;This is what I'm thinking about doing, what do you all think?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use Skype and Webex to communicate w/ screen-sharing, and we upload our design / code review documents to Sharepoint for easy access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of our long-term goals is to be appraised at CMMI level 3, so documenting and analyzing the results of our peer reviews works towards the verification of our work products.  Although, I do not want to advocate peer reviews for the sake of documentation.  I would like for the development team to &lt;strong&gt;want&lt;/strong&gt; to communicate with their peers.  I do not want to bog the team down with having to document every communication, but I do want to capture the benefits of peer reviews to analyze for process improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can a distributed agile team facilitate communication without it feeling like a chore?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What software products exist that can facilitate communication across a distributed team?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What methods of peer review would match our goals of people-over-processes while effectively documenting the results for future analysis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just for perspective, I am a junior developer who was moved from a separate project to start a QA branch for the company, so I am researching how to implement CMMI with our Scrum project management.  We are working with very limited resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4396" LastEditorUserId="4396" LastEditDate="2012-08-08T13:51:05.733" LastActivityDate="2012-08-15T17:00:13.370" Title="How to facilitate communication and peer reviews on a distributed scrum team?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;distributed-team&gt;&lt;reviews&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6286" CreationDate="2012-08-08T14:06:18.207" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally people are not going to do something if there is nothing in it for them. So if there are no negative consequences for their current behavior and no reward/payoff for going through the peer review process they will continue to do what they are doing. Just finding a tool to do something isn't enough, you need motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is easy to have negative consequences for not doing e.g. peer reviews, just don't accept the product if it hasn't undergone a peer review and hold the producer accountable for the delay in his deliverable. Or force rework that would have been caught without peer review. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But just punishing isn't sufficient, and in the long run is going to be counter-productive to motivating the team. You need to reward the good behavior. The look &amp;amp; feel &amp;amp; shape of that reward will depend on the motivators of the producer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-08-08T14:06:18.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6286" CreationDate="2012-08-08T17:44:16.333" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't communicate for the sake of communicating.  You do not deploy a communication vehicle if you have no message to deliver, no message to receive, no messenger, or no audience.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of your communication is the analysis of who, what, where, when, why, and how communications need to be conducted, i.e., NEED.  If you are finding they do not want it, then perhaps they don't need it...or, they don't need the message you are delivering at that time in that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Communication is one of the biggest critical success factors for project success and it is very very difficult to get it right.  The challenge is tailoring the methods to fit the project environment, culture, dynamics, and personalities you have onboard.  And your entire draft reads like you have not overcome that challenge.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing you need to do is get the expertise onboard on how to do this stuff.  There are consultants who do nothing but specialize in this area.  The second step is to conduct a stakeholder analysis, which is where you would answer most of the 5Ws and H questions above.  If your analysis was performed right and you deploy the consequences of that analysis, communication should flow.  Step three:  tweaks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's another hint: research personalty types and inherent behaviors.  There is a personality type or two that is attracted to highly technical work.  There are consistent behaviors attached to this type or types and you need to cater to it if you want your communications to improve.  Rewarding and punishing will do very little.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-08-08T17:44:16.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6286" CreationDate="2012-08-08T18:06:37.747" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I generally agree with the comment of the first answer (you don't want to be purely punitive; you need positive incentives; etc.), it is possible to motivate people to move in this direction without explicit rewards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What management talks about with the developers is what they think about.  If all management talks about is deadlines, that's what developers will work towards.  If you start having a weekly meeting with your devs to discuss the process/tools of code reviews, you will find that they start to think more about this and engage in the process.  If your developers are anything like my developers, the meetings alone are punishment (without explicitly calling anyone or the team as a whole out for punishment).  :)  Just having a quick 20-30 minute meeting once a week will help get them thinking more about the process and understanding that the CMM goal is important.  And over time, talking about the process will lead to improvements in the process, and THAT is where you want to go.  Giving the developers control to improve the process is a big positive incentive.  Just be sure you lay out clear goals for the results, and let them figure out how to get there.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make things as easy as possible.  This is why you need to engage with the developers rather than just impose a process on them.  They know the tools better than you do (especially when it comes to code reviews).  Create a laboratory-like environment where everyone can experiment to improve and simplify the process.  Simplify, simplify, simplify.  If the tool overhead for doing a code review is 2 minutes, you're going to get a lot more action than if the tool overhead is 15 minutes.  Developers will go to ridiculous extremes to save themselves 15 seconds if it's something they have to do more than once a day.  Example: We used Subversion at my previous shop.  To do code reviews, the reviewee had to email the changed files to the reviewer who had to save the to the file system, be careful not to overwrite current files, do a diff, then carefully delete the reviewed files without screwing up his existing work.  Then someone figured out that we could use Subversion patch files for code reviews.  Suddenly the process was mail the patch file, reviewer saves the patch file and loads it in their client which shows which changed files and changes.  There was no danger of overwriting their current source files and they could cleanup or not cleanup after the review.  It didn't matter.  Developers weren't happier to engage in code reviews, but they were less unhappy about it.  And not to be understated, someone came up with an improvement; the improvement was acted on immediately; the developers felt better about things because they were allowed to improve the process.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Engage.  Simplify.  Repeat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4404" LastActivityDate="2012-08-08T18:06:37.747" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6290" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6291" CreationDate="2012-08-09T14:09:44.330" Score="1" ViewCount="1632" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to create a graph like the one below dynamically in Project. I have done this in the past using Excel, but in those cases it was &quot;easy&quot; since planned and earned value were calculated based on contractual milestone payments on a FFP contract. For my current projects this isn't possible, instead any earned value analysis would be based on percentage of work completed and level of effort contributed by internal resources. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nIBEx.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2012-08-09T17:52:55.590" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T17:43:27.377" Title="Can MS Project graph out planned value?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;evm&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6290" CreationDate="2012-08-09T14:38:15.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't believe it does.  MS Project is seriously limited in its functionality.  On our EVMS solution, we only load our schedule in project; our dollars are loaded into another tool and even a third tool is used to draw the graphs, called Winsight.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-08-09T14:38:15.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6292" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6293" CreationDate="2012-08-09T18:37:06.530" Score="4" ViewCount="44252" Body="&lt;p&gt;As subject, on early Monday, I want to see &quot;what we planned to do in this week&quot;. At late Friday, I want to see &quot;what has done/delayed in this week&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I can't find how to quick-filter tasks like that. How does one do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;task in this week&quot; in my context:&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task start in previous week (or before) and finish in this week  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task start in previous week (or before) and finish in next week (or later)  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task start in this week  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1945" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-08-11T21:57:46.837" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T18:03:18.160" Title="Microsoft Project - How to quick-filter tasks in this week" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6292" CreationDate="2012-08-09T18:50:56.800" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check your task bar, top right there should be a pull-down menu you can select type of filtering. You will want to filter by &quot;Date Range&quot;, you will then be prompted to enter start date and end date of the range.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how to get to this through the menus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Z174y.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-08-09T18:50:56.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6294" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-09T19:37:28.623" Score="4" ViewCount="591" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obviously, calling sprints &quot;sprints&quot; would be one option, but even though that is well known and might convey an image of working really hard and getting a lot done, it also might imply &quot;moving as fast as you can without regard to fatigue&quot;.   And even though people directly involved in the sprints can be expected to understand this, managers not directly involved in the sprints might think that sprints involve, well, sprinting.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that when the original term was coined it was in the context of performing consulting for clients at an hourly rate, which might be part of the motivation for naming it a sprint.  Sort of an &quot;at $200/hour you had better be sprinting&quot; kind of thing.  But in this case, clients buy the software, not the time, so they don't really care if we are sprinting or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what's a good name for a sprint that won't tempt people to think it means working as hard as we can without pause until we drop?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, before anyone points it out in an answer, there are lots of great ways to educate people on a good agile process, but this question isn't about that.  This is about naming sprints in a way that helps as much as possible to educate people about a good agile process by means of the name alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4415" OwnerDisplayName="psr" LastActivityDate="2012-08-17T02:08:04.963" Title="What should we call sprints in agile development when not selling consulting to a client?" Tags="&lt;education&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6294" CreationDate="2012-08-09T19:43:42.067" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would refer to these as &quot;Iterations.&quot;  You can describe your process in terms of iterations to your clients -- e.g. We work in two week iterations.  That means, on day one, we identify the work we're going to do in the next two weeks.... etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4413" OwnerDisplayName="Jacob G" LastActivityDate="2012-08-09T19:43:42.067" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6294" CreationDate="2012-08-09T23:20:56.213" Score="4" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Public Sector Terms&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every industry and sector has its own &lt;em&gt;patois&lt;/em&gt;. In the public sector, agile practices are generally referred to as &quot;modular development,&quot; and sprints deliver &quot;increments&quot; or &quot;useful segments.&quot; See page 7 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/procurement/guidance/modular-approaches-for-information-technology.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Contracting Guidance to Support Modular Development&lt;/a&gt; for an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Private Sector Terms&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For companies that understand agile practices, it's still often useful to define the terms as you mean to use them. For my clients, I generally define agile frameworks (e.g. Scrum) as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An iterative process (or set of processes) where the &lt;em&gt;goal&lt;/em&gt; of each iteration is to complete a demonstrable increment of user-visible functionality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure other people have said similar things, but the quote above is mine, so I have no external reference for it. I simply find it useful to define my terms with people so that, regardless of what we decide to call it amongst ourselves, we at least theoretically agree on the actual objective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;See Also&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cio.gov/documents/25-point-implementation-plan-to-reform-federal%20it.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cio.gov/documents/25-point-implementation-plan-to-reform-federal%20it.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrum.jeffsutherland.com/2010/01/iterative-vs-incremental-development.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://scrum.jeffsutherland.com/2010/01/iterative-vs-incremental-development.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-08-09T23:20:56.213" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6297" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6300" CreationDate="2012-08-10T03:40:07.600" Score="5" ViewCount="965" Body="&lt;p&gt;In any given project, a variety of detail levels are needed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;executive summary&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;technical summary&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;delivery team summary&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;delivery details&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can these different levels of detail be contained and published in the &lt;em&gt;same&lt;/em&gt; project plan (specifically using MS Project 2007) &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; the &quot;higher levels&quot; being able to drill-into the lower ones?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible with the tool, or would multiple project plans need to be kept to be able to share with the representatives of each level?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="167" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T19:41:47.757" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T19:41:47.757" Title="How to manage different detail levels in a project plan to be presented to different audiences?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;goals&gt;&lt;ms-project-2007&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6294" CreationDate="2012-08-10T07:30:04.277" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the Scrum perspective, the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Sprint&lt;/em&gt; is not just an iteration. It has commitment (planning) and accountability (demo) as well&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you change the terminology you won't be able to communicate with other practitioners. If management doesn't understand the definition of &lt;em&gt;Sprint&lt;/em&gt; and stops at the terminology, they may think that &lt;em&gt;Scrum&lt;/em&gt; means that the developers will go into a formation and to this every morning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/t0dRX.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;real scrum&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point is that &lt;strong&gt;don't change an existing name because it is easier to sell something&lt;/strong&gt;. Sell the idea not the name. People don't buy a certain kind of product, because it was made by a company named after a fruit. &lt;strong&gt;They buy because the idea what it represents&lt;/strong&gt;: reliability, status symbolism etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on my experience, most of the managers are smart and they know the difference and will understand the meaning of a &lt;em&gt;Sprint&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-08-10T07:30:04.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6297" CreationDate="2012-08-10T11:19:46.613" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, so by project plan you mean schedule.  You want to be able to share the schedule with the appropriate stakeholder at the level that stakeholder needs to see it, i.e., the executive sees the summary and major milestones while the workers sees the low level packages?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Filter.  You can collapse and show whatever you want.  Packages only, milestones only, hammock only, summary only.  Etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multiple schedules?  It will cost you 10x as much to maintain those various schedules and keeping them in sync--and thus usefull--would be next to impossible on a complex project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  I see Tiago's edit.  Now I am interpreting you mean you do not want the higher levels to be able to drill down.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, you can always send a .pdf so they can see what you want them to see.  However, my question would be...why?  Are you wanting to hide things?  Run as transparent as you possibly can.  It will benefit you far more than ever hurt you.  If a higher up wants to drill down and can't, his/her first question should be, why am I putting my trust into this PM?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2012-08-10T11:43:31.000" LastActivityDate="2012-08-10T11:43:31.000" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6297" CreationDate="2012-08-10T14:50:48.783" Score="4" Body="&lt;h3&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't be constrained by your tools. If your tool doesn't do what you want, refactor the information you plan to display.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Define Audience Expectations&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to deliver the right view, you have to decide what's important. Adjust the presented information accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, for an executive meeting, I might choose to provide only major project milestones or estimated shipping dates. The executives won't care that the Foo() class needs to be embiggened in order to meet the milestone; they generally just want to know when &quot;stuff&quot; will be shippable to customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a meeting within the project team, the full work breakdown structure might be more important, and I might even be tempted to leave shipping dates out of the presentation since they are usually management (rather than team) driven.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;MS Project vs. Paper and Pencil&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would assume MS Project can filter views, and can print them as either PDFs (which can't be changed) or that you (as the presenter) can direct the conversation towards the level of detail that you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, as an agile practitioner, I prefer using different artifacts to present different levels of detail. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For an executive view, I'd use the Product Backlog, theme/epic cards, or a &lt;em&gt;project&lt;/em&gt; burn-down chart to represent the information.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For a team view, I'd use the Sprint Backlog, a snapshot or two of the Kanban board, user stories small enough to fit in a single sprint, and a &lt;em&gt;sprint&lt;/em&gt; burn-down chart.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, your mileage may vary widely on this. The important thing is to present the right data rather than allow your tools to constrain the data you're able to present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-08-10T14:50:48.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6286" CreationDate="2012-08-10T22:29:31.947" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since no one has given much advice in terms of software products, I would just like to put forward that Team Foundation Server 2012 Preview is free for less than 5 users, and is a great resource for managing distributed teams and facilitating communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To highlight some of the ways it can help you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Request Code Reviews - Any changeset can be shelved and sent to another developer for code review. The interface is very smooth, and the workflow is tracked by automatically creating a work item for you. Once the code review is complete, you can unshelve the changeset and merge it with your current version of the solution (think of it as very similar to a typical branch &amp;amp; merge scenario). If you wish to enforce a code review policy, this is a very good way to do it. You can set a gated check in policy that requires a completed code review before check in to be associated with the change set.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Web Access - It has been vastly improved from the 2010 version, making it much more useful. Pretty much everything you need to do an agile sprint planning is there. Re-prioritize and manage your backlog, assign work item, burndown charts, and a whole lot more.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your questions in specificity:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Collaborative sprint planning and sprint review. Usually this is best to do in the middle of the week, because you want everyone to consistently be there. Spend the first half of the day doing spring review &amp;amp; retrospective, and the second half doing sprint planning (adjust as necessary, perhaps you only need half a day for both). This way you get a lot of the administrative overhead done on a single day. Try to be as unobtrusive as possible during these meetings. Do not dictate to your team how long something should take, gather their input on how long they believe each user story will take, bounce that off your backlog priority and add an acceptable amount of work to the current sprint. I think of project managers more as more of a project facilitator than anything else. Your job is to enable your developers to do theirs, and to run interference between them and anyone who would interrupt them from doing their job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) TFS 2012, as described above&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Code review requests are great. You may need to enforce them by creating a gated checkin policy to begin, but eventually you could hopefully move away from that as you team sees their benefit in improved code quality. Documenting is taken care of as the review is part of source control as a work item, so it is always there. This also takes care of the problem of sacrificing code review time for development time. Code review time literally becomes part of development time, and your team won't feel like you are taking them away from their jobs to do something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And on a final note: I prefer putting team documents into source control rather than share point. In 2012, TFS will detect changes made from outside of VS, so they are easy to check in and maintain. I find that having a single repository makes it easier on the team to keep track of all documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastEditorUserId="4422" LastEditDate="2012-08-15T17:00:13.370" LastActivityDate="2012-08-15T17:00:13.370" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6292" CreationDate="2012-08-11T10:07:36.670" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;and Here is screen for Microsoft project 2010.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Rs5F2.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;for Microsoft project 2010 :&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1945" LastActivityDate="2012-08-11T10:07:36.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6294" CreationDate="2012-08-12T08:23:08.483" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about &quot;Time-boxed work packages&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2012-08-12T08:23:08.483" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6305" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-12T12:44:36.727" Score="3" ViewCount="4651" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to add a &quot;Bugs&quot; task with a duration calculated from 20% of total project duration. Is this possible in MS Project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, what are the options of adding a task that duration depends on duration of others?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4428" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-08-12T17:54:55.670" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T22:35:38.737" Title="Calculated duration in MS project task?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6305" CreationDate="2012-08-12T13:39:23.240" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The tool is not that smart. But, that said, it violates what a baseline is supposed to be. All of your packages have some level of dependencies on other tasks as well as normal variances. But once you have examined your risk, you need to create targets and firm your durations up. So if your bug package is 20% of the cumulative result of your other packages, then firm it up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when your schedule begins to produce variances, so too will your bug package, and that is what you manage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now in Agile, this might be different. I don't have experience here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-08-12T13:39:23.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6249" CreationDate="2012-08-12T14:49:16.857" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrum.org/Scrum-Guides&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; is the official documentation of the Scrum framework.  It is a non-technical document that addresses roles, goals, events, artifacts, and more.  It is also a fairly brief read at about 13 pages of content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your boss wants to learn the basics of Scrum, there is no need to reinvent the wheel.  I would recommend providing him a copy of the Scrum Guide, along with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When the review, retrospective, planning, and daily scrum meetings will be held&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which employees will be product owner, scrum master, or on the development team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where the scrum artifacts will be stored &lt;strong&gt;or&lt;/strong&gt; how the scrum artifacts will fit into an existing configuration management plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on your organization's level of documenting policies.  A lot of our documentation of management policies simply cite the Scrum Guide for reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4396" LastEditorUserId="4396" LastEditDate="2012-08-19T13:23:00.047" LastActivityDate="2012-08-19T13:23:00.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6308" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6310" CreationDate="2012-08-13T02:52:49.167" Score="11" ViewCount="10040" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have 3 years of programming/development experience in mid-scale applications, and I do not have any project management experience. I'm thinking of taking the PMP as a stepping stone so that I can transit to a project manager role in my next job hop. Is 3 years of experience enough, or should I wait out to fortify my technical skillset first? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently holding a Bsc, and I'm 25 years old, if that matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4431" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-08-13T05:20:26.473" LastActivityDate="2019-03-25T21:27:32.893" Title="How much technical experience is required to be a software project manager?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6308" CreationDate="2012-08-13T06:44:20.670" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm biased, because I have a developer background, and say that you'll need the technical skills in order to be a software project management. I'm not saying that you have to know the architecture and development environment better than anybody else from your team(s), but you have to understand the basics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time to time, you'll have to talk to developers and testers - hopefully these discussions will happen on a daily basis - and &lt;strong&gt;you must understand what they are talking about&lt;/strong&gt;. If you just nod and take everything as they say, you'll be in trouble: they'll know that you have no idea what they are talking about - no respect - and sometimes they tell you something because they want and not because it is good for the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take the classical &lt;a href=&quot;http://t.co/uanRNblL&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;rewrite&lt;/em&gt; example&lt;/a&gt;. Developers will tell you all the time that the product has to be rewritten and they'll have very good arguments. This action is a challenge for them, but a huge risk for the project. If you the basics of software development, you can challenge them back using the existing architecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other tricky area is the estimations and planning. &lt;strong&gt;You won't estimate the projects by yourself, but this doesn't mean that you have to accept the estimations you receive&lt;/strong&gt;. I'm not saying that you have to question all the numbers, but sometimes it is good to know what they cover. You need a basic knowledge and understanding on the practical things. For example, setting up a database is not a week job, and merging code is not an hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, my old boss said that a good manager didn't have to know anything about the area he was managing. I still believe that he was wrong, because he hired somebody based on this principle and that guy almost killed our project, but what he advised that to &lt;strong&gt;have a technical guy who you trust and let him handle the cases I mentioned above&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-08-13T06:44:20.670" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6308" CreationDate="2012-08-13T08:34:12.530" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer the question literally (&lt;em&gt;&quot;how much &lt;strong&gt;experience&lt;/strong&gt; is required...&quot;&lt;/em&gt;): &lt;strong&gt;none whatsoever&lt;/strong&gt;. I know project managers who has had no technical experience and are dealing great with their jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you asked me whether I require technical experience when hiring, or working with, PMs, &lt;strong&gt;my answer would still be negative&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, technical experience in vast majority of cases is an advantage. Understanding what is happening under the hood definitely helps. Most good and great PMs I know have technical background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the real question is how much one should invest in building technical skills. Well, if the choice to &lt;strong&gt;transit to project management&lt;/strong&gt; is made I would advise to make it &lt;strong&gt;as soon as possible&lt;/strong&gt;. When you land in the new role, your new craft will be project management and not software development, so much of your current skill set will become irrelevant. It's much better to focus on project management skills as this will be you bread and butter soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You can be a decent PM without technical skills. You can't without project management skills.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2012-08-13T08:34:12.530" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6308" CreationDate="2012-08-13T11:35:31.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many skills and knowledge areas necessary or good to have to be a decent project manager, one of which is technical skills and knowledge. The absence of one of these many skills will not cause imminent failure. In addition, projects are unique and one project may require the presence of a certain skill over another for that project at that time, meaning the weights you apply to each skill will vary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get hung up on one attribute is to put blinders on. There are many flavors of PMs, each with a set of benefits and a set of costs and penalties. Look at the bigger picture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-08-13T11:35:31.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6308" CreationDate="2012-08-13T13:30:12.140" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking at the question in another way, the &lt;em&gt;disadvantages&lt;/em&gt; of emphasizing technical expertise when thinking of transitioning to a PM role are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lack of PM skills&lt;/strong&gt;. Assuming there are only so many hours in a day to work on your entire skillset, emphasis on being a good developer will take away from developing the skills necessary to be a good PM. I think a there is a strong argument that PM skills are more difficult to learn than technical ones because key PM skills are &quot;soft&quot; (leadership, motivation skills, etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Too much technical expertise&lt;/strong&gt;. If you are a good developer then at some point you are going to be assigned a developer that isn't as diligent/experienced/good as you. There will be an overwhelming desire on your part, or expectation on your boss' part, to jump in and do work that a PM should not be doing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lack of realistic job expectations&lt;/strong&gt;. If you are a developer first and a PM second you may be getting into a situation where you don't really know what you are getting yourself into. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lack of transferability&lt;/strong&gt;. PM skills are transferrable, much more than technical skills. And I'll bet you that PM skills won't become obsolete like many/most technical skills will.  Be prepared for a dream job that comes along in an area different enough that you will have to rely on your PM rather than technical skills. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMI website&lt;/a&gt; to go over the training and experiential pre-requisites for the PMP certification. Three years in position may be enough but you will need a fair amount of PM training. Be aware that PMI does audit some proportion of applicants to make sure the experience and education reported is accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-08-13T13:30:12.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6308" CreationDate="2012-08-13T14:21:35.673" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer here really depends on the company you work for, how they utilize their PMs, and what the company culture is like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think in many/most situations, you'll find that Pawel's answer (&quot;none&quot;) is correct. If a company is utilizing their PMs strictly for managing projects, then the project management skills vastly outweigh any concern for technical ability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In those situations where PMs are used for more than just managing a project, the technical skills might be more important than otherwise. But they still need to take a second-fiddle role to the project management capability. And more importantly, you need to make sure to trust those with more technical experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some places where having the technical skills will increase the trust that the development team is willing to place in you, knowing that you won't sign them up for something unobtainable. However, that kind of trust can still be built by those without technical skills, it might just take a little longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, it is important to realize that whatever technical skills you have when you make the leap, they will quickly be outshone by the developers working on your projects. Development is what they do day-in and day-out, so if you aren't able to rely on them to make the technical calls, there is something wrong (most likely in your perspective of your own skills, though possibly you just have some new developers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note, I would strongly recommend getting some actual project leadership experience (or even PM experience) at your current job before trying to jump into a project management role at a different company. No amount of training is going to be as important as actually experiencing things first hand. If someone came to us with PMI certification and no actual PM experience (or even project leadership experience), it would be tough for us to bring them in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastActivityDate="2012-08-13T14:21:35.673" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6308" CreationDate="2012-08-13T15:46:51.743" Score="6" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Project Management is Process Management&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you are a traditional PM or an agile practitioner, project management is about managing &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt;. Like any knowledge domain, the deeper your understanding of the underlying processes and procedures you're dealing with, the better you will be able to manage process flow and identify risks and impediments to your process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind, you could &lt;em&gt;theoretically&lt;/em&gt; manage a Mars mission with zero technical background, but having sufficient domain knowledge to understand the details &lt;em&gt;within&lt;/em&gt; the project you're managing is more likely to lead to a successful outcome for the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If &lt;em&gt;hire-ability&lt;/em&gt; is your key metric, then the only correct answer is &quot;whatever the hiring manager needs to see on the resume to give you the job.&quot; If &lt;em&gt;percentage of successful outcomes&lt;/em&gt; is your key metric, then you're asking the wrong question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;PMO vs. Technical Project Management&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my personal experience, a company that manages projects out of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_office&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PMO&lt;/a&gt; tends to favor process experience over technical experience. Most PMO-managed projects use non-technical PMs, so while they may not be indifferent to technical skills, it has never been a hard requirement for any company that I've worked for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, jobs that advertise for a &quot;Technical Project Manager&quot; or require technical leadership for a given project tend to look for process experience &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt;, but often look for sufficient domain experience to ensure that the PM can lead the project on a technical level without having to defer all estimates to members of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of these differences are really formally defined. A good, non-technical PM won't take long to figure out whose six-week estimates for embiggening widgets are wildly off-base; it's just a process tracking issue. On the other hand, a strong technical leader may have a harder time determining why widget-embiggening takes two months to move from development to QA, because it may not be a technical issue at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;It All Depends&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like much in life, and in project management in particular, it just depends. Technical skills are always valuable if they apply to your current problem domain, but they are not the &lt;em&gt;key&lt;/em&gt; skills necessary for successfully shepherding processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-08-13T15:46:51.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6315" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6316" CreationDate="2012-08-13T17:33:08.343" Score="4" ViewCount="149" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm relatively new to Project Management (having a technical background) and I noticed that there are these specific columns in an excel file regarding deadlines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pessimistic  |  Optimistic  |  Modal  |  PERT  |   Actual&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone give me an overview of what these mean (specifically, Modal and PERT) or provide a link to where I can read more about these?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4434" LastActivityDate="2012-08-13T17:48:58.190" Title="Modal estimate when it comes to project deadlines" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;deadline&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6315" CreationDate="2012-08-13T17:48:58.190" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;PERT is a weighted average of Optimistic (O), Pessimistic (P) and Most Likely (M) estimates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(O + P + 4 * M) / 6&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check the cells under PERT to see if they have this formula. Probably &quot;Modal&quot; is the &quot;Most Likely&quot; estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-08-13T17:48:58.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6305" CreationDate="2012-08-14T11:17:42.413" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, let me agree with Mr. Espina that this &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; not be wise.  I'm not arrogant enough to assume that I fully understand your underlying requirement, it sounds to me like you need to add a 20% buffer to each of the development (and integration) tasks to cover quality control.  Personally, I suspect that I'd add a new work package called &lt;strong&gt;Quality Control&lt;/strong&gt; dependent on the development/integration work packages, and I'd assign a deliverable to that work package that would include &quot;Estimate Technical Debt&quot;. I'd then use that to look at long term quality control process/procedures.  But I digress - you know your environment better, and that is &quot;discussion&quot;, rather than &quot;answer&quot;, which means I'm pushing the boundaries of Stack Exchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To directly answer your question, it is possible to create custom fields based on the project duration (See &lt;a href=&quot;http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project-help/project-functions-for-custom-fields-HP010080956.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project functions for custom fields&lt;/a&gt;, and probably ProjDurConv or DateDiff).  However, I've found that the functions are ... less than reliable... (I'm in the process of documenting a test case so that I can ask a clear question on Stack Exchange).  The best source for getting started is probably &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/tech-manager/add-the-late-indicator-tool-in-microsoft-project-2007/3616&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Add the Late Indicator tool in Microsoft Project 2007&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2012-10-28T22:35:38.737" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T22:35:38.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6318" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-14T15:06:19.967" Score="4" ViewCount="1284" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a difference between change management for scope, cost and schedule? Is the flow of the change management for all three areas the same? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4439" LastActivityDate="2012-08-16T18:45:56.337" Title="Is there a difference between change management for scope, cost and schedule?" Tags="&lt;scope&gt;&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6318" CreationDate="2012-08-14T15:32:21.803" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your process for change management should be the same regardless of the type of impact. What will vary will be who is allowed to approve a change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For each of scope, cost and schedule (and also risk, quality, benefits and resources) you should set tolerances up front for the production team leader, PM, project sponsor, steering committee, etc so that decision making devolves to the lowest appropriate level given the priorities, criticality and complexity of the project and corporate culture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a critical project in a cost-averse company may require steering committee approval for any increase in costs, but the same project may only need PM approval on schedule increases of less than 2 months and project sponsor approval for increases of 2 months or more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should still have a single gate-keeper (an individual or committee) through which all change goes through so that the changes can be communicated to stakeholders and the plan can be updated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-08-14T15:32:21.803" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5991" CreationDate="2012-08-15T11:42:56.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say from my personal experience that Gantt charts quickly become useless if they contain too much detail. While it's OK to have a Gantt chart showing individual tasks up to, say, 16 man-hrs for a 4 week-long iteration, doing the same on a chart at the yearly scale would simply render the chart unreadable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my advice would be: always maintain a proper scale! If you track the progress of a whole large project, it probably makes sense to do so at the work package level. If you track a progress of a 3-month long release, it probably makes sense to do so at the feature / use case level and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1281" LastActivityDate="2012-08-15T11:42:56.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6294" CreationDate="2012-08-15T12:15:20.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think you really need to worry about the semantics. &quot;Sprint&quot; is fairly standard terminology, and the clients will care more about the end sprint review/burndown charts etc. As long as the work is being done, what's in a name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said this, if you really must change the name, how about timebox? If you use the DSDM agile terminology, you can split the project down into iterative cycles, and then break the iterations down into timeboxes. This is the same thing as 'sprint' but with a different name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3246" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-08-17T02:08:04.963" LastActivityDate="2012-08-17T02:08:04.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6322" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6323" CreationDate="2012-08-15T14:08:32.723" Score="1" ViewCount="338" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being new to this field, I've read quite about Critical Path and now understand its important to closing a project on time and on budget. I don't have MS Project, so as an alternative, what's a solid software program to do the job of providing information on the Critical Path and give the ability to plot out Gantt charts? Please explain the steps to help ensure the project is on time/budget and how to plot the Gantt chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4434" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-08-15T14:38:57.420" LastActivityDate="2012-08-15T17:53:11.643" Title="Excluding MS project, what software can be used to determine Critical Path?" Tags="&lt;gantt&gt;&lt;critical-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6322" CreationDate="2012-08-15T17:53:11.643" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several questions here each looking for a simple answer that I don't think exists. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day you can develop a schedule and identify the critical path using paper and pencil if you have to. Software isn't going to help you in the long run, but understanding what the software is doing for you will. If you are a new PM and have a simple project I advise you to do this first so that you will &lt;strong&gt;understand&lt;/strong&gt; the underlying logic. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_path_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; is as good a place as any to start learning what a critical path is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same for ensuring a project is on time/budget. No simple answers and, unfortunately, a huge amount of the learning will be experiential (i.e. on-the-job). At a high level keeping a project &quot;on track&quot; involves a lot of effort in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensuring you have an achievable project plan based on reasonable and realistic estimates, including not only schedule and budget but also scope, vision, quality, resources, etc etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Engaging the project team at all levels, as well as stakeholders that can impact the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensuring that necessary changes are recognized and approved, and the plan is updated accordingly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Managing assumptionsand expectations, and planning for risks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these have tools that vendors will try to sell you, but at the end of the day it will be your experience and ability to use your soft skills to herd a pack of cats in generally one direction that will make or break a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-08-15T17:53:11.643" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6324" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-15T19:15:30.190" Score="5" ViewCount="730" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a small engineering firm that has just expanded from one to three workers. Earlier, the managing of projects was done by e-mail, where the user sorted each project by folders in Outlook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the expansion, we need to organize this for multiple users. All the project management tools I have looked at focus on milestones, task assignments, and etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We need something a lot simpler. The most important part for us is to have a common list of ongoing projects, current status, and all the email communications related to this project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We deliver software that is customized for each project (by configuration files and models), and the most common workflow is like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Get order, a lot of communication with files that specify the details, delivery, more communication on setup and support. Then it can be years and the software needs to be updated according to new specifications and the communication starts again before a new delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have looked for months to try and find something suited for our purpose. How should I select the right project management software based on our specific needs, and how could such software be used effectively to support our process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4445" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-08-18T22:09:21.527" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T22:35:36.473" Title="How do I select project management software for our current workflow?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;process-scaling&gt;&lt;process-engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6324" CreationDate="2012-08-15T21:55:20.297" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team (7 members) works very well with Google Docs + physical board + Bugzilla.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We keep the backlog online in the docs, use the physical board for the current tasks (sprint) and the Bugzilla for all the communication history, files, resolutions, etc. supported by an e-mail server, i.e. everyone receives an e-mail copy when anything is added to the Bugzilla. It's simple, searchable and free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2352" LastActivityDate="2012-08-15T21:55:20.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6324" CreationDate="2012-08-16T14:18:55.823" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're okay with a self-hosted option, you could try activeCollab. It's great because it allows you to manage all your projects in a centralized space (including communication, milestones, checklists &gt; sub tasks). As for attachments, while it has a 2MB limit, you could simply use a ftp server and reference the links/paths in your notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So using your scenario, here's how I would break it down:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Get Order - &lt;strong&gt;New project&lt;/strong&gt; on activeCollab&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A lot of communication with files - Use a combo of the &lt;strong&gt;Discussions&lt;/strong&gt; feature (you can specify permissions to restrict access) that allows you to communicate with your team and/or clients. Files: Use FTP to store all documents in one location and reference the paths in the Discussion threads.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Delivery - Project Management using &lt;code&gt;Milestones &amp;gt; Checklists &amp;gt; Tasks&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;More communication on Support - Use the &lt;strong&gt;Tickets&lt;/strong&gt; feature. activeCollab also has a &lt;strong&gt;Public Submit&lt;/strong&gt; module that allow clients to submit tickets without having to log in.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When years have gone by and your client needs a new software, rinse and repeat with the above steps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Link to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.activecollab.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;activeCollab&lt;/a&gt;:&#xA;It's not free, but it's a good investment with a quick ROI depending on your volume of business&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4434" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2012-10-28T22:35:36.473" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T22:35:36.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6294" CreationDate="2012-08-16T16:20:29.440" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the perspective of what you call a sprint for your customer?&#xA;Does the customer have visibility and receive a deliverable that he evaluates and needs to approve? Does he provide feedback about the product that you consider for future releases?&#xA;Is the product defined in a clear and closed way enough to finish the development?&#xA;In my opinion, you should get on your customer feet's to name it in a way that it makes sense to him and be also clear enough for the team to understand the customer perspective.&#xA;Without more information, you can maybe call it 'release', 'version' or something similar.&#xA;The topic is important as will more likely describe and help to meet expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4386" LastActivityDate="2012-08-16T16:20:29.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6318" CreationDate="2012-08-16T18:45:56.337" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, the flow is the same, because you're not talking about a change to the scope, or the cost, or the schedule, you're talking about change to the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Change management (or control) deals with those three in that for every change, all three must be assessed for impact. &quot;How does this change in scope affect my schedule? How does this this delay affect my cost?, etc.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there's no separate flows or processes for each. Any and all changes need to weighed against the project as a whole for impact, and this includes three mentioned, but also for possible new risk, stakeholders interests, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-08-16T18:45:56.337" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5561" CreationDate="2012-08-17T23:08:23.287" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't used this before but did spend some time looking into some of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.servicenow.com/project-portfolio.do&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Service Now&lt;/a&gt; product suite. They offer a SaaS model and local installations, and the best part is that product suite is extensive and well integrated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="98" LastActivityDate="2012-08-17T23:08:23.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6324" CreationDate="2012-08-18T21:57:09.583" Score="7" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Skips the Tools; Build a Process&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You describe your current process like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Get order, a lot of communication with files that specify the details, delivery, more communication on setup and support. Then it can be years and the software needs to be updated according to new specifications and the communication starts again before a new delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this is technically a process, it doesn't seem like a sustainable one from a project management point of view. PM software, however, will not really help you until you refine your process, since software should &lt;em&gt;support&lt;/em&gt; your workflow, rather than &lt;em&gt;define&lt;/em&gt; it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Define Your Artifacts and Procedures&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a number of implicit (rather than explicitly-defined) artifacts listed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Delivery schedules.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Setup requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Support requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical specifications.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customer communications.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, even if you had a place to stick all that data, you have to formally define what you plan to &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; with it. For example, what is your step-by-step procedure for turning an email about delivery into a schedule for delivering specified functionality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Assess Your Current Process&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter what you're doing at the moment. You just need to document and formalize the &lt;em&gt;current&lt;/em&gt; processes and procedures, so that you can:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decide if the process and procedures are working for your organization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they are, find a piece of software to support your workflow.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they aren't, figure out what you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be doing that's different from what you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; doing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A great deal of project management is really just process management and process engineering. Based on your question, it seems that looking at tools is putting the cart before the horse. Once your processes are more mature, then you will &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; what criteria are important to look for when selecting your process management tool-chain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-08-18T21:57:09.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="531" CreationDate="2012-08-19T12:40:49.783" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's bad practice ... it doesn't make sense in this modern era of automation.   You're making an assumption that the recipient bothered to read your email while forgotting that email systems can automatically send read receipts.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OHpjS.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see in this image Outlook could automatically be sending you a read receipt.  In my settings, I have this set to &lt;em&gt;Never send a receipt&lt;/em&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4420" LastActivityDate="2012-08-19T12:40:49.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6336" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6338" CreationDate="2012-08-20T08:20:10.333" Score="15" ViewCount="588" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are trying to generate an initial estimate to see if a project is viable. The problem is that the project involves configuring and customising an open source product that the development team have no experience with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact the customer requires a large amount of custom integration. At the moment the developers say they cannot imagine how they would go about implementing some of the features (or if they are even going to be possible) and would like time to research, but at this stage there is no budget to allow for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best approach to estimating/planning a project of this nature?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2156" LastActivityDate="2012-08-25T18:08:41.020" Title="How to estimate a project involving unfamiliar skillsets" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6336" CreationDate="2012-08-20T08:56:41.693" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, if &lt;strong&gt;the team doesn't have the budget now, they'll run out of budget later on, that is for sure&lt;/strong&gt;. You'll need to invest some time (money) into the prototyping in order to get better estimates or ideas on how the integration will go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were you I would give the team strictly three days - &lt;strong&gt;timeboxing&lt;/strong&gt; - to investigate the product you are referring to. During these days they are not allowed to work on something else and interact with the world (no emails, no interruptions). The goal must be to create a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules/spike.html&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;spike&lt;/em&gt; from XP&lt;/a&gt; and have a plan on how to do the integration. (&lt;em&gt;an XP approach&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really are not in the position to spend money on investigation, &lt;strong&gt;try to find a similar situation from the past of the team and use that data to do the estimation&lt;/strong&gt;. It may not work, but it is more than nothing. Look for the worst case scenario and use that number. Let's say that your team did several integration projects in the past, and the longest one was 5 months. Use the 5 months. (&lt;em&gt;distribution of lead times approach from Kanban&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also try &lt;strong&gt;an iterative approach or Scrum&lt;/strong&gt;: find a small set of features which you can investigate and deliver. It won't tell you much about the end of the project, but you'll know it better after each sprint or iteration. (&lt;em&gt;an Agile approach&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-08-20T08:56:41.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6336" CreationDate="2012-08-20T11:08:51.547" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to do the estimate, and the work, you need the capability to do so.  You need the right materials and people--those with the requisite knowledge, skills, and experience--in order to have an acceptable amount of risk and to do right by the client.  No customer deserves to spend its dollars for a product it wants to a seller of services who are experimenting and learning, unless that customer is pursuing cutting or bleeding edge stuff and everyone is experimenting and learning.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have the capability resident, you need to buy it.  Then do the estimating as you would normally do.  If that is not possible, then the answer is, the project is not viable.  Keep your client in the long term and let them hire a more capable firm for this gig.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT to Rob Bird's comment:  Rob, I can see a scenario where a customer may want a specific vendor no matter what, simply because of history and trust.  Under a scenario like this, a postive and constructive approach I may try, if I were in your shoes, would to be 100% upfront with my client, letting them know you are cutting into an area that is new, and approach the work under a shared risk contract in some way, e.g., a fixed fee with discounted T&amp;amp;M cost rates.  This would allow the relationship to continue, open honest communication that there is more risk than one might want, shared investment so that you and your team can build capability, and with some luck a shared win when it is all said and done.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get them to the table, tell them your troubles framed that you are protecting their interests, and see where it goes.  There's a solution to everything...just have to find it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2012-08-20T20:22:52.113" LastActivityDate="2012-08-20T20:22:52.113" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="531" CreationDate="2012-08-20T19:53:39.673" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. Not only is it bad manners, it doesn't provide you any useful information as there is no indication as to whether or not the email was actually read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastActivityDate="2012-08-20T19:53:39.673" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6324" CreationDate="2012-08-20T19:58:40.913" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;TFS 2012. Create a communications folder inside your project, then save and upload all your emails and call logs into source control. Then its always there, always visible, and forever attached to the correct project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Web Access (part of TFS) will show you what projects are running, what work has been done, burndown charts, let you create tasks, track bugs, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and it is free for less than 5 users, and will scale nicely when your team grows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastActivityDate="2012-08-20T19:58:40.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4617" CreationDate="2012-08-21T09:19:10.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest &lt;a href=&quot;http://kanbantool.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;KanbanTool&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - a smart software with a long list of features that support real-time team collaboration: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;team collaboration with real-time updates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;advanced account access privileges (full, custom &amp;amp; read-only access)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;advanced sharing options: sharing folders, boards and online&#xA;documents&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;build teams and assign tasks to team members&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;email notifications for task assignments and comments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;add tasks and comments via email&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;create, edit and share documents&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;additional info field on Kanban board for teams&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and a lot &lt;a href=&quot;http://kanbantool.com/product&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;more&lt;/a&gt;... Enjoy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4473" LastActivityDate="2012-08-21T09:19:10.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6342" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6343" CreationDate="2012-08-21T13:48:39.020" Score="10" ViewCount="317" Body="&lt;p&gt;From time to time, our product need to cope with new network protocols that comes in large specification files (~100+ pages). Usually, gathering the requirements from the specification can't be done by only one person, because it's large and prone to errors. On the other side, the development team feels demotivated doing this kind of analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that, what are the alternatives to gather requirements from large specification files with Scrum? Should the PM take care of it with a specification team? Or the development team should be more suitable for this kind of task? The specification analysis should be time boxed into the sprint or it comes before Scrum can be applied?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2352" LastActivityDate="2012-08-25T15:23:55.107" Title="Dealing with large specifications with Scrum" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;specification&gt;&lt;analysis&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6342" CreationDate="2012-08-21T15:32:51.410" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Given that, what are the alternatives to gather requirements from large specification files with Scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid that there isn't any. It is either the Product Owner, the Scrum Team, or them together. Another option might be to hire an expert how can help out with the processing of the documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should the PM take care of it with a specification team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By default yes, but in case of a large amount of complex work it is good when the Product Owner cooperates with the Scrum Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Or the development team should be more suitable for this kind of task?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say, yes. It seems that you have to do this kind of work on a regular basis. I assume these large specifications are vital to your business, which means that somebody has to do it. If the Product Owner is not enough than the team should help out. Maybe you can compensate the boring part with some &quot;fedex day&quot; like activities such as team members can pick what they'll do during a day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The specification analysis should be time boxed into the sprint or it comes before Scrum can be applied?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is possible, this is the best solution. You can iteratively process the document and implement the features. If you have a backlog (user stories) for 2-3 Sprints ahead it is fine, and actually it is the best, because you don't create too much waste by defining user stories which may not be implemented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, it is not mandatory to process the whole requirement specification before starting the project. You create just enough user stories so that the team(s) can start to work and while they are working, the Product Owner continues the processing of the large requirement file, and puts the new user stories into the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-08-21T15:32:51.410" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="531" CreationDate="2012-08-21T22:14:23.657" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any policy must have a reason and must be communicated to the team that these policies apply. It would be highly desirable that the team agrees with the policy or at least doesn't feel uncomfortable being ruled by it, what is easier is if the policy is properly communicated including reasons and benefits. It's some kind of virtuous cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related to that, @Mark C. Wallace has made &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/531/is-it-a-bad-manners-or-practice-to-request-read-receipt-to-all-mails-send-from#answer-6278&quot;&gt;very good points&lt;/a&gt; about how this feature is used and understood by the team. Internally, it has shown to be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with this kind of policy in the way it is implemented by MS Exchange, is that it is not possible to differentiate between mails sent internally to a team, inside the company, and to external customers or providers. Given that the original question was about use of this setting for &quot;all&quot; emails, I must answer no. I would instead use it in a more limited environment and building on top of other answers given in the thread combine it with &quot;Request Delivery Receipt&quot; as it better serves you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal experience, is that the problem of using this &quot;Read Receipt&quot; comes from misuse. It is understood that if a &quot;Read receipt&quot; is received, what could have been sent automatically as has also been said, the message has been fully read, understood (as it was mean to be understood, extra point) and agreed to any points included what doesn´t need to be the case as the receiver have not even the time to read the mail (for a variety of reasons). And the top problem I have found is that some bully coworkers understand that there are SLA's that apply to mail response (sometimes the time starting even before you open the mail).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an additional alternatives to the ones provided, in my team, we add to the subject some &quot;tags&quot; to identify the email, easing sorting and clarifying what kind of email is and what is expected:(info)(urgent)(ActReq)(customer1)(project2) are combined so that only the necessary people hurry up to read and reply to the email while the rest will read it when the rest of their tasks permits. And then, the cherry of the cake is to use properly To: and Cc:(Bcc:).&#xA;In summary, the &quot;read receipt&quot; is a good idea if used properly, but the implementation doesn't help to make a good use of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2015-05-27T00:20:06.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6342" CreationDate="2012-08-22T06:14:21.240" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to address the &quot;demotivating&quot; part of your problem.  The most effective tool I have found for addressing these kinds of problems is to break up the time that developers spend doing non-development activity.  Funny thing about programmers: most of them only want to program.  They don't want to do doc.  They certainly don't want to do QA.  And most of them aren't interested in doing requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in cases where there is a lot of material that needs to be processed for requirements, it is a lot more palatable to the developers if they are doing it in chunks.  This may or may not work with the 100-page doc that gets dropped on you.  It could be that you are required to go thru all of it and provide time estimates to management as soon as possible.  In that case, there's not much you can do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And see if you can work with the team providing these document drops to you.  If you tell them that you are trying to break things up to make life more bearable on your developers, they may be able to structure the document a little differently to support your efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, try the XP &quot;pairing&quot; approach to this problem.  Pairing takes two medium programmers and turns them into a single better programmer.  A lot of times people don't like doing something because they feel like they aren't good at it or are unsure of themselves.  If you pair the developers up to chew on various pieces of the requirements doc, they will self-organize and optimize for their own strengths and weaknesses.  It might introduce a little competition and energy into an otherwise dreary process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4404" LastActivityDate="2012-08-22T06:14:21.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6347" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-22T10:37:31.350" Score="11" ViewCount="409" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have sensed conflict in an organization, which works like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They want to encourage teamwork and good personal relationships&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They want discuss work-related personal matters and design decisions at work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When discussions take very long, the sponsor gets annoyed that &quot;nobody is working&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, point 2 is needed for point 1, but point 3 negates point 2, which could potentially harm the main goal of forming good personal relationships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is a good solution here? I could imagine something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Force talk to happen in the kitchen&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time-box all discussions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tell people to go back to work when it's &quot;too long already&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some reason, I don't know which, I don't think that's the best solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4480" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-08-24T02:08:06.777" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T20:38:41.253" Title="How to balance Teamwork and Babble?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6347" CreationDate="2012-08-22T10:51:04.813" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an opportunity to educate your sponsor. 100% FTE is really somewhere between 45% to maybe 75% truly productive where the balance is unproductive to include socializing amongst other things. 100% truly productive is not achievable and likely detrimental to performance. There is value in socializing but you need to make sure it does not get out of hand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, educate your team. Appearances matter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the best indicator of performance is how you are scoring on your metrics. If you are in the green against plan, then you need to work with your sponsor to ease on the micro management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-08-22T10:51:04.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6347" CreationDate="2012-08-22T11:06:51.270" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;David was right on the spot when me wrote that the output matters (&lt;strong&gt;delivered values&lt;/strong&gt;), so I have nothing else to share than a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The company I'm working for have several sites, and I'd like to write about two specific sites: one, where the discussions can be as long as they needed and the other where the sponsors behave as you described. Both sides are productive, but the smarter things come from the site where we can discuss as much as we can. The knowledge sharing is way faster, where you can discuss things. Where the discussion is monitored, the knowledge stays where it is and certain people &quot;own&quot; the knowledge and that's slow and not healthy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also realised that talking much may be bad for the company so &lt;strong&gt;we trained ourself to stop when it really goes off-topic&lt;/strong&gt;. Of course we talk about off-topic issues, because they can help us get out of the comfort zone and look at things differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My tip: learn when to finish the discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2012-08-22T13:41:20.333" LastActivityDate="2012-08-22T13:41:20.333" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6347" CreationDate="2012-08-22T13:09:18.063" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are a couple of different issues&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They want discuss work-related personal matters&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a team member has a personal issue that is impacting their work I don't think there is value in trying to tightly control the discussion. If you do you risk devaluing and demotivating the team member. What you can do is lead the discussion towards solutions rather than just talking about the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;and design decisions at work&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an entirely different animal. Once a design decision is made issues may crop up that force revisiting of the decisions. It is important to make sure all key players get involved in these discussions when needed, and equally that these discussions be documented and communicated to the rest of the team. Without the second part you will lose control of the project due to scope creep, lack of shared assumptions, etc. The need for this documentation should push these discussions to be more formal rather than &quot;water cooler&quot;, giving you more opportunity to timebox the discussions so that you can avoid analysis paralysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-08-22T13:09:18.063" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6336" CreationDate="2012-08-23T08:13:28.167" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;some suggestions for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;give the develpers some time, say 2 days, to do some invesigation on&#xA;the open source tool, or some prototypes for the tool is much more&#xA;better. This will help the devlopers to understand the open source&#xA;tool and have a basic sense on what problem may be met in the&#xA;future. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give a rough estimation after the develpers invesgitation.&#xA;Reserve some buffer for risks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Split the tasks and set the milestones for your project. If you use the Scrum model, it could be more better, you should pay more effort on the retrospective meeting, which will help you to summarize the experience and identify the problems and block issues in current Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Re-schedule after each Sprint according the feedbacks of develpers and testers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Factually , this is the practice I was doing when I faced the similar situation with you.&#xA;Hope this can help you . :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2519" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T08:13:28.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="852" CreationDate="2012-08-23T08:23:47.963" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;may be not a tool.&#xA;what you need is a Method Of Work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the first step is WBS. which means work breakdown structure (WBS), in project management and systems engineering, is a deliverable oriented decomposition of a project into smaller components. It defines and groups a project's discrete work elements in a way that helps organize and define the total work scope of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second step is to allocate the resources. You should, you need business analyst, chief architect, develpers, testers.  You also need the hardwares, iphone, mbr, etc. You need an office.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third step, when devs+QAs is avaialbe, they need to set up the work env.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then technical selection. To choose the correct or appropiate technical skill set for your product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then prototyping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then demostration to your customers and get feedbacks from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Change your product design and implementation according to the feedbacks you collected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then demo-&gt;change--&gt;demo--&gt;change..... .....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2519" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T08:23:47.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5561" CreationDate="2012-08-23T20:52:14.900" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our product, TrackerSuite.Net, has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.trackersuite.net/scrn_project_resource_widget.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Resource vs. Available bar chart graph&lt;/a&gt;.  For more details about resource workloads, it also offers &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.trackersuite.net/scrn_resource_availability.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;resource availability grids&lt;/a&gt; that can be filtered by department, manager, project status, priority and more.  You can also drill down on individual resource assignments. If you'd like a hands-on evaluation, you can register for immediate access to a demonstration site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DISCLAIMER: I am affiliated with this product.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4486" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-08-24T04:57:28.933" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T04:57:28.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6354" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6355" CreationDate="2012-08-23T21:05:01.043" Score="17" ViewCount="4500" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lately, I have been the solo developer on a software development project and I break down my project into functionality that I believe I should be able to implement in 1 or 2 weeks depending on the feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I get my estimate wrong. Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) I estimate a week and the feature takes 1/2 a week to finish&#xA;b) I estimate 2 weeks but the feature set takes 3 weeks to finish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why not just set your goals for the iteration and finish them in the time it takes rather than have a fixed iteration that you miss by finishing too soon or too late? What are the benefits of a fixed iteration development time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4485" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2012-08-23T21:23:32.903" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T13:08:26.560" Title="What are the benefits of having fixed length sprints for agile?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6354" CreationDate="2012-08-23T21:23:12.030" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea behind the fixed length sprint is to provide a understanding between development and the customer (or PO) when something new (and working) will be available, and to define the length of the feedback loop, which is equals to the length of the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the customer will know that she will get something in 2 weeks, which works, and the development team will know that they'll receive feedback on their work and know more about the upcoming work in two weeks. &lt;strong&gt;That's predictability&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's get back to the feedback part. The length of the sprint helps you find the right balance in work. You cannot really take more work than you can do in two weeks, so &lt;strong&gt;an agreed length can relieve the development team of an unnecessary pressure&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your feature set takes three weeks, then you have to find way to break it down into smaller tasks or user stories. &lt;strong&gt;The whole idea behind Scrum is to shorten the feedback time&lt;/strong&gt;. If you spend three weeks on a user story you'll get feedback minimum in three weeks. If you manage to break it down to three, one-week long user stories, the first feedback will arrive in one week, which is extremely good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why not just set your goals for the iteration and finish them in the time it takes rather than have a fixed iteration that you miss by finishing too soon or too late?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It really depends on the way of working you are following. Let's say you are working alone, and the next team or group which will get your code doesn't care when it arrives, then you can switch to a continuous model like Lean (or Kanban). If they want to receive your work in every two weeks, then you don't have other choice to deliver in a two week long cycle (unless you can convince them to switch to a continuous model).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before picking a model check the whole system (from customer back to the customer) and &lt;strong&gt;pick a model which provides the following benefits: quality, speed, reliability and predictability&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last thing: &lt;strong&gt;stick to the model&lt;/strong&gt;. If you are doing (or have to follow) scrum than dynamically changing the length of sprint is out of question, because without a fixed sized sprint it simply won't work, because you'll lose the speed, reliability and predictability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="22677" LastEditDate="2017-06-05T13:08:26.560" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T13:08:26.560" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6347" CreationDate="2012-08-23T22:19:36.053" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is something in your description of the problem that I think is more important that it could appear. This combination of &quot;work-related personal matters&quot; may be significant for the sponsor. He probably doesn't react in the same way when the team is working on design/implementation problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, if these conversations have a &quot;personal&quot; component they shouldn't happen in front of the sponsor, better in private with the least necessary audience. Also, the team members involved should be very assertive in expressing their arguments to avoid the problem develop into a cyst. For the same reason, these kind of discussions should happen only once if possible and you as the project manager should be able to provide a professional perspective to solve the problem. Maybe you will not be able to solve the differences, because when it's personal, it maybe complex, but at least be able to show what you expect from each team member in order for the project continue in the right track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The approach of justifying the discussions to the sponsor based on good project progress is fine if you are confident that the situation will still be like that, otherwise, at the very first moment any issue arises, the sponsor will blame you for not anticipating the problem based on the symptoms he had already foreseen, whatever the problem and real causes of it are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4386" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T22:19:36.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6354" CreationDate="2012-08-24T06:29:10.953" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I took a scrum class, the instructor showed a graph similar to this one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JZGMa.png&quot; alt=&quot;Comparing Level of Effort&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a chart of the amount of effort exerted by developers in a classic waterfall project vs the amount of effort exerted by the developers on a scrum/sprint-based project.  The idea is that by creating a lot of little deadlines, it increases the effort exerted on the project for each sprint deadline rather than waiting until the very end of the project when people start realizing THE deadline is coming and they start working crazy hours for weeks on end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your estimates are always going to be over or under by some amount.  Scheduling is something that people can get better at over time.  Like anything else, some people will always be better at it than others.  But do your best to come up with good estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One reason you don't want to go smaller than 2 weeks is that the overhead of the process (retrospectives, demos, signoffs, etc. if you are doing those things) starts to intrude.  In an extreme case, you could have 52 sprints per years vs 26.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want to try to avoid going longer than 2 weeks because when you start to schedule larger things, the amount of scheduling error increases.  If you're dealing with some scheduling error already, that will only get worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4404" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T06:29:10.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6358" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-24T07:43:35.013" Score="0" ViewCount="1030" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for tool (web application/service) that would allow me to write progress logs. I like to document what i'm doing over time, so i can look back what i was doing, what am i doing wrong, and so on. I know how to manage code projects using git, redmine, trac and so, but i am looking for something different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to make daily logs of what i was doing. Currently i'm just writing wordpress posts and edit them daily, but that is not sufficient, because i want to group by days, projects and tasks and enable everything to be structured. I know i can put posts in categories using wordpress, but this way i have to make a new post for every day and i cannot simply refer to previous day, and tasks that were previous day unfinished. So basically i'm looking for some advanced diary tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know any web app/service that would help me doing that, or do you prefer some other totally different approach. Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4489" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T09:40:47.410" Title="Tool for writing progress logs/documentation?" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;knowledge-management&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-08-24T14:43:32.917" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6358" CreationDate="2012-08-24T09:05:40.480" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a tool called &lt;a href=&quot;http://ohlife.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ohlife.com&lt;/a&gt; which may be the one you are looking for. I've never tried it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T09:05:40.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6358" CreationDate="2012-08-24T09:40:47.410" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could try &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;JIRA&lt;/a&gt; and simply create an issue type called 'daily log' or log each activity separately within a 'logs' project so that you can mark them as completed or not. If you use JIRA for your bug tracking anyway then it would offer a quick way to get started on this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T09:40:47.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6354" CreationDate="2012-08-24T15:34:48.687" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Completely agree with Zsolt on this. Here's a good quote from Henrik Kniberg's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/minibooks/scrum-xp-from-the-trenches&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum and XP from the Trenches [free edition]&lt;/a&gt; which re-iterates the importance of predictability in sprint length: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;once you have decided what length you like best, stick to it for&#xA;  an extended period of time. After a few months of experimentation we&#xA;  found that 3 weeks was good. So we do 3 week sprints, period.&#xA;  Sometimes it will feel slightly too long, sometimes slightly too short. But&#xA;  by keeping the same length this becomes like a corporate heartbeat which&#xA;  everyone comfortably settles into. There is no argument about release&#xA;  dates and such because everyone knows that every 3 weeks there is a&#xA;  release, period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book also has great advice on how to assess how many story points you are likely to be capable of completing within your sprint. This will help you avoid the situation where you promise something that can't be delivered in your sprint. By understanding your &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_%28software_development%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;velocity&lt;/a&gt; (which will take time because you need to look at past data) you'll find your sprint planning becomes more accurate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T15:34:48.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6362" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6363" CreationDate="2012-08-24T20:40:26.460" Score="24" ViewCount="4414" Body="&lt;p&gt;No matter what our current conditions are, it seems like my team is always working 40 hour work-weeks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under normal work conditions this would be fine, but as we approach a deadline on a major product, we really should have all members dedicated to staying late to see it finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also offer the ability to log in to their work PC's remotely, so they are able to access them from home or other locations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to just set &quot;more hours&quot; a goal since that's not necessarily tied to more success for the company, i.e. they could have just spent 8 hours on a project that should have taken 4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still though, as we approach deadlines, it does bother me that more of the team members seem to only be doing the minimum required.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your experience, what is the best way to get development team members to increase their hours and make them count?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NOTE:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; I know there is a counter-argument that any work above a 40-hour work week will not be productive.  I think that has some merit, but the realities of the industry dictate that sometimes we can not finish everything that needs to get done within that time frame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4139" LastEditorUserId="4419" LastEditDate="2012-09-01T01:29:27.580" LastActivityDate="2015-10-17T11:45:03.227" Title="Are 40 hour work-weeks (no overtime) acceptable for development teams?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="14" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6362" CreationDate="2012-08-24T21:06:46.380" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Very short term solution&lt;/strong&gt;: Based on my experience, there is always somebody who'll do anything for money. &lt;strong&gt;Money is the worst motivator ever&lt;/strong&gt;, but if you are in trouble - such as losing a customer - you have to do something. &lt;strong&gt;If the money motivation works, think about the why and start thinking about hiring a new team&lt;/strong&gt;, because they kind of put upon the situation and want more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short term solution&lt;/strong&gt;: Try to emphasise that the company needs - in the positive - way to stay longer for this major release. &lt;strong&gt;If people feel that they count (needed) they become more flexible.&lt;/strong&gt; Don't bother with the usual company BS, that we are a family and without you it won't happen. If necessary, you can give them some extra vacations days for their additional effort. But no money!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mid term solution&lt;/strong&gt;: Learn from your mistakes and find out what went wrong with the last delivery, and add buffers to your schedule so that teams don't have to do overtime. Involve the team into this discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long term solution&lt;/strong&gt;: Find out why the team members provide only the minimum. If you know their motivation, you can counter-act and manage the situation. For example, I know a company where developers just did the minimum because they had family and didn't want to go home exhausted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Personally&lt;/strong&gt;, I don't like the idea of doing overtime at any release. Teams should prepare for releases from day one and improve until the release happens smoothly. &lt;strong&gt;Sometimes it's ok to stay late, but when I'm the only one who stays and cares, I'll be angry and provide the minimum the next time&lt;/strong&gt; too. I suggest you solve the current situation and put some effort in the &lt;em&gt;mid&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;long&lt;/em&gt; term solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-08-25T03:32:00.793" LastActivityDate="2012-08-25T03:32:00.793" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6362" CreationDate="2012-08-24T21:52:22.553" Score="35" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;but as we approach a deadline on a major product, we really should have all members dedicated to staying late to see it finished.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a PM is doing their job efficiently, this would be exactly the opposite of true. Your team &lt;strong&gt;should&lt;/strong&gt; be working about the same amount of hours every week. If they have planned their project properly, and continually monitored the progress while updating the timetables, there should be no need to put in 60 hour weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, you never mention whether or not your project meets the deadline, or fails to meet the deadline. Are your developers continually missing deadlines, or not? If they are, then you should probably think about altering the way you manage your projects. Unless you have a team of complete incompetents, missed deadlines generally imply a poorly managed project. On the other hand, if your team is indeed meeting the deadlines, then why in the world do you think they should be working more hours? Simply because you feel like there should be a big rush to finish the project at the end?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if you have members of your team that consistently fail to pull their weight and always put in the minimum amount of effort possible while allowing others to carry the project, &lt;strong&gt;fire them&lt;/strong&gt;. Don't wait, don't torture yourself or your team any further. The general reluctance to fire team members that detract from the quality of our teams never ceases to amaze me. One member who consistently brings the team down will slowly but surely lower the quality of output from all team members. And no, I don't believe you should warn them, or give them second chances, or talk to them to see why they choose to put in the minimal effort, or any other sort of feel good crap. Team members who continually &lt;strong&gt;choose&lt;/strong&gt; to underperform will pretty much always choose to do so. Serve the many and facilitate a good team dynamic by removing those who choose to detract from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; In the interest of clarity, I will explain myself further. A properly planned project has very firm short deadlines, and flexible long deadlines. Obviously the unforeseen will always occur, and it must be accounted for. I'm a huge proponent of shortened cycle times (&amp;lt; 1 month), in order to increase the accuracy of our estimations. A caveat to this is extremely limited work in progress. Team members should be working on no more than two or three things at one time. This limits the amount of things that can go wrong, allows them to focus their efforts, and increases the accuracy of your time estimations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also like to emphasize that the team members I spoke of firing are ones who &lt;strong&gt;consistently choose&lt;/strong&gt; to put in the minimal amount of effort to get by. I am not referring to Jimmy who's a good team member normally, but has been having some issues at home and has been off his game for the last month. That is entirely different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally, I would like to add that regardless of your estimation skills, it will at times indeed be necessary to crash at a deadline to finish the project. This however should &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; be the norm. Things sometimes go wrong, and you must make up for it. Sometimes you can throw more people at the problem, sometimes your product owner will be happy with a reduced feature set (which is much easier to gauge if you're agile and have had continuous feedback from your product owners), and sometimes you just have to suck it up and stay late. But again, this should be the exception, not the rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastEditorUserId="4422" LastEditDate="2012-08-27T17:53:51.780" LastActivityDate="2012-08-27T17:53:51.780" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6354" CreationDate="2012-08-24T21:59:59.203" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't need either if you are developing solo. Fixed length sprints are to ensure rapid &amp;amp; continuous feedback between product owners and developers, as well as continuous communication between developers in the form of sprint retrospectives. It also helps to ensure that user stories (requirements, product backlog items, whatever) are broken into small enough pieces. Most places I've witnessed that did not stick hard and fast to their sprint lengths slowly increased them over time, until they were basically back to semi-agile waterfall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrum.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;scrum.org&lt;/a&gt; for more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T21:59:59.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6347" CreationDate="2012-08-24T22:05:04.547" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I don't care in the least how much babble and BS goes on (as long as its civil and generally workplace appropriate), as long as we're meeting our deadlines and producing a quality product. Watch your metrics, enable your employees and manage your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The flip side to that is I generally also don't consider giving warnings. If we drop the ball on a project because the team didn't put the effort in, we'll talk about it in our retrospective. If one of my team members isn't adult enough to recognize what needs to be done going forward, they won't remain on my team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really dislike all three of your solutions. Each of them fails to treat your team members as adults. Treat your team members with respect, and expect them to perform. A PM isn't a baby sitter and your team members aren't children (well, hopefully not at least).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastEditorUserId="4422" LastEditDate="2012-08-26T05:44:29.760" LastActivityDate="2012-08-26T05:44:29.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6362" CreationDate="2012-08-24T22:34:36.137" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing about 40 hours and the degradation of work performance.  The law of diminishing returns has been butchered.  There are certainly stamina issues, but you can expect quite a range when people start to crap out.  The concept of 40 hours is around the law--here in the US--that says certain roles must be compensated a certain way when passing 40 hours in a work week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The notion that, when approaching a deadline, op tempo should increase seems odd to me.  Op tempo should go up or down, or stay the same, throughout the work cycle based on many different issues, not just an imminent deadline.  If you are finding the need to increase effort at deadline, something's wrong with your teaming set up and how work is done long before the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you are finding your team not willing to do what it takes when the pressure is up, then you haven't built a high performing team, yet.  Look at the following key motivators: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.  Build your team, get them wanting to be successful, get them to feel that the team succeeds together and fails together, then this question will be come irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T22:34:36.137" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6362" CreationDate="2012-08-25T00:34:00.900" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Under normal work conditions this would be fine, but as we approach a deadline on a major product, we really should have all members dedicated to staying late to see it finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, your (obviously bad) product managers need to &lt;strong&gt;set better deadlines and the amount of work&lt;/strong&gt; that must be done before said deadline. This is likely to be your failure, not theirs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4492" LastActivityDate="2012-08-25T00:34:00.900" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6336" CreationDate="2012-08-25T10:58:32.747" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As mentioned before, you will have to invest the time and money to either build or buy the knowledge to be able to give a professional estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, since it is about an open source tool, you could try and ask the &lt;strong&gt;community&lt;/strong&gt; of this tool, if it exists, for some actuals. But I would be very very cautious and try to be as detailed as possible (split it up in technical tasks, by module, ...) and get as much additional info as possible, like years experience, industry, environment, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2012-08-25T10:58:32.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6342" CreationDate="2012-08-25T15:23:55.107" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on who is available to you, of course, but I think it is a good experience for the developers to do this.  As this analysis happens, they will hopefully be contemplating design, and will ultimately come up with a better design.  I agree it may need to be done in smaller batches if possible, to avoid burn-out and attention drift.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been a developer for more than 25 years, and I have little tolerance for developers who &quot;only want to do code&quot;.  Of course, I come from a small company environment where it is necessary to wear different hats.  In my experience, it's always beneficial to sample different roles, so you can see the work from a different perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, the Product Owner should at least confirm the level of suport for the spec (if there are variations).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4503" LastActivityDate="2012-08-25T15:23:55.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6336" CreationDate="2012-08-25T18:08:41.020" Score="4" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Value Transparency&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a customer that is asking for an estimate, regardless of your estimating process it should be &lt;em&gt;transparent&lt;/em&gt;. In other words, whether you're spiking a solution, using historical data, or taking a wild guess, your estimation methodology should be clear to everyone on the team, as well as the Product Owner and the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Estimates Aren't Commitments&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most agile practitioners will recommend that you treat &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/separate-estimating-from-committing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;estimates differently than commitments&lt;/a&gt;. If you're being asked for a commitment, that's a red flag. Instead, you should estimate by whatever transparent method you can, and then have the project &lt;em&gt;fail early&lt;/em&gt; if it turns out that the project can't get where it needs to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Use Iteration to Limit Uncertainty&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You stated that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the moment the developers say they cannot imagine how they would go about implementing some of the features (or if they are even going to be possible)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, your &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cone of uncertainty&lt;/a&gt; for the project as a whole currently approaches infinity. One approach is to estimate a small feature set where the cone of uncertainty is smaller, and then refactor the project estimates, epics, and user stories after each iteration when more is known about the project and its fundamentals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is essentially an exploratory approach, but can be viable if the project doesn't allow time for a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules/spike.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;spike&lt;/a&gt; as input to the estimating process. The spike will still need to happen, but will take place within a sprint rather than in preparation for Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This kind of iterative development will allow the project to fail early when necessary, or to maximize earned value by building only the features that can be built in a cost-effective and timely fashion during the project life-cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Get a Prioritized List&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to do most of these things, the customer needs to provide the Product Owner with guidance on what's truly essential so that the Product Owner can prioritize a backlog. Once that happens, you can estimate a few of the top stories, rather than the entire product backlog. This is yet another way to limit the cone of uncertainty around your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If feature-by-feature delivery holds no value for the customer (e.g. the final product truly has zero earned value unless the entire project is 100% feature-complete) then the customer needs a measure-twice, cut-once methodology that emphasizes detailed planning and work breakdown structures. It may not make their project any more successful, but such a project isn't a good candidate for an iterative approach anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, that said, very few IT projects actually require 100% feature completion. That's &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; agile projects attempt to make each iteration potentially-shippable: so that the project can be terminated whenever enough value has been realized that further development is not cost-effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Root Cause Analysis&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the foregoing is really a way to manage problems that shouldn't exist at the level that it appears to exist in your individual circumstance. In this case, it &lt;em&gt;appears&lt;/em&gt; that the problem is caused by faulty communication with the client about process, capabilities, or cost. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are in a position to fix the faulty client communications, then you should certainly do so. If you are not, then your professional responsibility is simply to identify the risk to your management team and let them be responsible for the success or failure of the process--they are anyway; it says so in their job descriptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-08-25T18:08:41.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6362" CreationDate="2012-08-25T20:14:09.183" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Things that have prevented me doing any more than I'm contracted to do include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Habitual requests for extra time, if it happens every deadline, then the project manager is not pulling their weight.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lies.  If you tell me you need it tomorrow, you'd better be using it tomorrow.  If I ask you about it a week later, and you say you haven't looked at it, you can bet I'm not going to take any of your deadlines seriously ever again.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Presumption of extra time - If I go home on time or only give an extra half hour one day, I don't expect to be asked why I'm leaving so early.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Asymmetry in the extra time.  If I work 8 extra hours one week, I don't expect to be chewed out for turning up half an hour late the following Monday.  In fact, I expect a manager to say, &quot;Well done, take Monday off.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your team has been subjected to either of the first two, then you either need to regain their trust, which may take years, or replace them with a more gullible team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may be able to fix the other two by offering, up front, a programme of lieu time with at least a 1:1 ratio, that can be taken at any time after the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4507" LastActivityDate="2012-08-25T20:14:09.183" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6373" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-25T20:49:04.930" Score="11" ViewCount="3087" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/6364/30&quot;&gt;Aclear16, on an answer from another question, brought up the notion of accuracy of estimates&lt;/a&gt;.  In my view, this notion is nonsensical; however, we talk about this often in PM circles.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an estimating training class I taught, I wanted to demonstrate the effects of random variability on projects, results that occur secondary to the plethora of variables over which we have little to no control.  To do this, I literally, with a time watch, tracked my time from door to door, coming and going, my commute to and from work for over a year.  I plotted the results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aK1Ja.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Yes, I hate my commute.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if a commute was a project and I was wanting to target accurately, with this historical data as input to our estimating exercise, where does accuracy live?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I choose &quot;65&quot; minutes, a slightly more pessimistic target over the MODE, and I arrived at 75, is my estimate &quot;not accurate&quot;?  Conversely, if I plan at &quot;80&quot; and arrive in &quot;50&quot;, is that also not accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here's the ultimate question:  what does an accurate estimate mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This is question that really does not have an answer and likely violates the rules; however, I hope we can entertain this as I think it is valuable to understanding a very important process in project management.  I am hoping some good critical thought and discussion will ensue.  Thanks to aclear16 for triggering this!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T16:18:31.137" Title="Accuracy of Estimates" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;performance&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6373" CreationDate="2012-08-25T21:48:36.060" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So here's the ultimate question: what does an accurate estimate mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, &lt;em&gt;accurate estimation&lt;/em&gt; is like the unicorn: people are looking for it, love to have one at home, but actually it doesn't exist. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of &lt;em&gt;accuracy&lt;/em&gt; I tend to use &lt;em&gt;likeliness&lt;/em&gt; and focus on certainty. Calculating the likeliness, I'm using the &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://speakerdeck.com/u/fabokzs/p/measure-and-manage-flow-in-practice&quot;&gt;distribution of lead time&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; idea from Kanban (create a histogram of your lead times and pick the longest one). Using it on your example, it would give 87 minutes. That's the estimate. Of course the project can be finished earlier, but that's the date I can tell the customer with the highest certainty at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an important thing: &lt;strong&gt;data expires&lt;/strong&gt;. So, when we are using data for estimation we need another technique which sorts out expired data. For example, the &gt; 70 minutes data was gathered when a huge road reconstruction was performed in your neighbourhood. It is over now, so taking that data out is a good move.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-08-25T21:48:36.060" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6373" CreationDate="2012-08-26T03:19:56.120" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;An accurate estimate would most likely be a range.  I think many people get confused between accurate and precise and numbers (especially below 1,000) inherently provide a false sense of precision.  So, for example, given the above data I would probably answer the question with a range utilizing standard deviation to create the range.  How far out I went would probably depend on the risk involved with the actual being outside the range.  For most things, giving a range out 2 standard deviations gives approximately 95% accuracy, which is usually acceptable.  If you don't like the low end of the range you can always also give a couple points on the upper end (I'm about 70% certain it will be done by X, 95% certain it will be done by Y, and 99% certain it will be done by Z).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1390" LastActivityDate="2012-08-26T03:19:56.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6373" CreationDate="2012-08-26T04:33:34.053" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;So to begin, here is the quote from the other post that I believe you are referring to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;... in order to increase the accuracy of our estimations.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which wasn't intended to imply that one could ever hope to achieve a perfectly accurate estimation (which is almost an oxymoron). This doesn't preclude us from trying to get there. A lot of literature, systems of project management, and training has gone into the idea of increasing the accuracy of estimations. Heck, I even took a class on it in college in the context of mathematical estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So here's the ultimate question: what does an accurate estimate mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To return to the matter at hand, I believe an accurate estimate refers to an estimate that falls within an acceptable amount of error from the true value. The amount of acceptable error obviously depends on the context. I was attempting to get at this issue when I said that a project should have very firm short term deadlines, and increased flexibility for deadlines that are further out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question does bring up a very good point; at times language will utterly fail us. Many answers are going to prefer this term or that term over accurate estimate, but they all are attempting to capture essentially the same idea. And in all likelihood, none of them will fully explain the idea to everyone that hears them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastActivityDate="2012-08-26T04:33:34.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6373" CreationDate="2012-08-26T10:16:27.033" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, I will answer your question technically, and then I will discuss the project management considerations and implications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Estimates and accuracy - statistical background&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The time that a project will take to deliver is, prior to project closure, a statistical distribution, due to project risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can derive various numbers or estimates from that distribution. For example, you can compute the statistical expectation ('mean' or 'average' time) of the distribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The accuracy of an estimate hatt is measured by a metric such as the error t-hatt, where t is the actual time that the project took, a value which is only known at project completion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You cannot guarantee an accurate estimate prior to project closure. What you can do is minimise the statistical expectation of the error. If you know the distribution, the statistical expectation of the time, E(t) gives you what is called an unbiased estimator, because E(E(t) - t) = E(E(t)) - E(t) = 0 (i.e. the average error is zero). All other estimators will be biased - they will have an expected error that is non-zero - but they might have other desirable properties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Project Management Implications&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time and cost estimates are useful in project management for several reasons, but it is important that they are not misused. For many of these applications, an unbiased estimator is not the most suitable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some key uses of time and cost estimates on projects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Helping the executive and programme or corporate management decide whether or not there is a continuing business justification for a project. For example, a project that costs too much or takes too long might not be worth it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Marshalling resources that need to be planned in advance correctly. For example, specialist team members or equipment might be required after certain tasks are completed, and need to be booked in advance. If they are booked for too early, the booking will need to be cancelled or they will sit around doing nothing. If they are booked for too late, the project will take longer than necessary. This also includes planning activities such as launch parties or media events, which cannot always be changed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ordering tasks optimally, based on estimates of their cost and duration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For different applications, different estimators are appropriate; there is not one estimate to rule them all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When conveying project time and costs to stakeholders, simply conveying an unbiased estimate is not enough; instead, it is far better to ensure that the risks are accurately conveyed (for example, through a Risk Register and a Risk Management Strategy) and approved, so that the relevant stakeholders are aware of the distribution that the project might take in terms of time and cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of approvals, ideally a project manager should seek to be given tolerances for project variables such as risk, cost, time, and scope. The project manager should seek to optimise the project, but have the approval to go up to the tolerances in new forecasts without needing to seek further approval. This is far better than working to a single estimate or having a contingency without defining how it can be used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By explicitly taking into account risk, the risk appetite of the organisation can be taken into account. For example, suppose that the project would fail at its objectives and make a loss if your commute takes more than 70 minutes. There is then a significant chance that the project will fail. For some organisations, the expected benefits might outweigh the risk of failure, but for others, it won't. Simply using an unbiased estimate would not get this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of marshalling resources, a specific date often has to be nailed down in advance. For example, the room for the launch party might have to be booked. If the date is missed, the room will have to be rebooked, increasing costs. In this case, an estimate is needed. One option is to avoid the risk by being flexible on other variables (e.g. include some could have features, but give the project manager tolerance to cut them if needed to make a deadline). If there is no option but to be firm on the date, the best approach will depend on the organisation's risk appetite and the additional costs if the risk of missing the deadline eventuates. A conservative estimate is one way to reduce the risk (i.e. an unbiased estimator stacked towards the estimate exceeding the actual time), but it might reduce the organisational benefits captured (by allowing competitors more time to get in before the launch party).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trade-off between risk and benefits is an important business consideration, and there are statistical techniques that can help, such as picking the date that minimises the 'expected loss', or picking a date such that with some high probability (95% or 99%), the actual loss will be less than a certain amount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4499" LastActivityDate="2012-08-26T10:16:27.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6379" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6381" CreationDate="2012-08-27T01:31:35.827" Score="2" ViewCount="21278" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work on a project with many changes. To get data about how these changes affect my project, I want to show my boss about my plan gantt &amp;amp; actual gantt on the same diagram. Could I do this with Microsoft Project? if yes, please show me how!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1945" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-01-14T14:09:24.350" LastActivityDate="2019-01-14T14:09:24.350" Title="Microsoft Project - display &quot;plan schedule&quot; vs &quot;actual schedule&quot;" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6380" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6393" CreationDate="2012-08-27T09:24:11.563" Score="2" ViewCount="1142" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, I am a programmer writing a software for analysing gantt charts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone please explain what types of analysis that project managers often do based on these gantt charts?  What types of information do project managers derive from the gantt chart?  What things can be automated and what cannot? Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4042" LastEditorUserId="4042" LastEditDate="2012-08-28T04:05:05.600" LastActivityDate="2016-11-07T14:10:27.797" Title="What are the metrics that can be analysed or derived from a Gantt Chart?" Tags="&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6379" CreationDate="2012-08-27T12:41:44.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think you can. Especially with a complex project trying to have two Gantt charts essentially overlapping is going to get messy and difficult to interpret. A better bet may be to create a table of four columns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First column is the milestone&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Second column is baseline completion date &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Third column is predicted (&quot;actual&quot;) completion date&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fourth column is variance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-08-27T12:41:44.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6379" CreationDate="2012-08-27T12:49:59.003" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Set your view to tracking Gantt.  After you baseline your schedule, there will be two bars on each package.  One shows your baseline, the other shows your actual.  If you have your packages predecessor and successor logic captured well, the actual gantt will show your finish variances throughout the entire project, including your critical path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-08-27T12:49:59.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6383" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6735" CreationDate="2012-08-27T13:36:02.110" Score="3" ViewCount="3718" Body="&lt;p&gt;As displayed in the Microsoft project 2010 screenshot below, why the summary task (Create DSfile&gt;) has 52hrs work whereas the sum of 2 child tasks is just 12h?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SqtGF.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Solved: &lt;strong&gt;Check to make sure that none of your summary tasks have resources assigned&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1945" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-09T16:36:37.130" LastActivityDate="2018-11-09T16:36:37.130" Title="Summary task (father) shows more work time as compared to the sum of sub tasks (children)" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6373" CreationDate="2012-08-27T14:44:11.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;An estimate is accurate if the observed time/cost falls within your tolerances around the estimate. As noted elsewhere, these tolerances may be more or less strict and this will impact which part of your distribution curve will be used for the estimate. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For projects being delivered under a firm-fixed price contract your tolerances will be very strict, so you may want to set your estimate at the 95th percentile or higher (in your table your estimate may be more than 80 minutes).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For projects that are low risk and of low complexity your tolerances will be much less strict, so you may set your estimate at the 65th percentile and go from there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This relates to the issue of accuracy (&quot;how close did I get to my estimate&quot;) vs precision (&quot;what is the expected error in my estimate&quot;).  I think a strong argument can be made that at the very start of a project the precision of an estimate is probably measurable in weeks, which should feed into how strict your tolerances are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-08-27T14:44:11.063" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6373" CreationDate="2012-08-27T18:42:27.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Funny, I use exactly the same example of commute time in my training classes. The point I try to explain is that a (single point) estimate can never be accurate (nor precise, which is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/accurate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;synonym&lt;/a&gt; I believe), as it would imply a 100% chance of happening. The probability distribution of a well known task (commute) clarifies the variability. Hence the advise to use &lt;strong&gt;ranges&lt;/strong&gt; (Most Likely - Worst Case) and carefully decide what &lt;strong&gt;risk&lt;/strong&gt; you wish to take, how much buffer or reserve you want to take into account etc. (I can explain this further, but the question is about 'accuracy' I believe).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see the point in calling a range estimate 'accurate'; how it was calculated is more important, and how much risk is implied (Worst case only 20% higher or a 100%)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a bit worried about the notion of &quot;data expires&quot; discussed by Zsolt: taking out the 'road block' data from the commute time example, would imply no other road blocks are possible on your way to work. In light of risk management, I would certainly leave it in (unless you have the time / and money to test drive and measure every possible alternative route for getting to work).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2012-08-27T18:42:27.640" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6387" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6389" CreationDate="2012-08-28T09:05:52.857" Score="15" ViewCount="1169" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently read a question on here about - &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/6347/how-to-balance-teamwork-and-babble&quot;&gt;How to balance Teamwork and Babble?&lt;/a&gt; - and David Espina's answer pointed out that despite developers being contracted as 100% FTE (full-time equivalents), in reality they only deliver between 45% and 75%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For simplicity's sake, translating that statistic into hours implies that in a typical 8 hour day (9 to 5), developers only work around 4 to 6 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on my experience at work, I would tend to agree with David. In other words, I have also found that developer stamina and / or willingness to work varies quite a bit from one developer to the next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some developers enjoy working 8 hours per day. Other developers experience stress when they work for prolonged periods of time and require regular breaks during the day in order to perform at their best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, a 4-hour per day developer (let's call him laid-back Larry) gets stressed if he is required to put in 8 hours per day. This reduces Larry's morale and thus impacts his long-term productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise an 8-hour per day developer (let's call him workaholic Winston) gets stressed when Larry takes regular breaks, because he feels like he's the one doing all the hard work whilst Larry is free-riding. But levelling the playing field by inviting Winston to work 4 hours per day instead of 8 results in a loss of long-term productivity as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how do you manage a team of developers when their preferred working hours vary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4523" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2012-09-01T02:03:56.193" Title="How do you manage a team of developers when their preferred working hours vary?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6387" CreationDate="2012-08-28T13:37:19.330" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, different people provide with different output per hour. This is normal, and this is why their hourly rate (or monthly salary) might differ. There is no specific gauge to measure how much &lt;em&gt;each individual working hour&lt;/em&gt; would cost, so there's usually a certain average, FTE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What happens here&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example, let's assume Winston is working 8 hours and each hour is equal. Larry is maybe working 4 hours. If Larry manages each of those 4 hours are that prominent he can deliver the same work as Winston does, a good manager should tolerate that.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Even more, if Winston is late to the office due to the personal reasons, his work for today is certainly late. It does not apply Larry who may concentrate and accomplish today's tasks during a second half of the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if their average hourly productivity is equal, Winston should receive a twice as higher rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Work and hours spent are different terms&lt;/strong&gt;. They are both measured in hours but they have totally different nature: spent time is an effort (physical time), while work is the actual result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yet another consideration. People may be productive at different time of the day, but the key to success is collaboration, not the individual work. A PM has to manage this difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What a PM can do&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I would say &lt;strong&gt;you need both types of developers&lt;/strong&gt; for best long-term results.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A good idea is letting the developers know how many &lt;em&gt;billable work&lt;/em&gt; they deliver daily or weekly. &lt;strong&gt;Even if the project has nothing to do with outsourcing, maintain the time tracking as if the project was billable&lt;/strong&gt;. This alone lets all people to see the &quot;big picture&quot;. They no longer blame on you for paying same salary to people who work different hours a day just because they see how much &lt;em&gt;added value&lt;/em&gt; everyone produces.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having &lt;strong&gt;internal or side projects&lt;/strong&gt; also lets Larry to work more effectively, here's why. Ask yourself, why people get bored? In many cases, it's just because they don't feel courage &lt;em&gt;to do a certain work&lt;/em&gt;. But they will likely want to do &lt;em&gt;another&lt;/em&gt; work. I usually keep a bunch of lower-priority tasks specifically for such situations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As per people who have different productive time, you may let them &lt;strong&gt;agree among themselves&lt;/strong&gt; on critical time slots when everyone is available. These slots are usually assigned to local meet-ups.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Everything above is only valid if the corporate discipline is kept well. Limiting people make them unhappy, but absolute freedom is harmful as well. :)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3941" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T13:37:19.330" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6387" CreationDate="2012-08-28T14:35:08.810" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would be focused on the team and not the individual.  If an individual on my team is focused on the lack of productivity of another, that would be a sign and symptom of a weakness on the team.  Ideally speaking, a high performing team has a sense of collective success and failure, in which the individual strengths are exploited and individual weaknesses are protected.  Indeed, extremes of performance variability needs to be addressed in some way...on both side: meaning a very low producer and a very high producer.  It sounds very counterintuitive to &quot;address&quot; the high producer; however, if it is adversely affecting the overall team's performance in some way, it needs fixed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Performance variability will always exist but I think you will find most to hover around the same level.  I think if you promote a good teaming environment, the variability by individuals will be protected by the team...at least ideally speaking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T14:35:08.810" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6387" CreationDate="2012-08-28T15:23:33.460" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless it becomes a large issue, I don't think you should be micro-managing developer hours. Rather, you should be focusing on the amount of work they are contributing to your project. To use a college analogy, the Professor should not be concerned with the amount of time it took to write a paper, only with the quality of the paper and whether or not it met the requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it becomes an issue, I would prompt my team to speak about it in their next retrospective. If that doesn't solve the matter, consider a visual KanBan style board where everyone can see the tasks that everyone else has in progress and completed. Winston may be simply working under the assumption that Larry is performing less work because he is working fewer hours (Obviously this would only work if Larry is performing a comparable amount of work. If he isn't, then you have an entirely different issue).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T15:23:33.460" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6373" CreationDate="2012-08-28T16:18:31.137" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;@Aclear has it right - an &quot;accurate estimate&quot; is one that falls within the acceptable margin of error for that particular instance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I say the work will take 5 days and it takes 5.5, then within the overall scope of the work that may be an accurate estimate. A) there was no way to determine beforehand 'exactly' how long it was going to take, so 1/2 day on 5 days is probably pretty good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if I estimate it will take 20 minutes to drive my kids to school and I leave with 20 minutes until school starts, if it takes 25 minutes and they arrive 5 minutes late then my estimate was not accurate. It was outside the acceptable margin of error. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality, an estimate is just that, and estimate. Whether it's an accurate one or not really depends on how accurate I NEED to be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T16:18:31.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6380" CreationDate="2012-08-28T16:31:07.093" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the comments you've gotten so far, the question is a little open-ended.&#xA;But in the spirit of helping - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use the Gantt chart to give me a visual representation of things that haven't happened yet. I can look at it and see the flow of the project - when things are scheduled to be done, how tasks/deliverables relate to each other (dependencies), where resources are scheduled at any given time (on not yet scheduled), important dates (milestones).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Gantt is where all of the pieces of the project are displayed collectively. Outside of this visual aid, I have to look into various docs for information -  into contracts to see when a vendor is supposed to deliver something, or when subcontractor is due to start, emails for new dates or resource issues, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also gives me a place to see the overall project (at least in terms of deliverables. My contract may have the scope and deliverables written down, but that will undoubtably take several pages. The Gantt allows me to list it all in one long list, and then view it as I need to  - roll up to milestones only, a specific deliverable, print it out and hang the whole thing on the wall so I can see it all at once. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, I'm not sure how a s/w package could 'analyze' this in a way that I would find useful, but I'd like to hear how you're going about it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T16:31:07.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6387" CreationDate="2012-08-28T16:36:16.507" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Focus on the goal, not the process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a project, you and your team know when it's got to be done. Everyone's agreed. Now if everyone is responsible for an aspect of that work, then it doesn't matter how long they work, or when, as long as the work gets done as agreed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's only when those preferences for hours impact others that you need to worry about managing them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T16:36:16.507" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6387" CreationDate="2012-08-28T16:48:28.907" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is almost always going to be variability in the productivity of individual developers.  And the developers themselves have a good sense of who gets what done.  @DavidEspina said that this fact is &quot;protected&quot; within the team.  I would use the word &quot;accepted&quot;.  The developers simply know the pecking order.  Usually, if it seems like the less productive developers are doing their best and are not otherwise disagreeable, it doesn't cause a problem.  And if it isn't causing discontent among the developers, and management is OK with what is being produced, then it's probably not something that needs to be addressed explicitly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is causing problems, then it absolutely has to be addressed.  If management isn't happy about results because of specific developers, then more pressure or support needs to be applied to those developers to let them know that they need to step up their game.  If they can't make adjustments and management still isn't happy, then you have to consider more severe consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the developers themselves are unhappy with the situation, then you really have to swing into action and deal with the problem quickly.  Every day, the more productive developers will be building up resentment for the people who aren't pulling their weight and that's the kind of problem that reduces everyone's productivity at best, and destroys the team at worst.  The productive will start to resent helping the unproductive.  The unproductive will become more hesitant to ask for help when they really need it.  It's a totally negative, viscious spiral.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing is that when it comes time to hand out raises, bonuses, promotions, etc., these things have to go to the more productive developers.  If there is a stable team situation with unbalanced abilities, rewarding the less productive members of the team is one of the quickest ways to destabilize things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having people of varying abilities around is the norm.  We live it every day.  There are people who are stronger, weaker, faster, slower, prettier...less prettier.  We're used to that.  We accept it.  But when people see someone they know is far less productive getting rewarded more or even the same as they are, it's untenable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if the less productive people complain that they aren't being rewarded, you simply have the facts ready and explain why.  It's unassailable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4404" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T16:48:28.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4500" CreationDate="2012-08-28T17:31:15.243" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like your team would benefit from discussing stories in more depth before starting them, and also breaking them down into smaller stories. &lt;strong&gt;If there's a lot of debate about what the story &quot;means&quot;, then that is a good indication that the story was either too vague or too large.&lt;/strong&gt; However, if the debate is about the proper technical implementation of a given story, then there may be nothing wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, here are my answers to your particular questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are debating implementation details or tweaks to acceptance criteria, then keep the story as is and make those tweaks. But if the debate is larger than that, then a larger action is probably necessary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assuming the story is too big, you should break it down into multiple stories that are more focused and have a smaller set of acceptance criteria on each story. You may want to group those stories together with a label or an epic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The product owner should be coordinating this process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is perfectly fine to reestimate the number of points for the original story and the new stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these steps become harder and cause greater interruption to your development process if you do them once the story has already been started, so again, it's best to talk about the issues during your story planning meetings. However, agile is about adaptation, and so if a story has been started and still needs fixing, better to do it now rather than after the story has been &quot;finished.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4518" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T17:31:15.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4035" CreationDate="2012-08-28T17:48:45.020" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team uses Pivotal Tracker, and in my opinion it meets all of your criteria. However, it does presume that you want to use an agile development methodology, though for the most part you can ignore the agile features that you don't want to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exploring their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pivotaltracker.com/public_projects&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;public projects&lt;/a&gt; is a great way to see it in action and may help you to visualize whether you can fit your processes into that framework. Also, I highly recommend reading through their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pivotaltracker.com/features#workflow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;workflow explanation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that Pivotal Tracker is completely free for public projects, otherwise it is relatively cheap (only $7/month for the team you described).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4518" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T17:48:45.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6362" CreationDate="2012-08-28T19:57:36.453" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless your development team is already committed to the project and it's deadline, I think you will have a very difficult time motivating the team to deliver more functional hours and more importantly effective code, by which I mean properly tested and documented code that was designed well.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the point were the deadline is looming you either have the team mentally and emotionally onboard and they are already putting in the extra time because they don't want a missed deadline on their watch.&#xA;Or you need to threaten them (e.g. people will lose their job if deadlines are missed, etc.)... which really doesn't work for many reasons, but it may produce something that the 'deadline setters' would accept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To fix this problem, you need to go back in time.&#xA;You need the team to be held accountable to estimates and timelines that they accept.&#xA;Without diving into the details, take a look at Scrum or another agile development models.&#xA;Basically you need to reset the software development process at your organization; the development team is likely not very happy, if you keep missing deadlines, the deadline setters aren't very happy.   All of this can be fixed, but not by whipping the development team to make them go faster or pull harder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One side comment, as aclear16 said &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;if you have members of your team that consistently fail to pull their weight and always put in the minimum amount of effort possible while allowing others to carry the project, fire them. Don't wait, don't torture yourself or your team any further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with this approach.  If someone is unwilling to play nice with others and carry their weight they need to find a new home.  That does not mean that a junior developer should be expected to deliver the same volume and quality of work as a senior developer.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They may not be a bad nasty person but they are in the wrong position and should go find something more useful to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4527" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T19:57:36.453" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6380" CreationDate="2012-08-28T20:29:42.767" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I second Trevor's description. What I would add is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Critical Path analysis, but this is already done by most planning software&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dependencies (inside or outside of the project), which require some time-buffering to mitigate possible slippage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Gantt is only a representation of the data behind it, based upon start and finish dates (baseline, planned, actual) etc. Data can be used for all kinds of analysis. What I find useful is a &quot;Milestone analysis&quot;, being the % that you hit your planned milestones on time (across projects). This is useful for organisations that use some 'standard' methodology for similar projects, with a defined set of milestones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T20:29:42.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6347" CreationDate="2012-08-28T20:38:41.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been thinking about this question for a bit and something kept gnawing at me with the other answers, and I finally figured it out. They're all great answers, PROVIDED everyone's on the same page about both the goals and the process. And I think that's where the conflict comes from. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First - Discussions are good and necessary. But most of the answers presume that all of the discussions are a) either work-related, b) focused on employee relations, or c) the employees know when to quit and go back to work. In my experience this rarely happens. So I can see the sponsor/Manager getting frustrated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, as a Sponsor, if I saw everyone spending what appears to be considerable time talking, about what may not be project related I would have two initial concerns - a) am I paying for the time by the hour, and b) even if I'm not, it appears that the time estimate was inflated to include time to talking and socializing. So I would wonder in the first case, &quot;am I paying them to stand around and talk about personal issues? and in the second case, &quot;could my project actually be completed sooner than they told me if they were working rather than talking?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third - Zsolt made a good point about knowledge sharing. And this point goes to the individual project - but is that part of the project, and is it a necessary part of the process? In other words, for some projects research and collaboration are necessary, for others it's not. so is your project one that requires it, or are the employees doing because they 'want to'?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here's where the point about alignment comes in - does your sponsor know what goes into making this project work? Do they understand that there may be times when it looks like things aren't being done, but that those time might actually be the most important discussions? Conversely, does the team understand what the particular requirements are on this project? Schedule, scope, etc? Maybe this just isn't the project for a lot of talking and they need to hold for the next one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T20:38:41.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6387" CreationDate="2012-08-28T22:28:29.823" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Working habits are very personal and trying to change them can only create conflict. Nevertheless, as a PM, it's your responsibility to get the maximum performance from every team member for various reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Individual contribution to the project must be rewarded fairly, based on productivity, that you will need to measure and compare properly considering the task value, complexity, appeal (not all tasks are motivating), pressure, timelines, etc. This is most difficult part.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Different tasks will require different skills and, at the same time, different work habits indicate, in my personal experience, different skills too. Take advantage on the observation of working habits while you get to know better your team members to assess their skills. Specifically, laid-back Larry may be best for tasks that require talking to several people to collect the required know-how to integrate some complex modules or coming with a brilliant idea that can simplify an existing solution or solve a challenging issue. Larry may be just wandering around while the ideas are shaping in his head. Winston instead may be a very meticulous and systematic person who needs to stay in front of the screen double-checking every configuration, unit test and deployment scenario. Do not try to swap their tasks, both will feel miserable, in most cases.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conflict then happens because of misperceptions. You must be able to recognize both profiles accordingly. The Kanban board is a good way and probably you can use it for other purposes too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My favourite option would be to have Larry and Winston working together or collaborating on a task where they can see each other special skills put in place. This way they will learn to value each other contributions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also important, that Larry doesn't look like lazy during his 'low intensity' periods. If this is the case, you should push him a bit more assigning some real tasks that while keeping him busy prevent him from affecting the productive atmosphere of others, that could be tempted to join him in his 'leisure gaps' or get demotivated by the perception of Larry's attitude.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4386" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T22:28:29.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6387" CreationDate="2012-08-28T23:53:35.527" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As CTO at Blueprint software I had a team of 25 developers in Russia and 25 in Toronto, so due to the timezone's there was little overlap during the day.  We actually had the team in Russia start around noon their time and work to about 8pm, providing more overlap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for mentioning this is that the key issue you run into when allowing developers to work their &quot;own hours&quot; is ensuring there is enough time everyday when they can interact with each other, help each other and frankly just feel part of the team.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Allowing people to work their own hours is something I have practiced for the past 10 years.  They only requirement I would have is that there be some core hours where you must be in the office to ensure team collaboration could happen.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If people are measured based on what they produce and less about the hours they put in, this is an important change in thinking that will allow you to see who your top performers are and frankly more importantly, helps motivate the team, as they are and feel more empowered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nothing will zap a teams energy if they feel they are just coding drones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the key points here are &#xA;1) let your team work their hours&#xA;2) make sure there are core hours for team collaboration - at least 3 to 4 hours per day&#xA;3) measure more on what they accomplish than the hours they work.&#xA;4) if you have distributed teams in different timezone, figure out a schedule that supports (2)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4528" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T23:53:35.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6403" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-29T01:08:30.250" Score="2" ViewCount="261" Body="&lt;p&gt;I manage a team of 20 people. I would like to create a project plan with tasks, start date/time, end date/time, link predecessor and successor tasks and also assign my team member names. Here's what I want the software to take care: I want the software to trigger the tasks to each team member, and if the team member doesn't respond back that the task is complete, the software should ping him again saying he is running behind schedule. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if task-1 is complete, software should ping team-member-2 to execute his task. Ideally the entire plan should be executed in this way as team members indicate tasks once they're complete. Are you aware of any software that can do this for me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4530" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2012-08-29T13:02:14.267" LastActivityDate="2012-09-04T11:04:05.623" Title="Project Plan software - auto triggers tasks to team" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6403" CreationDate="2012-08-29T04:52:25.793" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, PMSE doesn't really work well as a repository of software links; however, the problem you're facing runs much deeper than the need for special software. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you're getting a little overwhelmed. The question is why? Are you focusing on managing the schedule and the project? Are you meeting with people regularly to communicate with stakeholders, clients, and the team, or are you possibly getting lost in other details? It sounds like you're trying to replace yourself with a machine. It's difficult to automate the job of someone who must manage many different communication paths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of software that forces developers to move on, check in regularly with the developers on your team. In my experience, there may very well be problems encountered that were unexpected. No estimates will ever be perfect, and you'll need to account for this in your schedule. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also important for you to discuss these problems with the team, and no software can fill that role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, we have a vast repository of questions that have been asked and answered about software recommendations, which aren't really on-topic here anymore, but please see the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/pm-software&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'pm-software'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;pm-software&lt;/a&gt; tag or the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/tools&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'tools'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;tools&lt;/a&gt;, which contain many choices that may be similar to what you're looking for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-08-29T04:52:25.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6362" CreationDate="2012-08-29T10:59:39.487" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some answers about dealing with the immediate problem.  You should also invest some time into making sure you're not in the same boat again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I notice you say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the realities of the industry dictate that sometimes we can not finish&#xA;  everything that needs to get done within that time frame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some questions I'd be asking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Who set the release date expectation and how was the date arrived at?&#xA;(was the team involved &amp;amp; did they agree it was a reasonable target)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What are the business reasons for releasing on that day?  (how much do we lose by delivering a week later.  I've seen cases where the loss was less than the overtime paid!)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How far apart are your releases?  (shorter releases are easier to plan for)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do you deal with unexpected work (discovered work, live support etc)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do you communicate the affects of that to your customer?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2012-08-29T10:59:39.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6362" CreationDate="2012-08-29T13:04:00.620" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is on the contract that every employee has signed with the company. Whatever number of hours is reflected there should be not only acceptable but what you must expect and rely on to get the job done. Now, taking off my 'union hat'... development is not a production chain where number of hours translates directly in productivity or maybe it does but in such a complex way that the comparison will always be dangerous to be considered for you as project manager.. supplies shortage, unplanned repairs, ... have their analogous in the IT world but it's a game that you cannot win if your problem as it looks refers to most of your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can be done then? There is a fine balance to be kept and a small 'cheat' to play. The planning of the work, following whatever methodology you use (waterfall, agile, ..) must be realistic and with enough definition level so that when things don't work the person taking a task considers himself responsible for the miss. The developer will be responsible but you will still be accountable (I am using the RACI model here). Getting to a level enough of definition may not be easy so, involve the team on achieving it (write specs, contact customer representatives, ...) make them feel IMPORTANT and they will be motivated. The cheat to play is that you must fix a minimun that is slightly higher that what you think can be done. More often that you can imagine, you will see this threshold achieved, sometimes because the person will push, others because you will have underestimated and some others because the team will come out with more efficient solutions...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The size of your company is another important factor. In big companies, where the failure of a project or the loss of an important customer is not relevant. This false conclusion must be conveyed to every employee in the company to avoid that they get accomodated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About salary, in my life as developer I have had sustantial salary increases and none of them have made me work more or better nor staying in the company. Salary is a short-term motivator in the best case. For this, I consider important that any incentives can be awarded directly linked to direct contributions by individuals and given with a regularity enough so that effect may last from one to the next if both are achieved but if one fails there is the possibility for another not far down the road.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And incentive may not be only referred to money. You must get to know your people to know what they like: training, attending a conference, public recognition, a second screen, extra holidays, ... will be easier for you to provide as companies CFO don't see them in the same way. Given them what they prefer not what you would like to get yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But of course, as several people have already mentioned, if everything else fails after trying for some time, you must know how much effort you can afford, you must redistribute the team to other functions or just fire them and have a better assessment on people responsibility and motivation when hiring. Quite often though this will be difficult to do because the burnt out people will be people who has been on the company for long and hence, is difficult to justify that they are no longer valid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to take advantage of annual appraisal to stay in touch with your people expectations and motivations. This will require that you have honest and open communication with the team throughout the whole year so that the environment is friendly. No doubt, if there are indicators that show a problem you must act inmediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To finish, let me tell you also something that I hope you will take it properly. I detect in the way your question is expressed certain old-times attitude that I think is biasing how you approach the problem. You should, and here I connect with my first paragraph, consider your developers not 'blue-collar' workers that will try to work the least but 'artists' looking for a muse that inspires them to create. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4386" LastActivityDate="2012-08-29T13:04:00.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6362" CreationDate="2012-08-29T13:28:04.490" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;No matter how many times I read this, this line slaps me across the face &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;we really should have all members dedicated to staying late to see it finished.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is dripping with false expectations.  When an employee accepts a job, at least in North America, a 40 hour work week is standard.  Some overtime is expected, but only in exceptional situations.  Nearing a release is not an &quot;exceptional situation&quot;.  It has been planned for months.  It's a target that has been nearing for months.  When the schedule started to slip a quarter of the way through the project, measures should have been taken then to get back on track.  What action is required varies from team to team, project to project.  But something can almost always be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Waiting until the &quot;final push&quot;, and expecting everyone to put in extra effort is a management failure.  For several reasons.  First, as mentioned, it should have been handled sooner.  Secondly, that &quot;death march&quot; at the end of a project will be the shotiest code written.  It will be full of bugs, and cheap hacks to get things done quickly.  Third, and the reason for point two, is it destroys morale.  Employees want to go live their lives, and this death march, which they probably saw coming months ago, and warned management about, and were ignored is motivating them to one end and it isn't quality software.  It's to finish as fast as possible so they can go home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And after hitting the deadline, at least on the calendar.  You'll spend the next several months fixing up the bugs, costing more.  And annoying the coders stuck on the project in the mess that was created because of the death march.  Which will ultimately result in worse performance next project because they're now starting with poor morale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, you end up with your best people quiting.  And a reputation as a company (or IT Department) for not delivering quality work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1414" LastActivityDate="2012-08-29T13:28:04.490" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6403" CreationDate="2012-08-29T16:10:59.933" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like what you're really trying to do is have the software manage the project for you - you build the plan/schedule, then &quot;set it and forget it&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are programs that will alert a team member when a new task is scheduled for them to begin, but the additional functionality you're talking about is what the PM's there for. To manage the project and to make sure that tasks are being completed, others begun, and issues affecting those are addressed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you're describing would only work in a perfect world, where the project goes according to plan. I have seen very few of those in my career. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-08-29T16:10:59.933" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6387" CreationDate="2012-08-29T17:46:05.717" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both Jesse and Trevor contributed answers that pertain to Resource Allocation in the thread I've linked below, but I think their thoughts play well with your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/3493/how-can-i-make-company-wide-scheduling-and-resource-allocation-decisions&quot;&gt;How can I make company-wide scheduling and resource allocation decisions?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is also in line with David Espina's answer in this thread about focusing on the team and not on an individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4434" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-08-29T17:46:05.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6410" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6411" CreationDate="2012-08-29T18:45:58.907" Score="2" ViewCount="363" Body="&lt;p&gt;The company in question is currently micromanages task assignments, updating people's calendars several times a day as to what they should be doing and when. They feel the need to put more structure into their workflow but are having trouble making the conceptual leap to more of a project-based workflow e.g. where tasks would have a due date, at the least, and people could decide on their own as to when to work on it to get it done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas on how to assist them in this transition?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;They feel the pain but can't see the bridge to a solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FURTHER INFORMATION&#xA;They have one PM who acts mostly as a traffic manager. However, the pm is trying to move to greater structure - wants more building a house, rather than putting out fires.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no methodology at this time or pm approach. The team is servicing client requests as they come in. Some requests are for larger, longer-term projects such as putting together a new marketing brochure. Some requests are shorter, like putting up a new picture on a website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a relatively flat organization. Owner/Manager, PM, account exec, group of creatives and developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2012-08-30T14:27:39.683" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T10:16:34.300" Title="How to Migrate from Task Management to Project Management?" Tags="&lt;process&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6410" CreationDate="2012-08-29T19:17:04.907" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Strange, but talk about taking &quot;looking through a microscope&quot; to a whole new level. In this case, instead of breaking it down further, I'd say they need to do the exact opposite and go back to the big picture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, all of these task assignment contribue to some goal (I'm assuming). What is this goal and can it be translated to a project? From there, work out the deliverables and assign it to a team member. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From that point, the typical PM methodologies would take over (depending on what they want to use).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it's easier said than done, but I'm keeping my answer a bit broad as I am making a lot of assumptions being made about their existing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4434" LastActivityDate="2012-08-29T19:17:04.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6410" CreationDate="2012-08-29T20:07:28.833" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Micromanaging is a simplistic &quot;fix&quot; for an issue like poor quality work, not staying on budget or schedule, perceived inefficiencies of workers, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So look for the root cause of the problem that causes the micromanagement and use that to develop a business case for a project-based workflow over &quot;today's&quot; approach of micromanagement. Do your best to quantify the pros and cons in dollar terms and let them see precisely how much value they can add. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just make sure that the business case is fair, open, transparent and fact/data-based.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastEditorUserId="1251" LastEditDate="2012-08-30T19:04:00.917" LastActivityDate="2012-08-30T19:04:00.917" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6410" CreationDate="2012-08-29T20:17:29.777" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like the company being described does not trust their employees to figure out how to break down their projects into bite-size tasks, and thus it is doing it for them. Perhaps using a piece of software like &lt;a href=&quot;http://asana.com/product&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Asana&lt;/a&gt; would help. The management could define the high-level and medium-level goals, and let the employees break down those goals into discrete tasks. Because Asana allows everyone to have a real-time view of what is going on with the project at a detailed level, that would give management a chance to see that the employees do actually know how to manage their own work, and would also allow them to see the detailed tasks that each employee is responsible for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's certainly possible that the problem runs much deeper than not having the right project management tools/software, but something like this may be a step in the right direction.&lt;/strong&gt; Both sides would be giving a little: management would be allowing their employees more autonomy, and in return, employees would commit to exposing their detailed tasks (which they may currently manage in their own way) to management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there are surely other tools that could be used in the same way, but I just happen to be familiar with Asana (and it's free).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4518" LastActivityDate="2012-08-29T20:17:29.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6414" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6420" CreationDate="2012-08-29T20:55:09.167" Score="9" ViewCount="2834" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the Daily Scrum meeting mandatory for a successful Scrum project? Is it possible to replace it with a one hour meeting once or twice a week?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am asking this because I am finding it difficult to hold daily 15-minute meetings with my project team since they are doing operational tasks (which are mandatory) outside of the project tasks (which are supplementary), so we agreed to do one hour meetings twice a week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-12-16T23:38:26.373" LastActivityDate="2019-12-16T23:38:26.373" Title="Is the 15-minute daily stand-up meeting mandatory for a successful Scrum project?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3643" CreationDate="2012-08-29T20:59:15.753" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I started as a technical writer and editor with the exact same background--English major and English teacher. The book I found most useful in explaining the basics of software development was actually The User Manual Manual : How to Research, Write, Test, Edit &amp;amp; Produce a Software Manual (Untechnical Press Books for Writers) by Michael Bremer. It's from 1999, so it predates Agile, but it gives a good overview of the general concepts: iterative design, waterfall, etc. It doesn't assume any software knowledge at all, and it's a quick, fun read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I found particularly useful was the way it explained how the writer fits into all of these methods and what particular advantages and challenges each one creates when it comes to documentation. Depending on the docs your friend is editing, this may or may not be useful to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4532" LastActivityDate="2012-08-29T20:59:15.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6414" CreationDate="2012-08-29T21:30:09.457" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;CodeGnome's answer is about perfect... But here's my 2 cents as well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is the daily scrum 15mins meeting mandatory for successful scrum project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a successful &lt;em&gt;scrum&lt;/em&gt; project, yes. You're not doing scrum if you don't have daily scrum meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a successful project in general, probably not. People have been successfully building software without any of the recommendations in scrum for quite some time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real point behind the daily scrum is to ensure constant communication amongst your team members. If they are achieving this without the need for a formal meeting, perhaps, you could forgo it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't really like the idea of your twice a week 1 hour meeting. That seems too long, too ripe for wasting people's time, and too easily turned into a chore for your developers, rather than a tool to help them accomplish their jobs. But who knows, if it works for your team, run with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is that everyone's practice is going to be different. It should be customized to fit your needs. You can always try for a sprint, and talk about it in your retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastEditorUserId="4422" LastEditDate="2012-08-30T14:58:34.230" LastActivityDate="2012-08-30T14:58:34.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6414" CreationDate="2012-08-29T22:33:11.330" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's an old saying: nine women can't make a baby in one month.  You can't just substitute the same amount of time in long meetings for the short ones.  My guess is that you would be wasting more time in a one hour meeting once or twice a week than you would in 15-minute dailies and that less would get done in these meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is some subtlety in scrum.  One of the purposes of the dailies is to ensure communication.  This is very important because you want problems and issues surfaced as soon as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another purpose of dailies is to ensure operational tempo.  It could be argued that in a case where development is a background operation, brief daily meetings are even more important to keep people mindful that there is this background task and they need to keep development pressure on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dailies also keep individuals focused and close off opportunities for procrastination.  If I know I'm responsible for something in a daily three days from now, that gives me 2 days to say &quot;I can finish that tomorrow.&quot;  If I know I'm responsible for something in a daily at the end of today or tomorrow morning, I had better get on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4404" LastActivityDate="2012-08-29T22:33:11.330" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6418" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-08-29T22:34:02.707" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redmine.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Redmine&lt;/a&gt; is a flexible project management web application. Written using the Ruby on Rails framework, it is cross-platform and cross-database.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Redmine is open source and released under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2 (GPL).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Features&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the main features of Redmine are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multiple projects support&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Flexible role based access control&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Flexible issue tracking system&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gantt chart and calendar&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;News, documents &amp;amp; files management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feeds &amp;amp; email notifications&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Per project wiki&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Per project forums&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time tracking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Custom fields for issues, time-entries, projects and users&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SCM integration (SVN, CVS, Git, Mercurial, Bazaar and Darcs)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Issue creation via email&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multiple LDAP authentication support&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User self-registration support&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multilanguage support&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multiple databases support&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read more about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redmine.org/projects/redmine/wiki/Features&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Redmine features&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Links&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redmine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki atricle about Redmine&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redmine.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Redmine Home Site&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-02T19:50:05.730" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T19:50:05.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6419" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-08-29T22:34:02.707" Score="0" Body="Redmine is a free flexible project management web application. Written using the Ruby on Rails framework, it is cross-platform and cross-database." OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2013-01-24T00:07:22.557" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T00:07:22.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6414" CreationDate="2012-08-29T22:41:49.047" Score="16" Body="&lt;h2&gt;What the Stand-Up Meeting is For&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Stand-Up Meeting (a.k.a. the daily scrum) is designed to accomplish two main things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coordinate task dependencies within the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify process or resource issues (blockers) that need to be addressed outside the stand-up meeting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Various &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/scrum/daily-scrum&quot;&gt;scrum practices&lt;/a&gt; support these objectives. The individual practices are malleable, the actual objectives of the stand-up are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Time-Boxing is Essential to Scrum&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is all about time-boxing. Iterations are time-boxed. Stand-ups are time-boxed. Can you fiddle with the &lt;em&gt;size&lt;/em&gt; of the time boxes? Sure you can. However, there are always trade-offs in doing so, including increased overhead with shorter time boxes, and a loss of flexibility and turn-around time with longer boxes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your team can't spare 15 time-boxed minutes per day, then you have process issues far beyond Scrum. On the other hand, if the 15 minutes per day don't add value to your team's process, then read on!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Introspect the Purpose of Your Meetings&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find that you aren't really working as a team (e.g. individuals all have non-interdependent tasks) then you really won't gain much benefit from regular stand-up meetings. The daily scrum is for coordinating tasks and making delivery commitments within the team, but if Alice never needs anything from Bob (and vice-versa), while Fred is always working on something entirely irrelevant to the rest of the team, then the value of the stand-up is zero unless you're treating it like a PM status pull.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've certainly worked in plenty of shops where the &quot;team&quot; is a conglomeration of individuals, rather than a true team within the meaning of the Scrum framework. In such cases, limiting meetings to a few planning meetings and the occasional retrospective might still be valuable, but that will be highly dependent on the nature of the work and the organizational culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;DevOps is Not Ideal for Scrum&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your team members are performing mostly operational tasks, with some supplementary projects, then Scrum may not be the best fit for your work-flow. Scrum is really designed for &lt;em&gt;projects&lt;/em&gt;, especially software development projects, and while it can be adapted to ongoing operations or support, there are better tools available to agile project managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether your operations tasks are ticket-based or backlog-based, you may find a pull-process like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt; to be a better framework for your needs. It's a leaky-bucket system: work pours into the bucket, and work-in-progress limits ensure that tasks trickle out of the bucket at a sustainable (and usually predictable) pace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can certainly adapt Scrum up to a point, but beyond that point it isn't really Scrum. If you find that the Scrum meetings, practices, and artifacts aren't meeting your objectives, I'd highly recommend looking at alternative agile frameworks and practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-08-29T22:41:49.047" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6421" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-08-29T22:44:08.030" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28development%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on Scrum&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum of Scrums is a daily meeting normally after the Daily Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;These meetings allow clusters of teams to discuss their work, focusing especially on areas of overlap and integration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;A designated person from each team attends.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The agenda will be the same as the Daily Scrum, plus the following four questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What has your team done since we last met?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What will your team do before we meet again?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Is anything slowing your team down or getting in their way?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Are you about to put something in another team’s way?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-08-30T03:27:00.547" LastActivityDate="2012-08-30T03:27:00.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6422" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-08-29T22:44:08.030" Score="0" Body="Scrum of Scrums is a daily meeting normally after the Daily Scrum" OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="4529" LastEditDate="2012-08-30T03:21:30.947" LastActivityDate="2012-08-30T03:21:30.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6423" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-08-29T23:08:59.710" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-08-29T23:08:59.710" LastActivityDate="2012-08-29T23:08:59.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6424" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-08-29T23:08:59.710" Score="0" Body="Department of Defense" OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="4529" LastEditDate="2012-08-30T06:20:57.153" LastActivityDate="2012-08-30T06:20:57.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6425" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-08-29T23:23:02.563" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28development%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia's Article on Scrum&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A sprint is the basic unit of development in Scrum. Sprints last between one week and one month, and are a &quot;timeboxed&quot; (i.e. restricted to a specific duration) effort of a constant length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Each sprint is preceded by a planning meeting, where the tasks for the sprint are identified and an estimated commitment for the sprint goal is made, and followed by a review or retrospective meeting, where the progress is reviewed and lessons for the next sprint are identified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During each sprint, the team creates finished portions of a product. The set of features that go into a sprint come from the product backlog, which is a prioritized list of requirements. Which backlog items go into the sprint (the sprint goals) is determined during the sprint planning meeting. During this meeting, the Product Owner informs the team of the items in the product backlog that he or she wants completed (the ones with the highest priority). The team then determines how much of this they can commit to complete during the next sprint, and records this in the sprint backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The sprint backlog is property of the development team, i.e. during a sprint, no one is allowed to edit the sprint backlog except for the development team. The sprint goals should not be changed during the sprint. Development is timeboxed such that the sprint must end on time; if requirements are not completed for any reason they are left out and returned to the product backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After a sprint is completed, the team demonstrates how to use the software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-08-30T03:24:37.947" LastActivityDate="2012-08-30T03:24:37.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6426" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-08-29T23:23:02.563" Score="0" Body="A sprint is the basic unit of development in Scrum and Agile. Sprints last between one week and one month, and are a &quot;timeboxed&quot; (i.e. restricted to a specific duration) effort of a constant length." OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2014-10-09T11:09:59.667" LastActivityDate="2014-10-09T11:09:59.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6414" CreationDate="2012-08-30T11:45:24.227" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;CodeGnome's answer is very good, and said most of what I had to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'd like to ask is, how come these operational tasks interrupt daily meetings, but not one-hour weekly ones? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum daily meetings don't have to be full-team (they should be, but they should take place without people if they're unavailable) and don't have to be 15 mins in length. Schedule them daily for the team about 30 mins after their official 'start time' and keep them short.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on the three questions of 'what did you do yesterday', 'what will you do today', 'do you have any impediments' can be gotten through fairly quickly if the majority of the team's time is spent off-project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mandate the meetings in the same way you'd mandate the weekly ones, and if people aren't there they miss out on the vital information, this is something you should introspect with the team during your Retrospectives to see how it is working out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4525" LastActivityDate="2012-08-30T11:45:24.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6410" CreationDate="2012-08-30T14:56:37.027" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe a Kanban style implementation would fit perfectly. Have the PM move from managing tasks, to managing a prioritized list of user stories based on the client's requests. Get the team together once a week or so to break down the user stories into tasks (This should be the team, not the PM doing the breaking. You could also simply have the team break a user story when the PM is ready to put it on the board). The PM controls which user stories' tasks go on the board, and the developers worry about the order in which they are completed, and who completes what.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The selling points of this implementation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't change much over their current flow, and doesn't require any new technologies (other than a whiteboard).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The PM still gets to manage the order in which customer requests are completed by managing which user stories' tasks get placed on the board, but he no longer has to micromanage how those tasks are completed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The team becomes responsible for breaking up user stories into tasks. This will involve them more in the process, break the user stories in a manner that makes sense to the developers, and relieve the PM.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Kanban-style should support the different lengths of customer requests nicely, rather than having to try and force them into a fixed length timebox.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-08-31T00:24:43.563" LastActivityDate="2012-08-31T00:24:43.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6429" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-30T21:56:05.953" Score="12" ViewCount="1016" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently a developer who recently applied for a project manager position at my company. I was told that being a PM in my company will make me earn less than what a developer will earn. I did however proceed with the application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While doing some research I came across the following &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/45776/why-do-business-analysts-and-project-managers-get-higher-salaries-than-programme&quot;&gt;question.&lt;/a&gt; To sum up some of the answers it states that a PM should not earn as much as a developer as it's the developers that do the hard work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How true are these statements when comparing salaries in other IT companies? And are PM's more valued than what one would originally think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="519" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:31:53.287" LastActivityDate="2014-10-05T04:42:34.317" Title="PM salary in the IT industry" Tags="&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6429" CreationDate="2012-08-30T22:53:15.813" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to glassdoor.com, the average PM salary is $66,048 while the average programmer salary is $43,658.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the relative salaries are going to depend greatly on perceived programmer skill, PM duties, company culture and negotiation skill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Successful project management is a science and in demand skill in its own right (PMs require both project management skills, something which there are a number of professional certifications for, like PRINCE2 and PMP, and a bit of knowledge about the domain the project is in), and it sounds like your company may not fully appreciate what a good project manager can do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, project management is a difficult field to get into; you need experience to get a job, and you need a job to get experience, so if you want to be a project manager elsewhere, an offer to get a first job in project management is valuable even if it means temporarily getting paid less. I'd suggest reading some literature (e.g. the PMI's Project Management Body of Knowledge, Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2, The Agile Manifesto, and books on popular agile methodologies like XP, Scrum and so on). If it sounds like you, taking the job could be a good opportunity, because it will help you to get a PM job elsewhere. Don't forget that developing yourself as a good PM takes just as much effort as a programmer, so keep up with opportunities to learn new methods and get certifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4499" LastActivityDate="2012-08-30T22:53:15.813" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6429" CreationDate="2012-08-31T00:25:42.720" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some companies, the project manager is seen more as a coordinator. it will depend on the job functions. &#xA;In general though, my experience, is that PM is the pre-entry to management positions that are part of the company hierarchy and hence more valued.&#xA;Companies may or not have a technical and management career path, you should ask about it and it will help you to understand what can you expect from your PM position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, I am glad that your company considers that developers do the hard work, as usually it is underestimated. Nevertheless, I think that a good PM is essential for a project to be successful: planning, team management, technical direction( sometimes the architect does this), global perspective, risk management are key tasks of the PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4386" LastActivityDate="2012-08-31T00:25:42.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6432" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6438" CreationDate="2012-08-31T03:34:46.257" Score="11" ViewCount="663" Body="&lt;p&gt;I lead a medium sized team of developers whose skill, age &amp;amp; time in the company vary for quite a bit. Some of the youngest in the team are considered profficient while some of the most seniors (age-wise) are outranked by a large part of the team. Plus, we have new people with less than 2 months in the project, while others have been for more than 3 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem I have is that we have a new project coming up everyone wants to get into, but everyone is unfamiliar with the skillset required for it and I have to divide my team in two for at least the first couple of months: some of them will stay in the current project, while others will get to work on the &quot;cool&quot; project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the long term I have already made it clear everyone will get their time on the new project by scheduling rotations, however everyone is eager to get in there first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have some concerns with this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the experience on the skillset required for the new project is basically the same among all of the devs (quite low), based on what should I choose who moves and who doesn't? Experience is really not a factor i can rely on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can I justify the desicions I make (or even, should I try to justify them?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What's the best way to keep morale up for those that don't get moved into the cool project (repeating &quot;you'll get your chance soon&quot; at some point will not be enough)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have thought of doing small quizes so that I can pickup who's in the best shape or have at least the most knowledge needed for the &quot;cool&quot; project (which kinda gives me some justifications for my actions), however I also think I should just go with those I believe who can get the job right (basically a hunch which would led me to pick those I already have worked with, which practically gets the new guys out of the game).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice would be highly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4177" LastEditorUserId="4177" LastEditDate="2012-08-31T03:48:33.130" LastActivityDate="2012-08-31T11:16:34.257" Title="What is the best way to divide a development team?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;&lt;multi-team&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6432" CreationDate="2012-08-31T04:14:24.570" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If there are truly no advantages in people's existing skillsets, then you have to look at other factors.  You need a good mix of solid developers and more wisened developers to ensure success, especially since this is out of everyone's comfort zone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would first look at your more senior (company-wise) developers and chose the ones who are some of your more productive and hard-working developers.  This should be seen as a reward to some extent if everyone really wants to work on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have a core group, I would look at your senior (experience-wise) developers and chose at least one (maybe two depending on the size of the project) to get things off to a start.  Again, since this is out of everyone's expertise, you need to pick people you have been able to rely on.  These more experienced developers should help you be able to identify project risks even if this isn't in their wheel house.  And you need people looking out for risks (technological, schedule, and otherwise) because this is a brand new project using a technology that &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; aren't experienced with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for justifications, everyone can't work on the new project.  The developers know who the better and more hard-working developers in the group are, and the people who put in less effort can't really complain about being excluded from the start of the project.  Good people have the option to leave you.  Don't give them a reason.  Then you need some experienced people to help mitigate project risks.  Again, if you chose the one(s) who have proven themselves in the past, the others can't really argue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're the manager.  You can't be everyone's buddy.  Sometimes you have to make unpopular decisions.  Try to be unemotional like Mr. Spock in presenting your reasoning.  And you may want to announce the bad news to people individually or in small groups if you are really concerned about reactions.  This will give people a chance to vent (on you) without creating a huge wave of negativity.  Make your decision and announce it to everyone (individually or in small groups) as quickly as possible.  It's bad news.  Get it out and get over with it quickly so the rumor mill doesn't have time to spin up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may be able to spin some of it as a chance to learn/manage new parts of the system for the folks staying on the old software.  But that's not going to get you very far so don't oversell it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4404" LastActivityDate="2012-08-31T04:14:24.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5052" CreationDate="2012-08-31T06:06:19.087" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you heard of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sococo.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sococo Team Space&lt;/a&gt;? Integrates screen sharing, video, voice and chat communications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4540" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2012-10-04T13:17:25.423" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T13:17:25.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6432" CreationDate="2012-08-31T07:49:49.013" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Until you are better able to judge who will be most suitable to lead aspects of the project why don't you use a rotating leadership chair? The approach could work similar to having everyone rotate roles and a team rotation (Junior Dev, DBA, Lead dev, Architect, etc.) every 2 (or n) weeks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To kick things off you could get everyone to cast an anonymous vote as to which team and which role they feel one other team member should have (obviously the voter cannot vote for themselves).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pros of the approach&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allows you time to responsibly evaluate team members.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gives everyone on a team a sense of fairness in joining the cool project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give you a time frame to transition out undesirable resources.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lets people who may not &quot;get along&quot; to be split into two separate groups.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cons of the approach&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;May add risk to the project a rotating lead will most likely lead to a lack of cohesive consistency in the code base.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team may feel there is too much chopping &amp;amp; changing within the project, which in turn may damage morale.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="98" LastActivityDate="2012-08-31T07:49:49.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6432" CreationDate="2012-08-31T08:53:57.533" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did some experiments in the past and it seemed that those teams were successful, where the members &lt;strong&gt;where able to work together&lt;/strong&gt; before. This setup were way better than the setup when the team setup was based on the necessary skill sets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion would be to setup teams based on the existing &quot;small groups&quot;. &lt;strong&gt;People with the same understanding learn more and faster&lt;/strong&gt;. There will be some &lt;em&gt;storming&lt;/em&gt;, but it won't hurt that much. The most common mistake I see today is that the line managers search for developers with the necessary skill set - handling them like resources - to start a project, and ignore the ideas of team dynamics. Their argument is that people learn to work together faster than learning something new. I see this argument valid under special circumstances, but I don't support it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What's the best way to keep morale up for those that don't get moved into the cool project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem with this part is that the old project is considered not cool. If I were you I worked on this issue and find out why the old project is not cool, and how to make it cool. &lt;strong&gt;Usually, the old not cool projects keep a company alive&lt;/strong&gt;, so maybe you can use this argument to &lt;em&gt;sell&lt;/em&gt; the team separation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum up: try to find the small groups in your current team by face-to-face or small group conversations and find out what is cool in the old project and sell that idea. Their might be somebody who'll love it. Talk to them and find out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-08-31T08:53:57.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6432" CreationDate="2012-08-31T09:27:09.380" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some points from my side to add to the ideas already expressed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;don't promise anything you will not be able to honor, or make it clear that is your intention and may be subject to changes. Even when this could seem very basic when dealing with mature adults, it can be surprising how not meeting these kind of expectations can demotivate someone.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;consider not only the needs of your new project, but also how to guarantee that the old one will have an smooth end.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;if your group is new to the technology or sector, you should start by moving in the people who are better self-learners/self-starters and will definitely include some seniors that could guide the process. This can help for the project to get some quick wins that will help you to gain some credibility in front of your management or customer. Also these starters will help others to come onboard easily.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;about explaining your decisions, do as usual or you will be questioned. In general, I prefer the more openness that the topic allows but you must stick to your style.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;avoid converting the assignment into a prize/penalty thing, you have other important drivers to take the decision in this case and the best motivator scenario may not be the best business one. As Corleone said: &quot;It's only business&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4386" LastActivityDate="2012-08-31T09:27:09.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6432" CreationDate="2012-08-31T11:16:34.257" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Experience is a weak indicator for future success (Hunter &amp;amp; Hunter, 1984).  So feel free to remove time in chair as it will not hurt you.  Age is a zero indicator for success (same study) so definitely remove that from the equation.  Your best predictor is cognitive ability, to be able to think critically, to be able to analyze.  Since all of your developers have the basic skill and knowledge set, take the ones that have shown their ability to analyze, the ones that have exhibited intelligence above all others.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Develop a structured interview, a set of questions delivered to each candidate that will expose their ability to think, to ask the right questions, to theorize, to get into the abstract.  Choose the ones who scored best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all cases, remove your gut feeling.  You're biased like the rest of us and likely your gut will have little to no validity of future success.  I know that reads very counter-intuitively; we all tend to rely on it, and experience, and that is why our selection process is about 50/50 in terms of being successful.  That's a coin toss and you cannot run a business with a coin.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-08-31T11:16:34.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6429" CreationDate="2012-08-31T12:34:04.743" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Developers are always going to tell you their work is harder/more important than PMs or BAs. And PMs will say their work is harder/more important, as will BAs, as will Accountants, as will Legal, etc. At the end of the day, on a team everyone's work is important because without it the team is more likely to fail. The relative importance will vary from project to project and company to company because of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The relative availability in your area of qualified people to fill a given role;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Corporate culture, and therefore prejudices about who should earn what;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Corporate needs and project criticality;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Individual capabilities and level of experience.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think hard about whether this move is right for you. PM work requires a very different skill set than developing software (way more emphasis on soft rather than hard skills), and it can be too easy for you to dive into details when you should be more focused on the big picture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-08-31T12:34:04.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6429" CreationDate="2012-08-31T12:35:33.177" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Comparing one job family with another in an attempt to make sense of it is futile.  In that other question, the justification that one should make more money because they &quot;work harder&quot; shows a lack of intelligence, analysis, maturity, and general wherewithall.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, hard work is relative and subjective.  That would be an argument that would never end.  Second, pay has NOTHING to do with that.  Variables including supply and demand, the existence of a monopoly and monopsony, the ratio of marginal revenue product and marginal resource cost affect where a salary and wage fall.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does not matter about rank or perceived hard work or skills involved or number of years of education or how well you negotiate at the table.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pay certainly and realisticaly has a lot to do with your choice of your career; however, unless you are comparing a job that pays above $200K and below $50K, the deltas really become inconsequential over time and will never justify one's happiness and perceived content in his/her career.  Chase that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-08-31T12:35:33.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6429" CreationDate="2012-08-31T13:29:01.267" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;From personal experience in the UK (and particularly in the not-for-profit sector) I would say that PMs and Developers of a similar level of experience and seniority tend to earn a similar or equal amount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The skillsets are very different so it's pretty hard to compare the two roles fairly. You also have to take into account current market conditions and business requirements (as David Espina pointed out). A developer who knows a business critical legacy programming language might be worth a small fortune to one company but considerably less to another, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where I think the divide really begins to show is disparity between &lt;em&gt;Project&lt;/em&gt; Managers and &lt;em&gt;Programme&lt;/em&gt; Managers. The latter often earn considerably more than both the majority of project managers and developers but, again, it's all about the skillset. A programme manager might have considerable budget responsibility and strategic influence. While a developer is still essential in the projects a programme manager is responsible for, the truth is that businesses tend to reward those who play a stategic role more highly than those who play (for want of a better phrase) an operational role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2012-09-14T16:07:38.827" LastActivityDate="2012-09-14T16:07:38.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6442" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6443" CreationDate="2012-08-31T13:56:04.937" Score="15" ViewCount="1586" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working as project manager on a large project with a five person development team. They have been without project management support for several months and there is no project management methodology in place (though build processes - CI etc. - are quite mature). Agile is attractive to them but they have little or no experience with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What tools and techniques would you introduce to get a team started on agile without overwhelming them (and me!). In your experience is it more effective to introduce everything at once or is a phased approach more effective?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have limited experience of Scrum and Kanban from previous roles but not at introducing them for the first time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2012-08-31T15:27:01.720" LastActivityDate="2012-09-14T11:06:57.547" Title="What tools and techniques should be introduced first when starting with Agile/Scrum?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6442" CreationDate="2012-08-31T14:37:25.103" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum is probably the more difficult of the two to implement from scratch. Here's what I would suggest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First Phase: Preparation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Spend some time grooming and prioritizing your backlog. The key here is to break the backlog items into small enough pieces. Most new Scrum teams fail early because they are unable to deliver software at the end of a sprint, and that is usually because their backlog items (user stories) are too large.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Have your team read up on the Scrum process, and go over with them the plan of implementation. Get their feedback, and feel for where you are getting pushback. Talk to them about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TDD&lt;/a&gt;/&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior-driven_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BDD&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Second Phase: Sprint 1&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Set up your first sprint. I usually suggest 3 weeks. If after 2 sprints, your team is having difficulty delivering working software, &lt;strong&gt;shorten your sprint length to 2 weeks&lt;/strong&gt;. This will force you to break your backlog items into smaller pieces. Increasing sprint length is usually a black hole that you'll never get out of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Implement all the required meetings, including the daily standup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Third Phase: Automation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) If you don't already have them, now is the time to set up your CI builds, and work on your developer's daily workflow. Encourage them to use the &lt;em&gt;get latest &gt; build &gt; code &gt; build &gt; get latest &gt; build &gt; check in&lt;/em&gt; flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;6) If your project doesn't already have extensive automated tests, now is the time to really start encouraging their creation. Your sprints will be more productive, and your working code will be more &quot;working&quot; if you can achieve good code coverage for your CI builds. Consider a check in policy that requires an increase in code coverage for a successful check in. This can be abandoned later on, once everyone is used to writing unit tests for their new code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you get this far and you haven't had a revolution on your hands, you can now start talking about setting up automated deployments, pushing TDD/BDD, implementing a code review policy, and formalizing an input/feedback process with your product owner that is more continuous. The last part can be quite difficult. Most teams end up with what we call Water-Scrum-Fall where the product owners act in more of a waterfall manner and only want to be involved at the beginning and ending points. The further into the organization you can push the agility, the more benefits you will see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for technologies I recommend TFS 2012. I've written a fairly decent overview of it's power on stackoverflow &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/a/12076875/1162102&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. To recap, it combines pretty much everything you will need from both the PM side and the developer side under one umbrella.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a final note: it is possible to do this in almost the exact reverse order, except for grooming your backlog (that should almost always come first). You could choose to concentrate on developing your team member's daily habits before implementing the structure of Scrum. Get them increasing your code coverage with automated tests, introduce a CI build, and (hopefully) set up automated deployments first, then create the sprint structure around that. Talk to your team, and see which they would prefer. Scrum is all about continuous value delivery achieved through automation and continuous communication. Get your team's input throughout, but if you get some pushback you may need to enforce some structure. Hopefully after a few sprints, they will see the benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After some discussion with my colleagues, I believe I left out something important. I mentioned TDD/BDD, but I failed to emphasize the importance of integrating testing into your sprints. You need to include enough testing (unit, integration, acceptance) &lt;em&gt;inside&lt;/em&gt; your sprints to ensure that your &quot;working&quot; software is actually working and fulfilling the product owner's needs. I've found that one of the most effective ways to achieve this is through multi-dimensional teams. Put a tester or two on your teams. Paired programming with a tester and a dev can be incredibly successful if they can work in a collaborative arrangement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:41:23.897" LastActivityDate="2012-08-31T16:19:53.503" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6387" CreationDate="2012-08-31T17:25:43.477" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;All of our developers are local, but many have varying hours. Some work 7-4, others 10-7, etc. My expectation (as PM) for them is that they be in the office during &quot;core hours,&quot; so that I (and others) can schedule meetings and discussions as appropriate. For our purposes, I define &quot;core hours&quot; as 10-3; so I assume folks will be here during those hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4544" LastActivityDate="2012-08-31T17:25:43.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6445" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6604" CreationDate="2012-08-31T19:30:22.383" Score="6" ViewCount="3085" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am planning on facilitating one or more sessions with key stakeholders in order to define and document a shared &quot;vision&quot; for the end-state coming out of a planned business improvement project. This vision will feed into further sessions to define what the end product(s) will look like and to develop an outline business case, and hopefully will have the side-benefit of getting the stakeholders engaged from the outset.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What tools, templates or techniques will be effective in facilitating this kind of discussion, and why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastEditorUserId="4529" LastEditDate="2012-09-02T03:19:17.083" LastActivityDate="2012-09-15T21:07:31.950" Title="Tools, templates or techniques to facilitate defining project vision?" Tags="&lt;vision&gt;&lt;initiation&gt;&lt;strategy&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6362" CreationDate="2012-08-31T20:05:05.470" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;From everything I've read, switching to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://gorowe.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Results Only Work Environment&lt;/a&gt; results in an upswing in productivity. It tends to result in more hours worked too, but that's not the goal per se. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a nutshell, ROWE means that you stop managing hours and work location and instead manage measurable objectives and let employees control their own time and decide for themselves how best to accomplish the results that are expected. If the team produces a specific result (features developed, bugs fixed, etc.), that's more important than how long it took them to complete it or whether they worked late or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that it's really important for these expectations to be reasonable and to be agreed to by the person expected to perform them. If expectations are unreasonable, you'll burn people out and your good employees will leave. If people are on the hook for what others were supposed to do and didn't, again, they're likely to get frustrated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not managing hours means that saying &quot;I put in 40 hours, that should be enough,&quot; isn't an excuse if a task that you're on the hook for didn't get completed. Therefore, it should encourage people to put in extra effort when it's needed. But on the flip side, it means that they get to pick when and where they work, provided that they get the work done. So one person might come in at seven, eat at their desk, and work straight through til six PM. Another person might roll in at nine, work until one, take a lunch break, work from two until four, then go pick up their kids, deal with dinner and homework, and then do a bunch of work from their couch after the kids are in bed. Both of these are the employee's choice to make. They're given a set of things to accomplish, and it's up to them to figure out when, where, and how they work best and juggle priorities appropriately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of the reason it results in more hours worked overall is that people are willing to bust their tails for you when they have control of their time. If I'm not getting the stink-eye because I leave at four to let my dog out, or I can schedule doctor's appointments without it having to be the last appointment of the afternoon, I'm much more willing to work some in the evening or on a Saturday. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, people can often be more efficient if you get rid of expectations regarding hours and location. Someone who has an hour commute each way is spending ten hours a day to work for eight hours. That same person could work nine hours from home, get more done, and take less time out of their day to do it. Similarly, someone might choose to come in later in the morning to avoid rush hour, leave before afternoon rush hour hits, and do some work in the evening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Admittedly, this is a huge culture change and requires the willingness and ability to commit to it, and especially to fire people who don't produce the expected results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4532" LastEditorUserId="4532" LastEditDate="2012-09-02T13:19:39.993" LastActivityDate="2012-09-02T13:19:39.993" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6387" CreationDate="2012-09-01T02:03:56.193" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Define the Problem Better&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the issue whether there is sufficient overlap of &quot;core hours&quot; for members of the team to communicate, or is the issue that you have team members with different levels of skill and/or productivity? You mention both issues, but you can't solve for everything simultaneously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Core Hours&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of core hours dovetails well with the Scrum and XP practices of &quot;sitting together.&quot; While it is considered a practice and not a methodology requirement, it is worth listening to what the proponents of the methodologies have to say about the practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Sit Together&quot; predicts that the more face time you have, the more humane and productive the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Beck, Kent; Andres, Cynthia (2004-11-16). Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change (2nd Edition) (Kindle Location 893). Pearson Education (USA). Kindle Edition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is that a certain amount of face-time among team members, while not strictly required (and sometimes counter-productive in certain environments or for introverted team members) is still generally considered a generic best-practice because it enhances the level of teamwork through non-verbal communication, as well as fostering a sense of cohesion and allowing team members to pick up additional information through osmosis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A healthy agile team works together in high-bandwidth, high-quality communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Adkins, Lyssa (2010-05-18). Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Cohn)) (Kindle Locations 2459-2460). Pearson Education (USA). Kindle Edition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The amount of overlap required to implement &quot;core hours&quot; is somewhat fluid, but in my own practice I've generally found that the core hours of 10:00am-2:00pm work well for most teams. It allows the early birds and the night owls to overlap for at least a few hours every day, while still providing plenty of flex-time so people can avoid traffic and avoid working against their natural biorhythms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if you implement core hours at all, it's important that any all-hands meetings (e.g. daily stand-ups or Sprint Retrospectives) be scheduled to start and finish within the bounds of the core hours. This isn't really hard to do, but it's something that one should keep in mind if your team values any sort of consistency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Skills and Productivity Have No Relationship to Wall-Clock Time&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are managing an agile project, life is simple. Things are either &quot;done&quot; or &quot;not done.&quot; As long as the &lt;em&gt;team as a whole&lt;/em&gt; is meeting its commitments every sprint, and the team retrospectives don't indicate that there is dead wood on the team, then how people organize their own work (and by extension, their own work hours) should be fall under the M.Y.O.B. rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Alice handles her fair share of user stories, helps others on the team as needed, and even occasionally finds time to pull additional stories off the backlog, why on earth would you &lt;em&gt;care&lt;/em&gt; if she only works four hours a day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if it takes Bob 8-10 hours per day, every day, to keep up with his fair share of the user stories and he never finds time to pay down technical debt or pull additional stories, there still isn't a problem unless:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bob can't mind his own business about how other people work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bob is being allocated &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; than his fair share of the stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first is a social issue, in which Bob is the toxic element. The second is likely a process issue--one that needs to be addressed by the team in a retrospective, or by the Scrum Master by bringing it to the team's attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, as long as both people are pulling their weight, adding value to the team's overall efforts, and ensuring user stories meet the team's &lt;em&gt;definition of done&lt;/em&gt;, then any &quot;problem&quot; is illusory. Such illusory problems are often holdovers from a management style that values high individual utilization over system throughput.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always, always make sure you understand the root cause of a problem. In some rare cases, you may actually have a lazy or unproductive team member. In other cases, you may just have a busy-body on the team who can either be coached or voted off the island. Finally, the problem may just be a process that values perceived effort more than actual results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Measure the productivity of your team &lt;em&gt;as a whole&lt;/em&gt; rather than by micro-managing individual work habits, and define the validity of the overall process by its throughput. If the majority of your sprints are delivering tangible value and user-visible features, then don't break a process that's clearly working successfully!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-09-01T02:03:56.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6362" CreationDate="2012-09-01T08:03:34.940" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lot of long winded answers here, plenty of good content. One of my favorite posts on the subject is by Rob Mee of Pivotal Labs, a company known for sustainable work ethics. The full article debunks several myths. Here's what Rob says about &gt;40 hour work weeks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Working crazy hours doesn’t get you there faster. In fact, it slows you down. Sure, you can do it for a week. But most start-ups plan to be around for a little longer than that, and developers will going to have to keep programming for months, if not years, to build a successful product. Many start-ups operate as if the pot of gold is just around the corner; if we only work a little harder, we’ll get there. Pretty soon developers burn out, and simply go through the motions of working long hours without any corresponding productivity. Working intensely, for shorter periods of time, is far more effective. Pivotal has helped hundreds of start-ups build systems, and has done it on a strict 40-hour week.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoted from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2011/06/07/whats-your-start-up-bus-count-7-myths-of-entrepreneurship-and-programming/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Four Hour Workweek Blog: What’s Your Start-up’s “Bus Count”? 7 Myths of Entrepreneurship and Programming&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4545" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-09-01T19:54:25.213" LastActivityDate="2012-09-01T19:54:25.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6449" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6451" CreationDate="2012-09-01T11:36:39.843" Score="5" ViewCount="9251" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on my understanding, Product owner, Scrum Master and Development team are the major roles in a Scrum team. I have to setup a .Net Scrum team with 5-8 members. I don't have enough knowledge about Scrum. Can any one please give a solution for this problems?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the key roles that should be in a Scrum team?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who conducts the code reviews in a Scrum team?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do Scrum Teams have a role called team lead, and tech lead?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4546" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2012-09-01T15:34:42.050" LastActivityDate="2020-07-21T08:54:58.957" Title="What are the key roles in a Scrum team?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6449" CreationDate="2012-09-01T12:41:09.903" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To quote &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrum.org/Scrum-Guides&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;, &amp;quot;Scrum recognizes no titles for Development Team members other than Developer, regardless of the work being performed by the person; there are no exceptions to this rule;&amp;quot; In that regard, it would be counter-productive to restrict developers into specific duties.  The idea is that the development team will self-organize to accomplish tasks and overcome obstacles as needs arise (and as resources become available).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for code reviews, there are many methods for conducting code reviews (see chapter 3 of &lt;a href=&quot;https://static1.smartbear.co/smartbear/media/pdfs/best-kept-secrets-of-peer-code-review_redirected.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Best Kept Secrets of Peer Code Reviews&lt;/a&gt;).  It is up to you and your team to conduct and evaluate the code review method(s) that best complement your team's culture (although a separate quality assurance branch may collect and analyze metrics that can assist in evaluating the effectiveness of a code review method).  If you have developers who are better with client code, it may be a benefit for them to review client code for better defect detection.  It may also be a benefit for developers not familiar with the client code to review it so that they become more familiar with the client-side in case they need to step-in and do client programming in the future.  A benefit of agile and scrum is that the development team can self-organize to test various code review methods for effectiveness.  Regardless, the development team should be responsible for reviewing the code created by the development team.  There can also be an external quality assurance team that further reviews the code, but that is not at all necessary for a basic implementation of code reviews or scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4396" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-29T15:44:47.003" LastActivityDate="2020-06-29T15:44:47.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6449" CreationDate="2012-09-01T18:39:50.540" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Core Roles in Scrum&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are the key roles that should be in a Scrum team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum defines only three &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28development%29#Core_roles&quot;&gt;core roles&lt;/a&gt; for the framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A Product Owner, whose role is somewhat of an amalgamation of a traditional Product Manager and a Project Sponsor, but has a lot more interaction with the Development Team than a more traditional role would require.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A Scrum Master, who is the process referee that ensures that the methodology is followed. A Scrum Master is also responsible for coaching the team and the organization on how to make the most of Scrum's processes and artifacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The scrum master acts as a coach, guiding the team to ever-higher levels of cohesiveness, self-organization, and performance. While a team’s deliverable is the product, a scrum master’s deliverable is the self-organizing team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sims, Chris; Johnson, Hillary Louise (2011-02-15). The Elements of Scrum (p. 74). Dymaxicon. Kindle Edition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A Development Team, which is a cohesive, self-organizing, cross-functional group that contains all the skills necessary to deliver on the project goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum teams are highly collaborative; they are also self-organizing. Team members have total authority over how the work gets done. The team alone decides which tools and techniques to use, and which team members will work on which tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sims, Chris; Johnson, Hillary Louise (2011-02-15). The Elements of Scrum (Kindle Locations 976-978). Dymaxicon. Kindle Edition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Code Reviews&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Who conducts the code reviews in a Scrum team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Code reviews are a practice, not a framework requirement, and not one that is universally embraced. For example, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/stories/pair7.html&quot;&gt;Code Reviews Considered Hurtful&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, some Scrum teams &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; adopt code reviews, either because they are identified as helpful during a Sprint Retrospective or because they are required by the parent organization. Unless the parent organization provides a mandate, how code reviews are handled are an issue for a self-organizing development team to work out for themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, the goal is high-quality, maintainable code. If the development team finds code reviews helpful in meeting their accepted &quot;definition of done,&quot; that's great. If not, perhaps test-driven development or some other practice will work equally well (or better!) for a particular team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your job isn't to task someone with doing code reviews; your job is to referee the process to ensure that the team is continuously inspecting and adapting its practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Titles for Development Team Members&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do Scrum Teams have a role called team lead, and tech lead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum framework promotes collective code ownership, and the team succeeds or fails as a group. As a result, titles that differentiate team members are antithetical to the tenets of Scrum, although they are nevertheless used by the parent organization in job descriptions and Human Resources files.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at it this way: if you designate Bob as the team lead, then you are assigning responsibility for specific deliverables to Bob. Why should Alice take on Bob's responsibilities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, if you formally make Alice &quot;the QA person,&quot; why should Alice take collective ownership of code or work on architecture stories? Doubtless she was brought into the team to ensure that there was some specialized QA knowledge available to the team, but &quot;cross-functional&quot; doesn't mean siloed responsibilities within the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team members will have titles within the organization, which occasionally reflect the skills they bring to a project team. However, it's &lt;em&gt;up to the team&lt;/em&gt; to self-organize and distribute responsibility within the team. As a Scrum Master, you should only step in if it's obvious that the team is failing to self-organize--which you measure by whether or not the team is meeting its Sprint Goals and the &quot;definition of done.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Assigning&lt;/em&gt; leadership roles within the team is not an agile practice, and is certainly not Scrum. If you find yourself in a position where this is necessary, then you should certainly revisit your overall process, and try to identify what is impeding the self-organization of the Development Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-09-01T18:39:50.540" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6445" CreationDate="2012-09-02T03:08:11.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;First things first&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vision should come after mission and values discussion. Vision must be associated with values as it &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_90.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;communicates both the purpose and values of the organization.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Proposed steps&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one of my recent projects, I used below steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Open discussion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I found good guided questions and steps on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.franklincovey.com/msb/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mission Statement Builder&lt;/a&gt; for teams. I used those to brainstorm and open discussion with the team about team mission. Questions like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What does our team want to be known for?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;How do we want to treat each other?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What kind of workplace do we want to have?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What unique talents and skill does each person bring to the team?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What do we want to achieve?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What unique contributions can we make?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Everyone writes a vision statement&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;After mission and values discussion and prioritization, everyone asked to put a vision statement in his own way and communicate it on the project discussion board for all to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Highlight words&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In later meeting, everyone say his statement, make short discussion. By the end, we highlighted important words (values, actions, target, ...) in the target statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4. Draft statements&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I, then, took all statements, highlights, word and produce 2 draft statements. This could be also done in the previous step meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;5. Produce one statement&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;At last, with the team, put the 2 statements in front of all and choose which one or may be come out with combined one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Things to consider&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vision statements sometimes evolve with time and depend on the maturity level of the image of the end-product.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's also a good practice to look at other companies and products vision statements, sometime it's inspiring.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4529" LastActivityDate="2012-09-02T03:08:11.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6453" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-02T03:26:29.983" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Management_Institute&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on Project Management Institute&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To maintain most PMI credentials, holders must earn Professional Development Units (PDUs) which can be earned in a variety of ways such as taking classes, attending PMI global congresses, contributing to professional research or writing and publishing papers on the subject. Most credentials must be renewed every three years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="4529" LastEditDate="2012-09-02T09:46:48.947" LastActivityDate="2012-09-02T09:46:48.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6454" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-02T03:26:29.983" Score="0" Body="Professional Development Units. Units to be earned to keep PMI credentials for PMI Certification holders." OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="4529" LastEditDate="2012-09-02T09:46:01.350" LastActivityDate="2012-09-02T09:46:01.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6455" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-02T03:47:41.080" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_story&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on User story&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In software development and product management, a user story is one or more sentences in the everyday or business language of the end user or user of a system that captures what a user does or needs to do as part of his or her job function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;User stories are used with &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/agile&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'agile'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;agile&lt;/a&gt; software development methodologies as the basis for defining the functions a business system must provide, and to facilitate requirements management. It captures the 'who', 'what' and 'why' of a requirement in a simple, concise way, often limited in detail by what can be hand-written on a small paper notecard.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;User stories are written by or for the business user as that user's primary way to influence the functionality of the system being developed. User stories may also be written by developers to express non-functional requirements (security, performance, quality, etc.), though primarily it is the task of a product manager to ensure user stories are captured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;User stories are a quick way of handling customer requirements without having to create formalized requirement documents and without performing administrative tasks related to maintaining them. The intention of the user story is to be able to respond faster and with less overhead to rapidly changing real-world requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;User stories templates&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;User stories generally follow the following template:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&quot;As a &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;role&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;, I want &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;goal/desire&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; so that &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;benefit&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;but the shorter version is commonly used as well:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&quot;As a &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;role&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;, I want &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;goal/desire&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some practitioners place the benefit at the front, in order to keep the benefit at the forefront:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&quot;In order to &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;receive benefit&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; as a &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;role&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;, I want &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;goal/desire&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="4529" LastEditDate="2012-09-02T09:46:24.140" LastActivityDate="2012-09-02T09:46:24.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6456" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-02T03:47:41.080" Score="0" Body="User stories are used with Agile software development methodologies as the basis for defining the functions a business system must provide, and to facilitate requirements management. It captures the 'who', 'what' and 'why' of a requirement in a simple, concise way, often limited in detail by what can be hand-written on a small paper notecard" OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="4529" LastEditDate="2012-09-02T09:46:46.107" LastActivityDate="2012-09-02T09:46:46.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6457" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-02T03:52:52.087" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Foundation_Server&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki&lt;/a&gt; definition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Team Foundation Server is a Microsoft product which provides source&#xA;  code management (either via Team Foundation Version Control or Git),&#xA;  reporting, requirements management, project management (for both agile&#xA;  software development and waterfall teams), automated builds, lab&#xA;  management, testing and release management capabilities. It covers the&#xA;  entire application lifecycle. TFS can be used as a back end to&#xA;  numerous integrated development environments but is tailored for&#xA;  Microsoft Visual Studio and Eclipse (on Windows and non-Windows&#xA;  platforms).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-30T14:33:23.227" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T14:33:23.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6458" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-02T03:52:52.087" Score="0" Body="For questions about Microsoft's Azure DevOps Server, previously known as Team Foundation Server (TFS). " OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2020-05-27T13:43:36.770" LastActivityDate="2020-05-27T13:43:36.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6459" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-02T03:53:28.967" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;#Description&#xA;The Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK Guide) is a book which presents a set of standard terminology and guidelines (a body of knowledge) for project management. PMBoK Guide provided and published by Project Management Institute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;#See also&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/pmi&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;pmi&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;pmi&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;#Links&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Management_Body_of_Knowledge&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wiki article about PMBoK Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/PMBOK-Guide-and-Standards.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PMBoK page on PMI Site&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="36330" LastEditDate="2021-01-25T14:28:12.800" LastActivityDate="2021-01-25T14:28:12.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6460" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-02T03:53:28.967" Score="0" Body="For questions related to the Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK Guide)." OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="36330" LastEditDate="2021-05-26T11:40:18.020" LastActivityDate="2021-05-26T11:40:18.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6461" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-02T03:54:28.543" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Earned value management (EVM) is a project management technique for measuring project performance and progress in an objective manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Links&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_value_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki article about EVM&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-02T19:47:31.527" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T19:47:31.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6462" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-02T03:54:28.543" Score="0" Body="For questions about Earned Value Management (EVM) technique." OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-02T19:51:53.313" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T19:51:53.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6463" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-02T03:59:13.857" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMMI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on CMMI&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) is a process improvement approach whose goal is to help organizations improve their performance. CMMI can be used to guide process improvement across a project, a division, or an entire organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="4529" LastEditDate="2012-09-02T09:31:02.263" LastActivityDate="2012-09-02T09:31:02.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6464" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-02T03:59:13.857" Score="0" Body="Capability Maturity Model Integration" OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="4529" LastEditDate="2012-09-02T09:46:03.627" LastActivityDate="2012-09-02T09:46:03.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2634" CreationDate="2012-09-02T06:10:26.240" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our company used a loose version of Agile development, so it is possible that our Scrum Master responsibilities were much different from what you will experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our Scrum Master did not rotate and was never a developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was her just job to go back and forth with the different departments to make sure we had all the info we needed for our projects.  Similar to what jMort stated in his answer, her other main responsibility were to hold meeting and track progress on projects and bug fixes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were QA lead, that tells me you have expereience in trying to extract details about a project from several different departments so that you know how it should function.  The Scrum Master (at least our version) would absolutely need that ability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever skills you gained from leading meetings as QA Lead, they should help you immensely as you lead meetings with your new team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4139" LastEditorUserId="4139" LastEditDate="2012-09-02T17:13:15.260" LastActivityDate="2012-09-02T17:13:15.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6445" CreationDate="2012-09-02T09:45:23.363" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend to check out the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0470405163&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Beyond Budgeting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; approach from Bjarte Bogsnes which talks about the &lt;strong&gt;ambition to action&lt;/strong&gt; process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;ambition to action&lt;/em&gt; is a very interesting process and an effective vision and tool setting idea. It is a process which empowers strong performance, sustainable results, strategic objectives, KPIs, actions and forecasts. Here is a score card &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epmreview.com/images/stories/epmimages/content_images/balanced-scorecard-statoilhydro.gif&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RXCUh.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The vision (ambition) is on the top, and under that you can see what the necessary objectives to achieve that vision, how to measure (see where you are at the moment) and what are the steps (actions) required to finish that objective. &lt;strong&gt;Each organization&lt;/strong&gt; has a score card like this and the ambitions should support the higher ambitions. If an ambition doesn't fit into the big picture, it should be refined until it fits. Of course the ambitions can change, but it requires a discussion, which is good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a very good idea to find the right vision (ambition), see where you are and what you have to do in order to get there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-09-02T09:45:23.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6442" CreationDate="2012-09-02T09:57:02.703" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't recommend to introduce Agile or Lean, because one of them is attractive to your developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They love to try out new things by nature, and it is completely fine, but you as a project manager are responsible for the project and if you don't have any process, &lt;strong&gt;you should analyse the demand instead of checking out processes&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Find out what your customers want, what are the key moments in the life of the projects and know the vision&lt;/strong&gt;. Usually, when there is no process, means there is no vision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say you introduce Scrum, but your customers don't want to participate in demos, and don't want periodic deliveries. You spent a lot of time and their money on a process which doesn't fit. &lt;strong&gt;Demand comes first, and then the supply&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a possible list for you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;customer demand&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;vision&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;process idea which fits into the vision and demand&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;internal process pilot&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;idea validation with the customer (if doesn't fit, go to step 1)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;process education&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-09-02T09:57:02.703" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3115" CreationDate="2012-09-02T14:23:19.660" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q1 - What Questions should I be asking our clients?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend special focus on better listening to the already existing feedback rather than focus on what to ask. There is nothing more frustrating than giving feedback with no follow-up/ brainless refusal and later being asked what you think should be improved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not maintain that consumers do not know what they want. They know it or at least they feel it quite well. What they do not do well is to articulate what they want and more often than not - they ask for the wrong solutions for what they want. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone might require the improvement X which in your expert opinion is a bad idea. That doesn't mean you should hurry onto the next task on your schedule. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should ask yourself:&#xA;- &quot;What is the bigger need/ what problem is behind his suggestion&quot;;&#xA;- &quot;In what other ways does that need reveal itself? How do other users experience it?&quot;;&#xA;- &quot;What made him think X would be the proper solution for that need?&quot;;&#xA;- &quot;How is that competition tacking that bigger problem behind his suggestion?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: be available for feedback and focus on deeper analysis of available feedback first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you insist too much on asking questions of your own, though, I'd recommend you to have users compare your product with a competitor's. This makes it easy for them to be specific and accurate. They tend speak in too general otherwise and their words tend not to match their actual behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4551" LastActivityDate="2012-09-02T14:23:19.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6470" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6471" CreationDate="2012-09-02T16:08:45.780" Score="3" ViewCount="490" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example, if 10 team members of a project spent 1 hour in a meeting, should the time spent record for that meeting be &lt;strong&gt;1 hour&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;10 hours&lt;/strong&gt; since everyone contributed an hour of his own time? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same question applies on tasks that is being done by more than 1 team member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am confused between both ways since both have some valid logic reasons to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2012-09-03T08:21:20.580" LastActivityDate="2012-09-03T09:02:51.683" Title="How should time spent in project's meetings be recorded?" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6470" CreationDate="2012-09-02T16:43:49.143" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on the metric you want. If it is about the meeting, one hour describes time spent on it. If you are after how much it costs, you are going to need the five labor hours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For any metric, you have to answer a question. If you are not answering a question, you don't need the metric. Your question here implies you don't have a business question to answer and you are capturing the metric for the sake of capturing a metric. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So back at you: what is it about the meeting you need to know?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-09-02T16:43:49.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6470" CreationDate="2012-09-02T16:47:59.760" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, if you were recording it in MS Project, you'd simply untick the effort-driven box. It doesn't matter how many people you pile into that meeting, it's still only going to take an hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For effort-driven tasks, you can use man-hours, man-days etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if we consider that it takes 2 man-days to build a wall, assigning one person to the task should get the wall built in 2 days. However, if you assign 2 people to the task, it can be completed in one day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But for timesheets etc. you would consider each person's hour separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4552" LastActivityDate="2012-09-02T16:47:59.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6473" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-02T21:09:49.117" Score="12" ViewCount="1829" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some team members are self-motivated however some others is not. Non self-motivated members is slowing down the velocity of the project which cause frustration to the other members and to management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are best practices to motivate my project team members to be self-motivated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2012-10-28T20:24:28.423" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T00:36:43.730" Title="How could I motivate my project team members to be self-motivated?" Tags="&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6474" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-02T22:18:30.170" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_office&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on A Project Management Office&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Project Management Office (PMO) is a group or department within a business, agency or enterprise that defines and maintains standards for project management within the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="4529" LastEditDate="2012-09-03T07:05:53.277" LastActivityDate="2012-09-03T07:05:53.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6475" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-02T22:18:30.170" Score="0" Body="Project Management Office" OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="4529" LastEditDate="2012-09-03T07:05:50.780" LastActivityDate="2012-09-03T07:05:50.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6476" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-02T22:21:44.487" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrospective#Software_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on Retrospective/Software development&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The term is also used in software engineering, where a retrospective is a meeting held by a project team at the end of a project or process (often after an iteration) to discuss what was successful about the project or time period covered by that retrospective, what could be improved, and how to incorporate the successes and improvements in future iterations or projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In agile development retrospectives play a very important role in iterative and incremental development. At the end of every iteration a retrospective is held to look for ways to improve the process for the next iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="4529" LastEditDate="2012-09-03T07:06:10.780" LastActivityDate="2012-09-03T07:06:10.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6477" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-02T22:21:44.487" Score="0" Body="Retrospective is a meeting held by a project team at the end of a project or process (often after an iteration) to discuss what was successful about the project or time period covered by that retrospective, what could be improved, and how to incorporate the successes and improvements in future iterations or projects." OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="4529" LastEditDate="2012-09-03T07:05:43.060" LastActivityDate="2012-09-03T07:05:43.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6478" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-02T22:34:02.380" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_programming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on Extreme Programming&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Extreme Programming (XP) is a software development methodology which is intended to improve software quality and responsiveness to changing customer requirements. As a type of agile software development, it advocates frequent &quot;releases&quot; in short development cycles (timeboxing), which is intended to improve productivity and introduce checkpoints where new customer requirements can be adopted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Other elements of Extreme Programming include: programming in pairs or doing extensive code review, unit testing of all code, avoiding programming of features until they are actually needed, a flat management structure, simplicity and clarity in code, expecting changes in the customer's requirements as time passes and the problem is better understood, and frequent communication with the customer and among programmers. The methodology takes its name from the idea that the beneficial elements of traditional software engineering practices are taken to &quot;extreme&quot; levels, on the theory that if a little is good, more is better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="4529" LastEditDate="2012-09-03T07:05:31.530" LastActivityDate="2012-09-03T07:05:31.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6479" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-02T22:34:02.380" Score="0" Body="This tag is for questions related to managing projects that employ the eXtreme Programming (XP) agile methodology or its component practices." OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-12-22T00:51:47.657" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T00:51:47.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6480" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-02T22:36:09.570" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;KPI is performance units (or enterprises) to help the organization achieve strategic and tactical (or operational) goals. The use of key performance indicators gives the organization the opportunity to assess their condition and help in assessing the implementation of the strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;KPI allows control of the business activity of employees, departments and the entire company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Link&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_indicator&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki article about KPI&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-09-06T22:42:16.230" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T22:42:16.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6481" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-02T22:36:09.570" Score="0" Body="For questions about Key Performance Indicators (KPI), like its determination, calculation, etc." OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-09-06T22:42:38.230" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T22:42:38.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6482" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-02T22:38:15.247" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PERT&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article of Program Evaluation and Review Technique&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Program (or Project) Evaluation and Review Technique, commonly abbreviated PERT, is a statistical tool, used in project management, that is designed to analyze and represent the tasks involved in completing a given project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="4529" LastEditDate="2012-09-03T07:06:03.667" LastActivityDate="2012-09-03T07:06:03.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6483" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-02T22:38:15.247" Score="0" Body="Program Evaluation and Review Technique" OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="4529" LastEditDate="2012-09-03T07:05:59.250" LastActivityDate="2012-09-03T07:05:59.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6473" CreationDate="2012-09-03T01:33:40.510" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the subtleties of scrum is that it creates a lot of visibility across the team regarding who is getting what done.  If you are not practicing scrum or something similar, you should seriously consider starting it so that the unmotivated people on your staff can become more aware that they aren't pulling their weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talk to these people 1-on-1 at length and find out if they feel disenfranchised from the process somehow.  Find out if there is something specific that is causing them to do the minimum.  You need to engage with them and remove obstacles if they exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you sure they understand what is expected of them and how they are under-performing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are already doing these things or if these people are aware that they aren't pulling their weight and they just don't care, then it's time to consider other actions &lt;strong&gt;especially&lt;/strong&gt; if they are affecting the rest of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've done these things and you're still not getting results, then you start applying pressure until they change or quit.  The good performers will at least appreciate the fact that you're applying pressure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't want the good people suffering and possibly leaving.  Then all you will have is a team of low performers and it will be almost impossible to build a decent team from that nucleus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4404" LastActivityDate="2012-09-03T01:33:40.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6485" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6493" CreationDate="2012-09-03T01:40:49.033" Score="1" ViewCount="367" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a CS grad student, and I am interested in applying project management or software/system engineering methods to research projects at my university.  I have experience applying the Scrum framework for small development teams, but I do not believe such a management framework would be applicable here.  Let us use &lt;em&gt;Project A&lt;/em&gt; as an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some characteristics of &lt;em&gt;Project A&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Roughly 50-75% of the effort of &lt;em&gt;Project A&lt;/em&gt; is a technical solution that includes aspects of electrical engineering, physics, biology, chemistry, and computer science.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ideally, the initial effort of &lt;em&gt;Project A&lt;/em&gt; would take less than a year to complete&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anywhere from 2 to 12 people may be working on the project at any given time, with each individual having their own schedules and priorities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The time commitments from each individual could vary widely (an administrator/professor might commit a few hours a week to facilitate the allocation of resources, another professor may be writing the research paper, a grad student may be involved for 40 hours a week for a few weeks in the summer to write a program, another student may commit a few hours a week for the entirety of the year to integrate electrical systems, and so forth).  It may be possible to hold weekly meetings of sub-teams, but monthly meetings would be more realistic (if meetings are even necessary)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At this time there is not a defined set of requirements.  There are some vague use cases that can be refined into functional requirements, but there would need to be a somewhat substantial effort to refine the system being development into sets of technical requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Project A&lt;/em&gt; is still in its infancy (conceptual discovery phase, perhaps?).  By applying software/system engineering or project management methods to this project I can vaguely imagine the facilitation of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;communication among team members,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the thorough understanding of functional requirements while implementing the technical solutions,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;coordination of implementation efforts,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and the collections of basic metrics (such as person-hours, defects per person-hour, or others)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I mentioned earlier, I do not think that Scrum would be at all applicable to manage the technical solution of &lt;em&gt;Project A&lt;/em&gt;.  My experience in implementing technical solutions involves predictable and consistent commitments of time, even if the teams are distributed geographically or across multiple time zones.  However, I am unfamiliar with managing a project where people may intermittently start or stop working because they have other priorities in the organization (the organization being the university, in this case).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What methods of project management, development life cycles, or software/system engineering could benefit &lt;em&gt;Project A&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4396" LastEditorUserId="4396" LastEditDate="2012-09-03T21:33:17.867" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T20:57:48.540" Title="Project Management for Inconsistent Development Efforts" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;process-engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6485" CreationDate="2012-09-03T02:04:08.900" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, congratulations on recognizing that scrum would be a round peg in a square hole on the project structure you describe.  Scrum absolutely requires time commitments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might consider Kanban.  I have only read about it, but it seems to be a format that supports a looser availability of resources while trying to restrict waste of those resources to an absolute minimum.  I don't have any references that I prefer for this so &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_%28development%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;start with Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding meetings, under no circumstances would I go with monthly meetings unless there is only one person doing any work on the project for a period of months.  Bi-weekly should be a minimum target especially in cases where you have more junior people working on the project.  Juniors members need questions answered, attention paid to keep them motivated to deliver, and oversight to avoid gold-plating.  Maybe you should have more frequent meetings with those who need it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4404" LastActivityDate="2012-09-03T02:04:08.900" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6473" CreationDate="2012-09-03T04:58:11.923" Score="11" Body="&lt;h2&gt;First: A Few Words About Velocity&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity is most useful as an estimating tool, and as a measure of variance. However, it is often misused as a management goal or external commitment target.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wide variance in velocity is certainly a good reason to inspect the current project, though, and look for flaws in estimation, procedural impediments, process issues, or even social dynamics. However, social dynamics is deliberately last on the list, as problems with social dynamics are usually (but not always) symptoms of process issues rather than the other way around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, since the question as posed was about self-motivation, let's start there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;External vs. Internal Motivation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a person not self-motivated, then they can possibly be motivated by external incentives, but that's still not intrinsically &lt;em&gt;self&lt;/em&gt;-motivation. Self-motivation requires engagement with the process, and a certain amount of enlightened self-interest in the outcome of that process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Disenfranchisement is Common&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teams aren't &quot;teams&quot; just because people are assigned to them. Real teaming is something that grows organically out of a successful organizational and social process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many organizations, teaming is imposed externally, and then management is surprised when a random assemblage of people doesn't gel together. In other cases, tasks, deadlines, and objectives are mandated from above, and then (surprise again!) the &quot;resources&quot; fail to take personal responsibility for commitments they haven't made themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Open a Dialog&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't really know what's wrong unless you talk to the entire group. &quot;Lack of self-motivation&quot; is a symptom, not a cause. I'd bet heavily that the members of the group know why the project is not meeting expectations, so ask them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there really is a problem with specific individuals, opening a dialog directly with them is also a good first step. Communication is critical, regardless of the project management methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Inspect Your Process&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a terrific opportunity to inspect your entire system of processes. Some things you can look at are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the project management framework a good fit for the work at hand?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the project management process working as designed?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the project management process working effectively?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have the right people with the right skill-sets on the project?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there organizational processes that are impeding the project? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are the hiring/retention practices bringing in the right people, and keeping them there?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you truly have under-performing group members, then it's a Human Resources issue rather than a Project Management one. The solution to such problems is always self-evident: don't retain poor performers, and budget a lot more if you want to recruit top talent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you don't start with the assumption that there's something wrong with the team &lt;em&gt;members&lt;/em&gt;, but possibly something wrong with the group's &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt;, then you have a lot of wonderful opportunities to inspect-and-adapt. Don't underestimate the power of good process (re-)engineering!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-09-03T04:58:11.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6470" CreationDate="2012-09-03T09:02:51.683" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's put ourselves in the shoes of the client. Assume that each developer is billed out at $100 per hour. If you have a 1 hour meeting, and there were only 2 people present, then sure, $200 makes perfect sense (provided the meeting was constructive and there were demonstrable, value-adding outcomes). However if I'm your client and I receive a bill of $1000 for a 1 hour meeting because there were 10 developers present, I'm going to be wondering whether all 10 attendees added value to the meeting. In other words, how do I know you weren't just piling more people into the meeting to rack up the bill?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way we've addressed this at our work is by only billing for meetings between 2 developers. If you need to get information to 3 or more developers, and you want their feedback, set up an internal Q&amp;amp;A / brainstorming forum. Then you can ask each forum contributor to accurately calculate the amount of time they contributed to the brainstorming session, and bill the client accordingly. Should the client want to scrutinise your bill, you can share the forum conversation with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However if you prefer an in-person conversation with 3 or more developers, then you may as well have it over lunch, and send your client the lunch bill (and be frank about why you're doing it this way). Your client will appreciate your resourcefulness as well as your honesty. You get a good meal with some team building thrown in, and they get a good discount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4523" LastActivityDate="2012-09-03T09:02:51.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6473" CreationDate="2012-09-03T15:14:42.020" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Self motivation is something you cannot achieve from the outside - it is something that born and dies within each of us. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you can do however is to provide an environment which will favor self-motivation attitudes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example you can reward behaviors which, in your opinion, are manifestations of self-motivation. I don't know what rewarding system will work in your company - this is something you have to discover yourself. The book &quot;Drive&quot; by Dan Pink should help you with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll share the way how I create environment that supports self motivation. Maybe you'll find this somehow inspiring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that self motivation is often established when one knows the impact she does have on environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tool that I use is 360 degrees feedback which makes employees more aware of the impact they have on environment - especially the team they're working in. Imagine that one day 3 out of 5 team mates independently informed you, that as a tester you should learn more about test automation, because current way of testing slows the team down. This information is &lt;em&gt;potentially&lt;/em&gt; a good starting point - an ignitor I may say - of self motivation to develop new testing skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote potentially, because most of people will not effectively work on such goals. Not because they don't want to, but because they don't know how to start or what kind of support they can get from organization. That's where I use coaching&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; approach to work with people and their goals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; by coaching I mean the process described in Section 1 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.coachfederation.org/about-icf/ethics/icf-code-of-ethics/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ICF Code of Ethics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2012-10-28T05:32:05.943" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T05:32:05.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6485" CreationDate="2012-09-03T17:39:37.057" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the very least, you need some kind of a project plan that records what will be delivered when, and the dependencies between these components. Without this, it is going to be really difficult to communicate with your team members and show them when they need to be producing an artefact that is needed by someone else. This will also help you to understand if the very loose arrangement of resource availability can even deliver what is required... &quot;Joe is only available from February, and he is producing the widget document. But Jane needs the widget document in January...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are acting as PM on this, you can use the plan as a communication tool, and also as a way of lining up your resources well in advance... Don't wait until mid-January to check that Joe is still available to produce the widget document in February. Because if he isn't, you need time to find another widget document writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what I am saying, is whatever approach you take, understand the dependencies, and plan around them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2012-09-03T17:39:37.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6473" CreationDate="2012-09-03T19:13:37.383" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Notwithstanding individual variability during one's career or various periods in one's life, you'll likley find a rather normal distribution of motivation across any team.  Every now and again you may have a team with very high motivated individuals and vice versa.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The three leading motivators in the workplace seem to be: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.  Perhaps you need to break these three down and build an environment where these doctrines are maximized to the degree possible.  These are the variables that are in your control and can influence and encourage improvement to some degree the motivation you are seeing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, you would be best served to plan your velocity of work around a nice distribution of motivated individuals, i.e., plan your work based on the fact that you will have a span of motivated performers across the range of possibilities and set your expectations accordingly.  In other words, instead of, &quot;non-motivated members are slowing...,&quot; the so called non motivatated members are right sizing the velocity to something that is quite normal and reasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only caveat to my answer would be if there is something in the culture or environment that is killing motivation.  That would be an issue that needs to get cured.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-09-03T19:13:37.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6485" CreationDate="2012-09-03T20:37:29.190" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Definition of a Project&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google's dictionary yields the following as the primary definition of a project:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An individual or collaborative enterprise that is carefully planned and designed to achieve a particular aim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;particular aim&quot; part is important. Without clear deliverables that provide value to someone (a.k.a. stakeholders) then it's questionable whether you can really call something a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The needs of academia will certainly differ from public or private sector projects, but even oure research projects require a certain amount of structure to succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Not Yet a Formal Project&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on some comments, some additional information about&#xA;the proposed project was uncovered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The various departments and colleges of the university are sponsoring the project by allocating resources, although a long-term goal would be to commercialize our findings/product. I could see myself and/or a professor managing the project in regard to facilitating communication, arranging meetings, and coordinating efforts. I am having a hard time answering your question on stakeholders. I could imagine that the professors and students working on the project are all stakeholders. The university itself is only a stakeholder indirectly through each department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you're using a formal methodology like PRINCE2, or a lightweight methodology like Scrum, projects always need some kind of formal definition of a project to function. In other words, you need some sort of &lt;a href=&quot;http://tapuniversity.com/2009/04/21/project-charter/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;project charter&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the quoted comments, one may infer the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are no defined stakeholders who will reap the benefits of the project and drive the definition of its features and deliverables.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;While there are financial sponsors, there is no project champion whose job is to promote or defend the project within the organization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A project delivery date has been determined (e.g. &quot;less than a year to complete&quot;), but no actual scope or deliverables have been defined.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, it's a project in search of a framework and a purpose, rather than a process formed around a given goal. There are other missing pieces, too, but these are the big ones that should be addressed in some sort of formal charter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Stakeholders as Prerequisites&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even a charter has a prerequisite: you need stakeholders who want something of value to be delivered. Whether that's Ph.D. students researching for a dissertation, a tenured professor preparing for a school-sponsored paper, or an applied-sciences campus providing fieldwork for its students doesn't matter. What matters is that somebody, somewhere needs to be driving this thing, or it's not a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, based solely on the limited information provided, the aim of the project and its key stakeholders need to be somewhat self-evident as &lt;em&gt;input&lt;/em&gt; to chartering this project. A formal Project Charter Document is the output of such a process, but if the project itself has no stakeholders and no aim going into the chartering process, it seems unlikely to succeed regardless of the project management framework you ultimately choose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;See Also&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmhut.com/project-initiation-phase&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Initiation Phase&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmhut.com/project-definition-phase&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Definition Phase&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRINCE2#Starting_up_a_project&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Starting up a project&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&quot;Best-Effort&quot; Resource Planning with Kanban&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With all of the foregoing said, if you can address the project-formation and dependency-tracking issues required to drive your project, then you still need a framework that provides you with the ability to use some kind of &quot;best-effort&quot; resource planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A modified Kanban system may be a good fit when your work-in-progress limits will vary widely during the project based on who can provide time commitments during any given time-boxed period. The real key to making this successful, though, would be ensuring that no work element to be pulled would ever exceed the minimum time available to any project participant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't decompose tasks to that level, and you anticipate work-units that will vary widely in size, then you will have a prioritization problem where work is pulled from the queue based on &lt;em&gt;two&lt;/em&gt; factors: the current work-in-progress limit based on current throughput capacity, and the size of the user stories that can be completed within a given time period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is usually a bad idea, as it doesn't allow the work queue to be properly prioritized. Instead of popping work off the top of the stack in dependency or priority order, you may need to allow people to pull stories based on circumstantial criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, if properly utilized, Kanban &lt;em&gt;as a framework&lt;/em&gt; seems a good fit for projects where available man-power will vary widely. You can certainly do this with any methodology, but Kanban provides work-in-progress limits and averaged system throughput as simple tools that allow for elastic delivery estimates without heavy re-planning every time resource constraints change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your mileage may vary, but it's at least a place to start. Good luck with the project!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2012-10-27T20:57:48.540" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T20:57:48.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6473" CreationDate="2012-09-04T17:04:17.140" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Self-motivation can not be transmitted, it comes on the DNA, but all individuals have some. Then, the important thing is that people remember to use their self-motivation more often. For this to happen you must create an environment of positivism as being positive in front of a challenge is what will trigger self-motivation. They come together always.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I guess, that what you are looking for is a way to have this state to be constant and not having to act 'on demand' every time a new challenge raises on the horizon of your team. You will achieve this by having an environment where people see daily that with their work they can reach their goals, that is, what motivates them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maslow's pyramid describes pretty well needs, and hence, motivations.For each of the levels there are job related aspects to be addressed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2clyQ.png&quot; alt=&quot;Maslow&amp;#39;s pyramid, from wikipedia.org&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Physiological&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;salary&lt;/strong&gt; must be fair for the job and responsibilities, this will help cover the person needs. Having a huge salary will not help to motivate longer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Safety&lt;/strong&gt;, every person needs to feel that what he is doing is important, and &lt;strong&gt;recognized&lt;/strong&gt; by the company working for. Also, needs to have the &lt;strong&gt;tools&lt;/strong&gt; to do the job properly. If you don't provide those, he will understand that for you is not important he struggles as you are not making the effort to provide the equipment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Belonging&lt;/strong&gt;, when the person feels himself important in the group he is ready to integrate on the group and he values other people contributions. Together they can achieve much more. &lt;strong&gt;Collaboration&lt;/strong&gt; is the value you must push at this level.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Esteem&lt;/strong&gt;, with achievements comes pride and recognition and this enables the group to repeat and improve their marks. &lt;strong&gt;Empowerment&lt;/strong&gt; must be strong in your organization. People must feel themselves responsible while you keep accountability (this is why is difficult to implement).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Self-actualization&lt;/strong&gt;, with the previous levels consolidated, people will feel themselves capable of innovation, initiative and pushing the limits. It is important here that &lt;strong&gt;error&lt;/strong&gt; is not punished, but considered part of the &lt;strong&gt;learning process&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also possible to build a similar parallelism between the Maslow's pyramid and CMMI model. Depending on your organization it can help you to build your culture. PM forget sometimes that people is one of the key parts in technology and they try to achieve nirvana on their organizations improving their processes without enabling people to grow with the new paradigm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4386" LastActivityDate="2012-09-04T17:04:17.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3885" CreationDate="2012-09-05T14:21:11.657" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;CSM is currently in an early phase. I think it's only worth if your organization uses Scrum or you want get some exposure. In any case, you should go further in the scrum certifications list if you really want to use it as a credential of your scrum knowledge. To obtain it you only need to attend a 2 days training, by a certified scrum teacher, and take an online exam that, at least in April, doesn't have a minimum punctuation to pass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prince, I don't know exactly, but I know PMP, and my experience is that it will help you to get a wider perspective on project management techniques and terminology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, both Prince and Scrum are quite different philosophies, Prince more formal and Scrum more 'new age'. I consider though that any PM must have some formal PM training before moving to Agile-like methodologies so that he is aware what is getting simplified or minimized, because some assessments in Agile are just implicits and the points must still be considered when undertaking a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4386" LastActivityDate="2012-09-05T14:21:11.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6445" CreationDate="2012-09-05T18:43:35.863" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No real templates necessary. It's more of guiding down a set of questions and discussions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like Rami's answer. I also use the five W's - who, what, when, where, and most important - -why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start with discussing the 'why'. Why are we doing this? Why was this group formed? What need are we trying to fill? Why 'us'? What's the &quot;to-be&quot; vision? Do we all agree on it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-09-05T18:43:35.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6500" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6501" CreationDate="2012-09-05T19:48:07.243" Score="8" ViewCount="365" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find that process to be a bit confusing, but from the time I've been here, I get the impression that resource allocation happens during the morning scrum meetings. So for example, if Dev A has 8 tasks and Dev B has 6 tasks, Dev A will work on the two most important tasks for the current day and Dev B will work on the most important task for the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next day's scrum is set up the same, i.e. decide what task gets work on based on its priority. For some reason, this is throwing me off as a new PM because I can't allocate resources at the time of creating the project. So my process is simply to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create the WBS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plot the schedule (gantt, critical path, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Client communication&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I'll assigned a dev for my project for the duration of the project, it can get postponed depending on the fire that the Dev has to put out on a certain day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I advise the company on handling its resources properly in such a situation? Has anyone else been in a situation where the morning scrum is also the time to decide what fires are put out for the day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4434" LastActivityDate="2012-09-05T20:33:17.967" Title="Allocation of resources during morning scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6500" CreationDate="2012-09-05T20:33:17.967" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The intention of the daily scrum meeting is exactly as you describe it being used. Its a &quot;we did this, now we're going to do that&quot; meeting. Honestly, you shouldn't even be involved in the meeting at all as a PM. Your role is to prioritize their backlog, their role is to choose which team members do what, and when. You are approaching your team as individuals, rather than as a team. You need to think of assigning tasks to the team, rather than to the individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and drop the Gantt charts. They hurt more than they help. Unchain your team and your projects and you will find they work faster and more efficiently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastActivityDate="2012-09-05T20:33:17.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6502" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6506" CreationDate="2012-09-05T20:39:52.360" Score="-2" ViewCount="153" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have several workers working for me remotely. We contact via Gmail chat. The problem is how can we all work on the project without having to send it via email and sending it back. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for your help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4562" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-05-25T23:14:02.840" LastActivityDate="2013-05-25T23:14:02.840" Title="How to work on a programming project remotely" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-09-08T01:20:37.667" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6502" CreationDate="2012-09-05T20:46:41.443" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have an internal server that everyone has access to, you can set up an Apache/&lt;a href=&quot;http://subversion.apache.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Subversion&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://gitstack.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;git&lt;/a&gt; server.  If not then you can get an account on github.  They are pretty cheap.  There are other hosted source code management (SCM) sites out there as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4404" LastActivityDate="2012-09-05T20:46:41.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6505" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-05T22:20:43.990" Score="9" ViewCount="2121" Body="&lt;p&gt;If applying for project manager job, what are the best practices to highlight my previous/current managed projects and what project management skills to be highlighted in my resume?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How those projects / skills better arranged and highlighted in attractive, simple and to the point way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I mention projects name, scope, total spent time, number of members per project? What kind of information that's catchy to interviewer/employer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4529" LastActivityDate="2012-09-06T22:32:41.143" Title="What details recommended to be mentioned in my resume as project manager?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6502" CreationDate="2012-09-05T22:22:34.560" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend to use a collaboration service like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.hipchat.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;hipchat&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://campfirenow.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;campfire&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was working in a project where we used hipchat and it was really great. All the discussions where saved, the version control system (git) and the continuous integration system (jenkins) posted messages to the chat so that we knew what is happening and who is doing what.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://basecamp.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Basecamp&lt;/a&gt; is another great tool which was designed for the work you just described in your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-09-05T22:22:34.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6505" CreationDate="2012-09-05T23:03:54.777" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the most important things that upper management wants in a front-line manager is that they bring projects in on-time and on-budget.  If you have any wins like that in your history, you want to try to highlight those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you managed a budget, that's worth highlighting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the projects you managed were technically complex or were complicated because of the distribution of personnel, highlight that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you interfaced with executive-level management, that's worth mentioning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you managed more than 5-6 people at a time or more than 2-3 projects at a time, discuss that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you had to manage conflicting personalities or manage through difficult morale issues and you did so successfully, highlight that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were responsible from integrating input from people who were not developers per se (UX folks, users, etc.), discuss that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, if you want to tailor your resume for specific jobs, look at those jobs and determine what skills they are looking for and list the commonalities in your background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4404" LastEditorUserId="4404" LastEditDate="2012-09-05T23:32:34.023" LastActivityDate="2012-09-05T23:32:34.023" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6502" CreationDate="2012-09-06T05:04:29.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are working on a .NET project, one option is to use Team Foundation Server on a local server, or Team Foundation Server in the Cloud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will allow you to share and contribute to a common codebase, with a system in place to manage conflicts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not much different than an office where multiple developers will check in code without discussing it first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4139" LastActivityDate="2012-09-06T05:04:29.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6509" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6513" CreationDate="2012-09-06T06:21:06.010" Score="11" ViewCount="622" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are working on a very old project with a lot of legacy code. This means that we have around 3-5 unplanned issues every Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We were handling that with &quot;batteries&quot;: time set aside for unscheduled issues each Sprint. But I recently read an article that recommended against using batteries, and many points from it are true. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The battery is always used up, but it's sometimes used for unrelated things.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The battery has a negative influence on our velocity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should we handle this situation in our projects? And yes, we are doing &lt;em&gt;quality&lt;/em&gt; stories to improve the current state of the project. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4568" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-04-13T16:37:14.287" LastActivityDate="2016-04-13T16:37:14.287" Title="How should we plan work on support issues without a &quot;battery&quot;?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;&lt;timeboxing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6509" CreationDate="2012-09-06T07:47:59.453" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I won't make a difference between user stories and issues. &lt;strong&gt;The product owner should know whether new features or issues are more important, and should put them into the right order&lt;/strong&gt;. With this approach you don't have to bother with batteries or velocity, because they are part of the daily work. Based on my experience teams need about 1-2 months to get used to this idea, but after that the work simply flows (setting acceptance criterias for an issue is sometimes easier than for a user story).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One can argue that an issue may have a longer investigation time, which makes the sprint unpredictable. This is a tricky situation, because there are no general solutions. My approach is to &lt;strong&gt;check the nature of the upcoming issues during the sprint planning, check out similar solved issues and use this information to find out how the issue fits into the sprint&lt;/strong&gt;. Sometimes the prediction is just fine, sometimes it takes longer than one sprint to solve that issue, but the very same happens with user stories as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My colleagues like the idea to have a separate sprint and a separate team for solving issues of a legacy system. I don't like the separate team approach, because &lt;strong&gt;with this approach the feedback loop is cut into to pieces and the development teams won't get enough feedback on their work, and they'll do the same mistakes over and over&lt;/strong&gt;. When you have a &quot;&lt;em&gt;feature sprint&lt;/em&gt; - &lt;em&gt;issue sprint&lt;/em&gt;&quot; rotation, &lt;strong&gt;you'll loose the predictability and speed&lt;/strong&gt;. Additionally, based on my experience you'll team will weary of the constant change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say you'll mix the user stories and the issues. In the beginning the velocity will go down, but due to the nature of a proper Scrum implementation you'll speed up eventually, sort out the issues, can focus on user stories and the velocity will go up again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more thing. In this case, I think it would help you to categorize the issues: legacy issues and new feature issues. If you would like to improve your quality you should put more focus on the new feature issues, because you can do something about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-09-06T07:47:59.453" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6505" CreationDate="2012-09-06T08:11:18.417" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not a real answer, but I would add or mention a project which wasn't successful. It is a bit unorthodox, but you can tell them what you would do differently. With this approach your interview partner can learn more about on how you think and improve your projects and yourself. I have been doing job interviews, and after the 10th success story it starts to get boring and usually the &quot;&lt;em&gt;interesting&lt;/em&gt;&quot; details come to light when it is too late.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would appreciate the courage bringing up a fail story, and I learnt much more about a person who talked about how he or she failed and came back and did things differently the next time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-09-06T08:11:18.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6512" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6521" CreationDate="2012-09-06T10:26:29.710" Score="22" ViewCount="1158" Body="&lt;p&gt;As one of our teams was restructured completely (6 our of 8 new people in the last 2 months) and their knowledge base is now very weak, I notice constant daily interruptions from them. We share the office space and since most of the knowledge on their project is held by one of my team members, they always pop-over with questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We did a technical presentation for their team and planned one task battery-type, so we can offer some support during the sprint. We also suggested to them to build a knowledge data base with the info they gather, but lately the questions keep on coming even after talking to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cant just forbid people to talk, also since he likes to be very helpful.&#xA;How would you handle this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4571" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2014-07-17T23:24:22.333" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T23:24:22.333" Title="How do you deal with constant interruptions coming from outside the team?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;maintenance&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6509" CreationDate="2012-09-06T10:59:27.940" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;No Invisible Work, Ever!&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work is work, whether it's on bugs or new features. Therefore, &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; work needs to be tracked on the Sprint and Product backlogs, regardless of the source. If you are using Kanban, it is certainly possible to have a separate queue for bugs vs. new work, but unless you have separate development and maintenance teams, it doesn't matter: you still have queue and global work-in-progress limits that need to be honored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Bugs &lt;em&gt;Should&lt;/em&gt; Slow Velocity of New Features&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bugs, refactoring, and other types of rework are a form of technical debt. Since they count as work, they should actually have no impact on overall velocity &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; the work is being properly tracked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only time hot-fixes and production patches will appear to slow a team's velocity is if the technical debt is not being accounted for. If you were an accountant, this would be called &quot;cooking the books&quot; and would be illegal--so don't do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, iterations are time-boxed, so time allocated to fixing bugs or paying off technical debt means less time for new features. This is correct, and an intrinsic part of the framework: to identify the capacity limits of the system, and present the organization with the opportunity to inspect-and-adapt its processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Velocity Isn't a Delivery-Date Commitment&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, even if your per-Sprint velocity &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; have wild swings, your average velocity should remain fairly stable. If it doesn't, then the process should be reviewed to uncover the source of the problem: it could be poor estimates, invisible work, technical debt, process issues, or something else. Find out!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More importantly, if average velocity is being impacted by interruptions to the Sprint by support work or technical debt, that's great! That means the velocity metric is doing its job of making the &lt;em&gt;impact to the system&lt;/em&gt; of this rework visible to the organization. That's all velocity is really for: measuring variance in team output, and identifying process issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Don't Abuse Velocity&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're using velocity as a management target of how many features must be delivered each Sprint, rather than an estimation and feedback tool, then it's being misused. Velocity is for estimation, and provides a secondary function as a detective control to identify process bottlenecks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Options for Managing Support/Maintenance&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have some basic options here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Treat bugs and support work as normal Product Backlog items, and require the Product Owner to prioritize them along with new features. In this case, hot-fixes may not interrupt a Sprint without an explicit abnormal termination by the Product Owner and a return to Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have one team for support/maintenance, and a separate team for development. I would recommend adopting Kanban or some other pull-system instead of Scrum for the support organization, since it's often a better fit for ticket-based demand-queuing, but that's up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reduce work-in-progress limits (for Kanban) or story points per Sprint (for Scrum) to provide sufficient slack in your process--including task-switching overhead--to handle demand-driven interruptions like hot-fixes. If 30% of your capacity is being spent on untracked technical debt, then you need to reduce your velocity estimates by 35-50% to account for it. It's better to track the effort directly, but fudge-factors can work, too.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Educate the Organization&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, the goal of project management is not to sweep work under the rug, but to make the &lt;em&gt;cost&lt;/em&gt; of work (in time and money) visible to the organization so that accurate estimates can be made. Providing honest metrics and accurate estimates to the organization allows business leaders to make &lt;em&gt;informed&lt;/em&gt; business decisions--and the more information they have to feed the decision-making process, the better those decisions can be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure that management understands that velocity is primarily an estimation tool, and occasionally useful as a detective control. Velocity is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a substitute for capacity planning or process engineering. Part of your job as a project manager is to explain the value and proper use of your metrics to the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be an honest information broker. Making sound business decisions that ensure the success of a project is senior management's job, and your responsibility is to make sure that they are as fully-informed as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-09-06T10:59:27.940" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6512" CreationDate="2012-09-06T11:02:19.047" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;With patience.  Performance goes up and down.  Motivation goes up and down.  Teaming goes up and down.  Op tempo goes up and down.  The point is, everything is variable and in a very random way.  Trying to control it is futile.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is where planning and risk management come to play.  This variability should have been part of your planning and risk assessments so your targets were set to accommodate some of the variability and your contigent reserves were adequate.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-09-06T11:02:19.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6512" CreationDate="2012-09-06T12:52:14.573" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have a couple of alternatives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improve the training. It doesn't seem like what you've done to bring the team up to speed has worked, which isn't necessarily surprising. Think back to your school days and how many concepts/ideas were really understood after one presentation. Step back and look at the questions they have. Is there a pattern that will let you figure out where the shortfalls are, what additional training/materials you could provide, etc?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Control the conversations. Have your key team member set aside blocks of time when s/he is NOT available for answering questions. This will increase productivity by concentrating interruptions into a fixed part of the day.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Carry on as-is. If you are still meeting the goals of your sprints and the schedule/budget/scope of the project aren't being impacted you may want to put this issue lower down on your priority list.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Order a stop to the questions. IMO this is the worst alternative. The only benefit is helping make your most experienced person more productive, but this will be more than offset by the likely loss of productivity of everyone else, added work around quality assurance, rework to address incorrect assumptions on the part of the less experienced team members, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-09-06T12:52:14.573" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6505" CreationDate="2012-09-06T12:55:29.500" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing I've done is to highlight what I've done/led in each project phase (Initiation, Planning, Execution, Monitor/Control, Close-Out). This was suggested to me by a professional recruiter that was helping me out in applying to a large aviation firm as a PM. I used the same approach to get my foot in the door with my current employer (large financial company), so it worked at least once :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But take this with a grain of salt as what works will vary by employer and by position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example layout:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Manager, Company X (2007-Present).&lt;/strong&gt; Managed approximately 25 pharmaceutical development projects ranging in value from $150,000 to $3.5 million with durations of between 6 and 18 months. Deployed project management skills based on PRINCE2 and PMP standards, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Initiation -&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; business case development, project product definition, product breakdown structure development, contract&#xA;development, key resource identification&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Planning -&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; feasibility assessments, detailed business case development, project scheduling and budgeting, risk planning,&#xA;communications planning, definition of acceptance criteria for&#xA;deliverables&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastEditorUserId="1251" LastEditDate="2012-09-06T17:41:02.633" LastActivityDate="2012-09-06T17:41:02.633" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6512" CreationDate="2012-09-06T14:46:15.360" Score="13" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Duck&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, introduce the equivalent of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://hwrnmnbsol.livejournal.com/148664.html&quot;&gt;stuffed duck&lt;/a&gt; in the office. Questions should always be asked to it first. This one depends on the level of trust you have from that other team, and their own technical level. Make sure they don't take it as poking fun at them for not being able to work on their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question ticket board&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, introduce a &lt;em&gt;question ticket board&lt;/em&gt;. I used this to manage interruptions from team members when I was doing &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/&quot;&gt;Pomodoro&lt;/a&gt; and still had to be available to others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, that was simply having yet another post-its board, on which people with questions would write down one or two key words for &lt;strong&gt;them&lt;/strong&gt; to remember their question, and then put the post-it on some reserved space next to my desk. Then, when I was available, I would take the top post-it, FIFO style, and went to answer it with the asker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has the following advantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Transforming interruptions into managed time off the project. Not as good as being rid of them, but probably the best tradeoff.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Answering only one (or n, depending on the actual amount) question at a time forces askers to cooperate and self-organize to decide which question should be asked first. This adds a bit to the cost for asking too many questions, while not making asking few questions costly at all.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Making the quantity of questions visible for everyone, calling for responsibility from askers, especially if you are in the same room.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Documentation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have askers document the given answers. It seems you already asked them to do so, but all the usefulness of a knowledge base depends on its implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure they don't simply write down “question: answer” in a file, no one will ever read it. Have them document or refactor the parts that gave them problems, &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmer.97things.oreilly.com/wiki/index.php/The_Boy_Scout_Rule&quot;&gt;boyscout-style&lt;/a&gt; (I'm assuming a programming project here, but hopefully you can find an equivalent in your domain if it is different).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, have them understand that they should bend the material to their understanding, in order to foster a sense of possession and responsibility. This will also have the side effect of increasing the cost of questions to them, which seems to be something you might desire if it has already been some time since the transition started, and you noticed a rise in questions (based on &lt;em&gt;“ lately the questions keep on coming even after talking to them”&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2523" LastActivityDate="2012-09-06T14:46:15.360" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6512" CreationDate="2012-09-06T15:14:07.310" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think pair programming could really help you out. Pair your team members up for the day, and switch the pairs everyday. It will do two things to specifically address your needs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First it will help get your team used to asking questions of someone other than the resident expert. There may be someone that knows almost as much as he does, but no one knows it (this is usually the case, teams seem to become fixated on a single individual as a 'guru' even when it isn't the case). Pair programming can get your team asking questions of each other, and it will answer questions they didn't know they had.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, it will level the knowledge playing field much quicker than training sessions alone. I really don't know of a better way for an experienced programmer to impart knowledge to less experienced ones than pair programming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you don't go this route, I think there is only one major thing to watch out for: your team members asking questions that they could have easily found the answer to with 30 seconds of googling. This is a bad habit for everyone to get into, and its also a difficult one to break without doing something invasive. Talk to the resident expert and see if he thinks this is happening, and if he is willing to help you. A few responses of, &quot;didn't you google that?&quot; from him will be worth more than a policy from you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somehow in all my wisdom I missed that it was the other team's members coming to your team to ask questions. In this case pair programming wouldn't fix that particular issue (although that doesn't make it any less awesome). You could however, suggest to the other PM that he/she try instituting it of his/her team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastEditorUserId="4422" LastEditDate="2012-09-06T20:11:09.430" LastActivityDate="2012-09-06T20:11:09.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6509" CreationDate="2012-09-06T15:52:35.227" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with CodeGnome, but I would also like to add a bit about legacy code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you inherited a steaming pile? Or maybe, your teams built the steaming pile? This is a risk to your project, but it isn't one that should be &quot;managed&quot;. It should be &lt;strong&gt;reduced&lt;/strong&gt;. Each and every time you create a task dealing with your legacy code, part of that task should be improving the code beyond merely quick fixing the bug. Add unit tests. Add an abstraction layer to decouple. Refactor something. Anything other than getting in and getting out as quickly as possible. If quick fixing the issue is your game plan for dealing with your legacy code, understand that you are increasing the amount of legacy code with every line added, increasing your team's technical debt, and thereby increasing the risk to your project. You should be actively reducing this risk. It will pay dividends in fewer &quot;live issues&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final suggestion: Shorten your sprint cycles and make sure &quot;urgent live issues&quot; really are &quot;urgent&quot;. If you are running 1 week sprints, often product owners will be satisfied if the &quot;urgent&quot; issue is placed in the following weeks sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastEditorUserId="4422" LastEditDate="2012-09-06T16:34:31.977" LastActivityDate="2012-09-06T16:34:31.977" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6512" CreationDate="2012-09-06T17:44:52.563" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, notice that you are taking ownership of a problem that is not entirely yours. The PM  PM in charge of the project should be asking this question. Also note that you are specially punished because you share office space with the team, while other former team members don't have this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is important to keep in mind because you must involve the PM2 in your solution and he should lead any kind of agreement that you decide together and any effort from your side you should split it with the rest of the team also if too big for your project to absorb it, and even if it is not because I am sure your senior is not the best developer to solve all the questions he is being addressed (the project must be big enough with 8 developers so that he doesn't master all the code). You may require then to escalate the issue to your management so that they support and track progress of your transfer initiatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next point is to have an RCA, root cause analysis, of the questions so that you see the kind of doubts that still remain and even who the questions come from. You may discover that the training required is not only related to the project domain but to the technologies used, specially if as you say the new members are quite junior. Maybe the questions where addressed in the technical sessions and trainings that you had, then: Were they clear enough? Were they correct? Were they addressed?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask your senior developer to write down and classify the questions, I would even track the questions as issues or bugs. This will help you in your RCA effort and later on will help you to distribute the questions to different people to answer them even if they are not in the same office. Also, once you force people to write the questions the number will get reduced. The effect is the same as asking in public, most people don't dare but they don't mind asking later to the person privately. Also it can be a good way to introduce the Duck technique that has been suggested in the thread. Last but not least, it can be a base for your knowledge base or FAQ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you need support for all this, just make visible the impact foreseen on your project, on your developer productivity and motivation. Don't wait for delays to be visible, because they will be and then nobody will listen that it was not your fault.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4386" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2013-03-07T19:12:10.847" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T19:12:10.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6512" CreationDate="2012-09-06T19:04:22.110" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some good answers so far. I think the solution is a combination of all of them. It all comes down to people management, dealing with human beings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you said 'my team' I'm assuming that you have sort or leadership role. I also assume the other team has someone in this role as well. I suggest the two of you meet, along with the team member with the knowledge, and simply say &quot;Here's the situation, and here's how it's impacting my project. How do we resolve it so that your team gets what it needs, with as little impact to mine as possible? And how do ensure that the information being transfered is done so that the questions only have to be asked once&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will take the three of you to figure out what to do. The two team leads can discuss ideas or options that work within the project context (schedule, etc.), but the team member has to agree as well. He has to be comfortable with how things are going to be handled after all it's HIS time and concentration being impacted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-09-06T19:04:22.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6505" CreationDate="2012-09-06T22:32:41.143" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;How extense your resume must be wil depend a lot on the culture of the country or company you are sending the resume. Sometimes, employer, begin and end date, your position will be enough to make it to an interview where you will be able to provide more detail. Other times, you will need a more complete description of your position, as Doug B has mentioned. I would only keep in mind here, keeping the detail to the point and do not try to cut and paste the whole Pmbok.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would only add a list of customers or sectors if confidentiality does not allow you to mention your customers. In some industries and sectors, the technologies involved are also important as the PM will act as technical lead or will have to demonstrate technical knowledge in front of the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's always more important to pay more attention to the cover letter, where you will be able to focus your effort to adddress the key points mentioned on the job posting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4386" LastActivityDate="2012-09-06T22:32:41.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6524" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6532" CreationDate="2012-09-07T07:02:10.277" Score="4" ViewCount="1199" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am putting together a project sizing tool to help understand what artifacts are required for projects (E.G., a simple project may not require a project charter, whilst a complex project may require a project management plan). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My initial questions set to help determine the project size are below: -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Likely Project Cost&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Team Size &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Number of Vendors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Internal Effort (Staff &amp;amp; contractors)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;External Effort (Vendor staff)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Duration of Project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deadlines&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Domain Experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Complexity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dependencies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customer Facing Services&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scope (systems)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project-specific risks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am seeking feedback if there is anything else that I should / could add to help determine the &quot;size&quot; of a project? Please explain &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; that would be important as well as where it ranks in terms of importance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="98" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T20:54:30.833" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T20:54:30.833" Title="Which metrics can help estimate the size of a project?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6524" CreationDate="2012-09-07T08:25:34.583" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid you're on for a never-ending search. Making a definite ontology of projects is probably a dead-end project in itself. All the metrics you gave most probably already overlook specific details in many domains, and would therefore show a need for adjustment for each specific project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, how would you measure “complexity”? It all depends on the domain, and there might not always be an easy way to evaluate upfront…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering the fact (or at least, my opinion) that there is no one-size-fits-all project evaluation system, but acknowledging the need for a quick way to determine the most-likely applicable methodologies, I would rather advise using something much simpler, such as the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockburn_Scale&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cockburn scale&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may for example simply overlay the methodologies you're considering on the corresponding squares, in a zebra pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2523" LastActivityDate="2012-09-07T08:25:34.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6512" CreationDate="2012-09-07T08:42:27.853" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Indeed a lot of good answers here, so I'll summarize what I'll do based on other answers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Move the ownership of this issue away from the team. First, would be to get one appointed person from their team that will be responsible for the communication with the senior developer (this will be the speaking duck everybody will ask their questions to), so the classification and documentation of the Q&amp;amp;A becomes their responsibility. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, speak to the senior dev that will be managing the time for answering these final questions by setting aside some blocks of time during the week, so it can be included in the initial sprint planning.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, involve both PM in setting up and, since the other team is not using scrum, try a joint retrospective after 1 week to see how the situation can be improved and track the progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4571" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-09-08T01:15:42.200" LastActivityDate="2012-09-08T01:15:42.200" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6524" CreationDate="2012-09-07T10:40:27.763" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is your basis of estimate.  I agree with MattiSG in that you won't arrive at a definitive list; however, the exercise of trying to and going through the motions is a necessary one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would add to your list:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;history from similar projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;any known heuristics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-09-07T10:40:27.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6529" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6530" CreationDate="2012-09-07T11:28:21.253" Score="17" ViewCount="19263" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can someone explain how to build a burn-up chart? Please give me a walkthrough of how to build one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4574" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-09-07T14:48:16.147" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T07:51:11.190" Title="How does one build a burnup chart?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;templates&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6529" CreationDate="2012-09-07T11:50:07.937" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Basically, a burnup chart is simply a graph plotting both the total story points across the project, and the amount of done story points (both on ordinates), over all iterations (on abscissa). See for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://rapidapplicationdevelopment.blogspot.fr/2008/10/forget-burndown-use-burnup-charts.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this comparison&lt;/a&gt; with burndown charts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in order to build a burnup chart, you simply have to do the following for each iteration:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sum story points across the whole project (done + current + backlog; including the icebox is up to you but I would advise against it as it could lead to odd jumps, lived this in a project where epics with huge story points were in the icebox and later deleted, halved the story points amount);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sum story points in “done” state;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;plot them on a graph.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the same source as above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XUvC0.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Burnup chart&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rapidapplicationdevelopment.blogspot.fr/2010/02/video-how-to-create-burndown-charts-for.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This walkthrough&lt;/a&gt; gives an example based on SharePoint, but you can most likely extract all important information from it  :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2523" LastEditorUserId="2523" LastEditDate="2012-09-07T20:50:56.227" LastActivityDate="2012-09-07T20:50:56.227" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6531" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6534" CreationDate="2012-09-07T12:40:13.330" Score="26" ViewCount="615" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was very surprised to read, in &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/6509/how-to-plan-work-under-live-issue-without-the-battery&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, the mention of “batteries” as a PM tool, seemingly linked to Scrum. The OP talks about an article about their use, but none of my desperate Googling efforts helped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, since other people seemed to have no trouble with the term, I hope those same can now explain  :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is a &lt;em&gt;battery&lt;/em&gt; in the context of PM? Within which methodology is it used / usable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, if applicable: what are their pros and cons?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference articles would be greatly appreciated too  :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just for reference, the relevant part of the cited post:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We were handling [live issues] by batteries inside sprint. But I recently read article against using batteries and many points from it are true. Like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Battery is always used fully sometimes for other things not releated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This influence on our velocity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2523" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2020-06-29T15:44:33.850" Title="What is a “battery”?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6524" CreationDate="2012-09-07T13:29:51.210" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As MattiSG says, a definitive list is likely neither possible to generate nor likely to provide you much value compared to the effort in compiling and then working with that list. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I think that the level of bureaucratic overhead associated with a project can and should be tailored based on a short list of general factors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Criticality of the project to the company&lt;/strong&gt;. This should be definable during development of the project's business case, quantifying the relevant benefits of success vs costs of failure. The most critical projects should be the most tightly controlled and assigned the most/best PM resources.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Complexity of the project&lt;/strong&gt;. Easy surrogates for estimating this are the number of unique deliverables, milestones and stakeholders. The more complex a project the better and more thorough your planning and documentation will need to be.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PM Resources available for the project&lt;/strong&gt;. If you are averaging one or two projects per PM you may be able to better afford having more thorough planning for all of your projects compared to if you are averaging four or five projects per PM.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think you can necessarily rank these in order of importance, you have to look at things holistically and work to facilitate a discussion with your management team  to get a consensus on where to send limited resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-09-07T13:29:51.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="401" CreationDate="2012-09-07T21:44:35.940" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If interrupted mid sentence, go back to the beginning of the sentence.  If the offender persists (and they do!), go back to the beginning of the paragraph.  Repeat until they ask why and then tell them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4583" LastActivityDate="2012-09-07T21:44:35.940" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6531" CreationDate="2012-09-07T22:47:07.150" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I thought it is a some kind of a slang, but now I've also spent some time searching, and I think it comes from the tool they are using (the OP mentioned agilo for trac).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to a &lt;a href=&quot;https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!searchin/agilo/battery/agilo/oGW6Hdu2GTU/E5UTtyGSQmwJ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;discussion on the tool's google group&lt;/a&gt; the &lt;em&gt;battery&lt;/em&gt; is a feature which can be used to add &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110909065130/https://dev.agile42.com/agilo-help/user/Contingent&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;contingents&lt;/a&gt; to a sprint:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A Contingent is an amount of time subtracted from the Team capacity, reserved for specific &amp;quot;unplannable&amp;quot; events (e.g.: Bug Fixing in the Production System, Operational Tasks, Support...).&lt;/em&gt; (from: &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110909065130/https://dev.agile42.com/agilo-help/user/Contingent&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;agile42.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-29T15:44:33.850" LastActivityDate="2020-06-29T15:44:33.850" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6535" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-08T13:29:23.167" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Management quality of the product/project is a complex discipline. Through quality management it is possible to influence the cost and time of the product/project. Quality affects not only such activity, such as testing (in the software development area), but also such things (not directly related to the quality), as the qualification of employees, their motivation, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Links&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki article about Quality Management&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;See also&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/testing&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;testing&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;testing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/quality&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;quality&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;quality&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/defect-fixing&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;defect-fixing&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;defect-fixing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-09-06T22:41:49.873" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T22:41:49.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6536" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-08T13:29:23.167" Score="0" Body="Quality Management is an organizational methodology to ensure that the business processes in an organization are consistent in terms of producing high quality products. Not a synonym of a Quality Assurance." OwnerUserId="3941" LastEditorUserId="3941" LastEditDate="2012-09-08T14:21:10.367" LastActivityDate="2012-09-08T14:21:10.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6537" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-08T13:29:47.020" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-09-08T13:29:47.020" LastActivityDate="2012-09-08T13:29:47.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6538" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-08T13:29:47.020" Score="0" Body="Cost Management is an organizational methodology by which a company controls and plans the costs of doing business." OwnerUserId="3941" LastEditorUserId="3941" LastEditDate="2012-09-08T14:20:58.823" LastActivityDate="2012-09-08T14:20:58.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6539" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-08T13:34:01.037" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-09-08T13:34:01.037" LastActivityDate="2012-09-08T13:34:01.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6540" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-08T13:34:01.037" Score="0" Body="Resource Planning is a method for the effective planning of all variety of company's resources. Such resources may be people, funds, equipment, etc. On this site, Resource Planning usually means workforce of the people assigned to a certain project." OwnerUserId="3941" LastEditorUserId="3941" LastEditDate="2012-09-08T14:20:50.447" LastActivityDate="2012-09-08T14:20:50.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6541" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-08T13:37:51.077" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Requirements are documented statement of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_requirement&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;functional&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-functional_requirement&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;non-functional&lt;/a&gt; capabilities that a particular Product must be or perform. It identifies all necessary attributes, capabilities, and quality relevant to a Product for it to have value and utility to a user. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2012-10-22T13:55:57.303" LastActivityDate="2012-10-22T13:55:57.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6542" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-08T13:37:51.077" Score="0" Body="Use the requirements tag for software development PM questions that involve the subset of documentation related to requirements gathering. For all other documentation questions, use the documentation tag." OwnerUserId="3941" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-12-16T05:53:39.690" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T05:53:39.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6543" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-08T13:43:08.667" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-09-08T13:43:08.667" LastActivityDate="2012-09-08T13:43:08.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6544" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-08T13:43:08.667" Score="0" Body="Deadline is a particular day or time, by which a Task or a Project must be accomplished. Most Milestone goals are associated with a certain Deadline." OwnerUserId="3941" LastEditorUserId="3941" LastEditDate="2012-09-08T14:21:03.753" LastActivityDate="2012-09-08T14:21:03.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6529" CreationDate="2012-09-08T16:08:00.817" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Burn-Down vs. Burn-Up&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference between a burn-down chart and a burn-up chart is simply the way it represents the information. A project isn't done until work remaining is zero, so a burn-down chart is often more intuitive as it doesn't &lt;em&gt;require&lt;/em&gt; the plotting of an intersection with project totals to represent project completion. The intersection of the X and Y axes on the right of the chart is an implicit end-of-cycle with burn-down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, the differences between the two chart types are minimal. Specifically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A burn-down chart shows work that remains incomplete in a project or iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A burn-up chart shows work completed during a project or iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Building the Chart&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, you build the chart by graphing points that represent the work-effort on the project. This is often represented by story points, but can be in whatever units you track such as man-hours, ideal hours, features, or even dollars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that a burn-up chart will require a legend or an explicit second line identifying the project total you are building towards, unless you continually adjust the scale of the Y-axis to make the top of the axis an implicit total. Regardless of how you represent it, with burn-up just make sure you represent the total &lt;em&gt;somewhere&lt;/em&gt; to provide the burn-up metric with a valid scale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-09-08T16:08:00.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6546" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-09T23:42:50.167" Score="1" ViewCount="1415" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our team (40 people) is currently using Confluence as a knowledge base repository. There are many problems with confluence - formatting text is limited; can't paste images in the text; editing bugs; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have the idea to use something else - have a folder somewhere dedicated to documents. Anyone from the team can put files there, edit files, create folders, etc. Have also web-access with a search engine, and we have everything we want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize we won't be able to track changes, but I don't think it is that important for us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For second stage I think of something a little more sophisticated: Have a bot mail-user that whenever it receives e-mail, it stores it in said folder. That will make things even easier - since a lot of the information is in e-mails, all I need to do is Cc bot-mail-user, and I'm done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is: Is this a good/bad idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4589" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-09-10T13:27:22.390" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T13:27:22.390" Title="Is it a good idea to replace Confluence with a custom in-house workflow based on search?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;knowledge-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2012-11-14T12:01:55.103" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6546" CreationDate="2012-09-10T02:34:54.837" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The thing you need to ask yourself is what your goal is. If your goal is to build software, for instance, do you have the time and resources to put into maintaining a solution that you put together internally? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been in situations before where solutions that we put together for managing our projects ended up taking a lot of time to maintain, and it's easy to have your time become dedicated to something that is secondary to your business goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can find an out-of-the-box solution that you can tailor to, that would be best. Otherwise, you may find that trying to make something fit you perfectly may involve a lot of work you didn't consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T02:34:54.837" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6546" CreationDate="2012-09-10T10:13:13.433" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We were using &lt;strong&gt;google docs&lt;/strong&gt; for our internal documentation. You can set user rights, create folders, search in documents, follow versions, compare versions and you can be notified about changes like updates, comments etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So my question is: Is this a good/bad idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't do that. &lt;strong&gt;The maintenance costs of self-made tools are too high.&lt;/strong&gt; You'll need at least one full-time employee to do user support, maintenance, and new feature development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example. My old company bought a tool similar to SAP, because the management wasn't satisfied with the tool before this SAP like one. It took us about 2 years to migrate to the new tool properly, and there is a guy who is still doing the user support (the whole thing started in 2006, and it didn't take that long because he wasn't good enough - he was actually a really good developer, but not smart enough to decline the job offer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need something really minimalistic, just set up a samba share and &lt;code&gt;grep&lt;/code&gt; for the content. I think this is the easiest and most simple way to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T10:13:13.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6549" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-10T10:37:25.213" Score="26" ViewCount="1621" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working as a beginning scientist and was given the management role for a small project (5 internal scientists, 1-2 external software contractors). What are the absolute essentials I need to manage this successfully?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several difficulties ahead right from the start: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the project is already running and not progressing so well, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;my boss limits my time spent on this to 1-2 hours per week max,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there is a large gap in understanding between the internal people and the external contractors (each are experienced in their knowledge domain), &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and I have zero experience in project management, both soft and hard skills.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of good questions and answers on this site give advice how to do things 'right' if this is your primary job and domain of experience. However, I'm looking for a more minimalist answer within my constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How can a new PM manage a failing project in a few hours per week?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A BIG THANK-YOU to all of you who answered this question. I greatly appreciate the thought and experience you put into your answers and they are very helpful. I have come to the conclusion that my first priorities must be to make a Gantt chart and to actively mediate regular communication between the other scientists on the project and our software contractors. My boss has clearly communicated his expectations, and now it's a matter of methodically determining whether they can be fulfilled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to add a note here to explain the situation, because I got the feeling that some people were very surprised by this situation and thought it must be uncommon at best, negligent at worst. The fact is, most (all?) scientists in a leadership position are expected to manage multiple projects while additionally conducting their own research in the field, laboratory, or theoretical realm. At the same time, we must also regularly publish the results of our various projects in peer-reviewed journals and books -- ideally as soon as those results are produced (&quot;publish or perish&quot;). What's less common about my situation is that I am trying to manage a project which involves external contractors, and not just students and laboratory staff. However, as one moves up the academic ladder, one needs more and more skill in project management, and this is never actually taught to us. So my position is actually very common. I'm also sure that this sort of situation is not particular to academics -- as David Espina pointed out, project management is something that everyone has to do, but most of us aren't trained to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4592" LastEditorUserId="4592" LastEditDate="2012-09-16T17:25:48.033" LastActivityDate="2012-09-16T20:12:19.487" Title="How can a new PM manage a failing project in a few hours per week?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6549" CreationDate="2012-09-10T11:30:40.187" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all &lt;strong&gt;you need an overview of the whole system&lt;/strong&gt;. You have to identify the key players, the key movements and motivations. My recommendation in similar cases is to do a &lt;a href=&quot;http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2012/04/see-the-whole-flow-exercise/&quot;&gt;value stream mapping&lt;/a&gt; exercise. In a nutshell it will provide you some information on how the organization looks like and how the information flows inside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've offered an office, don't take it. &lt;strong&gt;Go and sit with your new team members&lt;/strong&gt; so that you'll know who they are and what they do. With this approach they'll know you, too and all the information in both ways will be first-handed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the 1-2 hours a week won't be enough, you'll have to ask for more (just reading the answers here will take about half an hour). In order to start properly, &lt;strong&gt;you'll need a sponsor/mentor as well&lt;/strong&gt;, who knows the people and the ways of working (and has time to help you out). If can afford, you can call in a consultant (&lt;strong&gt;I'm not&lt;/strong&gt; in the consultation business, so this is not an advertisement, but if you need help you have to get it somehow).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel that there is a gap between the internal employees and the externals, call a meeting and &lt;strong&gt;get them to sit at the same table and discuss the differences&lt;/strong&gt;. If you have no experience in facilitation, ask for help from your boss or hire a consultant. If you aren't on time and you have to deal with internal politics, you won't be successful. You need to resolve the conflicts as soon as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gaining the experience is very tricky. I suggest to read a couple of Q/As here - look for the &lt;em&gt;management&lt;/em&gt; tag and try out what you've read. As a start, you can watch a &lt;a href=&quot;https://vimeo.com/19122939&quot;&gt;nice video&lt;/a&gt; on &lt;strong&gt;system thinking&lt;/strong&gt; by John Seddon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a plus one. This won't be an easy ride. Prepare for a huge amount of over time and a physical and mental extenuation. Good luck, and let us know if you need anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T11:30:40.187" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6546" CreationDate="2012-09-10T13:24:31.143" Score="2" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Team Tools&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team tools should be determined by the project's needs (including regulatory compliance requirements), constrained by the budget and labor costs to create and maintain it, and ultimately selected from the field of choices by the team members that will be &lt;em&gt;using&lt;/em&gt; it on a daily basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Thou shalt use work-flow X!&quot; is rarely met with enthusiasm, and unless you have a background is designing IT controls, you may have a hard time actually enforcing the use of your top-down tool-chain. Organic, bottom-up tool-chaining is generally a closer fit for the team's &lt;em&gt;current&lt;/em&gt; work-flow, and documenting what people actually do (rather than what you wish they would do) automatically results in higher compliance levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Alternatives to Completely Rolling Your Own&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you decide to bypass commercial or widely-used tools, there are work-flows that don't require quite so much &quot;winging it&quot; on your part. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't use carbon-copy (CC) addresses for team communications. If tracking team emails is important, use a mailing list or web-based forum. Google Apps provides both types of functionality, but you also have a wide variety of alternatives such as Mailman, Majordomo, ezmlm, and whatever group mail features MS Exchange has sprouted for its current &quot;pay to play&quot; upgrade cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even if you bypass enterprise source control or full-fledged document management systems for documents, you still have many choices other than a shared-folder dumping ground. Some examples include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Automatic versioning with Git, Apache, and WebDAV.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Versioning and edit tracking with Google Docs or LibreOffice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use Markdown and Pandoc to put documents under plain-text version control.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use AsciiDoc to put complex documents under plain-text version control.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use a wiki that versions binary blobs or attachments (e.g. GitHub wiki pages) so that you can attach some context to your files.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Consequences of Rolling Your Own&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use an enterprise-class tool, or at the very least a commonly-used solution, then you can expect a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;high bus-factor&lt;/a&gt; for its use and maintenance. Custom, in-house solutions must be maintained in-house, and are more likely than not to become both unmaintained and unmaintainable over time--especially if the care and feeding of the system is not a formal part of someone's job, nor part of the job description of the person that will eventually replace him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, in-house tools often require written documentation on how they were setup, how to fix common issues with the tool chain, and written procedures about how to &lt;em&gt;use&lt;/em&gt; the tools in accordance with the team's work-flow. As a worst-case example, you will need to clearly proceduralize naming conventions and &quot;who's got the file&quot; processes for managing serial or concurrent access to team documents in a shared folder. &lt;strong&gt;If you think this is trivial to do, or not really necessary in a small team, then I applaud your sense of adventure in going where angels fear to tread.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't mean in-house solutions are &lt;em&gt;bad&lt;/em&gt;. Sometimes, they fit the work-flow better than COTS solutions. However, they are not free: there is always a labor cost to design and maintain them, and ongoing process overhead that will vary based on the work-flow and tool-chain, and the tools may represent a form of technical debt that will need to eventually be paid off before the TCO exceeds any up-front cost savings you may (or may not) receive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The Best Solution of All&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best solution of all is to allow your team to self-organize around a set of requirements. Build a user story around the requirements, and then let the team figure out what tools they need and how to adapt the tool and work-flow to fit one another. As a rough example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a team member,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want to be able to search all project-related emails for a six-month period&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I can find free-form project-related information using complex search queries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on who and what, rather than how. Make this user story a priority for the project, and then let the team figure it out. Regardless of the constraints in time, budget, or functionality, you will generally get better results with this approach than with infrastructure-by-fiat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;YMMV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T13:24:31.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6549" CreationDate="2012-09-10T14:14:47.127" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is possible that your boss hasn't really got a clue as to what a PM does. When I got my first PM job my boss thought all I needed to do was send out reminders and act as a stenographer at meetings. If this is the case you have a lot less work to do than if he wants you to act as a &quot;true&quot; PM. So the first thing that you need to do is talk to your boss and find out what his expectations are for someone in a PM role. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that you are to fulfill a &quot;true&quot; PM role, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRINCE2&quot;&gt;PRINCE2 principles&lt;/a&gt; will give you good guidance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Focus on products. Know what your end product is and what it is composed of. Make sure all the work done is relevant to that product.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ongoing business justification. The project has to provide value for money spent. Don't be afraid to suggest killing a project when the value isn't there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Defined roles &amp;amp; responsibilities. Without this some work will slip through the cracks and won't get done, decisions won't be made or will be made by the wrong people, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management by stages. Break your project into at least a planning and an execution stage. At the end of each stage verify the business case is still valid, the plan is updated, etc and decide if you should carry on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management by exception. Set tolerances for decision making at different levels of authority so that decisions are made by appropriate people.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn from experience. Talk to other PMs and team members and find out how to approach the management and execution of the project. Don't be afraid to ask questions, with no experience you can't afford to be shy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tailor your approach. You will have problems both if you have too much and too little process and oversight associated with your project. With the amount of time you have available you probably can't go whole-hog with any PM methodology.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond all of this, become zen with the fact that with the constraints put on you there is little chance that the original plan will succeed. Your task now is to come up with something that will work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T14:14:47.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6549" CreationDate="2012-09-10T14:56:43.713" Score="20" Body="&lt;h3&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your question is truly about how you can &lt;em&gt;manage&lt;/em&gt; a project like this in less than two hours per week, the answer is that you can't. At best, you might manage some minimal status reporting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Project Management is a Full-Time Job&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project management, when properly done, is a full-time job for someone. That doesn't necessarily mean 40 hours per week for each project; some PMs are responsible for multiple projects at a time. Nevertheless, the skills and attention required to manage &lt;em&gt;successful&lt;/em&gt; projects require that someone is wearing the PM hat and available to the process throughout the project life-cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Ailing Projects Require Experience, Attention, and Management Support&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An ailing project doesn't mean that work is not being done; it just means a project that is out of tolerance for time, budget, feature delivery, or scope. In other words, it will not meet expectations. By that definition, if your project is &quot;not progressing well&quot; then it is out of tolerance, is already failing to meet someone's expectations, and is therefore on the path to become a failed project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Manage this variance requires the full attention of a project manager who understands process, as well as the full and formal backing of senior management. Without those things, a project cannot be brought back within tolerance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Use Your Time Wisely&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are only allocated a few hours per week, I would use that time every week to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Send out emails to your &lt;em&gt;boss&lt;/em&gt; asking for project goals and metrics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Send out emails to the team asking for status on the goals and metrics provided by your boss.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Send out a one-page spreadsheet or email to everyone summarizing the results.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Granted, the report will be of limited value, but if in-depth reporting were valuable to your organization you would be given more time to develop it properly. The main benefits of this report are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It makes the process, goals, and concrete metrics available to management and the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It makes the results (of whatever quality) visible to everyone, including both management and the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Consider a Daily Stand-Up or Weekly Retrospective&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As another alternative, you can simply perform a daily stand-up, followed by a weekly report to management about process impediments. This would allow you 15 minutes per day for the stand-up, followed by 45 minutes per week of reporting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, you might hold an hour-long meeting each week, focusing on delivered features for the week (there will be none) and process impediments (there will be many). Time-box the meeting closely, and spend the remaining hour turning the meeting minutes into a report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This project is statistically likely to fail. &lt;em&gt;You&lt;/em&gt; are not reponsible for its success or failure. Your job as a PM is to referee whatever process you have, and to make the results of that process visible to the team and to management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The success or failure of the project is the responsibility of your boss.&lt;/strong&gt; Do not accept blame for it; keep the organization focused on the processes and management controls, however minimal they may be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T14:56:43.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6549" CreationDate="2012-09-10T15:29:20.407" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's be clear that project management has been a function of work long before it became a job role and a sort of profession.  I'm quite sure you have far more project management experience than you are giving yourself credit for; after all, we begin managing projects about age 5.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM practices are really nothing more than a logical approach to doing work in an organized way.  It is not some mystical rocket science thing for which you have to go to school.  You do these things now.  When you have time to study it, the class will put a name to it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't overthink things.  Just get yourself organized with the help of your team and learn to document what you are doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your boss's expectation of a couple of hours a week is...his expectation.  In reality, it will be what you need it to be, and as a leader you need to set that counter expectation.  However, once things settle down, an hour or two a week on a five-person team is not unreasonable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, when you have time, take some training.  Until then, rely on your smarts and your previous project management experience which you do have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T15:29:20.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6555" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-10T15:36:54.463" Score="10" ViewCount="2840" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have come to a new challenge in my career that involves handling some job interviews, and I must determine if the applicant really has mastered the skills he/she lists in his/her CV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I accomplish this? Do I:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prepare an assignment? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask concrete technical questions related to what we need? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do something else?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; There will be two persons conducting the interview. The other colleague is from the HR department. I must only be sure about the technical knowledge (Programming and architectural abilities.) of the applicant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4594" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-09-12T03:05:58.033" LastActivityDate="2018-05-28T21:30:47.370" Title="How to determine the skills of a software developer in a job interview?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;personal-skills&gt;&lt;team&gt;&lt;interview&gt;&lt;job-allocation&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6555" CreationDate="2012-09-10T15:49:50.557" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, the interview as a predictor of future performance has a very low validity.  Even structured, it is not helpful or very useful.  Testing for cognitive ability and conducting &quot;job tests&quot; are two of the leading indicators of performance, with a validity approaching or around r0.5 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://maamodt.asp.radford.edu/PSYC%20651/Huffcutt%20&amp;amp;%20Arthur%20%281994%29%20Interview.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hunter &amp;amp; Hunter 1984&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So creating assignments or test questions is the where you want to go.  However, testing predictors must be tested themselves.  Is this is not an easy task.  Those that create selection tools invest a ton of time and money and the reliability and validity of these tools are still questionable.  Might be best to purchase what has already been developed and tested, but be prepared to spend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are unable, get real comfortable with a 50/50 chance of selecting correctly.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="4718" LastEditDate="2012-10-28T05:31:47.580" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T05:31:47.580" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6555" CreationDate="2012-09-10T15:55:48.493" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The time during the interview is too small in order to learn about the coding skills of a developer, however it is important to know more about his personality, so have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2010/12/the-first-agile-job-interview/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;face-to-face discussion&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I get the CV of a new candidate &lt;strong&gt;I immediately start checking for code from her or him on github in order to see how he or she does the coding&lt;/strong&gt;. If I don't find any I give him an exercise to see how he is doing. I'm sending out a &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/ZsoltFabok/job-interview-roman-numerals&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link to this repository&lt;/a&gt; with a short description of the exercise. I don't explain too much, because I want to know how he can solve problems on his own. As you can see &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/ZsoltFabok/job-interview-roman-numerals/network&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one guy&lt;/a&gt; did the assignment and he did great. If I don't know too much about the domain I ask an experienced developer for help. With this approach I know what kind of developer is the candidate. The team work and other social skills can be checked during the &lt;a href=&quot;http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2010/12/the-first-agile-job-interview/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;face-to-face interview&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a time when the company spotify didn't ask for CVs, they asked for github repository links.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T15:55:48.493" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6549" CreationDate="2012-09-10T17:48:00.310" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have pointed out, you can't really expect to accomplish your goal within those parameters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the best you could do is try to switch over to an Agile team.  The nice thing about the Agile process, if done correctly, is that it moves much of the decisions and problems facing management to the team itself.  Rather than a manager identifying and solving a problem with the team, the team is encouraged to identify problems, propose and implement solutions and quantify results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be difficult to implement without a coach or people who are already experienced, and it's just a waste of time to do a half-implementation because much of Agile is interdependent - removing up-front design without insisting on ruthless re-factoring would be futile.  Ruthless re-factoring without full test coverage is dangerous, as is large-scale code sharing/re-factoring without pairing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just came from Nike where a huge chunk of their development has gone over to Agile.  They had hired a coach/trainer full-time to train hundreds of developers.  Even as a consultant they sent me to 3 full days of training.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It really can work well, and our reliance on management was minimal at that point.  Our teams were 2 developers, 2 QAs and an analyst, with 3 of these teams under a team lead (not management) and a few hours of time with our &quot;Customer&quot; every two weeks to validate finished stories and choose new ones (this would probably be your role).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's pretty hard to imagine until you've seen it operating smoothly though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you check around for a successfull team that works within your parameters and try to copy their practice, but I can't imagine a team working within those parameters without being Agile (Heck, that should have been my whole answer!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4597" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-09-11T01:09:03.913" LastActivityDate="2012-09-11T01:09:03.913" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6549" CreationDate="2012-09-10T18:41:58.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some great advice so far, although there's some information that's missing from your description that's critical - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the people you mentioned full-time on this project? What does 'failing' mean? IS it behind schedule? Was there a real plan put together before it started? Why does mgmt think it only takes 1-2 hours? Why do you say it's failing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are all important, for the simple reason that, before you can 'turn it around' you need to understand the reality of it. You need to look at the overall project, the expected results, the planned progress, the current state, the reality of delivering to expectations, the team, etc., and then assess what it would take for you to deliver. It's with this information that you can have an intelligent conversation worth your boss about realistic expectations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without this overall view, 1-2 or 20-30, you're going to have problems.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T18:41:58.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6560" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-10T19:01:37.097" Score="16" ViewCount="908" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/badges&quot;&gt;Stack Exchange is using nice way to motivate contribution through Badges&lt;/a&gt;. I was thinking of implementing this same idea for my project team members. Badges will be awarded to project team members in recognition of their contributions to the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought I would use the three ranks of badge: Bronze, Silver, Gold. Rank depends on the volume of the effort through the project sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Badges example for development project&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Committer&lt;/strong&gt;: commits working code changes into project repository (e.g. Bronze Committer=10 commits during 1 sprint, Silver Committer=25 commits, Gold Committer=50 commits)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tester&lt;/strong&gt;: test release and report bugs (e.g. Bronze Committer=2 bugs during 1 sprint, Silver Committer=5 bugs, Gold Committer=10 bugs)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;My questions are:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you think this will be a good idea to motivate people and get the project on-time with good quality?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did anyone use similar idea to motivate his team members? If yes, how do you implement it? Giving examples is much appreciated...  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What metrics would you suggest to implement this idea and how to measure them? Metrics I thought of like:  coding, commiting, completing tasks on time, testing, recording spent time, commenting in code, objectizing, organizing, integrating, standardizing, creativity and designing.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For above proposed metrics in point #3 (and if you are proposing new metrics), how do you suggest to measure each of these metrics?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:41:23.897" LastActivityDate="2015-03-19T05:35:58.187" Title="Badges for project team members for motivation" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;measurement&gt;" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6560" CreationDate="2012-09-10T19:40:29.683" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;If this is a project that people are currently getting paid to work on: ABSOLUTELY NOT!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, the goals on the project should be plain and obvious, and on a software project, those goals can already be complicated.  Get thorough designs in on time, get code completed on time with as few defects as possible, incorporate feedback from code reviews, fix the unit tests you broke working on this new feature, get new units tests done on time, get doc/doc notes done on time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now on top of that, you want to add a bunch of &quot;fuzzy&quot; goals you mention in #3?  &quot;Objectizing&quot;?  If you propose a badge for that, before you finish your first sprint you are going to regret ever coming up with that idea.  People are going to be arguing that their objectization is better than someone else's objectization.  All kinds of time will be wasted on this.  And worst case: people are going to start getting personal because someone didn't like their objectization.  Goals like &quot;organizaion&quot; and &quot;standardization&quot; are equally fuzzy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You already have enough goals.  Leave your developers alone to achieve those.  You don't want people spending time chasing badges (for which your organization receives &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt; credit).  You want them trying to achieve real goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;StackExchange can use these badges because we aren't getting paid for this.  And if it doesn't get done, only StackExchange loses out (though certainly the communities benefit from this assemblage of knowledge and people).  StackExchange also has an automated process for awarding badges.  How are you going to automate the awarding of the &quot;designing&quot; badge?  You can't.  So you're going to have to spend a lot of time doing it manually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developers are notorious for gaming any system you put in front of them.  The gaming of systems often leads to wasting energy while completely missing the point (real goals).  Your current goals are important and tough enough.  Keep your people focused on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4404" LastEditorUserId="4404" LastEditDate="2012-09-11T00:24:57.407" LastActivityDate="2012-09-11T00:24:57.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6560" CreationDate="2012-09-10T19:48:49.630" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unlike Kent, I think this is an interesting idea that could work. The caveat is that you will need to integrate this tool with other HR practices. This could then feed into bonuses, promotions, etc etc. For example, a developer may have goals to achieve X bronze badges per project on average over a year, those goals need to be met to get a bonus of A%, but if you get your X bronze per project average and get Y silver as well your bonus goes up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line I think is that you need a solid, integrated plan for implementing this with very clear standards and buy-in from corporate managers. Using a population of disconnected incentives is a recipe for confusion and disaster. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T19:48:49.630" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6555" CreationDate="2012-09-10T20:14:50.107" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This can be challenging, it is always possible that someone tests well but can't perform in the &quot;real world&quot;. In the past when I've interviewed candidates I've prioritized as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Personality. You can always train a new hire to become technically competent. You can't ever train them to be a decent human being if they aren't one already. Under this general heading I include traits like honesty, discretion, directness, courage etc. All the &quot;soft skills&quot; that make someone easy to work with... but are notoriously hard to gauge.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mental acuity. If you are looking at a long-term hire it is better to get someone who can break a problem down, think it through and then execute on the plan they develop over someone who can't really think. You could use a logic puzzle of some kind to test them on this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ability to learn. I wouldn't hire someone who hadn't a clue about what needed to be done in the position they were put in, but tech changes and if they can't keep on learning you will be stuck with someone who makes great punch-cards when you really need someone who can code in JAVA.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T20:14:50.107" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6560" CreationDate="2012-09-10T20:15:18.303" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Is it a good idea?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for mostly everything: it all depends on your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some might be very receptive, some absolutely not. If we are talking of an in-house team, I believe it would work more easily with people who already trust you, and who have some sense of humor, as they will have to cope with something that looks un-corporate and hence, at first sight, perhaps “unprofessional” to some. I personally had this issue when I tried to add some other “social improvement” fun-yet-serious artifacts, and backed off when I realized the team was not receptive and considered it more as a game &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; wanted to play rather than an actually useful PM  practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Do others do so?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, not exactly &lt;em&gt;badges&lt;/em&gt;, but along the same lines, and most certainly more impressive&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;;)&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;check out for example the &lt;a href=&quot;http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/b20/sword-and-shield.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Swords and Shields Ceremony&lt;/a&gt; at Blizzard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Metrics&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;coding: this is not a metric (what exactly are you measuring?).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;commiting: this is a bad metric, quantity does not mean quality, and it is usually the opposite in software.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;completing tasks on time: possibly, but on scope too, and in such a way that the completion was not done in such a terrible way that it will raise bugs later on…&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;…&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, I'll stop here. This has &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/27686/what-are-useful-metrics-for-source-code&quot;&gt;already been addressed&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to notice that the whole SE reputation and badges system relies on &lt;em&gt;a community of human beings evaluating stuff&lt;/em&gt;. The only automation that takes place is in counting scores and associating badges to that score.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For testers, it should be a bit easier. The amount of spotted bugs, possibly weighted by severity, could be an easy metric. You could also consider the time before the report as another metric.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Philosophical considerations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such a system is simply a &lt;em&gt;model for reputation&lt;/em&gt;, and thus a way to &lt;em&gt;simplify human trust attribution&lt;/em&gt;. However, for such a system to work, it has to map precisely to events fellow humans would acknowledge as impressive, or at least &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; in some way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I'm afraid this is exactly where you'll hit the limit of automation. By this very definition, automatically computable metrics cannot compute how &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; creative work is. Computers are very good at calculating stuff, not really at evaluating creative work. And coding is creative work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, I don't believe such a system would actually be sustainable to ask for contributions, as it would quickly raise doubts on whichever metric is used. Anything but fellow human evaluation will most probably be disregarded by other programmers, removing the very intention of &lt;em&gt;improving reputation&lt;/em&gt;. It could even have the opposite effect, depending on the metrics used (&lt;em&gt;“gold contributor? huh, this guy most probably did 30 shitty commits…”&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, let's conclude. Adding a badge system is a cool goodie that simplifies such an evaluation by adding discrete steps to a continuous spectrum of evaluation, but for it to have any meaning, you need to make sure the way they are attributed is consensual. For this, I think the only valid metric is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/360-degree_feedback&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;peers evaluation&lt;/a&gt;. This is difficult to obtain reliably on anything but projects with a solid community. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, I would advise to think twice before trying this reward system, as it could be disregarded quite easily, making you waste effort and look foolish, or even backlash if a subset of the population buys into it but not another, segmenting your community / team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2523" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:31:53.287" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T20:15:18.303" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6560" CreationDate="2012-09-10T20:56:07.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's an interesting idea, and I could see what it seem like a good one at first. But I would advise against it. Partly because I think it's based on a fundamentally flawed basis. I know for me, the badges provide no motivation at all. They're simply a by-product of continuing to try to answer questions in a way others find helpful. My ranking motivates me, as it means I'm providing value. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second issue is that the idea seems, well sorry, but a little 'elementary school'. You're (presumably) talking about a team of adults and professionals here. I question the need to motivate in this way. It's almost the reverse of the gaming that Kent mentioned - you're gaming the team to get them motivated? Is that really necessary? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, I understand why you might go this direction, but if you feel it's really necessary, then I think you have a bigger issue. You need to look at 'why' you feel motivating like this is necessary, and address that issue. Why does your team need additional motivation to do their job outside of the existing situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-09-11T00:34:20.790" LastActivityDate="2012-09-11T00:34:20.790" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6560" CreationDate="2012-09-10T21:33:27.223" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are already a lot of theories and studies about motivation.  Extrinsic motivators, like badges, awards, and money, have been studied and I believe the results show they are marginal at best, do nothing, or maybe even decrease motivation.  The strongest motivators are intrinsic and are mastery, purpose, and autonomy.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Follow the science....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T21:33:27.223" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6560" CreationDate="2012-09-11T00:15:14.917" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reasons given in other answers that this is a poor idea are mostly true, however I think they are missing the bigger picture. The number one issue with such an approach is you are treating the team as a bunch of individuals, and not as a team. You want to give team accolades? Awesome. But you should never intentionally divide your team in such a manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastActivityDate="2012-09-11T00:15:14.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6560" CreationDate="2012-09-11T01:17:49.377" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be careful!  There is a fine, subjective, line between motivating and manipulating.  If your team decides that this is the latter you may not get their trust back again.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you sure you aren't, in fact, attempting to manipulate them?  It kind of sounds like you don't think they will do a good job without more motivation.  But that giving them imaginary rewards will provide that motivation.  Based on metrics of project quality that you plan to come up with.  Which implies that you believe you can measure the project quality better than your team (otherwise why try to change their behavior if they know better than you what their behavior should be?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry, but if I were you I would hope my team didn't find this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4415" LastActivityDate="2012-09-11T01:17:49.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6560" CreationDate="2012-09-11T06:07:28.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I still feel that any gaming system moves the focus from the development and &lt;strong&gt;introduces a strong individualism inside the organization&lt;/strong&gt;. Gamification was introduced in applications in order to use the game to keep the customers. They return to your service &lt;strong&gt;partly&lt;/strong&gt; because of the gaming experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take Diablo 3 for example. Getting badges won't get you closer to the final goal, and in order to get some of them, the players may do a lot of unnecessary activities, and it is still a solo task. Back to software development: what will prevent the appearance of the unnecessary comments, commits, refactoring and features?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can have rewards for common activities in order to solve the solo achievement issue, but those where really hard to track, and you'll need a gamekeeper for sure. Or two. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not in favour to use such things in order to get people motivated and bring the projects forward. However, gamification can improve certain parts like knowledge sharing (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://searchcio.techtarget.com/news/2240161375/Gamification-key-to-launching-new-FedEx-social-collaboration-platform&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FedEx example&lt;/a&gt;) and education (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codeschool.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;codeschool&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A personal example. I tried to motivate people to be more agile using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2010/07/the-agile-trophy/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Trophy&lt;/a&gt; in 2010. I was given it to the colleague who made the more valuable contribution to our agile way of working during the week. The ceremony was fun - we did it during the weekly all staff meeting - the person who got the trophy was proud of it, but not everybody played. Partly because did not care about my stupid trophy, or they did not like the rules, or they found it hard to get (I didn't gave the trophy out for a good comment during a daily standup meeting). The idea dead quite fast, it didn't bring the projects forwards, and hardly anybody remembers is, but it &lt;strong&gt;was fun&lt;/strong&gt; :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2012-09-11T06:12:53.850" LastActivityDate="2012-09-11T06:12:53.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6362" CreationDate="2012-09-11T08:43:47.993" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In response to the question in the title - YES 40 hour work weeks (no overtime) are acceptable for development teams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best run teams (in my experience) can deliver good results most of the time on 40 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of an occasional project that is going over a lot at the end (and this is usually going to lead back to a business development failure, or a project management failure) then appealing to how needed your people are might get them to pitch in extra time without resentment. But in my experience, you have to be careful pushing even happy teams, because once people start to feel taken advantage of, you'll end up with a festering culture of  resentment where nobody can be bothered to do anything more than whatever bare minimum will cover their own asses. (You can also get passive aggressive behaviours like presenteeism, malicious compliance, and even malicious damage to projects depending on how annoyed your team are)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But really... a well run project will show slippage before the deadline is due, as soon as you start losing ground against the plan. So in the that case, an appeal for overtime at the time when the project starts to slip would make a lot more sense than having it at the very end. I can't see any reason other than bad management/planning for overtime requests at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line - If you're depending on compulsory overtime at the tail end of every single project, your problem isn't learning how to make people stay late, it's learning how to not need to make people stay late.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3865" LastActivityDate="2012-09-11T08:43:47.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6560" CreationDate="2012-09-11T09:03:01.283" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would share the idea with your team and ask them about opinion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can do it by variety of means:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;ask your team to share ideas about how to gamify the work; propose your idea then&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;ask your team directly what they think about your idea&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ask for permission to make a 30 day experiment to see how it works&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact is, that none of us have ever tried this before. Especially in your team. It's all guessing. But if your team is opened to try new things - go for it and be the first one to try the idea at work and share your insights. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastEditorUserId="1021" LastEditDate="2012-09-11T14:20:17.120" LastActivityDate="2012-09-11T14:20:17.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6555" CreationDate="2012-09-11T10:45:16.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would you hire a magician without asking them to show you some magic tricks? - Joel Spolsky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read Jole's guide: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000073.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2012-09-11T10:45:16.563" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6555" CreationDate="2012-09-11T13:35:29.500" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The interview is only one part of the hiring process. Speaking with references and past employers is another important aspect. Use the interview to learn more about the candidate, their experiences and expertise claimed. Then, speak with references and past employers to validate/get another perspective on the same experiences and skills claimed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-09-11T13:35:29.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6560" CreationDate="2012-09-11T13:52:39.573" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking at this from a programmer's side, there is some things that can be done and some potential bad thing lurking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First the bad things - you don't want to encourage poor practices.  The one that caught my eye was &quot;number of commits&quot;.  Indeed, submitting everything as just one commit is bad, but it is equally bad to submit one commit per file (or one commit to change the comment, another commit to change the code).  Ideally, commits are done with a logical grouping - if it is one commit, its one, if its 20, its twenty.  But to try to find an 'ideal' number of commits is folly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, I've seen goals for bug reporting go bad.  If one rewards (or requires) a certain number of bugs then instead of &quot;this bug occurs under this set of circumstances&quot; you will find &quot;this bug occurs under this set of circumstances on page A&quot;, &quot;this bug occurs under this set of circumstances on page B&quot;, ... &quot;this bug occurs under this set of circumstances on page Z&quot;.  And there is dozens more bugs reported that don't help anyone (it has wasted time time of the reporter, and the person who has to prioritize the additional bugs, and the person who has to fix them, and the person who has to close them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Measuring lines of code written is also a faulty metric.  Consider Bill Atkison writing -2000 lines of code&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When the Lisa team was pushing to finalize their software in 1982,&#xA;  project managers started requiring programmers to submit weekly forms&#xA;  reporting on the number of lines of code they had written. Bill&#xA;  Atkinson thought that was silly. For the week in which he had&#xA;  rewritten QuickDraw’s region calculation routines to be six times&#xA;  faster and 2000 lines shorter, he put “-2000″ on the form. After a few&#xA;  more weeks the managers stopped asking him to fill out the form, and&#xA;  he gladly complied.&#xA;  (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/macpaint-and-quickdraw-source-code/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Computer History on QuickDraw&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a possible solution, look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/The+Continuous+Integration+Game+plugin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jenkins continuous integration game plugin&lt;/a&gt; where the build server examines the static analysis information from a build and gives (or subtracts) points for a number of things (code style, coding practices, unit tests, compiler warnings).  Note that all of these things are programmatic and do not involve human interaction or judging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, its interesting to look at how I score on the local build CI game tab.  But I don't &quot;play&quot; it.  I strive to write good code because I want it to be good code, not because I would get points or a badge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4469" LastActivityDate="2012-09-11T13:52:39.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6578" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-11T20:19:28.637" Score="5" ViewCount="1434" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a microsoft project pro problem and need help.&#xA;I have two summary tasks A and B starting on the same day. Each Summary task has sub tasks 1,2 with resources allocated to them and obviously both subtasks 1 and 2 result in overallocation of the respective resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;A&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;..1&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;..2&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;B&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;..1&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;..2&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The timing of Subtasks 1,2 are ridgid within each Summary task. I want to resource level the subtasks to prevent overallocation but MS Project levels the subtasks by moving just the subtask.&#xA;How can I get MS Project to maintain the subtasks timing by moving the Summary task (i.e. all the subtasks within) to fix the resource overallocation. Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From above MS Project moves subtask 1 within the summary task B to fix the overallocation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;A&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;..1&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;..2&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;B&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;....1&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;..2&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want it to move the start date of the summary task to prevent overallocation like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;A&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;..1&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;..2&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;..B&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;....1&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;....2&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't think this would be a problem but have not found a way to do it yet...&#xA;Thanks for your thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4610" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2012-09-12T00:22:00.253" Title="MS Project: Leveling subtask resources by moving summary task" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6560" CreationDate="2012-09-11T21:09:12.140" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know the management theory of this, but I would be extremely wary of introducing badges in the way that you describe. When I put together a team to deliver a product, I want everyone achieving the best overall team outcome - whatever that means - rather than competing as individuals and potentially undermining / failing to help each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way that I could see a scheme like this working would be for people to be awarded badges by the rest of the team, not by achieving arbitrary goals that are of unclear value. Maybe there would be some merit in having a &quot;Helpful&quot; badge, or a &quot;great contribution&quot; award, or a &quot;problem solver&quot; certificate - but don't make it a competition. Teams pull together - players may compete to be part of the team, but once they are in, they should work for each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2012-09-11T21:09:12.140" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6578" CreationDate="2012-09-12T00:22:00.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;DO NOT HARD CODE IN DATES.  Remove your date constraints.  All leaf level packages should be &quot;as soon as possible.&quot;  This way, the tool can move the packages based on leveling or actuals entered and whatever else.  The tool, as you have it now, cannot move the packages in the manner you want because of a constraint...most likely.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addiiton, build the predecessor/successor logic in yourself.  Don't &quot;level&quot; the schedule by using the tool.  You lose too much control.  You'll end up burning a ton of hours fixing what the tool did because the tool is only so smart.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, don't chase this concept of over utilized resources.  Obviously, you'd want to fix a resource that is showing 180% or higher.  But to chase these minor fluctuations is futile, especially after you enter in actuals.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-09-12T00:22:00.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6555" CreationDate="2012-09-12T04:02:27.433" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Building on Marcin's response. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Guerilla guide to interviewing&lt;/a&gt; (latest version is best!) is very useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It helped me a lot when I first had to evaluate technical staff for hiring few years ago during an expansion spurt (I was hiring electronics development and embedded programming, not just general purpose coders for enterprise software) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not 100% sure of all his assertions - Don't really think that always having 6 people interview one person one after the other is a valuable way to spend 6 people's time when they also have project workload, but have to agree that &quot;smart and gets things done&quot; is pretty much the best summary of any good employee you will ever get, and if you keep those two indicators in mind, plus maybe a pinch of &quot;technical culture&quot; you'll be on your way to getting the technical side of things evaluated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also - there is nothing more true than this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Never say “Maybe, I can’t tell.” If you can’t tell, that means No&#xA;  Hire. It’s really easier than you’d think. Can’t tell? Just say no! If&#xA;  you are on the fence, that means No Hire. Never say, “Well, Hire, I&#xA;  guess, but I’m a little bit concerned about…” That’s a No Hire as&#xA;  well. Mechanically translate all the waffling to “no” and you’ll be&#xA;  all right.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As someone who did once give the nod to a maybe that turned out bad (I was making excuses for bad aptitude test performance and bad explanations in the interview because they seemed confident - but now I know I shouldn't have) I can say that it's the sort of thing that causes a lot of damage and distress to a development team....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from the info from Joel, you need to use whatever tools you have available to get your new team members without taking up all of your productive time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had a recruitment agent our company uses, who has basic maths and logic tests, and over a few different hiring sessions these turned out to be a great indicator for people that did well at technical interviews and at actual work afterwards. From what I've seen, you should expect any viable applicant to a technical job to score in the top 5% of the population for these things, even on a really bad day... The recruiter also did a psychological &quot;DISC&quot; analysis report which was always interesting to read, but I think I could live without that if I was paying the recruiting bill out of my own pocket.... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the programming side of my evaluations, I also used a couple of softball C questions, like described in that article. I'd consider them directed discussions rather than actual tests - It's not just that they can do it, but how fast they are and how confident, and the discussions you have along the way. For bonus points, mine were made of simplified parts from our existing code base so they also gave me a bit of a view into how their thinking process worked with our existing &quot;code culture&quot;, and gave me a look at how they handled things that are important to us, like state machines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly enough, I even tested a junior staff member who did great at the basic aptitude tests but with no real C experience by feeding him the &quot;general knowledge C details&quot; as needed for one of these tests and concentrating on his logic to explain the workings, and then add functionality. He turned out really good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3865" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2012-10-27T01:15:28.133" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T01:15:28.133" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6582" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-12T05:08:44.500" Score="5" ViewCount="486" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've managed a few small projects at work, but I've never dealt with the budget.  For instance, I've had a few tool projects, and two contracts, full time developers, and students.  The project lasts about 8 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you estimate the size of the project(in dollars) accurately?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4613" LastEditorUserId="4422" LastEditDate="2012-09-17T18:32:42.187" LastActivityDate="2012-09-17T18:32:42.187" Title="How do I roughly estimate the size of my project in dollar amounts?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6582" CreationDate="2012-09-12T10:16:14.303" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Taking a small project as an example you could break down your budget in these broad categories - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;People cost - how much would you spend on man power .e,g, hourly rate mutiplied by duration of the project&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tool cost - test equipment,development equipment,support software &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Training cost - if any &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Entertainment cost - e.g. buy them a round of drinks :)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Contingency cost - buffer for over run . trickier to estimate , use history or comparative projects &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Logistics - sales , marketing , advertising &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastEditorUserId="2523" LastEditDate="2012-09-12T12:35:04.520" LastActivityDate="2012-09-12T12:35:04.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6582" CreationDate="2012-09-12T12:35:35.453" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First create your &lt;strong&gt;Work Breakdown Structure&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do this thorough: make sure the whole project scope is captured (both product scope and process scope).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then calculate the cost for each Work package (like &quot;the reluctant tester&quot; summed up: people, materials, ...); make sure to include the cost of your risk management strategies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Add everything up until you have your project cost.&#xA;Finally, depending on your risk management culture, add management reserve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the WBS is key. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2012-09-12T12:35:35.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6582" CreationDate="2012-09-12T13:04:55.913" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PM should not be making estimates for anything other than the work associated with managing the project. Instead, the PM should collate estimates from the team members for the work that they will do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, think about &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; you have a budget. I would argue that the most important function it fulfills is to help give you a justifiable business case for proceeding with the project. In that sense you need a more holistic idea of costs beyond work done on the project, you also need an estimate of likely ongoing costs once the project products are delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, the budget for project work generally covers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Subcontracts. This is relatively easy, use the cost quoted by the subcontractor chosen. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Labor. Get this from the team leaders delivering a work package. Use your company rules to convert full-time equivalents into $ terms.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Materials. Again, get this from team leaders delivering a work package.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk. You should allocate money to deal with risks should they occur, but this should be a separate &quot;pot&quot; and not used unless the risk the money is earmarked for occurs. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Post-project ongoing costs can be broken down into similar buckets, but should be kept separate from project work costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the budget that you come up with at the start of the project, it is an estimate and will likely have to be revised as new information comes to light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-09-12T13:04:55.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6555" CreationDate="2012-09-12T13:05:16.457" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As to me the better way is make a short pair programming session with SMB from the team. Here is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/xYlQg80KaQ0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;An Example of Cyber-dojo Usage in Job Interview&lt;/a&gt; (video).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It takes from 20 minutes to 1 hour and shows the true level of skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4615" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2012-09-30T15:07:13.437" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T15:07:13.437" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6591" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-13T19:45:28.823" Score="6" ViewCount="249" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a project managed using scrum framework, I've a situation where all tasks associated to a user story (feature) had been done successfully. No more code changes are allowed since testing is in progress and sprint is near to closing date. However, while testing and reviewing the product, I, product owner or another team members had come with some suggestions to same story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to handle these suggestions?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should new tasks be created in the new sprint and linked to story in previous sprint?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or should a new story created in the new sprint with new tasks?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or there are a better practice for such scenario?!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4529" LastActivityDate="2012-09-13T20:31:36.570" Title="Handling new suggestions to resolved user stories in closed sprint" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6591" CreationDate="2012-09-13T19:51:46.073" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are following Scrum then there are two options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner terminates the sprint and the modifications are reevaluated and new user stories are created&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The new ideas become user stories for the next sprint&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, I suggest a retrospective about the issue, because how come that the new ideas are not known at the planning meeting? It seems that something is changing or not clear in the background which needs to be sorted out soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even it is tempting, don't change a committed user story. It will cause you too much trouble and the &lt;em&gt;broken window effect&lt;/em&gt; will kick in: there will be another small change, then another, another... (and there is no such thing as a small change)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-09-13T19:51:46.073" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6591" CreationDate="2012-09-13T19:52:18.387" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I prefer creating a new story that then goes into the backlog. The story is usually something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;When using [feature we created in current sprint] I want to be able to do [x]&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice that I said it goes into the backlog, and not necessarily into the next sprint. Its something new, and needs to be prioritized against everything else already in the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;New things are new things which are new things. They all go the same place, no matter when they were thought of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastEditorUserId="4422" LastEditDate="2012-09-13T20:31:36.570" LastActivityDate="2012-09-13T20:31:36.570" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6594" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-14T01:20:45.900" Score="11" ViewCount="3117" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our web development company has grown from five to twenty people over a year. We do 2-4 month projects, and usually team size is 2 devs, 1 QA, 1 BA/PM/Scrum master. Our development methodology is Scrum/Agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently everyone reports to CTO, which is NOT a good way to go for CTO to keep his sanity. Question is - what's the most efficient way to split people into teams? Two approaches emerged: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Split people into mini-teams:&lt;/strong&gt; project manager (who usually is also business analyst) is in charge of 2 devs and 1 QA. The same team does project after project. Everyone reports to PM.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Split by technology:&lt;/strong&gt; have a team of ~ 5 developers who all do Ruby on Rails (for example), managed by senior developer team lead. Then when we get a new project, team lead gets to decide who to put on the project, and it's up to him how to best utilize talent in his team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which one is the better approach? Or maybe there's another one that I've missed? All help would be much appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4632" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T16:59:46.677" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T16:59:46.677" Title="How to split developers/QA into smaller teams?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6594" CreationDate="2012-09-14T07:17:42.177" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you would like to do your business as effective as possible you should &lt;strong&gt;keep the teams together&lt;/strong&gt; even if they may need time for adapting to the new technical challenges of the next projects going to have. Following this, I would go for your first option and have small teams with one &lt;em&gt;leader&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say that a new rails project is about to start, but the rails team is still working on something. Now, you have to have the same discussion again and reorganise the whole organization in order to be able to answer to that demand. Have a team which can solve problems (I'm not talking about people who are experts in everything, I'm talking about a team) and let them figure out with the help of the PM and CTO how to proceed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I understand correctly, the CTO was kind of busy but he has been having up-to-date first handed information about the projects. If you introduce a new layer - layer of PMs/SCMs/TLs - this will change and has some pitfalls (misunderstandings, slowing down, longer response time etc.), so in order to avoid it, I recommend to have the CTO as an observer around the teams, participate in the meetings and discussions. Of course, he or she shouldn't go to all the meetings, but at least three visits per week is a must.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-09-14T07:17:42.177" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6594" CreationDate="2012-09-14T08:21:54.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A group of 20 developers is not too big for a CTO to handle. It should be analyzed where the overwhelming tasks come from, maybe it's not the team management but negotiation of new projects or administrative tasks. It can be interesting to analyze that and introduce improvements to alliviate the work required (new tools and process that for example change the way information is collected e.g. the CTO doesn't enter the information but instead approves and reviews the information entered by others). You should also consider adding a Sales or Biz.Development, if you are a Services-like organization, to help your CTO workload. If your projects are internal the CTO should be able to handle it with the support of the different PMs, this may require that the PMs get involved earlier in the project life cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Said that, you must have a list of the main tasks that are to be taken by the roles that you define. It is important that you differentiate between project related responsibilities and organization related responsibilities. The project related will be temporary will organization related will be more long term. PMs must take the project related responsibilities. About organization, they should go to the CTO. If your projects can be classified in different types (by customer sector, etc) you can have a person responsible for each category if the know-how required is different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, you should consider creating an intermediate level only if the role is significant enough, other ways it will be dilluted and the person in the position will get lost in other responsibilities that he may take (PM in a project) that give him a better career progression and organization visibility. With the size of the team that you describe I wouldn't create another layer, your company will become too hierarchical and this is one of the worst problems a young organization can bring himself into.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summarising, optimize the way you work with new tools and processes that make your management requirements lighter and delegate to the PMs as much as possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4386" LastActivityDate="2012-09-14T08:21:54.600" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6442" CreationDate="2012-09-14T11:06:57.547" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before you look at Scrum/Kanban keep one thing in mind:  It's a partnership with the business.  if you don't have a member of the business who can prioritise (this can be a person, a group, a committee, etc) then it's not going to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I first introduced Scrum I had to work really hard to convince the business to participate.  They were deeply suspicious of Scrum and didn't initially see the benefit of the time they'd have to put into the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, forget about unit test automation and the technical elements of this.  Here are some questions you and the dev team need to ask yourselves:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By going down the Scrum route you are handing prioritisation over to your Product Owner.  Usually, for Scrum to be successful this needs to be someone in the business.  Are you happy to do this?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You will have to prepare and manage the backlog.  This means getting the team to provide extimations for work that you will be held to by your Product Owner.  Are the team willing to spend a reasonable time estimating and are they willing to be held to their estimations?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team will have much more contact with the business through Prioritisation, and demos with the business.  Some people like this and some don't.  With they?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum is incredibly transparent.  We used to send our Product Owner our burndown chart every day, so if we were behind it was obvious by day 4.  Forget about hiding things under the carpet - if you've got issues you'll need to be honest with the business sooner rather than later to retain credibility.  Are you willing to share your daily status reports?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once you do actually deliver the business will have a quick honey-moon (they'll sing your praises) but they'll soon get used to constant delivery.  Are you happy to do this?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Never mind the technical stuff.  Is the business and the team ready for Scrum?  Don't just &quot;declare&quot; you're doing it, talk what you want to do through with the business.  Talk it through with your team and make sure they understand what they're getting into.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then send someone on a ScrumMaster course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3620" LastActivityDate="2012-09-14T11:06:57.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6594" CreationDate="2012-09-14T13:41:11.200" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should definitely &lt;strong&gt;choose cross-functional teams instead of pools&lt;/strong&gt;. There are lots of articles and studies about the cross-functional-teams-vs-silos dilemma. For example, you might want to have a little look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh273005%28v=vs.88%29.aspx&quot;&gt;Create Your Own Flavor to Become Agile within Your Constraints&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Team is a Team&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In larger companies, a project team may be constructed of team members from a shared resource pool. For example, the QA (Quality Assurance) lead for a project may be from the QA shared resources pool. If such team members view themselves as resources on loan, and not as team members dedicated to the project, the result can be functional silos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When silos exist, team members are more concerned about the welfare of their team or area than they are with the livelihood of the project. This mentality doesn’t bode well for Agile development and leads to customer neglect. The team needs to bond as a unified group toward the goals of the project. Roles are assigned, but one of the objectives of Agile is for the team to working collectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Working collectively can also be applied to team member roles. A tester can point out a possible code improvement. A developer can suggest a feature enhancement. In general, team members speak out—they don’t limit their roles to their titles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Management should ensure that individual goals include how well employees support the common good of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The (Agile) team must act as one single entity. Team members should be looking in the same direction. That's why you should avoid silos and break existing ones down if possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4071" LastActivityDate="2012-09-14T13:41:11.200" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6594" CreationDate="2012-09-14T15:59:04.497" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From your original question (and subsequent responses) it sounds like you've got about 10 developers, 4 QAs and 4 PMs plus the CTO. I'm basing this on the 20 headcount, the 5 concurrent projects, and the rough makeup of each project team. My answer outlines what I believe will work from an organisational &lt;em&gt;structure&lt;/em&gt; perspective - I think people need a named line manager to respond to issues/concerns. How these roles interact on a project-by-project basis is a slightly different question and is well-covered by other answers here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest you create two or three lead developer roles (if they don't already exist), and get them to line manage 3-4 developers each. Grouping these by technical discipline might be one approach (either by language or type - 'Rails' or 'front-end' for example) but I don't have a strong preference. Then create a head of QA and have that person manage the other 3 QAs. The lead developers and the head of QA can then report in to the CTO, along with each of the PMs. You could create two senior PMs to streamline this further, if needed. That'll reduce the number of direct reports to the CTO, which will free him/her up for more 'strategic' work, and give clear lines of reporting to the rest of the workforce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For each project I'd allow the PMs to select the team that best fits their project, but these decisions will need to be made in collaboration with other PMs and the CTO to ensure that you have adequate resources to support all of your projects. You might find that the project teams become 'self organizing', in that you will identify particular kinds of projects where a particular group works well together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, the nature of your business might demand that you select 5 project teams in advance and assign them to upcoming projects as soon as they become available. If the former is the case, then from a business perspective, you need to be careful that your client-base is diverse enough that one particular team (e.g. the expert Rails team) isn't overloaded. If the latter is the case you should look at knowledge sharing across your workforce so that each project team is capable of delivering the same standard of work across any type of project - if Agile is already quite embedded then this &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be fairly pain-free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T14:19:05.303" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T14:19:05.303" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6594" CreationDate="2012-09-14T16:14:55.393" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Split your teams into cross-functional non-specialized units. In a good Scrum implementation, a PM should be able to handle 4-5 projects (given that your projects are relatively short in length) at a time. Just make sure your PM is staying out of the day to day workings of your teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't believe in dev leads. Let your teams self-organize. If they absolutely fail in this you can appoint a dev lead, but if you can avoid it, don't. The best scrum implementations have 1 job title for developers (and yes, that includes all the &quot;QA&quot; people as well).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say that people participate in more than 1 project at a time. I would really, really encourage you to stop doing this. Assign a project to a team, and let them finish it. Assigning more than 1 project to the same team will generally result in both projects taking longer (due, mostly, too context switching). Unless there is a substantial blocking problem, try to keep it at 1 project per team at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summation: Create small multi-dimensional self-organizing stable teams with 1 project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit: Why specialized teams are a bad idea&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) &lt;strong&gt;Specialized teams are specialized.&lt;/strong&gt; This greatly limits the agility of your organization. If your dedicated UI team is backed up, but you've got the backend of three projects finished, what do you do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) &lt;strong&gt;Specialized teams are bad for team members.&lt;/strong&gt; The more you pigeon hole your team members into specific, specialized roles, the more likely they are to never be able to leave that role. Low levels of specialization within a diverse team is different, as they are constantly exposed to areas outside of their specialization. But when they are locked into a team that only does one thing, they only see one thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) &lt;strong&gt;Specialized teams are bad at design.&lt;/strong&gt; The more focused your teams are on one aspect of your projects, the less likely they will be able to see and understand the overarching design of your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) &lt;strong&gt;Specialized teams have to hand work off before the software is working.&lt;/strong&gt; If you have a backend team, a UI team, and a QA team each team needs to hand off the work to another team, before the software is actually fully functional. Bugs found by the QA team need to be handed back to a different team, which then goes to another team, which then goes.... etc. This breaks the idea of delivering working software at the end of each sprint, and greatly increases project time with all the context switching required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But don't take my word for it: google &quot;Why multdisciplined Scrum teams&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastEditorUserId="4422" LastEditDate="2012-09-14T21:21:17.640" LastActivityDate="2012-09-14T21:21:17.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3393" CreationDate="2012-09-15T09:20:19.893" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A simple answer to this question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Positive lag (lead) brings the successor's start date or finish date FORWARD,&#xA;while negative lag (lead) brings the successor's start date or finish date BACKWARD.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4643" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-09-15T16:44:44.387" LastActivityDate="2012-09-15T16:44:44.387" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6603" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6607" CreationDate="2012-09-15T17:06:58.753" Score="16" ViewCount="33214" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am planning to apply for the PMP. However, all my project experiences were time related (event planning). I had no projects where I managed a budget. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be better to obtain the CAPM first, or would it be better to apply for the PMP?  What are the requirements for obtaining these certifications?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4641" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-01-12T21:26:54.363" LastActivityDate="2019-08-23T06:45:36.103" Title="Can I apply for PMP without experiences in all processes? What are the requirements for obtaining these certifications?" Tags="&lt;certification&gt;&lt;pmi&gt;&lt;capm&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6445" CreationDate="2012-09-15T21:07:31.950" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first steps of an &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilewarrior.wordpress.com/2010/11/06/the-agile-inception-deck/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Inception Deck&lt;/a&gt; might be a good way to define a project vision. In particular the four first questions are dedicated to make sure that everybody is on the same page about what the project is and is not. In short:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why are we here?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the number one motivation that makes your customer want to spend money on the project? The main goal, the number one driver?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Elevator pitch&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you describe the project if you were in an elevator and only had 30 seconds? Helps you define who, what and why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The product box&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we had to sell the product,what would make customers buy it? what are the key advantages of the product?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The NOT list&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Defines what the project is not. Helps you define the precise scope of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4071" LastActivityDate="2012-09-15T21:07:31.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6603" CreationDate="2012-09-16T07:11:02.093" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/en/Certification/Certified-Associate-in-Project-Management-CAPM.aspx&quot;&gt;PMI CAPM Certification page&lt;/a&gt;, here are the requirements for the CAPM:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To apply for the CAPM, you need to have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;A secondary diploma (high school or the global equivalent)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;AND (one of the following) *&lt;em&gt;emphasis mine&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At least 1,500 hours experience&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;OR&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;23 hours of project management education by the time you sit for the exam.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than the secondary degree AND the hours experience OR the PM education, there appear to be no other requirements. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/en/Certification/~/media/PDF/Certifications/pdc_capmhandbook.ashx&quot;&gt;page 6 of the CAPM Handbook&lt;/a&gt; for more information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/en/Certification/Project-Management-Professional-PMP.aspx&quot;&gt;PMP Certification page&lt;/a&gt;, you need:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To apply for the PMP, you need to have either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;A four-year degree (bachelor’s or the global equivalent) and at least three years of project management experience, with 4,500 hours leading and directing projects and 35 hours of project management education.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;OR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;A secondary diploma (high school or the global equivalent) with at least five years of project management experience, with 7,500 hours leading and directing projects and 35 hours of project management education.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the PMP, the requirements are broken down into 5 process groups, which are listed in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/en/Certification/~/media/PDF/Certifications/PMP%20Application%20Form.ashx&quot;&gt;PMP Application Form&lt;/a&gt;. The one that includes preparing the budget is the &quot;Planning the Project&quot; process group. This consists of preparing the project plan and developing the work breakdown structure. Examples are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project constraints&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create WBS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Develop schedule&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Develop budget&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;HR Management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communication&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Procurement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quality management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conducting kick off meetings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Presenting the plan to stakeholders&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The manual doesn't state how many hours you must have in each process group; it just states the total and that you should have experience in all five groups. Thus, if you have experience doing something else in this process group, you should theoretically meet the requirement without specific budgeting experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/en/Certification/~/media/PDF/Certifications/pdc_pmphandbook.ashx&quot;&gt;page 8 of the PMP Handbook&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;You should have experience in all five process groups across all your project management experience submitted on the application. However, on a single project, you do not need to have experience in all five process groups.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, if you don't meet all of the requirements for the PMP, the CAPM is the choice recommended by the PMI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-09-16T07:11:02.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6549" CreationDate="2012-09-16T20:12:19.487" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a starting project manager, I found Project Management for Dummies to be be really helpful. With your academic background, you could read it in a weekend. The reason I recommend this book is that not only does it touch upon aspects of methodology, it also talks about soft-skills like motivating people etc. and it sets just the right tone, being both accessible and having enough &quot;meat&quot; for you to work with. It won't teach you to be the perfect project manager but it will get you on track and start you asking the right questions. It also deals with basic tools like Gantt Charts etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Methodologies like PRINCE2 and PMBoK are great but they take a while to get your head around - and it sounds like you don't have the luxury of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, I am sure there are lots of other great books about project management but that is one I am very familiar with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4552" LastActivityDate="2012-09-16T20:12:19.487" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6383" CreationDate="2012-09-17T10:05:34.137" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did you inherent this schedule or did you build it? Your parent is also showing actuals entered with 77% complete. This hammock account must have additional packages, some or all of which are at various stages of completion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ensure your view does not have a filter on it, eg, show only unfinished or unstarted tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-09-17T10:05:34.137" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6230" CreationDate="2012-09-17T17:54:21.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I concur with most of the suggestions above if you are doing a Scrum Master scrum of scrums.  I would ask yourself what the purpose of that meeting is.  If it is just technical coordination of immediate activities, then focus around that and the scrum masters (or senior developer) should be able to handle them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the focus is to keep the teams coordinated beyond just technical dependencies, I might suggest a scrum of product owners (assuming that you have product owner/business analysts or similar on each team) as well or even instead.  These folks are responsible for maintaining the overall vision and ensuring that business need is being met instead of just looking at the software.  Particularly as you move from being software focused to solution focused, the broader vision will often bring into focus areas that a team needs to be concerned about beyond just doing coding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, I would use the scrum of scrums as more than just immediate coordination between teams and a regular meeting to look at overall picture of the product (or sprint or release).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4315" LastActivityDate="2012-09-17T17:54:21.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6611" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-17T18:51:41.187" Score="2" ViewCount="497" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am the scrum master in my scrum team. At the end of a sprint, we have a sprint retrospective, and we comment on what good things we noticed in the sprint. We also comment on the bad things and what we can do to improve our sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wanted to know if any of you are doing anything different that brings positive things to the team. I want to make the most out of my sprint retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would appreciate it, if you give me some insight of how you run your sprint retrospective and what you find effective from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4337" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-10-02T05:44:47.027" LastActivityDate="2012-10-02T05:44:47.027" Title="Agile methodology - How to have an effective sprint retrospective?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-09-17T20:56:17.993" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6611" CreationDate="2012-09-17T19:49:42.063" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0977616649&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great&lt;/a&gt; by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen will answer all your questions about retrospectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-09-17T19:49:42.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6613" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-18T04:59:16.347" Score="1" ViewCount="145" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a project with a well-constrained breakdown that would suitable for training interns in scheduling projects.  (The desired context is actually software project scheduling, but I'm willing to expose them to other disciplines.)  Ideally, the trainees would create a schedule in MS Project from a given task breakdown.  Can anyone provide suggestions for that task breakdown?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4653" LastActivityDate="2012-09-18T12:52:51.727" Title="Canned project breakdown suitable for training interns in scheduling" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6614" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-18T10:13:37.430" Score="17" ViewCount="844" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my organization, we decided to hold retrospectives. To be honest, this was a move facilitated by me, because I felt that we should improve our teamwork after a rise from two members in one office to four members in adjacent offices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have one person for support and everything non-code related, two designated programmers of which I am one and our sponsor who also codes and created the framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can we hold a retrospective with one team member/sponsor being the moderator at all, and how would that work?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask, because I tried to moderate and found it increasingly difficult to position myself outside the team for these reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I want to participate actively.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My personal experience as a team member would be helpful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a team member I am &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; external and always involved, while trying the opposite feels artificial.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4481" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2012-09-18T13:07:01.160" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T15:36:23.457" Title="How can a team member moderate a retrospective?" Tags="&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6614" CreationDate="2012-09-18T10:38:11.873" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer is exactly the same as for a &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/6611/468&quot;&gt;previous question&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0977616649&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great&lt;/a&gt; by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen will answer all your questions about retrospectives including facilitation (as far as I remember a hole chapter talks about it, like setting the stage, preparation etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2012-09-18T10:38:11.873" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6614" CreationDate="2012-09-18T10:58:01.050" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not just in retrospectives, but in most workshops and meetings, it is very wise to have a facilitator that is separate from the team. This role is for meeting control and does not participate in the meeting content. If you commingle roles, you are degrading the effectiveness of the facilator. So I would answer your question with a no. Bring in a separate facilitator. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-09-18T10:58:01.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6613" CreationDate="2012-09-18T12:52:51.727" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming your interns know nothing about projects and project management it is better for initial training purposes to pick something simple that everyone in the class can relate to. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Getting to work on time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Taking a vacation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finding a new place to live&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Getting a job&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This lets you focus on basic principles first (e.g. how to create a work- or product- breakdown structure to ID scope, how to ID dependencies, how to do bottom-up and top-down estimates, how to create the first draft of a schedule, how to do the forward &amp;amp; backward passes to ID critical path, contingency planning, etc etc) before trying to teach them software development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once they have a handle on the basics work through a &quot;typical&quot; project that your company has completed to give them an idea of what to look for. Using something canned from outside your organization won't likely add as much value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-09-18T12:52:51.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6614" CreationDate="2012-09-18T12:53:02.053" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can also look at this position: &lt;a href=&quot;https://leanpub.com/the-retrospective-handbook&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Retrospective Handbook&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;This book can be helpful for people that begining doing retrospectives. You will find there for example description of such tools like checklists (Do you have enought markers in the same color, to assure the anonymity for participants? etc.) &#xA;There is also a part about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.retrospectives.com/pages/retroPrimeDirective.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the prime derective&lt;/a&gt;  and its importance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2012-09-18T19:01:46.030" LastActivityDate="2012-09-18T19:01:46.030" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6614" CreationDate="2012-09-18T15:56:09.247" Score="10" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Ideal&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best thing would be of course to have a separate moderator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, considering that if you could do this, you would have already, here is a proposition, which should be considered in all such cases: cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Abstract&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is: &lt;strong&gt;when an important role needs to be regularly taken by some group member, but that assuming this role prevents him/her to assume his usual status of group member and causes frustration or loss of feedback, try to have group members alternately take the responsibility.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Concrete&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have your team members take the moderator responsibility one after the other on each retrospective. This will directly solve your first two points, which are your own frustration and the loss of your feedback for the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will also help alleviate the burden of trying to be neutral, as the mediator knows he will be able to express his/her own feelinds on the next retrospective, and the other members will be more likely to help him/her as they will have felt the pain themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Sociological vision&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will have the added benefit of making attendants more responsible. You will indeed be building an implicitly normative system of &lt;a href=&quot;http://media.pfeiffer.edu/lridener/courses/NORMRECP.HTML&quot;&gt;reciprocity&lt;/a&gt; where attendants will try to be easily “manageable” by the moderator, as they know they will have to assume the role next time, and will want others to behave in a gentle way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Future&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pure linear alternation, depending on your team, may or may not be sustainable. Such cycling can be exchanged for volunteering (if enough different people do volunteer so that there is no feeling of power taking by a subset), or &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_decision-making&quot;&gt;consensual election&lt;/a&gt;. The decision process should be left to the team to choose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2523" LastActivityDate="2012-09-18T15:56:09.247" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3540" CreationDate="2012-09-19T00:40:20.807" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You better look into Latitude &lt;a href=&quot;http://latibiz.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;project management software&lt;/a&gt;!. We're using it for timesheets, job tracking, client-project relation, email documentation, calendar appointment notification, quotes, invoices and reports. Its fast and works well with Outlook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4659" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T00:40:20.807" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6621" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-19T07:56:19.843" Score="4" ViewCount="2140" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to create a recurring task in OpenProj? If so, how do you edit a task to make it a recurring task?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4660" LastEditorUserId="4639" LastEditDate="2013-02-05T00:04:25.567" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T12:04:06.850" Title="Is it possible to create a recurring task in OpenProj?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;open-source&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6622" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6625" CreationDate="2012-09-19T10:50:57.330" Score="14" ViewCount="2500" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard of PRINCE2, PRISM, and many other methodologies. I'm not sure if the waterfall model is actually a project management methodology or not. My project is based on research (Example, mobile selection using weighted scoring model and total cost of ownership).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the waterfall model a suitable methodology to implement it? If not, what methodology should I use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4661" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-05-25T23:13:39.230" LastActivityDate="2017-04-03T10:05:55.373" Title="Is the waterfall model a project management methodology?" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6622" CreationDate="2012-09-19T11:47:22.507" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Waterfall is a software development method because it is a process which provides structure, planning, and control for software development processes. It is not so easy to tell you if it's suitable to implement in your situation without more details. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you expect lots of changes in requirements that can comes during the time, and if you want to be able to react faster on these changes then forget about waterfall. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can try some light-iterative processes like XP or Scrum or some other agile stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2017-04-03T10:05:55.373" LastActivityDate="2017-04-03T10:05:55.373" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6622" CreationDate="2012-09-19T13:50:32.537" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Waterfall is a software development life-cycle.  It can be used in conjunction with project management frameworks and methodologies.  Since the waterfall life-cycle depends on each phase to be completed in full to continue to the next phase, it is typically recommended only if there is a rigid set of well-defined requirements.  If there is still a considerable amount of research to be done in order to elicit requirements or if the project is strictly research with little-to-no software development, then there is a good chance that the waterfall model would not be a good fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avalanche_model&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Avalanche&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;(broken link, see below)&lt;/em&gt; anti-pattern for more information on when waterfall is incorrectly implemented in an agile environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT on 2017-01-10&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently the Wikipedia page for the Avalanche development pattern has been removed.  I was able to find an article that quoted the original Wikipedia page (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rtos.be/2014/01/4-reasons-you-should-stay-away-from-almost-scrum/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.rtos.be/2014/01/4-reasons-you-should-stay-away-from-almost-scrum/&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Avalanche model is a Software Engineering project management anti-pattern, it is a combination of a sequential process such as the Waterfall model and Agile software development methodologies. It is the result of a Project Manager’s attempt to apply Agile techniques to a project, when all they really understand or were taught was a sequential development cycle. Instead of breaking the project into parts that each sequentially go through the phases of development, the entire project inhabits all phases of development simultaneously. Usually the result of attempting to use the Avalanche model is mass confusion, wasted effort, and a product that cannot meet the specifications of any requirements document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4396" LastEditorUserId="4396" LastEditDate="2017-01-10T17:36:53.873" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T17:36:53.873" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6622" CreationDate="2012-09-19T14:44:29.463" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are working alone, a software development methodology might be a bit expensive (time and additional research) for you, because the currently available methodologies were developed for teams which are cooperating and the need some ground rules in order to that. If you are working alone, you cannot really cooperate. My advise is cherry-pick those techniques which may bring your research further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mentioned in a comment that the research you are working on is a &lt;em&gt;college assignment&lt;/em&gt;, which most probably has a deadline. Let's say the deadline is in 6 months and the result of the research is a document and a presentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using an &lt;strong&gt;iterative&lt;/strong&gt; approach, you schedule 5 appointments with your teacher - one in every month - where you discuss the current progress with him (&lt;em&gt;status meeting&lt;/em&gt; from waterfall). It is important that you always bring the recent draft version of the document to the discussion (&lt;em&gt;working code&lt;/em&gt; from XP). Together you check your findings and progress and set the goals for the next session (&lt;em&gt;planning meeting&lt;/em&gt; from scrum). Plan your work for 5 months and &lt;strong&gt;use the last month as a buffer&lt;/strong&gt; for unforeseen work items and creating the presentation (&lt;em&gt;planning with buffers&lt;/em&gt; from classical project management).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The frequent feedback and discussion with your teacher will ensure that your research is going into the right direction and on the other side, it will put some healthy pressure on you from the beginning so that you won't start working on it one week before it is due :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T14:44:29.463" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6627" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6634" CreationDate="2012-09-19T18:25:51.290" Score="4" ViewCount="744" Body="&lt;p&gt;The type of project is small scale. It only includes research based on a topic, say selection of the best laptop, and involves only one individual working on the entire quality plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is PDCA (Plan Do Check Act) or maybe Six sigma technique applicable for this type of projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4661" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2012-09-20T10:21:48.503" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T20:09:52.567" Title="Which quality management approach is best for small-scale, research-based projects?" Tags="&lt;quality&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6628" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-19T20:47:02.150" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Process engineering (also called process systems engineering) focuses on the design, operation, control, and optimization of processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-03-14T13:16:17.697" LastActivityDate="2013-03-14T13:16:17.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6629" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-19T20:47:02.150" Score="0" Body="For questions related to the (re-)design of business processes." OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-03-14T13:16:17.697" LastActivityDate="2013-03-14T13:16:17.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6630" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-19T20:49:40.727" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project sizing is an activity in project management that is used to estimate the size of a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="4529" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T21:12:50.173" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T21:12:50.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6631" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-19T20:49:40.727" Score="0" Body="Project sizing is an activity in project management that is used to estimate the size of a project." OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="4529" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T21:12:46.913" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T21:12:46.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6632" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-19T21:17:31.803" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Backlog generally refers to an accumulation over time of work waiting to be done or orders to be fulfilled. The product backlog, a list of requirements that is maintained for a product developed using the Scrum methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="4529" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T21:24:14.117" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T21:24:14.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6633" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-19T21:17:31.803" Score="0" Body="Backlog generally refers to an accumulation over time of work waiting to be done or orders to be fulfilled. The product backlog, a list of requirements that is maintained for a product developed using the Scrum methodology." OwnerUserId="4529" LastEditorUserId="4529" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T21:24:22.820" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T21:24:22.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6627" CreationDate="2012-09-20T05:18:37.127" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given the example you gave, no quality management methodology can be applied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, quality management is all about &lt;em&gt;continuously improving the output quality&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_management#Principles&quot;&gt;not only&lt;/a&gt;, but as an abstract overview, it is sufficient). This definition would itself need to be more properly defined regarding against which metric improvement would be measured, what is the output, what is quality…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These needed definitions and the &lt;em&gt;continuous&lt;/em&gt; part are why you cannot have a fit: &lt;strong&gt;if your project delivers only once, there is no way you can measure a baseline output quality that you will try to improve upon.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give some more details regarding PDCA, because putting PDCA and 6σ at the same level means your ideas are not so clear about both, and that PDCA is a good basis for understanding QM&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;:)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look even only at the PDCA illustration:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7a/PDCA_Cycle.svg/200px-PDCA_Cycle.svg.png&quot; alt=&quot;PDCA illustration&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;…or &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDCA&quot;&gt;read a bit&lt;/a&gt; about PDCA, you'll notice that “PDCA” is actually an &lt;em&gt;iterative&lt;/em&gt; approach, and that we talk about PDCA &lt;em&gt;cycles&lt;/em&gt;. A one-shot delivery has no way to get &lt;strong&gt;its output and processes&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;Checked&lt;/em&gt; so that they can be &lt;em&gt;Acted&lt;/em&gt; upon by updating the &lt;em&gt;Plan&lt;/em&gt; (processes definition) for &lt;em&gt;Doing&lt;/em&gt; the actual delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PDCA is a basic framework that formalizes what many spontaneously do with a systematic approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma&quot;&gt;6σ&lt;/a&gt;, on the other hand, is a &lt;em&gt;strategy&lt;/em&gt;, i.e. a set of goals, methods, organizations and techniques, some of which are based on the PDCA cycle. And it would be overkill for any project of the kind you described, as it is designed for heavily industrialized and layered environments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2523" LastActivityDate="2012-09-20T05:18:37.127" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6635" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6636" CreationDate="2012-09-20T17:37:29.207" Score="10" ViewCount="26469" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it common to assign a task's priority based solely on its due date? For example, is the following system valid for all scenarios?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Urgent = less than 24 hours&#xA;High = Not more than 24 hours&#xA;Medium = 24 to 48 hours&#xA;Low = within the business week&#xA;None = no set timeframe&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the question: is it not possible to have a &lt;strong&gt;High&lt;/strong&gt; priority item that must be done on 22 December, 2012? So with this task, I'm assuming that the severity (impact) of it not being accomplished on that date is being taken into account when assigning it a priority of &quot;High&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope the question makes sense. To make things simple, what factors determine a task's priority? Would it be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;a. Timeline&#xA;b. Severity&#xA;c. Both&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any other factors that should be taken into account to determine a task's priority?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4434" LastActivityDate="2014-10-29T11:29:16.710" Title="What factors should determine a task's priority?" Tags="&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6635" CreationDate="2012-09-20T21:10:26.173" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quick answer - task priority is determined by the order in which tasks have to be done to achieve the goal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Longer answer - &#xA;Going along with David's comments, I don't see where one task would be of a higher priority than another. This is going on the assumption that, if it's in the plan it's something that should/needs to be done, therefore it's equally important as the rest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some areas where you may need to rank tasks however would be where resources are concerned and overlapping due dates. That's where I see the ranking being used, but that would also form the basis for the prioritization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I have two tasks that are scheduled for the same time and the same resource, then I need to rank then to decide which one to do first. This 'might' be due to time (ie: one affects other downstream work), or it could be by duration (one will take a day while the other a week), or it could be deadline (one HAS to be done by 12/24). It could be due to a lot of factors. I think David's point though was that most of these factors should have been addressed in the initial planning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other instance where I see prioritization is with resources across projects. If I have a task scheduled for a week and another project has a task for the same week with the same resource, then some prioritization will have to happen. Again, ideally this would happen during planning (resource management), but it doesn't always.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point being, the ranking/priority is going to be driven by a number of factors, most of them external. But I don't timeframe see being one of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-09-20T21:10:26.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6635" CreationDate="2012-09-20T21:21:56.473" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may be confusing due date with a task being on the Critical Path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A path on the Critical Path must get done in order for the project to be completed.  It is a firm constraint on the schedule and network of tasks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can have many tasks that are due before a task that's on the Critical Path, but those on the Critical Path are more &quot;important&quot; relative to the schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-09-20T21:21:56.473" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6635" CreationDate="2012-09-20T22:40:04.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Besides Mark's and Trevor's answers, the only other thing I can think of where you might want to reconsider the sequence of tasks is if you have to recover from some sort of unfavorable variance.  We schedule our network based on both hard and soft logic.  If hard, you don't really have a lot of options of resequencing because of the type of dependency hard logic represents.  So that leaves those tasks scheduled sequel to soft logic.  I think the result of resequencing would be based on the predicted effects of the new network, after you schedule and run your simulation, and determine which scenario provided you the best likelihood of schedule recovery and to what degree.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's all I got....  :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-09-20T22:40:04.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6635" CreationDate="2012-09-21T13:58:45.477" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to what Trevor mentions I would add some points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to keep everybody busy so, when planning I put first tasks that would allow other tasks to be started specially if these tasks are to be executed by external groups to my team or my company where I have less control about when I will received the deliverable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another important aspect is risk. Either because a precise duration or required efffort is not known or because of dependencies with other tasks or the cost of the task is high if gets delayed or needs to be repeated I try to give extra priority to the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, resource availability, duration and urgency are the usual variables to assign priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that urgency and priority is not the same concept although often are confused preventing people from making progress on important tasks because urgent tasks are put on their way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a more micro level, as a PM, I try to execute tasks that require communication with others early in the morning (but with time enough for my important tasks) while tasks that I can do on my own I plan them for the afternoon/evening or even late hours(work flexible hours) when I have less interruptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4386" LastActivityDate="2012-09-21T13:58:45.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6641" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6645" CreationDate="2012-09-21T15:06:58.350" Score="1" ViewCount="250" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have planned all the tasks using MS Project 2007. I used shots of Gantt chart, Network diagram and critical path. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can the project documentation plan have the following contents?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project background.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Objectives.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scope.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Methodologies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Core functions such as cost, quality, scope and time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these enough for a proper project plan documentation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nature of the project is research based and consists of only one working resource. No project team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4661" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-09T16:35:48.893" LastActivityDate="2018-11-09T16:35:48.893" Title="How to start off a project plan documentation for research oriented projects?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;&lt;ms-project-2007&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6641" CreationDate="2012-09-21T15:24:46.353" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the characteristics of a successful project is tailoring the project management methodology to the project's criticality and complexity. So don't ask &quot;Do I have enough?&quot;, ask &quot;Do I have what I need?&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To figure out if you have what you need where you are the only team member, talk to the end customer(s)/user(s) and find out what is important to them. Get them to prioritize time/cost/scope/quality so that you have an idea of what trade-offs to make in your plan documentation and ongoing reporting. Have them tell you the level of detail they need. Then balance their requirements off with what you can deliver, draft what you think will work and get their buy-in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-09-21T15:24:46.353" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6383" CreationDate="2012-09-21T15:28:34.807" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did you increase the progress of your child tasks under &quot;Create Ds..&quot; ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you don't have any mixed up task dependencies, for instance Start-To-Start. Or any constraints on &quot;Create DS..&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try removing the dependencies and constraints on &quot;Create DB..&quot; and check if it has calculated accordingly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4661" LastActivityDate="2012-09-21T15:28:34.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6641" CreationDate="2012-09-21T17:11:25.823" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some very simple questions you have to ask before you start, but it looks like you've got them (almost) all covered - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is my project, why am I doing it, what do I hope to accomplish, what resources do I have available, what are my constraints, what are the risks, how do I plan to approach and execute the project, etc.? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure the methodology includes some way to measure progress against plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are missing one that I can see, and it's the most important -  how will I know when I'm done and if I was successful? Define your success criteria BEFORE you start. Is it a particular grade, validation of a hypothesis, just completing the assignment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-09-21T17:11:25.823" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6647" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-22T05:35:37.633" Score="12" ViewCount="691" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just took over a project from a Project Engineer and just saw a revised project schedule. The revised schedule shows the project will be delayed by 3 months.  I am trying to complete it within the old schedule, which would make the project on-time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I review the submitted schedule, and how can I improve it so that I can finish it within the old time frame?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4675" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-09-22T07:13:45.387" LastActivityDate="2019-07-09T21:01:30.293" Title="How can I improve a project schedule on a project I took over and complete it on time?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6647" CreationDate="2012-09-22T10:50:40.073" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you review the schedule, have stakeholders with you and look for those items which have less value in comparison to the other items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a so called &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project-help/every-project-plan-is-a-triangle-HA001021180.aspx?redir=0&quot;&gt;iron triangle&lt;/a&gt;&quot; in software development. It talks about &lt;strong&gt;money, scope and time&lt;/strong&gt;. Let me take a quote from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/10/the-iron-stool.html&quot;&gt;Jeff Atwood&lt;/a&gt; (co-creator of SO and SE):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;These three factors are all related. If you pull on one &quot;edge&quot; of the triangle, the other sides have to give. If we cut the budget in half, we can't do as much, so scope has to give. That's why it's often called the iron triangle.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you would like to move forward, you either reduce the scope or add more money to the project and add more developers. The last idea won't really work, because adding &lt;a href=&quot;http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2010/06/handle-additional-resources/&quot;&gt;more resource will add more communication and coordination overhead&lt;/a&gt;, and the project will take even longer than before (Brooks' Law).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing you can do is &lt;strong&gt;wisely check the current situation&lt;/strong&gt;, check what has been done, what is under development and what is coming, and &lt;strong&gt;reduce the scope&lt;/strong&gt;. You either throw away planned or ongoing features and focus on those which are critical to match your deadline or you move them to the next delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key here is to &lt;strong&gt;have the stakeholders/customers and let this scope reduction be a conversation and consensus&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following suggestions will pop up and your job is to handle them properly (by saying no):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More resources: I talked about it before.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Additional working hours: This will kill the morale, people will get tired, and people will do mistakes, which will risk the delivery date for sure.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bonus as motivation: This shifts the focus from the delivery to a personal goal - unfortunately, this one is more powerful - and the features will be there for sure, but their quality will be very low.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-09-23T02:09:24.100" LastActivityDate="2012-09-23T02:09:24.100" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6647" CreationDate="2012-09-22T10:52:42.833" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a finite number of things you can do to bring in your schedule.  Can you crash it?  This means can you throw more labor into it, which, in theory, will bring in your duration as well as explode your costs?  Do you have some labor bandwith that will allow you to start packages that are scheduled down the road?  This is fast tracking.  It may adversely impact your costs.  Can you remove some scope?  This is called removing scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is very controversial, but can you degrade the quality and call things finished before you may otherwise have?  Many would have an issue with this suggestion but I think it is done all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there different methods available to you for the work?  For example, if your method is to move five tons of dirt with five laborers, five shovels, and some wheel barrels, several backhoes and dump trucks may speed things up.  (You'll have to translate this to the type of work you're doing, of course.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If none of these things are possible, then re-estimate the work again and see how aggressive you care to be on the probabilistic distribution your time estimate and publish a new schedule.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2012-09-22T14:23:51.477" LastActivityDate="2012-09-22T14:23:51.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6647" CreationDate="2012-09-22T22:37:17.917" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If tihe methodology is poor or non-existent, you should be able to reduce development time by improving the methodology being used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If code reuse is bad, you may be able to decrease development time by improving either.  Repeated code is much more more expensive to maintain (even during development) and highly fragile (often one copy gets missed in the patching).  Identifying and refactoring reused code when a bug is being repaired limits the overhead for existing code, and quickly gets you to one copy of problematic repeated code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using existing frameworks and libraries rather than developing the functionality in-house can also decrease development time.  This can reduce both development and testing time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding resources can be counter productive.  I managed one project where additional developers were imposed in attempt to meet a deadline.  This was highly unproductive as new developers weren't productive, and existing developers ended up spending a lot of time helping them instead of developing.  The new developers were quickly assigned to other projects.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As other have noted, all other things being equal you are stuck with the iron triangle.  Consider these options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;develop the minimal usable system by the original schedule (reduce scope). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;remove or reassign the least productive team members.  (Reduce/reassign costs.) This reduces communications overhead and may speed up development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;buy part of the solution. (Increase cost.) Frameworks and libraries mentioned above count.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;overtime or time shifting (Increase cost.) Getting some key components developed at the right time may pay off.  Regular overtime tends to be counter-productive so don't rely on it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;identify and remove blockers.  (Increase immediate cost.) The best project managers I have worked with ensured solutions were provided as soon as possible.  Identifying and removing future blockers helps even more.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;add appropriate tools. (Increase cost.).  I am constantly amazed that managers don't invest in productivity enhancing tools.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;add a wiki, or other communication tool.  This can improve communication and consistency across the project.  It can take some work to convince all the team members that the wiki documentation belongs to the project and not the author.  Everyone should feel free to update the project documentation there. &#xA;'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastEditorUserId="529" LastEditDate="2012-09-22T22:47:56.613" LastActivityDate="2012-09-22T22:47:56.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6652" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6658" CreationDate="2012-09-23T08:03:25.780" Score="2" ViewCount="222" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose I was working on a 3 months web development project, alone. And I had to start developing everything from scratch. I had to perform each and every activity that a software development life cycle required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would I manage this project? What would I do to improve the quality of the project and be on track? What are the processes that would help me achieve the target? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that MS Project helps the project to be managed. And I know how to use that software. But how would I do it all by myself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4661" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-05-25T23:12:58.057" LastActivityDate="2013-05-25T23:12:58.057" Title="How to apply project management skills for a bulky project?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6653" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6657" CreationDate="2012-09-23T11:45:18.983" Score="68" ViewCount="7119" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a developer and we started using Agile last year (October 2011).  And, it has been rough to say the least.  I was always taught Scrum was to discuss the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What you did yesterday&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What you are going to do today&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any issues, challenges or roadblocks that might be in the way (at the moment)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My understanding is that this meeting is for the developers, but product owners should be there to answer any questions that may be directed toward them.  Otherwise, this is a meeting to go over developer needs &amp;amp; issues in a manner that is relaxed and for the developers (no one else).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Now here's my issue...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;In our version, each developer is required give what is tantamount to some kind of Regimented Status Report.  We stand-up and report in the following format:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(a) The Story Number and Name&lt;br/&gt;&#xA; - Each Task Number in the story that we worked-on&lt;br/&gt;&#xA; - The Original Time Estimate for the currently discussed task&lt;br/&gt;&#xA; - The Actual  Time Estimate for the currently discussed task&lt;br/&gt;&#xA; - An explanation of why we were over or under&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My Question is:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Is this Scrum?  Heck, is this Agile?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4679" LastEditorUserId="4679" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T21:08:34.697" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T22:50:58.637" Title="Is Scrum a status report meeting or a developer meeting?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="32" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6653" CreationDate="2012-09-23T12:21:53.260" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The meeting you're describing (well, the meeting you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be having, see below) is &lt;em&gt;a&lt;/em&gt; Scrum, sometimes called a stand-up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum - the methodology - is a &lt;em&gt;set&lt;/em&gt; of practices, of which the Scrum meeting is core. You can think of Agile methodologies as different toolboxes, where the tools can be used together very effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile is the term we give to the conglomerate of practices, the body of knowledge and the community built around similar methodologies and practices, including Scrum but also XP, DSDM and others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the practice of holding Scrum meetings is part of Scrum, as well as part of just about every other Agile methodology (perhaps by another name), and Scrum is an Agile methodology, but Agile itself is bigger than individual methodologies or practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should also address your other question: no, what you're doing is not the practice commonly called a Scrum. It's the practice commonly called micro-management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T12:50:30.487" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T12:50:30.487" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6653" CreationDate="2012-09-23T18:44:55.337" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it is not Scrum and neither Agile. I would say that all the information he needs must be available on the board. It would nice to find out what he does with the gathered information. The &quot;&lt;em&gt;An explanation of why we were over or under&lt;/em&gt;&quot; is an interesting part, because what can your team or he do about it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you would like to improve the situation, find out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what does he do with the information?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how can you make the work more transparent (with the board etc)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bonus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what did you expect when you started doing agile? Has anything changed/improved?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer is &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; to the last question, you should really do a retrospective on different levels (business, development etc) separately and then together (share the information and generate discussions between the parties) to find out where are you heading and what are the expectations and set your ways of working accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-09-23T18:44:55.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6653" CreationDate="2012-09-23T21:05:57.247" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The daily stand-up meeting (called daily scrum in Scrum) &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/scrum/daily-scrum&quot;&gt;is not a status update meeting in which a boss is collecting information about who is behind schedule&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion this is tempting to transform a stand-up into a status reporting meeting, where everybody in the team reports to the Scrum Master, PM or whatever. And this is a mistake. In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/daily-scrum-not-just-for-scrummasters&quot;&gt;a recent article&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;em&gt;Daily Scrum: Not Just for ScrumMasters&lt;/em&gt;) Mike Cohn called it a &quot;synchronization meeting&quot;, a moment when each team member gets to know what everyone else is doing and how the project is &lt;em&gt;behaving&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is also the moment where issues, impediments, are raised (but not a big problem-solving meeting). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So no, the meeting you describe does not look like a genuine daily scrum meeting. In short, if everybody leaves the meeting thinking that they just gave report to the PM, and not that they synced with the rest of the team, this is not a actual stand-up meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, you should know that the problem is not that the meeting is held story-by-story instead of person-by-person, although this is the standard form. Kanban teams often use this kind of stand-up meeting, but the philosophy is not exactly the same as the focus is more on the flow of items. Anyway you might want to read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/should-the-daily-standup-be-person-by-person-or-story-by-story&quot;&gt;this other article&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;em&gt;Should the Daily Standup Be Person-by-Person or Story-by-Story?&lt;/em&gt;) by Mike Cohn. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4071" LastActivityDate="2012-09-23T21:05:57.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6653" CreationDate="2012-09-24T01:47:07.963" Score="67" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Dissecting a Status Pull&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, what is happening in your meetings is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a Scrum stand-up meeting, it's a status pull. In fact, it's probably worth dissecting this particular status pull to see why your &quot;Scrum&quot; process is failing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first two elements that your project manager (not Scrum Master, evidently) is asking are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The Original Time Estimate for the currently discussed task &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The Actual Time Estimate for the currently discussed task&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only &lt;em&gt;practical&lt;/em&gt; utility for this information is to determine whether estimates were on-target or not, or whether there are hidden process impediments that were not planned for in the original estimate. However, gathering this information in this particular way is not very agile because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This information should already be transparent through the use of a Kanban board or other framework process. Having to ask for it explicitly is a &quot;project smell&quot; that indicates a fundamentally broken project process or an undocumented objective.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimates are estimates, not commitments. As long as all stories that the team has voluntarily committed to perform during the Sprint are completed by the end of the Sprint, the individual story estimates (as opposed to the aggregate estimate) are not intrinsically useful except as part of a retrospective.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your process is based on 100% utilization, rather than a throughput-based pull queue, then it's neither Scrum nor agile. All agile frameworks require slack in the process; asking for daily deltas at such a granular level certainly implies an intolerance for the slack &lt;em&gt;required&lt;/em&gt; by agile frameworks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the last item is particularly telling. Your PM wants:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;An explanation of why we were over or under&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting better at estimating is a useful goal for any agile framework. However, one goal of Scrum is to ensure that the team does not over-commit; if there is extra capacity within the Sprint once all stories are completed, then the team can and should pull additional stories into the Sprint from the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question, as described, sounds a lot like stories are being &lt;em&gt;assigned&lt;/em&gt; to the team for each Sprint, which is an epic fail from a Scrum stand-point. Even if that's not actually the case, it's another &quot;project smell&quot; that indicates that individuals are being &quot;held accountable&quot; (presumably by the PM) for the accuracy of individual story estimates, rather than for the team's overall progress in meeting the Sprint Goal for that iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mis-estimating is an issue that should always be communicated clearly during Sprint Reviews, and used as a learning process during the Sprint Retrospective. However, the &lt;em&gt;tone&lt;/em&gt; of the question above implies that accountability for estimates is more important than anything else, and diverts focus from feature delivery to C.Y.A. delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Using the Stand-Up to Coordinate Status&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following is incorrect:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[The stand-up] is a meeting to go over developer needs &amp;amp; issues in a manner that is relaxed and for the developers (no one else).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The daily stand-up is a commitment and coordination meeting &lt;em&gt;for the entire team.&lt;/em&gt; It is designed to ensure that the entire team is aware of impediments, what stories are done or not-done, and what tasks are ready to be pulled from one team member's to-do list into someone else's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of the above means that a Scrum Master or Product Owner doesn't gain value from the meeting. A well-run daily stand-up will give the Scrum Master a clear picture of any process issues and whether individual stories are done or not-done. The Product Owner gains a sense of whether there are risks to the current Sprint Goal, timely insight into backlog grooming tasks for the next iteration, and provides advance notice of when a Sprint might need to be terminated early.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important that the Scrum Master and the Product Owner be &lt;em&gt;active participants&lt;/em&gt; in the stand-up, but if the team is &lt;em&gt;reporting&lt;/em&gt; to either of them, then the team is neither self-organized nor empowered to efficiently deliver value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Your Process Might Be Broken If...&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a short list of &quot;project smells&quot; that seem related to your issue. It's part of a longer list I came up with for reference when I'm doing Scrum training for teams or when I'm coaching other practitioners. If any of them seem applicable to your situation, then your team may want to take the issues on-board during a retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the team has so many stories on the board at once that a verbal report needs to identify the story by number, then the process is broken.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the team has so many stories that a glance at the board doesn't make it clear that things are moving from not-done to done in a timely manner, then the process is broken.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the team is so large that a glance at the board doesn't indicate who is working on what--or worse yet, requires cross-referencing with a separate spreadsheet--then the process is broken.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the PM's only communication about the project or with the team is at the daily stand-up, then the process is broken.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the PM can't construct a burn-down chart from some combination of the story board, the daily stand-up, and ongoing communication with team members, then the process is broken.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the daily stand-up is not serving the needs of the team, then the process is broken.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If estimates encourage excuses or justifications, rather than refinement over time, then the process is broken.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the team is reporting to any one individual during the stand-up meeting, rather than cooperatively coordinating with one another, then the process is broken.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your process is broken, but team members don't feel free to directly address the broken process during a retrospective, then your organizational culture is broken.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your organizational culture is broken, and figuring out &lt;em&gt;Who do we blame for breaking it?&lt;/em&gt; is more important than figuring out &lt;em&gt;How do we collectively fix it?&lt;/em&gt; then it's time to dust off your resume.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T21:56:59.663" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T21:56:59.663" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6652" CreationDate="2012-09-24T07:45:10.640" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How would I manage this project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2009/does-anyone-use-a-personal-kanban-scrum-board-for-project-management-activitie&quot;&gt;personal Kanban&lt;/a&gt;. The idea is quite simple (you have a board with the work items, the different phases are represented by columns and in order to move things forward you set limits on the columns) and can wonderfully be used with &lt;a href=&quot;http://trello.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;trello&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What would I do to improve the quality of the project and be on track?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tracking won't improve your project (you won't loose weight by measuring it). Most probably, you have a customer or a client. &lt;strong&gt;Have frequent discussions over the latest version of your web site&lt;/strong&gt;, let the customer use it and discuss the experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are the processes that would help me achieve the target?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;frequent discussion with the customer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;checking similar projects on the web and see how they are doing it (you may get some good ideas which will bring you forward)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T07:45:10.640" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6659" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6660" CreationDate="2012-09-24T13:58:36.147" Score="17" ViewCount="9184" Body="&lt;p&gt;Background – We are a small group (three PMs reporting to a director) doing business improvement projects for a large company. Problems with our processes have been identified, in particular going from vision to solution while starting up projects, and our director has brought myself and a consultant in to try to resolve these. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Issue – I am trying to engage the other two PMs in the group to get them to contribute to the solution. I figured that step one should be sitting down with them to figure out what their vision is for a “happy future”. Unfortunately they see this as a waste of time and refuse to participate, their logic being that (a) they have learned enough on their own to circumvent the problems and (b) their visions will be trumped by the director in any case so why bother. Ultimately they just don’t seem to care enough to go through the process to want to bother (but maybe I'm just interpreting their response that way out of frustration). I see this as a huge issue as they are key stakeholders and not bringing them in to the solution early and often is not going to be conducive to project success. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question – Is it possible to get stakeholders who don’t care engaged with a project? Or in this particular case where I can get a director to dictate a solution is it worth the effort to get the stakeholders to get engaged? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T10:56:22.027" Title="How do you get stakeholders who don't care engaged?" Tags="&lt;stakeholders&gt;&lt;leadership&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6659" CreationDate="2012-09-24T14:35:52.810" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Disengaged stakeholders will threaten your success, as you know.  They will remain a threat until either they are turned around or removed, literally.  Now, I typically segment stakeholders into two groups (I know, oversimplified): participating with seemingly no issues, stakeholders that are in a constant state of opposition.  On the surface, it would seem that those in a constant state of opposition are stakeholders that threaten your success while the first segment is good to go.  I actually think the opposite is true.  The first segment will contain those that either are simply not engaged and are going through the motions, who will also cause a lot of grief down the line; or those who are purposely passive and underground and are actively sabotaging your every action.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second group is engaged.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I write this because your (a) and (b) did not place them in either category, really, at least for me, so I am not completely sure you have as big a risk as you think you do.  Your first description sort of sounds like that, but your second description implies a frustration, an objection, that you can grab and run with in a very positive way.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I held a kick-off meeting once where all my client stakeholders were positive, smiling, agreeing with everything, asking rather benign questions, and said to me, &quot;we're glad you're aboard!&quot;  My boss, who happened to be there, congratulated me and said you were able to get everyone to eat out of your hand, to which I responded, &quot;Project's already in trouble!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T14:35:52.810" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6659" CreationDate="2012-09-24T17:07:12.340" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If The Disengaged feel like they have already learned enough to avoid the problems in the future, then maybe you can start with that.  Start a process with them where you are working to codify what everyone feels will work.  Maybe as part of that process they will start to become more engaged and the process can start to move forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been in a situation like you describe where there are concerns that anything they suggest will just be swept aside by your boss.  It's a difficult situation and highly DEmotivating.  But a lot of times these situations occur because you need to engage more with your boss.  Don't approach this problem so that the 4 of you (PM's and consultant) are going to work in isolation and come up with a solution that you will then dump on your boss.  No one should be surprised if there are some surprises at the end of that process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stay engaged with your boss on a weekly basis so that you are telling him what you've identified/what you're working on with respect to this problem.  At the same time you are getting information from him on how he would like to see things go.  At the end of the process, he can't really toss your work because he has been approving/suggesting it all along.  You're aligning your project with his idea of a successful end point along the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't force you compatriots to do work.  But if you are having a meeting with your boss in two weeks, and he knows (and your fellow PM's know he knows) that one of your fellow PM's is responsible for a particular piece of information, then they aren't doing it for you, they're doing it for the boss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work on more engagement vertically and you should see more engagement horizontally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4404" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T17:07:12.340" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6659" CreationDate="2012-09-24T22:16:14.367" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have to GET them engaged. And you can only do that by getting them to have a stake in the outcome. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's where part of the problem lies - the three PM's (you being one of them) have a problem; of that group only you were tasked to solve it. So you've started off down a point in their eyes. Regardless of the reality, to them it looks like you're now the &quot;Lead PM'. so you need to find a way to convince them that will actually be a part of the solution, that they will be heard, and that it's not just you. AS you said, one of there reasons is that the solution will be rejected, they're already feeling like it (their voice) will go nowhere. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, you need to get them involved in identifying the causes. You said that the problems with the processes have already been identified. By whom? Were the other 2 PM's involved? Do they agree with those problems, or are they being told these are the problems?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best bet to get them engaged is to start over - bring them all together and say &quot;here's how our dept is perceived, and this is why. Now, let's talk about why that might be, and what we can together as a group to change that.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T22:16:14.367" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6652" CreationDate="2012-09-24T23:57:09.853" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like Zsolt's advice, but I would add just a bit (but keep in mind my background is NOT s/w dev).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All projects, regardless of size, share some common traits. Primarily is the idea of scope, or in the case of s/w dev, requirements or capabilities. Then there's obviously cost and schedule. These don't determine success, but they give you some parameters for going forward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So treat it like any other project - define the expected capabilities at present. I say capabilities to avoid the 'some parts of scope are unknown discussion' and 'at present' to allow for emerging requirements as the project progresses. but get clear on where you're headed for now. Then break it down into the different deliverables/components, and the then work required for each, and roughly schedule that out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will disagree with Zsolt on one aspect - he said tracking won't improve it. Okay, perhaps not 'improve' it, but as you said you have a &quot;3 month&quot; project, some element of tracking against expected progress is necessary, just to make sure you finish as agreed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last piece - MSProject will NOT help you manage the project. At best, a program like MSP help you 'track' and/or plan the project. But that's ONLY if the information in it is accurate, and updated to reflect progress. On a 3 month, one person project it's overkill. It will most likely take you more time to update it than will be useful.  You may want to use it to work up the WBS and rough out the schedule, and then to refer back to. But (IMO) you would be better served to rough it out in MSP for a baseline of workflow and target dates, and then switch to Zsolt's Kanban recommendation for the day to day tracking and monitoring, and maybe refer back to MSP to gauge progress against how you originally planned it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T23:57:09.853" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2012-09-25T14:58:04.897" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend you to take a look at this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectmanager.com/project-management-resources&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt; It helped me a lot to manage projects. Not only just downloading and reading ebooks, but also learning from video tutorials. It also provides trial tools for project management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4661" LastActivityDate="2012-09-25T14:58:04.897" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-09-25T14:58:04.897" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6659" CreationDate="2012-09-25T23:09:00.333" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The feeling that your colleagues have is quite common and difficult to change. When in the past the voices of the workers have not been heard, have been ignored rudely or any similar similar it is difficult to collaborate in this kind of initiatives. By this kind of initiatives I refer to improvement of work methodologies and processes that usually suffer due to rush and daily pressure (if I understand correctly your problem description ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Said this, you should bring forward the WIIFM formula (What's In It For Me), how your colleagues will benefit from joining the initiative. Make sure you don't promise anything beyond your scope of responsibility. For this to happen you should have a clear idea from your director what is the scope of the solution you must define (new tools, new hires to reduce workload, new gadgets, ... ). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you apply the same formula at company level you will have the arguments to convince your colleagues why this time their voice is important and will be heard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another important point your boss should have clarified is that even when you are the liaison/coordinator/collaborator with the consultant everybody must collaborate. A percentage of their time even if small (8 hours in the first month) should be approved and enough for a kick-off meeting, them to write down the techniques they mention that have already come out with and a wrap-up session to share the results of the first round before presenting them to your boss, a session that they should also attend as your group is small enough to require that (1 misaligned person is a 33% of your group) and afford that ( a meeting of 5 can still be productive). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, share the credit, even if you have done the most work (in putting together the ideas, ...) everybody will be giving feedback and it is always difficult in a process improvement initiative which tweak made the difference. Your boss will know your role so don't be afraid, you have been probably chosen for a variety of reasons (less busy, more organized, more enthusiast or open to change, not necessarily for being the most creative or process expert, sorry! I hope you take it the right way).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4386" LastActivityDate="2012-09-25T23:09:00.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6669" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6674" CreationDate="2012-09-26T00:31:04.643" Score="12" ViewCount="1172" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the company I'm currently working at, there is a new opening for a project manager position. I've been here for two long years working in a more technical role (software configuration manager), although I also got a masters degree in PM and got certified as PMP in past June. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone working here was invited to participate for this position, in case of being interested, by submitting an email to the management. I was happy to participate and to have my chance to shine here with the knowledge and experience I hard earned in the past two years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bummer appeared when today I was informed in Thursday I shall participate for an extreme situational scenario evaluation for two &lt;em&gt;external&lt;/em&gt; candidates invited to participate in the PM selection process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I became disappointed because I know external candidates could also have more advantages as they surely will be older and more experimented (I'm 28) and willing to work here. In fact, I know that one of the managers, recommended one of the candidates, personally!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Internally, I knew only of two other fully competent guys I was going to go through this selection. Now I'm uncomfortable of the news, even although I'm fully aware of my previous qualifications and the fact I have a solid leadership figure here, so the internal knowledge I have and previous qualifications could give me an edge in the selection process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today in the evening, I rejected to be part of the scenario for the external candidates, as obviously I have conflict of interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that this is the kind of situation for which one must be prepared to face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I take advantage of my current position and play my strengths in my favor so that I can have a chance of landing this position?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4036" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-09-26T08:04:52.377" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T14:26:04.433" Title="How to handle selection process for new project manager position I'm interested in?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6622" CreationDate="2012-09-26T02:18:45.860" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Arguably, waterfall is a software development methodology (at least &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_methodology&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; thinks so).  However, a methodology is a defined set of tools, activities, tasks that offer guidance on how to provide a set of deliverables.  In this respect (as a delivery mechanism), waterfall breaks down as a methodology because unless the amount of work that needs to be completed is small, waterfall doesn't easily facilitate the need to make changes to the final set of deliverables once you begin. Expecting things to not change the minute you start is unrealistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Waterfall is a good description of the sequential activities that is needed to be completed for software development work.  First, you need to figure out what it is that you want to build (i.e. - gather requirements).  Then you need to determine how you will accomplish the end result given the limits of the chosen technology (i.e. - design).  Then you need to build the solution based upon what you just determined is the best path (i.e. - implementation/construction/development).  Then finally, you need to make sure that what you built did in fact solve the problem you initially set out to achieve (i.e. - testing).  This list of activities in this order is the de facto standard for software development (yes, you can argue minor adjustments can be made by determining how you will test before you start building using TDD, but the general list remains the same).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the key here is to keep the size of work within this cycle small.  If you grow the size of work too large, you now incur the risks that is inherent with waterfall as a methodology. This is essentially what agile software development does and why it is more successful in large scale software development projects.  It prevents the waterfall cycle of activities from growing too large.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4531" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-09-26T03:17:29.580" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T03:17:29.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6659" CreationDate="2012-09-26T03:09:41.773" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it possible to get stakeholders who don’t care engaged with a&#xA;  project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes ... unfortunately it is not uncommon to have several stakeholders on a project who appear to be disengaged or apathetic towards a project.  There are far too many reasons to go through  in this post as to why stakeholders are disengaged (Some have been listed here by other people, but I strongly encourage you to do your own investigation here so that you don't fall into the trap of having a pre-conceived notion of the problem before you've spoken with the stakeholders in question).  The key to solving this problem is to find out the specific reasons why these stakeholders are disengaged  (it appears that you've started doing this based upon your identification of (a)).  Talk to them ... uncover the mystery.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Based upon the responses, you may or may not be able to address their concerns.  This will depend upon the constraints the Director has imposed on you when he communicated the parameters of the project/engagement and his expectations.   But the information is still valuable as you will now have a better idea of the risks to the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Or in this particular case where I can get a director to dictate a&#xA;  solution is it worth the effort to get the stakeholders to get&#xA;  engaged?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is very difficult to answer without more information here, but I will say that in general, yes ... it is worth the effort.  Relying on an authoritative position held by someone else to get other stakeholders to participate in a project that you manage is a dangerous position.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Consider the possible outcomes if you use this trump card too often:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Director views you  as incompetent (why can't this person solve these problems without involving me all the time?).  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other stakeholders lose respect for you and may attempt to undermine you and your project every step of the way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You suddenly realize that you need the support of the other stakeholders midway through  the project in persuading the Director to take another course of action.  Likelihood of getting that support is the same as me becoming elected for President.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Strong-arm tactics are best avoided as a repetitive technique for getting things done.  That's not to say they don't have their place, but use them sparingly and acknowledge the follow-up work that you will need to do to regain the lost trust afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key here is relationship management.  You need to work on managing the relationship with these stakeholders to increase the probability of project success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4531" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T03:09:41.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6672" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6682" CreationDate="2012-09-26T04:48:59.817" Score="5" ViewCount="34834" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an eye problem, so I want to make the &quot;today line&quot; in my Gantt chart to be larger and bolder. Is there any way to do so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1945" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-14T09:41:46.423" LastActivityDate="2019-01-14T09:41:46.423" Title="How can I highlight the &quot;today line&quot; in an MS Project Gantt chart?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6669" CreationDate="2012-09-26T07:04:57.733" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have to be direct here so that there is no chance of misunderstanding.  Talk to the manager(s) doing the hiring/nominating, tell them you are interested in the position, and ask them where you stand in the process with two external candidates coming in.  If they tell you you have a shot then that's good news, but you will still have to wait for the evaluation of all candidates.  If they tell you you don't have a shot then that's good news because you won't be walking around the office everyday wondering where you stand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you get the news, then you may or may not have a decision to make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4404" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T07:04:57.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6669" CreationDate="2012-09-26T07:40:23.803" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's put on your boss' hat for a moment. Their goal is to hire best possible candidate, given all the constraints they have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way: it doesn't mean simply hiring the most skilled person, as they may or may not need to take into consideration things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Salary they're willing to pay&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How the decision affects company culture, e.g. showing that they support internal promotions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much risk they're willing to take in terms of knowing people or their incomplete skillset&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given all these their goal is to make best decision, so it isn't a surprise they look both: inside and outside the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understanding this, you may consider advantages and disadvantages of you as a candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You know way more about projects in the company than any outsider does&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your bosses know you, your skills and feats of your character way better than ones of any outsider&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Considering that the position is considered as a promotion by yourself it is likely that you will expect smaller salary&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your potential to fulfill the role and to grow within its boundaries can be (hopefully) taken into consideration by your bosses&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The decision is likely to have positive impact on people in the organization showing then there's no glass ceiling and there are plenty of options in terms ob building their careers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Probably points for skillset are not on your side&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There may be some internal politics in play, e.g. one of other candidates was recommended by one of the managers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Promoting you the org loses a specialist in the other place -- something that they may not be ready to do&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Managers may want to &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2006/12/fresh-blood-in-team.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;introduce some fresh blood&lt;/a&gt; to the team to shake things up.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given all the background I believe one thing you can expect from your managers is an honest discussion about your role in the process and, potentially, key criteria they will be using to make up their minds. It doesn't hurt to talk after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And one more thing: even if you end up not being chosen, your attitude in this recruitment process may be go/no go decision next time your organization needs a PM, so there's virtually no point in taking offence, no matter what you end up with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2012-10-01T14:26:04.433" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T14:26:04.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6672" CreationDate="2012-09-26T09:07:24.873" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no need of changing it's format. You can just zoom it by simply right clicking the gantt chart space and select &quot;Zoom.&quot; That way you can adjust the size of it and view it without any difficulty :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4661" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T09:07:24.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6669" CreationDate="2012-09-26T11:07:14.840" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The good news is, project management experience is a useless predictor of future success.  The validity of that criterion is very low.  The bad news is, it is used the most and relied upon as a heavily weighted criterion (Hunter &amp;amp; Hunter, 1984) and you cannot give them an employee selection tutorial during your interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no formula anyone here can provide that will ensure your success.  All you can do to further your career is know where you want to go and drive to that with persistence.  You have advantages you can exploit that the external candidates cannot.  You already work in the organization so you are a known risk.  You have experience in your organization and in the projects your organization pursues.  You know the culture, the politics, and you have an internal network established.  Exploit those and remain professional, positive, and driven.  And most importantly, demonstrate to them that you are smart, that you can critically think.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are passed up on this opportunity, your very next step is to schedule a meeting with the decision makers and learn why, ask for some things they'd like to see from now til then, and to thank them for consideration.  Then keep them in your network and build on that relationship.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T11:07:14.840" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6669" CreationDate="2012-09-26T12:41:59.637" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I disagree with the concept that you do not need to hire the best possible candidate you can get.  What you need is to find a candidate that meets your needs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a team that is good about generating documentation, and self manages their productivity then if the best candidate is an organizer then that is not what you need.  Your team is already organized introducing a PM that wants to reorganize and change their process may actually reduce your teams effectiveness.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would ask the following questions&#xA;What management skills does the team need?  Where are the pain points where the teams tend to get stuck?   What does the business need out of the PM?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3095" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T12:41:59.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6669" CreationDate="2012-09-26T15:43:17.580" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The biggest advantage you may have is any knowledge of the personalities on the selection committee and company hiring practices. That should help you gauge what questions are likely to be asked, how to answer the questions in the best way (e.g. &quot;Lots of detail&quot; vs &quot;Short and sweet&quot;), etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that focus on yourself. You don't know who your competition is or what they bring to the table so don't worry about them. List your own strengths and weaknesses. Try to put these into buckets. Look at the buckets and work out how to emphasize your strengths while acknowledging your weaknesses in a positive light (e.g. &quot;I know that I lack PM experience with the company, but I know our products and have been serious enough about being a PM to go out and get certification etc.&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Opting out of the extreme scenario being presented to the external candidates could have been a bad move if you didn't discuss thoroughly with the selection committee. You may have thought you had an unfair advantage and wanted to do the &quot;decent thing&quot; which is laudable, I hope the committee sees it the same way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T15:43:17.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19" CreationDate="2012-09-26T17:52:59.850" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I really like &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0446698202&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The No Asshole Rule&lt;/a&gt; by Sutton.  While it won't tell you how to manage, if you execute in an agile atmosphere, it helps in setting up teams that can execute (and companies).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more straight how to run a project, I like &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0321579364&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Succeeding with Agile Development&lt;/a&gt; by Cohn.  Obviously an agile book, but one of the better I have read and good advice on how to move teams and get them to adopt culture change as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4315" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T17:52:59.850" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-09-26T17:52:59.850" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6669" CreationDate="2012-09-27T03:14:49.103" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may want to consider expanding your job hunt to other companies. It sounds like you threw your hat into the ring and it didn't work out.  The fact that you bowed out of the selection process due to a conflict of interest says a lot about your character and should be viewed positively by other employers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-09-27T03:14:49.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6672" CreationDate="2012-09-27T20:31:54.737" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Right click the mouse over a blank space on your gantt graph, choose &quot;gridlines...&quot;, highlight &quot;current date&quot; and define the line color and type. I usually make it a red continuous line. Unfortunately, it is not possible to control line width.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2462" LastActivityDate="2012-09-27T20:31:54.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6659" CreationDate="2012-09-27T23:14:38.660" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Human being naturally oppose change.&lt;/strong&gt; Resistance to change is natural (a natural force of disruption); you can't solve it, you can't fight it and you can't overcome it, but you can manage it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not a sign of disloyalty, there's nothing personal, it's not linked with bad performance, it's just a sign change is not managed, it's out of control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your colleagues are acting within their frame of references (emotions + experience + values + knowledge), aka company culture, and they oppose change, they show the typical symptoms of resistance... Immobilization, denial, bargaining, anger...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You first need to listen to them, talk no more than 30% and listen for at least 70%.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need sponsorship (your director), and sponsorship must be expressed clearly, must be &lt;strong&gt;reinforced&lt;/strong&gt; multiple times and it must be &lt;strong&gt;modeled&lt;/strong&gt; over them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need to define reachable targets and establish expectations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Learn their frame of references&lt;/strong&gt; and explain yourself in their frame of references.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Analyze their frame of references (emotions + experience + values + knowledge) and find the source of resistance there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the energy of the target you defined to help manage the situation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use team meetings, interviews, question and answers to let their frame of references surface.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Forget about money&lt;/strong&gt; (in case it's an option in your case), check the Maslow pyramid once again, &lt;strong&gt;people are better motivated with&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;stuff they are interested in&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;appreciation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;making them feel part of it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read what I wrote above twice, you can not fight it, you can not fight their frame of references, you can not fight the company culture, you can not fight a point of view... But you can manage it, and you can lead it through change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you define the target keep in mind target=success, what's success in their frame of references? Who attain success become a leader, he/she is seen as a leader, and leaders define what culture is in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use it, identify the frame of references, identify the leaders, change them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Read these two books&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influence_Science_and_Practice&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Influence: Science and Practice&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0385528752&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3342" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2012-10-27T01:15:08.367" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T01:15:08.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6684" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6703" CreationDate="2012-09-28T22:14:53.813" Score="9" ViewCount="586" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt;  What quick reference, training, items about Scrum need to be on a training sheet for quick reference to keep everyone in the know about what Scrum is, its processes and common terminology?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Basis:&lt;/strong&gt;  I am new to Scrum, and project management, and will be taking on the roll of Scrum Master.  The Product Owner knows nothing about Scrum other than a brief 30 minute Q/A about the roll of Product Owner and what was entailed.  The team also knows nothing about Scrum and will be relying on me to help them through the process of it all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have some basic ideas at this point as to what should go on such a sheet.  Nothing fancy, not too much information.  Just something that someone could look at and have a general grasp and understanding within 30 seconds to 1 minute worth of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What I have so far&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;[edit]&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://goo.gl/TNU7R&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;To make things simpler of what I have implemented I am sharing the doc through Google Docs&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1481e.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;] - I am using the book Agile Software Development with Scrum.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;We value individuals and interactions over processes and tools... Asking a team to read a document is the process, the document is the tool.  I believe that the tool can be condensed to portray the required information that is most pertinent to scrum. Providing further resources and materials on specifics of course should always be made available (transparency), however even so most people only read in depth what is pertinent to them and what they are interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am asking what is the absolute basics that are needed to gain an overview understanding of what Scrum is to be condensed into a single sheet of paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2130" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-09-30T22:22:59.197" LastActivityDate="2020-06-29T13:52:31.587" Title="Scrum Training Sheet for new teams" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6685" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6687" CreationDate="2012-09-29T03:38:39.337" Score="8" ViewCount="1224" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm involved in a project where the business team created a large business requirements document that were using to create product backlog items and acceptance criteria.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, they have also created use cases that look to contain more interaction between how they see their users interact with the software.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The business team seems to feel the use cases contain more detail with more behaviors around how their users would interact with the software. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: Should we be putting more weight and time into turning the use cases into backlog items/acceptance criteria or stick more to the business requirements, or treat them equally?  Is there any rule of thumb that others use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1076" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-09-29T19:29:33.317" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T13:32:15.500" Title="Develop from Use Cases or Business Requirements" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6684" CreationDate="2012-09-29T03:46:32.013" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Scrum guide is what you need. You can find it &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrum.org/Scrum-Guides&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. Everyone on the team should read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There really isn't anything that you could look at to grasp Scrum in 30 seconds, other than the statement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is about decreased cycle times and increased communication, facilitated by self organizing teams and constant feedback loops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastActivityDate="2012-09-29T03:46:32.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6685" CreationDate="2012-09-30T05:39:51.220" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Business Requirements (BR) and Use Cases (UC) are two different poles of the software development cycle (SDLC).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;You have to consider both&lt;/strong&gt;, but apply them at different times of the SDLC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a look on this diagram (taken from &lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com/site/amitamitbhutani/testinglifecycle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Km3I3.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;BR vs. UC&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both documents come from the customer's perspective, but apply differently:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BR&lt;/strong&gt; essentially define primary objectives (hence the name), e.g. &lt;strong&gt;what the software should do&lt;/strong&gt;. They are usually having top-down, feature-wise nature.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;UC&lt;/strong&gt; define individual &lt;strong&gt;cases&lt;/strong&gt; (hence the name) how the users will interact with the system, or how the components interact with each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As soon as &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; are defined, the development team starts elaborating &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; by essentially moving towards each other:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Analysts drill down to SRS and DS;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;QA team elaborate Use Cases into Test Cases;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(skipping the resource planning phase as it is not relevant to your question)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, at the very middle of the SDLC, the Developers bring both ends together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summarizing:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;You can't ignore BR as they define &lt;em&gt;what the software will do&lt;/em&gt;;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;You can't ignore UC as they define &lt;em&gt;how it will be tested&lt;/em&gt; (or, if you wish, they define &lt;em&gt;success criteria for telling working software from non-working one&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Caveats:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I've seen quite a few cases when teams failed to keep both documents synchronized, assuming BR are for project start, and UC are for project end. As result, one of these docs becomes too detailed, while another is treated as &quot;it's for the customer, not for the developers&quot;. IMHO, having these two synced at all phases lets the team &lt;strong&gt;detecting logical gaps early&lt;/strong&gt;. Too valuable asset to ignore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3941" LastEditorUserId="3941" LastEditDate="2012-09-30T12:10:02.790" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T12:10:02.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6685" CreationDate="2012-09-30T10:00:17.110" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A more detailed answer, I think the business requirements document should be considered like the document that the customer (directly or through your business team) delivers so that you understand what they need. Any of the requirements will be for sure complex and hence, prone to be interpreted in a variety of ways not all of them probably suitable for what your customer needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, lucky you, your biz team has created also the UC. I think your development team (or you) should validate both documents with an emphasis on detailing and completing the UC and mix them in a unique document (easy since both documents come from your biz team) and once this is done use both documents to involve the customer and give approval. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think the UC document should be used for the development, I think it's aligned with Agile best practices to have a clear understanding of the requirements and how they will be implemented before starting to code and even when Agile focus on reducing documentation, if you have been awarded with a good BR and UC documents use them at least to start moving and plan the first releases(sprints) or prototype the User Interface. What option you choose depends on how technically savvy is your customer and how much effort do you want to invest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if your customer is familiar with your development because you are going to customize and existing product of your company of has been shown other projects your company has developed the privilege of early feedback either based on a customer review of your merged document or a prototype of the UI is priceless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually all this work is done internally, so why not wrapping it a little with a red ribbon and handle it to your biz team so that they help you to get the customer feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4386" LastEditorUserId="4386" LastEditDate="2012-09-30T13:32:15.500" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T13:32:15.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6689" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6691" CreationDate="2012-09-30T17:29:11.810" Score="1" ViewCount="235" Body="&lt;p&gt;A typical project for me is a 3 months web development and Android Apps project with a 3 person team. All development work is started and required all software development life cycle activities (planning, implementation, testing, documenting, deploying and maintenance).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any rules or guidelines for tailoring the software development life cycle to different projects? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For example, when could an agile development model best be applied to initiate the project and track workflow? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Related to this, how can I better determine what can be done to improve project quality and better stay on track?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4714" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-10-02T01:12:31.770" LastActivityDate="2012-10-02T01:12:31.770" Title="How to apply project management skills for different projects?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6690" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-30T19:21:16.653" Score="7" ViewCount="1763" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've created a recurring task in MS project and I'd like to assign resources (staff) to that resource but when I add the resource(s) to the task the Work hours multiply to extremes and I don't understand why.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example I have Project Meeting as a recurring task, it's duration is 217.13 days and the Work is set to 22 hours. However, when I assign a resource this jumps to 1759 hours. If I add another resource this jumps to 3496 hours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's going on? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: It only seems to happen when I add to &quot;resource names&quot; rather than &quot;assigning&quot; resources. So.. what's the difference? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4660" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T18:58:19.823" Title="Why does MS project multiply the duration of tasks?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6689" CreationDate="2012-09-30T23:27:29.480" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am going to use an educated guess based on what was said, as it is a bit unclear exactly what you are looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How would I manage different project with respect to the software development life cycle?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first suggestion would be to read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agile-process.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Software Development: A gentle introduction&lt;/a&gt; .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When should agile development model be applied to initiate the Android Apps project to track the workflow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You start Agile as soon as you decide to start applying or integrating Agile principles to the project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular you are going to want to do a bit of research into DevOps to start using Automation to deliver continuous software. It's not just about stand ups and a product backlog.  A couple of podcasts that I would recommend that will help with getting some of the concepts are &lt;a href=&quot;http://developersmackdown.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Developer Smackdown&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thisagilelife.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This Agile Life&lt;/a&gt;.  There is a lot of information on &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/continuous-integration&quot;&gt;Continuous Integration&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/continuous-deployment&quot;&gt;Continuous Deployment&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/continuous-delivery&quot;&gt;Continuous Delivery&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/continuous-testing&quot;&gt;Continuous Testing&lt;/a&gt; on StackOverflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What would I do to improve the quality of the project and be on track?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Extreme Programming&lt;/a&gt; or Scrum.  Great starting point, if I am too assume you know nothing about either.  This is all actually based on this question being posed in a manner that sounds like you are jumping in head first and unsure about all the information out there, a lot like I was about a year ago and trying to decipher what is out there.  It was frustrating to be honest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck ^_^&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2130" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:41:23.897" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T04:07:08.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6690" CreationDate="2012-10-01T15:00:19.470" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's because of the nature of recurring task itself. Since each resources are assigned to a recurring task, the working hours tend to exceed in each task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wz9gL.png&quot; alt=&quot;Example of recurring task&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assigned resources to task. The output is shown above. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4661" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T15:00:19.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6689" CreationDate="2012-10-01T16:37:31.360" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;how can I better determine what can be done to improve project quality and better stay on track?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do your lessons learned from the prior project state?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Perhaps I'm reading too deeply into &quot;typical project&quot; - but that implies to me that you're not a complete novice; you've danced this dance before.  I would expect that the closeout from prior projects would be the key resource to identify risks to quality and schedule.  I'm a risk management maven, so I'd look first at whatever records were in my risk registry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T16:37:31.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3582" CreationDate="2012-10-01T16:41:38.890" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I prefer to create a main heading task with indented sub-task below it. Each sub task will have the individual time entries at 100% work completed. I use a date underscore initials method to identify who and when at a glance from the names. You could just enter the same task name over and over but filtering it later could become problematic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project Admin Tasks (as main)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;15-Sep-12_APF (task name) 100% complete, X hrs, resources (indented)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;15-Sep-12_BRT 100%, X Hours, resources (indented)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;18-Sep-12_APF 100%, X Hours, resources (indented)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the task will roll up into the main heading. If you have your baseline created at the project start you can also compare how many hours are going over, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4727" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T16:41:38.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6690" CreationDate="2012-10-01T18:58:19.823" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;More than probably your task is set by default as &quot;Fixed Units&quot; so the initial 22 hours of work are not kept fixed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now 217.13 days * 8 hours/day = 1737 hours (the task duration in hours)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever you add a new resource in &quot;Resource names&quot; column MS Project tries to guess what you want to do. And by default he believes you are adding a new resource with 100% allocation so it results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;22 + 1737 (hours the new resource will have to work) = 1759 hours&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding a new resource results in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1759 + 1737 = 3496 hours&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you assign all resources at once using the &quot;Task information&quot; dialog, all resources are assigned with 1% allocation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you first add resources and then set the desired work. Otherwise MS Project might thing you are trying to do some resource leveling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4457" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T18:58:19.823" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6689" CreationDate="2012-10-01T19:46:12.757" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;At a very high level the principles of good project management (focus on the end product, have a viable business case, learn from experience, tailor your methods to your needs, manage the project in stages, clearly define roles &amp;amp; responsibilities, open &amp;amp; timely communications, etc) are universal across project types. You should work to ensure these principles are followed on all projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of specific methodologies, look at your needs, your client's needs, your corporate culture and the team you have to adjust your approach and overcome obstacles. Get a consensus from all the key stakeholders about how much control over the project they want and the level of documentation they require. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key point is that your method needs to be tailored to what you require. I'm sure most PMs have worked in environments where you fill out X, Y and Z forms/documents because &quot;that is what we do&quot; without any real organizational realization that all projects are unique and that there are cases when you will have to do &quot;more&quot; and cases where it makes sense to do &quot;less&quot;. For example, you likely don't need project plans with identical contents for each of two projects when one is 3 months long and worth $50,000 the other is 18 months long and worth $1 million. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T19:46:12.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6698" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-01T20:58:42.290" Score="11" ViewCount="1534" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our team has been slowly trying to go towards agile, and like many other teams, up to this point, the question of &quot;what do we do when we actually finish all commitments?&quot; is fairly new and foreign to us. But lately it actually came up once or twice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I wanted to ask this board on good practices is that we are using Rally for agile project tracking and one thing the tool does is keep track of hours and points. In order to improve our estimates, I wanted to do something with this data and provide feedback to the team on how we did in the past, by comparing metrics that show estimated task hours vs. actual task hours vs. assigned story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems like it could work great as long as developers work up until the last day of the iteration or if they are late with their deliveries. Then &quot;actual hours&quot; reflects exactly what went into each story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, what should we do when we finish early but next story would take too long to complete so we can't pull it into the current iteration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know some people are advised to simply take the time for general cleanup/housekeeping like updating automated tests or documentation, but for sake of argument, let's say the best value to the team and the company in this specific scenario would be to immediately start working on the next story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we are not committed to the next story, actual hours aren't tracked anywhere. And in the next iteration when we do commit, we will only identify estimated/actual hours which will go into the next iteration, at which point the work might already be 25%-50% complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1948" LastEditorUserId="38353" LastEditDate="2020-08-02T11:41:16.780" LastActivityDate="2020-08-02T11:41:16.780" Title="Agile/scrum - tracking time spent in current iteration towards stories from the next iteration if all current stories are done" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;rally&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6698" CreationDate="2012-10-01T21:28:00.150" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem with general cleanup and housekeeping in some corporate cultures is that they simply get ignored, or viewed as something &quot;extra&quot; that doesn't necessarily need to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order for the sprint to actually be complete, consider for a moment that the estimates for that story should also include documentation, reducing technical debt, updating automated tests, etc. Consider that your sprint is not &quot;done&quot; until these things are also completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ignoring these things may lead to additional risks to the quality or success of the project and could be considered an impediment down the road. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, if you have your mind set on skipping these things, you could split the next story up into smaller components so that the first part could be finished in the extra time remaining, but the extra work you would be putting into this may create some confusion in the team. My suggestion would be to stick to your sprints and don't rush. It will pay off in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T21:28:00.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6698" CreationDate="2012-10-01T22:18:44.503" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;While hours actual feels like something valuable to get to better estimates, its actually useful if you are using relative estimation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point of using story points and a time box is to learn, &quot;how many points of work can we fit in the box&quot;. This works as long as we get good at relatively estimating all 5s and 5s and 3s as 3s, instead of that will take us X time. The better you get at identifying the size of story, then the more stable your average velocity will be, which means you are pretty good at estimating what you can do in 2 weeks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is always variable so yes, sometimes you take to much and sometimes you take to little and you assess that with your burndown everyday. Based on the assessment its up to you how to act. Fix a few bugs, learn something, pull in a small story you know you can finish. There is no scrum by the book answer here, just good judgement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why not spend the time that you were going to use to become better estimators to adopt a new practice? (look at XP for ideas). Don't fall into the traditional earned value trap that we can become better at estimating time. It's not possible. Our brain can't do it, hence relative estimating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck! Sounds like you are doing great so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Erin&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T22:18:44.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6698" CreationDate="2012-10-01T23:16:34.347" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Things I would look for in order of preference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does anyone else need help finishing up their work in the current sprint?  It's better to try and make sure that everything that was targeted in this sprint is actually completed (keep the whole team together in this sprint) than to let the faster developers move on to future stories (letting everyone get spread out across multiple iterations).  Remember that the scrum process has process that needs to happen before and after each sprint, and if you start spreading these activities across sprints, the whole process will lose its &quot;cyclical&quot; quality. I think the cyclical nature of scrum is one of the subtle things that makes it attractive.  But that's just me.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any stories designated for future sprints that still have more risk than people are comfortable with?  If you have a project of any size, then there are bound to be a few stories that people are not entirely sure how something is going to be done.  You may need to ask the team for feedback on this.  Use the extra time to reduce risk on those stories by prototyping, doing additional research, or whatever you need to do to make everyone comfortable with the problem stories or break them down further.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a very small story that can be pulled into this sprint and absolutely be finished by the end of this sprint.  If so, then pull it in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4404" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T23:16:34.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6684" CreationDate="2012-10-02T00:17:11.400" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_650246&amp;amp;feature=iv&amp;amp;src_vid=Q5k7a9YEoUI&amp;amp;v=XU0llRltyFM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Intro to Agile Scrum in Under 10 minutes&lt;/a&gt; video that does a decent job.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I'd try the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28development%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia page on Scrum&lt;/a&gt; - it's actually quite good.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can start with those, but 30 seconds to 1 minute is a pretty tough task, and I'd say you should be able to ask people on the team to spend more time than that to learn the new development process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1373" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2012-10-27T00:15:43.583" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T00:15:43.583" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6684" CreationDate="2012-10-02T11:34:29.577" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you checked the &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20130901040809/http://refcardz.dzone.com/refcardz/scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum RefCard&lt;/a&gt; from DZone?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-29T13:52:31.587" LastActivityDate="2020-06-29T13:52:31.587" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6704" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6712" CreationDate="2012-10-02T14:15:03.200" Score="7" ViewCount="1725" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking at implementing Jira (and add-ons) for our team to manage projects and bug-tracking. Obviously I will set the team up as Users but do clients need to be setup as Users to report bugs and issues? I can see Jira has a capture feedback functionality, but will this also create a Jira issue automatically?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3915" LastEditorUserId="2340" LastEditDate="2012-12-06T08:22:40.053" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T01:01:58.290" Title="Can clients report bugs and issues into Jira without being setup as a user?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6706" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6726" CreationDate="2012-10-02T17:38:17.260" Score="5" ViewCount="308" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just started my Master's program in MIS, but the program isn't the strongest. IT is the field I'll be going into, and I want to be as prepared as I can be when I complete my degree. We've covered the different methodologies, however not too in depth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should a student study/research in order to best prepare themselves for a career in PM?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4735" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-10-02T20:47:06.730" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T05:18:44.873" Title="What should I focus on as a student of IT to prepare myself for a career in Project Management?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6704" CreationDate="2012-10-02T17:45:33.320" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess you could use the feedback functionality to capture issues from your customers as it is intended to capture feedback from end users but you might want to take the issue submitted via feedback and capture it as a issue in JIRA so you can track it for internal purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4731" LastActivityDate="2012-10-02T17:45:33.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6706" CreationDate="2012-10-02T18:36:43.973" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are new to project management there are several programs available in local colleges for 6-8 months that offers you certificate courses that you can use to get your CAPM/PMP from PMI. If you want to earn a master's degree in project management, then you could go for a MPM(Master's in Project Management) but this usually requires two years experience as a project manager. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with all your endeavors!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4731" LastActivityDate="2012-10-02T18:36:43.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6706" CreationDate="2012-10-02T19:17:42.163" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question will yield a ton of advice, all of them good and bad in their own way, and the one that you want to hear will be the one you think is &quot;correct.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a plethora of drivers that influence a person's success in a career. School, experience, your intelligence level, your motivation, your personality characteristics, your network, a bit of luck are just a few of the many.  Your school is just the entry-level requirement. Whether it is a good school or not, after about five years it won't matter.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-10-02T19:17:42.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6706" CreationDate="2012-10-02T19:18:25.823" Score="4" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get a certification. PRINCE2 and CAPM to start, when you get experience get PMP. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apply what you've learned. Maybe you start as a developer or tester, but think like a PM. Ask about the big picture (business case for the project, what the project product is, etc), ask about project requirements and constraints, ask for the project plan, participate in discussions about risks, document your lessons learned, etc. Think critically about these and ask yourself why things are done the way they are done and how the theory you've learned is being (or is not being) put into practice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get a sensai. Find someone in your organization who knows PM and is willing to mentor you. Leverage their experience and take advantage of their lessons learned.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep on learning. Participate in boards like this one. Go to local PMI chapter meetings. Take an online course. NEVER assume you know enough - you never will.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Practice your leadership skills. Daily. Do this by seeking responsibility and insisting on being held accountable for your failures as well as your successes. Recognize good work and encourage team members that are falling short. Use please and thank-you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read the PMI code of ethics and live by them. Things like honesty are universal goods that can't hurt you in the long run.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn to say &quot;Let me check with the team&quot; before committing them to anything. Similarly, learn to say &quot;We can do that, but let me check with the team to see what the impacts will be&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn how to facilitate agreement among the right stakeholders. This can get messy but don't take the easy way out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn how to communicate effectively. Get experience communicating with different personality types. Get experience communicating in stressful situations without getting stressed. Get experience communicating to the right people at the right time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leave your baggage at home. This is business and not personal. No sense in getting upset or angry or frustrated or tense. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-10-02T19:18:25.823" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6706" CreationDate="2012-10-02T19:22:52.963" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One curiosity I have - and I've discussed over and over with some fellow IT colleaguesm, without reaching a proper conclusion: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;What's the purpose of getting a manager bypassing the early steps and activites?&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I never found a proper reason for this... In the way you present your question, it seems you're still in the early days of your career, so why not taking some IT skills before moving on to the management role?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok, it might be nice to be a 'manager'... but thinking twice, will you be comfortable leading a team in a task you're not used to do? Besides, can you imagine yourself leading a big project with 50+ developers, documenters, architects, engineers, without know what are they doing? A minimal ground experience, in my opinion, is a must for every 'manager'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It happens (at least, I have this impression) in every market: from Civil Engineering to Medicine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please correct if I'm wrong and I'll be more than happy deleting my own answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-10-02T19:22:52.963" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6704" CreationDate="2012-10-02T19:23:12.170" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.atlassian.jira.collector.plugin.jira-issue-collector-plugin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jira Issue Collector&lt;/a&gt;.  An excerpt from its docs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Need to capture feedback on your website or web application?  Want to make it easy for end users to directly create bugs so your developers can act on them?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  If you develop web-applications or web sites, the JIRA Issue Collector is the best way to turn your customers' and users' feedback and problems directly into JIRA issues, &lt;strong&gt;all without requiring a JIRA login&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, the captured feedback goes straight into JIRA in the project you specify, so your team can act on that feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zdvQ3.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, opening a direct way to gather feedback has its disadvantages, and you have to define rules on how to process the feedback efficiently:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Often, your users are not technical people. They simply can't provide with &lt;strong&gt;quality bug report&lt;/strong&gt; that could be directly processed. It may lack Environment, Steps To Reproduce, Expected, or Actual Result, attached logs or screenshots;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even more, since the users aren't registered, it is hard to retrieve missing info;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Since the users don't search for existing issues, you will likely get many duplicates;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Obviously, the users are unable to track how their issue progresses;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way, I think, is to assign someone to review all incoming issues, then make them &quot;real&quot; bugs assignable to your development team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3941" LastActivityDate="2012-10-02T19:23:12.170" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6622" CreationDate="2012-10-02T20:48:07.540" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although the Waterfall methodology was developed for software development, it has been adopted as one of the accepted project management methodologies and is used by lots of organizations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way this has been adopted for the project management world is as clearly defined scope, pre-determined dedicated project team, modules and team dependencies identified and established with no to very little room for slippage and no room for modification for scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since Research projects in my mind have lot of uncertainties and assumptions, waterfall is not the right methodology I would go with. Event chain methodology probably is the best for research projects. You can &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.intaver.com/Articles/Article_EventChainMethodology.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;read more about this here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4731" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-10-03T03:39:46.603" LastActivityDate="2012-10-03T03:39:46.603" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6714" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-03T01:40:43.383" Score="9" ViewCount="2203" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a PM on a large multi-year project with a sizable backlog of work implementing Scrum in 4 week release cycles.  I hold weekly backlog grooming sessions with the project team and key business owners to review the user stories in the backlog, break down larger user stories (epics) into smaller ones that the project team can begin implementing in the sprint and size these smaller user stories using story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The use of story points associated to a user story is a fairly new concept to the team and has only been implemented in the past 6 months of the project (that started 1.5 years ago).  So, the entire backlog is not sized in story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My goal initially was to introduce the team to story points and to establish a regular meeting for the team to size user stories in the backlog so that they get used to it and thereby become more efficient (read faster) at sizing.  However, the team has plateaued in terms of the speed at which user stories are sized and at the current rate I estimate it would take upwards to another year to size the entire backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a good approach to sizing an entire backlog (that is very large) with the project team?  How can I move forward with this in a manner that will speed up the process? If not a good idea, what is the better approach to this process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4531" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-10-03T03:04:56.430" LastActivityDate="2013-03-21T20:51:22.370" Title="Sizing an entire backlog using story points" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6714" CreationDate="2012-10-03T07:46:19.530" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually, it is not a good idea to frequently check the whole backlog with the whole team. The last 2/3 part of the backlog is going to change in the future and checking these items just waste the time of the team and generate unnecessary discussions about future issues which may not be implemented at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The recommended approach is that the &lt;strong&gt;Product Owner checks the whole backlog and keeps it in shape, and prepares as much user stories that the team can handle in 2-3 sprints.&lt;/strong&gt; The rest remains in a kind of unknown or draft state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner can call for a regular meeting where the whole backlog is discussed where the team gives a rough estimation on the whole backlog. If the sprint is 2 weeks long than this meeting shall be called once in two months. This meeting gives an overall view on the whole progress and provides. Running this meeting is a bit different from a Sprint Planning Meeting, because it is longer, because of the number of user stories, and there is no task break down. If impediments or issues come up, the Product Owner shall sort them out. This meeting is often called as &lt;strong&gt;Release Planning Meeting&lt;/strong&gt; (there might be some good &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumalliance.org/site_search?q=release%20planning&amp;amp;x=0&amp;amp;y=0&quot;&gt;articles&lt;/a&gt; about it on the Scrum Alliance site).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-10-03T07:46:19.530" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6714" CreationDate="2012-10-03T08:47:53.700" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stories to be worked on in the upcoming sprint should be estimated much more rigorously than stories scheduled for many months' time.  Some people call this &quot;Rolling Wave&quot; planning.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is how I've estimated the whole backlog in the past:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Owner identifies stories and prioritises them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Before a project starts, the PO and 1 or 2 technical guys spend 10 secs per story on estimation.  Literally just a buest guess from the headline of the story.  Not very accurate, but accurate enough given that most stories will get changed in some way before development, and many will not even get scheduled in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the start of the project the whole team estimates the candidate stories for the first sprint, and possibly the following (if there's time).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;During a sprint, take some time out for the whole team to estimate the next batch of candidate stories for the following sprint in more detail.  (This meeting is timeboxed to 1 hour).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Re-estimate stories if necessary during sprint planning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that Scrum is &lt;em&gt;adaptive&lt;/em&gt; rather than &lt;em&gt;predictive&lt;/em&gt; -- you shouldn't expect highly accurate estimates for work which is more than a sprint or two in the future.  The type of accuracy you get from the above approach still lets you draw product backlog burndown (or burnup) charts to give an idea of release date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4651" LastActivityDate="2012-10-03T08:47:53.700" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6717" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6719" CreationDate="2012-10-03T14:24:58.203" Score="35" ViewCount="12624" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a developer aiming to become a manager. I want to know if the following is a valid management technique (within reasonable parameters, to be determined), I want to know how to deal with it and to use it or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A group of developers is given a task that has a hard deadline of one week. Everyone knows that is impossible to achieve, concerns are raised, people speak up, but the deadline stands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One week later, of course, the task is not finished. The deadline is moved another week further, and so on...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could this actually be a management technique to create a sense of urgency to actually get the task done in the least possible amount of time, having management knowing full well all along that the imposed deadlines are impossible to meet?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4741" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2012-10-04T13:59:30.597" LastActivityDate="2020-10-21T10:53:21.597" Title="Is imposing &quot;impossible deadlines&quot; a Management Technique?" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="15" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6717" CreationDate="2012-10-03T14:45:39.597" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds quite severe and I would think the consequences of this kind of approach would not be favorable overall.  However, there is a benefit of a challenge like this.  The critical chain method is based on this concept to a degree.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finishing any type of task is not deterministic.  In other words, you cannot say that doing a task will take 15 days each and every time you do it.  Task completion is probabilistic, where most variables that affect your final result are random, uncontrollable, and unseen.  Therefore, a more precise estimate of completing a task would be a range of results with some type of probabilistic distribution on top of it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Completing on time and within budget are two metrics that we have a tendency of putting too much weight on.  So much so that it can be reasonably expected that we would target on the pessismistic side of both targets in order to increase our likelihood of being a &quot;success.&quot;  The benefit to this would, of course, that you will not overrun your targets except in extreme circumstances.  The cost to this is, well, increased costs.  And, since you built in the time and budget, due to things like Parkinson's Law and Student Syndrome, it is highly likely your team will use every bit of available time and budget to complete the work that would have otherwise taken less time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there is, in my opinion, some efficacy to &quot;challenge&quot; the team by condensing the time and budget and pushing for better results.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is better: To target 20 days and come in at 19, a favorable 1 day variance; or target 13 days and come in at 15, a two day unfavorable variance?  If you don't have these type of challenges, the latter will never come true.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-10-03T14:45:39.597" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6717" CreationDate="2012-10-03T15:02:38.437" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a difference between &quot;impossible&quot; and &quot;aggressive&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Setting &quot;impossible&quot; goals, ones where there is almost zero chance of success, is a fantastic way to demotivate your team in the long run  because teams are being set up for failure. I've been in companies where the team will provide an honest estimation that a project will take X months to complete and management divides that by some factor as your goal because they've already made a promise or projects are always &quot;late&quot;. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because there is too little time to get the project done. Very frustrating to be in that kind of environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Setting &quot;aggressive&quot; goals, ones where there is some chance of success even if unlikely, is a reasonable approach to get the team to perform better than they would otherwise. I've been in companies that do this and it has worked well, the main downside is that you have to find a reasonable definition of what &quot;aggressive&quot; looks like so that you can push the team to excel without burning them out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-10-03T15:02:38.437" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6706" CreationDate="2012-10-03T15:08:27.053" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Put yourself in situations where you have to learn how to listen and communicate to get things done. These can be in group study sessions, volunteer activities or in a work setting. The better you are at listening and communicating, the more successful you'll be as a PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-10-03T15:08:27.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6717" CreationDate="2012-10-03T15:12:50.730" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like a project that is out of control and management that will soon burn-out its personnel from too much of the &quot;boy who cried wolf.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-10-03T15:12:50.730" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6714" CreationDate="2012-10-03T18:00:46.880" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I truly believe that story point estimation should be limited to tasks you plan on putting into the next two-three sprints. Attempting more than that is just going to waste your team's time. The further into the future you're trying to predict, the more uncertainty there will be. This is just the way it is, whether using Scrum or any other methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what do I do? Default new user stories to the average effort point value of completed user stories. You'd actually be quite amazed at how accurate predictions made with this value are, especially if you're good at breaking your epics into the right sized chunks. Just make sure that you don't fall into the habit of leaving this value. Estimate effort points with the team during sprint planning (or whenever you normally do it), but concentrate their efforts on the top of the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastActivityDate="2012-10-03T18:00:46.880" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6717" CreationDate="2012-10-03T18:19:18.517" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel sorry for anyone tasked with maintaining or altering any software created in such a manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to create software like this? Sure. You leave out the following things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Unit Tests&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Code Reviews&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Refactoring&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Architecture Enforcement&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A team that skips these steps, and gets very good at skipping them can deliver new software at amazing rates. Right up until technical debt smacks them in the face. It will happen sooner or later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here's the worst thing about skipping these: as a PM, you'll have no idea that the product is un-maintainable until it is too late. You won't be able to tell that what was created is a hack, because most developers are quite good at making a hack work. Kind of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the technical debt starts to pile up, everyone will start screaming legacy code this, and legacy code that (when they were the ones who wrote it in the first place), and the tempo will fall off completely. Your good developers will go somewhere else, you'll blame them for making a bad product, and pretty much everyone involved will be unhappy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So no, I don't think it is a legitimate managing technique. Unless of course your aim is to churn out an unmaintainable product, make a profit, and then go out of business. Getting the task done in the least amount of time possible is almost always a horrible metric of project success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;If there actually is a hard deadline, then be honest with your team and tell them what that deadline is. Treat them like professionals, and expect them to be honest with you about whether or not the deadline is feasible. Either party being dishonest in this process will result in a downward spiral of lies and suspicion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastEditorUserId="4422" LastEditDate="2012-10-03T22:07:35.527" LastActivityDate="2012-10-03T22:07:35.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6717" CreationDate="2012-10-03T20:32:37.593" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The only way to get the milestones accomplished on time is when the team sets &lt;strong&gt;either&lt;/strong&gt; deadline or scope.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If someone else does it (a PM), and the team did not participate in negotiation, they will simply think that the deadline is not their responsibility. You can &lt;em&gt;force&lt;/em&gt; them to accept it, but they will be set up for failure and they will certainly fail. At least to prove you: &quot;we've been telling you that!&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;And maybe the most important criteria to tell a good PM from a bad one is their &lt;strong&gt;ability to negotiate&lt;/strong&gt; on very this matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/M1C8P.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Iron Triangle&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at the &lt;em&gt;Iron Triangle&lt;/em&gt;. The more balanced it is, the higher the quality of your product. You can stretch &lt;strong&gt;any&lt;/strong&gt; axis, but not &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt;. Leave one for the team, and they will do their best to keep their promise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, there are two typical cases as the team usually don't rule the resources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;We need &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; scope done&quot; - then your team tells you when they can accomplish this. If their deadline is not satisfactory, re-define the budget.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;We have a presentation on &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; date&quot; - then you have to agree with your team &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; will be done by that date.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other case, you should think on increased budget, e.g. hiring additional people, buying tools, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3941" LastActivityDate="2012-10-03T20:32:37.593" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6706" CreationDate="2012-10-03T21:10:37.040" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You asked what should you study/research to best prepare you for your career, not get a job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way? Read as much as possible about it all, and more importantly, then talk to experienced PM's about what you're learning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the crucial point. In school and reading you will learn the theory, but only by talking to those that have done it will you find how that theory can be applied, which works when, and the why's. There's simply no substitue for experience, even it it's someone else's. Take these boards for example. A large number of us have been doing this for years, sometimes decades, but I would imagine we're all learning from the answers we see here. So interact with as many PM's as possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would argue against Doug B's advice on the certification to start, especially as the #1 on his list. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two problems with that - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some of them (P2 for example) are specific methods. So unless you're going to be working in a PRINCE2 shop you'll have no need for it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The CAPM and PMP rely on the PMBoK Guide which addresses a number of topics, but doesn't really help as far as how to implement them. There's a danger in that of &quot;too much information&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly there's a learning aspect with that, but without the counterpoint of experience to temper it, it can be a problem. All too often I run into PM's that quote the PMBoK Guide or try to manage projects according to it. And that just speaks to the lack of understanding. To highlight this, the single most often used &quot;input&quot; in the PMBoK Guide is &quot;expert judgement&quot;. Without experience or external references you don't have this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would focus on learning the concepts from your program, but then bringing them to forums such as this and asking more questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-10-03T21:10:37.040" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6717" CreationDate="2012-10-03T21:22:59.570" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course it's a management technique. And at the risk of down-votes, it's used all the time. It's a function of Parkinson's Law, also known as the Student Syndrome - work expands to fill the time available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a team is given two weeks to finish a task that could be done in week, it will take the full two weeks. And before anyone attacks, there are any number of reasons for this, not all of which point to failure on the part of the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Management hedges against this. They have a task that HAS to be done it two weeks. They say 'one week', knowing they have a buffer of one week. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Critical Chain Method is based almost entirely on this principle. It takes estimates, cuts them in half, gives the team the shortened time, and then banks the remaining time as 'buffers&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't mean it's a good technique, but it's also not a bad one. Sometimes it needs to be used. Those teams that are 'self-organizing' and always working at optimum speed and efficiency are rare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-10-03T21:22:59.570" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="125" CreationDate="2012-10-04T08:09:41.760" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is OK only for small teams and small projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But bear in mind that managing a larger project is a full-time job in itself. So by involving a PM in task execution you're risking that they'll fall into the trap of bad multitasking. As a consequence, the overall project performance will surely suffer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4747" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T08:09:41.760" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6717" CreationDate="2012-10-04T08:19:07.070" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Overall, management by task deadlines is not a good idea. It leads, among other things, to student syndrome. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A better approach is Goldratt's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_chain_project_management&quot;&gt;critical chain method&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In critical chain, tasks are estimated at 'aggressive but possible' durations, however, there is NO EXPECTATION that such estimates will be met. In other words, there is a clear separation between estimations and commitments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is committed is the project end date. In order to protect it from unavoidable overruns of aggressive estimates, a project buffer is added to the end of the project. Buffer consumption is then monitored against project completion to assess whether the project is in green, yellow or red zone. This information is a basis for active project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an excellent introduction, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0884271536&quot;&gt;the novel 'Critical Chain'&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4747" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T08:19:07.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6627" CreationDate="2012-10-04T16:43:20.210" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Small sized research projects benefit from risk based quality management. Risk based quality management uses continuous identification of risks in a project for all activities that create risks during all the phases of the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It uses the process called identify, access, control, communicate and review the risks associated during the life cycle of the project. The risk mitigation strategy depends on the priorities set by the research team and the risk control threshold set by the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4731" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-10-04T20:09:52.567" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T20:09:52.567" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6732" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6733" CreationDate="2012-10-04T18:06:06.113" Score="5" ViewCount="111" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to better track issues and plan development of an ever-expanding web application, I am setting up an instance of &lt;code&gt;Trac&lt;/code&gt;.   As developer, I will use this system primarily, along with the department coordinator and a few end-users. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the &lt;code&gt;Trac&lt;/code&gt; configuration is relatively self-explanatory, however I am a little unsure how to use the &lt;code&gt;components&lt;/code&gt; option (on the ticket form). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I include components of the application itself (ie, product page, user administration, reports, ect) or is this field designed for higher level objects (such as users, coordinators, developers) or something else entirely?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will be using Trac to keep track of bugs, regular maintenance, server maintenance, and new development among other things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4749" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-05-25T23:12:37.307" LastActivityDate="2013-05-25T23:12:37.307" Title="Project component - what exactly is this?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6732" CreationDate="2012-10-04T18:28:10.317" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well based on Trac's website docs...&#xA;&quot;Component — The project module or subsystem this ticket concerns.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/TracTickets&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Trac Ticket System&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1781" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2012-10-25T14:00:27.493" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T14:00:27.493" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6383" CreationDate="2012-10-05T00:47:11.503" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This can happen when your summary tasks (or any children summary) tasks have resources assigned.  It can also happen when a child task is external, e.g. located in an external project file. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, check to make sure that none of your summary tasks have resources assigned, and none of the have predecessors or successors assigned.  If your project file has subprojects, or external dependencies, open up all of the files in the set so MS Project can do its calculations properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4752" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-10-05T00:55:56.427" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T00:55:56.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="259" CreationDate="2012-10-05T05:06:07.043" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind that PMI PMBOK &lt;strong&gt;is not an execution method&lt;/strong&gt;. I.e., it will &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; tell you what to do on Monday morning at 9:07 am to move your project forward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case you're wondering, my favorite project execution method is Goldratt's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_chain_project_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;critical chain project management&lt;/a&gt;. Complementary to CCPM are: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_%28development%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;kanban&lt;/a&gt; supplemented by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GTD&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4747" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T05:06:07.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6706" CreationDate="2012-10-05T05:18:44.873" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Focus on learning how to deliver a project on time, on budget and with full scope. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two best resources, IMHO, are the books:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Goldratt's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0884271536&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;'Critical Chain'&lt;/a&gt; project management novel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anderson's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0984521402&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;'Kanban'&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stay clear of PMI PMBOK, PRINCE2 and other 'standards', unless absolutely necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4747" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T05:18:44.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="259" CreationDate="2012-10-05T15:44:15.433" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMBoK is a toolbox. It's full of useful tools. Think of the project manager as a carpenter. He gets certified to use every tool in the toolbox. It doesn't mean they're going to use each one when building a piece of furniture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4756" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T15:44:15.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="259" CreationDate="2012-10-05T17:12:58.053" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a large gap.  You are correct that you see a large gap; all of us see a large gap.  The critical feature is that we don't all see the same large gap. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is the reason that every project plan must be tailored.  Quite frankly, that is the reason to write a project plan; the process of negotiating and writing the plan is the process of examining all the possible elements of the plan and identifying which are the most important to the successful closure of this project.  (And although it is implied in that sentence, it bears explicit mention that the plan also documents the elements that are unimportant.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PMBOK contains the groundwork for all possible plans.  Your project(s) will have reified plans that contain only the processes tools and technology useful for your project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But let me finish where I started; your observation is correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T17:12:58.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6429" CreationDate="2012-10-05T20:23:22.977" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was a Sr. Developer for 8 years before I became a PM. A good PM is a very valuable asset for the success of a project. I was offered a PM position within my development team as my manager believed that I had the right balance of management and technical skills to be a successful PM. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The skill sets for a developer and a PM are very different and I am not sure I would even say developer does all the hard work and the PM doesn't as I have been on both sides now. It is easy to sit behind a desk and type away your code without interacting much with the higher ups. But when it comes with interacting with the higher up's(as high as CEO's), delivering the bad news that the delivery date is going to slip and the cost is not going to be met is not a easy thing :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, you need to make the decision and trust your capabilities and make sure that is the correct path you want to choose in your career.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In terms of compensation, I believe it is pretty much the same for a Sr. PM and a Sr. Developer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4731" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-10-06T02:29:13.747" LastActivityDate="2012-10-06T02:29:13.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5252" CreationDate="2012-10-06T00:13:24.750" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a quite common problem PM's face. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) See if there are other available resources that can help by reaching out to the functional managers that manage the software/component development&#xA;2) If the resource that is not available is responsible for any critical path items that are going to impact the other components of the project, ensure that you highlight this situation to the PMO or your direct line of management to ensure they are aware of a possibility of slippage if alternate resources are not found in time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4731" LastActivityDate="2012-10-06T00:13:24.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3555" CreationDate="2012-10-06T16:24:43.463" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Open a current project or new project, change the project calendar and add the calendar to the global file. Saving it as a global file makes the calendar visible to all projects.&#xA;Steps to add calendar to global file&#xA;a) Go to Tools =&gt; Organizer&#xA;b) Select Calendar Tab and click Copy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4731" LastActivityDate="2012-10-06T16:24:43.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6745" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6754" CreationDate="2012-10-06T16:25:04.750" Score="3" ViewCount="816" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_H._Heilmeier#Heilmeier.27s_Catechism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Heilmeier's Catechism&lt;/a&gt; is a set of questions that any research project or product development project should be able to answer to assess its feasibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far I've found &lt;a href=&quot;http://brainbuildingkit.lettvin.net/BrainBuildingKit/index.php?page=Catechism&amp;amp;scroll=&amp;amp;BAA=865#Cost&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this example&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, I was wondering if it's possible these partially overlap:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Who cares?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;If you're successful, what difference will it make?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What are the risks and the payoffs?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you state who is affected by the project in the first point (the stakeholders), I think you should avoid commenting on the positive effects until the second point and simply mention how they are involved in the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second point, I would mention how these stakeholders would be affected (positively and negatively) if the project were a success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third point allows you to mention any effects if the project fails, but I think the payoffs have already been discussed in the second point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a good argument to only consider risks in the third point?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the first question in the full series is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are you trying to do? Articulate your objectives using absolutely no jargon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The example I provided uses technical jargon specific to neurology. If I need to use technical concepts, can I introduce them with a definition which doesn't contain any jargon? Otherwise, its difficult to describe a problem without introducing the problem domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, are citations permitted for referencing any previous research, as well as backing any claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4763" LastEditorUserId="4763" LastEditDate="2012-10-07T07:09:03.937" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T23:08:01.873" Title="Heilmeier's Catechism Breakdown" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;analysis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6746" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-07T01:48:15.237" Score="8" ViewCount="1768" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am considering using Scrum on a very large (40+ developers) multi year project for a major bank.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am trying to figure out if Agile is feasible for a project this size. There are thousands of requirements, and the team is distributed (between NY, London, and Mumbai. I am in NY.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have succesfully managed several medium sized Scrum projects in the past. They were hard due to the number of back-logged requirements. Therefore I am concerned that a project of this magnitude with so many more requirements will be too ponderous to be feasible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone weigh in on how to make this realistic, and perhaps to point to any books on the topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other consideration - if you know of some flavor of Agile that is more appropriate for such a project, please let me know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4764" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2012-10-07T16:28:18.893" LastActivityDate="2020-06-29T12:26:54.193" Title="Is Agile feasible for a large financial application?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6746" CreationDate="2012-10-07T04:01:10.843" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is never one definitive answer about whether particular agile techniques like scrum are appropriate in a given environment; the key is to tailor the methods to suit the environment, the client and the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For any methodology to work, you need to have the buy-in and support of the executive (i.e. the business interests), the users (those who will be making use of the products of the project) , and the suppliers (e.g. the developers). So the first step to deciding if an agile methodology is feasible is making sure that the important stakeholders understand what agile project management methodologies entail, and that they are willing to participate in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the off-the-shelf tools from scrum won't work well with such a large team; for example, you don't want to have a stand-up meeting with 40 people every day (and given they aren't all in the same place, the timing probably wouldn't work anyway). For such a large project, you should aim to divide people up into smaller, more manageable teams (maybe 10 developers at most), and appoint separate scrum masters (or team leaders). For scrum, this would work the best if you can meaningfully divide the project up into a programme of projects, and give each team a different project (whether this is possible will depend on the exact nature of the project, and would be complicated if there are too many different functional roles). The Scrum of Scrums method can then be used - a representative from each scrum meets to share information between what the different scrums are doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are reports of very big projects using tailored versions of Scrum with distributed teams and working out very well - for example see &lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&amp;amp;arnumber=4076936&amp;amp;url=http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=4076936&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt;, in which a team of 50 developers over three countries used a modified Scrum methodology to achieve higher productivity; they call their model Integrated Scrums, where you have multiple scrums, but the scrums are cross-functional and incorporate team members from multiple sites. All members in each scrum meet daily with the other members in the same scrum using tele/videoconferencing, and a representative from each scrum based at the central site meets in person with the other representatives to coordinate the entire project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have difficulty getting the organisation to accept this type of methodology (it can't be forced on an unwilling organisation), I would suggest trying to focus on the most important aspects. According to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0164121207002208&quot;&gt;survey based study&lt;/a&gt;, the strongest factor in agile project success is the agile delivery strategy (i.e. delivering products early and getting organisational input, rather than trying a big bang deployment), then agile software development processes (e.g. look to eXtreme Programming), then team capability, and only then project management processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4499" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T04:01:10.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6748" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6749" CreationDate="2012-10-07T05:37:11.927" Score="13" ViewCount="3689" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently switched to a start-up organization providing a social network site. In my new organization, we are a small team of 8 developers/designers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I heard a lot about continuous integration (e.g. Husdon/Jenkins) but never tried that, better say never needed them. For us, mentis is working fine until now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a manager (ahh, my first assignment as manager), I need to continuously suggest process for better efficiency, without complicating developer's tasks. However, I'm not 100% sure if I should suggest CI for my organization, as I don't know a lot about CI. I don't want to miss better or more efficient ways of developing software, but at the same time I don't want to change the process just for the sake of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone please point out if using CI tools like Hudson/Jenkins will be beneficial to a small team, which already has a working process? If yes, what benefits will we get for that switch? Given the team size, is it worth investing my time to learn/try CI tools first?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for missing some required context. Current workflow: Our product is based on symfony 1.4, we use mentis, and symfony console tools for builds. For every release version, we create SVN tags and update server with SVN tags, after manual testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4650" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-10-07T20:54:33.463" LastActivityDate="2012-10-08T13:49:18.720" Title="Should small teams use Continuous Integration?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6748" CreationDate="2012-10-07T06:04:31.143" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was managing a team of five developers and we started out with CI using CruiseControl.  I am hard-pressed to think of a situation involving more than one developer where it would not be advantageous to do CI.  Hudson/Jenkins is a good platform and we later moved to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you get A LOT more bang for your buck if you are doing CI against a build system that performs automated regression tests with each build.  I would very strongly recommend that you include unit tests and general regression tests as deliverables for every feature you implement.  It takes more time up front, but you can really, really work a lot faster later in the process &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; sleep well at night knowing that the quality of your product isn't being compromised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At one point in our product, we had over 7,000 regression tests that were getting executed with every build.  Our product took 20-30 minutes to build and 5 hours to test.  Those tests were all put in place &lt;strong&gt;during&lt;/strong&gt; the development of the product and it was one aspect of the project I was most happy with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hudson/Jenkins has a very strong regression test dashboard.  Make a rule that no one is done with their feature work until their code builds in the build process and all tests are passing.  After you get the server set up and people have been using it for a couple of weeks, you won't even think about doing without it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4404" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T06:04:31.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6746" CreationDate="2012-10-07T12:38:35.877" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not recommend attempting to introduce Scrum to a 40-man team in one go. More than anything else, Scrum requires time and effort on the scrum master/coach's part to educate the team about how to be Agile, and you won't have the overhead to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However if you have some existing methodology it can be useful to keep everyone following that, but take 7-9 people and form a Scrum unit for some aspect of the project. Once that team is performing optimally you can then look at splitting it in two, adding more members and forming two teams, let them run on scrum for a while, then split again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way you get a gradual ramp up of Scrum acceptance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4525" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T12:38:35.877" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6746" CreationDate="2012-10-07T19:22:41.967" Score="4" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Truly Agile Projects &lt;em&gt;Evolve&lt;/em&gt; (or, When to Use Scrum)&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile projects work best when you are working on a project that is iterative, and where the overall project is structured to deliver continuous value as it evolves over time. If you have already done all the work to plan out a waterfall-style work breakdown structure that can't be broken up into iterations, or that won't deliver any stakeholder value until the entire book of work is completed in its entirety, then Scrum is probably not the right choice for the project &lt;em&gt;as a whole&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your multi-year project doesn't have a giant &amp;quot;integration death march&amp;quot; at the end, and has sub-projects that are a good fit for iterative development and continuous integration, then Scrum may be a good fit for those parts of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deciding between Scrum (or any agile methodology) and more traditional frameworks based on up-front planning is not an all-or-nothing choice. You can mix and match, if it seems like a sensible thing to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Optimum Team Size for Scrum&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Jeff Sutherland, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scruminc.com/scrum-keep-team-size-under-7/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum teams should not have more than seven people&lt;/a&gt;. That doesn't mean you can't use Scrum on your project; it really just means that to use Scrum effectively you would need to break up your overall project up into sub-projects as described above, and then form cross-functional teams for each of those sub-projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you choose to do that, then you will also need to integrate and coordinate your Scrum teams using a &amp;quot;Scrum of Scrums.&amp;quot; Even in more traditional methodologies, you need to track dependencies and hand-offs, so this is really no different in that regard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-29T12:26:54.193" LastActivityDate="2020-06-29T12:26:54.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6748" CreationDate="2012-10-07T20:41:15.127" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;The Purpose of CI for Project Management&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the question as originally posed isn't really an ideal fit for this site (e.g. it's more about development practice than about managing projects) it is nevertheless a useful question when properly framed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The Value of Automation to a Project Manager&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a project management perspective, real-world projects typically require (among other things):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Validation against requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Regression testing of existing features.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acceptance testing of new features.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Continuous integration fulfills this role in an automated way, meaning that it doesn't have to be explicitly managed. This often creates efficiencies for the project over time. From the perspective of a project manager, it may also mean fewer bugs will go unnoticed long enough to impact the overall project estimates or release dates negatively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you do this without CI? Sure. But if you have even two developers on your team, then there will also be integration work (you &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; plan on feature integration in your project plan, didn't you?) that can and should be automated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a project management perspective, frequent integration testing means fewer integration death marches at the end of a project. In my experience, any big project without automated integration testing has a strong tendency to blow its schedule because the effort and complexity of manual integration testing grows over time--and if it's left until the end of the project, you won't be able to accurately estimate the size of the effort involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Information Dashboards&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another purpose of CI is as an information dashboard. A good CI system with both &lt;strong&gt;effective tests&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;sufficient code coverage&lt;/strong&gt; will communicate the status of the project quickly to anyone who's interested. CI won't tell anyone what features are available in the code base, but a green dashboard will certainly tell stakeholders that whatever features are present and tested are ready to ship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, just like any other tool or project management technique, the CI dashboard can be abused. For example, taking out failing tests just to &quot;green up&quot; the dashboard violates the principles of effective communication and transparency that all project managers should strive for, but I've seen it happen for political reasons and through organizational dysfunction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a project manager, communication of project status is extremely important. If some of that communication can be automated, that represents a project efficiency that usually adds measurable value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While CI is useful from a technical point of view, it can also be useful to create efficiencies and enhance communication within a project management framework. Unless your project is truly trivial, avoiding the overhead of automating tests is usually a false economy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T20:41:15.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6748" CreationDate="2012-10-07T21:13:58.373" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Small teams, if the codebase is small as well, can get away without CI, since their test suite takes so little time to run (just 3-10 minutes, probably).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real strengths of CI come in when either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you have a complex build to automate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you have 20+ minutes of tests to run&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you publicly display your red-green test scroll by the company water-cooler.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4718" LastEditorUserId="4718" LastEditDate="2012-10-08T13:49:18.720" LastActivityDate="2012-10-08T13:49:18.720" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6745" CreationDate="2012-10-07T23:08:01.873" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;On using jargon: research projects have to be ultimately sold to those who pay for them (or arrange the financing) without intimately knowing the subject area. Hence, it makes sense to ensure that the main goal of the project is communicated without information loss or ambiguity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jargon falls in two categories: well-defined and ill-defined terms. Well-defined terms can be progressively expanded without introducing ambiguity to convey the essentials up to the point where every layman is able to understand the meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ill-defined terms are those with no consensus definition &lt;strong&gt;within&lt;/strong&gt; the expert community. A couple of nice examples can be gleaned from Richard Feynman (1997) (Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!. W. W. Norton &amp;amp; Company. ISBN 0-393-31604-9), especially chapter &quot;Is Electricity Fire?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you use well-defined terms, the explanation can and should be reduced to layman's dictionary, even at the cost of being more verbose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please consider that using complex, Latin-derived technical terms as a shorthand within the explanation increases the risk of a mental block for the readers (which makes them act irrationally and miss the entire point of your presentation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this a good argument to only consider risks in the third point?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any unbalanced discussion of risks without payoffs or payoffs without risks is quite pointless, since it leaves the reader uninformed (and possibly duped), bereft of basic data for rational decision-making.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Specifically, I was wondering if it's possible these partially overlap:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Who cares?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;If you're successful, what difference will it make?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;What are the risks and the payoffs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, these are mostly orthogonal, non-overlapping dimensions of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The set of those who &lt;strong&gt;care&lt;/strong&gt; is substantially different from those who would &lt;strong&gt;benefit&lt;/strong&gt; (or lose, for that matter) from the results of the project. Those with concentrated interests (say, pharmaceutical companies) will always be much greater hindrance or support for the projects than the general public or anybody with gain/loss insufficiently high to warrant action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HTH&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4766" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T23:08:01.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6748" CreationDate="2012-10-08T06:24:45.110" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm at a risk of down-votes, but &lt;strong&gt;I don't think that you need Continuous Integration in that project&lt;/strong&gt;. It is a good thing that you are checking it out before introducing it, but it would be also good to know if your organization needs it at all - &lt;strong&gt;demand first, supply second&lt;/strong&gt; approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Continuous Integration is good for finding those issues which appear because of working on the same code base on the same time, like build problems, regression testing and possible deployment issues (it is more likely a Continuous Deployment thing). If your organization can develop and test in parallel without any major issues, then the Continuous Integration won't bring any value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, &lt;strong&gt;Continuous Integration systems have a certain continuous maintenance expense&lt;/strong&gt; in the beginning. I'm not talking about updating the tool, but taking care of failing build, making it faster and more responsive. If the team has low interest in this - in other words they don't benefit from the system - &lt;a href=&quot;http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2011/10/saving-the-ci/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;it will slowly die&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you still want to use it in your project, before introducing it, keep a demo or hire a good expert who can show the benefits and explain the idea behind Continuous Integration (if he or she starts with the tools then find somebody else).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-10-08T06:24:45.110" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4610" CreationDate="2012-10-08T06:40:26.403" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although, I'm a huge fan of transparency - strictly &lt;em&gt;read-only&lt;/em&gt; -, this feature scares me. It kind of allows the customer to change the backlog without having a proper discussion with the team or organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say I'm a small company owner who has a contract with the customer and a budget to keep. &lt;strong&gt;In the contract, I agreed on a set of features I'm going to deliver and my customer is allowed to see my progress which is completely fine and a good way of maintaining business relationships.&lt;/strong&gt; The business situation of my customer can change, and he comes to me for changing our agreement. We have a discussion - because of the &lt;em&gt;read-only&lt;/em&gt; access - , change in the contract and live goes on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the customer has &lt;em&gt;write&lt;/em&gt; access to the backlog, this discussion is pointless from his point of view and I became his slave who has to be able to react on any changes - it is a resource allocation nightmare - and I have to keep my eye on my own backlog and look for changes. This is a sort of micro management on a different level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I see the following issues: contracts, resource allocation, project planning, and need for a notification feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-10-08T06:40:26.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="762" CreationDate="2012-10-08T11:08:31.573" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pretty much all the risk will come from things the team has not done before (and every project has some aspect of that, unless you're experts in the particular field, in which case it isn't a 'project' so much as a 'job' - rolling out SAP in yet another enterprise, for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, assuming you've got some things that the team has never done, first you need to find those things. Here's my step-by-step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Find the stakeholders and their goals.&lt;/strong&gt; There'll be some championing stakeholder for the project, but also a bunch of people who need to be kept happy in order to make it succeed - legal, audit, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Divide the project into capabilities.&lt;/strong&gt; The capabilities will be those that can help the business, or users, to achieve the stakeholder's goals. For instance, a software project might provide the capability to book a certain type of trade, calculate a particular aspect of risk, limit exposure to any one customer. A mobile phone has the capability to receive calls. Note that I am not referring to any concrete features here - the capability could be delivered through filling in paper forms, for instance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask the team to identify which things they've never done before.&lt;/strong&gt; For instance, while the ability to make and receive calls on a mobile is pretty standard, maybe the particular type of camera you're using is new. You can also look at which stakeholders have never been considered before. It could be that you're going to be delivering a capability in a new way - with a new UI, etc. - in which case, you probably have a new capability like &quot;do X faster&quot; as part of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Identify which things have been done before by someone else.&lt;/strong&gt; These are things which require expertise you simply don't have. They're lower risk than the other things which have never been done before by anyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Identify things which have never been done by anyone.&lt;/strong&gt; This is where your highest risks are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By identifying things that the team has never done, you're &lt;em&gt;bounding your ignorance&lt;/em&gt;. Brainstorming and other techniques tend to bring up things which are known or have been considered, but the biggest risks are in the things which haven't been considered. Pretty much those happen in the places where new stuff is occurring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For good reading around this, I recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0932633609&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Waltzing with Bears&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://dannorth.net/2010/08/30/introducing-deliberate-discovery/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dan North's post on Deliberate Discovery&lt;/a&gt;, which is written from a software perspective but IMO has some lessons for all walks of life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2012-10-08T11:08:31.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6429" CreationDate="2012-10-08T13:47:09.347" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the main factor with pay disparity between disciplines is the number of people who want to do the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most BAs or PMs have come via some other path.  I'm guessing that if you did a survey of all people starting university this year, there'll be quite a lot of people who want to do software development and very few who say &quot;when I grow up I really want to be a BA or PM&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Supply and demand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2012-10-08T13:47:09.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="531" CreationDate="2012-10-08T20:31:58.860" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agree with the majority here.  Requesting a read receipt on EVERYTHING smacks of paranoia and &quot;control&quot; issues.  I NEVER send a read receipt for precisely this reason.  I will not feed this neurosis.  Sorry.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have NEVER been asked why I don't send them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That should tell you that they really ARE NOT important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4774" LastActivityDate="2012-10-08T20:31:58.860" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4610" CreationDate="2012-10-08T23:14:52.067" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;the situation you describe is very appealing. It's not very common having the opportunity to work in such a way with your customer. This scenario requires a very committed and knowledgeable customer. So, while the scenario has some cons, that other users have already mentioned, let me take the positive perspective and give some insights on how to improve success probabilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As mentioned, it is important that the customer understand the importance and impact of the changes/new reqs on your work. You need to make sure that the designated PM on the customer side is experienced and focused enough, and also make sure that there is only one person from the customer as liaison with your group and editing the information on the tool. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is important the PM is able to detail the requirements at an appropiate level of detail for your estimations to be useful and &quot;modular&quot; enough so that adding and removing new reqs doesn't affect the whole plan, design and hence estimations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Among the rules that must be clear, there must be a certain point in which a task request goes beyond the &quot;no return point&quot;. A task that has been requested for the next release/spring and the team has started implementing/designing(in detail) it, can not be cancelled (unless discussed directly with you).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To help with that, better make sure the tool you use allows to specify different states for the different requisites. Every status must have its responsible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Last but not least, you must agree on when you will deliver the estimates as it may not be easy for you to respond immediately to any new reqs or doing so may impact the work of the group, that you may require to assist with estimations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be patient, the first weeks you will have an avalanche of new requests, that will slow down to a stable situation. I had a similar scenario, in which Marketing was entering the reqs for the product through a tool and initially it was like a toy for them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Someone has already mentioned but I will insist on that, the tool must not replace any meetings or phone calls that you have with the customer. Use the tool to put together the information and go through the requirements and estimations with the customer regularly and specially before planning a new release/sprint. If you are into Agile/Scrum don't replace the sprint planning meetings take the tool as preparation work for those meetings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Depending on the kind of contract you have with the customer (fixed price, dedicated resources) you may need to adjust so that it makes sense for both. Charging for estimations is difficult in certain company cultures, competitive environments but should be kept in mind.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope it helps. I would be interested on a follow-up on how it worked for you and the tools that you chose for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4386" LastActivityDate="2012-10-08T23:14:52.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3049" CreationDate="2012-10-08T23:37:23.227" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To give you an example, here's a photo of one of our team's automated Information Radiators, which provides a continually present summary of metrics important to us. Each part of this screen is dedicated to monitoring a different aspect of our development pipeline or operational systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom left quadrant contains the status of our &lt;a href=&quot;https://ccnet.github.io/CruiseControl.NET/projects/ccnet/wiki.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CruiseControl.NET&lt;/a&gt; builds. If a developer commits code to the source code repository that fails to compile, fails the automated tests or cannot be automatically deployed, a segment will become red. Across the top are sections for each staging environment: internal test (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle#Alpha&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;alpha&lt;/a&gt;), &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acceptance_testing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UAT&lt;/a&gt; (beta-testing) and live (production). The display also contains sections for monitoring the performance of key services to provide early warning of application or infrastructure issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We've found this ability to visualise the system in real-time gives us a greater feel for the system's characteristics and as a team it's enabled us to become more proactive in preventing potential issues. Also, it's a great talking point that helps increase our project's exposure to other teams as they pass by.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9CMm1.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Information Radiator used to show build status, availability and performance&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;from: &lt;a href=&quot;https://serverfault.com/questions/431981/monitor-a-web-service-hosted-at-http-url/433758#433758&quot;&gt;https://serverfault.com/questions/431981/monitor-a-web-service-hosted-at-http-url/433758#433758&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="964" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-12T14:42:17.187" LastActivityDate="2020-07-12T14:42:17.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5726" CreationDate="2012-10-08T23:47:00.593" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A popular package is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ontimenow.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OnTime&lt;/a&gt; but it is really scrum / agile oriented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other candidates are &lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://smartbear.com/products/software-development/software-development-management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DevComplete&lt;/a&gt;, and good old &lt;a href=&quot;http://borland.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Borland&lt;/a&gt; does nothing else these days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my favorites is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jetbrains.com/youtrack/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;YouTrack&lt;/a&gt; which actually started out as a bug tracking system but is moving more towards a project management system. It is free for 9 users and 3000 issues with some other limitations. But I'll have to admit that I'm biased since I use their excellent continuous build solution &quot;TeamCity&quot; which integrates well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://leankit.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LeanKit&lt;/a&gt; is a popular kanban board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other online gems that I use to complement any other system: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.taskfreak.com/original&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TaskFreak&lt;/a&gt; for keeping track of todo's and loose ends that pop up during development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://workflowy.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Workflowy&lt;/a&gt; especially handy when initiating a new project, shuffeling points around.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://mural.ly/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mural.ly&lt;/a&gt; during brainstorm sessions (which can be fun with multiple enthusiastic editors :-)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4775" LastEditorUserId="4775" LastEditDate="2013-05-21T23:02:43.497" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T23:02:43.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6763" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6777" CreationDate="2012-10-09T03:58:47.503" Score="4" ViewCount="177" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm requisitioing some tools for a large scale web development project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Intending to start with the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;JIRA for issues tracking, wiki, git or svn hosting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Greenhopper plugin for agile PM&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bonfire for issue creation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why JIRA? It's something myself and core team members are experienced in already and seems to be able to centralize most of our needed project tools under one platform.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm unfamiliar with Confluence though, Is it mainly to give an area for the business side to create multiple projects, discussions, etc? Would JIRA combined with Google Apps be the common alternative for JIRA&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Atlassian's Bamboo looks to serve the purpose of automating deployments, does this integrate with JIRA's hosted svcs so that a commit can trigger a staging/production deployment with testings and reports and auto rollbacks on failures?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe the above JIRA and modules will be enough to start this project. Crucible looks to make code review less painful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does Fisheye offer much more over the built in JIRA source code browsers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4772" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-01-14T19:25:41.080" LastActivityDate="2019-01-15T00:27:17.983" Title="What should be in an Atlassian toolkit for website PM?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6764" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6783" CreationDate="2012-10-09T08:55:59.607" Score="1" ViewCount="148" Body="&lt;p&gt;In JIRA, if I create a high level user story, where do I put the AT(s)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I put the ATs into the user story, say as text &quot;AT: must do blah blah&quot;, then the user story gets split into sub tasks for the developers to work on, do the ATs need to be moved/repeated into each sub task or is it acceptable to have developers reference the parent user story for ATs when working on tickets?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4772" LastActivityDate="2012-10-10T07:00:41.473" Title="Where to write ATs/UATs in JIRA?" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6765" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-09T10:48:15.970" Score="2" ViewCount="456" Body="&lt;p&gt;The configuration options in admin so far only allow me to edit the display of cards in Classic views.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4772" LastActivityDate="2012-10-11T00:42:20.027" Title="How to add story points to card display in Greenhopper Kanban Work view?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="762" CreationDate="2012-10-09T14:11:40.783" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Practice.  After you've done some risk analysis, you'll find that it is a learned skill. I believe this to be the most accurate answer to the question, but I acknowledge that it is not perhaps the most useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WBS - I'd like to second @aarom's answer. This is, in my opinion, the best way to build &lt;em&gt;actionable&lt;/em&gt; risks.  Some risk analysis techniques lead to quagmires.  Focus on the WBS rarely does in my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Structured questions.  Imagine that you're writing the lesson's learned for the WBS task.  The task is done and it failed. Why did it fail?  What went wrong?  That's likely to be your chief risk.  You can also apply this at the project level.  This obviously merges with @lunivore's answer - you want to consult prior lessons learned/ project closure documents for information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last time I consulted &lt;a href=&quot;http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-30/sp800-30.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NIST Risk Management&lt;/a&gt;, it advocated but didn't fully explain an asset based approach. I think there is some merit there. @asoundmove lays out some principles, but the general notion is to identify what is important about the project - the charter/SOW should contain these.  Then figure out what could go wrong. You can then descend from the charter to the capabilities, to the deliverables to the tasks asking the same questions throughout.  Don't forget the two triangles (scope, schedule, quality) and (Business acumen, technical leadership, Project Manager skillset).  What happens if those are compromised? What is the most likely reason for a schedule failure? What is the most likely reason why the end product might not match the business need?  What is the most likely reason for stakeholders to lose interest? etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're in the information risk world You can also consult &lt;a href=&quot;http://fairwiki.riskmanagementinsight.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FAIR&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cert.org/octave/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Octave&lt;/a&gt; or the excellent resources at &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.societyinforisk.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SIRA&lt;/a&gt; - some of those can be generalized beyond information security. I'm particularly fond of SIRA - they make the additional points that if you can't quantify the risk, it is of low value, and if you can't collect data to quantify the risk, you might need to invest your time/effort elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, I'm not sure that I would value:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a raw list of risks containing, say, 100 items&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've only had one experience where the Risk Manager pursued that approach, and it led to quagmire as the team thrashed about trying to understand the risks and debating abstract details of some poorly expressed risks.  Lots of things depend on the size, experience and discipline of the project team, but I'd urge you to strictly timebox any excercise that began that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2012-10-09T14:11:40.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6769" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6771" CreationDate="2012-10-09T18:53:37.963" Score="1" ViewCount="163" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to choose between &lt;em&gt;business sponsor&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;business visionary&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;business ambassador&lt;/em&gt;. Here is the scenario:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jane is one the owners and managing director she is the budget holder of the project and will be available throughout project to provide input where required in the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paul is one of the owners and COO of the project he will be available through project and he understands the need for having a computerized system and is supportive of using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dsdm.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DSDM Atern&lt;/a&gt;. The stock controller and assistant stock controller report to him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which roles should Jane and Paul fulfill?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4782" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2012-10-10T10:42:54.930" LastActivityDate="2012-10-10T10:42:54.930" Title="Agile management roles" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;dsdm&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-10-11T14:27:34.590" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6717" CreationDate="2012-10-09T19:13:00.537" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Within technology, one of our responsibilities is to provide options. If management sets a deadline, it is our responsibility to provide options for how this can be accomplished (variance to minimal viable product, people, etc). Use data to tell the story, not subjective opinions. In my experience, a &quot;business person&quot; (read manager/execitive) will find ways to go around you, through you, behind you, any way to get what they need done. By providing options (backed by data) with costs/cost impacts for alternatives outlined and giving them a thoughtful response, you make it a business decision, not a technology capabilities decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have worked for a CEO who regularly set the bar very high just to see if people would step up. I asked him why he did this and he replied that people generally sell themselves short, tell themselves all the ways it can't be done. By setting the bar high, you will find out what people are capable of given the right environment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1159" LastActivityDate="2012-10-09T19:13:00.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6769" CreationDate="2012-10-09T20:36:24.300" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on the above scenario, Jane is a business sponsor as she owns the budget and can cancel the project anytime if it doesn't meet her business goals and Paul would fit under the business Visionary role if he will be involved throughout the life cycle of the project as defined in DSDM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4731" LastEditorUserId="4731" LastEditDate="2012-10-09T20:41:44.387" LastActivityDate="2012-10-09T20:41:44.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6774" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6782" CreationDate="2012-10-09T22:15:24.367" Score="1" ViewCount="1316" Body="&lt;p&gt;Between a solution developer and a solution tester who must understand the IT architecture of a project in order to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4782" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T03:14:29.527" Title="Solution developer and solution tester" Tags="&lt;roles&gt;&lt;management&gt;&lt;dsdm&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6775" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6779" CreationDate="2012-10-09T22:26:49.807" Score="4" ViewCount="262" Body="&lt;p&gt;At our university, we have a Student Computing Group of about 25 students.  I would describe about 1/3 as self-motivated, innovative, and/or having some level of professional, technical experience.  Personally, I am a grad student with about 2 years of experience developing web applications, from requirement development to system administration.  I do not mean disrespect to the remaining students, and I am by no means perfect either.  I am glad that everyone is interested in participating, but a majority of the students need to be told what to do and how to do it in order to get anything done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are dividing the Student Computing Group into teams that can work on projects in various areas of interest:  networking, robotics, mobile apps, and more.  Off the top of my head, I figure that one motivated, innovative student can help give instruction to one or two students without impairing productivity too much.  I could be completely off base, but that is why I am asking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What techniques for project management can be applied in a scenario where the majority of team members are dependent on strict requirements and instructions, while also keeping in mind that everyone, including the team leads, will only be able to contribute something like 3-20 hours a week to any given project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4396" LastEditorUserId="4396" LastEditDate="2012-10-10T03:37:23.417" LastActivityDate="2012-10-10T03:37:23.417" Title="Techniques for Managing Teams of High-Maintenance Students" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6776" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6780" CreationDate="2012-10-09T23:21:13.610" Score="20" ViewCount="9444" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Full disclosure: I am working as a lead developer for a team of around 6 developers, not as a project manager. But this seemed like a good place to ask.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background&lt;/strong&gt;: Recently the team is covering more client support requests than we are larger developments.&#xA;This makes it hard working with Scrum methodology (as we would normally) because we cannot plan multiple weeks ahead at a time as we may get critical support requests. For this reason we are looking to adopt kanban to manage the team workload.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My question&lt;/strong&gt;: when working (with or without kanban) on a more support oriented workload, what are the differences in responsibilities between the project manager and lead developer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specific examples include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;who is responsible for managing support requests raised by the&#xA;clients? Who should be monitoring for new requests/tickets and who&#xA;should triage them as they come in?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;who is responsible for managing team workload and monitoring individual developers progress?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;who is responsible for setting the release schedules and which issues/tickets constitute the next release?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;who is responsible for prioritising the support requests between multiple customers?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. I know that roles and responsibilities vary a lot between different companies, but in my company the roles seem to be slightly blurred in some areas so I would be very interested how other people define these roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2156" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2014-07-17T23:25:05.517" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T23:25:05.517" Title="Difference in responsibilities between lead developer and project manager for support workload" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;maintenance&gt;&lt;responsibility&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6763" CreationDate="2012-10-10T00:24:52.653" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wouldn't be better to think of &lt;strong&gt;what are you going to do&lt;/strong&gt; on the project and then &lt;strong&gt;fit the tools in&lt;/strong&gt;? Tools are supposed to solve problems / assist management, but - as per the question as it stands now - it seems that the problems and management actions aren't clear enough... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, considering 'management' as keep the communication flowing (it goes beyond this, but let's be a little simplistic), you can think, for instance, of what is the information you need to provide to whom and how often. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, think of the cycles you'll have in your project, not only the development itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discuss with your team about the tools they're used to use. There's nothing more frustrating than fight for an amazing tool that no one cares to use (like Jira, for instance... that's quite expensive). It seems to not be a problem as you're team is already used to it. Anyways...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, if you're comfortable, with a clear picture of what you need, these &lt;strong&gt;tools will only make you reach your objectives faster / easier&lt;/strong&gt;, but they're not something you must rely on for your success. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, we're tempted to rely on 'tools' or 'gadgets' to reach a goal, but maybe if something goes wrong, you'll want to blame the software. And there's nothing more wrong than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-10-10T00:24:52.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1125" CreationDate="2012-10-10T02:07:36.213" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try using the Sandwich Method:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good News – Bad News – Good News&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start saying something like, &quot;We have a promising opportunity, engulfed along with a little unfortunate situation. But holistically the situation still looks under control due to some quick mitigation recommended by the project team.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4783" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2012-10-10T11:19:17.870" LastActivityDate="2012-10-10T11:19:17.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6775" CreationDate="2012-10-10T03:34:41.160" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of what you are observing is simply people who are new to the software creation process and they need to get themselves oriented and develop some momentum and things will get better for them.  Some of them will never improve much from what you see today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you have come up with a good strategy of pairing the motivated and able students with those who need help.  The able students might not be thrilled in some cases but they can learn a lot by teaching.  Furthermore, if they are the top producers in school today, they will be the team leads and architects once they start doing this professionally so they need to get experience mentoring others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one thing I would say you need to add to the process is that the folks you are designating as leads need to be supported in two respects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, you or another overall project lead need to meet with these guys in small groups once a week and discuss their experience leading.  Some of these guys are going to be naturals and have people they work well with and there won't be any problems.  Others are going to be control freaks or undiplomatic in how they support their colleagues.  Someone needs to meet with them to briefly discuss how things are going and be prepared to coach them on coaching or to reassign partners if needed.  Some of them may just need simple questions answered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, some of the performers will just decide that it is easier for them to do everything themselves rather than help/let their partners do it.  Someone needs to make sure that doesn't happen.  Also, make sure that everyone is committing some time to the project each week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4404" LastActivityDate="2012-10-10T03:34:41.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6776" CreationDate="2012-10-10T05:51:34.040" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMO, all four of the activities you cite are things that should be handled by a project manager and/or product manager.  If you are currently performing this activities, then you are acting as project/product manager and lead developer.  (Time to ask for a raise.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would structure things a little differently rather than just adding kanban to the process (and this is not addressing the fact that you probably need a real PM/PM).  If you just add kanban, it is probably still going to be difficult to get new development done because dev cycles are going to be chopped up by the barrage of support requests.  You need to avoid the chop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would structure things by assigning at least 2 of the devs to new development per sprint.  The devs can rotate from sprint to sprint, but you need to have some people dedicated to new development and generally unavailable for developus interuptus.  The dedicated people should not be pulled off the new development unless the support work absolutely, positively cannot be handled by other developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During a sprint, if the support developers run out of support-type work, then they can either help the feature developers finish the features selected for the sprint, or they can maybe pull something out of the backlog to work on (it will be tough to keep this to pure scrum in this way).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this will ensure that you are always making consistent progress on the feature backlog while keeping up the expected support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And what's with all the support issues?  Are these quality problems or something else?  If they're quality problems, then it sounds like you need to do some serious work on the quality control processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4404" LastActivityDate="2012-10-10T05:51:34.040" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6776" CreationDate="2012-10-10T06:37:33.530" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;My rule of thumb:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lead developer&lt;/strong&gt; is responsible for the technical and architectural well being of the product&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Team lead&lt;/strong&gt; is responsible for the team cohesion, team improvements and the well being of the developers&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project manager&lt;/strong&gt; is responsible for the coordination between projects, customer development and delivering the project on time by helping/supporting the teams which are involved in the process&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a situation when the responsibilities aren't 100% clear, then the lead developer, team lead and project manager shall have a conversation and make a decision together. &lt;em&gt;Team workload&lt;/em&gt; is a good example: there is a demand from project management, and the lead developer and team lead should response to this demand and tell project management if the team can take more under the current circumstances without risking &lt;a href=&quot;http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2012/08/waste-in-software-development/#muri&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;overburdening&lt;/a&gt; or product quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2012-10-11T07:39:56.210" LastActivityDate="2012-10-11T07:39:56.210" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6774" CreationDate="2012-10-10T06:48:31.770" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both of them, but on a different level. The developer should understand the basic characteristics of the architecture in order to deliver software which works, performs and scale. The tester needs to know more about how the system is configured in order to be able to solve possible deployment and configuration issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-10-10T06:48:31.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6764" CreationDate="2012-10-10T07:00:41.473" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Instead of JIRA, I would put the AT descriptions into a gherkin form and create cucumber features and scenarios so that they can be used by testers and developers creating test cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, if you have the description in an issue tracking system, you'll have to move them around and there won't be a good place anywhere. Second, you won't be able to automate and reuse them later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-10-10T07:00:41.473" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5822" CreationDate="2012-10-10T11:28:19.447" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see that @Trevor K. Nelson has already provided what I think is the key element of the answer - obtain feedback from critical stakeholders.  But there are many processes that can become bogged down in similar quagmires.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my mentors was fond of establishing &quot;no fly zones&quot; - identify the topics that generally are rapid paths to the quagmire and agree ahead of time not to discuss those topics. Any group member can point out that the discussion is veering towards a no fly zone.  Make sure that the identification of the &quot;no fly zone&quot; isn't judgmental. We're not avoiding topic X because it is bad, but because we simply won't have enough information to deal with it productively, or (and this is a big one for us) because stakeholder X has declared it off-limits. We may not agree with Stakeholder X, but we know that if we include this topic in the discussion, stakeholder X will oppose us, and the issue simply isn't worth the effort.  The no fly zone helps to avoid the quagmire and keeps the discussion productive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other alternative that comes to mind is to impose time constraints.  Depending on what precisely is dragging you into the quagmire you can either agree that if topic X comes up, it can only be discussed for 15 minutes. At the end of 15 minutes either (a) assign a couple of people to construct a formal response to stakeholders for feedback on the topic, or (b) assign a couple of people to struggle with it in private and come back to the group with an alternative or (c) table the topic, take a quick break and then resume from a new angle. Which alternative you pick depends on which route is leading to quagmire.  Time limiting the discussion does two things  (1) it avoids the discussions which drain the energy and enthusiasm of the participants and (2) it shifts the psychological ground away from &quot;can I win this discussion?&quot; to &quot;Can we really reach agreement in the allotted time, or is there a better strategy?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2012-10-10T11:28:19.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6776" CreationDate="2012-10-10T23:09:20.690" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looks like you have transitioned to the software maintenance phase, and are heavily multitasking while being apparently at least a bit understaffed (hence @Kent 's intuition about pay raise). Cannot help thinking that two of your questions regarding triage &amp;amp; priority setting a) overlap and b) cut across the competencies of team members:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;who is responsible for managing support requests raised by the clients? Who should be monitoring for new requests/tickets and who should triage them as they come in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;who is responsible for prioritising the support requests between multiple customers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since triage involves knowledge of customers' business (the monetary and reputational value of each support request) and specific estimate of man-days per request, your PM (or the most &lt;em&gt;externally-oriented&lt;/em&gt; team member) and you (or the developer generally responsible for a particular project) as the lead developer have to come to consensus on scheduling and resource allocation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;who is responsible for managing team workload and monitoring individual developers progress?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are two different functions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Workload management is just another name for resource allocation/scheduling (see above); there should be as little request reshuffling between developers after initial allocation to avoid unproductive time losses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Kicking developers' rears to get things done in time is more of a PM's role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the remaining two questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;who is responsible for setting the release schedules and which issues/tickets constitute the next release?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;there is nothing useful that an outsider like me can say. Doesn't your company have a release policy in place? If you and your PM have solved request prioritization problem, the scope of the next release logically follows from company-imposed time constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4766" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2012-10-10T23:09:20.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6791" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6792" CreationDate="2012-10-10T23:27:15.170" Score="2" ViewCount="394" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using Open Project (or MS Project, i suppose), in the following example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/oMU1t.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;does #13 depend on #7?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;does #14 depend on #7? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;does #13 depend on #12?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;does #14 depend on #12?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or does it matter at all? Please assume &lt;code&gt;waterfall&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4791" LastActivityDate="2012-10-11T01:15:36.600" Title="Setting up task predecessors correctly" Tags="&lt;waterfall&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6791" CreationDate="2012-10-10T23:43:35.623" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;7,9,13, &amp;amp; 15 are &quot;Summary Tasks&quot;, or &quot;Roll-Up&quot; views. They're combinations of other tasks (9 is the sum of 10,11,12, and 7 is the sum of 8,10,11,12), not tasks in and of themselves. So no, they would not have predecessors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;12 is a task, and can have a predecessor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for your questions - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No. 14 would follow (depend) 8. Both 13 and 7 are summary tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No. 14 would follow 8. No 13 is a summary task.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No. 14 would follow 12. 13 is a summary task.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yes. See above.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-10-10T23:43:35.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6765" CreationDate="2012-10-11T00:42:20.027" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This explains how you can add story points with other templates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/GH/Story+Point&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/GH/Story+Point&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4731" LastActivityDate="2012-10-11T00:42:20.027" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6791" CreationDate="2012-10-11T01:15:36.600" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;And to add to Trevor's explanation, you have both hard predecessors and soft predecessors.  A task can have a finish start relationship because the first task MUST finish before the second begins.  That is hard logic.  But you can also have the same logic based on a resource constraint or other scheduling logic.  That would be considered soft logic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every leaf level task or package should have a predecessor-successor relationship somewhere in the schedule.  No task should be orphaned.  That way, your ability to manage a critical path or two will not be compromised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-10-11T01:15:36.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6795" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6830" CreationDate="2012-10-11T05:06:47.403" Score="20" ViewCount="3946" Body="&lt;p&gt;What value does a project manager bring?  How do they benefit the technical members of the team who do the work (e.g., the software developers)?  Why should software developers prefer to have a project manager as part of their team?  What are some reasons that might make them lobby to hire or recruit a project manager to join their team, if they don't already have one?  How does a project manager make their life better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please pretend you are explaining this to a software developer (or other technical team member), and explain in language that they would appreciate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4648" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2012-10-11T14:02:52.887" LastActivityDate="2020-05-03T17:56:06.820" Title="What value do project managers provide a software development team?" Tags="&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6796" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6804" CreationDate="2012-10-11T05:12:30.487" Score="3" ViewCount="645" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe you remember my &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/6669/how-to-handle-selection-process-for-new-project-manager-position-im-interested&quot;&gt;last question&lt;/a&gt;, where I asked how to leverage my internal knowledge to better handle an internal selection process for project manager. Well, in part because of that advice, I passed the first two stages of the evaluation (against a bunch of guys in the company!) and now I'm here for the last level of the selection. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This time, each of us finalists, were put in charge of real projects for software development with real deliverables and deadlines. The four main deliverables being a project charter for Friday, a kick off meeting for next Tuesday, an impact analysis on ongoing projects and a planning poker exercise for the end of the next week. The project is for a big company in the Oil and Energy industry, and is the third part of three phases for a software development project. Each one of the others phases carried out a backlog of things that were missing when we delivered them, and now is the moment to consider those again. The project has a fixed deadline of March in 2013, and there are some technical and advanced requirements I don't really understand too much (one of my evaluators advised me to not dive too deep there because is not so relevant now).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem now was that my priority this week was to complete my usual assignations in my current role because we have to deliver a stable release for the customer tomorrow, and everything was aggravated by the fact that I had to replace another coworker's duties as he went on vacation these days, so as today (Wednesday) I have had too little time to ask questions and to understand better what is the goal of the project, and the bosses and customers are in Germany so the time difference and their other priorities unfortunately clash making everything a little bit harder. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I only have tomorrow for solving this and doing the best of my effort to shine, so I'm here again to ask you what can be the details making a substantial difference in a project plan with too little information. The point, I believe, is to do the basic stuff but going further and propose innovative elements and impress everyone so my evaluators can be convinced I'm a better fit for the position. I personally think this selection has been particularly exhausting, hard and long but I'm really interested in getting the job so any other experienced viewpoint surely will be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I only thought of, in addition to the basic sections (requirements, success criteria, team, and communication plan), expand on the methodology to explain a practical way where we could improve the metrics for the control of the progress for the project, and where we could estimate velocity and projections of completion date in a systematic manner taking advantage of tools like Microsoft Application Lifecycle (supported on TFS 2010 and better integration with MS Project and stuff like that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are other elements you think could make a massive difference in a project charter and, more generally, in the formulation of a project like this? Objectively, where do I have to put my main effort here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you recommend it can be done to better handle this, I mean, to improve the impression for my evaluators and so on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4036" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-10-11T16:02:47.620" Title="How to create an astounding innovative project plan when the information is too broad and there is short time to do it" Tags="&lt;interview&gt;&lt;project-charter&gt;&lt;innovation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6797" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6803" CreationDate="2012-10-11T07:36:04.987" Score="2" ViewCount="604" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hi guys I was wondering if I got it right that a hybrid approach is a mix two different agile approaches if so what happens to senior project business level roles in hybrid approach eg: scrum and dsdm&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4782" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2012-10-11T14:00:21.020" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T04:30:49.773" Title="What is a Hybrid Agile Approach? How Are Senior Business Roles Affected?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;dsdm&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6799" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6828" CreationDate="2012-10-11T08:06:57.850" Score="-6" ViewCount="560" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do Timeboxes align with sprints in a hybrid approach like dsdm atern and scrum&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4782" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T22:44:14.213" Title="How Timeboxes align with sprints in hybrid approach" Tags="&lt;dsdm&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-10-13T14:59:25.287" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6796" CreationDate="2012-10-11T09:37:03.370" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;and there are some technical and advanced requirements I don't really understand too much (one of my evaluators advised me to not dive too deep there because is not so relevant now).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For starters, learning more about subject domain (Oil, Gas &amp;amp; Energy) is indicated (evaluator may have a hidden agenda). Benefits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Understanding customers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Understanding development hurdles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gaining respect of team members&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Drawbacks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spending some time with the books.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your post I can also see you're a bit elated. Please consider drawing a breath and calming down. Astounding innovation may not be what your project needs, if you start pushing methodology changes against the grain of the team instead of getting things done, you may be facing problems soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4766" LastActivityDate="2012-10-11T09:37:03.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6795" CreationDate="2012-10-11T10:25:59.293" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've served as a project manager on several software development teams, and the analogies I like best are these:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm the sweeper on the curling team.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or:  I'm downriver from the team, clearing the big logs that are going to slow down progress.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about it this way:  Software developers bring a set of very specialized skills to the table, and when they spend their time tracking down other team members to find out about the status of an upcoming handoff, they're not applying any of those skills.  When they have to go ask for more people, an additional server, or more funding, they're usually not the best person for those jobs. Simply put, from the software developer's perspective, a project manager should let you focus on your true work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4752" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-10-12T00:31:57.440" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T00:31:57.440" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6795" CreationDate="2012-10-11T12:14:41.550" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that @Brian Leach has hit the key &quot;Let you focus on your true work&quot;, but since @DW asked for language to help explain to a team member, let me offer a couple of other observations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) It is always better to work on a successful project than an unsuccessful project.  Looks better on your resume, less draining to the soul.  The PM's role is to make sure that the project is successful (and there is some statistical evidence to support that they are successful; unfortunately I can't call any to mind right now. Perhaps someone will edit this?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) PM should act as an umbrella - keeping &quot;that which rolls downhill&quot; off your head. The PM should be aware of anything that obstructs your work, and should be exerting maximum effort to remove the impediments and add lubricants.   That includes managing status requests from outside, stopping scope creep/change, ensuring that managers/stakeholders/sponsors are aware of the value of the project and continue to sponsor/support the project, etc.  If they're asking you to code in an obscure dialect of Cobol  on a dual floppy PC with a monochrome amber monitor to develop a multi-platform game system, it is the PM's job to fight for a more reasonable set of requirements, so that the challenges you face are interesting challenges. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2012-10-11T12:14:41.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6797" CreationDate="2012-10-11T13:11:38.767" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a strange combination - Scrum and DSDM -, but those roles can stay in Scrum. The Product Owner shall be a SPOC (Single Point of Contact) between business representatives and the Scrum Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-10-11T13:11:38.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6796" CreationDate="2012-10-11T14:02:33.777" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two suggestions - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;and propose innovative elements and impress everyone so my evaluators can be convinced I'm a better fit for the position.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would stay away from trying to be &quot;too clever&quot;. You're trying to convince them that you're the best person to 'manage' the project, not that you're the most technically gifted. Focus on  the management aspect of bringing 'their' project to fruition, when they want it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And 2, go in with what you have. As a PM, you're going to be faced with a situation exactly like this as some point - not enough info, not enough time, etc. So go in with that mindset - if faced with this situation in reality, what would I need to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And find a way to work that into your presentation. Start the interview by explaining that you put this together while still completing your other responsibilities, and so 'yes, some of the requirements were not clear or missing, but even with that, here's how I'd get that info, and how I'd manage your project to success'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It shows that you can think on our feet, and that you don't need to have every detail spelled out to be successful. You know how to adjust and adapt, and most of all, find the info you'll need. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-10-11T14:02:33.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6795" CreationDate="2012-10-11T14:12:50.740" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the industry or project type, someone has to watch the budget, the schedule, the status of upcoming components, deal with change requests, verify requirements are being met, referee disagreements of misunderstandings, stand up for the team, make progress is as promised, report to both management and client, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's both easier, and more sensible to have one person doing that rather than having 'the team' handle it. Not only is it disorganized, but it adds another level of decision-making to the project - &quot;who's going to handle this, or that&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter the project, eventually someone has to act as coordinator for all the parts that aren't project specific or technical. Best to let someone focus only on those, so  the team can focus on the work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-10-11T14:12:50.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6795" CreationDate="2012-10-11T15:18:46.893" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project manager manages the lifecycle of project, where as the development team would manage a lifecycle of the software delivery. The concept of management of projects through ruthless control and planning is PM. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By ruthless control and planning, by no means do I mean dictatorship, it's the people who can make a project a success or failure. I have been a developer, project manager, scrum master and a portfolio manager now. As a developer I used to ask the same question why do we need PMs? as I moved into management I realised that PM is actually a science, it's the art of managing people, expectations, realising goals. End of the day it takes someone to be there an motivate a whole lot - constantly through the journey to achieve results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If software developers understand this, they can manage, but they would be fulfilling the role of a project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4788" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-10-13T03:17:20.720" LastActivityDate="2012-10-13T03:17:20.720" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6796" CreationDate="2012-10-11T16:02:47.620" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think you need innovation so much as you need to focus on basic principles. The key buckets of information that you should look to include in your charter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;End user interests. What does the client need to have and why? What does the client want to have and why? What are their priorities in terms of time/cost/scope/quality? What are their key risks and assumptions? How do they want to be involved?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Supplier interests. What can the people preparing the product deliver? What resourcing/training/experience issues do they face? What are their key risks and assumptions?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business interests. Not the interests of the client, but the interests of &lt;strong&gt;your&lt;/strong&gt; organization. What drives the need for you to complete this project? At what point in cost or time or effort does the project lose value? Remember that a project should only move forward if there is a justifiable business case, and your project is a failure if you deliver on time/budget/scope but such a business case does not exist.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get the end user requirements and get them &quot;in a room&quot; with the leaders who will generate those requirements so that issues can be raised and questions asked. Make sure assumptions between the two groups are shared. Put your effort into making sure clients and suppliers are on the same page before you start doing work and base your plans on that. Then make sure your plans accomodate your company's business interests. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-10-11T16:02:47.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6808" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7845" CreationDate="2012-10-11T17:25:10.093" Score="12" ViewCount="2246" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a software development firm that I work for, contracts are billed based on 3 items: Design, Development, and PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: A simple software project could take 200 hours and would be broken down into the following hours: &lt;strong&gt;90/90/20&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;strong&gt;Design/Development/PM&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can imagine the profitability of the project being affected if Design and Development exceed the allocated 90 hours each. However, should it be a concern if the PM time exceeds the 20 hour mark? I mean, is the PM even considered a billable resource?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Traditionally, the companies I used to work with practice the philosophy that a PM must spend as many hours as it takes to make the project successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But how is this viewed from a PMBOK/Prince 2 methodology? Please note that I am not asking for a personal opinion or a poll. I would like a response that is based on some formal methodology (if possible as I'd like to make this as objective as possible).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I found a very similar question here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/125/should-a-pm-also-be-a-resource-on-the-project-why&quot;&gt;Should a PM also be a resource on the project? Why?&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;From the answers there, I liked Mark Phillips' answer the best (being a 'no') as impartiality is required from the PM's perspective. However, I don't feel that that question is as specific as mine as it doesn't address the billable aspect.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4796" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T00:06:35.680" Title="Is PM considered a billable resource?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6795" CreationDate="2012-10-11T17:33:01.647" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apart from Brian Leach's answer, I haven't read the other ones as I'd like mine to be unbiased as possible. But on a software dev team, the PM is vital because someone has to keep a track of the basics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;a) Time&#xA;b) Milestones&#xA;c) Deliverables&#xA;d) Communication (by far, the most important)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've worked both as a developer and a PM. PMs loved working with me because I, as a developer, placed a huge emphasis on d)  (however, this is not the typical behaviour of a dev as their job is to address the requirements. I just went above and beyond explaining other scenarios and challenges). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Devs, on the other hand, loved my work as a PM because of that exact same emphasis on Communication - specifically, I'd deal with clients and would drill down into the details and provide them requirements that were as specific as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is this: without a team member who possesses BOTH the ability to communicate clearly and understand requirements, developers need to realize that the onus of these tasks will fall on them. From my experience, I can &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;guarantee&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; that they would be more than happy to have a PM handle these aspects for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4796" LastActivityDate="2012-10-11T17:33:01.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6808" CreationDate="2012-10-11T17:39:20.267" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think PM methodology is relevant, more what your company's accounting practices are. I have worked with companies that do consider PM as a billable resource and track hours etc to pass those costs on to the client transparently. I have also dealt with subcontractors where PM effort is rolled into overhead so it isn't as transparent. I have also worked with companies where PM effort is not tracked because projects are internal (e.g. business changes). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is shared by all the companies I've worked for/dealt with is that the PM is considered to be a &quot;resource&quot; even if hours/costs aren't tracked or billed on a per-project basis. I think this is appropriate from a methodological point of view and best practices point of view. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-10-11T17:39:20.267" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6808" CreationDate="2012-10-11T17:48:44.350" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are trying to force an answer to this by asking for any methodology that gives an answer.  I'm not an encyclopedia of methodologies, but I don't think you are approaching this correctly.  You should not be looking to a methodology for the answer.  You should be looking to your contracts.  If your contracts allow you to bill for PM, then bill for it.  If your contracts don't allow to you bill, then don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say you are using a methodology called &quot;PM-Billable&quot; (PB)(it's like scrum but it has an additional rule that says you &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; bill your clients for PM services).  You write up a contract that clearly states what you are going to charge for.  Your client reads the contract and comes back to you and says &quot;This contract is fine except there's no way I'm paying for PM.&quot;  Now what do you do?  He doesn't care about PB methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now let's say you are using scrum.  Scrum doesn't dictate PM billability  You write up a contract that says you are going to bill for PM time.  The client signs the contract.  There you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4404" LastActivityDate="2012-10-11T17:48:44.350" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6746" CreationDate="2012-10-11T19:24:16.733" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The FBI implemented their Sentinel system a couple of months ago. Team of 55, $110m budget, and 13,000 FBI agents are now tracking 600 crime and terrorism suspects as you read this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A big, hairy project if there ever was one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have read &lt;a href=&quot;https://brianwernham.wordpress.com/2012/05/31/fbi-sentinel-programme-saved-by-agile-2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;this article&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; you will not even consider using a waterfall approach. The complete case study is &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0957223404&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;here&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4798" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2012-10-11T20:32:03.977" LastActivityDate="2012-10-11T20:32:03.977" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6813" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-12T01:43:08.980" Score="1" ViewCount="373" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using Open Project, how can one calculate staff-hours?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using &lt;code&gt;Project -&amp;gt; Project Information -&amp;gt; Statistics&lt;/code&gt;, is &lt;code&gt;work&lt;/code&gt; it? (&quot;Work&quot; is 1,219 hours in my example below)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UPmBt.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4791" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-05-25T23:12:02.583" LastActivityDate="2013-05-25T23:12:02.583" Title="How to calculate staff-hours using Open Project?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6814" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-12T01:49:04.873" Score="2" ViewCount="2872" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using Open Project, how can one calculate time spent on a project by resource?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given 5 people, I'd like to know how much time each person is spending on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it done manually, or can we get a report covering this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/b2zXn.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4791" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-05-25T23:10:45.767" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T04:38:13.787" Title="How to calculate breakdown (in hours) of each resource used (open project)?" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6815" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-12T03:39:11.277" Score="7" ViewCount="7403" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should the project manager be the team members' supervisor/manager?  (In other words, should team members report directly to the project manager?)  Or should the project manager be in a separate line of authority, so that team members report to their supervisor, who is a different person from the project manager?  What are the tradeoffs?  What are the costs and benefits of each approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4648" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T07:28:00.520" Title="Should team members report to the project manager?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6815" CreationDate="2012-10-12T06:21:16.093" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Traditionally, the team members report to their line manager unless an issue is related to the project. Additionally, the project manager is very rarely the same person as the line manager, because of the different kind of demand coming from the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I don't like this approach, because a team member has two &lt;em&gt;supervisors&lt;/em&gt; and for example, when she has a organisational problem she goes to the line manager, who will talk to the project manager because it might affect the project as well. So, there are unnecessary rounds made all time and the information is either second-handed or team members shall tell them twice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In my ideal world, the project manager is the only person the teams are in connection with&lt;/strong&gt;, and if the number of the project participants is starting to be unmanageable, the PM should make the organization a bit less flat and involve the team leads and technical leads in the decision making and organization issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T06:21:16.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="195" CreationDate="2012-10-12T06:23:10.753" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good Approach of your starting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I have to add is that daily backup and version control is important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience is that I saved the project after modifying the source code from the workable version , it sometimes displays logical errors in the another day. It takes me a day to retrieve the original workable version. A week later, my computer is attacked by a trojan and I have to ask the technician to get back the file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always do backup and version control . The path of storage  should be web server like dropbox , google Drive and your USB drivers if necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4714" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T06:23:10.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="452" CreationDate="2012-10-12T06:43:39.987" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Again, as a project manager, you have to lead , not to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To lead means you have to initiate your teammates' passion and expertise by asking questions and setting goals. Most importantly, to compromise the time frame for each phase of the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Afterwards, you only need to do project management and anticipate any risks involved by using risk matrix during the project phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4714" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T06:43:39.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6698" CreationDate="2012-10-12T12:21:16.363" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A big alarm bell went off as I read this question.  It sounds a lot like you are allowing your tool constrain your teams working practices which is usually bad ju-ju.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work out how your team wants to manage this situation (and there's some good advice in the other answers), then figure out how to track it, even if it means doing something manual, it's better than forcing the team into an approach because it's what the software allows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T12:21:16.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6815" CreationDate="2012-10-12T13:12:19.737" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tend to think that it can be better to have project team members report to their line manager rather than the project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, as a PM I don't really care that John is working on or assigned to something, I care that his line unit has someone assigned to it and it is going to be done on time/budget. So when I plan projects work gets assigned to department leaders and they delegate who does the work. I have to trust the department leaders to tell me that their teams are overburdened, that they have assigned the right person to the job, etc but I avoid turning myself into having to manage the plan at too low a level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having team members report to PMs from an HR point of view can also cause the team members a lot of problems because lines of authority are more clear (if John is working on two or more projects which PM should he report to?) and his/her performance can be better evaluated (if John works on three projects with three different PMs consecutively over a year how do you assess the consistency of his performance? And how do you assure that the evaluation of his performance, which is going to some degree always going to be subjective, is consistently done by the three PMs?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T13:12:19.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6815" CreationDate="2012-10-12T13:48:15.243" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short: &lt;strong&gt;definitely not&lt;/strong&gt;. For me a project manager needs to be in a more neutral position. From experience I would say that the moment the project manager is placed in a position of authority over the project team the relationship changes radically. I think the project manager should be creating an environment in which the project team are using their expertise and skills in the most effective way possible &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; telling people what to do. No matter how flat an organisation is in theory the reality is that if your line manager tells you do something you feel like you have to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The merging of line management and project management also assumes that the skill sets are the same. They aren't. There are great managers who couldn't organise a project if they tried and great project managers who would make terrible line managers (not least because lots of PMs don't get line management experience because it's such an unusual set up).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with @Zsolt that the trade off is that lines of communication can sometimes get blurred in this scenario but communication and stakeholder management are as important in a Project as 'getting stuff done'. A good PM should be handling this effectively, raising issues with appropriate supervisors where necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also agree with Doug B - the moment someone is working on more than one project the idea of merging line management and project management becomes even more complex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T13:48:15.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6815" CreationDate="2012-10-12T14:38:34.757" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When an employee reports to someone other than the PM, it is a matrix organization.  From a project perspective, this type of organization causes some serious threats on the welfare of the project.  Command and control are weakened, and the push-pull effect on the employee's time becomes a competition instead of collaboration.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This type of organization has its fair share of strengths, too.  So this is one of those things where a definitive yes or no answer does NOT exist.  It is a benefit/cost/risk/penalty balance that should be assessed for a specific organization at that specific time for that specific project.  Anyone who adopts an answer--thus, indicating that one is better than other all the time, every time--does so at his/her detriment.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T14:38:34.757" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6717" CreationDate="2012-10-12T15:28:06.623" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work at a company which often has very tight, and very impossible deadlines. One thing I've found is that if you tell people they /must/ produce results in 1 week, they can pull it off but they will cut corners because that's the only way to reach the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what happens with an impossible deadline: people rush to meet it. People do as much as they can as quickly as possible and cut out all perceived non-important steps. At the end of the week you have results, but they were created with cut corners and last-minute patches. When you then say &quot;actually the hard deadline is /next/ week so you can get it done properly&quot; the entire project has to essentially start from scratch with people trying to patch up the shoddy work they did just to roll it out in time. It doesn't create a sense of urgency so much as create projects with numerous short-cutting errors and a very inefficient edit-and-re-edit process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my company, seven people have left in the last three months. Very, very high turnover because nobody can stand working like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T15:28:06.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25" CreationDate="2012-10-12T17:12:51.053" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is hard to estimate and answer as the assumption of your question is that the teammate do not want to achieve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were the project manager,  I shall do a research on the project , corresponding technology and discuss with the teammates about their proficiency to the related technology. At least , the Pm can get the overview and anticipate the difficulties with respect to the technological and human level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As ,the major responsibility to get the project done is burdened onto the developers , letting them to get the consensus is a must. PM should never involve in micro-management to help developers solve the problem by direct coding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the project start, regular meetings can be held and access the difficulties and risk by risk matrix. Prioritize which to be resolved first. Sometimes, you may provide training to the developers by introducing the workshops , seminars , courses or even some website for reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be extreme, system analyst can also held responsibilities to conduct research and assign tasks to developers. PM and System Analyst can work together in this case. Collaboration and Mutual Trust can be built.  I personally think that System Analyst can help much by estimate the working time in a detailed way and set the tentative time frame as they are more experienced in estimating the learning curve among the developers towards the new technology involved in the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4714" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T17:12:51.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6815" CreationDate="2012-10-12T20:55:52.680" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a project perspective, they should absolutely report to the PM. What's the old saying - a man cannot serve two masters? The same applies here. And this is for several reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a PM to be effective, they need both the responsibility, AND the authority to make sure the work goes according to plan. If the team is reporting (accountable) to another manager, the PM no longer has the required authority to make sure things get done. Now they're simply in a position of making requests and hoping. And when it doesn't work, they're the ones held accountable, and the 'they didn't give me people' excuse won't work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a team to be effective they need to know that they're all in it together. If you have team members reporting to different line managers (ie: other teams) the team as a whole no longer knows who's committed, how much, when they're available, etc. In short, it's not a 'team', it's associated individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an individual to be effective they need to be clear on priorities and expectations. If a team member reports to one manager but is also on another team, this creates not only confusion, but tension and stress. Given conflicting tasks, now the team member is being asked to weight priorities and decide which they have to do. At the very least one of the managers will be offended/troubled. but there may also be long-term career problems if they choose wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this says nothing of the potential/possible issues between the PM and LM. What if the LM resents having to share their people? What if the LM doesn't agree with the project? What if the LM sees it as an opportunity to off-load poor performing people, etc. The list goes on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T20:55:52.680" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3949" CreationDate="2012-10-12T21:08:33.510" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could consider using &lt;a href=&quot;http://tfspreview.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Microsoft's Team Foundation Service preview&lt;/a&gt;. It does offer the features that you're looking for. It is currently free while in preview and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://tfspreview.com/en-us/pricing/information/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pricing&lt;/a&gt; page indicates there will be &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; level of free service available once it fully launches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4664" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2012-10-14T15:34:54.617" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T15:34:54.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6799" CreationDate="2012-10-12T22:44:14.213" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I too am not entirely sure what you mean by the hybrid approach, but a timebox is essentially a sprint - a dedicated slot of time to do a certain amount of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're following the DSDM method, the manual suggests breaking the project down into a number of iterative cycles, with each cycle subdivided into timeboxes/sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, one of the major differences between DSDM and Scrum is that DSDM works on the basis of a fixed deadline for delivery, whereas scrum doesn't necessarily specify this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3246" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T22:44:14.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6717" CreationDate="2012-10-13T15:24:17.367" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a developer who is studying project management as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a technique, but it is not an effective one if you want a top quality team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimates need to come from the developers who are actually writing the code.  It is the team lead's job to make sure that the estimates are reasonable to the skill of the developer, complexity of the task and quality of results that are expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keeping everybody perpetually under the gun will result in an unhappy team and very likely will result in the loss of your most important people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I am asked how long something will take, then I will provide an estimate that is as accurate as I can make it.  If my boss then tells me that I have half the time I estimated then I have 3 options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work extra long hours with no extra pay and push myself closer to burnout.  Studies have shown this to be ineffective in the long run.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cut quality.  There are lots of ways to do this, leave bugs in the code so that you will be allocated time later to fix them.  Don't unit test, don't comment, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take longer than the time that I have been allocated and think a bit less of my project manager or boss, because they clearly don't respect me as a developer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't see how any of those options would come from a good management technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4810" LastActivityDate="2012-10-13T15:24:17.367" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6795" CreationDate="2012-10-13T15:39:16.390" Score="6" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Value is Not Automatic&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What value do project managers provide a software development team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, project managers may or may not provide &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; value to the development team. Just like any other role in an organization, the PM role is just as much a victim of organizational hiring practices and the bell curve as any other role (such as &quot;software developer&quot;), and has exactly the same chances of being filled with mediocre performers or incompetent time-servers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project managers &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; add value to any project. It just isn't automatic just because someone is wearing the PM hat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;How Project Management Can Add Value to Software Teams&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project management is, from one point of view, the management of process and expectations. Even though Scrum doesn't use the title of Project Manager, it is definitely all about project management, and provides an illustrative example of the value that such management provides to software developers on the team &lt;em&gt;when done correctly&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, the Scrum Master provides the following value to the team and to the organization:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communicates the Scrum framework requirements and associated processes throughout the organization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acts as a process referee.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In cooperation with the Product Owner, the Scrum Master protects the team from outside interference and scope creep.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Facilitates communication between the team and stakeholders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In cooperation with the Scrum Team, the Scrum Master ensures that Sprint and project status are both transparent to the rest of the organization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coaches the development team towards self-organizing behavior.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensures that all work is made visible to the team and to the rest of the organization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When the team identifies process impediments, the Scrum Master uses all available organizational tools to communicate the impediments to the organization, and mitigates them whenever possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In practice, the Scrum Master is often the repository of various framework artifacts such as the Sprint Backlog, as well as metrics such as burn-down charts. (Whether this is ideal is debatable, but it's usually the case.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Scrum Master coordinates essential framework activities such as the daily stand-up, the Sprint Review, and the Sprint Retrospective.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the Scrum Master role is an enabling role. Whether your framework is agile or traditional, project management provides structure to the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Identify Why Project Management is a Hard Sell&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If project management (as a framework) or a project manager (as a role) is a hard sell within your organization, then you need to unearth the reasons why this may be so. Has your team had bad experiences with particular individuals or frameworks in the past? Has your organization found project management more of a hindrance than an asset?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever the reason, until you fully understand the context, evangelizing a framework or role will be an exercise in futility. Project management is designed to solve various business problems; make sure you know what those business problems actually are (for both the organization and the software development team) before you try to solve them prescriptively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-10-13T15:39:16.390" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6717" CreationDate="2012-10-13T17:06:44.873" Score="13" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Asking the Wrong Question&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is imposing “impossible deadlines” a Management Technique?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it's part of the management framework henceforth known as Epic Failure&amp;trade;. It's right up there with flogging a dead horse, deliberately planning a death-march, and telling people to &quot;work harder, not smarter.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't mean it isn't &lt;em&gt;practiced&lt;/em&gt; as a management technique. Many, many companies do exactly what you've described. However, you're asking the wrong question. The &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; question isn't whether it's a management technique or not, but it's whether it's an &lt;em&gt;effective&lt;/em&gt; one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;How People Address Impossible Deadlines&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When faced with impossible deadlines, some common things may happen. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People ignore ridiculous and arbitrary deadlines, and continue doing whatever they normally do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People try to meet unrealistic deadlines, burn out, and move on to other projects and/or companies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People speak up, get singled out as &quot;not a team player,&quot; and shrink the collective IQ or skill set of the team when they get drummed off the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't an exhaustive list; I'm sure you can think of others. The end result, though, is typically a failed project. The mere use of this management technique is often a &quot;project smell&quot; that a project is currently failing, or is just about to fail, so it's a useful signpost that intervention is urgently needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;My Personal Response to Ridiculous Deadlines&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When faced with the Epic Failure&amp;trade; management technique, I have actually said the following to various people in my professional life:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've given you my very best professional estimate. If you prefer to apply a different metric, just subtract your deadline from my projected delivery date; that will tell you approximately how late the project will be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few people have appreciated the refreshing honesty over the years, but most Epic Failure&amp;trade; practitioners do not. There are certainly consequences to being so outspoken, but one of the &lt;strong&gt;positive consequences&lt;/strong&gt; is that I haven't been on a single &lt;em&gt;involuntary&lt;/em&gt; death march in the past twenty years. Your mileage will certainly vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-10-13T17:06:44.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6774" CreationDate="2012-10-13T23:15:08.147" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is very important that both entities understand the programming architecture as it will be useful when reporting the errors or when looking for the the errors or bugs int he software. If the tester does not understand the programming architecture he/she will not know all the dimensions to test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4811" LastActivityDate="2012-10-13T23:15:08.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6774" CreationDate="2012-10-14T03:14:29.527" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's start from the beginning.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The ultimate goals of the developer and tester are opposite:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The developer works to prove that the application &lt;strong&gt;works&lt;/strong&gt; as expected;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The tester works to prove that the application &lt;strong&gt;does not work&lt;/strong&gt; as expected;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;As expected&lt;/em&gt;&quot; literally means that the application performs exactly as specified in requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the requirements can't be coded or tested directly. For this purpose, two artifacts are created:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Design Specifications&lt;/strong&gt; (DS), containing the Architecture of the solution;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Test Cases&lt;/strong&gt; (TC), containing details of individual usage sequences;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The developer implements the DS by writing the code.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The tester tests the code according to TC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you see, &lt;strong&gt;only the developer has direct need to be deeply familiar with the Architecture&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;However, if the tester is also familiar with it, they get a good opportunity to find design-specific problems that are otherwise hard to detect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further reading: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-Model_%28software_development%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;V-Model&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3941" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T03:14:29.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6776" CreationDate="2012-10-14T08:25:59.413" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would treat the support requests as issues and track as you would for projects. In short the PM should be managing all scheduling and putting processes and systems in place that allow the developers to do their work with minimum interruption and allow the lead developer to work on quality, code review, etc. The PM should be seeking the lead developers advice on all aspects of planning and scheduling. And all decisions around this should be backed up with discussion - i find its useful to have an all team meeting on a Monday morning to review the week's schedule, then a meeting between lead developer and PM on a Friday to review the week and update the following week's schedule. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've added responses to each of your questions below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;• who is responsible for managing support requests raised by the clients? Who should be monitoring for new requests/tickets and who should triage them as they come in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project manager should be the first port of call for any new work coming into the team, and developers should have a system for logging requests as issues if the client goes direct to individual developers. The developers should have processes and a PM in place that allows them to focus on their work and not the scheduling of new work (other than prioritising their existing workload). Certainly the PM should be liaising with the client to make sure that support requests are raised via him/her. The PM should attempt to triage the requests or speak to you as lead developer if any more information is needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;• who is responsible for managing team workload and monitoring individual developers progress?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team lead should monitor workload and report any issues to the lead developer and PM. An astute PM should be on top of this because any workload conflicts will affect delivery of the projects/closure of issues. The lead developer should be aware of workload and progress but the accountability for ensuring work is done on time sits with the PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;• who is responsible for setting the release schedules and which issues/tickets constitute the next release?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM is accountable for this but this should be done in collaboration with the lead developer and team lead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;• who is responsible for prioritising the support requests between multiple customers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM again should be doing this but also in collaboration with the lead developer and team lead to ensure that any prioritisation will not adversely affect any existing work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3915" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T08:25:59.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5081" CreationDate="2012-10-14T14:31:46.647" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't believe that there is a way to do this.  You could probably pick one custom color for the calendar bars based on the value of a custom field by writing a VBA script to check the value and set the Marked field, and then specify the color of &quot;marked&quot; activities.  I doubt that will be enough for your desired purpose, though.  Or, you could convince one of the project viewer companies (full disclosure -- my company Steelray is one of them) to implement this for you in their viewer.  Sounds pretty custom, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4752" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T14:31:46.647" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6815" CreationDate="2012-10-14T16:16:49.057" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the assignment of a team member to a project is long term, having the project manager as supervisor I think it´s benefitial because there is no need to manage priorities between assignments to different projects/programs. Also having the roles combined in the same person contributes to a more accurate track of the performance of the team, very useful to plan training, salary raises, promotions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is much more difficult to track when the person is assigned to many projects, and then works for different PMs and it´s important to have a supervisor who is the conductive line of every team member for task assignments and performance track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4386" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T16:16:49.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6815" CreationDate="2012-10-15T03:56:57.173" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a question of responsibilities.  Having project team members report to a line manager that is also the same person managing the project means that the line manager has responsibilities for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodagile.com/resources/roleofthemanager10.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;managing team members&lt;/a&gt; from an organizational perspective (the link provided identifies managerial responsibilities in an agile environment but they apply here as well) and tackling project management responsibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are pros and cons to this approach which depend upon the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pros&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cheaper to the organization (1 person performs multiple responsibilities)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Less lines of communication (assuming the line manager here doesn't engage in heavy debates with him/herself)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Able to use positional authority to speed up decision-making or propel a team that may be stuck.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cons&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Potential to hide true team member's allocations to projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Potential to decrease collaboration within team due to excessive use of positional authority&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Potential lack of communication/visibility into project details.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From an organizational standpoint, it is difficult to align incentives to the individual since 1 person is essentially tackling 2 different roles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dividing the responsibilities of line manager and project manager into 2 roles and 2 different individuals will basically flip-flop the pros and cons stated above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4531" LastActivityDate="2012-10-15T03:56:57.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7838" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7842" CreationDate="2012-10-15T13:49:22.567" Score="3" ViewCount="197" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Context&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a feature request represented as a JIRA issue with the handle &lt;strong&gt;PRJ-11&lt;/strong&gt;. My issue has a sub-task with the handle &lt;strong&gt;PRJ-23&lt;/strong&gt;. JIRA has the latest FishEye and FishEye Plugin installed and smart commits are enabled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I was to make an SVN commit with the log message:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;PRJ-11 #resolve #time 1w #comment Finished working on the complete feature&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FishEye would resolve the parent issue (and presumably the sub-task while it was at it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I try to do the same with the sub-task:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;PRJ-23 #resolve #time 1w #comment Finished working on the sub-task&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FishEye detects the SVN commit and logs the activity against the sub-task, &lt;strong&gt;but&lt;/strong&gt; it does not either advance the workflow of the sub-task or log any time against it or the parent issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have I missed something in my commit message syntax or FishEye configuration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4820" LastActivityDate="2012-10-16T11:11:17.270" Title="Can I resolve an issue's sub-task using a FishEye smart commit?" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-10-26T01:25:09.313" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7839" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7840" CreationDate="2012-10-16T04:32:25.520" Score="10" ViewCount="1184" Body="&lt;p&gt;Picture a very heterogeneous team, where every member knows just his/her field or just a part of his/her field and very very limited part of some other fields. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it makes sense to do the estimation at the planning session with help of planning poker?  If more than a half of a team simply does not have an idea/clue about what it mean to implement some user story, how could they estimate it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1726" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-10-16T05:52:33.090" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T23:01:34.410" Title="Can planning poker in very heterogeneous teams help estimate user stories accurately?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;planning-poker&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7839" CreationDate="2012-10-16T06:47:00.460" Score="6" Body="&lt;h3&gt;What the expert thinks about planning, story points and planning poker&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been in the air among Scrum and XP practitioners for a while, but now, there are blogs, which state that story point based estimation and planning won't really help teams moving forward. For example, Joshua Kerievsky talks about this in his recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.industriallogic.com/blog/stop-using-story-points/&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt;. According to his experience, story points and velocity measurements won't move teams forward and they take the focus away from the important things. He has to suggestions though:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Focus on the shipments (&lt;em&gt;&quot;Our focus was on shipping, not working in a fixed timebox or tracking the number of story points completed.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improve the planning process with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.industriallogic.com/blog/bargain-hunting/&quot;&gt;bargain hunting&lt;/a&gt; (looking for features with low cost and high income by having conversation with business representatives)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;My view on this&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the teams are continuously improving and the business needs are also changing constantly, I don't see any advantage in using story points for planning or estimation. Due to this constant change, the value behind a story point from &lt;em&gt;Sprint N-1&lt;/em&gt; is not equal to a story point from &lt;em&gt;Sprint N&lt;/em&gt; which makes planning extremely hard and inaccurate. Unfortunately, &lt;strong&gt;there is no such thing as accurate estimation&lt;/strong&gt;, so the only thing you can do is continuously improve your estimation process and &lt;strong&gt;try to figure out a most likely delivery date or amount of work items to deliver&lt;/strong&gt;. It is easier said than done, but it is not impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing which is needs to be taken care of is the length of the planning meeting. &lt;strong&gt;It cannot be longer than 2 hours&lt;/strong&gt; and the team shall use the result of the discussion for the upcoming sprint even it is half baked. Experience reports shows that if a team cannot discuss a content of a sprint in two hours regardless of the length of the sprint, they won't be able to do it in 3, 4 or 5 hours. You can evaluate the result of the planning during the retrospective meeting, and improve the next one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, instead of the points, focus on a number of features - batches - the team thinks that they can deliver. Talk about the possible difficulties and challenges, but keep the discussion on the batch level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do a couple of sprints, but keep the eye on the size of the features in the batches and how they got implemented. Use this data during the next planning meetings. The ultimate goal would be to have the same size for the features - of course you can break down features during the planning meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you'll reach the point when the planning will be very quick, because the team will break down the work into equal pieces and take the number of items they can deliver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Running the meeting&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you are running the planning meeting, be aware of the &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd&quot;&gt;Wisdom of the Crowd&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; phenomenon:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The wisdom of the crowd is the process of taking into account the collective opinion of a group of individuals rather than a single expert to answer a question. A large group's aggregated answers to questions involving quantity estimation, general world knowledge, and spatial reasoning has generally been found to be as good as, and often better than, the answer given by any of the individuals within the group...&lt;/em&gt; (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to avoid the false results one good technique is to ask the participants to think about the situation alone for a couple of minutes, put it on a note and give it to the facilitator. She shall aggregate the result and share with a group, which can continue the discussion using the aggregated data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Summary&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The planning poker as an event is good for understanding the product/context until you don't use the points for estimation. Move the focus from estimation to continuous learning and throughput.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2012-10-16T08:40:08.023" LastActivityDate="2012-10-16T08:40:08.023" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7838" CreationDate="2012-10-16T11:11:17.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems like Jira workflow is not setup to do what you expect. I suppose that when you manually resolve a sub-task in Jira, the parent's issue does not get resolved. You need  to add a post action for Resolve transition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may be interested in &lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.onresolve.jira.groovy.groovyrunner&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Script Runner&lt;/a&gt; plugin. In particular - 'All sub-tasks must be resolved condition'. So you can set status of the parent issue on condition of all sub tasks closed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4826" LastActivityDate="2012-10-16T11:11:17.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7839" CreationDate="2012-10-16T14:17:00.620" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the extreme case where every given team member knows only their field and nothing (or next to nothing) about anyone else's field I just don't see the value in bringing everyone together to provide estimates. If you get feedback from non-experts without a team discussion those estimates will be guesses and therefore  essentially random. Any discussion that you have with the team will likely tend to drive consensus towards the single expert's estimate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In less extreme cases I still don't see the value of bringing non-experts in. Let your two or three or four experts play planning poker for what they are experts in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this doesn't solve what could be a serious problem - the lack of a holistic view of the project as a whole. YOu will need to find someone with enough knowledge to be able to facilitate a discussion on what everyone expects to have as a starting point for their work and what they expect to pass on to the next team. Align everyone's assumptions as best you can so that they have a better idea of what their start and end points are. Then get them to do their estimates on their pieces so that you can do a bottom-up estimate of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-10-16T14:17:00.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7839" CreationDate="2012-10-16T19:08:56.480" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the most overlooked benefits of a planning session like planning poker is the ability for it to bring out and encourage design &amp;amp; architecture considerations for a new feature. When two people's estimates are quite a bit different, it usually speaks to two completely different approaches to solving the problem. This is a great opportunity to increase the knowledge base of the entire team, especially if you have new grads/hires on your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it's predictive capabilities (as pointed out quite comprehensively by Zsolt) are rather limited. Almost each and every sprint will have some unique &quot;thing&quot; that will make it impossible to use the same baseline number of story points in a single sprint. Your teams aggregate over time will probably be fairly stable, but each individual sprint can vary wildly (one of the reasons I'm a huge Kanban fan).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastActivityDate="2012-10-16T19:08:56.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6808" CreationDate="2012-10-16T20:34:40.330" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Doug and Kent -- the question of whether the PM should be considered a billable resource depends on the organization and the contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will add this:  ask whether the PM can impact the critical path?  For example, if the project manager were ill for 3 weeks, would it jeopardize the end date?  If the answer is 'yes', then the project manager should be tracked as a resource on the schedule.  Like any other resource, you would want to know what the impact of that illness would be on the finish date.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, if the project manager is being paid funds that Finance is tracking to this project, then yes, they are a billable resource.  In some organizations, the PMO (project management office) provides project management resources and is considered a fixed expense unrelated to the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A common practice in the Aerospace &amp;amp; Defense industry is to categorize project management activities as LOE (Level of Effort).  In some reports, they remove LOE activities so they can quickly see the numbers without the PM overhead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4752" LastActivityDate="2012-10-16T20:34:40.330" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7839" CreationDate="2012-10-17T05:53:00.380" Score="2" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Planning Poker is a Tool, not a Requirement&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Planning Poker doesn't work for your organization, then don't use it. However, when properly executed by cross-functional teams, the benefits can be profound. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Estimates by a subject-matter expert may exclude process areas or dependent tasks outside the SME's core area of expertise. As an example, giving a vote to the Java Architect as well as the QA folks and the systems administrators who need to build the underlying architecture will give a better aggregate estimate than asking just one of the three skill sets.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Statistical outliers on estimates are great discovery tools for hidden processes and unanticipated risk factors.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It promotes collective code and project ownership.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Collective estimates help prevent &quot;Scotty engineering&quot; bias, as well as underestimating due to a failure to identify all dependent tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither Planning Poker nor any other estimation tool is guaranteed to be accurate. However, over time, you may be surprised at how continuous improvement and estimation &lt;em&gt;kaizen&lt;/em&gt; can improve the accuracy of team estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just make sure to treat estimates as estimates, rather than commitments! As long as you do that, a good round of Planning Poker at the beginning of each Sprint is at least as useful as trying to build work breakdown structures months in advance of any actual work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm generally a proponent of Planning Poker, even if it's done without the cards and in a more informal coffee-klatch session. Your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-10-17T15:46:47.330" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T15:46:47.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6815" CreationDate="2012-10-17T07:28:00.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to PMBOK, there are three types of organizational management:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pm-primer.com/pmbok-project-management-body-of-knowledge/the-pmbok-organization-structure/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Projectized&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Functional&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Matrix&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your organization's objectives you can pick one. If your organization is doing business in projects - the first one is right for you and in this case team members report only to the PM (which is better for the project). If your organization is providing a continuous service - the second one will be more effective, where all team members have their own functional/linear managers. Matrix type is a combination of both (and can be &lt;em&gt;weak&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;strong&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T07:28:00.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3949" CreationDate="2012-10-17T07:29:20.377" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fazend.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fazend.com&lt;/a&gt; (I'm a co-founder). It offers SVN, Trac, and Jenkins for free in the cloud. All in one package, just as you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T07:29:20.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6717" CreationDate="2012-10-17T13:52:45.953" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short, what you want to set is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeboxing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Timebox&lt;/a&gt;, not impossible deadlines. Impossible deadlines are highly demotivating, as developers usually know when a deadline is impossible. If you keep using and pushing impossible deadlines just to scare them, soon it'll become useless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Setting a timebox is a more formal way to do that. You're telling your team that you are with them, but you don't have all the time/budget available, so at the end of the timebox, what was done is either accepted and pushed into production or simply rejected. Keep in mind that who makes estimations come true are developers, not managers. You want the best that can be done in X weeks, not shrink Y months in X weeks, as this usually leads to catastrophic results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2352" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T13:52:45.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7852" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-18T00:56:04.563" Score="18" ViewCount="3114" Body="&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you prevent a situation where you have to produce work-product work first and get client feedback before getting on the right track to meet their needs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any techniques to help the client and us to get a clearer sense of what she expects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background&lt;/strong&gt; on what we usually deal with:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We often develop (customize) CMS for clients. First and before any information structure is the &quot;look and feel&quot; of the website, the whole &quot;identity&quot;, we could even say branding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond the fact that we are wire-framing the home page with tools like &lt;code&gt;Balsamiq&lt;/code&gt;, and ask a lot of questions like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your website would be a person, how would he/she look like, behave, attitude have...?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What colors would you associate with your company / product / services?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How is your competition, how does they website look like, what do you feel about them?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is your company mission statement, vision...?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How your business model looks like, Who is your target group, What the seek etc?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this later on in our costumers case most of the time is out of &quot;their true vision of product / company / service design&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is more one of our customers when we started to ask questions answered: &quot;I need artist that will with himself find proper colours and prepare design. If he is truly artist when he will understand what mission we provide, the design will manifest from inside of him...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we also arranged meeting with both client and graphic that would remove any &quot;chain factor&quot;, however client using world like: unique, prestigious, life saving, and giving also marketing materials provided totally other vision that graphic understood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Graphic prepared nice modern design, that showed joy of life, product and company as happy place... As opposite to client vision (that he claimed after he saw project) as this institution has a machine that treats people and rescue life it should be: grey, sad, with attitude like at the funeral / church...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that we can adapt &quot;after&quot; he will provide us feedback, however this is tremendous waste of time, money and very often indicates frustration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4841" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2012-10-24T06:47:35.007" LastActivityDate="2012-11-30T15:25:59.650" Title="What are the techniques to elicit requirements from customers who don't understand their needs?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;customer&gt;&lt;customer-satisfaction&gt;&lt;design&gt;&lt;business-analyst&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7852" CreationDate="2012-10-18T12:15:08.180" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Would not delve in graphic design issues, since my aesthetic feeling may not be shared by others. As for eliciting customer's requirements, there are a few considerations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you structure and dimension your product space?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) Structure: what attributes of the product do you consider overarching and largely constraining your design? For instance, for aircraft it would be the required mission profile - what payload, how far, how high and how fast should it carry? It doesn't make sense to concentrate on ancillary product characteristics if inability to fix the top of the attributes' ladder leads to feature creep and multiple redesigns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've decided what attributes would generally come first, you have to make them as independent of each other as possible (we say &lt;strong&gt;orthogonal&lt;/strong&gt;, perpendicular to each other).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) To achieve attribute independence you would generally cull out attributes strongly correlated to each other and leave a manageable number of dimensions. Given clients' short attention span and your limited resources, would not recommend more than &lt;strong&gt;five&lt;/strong&gt; dimensions altogether, preferably two or three (to leave clients some choice).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, what are the extremes at each dimension? Say, a regional jet or a jumbo for Trans-Pacific flights? (note to self: avoiding car analogies? check) Prepare sketches of design for each combination of extremes and sit with the client to see how he feels about the variants. (Don't try to second-guess him now - the money is his.) Let him know these are just rough approximations and will be refined as more preferences are revealed. Refine, fixing his decisions on what is and what isn't acceptable. Repeat the process...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is another route (which works for less subjective products, though): finding someone with enough knowledge of both the client's industry and your subject domain and enlisting him to work as 'an interpreter'. However, the usual complication is that a 'middleman' whether he works full-time for you or not brings a whole set of own biases and preferences into play, and possibly a hidden agenda as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4766" LastActivityDate="2012-10-18T12:15:08.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7852" CreationDate="2012-10-18T15:04:20.027" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the initial scoping phase of the project you need to understand what the client wants and what users want. Your project management skills will be tested in trying to balance both sets of requirements and deliver a product both are happy with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To understand your client's requirements use the techniques that other answers have proposed including what you're already doing - asking questions. From experience I've found for larger projects it's good to start the process with a workshop (for smaller projects a face-to-face meeting usually suffices). This is really an ideas session but you will need to put some structure around it to ensure that you can engage your client and keep them focused on what you need - their requirements. For example, you might want to put some of the results from usability testing (see below) in front of them and ask them individually to write solutions on post-it notes and stick them on the wall. You can then review them as a group and agree on what the best solution is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Follow-up the workshop with 1-1 interviews then produce a requirements document in whatever form appeals to your client - so a slide deck, a spreadsheet, etc. Ask for their feedback on the requirements document, reiterate and then get it signed off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For gathering requirements from users do some usability testing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no better way to understand what users' requirements are (and these are the people who matter most). The information you will get from engaging users is the most valuable information you will get about a website. It's also a great way to challenge what your client wants or believes they want. Informed usability testing cuts through personal opinions about how websites should work. You'll often find that what you thought would work for the user actually doesn't work at all, or gets ignored by the user. It can also validate new functionality that you've introduced. Ideally usability testing should be done throughout a project: during the scoping phase to gather requirements; after wireframing to test the concepts; after the visual design to test reaction to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is lots of information on the subject in books and on the web (including the &lt;a href=&quot;https://ux.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;UX Stack Exchange site&lt;/a&gt;). Some typical usability testing techniques are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;face to face testing: inviting participants to click-through the website while you observe, taken notes and ask questions (also try monitoring your behaviour during these sessions to inform how you can modify it for future sessions)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;lab testing: can be the same as above but if you can find the facilities, participants interact with the website while your client watches through a two-way mirror; you can also use eye-tracking tools to monitor where users eyes track across the screen&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;online surveys&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can gather all of this data to improve deliverables on your current project and to plan for future projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The data gathered from the testing sessions can then inform your discussions with the client about what they want, what their strategy is, etc. Usability testing data provides a solid evidence base for making design and functionality decisions when planning your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3915" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:32:23.503" LastActivityDate="2012-10-18T16:22:32.270" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7852" CreationDate="2012-10-18T15:52:19.703" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Soliciting requirements is a iterative process, starting at an abstract level and diving down as you iterate.  It is a data pull from the stakeholders; so it is about asking a ton of questions, several different ways, and becoming more tactical as you go along.  Since it is a data pull, the techniques are not rocket science.  It involves surveys, interviews, workshops, and focus groups.  Which means you need to understand the universe of stakeholders involved, their segments to which they belong, and the missions and values which are often times at odds with each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Requirements will conflict, and this part of the iteration process.  You must de-conflict the offending requirements and rack and stack what remains.  And then you will have your requirements baseline from which you can plan the rest of the work.  And you will have--not may have--stakeholder segments who are simply not happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the work product part of the question, that's part of this process.  Sometimes you must demonstrate functionality, customers have to play with the widget, before a decision can be made.  It is part of the focus group and cost of doing business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-10-18T15:52:19.703" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7852" CreationDate="2012-10-18T16:09:07.917" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure we've answered the OP's question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do you prevent a situation where you have to produce work-product work first and get client feedback before getting on the right track to meet their needs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I understand the problem correctly, the OP is working with the client to develop the initial requirements for the project (pre-initiation).  The sticking point seems to be some soft non-functional requirements (NFR). (the look &amp;amp; feel/branding of the website).    It is difficult to do user testing on NFR's (not impossible, but more difficult). If the OP's team doesn't convince the client that they can fulfill those requirements, then there will be no project. These are also soft non-functional requirements - there is no objective answer. The client doesn't know what the website should look like, (if they did, the whole interaction would go differently.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe the OP has given the best answer so far; there are a list of questions to elicit subjective impressions of the brand and try to identify key themes that need to be reflected in the website design.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would offer two further suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check some books on advertising - part of the question falls outside the domain of project management.  Very interesting stuff, but not PM. Some of the answers will bridge over into salesmanship where I'm not qualified to comment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prepare two or more alternatives based on the answers to the branding questions and ask the client to select the elements that work.  Contextualize the experiment correctly - you're presenting some exploratory material to make sure you understand the NFR; actual fulfillment of the NFR will be part of the project execution after the project is chartered and planned.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Might be that some form of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWOT_analysis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SWOT analysis&lt;/a&gt; could be adapted here to identify the concepts that are core parts (Strengths) and peripheral parts (opportunities) of the desired brand.  The internal/external axis might represent the competitive advantage/discriminators from the competition.  (I'm not familiar with it, but I think that the Gartner Magic Quadrant follows a similar model.)  If the Project Team and the Client can use that as a structured process to identify the key features of the brand, I think they'll have identified a cluster of NFR's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also an analogy to risk management.  Risk management is an attempt to give the operations manager actionable information; the risk manager does that by decreasing the uncertainty on the unknowns.  In this requirements exercise, the project team is trying to reduce the mutual uncertainty about the client's soft NFR. The key in both risk management and the OP's situation is that you don't have to solve the problem during the initial requirements stage, you just need to establish a framework and trust that the problem is bounded and that the boundaries will constrict over time to reach a final requirements set that matches the client's true needs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The OP has asked what I believe to be a powerful question that has implication for scope management in many projects.  I believe it is not at all uncommon for the stakeholder to either fail to express or be unable to express soft NFR's.  Successful closure of the project means that the PM needs to uncover and quantify those requirements.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2012-11-30T15:25:59.650" LastActivityDate="2012-11-30T15:25:59.650" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7858" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7865" CreationDate="2012-10-18T16:53:29.993" Score="6" ViewCount="1464" Body="&lt;p&gt;My title sums up my question pretty well.  We're investigating whether we can use a Kanban-based system to manage and track some internal projects and one of our requirements is to track time spent on activities. This will allow us to collect stats on engineering cost.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is anyone doing this and if so, how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4752" LastEditorUserId="301" LastEditDate="2012-10-20T16:13:28.293" LastActivityDate="2020-08-05T17:57:28.650" Title="Can we use a electronic Kanban board to track actual time spent?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7852" CreationDate="2012-10-18T18:58:36.533" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;How do you prevent a situation where you have to produce work-product work first and get client feedback before getting on the right track to meet their needs?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't in a lot of cases. But from what I've read/understood of your question, it all comes down to risk management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is more one of our customers when we started to ask questions answered: &quot;I need artist that will with himself find proper colours and prepare design. If he is truly artist when he will understand what mission we provide, the design will manifest from inside of him...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Translated that says - I want an artist that can read my mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a client like that you have two choices - keep trying to draw out requirements, and then document those and be very clear and specific, or build the process of demos and prototyping into the cost. Start with a crude idea and get feedback and build from there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-10-19T23:35:43.827" LastActivityDate="2012-10-19T23:35:43.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7858" CreationDate="2012-10-18T19:10:23.793" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advice is to use whatever time tracking system you currently have rather than add unnecessary bells/whistles to Kanban because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It will cost you less in terms of time, effort, training and dollars.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It will avoid giving people one less thing to complain about when you implement Kanban, so acceptance of this change will be easier.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It will avoid trying to graft on bells/whistles onto Kanban that at the end of the day may not work as well as your current system. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have a time tracking system already in place then I suggest that you get a good one that your accounting and HR teams can work with rather than try to graft something onto Kanban boards. The fact that you're asking if this can be done says to me that it isn't obvious that it can be done which means you should think twice about whether or not it should be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-10-18T19:10:23.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5107" CreationDate="2012-10-18T20:50:43.267" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're a small shop; 20 developers and about as many admin/marketting people.  I'm co-owner; 30 years in IT, I've always designed, developed, managed and sold my products.  My partner talked me into hiring a couple of &quot;PMP&quot; certified managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nearly bankrupt us.  The overhead, in terms of time and effort, trebled our turn-around.  Instead of affecting problems, everything was staged, couched and discussed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fired them both, hired a BA and we're back on track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lesson:  If someone has never cracked a development environment, never written a line of professional software, do not hire them to manage your IT project.  The Fed, states and banks can afford this bureaucratic crap, but real companies can't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4846" LastActivityDate="2012-10-18T20:50:43.267" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7862" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-18T23:07:13.297" Score="3" ViewCount="463" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PMBOK 4th edition, page 73, mentions that, thanks to the develop project charter process, a  partnership is born between executor (performing organization) and receiver (requesting organization). This implies that several people – a team in other words – are necessary for project management to be viable, at least from the project execution point of view. Apparently, a one person team executor is not OK under the PMBOK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the PMBOK quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Develop Project Charter is the process of developing a document that&#xA;  formally authorizes a project or a phase and documenting initial&#xA;  requirements that satisfy the stakeholders' needs and expectations. It&#xA;  establishes a partnership between the performing organization and the&#xA;  requesting organization (or customer, in the case of external&#xA;  projects).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say that the project's product (it's final result) is nothing but a researched SCHOLAR book with such vast a scope that not even an awesome methodology such as KATIE TURABIAN's will be capable of managing the time I would need to juggle work, family, career and personal time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line: the result is indeed small (a book) but the result's scope is so large (book volumes) that I would need to treat it as a project under the PMBOK. It's not a book you can finish in less than 10-15 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as with most books, it is best they are researched, argued, drafted and proofed by a single person, maybe only edited, published and marketed by a third party. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you accept this, can I refrain from searching for a sponsor and forming a PM execution team?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can imagine the project's initiation charter will have no signatures since it is only towards my own self that a duty will emerge in the sense of  producing the book, regardless of the fact that I also need to have in consideration the project's stakeholder needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4849" LastEditorUserId="4849" LastEditDate="2012-10-19T13:51:11.977" LastActivityDate="2012-10-19T13:51:11.977" Title="Single person project management &quot;team&quot;" Tags="&lt;team-building&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7862" CreationDate="2012-10-18T23:23:33.113" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should quote the text in the PMBoK that you are referencing and include the version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A single person can certainly execute a project.  There is a difference between roles and people.  For a single person project, that person plays many roles...all of them required, in fact: sponsor, PM, technical lead, laborer, procurement official, project controls, risk manager, quality manager, financial manager, customer, and on and on.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, think about the language in the PMBoK and infer, instead, multiple roles versus humans.  Does this change your interpretation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-10-18T23:23:33.113" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5757" CreationDate="2012-10-19T02:37:10.230" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is my 2 cents:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1) Ensure that the documentation, queries etc are in the appropriate version control system. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2) Escalate to the functional manager the technical member reports to.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3) If the situation occurs again after 1 and 2, ask for a replacement resource that might be a better fit for the maintenance effort.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4731" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-10-19T04:43:25.183" LastActivityDate="2012-10-19T04:43:25.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7858" CreationDate="2012-10-19T10:22:18.267" Score="12" Body="&lt;h3&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't think &amp;quot;time tracking.&amp;quot; Think &amp;quot;cycle time&amp;quot; instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Kanban Should Measure Cycle Time&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, Kanban is not about measuring &amp;quot;activities&amp;quot; at a granular level; it is about measuring cycle time for a pull through the entire system. There is legitimate debate about whether this time should include lead time (e.g. time spent in the ice box) or just time from &amp;quot;started&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;done.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples of how lead and cycle times can be measured are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160304145123/http://www.dennisstevens.com/2010/06/07/kanban-and-when-will-this-be-done/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban and When Will This Be Done?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://kanbantool.com/kanban-analytics-and-metrics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban Analytics &amp;amp; Metrics: Lead and Cycle Time and Cumulative Flow Diagram&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but there may certainly be better explanations out there. The the general idea, though, is that you care about how long it takes and average batch to move from from initialization to a delivered state--regardless of how you choose to measure that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Don't Micro-Manage&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing in Kanban is that you are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; measuring sub-tasks or work products belows the level of the user story. In other words, if a user story is &amp;quot;embiggen the quux&amp;quot; then it doesn't matter how long it takes to order the quux components, perform the embiggening, or update the quux documentation--unless those are explicit queues in your Kanban process, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With Kanban, the question you're asking is &amp;quot;how long does it normally take for a standard-sized story to move through the entire queue and across all defined processes for that queue?&amp;quot; You then use &lt;em&gt;kaizen&lt;/em&gt; to eliminate waste and reduce cycle time to the maximum extent practical, rather than optimizing individual tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you ask how to track time spent on specific activities, you're trying to optimize parts of a task. This is wrong. Consider the following quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To optimize the whole, you must sub-optimize the parts...First, model the process by breaking it down into between five and nine sub-processes. Visualize each sub-process as an input hopper that sits on top of a black box. Inputs to the queue are dumped on top of the input hopper where they wait their turn. When the black box is ready to process the next item it grabs an input from the bottom of the stack, does whatever it does, and shoves it onto the top of the input hopper of the next sub-process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lewis, Bob (2012-01-23). Keep the Joint Running: A Manifesto for 21st Century Information Technology (pp. 31-38). IS Survivor Publishing. Kindle Edition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All you (should) care about is the overall efficiency of the entire process chain, not the individual sub-processes. That doesn't mean waste can't exist in a sub-process, but you should spend &lt;em&gt;zero&lt;/em&gt; time on that level of analysis until and unless it is negatively impacting the cycle time of your macro-process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-26T10:10:16.563" LastActivityDate="2020-07-26T10:10:16.563" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7858" CreationDate="2012-10-19T16:07:14.930" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can achieve this using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/overview/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;JIRA&lt;/a&gt; (which will manage your issues/bugs/backlog) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/greenhopper/overview/kanban&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Greenhopper&lt;/a&gt; (which will handle the Kanban side of it). Devs (or PMs) can log work on the issues that they're working on but, as others have mentioned, it might not be quite right in a Kanban context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use it in Scrum, where it's helpful for calculating burndown and velocity, but I should emphasize that, for us, it's just about helping us to improve our estimation and not overloading our sprints rather than for performance management. In my opinion, performance management is much more complex than just the measurement of hours/days a person has logged against a particular task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2012-11-05T15:36:44.570" LastActivityDate="2012-11-05T15:36:44.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7867" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7876" CreationDate="2012-10-19T21:06:54.267" Score="12" ViewCount="3960" Body="&lt;p&gt;My software development group has spent a significant amount of time recently on fixing existing bugs instead of working on new development.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using our bug tracking software, I can get data on how many total bugs were fixed by time period and which areas of the software had the most bugs reported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the most useful information I can extrapolate from these results?  I know there is a lot of material available about performance metrics, but I am trying to get ideas on which would be most helpful for this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, I want to be able to demonstrate the effectiveness of the recent time that we've spent dedicated to bug fixes. For me, it's not enough to just say that we were able to fix more bugs, I want to be able to show a dramatic overall improvement in the software. For example, would it be best to measure the decreasing rate of customer complaints? If not, what is the best application of data related to software bug fixes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4139" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2012-10-22T14:27:40.243" LastActivityDate="2012-11-11T15:13:44.970" Title="Best Metrics to Show the Value of Fixing Bugs" Tags="&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7867" CreationDate="2012-10-20T01:39:54.787" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I generally agree with the two comments posted so far.  I can tell you two things that we have used these kinds of metrics for in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, if you have one area that has a lot of bugs in it, you need to do something to improve development or QA procedures in that area.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can use the bug closure rate during this phase of development to estimate future bug closure rates which will help you schedule future releases.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, unless you have specific questions, it's tough for us to give you much more information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4404" LastActivityDate="2012-10-20T01:39:54.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7869" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-21T05:38:18.377" Score="7" ViewCount="3070" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are different stake holders like the quality team,client, peers, sub-ordinates, seniors.&#xA;As a manager, do we need to have a strategy to handle different stakeholders? Sometimes we might not be able to be good to everyone. In such a scenario, whom we need to give priority and based on what? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1717" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2012-10-21T20:24:10.687" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T04:06:46.137" Title="Best way to handle different stakeholders?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7869" CreationDate="2012-10-21T08:56:50.100" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As part of your project start-up documentation, you can (and should) describe what you will deliver to satisfy each of your stakeholders. I would normally include this in the Project Initiation Document (PID), which must be signed off by the principal stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For each stakeholder, you should define the relationship, and what you will deliver to meet their requirements. It will be a short description for some, and a much more extensive write-up for others. In each case, you should be identifying what you will do, and what you won't -and this should include your communication strategy for that stakeholder, as well as &quot;hard&quot; deliverables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also supplement this with a RACI matrix that defines Responsibility, Accountability, Consultation, and Information - see &lt;a href=&quot;http://aroundthechaos.com/use-a-responsibility-matrix-to-fight-project-chaos&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/raci-matrix.html&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt; for a high level overview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of priorities, that will vary according to the project. For example, in a defence or medical project, you may have quality as a very high priority, whereas in banking the focus may be more on regulatory matters. In some cases, the customer experience may be highly significant, and in others, cost control may be at the top of the agenda. Discuss this with your project sponsor and gain his or her agreement. That way, you both know what is expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2012-10-21T08:56:50.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3867" CreationDate="2012-10-21T10:08:41.803" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having recently compared many online Gantt solutions, I can also recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://Gantter.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gantter.com&lt;/a&gt; as being one of the most polished and visually similar to MS Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It still has bugs and the interface is cramped in a single browser window, but enables printing and optional tight integration with Google Drive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible security concerns if you install the optional app to Google Docs, which allows it to access any files in your Google Drive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The background to my testing is that I was using JIRA OnDemand and could not integrate any Gantt generators with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4772" LastActivityDate="2012-10-21T10:08:41.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2472" CreationDate="2012-10-21T10:52:44.917" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I encourage teams to put a WIP (work in progress) limit on the code review column, usually 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the column is full, developers can no longer put something into that column. Instead, they have to either review some code or chase someone else to do a review. This is a Kanban practice rather than Scrum, but I usually find it's the first useful place to put the WIP limit on the board (the &quot;ready for test&quot; column is usually 2nd).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting a WIP limit on the board allows senior developers to review code in their own time if they have it, while ensuring that nobody spends too long without getting feedback on their code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2012-10-21T10:52:44.917" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7869" CreationDate="2012-10-21T14:36:27.393" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not subjective at all.  It is the result of your stakeholder analysis, a necessary analysis that feeds your communication plans, your training plans, your stakeholder participation plans, and likely many other things.  It is one of the most important things you do for your project and this is not an area where you want to go on the cheap or try to save money or even try to avoid doing.  It is a must.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to segment your stakeholders into categories of similar attributes.  Then you need to ask the questions like who are they, what do they need, what do we need from them, how will they be impacted, are they likely supporters or detractors of this project, what do they need to hear, what do we need to hear from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are right that not all stakeholder segments will benefit from the project.  That is very unlikely.  One or more stakeholders are going to get impacted in an unfavorable way and part of your plan needs to include how to manage that, including bulldozing them out of the way (as atrocious as that might sound).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line is, your stakeholder management activities need to be as complex and diverse as your stakeholder community is.  Anything less you are increasing the odds of failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-10-21T14:36:27.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7869" CreationDate="2012-10-21T20:23:35.617" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The project sponsor is generally the most important stakeholder to your project. Without the sponsor, the project wouldn't exist (from a funding/empowered to use resources perspective) and the project wouldn't have a reason to exist (the project exists to provide a result for the sponsor -your customer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have trouble working with a particular stakeholder group, identify why that problem exists and address it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-10-21T20:23:35.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7869" CreationDate="2012-10-21T21:47:34.583" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For you to prioritize stakeholders you would need to connect them to enabling your project's goals/sub-goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prioritize your project goals and you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; have a prioritized list of stake holders&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastActivityDate="2012-10-21T21:47:34.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7867" CreationDate="2012-10-21T21:53:56.903" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understand correctly you want to highlight the benefits of this bug fixing period over the usual mix of development and bug fixing. It is important to have a good baseline of metrics so that now you can show improvement. As  you have already obtained permission for this period you must have used the existing metrics or maybe you are asking because you didn't have good metrics but the situation showed a sense of urgency that required this break on new development. &#xA;Under any of this scenarios, it can be interesting to measure (show improvement in):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;decreased the number of bugs found in future releases as a consequence of the team working on a more stable code base, and (if this was the case) time spent on refactoring and archictecture improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;decreased the ratio of bug reopening ( a bug that is supposed to be fixed but is reported again)  versus the usual.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;performance and usability improvements are also a good point to put up front if there was some effort on this direction.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;bugs found by the team (during this phase, in which probably you have also done a more throughout testing ot the solution) compared to bugs found by customers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A reduction of users complaints is definitely a good point in your favour but, as has been mentioned, you need to make sure on the real cause of this reduction and measure that your software has increased or maintained usage ratios.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4386" LastActivityDate="2012-10-21T21:53:56.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="873" CreationDate="2012-10-22T08:01:16.837" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This might sound a bit counterproductive, but my advice is to &lt;strong&gt;use the correct tools&lt;/strong&gt;. Let me explain:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An overly complex tool that does not contribute to the actual project management tends to create an obstacle to actually use the tool. Frustration and irritation that is a direct result of this mismatch prevents users from wanting to dive into a tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, don't underestimate usability, look and feel and accessibility. Users want a tool that works, that is usable and accessible with their platform of choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My guess is, that if your colleagues and / or team members don't use the tools, then these are the wrong tools.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4856" LastActivityDate="2012-10-22T08:01:16.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7867" CreationDate="2012-10-22T09:44:09.980" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Essentially, I want to be able to demonstrate the effectiveness of the&#xA;  recent time that we've spent dedicated to bug fixes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's obviously good news that you've fixed all these bugs, but as a manager/senior stakeholder my first question would be why there were so many bugs to fix in the first place. Because of this I'd suggest that in addition to reviewing the quality and value of the work you've done on the bug fixes (which others have provided useful guidance on) you also look at the root cause of the bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could take a random sample of your bugs and try to trace them back to their origin. Did the project have sufficient resource in place to deliver high quality code in the first place? Was enough time dedicated to quality assurance? Were the right development tools in place? Did the scope/requirements of the project change regularly or significantly? There's a lot of questions to ask!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishikawa_diagram&quot;&gt;Fishbone/Ishikawa&lt;/a&gt; diagrams or the '&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys&quot;&gt;5 whys&lt;/a&gt;' are both useful techniques for getting to the bottom of problems like these. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously you'll never eliminate all the bugs in a release but I think it's important to continually improve your processes to limit the amount of post-release bug fixing. Senior stakeholders will be happier that the initial releases work as expected/required and that your team can dedicate more of its time to further projects and releases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2012-10-22T09:44:09.980" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7869" CreationDate="2012-10-22T11:59:46.807" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, go talk with them. How do they wish to be informed about the project? Do they want your regular status report? Do they wish to be informed about scope progress? The lot or only that one feature one of them has requested? Ask, then decide (and document) how to keep each of them in the loop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding priority, that depends upon their &quot;stake&quot; in the project. But it should be discussed and agreed by your SteerCo how you will handle priority issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2012-10-22T11:59:46.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7880" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7885" CreationDate="2012-10-22T12:20:28.927" Score="4" ViewCount="336" Body="&lt;p&gt;Clear, coordinated, requirements are closely correlated with successful project closure.  Small teams can experience several obstacles to developing and managing requirements during the initiation phase of a project.  For the purposes of this question, assume that the project team is &quot;selling&quot; the work to the stakeholders  (because if the project team is employed by or otherwise bound in a long term relationship to the stakeholders, life is easier, and we're trying to examine techniques to &lt;em&gt;overcome&lt;/em&gt; the obstacles, not techniques to &lt;em&gt;bypass&lt;/em&gt; the obstacles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Non Functional requirements are often more difficult to elicit than functional requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Soft requirements (style, brand, user experience, security, convenience and other qualitative requirements) are more difficult to elicit than hard/quantitative requirements (e.g. &quot;performance&quot; can be measured in milliseconds or megahertz, or transactions/second/etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stakeholders probably don't come to the table with a clear understanding of their own requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Small teams frequently don't have specialized staff who are experienced in eliciting requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So imagine that you're the PM of a small team trying to convince a new customer that you can complete the project. You and the customer have agreed on the functional requirements, but you know that other project teams can fulfill those functional requirements.  How do you elicit the soft requirements and convince the customer that you can (over) fulfill those requirements.  (Everyone gets &quot;marketing&quot; as the first answer; it is too easy.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/7852/4367&quot;&gt;This question is inspired by a comment made by @mark Phillips here&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-10-22T16:37:22.877" Title="How can small teams elicit high quality soft Non Functional Requirements?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;customer-satisfaction&gt;&lt;design&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7867" CreationDate="2012-10-22T13:41:49.257" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been collecting bug related data for years now, and the &lt;em&gt;number of fixed bugs&lt;/em&gt; haven't given me anything useful, because this data didn't tell me much about our projects of effectiveness. It simply says that how good we are at fixing bugs, and doing something we shouldn't have done in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I talk about solving bugs I like to use an analogy to the police work: &lt;em&gt;the purpose of policing should be preventing crime not chasing&lt;/em&gt;, which translates to analyse the circumstances of when certain bugs are appearing and make it sure that they less likely happen in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my proposal is to &lt;strong&gt;watch the number of found bugs and where they have been found, by whom and when&lt;/strong&gt;. Using this information you can put a distribution graph together and it will tell you which part of your application needs attention. The most problematic area is those bugs which were found by the customer (they are hard to reproduce, delivering the fixes are usually hard, and it is not good from the company's reputation point of view).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a summary, I believe it doesn't matter how much bugs you fix, the number of found bugs matters and one should work on reducing this number instead of increasing the first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-10-22T13:41:49.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7867" CreationDate="2012-10-22T14:26:51.337" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, the software exists to meet a customer need. That is the value of the software. The best way to make a case for bug fixes is to show how it increased the value of the software.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of a software product, show how the bug fixes added to increased revenue.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of internally deployed software show how it helped people do their jobs more efficiently, saving the company time/money and allowing the software users to focus on creating value for customers (instead of getting bogged down with buggy software).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-10-22T14:26:51.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7880" CreationDate="2012-10-22T14:41:26.077" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no formula to eliciting and convincing a customer that you can meet their soft requirements. It comes down to relationships and personalities.  Some people &quot;click&quot; with each other, others don't.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be frustrating, particularly for a small, hungry team, to think that there are some jobs they won't get because of the soft side. But the alternative is spending time and money doing work for free, trying to &quot;help&quot; the customer uncover items which are intangible. It might seem like the customer is getting a good deal since you are doing strategic consulting for them at no cost. But if the customer hasn't asked for it, it is likely that they don't see value in and therefore don't see/understand the value of what you are doing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are people who appreciate the soft side that you bring to the table. There are people who &quot;get&quot; you and your team and with whom the team will click.  Spend your time finding those customers, rather than trying to convince those that don't click of your value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-10-22T14:41:26.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7884" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-22T15:09:50.693" Score="2" ViewCount="1849" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to track organizational execution on high-level, long-term goals, along the lines of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Encourage collaboration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improve productivity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increase customer satisfaction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of these can be measured via surveys of empowerment, etc. But how can I create KPI measurements for tracking execution on strategic goals of this nature, which aren't easily measured?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4858" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-10-26T01:19:55.090" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T15:40:27.557" Title="What are good KPI's for measuring high-level strategic goals?" Tags="&lt;strategy&gt;&lt;kpi&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7880" CreationDate="2012-10-22T16:37:22.877" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer for me is to always have user stories. I come at this with a software dev background, many Product Managers don't have a background in development and cannot think in units of dev work. However, they can work with us on defining who are the end users, and what will they be doing with the end product. Once we can come up with a list of likely users we can flesh out the types of interactions these &quot;users&quot; will be having with the product. Each &quot;user&quot; has a role to play, and thus has a different set of features/functionality that they require. The hard part then is to find the overlap among these &quot;users&quot; and to create hard requirements from that. There will be many soft requirements though that do not fit into definable work units and can be used then as guidelines as to the feel of the product. These soft requirements have to constantly be updated as milestones are hit and those whose buy-in you are seeking see more of the product they can relate to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Key advantage of this for me has been in getting testable scenarios. The more we can describe in human (&quot;soft&quot;) terms the nature of the users interaction with the product the easier it is to come up with a good list of positive and negative test cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having an understanding of the human interaction and a good story for how the product will be tested along they way has always been key to getting buy-in from outside the dev/engineering department. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4859" LastActivityDate="2012-10-22T16:37:22.877" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7884" CreationDate="2012-10-22T20:13:52.173" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For customer satisfaction, I encourage you to look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.netpromoter.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NetPromoter&lt;/a&gt; system.  It's simple, easy to implement.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For productivity, collaboration, etc., you might find some way to measure these things, but  your real strategy should be to measure your downstream goals.  Ask yourself: if your team doubled their productivity and doubled the collaboration that occurred, then what?  Perhaps your company's profits would increase, mistakes might be reduced, and/or they would meet their team objectives for the year.  You'll want to make sure you're tracking the big-picture metrics before you track the softer skills that drive those goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4752" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2012-10-25T03:53:12.223" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T03:53:12.223" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7867" CreationDate="2012-10-22T22:19:09.180" Score="2" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Justifications are not Project Goals&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Essentially, I want to be able to demonstrate the effectiveness of the recent time that we've spent dedicated to bug fixes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a project smell that I usually associate with stakeholder justification for time spent on anything other than new features. However, it is important to note that justifying time spent on a task (regardless of what that task is) is a common organizational requirement, but is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; directly related to any project goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While good project management is about managing time, scope, and budget, justifying the time spent on squashing bugs is only indirectly about those things. Instead, a project manager should be focused on communicating project status or identifying and controlling deviations from the project plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addressing code quality is useful for addressing technical debt, and may be justifiable in terms of improved velocity, fewer customer-facing bugs, or producing something that can actually ship. However, if you haven't identified a problem that this bug-squashing task solves, it isn't really justifiable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Voltaire#Sourced&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this quote from Voltaire&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The best is the enemy of the good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_ain%27t_gonna_need_it&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;YAGNI principle&lt;/a&gt; to see why bug-fixing that's unrelated to project goals or requirements might be misguided, unless it's genuinely measurable technical debt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Is Bug-Fixing on Your Critical Path?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All projects should have a goal. That goal may be &quot;deliver a whatzit that eats irreplaceable data.&quot; If your whatzit data-eating feature is not working correctly, then of course you need to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fix the feature.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify the extra time (if any) as a deviation from your plan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Refactor your plan to take the extra time into account.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do some kind of post-mortem or retrospective to prevent such critical bugs in the future.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if your whatzit happens to electrocute users of the system, the risk has been identified to the stakeholders and accepted as a known risk by the organization---and if you don't have the moral gumption to quit over a customer-killing &quot;feature---then your project road map should not include solving that issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Technical Debt is Bad&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For me, it's not enough to just say that we were able to fix more bugs, I want to be able to show a dramatic overall improvement in the software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is clearly not a requirement from anyone outside your team, and thus is off the critical path. If you have a customer or stakeholder asking for specific improvements to some aspect of your software, then that's a legitimate (and likely measurable) requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, seeking &quot;dramatic overall improvement&quot; without an external requirement is called &lt;em&gt;over-engineering&lt;/em&gt;. Most time spent on a project should be related to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Meeting functional or non-functional requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reducing technical debt in order to make it easier to deliver on requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fixing actual defects that don't meet your requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Preventing &lt;em&gt;predictable&lt;/em&gt; future defects (see &quot;reducing technical debt&quot; above).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Following development practices that enable you to support your code in the future--see &quot;technical debt&quot; again, but don't over-engineer for &lt;em&gt;potential&lt;/em&gt; problems that you can't measure or estimate &lt;em&gt;right now&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Pithy Three-Sentence Summary&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fixing bugs is good. Preventing bugs is better. Over-engineering is best done as an intellectual exercise to impress your programming friends on a slow weekend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-10-22T22:19:09.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7869" CreationDate="2012-10-23T04:06:46.137" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three important things to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;What is the formal process?  As mentioned by @lain9688 you should&#xA;have some sort of Project Initiation or kickoff document.  This&#xA;should include who each party is, and for each activity or&#xA;deliverable, what their level of involvement is.  (Own?  Contribute?&#xA;Veto?)  &#xA;&#xA;What is the real capability?  Many times Statements of Work or&#xA;Initiation Documents are written that don't fully capture reality. &#xA;As a good project Manager you need to be on top of where the&#xA;breakdown is.  Will your client really ever pay for Change Requests?&#xA;Will an external Design Authority really be fast enough?  Will there&#xA;really be enough time for the project team to analyze all the new&#xA;requirements?&#xA;&#xA;Lastly, what is the relative importance of the stakeholders. &#xA;Usually the most important is the one that's paying, but sometimes&#xA;others have veto power, or aren't cooperative.  Many times someone&#xA;will say, &quot;I'm paying for this, my team will honor all the industry&#xA;standards&quot; but then their subordinates want a million free&#xA;customizations.  This is a big challenge in project management.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T04:06:46.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6717" CreationDate="2012-10-23T04:18:41.567" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;On paper, it sounds like incompetence on the part of management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it is part of mainstream culture.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0887306292&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hard Drive&lt;/a&gt; talks about how agressive Microsoft was in getting early contracts.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0609807455&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Renegades of the Empire&lt;/a&gt; suggests this is actually a strategy to keep people perpetually never satisfied.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many young developers have never failed at anything in their lives, and companies prey on this insecurity.  It's not sustainable, but neither are many other bad management practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3086" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T04:18:41.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6797" CreationDate="2012-10-23T04:30:49.773" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I understand it, Hybrid agile Approach is a combination of agile and traditional project management methodologies. These are practiced by teams that want to move to agile but have been using the traditional methods for a long time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4731" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T04:30:49.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7884" CreationDate="2012-10-23T12:09:01.487" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I won't measure &lt;em&gt;encourage collaboration, improve productivity, increase customer satisfaction&lt;/em&gt; separately, because an organization may need the combination of those three. The individual KPI may provide a local view on the overall progress. For example, a high KPI on the productivity doesn't necessarily means that the organization is successful - the KPI for customer satisfaction may be low on the other hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would start with something simple: &lt;strong&gt;number of new customers, number of old customers&lt;/strong&gt;. The first will tell you how good is the organization's improvement plan, the second will tell you how reliable the service is. These KPIs are easy to measure and understand on each level of an organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T12:09:01.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7892" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-23T22:15:45.263" Score="12" ViewCount="992" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the pros and cons of incorporating a project manager into a research team?  If anyone has any experience doing so, do you have any suggestions about how to make the program manager as effective as possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often a research project has a different atmosphere than a product group.  Open-ended research is hard to plan.  You can't plan for breakthroughs, but breakthroughs are exactly what researchers are seeking.  A significant part of a researchers' time is figuring out exactly which problems to work on (or working on problems that go nowhere).  And, research is about risk; if it wasn't high risk, it wouldn't be research.  So, in some sense, research is about chaos.  At the same time, project managers seem to prefer order: e.g., carefully planned timelines and schedules and milestones.  I can imagine this might drive the researchers crazy -- and conversely, I can imagine that a research environment might drive a program manager crazy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in many research programs there is already a leader with an exciting vision who can corral and inspire folks, but who isn't necessarily the best at the nitty-gritty details of project management.  And, researchers tend to respect those who can &quot;talk shop&quot; with them and who are in command of the intellectual, substantive stuff.  So, this means that a project manager probably cannot expect to be the leader that everyone looks up to and might not be in the best possible position to tell the researchers what to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is a project manager a good fit for this kind of atmosphere, and if so, how can a project manager best add value and make the relationship work well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4648" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-10-05T04:38:11.623" LastActivityDate="2014-10-05T04:38:11.623" Title="Project management and research" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;roles&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7884" CreationDate="2012-10-23T22:43:11.897" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with other answers that you need to track downstream goals and should possibly challenge the need to track productivity as a strategic goal. That said it can be a useful metric for comparison and understanding its contribution to bigger goals e.g. profit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I understand that many companies set targets (either internally or externally) for things such as collaboration, productivity and customer satisfaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For you to track these, you should break them down into tangible deliverables. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For collaboration consider things such as implementing a collaboration or social networking application e.g. Confluence, Sharepoint, etc. Measure its usage and effectiveness e.g usage of the application increased by x% over x period and was an essential tool in delivering project x.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research methods for measuring productivity because it can be complex but this is not a soft metric so you will be able to find methods for doing this. Measuring productivity is a measure of the efficiency of production. How you do this is dependent on the industry you work in and the work being carried out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Customer satisfaction can be measured by surveys and by more in-depth techniques such as 1-1 interviews, focus groups and workshops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the goals you want to track are relevant but only within the context that some of the other answers give i.e. What are you ultimately trying to measure? What bigger goals do the ones you've listed contribute to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3915" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T22:43:11.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7892" CreationDate="2012-10-24T00:26:22.343" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think characterizing research as chaos is a misrepresentation.  Research follows strict scientific methods.  You have limited funds.  You have constraints on schedule.  You have risks.  You have quality concerns.  You have scope.  You have to procure equipment and materials.  You have to hire appropriately skilled staff.  You have to communicate results to someone or some group.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot imagine that research firms simply throw millions of dollars to a bunch of scientists and say, &quot;go forth and do great things.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Researchers tend to respect those who can 'talk shop'....&quot;  Every practitioner in every industry says the same thing.  Most PMs are born from the employee population so this is a non sequitar anyway.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A research project is surely different than a project to build a shed, but it still has a start and stop and needs managing, so you will still have a project manager and the methods would be consistent with a research project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answers to comments:  I have never put any thought into how to PM a research project as I have never had the opportunity to do so.  Adaptation would always be needed, not because you are moving from something traditional to research but because you 'always' adapt your approach to meet the needs of the project.  All projects are unique, even those you do &quot;all the time.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds to me the exploratory portion of research is not a project at all, but more of normal operations.  It sounds like, once the exploration is done and you arrived at the hypotheses, approach, etc., the research project begins.  Maybe this is just point of view, I don't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I neither recommend nor not recommend putting a PM with research experience.  Choosing a the right PM for the project at hand to be executed at a specific time in a specific place calls for varying competencies.  One project might be best served with a research experienced PM while another might be best served with a PM that brings to the table another capability having nothing do to with research.  I would recommend not giving up flexbility in your hiring approach, i.e., do not adopt this sort of cookie cutter formula.  I have never seen that work well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2012-10-24T15:12:11.883" LastActivityDate="2012-10-24T15:12:11.883" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7895" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-24T02:51:42.217" Score="6" ViewCount="15539" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What kind of preparations or any helpful tips should be done/handle ahead for going in interview  for junior project manager position or project manager position? ( A person who has no PM experiences like advancing career or a fresh grad)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the most common questions for such kind of interviews?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What kind of aspects that employers focus on such kind of a person ( no PM experiences or a fresh grad) for Project Management role?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: Some job descriptions welcome for fresh grad for junior project manager role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2260" LastEditorUserId="2401" LastEditDate="2012-10-26T09:32:43.113" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T17:09:35.637" Title="Interview preparation tips for junior project manager position or project manager with no experiences" Tags="&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7896" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7897" CreationDate="2012-10-24T05:16:21.960" Score="6" ViewCount="449" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PO defined a user story, roughly saying: &quot;As an employee want to use functionality X in our web interface&quot;. The functionality is well defined and for internal use in a large company, but during planning the dev-team asks: what is our minimum browser, because this influences estimations. Neither the dev-team nor the PO know what the pre-installed browser in the target company is and declare that an impediment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it now the SM's task to figure this out by contacting the target company the feature is built for, because for the PO this is &quot;a technical detail I don't care about&quot;, or is it the SM's task to let the PO know that his user story is not precise enough and ask the PO to contact the target company?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4865" LastActivityDate="2012-10-30T18:00:25.743" Title="Is &quot;what browser do we have to support&quot; in SCRUM an impediment or a user story?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7896" CreationDate="2012-10-24T06:06:26.867" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This a requirement, and therefore the Product Owner shall figure it out by contacting the target company. While waiting for the answer, the team &lt;strong&gt;can&lt;/strong&gt; start thinking about a solution which is kind of browser independent, or can get some data about the most popular browser in the domain and start working on it. These last two ideas are not approved by the Scrum framework, because according to it, the team shouldn't do anything which hasn't been approved by the Product Owner or the customer, in order to avoid waste creation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-10-24T06:06:26.867" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7895" CreationDate="2012-10-24T07:03:58.760" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Could you tell us about the projects you were involved in?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;What was your role in that project?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Could you give an example of a project where you had to change something in order to deliver in time and on budget?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost all the PM interviews in which I was involved in, were about the experience in the first place, then about the personality and the lexical knowledge. &lt;strong&gt;I risk that nobody will hire a product manager without experience&lt;/strong&gt;. It is simply against common sense. In &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/7894/468&quot;&gt;his answer to another question&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/574/david-espina&quot;&gt;David&lt;/a&gt; mentioned that &lt;em&gt;Most PMs are born from the employee population&lt;/em&gt; - I experienced the same -, so if you have PM ambitions join the company in a different role, learn about how projects are done, get a good mentor, get involved in a couple of small projects and get the experience and practical knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2012-10-24T07:03:58.760" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7895" CreationDate="2012-10-24T10:50:03.503" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having no professional experience with project management is not as having no experience at all. If you have no experience at all, the best you can hope for is an intern position, not a junior one. What you'll be asked for, in case you are fresh grad, is to relate some of your university experiences to a project management role. So be prepared to answer question about university projects, that involves a group of people, and volunteer experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also you may be asked what project management techniques you know. And of course, that may be practical questions like &lt;em&gt;you are going to miss a deadline and you do not have enough resources, what you are going to do&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2340" LastEditorUserId="3941" LastEditDate="2012-10-29T17:09:35.637" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T17:09:35.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7892" CreationDate="2012-10-24T11:23:02.687" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the critical question is the second &quot;What are the pros and cons of incorporating a project manager into a research team?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Superficially the answer is to quote the definition of a project - &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pmi.org/About-Us/About-Us-What-is-Project-Management.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;temporary group activity designed to produce a unique product, service or result&quot;&lt;/a&gt;   If you are researching to produce a specific change (formulate a drug to cure X, or an algorithm to solve Y), then that's a project, and I think one can argue that a PM could assist.   I think one could argue that most research projects begin with a hypothesis that the research will prove or disprove, and that hypothesis is the statement of work. Most of the comments made in this question about &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/6795/4367&quot;&gt;software development teams&lt;/a&gt; are also true for researchers.  Researchers (in my liminted experience) want to do research.  The PM can act as an umbrella to divert non research concerns/issues away from the researcher and allow them to focus on the tasks to which their skills and passions drive them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I &lt;em&gt;suspect&lt;/em&gt; that the most valuable parts of the PM's time will be in the Initiating/planning and closing stages, although I believe that I've heard some of my research friends talk about competition for critical equipment, which is effectively a work planning system, and I &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; that I've heard my research colleagues talking about interpersonal tension; deconfliction of that tension is a core skill in the execution phase.  I &lt;em&gt;believe&lt;/em&gt; that research is similar to project management in that nobody really appreciates the value of the up front planning research prior to the experiment/project.  I have no evidence, but I believe that having a PM manage the Management &amp;amp; Oversight Control would be of benefit to all (nobody might enjoy it, but I suspect that having an outsider manage it would be a benefit).  I have a notion that the stakeholder management analogue in research management would be interesting but I can't quite put my finger on it now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't done formal research since High School (when we used wet clay spread on stone tables and recorded our research in cuneiform), but it seems to me that research is a bit more like portfolio management.  (I can't find a good, terse definition, edits welcome).  If I understand your open research projects correctly, they involve a set of projects/hypotheiss, each of which will be addressed by one or more experiments(projects) that are managed with similar constraints and procedures.  Your goal is to find the best way to organize the resources available.  In both open ended research and in portfolio management you need to ask questions like: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this project/experiment well planned? Are all the resources available? Are there any schedule conflicts for people/equipment/etc.  Is it well defined/scoped?  Is the hypothesis well formed and reviewed? Is the experiment well designed to support/disprove the hypothesis. (? do you use peer review on this stuff? Are fellow researchers effectively stakeholders?)  Is the predicted duration of the experiment enough to effectively address the hypothesis, but short enough to release critical resources to other projects at relevant times?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this project the best investment of these resources? Does this approach or hypothesis still look promising?   Are there alternative designs that might prove more fruitful? (even if they are less satisfying to the researcher personally?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this project likely to complete successfully, or is it time to close this project and move the resources to one that is more likely to succeed?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the impediments, issues, and risks that diminish the chance that this research/project will succeed? What can I do to reduce the uncertainty, and what can I do to mitigate the impact? (e.g. Lab is too small, we're missing critical skills or equipment, researcher is distracted by administrative crap, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the techniques/procedures/tools common to all of these projects/research efforts?  Is there a way that I can optimize these? New equipment? new training? new resources?  Are there external experts that we could consult? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the lessons learned from this project/line of research/approach/experiment that I can document for re-use in my next project/research/experiment?  Apart from the confirmation/disposition of the core hypothesis, what else did I learn?  Can I use anything I learned outside my core research? Can I market it either to other portfolio managers/researchers, or even commercially? (We're always looking for the penicillin/post-it note/viagra lesson)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2012-10-24T12:20:22.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7895" CreationDate="2012-10-24T13:54:04.647" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://managementblog.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Management Blog&lt;/a&gt; has an extensive treatment of how to interview, including sample questions, things to avoid, and the underlying principles that lead you to choose questions.  He has a very structured process that leads from the job description to the interview to the selection.  Not PM specific, but it should be easy to adapt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2012-10-24T13:54:04.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7892" CreationDate="2012-10-24T14:29:02.217" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having done research (genetics, protein chemistry, proteomics and bioinformatics) and having been a project manager with a research team (pre-clinical research) I can tell you that, based on my experience, having a project manager - or at least awareness and implementation of project management best practices - is very helpful because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It helps keep the team on task.&lt;/strong&gt; There can be a tendency (at least in the biopharma world) for researchers to investigate what is interesting rather than what will move the project ahead. This results in diffusion of effort and non-value-added work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It helps keep the team moving forward.&lt;/strong&gt; Again, there can be a tendency to try to get things &quot;perfect&quot; when &quot;good enough&quot; is all you need. The PM principle of focus on a valid business case is really needed in research to weed out the ideas that won't work. You wouldn't believe how much time and money I've seen wasted because of a lack of awareness of the need for a business case.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It helps promote communication.&lt;/strong&gt; Especially in academia I've found researchers can talk for hours but communicate nothing. Mentors don't tell their students/technicians what their acceptance criteria are, students/technicians don't pass on accurate and timely information to their mentors, etc etc. Industry is a lot better but when an academic starts a company or you get someone in fresh from college there can be problems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing you have to wary of is that research is iterative, so your plans have to be flexible and able to adjust to a constantly changing environment. This can be frustrating for the PM but is part and parcel of research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will also likely encounter significant resistance if you are trying to introduce PM practices into an existing Research environment. Scientists don't like to have a non-expert telling them what they should do, and that is what they will perceive your role as being. Be patient and work hard to engage them in planning efforts so that they see that the PM is there to help them keep &lt;strong&gt;their&lt;/strong&gt; plan on track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you noted in your question, probably the only thing PM won't help you with in a research environment is getting breakthroughs. But the fact of the matter is that breakthroughs represent probably less than one percent of one percent of one percent of research. And any breakthroughs you get will be based on a huge amount of work devoted to incremental improvements in your knowledge base. At a corporate level you should have a slush fund to investigate brilliant ideas your team comes up with outside of your overall research plan, just don't expect a return on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-10-24T14:29:02.217" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7895" CreationDate="2012-10-24T15:32:17.887" Score="5" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Good hiring practices evaluate knowledge, skills, and abilities.  To prepare, you need to be able to demonstrate knowledge of PM things: the types of processes you would stand up to control your project, things like a risk process or quality process, a way to select staff, a way to procure materials you may need, a way to control costs and schedule, e.g., earned value and critical path methods.  If you took classes in school in PM, you would want to highlight what those classes were and perhaps your grade(s).  To demonstrate skills and abilities, you need to focus on those things you can transfer to PM.  While you may not have formal PM experience, if you have management experience, such as with a job you held during school, cite those because many skills you grow with that transfers to PM.  Also, do not minimize your project management experience.  PM is a function of work.  You have way more experience than you think.  We begin managing projects at like age 5.  Highlight projects in school or extracurricular activities and discuss what went well, what failed, and what you learned.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will skip #2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Too many of us put too much weight on experience.  Experience does not hold a ton of validity in hiring, but despite this it is heavily weighted.  However, if you scored an interview and you are new to this, then you can assume that they are not requiring some level of experience and the role is consistent with that.  It might mean the project is on the simple side, with only a few resources and not a lot of money.  Critical thinking is one of the highest levels of validity in predicting performance.  This is consistent across many 'thinking' type jobs.  So, above everything else, demonstrate your ability to think critically, to analyze, to theorize, to problem solve.  Demonstrate that you are smart.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-10-24T15:32:17.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7904" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-24T17:18:57.307" Score="19" ViewCount="2775" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am the project manager for a team composed of employees who were hired specifically as QA or development prior to agile/scrum being adopted by the organization. Just for background, I came into the organization after the implementation of scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem we're having is at various times during a sprint, team members will announce that they have no work to do. There are still many items that aren't &quot;done&quot;, but either someone is already working on them or they're not in the phase that person feels they're responsible for - developers have no work because everything is in QA or vice versa. Previously, they would just pull more items off of the product backlog - no team commitment, no discussion, they were allowed to just pull something else in to the sprint. That, I put a stop to immediately, explaining by doing that they were committing to things for everyone else on the team without asking them first. I should also mention that the team rarely meets their original commitment set in planning, let alone the extra items pulled in, because things get stuck in phases even though there are team members claiming they have nothing to work on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of a single team working together to get everything to &quot;done&quot; has been explained to them, but developers say they weren't hired to do QA and QA says the developers just get in their way when they try to help on QA tasks and they don't understand how to properly test from a QA perspective. I've also explained that developers don't necessarily have to test and testers don't necessarily have to develop, but that the entire team should be working (through self-management) to either get committed items to &quot;done&quot; or doing something to benefit the team in the future (updating docs, maintaining the build/CI systems, improving automated testing, etc.) Regardless, we still get team members saying they don't have anything to do and want to pull new items in from the product backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel that what they're really saying is:&#xA;1. There's nothing left in this sprint that I WANT to do.&#xA;2. I really want to get a head start on that so I have less work to do next sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a project manager, none of the team members directly report to me. I have discussed this with their managers individually and while they agree this is a problem, they feel that they can't force this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most direct result of this is that QA is constantly behind. When we start a sprint there are already several items ready for QA. While they work on these items, things keep piling up and at the end of the sprint we've got a giant set of items in QA and developers saying they have nothing to do. Of course with items not getting finished in a sprint, the next sprint comes and the problem keeps getting slightly worse and worse as QA can't keep up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone see any course of action here? Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4699" LastEditorUserId="4699" LastEditDate="2012-10-25T13:55:33.960" LastActivityDate="2017-12-29T22:41:02.587" Title="How to better balance resources in a cross-functional agile team?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;cross-functional&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7904" CreationDate="2012-10-24T18:35:09.060" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is going to be an easy answer to this question.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my perspective, the critical factors are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team is not meeting the development goals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;QA runs late, but does not want help from developers &lt;em&gt;as it is currently offered/supplied&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developers complete the work that they perceive is necessary, and don't perceive any need to do additional work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've got a couple of questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the consequences of the slipped deadlines and the technical debt from QA?  Have you assessed the impact of this problem on the ultimate deadlines?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What feedback are you getting from your stakeholders?  Are they content? Are they upset enough at slipped deadlines that they'll support changes?  Will they communicate that support to the line manager?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were in your shoes, I'd assess the consequences first and make sure that the stakeholders feel enough pain to support some changes. (if not, then we need to discuss a different problem).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I'd start to measure technical debt.  On an average slip we slip x QA tasks; the average QA task takes X hours to resolve.  Build a metric brief stakeholders/line management on that metric weekly/monthly/(period appropriate to your sprints).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now we need to change the attitude of the developers and the testers.  They're not working together as a team.    First, we need to make sure that we, the PM, have provided motivation/leadership. Have we communicated the value of working as a team?  Are there incentives for team-play? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;QA needs to change their attitude.  QA doesn't like the help that devs provide; that's fine, either teach them how to provide helpful help, or tell the PM to get them training that will enable them to provide helpful help.   Ask QA if switching to test driven development would help?  QA apparently has some processes that need improvement. Pull one QA and a couple of devs offline and ask them to redesign the QA process so that it is (a) faster (b) facilitates effective teamwork and (c) more effective.  Ask the devs which QA person was the easiest to work with?  Which QA has the best code-fu?  That person has skills that need to be transferred to the rest of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Devs don't want to do QA?  That's fine.  Work with line manager to obtain devs who have the right skills and want to work as a member of a team.  Ask the QA dept, &quot;Who was the most helpful dev this sprint?&quot; PM can recognize that individual and make sure that line management knows that you value this person as a team player, and will want this individual on future projects.  This dev's behavior is directly tied to your projects ability to meet deadlines and stay within schedule/scope/quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, the only tool you've got is your stakeholder's desire to meet the deadline. Slipped deadlines create pain for stakeholders; your job is to redirect that pain in a way that will motivate change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what you've said, you've got a significant problem that needs changes to motivation, skills, and processes.  The particular details of your situation will make those changes at least an order of magnitude more difficult than what I've blithely described above.  If it were that easy, you'd be earning minimum wage.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure that your stakeholders know that there is a problem, that you're taking action to solve it, and that you don't expect that the problem will be solved this sprint, or next sprint. The best you can promise them is that the rate of growth of technical debt will slow by x% every sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2012-10-24T18:35:09.060" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7904" CreationDate="2012-10-24T18:59:35.767" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, you are facing one of the bugs in Scrum. By default, it assumes that people are eager to work together regardless their previous roles or ambitions, and they are more than happy to give these up for the greater good. I'm not sure that a generic solution exist, but here are some ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;If you want to keep Scrum&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most probably the team has some issues with understanding the basic principles behind Scrum. The recommended solution is to coach the team and be patient, and temporarily try to live with the current situation until those principles are understood.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is a good chance that the developers are faster than the testers, so you can remove the unnecessary testers and use them somewhere else, or you can create two teams from the current team. With this approach you create an artificial bottleneck - the number of testers -, which will provide you more information about the situation. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Talk to your Scrum Master, because she is the one who should escalate this problem and try to come up with solutions and coach the Scrum Team. Something isn't right here.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;If you want something else than Scrum&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I've seen setups where there were two shifted iterations: one iteration for development and testing and one just for testing - this one started later. The idea was that the developers overcommit and did more work than they can test in an iteration, and the additional work had been tested in the testing only iteration. This wasn't an optimal solution, but everybody got something to do and the team(s) delivered - the fully tested user stories were demonstrated to the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can start learning a bit more about Scrumban, and slowly switch from an iteration based approach to a continuous approach like XP + Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-10-24T18:59:35.767" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7904" CreationDate="2012-10-24T18:59:45.550" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The most direct result of this is that QA is constantly behind. When we start a sprint there are already several items ready for QA. While they work on these items, things keep piling up and at the end of the sprint we've got a giant set of items in QA and developers saying they have nothing to do. Of course with items not getting finished in a sprint, the next sprint comes and the problem keeps getting slightly worse and worse as QA can't keep up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to look at this is that your developers are constantly ahead. In either case you are over-resourced in terms of developers and/or under-resourced in terms of QA. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can resolve this by changing the resourcing levels. Talk to your project sponsor and find out how important the overall schedule of the project is from a business perspective. Based on that, get your sponsor's agreement to either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give you additional QA resources so that you can maintain or improve on your current pace by helping QA catch up to the developers; or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Redeploy the excess developers onto other projects so that your QA can keep pace with your developers, though there is a risk that your project may take longer to complete.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-10-24T18:59:45.550" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6621" CreationDate="2012-10-25T10:53:48.183" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A quick google search indicates that you're not the only one with this problem. It appears that OpenProj has changed owners and subsequently been replaced by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectlibre.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;project libre&lt;/a&gt;. I don't have access to Project Libre, but someone claiming to be one of the authors claims that the new software will include recurring tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T10:53:48.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1761" CreationDate="2012-10-25T12:08:03.897" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project Server is expensive to maintain with a huge learning curve.  As an aerospace PM with the help of a team, we reviewed several PMIS options and found MSPS far outside our requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently we're reviewing MS Project 2010 as an option to integrate with Sharepoint which we highly use to collaborate with our project team.  We currently use MS Project 2007 to share PDFs and what-if MS Project 2007 files only.  The original/officially maintained MSP07 file is stored on a server location.  Our PMs access the latest what-if file to status, make what-ifs, propose customer approved baseline changes, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suggest reviewing MS Project 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4877" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T12:08:03.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7910" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8057" CreationDate="2012-10-25T17:23:47.303" Score="4" ViewCount="119" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm quite new to project management. I have a software project in mind and would like to manage it the correct way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The app basically allows movie theater owners to announce their upcoming movies, schedules and such, so users of the app can be up to date and get movie suggestions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm quite related to regular software project management, but in this particular case, negotiations with multiple movie theater managers and owners in order to keep the movie schedule database up to date, which can be made in two ways: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hire people to maintain the databases up to date (expensive).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide a web application to allow establishments to add schedules and such Foursquare-style (cheaper and wiser).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, my questions are: How effort, time and costs are estimated for this &quot;negotiation&quot; part? How a project like this is usually handled?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; I think the first option to hire people to maintain the database is expensive in terms of money and time. In terms of time because they will have to take time to ask and talk to people in each movie theater to get the updated schedules. I think the second option is more feasible because usually owners and managers have the updated information at hand and also, some other useful information they do not share easily; like offers and such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4879" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2012-10-29T14:51:12.040" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T20:23:27.533" Title="Project Planning For Merchant-based Software" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7912" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-26T02:29:34.730" Score="0" ViewCount="3651" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our project was on ENROLLMENT SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT. We are 4 members and we are adding new software to improve the system to give clash free timing to students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stakeholders are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My teammates &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The University&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the time constraints:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Start Date: August 30, 2012.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Projected Finish Date: October 21, 2013&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the problem is that now we're having trouble approaching these 3 questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What Quality Objectives would be needed for the project?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What metrics should we use to measure the quality of this project?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What actions should we take to ensure Quality Assurance of this&lt;br&gt;&#xA;project?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to these questions are not in my syllabus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4881" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-10-26T10:34:22.447" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T11:23:46.887" Title="How can I identify quality objectives and associated metrics?" Tags="&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7912" CreationDate="2012-10-26T07:02:31.553" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_Function_Deployment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, you should quantify the main characteristics of your software, try to measure them, and to score each characteristic. After this scoring you would be able to find out how about the quality of your software. I suggest you to look through this &lt;a href=&quot;http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/A1_House_of_Quality.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;house of quality graph&lt;/a&gt;, I think it is very useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience a software quality can be measured in two main categories: the small (low priority) bugs and the critical (high priority) bugs. You cannot solve only one category and say that you solved the half of the bugs. This only can describe your project's situation. (Let's say, you have 50 low priority bugs, such as wrong interface offsets, typos, and 35 high priority bugs, such as crashes and application freezing. If you solve all the 35 critical bugs, you cannot say that you almost done the half of the bugs, only that your application is critical bug-free). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another personal experience about bugs: the number of total bugs is pondering with 65-70% low priority bugs and 30-35% of critical bugs. After solving all of them, other bugs are generated, in my experience this number is the 33% of the previously solved bugs' number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make your software as good quality it can be, I suggest you to broke it in smaller parts, if you have about 1 year, I suggest you to broke it in 4 or 5 smaller releases. Each part should contain a specification part (15%), a development part (30%), bug fixing (40%) and final review with code freeze (15%). In the final review don't forget to discuss with your team the weak and strong points of the project, and try to avoid/improve in the next level the weak ones. Don't forget about the hard deadlines of these smaller parts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although, I suggest you to let about 1 month at the final of this 1 year project for the final fixes, to discuss with the customer in each final review, to confirm the already done parts of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also suggest you &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.computer.org/portal/web/swebok/html/ch11#Ref2.1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; chapter to read, I think is very useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I think your question is highly connected with risk measurement, &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/17/how-do-you-measure-risk?rq=1&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; you can find a pretty good approach of risk management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4564" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T07:02:31.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7912" CreationDate="2012-10-26T09:23:34.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That seems to be a long project and I think a couple of internal milestones can help you with your quality related questions. I don't know anything about your context or way of working, so I'm going to share my general view: &lt;strong&gt;if people start talking about quality in the middle of the project, they are usually experiencing fear which comes from the uncertainty they are experiencing&lt;/strong&gt;. If you can reduce the uncertainty, you can move forward instead of talking about quality.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One good way to do it is by introducing iterations and frequent internal milestones. This means that you figure out what you would like to do in the short term - maximum 3 weeks -, do it and made it public so that the users can start giving you feedback. At a university it must be easy to find a larger group of people who would join these early adapters and give you feedback. If they like your product then your quality is good enough. If they don't like it, it isn't and you have to change things in the next iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Listen to them and see what do they value and use that as a quality indicator in your project. There was a project where we were focusing on the number of issues we had and all of our improvements was about this number. After a couple of months, we told our customer how drastically we reduced this number. She wasn't happy, because she didn't care about this number. She wanted faster answer times. I learned that the numbers I read in books or used before were irrelevant. &lt;strong&gt;I needed the number that the customer checked and valued.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T09:23:34.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7912" CreationDate="2012-10-26T10:56:39.637" Score="2" Body="&lt;h3&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have insufficient external inputs to properly address your questions within a project management context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Are Quality Objectives Project Management?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is probably some reasonable debate as to how much quality management really has to do with project management &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt;. To the extent that it's an external requirement imposed on the project, I would say that it bears on project planning and delivery, but while quality objectives may be &lt;em&gt;inputs&lt;/em&gt; to a project, I don't think they are properly project management tasks in the normal sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Ordering Matters&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Setting that aside, I think you're asking one mistaken question with two dependencies. You ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What Quality Objectives would be needed for the project?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What metrics should we use to measure the quality of this project?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What actions should we take to ensure Quality Assurance of this project?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first question is not yours to decide. Objectives (also known as &quot;requirements&quot;) are inputs to a project. For example, if you're making widgets, what are the machining tolerances? If you're writing software, what bug-free features are essential to ship the product? Those are questions that must be answered by stakeholders, not project managers, although a PM can certainly facilitate the requirements-gathering process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second and third questions are entirely dependent on the first. Until you know what your objectives are, how can you possibly measure them or evaluate the effectiveness of each objective's quality controls?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Further Reading&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it's a little thin, a reasonable place to start is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requirements_analysis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Requirements Analysis&lt;/a&gt; page on Wikipedia. It identifies a few ways to gather project requirements, and how goals can be set based on those requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specific details will, of course, be highly dependent on your particular circumstances. The best advice I can offer is to read widely and adapt processes as needed until a practice fits &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T10:56:39.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7912" CreationDate="2012-10-26T11:23:46.887" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What Quality Objectives would be needed for the project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What metrics should we use to measure the quality of this project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What actions should we take to ensure Quality Assurance of this project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question is very general; I agree with @CodeGnome and @Mollybaba that there are insufficient details to answer the question in a manner that is satisfactory in either an academic or real world situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would  suggest that you begin with a review of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;wikipedia Quality Management page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to infer from the details that you do provide that you're developing software.  In that case you'll probably want to check &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Software Quality Management&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Software quality assurance&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would choose some quality objectives that would enable me to ensure that I meet the customer's non-functional requirements - to ensure that my project meets and exceeds their needs.  That involves discussion with the stakeholders to determine how they measure quality in the current system and what level of improvement they desire.  Whatever they mean by &amp;quot;clash free timing&amp;quot;, you'll want to set a threshold for &amp;quot;clash free timing&amp;quot;, and a tolerance for clash free timing.   (Any PMI resource will provide enough backgt&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you define &amp;quot;clash free timing&amp;quot;, find a way to measure that; that's your first quality metric.  I'd supplement that with standard quality measurements like &amp;quot;bugs/kilo-lines of code&amp;quot;, or &amp;quot;average time to fix bug&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;total technical debt&amp;quot;. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sei.cmu.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Software Engineering Institute&lt;/a&gt; provides some resources if I remember correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've done that, design processes.  I can't speak to &amp;quot;clash free timing&amp;quot;, but there are fairly standard ways of improving software quality.  You could adopt extreme programming, or structured code reviews.  You need to continuously measure the metric, detect when the production quality begins to veer towards your control limits and plan actions to take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience people tend to forget that you can improve software quality by training the developers in software quality and software security development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T11:23:46.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6746" CreationDate="2012-10-26T12:20:13.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum works best with a small team but proportional team of engineers, testers, etc. But this is my experience with scrum teams. &#xA;In your case I would suggest to do following, if feasible&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Breakdown the projects into sub-projects or define sets of tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify your team skills across the glob&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make smaller groups (6-10), which is considered ideal for development&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make scrum dashboard available for each team (e.g. JIRA, tinypm ) to monitor each team daily progress in scrum way&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Off-course, it all depends on nature of project etc. In any case, scrum is recommended way of development when you break-down the project into pieces. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4883" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T12:20:13.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1397" CreationDate="2012-10-26T18:15:30.890" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have played with some 'spatial' tools for distributed teams since 2009.  These can be 2d, or 3d like the tame 'the Sims'.  I've watched how other companies use them too, and attended 9 conferences on the topic. I find these tools so useful I got a formal certification in this stuff (one year program, U Washington), and have 200 folks using this stuff for 2 years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most folks use a webcam to see facial expressions during meetings.  I like tools that add a sense of venue or space.  I get to see who else is in the context of the discussion, and some visual cues about how engaged they are.   Adding iterative objects is also helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Co-Locate?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Of course, if you can co-locate that's great.  However, out of &gt; 2,000 team members where I work only 21% have all their team members in the same building.   77% work at home at least some of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Travel&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Travel if you like.  But I don't like the time I lose in airports (just got back from India - great to see folks, but 36 hours in planes and airports!!)  Budgets are an issue, especially for international travel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Traditional Webcam &amp;amp; Screen&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;A lot of tools do a mix of screen share, text messages, voice over IP, and webcam.  I feel like I still lose communication context due to a lack of shared venue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4. Two Dimensional spatial&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Sococo is a 2d interface that supplies a spatial context.  I like that for always on 'Osmotic Communication' for distributed teams.  I designed a custom layout for my Agile teams.  Sococo is easier to use than 3d environments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;5. 3d Immersive&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;3d tools let you 'immerse' more, or design and program some interactive objects.  But they can be hard to use for newbies, are perceived as a game, and sometimes take expertise to modify the environments.  Sometimes they are port hogs so can't get through firewalls.  They let you do more, but is a much bigger culture change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bottom line:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Webcam / screen share tools like Skype, Adobe Connect, GotoMeeting, Microsoft Lync, etc.  Telepresence from Cisco gives you live size TV / webcam but is not cheap.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;2d - Sococo&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are brave, 3d tools have some cool uses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Terf Always on - great for collaboration on data,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;VenueGen - setup a meeting for a fixed duration - great gestures for your Avatar&quot; Avayalive engage&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Advanced uses / Toolkits: 3DVirtual-Events, OpenWonderland (Java APIs), Jibe (JavaScript, C#, Boo), OpenSim (create objects dynamically at runtime)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Weaker recommendation: Second Life (expensive, branded for entertainment, but lots of content available for purchase), Blue Mars, On24, ProtonMedia, &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have some pictures and video examples of these platforms, but am a bit shy adding the link because i don't want to look like I'm spamming.  I've used all these tools and approaches to do distributed since 2009, so please do let me know if you'd like more info!  I hope I can save you some of the startup woes I hit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Soft Skills&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Don't forget the '&lt;strong&gt;soft skills&lt;/strong&gt;'.  Beyond tools, we need to remember culture, timezone, language, basic facilitation, etc etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Infrastructure Tools&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;These tools compliment normal web based task boards / Kanban boards, which you can display as usual in your browser, or often inside the spatial context.   Stuff like RallyDev, VersionOne, AgileZen, Trello, LeanKitKanban, SeeNowDo, Axosoft, Telerik, Sonic, RedCritter Tracker (which is gamified) are all key tools for those who can't gather around a white board filled with yellow stickies for their tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4884" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2012-10-27T20:58:00.910" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T20:58:00.910" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6555" CreationDate="2012-10-27T22:04:38.807" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most effective interview technique I have found for interviewing programmers is a white board session where we work through a real life case study followed by a programming test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The white board session gives a good idea of how well the candidate can articulate and share both their understanding of the problem and how they would approach solving it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The programming test gives an indication, just an indication mind, of how good their skills in the language they will need to use in the job are.  I like to use something language specific, such as the 'Elastic Racetrack' problem in Flash and an exercise where the candidate has to write some unit tests to test the behaviour of an API such as a simple sort method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I typically do programmer interviews as a pair consisting of a senior developer and me - the project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4885" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T22:04:38.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6555" CreationDate="2012-10-28T00:44:34.710" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're a project manager, then you may want to consider leaving the technical aspects of the interviewing to the team, or to the functional managers. As a project manager, even if you have technical skills, the technical and tactical details are really not your responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spending time interviewing can also take away from your duties of actually doing the project management work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you do participate in interviews, focus on the soft skills. As a project manager, you will have to work with this person, and you'll want to be sure that this person will be a team player and will be someone who you'll be able to work and communicate with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, it sounds like you may want to participate as an observer in the interview, mostly with the HR interview, and possibly as an observer in the technical interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T00:44:34.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6473" CreationDate="2012-10-28T18:49:28.397" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From your question it looks like you have a perceived problem; the velocity of the project is lower than you think it should be, and what you see as the cause; not all of your team members are self motivated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would start by testing the assumption that one is the cause of the other by sharing your concerns about velocity with the team and asking them what they think might be causing this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it transpires that motivation is indeed playing a part in this then ask your team what motivates them and why it is missing in the work they are doing on this project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Motivation can be both intrinsic and extrinsic, and these can coexist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They can probably tell you what gets them out of bed in the morning and keeps them coming in to work for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take your cue from them and work with them together to improve things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found this approach to be beneficial with the teams I have worked with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4885" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T18:49:28.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7858" CreationDate="2012-10-28T20:08:37.073" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I concur with &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/4271/codegnome&quot; title=&quot;codegnome&quot;&gt;codegnome&lt;/a&gt;'s answer above.  Kanban is about outcomes, what the team delivers in terms of &lt;em&gt;throughput&lt;/em&gt; and how fast they do this, measured as &lt;em&gt;cycle time&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could use this to support your financial analysis by asking 'Of our team's throughput, how much of that is bug fixes for product X, how much of it is new features for product X, new features for product Y etc?' and then charging your customer accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would urge you to think in these terms rather than measuring developer activity as such measurements do not come for free, they are an imposition on the team and as such can end up being incorrectly recorded and so less than useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4885" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T20:08:37.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6473" CreationDate="2012-10-28T20:27:39.370" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a mature Agile team,  bring up the issue with the team itself and let them self-organize/problem solve the issue by themselves. You can help them by providing metrics on how their solutions are working and direction on whether further experimentation is needed. But, they will be in the best position to solve the problem, and any solution they come to will already have the team's buy-in and therefore build-in incentives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T20:27:39.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7925" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-29T01:52:32.593" Score="9" ViewCount="378" Body="&lt;p&gt;My question is more of a management than a technical one. My boss gave me my first team project. I'm used to writing code by myself. This project will require that I manage a team including myself and a partner who has less experience than I do. This project is also training, since my boss seems to expect me to lead a team in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have experience working with someone, specially with people who is just starting in his career as a developer. I have experience writing code by myself, but so far lack the coordination and skill to lead such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to request for directions, books or articles that will help me get a head start on this endeavor and learn more in in this kinds of projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4892" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2012-11-18T14:28:06.730" LastActivityDate="2012-11-18T14:28:06.730" Title="Right Resources For First Time Managers" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;career&gt;&lt;roles&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7904" CreationDate="2012-10-29T11:59:09.060" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is already an excellent answer from Mark C. Wallace but I thought I'd add one more thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to balance the system a bit by using work in progress limits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment, dev is producing work at a faster rate than QA can test it.  Try set a work in progress limit on the dev process that will feed work into QA at a rate they can complete it, you will avoid having loads of work backing up in your QA stage.  You can also add a work in progress limit to the QA step so it's clear when QA is overloaded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you have 4 dev pairs, try setting a work in progress limit of 3 on the dev step and a work in progress limit of 2 on the QA step (1 being worked on, 1 queuing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will mean that your devs will have slack time since only 3 pairs can be doing dev at any one time.  This might seem like a bad idea but it's generally better to leave slack in the system rather than to keep producing work that then can't be kept up with by downstream steps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The devs on slack time could be looking at things like removing technical debt, spikes, live support, analysis on stories coming up etc that are still productive but won't clog up the QA step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, by forcing them to do nothing to contribute to the sprint while their colleagues are all working their proverbials off to complete stories, I'd hope that professional integrity would encourage them to get stuck into helping out with some test!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T11:59:09.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6653" CreationDate="2012-10-29T12:23:39.370" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From your description above it appears the focus of the meeting is tracking actuals against estimates.  This is not my understanding of the purpose and value of the Scrum daily standup meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather it is as you have described to use the structure of the three questions to get an idea of the current state of play.  The value of those questions is what you do with the answers.  Do they just provide a status report or are helping you with communication and co-ordination?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have only worked on one Scrum project, developing an application for a German Telco.  In this project I took on the role of 'Product Owner', I was based in London, UK, with the 'Scrum Master' and development team working in Dublin Ireland.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The value to me of the Scrum stand up, which we held as a conference call every day at 2pm, was to get daily feedback of what things were blocking the development team or needed clarification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That was my one and only Scrum project.  Once that project was in production the increased complexity tested the constraints of Scrum and I have since found Kanban to be a better fit for the work I do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside I would recommend taking a look at the debate on the value of estimation in software development.  This &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanagement.net/index.php/Blog/a_taste_of_lessons_11_agile_practices/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;David Anderson post&lt;/a&gt; on the subject is an interesting place to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4885" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T12:23:39.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7925" CreationDate="2012-10-29T13:46:31.547" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would argue whether two-person project requires extensive project management knowledge. Actually, it is more about some basic planning and organization and a lot of collaboration. Fortunately the latter mainly between two people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leaving aside a crucial part of collaboration with your peer, the rest of project management effort should likely boil down to a few areas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scope management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task organization&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product management/product ownership&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communication with clients and/or users&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your situation one or more may be less important then the others. You can see a bit more explanation of each these areas &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2011/04/project-management-one-man-project.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;in this post&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1339/how-do-you-project-manage-when-you-are-the-only-developer&quot;&gt;in this PMSE question&lt;/a&gt;. Context of these sources focuses on one-man project, yet most of the time, your situation should be very similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would add to these sources that in terms of task organization techniques and tools known under the name of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Getting Things Done&lt;/a&gt; (GTD) might be useful and at the same time they require little initial investment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of collaboration, with just two people, I'd just try to find it out experimentally what works for you two best. Be it pair programming all the time or splitting the project into two separate parts and working on them independently or whatever in the middle--as long as you talk one with the other you should soon find out which approach you like and which makes you effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Knowing which areas you want to focus at it is a good idea to address the knowledge gap. I would probably recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0932633439&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Peopleware&lt;/a&gt; and/or &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0596517718&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Making Things Happen&lt;/a&gt;. In both cases please do remember about your specific context, which is a very small team, as much information covered in books on project management typically address more complex environments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, the final advice: experiment with the way you work. Such a setup is a great sandbox to learn as you can adjust your methods, practices and tools rather easily. It's enough to convince the other person that it's a good idea to try this or that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T13:51:38.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7858" CreationDate="2012-10-29T14:20:54.713" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I'm the author of Breeze.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had a similar problem where I internally use Kanban for software development but still needed somehow to bill clients based on estimates and actual work done. So, being a developer, I made a simple tool called &lt;a href=&quot;http://letsbreeze.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Breeze&lt;/a&gt;. It's basically a Kanban board with time tracking and reports. Initially I called it Trello and Basecamp hybrid with time tracking and reporting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically you can add estimates and log work (also includes timer) for every card and you can then generate report based on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an ideal world I would like to drop the tracking and use pure agile development but it is not possible if you are primarily doing freelance development. Also it really depends on the client, if they insist on Gantt charts then you are stuck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4894" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2012-10-29T15:59:22.443" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T15:59:22.443" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7925" CreationDate="2012-10-29T14:22:53.523" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Pawel.  Don't over think this.  It is great to find and read on various 'how to' PM topics; however, project management has been a function of your work, and play, since you were a child.  Get organized, do a bit planning, think about things that can go wrong, assign tasks, and get to work.  I like his idea of experimenting, too.  With only a two-resource project, this is a great time to test some ideas, maybe things you pick up from the resources you find.  Just keep it simple!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T14:22:53.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7925" CreationDate="2012-10-29T15:48:40.487" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Managing projects requires two skill sets:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hard skills&lt;/strong&gt;. This includes all the good stuff that you learn from PMP or PRINCE2 training or reading any number of textbooks, things like how to set up a schedule, how to document risks, how to level resources, etc. These generate tangible outputs and so are relatively easy to learn and understand. And as David and Pawel indicates, they are also easy to abuse or overdo, especially in an environment that doesn't have mature PM practices. You need to tailor the outputs produced by these hard skills so that they meet the needs of the project without generating unnecessary bureaucratic overhead.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Soft skills&lt;/strong&gt;. This includes knowing how to manage conflict, how to motivate a team, how to act as a leader, when/how/to whom to communicate information, etc. These do not generate tangible inputs in the short term, but when applied well will go a long way to ensuring project success. They are not amenable to being learned or understood from a textbook, they are instead a huge part of on-the-job training and are what separate the experienced from inexperienced PM. I believe that you can &lt;strong&gt;NOT&lt;/strong&gt; afford to tailor the use of your soft skills, you have to use them full-bore all the time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that out of the way, the best (or at least most straight-forward) introduction to &quot;soft skills&quot; that I've read is &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.ca/books/about/Premonitions_of_the_Palladion_Project.html?id=uFAqhA4r5dUC&amp;amp;redir_esc=y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Premonitions of the Palladion Project&lt;/a&gt;. This is a short fable that defines a couple of dozen key lessons for new project managers that is easy to understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T15:48:40.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7925" CreationDate="2012-10-29T18:31:30.440" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The book list linked to above is great.  I would add to it Steve Maguire's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1556156502&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Debugging the Development Process: Practical Strategies for Staying Focused, Hitting Ship Dates, and Building Solid Teams&lt;/a&gt;  It is a book I come back to time and time again.  Here is his fundamental guideline for project leads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The project lead should ruthlessly eliminate any obstacles that keep the developers from the truly important work: improving the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What he is talking about here I now know to be Systems Thinking and Kaizen, two very current concerns but he was writing this back in 1994!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4885" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T18:31:30.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7933" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7946" CreationDate="2012-10-29T19:59:34.553" Score="2" ViewCount="150" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is so much literature about working with organizational hierarchies and methods to monitor them and measure performance, but in reality teams behave more like (heavily) cyclical graphs, especially in organizations that don't have a &quot;silo mentality&quot; and promote common ownership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any best practices for cyclical graphs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4897" LastActivityDate="2012-10-30T16:42:49.117" Title="Management techniques apply to hierarchies, but teams in real world are cyclical graphs" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;measurement&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7934" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7943" CreationDate="2012-10-29T21:50:17.283" Score="17" ViewCount="518" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are assigned a three month duration project at the end of the calendar year that has legal obligation of a finish by Jan 1.  The schedule is very aggressive with higher odds missing that date than hitting it.  The team is between 12 to 15 full-time staff.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the schedule is very tight, holidays and vacations that occur at the end of the year present a threat.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you approach scheduling the team during this time?  The team, by the way, is made up of contractors, sellers of services versus internal employees assigned to a project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this is a bit of a polling question but I hope we can entertain it a bit.  This is relevant to this time of the year, too!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2012-10-30T12:51:59.713" LastActivityDate="2012-10-31T07:30:02.923" Title="How to schedule a team during a time of many holidays, on a project with a tight deadline?" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7935" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-30T03:09:20.933" Score="-4" ViewCount="95" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an estimating contracts class. the assignment calls for bidding on a excavating job. I am not able to determine the of amount of time I will need a supervisor for, but the assignment calls for paying one. It gives the per hour amount and how many hours per day. I having trouble with where I get the info to determine the amount of days it will take for the whoe&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4899" LastActivityDate="2012-11-07T14:53:02.007" Title="estimating class homework" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-11-07T15:57:47.487" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7934" CreationDate="2012-10-30T04:08:36.347" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A project is made up of scope schedule and resources. It forms the basis of project management, called the flexibility matrix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;            Highly Flexible   Moderately Flexible   Not Flexible&#xA;Scope                              tick&#xA;Schedule                                                 tick                     &#xA;Resources         tick&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A smart project manager knows, that no one will give him this flexibility matrix. Nor can he share his flexibility matrix with anyone, not even his wife :). A smart project manager will know that he has to ask the right questions to the right people at the right place at the right time to construct this &lt;code&gt;secret&lt;/code&gt; flexibility matrix. A smart project manager will not pin people to what they say, but pin the project to what is &lt;code&gt;understood&lt;/code&gt; from what they say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its not a trick, its a art. Its a smooth river flowing like water. Take time to develop. This is one skill that is not taught &lt;code&gt;ANYWHERE&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest. Cool Down. Start to believe that &lt;code&gt;your neck is not on the line&lt;/code&gt;. Start to communicate with people outside of office, outside of their cubes, outside of their cabins, outside of their stressful work environments. Connect with them at a personal level. 50% issues will be resolved. Since people will start telling you the truth on your face. You will be able to make a few puzzles fit really well. Some you will have to talk to other people and make decisions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Develop your questioning skills. When you walk with these people for a cup of tea, coke ask questions, try to understand things that you did not care about. Kill that tough exterior of yours. Let people be approachable, stop doing what you are doing, and listen to people. Be ok getting disturbed. People will help you get the &lt;code&gt;secret&lt;/code&gt; flexibility matrix done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit : Kind of questions you need to ask&#xA;Scope : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why is this feature important ? Make a personal judgement about it and discuss it out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What if we don't deliver this feature ? Who is impacted ? Be careful when you ask this question. You should already know the answer to this question, but you should ask this question, state what you believe and tell them how important you think this feature is. Discussions again here.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you ask, what is the priority of this feature and complain about lack of time/resources to complete the work, I can bet you will get a response &quot;high priority&quot;. So a smarter question to ask is, what feature do you want us to complete first. Talk about sequencing, instead of priority. This always hits them in the face :). They have to tell you what is more important to them. Here be careful and dont ask stupid questions like, should I first sort the data or import the data :). &lt;code&gt;Sequencing&lt;/code&gt; instead of &lt;code&gt;Priority&lt;/code&gt; always does the trick.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kind of questions for schedule&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will this feature be used 10 days after release ? If the probabilility is low, can I live with this defect and deliver a patch after the main release ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many customers will be impacted by the loss of this part of the feature ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How soon will a customer identify the missing part of the feature ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4900" LastEditorUserId="4900" LastEditDate="2012-10-31T05:16:12.017" LastActivityDate="2012-10-31T05:16:12.017" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7937" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7939" CreationDate="2012-10-30T06:44:09.383" Score="13" ViewCount="23723" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am aware that the length of a Scrum Sprint can vary on a case to case basis. This raises the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can product releases be handled within the Sprint time-box?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How frequently can the release happen?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does Scrum have any rules that require releases only at the end of a Sprint?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does it affect the product, developers, and testers?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4901" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-11-02T14:37:32.420" LastActivityDate="2020-06-29T12:25:51.420" Title="How frequently can a release happen within a Scrum Sprint?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;release-plan&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7937" CreationDate="2012-10-30T08:56:24.583" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum originally didn't have anything related to releases, but fortunately it has been changed and there is a thing called &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20121022020332/http://www.scrumalliance.org/articles/441-the-value-of-release-planning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Release Planning&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;During this meeting the &lt;em&gt;Scrum Team&lt;/em&gt; and the &lt;em&gt;Product Owner&lt;/em&gt; sit together and see when the product can be released.&lt;/strong&gt; It is a high level planning meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality, the releases are set by the projects and the stakeholders. The &lt;em&gt;Scrum Team&lt;/em&gt; and the &lt;em&gt;Product Owner&lt;/em&gt; shall use this meeting to give a &lt;strong&gt;periodic feedback&lt;/strong&gt; to the stakeholders about the release. This feedback should contain information about the risks, scope (content) and possible impediments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The frequency of this meeting depends on the length of the &lt;em&gt;Sprints&lt;/em&gt; and the length of the original project. I didn't manage to find any data on the frequency, but I'd say have at least 3 meetings during a project - equally distributed on the length of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was the case when the release is &lt;em&gt;pushed&lt;/em&gt; to the team. If the team can decide on the releases then I'd refer to the original Scrum idea that &lt;strong&gt;the result of a &lt;em&gt;Sprint&lt;/em&gt; must be something shippable&lt;/strong&gt;, hence the release happens after each &lt;em&gt;Sprint Review Meeting&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frequent releases in a large context have a huge overhead, but the feedback received from the customers/users/stakeholders are very valuable. That's why teams should do Agile: have frequent feedback on their work to verify that they are on the right track, and without frequent releases it is hardly possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-29T12:25:51.420" LastActivityDate="2020-06-29T12:25:51.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7937" CreationDate="2012-10-30T08:56:33.717" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Typical approach&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum by-the-book assumes that you release at the end of iteration, then you demo the product to a client. &quot;Release&quot; and &quot;demo&quot; of course may mean different things depending on a product you build, e.g. back office app for big corporation versus an app directly addressed to end-users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most Scrum teams try to release at the end of timebox as it gives them more freedom in terms of how the work is done within iteration, e.g. they can start everything at the beginning of a sprint and finish stories only as the sprint end approaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Frequent releases&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you want to release more frequently, which I would personally encourage, feel free to do this, no matter what is the typical practice or what books says. Scrum, as any other method, is not a religion and shouldn't be treated dogmatic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to introduce (more) frequent releases since:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They shorten feedback loops--you learn what you did right, what you did wrong, and what should be changed sooner--so you can act on this feedback improving further work faster.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It also means that you need to automate most, in not the whole, process so you get closer to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_integration&quot;&gt;continuous integration&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another thing is it encourages smaller batches of work, which usually is safer way to increment a product, as the smaller the change the smaller the odds that something is going to blow up.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, there are methods that are decoupling planning, release and retrospective cycles. In this case we are talking about cadence. Planning cadence doesn't have to be the same as release cadence or retro cadence is. It's just Scrum that made them so. &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2012/07/cadences-iterations.html&quot;&gt;Read more about cadence versus iteration here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, change to frequent releases affects the team as the tools you use usually have to evolve. You can spend a couple of hours to release a product if you're doing it bi-weekly. If you're doing it every single day, you can't. The good thing is that you may make this transition evolutionary, shortening release cycle step by step, e.g. from bi-weekly to weekly, and looking for pain points and addressing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2012-10-30T08:56:33.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1076" CreationDate="2012-10-30T11:19:48.903" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The title of this question 'Discerning estimate validity' raises the question of the validity of estimating full stop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend this post by David Anderson on the subject:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanagement.net/index.php/Blog/a_taste_of_lessons_11_agile_practices/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://agilemanagement.net/index.php/Blog/a_taste_of_lessons_11_agile_practices/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is my personal experience.  I have stopped using estimates for two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Variation in the estimates due to the 'non fungible' nature of developers - See Tom De Marco's Book 'Slack' for more on the myth of fungible resource.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time taken to produce the estimates which could be spent doing more valuable work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can mitigate against the first point by using team estimating methods such as Planning Poker as suggested in the answer above but this this will still leave you with an average estimate. If the actual work is done by a developer whose capability to do the work falls below the estimate then the estimate will be misleading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the second point, lets say you average a throughput of 30 stories a week. Each story needs five minutes to estimate&#xA;You have now spent two and a half hours of the whole team's time estimating.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the estimates the team produced in this time could be demonstrated to be accurate and so provide a useful metric for steering the project then that would be time well spent.  My experience has been that they are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of estimating I prefer to take the Kanban approach which is to make probabalistic forecasts based on the historic throughput of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4885" LastActivityDate="2012-10-30T11:19:48.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6659" CreationDate="2012-10-30T12:04:12.287" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I've understood your question properly you have two issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The problem the company wants to address is improving your effectiveness at 'going from vision to solution while starting up projects'&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your efforts to address the first problem is impeded by a lack of interest from your peers, i.e. the other two PMs, based on their feeling disempowered; 'their visions will be trumped by the director' as you put it and their not seeing there being a problem that needs solving in the first place; 'they have learned enough on their own to circumvent the problems'&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One approach might be to use &lt;a href=&quot;http://impactmapping.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Impact Mapping&lt;/a&gt;.  This technique starts by calling out &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; you are doing the project, in your case it sounds like this would be a specific improvement you want to make to the business and then maps this to &lt;strong&gt;who&lt;/strong&gt; can help or hinder it's success.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It then asks &lt;strong&gt;how&lt;/strong&gt; these people can help achieve the goal or how they might obstruct it and finally ends with &lt;strong&gt;what&lt;/strong&gt; the project is going to do to bring about the desired outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could set up a workshop where you, the consultant, the director and the other two PMs produce an Impact Map for an upcoming project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would allow you to assess the effectiveness of this technique for your business and should engender some useful conversations between you all as stakeholders.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would provide an opportunity for your peers to share their past learnings and demonstrate how applicable they are to upcoming work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By working together to articulate the 'vision' of the project and producing a public, shared artefact; i.e. the Impact Map, this should go some way to mitigating your peers fear that their visions will be trumped by the director because you will all have an agreed, shared statement of the vision and how you propose to realise it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4885" LastActivityDate="2012-10-30T12:04:12.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7942" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7944" CreationDate="2012-10-30T12:29:11.110" Score="5" ViewCount="3316" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our Program Management office is interested in identifying tasks where the projected execution differs from the planned execution.  MS Project's &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project-help/duration-variance-task-field-HP045305004.aspx&quot;&gt;Duration Variance&lt;/a&gt;&quot; field calculates the difference between the baseline duration and the planned duration &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;( ( [Baseline Finish] - [Baseline start] ) - ( [Finish] - [Start]) )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't contain any information about the execution variance. &#xA;*Aside: I know that I could simply ignore [Actual Start] / [Actual Finish], and treat the Baseline as Planned and the Start/Finish as the execution, but I've got legacy assumptions to deal with. *&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried to build a custom field [Projected Duration] such that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  [Finish] - [Actual Start]&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also tried&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  ProjDateDiff([Actual Start],[Finish])&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Aside: I'm aware that I would need some error checking to deal with Actual Start = NA, but let's solve the simple problem first&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of those are returning &quot;0&quot; duration for tasks with known values for both fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I calculate execution variance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2012-10-30T12:50:23.387" LastActivityDate="2015-06-11T14:01:19.027" Title="How to calculate execution variance?" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7934" CreationDate="2012-10-30T12:38:38.093" Score="6" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make sure that you have talked with the client and explained the truth of the situation to them. The tight deadline is not likely to be met, and they should consider what alternatives may be possible (reduced scope, temporary solutions, getting a delay to the effect of the legislation, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Take a look at the work to be done. Can any of it be tackled by people lacking specific domain / technical knowledge? If so, consider bringing on people to tackle just those pieces while your experts tackle the pieces that need their attention. Make sure that you can effectively coordinate any added team members.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you haven't already, I'd talk to the team as individuals and make sure they understand the situation. Ask them for suggestions on alternative approaches that can save time. We had a project once where two days of an engineer experimenting with an alternative approach turned into saving 33% of the development time on a project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have repetitive tasks been automated? This is particularly applicable to testing, but also applies to any other activities that reduce the effectiveness of your experts.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask what can be done to make working more at this time of year more palatable. See if vacations can be delayed until after the deadline. See if holiday time off can be moved. Make sure that they can see a light at the end of the tunnel and that this isn't going to continue forever. Hopefully you have already established a good relationship with these individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastActivityDate="2012-10-30T12:38:38.093" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7942" CreationDate="2012-10-30T12:45:21.947" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Duration variance calculates the delta between the baseline duration and ACTUAL duration.  All variances--SV, CV, FV, VAC, DV, etc.--calculate the delta between baseline and actual.  So, no custom calculation necessary.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will likely need a custom calculation if you are trying to determine the delta between baseline duration and latest revised estimate (LRE) duration.  I don't think there is a out-of-the-box calculation for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-10-30T12:45:21.947" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7934" CreationDate="2012-10-30T12:55:50.640" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Conduct a network analysis. Fast track where you can. Crash along the critical path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-10-30T12:55:50.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7933" CreationDate="2012-10-30T13:13:34.207" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you looked at Systems Thinking at all?  In its application to work it addresses issues of common ownership of &lt;strong&gt;purpose&lt;/strong&gt;, how you &lt;strong&gt;measure&lt;/strong&gt; the effectiveness of an organisation in achieving that purpose and the &lt;strong&gt;methods&lt;/strong&gt; they use to improve that effectiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was introduced to Systems Thinking through the work of John Seddon who is focused on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.systemsthinking.co.uk/2-1.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Systems Thinking for Service Organisations&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Karl Scotland writes about Systems Thinking and Software Development here with specific reference to John Seddon: &lt;a href=&quot;http://availagility.co.uk/2010/02/25/systems-thinking-the-vanguard-method-and-software-development/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Systems Thinking, The Vanguard Method and Software Development&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To your point of &quot;trying to measure the performance of teams, by monitoring the total output in specific fields.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you come across Don Reinertsen's criteria of a good metric?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He sets these out in his book 'Managing the Design Factory' as being simple, relevant and focusing on leading indicators, in your case future performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the software projects I have worked on the two most useful metrics I have found are taken from Kanban; Throughput and Cycle Time.  Throughput is how many pieces of value work, features, stories etc, a team produces in a given time period.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cycle time is how long it typically takes for these pieces of value to be realised; measured from the point they are pulled in by the team to start working on them to the point where they are delivered to the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are very much focused on output; 'What has actually been produced?' and performance 'How long does it take to produce it?' so may be a good match for what you are looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4885" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2012-10-30T16:42:49.117" LastActivityDate="2012-10-30T16:42:49.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7896" CreationDate="2012-10-30T18:00:25.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is a good practice to define browsers you are developing for as part of the teams definition of done at both the story and release level. E.g. All acceptance tests are passing in IE 8,9 and Chrome (story level); All features and functionality are working in browsers X, Y, Z (release). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a link to a good simple list for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rallydev.com/toolkits/definition-done-toolkit?dest=node/602&amp;amp;type=download&amp;amp;ct=rally-ext&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;creating your DoD&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1159" LastActivityDate="2012-10-30T18:00:25.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7852" CreationDate="2012-10-30T19:45:42.853" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe I've missed it in other answers, but I think one of the key pieces is to gain a better understanding of what the client is actually trying to achieve at a high level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Measureable goals&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increase overall market size?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take users away from competitors?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prevent current users from leaving?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be seen as the best solution in the space?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;whatever else they are trying to achieve, as long as it is measureable in some fashion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Constraints&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What can't they do?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there regulations that they need to follow?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;User personas &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who are they targeting? (this needs to provide insight, not just a few words)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the context does this person use this product in?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Building this with the client can help not only point you in the right direction, but will often help get the client to think (and express) more about what the final product should look like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastActivityDate="2012-10-30T19:45:42.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7934" CreationDate="2012-10-31T02:19:44.207" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Prioritize the list of duties and finishes the duties with the highest priority first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4714" LastActivityDate="2012-10-31T02:19:44.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7934" CreationDate="2012-10-31T07:30:02.923" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a story from 2009. We were in the similar situation and my bosses offered the following deal to the teams: they can have extra money for their extra work during this period, plus their vacation days will be shifted to the next year with some extra days (the local law allowed them to do it, and it is still possible if the company can prove that the situation was an emergency and risked the business).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that the money based motivation is a bad practice and one can see that story as a good example of it, however at that time, nobody really saw it that way. The teams knew that there are problems and there was a some kind of diversity. Certain people were happy to get some extra money, and since they had no family, they went for it. Others liked the extra time and went for a longer vacation in January.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've learned a couple of things during that period:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;transparency really works&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;people are mature enough to make decisions on their own and can make sacrifices &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the bad effect of the money motivation kicks in when there is no real transparency and the managers have no other tools or skills&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm guessing here, but maybe your contractors would love to earn some extra money at the end of the year and show good faith so that they'll get some extra work in the future. The internal employees may be loyal enough that they actually care about the company and they are willing to make some sacrifices. Again, I'm guessing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-10-31T07:30:02.923" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7951" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-31T11:29:03.917" Score="6" ViewCount="883" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're a webdesign agency with numerous simultaneous projects, and a lot of people working on different projects. We already have an online PM-system which works fairly well, but we'd like a physical board to represent the current status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any specific technique/structure I should use in this case? Below is a description of what data we'd like to have projected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note that our online PM-system has all the details, which people can look up there - so the project board doesn't need to encode everything&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Need to have info:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Current projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Upcomming projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who is project manager for a given project?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who is currently working on a given project?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Must be easy to see which projects a given person is currently working on&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Nice to have info:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When is a project due?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How far are we with a given project?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the upcoming projects for a given person?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4911" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-10-31T19:35:58.697" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T10:38:49.833" Title="Physical board/overview for multiple projects with many participants" Tags="&lt;multi-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7951" CreationDate="2012-10-31T13:29:28.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming that most of your staff are co-located then a high level physical overview of your current projects could be useful - it helps people understand current resource constraints and &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; protect those who are approaching deadlines from unnecessary interruptions. I wouldn't want to invest too much time in it though - some people will never use it and those who aren't in the office will just call up and ask anyway so you could be duplicating work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest listing the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Upcoming projects&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project Name | Start date&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In progress&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project Name | Due date | PM | Team members | Progress (as % or maybe just a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_light_rating_system&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;RAG status&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anything more than that seems like overkill to me - keep the detailed stuff in your online system. If you make it too complex people won't (in my experience) use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2012-10-31T13:29:28.120" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7953" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7956" CreationDate="2012-11-01T04:52:46.550" Score="5" ViewCount="242" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a small team of 6 developers. We usually complete 4 to 5 user stories in a given sprint. Typically every person takes a complete user story and some take a couple of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem arises when there we need to continue the same user stories in the next sprint. A dev team is willing to work only on the same user story which they have started previously, stating that they know it very well and will finish it easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to keep all developers informed about all user stories? If it is covered during sprint planning meeting then the meeting will take more than a day to discuss everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4901" LastEditorUserId="89" LastEditDate="2012-11-01T17:03:41.323" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T00:34:01.643" Title="How to keep all the developers on the same page in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7954" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7958" CreationDate="2012-11-01T04:55:55.430" Score="21" ViewCount="1831" Body="&lt;p&gt;In real world, business initiatives always take higher priority as there are associated ROIs and deliver something tangible to the users. But there are technical initiatives and projects that need to be done to keep up with the different versions of software, upgrading to a newer platforms, architecture re-factoring etc., &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can we plan, prioritize and manage such competing initiatives?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a model to quantify technical debt and its impact to the business?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4731" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2012-11-01T11:11:27.130" LastActivityDate="2016-07-19T22:45:24.223" Title="How do you manage technical debt?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7954" CreationDate="2012-11-01T06:29:39.733" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Technical Debt isn't a PM's Responsibility:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a project manager, the short answer is, you don't. This is really a job for the technical team, which includes functional managers and the actual developers working on the project.  If you're doing project management correctly, then you should be getting all of your estimates from the developers themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if it becomes a noticeable detriment to productivity, it may become a project management issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Focus Primarily on Business Goals:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, here is where this can get tricky and why sometimes it is helpful for a project manager to have enough experience in the subject matter to know the difference between a good estimate and a bad estimate. New developers, fresh out of college and eager to apply their newfound knowledge, will sometimes be the first to suggest a complete rewrite to the database layer because it's a cluttered mess. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, the job may have been to write a feature that lets the customer service team sort customer data by creation date, something that helps the team improve retention efforts, but this eager dev attempts to take the issue scope to another level. By prioritizing technical debt the wrong way, the actual feature being developed is removed from focus, and management is justified in stopping this in its tracks. If revenue isn't being generated from a development operation, then there's a problem with the balance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pay Back Technical Debt One Piece at a Time:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a developer, I've worked with some code that I've had a pretty strong opinion about. When I told my project manager about it, he said he didn't care. He didn't want to think about it, and that it was my job to include this in the estimates in a way that didn't conflict with business goals. I've been doing that ever since, and I manage my own technical debt while still keeping management happy with the progress. In many cases, it actually makes the development faster because the impediments that would normally slow me down are removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, the solution to managing technical debt and balancing it with company initiatives is to break it up into manageable, bite-sized chunks. If the database layer needs a rewrite, start with the new feature. Add it in a manner that scales, and then next time a new feature is added fix a little bit more. You should only commit to paying back a small portion of technical debt so that it doesn't stand out as a red flag to management, similar to how you should only pay down enough of your debt to where you can still pay your rent and eat your meals. ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the way to balance technical debt against business goals and  initiatives is to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/02/paying-down-your-technical-debt.html&quot;&gt;refactor as you go&lt;/a&gt;. The code will never be perfect, and that isn't the goal. Instead, the goal is to manage the technical debt to keep it from becoming an impediment, because when it impedes progress and becomes a threat to the project, then it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a project management issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T06:29:39.733" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7953" CreationDate="2012-11-01T07:58:26.307" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the business point of view, their reasoning is correct, if one wants to avoid waste created by &lt;a href=&quot;http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2012/08/waste-in-software-development/#muda&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;transportation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm guessing here, but your question might have to do something with cross functional teams. If so, I'd say that &lt;strong&gt;there is a difference between a team, which is capable to adapt to new circumstances and deliver, and an individual who knows everything about the product&lt;/strong&gt;. Scrum is about the first case, it is about a team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you are concerned that small silos around certain features are about to be built inside your team, you can demonstrate why it is good to &lt;em&gt;share&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;switch&lt;/em&gt; user stories (until it doesn't risk the delivery dates). Here are a couple of reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the quality of the feedback is better&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it is easier to get help with technical issues&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the integration of the user stories is easier&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the planning meeting becomes more effective&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest to have a retrospective, where you'll try determine the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;bus factor&lt;/a&gt; of the team (&lt;em&gt;how many members should leave the team in order to make the delivery impossible&lt;/em&gt;). &lt;strong&gt;Take the last Sprint as an example, and pick one team member, and ask the team what would have happened if got removed from the team in the middle of the Sprint?&lt;/strong&gt; Have a discussion, and put down the findings. Then, pick another member, and do the same. Repeat this until the team concludes that it is impossible to continue Sprint. Collect the findings, and let them figure out how to increase the bus factor by one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T07:58:26.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7954" CreationDate="2012-11-01T10:03:34.990" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would start by &lt;strong&gt;Identifying the ROI that the technical debt delivers&lt;/strong&gt; and discussing this with the business.  If you can describe both value work and what John Seddon calls 'Failure Demand' in the same terms and using the same metrics then you can agree how to split your capacity across them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example - Architectural Refactoring&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a piece of configuration information which is baked into an app (I know, I know...).  This config can go unchanged for weeks and then suddenly need changing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the config doesn't get changed then ads stop appearing in an application and we stop making revenue from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quick and dirty solution is to change the config in the code and redeploy.  This is repetitive and error prone and ultimately not sustainable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sustainable solution would be to factor our the config from the code and provide a mechanism for changing it independently from the code.  This will take longer the first time round but will then make future config changes much quicker and less error prone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Guess which one we have done twice already?  That's right the quick and dirty.  This is because the ROI on the feature is immediately visible or rather, the Cost of Delay were the work not to be done is very high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sell we have to make to the business is, let us spend time refactoring this to address the technical debt.  That way, next time we need to change the config it will be quicker than it currently is, so quicker ROI in the future, but we will need to take some capacity away now to address the technical debt.  It is deferred ROI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example - Architectural Refactoring as complexity increases&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it is hard to describe the technical debt to the business, to them it is just an implementation detail or something you should not have accrued in the first place.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, as something grows in complexity it requires refactoring.  In this case I do one of two things.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I either cover the cost of the refactoring in the delivery of the feature which has required us to go back and look at the code in question.  I always call this out to the business either to tell them that the feature will take longer to deliver than similar features have in the past, because we have reached a point where we need to refactor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again I describe this to them as deferred ROI. There will be a greater upfront cost but by doing the refactoring now, future work in this area will be cheaper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other approach I take is to treat the development team as a customer of itself and reserve a percentage of capacity, agreed with the business, in each iteration for reduction of technical debt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example - Platform Upgrade&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the example you give of upgrading to a newer platform I would again look at how you can describe this in terms of ROI, or impact on ROI.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the existing platform is no longer supported by the vendor then the business is exposed to the risk of defects discovered in that version of the platform not getting fixed and so impacting on business functionality which depends on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This impact will be an increase in failure demand, that is, customers will be less able to get value out of what you as a business provide as problems with the underlying platform are getting in the way.  This can be articulated as lost revenue, or potential lost revenue so the ROI is to upgrade the underlying platform.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prioritising such an upgrade can again be done by looking at the Cost of Delay.  If you were not to upgrade the platform would there be any impact on your existing products and services?  Would it prevent you from launching new ones?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If problems in the existing platform are generating failure demand now then the Cost of Delay is high and you have a compelling ROI based argument for doing the work sooner rather than later.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are currently unaffected by problems in the existing platform but need to upgrade in order to add new functionality then the ROI of the new functionality will determine the ROI of upgrading the platform.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4885" LastEditorUserId="4885" LastEditDate="2012-11-01T10:18:58.110" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T10:18:58.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7954" CreationDate="2012-11-01T10:52:25.163" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to pick on @jmort253's answer, because I disagree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ROI initiatives aren't the only kinds of project, nor should they be. Chris Matts (the analyst behind BDD, Feature Injection and Real Options) found that 80% of one of his CIO's projects were concerned with protecting existing customer revenue, rather than trying to increase it - essentially, stopping their customers leaving for a competitor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of projects also simply provide &lt;em&gt;options&lt;/em&gt; for the future. These are often very hard to price, but very, very expensive if they're not done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most technical initiatives are done for this reason; to provide the business with options to change in the future. Some of them have more direct business concerns which are more easily phrased, like increasing current system performance to cope with growing demand. Others may be relevant to different parts of the business - changing from Fortran to Python to attract better talent and make it easier to recruit - but in the long run, that's still about having options in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Technical Debt is, and should be, a PM's concern&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chris Matts and Steve Freeman &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.higherorderlogic.com/2010/07/bad-code-isnt-technical-debt-its-an-unhedged-call-option/&quot;&gt;came up with a lovely analogy&lt;/a&gt;. &quot;It's not like a credit card. It's like an unhedged call option. It's like you've promised to sell all these chocolate Santas at Christmas, and then suddenly one year the price of chocolate is really high, and you have to sell the Santas anyway because you made that commitment, and now you're bust.&quot; As long as nobody makes the call, technical debt doesn't matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that every project has something new about it, or that project wouldn't be happening (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0932633609&quot;&gt;&quot;Waltzing with Bears&quot;&lt;/a&gt;). So every project has changes that get made as discoveries happen as a result of feedback from the new thing (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://lizkeogh.com/2012/03/11/cynefin-for-devs/&quot;&gt;the complex domain in Cynefi&lt;/a&gt;n). And every project is therefore seriously at risk from being called.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Every project is also difficult to estimate for this reason; you can't estimate something you've never done before.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The option to change is usually an unstated a business goal&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I worked with one company that had a single class of 10,000 lines that took Visual Studio 5 minutes to load. When the business found out what poor quality code had been produced, they said, &quot;Why would you ever do that? We expected you to push back if we were making you do that!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This unstated goal is also, usually, the &lt;em&gt;core goal&lt;/em&gt; of most projects which are replacing legacy systems. The legacy systems have become too unwieldy, and can't be changed to meet new requirements and architectural demand, so a new system is created. If I had a shiny English pound for every time I've seen a replacement system team abandon the core goal in order to meet some arbitrary deadline, I wouldn't need to work again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By calling out this unstated goal as an explicit one, everyone involved on the project can talk about it rather than assuming it's happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Educate the business about the cost of technical debt&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technical debt only happens in the face of time pressure (or as a result of bad habit or lack of skill, which are a different problem, solved by having time to learn how to do the job well... so, time pressure).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By keeping track of the growing cost of the debt and making the business aware of it, you can help to show them the value of the options they're losing. This could include things like your best developers leaving, and the cost of re-hiring; how much extra time the devs reckon it took to create a new feature as a result of technical debt; how much more effective the team is when they're given the chance to take pride in their work instead of bowing to business pressure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also educate them about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ebizq.net/blogs/agile_enterprise/2009/11/dont-fall-in-the-alignment-trap.php&quot;&gt;the alignment trap&lt;/a&gt;. &quot;Companies in which IT was highly aligned with business but not effective were considerably worse off than companies in which IT was less aligned and merely kept the systems running.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pay back technical debt one piece at a time&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this place I agree with @jmort253. It's even better if you can avoid falling into debt in the first place, but usually there are different skill sets on a team, people learning to code well, etc. - so having the ability to refactor as you go and help educate other developers is more important than getting it right up-front.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team feel pressured to churn out new features, though, they'll very quickly abandon the technical debt. It can't be seen or measured easily, and as such is usually the first victim of any pressure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A PM's responsibility in this situation is to push back, educate, and help the business cut scope instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2012-11-17T14:08:51.993" LastActivityDate="2012-11-17T14:08:51.993" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7954" CreationDate="2012-11-01T11:26:50.620" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fascinating discussion, and very relevant to me.  I believe that technical debt is a PM's concern. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One could argue that a project is a coordinated effort to produce a specific outcome/change; if the project produces the outcome, the project is successful, and technical debt doesn't enter into the equation. But I think that is shortsighted; at a minimum, the PM is obliged during the closeout procedures to document lessons learned and update the corporate process assets.  Technical debt should fall into that category.  Beyond that, the PM has an ethical obligation to do the best for the company within the constraints, and leaving a company saddled with unknown, undocumented technical debt is unconscionable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively we could consider that technical debit is a quality control problem. Technical debt is a aberration that falls within control limits, but if it can be eliminated, the quality (and presumably value) of the product rises. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multiple ways to look at the problem, but each of them convinces me that although the PM can ignore technical debt, prudence dictates that the PM estimate, document and manage technical debt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the key challenge is establishing the value of technical debt. I think that companies/industries/teams should establish reference values and refine as they go. Just as the PM is obliged to assess &amp;amp; estimate the impact of every proposed change on schedule/scope/quality, the PM should assess &amp;amp; estimate the impact of technical debt. I think that an interesting corrallary to @Jmort253's question is &quot;Change proposals go to the CCB. Who is accountable for changes that are intrinsically outside the scope of the project?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said, excellent, thought provoking question.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T11:26:50.620" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7960" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-11-01T11:31:40.297" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technical Debt (also known as design debt or code debt) is a term coined by Ward Cunningham to describe the cumulative consequences of corners being cut throughout a software project’s design and development. The basic idea is that a development team, over time, cuts corners due to lack of skill, laziness or pressure, which then manifests itself as a large backlog of technical inefficiencies that needs &quot;paying off&quot; in the future. Technical debt encompasses issues related to the code base, development environment, platform and libraries, architecture and design, and test automation, among others. The impact on the project includes reduced velocity, recruiting difficulties, and high defect rates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2012-11-01T12:56:13.963" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T12:56:13.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7961" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-11-01T11:31:40.297" Score="0" Body="This tag is for questions that are related to Technical Debt which describes the cumulative consequences of corners being cut throughout a software project’s design and development." OwnerUserId="1615" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2012-11-01T12:55:09.457" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T12:55:09.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7954" CreationDate="2012-11-01T13:20:59.057" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tend to disagree with the basic assumption that technical initiatives are not business initiatives. They may be different from rolling out a new product or an advertising campaign, but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They have a business benefits... be it regulatory compliance, improving efficiencies, making the customer experience better, etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They have business costs... training, systems development, etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They have business risks... what if stakeholders don't like the changes, what if their costs are more than expected, what if their benefits are less, etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where technical initiatives tend to have problems is that they aren't easily understood by decision makers who tend to come from the marketing/sales/&quot;business&quot; side of the house. Basically they aren't as &quot;sexy&quot; as a new marketing campaign or partnership. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best approach to getting a better focus on &quot;technical debt&quot; is to do a thorough business case for addressing it. How much will addressing the debt cost in time, money and effort? What is the payback period given the expected labor savings, increased sales, increased customer retention, increased market share, etc once the initiative is implemented? How does this compare to the costs and benefits of maintaining the status quo? Getting this information together will take some time and effort, but if it is done well it should be obvious to you whether or not the technical debt needs to be paid &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt; or if payment can be deferred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T13:20:59.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7904" CreationDate="2012-11-01T14:02:24.897" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;An excellent set of answers so far.  I just want to add this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0321803027&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How Google Tests Software&lt;/a&gt;.  This quote sums up their goal for balancing development and QA:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Quality is not equal to test.  Quality is achieved by putting development and test into a blender and mixing them until one is indistinguishable from the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has been my experience.  In my role at YouView where we were building the UI for a Set Top Box we had an excellent test team but until we made them part of the development team; working with them in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acceptancetesting.info/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Specification Workshops&lt;/a&gt; before development begun and releasing functionality to them early and often for feedback we had a similarly dysfunctional relationship to the one you describe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting the right collaborative relationship between developers and testers has in my experience been fundamental to raising to quality of the software being produced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4885" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T14:02:24.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7964" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7973" CreationDate="2012-11-01T15:14:25.063" Score="19" ViewCount="9177" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a way to make it easier to perform planning poker on a virtual team (i.e. a team that is not co-located with one another).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Requirements for a successful planning poker:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Since we're distributed, how can I do something that works well with a phone conversation?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I want to make sure this is easy for everyone, as in Easy to use - get in, get the work done, get out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't want to have to track story details.  We'll have a discussion going on over the phone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another challenge we face is people are on multiple platforms, such as (i.e. desktop, mobile, tablet, Windows, Mac, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The obvious answer here is the tool found at &lt;a href=&quot;http://planningpoker.com&quot;&gt;Planning Poker&lt;/a&gt;, but this seems a bit heavy for my needs.  I don't want to make my team members sign up for an account and entering the stories seems like a bit too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We've tried things like holding chat sessions online with everyone, but the process gets a little biased by the fact that other people can see the inputs of others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What else could I do to hold a successful planning poker session with virtual teams?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4918" LastEditorUserId="25" LastEditDate="2012-11-02T13:27:08.620" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T00:45:51.127" Title="Planning poker on virtual teams" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;planning-poker&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7964" CreationDate="2012-11-01T16:17:51.293" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simplest thing I can think of is a &lt;strong&gt;simple chat room&lt;/strong&gt;. You set up a server, our just Skype, then the participants log in and when there is the time they enter a number and that's it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T16:17:51.293" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7904" CreationDate="2012-11-01T19:12:19.507" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wonder how sophisticated your automated testing facilities are. If not particularly good, then there may be a real benefit in investing time and effort into this area, as the payback will be rapid and substantial. You indicate in one of your comments that you have a month long regression testing period before every release: this sounds very significant indeed, and although I don't know your environment, it seems that if this could be reduced, through aggressively automating your test cycles, you would reap real benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In his book &quot;Agile Project Management&quot;, Jim Highsmith talks a lot about &quot;ruthless automated testing&quot;, and states &quot;Experience has shown that the biggest difference between mature and immature agile teams lies in their commitment to ruthless automated testing&quot;. You may not entirely agree, but it is worth considering the implications of this statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another topic from the same book refers to getting the right people. It's a hard point to make, and harder to follow through on, but you seem to have some issues with your people. Maybe that's another key area on which to focus, at least in the short term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T19:12:19.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7967" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7994" CreationDate="2012-11-02T00:31:59.217" Score="4" ViewCount="472" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team consists of 4 people&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Myself&lt;/strong&gt; (Division Director, Senior Developer and Project Manager (adhoc PM))&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Emp1&lt;/strong&gt; (Data Administrator/Data Entry for entire agency)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Emp2&lt;/strong&gt; (Junior Developer - Have not hired yet)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Emp3&lt;/strong&gt; (Assistant Salesforce Administrator / Assistant Developer - Have not hired yet)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Overview:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The agency I work for consists of 7 divisions. My division (Data Services) is responsible for Data Collection, Data Entry, new Development, and maintaining existing web applications (total of 5 sites including Salesforce for 70 users). I'm currently the only one developing, maintaining, and administrating all sites including Salesforce. I'm also the one responsible for all of my staff and can put together any kind of team that I need, but with only the resources for hiring 3 employees. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why I want to use Scrum:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to put together a Scrum team because our projects change often, and randomly due to politics. So, with traditional management I found that I was starting over and wasting a lot of time re-writing requirements only to have them change in the middle of development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My Issue:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the resources listed above, can I successfully pull off a Scrum team? The reason I'm concerned is because I'm the one juggling the Scrum Master role, as well as Salesforce development, .NET development, and managing my staff. Granted I will have a Junior Developer and Assistant Salesforce Admin, that will take some time to get them up to speed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to sum it up, is this possible without jeopardizing conceptual control? What I mean by this is; with the types of resources and non-dedicated Scrum Master (since I also have a few others roles) am I high risk for failure approaching using Scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4921" LastEditorUserId="4921" LastEditDate="2012-11-02T19:13:14.560" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T16:58:27.550" Title="Hiring new team with limited resources using Scrum" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7953" CreationDate="2012-11-02T00:34:01.643" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps I'm missing the point here, but in my experience this is at the core of Scrum:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For starters, it is on the variety of skills that the team finds its strength&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is on the coming together of the minds that better solutions are found, not just nice solutions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll try to reverse engineer your question a bit, and then seek to land the answer you might be looking for. I hope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Allow me to clarify the afore mentioned points a bit further:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Typically every person takes a complete user story&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Through such statement—as seen on the context of your question—it seems each member takes on the many aspects of a user story on their own. Such idea puzzles me of course, cause if your team has variety of skills, each user story should be touched by as many hands as needed in order to drive it home safely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The simplest of user stories might merit the brush of a designer, the pen of a copywriter, the mind of a back-end developer and the expertise of a front-end guru; all skills diversely spread over the members of your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, you must be endowed with a powerful squadron of &quot;I can do it all myself&quot; Rambo Developers, who can do design, copy, DB entities, server side and client side code. That, or perhaps you are missing the power of a team: its diversity, and the coming together of each member's strengths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that's where the strength of a team lies, not the strength of Agile and Scrum per sé.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If it is covered during sprint planning meeting then the meeting will take more than a day to discuss everything&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As stated on my second point, it is by the coming together of many backgrounds, skills and ideas that great solutions come about. The perfect time for them to shine the most is precisely during the planning meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A user story is not the same as a requirement. It is meant to be brief and concise, providing an scenario and a use case with it. It is NOT a recipe or set of instructions; it is a problem, a feature, the seed of something that might be but which hasn't been entirely figured out yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A product owner comes and bluntly states: &quot;As a user, I'll like for pictures in my gallery to stop getting stretched out&quot;. A simple enough use case, but hardly an statement you can say places the dot atop every &lt;strong&gt;&quot;i&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An architect might come and fancy a great solution for it; but he is not day in and day out in the code, so he might miss something out in his fancy solution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A tech lead might come and try to use a cannon to kill a mosquito, but that may be a product of being too close to the code day in and day out to lift up his sights and look at a simple enough solution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A designer might not know much about how to code the code, but he knows about pictures.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, Scrum stands out from the pack because of these brief lapses where the team comes together NOT just to apply a solution, but to dream it up as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rest asure, you are bound to get some resistance trying to convince everyone that it is through these planning meetings that you are going to be saving more time than anything else, especially when they drag for much longer than they are used to. Amongst the first arguments you'll get is: &quot;wouldn't it be better if we spent this time coding and... being productive?&quot; At any rate, I know I did. It was only after they had tried everything else, fallen behind several times, failed to get everybody on the same page, and repeatedly underestimated User Stories, that they came back... this time willing to follow along. After all, they didn't have much else to lose :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever we have applied Scrum correctly good results have not failed to follow shortly after. Instead of getting burnt for trying to borrow the team's time for a couple of hours, now we might run for 4 hours straight and nobody frowns at it. In their own words: &quot;this is good, there are no surprises anymore; everyone knows what everything is about, what everything is for, and what is expected of them.&quot; How so? Well, they took part of the solution. That aided in two fronts at once: &lt;em&gt;being truly productive&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;keeping them engaged during such long meetings&lt;/em&gt;; a true win-win situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In Short&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following a Scrum methodology, and taking advantage of the strengths it seeks to foster&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you won't have a problem with User Stories that spill over to the next sprint, everyone knows what to do and can get on with it right away&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you won't have a problem transferring over knowledge&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you won't have a problem keeping all members informed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you are likely to spent more time in planning meetings than before&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you are likely to save you and your team considerable time, misunderstandings and rework by giving up on playing &quot;chinese whispers&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;instead of one pair of eyes, you'll have many pairs of eyes dotting every &lt;strong&gt;i&lt;/strong&gt; and crossing every &lt;strong&gt;t&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you are likely to get better and faster solutions through many eyes looking from different perspectives than you would otherwise&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4907" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T00:34:01.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7970" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7972" CreationDate="2012-11-02T06:50:57.483" Score="0" ViewCount="280" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to talk for my team members individual performance with other employees working in different projects to get good relative ranking.Can you please suggest me on how to represent the team in a better way&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1717" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T09:17:38.037" Title="Performance evaluation discussion with other project managers" Tags="&lt;performance&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2012-11-02T23:11:14.417" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7964" CreationDate="2012-11-02T07:07:03.010" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Google Hangouts? So the team meeting is virtual, but folks still see each other - so planning poker is almost as effective as it gets when all team members are in a room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4924" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T07:07:03.010" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7970" CreationDate="2012-11-02T09:17:38.037" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a disservice to your team, and to the other teams, to present your team in a better way.  Evaluations is NOT about how well you argue, but is about an individual's performance to a standard benchmark and between themselves.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, get the other managers to objectively score each, to the degree possible, so that your evaluations are precise and realistic.  While one manager may have all the stars or the scrubs, most likely each manager will have pretty much the same composition: a few stars, a few scrubs, and most right in the middle.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T09:17:38.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7964" CreationDate="2012-11-02T11:23:16.893" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since there doesn't appear to be many specific solutions to this problem, I ended up writing a simple web app that meets my needs.  I think that even co-located teams might like to use it.  Check it out here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pointingpoker.com&quot;&gt;http://www.pointingpoker.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4918" LastEditorUserId="4918" LastEditDate="2012-11-03T14:53:08.573" LastActivityDate="2012-11-03T14:53:08.573" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7964" CreationDate="2012-11-02T12:45:36.047" Score="2" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Some Tips for Distributed Planning&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've done a lot of distributed planning over the years, both with and without formal &quot;planning poker&quot; estimates. Here are some tips that have worked for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have a written backlog of stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter if it's a spreadsheet, on Google Docs, Trello, or a planning poker app--just make sure the backlog is written down somewhere that everyone can access. If all else fails, a single document on a shared screen (e.g. VNC, Google Hangouts, or Mikogo) will suffice in an emergency.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Avoid vote-anchoring by having people message their votes to the Scrum Master privately before the &quot;big reveal.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum teams should average about seven to nine people plus a Scrum Master, so this isn't onerous. Let the Scrum Master collect the votes, and then share them with the group. Other viable alternatives include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People could enter their votes, and then everyone press &quot;Enter&quot; at the same time to post their votes in the chat room.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If using video chat, people hold up their index cards or planning poker cards, and hold them to their foreheads like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnac_the_Magnificent&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Carnac the Magnificent&lt;/a&gt;. Then they turn them around for the reveal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you're stuck using phone-only for your planning session, let people pre-estimate before the meeting, and email their &lt;em&gt;initial&lt;/em&gt; estimates to the Scrum Master for the reveal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since additional votes are often about reconciling outlying votes, anchoring is somewhat less important since folks will be openly discussing the story and its estimate at that point anyway. Alternatively, the Scrum Master can put the conference call on hold and call people individually for additional votes. Be creative!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask the team. Planning poker is an estimation tool, not a required Scrum artifact or practice. If planning poker as such doesn't work for the team, invite them to brainstorm on a better way--after all, it's about what helps the team estimate, not what is easiest (or most common) for the Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T12:45:36.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7937" CreationDate="2012-11-02T14:26:09.633" Score="0" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Continuous Delivery and Scrum&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is about time-boxing. Continuous delivery is about rolling releases and (to some extent) automated continuous integration and deployment. They are not completely orthogonal, but they are not synonyms, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Release Planning&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're practicing &quot;real&quot; Scrum, then a release should coincide with a shippable increment at the end of a time-box. However, I have seen real-world examples where &quot;shipping&quot; was a story within a Sprint, where the shipping story is tracked as work and has user stories that continue on past the shipping story in the Sprint Backlog. If that fits your work-flow, then it's certainly something to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; Sprint can be &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abnormal_end&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;abended&lt;/a&gt; by the Product Owner, so even within the traditional Scrum framework there's a methodology for shipping early. The idea is that the Product Owner can terminate the Sprint at any time and return the team to Sprint Planning. This incurs process overhead, but it may very well be justified in some cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;More About Early Sprint Termination&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An early Sprint termination isn't automatically a negative thing; it's simply a management tool that trades some cycle time and process overhead to respond to changing business requirements. If the Sprint Goal for a given Sprint is &quot;ship the product,&quot; then early termination of the Sprint after a successful product shipment is the very &lt;em&gt;essence&lt;/em&gt; of agile, since the project doesn't chug along and incur costs that aren't necessary to the organization once its goals have been met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T14:26:09.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3005" CreationDate="2012-11-02T18:37:05.147" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are common trainings for those soft skills?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in my case it was a book (&quot;Getting things done&quot; by David Allen). Imho, following GTD methodology a great way to become organized and result-oriented&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Defining projects, breaking them into actionable items and assigning contexts really helps to achieve desired results&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2935" LastEditorUserId="2935" LastEditDate="2012-11-05T14:36:59.667" LastActivityDate="2012-11-05T14:36:59.667" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7978" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7987" CreationDate="2012-11-02T20:08:12.720" Score="7" ViewCount="432" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've learnt project management and I got a project by my lecturer requesting me to form a team. And yes, I have a team now. I just want to be the project manager so badly! My performance has been great so far but I am worried about the competition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I prove to my lecturer that I'm capable of being a good project manager for the team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks to StackExchange Community, I've learnt so much compared to my competitors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just need to be the best. What exactly do I need to prove? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE:- I don't think I need to improve because my lecturer knows what I'm capable of. I was a team leader twice in my diploma projects. I've experienced the WORST situations and I learnt how to improve myself. The difference is that in my diploma level, I was managing a college project for the sake of an exercise (not a real one). This time, I've been ask to work on a real project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point here is that, I want to prove to everyone that I can be the best project manager (Example:- picture a scenario where competitors compete in presidential election campaigns)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know how to use methodologies depending on the size of project and organizational rules, I know how to manage my team, I know how to solve problems, I know how to plan, organize and manage the project flow. In short, I have the knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just want to prove it. Example:- What are the main points you would show to your boss if you want to be chosen as a project manager?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4661" LastEditorUserId="4661" LastEditDate="2012-11-03T10:34:36.347" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T12:14:03.997" Title="What skills do I need to beat my competitor to be a good project manager for my team?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7979" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7989" CreationDate="2012-11-02T20:29:23.023" Score="4" ViewCount="563" Body="&lt;p&gt;A team member who manages a small team has asked me for ideas to help her better manage what her team is doing. I'm trying to pull examples together that wouldn't require a lot of overhead but will be effective at helping her keep track of what her team's action items and deliverables are, who is assigned to them, what their state is, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone out there have any creative suggestions beyond Kanban boards and Excel tables?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-04-01T08:14:17.713" Title="What is a good &quot;lightweight&quot; approach for managing team resources and action items?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7980" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7982" CreationDate="2012-11-02T21:56:16.887" Score="11" ViewCount="2889" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every two weeks we have our Scrum retrospective meeting and everything seems to be great, because we are getting lots of ideas. However, the problem is that these ideas are almost never actually implemented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was pushing hard to place all these actionable items--the result of the retrospective meetings--on our Scrum board, but I was told that it is for product-related tasks only. I tried to argue that &lt;em&gt;team development&lt;/em&gt; is also a product, but it didn't work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you implement items from retrospectives?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have any budget (time/money/etc) for such things?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How often do you follow up?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2935" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-11-08T12:08:15.307" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T12:08:15.307" Title="How should we implement items from Sprint Retrospectives?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7967" CreationDate="2012-11-02T22:26:11.823" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Scrum Team success depends greatly on the Product Owner and her work. If she is unable to put together a good and usable product backlog, it doesn't matter how good the Scrum Team is, it is going to fail. If you don't have a Product Owner yet, get one. Keep in mind that the Product Owner is not a Scrum Team member, and cannot be one, because she needs to keep the backlog updated and valid, which doesn't really allow time to spend with development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next key figure is the Scrum Master. Your team is quite small, and there is a good chance that you can make progress with a dedicated Scrum Master, but it is important to save some time to learn about Scrum and have frequent discussions inside this team on how to do Scrum properly. It must be a research + presentation + conversation like discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read that the project changes often. How often? Because if it is changing on a weekly basis, you may problems with Scrum. A traditional two week long iteration may be too long in this case. Anyway, Scrum is a good start - if you have the dedicated Product Owner and backlog - , but I would keep my on the resent events on the continuous deployment movement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T22:26:11.823" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7980" CreationDate="2012-11-02T22:39:53.050" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend to change the focus of your retrospectives. Instead of finding ideas, try to focus on how to implement a single idea. Let's say, you have three parts of the meeting: finding ideas, what is the next step, and how to implement that step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first part, you do the idea collecting - nothing new here -, but in the second part you &lt;strong&gt;pick only one idea&lt;/strong&gt;, which the team will implement during the next Sprint. In the third part, you do a planning meeting like session on how to implement that idea and bring the result - the tasks - to your Scrum board. It is highly recommended to &lt;strong&gt;timebox&lt;/strong&gt; these parts so that you have enough time for the third part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this approach you have your focus and tracking. There is no need to talk about the progress of the idea during on a daily basis, but it can help a lot. Putting the created &quot;idea tasks&quot; into the Sprint Backlog with a different color can also help, but this trick is team dependent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have the improvements on your Scrum Board, they won't be visible, and this means that they don't exist (yes, you can have improvements on your Scrum board).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Budgeting is an interesting question. A good Product Owner knows, that continuous improvements are crucial in Scrum - the framework is about continuous improvement - so it is not a question whether to have them or not. If you still have trouble, then you need to do more coaching and help people understand the importance of continuous improvements on each level. &lt;strong&gt;Doing them off the record is not a good idea&lt;/strong&gt;, because then there is no real transparency any more, which eventually will lead to mistrust between the Product Owner and the Scrum Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2012-11-02T22:47:00.617" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T22:47:00.617" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7979" CreationDate="2012-11-02T23:03:15.990" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not having a Kanban board is a good idea, because it for something else, and an Excel sheet just kills collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest to have a coffee with her on a daily basis, maybe after the daily meeting - if her team has a daily meeting -, and talk about the team from a team leader perspective. If you would like to help her, you need to learn more about how that team is working, and I'm sure that it won't happen if the information is in a document. You need to be there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A frequent discussion doesn't take too much time, and provides a short feedback loop. You can define small steps she needs to do, and you can retrospect on them the next day. It's like a student-mentor relationship. For example, you can review the board or plan and talk about how to help the team move forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T23:03:15.990" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7978" CreationDate="2012-11-03T01:31:49.640" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Performance.  You need to perform.  You need to do a great job. Above all: THINK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-11-03T01:31:49.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7978" CreationDate="2012-11-03T08:39:13.083" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;worry about the project that your managing and aim to be successful at project's goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;dont worry about the competition, very hard to control that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;project's success is more profund than achieving personal points. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;accept your failures publicly,learn from them and adapt will be my advise&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastActivityDate="2012-11-03T08:39:13.083" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7978" CreationDate="2012-11-03T23:13:27.337" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Conceptually, it's pretty simple.  As Project Manager, you are responsible for the success of the project.  It gets complicated by technology and people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Upfront:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure you have clearly defined goals for the project.  There should be very clear requirements about what the final product should do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure the people assigned to the project clearly understand their individual goals for the project.  Sounds obvious, but it never surprises me how two people can look at the same thing and interpret it completely differently.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure people are capable of completing their individual goals.  You don't want someone accepting responsibility out of peer-pressure and then melting down halfway thru.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify the most significant areas of risk (technological and/or chronological) on the project and figure out what you can do to reduce the risk as early as possible.  Prototype, do hard stuff up front, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set up measurable milestones for the project so you can tell whether or not you are on schedule.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set up a good, comfortable workflow for everyone involved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In progress:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure individuals are making progress.  Support them.  If one person if falling behind, figure out why.  See if you can identify someone else who is ahead and can help them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure the work that is getting done meets requirements and is solid.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure that people on the team are communicating with each other.  People may make assumptions that someone else is going to do something.  Then they don't find out until the end that the other person thought the first person was going to do it.  Don't let this happen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Integrate early and often.  Integration can be one of the trickiest parts of any project.  Do integration as soon as you can and then continue to monitor integrated work.  It can be as simple as ensuring that everyone's code builds when checked into the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's a lot of it.  As others expressed, the question is somewhat vague so there can easily be a lot more specifics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ADD:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other thing, you use the words &quot;I&quot;, &quot;me&quot;, &quot;my&quot;, etc &lt;strong&gt;A LOT&lt;/strong&gt; in your question.  Your question is very &quot;you&quot;-centric.  As Project Manager and someone who wants to be Project Manager going forward, you need to put the project and people first.  If the people on the project have clear, accurate goals and meet them, then the project is likely to be successful, and you are likely to be successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4404" LastEditorUserId="4404" LastEditDate="2012-11-03T23:28:20.107" LastActivityDate="2012-11-03T23:28:20.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7978" CreationDate="2012-11-04T00:06:27.190" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Spend time meeting with the project sponsor. Learn their goals, what they want the project to accomplish and why. Establish open and clear communication with the sponsor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This time spent will improve your relationship with the sponsor (which is particularly helpful when things don't go as planned in the project lifecycle) and give you a sense of what is truly important for the project to be a success. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, projects are not one time entities that exist for their own sake. They exist to meet a business or organizational goal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-11-04T00:06:27.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7979" CreationDate="2012-11-04T00:09:45.027" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;She should try daily &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-up_meeting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;stand-up meetings&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2012-11-05T00:29:54.783" LastActivityDate="2012-11-05T00:29:54.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7978" CreationDate="2012-11-04T03:33:43.770" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can see the energy and anxiety in your question. Energy is good. Anxiety is bad. I won't worry about competition. Focus on the project and do a good job. Rewards will automatically come.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4930" LastActivityDate="2012-11-04T03:33:43.770" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7991" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8000" CreationDate="2012-11-04T09:59:43.890" Score="3" ViewCount="878" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using Microsoft Project 2010, how do I view how much a resource costs the project between a specific time period?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I want to view how much the &quot;HR&quot; resource cost the project between September 13th, 2012 and November 15th, 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4933" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-01-13T10:31:27.627" LastActivityDate="2019-01-13T10:31:27.627" Title="Microsoft Project - View Resource Cost for a Specific Timeframe" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7991" CreationDate="2012-11-04T21:55:17.600" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should be able to use the costs or custom reports in project 2010 and get reports based on your requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4731" LastActivityDate="2012-11-04T21:55:17.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7967" CreationDate="2012-11-05T19:38:44.750" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your situation, I would highly recommend hiring developers who have already worked in a scrum environment before so they don't need as much coaching from you. They don't have to be CSMs or anything, but they should understand the framework and have worked with a team that has used it before. The less hand-holding you have to do with them on the process, the better. For interviewing, I'd just ask them to tell you about some of the pros and cons of scrum or agile development that they've witnessed. You should be able to tell within a minute or two if they have the experience and also get an idea of how well they'll work with the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, be careful not to let scrum restrict you either. With a small team, you may find that some of scrum is overkill for your team. As an example, you may see specific durations listed for timeboxing your meetings. While a 12 man team might very well take 4 hours of planning for a 2 week sprint, you may find that your 4 man team can plan out 2 weeks in an hour. Always remember to do what makes sense for your team/project and use your retrospectives to facilitate this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your team size/make-up is fine. I've personally used scrum on projects before where I was the only team member. I've also worked on projects where I was a team member, scrum master and product owner. It's not ideal by any means, but sometimes real world constraints give you no other choice. It can work though. One important thing is to always make sure the team knows what role you're speaking as at any given time. You have to assure them that when you're working as a team member, your status as their boss doesn't come into play. You'll have a hard time achieving a self-managing team if you don't because they'll always be looking to you as their boss to give them marching orders and that'll just take up more of your already limited time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4699" LastActivityDate="2012-11-05T19:38:44.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7995" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7996" CreationDate="2012-11-05T22:21:57.350" Score="0" ViewCount="2505" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am using Gantter and/or ProjectLibre (which are both almost identical to Microsoft Project in functionality). I think that if there is a solution to this in Microsoft Project, then it will work in either of these too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the scenario:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Task 1: Work 5d (40h): Resource A&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Task 2: Work 2d (16h): Resource B&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Task 3: Work 20d (160h): Predecessor Task 2: Resources A and B&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like Resource B to start Task 3 at the end of 2 days and Resource A to start Task 3 at the end of 5 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that &quot;Work&quot; above is the effort estimated by us for the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, Task 3 should start on day 3 with Resource B who should spend 11.5 days on it and Resource A should spend 8.5 days once Task 1 is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, when I allocate 2 resources to the task with 100% units, it gets divided equally into 10 days each. The Task 3 starts on day 3 and I get over-allocated resources message because Resource A spends 3 days on both Task 1 and Task 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know I can do this allocation manually by detailing the resource assignment. The question is can this be automated in some way? It's bizarre that this has to be done manually. I assume that it must be a pretty common requirement? Or am I mistaken?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4938" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-12-16T05:25:54.057" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T05:25:54.057" Title="Gantter/ProjectLibre multiple resources to one task, start ASAP, divide work unequally" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7995" CreationDate="2012-11-05T22:38:01.853" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ignore it.  It doesn't matter.  Chasing a perfectly leveled resource allocation will cost you a ton of effort to get it just right and will be perfect for one day--the day of baseline.  The very second you start to load actuals and progress, your resource allocation will go up and down to some degree.  You would never--hopefully--chase the leveling.  Instead, you would use the tool's warning of a over loaded resource to see if you need to intervene.  If you know you don't need to because of other known factors, e.g., resource A won't start for a few days, then you would simply ignore the tool's warning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So load the scenario as you described in the tool, allow resource A to be &quot;over utilized&quot; a bit.  Baseline and go.  It will not materially affect your schedule analysis one bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-11-05T22:38:01.853" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7951" CreationDate="2012-11-06T08:20:10.880" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way to do it is to have a Kanban board like this (&lt;a href=&quot;https://speakerdeck.com/fabokzs/maintenance?slide=34&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://speakerdeck.com/fabokzs/maintenance?slide=34&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6OWXG.png&quot; alt=&quot;a Kanban board with swim lanes&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A yellow note represent a project and an avatar shows who or which team is working on that project. If you need a more detailed view (e.g. for different teams, versions, organizations etc.), you can use swim lanes as they are shown on the board above. We had a company board just like this in the kitchen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of this board is to give a high level overview on &lt;a href=&quot;http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2012/03/visualize-on-the-highest-level/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the whole flow from the company's perspective&lt;/a&gt;. If we needed more information about a certain project, we visited the board of the team which was working on that project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T08:20:10.880" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4192" CreationDate="2012-11-06T08:36:33.127" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The spiral model was developed by Barry Boehm in the late 80's in order to introduce risk management and iterations for waterfall based projects. It tried to solve the problems they found with the waterfall approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole concept of iterations was missing from the early versions of waterfall, although it was clearly stated on the second page of the white paper that it wouldn't be successful without doing the steps iteratively. So Boehm tried to come up with a model where &lt;strong&gt;the iterations are explicitly in the model&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing which was missing is the &lt;strong&gt;risk management&lt;/strong&gt;. Even in a short iteration, it was important to know about the risks, therefore the spiral model suggested to have a prototyping phase, where prototypes had to be made and a risk analysis based on the prototypes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The model in a nutshell:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;determine objectives - figure out the requirements for the iteration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;identify and resolve risks - prototypes and risk analysis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the classical waterfall steps - design, code, integration, test, release&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;plan the next iteration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;goto step 1.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not saying that the model is bad - the risk management is actually a good idea which is unfortunately missing from the new age models -, but it is obsolete. I think &lt;strong&gt;a good XP or Scrum based approach with a short risk management session can be a better choice&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T08:36:33.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7978" CreationDate="2012-11-06T12:14:03.997" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you'll fail in your profession if you want to beat your competitor. The thing is that &lt;strong&gt;if you are in competition, you are focusing on the opponent not on yourself or the work you have to do.&lt;/strong&gt; For example, if she creates a nice presentation on a project, you'll try to create a better presentation, but you'll compare yours to hers. Your focus is on the presentation and not on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are in competition, you are playing a &lt;em&gt;zero-sum game&lt;/em&gt; (there is a winner and a loser), but at a workplace is usually a &lt;em&gt;non-zero-sum game&lt;/em&gt; (there can be two winners, or two losers as well), which is not necessarily a bad idea, but the outcome is very uncertain. For example, you beat your competitor, but it can happen that she comes out as a winner, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is &lt;strong&gt;set your own goal and do your best to reach that goal&lt;/strong&gt;. Of course, you can keep your eyes on others, but as soon as you shift your focus to them, you'll have less resources to do your job. Less resources can lead to bad performance, which can lead to a bad evaluation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T12:14:03.997" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7991" CreationDate="2012-11-07T01:57:22.517" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been talking to someone who has used MS project for a while now, as far as he knows this is not possible to do. He suggested I print out the total for each week and add them up manually. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4933" LastActivityDate="2012-11-07T01:57:22.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8001" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8002" CreationDate="2012-11-07T06:31:41.180" Score="1" ViewCount="375" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say, we have a project with: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a well defined user interface&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the application's features specified in details&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;backoffice, where the data comes from.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The backoffice development takes less then the interface creation. The programmers don't know about the data structure what they will receive from the BO. The features specified depends in 80% on the BO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best solution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give the developers the interface to begin the creation, knowing that they won't finish until the BO development and data structuring will come. It's possible in this case to: work less then the expectations (UI highly depends on the data structure from the BO)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give the developers the interface creation and the whole project only when the BO development and structuring finished. In this case - if the project is urgent - it's possible to have delays on some tasks, or even the whole project. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Solution somewhere the first to: to give the developers the UI, but the condition to do only what they can finish until the BO development, and when the BO comes, the app development can start with 100% power.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did you ever met with this kind of problem? How did you solve it and with success or fail?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4564" LastActivityDate="2012-11-07T07:24:34.147" Title="Interface building and background programming in a project" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8001" CreationDate="2012-11-07T07:24:34.147" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest to introduce a bit closer collaboration between the two sites. For example, you can have a week long iteration starting on Mondays. Monday morning the two offices organise a video conference where they decide what they want to do the next week. This is some kind of a work break down, which should follow the idea of &lt;strong&gt;&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agilewarrior.wordpress.com/2009/07/27/horizontal-vs-vertical-slicing/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;vertical slicing&lt;/a&gt; with a bit of shifting&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/S3rQF.png&quot; alt=&quot;vertical slicing&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The vertical slicing means that a portion of work contains one small piece from each layer: UI, SOA, and Data. The diagram above presents the idea for a single team, but you have at least two teams - front office and back office you need to change it a little bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During that week the back office creates a small portion of their work, and deliver that work to the front office the next week. The front office knows what tho expect the next week and can build the UI on that small portion. The front office will always behind the back office, but with the iterations, the planning meeting and work break down they have only one week disadvantage. You can reduce this disadvantage by &lt;strong&gt;asking the back office to deliver a small mockup of their planned work&lt;/strong&gt;, which the UI team can use - we successfully used this technique in several large projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-11-07T07:24:34.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8003" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-07T12:10:55.023" Score="1" ViewCount="13742" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since our HR manager is out of station, I have been given the responsibility to recruit people for our hardware design team. I do not have any experience of recruiting people. Posting a job on linkedin, resulted in spamming with 25 CVs in a day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the general guidelines I should follow to recruit right person? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What approach I should adopt so that I recruit best person in least time, and making sure that I do not ignore the best one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4948" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2012-11-09T09:03:56.050" LastActivityDate="2012-12-08T23:41:05.187" Title="What are the general guidelines a project manager should follow to recruit the right person?" Tags="&lt;human-resources&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2012-12-11T12:34:27.753" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7935" CreationDate="2012-11-07T14:53:02.007" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You will need a Supervisor/Superintendent for every day that the excavation operation is going on. Excavation crews cannot work without supervision. It's a safety issue. So figure one Supervisor day for every crew day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-11-07T14:53:02.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8005" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-07T18:04:31.023" Score="3" ViewCount="1078" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read many resources on the web about agile web project management and I think I understand the theory behind it. Now I would like to find few examples built like full &quot;tutorials&quot; in order to be able to mentally map theory into practice. Unfortunately, I am yet to find anything mixing theory and practice in great depth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They need to cover at least those areas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;gathering information&lt;/strong&gt; from the customer (product vision, what problem&#xA;does it solve or need that it covers)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;writing &lt;strong&gt;user stories/cases&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;estimations&lt;/strong&gt; (development, testing, deployment, bug fixing, risks)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;detailed &lt;strong&gt;specification&lt;/strong&gt; for first iteration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter if they are from books, websites or videos as soon as they cover everything from start to at least the end of the first iteration. Also, I know the term &quot;agile&quot; is pretty vague, but any iterative style will do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is not appropriate question for this group, please forgive me and tell me where can I find answers or ask this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4952" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T11:30:08.623" Title="Is there any agile web project management &quot;tutorials&quot;?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8005" CreationDate="2012-11-07T18:30:00.747" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rather than use a web tutorial it might be better for you to try a simple real-life exercise. For example, you could plan out your next vacation or dinner date with your significant other using an agile approach. You can work with him/her on visioning, user stories etc etc and work through at least a couple of iterations. Approaching learning from this angle has the advantages of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Being relevant to you and therefore giving you more interest and engagement in the process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Forcing you to deal with real human beings, which is the real challenge of project management.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoiding situations where you don't understand the technical aspects referred to in a tutorial.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Giving you a wider breadth of opportunity to make a variety of mistakes, which gives you experience to learn from.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-11-07T18:30:00.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8003" CreationDate="2012-11-07T21:07:35.823" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If possible, delegate that task to someone who has recruitment experience. Finding out the right person for the job is not a trivial task to experiment on and there is not a magic formula.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, in most interviews, HR seeks answers to these questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can you do the task?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are you willing to do the job?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can we bear to work with you?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is PM's task to make sure project is completed successfully. So a PM should have a say in who will be in his project. But recruiting people is a bit more than that...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recruitment is a specialised area and requires expertise, say, like training, should a PM plan and find the means to train his staff, or do the training himself? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give an example from the original question, PM have 25CV's, how will he evaluate them? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Skim the pool of CV's for the gold.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plan interviews&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have the interviewee take an exam to prove his abilities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have the interviewee fill a questionnaire to evaluate his physicology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do the interviews, (PM should not be alone while doing this).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fill out an evaluation form based on the interview and exam results&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Negotiate on money and work conditions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reject unqualified ones with an appropriate letter and file their applications for future use&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A PM, depending on his experience and age, may do any or all of the tasks above, but it is not his job. It is what HR are for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another aspect of the recruitment is, if you are recruiting people with a permanent contract, you need to think bigger than the project and take the company vision into account. You need to answer &quot;what will this person do after this project finishes?&quot; A PM may not always be able to answer this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4808" LastEditorUserId="4808" LastEditDate="2012-11-08T08:45:34.143" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T08:45:34.143" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8008" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8023" CreationDate="2012-11-08T05:23:43.643" Score="7" ViewCount="453" Body="&lt;p&gt;The triple constraints are listed as Time, Cost and Scope. PMBOK 4th Edition lists 6 project constraints: Cost, Time, Scope, Quality, Risk, and Resources. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can the scale of a project be considered a project constraint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4931" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T15:22:58.297" Title="Can the scale of a project be considered a constraint?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;scope&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8005" CreationDate="2012-11-08T09:49:00.080" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've found that there aren't a lot of resources specifically around Agile and web project management which is why we launched an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emarketeers.com/training-courses/agile-web-project-management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Web Project Management training course&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also want to try joining some LinkedIn groups around Agile. The groups I've joined appear to have lots of daily discussion around people's Agile Web PM experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4956" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T09:49:00.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7951" CreationDate="2012-11-08T10:38:49.833" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;thanks a lot for your answers. Good sugestions. We talked about it, and didn't really feel that the Kanban made sense for us, but it had some good ideas. So we tried to come up with something similair. This is the result:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aWMfu.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So... The project manager for a Project is indicated by the color on the note. Upcoming projects are to the left of the person responsible of &quot;making the next move&quot; in the project. When the project is ongoing, it is placed with the responsible person and relative to its due date as indicated above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please let me know what you think. Any suggestions to improve this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we like a lot, is that it is easy to spot how many and which project a given person has at some point (if planning was good, the notes will be nicely spread out - if not so good they'll pile up and you won't be able to see all details -&gt; very metaphorical). Further than that, the ability to adjust deadlines, responsible person and starting the project by just moving the notes around. Seems like that makes it easy to &quot;play&quot; and a very visual way of communicating changes in planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4911" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T10:38:49.833" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8008" CreationDate="2012-11-08T10:42:15.820" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The scale of a project is determined in the first place by the &lt;strong&gt;scope&lt;/strong&gt; of the project (both product and project scope), and derived from that also the number of resources that you will need, the time it will take, required quality, level of risk. And all of that has impact on the budget as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I wouldn't call the scale a constraint, but rather the result of the impact of the other constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, a large objective (rewrite entire application to strenghten market share and reduce maintenance) could be reduced, due to budgetary constraints for instance, to a simple makeover of the user interface (and thereby dropping the &quot;reduce maintenance&quot; bit of the objective).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 'scale' of the project is reduced substantially because of one (or more) constraint(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T10:42:15.820" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7980" CreationDate="2012-11-08T11:00:37.617" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see and experience only two types of improvements that come out of retrospectives (or any other Lessons Learned session for that matter):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The improvement idea can be handled within your team&lt;/strong&gt; (and thus your budget) and should only be implemented if it will result in a direct benefit for your team and thus on the overall progress of your project. Follow-up starts next stand-up meeting. You can only implement it if there is real value in it for your team, otherwise the team won't do it. In that case, let it drop.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When succesful, you can distribute this Lesson Learned to the rest of your organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The improvement is outside the authority or capacity of your team&lt;/strong&gt; (eg organisational processes, or tool-dependent or ...). Here you cannot do anything except try to convince others (eg your manager) that it would greatly improve your (and possibly other) teams, reduce cost, fasten delivery etc. This is outside your project budget, unless it is decided that you can add this as an additional scope item to do by your team, taking in mind the impact on the available budget. Otherwise it is completely outside your team scope and you can only remind the relevant people of its' importance (with new cases, additional numbers of waste etc.) and check up regularly if there is any progress.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2012-11-08T11:26:48.490" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T11:26:48.490" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7980" CreationDate="2012-11-08T12:02:33.850" Score="3" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Retrospectives are for Process Improvement&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of a retrospective in Scrum is to &quot;inspect and adapt&quot; the team's process. It's not intended as a brainstorming session for product ideas, or for generating user stories that people want to see on the task board---it's about improving the team's internal process to do &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/scrum/sprint-retrospective&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;more of what works and less of what doesn't&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, your team may decide they need to revamp the &quot;definition of done.&quot; Or perhaps they decide that they need to refactor the way they branch and merge the source code, or need to add a continuous integration server to the work-flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anything internal to the team goes into the Sprint Backlog (not the Product Backlog) and therefore doesn't require any consensus outside the team. However, if your retrospective identifies process issues that are externalities (e.g. the need for appropriations for a new CI server, or ongoing failures related to inter-team hand-offs) then of course the larger organization will need to be made aware of the issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Make Issues Visible&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The retrospective is about making issues visible, and allowing the team the leeway to self-organize around a solution. However, if your corporate culture doesn't truly allow the Scrum team to solve problems, the team has the right and the responsibility to &lt;em&gt;raise the visibility&lt;/em&gt; of the issue, and then drop it squarely in management's lap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if the lack of a CI server is identified as a process bottleneck by your team, then this issue needs to be raised with the organization. If those holding the purse strings say &quot;do without,&quot; then that's a business decision they need to live with---the team's job is simply to make the &lt;em&gt;cost&lt;/em&gt; of that business decision fully visible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means that no one works unpaid overtime manually running integration tests, or does integration work &quot;off the board.&quot; If it's work, it goes on the board!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the organization says no to CI, then merging and integration testing simply become explicit stories on the Sprint Backlog that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;require estimating;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;consume time and effort; and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;redirect resources, man-hours, and story points away from new features.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that these additional tasks reduce capacity for Product Backlog items is neither good nor bad; it's simply a natural consequence of the business decision, and as long as it is transparent and visible to both the team and the organization, the responsibility to accept reduced capacity or to change the situation belongs &lt;em&gt;solely&lt;/em&gt; to management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The Scrum Master's Role&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The role of the Scrum Master in all of this is to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Facilitate the Scrum Retrospective.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Encourage the team to implement internal process improvements themselves.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Update process artifacts like the Sprint Backlog or &quot;Definition of Done&quot; poster to reflect any changes agreed to by the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Facilitate communication with the outside organization when issues are broader than the team's internal process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that's it. You're not a baby-sitter. Your job isn't to &quot;manage&quot; the results of the retrospective, to chase after people to make sure they're implementing changes, or anything else that smacks of micro-management. You are a facilitator, a process referee, and a coach; don't lose site of the core role that enables Scrum &lt;em&gt;as a process&lt;/em&gt; to work smoothly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T12:02:33.850" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8003" CreationDate="2012-11-08T18:10:28.997" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I'd say make sure you are aware of what laws around hiring there are in your location. Certain procedures may need to be followed during the process. For some locations you may need to be careful in avoiding asking the candidates certain questions for example. Certain records may need to be kept for X amount of time. Ideally, your HR manager has already let you know about things like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, I'd make sure you set your goals appropriately. You asked how to make sure that you don't ignore &quot;the best one&quot;, but do you really need &quot;the best one&quot;, or do you simply need someone of a certain level of ability?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, make sure you know what you are really looking for in a candidate. Technical skills are often obvious, but usually there are other things you need to look for as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourth, many/most hiring processes have several filtering steps that lead to the number of applicants funneling down at each step. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You want to set up your early filters in such a way as to filter out the most noise as possible while taking the lease amount of time. Often this starts with making sure you are clear with the candidates about what you are  really looking for, and giving them enough information that they self-select out of the process. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Depending on the role, looking at their CV can help you quickly winnow others out. Fair or not, when you've got 25 a day to look at, you need to have some simple criteria to apply to cut that number down. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once you've got it whittled down a little, consider a short (1/2 hour to an hour) phone interview to get to know them a little better and determine whether or not you want to bring them in for a full interview. This is also a good way to answer questions they might have that may help them self-select out of the process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once you've narrowed down the list some more, invite select candidates in for more in-depth interviews. This should include time for one or more members of your technical team to talk to the candidate as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something else... Consider alternative sources of candidates than just posting a job opening to a web site. Ask your contacts if they have anyone that they would recommend or if they know of anyone that is looking (make sure you are clear with them about what you are looking for). Depending on the skill level needed, get in contact with the career services department of the closest technical college. And keep an eye out for companies in your area that are looking at downsizing as often some of the best employees leave first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T18:10:28.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8015" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8020" CreationDate="2012-11-08T19:41:01.450" Score="13" ViewCount="4923" Body="&lt;p&gt;I apologize if this sounds basic, but here's the scenario: We were supposed to complete a project in August and now that it's November, it's still in progress. After asking the client to provide us with feedback regarding certain tasks, the response was along the lines of, &quot;don't push me. You missed the deadline, so now I decide when this project is completed&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to admit that I was thrown off, but this brings up another question: as a web dev shop, we take on multiple projects at a time and a delay like this affects our ability to take on new projects. So how does one decide when a project gets completed? I'm thinking that I'll have to sit down with the client because, obviously, he doesn't want the project up and running in 20 years from now. He must have some vague expectation of project completion that's in the near future. So the question is how would I approach this? I'm relying on other project managers with far more experience than me who may have come across this scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4796" LastEditorUserId="4796" LastEditDate="2012-11-08T19:46:58.807" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T18:31:14.790" Title="How to deal with a missed deadline and obtain a new target date?" Tags="&lt;deadline&gt;&lt;clients&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8015" CreationDate="2012-11-08T20:24:56.283" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you have several options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Reboot&quot; the project.&lt;/strong&gt; As you infer from your question sit down with the customer and key team members responsible for producing the product. Get them to admit the project is in trouble and create a new plan that is achievable. Besides schedule be prepared for budget and scope to change. The key point to remember is to be forward looking and move beyond finger pointing so that you can find solutions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Amend&quot; the project.&lt;/strong&gt; Similar to the first option but you aren't starting from scratch. This can be easier for people to swallow, especially if there have been no changes to the team, as nobody wants to admit previous effort was &quot;wasted&quot;. This can turn into a reboot but there is risk that you will be hamstrung by components of the original plan that may not be in the project's best interest now.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Kill&quot; the project.&lt;/strong&gt; This is a business decision and not a PM decision. It &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; (IMHO) a PM responsibility to present a reasoned assessment of this option. If keeping this project on the books is going to affect your company's ability to take on new projects there may be a business case for walking away despite not being able to recover your sunk costs. There is also a risk of reputational costs following this path, but if your customer is already ticked off with you this may be minimal. Again, not a PM decision.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T20:24:56.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6808" CreationDate="2012-11-09T00:06:35.680" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer:&lt;/strong&gt; I'm not a PMP, so apologies if my comments below aren't correct / accurate. Feel free to correct it as much as you want.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe the word to bind your question with PM's best practices (more specifically, the PMBOK) is '&lt;strong&gt;tailoring&lt;/strong&gt;'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PMBOK mentions that &lt;em&gt;&quot;the organizational culture, style and structure influence how projects are performed.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; (2.4, organizational influences on project management). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, on Organizational Process Assets, is mentioned that one of PM duties is to &lt;em&gt;&quot;tailor the organization's set of standard processes to satisfy specific needs of the project.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it boils down to what's been already told: you need to fit your projects / contracts to their needs, taking into account the company culture and structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T00:06:35.680" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8005" CreationDate="2012-11-09T09:03:52.620" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A different approach could be to look at something like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://weisbart.com/kickoff/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum Kick-off planner&lt;/a&gt;. It may help you &quot;get ready&quot; for agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4957" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T09:03:52.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="350" CreationDate="2012-11-09T11:58:59.510" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll echo what others have said; I would not place use cases in a project charter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The value of the project charter/business case is to attract and keep stakeholder backing.  The project charter should focus on value/scope/cost/schedule/value.  My project charters have been short (&amp;lt; 5 pages) and emphasize how the project will benefit the stakeholder communities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would include diagrams if the diagrams help the stakeholders to understand the concepts.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I would include top level Rough Order of Magnitude estimates of scope/schedule/cost.  I might include capabilities/top level deliverables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T11:58:59.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8015" CreationDate="2012-11-09T12:25:09.267" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;@user1220 said it - This is where you earn your value as a PM.  You have the opportunity to turn a project around. Right now this project is on a fast track to zombie status - not quite living, not quite dead, but tough to kill.  You have the opportunity to change that and to transform it into something that will look fantastic on your resume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think @Doug B's answer is very good. There are a couple of other thoughts I'd add.  Effectively the client has imposed a constructive change - he has taken advantage of your missed milestone to completely destroy the project schedule without providing a replacement schedule.  If I were in your shoes, I'd do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Document the impact of the current change. Assume that your client won't respond on 1.2 in the near future.  For the sake of argument, assume that you're stalled until 31 January.   (It is a safe bet for my clients that December and January are wasted months with critical staff on leave).  Revise your integrated master plan to show the effect of that delay.  Prepare an estimate based on 1 month, 2 months and 3 months.  Now you've got two options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1a) I you want to keep the project alive, then propose that during the review period we alert key staff that this is a good time to take leave, spend time with families, etc. There is a lull in the project, but we expect it to restart in February.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1b) If you want to play hardball, identify your key staff. Revise your Integrated Master Plan based on the assumption that some fraction of these people will move to projects where (a) they have satisfying work to do and (b) the company isn't wasting their talent.  Personally, I would begin to develop opportunities for these key staff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also do a series of simulations showing the effect of varying delays on the project.  (in a similar situation in the past, I measured the slippage that resulted from customer failure to produce feedback, and then did a monte carlo simulation for all similar governance tasks. That allowed me to state that if stakeholder X continues to drag their feet, the schedule would have an X% chance of Y months of delay with a concommittant rise in total cost of $Z).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Include risks - if the project delays for 2 months, there is a 30% chance we'll lose key staff (what is the turnover rate for your company for those key staff? If your company doesn't have that calculated internally, you should be able to find it for similar companies/skill sets).  Loss of key staff will delay project by X and raise cost by Y.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calculate the point where it makes sense to kill the project.  For example, if the client delays for 2.6 months, the project will no longer be profitable to the company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now present the data to the client and to your management.  The carrot is that you have demonstrated that you're a better project manager than your predecessor, and that the probability of missed milestones has just dropped.  The stick is that you have identified a point at which it would be sheer folly for your company to continue the project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can turn this project around, your company, your client, and the key staff &lt;em&gt;ought&lt;/em&gt; to recognize that you've done a great thing.  Zombie projects smell foul, and that smell taints everyone involved.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T12:25:09.267" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8003" CreationDate="2012-11-09T12:42:55.247" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The official scrum question and answer to this question is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Scrum guidelines, who is responsible for hiring or assigning a new person into a Team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is outside of the scope of Scrum&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3687" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T12:42:55.247" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8008" CreationDate="2012-11-09T15:22:58.297" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scale would only be considered a constraint in the fact that it might determine that the 'project' is actually a 'program', made up of what should be several smaller or component projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any other case, scale would only be 'result' of all the other factors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T15:22:58.297" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8015" CreationDate="2012-11-09T17:04:14.057" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a lump sum contract as you indicated and I imagine the sum is fixed.  A fixed price contract guarantees only a fixed price-- as evident in the name.  It does NOT guarantee a fixed schedule.  Indeed, we target a delivery and do our best to hit it; sometimes we beat it, sometimes we miss it, and very few times we hit it dead on.  That's project life.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also imagine that your contract has explicit expectations and obligations that are required of your customer, which could include establishing work space, providing documentation or equipment, providing subject matter expertise, and &lt;em&gt;providing verification and validation on a timely basis&lt;/em&gt;.  It appears your customer is withholding that because you were late, which has an underlying message that (s)he is sabotaging your ability to make a profit almost as revenge.  This is immature, irresponsible, laughable, ridiculous, and is most likely a violation of your agreement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what I would do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stop work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Comb through the contract, statement of work, proposal, etc., and identify where and how your customer is violating the terms and conditions of your agreement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Calculate the financial impact sequel to said violations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Retain an attorney and pursue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remove customer from your customer relation management database and allow others to &lt;em&gt;win&lt;/em&gt; his/her work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Move on....&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose this might deserve an attempt to sit down with the customer to try to work things out before such a drastic action.  There is something about this childish behavior, though, that makes me want to just react with the drastic action.  And, with this display of behavior, the likelihood of a fruitful result is probably low.  So....  My two cents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T17:04:14.057" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5642" CreationDate="2012-11-09T17:23:29.257" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't recommend linking summary tasks in MS Project for the following reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it can make the logic difficult to follow, and make it hard to identify the Critical Path&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it can cause logic errors which artifically extend the plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it can lead to unnecessary bench time. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it can cause circular logic warnings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stakeholdermap.com/ms-project/link-summary-tasks-ms-project.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.stakeholdermap.com/ms-project/link-summary-tasks-ms-project.html&lt;/a&gt; for more information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4973" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T17:23:29.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3414" CreationDate="2012-11-09T17:39:17.780" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that a FS dependency is useful when you have an activity that can't finish before the dependent starts. Imagine: a watchman is hired to take care of a building during nights and the manager tells him that his activity can't finish until the building administrator comes in the morning. The arriving time can vary every day but the watchman cannot finish his activity until the administrator comes and starts working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example for a fixed date of starting date: I have to place the forms for a column after these are removed from another already poured and cured. I know what the starting date to start forming the new column is (fixed date) and need to install the rebar for that column previously. Therefore, I can link column formwork installation (b) and rebar installation (a) with a SF relationship meaning that activity b must start for activity a to be considered finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4974" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-02-15T14:08:27.570" LastActivityDate="2017-02-15T14:08:27.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8015" CreationDate="2012-11-09T18:31:14.790" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there upper level on both side?&#xA;Possible to escalate the issue to senior management?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;client acquire project services because they expect benefits of having the deliverable (the final product) developed by a vendor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Late is better than not delivering the products at all.&#xA;Thus, may want to try understanding from the client perspective what would the expected benefits to the client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prepare a simple business case with expected benefits (tangible and intangible) and present to someone who can understand it (I would expect it would not be the one who you are dealing with directly.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Late is common to software development project, but it is not a valid reason for the client's user representative to delay neither. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though contract may not be clear, common practices does apply!! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understanding your client's organisation structure on their executive point of view.  Start from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, the Top Down approach may just work in case like this.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your client is also the top management. Then, assess the possible loss to your company versus the time and resources already and will expect to spend if continue to drag on the case. May help you to make a faster decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rose from Hong Kong&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4975" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T18:31:14.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7867" CreationDate="2012-11-10T04:08:52.263" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, fixing bugs is like changing the oil in your car.  It's an immediate expense that does not have an immediate return.   Both activities result in cost avoidance, rather than a return.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike an oil change, fixing bugs tends to begin reducing costs almost immediately.  These returns are likely to include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Less effort to verify if a newly discovered bug is a repeat of an open bug.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lower cost to repair bugs as developers likely know where to fix them now.  A couple of months from now they may have to spend much more time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improved morale in the development team.  The developers I know don't like leaving known bugs unfixed when repairing nearby code.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simpler code, as bugs don't need to be worked around.  There may also to be a reduction in bug injection.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Faster code production as developer can count on the existing code to work.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lower testing costs, as the testers don't have to avoid or work around the bugs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improved product credibility.  I quickly discount the quality of products when I find that known bugs were released.  Typos also reduce the credibility of a product.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For some bugs, there can be significant data cleanup costs to correct data that was corrupted by the buggy code.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For bugs generating log data, lower cost of finding the cause of problems.  This is also likely to include lower costs for storing and processing the logs. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lower costs for reviewing the open bugs list.  These list should be reviewed frequently and the longer they are the more time it takes to review them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As other have noted, fixing bugs can be a learning activity.  The sooner that practices leading to bugs can be corrected, the fewer bugs with their resulting costs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just managing the bug list can generate significant costs which may be the most measurable return.  Many times it will merely delay some action by a minute or two.  However, these minutes add up and most bugs will generate a lot of these delays.  I've seen many bugs dragged along for months with the cost of keeping them for another month exceeding the cost of fixing them.  The cost of verifying a long outstanding bug which got fixed by other changes can be quite significant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for a measurable metric, it is unlikely you will be able to accurately measure savings after the fact. If you had prior measures for some of the above avoided, you could look for attributable changes in your cost.  You may see a decrease in the cost of ongoing development, but it may be with the normal variations.  You may also get intangible improvements to team morale, team motivation, and the development process.  Like the adds say, priceless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastEditorUserId="529" LastEditDate="2012-11-11T15:13:44.970" LastActivityDate="2012-11-11T15:13:44.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8030" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8031" CreationDate="2012-11-10T10:37:52.667" Score="5" ViewCount="230" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just launched a big web infrastructure project which has resulted in a lot of inconsistency in the users' feedback on their experiences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the users are not that web-savvy, and, due to technical limitations, the user experience isn't perfect. At first I thought this was the reason, but there now appears to be some bugs that I'm having problems recreating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have made some tweaks to the system in two areas that are not essential but pose a risk and could be contributing to the problem. I have been going through all the customer service emails to spot patterns and then pass these findings on for my development team to investigate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For situations like this which are likely reactive, what things are good to consider to try and get through the tough times?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4349" LastEditorUserId="5003" LastEditDate="2012-11-13T19:56:53.603" LastActivityDate="2013-04-19T09:09:01.020" Title="Things to consider when a deployment goes wrong" Tags="&lt;customer&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8030" CreationDate="2012-11-10T18:41:18.673" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first reasonable step is to learn more about the issues the customers are having. In cases like this the general advice is to &lt;strong&gt;collect as much data as possible&lt;/strong&gt;. Add google analytics events to everything you can think of, take the web server log files and &lt;strong&gt;try to recreate the steps the users are taking&lt;/strong&gt;. With this approach you don't have to try to recreate anything, because you'll have the real data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have the data, take the team and create a list with forecasting : if the issues stay in the system, &lt;strong&gt;what is the probability that users stop using your service&lt;/strong&gt;. Pick the first one, solve it, and continue the data collection and look for changes. If the change is positive, then you and your team are on the right track, and keep solving the issues from the list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is called &lt;strong&gt;&quot;validated learning&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; from the Lean Startup Movement. It suggest to do it before going live, but there is no such thing as lost cause. Deliver small changes continuously - I'm talking about days -, collect, and check your data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-11-10T18:41:18.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8032" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8033" CreationDate="2012-11-11T06:00:09.887" Score="10" ViewCount="477" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's my story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started working for a new company as an interface developer, with a small team of 3, for a semi-large laboratory 2 weeks ago.  When I came into the department all of their projects were being managed by either paper or excel spreadsheets.  Seeing an opportunity to tidy up the project management and do some coordination in assets and resources I spoke with my director and they've offered to pay for training within Microsoft Project and Project Server to have this all setup while I manage the projects as well as do development work. I'm a developer at heart, but have always wanted to learn PM. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being brand new to this, I want to be able to track around 40 projects a year as well as give cost analysis and reports at the end of the year to my director on the work we've done.  These are strictly ROI projects as we do not make any money for doing the work, rather it's a service we provide to our clients.  The individual cost of the project will be dependent on the amount of work needed, and the amount that will need to be paid out to vendors to have the software interfacing done on their end.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, should employee pay be factored in to the cost of the project?  They are obviously resources but knowing another employees pay rate is something that's discouraged when working for a company.  If this is so, how is the best way to approach this method?  IS it worth factoring this in for such a small amount of projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4982" LastActivityDate="2012-11-11T11:47:02.937" Title="Are employee's pay factored into costs for project?" Tags="&lt;resources&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8032" CreationDate="2012-11-11T11:47:02.937" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.  You do not need the exact wage rate of any individual employee.  You use a standard rate for the job family and labor category in which an employee resides.  The base rate would cover not only the wage rate of most employees in that job family, but also a multiple to cover benefits and a margin.  On top of that, the rate is furthered burdened to include overhead, administration fees, on or off premise, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John is in the mid-level developer family.  His wage rate is $25.00/hour.  The job family's base rate might be $75/hour to include the benefits and margin.  After you add the other burdens, the price rate might be $130 an hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, no one except who is authorized to know will know an individual's salary.  People might be able to guess roughly what someone makes, but they can do that now anyways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-11-11T11:47:02.937" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8034" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8035" CreationDate="2012-11-12T07:19:15.913" Score="23" ViewCount="1229" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our client asked for the root cause of a bug after we delivered our fix. Should I explain it to her? For example, should I say that the bug arose from a wrong condition check or from bad configuration of memory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to provide her this information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4031" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-11-12T16:56:49.703" LastActivityDate="2012-11-13T20:20:58.550" Title="Should I explain the root cause of a bug when a client asks for it?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8034" CreationDate="2012-11-12T08:16:14.520" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;In situations like this two important rules are in conflict:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;don't lie to the client&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;don't look bad in the eye of the client&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on my experience, clients appreciate the outcome of the first rule, so if you are honest and tell them about the background of the issues, they'll most probably understand them (of course, there are client, who will try to use the nature of the issue at contract negotiations).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to &lt;strong&gt;communicate the issues properly&lt;/strong&gt;. A businessman won't understand race conditions, memory leaks, and other fancy geek terminology. You can cover these as a minor/major programming issues (this is the case where you have to keep the second rule in mind).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you talk about the issues, show confidence and be honest. Don't forget to consult your team before talking to the client, and if you cannot answer a question right there, don't try to figure something out. Tell her, that you need more time, but you'll come back to her soon with the answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, there are cases, when knowing more about the background of the issues can actually help your customer and you. What if your product is part of a bigger application, and a problem in your part is actually not your fault? What if you discover a use case nobody really thought about before? Be cooperative, but as soon as the conversation turns to a &lt;em&gt;&quot;blaming event&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, you must stop and rethink your position (ask for more time for a more thorough investigation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-11-12T08:16:14.520" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8034" CreationDate="2012-11-12T13:08:34.203" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I support Zsolt approach, adding one suggestion when planning the way to deliver this information to the users:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Before the fix:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What caused (a misconfiguration on the application, a typo?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why it was caused (a last minute requirement change?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;why it wasn't noticed (lack of proper testing?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;After the fix:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any potential similar problem somewhere else?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A full review has been done o ensure there's no other similar issue hidden?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What actions are taken to avoid them in the future?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way, you'll accomplish two things at once:&#xA;- Demonstrate to your client you (as a team) knows when something went wrong (transparency is fundamental!)&#xA;- Demonstrate you're ready, you learned the lesson and the same mistake won't happen in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I dare to say that the second part is more important than the first. When a user asks for a root cause, he's asserting if there's any potential similar issue in the near future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A last comment:&lt;/strong&gt; Avoid, with all your efforts, to explain the root cause technically. &lt;em&gt;Explain it in a way your grandmother could understand.&lt;/em&gt; And this explanation must be in one paragraph. No more than two, otherwise the user will feel frustrated by don't understanding what you meant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-11-12T13:08:34.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8034" CreationDate="2012-11-12T14:11:42.260" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are building a house and all of a sudden a wall comes down, would you like to know the root cause of the problem or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&#xA;Sorry if it was not clear, but what I mean is, explain it to them how you'd like to have it explained to you if such a thing happened with you, i.e. wear the client hat and think, what would you like to hear in this case? My advice is, always tell them the truth, is the best way to guarantee that they will ever come back. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2352" LastEditorUserId="2352" LastEditDate="2012-11-12T16:41:52.337" LastActivityDate="2012-11-12T16:41:52.337" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8038" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-12T15:57:11.897" Score="8" ViewCount="342" Body="&lt;p&gt;Background: we currently use MantisBT for tracking of bug tickets, and have attempted to use the same for feature development. The latter has worked, but only to a point. Ours is a small shop, so large Agile methodologies seem a bit much, and none of us are really well-versed. The software/cloud products I keep finding all share that theme: very large. We are in the process of setting up a physical Kanban board for the procedural stuff, but I need a way to track the actual feature maturation process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question: what tools are available for specifically tracking feature development?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a basic example: I would like to create a &quot;feature&quot; and then add to it supporting details such as a description, files (pictures, files from Balsamiq, Word docs, etc.), priority, users, resources, and time frame (start/end dates). More, of course, but I hope you get the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would be correct in thinking that this seems a lot like generic project management.  And if there is a tool that fits the bill, I want to consider it.  The more closely it suits software feature development, however, the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found a weath of tools that might fit the bill, but the specific parts for tracking features always seem to be part of a much larger system.  Are there any that focus specifically on the feature lifecycle, without trying to encompass every aspect of the agile process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4990" LastActivityDate="2012-12-06T10:23:13.263" Title="Tool for Managing the Feature Development Process" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8034" CreationDate="2012-11-12T16:57:04.063" Score="8" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Transparency and Root-Cause Analysis&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're running an agile shop, transparency should be a key objective. Even in more traditional PM approaches, it's usually a bad idea to sweep issues under the rug. Invisible issues can't be managed by stakeholders or the project management process, so one should always strive for transparency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Address Process; Don't Fix Blame&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a customer point of view, knowing that a bug was caused by an integer overflow or an unexpected nil value is rather useless information. If they &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; that information, fine, but I prefer to use the opportunity to address the underlying meta-questions. These generally boil down to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was the bug preventable?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can we prevent similar bugs in the future?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What levers does the customer or business have to improve process quality?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bugs are inevitable in any software system. However, in my personal experience, severe bugs are usually process failures caused by unrealistic deadlines, budget limitations, or unclear (possibly even undocumented) requirements. Root-cause analysis is a great opportunity to address those sorts of issues in a constructive way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-11-12T16:57:04.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8040" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8041" CreationDate="2012-11-12T20:50:42.737" Score="4" ViewCount="159" Body="&lt;p&gt;I originally asked this question from &lt;a href=&quot;https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/28987/starting-responsive-web-design-from-desktop-planning-project-time-crunch&quot;&gt;https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/28987/starting-responsive-web-design-from-desktop-planning-project-time-crunch&lt;/a&gt;, but was referred to here&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Backstory:&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our product team has begun finalizing details for a user accounts project, which will be worked on in a fluid framework. But, responsive web design had just been brought up to the product directors, and now we're realizing it's important to start preparing for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the high-fidelity layouts designed for desktops have just been created, and we haven't had enough resources and time to figure out if we can convert them to smaller layouts, so our directors are hoping we can develop the the whole project in the wide desktop layouts first, and then work backwards to smaller layouts. (Finish the project in the intended liquid/fluid layout, then do responsive web layout).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Question:&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the issue of us not being able to prepare this sooner, are there some best practices that we could do on this fluid layout so that, by the time we finish the fluid project, we can minimize the damages of doing responsive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that this is not ideal to be doing the responsive planning first, but we also had to get the core desktop webapp done first (slated to finish by Q1).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4992" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2012-11-12T21:38:41.910" Title="Starting responsive web design from desktop planning? (x-post from ux.stackoverflow)" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8040" CreationDate="2012-11-12T21:38:41.910" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although not specifically PM related, what you can do to minimize damage is to use a pre-built CSS fluid framework (there is a good list &lt;a href=&quot;http://speckyboy.com/2011/11/17/15-responsive-css-frameworks-worth-considering/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, I'd recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bootstrap&lt;/a&gt;). Take a minumum time to learn how to use it properly, build your desktop design over it, and handle the fluid on smaller screens later. If you get the structure right with the desktop version, the fluid one will be a no pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the PM side, consider outsourcing the fluid design. If you have good specs for the desktop version, you can build a fixed one to fit your schedule now at the same time someone else is building a complete, fluid solution for you to be used later, replacing the fixed one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2352" LastActivityDate="2012-11-12T21:38:41.910" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8042" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-12T23:10:42.413" Score="21" ViewCount="1310" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say I have an Epic that is estimated to take 3 sprints to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the Epic is broken down into &#xA;A to Z tasks/user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problem is, to do B, we need A, to do C we need B, etc....&#xA;And in sprint one, we only complete A to E, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and I do not think it can be classified as &quot;Done/Done&quot; within a sprint, as that functionality cannot be tested as it breaks existing functionality, what is the best practice for such a scenario?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eg.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Epic = Revamp of Super Calculator Functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Calculator has Calculate A, Calculate B to Calculate Z Functionality and a final result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) You need to do Calculate A to do Calculate B, as Calculate B requires the result from Calculate A, etc until Z.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Existing calculator has A to Z, but their rules have all changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) The final calculator result is wrong if only Calculate A to B are changed, as existing C will break.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;6)  They can be unit tested per unit, but cannot be checked in and tested on the ui by testers and cannot be defined as done, as the release should not include partial changes, as customers are using the calculator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such scenarios are affecting our burndown chart per sprint and bosses are complaining, hence this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4994" LastEditorUserId="4994" LastEditDate="2012-11-12T23:51:00.357" LastActivityDate="2012-11-17T19:36:20.377" Title="SCRUM Sprint and tasks/user stories that cannot fit into a sprint!" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8042" CreationDate="2012-11-13T00:46:37.140" Score="8" Body="&lt;h3&gt;User-Visible Functionality&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal of a sprint is usually to complete one or more user-visible features. However, there are certainly projects where this is not always possible. It may be worth re-evaluating whether this is possible in your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, math certainly supports the concept of sub-expressions, so each sprint could have a goal of completing one or more sub-expressions. You could demonstrate the successful execution of each of the new sub-expressions during your Sprint Reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your software was designed in a non-modular way, and features can't be &lt;em&gt;replaced&lt;/em&gt; incrementally, you can still develop &lt;em&gt;new&lt;/em&gt; modules alongside the old ones and show off those increments each sprint. You will then have a big &quot;swap-out&quot; user story at the end of your project, where you have some kind of cut-over to the new modules, but it's certainly an option in some cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Sprint Length&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can always adjust your Sprint length to ensure that you have adequate time to deliver functional features. While most Scrum projects vary between 2-4 weeks per sprint, I've seen projects with 90-day sprints too---but the methodology still requires that each sprint meet a Sprint Goal and deliver at least one element from the Product Backlog to be a success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Projects with Zero Incremental Value&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your project truly has zero value unless all elements are fully functioning, then Scrum or any other form of purely iterative development is not the right approach. For example, if you are rewriting a piece of software that is too tightly-coupled to replace a piece at a time, then the benefits of iterative development are not obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to consider Kanban, Lean, or even traditional waterfall development if you can't deliver any value to the users until the very end of the project. A car can't be driven with only one wheel; at the risk of a faulty analogy, perhaps your software project can't be used without 100% of all new pieces in place, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; projects can be refactored into incremental-value projects, but that may require a complete re-engineering of the project plan and the project management process. If that simply isn't possible for political or practical reasons, then you must search for a methodology based on something other than incremental features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-11-13T00:46:37.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8044" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-13T03:49:39.157" Score="8" ViewCount="367" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for a small (3 person) consulting/Investment Banking group.  For the last 2 years I've been looking for some kind of software to help us manage our &quot;projects&quot; but our projects look nothing like the kind of projects that PM software is typically designed to help with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of a typical project for us is one where we're helping a client sell one of their subsidiaries, a project that we've been working on for about 18 months, during which time we've communicated with 50+ companies (and usually multiple people within the company).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;At any point in time I need to get an overview of what the status/last communication is with each of those 50 companies, and then, ideally, click on the company name and get a chronological listing of all the communication we've had with them related to this project.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When I'm on a call with a client it is expected that I should be able to answer within a few seconds a question like &quot;Last year we had active discussions with company X on both projects Y and Z, what was the last communication and why did discussions break off?&quot;  I should also be able to send a client a report with this summary level information for all the 50 companies, or alternatively, a report that details all of our communications with one of these companies over the course of the project&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've looked extensively at cloud based CRM providers (we currently use Zoho), but the focus of CRM is almost always around the sales process and getting new clients.  I've looked less carefully at PM software, but everything I've seen has been around managing a product where you actually produce something, and any communication management tools are focused on managing an internal team, or maybe communications with the client, but certainly not designed to organize communications with dozens of different organizations.  I've also looked at software that is supposed to combine CRM and PM into one product (Solve360), but it still is the traditional CRM for the sales cycle, and PM for delivering some kind of product.  I haven't found anything that is designed, or seems like it can be customized, to fit our needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The current process, as much as there is one, involves searching through email archives and CRM records, and sporadically trying to summarize in Excel when we need to provide a report for a client.  The result is messy, time consuming, and means important information is often overlooked on review.  Perhaps most importantly, it can not scale as the organization tries to take on more projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize this is a forum mostly for and populated by software developers, and the types of projects we work on are fairly different from those.  But I haven't found any other place on the web that seems to have as thorough and well thought out answers as there are here, so I'm hoping I might get lucky and someone has some ideas.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4995" LastEditorUserId="4995" LastEditDate="2012-11-13T19:13:27.837" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T17:13:22.320" Title="PM Software for managing communications history" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8044" CreationDate="2012-11-13T07:32:38.703" Score="4" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Define Your Process, THEN Automate It&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the (open) secrets of managing any process is that if you can't do it manually, then you can't automate it. Or, to put a more positive spin on it, solve your problem with whatever process works, and then automate that process to whatever extent is practical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Getting Down to Specifics&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, you say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At any point in time I need to get an overview of what the status/last communication is with each of those 50 companies, and then, ideally, click on the company name and get a chronological listing of all the communication we've had with them related to this project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One assumes you communicate routinely with these 50 companies. Further, one assumes that you have &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; process currently in place for tracking this communication, however manual it may be. You may be using:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Index cards.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Emails.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Faxes filed in folders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An old-fashioned Rolodex.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sticky notes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jotting things on the back of napkins.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All of the above, any combination of the above, or something completely different.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It actually doesn't matter what you're doing. The point is that if you had no process at all, you'd already be out of business. So, you clearly have a process---the first step is just to document it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've documented your current process, you can re-engineer it or automate it if you really need to do so. If you decide to automate it, your freshly-minted process documentation will give you clear guidance on the feature set you need so you can comparison-shop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;How to Pick a Tool&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's always important to pick a tool that maps to your current or desired work-flow, rather than building a process around any specific tool. The best way to fail at automation of any kind is to automate something you aren't really doing on a routine basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if no one is currently making notes after each client contact, it doesn't matter if your tool is a shared spreadsheet on Google Drive or the &quot;Magical Happy-Time Customer Tracker&quot; someone will gladly license to you for a mere $3 billion per seat. You have to address that process gap &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you automate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also times when there just aren't any off-the-shelf tools that fit a given work-flow. If that's the case, your choices are to stick with a manual process, customize an existing tool, or build your own. The smart money is on the first option, but the others can also be reasonable choices if you're honest about the cost/benefit analysis or have the in-house skills to support a custom solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examining your processes is always valuable. Automation may or may not be. Your mileage will definitely vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-11-13T07:32:38.703" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8044" CreationDate="2012-11-13T15:01:29.720" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Really interesting question - I'd recommend moving the use case from your comment on @CodeGnome's post up into the question, because that really helps me to understand it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know of any software that is designed for this purpose.  You may wish to look at xobni and some of its competitors in the customer relationship management suite, but I think you've already done that, and I think that they're not ideally suited to your needs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were in your shoes, I'd build on what @CodeGnome has suggested - build a process that supports your needs and then automate based on cost benefit analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were just looking for &quot;What is the status of our discussions with company X?&quot; and &quot;When did we last communicate on X about Y?&quot; then you could probably use a google search appliance. (heck, I could write those queries as pre-formatted gmail queries relatively quickly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other approach I might consider is to build an email alias for each project and for each company, and BCC the project and company email address on all official correspondence. Then I'd add to my stakeholder management/communications management procedures a monthly summary of where are on each project.  Starting that up might involve some cumbersome errors, but I suspect that over time you would construct a valuable source of business intelligence. (in fact, I suspect that you probably already have an analogous process, I just don't have the right terms to describe or reference it).  You'd be better able to value the subsidiaries for sale, identify the key metrics that each company is using to select and prioritize their acquisitions.  Better valuation would lead to more precise presentation to the potential customer and that leads to both parties being more satisfied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let us know what you find out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2012-11-13T15:01:29.720" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8044" CreationDate="2012-11-13T16:32:28.887" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would require a certain level of technical skill but how about integrating MS Outlook and Access? There's little in terms of information that you cannot pull out and organise in Access using queries and it's quite possible you already have these tools and someone who knows how to use Access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or alternatively, you could integrate Alfresco (which has a free &quot;community edition&quot;) with your e-mail service. Check out this video for some ideas: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gETmGAwytNQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gETmGAwytNQ&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4552" LastActivityDate="2012-11-13T16:32:28.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8042" CreationDate="2012-11-13T19:45:23.837" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can, create a backwards compatibility adaptor from module E that you just finished to module F that is legacy. This way you can modify the flow each sprint, replacing old modules and placing a adapter at the end, so the rest of the modules still receive the data in the way they expect it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4603" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-11-17T19:36:20.377" LastActivityDate="2012-11-17T19:36:20.377" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8034" CreationDate="2012-11-13T20:20:58.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, and be honest. If you screwed up, just tell the client (not in that way, but tell them)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are honest and tell the client what went wrong, what you did wrong, or did not do, the client will appreciate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Show the client that you learned from it and will do better next time and how you are going to do it next time to not make the same fault again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trust me, always keep the client informed. In good times and bad times!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2973" LastActivityDate="2012-11-13T20:20:58.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8038" CreationDate="2012-11-14T13:18:03.020" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I rather suspect that I would approach this as &quot;tools &amp;amp; techniques to construct work packages&quot;.  From my limited understanding, a &quot;feature&quot; is nothing more than a work package - a discrete deliverable with schedule &amp;amp; requirements.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know of any software to assist in constructing and managing work packages, but I think that &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8045/34&quot;&gt;@CodeGnome's law is &quot;Build your process &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; automate it.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;  I could probably generate a quick form in Microsoft Word or Access that would require me to specify for each work package:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Name/Title&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Description&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Directory for attachments/artifacts (including files)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Formal requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customer owner/stakeholder&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Key users&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Schedule (Planned/Projected | Start/Finish)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Key resources&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Priority&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once I have that form and I have a process that uses that form, &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; satisfies my stakeholders, I'd then look at automating the process.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, we could both get lucky and someone on PM SE will point us to software that assists in the development/management of work packages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-11-19T08:31:27.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8052" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8056" CreationDate="2012-11-14T15:34:59.757" Score="9" ViewCount="242" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before the Planning (and initial) phase of a project, there is obviously going to be some time devoted to an analysis of the client's requirements. I know this might be hard to answer, but is this time typically billable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; I'm dealing with a complex software project - a client has an Excel spreadsheet with a million rows and around 25 columns. The data populated in the cells is based on complex calculations between each of the columns (or fields). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The developer and PM (me) go into a conference call and spend an hour estimating the scope of work. I decide that the developer and myself (as I have a technical background) will require another 10-15 hours of work to figure out the mechanics of the Excel file, which will include providing documentation that contains the suggest approach for building the app (framework to  be used, hosting environment, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The client feels that this &quot;digging into the analysis&quot; (the 10-15 hours) should not be billable as no real development work is being done (i.e. converting the Excel file into a web based app).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your experience, how much time do you give away for &quot;free&quot; for estimating the actual work of a project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4796" LastActivityDate="2012-11-17T07:28:13.603" Title="Costs for estimating the tasks in a project?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;project-proposal&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8052" CreationDate="2012-11-14T15:42:49.447" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short, I'd say &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt;. There's no reason working for free and it could cause several issues further down the road (who's going to pay for this 'free' work?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The analysis your team is doing is &lt;strong&gt;part of the estimating process&lt;/strong&gt;. The underlying point in your question is: &lt;strong&gt;how accurate your client want estimates?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they only want &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2009/02/whats-use-of-wild-guesses-instead-of.html&quot;&gt;wild guesses&lt;/a&gt;, then go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As much time spent on the analysis, as better the estimate will be. With this argument, you throw back to the user his own question in a polite way and without working 'for free'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yes, working on the estimates is not part of the development, as the test, QA and deployment phases. Nevertheless, they're required and mandatory for a successful project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T15:42:49.447" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8054" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-14T16:34:48.883" Score="4" ViewCount="775" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I take schedule information from multiple (40+) Microsoft Project files and create portfolio dashboards and reports. Specifically, I'd like to see Gantt charts for all projects in a stack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5014" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-01-13T10:30:11.843" LastActivityDate="2019-01-13T10:30:11.843" Title="Portfolio Reports from Microsoft Project files" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;visualization&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8052" CreationDate="2012-11-14T16:39:11.743" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Expanding on what Tiago said, it is more than part of the estimating process, it is part of requirements gathering and is part of the project's billable time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other side of the equation, the client is looking for some sense of a total estimated budget before signing-off on the project. This is a reasonable request as part of giving you the go-ahead on the project.  The total project budget can be a WAG ROM with +/- 50% but will at least give the client some sense of how much they are getting into. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T16:39:11.743" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8052" CreationDate="2012-11-14T17:28:53.880" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general I agree with @Tiago Cardoso and @Mark Phillips; your client is effectively saying that they want to pay only for development, not for project management of the development effort.  If that is what the client wants, I'd be happy to supply the name of three or four competitor firms, and tell them to keep my name on file to rescue the project when the inevitable occurs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; depend on your environment.  Currently I support government customers and planning and estimating are part of the service we provide and are directly billable. When I was in the private sector, these costs were part of corporate overhead.  Planning and estimating were performed on speculation and were part of the cost of acquiring the contract. (and to give proper credit where it is due, my current job relies on someone performing the planning and estimating function on speculation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It all depends on the environment in which you work and the client's expectation.  But on the other hand, the answer is the same as the answer to 90% of PM questions - assess the consequences of the alternatives, and communicate the options to the relevant stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-11-17T07:28:13.603" LastActivityDate="2012-11-17T07:28:13.603" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7910" CreationDate="2012-11-14T20:23:27.533" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short, doesn't matter, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/12/version-1-sucks-but-ship-it-anyway.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;just ship it&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You still need to prove that your idea solves a real problem, and that it'll gain traction. Doesn't matter now if you are updating it by hand (faster to test) or with an automated tool (better later), the core of your idea is to show people movie theater shows with an app, not allow companies to register it this or that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't even need to make a deal with a company, I'd update it myself (take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://google.com/movies&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Movies&lt;/a&gt;, just damn easy!) at first and focus on getting users. &lt;strong&gt;If people don't use it, the tools and negotiations you develop around it are useless.&lt;/strong&gt; On the other hand, with a solid user base, companies will offer themselves to be featured in your app.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Test your core idea first, go for the rest later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2352" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T20:23:27.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8058" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8064" CreationDate="2012-11-15T04:11:51.223" Score="4" ViewCount="421" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our team, we have a small team of 3 people, fresh graduate from the computer and networking stream.&#xA;2 people are responsible for software development , 1 people are responsible for back-end configuration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am responsible for the software development and sometimes meeting clients to propose an I.T solution ranged from a software application to integrated I.T solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I am a fresh grad student with about cumulatively 1  year of experience developing web applications, from requirement development to system administration, 3 months of Android Applications and hands-on experience of window application. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would describe my team as follows:  self-motivated in the beginning but motivation drops as times goes by, inexperienced , innovative, willing to learn but less time or incentive to finish the task on time as we have other things to do or appointments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The current project is Window application which all of us needs additional time to get hands on .The deadline is by the end of Nov.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There exists shrinking of the current project and hence risk to compensation due to delay of delivery so I have to be the person to talk with business requirement with new clients in order to get new projects to do for the sake of our business continuity. As for the newly received project, the deadline is End of Dec.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What techniques for project management can be applied in this scenario? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4714" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-12-16T05:25:20.000" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T13:21:41.270" Title="How to enhance project management practice for the small team?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8059" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8067" CreationDate="2012-11-15T04:30:42.487" Score="7" ViewCount="3780" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm certain that acquiring the business requirements from the clients and providing the work items for the developer teams are always a headache for experienced business analysts as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, it was my first time to talk my clients, who ask us to develop an ordering application for the Windows platform. After that I was recommended to carry on the necessary research and summarize the business needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a fresh graduate of Information Engineering and I don't know much about software development processes, and I have less experience in discussing business proposals with clients about reducing operational costs and process improvements. Nevertheless, I had to draft a wireframe for our application along with all the possible use cases and architectural specifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment it is hard for me to distinguish between the business analyst role and the programmer role, which I also have in our 3 men team, but I have to figure this out in order to be able to communicate with our clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what is the best way to collect business requirements? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a good way to translate business requirements to software development requirements?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I gather business requirements without getting into deep technical discussions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4714" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-12-16T05:24:47.223" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T05:24:47.223" Title="How to keep a requirements gathering discussion focused on business needs and not technical details?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;communication-management&gt;&lt;business-analyst&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8058" CreationDate="2012-11-15T09:11:35.583" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your team is composed by 3 persons and you are without serious experience in the background, I suggest you to plan your project finish with 1 week before the deadline. It is very useful to take &quot;code freeze&quot; periods. It persist in using/testing the application, but not modifying the code. It should be at the end of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started my work as you, with a little bit bigger team, about 7 persons. The strong point of this startup is that you know, that the inner team forces are higher than at a bigger company, because your desire to proof your abilities is much more higher. You can rely on this, and this can motivate your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you to make at the end of each week a meeting, when you shut down your computers, and discuss about the past week's tasks, the strong and the weak points. Here should be discussed the next week's tasks too. It shouldn't take too many time, not more then 1 hour. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You didn't described your working hours, if you develop this project when you have time, or you have a fixed planning. Anyhow, fixed rules and short deadlines may sound strange, but they are very important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should pay attention to your colleagues individually. If one of them fails, don't demoralize him, because it can influence his following work. Just stay and discuss why did he fail and how should be this corrected in the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4564" LastActivityDate="2012-11-15T09:11:35.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8061" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8065" CreationDate="2012-11-15T10:09:27.230" Score="15" ViewCount="1678" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Questions&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to reject customer requirement/highlight to them that is outside our job scope even though they feel we are able to do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to explain to customer why our charges is higher when they receive a cheaper quotation by others company? Most of the time I believe the client did not provide full job specifications to the service provider. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to explain to customer that we are going to charge him for the additional requirement. &#xA;They might think that that is just a minor changes but in fact there are quite a lot of minor changes add up and used a lot of time to fullfill his requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Background&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to have your advices on how to handle difficult customer. I am not complaining about the customer but just want to learn a professional way to avoid similar incident occur in future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have developed a custom CMS website for my boss's friend. The job I have done so far include: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Logo design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Custom template&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Content update (Copy Paste from M. Words up to 50 pages+)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Basic SEO Based on Google optimization guide (Submit sitemap, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 custom form (Application form/training form/contact form)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used 1 month to design and developed the website. Also I have offer the customer with 1 month free website maintainance which include small changes or content update to the site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically it would be a simple job and we can done all the requirements within 1 month. Unfortunately, the customer can't provide the full details upfront. Initially, he just send us a hardcopy form and ask us to develop according to the form. After we have developed, then he told us to make some changes to the form. So we follow exactly and update the form. This process keep going round and round and every time he also got new small request to add on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just the changes to this form and while waiting for his feedback has already spend for a month. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also he request us to test certain software and let him know whether it is user friendly and suitable for his business. But we haven't use this software before and it is not in our job scope. I don't know how to reject his request most of the time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have charge him for USD 1600++ for the whole project. I feel the price is reasonable for the efforts that we have put it in. Unfortunately he complains to our boss said our charges is very high while he getting the quotation from others is just around $800. Almost half of our charges. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I explain to him in this situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also he is expecting us to quote him for maintenance agreement by next week and I am worry if I quote for too less and we receive a lot of changes from him, or quote too high then he complains to my boss again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I am not allowed to post this question in this project management section, please feel free to close this thread. I welcome any and all criticism and advices. Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read this and found it useful.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/7852/what-are-the-techniques-to-elicit-requirements-from-customers-who-dont-understa&quot;&gt;What are the techniques to elicit requirements from customers who don&amp;#39;t understand their needs?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5020" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2019-10-28T10:14:40.317" Title="Handling difficult customers" Tags="&lt;customer-satisfaction&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8061" CreationDate="2012-11-15T14:02:02.540" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your problem arises from the fact that the customer has no limits to request reviews in you application, so he doesn't make the necessary effort to review what he really wants, because you'll do it anyway later if he asks to. You can settle an agreement before the project starts that each iteration will have two or three reviews accepted. Each additional iteration will cost X to build. This way, he'll pay much more attention on what he is asking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You can read the whole idea &lt;a href=&quot;http://elweb.co/stuff/this-is-how-we-work-with-clients/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2352" LastActivityDate="2012-11-15T14:02:02.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8061" CreationDate="2012-11-15T14:07:47.233" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds like bit of a hairy situation, as stated this is your boss' friend. I don't know the full background of the company (does your boss own it? Is it a large software firm? etc).  However, it does sound like that your development practices, and in general the project coordination being done prior to it getting to the developer's lap is lacking quite a bit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many approaches that you can use for pricing or planning prior to the development phase.  Proper Project Coordination is just as important as the code being written to come up with a final product.  Here's some suggestions based on what I see is missing from what you've explained. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Forms are always bad to describe an initial request for development. This is due to the person requesting the development not being a developer themselves and often leaving out necessary information (Remember that assignment in Programming Logic 101 where you were asked to name the steps of making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?).  Instead there should either be a face-to-face talk/conference call where the Project Coordinator, Developer, and customer sit down to go over all the aspects of what they want.  It's the job of the Developer and Project Coordinator to get them to a point at which they KNOW what they want. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From this point, do a feasibility assessment based on the information that you were able to obtain with the initial client engagement.  Is this feasible for the team?  Do we have the necessary man-power and skill-level to complete this project?  Is the environment that we're developing in able to technically handle all the features that the client wants?  What will the estimated cost be for this project?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the project is agreed upon as feasible and a project plan is set in place, then the fun part begins.  The legal contract with clauses referencing &quot;Code Freezes&quot;, additional charges based on large infrastructure changes or functionality, cut offs for edits, quality and integration testing, etc.  This is where you make your money, as this is what will save your butt if you have a pushy client such as the one that you're describing.  Laying everything out, up-front to the client prior to any money exchanging hands is the responsibility of the company/developer and if this isn't done then you place yourself at risk for situations like this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may seem as though I've completely re-hashed the development/project life-cycle but judging by your post it really feels as though a reassessment of how this is handled needs to be done by your department/company.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as dealing with the current situation on hand, I would speak with your boss directly regarding the issue.  If he's a developer himself, or manages the development team he should understand the strain that it's placing on your team and will most likely be the best communication route for your customer in re-negotiating what can be done to save this project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4982" LastActivityDate="2012-11-15T14:07:47.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8058" CreationDate="2012-11-15T15:22:20.977" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, a few comments here - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first is to answer your question - &quot;what pm techniques&quot;? Based on your description, the first (and most important) technique is 'commitment'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I would describe my team as follows: self-motivated in the beginning&#xA;  but motivation drops as times goes by, inexperienced , innovative,&#xA;  willing to learn but &lt;strong&gt;less time or incentive to finish the task on&#xA;  time as we have other things to do or appointments.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you're not sure you can get it done, you're worried about &quot;risk to compensation due to delay of delivery&quot;, but you're too busy or have other things to do than work on it?????&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The FIRST thing you need to do is figure if this is even something you want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having decided that, the second technique is 'planning'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have to complete this project by the end of Nov, then you need to break it down into it's component pieces (WBS) and map out what order they need to be done int, when they need to be done by so others can be done, and who's responsible. Without that planning it jsut won't happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastEditorUserId="921" LastEditDate="2012-11-15T20:09:17.190" LastActivityDate="2012-11-15T20:09:17.190" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8061" CreationDate="2012-11-15T15:31:24.637" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;In reality this isn't a difficult customer. This is a customer. The issues arise from the fact that neither you nor he was clear about the scope going in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He provided a form to quote and you did it. I imagine that the form was fairly vague and didn't address scope changes, final acceptance, review cycles, cost for changes, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the first thing for going forward is DON'T DO ANYTHING MORE unless the process is spelled out and agreed to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the current situation - your prices vs others. That's easy. Compare quotes and show that the quote he's using for comparison doesn't include the changes you've made. So the initial cost was probably equivalent. But changes cost. When he balks at the change costs, walk him through what he asked for, what he changed, and what it took to implement those changes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will also be helpful in going forward. It will show him the importance of being clear up front, and that changes need to be assessed and agreed to before just being requested. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastEditorUserId="921" LastEditDate="2012-11-15T21:26:21.257" LastActivityDate="2012-11-15T21:26:21.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8066" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8068" CreationDate="2012-11-15T21:43:37.343" Score="5" ViewCount="151" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're a team of around 4 UI Developers, 1 Designer and 2 UX. We work on a series of ongoing projects and every month or so, we start a new small project from scratch. All projects are owned by the company we work for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Up until now, when a new project started, the UX and Design team started almost from scratch. There are no standards regarding typography, font sizes, margins, paddings, button colors and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no brand consistency between our projects right now. We can't allocate time to start a &quot;branding&quot; project. What we can do is decide on standards as we go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, what is the best way you can think of to start organizing the team to slowly adopt design standards? Where and how would you share it and make sure the team knows about it. What would you include in the standard? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The time frame would be 2~3 weeks while working on other projects. Higher management does not consider this a priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4603" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2012-11-15T23:04:04.240" LastActivityDate="2012-11-15T23:48:13.873" Title="What is the best way to get a UX/UI team to adopt standards?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8059" CreationDate="2012-11-15T23:22:37.713" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The easiest way is to organise a series of interviews with your clients. During the first session, you talk about the product, create some sketches either on paper or on the whiteboard about how the product should work (it may be a good idea to record the session with the permission of the clients). After that, you go back to the team, and together you create some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pretotyping.org/&quot;&gt;pretotypes&lt;/a&gt; based on the gathered data and you play with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;pretotypes&lt;/em&gt; should give you ideas on the work you are facing, and most probably you'll also have a lot of questions. You call for the second session, where you give the &lt;em&gt;pretotypes&lt;/em&gt; to your clients and ask your questions. The session should end with a set of use cases in a prioritised order. These uses cases will be your requirements. If you focus on the use cases, you can avoid talking about technical details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-11-15T23:22:37.713" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8066" CreationDate="2012-11-15T23:48:13.873" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are really two ways to handle this. One is more intentional than the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a bigger reason for it that might get mgmt behind it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first is do a &quot;lessons learned&quot; after each project. What went right, what went wrong, what could we do better, what new risks did we identify, etc. During this time one of the things you can review is the idea of 'standards'. What did we need to decide on? Have we had this same discussion before? Did we come up with the same solution? Did we use something again that we already knew about. Use this time to codify the standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other approach is to find some time to go back and review previous projects for those common themes, those things that you keep asking, and what the answers are. You'll develop the standards out of the common tings you keep finding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, mgmt (2 arguments) -  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;re-inventing the wheel cost money each time you do it. So it's in the company's best interests to develop these standards to save time and money on all future projects. For each project you bid, you'll be able to eliminate the amount of time spent defining these items. That translates into either more profit, or a lower bid (which secures more work). Position it as a short-term cost for much longer-term gains.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The most accurate type of estimating comes from historical data. Historical data only comes from a thorough review of past projects, and finding the 'standard' way things were done and what it cost. So taking the time to find and develop these standards wont only improve your bids and eliminate cost, it will make your bids that much more accurate. That helps with both work in progress, and cash projections. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-11-15T23:48:13.873" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8061" CreationDate="2012-11-16T00:44:26.533" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As pointed before, the best thing to avoid this situation is planning in advance, setting the number of reviews and the cost of extra ones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Setting a deadline is not only good for customers, as they get the results when they expect, but also good for you, as they will know that your time is valuable and you will be spending it on something else after that deadline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the cheaper quotes he got, the approach I like is based in my experience as a customer, more than a service provider, and I think that's why is working fine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare quotes and do it with your customer, let him see what he should be expecting from each one. Point what is the extra value that you gave in yours, make it clear that you cannot charge anything below that price (if that's true) while you keep your quality standards. If there is some kind of professional who works especially in that extra part of the job, find a good one and refer to him. This is a very good policy that works miracles for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes there is work you can't afford to do for many reasons, or simply can't offer an optimal result. Most people go ahead and try, ending in something mediocre, cheap. Instead, give the name of some good professional to do this job you can't do, you could even find some agreement with him to lower prices for refered customers. Two things can happen afterwards:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The customer goes to him and gets a quote. As this is a good professional, it might be expensive. Your customer will get the idea of why you weren't going to do it for free or very low rates. He can go on or come back and decide he doesn't want it anymore, but it's his problem now, not yours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The customer is ok with the extra price the refered professional is charging him. He gets a good job done and you are relieved from the extra pressure of doing it. If you chose the right person to refer, everyone will be quite happy with this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not many service providers gave me this option of putting my money somewhere else, but the ones who did, had my respect forever, I always thought of them as very trust worthy and gave them back the money they didn't charge me with recomendations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5032" LastActivityDate="2012-11-16T00:44:26.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8070" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-16T04:25:00.003" Score="5" ViewCount="1312" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Sufficient Granularity?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a ASP.NET web page to construct. The design of the UI and classes is already complete. I have prepared a task breakdown, including hours needed for each task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this WBS need to be split up further to be sufficiently granular?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Work Breakdown in Hours&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;╔══════════════════════════════════════════════╦═══════╗&#xA;║                     Task                     ║ Hours ║&#xA;╠══════════════════════════════════════════════╬═══════╣&#xA;║ SQL formation (for method 1)                 ║ 4     ║&#xA;║ DTO classs creation (for method 1)           ║ 0.5   ║&#xA;║ DAL/BL Method (for method 1)                 ║ 0.5   ║&#xA;║ NUnit Unit Testing (for method 1)            ║ 3     ║&#xA;║ Concurrency Handling (for method 1)          ║ 1     ║&#xA;║ HTML layout and styling                      ║ 6     ║&#xA;║ Tabular Data display in UI                   ║ 3     ║&#xA;║ Input Validation                             ║ 2     ║&#xA;║ Ajax Calendar Control                        ║ 1     ║&#xA;║ Hide/Show grid columns                       ║ 4     ║&#xA;║ Asynchronus data loading inside div          ║ 2     ║&#xA;║ Third Party file upload control              ║ 2     ║&#xA;║ Other Client side Manipulations with Jquery  ║ 2     ║&#xA;║ Export to Excel                              ║ 5     ║&#xA;║ Coding Standard Check                        ║ 1     ║&#xA;║ Exception Handling                           ║ 0.5   ║&#xA;║ Integration Data Verification                ║ 0.5   ║&#xA;║ Design document update (based on deviations) ║ 1     ║&#xA;╚══════════════════════════════════════════════╩═══════╝&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3014" LastEditorUserId="3014" LastEditDate="2012-11-21T05:44:28.007" LastActivityDate="2016-07-04T02:32:47.143" Title="How granular should an estimate be for building a web page?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8054" CreationDate="2012-11-16T05:19:28.617" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since this hasn't been closed yet I'll try and answer based on the limited information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two ways you can do this.  You can get a Project Server setup to manage this information for you, and even go as far as to have a Sharepoint Server pull this information and display KPI's and all the pretty bells-and-whistles on a Sharepoint Site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Project Server and Sharepoint Server are out of your reach, you can do this manually by making a Master Project within Microsoft Project.  Once the Master Project has been created, point yourself to the &quot;Project&quot; tab and subproject out all the projects you want to fall into the Master Project for a dashboard view.  Make sure that the projects are linked content-wise.  As long as you do not change the location of the project or files once these have been subbed-out - you can edit and manage all of your projects from the Master Project and it will update and save the subprojects for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Here's a Quick Tutorial&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kodyaz.com/microsoft-office/create-master-project-subproject-microsoft-project-2010.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.kodyaz.com/microsoft-office/create-master-project-subproject-microsoft-project-2010.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4982" LastActivityDate="2012-11-16T05:19:28.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8070" CreationDate="2012-11-16T12:10:14.067" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It looks detailed enough to me if it is in days. If it is in hours, then it is too detailed. A half an hour work rarely takes half an hour. Usually, it is more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an &lt;em&gt;&quot;Exception Handling&quot;&lt;/em&gt; task, which may not be a good idea to do separately. Additionally, in comparison to the other tasks the time you'll spend on it is technically zero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a scenario. You've finished all the other tasks, but it turns out that you have to rewrite several classes because of the complexity the &quot;&lt;em&gt;Exception Handling&lt;/em&gt;&quot; brings in. It is better to do the error handling at that task it belongs to, and try not to underestimate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have to provide a schedule or a plan based on your estimates, try to add some buffers. It is really hard to set the right size of the buffer (it really depends on the environment, the team, the infrastructure), but a number between 50% and 30% usually does the trick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-11-16T12:10:14.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8070" CreationDate="2012-11-16T14:47:41.913" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, you should be clear on the terms you are using.  An estimate, which should be a range of results, is different than a target, which is a single number to which you are marching and which lies somewhere in the range of your estimate.  So you are talking about targets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rule is easy:  you break down your work to the smallest level that you need to manage it, and by &quot;manage it&quot; I mean such that you can analyze where you are in your progress, what is causing your variances, and where you can make a credible prediction as to where you are likely going.  That level is different for every project and for every PM.  At the end of the day, you need to be comfortable with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The break down of work is not free.  The more you break it down, the more it costs to track it and control it, the more complex it is and far easier to get &quot;lost&quot; in the details.  So it becomes a balance between your ability to manage it and the costs to control it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many organizations apply rules, e.g., you must break down your work so the duration or work does not exceed x days or hours.  I dislike those rules; it should be flexible.  The one rule I do like, however, is that the work should be broken down so you have at least one, better two, tangible milestone or completion products/tasks within your reporting period, so that you can measure your work using EV, critical path management, etc.  If you cannot reasonably break it down to have such a milestone within the period, so be it, but that should be an exception versus a rule and you need to be comfortable in flying blind for that reporting period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that everything is variable.  We do not live in a deterministic world, but a probabilistic one.  I prefer to estimate and target in days of duration versus hours.  The variability in days is enough to cope with.  In hours, the variability would be too crazy to analyze and would like not add any value.  Your variance analysis would include things like 'Harry went to the bathroom at 2:00 pm and returned to work at 2:07 pm.&quot;  :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-11-16T14:47:41.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8070" CreationDate="2012-11-16T18:57:46.237" Score="5" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Ideal Hours vs. Everything Else&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your work breakdown seems to be based on ideal hours. While there are proponents of this approach, ideal hours &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/how-do-story-points-relate-to-hours&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;rarely track with any precision&lt;/a&gt; since estimates are usually a &lt;em&gt;distribution&lt;/em&gt;. Another person &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kfurlong.com/2009/11/18/why-we-dropped-ideal-hours/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;said&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[P]recision doesn’t equal accuracy and accuracy is what we’re really after.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, whether any given task will take 30 minutes of wall-clock time or not is an educated guess, and doesn't really tell you how much process overhead, task-switching time, or other issues will impact delivery of a given unit of ideal time. The real underlying question is how many ideal hours one can actually expect to complete in any given cycle, and your WBS doesn't really say anything about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Granularity vs. Clarity&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Granularity should result in clarity on several key points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dependencies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Success criteria.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implied or explicit failure criteria.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your WBS doesn't address any of those things. For example, what are the dependencies of &quot;Export to Excel?&quot; How will you know if it's done? How will you know if it was done &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These things matter because your time estimates should be based on those things. Perhaps you and your team have some implicit understanding of what that task means, and how it fits in with everything else, but it is unlikely to be documented or transparent enough to make the estimate of &quot;5 hours&quot; anything but an opaque guess based on indeterminate criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this doesn't mean you have to decompose the task further. It may or may not already be granular enough. The real issue is that it isn't &lt;em&gt;clear&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Have the Right People Estimate&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, in Scrum the cross-functional team provides the estimates because &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; are the ones doing the work. As a result, they are the only ones who know what skills and tools they have at their immediate disposal for the task, and whether or not they have sufficient confidence in the estimate to commit to completing the work within a given time-box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Confidence in estimates grows over time. The right questions to ask are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether the WBS you presented is sufficient to give you and your team confidence in the estimates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The granularity of individual WBS elements is sufficient to track progress and deviations from the schedule.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The clarity of the WBS elements is sufficient to communicate effectively within the team, and between the team and the organization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definitely ask those questions. However, the only people who can answer them already work with you; the answers can't be found on the Internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-11-16T18:57:46.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8061" CreationDate="2012-11-16T19:59:21.337" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am surprised no one mentioned agile methodologies (SCRUM etc) - imho, it would be much easier for both sides if customer could provide constant feedback and receive results every 2 weeks or so&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2935" LastEditorUserId="2935" LastEditDate="2012-11-16T20:06:07.523" LastActivityDate="2012-11-16T20:06:07.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8076" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8080" CreationDate="2012-11-16T22:38:24.500" Score="15" ViewCount="1015" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's no surprise that when a meeting is in place there are a select few that cannot seem to take their eyes off of their phone. I find that this distracts not only that one person, but it also distracts the members around them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The questions is, as a project manager, whether or not I should collect all of the cell phones  before the meeting or single out the few that constantly are distracted by them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to punish everyone just because a few people can't pay attention, and I also understand the need for them in emergency situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5006" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2012-11-17T03:11:04.377" LastActivityDate="2019-07-03T14:04:42.453" Title="Should I collect all the phones before a meeting?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8076" CreationDate="2012-11-16T23:42:23.067" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't recommend to do that. People are really attached to their phones and they don't like others touching or taking them away. Additionally, even it is a company phone it is their property and their responsibility, which you cannot just take away (it might be a felony as well). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have problems only with certain people, you should talk to them face to face and &lt;a href=&quot;http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2012/05/group-punishment/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;don't punish the whole group&lt;/a&gt;. Talk to them and ask them to stop using their phones during the meeting. &lt;strong&gt;If it still happens, stop the meeting and ask them if the information they are getting from their phone is important to them, or is it relevant to the meeting.&lt;/strong&gt; If the answer is not a definite yes, you ask them to put it away, and you wait until it happens. Be determined, but polite and professional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mind the emphasis on the face to face discussion and on the targeted communication. If you address the issue to the whole group, your message won't be taken that seriously, and they may not even get your point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-11-16T23:42:23.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8076" CreationDate="2012-11-17T01:08:08.017" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;that's a very pertinent question! I'd rephrase it in a slightly different way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why people don't pay enough attention to meetings?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The usage of mobiles (or any other gadgets) just for distraction (at least in the meetings I've been to) is mainly because people don't believe the meeting is useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, instead of trying to solve the consequence, I'd suggest you to focus on the root cause. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are these meetings &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/02/meetings-where-work-goes-to-die.html&quot;&gt;REALLY&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; required?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the attendance of everyone invited really needed?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there in place a proper schedule?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are the times being respected?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd guess if someone isn't paying enough attention, is because one or more of the above is a problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, &lt;strong&gt;get in touch with the peers that aren't paying enough attention, asking them if there's anything wrong with these meetings&lt;/strong&gt; from their perspective and then balance their opinion with yours. Be sincere, and keep things private. The answers might surprise you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-11-17T01:08:08.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8059" CreationDate="2012-11-17T02:07:09.237" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Zsolt mentioned, there's no other way to gathering requirements than getting in touch with the business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you mentioned that you're a fresh graduated, you may still consider confuse the differences between Tech and Functional Specs. If that's the case, you can take a look at this article from Joel: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000036.html&quot;&gt;Painless Functional Specifications - Part 1: Why Bother?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At some point, he clearly states the difference between Functional and Technical specs (that might be the most obvious for everyone, but I haven't heard until reading this article):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Functional Specs defines &lt;strong&gt;WHAT&lt;/strong&gt; the application is going to do;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical Specs defines &lt;strong&gt;HOW&lt;/strong&gt; things are going to built.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope you have already seen this definition somewhere else. If not, hope it helps you now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-11-17T02:07:09.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8076" CreationDate="2012-11-17T02:13:56.123" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, don't even think about taking someone's phone. If they're looking at their        Facebook account or personal Twitter account during a meeting, then you have a bigger problem, and the solution most likely would involve possibly trying to recruit and hire the right kind of people; ideally, those who are capable of acting like adults.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, one thing I've noticed is that we tend to think we're more important than anything else that could possibly be going on in the organization, and that's not always the case. For instance, maybe one of the members in this meeting is part of your IT department, and she was checking her phone to make sure the alert she got didn't involve one of the production servers going down, or maybe the alert was to tell the construction manager that the shipment of concrete arrived and needs to be dealt with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, you should ideally have people on your team who you trust, so that when they do pick up their phone, you can be reasonably certain that they're indeed looking at something work related, and not pictures of kittens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One strategy you might use is to mention in the meeting invite that meeting attendees should make sure their responsibilities are covered by another colleague, so that they may focus on the important issues you wish to discuss. This will make it clear you would like to be able to focus, while also giving people the opportunity to set things up so that they can focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefit of this approach is that your team member whose wife is about to have a baby can check in with her &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the meeting and let her know to contact only in an emergency. In short, people can also take care of any personal issues in preparation for the meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-11-17T02:13:56.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8076" CreationDate="2012-11-17T14:22:09.713" Score="11" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Command-and-Control vs. Self-Organizing Teams&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I collect all the phones before a meeting? ...I don't want to punish everyone just because a few people can't pay attention[.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends. Are you facilitating a meeting between adults, or babysitting kids? If you treat adults like kids, then you abandon all hope of creating teams where people step up to the plate to accept responsibility or extend themselves beyond the bare minimum dictated by C&amp;amp;C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the fine points raised by other answers, the very question indicates that you are already in a situation where:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You feel that it's your job to manage (rather than facilitate) the flow of information in a centralized way.&lt;/strong&gt; Attention deficits are usually a project smell for when someone is talking &lt;em&gt;at&lt;/em&gt; people rather than eliciting their active participation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You feel that you can't trust your team.&lt;/strong&gt; If you trusted them to get their jobs done, work around distractions, or communicate effectively with one another, then you wouldn't have to strip-search people before a meeting to find contraband smart-phones.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You feel that you are herding cats.&lt;/strong&gt; If everyone is doing their own thing, then they are a conglomeration of people rather than a cohesive team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You are projecting your own priorities and concerns onto the team.&lt;/strong&gt; Has anyone but you actually &lt;em&gt;said&lt;/em&gt; anything about individuals on the team distracting them during meetings? If not, why don't you trust them to speak for themselves? If they have, why are you trying to solve the problem single-handedly instead of empowering the team to solve their own problems?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trust must be earned over time on all sides, and both trust and organizational culture are built one interaction at a time. Treat people like responsible adults, and they will usually act responsibly. If the organization is populated by mediocre people who aren't deemed trustworthy to deliver value without babysitting, then there are hiring decisions (including decisions to hire executives who make poor hiring decisions or engender distrust throughout the organization through their management style) that should be carefully reviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Tone at the Top&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_at_the_top&quot;&gt;Tone at the top&lt;/a&gt; is essential to defining organizational culture. As a project manager, you are likely to be a product of your organizational environment (both good and bad). Nature vs. nurture is an ongoing debate, but you certainly have the &lt;em&gt;opportunity&lt;/em&gt; to nurture and protect your team from a toxic culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the overall organizational culture is bad, you have the responsibility to make your team as effective as possible &lt;em&gt;despite&lt;/em&gt; a poor culture...but don't be too surprised if you can't overcome company-wide inertia or disincentives single-handedly. Even if you wear a cape, that doesn't make you a super-hero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-11-17T14:22:09.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8059" CreationDate="2012-11-17T15:36:37.500" Score="2" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Translating Requirements with User Stories&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than attempt to answer the whole question, I'm going to answer just the part about translating requirements because I think it's often the most misunderstood. You asked:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there a good way to translate business requirements to software development requirements?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many ways to do this, but one of the most useful agile techniques is the &lt;em&gt;user story&lt;/em&gt;. A user story contains perspective (&quot;As a ...&quot;), a deliverable (&quot;I want ...&quot;), and some context (&quot;so that ...&quot;) that provides a solid framework for defining the scope and technical tasks that meet the business requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, as an agile technique, user stories are inherently iterative. Mike Cohn &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/topics/user-stories&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;points out&lt;/a&gt; that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[A] user story...is incomplete until the discussions about that story occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, while user stories are a great starting point for delivering value, they don't replace the need for ongoing interaction and routine feedback between the development team and the end users (or their proxies, such as the Product Owner).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter how far down the rabbit hole you go, you still need a feedback loop. For example, converting user stories to acceptance tests with Cucumber often builds an initial agreement (ideally using domain-specific language appropriate to the business) on what the specification really means. However, it's still extremely common to uncover additional use cases or hidden requirements only &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; a requirement is met, which then requires refinement or refactoring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a concrete example. I had a client that specified that they wanted all records from a database table to be available on a single UI screen---no paging, no Ajax or remote procedure calls, just local access to all records delivered in a single batch to the client. The feature was delivered, having met all the acceptance criteria originally specified...and was then redesigned because it didn't meet the performance expectations of the end users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes this happens because the end result is unexpected or unanticipated, and sometimes it happens because the organization accepts business risk, betting that a shortcut will pay off. Whatever the reason, though, it's common enough that continuous refinement and re-evaluation are baked into agile development frameworks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Requirements Should Be Living Documents&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the problems with project management come from treating the requirements document (whether a formal specification or a set of user stories) as an historical artifact. User stories make treating requirements as living documents more intuitive, and encourage informed discussions about scope, risk, and usability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If end users and developers don't remain routinely engaged with one another in a tight feedback loop, it pretty much ensures that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The business will ask for the wrong things.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The development team will deliver unusable things.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Requirement documents are, from one point of view, a proxy for end-user expectations. If you build a good feedback loop into your project and revisit the requirements throughout your project life-cycle, you will be in a better position to manage those expectations successfully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-11-17T15:36:37.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8076" CreationDate="2012-11-17T22:40:29.917" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;there are a select few that cannot seem to take their eyes off of their phone&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;imho, it's quite common for creative people to get bored during all those endless meetings &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;perhaps you could change the way you run meetings? I've seen too many project managers who just &lt;em&gt;loved&lt;/em&gt; all kinds of meetings and couldn't understand why developers would find these wonderful long meeting &quot;boring&quot; or &quot;exhausting&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2935" LastEditorUserId="2935" LastEditDate="2012-11-17T23:05:30.930" LastActivityDate="2012-11-17T23:05:30.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2377" CreationDate="2012-11-18T13:23:54.170" Score="0" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;obsolete (?): &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/edavis10/redmine-customer-plugin/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Customer Plugin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;code&gt;https://github.com/edavis10/redmine-customer-plugin/&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ruby-based CRM, don't know about Redmine integration: &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/brobertsaz/railscrm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rails CRM (needs mongoDB)&lt;/a&gt; &lt;code&gt;https://github.com/brobertsaz/railscrm&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5049" LastActivityDate="2012-11-18T13:23:54.170" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8076" CreationDate="2012-11-19T11:36:30.583" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to add my voice to the consensus; I'm not sure how much new I have to add, but I want to reinforce the consensus that this is an &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; bad idea.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you want to advertise that your meeting is so boring that the only&#xA;way to enforce participation is through acts of petty tyranny and&#xA;theft?   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you want the attendees to focus on their rage and&#xA;resentment of you rather than the agenda of the meeting? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Personally, if the meeting organizer tried to collect my phone, I'd walk out&#xA;there, because I am assured that there is something I can do that is&#xA;more valuable than stroking someone elses ego.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is checking their phone different from doodling on the notepaper?  Quite frankly, I can play games on my phone and still have enough attention left over to participate fully in most meetings.  Sometimes it helps - playing a game on the phone prevents me from uttering the first thought that comes into my head; it forces me to mull over my comments for a moment and contribute something that is valuable, rather than something that is trivial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have said, you'll get the meeting you request. If you treat the attendees like children or criminals, then you'll get children and criminals.  If the focus of the meeting is on what needs to be done and who is accountable, then you'll get people who will help you get things done and be accountable for them.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, the people who are on their phones don't have a problem with the meeting you do. And it is up to you to solve the problem. There is plenty of practical, pragmatic advice on how to run a meeting that engages and involves people.  Demonstrate the responsibility and accountability that you're not getting from the attendees. Set an example and hold yourself accountable for conducting a meeting that deserves attention. The only alternative is to reveal just how poor your meeting management skills are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2012-11-19T13:01:06.743" LastActivityDate="2012-11-19T13:01:06.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8076" CreationDate="2012-11-19T14:01:58.180" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Treat the symptoms or kill the disease.  Taking the cell phones away will certainly cure the distraction problems.  I'd hate to think what the side effects might be.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A high performing team doing work with which everyone agrees will not be distracted.  It is simple as that.  Like others have stated, take a long, hard look at your meeting and ask the right questions:  why are we meeting, what is the desired outcome, who needs to attend, do we have to meet, do we need another type of communication exchange, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-11-19T14:01:58.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8059" CreationDate="2012-11-19T17:29:39.740" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;So, what is the best way to collect business requirements?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have said, working directly with business, managers and staff (SMEs), is the best way. Given that, you can't just ask what they want; that is an open-ended question. Creating a prototype is a good way to give feedback on the requirements, but it is much better if you have a grasp  of the requirements first, or you may end up in an endless loop of prototyping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, ask the business what they need to do, and what information they need to do it; this post, &lt;a href=&quot;http://iag.posterous.com/requirements-attack&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Requirements Attack&lt;/a&gt; tells it pretty well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5054" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-11-20T01:35:01.420" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T01:35:01.420" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8088" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8096" CreationDate="2012-11-20T11:22:15.280" Score="7" ViewCount="1911" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background:&lt;/strong&gt; We are mid-way through a development which was estimated for a customer on a fixed price contract. To come up with the estimate we built a backlog by trying to list all user stories and then gave them a story point estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also tried to come up with an overall time estimate by taking certain stories, breaking them up into tasks of days/hours and then scaling the time to story point ratio up to the entire backlog. Because the technology and framework being used was not familiar to the development team (I know, I know...) the estimates ended up being more of a gut feeling guess. We did run spikes but they weren't entirely useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, now that we are mid way through the team have a much better understanding of the technologies and frameworks in use. We are considering re-estimating (in story points) the remaining items in the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is some conflicting opinions in the team and some people feel we will lose track of the original plan and that 'you win some, you lose some' and it will all balance out. But at the same time it would be good to have a more accurate picture of our current progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My question:&lt;/strong&gt; should we change the story points for backlog items once development is underway?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considerations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this good or bad practice? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If we do this, what calculations should we apply? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should we re-estimate the entire backlog including&#xA;completed items, to make the things accurate. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;am I over-thinking&#xA;this? :)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2156" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-01-09T09:54:25.097" LastActivityDate="2019-01-09T09:54:25.097" Title="Changing backlog story point estimates mid way through a release" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8089" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-20T12:08:05.073" Score="10" ViewCount="2631" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to get information about measurements and metrics for documentation work in a project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project can be itself limited to documentation as a deliverable or  documentation as part of entire product delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I measure performance around a paper deliverable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5060" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-11-22T18:33:05.213" LastActivityDate="2012-12-14T21:21:25.203" Title="What are the metrics for software documentation?" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;performance&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8089" CreationDate="2012-11-20T13:22:09.887" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;When anyone asks this question in this way, it implies the desire to measure for the sake of measuring, an end versus a means to an end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You metrics pop out as a result of decomposing your project goals.  Any other measurement that has no parent goal will be looked at by bored stakeholders, who will eventually learn to ignore that report.  Goals are decomposed into objectives that are deliverd by plans.  The question becomes, how do you know when you get there, how do you know your plan was achieved?  The metrics you need answer that question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T13:22:09.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8089" CreationDate="2012-11-20T13:32:17.283" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Concur with everything that @David Espina said).&#xA;Are you writing the quality management plan for your project?  If the project is effectively to produce a document, then the &quot;metrics&quot; are really your quality goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does this document support the organization's strategic goals?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The project metrics should demonstrate this alignment?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How will the document relate to business case?  The metrics should&#xA;demonstrate that the document fulfills the business case.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who is the consumer of the document? How will they judge the utility&#xA;of the document? Does it need to be read by people of a given&#xA;reading level? Does it need to be comprehensive measured against&#xA;some set of  criteria?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T13:32:17.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8088" CreationDate="2012-11-20T14:06:47.707" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I faced the same problem with my team. What I learned is, if you're not comfortable with current estimates, go for it, but don't waste time re-estimating in-sprint or past stories. Focus on enforcing the basic rules of using points for new ones:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;choose a completed story S1 that everyone or most of your team is aware of the efforts involved to complete it. This is going to be your base to start estimating.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;define a point to this story, say 3 points, B size, or whatever metrics you use.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;define that new stories that are 3 points or B size will require the same amount of effort to complete as S1.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is the important part&lt;/strong&gt;: define that new stories that are 1 point will require 3 times less effort to complete than S1. Stories that are 2 points will require two times more effort than 1 and less effort than S1, and so on. The same applies to sizes, if A size is the biggest one, define that a B size story should take an effort between A and C size stories. &lt;strong&gt;When in doubt, always bring back past stories estimates and compare with them&lt;/strong&gt; (prefer the ones that everyone is aware of the costs).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, consider using regular &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.collab.net/agile/the-backlog-refinement-meeting-or-backlog-grooming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;backlog refinement&lt;/a&gt; meetings, there is no problem in re-estimating stories, I'd even suggest doing it very often to keep your backlog on track with reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2352" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T14:06:47.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2127" CreationDate="2012-11-20T14:41:35.217" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a link to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://stakeholdermap.com/stakeholder-management-templates.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;completed stakeholder analysis&lt;/a&gt; template.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition here is some more informaion about how to use interest and influence in &lt;a href=&quot;http://stakeholdermap.com/stakeholder-analysis.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;stakeholder analysis&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5062" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T14:41:35.217" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8088" CreationDate="2012-11-20T15:08:46.130" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;should we change the story points for backlog items once development is underway&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;if this will help team and business folks to understand situation better - absolutely!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you might also want to consider aborting this sprint and start a new one (if change is big enough)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2935" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T15:08:46.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2127" CreationDate="2012-11-20T15:23:13.667" Score="1" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Consider Alternative Methodologies&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have noted, the original question is probably NARQ as it's currently written, and the data needed to fill in the existing template is both subjective and based on data not in evidence. So, I will address my answer to what the &lt;em&gt;goal&lt;/em&gt; is rather than the template presented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The template presented appears to primarily be a fact-sheet about stakeholders that will be used to manage stakeholder relationships. As written, this is probably most useful as an &lt;em&gt;internal&lt;/em&gt; document (e.g. not shared with the stakeholders) and might add value on a politically-charged project where stakeholders need to be managed with kid gloves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'm a big proponent of transparent, metrics-based project management. I think managing the &lt;strong&gt;priorities and interests&lt;/strong&gt; of stakeholders in a project is at least as important as understanding their perspectives. The best way I know of to do this is to facilitate communication &lt;em&gt;between&lt;/em&gt; stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Ideas for Facilitating Stakeholder Communication&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to facilitate communication within the steering committee, I would try to capture user stories for each stakeholder. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As the governor&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want the project to be successfully completed under budget&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I don't have to cancel an existing project or appropriate additional funds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefit of this approach is that it gives you information about the role of the stakeholder, explicitly states his goal for the project, and provides some additional context about his perspective which can be used to feed into additional processes. Additionally, it is constructed such that it can be shared among the stakeholders (it's transparent, and doesn't come across as intrusive or manipulative) and gives &lt;strong&gt;other stakeholders&lt;/strong&gt; constructive information about how to interact with--and perhaps do a little horse-trading with--this particular stakeholder based on his unique project perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to making the stakeholders' perspectives transparent, these sorts of stakeholder stories can feed directly into project planning tools such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/relative-weighting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;relative weighting&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/theme-scoring&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;theme scoring&lt;/a&gt; calculators. These tools allow stakeholders to build consensus around project objectives based on &lt;strong&gt;clearly-articulated metrics&lt;/strong&gt;, and often provide direct inputs to such calculators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not the stakeholder stories provide direct input to project success sliders, they frequently provide context to other stakeholders about the metrics that are most important to others on the steering committee. As such, they increase communication, frame conversations, and provide a measurable backdrop that is generally more useful than implicit assumptions about organizational or stakeholder values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T15:23:13.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8088" CreationDate="2012-11-20T15:55:08.270" Score="5" Body="&lt;h3&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of your methodology, your project plan should be routinely refactored. In traditional project management, this often means tweaking start/end dates for tasks and milestones. In agile methodologies, this generally involves re-estimating user stories, throughput rates, and delivery dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The Value Proposition of Re-Estimating&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anyway, now that we are mid way through the team have a much better understanding of the technologies and frameworks in use. We are considering re-estimating (in story points) the remaining items in the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Congratulations! You have just discovered the value of iterative estimation in agile methodologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As projects progress, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot;&gt;cone of uncertainty&lt;/a&gt; usually narrows, and your team's accuracy in estimating work generally improves. Wikipedia says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In project management, the Cone of Uncertainty describes the evolution of the amount of uncertainty during a project. At the beginning of a project, comparatively little is known about the product or work results, and so estimates are subject to large uncertainty. As more research and development is done, more information is learned about the project, and the uncertainty then tends to decrease, reaching 0% when all residual risk has been terminated or transferred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, individual stories are re-estimated each Sprint as they are peeled off the Product Backlog. Some level of re-estimation is also performed during Backlog Grooming, including the estimation of new epics or stories as they are added to the Product Backlog over time. However, the value proposition of re-estimating the entirety of the remaining Product Backlog is slightly different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Goal of Estimating the Product Backlog&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We are mid-way through a development which was estimated for a customer on a fixed price contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, an estimate is not a commitment. While you may have agreed to deliver a fixed amount of work for a fixed price, unless your contract states otherwise then the delivery date of a fixed-price contract is usually flexible in at least one of the following dimensions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scope&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Speed (e.g. the actual delivery date)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The value of re-estimating the remaining Product Backlog under this scenario is that you will now have more accurate estimates of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the scope that can be delivered by a fixed date, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the date on which the currently-defined scope is likely to be complete.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This provides transparency to the project, and gives the stakeholders levers to adjust the project as necessary. For example, a more accurate project estimate may allow them to make new cost-benefit comparisons about specific features or save money by terminating a project that has already provided sufficient business value to ship as-is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Overly-Constrained Projects&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you unlucky enough to be managing a project that is simultaneously constrained in all three dimensions (e.g. cost, scope, &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; speed) then the only real value in re-estimating the project is to determine &lt;em&gt;whether&lt;/em&gt; it will fail, &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; it may fail, or &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; needs to be re-negotiated to salvage earned value for the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is your situation, then the goal of re-estimating is to improve transparency and communications with the stakeholders. As such, doing the re-estimation clearly has value to both the team and the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T15:55:08.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7839" CreationDate="2012-11-20T23:01:34.410" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My thinking on this thread after years into this is that planning poker gets the high estimates. This means that for story A, the tester will say &quot;GAH this is huge&quot; even when the devs thought it easy. Planning poker will catch those in diverse teams.  The downside is that everyone has their own silo. For that reason I use the fist of five technique to establish consensus.  If there are serious problems I record the minority opinion in my agile tool( VersionOne). Its critical that &lt;em&gt;everyone&lt;/em&gt; feels that they had a say, because its their commitment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5066" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T23:01:34.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8098" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-21T09:25:25.083" Score="19" ViewCount="2363" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently gone live with a big project. To meet a tight deadline some technical debt was accumulated but the true extent only became apparent after go live. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As this is intended to be a scalable application, these problems which could be deep seeded into the code have to be resolved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should these issues be grouped under user stories / child tech tasks and be accounted for within the sprint process? I think not as it is fixing existing functionality and should be logged as tasks / child tasks outside the sprint process. Or should I add them to account for what the team is doing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many thanks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4349" LastActivityDate="2013-03-01T09:30:13.713" Title="Handling bugs in the Scrum process?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8099" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8102" CreationDate="2012-11-21T09:39:04.840" Score="12" ViewCount="571" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say, you have a project and a very good team. The team leader is a very good programmer, with high professional performances, but without any team-playing competencies and with some non-conformist attitudes. For ex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;arriving late to work, working in the nights (the management politics lets him do this, with having free program at the company). In this case the other members of the team have no possibility to collaborate with him&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the team has a big number of bug, but the team leader - being the best professional - takes the 85% of them. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;has an antisocial style&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should this situation be handled by the project management? Should the whole team adopt to the team leader's habits, the team leader should be moved somehow or both? I mention, that the project manager should take in consideration that the team leader is an antisocial and non-conformist person, with very good professional skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4564" LastActivityDate="2012-11-21T18:04:56.057" Title="Handling non-team working, good programmers" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8098" CreationDate="2012-11-21T10:17:02.783" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every task that the team is going to perform should be documented and accounted for in each sprint. Whether it is a user story, bug, or technical debt, every item should be assigned appropriate points so that the team continues to monitor its proper velocity. Another advantage of this is that all the stakeholders know that is being done and why. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the issues you have encountered, new stories / technical debt tasks should be created and added to the sprint backlog (as per the team's velocity). These may cause some user stories (maybe feature requests) to be pushed into future sprints, which is fine as long as the stakeholders agree that paying off technical debt provides more value as opposed to feature requests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2013-03-01T09:30:13.713" LastActivityDate="2013-03-01T09:30:13.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8099" CreationDate="2012-11-21T10:36:54.430" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;From your story it sounds like the current teamlead is not very good at being a teamlead and excels as a Senior Developer. I would suggest he is relieved of the task of coordinating work to his fellow developers and have the Project Manager appoint someone with more personal skills who will likely enjoy it more, ensure that the work this powerhouse leaves for the others is distributed evenly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other then that, I am curious where the huge amount of bugs are coming from. Is there a team of dedicated testers or are these findings from the developer-made automated tests or do they stem from user tests? Someone who is unable to share bug fixing has something to hide, I would like to know what it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally I would like to add that you seem to be very dependant on a prima-donna programmer who has little social skills. This in itself is a threat, who will maintain his code if he decides to leave, which he sooner or later will? You might add value now by having the other team members review and analyze his code to ensure they can work on it later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the lead-developer objects and/or gets angry at any of the above mentioned points, kick him off the team right away as he has no place in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4845" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2012-11-21T14:24:56.330" LastActivityDate="2012-11-21T14:24:56.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8099" CreationDate="2012-11-21T12:17:28.027" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interesting question. Before I could take action, I'd need to know two things (at least):&#xA; 1. What is the impact on the project?&#xA; 2. What are the duties of the team lead? What is the team lead&#xA;    accountable for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;90% of the PM's job is assessing the impact of an issue/risk/change/ on the project and communicating that impact to the relevant stakeholders. For example, the team lead setting his own working hours could have a negative effect on the project (limits collaboration), or it could have a positive effect on the project (greater productivity) (There is ample evidence that management endorsement of non-conformism significantly increases productivity).  What is the real effect?  Only after I know the impact on the project can I identify strategies to respond.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team lead is accountable for setting an example and a standard, then I've got no problem with his behavior.  If the team lead is explicitly accountable for reducing bug count, implementing procedures to improve quality and training other programmers, then my response is to hold the team lead accountable for those behaviors.  If the team lead is responsible for resolving bugs, then perhaps his practice of holding himself accountable for 85% of the bugs is effective?  Is the team lead accountable for being social? (If so, why? How does social behavior lead to project closure?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect that the answer &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be to discuss the quality improvement portion of the role with the team lead.  Based on that discussion, either coach the team lead to a higher level of performance on that portion of his tasks, or reassign those tasks to someone better suited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm very very skeptical of charges like &quot;antisocial&quot; and &quot;nonconformist&quot;.  The goal is to close the project successfully; if you can lead my project to closure, I don't care if you wear a plaid tutu and a tiara, discuss only Star Trek Voyager, and work only during prime numbered hours on alternate tuesdays.  If you can't help me close my project, I don't care about your working hours or any other habit you have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2012-11-21T12:17:28.027" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8099" CreationDate="2012-11-21T13:56:47.873" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of issues here where resolving one can exacerbate another.  A high performing team requires individuals who can team.  An individual who exhibits the behavior you describe is contraindicated if you have any hopes in furthering your team's maturity and performance.  Putting such a character in the team lead role is nailing your coffin lid shut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A high performing team is, as the name suggest, high performing: collective sense of success and failure, individual support and coverage, etc.  It only takes one individual on a large team to destroy that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there are certain types of jobs that attract certain types of personalities, i.e., certain jobs will have a prevailing personality type and behavior characteristics.  Now, to be clear, I am not accusing that programmers have this type of behavior characteristic.  I am, however, saying that there can be behavior and personality traits, like introversion that may be a prevailing personality type in this role, that can be &lt;em&gt;interpreted&lt;/em&gt; as antisocial and anti-teaming by others.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will be a balance between accepting some type of penalty to your teaming goals and working with the prevailing personality types you may have with the job role.  As with most complex problems, no easy answer and no cookie cutter solution.  You would be best served to understand the personality types so you can double check your interpretation of this person's behavior and assess how much risk you want to take with the teaming perspective.  However, I think having him in a team lead role is probably not a good idea.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-11-21T13:56:47.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8104" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-21T17:00:18.007" Score="5" ViewCount="672" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would love some feedback on my work experience in the context of the PMP experience requirement.  I have an M.S. degree, so I need 4500 hours.  I have a background in audit, IT audit, and then database programming during software implementations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Experience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Performing government audits as the team lead or solo auditor - 1200 hours&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;IT audit - either audit project lead or responsible for initiating, planning, executing, monitoring &amp;amp; controlling, and closing IT portion of larger audit - 1800 hours &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Total from audit: 3000 hours&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I now work as a consultant performing database programming/reporting in the context of software implementations.  It's a mix of converting reports from legacy systems, configuring default reports to work for that client's setup, and building new reports as needed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For about 1/3 of my tasks, there is a PM who is involved but basically only records development, testing, and sign-off dates based on dates I give him or her at a 2x/month meeting.  The PM basically knows none of the details of what I do other than the name of the task and whether they have dates for a few milestones.  For the other 2/3 of my tasks, I am the sole overseer. A client sends specs, which are frequently sparse.  I work with them to nail down more detailed specs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plan.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Validate.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, these tasks - a task usually just means building a report but might mean multiple reports - can take as few as 2 hours but sometimes take up to 100 hours.  Not conventional 1000-hour projects to be sure.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually mentor 2-4 other programmers but am not responsible for closely monitoring or reviewing all their tasks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have any feedback regarding whether my current job as a database programmer/report writer contains acceptable PM experience?  My boss gave me a training plan for next year that includes a project management class that is basically a PMP review course.  I would love to take the exam as well.  It would mean a small but worthwhile annual pay bump.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5073" LastEditorUserId="15972" LastEditDate="2016-12-05T14:10:19.677" LastActivityDate="2016-12-05T14:10:19.677" Title="Does my job as a database programmer/report writer contain acceptable PM experience for the PMP Exam?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8099" CreationDate="2012-11-21T18:04:56.057" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do agree with most of the presented, but believe would be interesting to think of the question from two different perspectives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short Term:&lt;/strong&gt; The project, as it stands now, seems to be working fine. In despite of the team lead's lack of leadership, deliverables&#xA;  are flowing. If that's the case, keep things as they are, adjusting&#xA;  the rest of the team to fits into the top performer's behaviour IF&#xA;  REALLY REQUIRED.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Medium / Long term:&lt;/strong&gt; Replace this person. Not from the &lt;em&gt;development&lt;/em&gt; role, but from the &lt;em&gt;leadership&lt;/em&gt; role. He's a great developer, and most of the great developers I know aren't good when&#xA;  talking with something that's not a compiler. Remember, however,&#xA;  that's also complicated to step down someone, so ideally this person&#xA;  could be moved to another environment (another project, for instance).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You must understand what the team and every member wants. Maybe the head developer only wants to work alone (out! out of my desk, now!); maybe there's another person dreaming about the leadership position; The easiest way to know is with a candid 1 to 1, but bear in mind that some people simple won't give you the tips.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Remember:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0007197675&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;No one is irreplaceable&lt;/a&gt;. You must avoid as much as you can to depend on one single person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-11-21T18:04:56.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8104" CreationDate="2012-11-21T18:16:53.257" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;welcome to pmse!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a PMP, but as far as I know, &lt;strong&gt;you'll need to &lt;em&gt;prove&lt;/em&gt; you have project management experience before applying for the exam&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you pointed, the minimal required worked hours as a project manager is 4500h, but is strongly suggested to have more than this to avoid denials on the submission for the exam. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When applying to the PMP exam, you'll have an interview (PMP folks, correct me if I'm wrong!) where you'll need to explain them how was the management tasks you conducted, so be sure (and especially, confident!) that what you've done are really PM tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My personal suggestion in your case would be to take first the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/Certification/Certified-Associate-in-Project-Management-CAPM.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CAPM&lt;/a&gt; exam.&lt;/strong&gt; Although it may not give you this bonus you're looking for, studying for CAPM can be considered the 'first step' to become a PMP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-11-21T18:16:53.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8107" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8119" CreationDate="2012-11-21T18:28:46.017" Score="21" ViewCount="17105" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might be a silly question for non-latin speakers, but it's odd to hear about a &lt;em&gt;post-mortem meeting&lt;/em&gt; for a successful project since this expression means '&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=post-mortem&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;after death&lt;/a&gt;'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that this can be also called &lt;em&gt;Lessons Learned meeting&lt;/em&gt;, but I'd like to know if that's correct to conduct a post-mortem (and calling it like this) for &lt;em&gt;successful&lt;/em&gt; projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Thanks you guys for all the answers that are coming! As we've seen so many different thoughts (including outside IT, YEY!) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe would worth to highlight that the underlying question here is if &lt;strong&gt;would be good or not to keep such expression only for failed projects&lt;/strong&gt; (in the sense of improving the quality of work and communication with stakeholders).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Outcomes:&lt;/strong&gt; I believe David's answer can be considered as the &lt;strong&gt;most impartial&lt;/strong&gt; answer. It's based on the fact that every industry has the freedom to use its own lingo. But I agree with  Steve (and others) who states that &lt;strong&gt;retrospective&lt;/strong&gt; is better for a successful project. But again, I can't put &lt;em&gt;my opinion&lt;/em&gt; over an impartial (and well explained) answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that from now on, the chosen answer could only be changed in case someone finds a reference where a well-established PM organization (like PMI) stating that post-mortem could not be used for successful projects or something alike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-10-31T13:17:06.733" LastActivityDate="2020-01-21T14:23:22.090" Title="Is it correct to refer to a 'post mortem' session even for successful projects?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;&lt;post-mortem&gt;" AnswerCount="13" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8104" CreationDate="2012-11-21T18:56:04.647" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The criterion reads managing projects, not necessarily serving as the project manager on record.  It used to read leading project tasks.  PMI states that the change in language was to provide more clarity but not to change the original intent of the criterion.  So the quality of your hours you claim needs to really be about managing the work from cradle to grave, watching your risks, controlling resources, controlling your schedule, managing quality, delivering something, etc., whether you were a PM or not.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way you will know if your experience is relevant it to complete the application and submit it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I second Tiago's suggestiong about the CAPM.  It won't hurt you to get that out of the way as you accrue more time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-11-21T18:56:04.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8107" CreationDate="2012-11-21T20:06:24.373" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Retrospective&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; is more appropriate name in this case&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imho, project is &lt;em&gt;dead&lt;/em&gt; when it has been aborted (or abandoned), if it has been successfully deployed then the project is very much alive (the code is there and it works!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2935" LastEditorUserId="2935" LastEditDate="2012-11-22T01:57:48.307" LastActivityDate="2012-11-22T01:57:48.307" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8098" CreationDate="2012-11-21T20:33:18.730" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should these issues be grouped under user stories / child tech tasks and be accounted for within the sprint process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it depends (how big and how critical these bugs are)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;if the item is big enough (critical bug and fixing will require to modify lots of code) then it looks like a story (or even epic)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;on the other hand - you might have bunch of smaller independent items - just put them all into &quot;active bugs&quot; box and work on those when you have time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2935" LastEditorUserId="2935" LastEditDate="2012-11-22T01:05:36.420" LastActivityDate="2012-11-22T01:05:36.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8111" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-21T20:56:46.560" Score="18" ViewCount="498" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering whether this approach I am doing to scheduling dev work on a day to day basis is correct. In which I assume that instead that a developer has 8 hours a day to do coding, they actually have less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I already have list of specs and broken them down to appropriate tasks and estimated hours to complete them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now I want to fit these tasks and their appropriate hours in the calendar so I can find the dates on when these specs can be completed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My thinking is that assuming a standard 8 working hours a day is flawed because one does not always code 8 hour straight. So after taking into account for non-code time involved for my team and myself such as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Daily scrum (0.5)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lunch (1.0)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Misc Meetings/Discussions (1.0)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would assume that a developer would really only have on average 5 - 5.5 hours of solid work. So I am scheduling on that assumption. Would this be the right approach or a better way to take into account non-coding time? Because simply saying that someone has a day to finish Spec X doesn't mean they have 8 hours to finish it, isn't it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5076" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2012-11-22T00:30:19.713" LastActivityDate="2012-11-25T14:31:38.970" Title="How should I account for non-coding time when estimating duration of a coding task?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8111" CreationDate="2012-11-21T21:57:17.057" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is common practice to schedule developers at 75-80% of their available hours.  Available hours do not include vacation time, lunch, or any other time that the developers are not expected to be working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developer time is often consumed by things other than pure development activities.  Meetings and scrum as you cite.  But also communication with other developers, unexpected technical problems, little project administration items that weren't originally on the schedule but probably should have been (test data creation, test creation, integration with other developers, documentation, helping other team members, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully, your scrum is not a half hour every day.  They should be in the 5-15 minute range.  And certainly developers will have to attend design meetings and those kinds of things over the course of the project, but are your developers really spending an hour a day in meetings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4404" LastActivityDate="2012-11-21T21:57:17.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8113" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-21T22:44:30.880" Score="2" ViewCount="283" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/36/is-pmp-certification-an-appropriate-career-goal-for-someone-about-to-start-a-car&quot;&gt;Is PMP certification an appropriate career goal for someone about to start a career in project management?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is a PMI certification like the CAPM (for people having experience in project management) worth getting if I'm looking for a first job at a company like Boeing, Airbus or Lockheed Martin?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5077" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2012-11-22T07:13:49.760" Title="Would having the CAPM help me get a job at an Aerospace and Defense company?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;certification&gt;&lt;pmi&gt;&lt;capm&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-11-22T18:17:51.453" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8111" CreationDate="2012-11-22T00:53:07.440" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;So you are using hours in a day but talking about duration.  These are two different estimates and cover different things.  You are on the right track, however, in terms of allocating the right utilization per resource.  Full-time is something less than 8 hours a day.  It can range from 35% to probably not higher than 75%.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While productive work is less than eight hours, the caveat to this is, 'where are they charging non productive hours?'  Likely, they will hit the same charge codes even when attending meetings and not coding.  In this case, full-time is 100% and you wouldn't have to worry about resource utilization.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I estimate in days and duration, load the resources, and let the hours calculate out.  I find this the easiest way to estimate and manage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-11-22T00:53:07.440" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8098" CreationDate="2012-11-22T02:06:44.793" Score="17" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Where Does Technical Debt Belong?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should these issues be grouped under user stories / child tech tasks and be accounted for within the sprint process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. Oh, there are some cases where some small tasks need to be added to the Sprint Backlog in order to meet the Sprint Goal, but only stories accepted from the Product Backlog &lt;em&gt;by the Team&lt;/em&gt; because they believe they will fit into the current Sprint should generate tasks on the Sprint Backlog. Technical debt, especially technical debt from past iterations, always belongs on the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Minor caveat: technical debt that is incurred &lt;em&gt;within&lt;/em&gt; the current Sprint, and can be corrected within the same sprint without jeopardizing the Sprint Goal, can be added to the Sprint Backlog. However, unfinished stories (including stories about technical debt) go back to the Product Backlog at the end of every Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What Causes Technical Debt&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tech debt is most often incurred when shortcuts are made or stories are implied rather than made explicit. Some examples might be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &quot;definition of done&quot; allows stories to be marked done even when there are known flaws and/or business risks, such as partially-implemented features.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You didn't know then what you know now about the code base, architecture, or customer requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There were missing stories on the Product Backlog, such as the stories to clean up all the references to &quot;foo&quot; when your organization renamed all the widgets to &quot;bar.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Product Owner has accepted business risk for not adding tech-debt stories to the backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are certainly other ways technical debt can creep in. The point, though, is that technical debt doesn't just impact the Team--it impacts &lt;em&gt;the whole project&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Why Technical Debt Belongs on the Product Backlog&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal of Scrum isn't to maintain a given velocity; the goal of Scrum is to make the development process &lt;em&gt;transparent&lt;/em&gt; throughout the organization. As a direct result of this, technical debt needs to be made visible in the only artifact that counts organization-wide: the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to visibility, technical debt usually slows development. This happens by making new changes hard, or by reducing the velocity of new features by requiring resources to be (visibly) spent on on correcting bugs or misfeatures. Unless you're sweeping the bugs under the rug (hint: don't do that!) then your velocity probably won't change much &lt;em&gt;unless&lt;/em&gt; your Product Owner refuses to add technical debt stories to the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, the Product Backlog belongs to the Product Owner. That doesn't mean that the Team can't recommend that stories be added to the Product Backlog and prioritized; it just means that the Product Owner has final say over what is on the Product Backlog, and how each story is prioritized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, the Team is the only entity that can estimate stories and determine what will fit within each Sprint. That means that, as unaddressed technical debt piles up, a Team that is estimating &lt;em&gt;accurately&lt;/em&gt; will factor the debt into their story estimates. This will (correctly) slow velocity, which is how the organization can see the impact of the debt on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Concrete Example&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say you have a continuous integration server that is underpowered. This is slowing down the testing of new features and bug-fixes, causing the Team's velocity to slow down as it takes longer and longer to complete each new story. Let's also say that the effort to build out a new CI infrastructure is something that would take substantial effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The right thing to do would be to create a user story about upgrading the CI infrastructure. There may be additional tasks and stories associated with this, so capture them all. These stories should be passed to the Product Owner for inclusion on the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if the Product Owner makes this a priority, then this will be a hiccup that gets smoothed out in the next Sprint. However, the Product Owner may say: &quot;No, this is not important enough to prioritize. I will accept the cost to the project of lower velocity in order to prioritize other features that are more important to the stakeholders.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's okay! It doesn't mean more work for the Team, it just means reduced output from the Team in exchange for prioritizing some other business need as determined by the Product Owner. This is both legitimate and &lt;em&gt;transparent&lt;/em&gt;, and therefore proves the value of the framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Include Debt in Your Estimations&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you estimate stories during Sprint Planning, outstanding technical debt will be a visible drag on story estimates. Something that may have been a 1-point story without the debt may become a 5-point story because the debt remains unpaid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, story points are a measure of relative effort. As the effort to deliver features increases, the estimates should increase as well. As a result, the Team's actual velocity will rarely change as a result of technical debt &lt;strong&gt;unless you are misusing velocity or allowing others outside the team to provide estimates.&lt;/strong&gt; The only thing that will decrease is the rate of new features, and prioritizing debt stories to improve the rate of delivery is the job of the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your job as the Scrum Master is to make sure the Product Owner and the Development Team are both giving sufficient information about how to use the Scrum process to communicate about these issues effectively. The Product Backlog is the right tool for addressing technical debt, but &lt;em&gt;communication&lt;/em&gt; is the essential mechanism by which technical debt is moved from unseen roadblock to actionable item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-11-22T02:06:44.793" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8107" CreationDate="2012-11-22T07:07:23.040" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think is it completely fine. I googled it and organizations outside of the Agile world often call their &lt;em&gt;lessons learned&lt;/em&gt; sessions &lt;strong&gt;postmortem&lt;/strong&gt;. I found a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/11/the-project-postmortem.html&quot;&gt;great article&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com/&quot;&gt;Jeff Atwood&lt;/a&gt; about postmortem in case you are interested. Pawel also has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2008/03/post-mortem-basics.html&quot;&gt;post&lt;/a&gt; about the very same topic and he called it postmortem (in 2008).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The naming is interesting though: I found post-mortem, post mortem and postmortem ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-11-22T07:07:23.040" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8113" CreationDate="2012-11-22T07:13:49.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are looking for a project management position, I recommend to have a look at the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/36/468&quot;&gt;Is PMP certification an appropriate career goal for someone about to start a career in project management?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/2601/468&quot;&gt;What does PMP Certification guarantee about a person?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Preparing for a certification is covered in this question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/3461/468&quot;&gt;What&amp;#39;s the best way to prepare for PMP Certification?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find more interesting and useful questions under the &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/certification&quot;&gt;certification&lt;/a&gt; tag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2012-11-22T07:13:49.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8107" CreationDate="2012-11-23T08:59:40.743" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Post-mortem also has strong connotations in English of &lt;em&gt;examining something dead to see what killed it&lt;/em&gt; and it is hard to see why it would be appropriate for a successful project. Lessons learned is better as it covers positive and negative experience from a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your gut instinct is correct and you can do your bit by not using the term in that sense and diplomatically promoting the use of a less sinister term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, people working successfully in the corporate world are not immune to incorrect English, excessive use of jargon or misuse of correct terms, even people whose first language is English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However it's also not such a big deal and if other people insist on using it, getting the job done is always more important than the specific words you use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4552" LastActivityDate="2012-11-23T08:59:40.743" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8107" CreationDate="2012-11-23T12:55:10.207" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every industry has lingo.  It slowly evolves and becomes a sort of sub culture of the industry itself.  Even if technically not correct in terms of a literal definition or even proper grammer, it &lt;em&gt;becomes&lt;/em&gt; okay and common and accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, no matter how any of us dissect the word, I doubt any of us can say we have never heard anyone use post mortem in our profession and I bet everyone of us knows what is meant by it...at least those of us in the field of for a couple of years.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use it because it is a PM / consultant lingo word, it is appropriately descriptive for what I want to get across, and those outside of this field have no idea what I am talking about.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-11-23T12:55:10.207" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="77" CreationDate="2012-11-24T02:15:23.790" Score="1" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Effective Communication &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is to concisely deliver message in different ways to different people at the beginning and add details and background in a logical manner so that even a dummy can understand your meaning. It does not necessarily to present like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. Just to be natural to speak and be sophisticated to think before you speak. Especially in the phase of discussion, just to initiate them or to add details above their speech. At the phase of decision making, provide some options with pros and cons.  If they are active and listening, initiate them to vote. Or else, you make decision.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Interpersonal Skills for Management&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is how to interact with people with different expertise. There is a motto saying that Management is doing things right. Leadership is doing &#xA;the right thing. But, you should always remember you are manager that how to arrange tasks according to your sub-coordinates. This is extremely important because you have have wider time-frames to execute your expertise of project management .Never do the task for a long time even your have strong technical background or related experience. Otherwise, it is your project not the team's project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Be objective &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be presented in macroscopic manner and microscopic manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Microscopic view:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very often, some members cannot delivery work on time. Never blame them at the first time. There must be a root cause for that. Find out the root cause and provide guidance. If it is related to personal matters, chat with them separately to know more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Macroscopic view:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, the business requirement is not always confirmed and become solid. As a manager, it is time to     interfere the task which BA or Sales is involved. Since the tasks of project is attributed by the business requirement, project manager shall shoulder (part of) the responsibilities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep on Anticipating the process and execute practice for project risk management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I have mentioned, the time frame compromised among the team members and stakeholders cannot be met sometimes. It is expected for the project manager to to use tools or models to anticipate the risk involved in the project and take actions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create a risk matrix first to summarize a list of possible project risk to occur in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always prioritize the project risk  and deal with the one with the highest risk first and so on. Although the level of risk cannot be objectively quantified in terms of scientific manner, we can consider it as the product of potential consequences of catastrophic events contributed by the project risk and the remaining time frame to deal with that . If the time frame is small , deal with them first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest depends on the project we have taken. If it is familiar to your or your teammates expertise, encourage them to give guidance. If not, provide a time frame to carry out research and uphold regular meetings to share the technologies they have learnt. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more thing I want to add is that there is a rising trend of using Agile Methodologies for adopting the practice of software development process, or so-called Application life-cycle management. It can be attributed by the fast advance of technologies and widespread of social networks. These can give rise to great availability for us to communicate each other. More importantly, as our age grows , our learning capabilities will eventually drop. Agile Methodologies can provide instant feedback and modification to develop the software. During the phase on iteration and daily, the senior can provide teaching to the junior with prototypes at the beginning so as to get their learning curve smooth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4714" LastActivityDate="2012-11-24T02:15:23.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8122" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8124" CreationDate="2012-11-24T09:56:06.207" Score="4" ViewCount="162" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like most PMs, I wear many hats. The one which fits me better and is consuming more of my time is the Product Manager one, so I would like to start planning for the recruiting and responsibility handover of a dedicated PM so I may better focus on product management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My vision for this person is for them to be responsible for resource allocation and chasing deliverables, preparing Gantt charts, KPI reporting, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a currently small web development team for a large singular website, aiming to be agile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How big does a team or my workload need to be to justify the onboarding of a dedicated Project Manager so I can focus on Product Management?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to avoid being a bottleneck or doing a disservice trying to juggle both roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4772" LastActivityDate="2012-11-24T13:18:32.817" Title="How to introduce a dedicated PM and separate myself from those tasks to become a Product Manager?" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8107" CreationDate="2012-11-24T11:07:24.160" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, we should distinguish &lt;strong&gt;post mortem&lt;/strong&gt; meetings from regular &lt;strong&gt;retrospective&lt;/strong&gt; meetings. But I do not agree with the other answers as I don't think it only applies to a failed project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In software development, teams usually have retrospective meetings throughout the project, typically after each iteration, sprint or whatever you call them. The purpose of these meetings is to improve how the team is handling the current project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;post mortem&lt;/em&gt; meeting is a kind of retrospective that happens &lt;strong&gt;when the project is over&lt;/strong&gt;, and might deal with higher-level concerns : what did we learn from this project? what improvements should we make for the next project? etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4071" LastEditorUserId="4071" LastEditDate="2012-11-24T11:32:49.373" LastActivityDate="2012-11-24T11:32:49.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8122" CreationDate="2012-11-24T13:18:32.817" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every industry is a bit different. In IT, I think you will find that the cost of PM activities range from 8% to as high 15% of the total CCV.  Look at span of control, too.  I would suspect you would not have a layer of leadership unless that layer had 6 to maybe 15 direct reports. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your team is small, looks like a part-time PM. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-11-24T13:18:32.817" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8125" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-24T23:10:08.997" Score="9" ViewCount="226" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a project management course now. One of points of my project requires me to rent a territory, and I need to include its cost in the project's total cost. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing I thought was to count project's total time and multiply it by monthly rent ($6000). But the professor says the project may crash before finishing, so I can not allocate so much money from the start of the project, and there should be another way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the right solution for this problem? How can I predict total cost of renting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5088" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-11-24T23:36:36.770" LastActivityDate="2012-11-27T13:45:31.497" Title="Rent total cost prediction" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8125" CreationDate="2012-11-25T01:49:13.983" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your professor's wrong.  Would you do that for any other cost?  For the cost of labor?  What happens if the project continues?  Do you tell your customer, 'oh sorry, we thought the project would fail so we're going to need another $52,000 for rent'??&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is always uncertainty in estimates, more uncertainty with some things than others.  For rent, especially since you seem to know the exact monthly amount, there is little uncertainty of what rent will cost for your targeted duration.  There's always risk the project will cease before it finishes, but you cannot build that savings into the project's budget.  Instead, because of this uncertainty, you may build in some cost contingency to cover the expense to get out of your lease early.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only time I can think of loading something less than the $6K/month is when you think you might get a better deal at some stage in the future.  You can use expected value calculations to load that possible savings in.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are able to put under contract the project using a progressive elaboration process, then you can firmly load the rent expense for the first portion of the project, then load the rest as you move along; however, you would still provide a target in the way of a rough order of magnitude (ROM) for the elements under future elaboration.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2012-11-27T13:26:45.310" LastActivityDate="2012-11-27T13:26:45.310" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8125" CreationDate="2012-11-25T03:42:20.660" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with David, your Professor's wrong. Using that approach, you would never be able to estimate anything given that there are always risks to every aspect of the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To take it a bit further (and illustrate where he's wrong) - okay, so you cut back on the rental estimate and crash the project. Where does the extra money for crashing come from? Or, what if the project doesn't crash and now you haven't got enough budget for the rental? Or what if your project goes a month longer than planned, but you budgeted on potential crashing? Now you're not a month overbudget, you're X months over-budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like he's confusing budgeting with risk management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FWIW, you NEVER estimate or budget based on the project going FASTER than expected. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how do you correctly predict cost? You estimate, plan and budget to &quot;most likely&quot; scenario, and then add or adjust contingency based on risk identification and likelihood. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastEditorUserId="921" LastEditDate="2012-11-25T15:31:34.300" LastActivityDate="2012-11-25T15:31:34.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8107" CreationDate="2012-11-25T03:50:31.383" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is where PM's, and pm in general, run into problems. We get so hung up on terms.  Post-mortem, retrospective, lessons learned, end of project review, etc. We all know what they mean, we all know the intent. And yet we quibble over the specific terms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can call it what ever you want. The point to remember is that after EVERY project (successful AND failures), and better yet, after EVERY phase, you and the team do a review of some kind to quantify and document anything you've learned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-11-25T03:50:31.383" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8111" CreationDate="2012-11-25T04:00:20.597" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it depends on how specific you're being, and where you're reporting it to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you asking about how to report to the client? Are you asking about how much time to tell the devs they've got? Are you looking to plan the schedule?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, when you refer to a task you have to include all that goes into that task, So if you're talking about coding, there.s time for reading the reading the requirements, time for thinking about the correct approach, time for the actual coding, and time for the review of what they typed, among other things. And then throw in some meetings to make sure they're clear on changes, mods, interaction with others deves, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would include all of that under &quot;coding&quot;. To try and break it out is inviting problems. Then you're into how long is the meeting, why is the meeting, do they need to be at the meeting, was the daily stand-up too long, did they take a long lunch, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stick to 'averages', and agreed upon durations. As David said, figure 75% or so of an 8 hour day for productive work, the rest taken up with minutiae. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trying to get more specific means that eventually you'll be counting keystrokes per hour. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-11-25T04:00:20.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="353" CreationDate="2012-11-25T04:34:07.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see two questions here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the answers attacks (very well, some +1's around here!) the secondary question, but I'll try to focus on the first, in subject, question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What to do when team members are overburdened by process?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's assume we're chit chatting about this question in the IT lounge of a big, Forbes 500, Financial company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's common sense that IT folks simply HATE bureaucracy. IT people tend to anarchism, in a good sense. So, throwing a pile of paperwork on them will for sure create the chit chatting on the previous paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, back to the original question... &lt;strong&gt;what to do about it?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this sense, SBWorks in his answer raises a very important point: documentation is not senior management only. Especially in big companies like this we are, in the 18 floor, this gray carpet and windows from top to bottom of the wall, documentation is vital. Is mandatory. Is regulatory. Bottomline:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's not a matter of doing 'enough' documentation. Is a matter of doing &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; mandatory documentation.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And doing so as better as possible. You for sure don't want those big guys from Wallstreet hating you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here I believe the best answer is Mark's, with: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Enough is what helps the team.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sounds simple, right? It's not. Definitely. IT keeps complaining. IT complains of everything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to have IT stopping complaining about the documentation, explain them the underlying reasons for the usability of so much documentation. Before try to explain to them, make sure you accept the answer for yourself. If you find no reason, go talk to the people responsible for the process and discuss with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea, in de end, is to get rid of the documentation no one explained hot to use and keep very attached to the documentation in place. Doing so, there will never be 'documentation overload'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-11-25T04:34:07.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8111" CreationDate="2012-11-25T11:16:30.013" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you seem to be using Scrum as your project methodology, you should have sprint team velocity information. If not, you should start gathering it. You should also have story points estimates for each of the story as this is part of the Scrum planning and backlog grooming process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming the above is true, the scrum team should be able to estimate itself how much work they can do for a given sprint and then commit to that load. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, the team members should be the one providing the duration estimates on the tasks that they will be handling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach will automatically account for non development activities during a sprint and after a few sprints should give you enough confidence in estimating and planning for future sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2962" LastActivityDate="2012-11-25T11:16:30.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8125" CreationDate="2012-11-25T14:18:39.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Match the 'uncertain' end dates with a variety of options that will give the user the information they need to make their own decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Costs based on the project lasting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;3 months: fixed 3000 + rent $600 * 3 = $4,800 total&#xA;6 months: fixed 3000 + rent $600 * 6 = $6,600 total&#xA;12 months: fixed 3000 + rent $600 * 12 = $10,200 total&#xA;24 months: fixed 3000 + rent $600 * 24 = $17,400 total&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the project length is unknown but there are monthly fixed fixed costs the of course the total is 'unknown'  However that doesn't mean that a business person will not ask the question.  They frequently will ask such 'seemingly impossible' questions but then it's our task to think about what they need for their decision and give it to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2602" LastActivityDate="2012-11-25T14:18:39.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8111" CreationDate="2012-11-25T14:31:38.970" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From experience I have found that focusing on time, in units of hours is not a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Base all your estimates on feature size and larger scale measure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, at work we use numbers of 1, 2, 4 8&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 means trivial (&amp;lt; 1 hour)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 means 1/2 day or so&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;4 means half a week&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;8 means a week or more&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also make sure that estimates are done with input by the actual programmer(s) themselves.  Some folks will complete a task in 20 minutes that will take another programmer 4 hours.  This is much underestimated in the industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you allow for estimates to be completely wrong.  When a target is not met, and that repeats, consider if the estimates are right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When broad estimates are not met, always make 'what did we do wrong in the estimate' the first question.  Not &quot;why did we miss the deadline' which will but the programmer on the defensive and encourage them to 'get the stuff written one way or another by the deadline', i.e. not pay attention to long-term quality.  Today's 'met' deadline quickly becomes tomorrow's bugs and errors.&#xA;Allow time for downtime.  You mentioned lunch and the like but what about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;computer crashes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;editor or IDE upgrades&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;OS updates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;prototyping&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the unexpected crap that comes up all day long as a programmer...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Programmer often put in many extra hours, (mistakenly) feeling that they are responsible for the extra time that the task is taking, whereas in reality it's just the estimate that was off as it didn't take into account the unexpected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many hard-core programmers end up spending as much if not more time 'finishing up' outside the office.  Make sure that is accounted for as it matters in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2602" LastActivityDate="2012-11-25T14:31:38.970" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8134" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-25T21:37:35.833" Score="4" ViewCount="871" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team and I offer freelance web development services, often to non-technology personal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We started to incorporate a wireframe phase in our web software development process (as opposed to outsourcing it).  Often times, clients would review our wireframes and request features to be added that meet any or all of the following conditions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;features are in conflict with specifications with other features&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;features will result in poor user experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;features are half-baked ideas that I know will not work if explored further&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe I can prove each of my points above if we devoted substantial time to exploring them. However, our clients are on a tight budget, and I can't justify spending over 50% of their budget explaining to them why their ideas are bad.  They would rather we spend that budget on actual development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Options I'm considering:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find a way to reduce client involvement in the wireframe phase.  However, how does my team know if the product design has satisfied business objectives?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do whatever the client says.  However, from my experience, 3-4 months from now, clients will complain how &quot;such and such&quot; is not user friendly, and throw a tantrum until we volunteer our time to upgrade their product.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Something else?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're currently using wireframe tools for the wireframing phase. So the actual drawing is fast. But the talking, and trying to explain everything to the client is taking too long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any management techniques you guys can suggest would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5094" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-11-25T21:52:52.697" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T20:55:48.153" Title="How to manage client feedback during wireframe phase" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;clients&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8134" CreationDate="2012-11-25T21:57:06.727" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using an agile methodology, or some approach that package deliverables into smaller, bite sized, easily digestible chunks may help avoid doing a lot of work for free.  When using such an approach, you estimate one small piece at a time, collaborate on the ideas with the client, build it, release it to the client, get paid, and then repeat the process with the next phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the client then wants to change something after it's been built, you would then renegotiate this as an additional phase of development. In my experience doing some freelance work in the past, the iterative approach is generally more favorable for both parties. If it isn't favorable to your client, then it might be a good idea to reflect on your target market and consider the cost/benefit of searching for clients who understand the software development game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing you might suggest with the client is that they can help lower the overall cost of the project by coming prepared with exactly what it is that they want to do. Also, you might consider including these meetings in the estimates and timing these meetings so that if you start to hit the cap for what's budgeted for meetings, you can then let the client know they must then make a decision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being up front with the client and encouraging them to prepare for these meetings can help keep them shorter, keep their costs down, and also ensure that the product you build meets their needs. In short, a client/vendor relationship is just like any other give and take relationship. Both parties must participate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-11-25T22:03:50.693" LastActivityDate="2012-11-25T22:03:50.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8134" CreationDate="2012-11-25T22:49:51.150" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Working with your stakeholders is the most important thing you can do. Your brilliant product is garbage if your client does not buy it. Build time and budget into your plan to allow for this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to remember why you are there. The solutions you develop are there for the benefit of the business, not the other way around. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-11-25T22:49:51.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8134" CreationDate="2012-11-26T05:19:51.080" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your concern for your client's time is a sign that you are looking out for them and the fact that you have identified conflicts in their new &quot;requirements&quot; is a sign that you know what you are doing.  However, if they are paying for your time, to a certain extent they get to call the shots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would bet that you &lt;strong&gt;can&lt;/strong&gt; demonstrate to them that some of their ideas are off base.  But the question is &quot;Will that make them happier with you or just tick them off?&quot;  And that's the bigger question here, assuming you want more of their business.  If you have a bunch of other clients lined up, then maybe you can move on to one of them.  But in the long run, you want to have a long trail of happy clients.  Even if some of them had to learn the hard way (by paying your development time for their own education).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not reduce client involvement and keep doing the wireframing.  Despite some of the negative results you are currently encountering, it is a very strong tool to help bring out the best feedback from your customers and help get full requirements from them.  Getting full requirements reduces the amount of time you have to &lt;strong&gt;add&lt;/strong&gt; to the schedule later because you or the client didn't think of various features that really are important to the product.  And though they may not say it, they will quietly blame you (at least partially) for features (and cost) that are added later in the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you should have at this point is a long list of features.  You need to work with them to prioritize and schedule those features.  If there are some that you think are not going to work, try to negotiate with them and schedule/budget those later.  But don't just say &quot;No&quot; if they are standing firm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prototyping is another strong tool.  It requires more work than wireframing, but if done correctly, it's considerably less work than full production-level code.  See if you can get them to agree to just prototyping some of these features, seeing if they are truly useful, and only then doing full design/budgeting/scheduling on them.  And see if you can do that prototyping later in the development process where possible.  And &lt;strong&gt;they&lt;/strong&gt; pay for the prototyping.  Non-negotiable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the meetings with them to explain their fallacies really taking a lot of your time or are they taking more energy than you thought they would?  You state upfront that these folks aren't always very tech-savvy.  You need to have low expectations about their ability to envision the conflicts that you are correctly identifying and bringing to their attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stay engaged.  Educate them as best you can.  Try to conditionally budget and use incremental development to your advantage in cases where you think they are making mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4404" LastEditorUserId="4404" LastEditDate="2012-11-26T19:36:14.870" LastActivityDate="2012-11-26T19:36:14.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8138" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8142" CreationDate="2012-11-26T11:14:32.953" Score="5" ViewCount="325" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you manage your projects (and your personal life) ? I tend to become psychotic because nothing seems to work. To specify the requirements &amp;amp; information better (as a developer's way of thinking...):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are several client projects, that can be :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Web site development &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Web site design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Graphics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a mixture of them &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are several personal projects that can be the same as client ones plus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cleaning junk from the house &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;organise my music library&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;fix my bike etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;All projects will have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Documents like : &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;accounts information (web services like ftp, ssh etc.) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;invoices&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;client information (history of purchases, personal information etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project files &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Exports, drafts, etc. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am using a MAC and an iPhone (and a lot of web !)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I desperately NEED to have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Projects and tasks organised&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An estimate that every project &amp;amp; task needs and can change through time until completion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that there is an overload of tasks, work and information and reduces my productivity and motivation to complete goals. At the time of speaking I manage 4 personal projects, 3 personal professional projects and several corporate projects. I simply can't find a way to deal with all this stuff in a place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though I am trying very hard, it seems that I need some guidance from experts. I am not very strict with dates (I definitely do not want to manage projects by time but as an estimate) and I have read a lot of GTD and pm methodologies as Scrum. At the end there is so much to organise that I feel devastated and stressed. Finally it ends where I do nothing and feel depressed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question that will change my way of thinking is: Am I started to become paranoid about organisation, or am I lacking somewhere that I can't see ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5098" LastEditorUserId="5098" LastEditDate="2012-11-26T23:02:43.393" LastActivityDate="2012-11-26T23:02:43.393" Title="Have I become paranoid about project &amp; time management?" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8134" CreationDate="2012-11-26T12:00:11.977" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have said, a core part of your job as project manager is establishing scope with the client and managing/maintaining that quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no easy answer to this question; clients who are on a low margin have a vested interest in obtaining the most services for the money, while you have a vested interest in obtaining the most moeny for the services.  These are in intrinsic tension. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your situation, I'd probably first read a lot of books on negotiation theory and tactics.  Then I'd develop a series of quotes for the client. - one for the base service, and additional quotes for each package.  The ideas that are bad are priced higher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the client wants to discuss the quote that takes up their time and yours.  That ought to discourage extended negotiation.  If not, you can impose an additional charge for negotiations beyond the second hour, or beyond the fifth email.  You owe it to yourself and your clients to do you best to optimize the explanation of those prices.  That is a core part of the service you provide.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also need to develop and market your reputation for integrity, for treating the customer fairly, and for fair assessments that are in line with the market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're going to go after low margin clients, I suspect you're going to have to deal with a low capture rate.  If you want to improve your capture rate, drop the low margin clients.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No easy answers.  Best of luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2012-11-26T12:00:11.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8125" CreationDate="2012-11-26T12:26:23.693" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like others, I'm uncomfortable with the term &quot;crash&quot;, but I'll reason from the premise that the Professor's point is that the duration of the project may vary from the initial estimate. (either because the project fails, or because the PM is urged to crash the project and reduce the estimated duration)&#xA;The other thing the prof said that seems significant is that &quot; &lt;em&gt;I can not allocate so much money from the start&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the PM is less than confident (i.e. uncertain, i.e. risk), about the duration of the project, then I forsee the following options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rent on a month to month basis, probably increasing the rent fee, but permitting early termination and potentially allowing allocation of less funds up front (which aligns with what the Professor said, but doesn't make a whole lot of sense).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Negotiate an early release clause in the rental contract - probably increasing the cost, but reducing the ultimate risk that we'll be forced to pay rent on the territory after project closure. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prepare some sort of a sublease option - this seems dicey and way more creative than a homework project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Transfer risk in some other way? Insurance?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Divide the project into smaller sub-projects. Scope out a two month sub-project/sprint, and rent for that period, with an option to extend the rent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last seems to be the most likely, but relies on information that the querent did not provide. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd be interested to learn the answer when the Professor provides feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2012-11-26T12:26:23.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8138" CreationDate="2012-11-26T14:18:13.513" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds more like a personal time management issue rather than a project management issue, though I'll admit that the two overlap. If you can better manage your time you should be able to reduce your overall levels of stress. Some things that can help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Prioritize your work.&lt;/strong&gt; If something is a nice-to-have put it at the end of your to-do list and only deal with it when the must-haves are complete.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Delegate your work.&lt;/strong&gt; If you are running something like 10-12 projects you are almost certainly going to get behind the curve on all of them. Are there any projects that you can delegate to someone else, or delegate some of the project work to?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Streamline your work.&lt;/strong&gt; Base the amount of documentation etc supporting each project based on criticality and complexity. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Focus your work.&lt;/strong&gt; An inordinate amount of time is wasted switching between tasks. Try to focus on one project per day so that you can avoid losing time as you &quot;switch gears&quot; between projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Limit your work.&lt;/strong&gt; If the amount of work associated with your projects is too much, admit it and move to reduce the number of projects you have. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-11-26T14:18:13.513" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8138" CreationDate="2012-11-26T15:07:29.697" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your writing suggests that you are driving to a set of results or a level of perfection that does not really exist, as if you are trying to predict the future with 100% accuracy and have no variance in your plans.  Neither is possible except for the very lucky exception that happens every now and again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not a tool or proven time management methods or estimating methods that will help you.  Instead, I think you need to reset your expectations.  When you understand that decisions are made without all the information--especially the outcome since it has not happened yet--and that all plans WILL have variances, you would not experience shutting down and getting depressed.  Don't look outside, look inside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-11-26T15:07:29.697" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8138" CreationDate="2012-11-26T16:22:35.930" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Imho, GTD &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; the answer (or, at least, one of the answers):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I think that GTD might have started to become obsolete... Who keeps notes in paper? The world is changing and time &amp;amp; project management changes too - new tools and methods of organisation appear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;GTD lacks also in multiple projects organisation &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) there is nothing wrong with electronic records; forget about paper; the key is to deal with &lt;strong&gt;one piece&lt;/strong&gt; from your inbox at any given time (this will help you to stay focused during weekly review; &lt;em&gt;when you don't see the rest of your inbox&lt;/em&gt;, it's much easier to deal with)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) multiple projects should not be problem at all - just assign an extra tag pointing to a project; quite often actions, belonging to different projects, could be done within the same context (phone calls); this will allow you to keep track of your projects and keep your productivity level high at the same time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2935" LastActivityDate="2012-11-26T16:22:35.930" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8144" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8148" CreationDate="2012-11-26T17:34:48.350" Score="3" ViewCount="22948" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a process that is defined by the number of business days required to complete. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to put this into MS Project, but there is no specific start date, as this is a repetitive process.  How can I go about doing this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5101" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-01-16T22:39:56.847" LastActivityDate="2021-03-17T13:02:50.753" Title="Is it possible to create a MS-Project without specifying the start date?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8144" CreationDate="2012-11-26T18:16:03.783" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it is a repetitive process, it may not be a project; it may be a process.&#xA;(and if it has no start date, then I'm not sure what meaning &quot;schedule&quot; has.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless you can do this - create a task for each step, and manually set the duration of each task.  Then manually update the dependencies (predecessors).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does that answer the question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2012-11-27T11:46:33.673" LastActivityDate="2012-11-27T11:46:33.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8146" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-26T18:57:36.280" Score="7" ViewCount="1155" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Objective Questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you guys coordinate cross-team deployment plans? Are you still using the old school Excel for these plans?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you rearrange tasks in a way the dependencies between them aren't broken and times are recalculated? Remember that using a MS Project file for deployment plan isn't a possibility as there are some teams that don't have access to a MS-Project instance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some background:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my last project, during the deployment stage, we had to coordinate 6 'parallel' deployments (there are 2 different business lines + 3 different business regions). Each deployment was formed of around 10 high-level task descriptions, without too much details, in order to be a high level project deployment plan to be used across all teams involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we were dealing with 10+ different teams across the globe, the time differences were a pain to manage. I build up a rough Excel sheet with some semi-automated formulas to automatically calculate the time dependencies based on the task + time taken for each task. Therefore, when changing the time taken for one task, all dependencies where automatically calculated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Turns out that for the people who's not familiarized with Excel (or don't have time to check for the formulas), it wasn't easy to rearrange tasks. MS-Project was out of question because, as already stated, some teams don't have access to MS-Project instances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, during deployment, all involved parts were advised to update that sheet and share with all attendants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this experience, I believe that would be great if there was a way to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Present deployment actions, (maybe in a format similiar to a Gantt chart, but in hours?) where managers could easily rearrange tasks, keeping their dependencies and having their times recalculated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;During deployment phase, all teams could collaboratively check when a task was done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;During deployment phase, accountables for each task could mark tasks as completed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some possibilities:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep using the ol' buddy Excel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use a MS project (not sure if it would work), but having only the PM updating it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Update somehow the outputs from MS Project into a SharePoint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2012-11-30T17:55:20.120" LastActivityDate="2012-12-06T17:03:51.870" Title="Is there any alternative to MS-Project server to build a collaborative deployment plan?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8144" CreationDate="2012-11-26T18:59:44.687" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not think scheduling this activity is the right thing to do.  It's not a project, it's a process.  Since you do not have a firm &quot;start date&quot;, scheduling it in project serves no purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-11-26T18:59:44.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8144" CreationDate="2012-11-26T20:20:56.553" Score="5" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Enter the tasks for your process into MS Project, including durations, predecessors, successors in addition to other key items (e.g. assigned resources) you may want to track.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a task called &quot;START&quot;. Give it zero days duration with no assigned resources. Set this task as the sole predecessor for the first task in your process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you want to run the process update the start date for the &quot;START&quot; task. You should automatically have the rest of the tasks update.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-11-26T20:20:56.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8107" CreationDate="2012-11-26T22:39:11.940" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having the same discussion some time ago, and being of latin origin most of the team, we agreed to refer as post-partum... obviously this was also prone of jokes. Some babies are ugliest than others, some are born orphan... As it is said, success has many fathers (I won't elaborate on that) but failure is orphan.&#xA;Not sure what people on Healthcare would think about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4386" LastActivityDate="2012-11-26T22:39:11.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8144" CreationDate="2012-11-27T13:30:11.927" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if this is in earlier versions of MS Project, I do know however, how to do this in Project 2010.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you go into Project Information from the Project Tab on the Ribbon, it has a drop down menu to &quot;Schedule From&quot;.  Set it to &quot;Project End Date&quot; - This will allow you to set the time it should be completed in.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to disagree with some of the other comments regarding not scheduling a project based on an End Date - It specifically depends on what you're doing.  If you're unsure of how long your project should take, then you'd schedule your project from &quot;Project Start Date&quot; so that you don't mess up your deadline alerts within MS Project if autoscheduling.  If you do know exactly how long it should take then &quot;Project End Date&quot; setting is the best way to go.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once a task has been completed, if completed early, MS Project will automatically recalculate and schedule the next task as soon as possible with &quot;Project End Date&quot; set.  It will not do this with &quot;Project Start Date&quot; set. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4982" LastActivityDate="2012-11-27T13:30:11.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8134" CreationDate="2012-11-27T13:38:08.477" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not engaging early is a bad idea - as well as just doing what they ask of you. Both are easy paths to take, and will ultimately cause heartache on both sides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You must engage the client during the wireframe phase, and guide them in the design of the project. If their ideas are shite, then persuade them of their folly. That is why you are a consultant - use your expertise to consult them on the best path forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3493" LastActivityDate="2012-11-27T13:38:08.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8125" CreationDate="2012-11-27T13:45:31.497" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Knowing how academic questions are sometimes phrased I wonder if the Professor is, actually, testing your estimation abilities more generally. What he/she may really be looking for is the overall variance in your project schedule which can then be used as a basis for budgeting on a best-case basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you have said that your total project schedule is 12 months correct to +/- 50% then the Professor might want you to say that you should only budget for 6 months of rent since this is &lt;em&gt;minimum&lt;/em&gt; time you expect the project to be completed in. Have a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-point_estimation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;three-point-estimation&lt;/a&gt; as one means of achieving a probabilistic range of estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, other respondents' points on the reality of real estate contracts (i.e. longer contracts will probably have lower monthly costs, and early termination might mean penalty costs) does make me think that this would, &lt;em&gt;in the real world&lt;/em&gt;, offer relatively little benefit (unless you get a massive bonus for completing early?) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2012-11-27T13:45:31.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1513" CreationDate="2012-11-27T19:05:31.253" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;An IT Project Manager is primarily involved in &quot;People and Project Management&quot;. An Architect / Technical Lead is involved in &quot;Technology Management&quot;. These two streams very seldom cross each others paths. When it does it's when the project plan is prepared and inputs from both are important. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A project manager knows the availability of the members of the team, including that of the Architect, and is usually allocated the budget for the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An Architect decides on the designs, technology, components and other technical aspects of the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5109" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-11-28T03:03:03.073" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T03:03:03.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8146" CreationDate="2012-11-28T06:56:19.153" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never tried this, so take it with caution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a presentation tool called &lt;a href=&quot;http://prezi.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;prezi&lt;/a&gt;, which is based on the zooming experience. What if you draw a time line and put the important dates into a &lt;em&gt;prezi&lt;/em&gt;? With the zooming experience one can see the big picture or zoom to a tiny detail. As far as I remember one can share a prezi with others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T06:56:19.153" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8146" CreationDate="2012-11-28T13:45:23.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are any number of free online Gantt chart tools out there. You could track down some of those and see which one(s) fulfill your needs. There is a discussion of this on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linkedin.com/answers/technology/information-technology/computers-software/TCH_ITS_CMP/506257-5870847&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LinkedIn&lt;/a&gt; that might help get you going. If you go this route I'd suggest working with a free tool that is at least compatible with Project so that those that do have a Project instance can use a tool they are familiar with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T13:45:23.423" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8157" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8160" CreationDate="2012-11-28T17:25:09.683" Score="14" ViewCount="5815" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm having a hard time concisely explaining to some people what the difference between the two are. Also, I not totally sure what the scope and detail of quality assurance entails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quality control is the process of finding defects in a product. Quality assurance architecting processes to prevent defects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these correct statements?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they're false, could someone please elucidate a clear and effective way of explaining the differences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1253" LastEditorUserId="1253" LastEditDate="2012-11-29T17:33:12.590" LastActivityDate="2014-11-03T15:14:01.103" Title="What's the difference between quality assurance and quality control?" Tags="&lt;quality-management&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8157" CreationDate="2012-11-28T17:37:18.180" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to start from their name.&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Quality assurance&lt;/strong&gt; - it's a support of an application/project, which assumes that every quality requirements will be checked at the end of the project. The assurance may include the whole procedure, the logistic of the testing and fixing every bug and problem. It can be also preventing a problem and implementing quality systems too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Quality control&lt;/strong&gt; - is the procedure which has to be taken to fulfill a test. The test's result is irrelevant, the quality control refers to the testing phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't find any online or printed argument for the following, it's only my experience: quality assurance includes quality control. However, quality control is a very important part of the quality assurance, but it's not everything. When you are talking about quality assurance, you refer to the procedure which has to be taken, from the good development and application projecting, even until the bug fix and project finalization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4564" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T17:37:18.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8157" CreationDate="2012-11-28T18:22:16.033" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to add more words to help clarify:  QA is proactive--creating the capability to reduce the defects in development.  QC is retroactive--finding the defects already created to fix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of QA as risk mitigation while QC is risk contingency.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I differ in meszar's answer only in that QC is NOT part of QA, in my view.  Two different capabilities, different skill sets, different methods, different level of investments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T18:22:16.033" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8157" CreationDate="2012-11-28T18:44:31.437" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;My mneumonic is that Quality Assurance is a Process (spot the double 's' in each).&#xA;Quality control is testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you search on QA vs QC you'll get a number of sites; I happen to find these rather clear:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Quality assurance is about engineering “processes“that assure quality. Now let’s try to understand it better! &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.infostretch.com/quality-assurance-vs-testing-vs-quality-control&quot;&gt;Infostretch&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Quality Assurance is process oriented and focuses on defect prevention; while quality control is product oriented and focuses on defect identification. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.diffen.com/difference/Quality_Assurance_vs_Quality_Control&quot;&gt;Diffen&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;QC: controlling / validating the quality of the project outputs&#xA;  QA: assuring the appropriate processes are being employed on the project based on the quality control results  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.passionatepm.com/blog/quality-assurance-vs-control-pmp-concept-3&quot;&gt;PassionatePM&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;the text on that page is a bit dense, but very useful from a PMP point of view&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Quality Control is product/service testing.  Quality Assurance is process checking/audit.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Quality Control is checking to ensure that you build the right product (Testing).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Quality Assurance is checking to ensure that you build the product right (Process Audit).  &lt;a href=&quot;http://pmzilla.com/difference-between-quality-assurance-and-quality-control&quot;&gt;pmzilla&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;em&gt;there are a few more answers on that page, including some examples. worth a look&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Accordingly to the PMBOK Guide, Fourth Edition, Perform Quality Assurance is the process of auditing the quality requirements and the results from quality control measurements to ensure appropriate quality standards and operational definitions are used. Whereas, Perform Quality Control is the process of monitoring and recording results of executing the quality activities to assess performance and recommend necessary changes. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deepfriedbrainproject.com/2010/08/quality-assurance-vs-quality-control_22.html&quot;&gt;Deep Fried Brain&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;Always a good study site.  This isn't as plain language as I would like, but it is, I think, more accurate than the others&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T18:44:31.437" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8144" CreationDate="2012-11-29T08:20:55.037" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as you do not use hard constraints (MSO, MFO) a schedule can be relatively easy to be shifted in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all the tasks have ASAP constraint and the schedule is established only through dependencies and working calendars then this type of schedule has the greatest flexibility and you can shift it is time very easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now all you have to do is to create a template project for your process. All tasks will schedule according to the project start date. For each repeating cycle you can create a new project starting from the template and just adjust the start date of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to have all the repeating cycles in one single file then the only solution is the one given by &lt;strong&gt;Doug B&lt;/strong&gt; but with a slight change: copy and paste the entire initial structure for each cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4457" LastActivityDate="2012-11-29T08:20:55.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1539" CreationDate="2012-11-29T14:31:20.447" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Software product quality can be measured by metrics,&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~yijun/ece450h/handouts/tools&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~yijun/ece450h/handouts/tools&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5118" LastActivityDate="2012-11-29T14:31:20.447" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8163" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8164" CreationDate="2012-11-30T01:56:02.083" Score="13" ViewCount="6764" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a deadline one week away, and we have set up pretty extensive expectations with the client.  Should I talk to the client to try to manage the expectation?  If they work overtime, do I have to stay with them, or will that anger them more?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the first time in our project where I'm pushing for overtime.  I do feel like I can do a better job managing expectations next cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5121" LastEditorUserId="4766" LastEditDate="2012-12-03T08:22:32.067" LastActivityDate="2016-03-17T14:39:48.387" Title="How do you motivate people to work overtime to meet a deadline?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8163" CreationDate="2012-11-30T09:37:21.757" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your primary job is to manage expectations. It's your fault to have such high expectations, so negotiate with the client. You may have tight deadlines only if they are connected with external factors (like media promotions, legal regulations, etc.) and not just because the client wants it as soon as possible (the client always wants it as soon as possible).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need the team to work overtime, stay with them and provide them with everything they may need - coffee, dinner, etc. Be clear why the overtime is needed, what they will receive as a compensation and what steps you would take to avoid overtime next time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2340" LastActivityDate="2012-11-30T09:37:21.757" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8163" CreationDate="2012-11-30T11:36:14.827" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe the decision of whether cut the scope or work overtime is extensively discussed on the links J provided as a comment, so I'll focus on the subject question, about &lt;em&gt;how to motivate the team to have them working overtime&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two different scenarios, and I'd say the approach needs to be based depending on it. One is when you're working with a long-term team, and another with contractors. You have far more 'flexibility' when working with contractors, but remember that depending on the way the project is conducted (i.e. how hard you'll push the team) you may have problems in the future when you need other contractors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some items, however, that worth to bear in mind when dealing with your team, as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Assess the scenarios:&lt;/strong&gt; What happens if the project is not delivered on schedule? What will happen to the team? And to you? And with the relationship with the client? You must have these questions quite clear before action. Probably the questions you'll hear will be at some level related to them. Be prepared.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Define priorities:&lt;/strong&gt; You must know as well, what are the project priorities in case of delays. This must be assessed with the client (it's extensively discussed in the related links).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be transparent:&lt;/strong&gt; Explain the situation to the team. Schedule a meeting where everyone feeling comfortable (i.e. avoid having this meeting in the middle of the night). Put on the table (as much as you can) the drawbacks in case the project does not deliver on time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make them accountable:&lt;/strong&gt; When you need people engaged, &lt;strong&gt;make them feel that their success and the project success is the very same thing&lt;/strong&gt;. Otherwise, they may not work hard enough to deliver the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Overwork guarantees nothing:&lt;/strong&gt; Working extra-hours is not a guarantee that the project will be delivered, so while gathering team's commitment, review the scope with the client and define priorities, what is a must have and what is a nice to have.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How they'll be compensated?&lt;/strong&gt; They're doing extra work. They expect extra compensation. Or not. But make sure you manage properly their &lt;em&gt;expectations&lt;/em&gt;, otherwise you may burn your team to the point of having no commitment like this in the future.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A last reminder:&lt;/strong&gt; Working extra hours is part of the job, especially in IT. Assess what you need to do, and go for it. But make sure you're part of the team (being there with them, being available in a mobile number, helping removing any blocker they may face), otherwise they'll never respect / trust you again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-11-30T11:36:14.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8163" CreationDate="2012-11-30T22:36:37.247" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do you motivate &lt;em&gt;resources&lt;/em&gt; to work overtime to meet a deadline?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;what kind of methodology are you using? In agile environment I would consider it a great disrespect if someone would &quot;have set up pretty extensive expectations with the client&quot; behind the team's back and then try to motivate &quot;resources&quot; in order to meet the deadline; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;if you looking for a team's commitment - let the team to decide if the deadline is reasonable or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2935" LastActivityDate="2012-11-30T22:36:37.247" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8167" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8169" CreationDate="2012-12-01T14:50:22.593" Score="14" ViewCount="2116" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some context first: I am a project manager in a software development company with a Kanban environment. In the team I am managing there is no such thing as people reporting their work to me, or people telling one after the other what they did yesterday, etc. During stand-up meetings we focus on the flow, almost never on a particular piece of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other day I was having a (tiny) argument with my boss around a sentence from Jurgen Appelo's Management 3.0 book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whether employees need managers is irrelevant. It is the shareholders who need managers of their business. Self-organization is devoid of value. It takes someone with an interest in its outcomes to decide whether the results of self-organization are &quot;good&quot; or &quot;bad.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the boss asked this question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Considering a self-organized team where no individual work is ever reported, how do you spot the lazy team member?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4071" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-01-17T06:32:43.293" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T06:32:43.293" Title="How to spot the lazy team member in a self-organized team?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8167" CreationDate="2012-12-01T17:14:14.507" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) straightforward way: since you have a Kanban board, it should be relatively easy to track the average number of tasks/points done by each team member&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) ask (individually) every team member to pick 1-2 partners for a difficult and important assignment (task, story) and see who will &lt;strong&gt;NOT&lt;/strong&gt; be picked - this method might give you more info about the team but it could backfire, so be careful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;one more thing: you don't have to optimize for &quot;story points per person&quot; but it could be a good idea to know that you have a weak link in the team (perhaps, someone producing &lt;strong&gt;negative&lt;/strong&gt; results (I have seen it )) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2935" LastEditorUserId="2935" LastEditDate="2012-12-01T23:42:10.987" LastActivityDate="2012-12-01T23:42:10.987" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8167" CreationDate="2012-12-01T19:50:08.437" Score="15" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Value Judgements vs. Flow Analysis&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Considering a self-organized team where no individual work is ever reported, how do you spot the lazy team member?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the wrong way to ask the question, but it's understandable since people are social animals. The question is being asked through a social filter that imputes motives rather than analyzing the process flow and identifying bottlenecks, process gaps, or impediments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A better way to look at this issue is to look at the overall process flow. If the value chain is intact, and the cycle time of the process is acceptable, the question of whether a team member is a super-star or a super-dud is actually &lt;em&gt;irrelevant&lt;/em&gt;. The only question that matters is whether that person adds value to the chain or whether the process routes around that person (e.g. the person is a bottleneck/impediment that could be considered &quot;waste&quot; from a Kanban perspective).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's assume for the moment that the person &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; lazy, but nevertheless adds value to the process. Perhaps this person is the only one who knows how to embiggen the whatsit before it ships off to the customer. While it may be tempting to replace this person with someone who's excited to show up every day and embiggen everything faster, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences&quot;&gt;Law of Unintended Consequences&lt;/a&gt; suggests that this may not actually improve your process or cycle times. Perhaps the process can't move any faster than it does, or perhaps this person provides untracked value to the process chain that isn't captured by any particular swim lane or story card.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to go around firing people for &quot;moral turpitude&quot; or some other social equivalent, fine. But please don't make the mistake of thinking that this is a &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; issue, because that's not supported by the data that you've presented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Don't Optimize Sub-Tasks&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Kanban (as in other agile methodologies), tracking individual performance is always the wrong metric. Bob Lewis &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.weblog.keepthejointrunning.com/?p=1769&quot;&gt;has repeatedly said&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You can’t optimize the whole by optimizing the parts, whether you’re designing a car, a software system, or an IT organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a pervasive theme for Mr. Lewis, and while the context of the referenced blog entry is slightly different than your issue, the core message is still on target. If you feel that some part of the process is not optimal, you must carefully consider whether optimizing some sub-task or role would actually improve or degrade your overall process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel someone is &quot;lazy,&quot; you're implicitly addressing a potential optimization. You need to carefully consider your metric (Why do you think this person is lazy?) and determine whether or not it really matters to the overall process. If you are measuring the wrong thing, or optimizing for something other than value chaining, waste reduction, or process throughput, then you're just engaging in social engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-12-01T19:50:08.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8167" CreationDate="2012-12-01T21:44:58.547" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One cannot really spot a lazy team member in a cross functional team&lt;/strong&gt;. The good thing about about cross functional teams is the cohesion, which will &lt;em&gt;&quot;hide&quot;&lt;/em&gt; the performance (good or bad) of the individual, so one cannot really say that X or Y is lazy. It can happen that the team members are talking about another member, but that discussion doesn't and shouldn't be visible on your boss' level, unless it is escalated by the team members. Jurgen's book is about agile management, and I don't know your boss, but after he gets the book, he will realise that there is no answer to his question in an Agile or Management 3.0 context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say you are a team member and you think that your colleague is lazy. I consider laziness as a symptom. In most of the cases there is something else behind, so figuring out what is going on is the key. I remember that an old colleague of mine was convinced that another colleague was lazy and he continuously tried to prove it and get rid of that other colleague. Actually, he wasn't lazy at all, but much slower than the others. So, &lt;strong&gt;if you think that somebody in your team is lazy, dig deeper and figure out his/her motive&lt;/strong&gt;. There are two solutions: help him/her, or find him/her another team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-12-01T21:44:58.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8171" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-02T01:09:50.133" Score="11" ViewCount="2988" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a long-term software project with frequent releases, end-users regularly report bugs and defects in the product. When the reported bug is highly critical, the fix is generally developed and released right away. Otherwise the bug is recorded into a bug-tracking system, which is basically a list. One of the tasks of the product owner is to prioritize this list and decide what fixes to include in the next release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difficulty of prioritizing defects will increase along with the number of reported defects. Specifically, it is difficult to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimate implications of each bug (including risk, technical complexity, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;See the whole picture : How stable is the product? Did the quality drop with the last release? etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify duplicate bugs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What process or tool can the product owner (and the team) implement to facilitate (and potentially improve) prioritization of bug fixes? What are the advantages/disadvantages of these processes or tools?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4071" LastEditorUserId="4071" LastEditDate="2012-12-03T18:49:26.447" LastActivityDate="2017-05-04T12:44:49.157" Title="How to improve and facilitate prioritization of bug fixes?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8171" CreationDate="2012-12-02T01:09:50.133" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;With my team we recently adopted a new bug-tracking tool based on a &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticality_matrix&quot;&gt;criticality matrix&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. This is a physical board representing a 4x4 matrix on which we stick notes according to two criteria:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Columns represent the &lt;strong&gt;intrinsic severity&lt;/strong&gt; of the bug. The more a bug is on the left, the more it is critical. Each column has its own explicit policies but, for example, if a bug can cause the loss of users' data it will be in the leftmost column, whereas a very rare &quot;cosmetic&quot; bug will on the rightmost column. Deciding in what column to put a bug is the responsibility of the product owner.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rows represent the &lt;strong&gt;team feeling&lt;/strong&gt; about the bug. The more a bug is on the top, the worse is the team feeling about it. This evaluation is quite subjective and includes things like risk, technical complexity, time to develop a fix, etc. Choosing in what row to put a bug is most of the time the result of a 30 second discussion. The topmost row is dedicated to bugs that need an investigation before we can decide, typically when we completely ignore the cause of the defect.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we always have quite the same number of bugs, we needed a way to measure the overall stability of the product, which depends on bugs criticality. So we affected an arbitrary score for each row and column, allowing us to calculate a stability score.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Advantages&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Visualization makes prioritization easier&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Everybody understands why a bug has been chosen instead of another, as the choice is often obvious&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Easy to implement when everybody work in the same place (maybe easier in a Kanban team like ours)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disadvantages&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Probably impossible to handle a big number of bugs - say more than 200 - with a physical board&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.mjouan.fr/bug-tracking-story/&quot;&gt;blog article&lt;/a&gt; might give you more details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4071" LastActivityDate="2012-12-02T01:09:50.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8173" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-03T02:31:43.463" Score="2" ViewCount="317" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am representing a construction developer firm and I am looking for a tool to easily manage my contractors' progress and their payment. Currently I am using Microsoft Project and Microsoft Excel to keep track of all the work progress, claims and whatnot. It is a very tedious progress for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note that I am not talking about software project management tools.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.microsoft.com/project/en-us/project-server-2010.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Microsoft Project Server&lt;/a&gt;. I am interested to configure it so that it should have the following standard project management features and functionality:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Our construction developer firm will be the &quot;superuser&quot; who can see all the progress of all projects, made by our users--consists of contractors and sub-con (&quot;normal users&quot;). Our users can only see the projects that are related to them, they can't see other users' progress, of course. Only the superuser gets to see the whole project progress, in the form of Gantt chart, project baselines and whatnot. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Progress indication and % of completion and all the things that a real project management has, like start date, due date and so on. The progress indication can be updated by the &quot;normal users&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cost and projection. The user can specify the actual cost spent,the progress, and the estimated remaining cost for a task. At the end of the day, the program will take all these information, compute a new budget and compare this against the initial budget to check whether the project is over-budget or not. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It should be easy for our users to attach photo, provide description in conjunction with their progress of completion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, can Microsoft Project Server be extended or configured or customized to support the above needs? Or is there any other tools ( open source or not) that can be supported to do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="313" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-01-11T10:08:26.520" LastActivityDate="2019-01-11T10:08:26.520" Title="How Microsoft Project Server can support Online Project Management and Planning with different user credentials" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8173" CreationDate="2012-12-03T08:15:59.703" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are willing to spend money, if the team get's large, I would ask you to look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/overview/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jira&lt;/a&gt;. If you are dead set on open source and &quot;free&quot; software I would say that Redmine, Bugzilla or any other that has been atound a while, and looking for plugins to make it suit your needs is one of your best bets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many others but most of them are quite new. That means that they are likely to change core functionality that could make your life hard, they don't have a vast community support yet (for help and plugins) and they might seize to exist due to low adoption levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4602" LastActivityDate="2012-12-03T08:15:59.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8171" CreationDate="2012-12-03T12:43:44.270" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Limiting my answer strictly to the PM implications (there are others).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fundamentally a bug is a change proposal; part of the PM's job is to analyze the implications of a change proposal. I think that one method would be to consult with the change management stakeholders (you've mentioned the development team, but I would include customer representatives, et. al.) and assess what the impact of the bug is on the software, including estimates of the resources required to fix it.  (I'd also search for questions that reference &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/technical-debt&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'technical-debt'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;technical-debt&lt;/a&gt;.  Both Risk Management and Change Management sections of any PM reference contain methods to solve these problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You seem to indicate (either your grammar or my lack of caffeine is confusing me), that you're having trouble getting technical advice from your team; if that is so, then I'd table this problem and work full time on improving team communications.  The other two difficulties you cite can probably be better addressed in a software specific forum (I would suggest you consult CVE/CWE, or Software Engineering Institute models, and adapt those.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that the problem isn't team communications, it is about how to structure the conversation and quantify bugs, then I'd suggest either risk management or a variation of planning poker.  Or you could use the Delphi technique.  Or you could play price is right &quot;Which of our existing bugs is closest in severity to this bug, but not more severe?&quot;  (If it were me, I'd suggest that the dev's spend no more than 1 minute on the decision.).  Or you do risk management, and estimate the probability that this bug will ever be triggered, and the potential consequences of the bug.  Possibly calculate an expected value for the bug.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is that in addition to answers you get from software experts, you can use either change management techniques or risk management techniques to do this.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still think that the software development world contains the core of the answer, and if I were in the OP's shoes, that's where I'd start my research.  I'd also consult QA: they should have internal procedures that would help.  I'm going to ignore that and answer with my PM hat.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I think the key is to establish a process that is sufficient for your team - one that will produce an answer you can live with, but doesn't consume more time and resources that it produces value.  Kind of obvious, but I don't want to miss the obvious.  Ultimately the accuracy of the process is probably less important than (a) the consistency and (b) the amount of time it takes devs away from dev work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'd probably start by emphasizing lightweight.  Ask each dev to spend no more than 1 minute examining each bug, and predict how many hours of coding it would take to fix the bug.  (Emphasis on quick SWAG).  I'd drop the high and low, average the remainng estimates, and use the total as my total technical debt.  Personally, I'd probably also track the accuracy of estimates and start applying a weighting factor as I learned which of the devs are most skilled at estimates. I'd also incentivize correctness - I'd buy lunch for whoever is closest to the actual number.  Of course the drawback is that I've omitted the consequence of the defect, but I've got a pretty good idea of what the impact is on schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For impact/consequence, I would consult the customer. (First data mining the bug report database.  Look for clusters that might be identical; then find a dev who needs a coffee break and ask for help in identifying duplicates.)  Based on bug reports, I can estimate how frequently this defect is likely to be triggered. (I'm restricted to my PM hat, but if I were wearing my software hat, I'd also look at code profiling to see how often the code is triggered).  I'd also sit down with the product owner/business process owner and discuss whether the defect affects something that is core to the competitiveness of the product, and weight things that way.  Then I'd move to a spreadsheet and try to build a model - if the sales are based on X sales at Y dollars, and the bug will affect a/X customers, then I'll treat the value of the bug as f(X,Y,a). This is very rough, but it involves very little of the stakeholder's time. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you combine the above, you've got risk management.  I think you could probably adapt one of the more mature risk management methodologies (&lt;a href=&quot;http://fairwiki.riskmanagementinsight.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FAIR&lt;/a&gt; is the sexy one right now, and has the advantage that it is relatively comprehensive.  Start there and start stripping things out that don't contribute enough value.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately though as I've said elsewhere, this is a core job function for the PM.  This is where we earn our big bucks, and if it gets too simple, then they won't need us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2012-12-03T23:54:59.740" LastActivityDate="2012-12-03T23:54:59.740" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8146" CreationDate="2012-12-03T12:56:39.440" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For your needs the only viable solution is to use MS Project Server. No way to use Excel and using just MS Project and working with files has the disadvantage of not being able to work concurrently on the same data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this would become a problem regarding costs... A less expensive alternative would be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rationalplan.com/server-project-management-software.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;RationalPlan Server&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4457" LastActivityDate="2012-12-03T12:56:39.440" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8134" CreationDate="2012-12-03T14:50:16.080" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you are finding yourself in situations where you feel you have made some informed decisions that you feel are based on a solid understanding of what your client is trying to accomplish, but where it is difficult to explain those decisions to your customers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I would ask is how explicit are you being with your customers when discussing things prior to the wireframing stage? Are you discussing what their overall measurable goals, target users, and priorities are? Based on what you are saying, it sounds like you think you've got a good feel for those things, but how explicit are you being with your customers about these things? Are you documenting them and specifically referring back to them in later discussions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We often see clients that hear about some nifty new widget that they immediately want to incorporate into a system. Often times, simply asking how including that widget helps meet their stated goals or improve life for their target users can either get them to lower the priority on it, or help them communicate to you what the actual value is and why it should be a priority. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastEditorUserId="1197" LastEditDate="2012-12-22T19:21:15.090" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T19:21:15.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8178" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8179" CreationDate="2012-12-03T17:20:21.940" Score="6" ViewCount="347" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say, I have a project with well fixed deadlines, and a pretty good specification. Every specification needs additional discussion, with taking in consideration the client's requirements (I mean, this additional specifications won't be essential, but anyhow useful and necessary). But the client is too busy to answer to the mails, phone calls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project is ordered by the client, but its success depends on the development team, because it is made for an event with fixed date. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best solution in this case? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Take decisions without the client's agreement:&lt;/strong&gt; advantage: the project can be delivered in time; disadvantage: double development time, if the client wants other solution, or &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Wait until the client answers:&lt;/strong&gt; it can throw the finish time after the deadline, which isn't a good &quot;advertisement&quot; for the developer company?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4564" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2012-12-03T17:46:08.143" LastActivityDate="2012-12-06T08:15:49.363" Title="Slow client answers" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;clients&gt;&lt;deadline&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8178" CreationDate="2012-12-03T17:50:06.973" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming that the decisions that you want made are valid (i.e. you aren't overwhelming your customer with details that are really your responsibility to decide on), the problem seems to be that your customer, or maybe just your point of contact, is not engaged with the project. You need to address this root cause or you will spend a lot more time and effort keeping your project on track than you need to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;on-time&quot; issue from your perspective is probably a red herring. If there are deadlines in your contract with the customer you almost certainly have any number of caveats in them preventing penalties for late delivery if fault lies with the customer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't get hold of your point of contact then you may have to escalate the issue. Use this tool with caution, it is a blunt instrument that should be avoided if possible, but don't be afraid to use it if necessary. If escalation doesn't work then it becomes a business decision to just kill the project and release the resources to others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-12-03T17:50:06.973" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8178" CreationDate="2012-12-03T18:09:57.160" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are major points in most projects where you must have customer verification and validation before moving on.  It is an unreasonable risk for both parties to bypass these points.  And as Doug suggested, you should have in your contract where those points are such that, if the client does not do his/her part, you are held 100% harmless on delays sequel to that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For other areas, where there is less risk, you can certainly make those decisions to move on based on your risk analysis, e.g., what decision will the customer most likely make.  Yes, there is risk that you could choose wrong and you would have rework; however, if you are in touch with the project and its requirements, I think this is less costly overall--even with a few mistakes--then sitting idly while waiting for a decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really like Doug's first paragraph that talks about this being a symptom of the client not really being engaged.  This is something you need to simulteaneously investigate as this WILL cause you more grief down the line.  Get these guys to the table and have a no kidding discussion of how each of you will play in the sandbox moving forward.  Get agreement and, if you can't, get out of the box and find somewhere else to play.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-12-03T18:09:57.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8178" CreationDate="2012-12-03T18:14:48.040" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Doug (+1) that's on customer to decide how important the project is to himself. If he doesn't dedicate enough time to the project, he may not consider it as important as you may think the project is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't mean, however, that your team will stand still waiting for them to discuss the open points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you mentioned, I'd go for the first approach, slightly changing it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Review the open points you have, write down your proposals to solve them plus how your team is intended to implement them and then go back to the client for their signoff.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way, you'll:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;keep the project moving&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;doing the extra-mile&lt;/em&gt; (wow, they not only did their job, they did my job too! amazing!) and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;still have your bases covered&lt;/em&gt; (wow, wait! They assumed it wrongly! But... We signed off the requirements doc, so it's our fault!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bottomline:&lt;/strong&gt; Put everything on paper and properly signed off. If they aren't giving you proper feedback, make sure you state it clearly when going to them with your assumptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-12-03T18:14:48.040" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8171" CreationDate="2012-12-03T21:40:35.987" Score="4" Body="&lt;h3&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem isn't with your bug-tracking tool chain. The underlying problem is a lack of rigor in defining bugs in your business context, and possibly a lack of clarity in the business objectives that your organization is trying to achieve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The solution is to define your terms unambiguously, clarify your objectives, and then build processes (including bug tracking and change management) around those objectives in a sustainable way for your particular business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What Bugs Are Not&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question mashes a bunch of things together. You said that it is difficult to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Estimate implications of each bug (including risk, technical complexity, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;See the whole picture : How stable is the product? Did the quality drop with the last release? etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Identify duplicate bugs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're confusing bugs with product stability, business risk, and work effort. While all of these things may be &lt;em&gt;associated&lt;/em&gt; with a bug, they aren't synonyms. So, let's start with a workable definition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Defining a Bug&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's my personal definition of what a bug is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A bug is an aspect of a system that performs improperly (e.g. &lt;code&gt;2 + 2 = 5&lt;/code&gt;) or fails to meet requirements or customer expectations (e.g. the specification is for 10ms response times, but printing &quot;Hello, world!&quot; takes 17.5 minutes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your project may have a different definition. That's fine; the important thing is for everyone to agree on what it means when you call something a bug.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Bugs Need a Point of View&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bug needs a point of view. Generally, a bug that impacts no one isn't a problem, so it's important that a bug have a context and a point of view. A bug that electrocutes end-users is probably a business-critical bug that needs to be fixed right away, while bugs that are not customer-facing will probably have a different priority for the business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't understand who the bug impacts or why it matters to them, then you can't identify business risks or quantify the value of fixing (or not fixing) a particular bug.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Customers and Managers Don't Get to Estimate Complexity&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it may be legitimate to allow the bug reporter to provide information on the severity of the bug's impact on a given person or process, that's not the same thing as estimating business risk or work effort. The best way to make sure you estimate something poorly is to have the wrong people provide the estimates. As a result, initial bug reports shouldn't contain estimates of risk or complexity; it's the team's job to evaluate those issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, the Product Owner should determine what the business risk and criticality is of the bug. She may or may not consult with the rest of the team if the risks are wide-reaching or non-obvious, but ultimately prioritizing things is her job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, only the development team gets to estimate the complexity of the bug. After all, they wrote the software--and presumably the unit tests that can at least reproduce this bug--so they are the best people to estimate how difficult and/or invasive a given change is likely to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Don't Ignore Duplicate Bugs&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cross-referencing bugs is fine. However, automatically de-duplicating bugs is almost impossible. Either you end up with a bug reporting system that's so limited that only pre-defined bugs can be entered, or the free-form nature of the reports makes finding exact duplicates impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every bug needs some human triage. If bugs are related, it's okay to mark them as similar or exact duplicates of some other bug, but the fact that you have 973 &quot;duplicate&quot; bugs about your Super-Duper Widget is probably a useful metric in its own right. Why would you want to discard such valuable data?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Bugs are Not Intrinsically Code-Quality Metrics&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bug report does not intrinsically tell you anything about either code quality or product stability. A code base riddled with easily-preventable bugs is obviously a red flag for your process, as is a high volume of bugs that crash the application or its host system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, some bugs are just a result of emergent system behavior, changes in user expectations, poorly-chosen metaphors and paradigms, or simply unforeseen circumstances. These things are definitely bugs, but they don't mean your code base is bad, your programmers are lazy, or that your customers are idiots. They are, at heart, just specifications for change requirements or new user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to measure code quality, there are other ways to do that. However, I'd argue that end-user satisfaction and code base sustainability are the metrics that matter most. Measure those two things properly, and life will be easier for everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-12-03T21:40:35.987" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8178" CreationDate="2012-12-04T02:26:12.297" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another plan for dealing with the &quot;root cause&quot; here: how are you in contact with this person(s)?  Do you contact them on an ad hoc basis or do you have scheduled times during the week when you talk/review progress?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are only contacting them on an ad hoc basis at present, move that up to at least one, but possibly two, regularly scheduled meetings per week with all parties required to make decisions on the things you need.  By getting this regular meeting, it will obviate the need for you to continually escalate things.  You may need to escalate once to get the regular meetings, but after that you should have enough contact to make good progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to do your part in coming to these meetings prepared with everything that you need decisions on and with enough information so that the deciders can decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option might be to create an email list with a few deciders on it.  1) There is nothing like a little competition to get people engaged.  2) You can announce to a number of people that you are going with Option A if you don't hear back from someone by X.  3) If you can get the &quot;root cause's&quot; boss on the list, then after a few times of you saying to the list &quot;Remember this thing I asked you for 3 days ago...&quot; you'll have some clear evidence of a problem and a need to do something about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4404" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T02:26:12.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8163" CreationDate="2012-12-04T09:50:56.300" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A small addition to things said elsewhere (especially by @Darhazer): please remember to have a party with your team after completing the project. The exact format of the party will certainly vary according to local customs and traditions and the scale of the project. Anything will do, really, as long as you show your team you care for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not switch to party mode the very same morning you're shipping your product, though - firstly, there may be bugreps from the client to iron out, secondly, your team members will be exhausted and you have to cut them some slack and allow them to sleep and recover from the stress of working overtime to enjoy the party.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an important mechanism of bonding the team together and getting informal feedback on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4766" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T09:50:56.300" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8185" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-04T14:44:40.880" Score="14" ViewCount="1764" Body="&lt;p&gt;When my company was acquired, my 20-person development team gained a Product Owner who is energetic, engaged, and extremely idealistic. While many of the programmers on our team are familiar with agile principles, our methodology has been eclectic rather than agile, and we have delivered high-quality products on time for almost 10 years. Our programmers work on more than one project simultaneously, and all projects are not in this PO's area of responsibility.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We've &quot;gone agile&quot; in that we work in 2-week sprints from a backlog of prioritized user stories (not broken into 2-week size). The PO wants to know how many hours programmer X has available during each sprint and exactly what he will do with them.  He wants demonstrations of features completed at the end of each sprint, and if an implementation is more complicated than we expected and something isn't done, he considers that we have broken our commitment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been reading about the Product Owner role in hopes of finding language to tell this person, &quot;Your role is to set the goals and priorities, not to manage our time at the level of hours. You need to focus on making sure the user stories are clear, and then leave us alone for a sprint to do our jobs unless we have questions.&quot;  However, the more I read, the more I think maybe he's not overdoing the role per se; rather, the whole problem is that he's performing it too enthusiastically in an organization that isn't following his methodology and isn't convinced it will improve our output. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My specific question:  Is my statement above about the PO's role legitimate?  In a truly agile environment, does the PO go to the level of saying things like, &quot;OK, we have 40 person hours of work for Arthur and 32 person hours of work for Candace, and since they're each supposed to be half-time on this project, they should finish that work by the end of the next sprint.&quot; ??   I know we have a lot of issues to resolve, but if you all tell me that this guy isn't over-stepping his role as a reasonable PO in an agile environment, our group might find a way to be less resentful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1506" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-12-04T17:17:52.573" LastActivityDate="2020-06-29T12:26:24.877" Title="Managing a Product Owner in a not-yet-agile organization" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8185" CreationDate="2012-12-04T15:18:29.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Role descriptions...or a lack thereof.  Poorly drafted role descriptions will wreak havoc on your capabilities.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether this PO is outside of his boundaries with focusing on hours really depends on how your organization defines the role.  I'd bet you could get a few inconsistent opinions from surveying this site.  But at the end of the day, it becomes how your organization defines the boundaries of each role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking of boundaries, this is often overlooked when drafting role descriptions.  Most just write to responsibilities.  They forget about accountabilities and boundaries.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because you are complaining, it sounds like the PO is overstepping your perception of where the boundary is between his role and the agile team lead's role.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your answer is not found about what is right in an agile environment; it is found by properly establishing firm role descriptions for the organization.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T15:18:29.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8185" CreationDate="2012-12-04T17:03:59.000" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a truly agile environment, does the PO go to the level of saying things like, &amp;quot;OK, we&#xA;have 40 person hours of work for Arthur and 32 person hours of work for Candace, and since&#xA;they're each supposed to be half-time on this project, they should finish that work by the&#xA;end of the next sprint.&amp;quot; ??&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, in a Scrum environment, or in any other project environments for that matter, the product owner should not estimate the tasks for the developers. People doing the work should be providing estimates, especially when decomposing stories into tasks. This is even more important in Scrum where the team is self organized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, since you are just getting started, you probably don't have a handle on the team velocity (how many stories the team can implement in an iteration) and this makes the product owner's statement even more ludicrous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my group, the product owners are responsible for &lt;strong&gt;what&lt;/strong&gt; we are going to be doing and the teams are responsible for &lt;strong&gt;how&lt;/strong&gt; it is going to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is perfectly fine for the product owner to share an opinion, but one should not confuse estimates with target.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be the right time for your group to review the &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20151129004314/http://www.construx.com:80/uploadedFiles/Construx/Construx_Content/Resources/Posters/Tombstone%20Poster_0809_sm.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;10 Deadly mistakes of Software Development&lt;/a&gt;. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20151129004314/http://www.construx.com:80/uploadedFiles/Construx/Construx_Content/Resources/Posters/Tombstone%20Poster_0809_sm.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5YT9i.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;10 Deadly mistakes of Software Development&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2962" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-29T12:26:24.877" LastActivityDate="2020-06-29T12:26:24.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8185" CreationDate="2012-12-04T17:15:59.387" Score="9" Body="&lt;h3&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It really sounds like the Scrum Master and the Product Owner have both bought into the velocity and utilization trap. Break the cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Dissecting the Product Owner Role&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The PO wants to know how many hours programmer X has available during each sprint and exactly what he will do with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not his business in a Scrum shop. He is part of the Scrum team, but he's not in charge of story assignment or team organization. A Scrum team is self-organizing (when it's working well), so this is a no-no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He wants demonstrations of features completed at the end of each sprint[.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is legitimate. A Sprint Review is a standard Scrum meeting, and definitely part of the framework. It should be focused on completed, user-visible features, but that's somewhat of an implementation detail. The critical thing is that the Sprint Review is the opportunity to show the Product Owner and the stakeholders what's been completed during the most recent Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[I]f an implementation is more complicated than we expected and something isn't done, he considers that we have broken our commitment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe, and maybe not. There are several issues wrapped up here. Let's look at them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Team should have a &quot;definition of done.&quot; If the Sprint Goal has not been met, and the work doesn't meet the definition of done, then it's simply not done. It's never partially-done; in Scrum, &quot;done&quot; for a user story is all-or-nothing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The caveat to the previous axiom is if the Team and the Product Owner cooperatively redefine &quot;done&quot; during the course of a Sprint. If you are part-way through a Sprint and realize you will not meet the Sprint Goal or complete a story, then you should immediately involve the Product Owner to discuss your options.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the Team is properly executing Sprint Planning, then the Team &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; committing to the Sprint Goal and a set of user stories. That's why it's important to estimate properly, and not to overcommit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;How to Handle Failing or Failed Sprints&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PO is wrong in making this a blame issue, though. The Scrum Master's job is to use the Scrum process to manage everyone's expectations during and after a failed Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a Sprint is in danger of failing, the PO should be involved ASAP. The Product Owner has several options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work with the team to redefine the Sprint Goal or the accepted user stories in order to salvage value from the Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Terminate the Sprint early so that a Sprint Retrospective and a new Sprint Planning session can reboot the process now that everyone has more insight.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither option should be a &quot;blame game.&quot; Having to renegotiate or restart a Sprint is a common occurrence in Scrum, especially with teams that are new to estimating. It is usually a result of some or all of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Process impediments that were not foreseen or included in story estimates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mistaken estimates of one or more user stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An overly-ambitious Sprint Goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Over-committing during Sprint Planning due to incorrect story estimates, over-estimating team velocity, &lt;strong&gt;the &quot;100% utilization&quot; anti-pattern&lt;/strong&gt;, having stories assigned to the team (rather than the team making its own commitments), or any other reason that places more stories on the Sprint Backlog than can reasonably be completed in a single Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Utilization Anti-Pattern&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 100% utilization anti-pattern is what concerns me most. You say that the Product Owner says things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;OK, we have 40 person hours of work for Arthur and 32 person hours of work for Candace, and since they're each supposed to be half-time on this project, they should finish that work by the end of the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a double fallacy. First, the Product Owner is &lt;em&gt;not permitted&lt;/em&gt; to estimate work-effort for the team. His role is to prioritize stories, and to work with the rest of the Scrum Team to adjust scope or delivery dates to meet business requirements based on the Team's estimates of the amount of work involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, a successful Scrum Team is self-organizing. If the Product Owner is assigning work, attempting to implement 100% per-person utilization, or otherwise micro-managing the Team's intra-Sprint processes, then the Scrum Master must:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Educate the Product Owner on the benefits (and limitations) of the process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure the Team is not over-committing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coach the Team to organize as efficiently as possible around accepted Sprint Goals. This has nothing to do with utilization, and everything to do with shared ownership and &lt;em&gt;voluntary&lt;/em&gt; commitments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal of Scrum is not to maximize feature velocity or resource utilization; the goal of Scrum is to manage the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot;&gt;Cone of Uncertainty&lt;/a&gt; involved in large or complex projects, and to create a sustainable pace of work based on increasingly-reliable story estimates. In other words, reliability and consistency trump speed; the speed evolves as processes, estimation practices, automation, and work-flow improve over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T17:15:59.387" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8189" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8192" CreationDate="2012-12-04T17:18:32.570" Score="21" ViewCount="7899" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;4 .Net Developers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;4 PHP Developers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 QA Specialists&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 Integration Specialists &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 Analysts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 PMs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;11 Projects in active development.  None are trivial. Some are programs with sub-projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am the 4th PM tasked with adding method to the madness.  I am trying to take the org Agile.  My short term goal is to implement daily stand ups and Sprint planning (probably end up being more Kanban than Scrum).  The environment is multiple eCommerce and SaaS sites, so at any given time something can break and send all plans to the wind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Challenge:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;We can't have 11 stand ups a day, nor can we perform work on 11 projects a day.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Option 1:&lt;/strong&gt; Each PM has one stand up for the projects they want to focus on; however, some team members will be on all three and therefore need to attend 45 min worth of stand-ups every day.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Option 2:&lt;/strong&gt; We have one massive stand up with 17 people.  This would have the most transparency as to what project/task each person is/has been working on.  However; how long would such a meeting need to be?  How long would people end up listening to issues that do not apply to them?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Option 3:&lt;/strong&gt; I don't know, you tell me.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4046" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2012-12-04T17:30:33.957" LastActivityDate="2016-09-21T10:05:02.030" Title="How to apply daily stand-up meetings with a large team on multiple projects" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8189" CreationDate="2012-12-04T17:37:53.157" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The easy solution is to &lt;strong&gt;have only one standup which is for the team&lt;/strong&gt;. My recommendation is to talk about only &lt;a href=&quot;http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2012/02/standup-for-the-future/&quot;&gt;the upcoming work&lt;/a&gt; and focus on those issues &lt;a href=&quot;http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2010/12/daily-stand-up-variations/&quot;&gt;which my cause some troubles later on&lt;/a&gt; such as cross-project tasks, integration tasks, tasks which are on the board for a long time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this approach the three personal oriented questions need to be transformed to a task oriented question, but for large projects this kind of setup is way more effective. As I mentioned before you have to talk about issues, and the recommended order is right to left on the board, because there are those tasks which are close to finish. If the 15 minutes passed you stop the meeting and see what can be done differently the next time so that it fits into the timeframe. One additional trick is to talk about those issues which have a stop sign, because those are the one which need to be discussed with the whole team (how to unstop them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T17:37:53.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8189" CreationDate="2012-12-04T17:38:44.917" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You say that you want to take the organization Agile. Be careful, as this can be a significant change and can lead to resistance and inefficiencies at least in the short term. You will really need to plan this out and have buy-in from your senior management team to support you on this undertaking &lt;strong&gt;before&lt;/strong&gt; you try to implement it so that you can proactively address issues like the one that you raise. Otherwise you are setting yourself and your organization up for failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe a best first step is to use agile as a framework rather than follow it to the letter. There is no sense in implementing a system to improve efficiencies with a level of bureaucracy that negates any gains you can make. Do you really need stand-ups for all projects every day? Or can you get away with stand-ups every second day? Can you limit agile work to fewer projects so that the team can get a feel for it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T17:38:44.917" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8189" CreationDate="2012-12-04T18:45:10.480" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;option 1&lt;/strong&gt;: it might work if you make these standups extremely quick and efficient (15 min is the maximum, standup could be much shorter)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;option 2&lt;/strong&gt;: sounds like a disaster to me; having so many people and projects, it would be impossible to process it all in a meaningful way and still keep it under 15 minutes; you might end up with long boring &quot;standups&quot; (I've seen those)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would vote for &lt;strong&gt;option 3&lt;/strong&gt;: try to split your people into several teams and minimize the number of projects per team (context switching takes lots of brainpower). Ideal SCRUM team has 5-8 people (afaik).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;if you can put some of your projects on hold - do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The environment is multiple eCommerce and SaaS sites, so at any given time something can break and send all plans to the wind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in this case you can ask one of the teams to take care of the problem (or just assign one of the teams to be a &quot;product support&quot; team - for one sprint or forever).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2935" LastEditorUserId="2935" LastEditDate="2012-12-04T22:04:29.113" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T22:04:29.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8189" CreationDate="2012-12-04T22:22:50.620" Score="11" Body="&lt;h3&gt;The Problems&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading between the lines a bit, it would seem that you have a few related issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your &quot;team&quot; is too large to be truly agile. You may want to consider splitting up into cross-functional tiger teams with a focus rather than a multi-project, matrixed organization.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of your stand-up hasn't really been defined. Truly agile stand-ups are task-coordination meetings, not PM status pulls.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You have four project managers, all of whom presumably want to hijack the stand-ups for status on whatever they are on the hook for that day.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Some Potential Solutions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There aren't any easy answers here, but it's clear that you need to re-engineer the process. Some suggestions include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Split into project teams of no more than 6-9 team members. If people need to be matrixed, just adjust your expectations (and estimates) downwards to account for the reality of task-switching overhead.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Divvy up the projects between the PMs. Four project managers focused on the same projects is just too many cooks in the kitchen.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Never, ever use the stand-ups as a status pull. Hound people for status elsewhen. Use a single stand-up each day to allow the team members to coordinate their tasks &lt;em&gt;for that one day&lt;/em&gt; with one another.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Limit commitments made during the stand-up to tasks that can be delivered &lt;em&gt;the current day&lt;/em&gt;. Bob needs something from Joe by the end of the day; can Joe deliver, or does he have a dependency the team needs to know about?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have a separate stand-up each day just for the project managers. Whether it's a Scrum-of-Scrums or just a &quot;my Excel spreadsheet is bigger than yours&quot; contest doesn't matter; this is the meeting where inter-project dependencies and tracking issues should be worked out, not during the development team stand-up.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Organizational Costs&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is that your current process is unwieldy. That doesn't make it &lt;em&gt;wrong&lt;/em&gt;, but it certainly makes it expensive in terms of process overhead. To whatever extent you can, you should work hard to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduce the organizational costs of process overhead.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make overhead an explicit cost to the organization and each project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if your team really needs to spend 5+ hours a week on status updates and meetings, that's a minimum of 75 man-hours a week that needs to be accounted for in your project plan and its budget. Once those costs are made clearly visible to the organization, senior management can make informed decisions about whether the benefits of the current process outweigh the costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T22:22:50.620" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8189" CreationDate="2012-12-05T05:52:21.703" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You say &quot; My short term goal is to implement daily stand ups&quot;-this is not a difficult goal.  Whether this is useful is not important, so have daily stand ups.  Your goal should be to get the projects done as soon as possible, and your job is to find the process that satisfies that.  Maybe that is daily stand ups and maybe not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4493" LastActivityDate="2012-12-05T05:52:21.703" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5903" CreationDate="2012-12-05T20:08:01.343" Score="1" Body="&lt;h3&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consult your Human Resources department or your Legal Department about how resources can be allocated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;This is an HR/Legal Issue&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the answers to your questions may impact resource planning and project schedules, &lt;em&gt;determining&lt;/em&gt; the answer to labor-related questions is ultimately not the job of a Project Manager under any methodology of which I'm personally aware.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a PM, your job is to manage constraints. Labor laws are certainly a constraint, but those constraints should be &lt;em&gt;inputs&lt;/em&gt; to your project management process, rather than part of the process itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-12-05T20:08:01.343" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8076" CreationDate="2012-12-06T02:34:57.497" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Avoiding distractions is a great way to stay focus on tasks. In my opinion there’s no need for you to have collect or confiscate their mobile phone during meeting. Instead, strictly establish “Airplane Mode” it is a mode that needs you to turn all your gadgets off like your mobile phone. This way you won’t easily get distracted by messages, phone calls, emails and etc. If they won’t agree to with it another thing to do is make sure they “Silent” their mobile phone during meeting and only allow phone call for emergency use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5152" LastActivityDate="2012-12-06T02:34:57.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8178" CreationDate="2012-12-06T07:10:43.367" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an act of desperation you can officially write them about the open questions and say for each question what answer you will assume if they do not answer before a certain deadline. Inform them that to avoid endangering the projects deadline you regrettably cannot change that decision afterwards in the current release. If they do not like your assumption, they are of course invited to issue a change request for the next release, and pay for that extra. You will need to carry out that threat on at least some items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it is better if you can talk to them and find the root cause why they care so little. That might be something beyond your control, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also set up a tracking system for the open questions that both you and the customer can see, so that their behaviour becomes clearly visible for them and their bosses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4478" LastEditorUserId="4478" LastEditDate="2012-12-06T08:15:49.363" LastActivityDate="2012-12-06T08:15:49.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8089" CreationDate="2012-12-06T09:28:05.940" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sorry for the late answer but I just discovered this forum and joined it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many ways to look at documentation so I have to make some question (and assumption) to limit the field of this discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first question is: are we talking of &lt;em&gt;end-user's documentation&lt;/em&gt; (HTML files, printed manuals, etc.) or &lt;em&gt;developer's documentation&lt;/em&gt; (JavaDoc and the similar)? In my answer I will assume we are talking of end user's doc because dev's doc is usually covered by many kinds of Programming Best Practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second question is: are we talking of &lt;em&gt;documentation as a set of (deliverable) documents&lt;/em&gt; or as the &lt;em&gt;developement process that produces such documents&lt;/em&gt;? In my answer I will assume we are talking of deliverable documents because the dev. process is already covered by the same Best Practice used for software dev.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given these assumptions, there are at least the following metrics to take into account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Coverage. Does your documentation cover all of the features/aspects/capabilities of the documented project? This can easily be tracked using a simple database (or even a spreadsheet) listing all the implmented features and the related documents.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Understability/readability. Are the text and images of your docu understable for an average reader? This is sometime measured with a simple read/question&amp;amp;answer test: have a couple of users read your documents and answer a few questions. The &quot;quiz&quot; should contain questions regarding the documentation itself (&quot;What does &lt;em&gt;the docu&lt;/em&gt; says about this feature of our product?&quot;), regarding the product features (What does &lt;em&gt;our product&lt;/em&gt; do?) and regarding the working of the product (how &lt;em&gt;do you perform&lt;/em&gt; this task?).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Conciseness/effectiveness. Does the docu use a reasonably small amount of word and images to communicate its concepts? There are a lot of good text metrics out there but you can reasonably assume that any feature should not require more than two (7 inches diagonal) pages to be illustrated. Each feature-related chapter should contain at least one image or one bullet list to draw attention. Each chapter should be divided in paragraphs and each paragraph should not be longer that 6 - 12 lines. Each phrase should not be longer than 12 -24 words. Long, weird/unusual and hard-to-spell words should be avoided when possible (and clearly defined in a glossary when not possible). Each image should not try to represent more that 5 or 6 objects/concepts/&quot;things&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These concepts are typical of the software development industry but can be easily applicated to many other fields (mainly mechanical, automotive, aerospace, electronics and so on).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, documentation is an interactive process (we document our product and you, user, read our documents and tell us if you understand them). The only way to have a really good documentation is to keep the communication channel open. Have a forum on the web, answer the user's question and collect the best Q&amp;amp;As in a well orgainized, well written FAQ. Publish a collection of articles on the most interesting topics and bugs (a public &quot;knowledge base&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5158" LastActivityDate="2012-12-06T09:28:05.940" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8038" CreationDate="2012-12-06T10:23:13.263" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are actually two different topics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to keep track of the &lt;em&gt;description&lt;/em&gt; of the the required feature and its details (the request in itself)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to keep track of the &lt;em&gt;actual implementation work&lt;/em&gt; of the required feature&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the first point, I have to say that there is nothing out there that can be used &lt;em&gt;as is&lt;/em&gt; for this task (AFAIK), As you already noted, all of the existing bug/feature tracking systems have a much broader aim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal suggestion is this: develop your own web application to keep track of feature requests. Using the right tool (Ruby-on-Rails, Django, Padrino, etc.) this can be done in quite a short time and with a reasonable effort. You could also extend/modify Mantis or Bugzilla to fit your need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possiblility is to use a normal Project Management program (Like Gnome Planner) to keep track of the details of the request and its progress. Unfortunately, such a tool must be kept up-to-date by hand so you can be mathematically sure it will became obsolete in a week or two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the implementation work tracking, the approach that I see most often is the typical Continuous-Integration one based on tests (TDD). Every feature request is associated to a set of tests (JUnit or something like that) aimed to test the individual functionalities of the new feature. Running the test suite at build time, you can see how much of the feature is already implemented and working. With some CI tool (or with some cutom-made script) the test results can be used to feed a &quot;control panel&quot; or a &quot;dashboard&quot; used to keep track of the whole development work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe &lt;a href=&quot;http://hudson-ci.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hudson&lt;/a&gt; and/or &lt;a href=&quot;http://jenkins-ci.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jenkins&lt;/a&gt; can offer you what you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These tools can be intimidating at first and most likely are an overkill for you. I mention them just because is impossible to ignore them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CI approach is not always appicable (mainly for environment-related reasons). In these cases, sometime it is possible to rely on the //TODO: comments. Just ask your developers to put a //TODO: comment in their source files for any not-yet-implemented functionality requested by the new feature and keep track of how many of these tags are disappearing to get an idea of the implementation progress. Unfortunately, you will need some kind of custom-made script to extract this information from the source code and publish it to your control panel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A tool that can give you some inspiration is &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.google.com/p/hackystat/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hackystat&lt;/a&gt;. Hackystat is interesting because it is automatic but has a couple of very serious limits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It tracks almost everything. Most likely it is too much for you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; tracks everything. Most likely it would make your developer furious about their privacy...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The hackystat plugin exists only for Eclipse AFAIK. If you use another IDE, you cannot use it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, there are many commercial tools similar to (or even better than) hackystat out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5158" LastActivityDate="2012-12-06T10:23:13.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8146" CreationDate="2012-12-06T17:03:51.870" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A seasoned project manager advised me that there's one (relatively new) role to control such processes without overloading PM with technical details: It's the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Release Manager&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, which has amongst his responsibilities, to &lt;em&gt;proper liaise between varying business units to guarantee smooth and timely delivery of software products or updates.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe this approach would be therefore similar to the option #2 in the original question, with the advantage of not overloading the PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project could still be considered collaborative as everyone would gather updates on the Release Manager, who'd make sure the Deployment Plan is updated and available to the community involved (in any place the project would use to store documentation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-12-06T17:03:51.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8189" CreationDate="2012-12-07T01:35:15.567" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;With 18 people working on 11 projects, you must have a lot of multi-tasking going on. This will drag down all the projects.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have noted you may want to create some cross-functional teams.  Given that you have four PMs you may want to look at creating four teams.  That will leave you short some resources and you will have to share the scarcer resources.  These will be pretty small teams.  The PMs should meet frequently to deal with issues like project prioritization, work distribution, and resourcing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With four teams you should be able to have each team do a quick stand-up with shared resources attending a couple stand-ups.  You may want to add an additional stand-up for the project managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try taking one team and dedicating it to a shorter project.  If they aren't pulled between projects they should be more effective.  With four teams you will be able to experiment with process.  If this works out you may be in position to argue for more dedicated teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been my experience that matrix organizations tend to have problems keeping staff in touch with their functional groups.  Allow some time for the functional groups to meet and handle their issues and develop their skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2012-12-07T01:35:15.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8173" CreationDate="2012-12-07T17:03:44.873" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Microsoft Project Server works well with a broad range of project types like construction, software and what you have described is within the functionality of the tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can fully configure security to allow administrative or executive level view of all projects while limiting access to other users.  This is done using the RBS Resource Breakdown feature or “Department” codes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are 3 levels of % complete: Work, Duration or Physical.  We typically use physical % complete with construction projects to help gauge the amount of effort to deliver the product.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project has full baseline and budgeting functionality.  You can create a budget resources and baseline up to 10 iterations of actual cost, remaining cost, forecast cost, material cost, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project server SharePoint Project sites that are like website where you can easily attach any kind of document and version control it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Microsoft Project Server is fully configurable and depending upon your needs you can either do it in house or you can have a hosted company rent you a project server site.  The hosted option works best when you don’t have any internal computer/IT help.  It really works well when you have people all over the place and they need access in the office or on the job site.  Hosting can be accessed anywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps answer your questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5172" LastActivityDate="2012-12-07T17:03:44.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8185" CreationDate="2012-12-08T00:37:03.390" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Agile Common Understanding&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, agile methodologies like Scrum or XP usually split responsibilities into 3 parts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the &lt;strong&gt;cross-functional team&lt;/strong&gt; : all the people (developers, testers, integrators...) needed to achieve actual project work. They usually are self-organized, which basically means that there is &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;nobody outside the team who assigns work to individual team members&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. They commit themselves on the work they can do in each iteration (for iteration-centric methodologies like Scrum. It might be a bit different with flow-focused teams like in Kanban)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the &lt;strong&gt;coach&lt;/strong&gt; : called &quot;Scrum Master&quot; in Scrum, he is responsible for the HOW part. He knows the methodology and how to apply it. His work consists in helping both the product owner and the team work together. He is not a project manager in the classical understanding of the term and &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;will not assign work nor impose his decisions&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the &lt;strong&gt;product owner&lt;/strong&gt; : called &quot;customer&quot; in XP, he is responsible for the WHAT part. The product owner is the stakeholders' representative. For the team, his role consists in &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;providing a prioritized set of items to work on&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (features, user stories, etc.). For the stakeholders, his role is to report project progress. The product owner usually works full-time on the project and is easily available for the team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you - I mean your company, team, PO, etc. - explicitly decided to use such a methodology - but you did not - there should be no doubt about what is everyone's responsibility. In this case the Product Owner should not (have to) deal with the HOW part at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The role of a Scrum Master is important here as he will make sure that nobody crosses the line. For a Scrum-focused answer you should also read the question &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/4707/why-cant-the-scrum-master-and-the-project-manager-be-the-same-person&quot;&gt;Why can't the scrum master and the project manager be the same person?&lt;/a&gt;&quot; which features very interesting answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Role definition&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;my 20-person development team gained a Product Owner&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My understanding of your question is that the Product Owner was kind of dropped into your team &lt;em&gt;deus ex machina&lt;/em&gt;. If I understand well then there might be a misunderstanding in role definition that you must try to clarify. David Espina's &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8186/4071&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt; is pretty clear here on this point. &quot;Product Owner&quot; is just a name after all...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Classical Project Manager&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The PO wants to know how many hours programmer X has available during each sprint and exactly what he will do with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your PO used to be a command-and-control project manager, he might have trouble with becoming &quot;only&quot; a PO. He is used to having lots of metrics related to individual work that allow him to monitor the progress of the project. Try to understand why he wants to collect these data and how you could provide him relevant indicators that would achieve the same role but at a higher level (velocity, throughput, cycle-time, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He might also want to make sure that everybody is 100%-loaded. Please refer to CodeGnome's &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8188/4071&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt; on that point. Also read Pawel Brodzinski's article &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.brodzinski.com/2012/03/myth-of-100-utilization.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Myth of 100% Utilization&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Trust&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;OK, we have 40 person hours of work for Arthur and 32 person hours of work for Candace, and since they're each supposed to be half-time on this project, they should finish that work by the end of the next sprint.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your Product Owner often wants to go to this level, then there might be a trust problem between him and you. Maybe your lack of experience with Agile projects, his experience with non-Agile projects or a possible broken commitment earlier in the project makes him reluctant to trust you and your team. Under business pressure, he might want to &quot;do it himself&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this situation you want to sort things out quickly, since this lack of trust is likely to kill your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Summary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is my statement above about the PO's role legitimate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In absolute terms : yes. Your definition of a Product Owner is very &quot;scrumy&quot;. But the thing is that there obviously is a misunderstanding somewhere, either on each other's role, or on each others skills, or on each other's goal, etc. Make sure that you both are on the same page on this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4071" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2012-12-08T00:37:03.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8207" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-08T21:21:00.737" Score="5" ViewCount="233" Body="&lt;p&gt;My client is not sure about the impact a particular product design would have, but insists that the product design that he suggests is workable. The Project Managers know there are other options that will work better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What actions can we take, and how can the team handle this issue strategically?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5177" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-12-16T05:24:00.000" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T05:24:00.000" Title="What actions can a PM take when a client pursues a sub-optimal design?" Tags="&lt;scope-management&gt;&lt;conflicts&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8003" CreationDate="2012-12-08T23:41:05.187" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I highly recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000073.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;; you should hire people who are Smart, and Get Things Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That's it. That's all we're looking for. Memorize that. Recite it to&#xA;  yourself before you go to bed every night. Our goal is to hire people&#xA;  with aptitude, not a particular skill set. Any skill set that people&#xA;  can bring to the job will be technologically obsolete in a couple of&#xA;  years, anyway, so it's better to hire people that are going to be able&#xA;  to learn any new technology rather than people who happen to know SQL&#xA;  programming right this minute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Smart&lt;/strong&gt; is hard to define, but as we look at some possible interview questions we'll see how you can ferret it out. Gets Things Done is&#xA;  crucial. People who are Smart but don't Get Things Done often have&#xA;  PhDs and work in big companies where nobody listens to them because&#xA;  they are completely impractical. They would rather mull over something&#xA;  academic about a problem rather than ship on time. These kind of&#xA;  people can be identified because they love to point out the&#xA;  theoretical similarity between two widely divergent concepts. For&#xA;  example, they will say &quot;Spreadsheets are really just a special case of&#xA;  programming language&quot; and then go off for a week and write a&#xA;  thrilling, brilliant white paper about the theoretical computational&#xA;  linguistic attributes of a spreadsheet as a programming language.&#xA;  Smart, but not useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now, people who &lt;strong&gt;Get Things Done&lt;/strong&gt; but are not Smart will do stupid&#xA;  things, seemingly without thinking about them, and somebody else will&#xA;  have to come clean up their mess later. This makes them liabilities to&#xA;  the company because not only don't they contribute, but they soak up&#xA;  good people's time. They are the kind of people who copy big chunks of&#xA;  code around rather than writing a subroutine, because it gets the job&#xA;  done, just not in the smartest way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2935" LastActivityDate="2012-12-08T23:41:05.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8207" CreationDate="2012-12-09T03:52:12.007" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Project Managers know there are other options that will work&#xA;  better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The implication behind this sentence is that the PMs know with absolute certainty the other options will work better.  If my inference is right, I find that implication odd as I am not sure I have ever experienced a time when a complex problem had a solution that was guaranteed to work better than another solution.  Guarantees are best left with the sales and marketing people.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every solution to a complex problem has its fair share of benefits, costs, risks, and penalties tied to it.  If you think there is a better solution than your client's, build and present the case and an non-emotional, objective way.  Present your findings for all potential alternatives on all four of those things.  Give you recommendation and let your client make a choice.  Then implement his choice with the professionalism he needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: How to convince?  I think it becomes a sales call and, as with any product you are trying to sell, it becomes an argument that shows how the benefits of one product over another fulfills a client &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;want or need&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.  You need to be able to substantiate that the features, advantages, and benefits of your recommendation meet your client's needs and wants better than the other alternatives and that the costs, risks, and penalties of that recommendation are appropriate and less than the material benefits.  I can't break this down into something more tactical without knowing more of the specifics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is less about you convincing the client and more about the client realizing a better choice.  So the truly best alternative should sort of pop out in your business case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2012-12-09T14:25:51.163" LastActivityDate="2012-12-09T14:25:51.163" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8211" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8213" CreationDate="2012-12-09T20:58:41.540" Score="7" ViewCount="1419" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for a private investing firm that is looking to move from a face to face business to online business. They want to create a large, scalable website that can handle thousands of accounts and hundreds of thousands of transactions. They want an upfront general estimate of what this would cost. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On investigating this it seems the general consensus is that it is impossible to accurately estimate this without knowing factors of scope, scheduling, and quality. They are not happy with this answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I put together an early cost estimate that is somewhat accurate, and back it up with data I didn't get by throwing a dart at a board and multiplying by $500,000?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5179" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-12-09T22:42:58.640" LastActivityDate="2012-12-09T22:42:58.640" Title="How can I estimate a project's costs without well-defined scope, scheduling, and quality inputs?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8211" CreationDate="2012-12-09T21:36:04.417" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a ROM, a rough order of magnitude. By definition, you have a plus or minus 50% and 30% respectively. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has been done before. Find out where, learn the players, and pay for a top down ROM. Submit a range and firmly qualify that expected variance when it comes down to a more tactical estimate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-12-09T21:36:04.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8211" CreationDate="2012-12-09T22:39:41.270" Score="4" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Spikes, Assumptions, and Assessments&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On investigating this it seems the general consensus is that it is impossible to accurately estimate this without knowing factors of scope, scheduling, and quality. They are not happy with this answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stakeholders are rarely happy with the reality that poor-quality specifications lead to inaccurate estimates. There are a few potential solutions to this common issue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bound your estimate with documented assumptions.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, you might base your estimates around other similar projects (or a collection of projects). Itemize your assumptions about scope, resource requirements, and quality of deliverables, and clearly state that your estimate is based on those assumptions holding true throughout the project life-cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Perform a paid assessment with a documentation deliverable.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make the first part of your engagement an assessment where you delve into the project's specifications and assumptions. For example, perhaps you could engage for two weeks to craft a more-accurate estimate of the total project based on the additional information you gather during the assessment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Spike a solution.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In agile projects, one often uses a time-box to sketch out a prototype or explore a potential design. Crafting a wireframe or prototype will often give you enough insight into an epic to refine your estimate based on some real data, and provide additional detail about the project's underlying assumptions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Confidence Intervals&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can mix and match estimation solutions, either with some of the examples listed above or with other methodologies. Regardless of how you proceed, though, the goal should be to provide a sufficient basis for assigning a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-point_estimation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;confidence interval&lt;/a&gt; to your estimates that have some reasonable chance of success based on your documented assumptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cone of uncertainty&lt;/a&gt; is so high at the start of a project like this, it is important to document your estimation methodology as well. That way, the means by which you arrived at your estimate are clear to both the stakeholders and the project team, often improving everyone's comfort level with the estimate itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-12-09T22:39:41.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8214" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8216" CreationDate="2012-12-09T22:58:01.450" Score="22" ViewCount="39257" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was always under impression that Sprint Backlog is part of Product Backlog -&gt; it's impossible to add anything into Sprint Backlog without affecting Product Backlog&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, according to one of the comments to &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/7980/how-should-we-implement-items-from-sprint-retrospectives/8013#8013&quot;&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt;, these backlogs &quot;are completely different artifacts&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are using an electronic Scrum board; would it be possible to add things like items from our Retrospective into Sprint backlog and avoid messing up Product backlog?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2935" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2020-06-29T05:06:51.027" Title="Sprint Backlog vs Product Backlog" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;&lt;product&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8214" CreationDate="2012-12-09T23:42:59.613" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're not completely incorrect in your impression of the Sprint Backlog. The Product Backlog is the tool used by the product owner to keep track of all of the features that stakeholders would like to see implemented in the product whereas the Sprint Backlog is a subset of the Product Backlog representing the current active Sprint iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20191109052626/http://www.theitba.com/product-backlog-vs-sprint-backlog/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The IT BA - Product Backlog vs Spring Backlog&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A product backlog is a list of all desired product features (weather you plan to implement them or not).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone can add anything to the Product Backlog at any time. However, the product owner prioritizes it. So if you and I both add a feature request to add a quote of the day feature to a product, the product owner could very well put this at the bottom of the stack, meaning she doesn't really intend to have that feature added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint backlog is a to-do list of backlog items to be completed in the current iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint Backlog, on the other hand, represents the current Sprint iteration, and once a Sprint begins, no one should be adding or removing anything from the Sprint Backlog. The Sprint Backlog is put together by the team -- and in case this isn't clear, &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; by the team -- by selecting items from the top of the Product Backlog. If something is not in the Product Backlog then it should not be in the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone later on wants to add feature Y to the list, and it's a high priority item, it still goes in the Product Backlog, and if it's an important enough feature, the product owner can move it to the top of the Product Backlog so that it's likely to be selected in the next Sprint iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-29T05:06:51.027" LastActivityDate="2020-06-29T05:06:51.027" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8214" CreationDate="2012-12-10T04:16:43.453" Score="25" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Backlog Ownership&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner owns the Product Backlog, and prioritizes it on behalf of the stakeholders. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28development%29#Sprint_Backlog&quot;&gt;Sprint Backlog&lt;/a&gt; is the property of the Team, and they are the sole arbiters of its contents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Contents of the Sprint Backlog&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint Backlog contains user stories popped off the top of the Product Backlog during Sprint Planning. However, the Sprint Backlog usually contains many things not on the Product Backlog, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tasks that have been decomposed from the user stories accepted by the Team for the current iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Story points or time estimates for individual tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Refinements of the &quot;definition of done&quot; as it relates to a specific story or task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Refinements to stories that don't compromise the Sprint Goal or require the Product Owner to call for an early termination of the Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In-sprint stories or tasks added by the Team to support the current Sprint Goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint Goal and stories accepted for the current Sprint are set during Spring Planning, but tasks (and occasionally stories) on the Sprint Backlog are updated and modified by the Team in whatever way they see fit--it's the Team's artifact, and is theirs to manage in support of the Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Agile Means Change&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the stories accepted into the Sprint Backlog during Sprint Planning are generally fixed, if the team finishes early, they are encouraged to pull additional work off the Product Backlog if they believe it can fit into the current Sprint without compromising the Sprint Goal. In addition, sometimes additional knowledge or information comes to light during the Sprint, and the Team and Product Owner can cooperatively remove stories from the Sprint if doing so helps the Team meet the current Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, user stories are starting points for conversations with stakeholders (or the Product Owner if done by proxy), so adding and deleting tasks from the Sprint Backlog as stories are worked is quite common. Part of the art of Scrum is in differentiating between refinements that come from reducing the cone of uncertainty during a Sprint from changes to stories that jeopardize the Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;No Invisible Work, Ever&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, Sprint Backlog items should be decompositions of Product Backlog items, or supporting tasks that glue together stories in the current Sprint. Again, the art is in differentiating between tasks that the Team needs to create on the Sprint Backlog to support the Sprint Goal versus stories that need to be placed on the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, if you have a story that requires you to seed a database, you may need to add a task to your Sprint Backlog to install a new database server. Usually, this task would be added during Sprint Planning, but the task may not become obvious until later in the Sprint. In such cases, it's perfectly acceptable to add the newly-discovered tasks to the Sprint Backlog &lt;em&gt;as long as they don't compromise the Sprint Goal or invalidate the stories accepted into the Sprint.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team stories beyond that properly belong on the Product Backlog. For example, setting up a full-blown database architecture is a story that should be prioritized by the Product Owner as a prerequisite for other stories in the Product Backlog. These types of stories are generally added during Backlog Grooming, and occasionally during Sprint Planning; after that, they are treated like any other story in the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Don't Fear the Product Backlog&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[W]ould it be possible to add things like items from our Retrospective into Sprint backlog and avoid messing up Product backlog?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends. If your Sprint Retrospective leads to process changes or in-sprint tasks for the Team, then of course those things should be added to one of the backlogs. Tasks and internal processes belong on the Sprint Backlog; sub-projects that consume time or resources outside of individual story estimates belong on the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't be afraid of &quot;messing up the Product Backlog.&quot; The Product Backlog is not some inviolate, unchangeable document. A healthy Scrum process should encourage ongoing conversations between the Product Owner and the Team, and encourage adding infrastructure and tool-chain stories to the Product Backlog so that their costs and benefits are visible to the project and the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T15:37:38.280" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T15:37:38.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8207" CreationDate="2012-12-10T12:18:27.090" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Treat it as a change request. Assess the impact on scope, schedule, cost, quality, and conformance with mission needs.  Find Key Performance indicators to discriminate between the options. Make sure that the stakeholders are aware.  Then decide if the impact on the project is sufficient for you to walk away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be careful; As @David Espina hints, their preference may reveal that they haven't correctly documented the scope/requirements.   If they're insistent on something, analysis may reveal that what they're insisting on may actually be a critical requirement that they haven't articulated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the client decides to go with the suboptimal design, and you choose not to walk away, then this is a risk management problem.  How can you mitigate the risk? Timebox?  Ask for a prototype &amp;amp; evaluation?  Ask to develop what you perceive as the optimal solution as a backup in case the primary solution fails to achieve quality thresholds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2012-12-10T12:18:27.090" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8218" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8220" CreationDate="2012-12-10T14:56:45.460" Score="14" ViewCount="1261" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the functional units involved with most of our projects has a philosophy of &quot;just-in-time&quot; completion of deliverables. I believe that the root cause of this is understaffing or inefficient use of resources, and in reality becomes more of a &quot;kick the can as far down the road as I can&quot; philosophy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately I am not in a position to solve the root cause, so have to deal with the issue in my project plans. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To inject realism into the project schedule I could move towards a &quot;complete no later than&quot; approach, but this will increase the number of tasks on the critical path by an order of magnitude. I am quite confident that this is setting ourselves up for failure as something is bound to go wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any suggestions out there for addressing the schedule/critical path risks associated with just-in-time delivery?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-12-11T21:02:45.863" Title="How to manage risk of &quot;just in time&quot; delivery?" Tags="&lt;risk&gt;&lt;schedule&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8218" CreationDate="2012-12-10T15:15:33.823" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This speaks to pessimistic targeting on your estimations.  Sounds like the team has a long runway and, as Parkinson's Law suggests, the team is taking advantage of every bit of it.  There's another phenomenon, as well: Student Syndrome.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Challenge the team: target more aggressively.  Cut your durations and bring your dates in at baseline time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-12-10T15:15:33.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8218" CreationDate="2012-12-10T16:18:13.630" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Aside: I may be reading too much between the lines of this question; I think this is a workplace politics problem rather than a strict PM problem. As a consequence, my answer is correspondingly pessimistic, jaded and cynical.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the probability that the functional unit will fail to deliver?  What is the impact on the project scope/schedule/quality?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is usually no hard data on which to base these two estimates; that leaves you with two subjective estimates, which is an unpleasant place to be in an inter-office argument. I would develop some estimates based on assumptions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assume that Functional Unit X will miss their JIT target 70% of the&#xA;time, by less than two business days; what happens to my schedule.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assume that Functional Unit X will miss their JIT target 10% of the&#xA;time by more than 5 business days.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assume that Functional Unit X will hit their target, but the product&#xA;will be unsatisfactory for our needs from a QC point of view.  (speed&#xA;increases defects; catch those before they become your problem.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then develop risk mitigations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;IF Functional Unit X missed their JIT delivery, then we could purchase&#xA;from competitor Y. It would cost 30% more, but would permit us to&#xA;meet our deadline with acceptable quality.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;IF Functional unit X is more than 1 day late on their deliverable, then&#xA;we inform customer that our deadline will slip by X days, or by Y&#xA;quality.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In order to compensate for the chance that Functional Unit X may miss&#xA;a JIT delivery, we will keep stock of Y on hand. (somewhat tougher with software).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In order to deal with the risk, we are including an SLA that&#xA;Functional Unit X produce a prototype by date Y&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those are &quot;pretty&quot; textbook answers.  Reality tends to be much less cosmetic.  For most of us, those are totally unrealistic answers.  But they demonstrate that you're aware of the problem and you're doing your best to work around it. The onus transfers to those who are doing less to solve the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hard nose gritty goal here is to convince management and stakeholders that you did &lt;em&gt;more planning&lt;/em&gt; and *better planning&quot; than the &quot;kick it down the road&quot; approach.  If things go south, the guy who can demonstrate the better pre-planning will avoid some of the blowback.  Your best chance is to proactively solve the problem; but sometimes we're dealt situations where the ton of bricks is already falling and the best we can do is shout a warning and get out of the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2012-12-10T16:18:13.630" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8221" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8223" CreationDate="2012-12-11T09:38:08.080" Score="15" ViewCount="647" Body="&lt;p&gt;Until now, I worked on projects with fixed salary, receiving it at each period (monthly). But I would like to know, what if the workers should receive their salary with a percentage of the project's value? Would it be more motivating to finalize it as well as is possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see now three payment possibility, as rewarding a project from financial approach: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;fixed (periodic) salary&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;percentage of the project's value&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the combination: a smaller amount, fixed salary plus a percentage.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is the better solution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4564" LastEditorUserId="4564" LastEditDate="2012-12-15T19:54:13.853" LastActivityDate="2018-05-09T13:13:56.267" Title="Better (financial) motivation for a developer: percentage or fixed salary?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;pay&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8221" CreationDate="2012-12-11T10:49:56.190" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key to motivation is to remove the money from the table. So you have to pay enough so the developers don't think about the money, and then to rely on intrinsic motivators such as recognition, self-development, etc. If you use percentage or even mixed model, you focus people on the money, and not on the product. On the other hand, it's great to share with the team how product is going and to share the profit, but those should be extra rewards, and not the base of your payment strategy. Keep in mind also that as a business owner, you are taking the financial risk. Setting the payment as percentage of the profit actually moves the risk to the developers of the product and there's no reason the developer should work for you instead of for himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2340" LastActivityDate="2012-12-11T10:49:56.190" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8221" CreationDate="2012-12-11T15:04:11.853" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was working with a similar setup and it wasn't that bad at all. We knew what to expect, and somehow we felt that our work has a purpose, because we needed the money at that time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, when one brings up the money based motivation topic up, the other immediately pulls Daniel Pink's book, which is excellent book, but how one interprets is very important. &lt;strong&gt;Dan doesn't say that the money based motivation is evil, he simply proves with scientific methods that it is not effective with knowledge workers under certain circumstances&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book mostly talks about cases when something has to be done, and the leader needs to motivate people to reach a certain deadline or threshold. In those cases the money serves as a short term motivator, which takes away the focus from the joy of the work etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The title of the book doesn't say anything about money: &lt;em&gt;&quot;Drive: The Surprising Truth About What &lt;strong&gt;Motivates Us&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, because it is about motivation. &lt;strong&gt;If you agree with people in the beginning about the rules, then this is not a case of motivation&lt;/strong&gt;. This is how business is going to be done. If you start being behind the deadlines and commitments and you offer money that is a money based motivation situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point is that you should bring this topic up, and talk through with your colleagues and &lt;strong&gt;learn as much as possible about their motivations&lt;/strong&gt;. If it turns out that none of them is interested in money, you can do practically anything and nothing is going to change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum up: use as much time as necessary to figure out what motivates your colleagues and change the rules accordingly. Don't assume anything, do your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="6506" LastEditDate="2013-07-13T13:30:37.003" LastActivityDate="2013-07-13T13:30:37.003" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8221" CreationDate="2012-12-11T19:53:58.963" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Similar to other answers, they key thing to understand here is that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Money is a motivator, &lt;strong&gt;but only up to a certain point&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once people's basic needs are taken care of, &lt;strong&gt;money is no longer a major motivator&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other factors (such as &lt;strong&gt;esteem&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;self actualization&lt;/strong&gt;) become more important progressively.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrary to some of the other answers, this thinking is not new at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the psychology comes from a 1943 paper entitled, &quot;A Theory of Human Motivation&quot; and is often referred to as &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Maslow's hierarchy of needs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has been taught in business school for decades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2713" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-07-13T05:09:07.503" LastActivityDate="2013-07-13T05:09:07.503" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8218" CreationDate="2012-12-11T21:02:45.863" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Add buffer to your project. There are two ways to do this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Either taking a Critical Chain approach and have a bucket of buffer for the whole schedule (this would be my recommended approach), or, for a more quick and dirty approach...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add time between the delivery date and the start of the next task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This kind of situation is dealt with extensively in the Theory of Constraints literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-12-11T21:02:45.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8207" CreationDate="2012-12-11T22:54:31.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;h3&gt;&quot;Good Enough&quot; May Be Sufficient&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Project Managers know there are other options that will work better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, the pursuit of optimal solutions is not always necessary. A project succeeds if it is &quot;good enough&quot; for some defined purpose; unless the client's solution will cause the project to fail, it's probably not useful to press the issue if the client has already rejected well-presented alternatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Transfer Project Risk&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, the underlying issue here is really about project risk. If the client's solution puts the project at risk, or is unlikely to be happy with the deliverables even if they are exactly to specification, then your PM-fu is best spent on transferring risk to the client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could mean any number of things, depending on the circumstances:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A contractual transfer of risk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shifting the project from fixed-price to time-and-materials.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Documenting assumptions and potential risks--and ensuring the client signs off on a project plan that includes these elements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Moving to an iterative development model where the client has a short feedback loop about how his design impacts the project plan or its deliverables.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are certainly other ways to mitigate or transfer risk, but it's at least a place to start. If you've done your professional due diligence and presented the risks to the stakeholders, the success or failure of the project is ultimately their responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-12-11T22:54:31.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8227" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-12T05:16:09.710" Score="8" ViewCount="2445" Body="&lt;p&gt;A developer is working on a research project that involves working with new  technologies. The concepts are also new to the developer, and the developer is working on building a product on top of the new API's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result of the technology being new and undocumented, the developer spends a lot of time tearing apart demos and analyzing data in order to understand the technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since many agile methodologies involve daily or frequent team updates, such as Scrum and the daily stand up, how should developers give updates to both technical and non-technical stakeholders without it sounding like he or she accomplished nothing?  &lt;strong&gt;Note that the meeting we have currently doesn't have a name.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the work involves a fair degree of learning or acquisition of knowledge, as a PM, how can I advise these developers give their updates without making them feel as if they aren't making any progress, since there may not be anything to show for days/weeks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should the frequency of status meetings be reduced, or should the frequency remain the same with a different approach? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-12-12T07:03:47.183" LastActivityDate="2012-12-31T01:08:22.833" Title="In an Agile environment, how should a developer update team members and managers when there's no &quot;visible&quot; progress?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8227" CreationDate="2012-12-12T07:08:59.043" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the good things of a daily reporting is that you have to break down the task on pieces, each one in a day. I mean you have to know what are you working on today. Sure, you have to research the API, but are you researching the whole API at the same time, and write code after you've learned every method? Or are you starting small and add new functions, and of course refactor a lot while learning the API, so you know each day lot exactly you are working on? If you are reporting 2 weeks &quot;I'm still researching&quot; you are not telling anything to the team and it's better if you do not participate in the meeting at all; however if you are telling right now I'm working with this [part of the API], or yesterday I had to rewrote the whole [part of the API], you have a status update. And if 3 days in a row you are saying &quot;I work on this [part of the API]&quot;, it's obvious you've stuck with it and someone can jump and help you get out of there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2340" LastActivityDate="2012-12-12T07:08:59.043" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8227" CreationDate="2012-12-12T09:20:04.530" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to have a valuable research one usually needs to define it's purpose and goal. So, in other words, &lt;strong&gt;developer knows what he wants to do, what is his progress and what are the problems he is facing currently. The question is, how to share such knowledge in a meaningful way.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the meeting involves only a status report then there is only a concern about describing it in a compact, yet valuable manner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. &lt;em&gt;I've already checked five out of twelve API's known compatibility criteria. As for now  there is no evidence of possible incompatibility, but yesterday I was become aware of two new criteria.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the meeting is also about teamwork and revealing risk and overall impact of one's work, then a lot of new subjects arise. Does one have blockers? Does one need help? Should she inform someone about important discoveries? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the main reasons we do research is to reduce uncertainty. While we reduce it, we often need to change the direction we are going. So, &lt;strong&gt;every time your research achieves a progress there is a rising probability that someone else status needs to be influenced as well&lt;/strong&gt;. To anticipate it and give an update is probably one of the reasons such meeting exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastEditorUserId="927" LastEditDate="2012-12-12T12:30:53.880" LastActivityDate="2012-12-12T12:30:53.880" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8230" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8232" CreationDate="2012-12-12T13:03:45.607" Score="7" ViewCount="582" Body="&lt;p&gt;We just started with Scrum and are in our first sprint for a new software product. So far everything went well. As Scrum Master (former Project Manager) I build up all the knowledge I could find and had several workshops with the team to spread the word. The thing that gives me the feeling we are not doing it right is how/where/when to capture/collect the information that is necessary to draw the Sprint Burn Down Chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Right now I collect the information how much time is remaining for a certain issue during the daily Scrum Stand Up. That makes the Stand Up feel like a reporting meeting though, which I would like to avoid.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only alternative I see is: Get the information via daily reporting email from each member.  I´d like to avoid that since it adds to the reporting overhead the team already has (some are involved in different projects at the same time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there a best practice for pulling the burn down information during Sprints?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5198" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-12-12T14:45:28.810" LastActivityDate="2012-12-12T16:22:32.890" Title="How to collect Burn Down data during Sprints?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;progress-report&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8231" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-12T13:41:24.433" Score="5" ViewCount="306" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm conducting a Post-Mortem Review with Senior Management, regarding a project that had multiple unfulfilled/half-fulfilled deliverables that caused issues for clients. The deliverable for the Post-Mortem is a document that should link issues to unfulfilled/half-fulfilled project deliverables. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I ensure the format of the Post-Mortem connects Project Issues to Project Deliverables?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5199" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-12-14T13:09:33.810" LastActivityDate="2012-12-14T21:02:02.393" Title="How can I connect Project Issues to Project Deliverables in a Post-Mortem document?" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;post-mortem&gt;&lt;templates&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8230" CreationDate="2012-12-12T16:22:32.890" Score="7" Body="&lt;h3&gt;The Team Should Update the Sprint Backlog Daily&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether the Team is using a Kanban board or an Excel spreadsheet, there ought to be a canonical source for the Team's Sprint Backlog items. Members of the Scrum Team ought to update the Sprint Backlog at least daily, even if the only change is checking for tasks that meet the &quot;definition of done&quot; and marking them completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mike Cohn &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/scrum/sprint-backlog&quot;&gt;says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the sprint, team members are expected to update the sprint backlog as new information is available, but minimally once per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have a Team-managed spreadsheet, this can be done by any member of the Team. Generally, it should be handled by the person who handles the last completed task in a story. For example, if you have a story with six tasks, and the last task is &quot;QA the polish on the fob watch,&quot; then whoever is marking that task as done should also check the &quot;definition of done&quot; of the parent story to mark that as completed too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have more of a Kanban-style tracking system, then the Scrum Master can review the Kanban board at the end of the day (or the start of the next) to see which tasks/stories have been pulled from the last column (usually QA or acceptance testing of some sort) into the &quot;done&quot; column. If all the tasks for a given story are in the &quot;done&quot; column, then the story should have met the &quot;definition of done&quot; and the points for those stories should be deducted from the points remaining in the current Sprint--in other words, the &quot;done&quot; column is your source of metrics for the the iteration's burn-down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Alternatives for Gathering Burn-Down Data&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since a story is either done or not-done, the daily stand-up is a poor source of information anyway since it's a task-dependency meeting. However, not every Scrum process runs like a well-oiled machine. Here are some alternatives, but using them often implies that there's something wrong with your process that you need to fix; these solutions should generally be considered short-term patches on a broken process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask the Team to send the Scrum Master a daily done/not-done email for tasks they've volunteered for.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this moves the status pull out of the stand-up, which makes it somewhat acceptable, but it's covering the fact that task status is not transparent. It's also risky in that it may turn identification of process issues or road-blocks into &quot;holding people accountable&quot; or some other sort of blame game.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Scrum Master can follow up individually with task performers to see if completed stories meet the definition of done.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's nothing wrong with communication between the Team or the Scrum Master, or with a check-step process. However, Scrum Master sign-off is a sign of a Team that isn't fully self-organized. Likewise, if the Scrum Master has to validate that user stories are really done means there's a task or process that is missing or not fully visible within the Team's process. Oh yes...and it may also mean that there's a lack of trust on the Team, which is a sign that you have a group of individuals rather than a cohesive Team. There's a lot to consider with this one!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hold a separate &quot;backlog-grooming festival&quot; daily.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The stand-up is for coordinating intra-day tasks between Team members. However, nothing in Scrum prevents you from having more meetings, or other types of meetings, or from performing status pulls outside the stand-up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this particular quick-fix patches over tracking and transparency issues with the Team's process, there's nothing inherently wrong with holding additional process-related meetings during a Sprint. Please note that the time taken for these sorts of status meetings should be factored into the Team's story estimates, as they definitely create (potentially necessary) overhead that needs to be accounted for during Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The take-away here is that the Sprint Backlog &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; give you sufficient data to create the burn-down chart. If not, you should definitely consider why the necessary data is missing from the process, and inspect-and-adapt as needed to gather that data without hijacking other essential Scrum processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-12-12T16:22:32.890" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="156" CreationDate="2012-12-12T18:33:57.810" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;They shouldn't compete.  Before I go any further, let me endorse @MarkPhillips answer as probably the best.  But when I read his answer, then re-read your question, my attention is drawn to the phrase &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;. . . someone with greater domain specific knowledge tends to dominate in project or become informal an informal PM. . . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That leaves me with the lingering suspicion that there is more going on, that there are other conflicts being played out through the roles of technical lead/project lead.  As others have said, in theory (and in my experience described below), the two roles need not conflict, and don't naturally conflict.  If one of the individuals is being a micromanager/control freak, that would lead to conflict, but that needs to be solved through another approach.  Or it could be that there is a problem with stakeholder management - different groups of stakeholders playing politics with the technical lead/ project lead as pawns on the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My colleagues on my current team have vastly more domain specific knowledge, but it doesn't cause competition. Quite the contrary; I defer to them for domain specific questions, answering only when I'm 100% sure that I'm correct and that doing so will save them time.  My contributions are in the realm of planning, monitoring and controlling, stakeholder management, etc.  By recognizing our relative strengths, we build a stronger team. I'm not trying to glorify my team, I'm just providing context for my speculation above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2012-12-12T18:33:57.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8089" CreationDate="2012-12-12T18:44:18.160" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;K at &lt;a href=&quot;https://eight2late.wordpress.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Eight to Late&lt;/a&gt; offered a fairly comprehensive answer to the quality question in the blog post &lt;a href=&quot;https://eight2late.wordpress.com/2012/12/13/what-is-good-and-what-is-not-good-a-project-managers-further-ruminations-on-quality/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;What is good?&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure that I agree with K - I'm more inclined to believe that Quality is conformance to &lt;em&gt;the requirements under discussion&lt;/em&gt;, but the entire post struck me as applicable to your question.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2012-12-12T18:44:18.160" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8227" CreationDate="2012-12-13T15:17:51.947" Score="4" Body="&lt;h3&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Splitting status meetings with stakeholders from status meetings with developers may help.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Meeting intervals should match the batch size of your work items.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Methodology and expectations need to be explicitly communicated throughout the organization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Potential Chicken-and-Pig Issues with Your Current Methodology&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since many agile methodologies involve daily or frequent team updates...how should developers give updates to both technical and non-technical stakeholders without it sounding like he or she accomplished nothing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were following Scrum, I would point out that the daily stand-ups are for the Team and not for the stakeholders. Iteration results are generally provided to the stakeholders during the Sprint Review at the end of each time-boxed iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you're not following Scrum, I submit that asking developers to provide stakeholder-centric updates too frequently smells a lot like &quot;hold developers accountable&quot; and will lead to C.Y.A. reporting by the developers, and eventually reduce transparency within the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Potential Solutions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilejedi.com/chickenandpig&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chicken and Pig&lt;/a&gt; fable. The linked site says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On Agile projects the term Pig has come to describe all the developers, designers and testers who commit to the actual work. The term Chicken is applied to everyone else who make intellectual contributions but do not commit to any work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to consider a few options here, depending on your corporate culture and environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Consider limiting &lt;em&gt;frequent&lt;/em&gt; meetings to pigs (e.g. the development team) rather than including stakeholders in meetings that are procedural.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Provide visibility to stakeholders through a dashboard or some other key performance metric that doesn't involve &quot;personal accountability&quot; by the individual developers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make the project manager responsible for routine status updates to the stakeholders, rather than the team members. This allows the PM to educate the stakeholders on what is (or is not) reasonable progress, and may prevent C.Y.A. reporting by the developers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Create a separate meeting at defined intervals for Q&amp;amp;A between the stakeholders and the team. In Scrum, this would be a Sprint Review, but the main point is to give your stakeholders direct access to the project without hijacking the team's internal process.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Meet at intervals appropriate to your batch size. Either decompose work into day-or-less chunks, or increase the interval between meetings. The idea here is to move reporting away from &quot;I'm 29.36% done with foo&quot; to a done/not-done status update. This is more developer-friendly, and easier to track from a PM perspective, too.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Setting Expectations&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When the work involves a fair degree of learning or acquisition of knowledge, as a PM, how can I advise these developers give their updates without making them feel as if they aren't making any progress, since there may not be anything to show for days/weeks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project management often involves setting expectations, and communicating them clearly within the project team and to various stakeholders. Regardless of your methodology or your reporting intervals, you need to educate your organization on the process and set their expectations appropriately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Set stakeholder expectations.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your process involves bursty deliverables, make sure your stakeholders expect appropriate reporting. This may be regular reporting that includes a variable level of deliverables completed during a time-box, or irregular reporting when something is completed and worth bringing to their attention.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Set developer expectations.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure the developers know how they will be measured within your methodology. You get what you measure, and people optimize for metrics that impact them directly. If you decide to keep the daily reporting, make it very clear what information you expect to track, how that information will be used, and how that information will impact both the project and each individual developer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make expectations explicit.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[T]here may not be anything to show for days/weeks[.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure that this expectation is &lt;em&gt;explicit&lt;/em&gt;, and that you continually re-educate and reassure everyone on this point. Asking developers for daily status updates when the expected answer is &quot;I'm not done yet&quot; makes this very challenging, partly for psychological reasons and partly because how you're measuring (daily updates) is intrinsically at odds with your project's expectation of bursty results. You can offset that dissonance to some extent by keeping the real expectations front-and-center.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T15:17:51.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8221" CreationDate="2012-12-14T09:22:49.530" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion percentage has some extra risk:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Money always is motivating factor. If it isn't so important in current moment but who knows about future? Wife will become pregnant, somebody will get married, child will fall sick and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If something goes in not right way it will be huge chance to lose entire team. Because leaving the company will be able to be avalanche-like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mixing looks more better but it has some challenges. Team should have possibility to track changes of the project's value. Because people usually make plans and if reward is less then expected it will be serious lack motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5120" LastActivityDate="2012-12-14T09:22:49.530" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8231" CreationDate="2012-12-14T12:47:33.950" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I cannot recommend you a fixed template of Word/Excel/PowerPoint or other template, but I hope, that this answer can help you by creating one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Postmortem Analysis is composed by a meeting and a documentation. Their base idea is the same, to figure out why was the client lost or why did the project fail. The investigation has to be documented. I propose the following document structure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short presentation&lt;/strong&gt; of the project:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project's aim, what wanted the client to see&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Team members, everyone's role in the project&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Planned time, deadlines and milestones&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Team member's role, responsibilities, tasks&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Resources, data requests [for ex. design elements from the clients] with deadlines&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project analysis&lt;/strong&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IT_risk_management&quot;&gt;risk management&lt;/a&gt;, if your team member's professional level is at the needed level (this idea doesn't appear in many studies, but I think it's a base thing), if you have the needed device background (I mean, it's pretty hard to develop a mobile application without device, only on simulator).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Present the &lt;strong&gt;realized part&lt;/strong&gt; of the project: where did it stop, until the &quot;dead&quot; what task were completed/began. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The breakup&lt;/strong&gt;: in what circumstances was the project declared &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newPPM_58.htm&quot;&gt;failed&lt;/a&gt;; what exactly happened - in details; identify everybody who was in case, directly or in indirect mode. This is the critical part of the analysis. People hate critics (it's a normal thing), but you have to do your best and be real (&lt;em&gt;avoid to kick the goal&lt;/em&gt; to the other team members), but you have to think that the people working in your team have &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projecttimes.com/george-pitagorsky/failed-projects-who-is-responsible.html&quot;&gt;responsibility&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, and this means to &lt;em&gt;stand up&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;confess&lt;/em&gt; the decisions even in failed cases.&#xA;This should be the descriptive part of the analysis, where you take out each failed issue, and describe it's details.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;: what should be modified next time, situations to avoid, paradigms to be fixed at the beginning of the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you will take a presentation/meeting about the failed project, it should go through the steps presented upper, with highlighting the risky points and the failures. In many cases, not only one failure brings to the whole project dead, there should be a range of failures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;  If you would like to read a little bit more about this, I suggest &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/Jaiveer/post-mortem-analysis#btnNext&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; (especially slide nr. 19), &lt;a href=&quot;http://ericjacques.org/2010/04/29/postmortem-analysis-process/&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.continuitycentral.com/feature0755.html&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; link to be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4564" LastActivityDate="2012-12-14T12:47:33.950" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8231" CreationDate="2012-12-14T21:02:02.393" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is fairly easy. Break it down the same you did to plan the project and follow the paths - scope to deliverables to tasks to responsibilities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outline the scope and what specific deliverables were required. Then review what in the scope and deliverables wasn't completed, and what were the issues that prevented it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2012-12-14T21:02:02.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8089" CreationDate="2012-12-14T21:21:25.203" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a management philosophy that says that if you can't measure it, perhaps you shouldn't be doing it. I'm not sure I subscribe to that, but the corollary&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; makes some sense: if there is a purpose in doing it, you can probably measure it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, and I am speculating here, you could do something simple like compare word count with documents from similar projects. More ambitiously, how about submitting a &lt;i&gt;360 degree feedback&lt;/i&gt; survey to your document's audience. Many ISPs and shrink-wrap software vendors ask &quot;How helpful was this?&quot; on every online help page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alex Bottoni's answer mentions conciseness and readability. These too can be measured. I won't repeat Alex's measures but I will add this. If your document is in English and will be published, or your employer or client is a member of the Plain English Campaign(PEC), you might choose to apply for the PEC Crystal Mark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also the FOG score and Flesch test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/crystal-mark.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/crystal-mark.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/faqs.html#Anchor-8232&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/faqs.html#Anchor-8232&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the docs are online, you could even measure how often they are read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't forget that word count and reading frequency should inversely correlate to how intuitive or self-documenting your software is (and that applies both to end user software and to APIs.) So, though a need for hefty documentation might reflect the complexity of your problem domain, it is also a warning sign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1: more properly I should have said &lt;i&gt;contrapositive&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5215" LastActivityDate="2012-12-14T21:21:25.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8246" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-12-16T04:10:54.073" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-12-16T04:10:54.073" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T04:10:54.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8247" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-12-16T04:10:54.073" Score="0" Body="This tag is used for questions that involve pay for members of a project team." OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-12-16T04:10:54.073" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T04:10:54.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8248" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-12-16T05:40:09.933" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-12-16T05:40:09.933" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T05:40:09.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8249" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-12-16T05:40:09.933" Score="0" Body="The documentation tag is for questions about documentation of processes and projects in the field of project management. " OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-12-16T05:40:09.933" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T05:40:09.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8250" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-16T11:19:21.227" Score="14" ViewCount="953" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a newbie programmer in a troubling situation and wondered if anyone knew best practices for dealing with this type of project management problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a rough job-search, I finally found a contract job to port an arcane system from an old OS to a new one.  I was up front about having little proficiency in the languages and systems involved, but by demonstrating sharp thinking, determination and analytical skills in the test interview I got the job.  A project manager even told me I was hired precisely because I had no preconceptions about the &quot;way things should be done&quot;, and could adapt to their &quot;way of doing things&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I went into the project excited, and was asked by the tech lead (the only person I directly report to and work with) to start looking through the manuals and original code for the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, I started looking... and it was vast.  The manual was voluminous, the system complex, and the code running for hundreds of thousands of lines.  I was immediately struck by the enormity of this task.  It was clearly a system designed and built by a large company over a period of years, modified many times since.  One year and only two people didn't seem nearly sufficient for the needs of the work ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked the lead his thoughts on the original code, and surprisingly, he didn't seem to have looked at all, and didn't intend to.  I asked him how he knew this task could be done within a year without even knowing what the system already does.  He told me he had seen the system in operation once before, and it looked pretty basic and straightforward to him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know with certainty he's a highly intelligent, sharp, fast and skilled programmer, as I had the opportunity to look through and analyze code he had already written.  So I thought that his confidence was somewhat reassuring, and maybe he already had this whole project figured out.  So I decided to ask him what kind of design he was thinking about overall... and his answer was that we would just start coding different parts and kinda fit them together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This immediately sent up red flags for me.  So first there wasn't any thorough analysis, and now there wasn't even a design.  How could we even know what parts to code, or that our parts would fit together?  How can we communicate progress to stakeholders without knowing what and how much work needs to be done?  I asked if there was a project schedule... and he said he had submitted one, but not to take it too seriously, he considered it a &quot;loose guideline&quot;.  He showed it to me, and apparently we were already well behind on what he had communicated to management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, I thought, I was told I was hired because I had no preconceived notions, and wouldn't be a &quot;no, that can't be done this way&quot; kind of person.  I figured it was just a quirk of this new workplace I needed to adjust to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ironically, project management held a meeting a few days later, to discuss the scheduling of a big design review with major stakeholders.  The project schedule that was once a &quot;loose guideline&quot; was now suddenly a concrete baseline, and my tech lead was visibly shaken and tried to get a later date, and now management seems suspicious and concerned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should a person in my position do?  I had a difficult time finding work as it was, and if I do well in this job I might get future work, or at least good references if I move on.  So of course I don't want to get on the bad side of the tech lead who hired me, but I've tried talking with him and he only seems interested in coding now and worrying about everything else later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I air my concerns with project management and risk getting my tech lead and only co-worker on this project into trouble?  Or do I just work even harder to make up for it?  Or should I trust my tech lead and not worry so much, and let the cards fall where they will?  I'm new to all this and facing many mixed messages, from outside and inside, and have no idea what to do.  I think there's a phrase for this environment: cowboy-coding.  Thanks for any help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;:  I'll add more details here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I've only been working at this company for little over a month so far, mostly reading through system manuals, analyzing code, learning as much as possible about the languages and tools we're using, etc., to get familiar with the project.  Right now I basically ask my tech lead what I should work on, he thinks about it, and then sends me off to do things.  For example, he might say &quot;get familiar with such'n'such versioning software&quot;, or &quot;find a good library we can use for network communication&quot;, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5222" LastEditorUserId="5222" LastEditDate="2012-12-16T22:45:02.383" LastActivityDate="2018-08-02T20:46:36.660" Title="Solution to scary programming/project management situation?" Tags="&lt;technical-leader&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8250" CreationDate="2012-12-16T15:37:03.750" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your accountability ends at programming.  It is the PM's accountability on the success of the project within the constraints of the schedule and budget.  You need to execute your tasks as assigned and use your best efforts to do the best job you can under the constraints that you have.  Your responsibilities also include to escalate risks and issues in a non emotional way, to include some degree of alternatives analysis and recommendations.  Hand that over the PM and wait to see if something comes of it.  If nothing, which is a decision of and in itself, then continue down the path to which you are instructed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds like quite a mess and failure or degraded performance is likely, but that is out of scope for your role.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T15:37:03.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="222" CreationDate="2012-12-16T16:49:26.827" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;TPM - Means Technical Project Manager is always a project Manager with Technical Background and Experience where Project Manager might be of Both Technical or Non Technical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both are same instead one having Technical Knowledge but work is same that's why TPM are more considerable than PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Development Manager is over all responsible as Resources and Technology management to manage over all development teams and project with help of Project Managers and Project Leads&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5224" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T16:49:26.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="64" CreationDate="2012-12-17T12:02:31.870" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least within my industry sector,  the &lt;strong&gt;emphasis&lt;/strong&gt; is that project managers &quot;create a unique product, service, or result.&quot; (hat tip to @craig Villacorta); this excludes routine operations, and activities that are designed to generate yesterday's results tomorrow.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IT managers are focused on &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IT_service_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IT service management (ITSM or IT services) refers to the implementation and management of quality IT services that meet the needs of the business.&quot;&lt;/a&gt; Wikipedia goes on to focus on the &lt;em&gt;relationship with the customer&lt;/em&gt;, and on &lt;em&gt;process improvement&lt;/em&gt; - things that I think are generally perceived as &lt;strong&gt;NOT&lt;/strong&gt; project oriented because they are about the process, not the discrete result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is overlap; IT Service managmeent can involve the implementation of services (which can be managed as a project). Project Managers certainly care about quality and about managing the stakeholders/customers. They each use many of the same tools and processes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in summary, IT Services Managers generally involve providing ongoing services, which project managers provide management for a discrete, result oriented project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2012-12-17T12:02:31.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8250" CreationDate="2012-12-17T12:12:00.390" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, hat tip to @David Espina.  Everything he says is true.  I'm just concerned that it won't be helpful when the project crashes and burns and you're trying to shelter yourself from debris, and when you're trying to figure out how to spin this failure on the resume you're preparing for the next job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd strongly endorse Mr. Espina's recommendations that you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Document and escalate risks.  You're in a very good place to assess&#xA;the likelihood that the project will be X months late because the&#xA;complexity of tasks have been underestimated. But always do #2.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify alternatives - up to and including preparing an alternate&#xA;project schedule that you believe is more realistic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, I'd also update my resume and begin the job seeking process, including the small tasks that the PM has assigned (you cite &quot;find a network communications library&quot;, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-01-05T20:24:07.743" LastActivityDate="2013-01-05T20:24:07.743" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8250" CreationDate="2012-12-17T12:12:44.553" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that you have a responsibility to flag this issue/risk up with the PM. You don't have to blame anyone, but anyone on a project team should raise any problems as and when they are spotted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you're not the PM, I would say your immediate responsibility for the risk ends, but you may be needed to provide support, on the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, it's not about blame, it's about making sure the project succeeds. As a PM, I don't mind mistakes - I mind when mistakes are covered up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3246" LastActivityDate="2012-12-17T12:12:44.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8250" CreationDate="2012-12-17T14:36:02.060" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To reiterate the situation that you've presented:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are working in a contract position&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The tech lead who hired you has failed to plan out the work and has provided wildly optimistic estimates for the project to management &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management is going to hold the team accountable for the wildly optimistic estimates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your bigger problem could be what happens afterwards when your contract ends. If the wheels do well and truly come off of the project (and they will if the plan continues to fail to line up with reality) it is easy enough for the technical lead to point the finger at the contract guy as the root cause for delays. As Gregg indicates, a good PM won't lay blame but your tech lead is only human and if this is a huge balls-up there is a huge temptation to deflect the consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can lead to tepid references and huge problems getting your next job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key will be, as David and Mark suggest, for you to document and escalate the issues and risks. Make sure that you send these through the appropriate chain of command, but cc the PM. Make sure you focus on solutions rather than the problem. Don't be afraid to voice your concerns and your ideas. This will not only help the project but will cover your rear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-12-17T14:36:02.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8250" CreationDate="2012-12-17T16:23:51.253" Score="9" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Project Responsibilities&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are successive layers of responsibility for any project. In general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Senior management is responsible for the success (or failure) of a project. This often includes making strategic decisions about the project, making funding decisions about risk-mitigation controls, and accepting risks for the project that can't be mitigated or transferred.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Project Manager is responsible for the implementation of the project management process. This usually includes referring risk-mitigation and risk-acceptance options to senior management for approval.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Team leads have a varying scope, depending on the project and the organization. However, in my experience a team lead is usually responsible for implementing technical solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Team members (like you) are responsible for performing project tasks, and flagging technical or process issues that may prevent you from completing deliverables.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see from this top-down list, &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; are not responsible for the success or failure of the project. That responsibility ultimately rests with senior management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Provide a Professional Opinion&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an IT professional, you should certainly flag issues with the project such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unrealistic delivery dates for specific tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Missing prerequisites for your tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Flaws in the plan (if there is one), architecture, or tool-chain that prevent you from delivering specific tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Process or procedural impediments such as the lack of well-defined tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal isn't to criticize; it's simply to provide information and visibility about project tasks to those upstream. Just document what, &lt;strong&gt;in your professional opinion&lt;/strong&gt;, is required to do your job as successfully as possible within the framework provided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't expend your political capital on this. Your objective isn't to redefine the project or its process; all you're doing is providing decision-making information to those who can make decisions about the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've identified a project risk to your team lead and/or project manager, you have effectively transferred the risk to them. Remember, senior management is &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; responsible for accepting (or mitigating) project risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Early (Project) Termination&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the organizational culture is toxic, you are still likely to be &quot;held accountable&quot; when the project eventually fails. If that's the case, then you have the same option that senior management has: fail as early as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good project manager will recommend that a project be terminated early if it is unlikely to succeed. A good project sponsor will kill a project that is unlikely to meet organizational objectives. If failure is not an option, but failure is inevitable, then move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that the majority of IT projects fail. Being on a failing project is not necessarily a blot on your career--if it were, no one in IT would stay employed--but that doesn't mean you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; stick it out if the harm to you outweighs the potential benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be professional, be sensible, and consider all your options carefully. The only person who can manage your career is you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-12-17T16:23:51.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8259" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-12-17T16:31:20.260" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an example, questions about how to apply Scrum to a project would be a good use of this tag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-12-17T17:11:07.673" LastActivityDate="2012-12-17T17:11:07.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8260" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-12-17T16:31:20.260" Score="0" Body="Questions about implementing a specific project management methodology." OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-12-17T17:05:33.203" LastActivityDate="2012-12-17T17:05:33.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8261" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-12-17T16:39:42.867" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This tag is intended to be used for questions about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Specific meetings dictated by a framework (e.g. Scrum's Daily Stand-Up).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Organizing, scheduling, or coordinating meetings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Facilitating communications during a meeting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Meeting artifacts such as minutes or Sprint Backlogs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-12-17T17:06:11.037" LastActivityDate="2012-12-17T17:06:11.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8262" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-12-17T16:39:42.867" Score="0" Body="Framework-required meetings; meeting artifacts; organizing meetings; meeting communications." OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-12-17T17:06:23.500" LastActivityDate="2012-12-17T17:06:23.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8263" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-12-17T17:19:09.990" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reporting&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This involves creating, communicating, or managing reports and reporting artifacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What questions use this tag?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This tag is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; for questions about where to find reporting templates.&lt;/strong&gt; This tag is for questions about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What should go into a report that is specific to your project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to effectively communicate metrics or status through reporting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to manage reporting artifacts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-01-01T03:23:54.970" LastActivityDate="2013-01-01T03:23:54.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8264" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-12-17T17:19:09.990" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for detailed questions about how to create or manage reports." OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-01-01T03:23:54.970" LastActivityDate="2013-01-01T03:23:54.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8265" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-18T00:19:15.417" Score="5" ViewCount="961" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been asked to complete a SWOT analysis covering my small R&amp;amp;D group with reference to an enterprise wide project combining R&amp;amp;D groups from across the organisation. One section has already completed this analysis and we are asked to add any additional entries and also comment on how the entries already stated apply to our group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not a manager as such and haven't done a SWOT analysis before. I really get the feeling that we are going through this process because someone read in a management book that it's a good thing to do, rather than because it will be particularly useful in this case (I'm not suggesting the whole technique is worthless, just the way this is being applied in this case).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, I've read up a bit on the meanings of the 4 categories and I understand that the difference between the SW and OT is internal/external. However, reading the analysis that has been done, it seems clear that the distinction being made is temporal. The SW are the current state and the OT are things are in reference to the future. Is this an approach that is typical, or is it more likely to have been just how the people completing the analysis interpreted the meaning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5237" LastActivityDate="2013-01-02T15:09:35.843" Title="Completing a SWOT analysis" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8266" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8269" CreationDate="2012-12-18T00:38:18.513" Score="8" ViewCount="1607" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming similar work has been done in the past, can velocity be measured on a waterfall project? If that isn't the case, is there a more appropriate capacity management tool on a waterfall project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5108" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-10-21T22:28:02.940" LastActivityDate="2019-10-21T22:28:02.940" Title="Is it possible to track velocity on a waterfall project?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;&lt;velocity&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8265" CreationDate="2012-12-18T08:58:32.707" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The word &lt;em&gt;analysis&lt;/em&gt; in SWOT is wildly exaggerated. What you feel is most likely correct: &lt;strong&gt;&quot;I really get the feeling that we are going through this process because someone read in a management book that it's a good thing to do&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, back on topic. Yes, Strengths and Weaknesses are &lt;strong&gt;static&lt;/strong&gt; and mostly internal (unless your team is particularly favored/discriminated against by the management), Opportunities and Threats are &lt;strong&gt;dynamic&lt;/strong&gt;, but may be internal as well as external.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more thing, though. It is a mistake on part of your managers to allow you to read SWOT from another team for obvious reasons of cross-influence and induced groupthink.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: SWOT is in my experience a very basic exercise to discipline the mind. The disadvantage is that there are much more complicated, involved and fruitful exercises of the same kind. Doing explicit risk management trumps SWOT any time; calculating ROI of various investment opportunities, wargaming likely moves by competitors/suppliers etc. etc. all take time and produce tangible results. SWOT is an intermediate input into decision-making and requires a certain mental model and attitude; from the same SWOT analysis 5 different managers will likely draw 5 different conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4766" LastEditorUserId="4766" LastEditDate="2012-12-18T14:14:06.177" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T14:14:06.177" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8265" CreationDate="2012-12-18T12:37:50.670" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I disagree with Deer Hunter almost completely.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The SWOT analysis is a simple and very powerful tool and is an input to so many other pieces of business analyses: product selection, vendor selection, project selection, outsourcing, and insourcing to name a few.  It is done at the organization level, and then decomposed at the division level, business unit level, team level, and even individual level.  It is performed on a set frequency, like yearly when you are developing next year's plan, and on an ad hoc basis when you are preparing for a specific effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remove static and dynamic from your thinking here.  Nothing is static.  SW describes your current situation for whatever you are measuring, e.g., your capabilities, your products or services you sell, intellectual capital, etc.  I am strong at this but am weak at that.  You cannot just claim it, you have to substantiate it.  If you say you're strong at something, how, why, show the evidence.  Same is true for weaknesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OT is your risk analysis for both favorable (O) and unfavorable events (T).  Is your risk management just a thing you do because it was written in a management book?  It describes the future.  Risk requires a ton of analysis so this would not qualify as something that was exaggerated.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do it, do it often and do it well.  Invest in this because it is an input to so many other decisions you have to make.  In fact, it would not be unwise to bring in an outside party to help with this as that would help to remove the politics.  It requires brainstorming, research, analysis, deep thinking, many iterations, and the result is a living document designed to keep evolving as your company evolves and the environment continues to change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T12:37:50.670" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8266" CreationDate="2012-12-18T16:21:11.037" Score="4" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Measuring Velocity&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.versionone.com/Agile101/Agile-Scrum-Velocity/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one source&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Velocity is measured in the same units as feature estimates, whether this is story points, days, ideal days, or hours that the Scrum team delivers - all of which are considered acceptable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, most sources don't really explain that velocity is based on the idea that you can extrapolate your expectations for velocity based on historical measures of how much level-of-effort can fit within a given time-box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, the level-of-effort estimates that create velocity metrics assume a baseline task size. For example, if task B is roughly 5 times harder than the baseline task A that's worth 1 story point, task B is assigned a story point value of 5. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story points (or other level-of-effort estimates) are not &lt;em&gt;quite&lt;/em&gt; the same thing as the throughput and batch-size measurements used in Kanban, but there are some similarities. Throughput may be easier to retroactively calculate than velocity simply because it is less dependent on the original level-of-effort estimates for task, which may not be tracked as such in a waterfall project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Why Velocity/Throughput is a Bad Fit for Waterfall&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A typical PMI-style project often has a work breakdown structure, but those tasks are rarely decomposed into tasks of a uniform size (needed for Kanban-style throughput estimates) or time-boxed multiples of a baseline level-of-effort (needed for Scrum-style velocity estimates). That would seem to make velocity &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt; a poor fit for waterfall-style development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Retrofitting a Time-Box&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be able to retrofit velocity estimates in a waterfall project by arbitrarily assigning time-boxes. For example, you might assume that every two calendar weeks is a time-box, and see how many man-hours of completed work fit into each time box as a trailing average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will be a very rough estimate, and you should probably expect the estimates that you get this way to vary by at least an order of magnitude unless your WBS is extremely granular. Whether or not this sort of retconned velocity estimate is in any way &lt;em&gt;useful&lt;/em&gt; on a waterfall project (where you're generally tracking dependencies and deviations rather than throughput or time-boxed iterations) is up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Deviations from Milestones&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an informal rule of thumb, most waterfall-style projects that I've worked on have used deviations from planned milestones as their primary metric. For example, if Feature Alpha is due June 1st, one tracks whether one is on-target for the June 1st delivery date or how far progress towards Feature Alpha is behind schedule. (Hint: Milestones are rarely ahead of schedule on waterfall projects.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Accuracy with this sort of metric relies on a feedback loop that continually assesses the start/end dates of dependent tasks, and applying any identified deviations to the projected delivery date. This is a useful technique when one is tracking by time, but not so much when one wants to track the throughput of tasks or the velocity of features delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with any methodology, your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T16:21:11.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8270" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-12-18T16:31:57.617" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Metrics questions are generally about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What things to measure.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to measure those things.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some common uses of the metrics tag would include questions about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Key performance indicators (KPIs).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Velocity and burn-down charts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Throughput or cycle-time analyses.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Completion or activity estimates, e.g. &quot;This task is 83% done.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;http://pm.stackexchange.com/tags/measurement/info&quot;&gt;measurement&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="8524" LastEditDate="2015-04-08T15:51:54.453" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T15:51:54.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8271" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-12-18T16:31:57.617" Score="0" Body="In PM, metrics are measures of things. Defining, selecting, applying, or calculating measurements of progress or activity on a project." OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2014-10-11T08:55:33.637" LastActivityDate="2014-10-11T08:55:33.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8266" CreationDate="2012-12-18T16:48:36.747" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may want to use &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_value_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;earned value management&lt;/a&gt; techniques. These should give you an idea of progress to date in comparison to the baseline plan and also allow you to extrapolate future progress. As with other forms of prediction, the accuracy of the estimates will improve as you get closer to the end of your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main problem that I have had with EVM in the past is trying to avoid having Accounting take it over to suit their purposes rather than suit the purposes of the project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T16:48:36.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8273" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-12-18T22:25:41.980" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Data modeling in software engineering is the process of creating a data model for an information system by applying formal data modeling techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1197" LastEditorUserId="1197" LastEditDate="2012-12-19T01:41:11.560" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T01:41:11.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8274" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-12-18T22:25:41.980" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-12-18T22:25:41.980" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T22:25:41.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8275" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-12-18T22:26:38.643" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions about project management models.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1197" LastEditorUserId="1197" LastEditDate="2012-12-19T01:41:49.157" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T01:41:49.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8276" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-12-18T22:26:38.643" Score="0" Body="Questions about project management models." OwnerUserId="1197" LastEditorUserId="1197" LastEditDate="2012-12-19T07:52:19.437" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T07:52:19.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8277" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-12-18T22:27:49.050" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Six Sigma is a set of tools and strategies for process improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1197" LastEditorUserId="1197" LastEditDate="2012-12-19T01:41:16.440" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T01:41:16.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8278" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-12-18T22:27:49.050" Score="0" Body="Six Sigma is a set of tools and strategies for process improvement. If your question is about how to apply these strategies to a problem you're facing, you should use this tag." OwnerUserId="1197" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-12-19T07:53:40.887" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T07:53:40.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8279" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-12-18T22:29:19.873" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Rational Unified Process was created by Rational Software, and it was later acquired by IBM in early 2003.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Rational_Unified_Process&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia's Article on RUP&lt;/a&gt;, there are six best practices for modern software engineering:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Combining the experience base of companies led to the articulation of six best practices for modern software engineering:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Develop iteratively, with risk as the primary iteration driver[2]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Manage requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Employ a component-based architecture&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Model software visually&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Continuously verify quality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Control changes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1197" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-12-19T08:06:36.387" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T08:06:36.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8280" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-12-18T22:29:19.873" Score="0" Body="Used for questions about the Rational Unified Process, or RUP, which is an iterative software development process. Use this tag for questions about how to apply this process or for problems in using it on a project, for instance." OwnerUserId="1197" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-12-19T08:06:36.387" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T08:06:36.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8281" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-12-18T22:31:16.927" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For questions relating to use of Atlassian JIRA issue tracking product used for bug tracking, issue tracking, and project management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For product support see the &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.atlassian.com/secure/Dashboard.jspa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;official JIRA support site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1197" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2013-01-10T14:36:47.043" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T14:36:47.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8282" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-12-18T22:31:16.927" Score="0" Body="For questions relating to the JIRA issue tracking product used for bug tracking, issue tracking, and project management. If your question is about how to more effectively use JIRA to solve a problem you're facing, use this tag. But for product support questions, see the Atlassian website or forums." OwnerUserId="1197" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2013-01-10T14:36:25.763" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T14:36:25.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8283" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-12-18T22:32:23.760" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a special tag that is designed to be used only by the system, on questions that have had all of their other tags removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1197" LastEditorUserId="1197" LastEditDate="2012-12-19T07:52:48.063" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T07:52:48.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8284" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-12-18T22:32:23.760" Score="0" Body="This is a special tag that is designed to be used only by the system, on questions that have had all of their other tags removed." OwnerUserId="1197" LastEditorUserId="1197" LastEditDate="2012-12-19T07:58:44.067" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T07:58:44.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6429" CreationDate="2012-12-18T23:20:06.660" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Determining &lt;em&gt;management effectiveness&lt;/em&gt; is more difficult and time consuming than determining entry-level developer effectiveness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, accountability in project scope and duration and the requirement of leadership are key differentiators between the roles. Junior managers tend to get lower salaries because proving anything about their effectiveness is hard. Your first PM gig is a trial run and the fail rate is high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you consistently demonstrate the traits your company values, you earn accountability for greater project scope (people/$, hard resources, priority, etc.) and duration (week, month, quarter, year...five years).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do well, your company prospers by your planning and execution. Ideally you get recognition through more cool projects and a competitive salary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/45776/why-do-business-analysts-and-project-managers-get-higher-salaries-than-programme&quot;&gt;post&lt;/a&gt; ends with a reference to &quot;great&quot; programmers. Assuming that's the top 1%, it's not a meaningful metric. Aspire to be a great manager rather than earning a specific amount of money and you'll probably win on both counts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5051" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:31:53.287" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T23:20:06.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8286" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8291" CreationDate="2012-12-19T12:58:46.857" Score="17" ViewCount="1116" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team historically has averaged about 40 people over several years, often more than that. We have a pretty complex product that cuts across several problem domains. We switched from waterfall to scrum and looking back I have to say that neither worked (well). As one PM told me, our project was &quot;always yellow or red&quot; (meaning in state of high risk or seriously delayed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Watefall &quot;worked&quot; bc once we were officially done with development and moved to testing, not many of officially done features actually worked and effective development has been done during (long) testing and tediously corrected. You could say that it was sort of official waterfall combined with underneath sort-of iterative process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We switched to agile/scrum (in a very basic form). From frying pan into fire: we have terrible problems getting logically consistent product now. It's not strange given we have 5 major sub-teams (not all of them in one geo location) and Conway's law operates. Plus, repeated stress at the end of iteration over several years tends to wear out/exhaust people (that's my subjective feeling though, I do not have hard data to prove that). It's also has been terrible re keeping people long enough in one place/subsystem of the product so they could become experts and highly productive in their place: I get the impression that in this constant change we evolve towards being jacks of all trades and masters of nothing. In hindsight, I cannot tell that scrum has given us any definitive advantages (we have &quot;scrum of scrums&quot; of course and I can't detect that it has made any difference). Certainly, lack of big up-front design from my POV is a serious flaw: work gets unsynchronized, badly partitioned and needs to be redone or modified later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's like classic CS process deadlock, just moved to conceptual/design level: dev/subteam A waits for dev/subteam B to complete design X he/it relies so he could complete his/its design Y, while dev/subteam B waits for A to do his/their design Y so they/he could do X.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum says nothing about infrastructure tasks apart from &quot;cram it into some user story&quot; (and so infrastructure suffers). Additional 3 smaller sub-topic teams (internal, external, content provider team using products of both previous ones) for particular area still can't even agree on common data representation and format. Tracking actual state of a zillion of tasks is a nightmare. The consensus in the team is that scrum has given us no benefits while imposing additional costs. Certainly it has not made us pay better attention to what customers/end users actually need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't believe I'm saying this but for us waterfall worked (slightly) better than scrum (or to be more precise: it was &quot;not as bad, if only slightly less bad&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately some subsystems are pretty much orthogonal, otherwise we'd get nothing done. This is pure random chance, though: a tad more internal dependencies between subsystems (re conceptual integrity, performance, etc) and we'd be toast. Being saved by dumb luck is no proof of effective organization or wisdom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my POV it's like this: if a project is small (grokkable by one person in entirety or close to it) or consists of a bunch of nearly independent concepts and features, any methodology will work. If a project is big (one person can't even grok an entire subsystem + there are lots of internal dependencies between subsystems in concepts, design, business logic and algorithms), no methodology works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only solution I personally see would be like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do the big, up-front analysis (collecting requirements) and big waterfall-style design (principles, assumptions, business logic).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;treat it as draft to be modified, initial starting point to be modified on the fly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;develop this &quot;big design&quot; iteratively, using scrum or kanban.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have analysts and designers constantly re-evaluate big picture - whether the product stays consistent, and sync design and code.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that wouldn't work, I have to say that for me my project is like a &quot;Gordian knot from hell&quot; that is basically unsolvable (well) from my POV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This super-long background info gets me to my question: &lt;strong&gt;are there any PM methodologies that work well on &lt;em&gt;big&lt;/em&gt; projects?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Further details:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I understand that map is not the road. Sure. But I can't envision getting to Alaska from SA without the map. :-) As they say in math, methodology to me is a necessary, not a sufficient condition.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Issues: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deadlines: tight. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Budget: seriously underfunded. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scope changes: constant. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requirements: often changing, lots of gaps. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team structure: revolving doors situation, people shifted around mindlessly. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other issues: lots of (truly bad) legacy code, no appreciation of long-term situation and costs/benefits by mgmt. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Oh and: no (application) SW architect.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I know that people will shoot down my vision as &quot;asking for autopilot / panacea&quot;, but I tend to think that A. Whitehall is onto smth when he said that progress is measured by a number of things we can do without thinking. A perfect methodology would fit any team: just have the guts to follow the procedure. If &quot;other factors&quot; - the unknown factors - are necessary to make project succeed, what are those?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm starting to think that this is all futile. I've done some rough, example calculations: Imagine: n features, m classes (assuming OO programming), k software characteristics (reliability, performance in various contexts, security, implementation cost, defect rates, time necessary to get development done, testing cost, testing time, etc), o people. Potential complexity: every feature can be divided into p classes (p less-than m, with sum of all p for all features == m), impacts at most k characteristics and can require work or intervention of any subset of o people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So worst-case complexity (number of combinations) is n*m*k*o. with 20 features, 500 classes, 10 aspects and 40 people that is 4000000 (4 mil). Assuming generous release time of 18 months, that is 222222 (222 thousand) combinations per month. Suppose we cut 500 (or &quot;m&quot;) classes into 50 manageable collections with each collection modifiable/refactorable internally without impacting another collection. That's still over 22 thousand combinations per month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not humanly possible to track so many potential feature/class/person impacts on k (software characteristics) and select best combinations (plan ahead). Some sci-fi style hard-AI tool would have to do it. Otherwise, we're just throwing &quot;hail mary&quot;: maybe it will work well enough in enough cases that the project will not get delayed. Or maybe it won't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Background info to give you better idea of the system in question. This has to be sort of &quot;anonymized&quot; for reason of confidentiality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Data flow&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This one is fortunately pretty simple: agents &amp;lt;-&gt; server, with server consisting of following major subsystems: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;agent comm  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;inventory &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;data aggregation &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;report generation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(there are of course many supporting subsystems, from server config console to web ui to REST api but I'm not including those here)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Implementation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Technologies:&lt;/strong&gt; C, Java, SQL. Environments range from hundreds to tens of thousands of agents (the biggest environment: about 100K of agents).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Code size:&lt;/strong&gt; Several thousand Java files organized in approx 500 packages. About 900 KLOC total so far (not counting the agent). So it's not that big, but it's complex in the sense of involving many problem domains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aggregation is the most complex and resource intensive part of the app. We're using plain SQL for performance, but even then aggregation can't finish in 24 hrs for large environments (right when the next round of aggregation should start, i.e. next day). Miscalculation can be sort of serious, since it can easily cost a customer dozens of $M.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5240" LastEditorUserId="5240" LastEditDate="2012-12-20T19:49:26.570" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T19:49:26.570" Title="Is there any pm methodology that works well on large projects?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8286" CreationDate="2012-12-19T13:34:44.963" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Asking if there's a &lt;em&gt;methodology&lt;/em&gt; that works fine for a large project sounds like asking if a map route can take someone from South America to Alaska.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any (methodology or map)? Yes. Will it do it (work or travel) by itself? Definitely, no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;methodology&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; is a guideline. But, as the map, it's only suggestions of how to reach something or somewhere, not the destiny itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mentioned Waterfall x Agile. There's a very good discussion on this topic &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/389/430&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, and I believe Pawel's answer is amazing (as usual!). In your case, as a big project, it seems that a more formal methodology would fit better (i.e. Waterfall), but there's no strict rule saying that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bottomline:&lt;/strong&gt; The problem is not the &lt;em&gt;map&lt;/em&gt;. The problem is not the &lt;em&gt;methodology&lt;/em&gt;. Having said that, the underlying question here is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What's your project number one issue?&lt;/strong&gt; Or, why your projects are always between amber / red? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deadlines? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Costs? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scope changes? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unclear requirements?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team structure?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any other issue?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll need to &lt;strong&gt;nail down the root cause&lt;/strong&gt; of your project issues and then you'll be able to &lt;strong&gt;assess what's the best methodology&lt;/strong&gt; to fit your project. Not the other way round.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T13:34:44.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6704" CreationDate="2012-12-19T14:21:27.867" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could always have Jira &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Creating+Issues+and+Comments+from+Email&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;capture issues via email&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3464" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T14:21:27.867" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8289" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8293" CreationDate="2012-12-19T14:34:23.520" Score="4" ViewCount="215" Body="&lt;p&gt;My project consists of 5 sub-teams and I think that what most people under-appreciate is subsystem communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you think that teams using (or even being forced to) contracts between them to specify input data, output data and possibly communication protocols/calls would be a good idea? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5240" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T09:29:33.710" Title="contracts on inputs and outputs between subsystem teams?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8289" CreationDate="2012-12-19T15:07:33.253" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is an unequivocal yes.  If the input came from an outside vendor, you would certainly have an agreement in place in terms of quantity, quality, specs., costs, whatever.  Why would it be any different if the input came from a source internally?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, by contract, most would assume some type of paper agreement with signatures.  Some teams could require such a thing, e.g., if you were crossing organization divisions, while others would require a simple verbal agreement and handshake.  Many team charters can also capture rules of engagement, as well, to a certain level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, if you don't agree to intra-team requirements, you are not managing the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T15:07:33.253" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8286" CreationDate="2012-12-19T15:53:41.867" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following on Tiago's answer, the issue is not the methodology but how the methodology is being &lt;strong&gt;tailored&lt;/strong&gt; on your projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on my experience working on biodefence projects for US govt, as the complexity of a project increases so to does your need for upfront planning and thorough project oversight. Regardless of your use of waterfall or agile or whatever:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Take your time while doing your initial planning.&lt;/strong&gt; Make sure that you engage the necessary stakeholders. Have an open and honest conversation about capabilities and assumptions. Come up with a schedule, budget and scope that are realistic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Take the time to revist the plan at regular intervals.&lt;/strong&gt; When a key milestone has been reached don't just check it off the list. Sit the team down and celebrate the success and review what work is coming up. Find out how underlying assumptions have changed, and if there are any issues that have come up that may affect the original plan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Establish a robust change control system.&lt;/strong&gt; If someone wants a change that is OK, they just have to follow the approved process. Don't tolerate ad hoc changes from the team. These will lead to scope creep and will invalidate your plan. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Establish proper governance structures.&lt;/strong&gt; You as PM should be working with a project sponsor/champion to execute the project. You should both be reporting to a project committee/board that represents supplier, customer and business interests. Making sure they all have a say will help guide the project to a positive conclusion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Communicate progress in a timely and effective manner.&lt;/strong&gt; Set up regular reports with the key stakeholders so that you can flag issues and manage expectations proactively. These could be written, through telecons or whatever is most appropriate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T15:53:41.867" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8289" CreationDate="2012-12-19T18:44:41.333" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can envision the problem to which you refer, and I agree that it may be worth proactively solving. (Proactive solutions involve governance/political capital/stakeholder management. In some environments, political capital and governance are extraordinarily expensive, so it may actually be long run cheaper to plan for failure and solve the problem retroactively).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the face of it, this is either a quality problem or a risk problem. Team A feeds Team B; Team B needs to express the desired quality standards, and team B needs to plan to mitigate the risks if the quality standards are not met.  As @David Espina says, if you're not managing (intra team) requirements, you're not managing the work.  If we're talking protocols, inputs and outputs, then the common desire for an excellent result compells us to share very detailed information about expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does that involve a formal SLA for the teams?  That depends on the relationships involved. If the teams are close and cooperative, then a formal SLA may actually inhibit innovation and improved quality.  I get nervous when you introduce the term &quot;forced to&quot;, because I think the cooperation is probably more important than the actual quality of any part.  If you don't have the intent to cooperate and to make each other look excellent, then you may have &lt;a href=&quot;https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/66377&quot;&gt;an XY problem&lt;/a&gt;, but perhaps I'm reading too deeply there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-20T10:29:45.420" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T18:44:41.333" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8289" CreationDate="2012-12-19T19:22:32.317" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't need contracts. You need clearly defined requirements documents for each of the deliverables being produced. These should be written collaboratively by at least three teams:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team that will be using the deliverable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team that will be producing the deliverable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team that will be providing the input going into the deliverable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The end result should be a series of overlapping documents that provide clear accountabilities for delivering necessary requirements and outputs for each deliverable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This collaborative document should be reviewed by the PM and his team to ensure there isn't any gold-plating going on, the deliverable is within scope, the quality and acceptance criteria are clear, roles are defined, etc etc. A good example is the work package template from PRINCE2. You can get this and other templates [here].&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prince-officialsite.com/Resources/Resources.aspx&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T19:22:32.317" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8289" CreationDate="2012-12-20T02:01:25.323" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you certainly should have a written specification of outlining the interface between the sub-systems.  This will form the contract between the teams involved.  Both (all) should be involved in the writing of the specification.  Depending on your documentation style, this could be a wiki page or other online document.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the things I would cover include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Format(s) of the data.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Method of transmission (file, SOAP, REST, other).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Batch sizes if data will be transmitted in batch.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Expected response time (especially for interfaces accessed for OLTP).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Availability schedule.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T02:01:25.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8289" CreationDate="2012-12-20T02:45:02.780" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jumping off the Agilish tenant of focusing less on the documentation and more on the people, rather looking to a contract to specify what is needed, focus on setting up an environment that encourages open, consistent and accurate communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T02:45:02.780" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8286" CreationDate="2012-12-20T15:29:30.917" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Waterfall is used successfully on the largest projects in the world e.g. 500 people over 6 years at a cost of $21 billion. These are mostly infrastructure projects (bridges, tunnels and railways), aerospace and defense projects (airplanes and weapons systems) and energy projects (pipelines, drilling rigs)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not the methodology that fails, but the implementation and the &quot;vibes&quot; of the project environment. For an example of &quot;vibes&quot; on the project environment, I just came back from a workshop that studied the $3.3 billion development of the FA-18 Hornet fighter jet. One of the critical success factors mentioned on the project was creating an atmosphere of trust and accurate data flow on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to look at the organization, leadership and project environment. This is not a methodology issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T15:29:30.917" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8286" CreationDate="2012-12-20T17:47:12.537" Score="9" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Classic X/Y Problem&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the comments, the OP elaborated on his project environment. He said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[T]he major problem with our project is not that it is either big in KLOC/FP or &quot;complex&quot;...The problem is that the project is more like a &quot;bowl of paperclips&quot; more than a bunch of independent features - you can't touch any feature or issue without impacting most of other aspects, subsystems and issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I understand it, the issue is that the project tasks, milestones, features, and objectives are so interdependent that any change or deviation requires a refactoring of the entire project plan and/or schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, this is an X/Y problem because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;X:&lt;/strong&gt; The underlying issue is either architectural or conceptual---possibly both. Perhaps the work hasn't been decomposed sufficiently, or sub-projects have not been designed to be sufficiently self-contained. Either way, the issue appears to be entanglement between tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Y:&lt;/strong&gt; The OP has determined that a different methodology will solve the underlying issue, and therefore asks &quot;[A]re there any PM methodologies that work well on big projects?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Solve for X Instead&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on my understanding of the root cause, I would recommend refactoring the project plan rather than redesigning the project management process. Specifically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hold a review of the project's architectural assumptions. See if the architecture can be refactored to be more loosely-coupled.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Revisit the work breakdown structure, and see if tasks can be decomposed sufficiently to avoid dependencies between milestones.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider refactoring the project plan into sub-projects that are less co-dependent. This is non-trivial if the project has already been designed as a &quot;bowl of paperclips,&quot; but is certainly worth at least a thought experiment to see if it can be done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Invite your technical team to discuss ways to reduce technical or process dependencies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also consider treating the heavy inter-task dependencies as project risk. Document the risk appropriately, report the risks upstream to senior management, and let them either accept the risk or authorize necessary risk-mitigation measures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, if all else fails, set a benchmark for when the project is so far out of tolerance that it should be recommended for termination. While it isn't usually the project manager's role to authorize pulling the plug, it is certainly within your scope to identify the limits of risk and capital expenditure that the organization is willing to tolerate. Once that information is known, you can manage against that metric, and recommend a timely early termination (if failure is inevitable) in order to save the company money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T17:47:12.537" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8298" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-12-21T17:01:14.160" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-12-21T17:01:14.160" LastActivityDate="2012-12-21T17:01:14.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8299" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-12-21T17:01:14.160" Score="0" Body="Question about personal skills in project management." OwnerUserId="1197" LastEditorUserId="1197" LastEditDate="2012-12-21T17:18:05.873" LastActivityDate="2012-12-21T17:18:05.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8300" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-12-21T17:06:30.807" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project stakeholders are entities within or outside an organization which sponsor a project or have an interest or a gain upon a successful completion of a project or may have a positive or negative influence in the project completion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1197" LastEditorUserId="1197" LastEditDate="2012-12-21T17:23:43.547" LastActivityDate="2012-12-21T17:23:43.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8301" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-12-21T17:06:30.807" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for questions about communicating with stakeholders, managing stakeholder expectations and interactions, or integrating stakeholders into the project management process." OwnerUserId="1197" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-12-22T00:51:59.263" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T00:51:59.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8302" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-12-21T17:07:42.153" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Open Source as a development model promotes a universal access via a free license to a product's design or blueprint, and universal redistribution of that design or blueprint, including subsequent improvements to it by anyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Links&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki article about Open Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1197" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-02T19:50:14.193" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T19:50:14.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8303" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-12-21T17:07:42.153" Score="0" Body="Questions about project management in open source projects." OwnerUserId="1197" LastEditorUserId="1197" LastEditDate="2012-12-21T17:18:49.207" LastActivityDate="2012-12-21T17:18:49.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8304" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-12-21T17:09:49.177" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Waterfall model is a sequential design process, in which progress is seen as flowing steadily downwards through the phases of analysis, design and testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1197" LastEditorUserId="1197" LastEditDate="2012-12-21T17:23:55.027" LastActivityDate="2012-12-21T17:23:55.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8305" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-12-21T17:09:49.177" Score="0" Body="Waterfall model is a sequential design process, in which progress is seen as flowing steadily downwards through the phases of analysis, design and testing." OwnerUserId="1197" LastEditorUserId="1197" LastEditDate="2012-12-21T17:23:57.820" LastActivityDate="2012-12-21T17:23:57.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8306" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-12-21T17:27:45.630" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-12-21T17:27:45.630" LastActivityDate="2012-12-21T17:27:45.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8307" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-12-21T17:27:45.630" Score="0" Body="This tag was originally intended to mark questions about the project manager role. However, you are encouraged to use more-specific tags instead." OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-12-22T00:52:15.193" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T00:52:15.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8308" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-12-21T17:33:33.377" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-12-21T17:33:33.377" LastActivityDate="2012-12-21T17:33:33.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8309" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-12-21T17:33:33.377" Score="0" Body="For questions about identifying, documenting, communicating, or mitigating risks to a project's schedule." OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-12-21T17:52:45.573" LastActivityDate="2012-12-21T17:52:45.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8134" CreationDate="2012-12-22T20:55:48.153" Score="1" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Wireframes and Prototypes&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that the presenting issue here is that you haven't clearly identified (or perhaps effectively communicated) the purpose of your wireframe phase. In my personal experience, wireframes are most useful for asking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this user-visible feature set sort of what you had in mind?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer is yes, then you have a starting point for discussions about cost and complexity. If the answer is no, then you need to revisit your specifications or assumptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Possible Phase Transitions from Wireframing&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a clearly-defined wireframe phase, you shouldn't be jumbling it in with your development. The &lt;em&gt;output&lt;/em&gt; of each wireframe phase should be &lt;em&gt;input&lt;/em&gt; to another milestone. For example, a wireframe phase may lead to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another wireframe iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A return to requirements-gathering.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The start of a level-of-effort estimation phase.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Directly to a development iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these are valid things to do, but I'd personally try to avoid going directly from a wireframe iteration to a development iteration without a distinct estimation phase that takes the wireframe as input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Estimation and Communication Are Essential&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only the development team can provide accurate estimates. The goal is to use a client-approved wireframe as input to that estimation process. That allows you to have an honest discussion with the client about the trade-offs involved in design decisions, and to give them sliders to control time, quality, and scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are your main concerns, along with how estimation and communication can help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Features are in conflict with specifications with other features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conflicts in the specification should be clearly communicated. You don't have to &quot;prove&quot; them; you're offering a professional opinion, and hopefully giving the client the benefit of your expert advice in how to avoid the conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Features will result in poor user experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, a client is usually paying for your expertise. Requirements-gathering and wireframing aren't meant to be one-way conversations; they are &lt;em&gt;discussions&lt;/em&gt; to iron out specifications and expectations. If you think a given feature will have a negative impact, discuss it with the client and document the assumptions and results of the conversation---perhaps even add it to your project's risk log if you have one.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Features are half-baked ideas that I know will not work if explored further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is part of estimation and planning. Again, communication is key. If an idea will be hard or expensive to implement, your post-wireframe estimations should reflect that. If an idea is &quot;half-baked&quot; (in the sense of being incomplete) then it needs to be sent back through the process for refinement. If you simply disagree with the decision, then provide constructive feedback and let the client make an informed business decision.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Poor Change Control is the X/Y Problem Here&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[C]lients will complain how &quot;such and such&quot; is not user friendly, and throw a tantrum until we volunteer our time to upgrade their product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is your real issue. Everything else is trying to solve the problem without addressing the underlying cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your process is transparent, iterative, and remains closely-engaged with your client throughout the project, then they will be able to make decisions and necessary corrections along the way. They are in the driver's seat; if they send you down a wrong path, it's their decision---but one they can easily correct in the next iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you treat specifications, wireframes, and other inputs as inviolate one-way communications, then you need to transfer all residual risk to the client. This is usually a contractual issue, and involves a lot of documentation and client sign-offs. This will usually prevent the need for unpaid re-work, but certainly won't build trust or rapport with a client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, the issue you're dealing with (e.g. how to avoid working for free) is a contractual change control issue. To fix the real problem, not just its symptoms, you need to inspect your contracting process, as well as how your company wants to handle change requests and how well it educates the client on the agreed-upon change control process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T20:55:48.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8311" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8352" CreationDate="2012-12-22T22:11:02.003" Score="7" ViewCount="709" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working in a new environment where a typical project consist of a “slogan” provided by management and a team of engineers who delivers a product that matches the slogan. The company doesn't have any R&amp;amp;D process and the consequence is that the development becomes ad-hoc and mistakes are made. Examples of mistakes;&#xA; - The slogan is misinterpret – R&amp;amp;D delivers the wrong product&#xA; - Development starts without requirement analysis – we might end up in&#xA;   a dead end due to technical problems.&#xA; - Technical documentation is fragmented and inconsistent. As there is&#xA;   no development process in place the documentation is also ad-hoc;&#xA;   there is no requirement documentation except from the slogans and the&#xA;   technical documentation is fragmented and in various formats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a small business mentality in a company that just became a little too big.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The good thing is that one of the tasks assigned to me is to address these problems. We are currently less than 10 engineers (mechanics, electronics and software) but I would expect us to grow in the years to come so I would like to make a serious attempt to do something good. I have been thinking about this for quite some time and I would like to apply the following SDLC to on the organization;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Formal phases (startup, planning, development, Verification &amp;amp;&#xA;Release, Follow up).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reviews for phase transitions where each phase needs to have its&#xA;deliveries in place&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management signoff for phase transition and release approval&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk analysis and risk management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Documentation plans where the documentation is part of a document&#xA;structure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Regular meetings with the members of the project team and the stake&#xA;holders&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I manage the pain of transition? Is it even wise to try to apply something so rigorous on an inexperienced organization? I don’t want to scare my coworkers or the management. So I don’t really know how to handle this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’m currently leaning at writing a SDLC that describes the process, educate the development team and that apply this process on one new project and then take from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MY BACKGROUND&#xA;I have been working in a regulated multi-disciplinary engineering environment for almost 15 years and I'm used to strict project management. We were using a project management model which was based on 5 phases; (0)Startup, (1)Planning, (2)Development, (3)Verification &amp;amp; Release, (4)Follow up where the permission to move to the next phase required that you had fulfilled the deliveries for the phase. My main profession is software engineering as a software Lead, but I have also had responsibilities as sub-project manager and Scrum-master. When we were using agile methodologies for the software team we used them in phase 2 and 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5096" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-10-31T13:16:27.480" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T13:16:27.480" Title="How do I improve the development process when the only 'spec' is a &quot;slogan&quot; from management" Tags="&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;process-engineering&gt;&lt;process-improvement&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8312" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-12-23T15:43:37.300" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions about human resources with ONLY project management issues. If your question is about general human resources, it is probably belongs on Workplace SE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1197" LastEditorUserId="1197" LastEditDate="2012-12-23T17:06:22.587" LastActivityDate="2012-12-23T17:06:22.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8313" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-12-23T15:43:37.300" Score="0" Body="Questions about human resources with ONLY project management issues. If your question is about general human resources, it is probably belongs on Workplace SE." OwnerUserId="1197" LastEditorUserId="1197" LastEditDate="2012-12-23T17:05:45.223" LastActivityDate="2012-12-23T17:05:45.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8314" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-12-23T15:51:31.310" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions about recruitment process for project managers related positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1197" LastEditorUserId="1197" LastEditDate="2012-12-23T17:37:15.423" LastActivityDate="2012-12-23T17:37:15.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8315" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-12-23T15:51:31.310" Score="0" Body="Questions about recruitment process for project managers related positions." OwnerUserId="1197" LastEditorUserId="1197" LastEditDate="2012-12-23T17:06:03.227" LastActivityDate="2012-12-23T17:06:03.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8316" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-12-23T15:55:00.607" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Wikipedia Definition&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WBS is a deliverable oriented decomposition of a project into smaller components. It defines and groups a project's discrete work elements in a way that helps organize and define the total work scope of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Related Links&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_breakdown_structure&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_breakdown_structure&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1197" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-10-31T13:42:33.573" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T13:42:33.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8317" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-12-23T15:55:00.607" Score="0" Body="For questions about designing or documenting a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)." OwnerUserId="1197" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-10-31T13:42:33.573" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T13:42:33.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8318" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-12-23T15:58:46.767" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The sprint backlog is the list of work the development team must address during the next sprint. It's commonly known with Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1197" LastEditorUserId="1197" LastEditDate="2012-12-23T17:05:40.497" LastActivityDate="2012-12-23T17:05:40.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8319" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-12-23T15:58:46.767" Score="0" Body="The sprint backlog is the list of work the development team must address during the next sprint. It's commonly known with Scrum." OwnerUserId="1197" LastEditorUserId="1197" LastEditDate="2012-12-23T17:06:10.903" LastActivityDate="2012-12-23T17:06:10.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8320" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-12-23T16:06:33.537" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;DO NOT USE THİS TAG! This tag refers to Project Management FAQ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1197" LastEditorUserId="1197" LastEditDate="2012-12-23T17:37:24.843" LastActivityDate="2012-12-23T17:37:24.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8321" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-12-23T16:06:33.537" Score="0" Body="DO NOT USE THİS TAG! This tag refers to Project Management FAQ." OwnerUserId="1197" LastEditorUserId="1197" LastEditDate="2012-12-23T17:37:20.837" LastActivityDate="2012-12-23T17:37:20.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8322" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-23T17:03:49.970" Score="12" ViewCount="1974" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a clear benefit to separating &lt;em&gt;issue&lt;/em&gt; from &lt;em&gt;task&lt;/em&gt; when working in larger teams?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When working with sizable teams of developers in addition to a number of external clients, QA, and any other form of testers for the development of a software application, it's only logical that an accessible issue tracking system is used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Traditionally, all issues are entered into a tracking system as exactly that - an &quot;Issue&quot;. These &quot;Issues&quot; would then be divided primarily by a &lt;code&gt;Type&lt;/code&gt; field on the issue which defines whether it is a &lt;code&gt;Bug&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;Feature&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;Task&lt;/code&gt; or otherwise. Generally, the terminology used for this is defined by the tracking system that is being used and so couldn't be changed for example from &quot;Issue&quot; to &quot;Task&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This leaves developers, project managers, external users and QA all working from the same queue of &quot;Issues&quot;, with all of them entering into the same queue only separating by a field on this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I am trying to envisage here is a system that separates between the concept of an &quot;Issue&quot; and a &quot;Task&quot; on a core level. That is, to redefine the usage of these terms in Project Management Software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Issue&lt;/code&gt; - An unscheduled article / question / comment relating to a project that was entered via a third party, be it a tester from QA or a client experiencing an issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Task&lt;/code&gt; - A verified item that has been scheduled by the Project Manager or simply taken on by a developer. This can be seen as a &lt;code&gt;Work Item&lt;/code&gt; that is to have work performed on it. It may or may not be a verified &lt;code&gt;Issue&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is that most third-party queries/requests would be entered as an &lt;code&gt;Issue&lt;/code&gt;, and then migrated into a &lt;code&gt;Task&lt;/code&gt; and subsequently scheduled and assigned by the Project Manager before work is completed. This will allow for clear separation of assignments, developers are able to stick purely to a &lt;code&gt;Task&lt;/code&gt; queue to be able to find and complete their work, and Project Managers / support assistants (as an example) are able to use the &lt;code&gt;Issue&lt;/code&gt; queue to be able to clarify issues fully before converting them to committed &lt;code&gt;Task&lt;/code&gt;s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5259" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-12-26T14:55:47.990" LastActivityDate="2012-12-30T18:31:28.680" Title="Is there a clear benefit to separating &quot;issues&quot; from &quot;tasks&quot; when working in larger teams?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8323" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-24T13:40:11.027" Score="3" ViewCount="221" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have MS Project 2010 server.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need to add view or report (whatever fits best), and it may be implemented on client or server (whatever fits best).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need a crosstab report where Resources will be on one axis, Weeks on another and project list in cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Result should look like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;                | Alice      | Bob  | Jim  |&#xA;--------------------------------------------&#xA;Dec  3 - Dec  9 | Prj1       | Prj1 |      |&#xA;Dec 10 - Dec 16 | Prj1       | Prj2 | Prj2 | &#xA;Dec 17 - Dec 23 | Prj1, Prj2 | Prj2 | Prj2 |&#xA;Dec 24 - Dec 30 | Prj2       | Prj2 | Prj3 |&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it is acceptable if resources will be vertical, and weeks horizontal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I do this? I tried to setup custom resource assignments view on server but did not succ&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe that was discussed already, but I did not find any answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5261" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-01-16T22:40:20.947" LastActivityDate="2019-01-16T22:40:20.947" Title="MS Project: Week, Resource, Project crosstab view" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8322" CreationDate="2012-12-24T21:29:26.453" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before going into a system that offers the segregation between a task and an issue, would like to make sure the users are very comfortable with the terminology and, more specifically, when using one or another. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you pointed, systems usually use the same nomenclature for identifying something outstanding. I believe that's mostly because users &lt;em&gt;don't care&lt;/em&gt; how IT will call it. So, as long as the system's users clearly know when identifying something as a task or an issue, you'll have trouble further down the road. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possible scenario is that tickets will be mostly submitted by persons who clearly know the difference. In this case, why not using a piece of information to differentiate tickets? In our case, we agreed that when the field &quot;due date&quot; is populated, it means that's a task that's going into prod, to segregate to other tickets not prioritized yet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe, the efforts to change the system in place to another that offers the segregation between task and issues may not pay off. Bear in mind thattthere's always the learning curve for any new systems and if you have your client entering tickets, may not be nice to burden them into a new system &quot;just to make things easy to IT&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, you could pick any field your team isn't very used to use and agree that that field will be the &quot;task identifier&quot; (a field that can only be seen by the IT preferably). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Back to the system question :&lt;/strong&gt; jira could fulfill your need. But keep in your mind that such differentiation is more cultural than systematic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-12-24T21:29:26.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8311" CreationDate="2012-12-25T10:06:59.343" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Requirements gathering&lt;/strong&gt; is part of the manager's job, and how it is done depends on both the company culture / current processes, the experience of the manager in the specific field of the project, team members' experience, etc. If you want to introduce more formal planning part, start small. Start with gathering the minimal set of requirements your team can start working with, and try to gather as much information as needed while the team is working. Explain to your managers why some information is critical in the beginning, or plan to have any bit of information changed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the current process is &quot;slogan to product&quot;, it seems it's expected from the managers and team members to be very experienced in the field. Invest your free time in learning the business. At the same time, explain to the managers that requiring such experience for doing the job doesn't scale well, so introducing some steps in the planning will help bringing projects up to speed with new engineers and managers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2340" LastActivityDate="2012-12-25T10:06:59.343" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8322" CreationDate="2012-12-25T21:09:58.013" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think we're trying to solve the same problem, that being the challenge of prioritizing different types of work by categorizing at the entry phase or at least very soon after entry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've worked with systems that have had a single issue type (&quot;bug&quot;) to a current Jira implementation with three (&quot;deliverable&quot;, &quot;task&quot; and &quot;bug&quot;). The one-type system resulted in lots of weird labels and documenting standards to distinguish &quot;bugs&quot; (unplanned work except in the general sense) and &quot;planned work&quot;. The three issue-type system has evolved over five years and suits my organization's needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deliverable: Formal project work, it's estimated, detailed, has completion tests and a formal review/acceptance step. Typically rolls up to some kind of contractual obligation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task: Less formal, no review step. Basically &quot;to do&quot; items often entered by developers themselves. Exists due to a desire to capture otherwise unknown work in the form of notepad lists, outlook tasks, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bug: Typically entered by QA testers. Reviewed (we call it triage) and prioritized for action relative to it's severity. A severe bug may take precedence over a deliverable, a very minor bug could wait in the backlog for a long time. A bug fix is verified by the reporter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that both deliverables and bugs have review/verification steps. The difference between a deliverable and a bug is that deliverables aren't broken yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5051" LastActivityDate="2012-12-25T21:09:58.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8322" CreationDate="2012-12-26T03:43:09.260" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The idea is that most third-party queries/requests would be entered as an Issue, and then migrated into a Task and subsequently scheduled and assigned by the Project Manager&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you're referring to here is a &lt;em&gt;state change&lt;/em&gt; not a separate item. You need a way to capture the initial state of the item as an issue, and then a way to change that state to indicate that it has been viewed and approved by the PM's and is ready (or has been) scheduled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In TFS this is simple, when new base type work items (name varies depending on template) the state is something like &quot;proposed&quot; or &quot;pending&quot;. Once it has been approved the state is changed to &quot;approved&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This method ensures transparent reporting and also that work items don't get lost. If you used two completely separate work items you could easily run into issues where the item failed to migrate properly. Each state has it's own method of closing, so a work item that hasn't been approved could be rejected, but a work item that has been approved can be completed or canceled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastActivityDate="2012-12-26T03:43:09.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8322" CreationDate="2012-12-26T14:19:57.690" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is a great question, and I appreciate the detailed context. I agree with @aclear16 that this more a state change than two separate trackable entities.  I think what you're really dealing with is fundamental change control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've defined &quot;Issue&quot; as some input from a third party that indicates a desire for change.  Logically that change request should be analyzed to discover what impact it has on scope/schedule/cost/quality/etc. Based on that analysis the PM develops a work package to address the issue - what you're calling a &quot;Task&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tasks should be submitted to the relevant stakeholders (change control board) for prioritization and resourcing.  (sometimes the CCB does validation and a separate entity does prioritization and resourcing).   At that point the schedule is changed to include the task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2012-12-26T14:19:57.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8322" CreationDate="2012-12-26T15:29:36.467" Score="2" Body="&lt;h3&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't conflate project inputs with commitments for deliverables. This appears to be the underlying X/Y problem that's being addressed by the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The Problem&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Traditionally, all issues are entered into a tracking system as exactly that - an &quot;Issue&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem, as I see it, is that your tools dictate work-flow, and you are trying to differentiate between uncontrolled process input (issues) and controlled, ordered process deliverables (tasks).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the extent that you've already defined a distinction between the two, there's no actual problem. The problem, as such, is that you haven't modified your work-flow accordingly, and that to some extent you're constraining your work-flow based on your existing tool-chain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There also seems to be a missing process step. Specifically, the process where issues are triaged and assigned, prioritized, and scheduled---or not, as the organization's needs dictate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Potential Solutions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no inherent value in differentiating between &quot;issues&quot; and &quot;tasks.&quot; What you really need to do is fix your process to differentiate between &quot;stuff we want to spend time and money on&quot; and &quot;stuff we don't care about.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To that end, you need to review your triage process, or create one if it doesn't exist. &lt;em&gt;Someone&lt;/em&gt; should be reviewing issues as they come in, assessing the business impact (if any), and identifying it as a deliverable if it merits the effort and resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, this would be the job of the Product Owner. The PO prioritizes the Product Backlog by identifying business value, and places the job on the backlog in a slot determined by both intrinsic importance and the dependencies of other backlog items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Leverage Your Bug-Tracking System&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you insist on remaining constrained by your current tool-chain, you still have a couple of options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use a different bucket for work that has not been triaged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is essentially a slop pile, from which the Product Owner (or equivalent) can select work to be transferred to another bucket from which work is actually assigned. Except for triage, no work is performed directly from the untriaged input bucket.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use the same bucket, but only work on triaged and appropriately-labeled issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most bug-tracking systems allow labels, prioritizing, and scheduling. If your bug-tracking system is really your project's deliverables bucket, then make sure your triage process labels work to ignore as &quot;wontfix&quot; or similar, or assigns severity levels, due dates, and milestones to the work that should be performed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, the solution is ultimately the same: &lt;strong&gt;Stop treating issues or bug requests as a commitment for specific deliverables.&lt;/strong&gt; Regardless of the format or nomenclature, your issues system is simply providing input to your process. It's up to the organization to assess value, and the responsibility of the project team to estimate effort and commit to specific tasks and milestones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-12-26T15:29:36.467" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8333" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-26T20:36:04.907" Score="33" ViewCount="3188" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work with a team of developers who are talented but often distract each other with chit-chat. They can waste hours of the day with these 20-30 minute, non-project related jam sessions. Since I am PM on many of their projects I get frustrated with the lack of focus but I'm not necessarily in the position (nor want to be) to micro-manage them or reprimand them. Currently I just kindly interrupt their chat with questions about progress on specific items. This helps them get back on track, sometimes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally the developers would have expectations that would require them to stay focused and manage their own work. I get a lot of resistance from attempting to setup benchmarks due to the nature of the current projects and management structure.  Even when I ask how long it might take to complete items (which I can complete in a very accurate time frame) I get negative feedback which indicates a desire to suppress accountability. Which incidentally facilitates a chit-chat filled work day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while I encourage the business management team to give me tools to establish clearer expectations, does anyone have a simple or clever way to keep people from overdoing the symptomatic chit-chat?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5174" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-02T14:29:02.217" LastActivityDate="2019-01-02T14:29:02.217" Title="How can I manage team distractions like chit-chat?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;micro-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8333" CreationDate="2012-12-26T21:22:50.613" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first issue you must face: Are distractions good or bad? I think this can not be answered with either a clear yes or no. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, no developer can work 8h on end and still remain sane. On a good day you get 4-6h of concentrated work. But don't think that, since they are not sitting concentrated at their desk that they are &quot;not doing work&quot;. In my experience the best ideas and insight come in down time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, morale is a very important aspect of productivity. A motivated developer can do more work in 2h than a unmotivated one in a whole day. It is important to recognized, that looking busy does not equate with &quot;working hard&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, distractions can really harm productivity. Not really in lost time, but rather in interrupted flow. No matter if it is the colleague asking about the latest trend in web technologies or the manager who wants to discuss the latest TPS report. It just takes forever to get back into sync.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding metrics may help. Without putting pressure on the developers, you can start to collect simple metrics like issues/time. This may make some healthy competition between developers about who can get the best score. &lt;strong&gt;But be very careful&lt;/strong&gt;, overdo it and people will start to game the system. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100603/0311539672.shtml&quot;&gt;Like incentives, putting pressure on people who need to do creative work, reduces their output.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end it is about having a healthy work environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5270" LastActivityDate="2012-12-26T21:22:50.613" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8333" CreationDate="2012-12-26T21:54:33.197" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question has one answer &amp;amp; one hidden question in it: &quot;overdoing the symptomatic chit-chat?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;overdoing: When is normal chit-chat become overdone?&#xA;symptomatic: Yes, you're right. This is merely a symptom. Don't try to fix the symptom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, from experience, if you worry about chit-chat and that becomes visible, they'l unconsciously do more of it :) I know, it makes no sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing that you should concentrate now is making the product more 'their product' and less 'your product'. Build on their pride, on their self-respect. Never on fear!!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, good luck! You have a bigger task ahead than the product, whatever you do... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5271" LastActivityDate="2012-12-26T21:54:33.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8333" CreationDate="2012-12-26T22:25:41.350" Score="42" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Conversation is Not &lt;em&gt;Inherently&lt;/em&gt; Disruptive&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I work with a team of developers who are talented but often distract each other with chit-chat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say they are &quot;talented but distracted.&quot; What makes you think they are talented? Why do you think they are distracted? What is your metric for determining that the team or the process is operating at a sub-optimal level? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You haven't really made a case for any of those things, except insofar as we're supposed to agree &lt;em&gt;ab initio&lt;/em&gt; that &quot;chit-chat&quot; (which has a rather pejorative connotation) is disruptive to the project. How have you determined that the team's communications style is preventing your project from succeeding?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Self-Managed Teams and the 100% Utilization Fallacy&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ideally the developers would have expectations that would require them to stay focused and manager (sic) their own work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I agree that an ideal team is self-managing, I have no knowledge of your hiring practices, corporate culture, or organizational incentives for teams to be self-managing. However, the fact that you appear to be in a role where you are tasked with managing a team that &lt;em&gt;isn't&lt;/em&gt; self-managing argues that expecting such may not be reasonable without changes to your organization or process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, &quot;staying focused&quot; is often management-speak for &quot;looking busy.&quot; As above, unless you can make the case that your team is failing to perform, it really does sound like how they behave is more important than what results they produce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, by making &quot;how&quot; an issue, you're acting contrary to the very principle of self-management you seem to want. Even if the team is truly disengaged, your time would be better spent figuring out how to engage them rather than on ways to make them &lt;em&gt;look&lt;/em&gt; engaged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developers are often odd ducks. Some developers work best in catacomb-like silence or working at 2:00am; others thrive on cross-talk and team engagement in the office. Regardless of work style, though, all developers need thinking time to be productive---more clicks on the keyboard (e.g. higher utilization) does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; lead to more throughput or higher-quality code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&quot;Accountability&quot; and Project Process&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even when I ask how long it might take to complete items (which I can complete in a very accurate time frame) I get negative feedback which indicates a desire to suppress accountability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, your conclusion isn't based on information in evidence. There may be other reasons your development team doesn't want to give hard deadlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Accountability&quot; is a buzzword for a way to shift blame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your organizational culture likes to affix blame, and projects are often late or otherwise doomed to failure, why &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; the team want to be held accountable?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Commandments from on high aren't commitments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team isn't part of the estimation or scheduling process, then they are being &quot;held accountable&quot; for delivery dates that they didn't sign up for.  Ask yourself honestly whether developer estimates are solicited and honored as a project baseline, or whether project deadlines are set outside the team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Estimates aren't commitments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a developer tells you something will probably take three days, but the job takes five, what happens in your organization? Is someone to blame? Does the developer get punished or denigrated for the mis-estimate? If so, why should they do anything other than slog onwards at whatever pace they feel is sustainable?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Commitments aren't guarantees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developers are rarely stupid. If they know something will take two weeks (due to complexity, process overhead, or organizational obstacles) and you think it will take two days, what's their incentive for giving you a different deadline? If the organization routinely cuts their estimates, and then holds them accountable, where is their incentive? If they give honest estimates, and fail to meet voluntary commitments through external impediments, does the organization expect a money-back guarantee in the form of unpaid overtime instead of trying to resolve the impediment?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if we assume that your conclusion that the team wants to avoid accountability is true, you haven't dug deeply enough into &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt;. There's clearly an organizational or process issue at work here, and solving the perceived problem isn't really addressing the root cause---or buying you anything if &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; are ultimately being &quot;held accountable&quot; for a project that is failing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What Next?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take an honest look at your organization, your project management process, and the members of your team. Try to be objective, and see if the incentives actually align with the interests of the developers. If not, start there!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Holding a Scrum-like retrospective might help, too. If the real problem you want to solve is getting honest estimates from the development team, the only people who can tell you how to get them are the members of the team. Of course, you will need to earn their trust (if honest communication hasn't been the norm), and there are no silver bullets. Still, it's one of the best tools out there: ask the people with the actual answers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are always other things you can inspect-and-adapt. Still, you need to start somewhere, and holding honest and open dialogs is almost always the very best place to do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-12-26T22:25:41.350" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8333" CreationDate="2012-12-26T22:28:56.043" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I second @sqreept opinion (+1!), you're trying to deal with the &lt;em&gt;symptom&lt;/em&gt; rather than with the &lt;em&gt;cause&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, my opinion below only represents a few between all possible scenarios. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Now, the scenario:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;my team is chit-chatting a little bit too much&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why?&lt;/strong&gt; Because they know they have loose deadlines to meet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why?&lt;/strong&gt; Because developers tend to be reluctant to provide estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why?&lt;/strong&gt; Because they don't want to get accountable for dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;OR&lt;/strong&gt; they don't have good specs, and then the team feels allowed to add a huge padding to their estimates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;OR&lt;/strong&gt; the specs aren't &lt;em&gt;considered&lt;/em&gt; good enough by the Dev team, who refuses to work under a tighter deadline for ellegedly bad specs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;OR&lt;/strong&gt; there's a culture in place that allows them to behave this way&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, answering your question, you'll need to assess the causes for this behavior and deal with the cause, not with the symptom. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind that no one works productively 8h straight, though. If you believe the chit-chatting is CLEARLY impacting in the overall performance of the project, you may need to act. But don't try to push your team too hard, because it simply won't work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A side note:&lt;/strong&gt; Asking &lt;em&gt;how's the progress&lt;/em&gt; to clearly ends up with a chit chat may sound rude. You're trying to deal with something &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; consider a &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; problem without facing it directly. If, after assessing the scenario you really believe it's a problem, be candid with your team and let them expose their opinions. Side actions (or side questions, in this case) won't add much value, as your demonstrating you're not facing the real problem. Step up and solve the problem (if there's one) without going round and round.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2012-12-26T22:28:56.043" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8339" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8350" CreationDate="2012-12-26T23:05:30.483" Score="6" ViewCount="524" Body="&lt;p&gt;What can I do as a project manager to ensure new team members are quickly brought up to speed within the project team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team is multidisciplinary, having mobile software engineers, UI &amp;amp; UX designers, front-end and back-end web developers, and testers. Team members are coming in fast; they need training to get used to our systems and processes, but they also need to feel they're in the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In managing a project the most important factor is to have people working on the project like it is their own. With dispersed teams that don't have a common workplace, and that may never meet, that purpose is hindered by communication issues, mistrust, cultural differences, you name it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I approach this issue from a project management perspective?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2012-12-27T21:59:10.917" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T22:07:35.690" Title="What should a project manager do to on-board remote team members efficiently?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;process&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8333" CreationDate="2012-12-26T23:22:24.950" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know why aclear16 deleted his answer. His answer is perfect. There are a ton of positives with idle, unproductive time by way of teaming. It matures the team and you want that. I'd even go as far to say that, if you are running behind, let the social time continue because the positive aspects of that will help, not hurt. And likely the down time was not the cause. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you try to squash it, you run a far greater risk of destroying the teaming and alienating yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are feeling is you don't have control of your team--thay don't even have the decency of looking busy when you are around. Meet your insecurity. Get over it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-12-26T23:22:24.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8339" CreationDate="2012-12-27T00:59:08.147" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer : the most efficient way that I know to train and integrate a new team member is &lt;strong&gt;Pairing&lt;/strong&gt; (pair-programming, I don't know to what extend this can be applied testers etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With pair-programming, new members will be in the team right from the start, they will learn how your organization works from the inside and begin to do their job really fast; but you might have to make sure that the team is ready for pair-programming and accept it before to try it with a new recruit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4071" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T00:59:08.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8344" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8349" CreationDate="2012-12-27T15:15:19.977" Score="13" ViewCount="3657" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have had limited exposure to PMs, and the last one who was in her 60s used to always refer to her previous experiences with: &quot;At the end of the project, I was the most hated person, but the project got done.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She was a very experienced having done two SAP implementation, and many projects in the banking industry. She also mentioned that after a big project she'd leave on a good severance package until the next project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am planning on moving more towards a PM role and currently as a tech lead my experience has been very positive maintaining very good relationships with other devs. I don't really want to lose that. Does it mean that moving towards a PM role will create more antagonisms with other devs? I've read parts of the Guide to the PMBOK, and the CompTIA Project+ manuals, but nowhere are mentioned the emerge of adverse relationships. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does becoming a PM mean that I will deteriorate my relationships with other devs, or am I drawing too much from one person?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3208" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-12-29T04:39:43.447" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T21:13:58.287" Title="Are PMs normally hated?" Tags="&lt;relationships&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8344" CreationDate="2012-12-27T15:34:10.143" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, ignore her. There is no reason to be hated after a project. Mutual trust and respect are what you are aiming for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the thing about the limitations of using experience to try to determine how good someone was. The worst of the worst will have experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T15:34:10.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8344" CreationDate="2012-12-27T15:45:15.303" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't believe that PM's are normally hated; I can't cite any evidence to support that notion. PMI has lots of evidence that indicates that strong PM practices are associated with successful projects, and all other things being equal, people prefer to work on successful projects than on failures.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I admired the good PM's I worked for even before I knew what a PM was.  I worked with a couple of very effective PM's. When I started studying the PMBOK (et. al.), I recognized &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; they were effective, and why I was glad to have them on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can be effective as a PM by being a jerk.  I'd argue that you're more likely to be an effective PM if you aren't a jerk - if you communicate to your project team the value you bring.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it is possible that the dev's are going to hate anyone who isn't a dev; there are devs who believe that all non-coders are subhuman. Nothing you can do about that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T15:45:15.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8344" CreationDate="2012-12-27T17:49:15.303" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I agree with David and Mark that trust and respect &lt;strong&gt;should&lt;/strong&gt; characterize the team's attitude toward you, must warn you that by becoming a PM you will gain more visibility; you will be judged more severely - such is human nature, as always, it's &quot;Us vs. Them&quot; and &quot;we&quot; get some slack while &quot;they&quot; are censured for the same mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately, as a technical lead you're &lt;em&gt;at least&lt;/em&gt; as competent as your developers; don't let the margin of competence erode until your professionalism as a PM becomes the source of respect of your colleagues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the lady whose experience you cite, she &lt;strong&gt;may&lt;/strong&gt; have a point. Not about &quot;hatred&quot; since this is a feeling engendered by lack of leadership and &quot;slave driver&quot; management, but about putting the project to the forefront of your priorities - getting it to completion may involve stepping on a few egos, for sure...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is more, you have to learn from her experience - was she fair or arbitrary? Did she practice what she preached? What negative personal traits did she have? etc. etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4766" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T17:49:15.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="531" CreationDate="2012-12-27T19:34:42.817" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't see it as being bad manners. I also don't see it being a safe way to track whether or not somebody actually read the email. Personally, when I get the message asking &quot;send read receipt&quot; I always click no. I do this because regardless of whether or not I've read the email, I may not have fully digested it, prepared a response, or set tasks based on the content of the email. I don't want the sender to think I've done all that just because I've &lt;em&gt;opened&lt;/em&gt; the email. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's critical that the recipients read the email, drop a line on the bottom something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;May I kindly ask that you confirm receipt of this email and provide feedback where appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way, the recipient proves they've read the email by replying, and you're also putting the metaphoric ball in their court. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I receive an email with a line as such, I flag it, task it, prioritize it, whatever it, before I reply. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, If I'm the client, I'm even less inclined to return a read receipt, especially if the email has been sat in my inbox for hours (or days). Do I really want the sender to realize I don't read their emails instantly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4342" LastEditorUserId="4342" LastEditDate="2012-12-27T19:40:11.883" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T19:40:11.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8344" CreationDate="2012-12-27T19:46:05.947" Score="13" Body="&lt;h3&gt;People Who Add Real Value Aren't Hated&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good project managers are generally liked by the team as a whole, and by the organization in general. This is not only because they get things done, but because they act as &lt;em&gt;facilitators&lt;/em&gt; for communications between parts of the organization such as stakeholders, management, and the development team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, the best project managers aren't just paper-pushers. They foster teamwork and cooperation, champion process change within the organization, and remove impediments that negatively impact those associated with a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Avoid Being Hated By...&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot;&gt;Valuing individuals and interactions over processes and tools.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensuring that stakeholders and developers are educated about the project management process, and are able to see how it benefits them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not treating the development team as fungible resources, or stakeholders as obstructions or obstacles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Making your methodology and its metrics both honest and transparent. This includes process failures, too!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People tend to act in their own self-interest. Projects where the management process is in the self-interest of the participants leads to engagement and appreciation; projects where the process leads to disenfranchisement or depersonalization may still be technical successes, but will inevitably be culturally toxic to the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T19:46:05.947" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8339" CreationDate="2012-12-27T21:50:05.377" Score="3" Body="&lt;h3&gt;The Project Management Perspective is Process-Oriented&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project management is about shepherding process. As such, implementation details such as XP practices or training are (at best) tangential to the role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; things you can promote at the project level. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make on-boarding a defined process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make the development team responsible for designing and implementing the on-boarding process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work with the development team to identify metrics and milestones for on-boarding.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agree on a &quot;definition of done&quot; for the completion of the on-boarding process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Enable success, but fail early when (not if) on-boarding is occasionally not successful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Why the Details Don't Matter&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specific implementation details will vary based on project requirements, organizational culture, team composition, and (most important of all) the personalities of those already on the team. That makes prescribing a generic &quot;best practice&quot; almost useless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a project perspective, the focus on the entrance and exit criteria for the on-boarding process is what's most important. For example, the project might:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Want all new developers to be competent to handle routine bug tickets, with deeper mastery of the code base reserved for &quot;down the road&quot; somewhere.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Want initial on-boarding to be completed in six weeks or less.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Want some way to know if the on-boarding process was successful or unsuccessful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Want a feedback mechanism to inspect-and-adapt the on-boarding process to make it more efficient.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On one project I managed, the on-boarding process included daily pair-programming focused on unit tests, which is often an excellent way for a new programmer to understand the underlying assumptions, assertions, and expectations that an application has. The team considered on-boarding successfully completed when the new hire could turn an uncomplicated SEV-3 ticket into a &lt;em&gt;failing&lt;/em&gt; unit test within 48-72 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your shop doesn't do unit testing, resists pair programming, or has some other metric for deeming on-boarding to be complete, then you will obviously need a different process and a different set of procedures. The people who are best able to identify those processes and procedures are the development team itself, so why not let them do what they do best?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on tracking project performance and the exit criteria for the on-boarding process. Don't try to do the development team's job for them. At the end of the day, integrating a new team member may be a project process, but it's inherently the development team's responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T21:50:05.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8339" CreationDate="2012-12-27T22:07:35.690" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My experience as a developer is - never underestimate meeting in real life.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After meeting my remote team members in real life for the very first time my interaction with the team members changed drastically. After all it is very common with team building activities when forming new teams, the rationale is that out of office activities will improve the communication within the team. The remote team members are not only forced to communicate over a telephone of telepresence but it will also isolate them from the day to day chit-chat the is so crucial in forming a team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other option is to work with what you got and therefor giving isolated tasks to the remote team enabling them to form a sub team of their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5096" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T22:07:35.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8311" CreationDate="2012-12-27T22:50:32.573" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I understand the question, and if you allow me some humor, you want to know if it is ok to change a pseudo-chaotic (non-)process into a highly bureaucratic PMBOKful one at once. Based on my experience the answer is &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;, for several reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team is not trained in such a heavy process and it will take a long time before they are efficient. Not that they are not aware of the problem, but they have been freestyling for a while and it might be hard for them. You probably can't count on them to train the new members on the process, making this team like a completely new team somehow.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You don't know - and cannot know - what the best process is for this particular situation yet. Nothing personal here. I really think no-one can find the best process/methodology/whatever on a paper, without trying anything.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As you are (rather) new in this company you might experience big difficulties to have your big process accepted by the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Trying to apply a process that worked somewhere else as-is is probably a mistake. Nothing personal here neither since this is a pretty common misunderstanding in occidental culture that does not exist in Japanese culture for example. We want big results right now. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pm4fQRl72k&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;We want it all and we want it now&lt;/a&gt;, so we apply the &quot;how&quot; without understanding the &quot;why&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You might sound like a grumpy old man : &quot;In my time we would have done foobar...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team is probably very agile-minded : no process means that things can be changed whenever the stakeholders want. Of course too frequent change requests are annoying, but you should not be too strict neither.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The management is probably very agile-minded too. They won't accept a process where they must give all the requirements from the beginning (which is impossible by the way), whereas they used to be able to change everything for free.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your situation I would recommend implementing a &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;kaizen&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;-driven improvement. Have the team think about the current process (there must be the shadow of something, right?). A manager should be here too. Together make a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_stream_mapping&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;value-stream mapping&lt;/a&gt; of what you do now and try to find out what the main problem is and how to fix it. Of course you will keep in mind your target process but don't be too hasty. Instead try to make everybody involved into the process of changing the process, after all they know that there is a problem with the current situation. Let the new process run for some time and repeat the whole thing in a try-learn-improve style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side-note I'd like to mention that I once was in a similar situation and decided to implement &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_%28development%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt;. You should have a look at it as it could open new perspectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4071" LastEditorUserId="4071" LastEditDate="2012-12-28T11:34:31.753" LastActivityDate="2012-12-28T11:34:31.753" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8344" CreationDate="2012-12-28T08:52:57.587" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a chance of deterioration of relationships with other developers if you are now 'managing' the work of the same developers whom you have had earlier 'lead' as a technical lead. It also depends on your current relationship with the team and how they perceive you now as a 'manager' and they will now compare you with your earlier role as a technical lead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But imagine if you were asked to manage a project with a completely new set of people, then it all depends on you on how you bring all the people in the project to work cohesively as a team. There could be some team members (for e.g. enterprise architects) who will have more experience than you and will be needed to report status to you as you are the project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it (project management) all boils down to how to manage various stakeholders to work towards a common goal (the project) and your skills of managing technology might not be something you can completely count on when you are a project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes, in some cases you will be required to act tough with some team members to keep them from jeopardizing the project and this will definitely deteriorate relationships with those people. But please also note that these instances will be few. A good project manager will also need to act in a transactional mode and should not permanently burn bridges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A successful manager will ensure that his team does not have any roadblocks in doing their tasks and will step in to make sure that the project is successfully completed with the required quality, in the time planned and does not go over budget. A successful manager will manage risks very well and sometimes will be almost invisible to the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5289" LastActivityDate="2012-12-28T08:52:57.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8344" CreationDate="2012-12-28T10:31:12.643" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adding to the arguments already mentioned by others, I think this depends on several factors and overall — organizational culture has a significant impact on how PMs are perceived.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are places where it's &quot;more OK&quot; to be against the Project Manager than elsewhere (it's &lt;em&gt;that guy&lt;/em&gt; who's poking his nose into everything — from one point of view). By the same token, an organization might have capacity problems, the tendency towards 100% utilization (effectiveness myth) — expect the relations between you and the team to be more tense over there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, there are projects where out of the three — goal, team, individual — you absolutely must put more pressure on the former (or so it seems).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With time, everything seems to be like a tool, even the way you build the relationships with your team members (makes one feel uncomfortable?). You learn to adapt to the specific purpose and context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2142" LastActivityDate="2012-12-28T10:31:12.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8311" CreationDate="2012-12-28T17:01:23.393" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heartily agree with Matthias in his suggestion for a Kaizen driven improvement process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You indicated that there won't be too much push back from the team when implementing you SDLC, but you do need to get buy-in from your stakeholders as you implement the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend that you take several steps to build a strong process with the team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bring in a very general, broad set of steps that's not very rigid. This way the management and the team feel like they are still flexible, and you are more likely to get stakeholder buy-in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implement this on small projects first, and solicit feedback from all team members and stakeholders. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use a Kaizen style of change implementation to have the team fill in the SDLC process. This way the team is building a solid, formal process that works for them. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll be able to guide the process toward your eventual goal, and it will be far less disruptive to the team and management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2199" LastActivityDate="2012-12-28T17:01:23.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8322" CreationDate="2012-12-30T18:31:28.680" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A task is the execution on a work package. It flows from a premeditated project planning activity (whether that be a user story or waterfall type project plan). A task is a planned activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An issue is a bug, risk or challenge that comes up during the execution. It flows from the work in progress.  An issue is an unplanned activity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether an issue becomes a task is subject to your change control and/or risk management process.  This process is where you decide when a bug becomes a task or whether a positive risk (an opportunity), for example, becomes a feature.  From there you would flow it back down to a planned activity (like building the feature or addressing the risk). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the bug comes up during testing/QA, i.e. during the development of the product, you have to decide when the software is &quot;done&quot; and off of that, base decisions for bug fixing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2012-12-30T18:31:28.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8227" CreationDate="2012-12-30T23:35:09.847" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A late answer that might only be relevant if you split projects into User Stories or equivalent.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the developer is working on building a product on top of the new API's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First let me summarize my understanding of the situation. There &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; a project. I mean there is an actual software that needs to be developed, the developer must implement a list of features into the software, the features might already have been split into stories, etc. The problem is that implementing these features requires the developer to learn a new technology. As a consequence it is quite impossible to schedule work or estimate the completion time of the project. More, there is no visibility for the stakeholders on the current research part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this situation I would recommend using &lt;strong&gt;spikes&lt;/strong&gt;. Spikes are a particular kind of story introduced in XP. They are meant to reduce risk and uncertainty in a part of the project while being themselves estimable and schedulable. They must be time-boxed. In short, there are generally two kind spikes : functional spikes and technical spikes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Functional spikes are designed to solve functional problems. For example we don't know what the best user interaction is for a story, we create a spike to prototype several possibilities before implementing the actual story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technical spikes are the kind of spike you might need. Use them when you need more technical input before implementing a story, a feature or a project. This input might be learning a new technology, choosing between several implementations, choosing between building a solution or buying it, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a product needs to be built on a new technology that we don't know about at all, I would recommend using three levels of stories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;research-inception&lt;/strong&gt; spike (maybe a real name exists). We don't even know how to learn. We don't know if there is any documentation, etc...but we know how long it will take to learn about how to learn. The goal of this spike is to gather enough information to build the second type of story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Technical spikes&lt;/strong&gt;. Now that we know how to learn, we know what precise facets we need to learn to implement the needed features. Create a spike for each one of them. You can estimate the difficulty/time of learning each of these facets based on the information gathered from the research-inception spike.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;User Stories&lt;/strong&gt;. Classical user stories can now be estimated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4071" LastEditorUserId="4071" LastEditDate="2012-12-31T01:08:22.833" LastActivityDate="2012-12-31T01:08:22.833" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1291" CreationDate="2012-12-31T13:33:52.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers are correct; I don't disagree with them.  I would like to add a couple of supplementary notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the frequency of updates depends on the size, complexity and velocity of the project, and on the priority your stakeholders give to risk management.   Yes, risk management should be continuous, but if the project is not staffed for a full time risk manager, you're going to have to fit the updates in as time permits.  Remember that the critical thing you want to do is to warn your stakeholders in time to productively intervene.  If your work packages average a week long and you've got a dozen or more in progress at any time, then monthly updates will not permit timely intervention. If your work packages extend over multiple quarters and you've got only a few in progress, monthly may work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, although I update my risk registry monthly, that's somewhat deceptive. The driver is that each risk has an urgency; I mark each risk with the date of next review.  Some high level risks (high probability, high impact) don't vary by much.  Some risks are dependent on political events that have very fixed deadlines and won't change till then. If you capture the &lt;em&gt;urgency&lt;/em&gt; of the risk as the next date on which it could potentially change, then you can review the risk registry very quickly/economically.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2012-12-31T13:33:52.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8363" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-01T03:18:45.250" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-01-01T03:18:45.250" LastActivityDate="2013-01-01T03:18:45.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8364" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-01T03:18:45.250" Score="0" Body="The training tag is used for questions about PM training methods or team member training methods. If the question is about a certification, use the certification tag." OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-01-01T03:18:45.250" LastActivityDate="2013-01-01T03:18:45.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8365" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-01T03:20:27.467" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-01-01T03:20:27.467" LastActivityDate="2013-01-01T03:20:27.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8366" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-01T03:20:27.467" Score="0" Body="The clients tag is used for questions about how to work effectively with clients, how to solve problems with clients, how to select good clients. The tag is not limited to just these categories. As long as the question is about a real problem faced with a client, use this tag." OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-01-01T03:20:27.467" LastActivityDate="2013-01-01T03:20:27.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8367" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-01T03:21:17.887" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-01-01T03:21:17.887" LastActivityDate="2013-01-01T03:21:17.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8368" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-01T03:21:17.887" Score="0" Body="The scope tag is used for questions about how to effectively manage the scope of a project. Also, use this tag for scope-reduction questions." OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-01-01T03:21:17.887" LastActivityDate="2013-01-01T03:21:17.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8369" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-01T03:24:33.813" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-01-01T03:24:33.813" LastActivityDate="2013-01-01T03:24:33.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8370" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-01T03:24:33.813" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for questions about how to use a PM methodology in a development process." OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-01-01T03:24:33.813" LastActivityDate="2013-01-01T03:24:33.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8265" CreationDate="2013-01-02T15:09:35.843" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think David's answer is on-target, although I think that more emphasis should be placed on the 'substantiate' aspect of what he said. The SWOT analysis is really an 'assessment' of the situation, and needs to be reality based. All too often the analysis ends up being a statement of what the team 'wants' themselves to be, not what they really are, and this is where the substantiation has to come into play. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;We are strong in this area.&quot; Great, show me how you came to that conclusion and see if I agree. &quot;We have this opportunity.&quot; Really, based on what, and what has to happen for that to be a reality? Don't say you have the opportunity to be number 1 or 2 in your market when you're number 9 now and not doing anything differently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I once led an org through a SWOT and the leader was adamant that their core strength was developing leaders, and everyone on the exec team agreed. But when challenged for evidence he couldn't point to a single leader they had developed internally. He 'wanted' to be good at it, so he considered it his strength. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So follow David's advice, and remember that there must be evidence of your conclusions, and the whole team has to agree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2013-01-02T15:09:35.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8250" CreationDate="2013-01-04T16:55:59.967" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The project schedule that was once a &quot;loose guideline&quot; was now suddenly a concrete baseline, and my tech lead was visibly shaken and tried to get a later date, and now management seems suspicious and concerned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes me think that there's a problem in the relationship between the PM/Management and your lead developer. It sounds like the deadline was imposed without adequate consultation with developers, which is really a failing on the part of the PM as much as anything else. That said, I'd advise the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I air my concerns with project management and risk getting my tech lead and only co-worker on this project into trouble?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the issue isn't raised then you and/or your team will be in 'trouble' anyway because a project with a wildly unrealistic schedule is bound to fail. Better, I think, to be the person who alerts the organisation to the risks and shows critical thinking. As a PM this is what I'd want to see because, as others have pointed out, it is the PM who will ultimately be held accountable for the success of the project. However, I think you should try your best to communicate risks and concerns &lt;em&gt;through your lead developer&lt;/em&gt;. It would almost certainly be bad for your reputation to bypass your manager and go straight to the PM/management until you have completely exhausted that avenue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T16:55:59.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2472" CreationDate="2013-01-06T18:08:22.220" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Which is the best &quot;flow&quot; for peer reviews?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it depends.&#xA;If the purpose of code review is to guard your codebase against someone checking in junk, then you should have mandatory reviews &lt;strong&gt;before&lt;/strong&gt; check-ins; there could be reasons like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you do NOT trust your developers (outsourced project to some remote team which you don't know and don't trust at all, or, you just hired a junior developer and you want to make sure his/her code is good enough)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the pressure is too high (you have to fix a few bugs before the major release -&gt; you don't want to introduce new bugs)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reasons to do code review &lt;strong&gt;AFTER&lt;/strong&gt; check-ins could be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you want all your team members to understand what is going on&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you want to make sure everyone is following Clean Code principles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you want to brainstorm existing code/architecture and improve it&#xA;etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in any case code reviews should NOT turn into ego contest, humiliating comments should be strictly forbidden, everything must be done in a friendly, professional way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2935" LastActivityDate="2013-01-06T18:08:22.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8377" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8383" CreationDate="2013-01-07T03:25:52.117" Score="13" ViewCount="35400" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for a small company as a software engineer. Our company doesn't have a business analyst or a project manager. We are about to sell a custom CMS system to a very IT illiterate customer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who is responsible for creating the requirements specification? If it's a project manager or a business analyst, who should fill this role and how can we avoid any problems as a result?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5341" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-01-07T03:53:07.767" LastActivityDate="2018-11-26T11:48:03.370" Title="Who is responsible for the requirements specification?" Tags="&lt;specification&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8377" CreationDate="2013-01-07T07:43:42.407" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on my personal experience as a project manager, it is generally the business analyst who is responsible for writing up the business requirements specifications. The project manager is responsible for ensuring that business analyst delivers the business requirements specifications on schedule, signed off by all parties and shared with software development team for analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5343" LastActivityDate="2013-01-07T07:43:42.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8377" CreationDate="2013-01-07T09:13:46.747" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the absence of a PM or a BA, the person(s) who has done functional testing on the product is a good choice for drafting the requirements specs. They can easily reverse engineer their functional test specs into  requirements specs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this formal process ( of having documented functional specs and subsequent functional testing)is not in place, the engineers who build the product are the ones who should document requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note, if you are selling a product to an IT-illiterate customer, a better format for documenting requirements is a user manual or user help document that will help the user navigate the system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-07-18T07:04:30.467" LastActivityDate="2013-07-18T07:04:30.467" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8380" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-07T09:34:52.350" Score="-4" ViewCount="86" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good day!&#xA;Looking for recommendations / mitigation plans for revenue outflows arising from unresolved implementation issues and change management gaps? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="614" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2013-01-07T09:51:04.773" LastActivityDate="2013-01-07T12:46:43.357" Title="Mitigation Plan for revenue outflows arising from unresolved implementation issues in change management gaps" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2013-01-09T02:09:35.147" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8377" CreationDate="2013-01-07T09:48:49.427" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ideally I think you'd want someone who isn't a direct part of the development team to be gathering requirements. This is partly because requirements should (depending on your precise situation) go beyond the technical needs of the project to the business needs of the client - something that developers/engineers may not be best placed to advise on. I'm fairly agnostic on whether this process should be undertaken by a business analyst or project manager. I've been in situations - particularly in small organisations - where these roles overlap or are performed by the same person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you have neither resource available to you I think you need to identify someone whose role - as far as possible - spans both business and technical domains. If you work in an agile environment I wonder if a scrum master or similar might be the most appropriate person. Alternatively the role could be split between someone on the technical side (e.g. you!) and someone in a sales or account management role. This would provide a range of views (with sales/accounts helping to document the 'why' and technical helping to document the 'what' and 'how') and ensure that the 'IT-illiterate' client doesn't get too lost in the details. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2013-01-07T09:48:49.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8380" CreationDate="2013-01-07T12:46:43.357" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking it is helpful to allocate a sum of money and time to addressing risks when planning and budgeting your project. This is &lt;strong&gt;NOT&lt;/strong&gt; a budget for general use to address cost overruns. Instead, specific amounts should be allocated to specific risks, and this &quot;risk budget&quot; should only be tapped into if and when specific risks are realized, and with appropriate approval/justification documented using your project change control procedures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have experience with particular implementation issues or change management gaps on previous projects you should have some idea of how much money to allocate for those risks. If you don't have this kind of data you may just have to make an educated guess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-01-07T12:46:43.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8377" CreationDate="2013-01-07T17:33:42.970" Score="8" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Responsibilities for Specifications&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The customer is ultimately responsible for specifying requirements. Whether your company has a business analyst or project manager is irrelevant to identifying the responsible party.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A business analyst is generally a liaison between the development team and the client, and is responsible for working with a client to &lt;em&gt;elicit&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;refine&lt;/em&gt; requirements. However, the requirements themselves always originate with the client. In many cases, the business analyst is in the best position to &lt;em&gt;document&lt;/em&gt; the requirements once they've been defined, but that is really a matter of convenience and is ancillary to the role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put another way, the business analyst facilitates requirements-gathering and refinement of the deliverable specifications &lt;em&gt;from the client&lt;/em&gt;. The client remains responsible for defining their needs and expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project manager, on the other hand, has the responsibility for managing the specification artifacts (e.g. storing and disseminating the specification documents, if any), and for integrating the specifications into the project plan. As before, the client is responsible for the specifications; the project manager just facilitates the inclusion of specifications into the project management process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-01-07T17:33:42.970" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8384" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-08T12:44:41.170" Score="2" ViewCount="530" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our developers work with &lt;a href=&quot;http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb187345%28v=vs.80%29.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;VSTS&lt;/a&gt; using a scrum methodology and also with project server. Developers are required to enter their work hours in Project Server by time-sheets. However, they are not happy to complete their time sheets. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can we convince them that both are important? Or should we stop using time-sheets? We need the time-sheet data for data analysis that we have them with Cube in Project Server.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4902" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2013-01-08T13:14:38.680" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T10:24:42.793" Title="How can we combine time sheet in project server with scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8377" CreationDate="2013-01-08T13:56:33.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adopt &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;agile values&lt;/a&gt; Everyone in the team should be responsible for bringing value for the customer and not developing non-sense. You have to speak to your customer. You have to provide working software - not future-complete, but working - as soon as possible, so you can receive feedback from the customer. You have to talk with the users of the CMS; with the people that will actually use your software. You can create mockups instead of software, to check the interactions your users expect and to show them what the software will look like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2340" LastActivityDate="2013-01-08T13:56:33.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8384" CreationDate="2013-01-08T14:35:06.460" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Normally Devs complain if they feel their replicating work or doing something they don't see a point in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a previous role we had a time sheet system which required teams to enter their exact activity and it was resisted by most devs, however when we allowed them to enter their time at a high level (so X hours on Y project) they started to comply. If you are going down to a very low level of detail, is it really needed for your reporting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they feel they're duplicating work as progress is already logged in VSTS, I believe there's various connectors for Project server which might be of benefit to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day we need time recording to prove to management that the project was completed not only within any client or internal time constraints but within any internal budgets so it not a choice for them, we can make it as easy as possible but good time recording should be an objective that they are reviewed on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-15T10:24:42.793" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T10:24:42.793" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8384" CreationDate="2013-01-08T15:40:25.360" Score="2" Body="&lt;h3&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the time reporting requirements are imposed externally (e.g. through contractual client requirements), then you need to communicate those reasons effectively to your team. If they are imposed internally by your own organization, then you need to examine your process carefully before deciding on your approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Determine Value for the Process&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, [the developers] are not happy to complete their time sheets. How can we convince them that both are important? Or should we stop using time-sheets?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On some projects, and in some organizations, labor costing needs to be calculated. This almost never has direct value to the people performing the actual work, though---it's a tracking metric for budgeting purposes or for management reporting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't seem like it's the case for your project, though. The very fact that you ask if you should stop using time-sheets indicates that it is an optional metric. What exactly is the point of tracking something no one wants to report, and no one cares about if it isn't reported? That's called make-work!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Other Ways to Report Hours&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all your staff are on salary, then the time-sheets are irrelevant. All you really need to know is whether stuff is getting done, not whether Fred charged 7.25 hours to Project X and 12.5 hours to Project Y---unless your organization forces you to track that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you can simply say something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We had X people working full time on the features delivered this iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This milestone took the efforts of the entire team over the past 30 days.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trade-off is that you can calculate labor costs at a macro level in seconds, but you can't get at the granular details. Perhaps this is sufficient for your purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, if all your people are hourly contractors, they need to give you an invoice or statement of hours anyway. Why not just use that, instead of requiring additional book-keeping? Again, the trade-off is simplicity vs. granularity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you're doing complex accounting for matrixed teams who are simultaneously charging against multiple projects, why make the time reporting any more complicated than it needs to be? Just track your labor burn-rate against your project's budget and call it good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Possible X/Y Problem&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While a project manager with budget-tracking responsibility needs to track labor rates on a project, how you track it and the level of detail you track depend on what you're solving for. Before doing anything else, you need to figure out why you need this information, and how you plan to use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been my personal experience that this level of granularity is often used as a proxy (or worse, as a stand-in) for measuring productivity on a project. More hours charged to a project doesn't equate to faster delivery, nor do fewer hours intrinsically equate to process efficiencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a spike in hours might be a project smell indicating hidden process problems, increased complexity, or a higher defect rate. Then again, maybe not. As a metric, tracking hours only &lt;em&gt;directly&lt;/em&gt; correlates to money spent on labor; by itself, it tells you nothing about the status of a project's deliverables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think carefully about &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; you want or need to track hours the way you do. If you can't come up with a good reason for it other than &quot;just because,&quot; neither can your development team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-01-08T15:40:25.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8388" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-09T17:43:07.517" Score="10" ViewCount="852" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Background&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently coaching a &lt;strong&gt;non-development team&lt;/strong&gt; on Scrum practices. The team is focused on back-office, administrative processes. This makes the work somewhat of a pull-queue where Kanban would be a better fit if the actual completion of work-product were not externalities to the team; as it is, Scrum was chosen a the framework due to its focus on stand-ups and retrospectives, which the organization believes will improve intra-team communication and lead to incremental process improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&quot;Fail Early&quot; and &quot;Improve Intra-Team Communications&quot; as Sprint Goals&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, the team identified &quot;fail early&quot; as the Sprint Goal for an iteration. The idea was that tasks that can't be completed on time may not have alternative solutions or work-arounds---the business model accepts the risk that some percentage of tasks will fail, regardless of process efficiencies---but that these impending failures needs to &lt;strong&gt;transparent&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;visible&lt;/strong&gt; to the entire team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal of making early failures visible ties directly into the corollary objective of improving intra-team communication. This goes somewhat beyond the task coordination and blocker-identification of a daily stand-up; it requires a bit of a paradigm shift in the way that the team communicates with one another on a routine basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the extent that the goal and its corollary was chosen by the team as a Sprint Goal without a concrete metric to determine if the Sprint Goal was done or not-done, I take responsibility as the Scrum Master for allowing that to happen. I still believe that these were valid objectives for the iteration, but they lack concreteness and a &quot;definition of done.&quot; In retrospect, neither of these things has a self-evident performance indicator that can be tracked with any precision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;How to Measure Semi-Subjective Process-Improvement Goals&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Fail early&quot; is somewhat subjective, but I believe I could potentially measure that by calculating the elapsed time from work-item start to its announced failure, and then tracking the &quot;failure lead time&quot; (e.g. the time between when a task is declared &quot;failed&quot; and its original due date). Perhaps there is an even better metric that I haven't considered yet; I'm certainly open to suggestions in that regard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Improve intra-team communications&quot; is squishier. Effective communication is a soft-skill. Anything I can think of measuring (e.g. email volume, status fields updated in the job queue, etc.) are at best proxy metrics, and not particularly accurate ones at that. So, other than polling people for how well they feel communication is going, I can't think of a practical way to measure this necessary (but perhaps poorly-framed) objective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the stated Sprint Goals, and assuming &lt;em&gt;a priori&lt;/em&gt; that the organization sees value in achieving those two goals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can I measure them in a concrete, meaningful way?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How might I adapt these (or similar) soft-skill goals in the future to better identify valid, trackable metrics?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-01-22T13:08:19.107" Title="How can I improve measurement of Sprint Goals that are based on soft skills or communication processes?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;kpi&gt;&lt;process-improvement&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8377" CreationDate="2013-01-09T17:44:49.327" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Customer IS responsible for requirements; however, it is the company's responsibility to organize them and translate into a technical language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agility of development is a must in the current subset; therefore, make sure that customer gets to see and approve every step of the development (working prototypes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be much easier to answer if we knew who else is the part of the process, meaning - what positions are there in the company? A software engineer cannot be a requirements elicitor (he/she can theoretically, but it is proven to be counterproductive in most cases. One of the reasons - the tendency is to minimize the coding workload; therefore, the product and customer satisfaction suffer). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, someone in the company, who is not technically illiterate, and at the same time can speak business language, should perform the duty of BA. For instance, it can be a sales person who is familiar with the production. But my advice is to contract a BA for requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5356" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-01-10T05:17:45.330" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T05:17:45.330" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8388" CreationDate="2013-01-09T18:42:24.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For &quot;Fail Early&quot; a valid measure in conjunction with (or in place of) chronological lead time may be the level of effort devoted to the task prior to identifying failure. That will give you a better idea of the resource impacts and whether or not you are saving $$ as well as time. For example, assume I am budgeted 50% effort on a three-week task (so 1.5 weeks of FT effort over that period), and I identify failure after two weeks after spending 100% of my time on the task. Does the benefit of flagging failure one week early outweigh the costs of my spending more time than planned on the task?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For &quot;Improve Intra-Team Communications&quot; I'm not sure if polling is a good idea. Assuming your team is small the data you generate will be sketchy at best. And if meeting sprint goals is tied into the team's bonus structure it would be relatively easy for there to be collusion. Maybe a better approach would be for you to track the frequency of issues raised that seem to be related to poor communications. I've been in any number of situations where a team member has raised issue X and upon investigation it turns out this is because of some kind of communications breakdown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-01-09T18:42:24.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8388" CreationDate="2013-01-09T18:43:59.343" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the metric you suggest for &quot;fail early&quot; is probably close to optimal. It might be interesting (although probably too costly) to track the time when the work item was first identified as &quot;in trouble&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time the work item was initiated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time when the work item was first identified as &quot;troubled&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time when the relevant stakeholders identified this work item as &quot;failed&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The elapsed time between 2 &amp;amp; 3 may provide some interesting information for the second metric.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Failure analysis - Since the goal is to fail early, conduct a failure analysis of the work item. If Intra-Team Communications contributed to the failure, score it as a communications fail. Track either the number or percentage of communcations failures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure I understand item #2, but I &lt;strong&gt;think&lt;/strong&gt; what you're asking is how to create meaningful metrics atop soft goals.  I &lt;strong&gt;think&lt;/strong&gt; the answer is to look for the impact that the soft goal has on hard business objectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-01-21T18:14:35.193" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T18:14:35.193" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8388" CreationDate="2013-01-10T13:10:33.180" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Improve Intra-Team Communications&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because communications quality is both subjective and highly personal I don't think there's going to be an easy measure for this. I'm also not convinced that it can be marked as 'done' at the end of a two or three week sprint because, as you point out, it's more of a long-term measure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I think your approach to measuring success is broadly correct. Presumably there was some driving force behind wanting to improve intra-team communications - a lack of face-to-face meetings, too many emails, re-work due to poor comms etc. - and ideally you have some benchmarks to work from. Even without benchmarks you could use a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likert_scale&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Likert scale&lt;/a&gt; poll to determine whether people think comms have improved. More quantitatively I think you could measure whether everyone is attending and contributing in stand-ups; whether documents are being shared on (for example) a wiki or shared drive; how many formal meeting requests were made (as opposed to face-to-face catch ups). It will all depend on how the team currently works and where it wants to get to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fail Early&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to agree with Mark and Doug's approaches on this but, again, I think it's difficult to measure 'completeness' of this task after only a few weeks - unless your measure of completeness is simply that you have a documented measure for early failure (of the type Doug and Mark have suggested). I actually think the latter is an acceptable outcome but I may have misunderstood what you want to get out of the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2013-01-10T16:03:33.240" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T16:03:33.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8393" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-10T13:43:18.327" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For questions relating to customer involvement in projects. Questions might relate to methods for improving customer interaction, risks and benefits of customer involvement or approaches to resolving problems or issues with customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2013-01-10T14:36:58.433" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T14:36:58.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8394" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-10T13:43:18.327" Score="0" Body="For questions relating to customer involvement in projects." OwnerUserId="4490" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2013-01-10T14:36:39.883" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T14:36:39.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8395" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-10T13:49:28.783" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions relating to the management of individual tasks in a project or project management software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2013-01-10T15:43:53.107" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T15:43:53.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8396" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-10T13:49:28.783" Score="0" Body="Questions relating to the management of individual tasks in a project or within project management software." OwnerUserId="4490" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2013-01-10T15:43:57.927" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T15:43:57.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8397" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-10T13:53:17.810" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-01-10T13:53:17.810" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T13:53:17.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8398" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-10T13:53:17.810" Score="0" Body="For questions relating to required project skills and how to measure and improve them." OwnerUserId="4490" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2013-01-10T15:43:50.097" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T15:43:50.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8399" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-10T15:56:27.573" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-01-10T15:56:27.573" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T15:56:27.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8400" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-10T15:56:27.573" Score="0" Body="For questions relating to the development and management of project business cases." OwnerUserId="4490" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2013-01-10T16:23:14.060" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T16:23:14.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8401" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-10T15:58:18.367" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-01-10T15:58:18.367" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T15:58:18.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8402" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-10T15:58:18.367" Score="0" Body="Questions relating to the avoidance, management and mitigation of conflict within or between project teams or stakeholders." OwnerUserId="4490" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2013-01-10T16:37:04.620" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T16:37:04.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8403" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-10T15:59:44.340" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-01-10T15:59:44.340" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T15:59:44.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8404" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-10T15:59:44.340" Score="0" Body="For questions relating to the effective management of distributed project teams. " OwnerUserId="4490" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2013-01-10T16:37:01.407" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T16:37:01.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8405" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-10T21:05:59.927" Score="3" ViewCount="825" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to try to track project progress using Earned Value Management approaches, mainly for my own education rather than out of a pressing need. The metric used to define planned value (PV) and actual work completed (Earned Value (EV)) is &quot;% Complete&quot; as generated by MS Project rather than a dollar value, which is OK because schedule is the main thing that I can track due to enterprise constraints I have to work within.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I am interested in is establishing robust upper and lower control limits on the schedule, but I find that these limits get wider later in the schedule compared to earlier on if I use something simple like setting limits at +- 10% of PV. This reflects the real-life uncertainty of precisely when things will happen if they are far into the future, which I am OK with. But if I'm setting control limits I probably want those limits &quot;tighter&quot; the further into the future I look because the impacts of slippage are also greater. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have considered setting arbitrary control limits (e.g. +- one reporting period) but would be happier if there was a more objective/&quot;mathy&quot; approach. Does anyone out there have any suggestions? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastEditorUserId="1251" LastEditDate="2013-01-11T13:08:38.630" LastActivityDate="2013-01-15T21:31:04.083" Title="What is a good way to set control limits on a schedule?" Tags="&lt;schedule-risk&gt;&lt;evm&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8405" CreationDate="2013-01-11T00:16:30.087" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;By control limits, do you mean an acceptable tolerance for cost and schedule variances?  If so, 10% is the typical benchmark, at least commonly accepted with those systems that are ANSI compliant, like in the DoD.  In other words, your CAC is acceptable if within + or - 10% of your BAC.  You can certainly tighten it up based on your project needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To keep terms straight, PV is planned value, EV is earned value (which you have as AC), and AC is actual costs.  And everything is measured in dollars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EV is truly a cost control tool.  Schedule control using EV has problems.  Earned schedule is an approach that resolves those problems.  Look into that, as well.  My experience there is only book read; never done it for real, yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T00:16:30.087" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8405" CreationDate="2013-01-11T13:03:09.993" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may not quite answer your question but one approach to your problem might be to look at the use of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_chart&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;control charts&lt;/a&gt;, which concentrate less on whether a particular process is within its bounds (+/- 10% or whatever upper and lower bounds you select) and more on identifying patterns of change between those bounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's typical to use the seven run rule, where the presence of seven sequential measurements that are below or above the mean, or are consistently increasing or decreasing, indicates that a process is 'out of control' and requires action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might be useful in your case because it would allow you to slacken and tighten your upper and lower bounds but still identify problems with the &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; that you are attempting to control. In my current work environment I find that the identification of patterns in cost or schedule accuracy is more useful than a measurement at a given point in time. The random 'outliers' in the schedule (maybe someone was sick or a vital piece of hardware failed) are still important but I'm generally more concerned with patterns over time. If I see, for example, that our velocity (we're using Scrum) is consistently decreasing I know that I've got a bigger, possibly systemic, problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your +/- 10% rule is reasonable but if month-on-month your accuracy was -1%, -2%, -3%, -4%, -5%, -6% and then -7% I'd be worried. If it were 6%, -2%, 4%, 7%, -1%, 9% and then 3% I'd still expect to have to do plenty of explaining but I'd be much more comfortable that the causes of these inaccuracies were random rather than as a result of a wider problem within the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T13:03:09.993" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8410" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8411" CreationDate="2013-01-12T14:48:51.677" Score="25" ViewCount="9633" Body="&lt;p&gt;During estimation, the Product Owner presents a user story that seems clear to a team that usually knows their strengths and weaknesses, and that is not hostile. What should the Scrum Master do if the story is judged very differently by the team members, but they can't convince each other enough to agree on a story-point estimate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, let's say two opinions arise. Some see this as a rather easy story (e.g. 2 points) and others foresee technical complications and judge that the story should be 20 points. The 2-point voters say, &quot;I understand your opinion, but don't think those complications are valid.&quot; The 20-point voters say, &quot;The past tells us that these things are always a lot more complicated then they seem.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume that if the issue is not clarified the 20-point faction will not commit to the user story if it is (in their eyes) under-estimated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should the Scrum Master do in this case? Go for the average? Choose the worst case? Or accept this user story as &quot;high-risk&quot; with only a semi-commitment during Sprint Planning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4865" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-01-12T16:58:01.377" LastActivityDate="2016-10-11T09:42:38.253" Title="How should a team handle disagreements about story-point estimates in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;planning-poker&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8410" CreationDate="2013-01-12T16:49:21.323" Score="23" Body="&lt;h3&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much of Scrum's value to an organization is in creating transparency. 100% agreement isn't the real point of planning poker; the goal is actually to narrow the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot;&gt;cone of uncertainty&lt;/a&gt; around feature estimates as much as possible, and to make the &lt;strong&gt;level of effort&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;potential project risks&lt;/strong&gt; of each story visible to stakeholders through their chosen proxy, the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Planning Poker Can Have Multiple Rounds&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As explained on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.planningpoker.com/detail.html&quot;&gt;planningpoker.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is very likely at this point that the estimates will differ significantly...If estimates differ, the high and low estimators explain their estimates...The group can discuss the story and their estimates for a few more minutes...After the discussion, each estimator re-estimates by selecting a card.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is that you can keep re-estimating as long as opinions are converging. The key, of course, is that people need to talk about &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; their estimates are outliers, so that the team can consider this information when re-estimating each round. If you still have outliers after discussion has been exhausted or when the time-box has expired, then you have to use your team's defined process to find a reasonable compromise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Options for Compromise Within the Team&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can do whatever seems reasonable in such cases. Generally, teams agree beforehand on a compromise process, but it's okay to change it on the fly so that the end result is always somewhat reasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some options for compromise include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discard outliers, then calculate the mean. This is usually my preferred method when a story has been properly decomposed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Calculate the average, including any outliers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Split out contentious tasks into separate-but-dependent stories that can be estimated separately.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remembering that estimates are educated guesses, not promises written in stone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is that the team can (and should) make its best guess and move on. If the team can't build a consensus, or at the very least agree to disagree, then you may have an underlying problem with the quality of the story being discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Options for Compromise With the Product Owner&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the problem is the story being estimated. A key point here is that all stories &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be estimated to see if they fit within the current sprint, but the stories you estimate don't have to be verbatim copies of the current Product Backlog items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, the first half of Sprint Planning involves the participation of the Product Owner, so a contentious story estimate is a perfect opportunity to work hand-in-hand with the PO to re-scope or refactor stories which have potential issues. The PO can work with the team to split or rewrite stories, or re-prioritize the Product Backlog on-the-fly to swap in a different story that fits better within the current sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-01-12T17:06:08.643" LastActivityDate="2013-01-12T17:06:08.643" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8412" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-12T17:15:08.683" Score="0" Body="&lt;h3&gt;See Also&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/user-stories&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'user-stories'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;user-stories&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/estimating&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'estimating'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;estimating&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/ideal-hours&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'ideal-hours'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;ideal-hours&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-01-12T17:15:08.683" LastActivityDate="2013-01-12T17:15:08.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8413" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-12T17:15:08.683" Score="0" Body="For questions about applying or interpreting relative measures of work-effort, known as &quot;story points,&quot; to user stories or project milestones." OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-01-12T17:15:08.683" LastActivityDate="2013-01-12T17:15:08.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8405" CreationDate="2013-01-12T19:57:05.407" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like the answers so far, so I'll approach it from a different angle - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question for me as two parts - one about control limits, and another about a &quot;mathy&quot; way to figure it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But for these two questions there's really a single answer. EV is at its core simply a more objective, &quot;mathy&quot; way to measure and monitor progress. So you don't need any more math, just use the formulas that EVE uses already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the control limits, again that's what EV is for. It provides an objective assessment, which tells you how you're doing. But 'how you're doing' is a function of both your planning and your risk tolerance/expectations. These limits are or your own design, based on the level and confidence of your planning, execution, assumptions, risk tolerance, contingencies, experience, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's work you've never done before, then maybe a variance of 20% is acceptable, A) because you don't know enough to be more accurate (and you know that about your planning), and B) because you added some contingency to cover a possible variance of that size. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other side, a 5% variance could indicate trouble because it's routine work with hard data supporting the planning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is, control limits are related to the project not EV. And EV &quot;is&quot; the 'mathy' process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2013-01-12T19:57:05.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8410" CreationDate="2013-01-13T10:59:02.217" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;let's say two opinions arise. Some see this as a rather easy story (e.g. 2 points) and &#xA;  others foresee technical complications and judge that the story should be 20 points. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product Owner should ask those who see this story as a 20-pointer to break this story down to 3-5 point pieces; this will help to identify the problematic spot and (if necessary) add one or more research spikes in order to clarify the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2935" LastActivityDate="2013-01-13T10:59:02.217" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8416" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8456" CreationDate="2013-01-14T12:30:56.483" Score="8" ViewCount="1093" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my current role we manage our web development using Scrum. This has been really successful &lt;em&gt;within&lt;/em&gt; our team (improving productivity, spotting issues early and increasing collaboration) but outside of the team, management still expect to see more 'traditional' measures of project progress, specifically documented milestones with &lt;em&gt;exact&lt;/em&gt; delivery dates. I can (and do) work towards these, using our backlog and velocity to calculate the likelihood of delivery on these dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I would like to see the organisation embrace agile more widely, not least because it will reduce the amount of time we spend 'translating' from one methodology to another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I effectively sell Agile to non-technical, senior staff who favor more traditional methodologies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-01-18T02:35:44.243" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T15:46:47.680" Title="How can I increase management buy-in of Agile adoption?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8417" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8424" CreationDate="2013-01-14T13:07:43.633" Score="16" ViewCount="4757" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an ideal world using Scrum we are all supposed to take part in the iteration planning, select tasks and stories, from the groomed backlog.  You then have a planning meeting where everyone comes together and agrees on estimates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the real world, or at least where I work we do the pull most of the work from the backlog and have iteration planning, and using planning poker come up with fairly consistent estimates, or at least estimates we can agree on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the exception to this for us is our SQA resource, who overestimates everything.  He does get some extra work from other people that he is the only &quot;qualified&quot; person to estimate, but on odd occasion where someone else has had to do the work, it is completed in a fraction of the time estimated.  This would be fine(or at least I'd be ok with it) if these tasks were all finished ahead of schedule, but these estimates seem to be used as more of a &quot;This is how much time I have to do this, and once I am finished, I can spend the rest of the time dozing&quot;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When challenged on any of the estimates, lists of reasons are produced that explain why they will take the estimate, but they all boil down to: &quot;This is how long it will take me.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in a methodology where buy in is so important how do I get these estimates more realistic.  I am the scrum master on the team, but have no direct authority over this resource.  (i.e. I'm not his team lead.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5373" OwnerDisplayName="user7192" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-01-15T09:05:08.640" LastActivityDate="2013-01-15T09:30:37.280" Title="How to deal with a team member who constantly overestimates" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;team&gt;&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8417" CreationDate="2013-01-14T13:39:12.103" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several approaches to this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way, is to change his incentive, so he is rewarded by delivering quickly - either by official time to work on his pet project, salary or what ever motivates him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way is to remove his status as authority, by redirecting this work elsewhere. As you say some times this has happened, and been completed much quicker, it makes commercial sense to do this more often. The times it doesn't succeed, the original employee provides training to the person tasked with the work and is not allowed to take control of the task directly.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Over time, he will have to either change his estimates, or will become irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third way is to implement monitoring of his computer usage. If he is not working actively on the task, it will show up on his computer usage. Several days of web surfing is plenty of evidence for company disciplinary action, and my guess is he will change employers if it becomes too much work here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5372" OwnerDisplayName="Ptolemy" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T13:39:12.103" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8416" CreationDate="2013-01-14T14:36:27.553" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally, treat this as you would any other change management project. By identifying and engaging your stakeholders, getting them to a shared vision, working with them to define a solution that adds tangible business value, and then moving towards implementing the change you will all get to a better place together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some more specific suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Accept that this will take time and needs tailoring.&lt;/strong&gt; You won't get by-the-book Agile tomorrow, so don't set this as a goal because you will set yourself up to fail. Figure out with the stakeholders what will work for your organization and go with that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Provide realistic estimates of benefits and costs.&lt;/strong&gt; You will get business buy-in when you give them a solid business case for the change. Look at the dollars and cents objectively and convince yourself that the business case is there. If you can't look at it objectively get someone you trust to do it, otherwise you run the risk of presenting a poor business case and embarassing yourself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Avoid labelling it as Agile or anything else.&lt;/strong&gt; You want to minimize resistance to change, so why give resistance a buzz-word to focus on and unite against? Much better to promote the change as a &quot;business process improvement&quot; or something similar.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T14:36:27.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8417" CreationDate="2013-01-14T14:49:14.557" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Development is not assembly line work.  Some developers take quite a bit longer to develop code than others.  It is possible that your developer is, while competent, one who takes longer to develop than others.  Unless you are his manager, if he is goofing off or not should not be your concern.  Rather you should be concerned that he is meeting resource needs of your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of allowing him to poker his how stories let the team help set the score for the stories.  Your SQA Resource should be able to explain briefly what will need to be done and the team should be able to reasonably score it.  It may take him 2 or 3 days to do a 1 point task but he will only get credit for the 1 point.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the SQA developer is not taking on enough points or not able to fulfill his commitment then you can contact the SQA team and ask for additional resources explaining that your team member is not able to meet all of your SQA needs.  After a few iterations you should have plenty of data to back this up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing here is to remember to manage the work not the people.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3095" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T14:49:14.557" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8417" CreationDate="2013-01-14T14:49:18.613" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Break tasks into smaller details.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When this individual gives you an outrageous estimate ask them more details about it. For example, if the task is to Test Feature X, it might involve setting up environment Y, going through cases Z, etc. Then ask them to estimate on each sub-point. You will be able to drill down and ask things like &quot;Does it really take 2 days to set up the testing environment?&quot;. Frequently you'll get &quot;Oh well perhaps not, probably I can do that in one afternoon.&quot; You can also say &quot;John went through test cases Z in this much time, what has changed?&quot;, and the answer will frequently be &quot;Uhh nothing, I guess we CAN do it in that much time&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Estimate difficulty, not time.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you are running an agile environment. In that case, you shouldn't be estimating man-hours but rather difficulty points, and then gauging team velocity. This will make it harder for this person to 'pad' because&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Velocity will catch up with &quot;point inflation&quot;. If they like to give themselves 2 hours for every 1 hour of real work, then in a few sprints 20 points will equal 10 today's points. It will be hard for them to continuously infate with a straight face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) You will able to objectively say &quot;Jane gets twice as much done as John. What's the dealio, John?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If they're really lazy and never want to work...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you have a culture problem that you need to solve. They could be de-motivated for different reasons (pay, boring work, lack of direction). They could also be the one bad apple that should be let go. We'd need more information to answer this one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5371" LastEditorUserId="5371" LastEditDate="2013-01-14T15:34:39.060" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T15:34:39.060" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8417" CreationDate="2013-01-14T14:59:21.470" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The concept of a &quot;realistic&quot; estimate is a nebulous one.  A realistic estimate is not a single number, but rather a range...an in many cases quite a broad range.  Where you target is solely based on one's interpretation of risk banged against one's risk appetite.  And because work is probabilistic under many random variables, the fact you have a couple of times when work performed by another came in less than what this guy predicted does not prove anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would get rid of this notion of a &quot;realistic&quot; estimate because no one has the capability of predicting the future to arrive at an estimate that ends up truly realistic.  Instead, focus your energy on the risk management part of estimating.  Do not build single point estimates but build a range.  Identify what threats exist that could cause you to end up on the outside of that range and what opportunities exist that could help you bring it in.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally, separate the function of estimating and targeting.  There are two different roles that play in this.  The experts who do the work provide the estimates, but the business people responsible for delivery provide the targets.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T14:59:21.470" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8417" CreationDate="2013-01-14T15:45:27.430" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing to determine is whether or not this is really a problem. If someone delivers on time according to the estimates that you have based your plan on then you don't have much of an issue in the context of your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's assume that your SQA delivers on time most of the time. That means that for some reason his estimates are reasonably accurate. If it isn't your role to dig up the root cause for why he takes longer than anyone else and it doesn't affect your projects then you really don't have a problem. If it is your role and/or your projects are affected take the time to find out what the root causes are in a non-confrontational manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your projects are affected but you have no influence on the SQA your best short-term fix may be to consistently request other SQAs be assigned to your projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T15:45:27.430" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8417" CreationDate="2013-01-14T15:47:24.400" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to assume that you are running one of the versions of Scrum in which there is both a &quot;story point&quot; estimation, done by the entire team, and an &quot;hours estimation&quot; done by the individual assigned the work. If it's not, and your only estimation is the story point one, this issue shouldn't arise because the estimation should be done by concensus of the entire team. Your problem member shouldn't be able to override their input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a very real sense, as scrummaster without managerial authority, this isn't strictly your problem. Scrummaster is a facilitator, and your job is to help the team do their job as well as possible using the people you have. However I'll assume you want to do the best for your team, and there may be some things you can do. However given you have no authority you're going to have to get the team to sort the issue out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing you can do is draw attention to it. If this person is consistently making hour estimates for his tasks that are higher than the hour estimates for other tasks with similar number of story points, then I would draw this to the attention of the team at the next planning meeting or retrospective, and get the person's input. It may be that the team is consistently underestimating the difficulty of tasks in his area of expertize, but at least give the team a chance to sort it out. There may be some peer pressure for this guy to shape up if the rest of the team think he is slacking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if you are sure this is an issue, and the team doesn't sort it out, bring your concerns to his manager. If you are invited to give feedback as part of a formal performance review, use that opportunity. If not, approach him anyway. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1056" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T15:47:24.400" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8410" CreationDate="2013-01-14T16:40:02.033" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The solution seems simple.  Give the story 2 points and assign the story to one of the developers who agrees it is a 2 point story.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally when we have disagreements it is 2v3 or 3v5 scores.  I have never seen one 2v10 or 2v20.  If it is close we will generally go the score requested by the developer who will be working the story.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3095" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T16:40:02.033" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8417" CreationDate="2013-01-14T19:01:10.597" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whatever you do, do not make estimation a political process.  You can't get accurate estimates if people don't want to give them to you, period.  Fighting the one team member over them risks compromising the accuracy of the other estimates, and then you lose really valuable information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The actual issue is that it appears that the guy is incredibly slow.  You suspect it's because he won't do more, rather than that he can't, but either way, you think he isn't pulling his weight (and actually it sounds pretty convincing that he isn't).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, do what you can to verify that he really isn't productive.  Make sure he isn't spending his time on productive things that don't produce story points directly, like helping others with their work, or doing other projects entirely.  It doesn't sound like this is the case, but do your due diligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, you either have to fix the problem or at least tell whoever you report to that this guy isn't as productive as you expected, and let them deal with it.  It's hard to advice on this, because it's very much about personalities and personal relationships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But don't make it about estimates, per se.  In fact on the bright side, it sounds like he does a good job of estimating his own poor productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4415" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T19:01:10.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8417" CreationDate="2013-01-14T22:35:13.533" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Estimates are just that - estimates. And they're supposed to be challenged. That's how a manager gets a &quot;confidence level&quot; in what's going on, by listening and challenging until there is agreement and buy-in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So challenge him. If he gives the same argument, then challenge it - ask why others were able to do it faster. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as others have said - don't make it adversarial or political, and don't assume you're 'right'. Maybe he does have some good reasons that you're unaware of. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So challenge, but listen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T22:35:13.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8417" CreationDate="2013-01-15T09:05:39.710" Score="9" Body="&lt;h3&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personality conflicts and process diseconomies are clouding the real issue. Tracking the proper performance metrics will improve your overall process and provide guidance for addressing issues of team composition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Your Problem Isn't Estimates&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[O]ur SQA resource...overestimates everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what? If your team is using planning poker, or any other commonly-used tool for building consensus estimates, then this person's estimates are simply outliers. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/8410/4271&quot;&gt;How should a team handle disagreements about story-point estimates in Scrum?&lt;/a&gt; for various ways to deal with this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimates are not commitments, and velocity is just another estimating tool, not an end unto itself. As a result, the Scrum Master should encourage &lt;em&gt;the whole team&lt;/em&gt; to estimate the task as accurately as possible during Sprint Planning, and then move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What Estimates Are Really For&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, though, this has nothing to do with estimation. Scrum estimates are &quot;educated guesses&quot; about the level of effort required to do something. The value of estimates lie in in the confidence interval your team is able to assign to estimation-accuracy over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimates are explicitly &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; management targets, and neither is velocity. If you're using them this way, you will not achieve your team objectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Some of the Problems Are Personality-Based&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;This is how much time I have to do this, and once I am finished, I can spend the rest of the time dozing!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is speculation on your part; you are imputing motives. It indicates that you have an adversarial relationship with this person, and you need to own 50% of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you set aside your personality issues with this person, your underlying concern seems to be that you think this person is lazy, not pulling his weight, or not meeting your expectations for efficiency. However, planning poker (or other estimation tools) will not help you address any of these concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Your Solutions Should Focus on Performance-Based Process Improvements&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you accept that your issue is not the estimates, but in your perception that this person is not performing adequately (for whatever value of &quot;adequate&quot; you care to apply), then you will free yourself to address performance concerns without clouding the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Our process] allows him to do so little work that the other team members need to end up doing work that he should have completed as part of the over all release, so instead of being able to pull extra development features off the back log they/we end up doing sqa stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your process needs improvement.&lt;/strong&gt; Whether the person is actually a bottleneck or not, if the process doesn't enable you to refactor your work-flow or adjust resources to remove resource constraints then your process is broken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if all SQA work flows through this one person, this may not be an optimal process for your team regardless of who fills that role. If the person performing SQA work isn't able to deliver sufficient value within each Sprint, you can do any of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Limit work-in-progress (WIP) until the capacity of your process is not saturated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add additional capacity to your process. Examples might include adding more SQA resources or replacing inefficient personnel with more productive team members.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adjust project delivery dates to align with actual throughput instead of management-defined targets.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Refactor your organization's hiring, compensation, performance review, and retention processes to improve the quality of your team members.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Improving your process will help you accurately measure and manage team member performance. At the end of the day, whether a person's performance adds or subtracts value from the team is what counts, and that's what you should be focused on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2013-01-15T09:30:37.280" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2613" CreationDate="2013-01-15T14:29:10.300" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, architecture is vital and Yes to your entire - and very well stated - second paragraph, it changes the relationships and the role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;agile manifesto's 12 principles&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  When a software architect tries to pull rank or maintain status over a good agile team, the team gets frustrated, even annoyed. The architect may feel threatened by the team wanting to do architecture, not have it thrown over the wall to them. They may be more capable than he.&#xA;  One way forwards is for the architect to trust that better architectures really will emerge from a team effort and do architecture with the team. Her/his role then moves more to consultancy than delivery of architecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Concerning the technical architecture&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All systems have architecture. The tools, frameworks and previous projects may do 80% of the architecture without you realising, but &lt;em&gt;ignorance is not bliss&lt;/em&gt;. Rapid, agile delivery is sustainable not just for a few sprints but over months even years &lt;em&gt;if and only if&lt;/em&gt; the right kind of architecture underpins the design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Systems don't get rewritten because of failing functionally. They are rewritten&#xA;  because of failure in the software qualities (NFRs) - performance or security&#xA;   or maintainability or other.&quot; In other words, because of architectural failure.&#xA;  (I think the quote's from Bass, Clements,Kazman, &quot;Software Architecture in Practise&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How should architecture evolve in the light of Agile?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is still an open and lengthy question. Here are 3 people's efforts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/makabee/aduf-adaptable-design-up-front&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.slideshare.net/makabee/aduf-adaptable-design-up-front&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://leanpub.com/software-architecture-for-developers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://leanpub.com/software-architecture-for-developers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/ChrisCarroll2/presentations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.slideshare.net/ChrisCarroll2/presentations&lt;/a&gt; (mine)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5386" LastEditorUserId="5386" LastEditDate="2013-10-17T17:04:59.700" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T17:04:59.700" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8405" CreationDate="2013-01-15T21:31:04.083" Score="0" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Acceptable Tolerances Vary&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand the core of your question to be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am interested in is establishing robust upper and lower control limits on the schedule[.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acceptable schedule tolerance varies based on project requirements and specific business objectives, and I'm unaware of an &lt;em&gt;ex cathedra&lt;/em&gt; formula for divining acceptable tolerance. In this case, I think your best bet is to evaluate what level of schedule risk a given project can tolerate before its planned value drops unacceptably, and then periodically track your current earned value against that metric.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put another way, you can track your &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/earned-value-management-terms-and-formulas-for-pro.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Schedule Performance Index&lt;/a&gt;, calculated as &lt;code&gt;SPI = EV / PV&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;SPI = BCWP / BCWS&lt;/code&gt;, with an ideal goal of &lt;code&gt;SPI &amp;gt;= 1.0&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Problems with SPI&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the SPI doesn't always get you where you want to go. Wikipedia describes the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_value_management#Schedule_Performance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;limitations of SPI calculations&lt;/a&gt; thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The use of SPI in EVM is rather limited in forecasting schedule performance problems because it is dependent on the completion of earned value on the Critical Time Path (CTP).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Limitations of EVM&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia also describes some &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_value_management#Limitations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;limitations of earned-value management&lt;/a&gt; as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;EVM has no provision to measure project quality, so it is possible for EVM to indicate a project is under budget, ahead of schedule and scope fully executed, but still have unhappy clients and ultimately unsuccessful results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Potential Alternatives to &quot;Pure&quot; EVM&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One potential alternative to traditional earned-value management may be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.earnedschedule.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Earned Schedule (ES)&lt;/a&gt; management. The topic is also &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_schedule&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;very lightly covered&lt;/a&gt; by Wikipedia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no direct experience with ES, so your mileage will probably vary. However, I personally believe that &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; other than pure EVM is required to properly control scheduling because Earned Value Management simply has other design goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no reason you can't have multiple controls on a project. In fact, I firmly believe that one &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt;. With that in mind, I'd make EVM one project control methodology among many, rather than putting all your eggs into one basket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-01-15T21:31:04.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8433" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8440" CreationDate="2013-01-16T12:15:20.920" Score="8" ViewCount="1156" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently encountered the opinion that, if a Sprint is successful due to statistical reasons (e.g. the team made big mistakes during planning but the team delivered its stories anyway), then that's as good as if success was achieved thanks to accurate estimation and informed commitment by the team. Hence, I'm wondering if this is actually in accordance with agile processes and the principles behind those processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question may be broken down into two parts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the team finishes the sprint, it means that...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the team fails a sprint, it means that...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When using an iterative, agile processes such as Scrum or Extreme Programming, what conclusions can be drawn from successful or unsuccessful Sprints?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5393" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-01-16T15:54:24.563" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T10:58:53.810" Title="What are the right conclusions to draw from the success or failure of a Sprint?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;&lt;extreme-programming&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8433" CreationDate="2013-01-16T13:41:50.083" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot speak to the principles behind agile processes but from a general perspective I opine that the results we achieve from work--or any action really--are mostly influenced by stochastic variables.  In other words, we have less control over our results than we like to believe.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When we do post mortems of a recently finished effort, when things go well we like to attribute those results to our great decisions and levers we chose to pull when we chose to pull them.  Similarly, when things go poorly, we do the opposite and identify all those things over which we had no control.  Misattribution and Illusion of Control govern these thought processes and behaviors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is valuable to identify those things that influenced a good result; it would be far too fatalistic not to do so.  However, a deep analysis of those variables needs to include some balance with what happens in a random way.  Otherwise, we end up with a ton of false beliefs of cause and effect where there really is none.  And there are a ton of examples of this in business.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T13:41:50.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8435" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8436" CreationDate="2013-01-16T14:19:16.483" Score="3" ViewCount="117" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the Quality chapter in PRINCE2 manual:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The time needed to create good Product Descriptions will depend on factors such as how important, complex and unique the product is, how many stakeholders will review and approve the product, and whether the organization has a library of standard Product Descriptions for reuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the Products and their quality requirements and are more or less unique:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have you ever managed to reuse a Product Description?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If so, are there any downsides (copy+paste mistakes, lack of creativity)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2915" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T01:27:41.940" Title="Are Product Descriptions in PRINCE2 actually reusable?" Tags="&lt;quality-management&gt;&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8435" CreationDate="2013-01-16T14:53:43.347" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes I have reused Product Descriptions. The key point is that the reuse of anything from one project to the next requires you to review and tailor what has gone before to suit your needs today. At a high enough level these will tend to be identical from one project to the next (e.g. documentation to support vendor selection, documentation to support project planning, etc). The further you drill down into the details the more unique the product description will be, so if you go down far enough the reuse of old Product Descriptions loses value. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where you find the main downside is people not &lt;strong&gt;thinking&lt;/strong&gt; when reusing materials. As noted in the reference you cite, the key for this is the complexity/criticality of your project and the product in question.  This will tell you how far you drill down into the details. If the team isn't thinking (for whatever reason) you will either have insufficient detail to be able to get the product you need, or you will have wasted your time and/or caused confusion by providing too much detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T14:53:43.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8433" CreationDate="2013-01-16T15:51:09.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, &quot;success due to statistical reasons&quot; as described in your question is not as good as success that is achieved because of accurate estimation and informed commitment because the former cannot be reliably reproduced. In fact, &quot;success due to statistical reasons&quot; is likely more dangerous in the long run because it will mask foundational problems in your planning practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By way of analogy, it is possible to pick a winning football team even though your analysis is deeply flawed. This will be a &quot;success&quot; because you win some money this week. But in the long run you will lose money compared to the person who picks their team using a robust analysis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T15:51:09.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8388" CreationDate="2013-01-16T17:53:25.723" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer&lt;/strong&gt; : I am not a Scrum expert, and I do not have any experience with non-dev teams. Thus my answer is both theoretical and imbued with Lean/Kanban thinking&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;On goal-related metrics and measurability&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal of a goal is at least triple :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Command&lt;/strong&gt; Help the team stay focused and make better choices, thus help management set priorities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Communicate&lt;/strong&gt; Help stakeholders understand what the team is doing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Control&lt;/strong&gt; Make sure that, in the end, we know if we succeeded or not&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering this, a goal must be defined so that it is possible to know if it was accomplished or not. In other words a goal should be accompanied by a &lt;strong&gt;definition of done&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point if you have a metric that everybody understands and is relevant from a business point of view : fine. As this metric is meaningful for your stakeholders, the goal will achieve its triple purpose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you don't have any metric don't bother trying to calculate things that do not provide any interesting information to your stakeholders (like e-mail volume). Instead try to have the team (including stakeholders) answer this question : &lt;strong&gt;when will we know that our goal is achieved?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;On failure&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The definition of &quot;done&quot; must help you get a good understanding of the reasons why the team has failed to achieve its goal. Keep that in mind when defining a metric that should define success/failure conditions, since you will have it as the root of the failure analysis. Your goal here is to facilitate &lt;strong&gt;understanding&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;On subjective goals&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advise about how to deal with subjective goals is &lt;strong&gt;don't try to rationalize them&lt;/strong&gt;. Let them be subjective. Let's take the &quot;Improve intra-team communications&quot; example. The only good measure here is probably to ask the team members about it. During the Sprint Retrospective Meeting ask the team members (including the stakeholders) if they think that the goal is achieved and why. Ideally you would already have defined the &quot;why&quot; part before the Sprint. A quick debate will then reveal if the goal is achieved or not, and it is likely to provide more information than the result of a weird calculation (At the end of the Sprint &quot;I don't even know what you did!&quot; is better than &quot;Our +communication rate+ is 0.473&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4071" LastEditorUserId="4071" LastEditDate="2013-01-16T18:42:47.973" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T18:42:47.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8433" CreationDate="2013-01-16T21:45:10.887" Score="6" Body="&lt;h3&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your Sprint was &quot;accidentally successful,&quot; then the Sprint is still a success. It just means that &lt;em&gt;future&lt;/em&gt; Sprints might not succeed without process change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Why This is a Good Question&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When using iterative, agile processes such as Scrum or Extreme&#xA;  Programming, what conclusions can be drawn from successful or&#xA;  unsuccessful Sprints?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a great question because it goes directly to the heart of what&#xA;agile practices are about, and explores the nature of the explicit and&#xA;implicit controls that underlie frameworks like Scrum and XP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Defining a Successful Sprint&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A successful Sprint generally meets all of the following criteria:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Sprint Goal was met.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Sprint Backlog was completed according to the &quot;definition of&#xA;done.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Sprint Review demonstrated user-visible features that elicited&#xA;constructive feedback from stakeholders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the definition of success deliberately leaves out issues of&#xA;velocity, story point estimates, internal processes, or scope changes&#xA;approved by the Product Owner that don't compromise the Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your Sprint met the goals, you should probably declare success and address any continuous improvement issues within the Sprint Retrospective. For example, if your Sprint was successful but the team's process was not reliable or repeatable within acceptable variance limits, that doesn't mean the Sprint failed--it just means the next one might not succeed without process change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Defining a Failed Sprint&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is actually harder to define, because a Sprint can actually succeed&#xA;through failure. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An abnormal termination by the Product Owner with a return to Sprint&#xA;Planning can allow the organization to take advantage of an&#xA;opportunity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Failing early and performing a retrospective before returning to&#xA;Sprint Planning can represent a cost savings over failing to deliver,&#xA;or over delivering the wrong thing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Sprint Goal was not met, but the organization extracted value&#xA;from the process-improvement opportunity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, note what is deliberately left out of the definition. A Sprint&#xA;Goal can be met even if the Sprint Backlog is not completed; by itself,&#xA;an incomplete Sprint Backlog does not mean the Sprint failed. Likewise,&#xA;a Sprint Review that doesn't delight stakeholders just means that&#xA;the iterative feedback loop of the Sprint is operating as designed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if the Sprint Goal was not met, and there's no silver lining&#xA;for the team or the organization, then it's fair to say that the Sprint&#xA;has failed. However, even a failed Sprint is rarely a total loss; there is&#xA;usually at least &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; residual value from the iteration, allowing even&#xA;&quot;failed&quot; Sprints to provide some marginal benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Drawing Conclusions From a Single Failure&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Analyzing failures is one of the purposes of a Sprint Retrospective. It&#xA;offers an opportunity to conduct a &lt;em&gt;post-mortem&lt;/em&gt; and identify potential&#xA;improvements to the team's process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From an overall project point of view, though, an isolated failure is&#xA;just a single data point. Until you have a &lt;em&gt;pattern&lt;/em&gt; of failures,&#xA;the only conclusions you can reasonably draw are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have a potential process problem that should be carefully&#xA;reviewed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have missed an opportunity to extract value from the process by&#xA;failing early. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; need to re-estimate your Product Backlog and release plan&#xA;if you have insufficient slack in your project to allow for variance&#xA;between iterations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if you really do have a pattern of failures, then it's up to&#xA;the team and the stakeholders to analyze why the process broke down&#xA;repeatedly, and whether the process or the project can be salvaged. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T10:58:53.810" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T10:58:53.810" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8441" PostTypeId="7" CreationDate="2013-01-16T23:46:35.530" Score="0" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Management Practices and Theory&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Methodologies and frameworks such as Scrum, SAFe, and PRINCE2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Commonly-Used Project Management Tools&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project-Oriented Resource and Communications Management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-10-03T16:35:27.710" LastActivityDate="2019-10-03T16:35:27.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8443" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-17T05:59:50.067" Score="1" ViewCount="167" Body="&lt;p&gt;When we open 1 project from MS Project Server , then we can update it easy and fetch changes and publish again to MSPS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when we have many project and programs that embedded them in 1 Master project and click on  update. This is not work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;please help me to update many projects and programs in MSPS 2007.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4902" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-01-12T14:31:09.703" LastActivityDate="2019-01-12T14:31:09.703" Title="How can we update nested projects in master project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;ms-project-2007&gt;&lt;project-server&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8446" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-17T15:44:20.813" Score="11" ViewCount="743" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is best described through an example. Imagine you're doing a project to promote a product. You have two equally important deliverables:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Street Advertisement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Social Websites Advertisement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to complete those, you need (among other things) some promotional pictures:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Street Advertisement &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.1 Promotional Pictures&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.2 ...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Social Websites Advertisement&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.1 Promotional Pictures&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.2 ...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if those promotional pictures are essentially the same, what is to be done in order to avoid repeated or overlapping deliverables?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5401" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T18:13:03.810" Title="What to do in a WBS when a deliverable is required in two bigger deliverables?" Tags="&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8446" CreationDate="2013-01-17T16:19:22.177" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Promote &quot;Promotional Pictures&quot; to a higher level WBS element.  So when you break Street and Social down, the promotional pictures does not become part of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T16:19:22.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8446" CreationDate="2013-01-17T16:31:41.303" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like your schedule could benefit by including dependencies.Promotional Pictures is not a &quot;sub-task&quot; of the two campaigns. It is a predecessor task for whatever step comes after completing the promotional pictures task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T16:31:41.303" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8446" CreationDate="2013-01-17T17:16:17.017" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given the multiple dependencies, 'promotional pictures' would a separate deliverable, and the as the others said, a predecessor to the other deliverables (campaigns).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T17:16:17.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8446" CreationDate="2013-01-17T17:20:49.140" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically I've used a product description for each deliverable that goes along with the WBS. That product description would include dependencies so that you can spell out what inputs deliverable X has and what other deliverables X is required for. These can also help capture acceptance criteria, underlying assumptions, owners, budgets, etc etc and are therefore quite useful for large/complex projects (though maybe a bit of overkill for a simple project if you take the product description too far).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, the linkages that you create in your schedule should help to make it clear that the &quot;Promo pictures&quot; are inputs to several other deliverables&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the WBS is the only document that you are working with then I'd go with David's response. Alternatively, you could keep the structure as you outlined in your question and put in a footnote to highlight that 1.1 and 2.1 are similar/identical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T17:20:49.140" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8388" CreationDate="2013-01-17T18:48:41.887" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both of these goals are really bad goals. Neither is measurable because neither really matters in the least. The answer is to ask why either of those two things matter to the team. What is the purpose of improving intra-team communication? Why do they want to fail early? Both sound nifty as buzz-words, but they don't really mean anything in and of themselves. Figure out what they are trying to accomplish by doing these things, and make that the goal (this will more than likely be measurable).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's like a user story: As a (team member) I want (fail early) so that (&lt;strong&gt;here is where the measurable goal lies&lt;/strong&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T18:48:41.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2635" CreationDate="2013-01-17T22:10:06.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good leading indicator of a process' output is to look at how well or whether the steps in the process are performed. If you require that the test script be written before the code, then measure the % of time the test is written.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5404" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T22:10:06.573" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8416" CreationDate="2013-01-17T22:32:15.993" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, Doug B's comment &quot;Accept that this will take time and needs tailoring&quot; is arguably the most important starting point - at least in terms of your mindset as you embark on this form of process change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would add one thing: don't approach this formally at the outset. In one company I was with, a few of us &quot;quietly evangelised&quot; for several months. In meetings, we would mention that there was &quot;another way to approach that issue&quot;; in reports we would recommend &quot;agile-like&quot; processes; one of the guys took the opportunity to give a lunch-time lecture (as part of a broader knowledge-improvement intitiative within the organization) on agile, who used it, and why. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By setting the scene like this it gave the initial, more formal, entreaties some context, and made them much less scary for management. It was time consuming, it was not 100% successful in getting Agile methodology used on all projects, but it did see buy-in that legitimised adoption of Agile by a number of our projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3170" LastEditorUserId="3170" LastEditDate="2013-01-18T01:53:49.613" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T01:53:49.613" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2635" CreationDate="2013-01-18T01:38:45.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Predictive Risk Calculations&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of quality control frameworks like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Six Sigma&lt;/a&gt; that attempt to calculate and control defect rates in a very math-oriented way. However, like many traditional project management practices, I personally believe these sorts of metrics work best in the manufacturing sector rather than in software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you might steal a page from the security sector and consider calculating the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_loss_expectancy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;single-loss expectancy&lt;/a&gt; (SLE) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annualized_loss_expectancy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;annualized loss expectancy&lt;/a&gt; (ALE) of your possible defects in order to estimate the potential &lt;em&gt;cost&lt;/em&gt; of those defects over time. Because this calculation is focused on cost to the organization, rather than simply positing a rate of occurrence, the end result is probably more useful in making strategic decisions about what risks to control for within a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Predictive Metrics Involve Educated Guesses&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly, these metrics are still subject to the cone of uncertainty. For example, when calculating SLE with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Single Loss Expectancy (SLE) = Asset Value (AV) * Exposure Factor (EF)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the value of &lt;em&gt;EF&lt;/em&gt; is still largely subjective. Likewise, the Annual Rate of Occurrence (ARO) in the ALE calculation is also an educated guess based on your threat model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't mean they're worthless. It simply means such calculations are most useful when devising planning scenarios, and designing project controls based around your tolerance for particular risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, you still need to track current trends and past performance to determine whether your risk models remain accurate over time. If you didn't need to do that, your results wouldn't be predictions, they would be prophecies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T01:38:45.940" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8416" CreationDate="2013-01-18T03:15:26.427" Score="4" Body="&lt;h3&gt;What Management Wants&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, what executives most want is more control over a project. &quot;Control&quot; in this case doesn't necessarily mean micro-management (although it often devolves into this); rather, it means more dials to twiddle in order to adjust the project on the fly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, they don't always &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; that they want this. Part of a Scrum Master's job is to educate senior management on how the framework provides &lt;strong&gt;increased opportunities to review progress, adjust priorities, and shift strategic directions at predictable intervals.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What Management Fears&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people--not just the ones on Mahogany Row--fear change and loss of control. Trying to sell Scrum based on &quot;self-organizing teams,&quot; or on the benefits of having teams limit work-in-progress to what they can complete within a time-box, is inherently doomed to failure unless the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_at_the_top&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;tone at the top&lt;/a&gt; is already pro-agile. Then again, if senior management has already drunk the Kool-Aid, then you wouldn't need to up-sell the value of agile practices in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What Management Needs&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter what the company does, or what methodology its projects follow, increased transparency is the number-one tool for improving &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; organizational process. Transparency gives senior management more knowledge and insight into the project, allowing them to twiddle dials in a more-informed way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, transparency comes at a cost. It means that organizational roadblocks and poor management decisions are made visible, too. It's not only successes that are visible to anyone who cares to look; it's the failures as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smart executives already know these things intuitively, and they also know that the benefits of transparency usually outweigh the political pitfalls---except in highly-toxic organizations, of course. When they see how the agile inspect-and-adapt cycle increases transparency while reducing political risk, the whole thing often sells itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Closing Thoughts&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give senior management what they want, ensure they get what they need, and avoid stirring up what they fear. It works for marketing everything else from micro-widgets to jumbo jets, and it can work for agile methodologies, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just remember, you aren't trying to &lt;em&gt;sell&lt;/em&gt; senior executives on anything. Instead, you're offering your organization a chance to &lt;em&gt;buy&lt;/em&gt; success by investing in process engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-01-18T15:46:47.680" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T15:46:47.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8446" CreationDate="2013-01-18T09:45:58.093" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remember the 100% rule. If the pictures are shared between media, then listing them under two headings breaks the rule by double-counting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some WBS schemes you always put &quot;cross cutting&quot; concerns in their own hierarchy. So some WBSes have items for Work X, Work Y and then a heading for &quot;Project Management Work&quot; to track that in one hierarchy, instead of across the whole project in dribs and drabs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, you might have&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1. Advertisements&#xA;  1.1 Street Advertisements&#xA;  1.2 Social Website Advertisements&#xA;  1.3 Advertisement Source Media&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where 1.3 is the one you book the photography against.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5319" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T09:45:58.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2635" CreationDate="2013-01-18T09:57:39.997" Score="6" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Using historical data&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the others have said, you'll need to estimate future outcomes, based on historical models.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For best results, you need to do this with your own records.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, for benchmarking and validation, you can also look into buying extracts from commercially-available databases of software project metrics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.qsm.com/resources/qsm-database&quot;&gt;QSM Project Database&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spr.com/spr-knowledge-base.html&quot;&gt;SPR Knowledgebase&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isbsg.org/&quot;&gt;The ISBSG Repository&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Predictive Indicators in the Literature&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you poke around in IEEEXplore and the ACM Digital Library, you'll find hundreds of papers on how this or that metric is a jolly good way to predict something else. But notice that in all such cases the researchers 1. gathered the data and then 2. generated the models.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is what we are all telling you to do: gather data. Generate models from the data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1062455.1062558&quot;&gt;Nagappan and Ball&lt;/a&gt; found that defects found by static analysis was a predictive metric for defects found by testing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=544352&quot;&gt;Basili, Briand and Melo&lt;/a&gt; found that selected OO-related complexity metrics predicted the fault-proneness of different classes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1134349&quot;&gt;Nagappan, Ball and Zeller&lt;/a&gt; also found a correlation between code complexity metrics and fault-proneness.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=1553571&quot;&gt;Nagappan and Ball&lt;/a&gt; again, this time correlating defects to code churn.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... and so on it goes. There are hundreds of such papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;But Not All Is Happy in Paradise&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Except, how good is this literature? A lot of stuff published on &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; topic in Software Engineering has problems with small sample sizes, weak statistical power, defective experiment design and so on. Software engineering is just one of those fields where the formidable apparatus of science is difficult and expensive to deploy. There are many things we will never know with any certainty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=815326&quot;&gt;Fenton and Neil&lt;/a&gt; wrote a brutal literature review in 1999 in which they point out all these problems with the literature on metrics as quality indicators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many organizations want to predict the number of defects (faults) in software systems, before they are deployed, to gauge the likely delivered quality and maintenance effort. To help in this numerous software metrics and statistical models have been developed, with a correspondingly large literature ...  However, there are a number of serious theoretical and practical problems in many studies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They go on to advocate Bayesian networks, which, if you are following closely, means that &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; will still need to ... &lt;em&gt;collect data and generate models&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;We Cannot Do Your Homework For You&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no general equations of software quality. Only rules of thumb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Software engineering is a complex process, in the sense that Bartosz Rakowski meant. There's lots of circular causality and lot of it is unobservable. The best you can do is form some loose models.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to be able to say &quot;Doing X has led to Y&quot;, you will need to collect those numbers yourself and derive your own figures &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; accept that they will be wrong anyhow. The second-best option is to use the industry statistics I linked to above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5319" LastEditorUserId="5319" LastEditDate="2013-01-19T07:39:09.783" LastActivityDate="2013-01-19T07:39:09.783" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1307" CreationDate="2013-01-18T11:41:53.610" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apart from the above, make it a &quot;MUST HAVE&quot; for a new PM to read the book before his new project starts. You can add a &quot;Read Lessons Learned&quot; step to you internal procedures or just encourage him to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2915" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T11:41:53.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8464" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8465" CreationDate="2013-01-18T12:03:27.407" Score="3" ViewCount="16304" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm preparing a Lessons Learned paper and I wonder what such paper should contain. I found this post: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/how_8014106_write-lessons-learned-report.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ehow.com/how_8014106_write-lessons-learned-report.html&lt;/a&gt;, some of the points listed there are sensible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any other point I should include in a lessons learned paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any other tips that can make the paper useful for other PMs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2915" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-10-31T13:15:39.510" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T13:15:39.510" Title="What a good Lessons Learned paper should include?" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;post-mortem&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8464" CreationDate="2013-01-18T13:23:51.537" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;PRINCE2 has a strong emphasis on lessons learned and provides &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prince-officialsite.com/Resources/Resources.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;templates&lt;/a&gt; for both lessons logs and lesson reports. Another site with useful templates is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectmanagementdocs.com/project-closing-templates/lessons-learned.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. I think both of these differ in tone from the example you cite. Your's almost seems to conflate some aspects of a close-out report with lessons learned, especially the first and last steps. While lessons learned is typically a component of a close-out report I've never seen it necessary to support lessons learned with documentation and statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other things that I have found helpful: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't wait until the end of the project.&lt;/strong&gt; Document your lessons learned on an ongoing basis. It is amazing how much you will forget over a period of weeks/months.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Track successes as well as shortcomings.&lt;/strong&gt; It is easy to have a list of things that went wrong, but you should also document what helped the project go more smoothly so that what works can be repeated in the future.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Document corrective actions&lt;/strong&gt;. It is all fine and good to identify issues, but you need to include some kind of plan to be able to address each issue identified. This doesn't have to be hugely detailed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Think about how you want to catalog your lessons.&lt;/strong&gt; You need to do this because if these are really going to be lessons &lt;em&gt;learned&lt;/em&gt; rather than lessons &lt;em&gt;identified&lt;/em&gt; you need to review and act on them in the future, and if you can't find relevant lessons easily the exercise loses it's value. I find it better to document the lessons in terms of project phases because it helps me focus in on what can be done better at a given point in a project. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have a home for your lessons that everyone can visit.&lt;/strong&gt; Share your lessons learned with others and they will share theirs with you. There is no sense in having anyone in your organization reinvent the wheel if it can be avoided.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T13:23:51.537" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8466" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-18T13:35:37.077" Score="7" ViewCount="456" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am researching agile methodologies for my organization. My question is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do you prevent a project from running for far too long while using agile?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can be writing requirements while feeding into a product backlog, the dev team can run with a sprint backlog while other requirements are being fulfilled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is to keep a growing requirements list from extending a project for far too long? How do you set that initial boundary so you can determine if the project has gone too far?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2226" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-01-18T17:50:40.120" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T18:21:25.740" Title="How do you set an initial duration for agile projects?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scope&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2635" CreationDate="2013-01-18T14:17:53.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't assume &lt;em&gt;Complicated&lt;/em&gt; environment, it's &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Complex&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Complicated environment is one which you can slice into the non-influencing factors, analyse each factor and find a proper and working cause-effect prediction model. Instead it is a Complex environment which consist of mutually influencing factors capable of delivering different results while having the same initial conditions. Only difference is the time of activity and related system state. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g.: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can have two different results based on the same project and the same people just because there are different interpersonal relations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can have two different results based on the same project and the same people just because they experienced and remember previous attempt.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can have two different results based on the same people just because they have different subject matter expertise on a given project's subject.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Agile and TDD related, leading-trailing indicators&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most cases the failure statistics provided by unit testing, continuous integration, release automation and manual testing - although they are trailing indicators - are strongly correlated with the technical quality of a final product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile practices like &lt;em&gt;&quot;iterations&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;&quot;frequent delivery&quot;&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;&quot;continuous integration&quot;&lt;/em&gt; (however you name it) - allows for live indicator of defect ratio. The same indicator cumulated over a time gives sort of a prediction of a technical debt. You can easily guess what tells you a trend line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Technical quality is not THE quality&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Customers use product and it's functionalities. They don't care if there is a defect in functionality if they don't use it. Moreover, they don't care if there are no technical defects if the functionality is poorly designed. For the customer the most important part of quality is how good a product was designed and how much of her needs were fulfilled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be sure you're not measuring ripples at a high sea&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it happens we believe having all the cards and that we rule all the data. It's important to remember that a volume of reported usage data is related to intensity of usage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the same amount of users generate different amount of product usage in different circumstances, e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Users can have holidays or other assignments pending&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Particular release triggered interest and influenced usage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Different user groups can have different engagement ratios as well as reporting tendency&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, be sure what you measure is a signal and you are aware of the biases involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T14:17:53.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8466" CreationDate="2013-01-18T15:53:11.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the best way is to pander to the priorities of the project decision makers when reporting progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When project decision makers are cost-conscious try running Agile projects on a time &amp;amp; materials basis. That way the decision makers are presented with an estimated dollar cost for the next sprint and can decide if the perceived benefits of the new functionality being delivered in that sprint is worth the cost.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When project decision makers are time-conscious you likely won't have the problem of the project lasting &quot;too long&quot;. Still, you may want to try to forecast remaining duration of the project based e.g. on the estimated units worth of work remaining as compared to capacity and contrast this to the relative value of what will be delivered.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When project decision makers are scope-conscious there may be reduced value in doing Agile approaches in the first place. Part of the premise of Agile is that you are delivering high-value functionality first, with the corollary that you could de-scope in order to save time and money.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T15:53:11.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8466" CreationDate="2013-01-18T15:54:25.203" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Three things: time-boxing, a prioritized backlog, and involvement of the product owner in the form of consistent feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Prioritized Backlog&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keeping a prioritized backlog ensures that the most important user story is implemented in the next sprint. In this way, the team is constantly creating a minimally viable product. Keeping a prioritized backlog is essential to managing scope creep. With a properly managed backlog scope creep is essentially impossible. Unimportant user stories will remain at the bottom of the backlog, no matter how many ridiculous user stories they want to throw at you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Consistent Feedback&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consistent feedback from the stakeholder/product owner is essential. This will allow you to gain better understanding of what they &lt;em&gt;actually want&lt;/em&gt;, which is rarely what they initially say they wanted. Be careful though, feedback must be prioritized along with the rest of the backlog&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Time-boxing&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using an iterative cadence is naturally time-boxed. Since your team is continually creating a viable product, this feeds directly into your product schedule. The product should be deployable at the end of each iteration, therefore you can choose to cease development at the end of any iteration, and have still created a product of value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing to ensure is that the team is implementing the project in functional units during iterations. In this way there is no &quot;too long&quot;. There is merely the current state of the working project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T15:54:25.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8466" CreationDate="2013-01-18T18:21:25.740" Score="2" Body="&lt;h3&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Initial duration is defined by estimating the initial Product Backlog. Like all projects, this duration can vary over time based on scope and velocity, and needs to be constantly updated and re-assessed. Termination by the Product Owner is the explicit control for preventing undesirable scope creep or infinite schedule slippage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Project Goals Are Defined By Stakeholders&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is responsible for working with stakeholders to identify project goals. Generally, this involves devising themes and epics, and then filtering them using some sort of consensus-building framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some common tools for building and prioritizing the initial Product Backlog include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/theme-screening&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Theme Screening&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/theme-scoring&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Theme Scoring&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/relative-weighting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Relative Weighting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tools aren't what's important, though. It's really about defining an initial scope so that the schedule can be estimated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Initial Product Backlog is Estimated by the Scrum Team&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the initial Product Backlog has been defined, the Product Owner takes it to the rest of the Scrum Team, along with any shipping dates or project milestones defined by the stakeholders. The Team then estimates as much of the Product Backlog as they can within the planning time-box, and works with the Product Owner to identify what epics are likely to fit within the planned schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this is a cooperative endeavor. The Product Owner provides scope and optional deadlines, and the rest of the Scrum Team provides the Product Owner with enough feedback about the Product Backlog to give the stakeholders an initial project schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Project Termination&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project ends whenever any of the following happen:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Product Owner terminates the project because it delivered sufficient value.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Product Owner terminates the project because its goals will not be achieved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Product Owner terminates the project because stakeholders have withdrawn funding or shifted organizational priorities to other projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Product Backlog is emptied, and no new stories will be added.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum projects &lt;em&gt;expect&lt;/em&gt; change requests and scope creep, so they generally require an explicit termination. This may or may not coincide with the original scheduling estimate, but &lt;strong&gt;termination by the Product Owner is the explicit control for preventing undesirable scope creep or infinite schedule slippage.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T18:21:25.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2635" CreationDate="2013-01-18T19:41:56.090" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like there are two problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Defending or getting budget for QA.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Modelling to predict potential failures.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are having trouble defending spending dollars or time on quality, there is a wealth of literature on the impact of building quality into a process rather than trying to correct for defects later.  This is the foundation of the whole field of Quality (with a capital Q).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are trying to predict potential failures, I'd look into the realm of systems engineering and serious risk analysis/management. This kind of work is done often on large projects where identifying potential failures could cost lives or huge dollars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T19:41:56.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8473" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8477" CreationDate="2013-01-19T02:34:11.593" Score="8" ViewCount="319" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is WIFO (Worst In, First Out) a good project management method? That is, should projects always prioritize work on the part or component that is the worst?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will WIFO make project quality more even by working on the most negative parts first, or will it lead to one part being the &quot;edge&quot; that you focus on, even though quality is already good enough?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2107" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-01-19T18:05:46.497" LastActivityDate="2013-01-20T19:00:35.660" Title="Is WIFO a good project management method?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8473" CreationDate="2013-01-19T07:55:18.857" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you're using &quot;Worst&quot; as a proxy for &quot;Most Valuable&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that's nice about agile methods is that they tend to order work according to value-to-client, not according to imposing a total project execution order to minimise costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you do the most important things first, then the next most important, and so on until there's nothing more to do or the client decides the work done so far is &quot;good enough&quot;. This approach isn't always possible for some project types (eg, the cost of building a bridge one lane at a time compared to doing it in a single project is so much higher that the 'agile bridge' method is just too costly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, value seems to be related to reducing the overall &quot;badness&quot; of the system under consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That might be a perfectly valid substitution. Or it might not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say for example you run a fast food franchise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now you have two problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your crayfish milkshakes are just &lt;em&gt;awful&lt;/em&gt;. Really vile.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your french fries are good. They could be great.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The milkshake situation is so terrible that late-night comedians are making jokes about it. Under WIFO, you might immediately begin to tackle it directly, looking for ways to make it tastier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in terms of &lt;em&gt;value delivered to customers&lt;/em&gt;, the french fries are the place to focus your attention. More customers get the french fries and more of them prefer french fries to any variation of a crayfish milkshake. By focusing merely on the &quot;worst&quot; thing on your menu, you may raise the average quality of the menu ... but not add much to its value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5319" LastEditorUserId="5319" LastEditDate="2013-01-19T08:52:46.477" LastActivityDate="2013-01-19T08:52:46.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8475" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-19T10:04:24.327" Score="1" ViewCount="2461" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often get task with the same similar like screenshot below, does MS Project has any feature help me to do it quicker and smarter than&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(1) copy &amp;amp; paste &quot;Module A&quot; task &#xA;(2) rename it to &quot;module B&quot; &#xA;(3) outdent the &quot;Module B&quot; task?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mgnOU.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1945" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T16:26:22.320" Title="task with similar sub task?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8473" CreationDate="2013-01-19T17:59:36.967" Score="5" Body="&lt;h3&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WIFO is really more about &lt;strong&gt;risk management&lt;/strong&gt; than it is about &lt;strong&gt;quality management.&lt;/strong&gt; Depending on your risk model, WIFO may or may not be a good choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Define &quot;Worst&quot;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing you need to do is define &quot;worst&quot; for your use case. Worst doesn't inherently mean something with a high defect or failure rate (although it may); it could also be a measure of complexity, cost, scope, level of effort, or uncertainty. In other words, &lt;strong&gt;&quot;worst&quot; is generally about how your project defines and estimates its risks.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Benefits of &quot;Worst First&quot;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The potential benefit of working &quot;bad&quot; sub-projects or dependencies first is that you may reduce the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot;&gt;cone of uncertainty&lt;/a&gt; for the remainder of the project. Once the hard-to-estimate or difficult-to-complete stuff is out of the way, the assumption is that there will be less variance in other aspects such as scheduling or resource requirements because the remaining tasks are better scoped and the risks well-understood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, WIFO front-loads your risk. By placing riskier elements at the front of the project when you have the most slack, budget, and resources to allocate to any issues, you may be in a better position to mitigate those risks than you would be at the trailing end of a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Projects that wait until the end of the project to handle &quot;big balls of mud&quot; like complex integration tasks are at much higher risk of failure and forced death-marches than projects that have tighter risk controls. When used judiciously, WIFO can be one effective risk control among many.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Pitfalls of &quot;Worst First&quot;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WIFO is intended as a risk-control measure, and &lt;strong&gt;doesn't focus on delivered value.&lt;/strong&gt; If you are working on a project where earned value or modular feature delivery is important, WIFO may be a poor tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, WIFO front-loads your risk. If your goal is to &lt;strong&gt;fail early&lt;/strong&gt;, this can be a good thing, and often represents a huge cost-savings over projects that fail late in their cycles. However, depending on &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; the work is considered worst, placing it too early in the schedule can skew a project by introducing premature architectural, design, or engineering decisions that would have been more self-evident later on. Lean methodologies advocate reserving major structural decisions until the &lt;strong&gt;last responsible moment,&lt;/strong&gt; while WIFO often forces these complex decisions to be made much earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, since WIFO front-loads tasks with a great deal of uncertainty, improper use of WIFO can lead to &lt;strong&gt;sunk costs&lt;/strong&gt; for the project. If the front-loaded tasks consume an excess of time or budget, your project may find itself behind the curve with no incremental value to deliver. And, as previously mentioned, premature decisions about design and architecture can lead to sunk costs in labor, equipment, or product design/implementation that can be very difficult to recover from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-01-19T18:09:09.317" LastActivityDate="2013-01-19T18:09:09.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8473" CreationDate="2013-01-20T02:00:07.103" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to point out a major risk that lies behind your question. Let's call it &lt;strong&gt;good-bad dualism&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question includes terms like &quot;&lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, &quot;&lt;em&gt;worst&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, &quot;&lt;em&gt;most negative&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, etc. Unfortunately a project is not just a single variable that we can sort to set priorities. Most of your job as a project manager is to balance between several aspects of the project, and risk or quality is only one of them. Because of that I would answer &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;, WIFO is not a good project management method since it focuses on only one aspect of the project, which is way too simplistic IMO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Particularly you need to balance whatever criteria you have with &lt;strong&gt;value&lt;/strong&gt;. For example in a maintenance software project where you must deal with a backlog of bugs, it is essential to schedule/prioritize work after taking in consideration the impact on users' experience, not only the risk or the quality. A defect located in a good-quality low-technical-risk part of the product, but causing an error message to happen every time the application starts is probably way more important to fix than a defect in the worst part of the project that deals with exporting in some weird outdated format that nobody ever uses anymore...but this might not always be true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, there is no &quot;&lt;em&gt;Most-XYZ In, First Out&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. Instead there are many &quot;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;The more XYZ, the more we should give a high priority, unless...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; (risk, quality, technical difficulty, value delivered to end-users, cost, etc.), and you should consider all of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4071" LastEditorUserId="4071" LastEditDate="2013-01-20T09:36:11.790" LastActivityDate="2013-01-20T09:36:11.790" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8475" CreationDate="2013-01-20T03:46:13.490" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, MS Project (as of 2007) doesn't provide any flexible way to do this. There are a few options, but based on your description/example, I don't think these would work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recurring tasks: You can define a recurring task (menu: &lt;code&gt;Insert | Recurring Task...&lt;/code&gt;), though you can't nest recurring tasks (as in your example, above). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shared tasks: if the 4 tasks you list in your example are the same task with the same dates and dependencies, you could create a single group and link to that single group from/to numerous predecessors/successors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Script it: Creating new tasks in a project file is trivial using VBA. Depending on how often and complex the tasks hierarchy is, you could put in a for loop and call &lt;code&gt;ActiveProject.Tasks.Add taskname&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note&lt;/strong&gt;: This is based on 2007. If 2010 has additional functionality in this area, I would like to hear about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2137" LastActivityDate="2013-01-20T03:46:13.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8473" CreationDate="2013-01-20T19:00:35.660" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. Two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quality is something that has to be built into a process, not 'fixed' after the fact. You can't build a quality product if you are always playing catch-up with bugs. Customers won't like it, it will eat up morale of your development team and it will cost way more money than getting it right the first time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work should be focused on whatever delivers the greatest value to the customer. This is the best way to prioritize effort.  Focusing on &quot;worst in&quot; means that your current efforts will be directed at whatever 'defects' were left over from who ever worked on the project last. That's no way to build value.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2013-01-20T19:00:35.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8475" CreationDate="2013-01-21T16:26:22.320" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you roll-up your Module A tasks before you copy &amp;amp; paste you can avoid the need to outdent (the new Module B will be at the same level as Module A). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think you can get around having to rename. It is probably also good practice to rename all of the subtasks in order to avoid possible later confusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T16:26:22.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8482" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-21T19:59:08.380" Score="12" ViewCount="806" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a client/shareholder who is more of a face-to-face kind of client. They can't grasp how to use email and phone to communicate project amendments and feedback. Instead, they wish to meet up every week with me and watch me add the changes in real time. Needless to say, this is a huge waste of time compared to emailing, phone, or instant message. Furthermore, it's adding the cost of travel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I manage this client and tell them &lt;em&gt;No, I'm not meeting up; send me an email&lt;/em&gt; in a nice way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5424" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-01-23T14:37:22.177" LastActivityDate="2013-01-23T15:30:40.373" Title="How to manage clients who want to meet up all the time?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;clients&gt;&lt;customer&gt;&lt;feedback&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8482" CreationDate="2013-01-21T20:56:44.780" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are actually in an enviable position in that you have a client who is engaged enough to get involved. My problem is usually one of getting that kind of attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the complexity of the documents and the size of the team you are probably saving more time (outside of travel) going through this FTF than dealing with it through email because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Discussion is in real time.&lt;/strong&gt; Hopefully you also have the key decision makers present so that decisions can be made in real time as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is no time lost switching between tasks.&lt;/strong&gt; This assumes that you are reasonably responsive to your customer, or are at least like many others who get distracted whenever a new email or telephone call comes in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is no loss of information during the discussion.&lt;/strong&gt; Remember the vast majority of info in a discussion is through non-verbal cues. It can be a lot of effort preparing a bullet-proof email compared to a FTF chat.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So maybe the main issue you have is one of down-time because of travel. If that really is excessive for you then have an honest conversation with them. Let them know that this is impacting your productivity and provide alternatives (e.g. Webex meetings; ask them to split the difference and have them go to you half the time). Or if you're on a time-and-materials contract let them know that you have to start charging them for your time and your gas and your parking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T20:56:44.780" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8482" CreationDate="2013-01-21T23:32:51.073" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, this is a question of roles. It's your role to complete the project to the clients satisfaction. And that includes method of communication. Declaring &quot;I won't meet you that often&quot; is putting yourself in the role of project owner, and that's not your role. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the first things PM's need to be clear on when beginning a project is how the client/stakeholder wishes communication to be handled; what form, what info, how often, who, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that you're being compensated for the time and travel, then as long as the client wants if this way, it's not &quot;wasted&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way I could see you being in a position to deny these meetings is if you're not being paid for the time, and it wasn't addressed in the contract initially. But even then, since they want it, you need to discuss it with him and find out what they want, and then negotiate. Not decide unilaterally what you will/won't do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T23:32:51.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8485" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8526" CreationDate="2013-01-21T20:38:16.693" Score="5" ViewCount="2024" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are running a project with a team of around 60 people using Scrum. Half of the team reports to one project manager; half to another project manager. Those 2 project managers meet with the test lead and the program manager in a daily Scrum of Scrums (SoS). Given that this is new, there is some concern about keeping the SoS short and efficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20130328040221/http://agile.dzone.com/news/scrum-scrums&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;read&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/scrum/team&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;several&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/11/scrum-of-scrums&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;good&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120324004930/https://www.scrumalliance.org/articles/408-running-the-scrumofscrums-agile-program-management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;articles&lt;/a&gt; on the topic of SoS, but most focus on technical integration between the Scrum teams via the SoS. What about reporting non-technical issues and status during the SoS?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, the project managers are not technical (and neither is the program manager). How detailed should the (non-technical) report be in the SoS and how can we keep this short and efficient?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2137" OwnerDisplayName="balinjdl" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-29T12:26:44.127" LastActivityDate="2020-06-29T12:26:44.127" Title="How to keep a Scrum of Scrums meeting short and efficient given that reporting on non-technical issues can take a long time?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;scrum-of-scrums&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8486" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8493" CreationDate="2013-01-22T08:45:30.500" Score="17" ViewCount="46184" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a team member in a Scrum team. This morning I had a discussion with my Scrum Master where I said that I needed a two people from another team to be a part of my team. I said I would like to discuss this with the Product Owner and then the Manager. The Scrum Master basically changed the discussion, saying that the responsibility for that was not mine or the Product Owner's, but was the Scrum Master's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who is responsible for changing the composition of the Scrum team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5425" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-12-09T19:37:14.347" LastActivityDate="2018-12-10T14:04:19.337" Title="In Scrum, what role is responsible for changing team composition?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;team&gt;&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8486" CreationDate="2013-01-22T09:59:05.320" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lets rationalize a bit:&#xA;- It is definitely not the PO's call, he is responsible for managing the product and not the team (that is self managed), but of course he holds the budget so there is an indirect call on the teams structure.&#xA;- The Scrum Master needs to keep the team in high performance mode - so he's approach should be: I see you are lacking some muscle, let's look into adding X more chaps to our scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it should be the &lt;strong&gt;Team's call&lt;/strong&gt; on adding another team member and who those team members should be as the team needs to feel comfortable with the addition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now on timing: Retrospective is a good moment to say &quot;This sprint we fell the lack of X or Y skills&quot; or During planning &quot;To get those US's done we need X and Y who we do not have on the team&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is theory talk... In practice he who holds the budget usually makes the call.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="634" LastActivityDate="2013-01-22T09:59:05.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8486" CreationDate="2013-01-22T10:19:55.487" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of Agile Manifesto is: &quot;Individuals and interactions over processes and tools&quot;&#xA;Which means that &lt;strong&gt;no one should be discouraged out of removing impediments by saying it's not his role&lt;/strong&gt;. Especially if there is a viable momentum for getting things done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to take a closer look at the &quot;rules&quot;, then each of team members should be able to raise risks and impediments and propose the solutions and mitigation plans. If a team lacks skills or knowledge it would also affect a team's ability to achieve goals. It sounds like a PO's impediment as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Removing impediments is a Scrum Master's responsibility&lt;/strong&gt; because team members and PO are often strongly focused on getting the results, &lt;strong&gt;so there should be someone who cares for performance of the other team as well&lt;/strong&gt;, since their resources are going to (actually) be robbed. Nevertheless, I hardly imagine a SM who would manage to change a team size without an active support of a team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="927" LastActivityDate="2013-01-22T10:19:55.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8388" CreationDate="2013-01-22T13:08:19.107" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm quite certain that is not possible to measure subjective goals and their related actions, because their measurement will be subjective too, but a measurement must be objective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;strong&gt;subjective goals usually appear when the team doesn't really know how to tackle a certain problem and starts experimenting&lt;/strong&gt;. That's why they are usually adviced to measure and observe the outputs (like lead time and throughput), because if they show a positive difference then the counter actions worked, and those outputs can be measured objectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if you &lt;strong&gt;count the appearance (mention) of a problem and check how this data looks like week by week&lt;/strong&gt;? Let's say that the sentence &lt;em&gt;&quot;we need to fail early&quot;&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;&quot;we should have failed sooner&quot;&lt;/em&gt; is said by one of the team members. You count the occasions, or ask the team members to do it, and at the end of the sprint you check this data. If the count is almost zero, means that you kind of solved that problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A while ago we weren't sure that we really need continuous delivery. So we counted the occasions when we could have done better if we had continuous delivery. We had 5 occasions in 2 months, so we didn't implement it, because we were good without it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this technique can work for your team as well. If the members less frequently mention that &lt;em&gt;&quot;they have to fail earlier&quot;&lt;/em&gt; might mean that they fail early enough for them. Or, if they don't feel the need to mention that the intra-team communication must be improved might mean that it is good enough for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-01-22T13:08:19.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8485" CreationDate="2013-01-22T13:14:14.100" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The thing is that the Scrum meeting shouldn't be technical&lt;/strong&gt;. There is a meeting called  &lt;em&gt;Community of Practice (CoP)&lt;/em&gt; and that meeting is for the Scrum Teams to talk about technical problems. So if you can keep the technical discussions out of the Scrum or Scrum-of-Scrums, your managers will be just fine. It is up to the Scrum Master and how he mentors others doing these meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the organization (&gt;500) of a friend of mine, they have a weekly SoS for organisational issues, and a CoP for technical ones. They are very happy about this setup, because it works for them. Managers go to the SoS, tech leads go to the CoP. Product Owners go to both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-01-22T15:12:10.987" LastActivityDate="2013-01-22T15:12:10.987" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8486" CreationDate="2013-01-22T13:20:35.603" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an ideal Scrum world you don't need people, you need teams. Of course, the reality is different. Your Scrum Master is right, it is not his responsibility, but he must be part of the discussion. Your Product Owner is also right, because it not his responsibility either. His responsibility is to deliver and when this act is at risk, he should something about it. Until the change in the team setup doesn't affects this, he should be fine with the change. It seems that it is nobody's responsibility. This is one of the flaws in Scrum. The created gap between development and management, left these issues open.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I tend to see a quite good solution to this problem: &lt;strong&gt;the line manager, the project manager, the product owner and the scrum master sits together and the situation. When they have an understanding, they ask for the team's proposal, and make a decision together&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-01-22T13:20:35.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8486" CreationDate="2013-01-22T14:28:23.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I have understood your question correctly as your team is trying to add resources then you are doing a right thing, however if you alone have ascertained to make such an adjustment am afraid it's not your call it's the teams call. In scrum teams collaboratively make such decisions, therefore if you think you need two resources it's better you table this as an impediment in the daily scrum and justify after scrum to team and SM the reasons why you intend to do it. In scrum team is empowered to make adjustments to team setup, however a Scrum Master could oversee if you are doing the right thing or not. For e.g. you team size is 6-7 and you are adding couple of more resources you risk the aspect of communication, flow, etc. &#xA;PO end of the day is answerable to the business about ROI by the end of sprint. He could be funding the project if so as Adrian above suggests it's his final call to add resources as there could be a cost impact. &#xA;If these two resources are shared resources across other teams then it shouldn't involve PO's approval, it would possibly involve the executive PO for the entire platform. When you have shared resources it's better to conduct cluster sprint planning meetings where shared resources are involved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4788" LastActivityDate="2013-01-22T14:28:23.580" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8486" CreationDate="2013-01-22T17:31:09.450" Score="12" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Roles and Responsibilities for Team Composition&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an interesting question, because it addresses some of the subtleties of self-organization with agile frameworks. In particular, it highlights the differences between &lt;em&gt;authority&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;influence&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum Team Members&lt;/strong&gt; are responsible for identifying impediments (e.g. the team doesn't have sufficient expertise in database design) and recommending adaptive improvements (e.g. suggesting that John Doe the DBA could provide the experience the team lacks). Team Members are also responsible for exerting &lt;em&gt;influence&lt;/em&gt; on team composition by making &lt;em&gt;recommendations&lt;/em&gt; about adding or removing people from the team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product Owners&lt;/strong&gt; are (often) responsible for resource budgeting. In such cases, the Product Owner would be responsible for approving or declining resources that would be charged against his budget. This falls squarely into the core Product Owner responsibility of setting project priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum Masters&lt;/strong&gt; are responsible for facilitating discussions about project resources (including resource constraints), process impediments, and recommendations for process improvement. However, Scrum Masters generally lack &lt;em&gt;authority&lt;/em&gt; to directly implement organizational change. When the Scrum team agrees on an approach, the Scrum Master is responsible for ensuring that the team's recommendations reach the appropriate decision-makers, and for promoting the team's interests within the larger organization through &lt;em&gt;influence&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Applicability to Your Case&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless the Scrum Master has been assigned additional authority beyond the typical scope of the role, he should not be making hiring or resource-allocation decisions unilaterally. Doing so is not a generally-accepted Scrum practice, and is certainly not in the interests of team-building; nevertheless, it occasionally happens in certain types of organizations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are quite right to bring up your concerns and recommendations within the team, but &lt;strong&gt;it is the Scrum Team's joint responsibility to agree on a solution and a spokesperson&lt;/strong&gt;. However, deciding what people or resources the team needs, and how the team could best assist the Scrum Master in representing the team's interests to the rest of the organization, is most definitely not within your authority to handle alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Organizational authority, whether on behalf of the company or the Scrum team, must always be delegated. The Scrum Master would be quite right to flag a team member taking a unilateral approach to this issue as outside the framework's generally-accepted practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-01-22T17:31:09.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8323" CreationDate="2013-01-22T18:20:11.993" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not aware of a way to generate this report using the built-in reporting features (even with a custom report format). You say that you can run it on the client -- are you able to run VBA? If so, you could generate this using a custom VBA function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2137" LastActivityDate="2013-01-22T18:20:11.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8486" CreationDate="2013-01-23T02:18:15.443" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Who is responsible for changing the composition of the Scrum team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would call a meeting and invite&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;team leads (both teams)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Owner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum Master&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Architect&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this change might affect other projects, these people should have their chance to participate in the discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2935" LastEditorUserId="2935" LastEditDate="2013-01-23T02:33:03.757" LastActivityDate="2013-01-23T02:33:03.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8482" CreationDate="2013-01-23T15:30:40.373" Score="2" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Defining the Problems&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have only two project management problems here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How the client's communication preferences impact the project's budget or efficiency (if they do).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who bears the financial burden of travel costs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other peripheral issues, but they are really more about how you &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; about the client's communication style, or how you can communicate your own preferences in a professional manner. As your primary job is to manage the project effectively, these secondary issues should be carefully framed within the context of what's best for the project&amp;mdash;asssuming you genuinely think that it's both professional and relevant to address them at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Potential Solutions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Communications&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, you should carefully measure the impact of the client's communication preferences on the project. Your post contains an emotional appeal, but no actual project metrics to support your position. When you say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They can't grasp how to use email and phone to communicate project amendments and feedback...[T]his is a huge waste of time compared to emailing, phone, or instant message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you are conveying a host of implicit assumptions, including the following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are assuming that your clients are Luddites who are ignorant of the alternatives or incapable of effective communication. This assumption sets up an intrinsically adversarial relationship.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are assuming that time (Your time? Project time?) is being &quot;wasted.&quot; This assumption is not valid unless backed by concrete metrics or quantifiable objectives.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are assuming that all modes of communication are equal. Effectiveness is very context-dependent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless your contract spells out how feedback and change control are to be managed within the project, how you and the client agree to handle these issues is certainly negotiable. However, such changes should be based on more than your personal preferences; professionalism demands that significant process change be tied to observable data and clearly-articulated process-improvement objectives with measurable results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Travel Costs&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may be a legitimate issue if it represents a change in cost structure or scope from what was originally agreed to. For example, if your contract states that the project budget is all-inclusive, but included incorrect assumptions about the amount of travel that would be required, then your contracting process should be carefully reviewed and the issue gently raised with the client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if the project was deliberately bid as a fixed-price contract with known travel requirements, then you may not have a legitimate recourse. That doesn't mean that you can't &lt;em&gt;discuss&lt;/em&gt; it with the client; if reducing travel would provide a positive impact on the project, that's information the client should have in order to make an informed decision about what's most valuable to them (e.g. face-time or potential project efficiencies).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not cost-shifting is an option, travel is certainly a requirement that &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; impact a project's budget, schedule, or efficiency. However, it is up to &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; as the project manager to track any such impact with concrete metrics, and to bring a level of professionalism to process-improvement discussions that treats your personal preferences as a side issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-01-23T15:30:40.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8499" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8500" CreationDate="2013-01-23T17:56:24.970" Score="6" ViewCount="3839" Body="&lt;p&gt;We hold daily Scrum of Scrums meetings on our project. The participants (i.e. non-technical managers) each manage several smaller projects and provide updates on their projects (from their daily scrums the day before). During the Scrum of Scrums, what should be captured in writing and disseminated to the participants afterwards?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Capturing a daily agenda seems overkill. But what about minutes to be sent to the participants after the meeting? Is there real value in capturing what was done and planned in each day? Maybe just capturing the impediments (and their resolution) is the best balance between effort and value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/4570/how-to-take-minutes-of-meeting-effectively&quot;&gt;How to take minutes of meeting effectively?&lt;/a&gt; (which talks about meetings generally) be applied to Scrums of Scrums?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My goal is to have something that the individual managers can use to reflect their status accurately with some historical view; and to provide the program manager with a view to effectiveness in each team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2137" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T13:30:11.863" Title="Should meeting minutes be captured during Scrums of Scrums?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;scrum-of-scrums&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8499" CreationDate="2013-01-23T20:58:06.517" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have found it most useful to track the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Impediments - who owns them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cross-team dependencies - when to expect.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resource contention - how it was agreed to be resolved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, you may find this detailed write-up from Mike Cohn of Mountain Goat Software helpful:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/articles/advice-on-conducting-the-scrum-of-scrums-meeting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/articles/advice-on-conducting-the-scrum-of-scrums-meeting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-01-23T20:58:06.517" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8499" CreationDate="2013-01-24T13:30:11.863" Score="2" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Defining Objectives for Your Scrum-of-Scrums&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the Scrum of Scrums, what should be captured in writing and disseminated to the participants afterwards?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first step in answering your question is to figure out what your objectives are for the Scrum-of-Scrums. In a &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/6238/4271&quot;&gt;related post&lt;/a&gt;, I defined the purpose of the Scrum-of-Scrums as a dependency-coordination meeting between Scrum teams and &lt;em&gt;not a status pull&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My goal is to...provide the program manager with a view to effectiveness in each team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're (mis)using the Scrum-of-Scrums this way, then your project may lack:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;proper visibility and transparency,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;appropriate stakeholder participation in Sprint Reviews,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;active engagement by the Product Owner, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a culture that values effective team process over &quot;accountability.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The types of artifacts you need for a healthy Scrum-of-Scrums will be quite different from the artifacts you need from a &quot;Scrum, but...&quot; meeting that is really a status-pull in disguise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Useful Scrum-of-Scrums Artifacts&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what meeting artifacts will help you capture the essence of a healthy Scrum-of-Scrums and assist you in coordinating your inter-team dependencies? Again, that depends, but I have often found the following items useful in my own work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A list of pull-queue items. Analogous to the &quot;what I did yesterday&quot; stand-up item, this is a short list of what each team has finished and has ready for other teams to pull into their workflow.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A list of impediments. The Scrum-of-Scrums isn't the place to hash out how to solve all the project's problems; it's a meeting to &lt;em&gt;identify&lt;/em&gt; specific problems so that the people best-suited to address it know they need to sync up after the meeting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A list of noteworthy process changes identified during the meeting. Sometimes problems &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; get solved in a Scrum-of-Scrums, often through the simple act of identifying dependencies or recent milestones, or by transferring tasks between teams. For example, Team 1 says they don't have capacity to QA some new feature, and Team 2 says they have a new continuous integration server and will take on the QA task. This information would definitely be worth capturing in a meeting artifact!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I often find that summarizing a healthy Scrum-of-Scrums really only requires a few bullet points, and almost never exceeds a single-sided piece of paper when printed. If more detail is needed, an appropriate team- or project-level user story can be generated to capture the essence. Such user stories convey actionable information, and provide organizational visibility when added to the appropriate backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T13:30:11.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8485" CreationDate="2013-01-24T15:05:02.767" Score="3" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Don't Give Reports During Scrum-of-Scrums&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question has a great title that already contains the seeds of your answer, but I think the body of your question obfuscates the issue. You ask (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to keep a Scrum of Scrums meeting short and efficient given that &lt;strong&gt;reporting on non-technical issues can take a long time?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are exactly correct: reporting (technical or otherwise) can be a big time-sink, and reporting upstream is not the intent of an agile meeting. That isn't to say that agile practices are antithetical to reporting &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt;, but that agile frameworks like Scrum aim to make project status easily visible to any interested party through artifacts like burn-down charts, product and sprint backlogs, and team-managed processes such as Kanban-style storyboards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum-of-Scrums is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/6238/4271&quot;&gt;dependency-coordination meeting&lt;/a&gt; between teams. If someone is pulling or pushing status (yes, &lt;em&gt;pushing&lt;/em&gt;; I've seen this done) during the meeting, the process is being applied incorrectly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T15:05:02.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8507" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8511" CreationDate="2013-01-24T16:29:36.650" Score="15" ViewCount="2486" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are practicing swarming in our Agile/Scrum teams. However, keeping WIP (Work in Progress) down continues to be a challenge. I am familiar with the theory, but I have some questions about the practice and application of swarming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In swarming, how should we arrange the work in such a way that team members do not step on each other's toes?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We are able to get designers and developers to pitch in with testing. What can we do to cross-train testers so they can help with the design and development, too?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When a story is blocked, the Scrum Master works on clearing it. In the meantime, should we not get the team started on the next story though WIP goes up?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-02-24T19:10:07.900" LastActivityDate="2013-02-24T19:10:07.900" Title="How to keep WIP down with swarming in Agile/Scrum teams?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;work-in-progress&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8508" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-24T18:06:46.497" Score="3" ViewCount="123" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our organization, sales people and administrators ask developers for support whenever they experience a problem. How should support time be structured/provided for existing software without constantly interrupting developers with direct requests to fix things?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4508" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2014-07-17T23:25:38.863" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T23:25:38.863" Title="How should support be provided for existing software?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;maintenance&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8509" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8520" CreationDate="2013-01-24T18:13:55.273" Score="16" ViewCount="22814" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the rule-of-thumb ratio of Project Manager/Engagement Manager time to overall project time (e.g. man-hours for work products) in a project? I'm especially interested in an answer within the context of a Professional Services engagement, though I presume there would also be a general answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, let's say we have a 1,000-hour project with two full-time team members working on it. How many hours should be expected from the Project/Engagement Manager on the project? 1/10, 1/20, 1/5?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there such a typical ratio? Does it scale/change based on the number of project members? For example, does it change if the project is 2,000 hours with four FT people over the same 500 calendar hours (~3 months)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="167" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-01-25T19:46:01.387" LastActivityDate="2018-07-18T22:41:16.910" Title="What is the typical ratio of PM/EM hours to &quot;work&quot; hours in a project?" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8508" CreationDate="2013-01-24T18:37:47.580" Score="3" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Responsibility for Change Control&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether the request is for new features, bug-fixes, or support for developed software, what you're really talking about is &lt;em&gt;change control&lt;/em&gt;. Change control is the process your organization uses (or fails to use) to manage scope and resource constraints on a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the framework, here's how responsibility for change control should be handled at the conceptual level:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Projects should define a hand-off to a support team/organization for completed projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Projects should define a support process for projects-in-progress to prevent diverting project resources in unanticipated ways.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Change control requests should be triaged and prioritized by someone who can make &lt;em&gt;business decisions&lt;/em&gt; about whether resources should be diverted from feature development to support for any given issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: In Scrum, this person should be the Product Owner. Other frameworks may task a steering committee, project sponsor, or other executive with this authority, which may then be further delegated to someone else (e.g. the project manager) if desired.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that all responsibility ultimately rests with senior management. While the project manager is responsible for recommending controls such as a formal &lt;em&gt;change management process&lt;/em&gt; to senior management, &lt;strong&gt;the management team remains responsible for funding the process and keeping it aligned with business interests.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Support Outside of a Project&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If support requests are an ongoing business process rather than a byproduct of a specific project, then an organization needs to build a process around that need. While some process frameworks such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_%28development%29#The_Kanban_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt; or Lean can be leveraged for repeating or ongoing processes, technical support itself is not typically considered a project, and is not usually managed by a project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because technical support is a business process rather than a defined project, applying project management methodologies (as opposed to process control methodologies) is usually not appropriate. However, one can't over-generalize here, so your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T18:37:47.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8507" CreationDate="2013-01-24T20:11:41.020" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Stop worrying that much about the amount of WIP and start worrying about getting the sprint done&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At my job we've tried a lot of different things to keep the WIP at it's minimum. We're an extreme cross-functional team with members (8 in total) in six different areas (iOS, Android, .Net, Web, Testing and Design) and we're currently quite satisfied by following the following practices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most importantly: We stopped worrying so much about the WIP as long as the sprint goal isn't in danger. Meaning that we don't really mind our people swarming over all the user stories as long as the goal of getting the sprint is clearly within reach. Of course when possible we all work together on one user story at the same time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We took care of the problem with stepping on each others toe by reminding and focusing on the team value more than the value of the individual. The team's goal is the most important thing. That means that working together should become easier by time. It does involve a lot of merging different commits (code based) but the developers get used to it. It does help you to actually hunt the stepping on each others toes, because developers tend to become more cooperative and start doing things like pair programming without anyone even hinting about that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each user story we have a set of disciplines to attach to, so it's clear to, if someone who totally lacks experience in a certain discipline skip the user story. This should be done in a very conscious matter though, and every standup should focus on getting the top ones done so if anyone can help with that the focus switches quickly back.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We've found testers to be quite hard to pitch in. We did involve them earlier by giving them versions almost after one hour already so they can start testing and sit next to you while you solve some of the issues they've found. Normally we don't produce as much software for one tester so we share a tester with multiple teams, which so far didn't really bring up any problems except of the logistic one (where to place them).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are just some practices we've found very useful. I know they're not all strict Scrum, but then again, Scrum only works if you apply it within your own domain. For us it works great this way, with your team it might be a bit different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5439" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T20:11:41.020" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8509" CreationDate="2013-01-25T13:31:51.097" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think you'll find a useful standard that cuts across industries and types of projects.  The range would likely be too broad to be of any real use in your specific industry and types of projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In IT, I have read from several sources, including the CHAOS Report and Capers Jones, that the PM effort is roughly 12% to 18% of total effort.  That happens to be consistent with what I have found during estimating for various systems integration projects where I work; however, I have also seen the effort to drop as low as 8% when the sales-incented people get their hands on it to get the price competitive.  Our organization unwritten rule is to be around 12% to 15% when we do our initial estimates.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T13:31:51.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8514" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8516" CreationDate="2013-01-25T14:56:57.223" Score="-2" ViewCount="1938" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/6603/can-i-apply-for-pmp-without-experiences-in-all-processes-what-are-the-requireme&quot;&gt;Can I apply for PMP without experiences in all processes? What are the requirements for obtaining these certifications?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a new member here and getting ready to take my PMP exam. &#xA;I worked as Project Leader reporting it to a project manager for a durability test for a chemical plant. The test lasted for 2 years totaling 10,000 hours of testing. &#xA;Biggest phase in the project was executing and monitoring. &#xA;I have similar experience with other testings as well. Can this monitoring phase be reported on my experience. Because two projects would total it to more than 3500 hours, required for the PMP eligibility. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would appreciate your thoughts &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5455" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T23:43:59.940" Title="Documenting PMP Experience" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;pmp&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-01-29T13:52:06.913" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8514" CreationDate="2013-01-25T15:39:58.367" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a very similar situation, and was able to claim the hours. PMI selected me for random audit and approved my application.  I was able to document that the work I performed was similar in nature to the monitoring and control processes of Project Management.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T15:39:58.367" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8514" CreationDate="2013-01-25T15:57:39.207" Score="1" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You can only claim the hours that you worked on the project.&lt;/strong&gt; I may be misunderstanding your comment about testing hours, but 10000 hours / 2 years / 52 wks per year / 7 days per week = 13 hours of work for you per day everyday for two years without a holiday = PMI auditing your claims and denying your application. Be clear about what &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; contribution has been and claim only that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I don't think you can claim hours for different projects over the same period of time.&lt;/strong&gt; For example, assume your &quot;big&quot; project ran from Jan 2010 to Jan 2012. From Oct 2009 to Feb 2010 you were also managing a smaller project. From the period Jan 2010 to Feb 2010 you would have to choose which of the two projects you were claiming hours for. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You don't have to claim all the hours you worked on a project.&lt;/strong&gt; Following on the first bullet, one could reasonably expect say 1100-1200 hours claimed per year if you are employed as a full-time PM. So if you've been in the position for more than about 3 years you could claim bits &amp;amp; pieces of projects so that you can cover off all phases of a project (initiation, planning, control, execution, closure)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be sure that you have appropriate references/documentation to back up your assertions.&lt;/strong&gt; PMI could audit your claims. There has been some scuttlebut (e.g. I think on LinkedIn) that PMI is increasing the ratio of claims that are audited.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T15:57:39.207" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8517" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8519" CreationDate="2013-01-25T17:30:30.843" Score="6" ViewCount="196" Body="&lt;p&gt;Update: (a PM-specific concern) Having developers working close together is valuable to my team - people tend to naturally ask more questions, get involved in code-related conversations they overhear, do more pair programming sessions etc. With the new setup, we will lose some of these benefits. Should I find ways to formalize these practices now - weekly knowledge sharing sessions, designated Scrum areas etc? How do you recapture the lost intangibles of changing a productive working arrangement for developers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Original question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My boss recently became head of both the BA and Developer teams, and wants to reorganize the office space and relocate everyone's cubicles so that the teams are more interspersed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the Dev manager, I see this as a bad idea because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's a threat to productivity as you can't ask peers a quick question without walking down the hall&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's a hit to morale as both teams lose their individual cultures and the sense of camaraderie that comes with sitting close to people you work with&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the right thing to do here? I appreciate the boss' vision of a closer-knit team but am not sure if he's on the right track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5456" LastEditorUserId="5456" LastEditDate="2013-01-25T22:49:17.210" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T18:30:27.760" Title="Is interspersing different teams a good idea?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8410" CreationDate="2013-01-25T18:14:25.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a very large gap between 2 and 20 points! The OP didn't say whether the story had testable acceptance criteria listed. In my experience, that removes much of the misunderstanding about the scope of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The OP claims that the scope is commonly understood within the team. Then one possibility is, like Dangda pointed out, some team members may know the code base better than the others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, the prudent approach would be to schedule a one-point research story first to build a proof-of-concept. Based on the outcome, the whole team can learn something and move forward more confidently and cohesively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T18:14:25.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8517" CreationDate="2013-01-25T19:20:08.007" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The downsides that you mention could just as easily be applied to project teams if you continue to have different groups siloed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's a threat to productivity &lt;strong&gt;and to project success&lt;/strong&gt; as you can't ask peers &lt;strong&gt;from other functional units that you have to interact with&lt;/strong&gt; a quick question without walking down the hall&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's a hit to &lt;strong&gt;project team&lt;/strong&gt; morale as both teams &lt;strong&gt;retain&lt;/strong&gt; their individual cultures, &lt;strong&gt;promoting an us vs them attitude within the project team, in particular when problems arise&lt;/strong&gt; and is also a hit to the sense of camaraderie that comes with sitting close to people you work with&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One key parameter would be to ask &quot;What level of cross-functional communication do our teams need to be successful and are we achieving that in the current system?&quot; I infer from your question that your boss' answer is NO you are not getting the level of cross-functional communication that you need, and is trying to address this by breaking down the silos the functional units have created. And a great way to do this is to co-locate your project teams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal experience is that co-locating members of different functional groups together when they are working on the same project makes those projects easier to manage and more likely to deliver on time/quality/budget by about an order of magnitude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T19:20:08.007" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8509" CreationDate="2013-01-25T19:37:56.383" Score="11" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Framework Overhead&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All frameworks entail some amount of process overhead. Some of that overhead is in the form of hours worked by the project manager, but some of it is a byproduct of delivering on framework controls and artifacts. The latter form of overhead is often significantly larger, since it tends to impact everyone on the project rather than being allocated towards a single role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Scrum is described as a lightweight process, but it carries significant process overhead that &lt;em&gt;increases as cycle time contracts.&lt;/em&gt; A typical calculation for Scrum overhead when using two-week sprints might look like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;4 hours of Sprint Planning per iteration. (32 hours per team)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 hours of Sprint Review per iteration. (16 hours per team)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 hours of Sprint Retrospective per iteration. (16 hours per team)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;15 minutes per day for daily stand-ups. (2.5 hours per team)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 hours of Backlog Grooming per iteration. (4 hours per Scrum Master/Product Owner pair)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 hour per day (minimum) for reporting, or generating artifacts like burn-down charts, or communicating impediments to the parent organization. (10 hours per Scrum Master)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the typical two-week sprint with six Scrum team members, a Scrum Master, and a Product Owner will consume 98 man-hours in overhead. This covers just the framework-mandated meetings, and as such is a reasonable baseline for some additional calculations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An 8-man team averages 320 man-hours in a two-week sprint, of which we'd be expecting 84 hours to be consumed in framework overhead, with an additional 14 man-hours allocated against the Scrum Master and Product Owner. That's 30.63% for the project as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A full-time Scrum Master averages 80 man-hours in a two-week sprint, of which 22.5 hours would be considered a minimum level of Scrum Master engagement with each team when using the expectations defined above. That represents 28.13% of the Scrum Master's available man-hours for each iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, the calculations can change based on sprint length (longer sprints trade cycle time for lower process overhead), team size, or meeting length. However, it is certainly a reasonable baseline for understanding the level of engagement required by a Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Level of Engagement&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The calculations above represent &lt;em&gt;a bare minimum engagement level&lt;/em&gt; for Scrum, and excludes participation in other organizational activities such as Scrum-of-Scrums meetings, stakeholder meetings, team &quot;hallway meetings,&quot; and other daily tasks that are essential to the Scrum Master's core responsibilities for coaching and process refereeing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With mature teams and process in place, a Scrum Master might be able to directly participate in 3-4 projects at a time, but the risks of &quot;drive-by management&quot; and process failure increase exponentially as per-team participation trends towards the minimum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a practical point of view, a Scrum Master should be an intrinsic part of the team rather than a part-time outsider in order to make the most of the framework. However, that's a decision each organization must make for themselves based on their own unique circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Generalizing for Other Frameworks&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the foregoing calculations were based specifically on Scrum. However, all &lt;em&gt;healthy&lt;/em&gt; projects need to allocate similar blocks of time for attending meetings, collecting/disseminating status, and generating framework artifacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some methodologies trade face-time overhead (&lt;em&gt;a la&lt;/em&gt; Scrum) for reporting or artifact management. Other methodologies trade team overhead (e.g. fewer team meetings) for project manager overhead (e.g. more metrics analysis or more reporting artifacts). However, &lt;em&gt;in my personal experience&lt;/em&gt; this does not actually result in lower overhead for the project as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your mileage may vary, but you can at least &lt;em&gt;estimate&lt;/em&gt; it by running similar calculations for your chosen framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;See Also&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/6549/4271&quot;&gt;How can a new PM manage a failing project in a few hours per week?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T19:37:56.383" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8517" CreationDate="2013-01-25T19:43:32.043" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the right thing to do here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ask&lt;/strong&gt; your employees. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really care about &lt;strong&gt;their&lt;/strong&gt; productivity - &lt;strong&gt;ask them&lt;/strong&gt;, which way they would be more productive. And when you ask - make sure you &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt; listen to what they are saying (I've seen a boss &quot;asking&quot; like this &quot;&lt;em&gt;we are going to have such and such changes, ok?&lt;/em&gt;&quot; )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2935" LastEditorUserId="2935" LastEditDate="2013-01-26T10:41:16.433" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T10:41:16.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8517" CreationDate="2013-01-25T23:50:02.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Steve and Doug in that it depends on a couple of things.  The first depends on how your organization has functioned in the past and can your team(s) adjust to change easily.  To go from a traditional functional team environment to a more abstract project maxtrix team environment takes a great deal of effort to come off smoothly.  Much of it has to do with training and preparing the new &quot;teams&quot; for the eventualities of team development (forming, storming, etc.).  Our office works completely in a matrix environment, where team members are on more than 6 - 10 projects each.  It takes some getting used to, but if your corporate culture facilitates the ease of communication, it can be a very effective methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5458" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T23:50:02.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8524" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8525" CreationDate="2013-01-26T13:38:58.933" Score="3" ViewCount="201" Body="&lt;p&gt;In terms of releasing the code and separation of responsibilities, should it be the project manager or the release teams that inform the business of the releases? I believe it should be the release teams job. Here are my reasons why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In our ALC, the release documents are written up prior to sign off.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We do two releases a week.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We run multiple project teams (6), and I would like a standard way of informing the business.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It requires less communication between groups, as the release team can just release instead of phoning the PM to ensure things have been sent out, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I think part of the release is informing the business directly. It gives people outside IT more of a view of the teams worth.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT-&#xA;Let me add some details, the &quot;development updates&quot; - are added to the tickets prior to sign off, the release team just collates the information from the tickets - When there are problems with the release we roll it back immediately. Another detail is that the release team is sitting with developers, the PMs and tests sit in a different building. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5459" LastEditorUserId="5459" LastEditDate="2013-01-27T09:15:59.610" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T13:43:48.050" Title="Release Team vs PM" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;responsibility&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8524" CreationDate="2013-01-26T18:06:16.577" Score="2" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Responsibility vs. Appropriate Task-Performers&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the project manager is &lt;em&gt;responsible&lt;/em&gt; for facilitating effective communications within the team, and between the team and the rest of the organization, that responsibility doesn't mean the project manager has to be the task-performer. It is perfectly acceptable to delegate that responsibility, or to encourage the team to develop new processes or side-channels that ensure routine communications are as effective as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T18:06:16.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8485" CreationDate="2013-01-26T22:47:49.827" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to keep them short:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;Don't disseminating status or solving technical problems. Do that after.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With 60 people in your Scrum Teams you would likely have between 7 and 10 Teams that all meet individually. It would be impossible for your two Project Managers to attend all of the Daily Scrums and you should trust the Development Teams to bring the relevant information to your attention after the meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Daily Scrum&lt;/strong&gt; - The purpose of this meeting is for the Development Team (3-9 people) to get together and understand what they still have left to do and to update their plan. There is really no requirement for a Project Manager to attend the Daily Scrum except as an observer and any information that the Development Team thinks needs to come to the attention of either the Scrum Master or the Product Owner is up to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum of Scrums&lt;/strong&gt; - Each Development Team should elect a representative to attend the Scrum of Scrums to allow the same information to be passed between the Development Teams so that they can minimise dependencies and make sure that all of the Development Teams have all of their work integrated and tested by the end of the Sprint. Again this is about the Development Teams themselves and not about Project Management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That all said, you can have as many other meeting that you like about whatever you like outside of those two specific instances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T22:47:49.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8524" CreationDate="2013-01-26T23:45:02.283" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends. Who informed the business before? If it was the release teams, then it makes sense to keep let them do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An important detail is missing from your argument. &lt;strong&gt;If another team is responsible for the release, all the information in the flow will be at least second handed, and in case of emergency an additional step will always be required&lt;/strong&gt;. Imagine that something goes wrong during the release. The release team might have a clue about a possible solution, but they'll definitely need help from the development teams. If the business sends feedback, it will be - not intentionally - filtered/altered by the release team, so there is good chance to increase the number of discussions to clarify things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For six project teams a whole release team seems a bit too much, however I know that customers like to have only one point of contact (either a person or a team).  I suggest to ask the project manager of the team who is responsible for the integration to be the point of contact, and make all the teams equally responsible for the releases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T23:45:02.283" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8517" CreationDate="2013-01-26T23:54:19.927" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems that you are facing a less pleasant top to bottom transition. In cases like this, there is a good chance that your actions are going to fail without proper support from the top. Brining back the old habits is important, but I think &lt;strong&gt;you should find a way to keep them instead of bringing them back&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There must be other colleagues who are worried as yourself. Have an informal chat with them and see who could you talk to your new boss about the current situation, and convince him to stop with his current plan. In order to do it, you'll need help, support and alternatives. This must be a team work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T23:54:19.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8507" CreationDate="2013-01-27T00:04:20.203" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In swarming how to arrange the work in such a way that team members do not step on each other's toes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If everybody participates in the swarming and agrees on the next steps, it shouldn't happen. Make the goals/commitments/targets clear and transparent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We are able to get designers and developers to pitch in with testing. What can we do to cross-train people the other way about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you mean by that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When a story is blocked, the ScrumMaster works on clearing it. In the meantime, should we not get the team started on the next story though WIP goes up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do that then the whole WIP idea is pointless. If something is blocked and the queue/column/line is full then everybody should work on the stopped/blocked items. If the team cannot do anything with any of the blocked items, you found a huge organisational bottleneck, which won't be solved by increasing the WIP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finding the right WIP limit is a challenge, which requires disciple. I remember that we had long discussions and &lt;em&gt;fights&lt;/em&gt; before changing the WIP, and at the end we always managed to get rid of the bottlenecks and kept the agreed WIP. Based on my experience, those who aren't familiar with the concept of WIP, won't really understand (or approve) this kind of approach until they fully understand it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-01-27T00:04:20.203" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3347" CreationDate="2013-01-27T01:02:00.633" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It isn't difficult to inegrate PRINCE2 and Scrum.  The PRINCE2 project proceeds as per the manual and during the Approving a Work Package Activity of Controlling a Stage, the PRINCE2 PM is acting as Product Owner (because he / she is representing the customer requirements).  The accepting Team Manager (Development Team Lead probably) implements Scrum in the Managing Product Delivery process and treats the Work Package as the Product Backlog.  This Product Backlog is broken into as many Sprints as required and as long as the entire process is complete by the time the Work Package was due to be complete, the PM has almost no interest in the activities taking place and expects only to receive Checkpoint Reports at agreed intervals.  The PM may or may not decide to attend the daily Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only other interaction that the PM will carry out is to recieve Issue Reports from the Scrum Master and keep him / her informed on the matter and the PM will also pass changes down to the Development Team lead.  How these issues are analysed and acted upon and how the changes were approved does not concern the Scrum team, the PM handles these activities using the PRINCE2 approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, there is no overlap or modification of either methodology.  Both PRINCE2 and Scrum methodologies are intact and neither the PM or Scrum team need to be burdened with any more responsibility than they would have had before combining the approaches.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5461" LastEditorUserId="5461" LastEditDate="2013-01-27T11:04:18.733" LastActivityDate="2013-01-27T11:04:18.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8507" CreationDate="2013-01-27T08:09:57.070" Score="5" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Swarming Defined&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is one of those buzzwords that cause more trouble than it solves. It &lt;em&gt;sounds&lt;/em&gt; awesome, but people needs to agree on a concrete definition before discussing it. Swarming typically means one of two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;All hands on deck&quot; to address a single user story. This is an extension of the &lt;em&gt;collective ownership&lt;/em&gt; idea, and throws maximum resources at a given problem.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Grassroots organization around a set of problems, often seen in a Scrum-of-Scrums context. Just like ants swarm around a food source without central direction, swarming is meant to lead to bottom-up solutions instead of top-down directives.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, swarming should never be a synonym for &quot;death-march.&quot; Not every technical or process problem is made better by throwing more people at it, and there's no such thing as a free lunch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;How Swarming Applies to Your Three Questions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In swarming, how should we arrange the work in such a way that team members do not step on each other's toes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't. &quot;Arranging the work&quot; is the polar opposite of what swarming is about. However, you can certainly keep the situation from turning into a game of bumper-cars by keeping your WIP at a sensible level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum implicitly supports WIP limits through Sprint Planning. Teams should limit user stories accepted into a sprint based on their &lt;em&gt;sustainable velocity&lt;/em&gt;. This inherently limits the WIP for the sprint. Some teams further limit WIP by ensuring that only X story points can be on the Kanban board (or in a given column of the board) at any given time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We are able to get designers and developers to pitch in with testing. What can we do to cross-train testers so they can help with the design and development, too?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a collective-ownership issue more than a swarming issue. First, check your capacity; are you &lt;em&gt;sure&lt;/em&gt; your testers have enough process slack to spend time doing anything other than testing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're sure that your testers aren't so busy testing that they ought to be pitching in elsewhere, you need to create time in the schedule for pairing, training, and information-sharing. You also need to allocate &lt;em&gt;money&lt;/em&gt; towards training time and training materials. In other words, cross-training needs to be baked into your organizational process &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; your budget unless you want it to remain a slogan about something your company would like to do...someday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When a story is blocked, the Scrum Master works on clearing it. In the meantime, should we not get the team started on the next story though WIP goes up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, no. The Scrum Master &lt;em&gt;facilitates the communication&lt;/em&gt; necessary to clear it. That may mean reporting the problems to senior management, working with other project teams to coordinate resources, or coaching a team member on how to approach a political or process issue within the larger organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for increasing WIP when items are blocked, this is usually a bad idea. Task switching is inherently bad for any process; Scrum is no different. If a story is blocked, the team should focus on &lt;em&gt;clearing the block&lt;/em&gt; rather than task-switching away from the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What to Do When &quot;Swarming&quot; Doesn't Work&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, some problems can't be cleared in a reasonable time frame or with a reasonable amount of effort. When that happens, the team might consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Working with the Product Owner to refine the story or swap it out for an equivalent story--but only do the latter if you have sufficient capacity left in the sprint!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Working with the Product Owner to remove the story (and any associated points) from the sprint altogether, as long as the Spring Goal isn't compromised.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Working with the Product Owner to remove &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; non-critical stories from the sprint, in order to reserve more team capacity for this (apparently significant) roadblock.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the story was essential to the Sprint Goal, the Product Owner has the option to terminate the sprint early. The team can hold a retrospective to figure out what went wrong, and then return to Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If team members have lots of stories that you &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; they can swap around within the sprint, then it's likely you have a process problem with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sprint length,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;capacity planning,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;estimation,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;organizational support for the project,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;political support for the Scrum framework, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some combination of all of these things.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the team should &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; be pulling more work into the sprint than they believe they can complete within a single iteration, there shouldn't be any &quot;extra&quot; stories lying around waiting to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-01-27T08:09:57.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8532" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8533" CreationDate="2013-01-27T16:19:40.753" Score="12" ViewCount="221" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the article titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.computer.org/cms/Computer.org/ComputingNow/homepage/2009/0709/rW_SO_Viewpoints.pdf&quot;&gt;Software Engineering: An Idea Whose Time Has Come and Gone?&lt;/a&gt;, Tom DeMarco says that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To understand control’s real role, you need to distinguish between two&#xA;  drastically different kinds of projects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;■ Project A will eventually cost about a million dollars and produce&#xA;  value of around $1.1  million.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;■ Project B will eventually cost about a million  dollars and produce&#xA;  value of more than $50  million.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What’s immediately apparent is that control is really important for&#xA;  Project A but almost not at all important for Project B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not &quot;immediately apparent&quot; to me. Can anyone explain?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5465" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-01-27T18:16:01.520" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T13:19:31.897" Title="When is &quot;control of a software project&quot; less important?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;process-controls&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8532" CreationDate="2013-01-27T18:10:38.790" Score="10" Body="&lt;h3&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author's leading premise is that cost containment is more important for Project A than for Project B. This is almost axiomatic if you do the math.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Purpose of Project Controls&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project controls are the processes and procedures used to keep a project within acceptable variance of the project's goals, especially in the area of projected cost vs. expected return on investment (ROI).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Project Controls and the Article&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Project A will eventually cost about a million dollars and produce value of around $1.1 million.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Project B will eventually cost about a million dollars and produce value of more than $50 million.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What this tells you is that &lt;strong&gt;Project A has an expected return of $0.1 million&lt;/strong&gt; after accounting for project expenses. On the other hand, &lt;strong&gt;Project B has an expected return of $49 million&lt;/strong&gt;, earning out more than 50 times its total budget. As one of the stars of &lt;em&gt;Breaking Bad&lt;/em&gt; might say, &quot;That's a lot of cheddar!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What’s immediately apparent is that control is really important for Project A but almost not at all important for Project B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project A has a profit margin of only $100,000. The planned budget will eat up almost all of the profits, so it will not tolerate much in the way of schedule slippage or cost overruns before the project is in the red.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project B, on the other hand, has a much bigger profit margin, and therefore a bigger margin for error. In fact, the &lt;em&gt;cost&lt;/em&gt; of the project is only 2% of the expected profits, so the project could theoretically balloon out of control (for example, it might have labor estimates running 300% over budget) and still make the guys from &lt;em&gt;Breaking Bad&lt;/em&gt; plenty of &quot;fat stacks.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-01-27T18:10:38.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8534" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8542" CreationDate="2013-01-27T23:17:10.173" Score="12" ViewCount="807" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a Scrum Master in a 7 person team. We currently use one-week iterations for our sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that sprint planning overhead is huge (2 hours each week for entire team), and not nearly as productive as it should be. Our team members do not care what each task costs, they rely on one or two people with context to provide the estimates. It seems team-wide sprint planning is meaningless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, there has never been a sprint where we successfully completed ALL planned tasks. We always complete most of them, but there are always a few left over for the next sprint. It seems the time-boxed idea is not working at all, as we are never able to fully deliver. Maybe it has something to do with only two people contributing to estimates, but I don't see the team completing all features even if everyone contributes to the estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know there are literally tons of books and papers that describe how wonderful iterative and incremental development are, but it just doesn't seem to bring enough goodness to our team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, how valuable exactly is it to keep a time-boxed iteration? If we just let one or two dedicated people maintain a strictly prioritized list and showcase deliverables as necessary, what's the downside of it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5471" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-01-28T17:59:33.640" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T17:32:06.760" Title="Why use iterations in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8535" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8599" CreationDate="2013-01-28T06:25:43.510" Score="2" ViewCount="12554" Body="&lt;p&gt;Microsoft Project 2010 (and 2013) no longer contain PERT charts. With this in mind, what is the recommended way to model uncertainty in project time estimates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE&lt;/strong&gt;: I only brought up PERT diagrams because supposedly they were used for representing schedule uncertainty in the past. I don't really care about PERT diagrams. What is the best way to represent schedule uncertainty in Microsoft Project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5472" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-10T07:00:19.867" LastActivityDate="2018-11-10T07:00:19.867" Title="Modelling schedule uncertainty in Microsoft Project 2010/2013" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8534" CreationDate="2013-01-28T10:44:06.287" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me you are mixing two things - prioritization of the tasks that will go into next Sprint, and task estimation. Project stakeholders should prioritize tasks, and the team estimates how much tasks will fit into next sprint (usually 1-2wks). Timeboxed sprints are good for setting proper expectation with Client, and good for deployment iterations (only ready and tested code goes to staging deployment every week).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're starting sprints on Mondays, on Tuesday of the previous week arrange session with project stakeholder (Client) to create prioritized list of items to be done next week. It may not go fast, but say, on Wednesday client will send you the list. On Thursday invite 3-4 qualified developers to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/topics/planning-poker&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Planning Poker&lt;/a&gt; session (not worth to take all team to estimation session.) Estimate every item in the list in &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/36810/whats-the-best-explanation-of-what-story-points-are&quot;&gt;Story Points&lt;/a&gt;. Split large features into smaller ones. See how many Story Points were done previously (previous Sprints), and cut your task list down to about same size of Story Points. If there's questions, clarify them with the Client and Developers on Friday. Email the shortlist to the Client to set correct expectations. Start working on the Sprint on Monday - this short list is likely to be finished on Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably not every sprint will match your estimates exactly, that's just impossible to achieve every time, however after 10 sprints, you'll likely to be more efficient at estimating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5475" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:31:53.287" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T13:00:05.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8532" CreationDate="2013-01-28T13:19:31.897" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think CodeGnome nailed it as the thinking the author had as he drafted that language; however, I also think this is a terrible message.  I sort of gives permission for sloppy management if you have a high degree of likelihood of an obscene return.  It also gives permission to exert a heavy hand on controls if your return is predicted to be small.  If my inferences are on target here, then the author's take-a-way should be avoided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the latter's perspective, where the return is low, you need to be very careful with the controls deployed.  They're expensive and, if you study organizations carefully, what you will likely find is a set of controls that get deployed to solve some an immediate and discreet problem, but will never go away despite the problem being long extinct.  In other words, we have a tendency to maintain expensive controls that offer little to no value.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think, no matter the expected return, the consistent deployment of the right controls is the way to go.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T13:19:31.897" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8534" CreationDate="2013-01-28T13:40:22.377" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you should be asking &quot;Why is the team not sufficiently engaged to provide estimates?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may help you get to the root of your problems, which I suspect is more likely a leadership issue at some level than one of process. You will need to step up and try to mitigate these effects by working to engage the entire team. Sit down with the team members who don't provide estimates and - in as positive and non-confrontational way as you can - find out why. Take this information and work to re-engage the team so that they are not only contributing to generating estimates but are also taking ownership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the more symptomatic issue of timeboxes, if you don't set a deadline for a task it will never get done when you need it. One can argue all day about how long a timebox should be for a particular project or iteration or deliverable or action item, but I don't think the basic need for setting limits on how long something should take is debatable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T13:40:22.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8535" CreationDate="2013-01-28T14:19:24.217" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Microsoft Project 2010 does have PERT charts. It is now called by its generic name &quot;Network Diagram&quot;. You can select it from the &quot;View&quot; menu. I don't have MS Project 2013, but I suspect it will be available by the same name &quot;Network Diagram&quot;. Checkout whether that is what you are looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am afraid the Pessimistic, Optimistic and Most Likely estimates have gone away in MS Project 2010. I found that somebody has developed an add-on he claims will help you do this. I have not used this add-on, nor do I know whether it is being maintained:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.technet.com/b/projectified/archive/2009/11/24/3296207.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blogs.technet.com/b/projectified/archive/2009/11/24/3296207.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2013-01-29T12:34:41.057" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T12:34:41.057" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8534" CreationDate="2013-01-28T14:47:01.457" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Timeboxed iterations are good for establishing velocity. It will take several iterations, but at some point you will be able to say that the team can get done, say 15 to 20 points in a one week iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The downside of not establishing a rough velocity is that you cannot do any planning. If your backlog is, say 300 points, and a new initiative needs to be brought in, you will not be able to make a judgement call whether the priority can be rearranged or you need to hire more people or outsource the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T14:47:01.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8534" CreationDate="2013-01-28T17:53:29.850" Score="9" Body="&lt;h3&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You actually have two questions. One is about time-boxing, and the other is about estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time-boxing and estimation are the very &lt;em&gt;essence&lt;/em&gt; of Scrum. If you aren't adapting those two practices for your team, whatever you're doing isn't really Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Tools and Practices Aren't Silver Bullets&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Incremental development] just doesn't seem to bring enough goodness to our team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time-boxing is a tool. It is not a goal in itself, &lt;em&gt;it is a means to an end.&lt;/em&gt; Objectives for time-boxing include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Composing more granular user stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Applying implicit work-in-progress limits.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improving the accuracy of estimation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developing a &lt;em&gt;predictable cadence&lt;/em&gt; within the project. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Time-Boxes: Essential to Scrum&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[H]ow valuable exactly is it to keep a timeboxed iteration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time-boxing is essential to the framework. It ensures that work is properly sized, that features are scheduled based on team capacity, and that the project has a tight feedback loop for its deliverables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;length&lt;/em&gt; of the time-boxes can be adjusted, but you can't do without them. In fact, sprint length is one of the most effective control dials for a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Shorter sprints...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;accelerate the feedback loop.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;increase process overhead.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reduce implicit WIP limits.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reduce maximum work-unit size.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reduce cycle times for properly-sized work units.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Longer sprints...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reduce process overhead.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;increase maximum work-unit size.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;usually increase the effort required for feature integration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;increase time available for implementing process controls at the cost of higher cycle times.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to find the &lt;em&gt;optimal sprint length&lt;/em&gt; for your team. It is very likely that one-week sprints are too short for your organizational requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Time-Boxing and Estimation Work Hand-in-Hand&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[T]here has never been a sprint where we successfully complete ALL planned tasks. We always complete most of them, but there will always be a few left into the next sprint. Maybe it has something to do with only 2 people are contributing to estimate[s.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to make a few assumptions here. First, you don't have sufficient team buy-in or participation to rely on your estimates, and so you discount the value of estimating. Second, because your work is improperly estimated, you are pulling more work into each sprint than your team capacity can support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All teams occasionally miss commitment targets, but &lt;em&gt;routinely&lt;/em&gt; failing to meet them is a sign of a fundamental process problem. In your case, this is likely due to improper iteration length, inaccurate story estimates, or &lt;strong&gt;stories being shoveled into each sprint from outside the team&lt;/strong&gt; without regard for WIP limits or team capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Possible Solutions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Estimation&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can improve your team's estimations over time by using some widely-accepted practices. Some of these practices include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A formal Sprint Planning session where the whole team participates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planning Poker to encourage unanchored estimates and prompt discussion about variance in estimates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint Retrospectives where estimates can be reviewed to identify lessons learned about the team's estimating process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Promoting collective ownership or &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8531/4271&quot;&gt;swarming&lt;/a&gt; instead of assigning stories to individual team members.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Team Capacity&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can improve your team's velocity and story completion rate by following the framework's guidelines. Best practices include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adjusting sprint length to the optimal size for your typical user story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Revising your velocity expectations downwards when commitment targets are not met.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Limiting stories accepted into each sprint the lower end of your predicted velocity range.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Working with the Product Owner to decompose user stories that don't fit within a single sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;See Also&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8520/4271&quot;&gt;Related answer&lt;/a&gt; about how sprint length can impact process overhead.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8531/4271&quot;&gt;Related answer&lt;/a&gt; that discusses swarming and WIP limits.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T17:53:29.850" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8517" CreationDate="2013-01-28T18:30:27.760" Score="3" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Purpose of &quot;Sitting Together&quot; as a Practice&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of sitting together is an agile practice that's predicated on the idea that colocation increases communication bandwidth within the team. There is widespread acceptance of this premise, but there are also thoughtful objections to the practice, including the observation that open-plan seating and colocation can increase interruptions, reduce signal-to-noise, and create additional task-switching overhead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the practice is widely considered beneficial, but is not &lt;em&gt;essential&lt;/em&gt;. You certainly have alternatives, should you actually need them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Keep Your Perspective&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While &quot;down the hall&quot; might be inconvenient for osmotic information-sharing, it is hardly a problem in the same way that coordination with geographically-dispersed teams or off-shore development models would be. Honestly, if a problem isn't big enough to warrant walking 20 or 100 feet, it probably isn't a real or urgent problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also benefits to integration within the larger organization. If your development team needs to coordinate with anyone outside the project (e.g. the business analysts), then any benefits of colocation would apply to them, too. Why wouldn't you &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; your developers to have easier access to DBAs, BAs, or other roles within the organization that they may need to work with to do their jobs well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Communications Culture&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teams that don't sit together can still work well together. It's all about communication. If you have a team that's dispersed, whether it's down the hall or across the ocean, the 21st century is awash in productive communications methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instant messaging, email, telephones, video chat, mailing lists, wikis, and screen sharing are just &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; of the ways that teams can work together without sitting together. Each mechanism has its own pros and cons, and teams must find the work-flows and formulae that work best for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Encourage your team to build whatever communication channels and teaming practices they need. You'd be surprised at how well teams can do when the organizational culture encourages innovative communications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T18:30:27.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8544" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9039" CreationDate="2013-01-29T05:14:55.760" Score="3" ViewCount="2525" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to create a &quot;reference&quot; schedule, then create an optimistic and pessimistic schedule based on this where the duration of each task in the optimistic/pessimistic schedules are calculated as a formula relative to the optimal schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know how to create custom fields with calculated values, but &lt;strong&gt;how do I structure the work so I can toggle between the different Gantt charts based on the optimal, reference and pessimistic schedules?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5472" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-10T07:00:12.757" LastActivityDate="2018-11-10T07:00:12.757" Title="Alternative schedules in Microsoft Project 2010?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8535" CreationDate="2013-01-29T10:35:44.167" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only way to get a true sense of uncertainty in your schedule is to run a Monte Carlo simulation.  Seeing a distribution that you created for each work package is meaningless.  You need to run hundreds of simulated projects so that the infinite number of combinations of those distributions can play out.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I can tell, there is no out of the box simulator in MS Project.  But there are add-ins that you can purchase such as @Risk, Fullmonte, and others.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T10:35:44.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8535" CreationDate="2013-01-29T11:41:44.097" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical that project can do what you ask; I'm not positive, but I'm skeptical.  Let me offer a few options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, you could use several of the custom fields to represent minimum, maximum and most likely estimates.  (e.g. num1, num2, num3).  If I were in your shoes, I'd probably allocate three more fields to indicate the probability, impact and aggregate risk rating for the task, and use the combination of those to develop a dynamic adjustment to schedule.  I've worked with math &amp;amp; formulas in project, and I'd strongly suggest that you either purchase the add-ins suggested by @david Espina, or else export to excel for the monte carlo simulation.  My preference here is reinforced by your statement that you want to see a graphical representation of the confidence bars; I doubt you can do that in project, but you should be able to do so in excel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, if your real goal is to manage the aleatory risk intrinsic to scheduling, you could adopt &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_chain_project_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Critical chain scheduling&lt;/a&gt;, which (at a rough summary) pushes all the risk &amp;amp; slack to a buffer at the end of the project, and consolidates the management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a third option - what you are describing as a PERT chart is not the PERT chart that I'm familiar with. If you check &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_Evaluation_and_Review_Technique&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia on PERT&lt;/a&gt;, they describe the PERT as equivalent to the network diagram referenced by @Ashok Ramachandran, but they do reference using Microsoft Visio to create &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File%3aPert_example_node_legend.GIF&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;node diagrams&lt;/a&gt; that are related to the PERT estimation techiques you reference.  Of course it doesn't lead to the error display bars you're looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think if you want what you've asked for, you're going to have to cobble it together from multiple products. In my personal opinion, the resulting schedule will be quite difficult to maintain. If you do develop such a product and document the procedures you use to maintain the schedule, I think it would be worth publishing. I can envision value in that kind of a scheduling tool and associated procedures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T11:41:44.097" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8547" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-29T13:32:29.523" Score="3" ViewCount="24357" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to put together a programme plan, collaborating all of the individual project plans into one programme plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every time I copy and paste one of the project plans into my new programme plan (even if there is nothing else in the plan) all of the dates change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without going through each task a rectifying the date change, there is not much that I can think to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Removing automatic scheduling allows me to copy and paste the dates, but I need the format of the plan to stay the same, so automatic scheduling needs to be on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5480" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-09T16:36:28.823" LastActivityDate="2018-11-09T16:36:28.823" Title="How do you copy and paste a group of tasks from one MS Project (2010) to another MS Project (2010) without the start and end dates changing?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8524" CreationDate="2013-01-29T13:43:48.050" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whoever can best articulate what business value was delivered should do that communication. The business team's eyes will glaze over if you just send a list of tickets deployed. They don't want to hear the technical mumbo jumbo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We created this Product Owner role and it is working out very well. My recommendation is that you create this new role. Here is a link that describes the role of the product owner:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumalliance.org/articles/44-being-an-effective-product-owner&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scrumalliance.org/articles/44-being-an-effective-product-owner&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;In the meantime, assign this responsibility to the person who can best extract the business value from the list of tickets and articulate it well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T13:43:48.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8547" CreationDate="2013-01-29T14:22:15.403" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is one approach you might want to try. Go ahead and paste the tasks of one project into the programme plan. Let the dates change. Then select only the start and end date fields from that project plan and then do a &quot;Paste Special -&gt; Text Data&quot; into the start and end date fields of the programme plan. If you see a dialog, select &quot;Continue. Move the task to start before the project start date.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T14:22:15.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8547" CreationDate="2013-01-29T15:41:07.983" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hard coding your dates kills one the biggest reasons you are tracking your schedule--to monitor your finish variances.  Hard coded dates are used as constraints in the schedule logic so that your finish variances read zero all the time, but your resource utilization increases to absorb schedule slips.  Instead, the dates should be derived based on your schedule dependencies and sequencing and work package durations.  As such, if you transfer the schedule into a new version, you only need to adjust the first milestone &quot;start&quot; date; then everything else will automatically adjust and sequence based on the logic.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T15:41:07.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8552" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8553" CreationDate="2013-01-29T21:56:49.003" Score="4" ViewCount="659" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm starting a Games Development club. I'll be thrown lots of people with their own skill-sets, commitment levels, goals, etc. I need to ensure they are pointed towards appropriate yet stimulating tasks, and hopefully manage to produce some finished products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current plan to deal with this is to have a website with listings of projects people are currently working on, and encourage people active in these projects to link all their work to the website. The system would have various functionality, but the basic idea is to help project members find people with the skills they need, and people with nothing to do to find a project task that interests them. The outcome would be that, even if a project died, anybody could continue it if all the work that had already been done was available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main concern is people dropping out and leaving half-finished work behind, but I'm sure there are other challenges I need to consider. I also want to make sure people can move between projects as they wish when their skills are needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I manage a potentially large, distributed, and fickle workforce in an effective way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5481" LastEditorUserId="5481" LastEditDate="2013-01-30T12:35:59.877" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T12:35:59.877" Title="How can I manage multiple large, parallel, distributed projects with different workforce commitment levels?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;distributed-team&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8552" CreationDate="2013-01-30T00:10:12.753" Score="3" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Your Question, Redefined&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My main concern is people dropping out and leaving half finished work behind but I'm sure there are other challenges I need to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many such challenges with any drop-in/drop-out resource matrix. Your question is broad, and not fully answerable in it's current form. However, I think it's answerable if you redefine the underlying problem that you're facing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, I believe the underlying issue to be one of &lt;em&gt;chunking&lt;/em&gt;. Whether you're talking about distributed computing or distributed project teams, the question of how to decompose tasks into discrete units of work, each of which can be performed independently, is a common one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;A Generic Solution&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a project management standpoint, there will be a large pool of potential answers to this question. However, at a macro level, they will all have some similar features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work units are small and independent of one another.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work units are largely self-contained.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work units can be completed within a short, well-defined duration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work units must be either done or not-done; incomplete work should not be turned in or reassigned.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work units need not be unique, and the same work unit can be handed out to more than one worker at a time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work units produce outputs that are provably correct.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work units must not block; each work unit remains available to anyone until it is completed and removed from the work queue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work units can produce identical &lt;em&gt;work products&lt;/em&gt; without causing problems, and duplicates are acceptable project artifacts that are handled properly during turn-in, collation, or integration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collation/integration of the completed work units is centrally- and actively-managed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;GitHub Repositories as Concrete Examples&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think about it, this is how a lot of open-source projects are managed on GitHub. Issues are created, one or more volunteers pick a given problem from the issues list, and the issue is closed only when the maintainers approve a completed patch and integrate it with the existing code base. If someone starts work on an item, but doesn't complete it, the system keeps those same items available to others until the issue is marked &quot;closed.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one problem this model faces is that it can't guarantee that &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; given unit of work will actually be worked on or completed. However, that problem is implicit in your drop-in/drop-out model, and may require other incentives or project controls to address effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Computational Examples with Project Management Implications&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While more in the nature of computational solutions, you might want to look at the way projects like &lt;a href=&quot;http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SETI@home&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.distributed.net/Main_Page&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;distributed.net&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://bitcoin.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BitCoin&lt;/a&gt; have attempted to solve these problems. Even if your problem is not computational, the packaging and integration of work units for these projects is the same &lt;em&gt;class&lt;/em&gt; of problem that you're attempting to address.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T00:10:12.753" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8534" CreationDate="2013-01-30T02:39:10.590" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If we just let one or two dedicated people maintain a strictly prioritized list and showcase deliverables as necessary, what's the downside of it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The downside:&lt;/strong&gt; When there are no specific deadlines, tasks often take longer than they should.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More specifically: &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Parkinson's law&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that time is infinite (no deadline), well... you can see where that leads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...how valuable exactly is it to keep a time-boxed iteration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, it's pretty valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't see the team completing all features even if everyone contributes to the estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a totally separate problem you may want edit it out and submit as a separate question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I certainly wouldn't advise moving away from timeboxed iterations to address a problem with estimation and delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2713" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T02:39:10.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8547" CreationDate="2013-01-30T09:47:05.390" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's acceptable to you (or whoever the programme plan is aimed at) it might make more sense to manage the projects separately and &lt;a href=&quot;http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/project-help/create-and-manage-inter-project-dependencies-HA010123057.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;create dependencies between them&lt;/a&gt;. That would allow the auto scheduling to remain in place on each project but effectively link them together as part of a wider program. Personally, I think having multiple projects in a single project plan is a bit unmanageable. If the intention of the single program plan is to share resources more effectively then it is also possible to &lt;a href=&quot;http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/project-help/create-a-resource-pool-for-sharing-resources-across-projects-HP045303641.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;share resources between individual projects&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T09:47:05.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8556" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8560" CreationDate="2013-01-30T10:06:26.100" Score="11" ViewCount="4190" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have plotted my team burn up chart and its velocity per iteration. To me it looks really bad (velocity fluctuates a lot). What should I be looking for to diagnose the root cause of this behaviour?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YpbT0.png&quot; alt=&quot;BurnUpChard and VelocityPerSprint &quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5484" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-10-21T22:30:46.797" LastActivityDate="2019-10-21T22:30:46.797" Title="Team velocity fluctuates a lot, how to find the root cause?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;burndown-chart&gt;&lt;velocity&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8534" CreationDate="2013-01-30T10:51:52.767" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some valuable suggestions in other answers but I thought I'd share what my team has been doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For quite a while now, we've not done sprint planning or story point estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing is that you look carefully at &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; you do those things and replace them with something else that gives you the same result, in a way that works better for your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my team, we decided that &lt;strong&gt;Sprint Planning&lt;/strong&gt; was done for three reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To give the PO an idea of what we would complete in that sprint, so he could communicate progress to other parties. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To give the team an opportunity to confirm the intent of a story with the PO and discuss any unclear acceptance criteria.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To check that, given what we have learnt since we originally estimated a story, the points given to it still sounded right and re-estimate if needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, we decided that &lt;strong&gt;estimation&lt;/strong&gt; (which we did in a separate session) is valuable for us, again for three reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To communicate a story to the team and allow the team to question the PO.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To force a conversation about the complexity and risks involved in a story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To ensure that a story is not too big to be worked on in a sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, we looked  at ways we could generate the same outcomes in different ways, stopped doing planning and introduced:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Backlog sessions&lt;/strong&gt; - This is a 30 min slot each day (although only used on an 'as needed' basis) where the Product Owner introduces upcoming stories to the team.  We then discuss them at a high level, identify where we may need spike or a technical design session to elaborate and decide if it is of a size we're willing to accept or if it needs breaking up (rule of thumb is do we think we can do it in a week).&#xA;This replaces points 4, 5 and 6.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Story Huddles&lt;/strong&gt; - This takes place as a story is starting, usually between the dev pain, BA, QA and PO.  It's an opportunity to make sure we've captured acceptance criteria, have an idea of the tests we need to write and we can split a story up if we start to think it's too big to be done as one.&#xA;This replaces points 2 and 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cycle time as a metric&lt;/strong&gt; - Rather than measuring velocity, we just measure how long it takes for the average story to be completed.  Monitoring this over time helps us identify when our story size/complexity is creeping up and also gives the PO scheduling information (if I have 5 things I want done and cycle time is 4 days, I should have them all in 20 days time).&#xA;This replaces point 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This works for us but I advise you go through the same process as we did and examine what value you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; get out of your current process before making any changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastEditorUserId="1185" LastEditDate="2013-02-04T17:32:06.760" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T17:32:06.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8556" CreationDate="2013-01-30T11:26:03.447" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Draw a line that represents the rolling average over that period, then draw lines that represent upper and lower control limits at 1, 2, and 3 sigma. Then analyze again. Your Y axis goes from zero to 1,000 which can make normal variation look extreme and volatile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You must use control limits to determine if you have a special cause. Else, you have normal, random fluctuations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have the new graph, repost. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2013-01-30T11:36:47.310" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T11:36:47.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8559" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-30T11:38:56.103" Score="4" ViewCount="688" Body="&lt;p&gt;We do cross-platform development with .NET, Java, and iOS. I have been tasked with selecting an Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solution suitable for managing multiple small distributed teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm struggling to see how any one of the vendors have any major advantage over the others. It's not at all clear to me how to choose between any of the major vendors solutions as they all seem pretty good, all support cross-platform, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just for context, I'm trying to decide mostly between the following suites of ALM tools:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Atlassian (JIRA, Greenhopper, Confluence, etc.) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 ALM: (Team Foundation Server, etc.) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;IBM Rational Collaborative Lifecycle Management (Rational Team Concert, Requirements Composer, Quality Manager, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What &lt;strong&gt;process&lt;/strong&gt; should be used to assess and pick the best solution? I'm struggling with how to proceed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4574" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-01-30T12:34:25.283" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T22:36:21.303" Title="What is the correct process for assessing project management tools/solutions?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;process&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8556" CreationDate="2013-01-30T12:01:29.107" Score="9" Body="&lt;h3&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Low but steady velocity is usually fine. Steadily-declining velocity is a strong indicator of an unidentified process problem, which the Scrum team needs to identify and make clearly visible within the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Velocity is a Range&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, velocity is not meant to be either a management target nor a fixed value. It's an &lt;em&gt;estimation tool&lt;/em&gt;, and is really useful for two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Schedule estimation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identifying hidden bottlenecks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By itself, the fact that your velocity fluctuates doesn't matter. You can use a tool like Mike Cohn's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/velocity-range-calculator&quot;&gt;Velocity Range Calculator&lt;/a&gt;, or a simple trailing average, in order to figure out what your normal velocity range is. Personally, I like to use 90-day trailing average, but the exact methodology is less important than the fact that &lt;strong&gt;you should treat velocity as an historical metric for predicting confidence intervals for future estimates.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What Your Velocity Tells You&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's not enough information provided for anyone to tell you &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; your velocity has so much variance, but it's trending mostly down, and there are a number of sprints that produced zero points. Therefore, one can draw a number of likely conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your project has hidden complexity, or your estimates are wrong.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're consistently missing Sprint Goals (not velocity targets; that's entirely different), you may be underestimating the work-effort for user stories, pulling too much work into each sprint, or are paying the price for technical debt that you took on earlier in the project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You had early success, but have hit a wall.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may be the result of technical debt, changes to the project, or changes in your team composition. Alternatively, you may have changed your point system, and the easy points earned earlier in the project are no longer artificially boosting your graph lines.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You're measuring the wrong things.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your accrued value continued to rise between sprints 8-14, even though velocity was low. Either your accrued value is completely unrelated to the size or volume of delivered features (possible, but suspiciously unlikely), or you are delivering features that aren't assigned story points within your sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Schedule Targets&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focusing on velocity out of context doesn't ship products. The real underlying question you need to ask is whether you are likely to hit your target dates with your current velocity. If your earned value is sufficiently high, your Product Owner might be able to declare your project a success at any given point and call it &quot;good enough.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your shipping targets are slipping, then your velocity is just a signal that you have a process problem that is not being captured in Sprint Planning or Sprint Retrospectives. This is a process failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What You Can Do&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the nature of the process failure, the &lt;em&gt;solution&lt;/em&gt; is to leverage team communications to bring those process problems to the surface. Once the faulty processes have been identified, the team can make informed decisions about how (or whether) to resolve them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As always, the goals are &lt;em&gt;transparency&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;visibility&lt;/em&gt;. Make the project's process and progress fully transparent, make the problems visible, and then put Scrum's inspect-and-adapt cycle to work!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T12:01:29.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8559" CreationDate="2013-01-30T12:29:02.553" Score="7" Body="&lt;h3&gt;First: Document Your Process&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We don't do &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/faq#questions&quot;&gt;shopping questions&lt;/a&gt; here on PMSE, but we're all about process. The correct way to comparison shop for &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; tool is to document your actual work-flows and project processes, and then find a tool that supports what you are actually doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write down how your team does things &lt;em&gt;right now&lt;/em&gt;. If your project is just forming, write down whatever process you'd follow if you had to do it with paper and pencil. The tools don't matter; the controls and processes are what count.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Second: Shop for Tools Conforming to Your Process&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that you know what your process is (or will be), you can shop around for whatever tools will automate or simplify the things you plan to do. Never, ever build your process around a tool-chain; always build your tool-chain around your process!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T12:29:02.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8559" CreationDate="2013-01-30T13:09:59.720" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Proceed as if this is a project - which it is. The end product that you want to produce is a series of business cases, one for each tool. These will document the costs, benefits, limitations, constraints, support costs, etc etc for each tool so that a business decision can be made on which to proceed with. In general you will need to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Identify stakeholders&lt;/strong&gt;. Not only end users and suppliers, but also who should be involved in decision making.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Identify the scope.&lt;/strong&gt; Engage users and get their key requirements and constraints. Engage suppliers and find out what can be provided. Work with them both to figure out where assumptions are misaligned.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Identify the timeframe.&lt;/strong&gt; Find out not only when can a tool be delivered but also how long training will take, what timeframe post-implementation work will occur in, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Identify the costs.&lt;/strong&gt; Not just costs for maintenance but also ongoing costs. And also document if you are going to do anything to defray the costs (e.g. pass them on to customer)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Identify the benefits.&lt;/strong&gt; Describe this in dollar terms if you can (e.g. things like  productivity improvements) though for some things this may not be easy (e.g. ensuring regulatory compliance).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T13:09:59.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8559" CreationDate="2013-01-30T14:12:09.023" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not a process, this is a choice analysis.  Choose an easy but controlled method.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is driven off of your requirements--functional, technical, business, and financial.  If you do not already have these articulated, then do so.  Bring in a team of SMEs that cuts across your organization.  In other words, you need SME representation from your technical team, functional team, financial team, and user communities.  Requirement definition is a difficult process of and in itself.  If you have someone that has expertise in facilitating this, that would help.  As a general rule, your requirements need to be in the same level of decomposition and you need to ensure you do not have requirements that contradict each other.  And, minimize mandatory requirements to the degree possible.  I personally use a 90/10 rule, where no more than 10% would be mandatory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When that is finished, you need to put a weight on each non mandatory requirement.  You can use a simple low, medium, high or numbers ranging from zero to 10  or something like that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your SME team will then evaluate each product against the requirements and provide a score.  You can either facilitate a consensus for a score or use some type of blind recording method.  There are pros and cons to each approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sum of the products established by the score and weight will provide a product score.  It will not take long to see the ranking.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T14:12:09.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8564" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8565" CreationDate="2013-01-30T14:15:57.850" Score="1" ViewCount="997" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently our team members report any impediments in the Daily Scrum Standup and the ScrumMaster takes ownership of them and gets them resolved. I would like to know whether we should track Impediments in the Agile PM tool just like User Stories and Defects/Bugs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T14:40:58.683" Title="Should we track Impediments in our Agile PM tool just like User Stories and Defects/Bugs?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8564" CreationDate="2013-01-30T14:40:58.683" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Who Owns Impediments&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master should not be &quot;taking ownership&quot; of impediments. The role of the Scrum Master is to facilitate communications and referee the process; &lt;em&gt;the whole Scrum team&lt;/em&gt; is responsible for addressing impediments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Tracking Impediments as Sprint Backlog Items&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, impediments that can be solved with a hallway meeting or a phone conversation probably don't need to be tracked. However, if the impediment is significant enough to generate an in-sprint task, you should definitely create a user story and place it on the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that in-sprint user stories shouldn't add story points to the sprint, since they should generally be dependent stories of some other Sprint/Product Backlog item. However, if an impediment outgrows its parent story, either in level-of-effort or scope, then it needs to be escalated to the Product Owner to see if:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the user story can be added to the Product Backlog for a future sprint;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the user story that triggered the impediment can be refactored or removed without compromising the current Sprint Goal; or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the current sprint can be terminated early, followed immediately by a Sprint Retrospective and a return to Sprint Planning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T14:40:58.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8544" CreationDate="2013-01-30T16:04:08.060" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If all you're changing are task durations (i.e. no different tasks, changed predecessors, successors, etc), you could use the DurationX columns (Duration1, Duration2, etc) to represent the other durations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in the screenshot below, I've set Duration1 to &quot;Optimistic Duration&quot; and configured the field to be 1/2 of the &quot;Standard Duration&quot; (&lt;code&gt;Duration3&lt;/code&gt;). &lt;code&gt;Duration2&lt;/code&gt; = &quot;Pessimistic Duration&quot; and is configured to be 2x the &quot;Standard Duration&quot;. The second screenshot shows how Duration1 and &lt;code&gt;Duration2&lt;/code&gt; are automatically updated (i.e. blue background) when Duration3 is updated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Optimistic, Standard, and Pessimistic Duration columns&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3mO85.png&quot; alt=&quot;Screenshot showing Optimistic, Standard, and Pessimistic Duration columns (Duration 1,3, and 2, respectively)&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rub is that the Duration3 field is not used in the Gantt chart -- you'll need to copy-and-paste the duration values (from &lt;code&gt;Duration1&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;2&lt;/code&gt;, or &lt;code&gt;3&lt;/code&gt;) into the &quot;Duration&quot; field to have the Gantt chart display those specific values. Project (at least as of 2007) does not have a way to show multiple durations for a single task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Setting the Formula for &quot;Pessimistic Dur&quot; as an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VrQWN.png&quot; alt=&quot;Setting the Formula for &amp;quot;Pessimistic Dur&amp;quot; as an example&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what it looks like (using Project 2007) when you update the &quot;Standard Dur&quot; field -- the Optimistic and Pessimistic fields are re-calculated automatically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Wk759.png&quot; alt=&quot;When you update the &amp;quot;Standard Dur&amp;quot; field -- the Optimistic and Pessimistic fields are re-calculated&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creating a script to update Duration values for all tasks would be trivial to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2137" LastEditorUserId="2137" LastEditDate="2013-02-04T18:47:04.313" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T18:47:04.313" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8567" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8569" CreationDate="2013-01-30T16:30:36.313" Score="12" ViewCount="3355" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our Agile/Scrum teams are getting better at taking on manageable workload and completing them fully. However, sometimes for a variety of good reasons, some of the stories are not fully done at the end of the Sprint. Should we move or split these incomplete stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2016-07-12T16:04:13.010" Title="In our Agile/Scrum team, should we move or split incomplete stories?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8567" CreationDate="2013-01-30T17:32:26.887" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;&quot;Fail Early&quot; with Product Owner Cooperation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, sometimes for a variety of good reasons, some of the stories are not fully done at the end of the Sprint. Should we move or split these incomplete stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a team knows that stories will not be done by the end of the sprint, the first thing to do is talk to the Product Owner to see if the stories can be re-scoped or removed from the sprint without compromising the current Sprint Goal. This will enable the sprint to succeed even without 100% completion of the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Splitting stories with the consent of the Product Owner is also an option. If a story is really composed of more than one user-visible feature, working with the Product Owner to tease out what part of the story can be done within the current sprint is a viable alternative to scrapping the whole story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once split, the stories would be done or not-done independent of one another. The trick, of course, is to make sure that the stories are actually independent, and that splitting them isn't just an elaborate accounting trick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Disposition of Incomplete Stories&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any stories that are not-done at the end of the sprint receive zero credit. The sprint itself may still be declared a success so long as the Sprint Goal was met, but an incomplete story cannot receive partial credit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any incomplete stories are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; automatically moved into the next sprint. Instead, they are placed back into the Product Backlog, where the Product Owner can re-prioritize the story based on lessons learned during the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, let's say you have a story about standing up a new MongoDB server. If the story wasn't completed during a sprint that was primarily focused on redesigning the login page, the following things should happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;During the Sprint Retrospective, the team would discuss &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; the story encountered problems during the sprint. Perhaps a needed server didn't arrive in time, or it turned out that NoSQL was a bad design choice that should be changed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team hands the unfinished user story back to the Product Owner.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Product Owner places the story into the Product Backlog if it remains important to him. He may also circular-file the story if it is no longer a feature he wants or needs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the story remains on the Product Backlog, the Product Owner re-prioritizes it against the other stories on the backlog, both new and old. The story may remain at the top of the backlog for the next sprint, or drop lower in the queue to make room for more urgent features.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point here is that &lt;strong&gt;user stories don't automatically move from sprint to sprint.&lt;/strong&gt; Every return to Sprint Planning offers the Product Owner the opportunity to revisit the priority of items in the Product Backlog, and to make adjustments based on lessons learned or new strategic requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T17:32:26.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8559" CreationDate="2013-01-30T18:11:37.797" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are unfamiliar with the tools, you can follow the systematic and rigorous process as recommended by David Espina. I followed that exact process for a critical software selection a few years ago. The big challenge was in figuring out which requirements the tools only partially met. The tool vendors will 'never' say they don't meet one of your requirements. They will say 'yes' and provide explanations. Figuring out which tool truly meets those requirements effectively is hard. If you can manage that, it should get you the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you say &quot;they all seem pretty good&quot;. I would like to recommend a slightly different process. Do bring in the team of SMEs that cuts across your organization. And do create the list of mandatory requirements. Eliminate those tools that don't meet your mandatory requirements. In addition, create another list of requirements that will help make your team shine. This should be a small list, say not more than 10 requirements. Put all of your effort in evaluating which tools meet these and to what extent. Further confirm it with an in-house trial of the shortlisted two tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T18:11:37.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8446" CreationDate="2013-01-30T18:13:03.810" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our own software takes care of this kind of situation by providing functions for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.trackersuite.net/scrn_task_wbs.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;task linking and indenting within the project WBS&lt;/a&gt;. In this situation, you'd create 4 tasks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Photography&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Advertisements&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.1 Street Advertisments&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.2 Social Website Advertisements&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Photography task would be linked to the Advertisements task, as its predecessor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5487" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T18:13:03.810" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4758" CreationDate="2013-01-30T18:56:41.713" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;User Story&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User story is the high level requirement of a client. For example: '&lt;em&gt;As an actor i need to retrieve a data from the SQL database&lt;/em&gt;' or '&lt;em&gt;As an actor i need to book a ticket in a web portal&lt;/em&gt;'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use case&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use case is a digramatical representation of what the actor performs in a system&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actor + System + Action = Use Case&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5489" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2013-01-31T10:44:10.993" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T10:44:10.993" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8573" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8592" CreationDate="2013-01-30T19:36:32.837" Score="2" ViewCount="1278" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently, I think I've got pretty good tools when it comes to measuring Budget (enough and more Excel docs that are regularly updated), Scope (against a mutually agreed upon statement of work), Time (detailed time records). I like that these can be all integrated in an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_value_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;EVM&lt;/a&gt; (Earned Value Management) system. However, I would also like to measure and track Quality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it make sense to use EVM in relation to Quality? Quality, in this case, is briefly defined as completion of most important features, reported bugs per feature, and customer feedback (based on a scale of 1-5 on completed items).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a quick description of the project itself: Custom Web Application, including mobile app development (price comparison software) Budget: $200K, Length: 6 months&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5449" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-02-01T11:46:00.960" LastActivityDate="2019-03-08T21:11:54.857" Title="Can EVM be Used to Track and Manage Quality?" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;quality&gt;&lt;evm&gt;&lt;process-controls&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8323" CreationDate="2013-01-30T19:57:45.997" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Resource View will have the Resources listed in a column. The Row headings can be the time span - days, or weeks or months. For each resource, the projects they are working on will be shown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wouldn't this, automatically available Resource View, suffice ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5490" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T19:57:45.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8443" CreationDate="2013-01-30T20:00:24.477" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My memory is 7 years old, but If I remember right, you could open each of the rolled up project in the Master project. And then Update. It most certainly updates all the projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5490" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T20:00:24.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8573" CreationDate="2013-01-30T20:33:02.373" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regular reporting of status within the team is a tool to track performance, and is probably the most commonly used. Unfortunately it isn't a mathy approach, which can cause some stakeholders undue angst.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CodeGenome provided some links regarding Earned Schedule in his answer to &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/8405/what-is-a-good-way-to-set-control-limits-on-a-schedule&quot;&gt;a question of mine&lt;/a&gt;. Willl also provides links regarding control charts in his answer to the same question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are looking at Agile approaches there is the concept of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burn_down_chart&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;burn-down charts&lt;/a&gt;, which is conceptually similar to EVM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When looking for a tool to use remember that tracking project performance is a means to an end, so whatever tool you use needs to do well only those things you need it to do well. So think about the key aspects of your project that need to be monitored (scope? schedule? budget? benefits? quality?) and figure out what your ideal tool/process/approach needs to offer before you select a tool. Maybe you need to use several tools, maybe just one. It all depends on your project's needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T20:33:02.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4758" CreationDate="2013-01-30T23:59:47.933" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Their context is different, but what they represent is the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T23:59:47.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8567" CreationDate="2013-01-31T00:04:58.483" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the Scrum point of view, it is &lt;em&gt;cheating&lt;/em&gt; to make an incomplete user story done by cutting, changing, or modifying it. Actually nothing will happen if you have an unfinished story in your sprint, until you talk about this event during a retrospective and do something about it during the next sprint. The situation is a bit different if this user story must be in the final delivery. In this case, you'll need to consult the product owner and the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about this as a &lt;strong&gt;signal&lt;/strong&gt;: something can be improved. This is a good thing, because it is visible and manageable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T00:04:58.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8581" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9936" CreationDate="2013-01-31T08:56:03.500" Score="1" ViewCount="2874" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before starting a project, I currently estimate project costs using Excel.  I enter the tasks along with estimated effort.  The spreadsheet will have several rules of thumb for high level estimates, such as Total Transition Effort will be 40% of the Total Development Effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering If I could use MS Project instead of Excel for this planning exercise.  Then when costs have been finalised, the high level project plan can be given to the project manager who refines it further as the project progresses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In MS Project, is it possible to automatically set one task's duration (E.g. Transition) based on another task/summary task's duration (E.g. Development)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5495" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T22:04:45.683" Title="MS Project - automatically setting a task duration based on another task's duration" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3414" CreationDate="2013-01-31T14:37:32.087" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best example of Start to Finish implementation involves the following analysis, which for the sake of simplicity I provide the URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://officetipsandmethods.wordpress.com/2009/12/12/project-illustrating-start-to-finish-sf-task-dependencies/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Start to Finish Example&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5500" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T14:37:32.087" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8573" CreationDate="2013-01-31T15:36:42.890" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, at least not directly.  Earned value is strictly a cost control tool and, to a slightly lesser degree, a schedule control tool.  However, what EV provides are early clues of an accruing variance and, with analysis, markers that allow you to predict with a good degree of confidence where you are headed.  The result of those markers is the action to find out why you are accruing variances (either favorable or unfavorable), which may enable you to uncover issues with development as it relates to quality.  But you have other tools, e.g., control charts, inspections and audits, to directly uncover quality issues and threats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T15:36:42.890" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8585" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8586" CreationDate="2013-01-31T16:21:09.850" Score="15" ViewCount="3285" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our Agile/Scrum team follows the Fibonacci sequence for story point estimation. However, it is not clear whether we should have any zero point stories at all. Even though a story may have minimal development effort, it still needs to be tested, regressed, documented, and deployed. So, there is always some overhead associated with any change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-01-31T16:26:35.363" LastActivityDate="2018-10-05T19:50:55.647" Title="Can we have zero point stories?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8585" CreationDate="2013-01-31T16:26:48.363" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;A story point is a measure of effort to implement a user story. Because every change requires some measurable time of development, peer review and testing, documentation (created or updated), and deployment, there has to be some level of effort put into it. This precludes 0 story point stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T16:26:48.363" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8585" CreationDate="2013-01-31T16:36:17.413" Score="8" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Zero-Point Stories&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an area of debate within the agile community, and I think that reasonable people can disagree. However, you're quite correct when you say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even though a story may have minimal development effort, it still needs to be tested, regressed, documented, and deployed. So, there is always some overhead associated with any change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because every story has overhead, whether it's task-switching, preparing its demo for the Sprint Review, or integration testing, no story truly requires &lt;em&gt;zero work effort&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Alternatives to Zero-Point Stories&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the work isn't &quot;free&quot;&amp;mdash;and therefore non-zero&amp;mdash;you have a few options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use half-or quarter-points.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, a story point is &lt;em&gt;a unit of measure relative to a one-point baseline story.&lt;/em&gt; So, a minor tweak that you can do with minimal effort might be 1/2 or 1/4 of the effort required for a typical story, and should be counted as such.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Roll up small stories into a mini-epic.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I'm not a fan of this approach, I consider it valid. You could take any number of small stories, and roll them up into a single one- or two-point story. For example, rather than having eight quarter-point stories for adding individual users to a system, perhaps you can have a single two-point story to handle all of them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefit of the first approach is that it ensures that all tasks are captured, and that stories can be done or not-done independently of one another. The benefit of the second approach is that it simplifies bookkeeping, but at the cost of causing the entire story to be failed if any one sub-task is incomplete at the end of the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pick whichever method works best for your team. Your mileage will vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T16:36:17.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8588" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8589" CreationDate="2013-01-31T18:57:47.597" Score="5" ViewCount="2431" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our Agile/Scrum process, should we have a Customer Acceptance Testing (CAT) stage when the Product Owner looks at what has been developed and acknowledges that it meets all acceptance criteria?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T11:56:57.113" Title="In Scrum, should we have a Customer Acceptance Testing (CAT) stage by the Product Owner?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;customer-satisfaction&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8588" CreationDate="2013-01-31T21:17:10.093" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User acceptance testing should be done as a separate process outside the sprint whenever possible. It &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be incorporated within the sprint, but there are a number of caveats and lots of potential for in-sprint scope creep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Define &quot;Acceptance Testing&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acceptance testing means different things in different organizations. In some companies, it means &quot;ensure the widget meets the original specifications.&quot; In others, it means someone signs off that the feature works for them, whether or not it does what they want. Yet again, sometimes acceptance testing means that someone &lt;strong&gt;reviews the feature to see if they like it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Scrum Provides Inspection Points&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole idea of Scrum is that the customers (directly, or via their proxy, the Product Owner) remain engaged throughout the process. In addition, the Sprint Review at the end of every iteration is the chance for stakeholders to see the features demonstrated, and offer feedback about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that negative feedback in a Sprint Review doesn't mean the sprint failed, or that the user stories weren't completed according to the &quot;definition of done.&quot; It simply means that the feature, even if &lt;em&gt;operating as designed&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;functioning as specified&lt;/em&gt; doesn't meet an undocumented (or recently changed) expectation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Acceptance Testing in the Definition of Done&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the lightweight Sprint Reviews are insufficient for your purposes, you can always bake a user acceptance task into each story as part of its &quot;definition of done.&quot; For example, after a feature has passed the sprint's QA step, you may require Joe from accounting to try out each new feature on a staging system before calling it &quot;done.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you make user acceptance testing part of your definition of done, you need to ensure that your story estimates include that effort as well. In addition, you need to decide what acceptance testing should measure; for example, should it measure satisfaction, or simply conformance as defined at the start of the sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also need to think about what the team's process should be if a story is technically correct, but does not meet a &quot;definition of done&quot; that includes user acceptance testing. If &quot;delighting the user&quot; is part of your definition of done--an unworkable idea that people sometimes try--then best practice would be to treat significant variance in the story as new scope that should go back to the Product Owner to re-prioritize on the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Embrace Change Without Abandoning Sane Boundaries&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Defining the limits of acceptable variance for any user story is a job for the entire Scrum team to explore within the process framework. Just make sure to keep your acceptable variance within sane boundaries, or poor requirements will never stop moving your cheese.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T21:17:10.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6103" CreationDate="2013-02-01T05:16:23.743" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was once fired for sticking to my &quot;design&quot; from a big organization. A technical core appointed to evaluate it fully supported it but by then the technical issue had degenerated in to a political one and I had no idea how quickly all of it would reach a climax. The team leader opposing the design didn't even knew the programming language the system was being developed in but he knew some important people in the management and that eventually paid off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5505" LastActivityDate="2013-02-01T05:16:23.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8573" CreationDate="2013-02-01T11:42:18.837" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Earned Value Management Isn't a Quality Control Framework&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_value_management#Limitations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Limitations&quot; section&lt;/a&gt; for EVM, Wikipedia clearly states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;EVM has no provision to measure project quality, so it is possible for EVM to indicate a project is under budget, ahead of schedule and scope fully executed, but still have unhappy clients and ultimately unsuccessful results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While one could argue that a well-controlled project is less likely to have quality issues, the fact is that any effect on quality will be (at best) a tangential side-effect. It may be possible to shoehorn quality controls into EVM by by pegging various earning rules to ancillary quality controls&amp;mdash;in much the same way that agile methods bake quality controls into the &quot;definition of done&quot;&amp;mdash;but explicitly controlling for quality is simply outside the scope of EVM's design goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Comparison with Six Sigma&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrast Earned Value Management with another framework like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Six Sigma&lt;/a&gt;, which is explicitly designed for quality control. For example, the Wikipedia entry says (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Six Sigma seeks to &lt;strong&gt;improve the quality of process outputs&lt;/strong&gt; by identifying and removing the causes of defects (errors) and minimizing variability in manufacturing and business processes. It &lt;strong&gt;uses a set of quality management methods&lt;/strong&gt;, including statistical methods[.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What It All Means&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one says you can't perform quality control while &lt;em&gt;using&lt;/em&gt; Earned Value Management. It just means that EVM, by itself, does not control for quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-02-01T11:42:18.837" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8593" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-01T13:53:48.400" Score="13" ViewCount="1367" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our company, we're currently trying to get started with Kanban. When discussing about how to handle the different work items / user stories / tasks, this question came up:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do you effectively handle different activities in Kanban?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I don't have to work for only one project. There are also other tasks I have to do (participating in special work-group meetings, client training some days, etc.). All members of our team are still involved in other activities that are completely independent of the actual project we're working on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Kanban is an evolutionary approach, we think there should be a &quot;smooth&quot; migration, meaning that we don't want to force all the team members to stop participating in other working groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our possible approaches are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Include other activities as tasks on the Kanban board.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problem: most of the other activities, like training or meetings, are&#xA;fixed in time. When other work isn't finished, starting those&#xA;&quot;non-project&quot; activities would break the Kanban Limit, but allowing&#xA;this, would not require us to include them in our Kanban process.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ignore non-project activities in the Kanban process.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully there's a better approach.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Create a second board for those other activities.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problem: How do you control the WIP-limits?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can we handle this these different activities with Kanban?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5508" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-02-01T14:09:23.780" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T07:44:37.010" Title="How to effectively combine different (project and non-project) activities in Kanban?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;matrixed-resources&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8593" CreationDate="2013-02-01T14:29:54.213" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Kanban: Not a Day Planner&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Kanban framework is not a day planner. You are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; supposed to add all your routine chores and obligations to the Kanban board. Kanban is a pull-queue system, and columns on the board ought to represent process queues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Cards May Contain Task Details&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An individual kanban (the card itself) may contain additional details such as sub-tasks, identify task performers, or other information necessary to determine when a card is ready to be pulled into the next queue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, a card is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a calendar item for your day planner. It shouldn't contain anything not related to the user story on the card. For example, mentioning that you aren't currently working on the card because you have a dental appointment is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; appropriate data to store on the card.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Outside Influences Affect Flow and Cycle Time&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you have a matrixed organization or multiple concurrent projects, Kanban requires no explicit changes&amp;mdash;except possibly reducing your work-in-progress limits to reflect actual project capacity. Cards are pulled from one queue to the next when they are ready.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If other projects reduce the capacity of the project, increase cycle time, or disrupt flow, then the Kanban framework will detect that and enable your team to make those issues visible. Once the issues are made visible, Kanban provides you with continuous opportunities for &lt;em&gt;kaizen&lt;/em&gt;. Armed with this information, you can choose to reduce waste and improve flow, but that's entirely up to the project team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-02-01T14:29:54.213" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8595" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8596" CreationDate="2013-02-01T18:44:11.143" Score="3" ViewCount="565" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are doing Sprint retrospectives with the entire team including the ScrumMaster and the Product Owner present. We have constructive discussion and good ideas are being generated. However, to improve implementation we are looking into the start-stop-continue format - what should we start, stop or continue doing from the current process.  What is a good format for Sprint retrospectives?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2013-02-04T02:23:48.327" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T18:57:55.393" Title="What is a good format for Sprint retrospectives?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8595" CreationDate="2013-02-02T01:18:56.360" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;we are using meetingwords.com as a tool for our retro (everyone would put his/her comments there, if you like one of the comments - vote it up (put a star in front of it); here are the topics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Was this past sprint successful in your opinion?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do you feel that your productivity has increased or decreased?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What do you need to be more successful in the upcoming sprint? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What did not work in the previous sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What’s one thing you would personally do differently in the next sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What would we as a team need in order to be more efficient and effective to achieve our sprint goals?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What should we start doing?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end we are trying to put together an actionable plan to implement results of the retro meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Goal (what do we want to achieve and why?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Criteria (how would we know if a certain goal has been reached?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Milestones (to prevent things from dragging on forever)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who is responsible for the implementation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2935" LastActivityDate="2013-02-02T01:18:56.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6103" CreationDate="2013-02-02T01:25:53.467" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This guy always cut down my designs, and never explains why, and the team leader always supports him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(assuming that you have tried to explain situation to your team lead and it didn't help):&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Start looking for another job&lt;/strong&gt;. There is no reason why you should be stuck with people who do treat you like this. Perhaps, they would be much happier if (instead of you) they would have someone who would just follow the orders without asking any questions and you will be much happier somewhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2935" LastEditorUserId="2935" LastEditDate="2013-02-02T02:17:52.743" LastActivityDate="2013-02-02T02:17:52.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8598" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8601" CreationDate="2013-02-02T03:51:11.187" Score="1" ViewCount="3383" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have run into unexpected behavior in Microsoft Project 2013. To reproduce, create the tasks seen in the screenshot:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nxMmi.png&quot; alt=&quot;screenshot&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where &lt;code&gt;Requirements&lt;/code&gt; has a maximum unit of 100%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Notice that when you &quot;Level All&quot; Project will complain &quot;Requirements&quot; is over-allocated even though it can schedule Summary1 and Summary2 as non-overlapping.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Removing predecessors from Task3 causes the error to go away but I don't see why it should make a difference.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a bug? Is there a workaround short of copying resources into the sub-tasks (this would make my project &lt;strong&gt;much&lt;/strong&gt; harder to maintain as there are hundreds of sub-tasks)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5472" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T19:55:09.357" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T19:55:09.357" Title="Microsoft Project: Cannot level resources assigned to summary tasks" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;&lt;dependencies&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8535" CreationDate="2013-02-02T03:59:36.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I emailed Steve McConnell, author of Rapid Development. He explained that the optimistic/pessimistic multipliers found in his book (table 8-1 &quot;Estimate Multipliers by Project Phase&quot;) are meant to be applied on top of the &quot;most likely&quot; single-point estimate. In other words, say you have a total effort of 8 staff months and 6 months schedule, you end up with 2-32 staff months and 3.6-9.6 month schedule. You can apply the same logic to Microsoft Project. In my case I created a macro that multiplied the &quot;Work&quot; of all tasks by a factor of 0.25 or 4.0 and noted the resulting schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5472" LastActivityDate="2013-02-02T03:59:36.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8598" CreationDate="2013-02-02T05:57:54.380" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you hard coded your start and finish dates, it constrains the schedule such that the tool, when leveling, cannot resolve by moving task b. It will over constrain resources. Make your tasks fixed duration and keep dates constraint free by selecting schedule as soon as possible. This should fix your issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your schedule logic rests at the leaf level. Load all resources there and create your sequencing logic there, as well. I don't care what project allows you to do, but you should never put any logic into hammock levels. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2013-02-02T07:20:13.107" LastActivityDate="2013-02-02T07:20:13.107" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8598" CreationDate="2013-02-02T07:04:01.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.ca/search?q=ms+project+summary+task+resource&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google&lt;/a&gt; assigning resources to summary tasks is legal but highly discouraged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/project-help/outline-tasks-into-subtasks-and-summary-tasks-HA010351689.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/project-help/outline-tasks-into-subtasks-and-summary-tasks-HA010351689.aspx&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;WARNING&lt;/strong&gt; Assigning resources to summary tasks can create unpredictable durations and assignment values. If you have the same resource assigned to the summary task and its subtask, you will not be able to resolve an overallocation if the summary task is automatically scheduled. In addition, fields such as %Comp are usually used on summary tasks to indicate amount of progress made on all its subtasks. However if there is an assignment on the summary task as well, then the %Comp is used for tracking both the progress made on subtasks &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; progress from that summary assignment. Under these circumstances, Project may not be able track specific progress accurately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ended up taking &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8600/5472&quot;&gt;David Espina's&lt;/a&gt; advice and moved all resource allocations to leaf level. I created the following VBA macro to automate the act of adding support resources to a task. The code is ugly (I have virtually no VBA experience) but it does the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;' Add a Project Manager, Requirements Analyst and Graphics Designer resources with 10% units each (unless they already exist). Duration is kept the same but work increases.&#xA;Sub AddSupportStaff()&#xA;  For Each task In ActiveSelection.Tasks&#xA;    If Not task Is Nothing Then&#xA;      If Not task.Summary Then&#xA;          Dim resource As resource&#xA;          Dim projectManager As assignment&#xA;          Dim requirements As assignment&#xA;          Dim graphics As assignment&#xA;          Dim assignments As Collection&#xA;          Dim i As Integer&#xA;          Dim totalWork As Long&#xA;          Dim oldDuration As Long&#xA;          Dim containsProjectManager As Boolean&#xA;          Dim containsRequirements As Boolean&#xA;          Dim containsGraphics As Boolean&#xA;          Dim assignWork As Boolean&#xA;&#xA;          containsProjectManager = False&#xA;          containsRequirements = False&#xA;          containsGraphics = False&#xA;          totalWork = 0&#xA;          For i = 1 To task.assignments.Count&#xA;              totalWork = totalWork + task.assignments(i).Work&#xA;              If task.assignments(i).ResourceName = &quot;Project Manager&quot; Then&#xA;                containsProjectManager = True&#xA;              End If&#xA;              If task.assignments(i).ResourceName = &quot;Requirements Analyst&quot; Then&#xA;                containsRequirements = True&#xA;              End If&#xA;              If task.assignments(i).ResourceName = &quot;Graphics Designer&quot; Then&#xA;                containsGraphics = True&#xA;              End If&#xA;          Next i&#xA;&#xA;          oldDuration = task.Duration&#xA;          If Not containsProjectManager Then&#xA;            Set projectManager = task.assignments.Add(task.ID, ActiveProject.Resources(&quot;Project Manager&quot;).ID, 0.1)&#xA;          End If&#xA;          If Not containsRequirements Then&#xA;            Set requirements = task.assignments.Add(task.ID, ActiveProject.Resources(&quot;Requirements Analyst&quot;).ID, 0.1)&#xA;          End If&#xA;          If Not containsGraphics Then&#xA;            Set graphics = task.assignments.Add(task.ID, ActiveProject.Resources(&quot;Graphics Designer&quot;).ID, 0.1)&#xA;          End If&#xA;          For i = 1 To task.assignments.Count&#xA;              assignWork = False&#xA;              If (Not projectManager Is Nothing) Then&#xA;                If (task.assignments(i) = projectManager) Then&#xA;                  assignWork = True&#xA;                End If&#xA;              End If&#xA;              If (Not requirements Is Nothing) Then&#xA;                If (task.assignments(i) = requirements) Then&#xA;                  assignWork = True&#xA;                End If&#xA;              End If&#xA;              If (Not graphics Is Nothing) Then&#xA;                If (task.assignments(i) = graphics) Then&#xA;                  assignWork = True&#xA;                End If&#xA;              End If&#xA;              If (assignWork) Then&#xA;                task.assignments(i).Work = totalWork * 0.1&#xA;              End If&#xA;          Next i&#xA;          task.Duration = oldDuration ' Add work but keep duration constant&#xA;      End If&#xA;    End If&#xA;  Next task&#xA;End Sub&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5472" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2013-02-02T20:20:37.450" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8593" CreationDate="2013-02-02T22:59:35.603" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Modelling your work with a Kanban system helps you see what you are spending all your time on and whether or not it provides value.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are working on multiple projects then giving each project it's own swim lane or board will help you visualise how your capacity is spread across them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our team we gave each project its own swimlane and in doing so realised we were working on way too many projects!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the non project work, you could as you suggest ignore this, treat it as background noise and look for changes in the cycle time on your project work to look for signs of things outside the project impacting in the project work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The drawback with this approach, of keeping this non project work implicit, is you have no visibility of how much of your team's capacity they are really taking up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might see your cycle times increase and infer that it is because half your team is off doing, to use your example, client training.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To continue with the example of client training, if you called out client training as an explicit demand placed on your team you could then make it clear that this has an impact on the capacity available for project work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Knowing what this impact is will help you throttle how much project work you pull in and so not over commit yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One option would be, as you suggest, to put this non project work on a separate board.  The advantage of this is you can have columns that fit with whatever states this work goes through if it differs from the states your project work goes through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An alternative would be to keep them on the same board but give the cards a different colour.  Then you could see at a glance how much project work you have in progress and how much competing non project work you have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could have a policy that allows, for example, '6 pieces of project work in progress and 3 pieces of non project work'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you know if you are out of balance between how much project work and non project work you have in flight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were in your position I would experiment.  Come up with a way of visualising the non project work in relation to the project work, for example as cards of a different colour on the same board, limit how many of these are allowed to be in progress at any one time and see how you get on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that doesn't work out for you, inspect and adapt, and continue until you have a way of modelling the demand placed on your team and your team's capability to fulfil that demand.  The Kanban system will give you the means to balance the two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4885" LastActivityDate="2013-02-02T22:59:35.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6103" CreationDate="2013-02-03T09:03:03.623" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you're in a software development project the base guidance is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sei.cmu.edu/library/abstracts/reports/10tr033.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CMMI Dev 1.3&lt;/a&gt;. Your team should have a formally approved document with functional and non-functional requirements (&quot;REQM&quot; process area). Every design decision should be made according with this document and in order to satisfy its requirements (&quot;TS&quot; process area). Every design decision should made with possible alternatives (&quot;DAR&quot; process area) - Design A and Design B in your case. Every alternative should be analyzed for its effectiveness according to formally approved requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looks like if your project all of these process areas are not institutionalized. Instead, your team management is biased by personal relationships between team members. This is the root cause of the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2013-02-03T09:03:03.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8604" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8612" CreationDate="2013-02-03T13:24:05.567" Score="1" ViewCount="1395" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't figure out how to represent salaried employees in Microsoft Project. I created a 24 month schedule, and assigned a $100/year resource to a 12-month task. I ran into two problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I expected the cost of the task to be $100, but it was $92.31.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I was not charged for idle resources (the remaining 12 months), but I should have been.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I correct this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE&lt;/strong&gt;: I figured out #1. Project calculate durations in terms of 7 days per week, 4 weeks per month. When you enter a duration of 12 months you're actually getting 336 days, not 365, hence the difference between the resource's annual cost and task cost over 12 month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5472" LastEditorUserId="5472" LastEditDate="2013-02-03T13:36:53.797" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T18:30:24.130" Title="Microsoft Project: How to represent salaried employees?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3257" CreationDate="2013-02-03T17:45:48.203" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had the opportunity of sitting on a BA interview panel recently. I have compiled a list of useful tips based on the most common blunders some of the candidates made. You can find them here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://businessanalystlearnings.com/blog/2013/2/3/tips-for-your-business-analyst-interview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://businessanalystlearnings.com/blog/2013/2/3/tips-for-your-business-analyst-interview&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5520" LastActivityDate="2013-02-03T17:45:48.203" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8606" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-03T19:33:22.407" Score="5" ViewCount="5455" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been a .NET software developer for the last 5 years, at the moment dealing with azure cloud technologies.&#xA;I am certified scrum master and soon to be certified scrum professional.&#xA;I have the opportunity to become a scrum master for my team. I haven't been a full time scrum master however I have been supporting the scrum masters in various teams whenever needed (holidays, sick days etc).&#xA;Am I right to  think that once I progress(?) to a SM role, I'll have to quit my developer's tasks (as we all know, being a dev and a SM is a highly hoped but infeasible plan) and thus stop keeping up with latest technologies, and eventually leaving behind me the dev career?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to go to higher management sooner rather than later (I'm nearly 30), but what if I don't like it and decide to go back, and then it's too late?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please don't start enumerating the &quot;scrum master is not a project manager, is barely a manager&quot; story, I'm very well aware of what the role includes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put this in different words: &lt;strong&gt;Is SM a stepping stone to higher management, or once you're a SM, you're stack there without being a PM (or PO), but also with degraded dev skills?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5522" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2013-02-04T15:04:07.593" LastActivityDate="2020-10-20T08:39:35.833" Title="Change from software developer to scrum master?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8607" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-03T20:45:55.567" Score="-2" ViewCount="2745" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can someone explain what are the differences between a &quot;process&quot; and &quot;process framework&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5523" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2013-02-04T09:25:02.220" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T09:25:02.220" Title="What is the difference between a Process and a Process Framework?" Tags="&lt;process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8593" CreationDate="2013-02-03T22:59:33.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't overcomplicate your Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;How to start&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pick the right approach and stick to it. There are two approaches with Kanban introduction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;visualise what you are doing at the moment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;visualise where you would like to be&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's assume you would like introduce validation in your process. With the first approach you improve your organisation by doing baby steps, but there is a good chance that you won't have validation in your process, because your the journey took you somewhere else. With the second approach you'll have it, but you'll miss the other opportunities. Based on my experience the second approach needs more discipline and knowledge about the Kanban method and the whole organisation (I'm not talking about a single team here, but the whole deal).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What is on your board&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;One board rule them all...&quot;&lt;/em&gt; You'll need only one board, and it should reflect what &lt;strong&gt;valuable&lt;/strong&gt; you are doing at the moment. If the task you are working on adds value then it must be on the board. If you have only one item there and the rest are non-value adding tasks, you are doing something wrong, but this &lt;strong&gt;will reflect in your lead time and throughput&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The problem with non-value adding activities is that they provide the false believe that you are actually doing something useful.&lt;/strong&gt; It may happen that one feels that way, but the customer might have a different opinion about it. However, not all non-value adding activities are bad. For example, an effective planning meeting can have a good effect on the lead time or/and the throughput.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two parallel, loosely coupled boards are hard to maintain, and doesn't make too much sense either. Which one is more important? If one of them, why we need a less important board? So, have only one board. Of course you can have a chain of boards, where a board visualises a significant part of the organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-02-03T22:59:33.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8606" CreationDate="2013-02-03T23:08:26.517" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once you become a &lt;strong&gt;real Scrum Master&lt;/strong&gt;, you shift your career focus from development to people management. Most of the organisations don't fully understand the role of the Scrum Master, and they function as a Technical Lead, so there is still place for doing development time to time in this scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;real Scrum Master&lt;/strong&gt; has hardly any time to do development. First of all, he is responsible for the Scrum adaption, therefore he spends most of the time with mentoring the PO and the Scrum Team. You cannot do this kind of work, in 50% of your time, because it requires 100%. Additionally, in reality the SM needs to work with the other SMs, and line management to ensure that the whole organisation wide transformation is really moving forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do good for your company, you can be anybody there. If you did the SM work for a while and you are looking for a change, your company might be able to give it to you. However, I haven't seen any Scrum Master who become a PM or a PO. The level above the Scrum Master is the Agile Coach or a change agent. There is a good chance that you'll lose your technical and domain knowledge on this career path, but you'll learn new things like, effective mentoring, systems thinking and other good stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-02-03T23:08:26.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8607" CreationDate="2013-02-03T23:25:06.997" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;They aren't the same. A &lt;em&gt;process framework&lt;/em&gt; provides the general principles for a process. It is the &lt;em&gt;core&lt;/em&gt; if you will. A process implements the process framework, but it can have other tailored, unique or company specific components. For example, RUP is a process framework (it is generic), and when your company follows the principles of RUP (it is company specific the basic ideas are the same), it is a process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-02-03T23:25:06.997" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8611" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8614" CreationDate="2013-02-04T02:52:32.947" Score="24" ViewCount="11951" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our Scrum team, when there is uncertainty about a story or the team is not sure about how to implement it, we take up a research story first. Based on the findings of this research story, we are able to estimate the base story better. Should we assign a time box (so many hours) for research stories or a regular point estimate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-02-04T16:57:49.343" LastActivityDate="2016-02-02T06:17:43.030" Title="In Scrum, how to estimate research stories?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8604" CreationDate="2013-02-04T03:11:16.823" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Glad you found a solution to #1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first reaction to #2 of your question was that it should work no problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After about a hour of investigation in Project, I began to look online and found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.office-forums.com/monthly-rate-salary-t76966.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; which appears to indicate that Project does not care how much actual time is spent on a task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5525" LastEditorUserId="5525" LastEditDate="2013-02-05T04:22:57.637" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T04:22:57.637" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8611" CreationDate="2013-02-04T04:18:58.083" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a great question, since this comes up for us a lot, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We haven't done anything specific for this before, but I think you're right about timeboxing it. X amount of hours, and then reconvene. If they're &quot;almost there&quot; in finding answers, maybe make a new story for round 2 of research and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5526" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T04:18:58.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8611" CreationDate="2013-02-04T07:27:22.187" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Research stories (called Spikes in Agile terms), should be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;used sparingly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;kept short&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;always be time-boxed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should we assign a time box (so many hours) for research stories or a regular point estimate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regular point estimate cannot be used mainly due to following reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;story points give out a measure of business value&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;points are used to calculate team's velocity of generating business value&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;spikes are initiated when &quot;there is uncertainty about a story or the team is not sure about how to implement it&quot;. When there is already an uncertainty, it becomes unreasonable to estimate it in a planning poker session. It becomes difficult to compare relative sizes of a research work (unknown activity) against a piece of working software, such as creating a shopping cart module (known activity). A spike would help you in reducing risks so that you may better understand / estimate other user stories. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A spike ends when you have achieved the desired results or time is up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Similarities between story and spike:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;has acceptance criteria (what means &quot;done&quot; for this spike)  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;added to iteration/sprint backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;findings are discussed or output of spike is demonstrated at end of iteration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Difference between story and spike:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spike does not deliver shippable product (business value).&#xA;As &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot;&gt;Agile Principles&lt;/a&gt; states, &lt;strong&gt;Working software is the primary measure of progress&lt;/strong&gt;, completion of a spike does not directly create a working software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T07:27:22.187" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4711" CreationDate="2013-02-04T13:52:26.613" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think if you can do both (MBA and PMP), it will be great benefit. It also depends what your undergraduate degree is in. For instance, if you have an engineering degree and do an MBA or PMP, it compliments each other. Technical and management skills. Also what you want in a career. Both MBA and PMP credentials perhaps are &quot;over saturated&quot; due the hard economy we are facing and a lot of people are just collecting credentials, with little work experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, both are great to have along with experience!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5528" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T13:52:26.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8556" CreationDate="2013-02-04T15:14:50.153" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As pointed out by CodeGnome, velocity is always going to be a range. However, if you find that your velocity fluctuates a lot, here are some things to check and suggestions for improvement:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do you account for holidays?&lt;/strong&gt; For example, if you run 2-week sprints, you may have one sprint with 2 holidays which is 20% less duration than a normal 10-workday sprint. Also, if some people are on vacation, you will have less capacity. May be you want to adjust your sprints for 10 working days, instead?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Improve your estimation&lt;/strong&gt;: Perhaps your point estimation is not consistent. Some people use benchmark stories. For example, identify a typical story as a 1-point story and another as a 2-point story and so on. When doing the estimate, use those to compare. Is this story more effort/complex than the benchmark story?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Unbalanced work&lt;/strong&gt;: You may have work that is not balanced across development, design and testing teams. This may lead to idle time in some disciplines. The solution here is to get the team to be more cross-functional.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Impediments&lt;/strong&gt;: Do stories/tasks get blocked often because of impediments? If that is the case, track impediments, assign accountability and adjust your sprint, as needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rework&lt;/strong&gt;: Do you have lots of rework? May be the team declares a story completed and the Product Owner asks for fixes, involving rework and retesting. The solution here is to write testable acceptance criteria upfront.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2013-02-05T13:39:35.870" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T13:39:35.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8556" CreationDate="2013-02-04T16:14:56.443" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;CodeGenome, Ashok and David have all given excellent answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would suggest before proceeding with a root cause analysis is to challenge your basic assumption that there is a problem. You say that to you the variability in sprint velocity looks bad, but does this variability have business impacts that warrant the time and effort to investigate the root cause, develop and implement corrective actions, and then monitor the effects of that corrective action on future projects? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T16:14:56.443" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8611" CreationDate="2013-02-04T16:56:49.407" Score="15" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should we assign a time box (so many hours) for research stories or a regular point estimate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should do both. A spike (or &quot;spiked story&quot;) requires both a time-box and a level-of-effort estimate, and is always counted as &lt;em&gt;work&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Spikes Are Just Special User Stories&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;http://scaledagileframework.com/spikes/&quot;&gt;one source&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Like other stories, spikes are put in the backlog, estimated, and sized to fit in an iteration...The output of a spike is demonstrable, both to the team and to any other stakeholders...And, like any other story, spikes are accepted by the product owner when the acceptance criteria for the spike have been fulfilled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main distinction is that a spiked story is designed to reduce the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot;&gt;cone of uncertainty&lt;/a&gt; rather than deliver a shippable increment. However, all the other requirements of good user stories and framework processes apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Why Spikes Should Be Estimated with Story Points&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum and XP are all about time-boxing; it is therefore axiomatic that all processes within these frameworks need to have a finite duration. However, the reason for assigning story points is slightly less obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CodeGnome agile motto is &lt;em&gt;No invisible work, ever.&lt;/em&gt; Since a spike consumes time and resources within a sprint, it is essential that the effort expended on the spike is made fully-visible to the project. The way to do that within Scrum is to ensure that the spike is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;listed on the appropriate backlogs,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;counted as work to be pulled into the sprint, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;represented in the burn-down chart.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While some people may argue that assigning story points to spikes will skew velocity, this is a misunderstanding of the velocity metric. Velocity doesn't measure features, it measures &lt;em&gt;capacity&lt;/em&gt;. Specifically, velocity is a trailing average used to estimate the team's available capacity for future sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is up to the Product Owner to prioritize that capacity. Balancing the delivery of shippable features against other (perhaps less-tangible) project requirements is the province of the Product Owner; tracking and estimating all project-related effort on the Product Backlog is &lt;strong&gt;the essential mechanism to express that balance visibly&lt;/strong&gt; within the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T16:56:49.407" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8507" CreationDate="2013-02-04T17:44:18.723" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll take a stab at your questions from the experience that I've had. Note that my answers are from a more general agile and lean process, not from a strict Scrum view. So while they should be helpful, you will likely need to adapat them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1.In swarming, how should we arrange the work in such a way that team members do not step on each other's toes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We often tackle this as part of the prioritization process. We'll try to ensure that the work being started covers different areas of functionality to reduce the need for multiple people to work in the same areas of code. Obviously, this requires some knowledge of the code base during the prioritization process, and requires that there is enough that needs to be done that you can pick and choose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you can't avoid stepping on each others toes, one of the biggest things to help is to ensure that people are aware of the overlaps and are discussing their changes. This usually helps reduce conflicting changes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the change management process you are using as well as the specific change in question, it may be as simple as having one of the people start by implementing their necessary change to the code in conflict, ensuring that this portion of their change does not negatively impact anything else, and checking in just that portion of their overall change. Then, both sides can continue on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2.We are able to get designers and developers to pitch in with testing. What can we do to cross-train testers so they can help with the design and development, too?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On most of the projects I deal with, we actively include testers in design, but not in development. One of the biggest helps our testers provide in design is letting the designers know how testable their design is going to be, how long it is likely to take, and what changes to the design can help improve test-ability or reduce time to test. (Obviously there are always tradeoffs, but it at least provides the option up-front during the design phase rather than after the code has been written). The testers also provide input on commonly-overlooked failure cases that they have seen, suggestions for test cases that developers should ensure work before considering development &quot;done&quot;, and data sets that will need to be tested against. This is all basically a case of applying what they've learned from their testing, so the only training that should be needed is likely to lie in the realm of communications training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We tend not to include testers in development as often, though that is generally due to their time being better spent in test or assisting design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3.When a story is blocked, the Scrum Master works on clearing it. In the meantime, should we not get the team started on the next story though WIP goes up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that the blocked story is not the only active one, the team should see what they can do to finish other items already in progress first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider tackling a small bug or other form of technical debt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look to see if any investigatory work needs to be done for upcoming functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Starting a new story is the last thing that should be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T17:44:18.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8544" CreationDate="2013-02-04T19:12:41.043" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure that what you want to do can be done.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, based on my experience, even if it can be done, you may not wish to do it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our experience is that although you can do clever things with the fieldx fields(@balinjdl's description is well written and a very good introduction), that very quickly those clever things become insupportable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular we've found it fiendishly difficult to error check calculations on customized fields, and particularly diabolic when performing any calculations against dates (as you are contemplating doing).  Project converts dates to different units, which makes math and comparisons unpredictable. The effort involved in maintaining what initially appeared to be relatively trivial code far surpasses the effort of saving the project plan as an excel document and doing the math in excel, then manually copying it back into the project plan.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to repeat with emphasis (mostly because I wish I could go back and say this to my past self) that the cost of supporting even trivial custom fields/formula's in excel &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;far&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; outweighs the value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T19:12:41.043" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8621" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8651" CreationDate="2013-02-04T21:23:07.970" Score="14" ViewCount="6809" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in understanding how agile project management differs between a single product-focused team and a digital agency or software development consulting firm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For starters, in a situation where the consulting firm or agency has multiple clients, is the Client the same as the Product Owner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5948" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-02-05T17:28:47.457" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T20:49:51.323" Title="In an agile consultancy, is the Client the Product Owner?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8622" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8624" CreationDate="2013-02-05T08:56:13.210" Score="11" ViewCount="409" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a programmer in a small company wants to be his own Scrum Master, and Scrum teams are supposed to be self-organizing, does that mean no one can manage him? If that's true, then:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can he manage himself?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can he plan his time for managing and plan for his works?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can Project Managers get reports from him?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it possible to grant responsibilities to him?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which work items should he define for himself every day?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4902" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-02-05T17:02:32.327" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T17:17:57.467" Title="Can somebody be his/her own Scrum Master in a programming company?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8622" CreationDate="2013-02-05T12:36:36.600" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the same way that a UX designer is responsible for creating an excellent &lt;em&gt;user experience&lt;/em&gt;, a Scrum Master is responsible for creating an excellent &lt;em&gt;project experience&lt;/em&gt; for those people who use the team to turn their ideas into reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By looking at the &quot;team&quot; from the external perspective, we can easily narrow down those bits of Scrum that are relevant even when the team is made up of one person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Scrum team provides:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;transparent insight into the team's progress&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an idea of what stakeholders can expect to see every Sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an opportunity for stakeholders to provide feedback&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the chance for stakeholders to change their mind and / or direction every Sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;working software.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a team member is working as his own Scrum Master, he can still provide these things by keeping a visible Scrum board, meeting with the stakeholders to prioritise work, working towards the Sprint showcase, responding to feedback, and releasing valuable software. How he chooses to do that within the limits of the Sprint will be his own business, just as it would be the team's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a single programmer is also working as his own Product Owner - for instance, he owns a one-man company - then he won't be constrained by the need to communicate with external stakeholders. He can create his own priorities, release code as-and-when, and get feedback directly from his users. In this case, I'd look at Kanban, simply because of the focus the WIP limits provide and the more flexible cadence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T12:36:36.600" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8621" CreationDate="2013-02-05T12:44:51.530" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For each product, there is one person who cares enough about that product to champion it and either provide the budget to develop it or arrange for the budget to be provided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That person is the Product Owner (occasionally it's a team rather than a single person).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone else, whether internal or external to the agency, is a proxy for that Product Owner, regardless of any roles or titles that may be awarded to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the Product Owner, there are likely to be stakeholders whose needs have to be met before the product can go live. Users are a great example of this - they won't like a product that's hard to use - but it may also include advertisers, auditors, legal staff, architects, etc. In this situation sometimes a proxy for the Product Owner may be more effective than the PO himself, as they may have a greater awareness of these &quot;gatekeeping&quot; stakeholders. I would expect that to be the case in any software consultancy which specialises in a particular domain - for example, Telecoms, Commodity Trading, Banking, Retail or hotels will each have their own set of well-known stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's likely that PO will be a client or within the staff of the client, and so will &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; of the gatekeeping stakeholders, but not all of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T12:44:51.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8622" CreationDate="2013-02-05T17:17:57.467" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Scrum is for Teams&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; use Scrum in a one-person shop, Scrum is really a framework that's designed for teams rather than individuals. The underlying inspect-and-adapt philosophy is also available to a one-man shop using Kanban or Extreme Programming (XP); XP in particular is often a great fit when you want agile &lt;em&gt;practices&lt;/em&gt; rather than a project management &lt;em&gt;framework&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conflicting Roles&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master role is a process referee role. This is inherently a conflict of interest with the Team Member role. For the same reason that you have (theoretically) impartial referees in professional sports, the Scrum Master role should be separate from developer roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Self-Organizing Doesn't Mean Unmanaged&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project teams are always constrained by resources, scheduling, and (most of all) by organizational culture. &quot;Self-organizing&quot; is intended to be shorthand for a process where teams figure out &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; to do the work without micro-management; the organization still manages &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; work is to be done and what resources are made available to the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;All the Rest&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The remainder of your question delves into specifics of individual time management, prioritization, and reporting that are going to be localized to your particular work environment. There isn't a &quot;one size fits all&quot; solution; finding one that fits your company culture and individual situation is part of the self-organizing part of being agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T17:17:57.467" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8621" CreationDate="2013-02-05T18:00:58.127" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[I]n a situation where the consulting firm or agency has multiple clients, is the Client the same as the Product Owner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, they are fundamentally different roles. While the Product Owner &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; come from the client, the Product Owner is a specific one-person role within the Scrum framework. The client is a stakeholder (a &quot;chicken&quot;), while the Product Owner is a formal member of the Scrum team (a &quot;pig&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: See &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chicken_and_the_Pig&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Chicken and the Pig&lt;/a&gt; for more on the use of this terminology in Scrum.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Product Owner as Stakeholder Proxy&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The client is, perhaps axiomatically, a stakeholder in the process. An individual or steering committee within the client organization is designated as the project sponsor, and of course the client is responsible for funding the project. However, Scrum assigns the Product Owner role as a proxy for &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the stakeholders in regards to prioritization and scheduling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner works with the stakeholders to create the Product Backlog, and to build stakeholder consensus for project priorities and resource allocations. As a defined role in the Scrum process, the Product Owner must be an active participant in the project, and not simply a stakeholder waiting for features to be delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Who Provides the Product Owner?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, the Product Owner needs to be an integral part of the Scrum team. As such, it is generally beneficial for the Product Owner to be a member of the same organization as the Scrum Master and the developers. In this way, the stakeholder proxy role is properly situated &lt;em&gt;inside&lt;/em&gt; the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Larger clients often have their own PMO or project management framework; such clients may provide their own internal project/product manager (or other stakeholder proxy) to each project. In such cases, the two proxies coordinate with each other: the client's internal proxy represents the client to the Product Owner, and the Product Owner facilitates the client's interests within the Scrum team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T18:00:58.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2635" CreationDate="2013-02-05T19:57:59.530" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Surprised this is getting recent traction :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see many answers explaining the benefits of tracking/reporting metrics, but I admit to disappointment in not seeing lists of things people actually track.  That is no answers to &quot;what useful leading metrics people might be using&quot;  So I will attempt to answer my own question :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Defects per release (normalized) - we do weekly releases sized by features by/in points.  I've found  (# defects found by devteam / points) to be a good predictive measure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Daily and weekly on time release - we have daily builds at 4PM and weekly builds Friday at 3PM.  If we miss two of these or more in a week, it seems to predict more customer reported issues&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Number of test cases (normalized) - (number of new test cases / story points) in a release was nice to track/report because we found where our diminishing returns on writing test cases was.  Beyond a certain number, didn't seem to impact customer noticeable issues&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contact hours with customer - this was a unique one... if we spent more than X hours in a week talking directly with a customer, quality went up.  Not just review meetings, but any meeting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Mentor hours/week&quot; - another oddball... when we asked for an external team member to consult on a project we noticed that above ~10 hours a week, the quality improved (they didn't do work directly, but was more &quot;sitting with the team and being available)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are (perhaps) obvious in retrospect - but it was (and remains) an interesting exercise to try to select metrics that can be tracked/reported easily and see if they are helpful or not.  Also, doing this leads to some interesting experimentation which in turn leads to interesting process improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Glad people found value in the question and really liked some of the answers!  Hope mine adds to the conversation!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T19:57:59.530" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8629" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8633" CreationDate="2013-02-06T00:23:28.893" Score="5" ViewCount="1867" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a &quot;heavy&quot; story that cannot be decomposed into smaller stories. It will span several sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can decompose the story into tasks all right, but tasks seem to be abstractions that are only a few hours long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we need is an abstraction that will drive each sprint - with a well defined deliverable (similar to a story, but internal), points estimation etc. What is smaller than a story, but bigger than a task? How is something like this usually handled?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5539" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-05-04T12:12:48.440" LastActivityDate="2020-06-22T13:37:46.580" Title="What is smaller than a user story but bigger than a task?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8629" CreationDate="2013-02-06T10:15:39.330" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you sure you cannot split the story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have for example some story about &quot;user can subscribe to receive weekly emails&quot; , you could split it into something like &quot;system can send emails&quot;, &quot;system can register users to receive emails&quot; , and then &quot;user can subscribe&quot;, or something like that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can't you separate your story in a similar way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;kthxbai&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3283" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T10:15:39.330" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8629" CreationDate="2013-02-06T11:42:00.763" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the occasions this has happened with my teams, we look for the smallest testable slices we can make, even if we know we wouldn't release them.  For example, we were integrating with a 3rd party and wanted to do single sign on between them and our site.  Our story was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;In order purchase products on the 3rd party site&#xA;As a registered customer&#xA;I want to log in using my existing information&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's kinda hard to break so it still has any customer value but there was a couple of weeks effort needed to get the single sign on to work - far bigger than we'd accept into a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We ended up with a number of smaller stories which, while quite technical, all had an outcome we could demo to a non-technical product owner.  To get there, we looked at what steps the team needed to take to get there technically and identified where there were outcomes that the PO was happy to verify.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We still had a couple of large chunks with no verifiable outcome though.  To get round this, we created a web page within our app that would output things like user IDs, user roles etc that are passed to the 3rd party so the PO could see the app was doing something and getting the right information out, even though it wasn't doing anything with the data yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also colour coded the broken out stories that were part of the big story so we made progress of the whole feature visible on our board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not ideal but that's the best approach we've managed so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastEditorUserId="1185" LastEditDate="2013-02-07T10:11:45.727" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T10:11:45.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8629" CreationDate="2013-02-06T11:48:24.260" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What we need is an abstraction that will drive each sprint...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually stories are used to drive the sprint. Stories should have &lt;strong&gt;clear acceptance criteria&lt;/strong&gt; so that everyone involved, can understand the state of the story. A story should be accepted by the PO as soon as possible (not at the end of a sprint or in the sprint-review).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually each story is broken down into tasks which are roughly between 1h. -1d. With this you can &lt;strong&gt;track your sprint tasks-burn-down using a chart&lt;/strong&gt;. This helps you to recognize patterns like to fast or slow in order to drive your sprint. If you start with 100 tasks for a 2 week sprint you measure each day how many are still open (including brand new ones).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some very mature teams even do not use tasks, only stories&lt;/strong&gt;, which they burn down as described by Jeff Sutherland. They have around 100-200 stories which they track in a story-burn-down chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another factor is the &lt;strong&gt;bigness of a story&lt;/strong&gt;. I always make sure stories are estimated (with planning poker or similar) using the so-called Fibonacci range 1,2,3,5,8,13,... Then a let the team choose the upper limit of splitting: usually an 13 or an 8 sized story needs to be splitted (vertically, not like per sw-arch-layer) before it can be worked on in a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding &lt;strong&gt;story splitting strategies&lt;/strong&gt; see:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agile-ux.com/2011/04/19/10-strategies-to-split-large-user-stories/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.agile-ux.com/2011/04/19/10-strategies-to-split-large-user-stories/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.richardlawrence.info/2009/10/28/patterns-for-splitting-user-stories/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.richardlawrence.info/2009/10/28/patterns-for-splitting-user-stories/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4691" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T11:48:24.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8588" CreationDate="2013-02-06T11:56:57.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Each story must have (a list of) crystal clear acceptance criteria, at the latest agreed on in the sprint planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then all team members now how to finish the story and a rejection by PO should not come as a surprise. If it were a surprise you should make better acceptance criteria and or ask more questions (also during the sprint) to the team and PO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB when you mentions stages, that is very &quot;waterfallish&quot;. The agile way is to find simple rules so the team can self organize without stages or formal checks like a described above...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4691" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T11:56:57.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8636" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8648" CreationDate="2013-02-06T12:00:01.537" Score="2" ViewCount="323" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sitrep: I have finished a story that I could not complete within iteration while it was planned to be completed. It's necessary to get this done and ASAP since it's a prerequisite for other stories and tasks, so I have just finished it several days later after iteration ended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Formally, the story should be thrown into backlog and revisited, but why really? There would be no point to it given the practicalities: it had to be completed anyway, reviewing it again would bring no new insights, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is are there any practical benefits to using iterations as such and not just measuring velocity using story points?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5240" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T15:48:01.383" Title="Are SCRUM iterations meaningful?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="75" CreationDate="2013-02-06T12:03:39.253" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not at all!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mindset (based on predictive process control, theory X) for which Gantt are invented as a tool are totally incompatible with the agile mindset (empiric process control, theory Y). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scruminc.com/why-gantt-charts-were-banned-in-first/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt; by Jeff Sutherland (co-inventor Scrum) why Gantt chart were banned in the first Scrum sprints!     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4691" LastEditorUserId="8586" LastEditDate="2018-02-05T14:28:22.860" LastActivityDate="2018-02-05T14:28:22.860" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6621" CreationDate="2013-02-06T12:04:06.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nope, OpenProj is a fantastic resource but does lack a few nice features. No recurring tasks in ProjectLibre either I'm afraid - no resource pool either I think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get around the issues we eventually got MSProj on one pm machine. Other resources use openproj and export to project xml. The PM then compiles into MS Proj to get everthing into the resource pool, add recurring tasks, etc. A bit messy, but works for us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3400" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T12:04:06.850" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8636" CreationDate="2013-02-06T12:06:53.660" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you do not have an experienced Scrum Master at hand, forget about even trying it...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(you would only create your Scrum-But(t) nightmare)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4691" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T12:06:53.660" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8629" CreationDate="2013-02-06T13:02:04.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the story is too large to fit into a sprint then it should be an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/stories-epics-and-themes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;epic&lt;/a&gt;. You would then break this epic down into smaller stories and then break these down into tasks. In that way you can spread the completion of the epic over several iterations while always being able to complete the stories that make it up (and therefore hit your sprint goal).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't split the story into parts that are small enough to complete in an iteration then there's a problem with how the story has been written or with the techniques you are using to decompose it. It doesn't matter (in my view) whether the tasks will only take a few hours but if you think these are too small then you could try and bundle a few related tasks together so that you don't feel like you're measuring something that's too small to meaningfully measure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2013-02-07T09:31:50.673" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T09:31:50.673" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8636" CreationDate="2013-02-06T13:25:25.117" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion you started the iteration incorrectly. Stories included in an iteration should get completed in the same iteration. Either the iteration length was too small or too many stories were added to the iteration. If there are more than one developer in your team then all of the developers should have worked on the same story (instead of one developer) by breaking the story into tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T13:25:25.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8636" CreationDate="2013-02-06T13:40:17.027" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether or not you put the incomplete story on the backlog &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt; and then do another iteration &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt;, will not help you &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt;. There is no value to you at this moment to do an iteration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The value in scrum iterations is that they help you to plan. Look at it this way: if you had been doing small iterations for several months prior to today and had established a predictable velocity, you would likely not be having this problem right now. You probably would have realized the story was too big and could have made better plans. &lt;em&gt;That&lt;/em&gt; is the value of doing iterations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are unable to accurately predict a couple weeks worth of work using scrum and small iterations, what hope do you have to predict your work without breaking it down into small iterations? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what do you do to solve your current delimma? My answer is to do whatever you need to do to get the work done. If that means to abandon scrum rituals for a while, so be it. Don't follow the rituals blindly -- they are a tool. The overriding goal is to deliver software to the user. Don't let dogma get in the way of delivering great software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;However&lt;/em&gt;, when you abandon scrum best practices, do it knowing that you may be sacrificing the long term benefits of scrum. The goal is to get your team to a state of hyperproductivity. You aren't ever going to get there if you can't establish a stable velocity, and you can't establish a stable velocity if you pick and choose when to follow the scrum rituals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3189" LastEditorUserId="3189" LastEditDate="2013-02-06T15:23:29.360" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T15:23:29.360" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8629" CreationDate="2013-02-06T13:58:47.703" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll give you a direct answer: &lt;strong&gt;there is nothing smaller than a story but larger than a task&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The good news is, there are almost no story that cannot be broken down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, say your story is &quot;as a user, i want to be able to frobnicate the jimjab&quot;, and that's definitely a month of work for several people. What do you do? Likely, doing this requires a database change. So, write a story: &quot;as a developer, i need the database changed so that I can implement the &quot;frobnicate&quot; story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you need to improve the test harness so you can validate the jimjams: &quot;as a tester, I need the test harness modified so I can test the &quot;frobnicate&quot; story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe the superclass of the Jimjam class must be extended: &quot;as a developer, I need the MasterJab class to be extended so I can implement the &quot;frobnicate&quot; story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spend quality time thinking about it, and I'm certain you can break your story (which is actually an epic) into sprint sized stories. Tell yourself you can do it, and it will happen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3189" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T13:58:47.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8644" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8649" CreationDate="2013-02-06T14:25:20.457" Score="4" ViewCount="357" Body="&lt;p&gt;We changed our work area layout from a cube farm to what is variously known as a bullpen or a fishbowl style open layout. We are finding this is more helpful for team collaboration and provides an area in the middle for the daily scrum stand-up. And we do the Sprint Planning in the conference table in the middle, instead of booking a conference room, which we used to do earlier. The downside is that there is some loss of privacy. What is a good work area layout for scrum teams? And if it is an open layout, is there some way to mitigate the loss of privacy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T16:06:48.587" Title="In Scrum, what is a good work area layout to foster swarming and other collaborative practices?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;work-environment&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8645" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8647" CreationDate="2013-02-06T14:51:36.823" Score="4" ViewCount="992" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say you have two suppliers, one for software development and one for graphics design. It seems odd to have the Senior Supplier role filled by any one supplier. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When you have multiple suppliers from different organisations, who should be in the Senior Supplier role on the Project Board?&lt;/strong&gt; I would say someone from MY organisation, but such a structure seems like it's overhead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the best approach to structuring a Project Board with multiple suppliers?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2915" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-10-31T13:11:18.003" LastActivityDate="2016-05-20T06:13:10.337" Title="How to handle multiple suppliers in a PRINCE2 project?" Tags="&lt;roles&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;prince2&gt;&lt;suppliers&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8645" CreationDate="2013-02-06T15:34:20.003" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have some options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use someone from your organization.&lt;/strong&gt; I don't see this as overhead, rather there is an advantage that you have a single person/unit representing the interests of all suppliers. It also helps you avoid potential confidentiality issues (maybe you have suppliers A and B that are competitors, precluding some discussions at Project Board meetings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Change ownership of the role as needed.&lt;/strong&gt; PRINCE2 refers to &quot;Senior Supplier(s)&quot;, so you could have more than one. If you engage different suppliers over different time frames you can have one sit on the Project Board for their piece and when that is done switch the role to the other. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have more than one Senior Supplier at a time.&lt;/strong&gt; Assuming that there are no conflicts and the two suppliers are OK with it this shouldn't be an issue. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is to do what makes sense for your project. PRINCE2 stresses that you shouldn't get too fussed with details of how to implement the methodology, you should be more concerned with taking the guiding principles (tailoring, learn from experience, etc) to heart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T15:34:20.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8636" CreationDate="2013-02-06T15:37:27.390" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Iterative time-boxing and estimation are the very foundations of Scrum. You can't &quot;do Scrum&quot; without incorporating these baseline concepts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Prelude: Assessing Your Practices&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before addressing your question, it's necessary to examine your practices to see if they are really Scrum. We'll take them one by one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I could not complete [a story] within iteration while it was planned to be completed.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is Scrum.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even when one follows the Scrum framework and implements its best practices, not every sprint will be a unqualified success. However, if you routinely handle work that can't be completed within the defined time-box, the Scrum Team is free to resize the time-boxes (e.g. increase sprint length) or reduce the number of story points they commit to each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I have just finished [the story] several days later after iteration ended.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; Scrum.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In theory, if your sprint just ended, you should be performing post-sprint activities like the Sprint Review or Sprint Retrospective, or have already moved into the next Sprint Planning cycle. In practice, maybe you did the work over the weekend &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the Sprint Review but &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the Sprint Planning session.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While that shows personal initiative, it violates the principle of keeping the costs of all work visible to the organization---it looks like &quot;free&quot; work from a project management perspective---and therefore contravenes the intent of the framework.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;[T]he story should be thrown into backlog and revisited, but...it had to be completed anyway, reviewing it again would bring no new insights, etc.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; Scrum.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, deciding what stories are still relevant to the project is the job of the Product Owner. Perhaps the company wants to shift priorities or reallocate resources, or maybe new information has come to light forcing a strategic shift in the project. By not providing the Product Owner the opportunity to re-prioritize the story, you undercut the organizational flexibility the framework is supposed to provide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, Scrum is based on principles such as time-boxing, estimation, and inspect-and-adapt. If you ignore time-boxes, do not perform estimations, or do not inspect process failures and adapt to changes in your requirements then you aren't doing Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thirdly, the Scrum framework requires that work be accounted for in order to product useful scheduling estimates. Either your work was done outside the boundaries of a sprint, or it was done in another sprint without consideration for the team capacity for that sprint. In both cases, this &quot;invisible work&quot; harms the framework and skews the metrics, making the scheduling process less reliable for rest of the team and the overall project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, it appears that you aren't following the framework's guidelines. As a result, you and your team may not see the expected benefits of the framework, and will naturally question the usefulness of various Scrum practices and artifacts which don't appear to be adding value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Your Core Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[A]re there any practical benefits to using iterations as such and not just measuring velocity using story points?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't measure velocity without time-boxing your work into iterations. Even if you look at other historical measures of productivity, you will need to impose &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; form of periodicity to your calculations in order to derive a meaningful result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, velocity is a key metric for predicting team capacity for a given time-box. &quot;Velocity&quot; without time-boxing is often a synonym for &lt;em&gt;management target&lt;/em&gt;; targets are goals, rather than useful measures of historical performance or future capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if you discard iterations as a planning tool, you lose the ability to plan or schedule work in a meaningful way. While other frameworks like Kanban rely on average cycle times rather than time-boxed sprints for planning and tracking, all agile methodologies require iterations of &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; type to drive them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-02-06T15:48:01.383" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T15:48:01.383" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8644" CreationDate="2013-02-06T16:06:48.587" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Productivity Trade-Offs&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Open plans increase &lt;strong&gt;communications opportunities&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;interpersonal bandwidth&lt;/strong&gt;. However, the potential benefit doesn't come free; as you've seen, it often comes at the expense of both privacy and interruption-free quiet spaces to work. Some teams find this a net benefit, but some do not; it is generally considered an agile best practice, but it's not an indispensable one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Options and Work-Arounds&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some teams embrace workspace work-arounds such as stuffed animals wearing &quot;Do Not Disturb&quot; signs, noise-canceling headsets, or sign-up sheets for temporary quiet spaces. Other teams rotate on-site work with telecommuting, or hoteling of private offices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another common option is half-height cubicles. The idea there is to provide some limited privacy and personal workspace while enabling coworkers to prairie-dog over the low walls whenever they need to see who's available or to ask a quick question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T16:06:48.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8556" CreationDate="2013-02-06T18:22:51.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see 4 possible causes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe the &quot;value&quot; of your story points fluctuates wildly for &quot;political&quot; reasons, such as inflation/readjustment, etc. See e.g. this:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.industriallogic.com/blog/stop-using-story-points/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.industriallogic.com/blog/stop-using-story-points/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, your team may be subject to political inflation or manipulation of story points. Unfortunately, in organization whatever measure we use, it tends to degenerate as people try to go for maximizing the measure instead of producing tangible results. Perhaps this is what E. Deming had in mind when he formulated this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Eliminate numerical goals, numerical quotas and management by objectives. Substitute leadership.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your team is trashing in finding good grasp on what a story point should be worth.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Work varied significantly causing productivity drains in some periods due to having to learn and/or solve problems associated with working in new territory.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your team optimizes for &quot;earned value&quot; and treats story points estimations carelessly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5240" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T18:22:51.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8621" CreationDate="2013-02-06T20:49:51.323" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Represent the Stakeholders to the Agile Team&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The primary role of a product owner is to represent the needs and desires of the stakeholder community to an agile delivery team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provides timely information and decisions on requirements and priority&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is an active participant in customer testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Facilitates requirements gathering&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Represent the Agile Team to the Stakeholders&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A secondary role for a product owner is to represent the work of the agile team to the stakeholder community:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Demos the solution to key stakeholders&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Announces releases&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communicates team status&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Negotiates priorities, scope and schedule&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whoever can do these well will be a good Product Owner. As CodeGnome pointed out, to be effective, the Product Owner should be an integral part of the Scrum team. We tried your approach of a client (in our case an internal client) playing the role of a Product Owner part time. It was not that effective. When we brought in a person to be a full-time Product Owner, the change was dramatic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T20:49:51.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8629" CreationDate="2013-02-07T00:26:47.260" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we need is an abstraction that will drive each sprint[.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is commonly known as the Sprint Goal. The Sprint Goal is an essential (but often overlooked) component of successful Scrum implementations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;User-Story Sizing&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a &amp;quot;heavy&amp;quot; story that cannot be decomposed into smaller stories. It will span several sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will cause you pain in the long run. It's very rare that an epic can't be decomposed into right-sized stories, but it can happen if:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have too many hidden dependencies in your stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your Product Backlog doesn't include sufficient spikes or non-functional requirements as user stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your sprint length is too short to accommodate your expected story sizes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your stories include speculative functionality, rather than just the &lt;a href=&quot;http://itsadeliverything.com/minimum-releasable-feature&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;minimum releasable feature&lt;/a&gt; needed for a given Sprint Goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your &amp;quot;heavy&amp;quot; story likely suffers from more than of of these problem areas, and I suspect it could be classified as a &lt;em&gt;complex story&lt;/em&gt;. In &lt;a href=&quot;http://athena.ecs.csus.edu/%7Ebuckley/CSc191/User-Stories-Applied-Mike-Cohn.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;User Stories Applied&lt;/a&gt; Mike Cohn says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike the compound story, the complex story is a user story that is inherently large and cannot easily be disaggregated into a set of constituent stories. If a story is complex because of uncertainty associated with it, you may want to split the story into two stories: one investigative and one developing the new feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, such stories can certainly be decomposed, but the proper level of decomposition may first require changes to the way you construct stories or manage the Product Backlog. These changes are definitely worth investigating if the alternative is committing to an epic that ignores the framework's basic iterative principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Guidelines for Granularity&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can decompose the story into tasks all right, but tasks seem to be abstractions that are only a few hours long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is fine. Granularity is a matter of taste, but here are some widely-accepted Scrum granularity principles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tasks &lt;strong&gt;should&lt;/strong&gt; be sized so that they can be &amp;quot;done&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;not done&amp;quot; within one half-day to two business days.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User stories &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; be sized to fit within a single sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If tasks get much bigger, they become hard to estimate accurately. Make them too small, and they just increase process overhead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any given user story, though, must fit within a single sprint before it is accepted. Otherwise, you ignore the time-box principle and fall into the &amp;quot;20% of the story is 80% done&amp;quot; trap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Use Your Sprint Goals as Story Filters&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we need is an abstraction that will drive each sprint...[towards] a well defined deliverable[.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the primary purpose of the Sprint Goal. Each sprint, the Product Owner and the Team should agree on an over-arching Sprint Goal that captures the spirit of the &lt;em&gt;minimum releasable increment&lt;/em&gt; for the sprint. Stories that don't address the Sprint Goal should probably be filtered out or de-prioritized by the Product Owner during Backlog Grooming or Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another use of the Sprint Goal is to provide the fundamental measure of success for the sprint. By definition, any sprint that satisfies its Sprint Goal is a successful sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also not uncommon to have sprints that don't produce a releasable feature (e.g. sprints dedicated to non-functional requirements, tool-chain or process improvements, or story spikes). In the case of story spikes, for example, a Sprint Goal like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Review the available literature on the effectiveness of embiggening a Jabberwock.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;might be perfectly appropriate. Such a goal is measurable, possibly demonstrable, and most certainly a candidate for rigid time-boxing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum without Sprint Goals is somewhat akin to flying without an airplane: it might be conceptually &lt;em&gt;simpler&lt;/em&gt; to just flap your arms, but you are unlikely to arrive at your intended destination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-22T13:37:46.580" LastActivityDate="2020-06-22T13:37:46.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8654" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8655" CreationDate="2013-02-07T13:17:35.507" Score="-4" ViewCount="273" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm new here, so here we go..&#xA;I previously was a young Telecommunication Engineer, but i mainly did IT solutions architect stuff in that area, since a year ago iv been doing a part-time MBA at a top university as well.&#xA;I was recently appointed as part of the PMO of my company which is something iv wished to be part of, now I do roles such as Program Coordinator, Resource Management and some junior Project management stuff, I also have A great Mentor!&#xA;But I was asked if I'd like a roll at a client site to work as a Commercial Manager (Program Manager), but I really like what I'm doing now as it aligns with what I'm studying, but then again will the other path be a better option?, I really am interested in the high level area of the business and don't wan to get back to all the deep technical stuff even though i was really good at it.&#xA;I'm not sure what to say, I can see that I like my new role as part of the PMO so much!, I would hate to go to the other role and regret it, but is the other role a better opera unity for career growth, I'm not even sure what Program Managers do really.&#xA;What's your idea?, can someone gimme any guidance, pointers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5551" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-12-01T00:25:07.507" LastActivityDate="2013-12-01T00:25:07.507" Title="Conflicting career options for a young professional" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;program-management&gt;&lt;job-allocation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2013-02-09T00:47:13.207" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8654" CreationDate="2013-02-07T14:16:39.657" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bottom line is your career is a project... so figure out what the end-state is, the requirements you need to get there and stay focused on these so that you can get what you want according to your schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Define schedule.&lt;/strong&gt; Decide what your planning horizon is for your career. You can have more than one (e.g. horizons of 2 years, 5 years, 10 years)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Define scope.&lt;/strong&gt; Figure out what role and position you want to have at the end of your time horizon. Then research what the requirements are, not only in your own organization but more importantly in the &quot;great big world&quot;. See if you can find commonalities in these requirements and list them in what you perceive to be the priorities that companies are looking for. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Define budget.&lt;/strong&gt; What are you willing to sacrifice in terms of time and treasure to get to where you want to be?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Evaluate risk.&lt;/strong&gt; Are there risks to saying &quot;No&quot; to the new position you mention? Are there risks staying in your current company vs going somewhere else? What happens if you miss your goals? etc etc etc...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have a valid business case.&lt;/strong&gt; Evaluate the sum total of all the costs and benefits for where you want to be and what it will take to get there. Things like salary and position are easy to quantify, but you need to be sure to factor in life benefits like relationships etc if those are important to you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T14:16:39.657" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8656" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8657" CreationDate="2013-02-07T15:48:28.803" Score="4" ViewCount="311" Body="&lt;p&gt;This one may be tricky to explain, but here's the use case. Our organization aims to reduce the amount of &quot;time-stealing&quot; by other staff. We want to eventually see this visual indicator show less intersects, with each resource keeping as much of their available working time free from interactions with other people as possible. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Person A's total available working time as a circle. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Person B who requires some of that person's time per month, so both&#xA;circles intersect the amount of time they interact.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Person C then requires a big slice of Person A and B's time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Person D requires only a little of Person A and B's time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How could I simply and visually represent such interconnected resource usage? I really can't think of how to visualize this, so am open to any ideas, even 3D if required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for the feedback so far. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could agree to not calling it &quot;waste&quot;, but perhaps &quot;shared time&quot;. Let's assume my organization is full of really capable people, who if left alone, are super-producers (ignoring reality for a while).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I played with this visualisation, which is getting closer to what I'm hoping for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5LsBy.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As shown, each person has their own colour (the outer line colour. The amount of time shared with another person is always of equal amount on each person's bar, represented by a fill of the shared person's colour. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone has a finite amount of time, so over-sharing can be quickly spotted by those who's boxes are filled up more and the most time demanding people can be seen by their color being in most people's boxes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could just as easily be pie-charts, I guess. For our company's purposes, we can limit the total amount of pie or bar charts to around 15, which would still give an at-a-glance feel for the information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4772" LastEditorUserId="4772" LastEditDate="2013-09-25T13:28:41.207" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T13:28:41.207" Title="How can I visually represent interdependant resources?" Tags="&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;resources&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8656" CreationDate="2013-02-07T18:21:32.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Your Question, Rephrased&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question, as phrased, seems non-trivial. You seem to be asking how to represent process dependencies within a single infographic. There are various charts and graphs one might use to show dependencies, but if you dig a bit deeper, that's &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the real underlying information that you're trying to represent here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The information that you seem to need is one of either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consumption of available time by &quot;waste&quot; attributable to other people.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some kind of organizational capacity chart that breaks out waste and available capacity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Possible Representations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number of possible graphical representations of any given data set are largely limited by your imagination. What is &quot;best&quot; is not answerable. However, I can certainly share some insight into what data you might need to track to represent your informational objective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're looking to break out consumption, pie or donut charts are an obvious choice. Trying to pack it all into one pie chart will probably lead to information overload if you are charting more than a few people, but it's technically possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider an exploded pie chart based on the following metrics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Resource | Available Man-Hours | Waste by A | Waste by B | Waste by C | Waste by D&#xA;Person A           40                8           18             2           5  &#xA;Person B           35                6            2             1           7&#xA;Person C           38                0            6             7           7&#xA;Person D           53                1            1             1           7&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is that the whole pie represents the total team capacity for a given interval, while each exploded slice represents the percentage of total team man-hours attributable to each person. Each exploded slice is then sub-divided into color-coded slices attributable to waste by some other person in the data set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to show total productive/wasted hours, rather than percentages of a whole, then a stacked bar chart might be a better option. Again, the choice of format is only bounded by your communications intent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Why You May Not Want to Do This&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Processes are performed by people. It is worth considering whether interruptions or &quot;time-stealing&quot; are truly wasteful interactions, or whether they represent undocumented processes and procedures within your organization. Mapping undocumented processes that operate pervasively throughout an organization is a non-trivial exercise, but there are certainly practices such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_stream_mapping&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;value-stream mapping&lt;/a&gt; that may make the task manageable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you decide that the interactions truly are wasteful, you need to consider the process overhead of tracking all that information with any accuracy or for any given granularity. At one organization, I once determined that the requirement for team members to &lt;em&gt;accurately&lt;/em&gt; track time allocations in 15-minute intervals consumed almost 50% of team capacity. Is that worth it for your use case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might cut down on this overhead by replacing accurate and continuous journaling with guesstimates, or by assigning values based on simplistic calculations like &lt;em&gt;Waste = Wall Time - Ideal Hours to Complete&lt;/em&gt;. However, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_in,_garbage_out&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Garbage In, Garbage Out&lt;/a&gt; principle would certainly apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, if you want to track waste, the metrics are more meaningful at the process or project levels rather than at the individual level. However, organizational circumstances may certainly vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T18:21:32.270" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8604" CreationDate="2013-02-07T18:30:24.130" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Resource underallocation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your question #2, this kind of situation is referred to as resource overallocation or underallocation by MS Project. The stress is typically on resolving overallocation without delaying the project completion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation you outline is one of underallocation. In MS Project 2010 you can see this in the Team Planner view. You can also drag and drop tasks from one resource to another.  Here is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmwares.com/content/efficient-resource-management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article with more details about resource management using MS Project&lt;/a&gt;. How to utilize resources who are underallocated is entirely up to you. You may assign them to other projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you want MS Project to include their idle time cost in the cost of this project, you have to create a task, say &quot;Idle time&quot;, and assign them explicitly to that task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T18:30:24.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8660" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8668" CreationDate="2013-02-08T02:07:20.070" Score="1" ViewCount="3622" Body="&lt;p&gt;A partner manager is there to maintain relationships. What's the difference between the partner manager role and that of a project manager? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5551" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-02-08T18:53:05.417" LastActivityDate="2013-02-08T19:15:47.963" Title="Is a Partner Manager role different from a Project Manager role?" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="531" CreationDate="2013-02-08T05:26:51.937" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My concern with receipts is with my company provided Android that is sync'd to our corporate server.  Unlike my Outlook 2010 client I do not see the return receipt request when reading emails on the droid and a return receipt is automatically sent without my knowledge.  I have turned off the setting &quot;Never send a return reciept&quot; in my Outlook 2010 client and while that works for emails read in Outlook a return receipt is still sent when read on my Android.  I agree with the majority of folks that this is bad manners and has an air of untrusting...I have one individual at my work that is on my level, that is neither a subordinate nor supervisor/manager that requests a return receipt for every message from all employees.  I have discussed the use of this feature with other employees who are also aggravated by this.  But then again the individual is untrusting...every email sent is cc'd to both their manager as well as mine whether this is the first email about a topic or an email deep into a topic.  I mention this because I find the attitude of the employee is synonomous with the employees need to cya. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think occasional use of this feature demonstrates a specific need rather than bad manners when used for every email sent.  I hope this explanation aids your inquiry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll be unchecking the setting &quot;Never send a return receipt&quot; because I don't to be part of the problem.  After all if you argue with a fool how can anyone watching from afar tell the difference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5555" LastActivityDate="2013-02-08T05:26:51.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8585" CreationDate="2013-02-08T07:42:18.297" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Zero point for Defect card&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some companies (including mine) are using zero point for &quot;defect&quot; card. We agree that defect card is not the thing customer want so we estimate it as zero even we have to put the effort to fix it. The velocity of that sprint will be lower than others because we have to take time to fix this zero story point thing. This will be shown at the end of sprint that we had defect card(s) to work on and this can show the quality of work in the team (it could be human defect or requirement defect).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5556" LastActivityDate="2013-02-08T07:42:18.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8664" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-08T14:09:58.987" Score="18" ViewCount="15738" Body="&lt;p&gt;Previously we used duration for each story, but in our current sprint we are using story points (effort) keeping test team effort separate from the development team effort. Story points are based on complexity, effort, and doubt. These three points will differ for a developer/programmer than with someone creating manual tests or someone creating automated tests. How can all of these different factors be combined to created an overall story point estimate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Scrum these should be combined (as it's a team effort), but how is this done? Is it just combining the developers' and testers' efforts, or do testers and developers have to estimate the combined effort? If the latter, are there guidelines for this to work effectively?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5560" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-02-08T19:28:42.153" LastActivityDate="2020-06-24T11:56:29.603" Title="How can developers and testers agree on story point estimates?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7858" CreationDate="2013-02-08T15:00:10.270" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I am related to Eylean board development&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a precise match solution launched instead of Eylean which covers the idea of using both Cycle time and time tracking as part of Kanban System. If it is still relevant option you can consider reviewing &lt;a href=&quot;https://teamhood.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Teamhood&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more tool is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eylean.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eylean Board&lt;/a&gt; - it is virtual board which offer both scrum and kanban tools. You can customize it anyway you like through a simple GUI. I have to say the board looks pretty nice and is very fluent with drag and drop everywhere. And of course it has cycle and lead time reports. One thing is that Eylean must be installed on client machine it is not a web app.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5562" LastEditorUserId="5562" LastEditDate="2020-08-05T17:57:28.650" LastActivityDate="2020-08-05T17:57:28.650" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5751" CreationDate="2013-02-08T15:05:56.780" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the software for agile management must meet one and most important rule, it should be dynamic, easy to use, do not require amounts of time on your daily PM tasks. It should be somewhat like physical board and of course integrate well with core PM functions alongside agile tools like reporting, estimating, team management, iterations/sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5562" LastActivityDate="2013-02-08T15:05:56.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8660" CreationDate="2013-02-08T18:50:48.177" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Roles Can Vary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definitions are tricky, because while some roles have well-defined boundaries, other roles mean whatever the companies want them to mean. I've known an executive during the dot-com bubble whose official title was &amp;quot;Senior Web Monkey,&amp;quot; and known at least two &amp;quot;Senior Vice Presidents&amp;quot; at major banks who were hands-on managers of IT departments but had only one person reporting to them. Your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Contrasting Role Definitions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Partner Managers&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, a Partner Manager is often a sales-channel manager who manages the relationships between a company and their channel partners. I'm not truly sure that &amp;quot;partner&amp;quot; is really the right term, as it's often management-speak for &amp;quot;preferred resellers.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More formally, Wikipedia defines &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_partner&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;business partners&lt;/a&gt; as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A business partner is a commercial entity with which another commercial entity has some form of alliance...A business partner can [also be a] channel intermediary[.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Project Managers&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A project manager, on the other hand, is primarily responsible for project &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt;. Wikipedia defines the typical &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_manager#Responsibilities&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;responsibilities of a project manager&lt;/a&gt; role in this way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The specific responsibilities of the Project Manager may vary depending on the industry, the company size, the company maturity, and the company culture. However, there are some responsibilities that are common to all Project Managers...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developing the project plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Managing the project stakeholders&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Managing the project team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Managing the project risk&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Managing the project schedule&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Managing the project budget&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Managing the project conflicts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Both Roles Include Managing Relationships&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both roles are similar in that they involve managing relationships; the differentiator is in who the relationships are with. However, the roles are also &lt;em&gt;fundamentally different&lt;/em&gt; in their organizational purpose, and require different deliverables from each role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2013-02-08T18:50:48.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8660" CreationDate="2013-02-08T19:15:47.963" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A project manager's goal is to ensure project closure. A project manager is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;teleological&lt;/a&gt;. and consequentialist The project manager's worries are scope/schedule/quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't work as a partner manager, but I suspect that the role is far more open ended.  Partner managers should, I believe, work to sustain and improve a partnership.   A partner manager's worries involve competition, competitive advantage and trust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While researching the question, I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.istaris.co.uk/article009.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;What makes a good Partner manager&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, which has this excellent quote, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Partner management] is also not a project management task. If you go about trying to manage a relationship as a set of activities to be controlled through some formal or semi-formal mechanism, you will not only alienate staff in the partner company, but you will stifle opportunism and innovation in the relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-02-08T19:15:47.963" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8664" CreationDate="2013-02-08T19:24:09.440" Score="23" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story points represent &lt;em&gt;consensus&lt;/em&gt; within the team. The goal of estimating story points is not to provide the largest or smallest estimate, but to accurately reflect the &lt;strong&gt;effort required by the entire team&lt;/strong&gt; to meet the &quot;definition of done.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Lewis Carroll Does Scrum&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider a story like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a practitioner of Extreme Dentistry,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want to know how many teeth the average Jabberwock has&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I can hire enough dental hygienists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During a round of planning poker, the programmers on the team might estimate this story at only two points, since adding a tooth-count column to a database table is a minor change for them. However, the testers might estimate this story at 13 points, since getting close enough to count a Jabberwock's teeth to gather accurate fixture data is a dangerous (and potentially fatal) task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should the story be two points, or thirteen? That's up to the team. Maybe the whole story is really 13 points overall, or the team discusses it and realizes that the story really ought to be 21 points once they factor in the need for an emergency medical team to be kept on standby. Then again, perhaps the team decides to reduce uncertainty by switching in a five-point Vorpal Sword story as a prerequisite, which reduces the Jabberwock story to only eight points in the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Getting Consensus&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes getting consensus is hard. That's why planning poker uses time-boxing, so that consensus-building doesn't take infinite time. Remember, you can also call on the Product Owner to clarify stories, decompose stories, or swap out stories for something else on the Product Backlog. &lt;em&gt;Some&lt;/em&gt; level of consensus should always be possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a story is accepted into the sprint, at the end of the time box the team &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; record an estimate. This estimate may be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The average (or mean) of the estimates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The median of the estimates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The worst-case estimate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The best-case estimate (but please don't do that).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Failure to estimate properly will become obvious during the sprint, and will provide good grist for the mill during your next retrospective. Continuous process improvement is the name of the game, after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-02-03T16:42:38.687" LastActivityDate="2015-02-03T16:42:38.687" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8664" CreationDate="2013-02-09T15:24:51.643" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few reasons for estimating:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To work out how much the team can commit to doing, each Sprint, in order to manage stakeholder expectations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To plan releases based on how much work the team can do&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To see if there are any discrepancies in understanding of the work that needs doing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to the discrepancies, there are plenty of other ways to uncover this without estimating. I like to use &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior_Driven_Development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Behavior-Driven Development's&lt;/a&gt; scenarios in conversation for this; if you can decide which scenarios are in and out of scope, and ask questions designed to find missing or unclear scenarios, you'll usually find out if there are misunderstandings or work that could be descoped for another story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to how much the team can do, and planning releases, you can think of the team as a pipeline. At any point, there will be one role whose time is constrained, and which represents the narrowest part of the pipe. By considering how fast that constrained role can work, you can see how fast the work can flow through the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's usually the case that developers can help overworked testers, but testers can't always help developers as easily. For that reason, frequently developers are the constrained role, and if that's the case in your team then I would suggest worrying about the development effort rather than the test effort. Including complexity and doubt in the estimate is a great idea. If the constraint ever moves away from the developers, you can change the role that does the estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's still worth talking through the test effort as this may impact how much work will fall to the devs. Note that developers and testers have very different mindsets, even when their skills are similar, so while they can collaborate effectively it's not always the case that they can take on each other's roles with flexibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a final note, story points are meant to be a lightweight way of planning and setting expectations. Teams that worry too much about accuracy tend to inflate stories so that points become worth less and less, and there are more of them, and also tend to spend more time on their process when they could actually be getting work done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this reason I prefer Kanban, which makes the constraints in flow very apparent and explicit, while providing more flexibility than Scrum's sprint cycle. Cumulative Flow Diagrams are also a great way of spotting constraints in either framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2013-02-13T10:59:59.003" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T10:59:59.003" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8671" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-10T15:58:21.187" Score="11" ViewCount="1178" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a full-time developer; almost everywhere in project management we are listed as &lt;em&gt;resources&lt;/em&gt;. Are there better terms to use other than &lt;em&gt;resource&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel term &lt;em&gt;resource&lt;/em&gt; has a connotation of being temporal: something used and thrown away once tasks are complete, etc. Maybe I am wrong, but it bothers me to be described that way. Are there other ways of referring to tech staff in project management?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user81107" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-02-10T20:37:42.630" LastActivityDate="2013-02-20T03:33:08.877" Title="Are there alternatives to &quot;resource&quot; for describing tech staff on projects?" Tags="&lt;roles&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8671" CreationDate="2013-02-10T16:37:35.420" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen the word 'Asset' used as an alternative that might be associated with happier feelings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, I feel like employees are resources.  Resources can be quite valuable and quite needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But they &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; temporary and they should be interchangeable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the US, the median duration of employment in the Software Industry (Computer and mathematical occupations) is about 5 years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/news.release/tenure.t06.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bls.gov/news.release/tenure.t06.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5580" OwnerDisplayName="Rob P." LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T16:37:35.420" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8671" CreationDate="2013-02-10T16:48:26.017" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;FTE&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; (full-time employee) is a somewhat more humane term that I've seen used at various organizations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that its common form is an acronym helps retain the abstraction so that project estimation and assignment can be done in the aggregate without accounting for individual variance; the long form of the acronym uses the nicer term &quot;employee&quot; which I don't think has the same connotation of something temporary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="paradigm72" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T16:48:26.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8671" CreationDate="2013-02-10T17:04:45.040" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I prefer the word &quot;people&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you work at a company which treats people as interchangeable cogs with no individuation, you are unlikely to get them to change their terminology. At least &quot;resource&quot; is better than &quot;warm bodies&quot; or &quot;butts in chairs&quot;, both of which make it even more clear precisely how valuable the resources in question are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Alan Shutko" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T17:04:45.040" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8671" CreationDate="2013-02-10T19:21:58.900" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile frameworks like Scrum generally refer to developers as &quot;team members.&quot; The specific nomenclature can vary from framework to framework, though, and is not prescriptive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Project Management is About Resource Constraints&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project management is a field built around &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_constraints&quot;&gt;managing constraints&lt;/a&gt;. Those constraints may be time, money, skill, or available labor, but all of those things can be defined as &quot;resources.&quot; Almost by definition, employees and contractors provide skill and labor resources, but the use of the word to describe the people themselves is an unfortunate by-product of modern business culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could be worse; in some companies, you may not even rise to the level of a &quot;human resource.&quot; You could be labeled a &quot;report&quot; or an &quot;asset,&quot; both of which are still better than being a &quot;cost center.&quot; Count your blessings and move onto something more productive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Build Alternative Terminology into Organizational Change&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, from a project perspective, you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; a resource. However, the shift to agile practices tries to instill a sense of value for people beyond treating them as fungible assets. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; explicitly values &lt;em&gt;individuals and interactions over processes and tools&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On projects that I manage, I try to differentiate between the resources that people provide and the people themselves. Treating people &lt;em&gt;as people&lt;/em&gt;&amp;mdash;and as integral members of a team&amp;mdash;is certainly important. However, while words sometimes convey ideas about how a company views the people who comprise its workforce, organizational culture is much more than just a bit of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming&quot;&gt;neuro-linguistic programming&lt;/a&gt;. Improving organizational culture may include changes in nomenclature, but it shouldn't become an end unto itself. That's just &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilting_at_windmills&quot;&gt;tilting at windmills&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T19:21:58.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8671" CreationDate="2013-02-11T03:18:33.203" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the tradeoffs is that the methodologies are trying to use generic terms as shorthand to refer to positions on a project.  The use of shorthand is to facilitate discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, people discussing a certain aspect of a project can say &quot;This new account management functionality is going to require 6 programmers, 2 QA analysts, 1 graphic designer, and 1 product manager.&quot;  Or they could say &quot;This new account management functionality is going to require 10 resources.&quot;  It depends on the context and the required level of specificity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been a programmer and a manager.  When I was a programmer, I joked with my managers about referring to me as a &quot;resource&quot;.  When I was a manager, I joked with my developers about referring to them as &quot;resources&quot;.  I always knew my managers didn't mean anything personal by the term, and I hope my developers knew that I didn't think of them as unemotional automatons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could be over-thinking this language thing.  But if you're looking for alternative terms, anything term can be looked at as &quot;degrading&quot; to the extent that it anonymizes people or the functions they perform.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want something that people won't be insulted by, use something that approximates their actual job titles: developer, programmer, designer, etc.  But then of course you have to worry that people will be insulted because you're lumping the Associate Programmer I's with the Senior Principal Developer V's.  :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4404" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T03:18:33.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8677" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8678" CreationDate="2013-02-11T08:50:15.923" Score="-2" ViewCount="238" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're a Software Development Company that's about to start working on a JSF (JavaServer Faces) project with a Hibernate persistence layer. I'm managing the project, and we have 2 developers on the team that were recently introduced to JSF. What's the best approach to structure the project plan? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some issues on my mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Breakdown of tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should developers work on different parts of the same module or should each one handle his own module?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please add/suggest any other issues you think I should take into consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5574" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-02-11T14:46:06.993" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T14:46:06.993" Title="What's the best approach to structure a project plan for a JSF project?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-04-30T19:21:28.223" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8677" CreationDate="2013-02-11T09:53:08.503" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That is not a simple question, and I won't insult it with a simplistic answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm asked that question frequently at work, and the best answer I've found is to point to &lt;a href=&quot;http://herdingcats.typepad.com/my_weblog/2012/12/project-controls-is-the-basis-of-project-management.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Herding Cats&lt;/a&gt; by G. Allman.  He doesn't have a short simple answer, but he has a coherent answer that he explains consistently.  Basically you have to decide what &quot;done&quot; looks like, then break that down into &lt;em&gt;capabilities&lt;/em&gt; that have meaning to the customer and can be measured.  Then break that down into deliverables and work packages till either it will cost more to measure progress than to create progress or until the work is &amp;lt; 2 weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your second question, if the answer doesn't arise naturally from the WBS, then I'd submit a second question to PM:SE, and invite CodeGnome to explain self-organizing teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T09:53:08.503" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8679" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-11T10:11:04.533" Score="6" ViewCount="1112" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am the scrum master for one of the products in a software development company. Our team, including me, operates from India. However my product owner is in USA. We are working on the feature development for this product that exists for ten years now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our team in India started six months ago, with no product nor domain knowledge on it. There are couple of issues that we are facing since then: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Although the team was provided high level knowledge sharing session on domain and the product, the team is not feeling confident enough in converting the user stories to functionality. The main reason I found was that the product was grown so big for the last ten years that the team is unable to figure out various places they have to add/modify the code. Sometimes it took multiple sprints to complete a user story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The second issue is the by-product of the first issue. As the team is not confident on the changes they have to make quickly, they were unable to estimate the user stories in the sprint planning meetings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is there any guideline that our team needs to follow to create better user stories having in mind that this product is quite old and changed a lot since it was built?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that there is another scrum team developing features in parallel in USA for the same product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5576" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2014-06-04T00:14:15.273" LastActivityDate="2014-11-03T08:30:21.460" Title="How does a team (new to product and domain) estimate user stories of a ten year old product?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8671" CreationDate="2013-02-11T14:54:23.407" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The contribution of the people to the project success lives on&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it makes you feel any better, the term &lt;em&gt;project&lt;/em&gt; itself has a connotation of being temporal: with a start date and an end date. As a consequence, the association of people to the project is also temporal. In contrast, &lt;em&gt;operations&lt;/em&gt; has the connotation of being permanent or ongoing. However, while the association of people to a project may be temporal, the contribution of the people to the project success lives on. That is something you can feel proud about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also you, being a software developer, are looking at this from the point of view of IT projects. In IT projects resources are almost exclusively people. However, in construction projects for example, you can have people as well as equipment such as cranes as resources. This is the reason project management tools use the generic term &lt;em&gt;resource&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond the tool though, my suggestion is to use the term &quot;Contributor&quot; for people working on the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2013-02-11T15:09:16.860" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T15:09:16.860" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8681" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10696" CreationDate="2013-02-11T15:27:38.427" Score="6" ViewCount="38240" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once I've set up my baseline, I like to use the Tracking view to see schedule slippage (ie: is a project going to be &quot;late&quot;?). The problem occurs when I'm updating the % Complete, but a task that was supposed to be complete (or in progress) has not been started yet, so I leave it at 0% Complete. Project doesn't update the tracking Gantt, so you can't see that the project is &quot;slipping&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How do &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; handle this?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;My &quot;Hack&quot; Workaround&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my Options &gt; Calculation I generally have the following set:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Move end of completed parts after status date back to status date.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Move start of remaining parts back to status date.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Move start of remaining parts before status date forward to status date.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Edits to total task % complete will be spread to the status date.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For tasks that are complete or partially complete, this works great - just fill in the % Complete value, and things jump around, showing you if you're ahead or behind schedule for the remaining tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if a task that was supposed to start before the current status date has not even started, I don't know how to make Project push that task forward to the current status date. The only workaround I've found is to assign it a small % complete, such as 1%. Then it moves the remaining part of the task forward to the status date. But this seems kind of hackish to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I get MS Project 2003 to show schedule slippage on unstarted tasks? Is there a setting / Tool or other feature I need to be using?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Example&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Set up a new Project with the following tasks:&#xA;1. Task 1 (1d) starts on Monday&#xA;2. Task 2 (2d, dependent on 1) starts on Tuesday&#xA;3. Task 3 (1d, dependent on 2) starts on Thursday&#xA;4. Task 4 (0h, milestone, dependent on 3) Finishes on Friday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, let's set the Status Date to Thursday - we're updating the project plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scenario 1, Task 1 is 100% complete, but task 2 for some reason is only 50% complete. If we fill that information in, Project will split task 2, and move the second part of the split (the remaining 50%) to start on Thursday. As a result, Thursday's task moves to Friday, and our Friday milestone moves to Monday and we can clearly see the project completion will be late by a day (1 day's slippage).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scenario 2, Task 1 is still 100% compete, but task 2 hasn't been started yet (0%). If we fill in the 100% complete for Task 1, and leave everything else at 0%, Project does NOT move Task 2 to Thursday, and as a result there doesn't appear to be any slippage, so at a glance we might conclude the project is still on-time. As a workaround, if I put a 1% in for Task 2, then it does go ahead and splits the task, but that's just a hack to get it to update the timeline, and can't be the only way to do things. At least I hope not. Hence this SE question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5577" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-13T10:31:19.613" LastActivityDate="2021-02-02T15:07:55.597" Title="How can I update a MS Project plan to show schedule slippage?" Tags="&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;ms-project-2003&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8679" CreationDate="2013-02-11T17:31:53.543" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lack of product or domain knowledge is a &lt;strong&gt;process gap,&lt;/strong&gt; rather than a failure attributable to the team. You can increase the accuracy of your estimates with increased Product Owner participation, training and documentation stories, and story spikes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;All Stories MUST Be Estimated&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team doesn't have the option to &quot;punt&quot; on estimates. At the end of Sprint Planning, all stories accepted into the sprint &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; have an estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The estimate should be as accurate as you can make it within the time-box allocated for Sprint Planning. This is why the Product Owner &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be on hand during Sprint Planning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To answer questions about scope or objectives.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To refine or clarify user stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To remove or replace a story that is truly inestimable with the team's current knowledge.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An estimate is not a guarantee&amp;mdash;it's an &quot;educated guess&quot; based on the information available to the team during estimation. When information is lacking, this estimate will generally be wrong; that's simply part of the Scrum process, and the issues that caused a poor estimate should be evaluated&amp;mdash;and appropriate mitigations proposed&amp;mdash;during the Sprint Retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Estimates Should Include Uncertainty&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[T]he team is unable to figure out various places they have to add/modify the code. Sometimes it took multiple sprints to complete a user story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good estimate accounts for the team's level of uncertainty. For example, let's assume a user story about adding a widget to a thingamabob involves changes to an unknown number of classes of uncertain complexity. How should you estimate that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Spikes&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first step is to reduce your uncertainty as much as possible. Perhaps you need a pair of story spikes, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Narrow the scope.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a developer,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I would like to know how many classes are involved in rendering a widget&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I can estimate the level of effort required to modify it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Assess the complexity.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a developer,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I would like to measure the complexity of the widget-rendering classes&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I can provide a more accurate estimate of the work effort to change them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you spend some time on these spikes, your team will be in a better position to offer an informed opinion about the work effort required to complete the original story. In addition, the spikes will provide the team with more confidence that they understand the part of the system they must estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Fudge Factors&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not you do the spikes first, &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; stories include some amount of uncertainty. However, the bigger the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot;&gt;cone of uncertainty&lt;/a&gt;, the less accurate your estimates will be. The spikes will reduce the cone, but not eliminate it entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the &lt;em&gt;size&lt;/em&gt; of the cone, one should always consider the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_interval&quot;&gt;confidence interval&lt;/a&gt; when estimating. This will result in story-point adjustments based on the team's current level of knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;High Confidence, Small Cone of Uncertainty&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, during Sprint Planning the team may be confident that a change is limited to a well-known area of the code, and that uncertainty is therefore small. In such cases, the level of effort may be straightforward to estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Low Confidence, Large Cone of Uncertainty&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, when uncertainty is high, that should be reflected in the story-point estimate. For example, the team might say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The change only involves renaming &quot;foo&quot; to &quot;bar,&quot; but we're not sure which classes should be involved in the change. The change itself is probably only 1 point, but figuring out which classes to modify is probably another 5 points. We can't call it a six since there's no such point-card, so let's make this an 8-point story instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, story point estimates are a way to communicate resource constraints to the Product Owner and the organization. Right-sizing a story based on uncertainty improves the accuracy of velocity metrics, and more accurately reflects the the speed at which the project can address items in the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By making the lack of available information about the system &lt;strong&gt;a visible cost to the project,&lt;/strong&gt; you provide the Product Owner the opportunity to prioritize training, documentation, or code refactorings that could reduce drag on the team's productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Create Training Stories&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If systems knowledge is lacking, this is a &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; problem that can't be solved without the cooperation of the Product Owner. Because the Product Owner is responsible for resource allocation on the project through prioritization of the Product Backlog, it is &lt;em&gt;his&lt;/em&gt; responsibility to add training and knowledge-transfer stories to the Product Backlog when needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if I were the Scrum Master on that team, I would use Backlog Grooming as an opportunity to suggest that the Product Owner add some time-boxed training sessions to the Product Backlog. In addition, I would actively encourage the addition of user stories such as this one to the Product Backlog:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a maintenance-team developer,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I would like to pair with one of the original developers to document the Foo module&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I can understand the system better and create more accurate estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such stories would go a long way towards effectively communicating the underlying process issues to stakeholders. These stories will also directly address a knowledge gap that will continue to plague your project until it is confronted head-on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T17:31:53.543" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8679" CreationDate="2013-02-11T17:49:35.583" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Challenges of working with an offshore dev team&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on my experience working a similar setup, here are my suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get one SME from the US to travel to India and train the entire team hands-on for a couple of weeks at a minimum.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get a couple of key team members from India to travel to the US for a few weeks of hands-on training with the SMEs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In addition to the Product Owner, get one SME from the US team to participate in the Sprint Planning meetings. Get the PO to write-up the stories ahead of the Planning meeting. Get the India team to plan out how they are going to implement them as well as estimate and task out the stories. During the Planning meeting, get the US SME to validate whether that is the right approach. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your budget and motivation, you should try some, if not all of the above. The following, of course, are other must-haves:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For better communications, these Planning meetings should be on video, if they are not so already. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your stories should have a clear list of testable acceptance criteria, if that is not the case already.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T17:49:35.583" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8684" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8685" CreationDate="2013-02-11T20:38:02.353" Score="7" ViewCount="313" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm curious if the project manager is best considered to be its own profession, or  a role within some other context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I've read there is a wide range of project types and I find it hard to believe one PM could manage to do them all successfully. Does this mean that project management is a role to be fulfilled by another person that can specialize in the project type, or does a project manager have a different set of skills to allow him or her to fulfill the needs of different projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5578" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-10-05T04:35:52.023" LastActivityDate="2014-10-05T04:35:52.023" Title="Project Manager, profession or role?" Tags="&lt;roles&gt;&lt;skills&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8684" CreationDate="2013-02-11T21:07:38.133" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project management&lt;/strong&gt; is a profession; it represents a career path and a body of knowledge while still allowing for specialization. This is no different than a doctor specializing in geriatrics or pediatrics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;project manager&lt;/strong&gt; is a functional role within a project team that should ideally be filled by a project management professional. Other roles within a project&amp;mdash;such as the &lt;em&gt;program manager&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;developer&lt;/em&gt; roles&amp;mdash;should be filled by other professionals, each with the appropriate skill set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T21:07:38.133" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8686" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8688" CreationDate="2013-02-12T12:51:36.067" Score="0" ViewCount="324" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am managing 4 projects, and every time I check email, I do see lots of tasks. Once I complete all these tasks, and feel it is done, again I see suddenly something else coming up. Please suggest better ways to handle this scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problem in detail:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As soon as I see an email which requires my attention, I start working on it. If there are multiple tasks, I work based on priority and complete them. As soon as all tasks are done, again I see something popping up and I give my attention to it too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To add to that, there are phone calls from different stakeholders, which I have to respond, and everyone needs the answer immediately. I started getting the feeling that the way I am handling this is not correct and this will only frustrate me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know many of us handling multiple tracks will have this issue. And one of the major concerns is the different stakeholders are not worried on the task which is not related to them and whether or not I am busy on other tasks. The usual reply I get is can you complete this first, and then things from different track gets piled up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1717" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-09-07T03:47:29.197" LastActivityDate="2013-09-07T03:47:29.197" Title="I am having difficulties in managing tasks that shows up in a random fashion" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8687" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8695" CreationDate="2013-02-12T14:50:50.230" Score="3" ViewCount="1301" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Agile/Scrum teams, the concept of a self-organizing team and the notion that &quot;the team owns all the stories, individuals don’t&quot; is turning out to be difficult to communicate. I have seen lots of articles and many pages of text explaining this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example I have heard is that of people cleaning up a messy conference room, after a teamwork exercise involving sticky notes, posters, markers, paper aeroplanes, balloons...etc. Nobody tells anyone what to do – everyone pitches in to do some part of the clean-up until it is all completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there other good examples to help convey this idea to the team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2013-02-12T19:32:19.973" LastActivityDate="2013-02-14T16:48:24.303" Title="Need a good example for what a self-organizing team looks like" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8686" CreationDate="2013-02-12T15:07:18.027" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Frequent task switching generally results in inefficiencies, wasted effort, stress and eventually burn-out. I think most people have problems managing this because, generally speaking, they want to be helpful and responsive... and most people are also likely to take ruthless advantage of your helpfulness and responsiveness to get what they want without real consideration of the consequences for you. You need to control this tendency so that you are &lt;em&gt;reasonably&lt;/em&gt; helpful and &lt;em&gt;reasonably&lt;/em&gt; responsive so that you can do the job while maintaining maintain your productivity and sanity. Some ways to do this are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Decide if you really have to respond.&lt;/strong&gt; Just because someone asks you for something doesn't mean you are the right person to be asking. If the work is appropriate for another team member to address point the requestor in that person's direction.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Focus on one project at a time.&lt;/strong&gt; If you are working on four projects you could block off half a day for each two days a week and leave the fifth day to handle other work. This will at least help keep you focused on one project at a time for relatively long stretches.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be clear about your limits.&lt;/strong&gt; Both with yourself and others. Learn to say &quot;Not yet...&quot; if you are unable to say &quot;No&quot;. If your plate is already full delegate new work if you can or manage expectations of your customer if you can't.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make sure you know what you are doing.&lt;/strong&gt; If someone asks you to do something make clear up front that you know what they want and when it is needed. Otherwise you are likely going to waste your time doing rework, or pushing out something fast that can wait.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Treat &quot;ASAP&quot; as it should be treated.&lt;/strong&gt; This is a hot-button issue for me. If you are asked to do something &quot;As Soon As Possible&quot;, get a hard deadline and justification. If a hard target or understandable justification isn't forthcoming, in my experience it is because someone wants to look like a star at your expense. Get to it as soon as you possibly can -  which, of course, is after you finish enough of your other work that has hard target dates to stay ahead of the curve.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-02-12T15:07:18.027" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8664" CreationDate="2013-02-12T16:08:45.873" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The team should come to a consensus on the combined effort&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want to work towards the ideal of a cross-functional team and the team owning all the stories rather than individuals. While that is a long term goal, you want to look for practical steps you can take to resolve these issues in the meantime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question, the team should come to a consensus on the combined effort. As CodeGnome suggested, start planning poker sessions for estimation, if you are not already doing so. Let each team member understand the scope of work and come up with their own estimate, without being influenced by others. The discussion that follows should focus on the reasons for the lower or higher estimate. That will foster a better understanding of the development and testing work content across the team. We have also seen some misunderstandings get clarified. For example, the developers might point out that they will be messing with the base classes and that might warrant a wider range of regression tests than what the testers planned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-02-12T16:08:45.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6206" CreationDate="2013-02-12T20:20:12.777" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have used Blueprint in the past. and it kept us on target in terms of budget. if that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the link, they specialize in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blueprintsys.com/products/requirements-management/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;requirements management&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5588" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-02-13T01:57:26.177" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T01:57:26.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8691" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-12T20:27:52.633" Score="0" ViewCount="246" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any idea Where are &lt;code&gt;Primevera&lt;/code&gt;'s old baseline dates are stored after rescheduling the project?&#xA;We can see the old dates in the Client but I want to query the database to get all the dates which were used before the current baseline dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5589" LastActivityDate="2013-07-15T01:39:52.110" Title="Where are Primavera's old baseline dates stored after rescheduling the project?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;pmi&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8692" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8696" CreationDate="2013-02-12T21:44:38.140" Score="2" ViewCount="567" Body="&lt;p&gt;My company takes in projects from a variety of clients in the region I am in.  One of these clients is a firm that kind of competes with us on some things, but in other ways we cooperate.  The relationship there is complex.  Anyway, I am managing a project where our development group configures and dumps a bunch of stuff onto their server for them.  It's actually pretty drab work.  It should also be noted that there is a pretty tight timeline on this particular project.  We have about 2 weeks from getting the project to deployment.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before we get the project, I collect the requirements, document the scope in a statement of work, and get it signed by all involved.  A week goes by and we start executing the project according to the agreed upon scope.  So now we have one week left.  We have a meeting this morning and lo-and-behold - he starts trying to add a bunch of features.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What else can I do to ensure that we get as much of the requirements as possible up front?  My business unit really isn't in a position to reject work; we could definitely use the business.  I should also add that the other guy is pretty new to the job, and comes across as such.  He also might have a small-man problem, in that he might be trying to show us all that he's large and in-charge of the project (although this is immaterial to the question).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So here's the question:&lt;/strong&gt; How do you handle people who obliviously try to add and change scope at the worst possible time in the project life cycle? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4339" LastEditorUserId="4339" LastEditDate="2013-02-13T13:04:47.327" LastActivityDate="2019-10-30T09:07:58.860" Title="project work with difficult client" Tags="&lt;clients&gt;&lt;scope-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6206" CreationDate="2013-02-12T22:46:17.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why not handle your requirements in Jira? It is easily possible if you keep in mind the following things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have different card types (i.e. &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Defining+%27Issue+Type%27+Field+Values&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jira issue types&lt;/a&gt;) like portfolio requirement, requirement, user story, story task, defect&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;clearly define what card type to use on which level&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;establish a governance model around, e.g. who is allowed to create a new card type&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;maybe collect all incoming requirements in a distinct project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;link all issues so that you have tracebility&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;use versions for release planning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give an example, imagine you want to implement a text editor. You would probably define portfolio requirements like printing support, copy &amp;amp; paste, desktop integration, etc. Afterwards, you could refine each of those portfolio requirements further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Together with product management, you will decide what portfolio requirements to tackle in the next major release. So you can create versions and assign your requirements to them. Also, for requirements to be implemented next, you probably want to refine them, e.g. create user stories and link them to the parent requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can establish a governance model around your requirements, e.g. that product management must sign-off a requirement before R&amp;amp;D is allowed to implement them. So you can define the required states for each card type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The big benefit of having everything in Jira is that you can do nice reporting on all aspects. Everything is linked and you got full tracebility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm currently working in a large software company, where one of our development branches is doing their complete requirements management just with Jira. Of course, they use Confluence for software specifications by linking those documents from the respective Jira cards).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5591" LastEditorUserId="5591" LastEditDate="2013-02-13T12:15:41.603" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T12:15:41.603" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8692" CreationDate="2013-02-12T22:57:20.783" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Timing is Immaterial&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do you handle people who...change scope at the worst possible time in the project life cycle?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you're missing the forest for the trees. It doesn't matter that the scope change comes at &quot;the worst possible time.&quot; The issue is that your project should already have &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_control&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;change controls&lt;/a&gt; in place to deal with scope issues and new specifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Contractual Controls&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With an external client, change control is often a contractual issue. You should review your contracting process to make sure that changes to scope or clients requirements are addressed properly in during contract negotiations, although that may not help you &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt; if this critical issue was overlooked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Process Controls&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of what framework your projects use, good project management frameworks always have a change control process of some sort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In traditional project management, this may be a formal change control process such as submitting new requirements to a steering committee for approval.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In agile frameworks like Scrum, changes must be introduced through the Product Backlog for a &lt;em&gt;future&lt;/em&gt; sprint, rather than the current iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Reboot Your Change Control&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have change control processes currently in place, you will need to create a new process for it. If implementing the new process requires client cooperation, then you will most likely need to pitch the change control process as a benefit to the client&amp;mdash;perhaps in terms of lowered costs, lowered defect rates, or increased on-time performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing is not to go it alone. Your &lt;em&gt;entire organization&lt;/em&gt; must get behind the need for change control, the necessity of engaging your client constructively within the new process, and the absolute requirement to support the project team in the face of client opposition to agreed-upon change controls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-02-12T22:57:20.783" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8687" CreationDate="2013-02-12T22:58:43.720" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Instead of explaining, let them experience it! Use one of the many team building games where they will understand during the game that they need to cooperate and organise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here a typical example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;create small groups of 2-5 people&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have 3-4 such groups&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;give each team an envelope containing a puzzle (20 pieces maybe or maybe some small lego set, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;tell them that they should finish all puzzles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;count down and start the race&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your wording, they will get the feeling that it is a race and the group finishing their puzzle first will win. However, there is a trick:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;each envelope contains pieces from another's group's puzzle :-)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in order to complete the task, the groups will need to start communicating&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After some time, they will notice it and ask what to do. Don't answer, just let them proceed. They will solve it on their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the game you should help them to reflect on what happened. They started as independent groups, but were only able to solve the overall problem by working together and self organising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5591" LastActivityDate="2013-02-12T22:58:43.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8692" CreationDate="2013-02-13T02:58:14.760" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with CodeGnome's well-founded comments about change control procedures. However the scenario you described and your question could occur regardless of how effective your change control procedures are. For now let's assume you have good controls in place but are still concerned about &quot;how do you handle people who obviously try to add and change scope at the worst possible time in the project life cycle?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several issues in play here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the project at risk due to a lack of accurate requirements? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By asking &quot;what else we can do to ensure that we get as much of the requirements as possible up front?&quot; you suggest that maybe these are valid requirements that were missed. &#xA;So here are some things to think about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You had the right process in place (engage, document, and sign-off). Did you produce the right document? In a two week “configure and dump” project should there be Requirements and a Statement of Work or an actual Specification? If the Statement of Work was viewed as a specification by everyone than the situation is different than if you are working with a less definitive set of requirements mapped to deliverables.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The most obvious next place you might look is whether the process involved the right people? Compare the source of the original requirements to the &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; source of the requirements that are arising now (this may take some detective work). Compare the people who signed off on the project to the people behind these new issues. One of the most common problems I see with requirements gathering is involvement of the wrong people within the customer's organization. Requirements are relayed by someone in IT who heard them from a manager who heard them from a programmer or an end-user. Then someone with no real understanding of the requirements signs the specification. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even if requirements were missed, are they important enough that their exclusion places the project at risk? One thing is for certain: adding requirements at this stage in a two week project will definitely place the project at risk. With a two week “configure and dump” deliverable this is not a question of staying with a sprint. Either the deadline mattered or it didn't. Either these requirements are critical to success or they are not.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the client has a valid point in saying “you guys are the experts and should have known while we don’t even understand what questions to ask.” That does not seem to be the case here. The client is also expert in the field and competes with you for business. Frankly it sounds like you should have been given a specification as opposed to having to document the requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If requirements were missed it might provide an opportunity for process improvement while still meeting the deliverable date by sticking to the original requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why is this person causing disruption?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You started to voice a question but pulled back: &quot;What is the motivation of this person who is causing the disruption?&quot; You mentioned that he is new, and that he might have issues with establishing his control.  I think understanding his motivation has everything to do with handling the situation. Does this come from a fear (or knowledge) that he made the mistake? Is he really just trying to establish his control? Most of the time I see this type of disruption coming from someone who is unsure of the stance that they are taking and almost asking for push back that reassures them you know what you are doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does a project manager effectively control disruption? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure that it is this human factor of understanding the stakeholders in a project that makes the difference between success and failure. A computer could replace the project manager if consideration to the human factors was not important. Understanding why someone is disruptive (be it change requests or something else) is the best chance you have at maintaining control. Ultimately the other person will benefit from your insight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5593" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T02:58:14.760" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8681" CreationDate="2013-02-13T10:30:16.253" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you tried to baseline the project plan? my suggestion is to use baseline dates and actual dates to show slippage. When you have a critical path shown with predecessors MS project would show the impact of moving dates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4788" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T10:30:16.253" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3013" CreationDate="2013-02-14T14:29:46.883" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agreed with Paul. But I assume that like most things in life, perceptions. People think a person who holds a professional designation such as P.Eng (P.E) and never worked a single day in the industry (real life experience), who earned their designation working as an academia or worked in laboratory and never stepped in a plant is insane. I feel the same for PMP credential holders who do not have real life experience and have a PMP designation. Fortunately, I have P.Eng and PMP, but working 20 years in plant designing and then work at head office as a PMP, with lots of grunt work from the the beginning. People should learn to start from Bottom Up and not take shortcuts. It shows up later in your work performance and saturate the certification(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5601" LastEditorUserId="5601" LastEditDate="2013-02-14T14:34:48.157" LastActivityDate="2013-02-14T14:34:48.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3013" CreationDate="2013-02-14T15:28:04.023" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hiring managers screen resumes for certificates; if you don't have the certificate, you won't be considered for the job.  In my particular discipline, regulation forbids us from considering anyone who doesn't have the certificate.  Companies will cite the number of certified PM's that they're bidding on projects; if you can't help them raise their number above that of the competition, they're less interested in you. (I've heard this from several hiring managers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure that is wise, but that's the reality in which I work.  I still oppose the notion of licensing and professional certificates, but the cold hard reality is that unless you can get past the screener and into the first interview, you'll never have the chance to make the case that your experience is more valuable than a certificate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is relatively little opportunity cost to obtaining the certificate.  Everything you do for the CAPM will transfer over to the PMP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are sites that show the difference in salary between a PMP certified PM and an uncertified PM with similar years of experience; I'm unaware of any site that tracks that for CAPM. There are  &lt;a href=&quot;http://ittrainingblog.com/2012/04/25/assessing-the-value-of-the-capm-certification-for-project-managers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sites&lt;/a&gt; that strongly assert the value of the CAPM, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://pmstudent.com/what-is-capm-good-for/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sites&lt;/a&gt; that weakly assert the value of a CAPM.  Both sites back up their assertions with logical arguments, but I haven't seen any statisitics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-02-14T15:28:04.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8687" CreationDate="2013-02-14T16:48:24.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're not going to be able to find a single example that exemplifies all the various concepts that are typically rolled into the term &lt;em&gt;self-organization&lt;/em&gt;. To find an appropriate example for your use case, you need to decide what specific behavior you're trying to model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What Your Example Models&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nobody tells anyone what to do – everyone pitches in to do some part of the clean-up until it is all completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure this example communicates anything beyond &quot;you're on your own.&quot; Yes, I can see how you can retcon a theme of self-management around the convenience of having people clean up the conference room, but I don't think it sends the right message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The actual behavior you're trying to model with the example you provided is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Individual initiative.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lack of prescriptive command-and-control.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bottom-up planning and execution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are certainly aspects of self-organization, but none of these things really highlight the collective ownership that you say you want to model. You need a different approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Model &quot;Collective Planning&quot; Instead&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my personal experience, the concept of collective ownership is best modeled through Planning Poker exercises that are stretched to include all members of a cross-functional team. For example, you might use a login-page story and encourage the team to stretch the development story to include technical writing, database architecture, or network topology to show that the &lt;em&gt;whole team&lt;/em&gt; needs to be part of the plan and execution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Model &quot;Cross-Functional Participation&quot; Instead&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also consider trying an exercise that requires every member of the team to add value to a story, in order to show that a story can't be completed without the participation of the whole team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you might give everyone on the team a single facial feature for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Potato_Head&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mr. Potato Head&lt;/a&gt;. Everyone adds value to Mr. Potato Head by adding an eye or an ear, or ensuring that parts are in the right places. By passing the head around a circle, you model whole-team participation in the &lt;em&gt;definition of done&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;NOTE: You might be tempted to try to make this particular example more more free-form in order to model the communication necessary to swarm or self-organize around a team-developed solution, but in my experience the task is both too prescriptive and too simplistic to make that point effectively. Your mileage may vary.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Use Multiple Exercises with Inspect-and-Adapt&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Self-organization is a surprisingly complex concept to communicate. Each exercise should clearly communicate an individual facet of this concept. As a corollary, focusing on facets of self-organization rather than the &lt;em&gt;gestalt&lt;/em&gt; may require you to use more than one example to illustrate your points, and to iteratively refine the team's understanding over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feel free apply Scrum's &quot;inspect and adapt&quot; concepts to your team exercises. If you have a point to make, use a review or retrospective of the exercise to make sure the point was communicated effectively, and set the stage for improvement of future exercises.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-02-14T16:48:24.303" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8681" CreationDate="2013-02-14T21:13:05.567" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Couple of suggestions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;if you type a % in, and then change it back to 0%, Project will&#xA;  sometimes move that task right to the project start date instead!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the absence of any predecessors or a &quot;Start No Earlier Than&quot; constraint, MS Project assumes that you could start that task on the project start date. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;if a task that was supposed to start before the current status date&#xA;  has not even been started yet, I don't know how to make Project push&#xA;  that task forward to the current status date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can put a &quot;Start No Earlier Than&quot; constraint of status date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the Tracking Gantt, you can also use the &quot;Start Variance&quot; and other Variance columns to see schedule slippage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Couple of cautions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is not a good idea to make a blanket assumption that all delayed work will start on status date. You need to get buy-in from task resources that they are indeed planning to do so.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can move tasks that don't have any predecessors (or whose predecessors have completed) to start on status date. Others must be left to follow the dependency logic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-02-14T21:13:05.567" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8706" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-15T08:38:21.977" Score="1" ViewCount="6699" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to find out the variance between baseline start 1 and actual start. However, I realised that the start variance value as seen from the Variance table actually shows the difference between the baseline and actual start. How should I go about getting this value? Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5605" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-09T16:35:42.467" LastActivityDate="2018-11-09T16:35:42.467" Title="How to calculate variance between baseline 1 start and actual start in MS Project (2007)?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2007&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8706" CreationDate="2013-02-15T12:21:18.440" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &quot;Options&quot;, find the EV calculation choice and choose Baseline 1 for your EV calculations.  I don't have 2007 anymore so I can't direct you more specifically.  But the EV Calculation method is where you need to make the change from baseline to baseline 1.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-02-15T12:21:18.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8681" CreationDate="2013-02-15T12:23:47.530" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The package that is starting late should have a predecessor.  That predecessor should be slipping which will cause everything after it to slip.  This will push the start date out of the succeeding packages.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you hard coded dates for your packages, the project will keep the start date as is. So you need to remove those constraints and have all of your packages &quot;start soon as possible&quot;.  This will enable the tool to function right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-02-15T12:23:47.530" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="63" CreationDate="2013-02-15T14:10:35.837" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I founded the company Earliz which provide a collaborative project management platform: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.earliz.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.earliz.com&lt;/a&gt;. Our services are based on Agile project management methods like Scrum and Kanban. The interface is optimized to offer a fast and inutitive use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5609" LastActivityDate="2013-02-15T14:10:35.837" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-02-15T14:10:35.837" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8706" CreationDate="2013-02-15T15:14:30.447" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another way to approach this is to save your old schedule as Baseline1, then do your schedule modifications and rebaseline as Baseline. I've found this to be a bit easier to remember to do compared to changing the EVM options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-02-15T15:14:30.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8711" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-15T15:34:48.963" Score="23" ViewCount="12101" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to practice Scrum with a physical board. We often faced problems when working with distributed teams or just when going into a meeting room. So I decided to implement a SaaS service to provide an online board, but after speaking with Agile coaches it appears they don't like this virtual solution because it breaks the real interactions promoted by the Scrum framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why would they say that? I think it's better to have all of the team involved and informed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5609" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-02-15T15:58:34.437" LastActivityDate="2020-02-06T17:17:26.327" Title="What is better: a physical Scrum board or an online board?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="15" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8711" CreationDate="2013-02-15T18:10:21.650" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The point of having scrums is to facilitate intra-team communications. From that point, having a physical board is beneficial because it forces people to be in the same room and communicate face-to-face. Remember that something like 75-80% of communication is composed on non-verbal cues, so if you are trying to do things virtually when you don't have to you are making the communications less effective than they have to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a distributed team that can't physically be in the same place then you have to find ways around the limitations inherent with that kind of setup. If this is the case for you may just have to acknowledge that you don't have a perfect situation but are dealing with it as best you can. The caveat is that when I say &quot;they can't physically be in the same place&quot; I mean that as a rule of thumb they would have to drive or fly or take a train whatever to get to where your board is rather than walk. Improving communications on a project is well worth a little inconvenience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-02-15T18:10:21.650" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8711" CreationDate="2013-02-15T20:54:05.093" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've worked on teams using both methods, sometimes at the same time. Others have mentioned the reasons for preferring the real world scrum board being about physical interaction and in-person communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I prefer virtual scrum boards for several reasons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, as you mentioned, distributed teams or even simply working from home days. In those cases the team members have no view of a physical scrum board and, more importantly can't update the scrum board themselves. They have to ask another team member to update the board for them and that just takes more engineering time away from that person. Plus, this almost always results in once a day updates from that person instead of having the continuous sprint status that the board is supposed to convey. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, tracking and historical views of the project are much easier to deal with using a virtual scrum board. When using physical boards, at the end of a sprint, all the cards get taken down and either tossed in a pile that nobody ever looks at or they're thrown away. How are you then supposed to look back at anything deeper than your point velocity when all your story/task level tracking is gone? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reporting in general is just easier with a virtual scrum board. One of my teams now uses a physical board and I have to go in every day and copy the points remaining from the board into an excel spreadsheet so that I can generate a burn down chart. In a virtual board situation, the data is all there and, depending on the system you're using, can constantly generate burn down based on the board at any time of the day or night. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for all the talk of fostering in-person communication, I think the cons of a physical board outweigh the pros. You're still going to have your daily scrum standups for that in-person interaction. You're going to display the virtual board to the team during the standup. Heck, you can even set up a place where the virtual board is displayed 24x7 that team members can still gather around. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4699" LastActivityDate="2013-02-15T20:54:05.093" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8711" CreationDate="2013-02-16T01:54:26.027" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've used both, sometimes at the same time. It's pretty much a truism that it depends on your situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your team meets the following criteria, you should go for the physical board:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Everyone in the same place&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have the discipline to create consistent cards, with the necessary relevant data&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have other internal systems that make it easy to find relevant files and online discussions related to a card&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easy to scribble down &quot;revamp landing pages&quot;, but without data like &quot;date of creation&quot;, &quot;created by&quot;, &quot;card #&quot;, it becomes difficult to manage and extract useful reporting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A virtual board or ticket tracker can be really helpful if you can't meet those criteria, and has additional benefits that aren't really possible regardless of your discipline.  It helps with reporting, allows for centralization of online conversations and it helps you keep necessary files and link to references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A best of both worlds approach is to have a large TV screen to display the board during scrum meetings, and someone operating the computer to sort the cards in real time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5948" LastActivityDate="2013-02-16T01:54:26.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8711" CreationDate="2013-02-16T17:27:50.800" Score="14" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Why Agile Practices Generally Favor Face-to-Face Solutions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[A]fter speaking with Agile coaches it appears they don't like this virtual solution because it breaks the real interactions promoted by the Scrum framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonverbal_communication#Importance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;one Wikipedia entry&lt;/a&gt;, 2/3 of all communication is non-verbal. In an agile context, this means that in-person interaction generally provides higher-bandwidth semantic communications between team members than a comparable exchange over telephone, email, or instant messaging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; values individuals and interactions over processes and tools. One reason for this is that tools should support the organic, emergent behavior of the team rather than forcing the team to build its processes around a specific tool-chain. In fact, in a &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8561/4271&quot;&gt;related post&lt;/a&gt; I said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Never, ever build your process around a tool-chain; always build your tool-chain around your process!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of the foregoing means that virtual story boards are bad, or that they shouldn't be used. However, one certainly needs to be cognizant of the trade-offs inherent in using a virtual story board, and take care that the tool is not used &lt;em&gt;in place of&lt;/em&gt; interactions or processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Why Virtual Solutions Are Adaptive&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A physical board will generally increase interpersonal interactions, and create spontaneous communications opportunities around the story board as people update it or view it. If given the choice, I too would recommend a physical board over a virtual board &lt;em&gt;in the abstract.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said all that, I think you are right: in your specific case, a virtual story board is necessary tool to keep your distributed team informed and engaged. However, the reason it's valuable isn't that it's electronic or virtual; it's useful because it increases communications bandwidth, project visibility, and task synchronization within the team. It addresses a concrete logistical issue; as such, I'd certainly consider it adaptive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2013-02-16T17:27:50.800" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8711" CreationDate="2013-02-17T22:13:06.120" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;Which one is better? The one that works better for the team. That is the &lt;strong&gt;entire point of Scrum&lt;/strong&gt;. Enable your teams to organize around practices and tools that work for them, and stay out of the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It really doesn't matter what your Agile coaches like and don't like. Their opinion can be used as a basis in your team, but the bottom line is to use what works. Try one board for a few iterations and talk about it during your retrospectives. If it doesn't work, change it. Be agile. Adapt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My vote in this instance is always for an electronic board and a projector or large monitor in a public area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastEditorUserId="4422" LastEditDate="2013-02-19T20:36:33.010" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T20:36:33.010" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4711" CreationDate="2013-02-18T02:23:25.197" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both different, that's why I did each of them. Some people did their MBA with a focus/specialization in Project Management- that might be middle of the road for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5618" LastActivityDate="2013-02-18T02:23:25.197" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8711" CreationDate="2013-02-18T13:29:49.017" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I prefer a &lt;strong&gt;physical board&lt;/strong&gt; for several reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's (usually) easier to change your process.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Want to add a code review step?  Just add a column.  That's easy in some virtual products but a pain in some.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It creates a focal point for standups.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;unless you have a really big screen where you have your standup, a physical board makes a great point to gather, discuss what's in progress and any blockers and talk about risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;People actually update it!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In every team I've been in that's used a virtual board, people update it very infrequently (typically in a rush before standups after the Scrum Master has had to go and ask them to do it) so it doesn't always have a good picture of what's going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It communicates to other stakeholders more easily.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My CIO is unlikely to open a virtual board but will have a look at our physical one when he walks past.  Equally, if I see him looking at the board, I'll usually go over and we can have a chat about how things are going.  Even if he did view a virtual board, we'd miss out on those informal chats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That all being said, my team is co-located.  In a distributed environment, I'd be using a virtual board (as well as kicking and screaming to get my team co-located!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastEditorUserId="1185" LastEditDate="2013-02-18T13:53:25.043" LastActivityDate="2013-02-18T13:53:25.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4711" CreationDate="2013-02-18T19:56:40.983" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an MBA and I am getting ready to take the PMP test next month.  My MBA was focused on general management and finance whereas the PMP focuses directly around PMI-specific processes and knowledge areas.  If you want to move forward in project management, I recommend the PMP.  The PMI material is actually tailored to the project management profession, and the credential itself actually means something to people that work in and hire for project managers.  For example, some of the best PM jobs are in organizations that have fully-embraced the concept of professional project management to the point where they opened a Project Management Office (PMO).  It is unlikely that the person who heads the PMO isn't going to have the PMP credential, if not others (e.g. ITIL, PRINCE2).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the flip side, if you're looking to advance your career as a functional manager (or general business operations), the MBA is probably the better degree.  You receive training in non-projectized management philosophies, as well as a well-rounded view of the business operation in general.  The MBA is also better for networking opportunities.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The MBA, though, will cost what $40k?  You can get a PMP certification in a few months and some intensive studying.  If you are willing to drop the $40k on the MBA, you should also be willing to drop $42k on an MBA and a PMP.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4339" LastActivityDate="2013-02-18T19:56:40.983" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8720" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8721" CreationDate="2013-02-18T23:16:20.717" Score="4" ViewCount="218" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea is that this team of 6 lower, mid and upper managers would would prioritize all of our IT development and infrastructure projects instead of trying to have us work on everything at the same time.  Along with this, we would be breaking Development/QA/Integration into two cross-functional, semi-stable Kanban teams.  We would have other teams depending on project need and resource availability.  I will be running and facilitating the meeting, I will not have any say as to priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the issue, the senior member of the team, the CFO, has high influence but low engagement.  My two bosses, the directors of infrastructure and development, are the most junior members.  In fact one of them reports directly to the two mid managers on the team.  The two mid managers are the most senior of the engaged members and I happen to know that they are opposed to setting priorities (ie, they are all high priority, do them all, do them now).  The CFO wants priorities set, my two bosses want priorities set, the loud people in the middle don't.  I think they don't want that accountability because many are customer facing projects.  The observant reader will notice that I have only mention 5 of the 6 participants, this is because that person is hardly ever seen in the office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My fear is we will meet, the CFO won't show (75% chance of no show) and after an hour of talking, there still will not be any priority to the projects.  There is also the issue of the new red hot project that spring up between meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What sort of norms or frameworks can I set up to get portfolio management team to prioritize projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4046" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-02-19T02:56:51.027" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T09:29:33.710" Title="What sort of norms or frameworks can I set up to get portfolio management team to prioritize projects" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;&lt;pmo&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8720" CreationDate="2013-02-19T05:10:40.287" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have an &lt;a href=&quot;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66377/what-is-the-xy-problem/66378#66378&quot;&gt;X/Y problem&lt;/a&gt;. You can't solve your problem without addressing the underlying political issues. No methodology or portfolio-management practice will help until you address the real problem head-on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Y in Your X/Y Problem&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, Y is the tool you're hoping will help your group prioritize in the face of absentee management and lack of authority. If solving for Y, you just need to apply any methodology that builds consensus among the stakeholders. You won't get 100% agreement from any committee; just look for sufficient buy-in instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One possible tool to create consensus is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/theme-scoring&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Theme Scoring&lt;/a&gt;. Here is the description:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Theme scoring is a prioritization technique that can be used to prioritize themes (groups of user stories) and epics (large user stories) against one another. It can also be used to prioritize projects or products against one another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also download a short document about prioritizing the Product Backlog, along with some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/uploads/presentations/Prioritizing-Product-Backlog-Scrum-Gathering-London-2007.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sample templates&lt;/a&gt;, directly from Mike Cohn's web site. He covers prioritization options quite well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of what technique you use, your goal should be to get the stakeholders to agree on the &lt;em&gt;criteria&lt;/em&gt; against which each project will be assessed. If your stakeholders can't agree on the metrics for determining what a successful project looks like, there's no point in looking further into the details of individual projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Common criteria often include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Capital outlay or projected budget for each project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Expected return on investment for each project, in total dollars or as a percentage of the project budget.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Marketing or strategic considerations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Regulatory compliance requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The specific criteria don't really matter from a project management point of view. However, there must be stakeholder consensus; the criteria must matter to each stakeholder personally, as well as to the business at large. Once acceptable criteria have been established, then you can apply your chosen portfolio-selection methodology using the agreed-upon criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With consensus on the criteria, the methodology becomes useful politically. By turning opinions on what matters most into measurable comparisons, you create opportunities for consensus and buy-in that (not coincidentally) also lead to self-evident priorities for each project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The X in Your X/Y Problem&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You suffer from absentee management and lack authority. So, it seems, do the rest of the stakeholders. You say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[As the project manager] I will not have any say as to priority.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[The CFO] has high influence but low engagement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The two mid managers...are opposed to setting priorities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My two bosses...[are] junior members. In fact one of them reports directly to the two mid managers on the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a nutshell, no one with any authority has the desire to set priorities. Let that sink in for a minute. Assuming that the mid-managers have the authority to make prioritization decisions in the first place--that actually hasn't been established here--you state that they are actively opposed to setting priorities anyway. So, unless &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; managers are politically savvy enough to be able to manage upwards, you are in an untenable position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have no authority. Ultimately, the responsibility for the success or failure of the business lies with the executives. Therefore, your only professional responsibility is to make the costs of indecision visible to the management team, and to use your influence (if any) to suggest a constructive course of action that would mitigate those costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are able to use your influence to build consensus around some strategic value statements and portfolio-selection criteria, by all means do so. You can then follow-up with a metrics-based, politically-neutral approach to evaluating projects for the portfolio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Just Say &quot;No&quot; to Accountability Without Authority&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Projects require an executive sponsor or project champion for a reason, and your current situation exemplifies the need. If managers and executives with authority do not support the initiative, and you have done your best to provide recommendations on how to move forward, that's the end of your professional responsibility. &lt;em&gt;You&lt;/em&gt; are not accountable for business decisions made higher up in the organization, and if you're then held accountable anyway, as a professional you must let the organization face the consequences of its own (in)action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the remaining choices are unpalatable. It may require rejecting the role of facilitator for a broken process and moving on to a different role within the company, or dusting off your resume and looking for a better opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Accountability without authority is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; sustainable, and sometimes a project manager's influence just isn't enough. In the final analysis, once you've done your professional best you must simply decide whether to fish or cut bait.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-20T10:29:45.420" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T05:10:40.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8104" CreationDate="2013-02-19T07:02:45.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with David but you are missing the biggest point of being a project manager. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I usually mentor 2-4 other programmers but am not responsible for&#xA;  closely monitoring or reviewing all their tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to decide why you want to do PMP? Is it for career advancement or you seriously are interested in this field. If you seriously want to go for PMP my suggestion would be to read the process areas of project management and see where you fit in and what needs to be done more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5624" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2013-02-19T11:43:11.157" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T11:43:11.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8723" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8726" CreationDate="2013-02-19T12:09:39.960" Score="-2" ViewCount="180" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often read about Agile development in blogs. It seems that some PM terms are sometimes mentioned with slightly different meanings depending on the context. Could you transcribe from a book (either Agile/non-Agile) the definitions of the following terms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Capacity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team availability (how it relates to Capacity)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Effort&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5484" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T13:38:48.137" Title="Project metric definitions" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;pmi&gt;&lt;definition&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8104" CreationDate="2013-02-19T13:12:37.557" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.  The experience I submitted was similar to that which you are offering. My understanding of the requirement is that you have to show that you have experience in the skills that are critical for project management.  From what you say, you're initiating projects, and monitoring / controlling work.  Implied in your description is that you're doing informal planning and some form of closure.  You'll want to review your work in more detail, map the activities you currently perform to project management best practice, and possibly including more project management techniques.  That will help you submit the experience, and will incidentally help prepare you for the exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T13:12:37.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8720" CreationDate="2013-02-19T13:25:00.110" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Concur with @CodeGnome that you have an XY problem. I've got a slightly different tl:dr than he does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;tl;dr&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM's job is to close the project.  That may mean killing it fast, cleanly and thoroughly so that nobody gets blame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Trapped between incompatible agendas.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CFO has a desire which is at odds with middle management.  You &lt;strong&gt;do not&lt;/strong&gt; want to get in the middle of that.  If, like most of us, you don't have the option to step aside and allow someone else the privilege of glorious high visibility failure, you need to arrange for the failure to be fast and thorough.  (A PM's job is to &lt;em&gt;close&lt;/em&gt; the project).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking for norms &amp;amp; frameworks will only create a third stake in the conflict, and become a magnet for failure and blame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;update in response to @CodeGnome's comment&lt;/em&gt;  You can't close the project; the PM generally doesn't have that authority.  The PM has the responsibility to analyze the alternatives and communicate the alternatives and consequences to the stakeholders.  You &lt;strong&gt;can&lt;/strong&gt; make sure that everybody knows that this portfolio/project/initiative is bound for failure, and that the failure is likely to affect the careers of everyone involved. Fast closure is the least unpalatable alternative for all concerned.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were in your shoes, I'd negotiate with the CFO and the middle managers to find the criteria by which this portfolio will be judged.  Best of all possible worlds, you manage to reveal that there is no criteria acceptable to all stakeholders, and the portfolio dies fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next best outcome is that the engaged stakeholders agree on a metric for the portfolio  - something that they both agree represents success.  Give the portfolio process a chance, manage to that metric and it will either succeed or fail.  Make sure that you are responsible for (and perceived as responsible for) successful communications about that metric.  If the portfolio crashes and burns, you will have predicted it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2013-02-19T15:14:59.373" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T15:14:59.373" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8723" CreationDate="2013-02-19T13:30:26.053" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not sure if you're looking for metrics used to measure those or just the definitions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Capacity&lt;/strong&gt; is best thought of as bandwidth.  How much concurrent work can a team do.  Larger teams will have more capacity (although typically with diminishing returns as the team gets bigger).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Team availability&lt;/strong&gt; is how much time team members can devote to the project due to holiday, commitments with other teams, admin they might have to do etc.  Low availability (i.e. in cases where a team member is working on more than one project) reduces capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Effort&lt;/strong&gt; is usually used in context of estimating how long things will take to do.  A feature that requires a lot of effort will consume more of your teams capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're interested in how we measure some of these things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum (an agile framework), &lt;strong&gt;story points&lt;/strong&gt; are used as an estimate of the total &lt;strong&gt;effort&lt;/strong&gt; involved in completing a user story.  A story involving a small change by dev but needing a lot of testing might get given 13 points whereas another needing more dev but is easy to test might only be 5 points.  Complexity and uncertainty can also influence estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum uses &lt;strong&gt;velocity&lt;/strong&gt; to measure &lt;strong&gt;capacity&lt;/strong&gt;.  Velocity is the average number of story points they complete in a sprint (defined time period, usually between 1 - 4 weeks).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We typically don't factor &lt;strong&gt;team availability&lt;/strong&gt; in specifically since velocity is an average anyway (some weeks everyone might be in, some might have a few people out) although if we know we don't have half the team in next sprint, we might agree to commit to less stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another approach used frequently by agile teams is to &lt;strong&gt;limit work in progress&lt;/strong&gt; and measure &lt;strong&gt;cycle time&lt;/strong&gt; (time from work to get from one part of their process to another).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a team might only allow 3 items to be in progress at once (to ensure they don't overload the teams capacity with unfinished work) and measures the average time it takes something to go from the product owner introducing the story to the team to the story getting released into live.  This way, when they get asked &quot;how long will it take for this to get done&quot; they can say 10 days (plus or minus two) with 90% confidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastEditorUserId="1185" LastEditDate="2013-02-19T13:38:48.137" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T13:38:48.137" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8720" CreationDate="2013-02-19T16:33:41.643" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;PM professionals can help minimize politics&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As CodeGnome said, &quot;You can't solve your problem without addressing the underlying political issues.&quot; However, while you may not have any say on priority, as a Project Management professional, here is a list of things you can do to shine the light on the underlying issues and present the options to the decision makers in stark terms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mission Statement and business drivers&lt;/strong&gt;: As a Project Manager you should partner with your customer (whether internal or external) to understand and articulate the problem or opportunity that precipitated the project in the Project Charter. Based on that, list the Key performance indicators (KPIs) which should be measurable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Delivery commitments and consequences of failure&lt;/strong&gt;: In more concrete terms, document what delivery commitments have been made and what are the consequences of failure for each of the projects. For example, one of the contracts may have a penalty clause.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project kick-off meetings&lt;/strong&gt;: As the PM, you should schedule Project kick-off meetings, if you are not doing so already. With good prep work from you, including the points 1 and 2 above, these kick-off meetings will help put everyone on the same page.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Resource constraints&lt;/strong&gt;: In a large organization like yours, it is entirely possible that all of these projects can be completed to meet their individual delivery timeline. In case you determine that it is not at all possible, you should be able to articulate resource constraints in clear, specific terms with the help of detailed project plans. Some examples are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In week 5 the DBA can either load data for Project A or migrate data for project B. If we do the first, Project B will be delayed by one week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From week 7 to 9 the designers will be in Chicago working with the consultant for Project A. To avoid delaying Project B, we don't have any option but to outsource the design work for Project B.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point, the decisions will become less political and more business judgments. While the Managers may still lobby to get priority for their own projects, it will be clear what the trade-offs are. Politics cannot be avoided completely, but professionals can help minimize it with better planning and communication. For those specific issues that are still unresolved, you can then escalate to the CFO and seek a decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2013-02-20T15:09:15.077" LastActivityDate="2013-02-20T15:09:15.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8730" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8731" CreationDate="2013-02-19T21:45:25.663" Score="4" ViewCount="220" Body="&lt;p&gt;I ask the question since I'm a relatively new PM (less than 3 years). Currently, the project budget I deal with are around the $250K mark with a 4-6 month timeline (our hourly rate is $250/hour). Now I see some projects that fall under the $1 million+ mark, so here's the question in a more elaborated form:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With my projects, I have a Project charter, plot out my WBS, create schedules, analyze Budget and resource allocation, and all that other fun stuff (no sarcasm intended, I really do enjoy being a PM). I also work closely with teams and stakeholders to ensure the project's on time and on budget (&lt;strong&gt;tons&lt;/strong&gt; of communication).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any differences in what I'm doing now with my current budgets than what other PMs do with multi-million dollar ones? I'd love to progress to that level, so I'd like to know if there are some additional skills/qualifications I need?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5449" LastActivityDate="2013-02-20T13:20:00.030" Title="Is there a difference in methodology between low and high budget projects?" Tags="&lt;skills&gt;&lt;budget&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8730" CreationDate="2013-02-19T22:11:17.147" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Big-budget projects aren't about pinching Lincoln until he screams; they're about deliverable high-stakes business value. The frameworks, and most of the controls, will remain the same. It's your &lt;em&gt;perspective&lt;/em&gt; that needs to change most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Impact of Budget on Frameworks&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a framework standpoint, the project's budget has nothing to do &lt;em&gt;directly&lt;/em&gt; with the project management process. However, a project's budget will often impact:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resources that are allocated to the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cost/benefit ratios for specific project controls.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk/reward or ROI calculations for the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Margins of error, schedule slack, and acceptable cost deviation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at it this way: a single $1,000 cost-overrun on a $9,000 project is a major problem. The same sunk cost on a $20 million project is a rounding error. The controls may be the same, but the &lt;em&gt;business value&lt;/em&gt; is different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T22:11:17.147" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8730" CreationDate="2013-02-19T22:35:58.527" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;An interesting question and the right kind for anyone who wants to build their career to be asking. Every answer you receive will involve some (or many) generalizations. For context, I will keep the discussion to custom software development projects that are an order of magnitude above what you are doing now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Project Characteristics&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The characteristics of the project are going to change:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;Project growth of this type is going to represent either a longer schedule, more resources, or both.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At $250K you are possibly managing enhancements to existing systems or creating simpler ones. As the cost grows it will be more likely that you are building complex systems from the ground up and perhaps including fairly complex migrations. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As the customer's investment increases the deliverable is more likely to be enterprise in nature and therefore of interest to a broader segment of IT and business stakeholders. This will introduce parallel and sometimes conflicting interests that may not have been there in the smaller projects.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Adapting to the Growth&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You sketched out a minimal list of project activities. It is enough to see that you understand the process and the fact that you are even considering larger projects means you must be succeeding! I don't think that your methodology will (or should) change much with this project size, but there are several things that I think may help you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;In terms of growth, if you break longer projects into phases that are close to what you are doing now you may feel more comfortable with the transition. Even if not exposed to the client, having short phases on your own internal documents may help.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the projects involve many more resources as opposed to longer schedules, remember the effect that it will have on productivity and the possible need to improve your risk analysis and mitigation skills.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you already have tons of communication this may multiply to the point of diminishing returns. Sometimes we compensate when learning new skills by communicating &lt;i&gt;more&lt;/i&gt; than is actually necessary. You may want to read up on best practices and various opinions on project communications.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt; Becoming a Trusted Executive Partner&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above items are the easy ones in my opinion. As projects grow larger strategic alignment with the business and stakeholder engagement become increasingly important. I believe that feeling comfortable with your understanding of IT Service Management (ITIL) and Enterprise Architecture is a great asset that allows you to be more effective with business and IT stakeholders of any level. Larger projects involve more risk and earning the executives' respect will be a key to weathering the unavoidable storms. At a minimum this requires reading some books but you might consider adding these certifications as your career moves ahead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5593" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T22:35:58.527" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8730" CreationDate="2013-02-19T23:03:25.807" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes and no.  The controls you put into place are the same no matter the size.  A project is a project.  However, when you are dealing with more money, you are dealing with more risk, so the rigor and formality will increase.  This means your documentation becomes more formal, your processes more explicit and monitored, your inspections formally scheduled.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T23:03:25.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3414" CreationDate="2013-02-20T07:31:19.220" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the term most confused and misunderstood. Even the latest edition of PMBOK makes a mess of it. Rather, it makes a laughing stock when, while giving the example of security shifts, it says that the &quot;first&quot; security shift is a &lt;strong&gt;SUCCESSOR ACTIVITY&lt;/strong&gt;  and the &quot;second&quot; security shift (which is to come after the first shift) is a &lt;strong&gt;PREDECESSOR&lt;/strong&gt; activity. And then they examine people for PMP!!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a strong believer of the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) Doctrine. Take the example of a generator which is online and providing power to a building. Call this activity A. The generator will not stop until electricity from the main grid comes on. Call the activity involving power from the mains B. So, the predecessor activity A will not end until the successor activity B starts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the network diagram, this dependency will be represented as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. Box B to the right of Box A, to represent correct chronological order.&#xA;b. Arrow from the start of Box B (to represent activity start) to the end of Box A (to represent the activity end).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will be exactly opposite to the Finish to Start dependency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is how I have understood the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5632" LastActivityDate="2013-02-20T07:31:19.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8736" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8737" CreationDate="2013-02-20T11:59:17.903" Score="4" ViewCount="1011" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming we have 3 projects for three different clients within an industry. The Concept papers are already approved and will be funded by senior managements. So it's rather in the next step of crafting the Business Case followed by the Project Charter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We (project managment team) supposed to run all three projects simultaneously (One has to be picked up to start first, second and third) Ofcourse all clients want their project to be done first... Now, how can we determine which project should kick in first?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is great to hear about most crucial, obvious/primary reasoning/justification we can use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5633" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-10-05T04:34:03.407" LastActivityDate="2014-10-05T04:34:03.407" Title="How to determine which project should execute first?" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8736" CreationDate="2013-02-20T12:22:47.913" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming that all three projects have similar schedules, profit margins, strategic alignments, etc. (which I infer from your question).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Which one has the highest risk?  I prefer to work on the riskiest project first; the earlier I can refine that risk, the better my chance of successfully managing that risk. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Which has the highest re-use value?  For which of the projects will we be most likely to be able to re-use parts of the artifacts?  If the three projects are completely independent, then this is null &amp;amp; void, but my experience is that I can re-use much of the language from one business case/charter/project management plan on the next artifact.  If you're going to be able to re-use some of the language, work on the project that will best enable re-use first.  Or, to put it another way, work first on the project that will best develop your Organizational Process Assets.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Which has the lowest risk for the first incremental deliverable?  All other things being equal, I'll schedule my work in such a manner that I can produce an incremental deliverable early.  That gives me some feedback, and also ensures that I'm perceived as successful earlier, which is important in perception management.  If you have the opportunity to structure the project so that you can produce something quickly (if we're talking software, which project will deliver the first user story.  If we're talking hardware, which project will produce the first mockup.)  All other things being equal, I want to work on the project that will enable me to demonstrate &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; success quickly.  Success breeds success.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Which has the toughest schedule/resource constraint?  Schedule the projects to ensure that resource constraints don't kill you.  If they're going to be worked concurrently, you're going to have to schedule them together.  Schedule the most constrained resource first. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I'm aware that the first, third and fourth bullet are in tension with the second. You'll need to select your strategy based on factors which aren't identified in your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2013-02-20T15:55:36.093" LastActivityDate="2013-02-20T15:55:36.093" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8711" CreationDate="2013-02-20T12:57:22.550" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you cannot do it manually with cards, pens and a wall then no system will help you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Traditionally a lot of document hand-balling was done and people lost the art of communicating.  Coaching the team to &quot;really communicate&quot; is hard work and should be the starting place.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you are successful with a physical wall done, you may want to consider virtual walls to help improve productivity especially when used in an ALM solution.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, put in a virtual wall for the right reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5634" LastActivityDate="2013-02-20T12:57:22.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8739" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-20T13:08:14.573" Score="4" ViewCount="1836" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shawresources.com/artchoosingqualityimprovementmethod.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Six Sigma, Lean, Process Quality Methodology, ISO9000 etc mainly used for quality management in project/systems analysis life cycles for process improvements.&lt;/a&gt; To be successful it's always said that we must &lt;strong&gt;fit out project into the method&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. Six Sigma gives secondary importance to human element where as process quality methodology treats it as primary. Then again, each project has an end user who will be using the end product..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for typical business IT projects, how can we (systems analysis team) justify which methodology is suitable? It great if any one can direct me to a &lt;strong&gt;sample case study&lt;/strong&gt; that clearly demonstrates evaluation/comparison of the above measures as well as backs up what methodology you've explained is suitable, if possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5633" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-02-20T13:57:38.033" LastActivityDate="2019-06-02T18:26:25.483" Title="How to decide which quality methodology for Business IT projects?" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;quality&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;&lt;process-improvement&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8730" CreationDate="2013-02-20T13:20:00.030" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key is that you need to tailor the project management methodology used based on the business value, complexity and criticality of your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically a higher dollar value translates into a more complex and critical project for you business. In such a case you will want to exert more control over the project, for example through more detailed (and more frequent) formal reporting, more strongly enforced change procedures, more detailed documentation of deliverable acceptance criteria, etc. Basically the same as what you currently do, only &quot;moreso&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a rough rule of thumb the amount of time/effort put into a project from a PM perspective is going to be roughly proportional to the cost of that project. There are going to be exceptions (for example government contracts require significantly more oversight than run-of-the-mill projects), so your best guide is to understand the business value behind the project and get agreement from the key stakeholders on what level of oversight they think is appropriate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-02-20T13:20:00.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8736" CreationDate="2013-02-20T15:11:58.143" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The decision can't be made until you have completed the business cases for each of the projects, and even then this is more of a question for executive management to answer rather than a PM team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately the answer has to be based on the relative costs and benefits of the projects to &lt;strong&gt;your&lt;/strong&gt; company, both in terms of hard costs/benefits (e.g. dollars spent, revenue in, etc) and soft costs/benefits (e.g. relationship with clients, business risks, etc). All other considerations like project risks, time constraints, technical complexity etc have to be subordinate to this examination of costs/benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if your executive management wants a decision &lt;strong&gt;now&lt;/strong&gt; before the business cases are complete and they want you to make that decision it sounds like they are looking for a sacrificial lamb in case things go wrong....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-02-20T15:11:58.143" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8742" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8744" CreationDate="2013-02-20T16:01:17.350" Score="5" ViewCount="887" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm sure other PMs have run into this issue, which is explaining the benefit of a PM to a client. Here's a typical question I hear: &quot;Why am I paying extra for someone who is not involved in the analysis, design, development or support of my project?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've come up with a few responses to this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. You need someone to make sure each of the project's phases adhere to a certain level of quality&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b. You need to talk to someone who is aware of all the phases and of the project's scope (as opposed to talking to 5-6 different people with different communication styes)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c. The PM ensures that the project is delivered on time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;d. Not client-facing responses: a PM allows other team members to focus on their work. The person also manages the budget and scope (what client wouldn't mind a project going out of scope and not having to pay for it?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found an excellent and related thread here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/6795/what-value-do-project-managers-provide-a-software-development-team&quot;&gt;What value do project managers provide a software development team?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'm looking to see how other PMs have dealt with this from an external client facing perspective, i.e. how do you relay the benefits to a client directly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: I'd like to add that this hasn't been a problem for larger, complicated projects. But when the stakeholders are few (1 to 2) and the budget isn't that large, this seems to come up more often&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5449" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2013-02-20T16:46:39.150" Title="How do you explain the value of a PM to a client?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;clients&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8742" CreationDate="2013-02-20T16:45:56.970" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is that you're using a project manager for a reason. Assuming you feel the need to explain at all, the reason you provide to the client should be substantially the same reason you provide to the rest of your organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Fixed-Price or Internal Process&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a project is fixed-price, or the customer is inquiring about your internal process, the only reasonable answer is that it's irrelevant to the customer. Why do they care how you manage your project internally? Unless it's a fee-negotiation tactic, I'd recommend not engaging on this particular issue since it has no direct bearing on the client's costs or deliverables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Resource-Based Costs&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the client is paying by man-hours, or otherwise paying directly for the project manager's time on the project, then the client may have a legitimate question. You then have a couple of choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Turn the question around.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask them why they need a CEO, CFO, or similar role. I mean, can't the guys in the mail room manage themselves? If not, why not?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Offer to let them manage the project.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let them create the schedules, work breakdown structures, and project milestones. Have them create all reports, track deliverables, and manage project resources. &lt;em&gt;Someone&lt;/em&gt; needs to do those things, so if they're willing to accept the responsibility, by all means transfer that risk to them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Ask them who will be responsible for quality or cost control.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Force them to think about whether asking the QA guy or technical writer to manage the project's budget is a reasonable thing to do. Maybe they have someone else in mind for the job; as long as you aren't left holding the (financial) bag, let them try it and see what happens.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Tell them &quot;that's our process&quot; and leave it at that.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; want to be held accountable for a project that has no formal controls? Probably not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they're engaging your company's professional services, then presumably they want the results you can deliver. If having a project manager involved has nothing to do with your process or the way you deliver results, then why is this even an issue?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Value Has a Cost&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question, as posed, isn't really about the &lt;em&gt;value&lt;/em&gt; of a project manager; it's actually about the &lt;em&gt;cost&lt;/em&gt; of the project management resource. Identify the value, then tie it to the cost. What could be easier?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-02-20T16:45:56.970" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8742" CreationDate="2013-02-20T16:46:39.150" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Think of the PM as the Master Trouble-Shooter&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The analysis, design and development resources are functional specialists and they are all very busy working on tasks for multiple projects. Their focus is on technical excellence. They neither have the time nor the mindset to follow-up with others to get prerequisite work done, manage contingencies, for example, when needed resources are out sick or come up with alternate plans for completing the project when they run into unforeseen blocking issues, such as when server resources get maxed out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need me, as the Project Manager, to navigate through all these uncertainties, make sure that nothing falls through the cracks and get your project completed successfully and on time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-02-20T16:46:39.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8736" CreationDate="2013-02-20T18:48:31.633" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First check whether you can make all three customers happy&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the project management team has been given this responsibility, I recommend starting with the desired completion dates. The three projects may be of differing sizes and durations. Draw up the detailed project plans to complete them so that all three customers will be happy. If you find that you run into resource constraints that will not allow you to do that at all, then only you need to go into all the other criteria mentioned for how to prioritize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-02-20T18:48:31.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8736" CreationDate="2013-02-20T19:16:36.050" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;We (project managment team) supposed to run all three projects simultaneously&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is probably the absolute best way to ensure that none of the projects are completed on time, or on budget. Even if your team(s) manage to waste absolutely no time context switching between projects (which is basically impossible) why deliver a project in 6 months that you could deliver in 2?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot; Ofcourse all clients want their project to be done first... &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's nice, but irrelevant to the question at hand. Clients &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; want their project done first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Now, how can we determine which project should kick in first?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, it isn't which project should &lt;em&gt;kick in first&lt;/em&gt;, it is &lt;em&gt;which project should we complete first&lt;/em&gt;. This is a vital distinction. You shouldn't begin the next project until you finish the one you are on. All you will do otherwise is waste time and resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, you need a metric with which you can evaluate each of the projects. Cost of Delay is what you are looking for. How much money will it cost to delay project A 1 day (or week, or month or whatever scale makes sense)? Now your decision is simple. The cost of delay calculation doesn't even have to be that accurate, it just has to be measured for each of the 3 projects in a similar fashion. If all 3 measurements are off my a factor of 2 in the same direction, its still a good comparison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastActivityDate="2013-02-20T19:16:36.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8736" CreationDate="2013-02-20T22:14:16.973" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest to &lt;strong&gt;start with the one which seems to be the shortest one according to your project plan&lt;/strong&gt;. If you start with that project, your chance to finish something in time, is bigger than starting with a longer one. A shorter project provides faster feedback which can arrive in time, can be useful in that or in the other projects. Of course, this approach may put a longer project at risk, but ensures that at least something will be ready in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find an article about this idea, but I'll keep looking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-02-20T22:14:16.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8748" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-21T01:16:02.637" Score="1" ViewCount="1470" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been searching here and there for the meanings of &quot;Earned Value&quot; and &quot;Contribution Margin&quot;, it doesn't seem to make sense to me why so many project could have a positive(+) Contribution Margin, but yet have a negative(-) Earned Value?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that Contribution Margin represents profit and Earned value represents the actual cost involved, but until now Im actually a bit confused...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5551" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2013-02-25T16:17:01.733" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T16:17:01.733" Title="Difference between &quot;Earned Value&quot; and &quot;Contribution Margin&quot;?" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;&lt;definition&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8748" CreationDate="2013-02-21T11:50:15.210" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a bit confused. These terms come from two quite different disciplines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contribution_margin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Contribution Margin&lt;/a&gt; is used in management accounting and is the marginal profit per unit of sale.  I've never encountered contribution margin in my (admittedly short) career in  project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_value&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Earned Value&lt;/a&gt; is a concept that is limited to earned value management, which is very definitely employed in project management.  Earned value management is a mechanism for measuring whether work (effort) is proportional to schedule(estimate).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, I can't conceive of a realistic situation where earned value is negative. (I can imagine contrived situations, but none that are plausible).  Furthermore Earned Value most definitely does not represent cost.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect that you need to revisit the concept of earned value management. &#xA;There is a relatively decent example worked in at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmis.co.uk/earned_value_management.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pmis&lt;/a&gt;. The following pages provide some additional resources &amp;amp; explanations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/earned-value-management-explained.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ProjectSmart&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tutorialspoint.com/earn_value_management/evm_elements.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tutorials point&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.planningengineer.net/evm-earned-value-management/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Planning Engineer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2013-02-21T12:58:21.540" LastActivityDate="2013-02-21T12:58:21.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8750" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8757" CreationDate="2013-02-21T14:39:28.413" Score="3" ViewCount="1910" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's being rather a tough choice on selecting projects. (Different case from what I had posted before.) Now in the scenario if there is Project A and B. Only one project can be executed and that has to be chosen. Both are given the same resources, costing/budgeting. Project A would generate revenue of 100$, and senior management would be happy. Project B will make 60$, increased productivity for staff and senior management will be happy as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TMS = Top management Satisfaction&#xA;UWE = User Workflow Efficiency Increased&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;| PROJECT | RESOURCES | COST | REVENUE | TMS | UWE |&#xA;----------------------------------------------------&#xA;|       A |      r100 |   30 |     100 | Yes |  No |&#xA;|       B |      r100 |   30 |      60 | Yes | Yes |&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which project should be choosen and how to justify it?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what I came up with and chose Project B, because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project that can be delivered in shorter period of time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As staff is trained to and their workflow are more productive, they will increase the revenue generation in the long run not only for today. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;100$ seems like one time project and doesn't seem to have an impact on the company's business operations and backbone or users. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Probably Project B could leave re-usable prototypes, artifacts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project that uses development tools that doesn't have a high frequency of new versions coming in but stable plus possible to adapt to future changes in the business model and processes. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There will be expertise answers out there and mine could have loop holes. Hence please throw some perspective or any guidance/article that could support better justification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5633" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-02-22T10:53:19.787" LastActivityDate="2013-03-01T12:06:27.410" Title="How to compare and select one project out of two?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;portfolio-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8750" CreationDate="2013-02-21T15:17:09.917" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the sake of maximum simplicity, let's say you have two projects that will take the same amount of time to complete (3 months) and will deliver the same benefit when they are complete ($10 per month).  I'll also assume that you intend to do both projects eventually, assuming nothing more important comes in first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to decide which to start is to look at the cost of delay for each project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Starting both projects today you have a payoff that looks a bit like this:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qku8J.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After 3 months of work where you get no benefit for either project, then you start earning your $10 a month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try modelling what happens to the payoff for each project if you start it after the other.  For example, let's say there is a trade show or a competitor likely to beat us to market in month 5.  If we start project A in month 4 (after the completion of Project B) we won't be complete in time for that event causing us to get less back each month for our investment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/s5DOy.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By starting later, a pesky competitor get's their product out first and erodes our monthly benefit to $8 a month, the new expected payoff is the green area.  The difference between stating now and starting after project B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next look at what happens if we do them the other way around.  Project B isn't as time critical as project A - there is no competing product or other event likely to affect the payoff if we do project A first, then do B:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rtNKt.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, the green area is our new expected payoff and the red area shows the cost of delay for starting after project A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, it's pretty obvious we should start project A now and start project B afterwards since the cost of delay is significantly higher for project A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I hope this makes more sense now!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://leanagilechange.com/leanagilewiki/index.php?title=Cost_of_Delay&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://leanagilechange.com/leanagilewiki/index.php?title=Cost_of_Delay&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I recommend Don Reinertsen/Preson Smith 'Developing products in half the time' for more info.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastEditorUserId="1185" LastEditDate="2013-02-21T16:33:15.533" LastActivityDate="2013-02-21T16:33:15.533" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3414" CreationDate="2013-02-21T15:18:22.393" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;A concrete example from a construction project&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The babysitter example is good. However, here is a concrete example (pun intended!) from a construction project: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let us say you are buying a pre-fab shed. The pre-fab company sent to you the drawing for the concrete foundation and the location of the foundation bolts to set the shed on. The foundation with the bolts is ready and cured and the truck carrying the fully assembled shed has arrived on site. Now you have the following tasks in your schedule:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unload the shed &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Install the shed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might have hired a crane from one vendor to unload the shed and a separate installation crew. The unloading task can start - you can mount the wire ropes and prepare the lifting points. However, can you let the crane complete the work of unloading the shed even though the installation crew has not yet started work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, the unloading task cannot be completed until the installation task starts. This is a start to finish (SF) dependency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-02-21T15:18:22.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8753" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-21T16:07:37.103" Score="3" ViewCount="1202" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is not about why do we need a prototype. Or the opposite of Why don't we need a prototype. It's about why some of the projects that we did without a prototype/not even thinking about one...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of our projects (small scale IT/software development), did not require a prototype. Some were &lt;code&gt;RAD&lt;/code&gt;, some were developed using typical &lt;code&gt;waterfall&lt;/code&gt; methodology or &lt;code&gt;agile&lt;/code&gt;. For major projects prototypes were required. During a recent  project meeting, I was challenged to explain why prototypes were required on some projects and not on others. &lt;em&gt;&quot;. . .[h]ow do you  determine that you don't need a prototype?&quot;&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For each of those projects, what made us to not to create a prototype..? I am cracking my head... I could only think of following reasons (and I am not fully convinced):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Client has no time for prototyping and needs accelerated development&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requirements and process to be improved are &lt;em&gt;Crystal clear&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Smalle scale projects that can be written within a day to 7 days or with max 2 weeks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some enhancements or modifications to an existing system &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of the above has to follow the basic project life cycle.&#xA;Also for e.g. does a migration project (say from Java to C#) better off with a prototype of without (I am not asking specifically for migrations, but it could be one of the situations in real life)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5633" LastEditorUserId="5633" LastEditDate="2013-02-21T21:09:36.187" LastActivityDate="2013-02-24T18:34:39.407" Title="Why didn't we need a prototype for some of the projects?" Tags="&lt;analysis&gt;&lt;milestones&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8750" CreationDate="2013-02-21T17:49:53.780" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Think like a small business owner&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One approach to making better decisions in such situations is to think of your department or section as a small business. Which Project will you opt to do if you were a small business?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you were tight for cash, don't know where the cash is going to come from for your next payroll or for next month's rent, you will opt for Project A.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;However, if your cash situation is not so dire, you can afford to wait for the potentially larger gains over the longer period that Project B seems to promise.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why finance people like to make profit centers within larger companies. They treat a section of a company as a separate business and calculate the profits or losses for that section separately - forcing people to think like business owners rather than employees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-02-21T17:49:53.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8753" CreationDate="2013-02-21T18:00:03.193" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;The Role of Prototyping&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototype&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Prototyping&lt;/a&gt; and its close cousin &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireframing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wire-framing&lt;/a&gt; are not really project management controls. Rather, they are engineering practices designed to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a skeletal mock-up for rapid feedback.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test the soundness of an engineering idea through an approximation or scaled model.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A project plan might include a milestone for delivering a prototype for review or evaluation, thus providing a feedback mechanism for the project. However, whether or not to include such a milestone is fundamentally an engineering or business decision, and not a &lt;em&gt;de rigueur&lt;/em&gt; process-control technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just as story spikes help reduce the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cone of uncertainty&lt;/a&gt; for a project, a prototype or wire-frame will often clarify aspects of the project that might not have been self-evident at the outset. However, whether or not the project &lt;em&gt;needs&lt;/em&gt; these spikes or interim deliverables is a going to vary from project to project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, your mileage will vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-02-21T18:00:03.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8748" CreationDate="2013-02-21T20:39:50.110" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;“Contribution Margin” and “Earned Value” examples&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mark covered the concepts well. Here are some examples that might help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://bizfinance.about.com/od/pricingyourproduct/a/contribution-margin-income-statement.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a Contribution Margin example&lt;/a&gt; where a company is selling a product for $2.00 each with its variable cost being $0.80 each. During one month the company sells 50,000 units. So the revenue is $100,000, the variable cost is $40,000 and the contribution margin (towards overhead and profits) is $60,000.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://smallbusiness.chron.com/examples-earned-value-calculation-37896.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;an Earned Value calculation example&lt;/a&gt;. Even though Earned Value is designated in dollars, it is really a distilled assessment of scope, schedule and cost into one single number. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you said negative earned value, were you perhaps referring to the difference between the Earned Value (EV) and Planned Value (PV) as shown in this example?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-02-21T20:39:50.110" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8750" CreationDate="2013-02-22T10:50:58.243" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project selection is the job of the project sponsor, product manager, or steering committee. It is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the job of the project manager. &lt;em&gt;Very Bad Things&amp;trade;&lt;/em&gt; (mostly for you) will often result from this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Why You Shouldn't Do What You're Doing&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of the problem here is that it seems like a project manager is being asked to select and justify a project. This is generally out of scope for the role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Projects require an executive sponsor, who generally supports a given project for strategic reasons. Those reasons may be earnings, return on investment, efficiency or productivity improvements, or just because it will look good to someone else on Mahogany Row.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is, &lt;em&gt;the reason doesn't matter&lt;/em&gt; for the purposes of project initiation. The goals of the project may certainly impact scheduling or the selection of project controls, but the decision of which project to pursue belongs at a pay grade &lt;em&gt;above&lt;/em&gt; the project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How a Project Manager Can Add Value to Portfolio Selection&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have opinions about the feasibility or value of a given project, or wish to exert some influence on the strategic decisions of your company, go right ahead and expend a little political capital by sharing what you know with the steering committee or project sponsor. However, I'd personally recommend against playing the Dilbertesque game of trying to quantify a business decision that is fundamentally one of subjective organizational value, and that is firmly outside the project management domain of &lt;strong&gt;process control&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Division of Responsibilities&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The executive sponsor has the responsibility to say &quot;I want to champion this project because...&quot; and then make the case for it. Your job, as a project manager, is to look at the proposed project and provide your professional opinion about the resources required to do it, and whether or not the goal can be met with the resources available to the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T10:50:58.243" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8758" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-02-22T11:02:13.160" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Portfolio management is often the responsibility of one or more of the following roles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Sponsor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum Product Owner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Steering Committee&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The role is responsible for selecting, initiating, and terminating related projects for the portfolio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-02-22T11:02:13.160" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T11:02:13.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8759" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-02-22T11:02:13.160" Score="0" Body="This tag is for questions related to the selection, initiation, or termination of related projects. It is not usually a Project Manager responsibility, although PMs may participate in the process." OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-02-22T11:02:13.160" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T11:02:13.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8760" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-02-22T11:03:53.987" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-02-22T11:03:53.987" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T11:03:53.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8761" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-02-22T11:03:53.987" Score="0" Body="This tag is for questions about key deliverables or notable events within a project management schedule." OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-02-22T11:03:53.987" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T11:03:53.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8762" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-02-22T11:05:29.603" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-02-22T11:05:29.603" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T11:05:29.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8763" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-02-22T11:05:29.603" Score="0" Body="This tag should be used to questions about observing project metrics for deviations from plan." OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-02-22T11:05:29.603" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T11:05:29.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8753" CreationDate="2013-02-22T12:05:57.680" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The purpose of a prototype is to learn something you didn't already know&lt;/strong&gt;, something that is vital (or perceived to be vital) to the success of the real project. All projects have some unknowns, and prototypes often can help address those unknowns. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some projects don't have enough unknowns to warrant a prototype. If you're building something very similar to what you've done before, for example, you probably aren't going to need a prototype. If the scope is small you aren't going to need a prototype. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, on the other hand, you are building something completely new, a prototype can help. If you're using new tools or new libraries, a prototype can help you learn how much overhead those new tools or libraries are going to add to the project. If you have a customer that is struggling with visualizing a completed project or feature, a prototype can help bridge that gap. And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original question was &quot;Why didn't we need a prototype for some of the projects?&quot;. I think the answer to that is simply that you already had all of the information you needed to be able to plan and implement the project, and had no need to improve the communication with the project stakeholders. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3189" LastEditorUserId="3189" LastEditDate="2013-02-22T15:46:10.753" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T15:46:10.753" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8753" CreationDate="2013-02-22T12:59:07.017" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience prototypes and wireframes really come into their own when you are dealing with unknowns or with lengthy/involved stakeholder sign-off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the former case a prototype can help to clarify functionality, architecture etc ahead of development, hopefully avoiding re-work and ensuring everyone has the same understanding of what is being built and how it will work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the latter case the prototype helps to clarify requirements (and can be used to change these), manage expectations and test assumptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your project methodology is very user-oriented then I think prototypes (or at least wireframes) are probably essential but only if they are actually used to guide development. I've seen situations in which a client/stakeholder was delighted with a prototype only to be disappointed by the changes that were made between its release and the final product. Communication is the key as always!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if there's a hard a fast answer to your question - it's one of those 'it depends' ones unfortunately - but these are two scenarios in which I think you &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; prototypes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T12:59:07.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8767" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-23T01:09:30.123" Score="1" ViewCount="57303" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you please tell me how can I use the slack value in my network diagram to readjust it(if it is applicable)? Using the following table, I have calculated the slack value and drawn a network diagram.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NasVs.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Finding Slack Value:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Civ3S.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;A-&amp;gt;B-&amp;gt;E-&amp;gt;F = 14 weeks is the critical path&#xA;A-&amp;gt;B-&amp;gt;D-&amp;gt;F = 10 weeks&#xA;A-&amp;gt;C-&amp;gt;E-&amp;gt;F = 12 weeks&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to keep the original project duration intact(therefore, I am not going to change the number of weeks used in the critical path). But I want to reduce the number of weeks used in non critical paths. Can I do that by using the slack values(or another method)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="NewGuy" LastActivityDate="2013-02-23T14:46:12.520" Title="Slack value in a project network diagram?" Tags="&lt;critical-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8767" CreationDate="2013-02-23T14:15:29.500" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But I want to reduce the number of weeks used in non critical paths. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am reading this as you want the total duration of your non critical path network to decrease thus increasing slack on those paths.  To do this, all you need to do is decrease the target duration of those packages that are off the critical path.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I am not sure what the value is in doing this.  The initial assumption is that, within the probabilistic distribution of duration of each of your packages, you are targeting a duration that is somewhere around the MODE of that distribution, a target that represents a realistic possibility but also lean enough to not constitute over buffering.  When you reduce that duration, you are increasing risk and, in order to mitigate, you end up increasing resource utilization and / work hours in order to meet the more aggressive target duration.  Duration = Work / Resource Utilization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This then threatens work activity on those packages on the critical path, which will directly threaten your overall duration.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, on the other side of that, you are increasing your slack so you have some cycles in there to cope with unfavorable schedule variances.  However, all this looks super on paper, but your reality will be very different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your other risk is, your critical path at planning is valid only at planning.  At the moment you press go and begin work and begin progressing your packages in the schedule, your critical path(s) WILL change and change and change and change.  Those packages that you arbitrarily reduced duration can and will likely fall in the new critical path(s) and, since you reduced the duration and increased your threat, you have now created a bigger threat to your overall schedule duration.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, I cannot see the logic in what you are attempting to do from a scheduling / planning perspective.  That does not mean there is no logic, I just cannot see it and I have never heard anyone discuss this before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-02-23T14:15:29.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8767" CreationDate="2013-02-23T14:46:12.520" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your float values for sub-critical tasks are not actually slack for the rest of the project. You can &lt;em&gt;increase&lt;/em&gt; float on sub-critical tasks with standard project management techniques like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reducing scope for the sub-critical task elements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increasing resources assigned to each task or milestone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Eliminating non-essential milestones or work elements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While not recommended, you can also apply &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_path_method#Basic_technique&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;techniques from the critical path&lt;/a&gt; such as &quot;fast-tracking&quot; or &quot;crashing the path&quot; of sub-critical tasks, but that isn't really part of the official methodology. Applying these techniques away from the critical chain may reduce &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_path_method#Crash_duration&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;crash duration&lt;/a&gt; of the sub-critical tasks, but will generally cannibalize resources from the critical path to do so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What Slack is For&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Slack in a project schedule generally accomplishes several main goals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;De-optimizes sub-processes in order to smooth the overall project plan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prevents the 100%-utilization fallacy from making your process brittle.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gives you buckets of time, money, or team capacity to borrow against, rather than forcing a recalculation of your plan at every hiccup.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Your Critical Path Has No Slack&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your critical path has zero slack. You define the critical path as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A-&gt;B-&gt;E-&gt;F = 14 weeks is the critical path&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of the linkages between critical-path has any slack. Whether or not this is true in real life, I have no idea. However, your diagram explicitly says &lt;em&gt;Slack = 0&lt;/em&gt; for each one of the critical path items. Consider that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;(0 float) * (4 chained milestones) = no slack on critical path&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you have &lt;em&gt;zero&lt;/em&gt; slack in your critical chain, any real-life process imperfections will create drag on your project. That means no items on your critical path can accept &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; slippage at all without forcing you to recalculate your entire schedule, and may force you to re-evaluate your budget or shipping dates as well. That seems bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Your Sub-Critical Path Doesn't Add Slack&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Delays in tasks or milestones that aren't on your critical path shouldn't delay the overall project. You haven't defined what these non-critical tasks represent, but since they're not on your critical path they probably represent:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Optional features.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Additional scope.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nice-to-haves.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fruit cake re-gifting exercises, or something else equally unrelated to a shippable product.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of what they represent, and even if they are essential to the final product, slack in sub-critical tasks only allow you to adjust the start or end dates of those tasks within tolerances; they don't buy you &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt; related to your critical chain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A Better Model for Slack with Critical Path&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia's entry on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_path_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;critical path method&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although the activity-on-arrow diagram (&quot;PERT Chart&quot;) is still used in a few places, it has generally been superseded by the activity-on-node diagram, where each activity is shown as a box or node and the arrows represent the logical relationships going from predecessor to successor as shown here in the &quot;Activity-on-node diagram&quot;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Jr6TV.png&quot; alt=&quot;activity-on-node diagram&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefit of this model over the one in your question is that it allows you to model variance on the critical path, which is something that your sample currently does not provide. It may therefore be worth re-evaluating what you're trying to model, and whether activity-on-node will provide a better planning tool for your specific use case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-02-23T14:46:12.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8753" CreationDate="2013-02-24T18:34:39.407" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The prototype can be looked at from the perspective of the engineer, solution architect, or project manager and I believe each role has it's valid reasons to impose a prototype. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here we are only concerned with the Project Management context and the answer to your question is completely about &lt;b&gt;risk management&lt;/b&gt;. Does the PM care if engineering or UX design feel they need prototypes? Only if the PM perceives sufficient risk when they don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prototypes have the potential to mitigate at least three types of risk:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&lt;li&gt;technical feasibility&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;usability&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;miscommunications (or claims thereof)&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project manager should be empowered to insist on a prototype on the basis of risk if necessary. The reverse is not true: the PM should not be able to use schedule or resources to veto the need for a prototype if engineering or other stakeholders want one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at your four examples, projects 2-4 provide a rationale to support minimal risk (crystal clear, short, minor). Without some other indication that there was risk I think it would be wasteful to include a prototype. On the other hand, project 1 doesn't provide a rationale to support minimal risk. You don't mention the nature of the project, but unless it fell into the 2-4 categories the elimination of the prototype actually increases the risk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you just need a written policy (or verbal if your company is writing-averse) that clarifies the relationship between the perception of certain types of risk in a project and the need for a prototype. That should answer their question and also provide a potential process improvement for the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5593" LastActivityDate="2013-02-24T18:34:39.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8771" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8776" CreationDate="2013-02-24T19:24:52.243" Score="2" ViewCount="294" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an engineering background and have accepted an offer from a tech company for which I will be leading a brand new web project (mix of PM + tech lead). There is no prior work done except overall concept of the project. Meaning, no team, no fix on what technology to use, no project management tools and methodology. I will have to handle all that, including selecting stack, people, PM tools etc. Also, what is important is that this company is a hardware manufacturer, not a software company as all of my previous employers, so they also do not have related tools and methodologies in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course I have ideas based on my previous experience and I've been on the other side of PM for a while, but I'd really appreciate tips and ideas to where learn more for my new job. I am specifically looking for tips for PM tools (e.g. Jira), outsourcing, automated testing, automated builds, deployments, team management, and common problems of PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks a lot!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5655" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T15:51:39.420" Title="PM crash course" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8771" CreationDate="2013-02-24T22:52:57.463" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Focus on the &quot;what&quot; and make sure the team concentrate on the &quot;how&quot; as far as possible. Your job as PM will be to make sure that everything that needs to be done does get done. So plan, plan, and plan again. And ask what can go wrong, and work out how to deal with it (risk management). Apart from that, get yourself a good PM book and / or a training course, and don't be afraid to ask for help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not worry too much about specific tools and methodologies right now. You can plan on a whiteboard or a big sheet of paper. The tools can follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2013-02-24T22:52:57.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8771" CreationDate="2013-02-25T01:09:10.887" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of the PM training puts names and formality and rigor to what you have been doing since age four.  There are certainly things like EV or various methods or quantitative risk analysis you did not do when you were a child, but there are many successful projects performed by reasonably mature PM organizations that do these things poorly and incorrectly.  Rely on your instincts.  You'll make tons of mistakes but success is a bad teacher.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T01:09:10.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8774" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-25T01:19:23.273" Score="0" ViewCount="135" Body="&lt;p&gt;From being a Tester to a Developer then to a service support engineer, I am now responsible for program coordination and resource management (Yes it is a big shift), along with some Project management tasks, which is the long term goal for all this, It seems that my mindset has to be completely different to how I go about doing my job than I would previously do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Im still on my part-time MBA, which I started a year ago, although my time has become even limited than it was before, there's just not enough time for anything as there's so much to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone here ever switched from an Engineering role to PM?, if so how did you find it and how long did it take for you to get things under control?, I also find that you have to be more punctual than usual, it's really changing the way I think about most things in life, at a more higher level top general view with no detail..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it just me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5551" LastActivityDate="2016-03-07T10:13:08.113" Title="New Project Management Duties" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;schedule&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8775" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8777" CreationDate="2013-02-25T03:45:37.220" Score="12" ViewCount="2240" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to give a context, there is an offshore team in India for a client in San Francisco. The offshore team is about 9 developers and 4 QA, with one project manager. I am doing onsite coordination for this team from the client location. Every sprint (2 weeks iteration) I go after the stories beforehand, understand it and give an overview during their story time. I also clarify the corner cases for them making sure every piece of requirement is clear and the scope is also well defined. Inspite of this, there are instances of surprises that come-up in the requirement as well as scope (my bad, agreed!). &#xA;We have started sending mock-ups for every UI story too. But instead the team there does not put any effort to brainstorm and understand the requirement upfront, but they start doing right away without proper understanding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of sprint (1/2 days before) they ask same questions that were clarified through the mock-up and those which were clarified during story time and the subsequent mails. Finally if I say yes this is to be done etc., they say this was not clarified before. (How do I know this question will pop-up to them?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They obviously fail to deliver sprint after sprint. The manager there does not even understand a piece of development he being a QA and has zero control of the project (unfortunately promoted as a manager of the same team, when he had tried to resign - which often happens in Indian services company). And this manager not even tries to understand that the dev or QA did not do adequate planning, brainstorming nor do their extra or little effort to understand a feature and its consequences, and directly jumps to the conclusion that the requirements are not clear. Manager also does not spend adequate time with the team and he spends time elsewhere going out! (weird, hearsay!) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also a severe dearth of technical and product knowledge of dev and QA respectively, and no steps are being made to improve this. In the first week I hear that they are all clear, the second week things change drastically - my guess is that is when they start to work. Every sprint it becomes worse and only harsh comments and emails are being exchanged. 'Requirements not clear' seem to be the easy way out, and Team there got habituated to saying this to compensate their incapability. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am unable to explain this as they form a group in making this easy decision, and bounce with multiple rude emails. What would you do to get these things right? How much of adequate is adequate clarity in requirement? I am really unsure of this. (The teams in SFO are rather pretty clear with the even lesser amount of explanation of requirement.) How can I set this right? Is my guess about the offshore team right?&#xA;(Excuse me for being too verbose!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4838" LastEditorUserId="1094" LastEditDate="2013-02-25T11:03:29.423" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T07:24:08.120" Title="Communicating requirements to offshore teams" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;remote-teams&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8771" CreationDate="2013-02-25T05:31:18.993" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of facets to your question but the focus right now should just be the broad subject of how you succeed on this first assignment. I agree with David that success is a bad teacher but the goal is to learn from small increments of failure that do not impact the overall success of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to add some detail about common PM problems that seem very relevant to your current situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ill defined scope, expectations, or deliverables.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't just apply to the web project, it applies to your job as well. In terms of the next 90 days, what is more important to your employer; the launch of the web site/application or the creation of a framework for continued web or other software development? If the focus is on the launch you will be making judgements and setting priorities based on that. As the two previous answers suggested, keep it as simple as possible if the launch is the priority. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about the requirements of the project itself? If all they have is an overall concept, that needs some work before you can start thinking about many of the other things you asked about.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Insufficient prioritization and task filtering&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A common problem with PM is the pressure to have an unmanageable number of things going on at once and it sounds like you are already right in the middle of that one. I would suggest starting with a high level task list and some focus on determining the critical path items. Take the most important task and build out the next level of the hierarchy for it, also in critical path order.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wrong fit of infrastructure or methodology&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To borrow from a popular quote: &quot;your methodology and infrastructure should be as simple as possible but no simpler.&quot; Do a search for lightweight or simple project management methodologies and SDLC tools and pick the ones that seem accessible and realistic right now. There is time to upgrade and get more sophisticated later. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5593" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T05:31:18.993" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8775" CreationDate="2013-02-25T06:07:12.430" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;No guarantees on this one, but here is what I would try:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Either they are not understanding your documents or they are not doing the work and using the documents as a scapegoat. It is a little extreme but ask for a restatement of your documents along with their anticipated approach. Get this by the next day as a precursor to them commencing work on the sprint. This will formalize the brainstorming that you want them to do and under the circumstances I think it is a necessary step. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do an honest evaluation of your documents to see if they are written using a level of English that is appropriate. The smartest developer cannot meet expectations if the language requirements are beyond what is reasonable. It is much easier to write complicated documents than simple ones and it takes continual effort.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you have no contact with them throughout the sprint? If that is the case it needs to change so that you don't find out things are off track 1/2 day before the end of the sprint. You need documented daily engagement on their progress and issues.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Given the level of dissatisfaction that you have with their technical abilities and communication it doesn't appear that you are in a position to terminate the relationship. Can you have the client put pressure on them to apply more knowledgeable resources to the project? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This situation cannot afford surprises in the requirements and scope. You need to explain that to the client and ensure that it just doesn't happen. By allowing it you are reducing the likelihood that a challenged team will deliver and giving them something to use against you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the most difficult thing is to honestly assess whether you need to call on your employer for some help. With sprint after sprint missed this has been going on for a while. It is painful to admit that a situation is outside our experience but much better than insisting we can do it and then failing.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5593" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T06:07:12.430" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8775" CreationDate="2013-02-25T13:13:54.130" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You certainly have a problem.  Ultimately the problem is yours, even if the team is composed of total slackers.  You're accountable for delivering on time; the team is accountable only to you.  I'm not sure that offshore/onshore is relevant; I'm not sure that many of the details above are relevant (except that we would have asked if you hadn't supplied them.)  What is relevant from POV is that you have  team that is consistently failing to deliver.    What are the consequences of that failure?  What are the consequences to the project? What are the consequences for the stakeholders? The consequences to the team?  And what are the consequences to you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Although you think that you have communicated the user stories clearly and effectively (and it certainly sounds like you've done all the right things), the communication isn't effective unless it is received.  First thing I'd do in your shoes is to find a way to test whether the recipients perceive that &quot;every piece of requirement is clear and the scope is also well defined&quot;.   Close that feedback loop during that initial sprint meeting.  Build in a feedback loop that forces them to produce a measureable product.  Perhaps have them produce the unit tests for the user stories within 24 hours of the initial briefing?  Something that prevents them from pleading unclear requirements later. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clearly the sprint of 2 weeks is an ineffective timeframe for Team India.  They need closer supervision. Until they can produce a successful sprint, they should be required to report incremental progress daily. (Weekly would be nice, but I'm skeptical).  You and Team India share a problem, and you're going to need to share the responsbility for the answer.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Metrics. Earned Value is your friend.  You and Team India share a responsibility to identify and correct the communications problem earlier in the sprint.  Shared understanding of the development process, identification of roadblocks and removal of roadblocks are the route out of that particular trap.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The consequence for the project is that you are later and later. &#xA;I'd escalate this quickly; start briefing upwards that the project&#xA;dates are slipping quickly.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Our ship date is now 4 weeks beyond our baseline; unless Team India can deliver on sprint 7, that date will slip an additional two&#xA;  weeks.  If the slippage hit 8 weeks, the risk that the entire&#xA;  project will fail to deliver is 50%.  If we want to mitigate that&#xA;  risk, we can contract for another team of developers to take over&#xA;  work that is currently planned for Team India.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;  In the end the PM can only identify problems and brief them to the appropriate stakeholders along with mitigations.  I just re-read everything that @michael Boses said, and my answer converged with his more than I thought it did.  He's right. Reading between the lines of your question, you've already reached this conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T13:13:54.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8775" CreationDate="2013-02-25T14:12:12.193" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I totally agree with Michael and Mark. Both nailed the problem with the &lt;em&gt;ask for a restatement of your documents along with their anticipated approach&lt;/em&gt;. They're clearly not understanding the requirements. The problem is... are they &lt;em&gt;trying&lt;/em&gt; to understand beforehand? If they're not &lt;strong&gt;analysing&lt;/strong&gt; the requirements and jumping straight to the dev, they'll have a hard time down the road.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing you need to consider is the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lessonsit.com/understanding-cultural-differences/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cultural difference&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; in place. There's an amazing video from Robert Dempsey &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://vimeo.com/12021592&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; talking about cultural differences that highlights one small detail that can change everything: Indians aren't used to say 'no', even if they don't understand what you're talking about (I'm from Brazil and I know that similar things may happen here too).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's another point that (if I'm not wrong) Brooks mentions in his &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TMMM&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;: It's unlikely you have one raising questions when you have room to &lt;strong&gt;assume&lt;/strong&gt; things. It may be aligned with the original problem, requirements not clear. So, when reviewing the requirements with them, make sure you separate what they &lt;strong&gt;understood&lt;/strong&gt; from the requirements docs and what they &lt;strong&gt;assumed&lt;/strong&gt; based on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2013-11-21T07:24:08.120" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T07:24:08.120" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8771" CreationDate="2013-02-25T15:51:39.420" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid that my answer will also be non-responsive; you asked for a shopping list recommendation. Like many of the others, I'm going to respond only to the &quot;common problems&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM is accountable for closing the project successfully, but doesn't control anything that directly contributes to closing the project.  The staff, the priorities, etc. all belong to someone else.  The one thing you control is information about the project and the project's status.  Cultivate and nurture that information because it is your primary tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your job is to uncover the risks/issues that will affect the probability of successful project completion on time/under budget/high quality/relevant to the enterprise' mission. Analyze those risks and issues and communicate the analysis to stakeholders who control the other resources.  BUT make sure that your communications are laser focused.  Ask each stakeholder what they need to know in order to maintain their support for the project, and make sure that each stakeholder has access to that information.  Change control is your friend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hardware focused projects have a tremendous advantage ; metrics are generally much easier - you can tell how many widgets you've produced, the quality/quantity/cost of the widget, etc.  Earned value is much easier to calculate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T15:51:39.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4035" CreationDate="2013-02-25T19:58:13.503" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend a combination of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pivotal-tracker.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pivotal Tracker&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.burndown-charts.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;www.burndown-charts.com&lt;/a&gt;. You will get your categorizing and sorting with PT. For the metrics and analytic, go with burndown-charts. Pivotal Tracker has an API so you can export your data if you need to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are both very cheap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer: I am part of the team who made the burndown-charts.com app ;)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5660" LastEditorUserId="5660" LastEditDate="2013-02-25T20:08:11.117" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T20:08:11.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8783" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-25T23:18:46.840" Score="14" ViewCount="358" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a project coordinator, would it be acceptable if I asked the employee &quot;Would this be a reasonable deadline for you?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5663" LastEditorUserId="5663" LastEditDate="2013-02-25T23:52:36.340" LastActivityDate="2013-03-14T12:22:37.260" Title="Setting Project Deadlines" Tags="&lt;deadline&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8783" CreationDate="2013-02-25T23:27:47.997" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;welcome to PMSE!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;. Yes, because the team member will be responsible for the deliverable. No, because a team member can only provide you estimates. In your question, I'm assuming you used the term deadline as estimate, don't you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thinking of estimates, you're not only allowed to, but you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; ask your team for &lt;em&gt;estimates&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An estimation (as the name says) is when something is expected to be available. A deadline, on the other hand, is the due date that the team must commit to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Estimates&lt;/strong&gt; comes from your team to you, &lt;strong&gt;deadlines&lt;/strong&gt; comes from the stakeholders to you. It's your duty to make things match as much as possible, tailoring business need / work effort throughput to reach the perfect balance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2013-02-27T16:58:52.193" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T16:58:52.193" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8785" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-26T04:43:28.510" Score="2" ViewCount="127" Body="&lt;p&gt;For Lean practice, what techniques are used for defining customer value and how is the information recorded and presented?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5665" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T14:36:47.543" Title="How is value defined for Lean?" Tags="&lt;customer&gt;&lt;lean&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8783" CreationDate="2013-02-26T09:55:10.630" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two different processes done by different roles.  Organizations, in my observations, typically combine them, which is mistake.  Estimating should be done, as Tiago indicates, by the workers who now the work intimately, while the targeting should be done by the business, e.g., the people accountable for success.  Estimating should be probabilistic, e.g., I can finish this between 3 and 7 days, most likely 5.  Targeting should be deterministic, e.g., the deadline is 4 days.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The factors and variables that are under consideration in both processes are different and many are in direct conflict.  This is why it needs to be two separate processes done by the two different roles; else, you will lose valuable considerations.  For example, the workers will care less about winning the work with an aggressive price set using aggressive targets.  The workers will care more about coming in on time and will target for themselves more safely.  (This, of course, is not always true in all cases; it is just an example of a common scenario.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T09:55:10.630" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8787" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-26T13:40:31.313" Score="6" ViewCount="418" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need your advice folks!&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I know the question may be quite trivial but I haven't found any related to my situation answers. And I don't know where to start  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have new start-up company, that has grown in to 10-15 ppl too quickly, that we even hadn't time to structurise it properly.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;To cut long story short I would be grateful if local experienced people would give me some advice on PM methodologies and tools e.g Waterfall or Agile(Scrum)? and what would be the best way of company structure?&#xA;Perhaps there are some books or other resources where I would be able to learn about the subject?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Our workflow is:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Most of the time we have small projects e.g Facebook campaigns, small to medium websites and social brand development plus some small video production.&#xA;Most of this projects should to last no longer than 3-4 days(in perfect world, but that's the goal of company), but in the end of the day lasts much much more longer, because of clients delays(specifications &amp;amp; content) and lack of proper management.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Director still keep trying to run the company in some flat organisation style, stating that he wants to be close to our team and be involved in any aspects of any project development. And I love it! But instead in reality he stretches him self so much (by doing PM, AM and Sales and general CEO stuff) that we always wait for briefs, scope of works and content from client. As result delays and unhappy clients.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We got some person to do Project Management(she is also Copywriter). But she is not professional PM.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;So as more experienced and tech person in IT I'd like to help to set it all up and make sure it all works!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;COMPANY STRUCTURE:&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To help better manage staff, delegate responsibilities and distribute work load we come up with a new company structure:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CEO/Creative Director (Also AM)&lt;br&gt;&#xA; ^&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Account Manager, Project Manager(Scrum Master + Copywriter)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ^&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Marketing Manager, Senior/Lead Tech/Web Developer, Senior Graphic designer&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ^&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Campaign Manager, 3 x Graphic designer, Web Developer, Junior Web Developer(the guy who just know how to install and set up wordpress and bit of CSS) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And subsequently create some fixed teams -&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Team 1 (1 Designer + 1 Wordpress Master)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Team 2 (1 Designer + 1 Web Developer)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Team 3 (1 Designer + 1 Campaign Manager)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like fixed teams(with an option for employee to move from one to another) because I think employe will better know in and outs of job nature. But once they get border say to design only facebook pages they can move to web design team&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I am still reflecting on cons and pros of flexed and fixed teams.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The main con for me of flexed teams is employee has to handle more multitask work and be able to design well as facebook pages, as web design and as to do a branding (logos, flayers, labels etc). With junior employees that's would be difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PM Methods:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I believe the most progressive and modern method of managing projects now is Agile(Scrum). It was meant for small projects and small teams(5-10 ppl). Gives ability to deliver features quickly.&#xA;But unfortunately I am not a scrum coach and can not be sure that it will work well for such smaller teams.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Perhaps there are out there some other special tailored methods for our case?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PM TOOLS/SOFTWARE:&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently we're using Podio. It's great software. But too huge and broad seems for us! People especially designers find it too complex.&#xA;I plan to try PivotalTracker. It looks simple and seems has everything we would need&#xA;I also have heard good feedbacks about Atlassian Jira. But in my opinion it is too complex as well for our small team.&#xA;Only what we need is a list of tasks to do assigned for each employee and nicely track the process, with charts and progress bars etc. The management needs to see the work progress.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Perhaps there are better solutions for our case?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is it!&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Apology if it was too long to explain. But I wanted to give as much as possible info to give you an idea of the situation.&#xA;I presume our case is not unique. And perhaps some experienced PM would be figure it out in a snap of fingers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking forward to hearing you feedback folks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kind regards,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Alex&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="724" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-05-25T23:07:54.617" LastActivityDate="2013-05-25T23:07:54.617" Title="Need an advice on Project management and company structure for a small social media agency (10-15 ppl)" Tags="&lt;organizational-structure&gt;&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8787" CreationDate="2013-02-26T14:21:58.673" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answers below are based on the assumption that you are all located in the same office space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that using a software solution for your project management may be overkill, and may actually be getting in your way as you start out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest sitting down with your CEO and PM for an hour and decide on what exactly makes sense for you to be tracking on these projects. Do you just need to know who is working on each one, what state they are in, and when they need to be done? Do you need to track the pieces of each project as they go through different stages? What is it that is usful for the team to be able to see at a glance? Yes, there are a multitude of things that can be tracked, but you need to decide what makes sense for your organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also suggest looking into kanban. In particular, look at how the software industry has adapted it. It is a very useful way of radiating information as well as acting as a visual control. It also has the benefit that it leads to the team taking ownership of the process and looking for ways to improve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T14:21:58.673" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8787" CreationDate="2013-02-26T14:50:31.280" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum will work for your organization&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The right way to get started is to send a couple of people to a good ScrumMaster/Product Owner training. If you choose good communicators/opinion leaders for this first round of training, they can come back and spread the message and help establish the process on the right footing. If you have the budget, you might also want to get an experienced consultant to come in and do some coaching sessions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T14:50:31.280" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8787" CreationDate="2013-02-26T15:57:36.557" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of your biggest constraints seems to be the CEO's desire to be involved at every level.  This can get in the way of any workflow or methodology.  Here are a few ideas on how you can help address that. Engage with your CEO to start to envision a structure for a scalable organization as well as ask him what specific type of reports he'd like to see that would give him comfort that he still knows everything that's going on and that would allow him to intercede in time, when needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T15:57:36.557" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8787" CreationDate="2013-02-26T16:50:51.490" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rule of thumb:&lt;/strong&gt; methodologies and tools fits to &lt;em&gt;your needs&lt;/em&gt;, not the other way round.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, you need to assess:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The problems you are facing now  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The procedures you have in place you believe could be improved&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What you believe is working fine and you want to keep&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This information can be discussed informally with everyone (and eventually, someone will need to balance everyone's opinions). Alternatively, you can also add what you want to have in the near future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, knowing what's already in place (where you are today) and where you want to be (answering the above questions) you need to define how to get there. I'll focus on the points you mentioned to keep on topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Management methodology:&lt;/strong&gt; Expecting a yes/no answer is risky. You'll need to check what are the possibilities and assess the pros and cons. The environment you mentioned is likely to be likely to work on Scrum (with a more interactive process) than Waterfall (more rigid). But your team needs to pick the decision (and don't regret in case some 'methodology tests' didn't work as expect). There's a very good discussion &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/8286/430&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; that you'll need to see the other way round.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Management Tools:&lt;/strong&gt; Again, having the questions above clear, will be easier to assess what you need. But the tool is only a mean to reach one objective... don't rely your success on a tool. It's only a support. If the tool(s) you're using are ok, stick with it. Don't add problems where there's none.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T16:50:51.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8793" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8800" CreationDate="2013-02-26T23:14:22.147" Score="8" ViewCount="895" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're starting with scrum, user stories, and agile. Some of our tasks require final testing from our customers to verify that they are completed according to their needs, but sometimes they don't complete the testing, or respond, for well over a week (or 3). What is the best way to handle these tasks for QA? Can we close the task as complete after X days? Should we have the sales rep remind them a couple times? We're trying to load our sprints 1 week at a time, would having a larger, month-long project to push these things to be a good option?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4735" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T16:36:15.443" Title="What to do with incomplete stories that depend on customers" Tags="&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;customer&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8775" CreationDate="2013-02-27T05:29:47.160" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before I start I should mention that I have managed India teams as large as 180 on over 100 projects over the last 10 years and have gone through the same exact issues.  It is critical in any project to match the right skillset to the project at hand, but 10x more critical in India due to culture, communication, time differences, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other posters have pointed out the major issues;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;India culture is significantly different than US.  The culture is very hierarchical in nature and self-expression, entrepeneurship, thinking 'outside the box' is quite rare.  For 90% of India developers, if the instructions/requirements are incomplete in any way, then it is highly likely that no work will be done.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developer quality in India is all over the board, I have experienced some fantastic developers, but mostly average/subpar developers.  Out of school they are extremely green and generally require a substantial investment in training.  It is very front-loaded in order to get a good return on investment.  Your expectations may need adjustment if they are not already well trained and have no local manager/mentor to guide them effectively.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communication, although India requires English as the primary language from a relatively early age, it is generally only spoken at work.  As such you will find a quite varied level of competency.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I have done that works is to find at least one top India developer (or manager) to lead the team, communication is the primary concern, then technical competency.  Without that manager it will be very difficult to succeed.  In the meantime you will be up from 11:30p-3am or 6a-9a to work/coordinate/mentor/train directly with dev and QA managers.  You're other alternative is to document the ???? out of everything, assume they know next to nothing about anything and document appropriately.  It may sound harsh, but it is reality.  You will then have to review all output constantly.  Either way for a team of 14 it will be a fulltime job.  Another option is to hire a contractor that is use to working with India teams to lead the effort, there is an art to working with India resources effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finding that top manager/developer, that is a whole other question...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5670" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T05:29:47.160" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8793" CreationDate="2013-02-27T06:02:53.420" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For successful Agile adoption, quick and close interaction is essential amongst all the stakeholders including dev team, product owner, end-users, and client. If that is not possible then first you need to bring everyone on-board and try to convince them about the advantages of having a quick feedback loop. If that doesn't work then you adapt. Beauty of Agile is that you are not bound to process but you find ways which work better for you and adapt accordingly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about removing UAT from the &quot;definition of DONE&quot; of your stories? A sprint can be considered &quot;done&quot; when the Product Owner (who is part of the team) signs-off of all the stories based on the acceptance criteria. Your team should have already completed the testing of each story before Product Owner sign-off phase begins. So you don't have any incomplete stories due to late response from UAT team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the UAT team is ready to provide feedback on a sprint, you may plan for a bugfixing sprint. While in the bugfixing sprint if you find empty cycles (because you did excellent work earlier) then you may work on technical debts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UAT team is usually composed of people outside of the project team and may have other priorities which may not be insync with your sprint planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can we close the task as complete after X days? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would not be a good approach. All actions should be based on some events. Closing a task, based on just elapsed time, without any cause/effect reason behind it would be bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should we have the sales rep remind them a couple times? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may help sometimes in getting feedback but your planning would still be a shaky grounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;would having a larger, month-long project to push these things to be a good option?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;May not help either. In a longer sprint there will be more stories to develop. Once you give the sprint for UAT, they may again take couple of weeks to provide feedback, so you get no advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are some of my thoughts. Lets see what the PMSE community pros have to say on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T06:02:53.420" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8785" CreationDate="2013-02-27T11:05:19.737" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Companies measure 'value' in different ways.  I've seen places that boil everything down to cash values and some where 'T Shirt sizes' or relative estimates of value are used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's nothing wrong with any of these approaches.  The important thing is that there is enough granularity in order for you to make decisions and that it's consistent across products/projects/features in order for you to be able to compare them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T11:05:19.737" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8793" CreationDate="2013-02-27T13:28:08.883" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Clearly Identify Your Problems&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some of our tasks require final testing from our customers to verify that they are completed according to their needs, but sometimes they don't complete the testing, or respond, for well over a week (or 3).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You actually have four problems here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have a &quot;definition of done&quot; that is dependent on people outside the Scrum team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your routine communications don't fit within your defined sprint length.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You don't know what to do with incomplete stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Scrum team is accepting stories into sprints that can't be completed within a time-boxed iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Possible Solutions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As always, possible solutions must fit both the problems they attempt to solve &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; your corporate culture, so you'll need to adapt these ideas for your own situation. Your mileage will vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;1. Move UAT to a Post-Sprint Actvity&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your pain point here is that your team is not allowed to finish a sprint without the input of resources outside of its control. This is a process #fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You have a &quot;definition of done&quot; that is dependent on people outside the Scrum team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If possible, remove user acceptance testing by anyone not actively engaged on the Scrum team from your &quot;definition of done.&quot; That doesn't mean no one is allowed to do UAT; you're simply moving it off the critical path for the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, the Sprint Review is generally the opportunity for stakeholders to see the functional increment demonstrated, and to provide feedback. This has &lt;em&gt;zero&lt;/em&gt; impact on the success or failure of the sprint; it's simply an opportunity for the organization to reflect on whether they believe the right thing was built, and to provide feedback to the team and the Product Owner about what's important for the next iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an ideal world, developers and UAT testers are working side-by-side during the sprint so that there are no surprises during the Sprint Review, but in practice this doesn't always happen. As a result, the Sprint Review or a post-sprint UAT cycle by a separate team is the optimal solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;2. Modify Your Sprint Length&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While moving UAT outside your sprint will help with resources and the &quot;definition of done,&quot; you also have a fundamental communications problem that includes a lack of respect for the integrity of the sprint or the importance of cadence for the team. This is a process #fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your routine communications don't fit within your defined sprint length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moving UAT out of the sprint won't fix your communications problems, or intrinsically improve respect for the team or its process. However, increasing the length of your sprint may provide a number of benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It will increase the amount of time available for external resources to perform tasks necessary to meet the &quot;definition of done.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It will &lt;strong&gt;visibly&lt;/strong&gt; slow the cadence of the process. Since UAT is the bottleneck anyway, making this issue a visible cost to the project is the proper thing to do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It provides more time for process overhead such as meetings with the UAT team or their managers, thereby providing the Scrum team with opportunities to improve communication with the outside team--at least to the bare minimum necessary to get to &quot;done.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;3. Incomplete Stories Return to the Product Backlog&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When stories can't meet the &quot;definition of done&quot; by the end of the sprint, then they are simply not-done. In Scrum, stories are either done or not-done, period. Regardless of the reason a story remains undone, it must be returned to the Product Backlog to be re-evaluated. Doing anything else is a process #fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You don't know what to do with incomplete stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you're really trying to say is that you have stories that you can't complete because of poor communications or integration with the UAT team, and a process that won't allow you to finish stories without that step. The &quot;definition of done&quot; may be completely reasonable, but the lack of organizational buy-in or resources to meet that goal is what's routinely setting the project back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By treating your defined sprint length as a firm deadline, you make the &lt;em&gt;problem&lt;/em&gt; visible to the organization. Whether your sprint is one week or one month long doesn't matter; the issue is that your process can't sustain the desired development cadence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Placing the stories back on the Product Backlog forces the stakeholders&amp;mdash;or their proxy, the Product Owner&amp;mdash;to accept responsibility for the organizational process and the resources available to the team. It is then up to the stakeholders to improve the composition of the team (perhaps by adding a UAT tester or two), modify the organizational process, or take some other action that reflects the value of the project to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that stakeholders taking &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; action also accurately reflects the value of the project. Feel free to act accordingly should that happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;4. Reduce Accepted Stories to Right-Size Capacity&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By accepting stories into the sprint that you already know can't be completed due to process issues or organizational roadblocks, you are setting yourself up for a process #fail. Don't do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your team is accepting stories into the sprint that it doesn't expect to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By this time in your Scrum process, you should have a fairly good idea of what your team's real velocity is. Remember, velocity is a measure of &lt;em&gt;capacity&lt;/em&gt;, and since you do not have the capacity to complete the volume of work you are accepting into each sprint, you are not using the tools Scrum gives you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter how much &quot;stuff&quot; the organization wants, or how many stories the Product Owner wishes you'd take on each sprint. The Product Owner sets the &lt;em&gt;priorities&lt;/em&gt;, but the development team chooses how much work to accept into each sprint based on the team's capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, some of the capacity is extrinsic to your team. That's okay; it simply means your Sprint Backlog should reflect a realistic capacity for work that &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be completed within your constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, even if the development team can theoretically do 40 story points in a sprint, but the UAT testers (who are outside the team) can really only be counted on to do one 5-point story per sprint, then your real velocity is five. Let me repeat that: your &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; velocity is &lt;strong&gt;only five (5) story points&lt;/strong&gt;, because that is the limit of what your team can realistically and sustainably deliver per sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal of Scrum isn't to inflate velocity, or sweep process issues under the rug. You should be using the Product Backlog and the team's real velocity to clearly communicate to the larger organization that there are procedural obstacles that are slowing the project down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they choose to improve the situation, great! If not, then you've done your professional due diligence by effectively communicating the project's status and constraints, and can leave the responsibility for the project's success squarely where it belongs: with the company's executives and stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T13:28:08.883" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8785" CreationDate="2013-02-27T14:22:18.143" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Value is the high quality outcome of an organisation that the customer is willing to pay for&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Important notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;there is a difference between output and outcome. The output is the product, the service etc. your company is providing. The outcome is the positive difference the outputs make&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;the value is always looked from the customer's perspective&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2013-02-27T14:36:47.543" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T14:36:47.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8793" CreationDate="2013-02-27T16:36:15.443" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Hire or designate a Product Owner (PO)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having part of your definition of done owned by people outside your team won't work. Customers have their own priorities and time commitments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on our experience, you need a designated Product Owner (PO) as a full time member of your team to perform this role. Hire a PO or designate a person within the team, who has good communication skills and an aptitude for business requirements, as the PO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PO will communicate with the customers, understand the business requirements and help write-up and prioritize stories. The PO will participate in the Sprint Planning meetings, clarify requirements, tweak scope and priorities (on seeing the effort estimates by the team). At the end of the sprint, when the stories are ready for Customer/User Acceptance Testing (UAT), the PO will test and accept them. The PO will demo these stories to the customers and get their feedback separately and without holding up the sprint. If any new requirements come up (or for that matter even if the PO missed or misunderstood some requirements), these all become new stories to be prioritized, among others, for the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T16:36:15.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="883" CreationDate="2013-02-27T16:38:38.163" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;An aspect of the work experience documentation that is often confusing for people has to do with overlapping projects. Here’s the simplest way I’ve found to explain it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMI is looking for two things regarding work experience on the application: a number of &lt;em&gt;unique months&lt;/em&gt; and a &lt;em&gt;total number of hours&lt;/em&gt; of leading and directing. Earlier posts handled the leading and directing issue so I'll skip it here.... The required quantity of months and hours depend on whether someone has a Bachelor's degree or equivalent but the two categories remain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's assume someone has a Bachelor's degree. For the PMP application, they need to demonstrate at least 36 unique months of working on projects and a total of at least 4,500 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say Project A went from January - October 2012, for a total of 1,200 hours. Project B went from July - December 2012 for a total of 800 hours. How does this get reported on an application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project A would count as 10 months toward the 36 unique months. The months of July-October cannot be double-counted so Project B does not get credit for those months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However&lt;/strong&gt;, the total hours for those two projects &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt; count. So the totals for those two projects on the application are 12 unique months and 2,000 hours. They get to count the overlapping hours but not the months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTE: PMI assumes a 40 hour week so someone could not be full-time on Project A during August and full-time on Project B at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5675" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2013-02-28T01:53:46.763" LastActivityDate="2013-02-28T01:53:46.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8804" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-27T18:37:22.457" Score="0" ViewCount="395" Body="&lt;p&gt;How to manage (&lt;strong&gt;find out&lt;/strong&gt; and preserve) the &lt;strong&gt;consistency of different types of requirements&lt;/strong&gt;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example&lt;/strong&gt;: That is great to have gathered many functional requirements (e.g. IS functionality that the system should perform, gathered through brain storming), but what if all this functions will violate the ergonomics of the future system (all these functions could not be placed in menues, GUI or are very problematic to describe with icons or words)? Such kind of problems could not be clear from the beginning of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there some &lt;strong&gt;good techniques&lt;/strong&gt; to manage such business inconsistencies? &lt;em&gt;Good Papers, books, articles?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does somebody know more &lt;strong&gt;examples&lt;/strong&gt; of such &lt;strong&gt;inconsistencies&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Upd.: How to manage (&lt;strong&gt;find out&lt;/strong&gt; and preserve) the &lt;strong&gt;consistency of different types of requirements&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5676" LastEditorUserId="5676" LastEditDate="2013-03-01T03:22:18.183" LastActivityDate="2013-03-01T03:22:18.183" Title="What to do if functional requirements violate non functional?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8804" CreationDate="2013-02-27T19:11:15.863" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Security is a non-functional requirement. Security is frequently in tension with functional requirements.  As you increase the effectiveness of simplistic security implementations you will increasingly choke off the ability of the system to support functional requirements. This is an opportunity; creative, elegant implementations of security can actually enhance the functional requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although it isn't my field, I understand that &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_508&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Section 508&lt;/a&gt; Compliance is frequently in tension with the requirement for ergonomics (GUI, etc.).  Once again, I believe that there are solutions to that problem, but they aren't simplistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The solution must provide all the functional requirements. The solution should be evaluated on how well it provides non-functional requirements. I prefer to assume that non functional requirements discriminate between solutions that completely fulfill the functional requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are principles, and the real world is always more complicated than any articulation of principals.  I think the underlying truth is that you want to find creative ways to reconcile requirements to provide the best possible value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T19:11:15.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8806" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8816" CreationDate="2013-02-28T01:29:19.447" Score="0" ViewCount="114" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been with a company for a year now, and I work closely with the company owners (its a startup).  I've had an idea for a project that I want to propose, but I wasn't sure the best way to pass the idea and make a good impression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was thinking of writing up a business plan for the project and presenting that, however, I wasn't sure if that would be overkill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5678" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-05-25T23:06:52.283" LastActivityDate="2013-05-25T23:06:52.283" Title="How to propose a project" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;project-proposal&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2013-04-30T19:20:19.427" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8807" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-28T06:42:27.843" Score="-2" ViewCount="207" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been assigned to lead an implementation of a third party software tool. I would like to seek some guidance on making sure this gets implemented successfully. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I was asked to provide the milestones and work plans. Before I engage myself with the third party, I would like to seek some pointers and guidance on the things I should remember on how I can successfully implement a third party software tool in an enterprise organization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="614" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-05-25T23:06:35.317" LastActivityDate="2013-05-25T23:06:35.317" Title="Need guidance in implementing a third party software tool for enterprise wide organization" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;milestones&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-03-07T12:47:31.523" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8807" CreationDate="2013-02-28T09:52:00.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Within my business I would follow these guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have access to stakeholders such as department managers, swing them in for a quick chat to make sure the roll-out will be supported. If you can't chat one on one or you need to approach a number of stakeholders, have a quick kick off meeting. If they don't buy in, your software solution is probably going to fail. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This goes for the end user too. As a quick example, we installed Lync IM on our computer clients for Customer Service reps. It was free so no loss besides the configuration time, but at the end of the day, it was easier to email someone else than send them an instant message. Have you trialed the software? If not, run a trial. &#xA;-Make sure integration won't be an issue, eg check with your systems guys to make sure the services can run on your it equipment, no use going to roll out and finding out you need to get firewall rules written up for it. This especially goes for BI tools. If you can't access the database, don't bother. &#xA;-As far as milestones go, I would aim for Cost Analysis, Kick-Off meeting, Trial Roll-out, Sign-off approval with stakeholders, Create Training package, roll out across system, and monitor and control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is general, however the best advice I can give is manage everyone's expectations about why they need the system, what it does, how they can use it, and when they can use it. Lastly, if it's not working, make sure you let the project sponsor know. There are plenty of good PM documents online, have a look around&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5679" LastActivityDate="2013-02-28T09:52:00.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8809" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15055" CreationDate="2013-02-28T12:49:41.563" Score="25" ViewCount="6319" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pivotal Tracker &quot;strongly discourages&quot; estimating velocity points for bugs and chores – you have to change a setting and accept a warning to be able to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They explain why &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pivotaltracker.com/help/faq#whycantiestimatebugsandchores&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, but I just don't understand it. Here is an excerpt:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By measuring velocity in terms of features only, Tracker can estimate how much real, business-valued work can be completed in future iteration, allowing you to predict when project milestones might be achieved&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chores and bugs take time. How can ignoring this &lt;em&gt;help&lt;/em&gt; you to predict when a milestone will be reached?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say you need to complete three more features to get to the next milestone, and you also need to complete a chore (because one of the features can't be started until that chore is done)... How could discounting the time needed for the chore &lt;em&gt;help&lt;/em&gt; you to estimate when the milestone will be reached?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5680" LastEditorUserId="30105" LastEditDate="2017-10-11T21:35:24.093" LastActivityDate="2017-10-11T21:35:24.093" Title="Why does Pivotal Tracker discourage estimating points for bugs and chores?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;pivotal-tracker&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8804" CreationDate="2013-02-28T15:10:00.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Non-functional requirements are requirements just as much as the functional ones.  Often people forget this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example I deal with daily is stability vs features. Stability does not violate any functional requirements but adding stability to a project will often require bumping features and functions off of a project (or sprint) roadmap in order to meet the same deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found the best way to get the product guys to understand this is to ask them to quantify their need for stability.  &quot;If you get all the features you want but the product crashes 5% of the time - is that acceptable?&quot; Once they are willing to quantify their need for stability, they are willing to treat stability (a non-functional requirement) as a &quot;real&quot; requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5682" LastActivityDate="2013-02-28T15:10:00.563" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8774" CreationDate="2013-02-28T15:55:44.800" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds pretty normal. You have moved from a position where someone told you both what and the scope of what you were doing to a position where you have to decide those things for your self. It's not easy.&#xA;I'm an industrial engineer who moved from a consulting firm to a production management position with a startup. I went from being handed projects to handing out projects.&#xA;A few lessons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Never hand someone something you are not willing to do. You can give&#xA;them something you don't have the skills or the time to do but hand&#xA;off stuff because it's not fun or unpleasant.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Protect the folks below you in front of the folks above you. If there is a success,&#xA;give the props to your team. If there is a problem, you should be&#xA;the person listening and internalizing the problem and then passing&#xA;it on to your team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You main job is not to do the work. You main job is to make sure the work gets done. This means checking to see if anyone elsewhere in the company is blocking your team and solving that problem. Check if anyone in your team is holding up work elsewhere. Make sure people are aware of the roadmap.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most important, listen quietly and fully. Bite your tounge and want for the other person to finish speaking. when they've finished, if you need to convey their message to someone else in the company (representing them), repeat what they told you back in your own words and ask them if they feel you fully understood them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5682" LastActivityDate="2013-02-28T15:55:44.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8809" CreationDate="2013-02-28T16:25:22.153" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;You should estimate bugs and non-functional requirements&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not familiar with Pivotal Tracker. However, looks like your question is more general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I not be estimating bugs?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I not be estimating technical debt or non-functional requirements? I think this is what you are referring to as &quot;chore&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, you should be estimating these. Pivotal Tracker seems to be taking the view that only &quot;features&quot; deliver value to the customers. I would argue that fixing bugs in production improves user experience and delivers value. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/should-story-points-be-assigned-to-a-bug-fixing-story&quot;&gt;See here for more.&lt;/a&gt; The exception to this is if bugs are found in completed stories in the functional/regression testing or even the post-release stages, they should be fixed by the developers who introduced them, without getting any point credits for the same. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, if you improve performance, stability or security, that also improves user experience and delivers value. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/estimating-non-functional-requirements&quot;&gt;See here for more.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By not estimating these, you sweep these under the carpet, and you run the risk of piling up bugs and technical debt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-02-28T16:25:22.153" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8809" CreationDate="2013-02-28T20:44:41.450" Score="18" Body="&lt;h2&gt;&quot;Feature Velocity&quot; vs. Capacity-Based Scheduling&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pivotal Labs is making a marketing decision with this design choice. By addressing themselves to &quot;business value&quot; as the key metric, they are implicitly discounting the importance of tracking team capacity or project scheduling in a broader sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to look at this is that they are trying to sell a dashboard for &lt;em&gt;management targets&lt;/em&gt; rather than iteration planning. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pivotaltracker.com/help/faq#whycantiestimatebugsandchores&quot;&gt;Pivotal Tracker FAQ&lt;/a&gt; says (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By measuring velocity in terms of features only, Tracker can estimate how much &lt;strong&gt;real, business-valued work&lt;/strong&gt; can be completed in future iteration, allowing you to predict when &lt;strong&gt;project milestones&lt;/strong&gt; might be achieved[.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, their idea is that bugs and chores aren't &quot;real&quot; work and don't add value. I disagree, but that's the point that they choose to make with their target audience. They also seem to discount the idea that bugs and chores consume team capacity, and assume that the cost of these non-valuable tasks can be amortized over time, leaving management free to focus on setting targets for milestones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In contrast to features, bugs and chores tend to emerge over time, and while they are a necessary part of your project, they can be thought of as a constant drag on business-valued output - an ongoing cost of doing business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, rather than make the cost of bugs and chores explicitly visible to the project, they discount them in order to provide a management dashboard that is more focused on feature-delivery than capacity-based scheduling. In my opinion, this prevents proper control of the project's budget and team resource constraints, but there are clearly people who disagree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Enabling Points for Bugs/Chores&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fairness to Pivotal Labs, they &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; allow you to disable this misfeature. You can allocate points to bugs and chores, with the caveat (dire warning?) that it's an irreversible decision for the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While discouraged, it is possible to enable estimation for bugs and chores, in project settings. However, it is not possible to revert that setting once your project has any estimated bugs or chores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I generally recommend that all tasks chargeable against a project's budget or that consume team capacity be made highly visible and properly accounted for. With Pivotal Tracker, the choice is yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-02-28T20:44:41.450" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8806" CreationDate="2013-02-28T20:54:17.533" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Try a pitch deck&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks to me that the project charter and business justification are part of the PM process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While tradionally formal business plans were needed for such a discussion, in start-up circles nobody uses them at this stage in the game. The &quot;pitch deck&quot; is the favored option. It is really a few presentation slides that highlight the essence of the business plan. Just search for &quot;pitch deck&quot; and you will get plenty of info.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-02-28T20:54:17.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8804" CreationDate="2013-02-28T22:06:27.467" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While functional and non-functional requirements often compete for schedule priority or resources on a project, they aren't &lt;em&gt;inherently&lt;/em&gt; in conflict. It's simply a matter of prioritizing both types of requirements within the project's constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Stakeholders Must Prioritize&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to manage the consistency of different types of requirements?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a project manager, this is only &lt;em&gt;indirectly&lt;/em&gt; your problem. The responsibility for defining which requirements are most important&amp;mdash;and balancing any conflicting objectives&amp;mdash;is the job of the stakeholders or their proxy (e.g. the Product Owner).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a project manager or Scrum Master, you can certainly educate the stakeholders on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_constraints&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Theory of Constraints&lt;/a&gt; as they apply to your project. One useful tool, which I often employ myself in such situations, is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/project-success&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Success Slider&lt;/a&gt;. A slider enforces constraints on project objectives such that the sum of &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; project variables remains equal to &lt;em&gt;3n&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Functional and Non-Functional are Both Requirements&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;type&lt;/em&gt; of requirement (e.g. function or non-functional) is frequently irrelevant to the planning process. The questions surrounding requirements generally remain the same:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What requirements provide value?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which requirements will be funded?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who gets the blame when every single requirement can't be Priority Number One?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third question is the most universal. In this respect, your mileage will &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-02-28T22:06:27.467" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8818" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-01T00:45:41.237" Score="1" ViewCount="459" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently reviewing some test case artifacts for various project teams as standardized by our organization. However, I'm a bit appalled to find that &lt;strong&gt;a lot&lt;/strong&gt; of content is being captured in documents and is leading to wasted effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some lean ways to capture/document test-case descriptions that you have seen being applied successfully keeping 'everyone happy' (i.e., no one complains about this &amp;amp; that missing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently here's an outline of what we capture just for a single test case:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test Case ID&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test Item &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test Priority&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pre-conditions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Post-conditions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Input Specifications&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Expected Output Specifications&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pass/Fail Criteria &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assumptions and Constraints Dependencies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Traceability&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course test-case ID/item are autogenerated for the most part. But that is still a lot to capture. We capture our requirements as user-stories but we still need some detail for our test cases. I'm just worried that the detail may be just too much. There are other details too, like type of test case, time/effort estimate etc.,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what are some suggestions of making test-case documentation 'lean' to eliminate/reduce this documentation overhead? (Just capturing the test cases &lt;em&gt;on the back of story cards&lt;/em&gt; is not acceptable for our organization. Tools/format suggestions are both welcome. Basically ideas to help reduce the burden of documenting test cases.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1119" LastEditorUserId="1119" LastEditDate="2013-03-01T00:52:23.523" LastActivityDate="2013-03-04T03:28:38.010" Title="How best to 'leanify' test case documentation?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;testing&gt;&lt;lean&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8819" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-01T04:22:02.757" Score="6" ViewCount="13386" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a Scrum Master of a team with 12 members. I know that the size of the team is large at this point, but as we grow further we will divide the team into multiple Scrum Teams. Our estimations for the User Stories are based on Story Points. For the tasks within a User Story we are estimating in hours. Based on the first 6 Sprints we were able to establish a team Velocity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We did not have any issues in taking the User Stories, because we knew how many User Stories we could take for the Sprint based on our Velocity. When a couple of team members went on a planned leave, we were unable to estimate the number of Story Points we had to commit. Since we are not calculating Velocity per team member, we are unable to estimate how many Story Points we should take for the next Sprint. So, my question is &lt;strong&gt;how do we calculate the story points we can commit to the sprint when some of the team members are on a leave&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My second question is we are calculating the number of hours each team member is available for the sprint. As we should not directly map Story Points to hours, we are not seeing the value of calculating the number of hours for each team member during the Sprint Planning Meeting. &lt;strong&gt;How do we establish a relation between hours and story points?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5576" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-10-21T22:30:03.157" LastActivityDate="2019-10-21T22:30:03.157" Title="How to estimate accurate velocity when team members are on leave" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;velocity&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3414" CreationDate="2013-03-01T04:49:35.227" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Baby sitter and hadover, both are the best examples to make a learner understand the meaning of SF. If the work is completed, handover can not be started untill the take over team starts... and so the work can not be considered complete as the hand over is not started...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5688" LastActivityDate="2013-03-01T04:49:35.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8819" CreationDate="2013-03-01T07:46:33.053" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Team velocity is a measure of team's past performance -- how much value they were able to produce in every sprint and it is measured in story points. Velocity is helpful to predict how many stories the team will be able to complete in the next sprint. However, velocity is not the only factor to predict this. Team capacity can be another factor. Lets take an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your team has 5 members and the velocity is 60 story points per sprint. One member is on vacations during the next sprint. So the team capacity will decrease by 20%. Your estimated velocity for that sprint would then be 48 story points. 60 * (100% - 20%) = 60 * 0.80 = 48&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an option that can be considered I guess. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2013-03-01T07:46:33.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8819" CreationDate="2013-03-01T09:40:24.447" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Due to the complexity of a team, you'll never be able to calculate the Story Point / Person ratio.  So, when you put together the Sprint Backlog use the User Stories from the Backlog and &lt;strong&gt;the capacity plan&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;(this tells you how many people will be on board during the upcoming Sprint)&lt;/em&gt;. You commit based on this data. The Velocity helps you not to overcommit in a Sprint. So it is not that helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on your question you aren't using the estimated hours for anything. If your work is Story Point based, you won't need the hours at all. If it is possible don't try to convert Story Points to hours. They aren't convertible, like you cannot convert a horse to a bicycle. Both can be used for travelling, but there isn't any other similarities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is something you can try out, which may help you with your first question. If you estimate the hours for the tasks, &lt;strong&gt;you can sum them up and based on the capacity you can check if the sum fits your upcoming Sprint&lt;/strong&gt;. For example, you have 2 User Stories. US1 has 2 tasks, and the sum is 48 hours. US2 has 3 tasks and the sum is 68 hours. Let's say that the 12 colleagues can do 120 hours in a Sprint. Without 2 you have only 100 hours, so the US1 + US2 won't fit into your Sprint. You can leave US2 out, or break it down to US2.1 and US2.2. I think this could work in your case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-03-01T09:40:24.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8750" CreationDate="2013-03-01T12:06:27.410" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't attended this course, but I'll cite it because it seems relevant&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pduotd.com/2013/03/01/how-to-prioritize-projects-when-each-one-is-critical-10/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How to Prioritize Projects When Each One is Critical&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no affiliation with the vendor - I just hoped it might help the OP (and provide some PDU's)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-03-01T12:06:27.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8824" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-01T12:32:40.200" Score="1" ViewCount="1274" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying out Scrum on a small, one-person project. During my first sprint, I realized that all of the stories I've chosen are really epics and should be broken down into much smaller pieces. The problem is that I've chosen too few story points, i.e. splitting would mean I have stories of .25, .1 story points of the original epics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My instinct tells me to break down the epics after the sprint and re-estimate. Since this is the first sprint, it won't mess up historical data and let me start from a clean slate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5693" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-03-02T13:44:35.973" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T03:38:01.970" Title="First sprint: Epics chosen instead of stories - should I re-estimate and when?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;epics&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8824" CreationDate="2013-03-01T12:36:48.153" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Epics are always broken down to smaller pieces, &lt;strong&gt;before&lt;/strong&gt; starting the sprint. Try to focus on &lt;strong&gt;delivering value&lt;/strong&gt; (asked by the customer and important, too), so don't bother with your historical data. If the epic is the most important, break it down, and start working on it. After a couple sprints you'll have enough experience and data to establish velocity and use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-03-01T12:36:48.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8819" CreationDate="2013-03-01T12:43:54.397" Score="11" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Velocity is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a management target. It's an estimation tool, and you should be using it as one tool among many to help plan your Sprints. Don't treat velocity metrics as targets, or maintaining a given velocity as the primary goal of each Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hours and story points have no direct relationship to one another. Story points measure relative effort, while hours measure ideal or wall-clock time. They are both useful, but are not interchangeable.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Estimating &lt;em&gt;Variable&lt;/em&gt; Capacity&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/velocity-range-calculator&quot;&gt;Velocity is a range&lt;/a&gt;, not a single value, and is generally most useful when:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planning a project schedule once the velocity stabilizes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Applying a smoothing function to spiky per-sprint results.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, unless you've gathered sufficient velocity data to amortize variations in capacity, then you have to apply some common sense instead. Consider these examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you've been doing Scrum for a year, people take sick days, go on vacation, or work above or below their typical capacity from time to time. Velocity averages those data points over time, and allows you to make reasonable estimates anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You've only been doing Scrum for two months, and have had all hands on deck for both Sprints. You have zero data regarding normal variation, and no information on maximum or minimum team capacity. You will therefore have to apply a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fudge_factor&quot;&gt;fudge factor&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;It's Okay to Under-Commit&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, the main goal of Sprint Planning is to avoid &lt;em&gt;over-commitment&lt;/em&gt; during a Sprint. The idea isn't to fulfill the 100% utilization fallacy; you don't have to pack each Sprint to the rafters based on your previous velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way Sprint Planning works is that velocity simply offers guidance, letting you know if you've gone over the reasonable work-in-progress limits for a single Sprint. It is up to the Development Team alone to determine how many story points can comfortably fit within the current iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example, when you will be under-staffed for a Sprint, it is expected that the team will acknowledge this fact and adapt accordingly during Sprint Planning. For example, the team might say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We normally try to limit our story points to 10-15 points per sprint. However, Bob is out having COBOL-based cybernetic implants placed into his cerebral cortex, so we should probably only commit to 8 points or less this time around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team then accepts only 8 points into the Sprint, based on their expected capacity. However, if they finish early, they can (and should) go back to the Product Owner in order to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gather a few more small stories to round out the Sprint without over-committing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask the Product Owner for an Early Termination so that the Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective, and Sprint Planning can be performed without simply waiting for the clock to run out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first is the most common practice, but the second is certainly acceptable within the bounds of the Scrum framework. It really just depends on what works best for your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-03-01T12:43:54.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8827" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8829" CreationDate="2013-03-02T03:06:23.690" Score="4" ViewCount="379" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's the scenario: You are building a schedule for a project that has a planned duration about three months.  You are not concerned about project costs so you will not be doing EV.  You are developing the schedule ensuring that your work packages are linked to represent your planned sequencing and all of your packages are fixed duration.  Once complete, you baseline the schedule and you have a good representation of your current critical path.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During execution, maybe you are 30% complete from a time perspective, you update the schedule with progress (assume you have a valid and credible way of capturing work complete).  The project finish date is starting to show an unfavorable finish variance, adding about 1.5 weeks to the three month project.  You estimate work remaining and, due to some changes in the way you do the work and other interventions, you estimate that you can shave off the finish variance and actually come in sooner than planned with a favorable variance of four days.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do you alter the durations of the remaining work packages based on your latest revised estimate, allowing the schedule to calculate a finish that shows the favorable finish variance?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If so, do you process the change in duration through your change control or do you consider duration something outside of what is baselined?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Or, do you keep your original baselined duration the same and show in another way your latest revised estimate and the resulting finish date?  If so, how?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-03-02T14:47:29.380" LastActivityDate="2013-03-04T16:04:57.483" Title="Schedule Control" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8824" CreationDate="2013-03-02T13:43:33.197" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't re-plan a completed sprint. Instead:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;terminate a failing sprint early and re-plan, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;complete the sprint and use its data to adapt your estimation and planning process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Treat data anomalies as such, and don't allow your Scrum framework to revolve around data points that aren't intended to be stringent mandates or infallible predictions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Stories vs. Epics: Will They Fit?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During my first sprint, I realized that all of the stories I've chosen are really epics and should be broken down into much smaller pieces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's your first sprint, you're still learning to estimate stories and to estimate your own capacity, so estimation errors are to be expected. However, in your particular case, you have two choices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your &quot;epics&quot; will fit within the sprint, and are therefore not really epics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your stories are too large to fit within the sprint, in which case you should return to Sprint Planning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is less about the story-point allocation than it is about deciding whether you've properly estimated your capacity for the sprint. If you think you &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; get enough stories done to meet your Sprint Goal then give it a try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum doesn't require perfection; it just requires that you inspect-and-adapt, and fail early when failure is inevitable. If you can deliver value this sprint, go for it&amp;mdash;then use what you've learned this sprint to refine your estimation and planning process next time around. If no value can be derive during the sprint, then an early termination is certainly appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;In-Sprint Decomposition&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find yourself with a large story or epic on your hands, you can certainly break down the story into right-sized tasks on the Sprint Backlog. You only earn points for Product Backlog stories you complete by the end of the sprint, but decomposing a story into tasks has several benefits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It gives you a better handle on the story, and often makes what to do next self-evident.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The decomposed task list will often give you a better idea of whether a story is completable within the sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum doesn't require that you complete &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; stories during the sprint, although that's obviously one of the goals. The real objective is to meet the Sprint Goal. If you decompose your stories properly in the Sprint Backlog, you may find that you can complete one or more stories that will meet the Sprint Goal even though you won't have completed the entire set of user stories. This would be a win!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Inspect and Adapt the Estimation Processes&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My instinct tells me to break down the epics after the sprint and re-estimate. Since this is the first sprint, it won't mess up historical data and let me start from a clean slate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please don't do this. If you do, you're already heading down the road of treating velocity as a management target, rather than as a capacity planning tool or WIP limit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By all means, review your Backlog Grooming and Sprint Planning process, and see where your estimation&amp;mdash;and perhaps more importantly, your process for selecting an appropriate volume of stories off the Product Backlog&amp;mdash;has gone wrong. This is a valuable use of the Sprint Retrospective process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, re-estimating or re-planning your sprint &lt;em&gt;post facto&lt;/em&gt; is a waste of time&amp;mdash;unless, of course, you've terminated your sprint early and returned to Sprint Planning. If that's &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; what you're doing, then keep your data points and move on with the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Handling Invalid Data Points and Outliers&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of a sprint, your Sprint Backlog, story estimates, and burn-down charts provide you with data to review your process. This data generally includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much work you estimated that you had for the sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much work you completed during the sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether your estimate was accurate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether your volume of completed work, if it continues on the current track, will meet your project targets.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story estimate is just a single data point with a couple of interpretations attached to it. If it's invalid data, you may choose to discard it. However, in your case it may very well &lt;em&gt;be&lt;/em&gt; valid data, in the sense that it accurately reflects an underlying process problem that impacts the productivity of your current Scrum implementation. If that's the case, then keep the data point!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimation, by its very nature, requires more experience and a larger data set than you can gain in a single sprint. Unless you fail to fix your process over time, your single data point will eventually become a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlier&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;statistical outlier&lt;/a&gt;. Wikipedia says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[S]ome data points will be further away from the sample mean than what is deemed reasonable. This can be due to incidental systematic error or flaws in the theory that generated an assumed family of probability distributions, or it may be that some observations are far from the center of the data. Outlier points can therefore indicate faulty data, erroneous procedures, or areas where a certain theory might not be valid. However, in large samples, a small number of outliers is to be expected (and not due to any anomalous condition).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, a Sprint Planning session yields useful outliers when:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It indicates faulty data from your work-level estimates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It indicates faulty procedures in the way stories were organized, (de)composed, or accepted into the sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It indicates that your theories about how to implement Scrum on your current project may be flawed in some way, and should be carefully re-examined.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is all valuable information for the inspect-and-adapt process. Learn from the experience, and then either discard the outliers or keep them for future analysis. In the end, your choice in the matter is just that, and doesn't really impact the efficacy of the overall framework as much as you may think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-03-02T13:43:33.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8827" CreationDate="2013-03-02T14:45:24.027" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At various points, your project is potentially 1.5 weeks late or 4 days early. Your methodology values calculated variances, but (as far as I know) doesn't mandate continuous re-planning. It would therefore be more efficient to value communication over re-scheduling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Communication: The Underlying Question?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your question, you state that at some point in your project you think you're 4 days ahead of schedule. Awesome!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you ask some detailed sub-questions, currently tagged with &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/schedule-risk&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'schedule-risk'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;schedule-risk&lt;/a&gt;, but really about how to communicate your project's status to a wide audience that you've defined as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Multiple audiences: stakeholders of the project, project sponsor, senior management, public, the project team itself as it is managing the project and its health....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To my way of thinking, all your questions boil down to &lt;em&gt;How do I communicate that we're slightly ahead of schedule?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Favor Communication Over Re-Scheduling&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1. Do you alter the durations of the remaining work packages based on your latest revised estimate, allowing the schedule to calculate a finish that shows the favorable finish variance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, should you recalculate your schedule with accelerated dates, removing slack from the process? That seems like a bad idea. Slack is important, regardless of one's chosen methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2. If so, do you process the change in duration through your change control or do you consider duration something outside of what is baselined?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Change control is usually a process for adjusting scope, not recalculating schedules. While there is some inherent overlap in that scope can impact scheduling, I don't think submitting &lt;em&gt;positive&lt;/em&gt; scheduling changes to a steering committee for approval makes sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this particular case, I think what you'd want to do is provide a communique saying that the project has is slightly ahead of schedule (yay!) but that at only 30% completion this slack may be required to mitigate other schedule risks down the road. This has the dual benefit of keeping stakeholders informed while protecting necessary slack from reduction by management fiat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3. Or, do you keep your original baselined duration the same and show in another way your latest revised estimate and the resulting finish date? If so, how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, communication is the key. Your original baseline is used to calculate deviations that need to be controlled. Slack probably doesn't need to be tightly controlled, so unless your project goals have changed dramatically there really isn't much justification for a new baseline. A new baseline also implies the need to review your project controls; is that worth it for this use case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, your routine status communications should highlight the process efficiencies that have provided this slack. You might also want to identify project risks or milestones where the slack can be allocated to mitigate slippage in the future, but that may not be a level of detail appropriate to every project communication plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-03-02T14:45:24.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8818" CreationDate="2013-03-04T03:28:38.010" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, a modern testing tool could greatly improve productivity. Microsoft Test Manager, when fully integrated into a Team Foundation Server installation, is my personal favorite. There are others however that will probably give you much similar results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said items 1-9 on your list appear to be a fancy way of saying &quot;things you have to do to run this test&quot;. If that is the case, then if you plan to do regression testing with any measure of repeatability you probably need to capture all of these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;10 however should only be captured on failing tests, as it is a waste of effort for passing tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;So what are some suggestions of making test-case documentation 'lean' to eliminate/reduce this documentation overhead?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on this quotation, I believe you may be missing the point of lean software development. Is the test case documentation you currently capture a bottleneck in the flow of value through your system? Have you optimized your batch sizes to meet your existing process? Do you have WIP constraints that you can alter to adjust the flow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &quot;keeping everyone happy&quot; should never be a goal. You need to worry about your economics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastActivityDate="2013-03-04T03:28:38.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8827" CreationDate="2013-03-04T13:24:52.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you alter the durations of the remaining work packages based on your latest revised estimate, allowing the schedule to calculate a finish that shows the favorable finish variance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My default is to re-baseline the project schedule at pre-defined control points after reviewing upcoming work with the team. This involves review of upcoming work, identification of new risks/issues, identification of work missing from the original plan, re-evaluation of the planned schedule, etc etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The frequency of these plan/schedule revision exercises depends on the complexity and criticality of the project, as well as your workflow. It is best to have this kind of exercise at a logical management phase of your project rather than at fixed timepoints (e.g. planning to do this after development ends but before testing starts instead of 2 months after project start).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2.If so, do you process the change in duration through your change control or do you consider duration something outside of what is baselined?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3.Or, do you keep your original baselined duration the same and show in another way your latest revised estimate and the resulting finish date? If so, how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once I've gone through the exercise of getting team feedback on upcoming work and have enough information to update the plan and schedule I process the changes through change control. This is a more extensive change than what you are asking about, but I think good documentation of agreed-upon changes is necessary from a best-practices standpoint. If your project is simple/non-critical to the business the extent of the documentation could be pared down, but I would still have something. Ideally there are pre-defined thresholds in terms of changes to schedule/scope/budget that make it clear who approves what changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I'm in a situation where the project is ahead/behind schedule I report this based on the project's governance structure (e.g. at update meetings or through status reports or however). This reporting usually includes a root cause assessment for schedule slippage and a recovery plan (if there is one).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-03-04T13:24:52.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8827" CreationDate="2013-03-04T13:49:52.690" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is, in my opinion, a risk management problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The project finish date is starting to show an unfavorable finish variance, adding about 1.5 weeks to the three month project. You estimate work remaining and, due to some changes in the way you do the work and other interventions, you estimate that you can shave off the finish variance and actually come in sooner than planned with a favorable variance of four days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Status quo you have a risk of a 1.5 week late finish.  This must be communicated quickly to the relevant stakeholders.  (I'm inferring that since you're not managing cost and don't seem to care about quality, that schedule is the primary interest of the sponsor/stakeholders.  If this is true, then I belive you have an obligation to quickly inform them of anything that could threaten the planned complete date.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The good news is that you have already analyzed the problem, and you have a proposed risk response.  The proposed risk response presents an opportunity to finish 0.8 weeks early.  I would want to brief the stakeholders on that too.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would want to attach probabilities to the two outcomes, and then write up the proposed changes in a format that would feed into your change control process.  You want to clearly express what impact these changes will have on other facets of the project, and how they might affect any KPI that the stakeholders have identified. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-03-04T13:49:52.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8824" CreationDate="2013-03-04T15:30:32.077" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before I reply I should point out that I really hate Scrum's estimation and velocity as it's traditionally done, so while this might give you some ideas, feel free to adapt your existing process accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason you're having to split &quot;epics&quot; into smaller stories and features is because they won't fit into the timebox of a sprint. There are only a few reasons to estimate and use timeboxes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To engage stakeholders at regular intervals and get their feedback (those might be live users if you're actually releasing)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To get the trust of stakeholders, when they see that you can deliver what you said you would&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To let people adjust scope based on history&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To work out whether there are any elements of the problem you're solving that you might have misunderstandings about; different estimates can show this up.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Getting stakeholder feedback&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to break things down to get feedback, if you're just focusing on doing something that will get stakeholders' feedback. Pick whichever thing you think you might need feedback on, then get something working and make it increasingly realistic within the timebox (and if you can get feedback early so much the better!) For instance, I hard-code a UI and show it to someone, then I get it working with a hash-map in memory, then I couple it to the persistence layers and thence the database (&lt;a href=&quot;http://lizkeogh.com/2010/02/02/theyre-not-user-stories/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;when the users are the stakeholder&lt;/a&gt; who is most able to give me feedback, anyway).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Getting stakeholder trust&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your stakeholders don't trust you, &lt;a href=&quot;http://lizkeogh.com/2008/09/11/splitting-up-stories/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;focus on delivering something valuable&lt;/a&gt;. You might need to split up your &quot;epics&quot; to do that, but this should be your focus, rather than &quot;get something done within the sprint&quot;. If this is the case, pick small, safe things that you can do easily and quickly, because your relationship with the stakeholder is probably the biggest risk. After you've got their trust you can start trying the tricky stuff and getting their feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Release planning and scope adjustment&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to adjust scope based on history, you can always do it with the original &quot;epic&quot; estimates. These are estimates, so they're likely to be wrong; you can't use a small sample of them to predict the future, so the scope adjustment is likely to be continuous and getting smaller as you approach release. (Ideally you're creating a Minimum Viable Product and releasing anyway so this point is moot).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Discovering uncertainty and misunderstanding&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're using estimates to discover misunderstanding, you may still miss some. I suggest &lt;a href=&quot;http://lizkeogh.com/2011/09/22/conversational-patterns-in-bdd/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;talking through examples&lt;/a&gt; of how the application might work instead, a la BDD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Split them up as and when&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than focusing on having small enough stories for a sprint, you may find it more useful to focus on the reasons for having the sprint in the first place. Whatever you find yourself working on as a result, put it on the board, and life will be much easier, with shorter planning meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may help if you work out whether your &quot;epics&quot; are capabilities (provides the capability to trade copper, for instance) or features (one of potentially many concrete user interfaces that provide the capability). Splitting capabilities into features and having some wireframes sketched out before the sprint is IMO fine. After that, leave the dev team free to split up the stories as they see fit, based on the principles above. This will also help you get a self-organising team, and gives the team a clear focus for each timebox.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Craig Larman told me that the original reason for month-long sprints was because you could actually focus on small releases, with only the different MVPs being prioritised by the business. Feedback was available all the time, and how much could be achieved, and released, within that month was completely down to the dev team. I think this original vision of Scrum has been corrupted and is much missed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're thinking of splitting your stories into tasks, please &lt;a href=&quot;http://lizkeogh.com/2011/08/23/splitting-stories-into-tasks-when-why-and-how-or-not/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;read this&lt;/a&gt; too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2013-03-04T15:30:32.077" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8834" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-04T15:35:48.490" Score="3" ViewCount="254" Body="&lt;p&gt;I run a program management office, reporting to a client on status of multiple projects on a one-page report card.  I need to be able to capture and maintain when a milestone slips, including the final milestone's completion date, but still report status on the revised date.  The client did not want a report card that included baseline dates, so I don't have that option, and they are insisting that once a project slips a completion date, the condition is always considered &quot;late&quot;.  I'm not trying to hide any slippage, and I am calling out what was slipped, but if the overall condition is always &quot;late&quot;, there is no tracking the revised date appropriately.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I track the revised date if the condition is always late?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5701" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-05-07T02:28:22.487" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T02:28:22.487" Title="Original vs Revised dates status tracking" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8827" CreationDate="2013-03-04T16:04:57.483" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Manage it through change control&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;due to some changes in the way you do the work and other interventions, you estimate that you can shave off the finish variance and actually come in sooner than planned with a favorable variance of four days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sounds like a miracle! I recommend a cautious approach. I would hate to communicate an early completion now and go back with bad news later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will put this change through change control to understand the risks, limitations and dependencies. If everything checks out, then communicate the good news to everyone else.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-03-04T16:04:57.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8834" CreationDate="2013-03-04T19:59:50.017" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Intriguing question.  The client wants the project marked as late if it was ever late as a defensive measure against ultimate late delivery.  I believe I'm not alone in thinking that this conceals opportunities to intervene and avoid late delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that if I were the PM on this project, I would want to satisfy the client's desire for a &quot;defensive dashboard&quot;, but also want to communicate the opportunities for intervention.  There are a couple of ways to do this, but the one that appeals to me the most would be to adopt @Mark Phillip's suggestion and use EVM. Print the Red Stoplight on the dashboard, but in the center of the red bulb print the current SPI.  For me there is a big difference between a red bulb with a 1.01 printed in the center and a red bulb with &quot;1.17&quot; printed in the center. (I might go so far as to print the first in white and the second in yellow; yellow on red should be alarming enough.) (Bonus; you get some Section 508 compliance as well!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other truth that I see in the question is that although the client doesn't want to track the revised dates, I would.  The dashboard can't be the only project tracking M&amp;amp;C tool.  I've got a half dozen tracking charts and tools that I use for my own reference and brief the client only if they're informative.  The client may or may not wish to be informed of these - your client seems more interested in allocating blame than in ensuring project success, but that is the client's perogative.  Your reputation will be based on whether the project closes successfully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-03-04T19:59:50.017" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2765" CreationDate="2013-03-05T04:45:34.267" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although probably not an intended feature, one of the benefits of using points from a manager's perspective is that tasks are measured by complexity rather than by time, which allows you to easily see who on the team works faster than everyone else.  For example, you know that it takes person A 2 hours to do something, but takes 10 hours for person B (for a particular task; perhaps it is opposite for another task).  If person A estimated 2 hours and then was out sick, person B would be 8 hours behind the estimate before even starting.  But if you give it points, and then average for the team, you are more likely to hit your mark overall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5707" LastActivityDate="2013-03-05T04:45:34.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8838" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-05T06:11:53.897" Score="7" ViewCount="446" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love using burndown charts, but they only work for finite chunks of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I also help out groups that do continuous operational work, I wanted to develop a similar tool that would work for them. In operations, the task list is a producer-consumer  queue that fills at one end and is depleted from the other. So this is what I use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tDtQL.png&quot; alt=&quot;Buildup/Burndown&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Along the horizontal axis are labels for blocks of time, similar to sprints. The vertical axis shows the number of work items, or the cumulative size of the work items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of any given time block, there will be some items not yet completed. These are added to the pile, and the chart gets higher. As those items are completed in future time blocks, they are removed from the chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The total height of the stacked areas represents the number or cumulative size of all work items &quot;on the go&quot; at that time. The height of any specific area section shows the number of work items remaining from the period where they were introduced. Counting the number of coloured zones in any vertical cross section shows how many old time blocks still have something lingering around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best part is that slope becomes a powerful indicator of velocity and focus. It encourages you to get rid of the oldest items, so that items from old time blocks are visibly wrapped up. As the pace of work increases, the slope becomes steeper and steeper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the question: &lt;strong&gt;Is there a name for this kind of chart?&lt;/strong&gt; I'm having trouble finding similar examples. I've been referring to them as &quot;continuous burndown&quot; or &quot;stacked work&quot; charts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5028" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T20:13:36.707" Title="What is the name for this type of chart?" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10" CreationDate="2013-03-05T09:53:30.547" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;[Disclaimer: I am one of the developers working on time cockpit] &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are looking for something flexible/adjustable you can take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timecockpit.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;time cockpit&quot;&gt;www.timecockpit.com&lt;/a&gt;. It features a dynamic data model (adjustable lists and forms), allows scripting using python, has good excel integration (import/export),&#xA;a great calendar and activity tracker (makes it easier for employees to track their time). Feel free to contact me if I can help you with it in any way!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5708" LastActivityDate="2013-03-05T09:53:30.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8838" CreationDate="2013-03-05T13:14:18.273" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That type of chart is called an &quot;area chart&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_chart&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_chart&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5709" LastActivityDate="2013-03-05T13:14:18.273" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8824" CreationDate="2013-03-05T13:25:37.767" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind that SCRUM teams should include 7 people +/-2, so you might find it awkward to plan, estimate, calculate velocity, be the SM etc on a one man team!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5710" LastActivityDate="2013-03-05T13:25:37.767" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8842" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-06T11:35:14.453" Score="3" ViewCount="692" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are using the Rally tool for managing our sprints. Mid-way through one of the sprints, the Product Owner de-scoped two user stories. These two stories are complex user stories carrying 8 story points each. Almost 80% of effort was already spent on these user stories. So, the team stopped working on these two user stories. I have couple of questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How should the burn-down chart be represented because the user stories carrying bulk of the size for this sprint was de-scoped. As a scrum master do I need reset the Y-axis in the burn-down chart with the story points that are still in scope? If I don’t reset the Y-axis the burn-down chart may present a wrong picture to management that as a team we could not deliver what was committed&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In our estimation meeting for the release we projected X story points for the release. Now, what we will be delivering  X-16 story points as we de-scoped two user stories. By the release date, if these situations continue to arise we will be delivering far less story points than what we committed for the release. What this mean is that the cost we incur will not reduce if we deliver fewer story points. As a Scrum Master, how do I neutralize the cost vs. story points delivery?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How does the team book the timesheet for the work? The team did 80% of the work, but the user story itself was not completed. Do I need to mark the user story as completed and ask the team to fill the hours?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5576" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-10-21T22:35:32.293" LastActivityDate="2019-10-21T22:35:32.293" Title="How does the team deliver consistent velocity when user stories are de-scoped mid-way through a sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scope&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;&lt;burndown-chart&gt;&lt;velocity&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8843" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-06T12:48:40.037" Score="1" ViewCount="1171" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have 2 tasks like Task A and B.  Task A has 2 Subtask named A1 and A2 and the same for Task B(B1 and B2).  Task B1 needs Task A1 to be done befor starting and Task B2 needs Task B1 to be done before starting.  Actually I have dozens of these type of tasks and I can't link them all one by one.  If I just link the Summary tasks together then Microsoft project will calculate the subtasks dependencies for me too ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example. In animation studios first we Draw something as reference then we will start modeling of it so I have 2 summary tasks named : Designing and Modeling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I have 100 object to Design then how can I create my Project plan !?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5719" LastEditorUserId="3794" LastEditDate="2013-03-13T21:44:12.510" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T11:24:07.073" Title="Subtask linking" Tags="&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8842" CreationDate="2013-03-06T13:04:42.267" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Strictly speaking, the PO shouldn't be changing stories in the current sprint.  For Scrum, best practice would be to abandon the entire sprint and start over with a new sprint planning session, new burndown etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other stories currently in progress can still be brought into the new sprint of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for timesheets - you should probably ask whoever consumes the timesheet info what they would like done.  At my place we'd still mark it as time spent working on that product/project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T13:04:42.267" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8843" CreationDate="2013-03-06T13:10:44.830" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming Task B1 has all Tasks A1, A2, ..., An as predecessors then you could set the summary/hammock Task A as the predecessor. This will have Task B1 starting after the last of Task A's subtasks completed. Note that if you have some subtask of Task A (call it Task Ax) that is NOT a predecessor for Task B1, and Task Ax completes AFTER all other subtasks of Task A, then Task B1 will start artificially late. So you will need to do a reality check on your schedule if you start linking things to hammock tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you enter subtasks under Task B in Project the software's logic should by default set dependencies between them along the lines of B1 is needed to start B2 is needed to start B3, provided you enter them in that order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T13:10:44.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8842" CreationDate="2013-03-06T13:53:14.420" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint Goal must not be changed during an iteration. Changes that would prevent the Scrum Team from reaching the Sprint Goal must terminate the sprint. The rest is just an accounting exercise that helps the organization understand the cost to the project for scope changes made mid-iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;When Scope Changes Mid-Sprint&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scope changes really require a conversation between the development team and the Product Owner, mediated by the Scrum Master. Scrum is designed such that scope changes should be made during the inspect-and-adapt inflection points at the start/end of every iteration, rather than mid-sprint. However, Scrum provides several mechanisms for managing just this sort of issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is certainly possible for the development team and the Product Owner to &lt;em&gt;cooperatively&lt;/em&gt; modify stories&amp;mdash;so long as the modifications don't prevent the Scrum Team from meeting the defined Sprint Goal for the iteration&amp;mdash;stories can't just disappear from the sprint. They &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be accounted for, as scope change must &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; remain visible and transparent to the entire organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the typical decision tree for how to handle removal of stories from a sprint:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The development team and the Product Owner may agree that the story can be incomplete without compromising the Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the story is already completed, then the story is &quot;done&quot; and counted in the velocity, whether or not the feature is used. This will correctly reflect the work completed within the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the story is not 100% complete in accordance with the &quot;definition of done,&quot; the story is simply &quot;not done&quot; and no story points are awarded in the burn-down. This will &lt;em&gt;correctly&lt;/em&gt; be a drag on velocity because it represents resources taken away from other stories.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Team may determine that the user story is essential to the Sprint Goal, which requires the Product Owner to call an Early Termination to the iteration and a return to Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Early Termination makes it explicit that the scope has changed radically enough to invalidate the plan for the current sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Early Termination &lt;em&gt;correctly&lt;/em&gt; adds visible overhead to the overall project. Dramatic scope change isn't free; that's why the process makes the cost of interrupting an explicit cost for which the Product Owner is responsible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can often skip the Sprint Review with an Early Termination, but don't skip the Sprint Retrospective or Backlog Grooming before returning to Sprint Planning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only stories that are complete per the &quot;definition of done&quot; will be counted in the aborted sprint's burn-down. Because the sprint is a non-standard length, this may be a blip in your data, but it still accurately reflects the amount of work completed in the iteration. This is why velocity should be  calculated as range based on trailing averages; it acts as a smoothing function that embraces even dramatic scope changes in the metric.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Educate About Change Control&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile frameworks embrace change. That doesn't mean change is free. As long as you use the framework properly, change will be &lt;em&gt;controlled&lt;/em&gt;, which is generally a key objective for any project management framework. As the Scrum Master, it's your job to educate the organization about how to use the framework to its best advantage. Hopefully, this answer will help with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T13:53:14.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8843" CreationDate="2013-03-06T13:56:46.950" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;While Doug is technically correct, I'd advise against building your logic at the hammock levels.  I personally load resources and logic at the leaf level of my schedule, the lowest level of decomposition.  While it might be logical in your head about how a summary level will work, the tool is only so smart and you cannot rely on its calculations based on that for things like critical path, or slack, or anything else.  The tool will literally expose issues that are not really there or hide issues that are there.  In fact, when you load things like FF or SS constraints, it too hoses up the schedule's calculations making the results either invalid or unreliable.  My firm has built a ton of add-ins to compensate for the tool's flaws and, even with these tools, we follow strict rules on how to load the schedule.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not look for an easy way out if you want your tool to really work for you.  If you don't care about that, use a spreadsheet and call it day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T13:56:46.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8848" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-03-06T14:52:19.337" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-03-06T14:52:19.337" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T14:52:19.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8849" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-03-06T14:52:19.337" Score="0" Body="Dealing with managing physically distributed project teams, often involving subteams from different organizations (e.g. offshore outsourcing)." OwnerUserId="5720" LastEditorUserId="5720" LastEditDate="2013-03-06T15:59:38.833" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T15:59:38.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8850" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-03-06T14:59:14.523" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mike Cohn's definition of Epic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Scrum epic is a large user story. There's no magic threshold at&#xA;  which we call a particular story an epic. It just means “big user&#xA;  story.” I like to think of this in relation to movies. If I tell you a&#xA;  particular movie was an “action-adventure movie” that tells you&#xA;  something about the movie. There's probably some car chases, probably&#xA;  some shooting, and so on. It tells you this even though there is no&#xA;  universal definition that we've agreed to follow, and that an&#xA;  action-adventure movie must contain at least three car chases, at&#xA;  least 45 bullets must be shot, and ….&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, “epic” is just a label we apply to a large story. Calling a story&#xA;  an epic can sometimes convey additional meaning. Suppose you ask me if&#xA;  I had time yesterday to write the user stories about the monthly&#xA;  reporting part of the system. “Yes,” I reply, “but they are mostly&#xA;  epics.” That tells you that while I did write them, I didn't get the&#xA;  chance to break most of them down into stories that are probably small&#xA;  enough to implement directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Links&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/stories-epics-and-themes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;User Stories, Epics and Themes&lt;/a&gt; by Mike Cohn&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2014/march/stories-versus-themes-versus-epics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Stories versus Themes versus Epics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_story#Story_map&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Part about Epic in &quot;User Story&quot; wiki article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-02T19:47:18.847" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T19:47:18.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8851" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-03-06T14:59:14.523" Score="0" Body="A big user story that takes longer than a single sprint/iteration, and thus is broken down into smaller user stories. Typically represent a high-level feature of the developed product." OwnerUserId="5720" LastEditorUserId="5720" LastEditDate="2013-03-06T16:24:26.380" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T16:24:26.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8843" CreationDate="2013-03-06T18:14:19.010" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Build the logic at the leaf level, but try to organize the work differently&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with David that you have to build the logic at the leaf level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number of the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) levels and the granularity of the tasks is mainly dependent on the size and nature of the project. But, it is also dependent on how the work is divided up among the resources. If you have extreme functional specialization in your team, with each team member doing a small slice of the work and handing it off to the next person, you have to track them all as separate tasks and manage their dependencies.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, let us say you have 2 people for the Designing and Modeling, If one of them does the Designing and hands it off to the other person to do the Modeling, you need to track them as separate tasks (especially if they don't get along with each other!). On the other hand, if you can get one resource to do the Designing and Modeling for 50 objects and the other resource the other 50, you can track them at a more aggregate level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T18:14:19.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8853" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-06T21:30:43.690" Score="5" ViewCount="3305" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;History&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work within a IT Team for my business that delivers (Develops &amp;amp; Unit Tests, QA, UAT and Releases) either system improvements or new systems to different areas of our business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team I work for have implemented various areas of the Scrum Framework over the last couple of years:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Roles: Product Owners, Scrum Master and Scrum Team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Artifacts: Product Backlog, Burndown Chart&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ceremonies: Daily Standups, Sprint Planning and Sprint Retrospectives&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Backlog is made-up of work that estimated using a Plan Driven system, whereby work is authorized. This is because we are one of many different teams within IT (Operations, Infrastructure etc) that don't use Scrum/Agile/Lean Frameworks and reply on this Plan Driven system to have System Change authorized. This system, explained is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Our Super Users log a change request.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We run a requirements workshop to get a &quot;sense&quot; of how big the job is.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The change request is then assigned to our &lt;strong&gt;1st authorization stage&lt;/strong&gt; which is made up of business/IT staff who either authorize it or reject it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is then assigned to us to quote. We have to quote based on hours which translate into pounds it will cost them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The change request is then assigned back to the business to either authorize or reject the quote.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the quote is authorized, then the change request is assigned to another committee to say &quot;yes&quot; or &quot;no&quot; based on current IT priorites&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as you can see, alot of committe's and upfront design before we even get for us to add the item to our Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My Question (Finally!)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to introduce better estimating and more efficient requirements capturing, which should lead to better PLanning. Now i wanted to use Planning Poker, User Stories and Story Points with a proper Sprint Board and to capture the required data (story points) to measure our Velocity. My constraints are they must fit within this Plan Driven system described earlier. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm trying to ask really is can i use Story Points within this system as we need to quote upfront Hours for a Backlog item during the Plan Driven system. Is there a way of using Story Points AND Hours together? Reasons for wanting to use these Scrum parts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Planning Poker - Improve our group estimation process in the negotiation of better estimates. Trying to reduce the &quot;larger than life&quot; characters from influencing our group estimations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User Stories- I like the idea of breaking out our Epics into small concrete pieces of work which we can decompose later into tasks. This should help our QA exercise greatly and help us see the forest from the trees in terms of breaking out backlog up into smaller shunks so we can run smaller iterations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story Points - This makes sense to me as a good way of measuring our velocity without using Ideal Days and getting bogged down with thinking about time when measuring effort for stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3245" LastActivityDate="2016-09-06T14:40:52.080" Title="Story Points to Ideal Days" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;planning-poker&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8854" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8859" CreationDate="2013-03-06T23:37:45.180" Score="4" ViewCount="5066" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like my emails to be perfect, especially the minutes that summerise the meetings we have, I understand that it is obviously preferred to send it through right after the meeting, or even an hour late at the most, but what about the next day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I do end up sending it through the next day, do I have to apologize in the email for the late send?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5551" LastEditorUserId="5551" LastEditDate="2013-03-07T07:18:44.957" LastActivityDate="2013-03-08T21:07:24.263" Title="Is there anything wrong with sending meeting minutes late?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8853" CreationDate="2013-03-07T00:55:56.407" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is always a temptation to map story points to hours (or ultimately days). I would recommend that you avoid that mapping as story points are a relative scale of effort that has nothing to do with hours in your estimation process. For example if you have a baseline story and then all story points are measured against that baseline a storypoint of &quot;2&quot; means that this story is 2x harder than your baseline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That all said, the best approach is to do an actual sprint and then calculate the team velocity. You can then use actual data and measurements (story points left, average story points added after each sprint, actual team velocity) to calculate the &quot;estimated sprints to completion&quot;. If you do 2 week sprints and then your estimated sprints to completion is 10, then it should take you 20 weeks for the project to get done. After about 3-4 sprints, this number gets more and more accurate. I like this method since it gives you the most accurate way to &quot;map&quot; story points to time. The downside is that management usually wants a time estimate up front and in your Plan Driven system you will need to do something else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that you have a team velocity already, this is not a problem. At step #4 above, convert the work into the number of sprints (or if the request is small, the percent of a sprint). For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work item estimate: 20 story points&#xA;Team Velocity: 100 &#xA;Sprint time: 2 weeks&#xA;Cost for sprint: $10,000&#xA;Cost for the 20 story points: $2,000&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not a perfect system, but it should work. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, have a look at Kanban since the Plan Driven system you describe would work well with it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5722" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T00:55:56.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8853" CreationDate="2013-03-07T10:20:06.767" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would avoid at all costs mapping points to hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tackled this previously by using a session similar to your early requirements workshop to break the work up into reasonably large epics (usually workflow steps from a customer perspective).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We'll then estimate those chunks in weeks of effort giving a ranged estimate and noting any assumptions we're making.  Where the range given by the team is large we'll drill further into risks to try and uncover where the uncertainty lies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The total range as well as the assumptions and risks can then be presented back to the committee.  If there is too much uncertainty (the range is too big) for them to commit to the project, you can then ask for time to investigate some of the risks and assumptions to see if you can get some more certainty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This lets you get an up front cost estimate and makes it really clear to all involved what (foreseeable) things will affect that cost without going to the level of creating all your stories up front or having to convert from points to hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the output of similar sessions my team did a while ago:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ux4IN.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/z7Qbf.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you might want to see how amenable the committee would be to changing the process slightly.  We now ask the people who sign off budget for work to tell us, based on the expected benefits of the work, what the maximum they would be willing to invest would be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tech team can then look at the work and decide whether we'd be able to meet the core requirements with that investment.  This type of benefits led sign off feels more healthy to me as it avoids fixing the scope up front, and helps focus everyone on the final objective rather than the detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastEditorUserId="1185" LastEditDate="2013-03-07T10:31:27.233" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T10:31:27.233" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8854" CreationDate="2013-03-07T11:55:18.190" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Minutes are a record of a meeting.  It shouldn't trigger anything.  There should be another mechanism where, if an action was identified, work is triggered.  Late is by definition.  What is your project defining for an on time delivery of minutes for that particular meeting?  You're late when you go beyond that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T11:55:18.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8854" CreationDate="2013-03-07T12:04:52.123" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Quick answer:&lt;/strong&gt; It depends. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Frequency:&lt;/strong&gt; If you're having a daily meeting, sending the minutes one day later make it useless. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Action Points:&lt;/strong&gt; If you're dealing with several people that will follow the actions discussed during the meeting, better sending the minutes before having the other people doing anything. Otherwise, if the attendees carry on with the wrong actions, they'll be able to tell that these actions where what they had understood.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Attendance:&lt;/strong&gt; Depending on the level of control the attendants will want over the outcomes of the meeting, better send the minutes right away instead of having them thinking that someone could have not understood something. It applies especially if you have senior members in the meeting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Meeting objective:&lt;/strong&gt; Most of the above are based on the assumption that there will be actions as one of the outcomes of the meeting, and I believe that's the objective of most of the meetings. If, however, the meeting was to discuss something that won't have any further discussion or action to be accomplished (a closing project meeting, for instance), then it's not strictly required to have the minutes right away... but important to have the minutes for future reference.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, thinking of this question from another perspective:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;- Why would minute take longer than some minutes to be written?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that, as long as the meeting &lt;strong&gt;topics&lt;/strong&gt; are clear &lt;strong&gt;before&lt;/strong&gt; the meeting, then the minutes will be a matter of adding details to the topics covered, potentially adding the decided actions to be taken and setting responsibles for each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if when the meeting starts up the topics to be covered aren't defined, then the minutes will require much more effort to be written, and thus taking more time. But in this case, you already have a problem before the meeting, not only after.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T12:04:52.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8853" CreationDate="2013-03-07T12:58:17.920" Score="10" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story points measure effort; hours measure time. They are not interchangeable. You're going to be better off estimating man-hours, ideal hours, or calendar days from the beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum may not be the right fit for you, either. Kanban or Lean might be a better approach given your IT Governance constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Story Points Don't Fit Your Organization&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your organizational process is a poor fit for story points. You aren't allowed to use relative measures for planning, so story points are not going to be a useful tool. While user stories may remain a useful tool for capturing requirements at a high level, the necessity of estimating in hours and pounds may mean that you will actually need a finer-grained work breakdown structure (WBS) than user stories are intended to provide by themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;An Alternative Estimation Approach&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this is to say that you should strongly consider something more like the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define a change as a user story to capture the high-level requirement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Break the story down into tasks, with an associated time-based estimate for each task. Whether to use ideal hours, calendar days, or some other time metric is entirely up to you; some experimentation may be in order.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Submit the WBS and the time-based estimate through your change control process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even in Scrum, stories are eventually broken down into tasks that are (usually) 4-16 wall-clock hours each. While this granularity can vary, it is part of the control mechanism for determining slippage within a sprint. Since stories are either &quot;done&quot; or &quot;not done,&quot; each task needs a time-box, and 1/2 day to 2 days is generally a manageable size for such boxes. Your mileage may vary, but it's a decent starting point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Scrum May Not Fit Your Organization&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your &quot;Product Backlog&quot; is really an internally-driven Change Request Log, with outside approval of the estimates. While Scrum certainly provides for input from the team &lt;em&gt;through&lt;/em&gt; the Product Owner to the Product Backlog, the process you describe is entirely upside-down from a Scrum perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not you're using story points, it actually sounds like your particular organization would benefit more from a different project management framework. While you may still be able to use time boxes to manage your WBS, I don't think Scrum &lt;em&gt;as a process framework&lt;/em&gt; fits the way your organization does its planning or controls deviations from schedule. Of necessity, you will find yourself mapping internal processes to external IT Governance with such regularity that it may not necessarily buy you anything to use a different framework internally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an alternative, Kanban might offer you an internal process for managing work with a reliable cadence that isn't based on time boxing. In my opinion, Kanban offers a framework that fits better when work is on-going or demand-driven, and has a tighter focus on team cadence than on time-boxing. You'll still have to remap your process when interacting with your IT Governance framework, but it may be a more sustainable internal process for you than Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not necessarily suggesting that you drop Scrum, adopt Kanban, or switch to waterfall. I'm really just suggesting that you take a long, hard look at your project management process, and decide if it's really working for you. If not, find an alternative that fits better!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T12:58:17.920" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8854" CreationDate="2013-03-07T20:25:14.507" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like these are status meetings and the notes are a type of status report.  If this is the case, the time table for the notes is determined by the urgency of the issues discussed.  Gauging from the request to have the notes sent out right after the meeting it seems like there may be pretty urgent issues to deal with and a set of stakeholders who feel that they need to know about those issues in short order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under those conditions, minutes are not the best way to get the information out in a timely fashion. Consider creating some sort of categorization scheme for issues that are discussed. Ones that require immediate action or those which people feel they need to be alerted to quickly should have a different reporting process than less urgent items.  Well crafted minutes are best suited for keeping people up to speed on what went on in the meeting, as opposed to being a trigger for dealing with urgent issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T20:25:14.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8864" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8868" CreationDate="2013-03-08T11:07:38.620" Score="5" ViewCount="358" Body="&lt;h2&gt;How can I politely ask a customer to participate in the design of the deliverables before we begin work?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have received a content update and brochure design job from client. Unfortunately it is so difficult to close this project because the client never gives us a clear direction of what we should put in the documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He has sent us a lot of sample documents/brochure from other companies in similar industries. He asked us to follow the contents in the documents and send back the draft to him for review after we are done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each brochure has very different contents, even though they are for the same product. For example, the brochure from company A might have a pricing section, while the brochure from company B might have technical specifications. What we do is include all the things from all the brochures and put it in a PDF that we send back to him. The next day, he asks us to redo it because he saw another brochure from company C. So we repeat the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have also sent him a Word document with all the contents and asked him to change the wording, removing anything that he doesn't want. Unfortunately, he just ignores it and asks us to design the brochure in PDF and put all the content inside first. After he sees the design, then he will decide what should change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure whether other clients on similar projects do this, but this is the first time I have encountered this type of customer. Going back and forth is really wasting a lot of time and money. How can I politely ask the customer to make a decision first on what he wants in the document?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5020" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-03-09T17:18:23.700" LastActivityDate="2013-03-09T17:18:23.700" Title="How can I complete a project with unfixed requirements from the client?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;clients&gt;&lt;scope&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8864" CreationDate="2013-03-08T11:55:15.780" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Marketing materials like this is more of a 'you know when you see it.'  The development of this type of deliverable is a back and forth process.  You elicit what you can, you design and build, you test it, you go back and make changes.  I would challenge you in the waste of time and money opinion.  Doing it a more controlled way may save time and money, but you will likely end up with something less than useful and a customer who will hire someone else in the future.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully, you are contracted in a time and materials structure, because this type of work is consistent with that type of contract.  If you are not, lessons learned.  Don't sign that type of contract again for this type of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-03-08T11:55:15.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8864" CreationDate="2013-03-08T13:42:32.333" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've encountered similar problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically your client has only a very hazy idea of what he wants and would rather have someone read his mind than articulate what he wants up front. In the long run your team will be demoralized by this kind of a situation, and this could push good people out of the door to work that is more challenging/stimulating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how do you push back against this? As David implies it is easier to do this on a time &amp;amp; materials contract as your customer is wasting his money. Every time he asks for something give him a cost estimate to drive that message home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are on a fixed cost type of contract you will hopefully have a well defined statement of work. Stick to that and if your customer wants to move out of scope by a fraction of an inch give him a cost estimate for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your contract is fixed cost and your statement of work is too loosely defined you have two choices: continue as is or back out of the contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-03-08T13:42:32.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8854" CreationDate="2013-03-08T21:07:24.263" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read the answers here and they are great and make good points, but I'm still going to take my bet on it and say that you should send them as quick as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides all the reasons for doing so that have been already mentioned (you can see them on &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8859/2391&quot;&gt;Tiago Cardoso's answer&lt;/a&gt;), I'm going to say that since your project may be advancing directly after the meeting -- specially if there were action items assigned -- you take the risk of your notes being outdated at the moment they are sent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have had this problem myself, and while we all want our mails to be perfect, we also want our projects to run as quick as possible. When you get that velocity and your own emails start to need corrections and addendums so that whoever reads it understands what happened between the minute and the present moment, you realize that this is creating unnecessary work for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is then to &lt;strong&gt;send your minutes as quick as possible&lt;/strong&gt;. You don't need them to be perfect, but to be clear and easy to understand, as a good summary of what happened there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: A reason for not doing it is to let yourself settle down and send a good outline of the meeting, specially if it happened to be agitated or controversial. I would say that the solution for this is to keep your professionalism and objectivity when sending them, rather than have it &quot;happen&quot; to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2391" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2013-03-08T21:07:24.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8864" CreationDate="2013-03-09T17:05:19.447" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Fixed Requirements + Change Control = Managed Scope&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You define two key project management issues, both of which ultimately relate to scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[H]e...asked us to design the brochure in pdf and put all the content inside first. After he see the design then only he will decide what should he change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a problem caused by starting a project with unfixed requirements, leading to undefined scope. You're also missing a clearly-delineated design phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an analogy, no one in their right minds would say &quot;Build me a skyscraper, and when it's finished then I'll take a look at it and decide if I like the building design.&quot; Regardless of your methodology, you need a design phase that produces a fixed scope with clear requirements, or you can never reach the finish line.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tomorrow, he ask us to redo it because he saw another brochure from company C. So we replace the content again and sent back to him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a problem with your Change Control Process&amp;mdash;or rather, with your lack of one. There's no formal process to manage changes in scope, and no cost to the client in change requirements repeatedly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you didn't address any of these process or pricing issues in the contract, then you obviously need to fix your contracting process. On other other hand, you don't really have a project management problem at the moment, even though it looks like one. What you have is a &lt;em&gt;political&lt;/em&gt; problem that is ultimately the responsibility of your CFO or contracting officer to address.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Political Options&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have limited choices when you have responsibility but no authority. They include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use your influence with the customer to define a new process that benefits everyone, with clear financial and functional incentives for the client.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use your influence within the organization to get the responsible executives to address the issue with the client.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Educate your organization on the costs to the business of performing work without adequate financial or process controls.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work with your contracting officer to define a better process for the next client.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many organizations with toxic cultures, you will eventually be held accountable for the failure of this project even though you are not really empowered to change the underlying process. As a professional, your best option is to ensure that the process, including its costs and inefficiencies, are clearly visible to all parties and to communicate the alternatives constructively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's it. There's no silver bullet. Communicate, educate, report, and provide options...that's the limit of the project management role. Keep that firmly in mind at all times, and you'll sleep better at night.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-03-09T17:05:19.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8869" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-10T17:19:04.367" Score="15" ViewCount="26571" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read many books about Scrum, blogs and academic articles. Though, all of them dodge from explicitly acknowledging this question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who is responsible for the project's money?  Why is this person responsible versus someone else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5484" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-03-10T17:33:43.180" LastActivityDate="2020-06-23T18:10:06.557" Title="In Scrum, who is responsible for the project's budget?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;budget&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8869" CreationDate="2013-03-11T09:44:26.377" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is project owner's responsibility for the project's budget in SCRUM. He has understanding to the capacity of his team from the team's velocity, and he has the power to increase/decrease manpower, set up another SCRUM, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5305" LastActivityDate="2013-03-11T09:44:26.377" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8869" CreationDate="2013-03-11T13:12:55.287" Score="15" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Who is responsible for the project's money?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is responsible for directing the use of the project's budget, while the funding source of the project varies by organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Funding a Project&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Projects are funded in organization-specific ways. Usually, a project sponsor gets funding from a steering committee or the CFO. In other cases, a project may be funded out of a specific department's budget. In all cases, there is ultimately a budgetary authority that authorizes predefined or ongoing expenditures for a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any well-run organization has a budget process. This process includes the delegation of formal authority to someone in the organization to manage that budget. On projects using the Scrum framework, that person &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Managing Resources via Product Backlog&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, the Product Owner is responsible for prioritizing the deliverables. By extension, this makes the Product Owner responsible for the allocation of resources for the project. Let's look at a concrete example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a recent project, there were two stories. The first story was a customer-facing feature, while the second was an infrastructure story for building a continuous integration server. Both stories represented a cost to the project, but the CI story required more up-front expenditures (i.e. server equipment, co-location fees, and ongoing maintenance costs) to be charged against the project's budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prioritization encompasses budget management. In this case, should the Product Owner spend project capital to buy servers for the project, or should he allocate more of the finite budget towards labor for manual testing? He has to make choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he de-prioritizes the CI story, the project may need more manual testing resources, or perhaps fewer stories will be accepted into each sprint by the team to reflect its reduced testing capacity. Higher labor requirements can impact scheduling and long-term staffing costs for the project, but might be acceptable trade-offs in exchange for being able to ship revenue-generating features at the end of a near-term sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this particular case, the Product Owner chose to prioritize the feature story and de-prioritize the CI story. &lt;strong&gt;In effect, the PO managed the budget &lt;em&gt;through&lt;/em&gt; the Product Backlog.&lt;/strong&gt; This is the primary vehicle the Product Owner has for managing the project's budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;References&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you have correctly pointed out, it's hard to find a concrete reference to this budget responsibility, perhaps because most practice guides focus on the Scrum Master or Development Team roles in Scrum. For more on the Product Owner role, including at least 12 specific references to to the Product Owner's responsibility for budgets, see &lt;em&gt;Agile Product Management with Scrum: Creating Products that Customers Love&lt;/em&gt; by Roman Pichler.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-03-11T13:12:55.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8873" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8877" CreationDate="2013-03-11T13:57:42.317" Score="4" ViewCount="3000" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have come to a team that is just starting to implement scrum.  One reality that we are going to face is what to do when an emergency occurs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, we have a system that started failing  while we were inside of our sprint.  It's a critical system, so triageing the failure had to become the top priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's how I've done it in the past:&#xA;(note, we were not using any sort of electronic scrum board or burndown, it was on paper and stickies):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wrote the fire up on a sticky that was a different color than the planned items&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Got an activity-point vote as soon as the team understood the problem well enough to vote it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If necessary, removed an item from the sprint backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Updated the paper burn-down to reflect the change.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Noted unplanned work in an Excel spreadsheet that we used for tracking our velocity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this shop, we are trying to use TFS 2012 and the Scrum 2 template (with the web-based scrum board and burn down).  Is there some guidance on how to notate this using the template?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5751" LastActivityDate="2013-03-12T15:16:58.127" Title="What is a good way to handle unplanned work with Scrum and tfs Scrum 2.1 template?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8869" CreationDate="2013-03-11T14:56:38.960" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;The Product Owner (PO) is responsible for managing the budget in Scrum&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;The Product Owner (PO) is the person responsible for managing the budget (money) in Scrum teams. The PO manages the scope, priorities and coordinates with the business stakeholders to make sure the project is delivered on time and within budget.&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a couple of references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Methodology: &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170304064210/http://scrummethodology.com/scrum-product-owner/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;In Scrum, the Product Owner is the one person responsible for...to make sure the release is developed by the deadline and within budget.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Reference Card: &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://scrumreferencecard.com/ScrumReferenceCard.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Single person responsible for maximizing the return on investment (ROI) of the development effort.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to your question on why, there are two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Software development, is not a deterministic process such as, for example, a construction project. Software development has uncertainty and it is difficult to plan ahead. Also, the cost to repair a mistake or change direction is orders of magnitude less than, say, in construction or manufacturing. So, command-and-control methods don't work. You need empirical process control.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Traditional project management doesn't like change. &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;But Agile/Scrum teams welcome changing requirements, even late in development.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result of these significant differences, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/topics/agile-project-management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the traditional Project Manager's roles have been rearranged in Scrum to make it more manageable and to give the team the best chance for success&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-21T16:49:47.567" LastActivityDate="2020-06-21T16:49:47.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8873" CreationDate="2013-03-11T20:47:46.990" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;You essentially follow the same process in TFS&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wrote the fire up on a sticky that was a different color than the&#xA;  planned items&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can write up a new story (Product Backlog Item in TFS) in the backlog for this fire fighting work. It won't be in a different color - but, apply the top-most priority to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Got an activity-point vote as soon as the team understood the problem&#xA;  well enough to vote it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the same way, get the team to estimate the points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If necessary, removed an item from the sprint backlog&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the same way add this story to the sprint and, if necessary, remove an item from the already scheduled work in the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Updated the paper burn-down to reflect the change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The built-in burn-down report in TFS shows the task hours. &lt;a href=&quot;http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/tfsreporting/thread/698824ae-da6a-44be-831f-24a6dafe5275&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;If you want the burn-down in terms of story points, you have to create a custom report.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Noted unplanned work in an Excel spreadsheet that we used for tracking&#xA;  our velocity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The built-in velocity report will show completed points - except that there is not a way to factor the disruption to the sprint. If this is a big change, you can stop the sprint and start a new one with the revised priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2013-03-12T15:16:58.127" LastActivityDate="2013-03-12T15:16:58.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8873" CreationDate="2013-03-11T22:21:33.407" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Scope of Answer&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Others will hopefully address your Team Foundation Server template question. My answer is focused more on the issue of how you should handle the interruption from a &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; standpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Abnormal or Early Termination&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this case, we have a system that started failing while we were inside of our sprint. It's a critical system, so triageing (&lt;em&gt;sic&lt;/em&gt;) the failure had to become the top priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is exactly the use case for an Early Termination of a sprint and a return to Sprint Planning. Unless you already had spare capacity in your sprint which could be allocated to your triage or break/fix process, it is likely that this interruption (and the task-switching that goes with it) has impacted your team's productivity for the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By all means, perform the business-critical work necessary to get your systems up and running again. However, &lt;em&gt;immediately&lt;/em&gt; afterwards the entire Scrum team (including the Product Owner) should assess the sprint to see if your Sprint Goal has been compromised. If you can no longer meet the goal, or if assessing the impact to the sprint requires the team to re-estimate or refactor the Sprint Backlog, then you should have the Product Owner terminate your sprint and return to Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you say that your team is new to Scrum, the team will be better off calling for Early Termination on principle. Re-planning is the safer (and framework-sanctioned) route for what you've experienced. Seat-of-your-pants adjustments to the Sprint Backlog and on-the-fly analysis of your Sprint Goal are adventuresome options sometimes undertaken by experienced Scrum teams with a high tolerance for schedule risk, but I certainly wouldn't recommend them as best practices to a newly-formed Scrum team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-03-11T22:21:33.407" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="829" CreationDate="2013-03-12T19:22:33.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In case somebody is still looking for a personal kanban solution, check this &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/carlosblanco/bugs.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://github.com/carlosblanco/bugs.html&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was inspired by Simple Kanban that somebody else already posted above. It can just be dropped into your code repo. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5759" LastActivityDate="2013-03-12T19:22:33.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8879" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-13T09:11:20.917" Score="4" ViewCount="612" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the past I've studied about implementing Lean Six Sigma methodologies, but the literature and the use cases were related to product-oriented environment. Can Lean Six Sigma methodologies be implemented in a service-oriented environment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5763" LastEditorUserId="22766" LastEditDate="2016-05-23T08:51:38.393" LastActivityDate="2019-05-31T10:31:03.237" Title="Can Lean Six Sigma be implemented in a Service-Oriented Company?" Tags="&lt;lean&gt;&lt;6-sigma&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3414" CreationDate="2013-03-13T13:50:50.350" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider this simple example which you can test in Microsoft Project to see how it works practically. To explain the use of a start to finish (SF) dependency I will also explain how it differs from a FS dependency&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have two tasks, &lt;strong&gt;Prepare for Store Opening&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Opening Day&lt;/strong&gt;. Opening day is planned for a Friday and you need 2 days to prepare. The task Opening Day cannot move and must happen on the Friday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finish to Start:&#xA;Prepare for Store Opening runs over Wednesday and Thursday and is linked (FS) to Opening Day which is on the Friday. If you realise that you need 4 days to prepare and change the task &lt;strong&gt;Prepare for Store Opening&lt;/strong&gt; duration to 4 days it will push the &lt;strong&gt;Opening day&lt;/strong&gt; task into the following week which you cannot have happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start to Finish:&#xA;The same scenario, you set the tasks up using a SF dependency and then realise that you need 4 days instead of 2 days to prepare. With the SF relationship, when you update the duration to 4 days it keeps the Opening Day on the Friday and rather moves the Prepare for Store Opening task &lt;strong&gt;start date earlier&lt;/strong&gt; as it adds to the duration. This will mean that you now need to start preparations on the Monday in order to be on time for the Opening Day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5766" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T13:50:50.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8881" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8883" CreationDate="2013-03-13T14:44:37.287" Score="0" ViewCount="121" Body="&lt;p&gt;My current project is to roll-out a new technology product throughout my company.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA; I want to come up with a website that will give a high level insight to the roll-out. I don't know how should I do this or what content should I consider in putting up there! I am thinking on the lines of having some kind of a interface between my team and the customers(end users) regarding the whole roll-out phase, like what is coming, how is it going to be different, what are the expectations from the customers, incentives to go this path, tracking the progress of roll-out, things like this.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I wonder how do the big companies do it when they are about to roll-out a big product or something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I have a new product and am looking for content ideas to put up on the web-site to capture the whole roll-out process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5589" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-10-31T13:06:42.873" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T13:06:42.873" Title="Critical communications during product roll outs" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;roll-out&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8881" CreationDate="2013-03-13T16:39:56.540" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;With that many unknowns I would try a Lean Startup approach where you decide on a very small MVP or value delivery, make that, and then test your ASSUMPTION that they will even use it or find value in it. You will probably fail or get a lot wrong if you just go and make something and then expect that they will see value in it because you do. Build it incrementally. Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T16:39:56.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8881" CreationDate="2013-03-13T17:45:12.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an entire consulting practice that focuses on these issues called Organizational Change Management.  There are methods used within this practice area that enable targeted communications to stakeholders throughout the entire change, including opening up two-way channels and ways to include stakeholders in some of the decision making and / or development...where it makes sense.  Typically, you would have a team (depending on the size and complexity of the change) come in and conduct a stakeholder analysis, which is used to identify who is out there that might be impacted, how they will be impacted, what they need to hear, what you need to hear from them, how often, and what channels.  Based on this analysis, this team would build communications and schedule delivery.  The channels could include not only a web site as you suggest but newsletters, town hall meetings, focus groups, mass e-mails, posters, postcards, and on and on.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a lot to this practice area.  If it is a big change, the least costly thing you could do is invest in this effort.  It's expensive...but cheap compared to the alternative of significant resistance, sabotage, or just being ignored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T17:45:12.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8838" CreationDate="2013-03-13T20:13:36.707" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Cumulative Flow Charts?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Ben said, looks like you may be looking for the Cumulative Flow Charts. They do have sprints along the horizontal axis and the size of work items along the vertical axis. However, each colored area will represent a state. They are used by Agile/Scrum teams to identify bottlenecks and monitor the health of the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.targetprocess.com/blog/2010/02/cumulative-flow-chart-in-kanban-real-usage-example.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here is an example of how to use it to identify a specific bottleneck.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.belatrixsf.com/scrum-cumulative-flow-chart-analysis/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here is a good example of how to use it to monitor the health of the process.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure your chart is even valid. Week 1 (blue color) runs from Week 1 to 6???&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T20:13:36.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8885" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8887" CreationDate="2013-03-14T08:38:05.183" Score="1" ViewCount="983" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using Lean methodologies, I have to optimize both product and people flow in an old printing house. The building has 3 floors with two elevators on one side. This printing house uses a &quot;Soviet-designed&quot; industrial building, which means there are lots of corridors and every machine has its own room. The final result of the analysis will likely be to break down some walls, design some working cells, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I draw a Spaghetti Diagram for both product and people flow in this environment? I have 3 other people that I can assign to this task. Since there are lots of different rooms, the use of cameras to record movements of products and people would be useless. What else could I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5773" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-03-14T20:34:19.270" LastActivityDate="2013-03-14T20:34:19.270" Title="How can I draw a Spaghetti Diagram of an industrial space with lots of different rooms?" Tags="&lt;lean&gt;&lt;process-engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8783" CreationDate="2013-03-14T12:22:37.260" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the deadlines &lt;strong&gt;are no the critical path&lt;/strong&gt; (which I assume most of them would be) then I would ask people to commit to those dates. Anything on the critical path is important enough to get commitment for.  There may be exceptions where the task and deadlines are based on estimates in which case people might not want to connect fully, but at least you want them to understand the urgency of delivering on those deadlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5766" LastActivityDate="2013-03-14T12:22:37.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8885" CreationDate="2013-03-14T13:11:26.207" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Walk the Process&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't be lazy; walk the process. You're trying to find a technological solution (e.g. cameras) rather than just following the current process to build your diagram. Especially for deeper detail levels such as hand-tracking, you will find it difficult to accurately identify waste without actually performing the process and getting a first-person feel for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pick a product increment and &lt;em&gt;walk&lt;/em&gt; through your process with it, recording whatever information you want for your diagram as you go. Simply asking people about their process or trying to track process flow by proxy can only result in a proxy result. Garbage in, garbage out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Some Related Links&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While none of the links address your question head-on, the following links show some of the activities that you need to perform while walking the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.six-sigma-material.com/Spaghetti-Diagram.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.six-sigma-material.com/Spaghetti-Diagram.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leankaizen.co.uk/spaghetti-diagram.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.leankaizen.co.uk/spaghetti-diagram.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second link, in particular, seems to address itself more fully towards tracking transport waste. Your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-03-14T13:11:26.207" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8879" CreationDate="2013-03-14T14:26:39.667" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Convergys reported successful Six Sigma implementation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Convergys is a customer care company with call centers in many countries. I happen to know that they implemented Six Sigma in their call centers (service-oriented environment) in India and reported major savings. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goleansixsigma.com/lean-six-sigma-success-stories-in-the-high-technology-industry/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here is a list of Lean Six Sigma success stories&lt;/a&gt;, including the Convergys' one. You might want to check these out and see whether any of it gives you additional info for the service-oriented environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2013-03-14T19:33:05.770" LastActivityDate="2013-03-14T19:33:05.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8843" CreationDate="2013-03-15T11:24:07.073" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe grouping tasks in products instead of tasks could work for you.&#xA;What I am thinking is, instead of having:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Design&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Design product 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Design product 2&#xA;....&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Model&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Model product 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Model product 2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product 1&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Model&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product 2&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Model&#xA;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could copy and paste the Product tasks with the dependence, making it easy to add a new one. Maybe resources can be assigned before pasting, so you always have a designer for design and modeller for model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I completely agree on assigning resources at leaf level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't know if this approach can work for you, but this is how I would do it (with the information I have).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5694" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T11:24:07.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8890" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-15T14:27:47.410" Score="2" ViewCount="10250" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using MS Project 2010, if you click Project-&gt;Reports, you have a number of very useful reports, but it seems like the only thing you can do is print them.  Can you save them to a file? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-15T12:44:00.973" LastActivityDate="2018-11-15T12:44:00.973" Title="Saving an MS Project Report to a file" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8892" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-15T18:07:35.233" Score="14" ViewCount="833" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a Scrum Master for two different teams. The product owner of one of the teams left recently, so we have a new product owner. The team is fairly experienced with the product. Since the product owner is new to the product she is relying far too much on the team to come up with user stories and also slicing the stories from epics. In the last two to three sprints she has consumed lot of time from the team by scheduling meetings with them, which is resulting in the loss of valuable time for the developers in completing their user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I handle the situation as a Scrum Master so that I can address the following problems?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What should I do to ensure that the product owner does not eat away the valuable time of the developers?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What should I do to make sure so that our product owner becomes effective and be self sufficient so that she will not overly rely on the team?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How should I tell the product owner not to interfere with the team on daily basis?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do I tell her this without affecting her morale and also without affecting the relationship with the team and with me?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5576" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-03-16T19:37:40.337" LastActivityDate="2013-10-24T17:51:28.913" Title="Product Owner depending too much on the team" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8892" CreationDate="2013-03-16T03:50:38.673" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) Accept the fact that the PO needs help and that the developers are the most qualified people to help&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The product owner and the developers together form a team. Nobody's time is more or less important than another. They work together to develop software. The team can't be expected to use their valuable time effectively if they don't have good stories, so it is in the interest of everyone that they work &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; the product owner to help her create the stories until such time as she's able to do it herself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) Schedule more story workshops at appropriate times&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Context switching is the enemy of productivity. To avoid too many context switches for story development, schedule an extra story workshop or two. When you do so, schedule them during the time that the team is least productive. For some that means first thing in the morning. For other teams that might mean right after lunch when their bellies are full and they haven't yet gotten back into their flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3) Keep your eye on the prize&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, your goal isn't to uphold the principles of scrum and to protect the developers &quot;valuable time&quot;, it is to help the team to work effectively together. Even more importantly, the goal of the team is to develop quality software. If they need to work with the product owner for a sprint or two to reach that goal, why is that a bad thing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3189" LastEditorUserId="3189" LastEditDate="2013-03-16T04:09:05.550" LastActivityDate="2013-03-16T04:09:05.550" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6512" CreationDate="2013-03-16T04:16:14.803" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;With a team that young, consider temporarily moving one of your senior people on the &quot;good&quot; team to the new team. This person can then help mentor the young team and deflect most of the support issues until they can become self-sustaining. Losing one developer full time is better than the whole team being distracted several times a day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3189" LastActivityDate="2013-03-16T04:16:14.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8892" CreationDate="2013-03-16T20:32:47.267" Score="11" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the immediate future, you need to spend more time working with the Product Owner and less time focusing on the development team. You and the Product Owner both need to spend a couple of sprints refining your roles and learning to work together, and you both need to gain a better understanding of your respective roles in the Scrum process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Fix Your Adversarial Relationship&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is part of the Scrum Team, not an outsider. You &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; an engaged Product Owner; many Scrum Teams would be lucky to have the problem of an overly-engaged one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, before you do anything else, make sure you understand that the Product Owner is an active member of the team, and that &lt;em&gt;she&lt;/em&gt; is ultimately responsible for setting priorities for the project. The development team sets the pace, while the Product Owner defines what should be done at that pace. If she chooses to allocate sprint capacity to additional planning, training, or story spikes, that's her call. &lt;em&gt;Your&lt;/em&gt; job is to make sure her priorities are clearly visible within the project, and communicated clearly within the team and throughout the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Involve Yourself More&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master, you have a number of responsibilities. One of them is educating Product Owners on the role they play in the process. Another is actively working with the Product Owner to perform Backlog Grooming to ensure the Product Backlog is in good shape for Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some ways you can make sure you're holding up your end of the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Education is Needed&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your Product Owner is new to the Scrum process, or not engaging properly within the framework, this is an educational task that &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; are responsible for. Take the time to talk with her about backlogs, sprints, estimation, and the various meetings and artifacts that go along with Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, you want to take some time to explain about time-boxing, and about the appropriate meetings for discussing new user stories, decomposing epics, estimating stories, and the other things that she wants to do. The things she wants seem reasonable to me; it may just be the fact that she wants to do them outside the framework that's causing you difficulties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She may also need some advice or guidance on how to develop user stories, or on how to prioritize them in the Product Backlog. &lt;em&gt;You&lt;/em&gt; should be providing that advice, and spending some additional time during Backlog Grooming in particular to make sure that &lt;em&gt;her&lt;/em&gt; questions are being addressed properly within the framework. The Product Owner and the Scrum Master must be active collaborators, so step up to the plate in this area in particular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Adjust Your Velocity Expectations&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that on-boarding new team members will have an impact on your velocity. That's fine; it's all part of the process. Adjust your velocity expectations accordingly, and make sure you communicate about the adjustments clearly and non-antagonistically with the Product Owner. It is probably more important for the Product Owner to get up to speed with the team and with Scrum than it is to maintain an artificial velocity level for its own sake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of your role is to communicate effectively about velocity, including what it measures, what may impact it, and how changes to the team's velocity may impact project schedules. Your role is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to control the velocity, but rather to report on it and help the organization to use the metric effectively in its planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A new team member, especially a new Product Owner or Scrum Master, will have a big impact on project velocity. As the Scrum Master, it's your job to make this impact transparent and visible, and to help set everyone's expectations accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Leverage Backlog Grooming and Sprint Planning&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your Product Owner isn't getting enough information, or not understanding how to get the right information within the Scrum framework, then it seems likely that &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; are dropping the ball during Backlog Grooming, and communicating poorly about when decomposition and estimation should be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Backlog Grooming is the defined meeting for the Scrum Master and the Product Owner (and sometimes the entire team) to discuss the Product Backlog. Identifying which stories are epics, which stories will probably need decomposition or refinement before being accepted into a sprint, or discussing the priority of backlog items are all constructive topics for Backlog Grooming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Decomposition happens either here or in Sprint Planning. It's better to do it in Backlog Grooming when possible, but decomposition often happens in Sprint Planning too, simply by virtue of the fact that Sprint Planning is more about near-term, fine-grained planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; job to facilitate these framework-defined meetings. Especially with a new Product Owner on the team, you may need to shift more of your attention away from the development side and onto the backlog management side in order to get the entire team back on track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Make&lt;/em&gt; the time. It's your job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-03-16T20:32:47.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8896" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-17T11:30:03.710" Score="1" ViewCount="944" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the process of starting a website build and previously it has just been a case of :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get designs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start implementing site by incrementally building the style and functionality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's it.  No real plan it just sort of happens and gets there in the end.  For my upcoming project I would like to implement a more structured approach using agile and start by creating a product backlog etc at the start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, im struggling to see how this should look.  Should it be broad as in :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Frontend Development&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Backend Functionality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or should these be split into areas of the site such as...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Site header&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Site footer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Homepage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contact page&#xA;etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or split into functionality&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;General site structure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Homepage carousel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contact form functionality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contact form frontend&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How detailed does my plan have to be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5784" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-03-18T05:23:51.133" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T18:54:01.450" Title="Agile for web development - How detailed does the plan have to be?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;process&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8897" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8899" CreationDate="2013-03-17T16:42:47.327" Score="0" ViewCount="7041" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm studying for a software engineering final &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/8897/trouble-drawing-network-diagrams#comment9775_8897&quot;&gt;that covers project management&lt;/a&gt;, and am having a little bit of trouble with actually drawing network diagrams. The problem is, I've followed the table below and drawn a network diagram, but every example I've seen online, everything always converges into one final node.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Source Table&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vBOjY.png&quot; alt=&quot;Data Table&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My Diagram&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/K61x6.png&quot; alt=&quot;Diagram&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: I haven't added numbers to nodes.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming the diagram's actually correct, I'm guessing the critical path is just the branch it would take the longest amount of time to traverse?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5787" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-02-18T15:14:11.403" LastActivityDate="2018-02-18T23:28:46.607" Title="What is the &quot;critical path&quot; when drawing an activity-on-node network diagram that doesn't converge?" Tags="&lt;critical-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8896" CreationDate="2013-03-17T17:16:36.440" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hate to be the type of person who says, &quot;It depends&quot; - but, it depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to divide things between project-specific concepts and generic concepts. For example, I recently worked on a site which displayed a lot of data in the form of progress bars in two different areas of the site. So, three tickets/stories get generated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Widget 1 consisting of progress bars, table, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Widget 2 consisting of line chart, progress bars, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Progress bars&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, there are dependency relationships for these tasks. In the example, the two widgets cannot be completed until we finish creating a way to make progress bars (a Finish-to-Finish relationship between the progress bar and the other two tasks). Therefore, in the backlog, the progress bars actually get the higher priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also depends on what you are responsible for. If your only focus is front-end and UI components - focus on that. If you're doing &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; front, back, and all points in-between...you'll probably want to do something different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A general rule of thumb I have adopted over the years of working on the web and in other development areas is to start with a general task: Create 2013 Version of Website, for example. Then try to estimate the duration and complexity level - if I can. If I can't estimate it because it is too vague, I start filling in details (maybe, build header, build footer, build single page template, etc.) - basically atomizing tasks, similar to creating a WBS (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_breakdown_structure&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_breakdown_structure&lt;/a&gt;). When all/most of the tasks can be estimated to take one working day or less to satisfy a definition of done (for me this is unit tests, if applicable; cross-browser compatibility; documentation; etc.), then I stop atomizing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I have found, by following this rule of thumb, is that the stories pretty much write themselves and the backlog tends to be more complete than if I tried to shove a project and its requirements &lt;em&gt;into&lt;/em&gt; some predefined structure/convention. So, go back to the original example we might end up with a break-down like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1. Create 2013 website&#xA;    1.1 Widget 1&#xA;        1.1.1 Progress bars (FF with 1.3)&#xA;        1.1.2 Table with data&#xA;    1.2 Widget 2&#xA;        1.2.1 Progress Bars (FF with 1.3)&#xA;        1.2.2 Line chart&#xA;    1.3 Progress bars - split-out and promoted to a higher-level of our WBS&#xA;        because it's used in multiple places&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I am new to this StackExchange site; so, pardon me if there is a better way to visualize that.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, to answer the question indirectly but concisely - it depends. To offer the most useful/pragmatic recommendation I have found over the years - don't come up with a template before you start documenting tasks - this leads to possibly trying to fit a round peg in a square hole. Instead, add a backlog item at the highest level possible - start building a list which fleshes out this abstract concept at the next level down - then, continue cultivating the backlog by breaking out tasks into 1 day's effort bits and reusability. Finally, use dependencies to help prioritize the backlog and choose which items have the most value - in our example, the progress bars have the most value; therefore, are the most important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastEditorUserId="5788" LastEditDate="2013-03-17T17:21:53.527" LastActivityDate="2013-03-17T17:21:53.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8897" CreationDate="2013-03-17T17:54:43.520" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hope this will help, I am currently studying these things as well; so, for what it's worth, this is what I can derive from speaking with PMPs I know and reading the PMBOK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The critical path is a path generated by Finish-to-Start dependencies from one task to the next - resulting in a happy-path (everything went right) minimum project duration. So, if we assume all the tasks in the table and their predecessors are Finish-to-Start you seem good in drawing your chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, given that a project is defined as having a defined beginning and end, we could add a &quot;virtual&quot; node/task - wrapping up the project which has a Finish-to-Start dependency with the &quot;final&quot; node(s), with the path of the longest duration (as you may find your example has multiple paths resulting in the same total duration), in your diagram. So, if any of the tasks on those path(s) take longer than estimated - the further out our final node gets - critical path(s). For paths in your diagram that are shorter than the longest duration, there is an assumed Finish-to-Finish relationship from the final task on that path to the final &quot;virtual&quot; node in your diagram - because the project can't finish until &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; nodes/tasks are complete, but we have wiggle room for them to take longer than estimated (task M, for example) without effecting the total project duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a nutshell, just as there is no task &quot;0&quot; for the first node in your graph - it is assumed to be the impetus for all other nodes - there is a node &quot;n + 1&quot; at the end of the project, which is where we tie a bow around the project. In the case of software engineering this might be the beginning of a new project - &quot;Finish development - Begin preparing for marketing and release&quot;...it's just not explicitly named &lt;em&gt;in&lt;/em&gt; the data set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2013-03-17T17:54:43.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8900" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-03-17T18:04:44.550" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_path_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_path_method&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-03-17T18:04:44.550" LastActivityDate="2013-03-17T18:04:44.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8901" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-03-17T18:04:44.550" Score="0" Body="For questions about the critical path method (CPM) of scheduling projects." OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-03-17T18:04:44.550" LastActivityDate="2013-03-17T18:04:44.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8824" CreationDate="2013-03-18T03:32:02.933" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some really good points here - let me throw another cent or two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, you aren't actually doing Scrum if you are 1 person acting as Product Owner, Scrum Master, and &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; development team. To quote the Scrum guide, &quot;the roles, artifacts, events, and rules are immutable.&quot; It's not a bad thing, I do agile development myself - taking a lot of pointers from Scrum and work on a two person team - on two platforms; so, really, it's just me for my platform.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ideal size of a team, according to the assessment you can take at Scrum.org and implied by the guide is 6 +/- 3. According to the guide, when you drop below 3 developers you lose a diversity of knowledge, and when you get above 9 you increase the potential for sub-teams to form and inter-team communication to reduce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story points are only one method of estimating a level of effort required for a given story/task, which is a common practice, but not part of the Scrum framework. Finally, Scrum, as a framework is pretty loose and allows you to do whatever you need to do in order to get the work done...all the other stuff like stories and epics, story point estimation instead of hours, etc. is pretty much personal preference (according to the original founders).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, technicalities aside, now to the actual meat of your question atomizing and estimating work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you have a backlog grooming issue - coupled with an estimation methodology issue. If you absolutely insist on using story points, one idea is to find the simplest story you can - that becomes 1 - it is a known baseline of complexity against which all other stories can be compared. Personally, I still prefer time-based estimates - but, totally up to you, just accept that chances are: (1) you will be wrong; (2) as your definition of done changes/improves, the level of effort for completing a level 1 story technically increases in relation to time and complexity, but you won't change the actual value; and (3) as development on a project continues, your estimates will increase in their incorrectness if not adjusted before each iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This last point is one aspect of slipping into a &quot;hyper-productive&quot; state, which is really our inability to predict the evolution of our system and how the pieces eventually fit together and suddenly cause a ticket valued at 500 (estimated at 30 days) to collapse to something more like 100 (6 days).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding how to build and groom a backlog - I tend to recommend starting high and atomizing to as close to one full day to get something from beginning to done. So, in my practice, this means a story/requirement estimate must be 8 hours or less including writing unit tests, coded, refactored, documented, and (optionally) reviewed by someone else (kinda hard to do on a one person operation). Which generally results in something akin to a WBS with &quot;Build Fantabulous Product&quot; at the top, which is then broken down, checked for reusable areas, etc. etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've overcommitted for the sprint and cannot complete all the items before the end of the time-box, then the SM-you needs to let the PO-you know, and then the PO-you needs to decide whether to abandon the sprint or not based on &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the information received from external stakeholders and the rest of the team (because only the PO can abandon a sprint). Don't worry about the validity of the historical data - it's your first iteration, and you will need to do two or three more before having enough data points to even consider reviewing it for &quot;scientific&quot; improvement potential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last, let me go back to the Agile Manifesto and say, don't get bogged down in the processes (Scrum, XP, etc.) and the tools (stories, epics, story points, burn-down charts, etc.) - and focus on the interactions you have with your team (even if it's kind of a virtual team amongst your fellow Stackers), and feel free to abandon the plan (completing the sprint because you planned to and committed to the work) - that's perfectly acceptable - better to stop and pick a new direction than continue going in the wrong direction just because you said you would.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum Guide&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrum.org/Portals/0/Documents/Scrum%20Guides/Scrum_Guide.pdf#zoom=100&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scrum.org/Portals/0/Documents/Scrum%20Guides/Scrum_Guide.pdf#zoom=100&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Self Organization: Jeff Sutherland&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1q6b9JI2Wc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1q6b9JI2Wc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum Framework: Lyssa Adkins&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BWbaZs1M_8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BWbaZs1M_8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum et al: Ken Schwaber&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyNPeTn8fpo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyNPeTn8fpo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile Manifesto:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://agilemanifesto.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastEditorUserId="5788" LastEditDate="2013-03-18T03:38:01.970" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T03:38:01.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8896" CreationDate="2013-03-18T04:56:27.097" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my view your project is a great fit for trying out Scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree to your current approach of incrementally building the site. Having used Agile for years, my recommendation is to break your requirements into testable features or functionality (product backlogs). Build milestones (Releases) around features - first milestone could be to build bare-bone site structure with graphics, logos, theme, and menu with placeholder pages. Further you could plan to build one concrete functionality per milestone. A Release would contain one or more sprints.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have product backlog, you may want to allocated features into sprint backlog, each sprint of duration 3-6 weeks. Again, the goal is to deliver something at the end of sprint that is testable and does not break. This way incrementally develop and release fully working set of functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5790" LastEditorUserId="4422" LastEditDate="2013-03-28T18:54:01.450" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T18:54:01.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="829" CreationDate="2013-03-18T13:43:10.290" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Eylean board free for personal use&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you might be interested in a whiteboard/sticky note board look alike as a desktop application which is client-server type and targets distributed teams especially. It is called Eylean board. I am representing it as a developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/C1cga.png&quot; alt=&quot;Board overview&quot;&gt;&#xA;This tool is highly dynamic and suits any agile process. It contains all of the KANBAN and SCRUM features. The reports are there as well, burdowns, lead/cycle time charts. Integrated time tracking etc.&#xA;Also it can integrate with Outlook, Excel, TFS or Teleriks TeamPulse. We focus a lot on user experience so it will not waste your time where it should not be wasted. Link: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eylean.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eylean board&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ANitf.png&quot; alt=&quot;Reports&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OlMHi.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Task card&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/L4Yxq.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Time trcking&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5562" LastEditorUserId="5562" LastEditDate="2014-03-07T10:59:57.040" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T10:59:57.040" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1395" CreationDate="2013-03-18T17:17:07.120" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Pawel,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say that no matter the level of expertise, when a new member is added in a team&#xA;especially in a project that is overdue and deals with pending issues, it will undoubtly cause a slow down. &#xA;There are indeed factors to take into deep consideration on both sides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's face it, I don't know about you, but I've worked on &#xA;a fair amount of projects and even if some firms claim to use the same MS technology&#xA;[even to be the best in the field and give formal training formation to newcomers when it's not always the case...], &#xA;no one uses the same code logic and architecture in every context.&#xA;If things were that easy, we could all sit back and take a big break...&#xA;Reality shows that it's not the case, each new project brings a new challenge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of factors [both technical and human] can vary and interfer from project to project. &#xA;I'd say the analogy of nine women who cannot give birth to a baby in one month is perfectly&#xA;true, still a lot of team or project managers can yet picture the basic concept. &#xA;Too often their own reputation comes first, they have to deliver a product right on time no matter what&#xA;upon a client's requests, otherwise their own job might be in jeopardy... right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've ended a big project recently. We were a small team of 4 senior developers with few young developers to help us with unit testings tasks. &#xA;We started the project nearly all from scratch and we managed to deliver the product on time exactly as the client requested. We even brought more extras in bonus.&#xA;We occasionally had to work overtime on weekend [for free..] but just like with the Olympic, the project just couldn't be postponed and&#xA;we all knew it was a one big shot deal we couldn't miss, so we didn't want to skip it. &#xA;Throughout the project, we not only learned to work and communicate together as a team, we sort of all created the architecture and&#xA;business logic of the project right form the start and I can humbly confirm that if I would have been asked to join &#xA;the same team at a much later stage in the production, let's say like a year after and in an overdue scenario...,&#xA;no matter the level of expertise, without any proper training from my fellow team members, I might have been lost in the jungle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line... Adding new team members to a late project can often end up in a Catch 22 situation for both parties like I often seen&#xA;if not handled and managed properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5796" LastEditorUserId="5796" LastEditDate="2013-03-19T03:05:21.627" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T03:05:21.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8892" CreationDate="2013-03-18T20:57:30.017" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Remember the Tuckman's group development&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't forget that adding every new team member sets all the team to the Forming phase in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuckman%27s_stages_of_group_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Forming-Storming-Norming-Performing model&lt;/a&gt;. There's no way to skip any of these phases, so get ready to be patient and tolerant and share the knowledge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cheer the team&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beware the team catching the spirit that PO &quot;consumes their time&quot; – that should be certainly addressed by you and PO, but developers should treat PO as an unexperienced team member, who seeks for help, not a random person, who interferes their job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What's underneath?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also it's a good idea to think of the real reasons, that lead to multiple meetings with the team and constant developers' distraction – maybe, existing user stories, test plans and other team artifacts, that would be helpful to familiarize with the project, are far from being in good shape, so questions arise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5797" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T20:57:30.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8911" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8915" CreationDate="2013-03-18T22:49:57.420" Score="5" ViewCount="911" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm new to kanban and agile as such but I'm really positive and enthusiastic and I have a clean vision of it's potential for us. I made a decision to start off with a first board and take it from there. Let's visualize and understand ourselves...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always thought that the development work in the company I work in is a pure CHAOS. Dozens of small (10 - 30min) to medium sized projects/requests thrown at you on a daily basis from a range of (6) product managers / directors of a sort + direct request from customers + customer services girls and data team having their issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Priorities change every second day with super urgent tasks requested for end of play tomorrow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is 6 of us in the team and each one has got his own niche overlapping each other only from time to time.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;There is no such thing as testing the software before deployment. &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;The developer is pretty much responsible for delivering a working piece of software. &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Bug fixing and maintanance is part of the job (actually it's probably more than 50% of the job unfortunatelly).&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Big projects just take ages to complete and tend to generate a great backlog.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;There is never time for automation, however hard we try and whatever good ideas we have.&#xA;Technical directors were not helping us (3 of them in the last 5 years). &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;We are self-organized fire-fighting chaos.&#xA;Thank God there are still 2 people who's been building the product from the very beginning (8 years ago) - me being one of them. It would be critical otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last month I've read Personal Kanban by Jim Benson and I knew it's it. I knew I've got to try it ASAP with my team. You just can't get it wrong, can you? ToDo, Doing (55), Done and bang - you've got board with WIP limit, you can see the flow, you can improve it.&#xA;Then I was polishing my vision and couldn't fit the board to match us. &lt;strong&gt;I just couldn't find the common denominator for each and every team member&lt;/strong&gt;. &#xA;There is no such thing as quota for us - the task tend to be thrown directly to the junior developer (by the technical director) etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today was the day when I drew my first kanban board in the office. And I can say I'm not too happy with it. I've done something that I feel is slightly wrong, but I stuck to the idea.&#xA;This is what I've done:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Backlog | Ready (6) | Who |  Today  | Doing (2) | Pen | Done&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    |         | Bob |         |           |     |       &#xA;    |         | -----------------------------------------&#xA;    |         | Rod |         |           |     |       &#xA;    |         | -----------------------------------------&#xA;    |         | Jay |         |           |     |       &#xA;    |         | -----------------------------------------&#xA;    |         | Jim |         |           |     |       &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first main reason I've drawn it like that was that this is basically how we work:).&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;The second main reason why I've done it this way is because I don't know how we work. &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;I don't have a clue how many small maintanance 15-minutes jobs we're doing on a weekly/monthly basis and how does it relate to the new features that are improving the product.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;I don't know where the job is usually coming from and what are the 'classes of service' distribution or who is the best multitasker etc.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I have also itroduced a rather-sophisticated post-it notes system with 7 different class of service (different colours and shapes) and some extra bits to be added on the very card (like the source of the task).&#xA;I thought that it can't be wrong this way.&#xA;I'm visualising the work.&#xA;Not so much I've limited the WIP (it's limited to 2 tasks for each member on the doing column; also the Ready column is limited to 6 tasks - for better planning), but I'm going to focus on completing the once started tasks and limiting the multitask switches (what I have identified as the number one disease that's killing us).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The kanban system will evolve, I'm sure of that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But the goal I want to achieve is to measure the our team's throughput.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm planning to go with the board measuring individuals' efforts for 4 weeks or so. I want to  identify and understand the input interface. I want to learn about the efficiency of each members on particulart tasks etc.&#xA;I need to understand what percentage of the throughput is used for maintanance and bug fixing.&#xA;Only then I will be able to make a really big step towards improving the process (and not only among the dev team, but a bit higher too).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is that a really bad approach?&#xA;Can you suggest an alternative one?&#xA;Perhaps it would just be better concentrating on the team effort as a whole from the day 0 and measure the input interface on the team level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5798" LastEditorUserId="5798" LastEditDate="2013-03-19T09:09:08.043" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T13:24:36.480" Title="Visualizing individuals' efforts with kanban. Is it a wrong approach for measuring the team's throughput?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8593" CreationDate="2013-03-19T07:44:37.010" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As for myself it is a known dilemma and in our company we took approach in merging utility/recurring tasks in our main Kanban process pipeline where we have two separate rows. One is for the main flow of the items and the second one is for recurring small tasks (it does not counterfeit with Kanban itself, it is just a two layer process). The WIP limits are calculated per column for both rows. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eylean.com/Images/Eylean_kanban.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Such board example using Eylean board tool for Kanban&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Sxg02.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, as CodeGnome said, it is not a day planner so you should add only tasks which are related to the production and &lt;strong&gt;they have final value for your goals&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;Kanban is strongly against the waste&lt;/strong&gt;, so you should not litter on your board with such tasks as &quot;Meeting&quot; or similar. Try keeping those away. If you are doing Kanban, you should do it on your production, not your daily routines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5562" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T07:44:37.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8911" CreationDate="2013-03-19T07:52:54.207" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One core thing you might be missing is that Kanban should probably use &lt;strong&gt;Pull principle&lt;/strong&gt; where you have a &lt;strong&gt;backlog with bunch of tasks&lt;/strong&gt; - (does not matter what size they are (of course in time you should learn to divide tasks in such manner that all of them would be similar in size so you could measure you future effort)) - so that bunch resides on the left in board and then you have a pipeline with steps like ready, development, doing, pen and done. You do not need four different rows for each person, you should focus on &lt;strong&gt;limiting Doing column to 4&lt;/strong&gt; so it would mean that people take tasks when they are out of work and drag them into Doing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5562" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T07:52:54.207" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8711" CreationDate="2013-03-19T08:14:09.353" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is true that if you cannot cope with physical board, virtual one will not solve your problems either. Firstly it is a good start to do everything on physical one, also it keeps budget small. Later on when you will get bored of all the waste physical one creates, you can switch to the digital one. But keep in mind that it can cost you slightly more and of course it will need some sort of software to run with. I recommend reading some of the ideas from pratical use in my blog post about virtual boards &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eylean.com/blog/2013/03/a-case-for-electronic-whiteboards/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5562" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T08:14:09.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8911" CreationDate="2013-03-19T13:24:36.480" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not unusual, unfortunately. I work in a similar environment now - we, as a team, do not use Agile or Kanban methodologies, but I do. I will recommend a book which is more of a direct relationship between software development and lean concepts - including, in a small way, Kanban. I also recommend the video from one of the creators of Scrum - one of the more popular Agile frameworks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that you work in an environment where priorities change often - including the injection of new high priority tickets - you should probably include a &quot;fast-track&quot; notion in your board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know you said you don't have a way of doing testing before deployment; however, this concept comes more from the waterfall methodology. I would recommend, if possible (it's usually not difficult to set up), writing unit tests &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you do development. Don't worry about trying to put it around everything you've built in the past, only new tickets (a.k.a. Test Driven Development). This should dramatically reduce the number of defects released into the wild, and allow you to better see the impact of changes made due to the code being coupled in some way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an effort to measure your team's throughput you will probably want to add a method for estimating task durations (or level of effort) - I use time, but there are a lot of various methods - try a few and find what works best for your team. To measure just the team's throughput, you want to measure the time it takes to move a ticket from the backlog to done, as well as the average times an item spends in a given column. This will give you a better understanding of where you are as a team. So, having a &quot;creation date&quot; on the card, a date of when the card enters each column, and an &quot;average time in column&quot; indicator under each column might help you in the data collection department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, if you do not have a basis for estimating a ticket's level of effort, knowing how long it took to move through the board will not be very helpful. If you get a bunch of little tickets that move fast - then you have a false team velocity, which will appear to slow dramatically with the first more complex ticket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A piece of advice outside of your main goal, would be to begin thinking of a method/policy/process for the team to discuss what the hang-ups (impediments) are: interruptions, changes of priority, etc. And, I do think the board will assist on this as well. I know some teams mark interruptions on the task with a red dot - and an interruption could include the changing of prioritization and shifting a team member from one task to another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think overall you are on a good track, because you are trying to put something in place to measure how life is, but the sister concept to that is how to get feedback and alter how life is in small ways, eventually culminating in a better way of life overall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0321620704&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Leading-Lean-Software-Development-Results/dp/0321620704&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyNPeTn8fpo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyNPeTn8fpo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T13:24:36.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8916" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8918" CreationDate="2013-03-19T18:36:33.310" Score="12" ViewCount="8663" Body="&lt;p&gt;Drawing from the body and comments of a previous &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/8907/167&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt;, what is the best way to schedule simultaneous projects and resources to those projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in a group of 16 staff, each working on multiple projects, each with an iteration cycle of ~2 weeks, how can I see what people are working on what &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;NOW&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, so that I can effectively utilize staff across all projects we may have and reduce idle time on the whole team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="167" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2018-12-12T23:21:00.037" Title="How can I schedule resources across multiple projects?" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8916" CreationDate="2013-03-19T19:49:55.097" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Drawing from the body and comments of a previous question, what is the best way to schedule simultaneous projects and resources to those projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ideally you will schedule your team so as to minimize the amount of time that they are working on more than one project at a time. This helps avoid the inefficiencies associated with multi-tasking.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Failing the ideal (which is likely what is going to happen around 99% of the time) look at your projects and figure out where they are most work-intensive for a given role. Use this knowledge to help level overall effort for your team across your projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allow for some amount of idle time. If you don't do this you will burn your team out, so allow your team some time to take a breath and celebrate successes before moving immediately to the next job. All too often the reward for a job well done is twice as much work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go through your projects and get feedback from your team members about where bottlenecks are. This can help tell you who is getting overloaded, allowing you to take action to resolve the problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T19:49:55.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8920" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-20T15:00:14.677" Score="0" ViewCount="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;The basic scenario is that my former employer has been approached by another company who wish to license some software I wrote for them while I was in their employ and have approached me to work with them on making the changes required to commercialise this software (it is currently very specific to my former employer's environment and systems, so some work is required to change this).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My former employer is not a software company and has no software developers of their own so this is strictly a side-project for them as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently in full time work elsewhere so anything I do will be in my own time at evenings or weekends. They have suggested a commission deal whereby I get a commission on every sale, which I am fine with. I expect there will be a maximum of 100 hours of work required prior to first sale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have still to work out details of who supports the customers, I certainly have no intention of being first line support!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is how do I go about working out what sort of commission is reasonable in this scenario? What factors need to be taken in to account?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5808" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T15:40:03.710" Title="Former employer wants to collaborate on commercialising internal software, what is reasonable commission?" Tags="&lt;small-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2013-04-12T12:09:25.830" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8920" CreationDate="2013-03-20T15:40:03.710" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a similar situation when I left a small start-up a couple of jobs ago. While I wanted to help them out as they transitioned my replacement, I also wanted to prevent them from overly relying on me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The solution I came up with was to set up a consulting contract with them. The key things included in this were:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A reasonable hourly fee that didn't provide an incentive for them to rely on me.&lt;/strong&gt; While the fee was less than what would be charged by a professional consultant it worked out to a significantly higher rate than what they had been paying me as a salaried employee. I went with a rate something around 130%-150% of what my salaried pay rate was.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A limit to the number of hours that would be worked.&lt;/strong&gt; This was also expressed in the contract as a ceiling to what I'd get paid in dollar terms.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A limit to the term of the contract.&lt;/strong&gt; I set this to 6 months so that everyone was clear that my effort was temporary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Documentation of payment requirements.&lt;/strong&gt; So answering the questions &quot;At what frequency do I invoice you? How fast do you pay me after invoicing?&quot; Depending on how much you trust your old company you may also want to include an up-front fee for yourself. I've worked for companies where it is like pulling teeth to get them to pay for services rendered, and for others where you aren't really sure if they will be able to pay the bills in six months. In either case you will need some kind of protection.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T15:40:03.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8922" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-20T16:38:01.527" Score="7" ViewCount="264" Body="&lt;p&gt;My company is developing a new product which consists of several embedded systems.  The hardware for these devices is being developed by electrical and mechanical engineers and the software is being developed by software engineers.  Of course the hardware guys and the software guys work together as necessary, but since the devices are running embedded Linux, the hardware/software concerns are pretty well separated and the different engineers are able to work separately and in parallel for the most part, independent of each others' progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This project has a single PM with a hardware background, and he has been mostly focusing on the hardware aspect of things while the software side has not received much managerial attention and has fallen behind schedule.  I, as a software engineer on the project, have often wished we had a &lt;em&gt;software&lt;/em&gt; project manager assigned to the project to manage things better on our end.  I have tried to fill in as an unofficial software PM as much as I can without stepping on any toes, but I just don't have enough pull to be effective in this effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, do projects of this nature generally have a software PM &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; a hardware PM assigned?  I would like to suggest a possible new approach for our next project, and I'd like to know what has worked for other people in this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT - More details from comments below.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Half the software is being developed in-house and the other half is being done by a contractor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have regularly-scheduled hardware reviews and all of our meetings with the contractor consist of 95% hardware talk. We have no idea what the status of the software being developed by the contractor is, other than they are &quot;working on it&quot; and it's &quot;coming along&quot;. I seem to be the only one that is concerned that we have no real idea of the status of the software after 1 year of work so far. I have tried to convince the PM that we need more visibility into the software status, but he doesn't seem concerned, even after hearing my suspicions that the contractor is way behind schedule on the software side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel that if we had a Software PM, we would have a much better handle on the software status and we wouldn't be at such risk of schedule/cost overruns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5810" LastEditorUserId="5810" LastEditDate="2013-03-26T12:06:58.193" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T12:06:58.193" Title="Should there be separate PMs for projects which involve development of new hardware and new software?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;multi-team&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8922" CreationDate="2013-03-20T17:50:15.863" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The project should be sub-divided as you suggest only if it is so complex and/or critical for your organization that there is business value in having the added overhead. For example, I've worked on US govt projects that have had multiple PMs overseeing different aspects of the overall project just because the workload was that big.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think anytime you have a PM with deep technical knowledge of one aspect of a project you run the risk that they will get sucked into that part of the project at the expense of other parts. This is something that can only really be solved with proper mentoring of the PM and better training. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I am more in the camp that thinks that it is better to take a person dedicated to project management as a discipline and train them to a base level of knowledge about the project's products rather than trying to turn a technical expert into a PM. At the end of the day the underlying principles of good project management will be the same regardless of your industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T17:50:15.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8926" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8928" CreationDate="2013-03-21T03:12:22.237" Score="10" ViewCount="406" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to manage ongoing development and maintenance of a client's web domain. There are many ideas for features to add in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering what the best practice would be for an ongoing project. Should I keep one project open, and keep adding tasks and milestones for each stage of advancement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or, should I just create new projects for each stage of development?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering if a project will get too cumbersome if I'm continually adding more to it, and if it would be better to have smaller projects which I can close after completion. But, that leaves me thinking about maintenance on those closed projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: I'm using zoho projects if that makes any difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5816" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-10-31T13:02:43.230" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T13:02:43.230" Title="Ongoing Development and Maintenance: Should I break it up into small projects, or keep one open project and keep adding milestones?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;scope&gt;&lt;maintenance&gt;&lt;milestones&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8927" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-21T03:31:24.827" Score="1" ViewCount="1904" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have being practicing agile development methodologies for a long time as a development company. Most of the time our product owners tries to have a map between story points and time. As a example, they think one story point should be one day per developer. When there is a user story with more complexity (maybe an R&amp;amp;D story) then they are in trouble when we assign a value like 40 using the Fibonacci sequence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, even we think about our estimates in hours so there seems no point in using story points. What's the best way to estimate based on effort instead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2598" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-03-23T17:07:47.083" LastActivityDate="2013-03-23T18:54:34.840" Title="How can we transition to Agile estimation based on complexity or effort of user stories?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8926" CreationDate="2013-03-21T03:37:43.350" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;By definition, what you are describing, is not a project at all - because it has no defined beginning and end:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A project is temporary in that it has a defined beginning and end in time, and therefore defined scope and resources. ~ PMI&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are, however, a few ways to turn this concept &lt;em&gt;into&lt;/em&gt; a project(s). One would be to create a backlog of items from bug fixes to new features. Then pick a stack of them - wrap them in a time-box - and work on them until the end of the time-box. I hesitate to reference Scrum here because Scrum is pretty rigidly defined in its roles, responsibilities, and artifacts - but, it is how Scrum operates from a PM perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The objective is to create a defined scope of work - then commit to a duration in which that work will be completed for it to truly be a project. If you divide your tickets into three categories this is pretty easy to do in a true &quot;project fashion&quot; - in situations like these I have used the following: new development, non-functional defect (the text is too far to the right), functional defect (stuff is crashing when I do X). Non-functional defects and new development are placed on a waiting list - because we need to wait for time, budget, and human resources to be prepared and scoped. Functional defects are worked on continuously and/or added to a project (the schedule should allow developers to be at about 80% or less capacity, depending on the stability of the system, to work on functional defects).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, best practice from a PMI perspective, based on my understanding of the PMBOK - is to define a scope of work and time frame - at minimum; otherwise, you are not working on a project. From a more Agile perspective, best practice might be to throw out the concept of a project altogether and use more of a lean approach - tickets come in - they're prioritized - you complete those with the highest priority based on a due date of &quot;as soon as possible&quot;. When the ticket is done, tested, blessed, you can either release a product update; or, wait, collect and integrate them into a more cumulative release at a later date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/About-Us/About-Us-What-is-Project-Management.aspx&quot;&gt;http://www.pmi.org/About-Us/About-Us-What-is-Project-Management.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0321620704&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Leading-Lean-Software-Development-Results/dp/0321620704&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2013-03-21T03:37:43.350" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8927" CreationDate="2013-03-21T04:10:38.430" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you practicing &quot;agile&quot; methodologies; or, Scrum specifically? The reason I ask is that you mention Product Owner - not Project Manager. And, in Scrum, the PO shouldn't be too concerned about how long something will take - only priority - because it is up to the team to determine what they can get done during a sprint/iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, is it possible for the team to do both? Estimate level of complexity, then estimate how long you think it will take. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option, and the one I would probably prefer in your setup, is to track how long it takes for an item to go through the SDLC (should probably be tracking this already if you are using a burn-down chart). Track an item from the time it starts being worked on until it is labeled &quot;done&quot; according to the team definition - capture, in a tool of your choice, the task's complexity and total time to complete (similar to estimates versus actuals). Now the PO can look at a task in the backlog and its complexity - compare it to the past performance of the team for tickets of roughly the same value - and get a good idea of how long it should take. (Given the statistic, can't remember origin, that it takes 3 times longer than a developer's estimate to complete anyway, it's probably a more &quot;scientific&quot; approach for scheduling purposes.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said all that, if you are already translating points into time, I would probably abandon the story points anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastEditorUserId="5788" LastEditDate="2013-03-21T05:21:17.593" LastActivityDate="2013-03-21T05:21:17.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8927" CreationDate="2013-03-21T09:41:43.557" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Estimates are not deadlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimate complexity in small/medium/large and only offer time based estimates based on how long an item will take to complete once it reaches the top of the priority queue. You will be consistently fairly accurate if you are properly limiting work in process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastActivityDate="2013-03-21T09:41:43.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8922" CreationDate="2013-03-21T11:45:35.387" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is about span of control.  And there are rules of thumb to help an organization decide when it is time to put in a layer of control.  Of course, there are competing and contradicting schools of thought on this.  You need to research the benefits, costs, and risks of different approaches to see what fits best in &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; organization for &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; project at &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will likely find rules that say at about six to eight reports you need a layer and other rules that say you can go as high as 20 reports before adding a layer.  A lot of this thinking is economically driven rather than validity of the thought.  You have to sift through that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If on your team it proves adding a layer adds more expense than benefit, the attention paid to the other team might be out of necessity, e.g., that team is struggling and that degree of attention is warranted, no matter the struggles your team is having...at least up until your struggles exceed the other team's.  That just has to happen because no project is ever perfect and you have to pick your battles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another aspect to look at is the natural evolution of team roles that develop.  Throw five or six people at a task and you will see, over time as the team matures, the individuals gravitating to various team roles, including a lead role.  I'd be surprised if this is not happening on your team, though it may not be if your team is imploding.  If it is happening, exploit and enhance it.  The one who is sort of taking ownership as the lead needs to continue in that evolution, which means (s)he needs to begin overseeing not only the task but also the management and control of it, including costs, schedule, risks, and other leadership things.  If this happens to be you, run with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT to follow additional information:  After reading your additional comments, it appears the issue is not a lack of SW PM, it is a lack of PM controls and methods.  It is typical to throw a person at a problem the same way we blame a person when things go south.  A more sophisticated analysis will likely show other capability enabling issues, such as weak and out-of-control processes, weak tools that lack integration, weak organization intellectual capital...and certainly it can also be due to weak people performance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The piece of work farmed out needed to have other deliverables as part of that contract, things like a schedule, reports on a set frequency, intermediate verification and validation of scope and milestones, things like this.  Flying blind to the end date is using hope for strategy.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So certainly your current PM has some blame for not enforcing or causing these controls to oversee your farmed out work; however, you may have bigger issues with your organization and its current maturation level around project management methods.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2013-03-22T12:51:13.193" LastActivityDate="2013-03-22T12:51:13.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8922" CreationDate="2013-03-21T12:29:39.327" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are two problems here.  I cannot improve on David Espina's description of the Span of Control problem; the second problem has to do with accountability.  The PM is focusing on the areas where his technical skills are most applicable and failing to exert effective project management over the project.   I think the H/W vs S/W issue is a distraction; the core issue is that the PM is failing to exercise effective oversight over cost/scope/schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You propose insertion of a  S/W PM as a solution.  I don't have all the information that you do, but my preferred intervention would be to assess the impact of the problem.  For political reasons, you'd probably have to brief the PM first.  I would avoid discussion of HW vs S/W. I would focus on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The tasks/WBS lines that are delayed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The impact of the delay on the project's scope/schedule/cost/quality/fitness for use/enterprise objectives&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The root cause(s) of the delay&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One or more solutions to the root cause(s)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to measure whether the solutions are working (if they aren't, it may be necessary to brief stakeholders about the risk of project failure. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That would be my advice, and I guarantee that it is worth at least what you paid for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-03-21T12:29:39.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8890" CreationDate="2013-03-21T19:53:41.967" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can always save it as PDF through  Export as PDF. After all your goal is to save the file as pdf.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5825" LastEditorUserId="5825" LastEditDate="2013-03-22T05:51:42.610" LastActivityDate="2013-03-22T05:51:42.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6714" CreationDate="2013-03-21T20:29:43.340" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Affinity Estimating could be an appropriate technique to use here. Essentially, you put all your backlog items on index cards and have your team put them up on a wall in order of relative size (for example, larger items on the left and smaller ones on the right). You are creating a continuum of story point sizes. Then you can create dividing lines to represent your different size values (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, etc) and get agreement that items are in an appropriate grouping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is described in more detail in the following blog posts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gettingagile.com/2008/07/04/affinity-estimating-a-how-to/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Affinity Estimating: A How-To&lt;/a&gt; by Chris Sterling&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mitchlacey.com/blog/the-big-wall-prioritizing-and-estimating-large-backlogs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Big Wall: Prioritizing and Estimating Large Backlogs&lt;/a&gt; by Mitch Lacey (although the blog talks about prioritizing as well, you can do it just for estimating if needed)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4664" LastEditorUserId="4664" LastEditDate="2013-03-21T20:51:22.370" LastActivityDate="2013-03-21T20:51:22.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8922" CreationDate="2013-03-22T13:12:12.707" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The more I read this question and think about it, the more it seems that this is really an issue of you working in an environment where there is limited information about a project's progress and therefore where informal relationships take the place of a clear reporting process.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than dwell on the problem, let me propose a potential solution. You should be the change agent. Meet with the stakeholders/project sponsors, understand their goals and build a high-level baseline plan on what milestones/deliverables the project should be hitting at what times and how much that should cost at each milestone.  Then try to track where you are.  This will help quench and quantify your interest in having more formal information. It will also show you whether this is a corporate culture you can comfortably stay in.  If they are receptive to it, great. If not, it may be time to look for another job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2013-03-22T13:12:12.707" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8937" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-22T20:58:14.670" Score="4" ViewCount="506" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have been using Scrum methodology and have been mostly successful, but there are few weeks where the sprints are totally crashed by customer demands or defects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a better way of handling the product road-map and to respond to the customer? Would you suggest splitting the group to deal the issues separately, or do you suggest splitting all the developers' time to give them a buffer (perhaps 20%)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Goals: To end crashed sprints and remain as responsive as possible to the customer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5830" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-03-27T05:39:19.663" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T05:39:19.663" Title="How do I end crashed sprints and remain responsive to the customer?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8938" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-22T21:12:55.377" Score="7" ViewCount="18475" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to transfer an &lt;strong&gt;existing&lt;/strong&gt; project plan to Microsoft Project (meaning I can't change how it's organised). Each task has a duration in days then a contingency in days showing how much the task might overrun due to complexity, etc:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Task    Duration (days)  Contingency (days)&#xA;1       5                2&#xA;2       10               5&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any way of adding this to tasks in Project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5831" LastEditorUserId="5831" LastEditDate="2013-03-28T04:04:33.893" LastActivityDate="2016-12-09T12:04:48.937" Title="How can I add contingency to tasks in Microsoft Project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8938" CreationDate="2013-03-23T10:23:39.160" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Theory of Constraints and Critical Chain Project Management talk about adding buffers to the schedule based on theoretical assumptions by E. Goldratt.  You can easily google this and find a ton of information.  But this may not be what you are talking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are not reducing your targets by 50% as CCPM suggests, then I would advise not adding buffers in your schedule as your asking.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The planning value you choose in all of your work packages should already contain the degree of risk you are willing to assume for that project at that time.  For example, you understand this project to be risky because of the environment and it is a firm fixed price.  For package A, you estimate eight to 15 days, most likely 10; for package B, you estimate 12 to 20 days, most likely 16.  Since this is higher risk, the planning values you choose for A might be 12 and for B it might be 18.  This represents values on the outside of the curve, giving you more probability that you will finish at that day or before then at that day or after.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your contingency is calculated at each package and built in.  In a less risky environment or type of contract, you may choose 9 and 14 days.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest of the risk you leave on the table, the balance between your planning value and the very worst scenario + other risk contingency, is capture in dollars and held in reserves.  It is not on the schedule or your performance measurement baseline but part of your total allocated budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-03-23T10:23:39.160" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8927" CreationDate="2013-03-23T17:43:46.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work with a simple rule: if it's new and you've never done it before, you probably have &lt;em&gt;no idea&lt;/em&gt; how long it will take, and estimates will be impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you will be able to estimate just how little you know about it. Here's the scale I use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5 - this is the first time anyone's done it in the world, or we've never heard of it being done.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;4 - someone outside our company has done it before.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;3 - someone in the company has done it before.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2 - someone in the team has done it before.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;1 - almost everyone knows how to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more that's known, the more accurate the estimates will be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to divide the backlog into capabilities; for instance, the capability to trade copper, or comment on a blog post, or take a photo with the phone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine that you're Kyocera, back in the days before the cameraphone. You're the first people to create a cameraphone. So what do you focus on first? Do you worry about being able to make calls and receive calls, or do you try to see if there's a way of getting a tiny camera into the space?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you do the second, because if you have too much trouble you know you have to rethink your approach, and possibly even abandon the idea. Once you've listed your capabilities, pick the ones which are newest and therefore most differentiating, and &lt;em&gt;do those first&lt;/em&gt;. Don't even worry about estimating stuff which is a 5 on the complexity scale! That's a pure spike, and it just means that your project has a high level of innovation associated with it - congratulations!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For anything which is a 1 to 4, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0131424602&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;David Anderson suggests these buffers for uncertainty&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;100% certainty (my 1):   15%&lt;br&gt;&#xA;90% certainty (my 2ish): 25-30%&lt;br&gt;&#xA;80% certainty (my 2ish): 50%&lt;br&gt;&#xA;50-70% certainty (my 3): 100%&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&amp;lt;50% certainty (my 4):   200%&lt;br&gt;&#xA;my 5: I already told you, don't bother estimating this. You have no idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you want to have a go at estimating in real days, or you want to map your story points to time, or you already have some idea based on cycle time, then you can use these buffers to determine how much extra to add to the estimate. If you want to add buffers together, then add up all the squares and take the root of that (not all uncertainty will end up being bad).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you can do release planning if you want to. But honestly, if you're doing the new stuff first then you'll make the biggest discoveries up-front, and it will be readily apparent if your project is on track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of hints which will help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If your business don't trust you, then that's the biggest risk. Forget what I said and do something easy and simple so they can see you deliver; then you'll have their trust and you can move to the risky bits.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Look out for new stakeholders who might stop you going live, new features, new bits of UI, etc.. Your goal is to get feedback on those bits ASAP. If your team can hard-code data and get feedback from that, do it. Feedback from stakeholders and users is the main reason Scrum works.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the feedback will be &quot;no&quot;, and that's OK because you're getting it early in the project while you still have time to change direction. Make sure your stakeholders understand that they're not seeing the finished product.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Forget Agile's rule that &quot;it must be a whole shippable vertical slice&quot;. If you can get feedback more quickly than that, do it. That way if you throw it away you're throwing away as little investment as possible. When you get positive feedback, that's the time to turn it into a full slice. Connecting stuff to the database is not risky, for instance; devs do it all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you're going to outsource anything, make it those commoditised bits that are already pretty well understood. Don't outsource your differentiators as it will lengthen the feedback cycle and you'll lose the ability to change direction.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When you run spikes, if the developers aren't particularly disciplined then they'll produce pretty poor code. That's fine for the spike, but make them throw it away afterwards. Really good devs who know TDD and tend to produce maintainable code or are good at refactoring can stabilize the spike. &lt;a href=&quot;http://git-scm.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Git&lt;/a&gt; is a great version system for managing the branches and merging you'll need.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For further reading, try Chris Matts and Gojko Adzic on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/articles/feature-injection-success&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Feature Injection&lt;/a&gt; (the precursor and similar to Gojko's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0955683645&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Impact Mapping&lt;/a&gt;), Dan North's posts on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://dannorth.net/2009/07/01/the-perils-of-estimation/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Perils of Estimation&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://dannorth.net/2010/08/30/introducing-deliberate-discovery/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Deliberate Discovery&lt;/a&gt;, and my post on &lt;a href=&quot;http://lizkeogh.com/2012/03/11/cynefin-for-devs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cynefin for Devs&lt;/a&gt; (Cynefin is pronounced &quot;kuh-nev-in&quot; and is another way of working out the difference between predictable stuff and things you might need to spike out).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps and gives you some ideas to try out!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2013-03-23T17:43:46.507" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8927" CreationDate="2013-03-23T18:54:34.840" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Story Points Aren't Timers&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story point has no direct man-hour equivalent. This is a common misunderstanding of how to use story points. The fact that your Product Owner (you should only have one!) tries to map them that way shows that the Scrum Master has failed to effectively communicate the use of story-point estimation or how to use the Product Backlog for scheduling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some proponents &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; recommend attaching man-hour or calendar estimates to tasks or stories that live on the Sprint Backlog. In fact, a common rule of thumb is that a user story should fit within one-half to two days of effort. However, this is more of a WIP or granularity issue than an actual &quot;story points to hours&quot; conversion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Points-Based Scheduling&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scheduling based on estimation of effort relies on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Semi-accurate &lt;em&gt;story point estimates&lt;/em&gt; within some acceptable limits of standard deviation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A confidence level in your historical performance, e.g. your &lt;em&gt;velocity range&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Backlog items that constitute (or can be aggregated or decomposed into) a &lt;em&gt;potentially-shippable feature&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, points-based scheduling works like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The whole Product Backlog is given a rough level-of-effort estimate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team's average velocity is calculated, or guesstimated if historical data doesn't exist.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Schedules are planned based on how many iterations it will take to reach a milestone at the assumed velocity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each sprint, the potentially-shippable feature guides the creation of a Sprint Goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each sprint, the Product Backlog is reviewed and/or re-estimated during Backlog Grooming based on current information.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's deceptively simple. At no time (other than possibly during the creation of the Sprint Backlog) is a conversion to hours done. Instead, the team uses a measure of its historical capacity to estimate how many iterations it will take &lt;em&gt;the whole team&lt;/em&gt; to reach a given milestone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-03-23T18:54:34.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8922" CreationDate="2013-03-23T20:16:46.017" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Why This Isn't Your Problem&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't your problem. Whether or not a project succeeds (and most don't) is the responsibility of senior management, although management may delegate day-to-day operational responsibility for the project to a product or project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you've already notified the accountable person that you feel the process is broken, you have discharged any professional responsibility you may have. It is up to those with responsibility or delegated authority to inspect the process and adapt it as necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Visibility and Transparency as Process Issues&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The core process issue you're facing isn't about lines of responsibility, or the professional background or areas of expertise of those in charge of the project. You've already clearly identified the real issue as one of transparency:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have no idea what the status of the software being developed by the contractor is, other than they are &quot;working on it&quot; and it's &quot;coming along&quot;...we have no real idea of the status of the software after 1 year of work so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like reporting on the software side is not something that your current project manager is accountable for, nor is it something that senior management has tasked your team to manage. Senior management is ultimately responsible for managing that side of the project, and it is really up to them to determine whether their current process is adding value to the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lack of organizational visibility into the software development process can certainly be labeled as a process problem. However, unless it is impacting &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; team, it's not &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; process problem. You're just tilting at windmills if you try to fix a process problem that doesn't fundamentally involve you, your team, or your assigned responsibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-03-23T20:16:46.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8937" CreationDate="2013-03-24T19:21:03.370" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not suggest splitting the group because of extra demands. Only if the group is too big, and there are communication issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, what you could do is except a part of the sprint to be dedicated to extra requests. One thing I found to work, is estimating as if the team would dedicate 100% of the time, and then when urgent requests come up, removing one of the User Stories from the Sprint backlog (one that has not been started), so the team would not have &quot;extra&quot; things to complete because of external factors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another important thing is, of course, try to have less defects (by doing some QA before releasing features) and, if there are new requests that are not urgent, delaying to the following sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="451" LastActivityDate="2013-03-24T19:21:03.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8945" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-24T19:25:18.887" Score="2" ViewCount="258" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Scenario&lt;/em&gt;: need to quickly explain how the estimation will work to an external business stakeholder; can't take more than few minutes really. The project area is web development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. There's no point in mentioning &lt;em&gt;Agile&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;SCRUM&lt;/em&gt; and other terms that the business stakeholder doesn't really care about. All she cares about is producing &quot;good&quot; (or &quot;decent&quot;) estimates so that she can, on her part, reasonably calculate project/feature cost and delivery time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here goes my outline:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;Components for estimation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A component that should be estimated shouldn't be a feature, but should a deliverable: examples: &quot;checkout&#xA;  process&quot;, &quot;user registration&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;components can then be split into sub-components (for estimation's sake)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;e.g. SCRUM splits these into &quot;epics&quot; and &quot;user stories&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Any deliverable should have clear &quot;cut off&quot; points that determine&#xA;  whether it's actually delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When a feature is &quot;delivered&quot; it implies it is actually deployed (not&#xA;  simply sitting somewhere in some code repository) and delivers actual&#xA;  user benefit&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;Estimates themselves&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When thinking &quot;what to estimate&quot; thinking about the following should&#xA;  help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;component development &lt;strong&gt;effort&lt;/strong&gt; (e.g. if you foresee there's a lot of manual work, or reading a lot of documentation, these increase&#xA;  &quot;effort&quot;) - this is a &quot;predictable&quot; part&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;component development &lt;strong&gt;complexity&lt;/strong&gt; (e.g. if you know that developing this part is very tricky, comprising a number of edge&#xA;  cases, it will need a lot of testing, and therefore automated tests to&#xA;  be developed) - this is a &quot;predictable&quot; part&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;component development &lt;strong&gt;uncertainty&lt;/strong&gt; (maybe there's a better term) - this is the &quot;unpredictable&quot; part - if it is clear this part is inflating the estimate more than the &quot;predictable&quot; parts, then a&#xA;  &quot;spike&quot; should be conducted to make producing the deliverable more&#xA;  predictable, leading to a better estimate&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;what makes a given task &lt;em&gt;unpredictable&lt;/em&gt;? Examples include: using an API you've never used/seen used by others before; a task requires a&#xA;  technical accomplishment which you haven't actually seen being&#xA;  accomplished by anyone so far, i.e. don't know whether it's possible,&#xA;  etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Any &quot;deliverable&quot; or sub-component thereof can be estimated at 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 where 2 is the &quot;double&quot; of 1 (obvious, but important to&#xA;  point out) any component that appears to be larger than 8 should be&#xA;  further split - this makes estimates less likely to be inaccurate&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any points I missed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5843" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-10-31T12:59:45.060" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T12:59:45.060" Title="Quickly explain how to make estimation work to an external business stakeholder" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8945" CreationDate="2013-03-25T10:47:11.477" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Delivering components is dangerous, because a component doesn't hold any business value and their late integration has a huge risk. Let's say I'm a business stakeholder, I don't want components, because I cannot sell them. Users want features, so do I.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mentioned that you don't want to confuse the stakeholders with Scrum, but your outline is full of Scrum references. I don't really get it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stakeholders won't understand points (this is my experience). They understand two things: money and time. So, if I were I won't bother with points, efforts, complexity etc. Give them the following information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;name, when will be ready, how much will it cost&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;feature1.1, 5 days, 1000 USD&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;feature1.2, 3 days, 2000 USD&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;feature2, 6 days,  500 USD&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(in the example above the stakeholders can make a decision wether they want to go with 1.1 or 1.2. It is up to them if they are willing to pay more to get the feature sooner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel that your outline is too long, and complex. Imagine that you want to buy a car, and the sales person tells you about risks, complexity in the production flow. You are interested in two things: when you'll get your car, and how much will it cost you. Start with these, and if there are more questions, you'll update your document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-03-25T10:47:11.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8937" CreationDate="2013-03-25T10:53:07.357" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Defects are signals&lt;/strong&gt;. Something is going on, which needs to be changed. Most probably you have some quality issues, and it is urgent to handle them as soon as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I suggest to talk to the Product Owner. She should be able to prioritise the user stories and bugs (you can handle bugs as user stories, but they don't hold any value).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having 20% for bug fixes won't really solve the problem. If you have more bugs you can fix in 20%, you'll have 30%, than 40%. Eventually, there will be colleagues who'll only fix bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to add a [tech] user story which fixes the root cause of the bugs. This is the agile approach. But it is crucial to &lt;strong&gt;coordinate with your Product Owner&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-03-25T10:53:07.357" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8938" CreationDate="2013-03-25T12:20:01.093" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the sake of transparency in the past I've separated out contingency reserves as separate tasks. This helps communicate the range of dates a given task can be expected to finish without assuming that the team needs/wants to understand Project as well as the PM. This works for critical path management techniques, as David says the &quot;buffer at the end&quot; approach is the critical chain techniques so the articles you've been reading have been talking about apples when it seems you have been looking for oranges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-03-25T12:20:01.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8938" CreationDate="2013-03-25T12:21:03.877" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have some misgivings about &quot;contingency tasks&quot; - seems to undercut Earned Value Management.  I'm not sure how to insert the contingency task automatically; should be possible to do it manually.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that Mr. Espina has described using &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_chain_project_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Critical Chain Management&lt;/a&gt; to address the problem of managing the risk of task slippage. When I have had a need for similar buffers, I've used two techniques. First is to manually insert a milestone after the task, and move the milestone to manage the slippage.  The other is to use &lt;a href=&quot;https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project-help/use-a-pert-analysis-to-estimate-task-durations-HP045321596.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PERT Analysis&lt;/a&gt;.  MS Project allows you to plan the schedule based on weighted estimates. That allows you to display an optimistic/pessimistic/most likely schedule.  Not precisely what you're looking for, but the technique may help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mechanistically, I'd create:  (Here's where I'm trying to answer OP's question directly with minimal assumptions)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A custom field for each task to track the contingency&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A custom field for each task to track the pessimistic duration (duration + contingency)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that will preserve the constraints imposed on the project.  The question that remains in my mind is how I would use the information to convey information to my stakeholders.  I could run a simplistic estimate that shows the optimistic end date, the pessimistic end date and the PERT end date. (This is what I've done most recently because my stakeholders aren't interested in any more complex analysis, and the quick experiments I've done indicate that the answers converge on the PERT answer anyway).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because I'm a frustrated quant, I'd probably also record the actual duration for every task/work package and generate a quick distribution of variances and use that to build a monte carlo model for the rest of my project.  (e.g. &quot;In the past, 50% of work packages deliver on time, but 30% use most of the contingency, 10% use all of the contingency and 20% exceed the contingency. If I assume that pattern continues going forward, then let's simulate the project end date if future work packages follow the pattern of prior work packages.....)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also look for patterns in the distribution... but I'm way beyond what OP asked at this point, I'm just thinking about how I'd use the data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-12-09T12:04:48.937" LastActivityDate="2016-12-09T12:04:48.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8945" CreationDate="2013-03-25T12:31:16.057" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might be better to talk about the assumptions underlying your estimates. Things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The technical requirements delivered by the client are clear and complete.&lt;/strong&gt; You need to be clear that estimating is to a large degree a garbage-in/garbage-out exercise.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project constraints in terms of scope/budget/schedule are known.&lt;/strong&gt; If your business team has made promises in terms of delivery date or cost range or whatever you need to know.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Desired level of error in your estimate.&lt;/strong&gt; Based on what you know, what the requirements look like, etc will you give an estimate that is +-10% or +-100% or whatever?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-03-25T12:31:16.057" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8937" CreationDate="2013-03-25T22:29:59.527" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will try to address the general concepts then, in the conclusion, address things more specific to your situation. Let me start by saying, Scrum is very flexible; however, the parts the &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be there, &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be there. So, some of these ideas are not part of the Scrum framework as described by the Scrum guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tests Exist - Bugs Still Get Released&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have automated testing, and the assumed continuous integration processes, in place, but bugs are still getting into releases, it seems like either the tests are incomplete (testing only the happy path) or hey are simply testing the wrong things. Try to account for more time per ticket item (not sure if you are using stories, epics, etc.); whether you are using story points or time doesn't really matter, try to increase either or both to afford your team the opportunity to create more robust/proper tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also consider examining the test writing process itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Diversity of Knowledge &amp;amp; Two Teams&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum has a general recommendation of 3-to-9 people (6 +/-3), to ensure a certain diversity of knowledge and background among team members. Those with testing backgrounds, those with back-end backgrounds, marketing, design, etc. If you can bring on more people to facilitate the creation of two teams, you may consider something described in the book, Leading Lean Software Development by the Poppendiecks; the team becoming support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic principle here is Team A works on a bunch of new functionality. For Scrum, the Product Owner accepts the deliverable during the Sprint Review. Team A now becomes support for the release, taking all the calls, updating all the materials, and fixing defects. Meanwhile Team B, during the same period, is continuously integrating the work of Team A into the work they are doing on new features. Now, if there are too many bugs for Team A to handle alone, then the PO may want to abandon the sprint for Team B so they can join Team A in correcting defects (this is a serious sign there is something wrong in the testing and/or review process).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Fast Track, Level of Commitment, and Nice-to-Haves&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When bugs come in, this an interruption to new feature development; however, it &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; happen. Take a look at the history of your sprints, how much time was spent dealing with defect interruptions (correcting technical debt)? Then, during the next sprint planning meeting, try to account for this in your estimates. Basically, determine the level of commitment the team is willing to take on for the sprint. While we would like to say 100% all the time, reality does not really concern itself with what we want. So, if 50% of the team's time in the last couple of sprints has been spent on overcoming technical debt, don't take on so much in the following sprint; instead, maybe take a different approach to the sprint planning meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, let everyone know that the team thinks they are capable of dedicating 50% of their time to new functionality; just in case. But, what you would like to do is create a first pass sprint backlog assuming 100% dedication is possible. Then, you, the team, and the PO can determine which, among those items is absolutely, positively, bar-none gonna be done in this sprint - based on a 50% commitment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By doing it this way, you allow for what is commonly referred to as a fast track. Basically, a defect is reported. All work stops on the other tickets until the bug is fixed - it &quot;fast tracks&quot; passed all the other work (but you should still write tests for it to try to curtail regression). Now, since we know which items don't necessarily need to be done by the end of the sprint - those marked as nice-to-have - as long as the team doesn't get bombarded by defects over the 50% time they truly committed to - the PO shouldn't have to abandon the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eventually, you should be able to overcome the technical debts currently in the system and, hopefully, reduce the amount of technical debt &lt;em&gt;in&lt;/em&gt; the system; thereby, increasing the level of commitment the team is comfortable taking on per sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, if your automated tests aren't covering the defects making into the wild - the process of their creation and what exactly they are covering should probably be reviewed. Given your team size is 7, to maintain a diversity of knowledge, you probably shouldn't split the teams. The &quot;buffer&quot; is a good idea; however, should not be allowed to become a crutch - the team shouldn't be spending a lot of time fixing bugs, because the technical debt shouldn't be getting out there - try to figure out why it is happening. The last thing I will mention, and this is something you should consider honestly, is does your team take on too much in a sprint for 7 days? It is not meant to be a criticism of the capabilities of the team; however, given the continuous improvement nature of Scrum, maybe the definition of done has increased in its sophistication while your complexity estimates have not adjust to accommodate, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps, and answers the question. If you would like clarification or expansion on any of the ideas, please feel free to comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2013-03-25T22:29:59.527" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8937" CreationDate="2013-03-25T22:31:00.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A bug is simply another word for a change request, which is the same as a feature request, which is the same as a PBI which are all proxies for things that the customer values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your backlog is a list of things that the customer values. Your Product Owner should prioritize it based on what the customer values most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What ZSolt said is exactly right, an excessive defect rate is a smell and needs to be addressed as soon as possible. Piling buggy code on top of buggy code is a good way to tank your entire project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you're running 1 week iterations, what value is there in cancelling a Sprint? How far into the Sprint are you when you realize that it needs to be cancelled? Seems a bit strange to nuke a 1 week iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit: Bugs = change/feature/user story/otherthing&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I think it is important to have different types of work items for reporting purposes (although with an eye towards the minimalist side of the house), I treat the backlog as the difference between how the product is currently and how the stakeholders want to the product to be in the future. Therefore, anytime that you are going to alter your product, the backlog should reflect this. This allows you to prioritize bug fixes, new user stories, architecture improvements, refactoring and whatever else you do to your product against each other. I find this to be a much more transparent process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastEditorUserId="4422" LastEditDate="2013-03-26T08:58:19.267" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T08:58:19.267" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8953" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-25T23:36:17.507" Score="9" ViewCount="741" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the company that I work for we have documents covering system requirements, standards, user acceptance, etc. each of these are maintained manually. If a change to the requirements is made then it has to be made in a couple of places, user acceptance criteria needs to be added associated with this requirement etc. etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As this is done manually there have been occasions where the person updating the documents have updated it in the main document but neglected to update it in another. Which while have been caught prior to being sent to the user so far would be quite embarrassing if the user found this before we did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I was wondering whether anyone knows if there is any automated way of dealing with this issue then I would be greatful to know. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5853" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T14:40:41.703" Title="Maintaining consistency over documents" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8953" CreationDate="2013-03-26T02:24:01.910" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very common problem across many types of documents. The solution used in Technical Communications industry is referred to as &quot;single-sourcing,&quot; which is the ability to write something once and then reuse it by reference in the various places where it is relevant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many commercial products to support the creation of single-source (also called component-based) content. As with most technologies the range of solutions spans from open source to very expensive. Many of the solutions require a Component Content Management System (CCMS) but it is not an absolute requirement. Most of the solutions utilize XML as a markup language for producing content however it is increasingly popular to hide the XML from authors in either a browser or word-like editor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest concern for someone who wants to single-source content for project documentation is the sheer amount of information and number of products dedicated to this subject. If you have any contacts with full-time technical writers you might want to see if they are single-sourcing their content and could help you to get started. You could also check to see if you have a local chapter of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stc.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;STC&lt;/a&gt; (Society for Technical Communication). The members are generally very helpful although not all of them are single-sourcing content. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5593" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2013-03-27T14:40:41.703" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T14:40:41.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8955" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8959" CreationDate="2013-03-26T08:01:47.943" Score="28" ViewCount="16466" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can a Product Owner be a developer in Scrum? In theory, yes, but is it recommended by Scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3687" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2015-06-18T10:47:25.527" LastActivityDate="2021-02-14T17:29:00.067" Title="Can a Product Owner be a developer in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="14" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8955" CreationDate="2013-03-26T10:56:15.253" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;While the Scrum Guide does not explicitly state whether the Scrum Master or Product Owner are, or are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; part of the development team, they &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; part of the Scrum Team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Team consists of a Product Owner, a Scrum Master, and the development team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which infers that both the Product Owner and the Scrum Master operate outside of the development team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, the Scrum Guide also states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum’s roles, artifacts, events, and rules are immutable and although implementing only parts of Scrum is possible, the result is not Scrum. Scrum exists only in its entirety and functions well as a container for other techniques, methodologies, and practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is also responsible for a lot of administration and backlog grooming, again from the Scrum Guide:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is the sole person responsible for managing the Product Backlog. Product Backlog management includes: Clearly expressing Product Backlog items; Ordering the items in the Product Backlog to best achieve goals and missions; Ensuring the value of the work the Development Team performs; Ensuring that the Product Backlog is visible, transparent, and clear to all, and shows what&#xA;  the Scrum Team will work on next; and, Ensuring the Development Team understands items in the Product Backlog to the level needed. The Product Owner may do the above work, or have the Development Team do it. However, the Product Owner remains accountable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the preceding information, I would say it is not recommended - and, if you were to do so you would not actually be doing Scrum (according to the document maintained by the founders). Having said that, is that inherently a bad thing - no, you just shouldn't call it Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrum.org/Scrum-Guides&quot;&gt;http://www.scrum.org/Scrum-Guides&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyNPeTn8fpo&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyNPeTn8fpo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastEditorUserId="5788" LastEditDate="2013-03-26T15:36:18.497" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T15:36:18.497" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8955" CreationDate="2013-03-26T10:57:38.377" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. PO is a hat just like any other. The only precluded combination is PO and Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Knowing that the community would be vehemently against me here, I short-circuited the length of my answer as I didn't really relish the idea of yet another argument with a Scrum zealot. To them I will say this: the Scrum guide is very explicit in saying that it is very explicit (see the quotes in Josh Bruce's answer for evidence). The Scrum Guide very specifically does not ever say the PO cannot be a member of the Development Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, if you're PO is only occupied 20% of the time and is a fully qualified developer do I really care if your going to make me stop saying I'm doing &quot;Scrum&quot; while I continue to deliver value to my customers? Nope, not in the least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is responsible for the economics of the product. As long as he/she is fulfilling that role and their work in process is controlled, I see no reason why they shouldn't grab a keyboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastEditorUserId="4422" LastEditDate="2013-03-26T17:30:17.197" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T17:30:17.197" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8955" CreationDate="2013-03-26T11:06:51.463" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is possible that a developer also acts as a product owner but I don't think that it is recommended. Here are my 2 main reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It may create conflict of interest&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It will drag down your output as a developer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PO has to prioritize the backlog (the what part) where as the team decides amount of work that can be delivered in each sprint (the how-much part). Similarly PO provides feedback on the sprint during sprint review meetings and decides to approve or reject the sprint which has been delivered by the team thus causing conflict of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a PO needs frequent engagement with both the client and the team so that everyone has aligned vision of what needs to be delivered when. PO has to be available to answer questions coming from the team. If your time is divided between engagement and development it is bound to have a negative effect on efficiency for both dev and PO roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20101223040216/http://scrumalliance.org/profiles/26-roman-pichler&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Roman Pichler&lt;/a&gt; has to say on &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20101222225350/http://www.scrumalliance.org/articles/44-being-an-effective-product-owner&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Alliance&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;The product owner is required to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;closely collaborate with the team on an ongoing basis to guide and direct them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;manage the product backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;answer questions asked by the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;provide feedback&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sign-off work results&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a lot of work for a PO which would require undivided attention. For highly aligned and high performance teams, Scrum Master role may need less amount of time but a PO will still have to spend similar amount of time regardless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-21T09:41:30.633" LastActivityDate="2020-06-21T09:41:30.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8953" CreationDate="2013-03-26T11:23:22.370" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Difficult problem, and I doubt there will be any simple answers.  I would suggest a corrollary's to CodeGnome's law.  First, decide what the process is - how do you make sure that a change is applied in all the appropriate places.  Once you have that, figure out how to automate it.  Automation is a tool not a solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your shoes, I'd apply change control first.  When a change has to be applied to a document, &lt;em&gt;BEFORE&lt;/em&gt; it is applied have the author run the change past a group of stakeholders who will review whether that change has any other implications, has adequate User Acceptance Test, needs to be incorporated elsewhere, etc.  The first dozen times through the process will be cumbersome, but pretty rapidly people learn.  Once people have learned/evolved informal procedures look for opportunities to automate the routine.  At this point as @Deer Hunter says, you can concentrate on the margin cases requiring human attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T11:23:22.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8955" CreationDate="2013-03-26T11:52:36.370" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately not. A good product owner has a lot of coordination work with customers, support, management which takes a lot of time (and meetings). Therefore only a small amount of time remaining for development work and being with the team. Plus this small amount time will be interrupted by users, customers, managers, meetings anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, if the product owner knows too much about the implementation details, he can drive the team to a certain technological direction and may be less open to other suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product ownership requires a different kind of mindset. Even if one has a PO and a developer mindset, switching between them takes time and a huge effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T11:52:36.370" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8955" CreationDate="2013-03-26T13:24:48.987" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No of course the PO cannot be a developer and vice versa. &lt;em&gt;Scrum&lt;/em&gt; is all about roles and different point of views on the same vision or goal. Additionally the task to be done by a PO are totally different to the task to be done by a developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To provide a good product it's good that team is challenged (I think that's why it's called &lt;em&gt;Scrum&lt;/em&gt;) by the PO and vice versa. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By providing feedback the team can also make the PO to think about the product or about the features he wants to have implemented. So due to the different point of views all participants are evolving. If a PO would also be a developer you would not use this effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3100" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T13:24:48.987" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8926" CreationDate="2013-03-26T15:44:24.130" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would close the initial project.  I would schedule follow-up &quot;releases&quot;, that can each be their own project, defined by the scope of the features you are going to include in it, and bound by the beginning and end dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="933" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T15:44:24.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8598" CreationDate="2013-03-26T15:46:25.230" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You shouldn't assign resources to a summary level task.  Not only in Microsoft Project, but just in general.  You assign resources to the detailed level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="933" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T15:46:25.230" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6813" CreationDate="2013-03-26T15:48:27.630" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Work is indeed effort-hours, rather than duration.&#xA;Someone works for two hours on a task over two days results in 2 work hours, and 2 Days of duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="933" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T15:48:27.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8953" CreationDate="2013-03-26T15:50:56.037" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a huge fan of automation without some level of human intervention. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is too likely that the business rules in your automation logic will be imperfect and will fail to catch what a human could catch intuitively. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is too likely that your team will get &quot;dumbed down&quot; if there is an overreliance on automated processes, in the same way that reliance on a GPS can lead people to literally go down the wrong road when common sense dictates otherwise.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Per Mark's answer, develop an end-to-end process for manual effort and then figure out what can be automated. At a minimum you will still need manual intervention as part of an auditing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Per DeerHunter cross-referencing should be used if a human were to do the work and can support your auditing. If you are going the paper route all it takes is a table in the back of each doc listing what other docs it cites, and which docs cite it. If you are doing things more electronically you could get away with a simple Access DB or Excel spreadsheet, nothing fancy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T15:50:56.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8968" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8970" CreationDate="2013-03-26T15:52:58.030" Score="18" ViewCount="977" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just started a project with a team of coders working remotely. I trust that they will get the job done, but I want a way to track their progress day to day. I know they are using a Git repository to keep a history of their changes, but I don't fully understand how to use it or how to get relevant information about their daily activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to track their changes visually and simply?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5860" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-03-26T15:56:27.900" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T16:03:43.463" Title="How can I track the work done by a remote team of coders?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;progress-monitor&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8968" CreationDate="2013-03-26T16:11:02.293" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If they are using a git repository a good idea could be to use &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GitHub&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;In GitHub you have tools like charts in which you will see the process, commits, adds, deletions and so on that your group of coders is doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For using it you don't need any knowledge of how git works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another good tool we use is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pivotaltracker.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pivotal Tracker&lt;/a&gt;. This is an online tool in which you have your backlog and sprintbackloog. The coders should start, comment and close the tasks they are working on. So taking a look at those tasks you will see what are they actually doing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5849" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T16:11:02.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8968" CreationDate="2013-03-26T16:27:22.223" Score="18" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use tools like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/gitk.html&quot;&gt;gitk&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://gitstats.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;GitStats&lt;/a&gt;, or the &lt;a href=&quot;https://help.github.com/articles/using-graphs&quot;&gt;GitHub graphs tab&lt;/a&gt; for a visual representation of repository activity. However, this is usually a bad idea from a project management perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Wrong Metrics&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, measuring lines of code (LOC) or commit activity is the wrong way to measure a software project. You get what you measure, after all; if you assess your team members based on volume, then you get volume, regardless of quality or usefulness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just as an example, consider the following Ruby code:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;a = b = c = 1&#xA;a + b + c&#xA;# =&amp;gt; 3&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if my performance review is based on lines of code, you will get:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;a = 1&#xA;b = 1&#xA;c = 1&#xA;sum = a&#xA;sum += b&#xA;sum += c&#xA;sum&#xA;# =&amp;gt; 3&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and most likely one commit per line of code. That's a 350% increase in verbosity, a significant &lt;em&gt;decrease&lt;/em&gt; in productivity, and no discernible impact on functionality. You will have measured your way to reduced productivity!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Right Metrics&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, you will want to measure the quality and timeliness of your deliverables, rather than changes to the code base itself. From a project management point of view, it's the deliverables that matter most; your key metrics should reflect that, rather than falling prey to the 100% utilization fallacy or mistaking busy-work for progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile methodologies like Scrum treat tasks as &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;not-done&lt;/em&gt;. You may want to consider adjusting your work breakdown structure to measure features or tasks that can be treated as checklist items, and assessing the team as a whole based on how often they meet the agreed-upon targets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a single example, it would be better to measure &quot;add a function to sum three&#xA;variables&quot; rather than &quot;write at least 200 lines of code per day.&quot; The first will get you a working function; the second gets you some very pretty graphs that you can proudly display on your wall after the project fails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T16:27:22.223" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8968" CreationDate="2013-03-26T16:32:41.457" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unit tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe (I have not yet implemented this) that unit tests would be the basis of EVM if I were supervising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Break the work down to unit tests and then measure completion of the unit test against the anticipated outcome and the error outcomes.  (if there are notable errors, they get EVM credit).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't care how many Lines of Code you check in  or out.  I care whether Unit Test 4479 can handle 70% of the cases thrown against it.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(abbreviated for time)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Update&lt;/em&gt; Mr. Fox made a comment that is correct (and that matches a realization I had over lunch). I wouldn't want to measure single unit tests, I would want to measure some aggregation of them.  Depending on the size of the project and the level of insight needed, I might measure tens or hundreds of unit tests.  I'm not suggesting this is trivial, but in my opinion this is the best compromise that allows me to measure % complete against a standard that is closely tied to the software's eventual functionality.  I'm kind of obsessive about measuring in terms of customer's value.  Unit tests also re-uses a metric that is already being captured &amp;amp; measured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2013-03-27T18:04:17.303" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T18:04:17.303" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8968" CreationDate="2013-03-26T17:51:04.410" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Might I suggest using a service like &lt;a href=&quot;http://codegraphite.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CodeGraphite&lt;/a&gt;? (disclaimer: I am one of the creators of the site). While I completely agree with some of the other answers in measuring code does not necessarily measure productivity, it certainly can help give you an idea of overall progress when looked at over a period of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CodeGraphite shows you the basic metrics you may need:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lines of Code per Day&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Commits&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Files added or Removed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coder progress&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5861" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T17:51:04.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8968" CreationDate="2013-03-26T21:11:47.280" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a good thing you asked on a public site where people can respond truthfully rather than telling you what you want to hear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The correct metric is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Knowing what you are doing&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There just isn't a simple metric that works, and trying to use one will mislead you, and if you act on it then it will drive the team in the wrong direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Saying &quot;Oh, I know, I know, but I just want a quick overall picture&quot; doesn't work either.  Quick but wrong will only make things worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to know the people on the team, and what their problems are, and understand the code they checked in and how it relates to the overall project, and who was responsible for it.  Or, you need to be able to figure out who to trust to tell you about those things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't, for whatever reason, do either of those things then you don't have the ability to measure the project.  Period.  If that means that you can't manage the project, then you can't manage the project.  Try to look busy, stay out of the way, and hope they do well without you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; manage the project without measuring it.  Find out what people need.  Solve their problems.  Don't create a new one - trying to get a project done while measuring up to silly metrics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4415" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T21:11:47.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8953" CreationDate="2013-03-27T04:48:27.547" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't do it by hand, then you can't automate it. Automation is a tool to increase consistency, but it is not in itself a substitute for a well-defined process or process control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A Whirlwind Tour of Potential Solutions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many technical answers to a question like yours. Some include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;macro languages like m4&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;single-source document markup languages like AsciiDoc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;templating solutions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;integration of sub-documents&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;database normalization for use with document merges&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;commercial systems like Rational DOORS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;home-brewed scripts using sed, AWK, Perl, Python, or Ruby for find-and-replace&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, all of them miss the real point: when you talk about validating quality and consistency, you're talking about &lt;em&gt;controls&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A Quick Overview of Controls&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Controls come in various types:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Physical controls&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical controls&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Administrative controls&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and with varying objectives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Preventive controls&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Detective controls&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Corrective controls&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are currently implementing a manual process with at least &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; detective and corrective controls. If you didn't have any controls in place, you would not have detected or corrected your errors before documents were sent out. Q.E.D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Document and Evaluate Your Process&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a process; document that down to the procedural level. Your process has controls; document them, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you fully understand your current process, measure the effectiveness and costs of both your process and your controls. Perhaps you need a better process, or maybe an appropriate technical or administrative control will become obvious once you start analyzing your process more closely. Then again, maybe all the right pieces are already in place, and you just need to make sure the process or controls are actually operating as designed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Administrative Controls Are Usually Easiest&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my personal experience, administrative controls are usually the easiest to implement, although (by definition) they are not automated. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Institute a formal document review process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Document a repeatable procedure for each set of changes made within the process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implement a checklist of things to validate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Require sign-offs for each administrative control stage.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The automation you use, if any, should be selected based on how well it integrates with your defined process, and whether the automated controls have fewer false positives or false negatives than your manual controls. An unreliable automation is worse than no automation at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T04:48:27.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8937" CreationDate="2013-03-27T05:27:18.633" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All your problems likely stem from communication problems and a general failure to adhere to the change-control processes built into Scrum. Fix the communications issues, leverage the Scrum framework, and make any problems with the current process &lt;em&gt;visible&lt;/em&gt; to the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Project's Problem&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project's problem is that you have both a quality-control issue and a change-control process issue. Your quality issue appears to be caused by failing to engage the customer throughout the development and QA cycles, and then treating their (presumably reasonable) bug reports as rush jobs rather than requiring the Product Owner to prioritize the change requests on the main Scrum artifact: the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Team's Problems&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Team's problems seem to include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A Scrum Master who is not working the process or educating the Product Owner or customer on appropriate inspect-and-adapt points within your iterative development process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A Product Owner who is not taking responsibility for the &quot;definition of done&quot; or refusing to prioritize infrastructure or training stories, story spikes, or other essentials within the Product Backlog. The Product Owner also seems to be doing a poor job setting customer expectations, gathering their requirements accurately, or engaging them after each iteration to (re)build the Product Backlog as needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A Development Team that is over-committing by accepting stories into sprints even when they exceed the team's actual capacity. I'd bet money that the team is also not addressing quality issues or fundamental process problems in daily stand-ups or during the Sprint Retrospectives.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Abnormal Terminations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abnormal terminations due to urgent changes in business requirements are allowed in Scrum. The Product Owner has the power to terminate the sprint at any time; the Scrum Master has the power to ensure that the Sprint Backlog is not changed during a sprint &lt;em&gt;unless&lt;/em&gt; the Product Owner terminates the sprint and returns the entire team to Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This creates process overhead, and a cost to the organization. That's necessary to ensure that the underlying process problems are addressed, rather than ignored or continually swept under the rug.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way you are handling things &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt; costs the business time and money. The only thing that would change by following the tenets of the framework is that it would become &lt;em&gt;obvious&lt;/em&gt; what the source of the process issues are, because the team (and senior management) will be forced to inspect the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T05:27:18.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8968" CreationDate="2013-03-27T12:16:29.740" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fogcreek.com/kiln/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;klin&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fogcreek.com/fogbugz/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fogbugz&lt;/a&gt; developed by fogcreek software. With tool you can see who is working on what and what is the progress. I suggest to have a look at the referenced &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fogcreek.com/fogbugz/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fogbugz&lt;/a&gt; page and the embedded video by Joel (it was a real eye opener for me).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T12:16:29.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8977" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8981" CreationDate="2013-03-27T13:48:59.417" Score="5" ViewCount="1887" Body="&lt;p&gt;My organization is currently using Scrum to manage a large development project. Once this is complete we will start to work on several smaller projects (ranging from approx 2 weeks to 2 months work) either simultaneously or by taking each one in turn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, what is the best way to manage multiple smaller projects in a Scrum environment? Should we work on a single project at a time or could we effectively work on stories from more than one project in a single sprint? The other option I can see is a hybrid of this, where we work on Project A in one sprint and Project B in the next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would like to concentrate on a single project at a time but I am aware that internal business pressures may make this a difficult sell. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T17:29:48.920" Title="Managing multiple development projects in Scrum" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8978" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-27T14:02:39.780" Score="2" ViewCount="4576" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently do a number of things at work, but I have no idea what to officially call myself?, I was a IT/Telco Design Engineer previously and now I do more Program Coordination/Governance, Resource Management and Project Management work as part of the PMO team, but I still do volunteer on some occasions to help out in some software dev or Solutions Architecture work, but my main focus now is really towards PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been searching around and asking questions to Seniors at work but everyone seems to have a different definition of &quot;Consultant&quot;, there was even a small argument between two colleagues about its meaning when I asked and whether it applies to what I currently do, or if PM's are able to call themselves Consultants..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On my Job Application it officially states that I'm a Consultant , but I'm not sure if this is what I truely am? which confuses me to what I should state on my LinkedIn page without removing the fact that I'm part of the PMO team?, I mean from what I have gathered now, a Consultant is an employee who works closely with a client to solve their current business and Telco/IT issues, but on this following page on wikipedia it states something a bit different: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_%28consulting%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Consulting Levels&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what is a Consultant?, what does a Consultant do?, can I call myself a Consultant even while being part of the PMO team?, as I would've called myself a Junior PM, but I'm doing so much other things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its like when I was a IT/Telco Design Engineer, I would do Programming, Testing, Solution Architecture, Support, BA...etc, it was all consolidated within &quot;Design Engineer&quot;, so is that what a Consultant is too?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5551" LastEditorUserId="5551" LastEditDate="2013-04-09T02:54:01.747" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T02:54:01.747" Title="When does one call themselves a &quot;Consultant&quot;?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;work-environment&gt;&lt;job-allocation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8977" CreationDate="2013-03-27T14:19:20.433" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are right, that setup is something hard to sell, and when you do A,B,C,A,B,C there is a chance that you won't finish anything. What happens if a user story of project B is not finished in its sprint? You have to shift it to the next. In this case you'll have to wait several weeks to continue, which has the risk of forgetting what has happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My proposal is to find the minimum set of user stories and sprints in each project (in theory let's say it is 25% of a project), and do the minimum from A, than from B etc. With this approach you'll minimize the risk of not finishing a project, and you'll still have enough room to do something valuable in each project:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A(25%, 2 sprints), B(25%, 3 sprints), C (25%, 1 sprint), A(50%, 1 sprint) etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T14:19:20.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8978" CreationDate="2013-03-27T14:55:19.647" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can always call yourself consultant, because the definition of a consultant is not that strict:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A person who provides expert advice professionally.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are person (check), you are an expert, therefore you can give expert advices (check), and you'll plan to earn your living from doing it - you are a professional - (check). Due to the nature of the job - people don't need expert advices all the team - the consultant is a sub-contractor work, and they are often considered as &lt;strong&gt;externals&lt;/strong&gt;. They come and go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since consultants are externals, organisations don't use the &lt;em&gt;consultant&lt;/em&gt; title internally. They use a version of a manager: change manager, expert manager, etc. So if you are looking for a name inside your organisation, find a fancy/sexy manager title and use that one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T14:55:19.647" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8977" CreationDate="2013-03-27T17:29:48.920" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;The Framework Answer&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a framework perspective, each Scrum Team works from a single Product Backlog, and each sprint should have a single unifying Sprint Goal. If you have multiple projects, it seems unlikely that you can meet either of these requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Scrum Teams are &lt;em&gt;Project&lt;/em&gt; Teams&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While a Scrum Team may work on multiple projects over time, and in some cases a Scrum Master or Product Owner will have more than one project, the team &lt;em&gt;as a whole&lt;/em&gt; should be dedicated to a single project. This reduces overhead and lost productivity due to task-switching and loss of momentum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That isn't to say that a Scrum Team never leverages matrixed resources. However, if you find yourself in a situation where 100% of your &quot;team&quot; is matrixed, or if you have individuals or sub-groups working on different projects concurrently, then you don't really have a team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Alternatives&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're going to be working on tasks that can't be classified as a singular project, but you have a conceptually unified process for your tasks, then you may find Kanban a better fit than Scrum.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If concurrency is important, you might consider re-partitioning into multiple teams for Scrum or Kanban, keeping each team focused on a specific project or process flow.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are limited to a single team for multiple projects, the business should re-evaluate whether projects can be prioritized to limit overlap and avoid overbooking of resources.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T17:29:48.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8982" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-27T22:44:24.990" Score="12" ViewCount="2697" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are ever so many references to the &lt;strong&gt;team's 'maturity'&lt;/strong&gt; in the Agile/Lean related books and articles/blogs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using my common sense I think I can get the idea. I can see how my team has evolved over the last year and how is still evolving. But still, I know for sure that we lack maturity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are a self-organizing team without anyone experienced enough to guide us through the difficult time of changes. We are finding our way (with myself - the most recent enthusiast of kanban and lean methodology) and we will get there.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are in our early days working aside the kanban board, getting there to automate a number of processes. Learning. We are getting agile bit by bit. We are growing and I can feel it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But &lt;strong&gt;is there any way to measure where we are? Is there any benchmark&lt;/strong&gt;? And what are the next steps?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5798" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2013-03-28T12:40:09.413" LastActivityDate="2013-03-30T16:41:06.517" Title="What is the standard for evaluating team maturity?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;team&gt;&lt;lean&gt;&lt;leadership&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8982" CreationDate="2013-03-27T23:56:20.980" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your team &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; the benchmark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If last week you weren't doing Test-Driven-Development, but you all agreed that was something you wanted to change for the next go-round, and you did...there you go. If you decided to give it a go - but didn't - well, you didn't follow through...not the end of the world, but could probably do with some follow-through and improvement if it was a stated goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are using Lean with a Kanban board, I'm assuming you are tracking how long it takes for an item to go from ready to done. How long items spend in each column. Etc. When you find out where your bottlenecks are - identify them, mark them as being &quot;found out&quot; - then start figuring out how to iron down that molehill (or whether that's a molehill you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; iron down, or even if it &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be ironed down). Did you manage to do it? Great! Not so much? Do the 5 whys exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, don't compare yourself against other teams, it's just asking for trouble. Your circumstance is different. Your &quot;vibe&quot; is unique. Your team culture is not their team culture. Your marketplace is not their marketplace. That's the beauty of Agile, as something internalized (pardon the cheese for a moment) - it doesn't say: You must do it this way, and just look at the $50 billion team over there - they're way better than us...sure, but you aren't there yet. Are you doing better than you did the last time in some measurable way (that you, as a team, have determined is worth measuring)? Then you're doing just fine. There are enough users and tasks to complete for everyone to have a piece and leave enough for the next generation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps. And maybe answers the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastEditorUserId="5788" LastEditDate="2013-03-28T12:04:36.073" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T12:04:36.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8968" CreationDate="2013-03-28T02:36:52.703" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rather than track code, track deliverables. Set deadlines for specific items being done and track against that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T02:36:52.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8982" CreationDate="2013-03-28T10:56:40.050" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your benchmark must be your customers' satisfaction, your recovery from failures, and reaction time&lt;/strong&gt;. The last two affects the first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say that team immaturity exist which means that the team cannot perform well without an external supervision. &lt;strong&gt;The team doesn't learn, but waits [and excepts] for external help.&lt;/strong&gt; Therefore an immature team has long reaction time (due to the waiting), and practically no self-recovery (due to the help). These two will result in poor customer satisfaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A mature &lt;strong&gt;team learns from previous team experiences and from external supervision&lt;/strong&gt;, and the dependency between the team and the external supervision is loose. The team's reaction time is shorter and recovery is faster week by week. This results in better and better customer satisfaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T10:56:40.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8982" CreationDate="2013-03-28T10:57:36.277" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are universal signs of team maturity.  Use the Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing model as an example.  The stages just in framework give a clue as to what you might see as your team matures.  When you just form, you can expect to see civility between the members and high morale, but performance will be low, and direction from the boss will be high.  As the team enters storming, as the name suggests, conflict will grow, allies and enemies created, sabotage is likely, and morale will drop.  The boss will even have to provide higher direction and more micro management (this is when micro management is NOT bad despite the general belief most have).  Then, into norming, the team starts to settle in, roles begin to emerge (think Belbin roles here, where individuals start assuming various roles that complete a team), morale grows again, and boss direction begins to drop.  Performance starts to improve as well where the deliverables become &quot;collective&quot; in responsibility.  If Bob fails, we all fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, in perform, boss direction is near hands off, the team is self organizing, morale is high, productivity is high, conflict still occurs as a natural consequence of working together but how it is resolved is worlds apart from the storming stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, opposite of what Josh suggests, comparison to other teams is what you need to do, as this is how these various teaming frameworks were developed in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2013-03-28T11:04:59.210" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T11:04:59.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8982" CreationDate="2013-03-28T13:28:30.853" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am of the opinion that it is more valuable to compare your team's current maturity against where you want to be rather than against where you started. To this end:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Define a reasonable, achieveable future state.&lt;/strong&gt; This definition needs to be based on your business requirements and not on what a text book says. Key to success here is engaging your team in arriving at this definition/vision.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Identify meaningful metrics for measuring success.&lt;/strong&gt; These would ideally be objective but could be subjective (e.g. polling the team for their opinions on current team maturity, soliciting lessons learned, etc). As part of the definition you should also specify how and how often the metrics are measured.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Plan for ongoing follow up.&lt;/strong&gt; It is all fine and good to come up with an idea and monitor metrics, but you need to have a plan to ensure that the team stays mature over the long haul once it gets there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T13:28:30.853" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8955" CreationDate="2013-03-28T16:08:16.437" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're looking for anecdotes, I'm both a PO and developer/architect for a team. This is more out of necessity than choice. Personally I find it rather difficult, because it means I don't have an opportunity to provide the appropriate level of PO support that my team deserves. I am not able to devote 100% of my time to development and I'm not able to devote 100% of my time to being the product owner, so both roles suffer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OTOH, my team is highly productive, arguably the most productive and happy team in the company. So, as a team we're able to make it work. At the end of the day, that's what matters most, right? A truly self-organizing team will do what it needs to get the work done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I don't recommend trying it unless you have no other choice. As productive as my team is, I like to think we would be even more productive with a full time PO, whether it's me or someone else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3189" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T16:08:16.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8990" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-28T17:37:37.847" Score="7" ViewCount="696" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a project having planning meetings at the start of every sprint. Three teams are involved on every planning meeting, reviewing pending/todo issues team by team (every issue is estimated).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some members have requested to conduct separate meetings, one per team, to not lose much time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Initially, it was proposed to make meetings together because sometimes there are dependencies between teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would you advise me to conduct these meetings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4895" LastActivityDate="2020-07-02T23:29:40.617" Title="How to reduce planning meeting time involving several teams?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;multi-team&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8990" CreationDate="2013-03-28T18:05:28.887" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may need to amend the scope of your meetings so that they are more efficient. One approach would be to have a series of smaller meetings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The first meeting in the series (and of a sprint) would be inter-team with key team leaders who have the knowledge and authority to speak for their teams. At these meetings you could talk about their issues, review dependencies, etc which impact the project as a whole.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The remaining meetings in the series would be intra-team planning meetings led by the key team leaders, and would be used to decide on the details of how to implement the decisions made at the inter-team meeting. These meetings could be run concurrently by your three teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking this approach has the advantage of reducing meeting time for lower-level team members (the doers), helps keep high-level and low-level discussions at the level they should be at, clearly delegates authority and responsibility to the key team leaders, and keeps the number of voices in a room to a level where they can all be heard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T18:05:28.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8896" CreationDate="2013-03-28T18:50:46.620" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're right to consider multiple aspects for web development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have an external client who is giving the final verdict on the design or functionality, you should separate those elements out because those requirements can change quickly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, most web development teams use flowcharts and wireframes to mark the infrastructure for the web site and a versioning system for tracking code changes. The wireframe gives some stability to your development of frontend before considerations are made for specific graphical elements like colors/fonts, while the versioning system (usually dependent on functionality) helps track the changes for functional requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another consideration is dependent on what features you'll show your customer at specific time intervals. The order in which you assign tasks and finish them (each feature should go thru development and testing) is up to you. It is also ideal to have development side testing performed prior to production level tests of each feature. Especially true for data heavy sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4260" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T18:50:46.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8938" CreationDate="2013-03-29T02:46:57.673" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not believe Project has a method of encoding an explicit contingency into specific tasks. I can think of three work-arounds in addition to the idea in the original question, ranked in what I think is decreasing utility:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Add the contingency to the base duration&lt;/strong&gt; and make this the task duration in Project. The downside of this method is that it blurs the distinction between the base and contingency amount and buries all the schedule margin in the individual tasks. That said, it's more likely to be a realistic schedule than using all the base estimates. If you really want to retain the contingency information you can add an extra column and easily paste the contingency information into your schedule. It would be used for anything by project, but the information will be there for later reference. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Remove the contingency and carry all program float at the end.&lt;/strong&gt; In this method the Project task durations match the base estimates. The resulting project end date will be sooner than in your current tool and the difference will be the total program float to that date. Project will calculate the float (i.e. number of days until a given task will be on the critical path), which can help you see how much contingency each task has before it will begin to impact the project-level end date. The downside of this approach is it represents the most optimistic schedule, and if you have to status your progress to these dates to your management you're definitely going to be behind on some of your tasks and might catch unnecessary hell.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Add new tasks for contingency&lt;/strong&gt;, where each contingency task is finish-to-start linked to the base task. This would double the number of tasks in your project and seems like a terrible idea to me, but it's theoretically a solution. You could also do this only for contingency at the end of a group of tasks, but honestly this is what the float metric is for.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="360" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T02:46:57.673" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8990" CreationDate="2013-03-29T10:12:14.327" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was in a similar situation a couple of years ago. We had a large meeting, because we thought that it was the best way to solve dependencies. We observed that most of the participants weren't listening, because the discussion was irrelevant to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a solution, &lt;strong&gt;we kept the meetings in the same time but at different places, near to each other. So when a dependency problem came up, we sent a message to the other team saying that we would go over in 5 minutes and discuss it.&lt;/strong&gt; They had time to finish what they were doing, and be ready for the next discussion. It really worked. I'm not with those teams anymore, but as far as I know they still do the meetings in this fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T10:12:14.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8990" CreationDate="2013-03-29T12:32:29.243" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the goal is to reduce meeting planning time, then hold a single meeting and timebox it.  A single one hour meeting fits the goal better than three one hour meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the question text hints that there may be more constraints on the goal.  I think the answers provided by others are correct, but if I were in your shoes, I would hold three meetings and include three mandatory agenda items for each meeting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any (new) dependencies between this sub-project and either of the others?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Close any reconciliation identified to other teams&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reconcile all dependencies identified by other project teams.  (inbound reconciliation)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also schedule additional ad hoc meetings to reconcile any dependency that isn't reconciled immediately.   (that is to say if Team X proposes to team Y that there X.1.3.4 is a dependency on Y.2.5, and Team Y doesn't resolve that dependency satisfactorily the first time it is considered then schedule an ad hoc meeting with all the players needed to resolve the problem.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T12:32:29.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8990" CreationDate="2013-03-29T15:43:57.127" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Scrum of Scrum meetings should handle dependencies between teams&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not recommended to have planning meetings with multiple teams together. With such a large number of people, team members won't be able to pay attention, as you are finding out. For coordinating cross-team dependencies, you can have separate scrum of scrum meetings. &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20111119082847/http://www.scrumalliance.org/articles/46-advice-on-conducting-the-scrum-of-scrums-meeting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Please see more on this from Mike Cohn&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum of scrum meetings allow clusters of teams to discuss their work, focusing especially on areas of overlap and integration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each team would designate one person to attend the scrum of scrums meeting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-20T07:10:49.970" LastActivityDate="2020-06-20T07:10:49.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8982" CreationDate="2013-03-30T11:26:15.877" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rather than thinking about measuring the maturity of the teams progress with agile, think about measuring what you are using agile to achieve. Agile allows you to deliver real business value to the customer as quickly as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to that end I would recommend looking at the practice of continuous delivery. The book &lt;a href=&quot;http://martinfowler.com/books/continuousDelivery.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Continuous Delivery by Jez Humble and David Farley&lt;/a&gt; was the most inspiring book I read last year and has really helped my team to grow to the next level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I mention this is that in the back of the book they describe a maturity model, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/articles/Continuous-Delivery-Maturity-Model&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;which I also found online&lt;/a&gt; (look at the table right at the bottom of the page). This describes several categories to measure your teams maturity by.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this could be considered a little off topic, and not necessarily a measure of agile/lean maturity. But in my opinion it's a great benchmark that gives you real tangible targets to aim for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2156" LastActivityDate="2013-03-30T11:26:15.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8982" CreationDate="2013-03-30T16:41:06.517" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Formal Definitions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this time, there are no formal definitions of maturity across agile methodologies. However, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model_Integration&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Capability Maturity Model Integration&lt;/a&gt; (CMMI) framework uses &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;five levels&lt;/a&gt; to define process maturity:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Level 1 - Initial (Chaotic)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Level 2 - Repeatable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Level 3 - Defined&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Level 4 - Managed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Level 5 - Optimizing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're looking for a formal methodology to define maturity, then you may want to take a closer look at CMM and CMMI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Maturity in Agile Methodologies&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, I try avoid the term &quot;maturity&quot; in talking about agile methodologies. I prefer to talk about framework experience and effectiveness of the implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I use the following metrics to measure the experience and effectiveness of a team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How well the team understands the &lt;em&gt;theory&lt;/em&gt; of their framework.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How well the team understands the &lt;em&gt;daily practice&lt;/em&gt; of their framework.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How well the team implements their framework's required practices.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much self-organization and initiative the team applies to their processes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How effective the team is at estimating work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How effective the team is at continual process improvement (a.k.a. &lt;em&gt;kaizen&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How effectively the team completes work &lt;em&gt;as a team&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that nowhere in those metrics do I include velocity, cycle time, work completion, or other project metrics vulnerable to externalities. It is extremely important to assess the team's capabilities directly, rather than using proxy metrics and trying to reason backwards from &lt;strong&gt;project metrics&lt;/strong&gt; to &lt;strong&gt;team-capability metrics.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-03-30T16:41:06.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8916" CreationDate="2013-04-01T08:05:44.923" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good Gantt chart software can be helpful, but, in my experience, not enough for efficient resource planning. For the cases described in both questions, I’d advise something a bit more advanced. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wrike.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wrike&lt;/a&gt;, PM software that my team and I have been using for more than a year now, has an interactive workload view, which helped a lot in optimizing our schedules. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to use its Gantt chart and workload in combo. First, I plan the project’s steps and set its milestones on the Gantt chart, and then I assign the tasks to my team on the workload. And there I can actually monitor how loaded with work each member of my team is at any time and, if needed, reallocate the tasks. So if, for instance, one of my team members falls sick, I can simply divide and drag-and-drop his tasks among the rest of the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This software has been a real life-saver for us, and I can’t even imagine how hard it would be to keep all that in one’s head and, honestly, can’t see why a person would want to :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5878" LastActivityDate="2013-04-01T08:05:44.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6362" CreationDate="2013-04-01T08:11:07.290" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As it’s already been said, working long hours doesn’t necessarily mean pulling extra weight. At the end of the day, it all comes to motivation. As the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wrike.com/blog_images/311816/Wrike_productivity_survey_infographic.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;infographic&lt;/a&gt; I recently came across suggests, the three leading motivators are a sense of responsibility, a good mood and a possible reward, respectively. Oddly enough, the mentioned reward is valued by only 42.1% of employees. So, if you earned enough of trust with your team, try to &lt;strong&gt;appeal to their dedication to the project&lt;/strong&gt;. And try to avoid the atmosphere of high stress and burning deadlines. Good jokes and cheering people up is almost always better than a stick. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if they actually make it, don’t forget to &lt;strong&gt;mark the contribution&lt;/strong&gt; of every member of your team and even have a small celebration to show your appreciation. Small gestures matter.     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5878" LastActivityDate="2013-04-01T08:11:07.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7979" CreationDate="2013-04-01T08:14:17.713" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like Mark’s suggestion of stand-up meetings, but in my experience, holding them once or maximum twice a week (if we are not talking about an urgent project that needs constant monitoring) is more efficient. This way, you can get a focused review of everyone’s progress and not waste their time. I also would suggest &lt;strong&gt;keeping all the tasks logged in&lt;/strong&gt; some project management software. My team and I use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wrike.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wrike&lt;/a&gt;. I can always see who’s assigned to the task, track their progress and, if needed, discuss any issues right in the task’s Activity Stream. I guess that’s also the reason we have stand-up meeting only once a week – we all know what’s going on in all our tasks at any time ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5878" LastActivityDate="2013-04-01T08:14:17.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2984" CreationDate="2013-04-01T08:29:47.080" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As this article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wrike.com/blog/07/18/2012/Is-Your-Team-Self-Organizing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.wrike.com/blog/07/18/2012/Is-Your-Team-Self-Organizing&lt;/a&gt; clarifies, self-organizing teams are not loose cannons, but flexible, responsive teams within the organizational framework.  In this case, managers just check in occasionally, rather than check up all the time. After all, it’s all about &lt;strong&gt;encouraging self-actualization&lt;/strong&gt; of the team members. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, this method has its pros and cons. The article refers to the research that shows that this type of team &lt;strong&gt;responds more easily to challenges and new situations&lt;/strong&gt;, taking a flexible approach, which often results in innovative solutions. I also liked the idea of “&lt;em&gt;collective wisdom&lt;/em&gt;” that accumulates in the properly selected team. But, naturally, this method has its limits. As the author points out, it works better for small and well-selected teams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fairly enough, the article gives some examples of both successful and failed efforts to implement self-organization. But if you still want to give it a try, I suggest you also check out this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agileweboperations.com/how-to-make-a-team-self-organizing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.agileweboperations.com/how-to-make-a-team-self-organizing&lt;/a&gt; article to know what steps to take. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5878" LastActivityDate="2013-04-01T08:29:47.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2730" CreationDate="2013-04-01T13:33:26.543" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did a recent SCRUM certification and thought that it was one of the best training sessions I have attended. I did the SCRUM certification and our company has adapted this practice for a while. The certificate in itself is valuable and It has a lot of best practices that can be adapted to the company atmosphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The certification is just a stepping stone to Agile and I must tell you that learning these best practices are essential. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5890" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2013-04-02T18:17:38.470" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T18:17:38.470" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9008" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9011" CreationDate="2013-04-02T07:54:23.507" Score="3" ViewCount="211" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a project management perspective, Which is more advisable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To go for a certification right away (currently, the PMP with PMBOK n-1)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To Wait for the rollout of the next standard (like PMBOK n [when the version n is due in a few months])&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the certification point of view, does it make any difference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Upgrading our skills even after certification is definitely a must-have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1340" LastEditorUserId="1340" LastEditDate="2018-09-03T10:23:16.347" LastActivityDate="2018-09-03T10:23:16.347" Title="When a new standard is about to be released for a PM certification, should I take the current version or wait for the next?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;certification&gt;&lt;pmbok&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1689" CreationDate="2013-04-02T18:11:54.993" Score="1" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Certified ScrumMaster (CSM)&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actual numbers are now available on the Scrum Alliance web site. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumalliance.org/scrum/media/ScrumAllianceMedia/Files%20and%20PDFs/Why%20Scrum/Class-Certification-Stats-Oct-2013.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;As of November 21, 2013 there are nearly a quarter million CSMs (249,221).&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2014-02-05T18:08:00.003" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T18:08:00.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9008" CreationDate="2013-04-02T20:27:24.923" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are ready to take it now or almost ready, take it now with PMBOK4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need training, I would still consider taking it now since there will be some lag between the updated PMBOK5 and the updated training (at least for some trainers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the main difference is 10th area, Stakeholder Management, I think you will find the difference less that it might sound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="158" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2013-04-11T20:48:33.580" LastActivityDate="2013-04-11T20:48:33.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9008" CreationDate="2013-04-02T22:57:38.213" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have a job at the moment than wait, because certificates are usually useful when you are looking for a job. If you don't have a job, you can go for the 4th edition, because I assume finding a job has higher priority than getting a one level higher certificate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A different view: according to google the difference between the 4th and the 5th version isn't that significant and the 5th contains the 4th. Let's assume that you have PMBOK4 and you meet somebody who actually knows what PMBOK5 is. She will also know the difference, and that you are familiar with the basics (you have PMBOK4) and only a small &lt;em&gt;&quot;upgrade&quot;&lt;/em&gt; is missing. If you meet somebody who has no idea what PMBOK5 is, will look for a certification with the higher number, but would you like to work with somebody like that? Maybe not. Following &lt;strong&gt;this&lt;/strong&gt; logic, PMBOK4 is enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T22:57:38.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4383" CreationDate="2013-04-02T23:43:26.800" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe try this &lt;a href=&quot;http://weekplan.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;online weekly planner&lt;/a&gt;. It doesn't require to enter any time, and you have set recurring weekly tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5902" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T23:43:26.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8990" CreationDate="2013-04-03T02:23:51.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with most questions, the answer is &quot;it depends&quot;. So a couple of questions - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are the teams/dependencies heavily inter-related? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there central points of contact for each team that could attend and then relay information/decisions?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And most important - what's the history of the projects/teams? do you foresee issues in decoupling the team meetings?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to look at each of the above questions in relation to YOUR situation and decide from there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have there been dependency/coordination issues in the past? Then they need to attend. And they need to understand why. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is information reliably relayed by one or two people? then just have those people attend and leave the rest of the team to keep working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And one more option would be tell the team you're changing, but ONLY on a trail basis. If issues appear then you're going back to the full team meetings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T02:23:51.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8978" CreationDate="2013-04-03T02:34:39.073" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitions abound, but mine is typically that if you provide expert advice to a group that you don't normally/regularly work for/with, then that can be considered 'consulting'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And payment is not a factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been paid to provide services to organizations I don't work for. &#xA;I have provided expert advice to organizations on a pro bono basis. &#xA;I have provided expert advice on my area of expertise to a dept I didn't work for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key (for me) is that you're providing advice that isn't a part of your normal job, ie: you're a PM and you provide pm advice/services to the organization. That's your job, that's not consulting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T02:34:39.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8978" CreationDate="2013-04-03T02:36:34.490" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simple answer: If your client asks you to do something, you're not a consultant. If they ask you what they should do, you're a consultant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5904" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T02:36:34.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9017" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-03T07:37:16.817" Score="1" ViewCount="716" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I'm not sure how to handle this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;We have a software requirement and we've asked two vendors for their implementaion proposal. The first vendor haven't submitted their proposal. The second vendor already submitted based from our requirement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second vendor's approach are two:&#xA;1. Enable and Implement&#xA;2. Actual Practice and Config&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scenario:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;We want to implement the software the soonest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To date:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm still waiting for the first vendor to provide the proposal. &#xA;I've already asked the second vendor to provide a workplan and timelines for both implementation plans. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Recap:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I'm not too sure what to do and tell the second vendor of a good strategy to make the implementation a success. I wan to have clarity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="614" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T11:47:42.587" Title="How to Evaluate an Implementation Plan by 3rd Party Vendors" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9017" CreationDate="2013-04-03T09:52:26.607" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, did you outline to both vendors what your requirement is, what you want in each vendor's proposal and give them a deadline for submitting their proposals? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you haven't then give both vendors a clear description of what each proposal should contain and give them a deadline to submit a proposal (vendor 2 will just need to update theirs with the additional information). This ensures it's a fair competition. Make it clear to vendor 1 that they are in competition with another vendor. If this doesn't motivate them to submit a proposal then it's a clear indicator that they won't be a good supplier to work with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also aim to invite 3-5 vendors to submit proposals to enable you to understand what's available in the market. It also ensures that you still have a decent pool of bidders if 1 or 2 drop out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of delivering the software the soonest, don't focus entirely on deadlines. Short deadlines usually means higher cost and lower quality. It's down to you to challenge your project sponsor on what they want from the project - is short delivery time critical, or is quality more important. Also be wary of vendors stating that they can meet unrealistic deadlines. This could create a management and financial headache.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3915" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T09:52:26.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9017" CreationDate="2013-04-03T11:47:42.587" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You ought to seek at least three competitors for this job, and more if you're able.  Your requirements in your Request for Proposal become your criteria.  From the RFP, you need to create a scoring sheet where each requirement becomes a criterion.  You need to develop a method of evaluation for each criterion where you can turn the response into a score, a number.  Some of the criteria are qualitative in nature so each evaluator (you need several evaluators) will subjectively score the response.  Some will be quantitative in nature so the score will be evident and others will simply yes or no.  No matter the method, it results into a score.  Further, you can also apply a weight to a criterion since some requirements are more important than others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should keep cost evaluation separate.  In fact, each proposal should be cost blind so that the evaluators are not biased based on price.  Bring in cost afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other factors to consider and score are the vendors qualifications in terms of past performance (seek references) and their credit ratings.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T11:47:42.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9008" CreationDate="2013-04-03T15:18:13.390" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is - are you ready now, or will you be ready before August to take the exam? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, then I would advise taking it now. The reason being, if you feel you're ready now, then that means you're familiar with the PMBoK 4. If you wait, then you'll have to either re-study, or at least brush up on, PMBoK 5. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T15:18:13.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5726" CreationDate="2013-04-03T18:00:58.413" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Check out free open source Agilefant&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilefant.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agilefant&lt;/a&gt;. You can create and maintain a backlog, manage sprints/iterations, manage tasks and take the story through various states to 'Done'. &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2187/open-source-agile-project-tracker/3656#3656&quot;&gt;See the other thread in this forum where a user highly recommended it.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T18:00:58.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4383" CreationDate="2013-04-03T18:37:21.977" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend giving Toodledo.com a try.  It allows you to create tasks with just about any fields you want.  If you don't want to add a start date or due date, you don't have to.  I'm not sure if you can create recurring/daily tasks in the free version, but you can in the paid version.  There are also iOS and Android apps, so you can easily bring your list with you to the gym.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also recommend picking up one of Michael Linenberger's books on time management/project management.  He has developed a strategy, which was originally intended for use with Microsoft Outlook's task tools, but can easily be applied using tools like Toodledo.  While he describes the system in the context of the day to day tasks of knowledge professionals, it can easily be adapted to your scenario and fitness goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5909" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T18:37:21.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8978" CreationDate="2013-04-04T04:16:00.233" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It does not sound like you are a consultant at all.  A consultant would provide advisory services, usually to a variety of clients concurrently, in determining the best course of future action.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within the realm of software development specifically, which from the sound of it you are involved in, a consultant would assist an &lt;strong&gt;external&lt;/strong&gt; client in designing a framework to address a particular business problem, but not offer to build the solution itself.  Leveraging this skill entails that work be delegated to outsiders who have greater expertise in the technical aspect.  More importantly, the consultant's skill-set is generally not focused toward development or implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your function seems to be internal and development-related, and therefore you'd likely be considered a solution architect of some description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most cases I would consider &quot;project manager&quot; as a purely internal title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5910" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T04:16:00.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9029" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-05T07:59:23.387" Score="1" ViewCount="115" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you use grid and scientific ways to objectively conclude, based on facts, that your employees meet the goals of your organization?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5919" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2013-04-05T10:42:19.330" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T13:12:20.433" Title="Is it your priority to use job evaluating criteria?" Tags="&lt;human-resources&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9029" CreationDate="2013-04-05T10:59:52.173" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several studies done in the 80's (Hunter &amp;amp; Hunter, 1982), still relevant today, that examined various job predictors and their validity to job performance.  Those studies showed that job testing, simulation, cognitive testing and other psychometric testing were much higher in validity, i.e., they predicted job performance better than the others somewhere around a correlation factor of 0.5, than those other predictors such as interviews, experience, education with degrees and certificates.  However, they showed that most relied on and valued more those weaker predictors, some of which had a validity near zero, such as experience.  I bet most find considering experience as a weak indicator so counter intuitive they would simply dismiss the study.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Follow-on studies showed that increasing the formality and rigor of the interview, with discreet criteria and methods of scoring, multiple interviewers, various types of interviews, increased its validity a bit, but still weak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while your question is a bit polling in nature, I think there is evidence out there that suggests most organizations do not have a sophisticated, reliable, and valid selection process.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T10:59:52.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9032" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9048" CreationDate="2013-04-05T14:27:10.847" Score="0" ViewCount="227" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using MS Project 2010 &amp;amp; new to resource pools and sharer plans. If I have a sharer plan open, and make changes to tasks/assigments -- is the resource pool file updated somehow, even if it's not open in Project at the same time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3493" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-09T16:36:33.030" LastActivityDate="2018-11-09T16:36:33.030" Title="Using a Project resource pool, must that pool file be open, to make changes in sharer plans?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8990" CreationDate="2013-04-06T11:56:50.053" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently looking after three projects; A, B, and C, which solutions are being developed by three different teams as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project A - Team Green&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project B - Team Blue &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project C - Team Yellow&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our sprints are 3/4 weeks long commencing at the same time for all projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Projects A and B have several dependencies of Project C. Likewise, Project C has dependencies of both Projects A and B. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the beginning of the sprint I set up &lt;strong&gt;three sprint planning sessions&lt;/strong&gt;, one per project/team. These sessions are shorter in time, &lt;em&gt;never longer than a 1h&lt;/em&gt;, and are &lt;strong&gt;focused on what needs to be delivered in order to achieve the goals of the increment&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the session, we identify and raise any dependencies that we have with the other projects which I collate in a &lt;strong&gt;Sprint &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/raid-log.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;RAID&lt;/a&gt; Log&lt;/strong&gt;. In this document I highlight the dependency and team working in that area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same meeting process occurs for every other project/team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of that day, I have good visibility of the correlation and dependencies among these projects, so the following day I set up a &lt;em&gt;30 min&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;RAID review session&lt;/strong&gt; with the parties involved to run through these dependencies and agree a mitigation plan (some actions may be taken during the current sprint or may be considered for later phases of the project). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key aspect here is that by the time we have the RAID review, the following day after individual sprint planning sessions, each team (solution developers, testers, Product Owners, and myself as PM) knows what they are working towards so we can discuss how to they are going to work to resolve these dependencies in a more efficient manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my selfish point of view, running three separate sessions with the teams the same day is quite tiring however, from a practical perspective, shorter individual sessions (instead of 2-3 hour meeting) keeps the team focused preventing them from context switching which, at some point, exhausts them impacting their concentration and attention to the conversation. In the end this increases the risk of misunderstandings and the need for further meetings throughout the sprint (wasting more time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T11:56:50.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3582" CreationDate="2013-04-07T12:22:16.577" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know this is a late answer but I provide it for the archive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @David Espina says, if you want to create the non-productive time as a task you can either set the percentage for each resource assigned, or set the actual hours separate from the duration and let Project calculate the percentage for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were doing this my approach would be to change the working time calendar to reflect the actual hours available for the project.  If your developers are available 34 hours per week, change the working time per day to 6.8 hours.  This has the advantage that it automatically applies to any resource added to the plan, whereas if it is an explicit task you would have to add to the task effort and add that resource to the task.  It also automatically scales the time to complete every task, and does not need to be updated if the project schedule is extended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a matter of fact, I am using this approach to plan a project during furloughs.  I just removed Friday as a working day in the base calendar to plan with a four-day week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, I note that accounting for (personal and holiday) time off, most employees already only work around 34 hours per week.  Admin and non-project tasks further reduce this number.  If you typically plan projects that only take a few months, employees can flex their time to be available during the project, however if you plan projects taking a year or more you need to account for the fact that people have to take their leave sometime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5292" LastActivityDate="2013-04-07T12:22:16.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8544" CreationDate="2013-04-07T13:07:42.193" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to create alternate schedules quickly, without a lot of setup, what I have done is to make a copy of the Project file, and change the base calendar in that copy.  Thus if your pessimistic schedule has everything taking twice as long, reduce working hours to 4 each day in that version.  I have done this to create a schedule showing the effect of furloughs, by changing to a 4-day week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will need to be redone if you change the schedule, but is very quick to do.  The copying among alternate durations method in the other answers has the advantage of permanently recording the modified durations, and allowing you to apply different scaling factors to different tasks, but requires more setup and maintenance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this will only scale work-based task durations.  This may be what you want or not, when you specify that a task will take fixed time regardless of resources.  You may need to be clever with the task types depending on the mix of task types you typically use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5292" LastActivityDate="2013-04-07T13:07:42.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8" CreationDate="2013-04-08T07:39:23.040" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As there is already an answer offering scrumban, I would like to vote for it as well, because while doing scrumban you can take tools from scrum and kanban which fit you and leave all the other behind. It will guard you from the waste but still can be strict and constrained not to run it to the wall. Check this site which provides all the information about scrumban: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aboutscrumban.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;www.aboutscrumban.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5562" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2016-03-01T17:54:31.207" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T17:54:31.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4711" CreationDate="2013-04-09T10:52:41.840" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the country you live and the accepted norm of educational qualification that is considered in that country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you have completed your Bachelor's and have no project management experience then going for MBA would be a good choice. PMP is a professional certification - not domain specific and is mainly helpful for people who are into projects and project management. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmstudy.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMP certification&lt;/a&gt; has certain eligibility criteria of number of project management hours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also to appear for the PMP Exam, a minimum of 35 hours of specific instruction that addresses learning objectives in project management is required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this information helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5944" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T10:52:41.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9043" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-09T13:49:48.913" Score="14" ViewCount="1037" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a friend who is a developer. He is very stressed out by his manager, who seems addicted to meetings. The volume of meetings is a problem, but what is more of a problem is that they are spaced out evenly throughout the day. Meening that there is sometimes only an hour between one ending and the next starting. Often they are moved or canceled at the last minute. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I and my friend know that this is bad for productivity, but the manager seems to be oblivious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have a definitive easy to understand explanation that shows how damaging to productivity this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally showing just how destructive it is. Something that looks scientific and has hard figures (even pictures) but doesn't go into too much detail will be good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1204" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T14:23:24.093" Title="Proof that badly scheduled meetings hurt productivity" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9043" CreationDate="2013-04-09T14:17:54.380" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are really looking at issues associated with multi-tasking. There are a number of questions on &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/search?q=multi-tasking&quot;&gt;PMSE&lt;/a&gt; addressing this issue that you could look at. If you want something a bit more dry you could try &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xhp274763.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt;, but I would suggest that your friend:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Document the lost time.&lt;/strong&gt; This would be the amount of time it takes to prepare for and then physically get to the meeting. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Provide alternatives.&lt;/strong&gt; The extreme solution (no more meetings) is likely not going to work, but what if (for example) meetings were scheduled 15 minutes apart rather than one hour apart? Or could they be shorter? Or is the list of attendees right?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to focus on meetings IMHO what is generally of greater concern is whether or not the meetings add value.  You can save a huge amount of time, confusion and rework on your projects if you have well-run, effective meetings. Broadly speaking, a meeting will add value if:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decisions are made; and/or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clear action items are assigned; and/or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Important information is shared&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While all of these could be addressed e.g. by email, depeding on your needs and bias a meeting could be far more effective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, meetings will lose their value if:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no clear purpose; and/or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no clear need; and/or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They are dominated by one or two voices; and/or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You fail to make decisions/assign action items/share important info&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:29.460" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T14:17:54.380" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9043" CreationDate="2013-04-09T14:28:24.983" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Developers are most productive when they focus on one thing at a time...&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...without interruptions and task switching. Meetings are only one form of interruption. If you have a ScrumMaster, consult with him/her and let them handle this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/105891/where-can-i-find-articles-on-why-interruptions-are-bad-for-programmers&quot;&gt;there is a thread on Programmers SE that has good discussion on this topic.&lt;/a&gt; You should be able to extract what you need from that. And then find a way to present it diplomatically to your manager!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:31:53.287" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T14:28:24.983" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9032" CreationDate="2013-04-09T18:14:11.447" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Open the Resource pool first and close it last&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you open a sharer file that shares resources from a pool, you should have seen a dialog like this:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8cFEI.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Open resource pool&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, if you didn't have the pool file open, that project would have used own resources when making assignments (nothing else is available). I am afraid you will have to fix this manually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For future reference, you should open the Resource pool first and close it last.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T18:14:11.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9029" CreationDate="2013-04-09T22:19:10.500" Score="0" Body="&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Step 1: Did the individual deliver value concurrent with his/her peers?&#xA;&#xA;If yes: Determine if the individual consistently delivered more value than his her peers? {&#xA;&#xA;  If Yes: reward&#xA;&#xA;  If No: Stay the same&#xA;&#xA;}&#xA;If no: Determine why not.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the framework for evaluations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastEditorUserId="4422" LastEditDate="2013-04-10T09:13:34.643" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T09:13:34.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9050" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-10T08:04:33.500" Score="2" ViewCount="582" Body="&lt;p&gt;We started using MS Projects recently in our small consulting firm, and one of the types of projects we have are retainer(SLA) based, where the client has a contract for a certain amount of hours per month. Now my question relates to creating tasks on a Project we created for this client, what we are currently doing is we create a main task for each month and assign the amount of hours to that tasks, and then we create sub tasks on that, one for general development and one for business intelligence, what we want to do is share the 150 hours between the two tasks without having to specify the amount of hours for each, as we don't know before hand how they will be split for any particular month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently the main task has 150 hours and both the two sub-tasks on that main task has no hours allocated towards it, each with its own resource assigned to a task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when I open PWA and view the projects it says 300 hours has been allocated towards this project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what would the best practice be for something like this?&#xA;And if you have some sources on the internet of where to find more information for something like this, please let me know?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5950" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2013-04-10T14:19:24.167" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T14:19:24.167" Title="Using MS Project for recurring monthly, retainer based project work" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9029" CreationDate="2013-04-10T12:45:13.777" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because SE won't permit me to answer with three letters, I'll expand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, as a PM, my responsibility is to close the project. I am not involved in employee evaluations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T12:45:13.777" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9029" CreationDate="2013-04-10T13:12:20.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My experience has been a bit different from Mark's, as a PM I am often asked to contribute to performance evaluations as I am in a reasonably good position to assess team members from a wide range of functional units. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every organization that I've worked for has tried to objectively document performance metrics of one type or another that are aligned in some way to organizational goals. That being said, these metrics are used more to &lt;strong&gt;support a conclusion&lt;/strong&gt; already made rather than come to &lt;strong&gt;make that conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T13:12:20.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9050" CreationDate="2013-04-10T13:59:41.587" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I were in your situation, I would set up a resource with 150 hours available per month and assign it to all your tasks.  Then you can use resource leveling using that resource to spread out your tasks such that only 150 hours per month is worked towards them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Project resources are not just people, they are anything that must be scheduled.  Using &quot;total consulting hours&quot; as a resource is just like scheduling a project to have access to a conference room or a specialized tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe what is happening in your current approach is that you have scheduled a roll up task to take 150 hours of calendar time, but there are two sub tasks running concurrently, so each takes 150 hours of resources, thus 300 hours of effort in total.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5292" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T13:59:41.587" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9055" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9056" CreationDate="2013-04-10T14:28:01.550" Score="16" ViewCount="4842" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new to Scrum and Kanban. So far, I understand that the Task Board is something that is originally from Kanban, but I am using an online Scrum tool that also also offers that board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the Task Board with columns like &quot;To-Do&quot;, &quot;Doing&quot;, and &quot;Done&quot; the only thing in Kanban? Is it actually a part of modern Scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5953" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-04-13T16:00:03.477" LastActivityDate="2015-09-29T16:11:02.727" Title="Is Kanban a part of Scrum, and is it simply the task board?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;artifacts&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9055" CreationDate="2013-04-10T15:48:15.553" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being new to Agile can be overwhelming with all of the different terminology that you hear getting thrown around. I had difficulty grappling with these two words in particular at first, as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll try to lay out the major methodological differences, without getting into the philosophy, where I'm not quite so strong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teams work in sprints, usually 1 to 4 weeks long.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tasks or User stories are tracked on a task board. Traditionally this is three columns, such as &quot;To do&quot;, &quot;Doing&quot;, &quot;Done&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are well defined roles for a Scrum Master and a Product Owner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No sprints, work is continuous&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tasks or User Stories are tracked on a task board&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The task board may have any number of columns corresponding to the state of the task ie. Backlog, Planned, Development, Testing, Done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Swimlanes may be added, cutting across the columns, to differentiate between types of tasks or priority&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each column has a work in progress limit, for example a team may agree that no more than 5 tasks can be &quot;in Testing&quot;, before a new task is added. If a column becomes overloaded, the team will swarm to help clear out the testing work, before adding new tests.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most evident differences then are the design of the task board and the use of the sprints.  Other philosophical differences accompany either one. Both have been around for a while, but Kanban's background is in lean manufacturing, and is only recently being brought into the Agile Software toolbox.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no reason that a Kanban board can't be used within the Scrum methodology to get better tracking of where each task is. This is commonly referred to as Scrumban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5948" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2013-04-25T22:30:36.387" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T22:30:36.387" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9055" CreationDate="2013-04-10T22:35:10.753" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The task board is actually not part of Scrum. Scrum is a framework, primarily with a project management style (time/deadline) focus, which defines three named roles, two backlogs (sprint and product), four meetings, and various time-boxes for each event. Beyond that, the field is open to the team to determine what the best way to get the work done is, as they are self-organizing and self-managing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Kanban board comes from Lean Manufacturing concepts (which did &lt;em&gt;inspire&lt;/em&gt; the developers of Scrum) and is used to measure, monitor, and improve the flow of work through a process. They also attempt to minimize work in progress by limiting the number of cards which can be in given step of the process as well as how many cards each team member can work on at a given time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some teams, using the Scrum framework, use Kanban boards during their sprints as an information radiator to those interested parties who want &quot;the status&quot; of the team - and team members in general. These people can walk by the board (transparency is a big deal in Agile) at any time and get a feel for what is happening. However, the tool itself is not a strict part of Agile (preferring &quot;Individuals and interactions over processes and tools&quot;) nor Scrum (&quot;a small baby process&quot;) specifically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://agilemanifesto.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scrumguides.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BWbaZs1M_8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BWbaZs1M_8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_47VWIvOKH8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_47VWIvOKH8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0321620704&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Leading-Lean-Software-Development-Results/dp/0321620704&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastEditorUserId="20687" LastEditDate="2015-09-29T16:11:02.727" LastActivityDate="2015-09-29T16:11:02.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4553" CreationDate="2013-04-11T02:46:57.840" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;[Disclaimer: I am the founder of the company behind Collaborade.com]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have recently launched &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.collaborade.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Collaborade.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a very simple online software for team collaboration and we want to keep it simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are planning to potentially add time estimates as a plugin in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not free but we believe it is money well spent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5957" LastActivityDate="2013-04-11T02:46:57.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9055" CreationDate="2013-04-11T08:15:22.470" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Kanban there is no task board. The &lt;em&gt;visualise the workflow&lt;/em&gt; principle suggests to so the current state of the work items, which can be user requests, bugs, features or user stories. Moreover, in Kanban you don't visualise a team's work, but the whole organisation. Here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2011/05/kanban-on-organisational-level/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an example&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bqMc7.png&quot; alt=&quot;Kanban on organisational level&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, Kanban should &lt;a href=&quot;http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2012/03/visualize-on-the-highest-level/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;visualize the whole process&lt;/a&gt;, because this is the place where it can help the most. Don’t get me wrong, it is also fine to have Kanban on the team level, but the real optimization and improvement should happen on the highest possible level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more interesting fact, that there is no Kanban board at Toyota. They use a &lt;em&gt;Heijunka board&lt;/em&gt; which looks similar to our Kanban boards, but it is used for signalling: knowing that something is wrong or can be improved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The boards in different Lean/Agile/Kanban approaches look the same, but their purpose is different &lt;strong&gt;(Agile: tracking, Lean: signalling, Kanban: improving)&lt;/strong&gt;. Therefore if you look at a certain board, it is good to know which method the owner of the board is using.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-04-11T08:15:22.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6223" CreationDate="2013-04-12T04:29:00.193" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simply put, you can't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish this could be an answer, but there simply is no answer to be had.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long term SMART goals (the form favored by corporate annual reviews), are in nearly every way antithetical to Scrum.  The issue is that the SMART guidelines are nearly the definition of waterfall, everything Agile is meant to get away from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you're 3 months into a 6 month SMART goal and the business needs change...do you keep pressing on to complete your SMART goal (because your salary is dependent upon it), or do you abandon it for something else (best for the team/company)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What metrics do you use?  Most all the metrics of Scrum are best kept private, never shared outside of the team.  Your team's velocity only has valid meaning and usefulness within the confines of your team.  When it's exposed to the outside world (for example, via SMART goals) it becomes biased, tainted, invalid.  It's no longer useful to anyone, a detriment to yourself, your team, and the business.  Scrum metrics are deliberately arbitrary (Fibonacci scores, etc) and only relevant to the team itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your goals are probably unique to yourself, not shared by the team.  Additionally annual reviews imply a competition (picking &quot;MVPs&quot; from a team, etc).  The result is it's not just about how well you achieve your goals, it's also how others failed to reach their goals.  You now have a financial disincentive to assisting your coworkers, most especially your direct Scrum team mates since those are who you will be most directly in competition with.  This cut-throat competition is in &lt;em&gt;sharp&lt;/em&gt; disagreement with the core of all Agile methodologies which put teamwork and team bonding very high on the list (and competition no where to be found).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes on and on.  SMART goals may have practical application on a sprint to sprint basis (effectively making a SMART goal into a backlog item or task), but as they're used in an annual employee review setting...they're incredibly damaging to the company and employees alike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what to do?  Make up something with lots of buzz words and other BS that will dazzle the HR folk enough to get past their filter and move on with your job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5683" LastActivityDate="2013-04-12T04:29:00.193" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9063" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-12T12:57:40.953" Score="4" ViewCount="404" Body="&lt;p&gt;I experience projects in which Product Managers delivered the &#xA;requirements with a great delay. In other cases, the requirements were delivered only for 1 or 2 sprints, then the PM left the company. Another situation was when a product manager gave us requirements at high level, and when asked details, he would endlessly speak without answering to the point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder now how can the project manager process influence the &#xA;product management process, bearing in mind that project managers are &#xA;under the constrains of budget and time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What kind of levers are most useful in these kind of situations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5964" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-11-23T03:18:27.397" LastActivityDate="2016-12-18T21:50:55.103" Title="How can project management process influence the product management process?" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;management&gt;&lt;product&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9064" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9065" CreationDate="2013-04-12T14:16:47.307" Score="0" ViewCount="222" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have some questions regarding how to handle bidding for a project, and how to structure the contract for the project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I find the answers to the following questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How many people (this includes programmers, designers, project managers, etc.) does this scope of a project usually involve?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What would be the ballpark cost for developing this kind of app?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the cost is above 10-15k, what would be the correct amount of work to give the client, if the client only can afford a very small portion of the original cost?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is hypothetical, but let's say all of what was explained was near completed yet the client hasn't provided an IP agreement or any sort of contract, yet demands the work be turned over within the next week. Payment has been made but at a &quot;very small portion&quot; of the original cost, does the client have grounds to take &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the work?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I proceed in answering those questions so I can define the scope of this project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5965" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2013-04-17T12:12:34.703" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T12:12:34.703" Title="How to Estimate Scope, Cost and Budget for Developing a Phone App" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;clients&gt;&lt;product&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9064" CreationDate="2013-04-12T15:28:43.037" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;•How many people (this includes programmers, designers, project managers, etc.) does this scope of a project usually involve?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;•What would be the ballpark cost for developing this kind of app?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that you are the customer for this App these are questions better asked by sending out a request for proposals to several vendors who can produce this kind of app. Your best bet is to do a proper job of documenting your requirements and pre-screening a number of different vendors to identify a short list of who to send the RFP to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are asking the question from the perspective of someone who is bidding on an RFP to produce this kind of app and are trying to get a competitive advantage, my advice is to not care about what other companies do or charge, build your response around your business case and not the business case of others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;•If the cost is above 10-15k, what would be the correct amount of work to give the client, if the client only can afford a very small portion of the original cost?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the client can't afford the whole package break it down into pieces that are self-contained enough to be independent of the whole. Figure out what you will charge for each line item. Whichever of those line items the client chooses to purchase is what they can afford and is the correct amount for you to deliver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;•This is hypothetical, but let's say all of what was explained was near completed yet the client hasn't provided an IP agreement or any sort of contract, yet demands the work be turned over within the next week. Payment has been made but at a &quot;very small portion&quot; of the original cost, does the client have grounds to take all the work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing to do is to document in your &quot;lessons learned&quot; file to NEVER start work without a contract in place. Then communicate this lesson to the rest of your company so that they don't make the same mistake. It is always best for everyone to have a contract in place, in particular spelling out terms of payments (what each service costs, when payment is due, etc) and deliverables (clear description of each, what acceptance criteria are, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If $$ has exchanged hands you may have a legal obligation to deliver something, depending on what jurisdiction you are in as in some a non-written contract could be as binding as a written one. You will have to negotiate with them to figure out what is fair based on what they paid. Depending on how those go you will need to make a business decision on the business value of fighting for the rest of the $$.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-04-12T15:28:43.037" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9066" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-13T11:54:56.937" Score="6" ViewCount="653" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are doing a review or several teams and in certain cases the PM and BA roles are combined into one and in other cases they are seperated out into completely independent teams.  I am looking at this from 2 angles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Whats best for the efficiency of the project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously there are specific analysis and project mgmt responsibilities but we have found that in many cases (depending on size of project, etc) that the person who is doing the analysis is in the best position to really manage the project (as the analysis is what is raising up questions and issues and risks, dependencies, etc) versus separating this into two different roles which would provide an extra hop and potential disconnects.  The other question is &quot;can a project manager really &quot;manage&quot; a project if they are not really well versed in the domain knowledge?  In many cases we find people are tagged as one label but if you look at the dynamic of the project they are crossing the boundaries of these functions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. What is best for the individual people?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in certain teams a junior BA grows up to be a project and then program manager so they are really different stages in the same team (versus separate roles).  In other cases people don't seem to want to do one or the other.  That being said a PM should have a decent understand of the space (goes back to the question above, can you be a great PM if you are not well versed in the domain which mean you must have done some time doing analysis in understanding the space&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many cases the answer might be &quot;depends on the people&quot; but I am curious around how rigid or open people are on this question based on experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1087" LastActivityDate="2018-03-06T14:10:53.360" Title="Should project management and business analysis be seperate roles and teams?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;business-analyst&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9066" CreationDate="2013-04-13T15:40:42.970" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question appears to be looking for an answer that applies in all cases, all projects, all the time, or nearly so.  If that was the intent behind your question, then my answer would be unequivocally no.  Individuals can assume multiple roles and I would venture a guess that this is the case on most projects, especially those that are initiated under competition.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The analysis behind whether an individual can assume another role is if (s)he has available time and that (s)he possess the knowledge, skills, and abilities required for the other role.  Other questions to be answered might include something around separation of duties or conflict of interests that roles can sometimes have.  Also, there is some evidence that multitasking can degrade performance, so that needs to be balanced against the expense and risk of bringing on another person to fulfill a role that may not be required full-time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your answer to question #1 is about balancing benefits, costs, and risks and you should avoid trying to find a one answer fits all as that would likely be to your detriment.  For question #2, that is probably too individualistic to again find a common answer across the board.  High performing teams take on whatever role is necessary for success, no matter an individual's preference.  Perhaps that should be your focus for project work.  Projects are temporary; this is not a life long situation for a person.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-04-13T15:40:42.970" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9055" CreationDate="2013-04-13T15:56:34.870" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to differentiate between kanban (the artifact) and Kanban (the methodology).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Kanban Defined&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban&quot;&gt;kanban&lt;/a&gt; is actually just a sign-board. In many agile methodologies, a kanban is used to hold &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban#Kanban_cards&quot;&gt;kanban cards&lt;/a&gt;, which generally contain &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_story&quot;&gt;user stories&lt;/a&gt;. In manufacturing, the kanban cards are a signal to pull parts or supplies into the process at the point where a card is encountered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_%28development%29&quot;&gt;Kanban methodology&lt;/a&gt; (as used in software development) generally uses a kanban holding kanban cards, but Kanban itself is in fact a full-fledged process framework based around pull-queues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Kanban and Scrum Aren't Synonyms&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While most agile frameworks share commonalities, they aren't interchangeable. Scrum and XP teams often use kanban boards as iconic artifacts within their process, but their use is not required practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is an agile framework primarily based on time-boxed iterations, while Kanban is generally based on continuous queue-based flow. Both methodologies have adherents, but pragmatic practitioners often borrow specific practices from other agile methodologies, which is why kanban boards are so often seen in Scrum implementations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-04-13T15:56:34.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9066" CreationDate="2013-04-13T20:39:32.437" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no &quot;best&quot; answer. Project management involves a lot of soft skills and can be very situational. However, there are some clear delineations between roles, and rules of thumb for optimizing teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Different Roles &lt;em&gt;Should&lt;/em&gt; Be Separate&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A project manager's role, when done properly, is a full-time job. So is business analysis. That doesn't mean that people &lt;em&gt;can't&lt;/em&gt; fulfill more than one role at a time; all it means is that they are fundamentally different roles with a different set of responsibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the risk of a flawed analogy, you can't have a soccer player simultaneously playing as both a mid-fielder and a goalie. Sure, it's theoretically &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt;, but they are different jobs and it's impossible to do both at once--and even if you could, you couldn't do both &lt;em&gt;well&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the same vein, a project manager is generally responsible for the control and reporting of the project, while a business analyst is typically responsible for gathering customer requirements and feedback. Even if you quibble over the definitions, these are clearly separate roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you have a cross-functional team, you will have better productivity if you allow people to focus on one task at a time, and don't ask people to do too many different things at once or in rapid sequence. Task-switching is bad for productivity. This is usually bad for teams, and it's frequently bad for individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Different Roles Belong on the Same Team&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teams should be cross-functional. Whenever possible, a team should contain all the skills necessary to complete a project without having to rely extensively on people or resources outside the project's scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By definition, that means that a team that needs business analysis performed should include a business analyst on the team. The skills should be intrinsic to the group, even if you decide to share the skills across multiple people or multiple roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What's Best for Individuals is an Individual Thing&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to find out what's best for John Doe, ask &lt;em&gt;him&lt;/em&gt;. There's no canonical answer for that. That's very much an individual issue, and more in the nature of individual capabilities and workplace politics. I won't address it further other than to say that &lt;strong&gt;what benefits the team often benefits the individual, but that there's no substitute for asking people what works best &lt;em&gt;for them&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-04-13T20:39:32.437" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9070" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-14T10:43:21.540" Score="4" ViewCount="579" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working in a Kanban process with a team the tries to estimate Cycle time, Lead time as well as completion time based on applying FIFO wherever possible on our queues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/yyeret/explaining-cumulative-flow-diagrams-cfd&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cumulative Flow Diagrams&lt;/a&gt; is very helpful in this process. However most systems I have used do not account for time estimates in this graph. The latter vary significantly in my team and also differ between iterations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The systems I have used so far, only count the tickets in the CFDs. Hence I largely discard them and measure velocity weekly, dividing completed story point estimates by the available resource in that week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking for a CFD and associated calculation of common metrics based on estimates. Are there any Kanban systems that can do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5031" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2013-05-17T14:16:20.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-20T14:19:20.623" Title="Should the Kanban CFD be weighted with estimates?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9070" CreationDate="2013-04-15T04:37:48.633" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For predictions purposes, we are using &lt;strong&gt;lead time distribution&lt;/strong&gt; diagrams in the Kanban method (&lt;a href=&quot;http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2013/02/when-will-it-be-done/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NUbdV.png&quot; alt=&quot;distribution of lead times&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The diagram above shows the number of finished work items (the height of the bars) with their lead times (x-axis). The rightmost lead time is the best estimate for your upcoming work items based on the “past experiences”. Based on the diagram above, you can decide to go with 2 days lead time, because in most of the cases the work has been done in 2 days. However, the evidence shows that there were work items with longer lead times, so taking 2 has higher risk in being late than the rightmost 16. So if you don’t want to be late, it is wise to give that time as an estimation or prediction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can of course have different distribution diagrams for different work item sizes and use them for prediction/estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-04-15T04:37:48.633" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9072" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9075" CreationDate="2013-04-15T05:53:35.880" Score="5" ViewCount="1496" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the recommended techniques to get the &lt;strong&gt;fastest completion time&lt;/strong&gt;? Just an example, a project has 6 tasks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;task1 takes 1 day  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;task2 takes 2 days  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;task3 takes 3 days, requires both task1 and task2  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;task4 takes 2 days, requires task 1  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;task5 takes 1 day, requires task 3 and 4  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;task6 takes 6 days, requires task 2  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apps to solve this problem would be great!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5977" LastEditorUserId="5977" LastEditDate="2013-04-22T07:25:51.463" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T18:15:23.130" Title="How to sequence tasks given time estimates?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9072" CreationDate="2013-04-15T06:45:41.743" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to get early feedback, you shall &lt;strong&gt;start with the most important task that has the shortest execution time&lt;/strong&gt;. With this way, you'll get fast feedback on your work, and you'll also red the risk on working on something which may not be not important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-04-15T06:45:41.743" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9072" CreationDate="2013-04-15T10:18:10.050" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The technique you're after is critical path analysis.  I find it's usually quicker to just do on a whiteboard rather than using software unless you have lots of tasks with lots of dependencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's an overview over at Wikipedia.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_path_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_path_method&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, in the event that you have enough dependencies between bits of work that doing this sort of analysis is worthwhile, it's generally better to look at breaking the work up differently in order to make each chunk independent (or at least to remove as many dependencies as you can) and then just starting with whichever activity gives you the most value or, as Zsolt suggests, the quickest feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is particularly true if there is uncertainty on the duration of tasks.  If each task is being completed by a machine (in automated manufacturing for example) where you have high certainty on how long the activity will take, focusing on the critical path is sensible.  In software however, we often find that our estimates aren't that accurate which makes focusing on the critical path more dangerous since it has a tendency to be in flux.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastEditorUserId="1185" LastEditDate="2013-04-15T10:38:04.183" LastActivityDate="2013-04-15T10:38:04.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9072" CreationDate="2013-04-15T11:05:34.407" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A simple scheduling tool like MS Project will help you do this.  You can do this on a whiteboard but even with simplest networks the chance of a calculation error is rather high...that might just be me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The path to examine is the critical path, the longest duration in the network.  Once you have established the resource and task dependencies and linked the work packages, the critical path will materialize and you can easily see what alternatives you have in sequencing.  Obviously, those packages that do not have a clear task or resource dependency are what can move more easily.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Loading your example in a scheduling tool, your planned duration is 8 days with task 2 and 6 on the critical path.  Task 1 and 2 are the only ones without a dependency so these are your only options as to which to start first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-04-15T11:05:34.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9066" CreationDate="2013-04-15T18:18:20.617" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whats best for the efficiency of the project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is best for your project is going to depend on the project's complexity and criticality to your business. If the end product is simple &amp;amp; straightforward and/or it isn't mission-critical you can probably get away with a small team and merged project roles. Generally I have found that there is a tendency to ask too much of too few, try to avoid that if you want things done well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The other question is &quot;can a project manager really &quot;manage&quot; a project if they are not really well versed in the domain knowledge? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A project manager needs to be well versed in the domain knowledge of project management. The underlying principles of PM are universal across sectors. You need &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; technical knowledge, but 90% of the job is dealing with personalities/people and helping those who do know the nuts &amp;amp; bolts stay on plan. By way of analogy, you probably hire a software developer based on their knowledge of how to develop software rather than the industry the software is meant to support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is best for the individual people?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That depends on personality. At the end of the day it is better for your team and team members if everyone enjoys what they do, find their work rewarding, etc. Don't put PM as a step in the promotion ladder for other roles like BAs or software developers, they are very different skillsets and you run the risk of turning good team members off of your company if you force them into a role that they don't have the aptitude for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-04-15T18:18:20.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9063" CreationDate="2013-04-16T22:40:31.840" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can influence the product process only by stressing that the project mgmt process is only as good as the information that goes into it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there's a deadline, then remind everyone that that the project can't start until the requirements (scope) is known and delivered to the team. The clock doesn't start ticking until that happens. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The adage of Garbage In, Garbage Out holds for pm as well as anything. If the team isn't provided what they need, they can't be expected to produce what's desired. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T22:40:31.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9081" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9091" CreationDate="2013-04-17T12:46:15.200" Score="12" ViewCount="3873" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently doing a my final year project and have used the methods employed by the Scrum project methodology to break down my requirements into manageable parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a question as to whether there are methodologies that are used which are catered to a one man team? The way I did my project was by using the structure of scrum in my own situation, i.e. I made the product backlog, ran through what I could accomplish in one sprint, implemented it, assessed it and moved on to the next once the work was acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But is that how it works if you have to tackle a project on your own? You pick up the structure of a methodology that would suit you and then run with it? Or are there other methodologies out there that are for &quot;freelance developers&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can justify for myself that the technique I used was appropriate for me and it worked, but I just want to know if it is acceptable, professionally, to adopt a technique which is built around a team effort and use it individually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd appreciate any feedback&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5995" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T06:16:44.293" Title="A One Man Project Methodology?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9063" CreationDate="2013-04-17T12:49:57.687" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;See my comment above; I think the answer is highly localized to the company.  I'm going to suggest two levers that could be used, but either of these could be a career ender in your company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The core of the answer is that you are responsible for project closure, not completion.  If the project is going to fail it is in the company's best interest (and your best interest) to fail fast.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first lever to use is risk management.   Document that: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Project X is three months behind because the product manager left the company.  The project staff are being diverted to work on projects where the product manager is involved and active, and I don't blame them.   This is 90% likely to delay production at least six months (three months to hire a new product manager and three months for him to get up to speed).  We cannot mitigate this risk on our level and it will only get worse as time goes on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Project Y is two weeks behind, and falling further behind. We cannot begin design until we have a set of testable and deliverable requirements.  Product manager YPM has not been able to supply them - he has high level goals, but we haven't been able to pin him down to testable deliverables.  If we proceed without requirements, the project will fail unless we receive divine intervention; my staff are good, but they cannot read minds.  I'm asking you for permission to restructure the project to include users X,Y, and Z and stakeholders  who will own the requirements. My staff will sit down with them and develop a set of requirements that we'll submit to Product Manager YPM. I'd also recommend that we revise the schedule to deliver a prototype  - that is a standard way of mitigating the risk of fuzzy requirements.  What do you think?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMI says that you have the power to close a project unilaterally; that's not true in the real world, but it is still a lever you can use.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Boss, Project X will fail in six to nine months.  The product owner has left the company and the company hasn't appointed a replacement or even an effective acting product manager. This project doesn't have the stakeholder support required to succeed. Unless you can convinced the board of directors to appoint a product manager, I would recommend closing the project and reassigning the staff to other projects.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Boss, Project Y will fail in six to nine months.  The project plan identifies &quot;requirements&quot; as the next critical deliverable. I've had three separate meetings with the product manager and he hasn't been able to supply any requirements.  He has some high level goals and visions for the project, but no testable, deliverable requirements. I've met with him and told him that I planned to talk with you and recommend cancellation unless we can bridge the gap between goals and requirements.  He is unwilling to budge.  If this project is important for the company, I think I need some support to set up a summit where I can lock my staff and his staff in a room until they can build a bridge between the goals and requirements.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is that in all of these cases (1) you demonstrate that you've done as much as you can, (2) you're asking for specific support, and (3) your recommendations are in the context of the company's bottom line/best interest.    But you've got have really done your homework and you've got to have developed a relationship with the boss/stakeholder/whoever that will generate the trust you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course the final lever is to seek a new job.  If you can't address the situation through risk, and you can't address the situation through recommendations to stakeholders, then your best approach may be to follow Product Manger X out the door.   But I'd make very sure you have a good way of explaining why you chose that exit strategy for the next interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-12-14T15:58:11.267" LastActivityDate="2016-12-14T15:58:11.267" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9081" CreationDate="2013-04-17T13:22:16.630" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Scrum can work efficiently on one man projects too.&#xA;As a development team needs to be self manageable, you can think yourself as a particle of a team.&#xA;The daily meeting could be a time for collect problems of past days for make decisions and search for help with the PO and other resources that you have access. &#xA;The sprint retrospective will also exists, when you will collect the lessons for make yourself better in next cycle. Maybe can be a good idea to involve more your PO, if theres one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think the big difference is that the conflicts probably will not exists, but you will have all the other artifacts of a normal Scrum project (backlog, planing, scrum poker alone, scope, sprint, daily retrospective, sprint retrospective..)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5304" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2013-08-28T08:25:14.477" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T08:25:14.477" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9084" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-17T15:54:17.930" Score="1" ViewCount="1263" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have spend countless hours trying demos of the 100's of types of project and task management software out there, and none seem to fit the bill of exactly what I am looking to accomplish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I decided to turn here and see if anyone has come across something that might fit these requirements.  Thank you in advance!  Here's the situation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Key items:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 Man Show&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Various Short term and long term projects  (from a few days to a few months)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multiple Clients/Departments (inside 1 organization)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Various Small Tasks (15-min - 4-5 hours)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Meetings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an ideal world, I would like to be able to plug in my weekly available hours and then put the task, or project in place and it's due date, along with what client it is assigned to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main thing I am trying to accomplish is stop myself from saying &quot;I can have that done by ....&quot;  Without knowing all the things on my plate also to visually see how all the little tasks and meetings throw off the bigger projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a one man show and some of the things i need to get done have turned into who screams the loudest gets their stuff done first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if I am &quot;Booked&quot; for the next 2-3-4 weeks, and someone comes to me and says This needs to be done by tomorrow, I need to know all the other projects and tasks that were effected so I can notify those people that they are getting &quot;Bumped&quot; by a time sensitive task or project that comes up. It would be nice at meetings to have the ability to show what caused it, and show what was worked on when and for who.  Also to show how these smaller tasks effect the completion deadline of the bigger projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I guess something that throws a flag when there is a conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will also be used to show over a long period of time that additional personal are needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I have tried the following:&lt;/strong&gt; I have found them to be way overkill and complicated, or lacking  (tested 1-2 weeks)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;MS Project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Toodleo&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Zoho&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for any and all input / suggestions you have!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5998" LastActivityDate="2013-05-05T09:57:27.627" Title="Project, Time, and Task Management software 1 person" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-05-05T21:17:52.680" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3988" CreationDate="2013-04-17T16:24:38.873" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't test during the sprint than you're going to be pulling your team back to fix bugs instead of focusing on the next sprint.  It is imperative scrum teams have a QA resource and testing begins during the sprint and as early as possible.  It is not scrum if you still have testing and bug fixing after the sprint is over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5999" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T16:24:38.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9081" CreationDate="2013-04-17T20:59:08.583" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum is by definition addressed to teams of 3 to 9 members. So theoretically it is not a good idea to use scrum for one man projects. And even worse in your case due to the fact that it seems that there is niether PO nor Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could decide to play all roles but it won't be a good idea since those roles are normally facing eachother.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Said that, you could adapt the scrum methodology for using it in your one man project and it will probably success, that's one of the good things of scrum, that you can adapt it to your own requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the following link you'll find a discussion about this issue&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/59713/best-development-methodology-for-one-person&quot;&gt;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/59713/best-development-methodology-for-one-person&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5849" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:31:53.287" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T21:04:22.703" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9081" CreationDate="2013-04-17T22:10:15.603" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't so much as call it a project management 'methodology' as much as personal time and task management. It is whatever system you develop to get things done and accomplish the work of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T22:10:15.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9084" CreationDate="2013-04-18T08:43:12.900" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this question may be answered elsewhere on PMSE but as a quick response my preference for this situation would be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;JIRA&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/greenhopper/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Greenhopper&lt;/a&gt; + &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/team-calendars/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Team Calendars&lt;/a&gt; (all Atlassian software and will cost less than $50 at the scale you need).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As always, though, it pays to define your &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; first and then pick your tools. My recommendation works for me but might not fit your specific needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T08:43:12.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9081" CreationDate="2013-04-18T08:53:21.117" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I can justify for myself that the technique I used was appropriate for me and it worked&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, that's all that matters. I've never once worked in an environment that didn't adapt project management methodologies (PRINCE2, Scrum, Kanban and whatever else) to its own specific needs or organisational limitations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's really useful to understand the academic/technical definitions of these different approaches to project management but in a real world situation you will often find yourself having to adapt them. It's when you &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to adapt them that you will find your knowledge of their history and their 'pure' implementations most helpful because you will understand (and, most importantly, be able to communicate) the impact of making adaptations to the methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with the project!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T08:53:21.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9092" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9093" CreationDate="2013-04-18T15:34:27.503" Score="2" ViewCount="762" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there an industry standard in communicating requirements to front end developers? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a project coming up where I will have annotated wireframes that will have front end dev input and complete designs. I normally work with back end developers and use User Stories as part of a Scrum setup but am unsure whether this is the best way to present these requirements to a front end dev given the nature of the task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4349" LastActivityDate="2013-04-19T15:41:34.417" Title="Giving requirements to front end developers" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9092" CreationDate="2013-04-19T08:43:06.860" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're using a Scrum methodology then I think it makes sense to continue using the same approach for both front-end and back-end developers. User stories are a perfectly legitimate and effective way to communicate requirements for both groups. The benefit to you as the project manager is consistency in terms of requirements creation, management and review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are concerned that some deliverables (e.g. annotated wireframes) are non-functional and thus unsuited to user story creation you may find &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/non-functional-requirements-as-user-stories&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mike Cohn's article on this subject&lt;/a&gt; useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mark Phillips' point is correct though - you definitely need to get the people who will &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; the work involved in making decisions about how that work is defined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2013-04-19T15:41:34.417" LastActivityDate="2013-04-19T15:41:34.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8030" CreationDate="2013-04-19T09:09:01.020" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I also recommend doing AB testing or variant testing on your website and see the different in these two designs or functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6010" LastActivityDate="2013-04-19T09:09:01.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9097" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-22T17:35:28.377" Score="-5" ViewCount="163" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can someone provide a good alternative to MS Project 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/9072/how-to-sequence-tasks-given-time-estimates#comment11029_9075&quot;&gt;How to sequence tasks given time estimates?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5977" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2013-04-22T19:52:33.980" Title="Best Option Over MS Project" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-04-22T21:17:03.540" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9097" CreationDate="2013-04-22T19:52:33.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find this to be a dangerous question.  All tools have various levels of functionality and capability and its set of quirks or weaknesses, all with varying price points.  Seems to me your &quot;best&quot; is one that meets your current set of requirements the best at a price you currently can afford.  I think the answer will change for every new project you jump on to some degree.  I think trying to find an answer for a best will bias you from making a reasonably objective analysis of tool fit in your future.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I remain tool agnostic.  If it meets my current requirements and I can afford it, it's the best...for right now.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-04-22T19:52:33.980" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9099" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-22T21:11:09.500" Score="34" ViewCount="2765" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for a small company of 6 multi-skilled developers where we have developed our own product which requires constant improvement but also maintenance and support, both for the current release from end users and from other areas of the business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This results in developers having to dedicate time to both development work and responding to requests for support and maintenance. As a result, the quality time that can be spent on development is squeezed, thus putting more pressure on the developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a company, we have adopted agile methodologies and are working in sprints; we specify our projects using user stories and use story points to do estimates. However, the significant amount of unplanned and unpredictable work that comes in due to end user support requests and requests from other areas of the business that the developers have to deal with makes it very difficult to plan effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need a better way to organize the development team's time to enable us to plan more effectively and get quality development time while still maintaining our obligations to respond to support requests, fix bugs and respond to requests from other areas of the business. Any suggestions for how to go about this would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;UPDATE&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I posted an update here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/9465/34&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/9465/34&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6020" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2016-10-01T17:09:35.573" Title="How to allow developers to get enough quality development time while keeping to support &amp; maintenance obligations" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;maintenance&gt;" AnswerCount="17" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9100" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9110" CreationDate="2013-04-22T22:29:37.237" Score="-5" ViewCount="300" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am thinking of using iPad as a Scrum tool to Skype/Google Hangout to coordinate better with our offshore team in a different country. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am planning to hang the iPad onto the scrum board 'top-center' with clips and other tools. Then, since the iPad's mic or Speaker might not well suited for a place like scrum board, I am thinking of pepping it up with an External Mic and External Speaker, so we are able to be hear and be audible both ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been using the laptop, (tried standing by the corner of the board and exactly in front of the board, holding the laptop on my palm) but there were issues like (1) Our NYC team could not not hear the offshore team, (2) The offshore team could not hear us, (3) They could not see the scrum board properly (not a major thing I suppose).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here comes the actual question: Has anyone done this before? How effective it is compared to using a laptop. I would like to know this really, before investing on an iPad!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The iPad idea still might not fix point 3, but I hope it can allow seeing everyone from the board's angle, and could probably hear better since the person who is scrumming will be close to the board and hence the iPad (than me standing in front of the board in an obtrusive way)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, if any one has used this method, which External Mic and External speakers are recommended? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been horribly struggling to connect the offshore and onshore teams as a Scrum master and a Project Manager, and hopefully this will cut down the multitude of email exchanges that sometimes go nowhere. Please let me know your suggestions. Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4838" LastEditorUserId="4838" LastEditDate="2013-04-22T22:34:58.497" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T23:01:38.033" Title="iPad for Scrum to Skype or Google Hangout" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;communication-management&gt;&lt;remote-teams&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-05-04T13:19:12.687" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9099" CreationDate="2013-04-23T06:11:15.213" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a bit unclear how you are managing the management/support requests.  Actually, I'm unclear whether you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; managing them at all.  You need to manage these requests, to protect your developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Software developers can only be productive if they have extensive time &quot;in the zone&quot;.  Interruptions are the number-one thing that can kill developer productivity and morale.  If you're constantly in interrupt mode, where you are interrupting them for some new request, then you're probably doing it wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, it sounds like you need to have a queue for support/maintenance requests, where they are assigned a priority.  Rather than immediately implementing them, why don't you let them wait in the queue until when you are scheduled to work on them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you considered deciding what fraction of time you want to spend on maintenance vs new development, and then assigning your developers a schedule accordingly?  For instance, if you want to spend 25% of your time on maintenance/support and 75% of your time on new development, then you have several options: you could assign each developer one week of the month where they are on maintenance/support and 3 weeks of the month where they are on new development.  When a new support/maintenance request comes in, it goes into the queue, gets assigned a priority, and then when a developer has scheduled time for maintenance/support, they start pulling the highest items from the queue until their scheduled time is over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing is clear: you need to start making some prioritizations.  If any time someone sends you a maintenance/support request, you immediately &quot;jump right on it&quot;, then you've implicitly made a priority decision: you've decided that every maintenance/support request (no matter how minor) is more important than new development (no matter how important).  If that doesn't match the priorities that make the most sense for your business, maybe you need to re-consider how you are prioritizing and how those priorities are reflected in your team's work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you start prioritizing, it's possible you may discover you can't do everything with your existing team.  At that point, you have two choices: hire more developers, or accept that there are some tasks you cannot and will not do with your existing resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4648" LastEditorUserId="4648" LastEditDate="2013-07-01T06:35:22.790" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T06:35:22.790" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9043" CreationDate="2013-04-23T06:26:27.130" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to explain what is unique about software development: that as a software developer you need uninterrupted time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Software development requires holding many pieces of a complex puzzle in your head all at once.  It's enormously challenging to assemble all those pieces.  As a developer, once you've got those pieces together, then you're furiously trying to solve the problem while you can still keep it in your head and have the clear insight.  If you interrupt a developer while they're in that state, then you're forcing them to think about something else, which drives all of that out of their head, and they're back to square zero.  Even if it's just a 5-minute interruption, when you walk out, it can take them a quarter hour or more to recover where they were and get back into the same mental state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you ever noticed how developers, once they get into the flow, often seem immersed in some fugue where they don't notice the outside world for hours on end?  Maybe your favorite developer emerges 6 hours later, looking a bit dazed.  Do you know why that happens?  It's because of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;flow state&lt;/a&gt;.  Getting into that flow state isn't easy, but once you're in it, you lose track of the outside world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this reason, it's not the number of meetings that matter.  It's the effect it has on the amount of uninterrupted time that developers have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; still have meetings without undue negative effect on a developer's productivity, if the meetings are scheduled very carefully.  For instance, if you make Monday &quot;meeting day&quot; and schedule all meetings on Monday, then Monday becomes basically a write-off for software development, but at least the developer still has four other days a week for productive work: 80% productivity.  On the other hand, if you schedule two meetings a day, one at 10:30-11:00am every day and another at 2:30-3:00pm every day, that's about the worst torture you could do to a software developer.  Sure, it's only 5 hours of meetings a week -- but you've just killed any hope of having a prolonged uninterrupted period where one can focus on software development.  That's deadly for productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I'll note that this phenomenom is somewhat specific to software development.  It doesn't apply to most managers or business folks.  That may be one reason why many managers are unfamiliar with this issue or why it may not occur to them without prompting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You know your manager best, so you will know best how to communicate with your manager.  What you don't want to do is come off as whining, or trying to avoid meetings because you hate meetings (yes, we all hate meetings, but your manager has probably scheduled them for a reason).  Instead, you want to emphasize that your interests are aligned.  It's about helping you to be more productive: something your manager probably cares a lot about.  Then, if your manager steps up to the plate by helping you get more uninterrupted time, you need to deliver: you need to actually be more productive.  If you do it right, everyone walks away happier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more, see the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code&lt;/a&gt;, 8. Do programmers have quiet working conditions? - Here Joel explains why it is so important for developers to have private offices and quiet places to work without interruptions.  It's because interruptions kill productivity, for software developers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000068.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Where do These People Get Their (Unoriginal) Ideas?&lt;/a&gt; - Joel talks about why it's so important to be able to get into the flow and stay in the flow.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000332.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Getting Things Done When You're Only a Grunt&lt;/a&gt;, Strategy 5 Get Away From Interruptions - Here Joel is giving advice to fellow developers about how to avoid interruptions.  (The hidden subtext, which Joel doesn't need to explain, is why avoiding interruptions is so critical to productivity, for software developers.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2006/07/10/a_nerd_in_a_cave.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A Nerd in a Cave&lt;/a&gt; - Rands talks about his &quot;nerd cave&quot;, which is just a fancy way of saying a comfortable place that helps him get into the flow state and stay there.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/magazine/16guru.html?pagewanted=all&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Meet the Life Hackers&lt;/a&gt; - This talks about productivity and the cost of interruptions.  It quotes a claim that, when someone is interrupted, it takes 25 minutes to get back to the original task.  That's for non-developers; I expect it'll be higher for software developers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. If you want to get advanced, read Rands in Repose on meetings.  But that's an advanced topic, for later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4648" LastEditorUserId="4648" LastEditDate="2013-04-23T06:46:07.820" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T06:46:07.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9099" CreationDate="2013-04-23T10:45:50.967" Score="12" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Use &lt;strong&gt;swimlanes&lt;/strong&gt; on your board (or different coloured cards) to&#xA;  indicate the type of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One team I worked with divided their board horizontally into two parts - the top for new product development work, the bottom for support/maintenance.  Each steam had a separately prioritised backlog that the teams would pull work from when ready.  This meant we always had a mix of new dev and maintenance in progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Use &lt;strong&gt;work in progress limits&lt;/strong&gt; to make it explicit how you balance&#xA;  the teams time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the team above, we had a work in progress limit of 3 stories for new product development and 1 for maintenance so it was clear what ratio of team time we were expecting to be spent on each type of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Use &lt;strong&gt;expedite&lt;/strong&gt; cards to accelerate vital work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also allowed one expedite token (we just used a big red star) to be placed on cards by the Product Owner.  It was expected that a card with an expedite token would get first priority to be worked on so would flow across the board quicker at the expense of other work being completed more slowly.  This allowed the PO to get live issues resolved quickly and made it clear when we had something in play that was going to slow everything else down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Watch how often this is used though.  You need to train the PO to only use it when it's actually essential and not to get in the habit of just always having it in play on a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;David Anderson's Kanban book explores these concepts in more detail&#xA;  and is highly recommended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T10:45:50.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9099" CreationDate="2013-04-23T10:45:57.850" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of opinions out there about multi-tasking and its effects on performance and productivity and maybe morale.  The only definitive studies out there I have seen about multi-tasking is the stuff between men and women so I don't know that I would take a hard stance about having an individual wear both a development and support role hats.  Either way, what is clear is that you need to adjust your estimates and planning values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cannot hire more people, then you need to adjust the durations of your sprints, push them to the right, secondary to the lower than expected available developer utilization rates.  Support is support.  The supply needs to meet the demand; else you will have unhappy customers.  And the demand the varies, so your planning value needs to be at the level to accommodate most of the supply.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developing schedules can move and no one dies.  Trying to control your response on support and someone dies...metaphorically, of course.  So re-estimate the demand side of support, and build a case to either hire more talent so you can restructure and separate the roles or schedule development with whatever time remains for work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T10:45:57.850" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9099" CreationDate="2013-04-23T15:16:28.530" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try dedicating some proportion of your developers to maintenance/support activities. This avoids issues associated with multitasking, the need to prioritize support vs new projects, removes a source of unpredictability from your sprint planning and should reduce stress on your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exactly what proportion of your developers do maintenance/support work would depend on your average monthly volume of issues with current products compared to ongoing work. In any case if you try this approach you would likely want to rotate who is doing maintenance/support on a fairly frequent and regular basis so that everyone has a chance to do the &quot;cool stuff&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T15:16:28.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9106" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-23T16:53:58.477" Score="4" ViewCount="8034" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the eligibility of the PMP certification it mentions &quot;35 contact hours&quot;,&#xA;I have searched on this for my local region and it seems to be that some training centers listed on the PMP site would provide with a certificate certifying these hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it really necessary to join a training center and get this certificate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can't I just study the books myself and appear for the exam?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know I have already added couple of questions above, but would be great if someone can take one more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also state - &quot;4 years into managing projects and 4500hours of leading teams.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4500/24 is 188 days - is that right calculation to go by?&#xA;Also if someone is just leading teams chances are they are not yet managers (atleast by designation) and thus how would this 4years of managing projects be accomplished?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6024" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T10:22:59.813" Title="PMP certification 35 contact hours- neccessary to be from training institute?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9106" CreationDate="2013-04-23T19:17:32.003" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your best source of information is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/en/Certification/~/media/PDF/Certifications/pdc_pmphandbook.ashx&quot;&gt;PMP Handbook&lt;/a&gt;. If you are going to go for your PMP take the time to review and understand what is required, doing so will help maximize your chances to succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the eligibility of the PMP certification it mentions &quot;35 contact hours&quot;, I have searched on this for my local region and it seems to be that some training centers listed on the PMP site would provide with a certificate certifying these hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it really necessary to join a training center and get this certificate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can't I just study the books myself and appear for the exam?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Page 8 of the handbook specifies that the contact hours have to be &quot;formal training&quot;, so intuitively NO you can't just self-study the PMBOK. It is not necessary to join a training center, there are any number of vendors, community colleges and universities out there offering pretty much any kind of training you may be interested in. Just make sure that they are &quot;real&quot; training organizations because there is a good chance you will be audited and if you don't have good documentation (i.e. some kind of certificate saying you took the course, the course lasted X hours and you passed) you will be out of luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4500/24 is 188 days - is that right calculation to go by? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your calculation needs to factor in having a life outside of work in general and the need to sleep in particular. More reasonable is figuring that you work on projects ~5 hours per day (out of an ~8 hour workday) 5 days per week for 48 weeks per year (accounts for vacation, sickness, stat holidays), so you are looking at 45 months of experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are assume 100% efficiency over an 8 hour work day you are still looking at working full time at 8 hours a day you are still looking at ~28 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also if someone is just leading teams chances are they are not yet managers (atleast by designation) and thus how would this 4years of managing projects be accomplished?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can manage a project without being a manager per se. There is a significant difference between your role on a project and your title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T19:17:32.003" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3935" CreationDate="2013-04-23T19:51:45.190" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pawel answer is great. I just published a simulation that visualizes how manage a mistake - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/GiulioRoggero/how-a-kanban-board-works&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;check it on slideshare&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are three of the possible options to manage a mistake (more are available)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0J0Dv.png&quot; alt=&quot;Blocked work&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/w244F.png&quot; alt=&quot;Option 1&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lP7BU.png&quot; alt=&quot;Option 2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eapeL.png&quot; alt=&quot;Option 3&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2812" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T19:51:45.190" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-04-23T19:51:45.190" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3305" CreationDate="2013-04-23T19:58:10.747" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kanban is a tool to visualize your waste (work in progress) and keep it limited.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/GiulioRoggero/how-a-kanban-board-works&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;If would you like to see a simulation check this presentation that I've written for introducing Kanban&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uwReO.png&quot; alt=&quot;Kanban step-by-step&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2812" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T19:58:10.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9100" CreationDate="2013-04-23T23:01:38.033" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Has anyone done this before? How effective it is compared to using a laptop&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this has been tried before. And obviously a system with better microphones and speakers will be better than one without them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of more interesting to note here though is that you seem to be hosting some kind of &quot;Scrum&quot; meeting with multiple Scrum teams. Is that really necessary? Could you instead use the product owners to coordinate cross-team dependencies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also say that the offshore team could not see the Scrum board, which would seem to imply that you have a single board for two teams. Do they not each have their own boards, reflecting their individual tasks? You may find it more effective to have a Kanban-style roll-up board that includes only user stories showing the work of each team, rather than forcing both teams to use the same board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T23:01:38.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9099" CreationDate="2013-04-24T12:47:23.583" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had some success with reviewing the amount of 'business as usual' and support work that is required over the next two weeks (from JIRA and other sources) during our sprint planning and reducing the time available for 'new' development accordingly. This avoids over-promising on your sprint and ensures that support needs are met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There will obviously be an impact on your velocity if you've never done this before so you need to either review this over time and adjust future delivery dates as required or make a realistic assessment of the % of your development time that is used up with support and adjust on this basis. What you absolutely need to avoid is your Product Manager (or whoever) thinking that you can complete, say, 100 story points in a sprint when, in reality, you normally only complete 80.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be a little messy to begin with and it's possible that people will feel disappointed that deadlines need to be pushed back. You need to manage this by pointing out that realistic deadlines are more useful for everyone's sanity and explain the impact that multi-tasking and last-minute requests have on developers and on code quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The importance of good prioritisation - as others have pointed out - is also absolutely vital. A frank assessment of the business value of, for example, a bug fix over the development of a new feature needs to be made before your schedule changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T12:47:23.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9099" CreationDate="2013-04-24T15:52:47.597" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a bit unclear if you're asking about estimation or about prioritization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think lots of answers here tackle the prioritization aspect, so I won't go into that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're asking how to estimate your efforts, given that much of them end up being unplanned work, then there are a bunch of things you can do, but a complete solution is probably impossible to find, for the simple reason that R&amp;amp;D projects by nature contain a high degree of uncertainty that cannot be easily quantified at the start of a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But first let's talk about what you &lt;strong&gt;can&lt;/strong&gt; do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where is this unplanned work coming from?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sometimes can seem like unplanned work is just dumped on your team from above, sideways and every other direction. But sometimes a team can bring it on itself. A trivial example: a team that ships in a big, big hurry and delivers buggy code naturally spends a lot of time putting out fires later. By the way, shipping buggy code isn't a way of saying &quot;hey, you suck at coding&quot; - sometimes it's really due to outside pressure no the team to sacrifice quality for cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can you make unplanned work go away?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're looking to reduce the amount of time you spend on unplanned work, first you need to identify what sort of work it is, and then work to reduce it. For example, if your development team constantly gets pulled to assist field engineers in installing and configuring the system in production environments, then maybe you should prioritize automating those deployment tasks; redesigning them to be easier, less risky, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Measuring unplanned work won't do you any good&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might seem like a good idea to measure how much time you've spent on unplanned work during the last few sprints and extrapolate from there, but it's a fool's errand. Predicting the unpredictable is futile. Your next sprint may go completely smoothly, and the one after that might be derailed by the biggest clusterf&amp;amp;ck production problem you've ever encountered. You're just not going to be able to predict that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that software development, in almost all cases, contains a good portion of unplanned work. Sometimes you just don't count it as such. It's easy to see a delayed project as just under-estimated, but most of the time the problem isn't with &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; you're estimating, but with &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; you're estimating. Unless your development projects are completely repetitive (constantly developing the same product over and over) they'll have a high degree of uncertainty built into them, owing to using new tools, tackling new problems and so on. You start off with a great work-plan, but after two days you realize that the library you were going to use isn't really supported by the target platform, and now you have to find an alternative, or, heaven forbid, develop something on your own. Those are the real kickers - the things you just didn't count at all during planning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So how &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; we estimate, given all this unavoidable unplanned work&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole idea of doing only what you planned on doing, with minimal unplanned work, is just not in the cards for most R&amp;amp;D teams. Obviously. That's why agile is so popular. You can try to minimize unplanned work, to some degree, but in the end your projects' schedules are always going to be dominated by the unplanned stuff. Once you realize that unplanned work is your bread and butter, you can now adapt your project management methods to handle it better:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Drill down and plan your iterations in detail. It doesn't take a lot of time, if you have a decent PM tool. Break things down to hour-sized tasks, where applicable. This will flush out a lot of the &quot;unplanned&quot; stuff.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prioritize the risky stuff. When you break things down to small pieces, you immediately see where your uncertainty lies. It's in those tasks that you don't really know how to break down further, and that you're not really sure about how long they'll take at all. Start from those, if possible. This way your estimate will still be off, but it'll stabilize significantly as your iteration progresses. You won't find yourself at the last couple of days of the iteration suddenly realizing you need 10 more days to finish what you started. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Negotiate with the project/product managers to work on the most common external source of unplanned work. e.g. would better documentation save your engineers a lot time explaining stuff to field engineers or customers? Then demand to allocate time for this as part of the development effort.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6028" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T15:52:47.597" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9043" CreationDate="2013-04-24T16:07:02.573" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aside from being a distractions, these meetings can basically be &quot;scheduled procrastination&quot;. When you're expecting a meeting, it's very hard to get into &quot;the zone&quot;. And of course the meeting itself breaks your flow completely. I wrote about this recently in &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.gigantt.com/2013/03/scheduled-procrastination.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a blog post&lt;/a&gt;. Sometimes it's just better to have surprise meetings than scheduled ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But of course 1 meeting a day is better than 4. If your manager is susceptible to evidence, try measuring your periods of continuous work and how much you get done during them. For example, you can use a time tracker to track your actual work intervals, and then cross reference those with some measure of productivity. e.g how many commits you've done during each period of work. If you show your manager that uninterrupted work periods yield more commits than interrupted ones (per hour, of course) he might realize that he's slowing you down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have to wonder (and pardon me for doing so) - have you actually talked to him about it? Sometimes you don't really have to throw data at someone, or &lt;em&gt;prove&lt;/em&gt; your point. Sometimes it's just enough to talk it out and convince. You know.. with words. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6028" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T16:07:02.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9114" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9115" CreationDate="2013-04-24T17:16:43.483" Score="10" ViewCount="524" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everyone is always telling me that to be successful as a project manager you have to build good relationships with your project teams. I see it all over this forum and am told this by other PMs in my company. My problem is, I don't believe this is a real solution to many problems and I'm currently thinking this is just a BS default answer given when the real answer is &quot;I don't know&quot; or &quot;I can't do anything about it&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Real world example - We have, from my perspective, a corporate culture issue where line managers are VERY protective of their teams and extremely hesitant to provide help with things outside the scope of their team's immediate job at a given moment. E-mailed requests go unanswered. In-person conversations often end with &quot;I'll get you that by the end of the day&quot; and the next day I'm in another conversation with the same person - &quot;We were really busy. I'll get it to you tomorrow.&quot; and this can continue for months with escalations to their management giving me the exact same response (&quot;They're busy. Tomorrow.&quot; and then tomorrow comes and goes with no result). As a PM, a lot of my job is getting these various teams to work together and it's just hell because they don't want to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask my fellow PMs how to handle this and the answer I get is &quot;You have to build a good relationship with them. They have to WANT to do things for you.&quot; Huh? That seems like BS to me. Aren't they getting paid to do stuff for the company? I'm just some dude that coordinates things. I'm not even really the one initiating the requests. Someone else asked me to get this information for them and they're going to hold me accountable for getting them that information. If they really are that busy, their line managers need to handle that. I'm running the project, not the individual teams and when you tell me &quot;Person X is your guy&quot; and then person X says they don't have time to do what I need, that's not a problem I can solve because I'm not their manager. However, I just keep getting told to build a better relationship with the teams. Honestly, I'm not even sure what that means I should do. It's not like I get invited out to lunch with these teams or hang out chatting in the halls. I don't even work on the same floor as most of them. Am I supposed to just randomly stop by all of their desks and try to strike up interesting conversations? I would hate if some PM stopped by to chit-chat with me while I was trying to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is this a cop out? When is it ok to say &quot;relationship building is not the problem here&quot; and how do you get that across?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4699" LastActivityDate="2013-05-13T15:44:36.727" Title="Can 'relationship building' be a cop out?" Tags="&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;relationships&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9114" CreationDate="2013-04-24T17:51:48.967" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your interactions with team members are the key part of being a PM. You will always have some sort of relationship with them, good or bad. In the common case where a PM has zero real power in a company, having a good relationship with those who do have power becomes overwhelmingly important because if you don't have someone who is willing to back you up you will never get anything done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So relationship building is always going to be an important ingredient for project success. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a good relationship isn't about being someone's buddy. It is about consistently showing your leadership by being honest, fair and open with everyone on your teams. It is about giving people a heads-up when something is coming down the pipe that can impact them. It is about asking if they have a minute to talk before you take their time. It is about showing real concern when they have issues and going to bat for them with senior management if you have to. It is about being honest with them about their accountabilities and how you want to help them look good. It is about involving the team leaders in your planning efforts and backing up their estimates when the estimated schedule isn't too rosy. And it is about taking the time to do all of these things, over and over again, consistently and persistently with little chance of getting an obvious reward in the short term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even though you may have good relationships your corporate culture can hamstring you. If there isn't clear accountability up to and including executive level on your projects you will have great difficulty getting attention. Remember that your team gets paid to do a lot of different things for your company, and if what you want them to do is low on their priority list you will have problems no matter how good your relationships are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T17:51:48.967" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8739" CreationDate="2013-04-24T20:11:10.990" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Six Sigma came from manufacturing. I believe that is still where it is used most, as does your link. I don't think that's a good fit from IT, with the possible exception of repetitive works such as deploying the same software, etc. to many computers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lean also came from manufacturing. But &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_IT&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lean IT&lt;/a&gt; has tailored it to IT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ISO9000 says &quot;do what you say and say what you do.&quot; That's a fine fit for IT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="158" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T20:11:10.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9072" CreationDate="2013-04-25T15:42:31.410" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You've stumbled upon the problem of task scheduling. As long as you have just one resource at work, it's not very hard to solve - you just start whichever task &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It gets more tricky when you have multiple resources used to accomplish tasks. Then it becomes the &lt;em&gt;resource constrained scheduling problem&lt;/em&gt;, sometimes also called &lt;em&gt;resource leveling&lt;/em&gt;. You can find a good intro to this problem, and a review of possible solutions, &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.gigantt.com/2011/05/ants-popcorn-sex-introduction-to.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, it's a tough problem to solve completely, as it is a NP-hard problem, which means finding the optimal solution for large project is simply not feasible, you can only find a good approximation of the optimal solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some PM tools, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://gigantt.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gigantt&lt;/a&gt;, provide automatic task scheduling. You just describe to the system how tasks depends on each other and it finds a good scheduling solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6028" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T15:42:31.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9072" CreationDate="2013-04-25T18:15:23.130" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start with task 1 and 2 since they don't have predecessors, as David Espina said. Note when they finish. Now you have task finishing at day 1, task 2 at day 2. (active task #1 at 2; #2 at 2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then repeatedly&#xA; 1. Find the first active  task to finish. Here task 1 at day 1.&#xA; 2. Look at which tasks can now be done. Here that is task 4.&#xA; 3. Figure when it will finish. That will be day 3.&#xA; 4. Update the list of tasks. Now you have (#2 at 2, #4 at 3) active.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then at day 2 task 2 finishes. You can start task 3 and 6. Now you have (#4 at 3, #3 at 5, #6 at 8).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next task #4 finishes at day 3, but you can't start anything more. That means task #4 isn't on the critical path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next task #3 finishes at day 5. You can start task 5 finishing at day 6. Active: (#6 at 8, #5 at 6).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next task #5 finishes. No new tasks to start. That means task #5 isn't on the critical path. Active #6 at 8)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next task #6 finishes at day 8.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last task is on the critical path. Then go backwards. It started when #3 finished, so #3 is on the critical path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task #3 started when #2 finished. So #2 is on the critical path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task #2 didn't have a predecessor, so it is on the critical path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="158" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T18:15:23.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9114" CreationDate="2013-04-26T18:49:17.797" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, it's somewhat of a cop out. It's like saying 90% of project mgmt is communication. No, 90% of pm is knowing 'how' and 'what' to communicate and why. Simply talking (communicating) about it isn't going to change anything, and it certainly not going to get the project done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, you have to build relationships. But you have to know 'why' you're building them, and then work on the how. You need these guys to do things for you, so you need to build a relationship where they want to help you, where they're interested in helping you and your team succeed. so work on building interest and support for the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to get them on board and supporting your project so they want to help. Anything short of that and yes, you're just telling them did something wrong. and non one's going to want to help then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T18:49:17.797" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9123" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-26T19:16:54.477" Score="11" ViewCount="2876" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the definitions, distinctions and relationship between the following roles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/6100/4367&quot;&gt;Project lead&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Coordinator&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Program Manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Portfolio Manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Product Manager (optional)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Business-analyst (optional)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/6100/4367&quot;&gt;Team lead&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (optional)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm aware that we've touched on this before - &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/4227/4367&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/2753/4367&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/1465/4367&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/2416/4367&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/9121/4367&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;; I'm hoping that we can fold all these answers into one and change it to community wiki as a reference. One answer to rule them all; one answer to enable all to find them, one answer to bring them all and in the stack exchange to bind them.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Please add new roles to this question rather than creating new questions; we want to nurture the network effect here&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2019-11-26T10:28:34.967" Title="What are the definitions and distinctions between Project x Program x Portfolio x Product Managers?" Tags="&lt;roles&gt;&lt;business-analyst&gt;&lt;product-manager&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9123" CreationDate="2013-04-26T20:30:15.027" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PMI view is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;Project Manager&lt;/strong&gt; manages a project. They make sure they get done within constraints. He cares most about execution details in day-to-day work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;Program Manager&lt;/strong&gt; has a bunch of projects. they may be a Project Manager on one or some of those too.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;Portfolio Manager&lt;/strong&gt; has a bunch of program. This is more of a strategic &quot;where should our business be in the future&quot; role. This is the least about execution details and most about long-term planning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;Product Manager&lt;/strong&gt; worries about what the product/service should do. He makes sure the right thing/service that customers want is done. Then the Project Manager manages execution to build it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="158" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-11-26T10:28:34.967" LastActivityDate="2019-11-26T10:28:34.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9125" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9146" CreationDate="2013-04-27T20:27:16.470" Score="3" ViewCount="1013" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my role as a Business Analyst working for a offshore company (7 developers, 4 QA, 1 PM, 1 Architect) but being onsite, I go through the Business Requirement Document's, Epics and Stories briefed by Product Owners (PO) and write a more detailed specification for an offshore team. Its a 2 week sprint, and the stories, designs often come not more than 2-3 days before the sprint planning day. Not to mention about that the designs are handled by a separate team in itself, and sometimes there is a disconnect between PO and Design as well. Furthermore there are clients who have their own Product Owners and Designers doing last minute requests, changes, priorities to customize or white-label it for them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To add more complexity, I am NOT involved in the PO-Design or PO-Client discussions. With this stated I try best to read the documents on wiki, see whatever designs that are available currently, while Design is trying to polish and fine tune them (these are mostly outdated initial bare minimum designs), read Business Requirement Documents-BRD (which are often at a high-level and mostly not updated as what is on the Design currently) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So with these limitations, I take up the stories (about 8-10) that are slated for the offshore team specifically &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Review stories that they are work ready (documented responsibility said by Client - seems pretty broad and covers most of the work below),  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define edge cases&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide more detailed information on every line of Acceptance Criteria (AC)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add necessary resources to the story/feature description (any content like XML that needs to be used, any Wiki that needs to be pointed for more information or Design assets that are missing)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Co-ordinate with Design, PO, PM, Scrum Master to get everything seamless&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Facilitate conference calls to run through all the stories (Story Time) every Sprint Thursday explain them as much as possible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Answer their queries/ clarifications that come in everyday (these are sometimes too obvious and unclear questions - takes my whole day often)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Demo for stories completed by Offshore team (preparing the Wiki page, information, test data)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do Acceptance Tests for offshore teams stories, prepare a document and pass it over to the actual POs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Daily review of Rally discussion board and answering them, reaching out to the necessary Tech leads and developers onsite to get information on this&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Review test cases and sign-off&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With all these things done, when any small issue creeps in stopping the story completion per the definition of done. The offshore team completely point fingers at me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is an appropriate quality standard for a requirements specification?  How can we design a process to more flexibly adapt to changes in requirements?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4838" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2013-05-01T10:53:34.350" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T16:12:06.887" Title="What is an appropriate quality standard for requirements specifications?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;distributed-team&gt;&lt;business-analyst&gt;&lt;specification&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4227" CreationDate="2013-04-29T00:48:55.287" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the experience in my company (which seems to be aligned with the opinions here), &lt;strong&gt;a Program Manager is responsible for &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; Projects managed each by a Project Manager&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Become a Program Manager is the 'career path' for Project Managers (PM).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some duties I'd list:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Responsible for all non-project-specific paperwork / bureaucratic duties&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Responsible for coaching the PMs below him&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accountable for the overall performance of their projects, along with PMs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Support a project whenever the PM isn't available&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work as an escalation point from the PM&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a nutshell, I'd say the &lt;strong&gt;Program Manager main work is to support Project Manager(s)&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T00:48:55.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9127" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-29T08:07:55.787" Score="4" ViewCount="57454" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I understand that the Project Coordinator's main duties are to schedules the project, manages contracts and vendors, manages the resources (especially in construction projects), creates most project related documents, coordinates meetings, etc... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it looks to me that a Project Coordinator is one small step from becoming a Project Manager? am I correct, or can a Project Coordinator be at least considered for a Project Management role?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also like to know how respected Project Coordinators are compared to Project Managers, are they on the same level? (I'm referring the level in the Management Hierarchy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5551" LastEditorUserId="983" LastEditDate="2013-04-29T09:31:01.320" LastActivityDate="2018-08-14T11:57:43.287" Title="Is a Project Coordinator a Step closer to becoming a Project Manager?" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;career&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8890" CreationDate="2013-04-29T08:30:56.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project-help/export-project-data-to-another-file-format-HP043007930.aspx?CTT=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Microsoft article - Export Project data to another file format&lt;/a&gt; explains how to use the file-&gt;save as command to export Project data to another file format:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;On the File menu, click Save As.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;In the Save as type box, select the file format you want to export data to.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;To export project data to a SQL Server or Oracle Server format, click ODBC, and then continue with step 5.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;In the File name box, type a name for the exported file.&#xA;  Click Save.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Follow the instructions in the Export Wizard to export the data you want into the proper fields of the destination file.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also some notes and FYI's that you may want to read as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5551" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-04-30T02:59:44.400" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T02:59:44.400" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9127" CreationDate="2013-04-29T08:42:09.483" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would be wary about giving an absolute answer to this because the meaning of a job title can vary hugely from organisation to organisation and sector to sector. In my own sector - digital/software development - I would say that Project Coordinators normally report in to Project Managers who may, in turn, report in to Programme Managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience Project Coordinators tend to take on more of the administrative side of project management. Some of the tasks you have described would fall into this category, others not. Either way, I think being a Project Coordinator (or any key part of the project management function) is a good way to get into project management at a more senior level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T08:42:09.483" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9127" CreationDate="2013-04-29T12:37:59.943" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answers to those questions depend heavily on your company/institution/hierarchy.  I think we can only respond in the context of PMI (although I'd love to hear from a PRINCE practitioner or other non-PMI organization).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work performed as a project coordinator almost certainly qualifies as job experience towards PMP certification (I'm only hedging because I'm not accountable for making that determination).  In that sense, work as a project coordinator does bring you closer to Project Manager title.   However the meaning of those titles depends on whether your organization is weak matrix, strong matrix, or some combination, the internal politics and history of your institution etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, the title of Project Manager is awarded by your company/institution. Both my manager and I are PMP, but he is a project manager and I'm either a project coordinator or a senior cybersecurity principal analyst.  On the other hand both he and his colleague are Project Managers, despite the fact that they both work on closely coordinated programs (technically not projects, but politically we can't call them programs).  In our case the title is determined by politics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put the same idea a third way, I think your last question is the most pertinent &quot;how do they compare in the management hierarchy?&quot;, but that question is entirely localized. &quot;Management Hierarchy&quot; is a term that has no meaning beyond the scope  of &lt;em&gt;YOUR&lt;/em&gt; management hierarchy. Only your management can determine whether your performance as a project coordinator qualifies you for consideration as a project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T12:37:59.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9131" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9135" CreationDate="2013-04-30T07:20:33.063" Score="12" ViewCount="1690" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been working several projects with Scrum method and, in some, we have taken the decision of execute Scrum sprints of dynamic length (every sprint).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me it have some advantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adapt the Sprint length to the &quot;real&quot; work charge by Sprint (always respecting the Sprint min-max duration rules).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More simple planification of Sprint (not have to &quot;play with&quot; the end of the Sprint to fix the lenght)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Easy to adapt complete functionalities in short planifications.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main dis-advantage is that feedback to the client is sent in variable time spaces, but if they are informed and confortable with this, there are no problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is this an accepted practice in the Scrum method?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;--update&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have posted the same question in the official Scrum Forum and, as we&#xA;  can see, no quorum: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrum.org/Forums/aft/340&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.scrum.org/Forums/aft/340&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4986" LastEditorUserId="4986" LastEditDate="2013-05-02T07:41:21.610" LastActivityDate="2020-06-21T09:41:16.990" Title="Dynamic length of sprints in Scrum" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1539" CreationDate="2013-04-30T07:39:22.807" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are possible and most effective methods of measurement of quality in a software development project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most effective method of measuring software quality is user feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're a small software development house known for our quality (it's worth pointing out that we assertively avoid estimating deadlines in favour of doing the job right - no matter how long it takes). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use the following step-by-step process for each project:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Evaluate the potential users / people working for your customer, and pick someone who understands the system needs and communicates well. We like to call this person the &quot;product champion&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Release early and release often, albeit make it clear that your software is still under development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have your champion test your latest releases and send you regular feedback. If they do a good job, tell their boss (recognition goes a long way). If they do a poor job, find another champion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As the system nears completion / reaches a functionality milestone, get more users / all the users on it, so that they can test it too. Make sure all their feedback goes through the champion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind that we develop custom software for various clients. If, on the other hand, you're developing an off-the-shelf package, then you need to keep the software in-house until it's ready, but I'm sure you can adopt a similar strategy to the one listed above with a solid team of beta testers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then if you want to use metrics to analyse your ability to fulfil the above philosophy, conduct the following user survey:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are these users actually using the system? (sounds silly but you'd be surprised)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are they happy with it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a side note, we don't bother with any metrics / analysis tools that measure code quality, as this does not add any value to our operations. But that's easy to say when you're as small as us, so I guess it depends on the size of your company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4523" LastEditorUserId="4523" LastEditDate="2013-04-30T07:57:36.740" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T07:57:36.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9131" CreationDate="2013-04-30T07:59:47.993" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum is a framework with few constraints; one of them is the timebox Sprint with a static rhythm. You need a static length of sprints to calculate your velocity, and to use the scrum pattern &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com/a/scrumplop.org/published-patterns/value-stream/estimation-points/yesterday-s-weather&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yesterday's Weather&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; in your plans. You have to make your team to get into the habit of doing scrum ceremonials that's why the rhythm of the meeting must be fixed and predictable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6057" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-21T09:41:16.990" LastActivityDate="2020-06-21T09:41:16.990" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9099" CreationDate="2013-04-30T14:45:59.427" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very good question. We are in exactly the same boat as you in terms of our development team, the nature of our work, and the need to respond to support requests. In other words I can relate to how tricky it is to find this balance you seek.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our solution - which is by no means perfect - has been to adopt a strict daily feedback cycle with our customers, which works as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each morning, the project manager reviews pending support requests and discusses them with the team. The team then gets to work on the support request at the front of the queue (last in last out), whilst the project manager responds to the client to confirm what's being worked on that day.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each morning, if the previous day's support request is partially complete, and another support request comes in, this new support requests is added to the back of the queue of support requests. This must be explicitly communicated in the next morning's daily feedback email.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each morning, if there are no outstanding support request, the team gets to work on product development. If during the day a support request comes in, do not address it until the next morning. That way you do not interrupt your team, but at the same time, because you've created a daily feedback routine with your clients, they know to only expect your email the next morning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key take-away point here is to manage expectations by creating (and enforcing) a daily routine of feedback every morning. If you're concerned about how to sell this idea to your customers, focus on explicitly communicating your uncompromising stance on quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll find that after a while your customers will learn to work with your morning feedback cycle and will grow fond of the sense of stability arising out of the daily routine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like I said, it's by no means perfect, but it works well for us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4523" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T14:45:59.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9131" CreationDate="2013-04-30T18:06:20.277" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the primary reasons for the fixed sprint length in Scrum is to make obvious various problems your team(s) might be encountering. Removing the regular cadence will make it more difficult to see these problems and address them. For example: if you consistently have trouble completing functionality within a timebox, that may be a sign that you are not breaking stories down enough. OR, it may mean that something is wrong with your testing process (happening too late in your process, is not sufficiently automated, etc). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another good reason for a fixed sprint length is when you try to scale Scrum beyond one team (don't know if this does or will apply to you). It is much easier if all your related teams are on the same cadence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I would recommend googling the &quot;importance of agile cadence&quot;. There are a number of articles on the usefulness of cadence beyond just velocity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there are some situations where a fixed development cadence just doesn't work well. That may be the case for your situation. I would recommend looking into &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanagement.net/index.php&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt; as an alternative to Scrum (it doesn't use iterations at all, but implements many of the same agile principles as Scrum). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5201" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T18:06:20.277" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9043" CreationDate="2013-04-30T19:44:45.137" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem your friend is dealing with can be classified as “interruptions,” and according to &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/wrike/status/306133999942766592&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;these guys&lt;/a&gt;, they were cited as one of the most dangerous productivity killers. &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.atlassian.com/2012/10/collaboration-best-practices-3-reasons-interruptions-hurt-productivity/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; also contains some useful statistics on the matter. I hope that would be enough to divert that oblivious manager of yours from his meeting obsession.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5878" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T19:44:45.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4553" CreationDate="2013-04-30T19:51:20.633" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The features you mentioned are quite common for most of the PM tools, so I suggest you go with the one you like the feel of. For instance, the tool we use, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wrike.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wrike&lt;/a&gt;, addresses all the points from your list:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We can &lt;strong&gt;assign tasks both from the system and via e-mail&lt;/strong&gt;. BTW, this&#xA;e-mail integration has been a real time-saver for our team.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We can &lt;strong&gt;leave comments both from the task panel and from the live Activity&#xA;Stream&lt;/strong&gt;, and even quote the comments left by the other team members.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yes. And besides &lt;strong&gt;scheduling the tasks&lt;/strong&gt;, we also can “backlog” them,&#xA;which is pretty convenient for keeping track of ideas and “someday”&#xA;tasks. And the Gantt chart helps us get a clear picture of the&#xA;overall project. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yes, also &lt;strong&gt;both from the system and via e-mail&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yes, we can even &lt;strong&gt;color-code&lt;/strong&gt; them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5878" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T19:51:20.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9123" CreationDate="2013-04-30T21:08:07.573" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Caveat at the start - these functional titles may be interpreted differently in different organations&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Coordinator&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;responsible for the adminstration/bookkeeping of a project: preparing budget breakdowns, frequential reporting, supporting standard meetings and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Manager&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;responsible for planning, managing and steering the day-to-day activities of the project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Program Manager&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;responsible for coordinating the activities of a number of projects toward a common goal or within the compass of an organisatinal divison (ie all the projects running in the Finance division) or even within a single budget (ie all marketing-related projects)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Portfolio Manager&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;responsible for the Governance of a portfolio of projects, ensuring that the whole remain within projected expenditure and aligned to the assigned goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product Manager (optional)&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;responsible for the ensuring the efficiency and integrity of all processes with respect to a specific product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Business-analyst (optional)&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Responsible for ensuring that all business constraints and requirements with respect to a specific product or functional area (Payments, Server Farm X etc.) are fully understood and implemented in any change/project with respect to his/her are of responsiblity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6063" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T21:08:07.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9127" CreationDate="2013-04-30T21:21:08.420" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bluntly the relationship between the project coordinator function and that of project manager is similar to that between a secretary. The secretary has an excellent grasp on the day to day activities of the task, but has never taken responsibility for delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not mean that the project coordinator cannot make the step to being a project manager, but it does mean that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need to be cognisant of the increased risk and responsibility and willing to bear it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You probably need to be sponsored by a person of authority&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference between the two jobs is significant in skillsets and responsibilities. Find a mentor to assist you if you wish to make this transition. Quite often an existing project manager will be happy to help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6063" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T21:21:08.420" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4227" CreationDate="2013-04-30T21:27:14.693" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Programme managers coordinate a functional (all projects needed to increase sales performance by 10%) or organisational (all projects within the finance division) group of projects. They have hierarchical power over the project managers whose projects fall within their programme and may require those projects to change their deliverables and timelines in accordance with the needs of the programme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where a project manager looks towards the goals of her sponsors and manages the resources of her project, the programme manager looks at the organisational context and manages the effect the that the projects will have on the organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6063" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T21:27:14.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9131" CreationDate="2013-04-30T22:50:49.587" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. Scrum is based on time-boxed iterations, and one of the main tenets of the framework is that the Scrum Team accepts work into the Sprint based on how much work can fit within a fixed-length Sprint rather than sizing the Sprint to fit a given volume of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;More to Think About&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is acceptable to adjust the Sprint length to fit the Scrum Team's needs, that is a allowing for adaptation of process rather than indicating that it's okay to have variable Sprint lengths. Continuously-varying Sprint lengths is a project smell that indicates that work may be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improperly-sized, rather than composed of small done/not-done chunks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assigned from outside the team, driving a requirement to finish X amount of work in a given Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improperly prioritized on the Product Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Insufficiently granular to make a good user story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Too tightly-coupled with other user stories, often indicating a missing user story or a poorly-defined epic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There could certainly be other reasons, too, but these are a good starting point to try to figure out &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; you feel like standardized time-boxes are a bad fit for your group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Scrum-Like Isn't Scrum&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use continuously-varying Sprint lengths, you are not following Scrum. You are possibly doing something Scrum-like, and potentially something agile, but as a Scrum practitioner I wouldn't take either for granted. Scrum &lt;em&gt;requires&lt;/em&gt; time-boxes; if you don't use time-boxing, you aren't doing Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If time-boxes with hard cut-offs are legitimately a bad fit for your work-flow, you might consider other agile frameworks that focus on different mechanics for managing iterations, cycles, and throughput. However, you should certainly make sure you understand &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; fixed-length iterations are a bad fit before you try to replace your methodology, or you may find yourself with a different (but still poorly-fitted) methodology for your process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T22:50:49.587" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9099" CreationDate="2013-05-01T15:27:48.220" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Over-estimate the amount of time you will spend each time period on support and maintenance with a comfortable margin what your team would consider a heavy load. Set this time aside for maintenance and plan your available development time around that. You can always use leftover maintenance time on extra development and it will look good for the team to accomplish more than you expected. It is not possible to guess the exact time you will need for maintenance and perfectly plan every sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6068" LastActivityDate="2013-05-01T15:27:48.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9099" CreationDate="2013-05-01T21:12:49.683" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is where i would like to think the lean concepts work very well if practices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use a Kanban Board and commit to say 3 to 4 tasks to be done as part of support every day and use rest of the time on development work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What this certainly means is that a choice between planning 28 hrs in a day and pushing something that may come back quick with chaos or agree to a continuous flow of delivery across both streams and eventually get the productivity factor up achieving the targets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2384" LastActivityDate="2013-05-01T21:12:49.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9125" CreationDate="2013-05-02T16:12:06.887" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is still a very complex question, and I think it is possible that an answer will nail a part of it and miss the whole.  I'm still thinking about the problem, but in the interim, I found the following quote today&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectmanagement.com/articles/278377/Phased-Based-Governance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The design specification must be governed differently than the requirements. If the requirements were appropriately governed, and if the requirements predominantly begin with the term “The system shall..,” then our design leads and developers need to take new factors into consideration when governing the design phase. Since the design is the translation of the business and technical requirements into a specification that can be developed, at this point in the project we must consider the following&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What follows is some criteria for translating requirements into a design spec.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe you have a quality assurance problem, and the resolution is to look at the process of transforming inchoate stories into produceable designs.   Nominally there are three stages that could fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The underlying data you get could be flawed.  Looks like you get &lt;em&gt;LOTS&lt;/em&gt; of data, and I have to wonder if some of the sources are more reliable than others. If prioritizing those sources that result in improved requirements and design specs wouldn't make the process better.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You.  You may lack the Knowledge, Skills, Abilities etc. needed to work the process. If so, then your manager needs to arrange for training to improve your skill. I don't say this to insult you, but to be comprehensive.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Output - perhaps the requirements are good, but the translation to design specs is inadequate. Perhaps the interface between you and the design team has some noise in it. (Some of the material that I edited out of your question and recommended you take to Workplace SE may support this thesis, but I would seek objective confirmation).  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were in your shoes, I would be looking for  a couple of things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some kind of agreed upon quality metric - some objective, agreed upon standard that we could use to manage improvement. Number of requirements that are implemented without change. Number of meetings required to produce a successful requirement.  But it has to be a metric that is accepted by you, your management, and your downstream customers (those who are complaining).   Find out what the quality is today, and commit to improve it by N% by X date.  (Even if the best you can do is &quot;25% of requirements are successful, but by June 30 30% of requirements will be successful&quot;, or &quot;17% of requirements need 3 or more meetings to clarify; by 1 July, that number will be 10% of requirements need 3 or more meetings...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Root cause analysis of every failed requirement.  &lt;em&gt;Why&lt;/em&gt; was this requirement unsatisfactory? What needed to be changed, and at what point in the process should the error have been detected? Did you not have the right data? Is the design team using a different definition of common terms?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management support.  I infer from your question that you've got some dysfunctional and out of control processes, and that these are generating friction within the company.  All the involved parties (you, design team, PO, corporate management, the bottom line, the customer) will benefit from reducing that friction and improving the process. But changing processes without the active support of both parties managers is ... risky.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're working in some kind of scrum variant, and I'm not initiated into the Gospel of Scrum; I'd love to hear the commentary of some of our Deacons of Scrum on the problem.  Based on my limited understanding of scrum, I think you have a major problem. My impression is that scrum is supposed to facilitate more effective communication, and it doesn't seem to be doing this in your case.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T16:12:06.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9151" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9159" CreationDate="2013-05-04T13:44:51.710" Score="1" ViewCount="394" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am quite confused with the term &lt;em&gt;'over-alignment'&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;Do you have any clue what this might mean in the context of business or IT alignment?&lt;/strong&gt; My speculation is that it is like putting too much focus on business strategy that a new technology cannot be introduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not quite sure about the term and there is not much literature that says &lt;em&gt;'over-alignment'&lt;/em&gt; in the context of business or IT alignment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6083" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2013-05-06T09:38:24.973" LastActivityDate="2013-11-16T00:44:12.477" Title="What does over-alignment mean for business or IT alignment?" Tags="&lt;business-improvement&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9114" CreationDate="2013-05-04T21:07:54.180" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It can be a copout, but in my experience, most of the time when someone says something like &quot;relationship building is a cop-out&quot;, the person saying that really does need to put more effort into building relationships. Let's look at some hypothetical scenarios:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Al's engineers need some mockups from Beth in graphics department. Al says to Beth, &quot;I need these mockups for this project. Can you do them for me?&quot; Beth says, &quot;I'm busy. I'll get around to it tomorrow.&quot; Al asks again the next day and Beth says, &quot;I don't have time right now. I'll do it another day.&quot; Al asks the next day and the next day and the next day. Beth still doesn't have time. End result: Al is frustrated that Beth won't cooperate. Beth is annoyed that Al keeps asking her to do something when she's clearly too busy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Al's engineers need some mockups from Beth in graphics department. Al says to Beth, &quot;I need these mockups for this project. Can you do them for me?&quot; Beth says, &quot;I'm busy. I'll get around to it tomorrow.&quot; Al says, &quot;Oh, really? What are you working on?&quot; Beth explains that she's been given the task of redoing all the logos on the company's flagship products after a new branding strategy was declared, that she was explicitly told this was her top priority. Al then continues to ask questions like &quot;When do you expect to be finished with this?&quot; and &quot;Is there anyone in the department with a lighter workload that I could maybe hand this task to?&quot; Beth, knowing that Al appreciates how much work she does, tries to help out and give him helpful suggestions. Maybe she even volunteers to skip her lunch break or work on Al's mockups a little each day until they're done. Al's project only falls a little behind schedule, if at all.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not to say every instance of unaccountable workers is situation 2, but you'll never know if you don't try. In other words, if nothing else, better relationship building enables you to rule out the possibility that a manager is missing out on something he or she can only learn through informal channels of communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6087" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-05-05T00:34:02.523" LastActivityDate="2013-05-05T00:34:02.523" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9084" CreationDate="2013-05-05T09:57:27.627" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I'm the author of Breeze.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check out Breeze (&lt;a href=&quot;http://breeze.pm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://breeze.pm&lt;/a&gt;). It's an agile PM tool, basically a Trello and Basecamp mashup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think we have exactly what you need because we have similar workflow to yours. Breeze has calendar module and it also supports due dates and time tracking. You can add your tasks to a board and assign a start and due date for them. Then you can see all your tasks in the calendar by task or resource (person). The resource view is like a mini Gantt chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6089" LastActivityDate="2013-05-05T09:57:27.627" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6100" CreationDate="2013-05-05T11:53:24.767" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A project manager's role is the overall responsibility for a successful planning, and to make sure that their team is performing at their best. A team leader is responsible for the day to day running of the development effort, especially focused on the effort of their specific team and their core focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6090" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-05-05T21:16:15.923" LastActivityDate="2013-05-05T21:16:15.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9151" CreationDate="2013-05-06T09:34:40.783" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To be honest, I've never heard about &lt;em&gt;over-alignment&lt;/em&gt; until know, but I did some digging. Your speculation is true, because we are talking about &lt;em&gt;over-alignment&lt;/em&gt; when management favours one specific action over another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if an organization that has strict policies about success and its communication, one cannot really perform proper innovation and experimentation, because these actions  may fail, which is not allowed by the policies. In other words, in this example, &lt;em&gt;the alignment is over at the side of control&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are still interested in the topic, google the word &lt;em&gt;misalignment&lt;/em&gt;, because that is the proper terminology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used the following sources: &lt;a href=&quot;http://thecrispianadvantage.com/2010/03/18/alignment-challenges-part-13-managing-conflict-relationship-tension/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source1&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-336/paper8.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source2&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-05-06T09:34:40.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9151" CreationDate="2013-05-07T13:10:46.667" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;IT Alignment&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[L]eaders must consult with others, building alignment of purpose through the hard, delicate, necessary work of careful consensus building.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.weblog.keepthejointrunning.com/?p=1536&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bob Lewis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;IT alignment&amp;quot; is business-speak for having an IT department that supports strategic business goals as the top priority over departmental goals. In my &lt;em&gt;personal&lt;/em&gt; experience, this often boils down to supporting financial or sales objectives over sustainable IT infrastructure, but your mileage may certainly vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many organizations seem to have an adversarial relationship with IT. Some of this may be because IT is often a cost center rather than a profit center, while some of it may simply be because keeping the servers running or the firewall tight is a different mission than that of the sales department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Real&lt;/em&gt; alignment is when multiple departments share a common vision. Weasel-speak alignment is when the CFO directs the IT Director to poke holes in the corporate firewall so that Joe in sales can access his one-off desktop database from the field rather than using approved, secured, and managed corporate applications such as the company's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.postgresql.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PostgreSQL&lt;/a&gt; database.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Over-Alignment&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find a source that talked about over-alignment. Perhaps you'd like to provide us one for proper context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, the CIO, CTO, and other IT executives have a core responsibility that isn't just to say &amp;quot;yes&amp;quot; to the rest of the organization. IT exists to support the business mission, but it is also generally responsible for systems security and stability. This occasionally involves saying &amp;quot;no&amp;quot; to something that would compromise the mission, or offering alternative technical solutions for a business objective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://search.dilbert.com/comic/Mordac%20The%20Preventer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mordac, the Preventer of Information Services&lt;/a&gt; is a great example of what can happen when IT is not aligned with the business. However, over-alignment is also possible. For example, replacing a reliable Linux server farm with the new Windows 2032 Greed Edition (blowing IT's software, training, and labor budget in the process) because someone on Mahogany Row saw an article about it in a magazine is another Dilbertism, and a great (if admittedly contrived) example of over-alignment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T13:10:46.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9160" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-08T11:58:07.967" Score="-6" ViewCount="203" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question may look a little odd. I will lead a software development project and i need some people(Junior Consultants). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some mathematicians have applied to the development positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;what i realised is that the mathematician have less Knowledege in special areas but how they think and how they solve the problems are really interesting. Therefore i can see the potential at them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would you recommend?&#xA;Mathematician or software engineer..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4594" LastActivityDate="2013-05-08T12:22:33.703" Title="Who should I hire? Mathematician or software engineer" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2013-05-09T13:17:11.487" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9160" CreationDate="2013-05-08T12:08:55.273" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Figure out the learning curve of the technology involved. If the curve is low but the algorithms are complex then I'd say mathematician. Otherwise def the other one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6106" LastActivityDate="2013-05-08T12:08:55.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9160" CreationDate="2013-05-08T12:22:33.703" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you have any evidence that either course of study is associated with a higher degree of success likelihood?  I doubt you would find it.  What you would uncover, if you ever tried to study it, would be a host of biases and anecdotes but nothing concrete that one course of study is better than the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Except for a few specific professions, like medicine and law (where you cannot even legally practice either without a specific course of study), many different types of education, INCLUDING on the job training, prepares one to do a job, where many other variables would influence more the probability of good job performance and the exact course of study becomes irrelevant, if it ever was relevant.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd strongly suggest you dismiss this as a predictor or as a requirement for your open position and research those things that are valid predictors for job performance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-05-08T12:22:33.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9114" CreationDate="2013-05-08T12:34:54.023" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Relationship-Building is One Tool Among Many&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relationship building isn't a cop-out. However, in your specific case, it is the wrong tool for the job. In many cases, a project manager has no real power; he or she must perform duties through &lt;em&gt;influence&lt;/em&gt; rather than command-and-control techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, you make the point that you can do neither. You have neither command-and-control authority over the project, nor do you have sufficient influence with the line managers or engineers to get things done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Leverage Your Project Champion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A well-designed project has stakeholders, an executive sponsor, and often a steering committee. It also generally involves someone with direct budgetary authority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, problems with scheduling or accrual of project resources (staff, equipment, or even hair gel if that's needed for your project) ought to be effectively communicated to those folks. It is ultimately their responsibility to see to it that the project is staffed, funded, and provisioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More specifically, the executive sponsor or project champion is the person who wants what the project is supposed to deliver. If you build trust with &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; person, it is perfectly reasonable to expect them to take appropriate action to ensure that the project remains on track, and to ask that person to leverage her relationships to exert C&amp;amp;C or influence where you can't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Projects Without Accountability&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plenty of projects are run with no real authority or influence by &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; involved party. As has been noted in other answers here, around 68% of IT projects fail. There is a correlation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, in a blame culture the project manager will be held responsible for the project's failure anyway. However, the organizational responsibility for its success or failure &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; rests with senior management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure that you've assessed your own part in this process. If the project is failing because you aren't upholding your professional responsibilities or communicating status to the right people, take ownership of that. Otherwise, remind people that &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; own the success or failure of the project, do the best you can with the project you have, and polish your resume in the meantime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-05-08T12:34:54.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9164" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9165" CreationDate="2013-05-08T14:37:48.350" Score="9" ViewCount="952" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a complex project in Android alone. There is no tech lead or any project manager to guide me about the project development. I have to interact with the client and do the work according to his requirement. This includes all coding. I even have to guide the one developer who is working on the back-end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I want to make it work well with a proper planning and within the time line. So please guide me what guidelines i have to follow to develop that project? How/what project management skills should I apply to that project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6108" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-05-12T15:50:21.260" LastActivityDate="2013-05-13T18:59:36.637" Title="How to handle a complex project without Tech Lead or Project Manager?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;timeline&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9164" CreationDate="2013-05-08T15:15:46.947" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Demonstrate your application to the customer often, and get feedback early.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Break stuff down into small tasks that you are very confident about estimating time for.  This is key.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Focus on minimal functionality first - login, logout, visit home page, etc. before the real features.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile&lt;/a&gt; methodology.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to your client daily.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use software that you, the client and programmer can share for tracking everything (features, bugs and Chores) such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pivotaltracker.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pivotal Tracker&lt;/a&gt;(which is my favorite), &lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jira&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MS Project&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make sure&lt;/strong&gt; you have a contract. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2602" LastEditorUserId="2602" LastEditDate="2013-05-10T22:12:11.410" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T22:12:11.410" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5399" CreationDate="2013-05-08T15:23:34.070" Score="0" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Schedule a meeting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prepare a list of ways that you could be more efficient&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prepare a list of ways that you could be better aligned to the business.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prepare a list of methods that you could use to meet deadlines.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure that your issues are described in business terms, e.g. &quot;We'll make less money becuase of 'x', or we'll lose customers because of 'y'.  If you actually can't do this easily it may be a sign that the issues that you consider important are maybe not important to the company.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that companies are usually interested in 'how much revenue can I get, how can I reduce costs' and that does not always align with a programmer or QA or product person's idea of what the software 'should' do and what bugs 'should' be fixed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By setting this up as 'what you can do' you are speaking your managers languages and using his/her point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you actually get into the detail, you can start to bring in the 'yeah, unfortunately that's not working [practical, etc] because of a,b,c.  How can I better address that?' to address what &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; perceive as the key issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2602" LastActivityDate="2013-05-08T15:23:34.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9167" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-08T16:44:36.237" Score="4" ViewCount="246" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about to start using Critical Chain for a new project. I've been reading about everything that has to be done and have all required data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I want to create my buffer penetration chart but I am not able to find out how to define the Yellow Zone. In some places I've read that it could be just removed but I'd really like to have it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is there a Best Practice on how to define this zone of the chart?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5849" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2013-05-21T14:36:37.420" LastActivityDate="2017-06-24T05:11:46.013" Title="How to define the yellow zone from the Critical Chain method for a new project?" Tags="&lt;critical-chain&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9168" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9169" CreationDate="2013-05-08T17:35:17.337" Score="15" ViewCount="46942" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to show an ongoing &quot;support&quot; task in MS Project, where the start date is driven by one milestone (test environment available), and the end date is set by another milestone (testing complete). I do not want to enter a duration or an amount of effort into the plan, as these will vary according to whether my dates vary as the plan evolves. Instead, I would like to have these figures calculated within the system and recalculated automatically if the plan moves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel as though I am missing something obvious, but can't work out what it is. Is this possible, and if so, how do I do it? It's not quite the same problem as in &amp;lt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/6305/calculated-duration-in-ms-project-task&quot;&gt;Calculated duration in MS project task?&lt;/a&gt; &gt;, but it does seem fairly similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2017-10-06T13:12:38.367" Title="In MS Project, can I create a task whose duration depends on two milestones?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resources&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9168" CreationDate="2013-05-08T17:45:35.467" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you need is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://support.microsoft.com/kb/141733&quot;&gt;hammock task&lt;/a&gt;.  A Hammock task is a task that depends on other tasks for &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; the start and finish dates. Like a hammock, the length of the task depends on the space between the two other tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Roughly speaking, create a task, then link the start of the hammock task to the first task, and the finish of the hammock task to the second task.  If either the first task or the second task changes schedule, the hammock will flex to accomodate the change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The referenced link contains step by step directions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2013-05-09T11:16:34.220" LastActivityDate="2013-05-09T11:16:34.220" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9167" CreationDate="2013-05-08T18:11:31.050" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't go with a by-the-book definition, think things through and come up with something based on your situation. Your definition of the yellow zone is going to depend on a number of factors, you should talk these through with your project sponsor and key stakeholders so that you have a consensus on what &quot;yellow&quot; means:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is your organizational tolerance for schedule slippage?&lt;/strong&gt; If your organization generally has a low tolerance for this you will  bias your definition of &quot;Yellow&quot; in a different way compared to an organization where other parameters (e.g. budget) are more vital. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How important is your project given your organization's other priorities?&lt;/strong&gt; Your sponsors and management can only worry about so many problems at once without getting overloaded. Having a low priority project go &quot;Yellow&quot; after more buffer penetration than a high priority project can help alleviate this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What weight does your project assign to schedule adherence?&lt;/strong&gt; Some projects are more than willing to sacrifice schedule to achieve end-product quality, or to ensure budgetary compliance, or to stay within scope. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-05-08T18:11:31.050" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9168" CreationDate="2013-05-08T19:47:37.113" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to enter planning values for work packages, no matter the type.  Your goal is NOT to be variance free.  You will always accrue variances so you should not feel compelled to be so accurate with support package planning.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choose your duration and load your support resources accordingly, based on the level of risk you wish to assume.  If you are measuring using EV, use the apportioned method to capture performance.  That will assist you in terms of analyzing how hot or cold you are running and if you are at risk of over- or under-running your budget for that package.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-05-08T19:47:37.113" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9164" CreationDate="2013-05-08T20:00:24.590" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You do have a project manager and technical lead on your project.  For every project, every project role necessary is represented.  In this case, there is only one person filling these roles: you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have been managing single person projects since you were six.  You have more PM skills than you are giving yourself credit for.  There are certainly techniques and ton more sophisticated methods taught in PM schools but a lot of this is putting a name and formality to things you already know and use on weekend projects at home and much of it is more useful for large projects.  Rely on your instincts and intuition and get to work.  Above all, keep it simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-05-08T20:00:24.590" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8157" CreationDate="2013-05-09T20:07:55.343" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Quality Control&quot; is the sum of planned and executed internal processes for delivering to specifications.  &quot;Quality Assurance&quot; is the activity of verifying that the QC processes are being followed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6119" LastActivityDate="2013-05-09T20:07:55.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9174" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-10T13:15:13.037" Score="2" ViewCount="2710" Body="&lt;p&gt;When following PMBOK guideline, to manage stakeholder expectations, how does a project manager manage stakeholder expectations in in monitoring and controlling phase??? what kinds of techniques are used???? or how do they manage them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be really good if you can provide me a link to further readings etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, I do not clearly understand the distinction between things that are done in monitoring phase and things that are done in executing phase. It seems like monitoring phase is supplementing what's done in executing phase. Could please give me a precise distinction between what is happening in two phases?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6083" LastActivityDate="2013-05-15T13:03:02.013" Title="managing stakeholder expectations in executing and monitoring and controlling phase" Tags="&lt;stakeholders&gt;&lt;pmbok&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9175" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9178" CreationDate="2013-05-10T14:19:58.687" Score="5" ViewCount="667" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find myself in an non-agile environment where &quot;user story&quot; actually means &quot;use case, backed by an excel requirements specification, a testing specification doc, and a few required wireframes || mock ups thrown in&quot;.  They want to go agile.  If the voices in the product owner's ear hear 'user stories' they'll not handle it well.  &quot;user story&quot; has years of improper use here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought this would be a fast google, as I doubt I'm the first person to run into this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I handle non-standard use of &quot;user-stories&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6123" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-06-16T22:22:36.483" LastActivityDate="2013-06-17T17:29:13.843" Title="How to handle confusion of &quot;user stories&quot; term in agile methodology?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9175" CreationDate="2013-05-10T15:36:21.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might want to consider just using 'case' since people at your business are familiar with the term but just redefining what constitutes a case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;We're changing how we specify cases&quot; might be an easier sell than &quot;we're stopping doing cases and doing x&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think you really need to change the terminology used, one of the following could work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Card&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feature&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Item&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Admittedly most of these are used in some agile contexts but they're so general you'd should be OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T15:36:21.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9174" CreationDate="2013-05-10T15:56:22.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fascinating question(s).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How does a PM manage stakholder expectations in the M&amp;amp;C phase - same as during all other phases - communication. Stakeholder analysis reveals the stakeholder's primary concerns. In the best case, the PM will craft a Key Performance Indicator related to the stakeholder's concern, and will publish that KPI regularly, and make sure that the stakeholder is aware of the KPI.  That serves as an opportunity for regular discussions with the stakeholder to ensure that the PM still has a clear and accurate picture of the stakeholder's needs.  I think the best reference on this is probably &lt;a href=&quot;http://herdingcats.typepad.com/my_weblog/2012/09/the-basis-of-capabilities-based-planning.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Herding Cats&lt;/a&gt; - Glen Alleman isn't terse, but he thoroughly discusses how to build a framework to establish and trace metrics. &lt;em&gt;I did a quick search on communications planning and stakeholder analysis. Lots of great resources, but only indirectly responsive to your question.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What's the difference between M&amp;amp;C &amp;amp; E?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pm-primer.com/pmbok-executing-process-group/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Execution&lt;/a&gt; does the work.  The PM leads production (line/staff will &quot;manage&quot; the work, but the PM provides vision and motivation).  Execution is nose to the grindstone effort to perform the plan. I'm not sure if the analogy will resonate with everyone, but execution is the job of the executive officer.  Execution is operations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pm-primer.com/monitor-and-control-project-work/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Monitoring and control&lt;/a&gt; (according to the source I've cited, M&amp;amp;C take place as a part of execution, but I don't quite agree with that - I believe they take place in parallel.)  M&amp;amp;C looks at the work being performed and looks forward to determine whether the work you're doing will accomplish the end/close the project successfully.  In my opinion, M&amp;amp;C is the job of the commanding officer.   M&amp;amp;C is strategy.  Look at the key activities - change control, performance monitoring, procurement, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the plan were perfect, then execution would be 95% - everything we do would follow the plan.  But no plan survives contract with reality; M&amp;amp;C is what determines how we adapt to the gap between plan and reality.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looping back to your first question,  M&amp;amp;C also produces the metrics and messages that we use to keep the stakeholders informed; that ensures that the stakeholders continue to support us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T15:56:22.373" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9175" CreationDate="2013-05-10T16:29:21.690" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd caution against introducing new terminology, as you'll confuse people that are using User Stories correctly. At most, I might try calling them &quot;Agile User Stories&quot; (or Scrum User Stories if you're using Scrum specifically).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, I would counsel you to try to educate those who have the knee-jerk reaction to how the term has been used in the past, and try to help them understand what it means going forwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't fight that battle now, you'll be dealing with the impact of introducing non-standard terminology down the road. (getting new hires that do use &quot;User Stories&quot; correctly to understand your terms, getting your people to understand any external books/blogs/training that references &quot;User Stories&quot;, dealing with clients that understand &quot;User Stories&quot; but don't know what your new term means, and so on).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T16:29:21.690" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3754" CreationDate="2013-05-12T09:59:26.980" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Poppendieck's defined lean software devlopment in their seminal work, &lt;strong&gt;Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research has a number of opinions on lean and agile. In a survey on agile methodologies, lean was considered a type of agile methodology. (see &quot;Empirical studies of agile software development: A systematic review&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lean has been shown in further research be different based on two factors from Agile. (see the chapter called &quot;Is lean agile and agile lean?&quot; from the book &lt;strong&gt;Modern Software Engineering Concepts and Practices: Advanced Approaches&lt;/strong&gt;) Lean is different than agile development because it focuses on one thing, which agile does not:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;E2E: Lean has the principle of end to end improvement &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The E2E concept is important because it optimizes the whole process instead of sub-optimizing only parts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6132" LastActivityDate="2013-05-12T09:59:26.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9164" CreationDate="2013-05-12T14:53:08.693" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You &lt;strong&gt;are&lt;/strong&gt; the project manager on this project. You need to plan, you need to allocate tasks to yourself and to your co-developer, and you need to manage the contact with your client. David Espina is absolutely right about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every task takes time, and so you should plan accordingly. Client meetings, discussions with your colleague, and simply taking time out for planning and review are things that you should always allow for. Whether you have a documented plan or not (and I hope you do), you should not expect to spend 100% of your time on development work, otherwise you will never be on top of the job, and will always be playing &quot;catch up&quot;. Far better to estimate that you need a number of hours each week for the PM work that needs to be done, and get that into your plan.  If that means that your development will take longer overall than you had initially expected, you may have to make a tough call on how you handle that with your client. I strongly advise against compromising the PM part of the job, as that's the bit that will build and maintain the vital relationship with your client, and which will ultimately keep the client on-side and supportive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastEditorUserId="301" LastEditDate="2013-05-13T18:59:36.637" LastActivityDate="2013-05-13T18:59:36.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9183" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-13T19:32:25.950" Score="2" ViewCount="152" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a startup where there is a huge list of projects/epics to do. Of course, we have to choose which are the best ones (the most valuable) in order to launch a release for this project.&#xA;Even if the CEO has the last word, we want to choose with &lt;strong&gt;all the team&lt;/strong&gt; (developers,marketing,HR,designers...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have try the planning Poker to put value on each project, but it can became a little messy with 20 people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know any &lt;em&gt;tools/games/techniques&lt;/em&gt; to help team choosing most valuable project ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS:&lt;em&gt;this question can also be ask with a Product Owner who wants to involve the team in the ordering of the users stories&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6057" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2013-05-14T10:03:24.047" LastActivityDate="2013-05-14T13:25:28.047" Title="How to involve the whole team in choosing the next project?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;epics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9183" CreationDate="2013-05-13T22:17:28.100" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to build consensus around &quot;value&quot; and select a methodology for comparing projects in the product portfolio against each other in a way that is inclusive of all your stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Define Value&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing your organization needs to do is define &quot;value&quot; in the context of your group. Value will be defined differently by each organization and each stakeholder, so you need to build some consensus first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Prioritization Categories&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prioritization can be done in a lot of ways, but in my opinion these boil down to just a couple of broad :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prioritize the low-hanging fruit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prioritize based on cost/benefit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prioritize based on contractual or compliance requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Tools/Techniques&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no &quot;One True Way&amp;trade;&quot; to prioritize anything, but in most cases I think that cost/benefit analysis is the right way to go. If you decide to go that route, then I think that relative weighting is a good approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mike Cohn describes his web-based &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/relative-weighting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;relative weighting tool&lt;/a&gt; this way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Relative weighting is a prioritization approach that considers both the benefits of a feature and the cost of that feature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have no other drivers, then using a technique like relative weighting might be good fit because it's somewhat quantitative, while still allowing for subjective fudge factors in various aspects of the estimation process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real key, though, is to build consensus around a set of priorities that aren't based primarily on political capital. ROI and cost/benefit analyses are often great options for exactly this reason, and relative weighting can really help in that regard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-05-13T22:17:28.100" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4227" CreationDate="2013-05-14T00:48:14.463" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know this is an old question and I'm just a newbie here, but this is a subject very close to my heart and expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way I have found to explain the difference between projects and programmes (and their respective managers) is by example. I'll use the London Olympics as an example of a programme (and please bear with me as I know the example is not perfect)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The programme manager will work to deliver a successful program within some constraints (the year and approximate dates, the sports and countries, the IOC rules) but will also have a lot of flexibility to work with the sponsor and stakeholders the objectives. And this is a major difference, within an overall objective a programme can hide many smaller objectives (Olympic and Paralympic Games, increase tourism, regenerate London,...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The programme manager will define what specific projects are needed and what is the best structure to ensure their overall and individual success. And the projects maybe varied in type, scope, objectives, resources, timing. Each of this project will be defined in terms of scope, time, resources, including a project manager. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Programme management as you can see from the example is effectively different from project management. They don't even have to be part of the same career path. I'd argue that an specialist construction project mgr may grow by growing the size of the buildings. The same as a software development project manager. On the other side I've managed a relatively small program (22 projects, 100 people in the team) that included components as different as office relocation, system development, branding and many others. I of course could not dream to manage some of those projects as I didn't have the subject matter expertise, but I could provide the framework and lead and manage the project managers to successful delivery. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6143" LastActivityDate="2013-05-14T00:48:14.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8739" CreationDate="2013-05-14T01:08:10.190" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Six sigma will drive quality in repetitive task, whether that's manufacturing or support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lean will drive value or efficiency in any process or project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ISO certification will drive consistency of approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you should never fit the project into the method, but adapt the method to the needs of the project. It wouldn't make sense to build a house using an Agile approach, but it I can imagine an Agile decorator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not possible to recommend an approach without understanding mor of your requirements, but as this is a Project Management site I'd suggest to follow standard PM processes. If quality is an objective, define quality (e.g. number of defects, user satisfaction, whatever) find a way of measuring it, set an objective, let everybody know it, track it, report, improve, iterate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6143" LastActivityDate="2013-05-14T01:08:10.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9183" CreationDate="2013-05-14T13:25:28.047" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you need to make a distinction between &lt;em&gt;choosing&lt;/em&gt; projects and &lt;em&gt;evaluating&lt;/em&gt; projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choosing which project to execute is best done by a single or at most a limited number of decision makers. This helps to promote clear accountability for the decision. In a start-up environment it may be the CEO alone, in a large company it may be a portfolio committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evaluating projects can be done with entire teams, and I think this may be where you are trying to go. The entire team isn't going to &lt;em&gt;make&lt;/em&gt; a decision, but they are going to inform the decision makers. What I have seen done in this context is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have small teams document what the end product of a project will be, and come up with a rough (High/Medium/Low type) estimate for the overall benefits to your company and the overall costs. Costs and benefits should include more than just $$, but should also address ease of implementation, risk, effort required, future reuse of the product, reputational enhancement, etc etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have the larger team take a closer look at the projects and conduct a sanity check. You can prioritize based on initial estimates of costs and benefits. Those that pass the sanity check can be investigated in more detail if necessary to refine the cost/benefit estimates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Continue to progressively elaborate on the project products, costs and benefits until you get to a point where you have a manageable amount of work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-05-14T13:25:28.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9189" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9216" CreationDate="2013-05-14T13:59:07.607" Score="5" ViewCount="3780" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm hoping someone has some experience on tools and/or better keywords to describe this problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have JIRA system for developers where they provide estimates and track time completed. The estimate could be captured in a higher level tool, but the time track (effort applied) should not require double-entry and instead pull from JIRA.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are multiple projects (up to 6 active over a pool of 20 projects) that all have pending work for the limited availability of developers (8 developers).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We might have to handle about 80 tasks a week we want to sort, prioritise, and schedule (an average task takes 2 to 4 hours to finish, we have 8 developers, so in the worst case - 4 hours per task - we have 80 tasks = (40 hrs / 4 hrs) * 8 developers).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to manage the resources with deadline/timelines and start dates so the developers know what they should be working on across all projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a tool that can be used with JIRA (or a plugin) that developers can update their progress (date, priority, etc.) with low effort?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6147" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-01-08T15:50:37.697" LastActivityDate="2019-01-08T15:50:49.657" Title="Is there are a resource handler or gantt chart creator tool for JIRA?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2019-01-08T16:40:41.387" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9190" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9201" CreationDate="2013-05-14T14:10:45.933" Score="4" ViewCount="18901" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am preparing for PMP, currently in Chapter 3 of Rita Mulcahy 's book. I prefer understanding over memorization, the 'why' rather than the 'what'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I searched on the web to understand why the planning processes are in the order they are listed in Rita's process chart. Some of them are straight forward, but some are not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know where I can find more explanation on the reasoning behind the sequence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it simply that it is explained better in later chapters, so just memorize for now and understand later? Please help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6148" LastEditorUserId="6148" LastEditDate="2013-05-14T14:23:17.637" LastActivityDate="2020-11-27T09:55:12.993" Title="Explanation on the order of Planning Processes in Rita's Process chart" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4383" CreationDate="2013-05-14T14:23:39.653" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest you to have a look at this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twproject.com/WorkManagementWithTeamwork.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;guide for work management&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The guide is a user manual for Teamwork software but they cover interesting aspects of work management with practical examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We work in a similar way as you do, using issue organizer and time tracking and we are happy with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6150" LastActivityDate="2013-05-14T14:23:39.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9192" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-14T15:04:56.610" Score="0" ViewCount="456" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have work experience as a Analyst &amp;amp; Senior Analyst roles totalling 4 years and now in UK into IT recruitment and placements.. where we are going to deal with govt. projects shortly. Would it help me in my career if I do PMP certification. Please help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6152" LastActivityDate="2018-09-25T09:17:37.083" Title="PMP certification will it help MY career profile" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2018-09-25T15:02:34.000" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9192" CreationDate="2013-05-14T15:48:35.180" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are in the UK and are going to be dealing with government projects you are probably better going with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prince-officialsite.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PRINCE2&lt;/a&gt;. This has several advantages for you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is the standard for UK government.&lt;/strong&gt; They developed the method and still own it (though there have been some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.best-management-practice.com/gempdf/Best_Management_Practice_eBulletin_Issue_01.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;developments in this regard&lt;/a&gt;). It is also apparently heavily used in the private sector in the UK and EU, but I don't have good independent data on hand to support this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It may be of more use to non-project managers.&lt;/strong&gt; The method discusses at length the roles of non-project managers in the context of a project. If your role would be as a leader or member of a team delivering one or more of the project's products you would probably get more value from PRINCE2 training than you would from PMP training.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is easier to get.&lt;/strong&gt; There are no educational pre-requisites nor documentation of past project experience required.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Training is straight-forward.&lt;/strong&gt; At least in the UK there are a large number of vendors, both for online and in-person training. In-person training usually takes three days for the initial Foundation exam and an additional two days for the subsequent Practitioner exam&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-05-14T15:48:35.180" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9174" CreationDate="2013-05-14T21:34:26.323" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When following PMBOK guideline, to manage stakeholder expectations, how does a project manager manage stakeholder expectations in monitoring and controlling phase??? what kinds of techniques are used???? or how do they manage them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to go one step above your question first, then we can work backwards from there:&#xA;To manage stakeholder expectations(p.59),which is a process in the Executing process group, you're going to take the following as input&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stakeholder Register&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stakeholder management strategy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project management plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Issue log&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change log&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Organizational process assets&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the above you do the actual process of managing expectations, PMBOK lists the tools &amp;amp; techniques(p.59) as &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communication methods&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Interpersonal skills&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management skills&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From that you output updates to the items listed as inputs above and change requests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To your question, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;how does a PM manage stakeholder expectations in M&amp;amp;C?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short answer: You don't, you do it in the Executing process group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Longer Answer:&#xA;Here's some things that occur in Monitoring and Controlling that would affect stakeholder expectations and would need to be performed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Focus on changes and integrated change control.  Any changes that occur in the project occur as a 'part' of M&amp;amp;C and therefore need to be communicated back to stakeholders.  Any document updates that need to occur because of a change are performed and communicated to stakeholders during M&amp;amp;C.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reporting performance is also a portion of M&amp;amp;C (p.43,63).  Since you are reporting performance to stakeholders, your communications concerning project performance against baselines and risks (and their associated updates) is another method of managing stakeholder expectations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a reminder, monitoring and controlling isn't a discrete process group, you're not just &quot;in&quot; M&amp;amp;C, you're also &quot;in&quot; Initiating, Planning, Executing, and/or Closing(p.42,44).  It's a continuous thing you're doing throughout the project.  Which should help answer your second question about what items are done where.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It would be really good if you can provide me a link to further readings etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, the PMBOK is the place to find all this stuff, I sprinkled page number throughout for your reference.  I'm looking at the 4th edition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Furthermore, I do not clearly understand the distinction between things that are done in monitoring phase and things that are done in executing phase. It seems like monitoring phase is supplementing what's done in executing phase. Could please give me a precise distinction between what is happening in two phases?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it supplements all of the phases.  Again, see the above description, but also PMBOK page 43, that chart should give you a quick view of what's occuring in each process group and help clarify things beyond what you've seen here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3807" LastEditorUserId="3807" LastEditDate="2013-05-15T13:03:02.013" LastActivityDate="2013-05-15T13:03:02.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2114" CreationDate="2013-05-15T12:21:03.350" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am unsure why the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrum.org/Scrum-Guides&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;official scrum guide&lt;/a&gt; has not been listed. The last time it was updated is Oct 11 but it is due to be updated this year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other links:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumcrazy.com/My+Preferred+Agile,+Scrum,+and+XP+Resources&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Crazy links&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://weisbart.com/kickoff&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Kickoff Planner - Adam Weisbart&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.innolution.com/resources/glossary&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Essential Scrum Glossary - Innolution&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20111002191604/http://www.scrumalliance.org/articles/39-glossary-of-scrum-terms&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Glossary of Scrum Terms - Scrum Alliance (Archived)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.volaroint.com/glossary-of-scrum-terms/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;New Glossary of Scrum Terms - Victor Szalvay&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com/a/scrumplop.org/published-patterns/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SCRUM Published Patterns&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6067" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-22T06:56:23.430" LastActivityDate="2020-07-22T06:56:23.430" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1999" CreationDate="2013-05-15T12:28:28.623" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sprints can be cancelled as abnormal termination, for example the team could cancel if unable to reach goal. The next step is to have a new sprint planning meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6067" LastActivityDate="2013-05-15T12:28:28.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8595" CreationDate="2013-05-15T12:34:04.520" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can recommend some good book resources for retrospective ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://isbn.nu/0977616649&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Retrospective: Making Good Teams Great&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://isbn.nu/0596804172&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6067" LastActivityDate="2013-05-15T12:34:04.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8606" CreationDate="2013-05-15T12:42:03.030" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I completely disagree with the first line from &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8609/1615&quot;&gt;Zsolt's answer&lt;/a&gt;. Scrum Mastering has nothing to do with people management whatsoever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A SM is a servant leader, not a manager, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://agile.dzone.com/articles/scrum-master-servant&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;team sherpa&lt;/a&gt; if you like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Principally, the SM is the &lt;strong&gt;guardian of the agile process&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The SM &amp;quot;oils the team&amp;quot; towards high performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6067" LastEditorUserId="6067" LastEditDate="2020-10-20T08:39:35.833" LastActivityDate="2020-10-20T08:39:35.833" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9190" CreationDate="2013-05-15T13:47:55.393" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...is it simply that it is explained better in later chapters, so just memorize for now and understand later? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How far along are you? I recently finished the Rita book, and felt that the order as well as the impact of the whole Process Chart is hammered on throughout.  It leads off every chapter and many of the exercises deal specifically with the process chart and relating that particular chapters info to the process chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put another way, it didn't make a lot of sense to me when it was introduced, but is much more useful now that I've made it all the way through and have a better perspective of the whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does anyone know where I can find more explanation on the reasoning behind the sequence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the correct answer here (as it is for most PMP specific questions) is &quot;read the PMBOK&quot;.  I did all the practice exams at the end of each chapter and referenced the PMBOK for questions that needed more explanation and the order makes sense now.  So somewhere in the combination of reading the Rita book, doing practice questions, and reading the PMBOK your clarification and reasoning lies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3807" LastActivityDate="2013-05-15T13:47:55.393" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9190" CreationDate="2013-05-15T14:12:11.277" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like you, I prefer to understand rather than to memorize.  I memorized this section. I played the process order game over and over until I could reliably order the process. (I won't provide the URL here because I don't know the current state of the copyright issues associated with the game.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is some logic underlying the order. IMHO the first five are kind of obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, memorize # 6 and #19.  If you can group anything into &quot;before six&quot; &quot;Between six and 19&quot; and &quot;after 19&quot; you're halfway there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1-6 and 6-13 are fairely logical.  The tasks flow naturally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I'm concerned 19-25 are rote memorization with a little dash of logic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plan the plan - nothing should come before this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finalize requirements - If you don't know what you're building you'll fail.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create Scope Statement - Transform requirements into scope.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Determine what to purchase - what will you build, what will you buy?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Determine team   - what kind of people do you need?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;WBS &amp;amp; Dictionary - Break down the scope into capabilities, deliverables and tasks. This must be early.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Activity List - tightly bound to the previous;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Network Diagram - very tightly bound to the previous 2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimate resource requirements - Just convince yourself that it is tightly bound to WBS.  Memorize this one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimate Time &amp;amp; Cost - tightly bound &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Determine Critical path -tightly bound&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Develop Schedule - Tightly bound&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Develop Budget - tightly bound&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quality/Standards/Process/Metrics - Memorize this, but remember that now that you have a fairly clear picture of What is to be done, and WHo is to do it, it is time to decide how it will be judged.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Process Improvement Plan - I percevie this as tightly bound to #14.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Roles &amp;amp; Responsibilities - Memorize this &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plan Communication - Tightly bound to 16&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perform Risk Identification, Risk Analysis &amp;amp; Risk Planning - Memorize this. Logically before #19&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go back - iteration - Memorize this &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prepare Procurement Documents&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create Change Management Plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finalize &quot;how to execute &amp;amp; control&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Develop the final PM plan &amp;amp; Performance Measurements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Formal approval&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kick off meeting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-05-15T14:12:11.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2817" CreationDate="2013-05-15T14:20:46.110" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a small team of game developers and we landed on Teamwork (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twproject.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.twproject.com&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What convinced me to adopt it is that it doesn't force you to use a specific methodology, at the end we use a mix of old-fashioned waterfall with a touch of Agile in particular for issue management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The notification system is quite helpful but keeping schedule and cost under control and accessible to the team is a real value!.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reading of Teamwork's user manual has been useful as the first part is a sort of work management intro.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use Teamwork installed on our server, but it is also available on cloud (if I remember correctly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6156" LastActivityDate="2013-05-15T14:20:46.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1597" CreationDate="2013-05-15T16:04:53.530" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you should collect user request, issues, todo in a unique shared environment; that is the first small step. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the tool I use, I create a single project as collector of issues. If/when projects becomes more complex I create some sub-project in order to have a fine grained control. &#xA;Then the tool you choose may allow to record time spent, generate alerts and should help you having the project under control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my (limited) PM experience the most important thing, and at the same time the hardest step, is to convince the team to be used to records everything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a look to &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/5600/project-management-software-for-a-small-team-with-shifting-priorities&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/5600/project-management-software-for-a-small-team-with-shifting-priorities&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6156" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2013-05-15T16:04:53.530" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9204" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-16T12:25:50.913" Score="7" ViewCount="5143" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say I have a project X that is due to be complete by Date Y&#xA;Right now we are 10% behind schedule (Should be say 50% and right now 40%), &lt;strong&gt;How can I estimate what level of &quot;effort&quot; is required to catch up?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I.E. the original schedule expected 1% of units of work a day to be done, but to catchup to the schedule by some date Z (which is &amp;lt;= Y), we need to work 1.2% units of work a day, &lt;strong&gt;I'm looking for a way to identify the 1.2% units part based on an existing schedule.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what this is called but if someone that has editing rights has a better idea for the phrasing, I would be grateful if they could reword it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hoping this doesn't make it a &quot;tool recommendation, or shopping question&quot;, again reword if it sounds like it, however if you know how to find the above information using tool, can you please provide a &quot;how to&quot; on that tool, this is really what I'm looking for, my project is currently using MS-Project, but I don't think it would be too tricky to insert &quot;start/end dates&quot; into another tool, if it has this feature? I would ultimately like to be able to run a report estimating what &quot;units of work per day&quot; are required to complete the entire project, broken down by tasks that are behind only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6166" LastEditorUserId="6166" LastEditDate="2013-05-16T12:57:48.430" LastActivityDate="2013-05-16T15:41:41.553" Title="Catch-Up Scheduling" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8606" CreationDate="2013-05-16T12:40:48.130" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to this is really going to vary depending on your team and organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your remit as Scrum Master is to cover only one fairly small team I can see you'd easily have time to do your Scrum Masterly duties while still doing some dev.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, I would argue that the more effective you are as a Scrum Master, removing impediments and ensuring your process works, the more dev time you should be able to devote to the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Company culture is another factor.  While &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; may fully understand the difference between a Project Manager and a Scrum Master, does your organisation?  Will you be expected to perform elements of a PM role in addition to the Scrum Master duties?  How good are your Product Owners and how much time do they have to devote to the team?  Is your team cross functional or will you be the only person who undertakes Scrum Master duties?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2013-05-16T12:40:48.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9204" CreationDate="2013-05-16T13:17:22.610" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Identify a root cause for the slippage, re-estimate your level of effort for each task, and adjust your schedule accordingly. You can't identify the &lt;em&gt;cause&lt;/em&gt; of a slippage from a schedule; at best, you may be able to identify the process or task dependency that's holding back your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Problems with Percentages of Units of Works&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some problem domains where you can usefully quantify percentages of units of work, but in general this is now accepted as a Bad Idea&amp;trade;. In manufacturing, for example, you can safely say that if you have three tires attached to a new car, then your wheel task is 75% done. In most endeavors, though, making a broad statement like &quot;100% of tasks are 40% done&quot; is not really very informative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What You Should Do&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should do a few basic things before proceeding. First is to identify &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; your schedule is slipping. Accelerating your schedule on paper will not necessarily accelerate your completed work. To do &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; you need to identify the cause of the slippage, and determine whether you have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a process problem,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a resource constraint,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an unrealistic schedule, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some other hidden issue that needs to be brought to the surface.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've identified the problem and gathered buy-in for a solution, you can then adjust your project plan based on updated plan elements. You have a number of choices there, too:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduce scope to meet the current deadline.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add resources to meet the current deadline, although you should keep &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Brook's Law&lt;/a&gt; in mind.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Modify your deadline to reflect what you've learned about your project's process and resource constraints.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What Not to Do&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you should probably &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; do is press some magic &quot;Go Faster&amp;trade;&quot; button based on an accross-the-board accelerated schedule. Shortening every task by 2/10ths of a percent is unlikely to yield useful results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about it this way. If I have a 4-hour task that I've decided is 1.2% behind schedule, that means I'm running a little less than 3 minutes per person behind schedule for that task. Let's say it's assembly-line work, and I speed up the assembly line by 0.2% (miles per hour? widgets per second?), possibly increasing the error- or stop-work rates in the process. Having done so, which 172.8 seconds of that 4-hour process are the waste that I expect each person to eliminate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-05-16T13:17:22.610" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9204" CreationDate="2013-05-16T13:38:38.987" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I completely agree with CodeGnome.&#xA;Actually &quot;we are 10% behind schedule&quot; can only have a &quot;statistical&quot; meaning and statistics are usually applicable to large data set only -&gt; very fine grained task definition, or a huge project that is out of my experience.&#xA;Probably your is the latter case, but in my projects I had big trouble to identify a creep of 10%. Actually my tool identify creeps and also tries to adjust the work plan, but usually the problem cannot be solved &quot;going faster&quot;.&#xA;I work in a agile oriented way with a very motivated team, when we are behind schedule, is because the schedule is wrong :-).  Overworking never helped us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6156" LastActivityDate="2013-05-16T13:38:38.987" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9204" CreationDate="2013-05-16T14:46:54.610" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure that I understand the question, but it sounds to me like you're asking for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://pmstudycircle.com/2012/05/to-complete-performance-index-tcpi-in-project-cost-management/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;To Complete Performance Index&lt;/a&gt; or TCPI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Roughly speaking, the TCPI answers, &quot;How far behind are we, and how much are we going to have to accellerate in order to make our deadline?&quot;&#xA;The TCPI is &#xA;TCPI = (Work Remaining)/(Budget Remaining)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course that assumes that you've quantified the work to be performed and the work that has been done.  If you didn't set up earned value when you did your WBS/WBS dictionary, and/or you didn't review it when the task started, then TCPI won't help you in the slightest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the estimable @codegnome has pointed out, knowing how much faster you need to work doesn't really tell you &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; to work faster. What activities can you drop without causing a loss of quality? Which staff members can you terrorize into overtime without damage to overtime &amp;amp; employee relations? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-05-16T14:46:54.610" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9204" CreationDate="2013-05-16T15:01:59.667" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you determined where you are by using earned value and your EVMS is credible, you can apply this formula:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ECR=(BAC-BCWP)CAR*remaining PoP in years&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;where &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CAR=(BAC/Planned FTE)/PoP&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should result in the level of FTE at which you will need to operate in order to catch up to the schedule by the end of the PoP.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can run this same formula, replacing BCWP with ACWP, to figure out what FTE burn you need to catch up from a cost variance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Period of Performance (PoP) = 2 years or 104 weeks; Hours = 24,000;    Planned FTE = 6; Budget at Completion (BAC) = $21,600,000; Weeks    exhausted = 29; Weeks Remaining = 75; Budgeted Cost of Work Performed    (BCWP) = $5,900,000; Budgeted Cost of Work Scheduled (BCWS) =    $6,023,077; Actual Cost of Work Performed (ACWP) = $6,200,000; Schedule    Performance Index (SPI) = 0.98; Cost Performance Index (CPI) = 0.95;    Actual FTE = 6.18&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following the formula above, the ECR = 6.05.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This suggests you need to run at 6.05 FTEs versus the 6.00 FTE planned or the 6.18 actual FTE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, 6.05 is less than 6.18 so it does not make sense that &quot;dropping&quot; to 6.05 will cure your schedule when you were late at 6.18.  So you need to interpret carefully, meaning you may need to add 0.05 FTE to your 6.18, making it 6.23 to correct the schedule.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also know that crashing your schedule does not always result in making things better but worse.  Nevertheless, this is the math.  Use it with care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2013-05-16T15:41:41.553" LastActivityDate="2013-05-16T15:41:41.553" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5681" CreationDate="2013-05-16T15:34:31.043" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The ScrumAlliance who publishes the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrum.org/Scrum-Guides&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;official scrum guide&lt;/a&gt; says the PO should not attend, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumalliance.org/articles/39-glossary-of-scrum-terms#1113&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;scrumalliance.org/articles/39-glossary-of-scrum-terms#1113&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;strong&gt;&quot;The product owner does not attend this meeting.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mike Cohn says they should attend, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://mountaingoatsoftware.com/scrum/sprint-retrospective&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;enter link description here&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;strong&gt;&quot;The entire team, including both the ScrumMaster and the product owner should participate&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mike Cohn &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/the-product-owner-in-a-sprint-retropsective&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;also says&lt;/a&gt; &quot;I can't think of a single good reason why a team would want to hold a retrospective without the product owner present. I can think of many bad reasons why they may want to--but each of those should be the topic of a retrospective!&quot;&#xA;&amp;amp; &#xA;&quot;I hope your next retrospective is successful. To help that happen, make sure the product owner is there.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there is different opinion, but &lt;em&gt;by the book&lt;/em&gt; the PO should attend!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6067" LastEditorUserId="6067" LastEditDate="2013-05-20T16:32:36.813" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T16:32:36.813" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9212" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-17T06:00:38.710" Score="5" ViewCount="1394" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to manage my first project that is really a small stream of an even greater project, and my boss said that I could make my own schedule and plans etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a couple of questions, I need some help with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When it comes to organizing meetings, is one meeting per week enough?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How often do I need to catch-up with developers?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do I need to come by once a day and check-up on their status?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What kind of planning should I do?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the best way to plan the projects development status?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What should I avoid when I'm about to do planning?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My background: I have been doing a great amount of Resource Management and Project Coordination before taking on this role, and before that I had been an IT Engineer, but it all changed when I decided to switch careers and started my part-time MBA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5551" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2013-05-17T10:18:32.567" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T19:31:50.190" Title="How to start my first project?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;career&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9212" CreationDate="2013-05-17T10:28:38.267" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;It depends&lt;/em&gt; pretty much answers all of your questions because they really depend on the context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first advice is to &lt;strong&gt;change your questions by adding the &lt;em&gt;why do I&lt;/em&gt; to the beginning&lt;/strong&gt;. For example, &lt;em&gt;&quot;Why do I want to have one meeting per week?&quot;&lt;/em&gt; Because I have to write a report once a week to my boss? Or, because I would like to know about the daily life of the developers I'm working with. Or, because the other project managers have a meeting per week, and if they do, it must be something good...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My second advice is to &lt;strong&gt;figure out what you would like to achieve with this project&lt;/strong&gt;. What is your &lt;strong&gt;goal&lt;/strong&gt;, and what is your &lt;strong&gt;vision&lt;/strong&gt;. If you have these two, you can start thinking about the how.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some general thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't have a meeting unless you have something to discuss that requires the whole team and cannot be discussed on the spot&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't plan too much ahead. Plan for a week, and at the end of the week check how far you got and use this information during the next planning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plan with your colleagues and never alone. They'll execute your plan, and in most of the cases they have more information about technicalities than you have&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a roadmap for future roles (can be meta)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Update it often and discuss it with your boss&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to you people regularly about their work, their problems, and their plans&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk often to your boss. You need a mentor in the organisation (everybody needs a mentor)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-05-17T10:28:38.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9212" CreationDate="2013-05-17T11:33:17.533" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In one post, you managed to exhibit simultaneously what you SHOULD do and what you SHOULD NOT do.  You are asking all the right questions and there are a ton more you need to ask.  And each question should spawn into several more.  What you SHOULD NOT do is expect a definitive answer as there is no such thing.  Zsolt has it right: it depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask the question, then answer it with 3 or 4 alternatives.  Take each alternative and analyze its benefits, its costs, and its risks.  How many meetings a week?  Well, your alternatives range from, what, zero through maybe eight?  Nine?  Pick 3 alternatives and do a benefits, costs, risks analysis.  One alternative will start to emerge as the least crappy one for THIS project at THIS time.  Do this with all of your questions and the rest of them you haven't asked yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is analysis, this is planning, this is problem solving in a world where there are few, very few, definitive right answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-05-17T11:33:17.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9189" CreationDate="2013-05-17T21:12:59.887" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would consider using the &lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.soyatec.jira.plugins.jira-ganttchart-project&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;free add-on by Soyatec&lt;/a&gt;. It produces Gantt charts that look similar to those from Microsoft Project. It allows you to set end dates and % done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't used it, however. You can find other alternatives at &lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/search?q=gantt%20chart&amp;amp;application=jira&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Atlassian's marketplace&lt;/a&gt;, such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1212259/bigpicture-project-management-ppm?hosting=cloud&amp;amp;tab=overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BigPicture&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="158" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-01-08T15:50:49.657" LastActivityDate="2019-01-08T15:50:49.657" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9192" CreationDate="2013-05-17T21:32:28.953" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. While recruiting and Placement can be projects, you don't need to be a PMP to do them and people you will work with won't need/expect it. Since your main focus isn't Project Management, you might just wish to take an introduction to Project Management class, but not go all the way to PMP (or PRINCE2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="158" LastActivityDate="2013-05-17T21:32:28.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="195" CreationDate="2013-05-17T22:29:20.210" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the most important things when managing yourself, is to maintain focus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do enough planning to know what and why you're doing this, but not so much that it becomes unwieldy or an opportunity to procrastinate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only in the sense of perseverance, but also in the sense of not taking on too much at once.  For a single person, I think that a kanban board, and strictly limited WIP is the ideal for managing a single project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest of &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.pmrobot.com/2013/05/effectively-managing-solo-software-projects.html&quot;&gt;my framework&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Limit the number of tasks that you have in progress, even if it's something you're waiting for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually track your time.  It'll give you a sense of your ROI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use Git.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talk to other people when you're stuck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5948" LastActivityDate="2013-05-17T22:29:20.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="195" CreationDate="2013-05-18T04:29:53.337" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A simple project plan that puts an ETA on milestones to make sure you stay on track would be my addition. It's too easy to overwork when on your own thereby decreasing your return on investment, e.g., your time. Is your project earning you $100 per hour or $10 per hour - something tech heads tend to forget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6177" LastActivityDate="2013-05-18T04:29:53.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9221" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9244" CreationDate="2013-05-19T14:41:20.750" Score="12" ViewCount="25320" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Given a 15x strong software development team working on individal projects, and small, medium, and large projects; what is the best way to structure this team and what is the best software development methodology?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;The department was previously made up of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CTO&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Support Development Team (1x lead, 2x support devs)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;4x Developers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The department grew to 10x developers so a decision was made to separate into 2x dev teams of 5x developers each like so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CTO&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team 1 (1x lead/manager, 4x developers)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team 2 (1x lead/manager, 4x developers)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The department uses Scrum, each team having its own sprint cycle (synchronized).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that the department is much larger, a new restructuring needs to take place. A few problems have been identified:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fixed teams are problematic due to individual developer's &lt;em&gt;silos of knowledge&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Promoting developers to lead/admin/line-management roles results in loss of essential developer resource&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also have a PMO consisting of 3x PMs and 2x BA. This team is separated from development (not ranking higher or lower, but aside) and falls under the operations department (COO).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using Scrum has its problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No dedicated support team means maintenance has to fall into a Scrum team. This doesn't work so well. &lt;em&gt;(A KanBan team could be more appropriate for support).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The company takes on bespoke work from lots of clients, resulting is mixed release dates, mostly not fitting the sprint-release plan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My thoughts&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I think a more responsive methodology would work better (but I'm no expert here - I'm a dev/lead), and on per project basis rather than per team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I think the development teams need to be more fluid, build per project rather than a fixed Nx developers per team. Line management becomes a problem here. Technical leadership and line management become a problem here due to lack of appropriate resource/time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4342" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T21:20:41.503" Title="How to structure a software development team" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9189" CreationDate="2013-05-19T15:28:02.457" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer:&lt;/strong&gt; we highly discourage tool-specific questions in PMSE, as they're likely to not add much value 5 years from now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you looked at &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.almworks.jira.structure&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jira Structure&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;? I'm leading a team with a similar structure and now that we (thankfully) moved into Jira, Structure is helping us a lot to prioritize and keep track of the progress in our tasks. Although it's not a proper Gantt Chart, it may fit your needs as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A short video explaining the idea can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e32sWFA-94&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2013-05-19T15:28:02.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9131" CreationDate="2013-05-19T17:05:18.467" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adding to already proposed answers I would recommend this short read: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agileadvice.com/2013/05/15/referenceinformation/the-rules-of-scrum-every-sprint-is-the-same-length/?utm_source=feedly&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.agileadvice.com/2013/05/15/referenceinformation/the-rules-of-scrum-every-sprint-is-the-same-length/?utm_source=feedly&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at my experience, dynamic length of Sprint was really bad idea. &#xA;It not only removes sense of rhythm, but in case of work being done actually earlier than planned shrinking time for Sprint removes possibility to introduce Slack which is crucial to allow team self-improve. &#xA;Good blog post on importance of slack by Paweł Brodzinski: &lt;a href=&quot;http://brodzinski.com/2012/11/wip-limits-pull-slack-bottlenecks-explained.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://brodzinski.com/2012/11/wip-limits-pull-slack-bottlenecks-explained.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3501" LastEditorUserId="3501" LastEditDate="2013-05-19T17:50:46.313" LastActivityDate="2013-05-19T17:50:46.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9099" CreationDate="2013-05-20T02:44:38.307" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Others have suggested adding padding to your development estimates to cover support/maintenance, this is a good first step. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To really communicate the issue and to justify your numbers you should have the developers track the amount of time they spend responding to customer support issues as opposed to code maintenance issues and actual new development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tracking your time at this level is definitely annoying but will help create a solid picture of where the team is spending their time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A rougher granularity of estimate (instead of hours) may be the quantity of support tickets worked during a sprint. This doesn't require any additional time tracking from the developers just a field on the ticket to indicate it's a customer support issue instead of a normal development ticket. Then if you are falling behind on delivering new features you can look at the # of support tickets during your sprints and show management that it is e.g. 50% higher than normal and that you need to shift the schedule to the right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having these kinds of metrics will definitely help management see that the team is overburdened and may convince them to hire additional dedicated support. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6185" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T02:44:38.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1999" CreationDate="2013-05-20T03:17:05.493" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sprints can and should be terminated if there is a &lt;em&gt;legitimate&lt;/em&gt; business need for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keeping the content of a Sprint static is good for your team's sanity and generally helpful for planning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What it is really powerful for is &lt;strong&gt;protecting&lt;/strong&gt; the development team from scope creep by stakeholders that may drive-by and ask for new features, etc... if each time this happens you mark that sprint as abnormally terminated you are creating a record to communicate to the rest of the management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are reviewing your projects progress with the leadership and show that Sprint 15 and Sprint 16 were both terminated because Stakeholder Xyz requested additional features this will raise red flags to show that either planning is not adequate, the vision isn't clear/consistent or Stakeholder Xyz is mucking with the team too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it will make clear the impact of adding new scope to a sprint to a Stakeholder and make them less likely to interfere, or to wait until the appropriate times to influence the dev schedule (e.g. sprint planning meeting).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile is not anarchy, but works by providing structure around agility and hence defining the limits to how agile you can be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6185" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T03:17:05.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9221" CreationDate="2013-05-20T13:00:29.610" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TANSTAAFL. If you want to scale, you need to add more teams. However, if you add more teams, you have to manage the additional complexity and communications overhead that comes along with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Direct communication channels scale poorly. The formula is generally expressed as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month#The_mythical_man-month&quot;&gt;N(N-1)/2&lt;/a&gt;. If you don't have a project management model that addresses this critical fact of communications complexity, you will have a great deal of trouble scaling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Teaming Options&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum teams are &lt;em&gt;project&lt;/em&gt; teams. While good teams often stay together to work on subsequent projects to avoid the overhead of &lt;em&gt;forming&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;norming&lt;/em&gt; with a new group, it's not a framework requirement. However, if you have multiple simultaneous projects you have a &lt;em&gt;capacity&lt;/em&gt; problem, regardless of your chosen methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Task Switching&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task switching is always a problem. Even if you choose a different methodology than Scrum, you still have to packetize and prioritize work in such a way that each unit of work minimizes cognitive switching. That means that asking a single developer to work on different tasks for different projects (even if the tasks are sequenced rather than pseudo-parallelized) will be less optimal than allowing the developer to work on one client's project at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Accept Work Based on Capacity&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real underlying issue is that you have prioritize client projects, and scale your processes as you require more capacity for more client projects. Your organization should not accept more work than it has available capacity to accommodate. Prioritizing the project portfolio is going to be senior management's job, not the job of the project teams, so this issue doesn't impact you directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for scaling, a Scrum of Scrums is generally the right tool for the job if you're a Scrum shop. If you use a different methodology, then you need to use the scaling functions of that framework instead. The point, though, is that communication between teams becomes harder and more complex as you add teams; that's almost axiomatic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way I know to solve the knowledge-sharing issue in a complex Scrum-of-Scrums environment is to ensure the Product Owners add inter-team training and education stories to their Product Backlog. This provides opportunities for cross-pollination between teams and reduces the silo effect, without destroying the nature of the close-knit teams themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T13:00:29.610" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1748" CreationDate="2013-05-20T13:58:09.740" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scope creep is the unexpected growth of user expectations and business requirements for an information system as the project progresses. The schedule and budget can be adversely affected by such changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project creep is the uncontrolled addition of technical features to a system under development without regard to schedule or budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6188" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T13:58:09.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9228" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9233" CreationDate="2013-05-20T14:56:00.237" Score="3" ViewCount="2089" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a development team with a leader, should this leader be a line manager or is it better to separate the two roles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much admin/HR should a hands-on leader actually do before it becomes the responsibility of somebody else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4342" LastEditorUserId="4342" LastEditDate="2013-05-21T11:59:00.400" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T15:26:08.943" Title="Should development team leaders be line managers?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;leadership&gt;&lt;technical-leader&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9099" CreationDate="2013-05-20T17:44:01.913" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are various issues which should be clustered, some are cultural, some are process (or lack there of). I fully understand the situation you are in, I've been there too. Here's how you take care of it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Process&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Unit Testing&lt;/strong&gt; - get 90%+ code coverage. This will allow your team to make bug fixes and system changes without worrying about breaking anything else. It will save you time by being automated and thorough, instead of manual testing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Continuous Integration&lt;/strong&gt; - automated launching of new code. I don't see if you are a web company or not. Regardless, there are ways of launching code out to the live product literally the second it is done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Task Management&lt;/strong&gt; - measure progress as it is done. Using one of these will ensure every developer, you, and any other managers, can see in real time exactly what is being done and who is assigned to what. There are multiple systems, and many plugin adapters for many IDE, in particular Eclipse.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Accurate Estimates&lt;/strong&gt; - when estimating time, ask a developer, or the entire time, don't do it yourself as the project manager. Do not have them give you a response immediately, give them 1 day or more. If you don't, they will unconsciously try to people-please you, and they will not be able to estimate accurately since they have not thought of all the details of implementation. Making a cake is easy within 2 hours, but it assumes you have all the ingredients, cookware, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Culture&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any time a team is being squeezed it is because of a &quot;failure to meet expectations.&quot; The people above / next to you clearly have a lack of understanding of what your team is capable of. You need to teach them. Having a Task Management system in place will help with that. It will teach them how much time it takes to complete a given task and show them what is currently being done. Many people outside a department assume that department has 10+ hrs. per week of &quot;open time&quot;. Show them that this is not the case.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project planning should be done in smaller increments, with the expectation that 1/3 or more of the team will be spent on other things. The further you plan a project into the future, the less accurate that estimate will be. I prefer to plan on a monthly basis or less.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prioritize incoming requests. I like to create an &quot;idea bucket,&quot; and a &quot;next version list&quot; for feature requests. The &lt;em&gt;idea bucket&lt;/em&gt; is good for general ideas that are either not business critical or would take a long time to implement. The &lt;em&gt;next version list&lt;/em&gt; allows you to keep scope creep down. If you have 1 month to complete a given project, time gets lost to other things, you can offload some of the less important features to the &lt;em&gt;next version list&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Focus on feedback from 1 department at a time. There is ramp-up time for any project, and having 3+ departments requesting features simultaneously means there is a lot of time spent on ramp-up instead of launching code. I have found it highly effective to focus on 1 department's requests every 4 weeks. One month for sales, next month for marketing, next month for editorial, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get a dedicated Customer Support person, even if it is an intern. Your developer's time is very valuable, they should not be interrupted since it takes them out of flow (deep thinking mode) for 15+ min every time they are asked to do something new. Developers are good at writing code, and should have an environment that lets them do that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make a wiki. This wiki will allow you and the team to post anything that takes more than 4 sentences to explain. Your default answer to any question will now become: Did you check the wiki? It will save time, share information, and make everyone happier.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5183" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T17:44:01.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9228" CreationDate="2013-05-21T11:54:16.320" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find any reason why it is a good idea to separate the roles. In fact, most of the team leaders I know are members of the line organisation. If you think about it, the responsibilities of a leader is quite the same as the responsibilities of a line manager. For example: the general &quot;well being&quot; of the team members, technical and personal growing, motivation etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The leadership has nothing to do with &quot;admin&quot;. So answering the question you need none, but then you can an ask, &quot;what do I need then?&quot; Unfortunately, that question is too general, and I cannot answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T11:54:16.320" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9228" CreationDate="2013-05-21T12:08:19.880" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an advocate of &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; having people reporting into other members of their immediate team.  Having a line manager in the room can affect the honesty of things like retrospectives and it avoids some awkward situations (would you want to pair program with someone who just put you/you just put on performance review?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At my place, we have a &lt;strong&gt;lead developers&lt;/strong&gt; who provide &lt;strong&gt;technical leadership&lt;/strong&gt; to the team they work in and &lt;strong&gt;managing developers&lt;/strong&gt; who people outside of their immediate team report into for the &lt;strong&gt;career development&lt;/strong&gt; aspects (and managing lead devs who do technical leadership for their team &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; line manage people outside it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Added following question in comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People have regular catch ups with their line managers and I think it's helpful to be able to ask for advice about an issue within the team from someone who isn't emotionally involved in the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think most people really view it as an employee/employer relationship.  It's more like having an impartial peer you can talk to about problems and development.  Probably more accurate to call them mentors rather than line managers for the most part although they are expected to tackle issues like lateness/sickness where the team are unable to do so themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastEditorUserId="1185" LastEditDate="2013-05-21T12:22:03.717" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T12:22:03.717" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9228" CreationDate="2013-05-21T15:26:08.943" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Team Leaders and Line Managers are different depending on your organisation structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;Line Manager&lt;/strong&gt; is generally used in a vertical structure with responsibility for direct supervision of line workers, in this case, developers. They duties such as scheduling, training, hiring, firing and writing performance evaluations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;Team Leader&lt;/strong&gt; works a lot closer with colleagues to provide motivation for team members. There may be some administrative duties like scheduling, but is generally not considered as a supervisor to colleagues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess your question is more to do with developers fitting into either of these roles and where you want your better developers to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more knowledgeable/senior developers would be more suited to the team leader role being able to provide technical consultation and also meaning they wouldn't have the burden of carrying out as many administrative duties as a line manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot depends on the ambitions of the &quot;better&quot; developers, whether they want to continue to do what they enjoy doing as developers or if they want to move into more administrative line manager role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6189" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T15:26:08.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9127" CreationDate="2013-05-22T14:30:50.017" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a company without project coordinators, everything you name is part of the project manager role.  So, I would say that project coordination is a step on the road to project management.  If you have both project coordinators and project managers, then it would seem that project coordinators are, in a sense, assistant project managers.  If you only have project coordinators, perhaps it's just the job title your company gives to project managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="933" LastActivityDate="2013-05-22T14:30:50.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9240" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-23T00:50:33.787" Score="-5" ViewCount="645" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to come up with the planned and actual start &amp;amp; end dates for the following tasks below. How should I do it and what is my basis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finalize business user requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical Implementation Plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Baseline Plan Released&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Development&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SAT&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;UAT&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business Readiness&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cutover and Shallow Testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Warranty and Closeout&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="614" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-05-23T17:13:03.023" LastActivityDate="2013-05-23T17:17:33.400" Title="How can I generate a timeline for tasks based on &quot;typical man-days?&quot;" Tags="&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-06-06T22:49:59.650" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9240" CreationDate="2013-05-23T12:08:11.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Josh's comment is spot on, estimates are going to have the most value if they are provided by the people doing the work. There are some other things to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;People can be unduly optimistic or pessimistic.&lt;/strong&gt; You should look at actual durations for the activities on past similar projects for guidance on how long they typically take. Be aware that you may be comparing apples &amp;amp; oranges, but you need to do your due diligence to make sure the team isn't either saying what they think you want to hear or are padding their estimate unnecessarily.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You should work off of multiple estimates.&lt;/strong&gt; There are a number of ways to do this. For example you could get best/most likely/worst case estimates for each activity and derive a weighted average (e.g. PERT) to plug into your schedule. Or you could play planning poker. Or whatever else turns your fancy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Report start/end dates as ranges.&lt;/strong&gt; Saying something will start/end on date X is largely a fantasy because estimates are just estimates. While you could reasonably fix a hard target for the final deliverable to your client, the start/end dates for the interim deliverables are going to have some amount of error. By providing date ranges you are in a better position to manage expectations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-05-23T12:08:11.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9221" CreationDate="2013-05-23T15:04:35.823" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you considered a Squad system? The always-excellent Henrik Kniberg has &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.crisp.se/2012/11/14/henrikkniberg/scaling-agile-at-spotify&quot;&gt;an article&lt;/a&gt; that you may find useful on how this system is used at Spotify.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic principle is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vertical multi-skilled (product, development, design) teams work on a single product or area of product development (e.g. infrastructure, customer feedback) - these are known as &lt;strong&gt;Squads&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Horizontal skill-based groupings (e.g. PHP developers, Front-end developers) cross-cut the squads - these are known as &lt;strong&gt;Chapters&lt;/strong&gt;. Each has a Chapter Lead who (usually) takes line-management responsibility for everyone in their Chapter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Special interest groups (e.g. Agile project management, Testing) cross-cut both chapters and squads - these groups are known as &lt;strong&gt;Guilds&lt;/strong&gt; and each has a Guild Lead.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some similarities with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_management&quot;&gt;matrix management system&lt;/a&gt;, which you may also want to investigate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer&lt;/strong&gt;: I haven't used the squad system, I just think it might be a good approach for you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2013-05-23T15:04:35.823" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9245" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-23T15:31:47.687" Score="-5" ViewCount="912" Body="&lt;p&gt;I publish status report on weekly basis for multiple projects. Normally I uses different tabs for each project in MS Excel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make it more effective, I want to publish project updates in email against constraints like scope, cost, resources risks etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anybody help me with the email sample please?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6213" LastActivityDate="2013-05-24T08:44:36.737" Title="Status Report - Multiple projects" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2018-09-14T03:53:34.653" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9240" CreationDate="2013-05-23T17:11:04.327" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Project Planning and Estimation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no boilerplate answer to your question, because planning and estimation are processes which vary widely between organizations and implementations. However, regardless of your methodology, there are some basics that you need to educate yourself about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Identify resources.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Figure out who is going to be performing the activities in your project plan, what equipment will be needed, and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask task performers for estimates.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your methodology, this may take the form of time estimates, story point estimates, or cost estimates. Whatever metric you're using, you apply it to your work breakdown structure to build an estimated timeline.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Identify target dates.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using your estimated timeline and your management targets, you define target dates for specific things. This may take the form of a milestone, critical path node, or release date depending on your methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, the basis of your calculations will be your team's past performance on similar tasks, or educated guesses about the level of time or effort required for each planned task. Ideal man-hours are exactly that: an ideal. How many real or ideal man-hours required for any given task will vary widely, which is why detailed estimation of clearly-identified tasks is a necessary part of the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Estimation Exercises&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every methodology generally has its own set of tools for performing estimation. Scrum teams generally use some variant of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.planningpoker.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Planning Poker&lt;/a&gt; to generate consensus estimates for defined units of work (generally called &quot;user stories&quot;), but there are certainly plenty of alternative methodologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pick whichever estimation exercise gets you the most organizational buy-in. Just remember to remind people that estimates are not iron-clad guarantees. That will save you a lot of trouble down the road.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-05-23T17:17:33.400" LastActivityDate="2013-05-23T17:17:33.400" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9247" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9260" CreationDate="2013-05-23T17:13:07.643" Score="1" ViewCount="504" Body="&lt;p&gt;We would like to use a common Wiki for all our projects. For this purpose we use DokuWiki. Now there is still the module in Redmine shown with the Wiki functionality which creates often discussion in teams about which one to use. Is there a clean way to disable the Wiki functionality of Redmine completely?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6214" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2014-04-17T08:58:31.920" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T08:58:31.920" Title="Is there a way to disable the Wiki functionality / hide it completly in Redmine?" Tags="&lt;redmine&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9248" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-23T19:51:43.100" Score="6" ViewCount="626" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a PM I am working with a team and I almost always define our times, however, sometimes my boss stipulates a deadline to the presentation, and even when I discuss it with him he explains the project won't be on budget if we don't get it on time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it my responsability to work extra hours to get the presentation on time, or should he discard the project if he's not willing to spend additional resources on it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also have other extra curricular responsabilities, but he says that since we are working for objectives and with the additional fact that me and my team has somewhat freedom to make our inner management, that we should repay it, without complain, or at least I should repay it, since I'm responsable for the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, where's the line?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="823" LastActivityDate="2013-05-29T10:47:26.520" Title="My boss says a Senior PM should show more commitment" Tags="&lt;deadline&gt;&lt;budget&gt;&lt;work-environment&gt;&lt;responsibility&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9248" CreationDate="2013-05-23T22:43:03.333" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends: the line is where you draw it, knowing that if he wants more than you're willing to give, you have to find a different job where the line is drawn differently.  Depending on where you draw the line, if you want to work less than other available PMs, that other job may be harder to find or pay less.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="735" LastActivityDate="2013-05-23T22:43:03.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9247" CreationDate="2013-05-24T02:13:51.487" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use redmine at work and none of our projects have a wiki by default. You can set individual project menu components through the admin area - if memory serves, but you need admin rights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also lock wikis (restrict access to certain members); however, I'm not sure if this will remove the menu link: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redmine.org/projects/redmine/wiki/RedmineWikis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.redmine.org/projects/redmine/wiki/RedmineWikis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2013-05-24T02:13:51.487" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9248" CreationDate="2013-05-24T06:55:26.940" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest to sit down with your boss and talk about responsibilities and expectations. It sounds that he gave you something (the freedom) and expects something in return that he forgot to mention to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a common misunderstanding that the extra work requires overtime. I think you as a project manager are expected to organise and prioritise your work so that you can deal with the important things during work hours. So, if your boss wants you to do some extra, you should find something that won't be done, or will be delegated to somebody else in your team. There are things that doesn't require a project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are about the draw the line, don't do the same as your boss. Make it clear to him as well where the line is in order to avoid further misunderstandings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-05-24T06:55:26.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9245" CreationDate="2013-05-24T08:44:36.737" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I observed that people don't read emails, they scan for information, therefore I don't think that you should add anything to the email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were you, I would create something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subject: [Weekly project report] projects with problems: prj1, prj2, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Body: &amp;lt;link to the excel sheet&amp;gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this approach you can help them figuring out which projects need their attention, and if they are interested, they'll click on the link for sure. Don't do anything twice (writing the excel and the mail)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-05-24T08:44:36.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9248" CreationDate="2013-05-24T13:26:56.187" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a joke: &quot;Project managers are people that believe 9 women can give birth to one baby in a month.&quot; It is your professional responsibility to set realistic expectations. Going all out and working a 80+ hr. week is mentally exhausting, which in software development leads to more bugs than genuine progress. In France since 2000, the legal work week is 35 hours, and anything over that is overtime, allowed up to 220 hrs. per year.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1873245,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1873245,00.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success is setting expectations and then going beyond them. Talk with your boss and bluntly ask them: &quot;Do you want to meet deadlines with a low quality product and burnt out workers, or have a high quality product with fully engaged workers?&quot; If they say they want quality, speed, and low cost, they are delusional. It's the iron triangle, choose 2. If they won't listen, it's time to update your resume and start looking. Don't waste your life spending 40+ hrs. a week in a miserable environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5183" LastEditorUserId="5183" LastEditDate="2013-05-28T22:56:35.073" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T22:56:35.073" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9248" CreationDate="2013-05-24T17:21:56.790" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The official PMI perspective is you shouldn't sign up for a project that won't succeed. The other answer the real world, however. In your case if it is just the extra hours, I would try to get my manger to give me &quot;comp&quot; time for later. Some companies allow that if you worked extra, you can take off extra time later without using up your vacation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="158" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2013-05-28T19:17:59.790" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T19:17:59.790" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9255" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9257" CreationDate="2013-05-24T17:37:11.743" Score="5" ViewCount="559" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Contextual Information&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have problems in describing the Development Process of my project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm doing my internship in an enterprise as an Information Systems designer and Java EE developer, for graduation. I need to talk about the development process and the project organisation in my report. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked my boss about the development process they are performing in the enterprise and he confirmed to me that it is Scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My subject is about Intranet. We have started by the most complex module in the intranet. The expected period of time to finish it is 5 months. After we finish this module we start another one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So during these 5 months, we are expecting to specify the requirements of the module, to design an Information System which satisfy the requirements, to design a software architecture, to develop then integrate then test then validate, and then to move to another module. These steps make me feel that we have used the V-Cycle described &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.fr/imgres?imgurl=http://www.xqual.com/resources/images/tutorials/v_cycle.gif&amp;amp;imgrefurl=http://www.xqual.com/documentation/tutorial_lifecycle.html&amp;amp;h=221&amp;amp;w=483&amp;amp;sz=9&amp;amp;tbnid=zM1KnXX1ObnLHM:&amp;amp;tbnh=55&amp;amp;tbnw=120&amp;amp;zoom=1&amp;amp;usg=__jJl29u1lyIxlBp4rC1pr5gPQWpw=&amp;amp;docid=VSqrcJWSAzZp_M&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=8p-fUd6_GNSjhge5yIDACA&amp;amp;ved=0CFIQ9QEwBg&amp;amp;dur=16&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, we have been doing Scrum practises such as doing a daily follow-up between the Scrum Team and the Scrum Master ( what have you done yesterday? have u got any difficulties? what will you do today?... ) during a meeting of 5 minutes. We are a team of 3 persons, we have a Scrum Master, and 2 Product Owners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I talked to my boss and he said he will divide 5 months into sprints of 2 or 3 weeks ( a sprint of designing, a sprint of implementing a working prototype...,.., a sprint of testing ). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, what I learnt at my college is that every sprint gives us a version, a product which we can use but that we need to improve. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for this long text, but I needed to make you in my context to be able to help me in describing the development process of this project. Thank you a lot!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;My Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could these be Sprints?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gathering Requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Information Systems Design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Defining the Software Architecture&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6221" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-06-26T21:38:26.547" LastActivityDate="2018-07-02T10:52:15.647" Title="Scrum or V-Cycle?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9256" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-24T18:53:29.177" Score="0" ViewCount="127" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know whether it is possible to re-schedule several tasks at once with &lt;a href=&quot;https://podio.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Podio&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say I have one task that needs to pass to another day. I wish that all others future tasks also adjust accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4217" LastEditorUserId="4217" LastEditDate="2013-05-27T15:57:34.667" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T16:39:57.737" Title="Podio - How can we re-schedule other future tasks?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9255" CreationDate="2013-05-25T11:23:33.480" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, you aren't doing Scrum. You simply apply certain practices, but not following the mindset. You are close when you are saying that &lt;em&gt;&quot;... every sprint gives us a version, a product which we can use but that we need to improve&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. However, sprints not necessarily produce versions and in Scrum we are aiming for feedback at the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, we do Scrum in order to receive faster feedback on our product. Of course, you can use the scrum practices - we use a couple of them, too -, but your processes far from a Scrum process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you describe your process, forget about Scrum, describe the process, and when you are done with your draft, update your essay with the Scrum tools and how they help you or your organisation. Be realistic and don't put something down that might look good, but you don't actually do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-05-25T11:23:33.480" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9258" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9265" CreationDate="2013-05-25T18:23:05.063" Score="5" ViewCount="560" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are going to outsource a project to an outsourcing website. I am going to be talking to a few of them today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have done this once before but that was a miserable failure and the project never got done, we only got excuses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I know to ask them about the project specifically, go into detail about it. What questions do I need to make sure I cover before I hire someone?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know I need to ask or state the following so far, what am I missing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Require source code when project is release&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clearly documented/noted in source code&#xA;= JavaScript, ASP.NET, and c# are the only languages to be used, any others are to be okayed by me&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 week requirement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;.NET 4.0+&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unit testing required&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I already created the scope of the project, I'm covering my bases with the follow up questions when I talk to them. They should already have an idea what I'm looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6228" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-07-15T12:20:38.547" LastActivityDate="2013-11-02T23:09:47.033" Title="Outsourcing a project: How do I determine if an outsourcer is a good fit?" Tags="&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9212" CreationDate="2013-05-26T09:19:07.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see the heading is how do I start. I think a good start would be to have a 20 minute meeting the first day and then at least a 5-10 minute meeting everyday. Does not have to be at a exact time, we used to do them when everyone available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I need to come by once a day and check-up on their status? I think its a good idea as long as your not rude or too loud. A daily catch up is good&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What kind of planning should I do?&#xA;You need to have a 'if all goes well' this is the plan for the next 1.5 months, but spend mo more than an hour on that. Need to focus on the next 10 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to plan the projects development status?&#xA;Plan the status? not sure what this means. if you mean obtain the status -&gt; then meetings, trackers and testing progress seem good yardsticks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I avoid when I'm about to do planning?&#xA;make too many assumptions, not talk to at least 2 other project managers at least initially, take inputs from all stake holders&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6231" LastActivityDate="2013-05-26T09:19:07.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9247" CreationDate="2013-05-26T15:39:37.037" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a quick and easy method to hide the wiki modul from the project module selection. I think this is what you want, right. Therefore, modify the redmine.rb file in the lib directory. This file is similar to the plugin's init.rb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&amp;lt; REDMINE_ROOT &gt;/lib/redmine.rb&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comment the section as shown below (on redmine 2.3.x it's starting at line 160) :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;=begin&#xA;map.project_module :wiki do |map|&#xA;    map.permission :manage_wiki, {:wikis =&amp;gt; [:edit, :destroy]}, :require =&amp;gt; :member&#xA;[...]&#xA;    map.permission :protect_wiki_pages, {:wiki =&amp;gt; :protect}, :require =&amp;gt; :member&#xA;  end&#xA;=end&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using a patch or &quot;patch-plugin&quot; is much nicer than modifying the source, anyway it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enjoy!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6234" LastActivityDate="2013-05-26T15:39:37.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9261" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-23T04:38:42.277" Score="1" ViewCount="177" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been working as a developer in software industry for the past 8 years. I have seen many projects and worked as a dev lead which also involves interacting with QA team to get the testing done of the project I am working on and follow the process of providing releases to QA, fixing defects (defect life cycle) etc. But I have never got a chance to see how a tester work in terms of preparing test plans, testing cycles, test cases etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I am leading a very small team where there is no separate lead/supervisor for testing team. Since its a small team, there is only one manual tester who happens to be a fresher from college. I have to mentor him, and I really want him to learn and get a good base for himself. The problem is, I myself do not know much about that domain. I do not want him to suffer because of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you help me know how to mentor in such scenario? How can I help him learn and grow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6245" OwnerDisplayName="mehta" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2013-05-28T16:46:10.103" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T16:46:10.103" Title="How to mentor a newbie tester when I lack relevant experience?" Tags="&lt;learning&gt;&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9261" CreationDate="2013-05-23T13:12:11.957" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, mentoring is all about helping someone perform or develop through improving their behaviour, communications, or other changes. Mentoring someone in a field outside your own has some challenges, but these can all be managed. As a mentor it is not your job to teach the specific technical subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your scenario, the things you can help with include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;supporting him in finding out information (this could include subsidising online learning, or encouraging him to join a local programmers forum, or even SE :-))&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;helping find individuals who can help (can you talk to other team leads and see if there is a possible opportunity?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;help him with the non-technical aspects. It sounds like he won't have a direct support network, so this could be quite stressful - his first job since graduation - part of your role is to help him adjust.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6237" OwnerDisplayName="Rory Alsop" LastActivityDate="2013-05-23T13:12:11.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9258" CreationDate="2013-05-27T13:50:35.110" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Documentation of requirements should ideally be collaborative between business users and developers. In my experience if they know what they are doing they will ask you for good quality requirements, and will ask questions proactively when they don't have the info they need. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So find out what format/template they provide to their developers and review that for types of content, level of detail, clarity, etc. Use this as guidance for developing your requirements when obtaining costs etc and for inclusion in the contract as part of the SOW. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they don't have a template or can't provide guidance they likely aren't very well organized. If you'd still like to give them a chance go back to your files and find a set of requirements from a project that succeeded and go with that rather than try to reinvent the wheel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to be ruthless you could include a logical inconsistency, or something they obviouly could not do, in your initial scope and see if they spot it. That would go towards demonstrating their attention to detail and real understanding of what you want done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-05-27T13:50:35.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9261" CreationDate="2013-05-27T13:53:02.917" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend to take some training courses in order to improve your skills, so that you'll become more experienced and confident in your testing knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6238" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2013-05-27T14:46:42.107" LastActivityDate="2013-05-27T14:46:42.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9258" CreationDate="2013-05-27T14:28:36.173" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Focus on Project &lt;em&gt;Control&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your entire question is based on a faulty premise, e.g. that specifications and contractual requirements are equivalent to process or quality control. They are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need to define for any project, whether it's in-sourced or out-sourced, is a set of project controls that allow you to continuously inspect your project and appropriately manage deviations from the project plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Setting Expectations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are setting yourself up for failure with this statement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They should already have an idea what I'm looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mind-reading is, I suppose, a desirable project control, but I've rarely seen telepathy work well as a communications channel. If you have expectations, set them explicitly and &lt;em&gt;document&lt;/em&gt; them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only should you be explicit about what the expectations are, but you should also be explicit about how you plan to &lt;em&gt;measure&lt;/em&gt; how well your expectations are being met along the way. If you can't articulate those things clearly at the outset, then the project is very likely to slip off the rails before it even starts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Defining &quot;A Good Fit&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good fit is a team that can achieve your technical specifications, has the appropriate skill set and knowledge to complete the project at an acceptable level of quality, and (most importantly) is both willing and able to work within the constraints of your project management controls. If they are a poor fit for the last item, the first two don't really matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-05-27T14:28:36.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9261" CreationDate="2013-05-27T14:57:45.093" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking you as a leader should be the last in the &quot;queue of mentors&quot; especially when you don't know the domain. Your duty is to find a mentor, or make it possible that your new colleague have time for self learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of tips:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find a senior tester in your organisation and ask him to provide a 2-4 hour long tutorial for your colleague&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make it possible that your colleague have time to read testing related blogs like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://googletesting.blogspot.hu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;google testing blog&lt;/a&gt; and videos&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Buy him (or her) the &lt;a href=&quot;http://lisacrispin.com/agile-testing-book-is-now-out/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;agile testing book&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;set up a safe to fail environment (this has nothing to do with testing, but important)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;send him (or her) to a testing conference like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agiletestingdays.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;agile testing days&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-05-27T14:57:45.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9256" CreationDate="2013-05-27T15:58:34.047" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;After contacting Podio Support, at this date, it's not possible to do such things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4217" LastActivityDate="2013-05-27T15:58:34.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9261" CreationDate="2013-05-28T10:49:17.677" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mentoring is not what you are looking for.  Nor should your focus--at least primarily--be to nurture and grow this new testing individual.  Your focus should be enabling a high performing testing capability and you need four high performing enablers to do this: people, process &amp;amp; method, tools, and institutional knowledge.  If any of these enablers are under performing, so too is your capability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the people side of this equation, you need the human resources that have the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSA) to perform the task.  This tester may have degrees of each of these, but as a person new to the workforce he is largely untested and is less likely to have the degree to run testing by himself.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of mentoring, I would focus on finding the individual who can close the gaps on the KSAs required to perform the task, whether you have a part-time resource who would assist the NOOB or replace him completely.  Pros and cons to everything so you need to analyze that a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your counter argument would be you cannot afford to bring on someone else, my counter counter would be: pay now or pay more later; either way, you are going to pay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T10:49:17.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9248" CreationDate="2013-05-29T10:47:26.520" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of your four paragraphs, only the last one is relevant.  The first three are just noise.  Where's the line?  It is where you draw it.  Each of us makes a choice as to the degree of commitment one is willing to make in his/her career.  And that choice will likely yield a certain result.  Your boss is opening the door, indicating his/her expectations and desired behavior that will enable a value proposition to make him/her competitive in the market.  If you choose to not walk through that, then (s)he will find someone else.  That someone else will receive some set of consequences for walking through that door and you will receive another set of consequences for not walking through it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choose wisely and accept the results you get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-05-29T10:47:26.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8005" CreationDate="2013-05-29T12:29:54.053" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some good podcasts on Agile Weekly can also help- &lt;a href=&quot;http://integrumtech.com/category/agile-weekly-podcast/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://integrumtech.com/category/agile-weekly-podcast/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I discovered them a few days back and have been listening to regularly now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6172" LastActivityDate="2013-05-29T12:29:54.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9272" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-29T17:56:21.297" Score="3" ViewCount="10125" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know this is short but this is the problem.  I have a user that has MS Project 2013 and his option under Save As for Sync with SharePoint is not there.  Any idea why?  I have tried looking everywhere and have not been able to find an answer.  Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6253" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T18:55:11.773" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T18:55:11.773" Title="MS Project 2013 Does not have Sync to SharePoint Option" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9273" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-30T00:14:42.250" Score="9" ViewCount="19873" Body="&lt;p&gt;I inherited a team 9 months ago. My style is to work alongside my team (and help them set goals + priorities) versus use fear, dictate, or break their confidence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A member of my team is a year older than me, newer to the field, but an expert on her project. I am a Director, and my manager is the VP. I've definitely noticed that she shows more effort for projects that involve her. Since the VP managed her for 3 months, before I took on the team, it took awhile for her to break the habit of going to the VP, and I had to correct that behavior. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently she did not turn in a strategic project proposal by my requested deadline, though it was clearly communicated, and we had a midway checkin. It felt disrespectful, and I immediately thought it was unlike her to be disorganized, and wondered if it was because, this was a project for me, and not one she brainstormed on her own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I present myself as a strong leader, while not losing my approachable and friendly style? This is the only individual on the team of 7 women, that I am struggling with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6254" LastActivityDate="2019-03-29T01:47:25.550" Title="Managing an employee that might not respect your authority" Tags="&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9273" CreationDate="2013-05-30T07:57:23.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you would like to keep the friendly leader approach, you should talk to her often, try to &lt;strong&gt;figure out why she doesn't respect you&lt;/strong&gt;. Maybe if you work together, this whole thing will turn around, because she will get to know you, and you'll get to know her. You can try to give her some special privileges like being allowed to stay away from certain meetings etc. But, keep in mind that it can be dangerous because the other team members might want to have the same privileges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you spend all your time with a person that undermines your authority, you should think about replacing this person. &lt;strong&gt;Your responsibility is the team and the project, and not being in friends with a primadonna.&lt;/strong&gt; You can grow another expert, who cooperates, from the rest of the team. Personally, I value teams more than a single person's expertise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-05-30T07:57:23.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9273" CreationDate="2013-05-30T10:12:13.503" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Labeling someone as disrecpectful, primadonna and uncoopoerative doesn't help. Find the root cause instead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One possible explanation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might not be aligning her goals with yours and/or company. Ask yourself honestly if you'd like to work on project you were assigned by someone else or projects you researched yourself. Talented people wants to shine, you possibly gave her assignment that will make YOU shine, not her. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give credit for people who do the work, you've already received your credit: Director title. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6257" LastActivityDate="2013-05-30T10:12:13.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9273" CreationDate="2013-05-30T10:37:17.840" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Only judging by what you wrote, the maladaptive emotion might be yours that you are interpreting or displacing on to her and labeling it disrespect.  There are 100 reasons, completely benign to how she might feel about you, that could cause her to be late, many of them random and out of anyone's control.  You indicating a deadline and having a mid-way conversation guarantees nothing.  The fact you &quot;immediately&quot; thought she was disorganized and something about you are more of symptoms and signs that you likely harbor something against her than the other way around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Intimidation?  Inferiority?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Respect and trust are earned.  You aren't owed it simply because you are named boss. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, not only do I not care that my team may go around me and talk to my boss, I also encourage it.  Open door policies build trust.  I work to have a relationship with my boss so I know he will support me even if he doesn't agree with me and I work with my team so they WANT to go to me directly and not even feel the need to go to my boss.  If I get split my boss, I will work with him to close that dynamic, but I would never ever ever consequence a team member for feeling the need to go around me.  Else, they will feel trapped and I will pay that price down the road.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-05-30T10:37:17.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9273" CreationDate="2013-05-30T11:36:22.757" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the Navy, we were taught that authority comes from rank, from expertise and from leadership (in increasing order of importance).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Staff may respect you because you're a director, but I would never rely on positional authority.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Staff may respect you for your competence - if you have the skills and a proven record of delivery.  It sounds like this won't work in the case you cite; the individual is an acknowledged SME, and I agree with you that it is unwise to challenge her on this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Staff can learn to respect you for leadership.  What value you provide to them.  I infer from your description of your leadership style that this is your goal.  You want to work alongside the team and help them to set goals.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I'm going to agree with nearly everyone else that this is an opportunity for you to interview the individual in question and find out what happened, why, and how to build a better working relationship.  Does she need goal setting, or does she have other needs? What does she need from a leader?  What role can you play in her success? What obstacles can you remove from her path?  What are her ambitions and how can you advance them?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking very personally, I'm very uncomfortable with a conversation that begins &quot;I feel disrespect when you fail to turn in a deliverable that we'd agreed on&quot;.  I'm somewhat more comfortable with, &quot;We missed this strategic deliverable; I'd like to go to management and reschedule delivery, but before I do that, I want to figure out why we missed it, and how we avoid this in the future.  What do you need from me, and from the division in general to make sure that we hit the new deadline?&quot; Followed by a whole lot of intense listening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your description of the leadership style you prefer, I suspect I'm merely confirming what you already know.  Best of luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-05-30T11:36:22.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9279" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-30T13:03:24.270" Score="6" ViewCount="1816" Body="&lt;p&gt;Imagine this: You are working on a already developed system in a stable release and now there is a change request coming up. Do you need to rewrite/change the requirement specification (and update the document to a new version)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I am very sorry if this is the wrong place for this question I carefully browsed &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/sites#technology&quot;&gt;http://stackexchange.com/sites#technology&lt;/a&gt; and this one seems to match the most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="799" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T13:41:26.827" Title="Does a change request change the requirement specification?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9280" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9281" CreationDate="2013-05-30T13:10:49.787" Score="4" ViewCount="214" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been a part of student project teams for years now, both in highschool and at university level.&#xA;I enjoy project managing but so far it's always been fictional, but as I'm going in to the next phase of my life Ive been thinking of starting up a project with real employees, money and customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is there to think about going from these fictional projects to a real one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the main differences in requirements management, review process etc &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for any help possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6259" LastEditorUserId="6259" LastEditDate="2013-05-30T13:31:23.623" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T02:54:37.203" Title="Student project vs Real project" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9280" CreationDate="2013-05-30T13:32:36.703" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Basically,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you can lose real money&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you can put your family in jeopardy (loans, mortgages)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there won't be anybody who'll help you out (like parents, teachers) if you are in trouble&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you'll be responsible for the life of others (your employees)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;nobody will give you an idea (like teachers do), you have to find them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there won't be such thing as &lt;em&gt;end of semester&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you will work more than 8 hours a day, and a weekend won't be a weekend for you (at least at the beginning)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2013-05-31T11:42:08.597" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T11:42:08.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9279" CreationDate="2013-05-30T13:34:44.227" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you do because otherwise nobody will be able to track the changes of the system, and know how your system is supposed to work. Make sure that you mark the change section in the history of the document. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-05-30T13:34:44.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9283" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9285" CreationDate="2013-05-30T15:43:38.430" Score="2" ViewCount="1140" Body="&lt;p&gt;The point of contact (say, Dave) on a large project has now informed me that due to the overwhelming quantity of work, he has now authorized a new point of contact (Let's call her Sally). The difficulty is that he wishes to be the final decision maker and Sally is just the channel for information that is to be relayed to our team from their side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question: Should I ask Dave to reconsider and continue to the single point of contact? Or should I deal with Sally and cc Dave on every piece of communication? Likewise, if I am to receive any approvals from Sally, should I assume that it has already been authorized by Dave?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I deal with a contact change (but same final decision maker)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5449" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-06-02T21:29:36.457" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T21:29:36.457" Title="How should I deal with changing points of contact on a Project (client side)?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9283" CreationDate="2013-05-30T17:01:38.890" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Raise a question if, in your professional opinion, there are questions about how the proxy relationship will (or can) work for your project. If the change stands, work &lt;em&gt;through&lt;/em&gt; your new proxy. Don't attempt to work around the proxy or to bypass her delegated authority unless you have political backing to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Framework Considerations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're practicing Scrum, Dave appears to be the Product Owner. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumalliance.org/pages/scrum_roles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum Roles&lt;/a&gt; for why this seems to be the case, based on his responsibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What successful practitioners of any type know is that absentee Product Owners or the presence of Product Owner proxies rarely lead to successful outcomes for the project. The most successful projects require active, ongoing participation by the Product Owner in order to facilitate tight feedback loops and subtle micro-adjustments within each iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even in a traditional waterfall environment, absentee management rarely results in a successful project. YMMV, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Political Considerations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dave has apparently already decided that his time is more valuable than direct interaction with the project warrants. He believes he has bigger fish to fry. So, Sally is now his proxy, and (politically speaking) you should respect that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you have further conversations with Dave to identify the limits of Sally's proxy authority, you should assume that she's speaking &lt;em&gt;ex cathedra&lt;/em&gt; for Dave. By designating her as the proxy, he has transferred responsibility for promoting his vision to her, and it is &lt;em&gt;her&lt;/em&gt; responsibility (not yours) to ensure that she doesn't overstep the limits of her delegated authority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The responsibility for the success or failure of the project belongs to Dave, not to you or Sally. If the project fails to succeed, be prepared to address the lack of direct Product Owner involvement in a &lt;em&gt;post mortem&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the meantime, by simple virtue of the fact that you're asking the question on the Internet rather than addressing his level of involvement directly with Dave, I'm going to assume that you don't have the organizational cachet to do anything more than gently raise a professional concern about it. Do so if it seems worth spending the political capital; otherwise, if the decision seems fixed, then accept it and begin working &lt;em&gt;through&lt;/em&gt; your new proxy management layer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-05-30T19:50:03.443" LastActivityDate="2013-05-30T19:50:03.443" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9279" CreationDate="2013-05-30T22:58:09.447" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a change that affects the requirements, then yes, the document needs to be updated and versioned.  But there are changes that don't affect the requirements.  In that case, it might mean that the document has a hole and it should be added.  Or it might mean that the change really doesn't affect the requirements and the document is fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some change requests turn out to be data issues -- they don't affect the document.  Some are minor tweaks that aren't documented anyway (perhaps the drop list doesn't fit when the screen resolution is set in some way, and the document never got anywhere near detailed to talk about screen resolutions or did more than mention that that field has a drop list filled by some source).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read the document.  If the change makes anything in the document incorrect, then update the spec.  If the change is something that you wish you'd known about, something that would be useful to people in the future, then add it to the spec. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="735" LastActivityDate="2013-05-30T22:58:09.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9287" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-31T14:46:54.073" Score="6" ViewCount="1661" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have 50 employees who are working on different projects in a team of 3-4 people. In my firm the testing is done by the developers. We have 2 or 3 products with a large code base that we constantly modify while we add new functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should the same person do the testing who did the development, or should another team member do the testing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6263" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T14:48:47.777" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T06:28:38.140" Title="Should the same person do the testing who did the development?" Tags="&lt;roles&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9287" CreationDate="2013-05-31T15:09:14.540" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the same person does the development and test, the feedback loop of doing things right is short (verification). The &lt;em&gt;test driven development&lt;/em&gt; method builds on this idea. On the other hand, it is good to have another view on the problem just to know if the right thing is built (validation), and that's the case when somebody else tests the developers' code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nowadays, developers are responsible for writing test cases for their code. This covers unit, function and integration testing. Additionally, UX or test responsibles are doing user tests and exploratory testing in order to know whether the right product is built.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T15:09:14.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9287" CreationDate="2013-05-31T15:25:54.630" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not deep into code testing but, from a QC perspective, having the same person check his/her own work is like having a prisoner keeping the key to his cell.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The QC objective is to find defects.  The more defects found, the better the QC capability.  That objective is inconsistent with the objective of the developer/builder, who is being measured by how well (s)he is developing/building.  There is no possible way that someone can objectively and critically evaluate his/her own work in the manner which is expected in QC.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T15:25:54.630" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9287" CreationDate="2013-05-31T16:12:41.537" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Props to @Zsolt for a very good answer.  However this is a plan for the future, not a response to the situation in which you find yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that the relationship between coder and tester should not be adversarial - they're both partners in trying to produce finished code of a known quality. I want accurate measurements of code quality, and I want code that will threaten the business pulled back.  Code with flaws that don't threaten the business is just technical debt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My time as a tester was very brief, but I think there are two advantages to independent testing. First, an independent tester is less likely to share assumptions about the code.  IF the coder tests the code, it is very difficult to detect the assumptions. For example, I currently confront a situation where the coder assumed that all names were Firstname, Lastname, and that the combination {Firstname, Lastname} was relatively unique.  The truth is that there are many many exceptions to that rule.  (All the women in my family have the same firstname, and 2/3rd of them have the same lastname.  All have more than four names each - First, Middle, Middle, Middle, Last).  Independent testers are &lt;em&gt;less likely&lt;/em&gt; to have the same assumption. (in this case I think the error would have slipped by the tester as well).  Frequently I find that the coder included instructions or directions that are .... incomplete...    When I write prose, I always ask a colleague to review it for the same reason - it is likely to reveal invalid assumptions I've made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second there is the two mind problem.  Study after study reveals that diverse teams are better teams, not because they fulfill some administrative diversity goal, but because diverse minds working on a problem are more effective at solving the problem.  &lt;code&gt;Mea culpa for not citing any of those studies&lt;/code&gt; If the coder and developer are the same person, then the team is about a homogenous as it is possible to get.  Psychologically people tend to take the stance of &quot;loyal opposition&quot; even when working collaboratively (especially when they have separate roles - coder and tester). They know that they can improve the quality of the project by intentionally distancing themself from the partner and introducing artificial diversity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;edited in response to a comment by @David Espina&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;The relationship between coder and tester shouldn't be agnostic; if the relationship is agnostic, that indicates something has gone seriously wrong. If QC is ruining code, then the manager of the QC department needs to have a serious talk with the business manager/sponsor/whatever.  QC's goal is to detect unacceptable technical debt. If QC strives for perfect code, then QC is working for your competitors. &lt;code&gt;sorry for the digression, but I think it is important in context.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2013-06-03T11:26:53.250" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T11:26:53.250" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4072" CreationDate="2013-05-31T17:48:55.740" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Size typically determines how necessary a project manager is. For instance with a large ERP implementation each process owner has a grasp of what he/she does and tends to protect that area naturally. However, in order to acheive the overall objective of what is best for the group as a whole requires the ability to be neutral and objective when guiding change management give and take,this is usually only possible when the PM reports to someone other than the organization he is overseeing allowing a truely unbiased approach. His value is intrinsically tied to this as there will be give and take on all sides and without a control point like a PM one interest will naturally dominate another weaker or less vocal group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6265" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T17:48:55.740" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8595" CreationDate="2013-05-31T18:57:55.393" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I've seen working is something where you take 1-2 learnings from the retrospectives, assign a pass and fail condition, assign an owner and track this as part of the next sprint's retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6172" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T18:57:55.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2187" CreationDate="2013-06-01T13:16:03.210" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.project-open.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;]project-open[&lt;/a&gt; is open-source and includes both &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.project-open.org/en/howto_scrum_project_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SCRUM and agile methodologies&lt;/a&gt; as well as an SVN integration. Installers are available for Win* and Linux. It's a pretty big system though, so it might take some time to set it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Affiliation: Please note that I'm a member of the ]po[ team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6266" LastEditorUserId="6266" LastEditDate="2013-06-01T13:35:19.363" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T13:35:19.363" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2518" CreationDate="2013-06-01T13:30:13.290" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.project-open.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;]project-open[&lt;/a&gt; includes resource management and resource leveling processes. Checkout the demo server &lt;a href=&quot;http://po40pmo.project-open.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://po40pmo.project-open.net/&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that I might be biased, I'm a member of the ]po[ team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6266" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T13:30:13.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9279" CreationDate="2013-06-01T13:41:26.827" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, you don't need to rewrite the &lt;em&gt;requirement specification&lt;/em&gt;, particularly if you are working with a &quot;stable release&quot; as you said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you probably should update the system's documentation, user manuals or similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6266" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T13:41:26.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9063" CreationDate="2013-06-01T13:49:45.693" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My personal opinion is to keep project and product management as far apart from each other as possible:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Management&lt;/strong&gt;: Get stuff done in time and budget.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product Management&lt;/strong&gt;: Do things right for the next 10 years to come.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Better use different PMs, different developers and preferably even different departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6266" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T13:49:45.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9272" CreationDate="2013-06-01T13:53:54.277" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to sync with Microsoft Project Server. SharePoint itself does not &quot;know&quot; about project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you might export your project schedule to an office document and publish this document on SharePoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6266" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T13:53:54.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6814" CreationDate="2013-06-01T14:04:59.140" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are probably looking for a time sheet management system where users enter the time they have actually spend on each project. Please search Google for &quot;open source time sheet management&quot; for a selection of available tools. You might also want to search for &quot;open source openproj integration&quot; in order to find a subset of these tools that actually have an integration interface with OpenProj (or ProjectLibre, as the latest version is called).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two system work together as follows: After creating your project schedule in OpenProj, you import the schedule into the time sheet management system. Once your team members enter their hours, you can compare task advance vs. resource consumption vs. time spent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6266" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T14:04:59.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9287" CreationDate="2013-06-01T18:23:56.267" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, if the developer is testing his own code, it needs to be automated and that too using TDD or BDD. Having him test manually wouldn't work since a developer is an eternal optimist (my code can't break) and hence wouldn't test it thoroughly. This is why you need a QC to validate what has been developed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been instances where TDD also doesn't help (an empty unit test case would never fail), so the role of QC needs to be there and is an important one. I recommend both to co-exist although there needs to be a balance between the two (~80% unit testing via developers since it cuts the feedback loop and rest 20% testing via QC).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6172" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T18:23:56.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8005" CreationDate="2013-06-03T11:30:08.623" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote a series about this topic a while ago:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2011/02/xp-with-kanban-instead-of-scrum/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;XP with Kanban instead of Scrum&lt;/a&gt;: moving from Scrum to Kanban&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2010/11/kanban-nightmares/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kanban Nightmares&lt;/a&gt;: failing with Kanban and recovery&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2011/02/pimp-my-team/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pimp my Team&lt;/a&gt;: rethinking Kanban&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T11:30:08.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9302" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-03T16:22:04.923" Score="1" ViewCount="1150" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working as a coordinator for two teams situated in different time zones. I do everything that is related to coordination (arrange meetings, doing scrum updates across teams, adding clarification etc). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I am very interested to know what additional responsibilities I could take up as project coordinator, that benefit both the teams, but benefit more the team I am representing (say Team A), other than the usual coordination work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Misc info:&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I do not have any reportees to me, there are PMs who takes care of people/project management for Team A and Team B.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I do not have any control over the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have a feeling that if I keep doing this for a year or more, my skill levels are going to be underutilized and may be of no value.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I might be understating my role, as it sometimes involve a complex of coordination of work for 12 people at site B and 6 people at Site A (where I am located representing Team B) and spend a lot of time to carefully read and assimilate and reply to emails. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;But I do get spurts of 2-8 hours a week to do something else for the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4838" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-06-04T05:04:52.277" LastActivityDate="2013-06-04T15:09:49.677" Title="What are additional responsibilities that a coordinating manager can take up?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8044" CreationDate="2013-06-03T17:13:22.320" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.project-open.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;]project-open[&lt;/a&gt; is an open-source project portfolio management system that includes a package for email integration plus a full-text search engine. This way you can associate emails with users and projects and later search either via user name, company name or keywords in the emails. ]po[ also includes time sheet management and general PM features. These might also be interesting in a company &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Affiliation note: I might be biased, I'm part of the ]po[ team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6266" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T17:13:22.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9" CreationDate="2013-06-03T17:27:06.983" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an MS-Excel Risk Sheet available for download in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.project-open.org/en/process_pm_project_risk_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this description of the risk management process&lt;/a&gt;. It is used by one of the largest software companies in the world :-). This sheet includes the following additional fields:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Approach,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Appearance Date,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;End Date and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Final resolution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to replace Appearance &lt;strong&gt;Date&lt;/strong&gt; with Appearance &lt;strong&gt;Version&lt;/strong&gt; in software development projects, so that you can track risks that are still open at some moment of the project or product development cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Affiliation note: I am a member of the ]project-open[ team and might be biased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6266" LastEditorUserId="6266" LastEditDate="2013-06-03T17:39:00.293" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T17:39:00.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="829" CreationDate="2013-06-03T18:04:02.813" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The open-source &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.project-open.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;]project-open[&lt;/a&gt; tool can be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.project-open.org/en/howto_scrum_project_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;configured&lt;/a&gt; to support SCRUM or KANBAN project and ticket states.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Affiliation note: I am a member of the ]project-open[ team and might be biased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6266" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T18:04:02.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1429" CreationDate="2013-06-03T18:18:54.840" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm doing the product management at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.project-open.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;]project-open[&lt;/a&gt;. It's open-source product management, but we compete mainly with closed-source tools, so the difference should not be too big. Here are my 5 cents:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn about Marketing: You now need to define where the &quot;project&quot; should be heading, not some customer type. Learn about strategic marketing, segments, surveys, focus groups etc. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn to speak and think like your potential customers. You need to understand their decision process and what's important for them. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn about public speaking: Visit loads of conferences and preset bits and pieces in order to involve your target group in discussions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn to talk to your sales guys: They know what their customers want. But don't believe them, just listen :-)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn about release processes: Many people will get angry at once if there are bugs in the product...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn about localization and internationalization: Software companies usually earn more than half of their money outside the US&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6266" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T18:18:54.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9287" CreationDate="2013-06-03T18:34:34.010" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;The Project Management Perspective&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should the same person to do the testing that did the development, or should another team member to do the testing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no canonical answer for this from a project management perspective because it's a false dichotomy. Quality assurance (QA) or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acceptance_testing#User_acceptance_testing&quot;&gt;user acceptance testing&lt;/a&gt; (UAT) often have different objectives and perspectives than developer-oriented tests, although there's certainly overlap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, developer testing falls into the categories of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development&quot;&gt;test-driven development&lt;/a&gt; (TDD) or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior-driven_development&quot;&gt;behavior-driven development&lt;/a&gt; (BDD). Perhaps more importantly, they constitute a sort of white-box testing where there's a clear understanding of the internal workings of the application. UAT, on the other hand, focuses on the user experience and generally treats the system itself as a black box so that the focus is on user-visible functionality rather than internal implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having dedicated QA/UAT resources on a project team provides the following benefits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Separation of duties.&lt;/strong&gt; This may be important for security products or in certain regulatory environments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Role-specific expertise&lt;/strong&gt;. While programmers need to write tests, and testers often need to write code, good testing is as much an art as a science. A great tester is an invaluable addition to a cross-functional team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Management of testing infrastructure.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;Someone&lt;/em&gt; will certainly need to manage the testing and continuous deployment infrastructure. A good tester is often the logical person to do that, as they are generally the most familiar with that aspect of the toolchain.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Think &quot;Cross-Functional&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you are in a regulatory environment that precludes it, &lt;em&gt;everyone&lt;/em&gt; on the team should be involved in testing on some level. &lt;em&gt;How&lt;/em&gt; they are involved will depend on your particular project and organization. However, as a generic example, many of my agile teams look like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Programmers mostly write unit tests, but work closely with the QA/UAT people to support integration tests and to write code that is &lt;em&gt;highly testable&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;QA folks manage the test infrastructure, monitor continuous integration and continuous deployment systems, and perform integration tests. They also work closely with the programmers to identify edge cases and boundary conditions that should be tested.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Programmers and QA folks work closely with the technical writers, ensuring that functionality is properly documented and that &lt;strong&gt;technical documentation is tested&lt;/strong&gt; from an end-user perspective in much the same way that code should be tested.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea here is that &lt;em&gt;everyone&lt;/em&gt; has a role to play in testing, but the inclusion of team members with deep expertise in testing adds skills and experience to the team that are often invaluable to the success of a project. QA team members shouldn't be treated as second-class citizens or optional members for a team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Great testers have skills and talents that can make your project more successful. Don't skimp on the things that lead to success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T18:34:34.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9309" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-03T19:01:42.660" Score="5" ViewCount="18355" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I was taking a sample scope management test online, and Question #9 stumped me -- the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmpden.com/pmp-exam-questions-3/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt; on the traceability matrix. Can someone please explain why b is better than c?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below is the direct question, quoted from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmpden.com/pmp-exam-questions-3/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PMP Den Exam Question 3 website&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which of the following BEST describes the purpose of a traceability matrix?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A) It describes how WBS Dictionary entries are traced to work packages, and how work packages are decomposed from deliverables&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B) It’s used to make sure that all of the sub-plans of the Project Management Plan have been created&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;C) It helps you understand the source of each requirement, and how that requirement was verified in a later deliverable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;D) It’s used to trace the source of every change, so that you can keep track of them through the entire Control Scope process and verify that the change was properly implemented&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is their explanation for the right answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(b)&lt;/strong&gt; The Requirements Traceability Matrix is a tool that you use to trace each requirement back to a specific business case, and then forward to the rest of the scope deliverables (like specific WBS work packages), as well as other parts of the project: the product design (like specific levels in Cows Gone Wild) or test strategy (like test plans that the Ranch Hand Games testers use to make sure that the game works).&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure I understand. Can someone explain in greater detail?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6148" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-07-28T07:46:16.870" Title="Can someone explain the Requirements Traceability Matrix purpose?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;scope&gt;&lt;scope-management&gt;&lt;pmi&gt;&lt;pmbok&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9302" CreationDate="2013-06-04T05:29:35.260" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your team will know better than us what additional responsibilities you could help them with. What is going well? What isn't going well? What hurdles or small things trip them up during the week? If you are looking to add value to your team, ask them. We will be wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastActivityDate="2013-06-04T05:29:35.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9287" CreationDate="2013-06-04T12:26:30.003" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;People are prone to cognitive bias, and developers are not exempt.&lt;/strong&gt; A person who tests their own work will tend to miss problems that other people have a high probability of finding, because their thinking has been constrained by their understanding of how things are &lt;em&gt;supposed&lt;/em&gt; to work. Put another way, &lt;strong&gt;a person can't think of using something in a different way unless they can first imagine using it that way.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can mitigate this by have people test each other's work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6282" LastActivityDate="2013-06-04T12:26:30.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9309" CreationDate="2013-06-04T14:54:20.530" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I probably would have picked &quot;C&quot; as well, but can see what they were trying to get at with their selected answer. I don't agree with it, but I can see the point. It's an academic answer that probably aligns with something in the PMBOK, but that doesn't mean it's either a great question or a great answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Ivory Tower Answers&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most tests, and especially most prep tests, often contain ambiguous questions or answers that are wrong from a &lt;em&gt;practical&lt;/em&gt; perspective. This isn't necessarily a deliberate practice to hone your test-taking skills; it's often just a side-effect of having to select questions from a pool that is not allowed to precisely mirror test questions that are often protected by NDAs or copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even on the actual tests, there are often questions which are iffy because the selected answers reflect an academic (rather than practical) bent on the part of the test creators. This is a pervasive problem when the test writers are academics rather than practitioners, which is why most good tests are normed on the responses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a singular example, when I sat for the CISSP many years ago, I remember a particularly horrible question about virus security. The question was something along the lines of &quot;What's the best way to prevent introduction of a virus onto a computer system?&quot; The use of an anti-virus system was the option that any real-world security practitioner would select, but I knew that the test &lt;em&gt;writers&lt;/em&gt; expected &quot;certify all media&quot; to be the correct answer for that particular test. Unless you understood that the test was written by academics who focus on abstruse government &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_assurance&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;information assurance&lt;/a&gt; practices, you were bound to get the answer &quot;wrong.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Potential Strategies&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you fail an actual exam, I wouldn't lose any sleep over questions like this. Depending on the exam, you also have a few other strategies to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give the answer you think the test writers are looking for, rather than the correct answer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your test allows it, select an answer and then comment on why you think the &quot;correct&quot; answer is wrong or why you think a different answer would be more correct. Especially on experimental questions that are included for norming, this can be a very effective strategy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pick the answer you genuinely feel is correct, and rely on norming (e.g. &quot;grading on a curve&quot;) to discount ambiguous or commonly-missed questions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Self-Evaluation and Domain Mastery&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, remember that sample tests are just samples, and are rarely drawn from the actual test material. They're really just there to help you self-evaluate your confidence level in the material. Sometimes, knowing that a sample test contains invalid questions or iffy answers is as good a way to measure your domain knowledge as anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By all means, if you find questions that merit additional study on your part, do that. However, sometimes it's more important to know that your answer is the one an employer would pay you to perform, regardless of what the answer key for a sample test says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-06-04T14:54:20.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9302" CreationDate="2013-06-04T15:09:49.677" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Improve communications within your project team. Identify resource requirements that you can personally fulfill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Problems&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your roles and responsibilities within your current project are either ill-defined or simply not challenging enough for you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communications on your project team are poor, or you would be asking this question within your team rather than on the Internet.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Potential Solutions from a Project Management Perspective&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good project plan clearly defines goals and success criteria for the team and for its individual members. If your project plan does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; include these things, then it's a conversation that should be held with the project management team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A properly-functioning project team has effective mechanisms for reporting status and identifying current resource requirements. If you want more to do, those artifacts are the ones to look at. If you don't have such artifacts on your project, this is another conversation that should be held with the project management team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Everything Else&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any other issues from your original question should either be raised with your supervisor or manager, or perhaps with Human Resources. Generic career growth and individual responsibility on a specific project are topics that are highly localized, and not really project management questions &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-06-04T15:09:49.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9318" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-05T19:46:52.350" Score="19" ViewCount="8489" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am on the product side and have an agile team that has missed every sprint commitment through the first 4 by between 40 and 60% measured by points.  The team continues to say, that it is OK and that the stories were mostly done and they'll just split and move stories forward.  We've already cut scope beyond what I think is really going to be possible.  At this point we only have 4 sprints left to achieve a minimal product and by every calculation I make that is impossible. Our team is widely distributed with multiple vendors.  I have asked for root causes of the problems and the team is pushing back hard saying that management needs to trust the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team keeps just telling me this is how agile works and that I just need to continue to adjust scope and we will deliver whatever we deliver at the end.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do we handle missed commitments in agile?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6289" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-07-03T03:16:14.803" LastActivityDate="2013-07-03T03:16:14.803" Title="Agile team missing commitments regularly and complaining about no trust" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;failure&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9318" CreationDate="2013-06-05T22:35:32.547" Score="14" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Missed estimates are not an opportunity for blame, but rather an opportunity to inspect your process and adapt it to fit the requirements of your organization. The Product Owner, the Scrum Master, and the Development Team must all work together to learn from the failed sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Misconceptions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like the entire Scrum Team is working under some misconceptions. Let's see if we can't clear some of them up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[The] team...has missed every sprint commitment through the first 4 by between 40 and 60% measured by points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nope. Based on what you're saying, the team has missed the first four &lt;em&gt;Sprint Goals&lt;/em&gt; by 100%. A user story is either done or not-done, and a sprint goal is either met or not met. There are no shades of gray.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The team continues to say, that it is OK and that the stories were mostly done and they'll just split and move stories forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nope. As the Product Owner, it is &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; job to review the Product Backlog after each sprint and determine how (or even if) missed stories should be re-prioritized, and what stories should be placed at the top of the Product Backlog for the next sprint. In other words, nothing is &quot;carried forward&quot; unless you place it back at the top of the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have asked for root causes of the problems and the team is pushing back hard saying that management needs to trust the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nope. Blaming the team is not constructive, but asking the team to inspect the estimation or delivery process when there's clearly a process problem is extremely reasonable. In fact, it is part of your responsibility as the Product Owner to engage the Scrum Master and the Development Team in the various Scrum meetings to identify and remove roadblocks to successful project delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Root Causes&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know what the root cause is here, but you need to involve the Scrum Master and the rest of the Scrum Team to find out. Some possibilities include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Scrum Team is doing a poor job of estimating story sizes, and taking on more than can fit into a sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Scrum Team as a whole may not be articulating a Sprint Goal that is both achievable and clearly defines what stories are essential to the current sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Retrospectives or other forms of inspect-and-adapt are not being performed to identify &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; the process is not working. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The process is not respecting the time-boxed nature of the sprint or the Scrum framework.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Transparency of the process is essential to the success of any agile implementation. The team is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; entitled to tell the Product Owner to mind his own business when stories accepted into a sprint are routinely incomplete at the end of each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Closer Collaboration Required&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on what you have &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; said, I'd wager good money that part of the problem is that you either do not have a dedicated Scrum Master, or you do not have a Scrum Master who is able to provide the education, feedback, coaching, and process adaptation necessary for a successful Scrum implementation within your organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if that isn't the case, I certainly think you need to collaborate more effectively with the Scrum Master. Whatever deficiencies your team may or may not have, the relationship between the Product Owner and the Scrum Master is one of the most important aspects of the Scrum framework. Don't neglect it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T22:35:32.547" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9318" CreationDate="2013-06-06T00:44:47.060" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Our team is widely distributed&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have all the information, but I reckon there's your root cause, right there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile methodologies don't have as much up-front analysis as traditional methods. Because of that, it's even more likely that discoveries will emerge during the sprint. For the team to react to the discoveries in a timely manner, they need to be able to communicate very easily. If they're in different offices, that isn't going to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum generally works best with co-located teams. At the very least, make sure that your distributed people are actually behaving like a team, trying to achieve a goal, rather than just doing &quot;their bit&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could try these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Invest in a bit more analysis. Some teams like to analyse at least one sprint ahead. Any more than that, and you risk investing in things which you won't end up delivering anyway. (Be careful if you do this that any uncertainty uncovered is addressed early, through spikes, rather than pushed to the end).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Increase the ability of the team to communicate. Make sure everyone knows who everyone else is and what they look like. Give them a forum or channel to hang out on together so that they can talk through any problems they encounter. Get webcams.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Rethink what the minimum product might be. If you can imagine shipping just one tiny thing, focus on that, and add more later if you have time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cancel the project, if a reasonable minimum is unfeasible with its current setup and timescale.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile methods aren't designed to help a project, as scoped, be successful. They're designed to fail fast, so that you can change the project appropriately - or cancel it. They give you transparency and information with which to make decisions, with minimum investment having been spent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cancelling a project may actually be the best decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2013-06-07T09:16:54.433" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T09:16:54.433" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6252" CreationDate="2013-06-06T17:02:29.343" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project managers walk away from a project after a period of time.  Product managers are there for life (the life cycle of the product).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project managers are akin to the midwife - they stay around long enough to bring the product to market.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product managers are akin to mothers - we define, launch and then nurture the product through all it's stages.  See the blog post on &lt;a href=&quot;http://allaboutproductmanagement.blogspot.co.uk/2007/03/project-manager-or-product-manager.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Product vs project managers&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://allaboutproductmanagement.blogspot.co.uk/2007/03/project-manager-or-product-manager.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://allaboutproductmanagement.blogspot.co.uk/2007/03/project-manager-or-product-manager.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6295" LastActivityDate="2013-06-06T17:02:29.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9322" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-06T21:06:20.703" Score="8" ViewCount="1278" Body="&lt;p&gt;Steve McConnell mentions in his Rapid Development book that a team needs a &lt;em&gt;shared, elevating vision or goal&lt;/em&gt; to be a real team not just a group of people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What could be the vision when there are multiple projects (with different goals) that the people work on? Is it possible at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some background: We do some internal product development (with ambitious plans for the future) but this seems mostly a &quot;backup&quot; project for times when there are no other projects for actual clients or we have to wait for the clients to move on to the next task, etc. Sometimes more than one client projects are running, so some people are helping to more than one project at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Our XYZ product has 20% of market share&quot; or something like this does not seem appropriate vision since client project usually has higher priority and developers are not allowed to work on product development those times. (Why should anyone commit to a goal which is unattainable, right?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Bring a shiny new WXZ system to client Y&quot; also does not seem good goal since usually isn't the whole group working for client Y.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6299" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T15:49:57.657" Title="Vision for a team with multiple projects" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;&lt;goals&gt;&lt;vision&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9323" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9331" CreationDate="2013-06-06T21:53:31.883" Score="15" ViewCount="1588" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently, all developers all required to &quot;clock in&quot; by actually clicking on a timer in our internal application. So even a discrepancy of 3 minutes from the budget needs to be accounted for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a PM, I find that this method has two major disadvantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The development team's morale goes down the drain during reviews (quarterly, annual) as they need to account for the over used minutes (not hours).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;From a PM perspective, requesting budget increases goes through a whole lot of (what I feel) unnecessary red tape. Also, it dramatically increases the time spent in creating status reports as I have to sift through timesheets with a fine toothed comb.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give you an idea of average project sizes, they can range from 200 - 1000+ hours, which makes me wonder if &quot;by the minute&quot; tracking has any advantages given that these are relatively smaller projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; Given the average project size described above, does it make sense to track by the minute and what is an ideal way for a developer to report time spent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5449" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T12:36:24.577" Title="When is time tracking too detailed?" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;timekeeping&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9318" CreationDate="2013-06-06T21:57:08.727" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are a few problems you and &quot;the team&quot; need to address:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Customer collaboration over contract negotiation&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Agile is first and foremost about &lt;em&gt;collaboration&lt;/em&gt;. There is no &quot;product side&quot; and &quot;the team&quot;. The team is everybody including you. There is no difference between the team not delivering and you not delivering. It's a collective effort and you fail or win together.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Do you do &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Agile-Retrospectives-Making-Pragmatic-Programmers/dp/0977616649&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;retrospectives&lt;/a&gt;? If not, do them. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Working software is the primary measure of progress.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If the team does not complete the stories, use smaller stories. In fact, use stories as small as you can make them whilst keeping them minimally valuable. Remember &lt;a href=&quot;http://andrewchen.co/2012/06/22/apples-minimum-viable-product/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Apple's MVP&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Do you have a &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumalliance.org/articles/105-what-is-definition-of-done-dod&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;definition of done&lt;/a&gt;&quot;? That should cut short any discussion on &lt;em&gt;what the team commits to&lt;/em&gt; in a sprint planning meeting. You commit to delivering a set of story up to the quality standard specified in the definition of done. No splits.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Trust them or change the team or leave the team. &lt;em&gt;Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and &lt;strong&gt;trust them to get the job done.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If the team can't deliver enough value it's because estimates are not reality. They are estimates, we all screw them up constantly. Accept the loss and move on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: all the text in &lt;em&gt;italics&lt;/em&gt; is from &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://agilemanifesto.org/&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6300" LastActivityDate="2013-06-06T21:57:08.727" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9322" CreationDate="2013-06-06T22:14:33.350" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you've mentioned, it needs to be an elevating vision or &lt;strong&gt;goal&lt;/strong&gt;. In light of the latter, I think the SMART principle and Time Map philosophies apply here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's start with the Time Map (to learn more, check out &lt;em&gt;Time Management from the Inside Out&lt;/em&gt; by Julie Morgenstern):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You know you can't devote all your resources because client projects take precedence. This is where a Time Map would be useful. You know it's important, but not as important as other stuff. At the same, you need to get this done at some point in the future. See if you can get everyone on the team to commit an hour or two a week at a specific time (book time in your group calendar or whatever you use). This slot on your calendar represents a &lt;em&gt;time map&lt;/em&gt; for this project. This time map is to be interrupted only if you have a priority that equals a burning house (severity 1, whatever you want to call it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SMART:&lt;/strong&gt; Now that you have a time map in place (2 hours a week, which is to be held on Thursday at 3pm - 5pm), you can now use the SMART methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Specific&lt;/em&gt; - The purpose of this project is that we wish to capture x% of the market share for a niche market (which determines the priority of the project). Our team members A, B, and C will be working on this project at a specified time during the week to release this product within a span of 1 year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Measurable&lt;/em&gt; - 2 hours a week&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Attainable&lt;/em&gt; - at 2 hours a week and an estimated 100 hours of effort, this project can be completed within 50 weeks (hey, it's better than never getting it done).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Realistic&lt;/em&gt; - Given that we have other higher client projects, 2 hours seems reasonable to spend on this project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Time bound&lt;/em&gt; - We can expect this project to be done within a year's time. You can also elaborate this section to determine what tasks of the WBS will be done during the allocated time of the week. Example: Task 1 will be done on week 1, Tasks 2 and 3 are small enough that they can be done during week 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5449" LastEditorUserId="5449" LastEditDate="2013-06-07T01:20:09.557" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T01:20:09.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9323" CreationDate="2013-06-06T22:44:08.357" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It only makes sense if you are required to track time by outside requirements. For example if hours and minutes are billable or if you are on a government &quot;cost plus&quot; contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Issue 1 of morale is to be expected. Professionals don't like to be treated that way. I have had to fill out time cards, but clocking in is generally not well received.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="158" LastActivityDate="2013-06-06T22:44:08.357" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9323" CreationDate="2013-06-07T01:16:22.837" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always billed to the nearest half hour.  Tracking to the minute like you do would be extremely demoralizing, especially if I had to account for any discrepancies.  Standing up for a healthy short walk should not be penalized. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have often worked in environments where interruptions were usually important and somewhat frequent.  Trying to track them to the minute would be difficult if possible at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The distinct lack of trust indicated by requiring every minute to be accounted for is a known bad practice.  If you can't trust your staff, replace them.  If you can trust your staff, show it and treat them like professionals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reports I have seen indicate that tracking time to individual work items at normal detail adds about 3% to the cost of a project.  I have no idea how much more your detail costs.  I would break it out and ask for a budget increase to cover the cost of time &#xA;accounting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asking for budget increases is usually difficult.  Try gathering some backlog items which are unlikely to get done in the next year and ask for a budget for them.  Repeat for a couple of years, and you may be able add the extra budget into your base budget.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have yet to work somewhere where periodic reviews were done well.  Typically, reviews are done late.  (We need to complete last periods review now, because its time to do this years review.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest this approach.  Provide feedback when needed.  Provide lots of deserved positive feedback.  Track it as you provide it, and summarize for the quarterly and annual review.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T01:16:22.837" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9323" CreationDate="2013-06-07T11:12:12.363" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;People have been punching in for work for decades.  There is no morale loss there.  I don't see much of a difference between the human looking at a clock and writing in his/her time or using an application; the behavior is the same.  One is known to be ambiguous, imprecise, and a source of fraud and the other is the opposite.  I am not sure why either would expose or hide &quot;unproductive&quot; time unless the application causes time to stop when you walk away from your work station.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focusing on variance by minutes is more an issue of the person doing the analysis, not the tool.  If they are trying to understanding the the causes of the variability by minutes, then their analysis sophistication is elementary at best.  Fix that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T11:12:12.363" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9323" CreationDate="2013-06-07T12:35:06.870" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;When is time tracking too detailed? &lt;strong&gt;When you ask the question about why you're tracking to that granularity and no one in your organization can tell you why.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We track time in 15-minute increments. Why? Because that is what we've agreed to with certain clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T12:35:06.870" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9323" CreationDate="2013-06-07T12:41:37.743" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what is done with the information.  I'd advise collecting the &lt;strong&gt;minimum&lt;/strong&gt; you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At my place we just record what project we were working on for the day but we only really care about whether time is being spent on a capex project or not so the lack of precision is not a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's being collected for something valuable and needs to be to that level of precision, so be it.  So long as everyone knows &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; it's being collected it shouldn't cause morale issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T12:41:37.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9323" CreationDate="2013-06-07T13:01:43.220" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have any solid evidence - our projects are much longer.  At one point I did work for a company that required timekeeping to the 0.1 hour range.  That lasted about six months before the accountants told the company President to stick to his own swim lane.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking as a PM, I would have the following concerns about timekeeping with a precision of 0.5%.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cost/benefit.  It will take longer to reconcile T&amp;amp;A records than most devs can earn in the period.  If I have to reconcile 6 minutes, and it requires the dev, the accountant, the PM and the dev's line manager, (4 professionals for 30 minutes) I cannot imagine that it is cost effective to dedicate that much in salary to that small a putative loss.    If I were in your shoes, I'd do some back of the envelope cost models, and try to grab the last six months of data and estimate what this is costing the company.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accuracy - I just did a resource loaded schedule and found that ~30% of my staff's time is dedicated to activities that are not devoted directly to deliverables.  (coordination meetings and operational activities designed to drive the project forward, but not specifically marked for a deliverable.  My numbers are probably higher than most because of where I sit, but &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; organization has some similar committments.  &quot;Sorry, I can't come down to the break room to celebrate the fact that you just narrowly survived a very complicated pregnancy and that you and the baby are doing fine, because that would cause a 6 minute discrepancy in my T&amp;amp;A report, and that would require a 45 minute meeting with my management.&quot;  &quot;Sorry, I can't come to the federally required sexual harassment seminar because I don't have a charge code on my T&amp;amp;A report.....&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accuracy 2 - as others have pointed out, people interrupt other people.  Sometimes they are company valuable interruptions &quot;Can you show me that really nifty way you shaved 5 lines and 10milliseconds out of that API call?  I think I could use it here&quot;. Sometimes they are not &quot;valuable&quot;, but it would be insane to block them - when the family calls, or the hospital, the worker &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; take that call.  I do not want to think about how to manage that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work experience.   Your devs have a choice. They can work at your firm, or they can work at a firm that requires &lt;em&gt;ten times less precision&lt;/em&gt; in their time and attendance records. Requiring timekeeping 10 times more precise than the competition makes a very strong statement about the trust you place in your employees, and the value you attach to them.  That is a best case scenario.  Worst case - from your point of view - is that the dev can go work for a modern firm that not only doesn't require that accounting, but actually gives them 20% of their time to work on unscheduled projects.  Is your firm going to pay a salary that compensates your devs for that?  Once again, I think someone needs to do a CBA and determine the cost of the talent you've got, and the cost of the talent that is walking out the door for a better working experience.  Remember that the best talent will walk first, and the worst talent will stay the longest.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work experience 2 - there is a second message hidden in this.  &quot;We value a tradition that is attached to no identifible business reason or stakeholder more than we value the opinions of our devs and our project lead/manager.&quot;  I think that is a truly chilling commentary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know of only one firm that does this kind of micromanagement - I won't name the firm, but everyone knows of them. They have trouble getting and keeping unskilled labour, and they promote completely from within because they simply cannot hire skilled labour.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T13:01:43.220" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9322" CreationDate="2013-06-07T15:49:57.657" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are talking about setting &lt;strong&gt;goals&lt;/strong&gt; then go with TechWire's answer. I won't elaborate as I don't have anything of value to add.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are talking about creating a shared &lt;strong&gt;vision&lt;/strong&gt; for your team/organization it is a different kettle of fish. When you develop a vision you have to think big, aligning the vision to your core values and corporate mission. Take into consideration:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do you currently do well? Where are you innovative?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do your competitors/contemporaries do well? Where are they innovative?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What does your organization find challenging?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where do you want to be in two, five, ten years? How would your business change compared to today in terms of process, organizational structure and culture?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do your customers want?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These provide you with guidance for everything that your company will do, and should be considered as part of your business case assessments when starting up a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T15:49:57.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9333" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-08T12:28:41.500" Score="5" ViewCount="417" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are running multiple Scrum teams, all dedicated to one technology or know-how: ops, server developers, web frontend, UX desigers, etc. We would like to move to a feature teams organisation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read that the easiest transition, is to create one feature team at a time, kickstart it, make it grow and mature, before creating the second one, and so on. Is this a good approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4300" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-06-09T06:42:32.513" LastActivityDate="2020-06-22T13:09:48.913" Title="Transition to feature teams organisation" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9333" CreationDate="2013-06-08T16:59:58.143" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's a good way to do it, especially if you think that there may be difficulties across the organization that one team will be able to surface. Here are some things to look out for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;shared dependencies, including other teams and people&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;KPIs that make different roles compete against each other&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;people working on multiple projects, rather than the one the team is focusing on&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;product owners and analysts who are used to providing the teams with more technical solutions, rather than descriptions of the problem they're trying to solve&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a project which turns out to be too big and weighty to be easily adopted by a newbie Agile team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your first Agile team should ideally be working on a small, &amp;quot;quick win&amp;quot; project, especially if it's risky. Try to avoid anything with lots and lots of dependencies; even experienced Agile companies struggle with those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people doing this leave the operations team out until the end, but there's a growing movement to embrace them (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DevOps&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;devops&lt;/a&gt;). If you can, do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Richard Durnall has written some excellent &amp;quot;expansion patterns&amp;quot; in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DevOps&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this presentation&lt;/a&gt;, for when you've got the first team going and want to grow it. You may also find his post on &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20090215084442/http://www.richarddurnall.com/?p=57&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the order in which different bits of the company break during an Agile adoption&lt;/a&gt; useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-22T13:09:48.913" LastActivityDate="2020-06-22T13:09:48.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9335" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9341" CreationDate="2013-06-09T23:50:18.460" Score="16" ViewCount="3637" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a Scrum team there is no role of a project manager. Does that mean that project manager jobs will eventually disappear? What is a project manager supposed to do when organization starts to shift over to Scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6317" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-06-10T18:46:52.960" LastActivityDate="2020-06-12T02:15:05.540" Title="Will Project Managers Disappear in a Scrum World?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;career&gt;&lt;roles&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9335" CreationDate="2013-06-10T01:17:14.983" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Probably not. The main job of a PM is to drive all the stakeholders in the same direction, which is sometimes more diplomacy and communication than actually project organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is a methodology to deliver product in accordance with requirements. However, a project is usually not limited to simply delivery a product, it may involve business, communication, strategic planning... aspect in which a PM can still have a real part to play.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a organization using Scrum, PM can shift from technical to more managerial aspect &quot;representing&quot; the project outside of the development team. It may also sometimes merge/collude with some team management job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6316" LastEditorUserId="6300" LastEditDate="2013-06-10T12:32:12.963" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T12:32:12.963" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9335" CreationDate="2013-06-10T10:21:43.870" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with &lt;strong&gt;Valeuf&lt;/strong&gt;; in our organisation the 'scrummaster' role is taken up by the team-leads. But this is only for more maintenance/support/ small changes kind of work (and they are often working more in a Kanban style)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the larger projects often have multiple scrumteams working in parallel, so there remains a lot of project setup work, coordination, budget-follow up, communication with operations teams etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides the list valeuf has proposed, I would definitley add &lt;strong&gt;Risk Management&lt;/strong&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T10:21:43.870" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9338" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9339" CreationDate="2013-06-10T11:37:38.353" Score="3" ViewCount="2113" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my goals for this year is to try to improve the documentation process within the R&amp;amp;D-department. My first step have been to sit down with each developer and talk about documentation in general and how they feel about our current documentation process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The (almost) unanimous response I got was;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I can't find the documentation I'm looking for.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't trust the documentation I find as it is probably outdated&#xA;because nobody updates documents once they are created.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Process? Well we put whatever document we create in the documents&#xA;folder and that folder is a mess...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I miss information related to requirements, design and implementation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Creating documents can be hard. Document templates would help.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is very important that we document what we should do and what we have done!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is terrible! Because this means that whatever documentation that is created is &quot;worthless&quot;. The good thing is that I there is a common urge from the team to actually fix this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a team building activity coming up in two weeks and my manager have given me a few hours for discussions around this topic. The question is - &lt;strong&gt;how would you spend these hours to make sure that you got the best result?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The background to this is that I a while back asked a question on how to resolve the problem of a non-existent pseudo process, &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/8311/how-do-i-improve-the-development-process-when-the-only-spec-is-a-slogan-from&quot;&gt;How do I improve the development process when the only &amp;#39;spec&amp;#39; is a &amp;quot;slogan&amp;quot; from management&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;As a consequence I have started working more on involving the team around the problems that I see. And less of my just keep presenting solutions to problems they haven't really thought about.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5096" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2017-06-15T23:18:18.883" Title="Create team activities that will lead to an improved documentation process" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9338" CreationDate="2013-06-10T13:08:03.260" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds to me like there are three clusters of opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Document templates - How to write a document that supports others&#xA;using the document.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Document search/storage - How to store a document in a way that&#xA;supports others finding the information rather than re-creating it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Documentation procedures - What do we record?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest that #3 is not where you want to invest.  I'd follow CodeGnome's law to come with a solution to #2 (Decide how you want people to search for documentation - what are they looking for, where are they likely to look, etc.  Then design some technology to support that process). I'd come to the meeting with a proposal for that and spend a few minutes vetting the proposal.  That could range from a search appliance to some kind of a website.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I'd shift to document templates. Once I know where to find the documentation, I want to make it as easy as possible to draft documentation to fill real needs.  The document template is going to have to support search, retrieval and trust.  That means documents probably won't be structured as old style reams of paper, but should include things like &quot;When was this last reviewed?&quot; and &quot;If I don't understand this, who should I contact?&quot;  I'd probably come up with an draft/trial baloon outline for one or two types of documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your corporate culture, the size/cohesion of your team(s) and the intangibles of the team build, I'd brief the suggestions, then break into small groups and design a couple of document templates, brief them to the group.  Then I'd try to get people to promise to develop specific documents based on those templates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T13:08:03.260" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9318" CreationDate="2013-06-10T13:11:38.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;CodeGnome's answer for this is excellent.  The only thing I'd add is to have a look at the teams velocity for an indication of what is happening.  Because velocity is well defined in Scrum and easy to measure, it provides a non-contentious start for conversation which can be handy when there is a perception of a low trust environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bearing in mind that velocity is the average story points for &lt;strong&gt;completed&lt;/strong&gt; stories in the last few sprints, I'd start by asking: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are you including partially completed stories in your velocity?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, stop!  If possible, go back over previous sprints and recalculate velocity without including partially completed stories to get your real velocity and use that for future commitment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is velocity trending down or staying fairly consistent?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's staying consistent it's an indication that you're over committing and you should look at what is driving that behavior.  If we did 10 points last week, 10 the week before and 10 the week before that, why did we think we'd do 20 this week?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience downward trending velocity is usually an indication of technical complexity slowing the team down over time or the team feeling under pressure to under-estimate stories but your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T13:11:38.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9335" CreationDate="2013-06-10T14:21:49.783" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Project Management role grew from needs to coordinate in the traditional environments. If the title sticks around, the role still has to change. I've seen PMs take on higher level coordination, become a PO, become a SM or design a new role altogether. This is all depending on your organization, quality of agile adoption and access to coaching. If not thought put carefully you can create duplicated work and unnecessary role confusion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A year ago I put together a graphic to help some other PMPs with the discussion. Maybe it will also bring you some clarity. This in no way is an exhaustive list or view, just an illustration of how some responsibilities might shift and the importance of understanding how people share roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120611060829/http://www.skipstoneconsulting.com/index.php/blog/8-blog/2-moving-away-from-titles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Blog Post - Moving Away From Titles or &quot;What Happens to to Project Managers in an Agile Transition&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9ySEM.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-11T12:27:31.167" LastActivityDate="2020-06-11T12:27:31.167" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9335" CreationDate="2013-06-10T18:42:41.193" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to be relevant in the agile world, update your skills. If you want to stay with traditional methodologies, target the right job sectors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Project Management in the Market&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does it mean that the project manager job eventually will disappear?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not in the foreseeable future. Project management as a career will be around as long as there are valid business cases for the role. Traditional project management will likely be around for a long time in the manufacturing, construction, and government sectors, and anywhere that modern agile practices are not a good fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile methodologies are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; restricted to IT projects, but in my personal experience I have seen limited uptake in other types of business units. Your mileage may certainly vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Avoid Obsolescence&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is a project manager supposed to do when organization starts to shift over to Scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to be the real heart of your question. You appear to be asking what you should do to prevent your current career path from becoming obsolete. The answer is really no different than any other career in an information economy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maintain market relevance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Continually improve your skill set.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shift your career goals based on your abilities and market demand.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your current market segment is &quot;going agile,&quot; then educate yourself about agile methodologies and update your skills. If you can't or won't do that, then you'll likely have to shift your career focus towards market segments where traditional project management practices and career progressions remain relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Arguing from analogy, people still make money doing COBOL programming. It's a niche market, but it &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.itworldcanada.com/news/programmings-second-oldest-profession/144636&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;hasn't died out&lt;/a&gt; the way everyone predicted. Even if some new project control hotness comes along in the future that makes both traditional and agile methodologies look old-school, there will likely be areas where those methodologies still apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Personal Choice&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, there are careers to be made in both the agile and traditional project management camps. Which one is best &lt;em&gt;for you&lt;/em&gt; is a personal choice; there's no canonical answer that applies to everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll let you know which career track is the &quot;best&quot; choice when my crystal ball starts working again, or when the future gets around to becoming the present. In the meantime, good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T18:42:41.193" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9212" CreationDate="2013-06-10T19:31:50.190" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do I need to come by once a day and check-up on their status&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be with your team&lt;/strong&gt; as much as possible. This is the best way to build the trust in the team, observe the status, discover issues and help in solving them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend an article which talks about this: &lt;a href=&quot;http://brodzinski.com/2013/01/flying-office.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Flying office - by Paweł Brodziński&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6324" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T19:31:50.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9344" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-11T07:55:58.320" Score="0" ViewCount="174" Body="&lt;p&gt;A big hurdle when you move your organisation from a component team to a feature team is the delivery process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feature teams all code in all components, using branches. Then we live a branch hell. We don't know how and when to deliver and release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;QA and ops team can play a role of regulator, at the end of the chain. As do Feature POs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you organise your deliveries in a feature team organisation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4300" LastEditorUserId="4300" LastEditDate="2013-06-12T13:15:21.880" LastActivityDate="2013-06-12T13:15:21.880" Title="Who is Best Suited to Guide the Delivery Process in a Feature Team set-up: QA, Ops Team or Feature PO?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9344" CreationDate="2013-06-11T16:13:03.847" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tool chains and procedural details are not relevant from the project management perspective. However, the underlying question of how to do continuous delivery within a given framework is certainly relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short version is that your team must define &quot;continuous&quot; within your organizational context. Once defined, the team must perform all development and integration tasks at a sufficiently granular level to deploy releasable increments at whatever interval you've defined as &quot;continuously.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Continuous Delivery Requires Continuous Integration&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Continuous delivery is basically a rolling-release process, and making a rolling-release project successful usually requires continuous integration. The specifics of how your team &lt;em&gt;implements&lt;/em&gt; continuous integration (CI) is really a technical issue, and largely outside the scope of project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my personal Scrum implementation experience, the keys to successful continuous integration within the project are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensuring that all features have an explicit integration task on the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Including integration of the feature into the CI branch in the &quot;definition of done.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sizing features at no more than 4-12 ideal hours to complete. Among other benefits, this avoids long-lived feature branches as a source of integration pain.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Migrating completed features to a release branch and/or tagging the release at the end of each sprint. This should also be an explicit story on the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Continuous Delivery&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Continuous delivery means different things in different organizations. I often find that rolling releases based on iterations are sufficiently granular for most projects, but your mileage may vary. Tying deployable increments to a specific Sprint Goal makes it easier to identify the milestones in the project, which is often important even with rolling releases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, Scrum projects succeed most with this model when:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deployment and roll-backs from a blessed branch are explicit user stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testing and deployment are highly automated, but the processes are fully visible and transparent to the entire cross-functional Scrum Team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The CI and deployment infrastructure provide sufficient project management artifacts to radiate information about the state of the project at all times.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shorter sprint lengths are used in order to minimize the complexity of release-level integration tasks. This has definite trade-offs in project overhead and story sizing, but is an extremely useful technique for continuous delivery.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's certainly possible to build processes around truly continuous delivery, where every push that passes continuous integration is immediately deployed. However, this requires an extremely high level of automation and feature decomposition, and is usually overkill for most projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a project management perspective, the most important thing is to make sure your entire organization is clear on the accepted definition of &quot;continuous&quot; for your project. In addition, it's a good idea to educate stakeholders (especially the Product Owner) on the trade-offs involved in your process, including costs, cycle time, and team capacity as they relate to the agreed-upon interval.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-06-11T16:13:03.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9338" CreationDate="2013-06-11T17:05:44.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;One Way to Use Team-Building Time&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[H]ow would you spend these hours to make sure that you got the best [documentation process] result?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not use a limited time window like that to come up with solutions. You should be iteratively improving process using mechanisms like Sprint Retrospectives (or your framework's equivalent) for that instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would do is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Document your documentation process.&lt;/strong&gt; Whatever your team says it does, effective or not, document it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Develop a new process.&lt;/strong&gt; Whatever your team says will solve the identified problems identified, and that they are on-board with implementing, make sure that's documented in an accessible way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use your team-building time to practice the new process.&lt;/strong&gt; Come up with some small practice samples, and work with your team during that set-aside time to familiarize them with the new process, give them a chance to practice it as a team on something that isn't business critical, and iron out (or at least capture) any emergent issues with the new process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Some Implementation Suggestions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Agile Manifesto recommends &quot;[w]orking software over comprehensive documentation,&quot; but that doesn't mean documentation isn't important. Assuming yours is an IT project, and without knowing the specifics of it, I'd offer the following suggestions if your team doesn't have any solutions of its own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Refactor for clarity.&lt;/strong&gt; Clear code and intuitive user interfaces require less documentation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Leverage TDD/BDD for documentation.&lt;/strong&gt; Great unit or integration tests act as functional documentation for a project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use documentation-generating tools like &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/rdoc/rdoc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;RDoc&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt; Generate documentation directly from source code and comments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Agree on, and implement, coding and commenting standards.&lt;/strong&gt; Another way to reduce the need to treat documentation as a secondary activity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make documentation part of your &quot;definition of done.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; If it's not done until it's documented, it will be baked into your process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, if your R&amp;amp;D isn't software, some of these suggestions may not directly apply to you. However, the overall goals of automating as much of the documentation process as possible and making documentation a first-class, pervasive activity instead of an afterthought will make everyone's life easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A self-documenting project is ideal. Even when that's not possible, adding a technical writer to a cross-functional team and making documentation an explicit part of the team's process should go a long way towards improving matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-06-11T17:05:44.563" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9338" CreationDate="2013-06-12T08:45:11.950" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have got an awful suggestion on spending your team-building time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Actually make each team member write docs&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's it, no powerpoint presentations, no reports, no dancing around the fire, no beating around the bush.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Oh, and leave some time to check what they have done&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By allowing most of the team slack off in their chairs while you do the &amp;quot;team building&amp;quot; you simply waste time. The mountain of technical debt is unlikely to get smaller by incantations, there's only one thing that can make it shrink - actual work. Your sessions with the devs showed that everybody was eager to put blame on others - this is a dangerous pattern and should be avoided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4766" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2013-06-12T08:45:11.950" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3461" CreationDate="2013-06-12T09:32:35.743" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMBOK Guide 5th Edition is released now. Even though new edition of the book is out, PMI is still following the PMBOK Guide 4th edition for the PMP exam until July 31, 2013. All PMP training and study guide providers are in the process of updating their materials for upcoming change. If you are preparing now, make sure you take the exam BEFORE July 31. If not, plan on taking it after August. Because, August will be the month when the new version of the book will be used for the exam and you won;t have enough training and support materials for your preparation. Use the month of August to find some lessons learned etc which will allow you to better prepare for the exam. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6338" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2013-06-12T16:46:35.113" LastActivityDate="2013-06-12T16:46:35.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9106" CreationDate="2013-06-12T10:34:57.780" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 35 Contact Hours should be earned through formal trainings. If you have taken project management specific courses from universities they may be eligible. Since PMP has become very popular credential there are many training providers that offer trainings targeted towards earning these 35 contact hours as well as passing the PMP exam. This means these trainings are based on PMBOK Guide which is the reference book for PMP exam. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is strongly recommended that you take these trainings from Registered Education Providers( REPs). The training content from these providers are evaluated and reviewed by the PMI and hence they are authentic. The good thing is that there are few good online/multimedia based trainings available now. The are convenient and cost effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6338" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2013-06-12T16:44:28.553" LastActivityDate="2013-06-12T16:44:28.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9008" CreationDate="2013-06-12T17:44:44.483" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Now it is a bit too late to take the PMP exam with PMBOK Guide 4th edition, unless you have already started preparing well for the exam. In general it takes about two months of intense preparation to appear for the exam. Moreover, if at all you schedule it between now and end of July, you will have no chance to postpone it without switching to new PMBOK Guide. On the other hand it is not recommended to take the exam right after the switchover either. So avoid August 2013. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6340" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2013-06-12T18:19:37.920" LastActivityDate="2013-06-12T18:19:37.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3461" CreationDate="2013-06-13T10:45:30.447" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A bit late for the original asker, but others might find the following useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is my 'proven' method (8 or 12 weeks), which I have applied several times, once for myself and as a study coach for others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Requirements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The PMBOK edition you're going to take the exam on&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rita Mulcahy's PMP studybook (or any other, but I found this the best one, by far)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some more example questions, preferably listed by PMBOK chapter. You can search around on the net, but they're often the same and of poor quality. There used to be a PMI question book available - its cheap if you divide the costs among participants. Even cheaper if the company pays :-)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a bunch of enthousiastic students&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(optional) a friendly PMP, at least one who remembers the book or who wants to dig into it again (to give him a reason to check out the latest version, for instance.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All participants study (or at least read) one or more PMBOK chapters each week, and the appropriate sections in Rita's book. The study-group comes together each week for 1,5 to 2,5 hours&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For each chapter (except 1, 2 en 3), you have&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;30 min Q&amp;amp;A&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;20 min test-questions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;20 min review &amp;amp; discussion of answers/results&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A possible schedule could look like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Week 1: Introduction PMBOK and PMP exam; how to apply, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Week 2: Chapters 1, 2 en 3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Week 3: Integration &amp;amp; Scope&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Week 4: Time &amp;amp; Cost&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Week 5: Quality &amp;amp; HR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Week 6: Risk&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Week 7: Procurement &amp;amp; Communication&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Week 8: General review &amp;amp; practice exam&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also follow a 12 week schedule like I did: each week one chapter (except for 1,2 &amp;amp; 3); after the Q&amp;amp;A, test and review time, the friendly PMP could give an intro on the next chapter (it helps when you hear it before reading the material). Ofcourse, this is also possible with the 8-week schedule, but then you'll get long sessions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some final notes on new PMBOK versions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure to register for the exam when you start, because the slots just before the &amp;quot;exam-switch&amp;quot; to the new version, tend to fill up pretty quickly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be careful with ordering study and example question books around the time of the version switch; they often claim on the cover they're adapted to the latest version, while they're still the previous book inside and you have to download an addtional paper with 'changes' ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2013-06-13T10:45:30.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9355" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-13T16:53:21.957" Score="4" ViewCount="383" Body="&lt;p&gt;Background - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work for a ~100 person sized genetics company that is newly owned by an ~8000+ person corporation. Over the last 2 years I've been our software development project manager and have learned how to do this job and the best practices based purely on experience I've gained here, my own mistakes, books, blogs, webinars, etc. No &quot;formal&quot; training; but I have a MS in Biochem so for whatever reason I was seen as a good fit for this role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently we've had a couple of our staff members (laboratory staff not part of a PM dept) attend a 2-week corporate sponsored green belt training program for their own personal development. Now these folks have returned and they have a project to complete and have all these green belt tools ready to use. One of the projects is focused on our in-house lab software that is really quite a small change. If I were gathering requirements I would not plan on taking more than 1 month. However, through the use of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMAIC&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DMAIC&lt;/a&gt; model, my colleague has managed to make this small software change take 4 months and countless meetings, and we're only just starting the Analyze step. I'm sitting back, watching this happen and just baffled about the seemingly convoluted process. (Not to mention I'm somewhat...confused about why someone else is doing my job.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the crux of my question is - Can anyone speak to the utility of green belt techniques for small or medium sized software projects? Based on my experience and common sense this seems like a much too powerful tool for the project at hand. But without any real experience with green belt training myself, and only a couple years of software PM experience, I'm apprehensive to say 'THIS IS GARBAGE!!' to my senior management (who of course thinks green belt is great because corporate does it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6349" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2013-06-14T10:59:04.783" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T00:06:56.497" Title="How useful are Green Belt techniques in medium/small software projects?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9355" CreationDate="2013-06-13T20:00:48.487" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Welcome to PMSE! All depends on what you want out of it.  Often, the benefits of approaches like six sigma are seen in better governance and the development of repeatable workflows. It may not translate into faster and cheaper software development in the near term. But it has benefits for corporate stakeholders. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2013-06-13T20:00:48.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9358" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9361" CreationDate="2013-06-13T20:21:09.397" Score="3" ViewCount="10484" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a project that has 4 team members in the plan:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 developers @ 8 hours per day&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 developers @ 4 hours per day&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I configure that two of those dev can only work 4 hours per day but the other two can work 8 hours per day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Also note&lt;/strong&gt;: all 4 can do work each day, so I can't simply combine the two 1/2-time devs into a 3rd full-time dev. I need the concurrency of tasks when I auto-schedule&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6351" LastActivityDate="2015-01-28T14:08:55.723" Title="Indicate max hours per day per resource in MS Project Plan" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9359" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-13T22:21:54.593" Score="4" ViewCount="18769" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should the product owner take part in estimating user stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, in our team not all developer familiar with every part of the system. Client and server side is a usual separation. GUI guys are not too familiar the server side code and vice versa. Should the GUI guys estimate server side stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that specialization is more or less against Scrum but we've just started using it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6352" LastActivityDate="2013-06-14T09:57:28.140" Title="Who should estimate user stories?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9359" CreationDate="2013-06-14T02:20:47.553" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The entire team needs to be present during Sprint Planning. This includes the Product Owner. However, only the Development Team actually estimates the user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Sprint Planning&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprint Planning is where the bulk of Scrum estimation is performed. While the Product Owner doesn't actually participate in the estimation itself (e.g. he doesn't get to vote during Planning Poker), he is part of the estimation &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; so that he can answer questions about the stories being estimated, help the team refactor stories, or adjust the Product Backlog priorities in real-time during the planning session.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Who Should Estimate&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The entire development team needs to participate in the estimation process, even on stories where they will be playing a secondary role. The reason is two-fold:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Everyone has a role to play in a well-written story.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A client-side story still needs data from the server side, and vice-versa. A programming story needs testing, documentation, and deployment. A story that doesn't involve most of the team is often a project smell that you have the wrong team in place, don't have a cross-functional team, or have a flawed user story.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A consensus estimate is usually more accurate.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By ensuring the whole team is involved in the estimate, everyone's skills can be brought to bear. Will your server-side programmers always know what their API changes will do to the client-side? How much technical writing will be involved in this new feature? Are there any required changes to the testing infrastructure that the QA guys need to implement to test this new feature?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Making sure that the whole team &lt;em&gt;agrees&lt;/em&gt; to an estimate means that all eyes have been put on the task, and that the entire spectrum of team skills are in play. Tasks can still be mis-estimated, but you should find that you have fewer unforseen problems that could have been avoided by having the right people look at it during Spring Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, part of Sprint Planning is to decompose stories into tasks for the Sprint Backlog, and add additional tasks to ensure that the user stories meet the &quot;definition of done.&quot; You are more likely to get this right when all the players are involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Necessity of a Whole-Team Approach&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The holistic approach to estimating and delivering features is the cornerstone of agile techniques. Whole-team estimation keeps the project planning process transparent and visible to everyone, increases intra-team communication and buy-in, and is essential to the Scrum process. If you aren't taking a holistic approach, I'd argue that the &lt;em&gt;essence&lt;/em&gt; of the methodology has been lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-06-14T02:20:47.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9358" CreationDate="2013-06-14T07:31:26.430" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In MS Project, first list down all your resources and their allocations. This can be done from &lt;strong&gt;View &gt; Resource Sheet&lt;/strong&gt; screen, for example like the screenshot given below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JANxq.png&quot; alt=&quot;MS Project Resource Sheet&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then assign tasks to the resources, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1FelK.png&quot; alt=&quot;MS Project Tasks&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MS Project will automatically display that the resource is 50%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that in the sample, Dev4 has been assigned 2 overlapping tasks. This means overallocation which is displayed in red color on the Resource Usage screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9TOHv.png&quot; alt=&quot;MS Project Resource Usage&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this will be of some help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2013-06-14T07:31:26.430" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9359" CreationDate="2013-06-14T09:57:28.140" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have just started using Scrum then it will take some time for the team to adjust. In the meanwhile, make sure that you improve upon two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Making good user stories (focus on vertical slicing)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do relative sizing of stories (instead of 'code writing' time estimation)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good user stories are written so that each one has a vertical thin slice of the system that you are building. A vertical slice would include some work from the following components (if applicable):  client side, server side, architecture, database, web service, testing, etc. This will reduce the problem of estimating server-side code by client-side team members and vice versa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relative sizing of stories require that all users stories are assigned &lt;em&gt;story points&lt;/em&gt; based on the effort required to complete each story as compared to the other stories in the backlog. Required effort would include the story size, complexity, doubt factor. This will minimize the problem of knowing how much time will be required to complete a server-side component vs. client side because the whole time can equally judge if Story A requires more effort compared to Story B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to your first question, product owner should participate in the estimation exercise to explain the stories and answer any questions from the team but the PO should not estimate the stories because he/she is not responsible to complete and deliver the story (the team is responsible).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2013-06-14T09:57:28.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9355" CreationDate="2013-06-14T10:58:36.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;welcome to PMSE! Great to see around managers from outside IT industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe the word here is &lt;strong&gt;tailoring&lt;/strong&gt;. It's not something exclusive for a green belt techniques in a ~100 company, it also applies to apply every PMBoK rule in a project with 5 people or manage a project with a paper notebook to build up a space shuttle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Methodologies are supposed to help, are means to a goal. When they provide more harm than benefit (as it seems to be the case), they should be reviewed and... tailored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want some sound arguments to use on this discussion, I believe the project tailoring is mentioned on the early chapters of PMBoK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2013-06-14T10:58:36.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="566" CreationDate="2013-06-14T11:13:55.433" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Put systems in place to automate as much as possible. &#xA;SYSTEM stands for Saving You Stress Time Energy and Money...&#xA;This answer is hard at the start (because you have no time to do it!), but its the only real long term solution I think. Without systems, everything relies you being a superstar which can be exhausting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep analysing what is taking up most of your time and asking yourself &quot;How can I systemise and/or automate this task and then delegate/outsource it out (to either another person or a machine)&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The simplest way to systemise is just document the ideal process/procedure for each task - a step by step document - thats the most basic type of system and in some ways the easiest.&#xA;Then of course, there are also technology systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Constantly building out your own personal Systems &amp;amp; procedures is critical - this issue is part of why companies have procedures. It will address this problem, but hard at the start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at books like &quot;The Four Hour work week&quot; by Timothy Ferriss and &quot;Instant Systems&quot; by Brad Sugars also deal with how to develop systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4574" LastActivityDate="2013-06-14T11:13:55.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9366" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9369" CreationDate="2013-06-15T02:04:13.307" Score="5" ViewCount="611" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my work we have a single project manager on site. We have several concurrently running projects split between a couple of dozen developers, and we also have several developer teams overseas who work on the same projects. Each project involves several cross-functional areas within our office, as well as cooperation with the overseas teams and several third party suppliers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what (admittedly little) I've read up online about the role of a Project Manager, it seems to me that they are meant to coordinate the project across teams, work to remove blockages, identify and act on risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me though, that our project manager only has a vague technical understanding of what we're doing and the cross-team collaboration, including pushing other teams to meet deadlines, often falls to me (I'm a team leader). He keeps track of our tasks at a very high level: we break down the project into tasks with estimates, we update our progress regularly, and he aggregates this information onto a graph. It does not seem to me that he understands what each task is. When he talks to us about these tasks it is basically a &quot;how much time do you have left on this task&quot; sort of conversation. And he just takes our word on it (which is fine with me, but possibly a problem when you just take the word of an overseas site that wants to make their figures look good).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no concept of linking our developer tasks to what QA is doing. While we try to push for agile within our team, QA follows a waterfall model, and starts after our feature work is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The act of working out potential bottlenecks, and coordinating cross-site tasks that are inter-related falls to us. We (developers) often have to push third party vendors or overseas sites for delivery dates. I think we're doing a good job at that, but to be honest I'm a technical person and I would rather be doing more technical work and focusing on my own team rather than looking at project spreadsheets, writing emails and having phone calls about other people's deadlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like I should raise this with my management, or push back a bit when they ask me to do certain things, but I'm just not entirely sure whether my assumptions about what a project manager is meant to do are right. I haven't worked in very many software organisations, so I'm still relatively new to the org structure of a mid-sized company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice? Or maybe someone can point me to some page that outlines the different roles within a typical company clearly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6364" OwnerDisplayName="kay" LastActivityDate="2013-06-15T15:20:25.833" Title="Role of a project manager" Tags="&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9366" CreationDate="2013-06-15T05:14:42.710" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've definitely met project managers whose main job was just to produce analytics (graphs, etc.) for higher-level management so they could quickly get an idea of how development projects are progressing, etc. Usually these project managers work at large companies where there are other project managers with other tasks. From what it sounds like, this is what your project manager mostly does. I'm a bit surprised to hear that he's only producing analytics when he's the only project manager there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would definitely say you should raise the issue with management, but you shouldn't necessarily &quot;blame&quot; the project manager for not managing cross-team communication, or dealing with third parties, etc. because he may not have been told to do that. It might be better just to ask for &lt;em&gt;someone&lt;/em&gt; to deal with that kind of thing so that developers can focus on developing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6361" LastActivityDate="2013-06-15T05:14:42.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9366" CreationDate="2013-06-15T09:23:49.937" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds to me as though you do have several project managers in the company - just that they don't have that as their job titles. These are the people who break down the tasks into activities, prepare the plans, update progress, working across sites, and liaising with vendors, etc. The person with the title of &quot;Project Manager&quot; is really fulfilling the role of either a Programme Manager or a project administrator, depending on the level of direction and authority that he has.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The culture of your organisation will indicate whether you can ask to be treated as  / paid as / recognised as a project manager. If that's not what you want, though, you do need to raise it with someone - and that &quot;someone&quot; may even be the other PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2013-06-15T09:23:49.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9366" CreationDate="2013-06-15T10:51:30.473" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The breakdown of PMs in a large project is just like the WBS, where PMs at the lower level are involved with more of the technical with some management and admin and where PMs at the higher levels are less involved with the technical and more in management and admin.  A project team that is well designed would have those roles and responsibilities, and the boundaries of each level PM, well articulated.  Whether or not the lower level PMs have the title project manager is inconsequential.  Team leads, control account managers, assistant PM, whatever.  The important thing is to understand who is doing what to whom and where and when and how that what occurs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I am reading in your draft evidence of role boundary ambiguity and roles and responsibilities confusion.  I'd raise that to management so you can design the organization with a bit more rigor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The piece your PM is focused on is hugely important.  Don't downplay the analytics of PM because, without it, you won't sell the next piece of work and the money will stop flowing.  It sounds like something is missing in the middle between the PM and you; the span of control throughout your organization is ill defined, perhaps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-06-15T10:51:30.473" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9366" CreationDate="2013-06-15T15:20:25.833" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess the role of project manager, team lead needs to be defined properly by the management. Even though he is a project manager I see him operating as a Program Manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6362" LastActivityDate="2013-06-15T15:20:25.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9371" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-15T15:26:27.777" Score="-4" ViewCount="155" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a project manager with a software development background assigned as a project manager for an IT infrastructure project company, what should be done first? Let me know your innovative ideas  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6362" LastEditorUserId="6362" LastEditDate="2013-06-15T15:34:40.120" LastActivityDate="2013-06-15T19:55:17.963" Title="New in an IT infrastructure project company - what to do first?" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-06-16T08:53:49.663" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9371" CreationDate="2013-06-15T19:55:17.963" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing to do on any project is to define finish.  If this is unknown, like for projects where you are building something new, including research and development, then define the finish of the first phase.  Everything builds off of finish: scope statement and WBS, project charters, plans, schedules, and on and on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-06-15T19:55:17.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9373" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9374" CreationDate="2013-06-16T21:36:52.340" Score="2" ViewCount="620" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are starting a Sprint today, first day of a 3-week Sprint. Our requirements from the client are still evolving, so remaining hours are estimated on some unclear values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should a deviation in overall design be managed in Scrum? For example, a requirement covered in this Sprint changes drastically, causing the Sprint to land up days behind schedule. Are we still committed to all the work, or do Sprint items get moved out to accommodate the change?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6367" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-06-20T00:52:17.557" LastActivityDate="2013-06-20T01:08:50.130" Title="How should a drastic deviation in overall design be managed in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9373" CreationDate="2013-06-17T01:23:51.153" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;it sounds like you are unable to estimate prior to sprint planning or in sprint planning due to the large ambiguity of the requirement.  You thus have one of two choices&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Recognize the fact that the requirements are so ambiguous and that they are impossible to estimate.  Thus the team will resolve these as they move along each sprint.  i.e. stop estimating and get the team/product owner/business to always focus on building the next highest valued item.  The team exists, there is work to do,  the next highest value PBI is know and the team is trusted to do their best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) As a team push back in sprint review, telling the PO that the requirement is too ambiguous to work on and he/she should start doing his/her job properly.  That is to keep the backlog in a healthy state where the requirements for the next sprint are clear, unambiguous for the team.  As a team simply state the fact that you are unable to estimate it due to the ambiguity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not the teams responsibility to make sure the requirements are clear, but that of the product owner.  Second, its not the teams risk to take on work and be held accountable if the work is ambiguous.  As the PO/Business how they are going to mitigate against the likely risk that the team is going to incorrectly estimate the requirement due to ambiguity, vagueness; and clearly state the team cannot be held accountable for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5634" LastActivityDate="2013-06-17T01:23:51.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9375" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9386" CreationDate="2013-06-17T07:06:17.750" Score="0" ViewCount="345" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a web designer/developer and I take some projects from individual clients that include the whole construction procedure of a website. That includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;planning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;wireframing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;communication with client&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;development&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;administration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even If the project is very limited, for example, someone wants me to create his small company presentation on the internet on a CMS with some news, a contact form etc., I struggle to keep up with the project. I do not know where to start or where to finish off and finally I always do 50% more work that I was intended to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am an extremely organised person but I want to follow professional guidelines to plan and keep up with the progress of a small project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5098" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-06-17T18:43:39.127" LastActivityDate="2013-06-17T18:43:39.127" Title="How do you professionally manage the whole procedure of a small web project?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;scope&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9376" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9380" CreationDate="2013-06-17T09:14:01.620" Score="-2" ViewCount="227" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to thank StackExchange - Project Management group for providing me with full support and guidance to move forward in my career path. I'm now a Project Manager and a Junior web and software developer. I'm working as a freelancer for about a month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm currently working on a software and a website. The project is small in nature (for a start), and so I've chosen Agile methodology. I develop prototypes with my partner and provide a weekly status meeting to the client (who is also an analyst).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm having conflicts with my partner because he is very immature and irresponsible. Also, his development skills are very primitive. The output produced doesn't actually satisfy me at all. And I cannot present a prototype that doesn't meet the required quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to that, I'm having trouble managing the project. He rarely obeys my advises. Also, during requirement analysis and design, he doesn't pay attention and he relies fully on me. He expects me to write the summary for him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then when I deny with a strong reason that &quot;Why didn't you question the client when you didn't understand/missed out,&quot; he comments that I'm showing attitude towards work and I want to acquire the most percentage of share.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically the team annexure is stated based on the work effort produced to bring out the quality of the deliverable. He thinks that I want more work so that I get the most share. I've discussed this matter with him that it's not true, but he doesn't listen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's very difficult for me to handle these problems. How do I make him understand? I'm very annoyed and fed up with his childish behavior. Sometimes I feel like quitting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4661" LastActivityDate="2013-06-17T12:36:06.970" Title="Agile team management strategy for small projects" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2013-07-22T22:03:26.367" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9377" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9384" CreationDate="2013-06-17T10:59:07.227" Score="17" ViewCount="13084" Body="&lt;p&gt;My original question was raised here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/8611/in-scrum-how-to-estimate-research-stories&quot;&gt;In Scrum, how to estimate research stories?&lt;/a&gt; and as suggested by @CodeGnome I created a separate question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion Spikes should be time-boxed as there is often a lure for &quot;additional 5 minutes&quot; that programmer thinks are enough to complete the research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my concern is: how do you timebox spikes using story points? The concept behind story points I know is that they should not be related to time, rather mix of effort and task complexity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(side note: I believe that once you start using story points to hours conversion then you'd better start using hours. You will save some time of your team doing the math on planning meeting)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how should I handle it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-12-30T08:59:37.987" LastActivityDate="2019-12-30T08:59:37.987" Title="How to timebox Spikes using story points?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;spike&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9377" CreationDate="2013-06-17T11:21:11.170" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, the answer is &lt;strong&gt;don't&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have done two kinds of spikes so far:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spikes outside of a sprint&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;These are easily time-boxed in hours/days (in units of &lt;em&gt;time&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spikes within a sprint&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;this, again, breaks down into two sections:&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The people working in the spike don't work on anything else in the sprint&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;this is easily time-boxed in units of &lt;em&gt;time&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The people working in the spike also burn down story points working on stories&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there is no easy solution here.  We try to avoid this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the bottom line is, we have never seen any value in estimating spikes in story points.  The nature of the work is completely different so the story points aren't calibrated for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6294" LastActivityDate="2013-06-17T11:21:11.170" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9377" CreationDate="2013-06-17T11:28:28.843" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the spike/research is necessary to enable completion of a user story it should just be estimated in the same way as you would any other sub-task. If you normally break user stories down into tasks that are measured in ideal hours then the spike simply beccomes one of these tasks e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task 1: Research task&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task 2: Technical task 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task 3: Technical task 2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc. etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This won't affect your velocity since the work is required to complete the story. Your velocity shows how many story points you can complete in an iteration. If completing research tasks is necessary for the completion of each user story and you &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; estimate it as part of the story then you're going to damage your velocity anyway. This damage will probably be more adverse than you might think because you'll lose the points for the entire story if it's not completed because you failed to account for the research work. If, instead, you had estimated it correctly you might have realised that it wouldn't fit in the iteration and might have chosen a smaller story instead which would give you a net velocity gain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may find that the output of the spike means you have to re-estimate other tasks or stories but that's not actually a huge deal. No matter what you're working on this might happen - UI's become more difficult to code than expected, a weird legacy system makes everything else break etc. The point is that if you don't include it as a task, you're setting yourself up for a fall. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2013-06-17T11:28:28.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9376" CreationDate="2013-06-17T12:25:45.203" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This still seems like a better fit for workplace.stackexchange.com but in the interests of helping you out I think the answer is pretty simple - learn what you can from this experience and then move on. You probably aren't going to change this person through PM alone. But you could try some of these approaches first:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the person you are having trouble with has a line manager then you&#xA;may need to talk to them about performance. If their work is no good&#xA;that's a major problem. Maybe they need more training or maybe the&#xA;company has taken on a project that it simply can't deliver with the&#xA;skills it currently has available.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clarify what is expected of you as a PM with management. Is it your job to collect requirements? Are you meant to be scheduling work for your colleague? You need to be clear on where lines of authority and responsibility lie.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clarify who is responsible for quality control. Is it just you who isn't happy with the quality or is it the client? If it's the client then that's a big problem. If it's just you then you can still push for quality improvements but only if you can agree who is responsible for setting standards.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spend some time explaining the benefits of agile to your colleague and other internal stakeholders. If it's an approach they are unfamiliar with then this might be part of the problem. If they're more used to a command and control style of management the personal responsibility element of agile may actually be quite intimidating.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2013-06-17T12:25:45.203" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9376" CreationDate="2013-06-17T12:36:06.970" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend to use SCRUM methodology with small sprints (like 10 working days) for make possible review the working progress by Product Owner soon as possible and mature the team with daily meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find a QA Analist for test the product before the sprint retrospective and find the bugs and issues caused by your partner. You also can turn someone, but not the involved developers, as QA Analists for your project. Measure time for tests and bug corrections before the final of the sprint.&#xA;At &quot;lessons learned&quot; meeting, at sprint retrospective part, is important to collect tangible activities for help define patterns and other stuff to make the others take care about the results in the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learn about &quot;dialectic&quot; for know how to talk to the problematic people without create bad conflicts, it will help you to understand their problems and them start to help them with that behavior problems. You will need to know how to ask questions to make your partner understand that his behaviour is not good, even though you know that it is not, you will need to make him understand by himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5304" LastActivityDate="2013-06-17T12:36:06.970" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9375" CreationDate="2013-06-17T12:48:32.360" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Frustrating as it is you probably won't find a useful step-by-step guide that exactly meets your needs (I know this because when I first started out in PM I also wanted to find one). The truth is that every project is different and you will need to adapt your methodology to meets its needs. For example, whether you design, wireframe or develop first will be determined by a number of factors: what does the client want/need; how much time is available to complete the work; how complex is the project; how much uncertainty exists in the project etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to analyse an upcoming project and document what feels like an appropriate and workable project management methodology to achieve it. The five process groups from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Guide_to_the_Project_Management_Body_of_Knowledge#Contents&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMBOK&lt;/a&gt; are a useful guide to &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; your methodology needs to cover though the &lt;em&gt;way&lt;/em&gt; you do it (given the scale we seem to be discussing) will probably be quite different. There's lots of advice on approaches to managing one-person projects elsewhere on PMSE that you will probably find useful. The best thing to do is give one methodology a try and stick with it for the duration of the project (unless it's going &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; badly of course!). If, at the end, it didn't work then change or adapt it for the next project. I assure you that this is how most PMs actually built their knowledge and skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some specific advice&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're consistently doing more work than expected then you need to think about how you manage scope. If you document what is going to be delivered (as functional requirements, users stories or whatever) and get the client to sign off on this then you've got your scope sorted. If the client then wants to change that scope (by adding more features etc.) then you can agree on additional schedule or resource costs as appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't know where to start with the work itself then a good thing to do is to ask the client what they expect. Do they want to see designs first or are they more interested in a working prototype? Be realistic about what's achievable in a given period of time and agree how sign-off will work (how many rounds of amendments you'll make etc.) These kind of agreements are a fundamental part of the project &lt;em&gt;initiation&lt;/em&gt; and should provide guidance to both you and the client on how the project will be managed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2013-06-17T12:48:32.360" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9175" CreationDate="2013-06-17T17:24:04.150" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;They're not user stories. Users are just one type of stakeholder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider CAPTCHA boxes as an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want to fill in a CAPTCHA box&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that... wait, what? No I don't!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not done for the benefit of the user. There's a moderator of the site somewhere who needs this so that he doesn't have to manually wade through a ton of spam. Similarly, some requirements are there for security, or for legal reasons, or auditors, or advertisers, or for performance, or for another 3rd party system, or because the legacy system we're talking to is a pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I disagree with Kyle. It's sometimes about users, but often about stakeholders whose goals need to be met for the users to get anything. Internal projects are almost always about delivering benefit to &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; users and stakeholders. I've been calling them &lt;a href=&quot;http://lizkeogh.com/2010/02/02/theyre-not-user-stories/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Stakeholder Stories&quot;&lt;/a&gt; for a while (even though they're not stories) and have found that this term helps teams recognize who the real stakeholders are. They usually end up just referring to them as &quot;stories&quot;, which is fine by me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, the pretence that stories should be focused on users tends to result in other stakeholders' needs being pushed back, or treated only as &quot;Technical Stories&quot; which then have to be delivered alongside others as 2nd class citizens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thinking about the business impact and the real stakeholders who need to give feedback can really help to address project risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I therefore recommend that a story should be a slice of a feature created in order to either get feedback or gain trust, with the focus on the stakeholder who cares. I like the Feature Injection template:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In order to &lt;em&gt;&amp;lt;achieve a goal&amp;gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  As &lt;em&gt;&amp;lt;the stakeholder who wants it&amp;gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want &amp;lt;&lt;em&gt;some users to do&lt;/em&gt;&amp;gt; &amp;lt;&lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt;&amp;gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have trust of the stakeholders, deliver something to them to show that you can make progress, and gain their trust. If you have their trust, show them something that's likely to need their feedback. It will probably be something new that's not been tried before (or not been tried by very many people).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do that, it doesn't matter what you call them. But I'd prefer it not to involve the term &quot;user&quot; unless it really means it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2013-06-17T17:29:13.843" LastActivityDate="2013-06-17T17:29:13.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9377" CreationDate="2013-06-17T18:22:57.267" Score="14" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spikes are estimated in story points. Tasks related to the spike should be estimated in time units. The time-box for a spike is calculated based on the associated tasks defined on the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What Spikes Are For&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[H]ow do you timebox spikes using story points? [They are a] mix of effort and task complexity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You left out &quot;uncertainty.&quot; Story points are also a measure of uncertainty. A user story where no one even knows where to start will approach infinite uncertainty, whereas a well-written story with good boundaries will limit the uncertainty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &quot;research the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin&quot; will have a high level of uncertainty, unless you happen to already have a pin that angels are known to use as a nightclub. In contrast, something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a programmer,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want to explore alternative ways to render the home page&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that it loads in under 1,200 milliseconds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;has some uncertainty about the solution, but it also has well-articulated goals, clearly-defined boundaries of &quot;good enough,&quot; and is likely to suggest uncertainty-reducing approaches that can at least be sized for effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike a normal user story, a spike isn't always expected to generate a potentially-shippable increment. A spike is a success if it adds knowledge to the team and reduces uncertainty about a related story. For example, the spike above might result in learning that a team &lt;em&gt;can't&lt;/em&gt; reduce load times without sacrificing content or re-designing the architecture. That's a win if it helps the team estimate other UI or UX stories. Even if the spike is incomplete at the end of the time-box, it reduces uncertainty about the level of effort required to meet related goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Stories vs. Tasks&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Stories&lt;/em&gt; are estimated in story points. &lt;em&gt;Tasks&lt;/em&gt; should be estimated in time units, since they are essentially an allocation of the enclosing time-box. There are no hard rules about this, but in my Scrum practice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stories on the Product Backlog are estimated in Story Points.&lt;/strong&gt; While there are exceptions, most spikes belong on the Product Backlog where they are visible to the Product Owner and the organization. Research has an associated cost that must be borne by the project, and it is the Product Owner's responsibility to prioritize research via the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tasks on the Sprint Backlog are estimated in time units.&lt;/strong&gt; Part of Sprint Planning is decomposing user stories into granular tasks on the Sprint Backlog. I generally recommend sizing tasks between a half-day and two days; anything smaller creates too much process overhead, and anything larger violates the underlying &quot;done/not-done&quot; principle.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Time-Boxing Spikes&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spikes, by definition, have a maximum time-box size of one sprint. That's your upper bound. At the end of a sprint, the spike is done or not-done, just like any other story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spikes also have an implicit minimum, which is the smallest size of a task on the Sprint Backlog. This represents a spike's minimum cost to the project, but can also be used to carve out a time-box &lt;em&gt;within&lt;/em&gt; a sprint for the spike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A spike has a story-point estimate. Each of the exploratory tasks for a spike should have a time estimate on the Sprint Backlog. You handle spike slippage the same way you handle user story slippage: fail early. While tasks don't require the same rigid time-boxing as the sprint as a whole, tasks that exceed their Sprint Backlog estimates should be communicated in the daily stand-up, and the whole team (including the Product Owner) should decide what to do about spikes that won't deliver value or that can't be completed within their time-box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A Concrete Example&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, a two-point story might have five tasks with a time estimate of one day each. The story therefore has a time-box of five days, and each task has a time-box of one day. If a task exceeds its one-day time-box, it is reported in the daily stand-up where the team can coordinate and decide what to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the team chooses to allocate more resources to the task, shifting time or people from some other story that turned out to be easier than expected. Then again, maybe the team decides that enough information has been gathered to meet the uncertainty-reducing goal of the spike. On the &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; other hand, the team might also decide that the potential gains from the spike aren't worth putting other stories at risk of being not-done at the end of the sprint, and therefore kill the spike early.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, this is really the same decision tree that the team has with regular stories. The primary difference is that a spike is usually designed to feed into the estimates of a related story in a future sprint, rather than deliver something concrete. As such, even a &quot;failed&quot; spike is usually a success in that it reduces uncertainty or highlights complexity of a related story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Self-Organizing Teams&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a final thought, remember that successful Scrum teams are self-organizing. As a Scrum master, your job is to remind people to respect the time-boxes that they allocate. However, within the limits of the framework, it is perfectly acceptable for the team to allocate or shift internal resources within a Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In plain English, that means that the team is responsible for meeting the Sprint Goal. If they miss goals because they fail to respect time-boxing, this will be clearly reflected in the burn-down chart and in the Product Backlog, and should be addressed in the Sprint Retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time-boxing is a tool; it's not an end in itself. The framework requires that the time-boxes for iterations and defined meetings be respected. However, &lt;em&gt;within&lt;/em&gt; a Sprint, time-boxing is intended to be a decision-making tool, not a line in the sand which no one can cross.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bad teams ignore time-boxes. Good teams respect the limitations imposed by the time-boxes. Great teams know when they can stretch a self-imposed time-box without compromising the Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-06-17T18:22:57.267" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9385" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9398" CreationDate="2013-06-17T18:26:08.427" Score="0" ViewCount="302" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say that our Product Owner decides to take the path of User Centered Design (UCD). So, instead of looking at what the &lt;em&gt;client&lt;/em&gt; wants he looks at what the &lt;em&gt;end user&lt;/em&gt; wants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you convince the client that what he wants is not what the company, project, or users really need?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4217" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-06-18T20:15:32.353" LastActivityDate="2017-05-24T17:09:45.020" Title="How should a Product Owner in a Scrum framework deal with client requests that differ from the PO's preferred UCD approach?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9375" CreationDate="2013-06-17T18:39:53.287" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I do not know where to start or where to finish off and finally I always do 50% more work that I was intended to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Knowing where to start requires clearly-defined deliverables that can be decomposed into prioritized tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Knowing when you're finished requires a &quot;definition of done.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Managing work &lt;em&gt;effort&lt;/em&gt; requires accurate estimation techniques, active scope management, and an effective change control process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whole books have been written about each of these topics. This question is likely to be closed as too broad, but hopefully the short list above will get you pointed in the right direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-06-17T18:39:53.287" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9387" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-17T22:13:36.833" Score="6" ViewCount="943" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're using TFS (2012) as our task tracking system for our Scrum project. In TFS, we have User Stories, and off each story, we have 1 or more tasks. A user story in our case is something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user, I need to be able to log into the system, to enable me to&#xA;  use functions assigned to my role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A task is assigned to a developer, but, within TFS, who should the user story be assigned to? I don't think it's the developer, as numerous developers can be working on the same user story, but assigned the tasks. At the moment, we're assigning to me, project lead. Is that good practice, or is there a better way. Leave it unassigned maybe?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6367" LastActivityDate="2013-06-18T04:32:13.133" Title="Scrum and TFS assignments" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9387" CreationDate="2013-06-18T04:32:13.133" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, it's often more useful to ask &quot;Who is working on a given story &lt;em&gt;right now?&lt;/em&gt;&quot; than it is to think of task or story owners. However, some Scrum teams &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; use per-person pull-queues or assign stories to team members who then &quot;shepherd&quot; the story through its various phases within the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While collective ownership is an underlying principle, it's not actually a framework requirement. Whether or not items have owners is therefore up to the team; the important thing is that &quot;owners&quot; not be assigned from &lt;em&gt;outside&lt;/em&gt; the team. Allowing the team to self-organize is an essential component of an effective Scrum team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Be Introspective and Creative&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself (and your team) a couple of questions about your process before you go any further. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What does ownership of a story or task mean within your organization and within your team?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What custodial information about a story or task does your team actually need or want to track?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can the tool you're using track and report that information is a useful way &lt;em&gt;for the team&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may be surprised to learn that you don't need to track this information in TFS at all. Or, if you do, perhaps your team already has some different ideas about the best way to leverage TFS to do what they need. If nothing else, learning whether the tool you're using is a good fit for the team's real process is always a constructive exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Story &quot;Ownership&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A task is assigned to a developer, but, within TFS, who should the user story be assigned to? I don't think it's the developer, as numerous developers can be working on the same user story, but assigned the tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you have already correctly surmised, in Scrum a story is owned by the entire team, rather than any member of the team. Tasks, too, should be collectively owned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite being collectively owned, it's often useful to have stories and tasks list the names of the folks who are currently working on them so that team members can coordinate with one another. So, if TFS supports it, I'd recommend having team members tag items as &quot;owned&quot; by them whenever the items are pulled into their individual queues. As TFS 2012 &lt;a href=&quot;http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dn189203.aspx&quot;&gt;seems somewhat limited&lt;/a&gt; in its ability to communicate about concurrent or sequential ownership of a task, you might need to leverage other fields or features to effectively radiate custodial information during a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some teams can certainly manage within the product's limitations, but some can't. If your specific work-flow isn't supported by the TFS feature set, please don't contort your work-flow to fit within the tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-06-18T04:32:13.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9377" CreationDate="2013-06-18T13:28:22.130" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're currently in a scenario where, as CodeGnome suggests, you have Stories with story points and tasks estimated in hours, I'd go with his answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Willl also raised a very valid point that if you're doing spikes for stories in the current sprint, you should really just roll the investigation in with the story and let your story points for the story reflect the uncertainty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, as my teams used to do, you have quite small stories estimated in points that don't then get broken down into time estimated tasks it's a bit trickier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My teams have tried two approaches:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Allow a max amount of time per week for spikes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We used to allow two days of spikes per two week sprint.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pro: Means the drop in velocity due to spikes was fairly consistent&#xA;in each sprint so didn't overly affect velocity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Con: Doesn't work where you might have very infrequent spikes or&#xA;where the size of the time-box required varies significantly for each&#xA;spike.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Time-box and use points&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also tried having a standard point value we attached to spikes with a certain timebox (e.g. a half day spike might be 1 point, a two day spike 5 points).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pro: Means infrequent or high variability can be accounted for.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Con: Dangerously close to equating time and points.  Manageable with &#xA;an experienced PO but can cause issues otherwise (&quot;oh, so all those&lt;br&gt;&#xA;other 5 point stories will take two days then?&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These days we don't estimate stories at all - then you can just treat everything as '1' regardless of whether it's a spike or story and that particular problem goes away!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2013-06-18T13:28:22.130" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9391" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-18T14:41:19.850" Score="3" ViewCount="9661" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a project plan for a project that we already started and I want the plan to reflect the schedule moving forward, say as of tomorrow. I have a handful of dependencies and resources assigned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I want to make the start and end dates reflect/auto-schedule based on the remaining work column.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The current columns I have that may be confusing me here are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Duration&lt;/strong&gt; - appears to match work in hours but bubbles up to days on super tasks; may be redundant for me&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Work&lt;/strong&gt; - defined in hours, see above&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Remaining Work&lt;/strong&gt; - auto calculated into hours based on % complete column&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;% Complete&lt;/strong&gt; - a % that I'm updating on many tasks. This is my main area where I keep updating it daily&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Start&lt;/strong&gt; - all tasks are set to auto-schedule and this seems to be tied to the resource and predecessor as well as either the &lt;strong&gt;Work&lt;/strong&gt; column or &lt;strong&gt;Duration&lt;/strong&gt; but I want to to be based on &lt;strong&gt;Remaining Work&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Finish&lt;/strong&gt; - all tasks are set to auto-schedule and this seems to be tied to the resource and predecessor as well as either the &lt;strong&gt;Work&lt;/strong&gt; column or &lt;strong&gt;Duration&lt;/strong&gt; but I want to to be based on &lt;strong&gt;Remaining Work&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6351" LastActivityDate="2013-06-19T14:05:18.913" Title="Calculate start and finish dates based on remaining work in Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9391" CreationDate="2013-06-18T14:52:48.347" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Duration is measured in days or weeks.  It differs from work in that it includes time not associated with work.  For example, the work to pour concrete might be four hours.  The duration of the concrete would be a few days to allow it to dry and cure.  There is no &quot;work&quot; during that time.  Typically, it is best to set your work packages as &quot;fixed duration&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work is hours and is actual effort performed by the resource(s) assigned against the package.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not use % complete.  It is meaningless.  Use physical % complete and based it on tangible intermediate products.  % complete is based on time and does nothing for you to assess the health of your schedule.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start and Finish should be constraint free and established by the horizontal and vertical logic you have in your schedule.  Do not hard code dates in the schedule but allow it create the start and finish date based on predecessor and successor logic.  As you update physical % complete, and enter actual finish dates, your schedule will push or pull the downstream packages based on the variances your are accruing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This said, there is a ton of technical knowledge you need to have to build and maintain a credible schedule.  From your writing, it is clear you have a cursory knowledge of scheduling.  You would do well to employ a trained scheduler as there are many nuances that cannot be covered here very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-06-18T14:52:48.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9394" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9403" CreationDate="2013-06-18T19:11:39.733" Score="3" ViewCount="4786" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am preparing to start my new project which is &lt;strong&gt;Developing open source ERP System&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;What really I am confusing about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to start : what is the first step should I begin with. ( Preparing the environment or preparing the documents first ) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what are the documents that should I prepare? ( I read about PID Project Initiation Document, FSD, BRD and User Guide etc...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Its a good idea to create a blog and website before starting or its time consuming ( or it can be done later).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some software that may help&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some clarifications:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My Project is about developing Web Based Open Source ERP System&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have no real client currently ( so I have no specific requirement for a customer, but of course I defined my project requirements )&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Since its Open Source is there any extra steps should I consider ? ( community, licencing ? )&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have an idea about Project Life Cycles, but in reality how can I implement it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for your time, and really I am sorry if my question is not straight to the point, but consider that this is the first time that I manage a project :).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the image isn't clear for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6386" LastEditorUserId="6386" LastEditDate="2013-06-19T11:41:36.523" LastActivityDate="2013-06-19T16:02:43.563" Title="What are the required documents should I prepare In order to start my Project" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9395" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9396" CreationDate="2013-06-18T19:41:45.507" Score="-2" ViewCount="144" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose you are a senior executive designing an organization that owns multiple brands in an industry. You can either structure the business unit to have each brand compete or collaborate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you decide which philosophy to adopt? Does it depend on the size of the organization? The degree of separation between the brands? The profitability of the industry?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6387" LastActivityDate="2013-06-18T19:56:48.780" Title="Internal Competition vs Collaboration" Tags="&lt;strategy&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-06-19T13:02:58.753" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9395" CreationDate="2013-06-18T19:56:48.780" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;None of the above. It depends solely on the people and culture of the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(also: collaboration is almost always a better choice. Competitors can collaborate, but collaborators have a hard time thriving in a highly competitive environment).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastActivityDate="2013-06-18T19:56:48.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9385" CreationDate="2013-06-18T20:42:32.027" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; explicitly values customer collaboration. Taking an oppositional role is contrary to the spirit of the Scrum framework. The Product Owner should instead be facilitating the client's informed decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Relative Roles of the Product Owner and the Stakeholders&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The role of the Product Owner is to &lt;strong&gt;proxy the interests of the stakeholders&lt;/strong&gt;, which in this case is the client. To the extent that he believes that the project's deliverables will not serve the interests of the stakeholders, his responsibility is to &lt;em&gt;communicate&lt;/em&gt; with them, offer possible alternatives, and educate them about the costs and trade-offs involved with their decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, however, the Product Owner is there to empower the stakeholders and drive the project, not to dictate objectives to them. It is up to the &lt;em&gt;client&lt;/em&gt; to determine whether a project's methodologies or deliverables will provide value to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Enable and Respect Informed Decisions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the client is making an informed decision, then your company should respect that if it wants to continue doing business with that client. If the client is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; making an informed decision, then that represents a failure on the part of your organization or methodology to effectively communicate with the client, and you should carefully re-evaluate how you engage with the client going forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an opportunity to inspect and adapt your organization's engagement practices. Collaboration and communication are essential components of any successful Scrum project, so seize this chance to improve in those areas!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-06-18T20:42:32.027" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9391" CreationDate="2013-06-19T08:33:00.723" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that you are looking for a way to reschedule your remaining work and find the new Finish date.&#xA;MsProject has a way to do that. In version 2010, go to Project tab and then find Update Project button. You can reschedule uncomplete work to start on a specific date, for all or selected tasks.&#xA;It will move the remaining effort to start on the selected date and you can see the actual estimated finish date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I don't like very much to update the % complete column. I prefer to use Actual Work and Remaining Work columns. Actual Work gives you the information of how many hours you really needed to do the task. You can update actual work with the effort you have done so far, and you can change remaining work to reflect the real status of your task. At the end of the project you will know exactly how many hours you have worked on each task, it will give you better information to estimate your next project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5694" LastActivityDate="2013-06-19T08:33:00.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9401" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-19T11:49:56.333" Score="2" ViewCount="7674" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are MVP and MMF related and how are they different?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6390" LastActivityDate="2018-11-19T15:43:38.340" Title="Difference between Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and Minimum Marketable Feature (MMF)" Tags="&lt;lean&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9394" CreationDate="2013-06-19T11:59:11.233" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's a very perceptive question.  The first document you should develop is your &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newPPM_85.htm&quot;&gt;Project Initiation Document&lt;/a&gt; (or &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_charter&quot;&gt;project charter&lt;/a&gt; as it is more commonly known).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BUT&lt;/strong&gt; the value of the project charter is not the document, it is the process of creating the document. The point is not to spread ink on dead trees, but to identify the key stakeholders in the project, the fundamental reason for executing the project, and determine at a high level how you'll tell when you're done.  The charter is just a way of recording the negotiations and discussions that lead to those decisions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User guides are for much later in the process. A blog is an optional tool; if it helps you to execute the project, great. But it may not be the best investment of your time at this point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you broaden your research to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.method123.com/project-initiation-phase.php&quot;&gt;project initiation phase&lt;/a&gt;, rather than to the documents. (A quick google search will find you a cluster of other sites about the initiation phase). You'll need to tailor the initiation phase to your project; try to understand the purpose of each of the artifacts and then determine whether that artifact will increase the probability of success of your project.  The Initiation Phase should allow you to make an informed decision about whether or not to proceed; will the results be worth the effort?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you complete the initiation phase, then you move to actually planning the project. That is the earliest place that I would touch the FRD &amp;amp; BRD etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're doing an open source project, you may wish to look at some of the incubators; they adapt the project management process to facilitate contributions from dispersed participants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-06-19T11:59:11.233" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9394" CreationDate="2013-06-19T12:26:02.530" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very broad question, from a general &quot;where to start&quot; to very specific about Open Source.  I'll focus on the &quot;where to start&quot;…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the size of this project (ERP) I would start with figuring out if you have a market for it. You say you have no real client as yet, but do you know what you need to convince potential customers to implementing your solution?  Can they start with a single module or do you need multiple modules available before you can actually publish something?&#xA;A project needs a &lt;strong&gt;clear goal&lt;/strong&gt;, otherwise it will start drifting even before you have started .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, do you have &lt;strong&gt;a team&lt;/strong&gt; available? Even though it will be open source, will it be build by a commercial team or by volunteers around the globe? Maybe the project should start with some marketing to get volunteers enthousiastic. This kind of project should not be initiated by a single person alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding a &lt;strong&gt;project Lifecycle&lt;/strong&gt; depends a lot upon the approach you have chosen or will choose to develop this thing.  For now, start with three phases: Preparation (or initiation, what you're doing now), execution and closing. The execution phase can later be subdivided into technical phases (e.g. by release).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to the organisation of the project itself (sounds more like a program to me), the first thing to do is to decide upon &lt;strong&gt;the scope&lt;/strong&gt; of your project and &lt;strong&gt;communicating&lt;/strong&gt; this to all your stakeholders. A &lt;strong&gt;Project Initiation Document&lt;/strong&gt; helps in this respect, but personally I start with building a deliverable-based &lt;strong&gt;Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)&lt;/strong&gt; to discuss and decide upon the scope and supporting processes (QA, training, marketing, …). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The WBS will be the basis for that, as well as for creating the PID, some kind of &lt;strong&gt;schedule&lt;/strong&gt;, etc. Since you have your &quot;Project requirements&quot; available, creating a first draft of the WBS will be relatively easy. Furthermore, some kind of &lt;strong&gt;'budget'&lt;/strong&gt; is necessary, either in money or in number of hours if you're working exclusively with volunteers, to set expectations straight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that 'documents' are also deliverables on your project, so if you want to create a user guide, then it should be visible on the WBS as well. Make a decision about any documentation you think is necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your team will only meet 'online', than it is a good idea to start with a collaboration environment. However, I would start with a shared dropbox folder or whatever (just keep it simple) untill you really have the project started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some final points to complete the PID:&#xA; - Use your WBS as input for an initial &lt;strong&gt;risk&lt;/strong&gt; analysis.&#xA; - Finally, determine &lt;strong&gt;how to track and communicate progress&lt;/strong&gt;. Again, the WBS can help here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When this is clear and agreed to, you can start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2013-06-19T12:26:02.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9401" CreationDate="2013-06-19T12:39:38.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;They're really just different terms for the same thing - the smallest shippable iteration of a piece of software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One could argue that MMF is best used when you are just talking about a new feature on an existing product and MVP for a new product (which might require several features, each having their own MMF).  That's a bit pedantic though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I quite like BVI (Business Value Increment) as an alternative, I think Chris Matts coined that one.  It doesn't contain the word minimum (which can have bad connotations with folk outside of the IT world), is ambiguous enough to cover enhancements or new features/systems and use of &quot;increment&quot; makes it clearer that we intend to continue improving it after launch, provided it makes sense to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2013-06-19T12:39:38.550" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9391" CreationDate="2013-06-19T14:05:18.913" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read &quot;The Mythical Man-Month&quot; sometime. Basically, project planning and management are very difficult since you trying to predict the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The further you plan into the future, the less accurate your estimates will be.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is because software development is unique from other fields, since the products being created are rarely identical to what someone has created before. I've personally made 3 calendar systems, before Google Calendar came out, and each was radically different. A good starting point is to sit down with the dev team and do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;identify project stakeholders&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;gather a thorough list of requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;prioritize requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;figure out the rough system architecture (database schema, code layout, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;assign a sub-system to each developer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have them mentally work through what they would need to to do build that piece&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;track all of the unknowns in each subsystem, possible road-blocks, external dependencies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;setup milestones and release dates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have weekly, preferably daily, status update meetings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;anticipate that the initial schedule WILL NOT be followed, and will often increase by 100%+, since unexpected bugs pop up, priorities change, scope changes, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on the high priority features first, so that as the deadline starts to close in, the less important features can be put off to version 2. Work hours spent will expand to fill the available time, since often developers and designers love to add new things and perfect other pieces. Conversely, a 1 lbs. steak cannot be cooked in 1 min. on HIGH, ie. some features will take a minimum amount of time to build regardless of how badly a manager or customer want them done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5183" LastActivityDate="2013-06-19T14:05:18.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9394" CreationDate="2013-06-19T16:02:43.563" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to assume that you are in the project initiation/start-up phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your very first step should be to have at least an outline of your project's &lt;strong&gt;business case&lt;/strong&gt;.  Remember that the best measure of success of a project isn't if it came in on time or on budget, but if it delivered value (in terms of benefits realized post-project) compared to money spent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In tandem with the business case you should have a &lt;strong&gt;description of the end product(s)&lt;/strong&gt; of your project and a &lt;strong&gt;project approach&lt;/strong&gt;. What are the products meant to do, what are their major subcomponents, are you going to buy off-the-shelf or develop internally? These will help you start to quantify likely costs and benefits necessary to make a business decision on the value of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that early on both business case and product descriptions will be rough and approximate only. They will require progressive elaboration as you get more information but should provide ongoing justification for moving your project forward throughout it's lifecycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once your business case and product description and approach are documented the next thing you need is a &lt;strong&gt;plan for your planning&lt;/strong&gt;. Figure out the whos/whens/hows to get your WBS, schedule, stakeholder analysis, risk analysis, communications, governance structures etc etc planned out. The key first step here is figuring out which pieces are necessary and to what level of detail you need them. This is going to be entirely project dependent and largely a judgement call on the part of yourself and your key stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-06-19T16:02:43.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9401" CreationDate="2013-06-19T18:41:00.867" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a lot of disagreement and confusion about the practical interpretation of these terms. I wouldn't get too hung up on hair-splitting as long as your Product Owner, stakeholders, and development team can all agree on some working definitions for your organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Minimum Viable Product (MVP)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Minimum Viable Product is a term most frequently attributed to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/08/minimum-viable-product-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eric Reis&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://steveblank.com/2010/03/04/perfection-by-subtraction-the-minimum-feature-set/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Steve Blank&lt;/a&gt;. The most succinct definition I've seen for it is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[MVP] definition: the minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, it's the smallest collection of &lt;em&gt;potentially&lt;/em&gt; marketable features than you can roll out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Minimum Marketable Feature (MMF)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An MMF, &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=tW14FDkNYv4C&amp;amp;pg=PA5&amp;amp;lpg=PA5&amp;amp;dq=%22minimum%20marketable%20feature%22%20software%20by%20numbers&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=41Hi_cN0rx&amp;amp;sig=24deHPs-D4zfKf4OOErJRnvBUwM&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=L_bBUcz9PIS90QGz0IDwCw&amp;amp;ved=0CEUQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22minimum%20marketable%20feature%22%20software%20by%20numbers&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;as defined in &lt;em&gt;Software by the Numbers&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; by Mark Denne and Jane Cleland-Huang, is the smallest unit of functionality with &quot;intrinsic marketable value.&quot; This begs the question of what &lt;em&gt;value&lt;/em&gt; means in a given context, but makes it clear that the term is generally applied to a &lt;em&gt;feature&lt;/em&gt;, rather than to the product as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How The Terms Relate&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having defined MMF as a &lt;em&gt;feature&lt;/em&gt; and an MVP as a &lt;em&gt;product&lt;/em&gt;, I understand the difference to be that the MVP is a bare-bones collection of one or more MMFs. In turn, each MMF is the smallest possible increment that has real or potential value to a customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-06-19T21:06:02.400" LastActivityDate="2013-06-19T21:06:02.400" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9373" CreationDate="2013-06-20T01:08:50.130" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is an agile framework that embraces changing requirements, but the framework has rules for &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; changes can be introduced. Minor changes should be deferred, while drastic changes should trigger an Early Termination of the current Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Defer Changes&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One option is to defer changes until the next Sprint Planning session. Every Sprint starts a new cycle of prioritization and planning, so it's perfectly acceptable to complete a Sprint and then change the project's direction, scope, or priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea with deferment is to provide change control by preventing changes in scope or deliverables from occurring &lt;em&gt;within&lt;/em&gt; the current iteration. If the current Sprint Goal and user stories will still provide value, then the new work should be deferred until the Product Owner prioritizes it for a future Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Early Termination&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is early termination of the Sprint. If the current Sprint Goal no longer provides value to the Product Owner, or the changes are so drastic that they invalidate the current user stories, then the Product Owner may call for an Early Termination and an immediate return to Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has a cost to the project, both in terms of process overhead and lost work. That is why it is the Product Owner's decision: the Product Owner is responsible for determining what user stories have value to the project, and using the Product Backlog to allocate resources. If the benefit of failing early outweighs the cost of abandoning the current iteration, then it's generally in the project's best interest to avoid additional &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sunk costs&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-06-20T01:08:50.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9411" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-20T02:28:23.957" Score="-2" ViewCount="170" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am responding to a request for proposal (RFP) that is requiring us to provide a Work Breakdown Structure, a deliverable list with details for each deliverable, and a list of resources by role in each phase with their estimated effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really want to make sure I am doing this correctly, as it's a fairly large part of the evaluation scoring, but I am finding there are varying examples of what should be included.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to create my draft plan and work with a project management consultant who can help me improve it and ensure I am covering everything that is being asked.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, where can I find a person to review this?  I obviously did some googling and the only things I found are huge consultant firms that would be overkill for this relatively small review I need.  Do any of you have any ideas where I would look to hire someone to review this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6395" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-10-26T13:41:03.167" LastActivityDate="2016-10-26T13:41:03.167" Title="Consultant to review project work plan" Tags="&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;&lt;reviews&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-07-23T09:53:28.917" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9099" CreationDate="2013-06-20T11:39:23.540" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;We apply two techniques to get this under control:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First is to decide upon the &lt;strong&gt;bandwith&lt;/strong&gt; (capacity) you have available for doing all the work; this is your team capacity doing productive work (so extracting vacation, training, average illness days, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next we devide this capacity into fixed &lt;strong&gt;buckets&lt;/strong&gt;: &#xA;ours is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;60% Planned development&lt;/strong&gt;: approved development work to create new stuff (investment); with this 60% available capacity, you can make a plan when all this new stuff will be delivered at the earliest (if the 60% is maintained).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;20% ad-hoc customer requests&lt;/strong&gt;: small changes and specific configurations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;20% support and maintenance&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When there is more support needed, the capacity of the customer requests is taken up first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After each period (sprint, two-weekly, monthly, whatever) the actuals are reviewed and a decision is made upon the buckets for the next period, and this is accordingly planned. e.g. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there was more support needed, and as a result approved customer requests are queing up, so for the next period we will assign 30% to customer requests and only 50% on development. This will have an impact on the delivery of the planned development, so this is replanned and the impact approved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it was a low period for support (rarely, but it happens :-) ) so we made some progress on the planned development, so either we go on as agreed (60-20-20), to remain ahead of schedule, or we do some more work on Customer requests.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the capacity for support is consistently insufficient, you change the capacity allocation (with impact on the other two of course). Or decide to change the overall capacity by adding people to the team (if possible).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point here is to keep the available capacity visible for all to see, that work is planned according to the buckets (and not on guesses), and that informed decisions are made regarding corrective actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second technique we apply is more to keep the individual engineers happier, is to &lt;strong&gt;assign 1&lt;/strong&gt; (or more e.g. functional and technical) &lt;strong&gt;person each week to do support&lt;/strong&gt; (We call him the &quot;Geek of the Week&quot; :-) ). He/she tries to fix all support issues independently; only if it is really complex he'll ask for help from the other teammembers. If support is low, he'll take up some other stuff like a small change or continue to work on planned development.&#xA;This keeps the other teammembers more focused on their particular subjects, without being disturbed too often by support issues. As the role changes each week, it is considered fair for all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This works well for us. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2013-06-20T11:39:23.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9411" CreationDate="2013-06-20T12:51:00.833" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't used any of them for PM recruitment but there are a lot of 'collaborative consumption' sites out there where you can post an opportunity and get bids in for the work from suppliers (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.elance.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Elance&lt;/a&gt; is one of the most popular). You'll more than likely get bids from individuals or small companies rather than large consultancies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stepping back a little I'm slightly concerned, from a PM perspective, that you're pitching for work that you won't be able to adequately project manage. If you don't have the PM skills in-house now and need to get someone else to help win the work how will you actually deliver the project if you do win? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2013-06-20T15:48:30.897" LastActivityDate="2013-06-20T15:48:30.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1429" CreationDate="2013-06-20T18:22:21.937" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are two online courses on Managing Web projects you might find helpful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eclasses.org/B137/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;eclasses.org: &quot;Web Project Management&quot;&lt;/a&gt; for anyone managing on Web or digital projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://webprofessionals.org/web-project-management-essentials/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WebProfessionals.org: &quot;Web Project Management Essentials&lt;/a&gt; geared more to the small designer/agency.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6406" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-06-21T01:56:55.277" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T01:56:55.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9401" CreationDate="2013-06-20T19:16:34.337" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Minimum viable product has &lt;strong&gt;absolutely nothing to do with usability or marketability&lt;/strong&gt;. It is the smallest thing you can do to get &lt;strong&gt;validated learning&lt;/strong&gt; against a hypothesis. That is it. It doesn't even have to be a piece of software. Oftentimes, a well formed question and a storyboard will suffice. The point isn't that what you've created is marketable, but that what you've created can be used to answer the persist/pivot question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Minimum Marketable feature is about something that has tangible value to your customer. It is something someone can use to accomplish something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastActivityDate="2013-06-20T19:16:34.337" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9418" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9423" CreationDate="2013-06-21T05:37:16.207" Score="2" ViewCount="1966" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm very new to the whole Project Management world, so this question may be at the beginners level, anywho:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the Budget Cost compared to the full Cost of the Project?, based on the research I have gathered that &lt;strong&gt;Budget Cost&lt;/strong&gt; is the project financial allocations or estimates the project is expected to meet; so am I being told here that the Project Budget is what the Project Manager sets up at the beginning of the project to calculate how much of the full actual of the project price will actually be needed to completion of the project?, if so doesn't this seem a bit close to the EAC (Estimate At Completion) definition? as they are both being estimated..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moving on, the way that Budget cost is calculated is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Budget = Opportunity  Value ($) – Contingency  Value ($) – Value Pricing ($)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I have no idea what that means, as in What is a &lt;strong&gt;Contingency Value&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Value Pricing&lt;/strong&gt;?, I'm guessing that &lt;strong&gt;Opportunity Value&lt;/strong&gt; is in fact the project cost..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, I really would like to understand what &lt;strong&gt;Budget Cost&lt;/strong&gt; actually means compared to EAC and the Opportunity Cost for example and who is responsible for calculating it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5551" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T12:18:39.243" Title="The meaning of &amp; Calculating Project Budget" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;&lt;budget&gt;&lt;pricing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9419" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9421" CreationDate="2013-06-21T10:26:46.120" Score="0" ViewCount="334" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a software dev in a medium size company. We work with a few people remotely (in a different EU country). We used to have the following people:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 CTO&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 agile coaches (1 of them being a PO as well which I think it's excessive for an agile company of this size)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 architect (non hands-on)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 Scrum master&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 PO (additional to the PO - coached?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;6 devs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 testers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 devops&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, after some changes we have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 CTO&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 PO of POs (accross 2 teams)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 PO (for the team I am working on)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 scrum master&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 scrum master (remote)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 developers manager (line)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and the same amount of hands on people&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;6 devs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 testers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 devops&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Isn't management a bit too much?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much management would such a formation need? Here there are factors such as, there are more than 1 teams in the company (with their respective managers) but CTO, lead PO and Line manager are across all teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, we haven't ship anything for almost 1 year now, though it seems like something is about to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&#xA;So, as an amusing update to this, the CTO of the company has left...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5522" LastEditorUserId="5522" LastEditDate="2013-07-02T09:08:33.640" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T10:07:56.063" Title="How much management is needed for medium sized IT company?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9418" CreationDate="2013-06-21T11:03:07.587" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never seen that particular formula to describe the budget.  In the U.S., the Defense Acquisition University published the &quot;Gold Card&quot; to describe the various dollars of budget for Earned Value Management.  Essentially, these are the components that make a contract price:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your Performance Management Baseline (PMB) consists of the costs required to perform against your work packages and planning packages.  Your management reserves are dollars that sit outside of your PMB but are part of your project costs.  Depending on the seller / buyer arrangement, the management reserves could be part of the contract cost value, i.e., the seller of services holds the dollars, or outside the contract cost value, i.e., the buyer of services holds the dollars, or both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PMB and MR are your project costs and is your negotiated contract cost (NCC).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On top of this value, you have your authorized but unpriced work (AUW).  So your NCC + AUW is your contract budget base (CBB).  On top of CBB is any project overruns that have been accrued, which becomes your Total Allocated Budget (TAB).  So your TAB is what you are expecting your project to cost you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this project is a seller / buyer arrangement, then you need to add profit and fees to the TAB, which results in your Contract Price or Total Contract Value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you have:  PMB + MR = NCC + AUW + Overruns = TAB + Profit = Contract Price or Total Contract Value.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T11:03:07.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9419" CreationDate="2013-06-21T11:23:25.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This reads like a span of control question.  There are a lot of theories and schools of thought behind this problem, and they all have merits and issues.  This problem remains an issue when designing your organization and, likely, there really is not true single answer or rule of thumb.  In fact, it might detrimental to try to find a one-size-fits-all solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are balancing the effectiveness of a supervisor's ability to supervise with the cost of the layers of management.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your best approach is to ask and answer these types of questions: where are the employees located, dispersed or local; what are the capabilities of the employees and supervisor; what is the complexity of the task; how much admin burden exists; are employees matrixed to other tasks; is your organization mature in its operational or project capabilities?  There are a ton more questions to ask and answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And no matter what choice you end up choosing, you will still have costs, risks, and penalties with which to cope.  And the benefits of your choice could change over time where a re-org could be indicated.  So remain flexible and agile because rigidity can destroy the organization.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T11:23:25.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9418" CreationDate="2013-06-21T12:18:39.243" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All in all, I really would like to understand what Budget Cost actually means compared to EAC and the Opportunity Cost for example and who is responsible for calculating it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Budget Cost is essentially the estimate of total project costs at the start of the project. Since this is an estimate it can (likely will) be somewhat different than the Cost of the Project which is the final balance of payments you have at project close-out&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't necessarily apply to a firm-fixed price contract where you are the customer. In those types of contract the supplier takes on the financial risk, so from the customers perspective Budget Cost = Cost of the Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EAC is a revised estimate that is generated at some time(s) during the project. The further you are into your project the more likely it is that your EAC will diverge from the original Budget Cost, but becomes more likely to be a better representation of the Cost of the Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: My project is to renovate my kitchen. I have a Budget Cost of $10,000 based on research and I decide to try to do it myself. Partway through the project my EAC is $11,000 because of unanticipated wastage of mterials. At the end of the project I total the bills and the Cost of the Project was $10,875. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All parties involved in a customer/supplier relationship should be estimating budget and deciding if there is a valid business argument for continuing with the project. The catch is that (a) you may not have as good an idea of what costs are likely to be as your partners, and (b) all parties need to be convinced that the project adds value for money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your equation I'm not 100% sure but maybe you are looking at it the wrong way. Is it really more along the lines of establishing a cut-off for a max value of your project? In other words it might be saying &quot;My project budget should no more than the dollar value of the opportunity less any buffers to address contingencies less the cost to complete the project&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T12:18:39.243" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2817" CreationDate="2013-06-21T14:39:01.203" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a middle-sized web develpment company, and we use Basecamp (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.basecamp.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.basecamp.com&lt;/a&gt;) for project management. Doesn't have Gandtt charts, which we initially thought were essential, but it makes up for this minimalistic approach with a great usability (in fact it's the first PM software that wasn't harsh to spread among our team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We added time tracking (which isn't available on Basecamp) using Timeneye (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timeneye.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.timeneye.com&lt;/a&gt;). In fact, you can find a whole bunch of extras for Basecamp: there are reporting tools too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6411" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T14:39:01.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9425" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-21T19:57:17.287" Score="0" ViewCount="277" Body="&lt;p&gt;I run the PMO for an IT organization with ~1,200 people and 120 PMs.  What are industry averages for the % of project managers with industry certifications (PMP, ACM, etc.)?  Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6414" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2013-06-23T17:46:53.143" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T12:36:28.177" Title="What are industry averages for percentage of certified PM's?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9425" CreationDate="2013-06-21T20:51:53.247" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem with trying to understand the prevalence of the PMP or any other project certification is the denominator.  I think the relevant organizations publish the number of certified practitioners but I am not sure how you could find out the number of people who are managing projects.  Would it be the number of people who have PM as a title or can it include those who manage projects or sub projects as a role?  Would it include those who specialize in project controls?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more important question to your question is why?  Do you consider a project certificate as a valid indicator of future performance?  Or do you use the certificate as a selling point for work proposals?  Whatever your belief is about the efficacy of certificates in this business, I do not know if anyone could ever argue the existence of some optimal ratio between certified and non certified practitioners.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more reasonable discussion would be around why you may want some prevalence of certificates in your organization.  If to advertise in your proposals, the certs do sell.  If you think it predicts future performance, you'd be best serve to look for studies that might substantiate that belief because there is not a lot out there that would support a certificate's validity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T20:51:53.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9427" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-22T10:27:36.747" Score="-6" ViewCount="740" Body="&lt;p&gt;What role stakeholders play  in the control of a project in execution stage of the project cycle.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6417" LastActivityDate="2013-07-06T15:04:01.903" Title="Role of stakeholders in the control of execution stage" Tags="&lt;roles&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-07-07T01:11:42.480" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9427" CreationDate="2013-06-22T11:12:40.757" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is far too broad to answer in any meaningful way.  Industry, location, and type of project would yield different answers.  So, too, would the breakdown and segmentation of the stakeholders.  Based on how their segmented, each group would play a different role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the only feasible answer one could give now is, yes, they play several of many roles during the execution stage of a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  In general, stakeholders can participate in the design of the widget being built.  They certainly participate in setting requirements or discussing changes or compromises to the requirements.  Some groups would provide subject matter expertise that would be needed by the builders of the widget.  All groups would require staying informed so they would play a communication receiving role.  If user acceptance testing is required, then a segmented group would play in that QC activity.  On some project, a stakeholder group would be at what I call level zero, meaning they are side by side with the project team on a daily basis, even part of the project team.  I would consider them a stakeholder even though they are part of the team because I am typically in a seller/buyer project relationship where I am the seller.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some stakeholder segments would be deployed as champions of change, meaning they would advocate to other segments about the change in order to reduce the likelihood of change resistance, a huge killer of project acceptance.  Other stakeholder segments may have projects going on where your project and their project have one or many touch points, so coordination between the groups to resolve dependencies would need to occur.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...just some general ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2013-06-22T11:23:22.380" LastActivityDate="2013-06-22T11:23:22.380" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9429" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9439" CreationDate="2013-06-23T10:38:48.533" Score="10" ViewCount="4242" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to create my first WBS for the relocation of my company's offices as an IT person. So far, I broke the jobs that have to be done down to parts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1   Documentation&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;1.1.    Infrastructure&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;1.2.    Floor plan&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;1.3.    People plan&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;1.4.    Software &amp;amp; build analysis&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;1.5.    Fixed assets&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2   Cabling&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;2.1.    Network&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;2.2.    Electrical&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;2.3.    Voice&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3   Infrastructure&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;3.1.    Barcode scanners&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;3.2.    Routers/switches&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;3.3.    Workstations&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;3.4.    Printers&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;3.5.    Telephones&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4   Services&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;4.1.    File server storage and files&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;4.2.    Print server&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5   Testing&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;5.1.    Connectivity&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;5.2.    Workstations&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;5.3.    Phones&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to listen to your opinion from an Infrastructure and Network department's perspective for my project. Also, as I have to communicate with several managers, colleagues, office owners etc. do you suggest I should include this as a section in my WBS ? Let's say :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communication&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discuss risk management with manager&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask for orders of new network equipment&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Call support agent for overtime costs&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Communication is a huge sector in moving offices to another place. Should I include it ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5098" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T06:07:57.357" Title="Should communication be included in a WBS?" Tags="&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9429" CreationDate="2013-06-23T11:37:57.410" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two types of communications, in my view.  One as a consequence of doing work, the other as specific outputs or deliverables.  For the former, I would not exhibit it in the WBS because it does not buy you anything from a measurable point of view.  I would consider this type of communication--risks, meetings, troubleshooting, design discussions--in my basis of estimate for all of those work packages to build up costs and time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the latter, I would exhibit it in the WBS as these are outputs that should be measured and tracked.  These could include quarterly town hall meetings, newsletters, JAM events, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question to ask is, is this communication a consequence of doing work or a deliverable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-06-23T11:37:57.410" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9429" CreationDate="2013-06-23T23:43:39.027" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;Effective Work Breakdown Structures&lt;/em&gt;, Haugan has &quot;Project Management Elements&quot; as a toplevel WBS item and moves all such work under that element. A lot of people don't consider process documentation to be an output of a project -- but it is. Such documents form inputs to other projects and to analysis. They're clearly a tangible output, and so belong in a WBS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not quite what you're asking. You're listing a series of planned activities. None of these look like outputs. They do belong in a plan, but a WBS is about the outputs only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5319" LastActivityDate="2013-06-23T23:43:39.027" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9355" CreationDate="2013-06-24T00:01:52.913" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for a large IT company on my 9-5 where Six Sigma is introduced as a must-have quality strategy for every project, be it large or small (I am green belt certified myself). Also, I take consultancy gigs every now and then for small development agencies where I have advised and run successful Six Sigma projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you point out, a DMAIC project can take too long to actually be completed and it can actually stop making sense along the way. In my company, projects that take more than 3 months to be implemented are marked as 'failed' or are not considered as impactful (one of the reasons behind this is the thought that the IT industry changes too fast in order to wait for 3 month-improvements). Another reason to prevent lengthy 6s projects is that at some point the actual improvement can sometimes be more expensive than the problem (if the meetings are weekly and involve 10 employees + 5 managers for just for some penny-saving project, then you might as well want to check if this is reasonable to continue).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your actual question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone speak to the utility of green belt techniques for small or medium sized software projects? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, 6s projects - asides from reducing defects - are just a way to put quality improvements in numbers, so I say it totally depends if this is just a one-thing-wonder in your company or are actually starting to get into a &lt;em&gt;continuous improvement&lt;/em&gt; strategy. Probably these people who are running these projects will later become the green/black belts and lead other improvement projects within the company, and in my experience, you have to start with something and not all 6s projects you come across will be a breakthrough in the company. So as suggested above, the project at hand needs some tailoring or perhaps not use such a &lt;em&gt;complex&lt;/em&gt; solution such as DFSS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On one 6s course, one instructor said to us, &quot;&lt;em&gt;In theory&lt;/em&gt;, a Six Sigma / quality department could shut itself down if it's proved that the time/effort put into projects for &lt;strong&gt;building solutions and improvements&lt;/strong&gt; is actually more expensive than the &lt;strong&gt;actual solutions&lt;/strong&gt;  implemented.&quot;. The point was that 6s can actually turn into a defect in your company, rather than a solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my say goes that 6s is a very interesting, useful and powerful set of tools, however, on my personal experience not every single 6s project suggested is useful nor should be pursuit - SMART goals and a clear scope of the project should always be present, BUT that's the work of the champion to identify, in this case you shouldn't approach the management saying 'THIS IS GARBAGE!!', but to the champion(s) of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, remember the improvements suggested in 6s are not exclusive for large corporations / projects, the whole idea is to reduce defects, and these can be found in any project - regardless of it's size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4177" LastEditorUserId="4177" LastEditDate="2013-06-24T00:06:56.497" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T00:06:56.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9419" CreationDate="2013-06-24T00:07:43.337" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look at the roles you have concern with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CTO - your big boss and I assume that he / she will have other people reporting into him/her other than these people.  e.g. infrastructure, support, whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PO - Your customer so this individual does not fit into the team&#xA;1 PO (proxy) -  Sounds like your customer needs a little help on the functional side of things as there is to much work for him/her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum Masters - They are not managers and by the sounds of it they may not be doing a great job if you (as a dev) have to come into a public forum to discuss this and not be able to discuss this openly in a retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1 developers manager (line)  - Sounds like the CTO may have his/her hands full and feels the need to employ a dev manager to deal with the day-to-day management of a development team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, I have to be a bit brutal here as you are only a software dev.  Unless you have shares in the business, this is not your risk to take, but instead it is that of the shareholders and the executive management and the people they choose to help manage the business.  Your CTO gets paid to make that kind of decision and if you feel that the decision may be wrong, then by all means speak to them to get the facts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing wrong that I see here is that perhaps the new structure, roles has been poorly communicated to the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5634" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T00:07:43.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9434" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-24T01:44:35.690" Score="2" ViewCount="791" Body="&lt;p&gt;When it comes to Project Management Vocabs and definitions, as a beginner I find it hard to understand some of the definition I find on the web, two of those are meanings that I find hard to understand due to my very small experience in project management is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Contingency Value&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Value Pricing&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone please help explain what they mean and maybe with a quick example?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also like to know why these figures are important and considered by some companies when it comes to Project Management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5551" LastActivityDate="2013-06-25T08:22:07.920" Title="What is a Contingency Value and Value Pricing?" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;definition&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9429" CreationDate="2013-06-24T11:01:54.787" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given that some communication activities will create dependencies and extend the overall project schedule I think it's essential that the communication overhead is taken into account in the WBS. However, for the most part I wouldn't say that all of it needs to be &lt;em&gt;explicitly&lt;/em&gt; included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of your example activities is the meeting to discuss project risks. If your Project Charter (or other start-up documentation) includes the requirement for a risk register then the conversation about risk with your manager and/or other stakeholders should probably be a task in the WBS since the rest of the project cannot proceed without it and any changes in the schedule of this activity may push the overall schedule back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other tasks feel a bit more like 'day-to-day' activities to me. If you break the work down into such minute detail I think you'll spend more time monitoring and reporting against the work than you will actually &lt;em&gt;doing&lt;/em&gt; it. Instead, I'd suggest that the required communications are built into the overall estimate for each task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd generally agree with the other answers here - if there is a tangible &lt;em&gt;output&lt;/em&gt; from the communication activity or it can be fairly described as a milestone (e.g. a sign-off meeting) then it should probably be included in the WBS. Otherwise, just build the communication overhead into your task estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T11:01:54.787" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9425" CreationDate="2013-06-24T12:36:28.177" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't seen much out there that talks about exact numbers but there is some useful information on the state of the PM profession as a whole in the PMI's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/Knowledge-Center/Pulse/Pulse-Key-Findings.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;'Pulse of the Profession'&lt;/a&gt; report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specific to your question the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/uk-landing.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMI say&lt;/a&gt; that of organisations reporting 'more project success' than their counterparts 69% report that 35% of the PM staff are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/Certification/Project-Management-Professional-PMP.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMP&lt;/a&gt; qualified. Now, that only covers PMP so it doesn't give you an overall figure (and PMI aren't likely to be shouting about the prevalence/successes of rival qualifications) but it is an indicator that a fairly small number of PMs &lt;em&gt;on successful projects&lt;/em&gt; actually have a top certification (in this case 35% of 69% of orgs who are in the 62% reporting success). And success should really be the key here. If you're just interested in having &lt;em&gt;x&lt;/em&gt;% certified PMs on your team because that's what everyone else in the industry does that's fine. But for me what matters is whether that certification has any measurable, positive impact. The report I mentioned above has some some stats that I think are far more revealing: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;training and development in project management has declined since 2010. Fewer organizations are&#xA;  providing training on project management tools and techniques (from 65&#xA;  percent in 2010 to 59 percent in 2012). Less than half have a process&#xA;  to develop project management competency (45 percent, down from 52&#xA;  percent in 2010) or have a process to mature existing project&#xA;  management practices (44 percent, down from 51 percent in 2010).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Improving on those industry figures would, I think, lead to a healthier, happier and more successful PMO. Some of the career development/training may well result in staff becoming certified but I don't think that should be the ends in itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T12:36:28.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9434" CreationDate="2013-06-24T12:39:44.783" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Value pricing is pricing according to the value you provide to the customer, as measured by the customer (not your cost). See &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.priceintelligently.com/blog/bid/162160/Value-Based-Pricing-101-The-Necessities-and-Your-Pricing-Strategy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;. providing umbrellas when it rains doesn't cost more, but they may be valued higher at the time by customers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contingency value is valuation where people are asked to state their preference, rather than asked to reveal their real preference by their actions. More &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contingent_valuation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6357" LastEditorUserId="6357" LastEditDate="2013-06-25T08:22:07.920" LastActivityDate="2013-06-25T08:22:07.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9429" CreationDate="2013-06-24T12:46:05.107" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My best resource on how to create a WBS is &lt;a href=&quot;http://herdingcats.typepad.com/my_weblog/capabilities/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Herding Cats&lt;/a&gt;; I've linked to an article on capabilities based planning, but I confess that Mr. Alleman is more thorough than he is succinct. I haven't yet found a terse sound byte that really conveys his notion of how to do planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on what I've learned from Mr. Alleman, &quot;Communications&quot; is a tool used to accomplish work, and doesn't belong in the WBS any more than &quot;Wire Crimper&quot; or &quot;kneepads&quot; belong in the WBS.  The WBS should center around capabilities that are of value to the customer/consumer. Furthermore almost every source I have consulted suggests that WBS lines be structured as &quot;Verb Noun&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Communication would have to either be a verb &quot;Communicate plans to stakeholders&quot;, or a noun &#xA;&quot;Draft Communications&quot;, &quot;Send Communications&quot;. I think the second would lead to an unmaintainable and inaccurate WBS; I think the first is good, but asking whether communications should be in the WBS is now a non-question.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T12:46:05.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9429" CreationDate="2013-06-24T22:40:36.237" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Communication plans or communication activities should only be included in a work breakdown structure if they &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; the deliverables. Even in such cases, the breakdown should reflect steps in the project rather than daily calendar items of interest only to the task performer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Define Your Level of Granularity&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question is not directly answerable because the &lt;em&gt;granularity&lt;/em&gt; of the milestones you're breaking down is not well-defined. In common usage, a work breakdown structure is essentially a list of discrete tasks that directly relate to a deliverable or milestone. Some of your communication items don't appear to fit into that category, but it's certainly possible that (in the abstract) some communication tasks might.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The art of creating a work breakdown structure comes from understanding what level of granularity is required, and whether the goal is to communicate about &lt;strong&gt;things people need to do&lt;/strong&gt; or about &lt;strong&gt;estimated hours needed to do those things&lt;/strong&gt;. I generally use a WBS for the former, and use other mechanisms to radiate information about the latter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of good project management is having an effective communications plan. However, it is rare to see the communications plan as part of the work breakdown structure--not so much because it &lt;em&gt;can't&lt;/em&gt; be, but because the purpose of the WBS is primarly a task analysis tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Your Specific Communication Items&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You list the following three items:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Discuss risk management with manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Ask for orders of new network equipment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Call support agent for overtime costs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All three items seem outside the scope of a WBS because they seem like they each fall below a useful level of granularity &lt;em&gt;for the project&lt;/em&gt;. The task performer certainly need to track those individual tasks, but the utility of breaking down &quot;order new equipment&quot; into &quot;ask my boss for permission to call Bob in accounting for the paperwork to send to Alice in purchasing&quot; seems unnecessarily detailed at the project level. Your mileage may definitely vary, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, setting aside time in the project plan for risk analysis or risk mitigation is certainly useful, and belongs &lt;em&gt;somewhere&lt;/em&gt; in the project plan. However, while WBS items belong in the project plan, a project plan is not simply the sum of WBS items. Semantically, scheduling a discussion is neither a work product nor a useful decomposition of risk management; I'd recommend using a different mechanism for risk management, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A risk management log.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adding a risk assessment phase to your project plan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Building risk management into your entire process, rather than having a one-off procedure for it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The specifics of how you control risk will depend a lot on your project and your organization. Those controls should be part of your time or effort estimates, but (in most cases) probably not your assessment of the steps needed to perform a given task like running cables. Again, your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Resources and References&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As defined on Wikipedia, the following &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_breakdown_structure#Design_principles&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;WBS design principles&lt;/a&gt; argue against including your communication items in the work breakdown structure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Plan outcomes, not actions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[D]efine WBS elements in terms of outcomes or results, not actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Level of detail&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One must decide when to stop dividing work into smaller elements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on these principles, and for the reasons I described above, your communications items don't belong within the WBS. However, you should definitely radiate information and provide project status. Such activities belong in your project plan; just not in a work breakdown structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-06-24T22:51:15.293" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T22:51:15.293" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9419" CreationDate="2013-06-25T09:51:57.410" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that you have managers for a 40 people department but only 10 techincal elements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Strictly speaking you need:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Someone needs to line manage (CTO?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Someone needs to be in charge of the product (a single PO)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the rest should be developers. QA can be done by devs, Ops can be done by devs, Scrum Mastering can be done by devs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that six devs is a mini-team that almost doesn't need any management!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, strictly speaking this is a personal opinion, but I've been there (with similar issues) and I am not surprised you are not delivering...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6300" LastActivityDate="2013-06-25T09:51:57.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5360" CreationDate="2013-06-25T10:49:18.440" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Work can be calculated as Actual Work + Remaining Work. It represents the total amount of work needed to finish the task (even if it has been done or it's still remaining).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you change your remaining work but not actual work, you mean that you need less hours than expected to finish your task, and I guess that's why Work column is changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you change % complete column, it updates both actual and remaining work, so Work stays the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5694" LastActivityDate="2013-06-25T10:49:18.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9443" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9479" CreationDate="2013-06-25T13:38:23.247" Score="1" ViewCount="2962" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team are just evaluating a move to a more agile process and one of the questions that has arisen is how best to track...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Projects (upcoming, in progress, completed)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team capacity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm hoping to find an electronic method that can be made visible to other people within the business and also possibly displayed on a big plasma tv or projector.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas that would point me in the right direction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6428" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T11:46:58.617" Title="How to get a good overview of projects using TFS 2012" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9309" CreationDate="2013-06-25T16:39:47.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Semantic Detail&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brian, I can not tell you why 'B' is better, but I can tell you why 'C' is wrong. The reason that 'C' is not correct is due to a little &quot;how&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It helps you understand the source of each requirement, and &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; that requirement was verified in a later deliverable&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; would describe a process. The Requirements Traceability is more of a &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;What&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. As in &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; the systems/applications functions trace back to, &lt;strong&gt;NOT&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; they were verified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think 'B' is a great answer and the explanation of it is even worse. Hope this helps.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6430" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-06-26T03:21:59.420" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T03:21:59.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9309" CreationDate="2013-06-25T17:28:24.013" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe because C discusses only a subset of B?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answer C indicates only two items: the source of the requirement and a link to the final deliverable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answer B mentions &quot;&lt;strong&gt;all of the sub-plans&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;: as they indicate in their argumentation, this also includes a link to the design, to a testplan, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since C actually covers everything you might be able to link a requirement to, it is more complete than answer C. And therefore the 'best' answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My 2 cents&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2013-06-25T17:28:24.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9448" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-25T18:29:16.043" Score="5" ViewCount="628" Body="&lt;p&gt;My projects generally have 6 areas (Engineering, Fabrication, Assembly etc). Each area has been allotted a budget for a particular project (dollars and hours). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every week, I get a report on how much we spent (in dollars and hours) in each area on that particular project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am trying to incorporate some kind of health check tool in addition to this info. For eg- Engineering had 40 hrs and $1600 allotted. Say they have used used up 30 hours and are only 50% complete, what formula can I use to show the health of this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6432" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-06-26T03:21:03.277" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T10:38:08.720" Title="Trying to develop a Project Health Check tool - How can I show the Health of a Project in Dollars and Hours?" Tags="&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;budget&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9448" CreationDate="2013-06-25T19:14:48.387" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To be honest I just use Word or Excel in conjunction with pre-defined parameters to assess and report project health on a regular basis to my sponsors, project board and key stakeholders. Establishing those parameters is the challenging part, and they will likely change from one project to the next. You may want to investigate &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_value_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Earned Value Management techniques&lt;/a&gt;, applying concepts like Schedule Performance and Cost Performance indices to your decision making if your projects are sufficiently costly and complex to warrant the overhead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-06-25T19:14:48.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9448" CreationDate="2013-06-25T19:50:27.203" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I second the Earned Value technique as a valuable tool for indicating status and forecasting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might start simple by also asking for an Expected to Complete (ETC) in hours: how much time will they need to finish the other 50%? Is it again 30 hours or will it be the original 20?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By adding the ETC to the actuals, you can calculate the total expected cost. The variance between original budget and expected cost will give you your health check.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure the &quot;50% complete&quot; is validated by tangible (measurable) evidence and not a guess. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2013-06-25T19:50:27.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9448" CreationDate="2013-06-25T23:16:05.157" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A useful information dashboard shows whether your project is on-track or at-risk. There is no single formula for determining that, especially when a project has fallen prey to the &quot;80% of stuff is 50% done&quot; anti-pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Define Your Metrics&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with &quot;health checks&quot; is that they must be intrinsically meaningful to both your project and your organization. When you say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Engineering had 40 hrs and $1600 allotted...they have used used up 30 hours and are only 50% complete[.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;there's no obvious context or action item. For example, is the point to say that you have to do the remaining 50% of the work in 10 man-hours, or that you only have $400 left in the budget? Is 50% the amount of value you've received from work on the current feature, or the level of effort remaining to complete it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, there are too many ways to interpret this data. It may also be the wrong data anyway, because...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Fixed Budgets Aren't Level-of-Effort Estimates&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question does not define how these schedules and budgets are arrived at. Are they based on fixed labor costs, or are they based on level-of-effort estimates for a particular milestone?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the limited information provided in your question, the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; valid conclusion one can draw from the data is that your current estimates are off by 25-50%. If this is a routine shortfall, then to my way of thinking you have a fundamental problem with your estimating or budgeting processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may be a real problem (e.g. your delivery dates are slipping) or it may simply be a transient issue (e.g. schedule or budget will be made up somewhere else). Nevertheless, the point is that the project is not meeting &lt;em&gt;someone's&lt;/em&gt; expectations, and that information should be disseminated and the process re-evaluated in light of your empirical results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-06-25T23:16:05.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9448" CreationDate="2013-06-26T10:38:08.720" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are multiple metrics that would indicate the health, but since you mentioned costs and hours, Earned Value is the method you want to deploy.  It is very involved to execute this method properly and is expensive to operate.  Typically, it is used on more complex and expensive projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While Earned Value monitors hours, it is a tool that measures dollars.  Hours can overrun while dollars underrun, and vice versa.  So, once you &quot;dollarize&quot; the work, hours become less relevant.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, most people think in hours--obviously--when they are estimating work so you need to use both.  But your ETCs and EACs are in dollars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T10:38:08.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9454" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-26T11:56:06.733" Score="12" ViewCount="14600" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Guide states the Product Owner is the sole person responsible for managing the Product Backlog. Product Backlog management includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clearly expressing Product Backlog items;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ordering the items in the Product Backlog to best achieve goals and missions;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensuring the value of the work the Development Team performs;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensuring that the Product Backlog is visible, transparent, and clear to all, and shows what the Scrum Team will work on next; and,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensuring the Development Team understands items in the Product Backlog to the level&#xA;needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So why does my Scrum Coach where I work say the Product Owner is the boss of the Scrum Team? My Product Owner is not a Development Manager, Architect etc but a BA that has been given this role. Can anyone clarify?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6390" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2013-06-26T13:53:49.273" LastActivityDate="2019-04-15T13:12:58.010" Title="Is the Product Owner the boss of a Scrum Team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="11" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9454" CreationDate="2013-06-26T12:18:04.983" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrum.org/Scrum-Guides&quot;&gt;the Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product owner definition&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the product and the work of the&#xA;  Development Team. How this is done may vary widely across organizations, Scrum Teams, and&#xA;  individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Development team definition&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Development Team consists of professionals who do the work of delivering a potentially&#xA;  releasable Increment of “Done” product at the end of each Sprint. Only members of the&#xA;  Development Team create the Increment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But note...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They are self-organizing. No one (not even the Scrum Master) tells the Development Team&#xA;  how to turn Product Backlog into Increments of potentially releasable functionality&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, no, the product owner is not defined as the 'boss' of the development team. However, it is possible (though not advisable) for the product owner to &lt;em&gt;be&lt;/em&gt; the boss of one or more team members based on your internal organizational structure. This doesn't sound like the case in your organisation however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this attitude is causing problems in your team then I think it would be useful for everyone to review the underlying principles of Scrum and build a better understanding of their roles within the framework. Agile is absolutely not about &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_and_control&quot;&gt;command and control&lt;/a&gt; management!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T12:18:04.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9456" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9460" CreationDate="2013-06-26T13:15:20.147" Score="9" ViewCount="2796" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been reading on this subject for a while now, but still can't come up with a workable solution for my situation to scale a development department. May be someone can advise me on where to go from here :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am in charge of the whole software development department in my company. We have 35 developers of different skill sets split between 2 offices. Most of them are backend developers, 5-6 do front-end (like JS), 3 do slicing, plus a few team leads. Right now I have 4 teams responsible for particular &quot;products&quot; or areas, with a lead assigned to those. All software that we develop is web based: websites, services, tools, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Challenges that I'm facing right now:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Workload is not even across all resources of the team. There are teams when someone has not enough work, while others are overloaded&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I need to bring in, say, 10 more developers within the next year to accommodate ever growing needs for development. This poses challenge in splitting of responsibilities even further.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;half of the people are not cross-functional&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;about 20% of time is spent on bug fixes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;another 10-30% of time is spent on small improvement and feature requests (say, requiring 2-15 hours of work each to implement)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;projects that are running are iterative in nature, usually not exceeding 3-4 weeks when done right. Sometimes dragging for 2+ months if there is too much back-and-forth on small changes, improvements, or bugs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We don't have external clients, so that removes the contractual pressure and such, but still I need to be able to plan ahead :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been thinking about splitting teams by the areas of expertise (say front-end, slicing, back-end, etc) but pretty much the whole Internet tells me it's a bad idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking into project-specific teams, but quite short project timelines, and quite large proportion of ongoing small requests poses a challenge here (how do you do bug fixes in this model after release?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the advice is for smaller (5-15 person) teams. We've grew past that, and I think managed that phase quite well. Now this next step is a whole new ball game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6440" LastEditorUserId="6440" LastEditDate="2013-06-26T14:11:40.627" LastActivityDate="2013-06-29T19:08:24.290" Title="Scaling software development teams" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;distributed-team&gt;&lt;multi-team&gt;&lt;process-scaling&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9454" CreationDate="2013-06-26T13:48:15.993" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Boss&quot; could be kind of a general term in this case, meaning a whole host of things depending on your Scrum Coach's intent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the traditional sense, no, the Product Owner is not the boss of the scrum team. The team doesn't report to the Product Owner, nor does the Product Owner task the team members directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It'd be more apt to say the Product Owner is the boss of the product backlog. It's through that tool that the Product Owner can direct the team toward their vision for the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, if your team is self-organizing, there is no &quot;boss&quot; called out. Team leaders should, and do, arise naturally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4699" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T13:48:15.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9454" CreationDate="2013-06-26T14:28:28.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a way, your Scrum Master is correct that Product Owner is the boss of the Scrum Team. Many organizations have matrix structure where employees have one direct boss (responsible for employee's performance evaluation and other management tasks) and an indirect boss (to whom an employee reports for a temporary duration). When you think in those terms a Product Owner can be termed as a boss of the whole team (not the boss of an individual).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From another perspective, for the scrum team a product owner is the customer (or customer's representative). PO is responsible to manage requirements, to prioritize them, and to accept/reject functionality delivered by the scrum team. In effect, PO has some of the powers which traditional bosses used to have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's recap some of the responsibilities of a Product Owner (&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumreferencecard.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum Reference Card&#xA;by Michael James&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Single person responsible for maximizing the return on investment (ROI) of the development effort&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Final arbiter of requirements questions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accepts or rejects each product increment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decides whether to ship&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decides whether to continue development&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product Owner has the power to say &quot;no&quot; on what goes into the product backlog and when stories go into a sprint backlog. As Steve Jobs said: &quot;Innovation is not about saying yes to everything. It's about saying no to all but the most crucial features.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the above list, I would say that a Product Owner has some critical responsibilities and appropriately has equally critical authority and decision powers (so he can be assumed to be the boss).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the Product Owner does not assign/distribute tasks within the scrum team. PO does not estimate stories and a PO does not tell you how a particular task should be done in terms of technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A related note:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Product Owner does not have to be a senior designation/person like an architect or development manager (or any kind of manager). PO's role can be assigned to any person who carries clear vision of what is being developed and why. PO should have great communication skills to convey that vision to the scrum team. Should have quick decision making skills. Should have updated market research information. Should be able to foster collaboration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/roles/one-page-product-owner/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Product Owner On One Page&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As the name suggests, a product owner should own the product on behalf&#xA;  of the company. You can think of the product owner as the individual&#xA;  who champions the product, who facilitates the product decisions, and&#xA;  who has the final say about the product, for instance, if and how&#xA;  feedback is actioned, or when which features are released.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T14:28:28.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9454" CreationDate="2013-06-26T14:53:27.000" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It looks like the missing nuance is that the Product Owner does NOT assign work, decide how something will be developed or how long it will take them or how much the team will get done in a sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the Product Owner does decide, hopefully with input from the team, what feature should be developed next based on customer value and time, but the team decides how to implement it and how much time they need. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PO has a very important set of responsibilities to determine the next best thing to develop so that the team can focus on excellent development. It is a collaborative effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T14:53:27.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9456" CreationDate="2013-06-26T15:08:33.217" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a pretty big question that might create a lot of advice, but I'm sure there are also nuances that we will not get here. There are also multiple questions and challenges embedded into your question so I'm going to answer generally. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are right that grouping by areas of expertise is considered a bad idea as now no one group of people actually has what they need to be responsible and deliver a full feature. It can create siloing and a lot of throwing over the wall or even overwhelming situations for again groups that end up being the dependencies for every other team. I would agree that in general most software companies scale by creating groups of people that can be responsible for full value delivery or they have everyone and everything they need to be responsible end to end as much as possible. I suspect any other &quot;agile&quot; person will answer much the same way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is also a nice article from Yammer on the subject: &lt;a href=&quot;http://firstround.com/article/Why-Yammer-believes-the-traditional-engineering-organizational-structure-is-dead&quot;&gt;http://firstround.com/article/Why-Yammer-believes-the-traditional-engineering-organizational-structure-is-dead&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No person can be 100% utilized either. The question is how could they be helping their team instead, even if it is a task that they might be a little slower on. People may have to change the way they work or how they do they work in order to scale well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this centers around organizing yourself around OUTCOME vs. OUTPUT. How do you deliver high value, high quality products, not just get a lot done and increase lines of code?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the challenges, you might consider which ones are business realties and which ones require changes. Which ones are creating the biggest pains? Maybe go after making small incremental changes to address one challenge and see if it works. Repeat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never seen a growing company not have to challenge some set culture and ways that they work in order to create good growth. You can't take what you have and mush it into a new mold. It may challenge some people for awhile and even create some pain, but with your eye on the ball and goals of what challenges you hope to fix, check in and see if it happens. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be iterative with your change too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, over communicate about what you are doing and the challenges you are trying to solve and rally people behind the effort. If they don't also see the need or value the change, you'll create bigger challenges. They have to be apart of the change since they are the ones having to do it even if you are deciding it in some way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For basic change advice, you might check out &quot;Leading Change&quot; by Kotter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastEditorUserId="1766" LastEditDate="2013-06-26T15:21:13.223" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T15:21:13.223" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9456" CreationDate="2013-06-26T17:20:53.833" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Erin has some great general answers. I'd like to add a couple specific suggestions based on the set of projects I've been running. The situation is similar to yours in many ways(needing to use a set of people to handle ongoing maintenance, small change request, and new development... and needing to bring new members on from time to time). The usefulness of my suggestions might be dependent on what your company's culture is like and how your people are split across the two locations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To deal with on-boarding and increasing cross-functionality:&lt;/strong&gt; One of the things I've found that does this best is pair programming. Even if you don't want to use pair programming 100% of the time, it can be useful to do it for a short (couple weeks to a couple months) time period to ramp people up. Pairing lets your new hires get on-hands training with your processes and tools at the same time as they are learning your code bases and coding styles. But one of the keys I've found to this is that unless you have some people that are natural teachers, you will want to pair new people up with people that are only a few steps ahead of them in ability and knowledge. The reason for this is that while your most experienced people likely have more that they could share, they are also likely to be far enough removed from being &quot;new&quot; that they overlook some of the basic building blocks that your new people will need to pick up (learning to use your particular work item tracking system or code repository for example). This also helps reinforce the knowledge in your person doing the training. This works for both completely new people as well as if you are moving people around to increase cross-functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To deal with work items with different levels of service and varying work loads:&lt;/strong&gt; I'd suggest looking into kanban with daily standups. Kanban is great for providing visual controls across work items with different rules depending on the service level of the item in question. Team members can see at a glance whether there is a high priority bug fix that needs to be addressed or a code review for a different team member that they should take care of before starting on a new feature. Combining with daily standups helps teams naturally talk about where the pain points are in their processes and address them, or deal with any blocking issues. One of the keys to using kanban effectively is that it shouldn't look the same over time, as it should change depending on what pain points the team runs into and addresses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T17:20:53.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9454" CreationDate="2013-06-26T19:11:24.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the traditional sense of the word, the answer is &lt;strong&gt;No, the product owner is not the boss of the scrum team&lt;/strong&gt;. The PO is a member of the team and works with the team collaboratively. A good PO will make the vision and reasoning for priority clear and motivate the team to work towards the shared goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the PO defines and prioritizes the product that will get built. In that sense, they are directing the work that is done, and in some people's mind, that could mean &quot;boss&quot;. However, they are not making decisions about which members of the team do which work, how the work is implemented technically, or any of the more administrative tasks of being a boss such as hours, pay, and vacation schedules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3710" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T19:11:24.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9323" CreationDate="2013-06-26T22:06:18.610" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the fundamental question that isn't being asked is, &quot;What is the purpose of time tracking?&quot; Depending on your answer for your group should influence the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my group, we work on very large features: an individual feature takes on average 9 months to 1 year to develop and around 2000 hours of estimated work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I view time-tracking  to have 3 general purposes (one or more of which may apply to a particular project):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) &lt;strong&gt;Time-tracking to improve future estimations.&lt;/strong&gt; This is the one I currently use most often. We spend a fair amount of time up-front developing a detailed effort estimate in both hours and elapsed time. Generally engineers are assigned to project on a full-time basis (we find that increases efficiency rather than mind-share on multiple projects, but that would be a different thread). Instead of having engineers do time-sheets we have project managers mark at the end of each week how many FT and PT engineers worked on the project. We find that using that to measure actuals against planned provides a high relative accuracy for looking at where we need to improve our estimations in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) &lt;strong&gt;Time-tracking for billable work.&lt;/strong&gt; This is best used when a contract requires that we demonstrate actual hours performed to complete a project. For the purpose of billable work, .5 hours has always proved sufficient for customers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) &lt;strong&gt;Time-tracking for auditable work.&lt;/strong&gt; Basically, the same as #2, but applies especially for government or other contracts where the time spent on a project can be audited by the customer even in the case of fixed-priced contracts. The same granularity of .5 hours has always sufficed to demonstrate area of focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, I have found that the smaller the time granularity you require of team members the lower your overall accuracy. Additionally, a smaller granularity may lead the audience to perceive a higher level of accuracy then there really is. When required, stick to .5 - 1.0 hour granularity. The audience understands that there is some play in that number but that it provides a general output of how time is spent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, only engage in time-tracking once you understand what the purpose is for tracking time - don't do it just to &quot;monitor&quot; or tick-a-box that you are doing it. You will not know what to measure and will likely fall into a trap over-enforcing an onerous policy that isn't delivering value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6445" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T22:06:18.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9456" CreationDate="2013-06-27T00:38:56.957" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a pretty standard problem.  I have seen it in a lot of larger organizations and projects.  A classic approach is a matrix organization where people are grouped by functional skills and assigned to projects.  It is difficult to get this right as one of the organization structures tends to win out.  If you can manage to keep the balance, you may get better flexibility within projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The functional organizations should deal with items related to the skill set. This can included things like coding standards, skill development, tool selection, and career progress.  You may want to leverage them to provide cross project review.  These are the organizations which should be growing staff skills and improving your processes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Th project organizations deal with delivery and draw resources from the functional organizations.  Your maintenance team(s) could fall into this structure.  These are the organizations that will deliver or fail to deliver results.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Growing the team will increase management and communication overhead.  Bringing in new staff with lesser skills and experience will enable you to develop them to work well in your organization.  Bringing in new staff with more skills and experience can be disruptive.  Try to use that disruption to improve your delivery processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maintenance tends to grow as your portfolio of completed projects grows.  Retiring old projects which are no longer useful can help with this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using common tools, libraries, and processes should help with overall productivity and reduce maintenance costs.  Having one component routine which delivers a functionality makes it much easier to fix a bug in that functionality when you have dozen such components spread across half a dozen projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Implementing tools which review your code can improve quality and eventually reduce maintenance costs.  Fixing existing problems may create an initial increase in maintenance costs.  You can use tools to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify duplicate code.  (Multiple components doing the same thing.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find common coding errors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify code which doesn't follow project/organization standards.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T00:38:56.957" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9099" CreationDate="2013-06-27T03:50:17.213" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;UPDATE - Posted by the asker in the question and moved to a CW answer.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am actually part of the development team but I am in a position to make suggestions to improve the situation. Everyone has given some very good suggestions so thank you to all, some points of note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;David Espina had some good points when he said &amp;quot;Developing schedules can move and no one dies. Trying to control your response on support and someone dies...metaphorically, of course.&amp;quot; -- This is an issue for us, the support work needs to be done whether us developers like it or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assaf Lavie mentioned un-planned work coming from buggy code in a hurry -- This is an issue for us also primarily as a result of the powers that be imposing deadlines from above, but also because of the uncertainty of our sprints meaning we cant get the required development time so we approach a deadline with too much to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assaf also had a good point about not measuring unplanned work, this will be a difficult one to sell to the bosses as we are already required to record our time spent in a time tracking system but so far recording that has got us nowhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ben's suggestions about using the swimlanes and the Expidite token I think could work for us, there is an amount of unplanned work which is setting up accounts, feeds and other services for clients. The sales team always want this done ASAP but probably need to take a chill pill now and again and only give things a hight priority absolutely necessary. The sales team also have direct contact with the development team, so we probably need to sever that line of communication and only allow work to come via the product owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;D.W &amp;amp; Doug B suggested dedicating a percentage of time each sprint to maintenance &amp;amp; support. But I think the uncertainty will mean that some sprints the maintenance time is under subscribed and at others its over subscribed. So I think in our situation, that will only work some of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T03:50:17.213" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-06-27T03:50:17.213" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9454" CreationDate="2013-06-27T09:16:58.447" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely not. The name spells out their responsibilities: they make sure that the team is building the right product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Equally, the Scrum Master ensures that the process is as efficient and effective as possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile, and Scrum, are team efforts. Where traditionally you have &quot;bosses&quot;, you only have people with different responsibilities cooperating in a team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6300" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T09:16:58.447" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9467" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9469" CreationDate="2013-06-28T07:52:42.063" Score="0" ViewCount="2950" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hi I started a new web development company and have some clients. At present one of my clients regularly complains about loss of time and poor quality of the work. How can I simultaneously increase the efficiency of the team, the quality of the output, and reduce the time spent on development?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6373" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2013-06-28T10:18:42.733" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T06:59:42.490" Title="Improving quality and efficiency in development team" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9456" CreationDate="2013-06-28T10:11:30.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lots of facts that need to be brainstormed. I will focus on the bullet points to hopefully give you enough to think about. In some way it feels like I had the same issues a several years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Workload is not even across all resources of the team&lt;/strong&gt;: Try to figure out the root cause of it. My problem was that the each individual was the owner of a specific area in the product. If that is the case you have to make sure everybody in the team understands that the &quot;team&quot; is the owner. If someone is idle then she has to step out of her comfort zone and deal with other areas. Start with pair programming initially and have everybody in the team to handle all tasks. If the team is idle then it is ok for the team. It means they don't have work to do. If half of the team is idle then there is no collective ownership or a lack of know-how.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I need to bring in, say, 10 more developers...&lt;/strong&gt;: If you have fixed teams it is much easier handle it. Decide min and max size of your teams. When a team is growing then you have to split the team and create a new one. If you have min 5 people then your could create a new team by moving 2 from one team and 1 from other teams and the newcomer. Never put more than one newcomer in a team and have them pair programming. Assign a mentor for a period of time, if possible, until the newcomers finds their way in the organisation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Half of the people are not cross-functional&lt;/strong&gt;: This is a painful situation. You have to get them more cross-functional, if you think that it is an issue. Or maybe you should consider in a different distribution of skill set among the teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;10-30% of time is spent on small improvement&lt;/strong&gt;: You could create a special team that handles those. Rotate (every month or 2 weeks to start with until you find the proper duration) people in and out of this team from the rest of teams. Have everybody go through it and do frequent retrospectives to make sure it works. Do not rotate the all of the team at once. The transition has to be smooth.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I advice against teams by the areas of expertise or project-specific teams. Create teams that will stick together and grow an identity outside of a project and an expertise. Name your team based on colors or fruits or something else. Have them prove to the rest that they are the best team in the company. Even if you create new teams keep the original ones, to not loose identity, just like in sports having people moving from one team to another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6447" LastEditorUserId="6447" LastEditDate="2013-06-29T19:08:24.290" LastActivityDate="2013-06-29T19:08:24.290" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9467" CreationDate="2013-06-28T10:13:39.180" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think what you are experiencing is the harsh reality of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://programsuccess.wordpress.com/2011/05/02/scope-time-and-cost-managing-the-triple-constraint/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Triple Constraint&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Project Management Triangle&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/The_triad_constraints.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Project Management Triangle&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The principle is that all projects involve a tension between three factors: scope, cost and schedule. Some people use scope and quality interchangeably, while in other cases (including the diagram above) quality is seen as the factor affected by each constraint. A useful way to think about the triple constraint is that - generally speaking - imposing a limit on two factors will increase the third, so a project with huge scope and a limited schedule is probably going to cost a lot. Similarly, a project with a tiny budget/limited resources but huge scope is probably going to take a long time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, in your particular situation you want to maintain quality/scope while reducing or maintaining schedule commitments. That probably means that your costs need to go up. The important thing to remember is that cost isn't just about cash, it's also about resourcing. If you want to maintain quality and keep everything on schedule you may need to hire more staff - this will ultimately cost you more but will mean you can actually deliver what you've agreed (which is presumably what you're being paid for!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel like your team is properly resourced but isn't working efficiently enough then you may need to review your working practices but my instinct is that your problem is really to do with under-resourcing or over-commitment. Be good to hear a bit more about how your team works now so that the community can share their thoughts on it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T09:42:46.867" LastActivityDate="2013-06-28T10:13:39.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5726" CreationDate="2013-06-28T10:58:51.660" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try out &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.flying-donut.com/static/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Flying Donut&lt;/a&gt;. It is a new online agile software that is based on Scrum. In Flying Donut you are working on iterations, items, and tasks. There is a nice way of organizing your backlog, and its GUI is clean with quick response times. Easy to assign estimates and remaining time with inline editing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer&lt;/strong&gt;: I have been using Flying Donut for many months, since I helped building it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6447" LastActivityDate="2013-06-28T10:58:51.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9454" CreationDate="2013-06-29T08:48:09.723" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMO, they are partners who are focused on achieving the same goals. One focuses on 'what' (PO) and another focuses on 'How' (team).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They should collaborate and influence each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6453" LastActivityDate="2013-06-29T08:48:09.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9099" CreationDate="2013-06-29T23:30:41.740" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As someone who works in an in-house team, this sounds very familiar. Apart from the possibility that you might simply not have enough resources to deal with all the work coming in, these are a few strategies that might work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dedicate one or two developers to support work and rotate them on a somewhat regular basis, unless you have people who actually want to do support all the time. This has the advantage of making it very clear how much time is going to support tasks. If you dedicate 2 out of 6 developers to support and it turns out that isn't enough, you're at least aware of the simple fact that support eats up 50% or more of your development time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use WIP-limits religiously. Expedite tokens/lanes are great, but should be limited, otherwise everything turns out being really urgent. Make sure WIP-limits are based on reality. See the previous point on how to determine that reality.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to find out if your code is consistently being deployed while it's still bug-ridden and fix that. Rush jobs are a fact of life if/when the pressure is on, but you usually end up paying the price afterwards. In the face of overheated marketing people demanding immediate attention, my only advice is to keep your head cool and calmly but sternly stick to the 'a job worth doing is worth doing right' routine.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it eventually turns out you're in a company culture where speed trumps quality every time, return to my first point. Assign one or two devs to support, rotate them and deal with the really urgent stuff. If the backlog starts filling up, explain to management that you're spending 1/3 of your time on support already and maybe, just maybe, you can start turning that company culture around.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, my advice amounts to getting people focused on what matters. If the constant demand of 'urgent' support jobs keeps getting in the way of real productive time, you need to remove that constant demand from as many people as you reasonably can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6457" LastActivityDate="2013-06-29T23:30:41.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9454" CreationDate="2013-06-30T21:06:25.200" Score="13" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. The Product Owner is not intended to be a line-manager role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Scrum Isn't a Command-and-Control Framework&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of a &quot;boss&quot; implies a command-and-control structure that is antithetical to the self-organizing principles of Scrum. In fact, much of the directive authority that a traditional line manager would wield is deliberately excluded from the role of Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a singular example, a &quot;boss&quot; would typically be responsible for assigning tasks to individuals. While a Product Owner prioritizes features on the Product Backlog, it is actually the Development Team's responsibility to estimate the work needed to deliver Product Backlog items, decompose user stories into tasks, and organize task assignments internally within the group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What the Product Owner Controls and Influences&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner's primary team-facing responsibilities are to prioritize the Product Backlog and to clarify user stories. However, because the Product Backlog is inherently a resource-management tool, the Product Owner may legitimately be seen as the arbiter of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project budget and cost control.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resource allocation at the project (not task) level.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acceptability or suitability of completed work increments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to meet the role's core responsibility for delivering a product or service, the Product Owner must work &lt;em&gt;cooperatively&lt;/em&gt; with the Scrum Master and the Development Team to achieve each Sprint Goal. To do this, the Product Owner provides the scope and vision for the project, and prioritizes project resources for each Sprint. However, using the &quot;boss&quot; label for the role completely misses the essence of what makes the Product Owner role so critical to the success of the Scrum framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-06-30T21:06:25.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9476" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-07-01T06:42:23.440" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;See &quot;Limit WIP&quot; in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_%28development%29#Six_core_practices&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;core practices&lt;/a&gt; section of Wikipedia's Kanban development page, which says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Limiting work-in-process implies that a pull system is implemented on parts or all of the workflow. The pull system will act as one of the main stimuli for continuous, incremental and evolutionary changes to your system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The pull system can be implemented as a kanban system, a CONWIP system, a DBR system, or some other variant. The critical elements are that work-in-process at each state in the workflow is limited and that new work is “pulled” into the new information discovery activity when there is available capacity within the local WIP limit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-07-01T06:48:08.890" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T06:48:08.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9477" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-07-01T06:42:23.440" Score="0" Body="for questions related to &quot;work in-progress&quot; (WIP) limits" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-07-01T06:42:23.440" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T06:42:23.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4383" CreationDate="2013-07-01T17:06:53.447" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you're looking for is a Kanban board. Try www.trello.com.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-07-02T04:13:33.260" LastActivityDate="2013-07-02T04:13:33.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9443" CreationDate="2013-07-01T17:29:40.480" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would highly suggest updating to TFS 2013. They've implemented agile portfolio management tools, with 7 levels of work items. It is currently in preview, but it is fully supported and &quot;go-live&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a good site outlining the new features&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nakedalm.com/get-visual-studio-2013-team-foundation-server-while-its-hot/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;VS 2013&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 2012 alternative is to nest PBI's inside of PBI's, and manipulate area paths to simulate various levels (without creating custom work item types for epics/visions etc). I've implemented this solution before, but it can get rather confusing and there are some odd things that happen when nesting PBI's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you just want to display status you can use SSRS to generate reports of the TFS warehouse (and/or cube). Depending on how your TFS Server is being used (multiple team project collections, multiple team projects), this has varying degrees of difficulty. &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee921483.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;VS 2012 Reporting Services&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, it is difficult to be more specific without more specific information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T17:29:40.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4711" CreationDate="2013-07-01T23:29:06.933" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I have been developing software since 1995, and have been managing its development since 2006. I also hold both an MBA and PM from a reputable university.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Honestly, I don't think you need either.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your intention (as you describe) is to &quot;prepare&quot; for an upcoming career in management, then I'd suggest you find an existing manager and shadow them, and, if possible, get your hands dirty practising management as well. Based on what I've seen over the years, this approach is, without a doubt, the best way to prepare for a career in management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(consider for a moment that you might not enjoy management at all, in which case this approach also helps you minimise your costs associated with learning)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what it's worth, and as other posters have touched on, I found the MBA to be a great capstone course, that provides you with a strong set of generalist skills across all aspects of business. It will equip you with both knowledge and a sense of confidence that will certainly help you over the long-term, and will probably open many doors - due to both the reputation that preceedes it as well as the network of peers in your MBA alumni network (the latter will vary depending on where you study, and if you do go ahead with the MBA, I suggest you strongly consider the strength of alumni networks when surveying business schools).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM on the other hand is highly specialised. Whilst its body of knowledge is very thorough, I find that it is often overkill in a practical setting - although that all depends on the size of your project(s), the size of your team(s), and the extent to which your organisation practises textbook project management techniques. As a simple rule of thumb, unless you're in an organisation that explicitly seeks to employ qualified PMs (and abides by all the classic PM processes and procedures), you're better off avoiding this qualification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, &lt;strong&gt;in summary, your best bet is to seek out existing managers and learn from them. But you can't go wrong with an MBA (provided you choose your school wisely based on the criteria I've outlined above), and PM is overkill unless your organisation is PM-oriented&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a side note, I find your choice of words interesting. You say that you'd like to &quot;advance your career from development to management&quot;, when in reality, it's a sideways (as opposed to an upwards) move. But perhaps I'm being overly analytical on your choice of words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4523" LastEditorUserId="4523" LastEditDate="2014-07-07T21:06:32.860" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T21:06:32.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9481" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-02T00:37:53.687" Score="1" ViewCount="1591" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my former question I've asked about &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/9322/vision-for-a-team-with-multiple-projects&quot;&gt;visions for a team with multiple projects&lt;/a&gt;. My boss suggested that we should aim &quot;working toward to high quality standards and efficiency&quot; (or something related/similar) since we are not perfect in these (who is it?). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although it's a good direction and we take steps to improve our ways of working it does not seem to be a good vision since I feel myself weird to commit to this vision. Is it a great/poor vision? Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6299" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T07:12:36.193" Title="High quality standards and efficiency as a vision" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;goals&gt;&lt;vision&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9443" CreationDate="2013-07-02T11:47:00.897" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can also have a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://urbanturtle.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Urban Turtle&lt;/a&gt; product management in TFS 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regards&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S I am the product owner of Urban Turtle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6465" LastActivityDate="2013-07-02T11:47:00.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9481" CreationDate="2013-07-02T12:46:59.417" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you the only one talking to your boss about this, and is the discussion ad hoc? If this is the case I don't think you've got a &quot;vision&quot; so much as an &quot;opinion&quot; on what your priorities should be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A vision provides you with guidance on what your overriding priorities are with everything your organization does. It should dovetail into your corporate values, purpose and mission statement. It should define the essence of how your organization sets itself apart from everyone else. It shoudl be simple enough that everyone in your organization can understand it and work towards it... even if they don't buy into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given this, I don't think it is necessarily possible to say objectively that any given vision is good or bad. What is good for me isn't necessarily good for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-07-02T12:46:59.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9481" CreationDate="2013-07-02T12:59:54.660" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend taking a leaf from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gilb.com/blogpost19-Is-software-quality-measurement-a-matter-of-subjective-judgement&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tom Gilb's book&lt;/a&gt; and actually trying to put some metrics around &quot;quality&quot; and &quot;efficiency&quot;. This may mean splitting them up. For instance, if part of &quot;quality&quot; is &quot;ease of maintenance&quot;, can you put a metric on it? How long should it take to fix a minor bug? How long to ship it to production? What's that like compared to your current metrics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will help clarify what exactly is meant by &quot;quality&quot;, as well as helping you find specific areas in which &quot;quality&quot; is lacking. You'll also be able to objectively measure the different aspects which you target, and see if the changes you make are having an effect. You could also look out for the riskiest aspects, where it might be hard to achieve a tolerable measurement, or where the company has never previously managed to achieve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A side-effect might be that your boss realises that his &quot;vision&quot; doesn't dovetail with the objectives of the company as mentioned by @doug-b. Look out for that early and see if you can find the definitions of &quot;quality&quot; and &quot;efficiency&quot; which do actually play into the company's goals and differentiators. Remember that if a measurement doesn't actually play into those goals and differentiators then targeting a tolerable level is plenty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also recommend reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0884271951&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Eliyahu Goldratt et al's &quot;The Goal&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0988262592&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gene Kim et al's &quot;The Phoenix Project&quot;&lt;/a&gt; (the second references the first quite heavily). Both of these are easy reads, both fiction books. The first introduces Theory of Constraints, and the second introduces Kanban for software development and shows how it plays on the second. These should give you some really great ways of looking at your work and managing the flow, as well as some useful language for pushing back if the work becomes overwhelming. You can follow up with &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0984521402&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;David J. Anderson's &quot;Kanban&quot;&lt;/a&gt; if you'd like some more advice on how to implement the ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2013-07-02T12:59:54.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9481" CreationDate="2013-07-02T16:31:00.573" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pithy slogans belong on coffee mugs. Real vision statements guide your organization's strategic goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Vision Statements Defined&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_planning#Key_components&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a Wikipedia entry&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[A vision statement] outlines what the organization wants to be, or how it wants the world in which it operates to be (an &quot;idealised&quot; view of the world). It is a long-term view and concentrates on the future. It can be emotive and is a source of inspiration. For example, a charity working with the poor might have a vision statement which reads &quot;A World without Poverty.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, simply expressing a desire to be &quot;working toward to (&lt;em&gt;sic&lt;/em&gt;) high quality standards and efficiency&quot; is so generic and semantically null as to be irrelevant. It might help guide your group's development of process, or be good grist for the mill during a retrospective, but it isn't really a vision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Good Vision Statements&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to one source, &lt;a href=&quot;http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples/best-examples-of-a-vision-statement.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;good vision statements&lt;/a&gt; should focus on &quot;what your business does and what...you would like it to do[.]&quot; Your boss's generic slogan doesn't measure up in that regard, even though it's probably a worthwhile team objective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By all means, develop high standards (which you can then include in your &quot;definition of done&quot;) and improve your efficiency in some measurable way. Those are certainly worthwhile goals for any project. These vague procedural objectives don't really amount to a vision statement, though; the tenets are myopic at best, and are not intrinsically inspiring or reflective of a strategic goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-07-02T16:44:02.397" LastActivityDate="2013-07-02T16:44:02.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9481" CreationDate="2013-07-02T19:11:56.167" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Efficiency initiatives often become cost-reduction-driven. Quality is about pride of workmanship. Personally, I don't find them to work well together. Better focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2142" LastActivityDate="2013-07-02T19:11:56.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9318" CreationDate="2013-07-03T00:38:17.010" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/strong&gt; Ask if there's anything you can do to help instead of asking for root causes. This might make the team act less defensively. For example, if stories are incomplete during sprint planning, spend more time during the week grooming the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Longer answer:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have asked for root causes of the problems and the team is pushing back hard saying that management needs to trust the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems obvious that many factors are coming into play, but may I suggest taking a different approach? Rather than asking the team for root causes, try asking the team if there is anything you as Product Owner can do to help the team achieve their goals. For example, are the requirements complete at the time when the team pulls the stories into their sprints, or does the team spend lots of time gathering requirements at the beginning of a sprint? If the latter, then there's an easy opportunity for improvement - set aside more time throughout the week for you and the team to groom the backlog so stories are complete before the team gets to sprint planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6468" LastActivityDate="2013-07-03T00:38:17.010" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9099" CreationDate="2013-07-03T08:35:14.663" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To protect the developers try having people who can handle calls from users. More like level 1 support. These people(could be 1 person) should be trained to handle routine issues and should have ability to direct the users to the right person for issue resolution. This person will help in reducing the burden of development team.&#xA;Also have 2 developers on rotation basis on support job dedicatedly. &#xA;You can choose the number of developers on support job based on the volume of issues reported. This will enable rest of the gang to churn up new code and because of rotation most of the folks get to do development work every month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6209" LastActivityDate="2013-07-03T08:35:14.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9489" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-03T14:46:21.710" Score="1" ViewCount="435" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have one technology manager and three product managers. As our small startup grows from 4 people to almost 100 I had assumed that our new product managers would also be 'project managers.' (The tech managers used to fill in as the 'project managers' before we had PM.) That is not necessarily happening. There is too much overlap and not enough distinct responsibility.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our team looks like this (number of persons in role at the end):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product team with product managers: 3&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Programmers: 16&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;QA: 4&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Director Technology : 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Director Engineering : 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We practice a non-rigid agile-like methodology, but we are not Scrum ideologues. We set aside about 3 weeks worth of work, estimate it, put it into Jira, and assign to devs. But the PM often changes requirements during the work cycle.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently I have been thinking that perhaps the flexibility that this accords us is having a deleterious effect in that the product mangers now have the ability to tweak requirements, sometimes based on beta testing with early adopters during the sprint. This is causing minor finger pointing. Engineers feel like PM keep changing things up. PM feel like devs are perhaps slower than they should be. The CEO doesn't know if we are doing a good job of driving accountability and productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6471" LastEditorUserId="6471" LastEditDate="2013-07-07T12:44:16.820" LastActivityDate="2013-07-07T12:44:16.820" Title="Should our Tech Manager or Product Manager be the Project Manager?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;technical-leader&gt;&lt;product-manager&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9489" CreationDate="2013-07-03T14:55:47.363" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It does not matter.  What you are missing is a strong PM capability.  You need to designate in a legitimate way the role of PM, give that role the necessary accountability, responsibilities, and authority, put a person in that role who has the requisite knowledge, skills, and abilities to execute, and then press GO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-07-03T14:55:47.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9489" CreationDate="2013-07-03T15:16:17.157" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Project Management as Distinct Role&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project management is a distinct role, and a distinct career path. Whether your project is shepherded by a Project Manager, a Scrum Master, or a Grand Poohbah of Process isn't the point; the issue is that you need &lt;strong&gt;formal project controls&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;a formal role to manage them&lt;/strong&gt; if you want your organization to move beyond &quot;catch-as-catch-can project management.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is that, according to you, your current process is not working. Continuing to follow the same informal non-process will not generate improved results, so it's probably time to review your process and your project management framework to identify what isn't working for your organization&amp;mdash;then do something different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-07-03T15:16:17.157" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9467" CreationDate="2013-07-03T16:33:21.067" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to add my thoughts as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understand what your one of the client complaints &quot;At present one of my clients regularly complains about loss of time and poor quality of the work.&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get the specific details about what he meant by poor quality and loss of time.  How can you fix the quality issue you have and how can you avoid the loss of time.  The more specific inputs you get from your client you would be able to improve the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If whatever client says is true acknowledge the specific inputs and issues from him and go with strong action plan to solve those and get a strong buy in from him on your plan too and assure him that these actions items and plan should solve this issue permanently.  Implement the leanings from this to all other tasks too.  Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastActivityDate="2013-07-03T16:33:21.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9493" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9494" CreationDate="2013-07-03T14:19:36.040" Score="5" ViewCount="8060" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a Scrum Master or a Ph.D. in math. How do stories with 0 and 0.5 points apply to stories on the Scrum board?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6477" OwnerDisplayName="davidshen84" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-07-03T18:10:56.280" LastActivityDate="2019-08-05T04:52:42.547" Title="When should I assign 0 and 0.5 story points to user stories in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9493" CreationDate="2013-07-03T17:32:49.403" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;0-point and 0.5-point stories are part of the modified Fibonacci sequence often used in user story estimation, and denote stories that are smaller than the team's standardized baseline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Sequence Measures Relative Effort&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story points in Scrum often use a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_poker&quot;&gt;standard or modified Fibonacci sequence&lt;/a&gt; to estimate the level of effort for stories based on some agreed-upon baseline such as a &quot;typical&quot; one-point story. The sequence is intended to encourage relative estimates of &lt;em&gt;effort&lt;/em&gt;, rather than time-based estimates. For example, a 1/2-point story should require half as much effort to complete as a 1-point story, while a 2-point estimate is expected to take twice the effort required by the baseline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Zero-Point Stories&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people use zero-point estimates for stories that they don't want included in their velocity tracking, or for stories that they consider too small to assign points to individually. For example, some teams might assign a number of zero-point stories an aggregate estimate, where a half-dozen zero-point stories are assigned an aggregate value of five points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my professional experience, while 1/2 point stories may have a valid place in Sprint Planning or user story estimates, I have &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; seen zero-point stories used to good effect. Using them either results in invisible work (a big no-no in effective Scrum implementations) or mis-estimates caused by emergent complexity or disregard of work-in-progress (WIP) limits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my own practice, I strongly recommend avoiding zero-point estimates altogether. However, your professional mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-07-03T17:32:49.403" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9493" CreationDate="2013-07-05T09:22:09.060" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stories with 0 SP means that there is nothing to do in this story. It means that this story has been done in another story, or just someone done it by accident. You can keep them in your product backlog, or with all stories which has been accomplished so you can see what have been already implemented into your product&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;0,5 SP means that there is a little work to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4732" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T09:22:09.060" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9419" CreationDate="2013-07-05T10:07:56.063" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would rather ask you and other developers in your company how this amount of management help you in day to day work. If all of them are helpful - for example by removing impediments and protecting teams before being interrupted it's OK. But if all of this managers distracting teams when they are trying to do their job... well it means that it's not working as good as it can. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answer depends on your context so none here will tell you what is better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4732" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T10:07:56.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9489" CreationDate="2013-07-05T16:26:35.947" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Asking your Product Managers to also perform the Project Management role is probably not the wisest course. There is usually a tension between the two roles. And it is extremely difficult for a single individual to pull off both roles at the same time. Generally, if one person is trying to do both, one of the two sides will get less attention than it should. I say this as a Project Manager that has often had to wear the Product Manager hat (and I freely admit that the best projects I've managed have been those that have had someone else fill the Product Manager role).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's look at the two roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product Manager&lt;/strong&gt; - Usually trying to help ensure that the &quot;best&quot; possible product is delivered. Making sure that it gives a good customer experience. Focus is not on how long it will take or what the cost will be. I'm not saying that they don't care about those things, just that they are supposed to take a back seat to the quality and customer satisfaction as far as Product Manager goes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Manager&lt;/strong&gt; - Usually trying to help ensure that the project gets done. And that it is done on time and on budget with few defects. Focus is not on whether the customers like the end result. Again, I'm not saying that the Project Manager doesn't care about the customers, just that it is generally not their focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a natural give-and-take between these two roles. Product Owners want to modify scope based on what they think will give the best experience to the end users. Project Owners push back, indicating the impact to budget and schedule. In a good relationship between the two, they'll see if maybe something else can be cut, or find out if another solution can meet both needs. Or flipping the situation... Project Manager might see that the schedule is in jeopardy, and discuss with the Product Owner what can safely be cut or simplified in order to meet the budget and schedule. While it is possible for a single individual to do this on their own, it is a difficult balance to maintain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having 6 product owners seems like overkill based on the information that you've provided so far. I'd suggest seeing if one of them has an aptitude (and interest) in project management, and changing their role. But one way or another, you need to have someone that is focused on that role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T16:26:35.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9498" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-05T17:07:11.447" Score="5" ViewCount="539" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have developers who have cleared the technical round of interviewa and the technical interviewers mentioned that the developers appear to have good communication skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since bringing good people into a project is difficult, what information can I use to predict positive future performance when evaluating candidates for developer positions where good communication is key?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2013-07-09T12:14:37.633" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T00:31:18.193" Title="What information can predict positive future performance when evaluating candidates?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9489" CreationDate="2013-07-06T03:22:17.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a big fan of &quot;Job Titles&quot;, however more interested in skill and competence of the individual that fulfils the role.  The question rather is &quot;Can person , do the job of both Product Manager and Project Manager, without being overloaded and in conflict?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know folks that can easily jump between the two roles and not impact the project,  however others are strong in one role and weak in the other which negatively impacts the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A title does not mean competence, its just a label used on a business card.  The reality is if you compare any one title across multiple companies, you will quickly find that each is completely different.  The position normally morphs into what the organisation needs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5634" LastActivityDate="2013-07-06T03:22:17.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9481" CreationDate="2013-07-06T03:31:11.453" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would rather adopt an empirical view of things.  I would constantly inspect the current state of the project/team/department and have an open discussion with the team to determine what is slowing down, impacting performance and reducing quality.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next is to be transparent about the findings to all interested parties. By being open and honest about weaknesses is the first step in correcting them.  As a bad analogy, an alcaholic cannot be helped until he/she admits there is a problem;  likewise a team cannot resolve dysfunction/impediments until they admit there is a problem that needs fixing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the team with the help of management and other stakeholders need to set in a plan of action to help remove or change that corrects the problem and give the team what they need to improve quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's all nice for your boss to put this vision in place, however what is the boss going to do the help the team achieve the vision.  To be blunt, a vision means nothing unless the boss commits to assisting the team with whatever it takes to meet this vision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5634" LastActivityDate="2013-07-06T03:31:11.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9467" CreationDate="2013-07-06T03:36:48.787" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a real problem that many teams face.  The first is to start empirically observing the problem and start adapting to make changes to improve.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need to do, is really inspect your situation with you team to find out why this is happening.  Then start making changes for the future.  You need to learn from your mistakes &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Willl is more likely correct with the iron triangle, however I would say you know your situation better than any of us.  What you need to do is a little retrospection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. &#xA;  - Albert Einstein&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5634" LastActivityDate="2013-07-06T03:36:48.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9427" CreationDate="2013-07-06T15:04:01.903" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stake holders play following key roles and many other&#xA;1.Stating requirements clearly&#xA;2.Clarification of requirements in all the phases of project&#xA;3.Validating POC or prototypes if there are any &#xA;4.Change controls if there are any and budget approvals&#xA;5.User Acceptance testing&#xA;6.Sign off for the developed piece of software&#xA;7.Production issues if there are any after product went live and follow up to rsolve&#xA;8.Feedback how it worked after the product is stable or mean time too&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastActivityDate="2013-07-06T15:04:01.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9467" CreationDate="2013-07-07T21:40:33.790" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can't. However according to Jason Cohen's studies in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.pl/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;ved=0CC4QFjAA&amp;amp;url=http://smartbear.com/SmartBear/media/pdfs/best-kept-secrets-of-peer-code-review.pdf&amp;amp;ei=qd_ZUbWhLIX-PMvegWg&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNGnMyNs-qUSI9gqIFUuNsNoQV3QoQ&amp;amp;sig2=og8LBhpKPdVg_ECoCRmCMg&amp;amp;bvm=bv.48705608,d.ZWU&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Best Kept Secrets of Peer Code Review&lt;/a&gt;, the cheapest way to improve software quality is introducing peer code reviews in your development process. I think it is really worth giving a shot :)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for productivity I think that you have to motivate better your team. Maybe some trainings and courses also would be a good investment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5085" LastActivityDate="2013-07-07T21:40:33.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9506" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-08T08:04:40.127" Score="7" ViewCount="1384" Body="&lt;p&gt;I moved to Asia recently. I have to optimize some production cells, mainly painting cell (manual spray), which means measurements. No operators in the company can speak English. In the offices, some person speak English such as CEO, quality manager, and a little bit the production manager. Some translator are available, but they are pretty busy and cannot be by your side for long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately I am not staying long enough in the company (just few months) to get to learn the language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that communication is the KEY point in industrial engineering, especially when measurement of productivity (and therefore operators) is involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the key point to follow in order to successfully accomplish a task in a foreign environment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5773" LastEditorUserId="5773" LastEditDate="2013-07-08T08:17:49.953" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T09:59:43.547" Title="How to manage a project in foreign country - language barrier" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;measurement&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9506" CreationDate="2013-07-08T17:58:01.460" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ideally you have someone from the culture that is foreign to you that you trust, who understands what you are trying to do, and is willing to support you. He/she/they can then interface with the operators while you interface with management, guide you through cultural norms, etc. Presumably he/she/they is/are less experienced than you, otherwise there would be no value having you around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Failing the ideal, you will need to spend more time talking with whomever you can and get their feedback on how to communicate with your team. The main thing is to throw your assumptions out of the window and ask what you would otherwise consider to be &quot;dumb&quot; questions. Find out what are good approaches vs bad approaches, where you have to massage what you are trying to say and where you have to be blunt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-07-08T17:58:01.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9506" CreationDate="2013-07-08T18:27:26.083" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Communication is one of the most--if not, the most--important contributor to any project's success.  If you don't have that capability, you need to get it.  Buy it, hire it, do something or give the project up.  And remember, communication is way more than speaking the language.  That is the easy part.  You have culture, norms, mores, folkways, taboos, and laws to worry about that are a huge part of communication and the hardest to get right.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-07-08T18:27:26.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9467" CreationDate="2013-07-09T06:59:42.490" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;efficiency of the team: Efficiency itself means good quality and better productivity.&#xA;the quality of the output: This can be improved using multiple strategies&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agree with the client about quality goals for various stages. You cannot achieve quality without defining it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Generally speaking lower defect delivery should be a goal. For that you can create coding check lists, code review, unit test plan review. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure that various defects are logged and later analysed using pareto diagram (or any other tool). Try to figure out why you have defects and fix the issue&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;reduce the time spent on development&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Again you need to ascertain how much Time spent of development is right amount of time. You should define your productivity figures and then you can decide on strategy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Generally speaking, creating reusable components, automating manual tasks, training the team in the technology you use and keeping a good working environment will more or less ensure that you have good productivity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6209" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T06:59:42.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9481" CreationDate="2013-07-09T07:12:36.193" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;All mission statements and goals should be tangible. There should be number associated with it. The approach should be scientific.&#xA;Ask you boss if he wants to increase the FP delivered per month, or does he want to reduce % of defects delivered per release or does he want the Employee satisfaction index to go up. &#xA;Just saying that we want more efficiency and better quality means nothing until it is measured. Since it is IT company by all means Efficiency and Quality should be one of the goals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6209" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T07:12:36.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3056" CreationDate="2013-07-09T09:04:38.813" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all you need to feel a need to organize your life. &#xA;Second of all - follow simple personal kanban rules to build your own personal kanban board:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Establish Your Value Stream&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Establish Your Backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Establish Your WIP Limit&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Begin to Pull &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6482" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T09:04:38.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9454" CreationDate="2013-07-09T09:35:43.420" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Product Owner compiles all the changes planned for the product and prioritizes the possible functionalities. The result of the product owner’s work is a Product Backlog – a to-do list that is constantly reprioritized. Before each Sprint, the highest prioritized goals are transferred to a Sprint Backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master coaches the development team, removes any possible impediments and constantly works to ensure that the team has the best possible circumstances for realizing the goals fixed for the Sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6482" LastEditorUserId="6482" LastEditDate="2013-07-09T14:55:58.943" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T14:55:58.943" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9498" CreationDate="2013-07-09T11:53:58.707" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Employee selection is a huge topic and very complex.  There are a good bit of studies out there analyzing the validity of performance predictors and future job success.  I read previously, but I cannot find the source, that some believe we have a 50% chance of selecting correctly.  If this is true, this means you can dispense with the expensive interview process and simply flip a coin.  I wouldn't recommend that not because of potentially disastrous results but because it would be politically unacceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the first things you should do on this topic is trash what you think is true on this topic.  Education, where someone went to school, training certificates, PMP, experience, results of interviews, all of these things rank quite low as valid predictors.  Hunter &amp;amp; Hunter in 1984 found that these things have less than 0.20 validity.   They also found that cognitive tests and job tryouts are the best indicators, with a validity of 0.53 and 0.44 respectively.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The penalty with these findings is, cognitive testing and job tryouts are very expensive.  The tests and job simulation have to have validity itself, which means they need to be developed and tested over time.  Companies that do this charge for its use.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to answer you question about your specific scenario, I would suggest first that the results from the first set of technical interviews are, at best, questionable, 50/50 they got it right, and if you have a good size population of candidates to begin with.  If you can't go back and do something else, then the best thing you can look for is, 'are they smart and can they get things done' (Joel Spolsky).  And leave your biases at the door.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T11:53:58.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9498" CreationDate="2013-07-09T13:25:54.363" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If good communications is key I think the best that you can do is to have a variety of interviewers. If you base your analysis only on the technical interviewers you will bias the assessment towards someone who is good at communicating &lt;em&gt;technical&lt;/em&gt; topics with other experts but may not be able to translate that to good communication with lay people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming you go with a variety of interviewers, it is important to have what they are evaluating overlap. For example, a developer and a business analyst could both assess the candidate's understanding and communication of functional and non-functional requirements. If you silo what individuals are evaluating you will only get a disjointed picture of the candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T13:25:54.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9506" CreationDate="2013-07-09T16:45:14.400" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use the technology.  Use technology translators like Google etc..  What ever you want to communicate to some one, type in English and translate the same. Check  even you can get other way too.   Get clearly clarity what you need to do and ask feedback in all the phases.  Use more diagrams if possible so that it is easy to communicate and understand too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T16:45:14.400" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9498" CreationDate="2013-07-10T00:31:18.193" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no uniformly valid predictive indicators for successful hires. However, there are certainly valid interview practices for assessing communications skills and potential project fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Communications Skills&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, communication skills are often self-evident during an interview&amp;mdash;assuming the interviewer has sufficient communications skills to evaluate them in others. Some ways to validate candidate communications skills include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assess how well people speak in interviews.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assess how well people write cover letters, source code comments, prior publications, or interview exercises.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assess the candidate's active listening skills.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assess how effectively a candidate transfers ideas in layman's terms, especially regarding job-related or technical concepts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of these things will guarantee that the person &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; communicate effectively if hired, and people with disabilities may perform poorly in some of these areas despite otherwise good communications skills. Still, if effective communication is a basic job requirement, the only way to test for communications skills is to actually attempt to communicate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Project Fit&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a project management perspective, your main concern in the interview process ought to be whether the candidate is a potential fit for your project management framework and project culture. It is generally someone else's responsibility to vet the person for the technical skills necessary to complete deliverables; even if you happen to be a technical subject matter expert, your &lt;em&gt;role&lt;/em&gt; is managing the project, not vetting someone's source code, so focus on how that person is likely to fit within your core areas of responsibility: project framework practices and project controls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Investment companies will be the first to tell you that past performance is not a guarantee of future results, and most interviews are really just hearsay anyway. Nevertheless, there is a lot of value in inquiring after a candidate's experience with your particular project management framework (especially when using agile frameworks) and then listening to &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; the candidate answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're a Scrum Master, there may be value in hiring a candidate who already has experience with a relevant Scrum role. A candidate who understands (and can articulate!) the purpose of a standup meeting or how to play Planning Poker is probably a more likely to be an effective self-organizing team member than one who is used to needing written authorization to blow his nose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're a waterfall practitioner, there's probably more value in hiring someone who understands the planning and reporting requirements you need than someone who prefers to &quot;get 'er done&quot; without all that tedious project management stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't mean you can't hire someone who isn't a project management expert, or who doesn't have experience with your particular framework. However, all other things being equal, an understanding of the team's project management framework and practices (and, perhaps more importantly, a shared appreciation of those practices) is going to be more valuable to &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; as the project manager than anything else you could ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;No Guarantees&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There aren't any guarantees in hiring. Even if someone is a perfect fit, they may get a better offer, learn to detest their teammates, suffer a health crisis, or decide to enter a monastery as a career change. Life is unpredictable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All you can really do is identify what's important to you in your specific organizational role, and then do your best to select for the characteristics that make your job at least &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt;. If you get it wrong (and it's even odds that you will) then do your best to honestly assess whether you selected for the wrong things or whether it was &quot;just one of those things.&quot; If the former, fix your selection process; if the latter, increase your statistical sample until you achieve the results you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T00:31:18.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9520" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9521" CreationDate="2013-07-10T09:38:17.430" Score="22" ViewCount="7756" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the things that I'm still trying to wrap my head around is defect tracking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should we put defects on the Board and track them alongside the other items (new features, refactoring work etc), or should we track them as issues (issues are tracked separately and they show up on the board only when they are blocking something)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reason why their existence on the board gives me trouble is that they are variable in size. In majority of cases, such issues are an order of magnitude smaller than the other work that's on the board. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of that, I was thinking about two options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduce a separate swim lane for bugs only. In the beginning, we would like to keep it as wide as possible to force the team to go through existing issues faster (mostly edge cases and minor issues that piled up with time), and than make it narrower when we go through them. By keeping a dedicated swim lane for bugs even when there are no pressing production issues (which are always handled as expedited items), we will ensure that edge cases and minor bugs get cleaned instead of letting them pile up.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Track them as issues in an issue tracking system and fix them the same way as we did. Risk here is that edge cases and minor issues would pile up, because such issues never get priority.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should defects flow through the Kanban board, or should they be tracked as issues?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6506" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-07-11T04:27:11.300" LastActivityDate="2017-01-08T10:26:55.890" Title="Should defects flow through the Kanban board, or should they be tracked as issues?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9520" CreationDate="2013-07-10T10:36:45.810" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;My opinion is that you have a very good approach at hand by creating &lt;strong&gt;separate swim lane for bugs/issues&lt;/strong&gt; on the same wall/board. &lt;strong&gt;Visibility is the main reason&lt;/strong&gt; why I am inclined towards this approach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having two separate systems to manage your to-do list is not going to give you a complete picture of the current status. Visualizing the flow of work and making it visible is one of the core practice of Kanban. When the team sees too many issues along side regular work items, they will get concerned and will decide on capacity distribution to handle both types of work (regular and issues).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Issues requiring smaller magnitude of effort as compared to the regular work items should not be a big concern as multiple smaller issues can be bunched together (if required) and handled in a group.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T10:36:45.810" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9520" CreationDate="2013-07-10T11:56:56.903" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use a &lt;strong&gt;different color&lt;/strong&gt; of token to represent bugs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That gives us a quicker way of looking at what &lt;em&gt;proportion&lt;/em&gt; of the current work is for features vs. bugs (and same for the backlog of items).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also have the separate swimlane as others have suggested.  But if we come across a bug that is related to a feature that we are working on, we put the bug in that feature's swimlane, and the feature isn't considered done until the bug is fixed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides that, I wholeheartedly agree with Aziz that &lt;strong&gt;visibility is the key&lt;/strong&gt;, and that your approach with having a separate swimlane for bugs/defects is a good way to approach it in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastEditorUserId="4718" LastEditDate="2013-07-11T16:52:19.290" LastActivityDate="2013-07-11T16:52:19.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9524" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-07-10T12:47:50.757" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use this tag on questions which are related to bugs. Bugs are errors, issues, problems, or faults that cause unexpected result or behavior in a system. This tag should not be used if you have to report a bug on any of the Stack Exchange sites, for that please go to the relevant meta site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2013-07-10T14:49:48.310" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T14:49:48.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9525" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-07-10T12:47:50.757" Score="0" Body="For questions which are related to bugs. Bugs are errors, issues, problems, or faults that cause unexpected result or behavior in a system. " OwnerUserId="1615" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2013-07-10T14:49:41.463" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T14:49:41.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8809" CreationDate="2013-07-10T13:16:31.610" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another interesting point is that in order to estimate a bug, you have to understand why it's not working, and that's usually the longest of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it can take a lot of time and speculation for the estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we did without Pivotal Tracker was calculating and &quot;average value&quot; (based on the time it took to fix the bug, transformed into points), so we would always give this value to bugs (and sometimes have big differences with the reality, but they compensate with time, as we re-adjust the bug value each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6511" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T13:16:31.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9527" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9532" CreationDate="2013-07-11T14:25:18.393" Score="7" ViewCount="417" Body="&lt;p&gt;My own background is in software dev and I've started work as a network engineering PM recently. In my previous PM work, creating documentation was a separate task. It was sometimes done by the software engineer who completed the task that needed to be documented, but sometimes done by someone else like a technical writer or junior engineer (then checked by the senior engineer). So it was a separate task with the task list looking something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;set up XYZ&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;document XYZ configuration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this environment, before I was around, they established that they don't have documentation tasks, that uploading documentation was what you did before you checked the task off because they say that it is not really complete unless it's documented. The result is I have a ton of tasks along the lines of &quot;Set up XYZ&quot; that are just hanging open because the person responsible doesn't have time to do the documentation yet. Their argument is that we have too many tasks already, that we have &quot;task bloat.&quot; Indeed, we have some task lists that are 30 tasks long and it does seem a little daunting at times. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I don't like this current practice because it looks like things aren't done in our PM software (TeamworkPM), which our clients also participate in and also I think sometimes the documentation tasks can be delegated to other people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is good criteria for deciding what constitutes a task? How can I balance granularity and &quot;task bloat&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5186" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-07-13T17:42:55.880" LastActivityDate="2013-07-14T15:32:39.703" Title="What is good criteria for deciding what constitutes an individual task?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9527" CreationDate="2013-07-11T15:37:19.580" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is going to be heavily dependent upon what your organization and sponsor want in terms of control and oversight over a project. For example, if your organization's culture is very much about tracking at a very fine level you may not want to just track delivery of the documentation, but also when it is first drafted, when it is reviewed, when it is revised, when it is accepted and when it is published.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your main responsibility here is to articulate what is required in terms of resources and time to generate the desired level of oversight, and facilitate tailoring of what is wanted to what is going to add the most value given the criticality and complexity of your project. On a current project of mine I started out with a high-level plan of maybe 80 tasks that morphed into one of ~250 by the time all was said and done, but the team was engaged and bought into the belief that such a level of detail was necessary and added value for the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With all that said, is the root cause of the problem really with your task lists? It seems to me that it is more likely your team members are over-tasked, it might be more productive for you to see if they can delegate the documentation effort to someone else on future projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-07-11T15:37:19.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9527" CreationDate="2013-07-11T17:02:31.517" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since it is clarified now it is end user documentation like user manuals etc..  Here are my thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User manuals are very important for the end user.  Need to educate your team how important it is for the end user.  With out this Users may not be comfortable of new features developed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Include this task in your plan and you could get this done with&#xA;junior developers or college interns if you have any.  Final document&#xA;review should be done with SME(Subject Matter Expertise) and with&#xA;Senior members of the team.  Send the end user after implementing the&#xA;review comments.  High quality documentation helps end user very&#xA;much.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The other way of educating the team is give your team members a new&#xA;software with out documentation and ask them to perform the needed&#xA;task.  Ask them to note down the challenges they face too.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Brainstorm the challenges on this and get team buy-in to implement&#xA;the agreed improvements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastEditorUserId="6474" LastEditDate="2013-07-14T15:32:39.703" LastActivityDate="2013-07-14T15:32:39.703" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9530" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-11T17:10:53.190" Score="2" ViewCount="11286" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the procedure to change Baseline plan of the project?  When do you considering changing Baseline plan of the project. Who need to approve the baseline changes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastActivityDate="2013-07-11T18:06:22.760" Title="What is the procedure to change Baseline plan of the project?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9530" CreationDate="2013-07-11T18:06:22.760" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The procedure to change a baselined project plan is whatever your change control procedure is. You should not change a baselined document (plan, schedule, budget, whatever) outside of your change control process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The change control process should define things like who has the authority to approve a change, how a change is documented, how a change is communicated to the team, etc. This should be documented either in your project plan or in documentation that your project plan can cite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of conditions that can trigger a change. Typically these are changes to scope/schedule/budget that you intend to make. What is not included are things like budget or schedule overruns, in other words deviations from the plan that were not intended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to who approves changes, define these upfront based on project needs. You will want to set a threshold of authority for e.g. the PM, project sponsor/champion, corporate management etc. For example, maybe the PM is allowed to authorize changes to the budget up to a total value of $10,000, the project sponsor can authorize up to $100,000, while more costly changes have to be approved of at a VP level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-07-11T18:06:22.760" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9527" CreationDate="2013-07-12T04:20:01.447" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your problem is not actually with granularity or &quot;task bloat.&quot; Your core issues appear related to exceeding the team's work-in-progress capacity, and allowing the team to ignore the agreed-upon &lt;em&gt;definition of done.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Integrating Documentation with Tasks&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Network engineering is not like programming. While collecting router configurations could conceivably be done by someone else after the fact, documenting which port in a 24-port switch was just attached to some jack in a punch-down block is something that would take an unreasonable amount of time to figure out after the fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the main, your team is probably right to make documentation part of the &lt;em&gt;definition of done&lt;/em&gt; for each set of tasks. Unless you have some upstream requirement to track documentation separately from other work, it seems likely that your problems lie elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analyzing Process Failure&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, if documentation is part of the &lt;em&gt;definition of done&lt;/em&gt; but someone says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have a ton of tasks along the lines of &quot;Set up XYZ&quot; that are just hanging open because the person responsible doesn't have time to do the documentation yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the problems can usually be traced to inaccurate team-capacity estimates or a team-wide failure to comply with reasonable WIP limits. Some common root causes may include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management pressure to do &quot;real work&quot; instead of documentation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teams that are multi-tasking, rather than working effectively on one task at a time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Individuals moving on to the next task before the previous task is fully complete according to the agreed-upon &quot;definition of done.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will need to work with your team, who you've said already agree that the &quot;definition of done&quot; includes documentation, to identify &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; documentation isn't being completed. Whatever the reason, the likely solution is to implement sensible WIP limits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;WIP Limits&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work-in-progress limits represent the number of active user stories or tasks that your team actually has the capacity to complete in a sustainable way. In your team's case, jobs waiting to be done should be queued until there is sufficient capacity to pull the job through all required stages for completion. This includes performing the work &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; documenting the cabling or configuration changes properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Determining your team's actual capacity will require some work on your part, and the active cooperation of your team. Although your mileage will vary, as a rule of thumb I recommend that work in progress never exceed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the number of folks available to perform each task,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the number of swim lanes on your kanban, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the number of columns on your kanban. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may find that your team can handle more or less in-progress items than indicated by my rules of thumb. That's fine; the important thing is that you identify &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; team's sustainable capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Benefits of WIP Limits&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you're not using the Kanban methodology, WIP limits will accomplish a number of things for you and your team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It will ensure that work abandoned before it is complete will be &lt;em&gt;visible&lt;/em&gt; to the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The size of the queue will provide your organization with valuable feedback about whether resources are adequate to process the volume of incoming requests within the desired cycle time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The average throughput for queued jobs can be be measured, providing feedback about team capacity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The average cycle time of jobs from acceptance to completion can be measured, and processes (or resources) adjusted if the cycle time is not adequate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you are able to track work more accurately and identify process problems more clearly, solutions may present themselves. Even if the answers don't jump out at you, this will at least give you a reasonable place to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-07-12T04:20:01.447" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9527" CreationDate="2013-07-12T11:35:29.933" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You break your work down to the level of abstraction YOU need in order for YOU to manage it, balanced by the cost associated with YOUR chosen level of granularity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only question that has to be answered is, do you know where you are, do you know the health of your project, do you know where you are going?  If you cannot answer those questions, then your breakdown is broken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avoid criteria.  There are an infinite number of scenarios that there can be no set of criteria that will work in all of those situations.  The PM on record should have the authority to break down the work to suit his/her management needs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-07-12T11:35:29.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9535" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-12T15:45:23.667" Score="2" ViewCount="614" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a project for knowledge transfer so most tasks have 3 resources assigned.  I want the KT to happen once, so all resources need to be available before the task can start.  How do I make this happen in MS Project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6528" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2013-07-12T17:57:05.750" LastActivityDate="2013-07-12T17:57:05.750" Title="How to make a task not start until all resources are available in Microsoft Project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9535" CreationDate="2013-07-12T15:52:58.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Set three milestone as predecessors to the KT package.  Resource 1 Ready, Resource 2 Ready, Resource 3 Ready.  When the resources are ready, you can indicated the actual finish date of the milestone.  If one is not ready, it would push the start of the successor package out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-07-12T15:52:58.640" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1533" CreationDate="2013-07-12T23:49:21.087" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;PRINCE2 is based on a methodology, specifically ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library). The early foundations of ITIL were based on best practices within the British Government and later expanded to be applicable to non-government work. You will find PRINCE2 used mostly in Europe and among government / Crown Corporations. PRINCE2 / ITIL is primarily focused on IT operations and is highly prescriptive. By the way, the L for library is apt as the current version (V3) is down to 5 books (ITIL V1 was over 30 books!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PMP is based on standards established by the PMI (Project Management Institute) and embodied within the PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge). It is more general in nature and originated to add formal governance and oversight to construction and government / military projects. It has become the mainstream approach to project management and the de facto standard in IT projects. This said, its flexibility allows other methodologies such as Agile and Price2 to fit in while address the holistic needs of an organization (both business and technology). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line... where will you be applying this? If you want to be a PM for the British government... go with PRINCE2. If you want to be a PM in North America... go with PMP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final note... there are additional certifications other than PMP and Prince2 (CPM, MPM, MAPM, CompTIA Project+, etc.). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6530" LastEditorUserId="6506" LastEditDate="2013-07-13T13:31:09.427" LastActivityDate="2013-07-13T13:31:09.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9538" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9539" CreationDate="2013-07-13T09:52:05.293" Score="13" ViewCount="10865" Body="&lt;p&gt;What we should do if we run out of stories during sprint (e.g we are still learning what is our true velocity)? Can programmers pick some unscheduled bugs to fix or should we end sprint prematurely? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if one person still is working on his task when all others already finished? Should they all help to finish that story or try to fill up time with some techical tasks (try to reduce technical debt)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5085" LastActivityDate="2019-12-07T21:56:17.280" Title="What if you finish all stories before sprint ends?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9538" CreationDate="2013-07-13T16:48:31.843" Score="14" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum doesn't enforce batch sizes on stories the way some other methodologies do, so individual story sizes can vary dramatically. The important thing is that the &lt;em&gt;aggregate&lt;/em&gt; of all stories should fit within the defined Sprint length, and the team is expected to adjust its processes as needed to optimize both estimation and Sprint Goal completion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, this means some stories will finish earlier than others; that is expected. When &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; stories are routinely finished early, that is a process issue that should be addressed in a systematic way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;When ALL Stories Are Finished Early&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your team has finished all stories before the expiration of the time box defined by the Sprint, the team is encouraged to work with the Product Owner to select additional stories off the top of the Product Backlog that may fit within the time remaining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few considerations here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Additional stories picked from the Product Backlog should be &lt;em&gt;near&lt;/em&gt; the top in order to respect prioritization of the backlog, but must be selected for size rather than in strict priority order. That's why this requires the cooperation of the Product Owner, so that Product Backlog items can be reordered on the fly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;These stories should ideally be related to the current Sprint Goal, but failure to complete &quot;bonus work&quot; must not compromise the current Sprint or prevent the achievement of the original Sprint Goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your team routinely finds itself with &lt;em&gt;large&lt;/em&gt; blocks of slack in each Sprint, then you need to address the accuracy of your estimation process during the Sprint Retrospective, or be less conservative during Sprint Planning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Small blocks of slack are necessary and desirable. Scrum is not about 100% utilization; it is about visibility and transparency of the iterative process. If nothing else, these small blocks of extra time offer opportunities to refactor code, improve tests, perform additional code reviews, and so on. Whether these tech debt stories are added to the Sprint Backlog or the Product Backlog, the essential activity is to ensure that this work (and its value to the team or project) is made &lt;em&gt;visible&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teams should strive to &lt;strong&gt;optimize their efficiency, not maximize their utilization.&lt;/strong&gt; That means that constructive use of slack time is a necessary part of &lt;em&gt;sustainable&lt;/em&gt; development. Finding the correct balance that optimizes team velocity without imposing an unsustainable reduction in necessary slack time is part of the inspect-and-adapt process. Your Sprint Retrospectives are a great time to evaluate that balance on a routine basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;When SOME Stories Are Finished Early&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is actually a common occurrence. While all user stories in a Sprint should be closely related to the Sprint Goal, they shouldn't be so interdependent that &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; stories can be completed unless they &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; are. Each story will be considered done or not-done independently, even if the story itself has another story as a prerequisite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because some stories are smaller and/or easier than others, some will be finished sooner. That's why agile frameworks encourage collective story ownership: even though one person may take responsibility for shepherding a particular story, the &lt;em&gt;entire team&lt;/em&gt; is responsible for the completion of any work accepted into the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Daily stand-ups are a good time for people who've completed their work to coordinate with others who need more resources. Likewise, a well-managed Sprint Backlog or kanban board will show team members where they can pitch in when they have excess slack time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, stories that have slipped beyond the reasonable bounds of their estimates should be addressed in the daily stand-up. The team can then decide whether &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8531/4271&quot;&gt;swarming&lt;/a&gt; over the story will be beneficial, or whether this represents a scope, scheduling, or resource issue that needs to be brought to the attention of the Product Owner for decision-making.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:29.460" LastActivityDate="2013-07-13T16:48:31.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9520" CreationDate="2013-07-13T17:33:24.307" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The core consideration is whether defects affect team capacity in other areas. If so, then you need to represent them somehow on the main &lt;em&gt;kanban&lt;/em&gt;. If not, you should definitely evaluate whether they are truly part of the same fundamental process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Work-Flow Assumptions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, &lt;em&gt;on-going or operational support&lt;/em&gt; should be part of a different process than development. This is not always the case, and may certainly not be true in your organization. Nevertheless, it is worth considering whether these issues &lt;em&gt;should be&lt;/em&gt; part of your current process or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Kanban and Queues&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban often works best when batch sizes are somewhat standardized. @Zolt has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2013/03/the-optimal-batch-size/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;blog entry&lt;/a&gt; on optimal batch sizes that provides some technical detail on this key issue. However, the Kanban process can certainly handle variation in the size of user stories, both through adjustments to WIP limits and in queue management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your defects are handled by the same team that handles features or product development, then your team &lt;em&gt;capacity&lt;/em&gt; remains the same regardless of the type of stories being queued. Throughput and cycle time of defects may be different, but they still require resources from your team, and will therefore impact your overall team capacity. In other words, don't ignore or discount these user stories unless they are performed by a different team or within a separate process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, however, that there is no requirement that defects enter the same &lt;em&gt;queue&lt;/em&gt; as other types of work. It is certainly worth evaluating the addition of a separate queue (or queues) for defects, bugs, and other issues to enable differentiation in the prioritization and pull processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Some Possible Solutions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because Kanban is fundamentally a pull-queue framework, you have some options in how you organize your queues and how you determine when work should be pulled from a given queue into an in-progress state. Some options include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Having swim lanes dedicated to the alternate queues.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this works best when your in-progress sub-queues (columns, if you prefer) are fundamentally the same as the stages for your other stories.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Having columns dedicated to certain types of stories.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefit of having optional columns, or having user stories that may skip columns that are not relevant, may be outweighed by the added complexity or cognitive load needed to track flow on the &lt;em&gt;kanban&lt;/em&gt;. This should be carefully evaluated by the entire team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Having different team members pull from different queues.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This somewhat violates the principle of collective ownership that agile methodologies promote, but is certainly in line with the core pull principles around which Kanban is based. If your team is organized in such a way that different people have non-overlapping core responsibilities, rather than being fully cross-functional, this may be a useful work-flow.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Adjust WIP limits.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If defects generally have a faster cycle time than other types of work, it may make sense to increase your WIP limits to account for the increased throughput you expect of the team. Alternatively, you can have separate WIP limits for different swim lanes or columns. This may greatly increase the complexity of the &lt;em&gt;kanban&lt;/em&gt;, and makes at-a-glance assessment of the board more difficult, but it is certainly an option worth considering.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There really isn't a single right answer to the issue you describe, nor is the list above meant to be exhaustively canonical. Nevertheless, the point is that the Kanban framework is flexible enough to address this type of issue in a variety of ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-07-13T17:33:24.307" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9541" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-13T19:34:32.207" Score="-2" ViewCount="758" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have started preparing for the PMP certification by the PMI institute.  I stumbled upon the PMI-ACP exam.  It's agile oriented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, what is the value of PMI-ACP in the job market?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6532" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-07-14T01:40:59.287" LastActivityDate="2013-07-14T11:57:57.830" Title="About the new PMI-ACP certification in comparison to PMP" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2013-07-23T09:52:45.163" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9538" CreationDate="2013-07-14T00:33:17.867" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Give the team a pat on the back and some recognition for achieving their forecast. This is a great position to be in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next chat with the PO and then pull in some more stories into the sprint the team can try get done or even make a head start on.  The key here is not to be idle and the team must keep busy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5634" LastActivityDate="2013-07-14T00:33:17.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9520" CreationDate="2013-07-14T01:13:22.163" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two kinds of defects;  the first are errors which occur whilst still building the requirement and before it is accepted as Done by the Product Owner.   In this case the error is simply communicated, perhaps another task created.  You see the original requirement is not done yet, thus simply do it.  Do not raise defects or bugs for this, as this is normal behaviour in product development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next is when a defect is found after the team and PO have reviewed the work and accepted it as done.   When an issue is found, this should be added to the product backlog as a defect/bug. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PO then schedules this defect/bug as with any other Product Backlog Item;  the reason some bugs are critical and others are purely cosmetic.  A defect has a value to fix and it's the PO's responsibility to order the defects amongst other work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Estimation of Defects&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I coach not to put story points against defects as the defect is a result of some weak practice; the team should not be rewarded with points for this.  When assigning points, one creates and artificial velocity and not the teams real rate of work to get stories done without defects.  I.e. a story that was estimated at 10, still remains a 10 even if defects are found.  It should not suddenly grow to 12, because of a defect.  The argument here is the defect should not have occurred in the first place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply timebox defects;  e.g. easy defects are given 1 hour and harder ones a day.  At the end of the timebox; inspect and if not complete give another timebox.  The idea here is not to let defect fixing carry on for days without reviewing and inspecting the defect;  sadly some developers go down the wrong path in fixing a defect and this should be avoided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Issues with WIP, simply deal with them as tasks and not as defects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Defects are logged once PBI accepted as done.  Treat as any other&#xA;PBI, but timebox the estimation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5634" LastActivityDate="2013-07-14T01:13:22.163" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9527" CreationDate="2013-07-14T01:34:12.643" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great question, and I believe in keeping this as simple as possible without adding too many &quot;rules&quot; to what constitutes a task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A PO creates a requirement that needs to be done,  this requirement requires work to be done in order to the job done.  This work comes in the form of grooming analysis, coding, testing, documenting, deployment packaging, UI design and many others depending on the type of product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each one of these constitutes a task.  Thus you will create many tasks for grooming, UI design task, coding, testing.  Each task then be executed and done when a team member has capacity to do it.  For example test data preparation can easily start before coding or TDD/BDD tests can be created with stubs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Check-in Rule&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like to create tasks at these boundaries&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Something a developer can commit to the source repository.  For example, a developer can create the database schema and commit that;  an ideal task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When a handover between different skills is needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When a bit of work exceeds more than 1/2 a day.  One needs visibility of what is being done and tasks that take days adds risk to the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tasks should contribute to the Definition of Done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Balance of task size&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try not create too many tasks that a developer is updating task statuses every couple of minutes.  This adds unnecessary overhead and frustrates the team.  However, don't make them too big that a developer works on it for days without indicating progress.  The team and other stakeholders need to see progress being made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Grooming Tasks&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often when having a Business Analyst in the team that does product backlog grooming,  I normally put a task on an &lt;em&gt;Epic&lt;/em&gt; that needs grooming work.  The task, simply requests grooming of the PBI and is then estimated in hours.  The goal is for the BA/PO and possibly team to groom the PBI and get it to a Ready state for the next sprint.   Doing this helps the team remember to to grooming and it also &quot;accounts&quot; for the activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Done&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a simple wall &lt;strong&gt;To Do&lt;/strong&gt;,  &lt;strong&gt;In Progress&lt;/strong&gt; *&lt;em&gt;and Done&lt;/em&gt;* makes it easy to see the health of a requirement.    Thus if there are still tasks to do, the team need to pick up the task to get it done.  Once all tasks are Done, then the requirement is ready to be reviewed by the PO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dealing with Change&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I encourage teams to add tasks and remove tasks in the sprint as to help communicate what needs to be done.  I don't believe in hardening the tasks as the reality is, if there is something the team forgot this will not change; thus rather make it visible and add the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Coaching Guidance&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep it simple and don't add too much process to it.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Let the team self organise on how they want to deal with tasks and its not a PO/Stakeholder/SM responsibility.  But, these people have the right to ask the team for daily progress updates; i.e. what is remaining to be done for the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5634" LastActivityDate="2013-07-14T01:34:12.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9541" CreationDate="2013-07-14T11:24:37.593" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Surveying here will not get you either reliable or valid results. It will only reveal unsubstantiated biases. Your likely best indicator for this relatively new credential is job advertisements in your area and industry. Scan for those and see if anyone is asking for this credential. In my industry and area- it is pretty much unknown. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even with that scan, you need to draw a limited conclusion as only like one in 10 jobs are advertised. So your sample can easily skew your findings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2013-07-14T11:57:57.830" LastActivityDate="2013-07-14T11:57:57.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8691" CreationDate="2013-07-14T15:43:57.453" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check this LinkedIn thread for same question and discussion.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linkedin.com/groups/How-does-Primavera-maintains-store-3305048.S.221621845?_mSplash=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;See the post by the user Gene Greiff, which contains the following code&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Declare @BaseLineName varchar (255) &#xA;Declare @BaseLineType varchar(255) &#xA;set @BaseLineName = 'Project Nano - B2' &#xA;set @BaseLineType = 'Mid Project Status Baseline' &#xA;&#xA;&#xA;select * &#xA;from dbo.PROJWBS pw &#xA;inner join PROJECT pj on pj.proj_id = pw.proj_id &#xA;inner join BASETYPE bt on bt.base_type_id = pj.base_type_id &#xA;where pw.wbs_name = @BaseLineName &#xA;AND bt.base_type = @BaseLineType&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-07-15T01:39:52.110" LastActivityDate="2013-07-15T01:39:52.110" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9547" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9548" CreationDate="2013-07-14T23:18:16.813" Score="2" ViewCount="263" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hope to find guidance on how to begin a career in Project Management and what I need to do in order to get started. I recently graduated from college with 2 years of theoretical experience with Project Management. I say theoretical because my experience is due to two consecutive Capstones that took place while I was still in college.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During each individual Capstone I worked under many titles such as Business Analyst, Information Specialist and finally Project Manager. I did this for two community Organizations so the stakeholders, scope, budget and deliverables to them were very real.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I have enough experience to seek a Project Management position now that I have graduated and have my degree, or should I be focusing on a PMP certification? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6503" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-07-14T23:54:33.667" LastActivityDate="2013-07-15T10:44:27.073" Title="How do I know if I have enough experience for a PM job, or whether I need PMP certification first?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9547" CreationDate="2013-07-14T23:50:37.040" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Entry-level positions are often a numbers game, where the goals are to find a role where your background fits the immediate needs of the employer and where your resume and interviewing skills show that you can quickly learn the on-the-job skills needed to grow as a professional. There is no perfect formula for being an ideal candidate, and certification may or may not help you land any given job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;My Guidance Counselor Hat&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wearing my guidance counselor hat, the only practical answer to a question like yours is to shop your resume around and see if employers are interested in your current background. Some will be, and some won't, and most won't provide you any useful feedback at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Politely Solicit Feedback&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; receive any feedback, don't debate the merits of your background with the employers. Simply acknowledge the feedback, and consider whether it has merit &lt;em&gt;for you&lt;/em&gt; to add the additional skills, training, or other background material to your reservoir of experience before continuing to shop around for a job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Seek Junior or Entry-Level Roles&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you lack experience, confidence, or both, then you should seek out entry-level or junior-level roles. Some jobs actively seek junior-level candidates who will cost less, but are able to master the role quickly while working under the supervision (and &lt;em&gt;occasionally&lt;/em&gt; the useful guidance) of a more senior practitioner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such roles exist in all job fields, and project management is no exception. Deliberately seek out such roles until you are able to successfully compete for whatever your ideal role might be in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-07-14T23:50:37.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8711" CreationDate="2013-07-15T10:18:09.760" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that you can't authoritatively assume that one of these solutions, online or a physical board is better. It isn't that simple. Team are not equal. Please, do not try to simplify the reality. Which tool is better? It depends on team. You should always try out different solution and then decided which one is better. One of the teams at my office works better with a web-based board because: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they work a lot with computers - so it's their natural environment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they have many team members &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they work in different offices &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they often work remotely&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second one works fine with physical board&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they have a small team &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they work next to each other&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;their are very young and they need to move &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no &quot;golden mean&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6537" LastActivityDate="2013-07-15T10:18:09.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9547" CreationDate="2013-07-15T10:44:27.073" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is a project manager position?  What do you envision you would be doing as a new graduate with PM title?  Would you be overseeing a $500M construction project, a $100M IT systems implementation, a $40M new product development?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Projects are a function of work first.  There is a huge range of projects running from a $1,000 3-person landscaping job to a multimillion new spacecraft job.  So wanting to be a PM is very ambiguous.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While project management is becoming a career of and in itself, most who end up doing this for a career starting as something else first, where they end up managing various projects mostly within their industry and domain.  While there are a few who believe they can jump from industry to industry and manage complex projects successfully, and maybe there is some anecdotal evidence to show this, you do not see it very often in practice.  And I think those who do end up in a more project controls type role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest you not look for PM roles and instead look for entry-level roles within an industry to which you are attracted.  Build your skills and knowledge in industry.  Leading and managing operations and projects will come later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-07-15T10:44:27.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9554" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9557" CreationDate="2013-07-15T19:51:57.030" Score="1" ViewCount="257" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to plan the next 9-12  months of development using a Gantt chart. I've input all the tasks, their durations, and their dependencies, and all is well. However, as I assign developers to tasks, I've noticed that some developers have big gaps where they aren't assigned to any tasks, while other developers are overloaded with too many tasks at times. Since each task has a varying start date and duration, it is not easy to come up with the optimal scheduling of developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my example, I have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;10 developers (let's assume equal skill sets)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;~40 well-defined tasks, each with a different start date and duration. Some tasks must wait for other tasks to be completed before they can begin. (These are not simple tasks that last only a few hours; but more long-term tasks that last anywhere from a few weeks to a few months.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a known algorithm/solution/tool for coming up with an assignment of developers to tasks, so as to simultaneously:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Minimize the amount of time each developer is not assigned any tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create the shortest possible scheduling, so all the tasks are done as fast as possible?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the algorithm/solution/tool is allowed to assign multiple developers to a single task (so that that task would take half as long) and it may also have some overlap of tasks, i.e., a developer may be assigned to more than one task at a time, as long as his total effort sums to 100% at any given time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6543" LastActivityDate="2013-07-18T04:44:39.127" Title="Optimizing scheduling of developers: &quot;who works on what, and when&quot;?" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9555" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-15T20:13:11.827" Score="7" ViewCount="1520" Body="&lt;p&gt;A team was having a debate where historically we had project documentation (requirements analysis, technical specs) put together large Microsoft word documents.  Looking back over time, I have found issues with this approach, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lack of links back to current or related information&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hard to search &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hard to collaborate on&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Intimidating (even with &quot;sections&quot; and table of contents, still seems worse then being able to breakup Breakup into several linked pages) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One school of thought is to switch everyone over to just using WIKI for all documentation. Unable to get any objections that seemed valid after discussion so just wanted to shoot a question out to this audience and see if there is any valid reason someone can think of to using separate word documents.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTE that the WIKI could always export as MS Word or PDF as required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1087" LastActivityDate="2021-03-22T16:45:32.897" Title="Project documentation (initiation, requirements, etc) on a WIKI versus requirements word document?" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9555" CreationDate="2013-07-15T21:57:45.230" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In either case the big issue is with the data contained becoming stale. A wiki will have more robust version control information. We collaborate using markdown and gists on github to build out documentation of component parts where members are responsible for portions then the whole document is compiled and reviewed for completeness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of using static doc files, this seems very debilitating for larger projects, and cumbersome for small ones. Google Docs has a more robust collaboration and version control system though if you wanted to go in that direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5613" LastActivityDate="2013-07-15T21:57:45.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9554" CreationDate="2013-07-16T00:31:22.613" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When people sit down to schedule, they schedule tasks. In fact, you are scheduling resources-human and otherwise. So if you ended up with a severely un-leveled schedule, do it again with the principle of scheduling resources. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some tools level for you, but the results are mostly unusable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another piece of advice: don't look to level with perfect results. Getting close  is good enough since the second you load actual, your leveling goes out the window. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-07-16T00:31:22.613" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9555" CreationDate="2013-07-16T04:02:00.827" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having everything public on a Wiki may make people more likely to refer to it.  In my opinion documentation I can't easily access isn't good documentation.  I've advocated for and used Wikis on a couple of projects.  There are systems, such as Trac, that combine a Wiki with a bug tracking system and links to the version control system.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've worked on a project where all official documentation was under &quot;Version Control&quot;.  The only problem was there was no known mechanism for the project team to get documentation out.  Developers and analysts alike worked from drafts.  Documentation revisions were done from drafts which were maintained outside the &quot;Version Control&quot; system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There will likely be information such as financials that you don't want on the Wiki.  You will need appropriate mechanisms to ensure they are available to those that need them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2013-07-16T04:02:00.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9555" CreationDate="2013-07-16T12:01:38.350" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best reason for not using a Wiki is if you have key stakeholders who are uncomfortable or unfamiliar with them. If this is the case you may be able to go with a hybrid approach, i.e. msot of your documentation is on the Wiki while particular key documents (e.g. your baselined schedule) are static.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, maybe you have a project business sponsor/champion who understands the business needs deeply but doesn't have the time/knowledge base to run through a series of documents on your Wiki to figure out how you got from A to B. In this case it might be much better to provide point-in-time summaries of decisions, changes etc as static documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-07-16T12:01:38.350" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9554" CreationDate="2013-07-16T15:16:10.033" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check it out MS project has auto levelling function that will help you to achieve your objective more or less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastActivityDate="2013-07-16T15:16:10.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9564" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-17T05:58:22.060" Score="3" ViewCount="730" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a little/mid-size software project idea which I am currently planning to do on my own. Or there may be maximum 1-2 other developers joining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it worth to apply any of the project management techniques? If yes, which one? So far I have worked with scrum at work, but the optimal team size for scrum is up to 8 people, and you have two others (SM and PO) doing PM. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6536" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2013-07-17T11:20:39.263" LastActivityDate="2013-07-29T09:57:14.523" Title="Project Management technique for my pet project" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9564" CreationDate="2013-07-17T08:04:39.620" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it worth to apply any of the project management techniques?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether a one-person team or more, applying project management principles will always help because it provides a way to measure project status and visibility into the actual progress. However the level of processes application may vary, that is, various PM processes can be carried out with less strictness. For a small project you may skip some of the PM artifacts or tone down some of the PM tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most &lt;strong&gt;basic PM concepts&lt;/strong&gt; are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Defining and managing work to do (the &lt;strong&gt;what&lt;/strong&gt; part)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimating timeline and schedule (the &lt;strong&gt;when&lt;/strong&gt; part)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coming up with budgetary numbers (the &lt;strong&gt;cost&lt;/strong&gt; part)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These 3 are fundamental parts of every project and combined together they make up a project plan. Having a project plan will always help you otherwise your project may go into chaos mode. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a documented plan then do track your progress often (daily or weekly) so that at every point in time you can objectively measure project's status (as opposed to relying on your gut feeling). Having the basic PM building blocks in place will ensure that when the team size grows you don't loose control and visibility of the status &amp;amp; progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For small project, other PM procedures such as risk management or change control processes can be skipped. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which technique to use?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a one-person project you may use any technique, waterfall, scrum, or any other. Objective of all of these techniques is the same, helping you in managing the projects. However, the practices used in each of the techniques are different. In waterfall, you'll be managing your requirement using &lt;b&gt;W&lt;/b&gt;ork &lt;b&gt;B&lt;/b&gt;reakdown &lt;b&gt;S&lt;/b&gt;tructure. In scrum, you'll be doing the same using &lt;strong&gt;Product Backlog&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;User Stories&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I suggest you pick an approach with which you are most comfortable and have experience in.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a one-person team, PO, SM, developer, tester responsibilities will be handled by the same person. As the team size grows, different team members can assume each of those responsibilities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Recommend some software&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I would not be able to recommend some software as Stack Exchange does not encourage tool recommendations because &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&quot;&gt;they tend to become obsolete quickly&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2013-07-17T08:04:39.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9564" CreationDate="2013-07-17T08:54:10.537" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even if you dont want to apply any of the Project management techniques, you will end up using a few of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Decision regarding which technique to use largely depends on type of work you would be doing and team you would have. Also the schedule that you would follow would play important role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding tools: I have seen people managing projects successfully just using MS Excel. If your budget is not big and also the things to be maintained and tracked are not very complex I think you can manage using Excel or MPP. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Important things to track are budget, estimate, work progress and defects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6209" LastActivityDate="2013-07-17T08:54:10.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9258" CreationDate="2013-07-17T09:02:23.760" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apart from what has been mentioned above, below are my 2 cents&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the SOW you can mention SLAs. SLAs could be like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Number of defects delivered in every stage (i.e UAT, Production)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Number FPs (function points) delivered per day/month/release&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Defect density&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will make the engagement more objective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also mandate that the vendor has to maintain logs of code reviews, unit testing and use a standard version control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6209" LastActivityDate="2013-07-17T09:02:23.760" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9564" CreationDate="2013-07-17T09:58:52.400" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aziz has a great answer, but I would not skip risk management just because it is a small project or you're on your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have the What and the When cleared out, take some time to reflect upon the impedements that you will encounter along the way. This doesn't have to take much time (in fact, it is a continuous process) and it will probably help you take action before it is too late.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go over your WBS (or product backlog, which is the same) and ask yourself what could go wrong when realising each deliverable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For measuring progress, use some kind of a Kanban board (Scrum in itself doesn't make much sense when you're on your own). When more developers join, you can create this easily in a spreadsheet or drawing program and put the file in the cloud somewhere (or use a free version of one of the many online tools).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2013-07-17T09:58:52.400" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9554" CreationDate="2013-07-17T12:11:56.063" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have pointed out it sounds like you are looking for information on resource levelling. If you did want to look into using a formula/algorithm for calculating optimum resource allocation and delivery time then you might want to start with &lt;a href=&quot;http://depts.washington.edu/pmgroup/GlobalCongress2006/FND02_wp.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this brief article&lt;/a&gt; on available algorithms for the task. Though in my opinion the cost of developing a system of your own would be far greater than the cost of simply purchasing software that does this job for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's really important to remember though (and I think is one of the main reasons auto levelling doesn't work) is that you need to take into account all of the interdependencies between tasks way ahead of their actual delivery date. The risk is that your early projections will give an overly-optimistic view of what's possible over a 9-12 month period. As your '&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cone of uncertainty&lt;/a&gt;' reduces over the lifetime of the project you may realise that the interdependencies are more complex than originally anticipated or that (surprise, surprise) the scope has changed to the point where your interdependencies are no longer relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2013-07-17T12:11:56.063" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9555" CreationDate="2013-07-17T12:22:44.577" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If everyone who needs to read or modify your documentation will have direct access to the wiki (and are comfortable using it), it sounds like you've considered what you need. However, it gets more interesting if not all parties have access to the Wiki (for example: your wiki is on your company's private internal network, and there is a need for external people need to either read or modify your documentation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you have documentation that needs to be read by external people&lt;/strong&gt;, consider how often you're going to need to provide a copy to them. While you say you can export the wiki to Word or PDF, you'll almost certainly need to do some cleanup of what that export process generates before handing it off to those people. If you've got documentation that you need to update and send out frequently, this could become a pain point. Consider keeping those kinds of documents in their current form rather than moving them to the Wiki. It is possible that depending on the wiki you could make use of some templating to simplify this process (but that depends a lot on what wiki you are using). While templating may not completely eliminate the pain, it should reduce it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you have documentation that needs to be modified by external people&lt;/strong&gt;, you should almost certainly leave those in their current document formats. If you did move them to the wiki, you would not only have to deal with cleaning up the export results before sending to the outside editors, but you also have to handle getting their modifications back into the Wiki (requiring additional time, and possibly introducing errors).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastActivityDate="2013-07-17T12:22:44.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9571" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9580" CreationDate="2013-07-17T12:33:17.043" Score="-2" ViewCount="71" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are five stages of an IT organization from a business stakeholders' view:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cost center&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Service Provider&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;IT Partner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business Peer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business Game Changer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Source: CIO Magazine 2013 State of the CIO Survey)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the company is between first and second change, is it possible to move directly to stage 5?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Comment: Maybe in an growed organization it is a slow process from 1 to 5 that every company has to go?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6107" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T00:30:50.223" Title="How fast can one change the IT organization to a Business Game Changer" Tags="&lt;strategy&gt;&lt;portfolio-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-07-22T22:04:43.903" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9572" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-17T13:33:02.007" Score="8" ViewCount="1017" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our scrum team has provided high level estimates for the project we are working during release planning meeting.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team provided guesstimated hours as well as Story points for each of the stories in the release backlog. Based on this we arrived at an end date and communicated it to the client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we got into Sprints, we got into a situation where the stories in the backlog needed to be decomposed into multiple stories and as a result of that our end date got pushed out and we communicated the same to the customer and he was OK with it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We were having regular product backlog grooming sessions as well. But, when we get into Sprint planning meeting, the team's estimate on user stories are again changing and again as a result of that the stories are getting decomposed and the size of the stories also increasing - with this the end date for the release backlog also having an effect. And this happened more than couple of occasions for our release backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where are we getting it wrong? How could we rectify the situation so that the team can finish what was committed to client during release planning OR at least come close to what was promised?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5576" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-03-03T17:30:37.453" LastActivityDate="2016-03-03T17:30:37.453" Title="Why does our Sprint Planning not align with our original Release Plan?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;release-plan&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9572" CreationDate="2013-07-17T15:00:54.117" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This could be due to a number of things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The requirements.&lt;/strong&gt; The less detailed and clear your requirements are the more you can expect there to be significant error in your estimates. Garbage in yields garbage out&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The estimating process.&lt;/strong&gt; If your requirements are good enough to provide reasonable estimates the estimates can still be off if the process isn't rigorous enough or if enough thought isn't put into the estimates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The corporate culture.&lt;/strong&gt; I've seen estimates being fudged in order to tell a client what they want to hear because the corporate culture was one of &quot;Get the contract and worry about how to deliver later&quot;. Depending on your organization there can also be consequences for speaking unpalatable truths.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The estimator.&lt;/strong&gt; Generally speaking people are optimistic and will give you estimates accordingly. This is made worse if you get estimates from somone who isn't actually doing the work. When you get an estimate you should ideally challenge it and give the estimator the opportunity to ask for more time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The expectations.&lt;/strong&gt; If you originally generated high level estimates it is reasonable to assume that there will be variance, perhaps significant, between those estimates and what comes out of more detailed planning. As a PM you should manage stakeholder expectations by providing them with a range of delivery dates that will narrow as the planning becomes more detailed. For example, if you have a high level estimate that the work will take 20 weeks you may present to the client that the work will take 18 to 35 weeks. As requirements are fleshed out and you know more about what needs to be delivered and how, maybe the estimate gets revised to 25 weeks but you present it as 24 to 30 weeks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the description you've given, I suspect that you were expecting too much in terms of accuracy from a high-level estimate. The only solution to this is to go back to the team and ask them to re-estimate the remaining work giving you a most-likely-case and a worst-case estimate. Present those to your client and if they are good with it hit the Project Reset button and carry on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-07-17T15:00:54.117" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9564" CreationDate="2013-07-17T15:42:58.970" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to add one more important thing is tracking your budgets and progress of the project is the key.  I know this every one does as part of the project.  I would like to illustrate with one example using hours-reforecasting method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let us say 3rd week you would like to know the progress for these activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Activity plannedhrs hrs-to-date hrs-remaining est-hrs-to-complete&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coding.     100           40             60           80&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Testcases.  100.          50.            50.            40&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last coumn is key and Calculate the % completion based on 210 hours instead of actual planned 200 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This hours-reforcasting method is likely to give you a far more accurate information on the project.  Helpful to know weekly tracking and repeat this for every week.  Also practice makes perfect. Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastActivityDate="2013-07-17T15:42:58.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9572" CreationDate="2013-07-17T16:07:17.627" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds to me like you're doing a very waterfally scrum and that's where you're running into issues. Your &quot;end date&quot; should be the end of your sprint. Nothing should be committed to past that. It sounds like you're taking a giant set of stories across multiple sprints and committing to far out dates to have them all completed. That's waterfall and without waterfall-style up-front planning and design you'll see the exact problem you're running into. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In perfect world scrum, time is fixed, stories are adjustable. That &quot;end date&quot; shouldn't change, only the number of stories committed to and only during sprint planning. If you're in the middle of sprint and it turns out your estimates were off, you bring in your product owner and negotiate the sprint backlog based on the new understanding. That could mean moving things back to the product backlog, swapping out stories or, in extreme circumstances, aborting the sprint and starting over. If you're following scrum, a complete abort of a sprint should only set you back a week or two. Not bad compared to waterfall where similar issues can set you back months. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the basic premises of agile methodologies is to realize that we are bad at estimating and that the further out the estimate, the more incorrect it usually is. That's a major point behind doing short (2 to 3 week) sprints. As soon as you start giving committed estimates that are months out, you're back to waterfall and you need to plan and design like waterfall.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4699" LastActivityDate="2013-07-17T16:07:17.627" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9576" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9577" CreationDate="2013-07-17T16:27:35.470" Score="2" ViewCount="73" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm creating a status report for my project and I want to report that we have used 44 out of our scheduled 144 days. The 44th days is simply the current Thursday when I submit my status report. I want to compare this number with two other key indicators, amount of the budget that has been spent and amount of work that has been completed. Is there a standard way of wording that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently I have the comments below but it feels misworded &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Budget:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall 50%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contract Labor 25%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Time:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Phase 1 Deliverable - Sept 27th&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;44 / 144 working day used (30%)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Deliverables:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2 / 10 Major Tasks Complete&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3 / 10 In Progress&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6429" LastEditorUserId="6429" LastEditDate="2013-07-17T18:09:28.333" LastActivityDate="2013-07-17T18:26:43.553" Title="Status Report - Reporting Expired Duration" Tags="&lt;progress-report&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9576" CreationDate="2013-07-17T17:15:03.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The wording of any metric depends on the message you are trying to convey.  What is it about duration exhausted that is meaningful to the health of your project?  If you can answer that question, then the language for displaying the metric should be self evident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue you have is, days exhausted does not mean anything.  The 30% does not necessarily mean, or even likely means, some level of completion.  It is merely a passage of time.  Days remaining is a bit more meaningful ONLY if it is accompanied by the PM's latest revised estimate of days remaining, e.g., 100 budget days remaining, PM LRE = 110 days remaining.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is more important is physical percent complete, i.e., what should have been accomplished by this arbitrary day 44 and what, then, are your variances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-07-17T17:15:03.760" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9576" CreationDate="2013-07-17T18:26:43.553" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Explore &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_value_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Earned Value Management&lt;/a&gt;.  EVM is a way to compare the number of days expired to the budgeted cost and time.  Although people make EVM sound very complicated, it isn't; it is a good way to tell if you are ahead of, behind, or right on track for what you predicted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-07-17T18:26:43.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9572" CreationDate="2013-07-18T04:31:55.493" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, we teach teams not to take on &quot;Risk&quot; where it is not theirs to take.  Your team did their best estimate at the start and as time progresses, you and the client realise that the team's ability to estimate is very bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first question I am going to ask the PO, is what risk mitigation did he/she have should a team likely estimate incorrectly?  I think it is very well accepted that technical teams are bad at estimation, regardless of method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next is have you been tracking the teams rate-of-work (velocity) versus the original estimate.  Regardless of technique you use, velocity is ultimately a ratio that is applied to original estimates.   For example, the trend indicates the team takes 72% more time than estimated.  Thus, applying a velocity to the the original estimate should give you an indication of the &quot;Real&quot; target date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum does not officially dictate how teams should estimate and how release planning should be done.  However, there are several proven patterns that work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Basic Principles&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Groom your product backlog to a level where the team have a gut feeling of what has to be done.  This should be done very quickly and without full analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The team should then estimate all the PBI's with a relative scale using story points or t-shirt sizes (I medium may be twice as big as a small).  &lt;em&gt;Theoretically, a PBI that is a 2 should take roughly double the effort/time that of a 1.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When new items are created then the team should estimate those too.  The team should still estimate against the original scale and not factor in their improved performances and tooling; doing this results in a ratio applied to velocity which will give you weak results.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Create tasks in sprint planning to help the team focus on how to deliver the PBI.  If you really want to estimate tasks, you can but I often find this does not add much value.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Simply track how much work the team has delivered in a sprint,  i.e. the team managed to complete 42 story points in the sprint.  This is your velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Thus if you have 450 remaining points in your product backlog, it is going to take you eleven sprints to complete (450/42 = 11 - rounded up).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Educate the management and PO that the team give a &lt;strong&gt;ESTIMATE&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;NOT ACTUAL&lt;/strong&gt; times&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master, your challenge is to help the team first stabilise their velocity and then improve their velocity by reducing waste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5634" LastActivityDate="2013-07-18T04:31:55.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9571" CreationDate="2013-07-18T04:37:03.923" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Moving directly is based on the perceived trust of the shareholders and executives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The speed at which you can change this relationship, totally depends on the cultural willingness of the organisation to firstly acknowledge they want to change, and then to follow this through with a committed approach.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its going to ultimately boil down to the working relationship and trust level between the stakeholders and IT.  Welcome to the &lt;strong&gt;human element&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5634" LastEditorUserId="5634" LastEditDate="2013-07-25T00:30:50.223" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T00:30:50.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9554" CreationDate="2013-07-18T04:44:39.127" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't even try to level or balance resources out so far in advance.  There is too much uncertainty that could totally change the picture.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People get ill, resign and working situations change and business constraints impact.  Only look at assignments in the very short term and the further you go out the more rough the allocation is.  i.e.  Work for the next day can be allocated but work for 6 months out should be in the form of &quot;We need 10 developers for another 6 months&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trying to plan so far in advance with so much uncertainty, will just mean you are going to have to do a lot of constant rework to keep the plan up to date.  I am sure you have better things to do that constantly rework the plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5634" LastActivityDate="2013-07-18T04:44:39.127" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9127" CreationDate="2013-07-18T08:12:15.180" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It simply depends on the organization. If there is a project/progam manager and project/program coordinator for the same project/program then there will be difference, but if only either of the two exists, then no difference, it is just a matter of what the organization decide to label the position, the roles become exactly the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6557" LastActivityDate="2013-07-18T08:12:15.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9572" CreationDate="2013-07-18T15:22:46.923" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As soon as you said &quot;The team provided guesstimated hours&quot; I recognized an issue here. When you do high level release management, you have to realize that it even applying story points to epics is a really inaccurate tasks and can only be used in broad strokes. Trying to actually estimate hours is bound for failure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As some others have said, yes, it sounds like your team wasn't great at estimating, and that they changed the estimates many times. However, as a product manager myself, I think one of the great things about agile is that it tries to alleviate the pain points that come from trying to plan far in advance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have run release planning meetings with my team, both at the high level of breaking the large project into epics and estimating those (20, 40, 60, 80, 100 were the options), and at the lower level in the few months running up to release of using story points and team velocity. Agile teaches us that you will never know every little thing that has to be done for a release until you are close to it - that is the nature of software and working with humans. Some complexities will be missed, you may find a month before launch that the feature you thought was perfectly designed really needs some additional criteria, etc. I recommend when you do the high level planning more than 2 months in advance, you only communicate to customers what quarter you expect to release in, and if you feel really confident (the team has done this type of project many times and therefore can be expected to have a good handle on what's needed), perhaps the month. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3710" LastActivityDate="2013-07-18T15:22:46.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9572" CreationDate="2013-07-18T17:37:38.197" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Release planning is an &lt;em&gt;estimated&lt;/em&gt; management target, generally based on level-of-effort estimates of large themes or epics. Sprint Planning is a team commitment based on iteration-sized user stories. They serve different functions, but the key is to remember that estimates are not guarantees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Schedule changes do not necessarily imply that your estimates are inherently wrong. Your goal should be to improve the accuracy of your estimates, not to meet arbitrary scheduling targets. However, improving the accuracy of your estimates should reduce variations in your estimate-based scheduling to acceptable levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Release Planning in Iterative Development&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Release planning is primarily about defining milestones and expected shipping dates. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cone of uncertainty&lt;/a&gt; is always largest at the start of a new project, and therefore the accuracy of the initial release plan should be a range with a defined confidence interval.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because Scrum is an iterative development process, release planning should be revisited every iteration. Based on what is currently known at the start of each iteration, the Product Backlog can be modified to reduce scope or change priorities to hit fixed release dates, or the release dates can be moved to more-accurately reflect the team's actual progress towards the planned release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Releasable Increments&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of core ideas behind agile development, but one of the core concepts is the idea of iterations that produce &quot;potentially releasable increments.&quot; In other words, while any given sprint might not contain the complete set of features planned for a given release target, each sprint should produce a working, functional, and (ideally) user-visible feature that &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be released.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put another way, every sprint should result in a product that has generated some amount of earned value. While the product might not be feature-complete, it is nevertheless &lt;em&gt;functional&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;potentially shippable&lt;/em&gt; at the end of each sprint. This gives stakeholders the &lt;em&gt;ability&lt;/em&gt; to convert earned value to market value at the end of every iteration, although they are certainly not required to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Continuously Re-Estimate&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to successful Scrum implementations is to continuously re-estimate. This re-estimation obviously includes epics, themes, and user stories, but it also includes re-estimating project timelines and the scope of target milestones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deviations from initial estimates are to be expected, and are handled by the inspect-and-adapt process baked into Scrum. However, if you find that your estimates are not growing more accurate over time, then you need to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;re-evaluate your estimation process to see where you might improve, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;determine whether your original scheduling-baseline was based on faulty assumptions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Management Needs to Embrace Change, Too&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Embracing change&quot; is not the sole province of the development team in Scrum. It is also the responsibility of the Product Owner and stakeholders to embrace all necessary changes to scope, schedule, resources, market forces, and other realities that are needed to ensure the project either succeeds or fails early. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sticking to a plan made months or years ago, without taking stock of &lt;em&gt;where the project is now&lt;/em&gt;, is one of the most common ways that projects fail. Agility doesn't guarantee success; it just expects the visibility and transparency of the project to enable stakeholders to make well-informed decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-07-18T17:44:54.230" LastActivityDate="2013-07-18T17:44:54.230" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3782" CreationDate="2013-07-19T00:26:10.557" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently working on my application, and the paper application no longer includes the quote above.  However, I have put in experience ending in Jan 2005 (approx 8 1/2 years ago) which shows zero qualified hours - so clearly the &quot;approved time period&quot; is still in place - although they don't state what it is ANYWHERE on the PMI site (at least that i could find).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6563" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T00:26:10.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="744" CreationDate="2013-07-19T09:17:58.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Find a summer intern in a university&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than hiring a C# expert, it might be worth looking at an alternative of hiring another intern, or hiring a student part-time. If you need it for a temporary project, I believe a motivated and skilled student could do as good of a work as a professional. You could also offer an incentive of hiring him/her full-time after completion of studies. Contractual agreements may be different from country to country, but it should be easier to terminate the student contract. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6536" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-07-24T02:37:40.040" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T02:37:40.040" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9588" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-19T14:29:16.347" Score="7" ViewCount="25214" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a project that's close to failing as the main developer has now left the company. To help get a sense of where the project is at, I created a thorough review of the project's WBS and the tasks that were completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unknown to me earlier, the owner of the company told the lead dev to get the project done by x date and the lead dev is now going to start working using the document I created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My concerns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The lead dev does not wish to provide the number of hours required&#xA;to finish the remainder of the tasks (so I don't know how meeting x&#xA;date is possible or it feels like it's out of my control). Should&#xA;the lead dev not provide the number of hours so that a schedule can&#xA;be properly created?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I want to sit down with the lead dev and the secondary dev to get a&#xA;sense of how they plan to accomplish finishing the remainder of the&#xA;tasks by x date. Ideally, I would like to allocate tasks by date,&#xA;i.e. finish task 1.1 and 1.2 by x date, 1.3 by y date and so on. Is&#xA;this in my place to determine this (I'm being told it's not)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm being told that I should let the lead dev plan this out and I am only to be given a percentage of completion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm fine with any approach, but given that I have a technical background, it feels odd not to have a deeper insight into this project after spending a gruelling 7 months learning everything about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6568" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2013-07-19T15:10:20.947" LastActivityDate="2018-04-02T10:07:04.893" Title="Role of a technical project manager?" Tags="&lt;responsibility&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9588" CreationDate="2013-07-19T15:25:59.833" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Company culture always dominates PMI principles; if the owner of the company told the lead developer that he is responsible for finishing the project by X date, then the lead developer is responsible for finishing the project by X date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is your role as a project manager?  PMI has a simplistic answer and a long winded answer, but practically in this situation your role is to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Monitor the project and estimate the probability that it will complete successfully on or before the deadline.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify anything that reduces the probability of successful completion prior to deadline. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify anything that would increase the probability of successful completion prior to deadline.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure that your management knows whether the project will complete on deadline.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your lead dev is hinting that your attempt to obtain greater visibility falls into #2; things that interefere with successful completion.  You need to find a way to ensure that the lead dev succeeds. I think in your shoes, my highest priority would be to work with the lead dev to identify obstacles that I could remove.  If that means that I take responsibility for hourly caffeine deliveries, then I'll ask how they want their coffee.  The number two priority is how to obtain &lt;em&gt;low impact&lt;/em&gt; visibility into progress.  Commit/checkin rates, QA surveys, unit tests passed, etc. might provide some insight. If they suddenly change, it might be time for another conversation with the lead dev, &quot;Hey, I see that commit rate has dropped significantly; is there something I can do to increase your probability of success?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My third priority is to capture lessons learned and improve process assets to reduce friction on this and subsequent projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T15:25:59.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9588" CreationDate="2013-07-19T15:31:10.583" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your organization suffers from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prima_donna#Modern_usage_outside_opera&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;prima donna&lt;/a&gt; programmer syndrome and management seems to actively support this culture. The success or failure of the project rests with management, not with you, so voice your professional opinion politely and then let management assume their rightful responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Ideal Roles&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole point of having a &lt;em&gt;technical&lt;/em&gt; Project Manager is to have someone in the role who can evaluate the project schedule, resources, and control through a more technical lens than the typical PMO-type resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, that means you should be having technical discussions of scope and objectives with the team. The goal of these discussions isn't to drive architecture or tactical coding decisions, but rather to be able to accurately assess the progress of the project through visibility into the deeper technical layers and to control technical-scope issues that arise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Politics&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have no authority on this project. When you say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm being told that I should let the lead dev plan this out and I am only to be given a percentage of completion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;one assumes that you aren't being told so just by the developers, but by upper management as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While an adversarial relationship with the development team is unfortunate, it is also unfortunately not uncommon, especially with traditional project management methodologies. However, having the management team tell you that you are responsible for opaque reporting (e.g. &quot;50% of the project is 80% done&quot;) is undermining your ability to deliver clear metrics and a transparent assessment of the project's current progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is ultimately management's responsibility, not yours. While you have a professional responsibility to address the status of the project and the effectiveness of the project controls (if any exist), you are neither authorized nor empowered to actively &lt;em&gt;manage&lt;/em&gt; the project. Therefore, don't; politically, the attempt will not serve you well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Career Advice&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether this project succeeds or fails, it seems clear that the culture of the organization is actively hostile towards project managers or effective project management controls&amp;mdash;and possibly both. Unless you like being on the hook for things over which you have no control, I strongly recommend looking for another job at another company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always do your best in any job for as long as you're there. However, don't take blame for things that are beyond your control, and don't let a toxic culture mark the end of your career. It's up to &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; to take an active role in managing your career, and from your description it sounds like making a graceful exit is the only thing left to do unless you enjoy &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilting_at_windmills&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;tilting at windmills&lt;/a&gt; for its own sake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-07-19T15:36:14.120" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T15:36:14.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9591" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-19T17:00:18.110" Score="5" ViewCount="163" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general risk costs are not estimated as part of the initial estimates.  How do you handle these costs?  Through Change Requests? Any other thoughts on these costs? What is the best way to communicate these to Senior Management and Sponspors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2013-07-19T17:52:30.617" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T18:39:27.597" Title="How to handle costly risks?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9591" CreationDate="2013-07-19T17:45:58.130" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Without estimating the cost for risks, any cost or timeline estimate that you have provided to senior management or sponsors is a best-case scenario.&lt;/strong&gt; You have set an expectation for when the project will be delivered and how much it will cost, but if any of those risks materialize you will not be able to meet those expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, the impact (cost in currency and time) and likelihood (percentage) risks should be estimated, and ways to mitigate those risks should be identified (as well as the costs for the mitigations and the impact that they have on the risks - whether they reduce the cost of the risk or the likelihood of the risk materializing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This information should then be included with your estimate along with your suggestion on how the risks should be dealt with. This means pointing out which mitigations you feel should be performed (and added directly to the estimate for the cost and timeline) and how much additional cost and timeline (from the remaining risk cost and likelihood) should be included in the estimate. A very simple way to do this is to just multiply each risk's cost by the likelihood of that risk and then sum those values. More complex methods also exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your senior management and sponsors are open to it, you can provide a range for the cost and timeline, letting them know what the best case answer is as well as the worst case, and where on that spectrum things are most likely to fall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important though to make sure that the proper expectations are set, and what your estimates represent. Ultimately, it will be up to the people providing the budget to decide on whether they want to pay to mitigate the risks or wait for the risks to materialize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T17:45:58.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9591" CreationDate="2013-07-19T18:01:32.153" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cost risk should be part of the initial estimate. It is unrealistic to paint a picture to Senior Management or sponsors that the effort will go exactly as planned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T18:01:32.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9591" CreationDate="2013-07-19T18:01:58.303" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Best practices for risk management (as established in the Practice Standard for Risk Management) include quantitative analysis of costly risks.   (Unless you are managing so much risk that costly risks fall below the threshold for quantitative evaluation of risks; in that case you have a serious problem).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Common methods to assess costly risks include &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expected_monetary_value&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Expected Monetary Value&lt;/a&gt; of the risk&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_tree&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Decision Tree Analysis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_study&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Contingency Reserves&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I've linked to wikipedia, the material in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://marketplace.pmi.org/Pages/ProductDetail.aspx?GMProduct=00101169201&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Practice Standard&lt;/a&gt; is superior, but it is only available to PMI members and to those who wish to pay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Standard practice on communicating these risks varies widely in my experience, but probably the most common is to establish the Expected Monetary Value with a range &amp;amp; confidence interval.  &quot;Current forest fires in the area of Supplier X mean that there is a significant risk that Supplier X will be unable to deliver widget Y on schedule.  We estimate with an 80% confidence that this will cost the project $13,000&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T18:01:58.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9591" CreationDate="2013-07-19T18:39:27.597" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally, risks ARE estimated in your initial estimates, which would include a firm budget on known mitigating actions as part of your cost baseline but also reserves that sit in both management and contingency for risks identified later or when unknown unknowns impacts you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T18:39:27.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9596" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9598" CreationDate="2013-07-19T19:52:04.637" Score="-5" ViewCount="147" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking to start up a small business, and I'd like to know if anybody here--and I'm not sure if this question belongs here--might know of a method to ascertain the following things in a cost-effective manner for which the applicant has authorized:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1: Criminal Record&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2: Previous Job History&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3: Driving Record&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4: University Attendance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5: University Transcripts&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6569" LastEditorUserId="6569" LastEditDate="2013-07-19T20:07:10.490" LastActivityDate="2013-07-21T20:24:13.180" Title="Background Check on Prospective Hires" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2013-07-22T03:28:15.937" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9596" CreationDate="2013-07-21T20:24:13.180" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No one has responded, so I'll give some input. This is the perspective of an informed employee/contractor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are companies that do this. With basic info from an application(Name, DOB, SS/GovID #, and Driver's License #) you should be able to get a criminal history fairly cheaply.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A prospective employee should give you a job history +  references. You can get this verified by calling references or sending an email. References are often checked by e-mail surveys now.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;See 1. This may be public record.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4 and 5. Ask for a transcript. If the student requests it, universities will either send you an official one directly. You may also ask for an unofficial transcript which can be printed from a schools website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been told that a background check in the USA runs around $35USD, per head. Perhaps, to save time and costs, run checks after you have verified university enrollment and job history. This way, you've filtered out unlikely candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, consider that any company you may go with might have a bulk rate for background checks. The same may go for drug tests if that is an objective as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6573" LastActivityDate="2013-07-21T20:24:13.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9564" CreationDate="2013-07-22T07:50:17.183" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My 2 cents is to go for an agile management approach. I think that the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rationalplan.com/projectmanagementblog/is-there-a-project-management-methodology-for-one-person-projects/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Is There a Project Management Methodology for One-Person Projects?&lt;/a&gt; is just what you were looking for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4457" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T07:50:17.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9600" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-22T09:13:03.073" Score="-4" ViewCount="2568" Body="&lt;p&gt;How Spill overs can be reduced in agile projects I had seen lot of sprint in which the spill overs are very common though the estimation done is very proper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6577" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T00:34:29.003" Title="How can Spill overs can be reduced in Agile Projects" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-07-23T00:42:04.707" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9600" CreationDate="2013-07-22T10:52:32.010" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two problems here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There should be no spill-overs.  In a Scrum development team you would/should approach the product owner if you think you're not going to achieve what was agreed during the prioritisation meeting and re-negotiate the scope of the Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If developers are routinely getting the estimations wrong then there is a problem with the estimation process and this needs to be resolved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimations can go wrong for a number of reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The task the developers are estimating against is too big (I want an application that does X as opposed to I want some functionality).  If the item being estimated is too big then it needs to be broken down.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developers need to do team estimations.  This is a process where the whole team estimates items and agrees, as a team, how long a task will take.  We do this because the time taken a senior member of the team may be significantly shorter than the time taken by a junior member of the team.  A really good way to do team estimations is to use a Planning Poker tool (there are free ones on the web).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The developers don't fully understand functional requirement.  During estimations it is really important to ensure that the developers understand the item they are building.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are outside constraints (other teams, other systems, etc) which have not been taken into account.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using a planning poker estimation system gets the whole team involved in estimations and will allow for better estimations.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3620" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T10:52:32.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9603" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9605" CreationDate="2013-07-22T22:34:33.683" Score="3" ViewCount="4499" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once we have groomed the backlog and have a relatively clear direction of what should be done in short and long term, how do we decide what to include in each Sprint? Who makes that decision?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like agile methodologies allow the team to decide, but what happens if the team plays things too safe and &lt;a href=&quot;http://allankelly.blogspot.ca/2013/07/commitment-considered-harmful.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;undercommits&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6580" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-07-23T00:01:40.950" LastActivityDate="2019-05-30T12:44:52.407" Title="Who decides how much work should be included in each Sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;&lt;team-capacity&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5628" CreationDate="2013-07-22T22:58:37.233" Score="0" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;install adobe scansoft&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;print to pdf&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;print your job with adobe scansoft printer: set the paper to &quot;customize&quot;, set big size,&#xA;set to landscape or portrait, set to fit printer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;click OK&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;print preview&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;print&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will see your job in one sheet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6582" LastEditorUserId="2864" LastEditDate="2013-09-06T16:29:34.137" LastActivityDate="2013-09-06T16:29:34.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9603" CreationDate="2013-07-22T23:52:55.897" Score="11" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Slack is essential, but an excess of wasteful idleness is not. True leadership is being able to tell the difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Scrum Roles and Story Commitments&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner prioritizes the Product Backlog, but only the Development Team may estimate stories. The team uses these estimates, along with their estimated velocity, to determine how much work should be accepted into each Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This only seems like a problem if you take a narrow view. The &lt;em&gt;project&lt;/em&gt; has milestones, release dates, and other targets that can be compared against current progress at periodic intervals. If the team is not on track to meet the necessary management targets, then this is good material for organizational dialogues and team retrospectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Slack Isn't Always &quot;Waste&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note, however, that simply saying the team is under-committing is not the same thing as actually having a team that has large buckets of unused spare capacity. The goal with Scrum is sustainable development, which requires some amount of process slack. It's up to the team and the organization to reach an understanding of how much slack is necessary, and how much is &quot;waste&quot; (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muri_%28Japanese_term%29&quot;&gt;muri&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muda_%28Japanese_term%29&quot;&gt;muda&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mura_%28Japanese_term%29&quot;&gt;mura&lt;/a&gt;) in the Lean sense of the word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, 100% utilization is not the goal. If the team is already working at it's optimum sustainable pace, you may need to examine your project's expectations, processes, resources, or scope to find other ways to address your system constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T23:52:55.897" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9603" CreationDate="2013-07-22T23:53:09.797" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems evident that you have a trust issue with your team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can't say a team undercommits unless you disagree with their capacity planning. Do you estimate sprint capacity? If you think your teams can deliver more points you can certainly argument that at the planning meeting, however you can't expect the opinion of one person to be considered the &quot;correct&quot; estimate. It's a team effort.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You are part of the team, and have a say.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you think the team is working inefficiently, or lazy, or simply have concrete ideas on how the team can improve their velocity, the correct place to make these suggestion is a sprint retrospective, and certainly not a planning meeting. I would make sure that retros take place (if they don't already) and that your doubts about the team's efficiency are handled there.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6300" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T23:53:09.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9600" CreationDate="2013-07-23T00:34:29.003" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem here is that you are working in a complex and uncertain subject domain ... technology.  It rapidly changes, there are many complexities and often not well documented.  Requirements change as people formulate new opinions.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First is to stop pretending, this is the real world and accept it.  The next is to learn to deal and manage it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The core agile principle to deal with this is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;INSPECT / TRANSPARENCY / ADAPT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You have identified the problem of &quot;spill over&quot;.  Next is to inspect it;&#xA;and I would seriously doubt it that the team estimates at the time of&#xA;estimation is wrong.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then be very transparent about the problem, as this makes awareness about it and it helps set the attitudes of everyone to change.  Again, I would say its more organizational and management and not Team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find way to adapt and make changes to improve your situation.  If you keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, that's insanity. (Einstein)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Next it is an &lt;strong&gt;ESTIMATE&lt;/strong&gt;,  so why are you treating it as ACTUAL.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why has the management team not factored in the risk &quot;What happens if the teams estimates are wrong?&quot;.  I don't see this as a team problem, but more of a PO or management fail.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA; - &#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5634" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T00:34:29.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9611" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-07-23T14:08:19.910" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-07-23T14:08:19.910" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T14:08:19.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9612" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-07-23T14:08:19.910" Score="0" Body="for questions about estimating or tracking a team's capacity to perform work" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-07-23T14:08:19.910" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T14:08:19.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9613" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9614" CreationDate="2013-07-24T11:41:11.843" Score="6" ViewCount="608" Body="&lt;p&gt;We know by books that: &#xA;User stories should be Valuable, estimable, independend and so on... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are newbies on all this SCRUM stuff, and we have arrive to the following &lt;strong&gt;feature / epic / backlog item&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Accept reservations by SMS&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that, none of us knows nothing about SMS sending and receiving services at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can split this into small user stories, and split it into:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a Restaurant Owner, I wish to receive my website reservations by&#xA;  SMS on my phone, so that I can prepare the table for my customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a restaurant site visitor, I wish to make a reservation so that I&#xA;  can be assured that I will have a table once I arrive on the&#xA;  restaurant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But on both user stories, we still have a huge ??? factor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because we need to &lt;strong&gt;investigate&lt;/strong&gt; HOW and WHAT are the technically features, before we can split those User Stories into something &quot;Small, Valuable, Estimable,  and so on...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can we deal with this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are thinking about creating on those USER STORIES, a TASK for &quot;Investigate further&quot;. What say you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4217" LastActivityDate="2020-06-17T14:25:41.227" Title="What should we do when we split an Epic and we still get XXXL user stories from it?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9613" CreationDate="2013-07-24T12:17:43.057" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out this article from Scrum Alliance:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20171125132222/https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2013/march/spikes-and-the-effort-to-grief-ratio&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Spikes and the Effort to Grief Ratio&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically the idea is to use add a new item to the backlog, a time-boxed research spike, that will allow you to investigate the matter further. The value delivered at the sprint review is what you learned from the spike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T14:25:41.227" LastActivityDate="2020-06-17T14:25:41.227" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9613" CreationDate="2013-07-24T14:03:20.467" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Stories Should be Actionable&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you talk about the granularity of user stories (as opposed to themes and epics), the stories should be &lt;em&gt;actionable&lt;/em&gt;. If the action item or tasks necessary to complete a story are not self-evident, then your story is insufficiently granular and needs to be decomposed further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, when you say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a Restaurant Owner,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I wish to receive my website reservations by SMS on my phone,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I can prepare the table for my customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;your team may still have a large &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cone of uncertainty&lt;/a&gt; around the implied components of this story, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How is a reservation represented?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How is a reservation stored?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How is a reservation retrieved?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How is phone information stored?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How is phone information retrieved?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How is a reservation transmitted to a phone via an SMS gateway?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How will you test this story?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This story might be fine if these issues are already well-understood by the team and clearly defined elsewhere in the project&amp;mdash;but if that were the case, you wouldn't be asking about how to split the story further. So, it certainly seems likely that you need to address these sub-stories as part of an over-arching SMS theme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T14:03:20.467" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9616" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9621" CreationDate="2013-07-25T08:32:15.667" Score="3" ViewCount="1014" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a TFS-specific question. If this is inappropriate for this site, let me know where I can ask it. I initially posted it on &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17732455/tfs-how-to-represent-the-application-version-that-each-change-request-bug-etc&quot;&gt;StackOverflow&lt;/a&gt;, but didn't get much of a response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have recently transitioned from Gemini to TFS for application change control. There is one aspect of TFS I can't get my head around - the lack of a built-in concept of &lt;em&gt;the application version that each work item will be addressed in&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Gemini every feature request, enhancement, bug etc can be tagged with a version number. If the field was left blank, the item was &quot;unscheduled&quot;, i.e. on the backlog. Each version could be flagged as either released or not. Reports could be then created listing the issues addressed in each released version, i.e. release notes, and the issues to be addressed in future versions, i.e. a roadmap. I was completely happy with this!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now in TFS I can't find any built-in concept of version. It seems like there are 2 ways to represent version:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;As a parent item in the iteration tree&lt;/em&gt;, e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Version 1.0.0&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint 2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Version 1.1.0&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint 3&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint 4&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;As a parent item in the work items tree&lt;/em&gt;, e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Version 1.0.0&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requirement 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requirement 2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Version 1.1.0&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requirement 3&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bug 4&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latter approach looks better because it allows versions to be worked on simultaneously (e.g. a major release will be worked on at the same time as bug-fix release).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what is the recommended approach to managing work by version?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6604" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:41:23.897" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T12:06:10.550" Title="TFS: How to represent the application version that each change request, bug etc will be addressed in" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9616" CreationDate="2013-07-25T09:27:08.250" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like using area paths for this. It allows you to do work in parallel, without breaking the iteration model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Area paths:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;product\version&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Iteration paths:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;team\iteration&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T09:27:08.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9618" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-25T10:57:29.340" Score="8" ViewCount="216" Body="&lt;p&gt;The scenario here is a new IT Services Program that is about six months on a five-year firm fixed price contract, providing IT infrastructure and application O&amp;amp;M services for an organization that is world wide.  All the teams, including the PMO, are suffering from still maturing processes and capabilities and teaming dynamics.  There is a lot of intra- and inter-team conflicts that, while improving, is still adversely impacting performance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PMO, by its very nature, causes additional administrative burden on these struggling teams by way of forcing standardization, controls, and policies and rules.  As a result, I have found an almost uniform and consistent resistance by the broader teams, not only on this program but also others, as well.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it seems counter intuitive that the teams would NOT find inherent value from some or most of the PMO controls as these controls, if performed properly, should help them manage their portion of the work.  For example, if this program was doing earned value, the project managers across the program would have early insight on their cost and, to a degree, schedule in order to make early interventions if they were accruing unfavorable variances.  Otherwise, they are flying blind.  Similarly, a program-level risk management process would/should/could help these project managers navigate from their threats or towards their opportunities.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, I think the PMO should be both sort of the watch dog of a program to ensure compliance and control to the benefit of the project sponsors and leadership but I think it needs to provide real, tangible value to the project team at large, as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: how can I improve value generation for the project team at large?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a type of question that may violate our rules here in that there is not likely a &quot;true&quot; answer and this may only generate opinions and lists.  However, I need to generate opinions and lists because this scenario is real.  Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-07-30T14:59:51.110" LastActivityDate="2013-07-30T14:59:51.110" Title="Members of the Broader Team Find the PMO Burdensome and Valueless" Tags="&lt;politics&gt;&lt;conflicts&gt;&lt;pmo&gt;&lt;process-controls&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9618" CreationDate="2013-07-25T11:57:42.013" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first is to help them acknowledge the fact that there are a lot of conflicts and that there is room for improvement.  Followed by an agreement that in order to do achieve different results, then something must change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This opens the door for a retrospection where one can inspect the current things that are impacting and causing the conflicts. Listening in a neutral discussion of the problems and then brainstorming ideas to bring about change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the first lesson in agility (may be a bad word for your PMO, so use it with caution), that of inspect and adapt. The next is to establish regular points to inspect and adapt, thus preventing a rut happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many great articles on the web that will explain retrospection and how to run them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5634" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T11:57:42.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9618" CreationDate="2013-07-25T11:59:59.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the problem you have outlined is fairly common. In my experience people in general want to see immediate, short-term benefits from initiatives. Longer-term benefits are often discounted altogether if getting to them is perceived as interfering with &quot;real work&quot;. I liken it to a man going on a hike who can reduce his load by half at the start but chooses not to because he doesn't want to lose the five minutes it will take to empty his pack. It makes no sense but is very human.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the best way to get your teams to buy into the value of a PMO is to collaboratively tailor your PMO's methodology with the team to the needs of each project. During pre-project planning work your way through the methodology with the key stakeholders (e.g. PMs, team leaders, sponsors) and decide what pieces are must-haves vs nice-to-haves given the project's complexity and criticality to the organization. By engaging the teams early you will avoid a lot of problems. With a project that is currently underway there is no shame in hitting the reset button when it comes to governance, maybe the methodology being used really is too onerous for the needs of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T11:59:59.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9616" CreationDate="2013-07-25T12:06:10.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;TFS has the concept of iteration, which is a hierarchy of release points.  It is pretty flexible and you can break it down to something like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Product&#xA;   Release 1.0&#xA;     Sprint 1&#xA;     Sprint 2&#xA;   Release 1.1&#xA;     Sprint 3&#xA;     Sprint 4&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can even put teams in them.  When you crate a work item, you simply allocate the work item to the the correct iteration.  If it is not to be released, then simply change the work item's iteration path to the correct new iteration as TFS tracks history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the workitem (requirement, bug, test) is associated in a hierarchy, you could write a query to find all work items &quot;&lt;strong&gt;UNDER&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; Release 1.1;  this will include all child items.  Using a combination of Area, Iteration and state you are able to create some pretty powerful queries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5634" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T12:06:10.550" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9613" CreationDate="2013-07-25T12:15:22.980" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Spikes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often teams come across requirements that require a new set of components the team is unfamiliar with, for example your team may never have worked with an SMS gateway and now need to build tools.  Quite rightly the team have no idea what it will entail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first is to be very transparent to the PO, that the team does no know how to do this and needs a bit of time to investigate it.  We call this investigation, research a spike.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are rules around spikes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They are time-boxed as to prevent the spike going on forever.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They should have a goal and deliverable; e.g. deliver a Proof-of-concept to send a SMS message.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the end of the spike, the team should review whether it was achieved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The result of the spike should be used to clarify an enhance the product backlog where the original uncertainty was raised.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I do exactly what you are suggesting.  I have a Story with a single task as a spike.  The amount of hours assigned to the task is fixed/time-boxed.  I have a second task, which is to groom the product backlog and remove break the ambiguous XXXL story down into many finer stores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5634" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T12:15:22.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9623" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-25T12:50:53.553" Score="4" ViewCount="472" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have a bunch of epic stories.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have a fixed term to do the project.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have to get approval from a project board.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We don't know the velocity of the project team yet.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project board wants to estimate epics with story points and then split those epics into smaller stories where the points all add up to parent story. Variance in later estimates is punishable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I hold an estimation session for a dozen large epic stories using the fairly large numbers, 20 points and upwards, this number comes out to 400 points. I later break those epics down into smaller stories and estimate them for an increment. I am under pressure from my project board to have very little variance in these later estimates. For example, the smaller stories should all add up to the estimate of their 'parent' epic, and all the smaller stories should continue to add up to 400.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have my own views on this, but wonder:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How desirable is this process from the team's point of view?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it a realistic expectation?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are story points related at all between the initial estimate and later sessions?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do other people do in these situations? I'm more than happy to clarify any of the points if it will help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1855" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-07-25T16:22:47.127" LastActivityDate="2013-07-27T23:25:20.930" Title="Can story points remain constant between the initial estimate and later planning sessions?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;epics&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9623" CreationDate="2013-07-25T13:01:47.013" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The variance here in punishable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is unfortunate.  It is imminent that you will be punished because it is certain that there will be variances.  Hoping or trying to have a near zero variance, or zero variance, is to suggest it is possible we can predict the future accurately and precisely...which we cannot.  Accurate Estimates is an oxymoron.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First you need to understand there is a real difference between an estimate and your planning values.  An estimate is ALWAYS a range and your planning value is the number you are hanging your hat on.  In other words, you estimate that this task will take from 10 days to 25 days.  Your planning value is 19 days.  See the difference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your goal here is to choose a planning value where most of your probability is behind you and not in front of you, but where you don't build in too much wasted fat.  The choice needs to be consistent with your organization's risk tolerance.  Since you are in a zero variance culture, that implies not a lot of risk tolerance so you are going to be on the fat side of your estimates.  It's expensive but safe to operate that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think your real challenge here is training your organization about the realities of estimation, aleatory risks, and the unrealistic expectation of this notion of zero variance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T13:01:47.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9623" CreationDate="2013-07-25T13:27:35.270" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;On a given project, estimates should get better as experience team gains experience with and knowledge of the particular project.  This will cause estimate to change.  As you break things down you should get better estimates which may or may not be equal to the estimate for the larger package.   If there is low tolerance for variance from the estimate of the original, you may want to provide the project board with scaled estimates.  Track the actual totals so that you are aware what the scaling is hiding.  If it is hiding schedule slippage or variance is otherwise high, the earlier you come clean the better.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many industries, it is possible to plan very precisely.  When you are building another unit when you've built hundreds, thousands, or millions of before, it is easy to accurately estimate how long it will take.  In these cases, a known process is being repeated and there is no design, experimentation, or rework required.  Testing if required, is to ensure quality is maintained, and rarely results in rework. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Building software is an entirely different process.  Unless you have a poor process, each unit consists mostly of design, experimentation, testing, and rework.  All of these steps are difficult to predict.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Good processes and understanding of the problem can reduce failures in testing and resulting rework.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Appropriate standard practices can limit experimentation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Expertise in the subject matter and tool set can reduce experimentation as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Standards and appropriate components can reduce the all of these factors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, you should be building one-off components.  These don't have the time certainty, that is found producing the next unit of a series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask the project board if they would accept a similar lack of variance in the time they take on their task.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastEditorUserId="529" LastEditDate="2013-07-25T23:42:02.443" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T23:42:02.443" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9618" CreationDate="2013-07-25T13:36:04.710" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like one or more of the following could be playing into the current situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lack of understanding by the projects of what the PMO is doing.&lt;/strong&gt; Maybe the PMO is offering the projects exactly what they need, but it hasn't been communicated well. To get some insight into whether this is a factor, do a quick informal survey to see what the projects feel that the PMO is providing them. Try to avoid asking questions in a way that biases the answers. Go over the results with the PMO, and see if there is a need for better advertising the PMOs offerings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lack of understanding by the PMO of what the projects need.&lt;/strong&gt; Again, do a quick informal survey. This time though, ask the PMO what they think the projects need from them. Once that is done, go over the results with the projects to see whether they find these things useful (or if some adaptations need to be made). It is quite likely that different projects will need different things from your PMO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lack of available time.&lt;/strong&gt; It could be that what the PMO is offering is exactly what the projects need, and that the projects know that they need it. But there are only so many hours in the day, and what the PMO is trying to help the projects with might appear to be lower on the priority list than the current fires that they are putting out. Look to see what high priority issues might be distracting projects from using the PMO offerings, and see which might have been avoided if the projects had been using the PMO's offerings in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lack of maturity.&lt;/strong&gt; You mentioned yourself that the processes and capabilities were still maturing. While six months seems like a lot of time, and it sounds like you've got a large distributed group involved. It may be that some training time is needed, or perhaps some on-hand coaching with individual teams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, even if you think you're doing a good job of communicating between the PMO and projects, don't stop looking to see if there are ways it can be improved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T13:36:04.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9618" CreationDate="2013-07-25T14:15:00.163" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some observations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All the teams, including the PMO, are suffering from still maturing processes and capabilities and teaming dynamics. There is a lot of intra- and inter-team conflicts that, while improving, is still adversely impacting performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can your organziation handle the pace of change?  Are you trying to do too much at once?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are you trying to impose standards on sub-teams and organizations  that are still &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuckman%27s_stages_of_group_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Forming and Storming&lt;/a&gt;? I'm not sure that is going to be successful; I believe you'll expend considerable political capital doing so.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The PMO, by its very nature, causes additional administrative burden on these struggling teams by way of forcing standardization, controls, and policies and rules. As a result, I have found an almost uniform and consistent resistance by the broader teams, not only on this program but also others, as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Forcing or enabling?&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;Might be that the PMO should strive to provide solutions and facilitate growth and progress. Emphasize intervention in problem projects, and avoid meddling with projects that are working. Ultimately the PMO will succeed if project managers find the PMO's contributions of value.  PMO force had better be backed by strong sponsorshp support. The kind of strong sponsor support that comes along once in a century. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the goal of the PMO? What is your sponsor's charge to the PMO?  What value is the PMO accountable for delivering?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there will be some inefficiency and thrash from failing to execute the mandated processes and procedures.  But I'm willing to bet that in the Storm &amp;amp; Form environment you're describing that inefficiency will be lost in the noise.  If I were in your shoes, I would work with the sponsors to identify the N projects that are most in danger of failure and intervene there.  (Where N is related to the resources &amp;amp; maturity of your PMO). Fight only the battles that all parties can win.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That said, it seems counter intuitive that the teams would NOT find inherent value from some or most of the PMO controls as these controls, if performed properly, should help them manage their portion of the work. For example, if this program was doing earned value, the project managers across the program would have early insight on their cost and, to a degree, schedule in order to make early interventions if they were accruing unfavorable variances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depends on your enterprise; if you are providing concrete products, then EVM is simple &amp;amp; helpful. We planned to produce 5 widgets, we produced 4, we're behind schedule. If you're providing services (which you say you are), then EVM is much more difficult.  We had planned to make 5 people happy today, but we only made 3 people happy - is that because 1 of the people is devoted to discontent, or is it because the other person had a problem that was far more complex than anyone expected (patient presented with a hangnail, but initial examination revealed diabetes). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T14:15:00.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9618" CreationDate="2013-07-25T15:43:37.130" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[I]t seems counter intuitive that the teams would NOT find inherent value from some or most of the PMO controls...[that] should help them manage their portion of the work[.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your organization appears to be suffering from a lack of perceived value in the new process controls, as well as a lack of proper &quot;tone at the top&quot; in support of this process change. PMO controls should be quantitatively evaluated, and senior management must visibly sponsor all new processes and spearhead an organization-wide educational effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Quantify Design Effectiveness&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, whether or not the PMO is actually providing value is an &lt;em&gt;a priori&lt;/em&gt; assumption within your post. There are no supporting details, so I'd start there: perform an actual evaluation of the PMO's controls to quantitatively validate their &lt;em&gt;design effectiveness&lt;/em&gt;. This will certainly feed into the rest of the political and process engineering that needs to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not to say that the PMO has not designed the right controls; it may very well have done so. The issue is that the design of the controls must not be seen as arbitrary or unsupported process overhead, and should directly relate to identifiable risks to the organization and its teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Quantify Operational Effectiveness&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, even if the PMO is applying controls that are correctly designed, it is necessary to inspect and evaluate the controls to ensure that they exhibit &lt;em&gt;operational effectiveness&lt;/em&gt;. If a control is &quot;operating as designed,&quot; but isn't actually &lt;em&gt;effective&lt;/em&gt; at controlling the associated risk it was designed to mitigate, then it is generally (and with some justification) seen as busy-work or useless overhead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Invest in Education and Improve &quot;Tone at the Top&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there's &lt;em&gt;perception&lt;/em&gt;. Even if the PMO is applying well-designed controls that are quantifiable in terms of their operational effectiveness, education and &quot;tone at the top&quot; matter. It is the job of senior management and the PMO to ensure that the various teams and business units understand:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The processes currently in place within the organization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How the new PMO-monitored controls work to mitigate risk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where the controls should be applied within existing organizational processes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How the new PMO controls benefit other layers of the organization, whether in the short run (rarely) or in the long run (the usual case).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to effectively work with the PMO to iron out process roadblocks related to the new controls.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this requires a meaningful education program within the organization. In addition, it requires that senior management provide other layers of management with the appropriate political motivation to be active participants in the process. Socializing and supporting the new process is always an essential part of senior management's responsibility in any process re-engineering effort, and this responsibility can't effectively be delegated&amp;mdash;it &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; start at the top.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T15:43:37.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9623" CreationDate="2013-07-25T16:13:08.427" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your board is out of their collective gourds. Estimates are not guarantees, and the precision of estimates in any process (but especially in iterative processes like Scrum) is a function of both inevitable change requirements and a varying cone of uncertainty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Estimating Epics&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of estimating epics is to give a &lt;em&gt;rough&lt;/em&gt; outline of the project schedule, and allow stories to be prioritized to achieve optimal value for each milestone or target ship date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the very nature of epics, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cone of uncertainty&lt;/a&gt; is extremely large and the initial estimates (which are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; guarantees) will not have the precision of the story-by-story estimates that are done at the start of each Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project estimation is a projection, and a guideline for measuring variance. The project schedule can and should be subject to the same inspect-and-adapt cycle as the rest of your process. The board can then use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_constraints&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Theory of Constraints&lt;/a&gt; to adjust schedule, scope, or resources as they see fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Inspect-and-Adapt Scheduling&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are the story points related at all between initial estimate and later sessions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes and no. Ideally, while there may be variance between the initial projection and iteration-by-iteration feature delivery, the variance should fall within some reasonable order of magnitude. If it doesn't, which is not an uncommon occurrence, then it is simply evidence that the initial estimate was wrong and should be revisited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way of looking at this is that the initial estimate is a baseline against which you will &lt;em&gt;identify&lt;/em&gt; variance. What you choose to do about that variance is up to you. In a well-run Scrum project, one might:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Re-estimate the entire Product Backlog in light of what is currently known.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Re-estimate the project schedule based on the new backlog estimates and the team's current velocity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Re-prioritize the Product Backlog to squeeze as much value into achievable release dates as possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fail early, if the project's objectives cannot be met.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Identifying Variance: Effective Control Isn't a Sin&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real problem here is cultural. You have a command-and-control project board that is looking at iterative development as a silver bullet. It isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Identifying variance is a desirable outcome of an effective project control. Punishing the messenger does not result in transparency or visibility; it can only result in CYA behaviors such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Excessive padding of all estimates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project dashboards that are always green, right up until the project results in an irremediable epic failure.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ponderous change management controls designed to prevent &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; changes which could increase the cone of uncertainty by even one iota.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blame-shifting, including finger-pointing to poor specifications or vague project criteria, neither of which will result in a usable product.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of comparing your current progress against an initial or updated scheduling estimate is to identify that variance. If variance is punished, then it will not be identified. Q.E.D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T16:13:08.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9631" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-25T21:37:47.757" Score="8" ViewCount="2678" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some background: At work, there are several epic (user visible) stories whose effort will be greatly reduced by improving the roles and permissions infrastructure in our code base. However, the effort of shoe-horning any one of these epics into existing infrastructure is less than the effort of improving the infrastructure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our team has been tasked with improving our roles and permissions. Additionally, since we would like to follow an Agile methodology, we have been given one of the mentioned epics to work on and are attempting to follow Scrum while building it. However, we are struggling with coming up with user stories that produce work that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is user facing (as all user stories should be),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;improves our infrastructure in any significant way, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;fits into one sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to be a 2 out of 3 deal: Either we make things user facing and fit into one sprint at the expense of making things harder to fix in the future, or we improve things in 1 sprint that we can't show anybody, or we improve things and make changes user facing but it doesn't fit into 1 sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes me wonder if there is an Agile methodology that would work for us better than Scrum. Do you have any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6607" LastActivityDate="2020-06-17T04:49:06.477" Title="Is there an Agile methodology that fits with large refactoring?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9623" CreationDate="2013-07-26T00:10:41.627" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answers given so far are good. I'd add one thing: treat all estimates as immutable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You never update an estimate. You create a &lt;em&gt;new&lt;/em&gt; estimate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is never &quot;the&quot; estimate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are &quot;the estimates&quot; and &quot;the most recent estimate&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, since your board have tied estimation to reward and punishment, they have defeated the purpose of estimation and destroyed information. It doesn't really matter what estimation policy or process is used, because the board have created a direct negative incentive to subvert all estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your most rational strategy now is to quit, your second most rational is to engage in aggressive sandbagging, haggling, lawyering and other CYA activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example, the smaller stories should all add up to the estimate of their 'parent' epic, and all the smaller stories should continue to add up to 400.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not going to happen. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002210310300177X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Unpacking Effect&lt;/a&gt; shows that estimates, when broken down, grow larger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5319" LastActivityDate="2013-07-26T00:10:41.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9631" CreationDate="2013-07-26T09:25:46.970" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stories are about concrete aims you want to achieve with your product. Of course, refactoring may well be required by concrete aims!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is really no specific way of handling large refactorings in agile on purpose. Let me give you two examples of large refactorings; one is perfectly fine, the other isn't:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Change an old and broken data access library and put in a new one, in order to reduce bugs and improve performance&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Change an old and broken data access library in an application that is not currently developed or maintained&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both examples represent the same &lt;em&gt;technical requirement&lt;/em&gt; but they are two completely different stories. In fact, it's impossible to express the second in story form!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why agile focuses on &lt;em&gt;what you are trying to achieve&lt;/em&gt; and it's constantly hostile towards expressing needs in terms of solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Refactoring is an activity that development teams should do constantly, without a specific story. Refactoring is a normal part of development and &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; story should include it - some stories have more refactoring than others, but then some other stories have more testing, or more design, etc. The problem only ensues because one takes a &lt;em&gt;task&lt;/em&gt;, refactoring, and tries to make it into a &lt;em&gt;story&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your particular case I would approach the problem in this order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the refactoring and one of the stories that benefit from it fit in an iteration? Just do the story and the refactoring.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the refactoring too big to fit in an iteration? Break it down and only do what fits in an iteration - refactoring is always a series of small steps that keep the application in a working state, so there's no big bang in refactoring.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your refactoring is &quot;special&quot; and you can't break it down, it's &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_refactoring&quot;&gt;refactoring&lt;/a&gt;. It's a rewrite. Make a business case for it - establish a business value - and use that to create stories. Typically your value is on &quot;verticals&quot; and this allows you to break the rewrite down properly in stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6300" LastActivityDate="2013-07-26T09:25:46.970" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4873" CreationDate="2013-07-26T18:24:33.080" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a non techie manager in an office full of developers, I can relate to this topic from experience. I agree that:&#xA;&quot;The key thing about dealing with non technical PMs is to have a strong technical team leader to act as a bridge between the team and management. If you are missing a good team leader as well then things can get messy&quot;&#xA;However, my job requires that I research the industry itself for trends and current events whereas this is sometimes &quot;news&quot;for programmers who have a preferred method of coding. They tend to be happy within those parameters. No, not everyone...but I am always surprised at how many can't be bothered to look outside their nook.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;When they do, it's always a treat because we both learn something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6610" LastActivityDate="2013-07-26T18:24:33.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9635" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-27T10:16:32.220" Score="3" ViewCount="1288" Body="&lt;p&gt;In production, there was an issue which impacted many customers. The issue was resolved in an hour but the damage was already done. Recovery is in progress. We need to explain this situation to Senior management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What details are mandatory when reporting a &quot;customer impacted&quot; issue? What should we be presenting or emailing to senior management?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-09-17T07:57:17.400" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T07:57:17.400" Title="How to present a &quot;customer impacted&quot; issue to senior management?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9635" CreationDate="2013-07-27T11:08:30.680" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The message should be as factual and emotion-free as possible:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Indicate the issue in a precise, straight forward, and simple way;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Describe how the customer will be impacted;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Indicate the the likelihood and degree of impact; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Detail the cause(s) of the issue; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the issue was predicted in your risk program, outline what you did to try to mitigate it;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Describe three or four alternate solutions to resolve both the issue as well as the impact to the customer; and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recommend which alternate path you think is best by way of benefit, cost, and risks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to push for decision so you need to put dates on the next steps as you drive consensus.  In other words, schedule the next event for continued discussion.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-07-27T11:08:30.680" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9555" CreationDate="2013-07-27T13:53:28.300" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your question you put &quot;a bunch of word documents&quot; on the one side and &quot;a wiki&quot; on the other side. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reality is that Requirement Management Systems out there (take the top N) are there because there are hundreds, if not so thousands of requirements FOR such a requirements management system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A requirements solution OF COURSE should include support for different input formats like word documents or scanned white boards&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;centralized access for everyone within the company and trusted outsiders&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the capability to produce traceability matrixes for impact analyses&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the capability to version and baseline certain requirements (e.g. release 2.3.1. run currently on test server A, release 2.3.4 on test server B and release 2.3.5 is currently used for training end users) (or... the set &quot;funtionality C&quot; will move to the next release)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the capability to extract singular requirements from documents and store them as records / wiki entries with unique numbers, attributes (import/not important), tracebility to what RFC's, Defects were found this this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To support different quality and security processes which all have their hunderds of checkboxes on what the requirement solution MUST be able to do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To have adequate security roles support / auditing options &quot;send me e-mail when someone touches my requirement)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To store each RFC/Defect/Etc... with each singular requirement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc... etc... (etc...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a certain baseline &quot;core&quot; set of requirements for RM system that everyone can write down in a certain amount of minutes. E.g. the set above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then there are the additional requirements often coming from the specific roles in an organization AND the processes that a company has standardized out (which encompass e.g. governance regulations and different quality frameworks)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your requirements management solution contains hundreds of puzzle pieces underneath, one of the puzzle pieces could be a wiki.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;you write &quot;A team was discussing...&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience the requirements FOR a RM system are often stated in the context of the role a person has in an organization and often these requirements conflict. Development Teams have total different look on requirements as e.g. operational architects or business analysts or support technicians or maintenance and theirs needs differ on what they are looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An architect for instance wants to have integration with his Architect system so that he can (sandwich approach) start architecting the solutions with layers of requirements , models, requirements, models, all integrated with the solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you should regard the requirements phase and selection for a RM system the same as for any other system: write down all requirements for you RM system from all partys involved and you find an enormous amount of requirements for a RM system, often not understood by other participants. Workshops etc... could help out there as well as demo's from the TOP N Gartner quadrant RM systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But... if you succeed in making the complete list of requirements for a RM system it becomes much clearer for all participants if a requirements wiki alone is a solution (based on the products on there)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;you Write &quot;Looking back over time, I have found issues with this approach&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On your experience with using Word Documents: it seems that you have used the Word Documents themselves to collaborate on and work on requirements. Word documents are not requirements. They are Requirement Documents. Each of them contains the atomic requirements so (also classic) RM systems extract those atomic requirements out of the word documents and store them as individual atomic REQUIREMENTS where you should collaborate on, version, etc... It would indeed be crazy to treat word documents as &lt;code&gt;the requirements&lt;/code&gt; but as far as I have seen no project has ever treated requirements as `a directory of requirement documents´. Ofcourse these are not THE requirements, you should always extract the individual requirements (and give them a type like use case, non functional, functional, process, release or whatever) (and have a diagram that explains the relations between the types).  Furthermore ofcouse an update to an individual requirement item in your database auto updates the word document (like many RM solutions do).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Integrated approach&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think we left the stage of different tools that together form the integrated solution to support your process (requirements management, configuration management, change management, defects, etc). I think we are at the stage that most companies are looking for yet the next step: A platform to plugin all of the different puzzle pieces that seamlessly guide any role throughout a process (standardized, adjusted and auto support for all major process frameworks e.g. ITIL for maintenance, agile approaches from dev, Prince 2 for PM, whatever is standardized on, etc....) without the need for them to switch to different tools for different tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;wiki thinking (core)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a Requirement is anything you can trace to something else. E.g. A [house] has multiple [window]s. 90% of the people thinking on requirements treat requirements as the dictionary 'common folk' explanation of a requirement. Therefore e.g. treating 'release 1.2' as a requirement is often not understood (because the base understanding misses).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what your actually doing is building a taxonomy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From that thinking hypertext stems: the reason that the World Wide Web works like it does is that it can link items together. (and Wiki gives the awaited option for everyone to edit pages)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So both systems (and probably a lot of other systems) use the same approach of how people can structure information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we have a gazillion insects we need to put them in a taxonomy. If we have a gazillion requirements we need to put them in a taxonomy. (just to understand complexity). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore both are going through change and support changes. Both also support linking to individual items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it is logical that wiki comes along especially since about everyone can use a browser and knows the internet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A wiki THEN needs to support the additional requirements as a RM system and there the problem starts: on wiki e.g. plugins need to be written for integration, to support baselining, etc... etc.. etc.. You could say that so much has to be written on top of the wiki that the wiki part in terms of pieces of code for the solution only forms a little part of that solution. On that moment the thoughts rise to make the step to a RM system that is often build from a more holistic approach. But that moment only comes when the requirements for that RM system become more and more and more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6617" LastEditorUserId="6617" LastEditDate="2013-07-27T14:39:04.443" LastActivityDate="2013-07-27T14:39:04.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9631" CreationDate="2013-07-27T23:12:34.953" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is obviously technical debt in the product which has negativity impacted the business resulting in the need to a large refactor. The issue here is not to get carried away and rewrite the entire application, but to focus on the debt areas that are hurting the most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Build a backlog of known issues&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Order them dealing with the most valuable to business first.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Refactor starting at the top and working down until the product is stable.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;During refactoring, you will come across many other debt areas.  &lt;strong&gt;DO NOT&lt;/strong&gt; fix them part of the current refactor, but rather add them to the backlog.  Obviously if it is a issue related to the current item, then fix it.  The problem here is that developers easily go down a path and very quickly get into a massive job.  Mitigate your risk.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Focus on improving the quality and the unit tests around it.  If there is an issue, write a test to prove it (failing test).  Then refactor until it passes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many unknowns and I would suggest using t Kanban method to limit WIP and focus on one refactor at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Communicate a lot and manage expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5634" LastActivityDate="2013-07-27T23:12:34.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9623" CreationDate="2013-07-27T23:25:20.930" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Variance in later estimates is punishable.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OUCH!!!! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many great answers here but I want to focus on this issue as this type of attitude kills projects, teams and productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimate is exactly that ... an estimate.  It is not an actual.  The world of software development is full of complexity and uncertainty and this should be accepted by business.  The management need to be asked the question of  &quot;What are you going to do to mitigate against estimation that exceed?&quot;  In Scrum, we teach teams not to take on risk that is for the business, these are around time, money, budget.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teams build software and that is their skill.  They are not project managers, nor are the estimators.  They can help give guidance to estimates, but it is simply that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I often challenge management around sales and budgets.  Do they accurately estimate their future sales and budget figures to the day?  It is &lt;em&gt;NO&lt;/em&gt;;  so if they cannot estimate as management, how on earth do they expect other people to estimate accurately?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend getting a skilled coach in to help educate your management on estimation as there are many, many factors that are to big to discuss here.  The coach should help change the mindset of your managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5634" LastActivityDate="2013-07-27T23:25:20.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9635" CreationDate="2013-07-29T01:14:58.177" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We need to explain this to Senior management. My question is what details you will present to them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's unclear who is demanding an explanation, and whether it's actually a technical explanation that's needed or political covering fire. If the former, the expectations for the response should have been clearly communicated to you and your team. If the latter, then the content of the response really doesn't matter all that much since actual knowledge-transfer isn't the point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;POA&amp;amp;Ms, Root Cause Analyses, and Other Remediation Artifacts&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If senior management is asking for a technical explanation, they should have told you what they want to know. If they did, use that as your guideline. If not, you should probably &lt;em&gt;ask&lt;/em&gt; them what it is that they want to know, rather than trying to guess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, large projects already have organizationally-defined formats for reporting significant issues, in-progress hot-fix status updates, or formal root-cause analyses. For example, many government projects use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/memoranda_m02-01/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Plan of Actions and Milestones&lt;/a&gt; (POA&amp;amp;M) format, while other projects may simply need to report what went wrong and what the expected time-line is for mitigation. Again, if these sorts of reporting requirements aren't already baked into your project and weren't made clear in the request for information, then you should ask senior management what's needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Blame Game&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, on the other hand, the real question is &quot;Whose fault is this?&quot; or &quot;Who's going to take the blame for this?&quot; then the technical content of your response is irrelevant. If you choose to play the Blame Game (which I don't recommend), then you will need transfer responsibility elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if senior management &lt;em&gt;wants&lt;/em&gt; to play the Blame Game, I wouldn't go down that road. The professional goal of a project manager is to provide senior management with visibility into a project in order to foster strategic decision-making. Sweeping things under the rug, passing the buck, and other political flim-flammery might keep your job or your department's budget off the chopping block, but it is neither ethical or constructive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, any organization that prefers to &quot;hold people accountable&quot; rather than to learn from mistakes has doubtless made other bad decisions in the past. This may include unwisely cutting project budgets, staffing resources, or quality assurance checks. If your root-cause analysis shows that past project decisions were involved in causing the problem, it is important that these issues be made visible as part of any corrective action plan, or similar problems are likely to recur in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-07-29T01:14:58.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9644" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-29T10:30:30.240" Score="2" ViewCount="875" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw this image where there are nine managers, one supervisor, and one guy doing all of the work on a project, and something about it rang true. I've worked in two organisations that attempted to implement a matrix style of project management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen this go very wrong, with both places ending up with nearly equal hands off headcount to hands on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can this be avoided?  What can management do to avoid an organisational structure where there is too little leadership and too much management in comparison to those tasked with the work? What checks and balances are required?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jA8OA.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Matrix Management&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6608" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-07-30T02:28:21.943" LastActivityDate="2013-07-30T12:30:50.797" Title="What measures and checks to implement for an effective Matrix Management project teams structure?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;matrixed-resources&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9631" CreationDate="2013-07-29T12:36:51.407" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're gravely misunderstanding a variety of aspects of Scrum, especially the respective roles of user stories, the Product Backlog, and the Sprint Review meeting. Your &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; needs refactoring a lot more than your infrastructure does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problems you're facing aren't unique to Scrum. Unless you address the underlying causes, switching methodologies probably won't buy you anything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Identified Problems&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a number of procedural and process problems with your Scrum implementation that stem from improper application of principles. Some specific examples include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User stories must have a point-of-view, but the perspective does not have to be that of the end-user.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You keep using the word &quot;refactoring,&quot; but &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Princess_Bride_%28film%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;I do not think it means what you think it means.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have difficulties with decomposition.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have difficulties with identifying and/or measuring incremental steps.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your system design and project methodologies haven't fully embraced the iterative development model.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may sound critical, but you've actually described most of these problems yourself. I'm suggesting that you need to look deeper into your process to understand &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; you're having these issues, and to come up with solutions that will work for your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Potential Solutions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month#No_silver_bullet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;There's no silver bullet.&lt;/a&gt; However, here are some potential solutions for the problems identified above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Identify the beneficiary of your improved roles and permissions infrastructure.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write your user stories from that point of view in order to provide the story with valid exit criteria and help your Product Owner measure the story's value.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stop using the word &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_refactoring&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;refactoring&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're not really talking about &quot;refactoring.&quot; What you're describing is either a change to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-functional_requirement&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;non-functional requirements&lt;/a&gt;, or possibly a change in the behavior or architecture of your system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's up to the Product Owner to decide if the value of this change set is high enough to off-set the cost of pushing other features down the stack, or if the long-term drag of the technical debt is worth it to avoid having a non-shippable product at the end of a given Sprint. The answer may be &quot;no,&quot; in which case you don't have to spend any more time worrying about it since the responsibility for this technical debt will have been accepted by the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Embrace iterative development.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Iterative development involves trade-offs. One of the often-overlooked trade-offs is that you are often trading time for stability. For example, an iterative rewrite/redesign of your roles and permissions may take &lt;em&gt;longer&lt;/em&gt; than starting from scratch in order to maintain the product in a potentially-shippable state at the end of each Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may involve more work, as incremental improvements can involve progressive re-work. It may also involve more time when compared to a full rewrite. It's up to the Product Owner to allocate project resources through story scope and prioritization, so this is ultimately the P.O.'s trade-off to make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's up to the Product Owner to define value to the project, and to prioritize user stories accordingly. By writing stories with clearly-identified value to the project or the team, you can make it more likely that the stories will be prioritized rather than the technical debt accepted as a cost of doing business.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Decompose &lt;em&gt;harder&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Small, incremental steps require that you have a way to measure success or improvement. In addition, you need to think more about how you will demo non-functional requirements during the Sprint Review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, rather than a full rewrite of your permissions system, perhaps a single story will involve improving the speed of your permissions checks. The Development Team and the Product Owner can work together to define &quot;fast enough,&quot; and the demo could involve some live or documented benchmarks showing the improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are certainly other ways to address your issues. Your team should be using Sprint Retrospectives to identify other process problems, and to brainstorm about ways to improve your development process and your Scrum implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-07-29T12:36:51.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9644" CreationDate="2013-07-30T05:31:51.573" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You like it or not you as a project manager need to manage Risk, HR, communication, security etc. The Image you posted is exaggeration, as I feel all the managers shown in the picture are functions which need to be carried out by project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for project management is concerned, it should deal in managing requirement, risk, cost, communicaiton, HR and others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ratio of workers(developers) to team leads to managers will differ from industry to industry. &#xA;In my company the goal is to have 5 developers, 2 team lead and 1 project manager ratio. Various functions mentioned earlier in the answer are managed by project manager. He might take help from team leads or liase with external parties (like HR manager, facilities manager) which are shared across various Projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6209" LastActivityDate="2013-07-30T05:31:51.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6230" CreationDate="2013-07-30T08:22:19.203" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum emphasizes not only self-organizing teams but also cross-functional team collaboration for better performance. Known as Scrum of Scrums, this practice is important for large, multidimensional projects which require  cross departments and teams to work in close collaboration so that the overall performance is as effective as in small projects involving smaller teams.  The key to this scalable element is the Scrum of Scrums, known in traditional parlance as “program management.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum of Scrums is a very good practice, but its success depends on two key factors – effective coordination and an efficient program manager. If either or both these conditions are not fulfilled, Scrum of Scrums proves to be the Waterloo of the entire project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In projects involving a single team of few people, Scrum Master is the guide and the mentor who steers the team in the right direction. However, with multiple teams working together on the same project, there has to be a manager who can coordinate effectively across the teams. In such a scenario, each team has its own Scrum Master who in turn coordinates with the Scrum Masters of the other teams under the guidance and supervision of an overall program manager, known as Agile Program Manager.&#xA;Source:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrum-master.info&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://scrum-master.info&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6632" LastActivityDate="2013-07-30T08:22:19.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4873" CreationDate="2013-07-30T08:53:16.677" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is a general rule because there are good PMs and bad ones regardless of developer/IT experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have had great PMs that have not been very techsavy but they knew how to listen and communicate. A PM is not necessarily somebody you sit and discuss technical problems with, instead his main role is to act as administrator. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also had mediocre PMs who obviously cannot let go of their developer past and see an absolute need to micromanage developers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So no, I don't think it is necessary with a developer/IT background but it is a bonus if the PM is good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3132" LastActivityDate="2013-07-30T08:53:16.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9644" CreationDate="2013-07-30T12:30:50.797" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have worked in a number of environments where matrix management was used.  In large organizations, I believe it is the only way to provision multi-disiplinary projects.   Where I have seen it break down, is the project team members fail to maintain contact with their practice groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Matrix management comes with additional overhead. This needs be allowed for the project plan(s) so that team members have time to spend their practice groups.  The practice groups need to have some way to engage their members who are assigned to projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although some projects may require project specific training, I believe training should flow through the practice group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may help if project managers and practice managers meet regularly to exchange feedback.  Perhaps a daily or weekly scrum would work.  Regular feedback from both managers could result.  I've never been a fan formal review practices, which tend to provide feedback to long after the event to be effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2013-07-30T12:30:50.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9653" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-31T03:47:19.733" Score="5" ViewCount="3328" Body="&lt;p&gt;The context is a PMO running across two development groups, one doing &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile development&lt;/a&gt;, the other using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;waterfall model&lt;/a&gt;. In order to come up with a common approach and engagement model, we would like to standardize roles, responsibilities, and definitions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;project&quot; definition is somewhat fuzzy in the Agile world, because work is a collection of features/epics that are aligned to a value stream. A project is a more legacy concept of an activity that has a start/end date, with hopefully some value being delivered to customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do we define &quot;project&quot; in the Agile world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6637" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-11-23T03:18:19.397" LastActivityDate="2019-10-16T14:25:57.667" Title="What is the definition of &quot;project&quot; in Agile settings?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;definition&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;&lt;pmo&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9653" CreationDate="2013-07-31T09:36:25.157" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The definition of a project in agile terms is no different to that of a project in traditional terms.  The difference is how the project is run and executed and the values behind the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Common&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both agile projects and traditional projects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have a start and end&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;may be constrained by schedule, scope or budget&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be for a single product;  (lets not debate symantics)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;run internally built or by external vendors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;be part of a larger program or portfolio of work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;deliver a product &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;deal with risk management and risk mitigation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you look at PRINCE2 and PMBoK, both promote iterative approaches in the form of stages or phases.   Most agile frameworks do to.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Differences&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile recognises that we deal with complex technologies and requirements in a world of many uncertainties and ambiguities. In doing this the approach is more an empirical process control instead of following a defined process control.  It allows the team to adapt around challenges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The work is done in very short iterations, not exceeding 30 days to mitigate risk against these complexities and uncertainties.  Traditional projects may run for years without phases, or phases may be several months.  Agile practitioners feel that this is far too long and far too many risks are involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most Agile practices follow lean principles to eliminate waste and only build what is needed.  Agile practitioners recognise upfront requirements normally lead to high volumes of waste; e.g. 64% of features are rarely or never used - Standish Group Research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people don't get agile as it is hard.  The reason it is hard is we have all been educated to work with defined processes and control these processes.   Breaking this mindset to deal with and learn to manage complex projects using empirical process control takes a lot of energy and commitment.  It has been proven to be a very reliable way to deal with software projects but needs the change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have done some pod-casts on project management and Scrum which highlights these differences in detail, you may want to use google to try find these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5634" LastActivityDate="2013-07-31T09:36:25.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9657" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9658" CreationDate="2013-08-01T16:21:30.063" Score="6" ViewCount="1862" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are new to Agile, and we have been noticing that user stories usually get completed by the end of the iteration. Testers have very little time to test stories thoroughly; they're idle for most part of the iteration. This seems wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the right way to get the user stories tested?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6648" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-08-01T17:21:13.197" LastActivityDate="2018-08-15T17:27:09.483" Title="At what point does a user story get tested in an iteration?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9657" CreationDate="2013-08-01T17:19:29.080" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are likely having this problem because testing isn't being included in your &quot;definition of done&quot; for each story. You should include testing for each story in your Sprint Backlog, and as a column on your kanban if you use one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Testing as a Story Requirement&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, Scrum teams will include unit testing in the development work, and Quality Assurance (QA) or User Acceptance Testing (UAT) as a defined process step before a story can be considered complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When decomposing stories for the Sprint Backlog, it may be useful to add an explicit task for QA/UAT to the backlog for each story. This makes it a checklist item, and any story that hasn't completed this task at the end of the Sprint is counted as incomplete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many cases, experienced teams don't include testing as an explicit item because it is baked into their estimates, and part of the team's &quot;definition of done.&quot; In such cases, testing is an &lt;em&gt;implicit&lt;/em&gt; requirement for a story to be considered complete, but the same rule applies: if the testing hasn't been done, then the story is incomplete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, many agile practitioners use kanbans to track stories through the team's work-flow. Having unique columns for testing that stories must pass through before being placed in the &quot;done&quot; column ensures that there is a visual reminder that testing is intrinsic to the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, because testing should be part of the &lt;em&gt;definition of done&lt;/em&gt;, adequate buffers for testing should be included in your story estimates. When testers don't participate in planning sessions, or when testing isn't part of the formal &lt;em&gt;definition of done&lt;/em&gt;, this essential practice might be overlooked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;When to Test&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Testing should be inter-weaved throughout your process. Testers should:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be involved in Sprint Planning and story estimation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work with developers to identify and build tests &lt;em&gt;during&lt;/em&gt; feature development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work with the technical writers to build tests that act as self-documentation for the product.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have their own process step or kanban column through which stories flow during each iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Actively participate in the daily stand-up to coordinate with developers, technical writers, and other members of the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Raise blocked tasks during the daily stand-up.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Raise process issues (such as waiting until the end of the Sprint to test) during Sprint Retrospectives.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If testing becomes integral to your team's process, you are less likely to require last-minute testapaloozas at the end of each iteration. Additionally, because testing is a &lt;em&gt;team&lt;/em&gt; responsibility, all members of the team will need to pitch in on testing tasks that are behind schedule in order to complete stories by the end of each Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create a strong incentive for the whole team to be cognizant of the resource and time requirements for testing, both during planning and during each iteration. If you do that, testing will stop being something that is &quot;thrown over the wall&quot; to the testers at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T17:19:29.080" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2507" CreationDate="2013-08-01T18:02:58.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You absolutely should keep this team together -- they've likely been together for some time now and have an established velocity.  Distributing them out to the other teams is certain to disrupt the existing velocity and possibly set those teams back into forming-mode.  If the API work is drying up, consider other feature work to flow into their backlog, in addition to the API maintenance, but I would advise keeping them together, if at all possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, it behooves more and more product organizations to truly understand the value of their API.  Treat your API as a product and ensure that all efforts to market it as such are investigated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When considering organizational changes in a software organization, always consider Conway's Law:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://swreflections.blogspot.com/2012/10/should-you-care-about-conways-law.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://swreflections.blogspot.com/2012/10/should-you-care-about-conways-law.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be cognizant of the potential affects to your API, over time, if you disband those individuals and essential change their focus.  They are now incentivized to ensure that their features work, but quite possibly lose sight on the value of the standards and discipline they built together, over time, as a team, working on the API with ownership and pride.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6650" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T18:02:58.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9506" CreationDate="2013-08-02T12:13:38.027" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We used to outsource part of our work to Asia, so I know this problem quite good. Miscommunication happens a lot even when everyone speaks the same language, now imagine a language barrier impact. Ideally you need an interpreter at least for each important meeting.If there's no budget for a separate position, maybe you could ask someone in the company who you trust to translate for you for some extra fee, or you may also hire an intern from a language school for this period of time. This person will be interested in gaining experience, and it will cost you less than a professional interpreter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6658" LastActivityDate="2013-08-02T12:13:38.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3867" CreationDate="2013-08-02T12:39:35.530" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wrike.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wrike&lt;/a&gt; – it has a good Gantt chart with ability to drag-and-drop tasks, create dependencies and milestones. The service is collaborative, so it enables you to share and edit tasks with other users. Besides, it has a number of useful features for task management, email and Google Drive integration, so you can manage all data in one place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6658" LastActivityDate="2013-08-02T12:39:35.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9664" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9665" CreationDate="2013-08-02T22:32:28.487" Score="0" ViewCount="247" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wanted to get an idea of categorizing bugs based on how easy is it to solve and how much benefit it will give me. for e.g., if there is a bug which will take say an hour (double file close etc.) to solve vs another which takes a day (segmentation fault). But if solving the first bug is not very important, then I'll probably work on the second one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I categorize bugs based on cost-benefit or similar metric and how can one prove that this is effective?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[EDIT]&#xA;Let's say it is possible to categorize bugs based on bug characteristics e.g. security vulnerability, memory error, logic error etc. On the other dimension there could be parameters like difficulty (easy, medium, hard). Are there other dimensions I should be looking for. To simplify things,  I can assume two things: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Every programmer in the team is equally capable of solving any bug&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no deadline&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6661" LastEditorUserId="6661" LastEditDate="2013-08-03T15:45:43.807" LastActivityDate="2013-08-04T16:12:53.187" Title="Solving which bugs will give greatest cost benefit" Tags="&lt;software&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9664" CreationDate="2013-08-03T14:52:10.610" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-criteria_decision_making&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;multi-criteria decision&lt;/a&gt; problem or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-objective_optimization&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;multi-objective optimisation&lt;/a&gt; problem, depending on how you want to look at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are hundreds of methods for assessing these problems, from simple intuitive methods through diagrams like decision trees to linear programming to more exotic stuff like nature-inspired computing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The simplest is to estimate expected value and expected cost, and to derive expected outcome. This is the intuitive model that most people follow. A slight elaboration is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weighted_sum_model&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Weighted Sum Method&lt;/a&gt;, where you arrange alternatives and criteria, then weight them and sum the result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The key problem: multiple solutions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key thing to understand is that &lt;strong&gt;you might not find a single best option&lt;/strong&gt;, given the method and the inputs. Optimisation problems can and often do throw up a &quot;Pareto front&quot; of alternatives that cannot be strictly ranked from &quot;best&quot; to &quot;worst&quot;. You can use tools to make the decision easier, but you will still need to exercise judgement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example that was used in a course I took was based on work commissioned by an iron ore company. They wanted to optimise iron ore crushing plants for profitability. This means deciding how much money to spend on an ore-crushing plant. Different configurations of crushers produce different fineness of ore, which fetches different market prices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this particular group of academics applied a genetic programming system to evolve model plants, with profitability as the selection function. At the end of the runs there would be a long string of alternative crushing plant designs generated that were indistinguishable for profitability, trading off between iron ore grade and construction and operations cost. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately the problem that the commissioning mining company ended with was the same. There was no one best solution. There were many equally best solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5319" LastEditorUserId="5319" LastEditDate="2013-08-03T15:49:42.780" LastActivityDate="2013-08-03T15:49:42.780" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9664" CreationDate="2013-08-03T16:40:20.030" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with all the above answers.  I would like to add from the business perspective too.  You can discuss with all the business stake holders and your own team too and get their priority.  Fixing the bugs based on business priority is very important as their input tells us which functionality is needed to run the business. Some of the bugs &lt;code&gt;does not&lt;/code&gt; require fixing as it is not important to business and can be deferred or it is nice to have not must to have feature.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my view I fix the bugs what business need after all business only provided this opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If business gets the benefit that is the greatest benefit for us and cost wise too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastEditorUserId="6474" LastEditDate="2013-08-03T16:49:54.667" LastActivityDate="2013-08-03T16:49:54.667" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9664" CreationDate="2013-08-04T16:12:53.187" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no silver bullet for cost/benefit analysis of any kind. Value is determined by your stakeholders, and varies from organization to organization. If you search for dissertations on the subject, you may find various mathematical models for bug triage, but real-world agile practice is typically to hold a &lt;em&gt;discussion&lt;/em&gt; to estimate effort and assign resources and priorities, while legacy organizations often rely on organizational policies and (sometimes) expert opinions to classify bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Perspective Matters&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following are certainly gross over-generalizations, but they are truisms for most projects I have personally worked on. YMMV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The Project Management Perspective&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a project management perspective, bugs typically fall into three broad categories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Features that don't work as expected.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Features (or mis-features) that have negative side-effects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change requests disguised as bug reports.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The Product Owner Perspective&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bugs can be categorized as one or more of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resource drains that reduce project capacity to deliver new features.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Value-decreasing issues that make the product less marketable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Value-decreasing issues that make the product less shippable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The Development Team Perspective&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bugs may be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change requests in disguise.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A correct solution to an incorrect assumption or specification.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A defect in the documentation or user training, or some other failure to communicate effectively with the end-users.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An actual defect in the implementation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Prioritization vs. Estimation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum perspective is that it isn't the developers' job to determine what bugs or features should be handles first. The responsibility is actually divided between the Development Team and the Product Owner as follows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Development Team gives a rough estimate of the work involved for each bug during Backlog Grooming.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Product Owner prioritizes the bugs the same way he prioritizes all other user stories on the Product Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Development Team and the Product Owner do some horse-trading during Sprint Planning when finer-grained estimates and relative project value are available.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, though, the developers are responsible for level-of-effort estimates, while the Product Owner is responsible for determining the cost/benefit of a bug or feature within the project. When this division of labor doesn't result in a self-evident relative value to the project, the Scrum Team as a whole can bring their multiple perspectives together to hammer out at satisfactory solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-08-04T16:12:53.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9280" CreationDate="2013-08-05T02:54:37.203" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest you to get involve in Formula SAE or some similar student competitions if your university has a team. Those are real project where you need to deliver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;''Real life'' project managing has very low tolerance for failure and 80% is a failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6674" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T02:54:37.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9671" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-05T17:04:37.333" Score="2" ViewCount="505" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team needs to successfully implement Test Driven Development (TDD). Which techniques have you found successful in making the &lt;em&gt;cultural&lt;/em&gt; shift from traditional development to TDD? And what checks and balances should we put in place to ensure ongoing success?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2013-08-08T16:02:56.527" LastActivityDate="2013-08-08T16:39:13.133" Title="How can we successfully introduce Test Driven Development(TDD)?" Tags="&lt;process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9672" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-06T02:34:14.353" Score="1" ViewCount="171" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've gone though the classroom training for PMP using PMBOK4 syllabus however since the exam now will be based on PMBOK5, is there a chance that I might be risking the exam with only my references from PMBOK4? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2013-08-07T01:55:54.380" LastActivityDate="2020-08-26T13:36:24.937" Title="Is it a risk to be sitting for a latest version of a certification (like PMP) after going through classes using the previous syllabus?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9672" CreationDate="2013-08-06T07:32:30.267" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course it's a risk and the risk being you might loose out on any concept which is new in PMBOK5.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More over PMI does not mention weightage of each topic or passing percentage so its very difficult to quantify the Risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will be paying few hundred dollars for the test/exam, so monetary risk is those few hundred dollars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6209" LastEditorUserId="11925" LastEditDate="2016-08-23T08:38:22.897" LastActivityDate="2016-08-23T08:38:22.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9674" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-06T09:17:42.880" Score="2" ViewCount="387" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Intro&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use different formalisms in &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;titles&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;/&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;subjects&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for different purposes (story, feature, test), but we have no formalism for bug reports...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are investigating the advantages of a &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;standardised title format for bugs&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Different formalisms for &lt;em&gt;titles&lt;/em&gt;/*subjects* in use, practically&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use with quite a success these formalisms in &lt;strong&gt;titles&lt;/strong&gt;/*&lt;em&gt;subjects&lt;/em&gt;* .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Story title&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Scrum stories, we use the following title formalism:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;As a &amp;lt;role&amp;gt;, I want &amp;lt;goal/desire&amp;gt; so that &amp;lt;benefit&amp;gt;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Feature title&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For FDD (Feature-Driven Development) features, we use the following title formalism:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;action&amp;gt; the &amp;lt;result&amp;gt; &amp;lt;by|for|of|to&amp;gt; a(n) &amp;lt;object&amp;gt;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Tests formalism&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Acceptance Tests (behaviour), we use the following formalism:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;GIVEN THAT &amp;lt;conditions&amp;gt;/&amp;lt;initial state&amp;gt;/&amp;lt;context&amp;gt; (no action)&#xA;WHEN &amp;lt;actions&amp;gt; (performed by user)&#xA;THEN &amp;lt;expected results&amp;gt;/&amp;lt;consequences&amp;gt; (that the system does)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Looking for a bug title formalism&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Title/subject formalism&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For bug reports, we think we are going to adopt a title formalism close to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;I was &amp;lt;context&amp;gt;, I did &amp;lt;action&amp;gt;, I got &amp;lt;actual behaviour&amp;gt;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I only focus here on the title, not the full description!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;homogeneity across teams (when bugs needs to be passed over)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;strictness for better description and understanding&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;mapping of:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the bug's 'context' to the acceptance test's 'context'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the bug's 'actual behaviour' to the acceptance test's 'expected results'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disadvantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it is a change to introduce, document, promote, and followup in the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you name it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Guidelines for the title/subject&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this formalism is not enough for just a title, as it may need a few guidelines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;should be as short as possible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do not mention a technical component or feature, as the guess and confirmation is part of the investigation and not the purpose of the creation of the bug&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do not make any assumption or guess&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;just basically describe as briefly as possible the context, action, and actual behaviour, because anyway it will be detailed in the full description&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do not not add any markup like [stuff] or (thing), because it hinders the reading&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do not add any team-specific keywords, as a bug is supposed to be passed from team to team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do not try to solve the issue at the reporting phase, it is the task of the assignee&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;bring the right balance/dichotomy between barely perimetered issue, and fully understood, as in one hand it is too vague, and on the other hand the resolution is almost finished&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;stay meaningful&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt; Full description (not the goal of this post)&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this is not the goal of this post, but in the full description of the bug free text), there will be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Context&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Steps to reproduce&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Actual behaviour&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Expected results&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Optionnally&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;links to docs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;logs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;diagrams&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;screenshots&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With all the fields of the bug tracker software, like affected/fix versions, severity, priority, links to other tickets, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this is not the subject of this post...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's get back to the bug &lt;strong&gt;titles&lt;/strong&gt;/*&lt;em&gt;subjects&lt;/em&gt;*.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Open questions on bug titles&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you think it is worth to put up such a &lt;strong&gt;title&lt;/strong&gt;/*&lt;em&gt;subject&lt;/em&gt;* formalism in place?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you &lt;strong&gt;name&lt;/strong&gt; you bugs? (how you fully describe and manage bugs is not the goal of this discussion)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4300" LastEditorUserId="4300" LastEditDate="2013-08-07T09:26:24.930" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T16:34:28.173" Title="Title/subject formalism in bug reports (standardising bug naming only): I was &lt;context&gt;, I did &lt;action&gt;, I got &lt;actual behaviour&gt;" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9653" CreationDate="2013-08-06T10:29:39.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the mechanism to deliver (as per @Brett's answer) I suggest that the definition of a project be as simple as &quot;a project is an activity which delivers measurable value to the organisation by either increasing revenue, reducing cost or improving efficiency&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each project that you deliver should be easily quantifiable as to why you are doing it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="98" LastActivityDate="2013-08-06T10:29:39.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9671" CreationDate="2013-08-06T10:38:21.460" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some [XP] techniques that I can think of that can &lt;em&gt;get you on the path&lt;/em&gt;, but not completely implement it, since agile is a process rather than a goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pair programming. Namely - ping-pong style pair programming where one developer writes a test, the other one has to write as little code as possible for that test to pass. Repeat until feature is implemented or bug is fixed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Code reviews on merges. We (in company I work at) are using git-flow for code versioning. Before each feature or bugfix is merged back to develop branch the merge request is submitted and the code is reviewed by 3rd developer (if code was written by two using first approach). Needless to say - merge requests without tests should be rejected outright.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Code katas. Take a very well known project and reimplement it every week using TDD. Granted - the project implementation should not take more than half a day.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pre-commit hook to run tests before the code is checked in to blessed repository (if using DVCS) or central repository (if using VCS).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Test coverage can also be of some help but I've seen too many times when developers rely on test coverage number even when the wrong things are covered with tests. Meaning - it's better to have 70% of test coverage for core functionality (which would amount maybe to 20% of all code base) rather than 90% of all code base, but core would be only 10% covered by tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Continuous Integration is also an option, but this would require more discipline as after every broken build the fix should be introduced ASAP. If not - everyone in dev-team &quot;gets used to&quot; red dot next to project name and doesn't care much about the health of the build.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="813" LastActivityDate="2013-08-06T10:38:21.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9674" CreationDate="2013-08-06T16:06:36.617" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you think it is worth to put up such a title formalism in place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. A title is rarely a unique identifier across bugs, nor is it likely to communicate enough on its own to justify the constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Titles Should Be Meaningful&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I agree that titles should be meaningful, it is very difficult to create a &lt;em&gt;short&lt;/em&gt; formalism that could be summarized in a few dozen characters. For example, you suggest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;I was &amp;lt;context&amp;gt;, I did &amp;lt;action&amp;gt;, I got &amp;lt;actual behaviour&amp;gt;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is already pretty long, but if you follow this idea to its logical conclusion it should be even longer. Part of a good bug reporting process is identifying how the bug or misfeature failed to meet expectations (sometimes known as the user contract), so the &lt;em&gt;expected behavior&lt;/em&gt; is missing. Using your same example, I might say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was trying to clear-sign a message&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  by using the &lt;code&gt;--clearsign&lt;/code&gt; flag, but&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  when I signed the message I got a header and my original text back.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I expected the header and text to be followed by a valid signature block.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The part where I explain &lt;em&gt;what I expected&lt;/em&gt; is essential to understanding the issue. Consider: if a press F1 and my team mate gets an electric shock, what exactly is the bug? Is the problem that this should only happen when I press F2? That the electric shock should have been a pie in the face? Or is this actually a feature that's operating as designed? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the record, I actually filed a real bug report loosely-based on the example I gave above, but the actual title was &quot;GPG Services Signs Improperly with Smartcards.&quot; This title might not make sense to you out of context, but was in fact an accurate summary of the bug and took only 46 characters. Using your formalism would have required 139 characters, and (in my opinion) wouldn't have really summarized the issue nearly so well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Project Management Perspective&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real underlying issue is why you think that you need to constrain bug titles in the first place. This is often a project smell that indicates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bug reports are ambiguous.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Root cause analysis is difficult.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communicating effectively about bugs within the team is difficult.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reporting or communicating about bugs outside the team is difficult.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other symptom that probably boils down to communication.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there's nothing wrong with formalizing your bug-reporting process, keep in mind that process controls should be effectively controlling for a defined problem or risk. In your case, it's unclear what you're controlling for, and whether the proposed control is actually likely to mitigate your risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is something you may wish to discuss with your team and your stakeholders. If it's a genuine issue, it's still usually better to employ a grass-roots solution that has buy-in from the control performers rather than imposing a process by fiat. YMMV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-08-06T16:06:36.617" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9674" CreationDate="2013-08-07T00:04:14.393" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, if such formalism works for you – then I do not want to say anything against. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;From my experience:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the bug is actually missed and not discussed requirement – then I’ll put context and will write it as a requirement and put the actual result. I love to use gherkin for such purpose:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Given I am a user who wants to calculate parking tax &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;   And I’ve set the start date to February 1-st 2012&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;   And the end date is February 29-th 2012&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;   And the current tax per day is $1&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;   When I calculate tax for the period &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;   Then I should get  result $29 dollars &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;   But, the actual result was $28&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I can give a title. The title will include actual component (Tax Calculator) and the issue or assertion:&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Tax Calculator should take into consideration leap years&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Or&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Tax Calculator calculates wrong sum for leap years&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;On the other hand, I would not put a lot of context if I want to describe server crashes or JavaScript errors. That would be ridicules to describe such things in Given When Then or put some business context for JavaScript error. That is a technical bug and it should have  a technical title (such as error message description)&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Some my bugs are so complicated to describe and reproduce, so I’ll better attach a video recording. &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;I am writing bugs for developers and management. My goal is to create a bug reports that will be clear and short. Taking into account the Agile context I am working in – we always can discuss any missed details by Skype of face 2 face. &lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I would write bugs in such formal way. But each project has its own context. And it may work for you if such approach will solve problems. &lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6400" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T00:04:14.393" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9674" CreationDate="2013-08-07T02:18:28.283" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only way you can tell if something is a bug is if it does not work as originally intended,  that is the original acceptance criteria no longer passes.  Simply log the bug with the failing acceptance criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you did not have the acceptance criteria in the first place, then you either have a lot of technical debt to pay back and this should be deemed as technical debt and made visible to the management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if it is a new acceptance criteria that is perceived as a defect, treat it as a change and add it to the product backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5634" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T02:18:28.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9680" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-07T05:08:41.890" Score="1" ViewCount="1254" Body="&lt;p&gt;We in the midst of a conversion to Agile/Scrum, using Agile Software Requirements as a general manual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We've traditionally broken our teams up into component teams.  One team does API/Service work while another does UI implementation.  Mix in a team of testers and after quite a few years of this, a bit of a rift has grown between the teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We've organized into back office and front office teams.  One team being in charge of building from top to bottom the customer facing part, while the other handles the back office billing/sales systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is twofold.  We have certain services that are consumed by both of the teams.  So, we also formed a component group that's in charge of maintaining these global services.  This creates inter-team dependencies, kind of contrary to the concept of a feature team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other problem is that the front office applications have to call into the back office applications to see if a customer has purchased a subscription to Product X.  Again, another cross team dependency.  It's impossible for us to bring Product Y to market without backoffice billing support and the management of the product in our customer facing portal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To solve the dilemma, we changed who the component group considers as a customer.  Instead of a fully end user testable feature with a UI, the APIs themselves have to be approved of by the teams that consume them.  Thus, kind of making them a feature team as well, just without a UI.  The back/front office teams become the customer/stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this logic sound?  Can I get a sanity check on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6685" LastActivityDate="2020-06-17T09:52:11.887" Title="Feature Team Cross Dependencies" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9506" CreationDate="2013-08-07T09:59:43.547" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Over the past 5 years, I have worked with Chinese, Korean, and Japanese speakers in a variety of projects. In my experience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Written correspondence is more successful than spoken communications. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing in short sentences with simple grammar is more successful than the way typical American/British English have been taught to write&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using references to international or industry standards (ISO, NEMA, etc.) can be very helpful since a professionally translated reference manual is probably available.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where possible, use diagrams, spreadsheets, models, animations or other things that might not require translation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reasons I recommend written correspondence are that quite a few people have learned grammar and vocabulary to past some school-age test (spoken English is rarely tested) and they have more time to research what you told them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T09:59:43.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9672" CreationDate="2013-08-07T11:54:23.470" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You will certainly not need another week long class unless you were having see issues with the basic concepts. Pick up the new version and study it and go take the test. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T11:54:23.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9674" CreationDate="2013-08-07T16:34:28.173" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the new way in a cloud software I heard the following way of testing and bug reporting.  This is offshore and onsite model where over lap is 2 to 3 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User or tester tests the use cases.  If it is failing he records entirely the steps followed and then upload into cloud these issue recordings his end of the day.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developer when he comes to office check these recordings and fixes the issue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way lots of time is saved and issue is clearly defined. Thought of sharing this, might not be accurate answer on the formalism.  This is also one way we can do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T16:34:28.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9686" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9689" CreationDate="2013-08-07T17:18:21.767" Score="7" ViewCount="4379" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a small start-up that is growing fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have 4 departments: (Backend dev [2 pers], Frontend dev [2 pers], QA [2 pers], and one system administrator)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before using Scrum methodology, we didn't have a clear idea about our progress, what others are working on, etc. Now we passed this issue, but we face a big issue now; it seems that the team is not conformable with the current methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To give you a clear view on our case, here is how we proceed to handle a project:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a backlog meeting with product owner. The team defines the release backlog in another meeting (basing it on priority set by the product owner)&#xA;Each department slices the release backlog and lists all tasks needed to be done by the next sprint. For instance, the backend group will start working on an API, front end will deal with designers and get the ready templates ready, the QA team will read and understand stories, and system administrators need to define the next priority according to the current project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each department creates their own sprint. (It's weird I know :s) and in the end we have 5 sprints. (The 5th one is for business employers. Well, they want to be part of the methodology, lol.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before we start using Scrum, we were respecting a cycle of two weeks, and after implementing Scrum, the project manager suggest that sprints need be done in two weeks. However, we just found that a sprint may take more :s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to our case, I have a list of question coming to my head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do QA, Backend, Frontend, and System Administration fit in Scrum methodology? What can we do if QA and system administration has a daily tasks? Can we use just &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; Sprint instead of 5?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6691" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-05-04T16:16:19.900" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T16:16:19.900" Title="How QA, Frontend, Backend development, and System administration fit in Scrum Management Framework" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9687" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-07T19:43:53.790" Score="7" ViewCount="6226" Body="&lt;p&gt;During the sprint planning meeting, does the team estimate time for each story, or the tasks that make up the story? Then which is tracked by the team/scrum master?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume the team estimates the time for the tasks that make up a story, then the story is the sum of the tasks.The burndown chart (if based on time) is based on the time left for stories...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6694" LastActivityDate="2013-08-29T13:38:20.703" Title="Does the team estimate time for tasks or stories or both?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9686" CreationDate="2013-08-07T20:12:57.440" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The methodology you are using is called ScrumBut. &lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrum.org/ScrumBut&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scrum.org/ScrumBut&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for me that is fine to make any modifications to Scrum in order to gain more comfortable environment for the team.  But, after you did those modifications – just don’t call it Scrum anymore. &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;We used to follow Scrum process on our project. The experience was horrible. Then during a year we did a lot of modifications. We still have retrospectives, (ad-hock) planning meetings, two-week sprints, small backlog, demo at the end of the sprint. We do not measure velocity and we have additional sprints for regression testing and bug fixing. We joined Demo and retrospective together. &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;As a tester, I have no chance to perform deep testing for the feature that was completed 2 hours before final demo, so I am saying about that on Demo+Retrospective meeting. I am usually taking those testing days from next sprint. &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;That’s not Scrum, but that works for us. &lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6400" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T20:12:57.440" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9686" CreationDate="2013-08-07T20:51:31.543" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In traditional Scrum, all of these roles are considered part of the same scrum team. Release backlog items get moved into the sprint backlog when committed to by the entire team (no matter what function the individual team members have) and then tasked out (again, by the entire team). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason scrum doesn't usually separate out the functional areas of the team are 1) just because you're QA doesn't mean you don't have something to contribute to developer discussions and 2) you're all working on the same product and should have some view/input on the product as a whole so you can catch any conflicts between functional areas. Your front-end developers need to know what your back-end developers are doing and vice-verse, as an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where the functional areas really come into play are when team members are pulling items from your 'Not Started' lane of your card wall. If I'm a QA guy, I'm going to pull tasks to work on that are QA specific first. If I'm a front-end developer, I'm going to pull tasks to work on that are related to the user interface. It's up to the individual team member to work on items related to their functional area. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question that always comes next is - What if there aren't any tasks for my functional area left? The answer is - give something else a try. If nobody's working on it, it won't hurt for you to give it a go. Not only will that give you insight into how the other functional areas work, but also how your product works in areas you might not regularly see. You can always hand the task over to someone from that functional area later (when they're available) and you'll have learned something from the experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's traditional scrum, which is how the question was phrased. If you're looking for advice specific to your scenario, that's a whole different discussion and will get into the reasons you're doing things the way you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4699" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T20:51:31.543" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9687" CreationDate="2013-08-07T21:55:26.077" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there's no formal requirement, common practice is to estimate user stories with &lt;em&gt;story points&lt;/em&gt; and tasks in &lt;em&gt;units of time&lt;/em&gt;. There is no canonical formula for converting story points to ideal hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Story Point Estimates vs. Man-Hours&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story points are relative level-of-effort estimates. They typically measure whether a given story is bigger or harder than some other story. Story points are great at leveraging your team's cross-functional knowledge and the current size of your &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cone of uncertainty&lt;/a&gt; to provide a metric suitable for filtering what stories should fit into a given iteration, but they don't really say much about &lt;em&gt;time&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A common Scrum practice is to use story points and historical velocity to determine which stories to accept into the current Sprint during Sprint Planning. Then, the second half of Sprint Planning is devoted to converting the stories into tasks on the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's at this point that time often enters into the planning. Some teams provide actual time estimates for each task, while other teams may simply ensure that no given task exceeds some maximum size (often two calendar days or some equivalent number of ideal man-hours). The purpose of this decomposition is primarily to ensure that tasks are &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;not-done&lt;/em&gt; in a timely way, and to allow the team to &quot;fail early&quot; when a task ends up being larger or more complicated than expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Burn-Down and Velocity Units Should Match&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your velocity is measured in story points, then your burn-down chart should be, too. Rolling the aggregate time estimates from the Sprint Backlog back up and comparing the sum to your Sprint length can act as a sanity check that you&#xA;haven't under-estimated your stories, over-committed your resources, or exceeded your team's capacity for the iteration, but the comparison is a process control rather than a required Scrum artifact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the reality is that each iteration has a finite amount of time, the nature of Scrum lends itself to a lot of horse-trading during Sprint Planning and within each Sprint. The underlying theory is that while the Sprint Goal is immutable, the individual tasks needed to complete each story may be changed, added, or discarded as needed by the team. Because of the rate of change in tasks, task-based time estimates are generally unreliable for agile &lt;em&gt;planning&lt;/em&gt; purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mike Cohn's &lt;em&gt;Agile Estimating and Planning&lt;/em&gt; may provide you with a greater understanding of the differences between deterministic estimates and agile estimation practices. It's certainly worth reading, whether or not you drink the agile Kool-Aid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T21:55:26.077" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9692" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-08T14:38:43.783" Score="3" ViewCount="1884" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've been using Function Point Analysis (FPA) estimation for new software development projects and medium sized changes that involves development efforts for code involving database entities as well (where we plug in EIF, ILF, EI, and EQ information). This process seems to be working out very well for us organization wide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, what are the best estimation methods to estimate minor changes such as :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simple server side scripting changes that don't involve any database components.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Trivial change requests that have very little code changes, for example UI design, realigning fields, changing error messages, and those sorts of changes. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though these changes are trivial, testers have to test it, leads have to review it, manager have to schedule it, and releases need to be planned for pre-production and production deployments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6699" LastEditorUserId="6699" LastEditDate="2013-08-08T18:20:49.710" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T12:39:46.113" Title="What are Our Alternatives to Function Point Analysis for Estimation?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9671" CreationDate="2013-08-08T16:39:13.133" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having an automated continuous integration server is the best way to have visibility and transparency when using TDD. It allows for everybody in the organization to see that tests are being written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use the branching pattern people can commit broken tests to a &lt;strong&gt;feature branch&lt;/strong&gt; and then being fixed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jamesshore.com/Blog/Red-Green-Refactor.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;red/green refactor&lt;/a&gt;. The neat part is that those tests can be then be fixed by someone else in a &lt;strong&gt;ping-pong&lt;/strong&gt; fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TDD for everything is usually too much for a team to handle. I would recommend to start testing it on individual small stories and allow people to get used to TDD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally always &lt;strong&gt;make sure that your stories have acceptance criteria that can be easily setup as tests&lt;/strong&gt;. If you use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allaboutagile.com/invest-in-good-user-stories/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;INVEST mnemonic&lt;/a&gt; this is a given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6701" LastActivityDate="2013-08-08T16:39:13.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9694" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9695" CreationDate="2013-08-08T21:56:01.407" Score="7" ViewCount="372" Body="&lt;p&gt;For those of you who have read Peopleware, you were probably exposed to the concept of flow. Flow is a mental state attained by creativity workers (engineers, writers, programmers, etc.) which is often described as a state of immersion in which time seems to pass unknowingly and creative work flows from the mind. Throughout Peopleware, there is the recurring concept that to engage in flow, privacy and quiet are the main two ingredients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I have read a substantial body of research in regards to pair programming (which should be familiar to the XP folks reading this). Pair programming, advocates a two person team which functions as an single organic, programming entity to accomplish a single goal. For those of you not acquainted, this paper should help: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/downing/papers/PairProgrammingKindergarten2000.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/downing/papers/PairProgrammingKindergarten2000.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So now we have two slightly contradicting ideas in the realm of software PM which proclaim to increase programmer productivity, code quality, and happiness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question to you is, are these ideas reconcilable? Is there any research on this topic, or how have you lead your software teams in regard to this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The closest scheme that I have seen to bridge this particular kind of paradox is that of a combination. Some of the work is done in pair programming, while some of the work is done in private. How to balance this team/individual work seems to me to be the biggest question in regards to this compromise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6696" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-08-09T00:03:33.440" LastActivityDate="2013-08-09T00:03:33.440" Title="How can my team reconcile flow and pair-programming?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;extreme-programming&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9694" CreationDate="2013-08-09T00:00:53.977" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not aware of much formal research in this area, but empirical results show that both models can be effective under the right circumstances. Flow and pair programming are somewhat orthogonal in the sense that they can't be performed &lt;em&gt;simultaneously&lt;/em&gt;. They also represent practices that optimize for different things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Different Optimizations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I can't talk and type at the same time. So, while I find pair-programming to be an extremely effective practice that I try to bake into my project processes, I also try to ensure that there's a balance within the team between increasing individual flow and encouraging teamwork.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, flow optimizes for individual productivity and individual comprehension, as many development tasks require a great deal of working memory and difficult tasks increase the cognitive load. I find it best to optimize for flow when the cone of uncertainty is small and the short-term goal is functional throughput.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, pair-programming increases cross-functional skills within the team, provides opportunities for creative problem solving that leverage multiple perspectives, and tends to reduce knowledge silos and preventable defects when done well. I find it best to optimize for pairing when the cone of uncertainty is large, or when long-term sustainability is the primary objective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Team Management Perspective&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some additional team-oriented points to consider when contrasting the concepts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Flow scales badly in mediocre teams. &lt;em&gt;(Hint: average teams are mediocre by definition, which is why they are average rather than exceptional.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pair programming won't make mediocre teams great, but it often reduces the defect rate and overall effectiveness of mediocre teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pair programming increases communication, which is a core element of success for any project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Effective communication underlies most of the key principles of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sitting together and pair-programming are &lt;em&gt;practices&lt;/em&gt; rather than framework mandates, so use them where appropriate and avoid them when they don't benefit your team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are doubtless other considerations as well. In the end, what matters is what works for &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; team. As an argument from analogy, consider that various sources like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_cream&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dairyreporter.com/Markets/Vanilla-still-most-popular-US-ice-cream-flavor-says-industry-survey&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DairyReporter&lt;/a&gt; claim that vanilla is the most popular flavor of ice cream, but mint chocolate chip works best with &lt;em&gt;my&lt;/em&gt; palate. I don't select my ice cream based on what tastes best to other people; I order what tastes best to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pragmatic project management takes the same approach: do what works best for your team. As always, your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-08-09T00:00:53.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9692" CreationDate="2013-08-09T00:12:11.680" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My understanding is that the FP tables/data published by IFPUG, ISBSG etc are based on historical data. Do you have any records of how long the changes take?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, consider setting a fixed point value and then periodically updating its value as time goes on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you might set minor serverside script changes at 0.1; UI changes at 0.2. After a while you can review your estimates and actuals to see if there was divergence in those headings, then adjust your local FP settings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5319" LastActivityDate="2013-08-09T00:12:11.680" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9702" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9853" CreationDate="2013-08-10T07:43:16.330" Score="33" ViewCount="71953" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am planning to go for Scrum Master certification, and while researching the certification providers, I could not clearly make up my mind about which one was most widely accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two organizations providing &lt;strong&gt;Certified Scrum Master&lt;/strong&gt; certifications: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumalliance.org/&quot;&gt;Scrum Alliance&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrum.org/&quot;&gt;Scrum.org&lt;/a&gt;. I am not able to figure out which one of these is more widely recognized or accepted (if there is such a distinction for this certification). I know that PMI also offers an agile-based certification that has wider coverage than these two, but I am not looking for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone tell me about the difference in recognition/acceptability of certifications from these two organizations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2631" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-08-10T18:50:03.767" LastActivityDate="2015-01-13T10:48:28.667" Title="Which Scrum certification provider is most widely recognized or accepted?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;certification&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9703" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9705" CreationDate="2013-08-10T12:05:37.290" Score="0" ViewCount="548" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to ask you Directors, PMs, and HRs for something. Lately I have been on several job interviews. The question what very often I have heard was: &quot;Why would you like to be a Project Manager?&quot;. What would be your answer? Why you are a Project Manager? What answer you give? What answer would you like to hear?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="878" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-08-15T04:05:23.827" LastActivityDate="2013-08-15T04:05:23.827" Title="How you answer for such question on job interview: Why would you like to be a Project Manager?" Tags="&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2013-08-10T21:50:13.757" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9703" CreationDate="2013-08-10T17:24:44.140" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have been asked this, you should think about your reasons before you go for another interview. If you want to be a PM, you must know why. I can't provide you with an answer that would be honest for you, but I can tell you that I am a PM because I like to make change happen, I believe that I am good at working with and directing people to achieve this, and I enjoy the challenges that the work brings me. Your answers may be very different, so you need to work this out for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2013-08-10T17:24:44.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9703" CreationDate="2013-08-10T20:08:50.267" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer is simple, I like to work people, look how they grow with the appropriate suggestions and by showing them possibilities they can choose from. I like the meetings, being in the heart of hurricane where you have to save the situation. I do not expect that you tell me what I have to answer. I just want to know what drives your decisions about being PM. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="878" LastActivityDate="2013-08-10T20:08:50.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5964" CreationDate="2013-08-11T18:37:05.180" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your question is a tool-shopping question, then it's off-topic. However, I'm reading it as more of a methodology question, and so the salient question becomes &quot;What are you trying to communicate with your project artifacts?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Gantt Charts&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Gantt chart...illustrates a project schedule. Gantt charts illustrate the start and finish dates of the terminal elements and summary elements of a project. Terminal elements and summary elements comprise the work breakdown structure of the project. Some Gantt charts also show the dependency (i.e. precedence network) relationships between activities. Gantt charts can be used to show current schedule status using percent-complete shadings and a vertical &quot;TODAY&quot; line[.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, while I don't think Gantt charts are the best way to radiate information about project status, they certainly can be used that way. If it's the right artifact for your project, but your chart is really big, you always have the option of using a plotter or large-format printer. Even if the whole chart won't fit on a single continuous page, I've worked on a number of large government projects where the Gantt charts were printed on the largest available paper size and pasted together on one or more walls in an office. Maybe that will work for you, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Revisit Your Status-Communication Needs&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your organization and your project, the goal of the status report or management dashboard may vary in its specifics. This isn't really a tool-specific issue; it's more a question of what information management needs or wants in order to facilitate strategic decision-making.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in Scrum the most common artifact is the Sprint or project burn-down chart, scaling the chart based on the Sprint Backlog or Product Backlog as needed. Other methodologies like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_path_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Critical Path&lt;/a&gt; use network or activity-on-node diagrams, and you could certainly use a couple of colored push-pins to identify &quot;You Are Here&quot; in your diagrams if you want to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is that you should start by re-examining:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What it is that you are actually expected to communicate about your project's status.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What you are comparing, contrasting, or tracking with your visualization techniques.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What methodologies and tools work best for &lt;em&gt;your specific project&lt;/em&gt; within whatever organizational limitations you have.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, don't start from the assumption that you must use a specific artifact or tool. Instead, start from your known communications requirements, then work backwards to identify the optimal processes and procedures to deliver that communication effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-08-11T18:37:05.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1973" CreationDate="2013-08-12T09:13:10.907" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think a good sprint should be around 4 weeks. so basically equal to an iteration. &#xA;An iteration does not necessarily have to be a production grade release, but should at least be an internal release for testing. Each sprint should aim at completing several user stories ready for testing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6718" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T09:13:10.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9702" CreationDate="2013-08-12T11:40:11.570" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This area is highly contentious. I went through a similar process and can share my take on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both certification providers are well recognized and accepted in the industry. I have seen a small number of job advertisements that request Scrum.org certification specifically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum.org test is generally regarded as harder to get, with a 85%+ pass rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I have met many Scrum Masters who use Scrum Alliance and this seems to be the more popular choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certification itself can be sniffed at with regards to Scrum. Perhaps a reaction to the ease of gaining certification through Scrum Alliance. I guess the Alliance strategy is to engage as many people as possible to the world of Scrum and the certification is a nice juicy carrot. But this can be counter productive. I have seem traditional PMs go away on the course and them come back thinking there are Scrum expects where they have only just scratched the surface.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally chose Scrum.org. If you are serious I think this is the best place to earn your stars. Although in the grand scheme of things I do not think it really matter who you choose and some would argue the certification is worthless anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6422" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T11:40:11.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9702" CreationDate="2013-08-12T15:53:56.337" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the time of this writing, I'm not aware of any formal market research about the level of demand for either of these certifications. You should do your own research regarding the job sectors you're personally interested in, or contact the certifying organizations about their marketing efforts in those sectors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;It's All Marketing&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like all certifications, Scrum certifications are all about marketing. Certifying organizations are interested in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Marketing the certification to job seekers who will pay for the certifications.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Marketing the certification to the public in order to raise the visibility and desirability of the brand.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In turn, job seekers &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be interested in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Marketing themselves to clients or employers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Standing out from the slush pile by differentiating themselves from their competitors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Branding themselves, often as generalists with broad expertise or as experts in a specific knowledge domain.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any certification can be a differentiator on a resume if all else is equal, but in my personal opinion the agile movement is young enough that most employers are more interested in a proven track record of project management success than in a formal certification. Your job sector and personal experience may certainly vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T15:53:56.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9712" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-12T16:41:11.293" Score="9" ViewCount="824" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a manager of a 20 member software engineering team, I would like to introduce some fun element at work. This is mostly to bring in a good team synergy, fun, motivation and cross communication in a team that is lacking all of these. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I myself was looking through &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefuntheory.com/&quot;&gt;Gamification&lt;/a&gt; videos like &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/iynzHWwJXaA&quot;&gt;Speed Camera Lottery&lt;/a&gt; and was inspired to try something like this in my team. ie., rewarding positive behavior than constraining people with a lot of parameters to evaluate them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would like to introduce is a system where I can kick-start this kind of awarding positive behavior by fun ways. For instance, I would initially start by awarding all engineers a seed fund of points, say 100 each and they have to spend and also earn points from others by helping, communicating, or motivating others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, as a simple case, a developer can send an email with a question to help him or her re-frame the question he is going to ask to customer, and is going set a value, ie., award 10 points to anyone who helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Help review this email that I am sending to customer about Dashboard&#xA;  feature. 10 points will be rewarded to the one who helps me with this.&#xA;  With regards, -O&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like all of this to be exchanged within an email system but don't mind if its can be accomplished by an existing web solution. The important part is the fun element of exchanging the points and cashing it end of the month back to me to get some sort of gift or lunch coupon. I know the idea becomes a project in itself as all other cases need to be handled. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone introduced such a system in their workplace? What systems are used or anything close to what I would like to accomplish?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I might not be clear from a reader's point, so please feel free to ask me more information. Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4838" LastEditorUserId="4838" LastEditDate="2013-08-12T18:51:20.837" LastActivityDate="2013-08-13T01:38:51.350" Title="Introducing fun at work for Software Engineering team" Tags="&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;gamification&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9712" CreationDate="2013-08-12T22:05:55.997" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gamification is inherently competitive, which is contrary to the &quot;succeed or fail as a team&quot; concept that underlies many agile methodologies. That doesn't mean it's a bad idea; it just means it's not well-suited for use with frameworks like Scrum or Extreme Programming. Your mileage may vary with other methodologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Competitive Nature of Gamification&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to one Wikipedia article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification#Techniques&quot;&gt;gamification techniques&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gamification techniques strive to leverage people's natural desires for &lt;strong&gt;competition, [personal] achievement, status&lt;/strong&gt;, self-expression, altruism, and closure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be quite healthy, but competition or status-seeking is contrary to the self-organizing, team-based structure of Scrum. Having said that, it is certainly &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt; to structure a point system that rewards cooperation, mentoring, knowledge sharing, swarming, and pair-programming, but in my personal experience I have found that teams that embrace these objectives often find the practices to be their own reward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Focus on Team-Based Rewards Instead&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than promoting individual achievement, I tend to focus on team-based rewards. Especially during the transition from command-and-control to agility, I've often found it helpful to reward the team with lunches out or pizza parties for things like dead-center estimates or swarming a late story with &quot;all hands on deck&quot; in order to finish within the current sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's important not to incentivize the wrong behaviors, such as padding estimates or sweeping under-performance under the teaming rubric. However, this is generally taken care of by having routine, honest retrospectives that include evaluation of the metrics themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Measure the Operational Effectiveness of Gamification&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with any other project management control, the utility of the technique varies between teams and between organizational cultures. You will also tend to get what you measure, so make sure the rules of the game align with your intended goals and continuously check that the control is operating as designed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you aren't a Scrum shop, or you don't do retrospectives, then you may need other controls to monitor your gamification controls. That doesn't mean it's not worth doing, but it &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; mean that the issue is likely to be more complex than it appears on the surface.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As always with project management, your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-08-13T00:21:12.773" LastActivityDate="2013-08-13T00:21:12.773" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9712" CreationDate="2013-08-13T01:38:51.350" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Robert Austin wrote a short, devastating little book, &lt;em&gt;Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations&lt;/em&gt;, that neatly demonstrates why and how most personal measurement systems are doomed be either at best distortionary or at worse actively dysfunctional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that you're introducing personal measurement. Under selected circumstances, that can work very well. However, if there is even the suspicion of a hint of a whiff of a chance of a possibility that it will ever be tied to any kind of reward or punishment, the system will be gamed. When the system is gamed, you now have two problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, any information derived from the system is misleading. It tells you things that aren't true; if you act on them, you may make costly errors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, you distort the mix of work that gets done. &quot;What gets measured, gets done&quot;. Unless you can measure &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; important dimension (Austin calls this &quot;total supervision&quot;), you will distort the mix of work. Introducing new metrics doesn't fix this, because in practice any mix will either collapse to the &quot;true&quot; metrics that management clearly favours; or an index metric is produced which itself can be maximised by fitting activity to the weightings in the index metric function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also, as CodeGnome pointed out, the problem of competition. Insofar as any system sets up a zero-sum game (for me to win, someone else has to lose), it creates a rational disincentive for cooperation between players. But software is usually a cooperative enterprise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using team incentives will resolve the zero-sum problem but does not resolve the problems of misleading information and distorted effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5319" LastActivityDate="2013-08-13T01:38:51.350" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9680" CreationDate="2013-08-13T18:28:25.773" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your approach makes sense. Considering that Feature Teams work on shippable increments to deliver business value to a customer, your back-office teams have to also have a client to whom they deliver value, making your front-office teams their customers. Your challenge then becomes to align all scrum teams from the point of view of planning. Check out &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20131224141246/https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2013/june/scrum-of-scrums-running-agile-on-large-projects&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum of Scrums: Running Agile on Large Projects&lt;/a&gt; (an archived version of a user submitted article that was on the Scrum Alliance site) for some ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6730" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:52:11.887" LastActivityDate="2020-06-17T09:52:11.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9716" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9720" CreationDate="2013-08-13T21:20:20.423" Score="1" ViewCount="1871" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm having a hard time classifying software development methodologies. In my understanding, SDLC is the overarching model used for software development approaches. SDLC methodologies can range from being very linear (e.g. the waterfall methodology) to being very adaptable (e.g. agile methodologies). Is this correct, i.e. do agile methodologies fall within the SDLC model?\&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6731" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-08-14T18:02:17.220" LastActivityDate="2013-08-14T18:02:17.220" Title="Is agile a 'subset' of the SDLC?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;&lt;sdlc&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9717" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9719" CreationDate="2013-08-14T08:13:58.087" Score="2" ViewCount="261" Body="&lt;p&gt;How should be handle small improvements, should we include story for them in each sprint? Or should it be done outside of the sprint scope? I am talking here about things like Uncle Bob's boy scout rule. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other option could be to accommodate time in each ticket? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5085" LastActivityDate="2013-08-14T16:13:16.933" Title="How handle small refactorings and minor code base improvements in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9717" CreationDate="2013-08-14T16:13:16.933" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Routine refactorings should be part of your story estimates. Deliberate changes should be estimated as stories. No work should ever be done &quot;outside&quot; of the Sprint Goal or Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Routine Refactorings&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Routine refactorings are a normal by-product of working on code. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_refactoring&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Code refactoring&lt;/a&gt; is the art of changing internal implementation without changing external behavior, and is often necessary overhead for adding new features. This overhead should be included in your story estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Deliberate Changes&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are planning deliberate changes to reduce technical debt or improve &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-functional_requirement&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;non-functional requirements&lt;/a&gt;, then these changes should be user stories that are prioritized on the Product Backlog. They are project goals and consume team resources, and must therefore be scheduled and estimated like any other deliverable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;No Invisible Work, Ever&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, you should never be performing work that isn't directly related to a Sprint Goal. That means that team capacity should never be consumed by work that isn't on the Product or Sprint Backlog, and that explicit allocation of team effort trumps implicit estimation every time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't mean that implicit work (such as routine refactorings) can't be included in your team's estimates or part of your definition of done. However, it &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; mean that there's a huge difference between embedded assumptions about level-of-effort and &quot;off the books&quot; requirements. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Adding a new Widget#foo method might require refactoring the Widget class and the Widget#bar method.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are expected activities, and should be explicit tasks related to the user story. This work should certainly be included in the story/task estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fixing Widget#implode requires refactoring the unit test.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should probably be part of your definition of done. It should be accounted for in the estimate, but probably doesn't need to be made explicit unless your team isn't experienced with TDD. Your mileage may vary on this one.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Add a Widget#get_rich_quick feature, but don't track all the work done on Widget#steal_from_poor to make this feature work.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would be bad on many levels: off-record work, invisible processes, non-inclusive estimates, and lack of project transparency. If your project is okay with stealing from the poor, then that effort needs to be visible and tracked, rather than swept under the rug.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can be implicit and what needs to be explicit will vary from team to team, and often depends a great deal on the maturity of your team processes. However, there's often a very clear delineation between implicit work and untracked work; never cross that line deliberately, and leverage your retrospectives to make sure you haven't crossed the line accidentally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-08-14T16:13:16.933" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9716" CreationDate="2013-08-14T18:00:50.057" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Agile&quot; isn't a methodology; it's a set of principles espoused by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt;. SDLC is an &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDLC_%28disambiguation%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ambiguous term&lt;/a&gt; that can refer to a specific, waterfall-like methodology or a generic lifecycle. Either way, frameworks like Scrum or Kanban are more usefully classified as &lt;em&gt;project management methodologies&lt;/em&gt; rather than lifecycles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Frameworks Aren't Lifecycles&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could certainly make the case that agile methodologies are part of a systems- or software-development lifecycle. However, the converse is not true, since a framework or methodology isn't really a complete subset of a lifecycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For project management purposes, it is often useful to think of the lifecycle as a process that starts with project inception and flows through to project closure. A more systems-centric view might look at the lifecycle from development through deployment, and then ultimately to decommissioning; however, this is rarely encompassed within a single monolithic project, and is probably the wrong viewpoint for the typical project management professional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-08-14T18:00:50.057" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9272" CreationDate="2013-08-14T19:18:44.983" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;MS Project 2013 Professional has the sync option.  I have Pro, but not Project Server, and it works for me.  Still working out some kinks, but it does sync.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6739" LastActivityDate="2013-08-14T19:18:44.983" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9722" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-15T03:35:22.897" Score="6" ViewCount="319" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an Engineering undergrad and I am working towards establishing a 8-10 person team for a 6-8 month long academic research project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Timeline&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We will be starting the groundwork for the project in September and initially, due to time constraints, we will be working slowly. From January to April, will be when we will be able to do most of the work related to the project as the time constraint will get removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Uptil December, we will only be doing on-paper R&amp;amp;D. All practical work will start from January.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project deadline is April end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Project Description&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project is a cross-department engineering project. The project has a very steep learning curve for all of us involved and there will be lots and lots of mistakes and time overruns on our part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Team Description&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team members are from four different engineering departments, only 4 of whom have previously participated in cross-department projects (but on a much smaller scale). None of us have any experience working on this scale or budget, or of the necessary project management required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, we do not have a faculty adviser till January.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;My Role&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will be working on the project in multiple roles. One, working in my domain area, and two, as the unofficial* project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;*At the moment.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my questions :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What project management methodology would be effective and have low overheads as well as be easy to understand by everybody involved?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What application or tool would be recommended for managing the project, keeping in mind that the team will be meeting infrequently till December, and hence the medium must allow for remote collaboration?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How important is it to have a person acting as a project manager on the team? Is there a need to make this role explicit?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Briefly, what will be the responsibilities of the project manager for a project of this scale and size?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Update&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on certain discussions, we have decided to use either Spiral model or Agile. Spiral model is something that most members of the team are (conceptually) familiar with. Agile will be new for all of us, both conceptually and practically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Out of these two, which one would be preferable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5996" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T08:16:28.343" Title="What should be the methodology followed by a research and development project?" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9723" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-15T08:44:50.043" Score="3" ViewCount="456" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a service oriented business catering our service to various agaencies offering us software development projects with tight deadlines and frequent updates. As a team, we are focusing to manage our workload effciently by minimizing resource idle time, keeping them busy to draw the best out of valuable business time. Kanban being an effective tool for lean software engineering has the capacity to address our work environment issues effectively. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, we would like to propose the ideal Kanban tool to our top managment. We like to seek professional and expert guidance on higlighting the selction criterias apart from pricing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are certain tools listed FYI: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://collaboration.about.com/od/projectmanagement/tp/7-Kanban-Board-Tools-For-Project-Collaboration.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://collaboration.about.com/od/projectmanagement/tp/7-Kanban-Board-Tools-For-Project-Collaboration.htm&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I devise a selection criteria that I can use on selecting the right Kanban tool so that we can do an accurate comparison?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2826" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-09-12T05:20:48.863" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T05:20:48.863" Title="What criteria are best suited to compare various Kanban tools in terms of maxmizing ROI?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9722" CreationDate="2013-08-15T12:23:33.410" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;•What project management methodology would be effective and have low overheads as well as be easy to understand by everybody involved?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conceptually Waterfall approaches are easier for most people to grasp compared to Agile. That being said, how you apply any approach chosen should be tailored to your needs. If you look at the guidance provided by PMBOK or PRINCE2 you could easily overwhelm yourselves with the suggested documentation. My advice is to engage your team and work with them to figure out what level of governance you need. Don't over-engineer this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;•What application or tool would be recommended for managing the project, keeping in mind that the team will be meeting infrequently till December, and hence the medium must allow for remote collaboration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This depends on the level of oversight that you need. Given that this is an undergrad project it probably won't add value to use something other than a basic package for scheduling the project and communicating with the team. You could do a quick Google search for free project management software and evaluate what is out there based on your needs, or go with what you probably already have access to (Skype, Excel, etc) and work with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;•How important is it to have a person acting as a project manager on the team? Is there a need to make this role explicit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking all roles/responsibilities on a project should be made explicit. The need for having a PM for the team depends on the criticality and complexity of your project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case you also need to consider that this project is part of your education. If someone wants the PM role that is fine, just make sure that you have the opportunity on this or other projects to hone your Engineering skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;•Briefly, what will be the responsibilities of the project manager for a project of this scale and size? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There really isn't a lot of information to go on to give you a solid answer, so take the following with a grain of salt. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on your description, it sounds like you will be in &quot;Pre-Project&quot; mode prior to 2014. At this stage of the game a PM does a lot of facilitation of discussion towards establishing a vision for the project, and using that vision to define the project products, and based on the definition of the project products determine schedule, roles/responsibilities, governance structure, requirements, etc. Unfortunately, pre-project effort can be very iterative/frustrating/untidy... so be prepared for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have developed a plan and are ready to implement (2014) the PM's role becomes more of a monitor to ensure project execution is going to plan, that change is controlled and the plan is amended as necessary, that progress is communicated to stakeholders, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also want to check out the discussion &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/5453/how-to-manage-rd-projects-in-a-rd-department/5459#5459&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;  for more about R&amp;amp;D projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2013-08-15T12:23:33.410" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9725" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9814" CreationDate="2013-08-15T14:41:10.897" Score="1" ViewCount="2708" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm using Microsoft Project 2007 for the first time to produce a plan and track multiple workstreams. This includes developers which is straight forward and an editorial team which is new for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main area I'm struggling to find a clear way to compare original estimates with actual time spent, with the multiple adjustments tracked. My main aims to highlight areas where we need attention and then to go on to adjust other estimates to make a more reflective schedule. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know baselines are made for this very thing, however I feel like I would need to update it more than 9 or so times. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently using milestones to log the original estimates and file versioning to record the progress with the plan to help my estimations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know there are lots of ways to do this sort of thing with project, however is there a clear or common way to achieve this sort of updating and tracking? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4349" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-14T09:41:15.403" LastActivityDate="2019-01-14T09:41:15.403" Title="Tracking estimates and delays in Microsoft Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9726" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9727" CreationDate="2013-08-15T15:23:42.150" Score="6" ViewCount="5937" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a sprint backlog with about 50 user stories that can be broken down into 7 epics. However, each epic is only partially represented in the current sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, one of the epics is migrating content. For sprint 1, we will do 3/10 user stories. 4/10 in sprint 2 and the remaing 3/10 in sprint 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this the proper use of an Epic?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it acceptable to organize user stories by epics in a sprint backlog when the epic is not fully represented in any one sprint?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6429" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T09:37:53.733" Title="Is it accepted practice to group user stories by epics in the sprint backlog?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;epics&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9726" CreationDate="2013-08-15T17:38:09.887" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. Product and Sprint Backlogs should be organized in &lt;em&gt;priority order.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Themes, Not Epics&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To understand the difference between epics and user stories, there's no better source than &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/stories-epics-and-themes&quot;&gt;Mike Cohn's blog entry&lt;/a&gt; on the topic. An epic is a large user story that needs to be decomposed before it is pulled into a sprint, while a theme is a collection of related user stories. What you're describing are stories that share a theme, not epic stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Sprint Backlogs Are Ephemeral&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're violating some very basic principles by having a Sprint Backlog that contains items not intended for the current sprint. The Sprint Backlog is built during Sprint Planning, and generally contains just the tasks needed to complete the user stories selected for the current sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Backlog is the project's long-term planning tool. The Sprint Backlog is just for the current sprint. Anything not done at the end of the current sprint is either discarded or placed back on the Product Backlog to be (re-)prioritized by the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Prioritization Order&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Backlog is always organized in priority order. What &quot;priority&quot; means is up to the Product Owner, and the Development Team must always peel stories off the top of the Product Backlog. (Note: The Product Owner can change the priority of items in the Product Backlog during Sprint Planning, so there's plenty of wiggle room if the team needs it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint Backlog belongs to the team, and should also be in priority order, although that's not a hard requirement. It's up to the team to define &quot;priority&quot; to suit their own needs. Some projects prioritize low-hanging fruit, while others try to get the hard stuff out of the way first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since each sprint should have a single over-arching Sprint Goal, it seems unlikely that a well-run Scrum would have multiple themes in a given sprint, but it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; technically possible. If that's the case, then you could certainly do a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_sort#Stability&quot;&gt;stable sort&lt;/a&gt; by grouping your Sprint Backlog items first by theme, prioritizing each theme, and then prioritizing at the story- and task-level within each theme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will strongly suggest that if your Sprint Backlog is complicated enough to require comprehensive sorting, then you are &lt;em&gt;probably&lt;/em&gt; doing something wrong at the Backlog Grooming or Sprint Planning levels. The entire process is worth discussing during your Sprint Retrospectives, at any rate, since each team's needs will vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-08-15T17:38:09.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9729" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-16T09:16:44.557" Score="0" ViewCount="207" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you estimate for project management i.e PM's role time, do you take a certain % of the total estimate?&#xA;Can  you provide me the process or procedure used in general and how accurate it is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-09-12T03:39:29.013" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T03:39:29.013" Title="What is the effective procedure or process to get the esimate of the Project Managers time on the projects ?" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2013-09-06T15:01:04.050" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9729" CreationDate="2013-08-16T11:25:51.277" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, there is no such thing as an accurate estimate.  Second, there is a difference between an estimate, which should always be a range, and your planning value, which the number in the range that represents what you are shooting for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I think of the PM role, I typically do not look at just the role of project manager but all project management roles, which includes the various controls like quality surveillance, risk management, procurement, cost and schedule controls, etc.  You can imagine on a small project, a single individual would assume all those roles where, in a large project, you would have a team of individuals, many of whom with specific expertise like a master scheduler or Earned Value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project management is largely service oriented.  There are few discreet work packages that fall under this area; mostly, you provide services to handle the demand.  Therefore, typical techniques to arrive at the appropriate sizing levels you would use in the other areas of the project are not appropriate.  This area is a supply and demand question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think in most industries, the range for PM on projects are known.  This is a belief of mine so I cannot support that with references.  In the IT area, which is where I work, it is known that the PM area typically calls for 8% to 16% of the total effort.  There is a bit of variance based on where you might read this but Gartner and Standish both have published their opinions on this matter.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where you might fall in this range is a huge depends.  There are ton of drivers: your risk appetite, your experience on a given project or customer, type of contract, etc.  Your mileage will vary.  What works for one project may kill you the next.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T11:25:51.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9725" CreationDate="2013-08-16T11:35:14.330" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are suffering from clugy estimating and scheduling disease.  There is a discipline around this scheduling and your draft indicates a lack of understanding in this area and the rules around managing your performance management baseline.  There would be no real answer to your question because what you are asking to do, I think if I understand you correctly, would violate a ton of rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to understand what a performance management baseline is, what it means to have variances (you will always have variances; the goal is NOT to be variance free), what it means to replan and rebaseline and the rules when they are allowed (e.g., you do not rebaseline to remove variances!!), and what your original baseline means after you have approved changes (i.e., discard it and forget it as if it never existed!).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T11:35:14.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9722" CreationDate="2013-08-16T11:38:39.247" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) Properly Plan according to the budget, time and resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Use online project management tools such as Redmine, Jira etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Maintain and share online wikis and repositories like Git-hub, Google Docs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) The role of Project Manager is mandatory. He will be responsible to assign the tasks and will keep checking and monitoring the overall process keeping in mind the deadline and budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) So, the overall project management cycle becomes very simple, i.e. Planning, Execution (constantly needs Monitoring and Control).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6745" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T11:38:39.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9735" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-16T12:43:20.820" Score="4" ViewCount="3557" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any integration between Team Foundation Server work items and tasks in either sharepoint or outlook?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4574" LastActivityDate="2016-10-02T11:32:43.307" Title="Is it possible to synchronise TFS work items with outlook or sharepoint tasks?" Tags="&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9736" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-16T16:03:05.160" Score="5" ViewCount="1515" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is, funnily enough, not much information on this type of role on the Internet. Perhaps that in itself says something. I do however find myself in this role for a small development team of around 8 C# developers working on different streams. I want to be able to perform a good job; however, I have no terms of reference and therefore I want to start off on Monday with terms of reference to discuss with my boss who is the App Development Manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My view on the role is as follows: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To ensure necessary standards are implemented. We largely do agile projects and the team is following an XP approach to their coding. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To produce a Development Standards Guide&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To ensure the team meets once a week at a set time to discuss technical things. I need to figure the nature of this meeting out. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attend the stand-ups for other streams of work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coding, I will tend to be assigned to a project within a stream.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spend Fridays pair-programming with someone from another stream.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assist my manager in reading design documents and deciding on development approaches.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anyone can help me clarify the scope of the role, it would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6747" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-08-16T18:40:56.250" LastActivityDate="2020-06-17T08:27:21.037" Title="What is the role of a C# or Java Technical Team Lead in an agile/XP approach?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;extreme-programming&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9729" CreationDate="2013-08-16T17:09:27.180" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best approach is to make your estimate based on experience from past, &lt;em&gt;similar&lt;/em&gt; projects. The projects being similar in terms of scale, complexity, oversight, etc to the project you are estimating is key.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if in your experience you can comfortably manage 3 concurrent projects of a similar level of complexity and oversight as the project that you are estimating for, your level of effort would be roughly 25% (assume 3 projects * 25% each gives 75% of your workload, the last 25% covers non-project related effort like mentoring, administrative effort, etc etc). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T17:09:27.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9736" CreationDate="2013-08-16T18:28:59.307" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within the Scrum framework, you are a member of the Scrum Team (which includes the Scrum Master and the Product Owner), and also a member of the Development Team that forms a third of the Scrum triumvirate. You have no other title within the framework, and the distinctions you are making are invalid within the team-oriented structure of Scrum. Extreme Programming also uses a team-based approach, although it is actually a set of practices rather than a complete project management framework like Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are likely to get a different answer on &lt;a href=&quot;https://workplace.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Workplace SE&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Programmers&lt;/a&gt;. Here on PMSE, though, you'll get the project management perspective. From the agile PM perspective, your role should not have the boundaries you are attempting to layer on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Your Team Isn't a Scrum Team&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your team is probably not a Scrum team. Such a team would be self-organizing, and would have a Scrum Master and a Product Owner. While Scrum Teams exist within larger organizations, and may have people on the team who report to line managers like an &quot;App Development Manager,&quot; neither the project nor the team would be run by someone in that role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, Scrum and XP teams are cross-functional. Ideally, that means that everyone shares responsibility for all aspects of the product. While Scrum and XP teams can and do divvy up work within an iteration, the team &lt;em&gt;as a whole&lt;/em&gt; collectively owns all the work and is often required to swarm over particular stories as a group. The fact that you have eight developers responsible for different things, as well as a manager and a team lead, means that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team is likely to be &lt;em&gt;assigned&lt;/em&gt; work rather than self-organizing to get work done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team members aren't working on things cohesively because work is partitioned.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team members are being held individually accountable for deliverables, rather than being responsible for them &lt;em&gt;as a team&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that you have a separate &quot;team lead&quot; role also means that you have an internal hierarchy which is antithetical to the concept of a cross-functional, self-organizing team. Whatever else your team is or isn't, it isn't Scrum and it probably isn't agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Clarifying Your Role&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since your team isn't following a standard agile framework, you will probably want to clarify the scope of your role and your individual responsibilities with the person you are actually reporting to. In a command-and-control framework, that will be your project manager or line manager&amp;mdash;and in some cases, both&amp;mdash;rather than making assumptions or asking your teammates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:48:41.317" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T18:28:59.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9736" CreationDate="2013-08-17T07:47:12.317" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;An interesting question that a lot of people raise when faced with Scrum rigid guidelines on team roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly I believe you should should be aware of the distinction between what a team lead and a tech lead might do. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20130323090016/http://www.stephen-smith.co.uk/technical-lead-is-not-team-lead/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Technical Lead != Team Lead&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum teams still need leadership like any other. The Scrum master should furfill the traditional team lead responsibilities. In an ideal world the technical leadership would be emergent. You will always have developers of varying ability, experience and with different character traits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not beat yourself up if your organisation likes to define this role up front with a job title. This is common place in the industry and no amount of Scrum preaching is going to change that. The important thing is to fulfill the role well. Do not make all the decisions, help mentor others, encourage acts of leadership within your team, let others come to meeting or send them in your place, do not solve everyone's problems for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you would like to know more there is a good book on LeanPub. Notes to a Software Team Leader. But be aware this is not a Scrum book, although it is full of great advice. &lt;a href=&quot;https://leanpub.com/teamleader&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://leanpub.com/teamleader&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6422" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T08:27:21.037" LastActivityDate="2020-06-17T08:27:21.037" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9742" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9748" CreationDate="2013-08-18T02:26:59.670" Score="1" ViewCount="264" Body="&lt;p&gt;Couple of month before I committed one project to remove bug from that software, that project is not developed according to customer requirements. So, I have included some advanced function according to customer requirement like &lt;strong&gt;&quot;report generation&quot;, &quot;customization&quot;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are some bug in  &lt;strong&gt;logic  of coding and also in database construction&lt;/strong&gt;. I changed everything. now, I am in final stage of that project. But I don't know how to estimate cost for all those process. I am doing this project as my part time work.&#xA; Could anyone suggest me, how to estimate cost for my work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6663" LastActivityDate="2013-08-18T19:09:27.143" Title="How to estimate cost to remove bug?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9742" CreationDate="2013-08-18T04:24:36.773" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, &quot;time &amp;amp; materials&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://pmp-study.blogspot.ca/2009/09/contract-types.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMI contract types&lt;/a&gt; since you have completed the work and should be able to derive the time you incurred making this change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if your client and yourself have already agreed to a fixed price contract and there is no signed-off change request you may be on the hook for the cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would try to work it out with your client using your; rate * hours took.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6750" LastActivityDate="2013-08-18T04:24:36.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9744" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-08-18T17:48:44.610" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;ScrumMaster is a very important role in the implementation of scrum. This person works with everyone in the team to ensure successful implementation of scrum. He understands scrum and ensures that the spirit of scrum is followed to delivered in time and with quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Excerpts from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumalliance.org/why-scrum/core-scrum-values-roles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;scrum alliance&lt;/a&gt; -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ScrumMaster is a &quot;servant leader&quot; who helps the rest of the Scrum team follow the process. The ScrumMaster must have a good understanding of the Scrum framework and the ability to train others in its subtleties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ScrumMaster helps the product owner understand how to create and maintain the product backlog. He or she works with the entire Scrum team to evolve the Definition of Done. The ScrumMaster also works with the development team to find and implement the technical practices needed to get to Done at the end of each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another responsibility of the ScrumMaster is to remove impediments to the team’s progress. These impediments may be external to the team (such as a lack of support from another team) or internal (such as the product owner not knowing how to properly prepare the product backlog). That said, the ScrumMaster fosters self-organization, meaning that the team itself should remove issues wherever possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6172" LastEditorUserId="6172" LastEditDate="2013-08-19T01:28:57.187" LastActivityDate="2013-08-19T01:28:57.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9745" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-08-18T17:48:44.610" Score="0" Body="The ScrumMaster tag is used to ask questions related to this very important and central role in scrum." OwnerUserId="6172" LastEditorUserId="6172" LastEditDate="2013-08-19T01:28:42.887" LastActivityDate="2013-08-19T01:28:42.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9746" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-08-18T18:37:10.547" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Planning poker is a poker like game played to estimate the tasks at hand in a scrum planning meeting. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_poker&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia excerpts&lt;/a&gt; -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Planning poker, also called Scrum poker, is a consensus-based technique for estimating, mostly used to estimate effort or relative size of user stories in software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason to use Planning poker is to avoid the influence of the other participants. If a number is spoken, it can sound like a suggestion and influence the other participants' sizing. Planning poker should force people to think independently and propose their numbers simultaneously. This is accomplished by requiring that all participants show their card at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6172" LastEditorUserId="6172" LastEditDate="2013-08-18T19:07:30.880" LastActivityDate="2013-08-18T19:07:30.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9747" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-08-18T18:37:10.547" Score="0" Body="Planning-poker tag is used to ask questions about this interesting planning technique. Planning poker is the method of planning used in scrum to reach a consensus on the estimation of a task." OwnerUserId="6172" LastEditorUserId="6172" LastEditDate="2013-08-18T19:07:18.363" LastActivityDate="2013-08-18T19:07:18.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9742" CreationDate="2013-08-18T19:09:27.143" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;How much should I charge?&quot; would be off-topic. Calculating costs, especially retroactively, should be a straightforward formula based on your contract with the client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Calculating Costs&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are generally three kinds of rates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fixed rates, where you and the client have agreed on a scope and a price ahead of time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time and materials, in which a fixed labor rate is multiplied by the man-hours consumed by the project. The cost of externalities such as equipment, consumables, or travel expenses are generally billed as separate line items from the labor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Receipts made, in which you pass your actual costs onto the customer directly, plus any agreed-upon discount or mark-up.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your contract specifies a fixed rate, then you can't change the price; your primary project controls are scope and volume, which you can't really manage retroactively. True fixed-rate contracts shouldn't involve any calculations, since the rate has already been agreed-upon ahead of time. However, if your &quot;fixed rate&quot; is based on some kind of piece-work, then you would calculate &lt;em&gt;UnitRate x UnitsCompleted&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your contract is for time and materials, then you normally calculate &lt;em&gt;(LaborRate x Hours) + Expenses&lt;/em&gt; to arrive at the cost. If your contract is on a receipts-made basis, then you typically calculate &lt;em&gt;MoneySpent + NegotiatedMarkup&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Read Your Contract&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your specific case, you've already done the work. Presumably, you didn't do the work before negotiating an agreement with the client, and you should therefore have a written agreement or signed contract that spells out how you may charge for the work performed and how those charges should be calculated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there are some standard ways to charge for projects, a contract can specify any billing structure you and the client agree upon. As a result, you need to refer to your contract to determine how costs for the project should be calculated and billed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-08-18T19:09:27.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9749" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-18T22:53:36.473" Score="2" ViewCount="397" Body="&lt;p&gt;In his presentation &quot;Adopting Continuous Delivery&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Adopting-Continuous-Delivery&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Adopting-Continuous-Delivery&lt;/a&gt;), Jez Humble mentions (~6:50) that queuing theory proves that optimizing for resource utilisation and lower coast, actualy leads to the most inefficient procedures for pushing change out to production. He also quotes the book &quot;The Principles of Product Development Flow&quot; by Donald Reinertsen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any proof of that? I mean, I've learned some queuing theory at the university for telephony, and I cannot even imagine how this principle can be mathematically proved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6755" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T19:57:17.887" Title="Queuing theory for measuring &quot;change&quot; delivery?" Tags="&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9749" CreationDate="2013-08-19T07:18:18.907" Score="-1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;optimizing for resource utilisation and lower coast, actualy leads to&#xA;  the most inefficient procedures for pushing change out to production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not read any study which might prove the above scientifically, but in defence of the writer it might be true in certain aspects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the effort required to optimize a resource utilization and the output from the resource post optimization are not proportionate (with positive bias) then the above statement holds true. The queue length may also play an important part in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the effort put in optimization outweights the output it gives, then its not worth optimizing it. This will be true in activities which are not business critical. I am tempted to say that one might want to tune the resources enough so that they keep delivering at profitable levels. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6209" LastActivityDate="2013-08-19T07:18:18.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9735" CreationDate="2013-08-19T12:10:17.753" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not tried this myself, but looks like it's got more than you need, calendar and email as well as tasks (plus source code):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bowie.codeplex.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://bowie.codeplex.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3336" LastActivityDate="2013-08-19T12:10:17.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9723" CreationDate="2013-08-19T20:22:31.940" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;A Selection-Criteria Algorithm&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no perfect answer to a question like yours, since every organization is different. However, there are certainly some basic process patterns for defining criteria within a given context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One such pattern is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define your stakeholders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify your stakeholders' goals for whatever tool you're selecting. This will define &lt;strong&gt;value.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify how you plan to &lt;em&gt;measure&lt;/em&gt; the success or failure of the tool to deliver this value. This will define your &lt;strong&gt;selection criteria.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build an assessment plan to rank or filter your options based on those measurable dimensions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research or brainstorm your options.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Calculate the best available option from the field of candidate solutions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether your value metrics and selection criteria are pass/fail or quantitative is really up to your team. It's always good to review your selection &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; with the entire team to make sure everyone's on board with your methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Calculations Will Vary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_on_investment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Calculating ROI&lt;/a&gt; is highly situation-dependent, because gains, costs, and periods are up to you to define. The basic calculation for a given period is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;ROI for period = gain / cost&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Selecting by ROI is straightforward:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Calculate your ROI for each candidate solution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rank each solution by the monetary value of its ROI.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also other ways to assess potential value, and you can make them as simple or as complex as you like. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Selecting the tool that meets the most criteria, reducing the problem to summing a set of check-boxes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using a composite score based on a relative costs and benefits for each distinct criterion. A good example of this would be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/relative-weighting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;relative weighting&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It really doesn't matter what calculation method you use, though, as long as you have buy-in from all the stakeholders. The important thing is that everyone agrees on an approach, and that afterwards everyone can see how the final decision was made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-08-19T20:22:31.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9755" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-20T04:40:47.033" Score="2" ViewCount="1289" Body="&lt;p&gt;Working for a large waterfall project (+180 members) and although we are about to ship the 1.0. Our client is asking us to work on the next major release (parallel development). Since those new major release includes new features, we need to conduct requirement analysis/impact analysis before getting anything done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far, this job has been done by the developers themselves in the early stage of the project before they moved to implementation full-time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the quite big workload to analyse the requirement for the new features (as well as preparing the implementation), we are thinking that it could make sense to have dedicated product owner. However, this job would not fit in our organization (those people may still be officially SW Developers) and because of the waterfall approach, they may have to get back to code in few month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should we have dedicated Product Owner in waterfall project? Or using developers for the job is ok.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6316" LastEditorUserId="6316" LastEditDate="2013-08-22T02:59:56.670" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T02:59:56.670" Title="Should Product Owner be a separate job in Waterfall project" Tags="&lt;waterfall&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9755" CreationDate="2013-08-20T09:53:38.867" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is already a product owner.  Since you are in a buy-seller relationship, as evidenced by your use of &quot;our client&quot;, then the product owner is on the client side.  Someone there is responsible for the product and its use in that organization.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question becomes, are you looking for someone in the seller organization to work as sort of a counterpart to the buyer's product manager.  That role is typically fulfilled by the project manager, who is accountable for the delivery of the product within specs.  Is there a piece of responsibility, accountability, or tasks not being fulfilled well that sparked this question?  If so, it may not be a missing role but something missing within the PM's role in the seller's organization.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T09:53:38.867" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9757" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-20T11:58:13.600" Score="2" ViewCount="908" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a small digital agency where we have the following roles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 Managing Director&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 Partner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 Technical Lead&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 Project Manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 Designer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 Developers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our day to day work is a mixture of planned projects, support &amp;amp; maintenance for existing clients, and pitching and scoping for new business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before our PM started we had very little process in place and little or no resource planning. The nature of the business makes resource planning difficult as we have a lot of support work and we frequently have jobs come in at very short notice with short deadlines which require resources being taken off planned project work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we were doing a terrible job of managing resources, we decided to hire a Project Manager. When he started he asserted his preferred way of working, which involved sending an email every morning which gave a list of tasks to be done that day for everyone except the MD. He would then ask that everyone email him an hour before the end of the day stating the progress of each if their tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach soon started to grate with people, especially the Partner and Tech Lead. It seemed like micro-management to the extreme, and left no room for the general unscheduled tasks that crop up on a day to day basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For quite some time, most people would forget to send their update email the PM near the end of the day, and eventually he accepted that it might not be the most efficient way of working. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main area of confusion is where the PM's duties should stop and the Tech Lead's begin. The PM has very little technical knowledge but assumes the role of assigning individual tasks to the Developers, Designer and the Tech Lead. This frequently leads to tasks being assigned to the wrong people, and also frustrates the Tech Lead as he feels this should be part of his role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would a PM normally be assigning fine-grained tasks to individuals in a small team, or do we have an over-zealous PM?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6769" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-02T14:30:48.123" LastActivityDate="2019-01-02T14:30:48.123" Title="Should a PM assign fine-grained tasks to individuals, or do we have an over-zealous PM?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;micro-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9757" CreationDate="2013-08-20T12:54:09.477" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think I would necessarily describe your PM as 'over-zealous'. The PM has tried to instigate a system in an organisation that you accept was lacking in this respect. The system clearly has its problems, which, again, you say the PM has accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I suggest is that the whole team (but particularly the PM and tech lead) work together to understand what does and does not work in the current system and make changes accordingly. Ultimately the PM's responsibility is to make sure projects are completed on schedule and meet the requirements of your clients. If the PM consistently fails to assign tasks to the correct person then work is not being completed efficiently - this is one clear area for improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scope and range of responsibilities for a PM can vary enormously from organisation to organisation. In some places they can end up being glorified administrators, while in others they play an active role in product development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could consider looking at Scrum (or some 'lite' version of it that you can adapt to your organisation's needs) and turning your PM into more of a product manager so that they are concentrating on what the client wants/needs while leaving technical work to the dev team. However, to make this work the dev team are still going to need to track their work and commit to completing work on time (doesn't mean it will always happen, but it gives everyone more ownership and responsibility).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the underlying problem is actually that your dev team resent being given deadlines and tasks after years of autonomous working then you also need to tackle this problem. Ultimately everyone is there to do a job. An inclusive approach will make sure that the system you implement works for the whole business but be prepared for some push back!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T12:54:09.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9757" CreationDate="2013-08-20T14:24:20.280" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would be hard to assess what the PM is doing in an unbiased way just based on what you wrote.  I can imagine he grated on you, as well, and perhaps maybe you are a tech lead whose role is now a bit ambiguous with the PM's.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notwithstanding all the soft skills you would want in a PM or any leader, much of what PM is, is about controls.  For a company who, by your admission, was out of control, this person coming in putting in any type of PM methods would likely be received as &quot;grating.&quot;  Change is hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I won't comment whether I agree or disagree with his methods as you indicate here, but I would opine that I would be looking at the organization as root cause of the issues you now face versus what this PM is doing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your organization needs to evolve.  You gotta let it happen.  Watering down the authority of the PM so that things can stay largely status quo will pretty much seal your fate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T14:24:20.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9762" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9777" CreationDate="2013-08-20T14:30:52.230" Score="0" ViewCount="111" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently been tasked with finding and implementing a solution for task/project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have come here for some suggestions to see what you use. There are however some rather specific requirements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Absolute MUSTS&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Must be open source&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Must be web based&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contain Customer Database&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simple interface/ Easy to use&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Advantages&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Runs on SQL Server 2005+&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Written on the .NET Platform&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The software will be being used within a small software company to assign tasks to employees and to track the progress of tasks. Some sort of timesheet would be advantageous (to see what time has been spent on what task)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I look forward to your responses!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6772" LastActivityDate="2013-08-24T13:26:08.163" Title="Project/Ticket Managment" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2013-08-25T03:21:21.827" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9757" CreationDate="2013-08-20T17:07:00.557" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before you put this down to an over-zealous PM, look for root causes. As Willl suggests, this could be a resistance-to-change question, stemming from the team playing loosey-goosey for too long. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also consider why the PM has taken the approach that he has. Is this how things were done at his last work? Is he acting on guidance from the MD? Are the leaders not doing their jobs when it comes to managing resources?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To resolve this your organization needs to clarify roles and responsibilities that will work for you. Even more importantly, you need to establish performance expectations and clear lines of accountability. It's nice to say that the PM is responsible for bringing a project in on time/budget/scope/etc, but if the team leaders are dropping the ball you can cycle through all the PMs in the world and you aren't going to get better results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T17:07:00.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9764" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9774" CreationDate="2013-08-20T22:58:06.003" Score="1" ViewCount="439" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a software developer and am familiar with Scrum.  However, I have also started a very different type business.  I raise different types of poultry for the fine dining industry.  I don't think Scrum will help me increase my productivity. I have been looking at Kanban and wondered if it might be a better fit. Am I on the right track or is there a better methodology?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that the day to day operations are a production issue but constant improvement is a project management issue.  For example when housing thousands of animals in a building what is the best method, i.e. different cages, lighting, bedding, building layout.  The type of poultry industry that I am involved in is not state of the art anymore than the car manufacturing business is.  New methods and technologies are always on the horizon and those that can adapt them to there business model most effectively will be the winners. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6778" LastEditorUserId="6778" LastEditDate="2013-08-21T19:16:41.993" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T14:33:20.103" Title="PM for non IT business" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9765" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9767" CreationDate="2013-08-21T04:03:07.677" Score="0" ViewCount="2413" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, we have hired bunch of people who say they have little experience on technology. When I delegate jobs to them and ask for a timeline, they give unrealistic timelines of around 3-5 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the tasks should actually take only 3 weeks to 1 month. The client can't wait for prolonged periods!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the ways I can help team members to get projects done within the client's expected time frame?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6774" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-08-21T05:49:18.700" LastActivityDate="2013-08-24T23:52:59.050" Title="How can I get inexperienced team members to meet project deadlines?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;deadline&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9764" CreationDate="2013-08-21T04:03:56.493" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every project needs to be managed, and to manage it you need to define your goal/aim.&#xA;Once your aim/goals are defined you can formulate a strategy/project plan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6209" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T04:03:56.493" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9765" CreationDate="2013-08-21T05:27:53.377" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Targets and estimates are two different things. You're confusing the two, and setting your team up for failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Targets vs. Estimates&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A target is something you assign to your team, such as &quot;I want this set of tasks done in a month.&quot; Management targets are fine so far as they go, but they rarely provide a means to get there. For the actual &lt;em&gt;accomplishment&lt;/em&gt; of the tasks, you need to rely on the knowledge, skills, and experience of your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimates, on the other hand, are what your team provides based on their current understanding of the problem domain and their assessment of their own skills. A skilled person might be able to add a feature or solve a problem faster than someone with less experience. On the other hand, sometimes experience leads to insights about how seemingly-simple tasks might take longer than expected. Either way, the estimates are generally good guidelines for how long the actual &lt;em&gt;task-performers&lt;/em&gt; think the job will take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, your team is &lt;em&gt;estimating&lt;/em&gt; that the project will take three to five months, while your &lt;em&gt;management target&lt;/em&gt; is a month or less. Neither side is necessarily wrong; however, there's clearly a discrepancy between targets and estimates that needs to be resolved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Resolving the Differences Through Dialogue&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are the ways I can help team members to get project done within time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the wrong question. What you're really asking is how you can get your team to deliver what you want when you want it, rather than when they think they can give it to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you know how to get the tasks done faster, share your knowledge. This will probably entail you being a hands-on participant on the team. You may even have to take ownership of various tasks yourself, since you may be able to get things done faster than the other team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then again, maybe not. Maybe the team is &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; about the fact that, with the resources you have and the experience level of the team, it will take longer than you'd like for &lt;em&gt;the team&lt;/em&gt; to deliver on the project's milestones. If so, unless you plan to do all the work yourself and have factored that into your scheduling estimates, you may want to carefully consider whether or not your team is correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a project's leadership is out of step with the members of the team, a good project manager will work with stakeholders and the team members to understand &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt;. Perhaps your team simply lacks confidence, or wants a buffer so that they aren't blamed if things fall behind schedule. Or maybe the project's delivery dates are unreasonable based on the skills of the team or the resources available to the project. Whatever the reason, you won't really get to the bottom of it until there's an honest conversation between management and the rest of the team about the issues and risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Management is Responsible&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Recently we have hired bunch of people who says they have little experience on technology. &lt;em&gt;(sic)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The managers who hired staff who may not be qualified for the work is management's responsibility.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hiring staff who are qualified but who lack confidence&amp;mdash;something that should have shown up in any reasonable interview&amp;mdash;is management's responsibility.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Promising deadlines to a client before gathering accurate estimates from the task performers is management's responsibility.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fixing the organizational culture that sets up the project team for a death march is management's responsibility.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter how you look at it, people can only accept responsibility for tasks they've agreed to complete with full knowledge of the details and circumstances. You can certainly assign tasks and deadlines to members of a project team, and then &quot;hold them accountable&quot; for the management targets, but that rarely works well in the real world. You might even get team members who will agree to anything rather than lose their jobs; that will get you a lot of agreement, but rarely will it get you completed deliverables when you expect them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Management is responsible for gathering accurate estimates, managing the client's expectations, and empowering the team in whatever ways are possible so that the team can do &lt;strong&gt;as well as they can, where they are, and with what they have.&lt;/strong&gt; Failure to do perform those essential management responsibilities is what causes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zdnet.com/blog/projectfailures/study-68-percent-of-it-projects-fail/1175&quot;&gt;68% of projects to fail&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Visibility and Transparency Make Mediocre Teams More Effective&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Flogging your staff until morale improves rarely works. However, converting your project management process to a framework that values rapid feedback cycles, process transparent, and full visibility into the project's processes and impediments will make sure that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team is actively engaged in the process, and has a mechanism for communicating about process roadblocks and resource gaps to managers who are empowered to do something about it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The management team will have complete visibility into the progress of the project at any point in its timeline.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risks to the project will be visible (and hopefully self-explanatory) when they are encountered by the team, empowering management to remove or mitigate those risks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increased knowledge between the team and management should result in more accurate estimates from the team, and more knowledge placed into the hands of management with which to make sound strategic decisions for the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you mash all of that together, it's &lt;em&gt;effective two-way communication&lt;/em&gt; that may enable your project to succeed despite its shortcomings. Teams that communicate effectively succeed more often, and when they fail they fail &lt;em&gt;earlier&lt;/em&gt; and at lower cost to the company. Encourage &lt;em&gt;honest&lt;/em&gt; communications at all levels involved in the project; it's really your best tool, so you might as well use it as effectively as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T05:27:53.377" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9765" CreationDate="2013-08-21T07:40:41.553" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;they give unrealistic timelines of around 3-5 months&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They give realistic timelines, taking into account their own skills and experience. However, your expectations are unrealistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to PMBOK, there are two main options of &quot;schedule compression&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;crashing: hire different people, give them training, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;fast tracking: do things in parallel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, see this &lt;a href=&quot;http://leadershipchamps.wordpress.com/2008/04/02/schedule-compression-techniques/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T07:40:41.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9765" CreationDate="2013-08-21T12:00:44.453" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a lot in your draft that suggests you yourself are lacking some basic fundamentals or understanding of how estimating, targeting, performance, and risk work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CodeGnome touched on a good bit in this area that you need to read closely and try to understand.  The only disagreement I would have is his explanation of target versus estimate, where I would suggest that an estimate is a range of probabilistic results and your target is deterministic, a single value for which you aim, on which you base your costs, and against which you measure your performance.  It indeed can be assigned by you but it is the value that represents the degree of risk you are willing to take and lives somewhere in the range provided by your team.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What your customer expects is irrelevant in the estimation process and should not even enter into the equation.  In fact, the estimators should be blind to that piece of information as you do not want their opinions biased to it.  The estimation process yields the range.  The business side of that process chooses the target which may or may not be consistent with what the customer wants.  So, if your team says three to five months and you target two to meet customer expectations, you are essentially making a business decision to buy the business at a loss and extreme risk of failure.  Nothing wrong that; there are a lot of loss leaders that drive very profitable business down the line.  But it's not your estimators job to come up with that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you need to understand how performance works.  No matter the target, much of the results that you will see over time is very very random.  Understand what aleatory risks are and how these affect performance.  Aleatory risks, as opposed to epistemic risks, are largely or wholly unreduceable.  They are random.  You cannot mitigate them.  I bring this up to challenge your belief that their risks are &quot;unrealistic.&quot;  That implies that an estimate is &quot;realistic.&quot;  You should divorce the word realistic from estimate here on out.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T12:00:44.453" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9755" CreationDate="2013-08-21T17:58:27.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You aren't missing a job title, you're missing a &lt;em&gt;role.&lt;/em&gt; You may also be missing the team capacity to fill the necessary roles for what is essentially a second project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Business Analyst Role&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[W]e need to conduct requirement analysis/impact analysis before getting anything done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is typically the role of a business analyst, although it often involves coordinating with the development team and stakeholders. While the Product Owner (PO) in Scrum has a lot of responsibilities similar to those of a business analyst, the PO role is really much bigger than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The person (or people) who perform analysis and reporting need a &lt;em&gt;skill set&lt;/em&gt;, not a job title. If you have developers who have the skills to perform business analysis, fine. If not, then giving them a temporary title won't make them any more competent in that regard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, what you really need to do is define what responsibilities this missing role should have, and then find someone within your organization with the skills to manage those responsibilities. It doesn't matter if their job title is Product Owner, Business Analyst, or Senior Bottle-Cap Collector; it's the &lt;em&gt;role&lt;/em&gt; that's important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Team Capacity&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[O]ur client is asking [us] to work [on the] next major release (parallel development).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creating a Product Owner or Business Analyst role will not solve your capacity problems. Your team is already fully-committed to working on the current release. Once you fill the missing analyst role, who is going to do the actual work on this parallel release?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The correct thing to do would be to create a separate team to work on the parallel development. Asking your existing team to work on two separate releases at the same time increases overhead, reduces efficiency, and will probably lead to over-engineering or cross-contamination of requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point, some folks may object that they don't have the organizational backing or financial resources to run two teams. That's fine if the business accepts the process or schedule risk; just be cognizant that you are taking a sub-optimal approach, and don't expect one team to do the work of two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T17:58:27.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9764" CreationDate="2013-08-21T22:08:00.410" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You shouldn't be looking at project management, except possibly for inspiration. What you are really talking about is &lt;strong&gt;process engineering.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Projects vs. Process&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Projects are generally understood to have a defined duration and a set of exit criteria. Processes, on the other hand, can be ongoing. A project contains processes, and project management is typically understood to be the art of applying controls to those processes. A process, on the other hand, can exist independently of a managed project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, you might find some of the process controls from Kanban or Lean Manufacturing to be useful in designing your processes. However, you don't necessarily need the whole framework if all you want to do is apply some of the controls and principles to your own processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Process Engineering&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Designing or modifying a process is the domain of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_%28engineering%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;process engineering&lt;/a&gt;. Many of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;agile principles&lt;/a&gt; are useful in process engineering. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the core tenet that is often restated as the &quot;inspect-and-adapt&quot; cycle, and I certainly recommend adopting it to ensure that you periodically review the operational effectiveness of your controls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also other principles lifted from Kanban, Lean, and Scrum that may help you. These principles include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reducing different kinds of waste (&lt;em&gt;muda&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;muri&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;mura&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Optimizing for throughput instead of utilization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reducing cycle times.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Making procedures measurable and repeatable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensuring processes and procedures are &lt;em&gt;testable.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whole books have been written on process engineering, so this can only scratch the surface. As long as you inspect-and-adapt, though, you can't help but benefit from the empirical knowledge you gain from &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; process or control you apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T22:08:00.410" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9764" CreationDate="2013-08-22T12:29:26.610" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you're on the right track. KANBAN is suggested for an assembly-line type of process. It would really work for you if your operations are aligned in that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, there could be some processes which you may find difficult to manage or monitor with KANBAN as it does not have feedback. In such cases you may think to club it with your knowledge of SCRUM!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rest is all upto you. Design a process that suits your purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6783" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T12:29:26.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9764" CreationDate="2013-08-22T14:33:20.103" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I understand that the day to day operations are a production issue but constant improvement is a project management issue. For example when housing thousands of animals in a building what is the best method, i.e. different cages, lighting, bedding, building layout. The type of poultry industry that I am involved in is not state of the art anymore than the car manufacturing business is. New methods and technologies are always on the horizon and those that can adapt them to there business model most effectively will be the winners. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As part of general business improvements it helps to look at the issues from a change management perspective, for example through &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prosci.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Prosci's approach&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But realistically I would question the need to use a formal methodology, in particular if your operation is small. Better to just follow the basic principles of project management as outlined by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PRINCE2 methodology&lt;/a&gt;, namely:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tailor the method you use to meet project needs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clearly define roles and responsibilities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manage the project in stages&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manage the project by exception (i.e. with clear levels of authority and approval)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a continually justified business case&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Focus on the end products&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apply lessons learned on past projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T14:33:20.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9749" CreationDate="2013-08-22T15:08:00.753" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agner Erlang originated queueing theory in 1909 in telephony. In a completely deterministic system, no delays are present until we exceed 100 percent utilization. Erlang showed that because phone calls arrive at unpredictable times and have unpredictable durations, delays rise exponentially &lt;em&gt;BEFORE&lt;/em&gt; we reach 100 percent utilization. This math does not only apply to telephony -- we use it for highway design, manufacturing systems, supermarket lines, etc. Whenever there is 1) variability in arrival times or durations, and 2) a cost of delay, then one can &quot;prove&quot; that loading to 100 percent utilization is not economically optimal. It leads to infinite queues, and the queues cost money. It's not a &quot;proof&quot; in the Maths PhD sense, but we'd throw away a lot of useful engineering ideas if we required this level of axiomatic rigor. Alternatively, one could ask what conditions would make 100 percent utilization optimal: no variability or no cost of delay. Then, try to determine if one of these conditions exist on your project. If they do, maximize resource utilization. Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6788" LastEditorUserId="6788" LastEditDate="2013-08-23T19:57:17.887" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T19:57:17.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9762" CreationDate="2013-08-22T16:35:31.757" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think that there is anything think out there that will check all your boxes.  The only thing that I have used that even comes close is &quot;The Trac Project&quot;.  Unfortunately, it is written in Python and runs on Linux, does not support SQL Server.  The other product that comes to mind is TFS Team Foundation Services but here again it is missing many of the buckets you are trying to fill.  Just my two cents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6778" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T16:35:31.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9686" CreationDate="2013-08-22T21:11:17.093" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main concept behind scrum is to get everyone (DB, UI, Dev, QA) together. This works wonders since now the dev would know what problems QA faces during testing and would be more attentive to the issues they would usually ignore before the hand-off to QA. Similarly QA would know how dev works day-to-day and would help. This comes from the joint responsibility principle of scrum. The entire team is responsible for the delivery. I can't say the delivery failed since the Dev completed late or the QA didn't finish on time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone starts thinking about the improvements they can make to the system and that contributes to the success of the team. Bringing all your teams together would break the silos that may be there. There is a nice preso on team mindsets by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lindarising.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Linda Rising&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/articles/Who-Do-You-Trust-Linda-Rising&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6172" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T21:11:17.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9780" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9784" CreationDate="2013-08-23T08:37:36.480" Score="0" ViewCount="2191" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have my PMP and currently a PMO Director. However, does anyone know of a certification for PMOs? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6795" LastActivityDate="2016-10-22T16:47:13.723" Title="Is there a PMO certification for PMO Directors?" Tags="&lt;certification&gt;&lt;pmo&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9780" CreationDate="2013-08-23T08:43:37.253" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, There is no specific certification for PMO Directors. Most prominent ones are PMP and Prince2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may check the available &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/Certification/What-are-PMI-Certifications.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMI Certifications&lt;/a&gt;. The site also allows you to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/Certification/Which-PMI-Certification-is-Right-for-You.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;choose the right certification for you&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6783" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T08:43:37.253" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9780" CreationDate="2013-08-23T12:02:51.310" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;UK Cabinet Office has a set of standards integrated with PRINCE2. These include a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.p3o-officialsite.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Portfolio, Programme and Project Offices (P3O) guidance&lt;/a&gt;. According to their intro, P3O is intended to &quot;provide universally applicable guidance that will enable individuals and organisations to successfully establish, develop and maintain appropriate business support structures that will allow:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Informed senior management decision making on strategic alignment, prioritisation, risk management, optimisation of resource etc to successfully deliver their business objectives (portfolio management) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identification and realisation of business outcomes and benefits via programmes &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Successful delivery of project outputs that enable benefits within time, cost and quality restraints.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T12:02:51.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9785" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-23T13:59:57.413" Score="0" ViewCount="111" Body="&lt;p&gt;I started a research about what is PMP.  For doing that I think a good idea is to become a member of a PMI Chapter.   I am mexican and there is a chapter here.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can I enroll in other chapters as well?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I am interested in visiting Los Angeles, it is a good idea to pay L.A. Chapter fee now? Do I have better opportunities?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can I expect to make some volunteering there if I am a PMI member?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6792" LastEditorUserId="16667" LastEditDate="2015-03-27T17:49:48.377" LastActivityDate="2015-03-27T17:49:48.377" Title="PMI-PMP relation" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;pmi&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9785" CreationDate="2013-08-23T18:16:09.347" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMI has some good information on their website around &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/Get-Involved/Volunteer-Opportunities.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;volunteering opportunities&lt;/a&gt;. Taking a quick look at their online system it looks like you aren't restricted geographically from searching for opportunities to volunteer. You may want to set up an account in their system and give it a try. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T18:16:09.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9757" CreationDate="2013-08-24T11:47:07.047" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My take on this is that the PM is trying to establish a sense of discipline into a company that has previously had a &quot;freewheeling&quot; attitude. I don't think he is being too zealous - but perhaps his method is not appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, the role of the PM should be to know what is due to be done, to know whether it remains on target, and to understand and manage the risks around the project. There will be other duties too, probably around project finance and management reporting, and an effective PM will certainly help the rest of the organisation by handling that side of the work, letting them concentrate on what they do best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You ask about the roles of the PM vs. the Tech Lead: Assuming the tech lead manages the developers, I would not expect the PM to be communicating with the developers directly - that should be the role of the tech lead. The tech lead should, of course, be able to explain what progress has been made at any point in time, but he should also have the autonomy to allocate work as appropriate within his team. In terms of allocating work to others, I would suggest that the PM discusses this with the individual rather than imposing his own thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do wonder whether the issue is the level of control that is being imposed, or whether it is the means of imposing it. In a small company such as you describe, a daily email to and from the PM sounds very bureaucratic and impersonal. I would prefer to handle the communication face to face, because this allows a conversation to take place rather than just passing on facts and figures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also suggest that the frequency of contact should perhaps be different depending on the levels of trust and the nature of what each person does. If a task will take a week, a mid-week checkpoint may be appropriate, but a daily check may be too frequent. On the other hand, for tasks that are only a few hours in duration, a daily check may be just fine. Horses for courses!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, then, it feels as though the PM is trying to impose disciplines and make decisions for the right reasons, but is not using the appropriate interpersonal communication to achieve the desired outcomes. Get him to talk to people more, and get off his pedestal. But the rest of the team also need to change, and recognise and accept the authority that he was presumably given when he was appointed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastEditorUserId="301" LastEditDate="2013-08-24T12:01:24.467" LastActivityDate="2013-08-24T12:01:24.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9762" CreationDate="2013-08-24T13:26:08.163" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You ask for what is not possible.  Having a great open sourced project to make your own generally means it isn't going to be extremely easy to use like some of the better solutions available on the web.  Have you looked into Trello?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://trello.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have just recently started using it but am amazed at what it offers.  Very nice and easy to use interfaces, very clean and flexible, and also can be customized to your needs.  Downside is it is not open-source and does not rely on .NET framework (appears to work on top of Mongo)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6805" LastActivityDate="2013-08-24T13:26:08.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9765" CreationDate="2013-08-24T23:52:59.050" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with CodeGnome and would like to add more&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Retrospection&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at what you are doing and how you are running the project and ask yourself a truthful question;  &quot;Is it working&quot;.  I would say no it is not.  Next look at ways to do things differently by taking a deep look at what you are doing, then learn from your mistakes and try do something differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result - Einstein.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Uncertainty and Complexity&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next is to admit you are dealing with software development which if you really look at it has a high level of uncertainty in it.  Possibly to do with requirements, teams, people, technologies and thus fraught with risk.  As much as you plan, you will more likely than not encounter situations that no one could have predicted.  Finally technology is complex and moves at a fast pace; there is always high degrees of complexity in what we do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learn to mitigate these risks through empirical processes control instead of procedural process control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Communication&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears there is some level of misunderstandings in the requirements,  you think it is a month and the dev team thinks it is three ... get in front of a whiteboard and talk it through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Human Factor&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I pretty much bet that right now, you and your team are all making decisions based on the facts you currently have at your disposal.  I don't believe that anyone will be deliberately making bad choices.  Both of you may be making misinformed choices as not all the facts are transparent and known.  Right this very moment, you don't know what you don't know.  In a few days you might find out that your thoughts today were completely wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stop &lt;em&gt;beating&lt;/em&gt; up the team based on previous choices everyone has made, respect that the want to do the right thing.  Help them do the right thing by constantly communicating and making minor corrections as you find deviations (again inspect and adapt).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5634" LastActivityDate="2013-08-24T23:52:59.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9757" CreationDate="2013-08-25T20:44:44.593" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would a PM normally be assigning fine-grained tasks to individuals in a small team[?]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question is non-deterministic. Project management is simply a discipline; the scope of the project management &lt;em&gt;role&lt;/em&gt; is defined by each organization. Your organization should re-evaluate its management goals and restructure its development process accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Command-and-Control&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The command-and-control style of project management is widely practiced, especially in organizations that embrace non-agile project management frameworks. If the role has been defined as an authoritative role, then a PM is often expected to assign tasks and &quot;hold people accountable.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever a PM is &lt;em&gt;held accountable&lt;/em&gt; for doing things that rub the organization the wrong way, then the &lt;em&gt;organization&lt;/em&gt; should carefully re-evaluate what they expect from the role and how they expect to measure the success of that role. Evaluating a PM based on the performance of team members is like &lt;em&gt;asking&lt;/em&gt; for command-and-control behavior; if that's not desired, then senior management must restructure the team and/or the project management role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Management Made a Choice&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As we were doing a terrible job of managing resources we decided to hire a Project Manager. When he started he asserted his preferred way of working, which involved sending an email every morning which gave a list of tasks to be done that day for everyone except the MD. He would then ask that everyone email him an hour before the end of the day stating the progress of each if their tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the organization had a problem, did its due diligence in hiring someone who espoused a philosophy that fit management's desired management style, and is now disliked for applying the controls that he was hired to enforce. This is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a recipe for success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two choices here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management got what it asked for, but it asked for the wrong thing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management is getting what it wants, but the &lt;em&gt;team&lt;/em&gt; is unhappy that things are no longer &quot;business as usual.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sincerely doubt that the PM decided that &quot;it might not be the most efficient way of working.&quot; It seems more likely that he simply got tired of taking flack for trying to impose some structure on your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of this is to say that there might not be a soft-skills gap here, or that there aren't other team-management methodologies that might be more effective in your particular organization. However, from the background you provided, it certainly seems like a leadership failure in the management ranks, rather than a failure on the part of the PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Process Slack and &quot;Invisible Work&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It...left no room for the general unscheduled tasks that crop up on a day to day basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a symptom of your organization's business-as-usual mindset. If you &lt;em&gt;routinely&lt;/em&gt; have &quot;unscheduled tasks,&quot; then you either need to bake those into your estimates, or define a standard process for managing such tasks outside the project schedule. A project manager cannot manage tasks which are unscheduled, unreported, or unaccounted for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While a good project manager will ensure that there is sufficient slack in the process to handle routine variances, invisible work is (by definition) unaccounted for and unmanaged. The fact that your organization doesn't make this distinction is a &quot;process smell&quot; that indicates something is fundamentally broken; expecting a PM to be &lt;em&gt;responsible&lt;/em&gt; for the results of a broken process without empowering either the PM or the team to &lt;em&gt;adapt&lt;/em&gt; the process is a recipe for failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Recommended Solution: Inspect and Adapt&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of things that ought to happen at this point. To start with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The management team needs to redefine the role of the PM within the organization. This re-definition ought to include not only the responsibilities of the role, but also clarify how the successful execution of the role will be measured by management.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management needs to define a clear goal for the development team. There's clearly a reason why they thought additional process controls were needed; those reasons need to be made explicit for everyone in the organization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The entire team should re-evaluate their existing processes, and consider how to adapt those processes in the most effective way possible. This may entail a different project management approach, but it will also require some changes to business-as-usual for the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This dialogue is simply the start of the process engineering that needs to take place. Affixing blame for &quot;things as they are&quot; shouldn't be the objective here; the goal should be continuous process improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-08-25T20:44:44.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9791" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9792" CreationDate="2013-08-26T03:41:40.587" Score="2" ViewCount="235" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an experienced developer. I'm flexible and can develop apps at any platform, but I'm experiencing problems on meeting my own deadlines and asking myself why can't I finish this start-up idea/solo project of mine. I started this project alone, and I only have few consultants. Also, I never quit my job as a programmer/developer at our company. My project is an app (desktop, Android &amp;amp; iOS).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use the Scrum method on this project. It's like insert-insert-insert when I want something on my app.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's an effective method in doing solo projects so that I can finish my deadlines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6813" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-09-12T03:40:32.347" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T03:49:02.240" Title="What is the effective system methodology for doing a start-up project?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9791" CreationDate="2013-08-26T07:09:26.910" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Back in the 90s, Watts Humphreys developed a &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_software_process&quot;&gt;Personal Software Process&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, first outlined in &lt;em&gt;A Discipline for Software Engineering&lt;/em&gt; and subsequently adopted and promoted by the Software Engineering Institute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of its actual content, the key insight of the book was in taking the processes of development in groups and scaling it &lt;em&gt;down&lt;/em&gt; to the individual developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the place to start. Pick practices as if you were in a team, then act as if you are the team. For example, don't perform work without an issue-tracking ticket. Don't check in code without tests. Practice branch management. Write daily &quot;standup&quot; reports summarising what you did yesterday, what you're doing today and what's blocking you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I'm working on solo projects that matter (as opposed to learning or noodling around), that's what I do. I raise issues, I fork into an issue branch, work on it, then merge back to master. I write notes and specs when I need them, as if some other programmer were going to take over. And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I get 100%? No. But I do try to stick to it, if only so I have a record of what I did, when I did it, and why I did it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5319" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T07:09:26.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9791" CreationDate="2013-08-26T11:53:36.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No method guarantees results from a timeliness perspective...or any perspective for that matter, nor does any method offer better timeliness results than another ALL the time under EVERY different scenario.  Different methods work better based on THAT project at THAT time.  The method is not your issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your issue is estimating techniques and choosing the planning value that represents the degree of risk you are willing to assume.  Much of your results from a schedule perspective is random, in that after you pull all the levers under your control to increase your odds of being on time, you are going to get this with many random and uncontrollable variables that may still make you late or even come in early.  These are aleatory risks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are coming in late repeatedly, it may be nothing more than a series of bad luck, not unlike travel to the airport four times in a row and hitting severe traffic due to accidents.  It just happens and the last four times you got hit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it may also be due to promising a planning value that is simply too risky or too aggressive.  You may need to push that out to the outside of your estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-09-12T03:49:02.240" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T03:49:02.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9794" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-26T15:36:43.943" Score="1" ViewCount="1090" Body="&lt;p&gt;Its common for most software development processes to begin with a plan of attack, in which you could find the following topics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The context of the clients company&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A summary of the business processes to be improved&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The current state of business (regarding that which is to be automated)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A clear description of the task at hand&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project activities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The scope of the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The planning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The products to be delivered&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The projects risks and the efforts to minimise the impact.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently I'm making my plan of attack. I'm wondering if the information stated above is enough or if it is better to include more information in this plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question to you all is, what do you think of the mentioning of the above topics into the plan of attack, what information would you describe and what are the expectations which you would have should you be in the role of an customer or of a project member?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6817" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-08-26T17:59:09.320" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T17:59:09.320" Title="What should be included in a comprehensive &quot;plan of attack&quot; document?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;project-charter&gt;&lt;artifacts&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9794" CreationDate="2013-08-26T17:22:22.190" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Mark on the project charter artifact.  It essentially sets up a project.  However, regarding plans in general, if you can answer the who, what, where, when, why, and how, you have a plan.  No matter if you are still in strategy phase or driving down to the tactical, those question must be answered and answered in way that another person can grab and go.  Anything else to add (that is not a decomposed topic of these basic questions) is icing on the cake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T17:22:22.190" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9794" CreationDate="2013-08-26T17:52:59.637" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;And before the First Day there was Nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the Executive Team looked upon the Nothingness and said “Lo, this is not good as our competitiveness is at risk.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on the First Day the Sponsor developed his Mandate and gave it to his Champion and Project Manager to make right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And on the Second Day the Champion and Project Manager did work with the Executive Team to identify those Key Stakeholders that must be consulted. And they gazed upon this list and said “This will do at this stage”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And with the close of the Third Day the Champion and Project Manager did facilitate a discussion amongst the Key Stakeholders to identify the Vision, which begat identification of Wants and Needs. And the Wants were summarily turfed as too costly, but the Needs were kept as they were necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the Fourth Day the Needs were developed into a Project Product Description, such that everyone could agree on what was to be built and a general Project Approach and could estimate Costs and Resources and Schedule at a Very High Level in a Summary Business Case delivered to the Executive Team on the Fifth Day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the Executive Team said “We might have something here”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And with this approval upon the Sixth Day a more detailed investigation of the Project Products, its Costs and Benefits began, to the point that planning for the project, including definition of Scope, Budget, Resources, Schedule, Risk, Contracting, Benefits, Communications, Governance and Quality could be initiated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then, on the Seventh Day, the real work began….&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T17:52:59.637" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9794" CreationDate="2013-08-26T17:57:01.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are inventing your own terms for common project management artifacts. What you are describing is commonly known as a Project Charter or Project Mandate, although some methodologies may use other terms for this type of output from project initialization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your organization doesn't define a process for this already, then &lt;em&gt;ask your stakeholders&lt;/em&gt; what level of detail they need. No one outside the organization can make that determination for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Formal Methods of Project Initiation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mastering-project-management.com/project-initiation.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;One source&lt;/a&gt; describes two of the formal methods for documenting Project Initiation, citing examples from the PMBOK and PRINCE2. It even includes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mastering-project-management.com/support-files/pmbok_project_charter_template.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Charter&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mastering-project-management.com/support-files/prince2_project_mandate_template.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Mandate&lt;/a&gt; templates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These templates aren't necessarily canonical, but they certainly provide useful examples. You can use your own checklist and format if they serve your needs better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Essentials&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of your methodology, a project initiation document ought to cover the following essentials:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the goal of the project?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When does the project need to be complete?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who is involved in the project?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How will you measure the success or failure of the project?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other items like budget, resources, scope, and so forth are really additional levels of detail that drill down into the foregoing. It's up to the organization and the project manager to determine what level of detail is required to define the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T17:57:01.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9799" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-08-27T18:13:59.873" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is the definition from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_manager&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A product manager investigates, selects, and develops products for an organization, performing the activities of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;product management&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;A product manager considers numerous factors such as intended demographic, the products offered by the competition, and how well the product fits with the company's business model. Generally, a product manager manages one or more tangible products. However, the term may be used to describe a person who manages intangible products, such as music, information, and services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a Scrum environment, a Product Manager is also referred to as the Product Owner, and usually has the main role of representing the product to the customer. Some of the responsibilities of the Product Owner include marketing of the product and analysis of the competition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6172" LastEditorUserId="6172" LastEditDate="2013-08-27T19:05:47.097" LastActivityDate="2013-08-27T19:05:47.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9800" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-08-27T18:13:59.873" Score="0" Body="A product manager manages one or more tangible products while considering the competitive analysis, market analysis for a business fit. " OwnerUserId="6172" LastEditorUserId="6172" LastEditDate="2013-08-27T19:05:38.563" LastActivityDate="2013-08-27T19:05:38.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9801" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9802" CreationDate="2013-08-28T08:33:31.330" Score="6" ViewCount="970" Body="&lt;p&gt;I manage a development team using Scrum extremely successfully. When I started there was &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; organization to development, so we implemented Kanban as a stepping stone to provide visibility into the work we do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although Kanban did improve things, after a short period of time the team got a feeling of achieving nothing and was losing motivation. This was because once a task was done, there were 3 tasks to replace it; no matter what we achieved, we still felt like we were going backwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main benefit I see to Scrum is having success at the end of each sprint and a real sense of achievement for the team. I suppose Scrum also shelters the team from the upcoming work more as well, so this might be partly answering my own question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can I do to improve my team's motivation and provide a sense of achievement using Kanban?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6825" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-08-28T10:56:18.733" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T14:03:39.093" Title="What are some ways to improve team motivation and sense of achievement using Kanban?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9801" CreationDate="2013-08-28T10:46:34.690" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While Kanban &lt;em&gt;practices&lt;/em&gt; can be used successfully for discrete projects, the Kanban &lt;em&gt;framework&lt;/em&gt; is best suited to ongoing, queue-based processes. To be used properly in iterative development, you need to implement effective feedback loops for your processes and raise the visibility of your project's input queue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Kanban in Manufacturing&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban has its roots in manufacturing, which by nature is primarily focused on repeatable process. For example, a production line might build a Model Q car in 2013 and a Model Z car in 2014; it generally wouldn't be expected to build a single car, declare victory, and then make single yacht before moving on to something else entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't mean Kanban can't be used for iterative development. It simply requires an adjustment in one's perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Feedback Loops&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[O]nce a task was done, there were 3 tasks to replace it so no matter what we achieved, we still felt like we were going backwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_%28development%29#Six_core_practices&quot;&gt;core practices&lt;/a&gt; of Kanban is implementing effective feedback loops. Part of the development cadence is to periodically take stock of where you were, where you are, and where you want to go next. In other words, the agile inspect-and-adapt process (implemented as Sprint Reviews and Sprint Retrospectives in Scrum) should also be an integral part of Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this aspect of the framework is missing from your Kanban implementation, the ability to observe progress on the project will likely be missing, too. That certainly sounds like the sentiment you're expressing in the quote above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Manage Queue Length and Number of Queues&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a related note, if your queue is actually growing &lt;em&gt;continuously&lt;/em&gt; at three times the rate of your sustainable cadence, you need to determine the source of the process problem. Some potential areas to consider are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improper filtering or queue management of incoming items.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inadequate team capacity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not having enough queues, or not having the right &lt;em&gt;kind&lt;/em&gt; of queues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not enough resources to process the queues within the expected cycle time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Invisible roadblocks or process issues in hand-offs from one queue to the next.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't an exhaustive list, but it's a place to start. Feeling like you're not making progress is very different from actually not making progress. It's up to your team to determine which situation you're in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Evaluating Progress in Kanban Projects&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're running an agile project, as opposed to a continuous process such as making cars, then your project should have a finite number of user stories and a set of defined milestones. Part of your feedback loop ought to include an assessment of team progress against this finite book of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project input queue (called the Product Backlog in Scrum) should be visible to the entire team. The team's progress in drawing down work remaining ought to be visible to the team, too. If the team is feeling discouraged, then raising the visibility and transparency of the input queue may help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, note that if your input queue is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; finite, then you either have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A continuous process, rather than a project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Changing scope or requirements for the project that may have gotten out of hand.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Visibility will help here, too. It exposes a process problem that the team can address. Being able to address process problems empowers a team, and empowered teams rarely feel an ongoing sense of futility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T10:46:34.690" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="452" CreationDate="2013-08-28T17:03:30.623" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the best ways to avoid micro-managing is to first realize that by micro managing you are turning yourself into a human bottleneck. Nothing will happen without you, and your productive time will be sucked away doing things and solving problems for others which they should have learned to solve on their own a long while ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you realize this, the question &lt;em&gt;&quot;how can I get others to learn how to solve their own problems?&lt;/em&gt;&quot; becomes the leading question. From that moment on, you need to make time for your people to learn new skills, and that, coupled with a &quot;I'll coach you to solve your own problems&quot; attitude, is what will make them able to solve their own problems (aka &quot;self organizing&quot;). Along the way you will need to confront unrealistic deadlines, remove commitments, and confront issues you might have been avoiding-by-micro-managing head on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jerry Weinberg wrote &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Management, done right, is a very tough job&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was absolutely right.&#xA;I would read his book &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B004OEINB6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Managing Teams Congruently&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also will shamelessly add that I've &lt;a href=&quot;http://TeamLeadSkills.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;written about this process in the book Notes to a Software Team Leader&lt;/a&gt; . I wrote the book I wish I had when I was just starting out leading teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6834" LastEditorUserId="6834" LastEditDate="2014-03-08T07:27:25.983" LastActivityDate="2014-03-08T07:27:25.983" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="92" CreationDate="2013-08-28T18:09:25.753" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I made a video about this called &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://5whys.com/blog/video-ten-mistakes-software-team-leaders-make.html&quot;&gt;ten mistakes team leaders make&lt;/a&gt;&quot; but it applies here as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not recognizing the needs of the team from the current leader. For example if the team is required to be self organizing, but do not have the skills to solve their own problems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fear of delegation. (micro management)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fear of engagement. Fearing confronting people and talking about the real issues iwth upper management, or your team members.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Placating. Telling others what they want to hear (&quot;yes, we can make that deadline&quot; even when you can't)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Being Irrelevant. Being away in meetings, playing clown, or not being involved.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Being Super Reasonable. Assuming that what is in your head is fully in the heads of others. That everyone understands exactly what you mean, even if you wrote it in three sentences in an email.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Blaming. Even in your head. Telling the story for the other side without actually talking to them (an example of fearing engagement)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ignoring Influence Forces. Not knowing what makes people behave the way they do, and what you could change to affect behavior is a big piece of the puzzle.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fear of Assertiveness. I see that a lot in scandinavia for example.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perpetuating non commitment. For example leaving a meeting without everyone knowing what they are going to do and by when. Not using a commitment driven language (we could vs. I will, for example)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6834" LastEditorDisplayName="user4469" LastEditDate="2013-10-14T19:04:06.830" LastActivityDate="2013-10-14T19:04:06.830" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-08-28T18:09:25.753" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9806" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-29T02:38:30.723" Score="2" ViewCount="2199" Body="&lt;p&gt;Who are the stakeholder of the software requirement specification? My UI designer keeps pressing us for the program flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought the designer should be giving us what should be included on each page. It seems like like there is an overlap of roles here. Please enlighten me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6835" LastActivityDate="2013-08-30T06:06:58.580" Title="Stakeholder of SRS" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="92" CreationDate="2013-08-29T04:35:35.947" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think one of the biggest problems is not having a disciplined approach to risk management.  It is not a well publicized area of PM, but it can have a big impact on project success.  even a very &lt;a href=&quot;https://tasktrakz.appspot.com/blog/how_to_create_a_basic_risk_management_plan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;simple risk management plan&lt;/a&gt; which just takes a few hours may avoid all sorts of problems down the road.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is even more true for new project managers than experienced ones, as they are not at all familiar yet with everything that can go wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6836" LastActivityDate="2013-08-29T04:35:35.947" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-08-29T04:35:35.947" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9806" CreationDate="2013-08-29T06:53:40.107" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What should appear on the page is not only a designer's task. Other roles will also have to step-in. Depending on the type of team-members one has in the team, this is supported by Business Analysts, few Developers, of course Designers and Client Representatives who have a say in the page design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There could be a requirement to follow certain design approaches or layouts or color-combination, et al. which the designer cannot decipher on her own. If your designer is pushing for program flow, she seems right to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Designing pages without being able to see their interconnection, if any or the big-picture and the users' context may lead to a bad design. Given a proper program flow, your designers would be in a better position to give you a usable design which may need lesser changes later on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6783" LastActivityDate="2013-08-29T06:53:40.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9809" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-29T09:53:52.600" Score="2" ViewCount="399" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a web developer in a small web design studio (15-20 employees). It was founded back in 2005 and since that time we've made over 700 different sites (~500 projects, ~300 clients). I started working here in 2011, so I had not participated in any discussions over decisions to use any PM tools. Here's what we have now:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A pile of tables filled with information about domains, hosts, hosting accounts, domain accounts, FTP access, admin panel access, etc. All this information is presented in quite a messy way on a local website.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A small CRM made for internal use; to some extends it is capable of time tracking, global &quot;task&quot; tracking, it stores project-client relations, basic project information and monthly money flows.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Redmine, which is used as a bug tracker for some of the projects.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One shared mailbox.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problems are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We still have to maintain websites that we made several years ago (not all of them, hopefully, but still this can not be neglected). Some of them smell. Some require secret knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Many projects have a huge backlog, it is not stored anyhow except mail history/documents; e. g. you can't tell precisely, whether local and testing versions are synced (without a file manager). You can hardly tell who designed the frontend, who programmed the backend; to learn that, you have to spend some time searching.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An enormous load of important information is stored by mailserver, and messages are not assigned anyhow to projects/clients/issues in internal CRM/Redmine.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The workflow is not yet stable and I guess it never was. Some sites have a precise spec, some do not; I guess, only a couple of them have VCS and 10-20 have passed the testing stage. Most of the testing often was done by clients themself, which is awfully bad.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is a lot of SEO information associated with almost every site; we have a few interfaces to manage cross-links and seo pages, but it was &lt;strong&gt;never&lt;/strong&gt; something neat. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now we have faced all these problems, as it gets more stressful to work with old sites. I don't have any &lt;em&gt;big&lt;/em&gt; hopes that one system can solve all these problems (&lt;strong&gt;almost certainly&lt;/strong&gt; it will even get worse). But I believe that bird by bird all this mess can be puzzled out and organized. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Strategies, products and workflows are welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6839" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T20:31:10.487" Title="Advice needed: best project management solution for a small web studio" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9809" CreationDate="2013-08-29T11:51:22.843" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have had really good luck corralling some legacy projects, as well as new and on-going projects with Microsoft SharePoint and a Microsoft Project Server. without knowing your budget, and feelings towards Microsoft I can't say definitively that this solution will work for you. however, for most of your points these solutions should work for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We still have to maintain websites that we made several years ago&#xA;  (not all of them, hopefully, but still this can not be neglected).&#xA;  Some of them smell. Some require secret knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SharePoint allows you to set security for documents pretty easily to address the secret knowledge issue specifically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many projects have a huge backlog, it is not stored anyhow except mail&#xA;  history/documents; e. g. you can't tell precisely, whether local and&#xA;  testing versions are synced (without a file manager). You can hardly&#xA;  tell who designed the frontend, who programmed the backend; to learn&#xA;  that, you have to spend some time searching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Version Control is the core of SharePoint&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An enormous load of important information is stored by mailserver, and&#xA;  messages are not assigned anyhow to projects/clients/issues in&#xA;  internal CRM/Redmine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, SharePoint is perfect for this task, both in tracking documents and assigning tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The workflow is not yet stable and I guess it never was. Some sites&#xA;  have a precise spec, some do not; I guess, only a couple of them have&#xA;  VCS and 10-20 have passed the testing stage. Most of the testing often&#xA;  was done by clients themself, which is awfully bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is where a Project Server will work well for you, allowing both tracking of responsibilities and monitoring progress&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is a lot of SEO information associated with almost every site;&#xA;  we have a few interfaces to manage cross-links and seo pages, but it&#xA;  was never something neat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another strong point for SharePoint, setting up specific SP sites for each project/site will allow you to assign tasks and organize the whole project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In closing I'd add that I came late to Microsoft's solutions, and have only been using them for the past 3 years, but I've found that they worked really well for my team, and for me personally. The best thing to do if you want to go down this road is to contact a Microsoft partner and work out an RFQ, because unless you have someone experienced Microsoft implementations on your team you will be hard pressed to have an easy time going live. It's worth doing it correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3090" LastActivityDate="2013-08-29T11:51:22.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9272" CreationDate="2013-08-29T12:13:25.690" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The option to sync a task list from Project 2013 to SharePoint is only available in Project Professional.  If the user has installed Project 2013 standard, the option is not there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Project 2013 Professional the command is File &gt; Share, Sync with SharePoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To check the Project version installed, File &gt; Account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2013-08-29T12:13:25.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="125" CreationDate="2013-08-29T12:22:13.510" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Considering the way the question is labelled, I would answer that it's possible, but not mandatory for a project to be successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A PM may be a resource if the project is small enough so that PM is not a full time job (eg : be their own BA, own dev, own tester, etc...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend a junior PM not to be a resource in the team, to avoid the firefighter bias of &quot;I didn't update my risk charter or computed my budget because I was busy fixing an issue in the project&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also pros and cons of managing a project comprised of people doing a job we've already done ourselves as resource :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PROS :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you &quot;know&quot; what is going on, that gives the PM a better sense of risk appreciation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PM gets far greater insights in term of estimates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PM is less dependent on resources to take decisions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CONS :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it's awfully difficult not to micro manage : delegation is about setting goals, not the way to achieve them. And having achieved them before, it's hard not to have a strong opinion on HOW to reach them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;firefighting : when an issue arise, it's harder to stay away from it and let the project team do its job&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;when managing junior resources, or part time resources with limited availability, they may get the sense that it's OK if they don't deliver as the PM is knowledgeable enough to step up and do it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I sense in the question that there is some challenge about the legitimacy of the person claiming PM role to do so, and for this, the answer is quite easy :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if there is no management involved in this, then it should be a consensus among your team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if there are external people involved, there should be some sort of governance defining who appoints the PM : it can be your manager, rules such as &quot;the person deadling with the customer is the PM&quot;, etc...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2275" LastActivityDate="2013-08-29T12:22:13.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9725" CreationDate="2013-08-29T12:53:57.407" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a suggestion - have you considered using partial baselines - working with a more 'rolling wave' approach?  Create the baseline for selected tasks before you start work on the tasks, later tasks which may still have a high degree of uncertainty are not baselined until the estimates are within a agreed upon range of probability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creating multiple copies of the file won't really help.  You can use the &quot;Compare Project Versions&quot; feature but you will quickly run out of options there - you cannot compare 9 different versions of the file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2013-08-29T12:53:57.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8214" CreationDate="2013-08-29T13:29:12.343" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The hierarchical relationship between a Product backlog and sprint backlog is caused by the iteration configuration in your timeline (by making sprint iterations children of the release iteration). Each timeline can have one Backlog iteration (that would normally be associated with the Product Backlog). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't think of any advantages to making the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quickscrum.com/Kernel/frmFAQ.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum Backlog Tool&lt;/a&gt; a parent iteration. By associating it with the timeline as the defined Backlog iteration, it gets some special status. Adding it to the iteration hierarchy probably just crufts things up (you'll have more layers to navigate when picking an iteration, for example). It may also cause issues with roll-up displays in the plans -- you may now see roll-ups into the Product Backlog, which is not its purpose and may make it harder to work with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6842" LastActivityDate="2013-08-29T13:29:12.343" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9806" CreationDate="2013-08-29T15:01:32.660" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is that there may well be overlap in interests, which is manifesting itself into an overlap of roles. More likely it is a miscommunication about the order of delivery of products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now for the longer answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few different buckets of stakeholders. Depending on who you talk to the number and labels for the buckets varies, but generally speaking you have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Customers/End Users.&lt;/strong&gt; This includes whoever will take a product and use them operationally.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Producers.&lt;/strong&gt; This includes whoever actually makes a product (software, document, etc) for delivery to the customer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Interested Third Parties.&lt;/strong&gt; This is a catch-all and includes those that support and oppose the project for one reason or another but don't fit into the other buckets.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A key thing to remember is that particular people/organizations/entities can shift between buckets as a project progresses, and there will almost always be more than one in a given bucket at a given time... and depending on the context one person could be in more than one bucket at the same time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, the UI designer sees himself as being in the &quot;Customer&quot; bucket, expecting to receive a program flow prior to developing the UI. You see him as being a &quot;Producer&quot;, delivering you requirements, presumably so that you can work out the program flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think what you need to do is sit down and work through your product flow. This is similar to a work flow, but documents which products are needed to develop other products. To do this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Develop a product break-down structure (PBS) to define all the pieces that go into the product(s) that your project will generate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Determine which components of the PBS are necessary to produce other components.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Document these in a flow diagram to help visualize the relationships.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have the product flow together it should be relatively straight-forward to figure out who is a customer and who is a producer for each deliverable. This will help avoid misunderstandings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-08-29T15:01:32.660" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9819" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-29T16:19:33.233" Score="3" ViewCount="325" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently working as a maths teacher at a small tutorial college, which offers one-on-one tuition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are around a dozen tutors and a dozen students at any one time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently timetabling is done in an arcane way;  the week is divided into 5 x 8 slots,  so there is one Microsoft word template showing this table.  Then the secretary creates one copy for each student and one copy for each teacher and fills all the slots in by hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that every lesson has to get written into two separate documents, one for the student and one for the teacher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that it is possible for things to get out of sync.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also means doing it at all is a logistical nightmare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone recommend a sane solution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been looking through timetabling software, and everything I've seen is far too complicated, or at least far more complicated than anything the school could possibly require.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's small enough that everything could be done by hand, i.e. no need for some intelligent timetabling algorithm, no need for any of that complexity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering whether to look at creating something out of Microsoft Access that is capable of exporting a word document containing the timetable for each student and teacher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Requirement would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a table of students; each student arrives on a certain day and leaves on a certain day,  they have x maths lessons, y chemistry lessons, z english lessons, but I think it's probably best just to have a text field into which their requirements can be entered&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a table of tutors; each tutor has a list of subjects they are willing to teach, but I think this could also be just entered into a text field.  each tutor also needs to be able to mark off times or days that they are unavailable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;for each week, every student and every tutor needs a timetable.  adding a lesson in the student's timetable should make it appear at the right location in the tutor's timetable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;when adding a lesson in the students timetable, the secretary should be able to visually see the availability of various tutors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I am hunting for at the moment is a range of viable options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6846" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-07-22T20:08:19.050" Title="Timetabling solution for small tutorial college" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;process-engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3414" CreationDate="2013-08-29T16:26:52.507" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An example of SF relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Successor   activity - Night is settling down in Newyork for 12 hours&#xA;Predecessor activity - Daylight is rising high in Newyork for 12 hours&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is assumed that 12 hrs is the lead time of each activity, Successor continues for a duration of 12 hrs until the Predecessor wakes up on the verge of Completion of the Successor and proceeds for 12 hrs OR vice versa. This takes place in a Cyclic Process everyday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All Cyclic Processes formed by 2 activities ( One Successor and the other Predecessor) share SF Type relationship. This is a rare type of relationship utilized in Realtime Projects as majority Realtime Project Networks are having activities which have a Forward Pass or a Backward Pass but not cyclic in nature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6847" LastActivityDate="2013-08-29T16:26:52.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9819" CreationDate="2013-08-29T19:18:43.110" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fix your process problem, then look again at your available options for automating it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Don't Violate &quot;CodeGnome's Law&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8974/4271&quot;&gt;CodeGnome's Law&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you can't do it by hand, then you can't automate it. Automation is a tool to increase consistency, but it is not in itself a substitute for a well-defined process or process control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your current process violates this law because you describe the process as &quot;arcane&quot; and a &quot;logistical nightmare.&quot; It's not just that the process is error-prone; from your description, it sounds like the process is fundamentally broken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Fix Your Process, Then Pick a Tool&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, you should revisit your underlying assumptions about your scheduling requirements to validate that they are actually meeting real business needs. You should also re-evaluate &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; standardized tools won't meet your needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just as an example, consider the following. You say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the week is divided into 5 x 8 slots&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which to me sounds like you could use a calendar or day-planner and simply allocate slots for each day, such as eight 1-hour slots each weekday. You could even block out days and times that are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; available for appointments by drawing a line through them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that strategy works for you, then you can automate it. For example, Google Calendar allows you to &lt;a href=&quot;http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/introducing-appointment-slots-in-google.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;define appointment slots&lt;/a&gt;. You can also add recurring all-day events on the weekends, or recurring blocks of time outside of normal business hours, and mark them as &quot;busy.&quot; Other products like Microsoft Outlook also offer the ability to &lt;a href=&quot;http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/change-your-calendar-work-days-and-the-start-of-your-week-HA001230295.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;define business hours&lt;/a&gt; outside of which appointments can be automatically rejected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are a few examples of what you can do once you've redefined the problem. I realize that's easier said than done, but it's still an essential first step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2013-08-29T19:18:43.110" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9686" CreationDate="2013-08-29T23:52:48.923" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Moving to Scrum is hard as it is not as simple as having a team, the hard part is to get the team members to work together as a single unit (a team) and break the old habits of working in isolation.  Much easier said than actually done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the main reason we have short sprints and a retrospective, thus allowing the team to inspect on how they work together and look at ways to improve.  The Scrum Master should be looking out for these behavioural issues and bringing them up in retrospective, asking the team how they are going to change they way they work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are some but all common problems I see with new teams; they may or may not apply to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The team are thinking as job titles and not joint responsibility of getting done&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is no clear definition of done which drives the quality&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Teams are not self-organising and Scrum Masters or managers still try &lt;em&gt;control&lt;/em&gt; the team.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Teams don't learn to inspect and adapt, but simply circle the same problems&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Testers believe they are the only ones responsible for quality control&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Scrum Masters don't look for weaknesses and opportunity to improve, then present them to the team; asking the team how they will fix it&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Team members have not been explained Scrum&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tooling is often poor in many companies which impedes the teams ability to adopt good practices&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Initially Scrum will highlight many issues, but many get ignored&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Rookie Scrum masters don't recognise the difference between good and bad changes as they have not learnt the hard lessons.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bringing in Scrum into a company requires so strong coaching by skilled and experienced professionals.  Organisational change is a different kettle of fish and should not be done without the right experience.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5634" LastActivityDate="2013-08-29T23:52:48.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9729" CreationDate="2013-08-29T23:56:50.113" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Uhm, ask a PM how much time they think they would need to manage the project?  Then use that value and add more or less time if it shows otherwise.  Not rocket science and no formulas needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5634" LastActivityDate="2013-08-29T23:56:50.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9692" CreationDate="2013-08-30T00:02:21.683" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One can look at using relative estimation using points.  The are of estimation is more about consistency in estimation than accuracy.  If consistent, one can make a ratio adjustment (velocity) to achieve better accuracy.  However if not consistent, then ones accuracy is just a lucky guess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5634" LastActivityDate="2013-08-30T00:02:21.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9819" CreationDate="2013-08-30T00:03:41.780" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scheduling is actually an NP-hard problem. That's a fancy computer science way of saying there's no way to produce the &lt;em&gt;best&lt;/em&gt; solution for any non-trivial schedule before the heat death of the universe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of algorithms that will render &quot;good enough&quot; timetables in much shorter times. The commercial and opensource scheduling programs do that for you. They're written by the PhDs who keep up with the scheduling algorithm literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm saying is: yes, you can develop your own software. But I think you will be better off either delegating scheduling to tutors (&quot;here's a shared calendar, sort yourselves out&quot;) or picking a scheduling package. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5319" LastActivityDate="2013-08-30T00:03:41.780" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9809" CreationDate="2013-08-30T00:12:55.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problems you are facing is what we call technical debt.  In the past when those projects were done there were time pressures and things left undone and not worrying about the future maintenance of the products.  Now you have to deal with those systems, but have lost the original context and finding it hard to deal with them.  On top of this, the technologies you are now working with have likely changed a lot and you do things completely differently as you did when you first started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing to do is &lt;strong&gt;Stop creating technical debt&lt;/strong&gt; for new projects and make sure you give sufficient time to ensure the product is maintainable in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using a combination of several things helps protect the future of the product,  these include&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Using an agile methodology to manage work, e.g. Scrum, Kanban or Lean&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Introducing TDD practices with unit testing into your code base to retain intent.  This will require some level of mastery to make sure you retain the Intellectual Property in the tests.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Having good ALM tooling with source control, continuous integration and deployment really helps keep a system in good shape.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Learn new development approaches and principles that help make highly testable web sites&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Constantly seek to improve the way you do things and learn from your past mistakes&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Focus on quality&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't take short cuts as they will come back and bite you &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5634" LastActivityDate="2013-08-30T00:12:55.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9806" CreationDate="2013-08-30T06:06:58.580" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stakeholders are those people who directly or indirectly involved in the project, who positively or negatively affected by the performance and completion of the project. &#xA;The first thing you should do is to make a PBS through which you can easily identify the possible outcomes required for a project. You have to break the complete project in the smallest components so that you can get as much details as possible. After determining all those things go for designing and coding part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6852" LastActivityDate="2013-08-30T06:06:58.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9819" CreationDate="2013-08-30T18:29:55.557" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Indeed, a flexible shared calendar could help.  Check out Teamup Calendar, teamup.com.  Some of the setup work you'd need to do include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add one calendar for each tutor and each student.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Limit the time range from e.g. 9am to 5pm, hide weekends, all configurable in the Settings. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teamup allows unlimited number of access links with cutom access rights, which calendar to be shared/visible or not shared/invisible.  This is very important in your case:&#xA;1) Create one link for each tutor where she or he has the modifying right to mark unavailable days and time slots. 2) Create one link for each subject with all calendars of tutors who are willing to teach that subject, and of students who need lessons in that subject.  Adding lessons would be&#xA;done on these subject links/views: Currently you need to add each lesson twice, in the tutor's calendar and in the student's.  Teamup has planned to allow one event to be assigned to multiple calendars, that'd be ideal but not available yet.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;3) More links can be created for individuals with different responsibilities&#xA;or needs.  The admin has the overview of the entire schedule.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There might be more details to work out.  Feel free to email support@teamup.com for assistance.  Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer:  I work for Teamup responsible for product management.  Always happy to learn user input what's important and how to make the tool better!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6857" LastEditorUserId="6857" LastEditDate="2013-08-31T20:38:40.483" LastActivityDate="2013-08-31T20:38:40.483" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9832" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-01T15:23:51.030" Score="0" ViewCount="258" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can see some project managers who worked as engineers and programmers in the past suddenly device impractical and insane plans when they become managers. Do they lose sanity even after worked so many years as engineers and programmers??&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do some stop thinking in programmers shoes when they become managers even though they were programmers for more than a decade,.?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6861" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2013-09-16T12:28:13.900" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T12:28:22.040" Title="How can new project managers avoid the pressure of creating schedules that meet deadlines but are not realistic?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9832" CreationDate="2013-09-01T16:02:23.463" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;By &quot;impractical,&quot; I am assuming you mean an aggressive / optimistic cost and or schedule to complete the project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other objectives and problems with which managers must cope that the programmers, engineers, trades, laborers, and technicians do not.  These other things create a perspective on the business of which others may not even be aware.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) If you're selling services, you have to win the project.  Estimates live on a range of possible results.  Estimating on the fat side of that range is a nice, safe place to be and puts a lot of likelihood in your hands that you can achieve the scope within that fat budget and schedule.  However, fat is expensive and you are likely to lose the work.  Being practical may mean no work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) There are a host of estimating biases that a manager needs to sift through.  Optimism bias, anchoring, recency, selective to name a few.  This makes what is practical and impractical much less obvious.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3)  As a manager, you learn quickly how amazing it is to watch the team meet a challenge.  Your team screams it is going to take 3 months to finish this task; you challenge them with 1.5 months and watch the team either hit it or come very very close.  This attacks this notion of Parkinson's Law or Student Syndrome, where a long runway means every inch will be used before takeoff, for no other reason than it is there.  Forcing a constraint on a high performing team enables innovation and problem solving they would not have otherwise even tried.  And those innovations will be used next time and that will set your team even further apart from your competitors.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is another way of thinking, being a manager and leader.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-09-01T16:02:23.463" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9834" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9840" CreationDate="2013-09-01T18:46:02.743" Score="6" ViewCount="7317" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are about to start working with Kanban instead of Scrum for our product development. We have identified that we will ahve the following flow:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Backlog -&gt; Analyze -&gt; Development - Test&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nothing strange there. For stories that are small from the beginning there is no problem. But what happens when we have epics and in Analyze split that story? Some sub-stories will move to the Development but some might go back to the backlog. How do we than measure lead-time when we are moving some stories forward and some backward? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another dimenson of the problem is that different stories will have different size and we want to have small stories and than we break them down in small parts. But the stakeholder is more interested in lead-time for the whole story. He want to now that if his epic goes to the Analyze column, how long will it take before the whole epic is complete?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5452" LastActivityDate="2015-06-15T09:21:42.103" Title="How to handle epics in Kanban?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9686" CreationDate="2013-09-01T19:23:30.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Expanding on what @NightMan and @Nikhil Gupta wrote in their answers: &#xA;it might be very counter-intuitive to you and your team, but &lt;strong&gt;bring them all together&lt;/strong&gt; as one team and work on one Sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it will be rough at the beginning, but you will build &lt;strong&gt;sense of common goal&lt;/strong&gt; and most of all you will start to improve your organization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of example areas that will change/improve: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;QA&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problem: &lt;em&gt;we cannot do this during the same Sprint as we're done coding 10 minutes before Sprint ends&lt;/em&gt;. &#xA;Solution: Introduce test automation, developers and testeres from the very beginning of coding of particular Backlog Item also &lt;strong&gt;automate testing&lt;/strong&gt; as there is hardly any way to get enough time to do testing during the Sprint. Long term you will have huge productivity benefit out of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Administrators/DBAs&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problem: We cannot put our DBA as part of Scrum team, he/she is &quot;shared resource&quot;.&#xA;Solution: Include them even partially in the team and let them pair with other team members, over time they will start to pick up part of their skillset and won't be relying that much of one particular person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line is: get them as one team, try it and you'll be surprised how much you will benefit of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3501" LastActivityDate="2013-09-01T19:23:30.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9834" CreationDate="2013-09-01T20:36:50.713" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without a clear understanding of the epic acceptance criteria it would be very difficult to determine the completeness of it. Therefore, the first action after committing to develop the epic (the moment where you should begin to measure lead time) should be to define those criteria. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the splitting issue, IME you can use some size estimations techiques to define a suitable range of actionable sizes within a defined timeframe (for an epic a maximun of a month should work).  I used &lt;a href=&quot;http://agileworks.blogspot.com/2008/01/team-estimation-game-by-steve-bockman.html?m=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://agileworks.blogspot.com/2008/01/team-estimation-game-by-steve-bockman.html?m=1&lt;/a&gt; for portfolio slicing with success. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6864" LastActivityDate="2013-09-01T20:36:50.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4571" CreationDate="2013-09-02T06:13:57.600" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest for you to ask yourself what you're trying to achieve and if status report is best way to do this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to have good visibility into progress, how about starting with something like Scrum or Kanban. Assuming that we're talking about software development Scrum is a very good start, if it's not software development, you try to employ Kanban. &#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Don't dismiss this idea&lt;/strong&gt; with &quot;I don't have time to any methodology&quot;. &lt;strong&gt;Both Kanban and Scrum are very easy to learn and start with&lt;/strong&gt;. Of course they are hard to master, but you'll get benefit in no time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of status reports, you'll get visual, transparent insight into what is going on with the team like below:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4Hvte.png&quot; alt=&quot;Sprint burndown chart (Scrum)&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or Kanban way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TW7pw.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Kanban board&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that's only start. You will probably get better sense of ownership and involvement from the team. I bet people hate these status report and they do not see them as something that is contributing value, therefore they will have tendency to put least possible effort into them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you would like to start with Scrum, here's good place to start: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Resources/What-is-Scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.scrum.org/Resources/What-is-Scrum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As per Kanban: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leankanbanuniversity.com/introducing-kanban&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.leankanbanuniversity.com/introducing-kanban&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Good luck!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3501" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T06:13:57.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9834" CreationDate="2013-09-02T06:42:50.750" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your process may be missing some intermediate queues in your work-flow, making estimates harder than they need to be. You may also need to work more closely with your stakeholders to decompose epics in order to provide meaningful estimates. And finally, you may need to provide your team and organization with more education about how estimates are performed in Kanban. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What Kanban Measures&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban measures a number of things very well. Some of the metrics Kanban helps teams measure include: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;System throughput.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Process cycle time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Average and optimal batch sizes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban works most efficiently when you have a consistent batch size because that optimizes system flow. High variability in the average size of your user stories will lead to unpredictability in the cadence of the iterations, making accurate estimation more difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Optimizing Estimates for Flow&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Kanban, scheduling estimates are typically based on two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How long it takes an average user story to be pulled through the system.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many stories, on average, can be pulled through the system in a given time period.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum provides explicit, fixed time-boxes into which work is scheduled. In contrast, Kanban provides continuous flow from input queues to output queues; there are no fixed time-boxes as such. This requires a slightly different world-view when providing estimates for specific features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Kanban Estimates in BDD Style&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if it were my team, I would provide the estimate in BDD style, making the calculations and assumptions explicit. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Given an average backlog of 20 items&#xA;  And an average story size of 2 story points&#xA;  And an average system throughput of 8 story points per week,&#xA;When asked for an estimate of how long it will take to complete a 21st story&#xA;Then the team would estimate that the story can be completed within three weeks.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Your Process May be Missing Some Queues&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User stories have a cycle time; epics don't, for the simple reason that &lt;em&gt;epics&lt;/em&gt; are never pulled into the system as Work-in-Progress. It's fine to put epics onto a backlog, but you must decompose them before they reach the WIP stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like your current process is missing a couple of important queues. I would suggest this work-flow instead:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Backlog -&gt; Analysis/Decomposition Queue -&gt; Ready Queue -&gt; Development WIP -&gt; Test WIP -&gt; Completed Work&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apply some sensible queue limits to the Analysis and Ready queues, so that you don't pull more from the backlog than you need. Respect your global WIP limits, but keep in mind that limits can be applied to columns and swim-lanes on your board, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T06:42:50.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9841" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9862" CreationDate="2013-09-02T07:39:38.190" Score="4" ViewCount="361" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was going through a &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/8686/6783&quot;&gt;question on PMSE&lt;/a&gt; when this question struck me. I have been working as a Project Manager for a software company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of our work we get from an agency. The agency in-turn gets that work from some other agency, which may get it from some other agency or the direct client. At the end of this chain there is always a direct client (of course). The following are the two modes in which we get work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We &amp;gt; Agency #1 &amp;gt; Agency #2 &amp;gt; Client&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We &amp;gt; Agency #1 &amp;gt; Agency #2 &amp;gt; Agency #3 &amp;gt; Client&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We had initially started following Agile for development, but we soon realized that it is not working for us. The reason being for each sprint, if we have any clarification required or blocked items to be taken care of, it traverses the route from us till the end client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under such situation the action items move up in the chain depending upon the priorities of the involved agencies or the clients. Many times, we don't get updates in one single sprint, it spreads to 2-3 sprints to get updates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As and when we get work items, we analyze and estimate them and send them for approval which may also take weeks or days depending on the availability of the agencies' respective Project / Account Manager. The same applies for approving finished tasks, which is relatively quicker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We know we cannot fully follow Waterfall like models as-is. We have been thinking of formulating and following a blend of Waterfall, Agile and V-model to make our lives easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the level of dependency that we have on various stakeholders, what overall development process shall we adopt?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6783" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2013-09-06T13:16:42.800" Title="Development process in a highly dependent environment" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9841" CreationDate="2013-09-02T08:45:17.523" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't have a dependency on multiple stakeholders; you have a &lt;em&gt;process failure&lt;/em&gt; at the interface between you and Agency #1. Shopping for alternative methodologies won't fix the process problem, but addressing it directly might.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Re-Define Your Stakeholders&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your description, you don't have any direct contact with the end user. While they may be stakeholders in some abstract sense, from your description you have exactly one client interface: Agency #1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that this agency may have stakeholders of its own (and so on down the line) should be irrelevant to defining your communications interface with Agency #1. If you aren't allowed to communicate directly with Agency #2, Agency #3, or the end user, then they should be excluded as stakeholders from your internal process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Re-Assess Your Process&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a number of ways of dealing with excessive delays in communications. Some examples include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define timely communications in your contracting process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adjust your sprint length for each project, based in part on the cycle time for communications.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Articulate the need for closer engagement to your counterpart at Agency #1.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure that communications delays are a visible cost to the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure that communications delays are a visible cost to Agency #1, since they are the company that pays &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; company.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't paper over a fundamental process problem by switching methodologies. There's no silver bullet; you must address this issue head-on. The project management framework you choose isn't really relevant to solving the problem at hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T08:45:17.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9845" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9850" CreationDate="2013-09-02T19:04:01.607" Score="13" ViewCount="2551" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm new to project management. I'm working in a software company. We have a team of 5 members. I was a developer too 4 months ago and was promoted to the project manager position. In my 4 months of experience, I found it really difficult to manage the team and the project and I'm struggling to learn the necessary skills. I hope I'll learn it very soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two problems I am facing. One issue is that some of the team members are wasting time during working hours, such as using Facebook or having long call on mobile phone (even for hours). I can block Facebook and restrict use of mobile but I feel that it won't create a healthy environment in the organisation. I just want the team to stick to their plan but this never happened. I have planned to install Redmine to plan everything and make the team to update the status. Is there anything to do other than that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am never able to deliver as planned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second problem is that I was a developer who got promoted amongst the 4 developers. Everytime I take some hard actions, I get into a heated argument which I wish to avoid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My boss is living abroad in another country and I'm here to manage the team and project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please provide me some tips to streamline my job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6872" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2014-04-17T08:59:06.973" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T13:11:09.460" Title="Unable to control team and deliverables" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9841" CreationDate="2013-09-03T00:56:35.153" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am inclined to think that more than a process change your team needs a relationship change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you guys need to get &quot;closer&quot; to the eventual client. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about building up a case upstream on &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Escalation - highlight the impact the current process is having i.e delays in delivering , clarification,sluggish communication  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Shorter feedback loops - Coming up with ideas on expediting communication channels with the client (e.g.  daily/weekly virtual stand ups/conference calls directly with the client/decision makers ?) .&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Push back - Advocating not picking up stories/committing where there are too many unknowns. This will further highlight the pain that you guys are experiencing&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure not what the political culture is in your relationship with those agencies so you would need to be careful with balancing this diplomatically so that the agencies dont get threatened or feel ostracized. So, the message needs to reinforced that this is strictly about improving communication &amp;amp; facilitating quicker decision making.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T00:56:35.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9845" CreationDate="2013-09-03T06:13:16.060" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to stop and ask yourself what are the reasons for such team's behavior. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that you're probably looking quick win and easy answer, but what you're describing is a complex problem and might be caused by many different things: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;unrealistic timeline&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;poor quality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;bad office space (yes!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;micromanagement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;low skills of coworkers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what you've put in your question first thing that comes to mind is that the project timeline is completely unrealistic and people feel disconnected from it. &#xA;A general rule of thumb is that people that are supposed to do the work, should estimate it, so when you will be building the project timeline it will be their estimate and they will feel committed and responsible for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or maybe your people do not like the quality of the work they're doing at your company? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I would recommend you one book&lt;/strong&gt;, that is probably the best book on how to manage software development team and keep them engaged:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00DY5A8X2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Peopleware&lt;/strong&gt; by Tom Demarco &amp;amp; Timothy R. Lister&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below are a couple of quotes to get you interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;One of seven false hopes of software management:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Belief:&lt;/strong&gt; Your people will work better if you put them under a lot of pressure. &#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Response:&lt;/strong&gt; They won’t–they’ll just enjoy it less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;One about trying to &quot;mobilize&quot; team:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even if kicking people in the backside did boost their short term productivity, it might not be useful in the long run: There is nothing more discouraging to any worker than the sense that his own motivation is inadequate and has to be “supplemented” by that of the boss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;And what your job is:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The manager’s function is not to make people work, but to make it possible for people to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I strongly recommend you to read this book, it touches many different aspects of how to run a team and what makes a great team. It should significantly help you especially that you're new to your role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3501" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2014-04-17T10:46:44.033" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T10:46:44.033" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9845" CreationDate="2013-09-03T06:57:53.437" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One issue is that some of the team members are wasting time during working hours&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can imagine that those guys are not easy to cooperate with. The reasons of such behavior may come from outside (boring tasks, private live problems) or from &quot;inside&quot; of a team member ;) (like laziness).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to involve the team in being responsible for the work they do, also for organizing the way they work. For example, make a weekly meeting when you will discuss what you (team) can improve and what they (developers) do not like in their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look also at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-up_meeting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;daily stand-up meetings&lt;/a&gt; which are for example in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28development%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt;. Each developer says on it what he achieved a day before. Those who spent time on Facebook will hopefully start to feel ashamed that they do not have so good results as the others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do all those things in a team spirit, trying to avoid treating them like from a higher position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Easy to say, huh? ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6324" LastEditorUserId="6324" LastEditDate="2013-09-04T20:28:08.697" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T20:28:08.697" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9841" CreationDate="2013-09-03T09:00:21.900" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you considered &lt;strong&gt;Kanban&lt;/strong&gt;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is Lean,  pull process that looks like good fit for your situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what you can do and how you can benefit from Kanban: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Map &lt;strong&gt;Value Stream&lt;/strong&gt; and make it explicit to the stakeholders (agencies) how you cooperate with them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduce &lt;strong&gt;Work In Progress Limit&lt;/strong&gt; and show where bottlenecks are - agencies will see how much it costs them to have you blocked&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Track &lt;strong&gt;Cycle Time&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Lead Time&lt;/strong&gt; to show how much time you spend to items and how much you wait for sth (e.g. requirements) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Invite stakeholder (agency representatives) into Kanban &lt;strong&gt;Operations Review&lt;/strong&gt; where you discuss your whole pull system and use data provided in above points to optimize system. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban is about optimization, but even more importantly it's about greater predictability. After some time you would get better data on average time to complete one item. &#xA;Armed with those you could try to influence your stakeholders -&gt; agencies you cooperate with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's good Kanban link for you to start: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leankanbanuniversity.com/introducing-kanban&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.leankanbanuniversity.com/introducing-kanban&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3501" LastEditorUserId="6608" LastEditDate="2013-09-04T11:37:52.950" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T11:37:52.950" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9845" CreationDate="2013-09-03T10:46:44.393" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer will focus on the type of authority you have and the process of teaming.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the newly minted leader of this team, on which you served as a peer, you have an interesting dynamic at play where the others are likely to test your authority and abilities.  This can be a natural consequence of the change and trying to figure out whether you have the ability to lead them but can also be a consequence of being jealous for not being chosen ahead of you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People naturally gravitate to a leader; even known leaders will defer power and authority to someone who is in a better position to lead.  Review &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_and_Raven%27s_five_bases_of_power&quot;&gt;French and Raven's Five Forms of Power&lt;/a&gt;.  Understand that, while most effective leaders use what they called Expert and Referent power bases, there are times when the others are needed as they are not without benefits.  Obviously, the more you are perceived as this expert or referent type of leader, the better, and you need to move in that direction if you are able.  The bottom line, the responsibility is yours and yours alone to build the respect as their leader.  You may have to play the punishment card, including removing and replacing team members, to help gain this respect, but do so carefully and with consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second process you need to understand is the teaming process.  A change occurred: you were promoted to the leadership role.  With any change on any team, you can see a quick degradation in team maturity, where the team's behavior begins to appear as if they are new to each other.  You need to respond with the management type techniques that are consistent with a new team.  There are a ton of teaming exercises you can deploy--many with questionable efficacy--but one of the things you do for a new team, a team that is forming and storming, is increased oversight and control--those things that look a bit like micromanaging.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may seem counterintuitive since we have all been taught that micromanaging is bad.  But rarely is something bad all the time in all cases.  And it has been quite a disservice to teach such a thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to have a higher control on the team's behavior and actions as it grows in maturity, and then release those things as you see evidence of maturity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My last thought is around your comment on unproductive time.  I would suggest that this is more about you than them, i.e., it is quite uncomfortable to see your team waste time and comes across quite disrespectful of you.  Get over it.  Employees are generally productive around 50% to maybe 70% of their day.  I believe that to be a normal range.  Trying to grow that can certainly be beneficial but I do not think it is sustainable.  In other words, increase work tempo temporarily then allow it to return to normal levels.  Much of the unproductive time can be exploited to help the teaming process, simply by way of socializing and getting to know each other and getting to care about each other.  These are variables to a high performing team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more thing:  &quot;...heated arguments.&quot;  Arguments and debates are good.  Conflict is good.  This is how high performing teams form solutions.  When your team gets there, this is not something you want to avoid.  This is something you want to facilitate.  You may need to squash this now because of where your team is, but remove this notion of avoidance.  Replace with encourage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2013-09-03T11:05:16.910" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T11:05:16.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9851" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-03T11:08:18.860" Score="30" ViewCount="47667" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that user stories in Scrum are measured with a Modified Fibonacci sequence (&lt;code&gt;0.5, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40...&lt;/code&gt;). Why does Scrum &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; use &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_number&quot;&gt;Fibonacci numbers&lt;/a&gt; to estimate stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6875" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-09-03T19:05:12.733" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T05:12:36.480" Title="Why do Scrum user stories only use the Fibonacci series?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9851" CreationDate="2013-09-03T11:28:24.150" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;One main reason is to not have debates/estimates like: 19,20, 21, 23 Story Points. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In agile estimation is usually about comparing &lt;strong&gt;relative size&lt;/strong&gt;, it's clear that 1 Story Point is significantly smaller than 10 Story Points, but 10 SP vs 9 SP is not much different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want to make sure that bigger numbers are &lt;strong&gt;rough&lt;/strong&gt; estimates and you're not sending to your stakeholders message that you know exactly how big item is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW: That's the reason you have &lt;strong&gt;20&lt;/strong&gt; instead of &lt;strong&gt;21&lt;/strong&gt; which is valid Fibonnaci sequence number. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Fibonacci series also better represents the fact that uncertainty grows proportionally with the size of the story. The differences between 1, 2 and 3 point stories are probably better understood than the differences between a 20 and a 40. This is reflected in the distance between story sizes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3501" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-09-14T05:12:36.480" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T05:12:36.480" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9702" CreationDate="2013-09-03T11:57:19.540" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;There isn't much of difference in recognition/acceptability of both certifications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One big difference is that to get &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Assessments/Professional-Scrum-Master-Assessments/PSM-I-Assessment&quot;&gt;Scrum.org Professional Scrum Master I&lt;/a&gt; &lt;strong&gt;you don't have to go to the training&lt;/strong&gt;. They offer &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Courses&quot;&gt;trainings&lt;/a&gt;, but they're optional. &#xA;You only need to pass online exam and you can even try out your knowledge for free in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Assessments/Open-Assessments/Scrum-Open-Assessment&quot;&gt;online assessment&lt;/a&gt;. Despite requirement of getting 85% on PSM I exam, it's &lt;strong&gt;very simple&lt;/strong&gt; and most of the questions are obvious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumalliance.org/certifications/practitioners/certified-scrummaster-%28csm%29&quot;&gt;scrumalliance.org Certified Scrum Master&lt;/a&gt;, their training is mandatory and for many years training was all it took to get certification. That's right: &lt;strong&gt;no exam&lt;/strong&gt;. So, the value of certification was next to nothing. Now it changed and you need to pass exam. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm holding both of these and attended both what I would recommend: if you're looking to get certification, &lt;strong&gt;go with Scrum.org PSM I&lt;/strong&gt; - you won't have to invest money in training. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to get to Scrum training, I would focus not on ScrumAlliance vs Scrum.org, but rather on specific trainer. Unfortunately both organizations have great and bad trainers and before investing money into Scrum training I would suggest asking someone for opinion on specific trainer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3501" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2013-09-03T14:40:34.390" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T14:40:34.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9851" CreationDate="2013-09-03T17:03:19.680" Score="32" Body="&lt;h2&gt;No Fibonacci Required&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While many agile practitioners have embraced a modified or unmodified Fibonacci sequence for story-point estimation, neither story points nor user stories are actually requirements of the Scrum methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you embrace the &lt;em&gt;practice&lt;/em&gt; of estimating with story-points and user stories, you can use any relative-sizing tools you want. Some examples I've seen in the field include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;T-shirt sizes (e.g. S, M, L, XL)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Traffic lights (green, yellow, red)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://coffeetea.about.com/od/coffeebasics/f/Starbucks-Sizes.htm&quot;&gt;Starbucks drink sizes&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;em&gt;demi&lt;/em&gt;, short, tall, &lt;em&gt;grande&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;venti&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;trenta&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simple sequences such as 1-5 or 1-10.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you decide to use story points, the key is to unmoor the points from time estimates. This helps to avoid &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring&quot;&gt;anchoring&lt;/a&gt;, and hopefully prevents estimates from being used improperly as a productivity-management metric rather than a planning or forecasting tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feel free to use whatever scale works for your team. However, I'd certainly recommend sticking with Mike Cohn's &lt;a href=&quot;http://store.mountaingoatsoftware.com/pages/faqs&quot;&gt;Planning Poker Fibonacci sequence&lt;/a&gt; unless you have a strong reason to do otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T17:03:19.680" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9845" CreationDate="2013-09-03T19:47:59.130" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my professional opinion, most of the problems you describe are the result of a perceptual problem on your end. They are probably exacerbated by misunderstanding the role of a project manager in your particular organization, and a failure to differente between &lt;em&gt;influence&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;authority&lt;/em&gt;. You need to engage more closely with your team and with your absentee management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Focus on Results&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[S]ome of the team members are wasting time during working hours, such as using Facebook or having long call on mobile phone[.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on results rather than on your perception of the team's level of utilization. It doesn't really matter how much time your developers spend on other activities &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; project objectives are being met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it's certainly possible that everyone on the team is a lazy bum milking the clock, you were a member of that team yourself until recently. If they (and you) were unproductive before, why would you expect that to change suddenly? If you felt like things were fine when you were a developer, it seems more likely that the change is one of perception because of your new responsibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Change Your Process&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your current process doesn't work. Some issues you've identified include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have absentee management.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You don't have buy-in from the developers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have a command-and-control management style.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your schedules are not realistic based on your current process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should re-evaluate all of these items, and I would strongly recommend evaluating them &lt;em&gt;with the whole team.&lt;/em&gt; Imposing project controls without buy-in will rarely get deliverables shipped on time because project controls are generally detective rather than corrective in nature. Effective project managers need to rely on soft skills, rather than wielding a big stick, to generate results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Senior Management is Responsible&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, senior management is solely responsible for managing the productivity of the team. They are responsible for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hiring the developers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Managing the developers (or not).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Placing you in the project management role.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Managing you (or not).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Choosing the way the organization interfaces with the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your job is fundamentally &lt;em&gt;informational&lt;/em&gt;. If you feel that the project is out of control, you need to &lt;strong&gt;provide project transparency and visibility&lt;/strong&gt; to senior management so they can take corrective action. If you really do have individual performance problems rather than process problems, then you need to &lt;strong&gt;refer personnel issues to line managers&lt;/strong&gt; for action. If you feel that you are out of your depth in your new role, then you need to &lt;strong&gt;be honest with &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; line manager&lt;/strong&gt; about that, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T19:47:59.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8869" CreationDate="2013-09-03T20:06:16.300" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I very highly recommend that you make sure that you get a dedicated project manager to manage the budget and the many other areas that seem to not be well recognized in the Scrum methodology.   The bulk of what used to be done by technical project managers is now just being pushed to me to do as a product manager/ product owner.  Budgets are a good example.  I am now requesting a full time technical project manager to do many of the activities that are being pushed on me by technology including budget management, risk and issue management for anything that isn't explicitly handled by a sprint, dependency management with other organizations that need sufficient lead-time and joint design,  all project type upward communication, discussions with finance about capitalizable vs non-capitalizable work, inter-project dependencies with other efforts going on at the company.  Plus there is a lot of work with marketing, sales, product collateral production folks, support desk ramp-up, . . . .that also need to be planned and accounted for.  In fact there have been weeks, where I barely had any time to look at requirements or what was produced because I was so busy with project management tasks.   We have been told by the technology team that this is now the role of product owners, but that is just not realistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6289" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T20:06:16.300" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9841" CreationDate="2013-09-04T14:33:42.213" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I take a different view to the other answers on here.  The problem here is, clear cut, project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fundamental constraints appear to be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Long lead times for work definition&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Long lead times for work clarification&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Long lead times for budget approval&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Long lead times for work acceptance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Long turn around time for defect reporting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now scrum will not work, because scrum is very dependent on quick turn around times for work acceptance / work clarification. Kanban will not work because the blocking tasks will all be blocked on client communications, so the development team cannot throw more resources at it to move the task along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what can be done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, improve the supply chain. Work with your customers to build trust to allow more direct customer &amp;lt;--&gt; development team communications when the conversations are about task definition, business rules.  These conversations should be restricted to the developers asking the end customer for technical information and technical decisions and supplying the responses back. Any information flow back to the customer should be handled through the supply chain (such as delays, costs, customer asking for supply of a perpetual motion machine or some other impossible task)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Build up a larger library of 'ready to go' or 'actionable' tasks.  Tasks where the work is defined, clearly understood by the developers and the customer is happy for that work to proceed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Schedule regular review meetings with the end customer for them to review current state of the work.  Whilst it may not be known when the meeting is arranged what work will be demonstrable, this creates the regular pulse of end customer feedback to the developers to keep their direction in line with their customers perceived needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, accept that at times work will be blocked because of customer communication delays. You can handle that internally by having work for other customers that can be scheduled, by taking a guess at what the customer will ask for whilst waiting for the answer - accepting that you could be throwing work away, or having staff on a contract basis so that you only pay them when you have work available (ohh hang on, that's what your customers have done...) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5372" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2013-09-04T17:04:21.783" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T17:04:21.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9845" CreationDate="2013-09-04T15:08:26.213" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Welcome to being promoted to the role of management of a failing project.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you were just a normal member of the development team, the project was failing. The previous project manager copped the blame and was sacked. They've looked around and made you the manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you have a short window to make a difference. It cannot be carry on as before, because otherwise the only thing that will change is that next time it's you that gets blamed and sacked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your only choice is to make a difference.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the difference you make will be catastrophic, the project will fail, you will be blamed..  err hang on, that was happening anyway. The point I'm making is that what ever decisions you have the authority to make are unlikely to make the situation substantially worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you will make an inspired difference, just like a magic wand, everything will be perfect, there will be 30% pay rises, large bonuses, share options...  err, thats not likely to happen either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In reality most choices you make will not make much difference&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing to remember is that when things are going wrong, it is important to make changes. Some changes will work better than others, but by making changes and monitoring the effects you can continue to do the things that work, and stop the bits that don't work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whilst each change on its own will not make much difference, a series of 1% changes over time will build up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What would I do as a first step?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, first of all, you cannot succeed without your team, but by the sounds of it, your team is not committed to the project, or possibly even to you as their leader. Assuming you have a little breathing room, and are not about to reach a major delivery date, with nothing to show I would focus on performing the role of a team manager to the best of my ability, ignoring the team output, work ethic and time keeping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the role of the team manager?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ahh, glad you asked. Whilst they have many duties, (usually the stuff that no developer would do even if you paid them), the key role is to make it as easy as possible for your developers to do their job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What things get in the way of developers on your team? Is the build tool chain a nightmare? Are the computers old and slow? Do they have too much office admin?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now here's the deal. Really, and its an absolute bargain. In exchange for you spending your time working to make their lives easier, all they need to do is to spend 5 minutes each day telling you what they did yesterday, and what they are going to do today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You get to hold them to account about why they are still doing something 3 days later that they thought would only take a few hours (can Joe spend 30 minutes having a look at that with you...), but also, you get to thank them for delivering on what they did yesterday too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over time, with the developers feeling good about making small daily achievements, and you making each day just slightly more productive, you might just turn the team around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5372" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2014-04-17T10:08:30.573" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T10:08:30.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9864" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-04T17:53:12.990" Score="1" ViewCount="454" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can we use Scrum or Kanban for smaller tasks or projects? Let's say that I have a small software project comprising of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Registration Form&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contact Form&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Admin Section&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then in the end my client said these details are partial. More details will be sent after 5 or 10 days. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My core question is: can we use Scrum and Kanban for this project or not? If not then why not? Please explain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2826" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-09-04T18:10:58.650" LastActivityDate="2013-09-08T23:15:46.113" Title="Is Scrum or Kanban only applicable to projects of larger size or projects with greater magnitude?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;process-scaling&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9864" CreationDate="2013-09-04T18:10:15.460" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Your Project is Iterative&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[I]n the end my client said these details are partial. More details will be sent after 5 or 10 days. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've just described the core use case for iterative development. You had what you &lt;em&gt;thought&lt;/em&gt; was a complete scope or set of requirements, but the requirements and deliverables will now change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scope_creep&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scope creep&lt;/a&gt; can sometimes be laid at the foot of poor scope management or a poorly-defined contracting process, but it happens so often that managing it well is a core &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;agile principle&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Use Project Frameworks for Projects, Not Tasks&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All project management processes incur overhead. The question you should be asking is whether the benefits of a formal project management process outweigh the costs of the framework's overhead. Scrum has &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8520/4271&quot;&gt;more overhead&lt;/a&gt; than people think; it's often worth it in terms of project effectiveness, but it's still a cost that must be acknowledged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a small set of tasks, rather than a project, you're probably better off skipping the overhead of a full-blown project project management framework and just getting the work done. Why incur the overhead if you don't need to do so? However, if you have an actual &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;project&lt;/a&gt;, the benefits of a formal framework will often quickly outstrip the cost of the overhead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, you may have &lt;em&gt;thought&lt;/em&gt; you had a small set of tasks, but the iterative nature of your client's expectations suggest that you actually have a project. See if you can define the extent of the project, and then see if a formal project management framework makes sense for your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T18:10:15.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9866" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-04T19:45:28.677" Score="1" ViewCount="8209" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the specific Custom Fields Formula using (GREEN, YELLOW and RED) indicators for Task Start and End Dates as follows in MS Project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 Task Start Date is within 5 or more of the Task Start Date = GREEN indicator. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 Task Start Date is within 2 to zero days of the Task Start Date = YELLOW indicator. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 Task Start Date has Not Started On Time = RED&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;4 Task Finish Date is within 5 to 2 days of the Task Finish Date = YELLOW indicator. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;5 Task Finish Date is within 1 to zero days of the Task Finish Date = RED indicator. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;6 Task Finish Date has Not Finished On Time = RED&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6883" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-09-05T04:10:38.587" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T15:07:10.213" Title="What is the specific Custom Fields Formula using (GREEN, YELLOW and RED) indicators for Task Start and Finish Dates?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9866" CreationDate="2013-09-04T19:56:37.540" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest abandoning any idea of using these type of indicators as they will add nearly zero value to your schedule analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read up on the critical path.  Variances that accrue at the package level, or lower if you track that, only matter when it is on the critical path.  Other packages off the critical path can be late all day with no effect on your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having stop light indicators will create a ton of noise that WILL confuse everyone who sees it.  It WILL cause the team to chase the yellows and reads no matter if these variances are material or not.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And to confuse matters more, the critical path(s) constantly changes.  So a package NOT on the CP last month could very well be on the CP this month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indicators of variance are very useful, but you need the right ones.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T19:56:37.540" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9081" CreationDate="2013-09-05T06:16:44.293" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum doesn't seem right way to go about. Scrum is more about creating hyper-productive teams. That's the goal behind this framework. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As much as I like @Willl answer I would recommend you to checkout &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.personalkanban.com/pk/personal-kanban-101/#sthash.fnQ8LSVA.dpbs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Personal Kanban&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is Kanban implementation popularized by Jim Benson aimed at personal productivity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Gains for your project&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could clearly visualize your flow, limit WIP which can have huge productivity boost and when you'll have a board with items flowing through the board you will get this morale boost and sense of moving forward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Tools&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could use physical whiteboard or one of two that I found cool and useful for Personal Kanban: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://kanbanery.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kanbanery&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with your project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3501" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T06:16:44.293" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9871" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-05T12:15:17.240" Score="3" ViewCount="908" Body="&lt;p&gt;I go to workshop after workshop with the same one dimensional approach - too many people, everyone looking at the screen while someone is capturing requirements/assumptions etc, dry, boring, not engaging, requirements are missed because people want to be somewhere else, mobile phones and laptops litter the tables etc for capturing stakeholder requirements and providing an excellent solution to a stakeholders problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yesterday I stumbled across &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_application_design&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Joint Application Development&lt;/a&gt; (JAD). It appears to promise the complete opposite to what I have been experiencing above. How can I implement this approach? Are there alternatives with the same end result of engagement and collaboration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6390" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-09-06T06:48:29.103" LastActivityDate="2017-08-19T06:23:42.900" Title="How can Joint Application Development improve a workshop?" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;&lt;business-analyst&gt;&lt;process-improvement&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9866" CreationDate="2013-09-05T18:54:56.417" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Please program my custom dashboard for me&quot; would be an off-topic request anywhere on Stack Exchange, so I'm going to address myself to the meta-questions you're asking about how to build the custom fields, and how to manage that effort within your project. I think your implicit meta-questions are good ones, and merit a thoughtful answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;MS Project Custom Fields&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Microsoft Project allows you to create formulas and graphical indicators. A rather thorough description can be found in various places on MS Developers Network (MSDN) and in the MS Office online help. A couple of places to start include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee767700%28v=office.14%29.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Using Formulas and Graphical Indicators with Custom Fields&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project-help/project-functions-for-custom-fields-HP010080956.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Project functions for custom fields&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Custom Programming of Dashboards is a Project Deliverable&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Custom things, by definition, are rarely things other people have needed to put together in exactly the same way. If everyone was using them, they'd be standardized into a template, drop-down, or wizard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your list of desired formulas, it's possible that someone already has &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; related macros they can share, but I rather doubt it&amp;mdash;especially if you're looking for a complete series of custom formulas. If they don't, then you need to treat that list as a custom programming requirement for your project and add that effort to your schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Account for Work on Project Tools&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CodeGnome's Law of Transparency says &quot;No invisible work, ever!&quot; In a &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/6513/4271&quot;&gt;tangential post&lt;/a&gt;, I explain that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Work is work, whether it's on bugs or new features. Therefore, &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; work needs to be tracked on the Sprint and Product backlogs, regardless of the source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you aren't running an agile project, effort expended on your project management tools and controls should be charged against the project. If this effort were trivial, you it would already be done and you wouldn't be asking about it here. That indicates that it's a process requirement that has a non-zero cost to the project. Account for it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T18:54:56.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9873" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-05T19:02:10.103" Score="9" ViewCount="263" Body="&lt;p&gt;My thought had always been that the person who is responsible for a team having to work late should be there with them. In most of my experience as a developer, that person has been a project or product manager and some would stay while others wouldn't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I'm a project manager and we often have code deployments that have to be done during off hours. Most of the other PMs here do stay for these and I usually do, but only if it's a major deployment. The team is distributed so there is always a phone conference set up and I just call in for minor deployments. However there's still this culture that looks down on you if you don't physically attend every one with your team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My role during these times is to sit in a chair and just be seen so people think I care about the team. Even if things go wrong, the team just jumps on it and gets it fixed. I have no responsibilities during this time and have never had to actually do anything. My managers say I should be there in case I need to coordinate something at the last minute, but all the people necessary, even for failure, are coordinated by me ahead of time and are all there or on the phone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there something I can do as a PM that would be a real, needed role during these times instead of just sitting there bored to show my support?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4699" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-09-06T04:32:49.453" LastActivityDate="2013-09-06T19:30:51.897" Title="What role does a PM play in off-hours engineering work?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9873" CreationDate="2013-09-05T19:29:51.523" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone needs to run the show. If not you, then one of your trusted team members who is able to direct the action and follow the plan, prepared to take control, and empowered to call out the cavalry if needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For any deployment you should have a detailed schedule of events (SOE - a fine-grained plan that gives all of the information needed to successfully complete the deployment or back it out if necessary). Someone - you or your deputy- should be working the SOE: recording progress, identifying off-plan activities, checking times, looking for opportunities for future improvements, etc. Unless your deployments are very bespoke, each one should build upon the previous ones. That way, you just keep on getting better at what you do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But should it be you? Well, this depends on a number of factors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is your company culture? - it seems to me that your culture is that you SHOULD be there. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have a suitable deputy or stand-in who can run the SOE without interfering in the technical &quot;doing&quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who will take over to manage the fix and the fall out the next day if it all goes wrong? If you are exhausted, having been at work all night, you need someone to take over from you - or if you need to be there, someone else needs to have been running the show overnight.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But one other thought: with a distributed team and an open conference line, why not stay at home, stay on the line, and provide the support remotely. After all, you can only be with some people in a distributed team - not all of them - so why do you need to be in the office to give them the moral support that seems to be required?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T19:29:51.523" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9871" CreationDate="2013-09-06T07:20:05.340" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding implementation, I can heartily recommend the book &quot;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0201786060&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Requirements by Collaboration&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; by Ellen Gottesdiener. It's also referenced in the bibiography of the JAD Wikipedia page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This book will teach you everything you need to know on how to plan, conduct and assess facilitated requirements elicitation workshops in a JAD-like manner, which are interactive and fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have used these techniques in the past with very good results, and I still use her workshop WBS as a checklist when preparing workshops to get things done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beware: this is hard work. The success of a good workshop depends on a large part on the preparation and follow-up activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck&#xA;Stephan&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2013-11-06T08:41:52.137" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T08:41:52.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9845" CreationDate="2013-09-06T07:28:58.707" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your team is small enough to be manageable in a micro-planning basis.&#xA;Sit with the ones with most responsibility and ask them about their deliverables. Ask him to assign development time to each of them, and then plan their week with them leaving an extra hour or so free as a buffer for fb, coffee, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then show them how much they have to have finihed per day, and set a meeting mid Friday to see how much they actually finished. They will slowly realize that they CAN do a lot, but they DON'T because they don't know how to use their time wisely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has helped me in many occasion (the first time, I was the one in the hot seat).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6892" LastActivityDate="2013-09-06T07:28:58.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9871" CreationDate="2013-09-06T08:02:48.577" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_application_design&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Joint Application Design&lt;/a&gt; (JAD) attempts to formalize a process for gathering requirements and developing a design from those requirements. One way to think of it is as a merger of the Requirements and Design phases of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;waterfall model&lt;/a&gt;, with some people-oriented agile principles mixed in to heighten engagement among the participants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;No Silver Bullet&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Repeat after me: there is &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; silver bullet. Say that 1,000 times before spending any more time looking for a framework or process to solve your workshop problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Define Your Problems Explicitly&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You already know what your problems are with your current process; you spell them out pretty clearly in your question. Let me highlight them for you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have the wrong people in the workshops.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not everyone in the workshop has skin in the game.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your workshop model is a lecture, not a cooperative endeavor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, you're holding workshops that no one wants to participate in, and your meeting facilitator is talking &lt;em&gt;at&lt;/em&gt; people instead of engaging them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Evaluate Your Solutions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's nothing particularly novel in the JAD approach to this issue. Adopting it simply formalizes an approach that focuses on increasing participation by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Defining clear goals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Selecting participants carefully.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensuring that &quot;chickens&quot; (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chicken_and_the_Pig#Agile_project_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chickens and Pigs&lt;/a&gt;) are kept as silent observers or excluded from the process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using an iterative model within the workshops to keep engagement high and give people a sense of accomplishment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, JAD isn't all that different from Scrum's underlying principles. Think Sprint Goals, Sprint Reviews, and daily stand-ups where only &quot;pigs&quot; can participate. In my mind, that's a fairly good model for what JAD is trying to accomplish&amp;mdash;just limited to application design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The JAD Facilitator Role&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key role in JAD is the facilitator. This person is a process referee and a group therapist rolled into one. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_application_design#9_Key_Steps&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia says&lt;/a&gt;: &quot;The facilitator must design workshop exercises and activities to provide interim deliverables that build towards the final output of the workshop.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bee.net/bluebird/jaddoc.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source references&lt;/a&gt; says: &quot;The facilitator is responsible for ensuring that each person is heard and has an equal opportunity to influence the decision.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;JAD and Potential Alternatives&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;JAD is focused primarily on the requirements-gathering and design phases of a project. It is not a full-fledged project management framework, so direct comparisons to other methodologies starts from a flawed premise. Still, there are some useful similarities and contrasts to be explored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned above, JAD shares some principles in common with Scrum. One might even draw useful comparisons between an effective Scrum Master and a JAD facilitator, as both are fundamentally servant-leader roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like Scrum, JAD isn't really all that prescriptive. There are some mandatory roles, some mandatory artifacts, and some mandatory meetings, but the implementation details are yours to create within the general framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike Scrum, JAD is focused on big, up-front design. Many agile methodologies like Scrum do away with the need to hold multi-day design workshops because they focus on &lt;strong&gt;emergent design through iterative delivery&lt;/strong&gt;. Every sprint involves a little analysis, a little design, and a lot of hard work, rather than trying to do all the analysis and design at the very start of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you aren't stuck with a waterfall development model, then I'd certainly spend some time evaluating the various agile frameworks. However, note that the organizational changes required to implement an agile framework effectively are generally more sweeping than the changes needed to implement JAD. Your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-09-06T08:02:48.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9878" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9881" CreationDate="2013-09-06T08:14:26.330" Score="1" ViewCount="1785" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are taking our first steps in agile and Scrum. We use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.versionone.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;VersionOne&lt;/a&gt; for managing our user stories and tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the development manager, I am trying to build a sprint plan for the development team. Now, VersionOne is fine for tracking user stories, but not all work is currently organized into user stories. For example: escalated support tickets, ongoing bugs, training new employees, and researching future technologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is that I want to merge the user-story work plan that VersionOne gives me with the other tasks that the team has. Placing the items mentioned above in the backlog seems unnatural. On the other hand, managing them someplace else means I will either duplicate the VersionOne information in the other system, or I will have two systems tracking the development tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I manage both user stories and other non-backlog tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6893" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-09-12T05:06:42.193" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T05:06:42.193" Title="How can I manage both user stories and other non-backlog tasks if using VersionOne?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9873" CreationDate="2013-09-06T08:32:58.487" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think end to end delivery including deployment is the role of PM.  As stated above some one need to do this.  Also once every thing is done as per the plan communicating to stake holders is PM responsibility.  Physically PM may not be required login from home and watching out, tracking and communication is the key for PM.  If there are any issues team need to hunt for PM, instead of that part of deployment meeting will help team a lot and is a booster for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastActivityDate="2013-09-06T08:32:58.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9873" CreationDate="2013-09-06T11:37:27.620" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like you are in a culture that needs you to look busy for the sake of looking busy, working long hours for appearances versus they are needed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scenario that challenges their expectation is, in many cases a PM can be assigned to several small projects simultaneously.  If two or more projects are working late, to which project should the PM attend?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM has his or her sets of tasks that would drive the level of effort required, which may or may not cause him or her to work late.  While one of those tasks is simply oversight and monitoring, it does not mean physically being there.  One can oversee and monitor from afar, either because they are available via our current technologies or they have a team leader who is monitoring on his/her behalf.  This certainly would be the case if there are multiple teams working late over several different geographies.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the issue is not this.  It is your organization's culture and expectations.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the likelihood of you changing this is pretty small.  Your choices are to go along with it and fit into the culture, go against the grain and accept the risks inherent in that action, or find another job.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you choose the first, and since you have some technical skills, then I suppose you can dig in and get your hands dirty to fill the time.  If you are getting in the way, then I guess you just need to sit there and look pretty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-09-06T11:37:27.620" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9878" CreationDate="2013-09-06T13:06:49.890" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;VersionOne uses the concept of &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://community.versionone.com/Help-Center/Version101/Current/Introduction-to-VersionOne/System-Assets&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Backlog Items&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This generally represents a valued functionality that can be estimated&#xA;  and tested, but may also encompass non-functional requirements and&#xA;  defects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories are mainly features but can also be any other task that helps the team in delivering value to the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Scrum is being followed then your team should not perform any task that is not part of the Sprint. All tasks done by the team should be documented and accounted for. One of the strong points of Scrum methodology is visibility and transparency of the process. If project delivery requires some research, add a new Backlog item and track it appropriately. If there are defects to be fixed, a new Backlog item is needed. If there are minor bugs, they can be grouped and tracked as one defect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2013-09-06T13:06:49.890" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9878" CreationDate="2013-09-06T18:32:11.573" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, all work chargeable to the project belongs on the Product Backlog. This includes bugs, training, and research in addition to features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;User Stories Recommended, Not Required&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A user story is just a &lt;em&gt;format&lt;/em&gt; for work items. While it is a widely-accepted practice to formulate user stories for placement on the Product Backlog, &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/210227/57614&quot;&gt;Scrum doesn't constrain the format&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a process point of view, there is nothing preventing you from reformulating the additional work items as user stories and submitting them to the Product Owner for insertion into the Product Backlog. At that point, the Product Owner can manage those stories just like any other story in terms of prioritization and scheduling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Non-Feature Stories&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CodeGnome's Law of Transparency says &quot;No invisible work, ever!&quot; That means that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/6513/4271&quot;&gt;bugs&lt;/a&gt; and chores;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-functional_requirement&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;non-functional requirements&lt;/a&gt;;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8682/4271&quot;&gt;team or organizational training&lt;/a&gt;;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8618/4271&quot;&gt;research spikes&lt;/a&gt;; and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;any other effort that consumes project resources&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;should all be &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8872/4271&quot;&gt;managed from the Product Backlog&lt;/a&gt;. Not adding them to the Product Backlog results in hidden costs to the project and work that is invisible to the organization; this is antithetical to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;agile tenets&lt;/a&gt; of Scrum and may undo many of the benefits you hoped to gain from adopting the Scrum framework in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2013-09-06T18:32:11.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9873" CreationDate="2013-09-06T19:30:51.897" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Alternatives to Busy-Work or Useless Oversight&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I just want some direction as to what I can actually do to be useful during these times. Everyone else is busy and I'm just sitting there staring at them like I'm some kind of lazy overseer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, yes. It sounds like you've done your scheduling and coordination jobs so well that that you have no need to perform those tasks during execution; you're just there because &lt;em&gt;politically&lt;/em&gt; you're required to be there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you genuinely feel at loose ends, and you don't want to rock the political boat by not attending these after-hours sessions, then you might want to consider some practical alternatives. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you have a technical bent, get some hands-on involvement.&lt;/strong&gt; As long as you're contributing constructively, rather than getting in someone's way, it's a nice way to keep up your technical skills and let the technical folks know you consider yourself an integral part of the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Focus on project management artifacts related to the after-hours work.&lt;/strong&gt; Generating reports, measuring deviations from planned effort for individual tasks, predicting man-hours or other resources for similar work in the future, or simply gathering metrics on the work itself may all be useful tasks that fall squarely into the project management domain.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Perception Matters&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anytime you ask engineers to go above and beyond, it's politically and socially necessary for them to feel that management has skin in the game, too. There's nothing more demoralizing than mandatory overtime when management is knocking off early for a golf game. So, if the team perceives your presence as a &lt;em&gt;sincere&lt;/em&gt; measure of your skin in the game, then that's a valuable contribution to the process all by itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you spend too much time looking for your own alternatives, one of the things you might want to do is &lt;strong&gt;ask the team&lt;/strong&gt; what they think of you being there, and whether there's any additional action they need from you. If they see your presence as genuinely useful, or at least view it as sincere support, then you may not need to do anything more. If the team views your participation as unnecessary interference or as a distraction, then perhaps they can articulate ways in which you can take a more constructive role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's certainly worth raising this issue during your next Sprint Retrospective or other inspect-and-adapt inflection point. Sometimes just raising an issue within the team is enough to dispose of it effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-09-06T19:30:51.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9887" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9888" CreationDate="2013-09-07T03:02:45.120" Score="3" ViewCount="1978" Body="&lt;p&gt;Right now we have 2 tasks, which will take about a day each. One has to be completed by end of day as it's an adhoc request. The other is part of a client project that is due not immediately, but 3 days from now which is 3 days task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My CEO proclaims that today's priority is high preference, and this directly impacts on the other's deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By communicating the above impact he says okay, but on the 2nd day he is demanding 99% (or least with core features) of the client's product for deliverable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Upon my futile attempt to explain that yesterday, I was working on his adhoc request. He doesn't allows me to speak at all, and he's stubborn in demanding what he needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I communicate on what can be completed by today, he demands more &amp;amp; more feature on 2nd day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Follow up from &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/5632/how-to-handle-ceo-priority-requests-that-affect-existing-client-deadlines&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6774" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2013-11-02T04:53:52.867" Title="Prioritization of adhoc request vs Handling long term deadline" Tags="&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;deadline&gt;&lt;communication-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9887" CreationDate="2013-09-07T05:29:26.560" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You seem to have answered the question for yourself already, but here are some key points that you may take into consideration:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Task &lt;em&gt;Priority&lt;/em&gt; is not the same as Task &lt;em&gt;Urgency&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. Some urgent, but low-priority, tasks may have tight deadlines, but they can (and, sometimes, &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt;) be ignored if other, higher-priority, tasks are under risk. How to prioritize them is a subject of mutual agreement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Upon receiving a more urgent task, you have to &lt;strong&gt;re-negotiate&lt;/strong&gt; all affected tasks that already sit in your schedule, you already did it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you have not done is &lt;strong&gt;getting a formal/doable confirmation of your mutual agreement&lt;/strong&gt;. Your changed schedule must be reflected in your time/task planner:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A new task should appear there, with its priority and time frame;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All the affected tasks have to be adjusted accordingly: e.g., if you decided that &lt;em&gt;&quot;it's okey&quot;&lt;/em&gt; the &quot;old&quot; task to end a day later, it must be reflected;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also, keep in mind that changed milestone is not the only option. You may have agreed that the &quot;old&quot; task will keep its end date, but &lt;strong&gt;the scope reduces&lt;/strong&gt;;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also, don't forget that a change in &lt;strong&gt;your&lt;/strong&gt; schedule may trigger changes in someone else's schedules as well. This must be also reflected somehow.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone tends to change their mind often, a more formal approach may appear the only way for an effective team collaboration. In an ideal world, it would be great if those who set the new task have adjusted the time tracker by themselves, but in reality, CxO people simply don't have time to do that.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;They also may order you to do something verbally (e.g., not written). In such situations, I found it useful to &lt;strong&gt;write a short follow-up email&lt;/strong&gt;, like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Dear CxO,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  According to our recent phone conversation, I have added a Task X to my schedule (end date is tomorrow).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I have also changed the end date of task Y to {a day following the prior deadline}.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would take only a couple of minutes, but eliminate any possible misunderstanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a CxO comes to you tomorrow and demands the old task to be done earlier, things will be simplified: &lt;strong&gt;they simply ask to change the timeline of an existing task, without any reference to a &quot;new&quot; task that have been added recently&lt;/strong&gt;. You will be able to respond, &lt;em&gt;&quot;our timeline for this task is {&lt;strong&gt;new date&lt;/strong&gt;}, according to our recent conversation. To change the deadline, we have to re-negotiate the scope/schedule again. Which functionality would you like to remove?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summarizing all above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Track your scheduled tasks in a task tracker;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adjust them upon each mutually negotiated changes occur;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write follow-ups to make sure everyone is on the same page;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3941" LastActivityDate="2013-09-07T05:29:26.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9887" CreationDate="2013-09-07T10:12:18.980" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To be truthful, I am having difficulties understanding what the problem is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our work is interrupted by both unproductive stuff and other productive priorities all the time.  This is why duration is not the same as work effort.  We set planning values based on understanding that it is not likely 100% of our time would be spent working on a task and that we will get derailed.  Simply put, the duration--three days on the customer task--was maybe too optimistic this time around.  Learn from it and add more time in reserves next time around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your CEO is demanding because all CEOs are demanding.  Non demanding types are usually weeded out from the selection process.  The piece to understand is, his challenge to literally make up the lost time will likely get you to progress the task more, even if you do not meet his demands, than if he let go and gave you his extra day.  And he likely knows you will not finish but he will expect it anyway.  And more often times than not, teams meet those crazy challenges somehow, despite the screams and objections and threats.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is par for the course.  Persevere, adapt, get to work, and be happy you have the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-09-07T10:12:18.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9866" CreationDate="2013-09-07T14:51:10.480" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To help you boil it down a bit.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;As you have multiple criteria you can use either and IIf comparison function or the Switch function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;IIf(condition to be tested, result if true, result if false)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Switch (condition to be test, result if true, next condition, result if true, next condition, result it true)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To perform math with dates in Project: &lt;strong&gt;ProjDateAdd&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;DateAdd&lt;/strong&gt; functions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try a search on &quot;RAG indicators in Project&quot; to see some examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2013-09-07T14:51:10.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9864" CreationDate="2013-09-08T23:15:46.113" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum is a process. Kanban (for software development) is a meta-process; a process from which you derive your actual process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's perfectly possible to do them both. You can start with Scrum, then add Kanban. I would do it in a very lightweight way. The following might be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lightweight Scrum&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum starts from an ideal. You set up a visual board with the kind of columns you'd like to have, and &quot;done&quot; at the end. This is a good way to start if you don't know what's going to happen ahead of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Show your work regularly to your customer. Set up meetings ahead of time to make sure this happens. Scrum also suggests &quot;signing up&quot; for work iteratively, which basically means managing your customers' expectations about what you're going to show them next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now let's add some Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Visualize your workflow&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Kanban, you visualize what's really happening. If you're waiting for details from your client, you can find a way to show what details you have, and what questions you still need to have answered. You can track what's been shown to the client, and what hasn't. You can even track what's been released, or what's been paid for, what you've invoiced - whatever you consider to be important to your side of the project. Do this for the whole stream - from ideas coming in, to whatever you consider to be &quot;done&quot; - and be honest about whether &quot;done&quot; really does mean &quot;done&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/4794/what-information-should-be-stored-on-kanban-cards&quot;&gt;Start light.&lt;/a&gt; As the project progresses, different things will become important, and you can add them to the visual board; either as rows, or new columns, or different colour cards, or sticky notes on the cards; whatever works best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's especially important to visualize the things that &lt;em&gt;aren't&lt;/em&gt; ideal. This acts as a reminder to fix (preferably), or work around, those things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Limit your Work In Progress (WIP)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you find that, because you're waiting for details from the client, you end up with lots of things in progress. You were working on the UI for the registration form, but you realised you didn't know what validation was needed, so you've moved on to the admin form, but you're waiting for them to tell you about the permissions, and the contact form contains some preferences that you don't understand, so you write the database tables instead, then you fix a few end-to-end tests that were failing, then start reading about how to write that particular PL-SQL monstrosity...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the time you get the information from the client, you've forgotten what you were doing with the registration form. You have to remember, and it takes longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the equivalent of car parts rusting away in a lot (hence Maxood's comment about an inventory management system; Kanban is traditionally used to manage inventory in factories). But now it's your brain, and your memory, that's rusty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By limiting the number of things you're working on, and &lt;em&gt;waiting&lt;/em&gt; for the information you need, it may actually be possible to save time. In your case, it might make sense to ask the client to send you details as and when they come up with them, rather than sending lots every 5 to 10 days. It might be better for you to refactor your code and make sure that it's easy to change when the details arrive, than to start something new.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being productive isn't the same thing as being effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Continuously improve&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At regular intervals, take a step back and look at how things are going. If this is your own project, you can do this at the end of the day, or even the next morning when you're seeing your work with slightly fresher eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would you like to do better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Retrospectives are a Scrum practice. Kanban suggests the same thing, but you don't need to wait for a retrospective to improve. If you do make changes, they should be based on some kind of evidence, preferably numeric metrics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything you're waiting for? Have you sent screenshots to the customer a week ago and still not heard anything? Are you still waiting for those details? Do you even know how long it takes your customer to respond?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you've got tests that take three hours to run. Is that slowing you down?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever is slowing you down the most is your &lt;em&gt;constraint&lt;/em&gt;. You'll probably be able to tell what it is if you're trying to limit your WIP, too, because the work will be piling up in front of that point, threatening to break your WIP limits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;And that's it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read more about Kanban on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_%28development%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt;, but this is what I apply to my own personal projects. I also run my own Kanban board for my one-man consultancy, and find this useful. For instance, I limit the number of clients I'm handling at any point, and the number of people I'm waiting to respond to me (I bug them if I'm about to hit that limit), and the number of outstanding tasks (if I have too many, I work hard to get rid of some).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps you and gives you some ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2013-09-08T23:15:46.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9895" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9898" CreationDate="2013-09-09T20:32:52.453" Score="3" ViewCount="249" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Situation:&lt;/strong&gt; The main dev left a project and deadlines have gone up in smoke. The client is upset after 3 weeks of no significant improvement (obviously, new devs have a huge learning curve). The client has now sent in a legal letter stating to have the project done by x date. The current PM knows that this date is impossible to meet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; Should the PM remain on the project? I ask because does this not imply a lack of trust and warrants bringing on a new PM on board for this project? Additionally, now that the project has entered legal waters, every single piece of communications has to go through the Board to ensure nothing is being miscommunicated. This is obviously a very stressful situation for the current PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not asking for an opinion, but for a factual answer that addresses this kind of scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6911" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-09-12T03:30:28.693" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T03:30:28.693" Title="Should a PM continue to stay on a project after a legal dispute?" Tags="&lt;communication-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9895" CreationDate="2013-09-09T21:30:39.087" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not recommend replacing the current project manager, as that will cause the project to fall further behind as the new PM needs time to catch up on the current state of play, as well as lead to an even loss of knowledge about the project, why the project ended up in this scenario in the first place and what needs to be looked out for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bit of support for the PM and getting the board to manage the expectations of the client is going to be the important thing. Unless the PM caused the dev to leave or misrepresented the scale of the delays then its not necessarily his fault that things have went wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you do, avoid throwing all hands at the meatgrinder in an attempt to get the job done faster, lest you envoke &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Brookes law&lt;/a&gt;. That would surely be the deathknell of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6912" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T21:30:39.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9897" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-09T22:42:33.983" Score="2" ViewCount="10361" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a resource that was initially going to be assigned 100%.  I want to change the resource availability to 50% and have that change effect all tasks current assigned.  It doesn't seem to be doing that.  The task is retaining the 100% allocation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6914" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T15:14:18.463" Title="Resource allocation / availability changes" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9895" CreationDate="2013-09-09T23:09:47.797" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The legal questions are really just a subset of the premise that this is fundamentally a business decision, albeit a highly political one. Determining whether or not to kill a project, and who should be assigned to a trouibled or failed project, is primarily a business decision with potential consequences (good or bad) to all parties regardless of the decisions made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Legal questions are for the company's lawyers to answer. Business decisions are management's to make. Personal and professional choices belong to the project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The PM's Viewpoint&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the incumbent project manager's point of view, it sounds like this project has already failed. Whether or not it is in the project manager's &lt;em&gt;personal&lt;/em&gt; best interests to stay on a failed project really depends on individual circumstances and personal/professional goals. Some examples for consideration that might lead to staying include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The need to collect a paycheck.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether the PM can salvage any positive career objectives (e.g. a positive reference) by &quot;going down with the ship.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The political ramifications of voluntarily leaving a project. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The expectation of a post-project future with the current company.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Business Viewpoint&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, whether the current PM should remain on a failed project is business decision. If the PM is blamed (rightly or wrongly) for the project's failure, the business could decide:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's the incumbent PM's job to &quot;stay and clean up the mess.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no one else to fill the role, so the current PM might as well continue the death march.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The PM is at fault and should be removed from the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Something else altogether.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real question is whether the project can be salvaged. Again, that is a decision for the project's backers to decide. Sometimes earned value can be extracted from a project that isn't going to meet all of its original goals, and sometimes a project can't be saved even when additional time, money, or other resources are thrown at it. In the latter case, it often makes more sense for the business to cut its losses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T23:09:47.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9895" CreationDate="2013-09-10T07:04:15.657" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with both the answers.  My thought is PM still should continue on this project and need to monitor and track all the attributes very closely.  First do the post mortem of the current issue and take action items and move forward.  It is also a very good opportunity for PM to come back strongly and make this project success.  Adversity can teach a lot and time to learn fast and implement for the success of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T07:04:15.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9897" CreationDate="2013-09-10T13:10:38.820" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Changing maximum units after assigning resources does not change assignment units.  You may use the &quot;replace&quot; command in the Assign resource dialog to replace the resource with the same resource and manually enter the lower assignment unit.  Assuming the tasks are not fixed duration, the duration of the tasks will increase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T13:10:38.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9878" CreationDate="2013-09-10T14:06:39.447" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We run a separate swim lane at the top of our Scrum board for the 'day-to-day' bugs and tasks that unexpectedly come in, and are urgent.  If these are significant, they will be discussed to ensure they will not compromise delivery of the sprint.  Generally they are small (up to 1 hour) jobs that will not have a noticeable impact.  If they are not urgent, they are added to our backlog for allocation to a future sprint.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6825" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T14:06:39.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9895" CreationDate="2013-09-10T15:03:18.810" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a business perspective, sometimes the PM has to get reassigned even if it isn't his/her fault. It depends on how much the PM was the face of your company, and if you have someone that can do the job better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen a similar situation where deadlines were not being met and there was no visible progress. Letters were exchanged and there were threats made about non-compliance with contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was the nadir of our relationship with that particular vendor. If there was a choice we would have started from scratch with another supplier, but our needs were too specific and we were stuck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coincidentally the PM we were dealing with left the vendor for other employment and was replaced by someone with significantly more experience. This turned out to be a very good thing. First off, the new PM lacked the baggage the old one had accumulated. More importantly, the new PM was a stronger personality and was able to force a full review of what needed to be done so that we could baseline realistic expectations. End of the day expectations were managed far better than they had been, and we were able to focus on disagreements on a technical level rather than on a project/legal level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T15:03:18.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9904" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-11T12:14:54.043" Score="2" ViewCount="2205" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a lot of discussion around maintaining different types of trackers or registers to monitor and control project activities, risks, issues, sub-projects, various tasks, and whatever else of interest to various stakeholders.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I am finding this creates a lot of wasted redundancy in documenting, reporting, and tracking efforts involving a ton of resources, human and otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are arguments ad nauseam around trying to differentiate a risk from an issue from an action when these things are related in correlation or cause and effect.  Risks are driven from existing issues which can turn into issues causing further issues and other risks turning into more risks and evolving into issues and so on....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, we mitigate and recover, which means we create actions to go do.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where this gets documented seems to depend on how it gets discovered.  Were we risk planning, were we just impacted by an issue, did someone suggest an action?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example: the project team uncovered an issue with storage capacity on their servers, running above 90%.  The team dutifully captured this issue on its issue register and laid out a recovery plan and proceeded to implement.  Since it was nicely captured already, the idea of conducting a risk assessment, trying to predict what could go wrong because of the current storage condition, was conveniently nixed, with a key argument being there is no need to identify the risks and capture on the risk log since we already have documented this on the issue log.  Needlesstosay, some of the actions were duplicated in the recovery plan as well as the action log.  Several redundant reporting channels were created, discovery of out of sync registers occurred, everything crapped out.  (I won't discuss the severe outage that occurred for which we had done nothing to mitigate and had no contingency in place to recover quickly.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you to the books, the answer is usually several logs, so this is not helping me.  I am looking for opinions and other people's experiences in this area and how it was resolved.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know opinions are not necessarily right for this site but I will hope this question remains open and perhaps some answers can be developed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-09-11T18:55:24.363" Title="Action Trackers, Risk and Issue Registers, Schedule" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9904" CreationDate="2013-09-11T13:41:03.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my current place we integrate documentation of risks, decisions, action items and assumptions in a single Excel file. Each category has it's own worksheet to make it easier to track them. I've found this helpful to avoid redundancy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One caveat is that what I track is at a project rather than at a deliverable level... tracking to this level for X projects each with Y deliverables would become unmanageable if I were to go too deep into the weeds. Unfortunately I've found that some team members expect that the PM will hold their hands too much, so use of any tool requires management of expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-09-11T13:41:03.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9904" CreationDate="2013-09-11T15:10:54.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some organizations I observed sharepoint tool customized to project needs used to manage all the issues,risks and other documents. I see this as effective than excel etc.  every one can access easily and PM discuss these and make real time updates as we speak in the meetings and every one has latest information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastActivityDate="2013-09-11T15:10:54.270" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9904" CreationDate="2013-09-11T18:04:39.567" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not entirely sure that I understand the situation, but what concerns me is the comment, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since it was nicely captured already, the idea of conducting a risk assessment trying to predict what could go wrong because of the current storage condition, was conveniently nixed, with a key argument being there is no need to identify the risks and capture on the risk log since we already have documented this on the issue log. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That sets off alarms for me.  I don't think that any changes you make to tools will make a difference until there is an integrated, strategic committment to change management. Risks, issues, actions, work packages, etc, all result in changes.  Every change should be assessed.  Optimize your change control process so that the involved stakeholders have the skill &amp;amp; knowledge to quickly spot implications, and to know when they can be silent.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2013-09-11T18:43:15.823" LastActivityDate="2013-09-11T18:43:15.823" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9904" CreationDate="2013-09-11T18:55:24.363" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Risk-Related Artifacts are Secondary Objectives&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is a lot of discussion around maintaining different types of trackers or registers to monitor and control project activities, risks, issues, sub-projects, various tasks, and whatever else of interest to various stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way to avoid useless and duplicative tracking work is to realize that risk logs and other similar artifacts ought to be transient means to a more productive end. By itself, a risk or issues log is essentially useless as an output artifact; the purpose of such logs &lt;em&gt;ought&lt;/em&gt; to be as inputs into a risk management process where the output is a control, modification to the deliverables, or a documented decision in your project report at close-out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Issues and Risks as Inputs&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A risk can be avoided, mitigated, transferred, or accepted. It has no intrinsic value; it's an &lt;em&gt;anti-value&lt;/em&gt; that should be addressed by the project and &lt;em&gt;incorporated&lt;/em&gt; by the project in some way rather than being given independent life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having an issue or risk log is fine, but it should be an ephemeral artifact. The goal isn't to write a document, after all; &lt;strong&gt;the goal is to manage the risk.&lt;/strong&gt; In an agile project, an identified risk should be assessed more or less immediately, and then disposed of properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disposition may include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adding an appropriate control-development or risk-mitigation story to the Product Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agreeing on a new control or process to manage the risk during the next Sprint Retrospective.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Terminating the current sprint with an immediate return to Sprint Planning to address the risk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Noting the transfer or acceptance of residual risks in the project close-out report.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Solved problems aren't really problems anymore, so the utility of tracking risks outside of a defined deliverable is zero. In other words, a risk codified in a corrective policy document is a useful risk-related project artifact, while an Excel spreadsheet enumerating risks is suitable for making &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origami&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;origami&lt;/a&gt; animals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Assessing and Managing Risks&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, to properly dispose of a risk, it must first be assessed. Examining the threat model, quantifying the risk, and determining how to manage it (if that's even required) is a process in itself, and how this fits within your project management framework often varies a lot. However, once you've identified the risk and determined how you wish to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identifying_and_Managing_Project_Risk#Managing_Activity_Risk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;manage it&lt;/a&gt;, one can generally:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid the risk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Develop controls to correct or limit the risk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Transfer the risk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accept the risk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all cases, &lt;em&gt;the goal is to do something about the risk&lt;/em&gt;, not just note it for posterity. Risks that are designed around or otherwise mitigated are (functionally speaking) documented in the changes to the project plan, and in my opinion no longer need to be tracked explicitly. Residual risk, on the other hand, is part of what's delivered by the project, and therefore risk-transfer or risk-acceptance artifacts become deliverables for the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I prefer to place all risk mitigation as action items on the Product Backlog, and to document any residual risk in an appendix in my project close-out reports. Related artifacts such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;risk-assessment meeting minutes,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;formal risk-acceptance sign-off documents, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;relevant insurance riders showing that the risk was transferred&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;may be useful attachments to the close-out report, too. Your mileage in that regard may vary rather widely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-09-11T18:55:24.363" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9909" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9910" CreationDate="2013-08-27T23:43:04.663" Score="14" ViewCount="5828" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're trying to plan for agile transformation soon, and one of the main sticking points in this is organizational structure. Management's expectation is to have a Scrum Master perform all normal functions, but tacking on hiring, firing, and performance reviews for people under his management. This would also add additional &quot;technical ability&quot; requirements to this position, and then basically have one Scrum Master for the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My concern is that it's going to create a situation in which s/he will be tempted to say how exactly something needs to be done, and people will take his/her word for it, as she/he's ultimately doing performance reviews. This undermines some of the basic agile principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this work long term? And what are the caveats I should watch out for implementing this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6440" OwnerDisplayName="Serge" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-09-12T19:35:54.993" LastActivityDate="2017-03-30T05:10:18.223" Title="Should a Scrum Master also perform a functional manager role?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9909" CreationDate="2013-08-28T00:28:53.170" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A manager who does the hiring, firing, performance reviews and has technical ability can still undermine the Team and force them to do things his/her way whether this person is the Scrum Master or not. For this person to take on the role of Scrum Master is just an additional burden on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The decision makers who chose to go the Scrum path hopefully know how it should work and the manager's manager should be doing an evaluation to make sure this person is facilitating the needs of the team and lets them do the job they were hired to do. If the manager is going to constantly &quot;pull rank&quot;, this is a personal issue and possibly a misunderstanding of how a Scrum Team managed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may help to bring in an outside consultant to help with this process. Sometimes it's easier for management to grasp the &quot;let the team manage itself concept&quot; from an outsider than directly from a team they fear is doing it out of self-interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11948" OwnerDisplayName="JeffO" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T00:28:53.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9911" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9912" CreationDate="2013-09-12T03:48:48.247" Score="0" ViewCount="1797" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find that I'm confused between the terms &quot;software engineering&quot; and &quot;software project&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the difference between these? I suspect that &quot;software engineering&quot; may focus on a different aspect, but I'm not 100% sure. Can someone please explain?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2300" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-09-12T03:53:50.637" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T11:44:55.510" Title="What's the difference between software engineering and software project?" Tags="&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9911" CreationDate="2013-09-12T05:05:24.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Study of different approaches like design, development, operation, and maintenance of software and applicaiton of these concepts can be termed as software engineering.&#xA;A project involving Software which has fixed goal and limited resources to complete can be termed as software project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to think that to execute a software project you need to implement software engineering concepts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6209" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T05:05:24.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9909" CreationDate="2013-09-12T11:31:50.587" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an Application Development Manager in this position, and it works excellently for my team.  The main thing is the difference in mindset from traditional management.  I have the benefit of building the team from the ground up so made it very clear from the start that I am here to help them, and they make decisions more than I do.  At first it took some time for the team to truly believe they make the decisions and are fully in control but after a few retrospectives, genuinely listening and making changes THEY decide, they are now willing to bring up anything for discussion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This worked so successfully that we even had a small stint where the team decided I was silent in stand-ups, to prevent them from talking to me rather than each other.  It only lasted a few stand ups, but did help them  focus on discussing issues rather than reporting to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you give the team ownership, they will take responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6825" LastEditorUserId="6825" LastEditDate="2013-09-16T09:11:13.553" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T09:11:13.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9914" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-12T12:25:12.343" Score="8" ViewCount="4304" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently in my workplace we use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redmine.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Redmine&lt;/a&gt; as our backlog management system. It works pretty well for us, but lately (as the company grew), I've been noticing that our tickets tend to be very long (both in regards of the description text and the implementation effort). For what I understand, I think we're having a confusion between a ticket and a user story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for some documentation to guide me in how to manage the transformation of requirements gathering into actual &quot;work orders&quot; to pass to my team. Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A concrete example for it is this: we're currently working on implementing a badges system for our website. Currently we have one ticket describing the problem as a whole (including bussiness value and such), which I believe is important information, only it's not the best place to have it in (It's not really relevant for the development team at coding time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think we should have smaller tickets, like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Design and implement data model&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Backend implementation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Front end implementation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is, if we do that, we kind of loose the connection between each ticket and the bussiness goal we're trying to accomplish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope I've made myself a little clearer. Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5171" LastEditorUserId="5171" LastEditDate="2013-09-13T12:00:30.883" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T15:43:47.110" Title="How to map user stories into tickets?" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9911" CreationDate="2013-09-12T12:32:25.127" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to add in the software project fixed goal, limited resources and limited time to complete the project.  To complete the software project you use software engineering practices like design, development, testing, deploy and operation  &amp;amp; maintenance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T12:32:25.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9909" CreationDate="2013-09-12T12:54:39.600" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems like the company has decided to go this way even though you understand that &lt;strong&gt;this undermines some of the basic principles of Agile&lt;/strong&gt;. So I'll stick to some of the caveats that should be watched out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Missed deadlines/goals by the team should not get attributed to your hiring/firing decisions. Hiring process maybe changed to have a peer-interview session with the whole team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team members should not start hiding progress/impediments/estimates depending on your displeasure/pleasure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum master should continue to provide frequent performance feedback and coach the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team should continue to manage the daily standups (scrum master just makes sure that daily standup are done). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team should not start reporting to the scrum master&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Performance reviews should be based on evaluation done by all team members including the scrum master&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T12:54:39.600" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9911" CreationDate="2013-09-12T18:58:30.783" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A software project is a limited time effort to produce discrete piece of software. Software projects end. Software engineering does not end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2013-09-13T11:44:55.510" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T11:44:55.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9918" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9924" CreationDate="2013-09-12T19:25:36.563" Score="3" ViewCount="2056" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have worked on two start-up firms and observed that our product managers over promises (at least from my vantage) to our client always.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The projects in which our team members have been worked out has predominately involved the following factors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;high scope, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;less time &amp;amp;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;less resources (always one developer).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The consequences are that developers are exhausted daily and gradually lose interest on the job, leading to a poor quality product which makes all of us unhappy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to balance the triangle effectively, at least to the decent extent so that my team member and client are happy? :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6774" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-09-14T05:02:11.573" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T05:02:11.573" Title="Scope, Time &amp; Cost Triangle Balancing To Motivate Team and Satisfy Client" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;scope-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9909" CreationDate="2013-09-12T19:34:37.283" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We're trying to plan for agile transformation soon, and one of the main sticking points in this is organizational structure. Management's expectation is to have a Scrum Master perform all normal functions, but tacking on hiring, firing, and performance reviews for people under his management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your company is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; planning on transforming anything. They are planning to rename a role, which they hope will magically endow the project with the benefits of agile processes without going through the actual hard work of re-engineering the project management process, the corporate culture, or the organizational structure. This is extremely likely to result in epic failure for the project, blame for the team, and a blot on the resume for the putative Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A Scrum Master Isn't a Line Manager&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master's job is to referee the Scrum process, educate the team and the organization about Scrum, and radiate information about the project to the Product Owner and the organization at large. While it isn't &lt;em&gt;impossible&lt;/em&gt; to give a Scrum Master managerial authority, it actively works against the self-organizing principles that Scrum is meant to encourage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Scrum Master's primary role is often compromised when he's asked to manage individuals rather than act as a servant-leader for the entire team. An ideal Scrum Master is a spokesperson for the team, working with the Product Owner and the stakeholders to clear obstacles; cracking the whip isn't part of that job description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Organizational Change is Hard&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of organizations attempt to label themselves agile, or say they've adopted Scrum, but they never actually change the fundamental business processes that underlie their projects. Scrum is a capacity-based framework that uses time-boxes to estimate and measure progress; it is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a magic bullet that can substitute for inspired leadership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adopting agile practices and frameworks is certainly a laudable objective. However, it takes more than a change of title and a new business card to restructure the role of Project Manager to Scrum Master. It also requires pervasive changes to the organization (especially among the stakeholders) in order to embrace the iterative development model. It also requires behavioral changes at the stakeholder and management levels to support the &lt;strong&gt;one project, one Product Owner&lt;/strong&gt; model necessary for effective Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Management Needs to Change, Too&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum isn't something that only development teams do. Adopting Scrum requires executives, stakeholders, and managers to change, too. The &lt;em&gt;psychological&lt;/em&gt; shift from &lt;strong&gt;100% utilization of individual team members&lt;/strong&gt; to &lt;strong&gt;team-based capacity planning&lt;/strong&gt; may ultimately defeat an organization that refuses to change its metrics or its management style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Scrum to be successful, senior management needs to make fundamental changes, too. If the &quot;agile transformation&quot; stops at the organizational boundaries of the development team, the Scrum implementation will not succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T19:34:37.283" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9918" CreationDate="2013-09-13T07:58:22.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems to be issue of collaboration, communication with in the team and estimations of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Review internally the scope, estimations and resources required with the senior team members and if needed whole team.  Once internally every one has one agreement convey your estimations to client.  If there is any scope change follow the change contol process or as a team revisit again.  This way team is always with you and feel part of team.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T07:58:22.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9918" CreationDate="2013-09-13T09:36:26.210" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally a Project Manager is not the only person involved in estimation. They may involve some technical members who have experience of executing or who may be actually working on those projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Project Manager may need some help with estimations and work-breakdown which is normal. However, after it has been done and before it is sent to the client, &lt;code&gt;the estimation should be reviewed from scope, time and cost perspectives&lt;/code&gt;. Also, the Project Manager should have valid justifications for the time and cost estimations of the agreed upon scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that you first review the estimates and then talk to your Project Manager and may also get it reviewed with other team members in a way that it does not challenge the role of the Project Manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anything unusual is found the Project Manager is accountable and answerable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a project has been estimated there are other means too to monitor the project progress to ensure that the project is going on the right track and that the team-members are not exhausted while working on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Talk to your Project Manager with the intent to find solution to this problem. It may not workout instantly. You may have to give some time to the Project Manager to adapt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6783" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T09:36:26.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9918" CreationDate="2013-09-13T11:49:49.553" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The triangle balances naturally.  You can independently fix or manipulate one or two of the sides, but the third is dependent and will adjust to balance.  But this is not your problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimating is not your problem, either.  You can estimate all day using all the tried and true leading estimating practices and it will not touch your dilemma.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a difference between an estimate, a target, and a planning value.  An estimate is a probabilistic range, a target is what your customer or bosses may &quot;dictate,&quot; and the planning value is a discrete value that lives somewhere on your estimate range, which can be optimistic, just right, or pessimistic.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your issue is with the target.  A target can live somewhere in the range, just like the planning value, but can also be a value no where near it, e.g., a number established as &quot;price to win.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your organization sounds very aggressive in its approach to win business.  I would further suspect it is going into a piece of work with its eyes wide open, meaning they know what they are doing and they are accepting the associated risks and issues.  Maybe their approach is using the initial contract as a loss leader, knowing they will certainly lose money on it but the relationship will lead to additional, more profitable business.  I don't know their strategy, certainly, but I have seen this behavior more and more in very recent times, likely consistent with our current economical situation.  After all, providing super planning values and estimates will do you no good if you lose the business to someone else.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T11:49:49.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9918" CreationDate="2013-09-13T17:05:33.413" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One means of dealing with this might be to suggest that an interim release could be made - perhaps using an &quot;agile&quot; approach in principle. This would give you something that could be delivered in less than the permitted time, at a lower than budgeted cost, and with substantially reduced scope. You work it out to be realistic. Then when you deliver, it will be clear that the extra scope cannot be delivered in the remaining time and or cost, so the project has to be renegotiated - but not by you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is devious and underhand, and not something that I would normally support, but it may just get you off the hook. And you never know - it may be that when you deliver using this model, the client likes what he gets, asks for changes to the original specification, and is happy to renegotiate accordingly. That would be a win-win situation!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastEditorUserId="301" LastEditDate="2013-09-13T17:17:20.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T17:17:20.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9918" CreationDate="2013-09-13T21:17:13.310" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a reason they call it the &quot;iron triangle&quot;. Like another said, it often rights itself, but if all corners are fixed then quality or lack there off is often what is sacrificed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You get to choose one, in reality. If you are fixing cost/resources by having one dev, then that leaves you time or scope. If you have a deadline, then that leaves scope. This is why many startups use Lean Start-Up techniques and Agile Development to manage their scope while dealing with constraints of time and cost without sacrificing quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JVFDN.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Key points of agile that help with your balance&#xA;- increase communication (daily)&#xA;- reduce your features/scope in progress to only what you can do in 1-2 weeks (scrum)&#xA;- prioritize your scope&#xA;- get an idea of how quickly you are completing your scope (in reality)&#xA;- demo/review with your client completed scope every 1-2 weeks&#xA;- set yourself up to welcome change in scope (cause in a startup....you have to!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are lots of resources online on how to do lean and/or agile development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T21:17:13.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9914" CreationDate="2013-09-14T22:09:26.707" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think you can split stories up the way! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The normally accepted best practice for splitting up stories is always vertical - one mini-feature at a time, not a layer at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing so should make it simpler to keep the connection, I think you are losing it by splitting in horizontal blocks of work which have no business value taken by themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note, I found that using an issue system has a big drawback: they don't generally have a notion of time. For example, try to build a burndown chart... it's very difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6300" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T22:09:26.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9926" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-15T08:32:54.410" Score="4" ViewCount="171" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have many legacy applications which are 10-15 years old.  The readability of the code is also challenging and many applications depend on other subsystems too. Documentation on these applications are not readily available, and are often not up to date. SME availability is also poor, and some SME's have left the company. Changing code in these applications without having deep domain information is also challenging, and we tend to miss some scenarios. Business folks are also new.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Question&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With all of these challenges, how can team members learn the domain quickly and effectively?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-09-15T19:22:34.013" LastActivityDate="2013-09-15T20:08:30.423" Title="How does a team learn a domain quickly and effectively on legacy applications?" Tags="&lt;knowledge-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9914" CreationDate="2013-09-15T16:32:32.080" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should use ticket trackers to track tasks, bugs, or issues. While some ticket trackers can also help with resource scheduling or tracking work items against milestones, they are not inherently good at mapping agile user stories. There are ways to coerce user stories into tickets, of course, but you should carefully evaluate whether you are letting your tools drive your process, rather than allowing your process to guide your selection of appropriate tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;User Stories&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Informally, user stories are full-stack slices of functionality that contain context and a point of view. They are also essentially conversational placeholders, intended to guide programmer/stakeholder interactions rather than act as fixed specifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Tickets&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Informally, tickets generally serve one of two purposes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task tracking.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Issue tracking.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While tickets often contain background details sufficient to reproduce a bug or describe the steps needed to complete a task, even the most complete ticket is rarely a substitute for a properly-written user story. They are not less useful; they simply serve a different purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Mapping Stories to Tickets&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a case of letting your tool drive your process. It is a clear violation of the principle that tools should fit your process, rather than having your process dictated by a tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, there are some things you can do within your current system. Some examples include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Making each ticket a user story, and then listing concrete deliverables as tasks within the ticket.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, &quot;implementing a badge system&quot; would be the subject of your ticket, while concrete tasks attached to the ticket might include designing a data model and implementing the database schema.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Treat your ticket tracker as a work-in-progress tracker instead of a scheduling tool.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, you would use your ticket tracker as more of a Sprint Backlog than a Product Backlog. Issues would be transferred to the ticketing system when they become work items, rather than using the ticketing system itself as a project planning tool.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Treat user stories as milestones, and tasks as tickets linked to a milestone.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this scenario, your completed badge system is a specific project milestone, and your badge-related tasks are all separate tickets related to that milestone. In fact, you may need to decompose further, making design and implementation of your data model separate milestones on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_path_method&quot;&gt;critical path&lt;/a&gt; to the &quot;badges completed&quot; milestone. Of course, each of those smaller milestones would have detailed tasks of their own.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the downside, these sorts of mappings can lead to bad metrics or additional project management overhead. The first example may lead to situations where teams might say &quot;81% of the stories are 63% done.&quot; The second requires a lot of work breakdown analysis in order to determine what specific task each ticket should address, how to link it to other tickets, and how to prioritize each of the tickets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are certainly other ways to use a ticketing system, largely limited by your imagination. However, there is no &lt;em&gt;intrinsic&lt;/em&gt; 1-to-1 mapping of user stories and tickets; they are fundamentally different tools with different use cases, and you should carefully evaluate whether ticket tracking is the right tool for the job within your organizational process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-09-15T16:32:32.080" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9926" CreationDate="2013-09-15T20:08:30.423" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[H]ow can team members learn the domain quickly and effectively?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no short-cut to mastering a legacy code base or knowledge domain. However, your organization can certainly choose to ensure that training and exploratory testing are made project priorities for the new team. The technical debt must be treated as a visible cost to the business, and paying down the debt should be charged against the current project as a cost of doing business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Technical Debt Doesn't Vanish&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your legacy project has a great deal of technical debt, and your organization has spent more than a decade failing to invest in documentation, knowledge transfer, cross-functional training, and effective hand-offs of its project deliverables. There is no silver bullet that will make this vast technical debt vanish; it must be treated as a visible cost to the business and acknowledged as an impediment to the current project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Engineering Issues: Legacy Code and Exploratory Testing&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I strongly recommend having the whole team, including the project managers, read some books on managing legacy code and performing exploratory testing. You might start with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B005OYHF0A&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Working Effectively with Legacy Code&lt;/a&gt; by Michael Feathers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pragprog.com/book/ehxta/explore-it&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Explore It!: Reduce Risk and Increase Confidence with Exploratory Testing&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;by Elisabeth Hendrickson&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These books will give you at least a general idea of the engineering issues involved when you inherit a legacy code base, but very few books really talk about how to integrate these issues into the schedule or project plan of a maintenance project like yours. Read on for some specific advice about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Project Management Issues: How to Pay Down 15 Years of Technical Debt&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've already identified a number of areas of technical debt, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inadequate system documentation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Non self-documenting code.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Brittle code with poor separation of concerns.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Brain drain caused by poor staff retention or improper project hand-offs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no quick fix for any of these things. However, all of these things can be effectively addressed by &lt;strong&gt;making the debt visible&lt;/strong&gt; to the organization, and &lt;strong&gt;explicitly allocating resources&lt;/strong&gt; to pay down the debt. Specifically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explicitly include exploratory testing to your project plan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explicitly add self-documenting unit testing to your project plan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explicitly add user- and administrator-level documentation tasks to your project plan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explicitly add team members with testing and technical writing skills to your project team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explicitly include any subject matter experts that remain with the company into your project plan, either in a training or team-participation capacity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explicitly add enough time to your schedule to perform necessary refactorings as you place the code base under test and disentangle your subsystems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it should get you started. The important things are to ensure that the cost of all the accumulated technical debt is made visible to the organization, and all necessary mitigation measures are explicitly included in the team's process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-09-15T20:08:30.423" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9897" CreationDate="2013-09-16T14:43:36.867" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Setting a resource's 'Max Units' value will not prevent you from over allocating that resource, and it will not change any of that resource's existing assignments as Julie stated. Unfortunately, you will need to find all of that resource's assignments in the project schedule and change the assignment units for each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately, there is a relatively easy way to accomplish this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Open the project schedule with Microsoft Project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apply the 'Resource Usage' view: 'View' ribbon tab &gt; 'Resource Usage' command&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Insert the 'Assignment Units' column into the left table portion of the view: 'Format' ribbon tab &gt; 'Insert Column' command &gt; Select 'Assignment Units' field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Locate the desired resource in the left table portion of the view; their assignments should be listed below their name.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change the 'Assignment Units' value next to each of the resource's assignments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6956" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2013-09-16T15:14:18.463" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T15:14:18.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9866" CreationDate="2013-09-16T15:02:09.043" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are trying to indicate upcoming starts, upcoming finishes, and lateness, then here is a formula to get you started:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;IIf([Start]-[Current Date]&amp;gt;=5,&quot;Green&quot;,IIf([Start]-[Current Date]&amp;gt;=0,&quot;Yellow&quot;,IIf([% Complete]&amp;gt;0,&quot;Blue&quot;,&quot;Red&quot;)))&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Insert this formula into a custom text field, and it will display various outputs under the following conditions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Green&quot; if the current date is greater than or equal to 5 days ahead of the start date.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Yellow&quot; if the current date is less than 5 days and greater than or equal to 0 days ahead of the start date.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Blue&quot; if the current date is past the start date and the task % complete is greater than 0 (i.e. the task has started).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Red&quot; if the current date is past the start date and the task % complete is 0 (i.e. the task has not started).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use similar logic to create another custom calculated field based on the finish date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6956" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-09-16T15:07:10.213" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T15:07:10.213" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9932" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-16T15:47:05.877" Score="9" ViewCount="373" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have stories coming into the backlog from various business area owners, like product support, marketing, partner integration, etc.  We have one Product Owner that manages overall backlog priority stack ranking.  But we want our devs to be able to work directly with the person that is requesting the story for optimal collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're calling that the 'Biz Contact' right now, but is there a more common use or term in SCRUM?  Would they be considered the 'Product Owner' for that story?  Or the 'stakeholder' of that story?  Or is it expected in SCRUM that there is only ever one person, the single Product Owner, that the dev team works with for clarity and review of stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6957" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T19:04:12.640" Title="In SCRUM is it okay to have a separate 'product owner' per story?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9932" CreationDate="2013-09-16T16:42:09.397" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;By definition, the Product Owner is a stakeholder representative and acts as Voice of the Customer. You should have one (and perhaps an alternate, should the primary be unavailable for an extended period of time) Product Owner for the product. Calling people the Product Owner for a story is overloading the term and may lead to confusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's nothing prohibiting various Stakeholders from interfacing with the Scrum Team. Generally, the purpose of the Product Owner is to provide a buffer - Stakeholders can interact with one person instead of disrupting random members of the Scrum Team during the sprint and the Scrum Team can formulate questions and get them answered by Stakeholders through the Product Owner to ensure that they get timely answers, but without disrupting the daily work of these Stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you identify classes of Stakeholders (or, in a small enough environment, specific people), it may be valuable to tie the appropriate Stakeholder(s) or Stakeholder Class(es) to each User Story. However, I'd recommend caution with direct interaction between the Scrum Team and Stakeholders - there shouldn't be conflicting priorities, use cases, or expectations and exposing the team without going through a common interface may lead to problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, it boils down to how sophisticated your team, Product Owner, and Scrum Master are at managing expectations, understanding limitations, and ensuring clear communication between all parties. There isn't anything in the process that precludes it, but adding communication channels does add some level of risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T16:42:09.397" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9934" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-16T16:44:32.490" Score="4" ViewCount="41366" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Microsoft Project 2013, is there a way of showing &quot;total duration taking account of non-business days&quot;, rather than simply &quot;total number of business days&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example (using a standard calendar): If I were to enter a sequence of 260 tasks, each of which takes 1 day, and each of which follows on consecutively from the previous (Task A then Task B then Task C etc), then the total duration calculated by MS Project is 260 days.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first glance this calculated duration appears to imply an overall duration of about 0.7 years (i.e. 260/365) because it only takes account of business days.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If resources will only be working during business hours, I would like to show that the duration is approximately 1 year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6958" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-09T16:36:23.060" LastActivityDate="2020-09-29T16:56:35.517" Title="MS Project 2013: Overall duration, taking account of non-business days" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9932" CreationDate="2013-09-16T19:04:12.640" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;One project, one Product Owner.&quot; Just like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highlander_%28film%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Highlander&lt;/a&gt;, there can be only one. However, stories are generally told from a specific &lt;strong&gt;viewpoint&lt;/strong&gt;, and well-written stories often reference &lt;strong&gt;beneficiaries&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;collaborators&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Viewpoints, Beneficiaries, and Collaborators&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When writing a user story, the generally accepted format involves starting with a &lt;em&gt;viewpoint&lt;/em&gt; that defines the end-user or primary beneficiary of a feature. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a wealthy &quot;one-percenter&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want lower estate taxes&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that my children's inheritance is taxed more lightly than other income.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this example, the critical viewpoint for the user story is that of the wealthy one-percenter. Sometimes the viewpoint character is someone the team will work with directly, but sometimes others act as proxies or spokesmen for the viewpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The potential benefits of a story are not limited to the viewpoint character. In this example, the children also benefit from the feature even though the story isn't told from their point of view. They are &lt;em&gt;beneficiaries&lt;/em&gt; of the user story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As written, the user story also implies a number of other &lt;em&gt;collaborators&lt;/em&gt;: attorneys, probate courts, tax advisors, and so on. These are people that may need to be consulted or actively engaged in order for the team to complete the story properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, collaborators (as opposed to the story's viewpoint or beneficiaries) are often implied by the story rather than explicitly called out. This may be a good thing that provides needed flexibility in story execution, or it may be a bad thing that makes the story's tasks less transparent to the project. Your mileage in this regard may vary widely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T19:04:12.640" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8581" CreationDate="2013-09-16T19:33:40.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can set one task's duration based on another task's duration, but it would require you to clearly define the rules... then convert those rules into some VBA code that you can run inside Microsoft Project. The VBA code could check the first task in question, read it's duration, do a calculation, then set the duration of the second task in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without knowing the exact rules, though, I can't help you more than that right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6956" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-09-16T22:04:45.683" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T22:04:45.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9934" CreationDate="2013-09-16T19:36:38.970" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you need to see the output? You can create a custom calculated number field / column that displays the number of elapsed days (i.e. &quot;15&quot;), or you can create a custom calculated text field that displays the number of elapsed days with formatting (i.e. &quot;15 d&quot;). The required formatting will determine the type of custom calculated field you should use, as well as the formula that you attach to that field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6956" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-09-16T21:57:32.250" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T21:57:32.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9726" CreationDate="2013-09-17T09:37:53.733" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although the answer provide by @CodeGnome is technically correct, however &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AGILE/Working+with+Epics&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;JIRA Agile User's Guide&lt;/a&gt; mentions the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It may take several sprints to complete an epic&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;JIRA seems to use &lt;em&gt;epics&lt;/em&gt; for categorizing the product backlog based on &lt;em&gt;features&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;themes&lt;/em&gt;, which is why an epic may span multiple sprints. Epics are then decomposed into smaller manageable stories. Also, a team may work on stories from multiple epics during one sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;epic&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; as &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AGILE/Epic&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;defined by JIRA&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Epics provide you with an additional hierarchy of story management,&#xA;  providing planning guidance for groups of issues within, or across,&#xA;  projects. This allows ScrumMasters and Product Managers to measure&#xA;  important groups of issues that are all related by a common theme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that information in mind, answer to your question,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it acceptable to organize user stories by epics in a sprint backlog&#xA;  when the epic is not fully represented in any one sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt; (when looked from JIRA's prespective).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T09:37:53.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9934" CreationDate="2013-09-17T14:43:33.250" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may want to check which calendar you have assigned as the project calendar. The default &quot;Standard&quot; calendar does not count non-working days (Saturday and Sunday) in the duration calculation. Check Project Information on the Project ribbon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-09-18T04:16:59.217" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T04:16:59.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9934" CreationDate="2013-09-17T15:57:11.943" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simple solution is customize calendar according to your need like number of working days,  working time, holidays, team vacations, client holidays etc. This will give you the details you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T15:57:11.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9934" CreationDate="2013-09-17T16:06:25.260" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, there is no such in-built functionality. However you can use a custom field for that. Here is an example - &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.jackvinson.com/archives/2009/11/05/tech_tip_how_to_show_calendar_day_duration_in_ms_project.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.jackvinson.com/archives/2009/11/05/tech_tip_how_to_show_calendar_day_duration_in_ms_project.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6960" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T16:06:25.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9934" CreationDate="2013-09-17T18:42:09.500" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have mentioned, there are project calendar settings that determine which days are counted as working days. Perhaps your working calendar has been set to consider weekends as working days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should check the working time for your project in the Project -&gt; Change Working Time menu.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Detailed help can be found on microsoft.com :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project-help/change-working-days-for-the-project-calendar-HA102809468.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Change working days for the project calendar&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1890" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T18:42:09.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9946" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9947" CreationDate="2013-09-18T08:50:05.757" Score="2" ViewCount="1786" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once upon a time a project that I was managing running was fine, when all of a sudden due to dependencies of another project, senior management decided to freeze the project to focus on something else. Weeks later, management decided to change the concept of the previously frozen project and revamp the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering how I would depict this on MS Project. When we froze the project, % Complete was at about 65% with many tasks left open. I was thinking to set all Actual Finish dates to the date of freeze, which would make % Complete 100%. This could be misleading to stakeholders. They might think that we actually finished the project. If I left those tasks hanging, then the project would never seem to have been completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum up my question, how should I depict dropped tasks on MS Project, with the least risk of misleading information to senior management and stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional information: The company I work for let's project managers freely choose their own tools as long as it showed information such as % Complete, a timeline, and breakdown tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6844" LastActivityDate="2013-09-19T08:50:03.140" Title="How to properly drop tasks in MS Project that have value" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9946" CreationDate="2013-09-18T10:39:45.213" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seems like you have a new project.  I think the simplest solution is to keep the original PMB as is to maintain as a project artifact and create a new PMB for the revamped product.  It doesn't seem like a ton of value to alter the existing schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if there is a reason to do so I am not seeing, it is totally appropriate to make old work packages 100% complete if stopped midstream.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example, your budgeted cost of work scheduled (BCWS) = $1,000.  You perform (BCWP or EV) $650 when you stopped, roughly 65% complete.  You need the performance budget from this package to fund a new work package so you reduce your BCWS from $1,000 to $650 and capture the $350 remaining performance dollars to fund somewhere else.  This sets BCWS = to BCWP making it 100% complete.  All of this goes through change control and explained in detail to the impacted stakeholders, so there is no misleading anyone.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice that you do not alter ACWP (actual cost of work performed) so dollars actually spent, whether you were over- or under-running, remain the same so you do not remove any cost variances.  Removing schedule variances by doing the above simply does not matter since you stopped the package.  In other words, who cares.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I really think you should just start a new project.  Close the first one down, document the variances in your closing documentation, and call it done.  The proceed with the new one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T10:39:45.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9948" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9950" CreationDate="2013-09-18T13:37:21.277" Score="5" ViewCount="580" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our company is doing some Scrum experimentation, and I have a quick question about what exactly a sprint should be composed of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the sprint planning meeting, we settled on three different stories. One story stands completely on its own, and can be finished and launched at the end of the sprint. The other two, however, are smaller pieces of a larger feature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it common to split the conceptual theme of a sprint like this, or should all of the stories been focused on the large feature?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6966" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T20:32:28.777" Title="Can a sprint be composed of vertical slices of functionality across multiple 'projects'?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9948" CreationDate="2013-09-18T15:26:41.047" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way I've seen it done (I'm currently working at a large firm doing scaled agile) is that the work put in a sprint is based on capacity and priority, not necessarily a theme.  We frequently have features that decompose into multiple stories that won't necessarily all get done within a single sprint - particularly when we have dependencies on other teams (e.g. we need a service built/modified).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I don't see any issue with the approach you are taking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6970" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T15:26:41.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9948" CreationDate="2013-09-18T20:32:28.777" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, a Sprint should provide a coherent increment of functionality. In practice, teams may pull in stories that aren't aligned with the singular Sprint Goal, but this requires advanced Scrum-fu. Even when pulling in additional stories, some strategies are more successful than others, and great care must be taken not to violate core Scrum principles while doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;One Sprint Goal per Sprint&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the most overlooked requirements of the Scrum framework is the need for a Sprint Goal to guide each iteration. The canonical definition of the Sprint Goal is described here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Sprint Goal is an objective set for the Sprint that can be met&#xA;  through the implementation of Product Backlog. It provides guidance to&#xA;  the Development Team on why it is building the Increment. It is created&#xA;  during the Sprint Planning meeting.  The Sprint Goal gives the Development&#xA;  Team some flexibility regarding the functionality implemented within&#xA;  the Sprint.  The selected Product Backlog items deliver one coherent&#xA;  function, which can be the Sprint Goal. The Sprint Goal can be any other&#xA;  coherence that causes the Development Team to work together rather than&#xA;  on separate initiatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Portals/0/Documents/Scrum%20Guides/2013/Scrum-Guide.pdf#page=10&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/em&gt;, Schwaber and Sutherland, p.10&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The text takes a bit of parsing, but the core concept is that a Sprint Goal is the foundation of the iteration. A Sprint doesn't fail or succeed based on how many stories are done or not-done at the end of the Sprint; &lt;strong&gt;success only comes from meeting the objective defined by the Sprint Goal.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your Sprint Goal is &quot;do a bunch of stories,&quot; or &quot;complete this, that, and some other thing&quot; then you lose the very essence of agility. The team isn't able to work with the Product Owner and the stakeholders to find an optimal way to reach the stated goal; instead, the team is forced to find success only through 100% completion of prescriptive work breakdown packages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Exceptions, Always Exceptions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each Sprint should have a singular Sprint Goal, and the success of the Sprint is based on whether the Sprint Goal has been met by the end of the iteration. However, because a Sprint is a fixed-length time-box, sometimes the team will have extra capacity available after meeting the Sprint Goal. This leads to several options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Option 1: Early Termination Strategy&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first option is for the Product Owner to call for an early termination to the Sprint. If you have a month-long Sprint, but you meet your Sprint Goal in a week, this is certainly a sensible thing to do. However, early terminations carry process overhead, so if you run into this situation often you should reduce your Sprint lengths and save early terminations for truly abnormal circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Option 2: Fill Excess Capacity Strategy&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second option is to ensure that the team only commits to stories related to the current Sprint Goal, but uses any extra capacity remaining &lt;em&gt;after the Sprint Goal is met&lt;/em&gt; to peel additional stories off the Product Backlog. This is obviously done in cooperation with the Product Owner, who works with the team to identify user stories that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;can fit within the remaining Sprint capacity, and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;can add value to project if bumped to the top of the Product Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Fill Excess Capacity strategy is the one that experienced teams generally find most effective. It preserves the integrity of the Sprint Goal and keeps the iterative cadence stable, but also provides much-needed flexibility to the process. Remember, Sprints are all about maintaining a sustainable pace of development over time, and the primacy of the Sprint Goal is one of the most effective ways to set that pace properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The 100% Utilization Fallacy&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, some teams fall prey to the 100% utilization fallacy and assume that the goal is to keep the team working at full capacity every iteration, regardless of the need for process slack or flexible business objectives. Such teams will typically fill their Sprint to the brim based on historical velocity patterns or arbitrary management targets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are lots of problems with this approach, including a reduced focus on the product increment and a reduced ability to adapt to changing business objectives. It also makes it very hard for a team to determine whether or not a given Sprint was a success. At the end of a Sprint, even if you completed 100% of the stories and kept everyone busy 100% of the time, without a cohesive goal &lt;em&gt;how do you know that you built the right thing?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some domains, this framework rule can be broken successfully, but it certainly complicates the process tremendously. If your Scrum-fu is sufficiently advanced that you can break this rule by leveraging your inspect-and-adapt cycles, measuring success properly, and keeping a sustainable pace&amp;mdash;well, go right ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are certainly cases where multiple goals or cross-goal Sprint Planning can work, but it's like juggling chainsaws. I don't recommend it&amp;mdash;unless you're planning to use your death-defying juggling act to join the circus, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T20:32:28.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9946" CreationDate="2013-09-18T21:00:34.500" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way I see it, you have two options... (a) continue using your existing project schedule or (b) abandon it and create a new one. In either case, you have a major scope change, so you cannot continue using the existing project schedule &quot;as-is&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you choose option (a) because you want to be able to easily see the project history in one place (which can be quite valuable), then I recommend doing the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make a backup copy of the existing project baseline (assuming there was a baseline &quot;snapshot&quot; originally) into an unused set of baseline fields.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set the 'Remaining Duration' to zero for all tasks that were in progress when the project was stopped; this will mark them as 100% complete, but it will only reflect the work that was done up to the point when the project was stopped... but not the uncompleted / remaining work on those tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Modify any remaining tasks as necessary, attaching a note to each explaining what you did, when you made the change, and why you made the change.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add any new tasks as necessary, attaching a note to each explaining what you did, when you made the addition, and why you made the addition.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Save a new project baseline &quot;snapshot&quot; when you feel that the schedule is ready to execute, and when your stakeholders agree to the new schedule.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you choose option (b) because you want a fresh start, then I recommend the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a copy of your existing project schedule in case you want to use it as a starting point for the new schedule.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the existing project schedule, set the 'Remaining Duration' to zero for all tasks that were in progress when the project was stopped; this will mark them as 100% complete, but it will only reflect the work that was done up to the point when the project was stopped... but not the uncompleted / remaining work on those tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the existing project schedule, cancel all unstarted tasks in the project schedule. If you are using MS Project 2010 or 2013, then you can simply set the tasks as inactive with a couple of mouse clicks. If you are using an older version of MS Project, then set the remaining duration to zero for all of the unstarted tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a new project schedule from scratch or by using the copy that you created; if you use the copy that you created, then delete all tasks that were completed, as well as any tasks that were in progress that you no longer need.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the new project schedule, add and modify tasks as necessary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the new project schedule, save a baseline &quot;snapshot&quot; when you feel that the schedule is ready to execute, and when your stakeholders agree to the new schedule.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6956" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2013-09-19T08:50:03.140" LastActivityDate="2013-09-19T08:50:03.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1973" CreationDate="2013-09-20T19:31:58.613" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The developers on the team should decide what works best for them.  It may be that short sprints work best at the start, then longer sprints in the middle, then shorter sprints at the end.  Or vice versa.  Or all the same size, at 4 weeks.  Or maybe 4 weeks turns out to be too long for the empirical approach that is Scrum, so the developer team may decide to cut it back to 3 weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately for the PM, the length of the sprint is not the PM's concern.  Assuming the PM is the product owner, and not one of the developer team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6982" LastActivityDate="2013-09-20T19:31:58.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9955" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-22T10:08:35.543" Score="9" ViewCount="1233" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, being directive is saying &quot;do the things that I have told you to do&quot; and supportive is &quot;do what is best for the company, and if you have problem I will support you.&quot; To be an effective project manager, which is more important, to be directive or supportive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6988" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-09-22T19:21:52.390" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T02:49:58.967" Title="Should a Project Manager be Directive or Supportive?" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9955" CreationDate="2013-09-22T11:33:39.257" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both. Team maturity, process maturity, experience, risk, stakeholder support, and many other variables dictate the type of leadership and management approach you need to deploy. And you can expect to change your approach as things change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, avoid trying to find a single answer comparing two extremes. Our world is way more dynamic and random than that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-09-22T11:33:39.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="75" CreationDate="2013-09-22T15:13:59.560" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a projects has a beginner and an end then it could be represented in a Gantt chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, a Gantt could represents task measured in hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't forget that AGILE methodology could be adopted in the design/implementing/supporting level, however it is not common to see other section of the business adopting it.  For example, a Agile Team can show to the Business/Finance Team, a Burn Down chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6053" LastActivityDate="2013-09-22T15:13:59.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9955" CreationDate="2013-09-22T15:40:59.850" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Cultural Expectations vs. Role Effectiveness&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether a project manager is expected to be a command-and-control authority figure or a servant-leader, coach, or referee is largely a matter of organizational culture. The expectation the role is generally set by the executives to whom the project manager reports; you can often be guided by &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; management style in determining the cultural expectations, but it's generally better to have it spelled out explicitly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, a better question would be: &quot;Which style of management is more &lt;em&gt;effective&lt;/em&gt;?&quot; Unfortunately, there's no canonical answer to this question. Agile methodologies like Scrum typically require servant-leader, coaching, or referee-style management to fully enable the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;self-organizing principles&lt;/a&gt; of the Agile Manifesto. Other methodologies may lean towards other management styles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm unaware of any &lt;em&gt;canonical&lt;/em&gt; research that makes one type of management better than the other under all circumstances. Therefore, it is up to you (and your development and management teams) to determine what works best in your specific organization. The important thing is to make sure everyone in the organization is on the same page, and that everyone agrees on the nature of the project management role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-09-22T15:40:59.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9959" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-23T01:02:34.680" Score="3" ViewCount="309" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're developing an application on a contract basis for an arm of a governmental organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment, we're students, and payment &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; slated to done using student funding avenues.&#xA;However, I've just heard word that we'll need to set up a business, write up formal requirements and a proposal, and assist in comparing bids of similar scope and domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for instance, try to find/identify applications and costs that use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;mobile phones&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a mapping system&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a PHP backend&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any browsable/searchable system for comparing prices of similar projects? &#xA;What is the typical way to &quot;compare costs&quot; for a project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I did try to find answers on this forum and online, hope this question isn't redundant.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mahalo&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6992" LastEditorUserId="6992" LastEditDate="2013-10-01T21:38:28.643" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T21:38:28.643" Title="Finding similar projects for cost comparison?" Tags="&lt;budget&gt;&lt;project-proposal&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3791" CreationDate="2013-09-23T03:34:26.153" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would agree with Lunivore and SBWorks - their inputs are from both an academic and from a professional industry-based perspective - seasoned with common sense and an understanding of the English langauge &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(which is pretty LOW in the UK, Australia, Canada, NZ and the USA - I constantly see immigrants who have a good laugh at the local's language disasters)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’d go with dictionary definitions, and apply those definitions to a situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is, if you try and look at the ‘industry’, essentially you have a bunch of self-propagating trash - in that each corporate publishes its version of life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. IBM calls it's framework based on the Unified Process a 'process' - the Rational Unified Process - which is actually a framework when you look at it. Coming from a big player in the industry, this is misinformation and bad terminology at its best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for enterprise terminology re: frameworks and methodologies, most corporates and government agencies are run by morons who have their own definitions of these terms - probably inspired by IBM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(pardon my French!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’ve seen at least one top level official (CIO/CEO/CFO/CTO) look at a process flow diagram and call it a ‘framework’.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BoKs are bodies of knowledge that describe elements and knowledge areas that may be used as a framework, and approaches to building models/methodologies based on that framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academic definitions of a framework suggest that unless you bundle standards, procedures and processes together at an enterprise level, you don’t have a framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Until you distill a framework into tools, methodologies governing processes, and standards that act as gateways in a procedure within those methodologies, you don’t have a methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very broadly, the Framework is ‘what’ the enterprise is aiming for, or the 'where' for that matter-  in the broadest sense, and the Methodology is the ‘how’ that includes methods, tools etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’m sure every corporate worth its shares would be out there molesting that definition till it is no more sensible than the US Dollar as a reserve currency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6994" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T03:34:26.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9961" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9967" CreationDate="2013-09-23T06:59:23.587" Score="1" ViewCount="23554" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I use auto-leveling in MS Project to schedule my tasks, some tasks are often split without visible reason. So the plan becomes not too real, like following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;TaskA.. [day break] TaskB TaskC TaskD ..TaskA &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you understand this plan is not very good because of loosing the context of the task.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I see that the tasks could be scheduled without splitting or with much less splitting. E.g. it would be okay if it build the following schedule:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;TaskA.. [day break] ..TaskA TaskB TaskC TaskD &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to deny MS Project to split tasks while auto-leveleling or at least to control such behavior?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6995" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-07-26T08:21:31.810" LastActivityDate="2017-07-26T08:21:31.810" Title="Is there a way to deny MS Project to split tasks?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9962" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-23T07:28:35.777" Score="2" ViewCount="35942" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to print the task list and the Gantt chart in a specific date range (as illustrated in the image below). How can I do it? The default print scheme wastes paper and is difficult to read. I have gone through all the print options provided in MS Project but it didn't help.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8AWqY.png&quot; alt=&quot;print only tasklist &amp;amp; gant&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1945" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2013-09-24T07:03:06.010" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T10:37:01.680" Title="How to print task list &amp; gantt chart from a specific date range" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9961" CreationDate="2013-09-23T10:26:25.133" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The solution is very simple: DO NOT AUTO-LEVEL YOUR SCHEDULE!  At best, the auto-level functionality could be used just to see what schedule issues you have that the tool finds.  Analyze what it pushed and pulled to give you a clue where you have a scheduling constraint that you need to resolve manually.  Other than that, never push that button.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T10:26:25.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9962" CreationDate="2013-09-23T10:29:02.850" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you tried using the &lt;strong&gt;Date Selection&lt;/strong&gt; provided in the Print Dialog? Date selection options are highlighted in blue color in the following screenshot:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GTccR.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried it in MS Project 2007 and it worked fine. Full chart was taking 3 pages, when I used the date range then the chart got printed in 2 pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/oKGeI.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T10:29:02.850" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9962" CreationDate="2013-09-23T11:50:51.910" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I filter the date range in project; I have a standard project filter &amp;amp; view for &quot;Six Month Horizon&quot; which includes only those tasks that start or end in the next six months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That may help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T11:50:51.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9959" CreationDate="2013-09-23T12:18:30.280" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We're developing an application on a contract basis for an arm of a governmental organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the moment, we're students, and payment was slated to done using student funding avenues. However, I've just heard word that we'll need to set up a business, write up formal requirements and a proposal, and assist in comparing bids of similar scope and domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't understand how you could bid on a contract (by submitting a proposal) and also evaluate the bids of other vendors. Or are you a single-source vendor and you are looking at past bids from previous projects? If the latter then OK, if the former there appears to be a huge conflict of interest and you might want to seek legal advice before proceeding down this path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that everything is OK from a legal perspective (and disclaimer here that I am not a lawyer and am not dispensing legal advice):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there any browsable/searchable system for comparing prices of similar projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This depends on the government or the agency. Your best bet is to ask the agency if they have that kind of information available, by and large in western democracies you should have access to costs for past projects. If the agency you are dealing with is having you compare bids from past similar contracts you should be asking them if they have a searchable system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the typical way to &quot;compare costs&quot; for a project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The experience that I've had with US Federal gov't contracts is that you as the vendor don't get to compare costs, bids are sealed. I do know that they look for discrepancies between vendors in terms of time, scope, resources, budget. So if one vendor out of five says the effort will take half as long as the other vendors a red flag goes up as the vendor may not know what they are doing or haven't put much thought into the bid. With larger RFPs points will be assigned to different sections to try to make evaluation more objective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does the requesting agency simply seek out other bids based on the same requirements document we'd generate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again based on my experience the agency sends out requirements as an RFP to a number of eligible vendors. The requirements would be the same for all vendors. Vendors may have been pre-selected (e.g. based on past experience, research on capabilities, etc) or it may be a more general thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More generally, government contracts are a complex thing, and given that no two will be alike you are kind of on your own beyond some basic guidelines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Base your costs on your estimates and not others.&lt;/strong&gt; You don't know what your competitor's margins are, if they are more or less efficient than you, etc. Make a best guess on how much time the work will take you and give a price based on your hourly rate. That hourly rate will need to factor in all of your overhead over the period of performance of the contract, including in your case the costs to set up your business. Trying to undercut the competition to ge the contract is a good way to either lose money or tick off the agency you are dealing with or both.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Factor in financial risk.&lt;/strong&gt; Government contracts are usually firm fixed price, so what they pay is what is in the contract regardless of how much it costs you. That is a good chunk of the reason why government contracts are as expensive as they are.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Clearly define scope.&lt;/strong&gt; Again, contracts are usually FFP so you need to be clear and precise about what is/is not included in the end deliverables.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There will likely be significant oversight costs.&lt;/strong&gt; I say significant in the sense that oversight costs will be a larger proportion of your overall costs than you would think. Regardless of contract size there will be someone at the government's end that fills the role of a contract officer, andn is responsible for ensuring you are doing your job. Expect to devote a non-negligible proportion of your work week on documenting what you have done and reporting it. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T12:18:30.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9961" CreationDate="2013-09-23T14:22:48.093" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm guessing you have turned off the Leveling option &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Leveling can create splits in remaining work&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;You can also control splitting on a task by task basis (instead of all or nothing), by inserting the field &lt;strong&gt;Leveling Can Split&lt;/strong&gt; in a task view and setting the field to &quot;no&quot; for tasks that you do not wish the leveling command to split.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T14:22:48.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9961" CreationDate="2013-09-23T14:33:08.000" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that David's response was a bit harsh... but I understand why. The built-in leveling tool in MS Project is greatly misunderstood, and if not used in a very controlled manner, it can wreak havoc in your project schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One very important thing to remember about the built-in leveling tool is that it is only capable of resolving resource over allocations by doing one of two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It can delay a task to remove an over allocation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It can split a task to remove an over allocation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other methods of resolving resource over allocations in a project, such as...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assigning another available resource to help perform a task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Re-assigning a task to another available resource.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reducing an assigned resource's utilization on a task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increasing an assigned resource's availability.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...but MS Project's built-in leveling tool is not capable of doing those things for you. If you want to use one of those techniques, then you will need to do them manually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, if you DO choose to use the built-in resource leveling feature, I recommend that you manually level one resource at a time... and DO NOT run the feature automatically. To set the resource leveling tool to run manually, rather than automatically, do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click the 'Resource' tab to display the 'Resource' ribbon in MS Project (assuming that you are using Project 2010 or Project 2013).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click the 'Leveling Options' button in the 'Level' section of the 'Resource' ribbon.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the 'Resource Leveling' dialog box, select the 'Manual' option at the top (rather than 'Automatic'), the click the 'OK' button.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are going to level one resource at a time using the resource leveling tool, then it is also CRUCIAL that you DESELECT the 'Clear leveling values before leveling' option in the 'Resource Leveling dialog box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To level one resource at a time using the built-in resource leveling tool, do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify a resource in the project that is the most over allocated or the most critical, using views such as the 'Resource Graph' or the 'Resource Usage'.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apply the 'Resource Usage' view and select the name of the over allocated resource.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click the 'Resource' tab to display the 'Resource' ribbon, then click the 'Level Resource' button in the 'Level' section of the ribbon.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the 'Level Resources' dialog box, ensure that the desired resource is selected in the list, then click the 'Level Now' button.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Review the results of the leveling operation using the 'Resource Usage' view or the 'Leveling Gantt' view; if the results are acceptable, then move on to the next over allocated resource, otherwise undo / clear the leveling operation and try another approach to resolve that resource's over allocation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting back to the task splitting issue, there is an option that you can use to control whether MS Project is allowed to split tasks. To select or deselect the option, do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click the 'Resource' tab to display the 'Resource' ribbon in MS Project (assuming that you are using Project 2010 or Project 2013).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click the 'Leveling Options' button in the 'Level' section of the 'Resource' ribbon.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the 'Resource Leveling' dialog box, select or deselect the 'Leveling can create splits in remaining work' option, the click the 'OK' button.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- tz&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6956" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T14:33:08.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9959" CreationDate="2013-09-23T18:36:16.630" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comparing project costs outside of your company or project team may be a useful sanity check, but it is rarely &lt;em&gt;accurate&lt;/em&gt; for planning purposes. You need to perform your own cost estimates based on your organization's level of domain knowledge, labor estimates, and process maturity levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using someone else's cost estimates as anything other than an idealized management target is a recipe for project failure, because industry-wide means or averages can still hide some truly huge variances that may derail your project. However, if you insist on using the data anyway, some of it is certainly available from public sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;FOIA Requests&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In theory, past bids for US federal government contracts &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.justice.gov/oip/foia_updates/Vol_II_2/page6.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;should be available&lt;/a&gt; under the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foia.gov/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)&lt;/a&gt;, but are often withheld for a variety of reasons (legitimate or otherwise).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&quot;Open Government&quot; Laws&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Various US states and municipalities have &quot;open government&quot; laws that are intended to make the bidding process transparent and subject to public review. The laws vary widely by locale, and again may not always be followed as they should be. Your mileage may very definitely vary at the state and local levels, even more so than at the federal level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Don't Budget That Way&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you have access to detailed bids from previous contract winners, it's of limited value because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It doesn't reflect &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; cost structure or level of domain expertise for the current project proposal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lowest-bidder contracts have significant failure rates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your labor and unit costs may vary significantly from other bidders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cost may be only one weighting factor in the bid process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project criteria or assumptions may have changed enough to invalidate specific line-item estimates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you are competing for a pencil-supply contract, but your main business line is selling puppy chow, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abilityone.org/skilcraft.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Skilcraft's&lt;/a&gt; cost structure for delivering writing supplies is probably not representative of what it would cost &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; company to produce a similar volume of #2 pencils. They're set up to do it in volume; your kibble company is unlikely to be able to compete at the same price point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T18:36:16.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4227" CreationDate="2013-09-23T21:39:18.677" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has been my experience that a Project Manager handles one project at a time from beginning to end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the Program Manager handles multiple simultaneous projects from pre-sales to post sales.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the Program Manager will work with the proposal team as content expert, trying to win the contract.  He will be the main or sole author of the project plan, work break down structure, scope of work, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the contract has been awarded, he will manage that project from beginning until the end, all while managing other projects at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then he is part of the team that derives post sales projects for the customer, such as additions and expansions to the original project and manages the additional work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:  It may take one year to complete an initial cellular system.  At the end of the year and the completion of the &lt;em&gt;original&lt;/em&gt; project, there will inevitably be the 1 yr, 2yr &amp;amp; 5yr growth plans (projects), which are expansions to the original project/system/contract.  He is instrumental winning this &quot;additional business&quot; as well as managing the implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is how I have seen the difference in the two terms.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7001" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-09-24T00:53:07.350" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T00:53:07.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9959" CreationDate="2013-09-24T00:59:31.720" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;See FedBizOpps.gov: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.fbo.gov&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.fbo.gov&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is where the gov posts its RFP's. You may not be dealing with the federal gov't but this is a place to begin your research as the general process is similar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you are dealing with some kind of gov't agency, and you are just starting out, I strongly recommend that you hop on down to your local SBA and get plugged into their support program: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sba.gov&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sba.gov&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Especially SCORE - which is a bunch of experienced people volunteering to mentor others like yourself. They can help you with setting up your business and learning the ways of gov't contracting. Tremendous resources, and free. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7003" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T00:59:31.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9955" CreationDate="2013-09-24T20:01:49.883" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, the most effective leadership style is the one adapted to the level of competence that a group or individual has regarding a specific task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hersey and Blanchard have described this in their &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situational_leadership_theory&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Situational Leadership Theory&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Competence is a combination of having sufficient knowledge or expertise as well as the motivation to do the job. For instance, a highly skilled programmer will not be very happy if he has to spend many hours doing helpdesk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, depending upon the 'situation' (skilled or unskilled vs motivated or not), a leader should adapt his management style accordingly. Hersey and Blanchard identified four styles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Telling&lt;/strong&gt;: the most directive&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Selling&lt;/strong&gt;: while still directive, there is more effort in convincing the employee&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Participating&lt;/strong&gt;: both leader and direct work together to find the best approach&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Delegating&lt;/strong&gt;: this gives the highest autonomy to the employee&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your approach towards a specific employee (or team) can change over time depending on the employee acquiring more knowledge about the task, or switching to a task he is already confident with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a well known chart (an example can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mlm-leadership-now.com/mlm-leadership-administration-situational-leadership/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) that summarizes the relationship between the styles and how you can move from one style to the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T20:01:49.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4227" CreationDate="2013-09-25T15:08:15.820" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We need to understand the difference between project and program first.  Project is limited to few applications(max can be 10)with in a product or with in few products. Program is in general good number of applications across many products.  You can see the difference of coordination and work for a program.  Program manager is responsible to deliver these many involved products and works closely with many PM's on these products and ensure that these projects belongs to program is successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T15:08:15.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4711" CreationDate="2013-09-27T17:26:07.493" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's like comparing a BS degree in Computer Science to a technical vendor certification - such as Microsoft's technical certs. One has nothing to do with the other. People shouldn't confuse degrees with certificates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7027" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T17:26:07.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9680" CreationDate="2013-09-29T02:23:11.400" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This makes a lot of sense when I compare it to what our organization is doing as well.  We've multiple layers of component teams with chained dependencies (they can't be one team given challenges due to the geographic spread, team size). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team A produces something consumed by team B which uses it to produce something for team C who eventually ends up selling the final solutions to an actual &quot;pays the bill&quot; customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the &lt;strong&gt;planning&lt;/strong&gt; approach we've taken is to stagger our sprints (for A, B and C) to allow for acceptance/feedback, testing and risk management. Each team treats whoever's receiving their deliverable as the &quot;one and only&quot; customer.  The Product Owner for each team liaisons with the upper layer and ensures that a &quot;tagged&quot; child story (for A, B, C) groups together to actually deliver the complete &quot;vertical cake slice&quot; user story that the actual customer wants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an earlier post indicated, a Scrum of Scrums where the Scrum Masters huddle together once a week is critical to making this work smoothly (we've already seen situations where we don't track each other's updates on Rally all that well and sometimes get blocked on a dependency-related task)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not quite what Agile might have in mind ... but we're trying to work with what we've got and add more improvements as we go along. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7032" LastEditorUserId="7032" LastEditDate="2013-09-29T02:28:18.783" LastActivityDate="2013-09-29T02:28:18.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9692" CreationDate="2013-09-30T10:37:46.983" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We used to estimate by using Software Problem Report Complexity Method (SPRCM).  This method of estimation calculates the size by taking into consideration the Software problem Report (SPR) as basis. This sizing technique determines the size of a project in terms of complexity index (CI). For each SPR given, it is classified to fit in one of the categories like Very Simple, Simple, Medium, Complex and Very Complex. A complexity factor is given to all the 5 categories taking Very complex as the base. Very Simple (0.08), Simple (0.16), Medium (0.8), Complex (0.5), Very Complex (1). &#xA;Then Complexity Index (CI) which represents number of very complex programs is calculated as follows:&#xA;Complexity Index = (0.08 * VS) + (0.16 * S) + (0.4 * M) + (0.5* C) + (1 * VC)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Where VS = number of Very Simple SPRs&lt;br&gt;&#xA;S = number of Simple SPRs&lt;br&gt;&#xA;M = number of Medium SPRs&lt;br&gt;&#xA;C = number of Complex SPRs&lt;br&gt;&#xA;VC = number of very Complex SPRs&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Taking coding as the base, the effort for coding is derived as:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    Effort per CI = 6 man days for all environments&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Total efforts in man days for coding = 6 * CI &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is one of the ways.  It used to work well for us.&#xA;Again once the SPR is completed we also capture actual effort and improve our estimation based on the learning’s continuously.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastEditorUserId="6474" LastEditDate="2013-09-30T10:44:10.830" LastActivityDate="2013-09-30T10:44:10.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9982" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9984" CreationDate="2013-09-30T18:52:21.107" Score="3" ViewCount="409" Body="&lt;p&gt;Working in web-development, I face a common situation when clients want to use 3rd party software as a starting point of the project. That could be a CMS, an e-commerce site, or something else. Motivation is usually budget-driven; it seems to the client that having a web site built atop of some off-the-shelf product will cut costs. It is not always true. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The client (often a non-technical person) was told that it's super-easy to build a 3-page website using a famous CMS. However, nobody knows what it takes to build a 100-page website, with a blog feature and 3 levels of paid membership.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team doesn't know the CMS before the project starts, so adding requested features become a hard task, and the existing CMS code often stands in the way of effective development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It also may turn out that there's no decent documentation. The team would create similar features faster &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; that CMS, but the client still insists on using it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adding custom design to the CMS-based site may cause trouble for HTML developers, requiring development of non-trivial code (for example, an obscure menu system).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It may turn out that the CMS is not compatible with the hosting that was usually used for deployment, the CMS has internal flaws preventing scalability in production, or that the solution requires enormous hardware setup to operate properly under load.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That leads to questions I'd like to ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can we convince a client that his solution should not require a custom CMS, or that it may take &lt;em&gt;longer&lt;/em&gt; to develop a custom solution using pre-existing code? Clients usually has arguments like 'the biggest sites on the Internet are using this CMS,' but we don't really know how much effort was put but those biggest sites to run the CMS properly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to include 3rd party (or pre-existing) code into our initial estimation and risk-management calculations?  Any numbers and techniques are welcome.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5475" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-09-30T19:31:56.087" LastActivityDate="2017-02-28T16:48:38.733" Title="How can we manage schedule risks brought into a project by 3rd party software?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9983" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-30T18:55:04.887" Score="2" ViewCount="8191" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working with MS Project 2013.  I have tasks set to auto-schedule, and to default to fixed work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have 2 milestones, one of which depends on the other.  The first one triggers some work which leads to the 2nd one, but I'm not interested in tracking that work, just the two milestones.  So I set milestone 2 to have milestone 1 as a predecessor with a 1 day lag, and set the durations of both to 0 days (in order to get them to turn into milestones).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that once I've done all that, they show as both completing on the same day.  My intent is that milestone one is by the end of day 1, and milestone 2 is by the end of day 2.  If I leave milestone 2 as a regular task with a duration of &quot;1 day?&quot; it schedules as I'd expect, but as soon as I change it to a milestone by setting its duration to 0 days, it jumps back onto the same day as milestone 1.  Here's a pic for clarity:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/sXCpr.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'd want/expect is for milestone 2 to schedule itself for 9/30.  Any way to get them to both be milestones but schedule the way I want with resorting to manual scheduling?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6856" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T20:01:48.130" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T20:01:48.130" Title="How to get milestone to auto-schedule for next day in MS Project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9982" CreationDate="2013-09-30T19:21:50.713" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You aren't really asking a risk-management question. At heart, the question is really about how to estimate projects where you have no baseline values. A common solution is to use a pilot project to generate planning values as inputs to a full-scale project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Ability to Estimate&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your project's ability to estimate accurately (or at all) depends a great deal on the team's experience with a specific knowledge domain. If you have zero experience with a given technology or project, then your project schedule is a black box; there is no way to estimate it other than guesswork.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even assuming some knowledge, all projects have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cone of uncertainty&lt;/a&gt;. Generally, you will plot a preliminary schedule based on some planning values, often adjusted by a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fudge_factor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fudge factor&lt;/a&gt; representing the amount of uncertainty the team has about the project. For example, inexperienced teams might multiply their initial productivity values (e.g. velocity) by 0.6, or pad their schedule by multiplying time estimates by 1.4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The actual value of the fudge factor is less important than the clear knowledge that it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; an adjustment to the planning values. Remember: an estimate is an &lt;em&gt;informed opinion&lt;/em&gt;, not an iron-clad guarantee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Pilot Projects&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your project involves skills outside the team's current area of expertise, or if there's a need to perform some tasks in order to calibrate the schedule for a larger project, then you need a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_experiment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pilot project&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, rather than trying to estimate a 100-page website with a tool-chain no one has experience with, you might plan a pilot project for a 5-page web site. The important deliverables from a pilot project like this aren't actually the web pages; the real deliverables are experience with the proposed solution and better input values for the larger project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, you might do your 5-page study in two weeks, but discover that the solution won't scale the way you need it to. Or, you might find that initial setup takes a week, and developers can average a page a day thereafter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever the results, you use the data from the pilot project along with a new set of more-informed fudge factors to generate the schedule or estimate for the larger project. This may or may not be linear: a 100-page web project isn't necessarily 20 times the complexity of a 5-page project. However, your cone of uncertainty should be smaller after a pilot study, and your estimates will be much more likely to fall within the boundaries of acceptable variance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-09-30T19:21:50.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9985" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9990" CreationDate="2013-10-01T08:52:04.600" Score="5" ViewCount="1388" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working in a Scrum-team that has been developing software for the past year. The organisation isn't used to agile product development and initially provided a weak product owner who was chosen because of his functional knowledge about the domain, but since we're developing both a functional system and a new technical architecture, he recently quit this position because he couldn't find himself adding much value to the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides the Scrum-team (programmers and testers), there is a relatively new separate project leader/manager who is responsible for budget, a software architect approving technical decisions and a requirements engineer (currenly 'interim product owner') who sees himself as &lt;em&gt;chicken&lt;/em&gt; helping out the hypothetical product owner. And then there is the test department and operations. These all are the stakeholders in this project and the organization has trouble appointing a product owner, because they 'can't find anybody who has enough knowledge and time to take on the job'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately most of my colleagues are smart, pro-active people and we are constantly debating among ourselves to make the right decisions and I think we're doing quite well under the circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, not having a product owner does slow us down and demoralizes the team in my opinion, because nobody seems to want to take responsibility for the final product except for the project leader/manager who only appears for demos, when approving timesheets and in weekly 1 hour meetings to inform the team about future organizational plans regarding this product, but also giving us a chance to speak up if there are any issues. A while back, I have asked the project manager to invest more time in making and maintaining a full release planning, so we can plan ahead and make choices about priorities accordingly. Although he response was positive, I have yet to see any results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you proceed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2078" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2014-06-10T12:52:39.413" LastActivityDate="2020-03-02T04:25:04.763" Title="Organisation fails to deliver a Product Owner" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9982" CreationDate="2013-10-01T11:55:58.713" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Question #1:  this is a business case.  To convince a customer of anything, you need to build an argument.  Develop a case that exhibits several alternatives from which the customer can choose, the benefits/costs/risks of each alternative, and your recommendation.  Your recommendation needs to be supported and substantiated with industry standards and facts that you find in your research, not just your opinion likely biased by your pursuit of profit.  Your entire presentation needs to be supported by the relationship you have developed with your customer.  You would not be just a vendor pitching your wares but a trusted adviser.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question #2:  This is a risk management question.  And you would apply normal risk management techniques.  There are few projects out there that are not dependent upon something external that could adversely or favorably impact your schedule and budget.  So this is normal; welcome to project management 101.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research what you can about the external dependency, e.g., reputation in the market place, history of being late or on time, references, etc.  What you can't learn, you need to draft an appropriate assumption (a source of risk).  You load your schedule with the external milestones based on that assumption so you can communicate clearly how your performance would be impacted if those assumptions do not bear fruit.  You can load schedule reserves to accommodate something coming in late and, most of all, you communicate clearly to your customer where you have dependencies, the risks you and your customer must accept, and any updates to what you are observing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can only control what you can control.  Most of the very random variables that affect our performance, both favorably and unfavorably, are way out of our control, which is very counter intuitive to all the business type A's managing projects, but such is life.  All you can do is watch for them, plan for them (risk management), communicate what you are observing in a timely way, and accept the fact this is all very normal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T11:55:58.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9983" CreationDate="2013-10-01T11:58:41.957" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your horizontal and vertical logic needs to occur where the work takes place.  The milestones should be linked to the work package that produces the result, not to each other.  I'd advise to abandon your approach and schedule using normal practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can still monitor only the milestones via filtering on them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you insist on using your approach, then use FS+2 days.  Put the logic in the predecessor field that makes the schedule do what you want it to do.  Since milestones are of zero duration, you need more lag than you would if it was tied to a package with &gt;0 duration.  The schedule is only so smart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2013-10-01T12:04:17.670" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T12:04:17.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9983" CreationDate="2013-10-01T12:50:47.100" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The one day lag translates to 8 hours. Your first milestone is scheduled for 8:00 am, the second milestone is scheduled for 5:00 pm the same day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with David, you should have a task of reviewing the report and creating the recommendations.  If you only wish to show the milestones, then apply a filter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T12:50:47.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9985" CreationDate="2013-10-01T15:17:25.847" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, this is a common problem. Sometimes companies &quot;buy&quot; Scrum not fully understanding what will be required from them.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;I see these possible action points:&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;1. Try to educate current stakeholders. Organize a meeting and explain them one more time that PO is a vital role. Perhaps one of them will willingly accept the role. Potential issue - you may find yourself in the same situation once again.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;2. Designate a product owner proxy from your own team. Potential issue - your assumptions might be incorrect and the whole product will solve other business problems.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;3. Add a Business Analyst to your team. You will lose cross-functionality; hence, it might be not pure scrum. However, if a successful project is a top priority it may be a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6960" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T15:17:25.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9985" CreationDate="2013-10-01T15:43:02.167" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master should work with the team to identify the costs to the team, the project, and the stakeholders that are related to the missing role. This information should be gathered in a transparent way, and the results should be highly-visible to the entire organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, senior management must fix this problem. In the meantime, the team should do its best without violating the principles of Scrum, understanding that it's sub-optimal and will remain so until the organization invests in meeting the managerial and structural obligations of Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Costs of Indirect Product Ownership&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only the Product Owner can add or remove stories from the Product Backlog. Only the Product Owner can change the priority of Product Backlog items. Therefore, having a missing, disengaged, or proxy Product Owner creates the following risks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project may build the wrong thing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The stakeholders may lack proper input or visibility into the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprints may lack clear Sprint Goals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team may end up working on low-priority items (from the stakeholders' point of view) because the Product Backlog is not properly groomed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The accuracy of estimates in Sprint Planning may be adversely affected.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team may need to commit to fewer stories each Sprint in order to account for ambiguity resulting from lack of Product Owner input.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not an exhaustive list, but it's representative of the common issues a Scrum team can face when missing a framework-mandated role. Not having a real Product Owner will almost always cause problems for the framework and the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Make the Costs Visible&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest mistake you can make with Scrum is to sweep problems under the rug. The lack of strong leadership from a Product Owner should not be discounted; it should be made &lt;em&gt;visible&lt;/em&gt; to the entire organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there is certainly political risk for doing so, an ethical Scrum Master should:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remind the organization of the important of the role of Product Owner.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Continue enforcing the framework rules.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't &quot;fill in&quot; for the missing Product Owner.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't allow stakeholders or the development team to manage the Product Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attribute reduced velocity or productivity as process problems to the missing Product Owner role when appropriate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Treat schedule slippage as a process problem attributable to the missing Product Owner role.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure the process is transparent, and the cost of the missing role is highly visible to stakeholders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When sprints fail, or fail to satisfy the expectations of stakeholders during the Sprint Review, invite them to the Sprint Retrospective.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make the lack of a Product Owner a recurring agenda item for each Sprint Review until the issue is resolved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, if the project takes twice as long to deliver half as much because senior management can't or won't place the right person in the Product Owner role&amp;mdash;well, that's their decision to make, but it comes at a cost that they need to live with. Under no circumstances should a Scrum team take improper responsibility for management decisions that violate fundamental framework principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team's responsibility is to sustainably deliver product in a professional and workman-like fashion. It is the Product Owner's responsibility to define and prioritize that product, and management's responsibility to identify and empower the Product Owner. In framework terms, it really is just that simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T15:43:02.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9309" CreationDate="2013-10-01T22:27:48.840" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is B becuase you need to think what the PMBOK would say. First thing is you need to understand all the inputs and outputs of the Program Management Plan from Chapter 9 in the PMBOK. The PM plan is much more encompassing then answer C and that's what the Traceability Matrix would do. Take all the sub-plans plus requirements into consideration. I teach some the PMP sessions for the PMP exam course. It turns out HR is one item I teach.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7052" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T22:27:48.840" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9994" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9995" CreationDate="2013-10-02T08:52:11.233" Score="2" ViewCount="707" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard several times that the greatest way to build your career and increase your knowledge is to become the weakest in your team. I recently became one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, every time I ask a question or ask for help they look at me like I'm stupid, and every time I try to tell someone something, they look at me like I'm a  4 year old child. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I take advantage of the learning opportunities in working with people senior to me without feeling lost, stupid, and like I can't contribute? How can I fit into this workplace as the weakest link?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7055" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-10-05T03:43:39.477" LastActivityDate="2013-10-05T03:43:39.477" Title="How can I get the most benefit joining a team as the weakest link?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;career&gt;&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2013-10-03T01:36:10.710" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9994" CreationDate="2013-10-02T09:34:21.860" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There can surely be a benefit in being the &quot;weakest&quot;, in the sense that you are surrounded by more experienced team members from whose experience you can profit. However, whether or not this really works out depends on you, the team, and the &quot;gap&quot; in experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For it to work, you must show that you are trying, i.e., don't only rely on the others. Prove that you can do things on your own and that you learn from what they show you. If you keep asking the same questions your teammates will surely get annoyed soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For it to work, your teammates must be open minded (and maybe experienced enough) to take in a new team member. Sometimes people get arrogant (surprisingly this happens most often to those who are actually not too far ahead themselves) and therefore act as if the new one is stupid. In this case I recommend to get this right onto the table in the next team meeting. Don't be afraid to talk to your team about problems your experiencing. A team that cannot reflect on itself cannot function properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something else you can do, if you don't want to go all out directly, is talking to the last member that joined the team before about his time as the &quot;weakest&quot;. Or, if that's not the right person for you to talk, chose a senior team member you feel comfortable talking to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A remark on the notion of &quot;weakness&quot;. In my experience it is seldom helpful to anyone to regard yourself as weak. I'm sure you have your accomplishments and your strengths. Only you are new on the ground you're walking and you need some time to get used to it. Such an orientation phase is not a weakness, but a perfectly normal and healthy thing. After all, it made you reflect on your role in the team. Image what would happen if somebody new joins the team and starts to tell everybody how to do things, right-away! It's good to have respect (and sometimes a little self-doubt) when facing something new. This is what makes us strive to become better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6990" LastEditorUserId="6990" LastEditDate="2013-10-02T09:43:49.270" LastActivityDate="2013-10-02T09:43:49.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9994" CreationDate="2013-10-02T15:35:16.347" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My thought is you should not demoralized with your team's behavior.  Particularly when asking the questions as you need to know the answer for the question and if you do not ask you will not get the answer and you will be the looser.  Best friends are critics.  You can learn lot of them.  Try to be more positive and keep your curiosity and ask questions.  Learn alternatively through internet and well prepare for the meetings and put your point with more confidence.  Once team feels you are active participation and good suggestions/points they will start recognizing and you can see the difference.  It is not easy but not impossible.  You will fail few times but you will learn a lot through failures and move on.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastActivityDate="2013-10-02T15:35:16.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9994" CreationDate="2013-10-02T22:01:08.280" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rather than dwell on the whole &quot;weak&quot; part, I'd interpret this as &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are trying to get out of your comfort zone (the only way people will grow!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your team will either motivate you to ramp up (via intense osmosis!) or you will willingly leave or be jettisoned.  Either way, you've successfully learned something about yourself and if this is the optimal career move for you.  :)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are putting yourself in a position where you will make mistakes frequently and if your team has a supportive critique + feedback loop, you actually get better faster!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Though with each mistake, you will need to promise yourself that you don't repeat the exact same error over and over again (this is the #1 reason a team member gets voted out of the island)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your craftsmanship (at code, or whatever the heck you are producing) improves as you are getting your work reviewed by people whose respect (even an iota) has to be earned.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though for all this to work, you have to really &quot;know&quot; that the team (and the lead) have bandwidth to accept a green member. All players in the team have to self-organize enough to accept your weaknesses and follow the right balance of mentoring you and/or assigning you tasks that don't create a damage path that needs clean-up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7032" LastEditorUserId="7032" LastEditDate="2013-10-02T22:07:09.810" LastActivityDate="2013-10-02T22:07:09.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9106" CreationDate="2013-10-03T07:26:14.277" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, its not necessary that you get these 35 contact hours from a training institute. There are other ways of gaining these 35 contact hours towards PMP eligibility criteria as per PMI handbook. Go through the handbook thoroughly for every information on PMP examination.&#xA;Though personally I recommend going through formal training through an REP. For that again, you need to check PMI website for the list of REPs. Online training is the best way to undergo this training as they are quite convenient and easy on pocket. I took my PMP training from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.simplilearn.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Simplilearn&lt;/a&gt; which is an REP and took many practice tests which were quite useful in gaining confidence. Good Luck!! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7058" LastActivityDate="2013-10-03T07:26:14.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9999" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-03T14:18:45.757" Score="1" ViewCount="1266" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every book/blog or Coach (and more recently, a 3 day workshop I attended) says having the scrum master serve as a solutions lead or architect is a terrible idea. Though I can't get a &lt;strong&gt;clear answer&lt;/strong&gt; as to why this is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm in a mid-sized yet spread-too-thin company with a 3 member team and Agile is currently being forced down our throats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is multitasking (not being able to function effectively in any of these three roles) the biggest downside to this? Any &lt;strong&gt;anecdotal evidence&lt;/strong&gt; to share if people have attempted this? Or is there a conflict of interest (Architects and Solutions Leads swim in details, the Scrum Master just wants to make sure things get done)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to make a strong case to the higher ups against this but I do not have enough experience (nor would I like to do a proof-by-failure experiment) to sell this to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Note that the other post asked about a Scrum Master being a Functional Manager (Waterfall role). This question actually asks about combining Scrum Master with two &lt;strong&gt;developer-centric&lt;/strong&gt; roles (Architect and Solutions Lead) =&gt; Thereby making this question quite different. In my case, we all (entire Agile team) report to a Functional Manager who does our performance reviews, recruits, procures etc. in the traditional Waterfall manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7032" LastEditorUserId="7032" LastEditDate="2013-10-04T02:54:54.770" LastActivityDate="2013-10-04T02:54:54.770" Title="Can a Scrum Master serve as a Solutions Lead and Architect all at once? What is really the downside?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-10-04T02:14:53.297" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9999" CreationDate="2013-10-03T14:57:52.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been Scrum Master, Product Owner and Team Member/Dev Manager all at the same time before and while it can work just fine, the negatives you point out are exactly it - time and conflict of interest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to be able to split time amongst those roles yet not let any of them suffer and set priorities without conflict. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What happens if you're nearing the end of a sprint, you have a development task that you need to finish or else it will block the project, yet another team member has a high impact task that is currently blocked and the Scrum Master needs to deal with it? Which role do you focus on? This might be able to be mitigated by putting your task back on the backlog for someone else to pick up while you focus on the block, but that may not always be practical. This can lead to sprint commitments not being met. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that said, we live in the real world and sometimes there's no choice but to combine roles. It can work, but everyone has to be realistic about what they're losing by doing that. I found it works best when there's an unwritten agreement within the team that the Scrum Master/Team Member usually works on the smaller/less impacting development tasks as they could have to drop work at any time to deal with Scrum Master duties. It's all about communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4699" LastActivityDate="2013-10-03T14:57:52.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10001" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-03T22:17:43.980" Score="2" ViewCount="4954" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is the scenario:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have a mobile app that should be developed for Android/iOS/Windows. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The app has similar features but with different design per OS.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It also needs backend/web development as well to provide some APIs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Those APIs are almost identical.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best practice here to form the team using Scrum platform?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I make separated projects for each of the backend APIs, iOS, Android and Windows apps and make them work on parallel?&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If so, how to manage the dependencies per app and the backend?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should the backend guy attend the daily scrum meetings for the iOS, Android and Windows apps as well?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or I make them one project and with the aim that each feature takes the same time to be developed in the sprint on each OS?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7061" LastActivityDate="2013-10-08T17:49:21.707" Title="How to structure a scrum team to build native iOS and Android mobile app that needs backend development?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2267" CreationDate="2013-10-04T06:51:53.557" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a developer of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eylean.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eylean board&lt;/a&gt; tool which offers UI perfection and variety of core features.&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Features:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Task board, burndown reports, cfd reports, lead/cycle reports, time tracking, excel import/export, fully customisable board to match any process, TFS integration, templates, Outlook integration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Structure&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Server/Client based software, so you can deploy on your own environment and be safe with your own data, without storing it in 3rd party websites... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xg0Wd.png&quot; alt=&quot;Scrum task board&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/w5uqX.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Project management dashboard&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wpxYK.png&quot; alt=&quot;Cumulative workflow diagram&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5562" LastActivityDate="2013-10-04T06:51:53.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10001" CreationDate="2013-10-04T15:06:47.390" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum framework asks for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cross functional team which can self-organize itself&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Building the product after breaking the required system in vertical slices&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in your case, a &lt;strong&gt;cross functional team&lt;/strong&gt; will have to include developers from different platforms and also testers. &lt;strong&gt;Vertical slices&lt;/strong&gt; of the system will consist of all the sub-parts of a feature from the frontend, backend api, database etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way the team can self-organize the work, for example, if the sprint goal is to allow the user to login and view the dashboard then the team will decide that login API is required, what will be its input/output and in which format (json, xml, etc.), frontend developers can provide their suggestions about the API usage/requirement and everyone knows the progress and impediments. Otherwise everyone will be working in their silos following their own plan/schedule which is highly discouraged by Scrum. Once a vertical slice is completed (end-to-end) then the team focuses on another vertical slice to build and so on. There could be some slack where individual team members have some spare time, which is fine, as Scrum focuses on work optimization and not 100% utilization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2013-10-04T15:06:47.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10005" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-06T12:45:46.487" Score="1" ViewCount="278" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my research study, I need to identify the key features of user story management tools that can be used to support agile development. So far, I identified the following general groups of features: User role modeling and personas support, User stories and epics management, Acceptance testing support, High-level release planning, Low-level iteration planning, and Progress tracking. Each group contains some specific features, e.g., support for story points, writing of acceptance tests, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which features of user story management should an agile team look for especially when switching from tangible tools (index cards, pin boards and big visible charts) to a software tool? Are some features more important than the others? Many thanks in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7073" LastEditorUserId="7073" LastEditDate="2013-10-17T12:14:36.037" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T12:14:36.037" Title="Which features of user story management should an agile team look for?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10001" CreationDate="2013-10-07T06:06:42.413" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My recommendations would be the same for regardless of the frameworks involved (Scrum, waterfall, hybrid, etc.) - break it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As you say, several parts of the work can happen independently &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;but&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; they need to be coordinate at the API level.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;So, have the architect/big-picture/astronaut types get together at the start of project and have them start to work on the API specs. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The backend teams and the individual app teams can probably get started right after the first draft is published&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The API team &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;needs&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; to meet, discuss, and publish changes in the API regularly as the project moves forward because their functional specifications will guide the other teams. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can call this something like &quot;build the framework first&quot;, I suppose, but I always imagine it as building a contract between different groups. For example, &quot;per my spec, the back-end groups agrees that when I ask for DataXYZ type data, I get it in UTF-8 format with date time stamps of YYYYMMDD in GMT time and ...&quot; and the reverse &quot;When I submit a new DataXYZ, it will be in UTF-8...&quot; This allows things to mesh later. Defining these kinds of things up front saves rework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, is should not &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; be defined up-front. Defining these contracts between groups should happen iteratively and have regular revisions. You may not get the results you want if you held up the whole project waiting for a massively detailed specification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is based of two of my regular influences: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000036.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Painless Functional Specifications&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Joel Spolsky&lt;/a&gt; and the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0738207683&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Business @ the Speed of Stupid&lt;/a&gt;. In fact, one of the case studies in the book closely matches your situation. Unfortunately, I can't find much in the PMBoK or other guides that would backup my approach. It has worked for me, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T06:06:42.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10008" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-08T08:03:32.593" Score="1" ViewCount="125" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just joined a small IT company that was looking for a project manager. We produce one project at once; that is, we start something, we develop it, we test it, and once it's done, then we think of another one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this reason, I implanted scrum, as projects usually take months. However (and fortunately) previous projects are working well; therefore, receiving tickets and... &quot;issues&quot; that just come out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please, consider that we are a small team (8 people in total currently) and I cannot assign only one person for tickets (it depends on each one's skills). As far as I've seen in many books and articles, Scrum-ban would fit our needs; that is, Scrum and Kanban combined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you guys think about it? Could you just give me small brief about how would it be in the day by day work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7088" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-10-09T03:15:25.170" LastActivityDate="2013-10-09T06:56:42.010" Title="Agile methodology for small company; large projects + ticket maintenance" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2013-10-11T06:59:21.240" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10001" CreationDate="2013-10-08T17:49:21.707" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whenever I have multiple teams with concurrent development that need to release synchronously, I leverage the Scaled Agile Framework (&lt;a href=&quot;http://scaledagileframework.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://scaledagileframework.com&lt;/a&gt;) model. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your program level team is your API team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;iOS and Android teams are feature teams&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Utlizes same framework as other Agile practices with more emphasis on roadmap and architectural considerations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check out Dean Leffingwell's book on this topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1159" LastActivityDate="2013-10-08T17:49:21.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9099" CreationDate="2013-10-08T22:53:26.713" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a couple approaches that my teams have deployed, each with different pros/cons. I will outline these approaches below. Which one or a hybrid of any, all depends on your business and users. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first rule of thumb is to tell a story with the data. How much time are you spending on support? If you do not know, start to measure. There could be deeper issues at play here and you need the data to tell the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have each team member dedicate some hours every sprint to support. For example, each team member allocates 5 hours per sprint to work on support issues. The trick here is aligning on priorities within the team. Create SLAs/team working agreements for how support will be managed. For example, any H priority issue will be pulled into the current sprint. Medium priority tickets will be addressed in the following sprint. Measure cycle time of support issues by priority to determine volume and if more/less time is required each sprint.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Scrumban - all work is prioritized and pulled with work in-progress limits, e.g. no more than 2 stories in a given column of your board. As tickets come in, they are prioritized against all other work and pulled into the sprint. Works well with teams that do not have specific deadlines or support issues that typically need to be addresses as soon as they come in. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Develop a rapid response team - works better if you have larger volume of support requests/user questions that need to be answered. Works as follows. 2 members, typically a pair dev/QA do not task to any new work in a given sprint. For the entire sprint, they respond to any ticket that comes in and addresses immediately. For those issues that require more effort, the work is prioritized as work product (story or defect) for an upcoming sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps and gives you some ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1159" LastActivityDate="2013-10-08T22:53:26.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10012" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10014" CreationDate="2013-10-09T06:39:17.847" Score="1" ViewCount="332" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've user story section in my project requirement document.&#xA;User story goes like this,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;As a user I want to check in to the venue&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and another one,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;As a user if I already checked in then check in button should be hidden&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am going in the right direction with this or I should rethink this stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7098" LastActivityDate="2013-10-20T12:28:40.047" Title="Confusion about user story in project requirement document" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10012" CreationDate="2013-10-09T07:09:58.867" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you writing Acceptance Criteria along with you User Stories, if not then it might be a good time for you to start writing them. From the example you gave, I believe that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;then check in button should be hidden&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;becomes &lt;strong&gt;one of the acceptance test&lt;/strong&gt; of the first story: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user I want to check in to the venue [so that ....]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each acceptance test represents some expected result from the system. A story will not be considered complete / done unless it fulfills all of the acceptance criteria of that story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some useful links to explore more about acceptance tests:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://implementingagile.blogspot.com/2011/05/acceptance-tests-in-scrum.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Acceptance Tests in Scrum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.boost.co.nz/blog/agile/acceptance-criteria/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;User stories: a beginner’s guide to acceptance criteria&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://guide.agilealliance.org/guide/acceptance.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Acceptance testing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2013-10-10T07:53:44.860" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T07:53:44.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1871" CreationDate="2013-10-09T11:00:48.210" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;read this to know: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/Pages/Ten_Ways_to_Earn_PDUs.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pmi.org/Pages/Ten_Ways_to_Earn_PDUs.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Most convenient way is to take courses by REPs and it helps in enhancing your knowledge too. You can try &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.simplilearn.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Simplilearn&lt;/a&gt; if interested in taking courses by REP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7058" LastActivityDate="2013-10-09T11:00:48.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10016" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-10T00:56:12.603" Score="1" ViewCount="264" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to shift careers (or narrow its focus) from web producer to project manager - and I'm currently unemployed. I've joined PMI and am studying for CAPM certification. I have one formal &quot;project manager&quot; role (web dev project management, 6 months) and other than that I've done lots of project coordination (scheduling, speccing, communicating with stakeholders as to milestones met) in my role as a web producer. I've also served as an HOA officer for three years, documenting procedures, getting us away from one company and sourcing another, scheduling maintenance tasks, coming up with the annual budget, et cetera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is that I'm not sure how best to sell my skills and background, and thus get into project management roles / onto that career track. My previous background is HTML production/web producer/front end web dev. I do have experience with Agile environments. But I'm having a hell of a time finding jobs that will fit my current experience level. Most PM jobs require 3 or more years of PM experience. I've got one formal, one more informal. So I'm at a loss as to what kinds of roles I should be targeting, what job titles, et cetera. Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7102" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T02:40:15.923" Title="Change in career focus; how to sell my skills+experience / get started in PM career?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;capm&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10016" CreationDate="2013-10-10T02:40:15.923" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Leigh,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a manager at a large fortune 500 company and having experience hiring and managing project managers, I think you might be trying to do too much.  Keep in mind that anyone looking for a PM right now is probably going to have a stack of resumes from qualified candidates and will automatically weed out those without a PPM certification or the proper experience.  Put yourself in the hiring manager's position, would you pick from a pool of experience candidates or take a risk on someone who is relatively new to a role?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice to you is to find a role that is more suited to your past experience as a web producer but in a growing organization.  After you are there a while and once you've proven yourself, take on extra side projects that will allow you grow into a lead role.  I think this will be easier than trying to find that perfect role straight away without any experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7104" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T02:40:15.923" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9955" CreationDate="2013-10-10T02:49:58.967" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As some of the other responses state, the answer is &quot;both&quot;.  Keep in mind that your job as a Project Manager is to maximize the effectiveness of everyone on the team.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The stronger team members will know what they're doing and you probably should stay out of their way.  Encouraging them and praising them for their accomplishments is the correct approach.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will have other team members who are challenged, whether it be because they are new to the organization, new to the technology, or perhaps not a good fit for the role.  For these folks, you should be directive -- provide them with a detailed set of instructions for the work they do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm of the opinion that as long as someone has a positive attitude, its up to his or her manager to come up with an environment that maximizes his or her contribution.  In some cases this means you should be &quot;supportive&quot; while in others it means you should be &quot;directive&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7104" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T02:49:58.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10020" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-10T11:45:22.007" Score="3" ViewCount="770" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for a very large organization not in the PM role that has historically had problems with project leadership and project management in general.  They have recently broken up and were reformed as now a &lt;em&gt;Program Management Office&lt;/em&gt; (which I don't really know or understand the difference).  The impression from my colleagues is that this is merely an abstraction away from real project management so that they won't have to be directly responsible for future project failures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our interaction with this group is generally that they coordinate BA, Dev and QA resources to hit arbitrary dates as laid out on a Gantt chart that they generate.  Developers are never really asked for estimates by PM's but we are asked early in project initiation for a &quot;rough guess&quot; on level of effort, but even then the dates that appear on the Gantt chart don't seem to correlate with any numbers we provide.  We track hours that are put towards a project, but we do not track project resource availability in any system.  For all intents and purposes the dates on the Gantt chart appear to be arbitrary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I asked about this in a meeting I was told that resource availability is just not possible, but upper management insists that we all work towards a hard date as a goal, and that everybody should view these dates as merely goals to try and achieve.  That is all well and good but our direct managers ask us for real estimates after the fact and then a date that originally started as merely a &quot;goal&quot; is now an unbending unmoving high pressure deadline by our direct managers.  The presence of the PM sort of disappears later in the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My original thought on the purpose of the Gantt chart is to demonstrate resource availability and visualizing the &lt;strong&gt;Critical Path&lt;/strong&gt;.  Wouldn't predetermined dates minimize the real value or usefulness of a Gantt chart?  Is this concept of pre determined dates on a Gantt chart a common paradigm for the field of Program Management?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7106" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T15:36:55.323" Title="Program management and the value of Gantt charts when dates are predetermined" Tags="&lt;gantt&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;&lt;program-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10020" CreationDate="2013-10-10T11:57:40.870" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fantastic question; significant overlap with my situation. I've got a couple of disorganized observations in response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, planning without the team violates the assumptions in the PMBOK.  I don't mean to treat the PMBOK as gospel, but I've found that pointing out that a given practice is at odds with the PMBOK is enough to get the audience to listen to my next two sentences; it is vital that the next two sentences be worth listening to.  The PMBOK planning process is based on planning with the best possible information and based on planning involving the whole team.  Once you eliminate the team from the planning effort, the quality of your plan will suffer.  If there are operational constraints that prevent involving the team in planning, management (and the PMO specifically) are responsible and accountable for compensating for that weakness. I would suggest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Emphasis on lessons learned, and retroactive quality assessment.  After you finish the plan (or any observable sub-unit of the plan), take an hour or two to measure how close the plan came to reality and ask &lt;em&gt;what can I do better next time?&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Frequent, Short, Modular plans. If you know that the quality of your plan is going to be constrained, then the best way to limit the damage is to shorten the plan. Transform the one large plan into 3, 5, or more shorter plans.  We currently have a master plan that is long, and then we build a set of rolling six month plans based on the master plan.  A catastrophic planning failure can only set us back only 6 months or so.  That also gives us more lessons learned sessions, and more opportunities to adapt our planning process to reality.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, you can still manage to this program plan, but the importance of Risk Management rises dramatically.  The program plan is set without consultation from the team, but that doesn't mean that the PM can't have a discussion with key internal stakeholders (e.g. developer team lead, or SME) and ask, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The schedule says we'll deliver X on date Y; is that realistic?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If we fail to deliver by that date, what is the most likely cause of failure?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'll bet you $100 that we'll miss this milestone; how much will you bet me that we'll make the milestone? (One of my favorites; when I talk risk, people stop listening, but when I phrase the question this way, people listen).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If our lives depend on making milestone X by date Y, what impact will that have on quality and cost?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What can we do to make it more likely that we'll make the milestone (and you'll win our bet)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just as a sidenote, I prefer not to have the discussion about likelihood and impact until we've discussed the problem and both have a reasonable understanding.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Program Dates are edicts, then schedule risk is a major component of your risk mangement.  Discuss all the schedule risks, assess the likelihood, and assess the impact in terms of the number of weeks delayed.  This is an ideal situation for a monte carlo analysis.  This supports a strong brief to external/senior stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The program plan shows the next milestone as Date X; we are Y% likely to meet that date.  The overall program plan shows program completion on Date W; we are Z% likely to meet that date.  If we are willing to spend $N, we can improve our chances by P%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2013-10-10T12:11:11.693" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T12:11:11.693" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10020" CreationDate="2013-10-10T15:36:55.323" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Gantt chart is a scheduling and not a resource tool. It documents the planned order and inter-relationship of activities needed to develop project products, and from this you can identify a critical path, but not resource constraints. A program like Project will integrate resource calculations with scheduling calculations, but conceptually they are different things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not an &quot;arbitrary&quot; goal invalidates a project schedule depends on whether or not you're talking about an aggressive goal or an unobtainable goal. Aggressive can be good, unobtainable is uniformly bad. I don't think I've ever worked on a project where aggressive goals have not been set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, your question is only looking at a couple of components impacting project success, namely schedule and resources. Mark talks about impacts of risk, but there are also considerations around budget, quality, business value and scope. My experience is that if you challenge your leaders on things like quality (&quot;I can deliver that by date X, but testing will be compromised and quality will suffer, are you OK with that?&quot;) and business value (&quot;We can push this out but we won't have XYZ which are necessary to save us the 5 FTEs of effort we are counting on to justify the project, are you OK with that?&quot;) they will almost always push out delivery dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T15:36:55.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10005" CreationDate="2013-10-10T20:03:21.490" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;High-level features of a user story management tool&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Broadly speaking a user story management tool needs to help an agile team in four areas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manage a backlog of epics, stories and bugs: Should be able to prioritize and size them. Stories at the bottom of the backlog would be epics, while stories at the top of the backlog would be broken up from epics into more granular stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint or Iteration Planning: Should be able to create sprints and possibly releases. Should be able to move stories from the backlog into sprints and should be able to split stories into tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint Execution: Progress tracking showing To Do, In Progress, Sent for Review, Done and so on. Should be able to close a sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Historical reporting: Burn-down chart, Burn-up chart, Team Velocity chart and so on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On top of these, the type of product being developed and how a business is organized may warrant other features:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One product being developed by multiple agile teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One agile team working on multiple smaller products.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of these features are essential for a minimum viable product. Beyond these, which features are important would vary from team to team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T20:03:21.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="611" CreationDate="2013-10-12T13:01:35.307" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;i like to respond to the same question as a resource ( well my company also uses the same word for employees) giving my point of view.. Watch out if your resource is facing some or any of these issues?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I was an extrovert, motivated and extremely hard working employee when joined. was putting more then 15 hours to work every day without getting extra paid&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;i was being hired for some different Profile and then after joining was being assigned a relatively low profiled task(QA).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My skill set was under-utilized in the company.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4.I alone was single back up for more than 15 employees adding to lot of work load.that was high time when i realised i ended up doing more then 50% testing alone for a big project for which client was being charged for 20 QA's&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5.i have multiple Managers, Leads, heads and bosses all assigning different task all with Top priories&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;6.At the same time facing office politics(regional discrimination).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;when tried to escalate few unacceptable things or providing any feedback, suggestions, it was often taken as complaints, and was Manager response was we don't escalate things!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;8.i was a borrowed resource for the project(originally BA, working for QA). not even single manager provided a listening ear. As for the Project i am not a permanent resource, for the original team- i never worked with them so they are nt the one responsible for my problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;9.while giving ETA resources are not being consulted even once( As a shock my boss used to include all holidays as working days, never used to calculate application downtime, emergency back up resource etc). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;10 If we give any comments on ETA, its considered that we are resisting work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;we never got any comp off or reward for working on holidays or late evenings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;12.Manager already knowing well that strict deadlines are set for the project, even then assigning multiple task parallel.. half of time is wasted in unnecessary meetings and compulsory training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;i find all the managers interested only in feedback from employees who have yes boss approach and are able to provide him hot n spicy information in workplace.i tried to talk to many senior managers, but i found they take feedback only from Managers!!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am a women, and complaint against a womenizer (high designated ) to one of my Lady manager and HR- in place of killing the issue and punishing hidden black sheep, i was officially transited to his team&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;i used to initially interact alot and make Manager understand consequences of Faulty ETA and poor resoucre allocation etc. but now after whole 3 years of struggle .. i left giving un-invited feedback. utmost irritated in the past.. i let the deadlines suffer. Let him have some heat. i stopped working more then 9-10 hrs/day. when assigning any task my comapany does not want to listen when you can finish. they want to listen'Yes' i will do that. So now i keep silent, keeping my manager in CC'ing.. keeping a written proof that i am overloaded.. don't expect task in time! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;why employees in IT and given only responsibility.. why there is no delegation of authority? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Employees are ready to work more then their physical capacity, depend how you manage them. its easy to find all faults with employees, i work in a fortune 500 IT company  and a member of Standard &amp;amp; Poor’s 500® Index but i see my company not even following basic rules of management:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Division of Work:the whole work should be divided into different parts and each individual should be assigned only one part of the work according to his ability and taste rather than giving the whole work to one person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Authority and Responsibility:authority and responsibility should go hand in hand. It means that when a particular individual is given a particular work and he is made responsible for the results, this can be possible only when he is given sufficient authority to discharge his responsibility. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) Discipline: discipline to mean obedience, respect for authority, and observance of established rules.Discipline can be established by providing good supervision at all levels, clearly explaining the rules, and implementing a system of reward and punishment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(4) Unity of Command:&#xA;According to the principle of unity of command, an individual employee should receive orders from only one superior at a time and that employee should be answerable only to that superior. If there are many superiors giving orders to the same employee, he will not be able to decide as to which order is to be given priority. He thus finds himself in a confused situation.&#xA;Such a situation adversely affects the efficiency of the subordinates. On the other hand, when there are many superiors, every superior would like his orders to be given priority. This ego problem creates a possibility of clash. Consequently, their own efficiency is likely to be affected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(5) Unity of Direction:&#xA;Unity of direction means that there should be one head for one plan for a group of activities having the same objective. In other words, there should be one plan of action for a group of activities having the same objective and there should be one manager to control them.&#xA;Unity of command means that there should be only one manager at a time to give command to an employee, while the unity of direction means that there should be only one manager exercising control over all the activities having the same objective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;6) Subordination of Individual Interest to General Interest:&#xA;This principle can be named ‘Priority to General Interest over Individual Interest.’ According to this principle, the general interest or the interest of the organisation is above everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(7) Remuneration to Employees:employees should get a fair remuneration so that the employees and the owners find equal amount of satisfaction. It is the duty of the manager to ensure that employees are being paid remuneration according to their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do agree to few points given by Tengurena. I never intend to write such a lengthy reply.. just that letting you know an employees POV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope my feedback will open few Managers eyes who consider employees as just as resource!.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7117" LastActivityDate="2013-10-12T13:01:35.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10025" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10027" CreationDate="2013-10-13T18:40:14.330" Score="7" ViewCount="1738" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing a research project on this topic for a graduate class, and I have had a hard time finding sources that specifically talk about this in detail rather than briefly mentioning it and moving on to the big project ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has there been any work done to develop a methodology geared for groups of this size?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does a single person manage his or her project most effectively?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a reason why it seems like there isn't a lot of attention dedicated to this topic specifically?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a tough subject because there is so much to it, just like the general topic of project management. My idea is that most concepts stemming from the general topic of project management will be revisited and adapted to the situation of only having a few people, at most, to accomplish the same tasks throughout the project life cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7121" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-10-13T19:19:10.850" LastActivityDate="2013-10-14T08:28:30.903" Title="Is there a project management methodology that is designed for small teams of 1-3 people?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;team-size&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10026" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10028" CreationDate="2013-10-14T04:38:49.767" Score="4" ViewCount="579" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a coach of a middle school Lego Robotics team, competing in our local FIRST Lego League competition. I'm interested in bringing Agile methodologies to our team. From what I've been seeing, it seems like a good fit, and would really help teach the students how things work in real world software engineering. The problem is that I'm a bit shaky on some aspects of adapting Agile to a software+hardware problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what I have so far:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the competition, the robot is set up on a table with many Lego structures. These make up missions worth varying number of points. The robot leaves a Base area, does something (ideally one or more missions) and returns. This sounds a lot like a &quot;user story&quot;, and I'm already planning to get the students to write what they want the robot to do that way. All the missions basically become the backlog!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm also going to use Planning Poker to estimate how hard they'll be to build and program for. Our team only meets for 1 hour per week, though. What would be the best way to set up the time estimates? I'm thinking that the smallest unit should be 1/2 an hour, and would go up from there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;These missions tend to be pretty complex sometimes, and benefit from being broken down into simpler tasks. Should we worry about that when writing up user stories? (Doesn't seem so...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As coach, should I act as project owner? Or should a student on the team be tasked with determining which missions or combination of missions is most important?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Given that our team is small (8 students), would one Scrum Master be best? Should that be me, or a student?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Given that our team is small, is it fine for students to be testers and developers as needed? (I'd like to avoid giving them excuses for downtime.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Since we only meet 1 hour per week, would a sprint length of 1 month be best?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I've also been looking at the concept of test-first design, and while it seems great, I don't understand the terminology. How would I get my students to design the robot and its programs test first? Would it even be appropriate? What kinds of tests (unit? acceptance?) would work well?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know these are a lot of questions. Any help you all could give me would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Also, if you'd like to read about this teaching experiment, I'm blogging about it at gettingteachingdone.net.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7124" LastActivityDate="2019-05-02T12:35:40.637" Title="How could Agile methodologies be used with a middle school Lego Robotics team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10025" CreationDate="2013-10-14T08:28:30.903" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's tackle your questions from the last to the first:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3) Is there a reason why it seems like there isn't a lot of attention dedicated to this topic specifically?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there is. The whole thing of project-management processes is about solving problems like inner-team communication, work sharing, team conflicts, responsibilities, ... the complexity of all these problems explodes with increasing team size. Hence, for a small team you there's just no need for specialized methodologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only problem specific to small teams is probably missing manpower, and the only solution to this is increasing the team size ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) How does a single person manage his or her project most effectively?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is lots of methodologies out there, for how to manage your individual work. Some examples are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done&quot;&gt;Getting Things Done&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://michaellinenberger.com/&quot;&gt;Manage Your Workday Now&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://masteryourworkday.com/dont-buy-my-new-book-let-me-explain-why-also-free-version-available&quot;&gt;The One Minute TODO List&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.de/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;ved=0CC4QFjAA&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fzenhabits.net%2Fzen-to-done-ztd-the-ultimate-simple-productivity-system%2F&amp;amp;ei=FqVbUvSTNcnQtAaJw4EY&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNGloyqbeoC0yoce9ys7jyO8l2-ehw&amp;amp;sig2=K1Wose_vXh2w6w-MIp9p0Q&amp;amp;bvm=bv.53899372,d.Yms&quot;&gt;Zen To Done&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.personalkanban.com/pk/#sthash.k8cS1myR.dpbs&quot;&gt;Personal Kanban&lt;/a&gt;, and many more... This is not what you'd call project-management methodologies, but it's still management methodologies. Usually those methods try to be as lightweight as possible. This is because many problems from project management just don't appear in self management. For example, you usually know what you did yesterday and don't need to communicate it to yourself. Team starts with two members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1) Has there been any work done to develop a methodology geared for groups of this size?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the best of my knowledge, there is no work targeting such group sizes explicitly. However, that does not mean that all is lost. The ideas of project management processes that target larger team sizes also apply for smaller teams. Only you would apply them in a more lightweight fashion or even drop some activities, to reduce overhead. Let me give you an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum process includes short daily status meetings, called daily standups. In a team with 7 member you would schedule these meetings to &quot;every day at 10am&quot;, to make sure they really happen. In a 2-men-team you could just as easily exchange you status during lunch or in the coffee break. It may even be that you exchange your status anyways, because your sitting in the same office and talk to each other during your workday. The general idea of a regular short status exchange still applies, only it's done in a more reasonable fashion, considering the project's circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion is that you can adapt most, especially agile, project-management methodologies to really small team by looking at the ideas and adapting their realization to the situation at hand. That's what most of these methodologies tell you anyways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6990" LastActivityDate="2013-10-14T08:28:30.903" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10026" CreationDate="2013-10-14T11:47:15.090" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with you that agile methods can be applied in your scenario. However, for the hardware part, this is only possible because of the special nature of your hardware: You can easily apply changes (add/remove/change parts) to it. Something that's oftentimes not possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Making a Story from each challenge is a good idea. That some challenges are bigger, while others are smaller is no problem here. After you decided on the priority of the stories (effectively creating the backlog) you should start to estimate their complexity, from the top. If you find that the complexity is too big, break them down. Usually you should break stories down when the developers are uncertain about the real complexity or the estimates are high. I found that it pays of to break stories down to pieces until multiple stories fit into one sprint. To get there, estimate, break down, estimate again, split again, ... until all stories are small enough. It will probably take some time until you find the right size, however.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your estimation strategy: Estimating required time may be hard for a team new to the field. Have a look at the relative scale used in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_poker&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;planning poker&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/214259/story-point-estimation-vs-ideal-days-estimation/214260#214260&quot;&gt;That too has its drawbacks&lt;/a&gt;, however. In any case, you should chose a value distribution like to the one in planning poker, because it makes no sense to discuss whether a task needs 8 or 9 hours. If you're not sure you can make in 8, chose 13. You will probably need them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the Product Owner (PO) and Scrum Master (SM) roles: Keep in mind that the Scrum Master should be someone really familiar with the Scrum process, since it's his responsibility to make the team adhere to it. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/4707/why-cant-the-scrum-master-and-the-project-manager-be-the-same-person&quot;&gt;PO and SM should not be the same person&lt;/a&gt;. Consider also that the Scrum Master has a full-time job. Keeping the team running is a lot of work. I personally would recommend you to take on that role and chose a PO from the students. I could even imagine the students together deciding about the importance of stories. However, there should be a clear responsibility for the product backlog (writing/maintaining stories).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is intended for teams with 7 ±2 developers, so one SM should be sufficient in your case. In any case you can start like that, and if the SM should drown in work, you can still think about an assistant SM.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One of the most important things about Scrum is that the team manages itself. Don't assign roles to the team members. If there are some more into testing and some more into developing, this distribution will likely evolve on its own. Along the same lines, they should not have to justify their individual work in front of you, but in front of the team. They are working together. They know best who's doing a lot of work and who isn't. And they know the reasons. If you take on the SM role, you may assist them. But you are not the one to punish lacking commitment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Regarding meeting only once per week: That's likely to be not enough. There should be at least one working meeting of the team. I once participated in a project with a similar setup and in my experience it's really hard to get things together when everybody is working at their own time. If I work on Mondays and I need something from a colleague who is working on Fridays, I may have to stop working for the week. Scrum is intended for teams that work in the same office/on the same floor. If you want to get it working in a part-time, distributed environment you are hard pressed. Get them to spend as much as possible of their working time together.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Regarding sprint length: In my experience, it's not good to choose sprints too long, only because you work part-time. Just pack fewer stories into your sprints, for the sake of keeping an eye on the project's progress. Note that with fewer stories in each sprint your planning time decreases, since you need only to break down and estimate as much as you need for the next sprint. To keep your long-term roadmap up-to-date (I guess there is a deadline in the end) you can go through the complete backlog every, say, 3-4 sprints. High level.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Test-first usually relates to unit tests. These tests really reflect what you are doing, as you make them pass fast. Acceptance tests can be written up-front, but they stay red for a long time and you have no easy way of telling to what extent they are done. The idea of test-first is to iteratively implement software along with tests. Don't write code unless there is a failing test, but also don't write new tests as long as there is a failing one (btw. a test that doesn't compile is a failing test). I don't really know how the FIRST Lego World functions, so I cannot give you specific advice about how to proceed here. However, building the robot itself test-first is probably nigh-on impossible. What would be the test? Can the hardware do anything without the software? Checking whether the robot does the right thing, given that the software is tested, is a system-level/integration test.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6990" LastEditorUserId="35563" LastEditDate="2019-05-02T12:35:40.637" LastActivityDate="2019-05-02T12:35:40.637" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10029" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-14T20:15:06.367" Score="1" ViewCount="237" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some history: I am attempting to transition from one sector of the economy, cultural resource management (a.k.a. contract archaeology), to a more &quot;business-related&quot; sector.  I have spent years within the capacity of a junior and senior project coordinator/assistant manager role, but it has been difficult to translate that experience.  Any advice about certifications that I can get or how to swing my resume.  I want my career path to take me to project management.  Any advice on how to make that happen?  Thanks for any help you can offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7129" LastActivityDate="2013-10-15T17:13:56.477" Title="In short: how do I prove my project coordinator skills in the hiring process?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10029" CreationDate="2013-10-14T23:09:22.020" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A project is a project, whether it's in construction, human resources or IT.&#xA;Therefore, focus on the achievements that you got in each of them, accounting the size (budget, scope, resources and schedule) and everything that you did to flawlessly accomplish the proposed objectives, or not, and the reason behind it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having that clear understanding will enable you to explain, in a brief amount of time, why you can be a valuable asset to any project or program, regardless the main industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything else comes after that, you can always train or apply to internships to get experience in specific fields, I would recommend you get PMI's PMP certification as a starting point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4145" LastEditorUserId="4145" LastEditDate="2013-10-15T17:13:56.477" LastActivityDate="2013-10-15T17:13:56.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10031" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10032" CreationDate="2013-10-15T09:09:14.817" Score="3" ViewCount="2662" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a software developer. One thing I learned about this a long time ago is that no two developers are the same (experience, skills, etc.). What I learned about project management is that it's ultimately about managing people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But all PM activities revolve around an uniform term of &quot;resource&quot;. I'm a resource, my colleague is a resource, that hardware down the hall is a resource, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I might see project management as an alternative career path, so I'm willing to learn. I want to start with understanding the rational behind dehumanizing people (with all of their different human characteristics and abilities) and calling them just plain &quot;resources&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7132" LastEditorUserId="7132" LastEditDate="2013-10-16T17:44:39.957" LastActivityDate="2013-10-16T17:44:39.957" Title="What's the rational behind dehumanizing people and calling them “resources” in project management?" Tags="&lt;terminology&gt;&lt;resources&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10031" CreationDate="2013-10-15T10:21:29.713" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Managing your resources--making tough decisions on how to deploy your financial, tools, materials, and humans--to minimize the threat of failure and maximize the likelihood of success AND treating people kindly, humanly, and with respect are two different things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is YOUR definition that makes a resource a thing.  Dictionary.com defines it as: a source of supply, support, or aid, especially one that can be readily drawn upon when needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That certainly can apply to humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is, however, that managing is about the deployment of resources and behind many of those decisions are ones that can be quite inhumane.  We are all different with different strengths and weaknesses, our collective performance varies, our individual performance varies, we are the least reliable resource of all resources, all of us can be replaced, and no project or company exists so that a human can have a job; it exists to make a product or service to make money or some other goal.  We are simply one of the many enablers to achieve that goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is cold and callous and we all want more loyalty and love from a company, but that only exists in HR literature designed to attract talent.  It ends when you sign your contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  When you are managing a performance capability, your goal is to have repeatable, sustainable, and predictable performance.  This means all of the enablers you use, the machines and tools, the availability of funds, infrastructure, environment, AND people, need to be replaceable, not unlike a tire.  If a cog craps out, you reach into the drawer, grab another, screw it in, and turn the machine back on.  Indeed with minimal variances, you can pretty much predict the same level of performance you had with the other cog.  If John Smith craps out--quits, dies, gets arrested and convicted--you need to reach in the drawer....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it is much harder than that, but that's the mentality IF you want repeatable, sustainable, and predictable performance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you understand the performance curve, whether you think it is normally distributed or positively skewed, most of your human performance that you will likely get will be severely average.  That is what the curve means.  We, however, like to kid ourselves that we found superstars, and our hiring selection process continues to find superstars, despite it being statistically unlikely.  But if you think about, superstars are the antithesis of repeatable, sustainable, and predictable results.  That is because, if your superstar leaves (assuming you really had one), then the likelihood of replacing said superstar is quite low, leaving your performance capability suffering.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this sounds like I dehumanize.  Maybe it is.  But again, I do not operate a project so that people have a place to work.  If one does not perform, they get replaced just like a cog.  And I turn the machine back on.  If I happen to get a superstar, icing on the cake, but I do not rely on him/her.  Because he/she will leave, die, get sick, get arrested, disappear.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2013-10-15T11:13:43.367" LastActivityDate="2013-10-15T11:13:43.367" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10031" CreationDate="2013-10-15T13:58:59.287" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's just a word. The real test is in how the PMs treat you. I prefer to say &quot;team members&quot; myself, so I understand where you're coming from. However, I don't know a single PM that doesn't think of their team members as real people. It's generally when you're just a line item on some executive report that you're thought of as a dehumanized resource and in that case we're not talking about personal interaction, so I don't think it matters much. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4699" LastActivityDate="2013-10-15T13:58:59.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10034" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-15T17:40:43.347" Score="2" ViewCount="2409" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am running MS Project 2010 and trying to print a project with non-working days on the gantt chart.  On the page setup view for a phsyical printer I can see the non-working days and they print fine.  As soon as I pick Adobe Acrobat OR Win2PDF they disappear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will repeat - I have non-working days showing just not when a PDF printer is choosen.  I am locked down here pretty tight at work so my options are limited to installing other PDF printers etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tried the usual Google search and all the PDF settings.  The Save As... PDF option is useless as it defaults to 8.5&quot; x 11&quot; and turns my nice one page Gant into a multo page monster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3511" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T19:51:37.540" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T19:51:37.540" Title="MS Project: Non-working days not printiing on PDF" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10031" CreationDate="2013-10-15T22:47:55.950" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Formal Definition&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;defines&lt;/a&gt; a resource as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A resource is a source or supply from which benefit is produced. Typically resources are materials, money, services, staff, or other assets that are transformed to produce benefit and in the process may be consumed or made unavailable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Why People are &quot;Resources&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People are the source of creativity and human labor on a project. They supply minds, hands, and man-hours to the project, which (theoretically speaking) is what creates value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are also &lt;em&gt;finite&lt;/em&gt; resources. If someone is 100% committed to Project Foo for eight hours a day, that person is generally unavailable to work on Project Bar&amp;mdash;except in organizations that indulge in wishful thinking, of course. While working on embiggening a thingamabob for Project Foo, they are unlikely to be truly available to stomp grapes, support Project Bar's widgets, or any other time-sucking outside activity; individual utilization is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_game&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;zero-sum game&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Emotional Freighting&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While not part of the formal definition, the word &quot;resources&quot; does carry a connotation that people are viewed as &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3afungible&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fungible&lt;/a&gt; assets. This is largely due to the fact that many organizations treat people this way, rather than because human resources are truly interchangeable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teams and individuals &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; resources for the project&amp;mdash;and valuable ones, at that. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; tries to bring teams, individuals, and interactions to the forefront to combat the notion that people are interchangeable cogs manufactured to precise tolerances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, though, the negative freighting of &quot;human resources&quot; is a result of an organization's poor people management, or a person's past experience with some other company's poor treatment of its people. The negative connotation isn't really intrinsic to the term as it's used within the project management profession.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-10-15T22:47:55.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10036" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-16T09:33:32.420" Score="2" ViewCount="538" Body="&lt;p&gt;A company has a long history of being &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_quality_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TQM&lt;/a&gt; oriented, now they are looking into injecting project management methodology. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The organization is comfortable using the TQM methods - especially &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isixsigma.com/methodology/total-quality-management-tqm/brewing-better-beer-tqm/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;7-step&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://cha-international.com/TQM-Application&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;9-step&lt;/a&gt;, how will you approach injecting the PM tools and templates? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do they have to choose one over the other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7141" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2013-11-20T15:59:13.097" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T15:59:13.097" Title="Total Quality Management vs Project Management" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10037" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10042" CreationDate="2013-10-16T17:50:49.273" Score="2" ViewCount="1001" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in one of many Scrum teams who are often told to allocate team capacities around 80% and leave the balance for supporting internal and external customers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This translates to developer &quot;Bob&quot; allocating 10-30% of his bandwidth to weekly support activities. Evidence shows that Bob (and his peers) often blow over this number; this is due to many reasons including too many moving parts, complicated/tightly coupled software products as well as high levels of accumulated debt marching in cadence with low levels of rigorous QA!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even the best bulldog of a Scrum Master gets pulled into a &quot;this is an exception, the customer needs help NOW&quot; discussion with his leadership chain and has to relent. Each...and..every ... Time! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd hate to track this kind of overflow with a separate tool / excel sheet and was wondering how bad of an idea is it to assign the team at 100% capacity (for us, that maps to 6 useful hours of a work day) and include support-based user stories for the 20%, even though the tasks broken down from these user stories are not &lt;em&gt;measurable&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;quantifiable&lt;/em&gt; (bugs you don't know about yet don't exist! :))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the best practice answer is a resounding &lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt; to this ... Though I can't see any other way to easily AND clearly show (to my managers) (and protect Development Teams) that the support churn is almost always going above the allocated buffers for non-Sprint related activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7032" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2014-07-17T23:26:01.387" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T23:26:01.387" Title="Should I list support activities the Development Team is engaged in as User Stories?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;maintenance&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10012" CreationDate="2013-10-16T18:54:48.650" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the answer that Aziz gave, I would ask whether your project truly has a single kind of user or if there are aspects that differentiate your users. If you do have more than one type of user, it is important to identify which one you are writing the story for (even if it feels like it should be obvious). In other words, instead of saying &quot;as a user&quot;, you might say &quot;as an anonymous user&quot; or &quot;as a registered user&quot;. We often take this a step further and develop &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stickyminds.com/sitewide.asp?Function=edetail&amp;amp;ObjectType=COL&amp;amp;ObjectId=15793&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pragmatic personas&lt;/a&gt; for use in our stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastActivityDate="2013-10-16T18:54:48.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10034" CreationDate="2013-10-16T19:12:22.210" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do the days (Saturday and Sunday) appear - just not with a gray shade or do the days themselves disappear?  Are you using scaling to fit the project onto one page?  Do you have SP-2 installed to Project 2010?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastEditorUserId="6840" LastEditDate="2013-10-16T19:31:21.020" LastActivityDate="2013-10-16T19:31:21.020" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10034" CreationDate="2013-10-16T22:51:45.297" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Print/Export to XPS. Then you can re-print to pdf using one of the options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that is not working I would open a support ticket at ms project support site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4145" LastActivityDate="2013-10-16T22:51:45.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10037" CreationDate="2013-10-16T23:07:46.100" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, you are missing a key point when mixing Agile with plan-driven development.&#xA;In scrum you don't level team members based on their availability, rather than deliver complete user stories at the end of a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You really don't care about that, you deliver stories or not, the more, the merrier :).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, if you want to account for each and every minute of the members' clarification time, you can, and it will probably tell you what you already know. (6 hours on code 2 or more on clarification)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, if you want to produce that awareness to the business team, find a way to measure it, by any means you can think (tickets, excel rows, mails, etc.), and use it as a tool to justify your ability to deliver (velocity), during the retrospective, or even better, during the sprint review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do that, if necessary, at least once in the lifetime of the project, let it not be something you complain about, rather than a true fact that is negatively impacting your development process.&#xA;Once you can tell your PO that you are spending a significant amount of time on clarification/doubts/inconsistencies, with the proper evidence, you are not just complaining about it, you are raising that issue, to the whole team, in other to be better next sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once they know that, it becomes part of the process, therefore, you can measure it again later, let's say 2 or 3 sprints later, and compare the results, if that even matters to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main thing is that your velocity should talk for your team, rather than some willful metric.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4145" LastActivityDate="2013-10-16T23:07:46.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10037" CreationDate="2013-10-17T03:15:07.160" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;100% utilization&quot; is a bad idea; agile projects rely on adequate slack in the process. &quot;Ideal hours&quot; can be bad too, although some practitioners can make a successful case for them in certain situations. Agile projects are about &lt;em&gt;empirical team capacity&lt;/em&gt; rather than making sure individuals are utilized at 100% of some theoretical capacity limit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure all support work is a visible cost to the project, and apply the same inspect-and-adapt pattern to that work as you do to any other business-driven features. &lt;em&gt;How&lt;/em&gt; requires a bit more explanation, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Let Capacity Be Your Guide&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No invisible work, ever!&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;mdash; CodeGnome's Law of Transparency&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the support work isn't free, it must cost the project &lt;em&gt;somewhere&lt;/em&gt;. You basically have two choices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reduce stories accepted into the Sprint until they fit within your typical velocity range.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach treats support work as a drag on capacity, but doesn't attempt to measure it directly. In other words, leave sufficient slack for all the support work and then vigorously protect the team from support work that starts to cut into actual story commitments&amp;mdash;unless the Product Owner feels some unplanned support work is important enough to justify early termination of the Sprint or an adjustment to the current Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Treat support work as a set of user stories with assigned estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach treats support work as a visible cost to the project, and forces the organization to make estimates about how much team capacity they expect it to consume in terms of story points, ideal hours, or manpower. These stories should be routinely re-estimated during Sprint Planning, and any mis-estimated support story that consumes too many team resources should be treated the same way as any other user story. Specifically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It should be flagged in the daily stand-up.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It should be escalated to the Product Owner if it puts the Sprint Goal at risk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the Sprint Goal can't be met because of the support story or its impact on other stories, then the Scrum should be terminated early so the Scrum team (along with organizational management) can inspect-and-adapt.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are valid use cases for both options. In particular, the first option may be necessary when you can't get buy-in from the Product Owner to add support stories or epics to the Product Backlog. Remember, the PO owns the backlog, but only the Development Team can accept stories into a Sprint! Limiting stories to your team's realistic capacity is a good mechanic for making the cost of support visible to the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second option is the better of the two, though. It conforms more closely to the Law of Transparency, and makes it easier to prioritize support work against other project deliverables. It also allows the project team to treat variance in support requirements as an estimation issue or resource constraint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, as long as the organization doesn't treat support work as &quot;free&quot; or unreasonably demand that support and project deliverables be treated as first-priorities simultaneously, you will be in a better position to successfully deliver value. Your political mileage may vary, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Interrupt-Driven Work&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final word on the whole issue of support is in order: &lt;strong&gt;Scrum isn't anti-support, but it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; firmly against allowing unscoped work into a Sprint.&lt;/strong&gt; Such work is often disruptive to development flow, and can create a great deal of task-switching overhead that can negatively impact team performance. While some of this can be managed through sufficient process slack and prioritization, it easily gets out of hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can, try to make your support process respectful of the development flow by applying appropriate service-level agreements. Also, make sure your estimates include a sufficient fudge factor for the inevitable task-switching and cognitive dissonance that are caused when support issues interrupt other active tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A single Scrum Team &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; provide both features and support, but it's a zero-sum game. Both types of work require time, effort, and resources, and the more you spend on one the less you have for the other. If you keep that fact firmly in mind, and ensure that it remains thoroughly transparent to the organization, the pros and cons of the process will generally speak for themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T03:15:07.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10043" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10045" CreationDate="2013-10-17T10:25:22.557" Score="3" ViewCount="212" Body="&lt;p&gt;A new manager just came on board in another region and asked us to take a photo of our Sprint board and post it to our wiki &lt;em&gt;every day&lt;/em&gt;. The question is: &lt;strong&gt;should we do this?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If yes, by the Team, Scrum Master, or Product Owner?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If not, why not and how should we educate the new manager about these reasons?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7146" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-10-17T17:10:01.233" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T18:48:04.897" Title="Should we take a photo of our Sprint Board every day for a remote manager?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;&lt;artifacts&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10043" CreationDate="2013-10-17T17:05:00.667" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's nothing fundamentally wrong with this approach. One assumes universal competence with a digital camera, so it's up to the team to decide who should be on camera duty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are trade-offs with any type of Sprint Backlog artifact. Decide which is best &lt;em&gt;for the Scrum Team&lt;/em&gt;, and then figure out the best way to share that artifact with other interested parties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Kanban&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;kanban&lt;/a&gt; frequently used to display the Sprint Backlog is a common artifact. Its purpose is to radiate information throughout the team and the organization about the current status of the Sprint. If the organization isn't centralized, asking the team to make the &lt;em&gt;kanban&lt;/em&gt; (or other Sprint Backlog artifact if you aren't using a &lt;em&gt;kanban&lt;/em&gt;) visible is not unreasonable at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, this is often a better idea than locking a team into the use of electronic backlog tools because it's physical and accessible to the team,while still visible to outside stakeholders. It also doesn't constrain the team's ability to structure the backlog to suit themselves; you can create any workflow you can imagine with a little masking tape, some markers, and sticky notes or index cards. Not so with electronic tools, which tend to enforce a particular process model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Sprint Backlogs Don't Have to Use Kanbans&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, a Sprint Backlog can take other forms. Using online tools like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira-agile/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jira Agile&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt; can provide electronic alternatives for distributed teams. For that matter, a spreadsheet on &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Docs&lt;/a&gt; can work, too. There are also plenty of other alternatives; any competent search engine will turn up more options than you can reasonably explore in an afternoon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The upside of an electronic tool is that everyone has access to it, regardless of their physical location. The downsides are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's hard for the team to congregate around an electronic tool.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even if the team uses a giant projector or large-screen TV to display the electronic board, sharing a keyboard or mouse will funnel updates through one person at a time during meetings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Electronic tools require a computing device to update, so you can't just move cards around or scribble on a story during a meeting. You may have to go in search of a computer, pull out a tablet, or perform some other activity that results in task-switching or delays in implementing the change to the backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most cases I firmly believe that the physical &lt;em&gt;kanban&lt;/em&gt; is the best choice, but circumstances differ. Your mileage will therefore vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T17:05:00.667" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10043" CreationDate="2013-10-17T18:48:04.897" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A better solution would be setting up a webcam he can connect to at any time - then he can see what is going on and it doesn't make any extra work for anyone in the team.  I can't see it doing any harm and it will keep him up to date (to an extent) whenever he feels the need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6825" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T18:48:04.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="92" CreationDate="2013-10-18T12:10:10.620" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Managers, especially new ones, are often unprepared for the job because they are so used to being an individual contributor and not responsible for other people. The hardest skills in business (and life) are working with other people because everyone has different motivators and a different view of how work should be done. As a manager, your job is to engage your team, make sure everyone knows what their responsibilities are and ensure that everyone is meeting their deadlines. Executives will blame you if something goes wrong, even if it’s your team’s fault. If you don’t perform as a manager it’s not just costly to you, but to your company as well. Your direct reports will leave and you will be charged with replacing them, which takes time and will frustrate you. Here are the top mistakes I see managers making most frequently: - See more at:&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.transtutors.com/homework-help/management/managing-information-technology/information-system/project-management-software/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.transtutors.com/homework-help/management/managing-information-technology/information-system/project-management-software/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not Learning From Past Mistakes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not Enough Planning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Too Much Planning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Trying To Do It Alone&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not Enough Resources&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allowing the Scope to Creep&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not Enough Risk Management  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7159" LastActivityDate="2013-10-18T12:10:10.620" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-10-18T12:10:10.620" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10049" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10051" CreationDate="2013-10-18T18:25:33.410" Score="-4" ViewCount="132" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you create a baseline standard across your team for how to conduct interviews? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have done some research into the actual interview techniques (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2005/03/on-interviewing-programmers.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;#&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hiring&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;#&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/five-essential-phone-screen-questions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;#&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/01/getting-the-interview-phone-screen-right.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;#&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/6555/how-to-determine-the-skills-of-a-software-developer-in-a-job-interview&quot;&gt;#&lt;/a&gt;). What I'm looking for is to see how others have inculcated these habits into the entire team, so that the recruiting process is consistent and effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Background: A big pain point of my IT team's interview process is that there are no standards. One developer may conduct a 30-minute informal interview, while another may do hour-long deep dives into their favorite technology. So far we've done okay because we have recruited through personal referrals... but we're now growing and interviewing unknown candidates a lot. Some bad apples were hired, that has led to introspection on our part. We don't want to stifle our developers' interview styles by &quot;mandating&quot; a standard set of questions, but we do want a consistent level of rigor and a consistent evaluation method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5456" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T13:56:01.613" Title="Creating interview standards for an IT department" Tags="&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-02-15T22:32:52.257" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10049" CreationDate="2013-10-18T18:41:51.043" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interviews are very low in validity. There is some improvement with increasing structure but you need to understand that results are marginal at best. Your odds at a good hire are not much better than a coin toss. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creating structure is easy. Standard questions, behavioral and scenario interviews, group interviews, easy research to uncover some ideas. Choose the path you want to go then train your interviewers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your issue will be to validate whether your new structure is worth anything and for that you need a ton of time with many hires measuring results over quite some time. Otherwise, you don't really know if you built anything of value. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-10-18T18:41:51.043" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10049" CreationDate="2013-10-19T00:29:40.800" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been on both sides of the desk, and find the interview process not terribly helpful.  I've yet to be through an interview that tested much of my skill set, not that I would appreciate one that did.  When interviewing, I try to ask questions that give me a quick understanding of the candidate's skill level.  I consider the interview a chance to see if a candidate will fit in the organization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is only recently, I have seen any references to studies on the effectiveness of interview in hiring.  The comments I have seen don't indicate interview are effective in finding good candidates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Resumes help in determining if the candidate has the desired training and experience.  Unfortunately, they can be misleading.  In larger organizations or when dealing with recruiting organizations, it can be difficult to get the right resumes presented to match the job.  Keyword matching can be a pretty poor indicator of the skill set, or even experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think hard about what you want from your interview process.  Then consider whether an interview is the best way meet your requirement.  You may find that what an interview is best for is determining if this is someone you want to work with.  Consider whether your receptionist can provide some input to this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Document what you want from the interview process and provide that information to the interviewers.  This may help your interviewers focus on those areas.  From your question I gather that your interviewers likely don't have a lot of experience, and are unlikely to gain a lot.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider tracking rankings on various impressions, and comparing them to future success.  You may also want to track which interviewers do the best job of selecting candidates.  It will take time, but you may develop an interview process that works for your organization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastEditorUserId="529" LastEditDate="2014-01-15T13:56:01.613" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T13:56:01.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10054" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-20T07:03:57.583" Score="1" ViewCount="2142" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a task that has two people working at 80% of their time on it. I have entered a task with work = 3 days. I expect the duration to be 3 / (2 x 0.8) = 1.88 days. But project insists that it is 3.05 days. I have this for a lot of other tasks in a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The task not effort driven and is in fixed units.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really don't understand this. Can someone explain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6944" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-10-20T20:17:22.160" LastActivityDate="2013-10-20T20:17:22.160" Title="Why doesn't duration = work / resources" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10055" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10077" CreationDate="2013-10-20T09:38:15.077" Score="1" ViewCount="148" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my company, we develop web applications and CMS and websites. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are having a lot of problems because every programmer codes as he wants and it is too hard for the others to maintain them, so we'd like to define a common &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_framework&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;framework&lt;/a&gt; to be adopted across the whole company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe our framework should match the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The base should be &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOLID&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SOLID&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The method should be Code-First&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The standards should be Naming Convention&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The type should be 3 layer programming&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The method should be &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model%E2%80%93view%E2%80%93controller&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MVC&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We should use from our dll archive&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The UI should be with HTML and CSS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And using from Bootstrap&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that I don't know where to start. Could you help me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7176" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-11-02T04:47:04.427" LastActivityDate="2013-11-02T04:47:04.427" Title="How to define / build up a coding framework?" Tags="&lt;pmi-framework&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2013-10-24T02:51:48.100" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10055" CreationDate="2013-10-20T11:56:47.103" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like you need a solutions architect. Some of what you mention are coding conventions and could be documented (a wiki works well for this). The role of an solutions architect is also to define non-functional requirements, such as what technologies are used (Bootstrap, MVC, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simon Brown has some great training material and &lt;a href=&quot;https://leanpub.com/software-architecture-for-developers?utm_campaign=software-architecture-for-developers&amp;amp;utm_medium=embed&amp;amp;utm_source=www.codingthearchitecture.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;books published&lt;/a&gt; around this area. I would recommend understanding the role of a solutions architect, talk with your team about the importance of the role and either promote or hire someone to fulfill that function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6422" LastEditorUserId="6422" LastEditDate="2013-10-22T00:12:40.973" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T00:12:40.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10012" CreationDate="2013-10-20T12:28:40.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;User Stories should follow this format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;As a (role) - This can be an end user or a business proxy&#xA;&#xA;I want - A description of what needs to be done&#xA;&#xA;So that - the definition of the value&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acceptance criteria is then required so you know when you are done. This can be a bullets list, like you have, or context specification style (part of BDD - Business Driven Development).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one major bit of advise I have is do not write the User Stories on your own. Creating a backlog using User Stories is a collaborative technique. Without this, you will be missing the point and main advantage of this approach. Emergent requirements and &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;valuing customer collaboration over contract negotiation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you would like to know more I  suggest reading Mike Cohn's User Stories Applied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6422" LastActivityDate="2013-10-20T12:28:40.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10026" CreationDate="2013-10-20T12:46:33.573" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wow. Sounds like these kids have a great coach and some really fun Lego activities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have recently done Scrum City Lego training and would highly recommend it as a way of teaching Agile practices. Especially the role of the product owner and how a team should interact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The are some nice resources on this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lego4scrum.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lego4Scrum.org&lt;/a&gt;, including a PDF guide for running Scrum training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sure there will be elements you can use and learn from in this approach. You might want to try out the exercise to  build a robot space station or something similar. You will need two people to run the exercise, a mean Product Owner and a Scrum Master to control the process. But you can combine the roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum as a framework is great for building complex projects. It helps you to use emergent design to build a better product and collaborate together as a team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also want to look at Lean practices, such as Kanban, which are born out manufacturing process improvements that focus on eliminating waste and focus on continual improvement. Great principles to be teaching kids. I understand there are ways of teaching this using Lego.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6422" LastActivityDate="2013-10-20T12:46:33.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10054" CreationDate="2013-10-20T14:12:21.733" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume when you say the work is 3 days - you are saying 24 hours of work.  Each resource should be performing half of the work - 12 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a couple of options to have Project calculate the correct duration:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the Task Form, enter 12 hours of work for each resource.  Project will correctly calculate the duration based upon Work/assignment units.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remove the second resource, ensure the task is effort driven.  Re-assign the second resource and Project will divide the 24 hours of work evenly - 12 hours for each resource - and re-calculate the correct duration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wish Project to divide work between assigned resources, ensure your task types are effort driven and assign each resource separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2013-10-20T14:12:21.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9258" CreationDate="2013-10-21T10:45:12.437" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask them about their past projects. Find out how they accomplished their tasks for previous clients. Were there any obstacles or challenges while they were doing the projects? What were they and how did they go about solving these issues? Pay close attention to past projects that are similar to the tasks that you are planning to outsource so you’ll have a good idea of the outsourcing company’s capacity to handle the tasks that you need to get done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7181" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2013-10-21T13:34:26.483" LastActivityDate="2013-10-21T13:34:26.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10061" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-21T12:19:15.250" Score="1" ViewCount="336" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to better understand the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_%28mnemonic%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt; properties of user stories. For example, consider these two user stories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A coffee machine is programmable and it's possible to define different kind of products. A product has a unique name in the product list, a price, and some ingredients (for which is specified a quantity) choosing between coffee, milk, chocolate, and sugar. The coffee machine gives the user the ability to add, modify, or delete a product and creates a configuration with a list of products available to the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The user can choose a product and he can insert an amount of money equal to or greater the price of the product. If the amount is greater than the price, the coffee machine gives change to the user.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In these two stories which INVEST property can be found, and which cannot? From my standpoint this is what I think the answer should be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Independent: 1 = YES | 2 = YES&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Negotiable: 2 = NO | 2 = NO (too many details?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Valuable for users: 1 = YES | 2 = YES&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimable: 1 = NO (too big) | 2 = YES (maybe requires more domain knowledge?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Small: 1 = NO (too big) | 2 = YES&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testable: 2 = YES | 2 = YES&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I right? Is it possible to rewrite them following the 3 C's style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7183" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-10-21T18:03:24.140" LastActivityDate="2013-10-21T18:03:24.140" Title="Can the INVEST principles be found in my coffee machine user stories?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;specification&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10036" CreationDate="2013-10-21T13:50:13.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Projects are a balance of several mutually interacting components. The classic &quot;triangle&quot; is scope, budget and schedule. More current PM theory also includeds Quality (as well as benefits accrued, risk and resources), recognizing that you could for example deliver a project more quickly or at reduced cost if you accept lower levels of end-product quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given this, TQM is one of any number of tools that could be used to help manage the quality of your project products. Where quality assurance tools intersect with PM tools is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Documentation of quality standards for a product.&lt;/strong&gt; You can look at these as acceptance criteria. These will help ensure that whoever is making a project product knows what standard to work towards, and also ensure that whoever is confirming that the project product is complete is assessing the deliverable against the same standard.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Documentation of ownership of quality measurements.&lt;/strong&gt; This itemizes who is responsible and accountable for ensuring that quality standards for deliverable X are achieved, when quality measurements are taken, who verifies that the deliverable meets it's acceptance criteria, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-10-21T13:50:13.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10061" CreationDate="2013-10-21T18:02:09.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you have is a set of specifications, not a set of user stories. They are not the same things, and trying to apply user-story principles to specifications isn't likely to get you where you want to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, you are misunderstanding what &quot;negotiable&quot; means. Negotiable doesn't mean fuzzy or ambiguous objectives; it means the details of a story (or even its inclusion in the scope) can be negotiated between the story owner and the development team for optimal results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;User Stories&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User stories are independent vertical slices of functionality. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a customer&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I can select coffee or milk&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  as my beverage base.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a customer&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I can select milk, chocolate, or sugar&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  as extra ingredients to add to my beverage base.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are user stories because they have a point of view, a testable feature description, and some context. While the &lt;em&gt;product&lt;/em&gt; has some clear dependencies (e.g. you wouldn't find it useful to vend sugar without a base beverage) implementing the selection features could be done independently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Negotiability&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Negotiable&quot; doesn't mean a story is ambiguous or ill-defined. Using an example from one of the stories above, negotiable means that the Product Owner and the Development Team can negotiate about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The priority or ordering of the stories.&lt;/strong&gt; Perhaps it makes sense to select a base beverage before adding extra ingredients.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The content of the story.&lt;/strong&gt; Perhaps the team thinks adding Stevia to the list of ingredients is a good idea, or thinks that adding a separate &quot;hot chocolate&quot; story makes more sense than multiple stories about milk and chocolate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The size of a story.&lt;/strong&gt; Maybe ingredients should each be in their own stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The scope of a story.&lt;/strong&gt; Maybe milk should be left out of one story or another, as adding milk as both a base and an ingredient is harder than expected because of architectural decisions made earlier in the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, negotiability is primarily a function of the &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt;. It is only a function of the story itself insofar as ensuring the story isn't so prescriptive that it can't be successfully implemented within a single iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Recommendations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The INVEST mnemonic can help you write better user stories, but they aren't an iron shackle. The real issue here is that you need to fix your process so that you're actually generating user stories rather than complex, entangled specifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of your existing stories should be decomposed further, and then re-examined against the INVEST principles to see if they provide a more agile set of inputs to your project. Lather, rinse, and repeat until you've achieved a Product Backlog that meets your organizational goals and that works well with your team's development process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-10-21T18:02:09.947" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10064" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-21T22:14:10.850" Score="4" ViewCount="923" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my team, there are two full-stack developers, one &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DevOps&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DevOps&lt;/a&gt; guy, a business manager, and a marketing person. We will be hiring more people soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this too early to create and implement a project management process, or should it wait until the team is bigger?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7185" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-10-24T05:34:42.253" LastActivityDate="2013-10-24T05:34:42.253" Title="Should a process be put in place when the team is very small?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;culture&gt;&lt;process-engineering&gt;&lt;process-improvement&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10064" CreationDate="2013-10-21T23:37:02.817" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I can't give you a specific idea about it being too early, I'd suggest strongly making sure that your team fully appreciates the concepts of agile development and also wants to have a useful process in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now I am working on a team of 4.5 (3 full stack devs, an intern, and me, the PM/BA).  I wanted to get us started with the agile concept early on, because the entire point is shrinking the feedback loop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you use scrum or some other flavor of agile, having an established process helps when new people come on board, so they know what is expected of them.  It's a concept explored quite readily in this book: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B008EKF87S&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Team-Geek-Software-Developers-ebook/dp/B008EKF87S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1382398521&amp;amp;sr=8-1&amp;amp;keywords=team+geek&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, the faster you can establish a team culture, the stronger your team will be long term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7189" LastActivityDate="2013-10-21T23:37:02.817" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10064" CreationDate="2013-10-22T10:38:03.977" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To get to point B, you are going to have a process. The question really is, do you want to think it through and formally design it, with control points, rules, assignments, and expectations, or just wing it. There are benefits and costs/risks to both alternatives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you will likely find is your performance will be less than desired. That will trigger your desire for increased controls, then you will have your answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  Remember that your performance capability is driven by four enablers: people, process, tools, and governance.  By sort of ignoring any one of these, you are relying on super performance from the others to make up for it.  For example, if you choose to use a shovel instead of a backhoe to move 10 tons of dirt, then you are relying on the super performance of the people side of the equation to get it done.  You will need more people and people physically fit.  Use a backhoe and you can get it done with one or two morbidly obese individuals.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same rule applies to process.  It process will exist but it would be ad hoc, non standard, unruly, unpredictable, unrepeatable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2013-10-23T12:23:26.100" LastActivityDate="2013-10-23T12:23:26.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10064" CreationDate="2013-10-22T12:03:42.510" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the principles of good project management is to tailor your approach to the needs of your project. Looking at it from this perspective you should always have a PM process, the question is more along the lines of how formal it needs to be &lt;em&gt;for the current project&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By all means develop a culture that embraces PM, but trying to implement and enforce some process based on the size of your team will come back to bite you. Either your process will be too chaotic to handle very complex projects or will be too onerous to deal with simple projects efficiently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T12:03:42.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10069" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10071" CreationDate="2013-10-22T15:12:05.857" Score="12" ViewCount="2261" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a team leader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My team handles multiple projects. Each has a different project manager. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our priorities keep changing according to deals the company is about to close. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project managers are not synchronized and whenever I talk to one PM I have to explain why other tasks of other projects were declared as more important than his/her project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need to create an environment for a changing work-plan (deadline, design, priorities etc..) and that will keep all my project managers synchronized. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can I set this kind of work environment? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who is supposed to synchronize parallel work-plans for different projects? Is it the project managers or the RnD manager?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7194" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T14:24:28.383" Title="how to handle multiple project managers?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;deadline&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10069" CreationDate="2013-10-22T15:36:41.780" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;When projects and project managers are out of sync, this is an issue at the organizational level.  The organization needs to resolve this problem if it chooses to advance in its project management maturity level.  That said, it is quite common.  Usually, you see this question from the PM point of view, who is trying to ensure its matrixed resources are utilized to his/her benefit over the other projects.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest being crystal clear as to the known priorities under which you are operating and the level of promised utilization you committed for your team under each project.  When you have a conflict, escalate.  There needs to be an escalation route so that conflicts can be analyzed and sorted through.  And above all, communicate to each of the PMs demanding your team's time.  So if you have a deadline with one project make sure everyone else knows it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some sense, it is not within your role to synchronize the projects.  It is your role to ensure adequate utilization for your team such that conflicts on bandwidth are minimized, no individual is over-utilized, and work is sequenced based on known priorities.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T15:36:41.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10069" CreationDate="2013-10-22T16:33:55.733" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Issue Log &amp;amp; Risk Registry. (hat tip to @David Espina, without whose answer I would have missed this).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're responsible for your project(s). Anything that you can solve relative to those projects, you're obliged to solve.  These are examples of things you cannot solve, because they are artifacts of dysfunctional organizational process assets.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things you cannot solve go in the issue log and should be briefed to management, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We are unable to predict completion date with less than a +/- 75% accuracy because we spend approximately 25% of our time managing our conflicting priorities&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly the risk log should indicate the &lt;strong&gt;uncertainty&lt;/strong&gt; and most importantly the &lt;strong&gt;impact&lt;/strong&gt; of the priority flux.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T16:33:55.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10072" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10074" CreationDate="2013-10-04T12:31:27.007" Score="3" ViewCount="321" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just joined an IT small company that was looking for a project manager. We produce one project at once; that is, we start something, we develop it, we test it, and once it's done, then we think of another one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this reason, I implanted Scrum, as projects usually take months. However (and fortunately) previous projects are working well, therefore receiving tickets and... &quot;issues&quot; that just come out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please, consider that we are a small team (8 people in total currently) and I cannot assign only one person for tickets (it depends on each one's skills). As far as I've seen in many books and articles, Scrumban would fit our needs; that is, Scrum and Kanban combined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you guys think about it? Could you just give me small brief about how would it be in the day by day work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7088" OwnerDisplayName="JJimenez" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-01-07T14:17:46.010" LastActivityDate="2019-01-07T14:17:46.010" Title="Agile methodology for small company; large projects + ticket maintenance" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;scrumban&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10072" CreationDate="2013-10-07T13:57:24.227" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are circumstances where Scrum is not well suited. One of those circumstances is where the team regularly get ad-hoc or emergency requests that have to be addressed quickly and the request cannot wait for the next Sprint.  In these circumstances, I recommend Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I never recommend is to try and smash two different approaches (Scrum and Kanban) together. For one thing, they address different problem domains and, for another, there are no extra 'brownie' points for saying that you're doing &quot;Scrum AND Kanban (waggle eyebrows suggestively)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I encourage you to look at Kanban more fully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7835" OwnerDisplayName="Derek Davidson CSP CSM CSPO" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T13:57:24.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10072" CreationDate="2013-10-07T18:17:33.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what is going on in your company or more precisely with your team. If you have 'heavy' product development activity, then 'Scrum' is suitable. For production support, Kanban is better. If you would like to address your issue along with your regular Scrum activities, you could &lt;strong&gt;rotate&lt;/strong&gt; your resources (probably on a daily basis) for production issues. Of course, your team velocity would be affected by the number of issues being received and their priority. And it is ok to have lower velocity in this situation, because it is the realistic velocity as your team addresses the production issues and the business need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8415" OwnerDisplayName="Bobby Fisher" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T18:17:33.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10064" CreationDate="2013-10-23T07:22:08.683" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to think about project management is that it isn't necessarily about adopting a specific process, framework, or set of practices. Rather, it is most often a tool for managing expectations and making sure that project-related communications are &lt;em&gt;effective&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is never too early to manage expectations, or to start communicating effectively. The only real question is what level of formality is necessary to achieve those goals within a given organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Communications Channels&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The formula for determining the number of communications channels is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;n * (n - 1) / 2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The complexity of managing project communications is therefore a function of the number of people involved. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A two-person project has only one communication channel.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your company currently has five people involved in the project: two developers, one devops, one manager, and one marketeer. This results in 10 communications channels.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A full Scrum Team with a Product Owner, Scrum Master, and six development team members has 28 communications channels.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may or may not need a formal project management process at this point, but you certainly need to start thinking about an effective communications plan for your projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Rigor and Overhead&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Small teams usually don't require the same level of rigor in their process as larger teams do. That doesn't mean controls aren't present in the process; it just means that they are often less stringently applied in order to make them less time-consuming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rigor of a process is typically correlated with the amount of process overhead. For example, a formal Scrum process using a two-week sprint usually consumes around &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8520/4271&quot;&gt;30% of available man-hours in framework overhead&lt;/a&gt;. In contrast, a simple communications plan where everyone on the team simply posts a status report on the wiki once a week consumes less than 3% in overhead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trade-off is essentially between improved communications within the organization and time spent on active development. Most projects reach a tipping point where the cost of communicating poorly or building the wrong thing is more expensive than the cost of any process overhead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tipping point will be different for each organization and each project, but my personal experience is that it's time to think about adding some rigor when:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project involves more than three people.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project requires a formal budget.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The tangible or intangible cost of project failure exceeds the project's budget.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your organization may have a different calculus for determining when it's time to formalize a project's controls, but every organization has to make the same essential trade-offs. It's probably not too early to start crunching those numbers for your organization and determining where that line should be drawn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2013-10-23T07:22:08.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10064" CreationDate="2013-10-23T16:14:40.567" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Should a process be put in place?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; Yes.  Even with a team of two  I've found that it is useful to put a process in place. To tell the truth, I put a process in place when the team size is 1 (just me). I make mistakes, and process is one of the tools I use  to compensate for my fallibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should the process be adjusted based on the size of the team?&lt;/strong&gt; Yes, absolutely.  The process should be adjusted based on all relevant factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking the question another way, when you add the next person to the team, will it be easier to bring them up to speed if you have a documented process?  If someone on your team departs  suddenly and the work has to be covered by others until a new hire is found, will you want a process?   If you want to do something better next time than you did this time, you need a process.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also recognize that this is another case of &quot;the plan is without value, but the planning is without price&quot;. If you and your team get together to devise a process, even if that process is never consulted, the exercise of collectively designing the process will result in both team improvements and process improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2013-10-23T16:48:05.387" LastActivityDate="2013-10-23T16:48:05.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10055" CreationDate="2013-10-23T20:42:42.297" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that you're having multiple problems and trying to solve them at once.&#xA;It never seems easy to get programmers to leave their egos outside and act as a single &quot;team&quot;/&quot;company&quot; entity while creating code in the name of that entity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The easiest thing you can start with is to put automated checks in for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coding_conventions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;coding standards&lt;/a&gt;. There are many tools out there for most languages. The abstract term you'll be looking for is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tools_for_static_code_analysis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;static code analysis&lt;/a&gt;.Such tools require you to create a ruleset from which they work, and verify the code against. Such checks, like &quot;no method should be more than 9 lines&quot; or &quot;no class should have more than 5 public methods&quot; and &quot;only tabs are allowed for line start&quot; make sure that the code &lt;em&gt;looks&lt;/em&gt; the same. Most likely these simple checks will drive a somewhat better design as the programmers will need to come up with solutions to adhere to the standards. &#xA;Introducing this usually creates a huge roar, as it is a straight offence against the egos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second problem you're trying to solve is consequent design. That's something a highly respected (!important) technical personnel could drive. Obviously the best scenario is to have a team who's self-aware and wants to do the best possible work, but judging from your question this is not a given in your situation. In such setup, you need this senior member (architect, tech lead, you name it) to have enough power in his hands to make the others do what he thinks would fit. On the other hand, he should avoid using that tool with all means possible and try to lead by example and convert the others. Pair with them, teach them and make them see why they should behave differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third problem is the technology stack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that if you put things like that into stone, you might end up using the wrong tool for a particular job. I'd rather have a rule of: &quot;Assess the tools available before each new task, and see what's the best for it&quot;.&#xA;You might find that for some tasks MVC is overkill when a simple static webpage would be enough. Or you might find that there are way better tools than Bootstrap. You won't be able to respond to technological shifts in the industry if you have a hard policy on tools used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To cut it short: it's more wise to &quot;grow&quot; a team than to rule them. Sure, they require borders, but try explaining those in the form of visions, goals and team values that they all should align to while they find their own comfortable way of solving your business needs.&#xA;&quot;Hard-wiring&quot; implementation(=tools, design) regulations on the other hand will set you up for a rigid and fragile process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7200" LastActivityDate="2013-10-23T20:42:42.297" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10078" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10096" CreationDate="2013-10-24T10:10:38.307" Score="2" ViewCount="477" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a web project going on and there are several use cases and we're now busy scheduling the development of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're wondering what the best practices are about scheduling a project. Should we schedule our project based upon use cases or technical tasks? I know that scheduling based upon use cases is interesting for business because they can determine what each use case costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, for developers this mindset is usually not very easy to follow (they think in technical tasks). Let's say they have a technical task &quot;Setup Java projects&quot;, this is a requirement for each use case, so it's hard to &quot;convert&quot; this into the functional aspect of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They can divide the story points for each use case, but let's say that business puts a specific use case on hold, then the project schedule wouldn't be correct anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question; what's the best way to schedule a project? Should it be based upon the functional part, the technical part or both?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7205" LastEditorDisplayName="user7205" LastEditDate="2013-10-24T11:11:07.867" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T17:29:36.463" Title="Project scheduling based on use cases or technical tasks" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10078" CreationDate="2013-10-24T12:15:29.647" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are not your only two choices.  As Mark indicated in his comment, there are many approaches.  Here are some things to think about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The primary purpose of a schedule is to schedule your resources--human, materiel, equipment and tools, availability of funds, environmental logistics.  Your schedule should be easy to use so that everyone involved knows what to do when and with what.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your secondary purpose is to monitor your performance.  What best approach will give you the indication whether you are on track or not?  For example, with tasks, you never really know how well you are progressing.  A task can be 100% complete per your schedule but your product it was supposed to produce is not complete.  You could have scheduled your painters and the availability of paint and brushes and other materials to cover two coats of paint.  At the end of two coats, your wall is still not finished as it requires another two or three coats.  How do you reflect that on your schedule?  Your resources have gone.  Now what?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Managing your schedule requires costly effort.  What do you have available to do these tasks?  Your choice in the approach to derive a schedule is constrained by what you have available to work your schedule.  Make it too complex and you have little to no availability of scheduler and tool resources, your schedule will become useless quickly.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What makes sense to you in order to manage your project?  While I wrote above you want to ensure all stakeholders understand your schedule, you really need to ensure you understand it as the PM so that you can answer all the hard questions that will come your way.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-10-24T12:15:29.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10080" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-24T13:03:50.623" Score="0" ViewCount="2371" Body="&lt;p&gt;Traditional requirements elicitation: &lt;br&gt;&#xA;–  Interviewing customers and domain experts &lt;br&gt;&#xA;–  Questionnaires &lt;br&gt;&#xA;–  Observation &lt;br&gt;&#xA;–  Study of documents and software systems &lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Modern requirements elicitation: &lt;br&gt;&#xA;–  Prototyping &lt;br&gt;&#xA;–  Brainstorming &lt;br&gt;&#xA;–  Joint Application Development (JAD) &lt;br&gt;&#xA;–  Rapid Application Development (RAD) &lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;When is it more appropriate to use modern or traditional? What kind of project? &lt;br&gt;&#xA;Spontaneously I think modern method is appropriate when we want to target the time to delivery on new project. And traditional method is more appropriate for upgrade project. Is there other situations which one of them is more appropriate than the other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6317" LastActivityDate="2013-10-24T14:55:57.673" Title="Traditional vs. Modern requirements elicitation. When each of them is more appropriate?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-11-07T17:48:05.550" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10081" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-24T14:55:38.990" Score="2" ViewCount="1215" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our development process, for networking reasons, some stories can't be QA'ed or tested until they have been pushed to production.  We do not, however, currently have branching capabilties so when pushing something to test into production mid-sprint, we also push some unfinished code for other stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am still defining many of our scrum practices, but this seems to be a confusing issue that I am trying to wrap my head around.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7207" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T16:37:48.617" Title="Deploying to production in the middle of a sprint" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10080" CreationDate="2013-10-24T14:55:57.673" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to these questions would require a very expensive and long term meta study on hundreds of various types of projects.  No two projects are a like and there are far too many variables--most of them random, unpredictable, and unseen--to try to correlate an approach with a type of project.  And I would bet the difference in validity of each approach is negligible.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best answer I can see here is: depends.  What is the project, the experience of the team, the maturity level of both the organization and the project team, your project-specific constraints, and on and on.  Your best approach is one on which the team decides based on a cogent analysis of the benefits, costs, risks, and penalties of available alternatives.  What can be guaranteed, however, is that no matter what approach you use, your results will be less than perfect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-10-24T14:55:57.673" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10081" CreationDate="2013-10-24T15:55:00.973" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see 3 routes you might be able to take:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;create branching capabilities :)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;create proper test environment(s)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;follow Scrum by the word and create one feature at a time. That would result in change sets that are only relevant to the feature you're about to test.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't believe there's any workaround you could get away in this situation apart from simply solving the problem that you don't have a proper staging/qa solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could however ask the questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what are the networking issues?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how can you get rid of those issues?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;who's in your way of solving them?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;why didn't that person solve it already?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;repeat the above for the problems you discover by these questions until you reach the root cause, and solve it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7200" LastActivityDate="2013-10-24T15:55:00.973" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10084" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-24T16:11:01.500" Score="4" ViewCount="174" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been working on a project for almost a year now as the Project Manager. Initially, it was just myself. Over time, several others have been engaged in the project on a much smaller scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project is relatively heavily modularized, primarily to accommodate this type of an environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, I really appreciate when people share creative control. It makes you feel like you're an important part of the project, you're contributions are more than just repetitive to-spec coding, and you get to have a little fun playing around with ideas. As such, I try to grant those I work with a heavy amount of creative control on their parts of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm beginning to think this is back-firing on me because there are some tasks, which should be relatively simple, that are turning out to be huge burdens because of the amount of discussion expected. I don't want to be a project dictator but when we are in &quot;crunch time&quot; and somebody goes off on a tangent with an idea and reports back that he doesn't think my solution is ideal, I find myself becoming aggravated. I am almost always an &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; laid back person so this is surprising to me. I don't let my professionalism slip and try to hide any negative notions to keep everyone happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of these issues are more related to &quot;personal taste&quot; (think Design) than a technical, provable problem. As Project Manager, I am really dealt the burden of making sure this project is completed successfully. Overall, I just want to find a way to balance letting my fellow programmers have fun and enjoy their work but also move forward faster than a snail's pace. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can anyone recommend some ways to establish a balance between letting the developers enjoy themselves while continueing to push out a product I feel comfortable delivering?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5293" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-11-02T04:46:42.110" LastActivityDate="2013-11-02T04:46:42.110" Title="Balance between sharing creative control and leading the project" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8892" CreationDate="2013-10-24T17:51:28.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess I would disagree that training the Product Owner is the responsibility of the Scrum Master. However I think it &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; the Scrum Master's responsibility to identify any gaps in the Product Owner's current competence for the role. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Scrum Master were to take responsibility for all of an organization's competency gaps that affected her team, she would deserve the job description (and pay) of an organizational development consultant. And her team would still need a Scrum Master. Scrum exposes an organization's weaknesses, but by itself cannot possibly remediate them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, as Scrum Master she can and should play a role in facilitating the Product Owner's growth as they practice and perfect their performance in the role. But taking on the responsibility to train them is a distraction for her and a crutch for the organization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easy to mistake co-dependency for facilitation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7208" LastActivityDate="2013-10-24T17:51:28.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10084" CreationDate="2013-10-24T17:57:25.277" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it depends on the phase/mode your team currently is in based on your organization's (and more specifically your ongoing project)' climate/weather report. There's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00EP03O5Y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fantastic book&lt;/a&gt; that speaks to this exact kind of confusion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To mildly paraphrase, you are either in&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Survival Mode (no time to learn, just do!)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Learning Phase (team is learning to solve their own problems, cleaning up debt, grooming new team members effectively, exploring creative ideas / prototyping)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Self organizing (The holy grail! Team rarely needs your help, period. You could fall sick for a week, come back and your project is still on track!)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would constantly (daily standup meetings etc.) let the team know where they're at based on stakeholder needs and really establish &lt;strong&gt;ground rules / working agreements&lt;/strong&gt; as to how much of a dictator you're going to be in each of these 3 modes (It should be obvious which one has you laying down the law more in, doesn't it?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your soft skills would then go on over-drive to &lt;strong&gt;earn your team's trust&lt;/strong&gt; that you are going to pull them out of the &quot;not all that fun&quot; survival phase and into the other two where they have more power/control and say over how things are done, creative license and ownership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7032" LastActivityDate="2013-10-24T17:57:25.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10084" CreationDate="2013-10-25T00:04:17.647" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[T]here are some tasks...that are turning out to be huge burdens because of the amount of discussion expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It isn't really the &lt;em&gt;discussion&lt;/em&gt; that's inherently problematic; it's the intersection of discussion with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Parkinson's Law&lt;/a&gt;. Or, to put it another way, you have rediscovered the reason that agile frameworks like Scrum rely so heavily on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeboxing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;time-boxing&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Over-Engineering: The Enemy of Productivity&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The agile community is full of pithy aphorisms that all boil down to the idea that productivity is about riding the line of &quot;good enough.&quot; Some examples include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_aren%27t_gonna_need_it&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;YAGNI&lt;/a&gt; (You Aren't Going to Need It)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules/simple.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The simplest thing that could possibly work.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Deliver working software frequently.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Working software is the primary measure of progress.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum enforces time-boxing on both meetings and iterations, so that discussions that need to happen have a &lt;em&gt;place&lt;/em&gt; to happen, but also a built-in time constraint that encourages selection of workable solutions over &quot;perfect&quot; solutions. In addition, the iterative nature of Scrum development lends itself to acceptance of &quot;good enough&quot; solutions that can always be improved further in later iterations if there's actual value in doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't the same thing as cowboy coding or deliberate technical debt. Rather, it's simply a formalized awareness that &lt;em&gt;shippable features&lt;/em&gt; are the goal, rather than perfection for its own sake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Introduce Time-Boxing and Set Expectations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you aren't an agile shop, you may find the following steps useful in reigning in the tendency towards over-engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clearly communicate the objectives and time constraints.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make &quot;good enough&quot; an explicit criteria.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be clear that no one will be blamed if something isn't &quot;perfect&quot; or needs to be refactored in the future&amp;mdash;and mean it!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reward on-time delivery of &quot;good enough&quot; features.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set the expectation that a team decision made &lt;em&gt;within&lt;/em&gt; the time-box will set the bar for the feature, but you will make a decision by fiat if the team can't reach consensus before the time-box expires.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Treat the time-box as inviolate; don't make exceptions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use a kitchen timer to help remind the team of the time-box.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Never&lt;/em&gt; hold individual developers accountable for features that are good enough but not &quot;perfect.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key here is to make the objectives clear, and to communicate effectively about how the team's performance will be reviewed and rewarded. Developers are rarely rewarded for &quot;good enough,&quot; but frequently punished for imperfect work. You will need to work hard to build trust in a process that values and rewards alternative team strategies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T00:04:17.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10088" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-25T02:50:34.560" Score="1" ViewCount="9797" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to show the secondary and/or tertiary critical path in Microsoft Project? The view menu has a way to filter to only those tasks without slack (i.e. the critical path), but is there a way to show more critical paths without artificially shortening something in the real critical path? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To Clarify based on the answers below, just increasing the slack threshold at which something is considered the critical path is not at all what I'm after for a couple of reasons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The secondary or tertiary critical path has some arbitrary amount of float to the primary critical path. So just changing this threshold would require tedious guess and check and could change whenever the schedule logic or status is updated. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Changing this threshold would cause all three paths to be considered &quot;the&quot; critical path, with no obvious visual means of distinguishing them from each other. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="360" LastEditorUserId="360" LastEditDate="2013-10-30T02:08:06.620" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T16:38:01.513" Title="How to show secondary and tertiary critical path in MS Project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;critical-path&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10089" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-25T13:46:32.117" Score="5" ViewCount="8761" Body="&lt;p&gt;We estimate stories as 1, 2, 4, 6, or 8 points. Consider a story with less development work but huge testing effort. Let's say we estimate that story as 8 points. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;We see the following options:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Let the story be 8 points, and be ready for the story testing to slip to the next sprint. This way development and testing are included in one story, but the team doesn't get any points for the work done in the current sprint. They get all 8 points in the 2nd sprint, or when the testing ends.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Split the story for testing purpose, i.e. development and some minor testing in one story, which can be completed in one sprint, then carve out the second story just for testing purposes (a testing-only story). This way the team gets some points in both the sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my previous experience, we have been opting for option 1, but in my current project people are more keen on option 2. I'm not sure if it is a correct way to split stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7211" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-10-28T14:12:12.427" LastActivityDate="2020-06-17T14:24:41.460" Title="Should there be testing-only user stories?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;testing&gt;&lt;definition-of-done&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10088" CreationDate="2013-10-25T14:32:21.123" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The option &quot;Calculate multiple critical paths&quot; shows critical (Total Slack &amp;lt; 0) for all networked tasks without successors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also add the Total Slack field to a view and apply filters for any amount of total slack you select.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T14:32:21.123" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10089" CreationDate="2013-10-25T15:02:30.190" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Option 2 only seems valid if you view testing as a service, and not as a responsibility of the team. If that's the case, I'd question how agile the team is and do you really need to squeeze 2 separate teams (dev &amp;amp; qa) into one sprint.&#xA;If your goal is to be agile, it might be worth not to distinguish between dev and test and consider a story &quot;done&quot; when it is properly tested. That way you'll end up estimating the overall work needed to be done as a team, and not just sub-parts of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7200" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T15:02:30.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10092" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-25T16:24:33.227" Score="5" ViewCount="327" Body="&lt;p&gt;Initially, it sounds best to have only talented (in their specific professional domains) people at hand. But then there's the fact that talented people want creative, non-routine work. Unless they have average employees as assistants for the mundane work, then, maybe, they would hardly get any work done... And talented people, if all in the same field, might get competitive in a bad way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an optimal ratio of talented vs average people in a team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4551" LastEditorUserId="4551" LastEditDate="2017-06-06T21:56:03.820" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T21:56:03.820" Title="Is there an optimal ratio for talented vs average people in a team?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10081" CreationDate="2013-10-25T16:37:48.617" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You seem to have at least two significant impediments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No branches&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No testing environment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both have to be resolved if you want to ship a quality product. I'm sure you're all too familiar with consequences of shipping unfinished and untested code since you're asking the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would really focus on those two issues. &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;First, introduce branching to code repo - if your team isn't familiar with the concept, organize a training for them. Let them learn. &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Second - testing environment. If you're unable to get one (for any reason), maybe you could find a possibility to mark &quot;not Done&quot; features as &quot;experimental&quot; or something similar - anything that will inform your users that the feature might not work as expected?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7214" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T16:37:48.617" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2307" CreationDate="2013-10-25T17:02:59.697" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't see the comments option under the question, so I am writing my comment as a reply here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be interesting to study small companies which tried to introduce processes and procedures from the very beginning. I personally don't know of any such examples so I am curious to learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4551" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T17:02:59.697" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-10-25T17:02:59.697" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10078" CreationDate="2013-10-25T17:29:36.463" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Factoring in the technical work&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To schedule a project you must base it on both the functional and the technical work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Scrum/Agile world you will see what you call &quot;the technical part&quot; referred to sometimes as &quot;nonfunctional requirements&quot; and sometimes as &quot;technical debt&quot;. Everyone agrees that these need to be accounted for. However, there are different opinions on how to track them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The nonfunctional requirements that will affect almost all stories, such as performance, should become part of the definition of done. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/news/2013/03/user-stories-technical-debt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Other nonfunctional requirements could become user stories or tasks within other stories&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, your &quot;Setup Java projects&quot; can become a task in the first use case that you implement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if it is technical, I would recommend that you try to explain why you need to do it to the business people, such as the Product Owner. For example, the developers may want to upgrade to the latest and greatest software version because it is cool to do so. However, when looking at the new features, the Product Owner may find that it is not anything she needs on priority. So, you might decide to skip a version upgrade altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T17:29:36.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10092" CreationDate="2013-10-25T19:06:55.567" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read this:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.managementpsychology.com/articles/when-too-many-smart-people-spoil-the-team-the-apollo-effect-in-the-professional-firm/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.managementpsychology.com/articles/when-too-many-smart-people-spoil-the-team-the-apollo-effect-in-the-professional-firm/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A high performing team has the typical team roles represented.  It is not so much less talented people assume the more demeaning roles as it is that each role is assumed by competence that performs to expected levels most of the time.  What you need to consider is, our performance, both collective and individual, is variable.  So even your best superstars will perform lousy from time to time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is most important to me is NOT to find that superstar but rather that individual that will perform in a predictable, sustainable, repeatable way.  While this is very unpopular from a humanistic perspective, I want to be able to replace said individual with another when the first one craps out...and they will crap out so says Murphy.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T19:06:55.567" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8955" CreationDate="2013-10-26T04:10:29.107" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;YES!!!!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's look at the spirit of scrum&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Focus on how to help, not on your &quot;job&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Iterative Retrospective, to Change and Adapt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you can try it, and see how it works, reflect on it, and decide as a group if it is beneficial. Remember that the role of the Product Owner is to organize the backlog and provide direction, so ensure that is happening effectively and you should have no problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can say that I run scrum independently on solo projects all the time. Is it some kind of blasphemy that I'm a team member, master of ceremonies and product owner? They are 3 distinct roles, but I just make believe that I'm 3 people and I do them all myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People who answer no are just zealots, the process defines flexibility and adaptation. You can do whatever suits you, which changes in situation to situation. You should try to make your first sprint pure, but after that the retrospective is meant to invoke improvement and change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7219" LastActivityDate="2013-10-26T04:10:29.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3122" CreationDate="2013-10-26T08:45:07.677" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A partial answer/ hint: speaking of success, no matter the field, we must also take into account the price paid. In most cases people tackle defining &quot;success&quot; from the point of view of what has been achieved, how it related to initial goals, its beneficial effects in the short and long-term, etc. But they miss to see the other side of the coin - what we had to give away for the sake of that achievement and what alternative opportunities we did not cater to in order to cater to this one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4551" LastActivityDate="2013-10-26T08:45:07.677" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-10-26T08:45:07.677" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10089" CreationDate="2013-10-26T10:56:13.423" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;When looking at problematic stories, the best advice is to use &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST principles&lt;/a&gt; and in particular:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Stories deliver value&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If QA is an activity that must be performed in order to deliver at all, then you can't split it off. Did you have a &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20161227151839/https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2008/september/what-is-definition-of-done-(dod)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;definition of done&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; meeting? Does &amp;quot;done&amp;quot; include QA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story doesn't deliver value, it's not a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Stories are small&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All stories must be less than one sprint in length in order to be planned. Split your story by delivering a subset of the features (less value, but still some value).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6300" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2020-06-17T14:24:41.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10089" CreationDate="2013-10-28T14:52:51.183" Score="19" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither of your stated options are truly agile. You are misusing points in an attempt to represent progress or to &quot;hold people accountable.&quot; Neither is appropriate within the Scrum framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Points are an estimating tool. They are only meaningful in the aggregate, and are primarily needed for estimating team capacity during Sprint Planning. Using them as a productivity metric is misleading, and continued misuse of the story-point system will eventually harm both the team and the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Points are Not Rewards&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This way the team gets some points in both the sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, a story is either done or not-done; it is never partially-done. You can certainly rig the system by artificially decomposing stories so that you can &quot;earn&quot; points in a Sprint by completing certain stories even when the real underlying feature isn't complete, but this doesn't serve any practical purpose other than to inflate velocity. Inflated velocity will ultimately skew your estimates, hurt the team, and damage your project. Don't do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Points are also not rewards. They aren't lollipops that you hand out for a job well done; they are simply a work-effort metric. Specifically, story points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are converted to a velocity metric by aggregating over an historical window, tracking the team's &lt;em&gt;capacity for work&lt;/em&gt; over time. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are used as a sanity-check to determine if a story can deliver its intended value within a single iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Points Measure Capacity&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Points are both an estimating tool and a means of tracking team capacity over time. When estimating, story points tell you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much effort the team thinks a story will take.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether or not the story (in its entirety) can fit within the current iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether the team should accept the story into the sprint as-is, or whether the team needs to work with the Product Owner to refine, clarify, decompose, discard, or re-scope the story to achieve the current Sprint Goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Points also act as a proxy for team capacity over time. &lt;em&gt;Earning&lt;/em&gt; points adds no value to the project, but being able to say that the team can usually complete an average of 12-16 points in a typical iteration helps the team estimate its capacity to accept stories during Sprint Planning. This helps the team avoid over-committing, prevents setting the team up for failure by creating an unsustainable work-load, and avoids planning a sprint that will not meet the stated Sprint Goal for the iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Stories Should Fit Within One Sprint&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your stories can't fit within a single sprint, then you either have an epic that must be decomposed, or your sprint length has not been optimized for your project. There is always a trade-off involved in determining the optimal sprint length for a project, but the challenge of writing stories that fit into a finite time-box remains a constant challenge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, a story should be a full-stack, vertical slice of functionality that engages the whole cross-functional team. Testing is &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; a separate story; rather, it is an integral task required to ensure that a given feature meets the formal &quot;definition of done&quot; as defined by the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories that are expected to extend past the end of an iteration indicate a process problem that must be fixed during Backlog Grooming or Sprint Planning. Likewise, stories which don't meet the definition of done are also process problems that the team urgently needs to address.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T14:52:51.183" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10105" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-28T15:04:47.293" Score="4" ViewCount="270" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in parallel with 20 other people on different projects. We can't see each other most of the time so we used to talk with emails (Gmail).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have to discuss about different subjects and sometimes people ask open questions. All of this results in a lot of email. People are added in a mailing list on the way. It's a total mess, and I dislike working like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the data sent between workers needs to be saved and reachable, but we also need to manage the visibility and the rights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know what is the &quot;good way&quot; for a open communication without all these emails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I improve our online communication and avoid this chaotic mail-chatting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7091" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-10-30T01:01:12.643" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T01:01:12.643" Title="How to avoid mail-chatting and improve the online communication?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9983" CreationDate="2013-10-28T16:25:27.993" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I actually found a workaround I like better; I can see why my approach isn't a &quot;strict PM&quot; kind of approach, but it works for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I did was set the end time of the first milestone to be 5:00 pm.  That kicked the second one to the next day.  So far, once that's done, any time I change the date of the first milestone it retains its 5:00 pm end time and the second milestone follows it automatically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not sure if this will break somewhere down the road or not, so I'm keeping an eye on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6856" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T16:25:27.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10107" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-10-28T20:06:15.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The term is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Resources/Scrum-Glossary/Definition-of-Done&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;defined by Scrum.org&lt;/a&gt; as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The DoD is usually a clear and concise list of requirements that a software Increment must adhere to for the team to call it complete. Until this list is satisfied, a product Increment is not done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-10-28T20:06:15.887" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T20:06:15.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10108" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-10-28T20:06:15.887" Score="0" Body="This tag is for questions about defining or implementing a Definition of Done (DoD) within an agile process." OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-10-28T20:06:15.887" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T20:06:15.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10109" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-10-28T20:29:18.980" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Related links:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_programming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_programming&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-10-28T20:29:18.980" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T20:29:18.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10110" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-10-28T20:29:18.980" Score="0" Body="For questions about the Extreme Programming (XP) process or its defined practices." OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-10-28T20:29:18.980" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T20:29:18.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10105" CreationDate="2013-10-28T21:08:40.237" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on the subject of your communication your problem can be solved by a number of tools:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Business-object related communications&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;eg. code, customers, offers, tickets, blog posts&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often times there are tools focussed around the objects in question, that also have comment- or wiki-style communication and documentation systems in place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of this are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Repository management system&lt;/strong&gt; that sometimes give you commenting ability down to specific lines of code&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CRMs&lt;/strong&gt; that even let you comment on specific communication items&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;for most &lt;strong&gt;ticket system&lt;/strong&gt; this is an essential feature anyway&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;audit/editorial systems&lt;/strong&gt; for blogs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ad-hoc problem related communications&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;eg. questions pertaining to some order that needs special handling, unclear commits, clarification of responsibility towards customer requests&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These can be both formal and informal and informal parts are often handled by &lt;em&gt;chat, mail, phone, yelling, etc&lt;/em&gt;. For communications that needs to be logged for some reason, &lt;strong&gt;email&lt;/strong&gt; can work, but if you need more accountability, handling questions as &lt;strong&gt;tickets&lt;/strong&gt; or in some chat-like &lt;strong&gt;internal communication system&lt;/strong&gt; that is monitored and persisted is probably a good choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Open questions up for discussion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;this can be around any topic&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These questions are common and usually should be stored even beyond the time an employee or customer relationship terminates and their related accounts are closed. So requirements usually are that the data is decoupled from any accounts like email or CRM and that it can be easily accessed by new users entering the communication system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mostly one would use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;wikis&lt;/strong&gt;, because they just work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Forum software&lt;/strong&gt;, as permission systems on those are easier to use&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an on-premise or saas-style version of &lt;strong&gt;Q/A systems&lt;/strong&gt; like this one&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;lately, &lt;strong&gt;company-centric 'social networks'&lt;/strong&gt; also increase in number&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7155" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T21:08:40.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10105" CreationDate="2013-10-28T21:58:19.537" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While this is going to end up being a product suggestion response, I've had the same issue and haven't come across a perfect solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Producteev.com is the leading contender for me.  If they allowed you to add files it'd be the 100% solution.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use Basecamp but at this point its been simply reduced to a cloud file storage for us and will be replaced as soon as someone takes the time to port all the docs to a wiki.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at Dokuwiki for a file storage solution and potentially overall solution&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a look at some of Lifehacker's posts &lt;a href=&quot;http://lifehacker.com/search?q=project%20management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://lifehacker.com/most-popular-personal-project-management-tool-evernote-1442396362&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for their suggestions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7235" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T21:58:19.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10069" CreationDate="2013-10-28T22:29:03.173" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I completely agree with Marc and David and want to suggest - as to &lt;strong&gt;how to set this up&lt;/strong&gt; - that you find a tool that you can use to &lt;strong&gt;easily track your projects&lt;/strong&gt;' stories and &lt;strong&gt;shuffle their priorities&lt;/strong&gt;. A tool that can be set up in a way that the &lt;strong&gt;PMs are immediately informed&lt;/strong&gt; of any change and can take a look at the current status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pretty much any &lt;strong&gt;project management tool&lt;/strong&gt; should do this for you, but buying those/setting them up might be an issue or even no-go, based on company policy. Other &lt;strong&gt;more light-weight tools&lt;/strong&gt; could be a better fit, so I'll mention one in a comment and others can add to it over time as options become obsolete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7155" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T22:29:03.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10114" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10130" CreationDate="2013-10-29T02:30:02.780" Score="1" ViewCount="60" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was previously acquainted with a specific model, which contains levels for different phases of a systems development, ie:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Phase 1: Complete chaos, nothing works&#xA;Phase 2: Getting stuff to work, but breaks, no process&#xA;Phase 3: Implement processes to stop things breaking&#xA;Phase 4: Scale &#xA;etc..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it had an acronym like MMCM or MMCP or such, but can't find it via Googling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4772" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T05:49:09.733" Title="Multi-level process development" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;&lt;process-engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10116" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-29T10:06:08.140" Score="4" ViewCount="1196" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work on a large line-of-business legacy application, my projects are very much NOT green field. The dev teams are small, usually 2 developers, 1 system tester, plus part-time PM and BA resources. For every hour we spend cutting code, we spend a scary amount of time doing something else. I've listed the rough areas and in brackets the amount of time spent in hours:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requirements gathering, business and systems analysis (0.5) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Functional and technical design (0.5)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cutting code (1.0)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;System testing, including test planning and developer time fixing bugs (1.5)  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developer time fixing bugs arising from user acceptance testing (0.5)  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deployment planning, deployment and post deployment support (0.5)  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project management, requirements and design walk-throughs (0.5)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this typical?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7239" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-10-29T17:03:04.863" LastActivityDate="2013-10-29T17:50:27.797" Title="For every hour cutting code, how many project hours are spent doing something else?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10105" CreationDate="2013-10-29T13:27:32.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is to get everyone involved on the phone and document the consensus in meeting minutes. A rule of thumb that has worked well for me is to set up a face-to-face discussion or a telecon if the email chain gets to be more than ~5 emails long. Going this route avoids needless chatter, increases clarity of decisions and reduces misunderstandings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-10-29T13:27:32.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10119" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10123" CreationDate="2013-10-29T13:30:12.067" Score="5" ViewCount="2489" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it generally a good practice to have large story-points for user stories in a sprint? We are following a modified Fibonacci series of &lt;code&gt;1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, 100&lt;/code&gt;. We estimate the effort considering only the complexity involved, and it's all relative. So, would it be okay to have effort estimates larger than 20, or is it recommended to have less than that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7243" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-10-29T22:14:17.617" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T14:10:22.117" Title="Is it a good Scrum practice to use large story-point numbers for effort estimation?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;fibonacci-sequence&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10116" CreationDate="2013-10-29T16:23:47.603" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will argue that writing code is probably one of the least important parts of the project. In my view it is a means to an end, at the end of the day you are translating the requirements of a customer into a particular syntax that can be executed by a machine to deliver benefits to that customer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Requirements gathering, business and systems analysis&quot; and &quot;Functional and technical design&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; - You should spend far more time on these than writing code. If requirements and design aren't clear you are dooming yourself to a lot of rework and wasted time at best, or to a project product that fails to deliver the planned benefits at worst.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;System testing, including test planning and developer time fixing bugs&quot; and &quot;Developer time fixing bugs arising from user acceptance testing&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; - I don't think anybody puts the time into these that they should, there is too much pressure to get something out fast. Ideally you allocate a substantial amount of time in your plans for testing and fixing bugs (at a guess 20-30% of total project time). This sounds like a lot but remember that you have no way to predict &lt;em&gt;a priori&lt;/em&gt; how many bugs you will have or how hard they will be to resolve.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Deployment planning, deployment and post deployment support&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; - You can have the best code in the world but if your deployment is poor your project won't reap the benefits it should. By analogy, I can build the best engineered car in the world but if I don't have a good plan for selling them and maintaining them after the initial sale I will be out of business sooner rather than later.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Project management, requirements and design walkthroughs&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; - This is totally dependent on the criticality and complexity of your project. You will need more oversight/governance for even the simplest project if it will make or break your company. That being said, project oversight is probably the one piece that I would tailor to let me allocate more budget to coding.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-10-29T16:23:47.603" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10119" CreationDate="2013-10-29T17:30:43.630" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt; Yes, you can have larger stories, just not at the top of the backlog&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your backlog should ideally have higher priority stories of smaller sizes and lower priority stories that are larger, also known as epics. The smaller, well-defined stories at the top of the backlog are ready to go into the next sprint. The Product Backlog Iceberg by Mike Cohn is very helpful to illustrate this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In each sprint, the team can get together in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/user-stories/decomposing-user-stories/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;story decomposition or elaboration (also known as backlog grooming) meeting&lt;/a&gt; to look at the next set of priority stories, break them up into smaller chunks, write acceptance criteria and estimate story points.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UxNYg.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-10-29T17:30:43.630" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10116" CreationDate="2013-10-29T17:50:27.797" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've described a scenario where your process overhead is actually only around 10%. That certainly seems adequate for most purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may be mis-categorizing prerequisites and dependencies as process overhead. By doing so, you have incorrectly determined that your process is wasting 80% of your available man-hours (or incurring process overhead of around 500%) when in fact your process overhead appears to be well below the &lt;a href=&quot;http://hbr.org/1985/09/the-hidden-factory/ar/1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;35% average&lt;/a&gt; for American industry as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acceptable levels of process overhead are really just management targets, and will vary by organization, job sector, and project management framework. There is no single number which is ideal across all scenarios.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Process Prerequisites&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a way, you're looking at things backwards because your question axiomatically assumes that writing code is the primary purpose of your project management process. It isn't. Delivering value in a predictable and controlled fashion is the &lt;em&gt;raison d'être&lt;/em&gt; for project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, most of the additional steps you've listed as overhead &lt;em&gt;aren't&lt;/em&gt;. As an example, requirements-gathering isn't really overhead since you can't deliver working code if you don't know what code to write, or what that code is supposed to &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; once it's written. Gathering requirements is therefore a prerequisite to writing the code; or, if you prefer to turn it around, writing code has a &lt;em&gt;dependency&lt;/em&gt; on requirements-gathering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the steps you've listed add value to the project. They ensure that you are building the right things, and in the right order. That classifies them as prerequisites and dependencies, rather than &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.toyota.co.uk/muda-muri-mura-toyota-production-system&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;waste&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Process Overhead&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there's surely a technical definition, in practical terms process overhead is all the stuff that adds no intrinsic value to the deliverables, but is nevertheless necessary to the functioning of the project itself. Project meetings, project management artifacts, and project communications are often good examples of typical overhead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Do the Math&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've defined a process that totals 5 man-hours per feature, of which only 30 minutes should be classified as overhead. You are therefore spending only 10% of your project time in process overhead. In contrast, a typical Scrum project often requires &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8520/4271&quot;&gt;around 30% overhead&lt;/a&gt; for its processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you have a specific business driver for reducing that number below 10%, I don't see an actual problem. However, if management or your development team feels that there is waste that can be trimmed, by all means feel free to see where you can make some incremental improvements without cutting quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2013-10-29T17:50:27.797" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10119" CreationDate="2013-10-29T19:27:55.460" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;All Accepted Stories Must Fit in a Single Sprint&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your velocity is a range that represents the team's capacity for each iteration. If your team velocity is 40-50 story points per sprint, then you could:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accept five or six 8-point stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accept two 20-point stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accept one 40-point story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea here is that you are only accepting work that will fit within the team's expected capacity for the current sprint. You may &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; accept work that you don't expect to have 100% complete (according to your &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Resources/Scrum-Glossary/Definition-of-Done&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Definition of Done&lt;/a&gt;) by the end of the iteration. If a story is too big to fit, you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; break it down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Avoid Accepting Epics Into the Sprint&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the rules of Scrum allow you to accept any story that can fit within your current sprint, it's generally a bad idea to accept epics. Smaller stories are easier to estimate, test, and swap in or out of the backlog, and tend to adhere more closely to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_%28mnemonic%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;INVEST principles&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, a story is either done or not-done, so having one big epic instead of a number of bite-sized stories is more likely to lead to a sprint failure. Making your stories smaller will make the Sprint Goal more achievable, and therefore make the team more agile during the iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally recommend that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stories should be decomposed until they are 13 points or less to avoid epic proportions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each story should be decomposable into tasks that are expected to take between one-half to two days to complete.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Epics as Process Problems&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find that you can't decompose an epic into stories worth less than 13 points each, there's probably too much uncertainty around the feature or too much entanglement within your feature. This should immediately trigger a conversation with the Product Owner, and possibly with the end users, in order to gain clarity and identify the minimum viable increment of functionality for the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are certainly edge cases where a single large story may be justified, as long as it can fit within a single iteration. However, claiming that the story &lt;em&gt;can't&lt;/em&gt; be decomposed is generally a &quot;project smell&quot; that indicates an underlying process problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-10-30T14:10:22.117" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T14:10:22.117" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10124" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-10-29T22:21:38.543" Score="0" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_number&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fibonacci numbers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_poker&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;planning poker&lt;/a&gt; as defined on Wikipedia&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Commercial &lt;a href=&quot;http://store.mountaingoatsoftware.com/pages/faqs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Planning Poker&amp;reg;&lt;/a&gt; with modified Fibonacci sequence&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-10-29T22:21:38.543" LastActivityDate="2013-10-29T22:21:38.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10125" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-10-29T22:21:38.543" Score="0" Body="For questions about Fibonacci numbers, or about the modified Fibonacci sequence often used in agile estimation." OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-10-29T22:21:38.543" LastActivityDate="2013-10-29T22:21:38.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10126" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10127" CreationDate="2013-10-29T23:12:21.057" Score="2" ViewCount="1987" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you delivered a user story in a previous sprint and then need to make changes to that feature in the current sprint, what do you do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change the user interface (UI) of a screen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change a technical detail in how the feature was previously implemented (i.e. refactoring).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1972" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-10-30T00:23:59.260" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T00:23:59.260" Title="How do you modify a delivered user story?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10126" CreationDate="2013-10-30T00:19:59.210" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you deliver a user story in a previous sprint and then need to modify it in a new sprint, what do you do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't. All work must be prioritized by the Product Owner on the Product Backlog, and no unplanned stories should be introduced into the current iteration after Sprint Planning is completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you discover work that needs to be done in a future sprint, write up a new user story and submit it to the Product Owner for inclusion in the Product Backlog. If it's truly a show-stopper that blocks progress within the current sprint, raise the issue within the team (e.g. during the daily stand-up) and let the Scrum Master escalate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Refactoring vs. New Work and Rework&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_refactoring&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Refactoring&lt;/a&gt; doesn't change the behavior of a feature, it just changes the internal implementation. You might need to refactor existing code to accommodate a new feature, but the old code should fundamentally &lt;em&gt;behave&lt;/em&gt; the same way, and all your old tests should still pass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, such refactorings should be kept to the absolute minimum needed to accommodate the new feature. This is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the time to go back and make improvements or optimizations that extend beyond the scope of the story you're working on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need to change behavior, improve a user interface, or optimize a section of code, that's &lt;em&gt;new work&lt;/em&gt;. It must be added to the Product Backlog, prioritized by the Product Owner during Backlog Grooming, and then get added to the Sprint Backlog during Sprint Planning for a &lt;em&gt;future&lt;/em&gt; sprint rather than the current one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;There Are Always Exceptions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are exceptions to every rule. Some examples include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;New work essential to the current Sprint Goal might be discovered during a sprint, and might justify an Early Termination and a return to Sprint Planning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paying down technical debt when you have no other stories to work on is a good use of one's time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Refactoring (or even improving) something &lt;em&gt;in passing&lt;/em&gt; while working on a deliverable feature is often okay in practice, but it's a very fine line that often leads to &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/34775/correct-definition-of-the-term-yak-shaving&quot;&gt;yak shaving&lt;/a&gt; and takes resources away from stories the team has committed to for the sprint. Don't do that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stories that aren't on the critical path to the Sprint Goal can be swapped out, modified, or de-scoped with the active cooperation of the Product Owner without triggering an Early Termination. This is an advanced technique that can backfire easily, so don't rely on it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum and other agile frameworks aren't meant to be a straight-jacket. There is enough flex in the system to accommodate variations and edge cases. However, a team really needs to master the underlying principles before attempting to violate principles like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_aren%27t_gonna_need_it&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;YAGNI&lt;/a&gt; or bypass formal scoping controls, or else it risks turning its framework into &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/ScrumBut&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ScrumBut&lt;/a&gt; or its failure-inducing equivalent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:31:53.287" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T00:19:59.210" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10129" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10132" CreationDate="2013-10-30T03:57:51.000" Score="0" ViewCount="6738" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are using Project 2013 (Standard) and have defined a 'Resource Pool.mpp' to share resources across multiple project (.mpp) files.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Older project files that were linked have been moved, removed or renamed on the file system causing the shared resource links within the Resource Pool file to be broken. This has resulted in orphan task entries and overallocation of resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am unable to remove the broken links via opening the Resource Pool in read/write mode and clicking the 'Break Link' button.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any other way to clean the Resource Pool's 'Share Resources' list?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6941" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T20:02:02.637" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T20:02:02.637" Title="Removing Orphan Entries from an MS Project Resource Pool?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10114" CreationDate="2013-10-30T05:49:09.733" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You appear to be looking for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model_Integration&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Capability Maturity Model Integration&lt;/a&gt; (CMMI). The &lt;a href=&quot;http://cmmiinstitute.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CMMI Institute&lt;/a&gt; seems to be the organization currently behind it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T05:49:09.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10069" CreationDate="2013-10-30T11:30:17.223" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thank you all for the great answers. I picked a winner, but wanted to add my own experience over the last few days. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I am a UI team leader, we created a stupid UI using angular, yeoman etc.. ( the tools we use every day) to create a UI with everything we need. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This environment has a &quot;live reload&quot; so that every time I change the code, it updates, so all our data is hard-coded as well. Sounds weird but seems like the best tool as the data is saved in a JSON format which is best for developers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We decided that the team scrum will be in a new format, I raise the server and all the team look at our new UI. &#xA;We decided to call it &quot;flight-plan&quot; since it reminded us the board your have at airports for outgoing and incoming flights. &#xA;We are even using airplane icons and terminology in it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We already have 7 sections: &#xA; - An overall for all tasks with some progress computation according to subtasks weight and status (done, started, initial, null). - it also includes 'deadline','ETA','have design (yes/no)','team member responsible','last updated','created at','starting working at'... &#xA; - Questions - for questions the team had and I have to find an answer&#xA; - Pending Issues - we go over our JIRA and see if there are new issues. we document our decision in the flight plan. &#xA; - Guidelines - where we simply write some standards for the team (we should run build locally before each commit, we should notify of ETA changes 10 days at most before deadline, etc...)&#xA; - Red flags - important issues that were raised and I need to bubble up. &#xA; - Support cases - according to source with status &#xA; - Detailed subtasks - a more details view for each task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And we are adding more as we need.. No tool, no authorization from company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First few meetings took a while (40 minutes) and now it is down to 20 minutes which is reasonable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of each team scrum, I print it out to PDF and send it to my supervisor which in turn can do whatever she wants with it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've barely heard from the project managers for over a week now. Our deadlines are in a couple of days and things seem fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One project manager told me he saw the &quot;flight-plan&quot; and did not understand the deadline - it should be 1 day earlier.. we simply moved the deadline... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your answers and comments helped me design and improve the flight plan. I am also linking to this page from the flight plan just in case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7194" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T11:30:17.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10129" CreationDate="2013-10-30T14:27:55.247" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, sorry.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;You would be best served by rebuilding the resource pool file.  I'm actually surprised you haven't had a fatal corruption of the project files yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Link to MS TechNet question with MS response:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/projectserver/en-US/79d286b4-545d-4e38-9abf-70ac31dbc984/testing-ms-project-professional-2013&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/projectserver/en-US/79d286b4-545d-4e38-9abf-70ac31dbc984/testing-ms-project-professional-2013&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastEditorUserId="6941" LastEditDate="2013-10-31T04:42:16.493" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T04:42:16.493" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10133" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-30T15:18:45.253" Score="1" ViewCount="4669" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a plan in MS Project. I have a resource that can't work 5 days per week, so I have negotiated with him to work just 3 days per week. In the plan, I changed his calendar for Thursday and Friday to be non-working days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a 12-hour task starts on Wednesday and finishes Monday, MS Project shows the task with 28 hours duration. How can I get MS Project to calculate this as 12 hours?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7248" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-10-30T17:02:03.190" LastActivityDate="2018-10-01T05:53:59.357" Title="How to not count the duration of non-working days of a calendar in Microsoft Project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10133" CreationDate="2013-10-30T16:12:27.683" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the task 12 hours in duration or work?  If the task is 12 hour of work starting on Wednesday and the resource works 8 hours per day, the duration of the task is 1.5 days or 12 hours.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If you mean a &lt;strong&gt;summary&lt;/strong&gt; task duration is showing as 28 hours, it &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; 28 hours from Wednesday at 8:00 am to Monday at 12:00 pm based upon a standard calendar where Monday through Friday is working time.  The summary task does not use the resource's definition of working time - it uses the project calendar definition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T16:12:27.683" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10135" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-10-31T13:08:07.240" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;System roll-out/deployment is one of the core activities of the Software development process. It contains a list of sub-activities, that make a software system available for use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Links&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wiki article about &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_deployment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Software deployment&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wiki article about &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Software development process&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wiki article about &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Systems development life cycle&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-02T19:47:25.850" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T19:47:25.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10136" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-10-31T13:08:07.240" Score="0" Body="For questions about the management of the roll-out (a.k.a. deployment) phase of  a systems development life cycle." OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-02T19:44:01.500" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T19:44:01.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10137" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-10-31T13:14:18.393" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-10-31T13:14:18.393" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T13:14:18.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10138" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-10-31T13:14:18.393" Score="0" Body="For questions about external providers of project resources such as contractors, vendors, or parts/equipment manufacturers." OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-10-31T13:14:18.393" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T13:14:18.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10139" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-10-31T13:49:13.597" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Examples&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Questions about the optimal number of people on a Scrum team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Questions about managing large teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-10-31T13:49:13.597" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T13:49:13.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10140" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-10-31T13:49:13.597" Score="0" Body="For questions about team size (not team composition) as it relates to a specific framework or project." OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-10-31T13:49:13.597" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T13:49:13.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10141" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-10-31T13:50:18.460" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-10-31T13:50:18.460" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T13:50:18.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10142" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-10-31T13:50:18.460" Score="0" Body="For questions about the role of a business analyst within a project team." OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-10-31T13:50:18.460" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T13:50:18.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10144" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-01T11:11:38.090" Score="0" ViewCount="944" Body="&lt;p&gt;My understanding, is that a lot of project management software packages still work on the waterfall premise. I know there are amazing tools such as Trello but during my use, I found it more targeted at the individual tasks rather than giving an overall project view especially for more complex tasks. Things I think would be useful to see are likely/estimated time to completion, on estimate (harder with story points so maybe this only applies to hours) and reports of how the project went.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comment on this if you think I need to change this question or make it more specific, let me know. Cheers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7261" LastActivityDate="2013-11-01T17:47:09.990" Title="Is there an industry adopted standard tool for Project Management for agile software development teams" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-11-03T13:57:47.487" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10146" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10149" CreationDate="2013-11-01T17:13:27.740" Score="6" ViewCount="387" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a long-tenured employee at my company and have become the subject matter expert for our business rules and the reasoning behind them. Additionally, I'm the last person around that knows the legacy systems which means I'm often the bottle neck for issues/questions and the first person who gets called if something goes wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to start documenting all of this information so that my coworkers have access to the information they need and if I'm hit by a bus, operations can continue successfully. The things that need to be documented are a) hardware and software infrastructure and b) business rules and processes, so the format and process of collecting this disparate information may be different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We currently use the Confluence wiki, so that seems like a good place for the documentation to live, but the body of knowledge is both wide and deep, so I'm looking for advice on processes or tools that I can use to get started. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: To address the (insightful) first comment. We are looking to replace a lot of the legacy system over the course of the next year, so the documentation I'm looking to create won't be so much a &quot;living document&quot; but an explanation of the current state so that the information lives somewhere other than just my head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7267" LastEditorUserId="7267" LastEditDate="2013-11-01T18:15:51.170" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T15:27:30.513" Title="Documenting institutional knowledge and legacy systems" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10144" CreationDate="2013-11-01T17:47:09.990" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A whiteboard and some sticky notes. If you can't do your process by hand, then your process is too complicated. Layering on software with lots of features, bells and whistles won't help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But no, there isn't an industry standard. You can check out the Magic Square from Gartner to get a feel of where the industry lies on the topic. Here's a link to the 2013 edition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/ATLAS/Gartner+ALM+Magic+Quadrant&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/ATLAS/Gartner+ALM+Magic+Quadrant&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastActivityDate="2013-11-01T17:47:09.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10148" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10167" CreationDate="2013-11-01T19:08:34.143" Score="10" ViewCount="2599" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently in the process of getting my team in a position to start using Scrum and Sprints within the next couple of weeks - I intend on taking on the role of Scrum Master as long as everyone on my team agrees that makes sense.  One of the members of my team only works part time, and I've been getting varying feedback as to the length and purpose of a sprint planning meeting.  One suggestion I had was breaking the sprint planning meeting across more than one day, partly so that the part time person is still able to be fully engaged during the sprint plan.  However, this takes more of the &quot;productive&quot; time away from the part time individual.  This also assumes that sprint planning is something that takes &quot;about a day&quot; to accomplish, given a two week sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, should I include my part time person in our sprint planning sessions? Or, is it my job to serve as his representative, and make sure that even though he's not present for the sprint planning, his abilities and needs are still met?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7189" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2013-12-20T03:11:49.443" LastActivityDate="2013-12-20T03:11:49.443" Title="Participants of sprint planning meeting - Is it essential to involve part-time team members" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10146" CreationDate="2013-11-01T19:20:04.523" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, congratulations on taking the high road. Too many IT &quot;professionals&quot; that I've worked with would use this kind of situation to extort ludicrous salaries from their employers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We currently use the Confluence wiki, so that seems like a good place for the documentation to live, but the body of knowledge is both wide and deep, so I'm looking for advice on processes or tools that I can use to get started. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this is a PM board I'll answer your question from a PM perspective, in other words more around the process rather than the tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Establish a vision&lt;/strong&gt;. Make sure you get your senior leaders to sit down together and agree on what they want to accomplish with this project. This provides a common set of guiding principles to focus your work within particular boundaries. Don't just assume everyone has the same big picture in mind, the risk to your project is too severe if they don't.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Define needed business capabilities&lt;/strong&gt;. Start at a high level. Start out with your &quot;project product&quot; and break it down from their into subcomponent products. Initially only do this to the point where you can get a high-level cost/benefit assessment going. Trivial example is a cake (project product) needs equipment, ingredients and cooking instructions. Equipment includes oven, pan, bowl, mixer, etc. Ingredients can be subdivided into ingredients for the batter and ingredients for the icing. Cooking instructions can also be subdivided according to batter and icing preparation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Document your initial business case&lt;/strong&gt;. Using the initial business capabilities that have been defined above figure out if there is a valid business justification for proceeding. Remember that &quot;doing nothing&quot; is an option that should always be on the table.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do your analysis and define requirements&lt;/strong&gt;. Assuming you have a valid business case, spend the time/effort/$$ to go into greater detail with your analysis of business capabilities needed and the system solutions available to deliver those capabilities. This includes getting enough data to make a build-or-buy decision. Note that this and the next step will be iterative, you should time-box your analysis efforts to avoid wasting time on something that won't fly at the end of the day.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Refine your business case&lt;/strong&gt;. As noted above, iteratively refine your business case on a regular basis. With each iteration make sure senior leaders agree that further effort is worth pursuing. As soon as you no longer have a justifiable business case become a forceful advocate for closing the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Start &quot;working&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;. Most senior leaders will want this to be the first step of the process. Fight this. You won't save any time in the end by starting early but will certainly raise costs associated with unnecessary rework.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-11-01T19:20:04.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10148" CreationDate="2013-11-02T14:54:07.963" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Include all team members in sprint planning&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic tenet of Agile/Scrum is that there should be direct communication between the Product Owner and the team doing the work. Also, the members who will be doing the work should make a team commitment to completing what they signed up for. So, you should try to include your part time person in your sprint planning sessions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you didn't say what your role is. Looks like you are the ScrumMaster. As ScrumMaster I have coordinated with part time resources while the sprint is in progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no hard rule that sprint planning should take a day for a two week sprint. If you are able to do effective planning, without cutting short essential activities, it is OK to make it shorter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-11-02T14:54:07.963" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10148" CreationDate="2013-11-02T16:20:51.827" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your part-time people need to be present for Sprint Planning. Specifically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do NOT:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;act as a team member's proxy during essential framework meetings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;attempt to circumvent framework-mandated meetings such as Sprint Planning or the Daily Stand-Up to accommodate resource constraints.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Instead, you should:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;accept that part-timers create additional process overhead, and avoid the &lt;em&gt;100% utilization fallacy.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;adapt your sprint schedule and velocity expectations to fit the team you currently have, rather than the team or project resources you &lt;em&gt;wish&lt;/em&gt; you had.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Who Should Attend Sprint Planning&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone on the Scrum team must participate in Sprint Planning. While it's important for all team members to participate in the estimation of Product Backlog items, it is &lt;em&gt;critical&lt;/em&gt; that all task-performers be active participants in decomposing stories for the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Why Attendance at Sprint Planning is Important&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Accurate estimates are based on what team members know (or don't know) about a story. Unless &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; are planning to perform the tasks yourself, it doesn't matter whether you think a task is easy, hard, or in-between because you aren't the one doing the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the whole team estimates, you have a broader consensus of what's involved and how much work is needed. In addition, in a team-based approach more than one person contributes to each story, and each person who will work on a story-related task needs to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have input into what they need from others to complete each task, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;be able to estimate (and communicate with the rest of the team about) when and how hand-offs will occur.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These things are essential for a self-organizing team to be able to coordinate with one another during a sprint. Doing this by proxy is defeats the self-organizing principles that Scrum is meant to harness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of part-time resources, this is even &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; important because part-timers have more cognitive and process overhead than full-time people, and will need to coordinate more closely with the rest of the team to ensure successful hand-offs. You will make matters worse, not better, by dis-integrating your part-timers from the rest of the team in the name of efficiency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How Long Sprint Planning Should Take&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will vary by team and project, and you will need to adapt the time-boxes for your specific needs. For new teams, I recommend starting with one full day for Sprint Planning each sprint, where:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;4 hours are time-boxed for defining the Sprint Goal, and then estimating, negotiating, and accepting stories from the Product Backlog to fulfill that goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;4 hours are time-boxed for decomposing stories into tasks and dependencies for the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Experienced teams may be able to cut this time down, especially with the effective use of Backlog Grooming, but trying to cut it down &quot;just because&quot; is a false economy. After all, Sprint Planning is where a significant portion of the team's analysis and design is performed, so allocating a mere 10% of your sprint to ensure that you're building the right things in a sustainable way is &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; more important than shaving a few man-hours from your budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;When You Should Hold Sprint Planning&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's up to the team, but it should be on a fixed schedule. Since you're trying to incorporate part-time people, the team should choose a day that's convenient for as many people as possible, and the part-timers will need to be flexible, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprints can start on any day of the week you choose, so there's nothing wrong with starting your sprints on a Thursday if that's what works best for your team. What's essential is that the schedule should be both &lt;em&gt;predictable&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;sustainable&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also split the Product Backlog and Sprint Backlog sessions across days, but this leads to additional process overhead. This may be necessary if you have part-time or matrixed resources, but your team and your organization need to acknowledge that this will create additional drag on your process. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/TANSTAAFL&quot;&gt;TANSTAAFL&lt;/a&gt;; it's simply the price the team must pay if it can't ensure dedicated resources, and the organization should treat it as the cost of doing business rather than &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_a_Good_Life_%28The_Twilight_Zone%29&quot;&gt;wishing it into the cornfield&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-11-02T16:20:51.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10148" CreationDate="2013-11-03T01:19:17.787" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend taking a look at the Scrum Guide available through Scrum.org (Ken Schwaber's company) - it pretty much lays things out and is written/maintained by the codifiers of the framework (Jeff Sutherland and Schwaber).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All members of the Scrum Team should be there: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum Master (facilitator who ensures the Scrum process is being followed),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Owner (curator of the product backlog), and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;All&lt;/em&gt; team members (this would include the part-time person). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only the people actually doing the work should be acting on their behalf.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint planning meeting is a one time meeting - no longer than 8 hours in length for a 30 day sprint - proportionally shorter based on the length of the sprint (so a 15 day sprint would have a Sprint Planning meeting of no longer than 4 hours).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; recommended spreading the meeting over multiple days - even just to include the part-time person. A couple of options would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find a day/time when (s)he will be there and adjust your sprint lengths to accommodate for him/her; or,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;See if the team (including the part-time person) is comfortable with other members being his/her proxy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, if your team cannot determine what can be done within a sprint in a single planning meeting there is something going on that should be examined. For example, the sprint duration may be too long/short, the product backlog items may not be defined well enough to be estimated properly, and so on. With a two week sprint, you're looking at roughly a 4 hour planning meeting - maximum (most time-boxes in Scrum are &quot;not-to-exceed&quot; durations and proportional based on the length of the sprint - except the daily Scrum meeting of 15 minutes or less).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps. Let me know if you would like any clarification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastEditorUserId="5788" LastEditDate="2013-11-03T16:07:47.327" LastActivityDate="2013-11-03T16:07:47.327" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10156" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10157" CreationDate="2013-11-04T17:16:00.617" Score="9" ViewCount="3488" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think my company could benefit from adding a technical writer to the team; making sure our output is unified and of a high quality. For our current project we need to produce a range of documents, both internal and external with a range of technical depth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where should these people be positioned in a Scrum team? In our current project we have pushed documenting it (other than deep technical detail) out to the end of our sprints. Is this a sensible plan?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4739" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-11-04T18:51:29.257" LastActivityDate="2018-06-01T09:40:52.720" Title="How should technical writers fit within a Scrum team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10156" CreationDate="2013-11-04T18:46:34.053" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In our current project we have pushed documenting it (other than deep technical detail) out to the end of our sprints. Is this a sensible plan?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Technical Writing for Agile Teams&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Agile Maifesto values:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Working software over comprehensive documentation...[T]here is value in the items on the right, [but] we value the items on the left more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what does that mean for technical writers on a cross-functional team? In my experience it means:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adequate documentation (whatever that means for the team/project) should be part of the Definition of Done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Code should be as self-documenting as possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test suites should function as technical documentation to the greatest extent possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical writers need to be involved in Sprint Planning to identify stories and tasks where additional documentation may be needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical writers need to be involved throughout the sprint to coordinate with developers and testers to make sure that the team is &lt;em&gt;communicating&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;coordinating&lt;/em&gt; about documentation requirements and deliverables that must be baked into the iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anything that needs documentation should be &lt;em&gt;designed&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;developed&lt;/em&gt; with documentation in mind, rather than treating documentation as a last-minute bolt-on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Technical Writers are Full-Fledged Members of the Team&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No member of the team should be a second-class citizen. It reduces team cohesion and efficiency to treat technical writers as anything other than integral members of a cross-functional team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the social dynamics and the requirements of the framework, treating technical writers as first-class citizens ensures that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Documentation tasks will be baked into your process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Knowledge transfer between coders, testers, and writers will be a constant high-bandwidth stream, rather than a last-minute set of interviews where lack of domain knowledge will tarnish the deliverables.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Individuals have the chance to become cross-functional, not just the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developers should learn something about testing and writing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testers should learn something about development and writing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical writers should learn enough about the technical disciplines to be able to ask meaningful questions when &quot;self-documenting&quot; code or tests just &lt;em&gt;aren't&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find that you need technical writers to ensure the success of your project, then they belong on the team as valued and essential contributors and should be interleaved throughout your iterative processes. Once you've made the decision to include technical writers on the team, then their inclusion within the core group is one area where your mileage should &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-11-04T18:46:34.053" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10158" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10159" CreationDate="2013-11-04T19:30:44.340" Score="1" ViewCount="199" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a member of a team of programmers. We do not have a real boss as we work as a group. Each member of a group took non-programming tasks on himself as well, which mainly means that they do testing &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; coding. It's a 10-hour-a-day job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, since I am the most talkative and experienced person on the team, I got more management tasks and cut my programming to the minimum. When the day ends, I feel like I need 40 hours rather than 10 in each working day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been asking myself if I am not well organized, or if I took too many tasks upon myself. I will list all the roles I have in our team so maybe someone can reply to my question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My roles are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a person who talks to clients&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a person who seeks clients (newspapers, friends, old clients, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a person who writes project specifications for the ongoing projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a person who does project management by assigning tasks to other colleagues and monitors their progress (then reports it to clients)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a person who seeks new contractors when some project or part of it needs to be outsourced, interviews them and makes/choose quality tests&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a person who does minor (1-2 hours) fixes in the projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this seem like too much for one person? When I look at this list it doesn't look like too much to me. If it's too much, which part needs to be assigned to someone else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3922" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-11-04T21:21:27.913" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T13:11:40.947" Title="Am I not organized, or have I put too much work on myself?" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10158" CreationDate="2013-11-04T20:10:03.443" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether self-imposed or as a result of organizational dysfunction, you are wearing too many hats and are unlikely to be able to perform any of the multiple roles well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an organizational resource-constraint issue. It is Senior Management's responsibility to resolve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;You're Not Cross-Functional; You're Filling Multiple Roles&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are not filling a single role defined in any project management framework that I'm aware of. Instead, you are filling a variety of &lt;em&gt;different&lt;/em&gt; roles, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sales Manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Client Engagement Manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Command-and-Control Project Manager.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Human Resources Manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hiring Manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developer or Support Engineer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of these roles requires a different skill set, and in most cases each role is a full-time job all by itself. Even if you allocate a slice of your time to each role, you aren't going to able to do justice to roles which require the equivalent of six full-time people to perform.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Possible Solutions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a number of possible solutions, but they all involve Senior Management taking responsibility for the organizational structure and the funding of adequate resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some options include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hiring more people to fill each of these distinct roles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reducing the resource requirements for each role by removing scope of responsibility.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explicitly transferring responsibility to another person or team, such as the Project Sponsor or Steering Committee.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reducing the scope of the project, or extending its schedule, in order to accommodate all the &quot;invisible&quot; work you're doing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make all the work you do a visible cost to the project, and ensure that any drag on productivity or scheduling is clearly attributed to the current resource constraints.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to work 90+ hours a week trying to do the job of six people, that's certainly a valid &lt;em&gt;personal&lt;/em&gt; choice, but it's rarely the right choice for the project or the organization in the long run because it's simply not sustainable. Your mileage (and organizational politics) may certainly vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-11-04T21:23:55.953" LastActivityDate="2013-11-04T21:23:55.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10160" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-04T20:47:53.387" Score="2" ViewCount="2152" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am using MS Project 2010.  My Task Type is defined as Fixed Work.  I have tried Fixed Duration and it only seemed to make the matter worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a task that spans 10 days (2 weeks).  However, the task is only estimated to take 20 hours.  At the end of the first week 13 hours of work was completed.  Although there is still another full week to complete the remaining 7 hours of work MS Project changed the Finish Date on the task, adding one day to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why?  How can I prevent this from happening? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7281" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-09T16:36:07.377" LastActivityDate="2018-11-09T16:36:07.377" Title="MS Project 2010 Finish Date changes unexpectedly" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10160" CreationDate="2013-11-04T21:30:15.713" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You do not want to prevent this from happening!  This is what the tool is supposed to do.  It will readjust when you finish based on the progress you make or don't make.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Turn the example around.  If you made less progress than you predicted, it would mean the end date should slip to the right.  If you disallowed project from doing that, then you would still show on time finish, which is masking the lack of progress you have made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Except for extraordinary reasons, I use fixed duration for my work packages almost exclusively.  Based on intermediate milestones, I want project to calculate the new finish date based on how we are progressing.  This is how our schedule risks are exposed.  Taking it further, if on the critical path, then you have to mitigate right away.  If not on the critical path, you can defer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2013-11-05T13:12:14.777" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T13:12:14.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10158" CreationDate="2013-11-04T21:36:18.580" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The root cause(s) of poor performance can be many:  not enough people, not the right people, poor tools, poor plan or method(s), environmental issues.  There's no way this forum could pinpoint your issues on your project.  If you are not producing the output you want by the end of day, indeed it could be you or a lack of you.  I'd choose the latter first and bring on some help and see if that makes a difference.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  Your health and lack of bandwidth as &quot;costs&quot; for results are indicators of poor performance.  It comes down to resolution of your performance assessment.  If you decrease the resolution a bit and include more time, you will likely see unfavorable impacts somewhere down the line, including your health.  The idea is to build sustainable, repeatable, predictable, and parachutable capabilities.  High operational tempo and heroic performance are not these.  They are temporary, may produce good results, but you cannot rely on it for any significant period of time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2013-11-05T13:11:40.947" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T13:11:40.947" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10146" CreationDate="2013-11-04T21:37:10.487" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In terms of processes, Doug B's answer covers this pretty well, so I've gone ahead and up-voted that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of tools...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... the documentation I'm looking to create won't be so much a &quot;living document&quot; but an explanation of the current state so that the information lives somewhere other than just my head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that case, you don't really need a wiki. It's complete overkill, and unless you already have the Wiki up and running for other &quot;live&quot; documentation needs, I'd say it's a waste of time (and resources), given that a static, print-friendly document will do just fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, the Wiki does provide useful navigation functionality (such as links to categorised pages, and the ability to search), but I'd first make sure your colleagues are comfortable navigating / reading the Wiki, otherwise you're probably better off with a simple PDF that can be kept on file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It really all depends on your company and their level of IT savviness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4523" LastActivityDate="2013-11-04T21:37:10.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10160" CreationDate="2013-11-04T23:29:04.727" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Something is not quite right here.  A 10 day duration task with 20 hours of work will, by default, spread the 20 hours of work evenly across the 10 days - 2 hours for each day.  If you completed 13 hours of work in the first week, Project should calculate 7 hours of remaining work and move the finish date earlier (to the left) instead of adding a day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with David - Project is designed to recalculate projected finish dates based upon the actual progress.  If you set the tasks as fixed duration, the duration of the task will not change, Project will just recalculate the assignment (peak) units to spread the remaining work out along the original duration.  So, your comment that Fixed Duration makes things worse isn't making sense to me either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there something else going on?  Multiple resources assigned?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2013-11-04T23:29:04.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8107" CreationDate="2013-11-04T23:36:42.637" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on my experience managing teams and working through sprints at companies of multiple sizes, it seems that if you use the term 'post-mortem' to describe a conversation had at the end of a project (successful or not), your colleagues will certainly know what you mean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, the term 'post-mortem' does indeed have associations with a death, or an otherwise negative event. As a result, the term seems most effectice when its used &lt;strong&gt;only&lt;/strong&gt; to reflect on something problematic, because the usage of the phrase primes your team for a conversation that is weightier than it would otherwise be. Holding a 'post mortem' only when a true mishap has taken plance, and calling everything else a 'retrospective' is a great way provide contrast and psychological benchmarking for your team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7280" LastActivityDate="2013-11-04T23:36:42.637" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10166" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-05T09:07:58.117" Score="0" ViewCount="472" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an application that have no unit tests. There are performed only manual tests through UI clicking. There is also a lot of spaghetti code, runtime evalutions, duck castings, old versions of third party libraries etc. Miraculously, perhaps because after massive manual testing sessions or infallible programmers, the application is working. However now, the new functional requirements have arised. I would like to stop that madness and introduce some refactoring, unit tests, third party libraries updates. The problem is, that if I covered the entire code with unit tests it would take few weeks or months. It is impossible to get so much time. It would be easier if I had some well known proportion that I could adhere to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a standard algorithm that allows to calculate how much time should be spend on implementing not business value in code versus value visible by business? E.g. 50/50 if there is spagetti code. 25/50 if there are already some tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5635" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T09:29:51.280" Title="Functional vs Non-functional requirements: Standard proportion of time spending" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10148" CreationDate="2013-11-05T09:18:32.590" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there's another point to this question that isn't covered yet and that is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;What should actually be covered in a sprint planning?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(or why does it have to take a lot of time at all?)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer:&lt;/strong&gt; In a sprint planning you should only be &lt;strong&gt;planning the sprint&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What that means:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Looking at your tasks and stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Quick estimation&lt;/strong&gt; (if you do estimates; e.g. planning poker)&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;emphasis on quick&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if discussions get out of hand that means the story wasn't 'ready' in the first place&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;re-estimate stories that have been estimated before but are not yet done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;reaching consensus&lt;/strong&gt; about the amount of points/stories to put into the sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;verbal commitment&lt;/strong&gt; from the whole team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;So why does this take long?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because people &lt;strong&gt;do way too much&lt;/strong&gt; in a sprint planning. Amongst to worst planning killers are in no particular order: task breakdown, task estimation, story estimation, getting stories 'ready' to be planned in the first place, discussing features, figuring out who's available during the sprint in the first place. I could go on. And so could the sprint planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't do these things in a sprint planning&lt;/strong&gt;. They are not planning, they are preparation and you prepare beforehand. Because &lt;a href=&quot;http://presentations.patrickbyrne.net/assets/knowing-is-half-the-battle/other-half-7cd53ca7d6f85f87f5190463b7e82624.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;knowing is half the battle&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had the &lt;strong&gt;best results&lt;/strong&gt; pulling these killers out of the planning this way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;backlog-grooming&lt;/strong&gt; sessions as needed&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;with: scrum master, PO and some, not necessarily all team members (rotate if you don't want to tie up the whole team)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;doing: reviews of the stories in the back-log, stating/discussing open points and priority&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to: &lt;strong&gt;get enough stories 'ready'&lt;/strong&gt;, i.e. get enough information to do a task breakdown&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;task break-down&lt;/strong&gt; sessions&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;with: scrum master, some or all team members&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;recently I had this done by pairs and then in the next session checked by a different pair&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;doing: a list of tasks necessary to accomplish the story, in a detail level your team is comfortable with; alternatively noting open questions and handing the story back to the backlog for grooming&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to: get at least a bit more than - comfortably twice the amount of - roughly what would usually be done in one sprint, &lt;strong&gt;so that the sprint can be planned&lt;/strong&gt; with some head room for rejected stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NB:&lt;/strong&gt; I mentioned 'ready' a couple times. This relates to the definition of done (which defines when something counts as delivered) but covers the other end of the process, planning your sprint, defining when a story is ready to be broken into tasks and estimated. For this, like for the DoD, you and your team need to figure out what they need and are comfortable with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to give you one example of mine though:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All open questions are addressed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The priority of the story in the backlog is clear&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The stake-holders are committed to being available for questions during the sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are no incremental steps (or smaller stories) that this story can be broken down into that individually still create value&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Bottom line&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you get a &lt;strong&gt;routine&lt;/strong&gt; going with your &lt;strong&gt;steps split out&lt;/strong&gt; like this, your &lt;strong&gt;planning won't take a whole lot of time&lt;/strong&gt; (as little as about two hours for a two week sprint) and each of the steps can be &lt;strong&gt;flexibly placed&lt;/strong&gt; throughout the sprint to make it possible even for your part-timers to attend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7155" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T09:23:58.847" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10166" CreationDate="2013-11-05T09:29:51.280" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no way of doing such a calculation. After all, it depends heavily on your goal with that piece of software! How large is the code base? For how long is it going to be maintained? Will there be more feature-requests in the future? In the end, doesn't making the code maintainable add to its business value?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is hardly ever possible to add tests for a whole program in one go. As you recognized, it will take you weeks --if not months-- during which you don't do anything else. What you probably should do is add tests for the parts that you are going to change. Then add the new functionality. Otherwise you can never have any confidence that your changes didn't break something. Over time, as more and more parts of the program become target to changes, more and more parts will be covered by tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend you Martin Fowler's Refactoring book. It's a good read in any case and contains valuable hints about how to target legacy software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6990" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T09:29:51.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10171" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-05T19:52:19.727" Score="5" ViewCount="3145" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a research group of an architecture firm that contains around 4-5 developers at any given time. We develop a lot of the in-house architecture software, and our skillsets range from C#, to Java, to PHP, to most of the major web languages (like JS, HTML, SQL, etc). We are definitely a group of transdisciplinary skills. Our work involves not only working on software, but also communicating with the architects within the firm to better improve current software and develop new tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the number of developers increase, and as the result of us just releasing a new piece of software for commercial release, we noticed that we definitely need and definitely will need a new way to manage our team. That is, to coordinate projects, to monitor/track changes (git, or any version control), to manage features, and much more. As we are a team of many skills, I am the only developer in the team that came from an actual software development team. Tools I used in my previous gig was project management software like JIRA, Confluence, HipChat, git, and more. However, my previous company was a firm of 100+ developers, while this team is only 4-5, so using JIRA, for example, would be overkill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am in need of some help and suggestions. What type of project management software can we use to track the things I listed above? What type of workflow can we adopt, i.e. Agile, Scrum, etc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7288" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-11-06T03:58:18.770" LastActivityDate="2013-11-10T22:01:43.453" Title="A software development workflow for a company of 2-4 developers?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10146" CreationDate="2013-11-06T07:25:45.973" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I also applaud your desire to share your knowledge, having worked recently with a hoarder and been reminded how unpleasant that can be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would still vote for a wiki, because in my experience&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;plans to replace legacy systems WILL take longer and cost more than anyone currently expects - and have every possibility of being cancelled although no one will likely admit that today.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;even if everyone is diligently pursuing the replacements, one often doesn't have the luxury of aiming at a fixed target.  If ANY enhancements are being made to the legacy systems, a wiki where someone (probably you) can make changes to the (hopefully minor) changes to the system, and others (the people building the replacements) can subscribe to those pages relevant to their pursuits...  you've solved a LOT of the communication problem that can bring these types of efforts to their knees.  (Or the participants to blows...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6563" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T07:25:45.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10173" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10179" CreationDate="2013-11-06T07:42:49.773" Score="4" ViewCount="116" Body="&lt;p&gt;As part of an academic course we have to develop a project. It is a group of 5 students. In such environment there is no hierarchy, all students have the same authority.&#xA;There are several tasks to be done (writing a document, coding, ... ). One of the students is not very expert in one of the tasks and the results are poor. Then it takes the other students a lot of effort to fix the issues. The student though it's very prone to continue working on this type of tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He is a very hard worker and takes initiative but not in the direction we would like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We need the student to continue on the team and keep a good atmosphere because we are collaborating on other courses too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His handicap is not a core competence in the course so it is not an objective of the course to develop these skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can we manage the situation without causing hard feelings and keeping the good atmosphere we are having so far?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand this topic, even if not in the business field, has its application to business. It is a good example of leading, organizing and negotiating without authority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4386" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T13:22:31.343" Title="Organizing teams without authority support" Tags="&lt;leadership&gt;&lt;authority&gt;&lt;negotiation&gt;&lt;coordination&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="812" CreationDate="2013-11-06T08:27:33.697" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Part of the confusion is caused by not recognising there is a difference in terminology and methods between internal projects and commercial projects. Both PMBoK and Prince2 have a heavy bias towards project approaches and methods concerned with delivering internal projects e.g. focus on cost management and not financial management, PID's and Charters, where commercial projects i.e projects where you are delivering a solution or service to an external client are much more aligned to things such as Proposals, MSA's, Statements of Work etc. One interesting conundrum that unfortunately has not been resolved is making a clear distinction between a Statement of Work and a Scope of Work both acronymed as (SoW or SOW) but having quite different purposes. I would support using completely different terminology to make the distinction perhaps things like Project Scope, Statement of Requirements (SoR) etc. All fun and games so have a dictionary at the ready&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7290" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T08:27:33.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10173" CreationDate="2013-11-06T10:24:50.757" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: communicate. Do what is called a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrospective#Software_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;retrospective&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long answer: The only way to resolve this situation without bad blood, is to talk about it in the whole team. Tell you teammate that you have concerns regarding his work. Explain your position and let him explain his. Then try to find a solution. Don't try to force anything on anyone. It's hard work, but blaming others behind their backs will lead to bad blood, because nothing will change and with every &quot;failure&quot; the situation will get worse, until it escalates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A possibility could be to work on these kind of task in pairs for a while. This would lead to an exchange of ideas. Maybe your teammate just isn't aware of the possibilities you see?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing is, regardless of whether these kind of tasks are relevant for the course, to look for some mentoring for the tasks. Since they seem to have some importance to your team, you should give them appropriate attention. Maybe you can all learn something on the topic!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6990" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T10:24:50.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10173" CreationDate="2013-11-06T11:09:15.357" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not specific to this question but rather general advice for resolving these types of inter-personal issues: try to put yourself in their shoes first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what do they gain from the current behavior?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what's their benefit in resisting the change you'd like to happen? (Retaining influence, protecting their work, ...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how can they benefit in similar/same/better ways from embracing a change or how can &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; adapt your desired outcome so that both your priorities can be satisfied.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's kind of hard sometimes to get people to talk openly about these points because some might not be clear to them, others they might not want you to know, but if you can't figure it out using these steps, I suggest addressing it in a direct fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7155" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T11:09:15.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5997" CreationDate="2013-11-06T12:42:14.040" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me suggest implementing this with the &lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/5167&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;JIRA PDF View Plugin&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Disclaimer: this is a commercial product, and I'm a developer working on this. Nevertheless it perfectly fits your needs, so recommending this should not validate any rules - hopefully.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This plugin is fully programmable. In fact, &lt;strong&gt;there is already a &quot;timesheet and invoice&quot; template (&lt;a href=&quot;http://midori.hu/downloads/jpdf/jira-timesheet-invoice-sample.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sample&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/strong&gt; among the default templates shipped with the plugin. All what it does is simply aggregating the worklog entries (who worked how many hours, and with what purpose), computing the total efforts and multiplying that with an hourly rate. This can be exactly what you need, or can be used as a starting point for further customizations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To implement the &quot;since the last payment&quot; feature, you should just add a new date picker type custom field to the issue. Then, while processing the worklog, trivially skip the entries before that date (those are already paid). &#xA;Remember to manually update that field at each payment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;JIRA does not have a feature &quot;field level visibility&quot;, thus it does not offer a solution for the hiding the &quot;hourly rate&quot; field. Nevertheless the &lt;em&gt;Field Security Plugin for JIRA&lt;/em&gt; may fill the gap. (Search for it on the Atlassian Marketplace.)&#xA;I am not affiliated with this plugin, nor particularly familiar with this, but based on the reviews, people seem to like it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7292" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T12:42:14.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10173" CreationDate="2013-11-06T13:22:31.343" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.belbin.com/rte.asp?id=8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Belbin's Team Role Theory&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_56.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;French and Raven's Power Types.&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other theories, as well, so a bit of research will uncover a ton of academic conversations around your issue you are facing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key take away is that high functioning teams gravitate its individuals to play certain, necessary roles that make it a high functioning team.  It is irrelevant that all of you are technically the same &quot;rank.&quot;  If you want your project team to be high performing, you need to facilitate each individual to gravitate towards the role that best fits their skill sets.  This individual who is performing poorly with certain tasks likely has the skill sets (s)he can do that will bring a ton of value to the team.  What you need to do is observe how people are relating to each other and see if you can fit each into a role category like described by Belbin and see who is standing up as the leader, maybe based on one of the five power types as discussed by French and Raven.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T13:22:31.343" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10180" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-06T13:35:59.540" Score="5" ViewCount="1181" Body="&lt;p&gt;can I have 0 hours recorded for some process groups in my PMP application? as I was not involved in all the process groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7295" LastEditorUserId="1172" LastEditDate="2013-11-06T15:18:39.607" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T09:49:41.667" Title="Recording work experience on PMP application" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;pmp&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10146" CreationDate="2013-11-06T15:27:30.513" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My thought is to use the ribbit tool for the storing the documents, sharing the documents and a great collaboration tool.  It has facilities like ask, sending e-mails etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check this site for more information: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ribbit.net/tools/collaboration&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ribbit.net/tools/collaboration&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T15:27:30.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8107" CreationDate="2013-11-06T15:44:11.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My thoughts and experience is as follows:&#xA;1. We use Post Mortem meeting when there are high production incidents.  We meet and discuss how the issue happened and what are all the prevention and improvements we can do to avoid the same in future.  It is a kind of more to understand and avoid in future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.We use Lessons learnt for the successful projects either by meeting and doing sharepoint surveys.  The best practices will be archived and shared with the bigger group of  project managers in the organization and improvement areas also worked on shared too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T15:44:11.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10184" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-06T19:54:08.710" Score="-5" ViewCount="610" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the impact of personalities on the selection of the tools and techniques&#xA;adopted with individuals? And what are the differing techniques needed when coaching different groups and individuals? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7298" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T21:21:10.947" Title="How to select coaching tools and techniques" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2013-11-07T03:33:39.790" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10184" CreationDate="2013-11-06T21:21:10.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are both incredibly broad questions and you should definitely be more specific in what you want to know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'm going to try answering it at least in part:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Personalities are the main factor&lt;/strong&gt; in selecting coaching techniques and not only those of the coachees but also the personality of the coach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The broad answer to this is, &lt;strong&gt;the coach has to be comfortable&lt;/strong&gt; using the tool or technique and &lt;strong&gt;the coachee must be open&lt;/strong&gt; to it. &lt;strong&gt;The technique must be 'getting through'&lt;/strong&gt; from the sender to the recipient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For you second question, I guess the only answer can be &lt;strong&gt;any and all you have may be needed&lt;/strong&gt;. The bigger your toolbox is, the better your chances are of achieving successful outcomes with a specific group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Metaphorically, only relying on a hammer, chisel and screw-driver will produce a mess when you are facing a can of paint and a white wall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are tons of &lt;em&gt;techniques and tools to learn&lt;/em&gt; and tons of &lt;em&gt;details to figure out&lt;/em&gt; when coaching somebody, but, writing this I come think there is a &lt;em&gt;common denominator&lt;/em&gt; to both:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Listen and watch.&lt;/strong&gt; Most if not all coaching techniques rely heavily on both and they are core to figuring out what your students are open and receptive to.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Interrupt.&lt;/strong&gt; Don't interrupt your students when they talk to you, in that case stick with the above. Interrupt the pathways they're thinking and acting in. Interrupt their behavior. This leads to being open for new ideas and to embracing them or at least trying them out. And If they acted and thought the right way already, they wouldn't need coaching.&#xA;If you don't believe this, think of all the stereotypical zen masters telling their students to empty their cups first. Now ask yourself if your cup regarding this current topic is empty enough.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reframe and rebuild.&lt;/strong&gt; Breaking down the bridges they used to walk on may be essential to making room for new things, but don't throw the building blocks away. Re-use them. There are ideas and motivations associated with 'old' or 'un-coached' behavior that have power - after all they made them build those bridges - and that power can be channeled to fuel new ways of action if reframed right by the coach. The same goes for 'rejection' of a technique. That is just clinging to a bridge and there's a motivator for doing that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are way more points and I could go on for a while but understanding these three things gives you a good basis for coaching in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7155" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T21:21:10.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10186" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10187" CreationDate="2013-11-06T21:36:12.690" Score="2" ViewCount="250" Body="&lt;p&gt;My question is similar to these two topics;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/10171/a-software-development-workflow-for-a-company-of-2-4-developers&quot;&gt;A software development workflow for a company of 2-4 developers?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1597/how-to-manage-a-web-project&quot;&gt;How to manage a Web Project&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but where my team fails is when we are all working on separate projects and we get bombarded with input from many other departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure Scrum and Agile are similar in that, once the project is started after its defined, there should be very little if not no input or changes to the plan. This tends to fail every time no matter the size of the project. We do have the support of the company and product owner but some of these problems originate from that very same person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can we minimize these outside interruptions to the project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7300" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T12:33:23.283" Title="A development workflow for a team of 3 developers that minimizes outside interruptions?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;&lt;matrixed-resources&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10186" CreationDate="2013-11-07T00:43:00.747" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following is pulled from a few different sources (including my own experience as a solo freelancer with multiple clients); however, you mentioned Agile and Scrum - so my terminology will be similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Shorter development efforts, with extended silence: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I found worked for me was to have, essentially, a one week sprint. On Monday, you meet the product owners - or collect the input from all of them and set priorities for the week. Developers forecast what they think they can do by Friday. Then, get to work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Friday comes, you show what you did. The three of you chat about what worked in the processes you actually control - and make improvements. Weekend. Monday - rinse and repeat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the product owner(s) can't calm down for 4 days and let you do your work uninterrupted, then there's probably a bigger problem.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Definition of done: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You all (product owners included) should define what &quot;done&quot; means for each task that will be in the sprint. It may start out as &quot;it just works&quot; - but there should be a drive/desire amongst the team to refine and mature the definition to include engineering excellence.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Definition of ready: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't accept into a sprint items which have not been crystalized to a certain, agreed upon, state. This may start out as simple and very generic descriptions (button in top left) - but there should be a drive/desire to improve to having mock-ups, maybe multiple requirements written in an FDD or BDD style in the language of the business...and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The only way to change direction is to stop first: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you've got: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Entrance criteria (ex. If an item isn't broken down enough to be done in 1 week - we don't do it); &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Exit criteria (ex. It just works); and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A communication plan (we meet Mondays and Fridays - and possibly daily for 15 minutes, but that should be more for the team doing the work - not the product owner) - between that time the PO can't say anything...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, for whatever reason, the product owner(s) has (have) to change things mid-sprint, it's okay and, in scrum at least, there's a simple way to do it - tell the developers to stop what they're doing, possibly abandon all the work to date, and  start again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this happens, I highly recommend modifying sprint lengths to get back on the Monday-Friday timetable (it works wonders if you're on that sort of weekday schedule - modify for whenever the team gets time off).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Two levels of defects - developers only hear about one during a sprint:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Level 1 defects mean stuff is crashing, horribly, it's bad, really bad. Level 2 is everything else - we found a glitch and a workaround, or we want this to be yellow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During a sprint (all 4 days of it, because the 5th cumulatively is taken up by meetings), the team is only informed of level 1 defects. Further, when the team is informed of a level 1 defect - all of the developers stop what they're doing and assist to fix the problem. (This is known as &quot;stopping the line&quot; in Lean Manufacturing.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you may not be able to (or want to) implement all of these. Further, you're corporate culture may not be one where a dramatic shift like this is a good idea. So, start slow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe the Monday-Friday book-end meetings that cover: What we are going to do; what we did do; and, for the developers, how can we do it better? Then start adding things to it...at the sprint review (Friday meeting with the Product Owner) is a great place to suggest having a definition of done and ready. Number 4 may not need to be brought up at all - but, if the PO interrupts, just inform them on the day; or, again, at the sprint review just bring it up and say, &quot;You know, when you do that...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastEditorUserId="5788" LastEditDate="2013-11-08T01:58:53.670" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T01:58:53.670" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10186" CreationDate="2013-11-07T14:50:45.013" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[W]here my team fails is when we are all working on separate projects and we get bombarded with input from many other departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is designed to handle exactly the problem you describe. Specifically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your team should be collaboratively working on a single project, not multiple projects. If you have multiple projects running simultaneously, you will need multiple teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The roles of Product Owner and Scrum Master are designed to limit the negative impact of &quot;bombardment&quot; from outside the team. It is fundamentally the Product Owner's job to filter stakeholder requirements and manage them through the Product Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Change Control Enforced by Sprint Planning&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is a framework that embraces change, but enforces change control by limiting most developer-facing changes to the Backlog Grooming and Sprint Planning phases of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sprint itself is a protected work zone that does not allow new work or changed requirements into the iteration. If a change is truly important enough to warrant an explicit termination of the current sprint and a return to Sprint Planning, then the Product Owner is empowered to do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fundamental idea is that the &lt;em&gt;project&lt;/em&gt; remains flexible, but that making changes &lt;em&gt;within&lt;/em&gt; an iteration has a real cost that needs to be made explicit to the project and to its parent organization. It is the Scrum Master's job to educate the organization about this framework requirement, and to enforce the rules of Scrum within the team and with the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stakeholders still get what they want, but it requires a shift in both stakeholder and Scrum Team behavior. See below for more specifics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Adjusting Sprint Length&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keeping your sprint lengths short increase overhead and reduce the maximum size of the team's units of work. However, it offers the project more inspect-and-adapt cycles during the life of the project, so this is an area where each project must find its own optimum sprint length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-11-07T14:50:45.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10171" CreationDate="2013-11-08T02:42:59.283" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This can actually be a really fun place to be. Given the size of the team, I probably wouldn't add &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; technical overhead by trying to bring in technology (software) to help with the problem...maybe a wiki. But, you get to define what it should look like based on various considerations/concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if your corporate culture places a really high emphasis on time/deadlines - Scrum might be a good idea; or, more traditional project management. Other cultures may be less deadline driven and decide something more like a Lean Software Development (just in time) approach is okay (not that there aren't deadlines, just an example). Or, some combination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What this comes down to for me is a popular refrain with me: Software won't save you. It sounds harsh sometimes when said that way but it basically means: Don't let technology define your workflow; rather, define your workflow and &lt;em&gt;discover&lt;/em&gt; technology that makes it better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point in the game, you folks may be better off with a wall, some index cards, and a source control system with regard to technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for what project management methodology to use - in all honesty - they're pretty similar at the highest abstract levels:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A list of things to do (product backlog or Work Breakdown Structure),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A way to track progress (task boards, information radiators, or status reports),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A time for reflection and continuous improvement (sprint review/retrospective or the PM term I can't remember right now).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, I go back to corporate culture. Do you have a lot of folks who know about Scrum? If so, start there. Maybe you're already using a task board of sorts, which makes Kanban or Lean a more likely transition. Maybe most of the team, at some point, took Project Management courses in college and a non-agile approach would be easiest to transition to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inspect and adapt loops for improving the process built into the process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Until you can figure out what to do without electricity, don't worry about whether to use AC or DC.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ps. The concept of the transition comes from evolutionary theory in biological systems (Jeff Sutherland touches on it in one of his Google Tech Talks on Scrum). Basically, the way evolution works is slight mutation over multiple generations, yeah? But, if there is too much mutation in a single generation then it can have devastating affects on the system/subject. Same is true for teams. So, figuring out where you are and taking baby-steps to get where you want to tends to be less traumatizing then saying, we want to be over there - now! - Go!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T02:42:59.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2765" CreationDate="2013-11-08T06:32:42.043" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Story points work best in Scrum because of the mindset of the method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience Scrum is one of the only methods that allows this because in Scrum management must be hands off. Scrum gives a certain amount of freedom to the development team to complete all the backlogs without interference from management (and PM's) until the end of the sprint. So asking how long a single Story will take to be developed will be irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Story A takes estimated to about 5 Story Points, and the total amount of Story Points in the next 2 week Sprint is about 20. If you as a PM need to know how long Story A will take to finish, well... 2 weeks is your answer. In parallel with the other Stories in the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, you can always try to calculate the ratio of man-days per Story Point. In the case above, 20 Story Points will take 2 weeks (10 days). Meaning it might take 5 Story Points task will take 2.5 days. But in Scrum, you don't package the release after 2.5 days. You must wait until the Sprint has finished, which is 2 weeks. Which makes the ratio of man-days per Story Point rather useless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't forget, as a PM, you need to monitor the velocity of the team and make sure that the team has a steady amount of total Story Points to work on each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6844" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T06:32:42.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10171" CreationDate="2013-11-08T07:10:29.183" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the main things that you must not forget when you start out is to start out small and simple. Although it may be good to implement a framework or a well established method of some sort such as Agile or Waterfall but you don't want to overwhelm yourself with the overhead processes to implement the entire framework. Implement more only when you feel the need to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The principals of cost and benefits need to be kept in mind when applying a defined process flow. If a certain process doesn't have a significant purpose, or if the benefits of it is insignificant, then most likely you can take a shortcut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to start out with Agile or Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start with defining a simple delivery of scope, something that might&#xA;take less than 2 weeks for your team to deliver.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write them down in a card or sticky note.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Put them on a board in order of priority, with the top item being&#xA;the highest priority. Start working on them from the top.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;After putting the delivery items on the board, break them down into&#xA;tasks that is needed to be completed in order to complete a&#xA;delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Put them into phases such as To Do, Work In Progress, and Done.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Remember to revise the list every 2 weeks, and only after that 2&#xA;week &quot;sprint&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6844" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T07:10:29.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10192" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10193" CreationDate="2013-11-08T09:23:31.950" Score="2" ViewCount="1085" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been working with my current employer for a little over and 2 and half years now and shortly, I'll be moving away from my current team to a new team within the same department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, I sat down with the colleague that use to work within this team to try and get a feel for how this team as a whole works; what processes they have in place for completing projects and such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From our lengthy chat - the team has no real processes set in place. They do work to a critical path for larger projects, but with smaller adhoc task... it's very sporadic, often with impossible deadlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within the team, there are approximately 15 colleagues, all of which are 1 or 2 pay grades above me - yet with the nature of the business, I'm the person ultimately responsible for completing projects on time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been reading around on project management methodologies; Sigma Six, PRINCE2, Kanban etc and while some of these sites do offer good information, they don't seem to offer 'real world' examples of implementing such methodologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone here had or come across a similar problem, and how they might have tackled it? I don't want to waste peoples time by asking for in-depth solutions, I'd just like some down to Earth, practical advice on how I might approach the situation; to encourage other colleagues, to get them excited about change and frankly, show them how disorganised the system is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks,&#xA;Alex&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7307" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T13:27:21.983" Title="New team with little to no management of work and lack of processes" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;critical-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10192" CreationDate="2013-11-08T12:21:52.167" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I moved into my current team we were in this situation, however I had the benefit of coming in as Application Development Manager.  You will face challenges without the authority to make decisions, but a lot of what I suggest below doesn't have to be driven from the top down. To be honest, everything I proposed I asked the team, and got their buy in before doing anything.  Although Scrum was my solution, I would suggest looking to any popular software development methodology. If you have an open manager, you could become the scrum master if you are the sort of person focused on improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The key is to focus on small improvements in your processes and hold regular, honest, and open,  reviews with the team&lt;/strong&gt;. In my case we implemented scrum through small steps outlined below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We began by implementing a kan-ban board and daily stand-ups, to provide visibility of the work that was going on.  This gave me an idea of the products we work on, and how much time we were spending on each.  From all of this work I created a backlog for each product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I then prioritised across ALL of the backlogs, so I effectively had my own backlog spanning projects. I had a tool to filter these by project, so I could work with the appropriate sponsor individually.  This laid the foundation for time boxing and committing to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;With this list, we introduced the a planning and retrospective meeting.  This encapsulating all projects and all team members, so some team members will be working on their own specific tasks, but I started to encourage cross functional working and learning. All stand up discussions are useful, because if someone is talking about something no-one else knows, they had to elaborate enough for us to understand. This aided the learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point, the team was lacking cohesion, but we were at least&#xA;getting things done on all projects, keeping the business happy, and&#xA;improving quality by adding source control / automated tests. It was&#xA;a HUGE improvement of the mess that was before, but it was also hard&#xA;to maintain focus, with no goal other than completing the sprint. We&#xA;also didn't have demo's as they would not be particularly relevant to&#xA;any one stakeholder. Because I was both PO and SM, I was relatively&#xA;gentle on committing the team to too much. It's worth noting we were&#xA;still delivering a LOT more than prior to my arrival.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I then tried to slowly shift focus of sprints more to a single product, so we would have a sprint say 60% on one product, but still with other tasks. Eventually, sprints were 90% focused on one task, and stakeholders learnt to 'wait their turn' - after all, we were still achieving a whole lot more than they ever got before. This made Demo's possible for one product at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once the sprints were focused, I began to train the stakeholders in Scrum, and turn some of them into Product Owners. This is the stage I am at now, I work with 3 product owners, and still have 2 products I effectively own. Sprints may have 1 or 2 tasks for 'other' projects, but we have a enough focus for a sprint demo with the main stakeholders of the sprint demonstrating only their products new features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6825" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T12:21:52.167" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10186" CreationDate="2013-11-08T12:33:23.283" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I agree with the answers above theoretically, see my answer in this link for how I managed to implement this. I know it can be extremely challenging to apply what is effectively an ideal in a real world environment that is currently chaos. I found the key to be small steps and introducing an 'inspect and adapt' process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/206381/does-scrum-lend-itself-to-multi-project-environments/207246#207246&quot;&gt;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/206381/does-scrum-lend-itself-to-multi-project-environments/207246#207246&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6825" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:31:53.287" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T12:33:23.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10180" CreationDate="2013-11-08T16:03:17.917" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is what mentioned in PMI handbook.  Here is the link for PMI site. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/Certification/Project-Management-Professional-PMP.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pmi.org/Certification/Project-Management-Professional-PMP.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PMP Eligibility Requirements&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To be eligible for the PMP credential, you must meet certain educational and professional experience requirements. All project management experience must have been accrued within the last eight consecutive years prior to your application submission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Educational Background&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Secondary degree (high school diploma, associate’s degree or global equivalent) &lt;strong&gt;OR&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Four-year degree (bachelor’s degree or global equivalent)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Management Experience&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Minimum five years/60 months unique non- overlapping professional project management experience&#xA;  during which at least 7,500 hours were spent leading and directing the project*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;OR&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Minimum three years/36 months unique non-overlapping professional project management experience&#xA;  during which at least 4,500 hours were spent leading and directing the project*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Management Education&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;35 contact hours of formal education&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;*Leading and directing the project as identified with the tasks, knowledge, and skills specific in the Project Management Professional Examination Content Outline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You should have experience in all five process groups across all your project management experience submitted on the application. &lt;strong&gt;However, on a single project, you do not need to have experience in all five process groups.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/Certification/~/media/PDF/Certifications/pdc_pmphandbook.ashx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pmi.org PMP Handbook&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-11-09T02:54:01.720" LastActivityDate="2013-11-09T02:54:01.720" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10171" CreationDate="2013-11-10T22:01:43.453" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend having a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.metacommunications.com/workgroups&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Workgroups&lt;/a&gt; if looking for a solution still. It is a highly customizable solution with lots of great features for managing tasks, tracking time, automating workflows, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7323" LastActivityDate="2013-11-10T22:01:43.453" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10200" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10202" CreationDate="2013-11-11T02:36:56.480" Score="0" ViewCount="905" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to create a custom field that tests if a completed task has a predecessor or successor with lag?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update:&#xA;I've solved my problem bellow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had inherited a large project which had not been properly progressed in some time and whose execution logic had changed significantly since the last baseline. To get up to speed I was creating a few custom fields to help identify tasks to watch when picking it apart and putting it back together again. My predecessor had included a lot of lag in his linkages, which a) I didn't want to progress and b) I wanted move into clearer to understand tasks rather than keep in the linkages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7326" LastEditorUserId="7326" LastEditDate="2013-12-09T03:02:46.260" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T03:03:57.547" Title="MS Project, Custom Field to show Completed Tasks with Lag" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10200" CreationDate="2013-11-11T14:09:46.090" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can quickly filter tasks that have lead or lag using autofilters on the predecessor and/or successor field.  Use &lt;strong&gt;contains +&lt;/strong&gt; to filter for tasks with lag.  You can apply autofilters to multiple fields (columns) to further narrow down whether the task is complete (filter on % complete field).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T14:09:46.090" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10203" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10205" CreationDate="2013-11-11T18:06:49.740" Score="4" ViewCount="173" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a project where payments are due according to a set schedule, what is the role of a PM in ensuring these obligations are met?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example of a payment schedule within an agreement: &lt;strong&gt;50% deposit, 25% upon completion of analysis and 25% upon completion of development.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, my preference is to stay out of this and delegate it to Accounts Receivable. However, since this is a prerequisite to starting the next phase of a project, I feel that my involvement is required as these should be communicated to a client clearly. So if a project is stalled for this reason, they are fully aware of the cause for the delay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is to what extent should a PM be involved and how should these kinds of contractual requirements be communicated to a client? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I searched around for external sources that discuss this and found this link: &lt;a href=&quot;http://psmj.blogspot.ca/2011/03/dont-forget-about-your-financial.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://psmj.blogspot.ca/2011/03/dont-forget-about-your-financial.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Refer to point # 4: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Collecting. Firms need cash to operate, not completed projects. As PM, you have the closest relationship to the client, and are in the ideal position to “assist” the client in the payment process. The best expression of confidence in the quality of one’s work is to insist on prompt payment for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6911" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-11-11T18:37:55.030" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T19:11:12.657" Title="How involved should a PM be in ensuring payments for completed milestones?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;budget&gt;&lt;milestones&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10203" CreationDate="2013-11-11T18:29:15.433" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PM is accountable for all aspects of the project, including satisfaction of money owed to all vendors, including his/her own organization.  So, the involvement needs to be consistent with accountability.  Delegate tasks as you see fit, but accountability for task completion and success is not transferable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  If you are a seller of services, you would establish a &quot;contracts&quot; meeting on an agreed upon cadence, say weekly or semi-weekly.  Payment for rendered services is nothing more than an agenda item on this meeting.  As you approach a payment milestone, add payment to the agenda to discuss proper and timely funds transmission.  If you are in the government, it could require funding obligation; if commercial, clean invoice with payment terms consistent with what was already negotiated or maybe new terms if you choose to go down that path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If payment is not submitted, you need to escalate the risk.  What is in jeopardy is continued work.  Some large companies can continue at risk but many small firms are incapable of that: they would not make payroll.  You escalate the risk and initiate whatever mitigating intervention you see fit, including communications up the chain of the buyer organization.  And you simply communicate the date which you, as the PM, will stop work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of these communication channels is unique to this issue.  You are simply deploying what you should already have in existence: a cadence to discuss contract stuff and risk management.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2013-11-11T19:11:12.657" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T19:11:12.657" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10203" CreationDate="2013-11-11T18:36:48.133" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Think &quot;Communications,&quot; Not Collections&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nature of your budgetary obligations is obviously dependent on the definition of the Project Manager role within your particular organization. However, in my experience &quot;chasing money&quot; isn't the proper role of a project management professional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you are probably &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; an enforcer working for a loan-shark, where your project management responsibilities will doubtless include use of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://dragaera.wikia.com/wiki/Lepip&quot;&gt;lepip&lt;/a&gt; to ensure timely payments. However, a Project Manager &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; responsible for communicating the status of the project, including roadblocks or gating activities. Budget status and funding milestones would certainly fall within those categories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your project has defined periodic or event-based payments as gating activities from one phase of the project to another, then you should certainly be &lt;em&gt;communicating&lt;/em&gt; with your client so that they are informed of their current responsibilities to the project, and understand their impact on the project's progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the project is stalled because of payment issues, then that is simply an element of the project's status that should be clearly communicated to all stakeholders. As always, it is up to the stakeholders&amp;mdash;in this case the client and your senior management&amp;mdash;to determine how they want to address budgeting or funding issues that affect the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T18:36:48.133" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1763" CreationDate="2013-11-11T22:25:43.807" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This study shows that Planning Poker provides better estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;K Molokken-Ostvold, NC Haugen (10–13 April 2007). &quot;Combining Estimates with Planning Poker—An Empirical Study&quot;. 18th Australian Software Engineering Conference (IEEE): 349–58. doi:10.1109/ASWEC.2007.15. Retrieved 1 February 2008.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7332" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T22:25:43.807" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10207" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10208" CreationDate="2013-11-12T13:06:23.470" Score="5" ViewCount="232" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider: We are implementing an ERP for a customer, and we had some bugs that make us lose a lot of time. They were not a result of our modification but on the base software. We had overtime on some tasks, and my boss asked me to visit the customer to explain that he needs to pay a part of the extra hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm preparing for the meeting, and I would like to know what would be the best approach to explain the situation. (Because the ERP owner will never pay)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6734" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-11-15T20:24:41.333" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T20:24:41.333" Title="Who needs to pay overtime caused by bugs from software we used in an implementation?" Tags="&lt;customer-satisfaction&gt;&lt;negotiation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10207" CreationDate="2013-11-12T13:39:11.437" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to this is in your contract.  How are you contracted with the customer?  If time &amp;amp; materials, the customer pays.  If cost plus fixed fee, the customer pays but you pay too in terms of your fee margin.  If fixed fee, you pay.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only do you need to understand the payment terms, but also assumptions and exclusions agreed to in the contract.  If fixed fee, there might be a stop loss clause that enables you to go back to the customer if more money to cover these bugs, as an example.  If the customer had a Not to Exceed clause in there, you may have had some reporting requirements prior to hitting that ceiling that, if not met, would put YOU on the hook to recover from.  If met, then you have good cause to ask for more money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not a contracts expert by any stretch so my examples above are high level.  You need to consult with the contracts expert, i.e. legal, to comb through your contract with customer to build a case for more funding OR accept the hit to your profit OR something in between.  In addition, I would expect you want to maintain good relations with your customer so you need to consider that, as well, as you comb through your T&amp;amp;Cs of the contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T13:39:11.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10209" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10210" CreationDate="2013-11-12T13:41:50.633" Score="4" ViewCount="1557" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our company has just recently started using MS Project Professional 2010 and we plan to eventually have a Project Server installation. I've created a few projects so far, but still claim to be a complete novice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A customer has just requested a quote for some work, so I've created a project plan for the proposed work, however I'd like MS Project to tell me how much working time I've allocated in the plan I've created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only information MS Project seems to offer is the difference between the start and end date of the project (9.38 days), but what I want is the time my staff will be working on the project, which shouldn't include lag time or times outside the calendar that I've created. I've calculated this as being 36 hours from the non-summary tasks in the example below (apologies for having to blur the task names).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whilst this example is only tiny, I want to know how to get MS Project to calculate this for me in future on much bigger projects. Can anyone point me in the right direction or tell me what I'm doing wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lNK9b.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: I've found that if I allocate a new 'test' staff resource rate of £1/hour for simplicity, I can see a cost of £36, which matches the 36h I'm expecting to see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7334" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T19:45:17.560" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T19:45:17.560" Title="Getting estimated working time from MS Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10209" CreationDate="2013-11-12T13:51:16.413" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two easy ways of doing this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Go to the &quot;Resource Usage&quot; view. Go you get there differs slightly depending on which version of Project you are using, but look for a Views menu or on Project 2010, look at the leftmost button on the Task tab (by default) for your Views selection. This will give you the actual time allocated for each resource in the plan broken down by task and totalled at a resource level.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Show the &quot;Work&quot; column in the Gantt Chart (right-click the column headings on the left side of the Gantt Chart, select &quot;Insert Colum&quot;, add 'Work'). This will show you the actual amount of work specified for each task irrespective of the type and nature of the resources assigned to that task.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which method you use depends on what you are comfortable with and what kind of breakdown you want to get out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T13:51:16.413" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10209" CreationDate="2013-11-12T14:59:57.097" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Turn on the display of the Project Summary task (Gantt Chart Tools Format ribbon).  Add the work column and that will display the sum of the assigned work for all tasks in the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T14:59:57.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10212" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-12T18:43:25.107" Score="10" ViewCount="162" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’ve been tasked with updating the business cases underlying several projects in a program that is significantly over-schedule and over-budget. I’m anticipating that this exercise will also force us to revisit things like our overall development plans, program/project governance structures and our internal communications/engagement strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the mechanics of this are straight-forward conceptually (i.e. engage end-users, suppliers, etc  to define business capabilities required, benefits they will accrue and their associated costs) I’m concerned about meeting resistance from current project leaders. They have put a lot of time, effort and personal prestige into what has been done to date, and I see a huge opportunity for them to become opponents of change if things aren’t handled well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My Questions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you were going through this kind of exercise, what would be the key outputs/products that you would generate? For example, in addition to revisiting the business case would you create/revise a governance plan? Communications strategy? Vision? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are key aspects that must be addressed from a human perspective in order to help avoid unnecessary opposition/resistance?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-11-12T20:34:53.710" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T17:58:28.370" Title="How to do a business case reboot?" Tags="&lt;change-management&gt;&lt;program-management&gt;&lt;business-case&gt;&lt;process-improvement&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10212" CreationDate="2013-11-12T20:33:25.810" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I’ve been tasked with updating the business cases underlying several projects in a program that is significantly over-schedule and over-budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is corporate-speak for &quot;the projects have failed.&quot; To address this properly, you may want to consider positioning the current program portfolio as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sunk cost&lt;/a&gt; so that the focus is not blame avoidance, fixing accountability, or various departments making excuses for past overruns. Instead, treat this as if you were building a new portfolio supporting a fresh set of strategic initiatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Don't Recycle the Old Portfolio&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Re-defining a portfolio must be positioned as a positive strategic event rather than a witch-hunt. This is easier said than done, but here are some bullet points that may help you spin this as a value-generating proposition that will help the organization take advantage of new opportunities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Review your value filters based on where the company is today. Business needs may well have changed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Review active charters and use cases in light of your updated value filters to see if they remain valid and continue to provide value to the organization. If not, remove them from the portfolio.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the opportunity to update your IT governance or project management methodologies to avoid the same mistakes that sank the previous projects, but keep the focus on &lt;em&gt;process improvement&lt;/em&gt; rather than blame or accountability.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use your updated assumptions, values, and use cases to prioritize projects in the portfolio. Don't treat them all as equal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Request a &lt;em&gt;new&lt;/em&gt; budget that covers the scope of the revamped program portfolio. Re-using or modifying the old budget carries a taint of prior failure that you need to assiduously avoid.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure the new budget includes sufficient overhead for any new processes, governance programs, or program controls. Don't build the new portfolio on a foundation of unfunded mandates!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure the new project schedule includes sufficient slack to avoid the 100% utilization fallacy or failure cascades.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider a shift to an iterative or earned value methodology so that projects can provide partial value even if they are canceled early.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Suggest that senior management set a new &quot;tone at the top&quot; that rewards failing early, rather than long after any potential value (even partial value) has been lost.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure the new portfolio is promoted as a &lt;em&gt;fresh initiative&lt;/em&gt;, rather than an attempt to redress past failures or missed milestones.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They key throughout all of this is to ensure that the organization improves its processes and controls while looking &lt;em&gt;forward&lt;/em&gt; rather than backward. Lessons learned are important, but if you aren't an archaeologist or an historian, looking forward is where the real business value is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T20:33:25.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10214" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-13T00:50:02.757" Score="2" ViewCount="512" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wanted to get feedback on if anyone has a really good way of when looking and trying to visualize a book of work or a roadmap, to connect:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Investment Themes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resource Allocation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Projects &amp;amp; Deliverables&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really don't want to get into a micro management of resources  / microsoft project styles as teams work in all sorts of ways  and trying to micro manage the cost of every little deliverable has high overhead and little value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I do want to have some connection around resource forecasting and the book of work to make sure I see where i am overcommitting and where i am allocation my resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone found a good middle ground that doesn't have to have an army of people to manage this data but still be good enough to be meaningful and give good visibility around where folks are investing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any particular tools out there that people find work well for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1087" LastEditorUserId="1087" LastEditDate="2013-11-16T17:24:53.800" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T07:10:26.390" Title="What is the best way to connect themes, Resource Allocation, Projects and Book of Work?" Tags="&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;&lt;deliverables&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10180" CreationDate="2013-11-13T09:49:41.667" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since PMP candidates should demonstrate experience in &quot;Leading and directing the project&quot;, it is indeed required to have experience in all five process groups. But, as quoted correctly by Sreedhar, you do not have to demonstrate experience in all Five process groups for each individual project you add to your experience list. Only the total matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T09:49:41.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10216" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10218" CreationDate="2013-11-13T09:58:43.867" Score="8" ViewCount="826" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a bit of an issue in my current company. We are implementing Atlassian JIRA as our project management tool for both business problems and software development and while the software development teams are enthusiastic, knowing fairly well how agile works and how projects should be managed, we have a problem 'selling the idea' to business managers - who are also integrated in the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way things work in JIRA and the way we have set them up is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each project is a separate project, maintained by separate project managers and software developers. Internally it has version numbers on issues and every issue has subtasks, which govern over different states of the issue, such as when the issue requires technical analysis, development or additional testing. Once the issues have their subtasks done, the issue is set to fixed and then, once pushed live, the status is changed to Live and the issue is closed entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But we have a problem with business managers. Their old-school workflow is follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They get requirements from different sources (upper management and internal development requests) that have not been fully analyzed yet. These may be badly worded requests for developments, bugs and fixes that need to be done but which are not clearly defined yet or whole new projects, like 'Make project C happen'.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Depending on how 'large' their new incoming issue is, they used previous software to create subtasks to this first issue. And depending on how large those subtasks were, they created other subtasks and so on and so fort, in the end having this massive tree that grows new branches as it happens. Once the whole tree is solved, it is closed. This whole tree still has the original 'request' as the main issue, no matter how large the issue grew.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach is problematic, since it is terrible for getting reports, estimations and any kind of structure out of such a tree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been trying to make it clear that it is not possible to think in this manner effectively and that at first they should simply send the first issue to analysis to see how many 'actual issues' should be created and those issues should be then sent to their appropriate departments for development and if needed, linked back to the original issue, for status updates on their end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it is not getting enough grip, it's a classic 'we have been doing things in this way and we are fine with it' locked guard and there's problem getting the old-school thinking of 'endless tree' in project management out of their minds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas how to 'sell' the idea of project and queue sprint based project management? One of the problems seems to be that the users have a hard time knowing what to do with an issue, whether the issue is so big that it should be a whole new project or just a separate issue and where it should go next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grinding my teeth here :) Any ideas are welcome!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7341" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T17:28:54.020" Title="Ideas how to convince old-school tree project management users to agile project management?" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10216" CreationDate="2013-11-13T12:28:40.007" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the comment from @salsolatragus... your problem is that the business side isn't using agile at all. From my experience this is a classic growing pain that happens... So force the business side to be changing the way that their interactions happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lock them out. (But figure out how to sell it better than that...) Do it as a 'process change' that is supported by some kind of need. Perhaps just a bit of a rearrangement in conjunction with the new calendar year that is coming. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that light reorganization, I would say that you need to teach them what your process should look like. They won't care. Tell them anyways. Here are the steps I would take:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fence it in.&lt;/strong&gt; (Your process). Based on the Agile methodology you're capable of working with, what should your development processes look like? How long are your sprints? How often do you complete stories? When do you run out of new requirements? How does your technology facilitate the basic tasks behind collecting, prioritizing, and executing project tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure out how to fence them in.&lt;/strong&gt;    The business side needs to be told how it can use this process. No one has told them yet... no one knows how they should use it so it has grown like a sprawling, out of control tree.  It's your job to figure out how they should be allowed to interact with this process. How often do they really need to provide you with new requirements? How often do they need to receive completed functionality updates? Define their use so that they can act that way. [BUT DON'T CHANGE IT BEFORE YOU'VE TOLD THEM]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Communicate...&lt;/strong&gt; If you don't have the individual clout within the organization to make this change happen, find someone who does that will understand your pains. Make the business case very clear in terms of lost time due to confusion, or errors, or something. And then go about setting up the presentation or user's manual or process instructions that will support your 'new' way of doing this.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, communicate &lt;em&gt;very clearly&lt;/em&gt; with the business stakeholders that you're going to obtain new requirements from them once every X... (month? quarter?) and that they're free to dink around as much as they like in their requirements-gathering sandbox outside that time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus especially on how this makes their jobs easier, and how this makes it possible to move forward one step at a time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they're stuck on setting up mini-tasks because that's how they're most comfortable expressing their new functionality requirements, then let them. You don't need to battle with them to try to force them to completely change what they're doing... But make it clear that because they're the business side the tasks will be taken as a suggestion and that the development side reserves the right to add additional tasks that have to be inserted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, &lt;strong&gt;actually fence them in...&lt;/strong&gt; If you can figure out the right interface for handing off requirements requests, then lock the business users out of your 'task development' interface. That's not their job. And especially if they're not playing Agile with you, then they're not welcome. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be diligent and disciplined in actually delivering.&lt;/strong&gt; If you lock them out, make sure that you're doing what you said you would. Once every month or quarter... you meet with the business interfaces individually, tell them the sprint successes that have been completed... tell them what your group is planning next... and then ask if there are any other new requirements... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Come away from that meeting with a clear set of instructions for the next period of time in terms of tasks that should be completed and priorities. And then rinse and repeat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any project management system tends to formalize the communication processes that get overlooked otherwise. You just need to impose better communication here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7344" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T12:28:40.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10219" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-13T12:35:24.997" Score="2" ViewCount="681" Body="&lt;p&gt;A statement &quot;a plan curve that will be created based on 40% late, 60% early&quot; - does it mean a 40% chances of starting late and a 60% chances of starting early . . . please help me clarify&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a plan curve with a large left shoulder, and the right shoulder being 40% late&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7345" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-11-14T17:52:42.557" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T17:52:42.557" Title="Early and Late Start" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10219" CreationDate="2013-11-13T13:12:52.150" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been doing project management for 15 years and I still have no idea what that means! As I see it your options are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask the person who wrote it to explain what they meant.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If above is not available ask the person who passed on the instructions to you to explain what &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; think it means&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ignore it and plan as you would for any project, entering this as a risk in the project risk log&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ignore it and do nothing and then challenge anyone who challenges you to explain it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is really is a key instruction to you, that cannot be ignored, then you really do have to obtain its meaning from the author or your manager before you proceed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T13:12:52.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10192" CreationDate="2013-11-13T13:27:21.983" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advice would be, before thinking about making changes to the processes, the methods or anything else you need to take some measurements that will assist in guiding you in the direction of problems that need to be sorted out- You should not assume that you know what needs to be fixed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have described a working situation- What are the requirements for change here? You need to know those before you can design a replacement system. For example, does the team consistantly miss the &quot;impossible&quot; deadlines? If so, is that actually a problem and for whom? (they may be quite happy with this situation as it affords a lot of leeway in getting things done). How much do they overrun? What are the impacts and consequences of this? There will be financial cost, but also probably some intangibles such as reputational cost etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask questions such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why does the team miss the deadlines?&#xA;By how much are deadlines missed (a vital KPI for corrective action)&#xA;What are the costs of overruns?&#xA;Are the overruns caused by bad planning? Over optimistic managment? poor team practices? lazy team members? whatever the causes you need to understand them else you cannot put a new system in place to fix the issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always always measure, describe and document the problems you are trying to fix. Then think about all the different ways you could address the issues and how you can measure whether you have fixed them or not, and only then make changes to the team, the processes and/or the practises and continuously measure whether the changes have been effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My guess, based on what you wrote and common experience, is that the following vital artefacts are missing here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A clear requirements definition approved by the users/clients&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A good quality estimation of work to complete&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A good quality plan for delivering 1 and 2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A process by which progress against the plan is measured, reviewed and reported&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... but only you can tell by investigating the reasons for prior failures...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T13:27:21.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9983" CreationDate="2013-11-13T13:49:17.410" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Milestones CAN have a duration and still be a milestone (try it by setting the Milestone checkbox on a task that has a duration (but no work)).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The milestone itself is &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; taken to mean the point at which the milestone &quot;task&quot; completes, which on zero-duration milestones is always the same as the Milestone task itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you don't want to set lags between the task dependencies, give your subordinate milestone a duration that is greater than one day and it will auto-schedule appropriately- However it is still a bit of a kludge as you have to set, say, 9 hours as the subordinate duration to make it flip over to the next day else it will just schedule it at the end of the day, assuming the predecessor milestone was completed at the start of the day...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;David's answer is still the right one though- Change what you are modelling to match what happens in the real world...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T13:49:17.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10219" CreationDate="2013-11-13T14:44:53.860" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is based on the project Ogive curve (not to be confused with the Earned Value S Curve of a Performance Measurement Baseline) and I think it is based on &amp;quot;finish,&amp;quot; not &amp;quot;start.&amp;quot;  I created a fake project that is estimated to finish between 20 days (best case), 35 days (most likely case), and 70 days (worst case).  Running a simulation with over 750 observations, this is the result:  &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wkxTv.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This shows that you have a little less than 20% chance of finishing this project between 35 and 40 days, and a little less than 50% cumulatively at 35 to 40 days or less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cumulative histograph is here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7l43K.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The red line above the 50% mark on the Y axis is approximately 60% cumulative.  The blue X represents where that 60% mark intercepts the Ogive curve.  The red line on the X axis represents the number of days at the 60% mark, approximately 42 or 43 days in duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, 42 or 43 days of duration would be the planning value that represents 60% early and 40% late on the plan curve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is my opinion only of what your question could mean.  I'd take Marv's suggestion and go back and get this clarified.  This is the only thing I can think of that makes any sense in project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T14:44:53.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10216" CreationDate="2013-11-13T17:28:54.020" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Lead by Example or hire a consultant&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my previous company, we in the the software development team switched over to the agile development process. Over a period of time the following benefits became visible to the larger organization:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vertical slices of work were delivered to end users frequently. We were demoing completed features every two weeks and deploying them every month successfully.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Our productivity increased.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Our quality got better.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Our teamwork got visibly better.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Partly inspired by this, one of the business teams started following the agile development process for non-software development work. All that we did was to invite that Scrum Master over for an occasional brown bag lunch session to share best practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to try a similar approach. However, be prepared for it to be a very slow process. If you are looking for quicker results, try hiring a good agile consultant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T17:28:54.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5579" CreationDate="2013-11-14T11:34:45.483" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off all, ask your team members, why did they lose interest in the board. Once you will get an honest feedback you can try to either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;adjust your existing board (change the place it's hanging, card size or card material, task sizes, introduce daily meetings in front of your board) or...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;switch to an online board such as a visual management board from       &lt;a href=&quot;http://kanbantool.com/visual-management-board&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kanban Tool&lt;/a&gt;  or any other: Kanbanery, Agilezen, KanbanFlow...       I'm sure that you will find a perfect match for your team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7285" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T11:34:45.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10226" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-14T23:48:15.083" Score="2" ViewCount="589" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're NOT paying for software like Jira, what/how do you create your own burn-down charts? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen a few tools out there for creating burn-down charts.  The one I'm most familiar with is setting up a template in Excel and working that way.  I've also seen third-party add on's for Chrome and Trello.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7287" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2013-11-18T10:57:44.473" LastActivityDate="2014-08-22T17:20:47.927" Title="How do you create your burn-down charts apart from using paid tools" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;burndown-chart&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10207" CreationDate="2013-11-15T20:15:05.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Review the terms of your contract, or have your Contracts Management group do so, if you have such a group.  There is often language in a contract of this nature specifying the payment terms for any additional hours or overage expenses.  Make sure the contract allows for you to request the customer pay a part of the additional expenses, before you request they do so.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your contract does not spell it out in specifics, then you will need to negotiate with the customer.  In that case, you could explain the situation as follows:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;No off-the-shelf software package is ever completely bug-free.  Even when the software publisher provides patches, the licensee is still responsible to expend their own time and effort to install such patches.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That kind of approach along with offering to pay part of the overage costs will show you are approaching the negotiations in good faith.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7361" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T20:15:05.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9151" CreationDate="2013-11-16T00:44:12.477" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Never heard of &quot;over alignment.&quot; There are some good definitions of business IT alignment but to my knowledge none refers to over alignment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are experts who believe that business IT alignment is difficult:&#xA;&quot;Alignment, apparently, is a rare thing.&quot;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cio.com/article/32322/Sound_Off_Why_Is_Business_IT_Alignment_So_Difficult_&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cio.com/article/32322/Sound_Off_Why_Is_Business_IT_Alignment_So_Difficult_&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are experts who believe that the goal of business IT alignment cannot be met:&#xA;&quot;No business will ever reach the goal of “business and IT alignment”.&quot;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cioindex.com/article/articleid/18/7-steps-to-business-and-it-alignment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cioindex.com/article/articleid/18/7-steps-to-business-and-it-alignment&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7362" LastActivityDate="2013-11-16T00:44:12.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10214" CreationDate="2013-11-16T16:54:08.953" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're looking for a tool, HP PPMC web based tool might help to allocate resources for projects, list of projects team is working, how much availability team have, time entry etc..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-11-17T02:43:11.677" LastActivityDate="2013-11-17T02:43:11.677" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1367" CreationDate="2013-11-17T03:26:28.433" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Anyone can learn to grow or evolve into a project manager role, especially if they already have strong aptitudes at organization/communication/planning + they're in an environment with good mentors. But there are many inexpensive ways to get PM training, and even if you've been a PM professionally for 2-3 years, there may be some small piece of information in that formal training that helps shore up or expand your OJT experiences. If nothing else, you may come away with one or two bits of information that help you work just a little bit smarter, or give you new insight on working with teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your previous job experience, you may not find getting the formal certification to be of value. It's a good way to help show that you're serious about changing your career direction, or focussing on moving into project management (from, say, software or front-end web dev); but if you've already had more than a few years as a PM, I'd go for the learning, but not necessarily for the formal certification. I wouldn't shell out thousands of dollars for a multi-day or even a quarter-long class, and I even give the side-eye to many of the test prep courses out there that charge upwards of $500; but I will gladly pay for and annotate the living daylights out of the PMBOK (Which you get a free exclusive-for-you electronic version with your PMI membership, so that's a factor to consider.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7102" LastActivityDate="2013-11-17T03:26:28.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10233" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-17T04:26:36.427" Score="10" ViewCount="1416" Body="&lt;p&gt;In IT companies, English is usually the official communication medium as most of the companies deal with foreign customers. We have so many countries where English is second, or even third language and in many workplaces the spoken language will be a regional language and email/online communications will be in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problems I felt from team are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Typos (manageable up to an extend in email clients with spell checkers)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bad grammar - leads to miscommunication including misunderstanding as 'rude mail'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People hesitate to talk to customers (shy, fear, no confidence)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Incorrect pronunciation leads to miscommunication which impacts customer confidence&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time waste in online meetings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Problems for the team in understanding customer requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team not successful in convincing clients when requirement creeps&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Soft skills trainings are not usually conducted in small companies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team do not give importance to communication skills and they believe it is not a part of their job&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to transform the team to good communicators? What a PM can do other than ask them to study yourselves? A slow poison is what I expect so that the team communication improvement process will not affect project priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt; Thank you for the answers. Here the communication issues are not just with customer interactions. The teams can be intercultural and/or can contain remote members. So as I said, I am not expecting a fast recovery solution but a medicine to heal the root cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3271" LastEditorUserId="3271" LastEditDate="2013-11-21T15:49:07.447" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T06:43:47.197" Title="How to improve communication skills of a team?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;skills&gt;&lt;communication-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10214" CreationDate="2013-11-17T11:44:05.547" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As software recommendation questions are discouraged, let's review what are good ways to present this information. Based on it, we can take this list to assess if a software is good or not for your needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Investment Themes&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid not quite used to this term, but as per &lt;a href=&quot;http://scaledagileframework.com/investment-themes/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; article, it seems to be a methodology (usually applied for Agile) to make sure that the budget for the different themes within a project is being consumed as expected (i.e. there's no project consuming more budget than expected). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to be usually presented on a graphical form of some sort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://goo.gl/BeQOZW&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Googling&lt;/a&gt; for it, your question appears as the 11th result... so I'm assuming it's something 'new' (or usually referred by another terminology).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Resource Allocation&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are as many ways to see resource allocation in a project as project management tools for resource allocation. As you mentioned, you need a high level view of resource allocation... but it's not clear on the question what's the information you need. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many resources are allocated to a specific theme? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What project is consuming more resources? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the resources delivering within estimates? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my work, for instance, what I need to know is the workload of each resource (regardless of the project he's currently working, as our projects are similar) and when this specific resource will be available again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Projects and Deliverables&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, there's a lot of forms to present the projects and deliverables forecast. With my BAs, I'm used to use a simple Excel (I love Excel). It'll also depend on &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; you want this information to be presented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if your situation is similar to mine, you can give it a try to the Atlassian &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jira&lt;/a&gt;. I can tell that you can use &lt;a href=&quot;http://goo.gl/fiHD9Y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Structure&lt;/a&gt; to have the project's big picture. Jira can also be integrated to your Continuous Integration Server (not only to the Atlassian's Bamboo. We use Sonar) linking deliverables by Milestones. Jira has also a very high level of customization, so you could definitely make it fits your needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the team is used to use Jira, you just need to access it to check how things are going... as developers are expected to be updating their own tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, regardless of the tool you'll use, you first need to review &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; you need and (most especially) &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; you need, otherwise you'll be only adding extra work over your shoulders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of a tool as a means to reach a goal, not the goal itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps, success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2013-11-17T11:44:05.547" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10236" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-17T16:08:30.520" Score="6" ViewCount="259" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a set of teams and they are trying to go Agile.  Lets say each team support one application and we have a total of 4 teams and 4 applications.    When we projects that are all within a team / application and the backlog fits within the team, everything seems to work fine.  Where it gets tricky is if there is a backlog where:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some projects are fully scoped within a current team / application&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other projects are cross team /application initiatives that are taking place which includes other folks outside the team included in #1.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like there are two agile recommendations that seems conflicting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The desire to create feature teams (which would span folks across the app teams - presumably taking a few folks from each app team) so every &quot;project team&quot; has a single ability to deliver the whole feature by themselves  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The desire to have long lived teams that can increase trust, good history of tracking velocity and better estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with this first approach (and why it conflicts with the second) is you keep creating new project teams to map onto the project scope and teams form and dissolve over and over again so you don't get the long lived velocity tracking, of those cross functional teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any advice to this seemingly contradicting ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1087" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-11-18T20:05:53.917" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T20:24:24.600" Title="What is &quot;agile's answer&quot; to projects that come in many shapes and sizes with different scope?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;distributed-team&gt;&lt;process-scaling&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10233" CreationDate="2013-11-17T16:38:19.553" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Few things like this you can try:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Arrange an English course training to team to improve to next level.  Influence management to get this training conducted and show your plan of improvement etc..&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use translators before sending emails, i.e they can type first in English, team can also type in their first language and use translators and get the English version and check themselves.  Correct and self learn.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reviews by someone who knows English much better before sending to client at least very important emails.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Encourage and introduce some rewards for the team to get better at English&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team can learn by watching Youtube videos on English Speaking course.  As a team every week few hours can be spent if #1 is not possibile for your organization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2013-11-18T04:27:16.297" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T04:27:16.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1147" CreationDate="2013-11-18T06:40:16.437" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would suggest reading PMBOK5 thoroughly. PMBOK5 is dry but its advisable that you go through it entirely without missing out on anything. For reference materials, you can refer Rita Mulcahy exam prep. Many people find it easy to prepare from this book. Also, I would recommend taking an online training- the audio video chapters helps in better understanding of the concepts and you remember the concepts for a long time. There are practice tests included in the training which you can take to understand your knowledge gaps in a much better way hence helping you in gaining confidence.&#xA;I feel that you must take more practice tests as it helps a lot. I took my training from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.simplilearn.com/project-management/capm-certification-training-online/ppa81&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Simplilearn&lt;/a&gt; and it really helped. Best of Luck!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7058" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T06:40:16.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2528" CreationDate="2013-11-18T09:08:37.413" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;the course content is same for CAPM and PMP- the only difference being CAPM is an entry level certification so the syllabus is not in-depth as compared to PMP. The exam pattern is also different for CAPM and the difficulty level is a much less as compared to PMP. You can read these &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.simplilearn.com/resources&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;resources&lt;/a&gt; to know more about the two certifications. I hope this helps! Good Luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7058" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T09:08:37.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2395" CreationDate="2013-11-18T09:29:08.917" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A fixed price contract typically works on shifting cost risk from buyer to seller:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In a T&amp;amp;M contract, the client has the budget risk of the project. The client is generally less experienced in doing IT projects, so the risk is high. He will estimate a budget contingency of e.g. +100%.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In a Fixed-price contract, the supplier is responsible for completing the scope in the least amount of money possible. He is experienced in doing this, so will estimate a required contingency of +30%. For the client, he bills +50%.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The case for T&amp;amp;M work can only be made if this will result in a &lt;em&gt;lower&lt;/em&gt; end price for the client. You could suggest Agile contracts with clauses like &quot;money for nothing&quot;, allowing a client to cancel the project at any given time. You can also suggest a &quot;proof of concept&quot; phase after which the client can still refuse continuing the project at no extra charge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7373" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T09:29:08.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5376" CreationDate="2013-11-18T09:54:27.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume this is during a bidding phase, where the client is determining what partner to work with. They have a problem and they want it fixed, as well as possible for a fixed amount of money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You wrongly assume that you should estimate what it costs to provide a certain scope. It is often the other way around: they have a budget available and want the supplier who will offer the most value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Suggest a (billed) analysis phase, where you will work with the client to better define the scope. Sales arguments:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Without this, we will just add a huge amount of contingency to our contract. All (serious) vendors will.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By paying us to do this, you will end up with a high-quality requirements document. This will enable all vendors to lower their contingency, allowing you to get better prices.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vendors will (minimally) do this analysis for free to reduce their own risk / pricing point. However, you will have to talk with 5 vendors instead of just 1.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make up the scope, as precisely defined as possible. They will be happy that you did the proactive effort and will clearly see you know their business.&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Disadvantage: they could just use your analysis and incorporate it in the next RFP. Make sure they can't, by making your offer confidential.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Suggest a scope-to-budget project. Provide a very clearly defined proof-of-concept to show them what you're worth. Once trust is established, they will realize you are value-for-money and will not care about the budget anymore.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simply make their scope for them, based on a simple conversation on business goals + available budget. Of course, this takes more sales effort, while you still might not win the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7373" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T09:54:27.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3978" CreationDate="2013-11-18T10:27:38.733" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are asking the team to make cost estimates when they do not have enough information. To do this, they will have to make assumptions, and they are refusing to do this, because it has bitten them in the ass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two ways to solve this. One way is to make sure it will not bite them in the ass. Ask yourself: &quot;Have I ever provided my team with a fixed-scope fixed-budget fixed-quality assignment, referring back to their initial estimate on unclear specs?&quot;. You probably have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other way is to remove uncertainty. If they refuse to make any assumptions, you have to make the assumptions for them. Answer every question they have, assuming either worst case, best case, or a realistic in-between. You can then communicate their estimates very clearly, because you know the assumptions behind them. Ensure broad functionality is split into smaller user stories to reduce uncertainty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7373" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T10:27:38.733" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10233" CreationDate="2013-11-18T13:14:47.360" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will assume in my answer that you are primarily concerned with communications between the Vendor (you) and a foreign Customer and not your internal communications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the short term you can identify the team members that can best communicate with your customers. This is both in terms of English language skills and also whatever technical skills they need to understand the customer's perspective. These team members can act as the primary points of contact with the customer, and will advocate for the customer's perspective during your internal conversations. Ideally whoever fills this role will have some level of authority (e.g. Project Manager, Product Manager, whatever) within your organization, this will better ensure that the customer's perspective has a strong and active voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Longer term you could promote learning English and use technology as suggested by Sreedhar. This is fine as far as it goes, but realize that a huge proportion of native English speakers are poor communicators. In other words, language skills are only part of the question. Your team should also work on improving their communication skills in general, and in particular how to handle cross-cultural communications. Don't undervalue this last piece, what a European or Asian customer may expect in terms of your company's performance against schedule/quality/etc will often be very different from a similar customer based in USA.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T13:14:47.360" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1079" CreationDate="2013-11-18T14:23:02.997" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is just wrong.&#xA;It goes against the principles of Agile and SCRUM.&#xA;PRINCE2 would be 'waste' in this context. There is no role and no need for it.&#xA;It leads to a 'scrum-but' situation at its best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7376" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T14:23:02.997" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10236" CreationDate="2013-11-18T19:50:23.640" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't create a false dichotomy by confusing the organizational &lt;em&gt;choice&lt;/em&gt; of how to structure teams with the mechanism for scaling the Scrum framework up within the enterprise. The team structure you choose will impact your level of integration effort, but does not ultimately affect the scaling mechanism itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of how you form your teams, each team will work from a single Product Backlog for a given project. However, the &lt;em&gt;enterprise&lt;/em&gt; can also have a Product Backlog, and delegate sub-projects to different teams in order to operate at scale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A Project Has Exactly &lt;em&gt;One&lt;/em&gt; Product Backlog&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By definition, each project has exactly one Product Backlog. Likewise, each team works from exactly one Product Backlog per Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you're describing sounds like a situation where you may want more than one team to work from a single over-arching Product Backlog managed at the enterprise level. There are a number of ways to solve the problems involved in scaling Scrum for the enterprise, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Scrum-of-Scrums approach (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://guide.agilealliance.org/guide/scrumofscrums.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;definition&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2007/may/advice-on-conducting-the-scrum-of-scrums-meeting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sample narrative&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://scaledagileframework.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SAFe&lt;/a&gt; framework.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the complexity comes from the fact that your &lt;em&gt;organization&lt;/em&gt; is not currently aligned with the way your projects are staffed and work is distributed. This is largely a process-engineering issue, although you may find that some changes need to be made to your organizational charts, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Two Short Examples&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a new product that will span multiple teams across the enterprise, you already know your organizational choices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teams formed to deliver a specific feature or project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teams formed as cross-functional units, to which features or products are delegated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are organizational pros and cons to each approach, but that is outside the scope of the original question. Let's look at two examples of how the project might be scaled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Feature/Project Teams&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The enterprise backlog is formed, and themes and epics are carved out to define the sub-projects that you will form Scrum teams to deliver. Each team is given a single Product Backlog that is composed of the themes and epics that define the team's objectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner and the Scrum Master for each Scrum team then participate in the Scrum-of-Scrums (or your scaling framework of choice) where the enterprise-level Product Backlog is coordinated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the team is often feature-focused, there is often more coordination required at the Scrum-of-Scrums level, and lot more inter-team dependencies will need to be managed at all levels. However, the team's narrow focus may make it possible to work with teams that are less cross-functional, because the cross-functionality exists &lt;em&gt;between&lt;/em&gt; teams rather than inside each individual team. This is one of the many trade-offs you must make at the enterprise level when you plan the top-level project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Cross-Functional Teams&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is actually very close to the previous example, except that the teams aren't formed around specific features. Instead, the team's Product Backlog is composed of vertical slices that leverage the cross-functional nature of the team to deliver functionality to the Scrum-of-Scrums.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach reduces interdependency between Scrum teams within each Sprint, but still requires active coordination at the enterprise level to ensure the work integrates at the end of each iteration. In addition, by ensuring the teams are fully cross-functional rather than specialized, there is more flexibility to move enterprise-level Product Backlog items between teams as capacity, requirements, or priorities change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T19:50:23.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10233" CreationDate="2013-11-18T20:21:10.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Theory vs. Practice in Agile Communications&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile practices generally favor direct interpersonal interactions. However, the problem you're describing is one where direct interactions with a client, customer, or other team may be counter-productive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's the case, what you're really trying to do is &lt;em&gt;manage the customer interface&lt;/em&gt;. There are a few ways to do this that immediately spring to mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hire someone with cross-cultural experience to manage project communications.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hire someone with interpreter-level language skills to manage communications. (Note: this may or may not be the same person as above.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Funnel all critical or high-impact customer communications through the designated communications channels.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set customer expectations about communications channels and skills levels.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a defined process to periodically review the quality of communications with the customer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have an escalation process for the customer, so that communications problems can be resolved quickly and effectively for all parties.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Culture and language can certainly be barriers, but setting everyone's expectations properly throughout the lifetime of the project may prevent those barriers from turning into project failures. In the long run, hiring a communications person and setting everyone's expectations is probably less expensive and more realistic than expecting everyone involved in a project (on both sides of a language/cultural barrier) to become a foreign-communications expert.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T20:21:10.930" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10233" CreationDate="2013-11-18T21:47:05.987" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, most English-speaking (America) people are poor writers.  Expecting those where English is not their first language to write better is futile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you cross language boundaries like this, you need interpreters, those that can interpret the original language into writing that is in English.  And the cost of those experts should be part of the cost build up in the contract.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spending project dollars to train your existing people is inappropriate.  No customer would want to, nor should they, fund language classes, and the results will be dismal anyway.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T21:47:05.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10214" CreationDate="2013-11-19T07:10:26.390" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is your driver? More important than a particular concept is your attitude and your insight into working with people and projects. A tool such as Quality Companion (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.minitab.com/en-US/products/quality-companion/default.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.minitab.com/en-US/products/quality-companion/default.aspx&lt;/a&gt;) can help you develop answers to your questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the site: &quot;Manage your projects with a single application that gives you all the tools and guidance you need.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, more or less. The tool ist good packed, easy to learn and leads me and my team to a successful approach. IMHO, there ist no such tool like &quot;ready to go and make me look smart&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7385" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T07:10:26.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10249" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-19T09:23:14.377" Score="4" ViewCount="390" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a recent graduate I am finding it very difficult to find work in the field I studied in. Having taken the Briggs Myers personality type test Project management cropped up as a possibility and it is something I have considered in the past. &#xA;Asides from completing a Prince 2 course, what other things can I do to ensure success in getting into this career?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7386" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-11-19T14:35:46.067" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T23:02:05.853" Title="How does someone get into project management?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10249" CreationDate="2013-11-19T12:12:50.890" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Study management, volunteering, and important: don't start at the project management level. You'll need some experience in the field first. A course of PRINCE 2 is not nearly enough. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Volunteering can help you to get management experiences. If you combine that experience with the 'field-knowhow' for a couple of years, you can build a strong resume. You'll need it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7389" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T12:12:50.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10249" CreationDate="2013-11-19T15:06:38.393" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It will be very hard to break into Project Management &quot;cold&quot; - You will definitely need enough experience in the field/sector you are applying for to be able to talk credibly about it and this can only take time and experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way in might be to begin working in a PMO (Project Managment Office) perhaps as a PMO administrator- That way you can learn the ropes from the governance point of view (important but by no means the be-all and end-all) whilst working in your chosen sector. After a few years of that you might be qualified to move into a junior PM role, though you would still be missing heavyweight field experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always insist that PMs have some real life hands on experience of actually managing a project before they undertake any kind of formal methodolgy (e.g. PRINCE 2) because the formal method needs to be tempered with field experience. People who tend to get the qualification first and then try to manage a project often drown because the real world is nothing like they have been taught it should be via the methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2013-11-25T23:02:05.853" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T23:02:05.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10226" CreationDate="2013-11-19T22:37:34.653" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best tool, though you could argue about the free part, for me is a &lt;strong&gt;whiteboard or flip chart and a marker&lt;/strong&gt;. Though any sheet of paper and pen will do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's &lt;strong&gt;easy to implement&lt;/strong&gt;, too. Just put numbers on your cards, draw the two axes and you're set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start from there and &lt;strong&gt;get your process on order first&lt;/strong&gt;. Once you and your team have established your own flavor of scrum, you will know what&#xA; your requirements are and screening tools will be a quick exercise, but not knowing what the tool is supposed to do, flexibility is key. And not much can beat board and marker in that respect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source:&lt;/em&gt; my own experience building and coaching scrum teams&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7155" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T22:37:34.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10254" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-21T08:11:36.837" Score="2" ViewCount="193" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to do a sort of case study in applying a software development methodology. The focus is more on the report which documents my experiences with the process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have only 16 days left to do the project and I have a 6 member team. We are working on improving an existing Android app and it is written in Java. Only 4 members are proficient in Java (2 in android UI, 1 in research backend and 1 in both) with varying levels of expertise. They can spend around 20 hours per week. There are a few data collection tasks and statistical tasks to occupy the other two. There is some uncertainty associated with the research backend as it is an ML task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The app need not be production ready but should be demo-able. Please suggest some paradigms to use under these conditions so I can figure out what would work for us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Erm.. some fancy terms to throw in my report would be useful :)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7403" LastEditorUserId="7155" LastEditDate="2013-11-21T10:38:11.653" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T10:38:11.653" Title="Need appropriate software development process and paradigms for very short term project" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10254" CreationDate="2013-11-21T09:37:04.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Buzz-word Bingo&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum, Kanban, XP, sustainable pace, pair programming, spike&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(This list is nowhere near comprehensive, but seeing that you only have 16 days to go, I want to focus on a few that are easy to research and implement)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Details&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Scrum/Kanban&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both those are &lt;strong&gt;team management principles&lt;/strong&gt;, focussed on &lt;strong&gt;managing processes that can't be planned&lt;/strong&gt; in advance (like software or prototype development).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Benefits:&lt;/strong&gt; Being &lt;strong&gt;flexible&lt;/strong&gt; in an environment of changing/unclear requirements or priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;XP (eXtreme Programming)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;XP is a set of tools used to &lt;strong&gt;improve the workflow&lt;/strong&gt; of software development teams, though most can be applied to other &lt;strong&gt;creative teams&lt;/strong&gt;, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Benefits:&lt;/strong&gt; Improvements to the whole &lt;strong&gt;process of working together&lt;/strong&gt; for a creative team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Sustainable Pace&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One term used in XP is sustainable pace, which basically means, &lt;strong&gt;don't put in more hours than you can keep up&lt;/strong&gt; for a long time. i.E. &lt;strong&gt;don't burn the team out&lt;/strong&gt; with overtime to the max.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Benefits:&lt;/strong&gt; Keeping up &lt;strong&gt;morale&lt;/strong&gt;; removing perceived pressure; increasing &lt;strong&gt;perceived(!) predictability&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Pair Programming&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another tool of XP, pair programming is the principle of &lt;strong&gt;distributing knowledge&lt;/strong&gt; in a team by having members work in pairs on a new problem/with a new tool where one member of the pair is already experienced in the topic and the other is there to &lt;strong&gt;learn from that experience&lt;/strong&gt;. This, too, isn't limited to programming and thus often just called 'pairing'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Benefits:&lt;/strong&gt; Easy (I want to say effortless) &lt;strong&gt;distribution of knowledge and skills&lt;/strong&gt; throughout the team; better &lt;strong&gt;galvanization of the team&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Spike&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a scrum term, for &lt;strong&gt;small research projects&lt;/strong&gt;. One key characteristic of spikes is a &lt;strong&gt;time box&lt;/strong&gt;. The team sets aside a number of hours/days to spend on the research and then proceeds to spend that amount of time on it, but not more (or less, unless they're sure the question is answered satisfyingly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Benefits:&lt;/strong&gt; Research tasks &lt;strong&gt;won't get out of hand&lt;/strong&gt; and inflate the overall time the project may take or block other parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Be aware&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are downsides, too, as with every change in process or management paradigm. &lt;em&gt;Resistance to change; perceived extra work just to keep the process runnning; personal preferences/dislikes; a long but familiar list.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7155" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T09:37:04.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10233" CreationDate="2013-11-22T06:43:47.197" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience, I would say the problem here is &quot;leadership&quot;. I am just taking couple of points from your statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team not successful in convincing clients when requirement creeps&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team do not give importance to communication skills and they believe it is not a part of their job&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are things that should be driven by a strong leader. The leader himself should be inspiring and people should &quot;wish&quot; that they could be like him/her. So it helps to start with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the requirement creeps and the team is not able to explain there should be a technical lead or a project manager who should help their views translate to the clients. If the team is thinking they are not giving importance to communication you must tell them and mark them as their goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spell checkers help a little bit, but not always. For instance: One of my colleague wrote to my client this way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Dear xxx, I would like to have a call to sink (sync) up (on) the project. So if you cum (come online for the call) it will be great&quot;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;QA writes: &quot;I have a sanitary (Sanity) test that I have to run...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bottom line:&lt;/strong&gt; Guide, mentor, inspire your team. &#xA;If you are the lead or manager, mark these as their goals, let them know that it affects their salary, provide links and ask them 1x1 how they are progressing, drive them relentlessly. You will see change!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4838" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T06:43:47.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10212" CreationDate="2013-11-22T17:58:28.370" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to understand the context behind the task you have been given. If the expectation is that the programme is to be killed off, and all you are doing is to provide justification for that, then whatever else you do may be a waste of time and effort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if the question is being asked as a genuine &quot;should we or should we not continue?&quot; or &quot;which parts of the programme should be continued?&quot;, then the position is slightly different. In the first instance, I still don't think you ought to be doing a great deal more than providing a review of the business case(s). However, as one of the conclusions of your review, you should perhaps make a recommendation that a further activity should be to review the governance, the vision, the comms plan, etc. That way, you are delivering exactly what the business has asked for, with the option to take it further &lt;strong&gt;if they want you to&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, concentrate on delivering what you have been tasked with delivering - otherwise your review will also run the risk of being, in your own words, &lt;em&gt;significantly over-schedule and over-budget&lt;/em&gt;, but give the business a proposal to take it further if this is deemed appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T17:58:28.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10260" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-22T19:11:12.613" Score="9" ViewCount="6506" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've got the dream job interview of a lifetime tomorrow, and I need to facilitate a 45-minute requirements gathering and planning meeting for a software application they think up. It will be me standing in a room with a 'customer' and a developer. They're expecting user stories, requirements, etc. by the end of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm very well-versed in Scrum, but have &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; held a project kickoff or planning meeting before. Any links, YouTubes, steps, or advice you could give me? I've tried my best Google-fu to find a mock 'project kickoff' meeting to watch or read about, but I have failed. I appreciate it! &amp;lt;3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7416" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-11-23T03:16:18.133" LastActivityDate="2020-06-17T14:24:36.997" Title="How to hold a project kick-off / requirements gathering meeting for a job interview?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10260" CreationDate="2013-11-22T22:44:33.180" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interesting problem. I'd be a little concerned that an interview setting is not necessarily a realistic microcosm of a real project. You're going to enter with much less understanding of the problem and 'customer' than you might expect to have in a normal professional engagement. However since you seem to have some idea what a successful outcome would look like this should be manageable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone has their own idea what a good kickoff looks like so if you can frame yours in a context appropriate for the company you want to join that's probably better. All I can offer is my experience as a contractor at &lt;a href=&quot;http://carbonfive.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Carbon Five&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question refers to a couple of different activities; requirements gathering, project kickoff, story planning. I'll often spend 45 minutes on each of those so I would want to prioritize which of these you actually need to cover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally I would start with a kickoff to explain the process my team uses, how it works, and what is expected/required from everyone participating especially the customer/project owner. That's probably not going to give you a good chance to highlight your abilities in an interview though so you may need to hope that can be taken as assumed knowledge or under a vague description: &quot;this team will be using an agile iterative process to build your product, we're not going to plan everything today but we should leave in a good position to plan each feature as they come up.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would focus on requirements gathering activities. Since you'll have a customer and developer present you can aim to produce some actionable stories but I would make it clear that in an initial meeting many of those are likely to be epics and need to be broken down in future conversations unless the problem is very simple. You should be able to get everyone to participate in a planning activity and give yourself a good opportunity to demonstrate your ability to lead an interactive discussion and discovery of the product the client needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would try to start by sketching some very lightweight personas as the customer explains the problem. Just enough to have a reference for who you are building this for and what constraints you understand them to have. Normally this is something I would try to have beforehand but I think it's worth 5 minutes to show a shared understanding of who this product is for and if there are multiple user personas to agree to focus on one. (I've found the style Lane Halley describes in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/LaneHalley/personas-for-coders&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Personas for Coders&lt;/a&gt; useful.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given some idea who your user is I would try to build a simple &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20181206013416/https://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/the-anatomy-of-an-experience-map/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;experience map&lt;/a&gt;. In 15 minutes you should be able to sketch out the activities your user performs which interact with the product and the different touch points involved. This should be a good chance for the developer to help identify external systems you'll need to integrate with and for the customer to reveal interactions outside the bounds of the product you control (e.g. forwarding emails to other people).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally I would use the activities identified in that experience map to start writing some high level stories and defining some initial milestones for the project. I find that a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jpattonassociates.com/the-new-backlog/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;story map&lt;/a&gt; is a good way to start organizing these sort of stories and shuffle them into functional (rather than temporal) milestones. This is also a chance for you to demonstrate writing good &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt; stories with a customer and developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would certainly be out of time at this point but hopefully you can block off a few minutes to discuss next steps like detailed estimation of the first sprint or milestone and to ask about the process the interviewers normally use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7255" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T14:24:36.997" LastActivityDate="2020-06-17T14:24:36.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10260" CreationDate="2013-11-23T18:50:08.783" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is hard to know exactly what they intend with this interview mock project, but if I were to do something like this (as the interviewer) I would primarily be looking to see the candidate's strategy for ensuring they have an accurate understanding of the customer's problem and priorities.  As a secondary benefit I would be able to see how the candidate communicates with a customer: phrasing, tone, making assumptions vs. asking non-biased questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since a lack of problem definition or initially solving the wrong problem leading to rework are such common problems I would be looking for a candidate that can avoid those issues, but that is just my bias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a related note, I would advise you to focus on what you already know and are at ease doing.  In my opinion &quot;cramming&quot; and trying to remember new skills during an interview will lead to stress and nervousness which will probably impact your ability to respond freely during the interview.  I think it is more important to appear at ease during the interview as that conveys deep competence at what you are discussing; if necessary you can be open about what areas you do not have as much experience in but state that you are looking forward to the opportunity to get more experience in those areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5292" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T18:50:08.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10249" CreationDate="2013-11-24T16:59:56.700" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having been in project management for over 20 years, always ask first what you can do for the project. Either bring business knowledge for the project on hand plus some communicative skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or exchange on another level: get allowance to act as right wing to existing project manager or project office and bring something to another part of the organisation where you have a unique added value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen a number of occassions in which really motivated people managed to get through the glass roof by showing their enthousiasm and hard work. But it is the hardest way to get involved into project management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7423" LastActivityDate="2013-11-24T16:59:56.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10049" CreationDate="2013-11-24T17:09:41.703" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First thing: in the past I've found interviews more useful than resumes. Old studies from IBM showed a factor 25 productivity difference between developers on the same project (uhh, yeah, that is 25...) The last 15 years I've been on the interview side and within the organisation I've worked for we have always used an interview combined with short assessments.&#xA;I've found it amazing how many candidates do not know how to handle even show the simplest cases of their skills. For example, for database technology we use &quot;write a non-join query&quot; or for C# we use &quot;Fibonacci function&quot;. For non-IT functions in my current company we do the same, like for finance: &quot;Generate general ledger postings for correcting the intercompany ledgers.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To ensure making it an organizational habit, I recommend using a simple form with &quot;STAR&quot; (Situation Target Action Result) questions on past life and a few (2 or 3) standard questions for the vacancy being filled. The HR manager can request the form to have been filled out and returned before providing an offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7423" LastActivityDate="2013-11-24T17:09:41.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10266" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-25T09:30:13.690" Score="1" ViewCount="254" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am especially interested in data input ergonomics: keyboards, mice, and chairs, but would also like to hear about other ergonomic improvements that changed project performance. References to specific research, case studies, or best-practice sheets would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is: Do ergonomic keyboards, mice, or chairs make a difference in delivering projects on time, on budget, or according to spec?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4551" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-12-01T01:45:48.177" LastActivityDate="2013-12-01T01:45:48.177" Title="Do ergonomic keyboards, mice, or chairs make a difference in delivering projects on time, on budget, or according to spec?" Tags="&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10266" CreationDate="2013-11-25T15:16:38.770" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is only indirectly related to project management, and isn't answerable in the way that you're asking it. In addition, requests for off-site resources or search-engine type questions are always off-topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, perhaps a valid answer is to simply point out where your question tangentially intersects with Project Management, and where it does not. With that in mind, I offer you the following guidance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Applicability to a Project&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While productivity is something that might concern a project manager, ergonomic equipment is more of an HR or facilities issue. The real impact to the project would generally come in the form of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Process issues, such as whether team members can request ergonomic equipment and the procedures for doing so.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Budget issues, such as whether such equipment is a cost to the project or to some other organizational unit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Ergonomics as a Science&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like common sense to say that if you don't have people losing working hours to back pain or carpal tunnel syndrome then you will avoid preventable losses to productivity. If, on the other hand, your question is more along the lines of &quot;How much faster will my programmers type if I get them ergonomic equipment?&quot; then I think you will need to turn to research literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Setting aside people's physical comfort and required accommodations, in my experience people on knowledge-based projects spend more time &lt;em&gt;thinking&lt;/em&gt; than they do typing or mousing around, so my expectation would be that any real productivity improvements will come from the health and happiness of the team members rather than from any measurable improvement in systems input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T15:16:38.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10266" CreationDate="2013-11-25T15:27:12.860" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is applicable to project management as it is in all other types of operations, whether it is knowledge type work or labor.  The application of the science is through generalization of the findings versus a study that shows a direct correlation between a project optimized ergonomically and one that is not.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The challenge in answering this question is setting expectations that you do not have a cause and effect between an egonomic station and cost, schedule, and scope performance.  There are an infinite number of variables, including a host of uncontrollable, random variables, that ultimately affect where we end up with cost and schedule and scope quality.  Our jobs as project managers, and operations managers for that matter, are to increase the likelihood of favorable results by pulling the levers and pushing the buttons that are known to help with the full understanding that you still have risk of poor performance and complete failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Googling ergonomics and performance yields a host of scientific findings that suggest improved musculoskeletal and visual performance via lack of symptoms or employee complaint.  One could easily conclude that, in most cases for much of the time, performance should be improved by providing ergnomic work stations.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I do not think there is much debate around this topic so I would certainly include an ergonomic work station and environment, and the cost thereof, in my project planning.  While the results are no where guaranteed, no magic bullet, these are the right levers to pull to help increase my odds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two studies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Health and Performance Consequences of Office Ergonomic Interventions Among Computer Workers, Michelle Robertson&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Office ergonomics training and a sit-stand workstation: effects on musculoskeletal and visual symptoms and performance of office workers.  Robertson MM, Ciriello VM, Garabet AM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The abstracts are available online; however, you might have to pay to see the entire study.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2013-11-25T15:35:29.497" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T15:35:29.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3540" CreationDate="2013-11-25T19:10:52.830" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.invantive.com/products/invantive-vision&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A more high-end project management solution is Invantive Vision.&lt;/a&gt; It is used by companies for projects between almost 0 and I think the largest ones are around EUR 700 M. It provides an online frontend as well as integration into Microsoft Outlook 2010 and 2013. It also integrated into Word, PowerPoint and Excel with add-ons. Please note that I work at the developing company. For Outlook use, you will need also Microsoft .NET 4.5.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7423" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T19:10:52.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10271" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10281" CreationDate="2013-11-25T19:10:56.017" Score="10" ViewCount="515" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is the story (no pun intended):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Product Owner had a fairly common feature prioritized in the second sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It was estimated with low story points.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The story was completed and in testing the team discovered that it didn't work as required for one class of users.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The developer who did the work thought it was a permissions issue and should be fairly easy to fix.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We logged a bug and prioritized it in the third sprint. It appeared to be a problem with the open source framework we are using. Developer tried installing some patches that appeared could be related. Didn't help. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Product Owner agreed to carry the bug to the fourth sprint at the request of the developer, however with a low priority. On seeing more time being wasted on it, the Product Owner moved it to the backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now we are in the sixth and final sprint and getting the product ready for beta release. The developer, who is highly skilled and very committed, reported that he intends spending own time looking for a solution. Looks like it has become a prestige issue for him.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the Scrum Master, I told the developer to stop working on anything not prioritized by the Product Owner regardless whether own time or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2013-11-25T20:24:39.877" LastActivityDate="2018-07-20T16:03:35.647" Title="Is it OK for a Scrum Master to allow a developer to work on a story not prioritized by the Product Owner, if it is on own time?" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10249" CreationDate="2013-11-25T19:28:33.140" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Find the best project manager in your area. Offer to be their personal assistant. If they say they don't need you / can't afford you, offer to work for them for free. This will grant you both excellent experience and a respectable reference. And possibly a job offer from the same company. Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4523" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T19:28:33.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10266" CreationDate="2013-11-25T19:29:44.587" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've enjoyed studying this topic of input devices and ergonomics at the Institute of Perception Research in Eindhoven (too bad it no longer exists separately as part of Philips NatLab; it was a cool place to acquire the MSc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question for a project manager can be rephrased as &quot;How do I get more output squeezed out of the team&quot; since all types of actions can be taken. And many pay off already within a reasonable size project. Such as defining a good process, labor instructions, motivation and a good desk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Productivity is composed of people, tools and processes. And working on each of these three, you can improve throughput by each one considerably.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back to the question; yes, the choice of input devices can have an impact on direct productivity (number of correct computer interactions per second) as well on indirect productivity (how happy are you with your work).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding environmental factors, there are numerous studies available when you use google scholar to look for &quot;ergonomics&quot; or &quot;information ergonomics&quot;. It is not uncommon that a different set up can easily double the direct throughput within the project. Prolonging research on productivity tools can even further raise the productivity. Which is good, otherwise we would all be still hunting mammuts using a wooden stick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But also please note that for &quot;creative&quot; projects the soft factors can have a much higher influence than the environmental factors. An old book from IBM has interesting numbers. For software engineering (which is my business) I like the books from Microsoft Press which besides normal bla bla on project management include many real-life problems faced within Microsoft. Some titles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Software Project Survival Guide&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Code Complete&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7423" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T19:29:44.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10271" CreationDate="2013-11-26T09:33:41.423" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's an interesting situation you describe there!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, you cannot deny the developer to search for a solution in his free time. However, there has to be a clear separation between his free-time work and the project. If he works on the project's code, trying/integrating a solution, the separation is not clear anymore. This is a problem you, as the Scrum Master, need to prevent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I experienced a similar situation not to long ago: I worked in a student team on a 1-year-project. We used Scrum. One colleague was really into finding an elegant solution for the bootstrapping logic of our program. Despite our &quot;working solution&quot;, he spent more time to implement an even better one; out of personal interest. It turned out to be more complicated than he anticipated, but since he already invested a lot of time, he kept spending more and more. In the end, this effectively reduced his working time, because after he spend much time on the issue, he wouldn't work on something else that long. He intended to separate the tasks, but he didn't manage to do that, because somewhere in his head working on the project still was working on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So much for the risk. End of the story is: the developer turned up with a very elegant solution that saved us a lot of work since that day. Don't know if as much as he spent, but, in the end, some might say it was worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the difference between my project and yours is that we were students, while you are employees. It maybe that this makes the separation easier, but in my eyes it also makes it more important. Especially if the PO already gave you additional time (multiple times) for the issue and you weren't able to fix it. If it's a corner case to him that's not worth further effort, than this is his decision to make. Developers tend to have a different view on such things, especially if their personal pride is involved. But it's the PO's decision. The team has to accept that. Period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he wants to figure out a workaround for the bug in the open-source framework, he's free to do that at home, in his own setup. He should not work on it from the company, nor using the project's code. If he should come up with a solution and still be interested in integrating it, you can talk to the PO again. Then you can tell him it will be so and so much effort and you know it, because your developer actually already tried it and it worked. If it's not too much work, I'm pretty sure the PO will accept the change. After all, he want's a robust product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps somewhat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6990" LastActivityDate="2013-11-26T09:33:41.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10277" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-26T13:39:03.713" Score="1" ViewCount="8865" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a B2B service provider.  Many of our potential customers want to see a Gantt chart in the proposal.  These are created based on a broadly estimated start date. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our problem: our clients aren't understanding (or reading in our proposal) that the Gantt was only based on an example start date with the caveat they sign the proposal promptly and send us the necessary items to allow us to start our work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've figured out how to print a Gantt with durations and numbered days across the top (in MS project), however I am wondering if there was a prettier way to do this?&#xA;Can I make a new project with no actual dates and starting on Day 0?  And having a milestone as Day X?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7441" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-01-15T14:26:08.473" LastActivityDate="2020-03-17T00:03:20.740" Title="Example Gantt charts in proposals - how to remove dates in MS Project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10277" CreationDate="2013-11-26T13:47:37.340" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use a different tool.  Use a spreadsheet, or visio using its timeline templates, or powerpoint using its symbols and graphics.  Proposals are usually notional, high-level durations.  MSProject is a scheduling tool designed for serious scheduling, not for pretty graphics.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-11-26T13:47:37.340" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10277" CreationDate="2013-11-26T14:03:00.833" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whilst David's answer is the right one in an ideal world, it is possible to achieve what you want by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Removing all the columns depicting start and end times (or moving the Gantt chart margin over them so they don't show), and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Modifying the timescale appropriately- For example if you double-click on the timescale headings and remove all but one tier, then set that tier to show, say, Weeks and further set the Label for that Tier to be &quot;Week 1, Week 2... (from Start)&quot; then you will get the Gantt with just Week 1, Week 2, Week 3 etc. at the top.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can then use the snapshot tool (Copy -&gt; Copy Picture) to cut an image into the cut and paste buffer for subsequent pasting into your slide, document or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a bit of a misuse of the tool, but it does work quite effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2013-11-26T14:03:00.833" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10280" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10283" CreationDate="2013-11-26T19:19:51.387" Score="0" ViewCount="388" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm new to agile but would like to apply it's methodologies to a software project where we are tasked with converting a Mathcad document into a web application.  We are typically a P&amp;amp;D organization&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are all the steps of Agile still applicable or would you tailor it. For instance do I still ask the client for a Business case and a product vision statement? Or do we skip that? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would I still sit with the client and collaborate on user stories or do I reverse engineer them from the Mathcad functionality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or maybe Agile is not applicabale at all for such a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2120" LastActivityDate="2013-11-26T21:00:52.287" Title="Applying Agile Methodolgies to a conversion project" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10271" CreationDate="2013-11-26T19:28:56.150" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I told the developer to stop working on anything not prioritized by the Product Owner regardless whether own time or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a framework point of view, this is likely to be the correct approach. It's certainly what I would recommend as an organizational statement of policy. It reinforces Scrum processes and practices (e.g. time-boxing), and reduces risks to the organization, the team, and the developer himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, from a psychological point of view, the correct team-management answer is less clear. A person's personality and drives, as well as his individual requirements for remaining tightly engaged in a project, need to be balanced in terms of the overall benefits to both him and the project as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What follows is an examination of some of the benefits and risks associated with allowing off-the-clock work. It is certainly not exhaustive, but should provide a solid starting point for your own risk/reward analysis. Your mileage will definitely vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Benefits&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; a few potential benefits to letting the developer work on something he's passionate about in his own free time. These may include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Supporting his passions.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many knowledge workers value personal achievement, pride in their work, and the approbation of their peers at least as much as they value a paycheck. Supporting these values can be good for individual and team morale.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Personal growth.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Encouraging developers to grow as programmers by expanding their knowledge of programming techniques solving problems they find interesting may lead to improved code quality and new insights for the team. Doing this outside working hours costs the company nothing, financially.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Individual investment.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone who feels passionately enough about a service or product to work on it on his own time is likely to be more engaged than someone who just wants to show up every day and collect a paycheck.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product quality.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People who are passionate about their work may be inspired during through their off-hours activities, whether or not those activities are directly related to the project. The project can certainly benefit from such inspiration, and (barring any risks as detailed below) such contributions may improve the overall value or quality of the team's product.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, caring about one's work or about a project that consumes close to 40% of one's waking life is generally a Good Thing&amp;trade;. On its face, there would seem to be few reasons to discourage this, but the potential upsides should be carefully balanced against the potential downsides for all involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Risks to the Team&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The risk to the team is that it may encourage the organization to think about non-billable hours as available for their estimates. Scrum is specifically about setting a sustainable pace within time-boxed iterations, so work that occurs outside the time-box skews the metrics and sets unsustainable expectations for the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, it risks confusion about some core agile principles such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Time-boxing.&lt;/strong&gt; Something is either &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;not-done&lt;/em&gt; within a time-box, and you don't want to set the precedent that time-boxes can be disregarded.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_aren%27t_gonna_need_it&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;YAGNI&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt; If the feature isn't part of the current Sprint, and isn't important enough to the project to be a priority on the Product Backlog, then it isn't important enough to expend resources on. Even if it's just the developer's personal resources, working on YAGNI items sets a bad precedent for the team. It may also reduce respect for the Product Owner's essential role in setting project priorities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Risks to the Organization&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While unlikely to be a significant &lt;em&gt;legal&lt;/em&gt; problem with the one-sided, work-for-hire contracts most IT workers sign these days, it's still a bad precedent to accept unpaid, private work into a commercial code base that isn't under an open-source license. You might want to consult your legal department about this, but it just seems like a Bad Idea&amp;trade; to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Risks to the Developer&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The developer himself runs a few risks here. In particular:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He risks developing bad habits related to time-boxing and sustainable cadence.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He risks a poor work/life balance that makes sustainable pacing at work more difficult.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He risks losing sight of the collective ownership of the code by thinking of portions of the code as &quot;his.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He risks identifying with the code quality of his contributions, rather than with the ability of the team to deliver value within a time-box.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-11-26T19:28:56.150" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10034" CreationDate="2013-11-26T20:04:37.547" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This worked for me when my weekend &amp;amp; nonworking shading was disappearing when I printed as PDF:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go into the &lt;strong&gt;printer properties&lt;/strong&gt;, find the &lt;strong&gt;Advanced&lt;/strong&gt; button (under paper/quality tab for me) and  set the Graphic - &lt;strong&gt;Print Quality&lt;/strong&gt; to &lt;strong&gt;less than 600 dpi&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7444" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2013-11-30T20:20:53.970" LastActivityDate="2013-11-30T20:20:53.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10280" CreationDate="2013-11-26T21:00:52.287" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Yes, Agile is applicable. Yes, follow all the steps.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though &quot;converting a Mathcad document into a web application&quot; sounds simple enough, things can get tricky. For example, are you going to try to make your web application look like Mathcad? Then you will be missing out on many things you can do in a web app that Mathcad cannot do. On the other hand, what if something that Mathcad can do is very expensive to implement exactly the same way on the web? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not sure how you got the impression that as per Agile the client owes you a Business case and a product vision statement. Not true. You should designate a Product Owner, a Scrum Master and the Development team. And this team should sit together to create a shared product vision and a product backlog. Business Cases,  roadmaps, release plans and so on can be created as needed. The Product Owner can coordinate with the client as well as other stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By all means use the Mathcad application as a good starting point to extract user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-11-26T21:00:52.287" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3540" CreationDate="2013-11-27T07:35:45.737" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can also try for the ribbit collaboration tool for project management.  It has integration with Microsoft Outlook.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ribbit.net/tools/collaboration&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ribbit.net/tools/collaboration&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T07:35:45.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10286" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10290" CreationDate="2013-11-27T10:06:09.103" Score="2" ViewCount="395" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are more people working on the project. I created like 50 tasks. The project is programming of an application. I am a project manager here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have 2 options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Assign all tasks to corresponding person and mark it by priority (1 to 5). If someone is faster, I re-assign the task to him. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Assign only a couple of task to each person and assign other based on their progress&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions for 1 &amp;amp; 2. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What if a person starts working and marks a task as Accepted, and I need to reassign it to another person? Mark it as New on re-assign?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If many tasks are of the same priority, a person in charge may chose which one to take. Good or bad?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How many tasks to assign for each person? How many active tasks should have each person?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main goal is to finish the project quickly but preserving quality. I noticed that guys take tasks as they want. That is why I thought if assigning all tasks to them is the wrong way to do it. Maybe the proper way is to have a bunch of unassigned tasks, which I assign to those person who finalize their tasks the quickest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the main issue is how to properly assign tasks to my guys. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3922" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2013-11-27T16:53:55.250" LastActivityDate="2013-11-28T11:51:56.097" Title="Immediately assign tasks to everyone or task by task?" Tags="&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10286" CreationDate="2013-11-27T11:51:59.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMBOK &amp;amp; Best Practice assumes that planning takes place as a team. You're describing a top down driven planning &amp;amp; assignment effort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I noticed that guys take tasks as they want. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you explain why that is a bad thing?  How does that affect quality or scheduled delivery?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T11:51:59.947" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10286" CreationDate="2013-11-27T12:15:06.613" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The sense I get from this question is the degree of control the OP is trying have.  Controls are certainly good but the cost of control is less fluidity, agility.  At the level of assignments I infer from the question, my answer would be: ease up.  Don't over think this.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the control point is at a higher level.  Assign all your available resources against the work package.  Let them figure it out, maybe with the aid of a team lead, how to get it done.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T12:15:06.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3145" CreationDate="2013-11-27T13:15:36.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hopefully I've understood the question correctly. I've been dealing with the same question from a Digital Agency perspective - working on major web development projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PRINCE2's conception of &quot;customer&quot; is not ideal in a software supplier / customer relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We decided NOT to put the client on the Project Board because we don't want to bother the client with project minutiae, our internal resource anxieties. Most importantly though, this maintains a contractual fence between client and us (the supplier). A healthy project has everyone's interests aligned, but placing the client on the project board potentially places too much power with the client, which could lead to mission creep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We call the &quot;Project Executive&quot; the &quot;Product Owner&quot; - this is usually the senior Account Director who knows the client the best. They represent the client in the process, but also act as the conduit if there are major budget/scope issues to resolve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if this is the &quot;right&quot; way of doing things - but it seems to work OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7452" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T13:15:36.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10286" CreationDate="2013-11-27T14:37:56.213" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might prioritize the tasks into a backlog on a Kanban board. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Set a board policy that tasks are pulled by priority so that the most important tasks (relatively) are always being worked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either assign the tasks at a daily standup, or let team members pull them into their own Work In Progress column. Limit the WIP for maximum workflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a daily standup, you will be have the agility to reassign tasks if needed, change priorities based on what you've learned, swarm to problem items and maximize flow. Focus the team on completing work rather than starting it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team members will pull new work into their WIP column as they complete work. If you set a limit of say, 2 items in WIP at a time, team members will move a completed task to the 'done' column and have an open slot in their WIP column. So the fastest people will automatically pull in work without your having to assign it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Control quality by defining 'done.' For instance, done means 'documentation is updated, code is commented, tracking spreadsheet updated,' or whatever is appropriate to quality control on this project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because all the work is &quot;on the board,&quot; tracking progress will be simplified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not a silver bullet, but it might solve your problems and keep it simple for the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7453" LastEditorUserId="7453" LastEditDate="2013-11-27T15:18:58.810" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T15:18:58.810" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10291" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-27T17:04:47.413" Score="1" ViewCount="361" Body="&lt;p&gt;We don't have an agreement on how to go about this process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The characteristics of what we are building:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is already a market, and its already saturated. Meaning there is established competition.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We don't know how our competitors do it. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No two customers are the same. Its easy to define features. Its not easy in deciding how to implement them. [Point 2 is emphasized here again].&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given this plight of things, I am of the opinion that we sit together (may be for a day or two) and generate a matrix of common problems faced by the business (I think we call this business case), and jot down their solutions - i.e. the traditional business solution (with its pros and cons), our product's solution to the problem (with pros and cons). We can freeze on this by having it reviewed with stake holders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Post this we can begin the task of creating user stories, wireframes, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, we actually go about building the user stories with a few business cases which on the whole fail to convince us on the acceptance of the system, or gives a false assumption of acceptance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the actual way to go about it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="355" LastActivityDate="2013-11-29T00:46:16.890" Title="how to do product software development?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;process-engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10291" CreationDate="2013-11-27T17:21:14.780" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;All such projects should start with a Business Case (BC). The BC should state the problem you want to solve or the opportunity you want to exploit. It should state the cost of undertaking the project (in resource and in hard cash terms) and the benefits that the business believes will arise from undertaking the project. In your case, since the nature of the product is not defined, I suggest a small preliminary project, with its own budget, to do some customer and product analysis to determine what the deliverable could look like and what features it needs to contain. The deliverable of the requirements analysis project should be the BC for the implementation project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All BCs should be reviewed, approved and signed off by the business. They are your approval to proceed and allocation of budget to get the job done. Once you are there you are into straightforward project management. How you choose to deliver the project (and therefore the Product and other deliverables) depends on your local preferences (i.e. Agile/Waterfall/some other model)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start by building a BC that stacks up (i.e. it brings more benefit to your company than the cost of completing the project- in simple terms, it brings in more money than it costs to build).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, and as part of the overall BC, nail down the features of the project and, if possible, separate them using MOSCOW, i.e. Must Have, Should Have, Could Have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get your budget.&#xA;Run the project.&#xA;Deliver the product.&#xA;Make the money (or measure your benefits realisation)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T17:21:14.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10291" CreationDate="2013-11-27T17:26:51.387" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience in managing new product development, I think the first step should be to find a launching customer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No launching customer = no reference case, no inside knowledge, IT-driven product, will hardly succeed in a satured market.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case I would recommend finding at least two launching customers that are willing to spend time and money, since the mix of requirements is too widely varying and you might up with a customer-specific solution otherwise. Alternatively, you might go for a person that has inside knowledge of the industry, having worked at potential customers, and has product management skills and is will to share.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest is just building a business case with MoSCoW, agile or whatever, but always the launching customers as partners aboard. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7423" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T17:26:51.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10294" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10296" CreationDate="2013-11-27T20:00:11.253" Score="2" ViewCount="1905" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am conflicted on how to create a baseline for a project.  Which of the following scenarios would be considered a &quot;best practice&quot; for creating a project baseline in which to measure progress and get some schedule-related EVM metrics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Background:  I have multiple project templates consisting of connected tasks that are resource dependent.  Assume that these templates are used to create identical projects at some time interval.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Schedule all tasks &quot;as late as possible&quot; leaving the entire float at the front end of the project.  This would assume infinite resources.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Schedule all tasks &quot;as early as possible&quot; leaving float at the back end of the project. Also assuming infinite resources.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Schedule each new project according to a master resource schedule.  This would mean that any future identical project would potentially have a different baseline than a previous one.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some hybrid of #1 and #2 with float distributed somewhat evenly prior to significant milestones in the workscope.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see flaws in each of the scheduling scenarios above.  What I need is to find some happy medium where I can baseline and report my project's performance in a consistant fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance.&#xA;RA&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7454" LastActivityDate="2013-11-29T15:24:12.450" Title="What is the best way to develop a project baseline?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;evm&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10294" CreationDate="2013-11-27T22:29:02.730" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you are confusing two separate things here: Baseline and Scheduling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think a Baseline is a snapshot of a project plan at a specific point in time against which you can compare future plans to assess deviation from the plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This holds true whether you front-load your project scheduling, back-load it, or something in between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You appear to be trying to create some kind of generic template for the project which can be reused in the future? That is not a baseline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you have two goals here? &#xA;1) Schedule today's project to deliver the output as efficiently as possible&#xA;2) construct a reusable project schedule template&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you have pointed out, these goals can conflict. What is a good schedule for this project may not be a good schedule for a similar future project. If it were me I would concentrate on delivering today's project as efficiently as possible and definitely front-load the schedule to get as much done up front as possible before you hit inevitable snags.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I would learn from that to build a template that is as flexible as possible whilst retaining as much of the core efficiencies as possible without becoming impractical for future projects. I would probably do his by trying to keep blocks of project activities at a fairly abstract level and not get too bogged down in granular tasks. From there you can build a vision of what a most efficient resource contour is for similar projects and then resource appropriately for the future projects where possible. Or replan the abstract template as appropriate for the resource available at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's always going to be a trade-off between the reusability of the plan versus the flexibility of the resource pool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T22:29:02.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10294" CreationDate="2013-11-27T22:34:43.543" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You do not control your float that way.  Float is a result of the planning values you choose per work package and the logic of the network you create based on task and resource dependencies.  Packages are scheduled based on that logic and your duration planning values.  To override that by arbitrarily trying to schedule late or early is merely changing your durations of your packages, thus creating new early and late start values.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No two projects are a like, no matter how similar the project seems.  You can have a starting template, but you should have no policy that demands the PM of a new project to somehow stick to that template with little to no change.  That is a recipe for disaster.  Instead, you need to assess the risk condition of each project--your environment, your customer, legal issues, work issues, staffing issues like availability, whether you are competing for the work, and on and on--that will ultimately dictate the planning values you use.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This risk posture of the new project also dictates the planning values you end up with.  For example, if your project is of high risk, you would be wise to choose planning values on the right side of the estimate distribution--vice versa if your risk posture is low.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a method of creating slack and building that into your project.  I think this is called Critical Chain Project Management.  This method calls for cutting your planning values in half and then using the balance as slack somewhere in your schedule.  That's pretty much all I know about this method and I might have that wrong.  Google it.  It is very interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T22:34:43.543" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10286" CreationDate="2013-11-27T23:58:52.017" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bottomline:&lt;/strong&gt; Apply the same rule for the whole team might reduce your work but also reduce the overall throughput of the project. Sorry, you may need to threat case by case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Here's why:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no one-size-fits-all answer for this question, as it depends on a lot of factors. You're dealing with people, and you won't have two people behaving equally in every aspect. Some aspects, though, can be &lt;em&gt;assumed&lt;/em&gt; as common for most projects, which can come in hand to give some ideas that eventually may fit your specific needs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Assumption #1: Every team member has his own speed&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you apply the same approach across the team, you might have someone struggling with a ticket for a long time (if we apply a FIFO logic for his task queue) while you may have someone on the other end jumping from task to task. Even though for the latter works to have a tasklist / pool of tasks, for the former there's no sense in keep a tasklist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Assumption #2: People tend to avoid complex tasks&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are tasks with same priority and one is more complex / longer, probably the task which requires less efforts will be picked up. That's probably the downside of your question #2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, with that in mind, I'd suggest you to split your team in two main 'work fronts': the experts and the beginners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Experts:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bigger tasklists&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;High-complexity tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assist beginners on their tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More freedom to chose tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To be used as a jack of all trades in case of issues&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Beginners:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shorter tasklists&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Medium to low complexity tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To be assisted / mentored by the experts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Constant feedbacks / progress tracking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that structure in mind... I'd suggest you to use option 1 for your experts and option 2 for your beginners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One last word:&lt;/strong&gt; Make sure that the tasks when prioritized are done by more complex to less complex... otherwise you may have 80% of your project completed and realize that the other 20% of the project is going to take the same amount of effort of the other 80%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T23:58:52.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10286" CreationDate="2013-11-28T11:51:56.097" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Basically the things goes as re-assign. Previously I was using a tool called JIRA. There once a task is created a unique id is generated and when ever that particular task is being assigned to any other person automatically it was taken as re-assign. If new task is required to be created then it should be with a unique id. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly it doesn't matter whether the task is assigned immediately or one by one if a tool is used literally. Because everything is being organized and planned up there itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7459" LastActivityDate="2013-11-28T11:51:56.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10302" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-28T22:14:52.227" Score="2" ViewCount="200" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it correct to think that a project manager should also carry the role of a recruiter and that it is entirely wrong to separate the PM role from the recruiter role? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reasons: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project manager can explain best what is to be done on a position, since he is the one giving the daily tasks and coordinating work, he keeps both a sense of the big picture and the smallest detail of work; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project manager knows the organisational culture and can identify people with the behaviour that will fit into company's or project's culture; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project manager can come up with the best pre-screening testing tasks, since he gives around tasks every day and he is skilled in leveraging the difficulty and scope of tasks; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project manager bears responsibility over the success of a project and he bears the brunt of interpersonal conflicts in the team, issues with motivation and productivity, etc. Thus he should have the biggest say who should be sourced, screened and hired, above anyone else. (By the same token he should have full power to fire people, but this is another topic).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4551" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2013-11-28T23:53:02.037" LastActivityDate="2013-12-10T09:37:25.670" Title="Project manager must be the chief recruiter?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10291" CreationDate="2013-11-29T00:46:16.890" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Who is your Product Owner?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, it sounds like what you are struggling with is that you don't really have a product owner defined for this software.  When doing software development, even if you're writing software that is market facing, someone has to represent the product ownership role as you develop your software.  Otherwise, you're developing aimlessly, and ultimately have no way of knowing whether or not your code is providing value to anyone - including the people developing it.  Product ownership is a critical aspect of software development - once you establish that, personally I would look into using some kind of agile development methodology so that you can more flexibly respond to the product owner's needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;InfoQ has a good discussion of what a product owner is responsible for, here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/03/product-owner-patterns&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Product Owner Patterns&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the critical things to be sure of is that you have a prioritized product backlog.  Without a product ownership role, there's no way to expect to have a backglog of things to work on that are important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general resource for development practices, I'd also recommend this blog, written by the engineering staff at Etsy: &lt;a href=&quot;http://codeascraft.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Code as Craft&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7189" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2013-11-29T00:46:16.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10302" CreationDate="2013-11-29T06:35:46.160" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This will depend on the size of the project, type of project and skills of the PM. &#xA;If your project is very techie and your PM is not very techie, he should delegate the recuirtment part. In some large organizations the recruitment is done by specialized teams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in smaller organizations and smaller team I agree PM can be chief recruiter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that PM should have a lot of say in who is being recruited or for what position you are recruiting but not necessarily chief recruiter. Chief recruiter sounds more like HR function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6209" LastEditorUserId="6209" LastEditDate="2013-12-10T09:37:25.670" LastActivityDate="2013-12-10T09:37:25.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10302" CreationDate="2013-11-29T11:10:45.587" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PM can be part of interview panel to understand few things ike process knowledge, domain etc..so that once he/she joins the team PM will be able to take decision to which role he/she will be suitable.  Having said that the resource manager can get the inputs from the PM and check those attributes or PM can mention that &quot;I am looking for the same skill set as the other X team member&quot;. In those cases PM need not be on the interview panel.  Again as Visu mentioned it will depend on the size of the project, type of skills, need, situation etc..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastActivityDate="2013-11-29T11:10:45.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10302" CreationDate="2013-11-29T11:14:38.110" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Only #4 has any validity of the four reasons you posted.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM is accountable for the success for the project and, therefore, should have either decision making responsibility or at least a lot of influence on the decisions about who joins the team.  That said, a PM would be best served to understand how to get the most of the employees he is assigned.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Resource selection is a crap shoot.  While the PM wants to have that control, without tested selection tools that have some proven validity, (s)he is in no better position to hire than anyone else.  Statistically, I can do just about as well as you could for your project that I know nothing about, by sitting here at my laptop with a coin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So a smart PM who understands the flaws in the selection process would not hold his/her position with too much weight, anyway.  (S)he would use a multi-selection process, which would include others, to filter out candidates.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your #1 is no good because, if the project is large with multi-technologies, the PM will not know this information as well as others on the team.  Your #2 is not good because of human biases.  Your #3 is not good because, individually, no one can do this.  Prediction attributes that we think are good predictors are usually not.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-11-29T11:14:38.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10307" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10309" CreationDate="2013-11-29T11:58:14.260" Score="5" ViewCount="4675" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently I'm part of a development team which create software and web applications; And I get assigned to tasks &lt;em&gt;randomly&lt;/em&gt; (kind of); most of the time I'm the only one working on a certain project, as other co-workers have another project assigned to them individually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel that it is extremely difficult to keep to deadlines when at the same time you have to solve issues you come across, which you can't always predict a time frame for, and so most of my tasks that keep getting assigned to me start stacking on top of each other, and some being more important than others I have to sack most of the tasks given to me earlier on to complete the more urgent ones that came in late.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to complete projects efficiently? Should projects be assigned to more than one individual, resulting in more projects overall to have no one actively working on them? Is it something I might be doing wrong? Should tasks by assigned by asking the development team who's up for it/who will be capable enough? Or who has less tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you think employees in my position should be assigned in order to complete a project successfully with least amount of truble?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7466" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2013-11-29T15:20:08.680" LastActivityDate="2013-12-14T00:02:04.077" Title="Best way to divide &amp; assign development work on projects?" Tags="&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10294" CreationDate="2013-11-29T15:24:12.450" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming that you have worked with your team to generate estimates for how long it will take to produce each deliverable. I'm further assuming that they have given you a most-likely case scenario and a worst case estimates for each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take the most-likely case scenario and create your schedule. Review this with your team against the master resource schedule and confirm that you have the team available to achieve this schedule. If enough of the team is NOT available you wll have to adjust your schedule to account for this, or get team members taken off of other projects in favour of your project, or introduce into your plan activities around getting new hires and training them up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have your most-likely case schedule aligned to team availability do the same thing for your worst-case scenario. The purpose of doing this is to allow you to report to your sponsors a &lt;strong&gt;range&lt;/strong&gt; of dates for project completion. This will really help you in the long run in terms of managing expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, run the schedule past your team and get their buy-in. Document that they agree that the schedule is reasonable and achievable, ideally getting them to formally sign-off. Distribute the schedule and off you go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In response to your specific options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1.Schedule all tasks &quot;as late as possible&quot; leaving the entire float at the front end of the project. This would assume infinite resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably not a good idea because people will tend to put things off to the last possible moment. Also bad things tend to happen at the last moment. Using &quot;as late as possible&quot; for scheduling poses a significant risk to the project by not allowing for late delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And assuming infinite resources is a very bad assumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2.Schedule all tasks &quot;as early as possible&quot; leaving float at the back end of the project. Also assuming infinite resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Better than #1, but I would tend to associate buffer with particular deliverables so that when there are internal hand-offs the receiving team is aware that a range of dates is possible. For example, the development team should be aware that requirements gathering and documentation should be complete by date XX but could be delayed by as much as 5 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, assuming infinite resources is not good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3.Schedule each new project according to a master resource schedule. This would mean that any future identical project would potentially have a different baseline than a previous one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By definition a project is a unique undertaking. Even if it is &quot;cookie cutter&quot; you will have different baselines. For example, a project in the USA that takes 3 months to complete if I start in September will likely take longer if I start in November (people are away over the holiday season) or in June (summer holiday season).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also don't see why you wouldn't consult your master resource schedule so that you are able to ensure your schedule is realistic and achievable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4.Some hybrid of #1 and #2 with float distributed somewhat evenly prior to significant milestones in the workscope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is more what I typically do, see comments under your option #2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-11-29T15:24:12.450" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10307" CreationDate="2013-11-29T22:35:57.663" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd strongly encourage you to talk to your supervisor about the project management practices your company uses.  I've been in a similar situation, and it's much more effective to be on a project team, then to have to do all project work by yourself.  If you have a team dedicated to a project, it's likely to be a much more solid piece of software than one written by a lone coder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said - what you're dealing with is a phenomenon I see where organizations assume that if every developer is doing their own project, that means more projects are being worked on, and more projects will get done in a year.  The fallacy there is that what really happens is projects are delivered with lower quality, and end up incurring a good bit of a support overhead because the management team was under pressure to get more projects done.  It sounds to me like your business needs to get better at prioritizing what &quot;the most important things&quot; are and re-align the development staff so that each of the &quot;most important things&quot; can have a team devoted to it.  Also - it sounds like your organization needs to understand the difference between a &quot;project&quot; and a &quot;product&quot; - something that I've seen cause headaches in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've established those practices, I'd suggest running the team using some flavor of agile development methodologies.  It gets any given team working out of the same project backlog, and also has processes in place for ensuring that backlog is accurately prioritized.  At this point, it then becomes the developer's responsibility to best deliver on their part of a team's needs, instead of just being randomly assigned to &quot;whatever's next&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7189" LastActivityDate="2013-11-29T22:35:57.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10310" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-27T16:31:12.427" Score="4" ViewCount="539" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a software company being outsourced by another company. Procedures for meetings, new projects, and to-do lists are emails, emails and more emails; no calling, no skyping, just emails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By this I mean, when there is a need to &lt;em&gt;change&lt;/em&gt; content, we get an email. If the client wants to upload a gallery, we get another email. If there's a bug somewhere, we get more emails. After you can't catch up, you just get a lot of unread emails with different subject lines, not knowing what they refer to or when they're due.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This, and the back-and-forth emails caused by mis-understandings, are having a massive impact on our time and productivity by having to link all the different emails on the different pages to their respective project, or tracking down a lost email about some changes that needed to be made to one of the &lt;em&gt;hundred&lt;/em&gt; projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: Is there a more easy and &lt;strong&gt;efficient&lt;/strong&gt; procedure we can follow (our company and the one which is outsourcing us) to reduce the time wasted, and the confusion, increase delivery time, and making it easier to find specific tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7466" OwnerDisplayName="Scorpion" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-12-01T00:17:43.550" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T11:57:33.580" Title="How to manage projects/to-do lists efficiently?" Tags="&lt;change-management&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10302" CreationDate="2013-12-02T04:32:44.927" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it correct to think that a project manager should also carry the role of a recruiter and that it is entirely wrong to separate the PM role from the recruiter role? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The extent of a project manager's authority to populate a project or manage the people assigned to it varies between organizations. However, it would incorrect to lump recruitment or hiring into the core definition of a project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recruitment and hiring are specific tasks that may be &lt;em&gt;performed&lt;/em&gt; by some project managers, but these tasks actually belong to distinct roles that are typically outside the core function of project management. Some distinctions between these roles are drawn below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Role Definitions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some informal definitions of the various roles relevant to your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Recruiter&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone who seeks out or supplies personnel.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hiring Manager&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The person with the authority to hire someone for a project or company.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Manager&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Responsible for planning, execution, or closing of a project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not an exhaustive list, and the roles above interact with one another and with other corporate functions (e.g. Human Resources) to staff a project. While it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; possible for one person to be responsible for more than one role, each role often requires a different skill set and role-specific expertise that often make it undesirable to put all those hats atop one person's head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-12-02T04:32:44.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10310" CreationDate="2013-12-02T07:26:57.587" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should definitely use some project tracker (or issue tracker). For small and middle sized teams and project &lt;a href=&quot;https://asana.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Asana&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://basecamp.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Basecamp&lt;/a&gt; are good. Both are in the cloud. If you looking for something really customizable or for bigger teams, then JIRA from Atlassian is the best for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team todo lists are IMO not so efficient for project management. But if you are really looking just for simple solution then you can try Trello.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7461" LastActivityDate="2013-12-02T07:26:57.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10310" CreationDate="2013-12-02T10:15:09.477" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As @stan pointed out,&#xA;Jira  tracking issues would be great. &#xA;Trello or Wunderlist for ToDO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest some readings to sync better like &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://zapier.com/blog/how-manage-remote-team/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://zapier.com/blog/how-manage-remote-team/&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://zapier.com/blog/how-build-culture-remote-team/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://zapier.com/blog/how-build-culture-remote-team/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;There are more. I am sure you might have researched. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I find Jira &amp;amp; trello to be excellent, besides syncing up with remote&#xA;counter parts over video conferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7469" LastActivityDate="2013-12-02T10:15:09.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10317" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-02T10:56:36.293" Score="4" ViewCount="393" Body="&lt;p&gt;In one of the projects, we missed analyzing a few things and missed testing a few scenarios.  We had separate SA, tech lead, and testing teams.  These resulted in  production issues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I consider that project success is one of the PM's measurements, is this more of a project management failure? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2013-12-03T19:51:10.720" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T12:08:54.130" Title="Scenarios were missed in analysis and testing phases, which resulted in production issues, is this a project management failure?" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10317" CreationDate="2013-12-02T13:40:48.267" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our inability to be perfect does not constitute failure.  There will always be defects in our testing / quality control processes in managing projects and operations.  Always.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, it would be a project management failure to stand up a testing capability that costs more than the benefit of the testing itself.  At some point, the expected impact value of a defect costs less than the cost of finding it.  At that point, you stop testing and go at risk, delivering a less than perfect product but fully prepared to fund the fixes when they're discovered.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-12-02T13:40:48.267" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10310" CreationDate="2013-12-02T22:07:39.487" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are missing &lt;em&gt;processes&lt;/em&gt;, not tools. Specifically, you are missing a formal change-management process that handles your bugs, content updates, and other important tasks in a controlled fashion.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Change Management&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a basic level, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;change management&lt;/a&gt; can be thought of as a process for identifying, controlling, and tracking changes within a system. Currently, your change management process is ill-defined because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It consists of a pool of emails, which isn't easy to search, manage, or prioritize.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's hard to enforce administrative controls like formal sign-offs via email.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's unclear from your post who (if anyone) is responsible for email intake, prioritization, resource allocation, assignment, or sign-off. These things may not even be formally defined within your organization at all.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your current process makes no distinction between bugs and new work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Change management, and to a lesser extent bug-tracking and feature planning, should be formal processes that are well-documented and consistently applied. Even an email-based queue could theoretically work just fine if the process itself was properly defined, documented, and followed within your organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Recommendations for Improving Your Process&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, apply CodeGnome's Law:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Define your process, &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; automate it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means documenting your as-is processes and procedures for managing bugs, new content, or client change requests. It's generally best to document what people are &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; doing, rather than what they &lt;em&gt;ought&lt;/em&gt; to be doing, but either will give you a baseline. This can be time-consuming, but it an essential starting point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, determine where your as-is process is not being followed (often a sign of processes that hinder rather than help), or where following the process actually provides poor results. This will help you evaluate the design- and operational-effectiveness of your current processes, and identify areas that could be improved through process engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, define your to-be processes and procedures. For example, define the new intake process for content change requests, including the roles required by the process and the procedures that task-performers will need to follow to process the change requests properly. These new processes will form the backbone of your new-and-improved workflow, and should be simple, clear, and repeatable. Ideally, they should be things you can do with paper and pencil; automation comes later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, once you have a process that is designed to address your organization's specific needs and a set of procedures to implement those processes in a traceable and repeatable fashion, then and only then should you automate those processes. Doing it the other way around will pretty much ensure that your organization will contort itself to fit within the constraints of a generic tool, rather than automating its unique processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-12-02T22:07:39.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10133" CreationDate="2013-12-03T06:04:06.307" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think what might help you is usage of &quot;eday&quot; (i.e. elapsed day) which takes one day as 24 hours. See this &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2003-project/what-is-the-meaning-of-edays-ewks/eaf5a134-8762-e011-8dfc-68b599b31bf5&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MS community page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7461" LastActivityDate="2013-12-03T06:04:06.307" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10310" CreationDate="2013-12-03T12:30:36.770" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the real problem might not be the e-mail thing, but the fact that work / change requests come in an unordered manner. Indeed, as far as I understand your question, it seems that the team handles the e-mailed requests as if they were all of the same (very high) priority, which produces this messy situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend to consider the situation in a more &lt;strong&gt;service-oriented&lt;/strong&gt; way : try and identify different kinds of work items, and agree with the company which is outsourcing you on classes of service based on their priority / urgency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would also need to explicitly limit the work in progress for each class of service. By doing so you would be able to better schedule the work without feeling like you have a thousand requests in progress at the same. Delivery times variance would also narrow down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you could have a look at the Kanban Method, and read &lt;a href=&quot;http://positiveincline.com/index.php/2011/02/kanban-prioritisation-and-scheduling-with-classes-of-service/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://positiveincline.com/index.php/2011/02/kanban-prioritisation-and-scheduling-with-classes-of-service/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4071" LastActivityDate="2013-12-03T12:30:36.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10317" CreationDate="2013-12-03T13:31:12.983" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As David says, defects at any and all stages of a delivery process are inevitable. What separates the great PMs from the others is how those defects are handled. I'm not just talking about how they are fixed, but also how they are communicated to the business and other stakeholders, how impacts and expectations are managed. The worst (but easiest) thing a PM can do is to bury the defects in the hope they can be managed away, which never works in the long term. Openness, transparancy, honesty and accountability are the watchwords here. Log all issues and risks, &lt;em&gt;actively&lt;/em&gt; manage them and report on them to anyone and everyone who needs to know the situation. Be honest about the expected timescales to resolve and keep everyone informed of the progress towards delivery...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2013-12-03T13:45:52.927" LastActivityDate="2013-12-03T13:45:52.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2141" CreationDate="2013-12-03T17:42:23.750" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can go to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/about-us/framework&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/about-us/framework&lt;/a&gt;  to learn more.  It basically provides a breakdown of marketing tasks into steps so that organizations take a broader approach, incorporating metrics and planning into marketing (imagine that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7483" LastActivityDate="2013-12-03T17:42:23.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10326" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-03T20:02:29.433" Score="1" ViewCount="2706" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My team uses &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asana_%28software%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Asana&lt;/a&gt; for all of our project communications and task management. We're very agile and lean focused and therefore our project plans are changing all the time. We love the flexibility and ease-of-use Asana offers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as project coordinator, Asana has poor support for overall project management features specific to resource allocation and stacking. The need for this is important since we do multiple projects at the same time. As a result, our team is reliant on input from team members as to how projects will stack. It's worked so far, but as my team grows, it may not be the best long-term solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What We've Tried&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've played around with OmniPlan and have experience in MS Project. However, these are too detailed for our agile and lean work environment. I'm currently using a &quot;Master Project Schedule&quot; Calendar on Google Calendar to outline the project roadmap using tags such as &quot;[Tentative]&quot; for projects we are waiting to get signed. Unfortunately, while the &quot;Notes&quot; section of each event is flexible, it does little to remedy calculating effective scheduling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With Asana at our core, how can we manage resource allocation and project stacking at a high level for an effective master project schedule?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7485" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-12-03T20:50:08.723" LastActivityDate="2016-03-19T22:06:24.053" Title="How can we effectively manage a master project schedule alongside Asana?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10327" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-03T20:28:51.013" Score="5" ViewCount="2134" Body="&lt;p&gt;My organization has several teams that are all attempting to use Scrum. Some of the teams are tied to a project, e.g. implement a new web site. Some other teams are shared services, e.g. search engine, networking, DBA. The problem we are experiencing is that the project teams drive requirements for the shared service teams, but communication of the requirements leave a lot to be desired. We have had instances where the Project team has implemented libraries that replicate what the shared service team created a year ago or the project team requests a service very late in the release cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can our organization improve communications between the project teams and the shared-services teams?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7486" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-12-03T21:13:23.690" LastActivityDate="2020-06-18T14:45:04.510" Title="Communicating between agile project teams and shared services" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;scrum-of-scrums&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10327" CreationDate="2013-12-03T21:05:46.180" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[C]ommunication of the requirements leave a lot to be desired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is both the core of your problem and your route to process improvement. It seems likely that you are missing Product Owners and Product Backlogs for each team, and do not have adequate coordination at the Scrum-of-Scrums level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to filling any missing roles and generating the necessary Scrum artifacts, your organization can leverage user stories to improve your inter-team communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Improving Inter-Team Communication with User Stories&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even without the right roles and artifacts to coordinate the teams, you can improve your processes significantly by ensuring that you aren't tossing &quot;requirements&quot; over the wall between teams. Instead, teams should &lt;em&gt;trade&lt;/em&gt; user stories that can be used to facilitate direct communications between members of each team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if a project team building a new web site needs database services, there might be a user story that says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a web site user,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I need the database to return the size of my embiggened widget in cubits&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I can place an order for a widget cozy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This story is then shared with the database team, which the DBA Product Owner can place onto the database team's Product Backlog and prioritize in coordination with the web team's Product Owner. That's the ideal you should strive for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Failing that, the user story still works as a starting point for conversations between members of the web team and the database team. It's not a complete specification, nor is it intended to be. It's a mechanism for providing &lt;em&gt;context&lt;/em&gt; between the teams, so that both teams have a common frame of reference as they hammer out the implementation details. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-12-03T21:05:46.180" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10327" CreationDate="2013-12-03T22:48:25.903" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Create Shared Understanding and Big Pictures Visuals&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, don't panic, agile or not, this is an issue with any delivery that requires coordination. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you want to look for is tools that help create &lt;strong&gt;shared understanding&lt;/strong&gt; and that help people discuss the big picture. While user stories are helpful, they can still be limiting. I would suggest that you map out your product using a Story or Journey Map. These maps act as a visual narrative that captures how a product team believes an overall user experience will play out and then it can be explored with teams and broken down to discover how teams will coordinate it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a link to Jeff Patton's site to learn more. &#xA;I recommend downloading his powerpoint presentation that walks you through the process to help you give it a try. It will help you avoid creating a map of features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jpattonassociates.com/storymappingslides/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.jpattonassociates.com/storymappingslides/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T14:25:22.100" LastActivityDate="2020-06-17T14:25:22.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10336" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10338" CreationDate="2013-12-05T02:41:36.540" Score="1" ViewCount="469" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very general question and I believe it will be relevant to other people in my situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been involved as a hobbyist in web design and development for over 2 years now. I have produced a number of websites but charged nothing or a token gesture to the people (my friends) that I've worked with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going forward as a freelance web developer, I'd like to know what tools do people use to engage their clients with&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all my successful ventures and going forward, I have used &lt;a href=&quot;http://getbootstrap.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;bootstrap&lt;/a&gt;, it offers the versatility of being designed from mobile devices upwards (I explain that to the client).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One issue with bootstrap, is, it doesn't provide a pretty backend WYSIWYG editor (like wordpress does) for the client to use - This means that I cannot charge a one-off payment to the client but instead have to negotiate a long term arrangement. The long term arrangement isn't the issue, but getting there is. In many cases clients want a solution they can manage themselves, and I refuse to use wordpress (snob - maybe).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, these are my questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Negotiation:&lt;/strong&gt; Whats the best way to negotiate a long term arrangement in terms of webpage design, hosting and ongoing maintenance? I gather charging an hourly rate for work done when the site is complete is the obvious answer but how do people factor this in to their original project proposal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Template Documents:&lt;/strong&gt; Are there any pro forma documents used for web design and costing that people have found to be beneficial?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Time scales:&lt;/strong&gt; When it comes to proposing time scales for the implementation and having read: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/8070/how-granular-should-an-estimate-be-for-building-a-web-page&quot;&gt;How granular should an estimate be for building a web page?&lt;/a&gt; are their any pro forma documents that people use to do that?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7499" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2018-05-22T20:15:36.207" Title="What pro forma documents do people use to talk to clients about web development" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10337" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-05T05:45:34.130" Score="0" ViewCount="713" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a file that has a single task. its fixed duration and is not effort driven and no resource is defined. duration is set to 10 days. after 5 days, %complete is 10%. after entering this data and rescheduling, in MSP 2007 duration and %complete remain constant (10% and 10days), while in MSP 2010 %complete decreases to 7% and duration increases to 14 days!&#xA;Why??!&#xA;Another question: I set task type as fixed unit and other conditions remain constant as described before, after rescheduling in MSP 2010, task will split and finish date changes. (for example increases 4 days). Problem happens when I copy %complete column on itself. In this case, finish date returns to its original value (decreases 4 days.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7500" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-11-09T13:54:29.943" LastActivityDate="2018-11-09T13:54:29.943" Title="Difference in %complete after rescheduling between MSP 2007 and 2010" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;&lt;ms-project-2007&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10336" CreationDate="2013-12-05T08:44:21.380" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Question 1: we use the free or cheap edition of Balsamiq (also&#xA;available online in the browser). Everything understands how to use&#xA;it and it allows XML (BMML) format to exchange ideas. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Question 2: I&#xA;don't understand the question. Do you mean templates? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Question 3: If&#xA;you mean templates, I assume the answer is &quot;Yes&quot;. But I think the&#xA;question is something different. Please reprehrase.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7423" LastActivityDate="2013-12-05T08:44:21.380" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3219" CreationDate="2013-12-05T08:49:59.093" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hi I have come across Slidiz static notes and purchased these online as I too was experiencing the downfalls of post-its losing stick and vital information being lost.  These notes are BRILLIANT for sticking to most surfaces especially glass, and can actually be rearranged and moved around without losing their stick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We actually have some up on our research and development chart which have been clinging on for over a year!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check them out online www.slidiz.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perfect solution I believe! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7504" LastActivityDate="2013-12-05T08:49:59.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10337" CreationDate="2013-12-05T14:05:14.827" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am assuming you have done the following:&#xA;Set the % complete to 10%, and set the status date to the end of 5 days.  You have then used the Update Project - Reschedule uncompleted work command to split the task and reschedule the remaining duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both circumstances, the finish date of the task is equal, so there really is no increase in the task duration.  The fixed duration task in Project 2010 is &quot;counting&quot; the 4 days during the split - in Project 2007 they are not counted.  If you look at the Tracking table, you'll see the Project 2010 task have 13 days remaining with 1 day complete 1/14 is 7% - where the Project 2007 file shows 9 days remaining and 1 complete 1/10 = 10%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Project 2010 with the default Fixed Unit task type - the task splits the duration stays at 10 days and % complete is still 10%.  I do not know why you are getting a different value - other than to ask if you have SP-2 applied to Project 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the bigger question - Fixed Units, Fixed Duration, and Fixed Work really only have value when assigning resources.  What were you hoping to accomplish using Fixed Duration tasks without resource assignments?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2013-12-05T14:05:14.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10343" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-07T10:17:04.760" Score="2" ViewCount="481" Body="&lt;p&gt;The beginning of the next year we would like to optimize our system (we working in the recruitment industry, the market is changing in every minutes). With my compeer we worked out a plan and the founders have accepted it. Moreover, we got budget and gave plenty of rope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our goal is to study our process and optimize it, and share the knowledge around the system. However, we have some negligent guys who do not really believe in our work, they are always late, don't do administrative topics, and slight our view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the best practices to make this change happen and help these colleagues to part of our initiative?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7536" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2013-12-08T10:02:21.457" LastActivityDate="2013-12-10T21:02:27.803" Title="How to manage reluctant or negligent colleagues to be interested about meetings, administration, or Kanban introduction?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10343" CreationDate="2013-12-08T09:57:53.500" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I were you, first I would figure out what is their counter argument against the change because we are talking about change here. Second, what can I do in order to make it easier for them unless we are talking about 2 persons out of 100. Finally, if the rest of the organisation is fine with the new way of working and they have only personal concerns such as &lt;em&gt;&quot;I don't like it&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, I would simply go forward and do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most common counter arguments are actually quite valid. They don't know what going to happen them, their carriers, their goals, their influence (this is quite interesting actually), and their social capital inside the company (the value of their network). Try to address these and see what is going to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-12-08T09:57:53.500" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10343" CreationDate="2013-12-08T12:27:28.277" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds as though you are looking to make a change happen within the organisation, where there is a degree of reluctance to accept the change. I wrote a blog about this a while ago - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.praefectusconsulting.co.uk/change.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;here is link to it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - which describes a change management model I have used in various ways for some years. Basically, to make change happen, you need to demonstrate a need for the change, create a vision of how things will be after the change, develop a plan for the change, and ensure you have sufficient resources to support the change process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this does not overcome the resistance - i.e. if it doesn't get the buy-in that you seek - then look at each of the components (need, vision, plan, and resources) and work out which is letting you down, fix it, and go round the loop again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the resources and the plan that I refer to is not &lt;em&gt;necessarily&lt;/em&gt; the plan you have drawn up and the budget that you have already secured. What I am referring to is a budget and a plan to gain the commitment of your colleagues who need to be won over. This could be different - but only you will be able to identify whether this is the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2013-12-08T12:27:28.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10200" CreationDate="2013-12-09T02:55:01.873" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sorry for the late response.&#xA;This is the test I was actually trying to construct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is used to check if a task with 100% completion has a Predecessor or Successor with lag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll edit the original question to be more specific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;IIf(&#xA;    ((InStr(1,[Predecessors],'+') Or InStr(1,[Predecessors],'-')) &#xA;    Or &#xA;    (InStr(1,[Successors],'+') Or InStr(1,[Successors],'-'))&amp;lt;&amp;gt;0)&#xA;    And &#xA;    [% Complete]=100,1,0&#xA;    )&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Formatted for readability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7326" LastEditorUserId="7326" LastEditDate="2013-12-09T03:03:57.547" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T03:03:57.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3219" CreationDate="2013-12-09T14:00:10.343" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand the concept of kanban, but if you are already on glass, why not just use dry erase and/or sharpies? Granted its not traditional, but it would be less expensive and less worrisome over the long run...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7415" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T14:00:10.343" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10307" CreationDate="2013-12-09T14:02:56.727" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the best way to complete projects efficiently?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no canonical answer to your question, because it is highly dependent on the organization, the skill sets of the teams, and the scope of the projects involved. However, it is safe to say that whatever your organization is doing is currently not working &lt;em&gt;for you&lt;/em&gt;, and that's a valid point worth bringing up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Projects Aren't Staffed by Algorithms&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter whether your organization uses project teams, feature teams, or a &quot;divide and conquer&quot; approach. The central fallacy here is assuming that people behave like algorithms, and that your process problems can be solved by deciding between &lt;em&gt;round-robin task assignment&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;least-used developer criteria&lt;/em&gt;. Such choices may work fine for a network load-balancer, but they fail miserably when applied to people or projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The 100% Utilization Fallacy&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also another fallacy here. On PMSE, we call it the &quot;100% utilization fallacy.&quot; This is a logical fallacy that assumes that the optimal use of team members involves keeping everyone busy at 100% of theoretical capacity, with no slack in the process. At a fundamental level, the fallacy is that &lt;em&gt;being busy&lt;/em&gt; is functionally equivalent to &lt;em&gt;being productive&lt;/em&gt;. They are not the same things at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Your Real Problems are Estimation and Prioritization&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I feel that it is extremely difficult to keep to deadlines when at the same time you have to solve issues you come across, which you can't always predict a time frame for, and so most of my tasks that keep getting assigned to me start stacking on top of each other, and some being more important than others I have to sack most of the tasks given to me earlier on to complete the more urgent ones that came in late.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on your own description, your project is sub-optimal because the project team isn't doing an adequate job of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimating work packages accurately.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Isolating new work from bug fixes or rework.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Providing sufficient slack in the process to handle modest deviations in the schedule.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Managing change requests or implementing formal change control.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Triage and prioritization of incoming tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these are fundamental process issues. From your description, the only process that you seem to have is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pour all the work into a bucket, stir vigorously, then let the developers try to serve themselves with a slotted spoon.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash; CodeGnome's Recipe for Project-Failure Soup&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what school of project management that comes from, although I suspect it comes from the &lt;em&gt;Dribble Glass Project Management Framework&amp;trade;&lt;/em&gt;. Regardless of its provenance, it's not a sustainable practice. Your mileage may vary, I suppose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Recommendations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Process issues aren't about blame; they are about improving workflow and efficacy. You should certainly bring these issues up as &lt;em&gt;process issues&lt;/em&gt; with your manager and your project management team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be politic and polite, but don't be silent. If your organization isn't interested in continuous process improvement, then you may want to give serious consideration as to whether it's a sustainable and healthy environment, and one where &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; want to remain. If not, dust off your resume and look for another job that has project management practices that you feel more comfortable with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T14:02:56.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10353" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10355" CreationDate="2013-12-09T21:45:43.823" Score="4" ViewCount="11576" Body="&lt;p&gt;Functional requirements tend to mature as the time goes by, and the initial versions of requirements for a project are usually based on assumptions (otherwise the work would never start).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the development cycles evolves, though, changes to the original requirements are required to be applied. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this specific case, the development is still ongoing, based on a master MS Word document containing functional specs plus a lot of change request (properly tracked separately from the functional document).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; How to correctly track these change requests?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Assumption:&lt;/strong&gt; The master functional doc should reflect all change requests (as that's the document to be used in the future for reference purposes), &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Open point:&lt;/strong&gt; I'm not sure if I should only spread comments over the original version, completely remove the updated pieces, use the 'tracking changes' functionality or have a rewritten Functional document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-12-10T01:10:15.877" LastActivityDate="2013-12-13T13:36:06.100" Title="How to track change requests over a functional document" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;&lt;specification&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10353" CreationDate="2013-12-09T23:29:16.243" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A common issue. There are a few approaches, but this is the one I use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Each change, or set of changes is captured in a new Change Request document. The CR document must capture the new requirements in as much detail as is required to a) approve them b) perform the functional requirements analysis c) do a reasonable estimate of the effort required to deploy the change (not just the development but all the downstream impact of deploying the change). Make sure the right people in the development team are included in the review/signoff so they know what is coming.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Each CR is assessed by the project board/the business/the sponsor/whoever is most appropriate to determine if the cost of the change is worth paying given the benefits it will bring.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the CR is approved to proceed it goes into the detailed functional analysis phase. Make sure you tell the development team it was approved so they know what is coming.&#xA;The previously approved document is uplifted to a new minor version, i.e. v1.0 to v1.1 (taking care to keep a copy of the original version). Tracking changes is set on and the document is updated in all respects to cover the CR. In the edit history you reference that this new version contains the amendments pertaining to CRxxx and, fairly importantly, list the headline changes in the edit history part of the spec e.g. Section 1.2 changed to include the new widget, Secion 2.7.1 changed to include the new widget in the integration scope etc. etc. Send a copy to the development team so they know what is coming but make sure you make it clear at this point it is yet to be approved so no-one starts development yet.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When all the amendments have been made it needs to go for approval to the same set of people that approved the CR. They can use the change tracking to see exactly what has been changed, or view/print the document in Final without Markup if they want to. They review that all changes have been made and they are happy with the new version. The signatories to the functional spec also need to review the amended document.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Iterate in through as many review/change cycles as needed until the signatories sign off the changed spec. Then save it to a new copy, uplift the version number to the next whole number (i.e. from v1.3 to v2.0), add a line in your edit history section with a comment saying Approved Version AND ACCEPT ALL CHANGES. Save it to the central project location, archive all prior versions and distribute it to everyone that needs it with instructions that it supersedes all prior copies. Run through it with the development team, talk about the changes, plan the changes into the project and make sure the devs are all on-board.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen this messed up on several occasions and it is usually down to the following reasons. Don't be tempted to try and short cut the process, eventually it will cost you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The new changes are captured in a new spec just for them, which is eventually approved and passed to the developers &lt;em&gt;in addition to&lt;/em&gt; the original spec. This is a nightmare- you will end up with different people developing to different specs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;People wave through the changes without documenting them, estimating them and properly considering the impact&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;People only ask the devs to estimate the changes/additions and forget to include the testing/QA team, and the hardware team, and the infrastructure team, oh and the release manager, and the BAs, and the MI team who have to deal with the downstream data and deliver changed reporting... etc. etc. Don't do this- Send the CR round to all the departments involved in the project so they can assess the impact of the change, then take that impact into account and cost it into the project budgets.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;People don't keep a log of the CRs so once there are over three it all gets a bit confusing&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;People don't keep the paper trail of versions and CR documents so it becomes impossible in a year's time to figure out what was changed and when.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;People don't ever go back and accept the changes and turn tracking off- So changes build up from version to version and eventually the document is impossible to read properly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;People say &quot;let's just get the change in and we'll catch up all the document merges later&quot;... It NEVER happens, and before you know where you are the project is specified in 23 different places each with shades of versions, understandings and estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically deploy consistent change control, document and track your changes even if they get rejected. Keep, as far as is possible, one single central version of &quot;the truth&quot; and make sure everyone is working to it. This can become a ballache in its own right, but keep at it- no matter how arduous it gets, it will always be much much more of a nightmare trying to retrospectively understand what the spec was supposed to be in the absence of change control and a paper trail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2013-12-13T13:36:06.100" LastActivityDate="2013-12-13T13:36:06.100" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10353" CreationDate="2013-12-10T01:02:00.657" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your assumption that you need to track changes across multiple revisions is limiting your scope of change control options. So is your use of the Microsoft Word format. I'd reconsider both unless you can:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ensure you have a single document owner, and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;track textual changes independently of your change-control approval process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you can't change either your assumptions or your tool-chain, I've included some suggestions about submitting changes through a centralized document owner and implementing revision tracking that might prove helpful. Your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Types of Document Artifacts&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Living Documents vs. Baseline Documents&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A living document changes as a project progresses. For example, a specification document may get updates when feature &lt;em&gt;foo&lt;/em&gt; is replaced with feature &lt;em&gt;bar&lt;/em&gt;, or when feature &lt;em&gt;baz&lt;/em&gt; is modified in some way. This type of living document may have sign-offs or approvals, but isn't intended to be compared to legacy versions of itself and is therefore relatively easy to maintain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A baseline document is an historical artifact. You might create a baseline specification at the start of a project, and then create new specification documents at need during the life of the project. All such documents are kept as artifacts of the project, but need not be revisions or even directly comparable. They are simply snapshots of the project's specifications at given points in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Bastardized Documents&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm deliberately using the term &lt;em&gt;bastardized documents&lt;/em&gt; instead of &quot;hybrid&quot; or &quot;shared-editing&quot; because the need for complex change tracking is generally a result of &lt;em&gt;ad-hoc&lt;/em&gt; editing. For example, if you route a document around to 37 people, all of whom are free to make revisions directly to the document, those changes need to be merged, conflicts resolved, and some sort of traceability for the changes needs to be implemented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Assign Document Ownership to Preserve Sanity&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Free-for-all changes are generally just a Bad Idea&amp;trade;. I'd strongly suggest a simpler approach where:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Documents have a single owner.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Documents are line-numbered.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People can submit requests for changes, referencing line numbers as needed, to the document owner.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The document owner makes changes and submits them to the approval body at need.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If required, the change requests can be kept as historical artifacts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, this is largely independent of the issue of change tracking within the document itself. However, actual revision control systems (think SVN or Git) can serve some of the same purposes &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; track the full history of textual revisions, too. More on that below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Value of Tracking Historical Versions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether there is actually any value in this is really a political question. From a practical standpoint, what the specifications &lt;em&gt;used&lt;/em&gt; to be is less useful than what the product/feature needs to do &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Version (or revision) tracking is really an independent issue from change control. For change control, you need to be able to define the changes (and perhaps the associated business cases) and get appropriate approvals for the new to-be specifications. If the changes are subtle, it's sometimes useful to see the as-is and to-be versions side-by-side so that the differences are more obvious, but the central feature of change control is that you're authorizing changes, rather than tracking historical versions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind, you only need to track the most recently-approved version and the new (currently unapproved) version. This violates your assumptions as outlined in the original question, but may be worth considering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Tracking Historical Revisions Separately from Change Control&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How you do this is largely dependent on your technical implementation of process. If you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; stick with MS Word, you might consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Always keeping change tracking on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add hidden notes attributing specific changes to people, meetings, or milestones that aren't captured by change tracking.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hide the changes/notes unless you're doing some sort of document archeology.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This works up to a point, but gets messy and confusing fairly quickly. If you use a more flexible format such as OpenOffice or Markdown, or even just a utility to dump text from Word to ASCII at need, you can store textual revisions in a source control system like Git. Personally, I often use &lt;a href=&quot;http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Markdown&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;AsciiDoc&lt;/a&gt; as the native document format so that I can store textual revisions in Git, and use &lt;a href=&quot;http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pandoc&lt;/a&gt; to pretty-print the documents in PDF, HTML, or Word format when needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This separates the complexity of revision control from the process of change control. It allows one to go spelunking in the revision history for side-by-side comparisons of any arbitrary pair of revisions, as well as the inclusion of notes and explanations in the history itself (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-log.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Git logs&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-notes.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Git notes&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Example of Document-Owner Model with Revision Control&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example of the document-owner model coupled with a text-based source format and a revision control system, consider the following. If Bob is the document owner, and Alice isn't savvy enough to edit Markdown or commit changes to Git herself, then Alice might submit a document change request to Bob saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please change line 17 to say &quot;embiggen the widget&quot; instead of &quot;minify the monolith.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and Bob can make the changes, attributing them to Alice, and submit the new document through the change control process for approval.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Word-Processor Based Options&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your mileage will vary a lot of you don't use a text-based native format, or don't use a revision control system. However, similar things &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be done (albeit in a more limited way) with Word and LibreOffice documents, each of which supports various types of &lt;a href=&quot;https://help.libreoffice.org/Common/Recording_Changes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;change tracking&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://help.libreoffice.org/Common/Versions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;document versioning&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://help.libreoffice.org/Common/Comparing_Versions_of_a_Document&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;version comparison&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If these features serve your needs, great! If not, at least you now have a few alternatives to your process or tool-chain that you can consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-12-10T01:02:00.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10343" CreationDate="2013-12-10T09:36:34.697" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need explain the bigger picture and make sure the goals of the project and colleagues are going in same direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Resistence to change comes because people don't see any value add from that change. If your negligent/reluctant colleagues can gain/learn from it they will readily work towards the project goal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a matter of aligning the goals, communicating honestly and clearly and setting expectations right. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As CodeGnome commented above, it would be great if you could share what have you tried so far and what are the results?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6209" LastActivityDate="2013-12-10T09:36:34.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9401" CreationDate="2013-12-11T10:36:52.437" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a good definition and explanation of differences: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/agile-product-innovation/minimum-viable-product-and-minimal-marketable-product/#comment-4050&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/agile-product-innovation/minimum-viable-product-and-minimal-marketable-product/#comment-4050&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The minimum viable product (MVP) is a powerful concept that allows you to test your ideas. It is not to be confused with the minimal marketable product (MMP), the product with the smallest feature set that still addresses the user needs and creates the right user experience. The MVP helps you acquire the relevant knowledge and address key risks; the MMP reduces time-to-market and enables you to launch your product faster&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7562" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T10:36:52.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4711" CreationDate="2013-12-11T18:50:11.303" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am software developer, i been through certification in IT and also did bachelor in software engineering. Degree gave me wide range of knowledge where as certification gave me know specific in core subject(Same applies for PMP and MBA). Secondly job requirement, companies prefer to take MBA candidate as campare to PMP or non MBA, so the MBA would open few more doors in industry. where as PMP would help you to compete with other candidates who have MBA and qualify the job requirement. &#xA;Project Management position not always required MBA but when market is stuff and 100 people for single job MBA and PMP would really help you to get in.&#xA;Beside that experience factor plays it's own role if you are not MBA and/or not PMP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7567" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T18:50:11.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1451" CreationDate="2013-12-11T19:26:37.263" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of the twelve agile principles, there is one that I have found most helpful to bringing an agile mindset to the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have had the most success with looking for opportunities to point out instances when the team has self-organized to solve a problem.  After doing this a few times, team members begin to believe in their ability to self organize, and come to expect that the other side of the statement; that the best architectures, requirements and designs will emerge.  In other words, recognizing success in this area has the effect of motivating the team and can be a stepping stone for bringing trust to your process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7437" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T19:26:37.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4986" CreationDate="2013-12-12T11:52:15.570" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My company uses &lt;a href=&quot;http://kanbantool.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kanban Tool&lt;/a&gt; - online task board with support for real-time collaboration. The interesting capabilities of this solution include: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;integrations (Zapier, API, online calendars, email)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;automatically generated analytics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;power-ups - the collection of additional tools that enable you to customize the application as well as allow you to add your own scripts. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, we use Google Drive and JIRA.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7285" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T11:52:15.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10363" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-12T14:39:01.597" Score="1" ViewCount="160" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently looking to move from dominantly presales and delivery work into more of a project management role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What coursework is most helpful in setting oneself up for success as a PM?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, what degree program type would be most helpful (MBA, IE, HR, etc)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="167" LastActivityDate="2013-12-14T17:31:26.077" Title="To become a Project Manager, what coursework should be taken?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2013-12-16T06:40:22.033" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10364" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-12T14:41:02.100" Score="1" ViewCount="15393" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please kindly help me find way to solve in MS Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have two Resources below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Employee_A = 4 hours per week only, but can work any day&#xA;Employee_B = 12 hours per week only, but can work any day&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MS Project just lets me put how many hours a resource can work on a certain day.&#xA;But what if my resource can work any day as long as he completes the given hours?&#xA;How can I setup these info to MS Project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please really needs help.&#xA;Thank you very much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7581" LastActivityDate="2017-12-07T22:37:29.473" Title="MS Project: How to set a Resource work by hour regardless of work days?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10364" CreationDate="2013-12-12T16:17:46.607" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why are you trying to solve this problem?  Planning and scheduling is not about being accurate with zero variance.  What is important is the start and end.  You want to schedule the resource start so the resource is available and you schedule when it ends because we put deadlines on things.  What happens in between is immaterial (immaterial in terms of what you are describing here, not in terms of trending analysis such as cost variances and schedule variances used to predict the future).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have no specific information about when these two employees will work, simply distribute the hours evenly across the available duration.  If you think they will work front loaded or back loaded, distribute accordingly.  You WILL accrue variances.  Always.  You need to expect them and actually want them because zero variance usually indicates someone is screwing with the books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So scheduling specific hours with total accuracy is a waste of time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T16:17:46.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10367" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10373" CreationDate="2013-12-12T18:30:10.603" Score="1" ViewCount="695" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say that we have a team of twenty, and each of them tracks their time on tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have a manager who doesn't track time on tasks because his job is to support the team, regardless of what task, plan, mentor and attend meetings. It's not reasonable to allocate his time to tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We calculate the utilization rate for the team by dividing the number of hours they tracks on tasks by the number of hours they logged to payroll. Right now a rate above 50% is good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we include the manager in the team utilization, it brings the utilization rate down. This is correct because too many managers to non-managers should yield a poorer utilization.&#xA;The manager is &quot;dead weight&quot; to the utilization calculation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In theory a manager can come on board (bringing 8 hours of dead weight per day) but take care of minutia on behalf of the team, this increasing their aggregate tasked hours by more than 8.... a net positive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This method fails when the manager is sick, or leaves early... or logs fewer payroll hours for whatever reason. If he is sick, then the team sheds 8 hours of &quot;dead weight&quot; but doesn't feel a long-term impact on their own productivity because he was only sick for the day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you account for his time then, when calculating utilization?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am considering giving him a &quot;free weight&quot; which is equal to the average task hours across the team, then weighted by the ratio of managers to non-managers on team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore if the team logs an average of 4 hours, then the manager will get 4 * (20/21) = 3.81 hours for free.&#xA;The result is that the manager &lt;strong&gt;always&lt;/strong&gt; brings down the overall utilization of the team by some margin (so his impact can be visualized on a time-series), and his absence brings it up by a similar margin (but spikes are less severe).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7435" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T13:44:38.297" Title="How do you handle utilization rates for teams with members that have no tasked hours?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;performance&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10364" CreationDate="2013-12-12T21:55:30.997" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;You can add part-time resources to your project&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you add resources to your project you can specify whether they are full-time or part-time or multiple resources. You do this using the Max Units field for the Resource Type. See the Project 2010 documentation on how to &lt;a href=&quot;http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project-help/add-resources-to-your-project-HA010377762.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Add resources to your project&lt;/a&gt;. In your case, for Employee_A you can enter 10% and for Employee_B you can enter 30% in the Max Units field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T21:55:30.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10371" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10372" CreationDate="2013-12-13T10:26:13.080" Score="3" ViewCount="3338" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working through Rita (8th edition) and there was the following question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Which of the following is an example of parametric estimates?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The correct answer is &lt;em&gt;Dollars per module&lt;/em&gt;. Of course I was able to exclude the other possibilities, however I don't know what's the meaning of &lt;em&gt;Dollars per module&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you explain it please?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4641" LastActivityDate="2020-02-19T07:59:30.770" Title="What is the meaning of &quot;dollars per module&quot;?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10371" CreationDate="2013-12-13T13:16:12.240" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea behind a parametric estimate is that you establish the measurement you are interested in against a unit that is meaningful to you.  They are using the term module to represent a unit in generic terms.  The unit could be square feet or square yards, produce release, gallons, or something like that.  You are essentially creating a ratio in the most simplest terms so that you can compare equally one effort to the next.  For example, burning 300 gallons of fuel to get from point A to B and comparing that to burning 500 gallons to get from point C to D is not meaningful.  However, if you break it down to miles / gallon, then you can compare the two different driving efforts.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apartment A rents for $600.  Apartment B rents for $800.  You are trying to establish a rent price for Apartment C.  They are all in the same geographic area.  How do you do this?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this industry, they establish the parametric of dollars / square foot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Apartment A is 1,000 sq. ft. and B is 1,300 sq. ft. and C is 2,000 sq. ft., what would you charge for apartment C?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe $1,200 assuming all else is equal??  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-12-13T13:16:12.240" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10367" CreationDate="2013-12-13T13:19:49.023" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's all a matter of perspective- the manager IS doing tasks, things that contribute to the success of the project deliverables, but not on tasks that appear in the task list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One pragmatic way would be to add a task of &quot;Covering all the management stuff&quot; requiring 8 hours per day and then the manager's time would not be invisible. Another way would be to add individual tasks that the manager has to take care of, but that would quickly become a) a PITA and b) impossible as your go down the task granularity curve and also begin to realise that many such tasks are unplanned and are ad hoc responses to current situations as they arise, i.e. unforeseeable (not nonetheless apparent).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you start to account for the manager's time, you then have to figure out what is the &quot;right&quot; amount of time to be spent on &quot;intangible&quot; management (i.e. management spent on facilitating the project not on actual deliverables) and estimation of that is more of an art than a science (just like &quot;planning&quot; how much time to spend on bug-fixing in the future)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask the PM, in advance, how much PM time is required on the project, and then get them to track their actuals against that forecast just like any other :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2013-12-13T13:19:49.023" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10307" CreationDate="2013-12-13T23:37:14.747" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As already mentioned in another answer there is no Holy Grail answer to this question, but let me give you some food for thought:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Issues happen&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not a real eye-opener, is it? Bugs, issues, defects or whatever you call them should not jeopardize the schedule, at least to a certain extend. Although rework is a loss of time, it happens in every (software) project and should be considered since the beginning. If every people - who are called &quot;resources&quot; in such a case - is stuffed with tasks at 100% capacity, any issue will make it 120%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advise here would be to identify &lt;strong&gt;classes of service&lt;/strong&gt; based on urgency and criticity, and allow some &lt;strong&gt;slack&lt;/strong&gt; in the system so that the team can expedite important bugs when they happen without killing the schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&quot;[I]ssues [...] you can't always predict a time frame for&quot;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what? You cannot crystal-ball predict how long it will take to solve a particular issue : is this really going to change the fact that the issue must be solved? If so then maybe this issue was not that important after all, and some other tasks could have had higher priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;When running too many projects at the same time, none of them will meet the schedule.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Running too many projects at the same time produces at least two effects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;People have to switch between projects&lt;/strong&gt;. Switching from one task to another is hard. Switching between projects is harder by an order of magnitude. When switching, people lose focus, experience difficulties reminding about the context and basically lose time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;People have to deal with too many things at once&lt;/strong&gt;. The human brain is not multitask. When someone has to work on several work items at the same time, the quality of his work will drop significantly. Not a surprise that making phone calls when driving (at least in France) or chatting with your neighbor in a classroom are forbidden&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advise here would be to &lt;strong&gt;limit the amount of work in progress&lt;/strong&gt; at every level of granularity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Pushing work&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]and so most of my tasks that keep getting assigned to me start stacking on top of each other&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Giving - pushing - work to someone is easy. When we tell someone to work on a specific task, we can then come back later and blame her for not having finished the assigned work, which is pretty comfortable, isn't it? But by doing so we blind ourselves : we ignore systemic problems and transform them into personal problems. The PM won't think &quot;&lt;em&gt;We have a problem with our process : we start too many things without finishing them...&lt;/em&gt;&quot; but &quot;&lt;em&gt;This guy is really slow : look at how late he is&lt;/em&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my last advise will be : &lt;strong&gt;implement a pull system&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;visualize work&lt;/strong&gt;. A pull system will make sure that the team &quot;stops starting and starts finishing&quot; (a Kanban adage, I can't remember who said it first) while visualizing work might trigger some improvements in the way work is processed (&quot;Don't tell me that we currently have 26 work items at the same time for only 4 people?!&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4071" LastEditorUserId="4071" LastEditDate="2013-12-14T00:02:04.077" LastActivityDate="2013-12-14T00:02:04.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10376" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-14T04:25:47.307" Score="6" ViewCount="597" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to know about product development planning in a particular scenario. I planned my sprint and executed it, and then I submitted the product URL for feedback and received a response from my Product Owner. In this case, in which sprint (current sprint or next sprint) should I implement the feedback? What is the normal procedure for this in agile development?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7599" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-12-15T16:28:20.333" LastActivityDate="2020-06-15T09:06:35.527" Title="Implementing Feedback in Agile Development" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10376" CreationDate="2013-12-14T11:56:47.583" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Feedback items eventually become part of the product backlog by either revising or adding new items in the backlog. These have to be prioritized by the Product Owner before the team pulls them into a Sprint/Iteration Backlog. So to answer your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;in which sprint (current sprint or next) should I implement the feedback responses&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Feedback gets implemented based on the priority set by the PO. If PO wants a feature/story to be completed before the feedback items then the team will implement the feedback in a future sprint.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the feedback items added to the backlog need to be estimated. Depending on the estimation, team may come to the conclusion that they may have to add one or more sprints to the project plan. If this is the case then it should be clearly communicated to the &#xA;PO as early as possible because that will help the PO in properly prioritizing the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An effective and efficient Feedback Loop is very important during Agile Development. However, strong and potent management of this feedback is equally critical, otherwise we'll have an unorganized and unmanageable product backlog in our hands. Not all the feedback items needs to go into the backlog. PO has a very significant responsibility to analyze the feedback and control what goes into the backlog. One of the tools that PO can use is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoSCoW_Method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MoSCoW prioritization technique&lt;/a&gt;, where each item can be categorized (or further broken down) as follows based on the product/project goal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;M&lt;/strong&gt; - Must have&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;S&lt;/strong&gt; - Should have&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;C&lt;/strong&gt; - Could have&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;W&lt;/strong&gt; - Wont have&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Wont have&lt;/em&gt; items also need to be documented and assigned a status of &lt;em&gt;closed&lt;/em&gt;, so that we dont loose sight of those and can be tracked. These items can be those feedback items which are not relevant to the product or are not cost effective to implement at this time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some reference about the use of MoSCoW in agile:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20150523232257/http://drucode.com/our-product-development-process&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://web.archive.org/web/20150523232257/http://drucode.com/our-product-development-process&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20190904025148/http://toolsforagile.com/blog/archives/46/moscow-as-a-prioritization-and-planning-tool&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://web.archive.org/web/20190904025148/http://toolsforagile.com/blog/archives/46/moscow-as-a-prioritization-and-planning-tool&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP3120/local_docs/readings/Prioritisation_using_MoSCoW_AllAboutAgile.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP3120/local_docs/readings/Prioritisation_using_MoSCoW_AllAboutAgile.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160515215721/https://www.agileacademy.com.au/agile/sites/default/files/aboutpdfs/AgilePracticesMoSCoWAgile%20Academy.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://web.archive.org/web/20160515215721/https://www.agileacademy.com.au/agile/sites/default/files/aboutpdfs/AgilePracticesMoSCoWAgile%20Academy.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this is just one of the available tools. There are other prioritization techniques which can be employed too. The goal is better prioritization of the product backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-15T09:06:35.527" LastActivityDate="2020-06-15T09:06:35.527" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10363" CreationDate="2013-12-14T17:31:26.077" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would recommend Prince2, PMP, and Agile courses if you're looking to study - professional courses teach you a great deal about project management and don't take as long/are not as expensive as degree/masters courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, project management is less about process and more about people and communication skills - you don't need coursework/a degree for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From personal experience, I would recommend (assuming you're already working in a field you want to stay in), take a prince/agile course, and try and get experience as an assistant PM/PMO etc..you will already have the product knowledge for your business area, and you can start to build up the other skills you need to do a PM role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3246" LastActivityDate="2013-12-14T17:31:26.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10376" CreationDate="2013-12-14T20:06:14.453" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Aziz provided a solid approach.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the scenario you described, it sounds like you have obtained feedback from your PO at the end of your sprint.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, then the answer is simple - you have no time remaining in the current sprint and will have to estimate and prioritize the feedback for consideration in future sprints.  Agile does not call for extending a single sprint to work on a feature or feedback.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To help one better manage the wide variety of feedback, it is one's responsibility to have user acceptance criteria (UAC) defined for user stories in a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7279" LastActivityDate="2013-12-14T20:06:14.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10380" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10408" CreationDate="2013-12-14T22:43:27.147" Score="5" ViewCount="23409" Body="&lt;p&gt;MS Project tasks are either fixed work, fixed unit, or fixed duration, where&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Duration x Units = Work&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project-help/change-the-task-type-project-uses-to-calculate-task-duration-HP010092039.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;documentation&lt;/a&gt; describes which variable is recomputed when one of the others is changed, but I can't think of simple examples to help me decide which I should use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I'm not interested in the task types you typically use or a heuristic for selecting one, because—like the official help documentation—this is too abstract. I'm not looking for a rule of thumb but an example-based framework for understanding how the task types are intended to be used. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;painting a fence&lt;/strong&gt; is a fixed-&lt;strong&gt;_________&lt;/strong&gt; task because…&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;writing a test report&lt;/strong&gt; is a fixed-&lt;strong&gt;_________&lt;/strong&gt; task because…&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="360" LastEditorUserId="360" LastEditDate="2014-05-23T16:41:55.490" LastActivityDate="2015-05-07T03:22:12.220" Title="Simple examples of the difference between fixed-work, fixed-unit, and fixed-duration tasks in MS Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10380" CreationDate="2013-12-14T23:39:00.540" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, it is not about finding tasks that fit which variable you fix, it is about fixing a variable in order for the auto scheduling, leveling, etc., in project to work.  It requires a variable to be fixed in order for it to behave a certain way.  So you would choose which variable to fix in any given package so that when you allow project to auto schedule it will behave in a predictable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, it is more about the sort of mental model I have as I am sequencing my resources that are assigned to the packages.  Because of that, I schedule almost exclusively using fixed duration.  In other words, I do not really care what project does to work or utilization.  The very stochastic effects that occur in real project work make tracking work and utilization, e.g., an &quot;over utilized&quot; resource, futile.  What I worry about are deadlines.  I need to know how progress, or lack thereof, is affecting my target deadline based on my target value I used for duration.  This makes the most sense TO ME so I want project to behave in particular way with duration in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, IMHO, do not worry about tasks that fit the fixed variable; instead, think about what is logical to you and then determine which variable you need to fix in order to have project behave the way you want.  It is a very clugy tool so you need to think about that carefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-12-14T23:39:00.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10376" CreationDate="2013-12-15T18:37:10.940" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're missing some defined meetings that would make this all much clearer. Specifically, you appear to be skipping:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint Review, which is the correct place for end-of-sprint feedback.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Backlog Grooming, where the Product Owner can work with the team to modify the user stories in the Product Backlog based on the Sprint Review and other factors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feedback can be incorporated at any point in the Sprint cycle, but feedback that generates new goals or user stories are always scheduled for future sprints, unless the Product Owner invokes Early Sprint Termination with an immediate return to Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Your &quot;Feedback&quot; is a Review&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While many user stories are conversational placeholders which facilitate communications between team members (and sometimes stakeholders, other teams, or end users), this is quite different from a review. If you are having a &lt;em&gt;conversation&lt;/em&gt; with your Product Owner about ongoing work during the Sprint, this can help the team make small corrections to help keep the Sprint Goal on track. This is one of the many reasons that a Product Owner should sit with the team, and be available to the team throughout the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, making small corrections that don't impact the Sprint Goal or significantly change the user stories accepted into the Sprint is not at all what you're talking about in your post. When you say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I planned my sprint and executed it, and then I submitted the product URL for feedback and received a response from my Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you are describing a situation where the feature-delivery for the Sprint is completed, and the team is demonstrating the features for the Product Owner and the stakeholders. This is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/sprint-review-meeting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sprint Review&lt;/a&gt;, where the team compares the results of the current Sprint against the Sprint Goal defined during the most recent Sprint Planning session.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the organization's opportunity to review the progress of the project, provide feedback about the project or features to the team, and to identify potential user stories for the Product Owner to prioritize based on the work just completed. This is one of the defined inspect-and-adapt meetings which underpin the Scrum framework, and skipping it or using it improperly is definitely a Scrum anti-pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-12-15T18:37:10.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10317" CreationDate="2013-12-16T12:08:54.130" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While the other answers are good I would just add my perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, while it is unclear why you are asking this question, if you are asking as part of a post-mortem to see what you can do better next time, then it is good and yes, something clearly went wrong. If you are doing this so that blame can be assigned to the appropriate person then you should avoid this. Blaming rarely does anyone any good. Consider it a learning opportunity for everyone on the team. Blaming introduces fear which leads to (as Marv said) PM's burying the bad stuff (which always causes bigger problems down the road).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, problems do happen and (as Marv said quite well) how you react to problems is really what separates the strong PM's from the weak. There is a reason that when planning you should always include contingency time and money...because surprises often happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7610" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T12:08:54.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10385" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-16T12:10:07.833" Score="2" ViewCount="2692" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working in a small team. On the individual level we have well-set knowledge related to our day-to-day activities. Nevertheless I am thinking that if we could share our best practices successfully and train each other, we could save time and resources as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We started short joint meetings and other proposals in order to encourage the team to share their daily problems and solutions with each other, but I'd like to increase the speed of this activity. How can I convince the team members to be to take more initiative in knowledge sharing? Can I use more tools to facilitate the process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7522" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-12-16T17:18:41.280" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T18:56:22.490" Title="How to motivate team members to share knowledge" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;knowledge-management&gt;&lt;cross-functional&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10385" CreationDate="2013-12-16T14:27:25.783" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have always found it quite useful to have everyone physically close, ideally in an open floor-plan. That is, no closed offices, low cubical walls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This kind of proximity gives rise, assuming the people are so inclined, of everyone seeing and hearing what is going on with every other member at all times. The moment someone encounters a new (for that person) situation, others become aware and can give input without delay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Care needs to be taken. This kind of floor plan does increase noise which can be distracting. Again, the team needs to learn to adjust to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal is to increase awareness and increase communication. This kind of layout does both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7610" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T14:27:25.783" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10387" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-16T14:49:54.640" Score="4" ViewCount="12146" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is a good project to teach university students project management principles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried one last semester, producing a video, but found it was too simple and the students did not have to work hard enough (and the network diagrams were too simple because there were too few tasks).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project needs to fit into a semester and should neither be too large or too small. It should not require any extensive technical knowledge (that is, no software development projects).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Ideally, the project would require only skills that most never-employed 20 year olds would have. The project should ideally not require the students to spend any money (and the school is not going to give them any either).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit 2:&lt;/strong&gt; Ideally, the project would take a group of 4 people 1 to 2 hours per week (per person) for 13-14 weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone here had experience doing this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7610" LastEditorUserId="7610" LastEditDate="2013-12-18T08:06:19.580" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T20:35:01.223" Title="Projects to teach university students project management" Tags="&lt;education&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10380" CreationDate="2013-12-16T15:11:43.077" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I generally approach task types by asking which of the three variables - work, duration, or resource units - is my most limiting factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I am fairly certain that I am unable to negotiate for more resource time (increased units) I will work with Fixed Units task types.  With a fixed unit task type if the work increases, the duration of the task must increase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I am more confident of the work estimates, I may choose to set a fixed work task type.  Then if the resource asks for addition time (duration) to complete the task, the work remains steady and Project recalculates peak units.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, like David, the issue is time and I can negotiate resource available or scope (work) then fixed duration makes the most sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rarely do I have an entire Project with only one task type.  The caution with both Fixed Work and Fixed Duration is you can overallocate a resource on a single task and the Resource Leveling command will not resolve the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T15:11:43.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10385" CreationDate="2013-12-16T18:56:22.490" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Motivation is a separate problem, and is largely about making the process appeal to team members' enlightened self-interest. The &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt;, on the other hand, is definitely something you can improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Knowledge-Sharing as Process&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum framework encourages knowledge-sharing and cross-functional teaming through a number of practices and framework-defined meetings. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/sprint-retrospective/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sprint Retrospective&lt;/a&gt; is a defined meeting for sharing knowledge about the team's &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Daily Stand-Up is a defined meeting for coordinating knowledge about the team's &lt;em&gt;progress&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User stories provide a starting point for communications between team members who must share knowledge to achieve a team objective.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pair-programming (or just pairing, if you aren't a software shop) is a practice designed to spread knowledge and experience throughout a team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Code reviews (or their non-programming equivalents) that focus on &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; things were done a certain way, rather than &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; was done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adding team training as a defined deliverable to the schedule or Product Backlog to ensure that project resources are allocated for it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Tools to Facilitate Process&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always define your process first, rather than build your process around tools. However, there are some general classes of knowledge management tools that you may want to evaluate. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wikis to collectively edit and maintain knowledge.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Centralized document repositories for manuals and how-to guides.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Screen-sharing tools for pairing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Formal &quot;lessons learned&quot; documents and reports.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Informal team demos of new or improved techniques.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Code- or document-review tools for interactive feedback.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing here is that your team and budget must support these things, whether or not you choose to automate them. For example, if your management team won't allocate &lt;em&gt;time&lt;/em&gt; for knowledge-sharing, it won't matter if you have a wiki because no one will have any billable time to add or update its content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T18:56:22.490" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10391" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-16T20:21:01.990" Score="2" ViewCount="574" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've a developer. I've always felt very negatively towards the concept of agile, especially during product development before a launch. I've worked in a number of agile teams and I've never really seen the benefit. I know that I can't avoid agile development and was thinking that the only way to truly understand the benefits is to become a certified Scrum Master. Is this a good idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7616" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-12-16T22:44:03.433" LastActivityDate="2016-11-11T03:14:51.000" Title="I don't understand or like agile; should I become a certified Scrum Master?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;certification&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10391" CreationDate="2013-12-16T23:13:37.637" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[I think] the only way to truly understand the benefits [of agile] is to become a certified Scrum Master. Is this a good idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. Agile practices encompass a spectrum of practices and frameworks well beyond Scrum, so a Scrum Master certification won't necessarily impart agility in a broader sense. In addition, doing more of something you dislike is not setting yourself up for success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, you should look for roles in organizations or job sectors that use a framework more to your taste. You can even make desirable project management methodologies part of your job search or interviewing criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How is Scrum Mastering Like Teaching?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you hate math, should you become a math teacher? Probably not. You won't enjoy your time spent learning the subject. Even if you eventually master the material, you'll probably have a hard time inspiring anyone else to learn about a subject that you intrinsically dislike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some ways, being a Scrum Master is quite similar to being a teacher. You are not only the shepherd of the Scrum framework for the organization, but you are also often called upon to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;educate teams in the methodology,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;dispense Solomon-like wisdom based on your experience with the framework, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;be an evangelist for the framework and its practices.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those things are hard to do if you actively dislike the very framework you're responsible for promoting. That will not set you (or your team) up for success with Scrum or any other agile framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Instinctual Drift and ScrumBut&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, if you lack passion for the framework or disagree with its &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;underlying principles&lt;/a&gt;, you are going to struggle with finding solutions to process problems that don't violate core principles. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instinctive_drift&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Instinctual drift&lt;/a&gt; will lead you into grafting non-agile patterns onto your process, leading to a perniciously-persistent &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/ScrumBut&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ScrumBut&lt;/a&gt; environment that will (over time) look more and more like whatever framework you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; feel comfortable with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Recommendations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Learn More About Agile Frameworks&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to learn more about agile frameworks, by all means take a class or workshop to learn more about them. Take your pick from any agile topic that interests you, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kanban&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lean&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Extreme Programming&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cynefin&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Find Roles Based on Your Preferred Framework&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite what you may believe, non-agile frameworks are still quite prevalent in the field of project management. Whether as a developer or a project manager, you can certainly search out roles that use more traditional frameworks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, if you go that route I would encourage you to ask employers about their project management methodology during interviews. Find out if they do big up-front design, or ask whether they use detailed specifications instead of user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever it is you dislike about agile methodologies, figure out what your preferred approach is and seek out positions that value that approach. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hate pair programming or cross-functional teams? Find individual-contributor roles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hate user stories? Find roles that are based on up-front specifications.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hate incremental planning or iterative development? Find organizations that use waterfall development or traditional project scheduling approaches.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever it is you want, it's out there somewhere. Unless you're a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3aserf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;serf&lt;/a&gt;, vote with your feet and work within an industry or organization that uses project management practices more to your liking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T23:13:37.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10387" CreationDate="2013-12-17T07:56:22.493" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The automation for the university admission system can be a sample project. Or the on-campus hiring/placement system can be another project they can work on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6209" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T07:56:22.493" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10395" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-17T08:20:36.237" Score="8" ViewCount="7342" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a project manager working with a product development team. We are using SCRUM with our development team. We have a heavy backlog list, that we are working on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue that I am having is, we have now released several versions of our product and we need to have a team on maintenance mode as well. This is mainly due to the fact that from the previous releases we have done, there are customers who are using the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have got a separate team and added two of my existing development team members to work with that maintenance team. We rotate two people after every release from the development team to the maintenance team and bring the previous two back to the development team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue I have is with the new comers in the maintenance team, it is very difficult to get them to work independently on LIVE bugs, small requirements etc., and the development team personnel eventually end up working on bugs, client requirements etc. This impacts sprint delivery and the development team is now missing the sprint deadlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have researched and read articles on this subject, but still I am not 100% confident on what is theoretically explained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help from anyone who has faced similar situation would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7620" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2013-12-18T23:09:15.533" LastActivityDate="2017-10-07T19:19:30.527" Title="How to manage a product development and maintenance team" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;maintenance&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10391" CreationDate="2013-12-17T08:27:59.040" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Becoming a certified Scrum Master helps you understand Scrum more , but it will not make you to believe it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Benefits from agile process is a believe rather than a scientific proof to me, as no control experiment for agile process has been conduct (or could be conduct).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there is some organisation working with ScrumBut as CodeGnome stated, which makes Scrum harder to be evaluated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you should enjoy using completed component from you co-work if their component is comply with a good definition of done. Task in agile process could be easier to comply with definition of done as tasks can be broken into small pieces. So scrum show you the way in developing better quality product, but you can always achieve a better quality without it / using other methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5305" LastEditorUserId="5305" LastEditDate="2013-12-18T04:57:27.457" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T04:57:27.457" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10387" CreationDate="2013-12-17T09:08:42.490" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I signed up for the course &quot;Project Management&quot;, honestly, I didn't expect too much. Thing is, I attended similar courses before and most of them were just boring. I mean, theory is nice and good, but you don't believe it until you get some hands on experience. People are like that and it's good, though sometimes annoying for the teachers ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyways, the &quot;Project Management&quot; (compact) course really changed my way of thinking! Why? Well, it had three major reasons (the second and thrid being more important to me than the first):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The lecturer came from a small company and, thus, new what he was talking about. He gave examples for everything he was talking about. I mean, real-world examples, not these boiled down, idealized, artificial things...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He used his management techniques to organize the course! He showed us everything in practice by managing 60 students he had never seen before in an agile manner. He let us participate and reacted to our questions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He let us prepare different aspects in smaller subgroups. Thereby, he made us use the management techniques ourselves. We did Mini-Scrums (4 iterations in 20 minutes: split the work and assign the tasks, begin the work, finish the work, combine the work to the end result), we used timeboxing to prevent discussions to loose focus, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in the end, he showed that what he taught worked in the larger scale (whole lecture) and he made us practice it ourselves (subgroups). In the meanwhile he spiced the theory up with stories about his experiences. The result was one of the best courses I every took.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6990" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T09:08:42.490" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10395" CreationDate="2013-12-17T09:42:11.807" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maintenance team skills are mainly significant recreating the bug, analyis and then coding, testing(unit, regression, UAT, BAT etc...) and deployment.  They do the same in the development projects too.  Domain knowledge is also very important for Maintenance team.  As there is no root cause mentioned not sure why your developers are unable to perform this.  Discuss with them what is their challenges individually and plan your solutioins for each individual accordingly. The basics for maintenance and development both are same.  In fact as the requirements are small it should be easier in maintenance space.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T09:42:11.807" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10380" CreationDate="2013-12-17T13:09:31.330" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For my consulting IT work, &quot;Fixed Work&quot; is usually the type I go with. Schedules and resources are more flexible for us, but the financial aspect related to firm proposals, and staff hours available to meet that proposal, are critical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3493" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T13:09:31.330" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-12-17T13:09:31.330" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10387" CreationDate="2013-12-17T16:09:15.647" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why don't you get them to plan out their educational careers? There is a huge amount of potential for them to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Articulate a vision of where they want to be in 5-10 years&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Develop a business case to justify spending Mum's $$ on their education&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify soft as well as hard benefits and costs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify stakeholders that they need to engage (Mum, profs, future employers, future spouse, etc etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify risks and risk management strategies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define key deliverables and workflow, along with roles/responsibilities for their realization&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work out a benefits realization strategy for post-project confirmation that benefits are being accrued&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If nothing else you'll be doing a bunch of 20-somethings a favor by forcing them to think beyond a one-semester time horizon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T16:09:15.647" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10391" CreationDate="2013-12-17T18:52:46.520" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Agile is for complicated and complex projects&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible that the projects you worked on in the past met the following two conditions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The requirements are well agreed upon.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The technology used to build the product was close to certainty.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this was the case, it is understandable that you didn't need agile. Perhaps this is why you didn't like it. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brilligence.net/the-agile-sweet-spot/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;You can read more about what kind of projects could benefit from Agile here.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is that you spend some time trying to understand what you didn't like about agile. May be you can expand on your question above articulating what you didn't like about agile. If your dislike is because of lack of understanding, then you can spend some time digging into it. If you understand it and still don't like it, then I agree with @CodeGnome that &quot;you should look for roles in organizations or job sectors that use a framework more to your taste&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T18:52:46.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1973" CreationDate="2013-12-17T19:19:25.040" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Shorter Sprints generally Trump longer Sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a much longer blog post &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilepainrelief.com/notesfromatooluser/2013/07/choosing-sprint-length-shorter-trumps-longer.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Shorter Trumps Longer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pros&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Since the team has more but shorter retrospectives they have more&#xA;opportunities to try smaller changes. This also provides more&#xA;opportunities to learn. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More frequent Sprint Reviews give the Product&#xA;Owner more feedback and more frequent opportunities to change. This&#xA;should largely eliminate the need for the Product Owner to ever ask&#xA;for a change (i.e. new Story) in the current Sprint. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Impediments and Slowdowns are highlighted more quickly, since the team is expected to&#xA;get the feature(s) to done by the end of every Sprint. This forces&#xA;the team to come to terms with things that are slowing them down.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shorter cycles make planning easier, which increases focus and&#xA;reduces the amount of “dark work”. Forces teams to do a better of job&#xA;of slicing Stories or Features into smaller chunks. This increases&#xA;visibility and gives the Product Owner better control over&#xA;prioritization and deprioritization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cons&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It’s harder to get to a finished product at the end of one or two week cycle. Caveat this is true at first however most teams are able to get the hang of it after three to four Sprints.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Working in one week Sprints can be more stressful at first.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Overhead – people say that the Sprint Meetings are too much overhead for a one week Sprint. However sprint meetings scale linearly with the length of a Sprint. So a one week Sprint will have 2hrs of Sprint Planning, a two week Sprint have 4hrs and so on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today most teams I encounter pick two weeks Sprints. Some go as short as a week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2254" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T19:19:25.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10395" CreationDate="2013-12-17T20:28:42.017" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;SCRUM is not an acronym. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do not need two teams. Try running textbook style Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you're not properly respecting the velocity of the team. If the team does not deliver all of the stories for the sprint then you should attempt fewer stories next time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You incorporate the distraction of maintaining releases in the velocity of your team. &#xA;All work, including small features and bugs should be product backlog items. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to get the basics of a Scrum team working before changing processes (Scrum Buts). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6608" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T20:28:42.017" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10395" CreationDate="2013-12-17T20:49:01.300" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Rotate all of the developers&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looks like you have created what &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/agile-product-innovation/innovation-and-maintenance/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Roman Pichler calls &quot;a two-class society with the cool feature developer doing rad innovation work, and the poor old maintenance guys slaving away at mind-numbingly boring bug fixes&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rotate all of the developers, including the new comers in the maintenance team. It will do way with the stigma as well as help with knowledge sharing. This should help improve productivity and collective ownership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T20:49:01.300" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10405" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-17T22:46:47.257" Score="10" ViewCount="775" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm about to take over an IT team that lacks organisation between members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The employees are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Part time lead software developer &amp;amp; team leader; Onsite; (Me)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Full time IT all rounder (Helpdesk, low level sysadmin, software development); Onsite&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contracted system administrator; Off site; Moderately expensive&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contracted database administrator; Off site; Expensive&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contracted system administrator; Off site; Expensive&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need to optimise my time managing this team since I'm doing majority of development for our systems and I'm part time (3-4 days a week). I therefore have a few questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What overarching advice could you give managing a remote team?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I use agile scrum (online board) in my own development, should I integrate this team into a my scrum board so we can track issues between ourselves in sprints?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If so, should I use a single board for the whole team or split it up?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7632" LastEditorUserId="3912" LastEditDate="2013-12-18T21:47:36.637" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T12:16:15.400" Title="Taking over a disorganised team" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;remote-teams&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10405" CreationDate="2013-12-17T23:15:41.080" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The overarching advice is to &lt;strong&gt;do whatever works&lt;/strong&gt; for you and the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best scrum process with the best scrum team will be nothing but an impediment if priorities change several times a day, while even the worst specification nightmare carried out by the most incompatible team may still profit from a scrum that's done well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming the work your team does is &lt;em&gt;mostly of the helpdesk/ticket&lt;/em&gt; kind, what's pressing &lt;em&gt;can change rapidly&lt;/em&gt;. For this you should maybe look into &lt;strong&gt;Kanban boards&lt;/strong&gt; instead of scrum. The difference is &lt;em&gt;minute but can be critical&lt;/em&gt; in this case. Basically think of it as a &lt;em&gt;scrum with sprints that last exactly one task&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;After that task is done, the team member goes back to the backlog and grabs the next task&lt;/strong&gt; with the highest priority. Usually estimates are an unnecessary overhead, and there's no point in sprint plannings and sprint commitments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will give you &lt;strong&gt;greater flexibility as well as visibility&lt;/strong&gt; for the whole team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both &lt;strong&gt;scrum and kanban&lt;/strong&gt; are designed to &lt;strong&gt;have the team manage itself&lt;/strong&gt;. They &lt;em&gt;plan and assign their own work packages&lt;/em&gt;, tackle what ever fits best for that moment within the &lt;em&gt;scope of their commitment&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;don't check&lt;/em&gt; back all the time to see whether there's anything that the manager would rather have them work on. This &lt;strong&gt;may not work for teams where contractors are involved on an hourly basis&lt;/strong&gt;, only when they are needed and have work assigned to them. This is the wrong flavor of agile for these situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there's &lt;strong&gt;only one set of responsibilities&lt;/strong&gt; (either the rapidly changing scope of support work or the more structured backlog driven development cycle), having one board is fine. I would strongly &lt;em&gt;advise against merging two sets that have very different constraints when it comes to planning&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7155" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T23:15:41.080" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10407" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10410" CreationDate="2013-12-18T01:26:37.460" Score="4" ViewCount="196" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm studying the &lt;em&gt;PMBOK Guide&lt;/em&gt; together with &lt;em&gt;Head First PMP&lt;/em&gt;. I'm confused about the distinction between portfolios, programs, and projects. If I have only one project, do I still have a portfolio?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="203" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-12-18T23:53:01.583" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T15:05:18.220" Title="Can I have a have a project without having a portfolio?" Tags="&lt;definition&gt;&lt;portfolio-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10380" CreationDate="2013-12-18T05:45:11.497" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fixed-duration&lt;/strong&gt; example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_Effort&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Program Management Level-of-Effort&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not a work item directly associated with the project product but one that supports it; its duration is based on the duration of the activity it is supporting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because duration is fixed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;more &lt;strong&gt;units&lt;/strong&gt; (i.e. more project managers) means more hours spent managing. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;less &lt;strong&gt;work&lt;/strong&gt; means less units are required.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Increasing &lt;strong&gt;duration&lt;/strong&gt; means the management supports the project longer and thus does more work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For fixed-unit and fixed-work tasks revising either units or work changes the duration. They differ in what's recalculated when duration is changed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fixed-unit&lt;/strong&gt; example: writing a report where the depth of the analysis is flexible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paul's analysis skills are so specialized only he can write Report X. If the duration changes then the scope of the report (i.e. the work) changes with it so he can finish on time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fixed-work&lt;/strong&gt; example: painting a fence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How long we have to paint the fence determines how many people need to work on it. Less time means a larger crew of painters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="360" LastEditorUserId="360" LastEditDate="2014-05-23T17:07:34.147" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T17:07:34.147" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10407" CreationDate="2013-12-18T09:05:46.003" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the PMBOK, a Portfolio is a collection of projects or programs and other work that are grouped together to facilitate effective management of that work. So, with only one project, strictly speaking, you also have one portfolio. Also you probably wouldn't call it that...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Portfolio Management then becomes the centralized management of one or more portfolios, which includes identifying, prioritizing, authorizing, managing, and controlling projects, programs, and other related work. So, with only one project, there's really nothing to do here. It all comes down to managing the single project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea behind Portfolios is to leverage synergy effects between projects and to manage multiple projects. Hence, it makes no sense to speak about Portfolios with only one project. The concept is not appropriate for that scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6990" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T09:05:46.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10405" CreationDate="2013-12-18T12:08:02.637" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My background is mostly in Agile methods (XP and Scrum) and I do have experience with running remote teams. You're asking for advice which probably makes your question a bit too subjective. You've also posted three questions, which would be better split into separate ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a way, I disagree with, &quot;do whatever works for your team&quot;, because how do you actually know that it is really working for you? How do you know you're doing it right? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start with something off the shelf. Only optimize for your team after you when are sure you (and your team) have enough expertise to know why you should make the change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't make too many changes at once and measure the success of any change you make in terms of velocity. Avoid being a ScrumBut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 Overarching advice:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd start off with a prescriptive method, one that can be easily and consistently applied. This way you can get all your team to work from a book or simple guide. The consultants I used really appreciated that I was using a standard Scrum process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Help facilitate communication by ensuring that even when communication happens locally it is broadcast via email. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use cloud/internet tools to run your processes. I've used, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rallydev.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rally&lt;/a&gt; for managing Scrum. &lt;a href=&quot;http://planningpoker.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Planningpoker&lt;/a&gt; for estimation, and corkboard.me for retrospectives. We used Google hangouts with a webcam for all group meetings, including the daily scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 Should I use Scrum?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're experienced with Scrum then it is likely a good choice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 Should I use a single board?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My default position is yes, but you haven't really given enough information as to why you're considering two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6608" LastEditorUserId="6608" LastEditDate="2014-01-30T12:16:15.400" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T12:16:15.400" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10412" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-18T21:19:46.627" Score="9" ViewCount="2241" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been working on the risk-management topic in software development for a while. According to the different literature there could be knowns knowns (typical risks), known unknowns (product related risks), and unknown unknowns (black swans).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;known knowns&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have some industry statistics and can use some simulations (e.g. RISKOLOGY) so you can add say 20% to scope and schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;known unknowns&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here you can brainstorm with the team and come up with the list of project related risks, and come up with preventive actions and estimate them, so these can be included into the scope. But what about the remainder of the known unknowns? Should you plan for contingencies? How much? 10%?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;black swans&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just plan for contingency? How much? 20-30%?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you plan for these risks at the project initiation or planning phase, especially when customer asks for estimates? How do you usually present all these different types of risks to the customer, especially if the risks double the budget or schedule estimates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7644" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-12-19T00:02:34.967" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T00:02:34.967" Title="How do you plan for risks in your project's estimates?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;risk&gt;&lt;budget&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10412" CreationDate="2013-12-18T21:48:10.313" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Risks are typically classified into these two categories:  Known Unknowns and Unknown Unknowns.  You can break the latter down into Unknown Knowable Unknowns and Unknown Unknownable Unknowns.  Known knowns are not risks since this implies certainty.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have two types of drivers when it comes to your budget and schedule risks.  The first driver is aleatory in nature, or random variables that will drive your results.  The best visual is to establish a 3-point estimate--e.g., best case, $1,000; most likely $1,500; worst case, $2,800--and draw a triangular distribution connecting these three values.  For simplicity, let's say you establish your budget at $1,600, $100 above the most likely in your estimate.  This leaves the range from $1,601 to $2,800 as your unfavorable exposure and everything below $1,600 as your favorable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your second driver are more discreet type risks, or epistemic risks.  These are specific threats that you can identify and calculate the likelihood and impact.  Because of the specificity of the threat, you can calculate the mitigating costs as well as what value you want to propose for contingency, maybe based on expected monetary value.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your last question is not easy to answer.  This depends on how you are contracted with your customer.  If you are going in with risk, i.e., a fixed price contract, your customer does not need to know what you built into your proposal for risk.  None of his/her business.  If T&amp;amp;M or cost plus, then it becomes a joint discussion about your threat assessments, the costs you calculated, and a joint decision about what to put into reserves.  Your target values is what you put under contract.  The reserves are not in contract but held by the customer to use in case bad things happen.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, the presentation of your proposal is not easy.  Customers want to hear a guaranteed success at near zero cost.  That's your challenge as a seller of services.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T21:48:10.313" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10412" CreationDate="2013-12-18T23:04:51.757" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Risks can be accepted, controlled, or transferred. Your project plan should certainly include risk analysis and recommended controls, but the risks properly belong to the project stakeholders. As the project manager, you should focus on documenting the risks and providing reasonable project controls for those risks that aren't accepted or transferred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Targets vs. Estimates&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every project has a target. In most cases, the management targets for projects are unrealistic. For example, a project that is estimated with best-case scheduling and no slack in the process is unfortunately common, and will represent your best-case scenario for the project in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An estimate, on the other hand, measures what you think you know and then factors in your &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cone of uncertainty&lt;/a&gt; and other risk analysis figures to arrive at a more realistic estimate. The more you know about the problem domain, and the more you know about the risks you may face, the more accurate your estimates will be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, you may find it helpful to offer your estimates as a range rather than a set of fixed numbers. The size of the range inherently implies uncertainty, which is really the point: you're making an educated guess based on a set of assumptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Fudge Factors&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An alternate method is to apply a &quot;fudge factor&quot; to your estimates. This can be based on historical measures (e.g. your projects typically come in +/- 20% of the realistic estimate) or on risk tolerance (e.g. your project can tolerate schedule slippage &amp;lt;= 10%).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a big proponent of transparency in planning, so if you go this route I'd certainly make a point of acknowledging that this figure is a fudge factor, rather than the result of a quantitative analysis. In Scrum, I typically apply a fudge factor of 0.6 for new teams, and 0.8 to established teams, but your mileage may definitely vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Explicitly Document Assumptions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Risk is never zero, and estimates are not guarantees. In general, I've found that the best way to handle this reality is to simply document them as part of your project assumptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, your project documentation may include a formal or informal risk analysis, as well as a target schedule or set of estimates. By documenting the assumptions that underpin your project plan, you improve communications and provide for contingencies at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider an imaginary project where you assume:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a schedule variance of plus/minus ten percent,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a budget variance of plus/minus ten percent, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a supply chain that will not deviate outside of your schedule or budget variance. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If any one of these assumptions turns out to be false at some point during the project, then stakeholders can re-evaluate. The organization may decide to take any number of actions if the project is out of tolerance, including changing the plan or canceling the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Your Role: Not a Guarantor&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're selling fixed-price services, then you need to bake that risk into your estimates, too. Sometimes your organization comes out ahead, and sometimes it doesn't. If your organization can't tolerate that risk, then don't do fixed-price contracts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that your role as a project manager is primarily to apply reasonable controls to the project, and to routinely communicate the status of the project to stakeholders. Politically, project managers may get blamed if a project slides off the rails, but try to keep in mind that your role is to &lt;em&gt;track the project&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;apply project controls&lt;/em&gt;. You can't actually guarantee an end result, nor should you try. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to sell customers a pig in a poke, switch to the sales department. Otherwise, use your position to educate stakeholders about the scope and assumptions contained in your project plan, and be prepared to explain how you came up with the planning numbers that &lt;strong&gt;management and clients&lt;/strong&gt; must approve to move the project forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T23:04:51.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10395" CreationDate="2013-12-19T09:21:26.020" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would assign a fixed &lt;strong&gt;capacity bandwith&lt;/strong&gt; for each major workstream, and manage this in a timeboxed fashion. In your case, this might be&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;New developemnt&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Support&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;New user setup&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have written about it &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2162/what-approaches-exist-for-long-term-planning-and-responding-to-change/2202#2202&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/9099/how-to-allow-developers-to-get-enough-quality-development-time-while-keeping-to/9414#9414&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; on this list. Please check those answers out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Luck,&#xA;Stephan&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T09:21:26.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10395" CreationDate="2013-12-19T16:57:00.427" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on the total number of developers you have available in your dev and maintenance teams it may make sense to re-combine them into a single team, some or all of whom work on both maintenance and on-going development. You can then handle maintenence in one of two ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Add all the tasks into the backlog, estimate them and add them to sprints as you would any other task [this won't work for ad-hoc, urgent work of course].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Keep the tasks separate from the backlog and work on them as required along with the remainder of your sprint tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to the latter one is to make an estimate of how many hours/days (or equivalent story points) the maintenance takes during a typical sprint period and make sure this is factored in when you are planning your sprint goal. For example, if an ideal two week sprint allows you to complete 100 story points but maintenance is likely to use up 20 story points of effort then you can only commit to 80 story points from your backlog in each sprint. This will take a while to balance out but this is really what velocity is a measure of - how much project work you can get done once you've factored in all the other interruptions that take place in reality. Maintenance can just become another one of those interruptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefit of this approach is that everyone is working on both dev and product maintenance. You'll make sure you don't make the same mistakes again if you're the one fixing it every time it breaks! It also lets your team scale up or down on the maintenance requirements during each sprint (e.g. 'this week we've got to deploy patches to 12 clients and upgrade a server so there's no way we can commit to more than 60 story points on product dev')&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also want to consider '&lt;a href=&quot;http://leansoftwareengineering.com/ksse/scrum-ban/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrumban&lt;/a&gt;' (or even pure Kanban) as an approach - I've found this quite effective when dealing with lots of bug fixing while continuing to build new features/products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T16:57:00.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10391" CreationDate="2013-12-19T17:12:34.707" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. Becoming a CSM seems like a pretty expensive and time consuming way of trying to convince yourself that you like something that you clearly don't. CodeGnome is right that there are plenty of roles out there for PMs, Devs and others who would prefer to work in a non-agile environment. And there's nothing wrong with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it took me a while to see the benefit of agile from a PM perspective so there is still hope!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're looking for evidence that Agile actually &lt;em&gt;works&lt;/em&gt; you could read through this paper - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.itu.dk/people/oladjones/semester%203/advanced%20it%20mgt%20and%20software%20engineering/project/materials/empirical%20finding%20in%20agile%20methods.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Empirical Findings in Agile Methods&lt;/a&gt; - or this paper - &lt;a href=&quot;http://secure.com.sg/courses/ICT353/Session_Collateral/TOP_03_ART_06_ARTICLE_ABRAHAMSSON_New_Directions_Agile_Methods.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;New Directions on Agile Methods: A Comparative Analysis&lt;/a&gt;. Both of these acknowledge the wider issue that has been touched on by other contributors here - how you &lt;em&gt;define&lt;/em&gt; agile really matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a huge difference between, say, XP (which is actually quite strict in its structure) and Kanban (which defines almost nothing). I've worked places that claimed agility without really understanding or implementing it (it was just a management buzzword) and in other places that were agile almost without knowing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, I'd suggest not worrying about it too much. Learn about it if you need to be convinced. But the best way of learning is usually doing and if you've done it and you're not convinced then move on. Nobody's going to want a Scrum Master who doesn't like Scrum!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T17:12:34.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10395" CreationDate="2013-12-19T23:42:09.403" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;What You're Doing Wrong&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[T]he development team personnel eventually end up working on bugs, client requirements etc. This impacts sprint delivery and the development team is now missing the sprint deadlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By failing to protect the development team from unscheduled work, and not following the rules of Scrum by calling for an Early Termination and a return to Sprint Planning as soon as you learn that the Sprint Goal can't be met, you have gotten exactly the results you should expect from your current process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes sprints fail. Sometimes unscheduled work happens. However, there are well-defined Scrum procedures for dealing with those events. If you don't follow them, why are you expecting success?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Why You're Doing It Wrong&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your organization is not prioritizing work, and it's not acknowledging real-world velocity or work-in-progress limitations. In &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/10395/how-to-manage-a-product-development-and-maintenance-team#comment12544_10404&quot;&gt;your comments&lt;/a&gt; you say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So one release may result is many clients finding issues and needing quick fixes as well as they may have small customization that needs to be done to them ASAP. So how do I tackle that without impacting the mainstream development?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the organization is not making wise strategic choices about how to spend its time, money, or resources. Support and change-requests &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; add drag to your new-feature velocity, and that should be clearly reflected in the priority of items in the Product Backlog and in your teams' velocity metrics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is the Product Owner's job to prioritize, and the teams' responsibility to only accept as much work into each sprint as they realistically expect to complete. Meanwhile, the Scrum Master must ensure that everyone is playing by the same set of rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the Product Owner tells you support and new features are both of equal priority, that person is not fulfilling the requirements of the role. The Product Owner's &lt;em&gt;job&lt;/em&gt; is to allocate available capacity to whatever is most important to the organization for the duration of the current Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the teams aren't saying &quot;no&quot; to work that they know they can't accomplish, they aren't fulfilling the requirements of their roles either. The job of a Scrum team is to estimate the work involved as accurately as possible, and only commit to the volume of work they can complete at a sustainable pace.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the Scrum Master isn't educating the organization about how to apply Scrum, or is not playing referee and calling a time-out when the Product Owner or the team aren't fulfilling their roles properly, then the Scrum Master isn't fulfilling that role either. A process failure isn't the Scrum Master's fault, but not making the process failure visible and transparent &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What To Do Instead&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't flog your team until morale improves. Don't turn every sprint into a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_march_%28project_management%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;death march&lt;/a&gt;. Instead, fix your process by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Making sure everyone understands their roles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Making sure that the organization continually inspects-and-adapts its process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teaching everyone from the CEO down to the mailroom clerk the differences between estimates, targets, and money-back guarantees.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pulling the emergency brake when the process is failing, and fix the underlying problems before restarting the assembly line.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Making all work (planned or unplanned) a visible cost to the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Making the cost of not planning the work or addressing the process issues visible. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, stop basing your project plans on the hope that unplanned work will get done during the night by magic pixies without impacting your schedule or consuming project resources. There &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; no magic pixie dust; just visibility, transparency, realistic estimates, and continual process improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T23:42:09.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10391" CreationDate="2013-12-20T08:11:48.053" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say if you don't like something, you'll have unconscious obstacles when you try to master it in a hard way. Just imagine how a college student who doesn't like Chemistry but majored in Chemistry is going to spend his 4 years life. You'll get that when you're in the environment. I did. It's tough and painful. Every time you want to do something interesting, you'll be forced to do another thing boring because you don't like it, and time wasting because you don't understand it which takes more time for you to accomplish something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interest is the initial drive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7659" LastActivityDate="2013-12-20T08:11:48.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9106" CreationDate="2013-12-20T13:41:17.363" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even I was thinking the same way that is it necessary to have 35 Contact Hour Certification for PMI Certification, so after some time I got to know that well you need to have this 35 PDU certification. As I was searching some institute preferably online, I found one i.e wiziq.com, providing the 35 hour as well as course materials such pdf and that too at $49 and got some discount too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I have been preparing for the exam, will give sometime next year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the link &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wiziq.com/course/21501-project-management-professional-pmp-pmbok-5-certification-training&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.wiziq.com/course/21501-project-management-professional-pmp-pmbok-5-certification-training&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7660" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2013-12-22T01:42:13.027" LastActivityDate="2013-12-22T01:42:13.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9106" CreationDate="2013-12-20T14:08:33.350" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need those 35hrs of training. There are few ways to get them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Either by formal education - MBA, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or by REP training institutes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should have proper documentation / evidence to support your choice. That's why many participants prefer to take the REP way so that they get trained and also get a certificate for 35hrs of learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6783" LastActivityDate="2013-12-20T14:08:33.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10395" CreationDate="2013-12-21T08:52:44.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thank you for all your inputs in this challenge that I have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I plan to do is following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have 6 members in the development team who are practicing SCRUM process and 10 members in the maintenance team who are not following any agile methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I am planning to do is combine both teams and create 3 teams. I will combine development and maintenance team members and plan each sprint with 2 teams for development and 1 team on implementation and maintenance.  This maintenance team will rotate every sprint. That will give us more predictability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also I will need to see what I need to do in order to make sure the maintenance team also plan their work in order to minimize the impact to clients. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7620" LastActivityDate="2013-12-21T08:52:44.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10428" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10439" CreationDate="2013-12-23T11:08:54.780" Score="4" ViewCount="969" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work with embedded systems and sometimes there are some technologies that the people involved with the project have to learn before applying to the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are three people that never worked with an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_operating_system&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;RTOS&lt;/a&gt;. Our company has acquired a RTOS from Micrium. They provide books and documentation that total almost 3,000 pages to read and learn, and offer three days of hands-on training that we will participate in. Our company's desired deadline is one year to develop this new product, and they think this is possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the problem. They &quot;think&quot; rather than &quot;know&quot; that it's possible. Maybe they are right, or maybe not. I think this learning curve is difficult to estimate, and in consequence the rest of features of the product are difficult to schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there some way to estimate the time it will take to learn this new system?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="203" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-12-23T16:16:19.920" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T20:39:06.880" Title="How can we estimate the learning curve for new technology in a project?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;learning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10429" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-23T11:44:17.220" Score="0" ViewCount="7862" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to have a column to show &lt;strong&gt;Planned % Complete&lt;/strong&gt; for a certain date that I will compare with &lt;strong&gt;% Complete&lt;/strong&gt; column.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now &lt;strong&gt;% Complete&lt;/strong&gt; formula is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;cstr(IIf([Duration]=0,0,100*[Actual Duration]/[Duration])) &amp;amp; &quot; %&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;customize  &lt;strong&gt;Planned % Complete&lt;/strong&gt; formula that I make is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;cstr(IIf([Duration]=0,0,100*ProjDateDiff([Start],[Status Date])/[Duration])) &amp;amp; &quot; %&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;both formulae give me exactly same result but at task level only. However, the later one does not give correct result at summary level if I use &lt;strong&gt;use formula&lt;/strong&gt; for roll-up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am really struggling with this, would appreciate your help. Or should I entirely follow different approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7672" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-01-14T14:09:32.403" LastActivityDate="2019-01-14T14:09:32.403" Title="MS Project how to compare &quot;% Complete&quot; with &quot;Planned % Complete&quot;" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10429" CreationDate="2013-12-23T14:07:01.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, using duration to calculate % complete is unreliable.  Physical percent complete is a better, more precise method.  Second, use earned value.  Cost, schedule, and finish variances inherent in EV methods are already built into MS Project, though a little clugy.  But, you don't have to make up new formulas.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T14:07:01.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10428" CreationDate="2013-12-23T14:37:35.027" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no magic formula here that would apply to all projects. What i would do is to get the estimates and them compute, like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, make a plan based on the assumption that people are familiar with RTOS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, get those answers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the training required to learn RTOS?&#xA;After this training, how much time people will need to be able to be efficient?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Add the required time to your project plan and then add some buffer to your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Very important:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;You need to make sure that all the assumptions are well known by all stakeholders, this way, whan an assumptions fails to be true, you will need a change request to handle the change in the plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Add to your project those assumptions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The assumption is that training on RTOS will take XX days and that after XX days the team will be proficient.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In case any assumption fails to be true the changes to the plan will need to be handled by a change request&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7674" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T14:37:35.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10433" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-23T15:31:44.547" Score="3" ViewCount="954" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to surface the priority field in the plan mode sidebar (issue details view?), but can't manage to add it from the manage board view. The priority field doesn't come up in the general field drop-down, but the field is available in all the screens as far as I can see. I can't find any info on the web.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7675" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-01-15T09:16:37.743" LastActivityDate="2019-01-15T09:16:37.743" Title="How can I show priorities on the sidebar with Jira Agile?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10434" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-23T15:37:19.403" Score="3" ViewCount="957" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Important Note:&lt;/strong&gt; This question was inspired by an &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/10426/4271&quot;&gt;earlier question&lt;/a&gt; that was &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/posts/10426/revisions&quot;&gt;community-edited&lt;/a&gt; to fit PMSE's on-topic criteria. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/revisions/10426/1&quot;&gt;OP's original question&lt;/a&gt; was considered off-topic, but it inspired this new question which seems answerable, if not canonically so.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When developing a risk management plan, one of the risks a project manager may want to address is the risk of team members leaving the project. This is often called the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;bus factor&lt;/a&gt;. A low bus factor could negatively impact project deliverables if the exiting team members have unique skills or knowledge that are not shared by the remainder of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can a project manager mitigate bus-factor risks to a team or project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T17:23:01.657" Title="How can a project manager mitigate the risks associated with a low bus factor?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;knowledge-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10434" CreationDate="2013-12-23T16:27:32.693" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is a great question for several reasons, mostly because it is an inherent risk on every project every time and largely ignored.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Attrition is normal and, in fact, can be beneficial when the rate of attrition is at that sweet spot where incoming and outgoing employees are at a good balance, and when you have a reasonably high performing knowledge transfer capability in place.  So some of the impact of this risk is favorable, too, and some of your risk response would include enhancing and exploiting activities.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of this risk is inherent to all projects so you would not necessarily capture this on your register for more formal tracking, nor would you tie specific funds for your controls above and beyond the sort of normal 'keep your staff happy' activities.  The other part of the risk, however, is discreet, like what the &quot;bus factor&quot; suggests.  What scenarios exist that could threaten your staff capability?  The answers to that question I would capture and mitigate specifically.  For example, if you have to transport your staff from point A to B, some catastrophic event in transportation could occur.  That would require specific mitigators such as using several modes of transportation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One approach I use on nearly all my projects is to facilitate a near zero single point of failure from an employee perspective, i.e., I would minimize where I could that issue where an employee possesses unique skills and knowledge that I cannot replace as easy as I would replace a cog in a machine.  Since we're dealing with humans, this is not as easy as a cog solution; however, my mentality is this so I pursue this type of resource acquisition.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We often get blinded by finding the best individual available and the best team available.  Intrinsically, that makes all the sense in the world; however, that threatens your ability to replace them in a reasonable way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume that the performance distribution is triangular and positively skewed, as in this picture:  &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TaXEg.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it seems like a good idea to find folks who live on the right side of the triangle, replacing these folks because of these inherent risks means you will have difficulty finding them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the circle is where most of your practitioners live, where you are very likely to find a replacement easily and where your performance gap between these guys and the ones who live on the right are largely immaterial or acceptable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this is more of a mental approach than something I can actually measure during employee selection.  When I begin to overly rely one a single individual and start to get the sense that I can't do without that person, I begin my intervention.  I will close that gap so if that person leaves I can shrug it off.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T16:27:32.693" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10434" CreationDate="2013-12-23T17:08:48.900" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although you focused the question on mitigation of the risk, I think the first step is a really strong risk assessment. What is the impact of the bus factor on your ability to deliver?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a problem on one of the projects I work; we rely on a key skill that is difficult to acquire.  Our lead tech/architect left to take what he described as his absolute dream job; it took us over 9 months to find a replacement, and we had to raise the amount we were willing to pay.  The HR department should be able to estimate the cost of hiring a new employee, and sometimes the time.  The impact to the project is the cost of the station keeping time while you locate and hire that new employee, plus a month or so to get them up to speed.  I am willing to bet that the total cost to the project will be quite large.  Make sure management know that this is the risk you're trying to mitigate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably the best mitigation is to bring on a junior RIGHT NOW. That lowers the cost because you can hire someone who is not fully trained, and eliminates the onboarding cost and the &quot;spinning up&quot; cost. Those two costs may be sufficient to justify the salary of the junior skilled person.   You've got to make sure you invest in a junior who can grow, and you probably should evaluate the cost of being wrong at a lower probability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The alternative - and we did this on a prior project - is to put a highly skilled expert on retainer.  Find someone else in the organization or who could be made available in case of an emergency and brief them up on the project, the technical approach, etc.  If the bus hits, the expert can take over.  Although this is in some ways the best cost/benefit, that's largely because you're concealing a financial cost inside a political cost; you're going to pay heavily in favors and governance for this arrangement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third option is to hire a pinch hitter. Short term high expertise contracts cost a significant premium, but they are available and they can make the difference between a project succeeding and a project catastrophically failing. If you raise the price high enough, you can get an expert to fly in and take the job for short to medium term. I would advise making sure you know what this would cost; If I'm going to walk into my bosses office and make the case for a junior staff, I'm going to compare that salary against two possibilities - either project failure, or a pinch hitter.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T17:08:48.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10434" CreationDate="2013-12-23T17:23:01.657" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cross-skilling your staff and having back-up resources for resources-at-risk are common practices. Also, you should have a well-defined KT process and KT should be a prerequisite for a clean exit from your organization&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3459" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T17:23:01.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10433" CreationDate="2013-12-23T19:06:55.490" Score="-1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Configuring the Jira Agile 'Issue Detail View'&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AGILE/Configuring+the+Issue+Detail+View&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here is the Jira Agile help page showing how to configure the 'Issue Detail View' tab.&lt;/a&gt; Please note that you need to be the Administrator of that board or have Jira Administrator global permission to be able to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T19:06:55.490" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10428" CreationDate="2013-12-23T20:39:06.880" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, there is no canonical answer to this, but there are some pragmatic solutions. Secondly, you can't estimate what you can't measure. You therefore need to devise a proxy metric to create your estimate or to graph your &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cone of uncertainty&lt;/a&gt;. Thirdly, the project's assumptions and risks (particularly including schedule risks) should be defined and documented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Bound Infinite Ignorance&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By definition, the scale of what you &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; know extends to infinity. In other words, you can quantify what you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; know, but you can't really quantify what you &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within any given problem domain, though, the question is &quot;When will I probably know &lt;em&gt;enough&lt;/em&gt; to get the job done?&quot; That's more answerable; pragmatically, you estimate your team's level of ignorance on a subject by subtracting what they &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; know from what they think they need to learn, then estimate the level of effort involved in learning a sufficiency of that subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Spikes and Proxy Metrics&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use story spikes or proxy metrics for a first pass at estimating learning effort. An example of a proxy metric might be how long it will take the team to read 3,000 pages of documentation. That's not measuring &lt;em&gt;learning&lt;/em&gt; directly, but it's an approximation of a measurable learning-related task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story spikes are another useful tool. For example, you might pick a minimalist, throw-away feature to develop for the purposes of estimating learning effort. You might spend four weeks trying to build the feature the same way you might take an open-book test, building, reading, and learning as you go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether the feature is ultimately finished or not doesn't matter; nor does it matter if the feature is inherently useful. The goal is to get a feel for the time and effort that will be needed to master the knowledge domain sufficiently to deliver some set of defined features. Granted that it's only an estimate, it's still based on empirical results and will be more useful than an arbitrary guess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Worked Examples&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Proxy Metrics&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say that each team member can &lt;em&gt;usefully&lt;/em&gt; absorb 100 pages per day of available documentation, including the time it takes to read it, try out some examples, and try to make sense of it within a cognitive framework. For each person to read the entire body of documentation without skimming would therefore take 300 business days, which is significantly in excess of the roughly 252 business days available each year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Story Spikes&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, let's say that you decide to build a toy project where the team will build a simplistic application that counts the microseconds between button presses. Each team member will focus on an area of specialization within the documentation, and try to read/learn/build the feature as a group within a four-week time box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the time box, the team should have a sense of how easy or hard it will be to build the feature set defined for the project while learning as they go. Most importantly for your purposes, you can use this estimate to determine whether a year is a reasonable time frame or not for the team to deliver the desired feature set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the team could:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do a test project with the new technology.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the results to estimate the Product Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the team's historical velocity to estimate the schedule at an 80% &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_interval&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;confidence interval&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Compare that schedule estimate against management targets to see if the schedule is reasonable and the pace of development seems sustainable over the life of the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&quot;Cone of Uncertainty&quot; Adjustments&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you use a proxy metric or a story spike, you also need to account for the team's uncertainty by presenting the estimate as a range. In software development, the cone of uncertainty is typically assigned as a &quot;fudge factor&quot; of 25-400% of the first estimate. (Boehm, B. &lt;em&gt;Software Engineering Economics&lt;/em&gt;, Prentice-Hall, 1981.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Management targets are often aggressive, and may ignore the team's scheduling estimates or the cone of uncertainty. That's why:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project manager must make it clear that an estimate is an educated guess and not a guarantee.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project's assumptions are clearly documented.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The uncontrolled risk associated with the uncertainly must be documented as an accepted risk that's owned by the management team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project has controls to detect when the projected schedule is out of tolerance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key here is to ensure that the uncertainty and lack of domain knowledge is factored into the project plan. As long as you don't hand-wave it, estimating your team's uncertainty can serve a useful purpose in helping the organization to define a realistic project schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T20:39:06.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2765" CreationDate="2013-12-24T04:47:03.157" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Story points work best when the following conditions exist: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Organization has a high risk tolerance which allows for vast variances in planned to actual during the beginning of a new, hard to estimate project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teams work in a closed system, where all teams follow agile and teams are stable.  No resources are shared and teams aren't required to interact with teams using other methods (e.g. Waterfall)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teams have an engaged product owner or end user as part of the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A dedicated test resource, automation or both allows for relatively stable testing estimates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team coordinates the prioritization of technical debt with each sprint, along with the customer's priorities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planning only includes stores carried over to complete or stories defined as &quot;good enough&quot; to estimate (e.g. Good user story, business rules that are universal or specific to the actor, conditions of acceptance/ test criteria can be established within 24 days of tasking.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After planning with the product owner, teams are allowed &quot;alone time&quot; and technical guidance to discuss and prioritize the tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;During the sprint, the team assesses progress daily, collaborating and removing roadblocks.  Teams stick to tasks they've committed to.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They're not required to complete standard or traditional documentation, such as a BRD or SRS, before work can begin.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project commitments or other items the team can't control, aren't driving the sprint prioritization but are factored in an influence in planning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teams demo and correct within the sprint, as inputs to velocity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teams take credit for work completed with a sprint, though the story may not be complete, but code is production ready - at least in part.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teams take the time to analyze variances in velocity, what they need to improve in retrospectives, define a plan and measure their success.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quality, bug free code is deployed on time, that didn't break anything else, and meets acceptance and testing criteria and hasn't left a backlog littered with massive amounts of technical debt.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a team can't check each of those boxes &quot;yep, we do that&quot;, your management its going to push back and a balance to manage the business will be the next step.  As an earlier answer mentioned, teams should begin to plan for points and hours to address this scenario.  Management knows each story point equates to some value in person hours.  Identify it as a team or be prepared when it's defined for you by the business manner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7679" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2013-12-24T11:41:37.970" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T11:41:37.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10441" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-24T17:59:19.800" Score="-6" ViewCount="1333" Body="&lt;p&gt;New Facility Center:  Work Breakdown Structure&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here below is the wbs... need to create network table and diagram from it.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did I required to select major dependencies only for network table and diagram&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.1 &lt;strong&gt;Requirements&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.1.1   &lt;strong&gt;Locations identification&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;1.1.1.1 Customer Base Analysis&#xA;1.1.1.2 Physical Structure Evaluation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.2.    &lt;strong&gt;Building Selection&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.2.1.      Lease New Building&#xA;1.2.2.      Facility Access Agreement&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.3.    &lt;strong&gt;Construction Build Out&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;1.3.1   &lt;strong&gt;Interior&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;1.3.1.1 Secure Offices/Rooms&#xA;1.3.1.2 Customer Service Area&#xA;1.3.1.3 Employee Area&#xA;1.3.1.4 Secure Storeroom&#xA;1.3.1.5 Reception Area&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.3.2   &lt;strong&gt;Exterior&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.3.2.1.    Veranda&#xA;1.3.2.2.    Parking&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.3.3.  &lt;strong&gt;Utilities&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;1.3.3.1.    Electrical&#xA;1.3.3.2.    Gas&#xA;1.3.3.3.    Water&#xA;1.3.3.4.    Sewer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.4.    &lt;strong&gt;Facility Center Design&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.4.1.  &lt;strong&gt;Security System Installation&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;1.4.1.1.    Key Card Access&#xA;1.4.1.2.    Physical Security&#xA;1.4.1.3.    Alarms&#xA;1.4.2.  &lt;strong&gt;Interior&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.4.2.1.    Architectural Drawings&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.4.2.2.    Lighting&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.4.2.3.    Furnishings&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.4.2.4.    Art&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.4.2.5.    Paint / Color Schemes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.4.2.6.    Floor Space / In Store Displays&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.4.2.7.    Window Displays&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.4.3.  &lt;strong&gt;Exterior&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.4.3.1.    Architectural Drawings&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.4.3.2.    Lighting&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.4.3.3.    Signage&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.4.3.4.    Landscaping&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.4.3.5.    Parking&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.5.    &lt;strong&gt;Communications Equipment/Network&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.5.1.  &lt;strong&gt;Equipment Purchase and Acquisition&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;1.5.1.1.    Computer Systems&#xA;1.5.1.2.    Phone Systems&#xA;1.5.1.3.    Projectors&#xA;1.5.1.4.    Kiosk Machines&#xA;1.5.2.  &lt;strong&gt;Communications Network Build out&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;1.5.2.1.    Cabling&#xA;1.5.2.2.    Internet connectivity&#xA;1.5.2.3.    Phone system&#xA;1.5.2.4.    New equipment implementation&#xA;1.6.    &lt;strong&gt;Quality review&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;1.6.1.  Code compliance&#xA;1.6.2.  Construction&#xA;1.6.3.  Electrical&#xA;1.6.4.  Occupancy certificate&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.7.    &lt;strong&gt;Center Maintenance&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;1.7.1.  Housekeeping&#xA;1.7.2.  Insurance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7687" LastActivityDate="2013-12-25T14:05:40.093" Title="Help needed for creating project network diagram from WBS" Tags="&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2018-09-14T03:49:37.947" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10442" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-25T12:38:01.833" Score="20" ViewCount="44959" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if it's a good idea to name Sprints with user-friendly names instead of using numerals like Sprint 1, Sprint 2, etc. Are there best practices or standards for naming the Sprint after themes or major milestones for the project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7692" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-02T04:59:33.787" LastActivityDate="2020-06-15T09:06:49.117" Title="How do you name Sprints in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="13" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10441" CreationDate="2013-12-25T14:05:40.093" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your network diagram is a result of when you schedule work to occur.  It is not just major dependencies.  You need to sequence logically based on both hard and soft dependencies, all of them, not just major.  Hard dependencies are dictated by task and resource constraints while soft dependencies are choices you make.  Either way, each package needs to have a predecessor(s) and successor(s).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-12-25T14:05:40.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10442" CreationDate="2013-12-25T20:29:40.763" Score="16" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Name the Sprint after the Sprint Goal&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to name a Sprint, I agree with the accepted answer in the programmers.stackexchange.com thread that you should name it after the Sprint Goal. As the Scrum Master, I keep pushing the Product Owners to come up with a well articulated Sprint Goal. I always start my Sprint Planning sessions by inviting the Product Owner to state the Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, coming up with a Sprint Goal is the harder part. &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160228195900/http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/effective-sprint-goals&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here are some tips from Roman Pichler on how to go about identifying a Sprint Goal.&lt;/a&gt; Once you have the Sprint Goal identified you can try and extract a shorter version of it for the Sprint Name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-15T09:06:49.117" LastActivityDate="2020-06-15T09:06:49.117" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10442" CreationDate="2013-12-26T12:02:49.607" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are different conventions I've seen used. In my opinion, even having one is completely irrelevant, besides giving you something to refer to in discussions (which may or may not be a good thing!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use a «Sprint N» or «Iteration N» convention:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Pro&lt;/strong&gt;: Easily generated&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Con&lt;/strong&gt;: Is anyone going to remember what you did in iteration 23? It's almost like not naming them since each sprint already has an ordinal number&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Notable Example&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://brackets.io/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Brackets&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use a «Sprint of dd of mmm» template:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Pro&lt;/strong&gt;: Easily generated, for some people date anchoring helps them remember in which sprint something was done&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Con&lt;/strong&gt;: It's almost like not naming them since each sprint already has a starting date&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Notable Example&lt;/strong&gt;: Not that I can think of, but it seems quite used&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Give sprints a name based on goal:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Pro&lt;/strong&gt;: Makes it trivial to remember when something was done&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Con&lt;/strong&gt;: Hard to generate, hard to remember (&lt;em&gt;name the first 20 sprints by heart&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Notable Example&lt;/strong&gt;: Not that I can think of&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Any combination of the above&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, here's my best advice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't do it unless you need to: what is the &lt;em&gt;value&lt;/em&gt; of doing so?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If there is a concrete need, let the team discuss the &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the team wants to name sprints, let them propose and vote on a convention&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Victory&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also: &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/82732/how-do-you-name-sprints-in-your-projects&quot;&gt;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/82732/how-do-you-name-sprints-in-your-projects&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6300" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:31:53.287" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T12:02:49.607" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10442" CreationDate="2013-12-26T13:39:18.090" Score="21" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was wondering if it's a good idea to name Sprints with user-friendly names instead of using numerals like Sprint 1, Sprint 2, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, it's not a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A sprint is a container where Product Backlog items are temporarily stored for a brief duration. A sprint may produce some project artifacts, but the sprint itself has value only as a time-box. Even if you can find a use case for tracking sprints by name, giving sprints non-ordinal labels reduces ease of communication and the amount of information conveyed by the name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Sprints Are Ephemeral&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A sprint is the name the Scrum framework gives to a time-boxed iteration. While each sprint has a defined Sprint Goal, the sprint itself is not a project artifact that needs to be kept for historical records or process improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprints often result in various outputs that are relevant to the project such as velocity measurements, finished features, new user stories for the Product Backlog, or process improvements, but the time-box itself has no lasting value once it has expired. Regardless of whether the Sprint Goal was met or not, the old time-box is gone forever and a new time-box for the next sprint replaces it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Giving code names or handles to a sprint therefore makes little sense, since any given sprint should have no utility as an historical referent. Trying to map ephemeral time-boxes onto named events is usually a project smell that the development model is not truly iterative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Sprints Aren't Milestones&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While each sprint has a Sprint Goal and a set of items peeled off the Product Backlog, neither of these things is necessarily a project milestone. Goals are not always unique items, and stories are sometimes placed back onto the Product Backlog (modified or unmodified) for future sprints. Therefore, there is no guarantee that a sprint is actually unique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if your current sprint does not meet its Sprint Goal and the Product Owner decides to have another sprint with the same goal, would you name the sprints the same? If not, would &quot;Sprint Fuschia&quot; following &quot;Sprint Aquamarine&quot; really tell anyone anything useful about the sprint, the project, or the team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the database world, the problem of (potentially) non-unique rows is generally solved by assigning auto-incrementing primary keys to each row. This is one reason that Scrum generally uses incremented integers rather than code names or handles for labeling sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Projects Evolve; Sprint Labels Shouldn't&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, the guiding principle is &quot;inspect and adapt.&quot; While a project may have a schedule with defined shipping dates, the contents of any given sprint is expected to change over the course of the project. Given that the output of one Sprint impacts the contents of subsequent sprints, it would make no sense to assign meaningful code names to each sprint in the project schedule ahead of time since the goal or stories for the 23rd sprint may change by the time the team gets the first 22 sprints out of the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, if you use colorful but meaningless names, what value have you added? At least sequential names give you sequence information; if you name your sprints after trees, endangered mammals, or exoplanets, what useful information does that actually convey to anyone?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since we've already established that sprints are ephemeral and carry no historical significance (other than perhaps as velocity data points), what is it that you might want to communicate about Sprint Koala (which was three sprints ago) to someone else during Sprint Wallaby? Other than as an abstract referent, how will its name add value to the communication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you are mapping sprint names onto a sequence anyway, and know that Sprint Koala was the 23rd Sprint and that Sprint Wallaby is really the 26th, you can't even convey ordinal or time information without additional cognitive load. That seems like the opposite of &quot;user-friendly&quot; to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Value of Ordinal Information&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the name of the sprint is rarely useful, the number of sprints in the current project plan or the team's current progress along the plan's ordinal axis do provide some utility. For example, a plan with 25 two-week sprints can be estimated to take 50 weeks. Likewise, a project that has less than 30% of the remaining Product Backlog completed after consuming 50% of the planned iterations is quite likely to be out of tolerance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how to divide a gaggle of geese by two koalas and a lemur, so I'm pretty sure that these sorts of names provide no value in managing project metrics or even simple percentages. In contrast, assigning ordinal numbers as labels provides for some useful math functions to monitor and communicate about your project, even if the &lt;em&gt;contents&lt;/em&gt; of past and future sprints are neither known nor tracked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T13:39:18.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10447" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-27T06:38:17.750" Score="2" ViewCount="246" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know if a person has to be currently working as a project manager when applying for PMP certification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7701" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-12-27T21:54:03.900" LastActivityDate="2016-08-25T03:27:28.920" Title="Is one required to be in a project management job to be eligible for PMP certification?" Tags="&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10447" CreationDate="2013-12-27T17:12:52.320" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obtaining or holding a current PMP certification from the PMI does not require that the person is currently employed. However, to obtain the certification the applicant must provide evidence of three years of work experience in the knowledge domains tested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The full criteria for applying for the PMP can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/en/Certification/Project-Management-Professional-PMP.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here on the PMI Website's Certification page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The certificate holder must keep current in the field over three years by continuing professional development through events or formal education. Otherwise the certification become expired and a new application and testing process must be completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7689" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-02-07T05:00:22.297" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T05:00:22.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10442" CreationDate="2013-12-27T17:33:00.030" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To echo CodeGnome a little, I would also say that naming sprints is a bad idea. They are ephemeral. Once a sprint has completed you may wish to gather the completed stories into a record for later use in completing user documentation, but aside from that there is nothing to be gained from remembering any particular sprint, and naming them would give them too much significance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What may work more effectively and be a better focus for your team is to look at the goals of the release that the sprint is part of and keep those goals in mind. Having a release name is a time-honored tradition since before agile methods. It forgoes tying the stories of any one sprint to any significance, however it does emphasize that all the stories in the backlog for the release are necessary before declaring victory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7689" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T17:33:00.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10450" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10451" CreationDate="2013-12-27T18:31:42.563" Score="6" ViewCount="1540" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Ken Schwaber, “The minimum plan necessary to start a Scrum project consists of a vision and a Product Backlog. The vision describes why the project is being undertaken and what the desired end state is.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2009/january/the-product-vision&quot;&gt;Also the Product Owner is supposed to collaborate closely with the team to create this product vision.&lt;/a&gt; This is desirable because having participated in this process, the team will have a deeper understanding of the vision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given these, in our large organization it takes time and several meetings with the stakeholders to get consensus on the vision and product direction. So, is it OK to have a Sprint 0 with no deliverable code?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorDisplayName="user7678" LastEditDate="2013-12-27T20:31:57.207" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T12:53:52.587" Title="Can we have a Sprint Zero with no deliverable code?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;vision&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10450" CreationDate="2013-12-27T19:40:43.427" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe your problem is in trying to shoe horn a process which comes prior to the initiation of your sprints, into an initial sprint. Your situation raises two questions, in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Is it Scrum methodology to have a sprint without a deliverable that can be shipped?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum intends to avoid detailed up front planning and the concept of getting things, &quot;done&quot;, is a key tenant. While you can be creative when you define, &quot;done&quot;, ultimately the concept of, &quot;sprint 0&quot;, is not part of the Scrum philosophy, nor is a plan that doesn't deliver a feature that can be shipped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Can I adapt Scrum to fit my needs?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure - but it wouldn't be Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there's no reason why you can't implement Scrum purely, if that is your aim, in the situation you have described. While the quote you give from Ken Schwaber is true, “The minimum plan necessary to start a Scrum project consists of a vision and a Product Backlog&quot;, that doesn't exclude the possibility that in your organization &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; than that is required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This extra planning prior to a series of sprints commencing needn't be defined as, &quot;sprint 0&quot;. If your development ecosystem requires project planning due to internal policy then it's perfectly legitimate to just call a spade a spade - refer to this as a distinct process outside of your implementation of the Scrum methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7678" LastEditorDisplayName="user7678" LastEditDate="2014-01-03T00:19:23.170" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T00:19:23.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10450" CreationDate="2013-12-27T20:10:54.260" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;is it OK to have a Sprint 0 with no deliverable code?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remaining true to Scrum framework, the answer would be NO. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you time-box the Sprint 0? If the answer is no then you would be violating two important factors of Scrum framework, first time-boxing and the second potentially deliverable code at the end of each sprint. As you have mentioned that the organization takes time and several meetings with the stakeholders to get consensus on the vision and product direction, so time-boxing this exercise could be hoping against hope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is why Mike Cohn calls this portion a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/sprint-zero-a-good-idea-or-not&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;project before the project&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During this project-before-the-project, the early team members&#xA;  (perhaps just a future product owner) can work toward creating an&#xA;  initial product backlog, finding or hiring team members, setting up&#xA;  the technical environment, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of the biggest problems with having a sprint zero is that it&#xA;  establishes a precedent that there are certain sprints or sprint types&#xA;  that have unique rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even the concept of Sprint Zero is debatable amongst the founding fathers of Agile, as &lt;a href=&quot;http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/scrumdevelopment/conversations/topics/32485&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Alistair Cockburn stated&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have a sneaking feeling that someone was pressed about his use of&#xA;  Scrum when he did something that had no obvious business value at the&#xA;  start, and he invented &quot;Oh, that was  Sprint Zero!&quot;to get the peasants&#xA;  with the pickaxes away from his doorstep. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... and then others thought that was a great answer and started saying&#xA;  it, too. ... and then it became part of the culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and in the words of &lt;a href=&quot;http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/scrumdevelopment/conversations/topics/32488&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ken Schwaber&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Exactly ... sprint 0 has become a phrase misused to describe the&#xA;  planning that occurs prior to the first sprint ... and since planning&#xA;  creates artifacts that often change, it should be minimized prior to&#xA;  the first sprint, and then occur every sprint at the sprint&#xA;  review/sprint planning meeting (just in time planning)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T20:10:54.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10450" CreationDate="2013-12-27T20:34:11.667" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are often debates between Scrum practitioners about whether to have a Sprint Zero or not. You can side-step the various arguments by redefining what the Sprint Goal will be for the first sprint, and by adjusting expectations of what will be demonstrated in the Sprint Review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Sprint Goal&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, the drive to have a &quot;Sprint Zero&quot; seems like a need to have a tool-chain or architectural sprint without a concrete deliverable. If you dig deeper, though, the real goal is often to avoid counting the first sprint into your team's velocity. However, all project-related work should be carried on the Product Backlog as a visible cost to the project, so &lt;em&gt;please&lt;/em&gt; don't fill your first sprint with invisible work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The technically-correct answer within the framework is to ensure that the necessary architectural, tool-chain, and other infrastructure stories are included on the Product Backlog. For example, the Sprint Goal of the first sprint could be something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Install the development infrastructure needed to kick-start the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might even need several such sprints at the start of a project; that's okay, too. The user stories accepted into those initial sprints would be selected to meet the defined Sprint Goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;User Stories and Sprint Review&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A literal interpretation of the Sprint Review process seems to make non-feature stories a no-no. However, this isn't really so. The process goal is to make progress (or the lack of it) visible to stakeholders, and to provide an inflection point within the project to gather stakeholder feedback. This generally works best with tangible or user-accessible features, but anything that you can demonstrate in a visual or engaging way will suffice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, your team's first Sprint Review could certainly demonstrate developer-facing deliverables such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The status screen of the project's continuous integration server.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The web interface for the new source control system.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A live demo of &quot;Hello, World!&quot; compiling with the team's tool-chain.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is up to the team, including the Product Owner and the Scrum Master, to educate the stakeholders about the need for these project prerequisites. Sweeping these deliverables under the rug through the &quot;Sprint Zero&quot; mechanism is a way to side-step the need to educate the organization, but it ultimately cheats stakeholders and the team out of the full benefits of a transparent process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T20:34:11.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10454" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-27T22:53:49.283" Score="0" ViewCount="3560" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an &quot;overhead&quot; task for tracking work related to administration of a project. As such, the project requires about 5 hours of administrative overhead work per week of its existence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I define such a task that will always be equivalent to 5 hours of work per week for the life of the project? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if my project schedule gets lengthened because another task took longer to complete, I want this 'overhead' task to also lengthen so that for every week that the project is lengthened, an additional 5 hours are included in the work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advise is appreciated. Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6722" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-09T16:37:01.500" LastActivityDate="2018-11-09T16:37:01.500" Title="MS Project 2010: Can I define an &quot;overhead&quot; task?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10454" CreationDate="2013-12-28T00:04:44.667" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This type of work package is called &quot;level of effort.&quot;  You put a finish finish constraint with the milestone or work package that represents the lengthened project.  This will keep pushing the effort's finish date out.  However, you do not &quot;add&quot; the additional five hours per week.  Your planned value stays the same and is baselined.  So, for example, if the total hours for your project was planned to be 100 hours, it remains 100 hours.  However, your actual hours continue to climb producing an unfavorable variance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T00:04:44.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10457" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-28T07:50:33.603" Score="-3" ViewCount="344" Body="&lt;p&gt;A task has completed. It's, say, 20% of duration progress, but it is still behind the schedule. Then in tracking, the 20% completion was updated and the task was rescheduled to the current date or status date. After rescheduling the task, still its actual start date (second part of work) differs (late) from the rescheduled date. How can this be updated in the Microsoft Project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7708" LastEditorUserId="8313" LastEditDate="2014-03-01T15:58:20.367" LastActivityDate="2014-03-01T15:58:20.367" Title="After rescheduling a partially completed task again, work progress is delayed. How do I update it in Microsoft Project?" Tags="&lt;tracking&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10458" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10485" CreationDate="2013-12-28T13:56:29.187" Score="3" ViewCount="1073" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, I qualified as a solicitor (that's &quot;lawyer&quot; for Americans), and decided I would much sooner set myself on fire than continue in that role. I have a law degree, but I have always been maths/IT minded. I also know that while I'm a passable coder, my strengths are in the area of organizing teams and getting stuff done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What, in your experience, are the things that a hiring manager would consider beneficial when assessing an applicant for a junior IT project management position who comes from a different field and has no direct IT project management expertise? Would Scrum or PRINCE2 certification be helpful? Are there other qualifications that would be sensible to seek out before looking for a project management role?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7711" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-01-04T16:22:16.610" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T16:22:16.610" Title="I want to transition into Project Management from a very different career" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10459" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-28T16:05:04.107" Score="10" ViewCount="433" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen managers create metrics that worked, and ones that had unintended side-effects. For example, one manager measured his IT team based on how quickly &quot;help request tickets&quot; were closed. Service suffered because everyone was closing tickets even before the customer could verify the problem was actually fixed...and often it was not. The metric changed to be based on satisfaction survey data, and suddenly people were staying on the phone for hours with each customer for even the most simple request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At other companies I've seen managers who had some kind of ESP that let them create metrics that could not be &quot;gamed,&quot; had no unintended side-effects, and encouraged the desire behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the secret? How can I create metrics that drive behavior to create the desired result?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6298" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-12-28T16:31:14.493" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T04:12:42.707" Title="How to create metrics that can't be &quot;gamed?&quot;" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10459" CreationDate="2013-12-28T16:59:56.593" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a cost with everything. Every metric you create will increase one behavior and decrease another to pay for it. Every metric has a cost/benefit. Analyze carefully. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T16:59:56.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10462" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10464" CreationDate="2013-12-29T00:59:51.653" Score="5" ViewCount="999" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a software developer that will be managing my first agile project. Although I have worked under other managers who implemented Scrum the best they could, my role as a developer involved mainly breaking down the requirements into tasks and implementing behavior-driven development (BDD). I did not talk to the customer, but was obviously involved in the daily scrums.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My past manager used JIRA with Greenhopper to collect the user stories and to show burn-down charts (which did not help much&amp;mdash;probably because they were not used properly) and good ol' Excel to do very crude estimates. We were not using story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am learning as much as I can via blogs and videos about tools that can help me in my new role. What tools do I need to manage an agile project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7719" OwnerDisplayName="JD01" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2013-12-29T13:51:36.177" LastActivityDate="2014-03-19T12:36:22.983" Title="What tools do I need to manage an agile project?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10462" CreationDate="2013-12-29T05:01:14.553" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simple tools are often the best to ensure that they are consistently used. &lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt; is a good one for both simplicity and flexibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7716" LastActivityDate="2013-12-29T05:01:14.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10462" CreationDate="2013-12-29T13:43:28.193" Score="13" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You always need the same two tools to manage any project:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wetware.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's it. No magic pixie dust required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Think Process, Not Tools&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am a software developer that will be managing my first agile project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there it is. As a developer, one tends to think in terms of tools or tool-chains to get things done. As a project manager, however, your fundamental tool is always &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt;. Don't become constrained by an automated tool until you master a process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Manage Process with Wetware&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While physical or software tools can help automate the &lt;em&gt;implementation&lt;/em&gt; of your process, your foundational tool for &lt;em&gt;managing&lt;/em&gt; any process should be the human brain. If you can't wrap your head around the process, or compute the input/output values of a given process in your head, then automating it won't help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Define your process. Then use whatever tools fit your specific implementation to help with tracking and reporting. That will off-load some drudge work from the wetware, but will not substitute for the lack of properly-applied wetware in a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-12-29T13:43:28.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10459" CreationDate="2013-12-29T14:20:49.207" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no secret. Magic pixie dust is a controlled substance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;You Get What You Measure&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a truism in management of any kind. You &lt;em&gt;can't&lt;/em&gt; prevent side-effects, because any phenomenon is changed by the very act of observation. At best, you can use multiple dimensions to refine the measurements so that you reach a better approximation of your goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Measure Multiple Dimensions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem you describe is a result of single-dimension thinking. If you measure exactly one dimension, then you are controlling or correcting for a single variable. If you measure ticket closures, then you get ticket closures...if that's all you're measuring, then that's all you get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The solution is to apply reasonable controls to all significant variables, and then apply some common sense to the results. In your case, you might need to measure at least three dimensions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;tickets left open as a percentage of total tickets&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;mean or median time elapsed from ticket opening to ticket closing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;customer satisfaction with ticket resolution&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and then see if you get the results you wanted. If so, great; if not, refine (or redefine) your measurements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Use Systems Thinking&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You start from the implied assumption that help desk efficiency is the problem to be solved. Is it really? Question your assumptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a defective or poorly-designed product, then your help desk is the wrong part of the process to fix. The correct solution would be to ship high-quality, intuitive products that require less support in the first place; your organization will gain efficiencies that way irrespective of how fast or effective your help desk folks are. You will also have happier customers overall, regardless of how happy those customers who open tickets may be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Systems thinking isn't a silver bullet, but it is generally the right solution for most process problems. Look at the whole system, including development and quality assurance, not just the help-desk sub-process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2013-12-29T14:20:49.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10454" CreationDate="2013-12-29T19:24:34.277" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can create a &quot;hammock&quot; task that will span the length of the project and its finish will adjust with the linked task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See: &lt;a href=&quot;http://support.microsoft.com/kb/141733/en-us&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://support.microsoft.com/kb/141733/en-us&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you must account for the approximate 5 hours per week, assign the Project Manager at 12.5% to the task to generate the appropriate work estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, do you truly need to get to that level of detail within the Project plan?  Are you able to track to that level of detail?  Unless your organization is tracking to that level and requires the documentation of that task - I would omit it and simply set the Project Manager's max units lower to account for the overhead work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2013-12-29T19:24:34.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10459" CreationDate="2013-12-30T04:12:42.707" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Metrics that track outcomes (e.g. customer satisfaction) are better than those that track activities (e.g. how quickly tickets are closed). In your example, I'd calculate aggregate customer satisfaction not just based on those who calls are answered but also based on wait times and dropped calls. Activity based metrics have unidirectional utility i.e. they mean something useful when red, not so much when green.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2247" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T04:12:42.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10468" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-30T06:26:30.487" Score="-2" ViewCount="174" Body="&lt;p&gt;First a brief description about myself.&#xA;I am having a total IT experience of around 7 Years.I have been working mainly in these years on ASP.Net and around 2 years on CMS Ektron. Although i have 7 years of exp but my journey as a developer is not very cherishing. I am an average kind of guy who is not conceptually very good in coding and does not have that much of experience in development as well. As a result i am always in a fear of my job security.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in order to survive in the industry some of my friends suggested me to go for PMP which would help me move into the management side. I have good verbal and written skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone please suggest me if i should go for PMP or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7701" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T18:12:59.840" Title="Shall i opt for PMP exam?" Tags="&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-01-04T17:36:47.107" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10468" CreationDate="2013-12-30T12:40:46.670" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nitesh,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;please let me share with you my vision regarding PMP. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, you need to understand that this is just a certification. It is something like certification exams for programmers. If you are proficient in ASP.NET, you, probably, will learn ASP firstly, then you will try to use ASP in your work in order to get some experience, and after that you, possibly, will think: &quot;Am I ready for Microsoft Test to prove my knowledge in ASP.NET?&quot;. Thus, according to my perspective, you should pass PMP when you already have some experience in project management and practiced PMBoK, for example. After that you can try to start working on preparing for PMP to get the certificate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, my point is that the fact that you have the PMP certificate shows other people that you can speak the same language (the same &quot;project management language&quot;) with them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my advice for you is that you should get a Project Manager position, maybe in the company you are currently working in. As soon as you understand what PM job is about, you will decide for yourself if you should or should not pass the exam. Also, in parallel, you can make some research regarding the experience of the people who already have passed PMP in order to understand the difficulties and the goals why they did this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you will need to formulate the goal why you need to pass this exam for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regards,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7289" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T12:40:46.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10470" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-30T18:00:49.663" Score="1" ViewCount="11086" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have learned that an agile application is done by dividing the development process in form of sprints. How the sprints different from spiral model development? Is there an minimal sprint count for a particular project as constraint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7724" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2013-12-31T17:31:56.333" LastActivityDate="2013-12-31T17:43:33.850" Title="How does sprints in agile differ from spiral model development?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10468" CreationDate="2013-12-30T18:12:59.840" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;After reading the description you have given, I think you do not have enough Project Management requirement. You will need some recommendation for your management experience as well. so I must suggest you to hold on for some more time, gain some experience and then go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as question of survival is concerned, you can always improve your skill-set for different languages etc..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;PMP Certification Eligibility Requirements are:&#xA;&#xA;Category 1: PMP Certification Eligibility Requirements&#xA;&#xA;PMP Aspirant possess Baccalaureate(Bachelor's Degree)/equivalent university degree&#xA;&#xA;4500 hours of Project Management Experience.&#xA;Three (3) years of Project Management Experience within the past eight-year period prior to the application.&#xA;36 unique (non-overlapping) months of Project Management experience.&#xA;35 contact hours of Project Management education.&#xA;&#xA;Category 2: PMP Certification Eligibility Requirements&#xA;&#xA;PMP Aspirant possess High school diploma/equivalent secondary school credential&#xA;(Participants who do not possess Bachelor's Degree can also apply for PMP Certification Examination provided they meet the following Eligibility Requirements)&#xA;&#xA;7500 hours of Project Management Experience.&#xA;Five years of Project Management Experience within the past eight-year period prior to the application.&#xA;60 unique (non-overlapping) months of project management experience.&#xA;35 contact hours of Project Management education.&#xA;Please be updated of PMP Certification eligibility 2012 and PMP Certification eligibility 2013 by logging on to PMI.org&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7712" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T18:12:59.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10470" CreationDate="2013-12-31T16:00:23.287" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Look beyond just the sprints&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile is an umbrella term used to describe a general approach to software development. There are many agile methods including Scrum, XP and Kanban. However, they all emphasize responding quickly to change, frequent deliveries of working software, close customer collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know the specifics of the Spiral model of development that you practice. In order to understand how it is different from Agile, you should look beyond just the sprints:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you start with a requirements document? And do you have a change control process if requirements change? Agile is designed to respond to change. Typically changes are welcome prior to the start of the sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you do up-front design? Agile tries to limit the design to what is needed to convert the stories to deployable code within the sprint. As the sprints progress plan to refactor the code as needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have Product Owners / customers working with the development team daily throughout the project? Agile requires such close interaction and feedback.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/253789/agile-vs-spiral-model-for-sdlc&quot;&gt;There is some previous discussion on Stack Overflow on Agile vs Spiral that you may find helpful as well.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your specific question - no there is no minimal sprint count for a project in agile. But, sprints should be short to permit frequent inspection and adaptation. And at the end of each sprint, code should be developed, tested and demo'd to customers in fully ready for deployment condition. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/articles/selecting-the-right-iteration-length&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is some additional info on sprints/iterations.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:41:23.897" LastActivityDate="2013-12-31T16:00:23.287" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10470" CreationDate="2013-12-31T17:43:33.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile is not a method, it is an approach towards software development. However, Scrum is a methodology and it is comparable to the Spiral Model. Both have test, plan, and evaluation phases, however Scrum lacks the risk management (when people attack Scrum that is their best move).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Spiral Model doesn't say much about the length of an iteration - there is not iteration per say in the Model but you can interpret one &quot;circle&quot; as an iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Experts recommend the Spiral Model for long projects that has high risk - the model highly depends on risk management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, there is no such thing as a minimal Sprint count. A project is done, when the customer accepts it. It can happen after one Sprint (very unlikely, but can happen), or after a thousand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2013-12-31T17:43:33.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10458" CreationDate="2013-12-31T18:29:22.560" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Much of the skills of being a PM--managing and leading people, managing risks and resolving conflicts, sales, solving problems, planning, facilitating quality--are the same no matter industry or domain.  Knowing the industry and domain is important, but becomes less so as one evolves from technologist to manager to leader.  And, managing projects exists with every job.  So this type of a career change should be quite simple assuming you have some degree of intelligence, aptitude, attitude, and good leadership skills.  I hired a lawyer recently into the consulting and PM world.  It was a piece of cake to ascertain those transferable skills, and I was right; he hit the ground running.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I look for people who are smart, can critically think, can present professionally.  Everything else can be taught.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2013-12-31T18:29:22.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10462" CreationDate="2014-01-01T00:37:40.797" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the process answer above but your question was about tools so in that case . . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends if your team is all in one location sitting next to each other or if they are distributed in different building, cities, countries, etc.  If they are in one location then simple white board with sticky notes or index cards work great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they are in multiple locations, the lure of an electronic tool becomes more compelling.  This comes down to how much you want to spend,etc.  A few really good ones are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;JIRA Agile&lt;/a&gt; - probably the most used (given that it integrated into JIRA which is extremely popular)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.trello.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt; - Free and quite simple to use and get setup.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;others include . .Version One, Mingle, etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1087" LastActivityDate="2014-01-01T00:37:40.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10478" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-01T06:55:16.870" Score="0" ViewCount="214" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to setup a project that allows me to keep track of obtaining equipment for a business. Basically I the &quot;progress&quot; is the funds generated or the equipment obtained(e.g., if I stole it then I wouldn't need any funds).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is many pieces of equipment and they affect other tasks(need the equipment before some tasks can complete).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g., I need to obtain the equipment &quot;hypersupergizmocapacitorator&quot; that costs about 10k$. I give myself about 6 months(may take longer or shorter) to obtain. Once I get that I can then do tasks that require it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7732" LastActivityDate="2014-01-01T19:37:10.337" Title="How do I create a task to obtain something with cost in MS Project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10478" CreationDate="2014-01-01T12:03:14.527" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Load them the same way you do human resources; instead of putting an hourly rate, use the cost/use column and load the $10K.  When you load the resource against the package, it will affect the planned value, or BCWS, accordingly.  When you purchase it, you can load actual costs and take your EV, just like you do for other type packages.  If AC differed from its PV and EV, you will show a variance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-01-01T12:03:14.527" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10478" CreationDate="2014-01-01T19:37:10.337" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple of questions come to mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you need to track the 6 month long process of obtaining the&#xA;equipment or just the moment the equipment is available for use?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need to track the process, create the task or tasks leading up to them with you assigned as the resource.  Add a milestone &quot;Equipment on site&quot; as the successor to the process tasks.  You can then use that milestone as the predecessor to the tasks that require the equipment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't need to track the process - add a milestone &quot;Equipment on site&quot; with a constraint that you can change as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the cost for the equipment (10k) all charged back to the project?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many circumstances, the capital costs would be amortized over a longer period of time - not just the project.  If the entire cost accrues to your project and you want to account for the point in time the 10K is paid, use the Fixed Cost field and assign the money to the &quot;Equipment on site&quot; task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need to spread the costs over the life-span of the project (from beginning to end) create a Budget Cost type resource and assign it to the Project Summary task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2014-01-01T19:37:10.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10484" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-02T13:26:53.050" Score="0" ViewCount="127" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a quite small engineering/programming project (~100kloc of code) which tackles many different areas of expertise. The program communicates with many external devices, has data processing and presentation capabilities, reporting module, etc. Basically it's a mashup of electrical engineering (electrical measurements), machine control, data processing, visualisation and project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to give the client a period of free technical service and bug-fixes after the sell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm inclining to propose 6 months of free support but wanted to know what was the range of free support you agreed to (would agree to) after selling your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wouldn't agree to free support period what would be your support financing proposal - payed per hour, per day, per month, per request after giving estimate of time necessary to complete the task?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7739" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T14:00:16.830" Title="Free project support after sell" Tags="&lt;clients&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-05-04T21:34:38.033" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10458" CreationDate="2014-01-02T13:34:43.240" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I were in your shoes I would be playing up my knowledge of the Law domain first and IT competancies second. Whether one considers PM skills transferable across domains or not, in a practical sense many employers want to hire people with direct knowledge of their domain. Thus someone who comes to IT project management in the legal sector, with actual qualifications to practise law, will be as rare as the proverbial rocking horse, erm, deliverables :) and may well get you into an IT PM role that you wouldn't otherwise have stood a chance in. Also, why limit yourself to IT PM, why not business change PM (in the legal world), where your relative lack of IT experience would not count against you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, any amount of time spent actually practising law will put you in a very good position for PM in that field (assuming you can also demonstrate good knowledge of PM disciplines too). Perhaps do a year of that before switching and use it as a year-long training course for your PM career in the legal domain? It seems to me you are in really good position, rather than perhaps thinking it hopeless. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T13:34:43.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10484" CreationDate="2014-01-02T13:44:01.380" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is commonly known as &quot;the warranty period&quot;. In software I have seen one month or three months used very often. I have never seen 6 months offered for a bespoke development warranty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of commercial support arrangements, they are many and varied. Reading between the lines, it seems you are a small outfit, perhaps one-man band? Assuming this, you will want to bear in mind that your resources are fairly finite and any long-tail support carries an opportunity cost for you- Any time you spend supporting the historical product is time you cannot spend on making more money elsewhere- so factor that in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen the retained resource model work well. Agree with the client how much time you both think they will need in support- let's say one day per month for argument's sake. Agree a rate for 12 days per year, bill them monthly or quarterly for that agreed amount (pro rata) and allow them to &quot;call-off&quot; their support time as and when they see fit or need it. But, crucially, agree a higher rate for anything they use over and above the agreed level. Then reconcile every three months, or monthly, or yearly (whatever works for you both) and &quot;true up&quot; how much they have used. If possible DON'T allow them to carry over unused support time across period boundaries else you are storing up a big cashflow/resource hit for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another common way would be to calculate the support cost as a percentage of the build/project cost. 15-20% is common. But ensure your exposure is limited so that it cannot become an unsustainable overhead for you. Preferably also define up front what support can, and cannot be used for. You wouldn't, for example, want a client to call-off support time and use it for adding new functionality. Any new functionality you DO add, by whatever method, should add to the support bill using the same percentage. More code=more support time=greater support cost to the client. For this kind of arrangement annual billing in advance is common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2014-01-02T13:52:00.887" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T13:52:00.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10484" CreationDate="2014-01-02T14:00:16.830" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &quot;free&quot; part is troublesome.  Nothing is free.  Your warranty period, as described by Marv, should be built into your price of your product, the cost of which is a calculated risk result.  And the terms &amp;amp; conditions of the warranty are clearly spelled out: what is included, what is excluded.  Thereafter, support services can certainly be sold on a T&amp;amp;M basis or fixed price (if you have the volume of fixed price contracts to carry the peaks).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Warranty is just like insurance...it IS insurance.  You have to calculate this risk understanding the probabilistic impact during the time period you are insuring.  Insuring one customer is deadly; you either have to charge an exorbitant premium--which no customer should ever buy nor should you sell--or charge a normal premium and be prepared for bankruptcy.  Insurance requires a critical mass.  If you do not have this critical mass, you need to seek reinsurance and I don't even know if such a product exists in your industry.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T14:00:16.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10488" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-02T20:26:44.387" Score="1" ViewCount="123" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Here is an interesting situation we have been put in. We developed a proposal that includes deliverables, work packages and their estimates, risks etc. Also we planned some contingency for risky situations , like API integration may take more time than needed, application may not work on some specific hardware and this will require additional time for fixes, etc.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;However customer insists on handling all the risks by their side. This sounds very good for FP project and let us share responsibility about the risks. On the other hand it allows customer to keep the project budget at the minimum level.  If we accept the order on these terms, what is the best way to manage these risks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7644" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2014-02-12T16:23:00.663" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T16:23:00.663" Title="FixedPrice but customer wants all risks are handled by their side" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;risk&gt;&lt;fixed-price&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10488" CreationDate="2014-01-02T20:36:07.917" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;That sounds like a disaster.  I think that set up would be a set up for a bunch of finger pointing and blame down the line.  If they want to have influence over the costs, do T&amp;amp;M or cost plus.  In fact, that's pretty much what this is or will be except without the finger pointing and lawsuits.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T20:36:07.917" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10488" CreationDate="2014-01-03T06:52:20.247" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think this is a disaster. We have done various projects on such conditions and it can work. Essential things are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure that you are partners in the project (which is generally a good idea when it is a real project) and not competitors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure you have explicitly defined what risks are moved over to the customer side as out-of-scope.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure you have some kind of time restriction: even when you deliver, the customer might not be able to go live due to occurrence of the out-of-scope. Allow the customer a reasonable amount of time to fix it and after that have the project automatically finish even when acceptance criteria are not fully met.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7423" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T06:52:20.247" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10494" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-03T23:20:41.833" Score="5" ViewCount="2458" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying integrate a UX team of about 14 UX designers into a software engineering organization of about 100 developers. One of many challenges I'm trying to figure out is how to deal with things like usability testing.  I'm working off lots of assumptions here (please correct me if these are bad assumptions):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The UX team's work should be in the backlog as user stories.  Point of clarification - right now, there is a design backlog and then there is an engineering backlog.  So we're not &quot;full stack.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A user story should be able to be completed in one sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here's my question: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does it make any sense to write a user story for a usability test?  It doesn't seem user focused.  For example, &quot;As a user I want the application to be usability tested so that we can identify problems and fix them.&quot;  What?  That's nonsense.  How should we integrate these kinds of tasks into our backlog? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It usually takes 4+ weeks to complete a usability test.  We have to recruit the participants (very narrow demographic), plan the test, run the test, and then report on the test.  Can't get all that done in a 2 week sprint.  What now?  How do I write a story for something smaller than the full usability test?  A story just for writing the test plan, then another story for recruiting the participants?  That really seems to stretch the definition of a user story.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7756" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2014-01-09T09:56:52.177" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T09:57:56.087" Title="Integrating UX into Scrum - how to do usability testing within a sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;design&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10494" CreationDate="2014-01-03T23:38:24.417" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're releasing software every 2 to 4 weeks, you can do the usability test on an actually released product, outside of the sprint, but as quickly after the feature is finished. You'll get feedback and that goes back on the backlog. Until you get the feedback, you've been able to release a working product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're  able to all that in a sprint, by all means do it. If you're not, then do the testing outside of the sprint, but try not to let the scrum team do all the work to prepare the tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some small testing, like having actual users use the features before they're even checked in is ideal. Having a couple of end-users on call who you can show some of your work can give you very quick feedback in a very short amount of time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just make sure that the time between releasing the product (even if it's a beta, or release candidate) and getting your feedback is as short as possible. Otherwise the feedback comes in too late and reworking it will be a lot more expensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7393" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T23:38:24.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10494" CreationDate="2014-01-04T09:29:44.973" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best place to fulfill this requirement would be your teams Definition of Done. A process policy used to ensure quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speak with you team about how to best test usabilility in the sprint cycle. I'm sure they will have lots of interesting ideas and a Definition of Done policy is best owned by the team. Some suggestions might be;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  Pair devs with UX&#xA;  Have UX reviews&#xA;  Get an end user to UAT &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will find this approach means a full on usability test at the end of a set period will be less pain full.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also sounds like your usability testing takes a long time. May I suggest you take a look at Steve Krugs new book, Rocket Science Made Easy &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0321657292&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0321657292/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/184-1692377-5775040&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6422" LastEditorUserId="6422" LastEditDate="2014-01-04T12:27:04.453" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T12:27:04.453" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10494" CreationDate="2014-01-04T11:42:21.060" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question is titled about integrating into a Scrum team, but it sounds like you are not organised like a typical Scrum team would be&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, your UX designers would be team members, they develop software, the same as your programmers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should not create user stories for UX tasks. User stories should meet &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_%28mnemonic%29&quot;&gt;INVEST criteria&lt;/a&gt;. UX tasks would likely violate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Independent (I): the UX tasks depend on a corresponding 'engineering' story&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Negotiable (N): doing the UX work is not optional&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Valuable (V): the user testing adds no value to the end user&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testable (T): your stories prescribe testing rather than being testable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, you should embed a UX designer into your engineering teams and incorporate the UX tasks into your Definition of Done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your team (that means programmers and UX) takes responsibility for the completing all of the UX work. Self organising teams means that if there is too much work for the individual UX guy to do, then the other team members should help too. That means they will have to collaborate together to complete the tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your second point, it sounds like you're applying a waterfall process to your UX testing. This is going to limit the rate at which you can release software. In Scrum, each sprint should deliver potentially shippable software. If you haven't done UX testing then you should not release. You should try to break down your UX work into small enough sections, working closely with developers to do UX on newly created features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You haven't really given enough detail as to the type of work that the UX team do so it is difficult to give any more advice than to apply standard Scrum practices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6608" LastEditorUserId="6608" LastEditDate="2014-01-04T12:38:44.450" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T12:38:44.450" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10501" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-04T12:46:51.383" Score="2" ViewCount="4619" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been full time product manager for last 6 years, with total of 9 years of industry experience. I could not find good software project/product nanager certifications which are accepted globally, so I was thinking of getting a PMP certification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have gone to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/default.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMI web site&lt;/a&gt;, but there are no clear answers about whether the PMP certification is for Product Managers. As a Product Manager, should I pursue PMP certification?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7762" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-01-04T16:47:41.210" LastActivityDate="2020-09-21T19:09:32.217" Title="I am a Product Manager with 6+ years in Product Management; am I eligible for PMP certification?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;certification&gt;&lt;product-manager&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10501" CreationDate="2014-01-04T16:44:30.393" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/en/Certification/Project-Management-Professional-PMP.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMP certification&lt;/a&gt; is specifically for project management. If you're a product manager, you probably want to pursue a certificate program related to program or portfolio management rather than project management. A non-exhaustive list of such programs include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumalliance.org/certifications/practitioners/cspo-certification&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/en/Certification/Program-Management-Professional-PgMP.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Program Management Professional (PgMP)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/en/Certification/Portfolio-Management-Professional-PfMP.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Portfolio Management Professional (PfMP)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are certainly others, and I'm not endorsing any of these programs personally. You should definitely do your own research to see what programs are most suitable for your individual career path and market segment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T16:44:30.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10488" CreationDate="2014-01-06T05:37:01.000" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the client wants to take all the risks, he must manage them, too. If he is not skilled in risk management for software projects, that would be a problem for you because you can't do it yourself as in a normal project and the success of the project depends on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4481" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T05:37:01.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10450" CreationDate="2014-01-06T12:53:52.587" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mind that Scrum talks about &lt;em&gt;potentially shippable increments (PSI)&lt;/em&gt; as opposed to potentially shippable &lt;em&gt;code&lt;/em&gt;! Of course you can ship code, but you can ship other things as well. For example, a product-vision document could be a shippable increment. Sprints with the goal do gain insight are often called Exploration Sprints. They are not unusual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, the idea of the shippable increment is to make you define a clear-cut goal for your iteration. That's the only way to make your progress measurable. You cannot measure your progress on the task &quot;understanding the problem domain&quot;, but you can measure the progress on creating a document that contains the product vision. Because in the latter case you can discuss the result and find out whether it's acceptable or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6990" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T12:53:52.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10501" CreationDate="2014-01-06T15:34:24.257" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your best first step is to look at the syllabus for any of the PM bootcamps that are out there to help you meet the minimum requirement for PM coursework you need to qualify for PMP certification. If the course contents look useful to your being a good product manager there may be value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also some other alternatives, such as CAPM (another certification offered by PMI) and PRINCE2 (offered by APM Group), that you may want to consider in lieu of PMP certification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T15:34:24.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10508" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-06T15:49:20.713" Score="8" ViewCount="2250" Body="&lt;p&gt;I lead a UX design team that is currently engaging with our devs in a waterfall-esque manner. I'm looking to integrate design with engineering within a Scrum process. I've read dozens of articles, a few books, done some online training, etc. None of it addresses how to integrate design considerations.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can we integrate UX design into our Scrum framework?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7756" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-01-06T16:07:57.450" LastActivityDate="2020-11-02T08:24:37.047" Title="Including UX in Scrum" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-experience-design&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10508" CreationDate="2014-01-06T16:22:30.033" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum uses just-in-time analysis and design in its iterative development model. This certainly includes UX.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is up to your self-organizing team to coordinate with one another to ensure that prerequisites like analysis and design are performed in a timely way, and that task and story dependencies are handled as efficiently as possible within the team and within each sprint. The Scrum process treats UX as an equal partner with development, testing, and documentation, so your team should too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Just-in-Time Analysis and Design&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum framework promotes just-in-time design, where the requirements, analysis, and design for each feature are performed within the same sprint as the development and testing of the feature. The iterative development model certainly creates some rework or refactoring, but that's the accepted trade-off to avoid &quot;big up-front design.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Cross-Functional Teams / Full-Stack Stories&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to integrating your UX design in Scrum is to ensure that UX designers are fully integrated into your Scrum team. They should be full team members, and should work alongside the developers and testers within each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User stories that include UX components should be included on the Product Backlog, and estimated and accepted into each sprint just like any other user story. For stories where it doesn't make sense to have separate UX design stories, you will want to include UX design within your Definition of Done and make sure that your Sprint Backlog includes the necessary tasks for the current sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T16:22:30.033" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10508" CreationDate="2014-01-06T19:02:38.740" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've done Agile UX (UX within an agile SCRUM team) some years ago and doing it in-team and within the sprint isn't feasible. It's just &quot;naive&quot;, because Agile is a developer workflow, not a design workflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I struggled a while until I recognized the many problems, that occur with that working style and looked around for help - and it is a quite common problem UX teams will encounter doing agile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you work within a sprint you will loose any big picture, if you had one before, because you are just working on small, detail leveled tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There isn't time for doing usability tests and put the learnings back into prototype/specs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However Agile UX is great, fast and compelling - you must to loose paperwork and talk and work with protoypes as specs. I love that way of working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best Agile UX practise is to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work in parallel tracks. One design track and one developer track. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do your User Research, Big Picture concept, UX Strategy one or two sprints ahead in order to be prepared for the running later on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Split your UX team in two teams: One is preparing the concept, prototype and tests the specs for the next sprint (n+1) and will join the dev team in this sprint (n+1) side by side. The other team is working with devs at the current sprint (n) and prepares the next sprint later (n+1).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Desiree Sy and John Schrag made &lt;a href=&quot;http://dux.typepad.com/files/sy_schrag_agileux_CHI2012_handouts.pdf&quot;&gt;a good presentation for CHI 2012 how they mastered this challenge at Autodesk&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2747" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T19:02:38.740" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4986" CreationDate="2014-01-06T19:46:23.037" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may want to just track things in &lt;strong&gt;Google Drive&lt;/strong&gt; as a spreadsheet. It's free, it's always accessible, simple, and can be easily customized for whatever you need to track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want something more advanced, I would recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://leankit.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Leankit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, which is dead simple if used as a 3-lane kanban tool. It has lots of visual cues (colors, icons) which makes it easy to understand what kind of work is ahead of you at a glance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a software development project using GitHub, then it's a no-brainer to use &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/blog/831-issues-2-0-the-next-generation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;GitHub Issues&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; because of the integration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7638" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T19:46:23.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6100" CreationDate="2014-01-07T16:15:32.803" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Project Manager is responsible for the planning, management commitments, customer communications, financial success, project schedule commitment, and overall success of the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project lead(s) is responsible for the coordination and successful completion of some or all of the project tasks. Depending on the size of the project, there may be multiple project leads on a project. (i.e. software lead, hardware lead, clinical qualification lead, validation lead) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7785" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T16:15:32.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4986" CreationDate="2014-01-08T06:58:02.003" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use Github for my personal projects. Github issues works pretty much like a backlog and you can add the project's milestones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7788" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T06:58:02.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4711" CreationDate="2014-01-08T09:07:06.983" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think first you should analyze your career goals and aspirants. MBA is a management degree which includes many areas like marketing, finance, hr, etc and hence understanding of all the domains. If you go for PMP, that will mean you are a certified Project manager as it is a Project management certification. So, in my understanding you should go for MBA first which will definitely give you new career opportunities and better salary package. There are some MBA courses that have Project Management (PMP) as a part of the curriculum so you can take it from your college.&#xA;The other thing is time and budget. If you cannot invest much time, go for PMP. You can also take &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.simplilearn.com/list?course_type_id=2&amp;amp;country_id=-2&amp;amp;city_id=-2&amp;amp;course_id=10&amp;amp;mode=s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMP training online&lt;/a&gt; which is light on pocket and is a preferred way for many professionals. &#xA;I hope my answer helps! Good Luck to you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7058" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T09:07:06.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10515" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10524" CreationDate="2014-01-08T19:00:34.423" Score="2" ViewCount="3976" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a MS Project 2007 plan with six months of work in it. I'm updating the &lt;strong&gt;% Work Complete&lt;/strong&gt; on the tasks as we progress through the plan each week and month. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm moving the &quot;Project Start&quot; date each day I work on the project so that it re-levels the tasks based on the current date and I can tell when my projected release date will be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What frustrates me is completed tasks remain to the right of my &quot;Project Start Date&quot; line. It seems like auto-leveling should move the completed work to the left of the &quot;Project Start Date&quot; line, correct? How do I make Project behave like I want?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;I could be using MS Project totally wrong. Maybe I need to change my workflow a bit.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7792" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T19:24:07.327" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T19:24:07.327" Title="How do I auto-level a project mid-duration taking into account % complete on tasks?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;&lt;ms-project-2007&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10494" CreationDate="2014-01-08T19:07:42.717" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;On my own experience I would recommend to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Include Usability into the Acceptance Criteria. If it fails then one have to redo the story. In the same sprint or the next sprint - whenever there is time and priority&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You have to cut your effort. Always recruit participants on a 2 weeks timing (depending on sprint length). Do not care what to show them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A day before, check what is ready and working and show it to them. Make a sort of standard test plan to save time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Invite programmers or product managers to your testings as observers or film it. After the test discuss it briefly and put together a power point presentation to show it next day the dev team. Show the video if necessary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talk about your recommendations with the dev team and that's it! No 10 pager is needed anymore, it is transported via mouth, face to face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is more a testing of parts of the software. After some time it might be useful to test all together in a classical usability test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even here I can recommend the Ucd UX blog from Autodesk UX team. They have good tips for efficient recruiting, but I can't find it right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2747" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2014-01-09T09:57:56.087" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T09:57:56.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10515" CreationDate="2014-01-08T22:16:20.020" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Resource leveling will not move remaining work forward.  The resource leveling command's sole function to the resolve resource overallations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to move all remaining work out of the past, use the Tools &gt; Tracking, Update Project, Reschedule uncompleted work to start after command.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not keep changing the Project start date. Set your status date (Project &gt; Project Information) and use the Reschedule command after updating your tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T22:16:20.020" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10520" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10522" CreationDate="2014-01-09T09:30:33.250" Score="2" ViewCount="1278" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose I have a user story like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a customer, I am able to browse products by specifying a category.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Product Owner wishes to list the types of categories available such as books, electronics, or clothing, how would that be captured in a user story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7800" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-01-09T12:27:32.870" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T10:37:50.413" Title="How do I capture details in a user story?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10520" CreationDate="2014-01-09T10:57:20.230" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The user story is a collection of scenarios , use GWT(Given When Then) to write the scenarios . Also create a prototype and attach it with the screen&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7802" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T10:57:20.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10520" CreationDate="2014-01-09T12:26:45.417" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A user story is not a specification. It is generally a placeholder that describes the outline (not the details) of a feature, and provides some context to guide design and implementation decisions. Important details can be provided as separate stories; minor details should be communicated directly or in ancillary documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Capture Important Features as Separate Stories&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Critical features should be separate user stories. Consider this advice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of these details can be expressed as additional stories. In fact, it is better to have more stories than to have stories that are too large.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;— Cohn, Mike (2004-03-01). User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Beck)) (Kindle Locations 489-490). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you might have one story for adding a user-selectable book category, and another for limiting your scope to clothing. This is the right way to go if each feature really needs to be captured at the project level, because user stories are tracked on the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Use Stories as Conversation Placeholders&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you are using Scrum properly, a user story facilitates communication &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt; a feature, rather than functioning as a detailed specification document. For example, a good placeholder might be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;As a customer,&#xA;I want to be able to select a category&#xA;so that I can narrow the scope of products I am browsing.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe the Product Owner and Development Team agree to hard-code the values, or perhaps a more dynamic approach where the marketing team can add or remove categories dynamically would be better. Both approaches will work; the main difference is in the level of effort required to implement the feature. This is a great negotiation to have during Sprint Planning if the scope and complexity of the story isn't already clear to everyone on the Scrum team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Stories Aren't Specifications&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than writing all these details as stories, the better approach is for the development team and the customer to discuss these details. That is, have a conversation about the details at the point when the details become important. There's nothing wrong with making a few annotations on a story card based on a discussion...However, the conversation is the key, not the note on the story card. Neither the developers nor the customer can point to the card three months later and say, &amp;quot;But, see I said so right there.&amp;quot; Stories are not contractual obligations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;— Cohn, Mike (2004-03-01). User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Beck)) (Kindle Locations 509-513). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point being made here is that in most cases adding prescriptive levels of detail to a story is a project smell that indicates that the Product Owner wants detailed, up-front specifications rather than truly iterative development. In practice, a story like yours might lead to some hard-coded values in one iteration in order to make the feature available, while future sprints might add additional categories or make the list of categories more flexible and dynamic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Advice for Your Specific Use Case&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given your specific example, it might be easier just to rewrite the story to include the small set of hard-coded categories. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;As a customer,&#xA;I want to be able to browse books, electronics, and clothing separately&#xA;so that I only see the types of products I'm currently interested in.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if the list of categories is a lot longer, you could just use your original story, and the Product Owner could provide a separate document listing the categories he wants added. The list doesn't &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to be part of the user story; in fact, if the list is a big one, it &lt;em&gt;shouldn't&lt;/em&gt; be. The story just acts as shorthand to describe the outline of the feature, but the details can be fleshed out during Sprint Planning or Backlog Grooming, and be captured in additional project artifacts when necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T12:26:45.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10523" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10529" CreationDate="2014-01-09T13:37:33.333" Score="3" ViewCount="1197" Body="&lt;p&gt;Background: a large consultant company wants to better utilize their consultants time when they're between assignments. The plan is to have an internal concept managing internal projects, which aim to deliver value to the company (sale demos, internal products, etc.) and also give the consultants the opportunity to gain new skills (for example get experience working as a Scrum Master).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using Scrum for these projects are getting mixed results, since staff leave the projects pretty much immediatly when they get a paying assignment which makes it impossible to get a somewhat consistent velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These circumstances also increase the demand on the ease of which one can enter these projects, for example readability of code, documentation of decision making etc. One risk is that this could increase the waterfall-nature of these projects, which I very much would like to avoid&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how to manage these projects? Project methods to use? Pitfalls to avoid, and how? Any help would be greatly appreciated&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7543" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T20:03:38.293" Title="How to manage agile projects with high staff turnover" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10515" CreationDate="2014-01-09T15:32:04.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If completed work/tasks are appearing to the right of today's date, this means that you have marked as complete a task that was in the future. This is a common mistake. Unfortunately, just because you marked it as 100% complete before it was supposed to be completed does not mean that MS-Project &quot;realises&quot; it should now be in the past. You need to do two things on a regular basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When you actually start working on a task, make sure its Start Date matches the date you actually started on it, not when MS-P happens to have scheduled it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If it finishes early this means it did not require as much work to complete as planned. Rather than merely setting it to 100% complete, first ensure the Completed Work and Remaining Work accurately represent reality (i.e. Completed work is how much work was actually done, Outstanding Work should be zero if you are saying it is complete). If the task start date in MS-P matches when it did actually start, then this step will mean that you don't have tasks completed in the future, they always end on the day they actually ended.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main problem with completed tasks in the future of an MS-P project plan is that the system continues to recognise the resource spend in the future days. So whatever resources were applied to the task are believed by the system to be actually working on that task in the future &lt;em&gt;even though you marked it as complete&lt;/em&gt;! This is a bad thing as it means MS-P doesn't apply them to other tasks even though they are actually free to work on something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2014-01-09T17:18:51.210" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T17:18:51.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10508" CreationDate="2014-01-09T18:06:57.857" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There a couple of ways to approach the challenge, but (like some others have said) trying to force it into a framework that is meant for execution and measurement will just frustrate you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead I recommend looking at models that are meant to complement the execution of known features. Some have described it as a &quot;dual track&quot; model, where you have some focused on discovering the next feature and other focused on the sprint execution of features already discovered. You can learn a little more about it in an &lt;a href=&quot;https://thisagileguy.com/dual-track-scrum-brief/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Aaron Sanders Blog Post&lt;/a&gt;. Aaron co-founded CoMakers with Jeff Patton and this article dates from his time there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with the term and drawing unfortunately though are that it lets people believe they can still tie it up in a nice pretty process box, but discovery and figuring out what to do next can get messy. That is why Scrum STARTS with a backlog at the beginning. Product Discovery and UX help you get a better backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is my version that I use to explain the concept, but it is in now way meant to represent &quot;the way&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/L84Oo.png&quot; alt=&quot;Product Discovery and Scrum&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main points is that you have a team that has to play different roles and work that is in different stages, but the basic idea is that ideas go through a discovery, experiment and validation process and IF validated get added to a backlog that a team can pick up in a sprint and then those feature, once delivered, should be measured or looked at for new ideas to start again. One other think to note is that the &quot;discovery loops&quot; are not meant to show any time or size or velocity, but they should fast, continuous and valuable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is hard stuff and requires a lot of dedicated people and trust, since you aren't scheduling discovery. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-13T16:06:14.273" LastActivityDate="2020-06-13T16:06:14.273" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10523" CreationDate="2014-01-09T18:22:09.610" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There isn't a silver bullet to fix your organization's problem that they will not invest in internal projects.  The way to successfully do a project is to staff it realistically and execute with that staff.  If you have folks that are simply killing time they will not be interested nor committed to their short-term-unknown duration assignment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that using an iterative project methodology is actually hurting you.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Why? Agile methodologies rely on a constant team with constant achievable velocity. If you have a team of 5 and in a 3-week cycle (sprint, even) you lose 2 folks, you lose control of that velocity and will either have to under-deliver or change your development cycle timeframe.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe your projects could be more successful if you devoted a smaller team (2 people?) to author your requirements and make some UI mockups (for example) in very small work packages, then when you get a developer on the bench, you assign him or her a small amount of work that your organization can commit to letting them finish. In our agile and non-agile projects (and some with hybrids of each) we make our definable and testable work packages as 'doable' as possible in under a week. Anything greater than 3-5 days of work is questioned in hopes of being broken apart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3974" LastEditorUserId="3974" LastEditDate="2014-01-10T15:16:43.673" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T15:16:43.673" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10527" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-10T00:05:15.347" Score="1" ViewCount="3672" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to understand the update function in MS Project 2010 and I hope you can help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say I have a road-project where I have divided a task in to several activities based on where the task is performed. To simplify my example I will call the task &quot;Build Road&quot;. Here are the example activities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nYaqv.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Originally, all activities are planned to be built in sequence (top to bottom).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After production start we begin having production problems on different stretches. To try and keep the schedule we decide to start working on several fronts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as a planner in this project I start to follow up the production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/X6OQ8.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To keep track of project finish date and to help manage the project i choose to Update the project and move unfinished work to report date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eGzum.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I keep doing this continuously in the project and after a while my schedule looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/iCAD6.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now my questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is this a smart way to keep track of project progress? what are the risks? is there a better way?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Where can I find the new startdates for the remaining work on the different partial activities? MS Project 2010 gives me the new end dates (and project finish date) but I cant't find the start dates for the different partials.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What starts happening if I, mid-way, start to update the durations of some tasks because I have recalculated the project with new capacities? what do I have to keep in mind? For example to increase production to minimise delays.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I appreciate any input you can give on this! Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this project there is not enough time to keep track of resources and work within MS Project so we are only working with durations (no resources or work in the .mpp).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(For those who know what flowline/line-of-balance is, this is an attempt to use flowline in an Gantt-environment when no flowline schedule application is avaliable.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best regards&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7804" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2014-01-10T08:25:32.227" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T21:54:02.927" Title="Update project plan, rescheduling and dates" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10523" CreationDate="2014-01-10T00:33:36.157" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure that Scrum is the right tool for the job in this case. A similar case can be found in developing free/open source software, where contributions are intermittent and heterogeneous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably a system without specific iterations, but with continuous deployment and variable velocity, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt;, could suit you better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6300" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T00:33:36.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10523" CreationDate="2014-01-10T03:04:57.900" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum assumes a fixed team so like another responder said, it isn't a surprise you have found Scrum frustrating. And while saying you want to &quot;utilize&quot; people more pushes against the false assumptions you can 100% schedule people, however, I agree with the goals to help folks not at a client to find ways to focus on other valuable pursuits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds more like the concepts like &quot;FedEx Days&quot; or &quot;80% time&quot;. Essentially, coming up with guidelines for folks but not trying to create projects with dates, deliveries or commitments. Pick up Daniel Pinks &quot;Drive&quot;. It may also give you some ideas about how you can help motivate and guide consultants on the bench. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've worked in consultancies and in my experience, we were always excited to work together when back at our home base. It did give us a way to make our business better and learn from each other and the challenge of leadership was to find ways to facilitate that for us while also supporting clients. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as more specific tools, you might try a Kanban board, but I would seriously ask why you need to measure speed (velocity or thru put). Maybe you just need a visible indicator or way to hand off or a way to see the next thing to pick up when you get back. Build the tool to suite you, don't drive it with process. Good luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-01-10T03:46:41.887" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T03:46:41.887" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10527" CreationDate="2014-01-10T09:58:03.350" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an absolutely classic example of misuse of constraints- The problem is that you have scheduled tasks to appear in a fixed order, nose to tail, by chaining them together since that, presumably is the broad-brush way things are scheduled for this delivery. But in the real world downstream tasks are often started before previous tasks are completed. This fundamentally breaks the scheduling rules you have applied, i.e. only start a later task when the previous one is 100% complete. Trying to then force MS-P to somehow deliver a sensible schedule results in more and more bludgeoning of the plan to try and make it fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short answer is: Don't constrain tasks unless there is a real technical dependency, let them float freely until the point a task actually starts and then fix its start date and start logging &quot;Work Completed&quot; against it. Let MS-P resolve resource allocations using levelling, which will keep the end date realistic based on the work remaining in the project, and instead of using Percentage Complete, use Work, Work Completed and Work Remaining to manage effort on the tasks as the situation changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a long subject that I have previously documented for the benefit of my colleagues and others in this document: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/practical-project-management-and-tracking-using-microsoft-project.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/practical-project-management-and-tracking-using-microsoft-project.html&lt;/a&gt; - Please feel free to use it at your leisure if it works for you. It is a bit out of date on some aspects of MS-P since they changed the working time screens in 2010 and I haven't got around to updating it, but the sections on predecessors and constraints, plus tracking and monitoring against a plan are very relevant to your question. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2014-01-10T10:03:57.830" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T10:03:57.830" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10532" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-10T15:00:41.423" Score="1" ViewCount="529" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently found article on scrum alliance about new efficient form of Daily Scrum Meetings: &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20150918183151/https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2013/november/change-your-daily-scrum-meeting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Change Your Daily Scrum Meeting&lt;/a&gt; which is based on a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.agilealliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/ScrumMetricsAgile2012.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2012 paper by Scott Downey and Jeff Sutherland&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically we are changing standard questions during daily scrum meeting to following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What did we achieve yesterday on  story 1?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What was our contribution in story 1? Estimate it in story points.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is our plan for completing story 1 today?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What if anything is blocking you?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My question is&lt;/strong&gt;: Who is estimating the progress? All team members or those who contributed in story? How to measure the progress in burn down and present to the team? Any tools, programs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7819" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-13T16:06:37.770" LastActivityDate="2020-06-13T16:06:37.770" Title="How to measure and count sprint progress in new daily meeting approach?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;burndown-chart&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10527" CreationDate="2014-01-10T21:54:02.927" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to Marv's comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use the Tracking table to record the Actual Start date of the task.  If it has started before its predecessor, remove the link before tracking progress.  This will allow the work to start on the Actual Start date as required.  If you are not using Resources, you cannot use Work Complete, only Actual and Remaining duration.  The Tracking table nicely shows those fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The  start date for the remaining work (after the split) can be viewed by adding the Resume field to a task view&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T21:54:02.927" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10539" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-12T22:35:57.407" Score="2" ViewCount="8752" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recall hearing some numbers related to the percentage time that is spent on analysis in a traditional software project. However, I'm now looking for references and coming up short. The only thing I have found so far refers to the Mythical Man Month where it states that 1/3rd of a project is spent on Planning. But I'm now looking for a more up-to-date reference. Does anyone have any other references from well known sources? TIA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7835" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T02:41:24.920" Title="In Traditional Development, What Percentage Time is Spent on Analysis?" Tags="&lt;analysis&gt;&lt;sdlc&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10541" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-13T03:36:25.927" Score="2" ViewCount="1522" Body="&lt;p&gt;Almost all successfully SCRUM practice on software development has different degree of tests (unit-test, integration tests) as a part of definition of done. Is there any research about how these successfully SCRUM spent on time testing activity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5305" LastActivityDate="2015-09-24T16:06:12.747" Title="How much time is spent on software testing for a successful SCRUM?" Tags="&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10523" CreationDate="2014-01-13T12:06:17.007" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;i think best way for you is to create a backlog first , try and do vision of what exactly is that you want to achieve from this tool . Once you have backlog as mentioned above try to have 2 ppl on board for long term . These guys should understand design/requirements . Then you can keep on adding ppl around them . For an internal project no company in world will resources or money . So do demo's from time to time to update stakeholders and make use of people on pool &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7802" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T12:06:17.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10541" CreationDate="2014-01-13T14:22:46.667" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no set amount in my opinion.  You need to define &quot;done&quot;, and then do enough testing to make sure that every piece of work conforms to that standard, whether that means you do 60% of the work for testing or 10%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4210" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T14:22:46.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10541" CreationDate="2014-01-13T14:27:16.923" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To the best of my knowledge, there is no such research. There is, however, lots of experience in that field. Like, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.se-radio.net/episode-164-agile-testing-with-lisa-crispin/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this great SERadio-interview with Lisa Crispin about Agile Testing&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.se-radio.net/episode-167-the-history-of-junit-and-the-future-of-testing-with-kent-beck/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this Interview with Kent Beck about JUnit&lt;/a&gt; (less immediate, but he talks about the tester-hat of developers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The message certainly is that you need to spend enough time on testing, for you to be confident that your product works. There is no way of telling how much that actually is, since it greatly depends on the problem at hand and your experience (both as a programmer and as a tester). It also depends on whether you are working on a new project or on some legacy code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6990" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T14:27:16.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10532" CreationDate="2014-01-13T20:15:30.910" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Don't try to estimate partially completed story points&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The recommended approach in Scrum is not to count partially completed stories. So, the answer to your question is no one needs to estimate the story point of incomplete stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, one way to estimate remaining work is to create sub-tasks for stories. These tasks can be estimated in hours. The team members who are actually working on each task can estimate how many hours of work remain to complete that task. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allaboutagile.com/how-to-implement-scrum-in-10-easy-steps-step-8-track-progress-with-a-daily-burndown-chart/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Be honest about what effort you believe is required to complete each task regardless of how long has been spent to date and regardless of what was estimated in the first place.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will help the team to say something along the following lines:&#xA;&quot;At the end of 5 days of a 10 day Sprint, our burn down chart shows that we have completed only 7 points out a total of 30 points committed for this Sprint. However, we have 2 hours left in the last task for completing a 8 point story.&quot; This approach will also have the benefit of shining the spotlight on that task and motivate the team to swarm on that story and take it to completion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T20:15:30.910" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10548" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-14T03:10:21.103" Score="1" ViewCount="299" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're trying to get started with Scrum and I'm not sure how to handle QA in our situation.  Like many organizations, QA and product development are separate entities.  However, we have QA teams that are dedicated to individual products, so I don't think incorporating them into a Scrum team is going to be a radical change.  The odd part is that our QA team is bigger than the development team on the project that's moving to Scrum.  We've got five developers, one QA lead, and six QA testers.  The QA lead is very technical - a programmer who lost his way.  There are two other fairly technical QA folks who are getting into automated testing.  The remaining four are not very tech savvy and basically just walk through predefined test procedures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, QA gets a release every two or three weeks and just tests that until the next drop.  We're dealing with an old, horribly buggy codebase at the moment so they have lots to do on each release.  We're going to wipe the slate clean pretty soon, at which point we're going to get serious about unit testing.  I'd also like to start doing continuous integration and have QA test each bug and user story when it's finished being developed.  Hopefully the end result will be a lot less bugs and a much quicker feedback loop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So with all that said, the question is who to include in the development team.  Clearly the QA lead will be part of it.  The two people working on automated testing might be a good fit as well since they'll probably be able to make sense of programmer talk and hopefully even contribute to planning and estimation.  I really don't know how to handle the other four.  It seems like they should know what's going on at all times, but I don't know how much they'd take away from the meetings and including them will make the team bigger than I'd like.  But then I also don't want to have hurt feelings by excluding them.  What should we do?  Try a team of 12 people?  Draw the line at eight?  Perhaps only include the lead and let him delegate to the others the way he currently does?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7845" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T15:40:43.520" Title="Non-technical testers on a Scrum team" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;quality&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10550" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-14T04:01:26.043" Score="2" ViewCount="3094" Body="&lt;p&gt;On lots of PM reporting decks you see the usual RAG status and I was wondering why we do this versus simply putting down &quot;confidence levels&quot; that make it more accountable and personal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;The project is Red&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; seems less accountable and clear compared to &quot;&lt;strong&gt;I have low confidence that I will hit the date listed.&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like the whole RAG status is not very natural and meaningful to many sponsors and project participants (even if its defined somewhere), so I wonder if being more explicit and accountable is actually a better way to report on projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another point is that with RAG, people seems to keep project &quot;Green&quot; until there is a problem. Where confidence on delivery might have degraded because of complexity or underestimating, I have observed folks not changing the status early enough.  I feel like if they were forced to put a personal confidence level, things would change much sooner as it represent a statement about them (not just the project status). It's a psychological point but I feel like there is something to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any information where RAG came from and if they have any evidence that is better understood than just listing out confidence levels (High, Medium, Low)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be clear, I have no issues with actually having the visual colors showing, but just saying &quot;the project is Amber&quot; seem one step removed from what we are actually saying...why require the translation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1087" LastEditorUserId="1087" LastEditDate="2014-01-16T09:57:46.957" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T09:57:46.957" Title="Why do we use project RAG status instead of team confidence levels to make it more personal and accountable?" Tags="&lt;reporting&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10550" CreationDate="2014-01-14T09:07:55.140" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all: Why RAG instead of numbers with a legend or text? Because it's faster to grasp. From our cultural background we know that red is a warning color, yellow is something to be aware of, and green is more like ok. If something appears in red on my screen, I automatically look at it first. If there's to much red to focus on the specifics, I know I'm in trouble...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding clearness: What does &quot;low confidence&quot; mean? 20%? 30%? 5%? It is seldom possible for 2 or more people to agree on a certainty level. After all you're not going to conduct statistical tests. So whatever representation you chose, the &quot;value&quot; you assign remains a gut feeling to some extend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been found in management that it is easier to categorize things, if the categories are few and distant from each other. R = &quot;critical&quot;, A = &quot;out of normal&quot;, G = &quot;ok&quot;. I can quickly decide which category my current situation is in. You can see the same in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_poker&quot;&gt;Planning Poker&lt;/a&gt; where the numbers are chosen with increasing distance in order to make it easier for you to decide which one is more accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding personalization: As you can see from the the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_light_rating_system#Traffic_Light_RAG_and_BRAG_.28or_RAGB.29_Milestone_Project.2C_Program_and_Portfolio_status_reporting&quot;&gt;wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; there are alternative/extended versions of RAG being developed as users find they do not fit there needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6990" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T09:07:55.140" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10550" CreationDate="2014-01-14T12:03:23.680" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adding on to what salsolatragus said, in a project environment where deadlines are critical to be met, the application of colour psychology (in RAG, or any other extension of RAG) is extremely useful as it instinctively promotes a specific awareness with less ambiguity (than a scale system), while making it appear more objective. This is useful from an individual issue level, to an overall project level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may not be useful to clients to see &quot;oh, my project is listed as red...&quot;, but that's where communication comes into it - you'd have to say it's red lighted which means we're working as fast as we can to meet the deadline, but we may need to extend it due to lack of resources or unexpected things/changes to the scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you are using specific statistics to determine a scale of 1-5, e.g. &amp;lt; 20% is 1, &amp;lt; 40% is 2 etc (and % based off what? completed issues? incomplete issues? can you be confident that ALL issues are recorded? can you be confident that you won't be interrupted?), then a 1-5 scale of completion confidence would be subjective - you'd go off a feel. If you feel like it won't be done, you &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; put a 1, 2 or 3, as you can't really &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; it won't be done. If you want to come up with a scale though, you should keep it simple and based on common terminology or processes your team, and stakeholders, would be aware of. 'Low confidence' as said before - what is considered low? Is it your opinion, the opinion of 2 developers colluding together to not have to work as hard?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Making something bright red and in your face is more likely to get the attention of someone than something that has been classified as a number. Example: if you have a project that has 5 issues to be completed, and they are all behind schedule (and you aren't already urging people to do them ASAP constantly), then marking them as red will, from a psychological stand point, make them feel like it has to be done quicker. Mark one as amber, and immediately, your staff will think of doing that one last. If you used a 1-5 scale, they would have to sort the list descending first, to determine which to do first, rather than just being able to look at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I've noticed this in my team in projects when there's an issue that needs doing. If I change it to 'Immediate' priority, which makes it go red and bold, they'll often even do it from home! We use Redmine which has Immediate, Urgent, High etc (essentially a 1-5 scale). I would prefer it to be RAG, because those 3 categories should all essentially mean the same thing to me, and my team don't care about the difference between them. Anything other than normal means do it asap, so its a cultural thing too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of RAG and colour psychology, we actually have a Do Not Disturb light on our door office door. We change the colours based on the importance of why we shouldn't be disturbed, and it works. When it's red, people will be really nervous about asking us. When it's green, they just walk on in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1696" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T12:03:23.680" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10550" CreationDate="2014-01-14T14:33:47.350" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The two different reporting alternatives are not mutually exclusive.  Confidence level is a statistical construct but I don't think this is what you mean.  I am interpreting the use of confidence level more from a PM's/Team's subjective opinion of how things look and where things are headed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think BOTH should be used when communicating to stakeholders.  The RAG should be a calculated result; it's objective (reasonably objective anyway); it's reliable and a high degree of validity.  Because of this, the data that goes into it is lagging, it's historical, with the assumption that its future is based on the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A PM's and or team's opinion of health, a subjective view, and their confidence of how things are should supplement the RAG.  By definition, it is far more subjective, less reliable and valid, but can show analytical thought about the future.  The analysis can include additional leading indicators to help predict the future.  Of course, you can do some of that with a more objective RAG formula, too.  However, there is something to be said to include the human in the analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, use both.  Our numbers indicate we are red; however, I have medium to high confidence, based on the interventions deployed and some signs of improvement, that we can recover by project end.  The red shows where we are, it gives the sponsors opportunity to challenge the subjective and likely overly optimistic of health, but they can also find some comfort based on the PM's point of view.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T14:33:47.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10548" CreationDate="2014-01-14T14:58:06.130" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Include everyone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It won't be a very functional team because of the likely pipelining of tasks which is characteristic of this kind of teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it will still be a better team than the alternative. Keeping QA out of the team seems to only increment pipelining and disengagement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, you want to maximize communication and self organization within the team. The best way to do so is putting everyone working together and helping them help themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6300" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T14:58:06.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10548" CreationDate="2014-01-14T15:40:43.520" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following Scrum framework you need to add anyone who is involved in project development &amp;amp; delivery and lets call it the scrum team instead of development team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum calls for a multi-disciplinary team which works together having open communication channels between each team member. Some Scrum followers would suggest a small team (preferably limited to 8 or 10) but a 12 member team can work too even though it would cause many communication channels but the alternatives you have mentioned  will take you to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/ScrumBut&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ScrumBut&lt;/a&gt;. You don't want someone who is responsible for task delegation in a scrum team as Scrum suggests a self-organizing team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the four testers, they need to be part of the planning meetings as it will give them the required 'big picture' of the project as wells as clear idea of sprint objectives so that they can create or execute appropriate test cases. Having them part of the team would help in minimizing the 'pass the blame' game. Moving forward, team could set a goal to raise skill level of each team member so that they can provide more value in the long-term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a scrum team everyone is an equal partner there are no lesser roles or less important team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T15:40:43.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10550" CreationDate="2014-01-14T23:31:29.893" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The project is Red&quot; seems less accountable and clear compared to &quot;I have low confidence that I will hit the date listed.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The core of your question presumes that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Personal accountability is the goal (or at least a desirable outcome).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A person's confidence in something is an accurate measure of project status.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feelings are an objective measurement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the presumptions are, at best, solving the wrong problem. I assume the underlying problem is really &quot;Why is my project not currently within tolerance?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to communicate effectively about your project, be clear and concise. If a project is out of tolerance, always inspect project and organizational processes first. &quot;Accountability&quot; is generally a poor substitute for good processes or efficient dynamics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Red, Yellow, and Green&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Red, yellow, and green are often used simply because they are very visual, and because they correspond to traffic light signals that most people are already familiar with. This makes the cognitive load low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A sea of green means everything's okay. A few red dots draw attention to problem areas. A sea of yellow or red indicate a project that's badly off-track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Accuracy Doesn't Depend on Encoding&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can people misrepresent the status of a project? Sure. Even if you aren't using color codes, how many projects have 60% of tasks at 80% completion? Are those numbers any more honest than the color codes? Even if they are, what does that actually mean? Is it within the expected range of values, or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Red, yellow, and green are no more (or less) honest than any other metric. But as long as everyone agrees on what the colors mean, they communicate more efficiently about the urgency of a status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I'd pay more attention to a work package that's flashing &lt;em&gt;Yellow Alert!&lt;/em&gt; than something marked 63.2% complete, plus or minus 3%, with an 85% confidence level of 6.8% schedule slippage. YMMV, I suppose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Fixing Blame&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Saying &quot;the project schedule is out of tolerance by six weeks&quot; is more objective than saying &quot;Joe doesn't feel confident that he can embiggen his widget by next Tuesday.&quot; The first is useful information about the status of the project, while the second is either a way to blame Joe for something that may represent a broader process problem, or perhaps even to blame him for not drinking the project-approved Kool-Aid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your immediate follow-up question is &quot;Why isn't Joe confident that he can embiggen the widget before the Gantt chart says it should be embiggened?,&quot; then at least you're trying to investigate a process problem that has the potential to impact the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's not the point of measuring the confidence of task performers, then it basically amounts to scapegoating anyone who isn't buying into the defined management targets. Would you rather Joe say &quot;Rah! Rah! I feel absolutely, positively confident that my widget will be embiggened by next Tuesday!&quot; even though no one's even sourced a widget supplier yet? You're either encouraging him to lie, or holding him responsible for something outside his control. Either way, it can't end well for ol' Joe unless he bails on the project before it implodes in fiery failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focusing on the project's process and overall progress is generally more constructive than blaming individuals. If you're worried that individuals will be motivated to pass the buck, you might want to spend more time thinking about &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; they are motivated to avoid responsibility on the project than on trying to hold their toes to the fire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, if you fix the project dymanics, and the project usually fixes itself. Your mileage will vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T23:31:29.893" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10558" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-15T05:55:09.713" Score="4" ViewCount="548" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently in charge of a bunch of guys who are generally self starters and self organizing, so being their manager, most of the time I just have to step out of their way and provide some minor goals for every iteration of delivery of our product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I can't really add anymore to their technical know how or better the processes, the value I provide to them is more towards getting management out of their way and providing more spiritual assistance in terms of morale boosting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found it hard though when asked recently by my CEO of what my contribution to the whole team is as it is not really measurable in the traditional way and some of the things that I do daily flies in the face of normal managerial practices. So, how do I justify my remuneration in such a scenario ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7857" OwnerDisplayName="Low Kian Seong" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2014-01-15T08:23:57.083" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T05:00:04.113" Title="As the head of a department, how do you justify your remuneration when what you do is hard to measure?" Tags="&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10558" CreationDate="2014-01-15T07:09:18.800" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few really hard problems to solve that relate to programmers in the workplace. In my opinion, it's your job as part of management to solve some or all of them. If you are doing so, you could say you are indirectly responsible for the efficiency of the programmers, overall. You may also take account of a few things compared to other companies, such as: low employee turnover, ability for everyone to work reasonable hours (home at 5:30, for example, if they want), clarity of communication across departments, and more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, these hard problems are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Programmers need long periods of completely uninterrupted time to think about how to solve problems. You can provide this via office silence policies, offices with doors that shut, work from home (or some quiet place) opportunities, enforced meeting windows (no meetings except between 9 and 11am, for example), and more. Basically anything you can do here is a godsend. So, if you're doing those things, tell management that you're increasing programmer productivity by several hours per day.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Programmers generally don't want to fiddle with office politics, but often bear a fragile ego. Make sure that you foster community within the programming department and breed a culture of forgiveness, humility, and teamwork. Doing this saves you uncountable hours of wasted time from duplicate effort or bad practices. Seriously, uncountable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduce mental overhead. Don't weigh your programmers down with overbearing project management tools, meetings, communication requirements, reports, or whatever. Document everything they need to do clearly. Document every process they need to follow clearly. Make sure processes are valuable to everyone, and if they aren't valuable, destroy them or replace them. This will save every programmer hours every week of wasted time on pointless communication, freeing them up to communicate effectively as needed. If you're doing some sort of Scrum or Agile, split up into small teams so everyone doesn't have to listen to 50 other people drone on about irrelevant items. It's your job as manager to handle that complexity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduce barriers to communication and resources. If a programmer needs to spend some money on some software, it shouldn't require a persuasive paper, a PO, and a 3 month waiting period (yes, I've had to do that). Find a way to make it work. Tight feedback loops and reduced barriers will make your team fly, and it shouldn't be up to programmers to make that happen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Encourage autonomous and independent work. Give people their own little piece of the world to be responsible for, and they won't quit even when times get hard or they're not being paid enough. Tell management that you are reducing turnover this way, and helping to foster a sense of pride in the work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you get all these figured out, you probably won't have to justify what you do very often. Your team will be singing your praises.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7858" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T07:09:18.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10539" CreationDate="2014-01-15T14:03:38.387" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nice question. The distribution of labour for software development across labour types varies per project, project approach and organisation. It has challenged me quite a lot in the past as an R&amp;amp;D manager. For current project we always work with some kind of FPA and in our case 15% for analysis unless reasons to deviate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that's not your question. Regarding references I've found most help in that period of my life with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model_Integration&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CMM&lt;/a&gt; (Capability Maturity Model, nowadays CMMi) and advice from Hans Sassenburg (nowadays living in CH). CMM induces that most organisations can not reliably predict the amount of analysis needed for a project till the variables influencing analysis time across the project have been brought into control. This includes also staffing (&quot;replace the senior analyst by a junior which makes a lot of mistakes&quot;) and procedures (&quot;waterfall&quot; or &quot;agile&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A nice quote from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.se-cure.ch/images/SBO%20-%20Description.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this presentation&lt;/a&gt; on predicting effort is ”You can’t fix &#xA;what you refuse to measure”. This &lt;a href=&quot;http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.46.9824&amp;amp;rep=rep1&amp;amp;type=pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article on software cost prediction&lt;/a&gt; gives some more information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summarizing: either take a reasonable gamble based upon historical projects or ensure your projects, teams and customers are similar and more accurately calculate the amount of analysis time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7423" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T14:03:38.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2953" CreationDate="2014-01-15T19:42:54.057" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had the same question and found the following solution:&#xA;View -&gt; Sort -&gt; Sort by -&gt; Unique ID&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This puts it back into the original order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7864" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T19:42:54.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10539" CreationDate="2014-01-16T02:41:24.920" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) International Software Benchmarking Standards Group (ISBSG, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isbsg.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.isbsg.org/&lt;/a&gt;) collects this data, you can buy their report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) There also used to be (still is?) Chinese Software Benchmarking Standards Group (CSBSG) that collected this data for Chinese projects. I believe I saw their data some years ago, but I can't find it anymore, and their site www.csbsg.org is no longer up. I still see reference to them as a part of ISBSG at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.totalmetrics.com/function-points-groups/csbsg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.totalmetrics.com/function-points-groups/csbsg&lt;/a&gt;, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) I was able to find this report at COCOMO Forum'08 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.docstoc.com/docs/20160200/Phase-Distribution-of-Software-Development-Effort&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.docstoc.com/docs/20160200/Phase-Distribution-of-Software-Development-Effort&lt;/a&gt; that compares CSBSG data with COCOMO II distribution - see slide 14 there. Acc to it, the Planning and Requirements phase is slightly above 15% for CSBSG, and slightly above 5% for COCOMO. Design phase takes another 15% acc to CSBSG and 35% acc to COCOMO model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) I also found another paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.compaid.com/caiinternet/ezine/Reifer-Benchmarks.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.compaid.com/caiinternet/ezine/Reifer-Benchmarks.pdf&lt;/a&gt; (2004) that provides effort/duration distribution figures. In particular, the Plans and Requirements phase for waterfall is ~7% (2..15%) in terms of effort, 16-24% (2..30%) in terms of duration. Design phase is extra 17%  / 24-28%. There are also distributions acc to other methodologies provided inside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5720" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T02:41:24.920" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10565" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-16T02:47:58.863" Score="0" ViewCount="979" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently we're working on a project where top management is providing unrealistic estimates to our customers, especially in terms of the number of bugs that we can fix. We are not talking just about a optimistic targets, but clearly unrealistic goals like fixing 400 bugs a week instead of an average of 200 bugs. The main risks are that we will not take the action needed to really fix the project like renegotiating the plan, reducing the scope, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am thinking about different strategies here to overcome the problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let the management focus on unrealistic goals while working-level people renegotiate planning and scope to find some real solutions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Directly raising this issue with client management (probably a bad idea).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wait until we really crash (e.g. fail to deliver what is expected) to implement a new solution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a better strategy to prevent such situations? Are there special tricks to deal with top management who get involved in project details? How can we deal with this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6316" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-02-13T15:57:37.350" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T15:57:37.350" Title="How to prevent top managers setting unrealistic expectations with a customer?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;scope&gt;&lt;team-capacity&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10566" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-01-16T03:37:54.573" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions about the software/systems development life cycle (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_Development_Life_Cycle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_Development_Life_Cycle&lt;/a&gt;), phases of realizing software product/information system requirements, per-phase statistics, comparing different phase breakdowns and estimation models.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5720" LastEditorUserId="5720" LastEditDate="2014-01-16T07:13:37.773" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T07:13:37.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10567" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-01-16T03:37:54.573" Score="0" Body="Questions about the software/systems development life cycle, its phases, per-phase statistics, different phase breakdowns and estimation models." OwnerUserId="5720" LastEditorUserId="5720" LastEditDate="2014-01-16T13:01:01.050" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T13:01:01.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10565" CreationDate="2014-01-16T06:26:59.500" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been in a situation like this, try to communicate with top management. They could simply be using the figures primarily for marketing or to close the contract. It seems they wanted to have a deal on this so much and if this is the case - discuss ahead risk management strategies/what-if scenarios. Is the 400 based on historical data? Bugs have severities, perhaps some sales guys just decided that 200 critical/major bugs = 400 minor/trivial to make the SOW more attractive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7736" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T06:26:59.500" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10570" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-16T09:13:58.620" Score="2" ViewCount="426" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to calculate or estimate time needed to code a particular project. This may include time spent doing analysis, actually coding etc. I find it difficult to make a good estimate. Can someone help me in making a good estimation or direct me to tools etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7870" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T15:23:04.517" Title="Calculating time needed for finishing project from scratch" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-02-15T22:28:08.923" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10572" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10764" CreationDate="2014-01-16T09:31:49.483" Score="1" ViewCount="374" Body="&lt;p&gt;Organization background: SW development team, painful level of bugs, little process (2 to 3 pts max on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Joel Spolsky's 12-point test&lt;/a&gt;). I have hard time convincing the team that the organization is defective and not just &quot;devs are incompetent&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember E. Deming's claim from his study that most (80%+?) problems originate in  process, methods and organization and not in workforce errors, but for the life of me I can't find it by googling. Does smbdy here know the study that is source of such claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6402" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2014-01-17T11:40:56.863" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T04:04:36.933" Title="Where is the Deming study that asserts most errors are in organization or process?" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;quality&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10558" CreationDate="2014-01-16T10:28:04.033" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There should always be a way to get an impression about the teams performance: the product they deliver. Especially with in iterative process (as you seem to have), it should be possible to see whether there's value dropping out of each iteration or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your CEO should be very happy (and content), if you can tell him that you manage a happy team that produces a lot of business value on a regular basis. That should put an end to every discussion about your methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cannot identify the value your team creates, I doubt your management and team situation is as good as it sounds. Regardless of the methods, knowing what your team does, how complex the tasks are, and how many of them get done in what time is THE responsibility of a team's manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6990" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T10:28:04.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10558" CreationDate="2014-01-16T11:14:59.777" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A competent CEO would not ask this question.  The contribution of the leader is the team's performance.  What the team does the leader does.  If the team succeeds, the leader gets credit; if it fails, the leader gets credit.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Self-organizing is a bit of a misnomer.  Team's do not self organize.  Throw several people at a task and someone will emerge as the de facto leader.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering if the CEO has noticed someone else on the team assuming this role and playing it effectively, to the point where the CEO is interfacing with this individual, not you, to understand what's going on.  The CEO could interpret this situation that you built the dynamic, grooming someone to take your spot so you can move on and up, or that you were sidelined by this individual.  I would hope the former.  But this is purely speculation on my part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T11:14:59.777" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10572" CreationDate="2014-01-16T11:26:25.343" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Google Demming, 95/5.  This will provide a few links to where you could find some of his work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem you have, however, will not likely be solved by introducing Demming to your bosses.  Blaming the people is the easiest thing to do and, when you replace a person or two, demonstrates you are actively managing to the problem.  It does not matter whether it will be effective; that can just gets kicked down the road to be dealt with another day.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly enough, however, when performance is high, we do not typically give credit to the organization.  We reward the people, even though the people are not likely why performance is high, or at least with the weight with which we like to celebrate them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2014-01-16T11:35:31.490" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T11:35:31.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10570" CreationDate="2014-01-16T15:47:35.123" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Gantter is one of the best ways to start with! Make a precise WBS (Work Brekdown Structure) with Hierarchy of tasks and Sub-tasks. Assign rough internal deadlines along-with actual deadlines. You'll be able to make better estimates as you go along!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7873" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T15:47:35.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10572" CreationDate="2014-01-16T16:52:48.857" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what you say, your basic problem is that you don't have a team to begin with. A group of groups of people blaming each other is not a team in any case. I see two possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Get the whole team on one table. Confront them with the situation: The team (as a whole!) is performing bad, nobody has a solution, so basically the project is about to fail. The following discussion may become ugly, but also may reach the point where the team understands that they need to change something in order to change the situation. Then you can introduce your ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The (lack of) confidence of you developers is a serious problem. I'm pretty sure they are not happy with taking the blame, so they might be the ones most welcoming your proposals. If you start improving management with them, then they will most likely improve and be able to prove it. This robs the rest of the team of the possibility to blame the developers. And that, in turn, makes them (DBAs + admins) become potential scapegoats. That, in combination with the developers's success story might be enough to get the whole team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering how you describe your team situation, I don't have high hopes for any of these possibilities. Honestly, it sounds to me as if the project already failed. But then again, you can barely loose to much from here on...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6990" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T16:52:48.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10565" CreationDate="2014-01-16T18:00:40.303" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The gap between sales and those who deliver will never be closed.  And there is good reason for that, too.  First, that line where you cross from optimistic, to very optimistic, to very very optimistic, to slightly unrealistic, to pretty much unrealistic, to unrealistic, and so on is huge, blurry grey line with indiscriminate borders.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on one's risk appetite, you'd place that promise on different areas on that line.  So it becomes quite a never ending argument as to really where you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, you would go out of business in about 15 minutes if you were &quot;honest&quot; with your promises.  As PMs, we are told to be transparent and honest and set real expectations.  As sales people, we sell and close deals.  While buyers might want honesty, they buy what they want to hear.  So if you want to have some place to work....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, there are so many changes and things that can occur that make early promises often irrelevant by the time you have to deliver.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One one recent project, we promised an eight month project to be delivered in three...during the holidays.  During the three months, we had difficulty controlling scope, which continued to grow.  The likelihood of completing in three was dismal from the start and only worsened until the team could only laugh about it.  As we approached deadline, the customer failed to negotiate with another vendor on whom a lot of our scope was dependent.  That other vendor would not jump into this train wreck of a project.  Consequently, our scope was cut over half, we finished the little bit that remained in that three months and claimed victory.  Customer was happy with us, we got the sales counted for the year end, and all the blame went to the other vendor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sleazy?  Yes, that's why I hate sales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T18:00:40.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10580" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-16T21:46:27.103" Score="1" ViewCount="1705" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I believe this question falls under a Project from the Management&#xA;  side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But I would appreciate any help or resources for the scenario. The&#xA;  project as an IT Manager, is responsible for &lt;strong&gt;merging IT operations&#xA;  team(approx 2-4 employees) of 4 sister companies&lt;/strong&gt;, into &lt;strong&gt;One IT&#xA;  OPERATION TEAM.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Challenges here are:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do I calculate the &lt;strong&gt;cost per employee&lt;/strong&gt; for the company since, there are some &#xA;  similarities in the nature of work they do? Like for&#xA;  example, supporting Exchange, Level 3 support, etc...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there a Model which I can refer to or any sources that I should read through before moving ahead?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did go through resources from the management side, which include the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tgcpinc.com/SiteData/doc/MergersAcquisitions-MBrenner-071409/976ceba14c4fae75a4bbcb514bb34762/MergersAcquisitions-MBrenner-071409.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mergers and Acquisitions: &#xA;Best Practices for &#xA;Successful Integration&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imaa-institute.org/docs/m&amp;amp;a/adlittle_02_Successful%20Post-Merger%20Integration%20-%20Realising%20the%20Synergies.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Successful Post-Merger Integration: Realizing the Synergies&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.strategyand.pwc.com/media/file/The_Role_of_IT_in_Successful_Merger_Integration.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Role of IT &#xA;in Successful &#xA;Merger Integration&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But was checking if I am in the right direction, or need to consider more resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Any help/suggestions/comments regarding the same will be highly appreciated&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7877" LastEditorUserId="6494" LastEditDate="2015-03-25T16:31:08.417" LastActivityDate="2015-10-30T12:17:16.620" Title="Factors to consider for Merging two or more IT Operations team into ONE" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10580" CreationDate="2014-01-17T01:17:02.507" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;At first glance, your question is not entirely related to the community (this is Project Management not people management). However, you could gain some useful information if you borrow parts of the Project Charter creation process from the PMBoK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, I'm thinking of building the list of stakeholders and getting input from them before you launch off on the integration project. You're asking about cost-per-employee guidelines but it may not be important to all of the stakeholders involved. One of our recent acquisitions had an extremely elaborate charge-back structure for IT services where each group was billed with very detailed reports. They assumed we did the same thing and kept pushing for information that our internal financial group had zero interest in providing. It look quite a bit of discussion at levels much higher than mine to get everyone to understand what will be happening in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cutting through assumptions, building commonly held list of priorities for the integration, and actually &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;writing down&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; what everyone agrees will be done is vitally important at the start of an integration process.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ITIL does have a big picture framework for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_management_for_IT_services&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Financial management for IT services&lt;/a&gt; that could be a useful place to start for the specific questions you are asking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current company is a growth-through-acquisition organization and we have several integration projects running at any given point in time. Unfortunately, IT is dropped into these projects quite late (confidentiality concerns, NDA restrictions, etc.) so we don't always get to have this discussions - and that hurts us in the long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T01:17:02.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10565" CreationDate="2014-01-17T01:45:43.443" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Weird to answer my own question, but the problem has been partially solved and I wanted to share the approach the team took. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, we convinced some well-respected senior manager in the company to have a look on the circus going on with the top-management reporting and a to have look over the number. He finally raised his voice to stop the mess, without having us to by-pass direct hierarchy. (Guy coming from other division, but having business with the same customer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, we decided also finally decided to focus on action to be taken (merging validation and development team in the same building, schedule adjustment...) over just promising something. For the side story, our sales insisted that engineering does not give blind promise to our customer, since that could hurt on-going discussion for other project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That does not solve the initial problem that our project is not side-tracked and it will be hard to close it, but at least it looks like we can go back to work and not spent our time to explain ourselves and give promise to our management. I had the curious feeling in conclusion that we had to play a lot of politics to drive to reason the internal forces. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6316" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T01:45:43.443" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10570" CreationDate="2014-01-17T08:43:30.500" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you want to produce estimates for programming tasks. There are countless methods out there (none perfect but each offers something).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should read about estimating from some books. Specifically, read about the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_breakdown_structure&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Work Breakdown Structure&lt;/a&gt;. You do not need any software to do this, you can do it on your own (though the larger the project the more you will want to use some software solution). The short version is to divide up your project into components and keep sub-dividing until you get to components which have sizes that are easy to estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also explore the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wideband_delphi&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Delphi Wideband method&lt;/a&gt; since you have at least one other person you work with (although Delphi should have more since data should be anonymous and with two people yours will not be).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are lots of books on Project Management and many, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1861522746&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Field and Keller's text&lt;/a&gt; (just OK), which include significant parts dedicated to software development but are for overall project management, not just software project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read and practice. It gets easier with time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7610" LastEditorUserId="7610" LastEditDate="2014-01-17T08:52:41.277" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T08:52:41.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10570" CreationDate="2014-01-17T12:07:08.490" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whatever books you read to help estimate, you need to really understanding probability and the effects of random variables.  Way too often, and with very senior people, we have a tendency to think we control every variable at play on a project and, with real good planning, there is no reason why our cost and time targets are not met with zero variance.  In other words, if you over- or under-ran, your planning was somehow at fault.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to understand that an estimate is probabilistic and is a range of probable results.  Your planning value or target that you would price and baseline for performance is a single number that falls somewhere in that range.  And the likelihood of you hitting that single number with zero variance is near zero.  If you are targeting appropriately, your career should be filled with equal underruns and overruns and very very few zero variances if any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you can lie like the rest of us on your resume about how you always underrun or meet targets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to see how this probabilistic thing works, log your commute time to and from work, door to door.  Don't exclude any time, include everything, even stops to get gas, grocery, or even happy hour.  Then build a histograph with your results.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T12:07:08.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10570" CreationDate="2014-01-17T14:10:16.547" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Break the task down into smaller components.  If you still can't estimate the components, continue breaking it down until the  components are something you can estimate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T14:10:16.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10457" CreationDate="2014-01-17T14:59:17.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Split the task on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gantt_chart&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gantt&lt;/a&gt; view. Leave the completed work where it was, and move the unfinished part to the new date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7883" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-03-01T03:05:23.437" LastActivityDate="2014-03-01T03:05:23.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10447" CreationDate="2014-01-17T15:16:18.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No you do not have to work as PM.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;You may have never got the title as PM before applying but as Polymath answered you have to show proof that you have the necessary expertise in the knowledge domains. &lt;br&gt;&#xA;You will fill out a form, while applying for exam, in which you will state how many hours you have worked on each knowledge field on each and every project you have worked on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7883" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T15:16:18.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10570" CreationDate="2014-01-17T15:23:04.517" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try to estimate by using the knowledge you already have.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Consider a small task/project that you already done and compare it with the new one and try to estimate according to it. &lt;br&gt;&#xA;Do it again for a difficult finished one. &lt;br&gt;&#xA;Then decide where in between really the task will fall between those two estimates. &lt;br&gt;&#xA;You can take the higher one if you are feeling pessimistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7883" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T15:23:04.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10590" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10593" CreationDate="2014-01-17T15:30:32.597" Score="5" ViewCount="4726" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know it should not be done, but I'm tasked by my company to measure the performance of each person on the Scrum team. What would be a &quot;not so bad&quot; way of doing it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. I cannot let the team decide how to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7883" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-01-17T22:16:05.887" LastActivityDate="2017-03-30T04:25:49.553" Title="How can I measure the performance of individuals within Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;performance&gt;&lt;evaluation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10590" CreationDate="2014-01-17T19:53:28.347" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure how you can calculate performance of an individual when Scrum is based on a Team environment. An individuals performance can be tracked by setting his/her goals and tracking if those goals are met within the given time frame. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7885" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T19:53:28.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10523" CreationDate="2014-01-17T20:03:38.293" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum suggests to have a fixed team so it will be hard to track velocity for your project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;what I would suggest is to divide tasks to smallest size which can be completed within a day and then apply Kanban style development cycle. it will help to get work moving as well as you can monitor individual's contribution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7885" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T20:03:38.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10590" CreationDate="2014-01-17T22:12:31.707" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You already know you shouldn't do this. However, if you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; do it, focus on team integration and support of team values, rather than trying to perpetuate the &lt;em&gt;100% utilization fallacy&lt;/em&gt; or applying irrelevant metrics like lines of code written or bugs stomped per iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the person makes the team better or the process more effective, then they &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; valuable. If the person reduces team cohesion or effectiveness, then the team should &quot;vote them off the island.&quot; It really is just that simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A Teamwork-Oriented Scorecard Approach&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't really measure individual performance on a Scrum team, but you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; measure an individual's level of participation in the team's process and (to some extent) how well they contribute to the team as a whole. For example, you might design a questionnaire that asks some team-process questions like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Team Member: ______________________________&#xA;&#xA;1.  Does team member attend all framework-mandated meetings?&#xA;2.  Does team member follow all framework processes?&#xA;3.  Does team member produce work that meets the team's Definition of Done?&#xA;4.  Does team member actively participate in the Daily Stand-Up?&#xA;5.  Does team member participate appropriately in Sprint Planning?&#xA;6.  Does team member participate appropriately in Sprint Reviews?&#xA;7.  Does team member participate appropriately in Sprint Retrospectives?&#xA;8.  Does team member pair well with others?&#xA;9.  Does team member value collective code ownership?&#xA;10. Does team member strive for continuous improvement and cross-functional learning?&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Defining Value&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If management's goal is to try to figure out whether Team Member #7 is more or less valuable than Team Member #3, then management has missed the point of Scrum. The real question is whether each team member adds value to the team, and whether the team would be better off with or without that person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the person makes the team better or the process more effective, then they &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; valuable, both to the team and to the organization. If the person reduces team cohesion or effectiveness, then the team should &quot;vote them off the island.&quot; Any other measure of &quot;value&quot; is not embracing the core agile principle of valuing &quot;individuals and interactions over processes and tools.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-04-10T21:34:12.387" LastActivityDate="2015-04-10T21:34:12.387" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10594" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-17T22:35:42.060" Score="4" ViewCount="1727" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will be planning my first project using Scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am still trying to get my head around JIRA and how I will use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know that once we have identified a sprint (all tasks have been estimated with story point or hours/days), if a developer is unable to work on a task (i.e. they are working on a non-sprint task), where in JIRA do we record the time the developer has allocated to the non-sprint task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess what I am asking is at the end of the sprint the burn down chat will show that the task has not been completed but how can I show management that this was a result of the developer working on another tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7719" LastActivityDate="2020-02-09T04:08:49.067" Title="Where do you record time in JIRA that is not part of a sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10590" CreationDate="2014-01-17T22:57:51.720" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most important thing is that the team is as productive as it can be. Measuring individual performance is not very important within Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum teams are supposed to be self-organising, so different team members make take slightly different roles. For example, I worked on a team where senior members of the team would take the &quot;harder&quot; bugs, but they would solve fewer than the more junior team members. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A performant Scrum team requires the team members to work in a certain way. There are too many details to list here, but you want the team members to respect the rules and contribute in Scrum ceremonies/meetings. For a team to be self-organising, you want your team members to be pro-active. You do not want to have to micro-manage your team. You should make sure the performance criteria align with these behaviours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've said, that, &quot;you can not let the team decide&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really?  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/360-degree_feedback&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;360 degree feedback&lt;/a&gt; is a common way to gather feedback about employees. I've recently been measured in this way. I'm certainly sure this should be part of the way you measure the performance of your employees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you really can't let the team members do this, then can you at least let them have some input on the criteria which you measure them on.  What do they think the perfect team member is? How do they measure up to it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6608" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T22:57:51.720" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10594" CreationDate="2014-01-17T23:34:20.950" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are doing Scrum you do not need to record this time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not really a Jira question, but one about Velocity and how you allocate resources to a Scrum team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum advises that you allocate team members fully to a given project. Of course, every team member has other duties and distractions. But Scrum assumes that amount of other work would be the roughly same for each sprint. These distractions will then be factored into the teams velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, if you lose a significant amount of your resources than normal (for example, team member moves to some other project or other unplanned activity), such that you won't be able to complete the commitment you have made for this sprint, then you should end the sprint as an &lt;a href=&quot;http://agileatlas.org/articles/item/abnormal-termination-of-a-sprint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;abnormal termination&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6608" LastEditorUserId="6608" LastEditDate="2014-01-18T13:47:56.383" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T13:47:56.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10580" CreationDate="2014-01-20T09:34:09.877" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is a model you can refer to that states how much more efficient you will be, and I think this will be really hard to calculate. Maybe you should take all employee profiles and sum up their skillsets. That way you will have insight in for example how many employees have &quot;Microft Exchange&quot; -skills etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that you can maybe identify obsolete personell, or the other way around you can substatiate the improvement in continuity and other qualitative areas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7895" LastActivityDate="2014-01-20T09:34:09.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10605" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-21T08:44:43.650" Score="1" ViewCount="4297" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to schedule tasks using the &lt;code&gt;Gantt&lt;/code&gt; chart. The project is developing a &lt;strong&gt;Web application&lt;/strong&gt;. I was stuck in the selection of resources for each task; knowing the developer for these tasks is only one person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the semantics of a resource in &lt;code&gt;GANTT&lt;/code&gt;?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there other types of resources than human resources?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7901" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T15:55:28.933" Title="what is resources in gantt chart for IT project" Tags="&lt;gantt&gt;&lt;resources&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10605" CreationDate="2014-01-21T09:55:30.163" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds as though the project is quite small, so I would personally not be assigning resources to tasks - it's not mandatory and, as you say, you are looking to schedule tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, to say &quot;what are the semantics of a resource in GANTT&quot; isn't quite hitting the nail on the head...a GANTT chart is a project planning tool, and MS project is one software package (I've assumed you're using MS Project) that allows you to assign resources to the tasks that you are planning in a GANTT chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said all this, if you still want to assign resources, they are generally broken down into: Costs, Materials, Work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regards,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;G&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3246" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T09:55:30.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10605" CreationDate="2014-01-21T13:41:15.370" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A resource can be anything that is used in the project. In your project you have one Developer resource, but you could have many. It is impossible to define what resources you need for &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; project, only you know that, but examples of resources that often appear on IT Projects are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business Analyst&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Development Lead&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;DBA (Database Adminstrator)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tester&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test Lead&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially your resources are defined by the role they play in the project (their Type) and there can be many roles and you may have many of them in any given project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T13:41:15.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10605" CreationDate="2014-01-21T15:55:28.933" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &quot;resource&quot; is anything that has to be assigned to a project in order to deliver the project's products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you infer, there is a bias towards documenting the team members who are going to be doing the work. I think Gregg has done a good job at identifying the broad categories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Materials.&lt;/strong&gt; This includes the hardware and equipment that are required to deliver a product and are temporarily assigned to the project. The most tangible examples are from the construction industry (e.g. front-end loaders, dumptrucks, power tools). Other examples could include physical space (e.g. if you have a designated &quot;project meeting room&quot;), project-specific servers, project-specific workstations, new development tools, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Costs.&lt;/strong&gt; IMO better called &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Consumables&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. I see this as consisting of what will be used up by the project to product it's products. Again construction gives easy examples (e.g. concrete, ashphalt, shingles, nails, lumber). Outside of that if you could have things like printing costs (for delivery of a report) or data storage fees or whatever.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Work.&lt;/strong&gt; So the labor costs that you have. Marv has given some good examples from an IT perspective.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T15:55:28.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10609" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10611" CreationDate="2014-01-21T17:09:42.627" Score="2" ViewCount="1208" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work as a tech pm. I have been using assembla for ticket management. For personal use, I use a to do list app called Walker. Having used it for a year, I found it brilliant at  certain things but limited as I became acutely aware of the difference between the nature of objects you might want to make a note of- there are an array of reasons. However, to cut to the point, what are the limitations of to do lists? I am finding it difficult to find info on this online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7909" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T11:13:13.740" Title="What are the limitations of 'to-do' lists?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10609" CreationDate="2014-01-21T17:46:57.960" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;...the human working them.....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  I think before an answer about formatting can be developed, I think the scope of a to do list needs to be agreed upon.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my perspective, it is a simple tool to capture very small, discreet tasks for a single actor.  It answers what needs to get done.  It does not answer how or when.  The when is only implied based on priority or sequencing of the to do items.  But that's it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a format for something this simple, I just need a list, with a simple box that allows me to indicate priority or sequence and a box that I can check off.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think the tool itself is limited only based on its purpose.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2014-01-21T19:36:27.373" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T19:36:27.373" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10609" CreationDate="2014-01-21T18:56:53.943" Score="4" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scope - having just sat through a 30 minute phone call that managed to decide &quot;we don't know what the manager wants, and we're afraid to ask him, but we're going to try to deliver it to him anyway&quot;, I have a great deal of emotional investment in the fact that &quot;unclear requirements&quot; are one of the top three causes of failure.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dependencies Todo lists don't show dependencies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prediction - Analysis of your todo list won't answer &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When will the entire project be complete? How confident are you of that estimate?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will the project serve the business need&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What will the project cost? Is your current estimate higher or lower than your original estimate? Why the change?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk Management - the ToDo list doesn't capture uncertainties. There is no way for management to plan based on a todo list. Management can't plan alternatives, and can't assess the impact of your suddenly contracting appendicitis and being unavailable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change Management - Who controls your todo list? how?  If I want to change the priority, is there a way to obtain consensus about the new priority? is there a way to deal with the work that is deprioritized? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;work authorization - todo lists don't provide a consistent, easy way to schedule work (beyond &quot;next in queue&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cooperation  - if the Todo requires multiple people, there is no meaningful way to coordinate todo lists. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;lessons learned - unless you're implementing something far beyond the typical todo list, there is no ex post facto capture.  Once you've completed the task and crossed it off the list, everything you learned vanishes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, todo lists don't do Project Planning or Project Management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T18:56:53.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10612" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-21T20:49:43.900" Score="0" ViewCount="983" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a university unit helping develop online courses. Upper administration wants a way of reporting these out there and how long our people are working on things. Each semester we are tasked with development of around a total of 20 new &amp;amp; updating old courses. Attempting to look for a system/methodology to track these - including time, tasks, emails, etc. We have a staff of around 30 people organized into 4 teams that each take a subset of courses each term. Then on top of those 20 new courses we have ongoing support for the courses after they are developed that should be tracked as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem that keeps coming up is that the number is far too large for most PM systems to handle at one time it seems like. We tried products like Microsoft Project, Jira, Asana, Trello, Zoho and others but the volume of what would be considered &quot;tasks&quot; (e.g. &quot;get course syllabus&quot;, &quot;input quiz 1&quot;) ends up quickly exceeding the limits of each system. The structure most commonly used in the past has been:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Project = Course Development&#xA;+---Main Task = Develop Course ABC 101&#xA;    +---Subtask = Course Task&#xA;Project = Course Support&#xA;+---Main Task = Support Course ABC 101&#xA;    +---Subtask = Support Task&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We did try creating each course as a project but in most system this doesn't take too well. Microsoft Project seems to require separate files, web based ones are slow to handle that many projects or organizing like tasks is near impossible. Thought of trying to label things as college, department, etc. as projects, but not sure if that would alleviate much. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be common to lump course developments as one large project? Or is there some way to break it down into smaller to handle areas? any ideas or possible past practices would be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7911" LastActivityDate="2016-10-06T09:57:06.310" Title="How to track large number of similar projects and tasks?" Tags="&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;team&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10613" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10614" CreationDate="2014-01-21T20:57:27.047" Score="6" ViewCount="8366" Body="&lt;p&gt;It appears that the TFS 2012 burndown works a bit differently than I expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose my current iteration is at 100 hours remaining out of 200 total original estimate, and my three team members each create a task today, estimate each at 6 hours, and complete these tasks.  Thus, we discovered and completed 18 hours of work that we didn't realize were there.  I would expect the entire burndown to &quot;shift up&quot;, have it recalculate based on 218 hours total, and we would now be at 100.  Thus we would show a good burn for today: we burned down 18 hours, going from 118 to 100, remaining.  The goal burndown line would get a bit steeper, and we would reevaluate if it is realistic given the newly discovered work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it seems that TFS's burndown chart ignores the &quot;original estimate&quot; in some (all?) cases and would show no progress today; those 18 hours are not reflected anywhere in the burndown.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't quite make sense to me--the upshot is, if I create a task &lt;strong&gt;today&lt;/strong&gt; and finish it &lt;strong&gt;today&lt;/strong&gt;, no hours are burned; but, if I create a task &lt;strong&gt;today&lt;/strong&gt;, work on it today, and finish it &lt;strong&gt;tomorrow&lt;/strong&gt;, then some but not all of its hours burn. Really?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How best to deal with this situation? Do we need to change the way we think of this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7912" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T13:43:57.527" Title="How does the TFS 2012 burndown work for tasks created and worked on in the same day?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;&lt;burndown-chart&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10613" CreationDate="2014-01-21T21:20:11.480" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you're seeing is how TFS currently works. I've logged this with the Product Team a couple of times, and I've heard a couple of ways it might be solved in the future, but for now your tasks found and solved on the same day are not reflected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The funny thing is that the burndown will still be correct. Any hours found and resolved on the same day have a net result of 0 hours, so the burndown should remain in place. So you can trust the prediction (which is the most important piece of the burndown), but you cannot see exactly how much work was done each day (which scrum cares a lot less about).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of &lt;a href=&quot;http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio/suggestions/5075722-fix-the-burndown-trendline-algorithm&quot;&gt;UserVoice&lt;/a&gt; tickets on this and a there might be bugs files on &lt;a href=&quot;http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio&quot;&gt;connect&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;So, how to deal...&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you want the graph to be accurate, &lt;a href=&quot;http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff731588.aspx&quot;&gt;use the Report Server version of the burndown&lt;/a&gt;, I believe that that graph is correct.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Get the data from the warehouse using &lt;a href=&quot;http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd695785.aspx&quot;&gt;Excel Powerpivot&lt;/a&gt; and then you're completely in control over the algorithm used. (steal the Excel file from a MSF for Agile project's SharePoint portal)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Or draw your own burndown.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do nothing and believe the trend.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7393" LastEditorUserId="7393" LastEditDate="2014-01-22T08:33:50.880" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T08:33:50.880" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10615" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10625" CreationDate="2014-01-21T23:08:44.680" Score="0" ViewCount="626" Body="&lt;p&gt;i hope the title is relevant; I find it hard to put to words so concisely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The Teams&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have 3 teams each with their own backlog and focus (think systems team, web team, mobile team). The 3 teams have 1 of 2 partially overlapping sprint schedules, each of which is 2 weeks long. Also, each team has its own planning meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The Problems&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a while each team was operating independently just fine, but now we're coming to a point where delivering stories depends on other teams implementing functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there is not enough work for some developers to focus on only one team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The Ideas&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking we need to add an additional team for internal APIs so that features needs by other teams can be worked on without hopping teams mid-sprint. MY main reason for thinking this is good is so that velocity can be more accurately measured and represent the progress of the focused topic for each team. For example, the mobile team's velocity should only represent work done on mobile products, not server side APIs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's where I leave it. I'm hoping to get some actionable advice from what others have found effective with similar team setups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1972" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T15:08:33.663" Title="How do you split developers among dependent teams" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3461" CreationDate="2014-01-21T23:50:23.950" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Something I don't see mentioned is leveraging the membership to PMI that you're paying good money and spending good time studying for. Put another way, use your PMI membership access to free ebooks to help you study instead of buying more stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Namely, after you sign up for PMI membership, something you're required to do to schedule your exam, you get access to the &quot;eReads &amp;amp; Reference&quot; section at PMI.org &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/Knowledge-Center/Virtual-Library-eReads-and-Reference.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;located here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of the latest edition of exam study books there, including one of my personal favorites &lt;a href=&quot;http://pmi.books24x7.com/toc.aspx?bookid=55550&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;PMP Exam Prep: Questions, Answers &amp;amp; Explanations, 2013 Edition&quot;.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In lieu of paying additional money for someone else's exam questions, leverage your membership and the professional organization you're actively pursuing to help get you there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note- those links require you to be a PMI.org member to access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3807" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T23:50:23.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10612" CreationDate="2014-01-22T12:15:41.407" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds to me like what you are actually looking for is a way to track effort spent on managing, maintaining, updating and supporting Courses. You don't appear to be seeking a way of planning and scheduling the time/tasks involved in this activity. If I am right what you are looking for is a time tracking product of which there are very many- You would need to go through a needs analysis and product selection process to determine which product is right for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a time tracking system you should easily be able to define a &quot;Course&quot;, against which you have categories such as Create, Maintain, Update, Support (whatever works for you) and then people can log their time spent against each category for a specific &quot;Course&quot;. You are then able to report on that to produce your costs and metrics etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry if I have got the wrong end of the stick!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T12:15:41.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10622" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10623" CreationDate="2014-01-22T16:17:23.637" Score="0" ViewCount="229" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am getting ready to head up an internal project. I already know that the budget will be tight on this. I am looking for effective ways to reduce project cost.  What I would like to see is the most code for the least amount of budget.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if I develop an example page and have an Intern or Jr. Developer refactor another page in the same style the hours on budget would be less assuming they code at the same rate as me. However, I know that Interns and Jr. Developers will not code at the same rate as me.  Giving up high cost functionality seems like another way to go, but in the end all functionality is desired.  As of now, there is not a time deadline, but that can at a moments notice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To try to avoid this question being closed, I would like to see answers with the following...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What has worked for you in the past.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why a particular process worked for you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What has not worked, i.e. you tried something you thought would work&#xA;and you were surprised it did not.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7920" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T22:07:24.053" Title="What ways have you reduced cost for a software project during the planning phase?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;budget&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10622" CreationDate="2014-01-22T20:32:56.267" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;On question 1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduce scope.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get backing of a CxO.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get rid of team members unproductive and not needed to maintain the software afterwards (or ask the people manager a refund for their hours).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get a champion for each discipline .&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deliver early whole processing chain to avoid surprises and risks forgotten.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use prioritizing approach such as MoSCoW.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make it fun.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On question 2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduce scope; there is nothing like it for reducing costs when everything else has been fixed such as duration, tools, employees, testers, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On question 3&#xA;- Get more project team members does not generally help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7423" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T20:32:56.267" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10622" CreationDate="2014-01-22T22:07:24.053" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quality, time, cost.  Pick two.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even when you pick two, performance of each variable is still very probabilistic.  And we have less control over this performance than we like to admit.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are looking at a single project, then you are not really looking for significant cost take out ideas or capability game changing initiatives.  If you have this type of pressure of delivering everything the customer wants at a fixed, unmovable cost and likely a fixed schedule, what you really need to do is monitor your work extremely closely, looking for the first signs of unfavorable performance variances, mitigating where you can early and often, and then communicating where you are with your stakeholders early and often.  It becomes more about communicating early that you are overrunning than actually hitting your promised targets, so that your customers can make the decisions they need to make if cost is such a huge factor for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use proven cost control and risk management methods.  Look for tangible evidence, not just what your team tells you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T22:07:24.053" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10615" CreationDate="2014-01-22T22:28:08.157" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You've tagged your question as Scrum so I'm going to assume that is your methodology. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum (and other Agile methodologies) prefers using user stories that are vertical slices. This means that your features are end-to-end, each delivered story is a working increment of software. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User stories should follow the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_%28mnemonic%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt; criteria. The &lt;strong&gt;I&lt;/strong&gt; means independent, you should avoid dependencies on these teams of other layers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your teams do not have the expertise to complete a feature end-to-end then you should consider re-structuring the teams. Change the teams to have at least one member from each layer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The guideline for the size of Scrum Teams is 7+-2. Given that the total team isn't that big (3+4+5=12), you could consider merging all the teams together into one.   Sometimes, the disadvantages of a large team are outweighed by the advantages in collaboration/communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, two teams of six is probably better as it should be easier to manage and within the guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which ever way you decide, by merging or re-organising the teams, you want people to work together on completing features. Having a team that can completely implement a feature will eliminate &lt;a href=&quot;http://leangenie.com/7-wastes-wait-time/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;waste&lt;/a&gt;, because they won't be waiting for features from the other teams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6608" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T22:28:08.157" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10626" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10688" CreationDate="2014-01-23T10:09:31.470" Score="1" ViewCount="495" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently a Business Analyst who's shifting to a new company as a Project Coordinator. I have done quite a bit of coordination as a Business Analyst in my current company. What is the initial process/checkpoints, that a Project Coordinator goes through before a project officially starts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7927" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T21:41:50.380" Title="Newbie Project Coordinator" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10627" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-23T15:08:25.113" Score="1" ViewCount="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;My Project Management Professional (PMP) 3 year cycle is ending soon and I am short 15 Professional Development Unit (PDUs). What is a fast and cheap way to get these units online? Can anyone recommend good courses especially ones that allow you to learn how to use software for project management and scheduling?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7930" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-01-24T06:51:10.620" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T06:51:10.620" Title="How can I attain my PMP PDUs fast and cheap?" Tags="&lt;pmi&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-01-24T06:51:38.030" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10615" CreationDate="2014-01-23T15:08:33.663" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should definitely not add another team to the process. It is hard to define APIs without having an implementation that shows what is required and it is even harder to implement a frozen API. You'll loose your agility in development because you fix things upfront. And you make inter-team dependencies worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rearranging the team, as Dave already mentioned, is probably the best thing you can do. You could still measure the progress on mobile/web/system, because you know what has been done in which area. You can even track which team has achieved how much of the progress in what area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6990" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T15:08:33.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10626" CreationDate="2014-01-23T16:35:17.713" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Start by writing and discussing the Project Charter with the stakeholders&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Marv said, your question is too open-ended. You should provide more detail. For example, are you coordinating a software development project or building a house?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless, it is a good idea to first put together a draft Project Charter and discuss that with the stakeholders and get their feedback. &lt;a href=&quot;http://nelsonbj.wordpress.com/2013/03/12/mastering-the-basics-of-project-management-the-project-charter/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here is a link that covers the basics of a Project Charter.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2014-01-23T19:58:56.647" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T19:58:56.647" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10626" CreationDate="2014-01-23T18:11:30.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hare are a few basic items a typical project coordinator might own or in which have an active part:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Facilities: project work location, infrastructure like hygiene facilities, phones, connectivity, safety &amp;amp; security, furniture, utilities, etc.;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Materiel: tracking and control of vendors, location of materiel storage to include security, tools with which to conduct work;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;HR: subcontracting control, onboarding personnel, initial training around safety &amp;amp; security and whatever else to acclimate everyone to the project;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Archive of various documentation that will be developed; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contact lists and phone numbers, email addresses of everyone and anyone involved;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work calendars, vacation calendars;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scheduling meeting rooms for initial planning and kick-off sessions;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&#xA;9.&#xA;10.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are more.  I'll add to it as it occurs to me.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The essence of a coordinator role is around administration organization and control.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T18:11:30.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10632" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10644" CreationDate="2014-01-24T07:21:06.363" Score="5" ViewCount="4867" Body="&lt;p&gt;I*ve used the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoSCoW_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MoSCoW model&lt;/a&gt; (but I'm not project manager, I'm developer) and I think it is good. But I also think that you can tell me more and perhaps find a drawback that I didn't think of while I say to friends and colleagues that MoSCoW model is a good project management model. Can you tell me about potential pitfalls using this method? I identify the tasks and identify whether the task is a must (&quot;M&quot;), what we should (&quot;S&quot;), what we coudl (&quot;C&quot;) and what we won't (&quot;W&quot;) right now. Perhaps a potential pitfall is that I almost always end up working only with what the project must do and the shoulds and coulds are just listed and almost never implemented. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2107" LastEditorUserId="7938" LastEditDate="2014-01-24T12:44:49.020" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T01:29:24.527" Title="What are the disadvantages and advantages of the MoSCoW model?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;customer-satisfaction&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10633" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-24T07:45:41.590" Score="2" ViewCount="5848" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have two questions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) How do you baseline project plan in Agile, How it is different from Waterfall&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) How do you calculate schedule variance in Agile&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5576" LastActivityDate="2020-06-13T16:05:44.640" Title="Baselining project plan and schedule variance in Agile" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4986" CreationDate="2014-01-24T08:20:21.153" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I searched for &quot;one&quot; tool to cover all bases; Project Management and the Billing Process with time sheets, AND a full CRM, which is basically covering all the aspects of activities in my business, and i found WORKetc.com to cover all of it beautifully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The software is not expansive for what they offer. It has email integration, and the popular Google Apps as well. It also has a built-in Help Desk Ticket system, and all projects, emails, bills, quotes, invoices, and uploaded files are interconnected through out the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No affiliation… I just was so happy I found it…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7937" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T08:20:21.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10633" CreationDate="2014-01-24T10:11:34.260" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your questions really hit at the heart of the difference between agile/scrum and waterfall style project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is less about command and control, and more about empowered teams that deliver &quot;complete&quot; features at the end of each and every sprint (a defined period of time). You only really plan (in detail) one sprint at a time, so there is no real need to produce an entire end-to-end project plan that is baselined and then changed (because we cannot accurately plan that far in advance). That does not mean that there is no planning in scrum, only that plans/decisions generally follow the &quot;last responsible moment&quot; principle of decision-making.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than rewriting out the entire scrum approach (and putting it less eloquently than the professional authors), &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20161102003303/http://agileatlas.org:80/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;agile atlas&lt;/a&gt; was an excellent website an archived version can be found &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20161102003303/http://agileatlas.org:80/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here you can find an overview of the scrum approach that should hopefully reveal why your questions don't necessarily apply to scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3246" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-12T10:04:55.600" LastActivityDate="2020-06-12T10:04:55.600" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10632" CreationDate="2014-01-24T10:59:40.377" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A definite advantage is it's simplicity, you shouldn't need prior knowledge or training to understand the concept.  It uses human language to prioritise and define requirements rather than a specific scale, or measurement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although the obvious counter argument is that it can be too simplistic, and doesn't provide enough information on what should be actioned first.  You may have come to a consensus on what MUST be delivered and have a list of half a dozen tasks, but which are you going to do first?  Which tasks depend on other tasks?  Where is your critical path?  From a project management perspective there will be a lot of unanswered questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion it's a simple yet powerful tool for initial, high-level requirement prioritization.  It's a great starting point for a project, knowing what needs to be delivered and what can initially be deferred helps greatly with decision making.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although as a side not, and I realise this isn't specifically a disadvantage of the method itself but rather it's implementation.  Relying too heavily on one persons/teams list of requirements can be disastrous.  Say you got all your developers together and drew up a MoSCoW prioritisation list, what does that tell you... here's a list of what the development think we should be doing.  But what about the business, customers, other stakeholders etc. are they being represented.  Good project management means understanding requirements of all the project stakeholders, so if you decide to use the MoSCoW system ensure you have representation (and consensus where possible) from all stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7938" LastEditorUserId="7938" LastEditDate="2014-01-24T11:45:00.190" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T11:45:00.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10613" CreationDate="2014-01-24T11:43:04.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you are misunderstanding the purpose of the burndown chart. The burndown is there to show you how much work is &lt;strong&gt;remaining&lt;/strong&gt; in a sprint at any point in time, not to record how much work you've done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you had 100 hours to do and you add 18 hours worth of tasks and burn down those 18 then the net effect on the work remaining is zero, hence the burndown chart will show zero progress. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it seems harsh to see no credit for the work but the fact is if you had 100 hours to do at the start of the day and those 100 hours still remain at the end then its right that the burndown reflects that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7941" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T11:43:04.217" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10632" CreationDate="2014-01-24T19:37:31.037" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The greatest advantage is when you bring in a variety of stakeholders and talk through their different opinions on what needs to be done. Treat MoSCoW as a tool to help facilitate the discussion and document the consensus. This will help to get broad buy-in around what the product needs to be comprised of, hopefully avoiding rework downstream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrary to @Jonathan Miles, I'd question the assertion that it is simple. I've run into problems when stakeholders start worrying too much about the semantics of &quot;Should Have&quot; and &quot;Could Have&quot;. This may just be bad luck on my part, but typically I've reduced MoSCoW to a MustHave-NiceToHave paradigm, where the former is in scope of the project and the latter is put on the shelf. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frankly I don't see only working on the &quot;Must Haves&quot; as necessarily being a pitfall, as delivery of &quot;Should Have&quot; and &quot;Could Have&quot; functionality usually follows the laws of diminishing returns. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T19:37:31.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7964" CreationDate="2014-01-25T21:34:36.393" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you need to take another look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://PLANNINGPOKER.COM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PlanningPoker.com&lt;/a&gt;.  It is about as simple as I can imagine--not heavy at all.  Only the leader would type in (paste in) the story, but you don't have to even do that--you could refer to stories by number, URL, whatever you want.  Also, only one leader has to log in; the participants don't even have to log in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7912" LastActivityDate="2014-01-25T21:34:36.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10541" CreationDate="2014-01-26T00:54:42.587" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing about Scrum (not SCRUM) that specifies or would even affect how much testing you need or should have.  Scrum is a project framework, but it is up to the product owner in consultation with key members of the team to determine how much, how robust, and what kinds of testing are needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is really a fundamental question of software development as it applies to your project(s), not one related to any certain methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile principles&lt;/a&gt; can help you make these decisions.  I might suggest that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Since you value working software, test as much as you need to deliver working software (and no more). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Since you value individuals and interactions, the team should self-organize to respond to the business need for quality software; the team should come up with testing standards, accountability, and other practices to ensure quality. The team can also develop unit testing standards in ways that are mutually useful for all on the team to develop efficiently, with a preference toward a short code-test-debug cycle time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Since you value customer collaboration, make it the product owner's responsibility to make testing a higher priority and to push for stronger testing; the product owner should insist on lots of help from key team members to figure this out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Since you value responding to change and an iterative approach, consider becoming &quot;one step better&quot; in your testing at any given iteration.  Often, many steps of intentional team-wide change add up more quickly and more effectively than a big-bang let's-all-become-more-mature effort.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7912" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T00:54:42.587" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10632" CreationDate="2014-01-26T01:29:24.527" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some pitfalls I've seen with the MoSCoW model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Managers are worried that their requirements will fall into &quot;should&quot; or &quot;could&quot;, and won't get done, so they make up reasons why their requirement is a &quot;must&quot;. This ends up delaying business-critical functionality. (This is usually caused by, or exacerbated by, bad KPIs at an organizational level. I'm not sure there are any good KPIs when they're tied to pay. In fact, I'm pretty sure there aren't.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Time is spent discussing things that &quot;should&quot;, &quot;could&quot; or &quot;would&quot; happen, delaying progress on the things which are absolutely essential. This is exacerbated by managers worried about the elements of the project which would help them achieve their goals, but which are not immediately essential (KPIs, again).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Managers use the &quot;should&quot;, &quot;could&quot; and &quot;would&quot; requirements as ways of getting extra budget, which they then spend as buffers for the &quot;must&quot;. (I also love &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1578518660&quot;&gt;Beyond Budgeting&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Architects and people in charge of other shared dependencies spend time creating support for all possibilities, instead of focusing on what &quot;must&quot; be done. Because it takes longer to actually create all the &quot;coulds&quot;, &quot;shoulds&quot; and &quot;woulds&quot;, it takes longer to prove the architecture, so the feedback on whether the architecture is appropriate takes ages too. This is one of the things that causes architects to act as such strict gatekeepers, and to spend ages designing architectures in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Frequently, the things which &quot;must&quot; be done are ideas which haven't been proven, nobody uses, and which eventually get thrown away anyway. If they were released earlier, they would also be discarded earlier, but by the time they're released along with the &quot;should&quot; and &quot;could&quot;, they're woven into the fabric of the application or system, and retirement is far harder. Pivoting (a la Lean Start-Up) becomes impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence why I tend to encourage people to differentiate between &quot;must, right now&quot;, focus on developing and getting feedback on an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product&quot;&gt;MVP&lt;/a&gt; which is as tiny as possible, and then worry about what the next &quot;must, right now&quot; is. Done deliberately and with forethought, this leads to developing architectures, communication patterns, organizational relationships, etc. which are easy to change, rather than right (see also &lt;a href=&quot;http://commitment-thebook.com/&quot;&gt;Real Options&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T01:29:24.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10633" CreationDate="2014-01-26T04:35:10.127" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Try the goal-oriented Agile Product Roadmap approach&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Baselining can be done only when all the requirements are known in detail at the beginning of a project. And from the baseline you can calculate variances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in Scrum you don't start with detailed requirements in advance. Here is the relevant quote from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Portals/0/Documents/Scrum%20Guides/Scrum_Guide.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide.&lt;/a&gt; &quot;A Product Backlog is never complete. The earliest development of it only lays out the initially known and best-understood requirements. The Product Backlog evolves as the product and the environment in which it will be used evolves. The Product Backlog is dynamic; it constantly changes to identify what the product needs to be appropriate, competitive, and useful.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Gregg said, in Scrum you only plan in detail one sprint at a time. Then how do you manage stakeholders and coordinate the development, marketing, and sales activities? Here is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/agile-product-roadmap/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;goal-oriented Agile Product Roadmap approach suggested by Roman Pichler.&lt;/a&gt; As he points out it &quot;mitigates the conflict between viewing roadmap features as commitments and agile teams who only commit for next few weeks.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-13T16:05:44.640" LastActivityDate="2020-06-13T16:05:44.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10646" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11011" CreationDate="2014-01-26T09:27:01.467" Score="1" ViewCount="607" Body="&lt;p&gt;I worked as project coordinator (for the first time) in an oil and gas company.&#xA;In the beginning, when I met the project manager who interviewed me for the job, I told him I don't have any experience in the field but that my background will allow me to learn it faster. I mentioned I need to have some training. He said I  would learn the skill on the go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My job on this project is to  make the environment (the field / site  where the drilling work take place) ready by making sure the needed materials, people (personnel), vehicles, equipment, catering, accommodation are all available throughout the project duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to obtain the CAPM certificate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I show the PMI organization that I worked for one year and for more than  1500 hours? What kind of proof and documents do they need to pass the audit stage to be qualified to take the exam?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7954" LastEditorUserId="7954" LastEditDate="2015-04-24T14:14:17.890" LastActivityDate="2018-08-19T05:39:12.873" Title="How to show the PMI Organization that I worked for one year and for more than 1500 hours? What kind of proof and documents do they want?" Tags="&lt;pmi&gt;&lt;capm&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10647" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10650" CreationDate="2014-01-26T19:45:46.413" Score="10" ViewCount="35749" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a small team and can afford only one project manager (PM). As a result he's basically managing all of our projects. To keep the quality of our business, we would not like to overload him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is industry standard of how many projects one PM should manage at the same time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3922" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-01-26T22:58:18.707" LastActivityDate="2020-06-08T20:29:46.753" Title="How many projects can a PM manage at the same time?" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10648" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10656" CreationDate="2014-01-26T19:49:58.283" Score="4" ViewCount="875" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are programming company. One guy is seeking jobs and talking to clients. Then when the job terms are negotiated, a project gets its own project manager and programmers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once a project is started, who should talk to the client about project-specific things? If there is a coding problem, then it's obviously a developer that will have such conversations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, should the PM take on all further conversations with the client, or should it be left to person who negotiated the job terms? It seems to me that the PM would be a better choice than the negotiator once the project has started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3922" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-01-27T13:17:28.427" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T07:23:56.767" Title="Who speaks with the client about the active project?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;clients&gt;&lt;communication-management&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9221" CreationDate="2014-01-26T21:20:41.503" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look into how Menlo Innovations in Ann Arbor, Michigan works. I think they are similar to what you are trying to do.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;About 70 people doing bespoke work for many clients&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Everyone pairs, and pairs change weekly - lots of knowledge sharing&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One week sprints&#xA;&lt;li&gt;eXtreme Programming practices&#xA;&lt;li&gt;High Tech Anthropology (something they invented)&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Projects are formed from pairs, so it is easy to scale up and down as needed&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See the book Joy, Inc. which was recently released. It was written by Richard Sheridan, a co-founder of Menlo Innovations, and describes the Menlo Way. They also do tours of their shop and offer classes for those interested in learning the techniques.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.menloinnovations.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.menloinnovations.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never worked there, but I do know a number of people associated with the company and I am a fan of how they work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7960" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T21:20:41.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10647" CreationDate="2014-01-26T23:31:23.800" Score="23" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is industry standard of how many projects one PM should manage at the same time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no such thing; individual projects vary greatly in the level of effort required to manage the project properly. In addition, each project management framework varies in how much overhead is involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, the correct question is &quot;How many hours per week are really available to our Project Manager for managing projects, and how many hours does each project consume from his pool of available hours?&quot; That question is at least answerable, but only your organization can answer it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Available Hours and Organizational Overhead&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practically speaking, there's a fixed amount of hours available for each project manager. Whether that's a sustainable 35-40 hours, or whether it's 80+ hours per week until that person burns out, there's &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; a cap on a person's hours available to manage projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From those hours, you need to subtract work-related overhead that isn't really project management or framework overhead. This may include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;organizational meetings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;time tracking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;responding to non-project emails and meeting requests within the organization&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;other miscellanea&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, you can expect to find that around 4-6 hours per day are the maximum effective hours you can reasonably expect a full-time Project Manager to have left after subtracting this overhead from the pool of available hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Framework Overhead&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After subtracting all the organizational overhead from the pool of available hours, you then need to subtract the right amount of framework overhead. This is actually &lt;em&gt;work&lt;/em&gt;, but is related to the project management framework rather than the details of the specific project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8520/4271&quot;&gt;around 30% of a project manager's time&lt;/a&gt; is consumed by attending framework meetings and generating framework artifacts in Scrum. Other frameworks may differ in the percentages, but most will fall somewhere in the 15-30% range. YMMV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Task Switching&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to everything else, the productivity cost of managing multiple projects is likely to be around 40%. The American Psychological Association &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apa.org/research/action/multitask.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[S]hifting between tasks can cost as much as 40 percent of someone's productive time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the more projects you put onto a project manager's plate, the fewer projects that person can effectively manage. Again, your mileage will vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Real World&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, a Scrum Master should belong to a single team and participate in only a single project at a time. However, that person might be able to handle as many as three teams if none of the projects are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;complex or complicated&lt;/a&gt;, and task-switching is kept to a minimum. Expectations about the number of teams and projects can be higher for more-traditional Project Manager roles, but the general calculus remains the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if your numbers are calculated differently, there is still a limit. If you want to run more projects than you have allocatable hours, your organization will need to budget more resources (time, money, and people) to managing those projects. That's rarely what people on a tight budget want to hear, but it's still the truth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2020-06-08T20:29:46.753" LastActivityDate="2020-06-08T20:29:46.753" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3964" CreationDate="2014-01-27T09:59:50.430" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a Scrum newbie and looking to implement Scrum in my company. Obtaining buy-in is not a problem, it is my company and the developers are more than happy to work like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that 75% of our revenue is derived from fixed length/fixed price projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ken Schwaber in his book, Agile Project Management with Scrum, covers the topic of bidding on fixed length/fixed price projects in an appendix at the end of the book.And u explained beautifully.Hats off&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a Plug to my website&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumstudy.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scrumstudy.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7965" LastActivityDate="2014-01-27T09:59:50.430" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10648" CreationDate="2014-01-27T11:13:21.313" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This should be documented in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Project_Management/PMBOK/Communications_Management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;communications plan&lt;/a&gt;. There are almost as many answers to your question as there are combinations of clients and providers, which is why each project should have a communications plan that summarizes who talks to whom about what. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your shoes, I'd create a template communications plan for the company, and then validate key points with the customer when the contract is signed.  Something along the lines of:&#xA;&quot;Our normal practice is to have a customer POC that we cc on all communications, and then specific POC's for specific issues.  Who in your company should be the default POC, and who should we talk to on issues like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;User acceptance and Testing&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Security &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Infrastructure, support &amp;amp; operations&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;. . .  (whatever else).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Update: @Earthling correctly points out that I made it sound like this was only about who in the client communicates; that was not my intent.  The point of the communications plan is to identify the &lt;strong&gt;necessary&lt;/strong&gt; communications, and identify who is responsible for those communications. I would imagine that he roles &lt;strong&gt;within&lt;/strong&gt; your company will be relatively consistent from project to project and will be defined in the template. Naturally you'll review those roles before you have the conversation with the customer.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2014-01-27T14:37:07.803" LastActivityDate="2014-01-27T14:37:07.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10648" CreationDate="2014-01-27T13:43:01.910" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong with having several people from the project team contacting the client. As you already pointed out, some people are naturally more appropriate. If you developers are interfacing with the client's systems and there is a specific coding problem, then the dev might need to talk to a client dev contact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally, the client will have multiple people who can be contacted. This is where Mark's answers fits. I believe your question is about who on YOUR team should be contacting the client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally, the salesperson (negotiator) will not be involved much after the deal is signed. However, that salesperson might well stay in contact just to check up and the PM might ask the salesperson to get involved in some cases (where terms were unclear in the contract, etc.). However, yes, normally the salesperson should focus on sales. The PM should focus on the project. Everyone should focus on their jobs and if they need to contact the client, they should. HOWEVER, the PM must make sure that contacting the client is ONLY happening in an organized way or you risk flooding the client with the same questions leading to a poor image for your firm and a damaged relationship with your client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the PM should be deciding who contacts the which person at the client. However, salespeople live based on relationships so do not expect the salesperson to magically disappear after the sale is made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7610" LastActivityDate="2014-01-27T13:43:01.910" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10657" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10665" CreationDate="2014-01-27T15:42:17.693" Score="19" ViewCount="15879" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently working with a development group that has a variety of project management approaches. They use a Kanban board for tracking work with a constantly re-prioritized backlog, they have iterations and a burn-down chart like scrum, and they have a PMO that wants to know the overall status of the project in a nice, neat timeline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After working with the project for about a month, it seems like this team delivers sets of functionality that usually take a few weeks to create and the priorities shift frequently, making Kanban a great approach for the team. I'd like to get rid of the burndown charts and the long-term project plan, since it changes so often, but there is a real sense of apprehension that some of the long-term goals for the overall project won't be met by their required deadlines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have experience with Kanban metrics to demonstrate progress through work - especially long-term goals that are being worked toward? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-01-08T21:14:28.590" LastActivityDate="2019-01-08T21:14:28.590" Title="What are some commonly tracked metrics in Kanban?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9686" CreationDate="2014-01-27T16:24:05.283" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've run very similar teams before and what I've found is incredibly vital is to have all roles work as the same team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off, I think you should definitely run a single team. The reason is this: your team members are working toward a common goal. Everything about your team structure should work toward that. A single scrum team has common commitments in their sprint goals, a common deadline, and they need to work together to get that done. If you add artificial separation, you ask for people to play the blame game. I can't count the number of times I heard things like &quot;Well, it's done, it just hasn't been tested&quot; or &quot;We couldn't do our work because Bob was sick and didn't set up the server.&quot; Sure, you're more efficient when you let people focus on their area of expertise, but when the whole team is on the hook equally for meeting goals, you find that there's a lot more overlap in knowledge than members would otherwise admit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, I think you will lose a lot of the advantage of scrum. To read into your case a bit, you mention that the BE team is working on the API. If this is done in isolation from the FE team and the business group, then how do they chose what they write? It can be very difficult to show that at the end of each sprint they are delivering a releasable set of functionality that delivers value to the end customer. This is a situation I've seen too many times. When asked what value is being created by work, I've heard &quot;Well, none right now, but in June when everything else is done, it'll be pretty key.&quot; This is great as long as we get to June. I've been part of a few projects that have been cut off early and the company was very frustrated that they'd wasted all of the spent project time and gotten nothing out of it. One of the great advantages of Agile is that you constantly deliver value, so if you're cut short, you're getting functionality out of the project proportionate to the effort that was put it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2014-01-27T16:24:05.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9672" CreationDate="2014-01-28T05:18:11.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even though PMI allows you to use the 35 hour contact certificate for exam registration for the updated PMP. The project management knowledge has been expanded/re-organized from PMBOK 4 to PMBOK 5. Major difference being:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 more Knowledge Area (Project Stakeholder Management)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;5 new processes introduced&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;19% increase in ITTO (total 614 in PMBOK 5)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will need to study really hard by reading through PMBOK 5 and/or other updated reference books. You will need to especially note the different as management of stakeholders has been separated from other knowledge areas and stand on its own. Answers based on PMBOK 4 in this knowledge area will be wrong. But for other knowledge areas, the general framework is more or less the same. In the end, PMP exam tests candidate on how to apply the project management knowledge instead of memorization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more tips on how to prepare for the PMP based on PMBOK 5, you may &lt;a href=&quot;http://pmexamlessonslearned.com/pmp/pmp-exam-preparation-faq&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;read this report on PMP exam study tips&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7975" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T05:18:11.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9106" CreationDate="2014-01-28T05:26:44.643" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 35 contact hours for project management education needs to be formal, you cannot achieve it through self-study on your own. However, PMI does not specify the training must be achieved through classroom face-to-face training. In fact, there are many online PMP courses which provide you with the 35 contact hours certificate with remote study. You do not need to choose a REP training institute but choosing a REP will ensure that your certificate will be readily accepted by PMI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://pmexamlessonslearned.com/pmp/pmp-exam-preparation-faq/4/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;recent online survey of 100 PMPs&lt;/a&gt; who have recently passed the PMP exam indicates that ~82% of them get their certificate through online courses. Of course as this survey is performed online, there may be a bias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PM PrepCast seems to be the most popular course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7975" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T05:26:44.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3893" CreationDate="2014-01-28T05:36:01.963" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a &lt;a href=&quot;http://pmexamlessonslearned.com/pmp/pmp-exam-preparation-faq/7/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;recent survey of 100 PMPs&lt;/a&gt;, it was found that Exam Central is not a popular choice for free PMP mock exams as there are many better yet free alternatives available. These are (links to these can be found from the survey report linked above):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PM Study&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Oliver Lehmann&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PMZilla Final Exam&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Head First Mock Exam (though based on PMBOK 4, but many questions are still relevant)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if you want more practice, it is advisable to invest in a paid mock exam system. PM Exam Simulator and PM FASTrack are popular choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7975" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T05:36:01.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10657" CreationDate="2014-01-28T12:55:05.860" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would establish a fixed capacity bandwith for each type of work&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Long term goals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Items whose priority changes often&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Support&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have written about it &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2162/what-approaches-exist-for-long-term-planning-and-responding-to-change/2202#2202&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/9099/how-to-allow-developers-to-get-enough-quality-development-time-while-keeping-to/9414#9414&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; on this list. Please check those answers out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Long term goal development can be tracked with a burn-down or Earned Value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T12:55:05.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10657" CreationDate="2014-01-28T14:19:59.420" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most common metrics used along with Kanban are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cycle time / production lead time&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is some confusion over naming so let me explain in a bit more detail. Production lead time or cycle time is time that elapses from the moment a team starts actively working on a task till the moment they are done (or done-done). This metric basically say about how responsive the team is or how fast they can deliver something when priorities change.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Customer lead time&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time that elapses from the moment a customer or a user submits the work item to a backlog to the moment they can use it. In other words, if a feature is queued for long time in the backlog it would hit customer lead time while it won't hit cycle time / production lead time. This metric say about how the whole organization or product team (not only a development team) reacts to customer's needs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Throughput&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A measure of productivity or efficiency which is typically a number of features delivered over time. Some teams tend to weigh delivered features basing on assumption that a big feature is worth more than a small one but that's tricky at best.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Work in Progress (WIP)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply a number of work items that are currently in progress in the whole process. As a stand alone measure it doesn't make that much sense but it gives a lot of insight when combined with other measures. One classic example is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little%27s_law&quot;&gt;Little's Law&lt;/a&gt; which adaptation to this context goes like this: &lt;em&gt;Average Cycle Time = WIP / Average Throughput&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tact Time / Takt Time&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A measure that says about frequency of delivering new work items. Tact time is Average Cycle Time divided by Average WIP. In other words it tells about throughput of a team and allows to assess whether remaining work would be done before a specific deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are tools that help to make sense out of these measures. A simplest one is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://brodzinski.com/2012/10/burn-up-better-burn-down.html&quot;&gt;burn-up chart&lt;/a&gt; which is an alternative to burn-down chart that is more intuitive to use especially in cases where the scope changes frequently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another tool that shows even more is &lt;a href=&quot;http://brodzinski.com/2013/07/cumulative-flow-diagram.html&quot;&gt;Cumulative Flow Diagram&lt;/a&gt; (CFD). CFD would show more data, e.g. give you sense of how much WIP is there in the system or what roughly are cycle times / production lead times and customer lead times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Value&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the tricky part is that aforementioned measures and tools are tools to measure efficiency and not effectiveness, i.e. how well we are doing in accomplishing our long term goals. For the latter there is one crucial bit that is missing here--an idea what value is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words the organization has to be able to answer the question how valuable each work item is or how it contributes to accomplishing long term goals. Only then you would be able to translate any efficiency measures to long term goal accomplishment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are we there yet?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there is a question you mention, which is an answer to a question what is project status. For that I would typically use a CFD and a forecast of progress basing on throughput over time (which is a curve representing done stage). However, instead of looking when it crosses current scope curve I'd use a forecast of scope change basing on how it was changing in the past. If it was growing over time the forecast would represent that. If new features substituted the old ones it should be pretty stable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would give you an answer about the estimated delivery date. While I don't think percent complete is, in such a setup, a very useful number I'd estimate it dividing a number of features done by estimated number of features at the end of the project, i.e. not the total number of features we have now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This works under an assumption that the scope will be changing over time roughly in a similar manner as it did so far. This is something that the organization is in control of, e.g. you can decide that you don't add new stuff or remove some of the planned stuff. This would render the forecast of scope change irrelevant but this would also give additional data what kind of scope you work against.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T14:19:59.420" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10666" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-28T14:26:49.613" Score="6" ViewCount="414" Body="&lt;p&gt;What to do if the client which you work for gives you tasks as well as deadline for those tasks, without compromising on time and budget?  Even though you know that the tasks can not be completed within required time, how would a manager/software professional handle such a situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7982" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-02-07T05:08:51.187" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T07:39:15.580" Title="What to do If client set the deadline for tasks in software development?" Tags="&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10666" CreationDate="2014-01-28T15:03:00.187" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One definition of project management is the art of managing cost, scope, and schedule. It is the project manager's job to raise the visibility of scope and schedule risks to senior management for action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you aren't the project manager, raise your concerns with the person in that role. If you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; the project manager and have failed to control the scope or schedule, then you need to inform senior management that the project is at risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T15:03:00.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10666" CreationDate="2014-01-28T15:54:58.840" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a buyer-seller relationship, the seller also has a say. If the terms are unreasonable, reject the contract and re-negotiate. If the seller agrees, then your only recourse is to do the best you can, mitigate what you can, monitor closely, and communicate early and often the high risk and how you are trending. A great PM is great not because they achieve project objectives all the time but because they communicate bad news early and often so that project owners can make decisions before they are surprised. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T15:54:58.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10648" CreationDate="2014-01-28T16:39:41.530" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;PM should be single point of communication for status, schedule and scope&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Mark pointed out, this depends on the size and complexity of the project. However, here are some tips from my experience in managing software projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For technical issues, it is OK for the tech to talk to the client tech. However, if I were the PM, I will want to listen in on the calls. In my experience, techies are not best equipped to deal with scope creep and enforce change control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sales person will have a vital interest in keeping in the loop, especially if additional opportunities are in the pipeline. For example, if the schedule looks likely to slip, this person can lobby with top management for additional resources. But this person is not equipped to communicate to the client about the status of execution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the PM should be the single point of communication for the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Status updates&lt;/strong&gt;: Invariably you will be waiting on client for things (e.g., UI design approval) that will affect project schedule.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;All schedule related communication&lt;/strong&gt;: When are we delivering what.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scope of work&lt;/strong&gt;: What work is within scope and what is not. What changes requested by a client will involve extra cost and time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the PM should listen in on all other communication with the client about the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2014-01-28T16:45:08.903" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T16:45:08.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10666" CreationDate="2014-01-29T01:44:13.443" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps I could give more specific advice with more details, but it sounds like you're in a situation where you're already committed, but you know you won't deliver. Even when everything goes right, this can happen, so don't panic :). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most cases, that deadline comes from a business need of some sort. It is important to communicate with the client, understand the need, and see if you can deliver a reduced scope for the task in the time frame. For example, maybe you were supposed to deliver a feedback system, but the backend is more complicated than you thought. If you can deliver the front-end and that sends an email to someone who manually creates a ticket in the desired system, they still get a lot of the value by their deadline and you can deliver the rest of the functionality iteratively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that helps you with your situation. If you promised the client the full scope in the deadline already, it might take some smoothing over, but it's a lot better than waiting until the deadline to have that conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T01:44:13.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10666" CreationDate="2014-01-29T02:57:00.917" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The issue of difficult/demanding clients is nothing new to the world of project management, nor is it limited to the world of software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The skill needed here is the skill of negotiation. One of the &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; skills a PM needs is the skill of negotiation. The client is clearly feeling they are in a position of power (which they may or may not be) and wishes to use that power to force your team to do their bidding, on their terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the PM is unskilled in negotiations, then the PM should get skilled. This is a skill which one acquires through study and practice, just like creating good quality software. There are training courses available as well as books and self-study options. The bottom line is that the PM needs to better understand the client, what they really care about. Once the PM knows what they client really needs then the PM and the client can work together in order to find a win-win solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply telling the client &quot;We can't do it so we decline the contract&quot; is not going to make you any friends in your own senior management. This kind of simplistic thinking is reserved for people who make simplistic (read: low) salaries. This is getting into the thinking of &quot;I win = you lose&quot; and you might win the battle but you will lose the war. Better to see it as a problem solving session and find the right solution that makes EVERYONE happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7610" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T02:57:00.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10672" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-29T04:20:42.170" Score="0" ViewCount="101" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a portfolio of applications and projects and we are trying to come up with a way to group projects into logical buckets for reporting, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now we have the following constructs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A project can have one or many milestones&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;funding grouping&lt;/strong&gt; when represents which funding bucket it comes from (LightsOn budget, Discretionary budget, initiative budget) so a project has to map to one of those categories.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tags&lt;/strong&gt;: A project can have one or many tags.  This is just a label (like stackexchange tags) that allows people to provide metadata to projects so people can group by these tags.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because #1 is very high level and in #2 a project can have many tags, we are trying to come up with another &quot;container&quot; to represent a stream of work of related projects.  The reason we don't want to use Tags is that in this case we want a project to only belong to a single stream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the idea was to create a new container called &quot;Stream&quot; which looks like a tag but you could only select one of them per project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am just trying to validate if this makes sense and if there is another construct or container that would suit better as I feel like having initiatives, streams and tags can get confusing and i am trying to keep things as simple as possible.  The alternative idea would be to have the idea of having projects have parent projects so instead of &quot;stream&quot; its just another higher level project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions around best practices when trying to group projects that is intuitive and supports the items above?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1087" LastActivityDate="2016-10-05T17:23:20.317" Title="What is the best practice when trying to group projects for reporting?" Tags="&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10666" CreationDate="2014-01-29T05:17:41.103" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you working in Software company, being in a senior position and then if you are communicating with the client directly then its 100% sure that you will get tasks as well as deadlines that is because you are capable enough to do that tedious job which you might have shown him already ! Client will have that perception of finishing the task within the deadline it is because of sometimes he may not have much knowledge or he is aware and even though he wants it .. Compromising with the budget always depends on the Organisation or the management I could say. &#xA;The same scenario happened with me so I would like to say that in chat with client &quot; this is not a task which cannot be completed but explain him the complexity of the project you are handling and then try to give an assurance that you will try to complete that genuinely by giving your 100% effort and then if something is left out then needs a little time &quot; I am sure the client is going to see your work which you have completed and then he will provide you the time !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7990" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T05:17:41.103" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10672" CreationDate="2014-01-29T05:21:30.280" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend determining what you are trying to measure first, and then look at how you are organizing your project data. The answer is very likely that you'll need different groupings for different purposes -- financial forecasting, resource planning, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found people quickly tire of micro-categorizing and you'll discover everything in the &quot;General&quot; stream -- knowing what you're measuring can help build safe-guards against categorization fatigue, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7952" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T05:21:30.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10648" CreationDate="2014-01-29T05:26:18.063" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different Organisation follow different process for the active projects so based on that I can just give an answer that projects are always initiated with the Technical Architects and PM and QA Manager. &#xA;When the active projects are finalised with reviews etc then its proceeded with the developement and if any changes are needed then the concerned Lead will get in touch with the concerned manager and seek the permission if needed, later proceed ahead with the clent!&#xA;Sometimes clients speak directly to the Developers or QA so such scenarios are also there that they contact directly on active projects !&#xA;Hopefully this is well answered if not please let me know !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7990" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T05:26:18.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10647" CreationDate="2014-01-29T05:39:24.203" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether the team is small or big, it always depends on the PM's responsibility of managing projects. But that is really good that you do not want to overload your PM. &#xA;When you have the intention of this then try to check whcih are the projects which you could handle easily with your team, I mean out of 5 if you could hadle 2 and then assign it to your team and you just have to review once in 2 hrs then this is really going to workout ! Give the deadlines to your team and if you have only 3 people in your team then check who is the most responsible person, make that person as your lead under you and assign the task to him giving two people under him but at the same time check what are the projects which are really difficult and then you and the guy who is like a lead under you, sit with him and plan which could be the easiest way to sort things, I mean it can be test plan, or the review or the execution !! May be in some way you will make your PM to be free for a while ! This will surely work out !! You can test the way I told you !&#xA;There is no Industry standards as such that the PM should handle ! He can handle any num of projects, depending on his capability. And when people like you are there to help him then you are making the Team grow and even the Industry could grow easily :)&#xA;All the best !&#xA;Let me know if you have got the answer for your question !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7990" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T05:39:24.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10447" CreationDate="2014-01-29T10:51:45.013" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For any kind of certifications, there are some limitations, but it's not compulsory that you have to be in working in the same field. But to write any certifications you need to have proper experience with the education. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now when you have raised as you need to be PM job so its not that necessary. There are larger benefits to grow when you want to be in Project Management stream. PMP is one of the best professional credentials in the field of Project Management.&#xA;The benefits of PMP Certification are immense! Not only will you become a more complete person, you will become a better project manager. Some benefits, if I could tell you is: Growth in career prospects, enhancing your marketability, improving your project management skills, and last but not the least, increased earnings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am planning to take this is up as it is very important when we have plans for abroad opportunities! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7990" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-02-07T05:03:21.527" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T05:03:21.527" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10672" CreationDate="2014-01-29T13:11:52.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My bias is to group them by &quot;primary&quot; target audience. So maybe you have projects that are Sales-centric that will be in one bucket (e.g. projects to develop and release a new product), others that are IT-centric (e.g. install a new server), etc. This results in the generation of multiple reports, which can be shared with whatever overall audience you want even though your primary target is a subset of that overall audience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T13:11:52.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10326" CreationDate="2014-01-29T13:27:19.400" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recomend MS excel to help you in this matter. &#xA;Nearly every software you use has support for exporting to excel. &#xA;You can use pivot tables as a rollup summary for high level task management.&#xA;You can go as detailed as you want it to be, adding additional information regarding to resources and tasks.&#xA;You can use vlookup tables to quickly fill information regarding the resources to your task lists.&#xA;As last step you can use charts to show your schedules graphically.&#xA;Once setup it will help you greatly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7883" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T13:27:19.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10672" CreationDate="2014-01-29T14:12:54.133" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Doug has it right. A report is for the benefit of the audience. You need to structure it so they understand and can make decisions. All other priorities are second to that. This question does not belong here. Instead, ask your stakeholders. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T14:12:54.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10683" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21705" CreationDate="2014-01-29T14:22:33.940" Score="7" ViewCount="1597" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have searched and not found an answer for this (nor did Google help).  We are on Project Server 2007.  I am running a large program with multiple project managers handling different parts of the program.  I would like to allow one of my project managers to get into the master plan to update it.  I cannot for the life of me figure out how to allow this in Project Server for this particular project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="933" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T18:53:55.063" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T18:53:55.063" Title="How to permit multiple Project Managers to update a shared project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;program-management&gt;&lt;project-server&gt;&lt;ms-project-2007&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10069" CreationDate="2014-01-29T14:24:28.383" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't believe you need a tool to do this.  You need to have a PM meeting where you bring the project managers together and set the priorities.  We actually have two of these meetings, one for the PMs with the PMs' manager where we discuss the status of our project and any interdependencies.  We also have a meeting with the resource manager to request resources, and see how the resources are assigned across plans.  Our overall department makes the high priority and strategic projects clear at our quarterly meetings, so everyone knows why another project might take priority in resources over theirs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="933" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T14:24:28.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10405" CreationDate="2014-01-29T15:59:27.323" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently working exactly how you describe and we have a few tricks to do it. I'm managing a team with people working remotely from many timezones... it is a mess :). But we follow SCRUM and a few custom rules and it works perfectly. In your case:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;What overarching advice could you give managing a remote team?&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say &lt;strong&gt;communication&lt;/strong&gt; is the key. Have your team well communicated and everybody will help each other (they need some trust and they must know that they can count with each other for that). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;I use agile scrum (online board) in my own development, should I integrate this team into a my scrum board so we can track issues between ourselves in sprints? &#xA;If so, should I use a single board for the whole team or split it up?&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.trello.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt; as our agile board. If your team members are in different projects, I wouldn't recommend that. But if they are working in the same project, that can be helpful so everybody know what tasks are pending, in progress, etc. &lt;strong&gt;Using internal messages&lt;/strong&gt; (in Trello with @) also &lt;strong&gt;saves tons of time&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to have each card as atomic and smaller as possible, so they don't block each other. And finally, in order to have the motivation up, review what everybody is doing and so, I recommend you to use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dutyful.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dutyful&lt;/a&gt;. It generates everyday a report sent to everyone by email, so everybody knows what everybody did, their blockers, etc. Very useful for remote teams!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7995" LastEditorUserId="7995" LastEditDate="2014-01-29T16:04:54.170" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T16:04:54.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10326" CreationDate="2014-01-29T20:42:02.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have used Asana, as well as several other tools, on multiple projects. In my opinion, Asana is a great tool for keeping track of TASKS, but not terribly robust at keeping up with project management requirements as a whole. Asana really excels at tasks creation and outlining, especially when you've already honed in on a specific project. However, it lacks features that make it a great tool for keeping track of a very high-level view of pending, current, and past projects. Its tools for resource allocation and management are also almost nonexistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My honest opinion would be, if possible, use another agile project management tool other than Asana. There are some great free options that might get you closer to where you want to be than Asana. Try some of these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pivotaltracker.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pivotaltracker.com/&lt;/a&gt;‎   --- This one only offers a free 60-day trial, but is one of the best I've ever used&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.versionone.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.versionone.com/&lt;/a&gt; --- Free for teams of up to 10 team members&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you simply MUST use Asana, my best advice would be to develop a syntax/system for adding comments to Asana tasks that are meaningful to time, resources, etc. If you can get everyone on the same page and using your documentation system for determining all of these aspects of the management cycle, then you could use the comments section at a high level to delineate timelines, resources, and whatever else you can fit into your abbreviations. For instance, from a technical standpoint:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(total # of resource hours allocated to project/total # of technical resources to be assigned to project/projected start date/projected end date)&#xA;(360/4/1-29-2014/3-1-2014)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a very basic example, but something like that might work out for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If nothing else, just making a block chart in Microsoft Excel might work out well too. It really just depends on how robust you want to go with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope I have helped, even if only a little bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8005" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T20:42:02.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10626" CreationDate="2014-01-29T21:41:50.380" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find that one of the most important duties of an IT project coordinator, is establishing a good relationship between the business and the technical resources. A common pitfall of many IT projects is repetitive miscommunication between the business and technical sides. The business often gets an idea of what they believe the final product will be too early in the project life cycle, and the technical department has a completely different view of the final product. Say both teams work independently with minimal communication and progress reviews over the next few weeks. When both teams get together to inspect progress, there is often a vast difference between what the two teams envisioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the interest of not digressing too much, I'll just cover a few more tips very quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.) &lt;strong&gt;Avoid scope creep!&lt;/strong&gt; - It's always hard to tell the business &quot;No&quot; when they ask for additional features, especially if they seem like they would take minimal effort to add. While some of this is acceptable (especially if the features are vital to the final product), be able to tell the business &quot;No&quot; when scope creep jeopardizes the final timeline/release of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.) &lt;strong&gt;Spend quality time with business, functional, and technical resources when deriving the initial project design (and with the technical lead for domain design)&lt;/strong&gt; - Another common pitfall that leads many projects to be delayed is simply poor planning. Projects are frequently delayed because of missing or incomplete ideas during the planning process. Bad domain design can also lead to numerous refactoring sessions later in the project's life cycle. Spend quality time with all resources involved to ensure that everyone is &quot;on the same page&quot; and that a solid view of the project from initial development to final product is established before &lt;em&gt;serious&lt;/em&gt; development begins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3.) &lt;strong&gt;Delegate!&lt;/strong&gt; - When you have such an extensive working knowledge of a project, it sometimes seems like it would be easier if you simply did tasks yourself. Again, some of this is acceptable. But keep your mind on the bigger picture. Your role is to help manage, communicate, plan, review, and make sure the project gets done on time. If you try and take on too many tasks, you A.) Have resources that you aren't utilizing aka - wasting resources AND B.) Overload yourself and become ineffective at your own job/set of tasks. If you have resources available to you - use them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In additional to my own personal experiences (wisdom, if you can call it that!), there are many resources online to help with project management, task delegation/tracking, and other issues you might encounter. And don't be afraid to ask for some guidance from your project manager if you need it. You're reasonably new to this, and learning from the processes of those around you will be vital to your success as a project coordinator/manager at your particular company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helped!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8005" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T21:41:50.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10689" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-30T03:55:17.100" Score="8" ViewCount="8724" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a team of developers who are relatively new to Agile and sprints (approx. 5 months now).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every time I walk into their sprint planning session, I do not like what I see.  It's absolute silence and we can practically hear ourselves breathing.  The SM is the only person talking and tries to create tasks, one-by-one, for each story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I try to encourage the PO and developers to ask questions, but I have developers who are very &quot;passive&quot; (not pro-active).  No developer will voluntarily request to be assigned a task (like I use to do and have seen done by so many of my peers).  They sit and almost wait to be assigned tasks (which was how it was before I introduced Agile).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our sprint planning sessions are WAY too long (almost a full day) for a two week sprint.  There is a lot of wasted time discussing things that should probably have been ironed out before the session by the PO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Other than a backlog grooming session, is there a formal meeting where the SM, PO, and I can pre-populate the tasks for each story?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We know we will need certain tasks, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;unit tests&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;functional tests&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;load tests&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;test strategy meetings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;If such a meeting exists, what is it called?&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;If not, would this, in any way, go against the Agile methodology?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How can I get developers more involved?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want them to be pro-active, ask questions, give opinions, to fight for tasks.&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can I do for motivation?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Any recommendations on what the PO could do prior to a sprint planning session?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just want all the boilerplate work to be done before developers and others join the session.  Having everyone sit through several minutes per story watching the SM create and name tasks, set the JIRA fields, etc. is entirely counter-productive.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="34743" LastEditDate="2019-01-20T08:59:02.797" LastActivityDate="2019-01-20T08:59:02.797" Title="When is the best time to create story tasks?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10690" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-30T06:27:03.420" Score="1" ViewCount="3984" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually the Deadline icon is shown as arrow in the Gantt Chart. It is possible to change by right clicking and selecting format.  Is it possible to show the deadline as a single line, just like &quot;Today's line&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8010" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2014-01-31T12:19:42.290" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T08:35:19.373" Title="How to change the arrow icon which is displayed as the deadline indicator" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10689" CreationDate="2014-01-30T11:20:41.640" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We work basically on Agile methodology and I work for the team which is almost similar but bunch of QA not the developers.&#xA;Before answering to the questions, some basics you need to know about the people whom you are working with. If you introduce anything then do not expect  that you will get responses, specially when you are introducing something really new.  Motivation is really important for  them by a little giggling and being friendly somehow help them to open up themselves of what their interest is in which part of development as everyone cannot be expert in all the functionalities they develop. So digging in their minds at free time initially helps you to grasp their brains!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answering to the questions which are raised by you :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure that developers will feel comfortable to approach you whenever they need you. &#xA;You can actually start with sessions as “ Interactive Sessions “ where each and every developer will be talking on the topic related to the particular project or may be something which you are introducing , and the topic will be assigned by you. This should be priorly informed to be prepared on those topics and make everyone listen to them ! Ask them to prepare 10 to 15 points on the topic given!&#xA;Anyone can raise questions and ask for the doubts and that would be mandatory and in those interactive sessions everyone has to open up and speak whatever they feel like as senior members of the organisations will not be in those sessions so they have that liberty.&#xA;Through these sessions they are well prepared with the project or subject of what you wan, which is coming up as well as they will have an idea of interest which they have already spoken and they tend to speak !&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can get the developers involved after these consecutive meeting held between you and the developers before the project is introduced. Its hard to do this initially but once you teach them how to speak, what to ask and what not to!  then I am sure you are going to bang the crowd! Well, this can happen but only through the effort what you put in. As this is real scenario what I have given you as explainatory answer so I am confident you will win this !&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I actually would refer you to go through the below link for PO could do prior to a Sprint Planning : &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.fsu.edu/~baker/swe1/restricted/notes/scrum.html#(8)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cs.fsu.edu/~baker/swe1/restricted/notes/scrum.html#(8)&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;Please let me know if these answers are of some help for you.&#xA;Thanks !&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7990" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2014-01-30T12:09:02.920" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T12:09:02.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10689" CreationDate="2014-01-30T12:09:53.853" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the common problem which was faced by everyone who are new to Agile. Because Agile is more about taking ownership and resposiblity which was lacking in other methods. To answer your question..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Before you goto Sprint Planning Meeting, Business Analyst and Product Owner should have discussion and priortize the list of features which you have according to your business needs. Before prioritizing the Business Analyst should break down the features into small task and with PO these should be prioritized. In this way when you go for Sprint Planning Meeting you can avoid time in discussion which features to be address. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To bring in more involvement from your developers, you should first teach them how Agile works. Make them understand you are suppose to take ownership. It can be done in a simple way, in your initial meetings please avoid people from Management team, make your dev team feel confortable, make sure that what ever they speak its not going to communicated to Management team. May be initial days you can give them some time say them these are features according to priority go back do effort estimation and let the team know how much time you need, who works on which feature etc. This way you can make them involved. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As I mentioned above PO and BA should meet before planning meeting and prioritize the user stories to be taken for each Sprints. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8012" LastEditorUserId="8012" LastEditDate="2014-02-03T12:38:32.780" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T12:38:32.780" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10690" CreationDate="2014-01-30T13:34:19.013" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No it is not possible. The deadline icon is a type of &quot;Bar&quot;. Bars can only be icons. You can change many things including the icon shape and colour, but you cannot turn it into a vertical line similar to the &quot;Today&quot; line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally Deadlines apply on a per-task basis and it does not make any difference if all tasks have the same deadline date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you may be able to achieve the same result by adding a Milestone task called Deadline at the top level, and allowing that milestone to appear on the Timeline along with other key tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T13:34:19.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8681" CreationDate="2014-01-30T13:58:44.500" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a task that was supposed to start in the past, did not actually start, then that workload (or some of the workload if it was only partially completed) still needs to be done. So the task, or the remaining part of the task needs to be moved into the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The act of moving it into the future means that there is more work for the project to do between now and completion, so completion could slip. It is this effect that you want to see correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On your status date use the Update Project menu item (on the Project tab in MSP 2010) to move all uncompleted work to a specific point in time (usually tomorrow). This will move uncompleted work into the future&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Since 1 does not resolve overallocations, you then need to Level the plan (unless you are using auto-levelling). Having done that MSP will attempt to schedule all remaining work to be done from the update date until completion. This may or may not result in a slippage of your end date&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2014-01-30T15:19:35.537" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T15:19:35.537" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10689" CreationDate="2014-01-30T16:20:19.133" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Introduction&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Division of stories into smaller stories should be done by the Product Owner. Scrum Master and developers can help in that, especially during backlog refinement (grooming).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Division of stories into tasks (meaning: technical tasks) is only the responsibility of the development team&lt;/strong&gt; – this is about HOW the stories will be implemented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I believe, neither Scrum Master, PO nor you (if you are not a dev) should not divide stories to (technical) tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just answered a question about „who?” and not „when?”, but that was for clarification. Now answers to your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Answers&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) The answer to &lt;strong&gt;„When?”&lt;/strong&gt; is, in my opinion: &lt;strong&gt;during sprint planning&lt;/strong&gt;. I think, no other formal meeting is intended for that in Scrum.&#xA;Also whenever someone sees that a task may be added to the story, he may add it. But formally, HOW the stories will be implemented is discussed among developers during Sprint Planning meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) &lt;strong&gt;Ask the Scrum Master to stop talking&lt;/strong&gt; ;), to stop entering stuff to JIRA during the planning meeting. He should facilitate the meeting and encourage developers to do this work and not do this instead of them.&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Give pens and postit stickers with story names to developers&lt;/strong&gt; and let them write on a sticker the tasks for that story. And &lt;strong&gt;take the keyboard from Scrum Master&lt;/strong&gt;. He does not need it during the meeting. Give it to someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about empowerment, about encouraging for self-organization of the dev team. They will not start to do this job if SM is doing it for them. Some „space” needs to be created. Make them feel responsible for technical solutions, for dividing stories into tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c) &lt;strong&gt;SM should support PO&lt;/strong&gt; before the planning &lt;strong&gt;in creating and splitting user stories and making them better understandable&lt;/strong&gt;. Does he do that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE regarding a):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tasks like: design, tests, review should be a part of general Definition of Done of the team. I do not think it is needed to put them to the story during planning. It depends on &lt;strong&gt;what is the goal of adding them&lt;/strong&gt; there - to have them visualized so that the size of the story can be estimated well or just to have a checklist if all the steps were done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is needed for estimation and the team prefers to have it written down, then it is fine. If the team do wants to have those tasks in JIRA to have kind of checklist (do they want? or you want it? :)) then a developer when starting to work on a story can add those generic tasks. During planning it would be enough to mention it - that's something that SM can do: &quot;guys remember that you need unit tests as well&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my team tasks added to a story during planning session are more like: add a new button to screen A, create a new screen B, create a new db table, improve the SQL query. We put &quot;unit tests&quot; tasks usually when we know that in a specific story we expect a lot of effort in making/maintaining unit tests. Usually we do not write down &quot;unit tests&quot; task to a story as we all know it needs to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6324" LastEditorUserId="6324" LastEditDate="2014-01-31T09:26:39.827" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T09:26:39.827" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10689" CreationDate="2014-01-30T16:25:06.643" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;From command-and-control to self-organizing&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looks like your team (and perhaps your organization) is struggling with transitioning from command-and-control style of management to agile. &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.sysev.com/transitioning-agile-smooth/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This article has some tips.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my experience, here are some things that might help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the Product Owner describing the Sprint Goal at the beginning of each Sprint Planning meeting? This will help the team understand what they are expected to accomplish and why.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Scrum Master should not be creating tasks. This should be left to the development team. They are the ones who are going to do the work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you estimate story points? I recommend the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/planning-poker&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;planning poker method&lt;/a&gt;. The entire development team gets a chance to become familiar with the work that is coming up next.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One way of encouraging the developers to participate is to split the Sprint Planning into two parts. In the first part of the Sprint Planning, the team can discuss the stories in the priority order, get clarifications on the requirements and acceptance criteria from the Product Owner and commit to how much work can be accomplished in the Sprint (based on story points). In the second part, the Scrum Master can step back and let the development team take the lead. The team creates tasks for each story based on how they intend accomplishing it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As @CodeGnome suggested, send more people to Scrum training. If you have a tight budget, get those already trained to train the others.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2014-01-30T16:34:59.073" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T16:34:59.073" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10689" CreationDate="2014-01-30T17:27:23.357" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like other responses have indicated, it's really about ownership. In my experience, developers really like to solve problems - it's what brings them satisfaction in their work. Usually when I see a low level of interaction, it's because the developers feel like they're being giving a list of things to do and they're just acquiescing. That may or may not be what's happening, but I've never seen a case of low involvement where that wasn't the perception. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the same problem that waterfall has. Tier 1, business leadership, decides on some requirements and passes them down with Tier 2, the PMO, then they make tasks and give them to Tier 3, the developers, which make them, then we go back up the chain and hope whisper down the alley didn't happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is that all levels are engaged at the same time. The project should start with the team getting a high-level view of what they're trying to accomplish in the project, then as you approach each section, before you get into sprint planning, you vet ideas and requirements with team members (doesn't have to be all of them if you've got a big team. Your goal is to get involvement and buy-in, not kill productivity). For example, if you intend to tackle user feedback next sprint, a few days before it, have the product owner take the team to lunch and say &quot;I need users to be able to give feedback with a single click from any page&quot; - or whatever the high-level need is - &quot;Like this site does - what do you guys think? How could we make X happen?&quot; Take that conversation and iron out some basic stories to work from during sprint planning. Now you've got the idea in their heads for a few days, they've got some ideas rolling, and they come into sprint planning knowing what they'll be talking about and ready to share some solutions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I know this kinda breaks scrum because you're allowing POs and stakeholders to take the team off task. In my experience, the benefits of getting the team to buy in and own the solution far outweight the fact that you're taking them off task for a bit. That being said, it's something to be aware of and to control - if it starts getting out of hand, reel it back in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also can work really well if it's not common in other meetings Project kickoffs and release planning, for example, are great places to start these conversations too. Spending extra time to do discovery and brainstorming activities in broader planning sessions like release planning can really pay off throughout the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last thing: don't worry too much about how long it's taking. You're right to worry that there's no involvement, but if the meetings are productive and it takes all day, then maybe that's how long it actually needs to go. When you pick arbitrary timeboxes for meetings like that, people will feel rushed and skip valuable discussions that will cause worse problems later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T17:27:23.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10690" CreationDate="2014-01-30T19:13:11.810" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can draw vertical lines on the Gantt chart using the drawing toolbar.  Click the Gantt Chart tools format ribbon and click drawing.  Hold down your Shift key while drawing the line (to make sure it is plumb).  Then right click the line and attach to the timescale date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T19:13:11.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10701" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-30T20:40:55.273" Score="0" ViewCount="561" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to assign resources to projects.&#xA;We are having a issue where a resources can be assigned in multiple projects simultaneously. making the executive dash board look way off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8018" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T21:28:23.833" Title="Demand Planning for Resources" Tags="&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10702" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-30T20:51:14.490" Score="1" ViewCount="101" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a pretty young Startup who helps offline retailers to get their products successful online and we also take care of anything else, like shipping etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also the customers are very eager after our meeting to provide us with the data we need to get started ( only a list with EAN-Codes and buy prices of the retailers for their products ) we have to call them up several times and make sure, we do not lose connection. Which stops us from get started making money and running his business, because we need this list in the first place to get started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We thought about taking a fee in the beginning so the customers is actually more bounded to us. But we are curios if there is not any better idea?&#xA;How can we make sure, the customer actually wants to give as his list as quick as possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4629" LastActivityDate="2014-02-16T08:11:55.987" Title="How to get a customer to deliver the needed ressources as quick as possible" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;customer&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10702" CreationDate="2014-01-30T23:46:56.910" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You cannot really force a customer to provide you with the data. And you shouldn't. You're a fresh startup. Customers put trust in you, but they don't know if you'll succeed. You can't blame them for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the project at hand, you should be patient with your customer. There's a variety of possible reasons for his delay (no interest, other priorities, uncertainty about what you want from him, ...). You should ask him if there are any problems preparing the data. Maybe you can help him out by providing something or stop by and help preparing the data? &lt;em&gt;The best way to get something is to offer something first.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For future projects, you could try to negotiate an upfront, partial payment to ensure the customer's commitment. If he's willing to pay that, he's on board. But be careful with your demands till you can prove some success. And still don't expect him to be available for you project 24/7!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6990" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T23:46:56.910" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10702" CreationDate="2014-01-31T04:56:41.807" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you do not get anything up front, then they have no 'skin in the game.' Even if your setup process is extremely automated (setup a site with one click) the reason to get money from the customer is manifold:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the customer is unwilling to put cash up front, they have no commitment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the customer has not given you cash, they might be trying several options and seeing which works best, all at no cost to them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You should have some working capital if not for operations, for more marketing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The client might say yes just because they are uncomfortable saying no. They do want to say no but you have given them a way to say no and still avoid all conflict...just don't give you the data, or keep stalling until you go away&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like your business model is based on free to setup and you take a piece of each transaction. Sounds nice, for everyone, however, for the reasons above, you might want to reconsider that model to something like $100 up front or even $100 up front which gets paid back on the first 100 transactions. That is (for the second option) they would still not be paying you per se but they would have some investment in the process, motivating them to help get things up ASAP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7610" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T04:56:41.807" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10705" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10711" CreationDate="2014-01-31T07:06:43.903" Score="16" ViewCount="4090" Body="&lt;p&gt;We know that during every sprint, the team's primary goal is to achieve 100% completion of user stories which are part of the sprint backlog. But what happens in practice is that, development should be completed 2-3 days prior to sprint end, so that ample time can be spent to complete testing tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, due to pressure of completing all user stories, the team can't pull another one since they know they will not able to complete it. Which means, either developers have to analyze next sprint tasks (which still may leave some spare time) or have to sit idle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people may argue that planning was not good. But aren't we following Agile, where estimates may vary from actual (which leads to carry over of user stories) or maybe the scrum team completes all user stories in less time as compared to original plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose the team is pulling another user story and didn't complete it. There is argument, it doesn't look good from management perspective that user stories are getting carried over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Isn't the pressure of completing all user stories, which are pulled in a sprint, somehow decreasing the productivity of the team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6875" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2014-02-14T17:12:33.043" LastActivityDate="2020-06-12T15:05:11.610" Title="During a sprint, should we try to achieve 100% user story completion or 100% productivity" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10706" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-31T08:21:35.317" Score="-2" ViewCount="111" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to hear some opinions about my situation. Initial:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Im the initiator of a startup idea&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Investor brings up his employee as Teammeber&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Investor splitted his proportion half for the employee&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I work only on the startup, 50-60 hours a week&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I get a small amount of money from each for half a year&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no contract atm, but the investor will pay everything needed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Teammember brings no performance. The real working time is under 10 hours for the whole time. I thought about cut him 15% for me or throw him out, but dont want to get in to a dispute, since i think i need him later, but everything tooks longer and more risky for me. What would you do in a situation like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8022" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T12:14:59.357" Title="No performance from Teammember" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2014-02-15T03:30:07.537" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10702" CreationDate="2014-01-31T08:32:24.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;it really depends on why you need the data from your customers. If you just need this data to show a demo for them, then you could use some fake data or just parse a customer's site in order to get the data you need. In this case you will be able to prepare the demo for your customers without asking them. At the next meeting, they will be so satisfied because you will make a presentation using real data that they will sign a contract with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As somebody else mentioned, there might be a lot of reasons why customers can't provide you with this data at this particular moment. If you need data from them not for the demo, but for the real production site, you can kindly push them. For instance, you should prepare an e-mail (a kindly reminder) that you are still waiting for the data. In this e-mail, you can describe all the benefits your client gets if he/she starts working with your startup, such as the company gaining a new market, etc. Good luck with your start up!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7289" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-02-16T08:11:55.987" LastActivityDate="2014-02-16T08:11:55.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10705" CreationDate="2014-01-31T08:37:54.820" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you follow the Scrum framework strictly, you will not change a sprint's backlog after the planning. This means you will not pull another story. Free time at the end of the sprint can be used for minor refactoring, reading about technologies, optimizing you work environment, exploring new tools, and so on. There's always something to do, if you look closely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't mean that you should finish every week after 4 days. If you (i.e., the team?) start feeling that you really don't have enough work, you should start pulling more work in the planning. If there's still space left and the next story is too big: break it down; pull the first part. The agile trick to productivity is to break stories down. Only when they are small enough, you can really measure your velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing: you are not going to hell because a story doesn't get completed. It's something that happens, as you cannot predict everything. If it happens you should analyze the reasons. Unpredicted problems? Maybe invest more in analysis next time. Too much work pulled? Adjust your velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case: bring this up in the next retrospective. Discuss it with the whole team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6990" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-04-02T17:26:04.613" LastActivityDate="2015-04-02T17:26:04.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10647" CreationDate="2014-01-31T09:19:00.227" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First and foremost its the kind of project based on which it can be calculated that how many projects basically can be handled by a PM. Like I am into online marketing and I have seen PMs in my industry doesn't go for more than 4-5 projects to give desired output. Upon overloaded they may have quality concern on their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7459" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T09:19:00.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10705" CreationDate="2014-01-31T09:53:41.600" Score="14" Body="&lt;h2&gt;100% user story completion vs 100% productivity&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think in terms of &lt;strong&gt;value delivered vs utilization&lt;/strong&gt;. Goal of Scrum team should be to maximize output and not maximize utilization. Anything (whether a machine or person) working on 100% capacity for longer duration will eventually break. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The goal of Scrum is not to achieve the highest resource utilization; it is to achieve the highest throughput of completed, deliverable value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2008/february/the-case-of-the-time-tyrant&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Article - The Case of the Time Tyrant (2008)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Full utilization concept may fit well in the traditional project management domain. However, software development is usually not a predictable / well-defined process, it is more of an empirical process in which you may end up in a situation where you have to discard a full days worth of work and restart from scratch. People have to attend meetings, answer to support calls, etc. in addition to writing code. So it may happen that a story gets completed earlier than estimated (or may get delayed too).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Maximum utilization can be counter productive&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should push back on 100% utilization part because maximum utilization can be counter productive in software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is about transparency and setting correct expectations. Stakeholders need to know when a particular piece of value will be delivered instead of how many hours of a developer were spent to complete a story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What to do if you find idle time&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with the fact that sprint backlog should be completed some time before the sprint end date so that it can be tested and team can finalize a stable build after the required bugfixing etc. So developers may fix issues which were reported during testing within the current sprint. In case the team consistently performs well on the QA front and not many bugs come up then you may reduce this sprint end testing time and in future sprints the team may add more stories to the sprint backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In cases where the team finds some idle time, the team may consult Product Owner to pick a story from product backlog which is next in line or can be completed in the remaining sprint time. Alternatively, if there are technical debts to pay then the team can also work on those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case of stories being carried over to future sprints, the Scrum team should not be held responsible for stories which were not part of the sprint backlog to begin with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-12T15:05:11.610" LastActivityDate="2020-06-12T15:05:11.610" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10702" CreationDate="2014-01-31T11:40:38.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did you sign a contract?  For services type work, I would hope there is a written agreement on what you two negotiated.  That typically seals the deal and, from there, it is a matter of you maintaining and growing that relationship, checking in with them, asking for the data and getting a date on which they commit, and following up on a set cadence.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can certainly ask for a retainer.  Many industries do that.  However, if it is not common in your business, then asking for it can make your company less attractive than a competitor, and if a competitor has been knocking on the same door, you are at risk.  Once you have a reputation, you can ask for these kind of things that make you less attractive but you are trading on your reputation so you can ultimately afford it.  So the question is, can you afford it now?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having customers back at on the 11th hour is the cost of doing business.  This is why you need to have a healthy pipeline.  Some of your incoming business that appears to be a sure thing will stall at the last minute.  If you can have them put skin in the game without degrading your competitive advantage, do it.  Else, play the game by the numbers and keep selling to other customers all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T11:40:38.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10706" CreationDate="2014-01-31T12:14:59.357" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem is clearly that you do not have a clear agreement with the investor. All of the terms of the agreement (at least the most important ones) should be clearly lined out in a contract ASAP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have someone on the team who does not contribute enough, then you need to see if you can resolve that with the person. If not, you need to find a way to remove that person from the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I saw a similar situation where an equity holder was part of the project to bring a product live. This was the first product so it was the foundation of the company. At any rate, the equity-holding member was a problem. Nice, but causing too many problems for others. They had to vote to remove him from the team. He could keep his shares but he would not be paid for his work going forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you cam imagine, assuming you also hold equity, this is not ideal because the equity was given in the expectation of performance but you did not hire the team member and it sounds like you did not give up any of your equity. So, it is not really your issue to resolve. That said, if you can find a way to get the team member to perform, through sincere conversation, it would be better for everyone...especially if he has some skills you know you will need later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversation must be the key here. You must find out why the member is not contributing more but you cannot force someone to be motivated, they have to want it. So, try to find out what will motivate them. I find that most people can answer the question &quot;What motivates you?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7610" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T12:14:59.357" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10715" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10716" CreationDate="2014-01-31T15:07:46.270" Score="-4" ViewCount="164" Body="&lt;p&gt;After breaking backlog items down to sprints, how should we partition the sprint items among the team ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7887" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2014-01-31T17:36:19.667" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T20:30:06.693" Title="How to partition backlog sprints among the team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-02-01T06:13:17.600" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10715" CreationDate="2014-01-31T17:39:39.907" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Work towards a self-organizing and cross-functional team&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looks like your first question is how to carve out sprints from the product backlog. The Scrum team should work towards &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Portals/0/Documents/Scrum%20Guides/Scrum_Guide.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;delivering a potentially releasable Increment of “Done” product at the end of each Sprint.&lt;/a&gt; You may or may not actually deploy at the end of each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to accomplish this, the Product Owner should go through the backlog items and prioritize the features. The Product Owner should also articulate a goal for each sprint. During Sprint Planning, the team works with the Product Owner to carve out the Sprint Backlog. This is the set of stories that represent the higher value features. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looks like your second question is how do I assign stories from the Sprint Backlog to individual developers. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Portals/0/Documents/Scrum%20Guides/Scrum_Guide.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum teams should be self-organizing.&lt;/a&gt; After the Sprint Planning meeting, team members should take up stories in the priority order and assign tasks among themselves based on not only their skill but also whatever needs to get done in order to create the releasable product. Try to break out of skill silos (such as developer, tester, designer) and aim for cross-functional capabilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2014-01-31T20:30:06.693" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T20:30:06.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10701" CreationDate="2014-01-31T19:15:01.257" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A simple answer to the problem is to use an enterprise project planning system. Several products allow for the creation of central resource pools (including people, places, and objects). Then as a resource is allocated to a task the time on task should be visible to all users of the system. This then allows the next requester of the resource to either select a different resource or negotiate with the person using the resource first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a significant caveat to this basic use of an integrated project planning system, and that is discipline is required to ensure that planners are not allowed to overload resources beyond an agreed percentage. Sometimes that overload percentage has to be zero, such as for physical resources (you cannot hold two meetings in the same conference room at the same time). However, your organization may have a policy allowing individuals a limited amount of overtime per day. That would mean you can overload the person-resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cannot overload a resource, then you will need to do resource leveling (this is not a wise thing to do automatically even though some tools allow it since it can give unpredictable results). To resource level you need to fill each next available open hours the resource has with the project need it until the demand is met. Unfortunately this frequently pushes the end date of the project out to the right an unacceptable amount. That may be the indicator that you need more temporary or permanent resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7689" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T19:15:01.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10701" CreationDate="2014-01-31T21:28:23.833" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;It is possible to assign resources to multiple projects using a desktop tool&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are double booking some resources, it is more than likely other resources are sitting idle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If your team is not too large a good supervisor may be able to manually assess workload and resolve idle time as well as contentions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you have a large pool, and if the assignments are for long term, one option is to assign resources full time to specific projects. And make the project managers responsible for keeping their resources well utilized. You need to set up project costing such a way they are motivated to offer under-utilized resources to other projects.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you have a large pool and the assignments are for short term, as @Polymath said you need an enterprise project planning system. But these things are expensive.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A lower cost option is to use a dektop project management tool that supports resource pools. &lt;a href=&quot;http://epmablog.com/share-a-resource-pool-across-multiple-projects-in-microsoft-project/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here is an article on sharing a Resource Pool across multiple projects in Microsoft Project.&lt;/a&gt; The open source &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectlibre.org/discussion/controlling-other-projects-simultaneous-form&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ProjectLibre team says they are working on it.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T21:28:23.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10719" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10723" CreationDate="2014-01-31T22:12:23.680" Score="11" ViewCount="22250" Body="&lt;p&gt;The project managers at my company were asked to use Microsoft Project 2013 to track our projects, but many of the business stakeholders do not have Project installed. It looks like I cannot just export the task list or Gantt chart as a PDF. There's this awful combined view for printing that just stretches lists and charts across pages and the PDF export seems to only print the same view, just to a PDF instead. I've used reports a little, but haven't found a quick solution to my problem there either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know a good way to share those project components and status updates on them with people that don't have project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T18:54:04.920" LastActivityDate="2020-06-02T17:47:49.760" Title="Showing Microsoft Project files to people without Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10702" CreationDate="2014-02-01T02:06:51.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Clients are almost never ready immediately -- even if they are the ones who find you AND they have a tight deadline. You need to work this into your pipeline and forecasts. Also, if you follow-up too often, especially if you initiated the relationship, you run a high risk of chasing them off or appearing pushy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have A/B tested this with my own clients and found that asking for a deposit did not make them respond any faster -- but it definitely guarantees they will respond. It can also keep a steady stream of income coming in, so long as you are prepared for those weeks when &lt;em&gt;everyone&lt;/em&gt; seems to respond at once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I second user7289 -- can you provide a demo without their data? Give them a 14-day free trial of your product? Find their data somewhere else and input a sample of it yourself? That is the level of effort that will impress potential customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7952" LastActivityDate="2014-02-01T02:06:51.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10721" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11626" CreationDate="2014-02-01T09:41:39.217" Score="1" ViewCount="819" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use Asana a lot for task and bug management with less technically oriented customers and externals. This works well except for &lt;em&gt;one feature that keeps confusing everybody&lt;/em&gt;: the fact that the &lt;strong&gt;order of tasks&lt;/strong&gt; (i.e. the visual representation of the task priorities) &lt;strong&gt;in&lt;/strong&gt; each user's &lt;strong&gt;&quot;My Tasks&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; list is &lt;strong&gt;independent&lt;/strong&gt; of the order of tasks in the &lt;strong&gt;project view&lt;/strong&gt;, where the tasks of all users can be seen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After logging in, a user sees her own tasks, and new tasks appear at the top under &quot;New Tasks&quot; and can be prioritized as the users sees fit. So we explain to the users &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to use their &quot;My Tasks&quot; view but to go straight to the project view. This is, however, not intuitive for most of the people and always leads to confusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to handle this better so that the project task order is sort of forced on the users task order?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update - clarification&lt;/strong&gt; - I'll try to visualize my problem here. Let's say I have a workspace named &lt;em&gt;DEMO&lt;/em&gt; and a project named &lt;em&gt;tasks&lt;/em&gt;. I click on the project in the left sidebar and add three task - &lt;em&gt;Task 1, Task 2&lt;/em&gt; and somewhat later &lt;em&gt;Task Urgent&lt;/em&gt; and assign them to a collaborator:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FewWP.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I decide to move &lt;em&gt;Task Urgent&lt;/em&gt; up (drag &amp;amp; drop):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fRlMs.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By design, this priority change (done in the project view) is not reflected in the collaborator view who still sees the original order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xNenZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He or she can now 1. mark each new task for today, upcoming or later and 2. order the tasks independent of the order in the project view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am the project manager, so I could, of course, click on the collaborator, set all new tasks to &lt;em&gt;Upcoming&lt;/em&gt;, and prioritize his tasks there as well. But I definitely want to avoid this double work, and while there may be scenarios where this total independence of orders is desired, what &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; would prefer is that clicking on a user (or on &lt;em&gt;My Tasks&lt;/em&gt;) works more like a filter on the main project list, using the same order of tasks and possibly even the same sections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I do now is tell all new collaborators to use the project view only and not their individual ones. But &lt;em&gt;My Tasks&lt;/em&gt; is the default view, and so this doesn't work so well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a feeling that I am missing something here, maybe use Asana the wrong way (although it is designed to be used with various work flows), but on the other hand having the same priorities for each and every team member seems to natural. How can I use Asana to accomplish that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="604" LastEditorUserId="604" LastEditDate="2014-04-16T07:48:48.690" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T22:38:11.743" Title="How to make personal tasks in Asana reflect general project task priorities" Tags="&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10719" CreationDate="2014-02-01T17:08:34.233" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you considered exporting the relevant data to Excel?  If you display the Task Sheet (use the View ribbon) you can certainly save that view as PDF as well. Saving as PDF just prints the current view to a PDF printer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would filter and show only the tasks of interest - instead of saving the entire list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2014-02-01T17:08:34.233" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10725" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10726" CreationDate="2014-02-01T23:51:24.253" Score="2" ViewCount="165" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should I consider &lt;em&gt;a margin&lt;/em&gt; calculating work hours, then increase the final cost, based on &lt;strong&gt;estimated hours + &lt;em&gt;margin hours&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;? Or should I add a margin after the estimated hours of work, increasing the final amount?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Edit: the problem&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a project with &lt;em&gt;N&lt;/em&gt; resources, which have a different cost per hour, I want to consider a margin of error in the estimation of the final cost. So I wonder which method is the most &lt;em&gt;accurate/correct/used&lt;/em&gt;, to be used to calculate the &lt;em&gt;total&lt;/em&gt; of my project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8036" LastEditorUserId="8036" LastEditDate="2014-02-02T00:03:04.493" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T00:38:23.943" Title="Estimated costs" Tags="&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10725" CreationDate="2014-02-02T00:38:23.943" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd advise against adding some type of margin to your targets.  It seems a lot of folks like to do this, but it is unreliable and just adds unnecessary costs to your budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, there is no such thing as an accurate or correct target.  Your estimate should ALWAYS be a range.  For example, for task A, your workers estimate that this work will take between 12 and 24 hours to complete.  Perhaps a most likely might be 16 hours.  That is the probabilistic density function of that task in hours.  If you did this work 100 times, this is the range of results you would likely experience.  So as you can see, picking a single number in that range has a very low likelihood of occurring on any given attempt.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding a margin is about risk.  Using the example above, you would simply push your targets on the outside of that range in the event the work is deemed high risk.  So, if high risk you might target 17, 18, even 20 hours to do the work.  By doing so, you are putting more of that density function behind you and, thus, giving you reserves to cope with uncertainty.  Conversely, if the environment is low risk, you might target 16, 15, or 14 hours because of your confidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So instead of using some frozen margin to add to your work that has no basis in reality, estimate your range and understand the probability of those results, conduct a risk assessment on the environment, and then target accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T00:38:23.943" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10728" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10844" CreationDate="2014-02-02T16:48:40.653" Score="0" ViewCount="2133" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technical question concerning MS Project 2010:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have a Gantt with a list of tasks. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For each task I have the work defined (ex: 2 wks). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each task can only have one person (resource) assigned to it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The tasks are divided into two kinds: Some are done by developers, others by researchers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I know that for this project I will have X (ex: 1.5) developers and Y researchers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I have MS Project optimally assign developers to &quot;developer tasks&quot; and researchers to &quot;researcher tasks&quot;? I don't care which dev does which dev task etc. I just care about maximizing resource utilization per time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8043" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-15T09:15:19.120" LastActivityDate="2019-01-15T09:15:19.120" Title="Let MS Project 2010 assign resources to tasks?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10729" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10754" CreationDate="2014-02-02T17:46:56.037" Score="3" ViewCount="492" Body="&lt;p&gt;In planning &lt;strong&gt;hardware costs&lt;/strong&gt;, considering the distribution of the product in &lt;em&gt;virtual/cloud&lt;/em&gt; environments, where the cost is derived from the use of resources, considering the following points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The minimum hardware architecture is defined;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hardware provider have not yet been chosen, but there is a list of preferences given by the team;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Obviously is impossible to consider what will be the expansion (and hence the effective use of the minimal hardware resources);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All providers allow the analysis of costs, through the use of &lt;em&gt;simulators of resources&lt;/em&gt;, and is therefore predictable the maximum cost (24/7);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to communicate this type of variable costs? In order to define the true cost of the hardware infrastructure, &lt;strong&gt;A)&lt;/strong&gt; it is appropriate to consider the maximum use of hardware resources, &lt;strong&gt;B)&lt;/strong&gt; or there are different methods to determine the cost of resources in virtual environments?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option A is the one that I took into account when projecting costs. One of the requests of the client, is to reduce the cost of infrastructure. The market analysis and consultations with the representatives of the different hardware providers, push the client to consider virtual environments. But when planning costs, option A, it does not seem to respect what the &lt;em&gt;analysis&lt;/em&gt; offers. So I'm wondering if this type of variable costs, must be projected as a maximum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8036" LastEditorUserId="8036" LastEditDate="2014-02-02T18:10:57.740" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T13:51:35.313" Title="Cost of resources in virtual environments" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10728" CreationDate="2014-02-02T17:57:24.380" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd let MSProject assign resources to work like I'd let a shovel dig a hole by itself.  The maximizing resource utilization will be valid at baseline line...and then invalid three seconds after.  Close enough is good enough.  Once the project starts, you will be dealing with a host of aleatory variability and chasing some &quot;maximized&quot; utilization is just a waste of time and will likely buy you nothing in terms of project results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T17:57:24.380" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10731" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-02T19:54:08.430" Score="7" ViewCount="1504" Body="&lt;p&gt;A team of engineers (software in this case) needs to be lead.  Leadership can involve:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Architect&lt;/strong&gt; - Leads &quot;design in the large&quot; issues, such as what components to use&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lead engineer&lt;/strong&gt; - A peer leader, writes code while leading the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project manager&lt;/strong&gt; - Goal is to increase everyone else's productivity; focuses on who's doing what, bottlenecks, tasks, schedule, expectations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product owner&lt;/strong&gt; - The voice of the customer, the market, the product&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of those roles contribute a lot.  But, for a team of say 6 engineers, 4 leaders doesn't really make sense.  And splitting leaders among multiple projects doesn't work well either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, given that a team is big enough to need leadership, how do you do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;em&gt;In response to the requests for clarification:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a small, growing company, with only 1 engineering team.  It's not large enough for a matrix organization.  Until now, it's been only 2 (later 3) engineers, who are also the business managers, owners, entrepreneurs, etc.  Now that it's moving to a engineering team distinct from business management and ownership, it's clear that the team needs leadership.  The question is as much about hiring (what type of role should we hire for) as it is about structure (how should authority and responsibility be structured).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other places, I've seen teams where everyone was supposed to have these roles, which meant that no one had them.  There a plenty of competent engineers which can carry out tasks, but can't architect, or manage a project, or understand the customer's needs.  So there's a real need to make sure these roles are filled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8044" LastEditorUserId="8044" LastEditDate="2014-02-03T04:51:54.183" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T16:18:55.140" Title="Project leadership of engineering team" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;leadership&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10731" CreationDate="2014-02-03T04:42:00.063" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This answer depends a bit on your culture. A matrix structure is not uncommon in the US. With this option, the engineers would report to one leader for their technical issues, perhaps the Architect or the Lead engineer. However, for non-technical issues, the PM would provide the leadership necessary. This matrix structure allows workers to get what they need from those who are best able to provide it while still providing a formality to the structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some countries, for example in France, workers do not normally easily accept the idea of having two bosses. For this reason, the matrix structure is extremely rare in those countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are using a matrix structure, you would not have one full time leader but rather two part-time leaders. The leaders being 'part time leaders' can also help with morale since those people will also be doing 'real work' along with the engineers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7610" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T04:42:00.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10719" CreationDate="2014-02-03T10:38:18.687" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to use &lt;strong&gt;File -&gt;save as webpage option&lt;/strong&gt; and customize to existing or new maps to display data according to my team needs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T10:38:18.687" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9686" CreationDate="2014-02-03T13:02:38.833" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That sounds to interesting.. You will always face some roadblocks when you migrate to SCRUM.. To solve the issue which you face..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First and foremost thing you should do is to educate your team on SCRUM.. Get some Agile Coach and train your team on SCRUM... &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make your different depts are one team.. If there is no coordination between team you cant be successful in Agile&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You should have a Business Analyst or Scrum Master to drive your team, thus they are not deivated from achiving the objectives&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you get a requirement, your BA should break down the requirements in smaller user stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discuss the user stories and get it prioritized&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Call your team for a planning meeting and make them understand the requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask your backend and frontend team to sit together and do the effort estimation because they both are interdependent on each other. Get one effort estimation not two. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask your QA team to prepare test cases when the sprint begins and they should test it parallely when the dev team completes each tasks.&#xA;(I dint understand the role of your system admin)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once you get the effort estimation plan for your sprints and go ahead&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In this you can involve your whole team into one sprint.. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8012" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T13:02:38.833" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-02-03T13:02:38.833" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10705" CreationDate="2014-02-03T13:21:43.540" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The goal of the team should be to complete 100% user stories at the end of Sprints. If they couldn't complete the user stories then there some mistakes in your estimations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To avoid such things, when you call for Sprint Planning Meetings, explain the requirements to your team. Team includes devs, testers, designers, dba, etc. Then ask your team to estimate the effort required to complete each user story. In this way you can get an idea of time required to complete each tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Business Analyst and Product Owner should prioritize the user stories according to business needs. Then take up the stories that can be completed in a particular Sprint. In this way you are not setting up unrealistic estimations on your team and your team can deliver 100% user stories and your management team will be happy with the results (which will never happen because they always expect more :P )  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8012" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2015-12-04T11:29:34.670" LastActivityDate="2015-12-04T11:29:34.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10731" CreationDate="2014-02-03T13:33:38.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL:DR&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;In your senario use a Lead Engineer who is knowledgeable about PM techniques as well as technical stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Detailed Response&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;There are many shades and variations, of course, and there is no real right answer to this. But I believe you are mistaken in some of your basic tenets. If you are talking about Project Leadership, where the project is software delivery, then only two of your roles should be considered for that leadership; Project Manager and Lead Engineer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An Architect is not a leader of a software delivery team, they are a member of it with deliverables of their own (the architectural vision and design etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Product Owner (unless you are talking Agile here, in which case I am not sure of my position) is not a leader of a software delivery team, they feed requirements into the team on behalf of the user base and facilitate testing the output on behalf of the user base.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in terms of leadership you should (massive generalisation) consider only the PM and the TL from your list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a small team, such as you outline, I would say the Technical Lead (Lead Engineer) should step up to the project leadership role, but only on the basis they understand that technical team leadership is NOT the same as project management (I'll return to this).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A pure Project Manager could be used in this scenario, but unless they are technical they will not be able to facilitate technical decision making and adjudication. Additionally they may be overwhelmed by technical detail and become less effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that Project Management requires different things than technical/engineering lead and you highlighted some of them above. But one of the key differences in this scenario is that the PM looks at the project delivery as a whole, not just the coding and development activities. So they would plan and facilitate testing, user workshops and managment of expectation, reporting to senior stakeholders on overall project progress, risks and issues management which can easily have nothing to do with engineering, and many more things besides. So your Lead Engineer would need to be PM savvy, or your PM would need to be somewhat technical, but even in the latter it is probably wise to include a technical lead in the team (perhaps not of the status Lead (or Chief is often used) Engineer as that role puts them on a par with the PM and therefore the project has two bosses).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also have to bear in mind that coders/developers/technical engineers often do not take well to project management (&quot;it'll be done when it's done&quot;) and that is where you really need a technical interface between the PM and the developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2014-02-03T16:06:12.150" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T16:06:12.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10729" CreationDate="2014-02-03T13:45:36.747" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Forget about the fact the actual platform is virtualised- that is a red herring. You still need to forecast your resource usage and growth just as if it was real tin. Pretend it is for the purposes of estimation and make sure you analyse, project and forecast your resource usage such as disk space, network bandwidth and backup requirements. If it was real tin you would have to do this as it is more difficult to change later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having got to your resource usages analysis and other technical analysis such as machine type (CPUs, memory etc) you can cost it out from the suppliers and present the costs just as you would for a non-virtualised environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key differences will be the virtual will have a smaller upfront cost as the project doesn't have to buy tin outright, but higher year-on-year costs as you rent the space. You will also have other justifying factors in the mix relating to cost of ownership of tin etc. but there is no need to take a different path in terms of presentation of costs- it's just costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It gets different if you are indeed buying in tin and setting up your virtualisations on that hardware as then the root hardware does indeed become a project cost, as well as the VM licenses etc., but you won't have year on year rental costs (other than renewal license costs). But if the kit you buy and install is then used by another project to host their VMs you are into a completely different cost game. If that is the case I would recommend you have a separate project to purchase the kit and set up the virtualised environment, and then your project (and others) share the cost of the hosting. But this probably needs to be ironed out by your CFO equivalent as it goes beyond the scope of your project (unless I read it wrong and that IS your project :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2014-02-03T16:01:52.960" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T16:01:52.960" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10647" CreationDate="2014-02-03T13:57:10.697" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Project Manager does a macro management and if you exptect him to do micro management it will end up in putting more burden on him and you cant expect him to manage more projects..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each project you have should have a Business Analyst/ Tech lead who can manage the team and if they face any roadblocks which cant be solved only to be reported to the PM.. In this way you can reduce the burden of your PM and you can make him engaged in more projects..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no ideal number in how many projects one PM should manage at the same time, it depends on the skill sets of your PM.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8012" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T13:57:10.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10648" CreationDate="2014-02-03T13:59:25.160" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ideally you should have a Business Analyst who should be communicating to clients.. Because Business Analyst has more insights and knowledge about a project since he is activly involved in the project.. &#xA;And if you need any technical help you can always go back your tech team.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8012" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T13:59:25.160" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-02-03T13:59:25.160" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10731" CreationDate="2014-02-03T16:10:20.990" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understand your question correctly, something that will help is drawing a distinction between project leadership and team leadership. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project leadership - that is, leadership on issues related to the project work itself - can be pretty easily shared and you can get a lot of value out of collaborative leadership. The most success I've had (and seen in other teams) is to have different people be the final say on different areas - PM is your final word on process, PO on decisions about features and functionality, architect of software design, etc. Though they are the final say, everyone can weigh in. This usually keeps everyone invested and engaged, but you have a final say once the conversation is just spinning its wheels and no longer adding more value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By team leadership, I mean the people who provide leadership on issues of team members directly. This would include things like unsatisfactory performance, career coaching, etc. In groups that are too small to have a dedicated manager, I've seen project managers share this role well. POs have too much at stake in deliver, so when they make demands of the team, it's self-serving. It can work to have a PO lead the team, but I think PM goes better. Having a team member do it is very difficult because he's too far in the weeds. That's not to say other people haven't made it work, but it's not what I'd recommend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that helps. Good question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T16:10:20.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10731" CreationDate="2014-02-03T16:18:55.140" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Forget about &quot;leadership&quot; and think about &quot;responsibilities&quot;. &quot;Who is responsible for what&quot; is a much more important and correct question that &quot;who is leading us?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your architect has to be responsible for technical decisions, and his word should be final. Your product owner will say how the product should look like, and his word is final, etc. Such an attitude will create much healthier environment than the one where people fight for &quot;leadership&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T16:18:55.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10745" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-03T17:03:30.003" Score="1" ViewCount="2780" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apologies for the long ramble and fairly short question but I wanted to set the scene (as such) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within all the blogs and articles on-line we use the term &quot;Generalist&quot; or &quot;Team Member&quot; when discussing agile teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However within the organisation I work for (a large corporate) we have the classic roles (PM, SA, BA, Dev, Test)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Historically we have worked in a waterfall manner or &quot;closet&quot; agile which basically means &quot;Water SCRUM Fall&quot; but we have made very good use of Axure and Balsamic for our prototyping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However we want to improve our practices and so are looking at Microsoft's ALM tools and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Foundation_Server&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TFS&lt;/a&gt; seems a very good tool pretty much out of the box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TFS integrates with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Both Excel and Project for Project Managers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test Manager Integration for Testers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Storyboarding for Systems Analysts ...well almost.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It turns out for TFS needs a full version of Visual Studio to be installed to get access to the storyboarding functionality in PowerPoint, which to me indicates Microsoft feel this is a task which should be carried out by a dev.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I guess I'm asking is there a role for formal Business Analysts and Systems Analysts in Agile teams?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is and others have experience out there how do they best interact with TFS?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2014-02-11T19:43:22.417" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T13:48:53.777" Title="Is there a role for formal Business Analysts and Systems Analysts in Agile teams?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10746" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10749" CreationDate="2014-02-03T17:05:26.200" Score="1" ViewCount="3375" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a way to view your project plan in a table broken down by tasks ongoing in each week.  I cannot for the life of me remember how to do this, and I'm not having any luck searching.  Does anyone know how? MSProject 2013.  I think I did this in MSProject 2010 before. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, it would say &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Monday Feb 3, 2014   Task 1  Joe&#xA;Tuesday Feb 4, 2014  Task 2  Mary&#xA;Friday, Feb 7, 2014  Task 3  Bill&#xA;&#xA;Monday Feb 10, 2014  Task 4  Joe&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T19:54:18.270" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T19:54:18.270" Title="View project plan by week in a tabular format" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10745" CreationDate="2014-02-03T23:03:47.107" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure I can really answer your question in its entirety, but I'm going to try and offer some input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that there is very much a role for business analysts in an Agile team. &quot;System &#xA;Analyst&quot; is a relatively generic title (since I'm not familiar with your company structure), but I can imagine that the position is similar to a software architect. At any rate, the business analyst position has played a huge role in my previous experiences with companies. However, its important that you understand the true role of your business analyst. In my examples, the business analyst played the role of intermediary, tester, and functional expert. This person would serve as the primary channel of communication between the business resources and the technical resources. He or she would have an extensive operating knowledge of the area of business he/she was assigned to, and would participate in all stages of testing during a project's life-cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I digress. The systems analyst (architect) serves the role of technical planning and implementation, as well as thorough testing and technical subject matter expert. The business analyst serves in the above-mentioned role, and also serves as the primary planner for the Agile life-cycle (assigning iterations, story points, etc.) So yes, I believe both positions have a very active role in an Agile team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as TFS (which I'm going to assume stands for Team Foundation Server), it is a very, very robust product. In my personal opinion, TFS has more value to a business analyst. This product (among many other things) allows the analyst to engage in a thorough Agile project plan through iterations, backlogs, and stories. TFS' tool-set allows for easy management of these aspects of the project. It also allows for project forecasting, team member management, and easy-to-use UI and visual tools for story-boarding and task management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the features that an architect would enjoy including TFS' continuous build engine, configuration management, and unit testing/refactoring tools. It also has easy integration with the business analyst's planning portion by offering transparency into tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend some more research online to get the most out of everything TFS has to offer. The true downside to using Microsoft products is the price. But if money is not an issue, I would definitely give TFS a look. Try a trial run of it, and do a cost-analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helped at least a little bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8005" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T23:03:47.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10746" CreationDate="2014-02-04T00:17:37.333" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm guessing you are referring to some of the reports that were in 2010 that are no longer available in Project 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you can certainly apply the Gantt chart view with any table you wish and then apply a custom group to group tasks by week.&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kD1qi.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T00:17:37.333" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10750" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-04T06:47:15.663" Score="0" ViewCount="2114" Body="&lt;p&gt;The client has set (and we have agreed to) the deadline for a project. In order to complete the project, the team needs to master a new tool chain including Selenium and Java.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I establish a plan for an agile project that includes both learning the software and delivering the customer value? For example, how do I scope work that is intrinsically unknown (e.g. &quot;learn selenium&quot;), and how do I mitigate the risks that arise from not knowing the software well enough to accurately estimate the work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7990" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-02-13T14:24:41.200" LastActivityDate="2015-03-07T06:34:33.563" Title="How can I plan a project that has undefined scope associated with learning new skills?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;scope&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10648" CreationDate="2014-02-04T07:23:56.767" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a traditional development (ex waterfall), it should be described in the communication plan which is authored by the PM. In scrum, it emphasizes on communication so I think everyone could interface directly IMO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7736" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T07:23:56.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10520" CreationDate="2014-02-04T10:37:50.413" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can user Acceptance Criteria to make your user story look more broader and clearer.. &#xA;Example&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a customer, I shall able to browse products by specifying a category.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acceptance Criteria: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There shall be categories like books, electronics, or clothing.. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8012" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T10:37:50.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10442" CreationDate="2014-02-04T10:42:56.087" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The name of the Sprint doesnt make any impact or difference in your process.. But it is recommended user numbers like Sprint 1, Sprint 2 etc because for the ease of tracking.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a large project you may have 30,40 sprints.. In that case it will be difficult to idetify the project if you give some fancy names.. So its better to name using numbers (Sprint 1, Sprint 2 etc).. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8012" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T10:42:56.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10729" CreationDate="2014-02-04T12:22:37.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your problem here appears to be that you are trying to budget &lt;em&gt;third-party services&lt;/em&gt; as if they were &lt;em&gt;equipment costs&lt;/em&gt;. You'd be better off treating virtualized services as a service or utility, and estimating those costs the same way you would electricity usage or shipping costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Cloud Services Aren't Capital Investments&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you buy a server or build a server room, that is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_cost&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;capital cost&lt;/a&gt;. You then have some tangible asset subject to first-sale doctrine, depreciation, and all the other ins and outs of owning material equipment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cloud services (regardless of type) aren't something you own. They are a service you rent by time (e.g. X dollars per calendar month) or usage (e.g. Y dollars per minute of use). You don't own the equipment, you haven't bought anything tangible that you can sell or depreciate, and most support is outsourced to the cloud services provider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, cloud services aren't hardware from a customer's point of view, so calculating hardware or hardware-maintenance costs for a cloud service (unless you are &lt;em&gt;running&lt;/em&gt; the cloud service) is a no-op.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Projecting Costs for Cloud Services&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calculating costs for cloud services can be difficult, as the market is largely a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusopoly&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;confusopoly&lt;/a&gt;. Nevertheless, you can certainly evaluate the service terms and make projections about your project's intended usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you plan to run 20 minimalist Digital Ocean droplets for your project, you can estimate your server costs at $100/month and your labor costs at whatever you think it will take your team to perform systems administration on the droplets. That's your &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_cost_of_ownership&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;total cost of ownership&lt;/a&gt; (TCO).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're using a service where you pay by the megabyte or the minute, then you'll need to estimate your project's intended levels of utilization. That may be a bit less straightforward, but it should still be possible to come up with an expected range for planning purposes. Just don't forget to add in your team's administration and support of the service to calculate TCO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Estimates Express &lt;em&gt;Expectations&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a hard target, just go with your upper bound. For example, if a service costs $0.05/minute, then the service (exclusive of your other administrative and support costs) will come to $504.00/week at full utilization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you expect to only use 50% of that capacity. Or maybe your usage will vary between 30-60% from week to week. You can express those sorts of figures as a range, a statistical average over time, or whatever else makes sense to report or budget for in your organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can always refine your estimates as you gain knowledge of the project and its resources. Continuous refinement is essential for effective project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-02-04T13:51:35.313" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T13:51:35.313" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10755" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10758" CreationDate="2014-02-04T14:41:11.963" Score="5" ViewCount="3214" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a lot research on team sizes and communication in social groups, but is there any research on how to grow and build multiple teams working on one large product?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that the &quot;perfect&quot; team size is 5+-2, how do you choose to break a team that just reached 9 or 10 people into two teams? That is, what would the second team's responsibilities be, how would communication stay fluid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess I didn't word that very well at all...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So! I don't have a framework or structure at this point in time. What I was trying to say is that there is a lot of deep research into &lt;strong&gt;team size&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.noop.nl/2009/04/the-optimal-team-size-is-five.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.noop.nl/2009/04/the-optimal-team-size-is-five.html&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what I'm curious is about how much research is there on &lt;strong&gt;business size&lt;/strong&gt;. That being, the number of teams and communicating between them. The next step after setting team sizes if you will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of team size and social connections that I'm talking about are...&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar&lt;/a&gt;'s_number&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tipping_Point&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tipping_Point&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8027" LastEditorUserId="8027" LastEditDate="2014-02-04T19:53:16.487" LastActivityDate="2016-03-16T12:05:46.563" Title="How can I effectively split a team into smaller teams?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10756" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-04T17:48:59.730" Score="0" ViewCount="780" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;NOTE: I'm not sure that this is on-topic, but let's try.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Considerations&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many methodologies, and these are tools for a PM. A PM that passes from the programming world, to the world of construction, it is probably oriented to apply tools he/she knows &lt;em&gt;(which operate in a specific environment)&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Question&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leaving aside the advice you can get from those who have successfully used a methodology that was not created for a specific type of project (for example &lt;em&gt;coordinate the construction of an hotel using SCRUM&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where can I find a &lt;strong&gt;list of methodologies&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;em&gt;ie, Waterfall, ASD, ...&lt;/em&gt;) or at least &lt;strong&gt;list of approaches&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;em&gt;id, Agile methodology, ...&lt;/em&gt;), with its areas of use (not only for the computing world)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8036" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T11:46:15.263" Title="Is there a list of methodologies ordered by activity" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2324" CreationDate="2014-02-04T18:17:19.220" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does project management mean managing people?  Not necessarily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PMBOK describes three major organizational structures: the functional organization (where staff report to functional managers); the projectized organization (where staff report to project managers) and the matrix organization, where staff report to functional managers but have project managers directing their work.  The third form is quite common, and in an organization like that, you would not have staff as a project manager.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T18:17:19.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10755" CreationDate="2014-02-04T18:54:28.247" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Create feature teams and have a coordination meeting&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @CodeGnome pointed out, your question is too broad. I am answering it in the context of Scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am presuming that you see some communication challenges or people not paying attention in meetings or some other symptoms of a team that is too large. Bring it up in the Sprint Retrospective and see what the team response is. See if splitting the team comes up as a solution to these issues. This way you can gather team feedback as well as team buy-in if you eventually go that route.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again this decision need not be irreversible. You can use Scrum's inspect and adapt approach for making this decision too. Try split teams for two sprints and then review with the team. &#xA;So to answer your two questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1409779&amp;amp;seqNum=2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Create feature teams not component teams.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum of scrums meeting: I have done twice weekly meetings with one or two representatives from each team. Topics can include cross-team coordination, dependencies and resource contention.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T18:54:28.247" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10756" CreationDate="2014-02-05T13:33:31.610" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia is a good place to start, see the Project Management page here &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management&lt;/a&gt;. This page contains a list of PM Methodologies and a discussion on the features of each&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2014-02-07T11:46:15.263" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T11:46:15.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1689" CreationDate="2014-02-05T18:42:29.193" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Project Management Professionals (PMP)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PMI publishes their membership and credential stats periodically. The latest numbers I could find were from their February 2014 &lt;em&gt;PMI Today&lt;/em&gt; publication. The numbers are as of 31 December 2013:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM): 24,450&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Management Professional (PMP): 594,603&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of specialization certifications, but they are all still under 5,000 recipients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd place a link to this resource, but it is available online only to members. The reference is: PMI Today, February 2014, Pg. 4, PMI Fact File.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Polymath (PMP, PMI-ACP)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7689" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T18:42:29.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10756" CreationDate="2014-02-05T20:59:48.917" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Areas of use is becoming fuzzier&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum was created for software development. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUaywvsfe78&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;However, Jeff Sutherland, co-founder of Scrum is now talking about how Scrum is helping everything from Education to Agriculture to Government (first 30 seconds)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRINCE2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PRINCE2 was created for managing IT projects. However, now it is the UK government de facto project management standard for all public projects.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Broadly speaking, the methodologies can be grouped into predictive and adaptive planning ones. PMBOK, PRINCE2 and Waterfall will go into the predictive bucket. Agile mehtodologies including Scrum and XP will go into the adaptive bucket.  (By the way, I am using the term 'methodology' loosely. Scrum is a framework, PMBOK is a standard.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kr6Pu.png&quot; alt=&quot;Stacey Complexity Matrix&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Referring to the Stacey Complexity Matrix, Software Development, New Product Development and Applied R&amp;amp;D Projects all belong in the complicated or complex category. Use an adaptive planning methodology for these. Frequent inspection and adaptation are key here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Construction and Engineering projects benefit from clearly agreed requirements and well established technology. Predictive planning works better for these. Good upfront planning is key here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-02-05T20:59:48.917" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10572" CreationDate="2014-02-06T03:56:19.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no such study, it is based on Dr. Deming's experience.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://management.curiouscatblog.net/2013/04/24/94-belongs-to-the-system/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://management.curiouscatblog.net/2013/04/24/94-belongs-to-the-system/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I should estimate that in my experience most troubles and most possibilities for improvement add up to the proportions something like this: 94% belongs to the system (responsibility of management), 6% special.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Page 315 of Out of the Crisis&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting hung up on the figure 94% is a mistake. His point was that you improve performance going forward by improving the system not blaming people.  His two books provide background and the thought process involved behind why we are failing to manage better.  Changing the people, while leaving the system in place, most often doesn't help.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Variation does confuse people sometimes.  The same mistake as say yelling at someone any time results are really bad.  Most likely results will get better.  Not because yelling helps but essentially regression to the mean.  So you can move people out after really bad results and things get better.  Of course, most of the time they would have gotten better if you left the people there (and did nothing or yelled).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even when the person did totally mess up, why did the system allow that?  Why did the system put that person in a place where they were not qualified?  Answering and fixing these types of questions would help improve the system.  Yes, occasionally the answer might be Joel was hired sensibly, managed and coached sensibly but he just became a complete jerk and won't respond to coaching and this is only his fault.  But normally that won't be the case, the even when the person seems nearly totally to blame (and that isn't even a very common situation - normally there are obvious weaknesses in the system that put them in the place to fail and will likely put anyone else in the same place in the future).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8076" LastEditorUserId="8076" LastEditDate="2014-02-06T04:04:36.933" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T04:04:36.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10766" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10786" CreationDate="2014-02-06T06:09:02.813" Score="1" ViewCount="243" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can a company follow agile and quality management hand in hand? Because Agile says focus on people instead of processes and tools, be flexible, focus on minimizing documentation, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a quality management process, like ISO, says to focus on process, standardize everything, document all records, etc. There are many conflicts between both methodologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So can a company following Agile implement and get quality certifications? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8012" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-02-07T06:15:35.027" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T06:15:35.027" Title="Can a company follow Agile and ISO?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;quality&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10767" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-06T07:37:37.980" Score="14" ViewCount="1875" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am involved in a project where for some time now the project has stuck in an endless testing, UAT, bug fixing cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issues that caused this are, lack of initial requirements, new requirements creeping up during testing, and just bad coding from the developers' side of things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, at the moment, we are stuck in the final cycle in which the developer gives a release, the release is tested (prechecked), business users are called for a UAT, the users find bugs that haven't been discovered before, the problems are sent to the developer for resolution, and the same cycle starts all over again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you get out of this endless cycle?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8077" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2014-02-17T09:00:57.090" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T01:35:03.263" Title="Project stuck in endless testing cycle" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10594" CreationDate="2014-02-06T08:12:34.317" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you considered &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rallydev.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rally&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; to track time spend on various task either sprint or non sprint.&#xA;You can add a Non-Sprint US in Rally with 0 point all team members can their task in that user story only.&#xA;We use Jira, only for defect tracking and Rally for time and task traking. It seems double effort but it's very clear in terms of tracking and management perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6875" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T08:12:34.317" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10767" CreationDate="2014-02-06T08:58:19.933" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have had to manage it as starting R&amp;amp;D manager in the past. Successful have been:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Involve management; establish necessary steps to break out of negative cycle and get feedback. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management or sales should involve customer in problem and sketch situation: it is going bad, but this is the best way to get out of problems instead of even bigger problems to be discovered later.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get rid of non-motivated and non-productive members of team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Strictly follow plan and follow up on daily basis together with key team members.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maintain issues list and priorities, for instance using MoSCoW.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep interface to management small; involve the sponsor only if possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Buy paint for your hair when it starts fading gray.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7423" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T08:58:19.933" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10767" CreationDate="2014-02-06T09:59:13.693" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would hope that by now you would have frozen scope as you have cited new requirements entering at the testing stage as a problem. That has to stop otherwise you are in an endless cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have stopped the scope creep there are a number of areas you need to look at. But the one that leaps out at me is System Testing. If the users are finding issues in UAT that presumably means you didn't find them in system testing? No matter where you find them, the bugs are there, but it is preferable to find them (and fix them) before going into UAT. I would start measuring the number of issues found during System Testing and during UAT so that you have a quantitative picture. Then strengthen your System Testing; do more of it, use more (or better) testers, work from proper test scripts, make sure you have the right amount of test coverage (i.e. you can't test everything so make sure you are testing the areas that are right for your users in as much depth as required to assure quality in those areas).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure that in each cycle of UAT all applicable test scripts are exercised. Don't let the users just stop testing just because they found an issue in one area. Make sure they test the other areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Introduce Regression testing into your system testing to some extent- For every release go back and re-test work that has already be validated and do it before the users see it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Track the issues situation on a daily basis. Log everything and make sure you have prioritised the issues list (on a daily basis if necessary) so that the developers are focussing on the most important issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grit your teeth, put your head down, and just get through it :) This can be hard, but if issues exist in the system you just have to keep going until everyone is happy that the release can go out (i.e. not necessarily when all the defects are fixed!). But be sure to make sure you are not making it worse by changing code during testing, other than to fix issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, after the dust has settled, take a long hard look at the process to try and figure out how and why the output was not of sufficient quality and try, as an organisation, to learn those lessons for next time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T09:59:13.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10767" CreationDate="2014-02-06T12:03:19.353" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should probably make a proper plan and define the process before starting the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are stuck in endless testing cycles. Define the testing process. When should they test? Give them deadlines. Give proper time for bug fixing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your requirements are not clear in initial stages, work only on the requirements which are clear. If you start working on requirements which are not clear, you will end up reworking them and wasting time. If you are not clear with requirements, call for a meeting with the client to make the requirements clear and start work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manage change requests. Once you get change requests, don't just start working on it. Prioritize and then start working on it. In this way, you will have a proper road map and tracking of all requirements. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you feel your developers coding is bad then you should focus in having code review at regular intervals. In this way you can avoid bad code and prevent rework at later stages.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And your problem regarding stuck up in testing cycles, you should have a clearly defined process and clear targets for completing each process. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think first you should study the process which you follow, identify gaps in your process, and try to solve the fundamental problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8012" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-02-16T07:56:38.343" LastActivityDate="2014-02-16T07:56:38.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10772" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10777" CreationDate="2014-02-06T13:25:25.470" Score="10" ViewCount="1146" Body="&lt;p&gt;Working in Agile manner, project team routinely delivers parts of software, described in User Stories. Upon each Sprint a working software is delivered, with some additional features added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage and drawback with User Stories is that it describe completed feature. Developing code for User Story has several sub-tasks, and problem is some tasks cannot be delivered within Sprint, often until end of the project. Such tasks are like: integration with 3rd party API, dependency on external system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, web development project:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WEB-122: &quot;As a customer, I see Order Confirmation screen, where I can review items ordered, amount total, tax information. I click on Pay Now button to be tranferred to  SomeExtravagantPaymentService page and finish payment&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Issue: client is only negotiating with SomeExtravagantPaymentService and cannot provide login details. Also, service does not provide beta or sandbox option for texting (in Europe it's quite common) -- dependency on 3rd party API.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, home construction project:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DWELL-234: &quot;I want to have electricity and lightbulbs in basement installed, controlled by switch&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Issue: even if switches and lightbulbs installed properly, this user story cannot be finished and tested until electric company connect house to power line, which may happens on later stages of development. Dependency on external system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problem with described User Stories is that such stories cannot be finished during several sprints and will be dragging from sprint to sprint. Client will not receive finished product after sprint. How this situation could be managed ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5475" LastActivityDate="2015-12-04T11:18:44.787" Title="User stories delivery issues" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10767" CreationDate="2014-02-06T13:30:29.213" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to assume that there's at least one senior stakeholder involved in this process who has the power to say that the project is ready to be released. If there isn't then you have a big problem and you need to identify someone in the organisation who can step in to this role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you need to get that person on-side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at the current scope of the project, based on the requirements you've agreed to from the start up until your latest round of UAT. Review that list with your senior stakeholder and decide which of the requirements are actually critical to the deployment of your product. There will &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; be new requests on a project but your job as PM (and as a team more generally) is to work out which of those are absolutely essential and which can be defined as 'nice to haves' or as candidates for later version of the product. Once you've been through this process (which may be painful and long-winded - don't run any more UAT during this) you'll have your complete 'Phase 1' requirements and senior stakeholder buy in for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next you actually need to deliver these requirements. If you're having problems with code quality and with UAT a quick(ish) way to tackle the problem would be to assign each requirement a 'definition of done'. If you can track the requirement back to the original source then speak to that person about what exactly that requirement looks like when it's finished. This will give your developers clearer outputs to work towards. At the same time, communicate to all stakeholder (the people who keep changing their requirements in particular) that not everything that everybody wants to include can make it in to the first release. But make sure it's clear that these additional requirements have been captured and will be reviewed/worked on next (or whatever you have capacity to agree to).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a lot of good advice in the answers already provided about best practice for project management in general. I think your project sounds like it's a bit late in the day to 'fix' by introducing radical methodological shifts. I'd concentrate on quick wins that will move you past your current impasse (something senior management types normally have a knack for) but make sure that there's time for a proper review of what went wrong so that you can avoid making the same mistakes on future projects. If you're not already keeping one start a 'Lessons learned' log for this purpose. If nothing else it's a useful place to vent your frustrations...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T13:30:29.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10772" CreationDate="2014-02-06T13:49:27.407" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the problem is that you haven't broken down the story. When you write a story try to break your high level requirements into smallest level possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example in the case which you have mentioned:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a customer, I see Order Confirmation screen, where I can review items ordered, amount total, tax information. I click on Pay Now button to be tranferred to SomeExtravagantPaymentService page and finish payment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story can be further broken down into smaller stories like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a customer, I see the Order Confirmation screen, where I can review items ordered, amount total, tax information&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Pay now&quot; button which will be transfered to SomeExtravagantPaymentService page&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Complete payment &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in this case, once you are done with Confirmation screen, you can deliver that to your client. You can take up SomeExtravagantPaymentService page after that once your client confirms it. Till that it will be in product backlog and will not be taken to sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way you can keep track of your story and you can deliver complete user stories to your client at the end of sprint and you can avoid carrying over a task to the next sprint&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8012" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2015-12-04T11:18:44.787" LastActivityDate="2015-12-04T11:18:44.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1151" CreationDate="2014-02-06T13:50:01.353" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum has hijacked Agile.  In theory it's the gospel.  It fails because its practical implementations in most organizations directly violate the Manifesto.  It introduces repeated inefficiencies with its constructs, dilutes ownership and accountability, and gives everyone an excuse.  It relegates good Agile methodologies to second class citizens while promoting droning.  It ends up hiding mistakes for later flareups rather than dealing with them.  The many parodies of Scrum are so funny because they are true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8082" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-02-26T19:32:42.640" LastActivityDate="2018-02-26T19:32:42.640" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10594" CreationDate="2014-02-06T13:50:52.767" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In JIRA (and in Scrum more generally) the only work that will show in the burn down chart is the work that is included in the Sprint itself. So if an issue hasn't been assigned to a sprint it won't show up in the burn down. Just keep the JIRA tasks that are non-sprint related out of the sprint and you shouldn't have a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@Dave Hillier is correct that the time lost to other non-sprint tasks will, in effect, show in the burn down because if your devs are working on non-sprint issue they obviously won't be copmleting as much of the work that was added to the sprint. Again, as Dave points out, this should start to balance itself out after a while - you'lll only add as many tasks to a sprint as you think your velocity allows for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your issue is with reporting back to managment then it's fairly straightforward in JIRA to run a report on the tasks completed in the same time period as your sprint. You can compare this with the burn down to show how non-sprint work affects sprint work (basically, 'we fixed these 5 critical bugs last week - look at the dip in the burndown. If it's like this for the next 3 sprints I'll revise the velocity and change my estimated delivery date').&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T13:50:52.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10772" CreationDate="2014-02-06T13:52:20.890" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problem with described User Stories is that such stories cannot be finished during several sprints and will be dragging from sprint to sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to break down your stories further using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2010/april/new-to-user-stories&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST model&lt;/a&gt;. Write your stories in a way so that each one is self contained and there is no or minimal dependency on other factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your story can be re-written like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WEB-122a: &amp;quot;As a customer, I want to place my Order, so that I can get my required items&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WEB-122b: &amp;quot;As a customer, I want to review my Order so that I can verify the items ordered, amount total, tax information&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WEB-122: &amp;quot;As a customer, I want to pay for my Order, so that my order can be processed (and delivered to me)&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In ideal cases, a user story should be completely delivered in one sprint, it should not drag on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T13:52:20.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10767" CreationDate="2014-02-06T15:23:54.687" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have a couple of different issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Poor planning&lt;/strong&gt;. This covers the lack of initial requirements and the resulting scope creep. Your best approach is to stop all work and work out with your customer what business capabilities need to be delivered. Do not restart work until you have requirements to an adequate level of detail needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Poor change management&lt;/strong&gt;. This covers the scope creep.  Identify a single, strong leader who has to approve any and all future changes to requirements. Do not allow your team to work on new requirements until you go through this formal change process. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Poor quality systems&lt;/strong&gt;. This covers finding too many bugs during testing. Review your internal testing processes. Divorce the developers from any and all testing, they will bring too much bias to the process. Give your team time enough to do the job right before it goes to UAT.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T15:23:54.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10779" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10782" CreationDate="2014-02-06T16:09:02.370" Score="1" ViewCount="802" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a plan that's broke up into a few stages. I want to schedule the first couple tasks in stage 2 to start as soon as possible, there are no predecessors for these tasks. My tasks in the middle of stage two are dependent upon the completion of tasks from stage 1 and the first tasks of stage 2, so those scheduled start dates are driven and being updated from the work in stage 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My plan was created months ago and my tasks at the start of stage 2 have still not been started for reasons outside the project. So now my scheduled start dates still have 2013 dates for those tasks and its now February.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to have Microsoft Project 2010 adjust the scheduled start dates for tasks that have not started yet to be &quot;today&quot; for tasks that have no predecessors and can start as soon as possible. I'm trying to avoid updating the tasks to &quot;start no earlier than&quot; and manually updating those dates each time I update the plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8085" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T19:54:35.503" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T19:54:35.503" Title="Scheduling tasks to start today" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10780" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10781" CreationDate="2014-02-06T16:28:42.247" Score="5" ViewCount="7208" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to create a detailed Gantt chart, using MS Project 2013, for a project in one of my courses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a student, I'm not working the same number of hours every day. For example, I may have a task to complete that I know will take about 4 hours, but I will start it Monday, and finish it Tuesday. I haven't been able to translate this to the Gantt Chart in MS Project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every time I set the percent work completed to 100% and set my start date, then a finish date a day later, it changes my duration to 16 hours and work complete to 25%. I can't seem to get it to stop auto calculating the times, which is really inconvenient due to the irregular and sporadic nature of the time I have available to work on this project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;tl;dr What I want is to set a start date, the date I actually finished it, % complete, the # of hours I think it will take, and the actual # of hours it took me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8087" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T18:54:51.963" LastActivityDate="2019-04-30T07:23:57.240" Title="Unable to schedule a 4-hour task completed over 2 days in Gantt Chart" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10780" CreationDate="2014-02-06T17:10:19.107" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to set the task type to Fixed Duration, which is on the Advanced tab of the Task Information dialog. Having done that set the duration to 2d. Then add the Work column to your display and set the Work=4h for that task. It will show 4 hours of work spread out over two days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T17:10:19.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10779" CreationDate="2014-02-06T17:14:15.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to use the Update Project functionality. Use this to &quot;Set Uncompleted Work to commence after&quot; and select yesterday's date if you want it scheduled for today. Usually people just leave it at the default which is today's date, meaning all uncompleted work is commenced from tomorrow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that when you have done that you may find it has scheduled work in parallel so that resources have too much to do in one day. Use Levelling to allow MS-P to resolve all the overallocations and reschedule all the tasks to resources so they can be achieved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also this answer which is a similar problem with the same solution: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/8681/how-can-i-update-a-ms-project-plan-to-show-schedule-slippage/10696#10696&quot;&gt;How can I update a MS Project plan to show schedule slippage?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T17:14:15.270" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10783" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10784" CreationDate="2014-02-06T17:29:03.747" Score="3" ViewCount="1611" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm having a hard time reconciling stories that have a concrete user value and that can be estimated when crossing component boundaries. Assume I own a Game application and have the following user story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;As a User I want to know which friends I have invited &#xA;so that I don't invite the same friend twice to play&#xA;this game.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pretty simple with a clear user value. This game already allows you to invite friends but it doesn't track friends you've already invited. This story asks for that. Now this is a mobile app that connects to a server using REST. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the problem is that the engineering tasks break into two pretty small tasks. The server needs to make a schema change to track which friends of a user have been invited. The mobile app needs to utilize this to ensure the same friend is not invited more than once. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, for fun, assume this is a remotely distributed team and two different resources will be doing the tasks. One that does the Objective-C part and another for the Java server code.  Also assume that will not be pairing on the entire story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is how do most people handle this? There are two different estimates and two different tasks to complete but only one logical story. I only want to track the story. But the estimate (I guess) is the greater of both. If I only put the story into something like Pivotal Tracker then each developer cannot mark the work done as it completes. If I break the story into TWO stories then I have engineering work in my backlog and NOT customer value? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems so simple but for some reason I am getting stuck on it, dunno why. As a product owner I want to track the features but since two developers need to work to develop the feature I can't figure out the best way to represent this in pivotal tracker. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8089" LastEditorUserId="569" LastEditDate="2019-07-24T09:07:14.377" LastActivityDate="2019-07-24T09:07:14.377" Title="A User Story that crosses components" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10783" CreationDate="2014-02-06T17:48:01.623" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a pretty classic problem in multi-tier applications. First thing I usually do is split off the front-end part of the work, so something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As the player, I would like to disable users that have already been&#xA;  invited so that I can't invite the same user twice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds a lot like yours - the difference is in the details. This is specifically calling for the UI action of disabling a user. I would do this for two reasons. First, you can ask yourself if you need more than this. Maybe you realize that, for right now, all invites will only ever come from one device and you can add a little bit of client code to track which users you sent an invite to and you never need to check in with the service. This forces you to justify your next user story with deliverable value. The second is just what you said - you can track the work independently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say, for sake of having another story, that you decide you can't have the client alone track it, because if someone declines and then you want to re-invite them for some reason, you want to know that it's an option again. So here's your next story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a player, I would like the list of invitable users pulled&#xA;  dynamically from the server so that I have an up-to-date list of which&#xA;  of my friends are available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, this next part leaves the scope of your question a bit, but I want to point something out. The developer could develop the first story independently and make code that operated completely independently, like I said earlier. However, knowing that the second story is there, it makes more sense to have it his a stubbed data layer that returns back static data. That way, the first story is completable and testable with that static data, you can validate all of the UI interactions, and it's all ready to link up to the real web service when you release it into production. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: After some of the comments, I can see that some additional explanation might be useful. That second story actually encompasses a number of customer/business cases. I can break this into a set of stories that speak to business value, like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a player, I would like the game server to update my list of&#xA;  invitable friends when new friends sign in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a player, I would like the game server to update my list of friends&#xA;  when a previously invited friend declines or the invite expires.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a player, I would like the game server to update my list so that I&#xA;  can't invite idle friends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The list can go on for each case. This does leave some loose work to actually build the service method. Usually I've just wrapped this into the first story, so let's say it's a 4 with the extra work wrapped in and then the next stories are 2's or something like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastEditorUserId="7944" LastEditDate="2014-02-06T19:15:10.407" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T19:15:10.407" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10783" CreationDate="2014-02-06T21:25:30.457" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why would there be two estimates? Most stories in the real world&amp;trade; are handled by multiple people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore remember that estimates are only useful to determine whether a story can be accomplished within one iteration. When in doubt on &quot;how to estimate&quot; something, it is often useful to concentrate on the most basic aspects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More in general, agile unashamedly favors vertical development and, correspondingly it works best with full stack developers. You may want to allow or encourage your developers to become self sufficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even more in general, one thing I've noticed about agile is that &lt;em&gt;it makes existing problems evident&lt;/em&gt;. People often do not realize this and blame the methodology for their team's shortcomings. I don't mean to imply that this is the case in this question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the most effective attitude isn't &quot;Agile doesn't work with my specific problem, how do I fix agile?&quot;. In my experience, successful teams are the ones that say &quot;Agile is making a problem visible, how do I fix the problem?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6300" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T21:25:30.457" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10766" CreationDate="2014-02-07T00:49:07.240" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I looked at the link @Willl provided, and there are some interesting comments there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we take Scrum, as one of the Agile project models/frameworks, it has structure, artifacts (documentation) and so on, so if your company declares in steering documents that you should for certain types of projects use Scrum, it would suffice either link to a generic model or document your version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the best answer to @Willl's provided link above, an auditor asks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are you doing?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you know what you should be doing?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And then there should be some mathching documentation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a developer/tester is working on something, it should be documented in the Scrum Product Backlog on a high level, the Scrum Sprint Backlog on an intermediate level (as of working in the current Sprint) and also be on more detailed level, either in form of post-its in the Scrum Planning room or even written as tasks in for example Jira/Confluence. If you really follow the Scrum methodology it should also be part of the Scrum Burndown chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thereby, you have documentation on all levels to satisfy ISO9001, so if you have any arguments of why Scrum can't coexist with ISO9001, you are probably not using Scrum (Agile) as it was intended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, Scrum/Agile must not be an argument for not documenting requirements and other important documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7438" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T00:49:07.240" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10666" CreationDate="2014-02-07T07:39:15.580" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I was a project manager I would have not taken that project.. If the client is has given tasks and deadlines which is not practically not achivable then no point in agreeing to it. If the client wants to meet deadlines they should compromise on budget in which we can add additional resource, even adding additional resource may not always give us the result which we wanted.. So there should be some understanding.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problem in taking such projects are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The client wont be happy because we dint meetin deadlines&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Employees wont be happy because of more pressure and stress&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management team wont be happy because of customer complaints and loss of reputation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of making everone unhappy you can better leave such projects.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8012" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T07:39:15.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10788" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10789" CreationDate="2014-02-07T14:17:10.207" Score="1" ViewCount="222" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, the Scrum master's duty is to &quot;remove impediments&quot;. I think I understand what this means in terms of organizational and coaching issues. I understand that the SM watches the devs' backs and keeps disturbances from outside the team away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, similar to &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/5950/what-is-an-impediment-and-how-to-handle-them-and-internal-improvments-in-scrum&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, I don't fully understand what it means with respect to internal and (development) process related issues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it or can it be a Scrum Master's responsibility to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;setup/improve a code review software system?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;setup/improve the continuous integration process?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;provide scripts/macros/helper tools to make the development process easier/more efficient ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7761" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T15:16:24.660" Title="Are inefficient/missing tools an impediment and is it the Scrum master's duty to improve them?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;process-improvement&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10788" CreationDate="2014-02-07T15:16:24.660" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it or can it be a Scrum Master's responsibility to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;setup/improve a code review software system?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;setup/improve the continuous integration process?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;provide scripts/macros/helper tools to make the development process easier/more efficient ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, no, and no.&lt;/strong&gt; These responsibilities rest with the self-organizing development team. If you turn the Scrum Master into a DevOps engineer, that person will no longer be able to focus on the core responsibilities of the Scrum Master role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Scrum Master Role&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master is the shepherd and evangelist of the Scrum process. In other words, the SM acts as a process referee, and &quot;removing impediments&quot; generally refers to working with the team, management, and the stakeholders to raise the visibility of process-impeding issues and providing a constructive framework for all parties to cooperatively develop an organizationally-appropriate solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Team's Responsibilities&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a Sprint Retrospective identifies code review as a process issue, then the Scrum Master should capture that issue and provide guidance to the team and the Product Owner on how the framework allows them to improve that part of the process. This may include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;changing the &quot;definition of done&quot; to incorporate code review processes,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the Product Owner adding a new user story to Product Backlog that prioritizes the installation and configuration of a code review system, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;anything else that everyone agrees fixes the issue &lt;em&gt;for the team &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; the project&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same is true for continuous integration and tool chains. Whether driven by technical debt or a desire to continuously improve the process, the Sprint Retrospective is the place to raise such issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, it is the Product Owner's responsibility to prioritize the work related to process improvement (by manipulating the Product Backlog), and the team's responsibility to implement a solution once that work has been prioritized by the PO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master's job is just to make sure that the Scrum &lt;em&gt;framework&lt;/em&gt; is properly leveraged to give everyone involved the process tools that they need to do these things within the context of Scrum. If you take your Scrum Master off-task by assigning implementation work, then that person is no longer fully-dedicated to performing the tasks that are essential to the Scrum Master role. Don't do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Intra-team process and technical implementation are responsibilities that rest within the self-organizing development team. Neither the Scrum Master nor the Product Owner should be sticking their thumbs in those particular pies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T15:16:24.660" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10792" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-08T06:48:36.417" Score="5" ViewCount="157" Body="&lt;p&gt;I asked &lt;a href=&quot;https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/19119/what-exactly-is-project-management-and-what-distinguishes-is-from-simply-man&quot;&gt;a similar question in Workplace SE&lt;/a&gt; and was advised to ask here. Note I am not an IT person / programmer but more of a business analyst - I do use a lot of IT tools though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am 3-4 years out of college in the same company and manage the team I started in (analytics). I enjoy the role, enjoy developing people, growing the team, managing crossfunctional teams to help our goals and helping other teams with our expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now some directors are asking me to prepare for more project management roles, and I am unsure whether this will move me away from the &quot;corporate ladder&quot;. I am even unsure whether it's a tacit hint that they don't like me to be in my current team (they asked me to groom a successor so I can focus more on my next role).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But anyway, the main reasons I ask this is... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) to understand where exactly project management fits as opposed to other management levels  in the organization - especially because there seems to be so much about noise but nothing very specific about the topic out there, even certifications and professional bodies. So it seems like a profession of itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) And, whether it will put me away from the track of developing seniority and moving up in my current department. i.e. Is moving to project management something more of a &quot;lateral promotion&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8100" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:48:41.317" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T03:44:58.180" Title="What is project management, and is it a different track from department management within an organization?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10792" CreationDate="2014-02-08T12:22:21.907" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are more similarities than differences between these two types of management.  I would submit that there are no differences in the soft skills used in either management.  The differences you would experience is that a project has a definite end where as a department, or any operational function, has an indefinite end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, the set of different skills one would have for a project would be around managing the definite end.  This means there are a set of product materials and methods and tools you would use that you would not like see in operations management, e.g., a project charter, a work product that defines the project in terms of scope, provides authority for a project manager, may provide a high level view of the project costs and perhaps overall goals and objectives and organizational benefits.  Other tools could be things like critical path management and earned value to monitor cost and schedule.  However, you would have a set of tools and products that would perform similar things in an operations.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Communications are important in both; however, in a project you might find communications to be a bit more important, more targeted, more purposeful, simply because you have a definite end you have to hit.  Other areas of management, I think, you will find to be quite similar if not exactly the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-02-08T12:22:21.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10794" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-08T15:24:47.377" Score="1" ViewCount="1166" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an IT graduate, and last week I started an internship working in the IT department of a reasonably large non-IT related company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the course of my degree I learned about the 'hard' side of IT, programming and databases and that sort of thing. I also learned of the 'soft' side of IT; Agile, ITIL, etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far I'm quite at a loss about exactly what a 'standard' day for an entry level person like me should be like. I understand what the managers do a little. They think of the broad picture of IT in the company and deal with selecting vendors and all that sort of thing. But I'm just a low level entrant; I can hardly be managing straight away surely, yet the implementation side of things isn't done in house. Our IT department is based solely around project management (well, apart from the server management people, but thats not me). So I really don't know where us low level IT people fit in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My work so far hasn't been standard, lots of training and learning about the company. I really want to know where I can expect to be going though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question in a nutshell is this: What does a low level project manager do?&#xA;Emphasis there on the low level. I'm not quite understanding how I can be a 'manager' but not a manager. Sorry for my English!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8101" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-02-16T08:06:55.950" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T19:32:01.350" Title="What does a low level project manager do?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10792" CreationDate="2014-02-09T14:18:51.740" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While David Espina answered quite well your first question, I will focus on your second one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When senior managers in a company are trying to figure out who to promote into management it is not always easy to know who will succeed in that role. The cost of failure is quite high in that if you promote a strongly-competent worker into management and they show they cannot handle it, usually they will leave the company rather than be demoted back to their original position (or the company will live with their bad decision (a la the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Peter Principle&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One safer path for senior management to take is to move someone into a position of project manager. As David wrote, there are more similarities than differences between the two. So, if you succeed in the role of PM, it could open the door for a permanent management position. If you do not succeed, when the project is over, it's over and you return to your previous position. No fuss, no muss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you succeed as a PM, the company will likely want you to become a manager, when there is an appropriate opening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7610" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T14:18:51.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10798" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10799" CreationDate="2014-02-09T15:07:38.830" Score="4" ViewCount="4350" Body="&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I'm a total agile newbee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a project manager for a pilot agile project, I am trying to create a rough sketch of my project using agile methodologies, but somehow I am not sure how to do define each &lt;code&gt;Story&lt;/code&gt; in the &lt;code&gt;Epic&lt;/code&gt;-&lt;code&gt;Story&lt;/code&gt;-&lt;code&gt;Task&lt;/code&gt; hierarchy, especially given the &quot;user-story&quot; approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a [user], I'd like to be able to [do that], so that I could [get that].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is, &lt;strong&gt;there are no users that I can identify in my project&lt;/strong&gt;. My project is defined as a communication extension of an existing project, in order to integrate it with a third-party system. A (say) 2-month job which I'd like to divide into (say) 4 or 5 sprints. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We need to modify the hardware a bit, then test it at customer's site to see if it will suffice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then get back to implementing some basic protocols, then test it at customer's site. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implement a bit, do a small release and test it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seems fit for small agile sprints. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I am unsure how to write the Story-level tasks. I am pretty sure that either I got this whole &quot;user&quot; part too strictly, or that I can actually identify users for my stories. I could simply write &quot;Test different communication options&quot; as a story, but it surely violates the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_%28mnemonic%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt; mnemonic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What am I doing wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8110" LastActivityDate="2018-08-16T20:24:36.460" Title="Agile &quot;user story&quot; for a user-less project" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10798" CreationDate="2014-02-09T16:02:14.817" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without knowing the specifics of your Product Backlog, a concrete answer isn't possible. However, some general guidance on crafting effective user stories may help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;user&lt;/em&gt; in user stories need not be an actual end-user. Rather, it is a viewpoint character that provides context for development and validation of a feature. If you can't identify a person or role that would find value in a given feature, then you may want to revise your backlog so that it represents &lt;em&gt;features&lt;/em&gt; rather than tasks, or decompose your stories further until a &lt;em&gt;value consumer&lt;/em&gt; is discovered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Viewpoints in User Stories&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;user&lt;/em&gt; in a user story can be any actor that would derive value from the feature. Some possible users for your scenario might be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;End-users of the communication extension.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A specific role staffed at the customer site.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An administrator or operator of the communication system.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A network engineer supporting the infrastructure that your product relies on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Identifying this user provides context, as implementation details are not part of a user story. The viewpoint helps the developers craft a solution from a feature-consumer's point of view, and often highlights the acceptance testing criteria necessary to ensure the feature is designed and built properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In cases where an actual person is defined as the user, then the story can also act as a conversation placeholder for starting a dialog with the person about the implementation of the feature. For example, if Joe the Administrator is the defined user, then the development team can work directly with Joe to clarify details or flush out issues encountered during the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Identify Value Consumers Through Feature Decomposition&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories without a viewpoint are often a project smell. It may indicate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A plan-driven (rather than feature-driven) Product Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Stories&quot; that are &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/10522/4271&quot;&gt;specifications&lt;/a&gt; rather than user stories in the agile sense.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_creep&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Featuritis&lt;/a&gt; that violates the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_aren%27t_gonna_need_it&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;YAGNI&lt;/a&gt; principle.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Themes or epics that haven't been decomposed well enough to identify who will receive value from the feature.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A story, epic, or theme that has been added to the Product Backlog without value-based prioritization by the Product Owner.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are certainly other reasons why your stories may lack a user-centric viewpoint, but the list above is a useful starting point for introspecting your backlog grooming process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many cases, restructuring your Product Backlog to contain features rather than tasks is a great first step. Once you've done that, you should decompose the features until each feature has some &lt;strong&gt;quantifiable value&lt;/strong&gt; and identified the likely &lt;strong&gt;consumer of that value&lt;/strong&gt;. This process not only helps you write better user stories, but will also help the Product owner to properly prioritize stories within the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T16:02:14.817" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10804" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-10T08:53:18.243" Score="0" ViewCount="1438" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of my team members.  I'd like the measurement to be relatively objective and transparent, and I believe that some form of software would fulfill those objectives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How could I search for and evaluate such software?  What &lt;strong&gt;kinds&lt;/strong&gt; of software incorporate these kinds of features&#xA;(While software recommendations are out of scope because they change frequently, the underlying requirements should be more stable.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there software that might:&#xA; - Diagram activity over the past year&#xA; - Facilitate peer evaluation?&#xA; - Measure improvement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there non-software procedures that would assist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8118" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2014-02-10T13:54:42.903" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T15:00:03.113" Title="How to monitor team members activity and effectiveness?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10792" CreationDate="2014-02-10T12:23:02.867" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to offer you some very blunt advice. Do preliminary research before you ask any question.  If you want to know about project management and the role it plays in the modern enterprise:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start with a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;wikipedia search on project management &lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;search &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/search?q=project%20manager&quot;&gt;PM:SE&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perhaps before you assert that &quot;nothing very specific about the topic out there, even certifications and professional bodies&quot;, you might want to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;check pmi.org&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then finally when you decide to ask a community of professional project managers about their profession, consider carefully language such as &quot;there seems to be so much about noise&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to your second question, if corporate directors are giving you advice and you're worrying about whether they are trying to ease you out of your current position, that indicates to me a very serious lack of faith in your management.  If I were in a situation where that level of paranoia occured to me, I'd start my job search immediately.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Projects are temporary endeavors; almost by definition, there will be more projects than products or lines of business. Project management can be  a way to give a junior person some management experience - to show that the individual is ready for more responsibility.  @Earthling has covered this well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T12:23:02.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10806" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-10T13:13:55.123" Score="-4" ViewCount="1259" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is scrum scalable? Can it be employed in large scale non-IT projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have gone through some articles and views on the Internet, which suggest that scrum can be employed in non-IT projects. But I am not sure to what extent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8121" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-02-11T07:02:03.017" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T07:02:03.017" Title="Scalability of Scrum" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-02-11T07:03:02.830" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10806" CreationDate="2014-02-10T13:19:58.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is Scrum scalable? Initially, Agile authors believed that Agile methodologies including Scrum was predominantly for small scale projects. This opinion was based on the fact that Scrum had not yet been applied on large scale projects. The Guide to the Scrum Body of Knowledge (SBOK™ Guide) gives comprehensive directions through which Agile methodologies including Scrum, can be scaled and applied on larger projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8122" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T13:19:58.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10783" CreationDate="2014-02-10T15:44:28.710" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Organize into feature teams&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have worked with 4 different teams working on a single project. By organizing into feature teams, we avoided this type of problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/the-benefits-of-feature-teams&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mike Cohn makes a strong pitch for organizing into feature teams.&lt;/a&gt; In fact, the example he is using is that of a California-based game studio:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Moving away from component teams is a difficult but necessary step for those who want to adopt an agile project management approach.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Rather than organizing around components, each team on a project can ideally be responsible for end-to-end delivery of working (tested) features. There are many advantages to organizing multiteam projects into feature teams.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/system/resources/8/10-Team-Structure.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chapter 10, Team Structure, of his book Succeeding with Agile&lt;/a&gt; is also available online (pages 182 - 189). Hopefully, this will give you a more detailed view into his thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T15:44:28.710" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10813" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10814" CreationDate="2014-02-10T17:39:40.467" Score="1" ViewCount="243" Body="&lt;p&gt;I realise this is not strictly a Project Management question, but is very closely aligned to PM practises and people, so I hope it's in scope. I am currently in the process of applying for an internal role as Project Management Team Lead. This will involve line management of up to 10 project managers. The workload is a combination of IT Systems Change and Business Change. Development (i.e. coding etc.) is done by outsourced third parties. I am a reasonably highly experienced technical project manager, although I have in the past performed this role for other employers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been asked to produce a presentation on a Case Study, mainly around allocation of Project Managers to Projects when there are too few of the former and too many of the latter. One of the questions I have been asked is &lt;strong&gt;&quot;How would you achieve and maintain a high performing team&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have produced the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure the team has clear objectives over and above personal objectives, and a means to measure and track itself against those objectives &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure team objectives are cascaded and supported by personal objectives&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify individuals' strengths and weaknesses (including myself) and create targeted Q&amp;amp;A sessions where members may evangelise and advocate on their strengths. For example on:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimation and Planning, MS-Project, Stakeholder Management, Risks and Issues Management, Testing Management, Documentation, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Enlist the team to help with resource planning wherever possible to share the difficulties and foster better &quot;buy-in&quot; on resource allocation decisions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure the team knows that support, advice and &quot;top cover&quot; is available when/if they need it, and ensure it is always provided when asked for&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure problems and issues are discussed privately, transparently and in a blame-free environment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure regular social interaction outside of the work environment where appropriate and possible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... I've never really had to put down on paper before how I expect to develop a highly performing team. It's been an interesting exercise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So my question is- Have I missed any critical items?!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2014-02-10T18:05:25.053" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T21:03:32.463" Title="How would you achieve and maintain a high performing team (of Project Managers)?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10813" CreationDate="2014-02-10T18:08:52.003" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would look at this from the standpoint of each individual team member from a knowledge, skills, and abilities view.  Since you are managing a PM practice where your point is to deploy the individual, your focus should be in preparedness of that individual.  It does not really matter how they interact with each other.  It's nice, but does not necessarily move the performance bar.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at it like you are managing machines or tools that get shipped out for use.  Your focus here is the tool is fit for use, cleaned up from the last use, well oiled, serviced where it needs servicing, on the shelf waiting for deployment, and maybe turned on and tested every now and again to ensure its readiness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, part of this includes sunsetting a tool no longer fit and replacing it with a new one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So focus on those things that increase knowledge, skills, and abilities, and be prepared to cut the lower performers on a regular basis.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other things are nice to haves and bring the humanistic side into the equation; it makes people feel better where they work and that can have some nice favorable side effects, but don't rely on that because the validity is not necessarily that high.  Capability enablers are and moving out low performers will move your practice to a high state of readiness.  Cold and callous, I know, but such is work life in my view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T18:08:52.003" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10815" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10816" CreationDate="2014-02-10T18:59:42.157" Score="0" ViewCount="1112" Body="&lt;p&gt;When adding a task with a relationship Finish-to-Start, successor task starts at the same time as predecessor task. I have tried moving the task by dragging the second task, but then another problem (with dotted lines) came in. Here is how it looks like right now:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/r1nYY.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would ideally like is to have all (non-summary) tasks in a sequential order, e.g. task2 starts when task1 finishes, task3 starts when task2 finishes, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas how to achieve that tasks start after one another and recalculate dates automatically?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8128" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T19:03:50.323" Title="Successor with Finish-to-start relationship starts at the same time as predecessor" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10815" CreationDate="2014-02-10T19:03:50.323" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The check marks indicate you have actual data loaded into this schedule.  Therefore, the two tasks you want to schedule in sequence are showing as starting the same time because you have an actual start date loaded into the successor task that must be the same as its predecessor.  Actual data will override scheduled or planned data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Build a new schedule from scratch.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T19:03:50.323" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10813" CreationDate="2014-02-10T20:25:29.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Managing transitions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The points listed by you seem to cover steady state. However, the hardest part of your job may be managing the transition when one of your key project managers were to leave your team. Establish a policy of internal growth so that if a senior person quits, other capable people in your team are considered first before going for an outside hire. You should have some junior PM roles in your team. This is where you will bring in new hires and they will have an opportunity to learn the ropes and prove their capability without involving high risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T20:25:29.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10818" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10820" CreationDate="2014-02-10T20:48:01.957" Score="11" ViewCount="1091" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm very new to Kanban, which I want to use in my new product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am concerned how to organize tasks.&#xA;For example I may have two tasks:&#xA;- change the color of the login button&#xA;- create 3d visualization of data for all users&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These two are very different when it comes to costs.&#xA;How to manage them on an &quot;in progress&quot; board. Should I put somewhere&#xA;the &quot;weight&quot; of the task?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any good practices for writing down tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8130" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-02-15T22:56:36.967" LastActivityDate="2014-02-15T22:56:36.967" Title="When using Kanban, how do I write tasks and where to put the &quot;weight&quot; of them?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10813" CreationDate="2014-02-10T21:03:32.463" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think the approach to leading PMs should be really any different from leading anyone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Establish Your Expectations.&lt;/strong&gt; Set a standard that is clear and achievable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lead From the Front.&lt;/strong&gt; Make sure you not only live up to that standard but excel it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Demonstrate Trust.&lt;/strong&gt; Trust that they can do their jobs. Delegate authority. Give them the chance to prove that they can excel.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Verify Regularly, Honestly and Quickly.&lt;/strong&gt; Follow up regularly and reasonably frequently to ensure that they are meeting the standard set. If they aren't meeting the standard be honest with them about where the gaps are. In this way you'll catch problems early and can address them when they are minor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T21:03:32.463" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10818" CreationDate="2014-02-11T00:42:03.870" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a fairly typical challenge for teams starting to use Kanban - how to manage input variability and to work with reasonably similar sized work items.  Depending on how you manage it today, you might start with one method - and then evolve to others that help you better manage and measure your team's performance on a variety of metrics.  For example, if you would like to be able to forecast how long it would take to complete work on a given backlog of items, it is useful to have historical data on similar sized, similar type of work items to base that forecast on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, you could assign a &quot;size&quot; attribute to each task or work item.  Typical Kanban systems use simple T-shirt sizing from Extra Small (XS) to Extra Large (XL).  If you currently use some sort of a hierarchy to breakup large work into smaller items (Epics - User Stories, for example), you might consider doing that in your backlog and putting only the user stories on the progress board.  You could even visualize this hierarchy on your Kanban board where you might have one swim-lane for the higher level items - and another for the 'child' items - as illustrated below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/e9gH9.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you start to work with the Kanban board, other ideas will emerge that help you decide what will work best for your team!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-02-15T22:54:13.973" LastActivityDate="2014-02-15T22:54:13.973" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10794" CreationDate="2014-02-11T06:50:33.617" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some fo the Project Management activities done by any Project Manager is as follows(in no order):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Form the Project team &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kick off the project with all the stakeholders (generally kick off consists of objectives, success criteria, and other things explained well)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planning and preparing high level milestones&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communications to the team and stakeholders&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify and manage risks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Preparing Work Break down Structure(WBS)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assigning tasks to team from WBS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Track the tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure collaboration with team and all the stakeholders&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stakeholder management and support in executing the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Status reports to senior management team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure and check the project deliverables at each phase of the project  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Regular meetings and resolving issues/risks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure on time, scheduled deployment of the project &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure warranty and support&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lessons learned meeting, etc..&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6474" LastEditorUserId="6474" LastEditDate="2014-02-11T07:16:09.527" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T07:16:09.527" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10822" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10824" CreationDate="2014-02-11T08:59:59.030" Score="12" ViewCount="17477" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are currently working on a project where we receive a lot of change requests, and the client insists that we should deliver the changes in the current sprint!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I add the new work to the sprint backlog as a new task? Sometimes the tasks' effort changes, like earlier it was an 18 hour job but is now a 32 hour job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I accommodate these changes without making a weird burndown chart? Is it okay to add tasks to a sprint in progress?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7276" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2014-02-13T16:15:09.783" LastActivityDate="2021-02-23T19:04:14.033" Title="Can we add more user stories to the Sprint Backlog if the requirements change during a sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scope&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2765" CreationDate="2014-02-11T09:25:56.703" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The point system is based around the behaviour of &quot;chunking&quot; and while it gets people to communicate the overall duration vs complexity matrix at the end of the day it will still distil down to time based calculation (whether at the time of the team doing the sequence forecast see's it or not).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an element of danger here in that i see allot of teams assume they've &quot;money balled&quot; development, they've finally cracked the secret to forecasting by math! - its a false positive because if someone allocates a Story with &quot;small&quot; (t-shirt size approach) and that person then decompresses 20 tasks to make that story complete, then each of these tasks are still allocating time variables to the equation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't a bad thing, as all the chunking sequences are doing is setting parameters around how much the team &quot;Allows&quot; in terms of not just investment in the task but also the types of developer skillsets required to make the task happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a team manager, you still need to know time + task, and it's not to penalise a developer for failing to hold his/her time budget into place. It's more to act as a way to monitor their growth or ability to help them nurture better communication behavior - &quot;Sam doesn't like to ask for help&quot; so it enables the leader to help rehabilitate the behaviour towards &quot;be ok with failure, failure teaches you life's lessons&quot;. It also lets you put a junior developer on a senior task, because you want to see how well they will fair...yes they will overshoot the point system estimates but that's part of on the job growth training and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like I said, you can &quot;game&quot; the forecast modelling with abstraction techniques as the point system, but when it comes to allocation and even velocity, time is still lurking away. It's why you most teams do the x number of weeks is a sprint, when if it were truly an abstract methodology it would be &quot;this is a 45 sprint and next one is an 24 sprint&quot; or something like that... the sprint would be variable in length &amp;amp; time. Instead you find yourself in this cognitive dissonance around shoe-horning abstraction of points into relative time? but using arbitrary baselines to quantify the data some how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8135" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T09:25:56.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10822" CreationDate="2014-02-11T10:03:39.390" Score="18" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can I add that to the sprint backlog as a new task ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can add stories to a running sprint, if the team agrees to it. It's not a good practice though as it reduces the usefulness and predictive ability of the methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some times the task's effort changes like earlier it was an 18 hr job now it's a 32 hr job&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is relatively unimportant: that's why stories are not measured in hours, but in points: the time estimates may vary during the sprint. That said, you only need to keep track of the time &lt;em&gt;left&lt;/em&gt;, not the time &lt;em&gt;elapsed&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel that stories were estimated as simple and get more complex as the sprint is developed, there might be a few underlying issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Did you have enough information during the planning meeting to estimate the story correctly? In other words, has the scope stayed constant but the complexity of the task turned out to be higher than predicted?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Did you estimate the original story correctly, but the customer changed their mind during the sprint? If they did so because they legitimately changed their mind, then you should abandon the story and start a new one. If they are, instead, adding scope, then you should add new stories &lt;em&gt;to the backlog&lt;/em&gt; for that.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can i accommodate these changes without making a weird burn down chart ?? Is it okay to add tasks to sprint in progress ??&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, burn down charts can go sometimes up instead of down. It's probably not something you want, though!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all - these are the basic rules which you should look up to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Only the team can &lt;em&gt;accept&lt;/em&gt; new stories in a sprint. They cannot be forced on them. Doing so is simply contrary to basic agile principles.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;New scope should always be a new story.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A new story can be added to a sprint if you take a correspondingly sized story out (the new story needs to be estimated by the team, and the team must accept this change as feasible).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A significantly changed sprint can be abandoned. You may stop the sprint, and start a new one from scratch, with a new planning meeting. Obviously, try to avoid this if you can.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As new information emerges the team might discover that it will take longer (or shorter!) to develop a story. This is expected. Story points don't change, hours left change.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As new information emerges the product owner might discover that they need more stories (or less!) than originally thought. This is expected. Add or remove stories from the backlog with impunity. Add or remove stories from the sprint only if the team agrees to the change and commits to it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6300" LastEditorUserId="6300" LastEditDate="2014-02-11T10:41:30.390" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T10:41:30.390" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10828" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-11T12:52:52.137" Score="2" ViewCount="248" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new to Scrum. I've done some searches; However, I failed to find answers for the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When should we mark a user story as completed in a burn down? Do we do this when the development is completed or when it's through QA?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If a task fails in QA, should we add it as a new user story or update the task hours?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the team asks for extra hours to fix the bugs due to some complexity, how can I update the total time remaining?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7276" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-02-15T03:09:01.527" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T13:40:54.813" Title="How do I handle user stories and burn down charts?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10822" CreationDate="2014-02-11T13:05:29.033" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Scope Should Never Change Within a Sprint&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We are currently working on a project were we receive a lot of change requests, and the client insists that we should deliver the changes in the current sprint itself!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a sign that You Are Doing Scrum Wrong&amp;trade;. While there are certainly edge cases where stories can be added or removed from the Sprint, or when the Sprint Backlog gains or loses tasks necessary to complete the current Sprint Goal, that isn't really the issue here. Instead, the issue appears to be that the client is not working through the Product Owner to review progress and adjust scope at the framework-defined inflection points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Backlog Grooming&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint Review&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Meetings between the Product Owner and stakeholders to prioritize the Product Backlog for the &lt;em&gt;next&lt;/em&gt; sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How to Fix Your Issue&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stakeholders should not be allowed to change scope within the current sprint without the active cooperation of the Product Owner and an explicit Early Termination of the current sprint. Violating this principle will create invisible work and untracked overhead for the project, which is a big no-no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That isn't to say that the development team can't work with the stakeholders or an end-user defined in a user story to clarify an in-sprint story or gain insight into the optimal implementation of a feature, but such interactions should not change &lt;em&gt;scope&lt;/em&gt; or compromise the Sprint Goal defined during Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner and Scrum Master must work together with the stakeholders to enforce the integrity of the sprint, and to educate them about when (and how) to make changes to the project's scope within the Scrum framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T13:05:29.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10828" CreationDate="2014-02-11T16:46:22.520" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When should we mark a user story as completed in a burn down? Do we do this when the development is completed or when it goes through QA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team commits to creating a 'potential shippable increment' at the end of a sprint. So, the story should be ready to ship in all respects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If a task fails in QA, should we add it as a new user story or update&#xA;  the task hours?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team gets no credit for stories that are not complete in all respects by the end of the sprint. Add a new user story in the backlog, estimate it and let the Product Owner prioritize it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the team asks extra hours to fix the bugs due to some complexity,&#xA;  how can I update the total time remaining?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hours remaining to complete tasks can be estimated at any time for internal tracking purposes regardless of what the original estimate was and how many hours have been already spent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looks like your team will benefit from some Scrum training followed by an internal team discussion of &quot;Definition of done&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-02-15T03:10:24.597" LastActivityDate="2014-02-15T03:10:24.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10835" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-11T16:58:16.767" Score="0" ViewCount="421" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find it hard to visualise projects across the years on a Gantt chart, especially when there are seasonal tasks repeating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be nice to have a tool that looks like a pregnancy calculator disc, that emphasises the repeating of seasons, etc:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/26NTH.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any formal type of diagram or tool that does that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4897" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T17:59:07.370" Title="Circular project visualisation tool that resembles a cross between Gantt and pregnancy calculator disc" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;&lt;timeline&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10835" CreationDate="2014-02-11T17:05:13.727" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reliability in pregnancy is much higher than any type of work task.  It is 266 days from conception, with only a very small variability except when you have something that is abnormal.  Task duration is not like that, where &quot;normal&quot; can have a much larger range.  Therefore, creating a tool like this for work would have an extremely low reliability and, therefore, validity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T17:05:13.727" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10837" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-11T17:46:50.837" Score="2" ViewCount="281" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not fully versed in project management but this seemed like a good place to ask the question. I'm looking to manage a &quot;product roadmap&quot; for a web site and eventually a mobile app. I'd like to be able to break things down to specific tasks and also have a method to get feedback from both users of the service and non-technical people on the team. What I'm trying to do is pretty much similar to 'agile' programming but, again, I'd like to include non-technical aspects to the process. Most agile interfaces would likely turn-off any non-technical users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be great to have project management, specific task management, documentation, bug reporting, and feedback all wrapped up in one service. Are there any existing services that anyone can recommend? Currently I have to cobble together everything from different services. I've used Basecamp, Beanstalk, and Confluence. Also took a look at Solve360 but it seems more a CRM application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7572" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2014-02-12T13:16:13.323" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T13:16:13.323" Title="What services are available for managing a product roadmap?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;roadmaps&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-02-15T22:31:31.237" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10804" CreationDate="2014-02-11T23:00:16.887" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question is very generic - actually too generic to be able to give a concrete answer. It depends on what kind of project you manage and how you can measure effectiveness and efficiency of team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;IS/IT - Application Development Project&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you manage an Application Development project, you probably use an Agile Software Development model like Scrum and thereby use the different artifacts (documentation) on different levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum teams can break down backlog items in their Sprint Planning to actual tasks and can document them in for example Jira (and connect with Confluence) and thereby have some sort of follow up. (I am not an expert of Jira though, so I can't actually give you more than that.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing to consider in Application Development projects is the amount of Technical Debt, i.e. the cost of bad code, meaning bad design or just bad code convention. Even if the code compiles and run, you can end up with bugs and especially later on, when adding features you might be forced to spend a lot of time refactoring your code. A great tool for measuring Technical Debt is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sonarsource.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SonarSource&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sonarsource.com/products/plugins/languages/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;supports a number of languages today&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Product projects (e.g. Automotive industry)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are in the Automotive industry and manage a vehicle project, you probably manage it in a waterfall model and use different kinds of documentation for different purposes. Common to have Requirement tools, Project Management tools for planning on different levels and Project Time logging tool where coworkers are logging their time to the different projects they are involved in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I remember correct, I think the company I used to work for used MS Project with specific templates for the project planning, a SAP Module for Time logging and then we had some plugin which visualized the resources over time, either by department or project and could also be used to foresee any resource complications. In other words, both following up on actual spent time as well as projected in order to avoid problems ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, that is only time. How do you measure quality? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;With that said...&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...it depends on&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what type of projects you are managing?&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what type of Project Model you are using? (Agile/Scrum, Waterfall...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what type of tools you use today&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;for project planning on different levels (phases, tasks...)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;for time logging, and which level (project, phases, tasks)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is most important of QDCF? (Quality, Delivery, Cost, Feature)&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you measure Quality?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you measure Delivery?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you measure Cost?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you measure Feature? (Scope - value added for customers)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what type of efficiency you want to measure?&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time efficiency only? (Project Plan vs Actual time spent)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Index of Time vs. Quality?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time &amp;amp; Cost vs. Quality &amp;amp; Features or some other algorithm index you have for QDCF?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NOTE!&lt;/strong&gt; - As you can see, project planning and time logging have to be matched &quot;level wise&quot;, i.e. if you want to have detailed information in your efficiency reports, you need to have your coworkers log their time on a level that corresponds to same level from project planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there are a lot of questions you need to answer and define whithin your company, before you can actually decide what kind of measurement you want, and then choose/design a tool for measuring what you want. Don't forget about Quality, and the rest of QDCF.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7438" LastEditorUserId="7438" LastEditDate="2014-02-11T23:13:57.027" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T23:13:57.027" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10767" CreationDate="2014-02-12T07:47:16.270" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should consider starting a code review process. Just the thought of it will make the developers think before submitting a piece of code in to the repository.&#xA;You should also start some automated test processes for previously encountered problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some tools that can help you. I do not know the development environment of yours, but Jenkins can help you with some of the automated stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, Gerrit code review tool will make sure that submitted code will be checked by peers before going into the repository.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use these tools back to back, it should improve your bug rates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7883" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-02-16T07:52:35.517" LastActivityDate="2014-02-16T07:52:35.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10728" CreationDate="2014-02-12T08:01:43.113" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no way to do it automatically.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Assigning 250% to a resource would seem like you have 2,5 of that resource all the time. &lt;br&gt;&#xA;So you have to manually assign resources to tasks and then modify the resource availability from resource usage sheet or resource calendar. At this point if you level the resources it should make some of the things you want.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7883" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T08:01:43.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10837" CreationDate="2014-02-12T12:37:06.167" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend looking up the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.romanpichler.com/tools/product-roadmap/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GO (goal orientated) roadmap by Roman Pilcher&lt;/a&gt;. He makes the template available as a free download.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your choice in tool is unlikely to help you building a better road map. Often roadmaps go into too much details (specific tasks) rather than keeping the planning at a strategic level. This is a common problem across many teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6422" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T12:37:06.167" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10745" CreationDate="2014-02-12T14:50:26.890" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It should be noted, from experience, there are some pieces that don't smoothly integrate with MS Project and TFS.  For example, in TFS, you can only have one resource allocated to a task and you will have to update your project schedule to conform if you want to keep them in sync.  If you're breaking down tasks at such a level that they can be assigned to one person already, this shouldn't be too much of an issue though. Also, if you need to assign tasks, such as UAT tasks, to a customer not in AD, you cannot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7510" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T14:50:26.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4711" CreationDate="2014-02-12T15:11:33.193" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have both the MBA and PMP and presently sitting for the ITIL certification.  After my MBA skills began to get stale, I was looking for a way to refresh them.  I found that the PMP certification is an abbreviated version of the MBA.  Everything that was covered in the MBA is covered in the PMP prep so it was a good refresher and has been very beneficial to me, monitarily.  I do think, that you probably need both to advance your management career.  The latest fad is ITIL and it's nothing more than the PMP and/or the MBA, but someone thought of another way to make money by selling the same credentials with a different label.  In another 10 years, another MBA candidate will write a thesis that will make ITIL obsolete and we'll have to get certified in something else that is the same thing as the MBA and PMP and ITIL.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8162" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T15:11:33.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10849" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-12T17:24:43.663" Score="2" ViewCount="3153" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to set up size for my tasks and stories based on t-shirt sizes convention.&#xA;I can't find it in Jira Kanban board. Does Jira support it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8130" LastActivityDate="2020-07-26T10:10:00.997" Title="Jira - how to set the size of story/task in kanban board?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10849" CreationDate="2014-02-12T19:38:53.603" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You can create a custom field. But are you sure you want to do that?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Story Points field for Issues in Jira Agile will accept only numerical values. However, if you are particular, you can &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver073/adding-a-custom-field-861253370.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;create a custom field&lt;/a&gt; that will accept T-shirt sizes. However, please keep in mind that you won't be able to compute sprint velocity. As a consequence you won't be able to judge what is a realistic team commitment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://labs.openviewpartners.com/achieving-full-benefits-of-scrum-methodology/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Teams that are able to consistently finish what they set out to do are able to accelerate at a faster rate, which is why it is so important for you to only be undertaking what you have proven to be capable of in previous sprints. It is what we refer to as implementing a pattern of  'yesterday’s weather'.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion this is a big downside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-26T10:10:00.997" LastActivityDate="2020-07-26T10:10:00.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10851" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-12T19:50:21.107" Score="5" ViewCount="137" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are work we are having some difficulty with, well, difficult customers during the implementation phase of a semi-custom SaaS product. Standard story, I guess, ship deliverable's and then nothing for a week, and then there are &quot;emergency&quot; fixes needed overnight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the work needs to get done, it'll get done, but how does one formally delay dates when the lag is the customers fault?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically: Is there some standard (contractual) language, which nicely places fixed deadlines on the customer as well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8072" LastActivityDate="2014-02-15T22:20:18.737" Title="Schedule &amp; Customer Blame" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;customer&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10851" CreationDate="2014-02-12T20:42:54.680" Score="4" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Short answer&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't formalize. Communicate more often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Long answer&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this situation calls for better expectation management / communication. Make explicit what you need from the customer and when, and make explicit when they can expect something back and what.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;emergency&quot; fixes needed overnight&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you mean that the moment the customer finds bugs, they need to be fixed &quot;right now&quot;: is it fair for a customer to expect this? I think not. Bugs take time to fix and the team should get that time. Tell them beforehand, that they can expect their fixes &quot;X&quot; days after they report them. If they object, negotiate. In any case, make it explicit when they can expect their fixes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;then nothing for a week&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what's going on here? Are they not using the product or just not talking about it? Radio silence? Let me know and i'll update my reply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Specifically: Is there some standard (contractual) language, which nicely places fixed deadlines on the customer as well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can: there are several ways to put everything down in formal documents (contract, time planning, Service Level Agreements, etc), but consider before proceeding:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Negotiating and documenting can take a lot of time, compared to the amount of actual work. You'll want to bill your customer to some extent for all this time spent, so effectively, you just become a more expensive supplier. Project size is key. The larger the project, the more sense this approach makes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do you prefer? To call the customer each other day and change the schedule if and as needed (negotiate) or grind down all the details beforehand in a contract? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, instead of naming fixed dates, I would recommend to name your deliverables (update, patch, new release, etc) and indicate how much time is needed after the customer delivers their input/test results/etc. That way, when the customer is late with their results, they cannot expect you to deliver overnight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this is usefull. If anything incorrect / missing, let me know and i'll update my post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8166" LastEditorUserId="8166" LastEditDate="2014-02-12T22:46:26.603" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T22:46:26.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10851" CreationDate="2014-02-12T20:50:36.537" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to describe my experiences from the point of view of a project manager in Information Services. Some of the specifics might not exactly match your specific environment, but the principles are still the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds like a classic case of breakdown in communication between the business resources and the technical resources. This can also be a symptom of poor design and poor communication during the early phases of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These &quot;emergency&quot; changes usually stem from features that are perceived to be &quot;missing&quot; from the final product; i.e. The final user expected a feature that isn't there. This is usually the product of a lack of understanding about what the final product will consist of. It is so, so easy for the project team to say &quot;Ok, here's what we need to make. This is what we talked about, this is what they want. Let's get to it.&quot; Everyone puts their nose to the grindstone and hammers out a product based on the initial design specs. However, as we all know, the final users typically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do not have a firm idea of what the final product is going to look like&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Change their mind mid-project cycle and expect the technical team to read their mind and know exactly what they &quot;really&quot; wanted&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To alleviate some of these emergency changes, there are a few things you can try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have frequent meetings (in-person, phone, video chat, etc.) with the final users to discuss progress on the project and current features. Make sure that everyone is on the same page during each interaction and stress what progress you've made so far and what features the users should expect by the next interaction.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Include the final users in all testing steps leading up to release. Make sure the users understand that the product is still in development, but include them in what progress you've made so far. The more interaction the users have with the product prior to release, the more understanding they will have of what to expect from the final product.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Document all discussed features and get sign-offs on everything. Write down every feature, produce mock-ups, and make sure that everyone involved in the final product has a firm idea of the rough final product. Having hard documentation of exactly what the users should expect from the final product, coupled with user approval (even if it's by email), will go a long way toward my next point:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Be able to say &quot;No.&quot; Now, I understand this might be harder when you're producing products for external users, especially if you rely on their repeat business. However, having documented approvals of the features that will be included with the final product will assist you in your argument. If saying &quot;No&quot; is not an option, simply be realistic with the user. You're likely moving on to other projects that have also have a strict deadline, and the user needs to understand that you can only do so much. Add only the essential extra features, but remind the users that in the future, they need to document all necessary features up front while the product is being produced. Hurried &quot;fixes&quot; and &quot;additions&quot; to the final product will often result in a decrease in quality.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as &quot;contractual&quot; language, well, an actual contract would be your best bet. If you're able to document exactly what features the users expects, and get everyone on the same page during initial planning and design, then my personal opinion is that it's entirely acceptable to ask the client to sign a contract. Included in that contract should be the features the team has discussed during planning and design, as well as a hard cut-off date on when new features can no longer be requested. Optionally, you can also include a clause stating that any new features requested after the cut-off date will result in additional negotiations for price on those specific features being added to the final product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the actual contracts themselves, you can draft your own and put in the specifics I've listed above. You can also edit an existing template to fit your needs. Some templates can be found on &lt;a href=&quot;http://develop-a-website.com/10-freelance-web-design-contract-templates-and-samples/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10 Freelance Web Design Contract Templates and Samples by develop-a-website.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter which you choose to do, I would also get a legal entity to evaluate it for soundness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that this has helped. If you need me to elaborate on any of these, or if you need additional information, let me know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8005" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-02-15T22:20:18.737" LastActivityDate="2014-02-15T22:20:18.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10851" CreationDate="2014-02-12T22:13:39.127" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You certainly need to formalize this.  These are controlled via service level agreements.  You have desired objectives for level of severity and criteria to determine at what identified defect will be placed.  Then, you simply perform against those SLAs and awarded / penalized pursuant to your performance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other cases, you have a cadence for delivery.  Some deliverables do not produce findings like a new release of production software but are verified and validated by the customer with findings, then the delivery organization addresses those findings for redelivery.  This cadence is spelled out contractually.  For example, draft delivery, 10 days for V&amp;amp;V, 10 days for fix, final delivery.  If the customer is late for V&amp;amp;V, like 12 days, then you have 10 days after the 12th day.  All spelled out EXPLICITLY in the contract.  No ambiguity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T22:13:39.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10794" CreationDate="2014-02-12T22:17:45.203" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The list from Sreedhar is good in general, imho.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you won't know if any or all of the items on this list apply to you, unless you answer another question :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The core question you should ask yourself and, eventually, your superiors is: which  responsibilities do they expect you to take on? What are you responsible for? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Figuring this out is way more important than figuring out what a title, like Program Manager could entail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8166" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T22:17:45.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10745" CreationDate="2014-02-13T13:02:05.817" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Analysts are definitely needed in the scrum process. They are both the bridge between the Product Owner and The Team and one of the members of a scrum team. Their main input into the process would/could be by helping the Product Owner by determining the Product Backlog and helping the Team to define the work items, to analyze development work etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their interaction with TFS is multilayered and/or non-existent depending on the type of analysis and their role within the scrum process. When analyzing the product backlog items and work items they can use the standard browser based interface to enter descriptions, acceptance criteria, or storyboards or they can do the job independently and leave this tasks to the product owner and the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Storyboards can be developed by using the TFS plugin integrated into Powerpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have analysts in our product cycles who are both developers, UX designers (form follows function) or product owners. We customize the standard scrum templates to add the &quot;Analysis&quot; activity to the task types.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8171" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2014-02-13T13:48:53.777" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T13:48:53.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10541" CreationDate="2014-02-13T14:31:00.193" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should do so much testing during the development phase of the product which should drop down the product related servicing rate after product release/deployment and try to find the sweetspot of your &quot;test-service time invesment rate&quot; bell curve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I mean is,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spending 10 hours of testing time in the x hours total project time is NOT good practice if the servicing time you spend after release is NOT dropping down in a satisfactory rate&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spending 100 hours of testing time in the x hours total project time is a good practice if the servicing time you spend after release is dropping down in a satisfactory rate&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spending 250 hours of testing time in the x hours total project time is NOT good practice if the servicing time you spend after release is NOT dropping down in a satisfactory rate&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sweetspot in this scenario is near 100 hours or a certain percentage of testing time invesment. You shouldn't spend less or more time in the total development stage for testing of similar projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This kind of data can only be accumulated in the long run of a company's product lifecycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8171" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T14:31:00.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10794" CreationDate="2014-02-13T15:25:42.700" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would expect even though you might be looking a project manager in title, with the emphasis you placed on 'low level', that you'll be performing the duties of a project coordinator.  This means you'll be looking at some authority and power to make decisions but only within the scope a higher level PM provides. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This scope will probably include helping with stakeholder analysis, project communications (minutes, meeting scheduling, and stakeholder updates), updating the schedule and tracking progress from the team, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7510" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T15:25:42.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10822" CreationDate="2014-02-13T17:37:02.017" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Ideal&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All requirements are completely predictable. By doing enough analysis up-front, extra work will be discovered before the sprint starts. Accurate estimation will therefore be possible, and this question will never arise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Reality&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Parts of your project will be new things you've never done before (otherwise it would be exactly the same project that you did before, and that never happens). Discoveries are inevitable, both in analysis and development. You can't estimate things that you've never done before, and trying to do so will usually result in floundering and / or estimate padding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What to do about it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recognize that there's always uncertainty in development and be adults about it. The end of the sprint is there for you to focus on getting feedback from your stakeholders, and that feedback is far more important than any story-point estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Arguments over these discoveries often result in people spending more time trying to analyze the newest, most risky elements of a project ahead of time. Analysis isn't as good at flushing out those discoveries as actually delivering something is (or Waterfall methodologies would work), so when those discoveries are made, it's very important to focus on delivery and feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, analysis paralysis sets in, and those elements end up getting pushed to the end of the project instead, when there's no time to react to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of estimation and velocity measurement is threefold:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To help decide the focus for the sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To measure against long-term plans in order to see how a project is progressing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To help gain stakeholders' trust through delivery.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pure Scrum doesn't mandate story points and velocity measurements. Instead of making promises around points, consider making promises around aspects of stakeholder needs on which you'll deliver or showcase something for the purposes of learning and feedback. By addressing the riskiest aspects of a project early on, you'll learn fast, de-risk the project (and help to make more accurate plans), and gain stakeholders' trust through addressing the things that stop them sleeping at night.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under no circumstances should the story points ever be used to &quot;punish&quot; the team. That will only create a rift between the PO and other team members, and the PO ought to be part of that same team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're looking for a tracking mechanism, and the scope changes happen regularly, consider a &lt;em&gt;burn-up&lt;/em&gt; chart, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumulative_flow_diagram&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CFD&lt;/a&gt;, instead. That will let you track your work against the scope over the longer term, and you'll also be able to see how scope itself is changing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T17:37:02.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10750" CreationDate="2014-02-13T18:28:12.493" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Project Definition and agreement&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be classified as a project, you need to have a defined scope, time plan (incl. milestones and deadline), resources and budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the client/customer have a deadline, it must be based upon a scope and a timeplan to start with. Before the contractor (your company) should agree on a deadline, the time plan should have been evaluated, investigate resource knowledge and if required add tasks to handle learning. Then evaluated their time plan against yours, and if you either need to postpone the deadline or need more resources to match the given deadline, this has to be discussed between the client and contractor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Current situation from a Project Management point of view&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the client has not provided you with sufficient documentation regarding scope, timeplan, resource estimation and budget and your company is in the situation you are now, I think both of you have done a major &quot;No-No&quot; already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;To mitigate...&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with @Gastón Algaze, that you need to talk to some expert/vendor to get more information of learning curve of the new software and then add tasks to the Gantt chart. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you have to either &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;put more resources, if that even is a solution to be finished in time. Will lead to more cost for your company and might thereby pass budget instead of deadline. Is the client willing to take that cost or will your company be forced to take that cost? If you have already agreed on the budget, I guess your company has to take that cost as education.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you will have to take your new time plan including a probable postponed deadline up for discussion with your client.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both alternatives are not good, but best to do it early than as a surprize for the client and managers of your company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7438" LastEditorUserId="7438" LastEditDate="2014-02-26T11:47:14.707" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T11:47:14.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10863" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10864" CreationDate="2014-02-13T19:48:14.597" Score="3" ViewCount="124" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe each software product should have its constant team throughout its life cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about the situation, when one of the core developer, who has been involved in project by 100%, shifts to another project. Here, assigning a new developer seems the only reasonable way to keep the project going. However, the time spent on communication and the full involvement and understanding of the code written by others arises many problems. Besides, many developers are reluctant to engage in such projects.&#xA;Another important thing is that team becomes fragmented and the team spirit starts to disappear, if team members are constantly changing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should PM keep its software team  or at least core members unchanged until the delivery of the project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8146" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T11:58:49.980" Title="How constant should be the software team?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10863" CreationDate="2014-02-13T20:11:49.557" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How should PM keep its software team or at least core members&#xA;  unchanged until the delivery of the project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You shouldn't...nor could you.  People leave.  They die.  They get sick.  The only certain thing about your people is they are uncertain.  And your project should be planned with that in mind.  In other words, create a project capability that does not depend on an individual.  Never ever ever get dependent on an individual.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your project capability should be established such that, if one person leaves, you can plug in another with an average set of knowledge, skills, and abilities that are required and keep the project machine running with little to no performance degradation.  And if you have degradation, you planned for it and can cope with it without any noticeable sequalae in any other areas of the project or business.  That is the job of the PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T20:11:49.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2360" CreationDate="2014-02-14T06:25:28.760" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great answers from everybody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to append on @Perry Wilson's answer regarding &quot;strengthening the methodology and standardizing process&quot;, i.e. which Project Models you use within your company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the company I worked for (as Process Leader of Product Portfolfio Development process), we had bought a lot of companies and all had their own Project Models. In all the procured companies their own Project Models were deeply &quot;in the walls&quot;.&#xA;Since coworkers, especially from Customer Support organization, were involved in more than one project and often in projects with different Project Models for the same type of project, there were a lot of time/cost lost due to &quot;different language&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore we started a huge project to merge them all together. It was not only to get the phase definitions/scope standardized, but also the nomenclature. We had so many synonyms used and also mixed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that cleaned up and defined, we finally printed booklet and sent it out to everybody working in projects, at any level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this to work, we made the booklet light weight, meaning the most important information per phase on two adjacent pages. This made it easy for readers to read through quickly, and they could also have the current phase of projects they worked in open, standing on their desk. (Beside the booklet, we also had a more extensive version of the Project Model online, as well as forms for asking questions, notify of misprints or even post change proposals.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CEO ordered everybody to read them and then we followed it up with further training for everybody that had got a booklet - more or less the whole organization (and this is a big company).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This had a huge impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We had a standardized Project Model regarding phases, steps, deliverables, milestones, requirements to pass gates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We used same templates and systems for documentation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We spoke the same &quot;language&quot; - using same terminology.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this enabled&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Everybody, from Steering Committee members to coworkers, knew their role much better.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Everybody knew what the different organizational departments (incl. PMO) were responsible of and when responsibility shifted (for example from a PreStudy to an actual Project, Advanced Engineering, from Project to PreMarket...).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It was easier to support another coworker and have back ups.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;And perhaps the most relevant for this question - it sure strengthened the knowledge and support of the PMO.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Fun Fact - The name of the Project Model is now even used in job ads by consultant companies when they are looking for people to work in this company.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7438" LastEditorUserId="7438" LastEditDate="2014-02-17T08:54:53.187" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T08:54:53.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10705" CreationDate="2014-02-14T08:20:16.390" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first problem with your team's approach is that tests shouldn't be done after code completion. You should apply TDD or test-first approach especially if you're using agile methodologies. Developing and designing unit tests, system tests, acceptance tests before starting to write code etc should be implemented in various stages of the sprint by pairing testers, developers and even analysts and UX designers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developers don't sit on their hands after completing their development tasks. They still have tasks which depend on code completion like technical documentation, UX modifications and of course modifications to the code which could be found by various kinds of tests (exploratory tests, installation tests, integration tests etc) after the code completion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8171" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T08:20:16.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10863" CreationDate="2014-02-14T11:58:49.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is common scenario which happens in many organization.. If you need to move a core resource from one project to another in between of project following things should be taken care ..(I am assuming that the core developer was team lead)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When the core developer moves knowledge transfer to new developer is more important. Try to spend some time and make the new developer understand the past, current and future of project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The old developer even after moving to new project should spend time with the project and team until the new developer in comfortable handling the project. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once the new developer is comfortable with team and project, the old developer can permanently move to new project. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8012" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T11:58:49.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10868" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-14T13:35:53.067" Score="3" ViewCount="313" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’ve read few articles about &lt;a href=&quot;http://agiledictionary.com/209/spike/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;spikes&lt;/a&gt; in Scrum. In general there are recommendations to estimate spikes with story points and define acceptance criteria, pretty much as normal user stories. What is not so clear for me is if a spike has not been finished within a given sprint, does the incomplete spike cause the sprint to fail?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8183" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-02-14T15:48:15.590" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T15:48:15.590" Title="Does spike failure cause sprint failure in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10868" CreationDate="2014-02-14T14:28:46.637" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[I]f Spike has not been finished in a given sprint does it cause a sprint failure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. Spikes are generally complete or incomplete. A spike (almost by definition) very rarely &quot;fails,&quot; and the status of the spike generally has no bearing on the current Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What Story Spikes Teach the Team&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The primary purpose of a spike is to learn something about the size or complexity of a related story. For example, if you are planning to build a database with a new DBMS, you might have a story spike to stand up a new, throw-away instance of the DBMS and seed it with some basic data to get a sense of how much effort it will take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the spike is successfully completed within the time box, then the team gains knowledge and a better understanding of how hard (or easy) the real story may be. On the other hand, if the spike is not successfully completed within the time box, the team still gains knowledge, but the knowledge may simply be that there were more variables or complexity than the team had planned for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An incomplete spike is still useful. It generally helps a team plan and estimate better, and may lead to more spikes or finer-grained stories in future sprints. It may also lead to rethinking an approach entirely, which is also a very useful thing in an iterative process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T14:28:46.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8968" CreationDate="2014-02-14T15:50:51.817" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simple: ask them to tell you what they are working on and got done, every day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be annoying but there are tools that automate this with the minimum hassle for everyone involved, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://dutyful.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dutyful&lt;/a&gt;. It sends a mail to everyone in the team asking what they got done, they just have to reply in a few lines directly from their mail client. The next morning, you (or the whole team, which is even better for motivation) get a digest with everything that got done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that info is stored so you can keep them accountable on what they said. For that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask them to do new deploys to a staging server as often as possible, so you can see the progress being done directly. Continous delivery is a good dev practice anyway, they should be doing it. In this way, you can see that what they are telling you about in the daily report is really getting done, and call them out for further clarification in case it isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best tracking is seeing the product evolution first-hand and keeping people accountable to what they say they are doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7999" LastEditorUserId="7999" LastEditDate="2014-02-14T16:03:43.463" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T16:03:43.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10872" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10874" CreationDate="2014-02-15T01:32:24.117" Score="4" ViewCount="3988" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a developer in a very small startup consisting of 6 people, and I have decided to cure our lack of organization now that we have clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give a little context, here is our organization:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 junior developers (myself included)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 senior business specialist&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 junior seller&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 senior seller who's the boss&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the last whole year, we had absolutely no organization. Everything was complete anarchy, and we were all over-working. We often miss deadlines set a long time in advance, lack visibility over our workloads and the business specialist is nearly in nervous breakdown. :D The only thing keeping stuff in check was my huge gantt chart I had to update a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we decided to get back on what we did before: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A scrum board. (our business specialist was fed up with the &quot;hippie&quot; side of Scrum and lobbied to stop all kind of meetings, discussions etc to spend more time working). But as always it's working great for the dev but the others need very clear workload view to understand how many things they have to do for the next month or so.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that I &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; that it can't work, as I was the one managing the Gantt chart for the last year. Fixing set tasks doesn't work when you build software, as we underestimate time too much because of pressure. Also, the gantt chart is only good at the end of the project, after 300 successive updates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So should I try to convince everyone to go for the more frightening Scrum way of &quot;planning&quot; stuff, without set dates for sub-tasks completion nor visuals for the next month workload per member, etc? Or should I just accept to build yet another fake Gantt chart to reassure everyone, making them believe we can plan one year in advance the life of a software development project? Or is there another way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8190" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-02-15T02:43:02.310" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T01:36:33.890" Title="Conflict in team over Scrum vs Gantt" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10792" CreationDate="2014-02-15T04:51:38.047" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project management is the coordination of tasks and resources to create something by and/or before a certain date. The something created can be anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, a department manager will make sure that quality hamburgers are served in a quality manner in a reasonable time. Each hamburger served is essentially considered a project completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project management is the exact same thing. Except project management doesn't focus on tasks that are repeated. The department manager will ensure that each hamburger is served as it should be. Whereas the project manager will invent a new hamburger by a certain date. Project managers can also focus on repetitive tasks, however their main objective is to complete a one-time task or project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project and department managers are exactly the same. They both have goals, but the project manager only achieves a goal only once. Department managers don't invent a new hamburgers, project managers can. And the moment a department manager begins to invent a new hamburger is exactly the moment that person is being a project manager and not a department manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8192" LastActivityDate="2014-02-15T04:51:38.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10872" CreationDate="2014-02-15T11:14:19.090" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other way is to build trust. Your colleagues need to realize that the kind of planning they want to do is simply impossible and an outdated method of working in most cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gantt charts only work when the work to be done and the burn rate are very predictable. Neither of them is in software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a better way of navigating these uncharted waters than simply getting an empty map and drawing a straight line. That way is planning much shorter routes so you can, for example, easily avoid that island that just appeared on your horizon...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile development (and Scrum) are ways to deal with limited information, by making your yearly plan flexible enough to accommodate changes. You won't have the warm, fuzzy feeling of a precise Gantt chart, but that is not due to agile. That's due to the reality of incomplete information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you plan a year using agile? Write epics corresponding to the large chunks of work you want to be done. Prioritize, estimate in points and distribute across the appropriate people. Fit to a year. From that point, remember that you should be &lt;em&gt;time boxed&lt;/em&gt; and not &lt;em&gt;scope boxed&lt;/em&gt;. You know when you are going to deliver (how many iterations you will dedicate to each chunk) but not exactly how much of the scope (because you will deliver the most valuable stories in order for as long as you have time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6300" LastActivityDate="2014-02-15T11:14:19.090" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10849" CreationDate="2014-02-16T01:59:20.827" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The last time I checked, you can only size stories in a &quot;Scrum&quot; view. Teams that I work with that like the Kanban view have to create two boards from the same project in order to see the size information. It is a downside, since you can also not filter the control chart by story size. However, it may be possible to create a custom view and do these things, but it is not there out of the box. &#xA;It is assumed that if you are using Kanban you don't size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastActivityDate="2014-02-16T01:59:20.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10877" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10904" CreationDate="2014-02-16T12:46:53.547" Score="5" ViewCount="703" Body="&lt;p&gt;As each software project has its team who work on it, this team is considered somehow a &quot;separate body&quot; within the company. Team members have their assignments, their vision and expectations from the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, number of questions arise during the project, both technical and non-technical. Technical questions are usually easier to solve as we have team leads and technical leads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For non-technical problems, we have project managers. Project managers should address all questions within a team starting from an unplanned vacations to disputes between team members. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, a team member wanted to give her tasks to another person who is not on the team; I did not allow that. A second team member is constantly delaying the start of his work. Another is trying to use a third party-tool to write HTML code more easily. One of the workers wants to use his own tool written in node.js to facilitate his work, although that is not a technology used in our company and no one could support the project afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other PMs in the company will certainly address all these questions with the CEO, but I believe a PM should have the appropriate level of independence to make decisions like &lt;strong&gt;who&lt;/strong&gt; should do &lt;strong&gt;what&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;how&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to what extent are PMs able to make independent decisions? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8146" LastEditorUserId="8146" LastEditDate="2014-02-17T07:42:10.613" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T19:21:25.877" Title="How much independence should project managers have?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;technical-leader&gt;&lt;authority&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10877" CreationDate="2014-02-16T17:24:10.277" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Projects exist within the context of an existing organizational structure, are managed through delegated authority, and should not be run like independent fiefdoms. All of your sub-questions boil down to an organizational failure to properly charter the project and define the project manager's scope of authority (if any).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the process failures, you appear to lack influence with both your management team and with your project members. Regardless of the reasons for this, you must either fix the problems (if you can) or leave the project. Your project is unlikely to succeed under the status quo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Project Charters&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of framework, all projects require some sort of inception document. This is usually called the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_charter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;project charter&lt;/a&gt;. A good project charter should also define the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.cit.cornell.edu/computer/robohelp/cpmm/Project_Roles_and_Responsibilities.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;roles for the project&lt;/a&gt;, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;project sponsors,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;stakeholders,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;technical decision makers, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;lines of authority.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project manager is often &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a manager or authority figure in the traditional sense, and on some projects may have responsibilities without delegated personnel or budgetary authority. This is an &lt;em&gt;organizational&lt;/em&gt; decision, and one which your current organization has either not made, or has made in a way that you don't agree with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Authority Must Be Delegated&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Authority must always be delegated from the top of an organization. This delegation is often a chain where the project manager derives whatever authority he has (if any) from the project charter or project sponsor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have not been granted any authority, then you must use &lt;em&gt;influence&lt;/em&gt; rather than a command-and-control style to manage your projects. Based on your description, it seems as though you currently lack both authority and influence. You may want to discuss these issues with the person you report to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Who Works for Whom&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You work for the company, and any authority you have is delegated from senior management. Therefore, when you ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[W]hat if CEO intervenes and countermands your decisions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it seems likely that one or more of the following statements are true:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are making decisions outside the scope of your delegated authority.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are making decisions that are out of step with your organizational norms or the management team's expectations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You do not have the appropriate levels of trust and two-way communication between you and your management team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are at odds with your management team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You do not understand the organizational chart or the source of your delegated authority (if any).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it's often preferable for the senior management team to work &lt;em&gt;through&lt;/em&gt; a project's appointed leadership to manage a project, it is certainly not required. Regardless of how &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; feel about their decisions, it is always up to senior management to determine how they want a project or team to be run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find that your style of project management is a poor fit for your organization, or that you lack the influence or finesse to manage the political aspects of the project, then you may want to consider looking for a different role within your company&amp;mdash;or even trying to find another company where your project management style would be a better fit for the company culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The only real power you have that is not delegated to you is the right to &quot;vote with your feet.&quot; Fix the process if you can, fix your attitude if you can't...or just move on. Good luck!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-02-16T17:24:10.277" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10879" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10880" CreationDate="2014-02-16T18:46:11.857" Score="13" ViewCount="2563" Body="&lt;p&gt;When an essential software project is behind schedule  we might naturally add manpower. The new developer, however competent and however quickly recruited, needs additional training from an experienced developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking into account the training and intercommunication time, the tasks which the new developer should implement, cannot remain unaltered, instead they should be revised so that they include also the 'adaptation period' of the new developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is adding manpower to late projects the right decision to meet the deadlines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8146" LastEditorUserId="8146" LastEditDate="2014-02-25T08:46:35.490" LastActivityDate="2020-05-30T09:49:46.223" Title="when a software project is behind schedule should we add manpower?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10879" CreationDate="2014-02-16T22:39:06.907" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Fred Brooks, author of &quot;The Mythical Man-Month&quot;, the practice of adding more people to a project at the last minute may not yield the results you want. From Wikipedia, this is known as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law&quot;&gt;Brooks's Law&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;adding manpower to a late software project makes it later&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Software isn't like manufacturing. When I was a lumber stacker, it took me a little under a week to form the mental connections to know which direction to twist to find the right stack for the boards that were coming down the conveyor system, and it took me about 3 weeks to where I wasn't in physical pain at the end of each day. :)  The company had a lot of turnover, but we were also pretty interchangeable at that level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With software, it can take good programmers a lot longer than a few weeks to really gain a solid understanding of the systems. Software is more complex, and requires an almost strategical, high-level understanding of how everything connects together. The longer someone has worked in the code, the more they know about where certain bugs, system flaws, and interfaces can be found, and this allows these developers to more quickly get work done and with higher quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, adding people to a project means those people aren't productive for at least a month. Sure, they might take a small bug or two that isn't mission critical, but until they gain a better understanding of how everything connects together, the only impact they really have is in reducing the productivity of the people who have been on the project longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you know a project is going to be late, you have two options that are almost always better than adding people late:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Meet with the stakeholders and discuss cutting non-mission-critical features.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Push back the project deadline to account for the extra time needed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By adding people late, you increase the chances not only of quality suffering but of the project being even later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2014-02-16T22:39:06.907" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10879" CreationDate="2014-02-17T02:12:38.117" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, you should prioritise the remaining work and ensure the most important work is done first. Then the stakeholders can decide if they continue to fund the work on the less-important remaining features with additional time, or if they discard them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, any project should already be prioritising the work to be done. (If not, why not?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question illustrates why the software world is turning away from large-scale projects with a single deliverable deadline date, towards agile multiple-deliverable projects prioritising work items. This ensure that by the time you are getting towards the end of the project's duration or funding (i.e. you're getting &quot;late&quot; in the project) the project has already delivered many iterations demonstrating real customer value. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8198" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T02:12:38.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10879" CreationDate="2014-02-17T12:53:53.747" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree completely with jmort253's answer. However, I would add one caveat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your project has &lt;strong&gt;extremely&lt;/strong&gt; isolate-able components (say some batch jobs, etc.) you &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be able to add someone and cut some of the remaining time. However, one should be extremely careful before concluding that more resources will speed up a late software project. Those new resources will &lt;strong&gt;never&lt;/strong&gt; be as productive as the existing team because they will &lt;strong&gt;always&lt;/strong&gt; have less experience on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an additional concern and that is those new resources are going to be taking time and attention away from the existing team members. That is, in my experience, why adding staff to a late software project makes it later - because it makes the existing, productive team much less productive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7610" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T12:53:53.747" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10879" CreationDate="2014-02-17T14:43:48.697" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answers need to be qualified a bit further.  I think Brooks findings have a lot of validity.  In other words, as Jmort expertly drafted, adding resources can threaten your schedule further.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I am loathe to adopt this as law, despite Brooks Law being seemingly adopted in the IT industry, meaning adding resources ALWAYS increases your schedule for ALL projects ALL the time.  Not many things in our world operate with this high degree of certainty, like gravity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Crashing your schedule is a legitimate intervention for compressing your durations, which must mean, despite what Brooks opines, it has some efficacy.  Therefore, you need to analyze your situation carefully.  The risk is real; however, it is not certain and in some cases you can successfully bring your project back in line.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T14:43:48.697" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10888" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-17T16:24:41.140" Score="3" ViewCount="1152" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scenario:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Software development team does NOT report to PM, but PM is responsible for hitting milestone dates and not exceeding budget.  Sometimes, developers have to do work for other PMs, so less than 100% of their time is available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As the PM, how can I motivate the developers to produce the results I need (quality work, done on time and within budget)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If there are no negative consequences for developers being late or doing shoddy work, how can I get the best possible work out of them?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than being one voice out of many at semi-annual performance reviews, I have no way to influence (positively or negatively) the quality or timeliness of the developers' work product.  Yet my performance is evaluated based on making the deadlines and managing the budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does a project manager manage and motivate people that don't actually report to the PM?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7617" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-02-17T18:51:18.277" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T15:15:41.330" Title="How does a project manager manage and motivate people that don't actually report to the PM?" Tags="&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10890" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-17T20:14:49.050" Score="4" ViewCount="2725" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want my team to do refactoring as often as it is possible, and follow some guides from Martin Fowler book. Although I'm confused about something:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we use scrum or kanban and decide to work on one task only, then in the commit message (git) mention to the task, when do we work on refactoring? how we name our commits?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;edit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;as my question may be unclear (I'm sorry I'm not english native).&#xA;We have tasks in team, and we are commiting to git with a task number.&#xA;The first thing is: when to do refactoring? after sprint ends or in the middle?&#xA;the second: how to name commits as we have convention to add task number in comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8130" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2014-02-18T23:11:31.267" LastActivityDate="2021-04-04T05:22:32.023" Title="Is refactoring part of a task in a sprint or a separate task for after the sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10890" CreationDate="2014-02-17T23:34:59.920" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first thing is: when to do refactoring? after sprint ends or in the middle?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the work needs to be done during the sprint, without exception. However, refactoring is not a task, it's a normal part of development, like stubbing, debugging or compiling. A task should be something concrete to achieve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The second: how to name commits as we have convention to add task number in comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since all the work is during the sprint and all the work is on user story, then use a link to the user story. Tasks are not very important in Scrum, stories are. Link to those, because it will make you remember &quot;What was I trying to achieve here?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6300" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T23:34:59.920" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10895" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10897" CreationDate="2014-02-18T09:54:03.353" Score="-2" ViewCount="1027" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need some advice on what tasks can fall under &quot;Project Support&quot; activity in a similar way that we can say the following fall under &quot;Project Development&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requirement gathering&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;coding&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8215" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T10:45:45.597" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T10:45:45.597" Title="Which specific tasks do fall under &quot;Project Support&quot; activity?" Tags="&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;management&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10895" CreationDate="2014-02-18T12:12:18.023" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on the complexity of the project, and the SLA (Service Level Agreement) that has been agreed, these activities could include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Client training.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bug fixing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Minor tweaks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A/B Testing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Further feature development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quarterly Security Reviews.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PCI Compliance Support.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, any work that goes into the project after it has been launched could be deemed as 'Project Support'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8220" LastEditorUserId="8220" LastEditDate="2014-02-18T14:38:20.957" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T14:38:20.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10888" CreationDate="2014-02-18T12:35:21.653" Score="1" Body="&lt;h1&gt;tl;dr&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't; project manager is not responsible for functional management&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;What sound does the Project Manager make?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course the answer depends on how projectized your company is, but in the abstract, the job of a PM is to analyze and predict the project's success.  If there are no negative consequences for late or shoddy work, then you have no problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is much more likely that late work will delay the project, and that shoddy work will both delay the project and diminish the quality of the deliverable.  That is where the PM has an opportunity.  Collect and analyze the data; once you are about to make a statement like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original project estimate was six months; that was based on the estimate that 66% of modules checked in would pass Quality Control. In our first month, only 33% of modules have passed QC (and 20% have never been checked in).  If that trend continues the project will require ten months. More seriously, QC and I estimate that the probability that the customer will reject the final project has risen from 1% to 5%; if that happens, we lose the entire investment in the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We could still make the original schedule if the number of modules checked in and passing QC rises to 75%.  I've discussed it with the functional manager and the programmers, and they've come up with some suggestions. I'm going to let them present the options, but based on our discussions, I support their recommendation.  Working together, we estimate that their best option will involve a 7% rise in cost and delay 3 features to a post deployment release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is up to the functional manager, the project sponsors and the programmers to make that change.  PM is all about predicting the impact on the project. If you're clever, you'll work closely with the functional manager to define solutions and alternatives, and you'll present them together to project stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T12:35:21.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10888" CreationDate="2014-02-18T15:01:43.217" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The situation you describe is quite common: &lt;strong&gt;The PM holds the responsibility for success without the related authority to push the workers.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue is one of leadership and motivation. In some companies, as Mark C. Wallace points out, PM's end up spending most of their time performing calculations and communicating status updates. In other companies, higher-ups expect the PM to act like a departmental manager and lead, motivate, etc. a team. Unfortunately, these firms realize that the project's human resources are on loan from their normal department and their departmental manager often retains authority over the workers. This leaves the PM in the position you describe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my first suggestion is to discuss with your immediate superior and explain that you are given responsibility for worker performance without having the corresponding authority and that is unbalanced, and unfair, and it should change. Good luck with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that does not work, then you need to fall back on motivation techniques. This is a &lt;strong&gt;huge&lt;/strong&gt; area and hundreds of books have been written on this topic. The short version is that you can be a leader without having any power. It is harder but not impossible. You need to find out what motivates the people you have. Software developers are often motivated by learning something new, having their creation used by large numbers of people, and some are motivated by money. Others are motivated by recognition, by admiration, or being part of an elite team with access to information that others do not have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your task is to get to know your people and find out what can motivate them. Then, structure things so that those things are actually pushing your team to give more in order to produce more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7610" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T15:01:43.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10900" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-18T15:13:10.560" Score="4" ViewCount="192" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just started a new experimental project in my division which will attempt to integrate application-use and development efforts across different teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problem:&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;In the kick-off meeting today I discovered that &lt;strong&gt;two of the five managers&lt;/strong&gt; I will be working with each have a distinct top-down or bottom-up approach. The one guy only talks about an integrated vision, process model, role-hierarchy, ...; the other about use-cases, business expectations for next month, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am prepared to act the counter part for them when working individually, so that I pull them both towards the center by asking the Top-Down guy what his expected benefits for day-to-day business are, and by asking the Bottom-Up guy how he plans to control integration with the other teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when we're in a meeting, I don't know how to keep them from circling around each other a la &lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/1318/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;win by changing the point of view of the argument&lt;/a&gt;. I can't counter them in a controlled fashion, since they already counter each other, albeit in the form of provocation and not sincere questions. After asking my sponsor, I was told that they apparently do come to an agreement after circling around each other often enough. They are both nice guys, just have opposite ways of working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions how I can effectively &lt;strong&gt;moderate between these two legitimate approaches in meetings&lt;/strong&gt;, so that we can concentrate on the topic instead of listening to these two for hours on end, &lt;strong&gt;saying things that are correct but don't help us move forward&lt;/strong&gt;? Needless to say, I don't have any authority over them - I feel I can only get them to think in a common direction by asking the right questions addressed at both of them - but I'm having trouble thinking up of a convincing approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help, ideas, or experience would be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6421" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T18:38:49.410" Title="Moderating a compromise between Top-Down and Bottom-Up approaches?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;&lt;communication-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10888" CreationDate="2014-02-18T15:15:41.330" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Leadership in a matrix organization&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In  a hierarchical organization each person reports to one boss.&#xA;In a matrix organization a person may report to more than one boss.&#xA;Looks like you are transitioning from a hierarchical organization into a matrix organization. By the way, most PMs work with a team that does not report only to them. I am giving below a couple of links on how to lead successfully in a matrix organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.hbr.org/2012/08/become-a-stronger-matrix-leade/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;We found that when leaders were successful in matrix roles they consistently used the following four competencies: empathy, conflict management, influence and self-awareness.&quot;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://seapointcenter.com/matrix-leadership/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;A matrix succeeds when there is a collaborative culture, where information flows freely, where development of strong relationships and informal networks are supported, and where people are encouraged to develop interpersonal skills (e.g. communication, conflict resolution, teamwork and influencing without authority.)&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T15:15:41.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10900" CreationDate="2014-02-18T17:00:12.303" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are talking about how to manage effective meetings, your best bet is to call out when what the two managers are contributing isn't adding value. You can do this by politely taking the first opportunity (when they pause to catch their breath?) to ask them to take their discussion offline and come back to the next meeting with a recommendation. Facilitate their offline discussion if you have to, but at least then you only waste your time and not everyone else's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your question is a more global one, top-down and bottom-up approaches are IMO appropriate at different points in a project lifecycle. Initially you need a top-down/holistic approach to define big-picture questions like Vision, Project Product, Success Measures, etc. As the project progresses and the team gets into the devilish details of how to develop the project product you will move more into a bottom-up mode and the top-down piece will go into the background, but you still need this to provide overall guidance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T17:00:12.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10877" CreationDate="2014-02-18T17:14:18.930" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Refer to senior management only if it is a policy issue&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @CodeGnome pointed out you should not try to run your project as an independent fiefdom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, you should not refer every decision up the chain either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wilbrewer.wordpress.com/2013/05/24/are-you-a-victim-of-delegating-up/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;In broad terms, delegating up means pushing responsibility and decision-making up one level, with the intent of the employee to avoid accountability for his or her actions. It typically occurs when the direct report lacks the confidence to exercise judgment or does not have the required skills or expertise to execute effectively.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally as a Project Manager (or for that matter any Manager) you should take all decisions needed to execute your project successfully, within the broad policy framework set by the leadership. However, sometimes issues comes up that might have broader impact, beyond your project. If there is no set policy or direction on how to handle it, you may want to refer it to senior leadership. Even in such a case, if I were you, I will consult my peers and make a specific recommendation to the CEO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T17:14:18.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10877" CreationDate="2014-02-18T17:57:58.263" Score="2" Body="&lt;h1&gt;tl;dr&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Independence&quot; isn't the issue; the issue is accountability and your integrity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Dispense with the distractions&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Independence&lt;/em&gt; is a road to project failure.  You are interdependent; your success is tightly coupled with that of your project team, and theirs with yours.  Any other viewpoint will lead you to disaster.  I would argue that none of the issues you list in your question are problems for the PM.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Concentrate on your accountability&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The core issue is to whom you are accountable and for what.  Fortunately, that is relatively straightforward. You are accountable to the project stakeholders.  The PM (should have) signed the project charter; in doing so, you committed yourself to deliver a specific scope at a specific time for a specific budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an ideal world, you'd do that.  In the real world, if project management were that simple, it wouldn't be a paid profession.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The real world&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the real world, your signature on the project charter commits you to deliver the scope on the schedule for the budget &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;and to manage any changes&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@Saakyan asks me to clarify &quot;for what&quot;; a reasonable question.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'm accountable to my stakeholders for a realistic estimate of whether the project will meet the target.  Ideally I phrase my estimate in a risk context &quot;I believe it is 90% likely that we'll deliver on schedule, and that the customer will accept the ultimate deliverable. I'm less confident about budget; it is only 75% probable that we'll come in within 10% of our estimate.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'm accountable to my stakeholders that if there are problems that threaten scope, schedule, quality or budget, that I'll work with the internal stakeholders to find solutions. Note that I'm accountable to both my internal stakeholders/team members and to my external stakeholders (customers, management, families, etc.)  I owe it to my team to work with them to find the best solution (most effective, least painful).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am accountable to all that if the scope/schedule/budget changes, that I present a &lt;em&gt;solution&lt;/em&gt; for that change, and a real cost for that change. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Interdependence&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success involves analyzing those factors, and &lt;em&gt;working with&lt;/em&gt; the project team to develop alternatives to mitigate the effects of the unknown. Where relevant you're also obliged to inform the stakeholders.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2014-02-18T19:21:25.877" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T19:21:25.877" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1400" CreationDate="2014-02-18T18:27:27.877" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;External dependencies are a complex issue in Project Management.&#xA;Direct external dependencies may cause those issues in our program schedule:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Non-critical schedule delays (negative floats)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Critical schedule delays (negative floats in the critical path, or in one of them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Higher costs and risks derived from these delays&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Issues with resources interacting with these external sources (vendors, suppliers, engineers, construction managers, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Issues among contractors working at the same site&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project schedule issues cause all kind of risks, which need to be properly analyzed by the adequate method and software, strategically planned, managed timely, and controlled closely. Risk management is a complex topic by itself, and can be related to the nature of the activity, to the project scope and location, to the project environment, to the industry, to the contractor, supplier or vendor past performance, etc., etc.  Problem is that a contractor may try to hide issues (and their related risks) to avoid penalties and other repercussions to his job and company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good project manager and project controls manager will however be able to detect when something is not looking right. An odd cost pattern, a productivity index spike, a resource work surge or replacement, may be a hint that an issue has been hidden. The next step for the PM is to try to manage the issue(s) by interacting with the external source(s) of the risk(s), analyzing the situation together, and try to build a solution that will solve, or at least mitigate the problem for the project. I have seen this done several times, and this is what is called Dependency Management. This effort is especially important when the external dependency impacts the critical path, or causes a relevant cost increase, a serious environmental risk, or another relevant issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, we also often have &quot;indirect external dependencies&quot; that need to be detected and managed - whenever possible. They occur when a contractor's schedule have direct dependencies with another contractor's schedule. THESE dependencies can also cause several issues, costs, risks, and delays, with one blaming the other, and the PMO should try to solve or direct their best resolution, to minimize program issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To deal with these external dependencies in a large program, I have often created separate top sections, one for the Key Milestones, and other for these external dependencies, and directed the contractor schedulers to have similar structures, so that even though they can make frequent changes to the schedule, their top sections would continue to be static, and their related special links in my IMS would continue to be valid, without the need for serious maintenance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A relatively small number of external dependencies in a single project can be properly identified (special column with a flag, for instance) and controlled without the need for these top sections, even though I always use the Key Milestones one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8224" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2014-02-19T05:11:39.903" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T05:11:39.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10900" CreationDate="2014-02-18T18:38:49.410" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a facilitation problem.  It is not an issue between the different approaches.  I would suspect you have other issues in your meetings, too, if you do not have a strong facilitator running the meetings.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different mental models are valuable.  You do not want to squash it.  Deploy a strong facilitator role in these meetings, somebody that knows how to read the room, maintain the rules, and keep the meeting flowing.  Remember that the leader of the meeting is NOT the facilitator.  And because you are asking this question about methods to moderate, it sounds like you do not have the resident knowledge and skill set for this role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find this person on your team or hire him/her.  The role will pay for itself eventually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T18:38:49.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10872" CreationDate="2014-02-18T20:42:07.923" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;You can follow Scrum/Agile and have a roadmap for planning purposes&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...others need very clear workload view to understand how many things&#xA;  they have to do for the next month or so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just because you follow Scrum does not mean that you are totally blank about what you are planning to achieve in the next month/quarter/year. Here is one approach to a goal-oriented roadmap in detail:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/agile-product-management-tools/agile-product-roadmap/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;The benefit of a goal-oriented roadmap is that it shifts the conversation from arguing over features to agreeing on shared goals.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone is committed to the goals but, as @Sklivvz pointed out, the exact scope to reach those goals can be determined and prioritized from sprint to sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T20:42:07.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10908" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10909" CreationDate="2014-02-18T20:44:29.950" Score="3" ViewCount="439" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team and I have been working on a web product that is targeting businesses. Usually we can deploy the product to any client within 4 weeks, we call this a single client engagement and is by itself a project that needs a project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a product team (5 members), and the team members are very agile and can play different technical non-technical roles, i want as much to engage the team members to the different aspects of the product cycle, the design, implementation and delivery. I used to have one project manager who handle all the client engagements but now im thinking of decentralizing this role and assigning future client engagements to different team members depending on their load and availability and this team member would be the owner of this engagement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is to expose the product team to the clients as possible and give them experience in the project management part. Is this realistic, would it make any sense to do this kind of decentralization in the real world, is someone else doing this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-02-22T13:47:35.087" LastActivityDate="2014-02-22T13:47:35.087" Title="Assign client engagement responsibilities to members of each team instead of a single Project Manager?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10908" CreationDate="2014-02-18T23:05:33.633" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The core of your question seems to boil down to the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I used to have one project manager who handle all the client engagements but now [I'm] thinking of decentralizing this role and assigning future client engagements to different team members...[T]his team member would be the owner of this engagement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I parse this, it really seems to be two related questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is project ownership the same as project management?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can project management responsibilities be handled by technical team members?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to the first question is &quot;no.&quot; The answer to the second question is &quot;maybe, but it's &lt;em&gt;generally&lt;/em&gt; a bad idea.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Project Ownership vs. Project Management&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Managing a client engagement is not quite the same thing as managing a project. While the roles may be related, they are distinct. In fact, some frameworks such as Scrum draw a distinction that places the Product Owner in the role of stakeholder management and championing the product, while the Scrum Master manages the project's process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't mean the rest of the team never interacts or interfaces with the client. In fact, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;principles behind the Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; explicitly state that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The division of roles is primarily intended to ensure that the project's process is managed cooperatively, while still controlling for scope creep and lost productivity related to interrupt-driven management. This division is often remarkably effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind, I'd take the position that asking members of your technical team to manage the business interface with the client is an inherent conflict of interest. While it &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; work, it's certainly not considered a best practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Who Should Have Project Management Responsibilities?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second half of your core question implicitly assumes that project management is a hat anyone can wear. While it's certainly true that some technical leads are more than capable of managing a project, it can also be a recipe for failure for several reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, a key aspect of project management involves applying &lt;em&gt;controls&lt;/em&gt; to a project. This creates an inherent conflict of interest for anyone who is simultaneously responsible for both delivery and process control. This is the same separation of duties concern that leads responsible organizations to separate finance and IT from internal audit: asking the fox to guard the hen house is simply a poor strategic decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, project management is a separate profession for a reason. Turn the question around: could you expect your middle managers to write code as effectively as your hands-on developers, or your CEO to sort mail as efficiently as the mail room clerk who does it every day? No doubt there are developers with cross-functional skills who could make great project managers, but in general you will see a higher level of efficacy by ensuring the role is filled by someone who has sufficient skill and experience to handle project management responsibilities as &lt;em&gt;routine&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the foregoing in mind, I would recommend getting your developers as involved as possible in the project management process, but would leave the functional responsibility for project management with one or more dedicated project managers. Greater transparency and engagement within the organization could certainly lead to a more cohesive and cross-functional project team, but your mileage will almost certainly vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T23:05:33.633" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10872" CreationDate="2014-02-19T01:36:33.890" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everything is question of zoom: which level of details do you want to display and track? You could be crazy enough to make a Gantt Chart for each hours in the day, each day in the weeks and so on. It would describe tasks such as &quot;Turning On Computer&quot;, &quot;Launching your IDE&quot; ... It could be helpful to manage monkeys, but probably not really efficient for developers with the right level of autonomy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your problem here is probably similar at a different level: Do you really need to know that in three months Jon will need to &quot;Optimize DB Request&quot; after he completed the task &quot;Write DB Query&quot;. Is it producing value for your company to know this information? Jon is probably smart enough to find by himself the tasks he has to accomplish to reach a goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should however probably keep a Gantt Chart for high-level goals and commitment. Instead of planning details of the DB Integration, you just write in your Chart &quot;DB Integration&quot;, this will be the goal of your team, with duration and finish-date. During the execution of this tasks, you may notice that you are running late, need more sprint to finish. Then you can reflect this in your Gantt Chart. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should be carefully detailed in your chart will be the dependency between each &quot;goals&quot;. What will be the other &quot;activities&quot; which cannot start before completion of the &quot;DB integration&quot;? This will allow you to get the big picture and prioritize the different goals and even organize your work in your sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, the DB Integration is half-completed although it was supposed to be completed. Do you start working on another task for your next sprint or do you focus all your effort on this task? You will find the answer in your Gantt Chart by checking the impact of missed deadline for the different goals coming soon. In addition you may even roughly project the delay impact of your higher goals (Product Delivery) by updating your chart with the new information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6316" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T01:36:33.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10913" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-19T09:58:21.707" Score="4" ViewCount="775" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently started working on a data center migration project for a large financial services client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the tasks I'm accountable is risk profiling the migration based on the as-is and to-be solution planning - inputs will be things like planned migration approach, Business &amp;amp; IT Service architecture and other domain specific information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone describe any risk profiling techniques and the logic behind them? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8232" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2014-02-19T11:44:19.573" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T17:52:55.100" Title="How to do risk profiling?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;risk&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10890" CreationDate="2014-02-19T18:15:55.467" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Refactoring - why and when&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&quot;Refactoring is risky. It requires changes to working code that can introduce subtle bugs. Refactoring, if not done properly, can set you back days, even weeks. And refactoring becomes riskier when practiced informally or ad hoc.&quot; - from a Foreword by Erich Gamma to Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler et al.&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, I hope you have unit tests written for your code.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/steverowe/when-should-you-refactor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;If you don't have unit tests, think long and hard before refactoring.  Without tests, you can't know you didn't break anything.  Write unit tests first if necessary.&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want my team to do refactoring as often as it is possible&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sourcemaking.com/refactoring/when-should-you-refactor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;You don't decide to refactor, you refactor because you want to do something else, and refactoring helps you do that other thing.&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to answer your specific questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing is: when to do refactoring? after sprint ends or in&#xA;the middle?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Refactoring should be done during the sprint. As @Sklivvz pointed out, it is not a separate task. You do refactoring in order to accomplish a task for the story that you are working on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the second: how to name commits as we have convention to add task&#xA;number in comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Add the task number of whatever task you are trying to accomplish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2021-04-04T05:22:32.023" LastActivityDate="2021-04-04T05:22:32.023" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10890" CreationDate="2014-02-20T11:44:52.210" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you include refactoring within done defenation. As technical debit will grow and you need to pay it with interest. So just catogrize refactoring nessercy and include it within done defenation. Some refactoring is needed within the sprint and other within the release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8253" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T11:44:52.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10913" CreationDate="2014-02-20T13:09:54.477" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Risk assessment is a broad topic that can (and has) filled many books. There is no simple answer to your question. However, there are certainly starting points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Borrow from Security/Audit&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The security and audit fields have some well-defined threat (risk) assessment models. For example, OWASP details the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Threat_Risk_Modeling#Performing_threat_risk_modeling_using_the_Microsoft_Threat_Modeling_Process&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Microsoft Threat Modeling Process&lt;/a&gt;. While this model is really focused more in information security than project risk in general, it's still a sound approach to examining risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Commercial Risk Assessment Standards&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also a number of commercially-available risk assessment frameworks and standards. These include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.standards.co.nz/news/standards-information/risk-managment/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;AS/NZS ISO 31000:2009 Risk Management – Principles and guidelines&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-30-rev1/sp800_30_r1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NIST 800-30 Guide for Conducting Risk Assessments&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Carnegie Mellon's &lt;a href=&quot;http://cert.org/resilience/products-services/octave/index.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OCTAVE&lt;/a&gt; framework&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ISO 31000 would appear to be the most domain-agnostic, and says it &quot;can be used by any organization regardless of its size, activity or sector.&quot; Your mileage may vary in this regard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should be able to find other frameworks dedicated to non-IT projects, but you'll have to use some domain-specific knowledge to research the issues if you want anything more than a generic approach. On the other hand, if all you want is a generic approach, then any of the risk assessment models should suffice; just tweak them to suit your project's particular business domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T13:09:54.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3414" CreationDate="2014-02-20T13:35:27.927" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Start-Finish dependency from start of activity A to finish of activity B enforce that activity B finishes after activity A has started. Predecessor (activity A) and successor (activity B) refer the CPM logic, &lt;em&gt;i.e.&lt;/em&gt; timing of activity B is computed after and relatively to timing of activity A although activity B &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; end up before activity A from the calculation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start-Finish can model the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A relay&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;em&gt;e.g.&lt;/em&gt; team B supervises a site until team A arrive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note&lt;/em&gt;: if activity B has a fixed start date, it is better modeled with a hamoc activity. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A period of handover&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;em&gt;e.g.&lt;/em&gt; team B trains team A during its last week of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note&lt;/em&gt;: lag is given as a positive duration to have an overlap. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Plan as late as possible&lt;/strong&gt; when the software enforce as soon as possible planning for the whole programme: &lt;em&gt;e.g.&lt;/em&gt; activity B is a delivery which finishes just in time for the installation in activity A.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Enforce continuity&lt;/strong&gt;: e.g. activity A and B are just one continuous task which had to be split for accounting purpose and which is planned after activity C with a Finish-Finish dependency. Activity A (the latest part) is correctly planned after activity C but a Start-Finish from A to B is needed to consider them as one task. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note&lt;/em&gt;: in order to be scheduled as expected, activities should be planned as soon as possible and activity B must have float greater or equal to 0.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8252" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T13:35:27.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10913" CreationDate="2014-02-20T13:39:41.933" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to @CodeGnome's advice, you may also want to consult the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.societyinforisk.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Society of Information Risk Analysts&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://riskscience.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;riskscience&lt;/a&gt; podcast currently discussing concepts of risk tolerance that may be related to &quot;risk profiling&quot;. In a recent episode they've discussed a number of risk frameworks beyond those that @CodeGnome cited.   They are focused on information risk analysis, not on project risk analysis, but I highly recommend their work, particularly Tony Cox's work on the limitation of PIG (Probability Impact Graphs)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMI&lt;/a&gt; publishes the &lt;a href=&quot;http://marketplace.pmi.org/Pages/ProductDetail.aspx?GMProduct=00101169201&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Practice Standard for Project Risk Management&lt;/a&gt; - which is authoritative but expensive.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@CodeGnome mentions the NIST 800-30 guide about which I am skeptical; it is adequate for starting risk management, but the values tend not to be calibrated and are not useful for making decisions - PMI's standard is better, but I think it still falls short of the real goal.  I don't think &lt;strong&gt;I&lt;/strong&gt; would want to base a monte carlo analysis on risk assessments done with either system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factor_analysis_of_information_risk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FAIR&lt;/a&gt; is an expensive system at the other end of the spectrum; it is quite likely more than you need (more expensive, more thorough, and more complicated). But if you're serious about risk management, I highly recommend learning FAIR. (I can't afford it right now, but I've hung around the edges long enough that I understand the methodology, even if I lack the details.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T13:39:41.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10719" CreationDate="2014-02-20T14:49:45.917" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;Copy&lt;/strong&gt; &gt; &lt;strong&gt;Copy Picture&lt;/strong&gt; option in 2013 has worked wonders for our communication.  You can copy for screen, print, full size, etc. and it will be stored as an image on the clipboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before discovering this, PDF was our way of distributing MS Project information to non-MS Project users and it didn't go nearly as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7510" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T14:49:45.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10913" CreationDate="2014-02-20T21:25:48.867" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Before starting the assessment think about how you will present it&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@CodeGnome and @Mark C. Wallace have given you excellent references for risk assessment. However, it is good to think about how you are going to present your findings before jumping into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend presenting it in a Probability Impact Grid overlaid with the Risk Appetite of the business:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/55TAY.png&quot; alt=&quot;Probability Impact Grid&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://projectmanager.com.au/managing/risk/project-risk-and-recovery/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Each risk should be rated in terms of its probability of occurrence and impact on the project. These figures should be multiplied together to determine an individual rating for each risk as a percentage. Probability x Impact x 100 = Risk Percentage. In the table above, the cut-off points were &amp;lt;5% (green), &gt;5% to &amp;lt;15% (yellow) or &gt;15% (red)&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you estimate the probability as very low and the impact as medium, that risk will get mapped to the 2% box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2014-02-21T17:52:55.100" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T17:52:55.100" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10923" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10924" CreationDate="2014-02-21T00:01:20.963" Score="1" ViewCount="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Scenario:&lt;/em&gt; John Doe is 100% allocated to the task 'vacations' from 01/Dec to 01/Feb. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He's doing great (a lot of efforts to wake up at 11AM!), but during 20/Dec to 30/Jan John needs to be 50% 'vacations' and 50% Christmas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Christmas (for John) is not part of vacation at all. He needs to stop enjoying his newspaper on his couch and go shopping for hours and hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Gantt Chart would be something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;                01 Dec | 10 Dec | 20 Dec | 30 Dec | 01 Jan | 10 Jan | 20 Jan | 30 Jan&#xA;Vacations 100%  =====================================================================&#xA;Christmas  50%                   ========&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The 'something' is the problem:&lt;/strong&gt; Between 20 to 30 Dec, John is 150% allocated, but the piece of paper where I track his work has only a single start date / end date. I see some options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Split the task 'vacations' into two pieces, one where he's 100% allocated and another with the 50% allocation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change his allocation day by day and manually set the overlapping days to 50%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have my notebook magically understand that when John is allocated to two tasks, he cannot work 150% for that specific period of time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not versed on tracking efforts on piece of papers, so there might be a simple and elegant solution for this (I believe) normal resource allocation scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope to have software-agnostic answers, even though my piece of paper comes from Microsoft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2014-02-22T03:20:55.083" Title="How to represent changes on efforts % for a specific resource over different tasks?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10923" CreationDate="2014-02-21T01:58:56.203" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you tried &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_leveling&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;leveling&lt;/a&gt;?  It will reduce the over allocation by either reducing the work in hours or extending the duration, depending on which you fixed.  Personally, I'd manually fix the hours because I do not like the auto function, but that's just me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2014-02-22T03:20:55.083" LastActivityDate="2014-02-22T03:20:55.083" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10926" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-21T10:28:19.310" Score="0" ViewCount="101" Body="&lt;p&gt;We would like to separate % Work Complete, Work, Remaining Work, Actual work in the task updates on Project Server. For example, a resource is allocated to work 8 hours on a task. The resource records 50 % Work complete, but the remaining work should not automatically update, therefore allowing the resource to record two hours remaining work even though there may be 4 hours remaining. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this possible in Project Server 2013?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8265" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T13:58:31.930" Title="Split time recording method for tasks in Project Server" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;&lt;project-server&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10927" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10928" CreationDate="2014-02-21T13:25:12.517" Score="6" ViewCount="656" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem is not in experience, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The developers have all the necessary resources to work in a good dev environment (time, books, assistance, team leads, technical leads, senior devs, project managers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are always serious problems in their work and I am forced to assign senior devs to check and fix the errors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried to say them directly about that, but this an inefficient way to deal with the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bugs are too specific to assign and wait for the solution as the problem lies in overall approach to software development process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone can help to apply some methods for efficiently solving the problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Additional information from comments&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of the major mistake they do is not apparent. If QA tests the system, all the features work right and in accordance with requirements. But, the performance sucks, which has its deep roots in code. When we analyze the code, we find that there are scripts which take much time to run, plugins which were copy-pasted without optimizing etc. Usually, we leave the devs complete freedom in implementation stage if they are not junior anymore&#xA;  (&lt;em&gt;from a clarification in the comments&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;most of the functional and non-functional requirements are well documented and daily meetings are held so that everyone understands how the system should behave. Most problems arise when the software is already in overall system testing stage or in production. Then, while analyzing we find that the dev has used short, but inefficient way to obtain a feature OR plugins were used which were not customized for the current project. It comes out that it is not a bug but insufficient attention and responsibility, which becomes a trend if I do not fix that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8146" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-02-25T02:20:14.573" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T10:48:33.657" Title="Best way to deal with developers whose work is always unsatisfactory" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10927" CreationDate="2014-02-21T13:38:22.190" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The developers have all the necessary resources to work in a good dev&#xA;  environment (time, books, assistance, team leads, technical leads,&#xA;  senior devs, project managers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of drivers to performance issues including many you will not identify.  In an almost knee-jerk fashion, we have a tendency to blame the human and overlook the many other drivers.  We replace the human but then get the same or similar results.  While you indicate they have &quot;all&quot; the necessary resources, I would suggest really analyzing your project capabilities from the total system of process &amp;amp; procedures, tools, skills of the human resources, and intellectual capital.  I suggest this because of the word &quot;all&quot; and &quot;always,&quot; which suggests perfection and we never really get to perfection, either perfectly great or perfectly poor.  So it leads me to believe your assessment is biased against the individual developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if you rule out everything else and determine you have individuals who do not have the resident knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform, then you need to replace them.  Unlike an operations where you may be compelled to &quot;grow&quot; a resource into a higher performer, on a project, you do not have that luxury of time, nor should a customer pay for that growth.  If an enabler is under performing, replace and keep going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  No one every performs with 100% success.  Individual performance, even the hyper performers and superstars who walk among us, will bounce it in every now and again.  I am not sure how you are measuring the 80% versus 100% but either way you must accept defects in work performance from everyone.  Your PM capabilities, specifically your risk management and quality management processes, should be designed with that in mind such that the defect can be addressed before delivery and in some cases after.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at your pool of developers, it is very likely they could have the resident knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform, but that does not make them automatically great performers or even acceptable performers.  As an example, the captain of the Colgan Airlines airplane that stalled over NY a few years back had all the credentials and experience but he was always a low performing pilot.  What you have to determine is if you think you can fix their performance to be acceptable in a reasonable amount of time before your customer and your reputation goes south.  If you can, train; have a better performer shadow them as they do their work.  If you can't, replace.  If you can't replace, then escalate to your boss your risk and document everything to protect yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2014-02-22T11:37:12.140" LastActivityDate="2014-02-22T11:37:12.140" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10828" CreationDate="2014-02-21T13:40:54.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When should we mark a user story as completed in a burn down? Do we do this when the development is completed or when it's through QA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your definition of &quot;done&quot; should answer to this question but you should consider that if there is anything left to do for a story it is not &quot;done&quot; thus not burned. The idea behind burndown is to see how much work left to do for the &quot;potentially shippable&quot; product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If a task fails in QA, should we add it as a new user story or update the task hours?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;QA should be part of your definition of &quot;done&quot;, so any task that does not fulfill the &quot;done&quot; requirements gets updated its work remaining and be sent to appropriate step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the team asks for extra hours to fix the bugs due to some complexity, how can I update the total time remaining?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @Ashok said in his post, you can update remaining time at any point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7883" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T13:40:54.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10927" CreationDate="2014-02-21T16:05:15.450" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a great answer by David Espina to a similar question that was asked about a year ago:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/5757/dealing-with-a-coworker-who-keeps-making-the-same-mistakes-over-and-over/5760#5760&quot;&gt;Dealing with a coworker who keeps making the same mistakes over and over&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there was a cog in your manufacturing machine that was well worn and slips and causes the rivets on your widget to be out of specs and tolerance levels, what would you do with the cog?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;rbwhitaker: &amp;quot;but people aren't cogs....&amp;quot; This is the challenge, isn't it: treating people well, making them feel needed, wanted, valuable, while make the unpopular, non emotional decisions treating us human capability enablers exactly like tool enablers, system enablers, process enablers, money enablers...because that is exactly what we are. The hard, unpopular truth is companies, and their projects, do not exist so people have some place to go everyday. We are there to enable a capability, and we go away when we are no longer needed. We may not like how that sounds, but our feelings are not relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The performance curve, if you believe it is normally distributed, says you will most likely have very average people on the job. Current thinking says the curve is not normally distributed at all, but instead skewed to the left, i.e., positively skewed. This means few produce the most; most produce little. These few individuals who &amp;quot;repeatedly&amp;quot; perform poorly are very unlikely they will even approach the MODE much less climb to be a high performer. They could, just not likely. It's a hard, crappy decision, but you're the PM. You HAVE to make the tough decisions. And you HAVE to consider what we know about human work behavior. And you have to deliver the goods. This means, act like a leader and replace the cog and turn the machine back on and deliver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7471" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T16:05:15.450" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10927" CreationDate="2014-02-21T18:13:59.530" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;@david Espina and @Joshua McFarren have given good answers; I agree with them, but I think that it may be useful to supplement their answers based on a more projectized environment. I don't have the ability to replace anyone on my project team. They all have line managers and frequently they work for companies that aren't even under my project sponsor.   If you're in a situation like mine, &amp;quot;replace them&amp;quot; is like the advice &amp;quot;Replace the speed of light&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;What is the effect on the project?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a purely project perspective, you've done the first step - you've assigned senior devs to doublecheck their work.  The next step is to quantify that and express it to the stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our plan had been for N months; based on a review of the work packages completed in X/N months, we are 30% behind our plan.  In order to meet our minimum quality standards, we've had to retask Y% of our senior dev's time to review the work of their peers. I'm very grateful to  the senior developers, but this effectively diminishes their effectiveness.  Consequently, I now predict that the completion of the project is delayed by P months at an additional cost of Q dollars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Management may wish to consider hiring a senior dev devoted to quality assurance, which would cost less than the Q dollars estimate and even factoring in the time it would take to get the new expert up to speed, would still cost less than the Q dollar overrun that we're currently projecting.  If you're interested, I can also develop some estimates of the total effect on the quality of the project and the probability that the customer will find it suitable for business need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T18:13:59.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10927" CreationDate="2014-02-21T20:29:05.657" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Additional things you can try&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To add to what @David Espina said, you can also try the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are you writing acceptance criteria? &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/user-stories/writing-good-user-stories/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Acceptance criteria complement the story’s narrative: They allow you to describe the conditions that have to be fulfilled so that the story is done. The criteria enrich the story and make it more precise and testable.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Instead of assigning senior devs to check and fix the errors (after the fact), you might try asking the senior devs to review the code for some period of time. This might give them a better insight into what is going on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Set up a retrospective meeting (if you don't have one already) and ask the devs what can be done to improve the quality of work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If none of that works, then you may have to consider more drastic measures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T20:29:05.657" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4576" CreationDate="2014-02-21T21:42:53.773" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are you doing to make sure you get the requirements that you want? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I practiced as a BA for several years at a large company. I will tell you that this is not an uncommon problem that you are having. I can also tell you that the only way It gets fixed is when you and the BA get on the same page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, the BA is supposed to document the requirements in a manner that is easily consumed by the dev team. The dev team is supposed to produce code that works and doesn't drive support calls (that you do not have to take) also. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, getting requirements to you is only one part of a BA's job. The other part is to get the NON technical senior leaders that hold the checkbook which pays both of you to give requirements that make sense and don't change every week. I can promise you that they do not get your problem at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you start looking for work where the BA is going to be a rockstar you are going to be looking for a lot of work in your career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why not get with the BA on the side. After work, for coffee or whatever and help them understand what your needs are. Train them to ask the questions so that they are gathering the requirements in a way that you can consume efficiently. It's a win win for both of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and I coded before I became a BA and still do today so I know why your requirements need to be clean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8272" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T21:42:53.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10927" CreationDate="2014-02-22T02:39:31.190" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a developer in a very small team (we are two...) without senior devs to help us, I know the thing that helped us a lot was integrating quality concerns into our workflow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We test A LOT what we do. I consider myself to be very unreliable, so I triple-check everything I do and I force my coworker to do so: we unit test many things, and integration-test everything (with Selenium for example). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We now are QA+Dev people and even if it doubles the time we spend on features, at least the application works as expected when released vs what we did before: rushing to get as many crappy features to show our boss as possible, without checking regressions or edge cases and eventually earning the reputation of bad developers :D&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Better answer with a task list you could try&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without knowing much about what they exactly do wrong and the size of the team, here is what I would do in such a situation, based on my own experience with the same situation &#xA;(when I arrived in my company fresh out of college, all our products were borderline crappy, with bugs everywhere, bugfixes creating more bugs than before, &#xA;devs not caring, boss burned out, everyone leaving out of despair):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start integrating &lt;strong&gt;quality concerns&lt;/strong&gt; into the development process: the devs must be committed to produce quality code, and they HAVE TO stop thinking their job is coding. Their job is 1 third specification/thinking, 1 third coding,&#xA;1 third testing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make them &lt;strong&gt;unit test a lot&lt;/strong&gt; of what they code, and you can gamify (always work with devs) this by measuring &lt;strong&gt;test coverage&lt;/strong&gt; (even if it has downsides which we can discuss about later): you have a direct quality metric&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make them understand the &lt;strong&gt;end-user constraints first&lt;/strong&gt;: they need to know what has to happen and not interpret too much on vague descriptions made by higher ups (a huge problem in our team that we try to solve with user stories)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make them (or others) test the code from a &quot;client standpoint&quot;, either via &lt;strong&gt;automating the user&lt;/strong&gt; or having a guy doing checklists (very boring, automation is much better if possible). That will show them immediately how&#xA;crappy their code is: the whole app simply doesn't work as intended. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make them do &lt;strong&gt;peer review&lt;/strong&gt;: each dev is responsible for the code of another one, and has to check the new stuff from times to times: we use Atlassian Crucible/Fisheye for that and it works very well&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use a lot of gamification metrics to &lt;strong&gt;give grades to the code&lt;/strong&gt;, Sonar is a very good tool for this. For example in my team we have a grade of &quot;76 days of technical debt&quot; which means that for our code to be perfect we need&#xA;to spend around 76 days correcting it. Of course it's only technical and it's a very vague grade but at least they have a grade. They know if they do better than the last time or not, and it becomes a game to try and&#xA;lower the &quot;debt&quot;. It give you a lot of other such metrics you can try to beat too. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to make them build &lt;strong&gt;&quot;end user test&quot; documentation&lt;/strong&gt;, that THEY will play with the end user (sorry I totally lack the english words to describe it). That will make them responsible and shameful if something doesn't work. (I work after hours when I disappoint a client with an unexpected bug vs I don't care too much if my boss just goes around and tell me &quot;don't forget to fix this weird thing someone might one day notice&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing about some devs is that they think &lt;strong&gt;code is their job&lt;/strong&gt;. It's because there are rhetorics everywhere about talented developers, elite programming languages, skills etc. While in reality a dev is not much more than a factory&#xA;worker having to assemble pieces together. The complexity of the assembly phase is impossible to perfectly predetermine and that's where &quot;skills&quot; is involved, but we have to understand we do industry stuff that need&#xA;to be &lt;strong&gt;reused, maintained, read, monitored, scrapped etc&lt;/strong&gt;, just like in a factory (don't tell them that xD). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quality of the work we do is much more important than finishing soon, coding like a star, learning something new. So in my very humble opinion, &lt;strong&gt;they lack quality concerns&lt;/strong&gt;, and it's not so hard to make them understand. It &#xA;took me 6 months to totally change the way we work, from vague oral specification to dynamic written specs transformed into tests and code. And now we even sell our products :D&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8190" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-15T10:48:33.657" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T10:48:33.657" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4576" CreationDate="2014-02-22T03:07:10.067" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Focusing on being as impartial as possible, I offer two point of views:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;From the Business Analyst perspective:&lt;/strong&gt; As already mentioned, he needs to focus on the &lt;strong&gt;WHAT&lt;/strong&gt;. If he's telling &lt;strong&gt;HOW&lt;/strong&gt;, the requirement is not optimal (from a business perspective). There's the definition of optimal requirements (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iiba.org/babok-guide/babok-guide-online/appendix-a-glossary.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BABoK&lt;/a&gt;): They are expected to be cohesive, complete, consistent, correct, feasible, modifiable, unambiguous and testable. You can use it to find gaps on the requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;From the IT department perspective:&lt;/strong&gt; The quintessential task of IT is to &lt;em&gt;build according to the requirements&lt;/em&gt;. If the BA confirmed with business that what they need is that the &quot;System should email customer an order confirmation&quot; and it's agreed between parts, there's nothing else IT can (nor need!) to do. Business accepted the mail solution.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, about the communication flow: If the BA is the channel between IT and business, then:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;The business needs must be transparent to IT&lt;/em&gt; or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;IT has some level of access / understanding of business needs&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the former, I strongly believe this question wasn't being raised. So, taking the latter for granted, we have roles intertwined: BA trying to do the work of the Functional Analyst and &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; the other way round. Who knows... maybe your BA raised a similar question on a BA forum (my IT lead doesn't stop trying to offer different views for the problems I detected).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2014-02-22T03:07:10.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10940" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-23T07:27:35.520" Score="5" ViewCount="1486" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've studyed some Operations Research (maths), as well as some Project Management (for engineers) at Uni.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is fairly well known that directed Graph with weighted edged (such as a PERT Chart, and family.) can be reduced into a series of inequalities, over the weights, which can be solved optimally via Linear Programming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rKULl.png&quot; alt=&quot;pert chart&quot;&gt; &#xA;&lt;sub&gt; source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pert_chart_colored.svg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikimedia commons&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt; &lt;br&gt;&#xA;Is reduced to in equalities over the times the milestones are reached. &lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Constraints:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;br&gt;&#xA;t&lt;sub&gt;10&lt;/sub&gt; ≥ 0 &lt;br&gt;&#xA;t&lt;sub&gt;30&lt;/sub&gt; ≥ t&lt;sub&gt;10&lt;/sub&gt; + 3 &lt;br&gt;&#xA;t&lt;sub&gt;20&lt;/sub&gt; ≥ t&lt;sub&gt;10&lt;/sub&gt; + 4 &lt;br&gt;&#xA;t&lt;sub&gt;40&lt;/sub&gt; ≥ t&lt;sub&gt;30&lt;/sub&gt; + 1 &lt;br&gt;&#xA;t&lt;sub&gt;50&lt;/sub&gt; ≥ t&lt;sub&gt;30&lt;/sub&gt; + 3 &lt;br&gt;&#xA;t&lt;sub&gt;50&lt;/sub&gt; ≥ t&lt;sub&gt;40&lt;/sub&gt; + 3 &lt;br&gt;&#xA;t&lt;sub&gt;50&lt;/sub&gt; ≥ t&lt;sub&gt;20&lt;/sub&gt; + 3 &lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Optimisation function&lt;/strong&gt;: Minimise t&lt;sub&gt;50&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Linear Programming techniques can be applied to this,&#xA;the ideal ordering be determined, critical path found etc, mby using the simplex algorithm.&#xA;More advanced linear programming techniques (that I can no longer remember how to do)&#xA;can be applied to determine the sensitivity of the solution to changes in the constraints etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this all seems very logical and great.&#xA;But I've never seen the terms Operation Research or Linear Programming ever show up in my project management lectures, or in PM text books etc.&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Is Linear Programming actually used in real world Project Management for planning?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8279" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T05:33:31.557" Title="Linear Programming and PERT charts" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10940" CreationDate="2014-02-24T05:33:31.557" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any use of linear programming within the field of project management would be wrapped within a software package. All project worthy of being called a project are simply too large to have their calculations done outside of project management software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finding critical paths, resource leveling, etc. are all part of software packages. While they do get taught in PM courses and in PM texts, they are normally taught on a very small scale where manual calculations do not require mathematical models.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in short, &lt;strong&gt;teaching optimizing is done on very small scales and can be done without linear programming. In real life, we use software to deal with it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7610" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T05:33:31.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10942" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-24T10:04:13.220" Score="2" ViewCount="227" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a sprint with 2 developers. IOS and Android&#xA;In this sprint we have estimated 50 hours for IOS developer and 10 hours for Android.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Logically Android developer will finish much earlier. However Burn Down chart will still count his man-hours for further days and will say that we are working too slowly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you balance this kind of situation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8287" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T20:36:44.423" Title="How to tell BurnDown chart that resource which finished his work can't do job for another resource" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;burndown-chart&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10943" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10946" CreationDate="2014-02-24T10:33:46.233" Score="0" ViewCount="417" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I also asked the question at &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/1618/which-simple-project-management-software-running-on-our-own-intranet-server-allo&quot;&gt;software recommendations stack exchange&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;Please consider answering there since this seams to be the right place.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a simple PM software that is installed on our own server and allows time tracking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I only need:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;several projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;several users (10-20)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;several tasks per project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;time tracking, i.e. how much time was spent on each task and how much time was estimated beforehand, and ability to add some comment on a task (e.g. why it did take longer)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;web interface would be an advantage (since we have Macs and Windows machines)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Outlook integration would be an advantage, but is not necessary&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;simple overview and maybe warnings if some task is not in budget&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a software that can be installed on our server &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't need to upload files, email, GANTT charts, chat, wiki and the other stuff. The team is all on site and uses other tools for file exchange, mail etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be only really simple to enter the time one spent on a task since this is by far the most common task and done by most people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The product hasn't to be free but should not be too expensive - a monthly fee or initial costs of more than 1000€ will definitely be a show-stopper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be grateful if you could provide me some links since I have found no solution that allows all of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8288" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:50:06.707" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T08:08:37.733" Title="Looking for a simple PM software running on our own intranet server and allows time tracking" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-02-25T03:26:50.020" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10942" CreationDate="2014-02-24T11:08:07.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seems to be multiple issues in the way you are implementing agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Stories should never be estimated in hours, but only in more abstract units. There are different techniques, but the main gist is that time is never estimated explicitly. In agile, time is fixed and scope is variable: estimates are used to understand how many stories we can fit in an iteration, not how long each will take.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Agile teams must be self organizing: thus, you are asking the wrong question here: if the team has forecast they will do 10 units of X and 50 units of Y, you should trust them to get the job done, and not try do second guess or micromanage their time. Are the team elements going to cooperate on some stories? This could account for the unevenness of the estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Agile teams must be cross functional: the stories are accepted by a team, at which point the team is responsible for getting them done. If you assign stories individually you are not doing agile: stories are never assigned, and are never the responsibility of an individual.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6300" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T11:08:07.880" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10943" CreationDate="2014-02-24T12:52:25.603" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A solution for which I am biased is Invantive Vision (I work there); it allows time registration through web frontend and Outlook calendar on workflows and projects. It has customizable task flows and advanced features such as financial cash flow prognosis and complex invoicing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some competitors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timetell.nl&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Timetell&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.assistancesoftware.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Assistance Software add-on to Navision&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ikdoeprojecten.nl/page/software-voor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Software voor project management (Dutch only)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also want to check out the wikipedia page on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_project_management_software&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_project_management_software&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7423" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T12:52:25.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10943" CreationDate="2014-02-24T13:26:21.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my expirience Redmine works fine for small projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most things you mentioned are quite simple to achieve and it's not overcomplicated in general. Modules you don't plan to use can be easily disabled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's free and has good plugin repository, so you can add lacking things like budget management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7378" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T13:26:21.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10927" CreationDate="2014-02-24T13:35:49.103" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Loads of great answers here, but the thing that leaps out at me is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have said the devs deliver the functional code to a high standard- it does what was requested of it. But you have cited Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs) as the source of the issues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you actually documenting your NFRs at the specification and design stages? If it is a pre-condition for acceptance that a certain function needs to perform at a certain level, then that should be documented and specified. It sounds like your dev process would deal with that successfully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you fail to document the NFRs you cannot then blame the developers for not producing code that meets them. You cannot just assume that devs will somehow know what is required and produce code that is performant in the right ways. If you document the NFRs then you can measure quantatively how well the development process delivers against them- if you don't then any assessment is subjective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest it sounds like you've got a good development team and are just not instructing them in the right way to deliver the required outcomes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T13:35:49.103" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10927" CreationDate="2014-02-24T14:01:45.933" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kudos to @MarvMills &amp;amp; @Pierre for peeling back a layer to more deeply understand the problem. Based on OP's clarifications in comments, I agree with Mr. Mills that the core problem is NOT the devs at all, but the process. Once again we have a variant of CodeGnome's law&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OP says that the problems are performance problems that arise &quot; . . . when the software is already in overall system testing stage or in production.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll make a few additional suggestions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't put code into production that you haven't load tested /performance modelled.  Or perhaps more precisely, if your performance testing/modelling is your production system, capture the performance modelling you need from your operational system.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Insert performance tests in whatever gateway you use to move code from development to production.  Create a feedback loop to adjust the nonfunctional requirements against which the devs work. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Elsewhere in the comments you assert that you have very strict acceptance criteria. Do those include the kind of performance problems you're experiencing?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T14:01:45.933" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10949" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-24T16:49:41.853" Score="1" ViewCount="3605" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I calculate the cost of a project over a given amount of time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Solution 1: cost 30k setup and 3k/month for as long as we have the service.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Solution 2: cost 40k setup and 2k/month for as long as we have the service. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Solution 3: cost 40k setup and 5k/month for as long as we have the service + 20% for monthly service charges. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I calculated these manually (excel) over 3, 6 and 12 year periods. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for 3 years:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;solution 1: 30K + 3k(36) = 138k&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;solution 2: 40k + 2k(36) = 112k&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;solution 3: 40K + 2k(36) + 20% = 256k&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just changed out the number of months for each 3 year period and after the first 3 years didn't include the setup cost. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm trying to learn from these calculations is which solution will be the most cost effective (leaving out other factors) over X amount of years. Solution 1 for example is cheaper than solution 3, but after how many years will solution 3 be cheaper than solution 1? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if this is the proper way to do this, if it's acceptable or if there's an easier, better solution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8292" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T17:37:25.370" Title="Formula for calculating cost over a certain time period" Tags="&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10949" CreationDate="2014-02-24T17:37:25.370" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a typical problem for investment decisions. You can calculate this using current or net present values, using some expected economic lifetime. You can include a risk profile, using for instance Monte Carlo simulations, to predict the average and standard deviations of your investment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The simple approach using current value you can solve using Excel goal seek, and then tell after how many years each solution becomes the best one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An acceptable approach for capital goods (also for funding organisations) is to apply a net present value calculation without Monte Carlo simulations or alike. This is explained at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.invantive.com/about-invantive/news/entryid/802/introduction-of-the-net-present-value-for-real-estate-development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a blog item of me on net present values for investing in real estate&lt;/a&gt;. Typically you will need a % to indicate the required return on money fixed in your investment. Often 10 or 15% is used for businesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can extend this using simulations. You can do that manually, just by varying some input variables (such as initial cost, project runtime, yearly cost, etc.) and determining the net present value for each of the solutions. That should give you a feeling on the sensitivity of each solution for changes in the input variables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need more tips, please update your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7423" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T17:37:25.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10942" CreationDate="2014-02-24T20:36:44.423" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The situation your in essentially is that you have more manpower available during the first part of the sprint. Its the same if some developers would go on holiday: The work power is reduced after that point. This will result in a slower velocity for the second part of your sprint. You can reflect this in the burndown chart!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's assume your workers work with 10 units/week. Then you will get 20 units done in the first week and 10 units done in the 4 subsequent weeks. When you draw the assumed velocity into the burndown, you can consider these numbers. Then you will still see whether or not you're on schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyways, I think Sklivvz has a point here... what's you Android Developer going to do during the rest of the time? Twist thumbs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6990" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T20:36:44.423" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10927" CreationDate="2014-02-24T21:41:12.960" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have to have the option to roll those developers off the project if there is no progress, otherwise, just assign them as little work as possible and give those senior developers something else to do to move the ball downfield.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People who make the same mistakes over and over again require additional time and attention from yourself and others that could be best used elsewhere.  There could be something else going on with those developers and their mistakes could be a sign of burnout, that they are upset about something or personal problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has to be about the team, and then about being of service to the people who need the software.  If you allow the situation to continue, everyone else has to work harder to pick up the slack, and the people you are ultimately serving will get less.  Also, the people that have to pick up the slack are going to be frustrated with you and you will lose their respect and will be a less effective leader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8294" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T21:41:12.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10953" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10983" CreationDate="2014-02-24T22:18:09.347" Score="4" ViewCount="1166" Body="&lt;p&gt;How should I handle telling our developers where to put the changesm wether it be a bug or new feature using JIRA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Here is why I ask:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Issues/Bugs I think the use of the Affects and Fix version fields are a no brainier. If fix version is 2.5, I know the code needs to go into the 2.5 branch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, to me the wording at least doesn't fit these fields for stories and improvements. An improvement could affect a future version but it doesn't &quot;Fix&quot; something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the fields differently between bugs and improvements seems like a bad idea too? I think this would be confusing to the users?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Here is an example of what I mean:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bug/Issue: set Fix version to the versions you want this bug to fix.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Story/Improvement: set the Affects version to where you would like this new feature to go.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For both of these scenarios, you are saying where to put the code. Using different fields, and if you want to start spelling out &lt;em&gt;where&lt;/em&gt; the bug exists (version 1 and 2 but not 1.5) you then use &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; fields for a bug and one differently for an improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I specify what branch or version an improvement or story goes in so it's less confusing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8295" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-02-25T02:19:12.443" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T20:34:33.543" Title="Jira Agile how to specify what branch or version an improvement or story goes in so it's less confusing?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10954" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-24T22:25:58.137" Score="23" ViewCount="882" Body="&lt;p&gt;I manage a team of developers and testers that makes widgets.  We manage several dozen widgets; in addition to creating new widgets, we have to update old ones with new functionality and fix urgent bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team is understaffed, overworked and burnt out, which of course is never good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm intrigued by kanban for several reasons: (1) People only work on one thing at a time (2) Work in progress is minimized (3) Useful metrics can be extracted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I see five stumbling blocks of varying criticality for my potential use case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I can't find much information on how to deal with deadlines under kanban, and we have many deadlines.  A Sochi Olympics widget wouldn't have been useful if it was released after the olympics started.  How do you manage deadlines under kanban?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I can't find much information on dealing with tasks of hugely varying sizes.  If all we were doing was fixing up bugs and adding small new features, things would be fine.  But the aforementioned example of the new Sochi widget takes significantly more time to develop than a bug fix to an existing widget; while it can be broken down somewhat, there are still several very large tasks that need to be done before anything remotely workable is ready.  How do you prevent large projects from &quot;clogging&quot; your pipeline?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How does kanban work if the &quot;swim lanes&quot; have differing priorities?  If there's a high priority &quot;swim lane&quot; for customer-reported bugs, how does one ensure that the right person temporarily drops one task and moves to the high priority task?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The pipelines that I usually see have a &quot;Development&quot; column and a &quot;Testing&quot; column.  But if you wait until development of a feature is done before testing begins, you could really drag out the cycle.  Should development of tests be tasks of their own, so that they can get started in parallel with development of widgets?  If so, this distinction may not always be understood by the project managers who fill the backlog... and therefore doesn't seem to fit cleanly into the kanban model of popping single tasks out of the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If multiple tasks are sitting around in different &quot;Done&quot; columns, and a developer or tester gets freed up, how does one determine which task gets pulled out of the &quot;Done&quot; column?  Does kanban treat all tasks within a swim lane as equal in priority, thus leaving it up to the developer which one he wants to pull?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know some of these questions are elementary, but don't seem to be fleshed out completely in some of the free documentation available.  Thanks in advance for any feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8296" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-02-25T02:15:02.633" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T08:44:23.683" Title="Kanban: A cure for what ails me, or snake oil du jour?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10954" CreationDate="2014-02-25T09:31:55.193" Score="9" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As in all agile development, deadlines are easy. You should have your app ready for release at every &quot;commit&quot;... once a story is done, then there should be a corresponding version of the app that is potentially releasable. Therefore you will have an app when Sochi starts. The features of the app are uncertain, not the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I disagree that huge tasks are a problem. Normally stories can be sliced vertically and can become quite small. Are you sure that your tasks are not of the &quot;write the service layer&quot; kind? That would be a bad task because it doesn't really create any value for the user (in fact, it creates opportunity cost because it prevents other valuable tasks to be completed).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Stories are worked on in terms of priority which is set by business. So, whatever is on top of your stack is the first next story to be played. By definition, that's &quot;as soon as possible&quot;. If people need to drop their current task and do something else, they can do so: you move the currently &quot;doing&quot; task back and move the urgent task to &quot;doing&quot;. This is for exceptional cases because it's disruptive, and with small stories, the time to wait is really small anyways. If you need someone always able to provide support, have a dedicated &quot;bug duty&quot; rota outside of Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your team should self organize in the most efficient way: typically you are correct, the shorter the pipeline the better. In order to be efficient, you need full-stack developers that can take any story to completion. This is a very common requirement in agile.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don't know the answer to this question, but my guess is &quot;whatever delivers the most value in the shortest time&quot;. I personally would advise to move right-to-left.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6300" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T09:31:55.193" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10957" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10960" CreationDate="2014-02-25T12:34:13.780" Score="13" ViewCount="1322" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are about to start a new project which is very serious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That will be a mobile project, and the target users is the whole population of a country. The client expects more than 1 million downloads in the first month. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project is in its initial stage of requirements analysis, documentation and planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main threat to the project success is the knowledge base and skills we are going to use in development process. The mobile developers have little experience and which is more important, middle skills. They have successfully accomplished some small projects, but that is not sufficient to engage in such projects. There are the following reasons why we are in this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management is prone to hire many low-skilled and low-paid developers instead of one highly skilled and highly paid.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management believes that we have to give them the possibility to grow by engaging in such projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is not any senior developer or tech lead to guide them through this process. And for this project too, we do not have any senior mobile developer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there is a significant risk I should anticipate before starting the development. I completely agree with @DavidEspina who says in &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/10927/best-way-to-deal-with-developers-whose-work-is-always-unsatisfactory&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; answer &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unlike an operations where you may be compelled to &quot;grow&quot; a resource into a higher performer, on a project, you do not have that luxury of time, nor should a customer pay for that growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What steps should I undertake in order to be confident in my future project success? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8146" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T04:27:19.730" Title="What can I do to mitigate the risk presented by moderately skilled developers?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10957" CreationDate="2014-02-25T13:45:30.867" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since your team lacks experience, it is very risky to go ahead without a proper person to guide them. It is not an issue to hire low-skilled developers unless and until you have some person to guide them and sufficient time for them to learn and grow their skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it doesn't work that way. The client would have set deadlines for the project, and if you didn't achieve it, you end up losing customer satisfaction. So it is better to convince your management to hire a skilled person and pay him rather than hiring unskilled person and paying less. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You must try to make your management aware about the hidden cost in hiring an unskilled team. You have bear their training cost, time of studying, etc. If the quality of the product which was developed by an unskilled team is not good then you end up redoing all things from the beginning. It is waste of time, cost, and energy. You may be ready to bear it, but will your customer accept it? I am sure not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So first try to convince your management team, because ultimately you work to make your customer satisfied. If they are not satisfied then what's the point in working? If they are stern about hiring a low-skilled team then at least hire a person to guide them. Else you end up doing nothing and wasting money and losing a customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8012" LastEditorUserId="8313" LastEditDate="2014-02-25T20:41:30.660" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T20:41:30.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10957" CreationDate="2014-02-25T14:18:12.287" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the PM, you need to make a power grab play; build a case with your management that, as the PM, you need to have the authority to move resources around, including changing them out, in order to increase the likelihood of success.  However, accept that fact that you may not get the power you need to really run the project.  Many of us are in that very same boat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like many other variables that influence project results, this team variable may be one where you have little to no influence to manipulate.  Great PMs do not have control over every variable, despite we like to brag like we do.  Great PMs, however, will read early signals of project performance degradation and communicate this finding and predictions early and often as well as mitigate where possible.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of your staff plan would include the staffing requirements in terms of knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSA) required.  The KSAs will also detail the seniority of the resource within that role, e.g., entry, middle, senior, executive, or something like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the team you are assigned, analyze what you have with what you need and DOCUMENT the gaps.  These gaps are an input to your risk analysis, meaning you and your team will document the threat these gaps are causing, the exposure, and your plan to cope with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Communicate this to your management team in a non emotional, factual way and track your risk throughout the life cycle of the project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, project doom is NOT imminent.  You could end up being very surprised by your team and produce outstanding results, both because your staffing requirements may have been too pessimistic or you had a bit of luck on your side or this mid-level team is inherently talented or a combination of these and other variables.  Keep in the back of your mind that experience and grade are weak predictors of performance.  One analogy I use is what we see in aviation.  We always like the 20,000 hour, gray-haired captain to fly us around, but who do we send to war in those complex fighters, bombers, and transports?  The 600 to 800 hour 24-year-old boy and girl wonder...and with great success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your project does degrade, you will have this as one of the drivers well documented with evidence of active attempts to mitigate via your risk processes.  This makes you a great PM despite a possible project failure.  That said, grow thick skin because you will likely still get blamed and scapegoated; this the nature of politics sadly.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T14:18:12.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10961" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-25T12:56:29.370" Score="1" ViewCount="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider two tasks: Coding and Testing. Testing starts some time after Coding starts and continues, until Coding stops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I cannot reflect such a relationship with Planner Project Management. I can add the Start to Start relationship, but when I try to add the Finish to Finish relationship, I get an error:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Could not add a predecessor relation, because the tasks are already related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is that so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8315" OwnerDisplayName="Worse_Username" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2014-08-20T08:04:21.327" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T08:04:21.327" Title="Why can't there be more than one preceeding relationship between two tasks in a Gantt diagram?" Tags="&lt;gantt&gt;&lt;relationships&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10961" CreationDate="2014-02-25T17:00:00.483" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know that software package, but it does not make logical sense from a scheduling point of view. Consider the case where your development is ten days long and testing is also ten days long. But then you need to do more testing so make it 11 days- With both SS and FF constraints the package will not be able to move either the Start date or End date to accomodate and so will be in an impossible situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why not make the Testing task the same length as the development task and then just use a SS constraint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T17:00:00.483" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10963" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10986" CreationDate="2014-02-25T18:33:29.660" Score="4" ViewCount="1275" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work at a startup where I'm the only designer (UI/UX/Visual), however, we don't have an actual front-end developer, so most of the HTML/CSS development also falls on me as I'm half-decent at that as well. We have a web app which I and development maintain, but we also have a marketing website that I'm basically the sole maintainer of and I do other design work for marketing as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a product owner that helps prioritize our backlog, but we don't currently have a scrum master unfortunately, so we're trying to follow a more &quot;program manager&quot; route until we're able to hire one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We currently practice scrum for our development team, but we're running into issues with trying to figure out how to project velocity since I'm technically apart of 3 different teams—development, design, and marketing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you account for someone that is a part of multiple teams? I realize Scrum by the book says this really shouldn't happen, but when a company doesn't have enough resources, then a person will get shared on multiple teams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen answers that say you should basically group together people with a certain skill set (such as design or system architects) and have them be a completely different team that has their own sprint where a lot of their tasks will cover work for different teams. Since I'm only one person, that seems a bit overkill, but I can't think of any other possible solutions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest issue I'm having is trying to make my design process be truly agile as scoring a design can become extremely problematic. Sometimes a design will be approved the first time, but other times it'll take 5 iterations. The only thought I had was to maybe re-score every time I have to do an iteration &amp;amp; bump it to the top of my sprint since that's still technically my priority? Either way, it makes forecasting design to be really hard and if I can't have semi-accurate story points for design, it becomes impossible to say how many points can be allocated doing front-end development stories for the development team project if a design story ends up taking forever due to multiple iterations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard solutions before that say devote &quot;X percent&quot; to this team &amp;amp; the rest to the other, but the main issue with that is that my time gets drastically shifted from being design-heavy one week to code-heavy the next. So the idea of trying to allocate a certain amount of time to each team just doesn't practically work out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say the work I do shouldn't actually affect the development team, but it currently does affect their work load as they are the ones that do code reviews &amp;amp; test each ticket since I'm only a team of one and can't review my own work. So kind of at a loss for what to do here as I've currently just been jumping from design to coding primarily just based on what I deem to be more important at the moment, which isn't exactly ideal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/5027/is-it-possible-for-someone-to-be-a-member-of-two-scrum-teams-and-how-can-that-b/5041&quot;&gt;Is it possible for someone to be a member of two Scrum teams, and how can that be made to work most effectively?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8310" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-10-21T22:34:07.973" LastActivityDate="2019-10-21T22:34:07.973" Title="How to manage sprint velocity when someone does both design &amp; development?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;design&gt;&lt;velocity&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10963" CreationDate="2014-02-25T21:16:53.193" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Looks like your Scrum team does not have a Product Owner nor a Scrum Master&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you do, get your Product Owner to prioritize the stories and get your Scrum Master to receive and manage all requests for your time. Your team (and you) should focus on one highest priority story (as decided by your Product Owner) at a time and take it to 'done' status. Now to respond to your specific questions:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do you account for someone that is a part of 2 different teams?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A scrum team should be able to deliver a &quot;potentially shippable increment&quot;. So, no, it is not a good idea to have one team for design and another for development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;it makes forecasting design to be really hard and if I can't have time&#xA;  estimates for design, it becomes impossible to say how much time I can&#xA;  spend doing front-end development for the development team project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't try to estimate in hours, do the estimation in story points. All software work has some uncertainty built-in. You cannot eliminate that uncertainty. At best your team can try to improve your estimation based on what you have learnt from previous estimates. Work on the highest priority work (as decided by your Product Owner) first. Once that is done, move to the next story in priority. And discuss the design approval process in the retrospective and see if there is anyway to improve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the main issue with that is that my time gets drastically shifted from&#xA;  being design-heavy one week to code-heavy the next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is wrong with that? Your team's goal should be to deliver the features prioritized by the Product Owner - not keep you fed with design and coding work very evenly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've currently just been jumping from design to coding primarily just&#xA;  based on what I deem to be more important at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is exactly what Scrum is designed to avoid. Context switching kills productivity and grows frustration. Refer anyone who wants your time to the Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it possible for someone to be a member of two Scrum teams, and how&#xA;  can that be made to work most effectively?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have worked with a database developer who was a member of more than one scrum team. Resource contention and priority across multiple scrum teams can be resolved in a Scrum of Scrums meeting between the Scrum Masters and the Product Owners of the two teams. You focus on doing the prioritized work on hand. You also update the remaining hours to complete open tasks on a daily basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2014-02-26T14:16:31.923" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T14:16:31.923" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10961" CreationDate="2014-02-26T00:29:28.223" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use SS with the number of days lag you need.  Then load the duration of the succeeding package so it will end the same as the preceding task.  When you baseline, the finish dates will end like you want.  That is the only time when you need the ending dates to match.  After that, your finish dates need to move based on how you load actuals, which is how you know things are going south.  Therefore, only constrain the start based on the preceding package and let the schedule move finish as it should.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The preferred way would be to only use FS constraints.  Meaning, you would have testing finish with something that triggers testing.  Some product is delivered to the testing team to get them to start working.  That is what I would exhibit.  If development continues, simply start a new package.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T00:29:28.223" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10794" CreationDate="2014-02-26T02:39:37.640" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you are an intern and have graduated and are ready to start working somewhere, you are in a really great position.  Ask yourself if you want to work for the company you are interning for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you decide you do, then think of how you can make yourself useful as possible.  Look for moments to arise where you can do small things for the members of your team to move the project forward.  Never think of yourself as a manager of others but as a manager of yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8294" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T02:39:37.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10794" CreationDate="2014-02-26T05:45:42.860" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project management is the art of transforming an uncertainty into certainty. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just keep six constraints under your consideration:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt; 1. Quality (“No compromises and must be Good only”)&#xA; 2. Time (“Fast &amp;amp; Acurate”)&#xA; 3. Cost (“Best and competitive - but don't forget your company budget too”)&#xA; 4. Scope&#xA; 5. Risk&#xA; 6. Resources/people&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Life Cycle of a project thoroughly depends on these. Even though certifications like the PMP and PRINCE2 are designed to recognize and standardize project management. It helps professional to learn a lot through various examples. The core responsibilities of a PM are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;- Be the walking, talking project scope&#xA;- Own the project budget&#xA;- Track task status/completion&#xA;- Manage all possible project communications&#xA;- Keep a close look on lists of projects/modules/components/jobs&#xA;- Prioritize between jobs/projects/modules&#xA;- Run interference between all the stakeholders&#xA;- Own the project management methodology&#xA;- Create Project schedulers and keep them updated&#xA;- Track project deliverable&#xA;- Explain/update  stakeholders about what is going on with a project&#xA;- Very Important - Be open to Accept/take blame &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, my experience conclude that there is no low level or high level system in project management. All of what required is &lt;strong&gt;your approach and planning to deliver a project&lt;/strong&gt; :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8318" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T05:45:42.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3258" CreationDate="2014-02-26T07:11:56.630" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally I feel you should first focus on getting the relevant work experience. You can start by contacting the local PMI chapters and meet people with PM experience. You can look for volunteer opportunities which can help a lot in learning about Project Management. You can also read various &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.simplilearn.com/resources/project-management-articles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Management blogs and articles&lt;/a&gt; available online, various forums like pmzilla.com, LinkedIn groups where you can start a discussion and get connected with many experienced PMs. &#xA;You can also go for entry level PM certifications such as CAPM or PRINCE2 which can add an extra value to your resume and helps you getting a basic understanding of Project Management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8321" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T07:11:56.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10954" CreationDate="2014-02-26T08:44:23.683" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;for point 1, have a look at the fixed-date class of service. That is for when an individual item needs to be done by a deadline. If an &quot;entire project&quot; needs to be done by a certain date, then that has nothing to do with Kanban, it is simply project management. No tool will help you meet a deadline if you start too late. The rest depends on your underlying process. One interesting idea that the Kanban community talks about is the use of Monte-Carlo Simulations in predicting project durations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For point 2, variation in item size is expected. Yes big items can affect flow. If this is an issue I recommend one of the earlier process steps be something like &quot;split item&quot;. Don't try and make them all the same size, just make them smallish so they flow better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For point 3, I think you mean classes of service. Swim lanes are just one visualisation tool. Each class of service should have it's own rules for pulling into the system, and into each work column. It is almost never a good idea for someone to &quot;temporarily drop an unfinished task&quot;. Let him finish the task, and then when he goes to the board he will see a lot of choices about what to &quot;pull&quot; next. Item priorities will probably play a big role in this decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For point 4, I think it is a bit of a shame the way the &quot;typical&quot; Kanban board is illustrated too. I like to have a &quot;Write Acceptance Test&quot; column to the left of the &quot;Development Column&quot;, and then something like a &quot;Customer Test&quot; to the right. None of this is determined by Kanban itself. You can have whatever columns make sense. However it should not be tasks that flow across the board, but items of customer value. (The tasks correspond to the columns, or activities within the columns).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For point 5, whatever makes sense. I like finishing things before beginning new ones, so I try and work on the rightmost columns first, but it all depends. Different combinations of columns and classes of service can have different policies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="763" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T08:44:23.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10657" CreationDate="2014-02-26T08:52:09.477" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that the most common are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cycle time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lead time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Throughput work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work in Progress &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a daily basis, I prefer to analyze cumulative flow diagram and time tracking metrics.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7285" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T08:52:09.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10957" CreationDate="2014-02-26T09:27:16.680" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Appoint a lead programmer, someone to make decisions on the architecture level, and implement the majority of the core code. Ideally the lead programmer or a very small core team should design the basic program before taking on more team members, but I guess that it might be difficult to arrange things so in your current situation. In general, if you have got a choice fewer people over a longer time span is usually vastly preferable to more people over a shorter time span, and if you have to take on more people you will want to wait for the project to be ready for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your SE activity looks like you are not a programmer yourself, so rather than trying to assess the programming skills of your team directly you should try to get your team members to assess the skill levels of one another. Try making every come up with a quick basic design plan, and have them all discuss the plans. After that they should as a group have an opinion of who would be the best lead, if you are lucky there is even consensus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if this approach will work with Armenian work culture, it requires your programmers to exert what might be an uncomfortable level of honesty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8316" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T09:27:16.680" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10750" CreationDate="2014-02-26T12:23:10.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is on a thin line between project management and team management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For team management I would say to put one person on the &quot;unknown&quot; for a couple of days to get some basic actions performed. Write all this code in a project called &quot;unknown-playground&quot;  (in your case &quot;selenium-playground&quot;) and commit this code to the repository so anyone can contribute. &#xA;From my experience, 3 days on an unknown is quite enough to finish a project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This team member is declared as an &quot;expert&quot; on the topic and is in charge to increase the knowledge bank further as needed. Usually, talking to an external expert/vendor is not required, but very recommended. That includes asking questions online, which is my personal favorite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note - this person writes to the playground project. I recommend having the rest of the team use the code snippets from the playground project to use in the real project. Do not bind the expert to all features related to this technology, only for acquiring knowledge or they will be isolated from the team which is bad. This expert should guide the rest of the team and the rest of the team should be encouraged to use this knowledge bank as often as possible.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a project management perspective, I think the most useful thing to do is to set deadlines on the playground project. For example, lets use selenium: add a feature - load a page, click a button. And this should be delivered internally. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not agree on putting more resources - usually this only generates noise rather than helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Appointing a single authority to lead a technical side of the project most likely proves itself more efficient to the project and the team member's self esteem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a team leader, I had the unfortunate experience to deal with forced deadlines on projects with unknowns. This approach allows me to make the deadline more than you'd expect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you do, do not tackle the unknown at the end of the project or it will fail for sure. Talk about it, be true to your customer, I am sure they will appreciate your effort, perhaps they will even be able to connect you to someone who can help (happened to me once). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7194" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T12:23:10.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10973" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-26T12:44:17.670" Score="5" ViewCount="675" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does PM get to have final say about UX?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am very disturbed by this. throughout my entire career I was really into UX (if before UX was coined). But every time my feedback was shot down by PMs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been to seminars, I've read books and researched online. As far as I understand it, PMs are responsible for meeting the project's requirements in the given deadline. The UX designer however is responsible for the UX vision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems logical to me that these 2 roles collide in some way, but who should have the final say about UX? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I gathered some UX relevant tasks for my team, should I approve it with the PM?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7194" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T15:14:52.777" Title="should UX decision be approved by PM?" Tags="&lt;user-experience-design&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10974" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-26T12:46:58.180" Score="10" ViewCount="894" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm new to this Agile way of doing estimates. For a long time I have been working in the classical way of estimating the whole project up front (roughly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I have started to look into the Agile way of making estimates, and I understand the quality it brings to the estimates. Anyway, I have not yet grasped the way I can communicate the estimates to my customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My customers are used to the old way. The say they want this and this done, please tell me how much (in hours) it will cost. I will then go ahead and make a series of &quot;qualified guesses&quot;, and finally end up with a total of hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The customer then accepts this, and let me start working. In almost all projects I have been working on, the &quot;Cone of uncertainty&quot; is lurking, and the estimates rarely end up as first promised. Much of the time I also end up giving away hours for free, because the customers come up with tasks during the project, and say something like &quot;this was a part the original estimate&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I therefor see a great potential using an Agile estimation method.&#xA;My only problem is how I can get my customers &quot;on board&quot;, since they are used to a figure up front.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8320" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2014-02-26T12:52:09.080" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T21:34:37.547" Title="Agile estimation and communication of price to customers" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10973" CreationDate="2014-02-26T13:22:53.320" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does PM get to have final say about UX? No, the client holds that power. But the PM should verify if building a UX vision is part of the project scope or not. If it is not a project deliverable and if by working on UX tasks the project scope/time would increase then the PM is correct in rejecting those suggestions as scope creep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should you do? For larger UX items, you should prepare a case and present it to the client. Try to convince the client about the potential advantages and if possible talk in the language of finance. Inform the client about potential revenue which your UX vision could bring in. If the client finds ROI then a separate budget can be allocated for the UX changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For minor UX items, try to inculcate a culture within the team so that each developer thinks about usability/user experience while coding. So that UX items are not treated as new tasks/re-work but those things get covered as regular work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T13:22:53.320" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2765" CreationDate="2014-02-26T13:46:44.193" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another point to add is that the team often estimates the work ahead of doing it. Time based estimates are particular to the people completing the work. Relative sizing (Story Points using Planning Poker) is the size for the team. It is not people specific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journey-to-better.com/2013/07/story-points-do-not-equate-to-time.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;time and story points are not equivalent&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8327" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T13:46:44.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10977" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10980" CreationDate="2014-02-26T14:43:45.380" Score="1" ViewCount="195" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a java developer, if I want to refactor some code, I can usually just go ahead and do it. I might need to approve it with team lead or head of R&amp;amp;D, but generally, if it is a small refactoring task (make static methods to singelton) and the team is fine with it, I can go ahead with it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If my code was part of API, obviously it would have better supervision, but it is not. As long as the code works fine, and the tests pass right, everything is well. PMs are never involved in this process because they do not always have the experties, interest or &quot;jurisdiction&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is somehow intuitive to a lot of companies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes UX is like a refactor to the UI. &#xA;We have a web application. Our application has a page where you select a value from a drop box and then click on button &quot;execute&quot; which opens a confirm dialog. A UX expert told me the &quot;Confirm&quot; dialog is bad UX and not required. Users will not select a value from the dropbox AND click execute without meaning to do it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I talk to head of R&amp;amp;D, we decide to go ahead with the task. We make sure it doesn't break any API and that all tests pass and we complete the task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it was a big UX change, we would have notified the users (like google did with instant search), but it is not. Moreover, this is the first version! so no customers to notify. But generally, It is a UX responsibility to make sure users have a nice transition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the PM is angry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why? Why do PMs treat UX differently? It seems unfair. &#xA;I mean it is obvious this is because UX is visible unlike code refactoring, but why do PMs treat it differently?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even more so it seems to me unhealthy to the company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I wrong here? Should PMs have so much control over UX? Is there no best practice for this in the UX/PM world to stop these roles from colliding all the time? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7194" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T16:56:35.133" Title="PMs treat UX differently - why?" Tags="&lt;user-experience-design&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ClosedDate="2014-04-02T05:52:30.063" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10977" CreationDate="2014-02-26T16:36:09.190" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Because UX is a forward-facing element.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention in your question,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If my code was part of API, obviously it would have better supervision&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The UX &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; the API to the end-user, if you think about it. You don't have to look farther than MS Office to see how changing the experience can cause problems even if it's now &quot;better&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3490" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T16:36:09.190" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10977" CreationDate="2014-02-26T16:41:23.287" Score="2" Body="&lt;h1&gt;tl;dr&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM has (or should have) sufficient power to ensure that the scope is completed on time, on budget and is suitable to the customer.   The PM is the executive agent for all of the stakeholders, and for the sponsor.&#xA;The solution to the problem is to recruit the PM as an ally rather than an adversary.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Does the PM have a vested interest in controlling UI changes?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes.  The PM has a vested interest in all changes. Changes have been proven to affect schedule, cost and quality.  Changes to UI have a particular impact on quality and on the customer's perception. So the PM is within his rights to examine the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Solution&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this is an example of needless conflict. The PM wants to assess the change&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what effect will it have on cost?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What effect will it have on quality?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What effect will it have on the customer's perception?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can offer that analysis, you can recruit the PM as an ally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T16:41:23.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10977" CreationDate="2014-02-26T16:56:35.133" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe you hit the nail on the head when you said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I mean it is obvious this is because UX is visible unlike code&#xA;  refactoring&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project Managers tend to assert control over all aspects of the application, but especially over what he/she, and the user, can see and interact with. In this case, it seems like a relatively simple change and I'm a bit surprised that the PM got so bent out of shape over such a small impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This particular instance may have more to do with the principal of the matter. If you were supposed to discuss with him the UI/UX change and you didn't, it wouldn't matter how small or large the change was, if the PM is the type of person that gets angry when he/she is not informed about changes that they believe impact their area directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should PMs have so much control over UX?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, that's a tricky question. Yes, and no. PMs should definitely have some control over UI/UX because they tend to be more seasoned with understanding the business, the users, and the interactions between the two. So, they tend to offer very valuable input on what will work well for your user base, and what won't. However, at the same time, if a PM is &lt;strong&gt;too&lt;/strong&gt; involved in this process, it can definitely hinder efficiency and effectiveness. A good PM knows how to offer solid feedback on the UI/UX design and what will work for the user base, while also realizing that the technical design and implementation aspects are best left to the development team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there no best practice for this in the UX/PM world to stop these&#xA;  roles from colliding all the time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Best practice&quot; will differ from business to business. My personal approach as a PM is to give enough input to the technical team so that the interface is efficient, easy to use, and makes sense to the user base. However, I don't bother with mundane details. If it's a small change, and it needs to be made....I say &quot;do it!&quot; But our business seems to work better with the PM focusing on exactly that: Project Management. Being a PM means making sure that all aspects of the project are managed efficiently and effectively. When a PM gets too involved in one area, or gets his/her ego hurt when a small change is made without his/her approval, it tends to hurt the entire project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8005" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T16:56:35.133" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10974" CreationDate="2014-02-26T17:59:56.580" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Strive for a collaborative partnership model&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should strive for a partnership model where your development team is able work closely with the customer towards project success. Try the points suggested here in your pitch:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timecockpit.com/blog/2013/10/15/NRWConf-2013---How-to-sell-and-estimate-agile-projects&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Your Argument against Waterfalls: Reduce Waste&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;With waterfall-like methods, all good ideas must come at the beginning. A great idea in a late process cycle is treated like a threat. Does that really make sense? What about the &quot;aha&quot; effect when people first see and try project results? Best ideas often appear during the first hands-on experience.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;With waterfall we see the risk of delivering what has been originally asked for (“written in stone”), not what is needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the end of the day the whole idea of agile development is to reduce waste. We don‘t want to produce more than we really need.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are able to persuade your customer, &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumology.com/an-overview-of-agile-contracts/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;then you can go with either of these types of contracts&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Capped T &amp;amp; M&lt;/strong&gt;: This is T &amp;amp; M (Time and Materials) up until a fixed agreed upon upper bound (or cap) to protect the customer by providing a limit to their total exposure.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Incremental Delivery&lt;/strong&gt;: Structured with regular inspection points, and at each inspection point the customer makes a decision; they can continue with the development of the product or they can stop development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are not able to persuade the customer, then you may have to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/uploads/presentations/Planning-Contract-Agile-Projects-Ative-2012.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;consider the Fixed-everything project approach suggested here&lt;/a&gt;. However, make sure to follow the rigor of the process recommended for arriving at velocity to form the basis of the cost and schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T17:59:56.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10974" CreationDate="2014-02-26T19:36:09.830" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The subject of how to price an agile contract is both too opinion-based and too broad for a single generic answer. However, a number of books touch on the topic, and there are certainly plenty of starting points to form your own process. I list some external references below, and include some of my own experiences and recommendations as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Some External References&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some places you might start researching the current body of thought on this issue include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xprogramming.com/ftp/Optional+scope+contracts.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.xprogramming.com/ftp/Optional+scope+contracts.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/About/All-Articles/articletype/tagview?tag=agile+economics&quot;&gt;https://www.scrum.org/About/All-Articles/articletype/tagview?tag=agile+economics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/articles/agile-contracts&quot;&gt;http://www.infoq.com/articles/agile-contracts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://coactivate.org/projects/agile-contracts/money-for-nothing-change-for-free&quot;&gt;http://coactivate.org/projects/agile-contracts/money-for-nothing-change-for-free&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://martinfowler.com/bliki/ScopeLimbering.html&quot;&gt;http://martinfowler.com/bliki/ScopeLimbering.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilecontracts.org/agile_contracts_primer.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.agilecontracts.org/agile_contracts_primer.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A little searching will yield many more documents, articles, and blog entry results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Some Distilled Thoughts&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Some Types of Agile Contracts&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having been doing Scrum contracting for a long time, I have my own empirically-refined opinions on the subject. In general, if you accept axiomatically that agile frameworks trade fixed scope for incremental delivery and project visibility, then you can structure your agile contracts in a couple of ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Shippable Increments&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, you should be producing a shippable increment at the end of each Sprint. As a result, contracts based on a per-sprint or shippable increment basis are a great substitute for fixed-price contracts.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Time and Materials&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile frameworks like Scrum provide customers and stakeholders regular inspect-and-adapt inflection points such as Sprint Planning and the Sprint Review. This allows contracts to be based on time and materials, but remain flexible on scope throughout the lifetime of the project. The client can then declare victory whenever the project has delivered sufficient value, or cancel the project whenever the costs exceed the expected return.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fixed Iterations&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet another option is fixed time and flexible scope. For example, a client may present a backlog that the team estimates at 26 sprints. The contract can specify a fixed number of sprints, and then the client and team work together to maximize the value delivered within the agreed-upon number of iterations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to prefer time-and-materials or fixed iterations in my own contracts, but your mileage may certainly vary. There are certainly other ways to structure such contracts; you need to find out what works best for your organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Hard Requirements for Agile Contracts&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the only truly fixed requirements of an agile contract are that the contract must:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Foster collaboration between the team and the client. &lt;em&gt;(See &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot;&gt;customer collaboration over contract negotiation&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide for changes in features or scope, because that's the very definition of agility. &lt;em&gt;(See &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot;&gt;responding to change over following a plan&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile projects are still constrained by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle&quot;&gt;iron triangle&lt;/a&gt;. You cannot contractually constrain a project in all dimensions (e.g. time, scope, and cost) simultaneously and still expect success. Because agility is about embracing change, I personally recommend leaving scope as the unfixed dimension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's certainly possible that there are edge cases where it's best to fix scope and unconstrain one of the other dimensions, but in my own practice that has rarely been the best choice when following Scrum. Your personal experience might differ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-02-26T21:34:37.547" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T21:34:37.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10953" CreationDate="2014-02-26T20:34:33.543" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Jira, being an issue tracking system, uses bug terminology&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Fix Version/s&quot; is used in JIRA built-in reports and views for indicating:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When issue is not yet done: In which version it is currently planned to fix a bug or implement a feature.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When issue is done: In which version a bug was fixed or a feature was implemented.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Affects Version/s&quot; is used only for bugs - which version a bug was found in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/32073/best-practice-for-using-affected-versions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;See this thread for more info.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T20:34:33.543" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10927" CreationDate="2014-02-26T21:23:42.443" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all I don't feel that unsatisfactory developers will be at instance should be a part of a developing company. But also if there is no other option then the usage of an automated tool will be the best option in managing the developers. We are a service based industry and also keeping the track of work we have been using the cloud based &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.replicon.com/olp/task-management-software.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;task tracking tools&lt;/a&gt; which makes a significant difference in the operational level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8331" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T21:23:42.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10963" CreationDate="2014-02-26T22:37:23.750" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your rather long question, this mixture of issues stood out as the gist of what you're really asking about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sometimes a design will be approved the first time, but other times it'll take 5 iterations. The only thought I had was to maybe re-score every time I have to do an iteration &amp;amp; bump it to the top of my sprint since that's still technically my priority? Either way, it makes forecasting design to be really hard and if I can't have semi-accurate story points for design, it becomes impossible to say how many points can be allocated doing front-end development stories for the development team project if a design story ends up taking forever due to multiple iterations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I parse this, a couple of things jump out at me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are consistently taking on stories that can't be completed within a single iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are carrying unfinished work across iterations, rather than placing unfinished stories into your backlog for re-prioritization by your Product Owner.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are viewing velocity as a management target rather than a trailing average or a range with a confidence interval.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is only tangentially that you are matrixed across multiple teams; the real issue is that there is no rigor in your organization's iterative process or inspect-and-adapt cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Stories Shouldn't Cross Iteration Boundaries&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story should be completable within a single iteration. Any story that can't be completed within an iteration is generally either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Incomplete due to improper estimation or unforseen roadblocks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An improperly-decomposed epic that lacks sufficient granularity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These stories should be marked incomplete, assigned no points towards velocity or burn-down, and placed back onto the Product Backlog for discussion during the Sprint Retrospective, re-prioritization by the Product Owner, and further decomposition or analysis during some future Sprint Planning meeting when the story is back on the docket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Unfinished Work is Never Automatically Carried Forward&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any story that isn't complete is &quot;not done.&quot; It goes back into the Product Backlog, where the Product Owner may or may not find it relevant to the Sprint Goal of your next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if it remains a top priority, the work should probably not be carried forward as-is. If it was not completed within the sprint, it should be carefully reviewed to determine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it was incomplete due to time or budget constraints.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If there was some process issue at play that prevented its completion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it was mis-estimated, and how it should be estimated in future.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it was improperly decomposed, and how it might be broken up into more actionable stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are certainly other things one can review about incomplete work as part of the inspect-and-adapt cycle, but the short list above has generally addressed the vast majority of real-world cases I've run across. Feel free to adapt or invent your own style of introspection; just make sure you and your organization take the time to analyze the root cause of incomplete work, and the cost to the project of leaving any discovered issues unaddressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Velocity Isn't a Management Target&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity should reflect a team's &lt;em&gt;capacity&lt;/em&gt;. If you are working on multiple teams, this will certainly affect the capacity of all three teams, and should be reflected as a visible cost to the projects you're involved with. This cost is most often made visible through a reduction in real velocity over time, a change in the slope of the project's burn-down, or through the number of incomplete stories left over at the end of each iteration. Such visibility is a Very Good Thing&amp;trade;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is generally best to calculate velocity as a trailing average over a number of sprints. I personally like to use the statistical mean of the past three months' worth of iterations, but you can use any sliding time box that makes sense for you. If your velocity wanders across more than two standard deviations from the mean, you probably need to revisit your planning and estimation process, along with uncovering any hidden roadblocks that might exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The utility value of tracking velocity is that it gives you a measure of confidence in future estimates. If you know that your velocity varies from 5-20 points per iteration, then expecting 20 points of stories to be completed every iteration is simply not a realistic expectation of your current process, but you could probably feel confident about delivering 5 points every single sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you or your organization start to use velocity as a goal, rather than a detective control to determine if your process is out of whack or a planning tool to determine how many iterations the current backlog will take to complete, then you are using the wrong tool for the wrong job. Velocity is simply statistical data; it is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a tool for developing fixed-scope schedules or delivery dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use your &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; velocity to determine how many iterations you are likely to need to complete a given set of stories. Your Product Owner can then adjust the project's scope to change the number of estimated iterations required to meet management goals, but he can't manufacture velocity (incorrectly pronounced &quot;productivity&quot;) by gaming the numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Keeping Costs Visible&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No invisible work, ever!&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;mdash; CodeGnome's Law of Transparency&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you say that it sometimes takes five iterations for some design element to be approved, that isn't inherently bad. Iterative development often means things get refined or redone multiple times. However, if designs aren't being completed during a single iteration, it often means there's a process problem such as a lack of cross-functional team skills or a poorly-designed feedback loop in the design process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether the multiple iterations to refine a design are good or bad is a judgment call for the organization. In either case, they represent a &lt;em&gt;cost&lt;/em&gt; to the project, and this cost should always be visible. If it's simply the cost of doing business in your organization to do multiple redesigns, then this should be looked at as an acceptable cost, and there's no reason to sweep it under the rug. If it's considered sub-optimal, then the organization needs to keep that cost visible as a constant reminder that the relevant processes should be inspected and adapted until the cost becomes acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Visible costs are the grease that keeps the agile wheels turning smoothly. Costs that are higher than expected are a call to action, and their existence means that your process is properly detecting those higher-than-expected costs. This is not a process &lt;em&gt;failure&lt;/em&gt;, but a process &lt;em&gt;opportunity&lt;/em&gt;. Treat it as such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T22:37:23.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10989" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10990" CreationDate="2014-02-27T10:50:46.620" Score="24" ViewCount="3601" Body="&lt;p&gt;A typical difficulty in implementing time tracking in companies is that employees are rarely engaged with time tracking tasks, seeing them as a waste of time. I'm wondering if a gamification approach to time tracking would help, or if it's possible to identify metrics that, shown to employees, activate a positive feedback loop in time tracking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification&quot;&gt;gamification&lt;/a&gt; increase employee engagement with time tracking?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6411" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-02-27T16:33:14.087" LastActivityDate="2016-10-26T06:54:43.733" Title="Would gamification increase employee engagement with time tracking?" Tags="&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10989" CreationDate="2014-02-27T11:34:36.070" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team uses Lego to track work done and what we're spending our time on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was our last iteration (two weeks):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7HHMU.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The section at the front shows task completion. White bricks are added when a task is developer done and committed, orange bricks are added when they're &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;QA&lt;/a&gt; complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The section at the back shows what people spent their time on by day. We have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Green: time working on tasks for the team and project specific&#xA;meetings (estimation, planning, etc.).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Red: time spent fixing flaky&#xA;tests, broken builds, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blue: meetings external to the team (developer&#xA;communities of practice, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Black: misc interruptions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is how the same iteration looked when laid out flat:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/q0EBv.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(We had some issues with our &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_integration&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;continuous integration&lt;/a&gt; (CI) in that iteration!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It works quite well, and people are more inclined to play with Lego than they are filling in information on a tracking tool!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastEditorUserId="8313" LastEditDate="2014-03-01T03:03:57.790" LastActivityDate="2014-03-01T03:03:57.790" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10991" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-27T15:12:29.497" Score="8" ViewCount="4465" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just had a little discussion about this with a few coworkers but we did not come to a conclusion yet. We have a bunch of projects that are actively maintained and developed using scrum, with fixed two week sprints, TFS backlog integration, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also have a separate project, called &lt;code&gt;Mobiltec.Framework&lt;/code&gt;, which is intended to be an extension to the default .Net framework (most of our projects are C# projects). This utility project is intended to support every other project in the company with general functionality not bound to any specific product, and is located in it's own TeamProject in TFS, independent of any other projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are in the process of starting anew with this one, in a migration to TFS 2013, and I immediately wondered:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What TFS process template will I use with this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is obviously specific to TFS, but I think the question stands generic enough: what is the best method to use to develop such on-demand utility project? Scrum makes absolutely no sense to me for it. Features are rarely added to it, and it is quite stable. There is no concept of sprint, and we don't have a special team to handle the project at all (any developer in the whole company could theoretically add things to it, if they are not product specific).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel there should still be a backlog of sorts with tasks / user stories mapped to it to at least track what is being done, but I fail to see how I should integrate this in the whole agile pipeline. Should I just completely ignore the 'iterations' idea (both conceptually and in TFS) and just develop and release directly from the main source, creating user stories and bugs along the way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an example of a project like this, in which the functionalities are all on demand and there is no intrinsic concept of sprints or iterations, on which I could base our project on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8341" LastActivityDate="2015-06-16T21:43:13.147" Title="Is there an Agile or Scrum method without Iterations / Sprints?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10973" CreationDate="2014-02-27T15:14:52.777" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You lack clarity about your role, the role of the project manager, and the necessity for change control on a formal project. It is extremely likely that you lack the delegated authority to make resource allocation decisions for the project, and that attempting to set engineering priorities directly would bypass the project's change control process. You should clarify your role and the limits of your authority with the functional manager that you report to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Roles of Design and Controlled Delivery&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The UX designer however is responsible for the UX vision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. From a project perspective, the UX designer is a &lt;em&gt;resource&lt;/em&gt; responsible for delivering user interface design tasks related to the project's goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The vision for the product is ultimately the responsibility of the stakeholders, although it's quite likely that they look to you&amp;mdash;perhaps even rely on you&amp;mdash;for subject-matter expertise. However, unless you have been explicitly granted the authority to unilaterally define the interface without an approval, oversight, or budgeting process, it seems likely that the organization has not made the limits of your role clear to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The PM returned an email saying &quot;Please [don't] do any changes to the GUI without PM approval&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The UX designer is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the person who sets project priorities or allocates budgetary or engineering resources. While recommending design improvements is part of your job, deciding whether the project should expend resources on &lt;em&gt;implementing&lt;/em&gt; the design changes is the job of the &lt;em&gt;stakeholders&lt;/em&gt;, who then implement their decisions through the chain of command for the project. In your case, that appears to be the Project Manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, the Project Manager is generally the person responsible for enforcing the project's change control process. Change on a project generally must be controlled, and on a large project it must be &lt;em&gt;formally&lt;/em&gt; controlled. Bypassing the change control process is not only stepping on the political toes of the Project Manager, but it may also put the project itself at risk in a variety of ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Integrate with the Process&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User interface design should be part of a project, not outside it or above it. Therefore, you should be following the same change control process as the rest of your project team. It's probably a good idea to talk to both the project manager and your functional manager to identify the project's core processes, and to delineate the roles and responsibilities your organization has defined for your position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's often all it takes to clear up misunderstandings. If it is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a misunderstanding, but rather a role that you feel limits you in ways you can't tolerate, you have some hard career choices to make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T15:14:52.777" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10989" CreationDate="2014-02-27T15:19:53.670" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, gamification of time-tracking shows that you've either failed to do anything worthwhile with time-tracking data, or you've failed to communicate the worthwhile things that you have done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.liquidplanner.com/blog/15-reasons-why-you-and-your-team-should-be-tracking-time/&quot;&gt;random website&lt;/a&gt; gives these as the top reasons to track time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Data for future project costing/estimation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The ability to value work in process (especially if you have flat rates).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Data for processing payroll efficiently.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Data for billing/invoicing automation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Insight into costs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you use your time-tracking data to create accurate estimates? Do you ever make meaningful decisions based on the value of work in progress?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest reason that I have seen that employees find time-tracking a waste of time is that the data is not honest and that it is not used for any valuable purpose. If the time-tracking data is valuable and that value is communicated, then professional employees will also value time-tracking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you EVER move numbers or instruct employees not to track every hour worked, then they know that the data is bad and won't be useful for creating accurate estimates. You need real, honest data, and then you need to show how you used that data to create a more accurate estimate for future work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work in progress should be valued according to tasks being accomplished, not hours worked. You must prove to your employees that your valuation of work in progress affects meaningful decisions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have salaried employees, the only thing they really need to track for payroll is their use of vacation/sick leave/PTO etc. That's not &quot;time-tracking.&quot; If you have hourly employees that really get paid by the hour (and not an artificial &quot;you will always log exactly 40 hours each week&quot; directive), they will have plenty of monetary motivation to log their time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you truly bill your customer in an hourly fashion, professional employees will fully comprehend the importance of logging hours so that the company can bill the customer. If you're on fixed price contracts, employees know that this is a lie. If there is a legal/contractual requirement that you log hours on a fixed price contract, explain that legal/contractual requirement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Data is not insight. This goes right back to numbers 1 and 2. Show that you make meaningful decisions based on time-tracking data and professional employees will embrace tracking time so that the decisions can be better.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8340" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T15:19:53.670" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10989" CreationDate="2014-02-27T19:25:08.690" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that gamification would help as well as make the timetracking more meaningful.&#xA;The first gamification element to consider is feedback. Let the employee know their input performance right away (i.e.: how many end-of-day updates they missed/made).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Follow that up with leaderboards. Make it public who is more successful at making their targets (top n teammembers; I don't think its useful to humble the bottom n). In a large organization you may need to limit the leaderboards to departments so that the comparisons are more meaningful to the participants. Plus it's going to be the department manager who is responsible for improving the participation level. Maybe a department level leaderboard to show which departments have the best participation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Badges can be issued for improvements/successes in participation. i.e.: successfully updated 5 days in a row, 4 weeks in a row, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You probably should reward participants on a variable reward cycle. So that there is a tangible benefit to performing well in the 'game.' Variable so that there is no feeling of entitlement nor is it boring that 'the' top scorer, who can never be displaced for whatever reason, is always the winner. For example the person who earns the most badges this month gets a designated parking spot for the month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that most companies that I've worked for, adhesion to the time tracking polices was part of the job description, a high-level of competency in performing this job duty should be rewarded (higher evaluation during performance appraisal = increased merit raise or bonus). Therefore performing well in the game would also provide a tangible benefit. Performing poorly would lead to increased training, counseling, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As noted in other responses above, gamification is not going to be as helpful if there is no useful purpose to gathering time tracking metrics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8352" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T19:25:08.690" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10989" CreationDate="2014-02-27T23:28:47.520" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm wondering if a gamification approach to time tracking would help...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that gamification has the potential to solve the problem with engagement, but it also generates some serious risks of unintended consequences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if very engaging, employees may spend too much time on time tracking / playing the game; this may make work more fun but may distract everyone from the core mission of the business&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;employees may learn to 'game the system' to generate more rewards from the game, while providing worse data (examples: if employees are rewarded for completing the tracking quickly, they may make mistakes; if employees are given a &quot;most improved&quot; badge, they may intentionally fall behind only so they can improve)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;...or if it's possible to identify metrics that, shown to employees, activate a positive feedback loop in time tracking.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is definitely the best approach: show metrics to employees that communicate the value of this data. As Dane explains in &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/10989/would-gamification-increase-employee-engagement-with-time-tracking/10993#10993&quot;&gt;his excellent answer&lt;/a&gt;, if you provide information to your employees on &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; this tracking data is useful to the company, then they should have a positive response to providing accurate time tracking data. &lt;em&gt;&quot;If the time-tracking data is valuable and that value is communicated, then professional employees will also value time-tracking.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7638" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T23:28:47.520" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10991" CreationDate="2014-02-28T11:53:09.243" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Team Foundation Server 2013, there are 3 templates available for team project by default&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 2013 &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;MSF for Agile Software Development 2013&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;MSF for CMMI Process Improvement 2013&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of them &lt;strong&gt;agile&lt;/strong&gt; enough to accommodate your needs, but I think the first two are more convenient. &#xA;The Scrum template is designed to support the Scrum methodology as defined by the Scrum organization. However, if your project should not deliver value in iterative and incremental way configured by sprints and iterations, you are free to not configure them at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In TFS 2013, there is a command 'Configure schedule and iterations...' for each team project. You can leave this part without configuration and use the scrum template just for writing and tracking work items. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing you need, is , while creating a new work item, the iteration should be the project itself. E.g. if you create a task for Mobiltec.Framework, the iteration of task will be Mobiltec.Framework, and &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; Mobiltec.Framework-&gt;Release 1-&gt;Sprint 1. By doing this, you may create queries with a clause 'Iteration-&gt;&gt;Mobiltec.Framework' and have all the user stories, bugs, tasks in one place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also customize each project template according to your needs using &lt;a href=&quot;http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms243782.aspx&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides this, in TFS 2013 you may have different teams working on the same project and can see each team's contribution to the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8146" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T11:53:09.243" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11003" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-02T09:05:22.257" Score="2" ViewCount="1015" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am quite confused. Is a Requirements Traceability Matrix (RTM) a requirements validation technique or a requirements specification technique?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8398" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-03-02T14:17:07.903" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T04:25:01.910" Title="Is a Requirements Traceability Matrix a validation or specification technique?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11003" CreationDate="2014-03-02T14:36:43.173" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Traceability is a project control that is useful for tracking complex requirements and (in some cases) for measuring the completeness of a set of requirements. However, it is rarely &lt;em&gt;intrinsically&lt;/em&gt; useful for validating a specification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What Tracing Does and Doesn't Buy You&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requirements_traceability&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;traceability matrix&lt;/a&gt; is primarily useful for tying complex requirements together. To the extent that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A requirements traceability matrix may be used to check to see if the current project requirements are being met[.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you might conceivably view it as a tracking tool. However, while &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requirements_traceability#Definitions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;requirements traceability&lt;/a&gt; can be used to &lt;em&gt;trace&lt;/em&gt; verification by tying test artifacts to requirements, the mere existence of the matrix itself provides no actual means of validation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T14:36:43.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11006" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-02T20:22:28.873" Score="0" ViewCount="68" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a team of developers and everyone has graduate degree,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but they are just degrees... no practical experience, they just studied it so that they can get a job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before, we used to teach them all required languages (PHP, HTML, CSS, Mysql etc)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But now we think they need some common sense&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ex: when we say make a signup form, they should know atleast that it should contains email,password, confirm password, submit button.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may look silly to you but some are making forms without password.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So i think we need to teach them some more things (common sense?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Previously i used to tell them to watch all famous websites and how they are building each and every page but that doesn't seem to work much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can 'make' them better programmers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTE: I Doubt mods may close this as its too general but it has become a big headache for us&#xA;and clients thinking of us as dumb, just because some devs doing silly things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8399" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T20:37:36.753" Title="Whats the best way to 'make' a web developer" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-03-02T23:40:49.480" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11006" CreationDate="2014-03-02T20:37:36.753" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, there is no such thing as common sense.  Second, identify what knowledge, skills, and abilities you need for the work you have.  Third, identify the gaps between what you need and what you have with your hired employees.  Fourth, train to close those gaps.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No magic formula.  Work performance is based on what people know, how they apply what they know, and how good they get through practice.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have the time or capability to train in a competent way, then hire replacements.  This means you need to research a bit on performance predictors.  Here's a hint: degrees and certificates are of low validity as it relates to predicting performance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T20:37:36.753" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11003" CreationDate="2014-03-03T04:25:01.910" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;BABOK v2.0 (Business Analysis Body of Knowledge) section 4.2.2 says the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Requirements traceability identifies and documents the lineage of each&#xA;  requirement,  including its backward traceability (derivation), its&#xA;  forward traceability (allocation),  and its relationship to other&#xA;  requirements. Traceability is used to help ensure solution &#xA;  conformance to requirements and to assist in scope and change&#xA;  management, risk  management, time management, cost management, and&#xA;  communication management.  It also is used to detect missing&#xA;  functionality or to identify if implemented functionality  is not&#xA;  supported by a specific requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience with documents labeled &quot;Requirements Traceability Matrix (RTM)&quot; has been spreadsheets assigning unique identifiers to decomposed system requirements and organizing those requirements into a hierarchical tree. Those requirements also list the approved change requests that spawned them and should list (but often don't) the test cases that test them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you break it down, the RTM is a tool for finding related requirements, tests, approvals, and any other work items you care to track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, you will likely use the RTM while specifying the system in order to make sure that your requirements are cohesive and work together, and also to see how your requirements are meeting your high-level business requirements. Where it should be most useful is validating all requirements by ensuring that every requirement has at least one test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Final answer: &lt;strong&gt;both&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8340" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T04:25:01.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10646" CreationDate="2014-03-03T13:43:37.370" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For my PMP I built a spreadsheet that showed the projects I had worked on, the dates, and the allocation of hours by phase.  The proportion of hours was estimated, but defensible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That was sufficient evidence to pass my audit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T13:43:37.370" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10991" CreationDate="2014-03-03T13:46:14.837" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question raises a big question to me - is this actually a project in itself, or something that will be altered as part of other projects?  If the latter, it may not need anything around it other than source control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Removing the TFS element from this question, Kanban is an agile methodology without time boxing that could be applied. These situations are where you need to look to the agile principles, rather than processes, and come up with a solution that fits your needs.   You could approach this from starting with something similar to Scrum and remove the time boxing if this is where your experience lies, but you will need to consider how you will ensure to progress on the project (if that is important).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6825" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T13:46:14.837" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="55" CreationDate="2014-03-03T18:33:52.127" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a great question! It inspired me to take action and do some research of my own. I interviewed one of my techie colleagues, and I wrote this blog post titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://dana-about-pm.com/2014/03/03/mondays-interview-tech-talk-with-ciprian/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Monday’s interview – Tech Talk with Ciprian&lt;/a&gt;. I asked some more questions related to the same issue: &amp;quot;how much tech is too much tech in PM&amp;quot; :). I hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Here's a snippet from the interview that helps further answer this question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dana:&lt;/strong&gt; When the developers give an estimate for a technical task, how important it is for the PM to know what is being told to decide if is reasonable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ciprian:&lt;/strong&gt; Extremely important. The project manager needs to have a clear understanding about any technical task being estimated. Deciding whether or not the estimate is reasonable, the PM needs to have a very good an honest relationship with the developer (or designer) giving the estimate. The PM needs to ask a lot of questions to try and understand fine aspects of the task, trying to keep in mind any technical roadblocks that might throw off estimates. One last point is that the PM must clearly report estimates particularities to client service or directly to clients so that they will have a clear understanding about what are they paying for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being technical as a PM basically can help improve the relationship between the PM and developers/designers, since they'll speak the same technical language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dana:&lt;/strong&gt;  When the developers specify a technical impediment, how much involved should the PM be to resolve it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ciprian:&lt;/strong&gt;  PM needs to be aware of any technical impediment, especially ones that will affect overall architecture. The PM and developer (or designer) must work together to come up with a reasonable solution. The PM must not rule out getting advice from other technical persons or anybody who can provide consultation on the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check out the &lt;a href=&quot;http://dana-about-pm.com/2014/03/03/mondays-interview-tech-talk-with-ciprian/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;rest of the interview&lt;/a&gt; for more information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8413" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T05:48:42.123" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10750" CreationDate="2014-03-03T19:22:07.773" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with all the aspects (primarily from regular project management standpoint) and comments made here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess the wrinkle comes in terms of 'agile' nature of the project. I suggest below steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accommodate for training&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set the productivity levels of members (learning new tech) to low number (say 50%) ramp it up as they go by&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Associate them with 'expert' developers to provide guidance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let them have planning meeting at the beginning of each user story; set up a task for that&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have code reviews and database script reviews when the code is promoted&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Repeat the process when new team members come on board or existing members with new technologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned by other members, ensure release planning is complete before leap into the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HTH.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8415" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T19:22:07.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10957" CreationDate="2014-03-03T20:04:22.617" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to make your case to management is to use metrics. As suggested by @David, I would document the risks and start monitoring them. Once the risk probability starts raising and starts affecting the timeline (ensure to identify at the earliest stage), take these numbers to the senior management and try to convince them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you are better off hiring a consultant to lead the team for the project duration (rather than hiring for a permanent position). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8415" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-06-27T04:27:19.730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T04:27:19.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11016" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11742" CreationDate="2014-03-03T22:21:16.217" Score="2" ViewCount="1587" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a team of developers that are building and maintaining a web application for our business. We use JIRA Agile to organize development items, plan sprints, track issues etc. One team works on the whole web application, though the application itself is divided into three different modules(Currently we just use the label field for this). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sprint burndown is an excellent tool for measuring our short term progress, however I would like to track our long term projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be possible to get three separate burndowns corresponding to the entire backlogs of each product (unrelated to the sprint progress). The purpose of this would be to get a guestimate for the final date that each module will be delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that makes sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm open to changing the JIRA structure as long as everything stays under a single project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5768" LastActivityDate="2015-09-11T17:27:20.320" Title="Single project, multiple modules -- how to track module burndown in JIRA?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11016" CreationDate="2014-03-04T03:33:56.940" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can create a &quot;Superboard&quot; that pulls in everything with a certain tag and then only use its reporting function. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Atlassian is actually pretty good at their customer support. So I would encourage you to reach out to them. Here is where they answer this question in more detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/192039/epic-burndown-charts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/192039/epic-burndown-charts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T03:33:56.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11018" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11021" CreationDate="2014-03-04T10:07:27.627" Score="7" ViewCount="621" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to estimate an overhead due to the effect of interruptions on an employee. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: Imagine an employee who is responsible for repair services. He gets called on a daily basis by external people who have questions, like to get advice etc. In addition the employee now and then gets called to help out in meeting preparations etc. All these &quot;side tasks&quot; appear as interruptions since they are not the employees main task but there is no one to do them other than him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Now I am looking for studies that have researched the effect of such interruptions on the effectivity and efficiency of work. The goal is to get a percentage value of the time he is spending on their core tasks to estimate the interruption effect in hours.&lt;/strong&gt; The result should look something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time for core task: 100 h&#xA;Interruption Overhead: 10 %&#xA;Interruption time: 10 h&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is to estimate if interruption is acceptable for a given workload or needs to be reduced by means that depend on the given situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8424" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T16:32:00.220" Title="Estimate employee overhead due to interruptions" Tags="&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;&lt;work-environment&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11018" CreationDate="2014-03-04T11:34:26.850" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You want to calculate Overall Labor Effectiveness.  Here is a document that discusses it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kronos.com/ads/effective/30/Kronos_effective.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.kronos.com/ads/effective/30/Kronos_effective.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hate to send you to Wikipedia but this write-up shows an example of how to calculate based on what appears to be a manufacturing job:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overall_Labor_Effectiveness&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overall_Labor_Effectiveness&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The overall OLE score will show you the employee utilization for the job you are measuring because it will reduce the availability metric.  So availability for this guy's case will be reduced by all the time he gets called away for other productive work but ALSO normal, unscheduled downtime that we all have in a given 8-hour day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, I think you can the OLE metric to your employee costs allowing a decent estimate for overhead interruptions but it may include, too, downtime.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T11:34:26.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11018" CreationDate="2014-03-04T13:42:59.870" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results from cognitive research are largely statistical. You will not find a single canonical source for your question that can be expressed as a fixed percentage and that will be accurate across all domains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are, however, some generally-accepted rules of thumb for task switching, interrupted flow, and operational overhead. Each of these items is lightly touched on in the sections below in order to provide you with a starting point for your own research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Task Switching&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interruptions are a form of task switching. The American Psychological Association &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apa.org/research/action/multitask.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[S]hifting between tasks can cost as much as 40 percent of someone's productive time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the more task-switching someone needs to do, the less they will get done. It's a direct hit to productivity, although the precise amount of the reduction may vary by person or situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Cost of Interrupted Flow&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that interruption overhead isn't just the amount of time someone is being actively interrupted. It also includes the amount of time necessary to resume &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;flow&lt;/a&gt;, and to recoup any cognitive framework and working memory they were using for the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/105895/57614&quot;&gt;related question&lt;/a&gt; on Programmers Stack Exchange quotes from &lt;em&gt;Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams&lt;/em&gt; which posits a &lt;strong&gt;minimum of 15 minutes&lt;/strong&gt; (in addition to the actual time spent on the interruption) to resume flow, but it's important to note that this is stated as a minimum, rather than as an average or a maximum. In practice, that means an interruption at a critical moment could potentially result in the entire rest of the day being wasted due to interruptions in flow, but your personal mileage will certainly vary greatly in this regard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Organizational and Framework Overhead&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to task switching, you'll want to take organizational and process overhead into account. Please see &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/10650/4271&quot;&gt;this related answer&lt;/a&gt; for a more complete discussion of overhead other than that which is strictly related to interruptions and task-switching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T13:42:59.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11023" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11027" CreationDate="2014-03-04T14:59:30.010" Score="4" ViewCount="2340" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am wondering how you guys handle changes to Assignee and status changes. In other system we have had multiple assignees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: &#xA;I pickup a work item from the sprint back log. Change status to development, and assign to myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I am done I move the ticket to ready for test, then qa picks it up and assigns their self?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this how the rest of you do this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8295" LastActivityDate="2018-08-14T16:40:59.087" Title="JIRA Statuses and Assigned users" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11018" CreationDate="2014-03-04T16:32:00.220" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have worked both in Waterfall setting as well as Agile. From time to time it is proven that resources cannot be productive at their work for 6-6.5 hrs a day. Remaining time goes into status meeting, collaboration and 'other stuff' that deviates them from being productive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would agree with above suggestions that task switching is not a good idea at all. I would let the resources focus and get things done one at a time and know with decent certainty when they would get done, rather than start 10 tasks and not knowing when they might be done with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HTH&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8415" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T16:32:00.220" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="452" CreationDate="2014-03-04T17:07:52.153" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am Dana and I work as a project manager in a digital studio. I have 3 years experience in the field, in which I've helped build several web and mobile apps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are my answers, I hope this helps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What situations have you been in when you've fallen into the trap of becoming a micro-manager?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Especially when working with beginner/medium level designers or developers, I find myself trusting them less than I should. I start making design or coding decisions just to make sure we are moving fast enough, or in the right direction with the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What are some strategies that you've used to avoid becoming a micro-manager?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trust your team! Give them the responsibility of the task - everyone will try to behave at their best if they know the client sees their work directly, and you are not there to clean it up. They will definitely check everything twice and be more aware of the quality of the design / code they produce. &#xA;Be patient that they will also reach to the right conclusions - even if slower than you :). And maybe they'll surprise you and come up with even better solutions!&#xA;Just make sure you state the requirements loud and clear, give exact &amp;amp; clear specifications for them to start with. Then, just &quot;inspect what you expect&quot; and give constructive feedback. By allowing your team to make mistakes and learn from them, you also allow them to grow and become more and more confident. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8413" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-03-05T03:03:10.927" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T03:03:10.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11023" CreationDate="2014-03-04T21:23:22.770" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;We create tasks under stories&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use Jira Agile (formerly GreenHopper). Much of the work of the team within a sprint happens in &quot;Work&quot; mode. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second half of the sprint planning meeting, we create tasks based on how the team plans to implement each story. This you can do by clicking on the &quot;Create Subtasks&quot; button in the issue detail view. Typically, we create several tasks for larger stories. When a team member picks up a task for the next priority story, they will assign it to themselves and drag-and-drop it from the &quot;To Do&quot; column to the &quot;In Progress&quot; column. When they are done, they will drag-and-drop it in the &quot;Review&quot; column. The status of the task will change to &quot;Resolved&quot;. The Product Owner can drag-and-drop individual tasks to the &quot;Done&quot; column, if they are separately verifiable, or drag-and-drop the entire story. They will now be in &quot;Closed&quot; status. Once all sub-tasks are closed the parent story will be automatically closed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These columns in &quot;Work&quot; mode can be customized to suit your workflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T21:23:22.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11023" CreationDate="2014-03-04T21:23:39.083" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When the task is created, it is automatically assigned to the person responsible for checking tasks before approving for development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Marking it as Unassigned means it is approved for development and it shows up in the sprint backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a task is picked up from the sprint backlog, it is assigned to the current user and its status changes to development (in progress).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the task is moved to &quot;ready for testing&quot;, it is auto-assigned to the tester or the testing team lead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Marking it as &quot;testing passed&quot; assigns it to the person responsible for the deploy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7913" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-08-14T16:40:59.087" LastActivityDate="2018-08-14T16:40:59.087" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="11028" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-04T21:45:30.543" Score="12" ViewCount="7459" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a large company that is in the process of transitioning to Agile. I suspect our ratios for the various roles are way off, especially for the technical writers. What is the ideal head-count ratio for the various non-managerial roles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;developers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;testers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;tech writers (producing install guides, release notes, data dictionaries, and other technical docs)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;user-doc writers (producing user guides and training guides)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8432" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-03-05T01:05:13.707" LastActivityDate="2015-10-21T12:35:29.380" Title="What's the ideal ratio of roles on an agile team?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;roles&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11028" CreationDate="2014-03-05T01:21:03.273" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The ratio depends on the company and how software and project management oriented the management team is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, the majority of staff in an agile software team were testers, because the corporation focused on user experience and prior to delivering the final product to the customer, they needed to ensure that the product was &quot;bug free&quot; and that a high quality product was delivered to the clients to ensure receiving additional projects from these clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, each team had a corresponding project manager, two developers, two to four testers, one tech writer, and a project coordinator assigned for each project. We did not have an specialized user-doc writer as the tech writer along with the project coordinator helped with these type of tasks. This ratio worked well in our agile team; customers were happy, and it seemed like an ideal ratio for our team. Keep in mind each developer was working on two to three projects simultaneously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also know of a multinational corporation that does not even have specialized roles in their &quot;software development&quot; team, and hire developers to wear all the hats: do development in all layers, do their own testing, write technical documentation, and specs etc.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach is not only a bad practice of using resources effectively (specially that each developer has different skill sets and strengths), but also increases the chances of delivering a defective product due to not having a proper development methodology from initiation to closing. As a result of this, projects in this team are delivered with bugs, budget is not properly allocated, projects are not delivered on time nor within budget resulting in dissatisfied customers and instead of developers being utilized to create new features of the product, they spend most of their time fixing existing and new bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8434" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-03-07T01:31:07.160" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T01:31:07.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11028" CreationDate="2014-03-05T02:04:27.580" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're still thinking in terms of strongly-defined roles rather than cross-functional teams, then you're not making a successful transition to an agile process. Agile teams may need all of the skills you've listed, but each of those roles is actually the responsibility of the &lt;em&gt;whole team&lt;/em&gt; rather than of individuals, and it is up to the team to identify who is best-suited to perform the relevant tasks required to produce a feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Team Size&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no single canonical answer to this question. A lot depends on the organization, the project, and the available resources. The recommendation from most agile practitioners is 4-9 people; I typically recommend teams of around 7, plus or minus two people depending on the size or complexity of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agility requires a full set of cross-functional skills on the team, but also requires that the number of communication channels be kept at a manageable level. The recommendation for smaller team sizes is primarily because larger teams aren't capable of the high-bandwidth interpersonal collaboration required by agile frameworks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the following equation for finding the number of communications channels within a team (expressed as Ruby code):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;# n * (n - 1) / 2&#xA;def channels people&#xA;  people * (people - 1) / 2&#xA;end&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you can quickly see that a 7-person team has 21 communications channels, while a 9-person team has 36. A 20-person team has 190 channels, which generally violates the core &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot;&gt;agile principle&lt;/a&gt; that values &quot;[i]ndividuals and interactions over processes and tools.&quot; You will find many agile team processes that perform poorly for larger teams; the 15-minute daily stand-up is just one such example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Cross-Functional and Self-Organizing&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile teams must be cross-functional, meaning that while certain people may know more about certain knowledge domains than others on the team, the knowledge and responsibility is shared (often through pairing or other high-bandwidth interactions) rather than siloed into vertical skill sets or strongly-defined roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, teams succeed or fail &lt;em&gt;as a team.&lt;/em&gt; In order to do so, the teams must be empowered to be self-organizing. In practice, that may mean that Bob writes the documentation while Alice codes, and Mallory writes the acceptance tests that Joe runs on the continuous integration server. However, Bob isn't writing the documentation because he's a technical writer; he's writing the documentation because he's pairing with Alice on some feature, and decides he has the bandwidth to write the documentation while Alice is running the developer-level spec tests on the code the two of them have just collaboratively written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, agile frameworks are built on the idea that the whole team swarms over each story, parceling out the tasks to the people who are most adept or have the most bandwidth to get a particular task done. Since the team is small, and the framework encourages constant n-way communication about task and story status, it is easier to simply hold the whole team accountable at the story level than to try to micromanage swim lanes and hand-offs at the project level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Teams in Transition&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For software teams in transition, I generally advocate the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;5 developers who work &lt;em&gt;interactively&lt;/em&gt; with everyone else to ensure that TDD/BDD specs are written, code is documented, and features are tested according to the &quot;definition of done.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 code-savvy QA expert who can work alongside the developers to help them write better tests, and who can maintain the continuous integration server.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 code-savvy technical writing expert who can work alongside the developers to ensure that the product is documented &lt;strong&gt;as it's being written&lt;/strong&gt; (not after the fact) and that the developers are writing documentable code and keeping code comments and documentation up to date.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On some technical projects, you might need someone with database or network design skills, or some other specialty. If so, go ahead and add a person or two, but remember that their job is to spread expertise throughout the team, rather than act out a unique role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these people are &lt;strong&gt;full members of the development team&lt;/strong&gt;; developers, testers, writers, architects, and analysts are all equal participants in every single aspect of an iteration. For example, testing is everyone's responsibility, and not relegated to a second-class team member. Testing should be part of your definition of done, and may include unit tests, integration tests, acceptance tests, or anything else your project has defined as part of the &quot;definition of done.&quot; Since it's everyone's responsibility, you don't need a unique role for testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ditto for documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because these teams are in transition, and are rarely adept at self-organization or collaborative development, you will probably need to allocate some project time (and therefore budget) to training, framework education, teaming exercises, and developing an agile mindset within the team. Simply throwing a few people with vertical skill sets into a room and calling them an agile team will not make it so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, it's worth noting that this section focuses on software development; that's simply for illustration. However, the underlying principles of collaboration and n-way communication during iterative development is equally relevant in any other domain. Only the skills required to round out the team should change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-10-21T12:35:29.380" LastActivityDate="2015-10-21T12:35:29.380" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="631" CreationDate="2014-03-05T07:04:44.093" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Besides everything that was mentioned above, in my case I also have to deal with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;availability (good people are always involved on more than 1 project,&#xA;timing is crucial) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;budget of the project (on high rates we go for the&#xA;rock stars, on lower rates we help beginner/medium level people gain&#xA;some experience as well - and ask the advance level people just for guidance or feedback) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;importance/value of the project (if there's a&#xA;client that could generate a lot of referrals and everything needs to&#xA;be top notch, even on a small budget, we bring in the specialists)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And indeed, balance is key. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8413" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T07:04:44.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11033" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11035" CreationDate="2014-03-05T16:19:44.703" Score="1" ViewCount="133" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new to project managment. I am trying to apply a task chart for different activities for my personal life as a &quot;project&quot;. The chart has different areas, goals, taks, and schedule. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pherhaps you could help me based on your experience on different projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes days or weeks after a task is scheduled , you realize that it's going to be part of a new bigger task and/or that is composed of different smaller tasks with well defined dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suposse I scheduled task A . and I later realize that what I need to achieve the goal is not just A but A+B+C+D.&#xA;And I have to assign dates to each one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By now I just keep the new tasks as changes and comments of the original task A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I wonder what is going to be the best practice in project managment to deal with that change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if just change the name of the original task in the chart so it  represents all the different tasks it has now. for example change it to : &quot;task ABCD&quot;.&#xA;an keep the aditional tasks BCD and its dates and comments as part of &quot;Task ABCD&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or create a whole new &quot;bigtask&quot; . define better each subtask , write the change somewhere. and move the original task into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My concern is that a couple of weeks later I have a clear view exactly what was the progress, the steps done, why it toke more time etc. and the best way to visualize that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;note: if you have specific bibliography I'll appreciate that you share it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4448" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T19:07:15.840" Title="What's the practice to include new subtasks in a project chart?" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11033" CreationDate="2014-03-05T19:07:15.840" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Project Management is not best suited for tasks in your personal life&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A project has a start and an end - such as building a house. Tasks in your personal life are ongoing. Looks like you are on the right track with a task chart. You seem to be mixing it up with Project Management. I suggest you check the features of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2419258,00.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Task List or To-Do Manager software&lt;/a&gt; to see what options are available for you to meet your needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the same, let me try to answer your questions in the context of project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't know if just change the name of the original task in the chart&#xA;  so it represents all the different tasks it has now. for example&#xA;  change it to : &quot;task ABCD&quot;. an keep the aditional tasks BCD and its&#xA;  dates and comments as part of &quot;Task ABCD&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not a good idea. With the added subtasks, everything about Task A may change - start date, duration, end date... All traces of the earlier task may be lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Or create a whole new &quot;bigtask&quot; . define better each subtask , write&#xA;  the change somewhere. and move the original task into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, create a whole new &quot;bigtask&quot; as a summary task. Move the earlier Task A as a subtask under it. Create new subtasks B, C and D also under the summary task. This way your earlier Task A will be preserved mostly. This is probably the closest you can get to address your concern.&#xA;Here is how your Task A will look in typical Project Management software:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ttRmv.png&quot; alt=&quot;Task A before change&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here it is with the summary task and the other new tasks added:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Grjan.png&quot; alt=&quot;Task A after change&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T19:07:15.840" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11036" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-06T10:27:17.480" Score="1" ViewCount="2659" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working in a company that wants to migrate their development process to Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The company did not have much of a development process up to now but had well organised sales and marketing departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time the company wants to start an R&amp;amp;D department in the East Coast from scratch (currently there is an R&amp;amp;D dept in the West Coast).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question I 've been asked is to propose a new organizational structure for the company that will encompass the new development team in the east coast and foster development in the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The company works in different projects at the same time, (possibly unrelated) and plans to have around 30 developers in the near future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I proposed a scheme which is project based, where each project consists of the basic Scrum roles (Product owner, Scrum Master, and Development Team). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teams WILL be spread across sites, with some of the members in the East coast and some of them in the West coast. One reason is that for some projects there is prior knowledge of existing platforms required and this knowledge is in the West Coast whereas the main development workforce will be in the East Coast. Scrum master will be located at the site were the majority of the development workforce of the project will be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I expect this to gradually change as development efforts are moved in the East coast, but this will not take place immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Projects will be coordinated by a person that assigns priorities to projects and can move people from one team to another (The scrum of scrum master).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that it is incredibly risky to do all of this things at once but this is a decision I cannot alter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The questions I have are the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you think the above setup is reasonable? If not what do you think are the downsides&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In terms of HR management, who should be responsible and what would be his/her role in the chart. For example, who should decide on hiring/letting staff, making staff appraisals? Will a separate manager be required? where does he lie in the whole picture?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I think a separate manager will be required in the East coast dealing with day-to-day activities. (Requests for leave? appraisals? anything a typical PM would do?). How do you think will be the best way to handle this?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8452" LastEditorUserId="8146" LastEditDate="2014-03-06T13:01:17.903" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T14:35:17.090" Title="Scrum and Organizational Structure" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;&lt;distributed-team&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11036" CreationDate="2014-03-06T10:41:01.407" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is much flaws in process which you mentioned. My suggestion is, as you said team should not have 30 members. Ideally in Scrum, the team should be 7 to 9 members. It includes dev team, testers, scrum master and product owner. I would suggest to divide your team to smaller units and have a Business Analyst who manages the team goals, Scrum Master to ensure the team follows process, (Business Analyst and Scrum Master can be same person), Project Manager to ensure the project goals are met and a HR to managing resource, leave, appraisals etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should have separate person as HR to take care of hiring, appraisals, leave management, employee welfare, motivation etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be better to have separate managers in East coast and West coast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need any clarification in roles and responsiblities or process of Scrum, please refer &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agileevangelists.wordpress.com/2014/01/23/intro-on-agile-scrum/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://agileevangelists.wordpress.com/2014/01/23/intro-on-agile-scrum/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8012" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T10:41:01.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="75" CreationDate="2014-03-07T10:14:49.467" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Gantt charts are not compatible with Scrum because in scrum dependencies of task are not fixed i.e it keeps on changing which in result can increase the complexity of gantt chart.&#xA;So, I suggest not to use gantt charts in scrum - Avinav&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8465" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T10:14:49.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11039" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11064" CreationDate="2014-03-07T11:15:03.840" Score="2" ViewCount="237" Body="&lt;p&gt;The case is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are 9 people involved -&#xA; 3 engineers&#xA; 2 sales&#xA; 2 marketing&#xA; 1 client/project manager&#xA; 1 general manager&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Engineers are related to marketing, sales and project managers. Sales and marketing also has relations. Each engineer covers its own specific area of expertise and they can replace each other on rare occasions. There are no projects involved just a stream of daily tasks. And each engineer performs support on sales request for new or existing clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My questions is - which agile techniques should be applied to hold the organization as one unit and control it as it was doing projects. In other words keep everybody involved in planning and execution?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Currently we use:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Work on iterations of (1-2 week).&#xA;Kanban board with estimations.&#xA;Time tracking.&#xA;Daily stand up meetings.&#xA;Reporting of total tracked time compared to actual estimates in hours for improvement over estimations. &#xA;Sort of closed iteration with reserved priorities for support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5562" LastEditorUserId="5562" LastEditDate="2014-03-07T14:17:49.300" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T05:34:49.020" Title="Is scrumban approach suitable to a small organization management?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-04-02T05:35:15.473" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4986" CreationDate="2014-03-07T11:19:15.950" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a freelancer you need a personal task manager with ability to track time in order to bill your customers. I would suggest &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eylean.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eylean board&lt;/a&gt; as it is free of charge for personal use and it contains integrated time tracking alongside other cool features for effective production. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/a5WkN.png&quot; alt=&quot;Board&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XkGXl.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Time tracking&quot;&gt;   &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8yMbt.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Task card&quot;&gt; &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dF2lz.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Clock&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5562" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T11:19:15.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11039" CreationDate="2014-03-08T06:15:47.623" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It certainly sounds suitable if not ideal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One concern I have is using estimations, and comparing them to actuals in order to improve estimates. This often doesn't work out too well as estimates are usually only relevant to one of the process steps, probably the steps that the engineers do, whereas the customer is probably only interested in true end to end lead time, which is duration based rather than effort based.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think Kanban especially could provide a few &quot;extras&quot; that might be useful in your situation, perhaps classes of service are interesting, and predictions based on gathered measurements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with the commenter. It is hard to answer without a concrete problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="763" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-04-02T05:34:49.020" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T05:34:49.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11047" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11049" CreationDate="2014-03-10T10:25:59.820" Score="7" ViewCount="192" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our team familiar with traditional SDLC process like waterfall.&#xA;So, We wanna step to scrumban. (we think it suitable for us.)&#xA;But we have something to concern and not sure what is best practice for us.&#xA;Here is our resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Graphic Team (5 People)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business Analyst Team (3 People)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Develop Team (2 Team, 4 People/Team)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test Team (2 People)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I include Graphic Team and Business Analyst to Scrumban? what's the best way?&#xA;Thank you in advance for your suggestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8451" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-01-07T14:15:46.000" LastActivityDate="2019-01-07T14:15:46.000" Title="Should we include Graphic Team into Scrumban Process?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;scrumban&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10957" CreationDate="2014-03-10T14:36:15.413" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I usually do with critical projects is to get the basics done as soon as possible, usually using some form of incremental project management (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_model&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;spiral model&lt;/a&gt;), however I am not that guy that sticks blindly to a concept, so this is just as an idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concept behind it is to have something &quot;potentially&quot; releasable as soon as possible to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give you and the team the necessary confidence that in worst case, there is something that you could ship. Do not underestimate team-confidence!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can identify issues at the earliest moment, and...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can plan ahead and i.E. schedule learning sessions for critical parts where your developers have missing knowledge. Or adjust the team if it is necessary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can get the whole chain (plan-&gt;implement-&gt;QA-&gt;client verification) running right from the start, so you won't get surprise issues 2 days before release.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team members have enough time to understand the whole setting and requirements as they can see the entire process and the actual use-case as working example. This often leads to improvements/solutions you wouldn't have expected or seen in a pre-planning model as it indirectly involves the experts into the planning phases. Make sure you listen to them and give them room to speak their minds.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And later once your project accumulates speed, you can easily add features by priority one by one without having to fear that a single feature was either missing, not as requested, not worth the time or not fitting into the whole when combining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also the client will get exactly what he wants, as he can comment on the results at a very early point. And you can later after release use the argument, that the client had lots of time to intervene or correct features should he still complain afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8489" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T14:36:15.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11047" CreationDate="2014-03-10T16:07:50.760" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Steps for moving from waterfall to agile&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looks like you have made the two most important decisions for transforming your software development process:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Moving from waterfall to agile.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Following the Scrum (or a modified Scrum) process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Congratulations! You are on the right track. It is possible to work out the other steps from here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say, in order of priority, you should consider the following steps, if you are not doing so already:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Send some of your key people for Scrum training.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team size: Looks like you have 18 people. This is too large a team for good communication and collaboration. Try to split this into two teams. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/the-benefits-of-feature-teams&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;While splitting the teams, make them into feature teams, not component teams.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ideally, designate a Scrum Master and a Product Owner for each team. However, you may be able to work with a common Scrum Master for both teams as well as a common Product Owner.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid having sub-teams. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Portals/0/Documents/Scrum%20Guides/2013/Scrum-Guide.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Individual Development Team members may have specialized skills and areas of focus, but accountability belongs to the Development Team as a&#xA;whole.&lt;/a&gt; This may be a slow process. But work towards this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to answer your specific question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I include Graphic Team and Business Analyst to Scrumban? what's&#xA;  the best way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, you should include Graphic specialists and Business Analysts to the Scrum team.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Portals/0/Documents/Scrum%20Guides/2013/Scrum-Guide.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Development Teams are cross-functional, with all of the skills as a team necessary to create a product Increment.&lt;/a&gt; And split into two Scrum teams, as described above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with your transition! Feel free to come back and ask additional questions here on PMSE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2014-03-10T16:41:46.940" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T16:41:46.940" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11051" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11053" CreationDate="2014-03-10T21:29:49.570" Score="5" ViewCount="671" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me begin by highlighting couple of roles of a Scrum Master as quoted by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumalliance.org/why-scrum/core-scrum-values-roles&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Alliance&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The ScrumMaster also works with the development team to find and&#xA;  implement the technical practices needed to get to Done at the end of&#xA;  each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another responsibility of the ScrumMaster as quoted there include&#xA;  removing impediments to the team’s progress. These impediments may be&#xA;  external to the team (such as a lack of support from another team) or&#xA;  internal (such as the product owner not knowing how to properly&#xA;  prepare the product backlog). That said, the ScrumMaster fosters&#xA;  self-organization, meaning that the team itself should remove issues&#xA;  wherever possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other responsibilities mentioned include helping a PO creating and maintaining Product Backlogs, facilitating meetings, and making sure Scrum process is strictly followed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work in an Agile environment with 6 Scrum teams, as a developer in one of the teams. We follow Scrum professionally and as expected, the scrum master chases developers to get all user stories finished by the end of the sprint, as we commit the delivery right during sprint planning (without really touching on the technical aspects). Now obviously, the scrum master is not expected to know anything about code or how time consuming/difficult a user story is; all he wants is the user stories finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now let's consider what Robert Martin has to say in his book &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Clean-Code-Handbook-Software-Craftsmanship/dp/0132350882&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Clean Code&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most managers want good code, even when they are obsessing about the&#xA;  schedule. They may defend the schedule and requirements with passion,&#xA;  but that's their job, It's your job to defend the code with equal&#xA;  passion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alright, so here goes my descriptive question: &lt;strong&gt;We all know writing clean and maintainable code could be time consuming depending on the task (for example architectural work usually require lots of time and efforts). Now, if writing clean code and maintaining them is an important aspect in software development, why does Scrum assign Scrum Masters (who don't have any programming knowledge) the role of getting developers to quickly achieve 'Definition of Done' before the end of sprint? A lot of times due to this, most developers end up not bothering much about writing reusable quality code and just write a slew of code just so that the feature is implemented. Rather than protecting developers from impediments, wouldn't it be appropriate to conclude that a scrum master is an impediment towards writing clean code?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now someone could argue saying that scrum masters are supposed to do this so that the developers stick to their commitments and get the features delivered. But I think we have already touched on the point that scrum masters basically foster self-organization, and that the team itself should remove issues wherever possible. Its quite obvious that if the team doesn't deliver the features as committed, then they shall ultimately bear the brunt from the higher management, the thought of which should automatically drive the developers to work towards their commitments whilst not hindering them from writing good code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point is not against having scrum masters, I definitely agree with all other responsibilities of a Scrum Master other than racing developers to get the tasks done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I justified in expecting the Scrum Master to allow me needed time to write reusable code?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8494" LastEditorUserId="8494" LastEditDate="2014-03-13T08:44:56.673" LastActivityDate="2015-03-25T00:43:51.630" Title="Are efforts to improve quality an impediment to achieving schedule in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11051" CreationDate="2014-03-10T22:38:44.487" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind that your Scrum Master is asking you to meet a commitment you, as a team, made at the start of your sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your team is consistently struggling to meet commitment without sacrificing code quality, I'd suggest you discuss this in your next retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reasons I've seen for this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team feels under pressure to give unrealistic estimates due to&#xA;deadlines.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team hasn't considered technical design at all prior to&#xA;estimation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some thing happened to cause the teams velocity to drop&#xA;(e.g. changes in team members) but it's not being taken into account&#xA;for planning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprints are too long (it's easier to plan more accurately over a shorter span).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stories are too big (so hard to estimate).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those are just speculation though.  Ultimately, you won't know the root cause unless you all sit down and discuss it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you discover a story is much more complicated than at first thought at some point during dev, make sure you're raising that at standups as early as possible.  Keep a record of stories where this happens and looks for trends.  Perhaps particular systems are hard to deal with or some bits of gnarly code with poor test coverage are tripping you up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastEditorUserId="1185" LastEditDate="2014-03-10T22:49:37.997" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T22:49:37.997" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11051" CreationDate="2014-03-10T22:57:15.693" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question seems to be from two mis-understandings about Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't really see how it follows that Scrum Masters cause a reduction in quality by keeping focus on the definition of done. The Scrum Master does not write the definition of done, the team does. The Scrum Master helps the team enforce the standards of quality that the team has decided upon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quote from Clean Code does not apply. Most managers might obsess about schedules, but Scrum Masters do not. They work with a different variable, they keep the &lt;strong&gt;scheduled fixed&lt;/strong&gt; and instead &lt;strong&gt;adjust the scope&lt;/strong&gt; of the project. A Scrum Master will drop user stories to keep the deadline the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, that being said, I think that Scrum takes an overly simplistic view to team structure. You need to build your teams with the right balance of experience and skills so that they can self-organise. Ideally, when a team has a gap, they can recognise it and ask for more support in that area. You can't just put random people together and hope for the best. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; As Jmort253 mentions, you have also assumed that a Scrum Master is non technical. This doesn't have to be the true, but in any case Scrum Master should limit the amount of directing and decision making that they do and instead make sure that they &lt;strong&gt;facilitate&lt;/strong&gt; the team to make [technical] decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6608" LastEditorUserId="6608" LastEditDate="2014-03-12T09:17:26.537" LastActivityDate="2014-03-12T09:17:26.537" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2890" CreationDate="2014-03-11T06:37:55.497" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The status report that I have used to update management and team includes a variant of a quadrant report. This will address the key concern and also the need to know status for the management and team. I have successfully managed to bring across key concerns and also highlight job well done by the team to management&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is as follows - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;HighLights&lt;/strong&gt; (Bring Good news first )&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;LowLights&lt;/strong&gt;  (Update bad news and what and who will work to solve it&#xA;    or identify the issue)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Risk&lt;/strong&gt; ( Possible things that could Go wrong and what are the back up&#xA;    options)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Next Activities&lt;/strong&gt; ( Key activities / deliverable s for next 3 weeks)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8497" LastActivityDate="2014-03-11T06:37:55.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11051" CreationDate="2014-03-11T09:41:55.020" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;@Ben and @Dave Hillier have provided great answers and I won't repeat their excellent advice but I would like to add this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master is not responsible for &quot;racing developers&quot;. If you have a Scrum Master who &quot;chases developers to get all user stories finished by the end of the sprint&quot;, I'd say they're doing it wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master does not drive, command, direct or tell the Development Team what to do. Instead, they have a supporting role. They coach, mentor, teach or advise as the circumstances dictate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the question of Clean Code, I would expect a good Scrum Master to defer to the Development Team and the Definition of Done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the question of meeting the forecast that the Development Team made in Sprint Planning, I would expect the Development Team to strive to meet their forecast and I would expect the Scrum Master to help them meet that forecast in any way he or she can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7835" LastActivityDate="2014-03-11T09:41:55.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11051" CreationDate="2014-03-11T13:49:39.767" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not &quot;into&quot; scrum, but I think we can rephrase this as a general project management question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are efforts to improve quality an impediment to achieveing schedule?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is clearly &quot;no&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what little I know about scrum, @Ben's answer is paramount - the team agrees to and commits to a definition of &quot;done&quot; that includes quality, schedule, cost, and any other relevant factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2014-03-11T13:49:39.767" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11051" CreationDate="2014-03-11T16:30:21.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Your question about reusable code has been addressed by Agile and Scrum&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I extracted a question from your post so that it conforms to the Stack Exchange Q&amp;amp;A format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Am I justified in expecting the Scrum Master to allow me needed time&#xA;  to write reusable code?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is an emphatic &quot;NO&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;XP is the source of many of the engineering practices widely practiced in the agile community - Test Driven Development (TDD), Continuous integration, Pair Programming/Code Review among others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what XP has to say about writing extra code that may be needed later:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules/early.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Keep the system uncluttered with extra stuff you guess will be used later. Only 10% of that extra stuff will ever get used, so you are wasting 90% of your time. We are all tempted to add functionality now rather than later because we see exactly how to add it or because it would make the system so much better. It seems like it would be faster to add it now. But we need to constantly remind our selves that we are not going to actually need it. Extra functionality will always slow us down and squander our resources.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a more detailed write-up, with examples, about the &lt;a href=&quot;http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?YouArentGonnaNeedIt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;YAGNI (You Arent Gonna Need It)&lt;/a&gt; principle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the 12 Principles behind the Agile Manifesto is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount&#xA;of work not done--is essential.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-03-11T16:30:21.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11059" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-11T18:40:04.797" Score="-5" ViewCount="962" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an undergraduate in an intro management class. I have to work in a group and complete a SWOT analysis on a well known company. I understand the theory but how do you actually apply this? How do you figure out the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of a company you have no connection or experience with? I have no experience in business or management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8504" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T05:45:07.683" Title="How to do a SWOT Analysis" Tags="&lt;management&gt;&lt;analysis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-04-02T05:46:42.327" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11060" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-11T18:49:30.207" Score="5" ViewCount="704" Body="&lt;p&gt;My goal is to optimize resource usage when having priority tasks partially allocated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MS Project 2007 simple two task scenario (My project has thousands of tasks) with automatic leveling:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;======------ Gantt Chart -----=====&#xA;Task Name            | Work    | Duration  | Resource Name  |  Gantt&#xA;---------------------+---------+-----------+----------------+---------------------&#xA;Support QA Phase 1   | 8  hrs  | 16 hrs    | Alfred [50%]   |  @@@@@@@@&#xA;Develop Screen Login | 16 hrs  | 16 hrs    | Alfred         |          ########&#xA;(@ - partially allocated - # full allocation)&#xA;&#xA;=====----- Task Usage -----=====&#xA;Task Name              | Work   | D1 | D2 | D3 | D4&#xA;-----------------------+--------+----+----+----+----&#xA;Project                | 24 hrs | 4h | 4h | 8h | 8h  &#xA;  Support QA Phase 1   | 8 hrs  | 4h | 4h |    |     &#xA;    Alfred             | 8 hrs  | 4h | 4h |    |     &#xA;  Develop Screen Login | 16 hrs |    |    | 8h | 8h  &#xA;    Alfred             | 16 hrs |    |    | 8h | 8h  &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the &quot;leveling&quot; Alfred can only start the screen development after the support is finished, since the development task requires 100% of units of Alfred. But obviously we can work during that QA Support. I'm trying to optimize Alfred time, something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;======------ Gantt Chart -----=====&#xA;Task Name            | Work    | Duration  | Resource Name  |  Gantt&#xA;---------------------+---------+-----------+----------------+---------------------&#xA;Support QA Phase 1   | 8 hrs   | 16 hrs    | Alfred [50%]   |  @@@@@@@@&#xA;Develop Screen Login | 8 hrs   | 20 hrs    | Alfred [*]     |  @@@@@@@@####&#xA;(@ - partially allocated - # full allocation)&#xA;&#xA;=====----- Task Usage -----=====&#xA;Task Name              | Work   | D1 | D2 | D3 | D4&#xA;-----------------------+--------+----+----+----+----&#xA;Project                | 24 hrs | 4h | 4h | 8h | &#xA;  Support QA Phase 1   | 8 hrs  | 4h | 4h |    |     &#xA;    Alfred             | 8 hrs  | 4h | 4h |    |     &#xA;  Develop Screen Login | 16 hrs | 4h | 4h | 8h | &#xA;    Alfred             | 16 hrs | 4h | 4h | 8h |   &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So Alfred only works at 50% of its time while support task is occurring, and then can go full speed ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The simple solution is to go to task usage and do manual distribution, others involve splitting tasks. In both cases, in hundreds of tasks this prone to errors and tedious. &quot;Spliting remaing work&quot; only splits tasks that are interrupted by other priority tasks, so no help from here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can we, somehow, change the way leveling works so that it does also split the task usage?&#xA;Is manual labor the only solution for this? (No project server)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8503" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T18:53:41.250" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T18:53:41.250" Title="Level Remaining Resource Units" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2007&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11060" CreationDate="2014-03-12T09:43:37.207" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you set the Support task to a higher priority than the Development task it will first allocate 50% of Alfred's time to that task (assuming you have set Alfred's allocation to 50%) and then use any remaining capacity for other tasks. Remember that the higher then task priority number, the higher the priority as opposed to the more normal scheme where the highest priority is 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2014-03-12T09:43:37.207" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11039" CreationDate="2014-03-12T09:57:30.810" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Basically estimation in  hours and time tracking can result in problems during planing and daily meetings. Thus, I would suggest using storypoints instead. What is more, you should use planning on demand technique. You can read more &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aboutscrumban.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8509" LastActivityDate="2014-03-12T09:57:30.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10991" CreationDate="2014-03-12T10:02:42.687" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest taking a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://vsarkanbanguide.codeplex.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MS kanban 1.0&lt;/a&gt; template. Which is more of a continuous delivery process instead of iteration based approach.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8509" LastActivityDate="2014-03-12T10:02:42.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10991" CreationDate="2014-03-12T10:15:06.417" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion you need to make a custom template, strip it off a little bit. Take agile template. Leave only two item types, just like in kanban: &quot;Card&quot; and for instance &quot;Bug/Problem&quot; just for type separation. Then you have only one iteration as mentioned before which is project root. Next, you make a parking state &quot;Pending/Backlog&quot; and other states for in progress (process steps to deliver item). Think that covers basic simple utility approach as you need Kanban for sure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5562" LastActivityDate="2014-03-12T10:15:06.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11059" CreationDate="2014-03-12T12:37:28.957" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only answer is &lt;strong&gt;research&lt;/strong&gt;.  You gotta study the company, and you are limited to only those things that are public.  But for every public company, there is tons of information out there.  If you are having issues about where to begin the research, start with questions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What does the company produce? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does that product compare to its competitors, and how does that product differ from its competitors? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What did the company make in profit last year, the year before, year before that, what is it forecasting for this year? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How did the stock perform over the last five years? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the company's market share? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is going on politically or globally that could affect the product and its performance?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep going from here.  Once you have your list of questions, put them under each of the SWOT categories.  You can have the same question under two or more of the categories.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then go find the answers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-04-02T05:45:07.683" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T05:45:07.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11068" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11070" CreationDate="2014-03-12T12:46:46.220" Score="2" ViewCount="72" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seems to be ubiquitous...the &quot;done&quot; or &quot;completed&quot; column. Conceptually what purposes does it serve? Is it the feel good reminder that &quot;hey we've accomplished X number of tasks/stories&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I struggle with using valuable screen space or physical whiteboard for such a thing, when electronically I can pull those tasks up at any time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps in Scrum, with it's iterations, the &quot;done&quot; column is handy for showing team/stakeholders/collaborators whats been done and what needs to be done and what is being done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8511" LastActivityDate="2014-03-12T14:11:00.927" Title="Done column -- use case?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11069" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11072" CreationDate="2014-03-12T13:32:31.573" Score="2" ViewCount="119" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our sprints follow the pattern of a planning game based on a prototype, followed by actual application development with unit test, followed again by integration test and more complete unit tests to try and achieve code coverage goals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In planning two/three week sprints we often find that after allowing for tasks such as developing prototypes, retrospectives, planning games, and deployment and test support tasks we are only left with less than 50% of the days developing the actual user story functionality - this is in planning, before we even get to the unexpected distractions that can occur in reality. Is this typical, or is there a good benchmark for number of ideal days to aim for? Would we be better to focus on optimizing time spent coding, or simply allow for this velocity in planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5175" LastActivityDate="2014-03-12T15:28:17.067" Title="Optimizing the number of ideal days in a sprint" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11068" CreationDate="2014-03-12T14:11:00.927" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's necessary to communicate when a card is ... done. Without it, for example, it would be impossible to take a list of what was done recently and review it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's often a final state. On our board, &quot;done&quot; stories are reviewed and removed every Monday, when we prepare our &quot;what we did last week&quot; report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6300" LastActivityDate="2014-03-12T14:11:00.927" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11071" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11090" CreationDate="2014-03-12T14:50:51.410" Score="3" ViewCount="218" Body="&lt;p&gt;My client has initiated the project and pledged to be an active participant in project activities. However, as project progressed, my queries on functionalities were not answered by the stakeholder. Delays were imminent. However questions were raised on delivery dates. &#xA;My question is how do I get the stakeholder to actually contribute knowledge and participate in the agile processes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I felt my question is inline with the question here - &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/6659/how-do-you-get-stakeholders-who-dont-care-engaged&quot;&gt;How do you get stakeholders who don&amp;#39;t care engaged?&lt;/a&gt;, However, I could not connect the answer to my question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8512" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T14:10:01.280" Title="Involving a non participating Stakeholder" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11069" CreationDate="2014-03-12T15:28:17.067" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a general statement, you should plan based on demonstrated velocity. That doesn't mean you can't try to improve your velocity over time, but this is usually not an overnight change and in my years of experience I have learned that not listening to your demonstrated velocity will get you burned every time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moving on to the details, I can tell you that having only 50% of your time going to final code development is perfectly normal. You can look at each other item individually, but unit tests, deployment, and prototypes are inextricable from the rest of development. That said, you could look at ways that people get more value out of those tasks. Test-driven development, for example, integrates the creation of tests with actual coded more completely and it might mean that the act of writing tests gets more code done. Similarly, practices like rapid prototyping which prototype at a higher conceptual level might reduce duplicate work if your developers are coding very hands-on to true-to-life prototypes and then re-coding the final product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the short answer is that you aren't in a bad place, but it sounds like there's some frustration and practices that integrate those other parts of development better can give the feeling that you're making constant progress. I'd be surprised if you ever spend more than 55 - 60% of your time writing final code though, so realize that the tangible gains in those practices are small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2014-03-12T15:28:17.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11073" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-12T15:45:07.310" Score="7" ViewCount="1022" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our agile team we frequently encounter the issue where the Scrum Master points out that all of our stories should be fully tasked and estimated prior to an iteration and once these tasks have been added no more tasks/stories can be added during the iteration. In my opinion this is very difficult to accomplish unless the item of work is fully understood. In my experience trying to fully task a story prior to actually working on it is difficult because : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don't know what the tasks will actually involve until I familiarize myself with the code in that particular area.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even when I familiarize myself I will be constantly reading doc's etc to improve my understanding and look for efficiency's thereby possibly making my original tasks redundant. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps this is not very agile of me but it feels like the best method of adding value to the work being done. Am I just being too rigid or is there a common approach to solve this issue? Is this issue common among users of this site as it seems quite common to developers I've worked with?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8513" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2014-03-28T14:24:28.157" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T14:24:28.157" Title="When to add tasks to stories and how to estimate tasks?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11059" CreationDate="2014-03-12T16:06:50.370" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;SWOT analysis from published data&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://coca-cola-remodel.tripod.com/id21.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here is a sample SWOT analysis of a well known company - Coca Cola.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Opportunities and threats are external. They are in the marketplace. Research the market for the sector your company is in.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Opportunities are, typically, unfulfilled customer needs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Threats can come from not only competitors, but also from replacement products. For example, if you are a digital camera vendor, the threat didn't come from other digital camera vendors. It came from smart phones. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Strengths and weaknesses are internal to the company. You can get information about public companies from their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.annualreports.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Annual Reports&lt;/a&gt;. And you can get more information from research reports. Here is a list of websites with &lt;a href=&quot;http://growinglocaleconomies.com/files/pdf/favorites2.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mostly free research reports&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an article that can help you get started: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessballs.com/swotanalysisfreetemplate.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SWOT analysis method and examples, with free SWOT template&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-03-12T16:06:50.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11073" CreationDate="2014-03-12T16:38:56.133" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always taken it from this point of view:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't task out the story because you don't know what tasks need to be done, how do you know how large the story is to estimate it and how can you commit to having it done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In these situations (and they are very common) it usually means that a story is either too broad (it's not that you don't know all the steps, they are just too many to practically enumerate) or too vague. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an example, let's say I have this story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a user, I want my final bill to account for any discounts available to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That could be a single field or it could be spread out in 10 different systems, 2 of which are in excel. I've run into a lot of friction at this point because of people's ideas of what a deliverable story is. I would tell you that you should have a research story with a concrete deliverable like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an account exec, I would like to identify all possible sources of discounts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've had people balk at that because it's not a feature delivery per se. Those people would say that is the business's job to determine and provide, but a lot of times these end of being very technical questions because the account exec might see it all in one or two places, but it's really in a number of databases. I personally think it's worth fudging agile a bit to get the job done right, but maybe others can offer an alternative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other really big problem with this is that, if you take that story on and you fill the rest of the available effort in the sprint with other stories, actually implementing code based on your findings will have to wait until next sprint. There's a pretty simply solution to this. Leave room in your sprint for more stories. If your velocity is 60 points, only commit to 45. That can give you the room to create and pull in more stories to implement your solution. Again, we're on grey area of Agile here, but I think it's getting the job done and keeping with the intent behind those Agile rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2014-03-12T16:38:56.133" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11076" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-12T16:41:20.447" Score="4" ViewCount="731" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I first started using Microsoft Project, I took it for granted that I should replicate the WBS in the task list and use that to structure my work packages. After working with Project a little while, I'm wondering if I should structure my work packages into phases instead (the project Program).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, all my leaf tasks are the work packages. All summary tasks are elements from the WBS, arranged in the same hierarchy as the WBS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I have the summary tasks be project phases instead? In this way, the work packages would be listed (more or less) chronologically instead of the deliverable based structure of the WBS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this setup I would use the WBS field to map the work package to the WBS maintained elsewhere. When sorting by the WBS field, MS Project shows the hierarchical relationship, so you could still view the WBS hierarchy in Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have experience using this approach? Is this how MS Project is designed to be used?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8514" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T10:25:32.127" Title="Do you use the WBS or Project Program to structure tasks in MS Project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11076" CreationDate="2014-03-12T17:31:00.987" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tend to logically group deliverables that are related to project &quot;phases&quot;. These could be the phases from PMBOK, but it is probably better to group them in what PRINCE2 terms &quot;management stages&quot;. Examples of these include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Planning&lt;/strong&gt;. So things like stakeholder analysis, developing schedules, risk analysis, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Solution Design&lt;/strong&gt;. Includes requirements gathering and validation, not only for software/hardware but also for associated business processes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Solution Development&lt;/strong&gt;. So taking requirements that have been collected and validated and turning them into tools/methods. Also includes UAT and formal acceptance by end users&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Implementation&lt;/strong&gt;. Includes your planning to manage change outside of the project team, communications, training, etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing this gives you the advantage of having logical points in the project where you can refresh your business case and verify that it makes sense to continue the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2014-03-12T17:31:00.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11073" CreationDate="2014-03-13T00:33:41.703" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most common reasons people struggle to estimate that I've seen are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You're trying to be too precise&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can help to have some stories you've done previously available when you estimate to use as benchmarks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've got an example of a 2, a 5, an 8 and a 13 point story, bring them to your estimation session.  Hopefully it'll be easier to estimate along the lines of &amp;quot;it's definitely bigger than the 2 point story and smaller than the 13 point one.&amp;quot; in which case it's either a 5 or an 8, pick what you feel is closest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, the purpose of estimation isn't precision.  You'll go too big sometimes and too small on other occasions, it all evens out over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Insufficient acceptance criteria&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the acceptance criteria don't contain vital information, estimation is tough.  Things to watch out for are phrases like &amp;quot;replicate current behaviour&amp;quot;.  If you don't know what the current behaviour is, it's going to be really tricky to get an idea what the size of the story will be!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get your product owner/business analyst to clarify before you accept the story!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your stories are too big&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To use the example Daniel gives in his answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a user, I want my final bill to account for any discounts available to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try breaking the story up into smaller chunks.  Perhaps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an early subscriber, I want my final bill to account for my early bird discount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an employee user, I want my final bill to account for my staff discount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a loyalty card holder, I want my final bill to account for my loyalty card discount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc.....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smaller stories are generally easier to get a feel for and less likely to involve multiple systems etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There are big unknowns&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you've not worked on this code before.  Maybe you're building something that's dissimilar to anything you've got experience of.  Could be that you're using a new 3rd party tool and you have no idea how it works.  This kind of stuff makes estimation pretty much impossible as you have very little to base an number on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this scenario, it's a good idea to do a &lt;a href=&quot;http://scaledagileframework.com/spikes/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;spike&lt;/a&gt; to help you understand the issue at hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T00:57:53.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11076" CreationDate="2014-03-13T01:37:58.590" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;With regards to the level of detail on your project, I'd say you may be going one step further but overlooking one a basic one: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are we trying to achieve with any task management system?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the time, the reason one would use a task structure is to make workable more pieces manageable and traceable. As &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.project-management-prepcast.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cornelius Fichtner&lt;/a&gt; reminds on his PrepCast, we must eat an Elephant one bite at a time. &lt;strong&gt;Only you can know how much you can eat at once.&lt;/strong&gt; So, if the granularity you're using is ok (regardless on what's based on) than your project is fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, Back to the original question, &lt;strong&gt;does it worth to change the approach from deliverable-oriented to cycle-oriented&lt;/strong&gt;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe it'll eventually depends on the nature of your project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you can close the deliverables&lt;/strong&gt; for granted, I'd keep using your approach, &lt;strong&gt;deliverable-oriented&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If your project has all / most of the deliverables intertwined&lt;/strong&gt; and will be tested and reviewed together, I'd say the &lt;strong&gt;cycle-oriented&lt;/strong&gt; would be easier to manage. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cycle-oriented might make easier to manage the project especially when &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_request&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CRs&lt;/a&gt; (that are likely to be cross-deliverables) start to arise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2014-03-13T10:25:32.127" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T10:25:32.127" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11076" CreationDate="2014-03-13T06:55:43.180" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Manage your schedule using MSProject and manage your WBS elsewhere.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Since MSProject is for schedule management (in most cases) it's natural to split yor scope by phases (iterations, etc.) in your plan.&#xA;The main benefit is that's easy to comprehend and control dependencies between work packages&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7644" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T06:55:43.180" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11082" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-13T10:25:22.887" Score="1" ViewCount="544" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I effectively work with a pool of team member (nor the usual resource pool share file in project)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me rephrase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My resources are spread into pools/groups, that share the same skills and are capable of handling one another's work. Lets say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Analysis pool has Mary and John&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developers pool has Alfred, Tony and Ana. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In project, I'm using the pool name has the resource, instead of the actual persons, which I then define the available units to 200% or 300% (2 or 3 resources depending on the pool) and do my planning. &#xA;Each week, the tasks are then revisited, setting the ones that are completed, and defining the actual resources for the two weeks ahead, in order to have a buffer if the work is done faster. &#xA;In my case, this is quite nice, because in the long term planning, I actually define that I'll have the availability of two resources, instead of saying Mary and John. If the team grows or shrinks I seek that impact quite fast, otherwise I would have to reassign the work for each resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This kinda works, but I don't believe that is the best way, or at least, in my point of view. I don't have full management of working time (setting individual holidays and working hours). Instead I've to do manual calculations to set the units within a range of dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a more efficient way to do this in Project 2007?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8503" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T23:14:28.753" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T23:14:28.753" Title="Working with a pool/group of resources" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2007&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11083" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-13T10:56:23.483" Score="20" ViewCount="15918" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know Agile came about as a group of 'adaptive software development' methods, where Scrum is one of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some background: We are an innovative web agency, which implies design and development. We have multiple projects running and we use JIRA to log hours and create issues. JIRA also have a Agile method where you can have your scrumboard online instead of offline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We want to start using Scrum for our project management or at least, use elements of Scrum. I'm aware of the difficulties and the principles Scrum has in order to make a Scrum project a success. Yet, I think it's possible to run multiple projects at the same time, using some elements of Scrum with minimal resources. We have a very small team, 3 developers (1 front-end/2 backend) and 1 Interaction Designer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our problem basically is that we have to manage multiple projects but we have a small team, so little capacity (velocity). So my one million dollar question is: How can we manage multiple projects, as we design, develop AND test our products as one single Scrum team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for one project it is already difficult enough. Can you design, develop and test everything in 1 or 2 week sprint? And how do you prevent the fact that other projects/clients won't be waiting for a month...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8519" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2014-03-18T12:31:40.253" LastActivityDate="2017-09-29T14:48:50.770" Title="How can we manage multiple projects, as one small scrum team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;&lt;design&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11083" CreationDate="2014-03-13T11:56:06.810" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is totally possible as you need to agree on one and the most important rule. When you plan sprint backlog, you close it and there is no place for new &quot;unexpected&quot; work items. Because you will be forced to deliver value on each of the ongoing projects, in any other case you will fail not one project but all together. Also, it is important that whole team is related to those projects, because if one person is only working on project A and the other team members are working on project B - you will be wasting time instead of saving. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But all in all, scrum will work if you employ the guidelines, take for example a big system which contains of different modules, but they are one big project, so as you - your projects are like modules but less related :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One question though, maybe scrumban or even plain kanban approach would be suitable for rapid project delivery? IMHO kanban is more loose and fit for small teams than scrum, as it requires quite few practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5562" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T11:56:06.810" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11083" CreationDate="2014-03-13T13:35:56.110" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our company we also face similar problem and I would agree to the post above that kanban is a good choice. Kanban board provides all the necesarry visibility and clarity for team, also we do stan up meetings for quick overview. During planning phase we take parts - if the planning is for first project, we invite only the members that are related. In such manner we save time. Kanban is also great for multitasking restrictions, here come the limits on columns. It is very important to have limits in multi project environment to keep people focused on single tasks until they are done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8522" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T13:35:56.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11082" CreationDate="2014-03-13T15:48:56.153" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can alter the max units available to account for holidays for one of the team of resources.  However, unlike setting non-working time, changing max units will not automatically reschedule tasks - it will just mark the resource as overallocated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use the Group field on the Resource Sheet view to assign a group to each individual resource, but then you would have to deal with the individual assignments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T15:48:56.153" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11073" CreationDate="2014-03-13T16:28:53.693" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Plan well. But be prepared to change, if you run into roadblocks.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When to add tasks to stories and how to estimate tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should add tasks at the time of the Iteration Planning. The dev team should have a game plan about how to accomplish the story. In my experience estimating the tasks in hours is found to be helpful. However, it should be clearly understood that the hours are only for the purpose of internal team coordination and not for management to use as baseline for performance measurement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;our Scrum Master points out that all of our stories should be fully&#xA;  tasked out and estimated prior to an iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with your Scrum Master this should be done prior to the start of the iteration. This is the primary goal of the Iteration Planning meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;no more stories can be added during the iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with your Scrum Master on this. This is the basic premise of Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;no more tasks can be added during the iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't agree with your Scrum Master on the no more tasks part. This is the waterfall (predictive planning) mindset. Scrum's (adaptive planning) premise is that software development is partly R&amp;amp;D type of work. You should start out with a specific approach to do the story based on your best judgment. However, if you run into problems a task may take longer than originally estimated. In some cases, your initial approach may not work at all and you may have to try another approach. At this point, you can re-estimate or redo the tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where there is high level of uncertainty, I ask my teams to do a time-boxed research story (spike) in the previous iteration. This might involve doing a proof-of-concept to validate an approach. Then the commitment of the team to accomplish what they signed up to do is much more firm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even when I familiarize myself I will be constantly reading doc's etc&#xA;  to improve my understanding and look for efficiency's thereby possibly&#xA;  making my original tasks redundant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds too tentative. You should understand the requirements well and have an approach planned at the time of making a team commitment in the Iteration Planning meeting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T16:28:53.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11071" CreationDate="2014-03-13T20:42:15.340" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Face-to-face (or video) communication and demo&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not sure how you communicated your &quot;queries on functionalties&quot; to the stakeholders. It sounds waterfall-ish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My question is how do I get the stakeholder to actually contribute&#xA;  knowledge and participate in the agile processes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile encourages face-to-face communication. Did you meet with the stakeholders? If your client is not in the same location as you are, get them on a video call. Nowadays with Google Hangout, Skype and other tools, this should not be difficult.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one of the Agile principles is to &quot;Deliver working software frequently&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. Even if you don't actually deliver the software, at a minimum you should set up a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/sprint-review-meeting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sprint review meeting&lt;/a&gt; and demo the working software to stakeholders. During the demo you can pause at the appropriate places and seek feedback and clarifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I worked with a client with similar challenges. Clients have other priorities and may not know your timeline. We initiated a practice to send out such requests with our expected response times. In a two week sprint you do not have much wiggle room. If the response is not received in a day or two then it becomes an impediment reported to the Scrum Master. The Scrum Master will follow-up, meet in person or escalate to senior levels - whatever it takes to get a response. It should become a crisis by the end of that sprint rather than get carried forward to the end of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2014-03-18T14:10:01.280" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T14:10:01.280" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11091" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-14T09:22:13.753" Score="1" ViewCount="261" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about to give new estimations of a project delivery time, estimating iterations etc..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides development, developers spend much time on distractions. By distractions I mean everything(tea, coffee, chats,) not directly related to development and code writing. In this case, developers spend no more than 6 hour on code writing instead of 8. &#xA;While giving estimations on task completion, developers always give daily estimation, not hourly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This fact allows them to lengthen the task completion time. I know that a task will take 12 working hours to complete, but in fact it has taken 2 working (16 hours) days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.Should I take hourly estimation in order to be more precise&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.In my project management software, should I write a developer's daily capacity time-6 or 7 hour instead of 8? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that distractions are necessary and very vital and I do not argue their existence. The main question is 'Is is right to extract this time while making estimations?'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8146" LastEditorUserId="8146" LastEditDate="2014-03-14T12:25:14.557" LastActivityDate="2015-12-21T23:29:07.323" Title="Should I remove distraction time from developers' capacity time while giving time estimation?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11092" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-14T09:40:37.990" Score="1" ViewCount="2270" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for an answer to a question I received during a test on PM theory:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a critical path method, dependencies between activities can be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;accurately determined;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;estimated approximately.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8527" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-12-13T10:37:34.610" LastActivityDate="2018-12-13T10:37:34.610" Title="Can dependencies in a critical path method be determined accurately?" Tags="&lt;dependencies&gt;&lt;critical-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="11093" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-14T09:47:33.107" Score="4" ViewCount="141" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for an answer to a question I received during a test on PM theory:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, as the project proceeds, complexities involved in project planning and re-planning&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;increase&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;decrease&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8527" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2014-03-14T11:21:31.470" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T12:36:01.020" Title="Does planning complexity increase as the project proceeds?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11093" CreationDate="2014-03-14T10:52:46.027" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a PM theory that suggests one of these two options is always correct for every project, every industry, all the time or even generally?  There's not a third option that says, 'it depends'??&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As projects progress, you learn new things, discover errors in your original planning, pull out additional requirements or change requirements as time goes on, so from that point of view you have more clarity which ought to driving planning complexity down.  However, you may also have a ton of poor variances to overcome, money running out, losing critical resources you cannot replace easily, discovered a host of threats no one saw previously, coping with a very upset customer who is ready to fire you, and on and on.  Real life project factors can grow the complexity of planning and replanning.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would argue there is no general rule on this and to have one, teach one, is a grave error.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T10:52:46.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11092" CreationDate="2014-03-14T10:55:51.853" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three types of dependencies: ones you can see clearly and are known with no uncertainty; ones you think you have but need to clarify; ones you cannot see because you do not know what you do not know.  I would think the answer is 2.  If the correct answer is one, then the author of the question has issues with illusion of being all knowing.  Risk applies here as with every other area of projects.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T10:55:51.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11091" CreationDate="2014-03-14T11:09:54.383" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Saakyan, no human resource is ever 100% productive.  Non productive time, including necessary work but not tied to a specific task as well as simple down time, always exist and should exist because of the inherent benefits of rest.  The range of productive time you should be using could be as low 50% but likely never higher than 75%.  Also, other things that increase duration despite the work hours are dependencies on other people.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I estimate, I ask for input in both hours, days, and resources, and I ask for multi-point data on all three.  I expect a return on a task to look like: 20 to 40 hours, most likely 25; three to 10 days, most likely five; 2 to 4 resources, most likely 3.  (I have no idea if my example here works out mathematically; I just made it up as an example.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have this type of probabilistic estimates on all three parameters, you can gauge the level of risk you wish to take as you arrive at your planning values, the single numbers on all three.  It becomes more a judgment call based on risk versus a math result.  This is precision in a risk-based, uncertain environment.  In my example, based on the threats and uncertainty I have, I may end up with using 28 hours, 4 days, and 2 resources as my measurable baseline.  So this results in about 50% productive time.  Essentially, I am trying to incorporate the aleatory risk involved in those three probability estimates that bang up against each other in a very random way that the D = W/Ute does not allow.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T11:09:54.383" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10609" CreationDate="2014-03-14T11:13:13.740" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To-do lists are used to simply describe and document the tasks in a clear way and to distribute these among respective team members. The clarity of the tasks very much depends on how clearly these have been understood and described by the concerned persons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they themselves are clear over them, then only they can describe it clearly for their other team members who need to execute them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But for other serious things in managing projects like tracking and managing uncertainities, risks and changes and for estimation and planning, features like Gantt chart can be of great help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For cooperation over tasks, online discussions can help, comments can be added over them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some tools in which the same task can be assigned to multiple people. A complex task can be better described and clearly identified by breaking into smaller and manageable units through subtasks. Labels can be also helpful in identifying, differentiating, filtering and planning over tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are using a tool called proofhub for managing and executing our tasks and we have not faced any problem in carrying out our tasks with it. For other serious things in a project, it has got the Gantt chart, discussions, comments, etc.          &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8529" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T11:13:13.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10380" CreationDate="2014-03-14T11:31:07.363" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm new to Project but I'll venture a task as an example of Fixed Work for you:&lt;p&gt;&#xA;It's an IT task to develop a suite of programs.&lt;p&gt; &#xA;The work estimate is roughly reliable (although it may change if new information comes to light during the task). So I will aim to set and meet the deadline by managing resource units. However, the work is complex and focussed tightly on each single program so there is a limit to how many units can work on a task together effectively. Therefore I cannot make the duration fixed. If we overrun, we have to either deliver late or drop some of the project from the first delivery.&lt;p&gt;&#xA;The initial units to be assigned is known up front (although this may also change, for example if other higher priority projects draw resources away, or if work increases and we need to meet the project deadline.)&lt;p&gt;&#xA;The duration is something we want Project to track for us, so that we can see if we are meeting the project deadline as things stand.&lt;p&gt;&#xA;I'll set the task up as Fixed Work and assign available Units to it, then see the expected Duration. &lt;p&gt;&#xA;If the duration is unacceptable, I'll add units as far as I can. The deadline is then set.&lt;p&gt;&#xA;If units are withdrawn during the project for more urgent projects, I'll see the duration increase, unless I can add more units.&lt;p&gt;&#xA;If a unit meets with a problem or discovers hidden work, we'll increase the Fixed Work accordingly, and see the duration change again.&#xA;Hope this helps. I am so new to this I amy be barking up the wrong tree entirely. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8530" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T11:31:07.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11091" CreationDate="2014-03-14T11:49:43.343" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Software development is not like an assembly / production line where we have exactly the same inputs and outputs for every project. Requirements, technology, and team members change. So if it took 12 hours to implement 'search' feature in Project A, may change for Project B (having similar requirements as of A). Developers learn new ways of doing stuff every day. On the other hand, new developers having a different skill level may join the team, so your '12 hours' job may be too big for that person and may require 16 hours to get completed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;100% (8 hours) utilization of humans is a big ask and should not be tried on a prolonged duration. Everyone needs breaks. At the same time there will be meetings, support calls, production issues, etc which will eat up team's time. They do need a context switching time to more from one task to the other. It is a natural requirement and can not be removed (although it can be minimized).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is not a good assumption that by taking estimates in hours would make it precise. An estimate is after all a guess. You can put in more time to improve the accuracy of your estimate but it will not change the fact that it is a guess (although it maybe based on knowledge, past experience, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T11:49:43.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11093" CreationDate="2014-03-14T12:36:01.020" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the real world picture, see David's answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if we look at it strictly in terms of planning and re-planning, all other things remaining the same, I guess the complexity should decrease on the basis that as the project progresses more and more work is done, more and more tasks are completed, and there are fewer and fewer outstanding decisions to be made and tasks to be re-planned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is, as David so eloquently narrates, the outstanding task list rarely reduces through the life of the project and tends to increase until it reached a local maximum. Then, as long as scope does not change, it will decrease until delivery when there is, theoretically, no more left to deliver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T12:36:01.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8058" CreationDate="2014-03-14T12:49:21.183" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can surely manage things with better planning. Your problem is you are unable to ensure productive usage of your time that is why you doubt whether you would be able to deliver to your clients on time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to be optimistic first as every problem however hard it might be has a solution. You have to maintain your motivation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You already know some skills related to your work and what you do not know, can acquire them through learning and experimentation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So better planning can be done if you adopt an online project management system for managing your work. Through it, you can communicate and collaborate easily, fast and accurately with your team members from anywhere in the world. This will save your time, effort and costs. You need not meet physically with each other to resolve matters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can clearly describe tasks and document them better through To-do's, so every team member knows which task he has to perform and by when you needs to complete it. You will receive timely email reminders which will let you know that your tasks are approaching your due dates, so you can complete them timely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also use timesheets which lets you know which tasks are incurring how much time and if you are doing your tasks within the allocated time or if you are using more than required time for performing them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can precisely track progress over your tasks by looking into Gantt chart. So you can know whether your tasks are being done in the timely and required manner and if not, you can reassign these among team members or take adequate measures, so delayed tasks get executed in a prioritized manner and do not in turn delay a project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you can identify early any risks, uncertainties, changes or imperfections and resolve them promptly through this chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are using an online project management software called proofhub and it has made managing projects and work a simple affair for us and we are able to deliver timely products to our clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can outsource some of your time consuming tasks to other individuals and service providers, that can also provide you more time and make you free of some tensions, but this will also cut your profits somewhat. But this can be quite helpful in delivering your deliverables on time.          &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8531" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T12:49:21.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11091" CreationDate="2014-03-14T12:53:37.303" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know when I am on the worker bee side of things and am asked to estimate my time on a project I quote as such: 120 hours total - 20 days at 6 hours per day - 30 days at 4 hours per day; this will give the PM or team a range of time to completion. When I am PM on a project that is how I expect my team to report their estimates as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7415" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T12:53:37.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11060" CreationDate="2014-03-14T15:38:06.517" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid you will continue to be disappointed.  The Resource leveling command is not an optimization tool and will not change assignment units on the Develop task to allow the Resource to work on both simultaneously.  Even with a task calendar of 4 hours per day assigned to the Support task - project is still not completely filling the gap.  I can get it to fill the second day gap - but the still only schedules 4 hours on the support task for the first day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T15:38:06.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3554" CreationDate="2014-03-14T18:49:13.163" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't see on your question the &lt;em&gt;purpose&lt;/em&gt; of having a view at company level. Would you like to have the ability of 'shifting' resources between project based on each project's demand?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to have this information to know who are the available resources, putting all your projects in a single MS Project file may give you headaches on the near future for two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;project plan&lt;/strong&gt; is a document that needs to be &lt;strong&gt;constantly updated&lt;/strong&gt;. Keeping it up to date at project level is already a pain... at company level (having several projects) on the same document will be a nightmare&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As any shared document, you'll need a &lt;strong&gt;document owner&lt;/strong&gt;, otherwise you'll have your managers allocating resources without taking into account other projects' needs&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, if you need such information to know how many resources you have available at a specific point in time, &lt;strong&gt;I'd use a ticket tracking system where you could see the pool of resources with no / less tasks&lt;/strong&gt; assigned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T18:49:13.163" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11092" CreationDate="2014-03-14T20:16:17.920" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Critical Path Method (CPM) requires dependencies to be accurately determined&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looks like your recollection of the question is inaccurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_path_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Critical Path Method (CPM)&lt;/a&gt; works like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You list all the activities required to complete a project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You establish the precedence relationships (dependencies) among them. For each activity, list all the other activities that should have been completed prior before starting it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;With the above information you draw a network diagram.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The longest path in the network diagram is the Critical Path. If any of the activities in the Critical Path is delayed by a day, the entire project is delayed by a day. The activities not on the Critical Path may have some float (wiggle room).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, unless you identify the dependencies accurately, you cannot apply the Critical Path Method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, most likely the question was: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;For applying the critical path method, dependencies between activities need to be 1. accurately determined 2. estimated approximately.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T20:16:17.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11108" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11113" CreationDate="2014-03-15T05:51:05.693" Score="4" ViewCount="201" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a specific team member on my team that comes for me to clarify his questions. Once these questions are clarified, he does the same questions to other team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be the best approach to make sure the information provided is enough and to let him know that if the information is not enough he needs to state it instead of going to another team member and ask the same questions all over again, wasting both my and my team mate's time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8482" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2014-03-15T09:22:30.283" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T13:44:57.720" Title="Team member asks the same information across the team" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11109" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11111" CreationDate="2014-03-15T10:07:21.780" Score="1" ViewCount="93" Body="&lt;p&gt;Trying to understand the entailment between Quality and Risk, can we state that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&quot;Non Conformance to Quality Leads to Materialization of Risk (Known/Unknown)&quot;?&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this statement is true, how concrete is it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6895" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T10:25:16.470" Title="Quality and Risk" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;risk&gt;&lt;quality&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11108" CreationDate="2014-03-15T10:17:40.823" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every person have different nature and requirements, and handling them is covered under Stakeholder Management and Communication Management under Project Management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The next time he comes to ask you question, let him make sure that he understands and that if there is anything unclear he comes back to you before going to everybody else. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the meantime, if other team members are aware and annoyed at the same time on this behavior, let them tell him &lt;code&gt;&quot;I know a little about it, probably you can ask Snooper&quot;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask him to take notes when you are explaining something. Try to sketch out solutions for him to keep as a reference and make sure he's clear on them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6895" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T10:17:40.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11109" CreationDate="2014-03-15T10:25:16.470" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with everything else in the project, you have two types of risks that affect quality.  The first is aleatory risk, which is random variation that you cannot reduce.  This type of risk would affect performance, in that there is variability in the creation of the product that would produce variability with quality specifications.  You would have some defined tolerance on that spec that would define the limits; anything outside would be rejected, but those inside would be accepted despite varied results.  That variation can become a risk factor of other downstream risks, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other type of risk is epistemic, discrete drivers that can impact quality.  This could be like using a known human resource that does not have the requisite skills, which can then cause products out of spec limits.  This, too, then becomes a risk factor of other downstream risks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T10:25:16.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11091" CreationDate="2014-03-15T10:25:54.980" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your estimations should ideally include both productive and non productive time as a matter of fact. As a matter of commitment, you can follow the PERT estimation technique i.e. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Optimistic Time  + 4 * Most Likely + Pessimistic Time) / 6&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for example if a task can be technically accomplished in 6 hours and takes 1 or 2 hours of distractions, and 12 hours in the worst case,&#xA; your estimates should go like:&#xA; (6 + 4(8) + 12) / 6 = 8.33 hours approx.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6895" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T10:25:54.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11108" CreationDate="2014-03-15T10:31:55.070" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see two sides to this: on one hand, gathering opinions on a problem / question is good thing because it means multiple brains on the problem, multiple points of view and schools of thought, crazy ideas that might be the trigger for a super idea, ideas feeding off of other ideas.  On the other hand, he could be fishing for answers that validate his answer, which means he is actively feeding a bias we all tend to have.  This, of course, would be not a great way to operate for himself.  If you are just noticing this with you, it could also mean he is telling you he doesn't trust you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know that you want to tell him the information you provided is enough if my first thought is true.  You'd instead want to exploit it even if it makes you feel insecure as a manager.  It might be worth a general inquiry to him about his method.  Let him know you observed this behavior and simply ask why.  Uncover more information before you judge what is going on.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And also take a look at yourself as a manager.  Managing others can often times make a manager, especially new one, feel very insecure.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-03-15T10:31:55.070" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11114" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-15T12:03:49.723" Score="1" ViewCount="218" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there ISO (or other) standards which suggest a naming scheme for office files like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Q-2014-01-02_ObelixAndCo.pdf  (example for a quotation)&#xA;O-2014-01-04_ObelixAndCo.pdf  (example for an order )&#xA;D-2014-01-20_ObelixAndCo.pdf  (example for a dunning letter)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course I could invent my own scheme like the upper example, but probably there are well accepted standards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7040" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T13:04:46.823" Title="Which common file naming schemes are available for project management?" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11118" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-16T07:14:06.637" Score="5" ViewCount="282" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in a fairly interesting situation.  I'm the only software developer in a team of electrical engineers who work on hardware and know how to hack some code in C.  I am the &lt;strong&gt;sole&lt;/strong&gt; developer responsible for developing/maintaining/supporting the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;DBA of a &gt;2TB SQL Server database with &gt;70 normalized tables, with many of them containing 10s of millions rows, and one of which contains &gt; 12 billion rows of data - I'm responsible for maintaining, tuning, and developing it - writing/tuning queries, coming up with comprehensive indexing strategies, monitoring data growth, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Separate data warehouse based on above data&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Large SSAS tabular model, based on above database&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Complex, multithreaded, concurrent processes that load data into the database, at a rate of &gt;1 million large files inserted /day, with the data coming from multiple sources.  Also responsible for detecting any missing data/data corruption issues and following up with the appropriate people&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multiple RESTful WebAPI services that power the internal business web apps - some of which are fairly complex, interfacing with other web services within our company and utilizing various design patterns and techniques to help keep them maintainable - Unit of Work pattern, Repository pattern, Dependency injection, automated unit testing, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All the internal web apps associated with the above database - at least one of which is used by &gt;100 users. Most of the web apps are complex, utilizing ASP.NET MVC5, caching, Typescript, Knockout, Angular, Bootstrap, etc., to provide a dynamic, responsive experience to the users&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Integrating an equally-large set of related data within this next year&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A web dashboard, using D3, Angular, Bootstrap, and other JS libraries- it updates key metrics the electrical engineers want to track as new data arrives&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Creating/maintaining multiple statistics-heavy parameterized reports in SSRS - adding features, fixing issues, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...among other things - this is not a complete list.  Only reason I've stayed (mostly)sane is by automating as much as possible, and writing decoupled, modular, testable code that adheres to industry standards and best practices as much as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My manager (and his manager) are very friendly guys and are very capable when it comes to electrical engineering project management, but know next to nothing about software development, and the effort it takes to develop and maintain software solutions that perform well with the data volume we're experiencing.  At my recent performance review, my manager mentioned that he thinks my position is a part-time job, and I should be able to handle that and other things - he's baffled when I say that this is too much for one person and I need more help.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They recently hired a guy and said he was to help me part of the time, because he had &quot;database experience&quot; - the last time the guy worked on a database was in 1994, and all he knows is coding BIOS C code in Linux.  Management seemed very surprised when he said that it would take him months and months in order to be somewhat productive at helping me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After laying out a case (yet again) for hiring another senior developer to help me, my manager's manager, who is also fairly clueless about software development, wants to discuss my workload and justification for hiring someone else, as he's not convinced it's necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is - &lt;strong&gt;what might be some effective approaches, if any, to convince a manager who is not a software developer of the effort and resources it takes to write/maintain the massive amount of code I'm responsible for?&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to come across as complaining, and I don't have 20 hours to explain in excruciating detail everything I'm responsible for and why it takes so long for me to develop new solutions while also maintaining all the existing code and the database. I've tried in various ways to explain how much effort is involved, but I feel like I'm getting nowhere - they compare me to an intern who was responsible for my current tasks before they hired me (the intern coded up a storm, but the code and database &quot;schema&quot; was so atrocious, I had to throw everything completely out and start from scratch) and appear to think that what I'm doing now takes a similar amount of effort and talent.  It also doesn't help that I'm in my mid-late 20s, so I don't have a massive amount of seniority under my belt (~9ish years), and thus they don't respect my views as much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8541" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T11:25:29.730" Title="Techniques on showing management how much effort it takes for quality software development?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11118" CreationDate="2014-03-16T11:15:02.327" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To request additional help on any given capability, you need to understand fully the other side of the equation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Salary, Wage, and Benefit line is likely the most expensive cost your organization has.  The SWB is typically the first area to attack when driving costs down because it typically has the biggest impact and there is, truthfully, usually a lot of waste there.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is a constant pressure to improve, which means doing more with less, essentially.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Of any given team, you will typically see a few hyper performers who deliver the most and most who deliver marginally to just okay.  And from an individual standpoint, humans are the least reliable, which means performance, even with the hyper performers, fluctuates up and down the performance range in a very dramatic and random way.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;While unproductive time is a given and normal and can be quite healthy as it relates to performance, too much unproductive time is a killer.  And a lot of this is perception.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Parkinson's Law: work expands to fill time.  Student Syndrome: we procrastinate.  Managers know this so forcing a constrained resource situation helps mitigate that.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Results speak volumes: if the organization is getting its output at the quality level they expect at their current cost level, meeting the timeline most of the time, and there is no evidence of low morale, high attrition, or other negative side effects, then there is nothing to fix.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on these things, and there are likely more, you need to build your case in the most objective, unemotional way and stay consistent on message.  And your case needs to address the above things in an indirect way.  In other words, your case needs to support the organization's goals of maintaining and growing profit, maturing capability to even higher performance, innovation, growing revenue, doing more things with less.  So you are asking them to spend more money and, by doing so, you are going to save more money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, your list is coming across as merely complaining.  How are you perceived?  Are you a hyper performer?  Do you spend just a little much talking at the water cooler?  Are you a 40 hour guy and then you disappear?  Are you forever labor or can they see you as a leader of organizations in your future who will one day say no to more labor when a 20-something year old starts to complain.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-03-16T11:15:02.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11118" CreationDate="2014-03-16T14:56:04.273" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you use any existing tools for project management of the software development part? My personal favorite solution to demonstrate the actual workload of what needs to be done, is involving them in a process of defining and prioritizing what needs to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even without applying anything like scrum by the book, I believe some of the core ideas could be useful for someone in your situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write down everything you do on a regular basis (the maintaining part) as a list. Write it down in a rather non-technical manner as close as possible to the actual outcome your management will have of your task, e.g. 'Keep System Xyz usable at all times', 'Respond to support requests from xyz users'.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Maintain a list of a all new feature / change requests that you currently are aware of, again as close as possible to what management (or users of systems) see.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make realistic estimations about how long each of these tasks will take you. Especially for the regular / maintaining tasks this will show how much time you even have left for new requests.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sit down with your management and prioritized the task. Based on your estimations, you can draw a line in the prioritized list, of what you will not be able to do / to do within the next month. If management is happy with this, they maybe really don't need an additional helper for you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now, make sure you keep these lists up-to-date. Keep track of bug requests coming in, and how much time they were consuming. Make it transparent to your management what other features or maintenance tasks where pushed behind by this. On the feature / task list this would mean, the 'not possible alone' line would move up, and your management will have to reconsider: Additional help, or x, y, z, etc. will not be done.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short this means: Making sure the responsibility of what is going to be done is always in the hand of your management (following your good advice hopefully). To do so you make it transparent and easy to understand what is happening, how much time it consumes, and what of their wishlist can't be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can help in many ways: Even if your management didn't have a budget for an additional developer, using your list of what should be but can't be done by you alone, they can calculate the economical loss that means, and this could quite likely free the budget for more help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either way, the main goal for you should be to maintain peace of mind: Your job is to develop, and to make transparent to management what management needs to make their decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience the worst thing of being overwhelmed with work and requests, is the bad feeling of not even knowing if you do the right, most important thing or if it will be even appreciated in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Btw.: As a software developer I know that time estimations can be a huge trap. In doubt, be rather a bit more abstract and keep track of what areas of tasks (maintenance, bugfixing, new feature requests) are consuming in terms of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck anyway!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8542" LastActivityDate="2014-03-16T14:56:04.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11118" CreationDate="2014-03-17T11:25:29.730" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the simplest way out is to make them realize the &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cost of failure &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time take to recover from a failure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once we attach numbers to these two metrics, managers pay attention (No offence but I guess it is justifiable as economic benefits needs to be established)&#xA;Most of the automation should be marketed to management post educating them on the above two metrics.&#xA;Hope this helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8512" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T11:25:29.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11108" CreationDate="2014-03-17T16:52:41.073" Score="2" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check the the various aspects of his question (use why? what? when?&#xA;&amp;amp; etc).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be patient and listen to him or her patiently.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use writing or Drawing for clarify the question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write his questions on a paper or board.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask him to be thought with you on the various aspects of the question.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write your answer or Description about those aspects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finally if someone else has given him a convincing answer; ask him to explain and check your answer with his description.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5437" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-18T13:44:57.720" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T13:44:57.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11126" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-17T17:55:08.747" Score="1" ViewCount="114" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our projects are very much risk focused and I'm keen to find ways to improve how we identify and manage risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've noticed that &quot;Proactive Risk Management: Controlling Uncertainty in Product Development&quot; by Merritt, Smith &amp;amp; Smith is well reviewed but this was published in 2002 and I suspect there maybe new ideas that this book won't cover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8549" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T06:07:18.910" Title="What is the best book/guide to help explain how to manage projects by risk?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;risk&gt;&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-04-02T05:53:20.427" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11083" CreationDate="2014-03-17T21:51:59.050" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hope theres not too much redundancy to other answers, but I wanted to go in to some details about tools you might use in agile team with several projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we do (about 6 developers, on 2 bigger and upto 4 smaller projects at the same time) is as well combining tools from different technologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We write specifications based on user stories, which we develop together with our clients, or at least have them proof read in the end.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the end of iterations (or if working more flexible whenever something is ready) we have the client accept the work done based on these specifications.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where possible we work in Iterations, it's not a general problem to do so just because there are more projects at the same time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Retrospective, Sprint Planning etc. can be more or less comprehensive depending on project / iteration size and other circumstances (e.g. how well the client specifies).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We do a daily stand-up meeting with all developers and QA.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For the stand-up meeting we use one kanban-style board, where we have color coded cards across projects. It took a while and some discipline to have everyone understand that it's fine to listen to reports from other projects, but in the end it helped a lot to motivated people to help each other out with experience across projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We mostly use story-point style estimations, to be able to get a feeling for the velocity for each project / project team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As other answers already suggested, I believe a kanban-style board could be the most important tool in your case. You will see if tasks for instance pile up in design or testing, if tasks get stuck, and you can have a transparent way to prioritize tasks even across projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8542" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T21:51:59.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11114" CreationDate="2014-03-17T23:59:39.860" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The lack of answers on your question may gives an indication (as I suspected) that there may not be a standard for naming files. Even if there's a standard out there, it may not be known enough to worth applying it without explicitly mention it on your documentation... which puts you back to your original point: if you need to mention your standard, it's not a 'standard per se'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, I'd use file names that could be understandable by the audience it's intended for. You could use a standard with a single letter for your team's reports used internally, but for an external audience that may not be interested in reading your standard... is better to use meaningful names instead of acronyms of any sort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might not be the answer you were expecting, and I'm looking forward to see if someone else out there has a standard for file naming. Until there, I believe the file naming will need to rely on our discretion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T23:59:39.860" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11114" CreationDate="2014-03-18T09:12:23.960" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think ISO have any requirement or recommendation on that level. The level they are on is more something like &quot;It should be able to track.&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your suggested naming standard would not be enough for a larger company.&#xA;Lets say a big automotive company like any of Volkswagen, Ford, Caterpillar, Volvo or similar. They would have many different buyers responsible for their commodity and since they are buying a from many big vendors there are companies that overlap more than one commodity. Therefore it is not uncommon to have more than one quotation to a vendor same day, I would think. So if you can have this as a (future) possibility or similar, I would not suggest only having date. Rather an incremental number or something where you can track the which document it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I agree with Tiago regarding externals not being interested in what kind of standard you will have, only that you can track documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend you to call a big company and ask what kind of naming standards they might have if you cant find your own standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7438" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T09:12:23.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11114" CreationDate="2014-03-18T13:04:46.823" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use the following naming convention for all documents in my projects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Project ID and/or Name] - [Document Type] - [Document Date] - [Document version] - [Draft|Approved]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P999 PMSE Answers - Project Brief - 2014-03-18 - V0.1 Draft&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note- The point of using the reverse notation on the date, which I use a lot in document filenames, is so that multiple versions of the same file sort into chronological order (though this is aided by the version number as well of course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T13:04:46.823" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11136" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-18T13:35:22.710" Score="5" ViewCount="2045" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are starting our new project in Scrum/agile method. The client asked us to provide the estimations on their high level requirements. We will be able to form the team during Sprint 0 which we will form in few weeks from now. I understand that the team will provide estimations (T shirt size/story points) based on that we will arrive at the end date. But in the context we are working now, the team will be added later. So, i have broadly three questions &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How will I come up with the dates based on scope without having the team now? (I dont have historic data also) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do I determine scientifically the number of resources needed to finish the release ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How different are the estimates and estimation for an Agile project done vs Waterfall?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5576" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2014-03-18T13:41:34.907" LastActivityDate="2014-03-19T09:33:14.687" Title="How to estimate employee resources?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11136" CreationDate="2014-03-18T13:50:43.190" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have to estimate all three variables together.  Estimating one without the other or other two results in an estimate of planning value that is not credible at all.  The formula is Duration (days) = Work (hours) / Resource utilization (FTE).  However, this is very deterministic and actual results do not really follow this.  It is good tool to get grounded, but you need to treat all three variables as variables that are both dependent and independent of each other.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do not have historical data or reliable heuristics, you are limited to &quot;engineering&quot; type estimates using your SMEs and several different techniques.  The limits to this are caused by human biases, politics, and agendas (like pricing to win), so this is a rather unreliable of planning your work.  However, if this is all you have, then this is all you have; measure your risks accordingly and build in reserves where you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not think there are a lot of estimate differences between agile and traditional methods but I'll leave that to the agile experts.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T13:50:43.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11136" CreationDate="2014-03-18T16:47:34.500" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile is based on the knowledge that &lt;em&gt;scope is variable&lt;/em&gt;, therefore effort estimates are unreliable and not supported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile projects are delivered at regular intervals or continuously. There is no &quot;deadline&quot; as such, and since one can't do estimates without the team -- one can't do estimates without the team in &lt;em&gt;waterfall&lt;/em&gt; either -- estimates are made as late as possible in the game, when more domain knowledge usually results in better numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an agile project you need to agree with your customer that each iteration will cost X and that you guarantee:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a certain minimum number of iterations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a release each iteration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The customer will guide the project and decide &lt;em&gt;during development&lt;/em&gt; what features are going to be delivered. The total cost of the project will be depending on how many iterations the customer will decide to pay for. Each will deliver a set of features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the estimation is done &lt;em&gt;each iteration&lt;/em&gt;. The software will be (potentially) delivered in any case each iteration so you can think of each as a &quot;fixed time&quot; mini-project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may sound like a step back from waterfall, but it is a very powerful approach which has very desirable qualities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;estimation is only made when something is about to be developed (not at the beginning)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there's optimal support for scope change and value maximization of the output (value is continuously delivered, not once per project)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there's support for changing value of features (if the next planned feature is not valuable, it won't be developed)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;estimates impede negotiation: there are many ways to produce a feature. The exact details are negotiated until the last minute in order to allow for maximum value and efficiency (versus &quot;following the plan&quot; in waterfall)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your customer values using an agile methodology -- not all customers and projects can accept it -- then I would think they expect something like the above and not a classical estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6300" LastEditorUserId="6300" LastEditDate="2014-03-19T09:33:14.687" LastActivityDate="2014-03-19T09:33:14.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11136" CreationDate="2014-03-18T17:41:17.670" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe the important thing is the presence of the 'client'. The team psychology differs whether the project is internal or external. I work for a software vendor. The approach that we follow is, make estimations using waterfall approach but execute it using agile. However, you need to be careful with your estimates as agile measures the velocity in terms of story points where as your waterfall estimates are based on hours. We have not yet mastered it but for sure it is slippery slope. Another method is to  provide rough order of magnitude estimates but price it on per sprint basis. There are other threads in this forum that explain these methods well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HTH.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8415" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T17:41:17.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3554" CreationDate="2014-03-18T17:50:54.670" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would be very cumbersome to use MS Project Professional or MS Project Standard.  However, MS Project Server provides the enterprise view of projects and resources using a single, central data repository.  MS Project Server 2013 has been re-architected to a single physical data base, with 4 logical databases including draft plans (not visible to anyone but the creator), published plans (visible to all authorized users), archive plans, and the reporting database. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This product is available through a subscription service provided by different vendors, including Microsoft Office 365.  The price is reasonable, and depending on the needs of individual users, may only require online access for all accept &quot;heavy-duty&quot; project managers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An interesting point - Microsoft recently announced at the 2014 MS Project Conference in Anaheim that they will be selling a new &quot;cloud-based&quot; subscription for project team members at $7 per month.  This provides full read-access to projects on which the team member is assigned, and update access for their assigned tasks and timesheets.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8562" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T17:50:54.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11136" CreationDate="2014-03-19T00:39:10.097" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To accurately estimate a project's time, scope, or resource requirements, you need to perform some analysis and estimation; this is true regardless of your chosen framework. One can generally accomplish this as a mini-project where an estimate for the &quot;real&quot; project is its primary deliverable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your other sub-questions will depend a great deal on your chosen project management framework. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Waterfall&lt;/a&gt; is a model, while &quot;agile&quot; is a set of frameworks based on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt;. Some useful comparisons can be made, but specific practices can vary quite widely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below are some specific suggestions for how to accomplish your objectives, regardless of what framework you choose. The suggestions also attempt to highlight some of the differences between traditional and agile methodologies so that you can consider what might work best for your specific situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Timebox Your Delivery&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How will I come up with the dates based on scope without having the team now? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't make these kind of estimates based on scope, because you have no way to estimate the level of effort or time required to meet that scope. Instead, if you want to be agile, you define a &lt;em&gt;time box&lt;/em&gt; for each iteration and each milestone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if it's now March 1st, your client might define September 1st as their target delivery date for the project. Your team then has a time box of six months to deliver as much scope as possible within that predefined time box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, you will define iterations as additional time boxes within which you will commit to delivering a set of potentially-shippable features. For example, a six-month project will give you approximately 12 two-week iterations. In each iteration, the client will define what features they want to prioritize &lt;em&gt;for that single iteration&lt;/em&gt;, and the team will commit to the scope of work they are confident that they can complete within that two-week time frame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The time box and the goal for each iteration is fixed, but the scope of work that can be successfully delivered over the lifetime of the project is variable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Kick Off a Project-Planning Project&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do I determine scientifically the number of resources needed to finish the release?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't. Oh, there are frameworks that &lt;em&gt;pretend&lt;/em&gt; that they can, but unless your project is a manufacturing project with well-defined tolerances no initial guesstimate survives the real-world project process without changes in scope, time, or allocated resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an agile project, the number of human resources is generally fixed (e.g. a fixed team size and/or a fixed number of teams), but the scope and the number of iterations will vary based on the needs of the project. This is generally what you need, but there are alternatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To provide a reasonable estimate of how much a project will cost or how many iterations it is likely to take, you must actually create a &lt;em&gt;project spike&lt;/em&gt; to create those estimates. In other words, you might form a short project to go over the feature list (a.k.a. Project Backlog), define and estimate stories, and maybe even perform a short story spike or two. This sort of calibration project is actually quite common, and many larger clients are willing to invest in a &quot;project-planning project&quot; in order to gain more accurate estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Waterfall and Agile Frameworks Have Different Value Models&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How different are the estimates and estimation for an Agile project done vs. Waterfall?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Waterfall, even modified waterfall models, are basically designed around up-front planning and then trying to control for deviation from this initial plan. Because the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cone of Uncertainty&lt;/a&gt; is typically largest at the start of a project, up-front planning is generally not successful in controlling &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;complex or complicated&lt;/a&gt; projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile methodologies, on the other hand, generally use just-in-time estimates at a granular level, thereby reducing the Cone of Uncertainty to more manageable levels. Frameworks like Scrum also provide for just-in-time analysis and design, which help to maximize the accuracy of short-term planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to look at it is to say that both types of methodologies are bad at long-term estimation and planning, but agile frameworks acknowledge that and take a value-driven approach to delivering features frequently in a tight feedback loop in order to maximize value for the project stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, if your project can deliver incremental value, then agile frameworks are a viable option. If your project truly can't deliver &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; value unless all predefined tasks are 100% complete, then frameworks that require up-front analysis and design and a less emergent production cycle may be necessary. Your mileage will certainly vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-03-19T00:39:10.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11144" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-19T05:16:21.213" Score="9" ViewCount="1544" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm the dev manager in my company. We're following what some people in the company like to call &quot;scrum&quot; but is in fact waterfall in scrum clothing - we are using some scrum terminology (backlog, sprints) but the PM, QA, and dev function as three separate entities in the delivery process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is roughly how our cycle looks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Our development sprints are 5 weeks long, followed by QA sprints of equal length in which the full sprint content is tested.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We have a constant stream of &quot;polishing&quot; bugs (minor changes in UI layout, changing strings, etc.) as well as &quot;major&quot; bugs that are relatively small to fix (e.g. a missing null check that causes a user flow to fail). We allocate roughly half of the sprint for such bugs, customer cases, etc. and the other half for implementing user stories. The bugs work is estimated in a single &quot;bugs bucket&quot; work item per developer which is ~10 days long.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the beginning of the sprint devs get a prioritized list of user stories with a reasonable amount of detail.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We have about 3-4 days of planning (that are part of the sprint) in which the user stories are assigned to developers and are broken down by those developers into tasks of no more than 3 days. Devs then commit to the user stories that we think can fit into the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main difficulty, as I see it, is that we can't seem to properly estimate how long user stories will take. It is very common for user stories to slip out of the sprint because of an over-optimistic estimation. This consistently happens sprint after sprint. Now, while we do have some junior and new developers, I don't feel the problem is inexperience with the product because the same happens to our experienced developers. The result of this is that we increase our sprint length (it went up from 4 weeks to 5), but then of course the user stories got larger so this negated the effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My belief is that the user stories are too large. For example, it is common for user stories to be estimated at 20-25 man days (divided to two developers, e.g. GUI and backend) or even more (one recent user story ended up taking something like 70-80 man days, and its initial estimate was about half of this). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My feeling is that these user stories are too large and need to be broken down, but our PM strongly objects to this on the grounds that breaking down these user stories will result in stories that have no customer value (for example, in the 70-80 day user story I've mentioned, there was a lot of GUI work, a lot of backend work, a lot of DB work, etc. - but the user story would be completely unusable without any of these).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was thinking that perhaps devs should force the US to be split to development milestones (rather than customer-facing milestones) and shrink our sprint accordingly, but I can't quite convince myself that this would help. I do feel that it is easier to estimate four 20-day items, since we have the data of the first item when estimating the second, but I am not sure it will give enough benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that fully analyzing our development process and finding what can be improved can take a significant amount of time and might be better-left for consultants rather than an online forum, but I feel that our problems should be fairly common...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any input would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7253" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2014-03-28T14:02:46.163" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T14:23:41.667" Title="Constantly under-estimating user stories" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11144" CreationDate="2014-03-19T08:02:14.630" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problems which I found in your process are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rule of Scrum is Sprints should not be more than than 1-4 weeks. Ideally the Sprint should be 1 or 2 weeks for better tracking. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint Planning should be made before the commencement of Sprint not during the Sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once you commit the features to be taken up in Sprint, for no reason it should be changed. No addition/ deletion of features. If there are any important feature that can be taken up only in next Sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you estimate a feature ask your team to estimate, the person who is going to develop that particular feature should estimate that feature. In that way we can avoid over/under estimating&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User Stories should not be longer, it should be broken down into as smaller tasks as possible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testing team and Dev team should work together in Scrum, After completing each feature/user story the testing team should test and report bugs. The bugs that can fixed in that sprint will be fixed and the bugs which cannot be fixed will be taken in next Sprint. In next Sprint priority will be given to bugs depending on its impact. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Solutions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plan your Sprint for not more than 2 weeks. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assign a Business Analyst/Scrum Master to manage these process of Scrum. They should ensure the process compliance. He should be the person communicating to product owner or project manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Train your dev team on estimating the features. There are many methods of estimations techniques&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User Stories should be written by Business Analyst according to Business Needs. It should be smaller and simpler. The user stories should be prioritized based on Business needs and should be taken based on that priority.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testing and Dev team shouldn't work as two different team, they should work as one team. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more details on Scrum process, please check this link &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum: &lt;a href=&quot;http://agileevangelists.wordpress.com/2014/01/23/intro-on-agile-scrum/&quot;&gt;http://agileevangelists.wordpress.com/2014/01/23/intro-on-agile-scrum/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8012" LastActivityDate="2014-03-19T08:02:14.630" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10462" CreationDate="2014-03-19T12:36:22.983" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest you a tool called Eylean. Disclaimer: I am a developer of this product. It is native Windows client with wast feature set for everyone using agile and lean processes. The pros of such tool are integration to Outlook client for email import, excel data import/export. Also, integrated time tracking allows you to measure efficiency not only by some abstract value like story points. You can download it &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eylean.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YlO7q.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zAwfs.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FO6SF.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5562" LastActivityDate="2014-03-19T12:36:22.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11144" CreationDate="2014-03-19T13:31:35.650" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are right and your stories are too big for your iterations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Either your PO is right and the stories are monolithic (very unlikely in my experience) in which case make your iterations 6 weeks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or your stories are way too big, break them down.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The classic mistake is for product owners to go down the slippery slope of &quot;nobody would want an improvement of so little value&quot;, thus bundling a bunch of subfeatures together in order to accumulate significant value to release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's much easier if I explain myself with an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose this bundle of stories has the theme &quot;Add a search feature to Stack Overflow&quot;. One could argue that unless we can do full-text search of all pages of the site, the search is not valuable enough to release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They would be wrong. In fact, that's not what Stack Overflow did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we did was&lt;sup&gt;(*)&lt;/sup&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;release a simple SQL Server full-text search, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;which was then enhanced incrementally with different filters etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;once the simple solution was not adequate anymore, we refactored the architecture to use Elastic search.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;then we extended the solution to cover new areas of the site as needed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these increments were (or could have been) released independently and provided value to the users of the site (either in terms of new features or better performance).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that in your case you are trying to deliver the equivalent of all the steps above in one go. In a way, you should not be surprised because you have 5 weeks of testing in order to release something, whereas we try to be very lean and release 5 times a day on average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as you said, you are really working in a rigid (opposite of agile?) environment. In this case you shouldn't get hooked up to the letter of scrum: you are already adapting it instead of adopting it (pardon the pun).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; do, is simply slice your megastories vertically and focus on providing minimal value for each slice. Value is not necessarily &quot;making the customers happy&quot;, sometimes it's merely giving them something &quot;better than nothing&quot; or even features that elicit &quot;I won't use it&quot; instead of &quot;your product is now worse&quot;. As an example of why &quot;I won't use it&quot; is still value: a search that only works in simple cases might be almost unusable for power users, but it still provides value in some edge cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you &lt;em&gt;shouldn't&lt;/em&gt; do is slicing your stories horizontally, by developer milestone or tier or layer. In that case, those splits do not provide value, are not INVEST stories but tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @iArunraj &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/11145/6300&quot;&gt;said&lt;/a&gt;, there are also other issues that you need to address but the above is the solution to the specific problem you mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(*)&lt;/sup&gt; This is a vast simplification, but accurate enough for the purpose of this answer&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6300" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2014-03-19T13:31:35.650" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11144" CreationDate="2014-03-19T15:32:55.373" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Smaller user stories and better estimates&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me address your two main problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My feeling is that these user stories are too large and need to be&#xA;  broken down&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some specific tips for splitting larger user stories: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agileforall.com/2009/10/patterns-for-splitting-user-stories/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Patterns for Splitting User Stories&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.christiaanverwijs.nl/post/2013/05/17/8-useful-strategies-for-splitting-large-user-stories-%28and-a-cheatsheet%29.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;8 useful strategies for splitting large user stories (and a&#xA;cheatsheet)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The main difficulty, as I see it, is that we can't seem to properly&#xA;  estimate how long user stories will take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Breaking down user stories into smaller ones will help a lot in better estimates. In addition, you can try the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Planning Poker: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/planning-poker&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Planning Poker in Scrum brings together multiple&#xA;expert opinions for the agile estimation of a project.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Research stories (spikes): If there is much uncertainty about the estimation of a story, you can take a time-boxed (typically no more than 4 to 8 hours) research story first. By spending this time the team gets a better understanding of the work to be done and can arrive at a better estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-03-19T15:32:55.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11150" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11156" CreationDate="2014-03-19T17:05:32.577" Score="3" ViewCount="315" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I deal with recurring meetings (like trainnings or feedbacks) in Scrum? Are they impediments? Do I have to plan less User Stories during the sprint planning? How can I deal with this situations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7806" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T10:09:49.737" Title="How to plan recurring meetings in scrum" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11150" CreationDate="2014-03-19T18:53:50.480" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course this somewhat depends on your office culture, but I've found that ensuring that the inter-sprint time is used for these activities. When I say &quot;inter-sprint&quot; I mean that day or so of other activities that make for productive sprints. In specific, between sprints, my teams hold a sprint retrospective (the place for feedback and discussions of improvement) and sprint planning activities (planning poker, communications with the Product Owners, etc.). These &quot;rituals&quot; should be included in your regular sprint schedule, so you should not have to reduce the number of story points covered each sprint. On the other hand, if you know that there will be a resource hit due to training or vacation time, then you should impose an efficiency loss for the sprint and reduce the number of story points of the sprint (velocity) by the percent loss in efficiency. Your development team still needs to buy into the commitment for the sprint, but by having the timed rituals clearly established and ensuring that team members know that they are not expected to operate at full capacity if they are not available, then this should smooth out timing issues. For problems that come up that will require additional research to establish an understanding of scope and complexity you may need to schedule research spikes into the following sprint. This can reduce the amount of product produced, but also makes account of the developers' times when handling difficult problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7689" LastActivityDate="2014-03-19T18:53:50.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11126" CreationDate="2014-03-19T19:28:49.067" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Risk management in product development&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a more recent (2010) research paper on risk management in product development. It has a link to the full PDF:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/74936&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Product development risk management and the role of transparency&#xA;(Abstract)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper has references to Risk management standards and frameworks proposed by NASA, Department of Defense and Project Management Institute (PMI) as well as several more recent studies and surveys of risk management professionals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-04-02T06:07:18.910" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T06:07:18.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11153" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11158" CreationDate="2014-03-19T23:41:25.893" Score="9" ViewCount="368" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for some honest feedback. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm leaving my current position in a few days for a bigger company, better pay, better hours, etc. One of the main reasons I'm leaving though is the management structure at my current job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are only four employees in the entire advertising agency. A designer that reports to the owner, a PM that reports to the owner, and myself, who reports to the PM. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First big question: Does a 4 person company NEED a Project Manager, especially one dedicated to only a single employee?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second big question: Does a PM need to have some understanding of the people they're managing? This PM has no technical experience, no development experience, and very little basic computer skills. I am a web developer. I code websites. I am the only developer in the company. Yet the PM makes design and technical changes on a whim, and ignores any and all feedback. Questioning illogical changes is considered &quot;combative&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If every project is behind, who would be a fault? The Project Manager, who is determining what gets worked on and when, or the devloper who is doing as they are told?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a deadline gets pushed, is that the developers responsibility? What about if a client is given a choice between A and B, and the client chooses B, is it the developers fault for coding A when told to do so? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Catch: The PM is the owners girlfriends best friend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I may sound bitter, but I've been dealing with this for the past eight months since this PM was hired. Is this the norm, or an anomaly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8577" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T12:21:16.593" Title="How useful can a Project Manager be?" Tags="&lt;management&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11153" CreationDate="2014-03-20T00:13:41.403" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are asking the wrong questions.  This is not about whether or not a PM role is valuable.  This is more about interpersonal and political issues you are experiencing in this very small company.  You need help with that, maybe also you need some career coaching or a mentor.  I am not suggesting you are at fault but you are clearly not coping and you are trying to impeach the role.  Not the best strategy.  Your best strategy might really be finding a new place to hang your hat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T00:13:41.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11150" CreationDate="2014-03-20T10:09:49.737" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If &quot;recurring&quot; means they occur each and every sprint and occupy the same amount of time: just don't plan for them. Your velocity will adjust to the amount of work you get done in the sprint's &quot;free&quot; time. This will be less with more recurring things, but velocity will reflect the work you get done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the &quot;recurring&quot; things occur irregular or take different amounts of time. Plan for them just like you would for every other work item. Otherwise your velocity keeps jumping up and down, even if your estimations are perfect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6990" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T10:09:49.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="883" CreationDate="2014-03-20T11:16:46.407" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PMP application has a section where you need to fill in the number of hours for each project for all five PMP process domains i.e. Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring and Controlling and Closing. You should have gathered 4500 hours of relevant project management experience to take PMP examination. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also possible that you may spend a few more hours in some particular process group. Make sure that you complete 4500 hours of PM experience for all the projects to be eligible. Also, if there is an overlap in the projects, you can count only one project at a time. Read PMI Handbook to know more: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/certification/~/media/pdf/certifications/pdc_pmphandbook.ashx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pmi.org/certification/~/media/pdf/certifications/pdc_pmphandbook.ashx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On some research, I got this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.simplilearn.com/pmp-exam-application-process&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;template&lt;/a&gt; which helped me in understanding how to document my Project Management experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8321" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T11:16:46.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11153" CreationDate="2014-03-20T11:58:45.900" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMI's studies have shown that projects that are managed complete more often and more successfully than projects that are not managed. (I can't find the citation right now).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 4 person team &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; use a project manager, if the projects are large and complex enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alarms go off in my mind when I read your statement, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does a PM need to have some understanding of the people they're managing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM's job is not to manage people. The PM's job is to be aware of the cost, schedule, scope, quality, and stakeholder needs,  to work with the team to resolve anything that would affect those values and to inform the stakeholders if the issue can't be resolved. Although PM's are sometimes line managers, that is a side duty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on what you say (changes on a whim, ignores feedback, etc.), the individual in question isn't doing a PM's job very well - they're doing some other job and calling themselves a PM.  That is an issue for your management; on the other hand if the projects complete on time, under budget and with quality that is acceptable to the customer, then management may be happy with the PM.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, I suspect that Mr. Espina is right - the best answer may be to move to a job where you have a better fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2014-03-20T12:21:16.593" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T12:21:16.593" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10327" CreationDate="2014-03-21T09:24:41.570" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my daily work I used to deal with issue of distributed agile teams and communication within / between teams. I've recently depicted a few (in my opinion) useful hints. Details you find &lt;strong&gt;in &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.rspective.pl/?p=113&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the post&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This article wraps up several improvements in communication which were introduced in one of the big project I've been working on. To give you a bit of context - it is about collaboration in &lt;strong&gt;offshoring model&lt;/strong&gt; were teams are located in different European countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the post I'm suggesting to introduce following betterments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;don't afraid to visit customer and &lt;strong&gt;work onshore&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;get all &lt;strong&gt;stakeholders familiar with process&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;regular feedback about processes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;daily and weekly meetings rhythm&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;proficient communication roles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;clear guidelines on how to build backlog (user stories, stories maps etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the &lt;strong&gt;Product Owner Proxy&lt;/strong&gt; institution - set it up internally on your side&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;robust project tracking tool used for exchanges between the team members&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2860" LastEditorUserId="2860" LastEditDate="2014-03-21T13:30:18.357" LastActivityDate="2014-03-21T13:30:18.357" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4254" CreationDate="2014-03-21T13:07:13.317" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have an experience in working with other office of the same company, however I used work for company which provides offshoring services. I believe those are comparable situations, in both cases you have to collaborate with one ore more teams which are located in different place (many distributed agile teams - for instance). I've recently depicted a few (in my opinion) useful hints concerning the cooperation between distributed teams. Details you find &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.rspective.pl/?p=113&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;in the post&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This article wraps up several improvements in communication which were introduced in one of the big project I've been working on. To give you a bit of context - it is about collaboration in offshoring model were teams are located in different European countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the post I'm suggesting to introduce following betterments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;don't afraid to visit customer and &lt;strong&gt;work onshore&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;get all &lt;strong&gt;stakeholders familiar with process&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;regular feedback about processes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;daily and weekly meetings rhythm&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;proficient communication roles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;clear guidelines on how to build backlog (user stories, stories maps etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the &lt;strong&gt;Product Owner Proxy&lt;/strong&gt; institution - set it up internally on your side&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;robust project tracking tool used for exchanges between the team members&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2860" LastActivityDate="2014-03-21T13:07:13.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4254" CreationDate="2014-03-21T14:03:56.273" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answers are good, but we need to add CodeGnome's Law.  Don't mistake technology for decision or committment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I currently work in a split office - there is no way to tell if person x is in office A, or B, or working from home, or on a train.  We have some technology (lync) for presence &amp;amp; chat, and we make heavy use of webex and cisco Jabber.   But that is technology.  You can fail with technology - it's easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The critical factor for success is a decision to work in a distributed office. Our CIO made a strong verbal committment that &quot;Work is what you do, not where you are.&quot;  If you don't have that culture all the technology in the world won't help you.  If you collectively commit to that, you'll succeed despite the technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Commit to:&#xA; - Make decisions in official venues. Don't make a decision in the hallway and then assume that the folks in the other offices know about it.  There is nothing that will destroy a distributed office faster and more thoroughly than the feeling that you are shut out of decisions that affect your future. If your in the hallway and making a decision, move back to someone's office and set up a conference call.  The critical thing is to recognize a decision, analyze the scope of the decision and involve the right people. I suspect that if you can form this habit you'll find that a variety of workplace issues improve as well. Diversity benefits from transparency. Governance benefits from committing to a decision making process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Distribute information intelligently.  If you send every document to everyone in every email, you'll fail. If you only handle paper and only get wet ink signatures, you'll fail a different way.  Make sure that the people who need to be consulted are consulted.  Once again, that is a work process committment that will improve your office whether it is distributed or colocated.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hold meetings.  There are a wide variety of technologies to hold meetings (both colocated and distributed).  Distributed meetings are slightly more challenging, but the marginal challenge of a distributed meeting is insignificant when compared to the difference between a good meeting and a bad meeting.  If you hold rambling meetings with no agenda and no outcome and no preparation and no action items, that meeting is a failure whether you are colocated or distributed. It is a failure whether you recognize it or not.  If you set an agenda, distribute the pre-reads, advertise the decisions, and collect the action items, and keep the meeting on target, the meeting will &lt;em&gt;probably&lt;/em&gt; succeed no matter whether it is local or remote.   &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Collaborate. Bounce ideas off one another.  Technology is a key enabler here, but you need to be able to spitball ideas and explore options.  That can be a conference call, a telepresence session (cisco jabber, skype, lync, text chat, whatever).  Don't let distance excuse the failure to collaborate.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Accept that some level of travel is necessary.   I hate bonebagging, I dislike anything that requires my meatsack. I am my mind and my skill and those are not geograrphically bounded.  But I drove an hour today to meet with my customers even though half of them are out of the office and we have no formal action items.  My presence here is evidence that I value them and I'm willing to go the extra mile (or sixty) to be available to them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could add more bullets and run on, but the tl;dr is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decide that you want to succeed in a distributed work environment. Decide what &quot;successful&quot; looks like.  Design a culture that will enable you to succeed.  Culture, practices, expectations, respect, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select technologies that enable success in the distributed environment.  Mitigate issues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just got a lync message to head up the hall, so I'll stop there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2014-03-21T14:03:56.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11163" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11165" CreationDate="2014-03-21T14:12:27.643" Score="0" ViewCount="152" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a project manager of software developers and would like to read a book that will provide me with general information about software development. It would be good to understand what it is that I am actually managing the completion of. My developers often talk about things such as endpoints, databases, migrations, APIs, etc. These terms are above my head as I am new to IT and do not have that kind of background. Are there any recommendations of books that could help me answer some of these questions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8591" LastEditorUserId="8591" LastEditDate="2014-03-21T14:30:30.570" LastActivityDate="2014-03-21T15:08:13.083" Title="What is a good book for Project Management of Software for non-programmer individuals?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-03-22T07:22:14.370" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11164" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11197" CreationDate="2014-03-21T15:00:12.563" Score="14" ViewCount="693" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a consultant usually brought in by companies doing project management on big projects, setting up operations etc. The last few years I have been dealing mainly with digital and creative agencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sector historically has a low level of expertise within software development. The lifespan of agency projects, once released, are often measured in months rather than years, since most projects are in some way marketing related. As such they are not accustomed to the complexity or scope of &quot;real&quot; software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is as follows: When presented with a new project, which I can rather quickly dismiss as unfeasible (we're talking extremely unrealistic projects), I have trouble communicating why it cannot be done. I argue the technical complexity and the requirements versus the time and price scope. I am however not able to make my points persuasive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially my recommendations get ignored, and the client looks around until they've found a vendor or individual who says &quot;yes it can be done&quot;. Both times, the projects crashed and burned. Reason being they were so amazingly unrealistic, that even inexperienced technical project managers would dismiss them right away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What kind of approach or what kind of arguments would you use when presented with something unrealistic, yet highly desired by major stakeholders? Maybe any literature to read on the subject?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8592" LastEditorUserId="8592" LastEditDate="2017-04-02T21:20:38.170" LastActivityDate="2017-04-02T21:20:38.170" Title="Communicating non-viability of project" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11163" CreationDate="2014-03-21T15:08:13.083" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask your developers! It's not possible to hide the fact that you are non-technical, so you might as well gain some points for trying to learn about their field. They might even have some books lying around that you can borrow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A concrete book that I would recommend to everyone in software project management is Rapid development by Steve McConnell. It is a really good book both for general project management, and especially about the software construction process, however it won't go into details of explaining what API's and databases are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8592" LastActivityDate="2014-03-21T15:08:13.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11164" CreationDate="2014-03-21T15:25:46.177" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I fear my answer will probably not be applicable to your problem because of the fleeting nature of the projects and the capabilities you report in your stakeholders and sponsors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However- In the business I work in we always, without exception, do a Business Case first (and spend a little research money to investigate where key data are not known). The business case, essentially boils down to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. What are the tangible benefits (over a period of time, e.g. 3-5 years) of doing this thing (i.e how much money will we make, or how much loss will we prevent)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b. How much will it cost us over the same period&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We usually look at a number of solutions in the business case that have a range of costs and potential benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the whole shooting match is reviewed by the people holding the purse strings to see if, in a nutshell, the benefits to the business are worth the costs to the business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such an artefact would not immediately solve your present issue- it is easy to make a business case look good by notionally increasing the benefits and/or decreasing the costs on paper, but do it a series of times and the person responsible for writing the cheques begins to ask questions when they are continually asked to spend money without realising the promised benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an ideal world you would also have a robust review of the stated benefits, including benefits realisation measuring in place, and the stated costs as part of the review process- but that can vary from org to org...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe in your case, do a &quot;post mortem&quot; or &quot;lessons learned&quot; review after each crash and burn, documenting the busienss case and following up with why the money spent was excessive or the stated benefits weren't realised, and make sure that Finance get those reports. You don't personally need to keep saying no, eventually the more finance-oriented people will begin asking questions of the more gung ho people and some degree of reality should start to creep in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or maybe they just all like being gung ho media types on the white hot bleeding edge of the digital age (as long as it is someone else's money they are spending!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2014-03-21T15:25:46.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10327" CreationDate="2014-03-21T16:57:19.017" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Reorganize into feature teams&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can avoid these communication issues by reorganizing into feature teams. Here are two good references: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/the-benefits-of-feature-teams&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Moving away from component teams is a difficult but necessary step&#xA;for those who want to adopt an agile project management approach.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.featureteams.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Without a feature team structure (but instead, a component team&#xA;organization...) your organization is likely to create numerous&#xA;wastes and sub-optimizations that lead to a sequential (waterfall,&#xA;...) development cycle.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that is not at all possible, setup Scrum-of-Scrum meetings as suggested by @CodeGnome. More on that here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/team/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Although it's not the only thing necessary to scale Scrum, one&#xA;well-known technique is the use of a &quot;Scrum of Scrums&quot; meeting. With&#xA;this approach, each Scrum team proceeds as normal, but each team&#xA;identifies one person who attends the Scrum of Scrums meeting to&#xA;coordinate the work of multiple Scrum teams. These meetings are&#xA;analogous to the daily Scrum meeting, but do not necessarily happen&#xA;every day. In many organizations, having a Scrum of Scrums meeting&#xA;two or three times a week is sufficient.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-03-21T16:57:19.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11164" CreationDate="2014-03-21T21:07:35.077" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Penalty clause for non-performance or an outcomes based contract&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether a project is feasible or not could be subjective. &#xA;My suggestion is that you should try to come up with a few objective measures of success. Also, define how exactly that will be tested and what specific thresholds must be passed. And then lobby for a penalty clause to be built into the vendor contract for non-performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or use an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flexiblecontracts.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;outcomes based contract such as this one, where you agree on 'statements of target outcomes'&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2014-03-26T18:09:24.937" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T18:09:24.937" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11164" CreationDate="2014-03-22T00:49:41.987" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are a consultant, not an employee of the organizations which choose these risky projects, right?  As a consultant, your only role is to advise a path to your customer, explaining its benefits as compared to its costs, penalties, and risks, in an unemotional, objective way.  After that, it is their choice; your scope is finished.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consulting is not about being &quot;right&quot; or winning an argument.  It is about presenting several alternate paths, including the less than desirable one, each with its pros and cons, and making a recommendation.  With trust, you'll become more persuasive, but it is not really about that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would advise a customer of several paths, make my recommendation, then, if they choose something different, help them with their risks and recovery plans if things do not turn out right.  That's the job.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  I don't get it.  You're doing all this but you're asking what?  You are building a business case, you outline benefits, costs, and risks of alternate paths, you make your recommendation, but they choose a path you did not recommend but it is not about being right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are doing all the right consulting things but are not being persuasive, is it about the quality of your work?  Is your research not rigorous?  Is your writing incoherent, irrelevant, or not compelling?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the thing: it could be very well your customer, who prefers to wing it than make decisions based on evidence.  That is NOT uncommon.  Transplant yourself to a different customer and set of projects, and your work and recommendations could have dramatically different results.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I tried to explain above is, your work product ends at the recommendation.  If you are proud of your work, notwithstanding all of our work could be improved in some way, then you did your job and you should be claiming success...DESPITE their decision.  If your work product could use some improvement, that's one thing; you can work on that because we all work on that all the time.  But you cannot take ownership or impeach your ability to persuade based on their ultimate decision and crashing into the wall.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2014-03-23T14:45:54.290" LastActivityDate="2014-03-23T14:45:54.290" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11171" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11174" CreationDate="2014-03-22T15:56:38.913" Score="3" ViewCount="124" Body="&lt;p&gt;We work in a project where we have to build the same game for both Android and iOS platforms. The requirements are the same, but each result in specific products. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use SCRUM in order to keep our team organized, and it works quite well. With this framework, we can focus on day-by-day jobs without big problems and it is easy to communicate with each person about &quot;what we have done yesterday and what we will do today&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But several problems seems to come because we are working on the same thing, for different systems. There are times in which we feel like &quot;not synchronized&quot; between each one of us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Android platform is a bit more complicated when building a complex GUI, compared to iOS's toolbox. This could lead to episodes where Android devs are &quot;one day late&quot; in respect to the iOS team, just because they are a bit slower in creating the user interface. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SCRUM doesn't seem to give direct solution to these episodes. Is there any suggestion to make the project coordination and progress flowing, and still keeping both at the same pace?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8601" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2014-03-22T20:18:54.617" LastActivityDate="2014-03-23T04:01:56.633" Title="What to do when the same project needs to generate two specific products - and product build is not aligned?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;performance&gt;&lt;pmi-framework&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11171" CreationDate="2014-03-22T19:35:10.353" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Though I'm not sure that this question is entirely on topic (the answer can end up being very subjective, and it's not exactly related to the real purpose of Project Management), I will give you my two cents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would take a good, hard look at the Unity engine. &lt;a href=&quot;http://unity3d.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://unity3d.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unity offers a wide array of options for developing games on Android, iOS, Windows Phone 8, Blackberry 10, and many more. It has built-in functionality to develop for each individual OS if you want specific features (you can add-on Pro toolkits for truly robust features in each of these categories), and it offers publishing options for these platforms as well. Code can also be written generically in Unity and published to multiple platforms without &quot;reinventing the wheel&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found Unity to be very user friendly. They offer a plethora of tutorials, examples, documentation, and tools to make it much easier to develop (whether you're just getting into game development, or you're already a pro). Many people are using it so there's a robust community, and if you're truly stuck, Unity offers personalized support solutions. In addition to all this, you can use the free version of Unity to do the bulk of your development. Of course, there are some caveats and features differences between Unity and Unity Pro (caveats of free license(see bottom section): &lt;a href=&quot;http://unity3d.com/unity/faq&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://unity3d.com/unity/faq&lt;/a&gt;; features differences: &lt;a href=&quot;http://unity3d.com/unity/licenses&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://unity3d.com/unity/licenses&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helped. Let me know if you have any questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8005" LastActivityDate="2014-03-22T19:35:10.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11173" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11180" CreationDate="2014-03-23T00:38:13.103" Score="3" ViewCount="831" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is retrospective a good place check the status previous retrospective action items?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my team we identify action items every retrospective; however I am not sure whether we should review them during the next retrospective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6453" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T02:59:58.917" Title="Is retrospective a good place check the status previous retrospective action items?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11171" CreationDate="2014-03-23T04:01:56.633" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming that the Android &amp;amp; iOS deliveries structured as two different teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum of Scrum has helped our organisation where inter-scrum teams issues need to triaged,coordinated and solved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More here....&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/team/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/team/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesnt need to be as formal as described above, in my company's case i solved such issues through a white board backlog of inter team dependencies and issues and held a daily 5 minute stand up to tackle issues as they came in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastActivityDate="2014-03-23T04:01:56.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11173" CreationDate="2014-03-23T10:11:55.113" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is a team choice or a manager's choice, but I would not.  Time is valuable.  The goal of the retrospective to conduct it for the piece of work under analysis.  Actions from previous should be reported in other existing venues, such as the weekly team meetings or, if the action is large enough to be come its own project, then communication of progress would be established as part of that project communications plan.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are balancing the goal of the meeting, the benefits of those goals, against the constraints of how much that meeting costs and your audience and what they need to hear.  If reviewing those actions furthers that goal and the value of the meeting, have at it.  But my guess is it doesn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-03-23T10:11:55.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11176" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11181" CreationDate="2014-03-23T21:46:48.387" Score="7" ViewCount="15080" Body="&lt;p&gt;My question: Is there &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a recommended format or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a procedure or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a check list&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;for documenting the sprint retrospective? Not only the immediate outcomes (i.e. measures to be tried in the next sprint), but also the other measures (for trying later), the problems and root causes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the Sprint Retro everybody in the team writes up the perceived issues on post its. We collect them on the white board, choose the most important ones, for which we try to identify the root cause(s) right there on the board. Then we come up with potential measures to tackle each of the causes. From the measures we choose two or three of the more feasible ones for the next Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now my problem: Some time later in the day, somebody cleans the white board. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence my question: (see above) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best would be in a format that could be used as additional input for the next retro ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8594" LastEditorUserId="8594" LastEditDate="2014-04-04T11:35:43.247" LastActivityDate="2020-06-08T04:24:41.600" Title="How to capture and document sprint retrospective results" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11176" CreationDate="2014-03-23T22:08:49.947" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually take a picture of discussion results on whiteboards. I can put them into most electronic tools or print them out to put them into a folder or pin them to the wall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the whiteboard works for your retrospective, I wouldn't change it. Most cellphones can make decent pictures, nowadays. You should point someone out who takes a picture after each meeting and places it somewhere for everyone to reach. Some Share, Dropbox, Google Drive, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6990" LastActivityDate="2014-03-23T22:08:49.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4254" CreationDate="2014-03-23T22:12:21.683" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently coordinating a team in this very situation, and just to state the obvious, it's quite a challenge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll drill down into the aspects I believe are the most important in an orderly fashion to make it easier to see where your project fits in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;1. &lt;strong&gt;Knowledge structure&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;With leading people in each location:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having people understanding in deep the &lt;strong&gt;culture of the company / project&lt;/strong&gt; definitely boosts the long-term performance of team. The leading person(s) will be key for the project success as they'll define not only the work to be done, but &lt;strong&gt;how&lt;/strong&gt; the work is done, &lt;strong&gt;what's important&lt;/strong&gt; and what can be done when there's a spare time, the expected &lt;strong&gt;quality of the work&lt;/strong&gt;, the concepts like &lt;strong&gt;'done', 'delayed', 'blocked', 'critical'&lt;/strong&gt; that vary from project to project, etc. Therefore, the commitment of such lead must be above average. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This person will need to nurse from zero a new team while the main location will keep the project progressing... and it may be &lt;strong&gt;extremely frustrating&lt;/strong&gt; to face this if the lead is not prepared in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;With leading people only in the main location:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As previously stated, starting up a new team from scratch 'in loco' is not an easy task. Doing this remotely, is that kind of challenge that will teach you a couple of lessons for life. The lead needs to keep the project pace with the local team at the same time explaining to the new team how the company works, the development phases, the company culture, how to proceed with a silly task as starting up a tool... well, it's simply hard and requires a &lt;strong&gt;massive amount of patience&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the team on the other side must match more rigid criteria to really fit in such a structure: it's &lt;strong&gt;simply not realistic to expect someone with a lead 200km away to have the same productivity as someone 20 steps away&lt;/strong&gt;. &quot;Oh, but there's video chat!&quot; Trust me, if you need to teach something from scratch, video calls will help you (a lot!) but the value of the side-by-side experience needs to be compensated by above the average doses of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pro activity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Independency to take decisions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Capacity of overcome problems by themselves&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clear Training path&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clear Guidelines (dev cycle, testing cycle, project culture... as much as better!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clear expectations (for both sides!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;2. &lt;strong&gt;Team structure&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sub-teams (silos) by location:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have leads on each location and / or you really trust your remote team, you can pinpoint a remote task lead to coordinate the tasks to be carried by the remote team. The local lead just sends to the remote lead the task package that is expected to be carried by the remote location without entering in micro managing of the remote team (as the remote lead will be managing the remote team). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take into account that this lead will not only be the person to distribute tasks but also the focal point to clarify any question / requirement from the remote team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of meetings with the whole teams from both sites, there'd be &lt;strong&gt;meetings by locations&lt;/strong&gt; with their respective leads and then a &lt;strong&gt;separated meeting between leads&lt;/strong&gt;. It's definitely the most powerful structure, but also the one that requires more knowledge and experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal suggestion is to &lt;strong&gt;pick up this option only, and if only, the lead on the remote location can coordinate a team by himself&lt;/strong&gt;, otherwise it'll be a waste of efforts from both locations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Peer to Peer:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case there's no expert on the remote location, the best approach is to have a peer-to-peer structure between locations. This way, one person on the remote site will have a direct contact person on the main site to clarify questions, to share tasks and to do any peer to peer activity (like pair programming, cross code review, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage of this approach is that the level of knowledge required from new team members is relatively lower to start being productive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most obvious drawback of this structure is that the throughput of the team will not increase as expected (well, it'll increase as expected &lt;em&gt;based on the new members' knowledge and experience&lt;/em&gt;). Also, it's likely that the unique team lead will have a hard time to coordinate a bigger team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example:&lt;/strong&gt; You have a team of 5 persons in one location that produces X. If you have in the remote location another 5 persons &lt;strong&gt;with an expert lead&lt;/strong&gt;, the productivity will &lt;em&gt;tend to&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;2X&lt;/strong&gt;. On the other hand, if you're &lt;strong&gt;using P2P&lt;/strong&gt;, the productivity initially will be (being optimistic) &lt;strong&gt;1.5X&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;3. &lt;strong&gt;Task distribution structure&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tasks distributed evenly across sites:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a lead in each location and silo structure, then you're ready to share the tasks evenly across locations. As previously stated, that's the best team structure and works quite well, but require more efforts to have the team productive and relies a lot on the leads (especially, on the remote lead).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Complex tasks in one site / simple tasks in other site&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have a lead on each location and a P2P structure does not work for you for any reason, you can have the remote location to carry on with the less complex tasks whereas you keep the tuff ones for the team near the knowledge / client. Yes, if the word 'offshore' comes to your mind, you're not alone.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, if you succeed making a remote team sky rocketing, you'll do a huge step ahead on your career. But before taking this step, make sure you know where you are (with docs, training, tasks) to define where you want to be (namely, expectations!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you have at least a star on the remote location, making a remote site productive is a job that will consume you for quite a lot of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2014-03-23T22:12:21.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11173" CreationDate="2014-03-24T08:39:25.220" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've been doing retrospectives for a long time and that question is also what we had in our mind. We tried to check the status of the action points of previous retrospectives for many sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We noticed that most of the actions took too much time to complete or never completed at all. That is the main problem we face and I am sure it is common for many teams as well. Getting the status of action points do not resolve this problem and it adds very little value to the whole process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what we did is we started to &lt;strong&gt;add action points to sprint backlog as individual tasks&lt;/strong&gt; in a separate &quot;retrospective action points&quot; story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some tips:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team should estimate if the action points need effort of the team. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the points will be implemented by Scrum Master, you may put a zero-point task to sprint backlog or skip it. It's up to you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By adding action points to sprint backlog, team will track the status in a daily basis and try to make it happen much more eager that before.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep in mind that you may need to split action points into several tasks to fit into your sprint. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We had good progress by following these steps. Teams started to focus on defining concrete action points (that is very important for retrospectives) and to complete one by one. I hope it helps you too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2317" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T08:39:25.220" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11176" CreationDate="2014-03-24T10:51:35.440" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to take pictures as well. Another possibility is having some (or many) take notes in a shared google doc. This also work for on-line retrospectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key point, in my opinion, are any action points. It's all nice and fine to dig down to root causes, but in many cases it's quite unproductive: many root causes lay outside of the scope of the project team and there's little if nothing that can be done to address them adequately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are important are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the issues (&quot;start doing&quot;, &quot;stop doing&quot;, &quot;continue doing&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;any actions to be taken, with somebody responsible for them &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does sound like &quot;team-themed&quot; stories, so I think documenting them as stories, can also be appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6300" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T10:51:35.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11182" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11188" CreationDate="2014-03-24T11:08:11.410" Score="2" ViewCount="100" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are using Trello for project management of a dev project. Here is how we are working currently:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developer takes a card assigned to them from the Todo pile and moves it to Doing then the&#xA; Developer works on card and moves it to Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the task / module / card has to be tested for functionality / bugs etc so what often happens is that the cards get moved back to Doing as more info is added into the comments section of the card about something not working / looking right. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this the best way to iterate / give feedback on cards? Or is there a better / more accepted or standardized workflow? Would you have a staged or for testing column in between Doing and Done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8612" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2014-03-24T19:46:14.167" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T21:17:26.210" Title="Using Trello to 'iterate' / give feedback on tasks that are marked as staged or done" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11183" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-24T12:19:37.970" Score="2" ViewCount="222" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been a scrum master of one single project of a co-located scrum team for last one year. Our program has been expanding rapidly and we are forming multiple scrum teams. The plan is to have one more local scrum team and also one distributed scrum team across a different time zone. So the questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do I setup continuous integration in a multi-team distributed environment without running into issues of broken builds?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do I plan for the frequently shippable increment Sprint on Sprint basis of all three projects combined?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Any other things I need to watch for or take care of for setting up such an environment? My idea is to make it first time right from process standpoint (at least most of the process).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5576" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2014-03-25T18:02:15.820" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T09:28:43.770" Title="Tips and steps need to follow to setup successful continuous integration environment" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11164" CreationDate="2014-03-24T13:20:16.920" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say it's about managing expectations. The guy hiring you has probably been given a budget for some customised software and he imagines that customised means it can be whatever he wants. You have to explain that even though it's customised you can't start with a blank page, it's going to have to be built on an existing platform. And all the other disadvantages that I'm sure you're aware of, try to spell them out from the start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the more they want the system to do, the more complex it will be and so the more training, testing and maintenance will be required. So maybe try to sell them on simplicity. You have to make them want a system that will do a limited amount of stuff, but do it well, not some snake oil solution that will do everything and nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you sell them on simplifying their processes and replacing, say, the spreadsheets they use for managing their projects, and make them aware of how 'feature creep' makes the project more complex, and that's a BAD thing, then they have some idea of what is achievable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know whether there is literature about managing expectations but you hear politicians do it all the time, usually when they're rowing back on the promises they made before getting elected. ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8614" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T13:20:16.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11185" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11186" CreationDate="2014-03-24T18:14:53.837" Score="4" ViewCount="412" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a very general idea of what a project manager does - taking each project group's work and basically synthesizing it in the most optimal, cost efficient way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, for this internship position, I was tasked to give a rough outline of being the project manager for a certain website. It had to include deadlines, milestones, etc. But I can't seem to figure out what these &quot;deadlines&quot; should include..&#xA;Simplistically, don't I simply give a template to the web developers and expect the template back? Or are there more factors coming into play?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for helping!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can, can I please see an example &quot;outline&quot; for a website?&#xA;For instance,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Week 1: General body meeting, discuss template&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Week 2: Discuss template with partners, stakeholders, etc..&#xA;I honestly have no idea what to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8615" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T10:13:34.630" Title="Project manager roles and planning" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11185" CreationDate="2014-03-24T18:41:40.320" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you are discussing here is Project Planning, which is a small fraction of what a Project Manager does and, arguably, is the bit that can most easily be done by a non-project manager. In its most simplistic terms planning the project is the &quot;art&quot; of taking all the tasks required to achieve the desired outcome, together with estimates of the workload for each of them, and laying them out along a timescale in a logical and achievable order such that by following the plan, you deliver the required outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The milestones are the key waypoints in a project and you can decide on what they are since they will vary from project to project. But for a simple web delivery they might be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get the order&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Complete the requirements analysis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Complete the specifications documentation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Complete the design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Complete the development&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Complete the system testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Complete the User Acceptance Testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go-Live&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So milestones are outward-facing items of information describing key transitions within the project and are used as a high-level way of assessing project progress (are you hitting your planned milestones on time?). They are also used to drive external dependencies- for example someone else (or just you!) might want to know when development completes/testing commences, so they know when you arrange with the testers to be available to start the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deadlines, on the other hand, are imposed upon you by external factors; the client may require that the system goes live by a certain date, or you need to complete the requirements gathering before a certain key user goes on extended vacation. You do not decide the deadlines, they are the dates you must conform to, or at least try to conform to them- The project plan dictates what you can achieve and by when and that may or may not align to the deadline dates (usually doesn't!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only you, your employers and your developers and other technical staff know the tasks you need to undertake to deliver your system. Only you and your team can determine the estimates for the workload and the resources available to deliver and so only you can put together the project plan. As project manager that is (part of) your job. For the rest of your question, in respect of getting an outline plan for a generic website delivery, that verges into software engineering which is out of scope of this website. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T18:41:40.320" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11185" CreationDate="2014-03-24T19:12:50.763" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, let me address your question about what a PM does. The PM:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Understands cost/scope/schedule/quality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Defines/plans cost/scope/schedule/quality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Takes action to preserve cost/scope/schedule/quality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Alerts relevant stakeholders of any change to cost/scope/schedule quality.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM's job is to make sure the project comes in on time, on budget, and is suitable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your first job is to define &quot;What is &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt;?&quot; How will you know when the website is finished? (I can use google sites to set up a webpage in 1 minute or less; that won't make &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; customer happy. What kind of a website does your customer need? What will delight them?)  Now you know the &lt;em&gt;scope&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second job is to plan.  Your question asks how you are to know all the technical details; you don't need to know, you need to communicate.  You don't need a template for a website; the devs already have that.  Meet with the devs and work with them to make sure that everyone understands &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt;.  Then ask them what needs to happen to get to done.  What are the steps.  Break the task down into subtasks (ideally each subtask should be observable).  The devs will estimate the time. They will tell you the deadlines.   Planning is a lot of work. Frankly based on your question, I'm not sure you have enough knowledge to do it well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once there is a schedule, your responsibility changes: at any moment, day or night, you need to be ready to answer &quot;Is the project on schedule? Will the project complete on time? Will the project complete on budget?&quot;  The tricky part is that you won't be writing code. You're just tracking devs.  If you quizz the devs infrequently, you won't know whether they're on schedule or not.  If you quiz them too often, &lt;strong&gt;you&lt;/strong&gt; will be the reason that they are not on schedule.  If your plan is well done, you'll be able to tell if they are on schedule/ahead of schedule or behind schedule. You should be &lt;em&gt;ready&lt;/em&gt; to report those estimates at all times, but you'll need to work out with your sponsor how often the real reports will be delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your other obligation is to identify things that threaten scope/schedule/quality/cost and take action.  If the head dev gets sick and falls behind in his work, it is your job to figure out whether the other devs can pick up the slack. If the problem will delay the schedule, increase the cost or diminish the quality, you need to understand that impact, and you need to work with whoever you need to come up with one or more options. (delay the project, hire a new programmer, decrease the scope, pray a whole lot).  If you and the devs can solve the problem, glorious.  If not, you need to involve whoever can solve the problem.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an intern, your ability to make change is going to be limited.  I suspect that the bulk of your work will be analyzing potential problems to understand what impact they could have on the scope/schedule/quality/cost. For any problem, make sure you know how many days delay, how many dollars cost, what capabilities will be diminished (quality).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T19:12:50.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11182" CreationDate="2014-03-24T21:17:26.210" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;I recommend the Agile/Scrum approach&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can slice this many different ways but I recommend the Agile/Scrum approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't have any sub-teams within the dev team. Team members may have deep expertise in one of the areas (Design, Dev, QA). However, let them make a team commitment to completing the work and operate as a cross-functional team. This means testing will happen in parallel with development. So, you won't need a separate 'Testing' column.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A business person - Product Owner or Product Manager - will accept a story as done either based on a demo or by testing it as a user. So, you need a 'In Review' column.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, have a 'To Do', 'In Progress', 'In Review' and 'Done' columns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever anyone doing a test finds an issue, they show it to the team members writing code and it gets fixed and verified within the dev team. I have bug tickets created in the backlog only if a bug cannot be resolved on the same day or, at most, the next day. This allows the story to be accepted and let the bug be prioritized by the Product Owner. For example, if a feature is working on the newer browsers but not on IE7, you may not want to hold up the feature. The Product Owner may lower prioritize it based on usage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T21:17:26.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11190" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-25T07:50:37.377" Score="4" ViewCount="379" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a list of deliverables below (draft)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Client Side&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User interface design for mobile app&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Registration module to allow end user register to the system by providing their personal information and CV&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Job listing to allow end-user to browse through available positions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Push notification message to be sent by server, to ensure end users receive the latest information&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Server Side&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;API access to be consumed by mobile applications which provide interface between mobile application and server&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;UI for server side of the system (Dashboard)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User Account management for server side of the system&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Job management (to create/modify/archive [remove] position)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am trying to find the right words to put it all together, so non technical persons would understand and know what to expect by the end of each milestone (when deliverables are presented).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8624" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2014-04-02T11:59:48.077" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T11:59:48.077" Title="What are the best ways to specify project deliverables to non technical persons" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;deliverables&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11190" CreationDate="2014-03-25T10:00:57.020" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The communication gap I often see between a technical person and a non technical person is getting from technical component to the end business result.  When requirements are being developed and identified, it starts with what you want to happen for the business, which is decomposed to a functional requirement, which is decomposed to a technical requirement, right?  So the deliverable or design needs to go the other way way, the technical solution which creates the functional solution which creates the business solution.  The non technical person only cares about the functional and business solutions.  So if your deliverable is designed to the requirement, use the requirements matrix, which you maintained, to map it to the functional and business requirement and talk to that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The communicator is important here.  Use a non technical person on the team to do the communicating of this.  I have found that a technical person discussing business stuff to a business person is about as effective as a business person talking technical stuff to a technical person.  Certainly there are folks that cross this line easily but I don't see that often.  Treat it like people are speaking different languages and you need an interpreter.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T10:00:57.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11183" CreationDate="2014-03-25T15:01:41.460" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do i setup continuous integration in a multi team distributed environment without running into issues of broken builds&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There should be a CI server accesible by all teams. It's understandable that due to the timezone difference, broken builds may cause issues. When one team breaks the build, the other team might not proceed with that issue. So in order to have a healthy CI environment, some rules should be set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Never leave the office if a build is in red (i.e. it is broken, some tests are failing)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Everyone is responsible for the commits. So before pushing the commits, the committer should make it perfect by checking if tests are passing, if the commit message is in standards, etc. I advice you (or someone else) to monitor CI builds closely and give immediate feedback if the rules are not obeyed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do i plan for the frequently shippable increment Sprint on Sprint basis of all three projects combined&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I collected my opinions as listed below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product owner should be capable of managing the product and the PBIs. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can create builds for deploying products of the 3 projects by checking the dependencies. We have such kind of builds and these should be designed with the help of the teams working on those projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Any other things i need to watch for or take care of for setting up sucha na environment. My idea is to make it first time right from process standpoint (at least most of the process)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think continuous integration, continuous builds, 10-min build rule, continuous deployment, emergent architecture, test driven development, multiple enterprise environments (like uat, test/qa, prod environments) are the key concepts you should dig into. The topic is quite wide, but it is achievable if you consider all these topics. There exists very satisfying information in internet about these concepts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2317" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T15:01:41.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11190" CreationDate="2014-03-25T17:41:55.050" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Think 'business person' instead of 'non technical person'&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have not read the business case for the project already, ask for it and get the tech team fully familiar with it. If you don't know why you are doing this project and what the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are, you cannot effectively communicate with the business people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am trying to find the right words to put it all together&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Words are not enough. Business people are thinking brand image, ease of use (usability), attention span, training needs (for admin work) and so on. You did list a couple of user interface designs. I recommend the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mock-ups for more items. For example,  provide mock-ups for the Registration module, Job listing, User Account Management and Job Management. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Interactive mock-up tools are getting better all the time. Business people should be able to navigate and get a feel for the user experience.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The technical team should be thinking on the above lines and state how your deliverables will meet those needs. If not, you are setting yourself up for significant push-back from the business people and a lot of firefighting and death march in the last minute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T17:41:55.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11190" CreationDate="2014-03-25T22:54:25.147" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Present milestones as....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What functionality or technical capability you will be delivering to the end user at each milestone.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you described in your question is not too far from that , you have to give it a spin ,with which your customer or customer advocate (business rather than technical oriented) can relate &amp;amp; perceive constant value being generated at each milestone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T22:54:25.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6704" CreationDate="2014-03-26T01:01:58.290" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can allow anonymous access to a project. We use this for some projects for comments, you may be able to extend this to raising a ticket as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8634" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T01:01:58.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11164" CreationDate="2014-03-26T04:01:45.370" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest the following approach on how to communicate in this particular type of situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) Be clear who you need to communicate to&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may sound obvious, but it's not always so. It's important to be clear about who is the decision-maker and needs to be informed of your assessment of the situation and your recommendation - in other words: who you need to sell it too. Usually it's the sponsor, but you may not have direct access to him/her (in which case you need to communicate first to the person(s) in between), or sometimes it is a whole group of people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) Work out what their interests are in the project&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to gear the communication to what the decision-makers are interested about, what matters to them and will get them to really see the impact of continuing on the wrong path. You have to see it from their perspective. For example, if you're dealing with a Marketing executive, he probably won't care too much about the technical argument (or even understand it) but will be more likely to respond if you tell him that he will not get any returns on his next digital campaign or that his brand will be damaged. By doing this you are focusing on them (not on what you think).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3) Use your experience and lessons learnt as part of your argument&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you have some great experience to share in seeing this sort of situations happen. Use it: &quot;Company X did a similar project, they spent $1M and had to postpone the brand launch by 6 months. It cost them $3M in lost revenue&quot;. This should pique someone's interest and I wouldn't call someone trying to stop a company losing money a &quot;killjoy&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4) Focus on the impact and make your communications as clear and simple as possible&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Present your information well, either as part of a formal presentation or in a document; keep it focused on the actual impact/consequences of following a certain path (what if we do it? what if we don't?). Don't drown people with details, especially technical stuff if you are speaking with non-technical people. Translate it for them into impact statements that they can relate to and it's also important to offer alternatives. Use simple language, avoid jargon and acronyms, keep it short and make use of good visuals to support your point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally whilst as a consultant it may not be strictly your responsibility to make the decision (indeed you are here to advise, your client decides to take it or leave it), I think it's important that you take the opportunity to voice your concerns upfront. Then you have a choice yourself to get involved in the project or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastEditorUserId="1722" LastEditDate="2014-03-26T09:18:39.583" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T09:18:39.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11198" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11208" CreationDate="2014-03-26T04:51:39.660" Score="1" ViewCount="410" Body="&lt;p&gt;We were practicing agile scrum for several years. So far so good :).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  What we feel is now that the team is more focused on completing individual tasks instead of thinking about the whole purpose of the project. This leads us to have some rotten code and some performance issues.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;As a solution for this I would like to encourage team to practice lean principals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Eliminate waste  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Amplify learning   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decide as late as possible   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deliver as fast as possible   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Empower the team   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build integrity in  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;See the whole   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The principals like &lt;em&gt;Decide as late as possible&lt;/em&gt; will improve the code quality , performance and at the end I need to achieve  &lt;em&gt;See the whole&lt;/em&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions is what are the tools, matrices can be used to encourage the team on these principals. Specially how can I achieve 3 and 7 ? (I think I can say others are already there up to some extent  )  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2598" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T07:46:56.717" Title="Encouraging lean practices in a agile/scrum team" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;lean&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11176" CreationDate="2014-03-26T08:19:06.477" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend to use &lt;strong&gt;mind mapping tools&lt;/strong&gt; to gather all outcomes of the retrospectives. By nature, mind mapping tools, you can easily group ideas, visualize root cause analysis outcome and mark action points. You can also export it in different formats, either to pdf or excel or jpg. I've been using it -I am using &lt;code&gt;xmind&lt;/code&gt; as the tool by the way- for a long time and I get huge benefit from it. I hope that helps you too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2317" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T08:19:06.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11198" CreationDate="2014-03-26T08:38:03.533" Score="1" Body="&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;What we feel is now that the team is more focused on completing individual tasks instead of thinking &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to have experience such as yours where programmer are competing against each others to score more during the sprint review when we show the burn down chart. The format of my burn down chart is per individual. What i try to do to increase team work is eliminate the burn down chart that only show how many points a programmer burned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To further improve that , i only put how many points burn per project. Let's say Project A, i have 5 programmers working on it, then by end of the day ( Sprint Review ) i will show what we've done&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8482" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T08:38:03.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11198" CreationDate="2014-03-26T09:14:54.300" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would encourage you reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eylean.com/blog/2014/01/involve-your-team-into-agile-process/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this blog post&lt;/a&gt; as it offers a variety of practices that are meant to promote planning on demand, team involvement and rapid delivery. Also, in my opinion, you might perform all three types of meetings for team collaboration: planning meeting, daily meeting, retrospective meeting. Such approach will allow you to communicate and interact with your team, thus, keeping them occupied and aware of current situation in your project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8637" LastEditorUserId="8637" LastEditDate="2014-03-26T10:49:45.580" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T10:49:45.580" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11202" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11211" CreationDate="2014-03-26T11:55:48.807" Score="0" ViewCount="155" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're currently doing an agile project where the customer is less agile than what we actually hoped for (he stays with waterfall). Also, while an official requirements specification exists, it is unfortunately not updated by the client (timing problems, whatever), so, our current process to get information we need looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to get the requirements right we collect questions to the &quot;epics&quot; we identified in a Wiki (Confluence)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;for each epic, we export these questions to a Word file and send them to the customer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the customer comments on these questions and sends them back&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;we copy-over the comments from the Word file back into the Wiki and further comment on them or close the questions, eventually we send updated epic exports back to the client&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason why we try to keep these information in the Wiki is because we would like to have one central, searchable place where all the project requirements are clarified and described in detail (no Word document hell). Furthermore, we currently write our system specification in the same Wiki as well, which gives us the ability to reference customer answers / requirements to the functional requirements we define and much more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously though there is at least one problem with this approach: The hand-copying of answers and the exporting of question catalogues over and over again. This, paired with the problem that some kind of &quot;external&quot; agreed document must always exist to reference later on in case stuff goes wrong, is a major headache for us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know people used Action Item lists for these kind of things in the past, but this does not at all fit our information finding expectations. On the other hand, a Wiki, by its nature being able to be edited at any time, surely will also not match the &quot;agreed document&quot; requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what are some valid techniques to do these things better (proper tool support even?!) or have you already ran away after you read the first paragraph of this question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8638" LastEditorUserId="6300" LastEditDate="2014-03-26T17:19:20.153" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T11:54:29.613" Title="How can I integrate information from a waterfall customer into an agile project?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;&lt;specification&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11176" CreationDate="2014-03-26T13:00:20.667" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team writes their issues on sticky notes and then attaches them to the white board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, as a team, we try to group them into 3 main groups:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What went well (Keep doing) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What went poorly (Stop doing)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ways to improve (Try doing)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I then collect these 3 &quot;piles&quot; of input and use them to craft a retrospective summary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8639" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T13:00:20.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11204" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11205" CreationDate="2014-03-26T14:23:14.800" Score="1" ViewCount="210" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm given the task to develop a measurement on how efficient our team is within our current development process (scrum). The measurement has to be done for the complete team not for individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My idea was to use the count of team members and velocity. But because velocity is a per team measurement the result will not be something useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8641" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2014-03-28T10:58:04.620" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T10:58:04.620" Title="How can the economic efficiency of a scrum team be measured?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;measurement&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11204" CreationDate="2014-03-26T15:51:33.290" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would argue that there is no clear way of defining &quot;efficiency&quot; in any meaningful way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that efficiency is somewhere along the line of &quot;value/time&quot;, you have two insurmountable problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Value does not depend on the team exclusively: a very good team working on a very bad product will produce less value than the same team working on a very good product&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Value is relative to the user and not necessarily an absolute number that can be measured exactly, for example think of &quot;brand value&quot; -- companies often ship features for free in order to build brand value: how would we estimate it?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, maximizing value is the purpose of the Product Owner, not the team: in other words, the team cannot be determinant in choosing which stories are prioritized first. In other words, it is a myth that value delivered is proportional to time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Assuming a &quot;perfect&quot; PO, the most valuable stories are developed first. Efficiency will therefore go down as time increases because the stories will be increasingly less valuable&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Assuming an &quot;imperfect&quot; PO, sometimes the team will not develop valuable stories, and this is natural as the PO learns better what is valuable as the product is delivered incrementally. The efficiency measured this way will not be a measurement of anything intrinsic.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, using something across the lines of velocity is flatly wrong. Velocity can be easily doubled by halving the &quot;size&quot; of a point! Of course, you can ask teams not to do that, but you can't prevent teams from inadvertently changing the size of a point across iterations -- it just happens, sizes &quot;drift&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, my advice is that you take a step back: why are you trying to measure &quot;efficiency&quot; in the first place? Do you not trust your team to be efficient, or are you trying to measure some other quantity and using &quot;efficiency&quot; as a proxy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first case, I would advise you to figure out a way to trust them, because clearly trust is a prerequisite in most cases. In the second way, you need to find a different way to measure what you need. &quot;Efficiency&quot; won't be a good proxy for anything because of the reasons above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6300" LastEditorUserId="6300" LastEditDate="2014-03-28T10:37:17.690" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T10:37:17.690" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11202" CreationDate="2014-03-26T18:11:38.873" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm still not sure that I understand the question/problem, and @skilwz's comment leads me to believe that this might be an X:Y problem.  There is going to be turbulence &amp;amp; friction if your customer is committed to waterfall, and you're committed to agile. The real problem may be differing conceptions of how to manage change and scope.  I also suspect that this is a violation of CodeGnome's law - you're masking the technological implementation rather than the core problem.  (Neither of those comments are a criticism of you; the situation is what it is, and you're trying to navigate your way through it as best you can.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I understand it, you're managing change, but your customer is not participating in the change management process.  Some alarm bells go off in my mind at that point that have nothing to do with agile/waterfall/whatever.  The customer's detachment from change and scope management concern me at a fundamental level. If it were possible to resolve that problem, I'm sure you'd have done so, so let's proceed on the assumption that you don't have the option to affect that problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Proceeding on that assumption, you've taken the defensive step of formally requesting your customer's participation in change management, and formally recording the customer's input. I think there are two goals&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be effective in incorporating the customer's input into the change&#xA;control process despite the customer's reluctance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure that you've got formal traceability from customer input to requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The desire for formal traceability raises the volume of the warning bells, but there is nothing we can do about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first priority would be to make sure that the team understands the problem and the solution.  If the team doesn't understand the problem, not amount of sophistication in the technological implementation will matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I'd import or attach the customer's response document (what I would call the &quot;epic word document&quot;) to the wiki page. (depending on what your wiki supports), and build links from your requirements to his comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for the longwinded reply, but the peripheral issues concern me more than the core question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2014-03-27T11:04:05.220" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T11:04:05.220" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11198" CreationDate="2014-03-26T18:19:55.643" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To make developers &quot;see the whole&quot;, the PO needs to discuss the vision with them. He needs to define, at least, the next big-picture goal of the project and explain it to the developers. For example, he could do milestone planning. Milestones typically consist of multiple stories/epics. Discuss the next milestone when the last is reached, gives developers the big picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, in my experience this can endanger &quot;decide as late as possible&quot;. Developers that know &quot;the whole&quot; tend to try to anticipate things. The simple-design principle is one of the most difficult things to learn. This is an experience and mind-set problem. Even though I'm perfectly aware of this, I do it wrong oft as not. The problem is that intuitively it's the wrong thing to do. In fact, anticipating things is not wrong. It's only that we usually anticipate the wrong things, because we don't see the full picture yet. In my opinion, the only way to learn this is to force yourself to implement &quot;lean&quot; and experience what happens. Do pair programming, do code review, and try to remember each other of your learn philosophy. It will become easier over time. And you will experience that it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Empower the team&quot; is imminent in Scrum. &quot;Deliver as fast as possible&quot; comes from &quot;decide as late as possible&quot;/&quot;Simple Design&quot; + Scrum's &quot;get one thing Done before you start the next&quot;. &quot;Eliminate waste&quot; is closely related to &quot;Simple Design&quot;; if you implemented to much: don't be afraid to throw is away. Pair programming/reviews &quot;amplify learning&quot; incredibly much; also give developers time to read about Clean Code, Refactoring, ..., and to practice it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6990" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T18:19:55.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11198" CreationDate="2014-03-26T19:55:53.060" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're getting rotten code, then the team's not really completing&#xA;the stories, are they?  I assume your definition of Done includes&#xA;having sufficient unit tests and acceptance tests, having them pass,&#xA;and having well-structured (i.e. refactored) code; if it doesn't, I&#xA;recommend you change it so it does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm guessing that if the focus is on doing individual tasks, then:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) The individual tasks are visible to the team, and the overall value&#xA;delivered by the sprint isn't, and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) The team members are individually rewarded or rated according to&#xA;number of tasks reported done, and not by the overall value delivered&#xA;by the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want the team to be delivering value overall, you need to&#xA;measure (and make visible) &lt;em&gt;value&lt;/em&gt; at the &lt;em&gt;team&lt;/em&gt; level, not &lt;em&gt;effort&lt;/em&gt; at the&#xA;&lt;em&gt;individual&lt;/em&gt; level.  (This is an example of &lt;em&gt;See the whole&lt;/em&gt;, by the&#xA;way.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Performance is also a matter of the whole system, in a different way:&#xA;the only parts of the system that you want to spend effort speeding up&#xA;are the bottlenecks.  Being a bottleneck is not a property of a part&#xA;of the system (even the part that's currently a bottleneck), but of&#xA;the whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend you measure the performance of the system frequently,&#xA;either every day or on every integration, whichever is more frequent.&#xA;This will let you know when performance sinks below a threshold, and&#xA;give you an idea which changes partially triggered it.  Improving the&#xA;performance should probably take the form of stories: usually a spike&#xA;to try a particular optimization approach, then (if that's successful)&#xA;a development story to implement it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Constant refactoring will help you achieve 3 (Decide as late as&#xA;possible).  Regular retrospectives will help your team achieve 7 (See&#xA;the whole).  They are also an opportunity to 1 (Eliminate waste),&#xA;especially if you include an activity in your retrospective focused on&#xA;identifying waste (hint: look for work piling up in queues).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this is helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8644" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T19:55:53.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11083" CreationDate="2014-03-26T20:13:43.540" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do your projects sequentially, one at a time.  Period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;And how do you prevent the fact that other projects/clients won't be waiting for a month...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think this one through: say you have three projects to do, and each one will take four weeks (with the entire team working on it).  Further assume you wouldn't lose any time switching between them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do these perfectly in parallel, you end up with no project completed until the very last day of the twelve-week period.  That is, &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; your clients end up waiting almost three months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you alternate between projects in one-week sprints, you finish one project at ten weeks, one at eleven weeks, and one at twelve weeks.  Congratulations, now only one of your clients has to wait three months—but the others only get their stuff one and two weeks before that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do the projects sequentially, one client will have their project at the end of four weeks.  A second will have theirs at the end of eight weeks.  And a third will have theirs at the end of twelve weeks—which is going to happen no matter &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; you schedule them, unless you happen to have a TARDIS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality, switching between projects &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; hurt your productivity, so your actual experience of parallelism or alternation will be &lt;em&gt;worse&lt;/em&gt; than you'd get by simply doing them sequentially.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8644" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T20:13:43.540" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11144" CreationDate="2014-03-26T21:06:29.253" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;My feeling is that these user stories are too large and need to be broken down, but our PM strongly objects to this on the grounds that breaking down these user stories will result in stories that have no customer value...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An eighty-day chunk of work that can't be broken down into pieces individually having customer value?  That has never happened in the history of the world.  Your PM (who you should be nudging into being a Product Owner, by the way) is probably thinking of &quot;customer value&quot; as &quot;something I can definitely get someone to pay for&quot;, as opposed to, &quot;something I could give away free and customers would thank me&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say you want to add sorting to displays in your product.  What if you started with alphabetic-only sorting?  Well, maybe nobody would pay you for that on its own.  But if you already had numeric sorting and geographical sorting in the product, and then you added alphabetic sorting, which would be the more likely customer reaction: &quot;Thanks!&quot; or &quot;You Suck!&quot;?  So while alphabetic sorting has little value on its own, it still has some.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One approach to stories that are too big is to &lt;em&gt;assemble&lt;/em&gt; stories from little pieces, instead of &lt;em&gt;splitting&lt;/em&gt; stories out of a giant one.  The key to this is scenarios: get your PO (sorry, PM) to state the story as a bunch of scenarios in Given-When-Then format, unambiguously saying what the product should do in a bunch of cases.  (This alone may lead him to split the story, from fatigue: &quot;Just do the ones we came up with, I'll deal with the rest later.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have the little pieces, some scenarios will obviously have affinities with others: &quot;Given I'm an Admin&quot; goes with other &quot;Admin&quot; scenarios, and not with &quot;Given I'm a User&quot; scenarios — put the &quot;Admin&quot; scenarios together into an Admin-focused story.  &quot;When I choose Sort By Name&quot; goes with &quot;When I choose Sort by Price&quot;, and not with &quot;When I choose Reset&quot; or &quot;When I log out&quot; or &quot;When I enter a search term&quot; — put the &quot;Sort&quot; stories together into a Sort-focused story.  And so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to force stories to be split is to let the time-box do it: you can't finish an eighty-day story in a two-week sprint, so you're going to have some of it done and some of it not.  Press your PO (sorry, PM) on what part he would most like to have in hand when the two-week axe falls.  (If he says something like, &quot;The database part&quot;, introduce him to vertical story slicing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other valuable approaches are either included in or referred to by the other answers to your question here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More information about slicing stories and writing scenarios (e.g. for Cucumber or FIT) is just a web search away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8644" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T21:06:29.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11202" CreationDate="2014-03-27T01:46:59.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a common problem with most methodologies.  Tracking and documenting changing requirements is difficult.  Both the customer and development team need to be award of changes to the requirements.  And both will likely be driving changes to the requirements.  If the client has done Big Upfront Design, rather than Waterfall, they are less likely to drive changes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you are finding, the development team is generating requests for clarifications of the requirements.  The client may also have changing requirements.  This is commonly dealt with by a change control process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may find keeping the documents flowing between the team and the client in a text format works better.  Doing the communication using email messages may make the transfer of information flow more easily.  Depending on the answers received, it may be appropriate to cut and paste the answer into the requirements document.  Other changes may result in edits to the requirements.  In any case, you should be able to trace the current requirements to the original requirements, and any approved changes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asking for clarification more frequently may help reduce the friction in the change process.  Adding the changes and responses to a bug/issue/task tracking system may also help in a number of ways.  With the appropriate work flow you will be able to track the changes through their life cycle.  It may be easier to get the client to join use the issue tracking tool than update the wiki.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastEditorUserId="529" LastEditDate="2014-03-27T11:54:29.613" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T11:54:29.613" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11144" CreationDate="2014-03-27T11:17:42.073" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to add a point to the great answers already here: if you're consistently under-estimating stories, I'd say that it's possible that you're estimating them correctly but over-estimating your velocity. Try to get rid of estimating things by &quot;days&quot;, and start estimating them by points instead. Estimate tasks based on relative size compared to each other, preferably with the fibonacci number series to avoid pointless tasks like deciding if a story is 28p or 29p in size. Then it's just a matter of finding the amount of story points a team can commit to each sprint (their velocity) to find what a good commitment for that team is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, of course, a footnote compared to the bigger issues that already has been solved in other answers in this thread.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7543" LastEditorUserId="6300" LastEditDate="2014-03-28T14:23:41.667" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T14:23:41.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11214" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11215" CreationDate="2014-03-27T15:35:30.940" Score="0" ViewCount="139" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking for the correct terminology to research what IT Management science calls the level of software just above the &quot;open source&quot; level.  Looking to research how very large organizations try to prevent in-house code redundancy at what I call the functional or proprietary level, meaning, the internal, company-specific solutions created from open source components, but which are not open-sourceable themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any search terms, sites, or forums that might give my research direction are extremely appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8651" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T17:08:21.297" Title="Preventing &quot;functional redundancy&quot; in large organizations: Where are the discussions?" Tags="&lt;management&gt;&lt;open-source&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11214" CreationDate="2014-03-27T17:22:31.803" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never heard of anything like that.    Although you don't explicitly say, I assume you have a function in your IT department that controls commercial software with the intent of avoiding duplication. Since Open Source software doesn't require that control, it is much more likely that it will be used in redundant ways, and that various internal organizations are &quot;reinventing the wheel&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM answer is that this information should be documented as an &lt;strong&gt;organizational process asset&lt;/strong&gt;. If you have a PMO they should be interested in capturing this kind of information as part of lessons learned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One brute force approach would be to develop a library of requirements rather than a library of software.  e.g. *37 different organizations have stated a &quot;Must have&quot; requirement for software with an API to manipulate Gantt Charts; 30 of them use Microsoft project, 4 of them usr LibreOffice, and 3 of them use an open source SaaS product.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably a better approach would be to work through enterprise architecture. EA is often summarized as just the description of ASIS and TOBE, but it &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be capturing the technologies that bridge between the two. You might contact &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.troux.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Troux&lt;/a&gt;; see if they have a solution, and then work down their competitors. &lt;em&gt;I have no affiliation with them, and don't use their product, but they are recogzized as a market leader&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A third approach would be to approach your cybersecurity office.  In theory they should be assiduously &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sans.org/critical-security-controls&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;collecting and maintaining&lt;/a&gt; a list of the software in your environment.  A fully mature cybersecurity program would also take notice of internally developed software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A fourth approach is to capture this as part of your knowledge management efforts.  The few times I've dealt with people who are knowledge management guru's they advocate capturing information like this.  Unfortunately, I haven't yet seen what I would consider a mature knowledge management initiative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T17:22:31.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11216" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11219" CreationDate="2014-03-27T17:22:34.323" Score="0" ViewCount="3452" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have joined one research institute as Project Scientist, but there is no clarification of the job profile here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should be the role of Project Scientist in the team? As we work on projects which are client based and also we do research for paper publications in journals, but from a project management perspective what is the exact role? AS a human recourse manager, what is the key responsibility of such a post in the organization? what value it adds to the project by adding such a person to the project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also I want to know actually what should be the qualities for the team member to satisfy such a role?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thannks a lot in advance....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8653" LastEditorUserId="8653" LastEditDate="2014-03-27T17:58:14.373" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T19:00:56.303" Title="What should be the role of Project Scientist in the team?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;roles&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-04-02T05:40:12.647" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11204" CreationDate="2014-03-27T17:29:42.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Maximize business value delivered&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a given team size (investment) you want the highest returns by way of delivered business value. Ideally, you should ask the Product Owner to assess this. However, this assessment by the PO will be subjective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you need an objective measure. In your comment, you said you wanted to compare performance for the same team over a period. For this purpose, it is OK to use velocity as a measure of value delivery. However, you should apply these two conditions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You use documented reference stories for various story points so that your estimations don't veer too much off track over a period.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have multiple teams, you use the same common set of reference stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this push for higher velocity, the following are potential casualties. So, measure these also and make sure they are not compromised:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Quality&lt;/strong&gt;: Number and severity of bugs found in production.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Team Morale&lt;/strong&gt;: Minimize number of fire drills.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Technical Debt&lt;/strong&gt;: Makes the code hard for the team to change. If the debt is not repaid, then it will keep on accumulating interest, making it hard to implement changes later on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2014-03-27T19:46:24.097" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T19:46:24.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10" CreationDate="2014-03-27T17:44:12.337" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a time tracker that allows you to track time to various projects within your organization and then roll everything up so you can see where your team is spending time.  You can also place limits and budgets on your team for specific projects.  You can see it here &lt;a href=&quot;https://hubstaff.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://hubstaff.com&lt;/a&gt; - let me know if you have any questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8654" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T17:44:12.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11216" CreationDate="2014-03-27T18:42:33.827" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;With the title of a Project Scientist, I expect you will be a team member in one or more research projects. Your expected contribution to the project will, most likely, be subject matter expertise to achieve the core objectives of your organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Traditionally Scientists have focused on acquiring in-depth expertise in one very narrow area. However, the preference these days is for T-shaped skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-shaped_skills&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;T-shaped skills: The vertical bar on the T represents the depth of related skills and expertise in a single field, whereas the horizontal bar is the ability to collaborate across disciplines with experts in other areas and to apply knowledge in areas of expertise other than one's own.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also become familiar with how to manage a research project. Here are a couple of starting points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0JXpjah1K8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Introduction to Managing a Research Project&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://technocalifornia.blogspot.com/2011/03/managing-research-agile-way.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Managing Research the Agile Way&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T18:42:33.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11216" CreationDate="2014-03-27T19:00:56.303" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first job in the &quot;real world&quot; was as a Project Scientist, so I can empathize with you. Based on my experience they probably want to use you as a &quot;floater&quot;, a warm body that can be put onto any project that comes through the door, or alternatively to support any politically powerful principal investigator in your organization. It is like being a consultant, but with twice the headaches, half the pay and a tenth of the authority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have joined one research institute as Project Scientist, but there is no clarification of the job profile here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anytime an organization can't provide role clarity it means the organization hasn't got much of a clue around what your role should be. Or if they articulated it nobody would want the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;from a project management perspective what is the exact role?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a PM perspective you are one of many team members, likely more competent than some and less so than others. I would look on you as a generalist and try to keep you on pieces that don't need real speciality knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;AS a human recourse manager, what is the key responsibility of such a&#xA;  post in the organization? what value it adds to the project by adding&#xA;  such a person to the project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You probably have the role because there was $$ in the overall organization's budget but not in department/lab budgets. This gives a great deal of flexibility from an HR perspective, and provides a warm body at reasonable cost,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T19:00:56.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11221" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-27T19:04:21.517" Score="3" ViewCount="4149" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a friend who has a M.S. in Biology and has led several biology-related research projects with both pharmaceutical companies and hospitals. Her job was eliminated (second time), and she is considering a career change towards project management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The research projects she has conducted has included the various aspects of project management, including identifying/maintaining scope, managing resources, managing costs to the budget established for that project, and final deliverable (published report) and closeout. I believe she has attained project experience without necessary knowing it, and I think she can make a case that experience can count towards PMP certification requirements. In addition, she has taken several project management classes for meeting the education requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does managing science research projects in this manner count as PMP project experience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8655" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-03-28T04:22:41.833" LastActivityDate="2016-02-02T16:42:34.217" Title="Does Managing Science Research Projects Count as PMP Project Experience?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11198" CreationDate="2014-03-28T07:46:56.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;h1&gt;1 Eliminate Waste - Find a way to measure what is wasteful (unused features, incomplete features, rarely used features, communication failures, handoffs etc), whatever isn't adding value to the end result.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Measuring waste is probably one of the easiest places to start and in my experience waste is one of the biggest drains on any software development project. It permeates the highest level of user facing functionality to the deepest levels of unnecessary code. The trouble is no one ever likes to remove functionality, so it just builds up like cancer over time. The sooner it's removed, the sooner no one will have to wonder what its value may be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start out measuring application usage in high level areas. If you notice low usage, expand your monitoring in the relevant area. Once you identify areas of unnecessary functionality, plan to remove it, and then figure out how it came to be in the first place. Chances are unnecessary functionality came from another form of waste, like an initial communication failure or decision making handoff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, don't get crazy, make sure your investment in identifying waste is reasonable and not waste itself :) as returns diminish, don't keep investing in higher levels of monitoring... eventually you can shift the ability to identify waste to be upfront in avoiding communication failures and handoff, thus negating the need for monitoring after the fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8660" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T07:46:56.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11224" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-28T07:53:05.110" Score="2" ViewCount="33669" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am learning to use MS Project for a student project and trying to change the default working hours. I am not able to make this configuration change. How does one modify this setting? I tried figuring out using online help but no luck so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8659" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T18:55:59.070" LastActivityDate="2019-04-24T04:11:06.510" Title="Changing default working hours from 8 hr/day to 4 hr/day in Microsoft project 2013?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11214" CreationDate="2014-03-28T09:29:54.287" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Business theory talks about &quot;differential&quot; or &quot;strategic&quot; vs. &quot;commodity&quot; systems that you may build internally or purchase externally from a vendor. Differential or strategic systems allows the company to differentiate itself from competitors, while commodities are available to all competitors at the same price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Infrastructure software (Linux, Nagios, ...) is a a good example for &quot;commodity&quot; software. In this area business theory says that it's best to reduce costs by sharing the effort with other companies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Google Search engine is an example of a differential software based on the commodity fundation. Differential software is exposed to the end customers and has an important part in convincing the customers to use the services of this company vs. competitors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers, Frank&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6266" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T09:29:54.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11226" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11232" CreationDate="2014-03-28T10:15:17.170" Score="15" ViewCount="59422" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am using a project management system that forces me to define feature requests as either High, Medium or Low priority. Has anyone got a good set of definitions that clarifies what those priorities should mean? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it would focus our minds better if we had specific definitions of what those priority levels actually mean. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4574" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-03-28T13:42:02.437" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T09:57:56.580" Title="What are some good definitions for High, Medium and Low priorities?" Tags="&lt;definition&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11221" CreationDate="2014-03-28T11:46:10.080" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;tl;dr&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not a PMI auditor, nor do I play one on the web.  I can't give you an authoritative answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can tell you that about half the experience I submitted to document my PMI was not in formally declared projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not alone in this belief, PM:SE has handled many questions about whether profession X qualifies as PMI experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/5107/4367&quot;&gt;Does a PhD qualify me to take the exam?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;strong&gt;Very Relevant&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/883/4367&quot;&gt;PMP Experience Documentation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/2918/4367&quot;&gt;Does developing software count?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/8104/4367&quot;&gt;Database Programming&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T11:46:10.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11221" CreationDate="2014-03-28T12:02:43.067" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on my experience, yes a scientific research project should count. As a PM in a pharmaceutical company I submitted as my experience nothing but scientific research projects (specifically pharmaceutical safety, PK and efficacy studies) and got my PMP based on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T12:02:43.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11224" CreationDate="2014-03-28T12:19:56.413" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Microsoft Project 2007, from the top menu, go to &lt;strong&gt;Tools &gt; Change Working Times&lt;/strong&gt;. In the opened dialog, click on &lt;strong&gt;Options&lt;/strong&gt;. In this new dialog box, you may change the working hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Change Working Time&lt;/strong&gt; dialog:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jPHQ8.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Options&lt;/strong&gt; dialog:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XqSNP.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T12:19:56.413" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11221" CreationDate="2014-03-28T12:21:52.933" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look at PMI's definition of a project:  a unique endeavor that has a defined start and stop that produces a product or service (my words, not exactly PMI's).  PMI further defines 10 knowledge areas that have processes within five process groups.  The application will ask for evidence of activity within each knowledge area across the process groups.  If the work performed within the research project can be described within PMI's context, then the research project will qualify from that standpoint.  The issue becomes whether the candidate met the degree of complexity, and of course time, to qualify and only PMI can answer that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T12:21:52.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11226" CreationDate="2014-03-28T12:34:53.007" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Priorities are defined based on the needs of product owners. It is decided based on factors like Importance, Urgency, Effort&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it is a critical feature which the product owners wants&#xA;immediately or a feature that has impact on creation on other&#xA;features and/or which doesn't relatively take time(depending on&#xA;sprint duration) that can be named as High&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The feature which is relatively important but not as important as High is named as Normal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The feature which is not required immediately or which doesn't have any impact of basic functionality of app can be named as Low priority. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To know more about deciding which feature is to be given which priority please check the following link: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Prioritize&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.wikihow.com/Prioritize&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8012" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T12:34:53.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11226" CreationDate="2014-03-28T13:32:22.107" Score="15" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Definitions Must Be Localized&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am using a project management system that forces me to define feature requests as either High, Medium or Low priority. Has anyone got a good set of definitions that clarifies what those priorities should mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They mean whatever your organization wants them to mean. How any given organization prioritizes features or tasks is based on a variety of factors, including (but not limited to):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Urgency&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Value&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cost&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Timing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ROI (Return on Investment)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Marketing or public relations concerns&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Squeaky wheel&quot; customers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost&quot;&gt;Opportunity costs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, your organization must develop a scoring system or a set of sliders that allow you to filter and prioritize features in a way that makes sense &lt;em&gt;for your specific business&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Coarse-Grained Priority Buckets Suck&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even with the foregoing in mind, large priority buckets are a terrible idea. There's a reason that frameworks like Scrum require ordinal prioritization. Quite simply, if something is &quot;most important,&quot; by definition everything else is subordinate to that objective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you sort into coarse-grained priority buckets, you end up with situations where you might have 37 &quot;high priority&quot; features. Not everything can be the top priority simultaneously, although it's common Bad Management Practice&amp;trade; to think so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you have secondary filters for each of your priority buckets, your project is likely to multitask itself to death. Even if you don't, will you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work through buckets on a first-in, first-out basis?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work on the low-hanging (and potentially lower-value) fruit first?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will you work on the hardest (and potentially schedule-destroying) stuff first?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, unless you put a lid on your high-priority bucket you will never get to the medium or low priority stuff. Ever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A More Sequential Approach&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, coarse-grained buckets are acceptable as a first pass, but you should strongly consider a second pass with some kind of ordinal prioritization queue. Mountain Goat Software has some nice web-based tools for helping teams use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/theme-screening&quot;&gt;Theme Screening&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/theme-scoring&quot;&gt;Theme Scoring&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/relative-weighting&quot;&gt;Relative Weighting&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/project-success&quot;&gt;Project Success Sliders&lt;/a&gt; to help the stakeholders give truly sequential priorities to features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always remember CodeGnome's First Law of Prioritization:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; is a &quot;top priority&quot; on your project, run (do not walk!) to the nearest exit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, undifferentiated &quot;top priority&quot; queues are generally the main source of project failures and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_march_%28project_management%29&quot;&gt;death marches&lt;/a&gt;. Don't be a statistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T13:32:22.107" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11185" CreationDate="2014-03-28T15:01:04.207" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’ll simply add to what the other couple of responders have already said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, project team members do not report directly to the project manager (PM) with respect to the org chart.  This means one of the most important tools a PM will have is their influence.  As an intern, you are both new to the organization and lack a lot of real-world experience.  This will probably hamper your ability to exert a great deal of influence over not only project team members but other key contributors and stakeholders as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like your management is asking you to be more of a project coordinator than a true project manager.  I suspect the main responsibilities for you will be planning and estimating.  These are of course just part of what a true PM does, but it certainly does not diminish the importance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep your outline simple and think about if you were doing all the work yourself and how you would approach it.  Perhaps some of your more experienced team members have a general set of project development steps they tend to follow.  You could use something like that as a starting point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the biggest tasks for a PM is to monitor and manage risk.  Be sure to point out in your outline which steps tend to involve the biggest risk.  For example, if you require a specialist to do an important step and there is no one else to do it should the resource be unavailable, that would be a significant risk.  More minor tasks or requirements that are lower in priority will inherently involve less risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your management/stakeholders probably already have a target date or at least a timeframe in mind as to when they want the web site to go live.  Keep that in mind as you set your milestones and deadlines.  So if they expect to go live on 12/31/14, you have approximately 9 months to achieve the goal.  Milestones are points along the project path you should feel comfortable sharing with anyone, including external stakeholders.  Deadlines will typically occur more frequently than milestones and often represent actions that must happen so that other actions may happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps and best wishes on your internship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7361" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T15:01:04.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11235" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11242" CreationDate="2014-03-29T03:49:21.263" Score="-2" ViewCount="242" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am poor, very poor, so poor that I don't have money to take a PMP class. So I decided to teach myself about it. &#xA;However, I find myself having a lot of knowledge gaps that a PM may have (i.e mindset, being energetic to kick off becoming one, being confused if I am given a project to start with as I might not know where to begin, lacking of skills in using excel templates or available software to monitor tasks e.g redmind, jira etc).&#xA;Without taking a PMP class formally and getting qualified, how can I become a PM ? could you provide some steps for me to crawl up to being a manager :-D ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8662" LastActivityDate="2016-12-01T23:36:51.817" Title="PMP/PMI and other similar classes" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;pmi&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-12-11T23:00:04.503" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11235" CreationDate="2014-03-29T12:30:04.163" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Contact your local PMI chapter.  Our chapter provides scholarships for classes.  And members may be willing to loan you books that they used to prepare for the exam. Your local library may have books on project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technically you cannot get the PMP without spending for a class; you must take 35 contact hours of education from a registered education provider, and I'm not aware of any of those that don't charge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T12:30:04.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11224" CreationDate="2014-03-29T17:46:01.860" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For Project 2013:  Project ribbon, Change Working time command.  Then follow the directions above.  You will need to change the Work Weeks Default definition in the first dialog (Change Working Time) and also change the Hours per Day and Hours per week setting on the second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is - are you trying to control the number of available hours (4 per day) for a resource or for the entire project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T17:46:01.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11235" CreationDate="2014-03-29T22:45:14.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;@user3462253 I think you may find that having a credential and doing a job are not the same thing. Your financial position will not get in the way of becoming an effective program manager. All those skills and temperaments you mention (&quot;mindset, being energetic to kick off becoming one, being confused if I am given a project to start with as I might not know where to begin, lacking of skills in using excel templates or available software to monitor tasks e.g redmind, jira etc&quot;) will not be taught in a formal PMP course. You can get the mindset items by finding a way to focus your thinking when approaching a project (and almost everything in our daily lives is a project), and the specialist skills (e.g. JIRA) can come from finding opportunities to use those skills (BTW, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/get-jira&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Atlassian&lt;/a&gt;, the makers of JIRA provide $10 licenses, so you can teach yourself). On-the-job training for each of these areas is actually a great way to get yourself ready for when you can afford to take the PMP test both mentally and financially.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a straight-out way to approach learning formal project management concepts and procedures, you can find many books in libraries and online. Also, pretty much any subject covered in the PMP is well written up on Wikipedia. Also, the PMI does have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/Membership/Membership-Types-of-Memberships.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Student Membership&lt;/a&gt; for just $32. I believe it includes online access to the PMBOK and other standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck in your pursuit. I've found project management to be interesting and fulfilling, but it doesn't require some letters after your name to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7689" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T22:45:14.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11239" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-30T14:06:23.427" Score="1" ViewCount="1050" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm documenting a Software Web Application Project Plan. The customers have sent us:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) snapshots of the various Web pages, and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Change Request Snapshots of some existing Web pages that we already developed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, they send us software functional requirements through various emails. In other words, the software functional reqs are scattered here and there in various emails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started writing a Software Web Application Project Plan for the Webpages that so far contains various tasks that pertain to changes in aesthetics, and content of the webpages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I created a Gantt graph using Project Libre. I listed out the various Tasks, Subtasks, work packages, etc., but is there any of showing Tentative Tasks? In other words, is there a way to ensure that other people who review the Gantt graph know that it is a tentative task?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I'm asking is that the Customer is constantly changing requirements which is quite common in software projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8622" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T16:03:49.740" Title="Is there any of Special way of showing Tentative Tasks in a Gantt graph using Project Libre?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4440" CreationDate="2014-03-31T02:04:44.823" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile, specifically scrum  is good for non deterministic projects where the requirements can change a lot over the course of the project. For Example Software Development projects. It can be used for deterministic project e.g. IT Infrastructure projects but alternatives like Kanban are more suitable for deterministic projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8680" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T02:04:44.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11235" CreationDate="2014-03-31T14:42:24.557" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't need a certification to be a project manager. Most certifications also actually require x years of formal PM experience before you can even take them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The standard way into project management, is being an excellent team member first. Showing traits like dedication, drive and autonomy, as well as good skills in the specific team role. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the same things needed for a great PM, together with an overall understanding of all team members' roles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have the traits or skills, then work on acquiring them. Emulate behavior for the traits, read and practice for the skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good skills coupled with pro-active behavior will make you stand out and will lead to more responsibility. The progression usually goes team member -&gt; specialist or team lead -&gt; project manager. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Progression can come through informal increases in responsibility or formal promotion. Change of jobs might be necessary if the company is small, since there'll be less room for professional growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8592" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T14:42:24.557" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11243" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11245" CreationDate="2014-03-31T12:02:20.277" Score="3" ViewCount="1983" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to know exactly when I can integrate acceptance testing into a scrum process? During the sprint cycle or at the end of the sprint cycle? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that acceptance testing is when we test the software against the user requirements, but i want to know exactly when acceptance tests should be done in the scrum process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8686" OwnerDisplayName="mery" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2014-03-31T16:19:45.657" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T17:24:04.380" Title="When do you integrate Acceptance Testing into a scrum process?" Tags="&lt;testing&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11243" CreationDate="2014-03-31T14:54:11.423" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;During the sprint cycle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are doing automated testing, the team members writing the tests can begin to write them either before or as the software is being developed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are not writing automated tests, the testers can begin at the start of the sprint by working on their test plans, getting familiar with the new requirements, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3189" OwnerDisplayName="Bryan Oakley" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T14:54:11.423" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11243" CreationDate="2014-03-31T16:31:54.423" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;The team should produce a potentially shippable increment&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Portals/0/Documents/Scrum%20Guides/2013/Scrum-Guide.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Development Team consists of professionals who do the work of delivering a potentially releasable Increment of “Done” product at the end of each Sprint...with all of the skills as a team necessary to create a product Increment.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team should produce a &quot;potentially shippable increment&quot; at the end of the sprint. Without testing whatever the team produces is not shippable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;but i want to know exactly when acceptance tests are done into scrum&#xA;  process...During the sprint cycle or at the end of the sprint cycle?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @Bryan Oakley said you should do acceptance testing during the sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;is it possible to separate the team, i.e team for development and team&#xA;  for testing? For example: from the first Sprint Planning we separates&#xA;  them, team 1 for development and team 2 for testing, working at the&#xA;  same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, they should not be separate teams. The team needs all the skills needed to create a &quot;potentially shippable increment&quot; - design, dev, testing...etc - within the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum does not allow separate testing teams. In fact, Scrum does not even allow testing sub-teams within the development team! Here is the quote from the Scrum Guide by Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber, &quot;Scrum recognizes no sub-teams in the Development Team, regardless of particular domains that need to be addressed like testing or business analysis; there are no exceptions to this rule&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2014-04-02T17:24:04.380" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T17:24:04.380" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11243" CreationDate="2014-03-31T17:05:43.170" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Acceptance tests should be done by Product managers, SME/clients. To gain confidence about the product, acceptance tests should be integrated during the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically we will have a feature creation sprint  for UAT followed by stabilization sprints for UAT, the user story used in feature creation sprint needs to be repeated during stabilization sprints to get more confidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8687" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T17:05:43.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11247" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11251" CreationDate="2014-04-01T12:17:40.283" Score="5" ViewCount="1377" Body="&lt;p&gt;I propose the following scheme for estimating user stories in a scrum process:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good programmer might cost 80000$ a year, so per hour this is 80000$/52 weeks/40 hours per week = 40$ per hour. In a two week sprint, a single programmer can work for 80 hours, which would cost 3200$. So the maximum size of a story for a two week sprint should be 3200$ . So instead of using story points to estimate stories/tickets, one could use the following schema to estimate tickets from lowest to highest complexity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;50$, 100$, 200$, 400$, 800$, 1600$, 3200$ &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One could also add that bugs cannot be estimated, so we might give them always a cost in the middle of the scheme of 400$.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be the disadvantage of using such a scheme for estimating tickets? Has anyone tried estimating tickets based on costs within scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8693" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T05:47:27.350" Title="Why not use costs instead of story points for estimation?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11247" CreationDate="2014-04-01T16:03:09.387" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's ... not advisable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories are not estimated in terms of effort, so why use dollars?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Estimate in relative terms rather than absolute terms. Instead of saying, &quot;This will take five days,&quot; say, &quot;This thing will take about as long as that thing.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/how-can-we-get-the-best-estimates-of-story-size&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How Can We Get the Best Estimates of Story Size?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make a long story short there are two main reasons for this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Estimation is a two step process in scrum: both a story and the capacity of an iteration are estimated. The first is done in relative terms, the second is done based on previous evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A team should choose how to develop a story, be able to change it through negotiation and have different people develop it if necessary. If, for example, there is need to pair-program a story because of team improvement reasons, this should not be reflected on the cost of the story -- but it's probably a cost (an investment!) in monetary terms.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6300" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T16:03:09.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11247" CreationDate="2014-04-01T16:18:54.500" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Software development is not a predictive process&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is an adaptive process developed specifically to address the challenges of Software development, which is not a predictive process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am sure you have seen that requirements change more often than you expect - especially in business software and more so if a GUI is involved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technology is unpredictable - version upgrades, security fixes, availability of new frameworks, blocking issues discovered late in the development cycle...etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Skill levels can be vastly different. You estimate a task as 4 hours assuming Joe is going to do it. However, Joe has been assigned to some other high priority work. Other developers take two days to do the same work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.martinfowler.com/articles/newMethodology.html#PredictiveVersusAdaptive&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;You can see more on Predictive versus Adaptive processes in this article by Martin Fowler.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrum.jeffsutherland.com/2010/04/story-points-why-are-they-better-than.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here is an article by Jeff Sutherland, one of the founders of the Scrum process, explaining why story points are better than hours for estimating software development effort level.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As pointed out by @CodeGnome, if estimating in hours is bad, estimating in dollars is even worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T16:18:54.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10705" CreationDate="2014-04-01T17:18:30.723" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question seems to boil down to: &quot;I have developers sitting around doing nothing for the last couple days of each sprint.  What should I do?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have the developers help with the testing.  It's a cross-functional team.  Sure, the developers might not be experienced testers: so give the testers the exploratory testing, and give the scut work to the developers.  This will help motivate them for point #2 below.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have the developers help automate the testing (if you're spending 2-3 days testing a sprint's worth of stories, I'm guessing at least half of that could be automated, either as acceptance tests or as unit tests).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Get testers, developers, and the product owner together to create acceptance tests for stories at the &lt;em&gt;beginning&lt;/em&gt; of the sprint.  Unless a story involves some wholly new interface, you can probably write or reuse fixtures to test it &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; it's coded.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't call stories &quot;Done&quot; before they're tested.  Go over your definition of &quot;Done&quot; to make sure it's what you want (or need).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find &lt;em&gt;useful&lt;/em&gt; uses for the slack time: setting up or improving Continuous Integration, automating deployment, doing coding katas.  If a bug is found, switch to fixing it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yours is a nice problem to have.  Don't blow your opportunities by pulling in more work than you can do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8644" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2015-12-04T11:32:15.700" LastActivityDate="2015-12-04T11:32:15.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11247" CreationDate="2014-04-02T04:51:45.997" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The common error is to assign a time or cost value to a point, but in reality the value is determined by environmental factors and teams actually doing the work. It is a random number to represent actual capacity that can be used for planning future sprints. So, if you are using points to do relative estimation, your $ amount would mean nothing since you don't actually know how much the team will accomplish. That is the reason for the use of a &quot;point&quot;. It has no time or cost tied to it and so informs you of the ACTUAL capacity (velocity) of a team NOT the assumed or desired one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original purpose of story points was to apply a numerical value to the process of relative estimation so we had a marker to use for better planning. Humans are horrible at estimating time and we get worse the larger an effort is, BUT it turns out we are actually pretty good at estimating when relating to some other thing we have done or other things around it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you are estimating a group of stories based on previously completed stories...think a conversation like, &quot;This new story will be a lot like this other story that was a &quot;5&quot; so this new story will probably be a &quot;5&quot;.&quot; Or &quot;This new story is going to be a little harder than this other story we did which was a &quot;5&quot; so we think this will be an &quot;8&quot;. INSTEAD OF &quot;How long will this take?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are relating the effort/size in relation to other reference stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you are relatively estimating stories, THEN the amount of &quot;points&quot; you complete is based on capacity, interrupts, vacations, previous sprints, etc. The # of points a team completes is determined by them actually doing the work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story points are a tricky subject as it can be used with good intentions to create an unexpected negative effect when used in a way it was meant to. Here is another reference on use story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/how-can-we-get-the-best-estimates-of-story-size&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/how-can-we-get-the-best-estimates-of-story-size&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2014-04-02T12:00:11.253" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T12:00:11.253" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11247" CreationDate="2014-04-02T04:59:35.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A product owner / stakeholders should calculate in dollars / money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a developer doesn't know what the costs of a company are or what a feature will gain is it useless to let story-points be done in money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A developer does it in points as you don't want to use a scalable methode like hours or in your case money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As some work is NEVER done within one hour, it could be done within 3 or 5 story-points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2973" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T04:59:35.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11226" CreationDate="2014-04-02T05:03:46.483" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're using scrum, ask your product owner. If you have a manager or CEO (or whatever) above you ask them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your definition of high priority is always different than the product owners' or CEO's high priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they don't have a clue what you're talking about, create simple to understand example for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, the main server goes down, do you want me to fix that within 2 or 8 or 24 hours?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2973" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-04-03T03:16:40.137" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T03:16:40.137" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11243" CreationDate="2014-04-02T05:07:17.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes I also agree that acceptance tests should be done outside of your scrum team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's done for the team, they have done the testing cycle within the sprint, but I would recommend a key user test team testing the software before going to live.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also depends on the kind of software you are making. If you don't have a key user test team, or your key users are web site visitors then there is no other option to test it yourself (together with the product owner / or just by the product owner)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2973" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T05:07:17.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1533" CreationDate="2014-04-02T06:10:50.387" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, PRINCE2 and PMP are competing. Both are based on different approaches and methodologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PRINCE 2 is Process based – defines What, How , When , and who can do series of management processes. It dictates right process to follow whereas PMP is Knowledge based – Tools &amp;amp; Techniques and best practices that can be applied when managing projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PRINCE2 defines the roles of everyone involved in a project whereas PMP Focuses on the project manager's role&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A professional who is looking forward towards gaining proficiency in project management approach with a project team point of view can opt for PRINCE2 Certification. On the other hand project managers who are looking forward for an individual growth as a project manager may opt for PMP Certification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This blog might help in understanding better: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.simplilearn.com/project-management/prince2-vs-pmp-the-battle-of-certifications&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.simplilearn.com/project-management/prince2-vs-pmp-the-battle-of-certifications&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I work for this company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8321" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T06:10:50.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8711" CreationDate="2014-04-02T10:45:53.397" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, online board works better for bigger teams, which have their team located in several positions. If some changes are made they can be quickly informed, as opposed to a physical board where you would have to replicate those changes in some other way or gather the whole team to see the board. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other argument in favor of online board is that notes can store much more information, you wont need as many different notes and the whole board will look &quot;cleaner&quot; and more understandable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Online board, however, will be more costly and will probably take more time to set up, as you need some kind of software to run it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8683" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T10:45:53.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8711" CreationDate="2014-04-02T12:12:51.950" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been involved in Scrum teams as SM or team member for 4 years. In 56 sprints, we used &lt;strong&gt;whiteboards&lt;/strong&gt;. We loved it because face-to-face communication made us feel like being a part of a real team with real teammates focused on one aim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one team, we've used &lt;strong&gt;online scrum board&lt;/strong&gt; almost for a year. The reason was simple: we had team mates distributed in other continents. We get the advangate of using online tools because using online tools increased the communication in the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, here is my advise: It doesn't matter which one you select. &lt;strong&gt;Select the one that you think it will improve the communication and collaboration in the team better&lt;/strong&gt;. Inspect. If it does not, then adapt and try again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to share my last observation. If your team is experienced about Scrum, you won't feel and disadvantage by using online tools. But &lt;strong&gt;if your team is new to Scrum, I advise to use whiteboards&lt;/strong&gt;. Online tools harm the culture you try to build much more than you expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2317" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T12:12:51.950" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11214" CreationDate="2014-04-02T13:01:40.233" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not entirely sure I understand the question, so feel free to correct. I believe at the basic level you are looking for information on how companies organize the reuse of code / components?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One place to start would be looking at component-based software engineering(CBSE), which you can read a bit about on: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component-based_software_engineering&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component-based_software_engineering&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also a paper on IEEE called &quot;Strategies for software reuse: a principal component analysis of reuse practices&quot;, which you might find interesting. It's available here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&amp;amp;arnumber=1232287&amp;amp;punumber=32&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel5%2F32%2F27606%2F01232287.pdf%3Ftp%3D%26arnumber%3D1232287%26punumber%3D32&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&amp;amp;arnumber=1232287&amp;amp;punumber=32&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel5%2F32%2F27606%2F01232287.pdf%3Ftp%3D%26arnumber%3D1232287%26punumber%3D32&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;General google search term suggestions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;IT strategy code reuse&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;IT strategy component reuse&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Software code reuse&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Componentization of software&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8592" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T13:01:40.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11239" CreationDate="2014-04-02T13:26:46.273" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If by &quot;tentative&quot; task you mean one that is not approved or unclear whether it will be in the scope, it generally shouldn't be in the project plan. It should rather be relegated to another document. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, if you have to do it: In MS Project, you'd be able to color-code the task name or the duration bar in the Gantt chart. This would make tentative tasks very easily distinguishable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Projectlibre doesn't allow color coding unfortunately, so the only other way I can think of, is to add an extra column to your Gantt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do this by right-clicking one of the existing column names and selecting &quot;Insert column&quot;. As &quot;Field&quot; you can just specify &quot;Flag 1&quot;. This will give you a column with a checkbox for each row / task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can then rename the column (just right click the newly created column) to &quot;Tentative&quot; and set a checkmark for every tentative task. This will then be shown in the Gantt chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8592" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T13:26:46.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11183" CreationDate="2014-04-02T13:41:57.487" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is actually a challenge the Scrum team should figure out, under your guidance. You should be sure the challenges listed in your post is understood by the team members, and then let them sort it out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your role as a ScrumMaster is not really to come up with solutions - that's the team's job - rather it's up to you to remove obstacles for the team. Say they come back to you with a solution which requires someone funding a new server - that's an obstacle you can handle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the CI system design itself, that should be handled by the people who are going to use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also keep in mind that developers might highly resist a solution forced on them from above. Regardless if the system is beneficial to the development process or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting buy-in is much simpler, if the developers are involved in the setup themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If however you for some reason want or need to do this yourself, I'd suggest asking over on Stackoverflow.com or Programmers.stackexchange.com as it really is a quite technical question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8592" LastEditorUserId="8592" LastEditDate="2014-04-03T09:28:43.770" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T09:28:43.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2765" CreationDate="2014-04-02T13:54:14.477" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Story points should not be used for project planning. There is no purpose. Estimations should be built in man-weeks or man-months. Story points do not readily present any information that is able to be acted upon. A story is weighted at 10. What is 10? Is that 10 for 1 person, is that 10 for 100 developers working on the project? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The usage of man-weeks is straight forward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end estimation whether it's points or time... is an estimation. It is based on the experience of the person creating the estimation. By using time directly you have a much better ability to measure the success of your estimates. Comparing story points to story points is at best fuzzy, and at worst meaningless. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, how do you build a system with story points? How many team members do we need? When will it be done? Time and money is business. Project planning is to give the business information on how to best apply their time and money, story points are neither.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8706" LastEditorUserId="8706" LastEditDate="2014-04-02T18:36:07.833" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T18:36:07.833" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11239" CreationDate="2014-04-02T16:03:49.740" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was just going to write the same explanation as @MortenK, but still can append on his answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you have done as Morten described above regarding a &quot;Flag 1&quot; column and you want to be able to toggle visibility by using the &lt;code&gt;Show (I guess it is called) &amp;gt; Filter dropdown menu (for Flag 1)&lt;/code&gt; you will see that you will only filter the ones that are checked as Tentative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately I don't think you can inverse the filter, i.e. &quot;NOT Flag 1&quot; and therefore you would have to Flag the &lt;code&gt;Regular&lt;/code&gt; instead of the Tentative to be able to toggle between &lt;code&gt;No filter&lt;/code&gt; (all tasks, regular and tentative) and &lt;code&gt;Flag 1&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Alternative, have two flags if you want to be able to filter both regular tasks and tentative tasks separately.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7438" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T16:03:49.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11214" CreationDate="2014-04-02T17:08:21.297" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Reusable &quot;services&quot; and integration&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...how very large organizations try to prevent&#xA;  in-house code redundancy...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very large organizations build core services and then integrate them in ways that can be used by their customers, partners, employees and vendors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Any search terms, sites, or forums that might give my research&#xA;  direction are extremely appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service-oriented_architecture&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SOA (Service Oriented Architecture)&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Initially SOAs were built using &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOAP&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)&lt;/a&gt;-based &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_services&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;web services&lt;/a&gt; that delivered XML formatted data. However, in recent years lightweight &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REST&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;REST (REpresentational State Transfer)&lt;/a&gt; based web services became popular, typically delivering JSON formatted data.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_%28web_application_hybrid%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mashup&lt;/a&gt; uses content from more than one source to create a new service...For example, you could combine the addresses and photographs of your library branches with a Google map to create a map mashup.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BPEL&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BPM / BPEL (Business Process Execution Language)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, you can look up SaaS, Cloud Computing, and other architectural approaches that reuse common services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T17:08:21.297" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11264" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-02T20:00:04.687" Score="7" ViewCount="2624" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love using Trello and I've found it an invaluable tool in the past on a range of projects, but I keep coming up against the same problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have X projects on at a time with 3 people working on them. I can create a board for each project and create detailed cards for everyone to work through, but we keep running into scheduling problems or end up giving to much attention to one project whilst neglecting others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a better system than trello or kanban to prevent the above happening? I guess I could group everything into one massive trello board - but A) I would hit the 1000 card limit pretty quick and B) the columns / lists off to the right would get neglected. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8612" LastEditorUserId="8760" LastEditDate="2014-04-08T20:37:18.070" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T20:37:18.070" Title="Using Trello to manage workload across multiple projects" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;multi-team&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11264" CreationDate="2014-04-02T22:13:32.017" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use Trello in a very similar setting and have indeed encountered the same issue. Our current approach to resolve it is to divide the planning into two phases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First, we distribute our velocity over the projects, to plan how much attention we give to each project in the next sprint. Everyone does this for himself, since different people participate in different projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When this high-level phase is over we proceed with the planning of each project, one after another. In this low-level plannings we use the previously assigned velocity-part as our project velocity and plan accordingly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Afterwards, we actually put the tasks for the next iteration on post-its and fix them to our office wall, because we found it way more convenient and explicit than multiple Trello boards. This also works around &quot;Out of sight out of mind&quot;. The copying is suboptimal, though. If you've got a better solution for this last part, let me know!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6990" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T22:13:32.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11266" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11280" CreationDate="2014-04-03T02:07:28.450" Score="6" ViewCount="6551" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand that in general you create stories with story point complexity, and then define tasks and subtasks in which to mark time against, but how does this translate into items that are outside of any code development?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you are part of an agile team and have a sprint in which you are expected to build and deploy code but at the same time you need to setup a new employee's PC that is starting next week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you include this time? Is this part of the sprint or not? It seems like you need a way to track this time. Even though in my case I fully expect to finish the code for the sprint how would you handle this if it caused you to not finish the items for the sprint? From a management perspective it impacts burndown velocity, as well as at the end of the week if your hours show 3 hours not logged then management could assume you slacked off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example could be something that pulls you off the sprint temporarily like troubleshooting a site outage, server crashes, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to factor in story points/tasks for non sprint related items, and how do you include tasks that weren't part of the original estimate, like building the PC?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8716" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2014-04-05T14:36:30.577" LastActivityDate="2020-06-25T21:03:54.837" Title="How to factor in story points/tasks for non sprint related items?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9106" CreationDate="2014-04-03T05:39:33.637" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many of my colleague have use the PM Prepcast to satisfied their 35 hrs of PM requirement and to study as well. I personally used the podcast to study while I was driving and I do recommended it. Of course you will have to purchase the package but it is worth the money.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://misptraining.com/product/project-management-training-in-dubaiabu-dhabi-uae/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pmp exam dubai&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8717" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T05:39:33.637" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9099" CreationDate="2014-04-03T09:35:41.480" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You mentioned that you are using agile methodologies and working in sprints, so i assume you use Scrum, as it is one of the most popular methodologies. In Scrum the work is somewhat constrained, team members are assigned tasks and those tasks have deadlines that need to be finished before each sprint ends. Unexpected tasks may hinder teams performance to finish tasks on time thus putting more pressure on the developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using Scrumban may relieve some of the pressure as it combines both Scrum and Kanban features. Kanban has fewer constraints than Scrum and can handle a steady stream of incoming tasks like support or maintenance tasks better, its a more event driven agile methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8683" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T09:35:41.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11266" CreationDate="2014-04-03T09:42:31.967" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is really simple and really complex:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simple Answer: In Scrum you don't&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Complex Answers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you know the extra tasks before the sprint starts and the team decides that it's necessary to do them, then just do them and lower the forecast. Common courtesy suggests that you tell the PO why you included the extra task.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you know the extra tasks before the sprint because a manager orders you to do it you are not doing scrum, i.e. the team is not empowered. Ask your Scrum Master for help.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the tasks comes up in the middle of the sprint and the team decides that it's necessary for you to do, quickly estimate whether it changes the sprint's outcome. If no change is likely just do it. If a forecasted story will not be finished inform the PO but still do it. If it drastically changes the sprint consider a sprint stop.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the task comes up in the middle of the sprint because it is ordered by a manager you are not doing Scrum. Ask your Scrum Master for help.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are always support tasks. Lower the forecast. Don't give the support task Story Points. That would suggest work towards your goal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are always bugs from stories of previous sprints. Lower the forecast and harden your definition of done. Add more and better tests.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a PO: The team always does other tasks because the team members have other duties, e.g. other teams. Ask the Scrum Master for help to assign team members to one team only.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a PO: The team always does other tasks outside the stories. Inform them that you are the Product Owner and that you can choose to work with another team if they consistently ignore the stories.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meta Answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who cares about the original estimate? It's the features that counts. Think about it: Do you want a product with 1000 Story Points or a product that makes the customer happy? &quot;Story Points&quot; is just a planning tool. There is no customer value in them. So do what is necessary to build a great product. If anyone counts Story Points, ask your Scrum Master for help to overcome the trust issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4331" LastEditorUserId="4331" LastEditDate="2014-04-06T06:46:15.810" LastActivityDate="2014-04-06T06:46:15.810" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11266" CreationDate="2014-04-03T09:46:24.347" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally wouldn't include non-product related tasks like setting up a new PC in the sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather I'd identify the team member needed to do the 3 hours of setup and reduce their amount of availability in the coming sprint. Just like you would if a team member has a vacation or is only available x% of her/his time in the sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any amount of capacity reduction in a team member during a sprint will of course also reduce development velocity. But your burn-down chart won't be affected by a non-product task, and it's easy to explain the slightly lower velocity (&quot;John had non-sprint tasks to care of&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for cases like server outages: These are (hopefully) rare events which reduce team capacity unexpectedly and thus both velocity and burndown chart suffers. In such a situation just address the event, its consequences and future prevention strategies in the following sprint review and retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8592" LastEditorUserId="1185" LastEditDate="2014-04-05T13:18:49.260" LastActivityDate="2014-04-05T13:18:49.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4599" CreationDate="2014-04-03T11:02:05.657" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Planning tools are always advantageous if used right, according to your specific needs. They improve your and your teams understanding on a plan and makes it easier to cope with deadlines. However, as it was already mentioned, a tool is just a tool. So the disadvantage would be that you still need to do the planning yourself, planning tools only enhance the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8683" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T11:02:05.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4599" CreationDate="2014-04-04T00:06:21.173" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on what kind of planning you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are looking for a project management tool for planning your progress, it is necessary to do so. You may try something like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;JIRA&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are just looking for a way to share the progress with your team, you don't have to use any complex project management software. Instead, just share the files in Dropbox or Google Drive, and share the source code using GitHub or BitBucket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to plan the tasks in your team, you may use some task tracking tools like Mavenlink. But it is important to define a clear role for each person to prevent adding many tiny tasks that no one cares about other then the assignee. Or if you are lack of team members, you may outsource some works to other companies like &lt;a href=&quot;http://dustoki.ca/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dustoki&lt;/a&gt; for QA testers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8725" LastEditorUserId="8725" LastEditDate="2014-04-04T00:33:49.237" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T00:33:49.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11275" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11277" CreationDate="2014-04-04T10:20:59.460" Score="0" ViewCount="205" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently been hired for a job as a Bukkit plugin developer for a gaming website. As the projects become larger and more complicated, I am finding it more and more neccassary to carefully design the components of my project before I begin coding. I am having difficulty deciding which components I should begin designing and coding first. I ask myself questions like &quot;Should I start with the config, or the listeners, or maybe the I/O layer?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is my question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you as professionals organize your project components and decide which components require the most attention?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8727" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T14:21:54.887" Title="How to design and organize a project?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;design&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-04-09T16:30:11.257" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11276" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-04T13:07:03.780" Score="0" ViewCount="433" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know which study guide is recommended e.g 4th edition or 5th edition of the PMBOK GUIDE to prepare for my CAPM Certification?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8728" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T11:48:36.673" Title="Which study guide is recommended for CAPM Certification?" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-05-05T21:08:51.220" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11275" CreationDate="2014-04-04T14:21:54.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will answer this question not from the perspective of SW engineering but rather scheduling.  Obviously, there is some SW design build method you ought to follow but there are some considerations around scheduling that is true no matter the type of project, but that you need to equally consider along with the SW method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, sequencing of work is dictated by the logical work flow, meaning work A needs to occur before work B in all cases.  Think: you cannot paint your wall until you hang the dry wall, which cannot be done until you framed out the room.  This type of sequencing comes first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, you have another issue with resources doing the work, either human or materiel, or tools.  A person doing work A cannot do work B at the same time, so these are sequenced accordingly.  It is not a hard sequence as you have some choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, you have soft logic built into your sequencing, which means you are simply choosing a sequence.  In the schedule, you would create a dependency, even though it is a soft dependency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have options and play with the second and third type of sequencing and here is where the analysis begins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While we put hard numbers in the schedule in terms of hours, days of duration, and resources, the work is actually probabilistic in a very random way, called aleatory uncertainty.  So, based on the estimated logic you created against the work, you can model different sequencing scenarios that provide you with the best case in terms of lower risk.  If you alter sequencing for the second and third types, you can materially change your risk posture, creating the most buffer within the work, thus minimizing the critical path.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each project is different so there wouldn't be an answer from a scheduling perspective that would say, do this before that all the time.  It is an analysis that would be done for each project during planning and replanning stages.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a PM perspective, hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T14:21:54.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11276" CreationDate="2014-04-04T15:01:14.747" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can check all the requirements on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/Certification/Certified-Associate-in-Project-Management-CAPM/CAPM-Exam-Prep.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMI's CAPM Exam Guidance page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &quot;Tips to Help You Prepare for the Exam&quot; section, they say the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Register for Essentials of Project Management — an online, self-paced course that offers a concentrated review of each Knowledge Area in the &lt;strong&gt;5th edition PMBOK® Guide.&lt;/strong&gt; It also provides the contact hours needed to meet credential application requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and they also say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Review the &lt;strong&gt;latest edition&lt;/strong&gt; of A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, according with PMI you must use the 5th edition PMBOK® Guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8707" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-04-05T14:45:49.097" LastActivityDate="2014-04-05T14:45:49.097" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11279" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11288" CreationDate="2014-04-04T19:00:03.310" Score="1" ViewCount="2700" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are working on a project that (roughly) consists of following parts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;back-end application,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;central communication server, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;client applications for several platforms.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our &quot;team&quot;, on the other hand, consists of several one-man teams, each person working on a different part of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are using JIRA+Agile. We have created a single project in JIRA, and a component is created for each above mentioned part. Each issue is assigned to correct component(s). This goes mostly for Epics and Story issue types, where it actually makes sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We write user stories in such a fashion so that PO can see clearly what is gained by completing this story (i.e. allow user to see his inbox). We tend to create stories that are granular enough so that they can be reasonably completed within a sprint. Actual development tasks are created as sub-tasks of main Story issue. We estimate our stories by playing Planning Poker, even though different people might really have different amounts of work involved in each story, and it makes sense for us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach allows us to also track progress of implementing complex, new functionality across all components (Epics) by breaking it down into discrete Stories, and then creating sub-tasks for each task that needs to be performed. As tasks are resolved, stories auto-complete themselves, which is all nice and sweet, and we are generally satisfied with how it all works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However... We are going to build another client application for a different platform (part of the same project). The work we will need to perform is already well defined in existing Stories, as most of that work has been completed in other client applications for other platforms. The trouble is, all those stories are already completed! And, furthermore, amount of story points for each Story is estimated long ago...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way is to duplicate all user stories, regarding existing client apps, redefine them a bit to make it clear which platform they are targeting, re-estimate them for that platform.. Another way is to basically create a user story for each piece of work that needs to be done on each platform, BUT, this approach will break entire process from the point of view of PO, thus breaking desired functionality into several (probably not equally readable) stories... Maybe it was a mistake to create a single project for all components? But, it was driven by the fact that client apps for each platform would basically replicate each other at least 90%, so there would be a lot of overlap and duplicated issues...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; What would be a good way to organise such a project using JIRA and Agile, that would allow us to work in similar way that we already do, but that would also allow us greater flexibility when adding new components that would basically have to replicate functionality already implemented in other client apps?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for reading ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8729" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-01-16T09:32:20.857" LastActivityDate="2019-01-16T09:32:20.857" Title="User Stories in JIRA for a project that covers several platforms" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11266" CreationDate="2014-04-04T22:23:00.820" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within Scrum, or any sane project management process, there should never be &quot;invisible work.&quot; &lt;em&gt;All&lt;/em&gt; work that impacts the project's budget, scope, or schedule should be visible to both the team and the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In essence, you are getting hung up on the idea that backlog items or user stories should add value to the &lt;em&gt;product&lt;/em&gt; (in your case, a software product), and that anything that isn't part of the software product is therefore an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;externality&lt;/a&gt;. This isn't so; externalities, infrastructure, technical dependencies, and internal process all impact project deliverables and resources, and should therefore be classified as either &lt;em&gt;trackable deliverables&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;trackable impediments&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your only viable solution is to make the work visible, and then either charge the cost of that work to the project or accept it as an external dependency. In other words: document it, track it, and adjust for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How to Classify &quot;Setting Up a New PC&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example, you are part of an agile team and have a sprint in which you are expected to build and deploy code, but at the same time you need to setup a new employees pc that is starting next week?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Setting up a new PC is something that is either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Outside the team's scope (e.g. it's handled by the facilities department, or some other external resource) in which case it is an obstacle to progress that must be accounted for rather than a deliverable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is a deliverable for the team. Your cross-functional team &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; have someone capable of installing a new developer's workstation, right?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a framework perspective, it doesn't really matter how you classify it. The classification will simply help the team identify those things that need to be done by the team as work chargeable to the project, or help the organization capture external dependencies that will create drag on the project and that will impact the number of stories the team should accept into the current sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Important Note:&lt;/strong&gt; If you're expecting a brand-new developer on a team to do anything other than create some initial drag on that team's velocity, with or without the benefit of a new workstation, then you are probably Doing Scrum Wrong&amp;trade;. Velocity measures capacity, not management targets, and capacity generally drops when adding new team members due to the necessary overhead of bringing them up to speed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;External-Dependency Stories&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first case, the user story is reliant on an externality, but should still be a visible cost to the team. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;As a new developer,&#xA;I need to requisition a new workstation from IT&#xA;so that I can be productive.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be tasks for the team, such as filling out requisition forms, or going down to the IT department and checking on the status of the new workstation. However, whether or not there are tasks for the team is largely irrelevant; the story is low-effort for the team, but is largely outside the team's ability to influence &lt;em&gt;directly&lt;/em&gt; in terms of speed of delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is often useful to have these sorts of stories included on the backlog because they are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A cost to the project, both financially and in terms of time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A project dependency that must be tracked.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A coordination item that should be addressed in the daily stand-up until it is resolved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A process step that should be inspected during the Sprint Retrospective, and adapted if the process isn't meeting the team's needs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Internal Stories&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second case, the new workstation is actually a deliverable for the team. If such is the case, then the team should estimate the level of effort involved in ordering, configuring, and installing the workstation the same way that all other project deliverables and dependencies are estimated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also provides levers to the Product Owner to manage the project's budget. If the story is something the Product Owner wants to prioritize, then this may indicate that there's value in having a new PC overnighted rather than shipped by Snail Express&amp;trade;. The Product Owner, through the Product Backlog, can determine &lt;em&gt;each and every sprint&lt;/em&gt; whether project budget and resources should go to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;feature delivery, or &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;essential project dependencies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Product Owners Responsible for Prioritizing Non-Feature Stories, Too&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bringing on a new team member, and all the associated processes that entails, is something that impacts a project's resources. It is therefore up to the Product Owner to manage the allocation of those resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Product Owner chooses to de-prioritize stories related to purchasing essential equipment or providing training to a new hire, that's a trade-off that can certainly be made as long as it's explicit. Likewise, if the Product Owner decides to emphasize new equipment and training &lt;em&gt;this sprint&lt;/em&gt; in order to improve team capacity in future sprints, that's also a legitimate choice to make explicitly through the Product Backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, the Scrum framework provides for these decisions to be made visible and explicit through placing &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; project-impacting stories on the Product Backlog. That means that procurement and training stories belong on the Product Backlog, too; it's not just a place where software features sit around waiting to be implemented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're following the official Scrum framework, then I strongly recommend that you add these tasks to the Product Backlog and allow the Product Owner to take responsibility for prioritizing them. If you're following one of the many pseudo-Scrum variants, then you may simply need to reduce your team's expected capacity and accept fewer stories into each sprint until the team has finished properly integrating the new team member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't think of a single case in my own experience where bringing on a new hire doesn't represent a cost to the project or to the organization. Why not make that cost visible, rather than sweeping it under the rug?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T22:23:00.820" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11247" CreationDate="2014-04-06T20:04:40.050" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think that it is a good Idea for estimating complexity or time of the stories in dollars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What would be the disadvantage of using such a scheme for estimating&#xA;  tickets?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimating features, especially when requirements are not ready and has only high-level description, it is easier to say which story is bigger/smaller and this relative estimation will be relevant in the future too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every developer has different specialties, different salary, different speed. If story-points are used, Product Owner knows velocity of the Development Team an it is enough to predict how many sprints (time) is needed to develop features from the backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Has anyone tried estimating tickets based on costs within scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, Scrum framework is open for extensions but essential ideas should not be ruined. Otherwise it won't be Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A list of estimates 50$, 100$, 200$, 400$, 800$, 1600$, 3200$ could be useful for estimation of &lt;code&gt;value&lt;/code&gt; from business point of view and it is responsibility of Product Owner (e.g. How profitable this feature is?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also it would be useful if developers selected stories with highest price. Unfortunately it isn't true and priorities are used in order to specify stories for the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I propose the following scheme for estimating user stories in a scrum&#xA;  process&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could you follow &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;5-Whys technique&lt;/a&gt; to define the root cause for using these scheme? I think there might be another and better solution for an issue that you are trying to solve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8738" LastActivityDate="2014-04-06T20:04:40.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11279" CreationDate="2014-04-07T12:45:36.023" Score="1" Body="&lt;h1&gt;tl;dr&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Build reusable components &amp;amp; Organizational Process Assets&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way is to duplicate all user stories, regarding existing client apps, redefine them a bit to make it clear which platform they are targeting, re-estimate them for that platform..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, CodeGnome's law; don't worry about technology (Jira) until you've decided what you want to do and how you want to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, if you have to write client applications for multiple platforms, don't worry about the technology until you've decided what to do and how to do it.   Design the client server architecture, then design the client capabilities, then decompose these into functional and non-functional requirements. Then plan how to achieve those requirements for each platform.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice how you have automatically built a reference class for estimation?  Start work on Platform 1; when you estimate platform 2, determine how much of the difference between estimate and actual will affect your estimate for platform 2.  Repeat for platform N.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you begin by creating user stories for every piece of work, you undermine the value of re-use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T12:45:36.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4599" CreationDate="2014-04-07T13:03:36.740" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A specific software tool such as MS Project isn't necessary.  It all depends on the size and scope of your project.  You should count on using at least rudimentary software such as Excel and emails.  In that respect, yes, you can plan your project without having PM-specific software.  Beyond this basic answer, I'd need more details as to why you are asking the question.  For example, are you trying to keep costs down?  Running into a software licensing issue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7361" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T13:03:36.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9055" CreationDate="2014-04-07T13:22:46.927" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aside from the other answers mentioned in this post, there some more differences between Scrum and Kanban which could give a clearer view of their differences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimation - must be done before each sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Performance metrics - burndown charts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task size - the size that can be completed during a sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Board - no items can be added/changed during a sprint. After the sprint the board is defined/reset.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fit for - teams working on a product or project which is longer than a year.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimation - optional&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Performance metrics - Cumulative flow diagrams, lead time, cycle time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task size - any size&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Board - new items are allowed (depends whether queue allows it). The board stays persistent&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fit for - Support and maintenance teams, continuous product manufacturing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8683" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T13:22:46.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11279" CreationDate="2014-04-07T17:02:18.487" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;You can Clone/Copy an entire JIRA project&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @Mark C. Wallace pointed out, decide on what you want to do and how you want to do it first. For example, in the process of building the first client application, your Product Owner might have thought of how to improve on the designs/flows. Your development team might have learned a few things about what not to do. By simply copying the stories, the team loses the opportunity to do some fresh thinking in the light of experience and improve things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, after due consideration for the above, if you want to bulk copy stories, looks like there are some possibilities. We have setup Agile boards such a way that we can pull stories from multiple projects. In this setup, though I have not used it, I understand I can &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=317948559&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Clone/Copy an entire JIRA project using the Jira Command Line Interface (JCLI)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T17:02:18.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11293" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11296" CreationDate="2014-04-07T21:14:17.253" Score="0" ViewCount="2790" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to calculate:&#xA;How much money I have for each dollar invested in each product of my portfolio. For example, each 1 dollar I invest in one product, I have 1,25 dollar. It can be the ROI, or profitability. &#xA;But, the problem is: I have a Initial Investiment and as any IT product, I must keep investing more for new releases and updates. So, I have a timeline table by months, and I must calculate profitability for each month separately and acummulated profitability. I don't know what I consider to calculate it. &#xA;I have already some informations: Month Result, accumulated results, developing costs, commercial costs, marketing costs, taxes costs. How can I manage all this costs and investiments to have what I want?&#xA;Thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8668" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T12:35:19.693" Title="How calculate profit margin of a IT project?" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;business-analyst&gt;&lt;business-case&gt;&lt;portfolio-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10794" CreationDate="2014-04-08T10:27:44.237" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the same veine as Sreedhar says, if you don't know what the scope and breadth of your responsibilities/duties are, or are going to be, which parts of the project you're expected to be involved with and to what level and what the reporting lines are - ask. You need to understand where your role fits in with others and how you are expected to contribute. Also to know what measures will be used to decide if you are contributing effectively etc. This should be handled by whoever is managing you. You shouldn't need to guess. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, as MikeMalter says, you've got opportunities to see where you could shine above someone else or offer to do something extra - but if you're unsure of your remit that's going to make it more difficult for you to do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7896" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T10:27:44.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10794" CreationDate="2014-04-08T11:15:45.683" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Manage projects, not people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that you are entry level, success lies in identifying and measuring things that will enable you to predict project success, and to intervene where the likelihood of project success is falling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T11:15:45.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11293" CreationDate="2014-04-08T12:35:19.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most projects deliver features or value (however the organization defines value for itself), but projects are unlikely to generate profit directly. Generally speaking, profits can only be generated once a shippable product is released into a sales channel, and the revenue from the sold product exceeds its associated costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Track Value Instead of Profit&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there are certainly exceptions, such as projects that have rolling releases directly into a sales channel, most projects are a cost center rather than a profit center. It rarely makes sense to track &quot;profit&quot; month-to-month on something that has not yet been fully built.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, many projects use &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_value_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Earned Value Management&lt;/a&gt;, where the project periodically &quot;cashes out&quot; earnings as defined by the project's Planned Value in accordance with predefined rules. Planned Value could conceivably be used as a proxy for potential profit once the product eventually ships, but that isn't really using the methodology to best advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other frameworks such as Scrum focus on iterative delivery of potentially-shippable features. Assuming you ship monthly and tie your sales earnings to specific monthly releases, you could use those numbers &lt;em&gt;retroactively&lt;/em&gt; to identify profit or loss for each iteration. However, iterations generally have a short fixed duration (e.g. one month), while sales generally follow a longer cycle and often have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;long tail&lt;/a&gt;. I suspect that trying to tie sales to each tagged release will cause most of your iterations to represent a &quot;loss,&quot; at least on paper, but your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T12:35:19.693" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10794" CreationDate="2014-04-08T19:32:01.350" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rephrasing what's being said, if someone is calling you a &quot;project manager&quot;, you must know what the &lt;strong&gt;project&lt;/strong&gt; is first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only once you know the project and its goals, you'll be able to start drawing how you can get to the solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A project manager of no project is like consder a peasant as a &quot;driver without a car&quot;, i.e. nonsense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T19:32:01.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11298" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11326" CreationDate="2014-04-09T09:57:01.163" Score="3" ViewCount="1665" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen the two terms &lt;strong&gt;New Feature&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;New Development&lt;/strong&gt; in same backlogs (i.e. more than one backlog), for things to be developed and integrated within a system/application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have used both myself (in my &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pixic.se/page_new_backlog.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;backlog for Pixic.se&lt;/a&gt;), since my definition of New Feature was more like inventing own functionality while New Development is more about implementing existing, but the more I added the harder I felt it was to differentiate the two terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q:&lt;/strong&gt; What are the true definitions of &quot;New Feature and &quot;New Development&quot; and what is distinguished by having the two different terms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7438" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T13:12:38.033" Title="What is the difference between &quot;New feature&quot; and &quot;New development&quot;?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11276" CreationDate="2014-04-09T11:48:36.673" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest the best guide besides PMBOK to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rmcproject.com/product/capm-prep.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rita&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6895" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T11:48:36.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11301" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-09T13:44:29.360" Score="7" ViewCount="6563" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a process to guide the initial WIP number decisions for kanban board columns apart from picking a rough number and seeing how it works out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, what metric(s) do you monitor to determine if WIP limits are set too high or too low? e.g. if the number of people on a team changes, the WIP numbers may need to adjust to reflect the change in the team. Or... could a team set their WIP too high just to avoid breaking the limit... So, are there metrics that can be monitored to determine if a team's WIP is correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4574" LastActivityDate="2016-06-22T13:13:33.547" Title="What is the process for deciding WIP limits for each column in a team's kanban board?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;work-in-progress&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9055" CreationDate="2014-04-09T13:53:02.460" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kanban is a set of three (and just three), simple, rules:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;visualize the workflow - use the board and map your processes into columns (in the simplest case: To Do, Doing and Done),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;limit WIP (Work In Progress) - Kanban limits WIP per workflow (for example you can limit number of items in your Doing column to one - the whole team can work only on one item at a time),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;measure the lead time - average time to complete one item.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a very good book (available for free) by Henrik Kniberg and Mattias Skarin: &quot;Kanban and Scrum - making the most of both&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/minibooks/kanban-scrum-minibook&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.infoq.com/minibooks/kanban-scrum-minibook&lt;/a&gt;). It explains all differences between Scrum and Kanban in a very clear way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8767" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T13:53:02.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11301" CreationDate="2014-04-09T14:42:15.560" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the very best of my knowledge, there is no canonical formula for determining Work in Progress (WIP) limits. However, there are some empirical best-practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What WIP Limits Are Intended to Do&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goals of WIP limits are generally to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improve throughput.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduce cycle times.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Optimize team capacity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Limit the efficiency drag from multi-tasking.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increase slack to make a process more adaptable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Optimizing WIP Limits&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How one optimizes WIP limits will vary a lot based on a number of factors and a lot of &lt;em&gt;in situ&lt;/em&gt; process analysis. However, a good rule of thumb is to limit WIP to the team's mono-tasking capacity. In other words, your baseline WIP limit should be the number of tasks that can be in progress simultaneously without idling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you have six team members whose responsibilities don't overlap, your WIP limit should not exceed 6 across all columns on the Kanban, since that is the maximum number of tasks that can be worked on simultaneously without task-switching or multi-tasking. In addition, specific columns may further restrict WIP limits for that columb as a subset of the limit for the Kanban as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as a practical matter, cross-functional teams, teams that practice pair programming, and frameworks that encourage &quot;swarming&quot; the team over stories should lower their WIP limits accordingly. For example, a WIP of &lt;em&gt;N-1&lt;/em&gt; (where N is the number of team members) would allow for more flexibility in coordinating stories within an iteration, while a WIP of &lt;em&gt;N/2&lt;/em&gt; might be optimal for a team that is optimized for pair programming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the actual numerical limit, the important thing is to avoid the &quot;100% utilization fallacy&quot; and ensure the process has sufficient slack to ensure a consistent level of throughput over time. That means that you generally want to apply &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; fudge factor to lower your WIP limits, but the specifics will vary from project to project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps counter-intuitively, reducing the WIP limits below the team's maximum capacity will generally improve your throughput. This is most often because at 100% capacity, any roadblocks or unexpected issues can create bottlenecks that impact the entire pull-queue cycle. Ensuring that there is sufficient slack in the process enables the team to overcome minor process issues as they arise without needed to &quot;stop the line&quot; altogether. This ability to adapt without stopping the line every time is part of what makes a process agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Per-Column WIP Limits&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban is a pull-queue system. Each column is essentially a separate queue into which work is pulled from the previous column when the WIP limit allows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For example, if two of your columns are &quot;Coding&quot; and &quot;Regression Testing,&quot; one would pull &lt;em&gt;finished&lt;/em&gt; stories from the Coding column when the Regression Testing column was below its capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a further example, if your Kanban WIP limit is 6, but you have only one person dedicated to Regression Testing, then your WIP limit for the Regression Testing column should most likely be 1; not one test, necessarily, but rather a single story.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are always exceptions. If regression testing is semi-automated, and six jobs can be run in parallel without multi-tasking &lt;em&gt;by the human agents responsible for the column&lt;/em&gt;, you might set the WIP limit for that column to six. The optimal WIP limit for each queue is most definitely an inspect-and-adapt issue that needs to be consistently reviewed by the team and adjusted as necessary over time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, the methodology for optimizing WIP limits for columns is the same as optimizing for the board as a whole: your WIP limit for a column must not exceed its mono-tasking capacity, and should be low enough to provide sufficient slack in the process to prevent line-stoppage for minor problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-04-09T14:59:03.570" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T14:59:03.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11301" CreationDate="2014-04-09T14:43:24.483" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is no, there's no hard-and-fast rule. In fact, the only article I've read that offered any suggested initial number said to start with 2 stories per team member as a WIP limit. That's probably fair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for metrics, your best bet is probably using cumulative flow diagrams. This is a really good article on them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://brodzinski.com/2013/07/cumulative-flow-diagram.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://brodzinski.com/2013/07/cumulative-flow-diagram.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and that can show you if you need to tighten up any areas of the development process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Past that, I've always liked the idea of working right-to-left on the board for stand-ups. Make sure that if anyone is capable of moving tasks along in, say, test, they aren't bringing in new stories on the left side. That practice can reduce the amount that you have to enforce the WIP limit. In an ideal scenario, you focus on keeping the workflow moving smoothly and the WIP limit is never reached.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T14:43:24.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11298" CreationDate="2014-04-09T21:27:27.243" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;According with this answer (&lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/58726/what-is-the-difference-between-user-stories-and-features&quot;&gt;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/58726/what-is-the-difference-between-user-stories-and-features&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;New feature&#xA;..is a distinct element of functionality which can provide capabilities to the business.&#xA;..is a fairly general term for some part of the functionality of a software&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And according with your own words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;New development &#xA;...is more about implementing existing&quot;; &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main diference between both concepts could be: in one case your are implement a new element with new capabilities; on the other hand you are re-implementing an existing feature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even more, following this train of thought you can consider a new development like a issue: something to re-implement.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8707" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:31:53.287" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T21:27:27.243" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11307" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-10T03:21:54.830" Score="7" ViewCount="306" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a Software Engineer at a startup ( 16 employees ), and we are still working like we have 3 employees.  The buy in for our tools is very minimal and renders them almost useless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know we are going through some growing pains, but we need to start fixing things.  I was hoping for some advice on picking a workflow and sticking to it, or maybe recommendations on new tools.  Any help / advice would be much appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few observations I have noticed and consider problematic :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are very &quot;knee jerk&quot; in the sense that if an important customer asks for something, we immediately work to push it into a release.  We have never stuck to our release plan, and I believe it is causing a lot of the team stress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of the prioritization of our work comes from our CTO and CEO, but that prioritization of work is not transparent.  The general workforce, me included, struggle to keep up with what is important.  Often times we run into scenarios where we are working on things that we shouldn't be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the usage of our current tools (Pivotal Tracker, Bitbucket, Google Hangouts) is poor because no one believes in the value of tracking what we do.  I have tried being a pest to people about using the tools, but verbal communication seems to be the primary method of assigning, managing, and sorting work.  It's hard to adjust resources, and nearly impossible to be aware of what people are working on.  If you look at our Pivotal Tracker velocity, we are probably one of the least efficient teams in the world because 50+% of our work never makes it in there.  It causes problems with releasing, testing, and code management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We struggle a lot with Pivotal Tracker because we have a lot of projects that are related, but you can't do any kind of relationship with stories across projects.  Most of us work on 6-7 projects at once and Pivotal Tracker becomes a bit of a bottleneck for us.  The ones who deal with one project love it, but the people stretched across a few are not doing a good job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is very popular and we &quot;try&quot; to do it, but our daily scrums last 35+ minutes and we generally don't have any other kind of meetings or planning activities.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for sticking with that long winded description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8690" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2014-04-13T15:51:36.337" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T17:53:44.233" Title="How can I get my team to use our tools and follow a (any) workflow" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3414" CreationDate="2014-04-10T06:52:49.947" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose you are rock climbing. You have to start holding with one hand to finish holding with the other in order to move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose you are guarding something. Replacement team should start their work in order for your to finish yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose you are going to change the energy cables of a critical system. UPS should start working in order for you to cut the electricity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7883" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T06:52:49.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11307" CreationDate="2014-04-10T08:35:22.703" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Forget what you have and start with a retrospective&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is little point in pushing any tools, process or framework unless people are bought in to their use and the reasons behind their use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Book a retrospective with the team and talk through issues.  Chances are, if you don't think things are working as well as they could be, other people feel the same way but might have very different takes on the reasons why.  Getting everyone's input will mean people feel more invested in whatever path you take and will likely pick up problems you hadn't even thought of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use a physical board&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully, with a relatively small team you're all located on the same premises.  Hopefully all in the same area...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, set up a physical board to track work rather than trying to use any tools.  While electronic tools can be useful, at the stage where you don't really have a defined process, a physical board is easier to use and easier to change if you need to.  It also gives you flexibility to do things that not every tool will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Begin by modelling the simplest workflow (probably 'ready', 'in progress', 'done', 'released'.  Introduce additional steps as you discover a need for them&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Split your team&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;16 people is too big for one team.  With two people, there is only 1 path of communication.  Between 5 people there are 10.  Between 16 there are 120 different lines of communication...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum teams usually aim for between 5 and 9 people and I've found this works pretty well.  Consider identifying two or three streams of work and having smaller teams focussing on these.  That'll help keep standups shorter and more relevant to the people attending and improve communication between people in the teams (co-ordinating between 5 people is far easier than between 16!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Set a goal&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have your stream/product/feature teams, work with each team to set a goal.  Start with a short term, very tangible goal (e.g release x feature by the end of month).  This will help the team focus more and will help prioritise ad-hoc requests that come in, hopefully stopping as many knee jerk reactions to new requests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastEditorUserId="1185" LastEditDate="2014-04-10T08:44:06.600" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T08:44:06.600" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11311" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11315" CreationDate="2014-04-11T00:32:59.017" Score="3" ViewCount="195" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are currently in my team in the process of applying Kanban to our project. It's currently a very iterative process which is not (yet) meeting the expected success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, we noted that the big whiteboard we set in the office has drawn a lot of attention from all the project members, not for the different cards displayed but regarding the peripheral information we display, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Next build date.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;General Project goals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Short-Term project planning (next releases, next events ...).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We would like to build on this and see if we could dedicate a part of our whiteboard to be more or less a project dashboard, with two intentions in mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Getting attraction from the developers on what's going on on the Kanban board.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improving our communication about project status/important information (which are currently usually sent by email to all the project team).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the therefore in your team the peripheral information you are displaying on your Kanban boards? How much space do you dedicate to those information?&#xA;How did you determine which information was critical to be displayed to the team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6316" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2020-07-27T09:12:20.723" LastActivityDate="2020-07-27T09:12:20.723" Title="What kind of peripheral information do you put on a Kanban board?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="11312" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11313" CreationDate="2014-04-11T12:11:18.920" Score="1" ViewCount="2304" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to outline the current situation first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We've recently had an QA tester added to the team on an existing project. The project has user stories in previous sprints which outline the objective, denote acceptance criteria and contain the tasks required to implement said user story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that the tester has joined the team with the intention of automating the unit testing and acceptance testing for the aforementioned features he needs user stories and acceptance criteria added to the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are over 100 user stories which currently exist in previous sprints which now need automating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I create new user stories to the same effect and copy and paste the acceptance criteria etc into the new user stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My other option is to move the old user stories into the new sprint and remove the done status on them. The problem with this in TFS is that the previous sprint will then have no user stories in it and therefore no record of what was completed during that time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do others approach this problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8783" LastActivityDate="2014-04-11T13:17:17.850" Title="How to reuse done user stories without rewriting/duplicating them" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11312" CreationDate="2014-04-11T13:17:17.850" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do I create new user stories to the same effect and copy and paste the acceptance criteria etc into the new user stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. Don't do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is new work, and therefore must be placed on the Product Backlog, prioritized, accepted into a sprint during Spring Planning, re-estimated, and appropriate implementation tasks added to the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Stories are Not Specifications&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're using user stories as acceptance test specifications, you're Doing Scrum Wrong&amp;trade;. A story describes a need or a feature, and leaves it up to the self-organizing team &lt;em&gt;as it's currently constituted&lt;/em&gt; to find the best way to implement it. Putting detailed specifications into a user story defeats this purpose, and using legacy estimates and task breakdowns doesn't leverage the current team's knowledge, experience, or lessons learned to optimize the story&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Stories are Not Identical&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have posted no examples, but I can't imagine that a properly-written user story can be duplicated exactly and remain meaningful. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;As a user,&#xA;I want feature foo&#xA;so that I can effectively quux.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is not the same as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;As a QA tester,&#xA;I want the regression tests for the foo feature to be automated&#xA;so we can leverage a continuous integration system to prevent regressions.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if the features to be tested are the same, the viewpoint and the underlying goals are not identical, and the stories will therefore likely have different tasks needed to implement the stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Backlog Items Must Be Re-Prioritized and Re-Estimated&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this new automation feature more important to the Product Owner than some other greenfield feature? The only way to be sure is to add the automation stories to the Product Backlog, and allow the Product Owner to prioritize them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the team accepts these stories into sprints based on backlog priority and current team capacity, the stories will also need to be re-estimated based on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Current team capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Automation stories may not change your overall velocity, but they will likely reduce your capacity available for new features.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Current team knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What was a large story 20 sprints ago may now be a small story based on new team knowledge or processes. Then again, maybe the team now knows more about how complicated certain types of testing are, and the old 3-point testing story is now really a 20-point integration story with many more dependencies. This detail should be driven out during Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Current tasks needed to implement the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developing product features rarely consists of the exact same tasks needed to automate infrastructure or testing. There are edge cases where automation was addressed early in the project as part of the &quot;definition of done,&quot; but new work always requires new estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-04-11T13:17:17.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11311" CreationDate="2014-04-11T14:24:48.777" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It looks like you are trying to make the KanBan all things to all people and combine it with a project Dash. What you are looking for is an &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160207023940/http://alistair.cockburn.us/Information+radiator&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Information Radiator&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is large and easily visible to the casual, interested observer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is understood at a glance Changes periodically, so that it is worth&#xA;visiting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is easily kept up to date&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want an area where someone can walk up and at a glance see where you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I think you need to consider your audience. If its developers they probably know where they are from a developer KanBan (or similar) so for the developers to communicate their position and build dates, post a KanBan, updated daily along side a burn chart (if you use them) will give the rest of the project team an Idea of where your build is and see at a glance if it's going to plan or you're having issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your post you also want to keep the whole of the project team updated with the general heath of the project so how about a general RAG status, and top 5 risks / issues and latest successes, along side a headline with the next milestone or something similar?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-27T09:08:06.723" LastActivityDate="2020-07-27T09:08:06.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="11316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5757" CreationDate="2014-04-11T19:33:33.117" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you have more than one making this kind of mistake, have them proof each others' work before turning it in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8789" LastActivityDate="2014-04-11T19:33:33.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11311" CreationDate="2014-04-11T23:35:39.837" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most likely, like a lot of other teams, you have not only the team that is working on the board, but also a set of management folks, who want to understand status - as also other project/ functional teams who might be wondering what this Kanban is all about :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team itself can have many information requirements besides tha Kanban board - such as the metrics (DFD, Thruput, Lead/ Cycle Time analysis, etc.), a calendar, reminders, etc.  You might have someone compute the metrics once or twice a week in a spreadsheet and stick them up.  The calendar maybe useful if you have task due dates and you want to get a 'due date view' of which cards are due when. If you have Releases/ Sprints, you could have a list of planned releases - and the burn/ velocity charts like Richard suggested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The management folks will love the board and the metrics - and the overall visualization of status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately Kanban says - start with what you do now.  So your peripheral information will depend on what you track now - and how you want to improve from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2014-04-11T23:35:39.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11318" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-12T18:43:12.880" Score="5" ViewCount="964" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a small three of three, including me as a PM/BA for the project. Every month we have a release, and the two developers which I have have different levels of experience. The senior fellow has been a committed individual till now, and the junior colleague is a hard working girl who is improving her expertise as we go along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the past two releases we have had slippages, but to no account of their hard work, mainly in terms of Infra issues and resource availibility issues (no redundancy!). However, this release I have tried to address all these issues beforehand, but the Senior developer has gone rogue, he hardly replies to my emails (am not in same geographical location), does not pick up his phone most of the time. He had a planned leave, and I already have people for the handover to continue the development work, before leaving he was responsible for sharing estimates for the next set of requirements, this task complained to be a , so this time we tried to reduce his work by half. Yet, he did not deliver till Friday evening (we submit these by Thursday usually), and again did not inform me through email or phone (inspite of earlier confirmation that he'd call me and share the estimates). Apart from this, the same behaviour has applied to other project actions/responses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am deeply concerned with his behaviour, part of which I can attribute to other aspirations which the project cannot fulfill. He has discussed these in the past, and I have told him that if he finds something better I will not stop him (he deserves it too). Am contemplating raising it with his supervisor formally now. Last week I had a discussion with his supervisor who stated that the developer assured no slips in delivery. This is something which I absolutely wish to avoid, I have never done this before, but I already see us delayed in work due to this. I also know that once I drop that line, his plans for any better aspirations would be stalled too.&#xA;What is the right thing to do here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8795" LastActivityDate="2014-04-12T18:50:57.057" Title="Handling a team member gone rogue?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11318" CreationDate="2014-04-12T18:50:57.057" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not your role to interpret what you are seeing in terms of what he has going on for future aspirations, why he may be checking out, etc.  As a PM, you should have already considered the risk of intra-resource performance variability as well as turnover.  Your project should already have built into its schedule and cost planning values and management / contingency reserves the resources you need to cope with varying performance levels.  So if you are not getting what you need from this team member, then deploy plan B.  You have a plan B, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can let his supervisor know that this team member appears unreliable at this stage and that you are moving in another direction for now.  You don't need to say anything more to ruin his other aspirations.  If he is moving on, let him.  It shouldn't affect you because you have already examined your risks and built in the reserves and plan Bs and Cs to keep on going, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-04-12T18:50:57.057" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11320" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-13T13:20:26.550" Score="3" ViewCount="149" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently joined a non-profit organization/club where all of the administrative work is essentially handled by one person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, this is even more than just org admin, she manages all of the organization's projects as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several of us members have decided to help her with all this, but it's proven to be more difficult than anticipated.  It seems that delegating the work would require more time (explanation, supervision) than actually doing the work itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand this, as I have been in a similar position in software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I'm wondering how we can start helping her without completely destroying her productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the first step is to increase visibility on the work she's actually doing.  This would (ideally) not create too much of an overhead as she wouldn't need to convey 100% of the information required to perform a task... just its metadata.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once we have an idea of the categories of tasks and the volume of work, it'll be easier to figure out how to help her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a valid approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6294" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T09:29:33.710" Title="How to achieve knowledge transfer without affecting productivity (too much)" Tags="&lt;workload&gt;&lt;coordination&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11322" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-13T21:41:05.477" Score="0" ViewCount="184" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my role I need to manage two types of projects&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;standard development projects (software/coding)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;operations related projects (IT/Vendors/Marketing - no coding involved)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first one, we slowly trying to adopt Agile using Pivotal Tracker&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But on the second one, because this is more ops related and majority of the stakeholders are non-techs, some have adopted Asana at their own initiatives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question does it make any sense at all to move ops type work to Pivotal when the work involved are in &quot;sprints&quot; - just to dos with due dates. My own thoughts that I need help on are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The work that works in Asana wont be compatible with Pivotal style&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Getting non-techs understand Pivotal is a huge barrier&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the other hand, trying to manage these projects in different tools makes its hard to track progress and resources.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8800" LastActivityDate="2014-10-11T11:27:35.800" Title="How to work with different project management methods/tools in one org? Applying &quot;Agile&quot; in ops type work" Tags="&lt;multi-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11323" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-13T22:02:51.057" Score="1" ViewCount="129" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it ok to start following an Agile PM style before we get formal training in it? The other way this question was phrased was is it ok to use tools like Pivotal that is geared for Agile before we even train on Agile formally?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard/seen numerous teams who attempt &quot;Agile&quot; but end up falling back to waterfall and that was because the team never strictly followed Agile in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a background, we (the senior developers) had decided to take over the PM tasks primarily because the company had decided to do away with the PM/AM role in a project (much controvesy, we aren't happy with it but its something we have to live with). It was usually left on to the client to manage the project their style but we developers found it was disastrous. So we felt we needed to bring back a PM process to keep some standard and sanity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have been in Agile-like projects before but never been the &quot;scrum master&quot; or the person to manages the whole process. And we have never been formally trained in it - we had normally left the PM to handle the resourcing and feature prioritization while we just handled the actual dev work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8800" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T09:19:34.237" Title="Is it ok to try do a project &quot;Agile&quot; style before attending a formal Agile training?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;training&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1973" CreationDate="2014-04-13T23:28:56.040" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Amelvin, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few thoughts about what you shared with us.&#xA;I understand you must adapt the framework to the specific circumstances of your company, but here are a few things I would personally advise against.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why the 5th week pause? One of the goals of scrum is to maintain a sustainable pace. If you need a break every 4 weeks that suggests to me that you might be overworking the team the other 4. Will you be able to sustain that for 14 months?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deployment tasks should be included in the sprint. or even better, As much as possible aim for deployment automation. they should not be the excuse for the off week either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The need for bug fixes raises the question of quality control. How are you ensuring quality in your sprints? How has your definition of done evolved? &#xA;Having a bug fix week leads the development team to cut corners and reduce the quality. It feeds the line of thought that problems &quot;can be dealt with it during the bug fix week&quot;. &#xA;And before you know it, items you thought were done, keep coming back for fix after fix.&#xA;A healthy DoD is crucial for transparency and transparency is key for project success.&#xA;My advise is to be strict with your definition of done and push the team to make it grow on every retrospective. Non-Functional requirements are great candidates for Definition of Done check points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last activity you seem to bundle into your off week is estimating and PB grooming. You don't need to have the entire backlog estimated and prioritized but you should have 2 to 3 sprints worth of stories ready to go at all time. To do this, the product owner should be regularly checking the priorities and the team needs to set time aside during the sprint for a poker planning session or whatever estimation approach you use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a read through the scrum guide from scrum.org, and I would suggest getting the whole team going through some formal Scrum training from either .org or from the Alliance. Most decisions need to be made by the team. E.G. Sprint duration should be determined by the Scrum team. It's always better when everyone understands the basic guidance and the reasoning behind it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck for your project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2345" LastEditorUserId="2345" LastEditDate="2014-04-14T12:43:15.280" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T12:43:15.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11323" CreationDate="2014-04-13T23:55:59.843" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I know there's no official &quot;agile&quot; training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile is a set of 4 values and 12 principles set out int the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile manifesto&lt;/a&gt;. If you agree with them, and practice them in your job, you are &quot;agile&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The training I've seen is in specific methodologies (scrum, lean...). I do suggest you get some training or coaching before attempting them because implementation is quite hard. This applies if you are in a non-agile environment. If the company already practices them, just follow along, it's not that hard -- the hard parts are the transformation from one working style to the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, they tricky bit is not &quot;following closely&quot; a methodology, but understanding deeply what is the meaning or reason behind each part of it. A team does not need to be perfect to be successful, but typically scrum is a set of very important and useful practices which are directly related to the agile principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Modifying them might be required by the situation but in most cases it will make your team &lt;em&gt;less&lt;/em&gt; agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6300" LastActivityDate="2014-04-13T23:55:59.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11298" CreationDate="2014-04-14T02:28:47.480" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the environments I have worked in, new development is green field work where there no existing system in the target software platform.  This may be a reimplementation of an existing system, or development of a new system.  The scope of new development is usually quite large. Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing a time and billing system to replace an existing platform.  This was a replacement for a system running on obsolete hardware in a language not available on the new hardware.  (Significant enhancements were possible due to changes in languages and technology.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implementing an OCR form processing system.  This was to automate the capture of data which was being manually captured.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A new feature is an addition to an existing system.  The scope of new feature work varies significantly.  It may be as simple as adding a new field or button to a form, or require extensive modification to a system to add significant new capabilities.  Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adding a new statistic to a data analysis report. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adding selective inactive data archiving to a system where activity occurred in many tables and all related data was to be archived.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some activities that may be fit both categories such as adding a new report to an existing system.  This may be new development as the code doesn't exist, but adds a new feature to an existing system.  I would consider this a case where a new feature results in new development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These categories exclude corrective actions (bug fixes).  Some bug fixes may require the addition of a new feature, or in some cases removal of an existing feature.  In this case, a corrective action results in a new feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastEditorUserId="529" LastEditDate="2014-04-14T13:12:38.033" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T13:12:38.033" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11327" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-14T07:18:12.113" Score="3" ViewCount="228" Body="&lt;p&gt;Would like to discuss my answer to the following question relating to work break down structure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A company runs a mail-order business and has a requirement for a new application on its existing menu-driven computerized engineering system that will allow staff to do the following tasks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Query their current customer database and add new customer details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Order goods from suppliers when customers place purchase mail-orders&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Send monthly bills to each customer as appropriate for goods sent to that    customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Check outstanding debts and issue reminders&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following wbs shows an initial plan but contains 4 mistakes. Identify and explain them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fZHxz.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mistake 1: Not sure if &quot;Client's requirements&quot; should be included in the wbds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mistake 2: &quot;Design order form&quot; should not be placed under &quot;Query Functions&quot;, instead should be placed under &quot;Order Goods Functions&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mistake 3: &quot;Order Goods Functions&quot; should be in level 1. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mistake 4: Integration into Live system should be broken down. &quot;Build and Test&quot; will be placed under &quot;Integration into live system&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Appreciate any suggestions/ corrections. Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8804" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2014-04-16T13:45:39.883" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T13:45:39.883" Title="Work break down" Tags="&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11323" CreationDate="2014-04-14T09:19:34.237" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say yes it is. In fact lots of companies try agile without specific training. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would say is most important is a shared vision within the project team. If you are going to work in an agile manner, get the customers on board. Every time I've seen an agile project fail it's because the Developers or IT think they're working one way and the customer (internal or external) believes they are working another or just doesn't understand what Agile is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Treat the learning agile as part of the project itself. Let them know it's a learning experience for everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get a book such as the Agile Samurai, which is clear and concise. have an internal workshop to discuss how you as a project team are going to work and then try it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of an iteration have an honest review of how the &quot;project&quot; has been working. Whats gone well, what could improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T09:19:34.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10798" CreationDate="2014-04-14T09:31:54.363" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been in a similar situation before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We were working on a integration project where the features/requirements were not coming from users.  In fact, a criterion for success was that the users didn't notice we had extending their application for integration with other apps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was asked to plan this as an Agile project, so I did.  But now I regret it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It ended up confusing &lt;em&gt;everybody&lt;/em&gt;.  People kept trying to talk about requirements from a user's perspective, they kept trying to manually test from a user's perspective, and they constantly questioned the business value of stories like &quot;As a Solutions Architect, I want Entity X's CRUD events to be recorded in a Message Queue, so that EventPublisher can publish them asynchronously&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile as we had done it before wasn't a good fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Implementing the work iteratively was OK, because we found out that the spec changed frequently (though this might not be your case).  But other than that, a Waterfall approach would have been much nicer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in short.  Maybe make use of Agile &lt;em&gt;tools&lt;/em&gt;, but plan this as a Waterfall &lt;em&gt;project&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6294" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T09:31:54.363" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11320" CreationDate="2014-04-14T12:14:31.623" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, I'm wondering how we can start helping her without completely destroying her productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your concern is that you want to improve long-term productivity without impacting short-term productivity. While I can understand that some activities can't stop, keep the end-goal in mind. At a macro-type level it may be in your organization's best interests to stop some work temporarily in order to realize greater benefits sooner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I think the first step is to increase visibility on the work she's actually doing. This would (ideally) not create too much of an overhead as she wouldn't need to convey 100% of the information required to perform a task... just its metadata.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once we have an idea of the categories of tasks and the volume of work, it'll be easier to figure out how to help her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't try to put the &quot;how&quot; before the &quot;why&quot; is explained to the &quot;who&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing you need to do is to get your admin person to buy into the idea that a change is necessary and of benefit to her. If you fail to do this you will get resistance to change from her, resulting in the whole exercise being dragged out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you get buy-in from the admin person get buy-in from management. Then sit down and figure out who else is impacted by the change and make sure they are on board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you get stakeholders on board with the change you can get their input on the best way(s) to reallocate work. Remember that you want to implement change &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; people, you don't want to impose change &lt;em&gt;on&lt;/em&gt; people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T12:14:31.623" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11331" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-15T07:57:41.253" Score="0" ViewCount="237" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am now the team lead of a known argumentative team. I was chosen by them, and upper management approved.  I thought that because I was chosen by most of them, I would at least be someone they respected. Most are being very cooperative, and working well as a team but about 3 members are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two of them are a couple in a relationship (this is allowed by upper management). I am required to go by every hour and input the number of tasks done. They all know this, and every team has to do it, this isn't something new.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every hour I come around, these same 3 people make it more complicated than it needs to be. They make up numbers in front of me, and when I explain to them that upper management checks these numbers and that they know what times are actually being submitted, these members start arguing that they know this isn't true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have explained to them is true and it has been explained to the entire team by upper management before. After working side by side with them and now being the team lead I believe that they do not like being told what to do. Also, I believe they wish they were in my position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is one, the female in the couple who is the main one being uncooperative and the others follow. she tries very hard to have a relationship with upper management. In fact, those are the only people she will listen to. No one else. Furthermore, she likes to intimidate other co-workers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has all been tolerated in the past for two reasons: no one wants to stand up to her, and she produces results. So far when she does argue with me, its been &quot;watered down.&quot; I know she is capable of more, but she holds back a little with me. At least that is something I can try to work with, but how can I get her to be more of a team player?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8810" LastEditorUserId="1185" LastEditDate="2014-04-15T10:47:18.237" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T17:05:05.137" Title="argumentative team members" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;roles&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11331" CreationDate="2014-04-15T11:09:39.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That level of micromanagement is always going to be highly unpopular.  I would strongly advise getting a good understanding of why the management team want an hourly breakdown of tasks done and, most importantly, what decisions they drive with that data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's the main point of conflict, understanding why that process exists is probably the first step you should take.  You can then work with the team to find a way of giving the management team information to make decisions in a way that feels less like they're just being checked up on and more like they're providing something of value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T11:09:39.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11331" CreationDate="2014-04-15T12:26:06.183" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whilst, as has been pointed out, this level of micro management will always be unpopular what we don't know is what these people signed up for. If this is the nature of the work and everyone has to do it, and that has always been the nature of working in this job for this company then they either need to comply or leave. If it is a recent process, deployed to &quot;fix&quot; or monitor some kind of dysfunction then the situation is both deeper and more problematic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are your other duties as Team Lead? If your job is merely to gather data from the workers and input it elsewhere I would suggest you will have little leverage to change perceptions. Don't blind yourself to the possibility that the team chose you because they thought you might be the easiest to manipulate to their needs. If you are more like a true Team Lead, then one approach might be to share the problem- People respond better to being asked to do things they don't want to, if they fully understand &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; they need to do it. At the moment it seems they don't believe the reasoning behind the request and therefore have no motivation for complying with a process they see as a waste of their time. If you can show a real and direct consequence (not neccessarily what Management &lt;em&gt;say&lt;/em&gt; is the consequence when they tell everyone to do it), and share &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; problem with the team as a whole (i.e. what are the consequences for you personally, and the team as a whole, if the numbers are &quot;wrong&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A second approach is to do with accountability- what would be the consequence of taking their numbers, or lack of, at face value and reporting them as-is? Would this not highlight to the powers above exactly where the problem people lie? Of course management may hold you personally responsible for ensuring quality of numbers, but then they need to invest authority in you to make it happen and if they don't then you are stuck between a rock and a hard place. It is either your job to fix this, in which case you need to follow a standard performance management process with these people, or it is not, in which case you are wasting your life and emotion trying to fix it, just report it upwards and let the cards fall where they may.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone thinks being a manager is just about telling people what to do- It is never that easy :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T12:26:06.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11334" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11335" CreationDate="2014-04-15T12:41:43.933" Score="0" ViewCount="71" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a less-than-ideal situation; A project with extremely tight timing and an engineering team expected to develop against a moving target.  We have a research/user experience team delivering draft storyboards and conducting design assessments.  Our mobile team is developing against the storyboards and reviews, but our web engineer has not yet been on-boarded so there is a gap in requirements - the API definitions don't exist, and they're likely to change as the user experience is fine tuned.  The web engineer will be local and the mobile team is remote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the majority of the computational workload is going to reside on the server and rely on the API, what can I communicate to the mobile team to keep momentum as storyboards are finished and data/server models need to be developed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current plan is to work with another web engineer and provide a draft API outline for the &quot;easy&quot; models first, such as CRUD for a user model - but I'm not sure if that's ideal&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8645" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2014-04-15T17:07:45.373" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T17:07:45.373" Title="How to keep momentum moving in the absence of critical requirements?" Tags="&lt;distributed-team&gt;&lt;multi-team&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11334" CreationDate="2014-04-15T12:56:19.543" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a matter of risk management. Clearly you can start the dependent work early, but doing so incurs risk on the project- How much risk is determined by the a number of factors but two key factors are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The approach you take to defining the interface up front in the absence of the right resources and clear requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the impact of getting it wrong?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could use a similarly qualified resource and make a best-guess (which appears to be your best bet) or you could derive a notional interface from the consumer end, or probably many other approaches. Some are likely to be more accurate than others. By accurate I mean, more likely to be close to the design that would be done by the right person and therefore likely to incur less re-work. You need to take advice from as many of the right kind of people as possible, to try and find the path that is most likely to yield the most accurate interface.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, having picked one or two of the most likely, you need to work out how wrong they might be (very subjective, find people experienced in this kind of interface and system) and work out what the cost is to the project of various degrees of wrongness, from &quot;a total rewrite&quot; to &quot;tweak a few function calls&quot;. This will give you a range of possible consequences in terms of additional timescale and effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have the consequences as well thought out as possible, you need to raise the appropriate Risk in the Risk Log and immediately escalate it to the Project Board (or other appropriate power). Include an option which is to delay the technical items until you have the right upstream resources in place, in other words, doing the &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; thing, and ensure you have worked out the timescales and costs for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then let the stakeholders determine which course of action they prefer, raise a change on the project to incorporate the appropriate budget and timescale changes, and off you go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might find that one of the apparently sub-optimal options is actually the cheapest. Or hopefully your analysis will show that you need to be allowed to do the right thing. But whatever the outcome, ensure it the Project Board or equivalent, that has chosen the path as that protects you and your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="8645" LastEditDate="2014-04-15T13:08:41.390" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T13:08:41.390" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11331" CreationDate="2014-04-15T12:59:06.353" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that @MarvMills hits the nail on the head - &lt;strong&gt;accountability&lt;/strong&gt;.  Who is accountable for what.  (I also think this isn't a project management question, but that's a different discussion).  Who is accountable for the data? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If team member X submits value Y, but audit later reveals that the true value is Z , what happens?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the consequences of bad/missing/erroneous data fall on you, but you don't have the power to pass those consequences on, then the only strategy is to find a new job.  If the consequences of bad/missing/erroneous data fall on those who supplied the data (or can be passed to them), then you are in a good place - you need to find a procedure that minimizes the pain and suffering for all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside: Some people have a great deal of trouble answering a simple question. I don't remember the Meyers Briggs type - I believe it is &quot;P&quot;, but people who are strong &quot;P&quot;'s have trouble answering closed questions because such questions restrict reality.  Sounds like one of the teammates you've got is a strong P.  There are strategies for dealing with strong &quot;P&quot; individuals - I'm not qualified to summarize them, but some quick google research may provide options.  Update: One of the ways to tell if the problem is a &quot;P&quot; issue is to ask a  simple question like &quot;What color is a rose?&quot; - most people will say &quot;red&quot;.  An extreme P will probably reply with something like &quot;Depends on the Rose.  Belgian roses are striped, while Pomeranian roses tend to the orange, and of course the leaves and stalks are green, but the thorns on a mature rose can tend towards brown, and the pistils are generally white...&quot;  It isn't that they're trying to be difficult, it is that for them, to answer such a complex question with a single word would be a lie.  If I remember correctly, one strategy is to give them an inaccurate estimate.  If you know that they worked for 37 hours on a project, go to them and ask, &quot;I'm going to report you worked about 40 hours on project X last week&quot;. Let them revise the answer to &quot;37&quot; and both of you can walk away reasonably happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general case is &quot;I need to collect data that you aren't interested in providing&quot;. Depending on the people involved and my relationship with them, I may do any of the following&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Here is my estimate of the data; can you confirm this estimate, or do you have better numbers? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'll just wait till you can provide the data.  No, I'll wait here. Take your time, I'll just sit at the front of your desk and wait till you provide the data.  Yes, I understand that you're doing something else, but &lt;strong&gt;there is nothing in my day more important than getting this data&lt;/strong&gt; and I'm willing to wait. Like I said, the most important thing I can do is to wait here. At your desk. Staring at you.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We both know I'm wasting your time collecting this data.  The sooner you give me data, the faster I'll go away and we can both go back to doing useful things.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA; - &#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2014-04-15T17:05:05.137" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T17:05:05.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11331" CreationDate="2014-04-15T15:15:22.480" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if this is the right forum for the question (Perhaps it's better suited to the Workplace)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its unlikely the team member is just being awkward to spite you. As David has said being micro managed every hour might really be causing issues with the team (is there a valid reason for this?) or it may be something else? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could you provide a mechanism for the team to update their tasks themselves? (perhaps a KanBan that you populate at the start of the day and then the team are responsible for moving tasks to the done state)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If these updates are just part of the job then you are the team lead then you need to set them objectives. It's a clear SMART objective to give you this information, if they don't they fall behind and that is reflected on your regular reviews and impacts their performance rating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in essence I'm saying. Look for a better way of working together. &#xA;Use coaching methods such as TGROW (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_89.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_89.htm&lt;/a&gt;) to work with the team, however if it comes down to it and you have to provide this information then they are responsible for it and you are accountable for it so link it to their performance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T15:15:22.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11327" CreationDate="2014-04-15T15:19:33.313" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with @Daniel's comment that this is a poor question to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of suggestions be wary that this may be in part a trick question as a mistake may be components missing from the WBS. For example, a best practice is to include project management activities (initiating, planning, controlling/monitoring, closing) in the WBS as they represent work within the scope of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T15:19:33.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11331" CreationDate="2014-04-15T16:43:54.277" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Marv makes good points here. Usually, the job of middle management is less about making people do work and more about making sure nothing gets in the way of them doing work. The way you write about this practice doesn't make it seems like you agree with it any more than your team does. What's worse is that, if management can verify those numbers, then that means that it's possible to get them without ever talking to the team members. The hourly check for team members to tell you what you already know seems like a very passive aggressive policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume that you aren't going to get your company to simply drop it though, so I'd like to suggest an alternative path to look down. Scrum offers a daily stand-up to bring up impediments and problems. There's nothing that says you can't have those stand-ups more often, but understand that the point of having it once a day is not bog the team down, so be wary of that. This also means that once per stand-up, you are making updates to the burn down chart, or progress through that iteration. It's not quite the same as an effort or number of tasks measurement, but it may offer the same kind of insight that the management team is looking for without that oppressive overhead of someone coming by every hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T16:43:54.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11342" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-16T06:06:07.797" Score="1" ViewCount="144" Body="&lt;p&gt;Prior to commencing a project we need to justify taking on the project by detailing expected benefits. To date their is no follow up on this information, no way to monitor and no way to calculate benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can we implement a program to successfully track and calculate benefits post delivery when benefits are varied (e.g compare a web project to an infrastructure project to a BI project) and may only be realised over an extended period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3273" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T17:53:15.093" Title="Calculating and tracking benefits post delivery" Tags="&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;budget&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11320" CreationDate="2014-04-16T11:20:35.743" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As stated, this is really an &lt;a href=&quot;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66377/what-is-the-xy-problem&quot;&gt;X/Y problem&lt;/a&gt; because you're asking for validation of your approach. This simply leads to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;confirmation bias&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; trying to accomplish is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_reengineering&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;business process reengineering&lt;/a&gt;, which requires your organization to invest time, money, and resources in changing essential workflows. Enumerating and understanding your current workflows is a prerequisite to changing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Logical Reconstruction&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of the problem is that your premise and conclusion contain a logical fallacy, insofar as you have created a false equivalence. When restated as part of a logical argument, your underlying question appears to be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is increasing the visibility of someone's work an effective means of knowledge transfer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, you have started from the premise that task visibility and knowledge transfer are roughly equivalent. This may or may not be true; in this particular case, &lt;em&gt;assuming&lt;/em&gt; that they are equivalent leads to an anchoring that will bias your options and obfuscate the real issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Define Terms and Measurements&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm wondering how we can start helping her without completely destroying her productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering how you're currently measuring her productivity, how you plan to measure the effectiveness of any knowledge transfer, and how you expect to measure the overhead or drag of adding task visibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also wondering how you plan to get something for nothing. In other words, you want to transfer knowledge, which requires people and time, but you don't want your projects to &lt;em&gt;pay&lt;/em&gt; for that transfer with any reduction in velocity. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_constraints&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Theory of Constraints&lt;/a&gt; basically says you can't have your cake and eat it, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What to Do Next&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said all of the foregoing, raising the visibility of the person's tasks and creating some sort of information radiator is actually a good first step, but not for any of the reasons you've presupposed. It isn't a substitute for real knowledge transfer (or delegation either), but is a necessary first step in getting your arms around the scope of work that needs to be documented and delegated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, making tasks and procedures visible is a good first step, but it's only &lt;em&gt;a&lt;/em&gt; step on the path to process documentation. As an organization, you need to get your arms around:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The person's scope of responsibility.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The processes that the person routinely performs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The step-by-step procedures that the person follows to successfully execute the process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've enumerated the person's functions, and documented how those functions are carried out, you will then be ready to measure those functions and determine what changes (if any) will add the most value for the least cost. This is obviously not a quick fix, but is usually the correct approach to this kind of systemic bottleneck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-20T10:29:45.420" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T11:20:35.743" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11350" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11351" CreationDate="2014-04-16T15:43:31.033" Score="0" ViewCount="362" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am attempting to plan a project in microsoft project 2013 which uses a piece of large machinery with substancial fuel costs.  My sponsor wishes to incorperate fuel as a resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Attempting to set it as a material resource and applying to the task at a rate of &quot;100/h&quot; in the units column on the resource form calculates it correctly initially.  As the duration changes, however, the calculated work does not change as the 100/h is only a one time calculation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I have a variable material cost for a task based on the tasks duration or for the work performed by another resource?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(theories)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create a macro or custom field (complicated for other users)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Set fuel as a work resource rather than a material resource (counter intuitive)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8826" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T10:45:53.593" Title="Manage Fuel usage for a project in Microsoft Project" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11350" CreationDate="2014-04-16T18:01:04.813" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you purchase the fuel, it is spent. If the machine takes 100 gallons and you need it April 12, you load the 100 gallons on April 12 in your schedule at your estimated cost. There is no value tracking the fuel burn because there is nothing you can do with the performance variance. Once the fuel is loaded, it is gone. (I retract this entire answer, above; I was too narrowly focused.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  My original answer was constrained by thinking only from like an earned value perspective, but after thinking about this more, and the comment below from the OP regarding his attempt at planning, I think I was looking at this through a paper towel holder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For estimation, I would use the data I have already collected around work and duration for labor as an input into my fuel estimation.  The manufacturer of the machine ought to have a rated fuel burn for its use, like a car's miles per gallon or a plane's gallons per hour.  That datum is also an input to your estimation.  If you have historical fuel burn values, then that is also an input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as an example:  If in my work package I estimated 100, 180, 125 hours (optimistic, pessimistic, most likely) of work; and 10, 25, 13 days duration.  For planning values, based on my risk analysis, I may choose 135 hours of work and 15 days of duration to load into my schedule.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this particular package, the machine is expected to operate about 80% of the time.  So only using this is a guiding principle, 80% of 135 hours might be the planning value I use for fuel usage, or 108 hours.  I can reduce or add to that based on other risk factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Continuing this example, the machine might be rated at 35 gallons per hour and my historical data might show I typically get 30 to maybe as high as 38 gallons per hour.  So for a planning value I might choose 33 gallons per hour to load some buffer.  33 x 108 is 3,564 gallons to be used in that package over the 15 days of work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Price of fuel is also variable.  I would apply the same logic to the price per gallon and choose the value that is best suited for risk purposes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Loading the fuel into the schedule depends on how you are purchasing it.  Are you purchasing all the fuel at once and storing it or as you go?  If as you go, I would load a separate control account for materials and underneath this a package for fuel.  I would schedule the fuel purchase when I would expect to purchase it, the quantity and the associated cost based on my estimation above.  If you run out early or have more than expected at the next purchase, you would load the actuals just like labor and track your variances, which would then allow you to readjust your planning values if and when you replan your work down the line.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps and good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2014-04-19T10:45:53.593" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T10:45:53.593" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11352" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-16T18:51:10.943" Score="11" ViewCount="1845" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have joined a new team as a developer but they also want me to be Scrum Master as I have the most Agile development experience. Do you think that is a conflict of interest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8830" LastActivityDate="2020-02-09T10:27:10.830" Title="Is it a conflict of interest for a developer to also be Scrum Master" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11352" CreationDate="2014-04-16T20:53:10.307" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. Why would this be a conflict of interest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The role of the Scrum Master is to remove any blocking issues from the team - if there is something stopping the team from getting its work done, the Scrum Master is the one to remove said impedance. They act as a buffer between the team and the outside world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best analogy I can come up with is a Scrum Master is the Head Slave - they had more responsibility in the household, but they were still a slave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are NOT Project Managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8833" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T20:53:10.307" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11352" CreationDate="2014-04-17T13:42:32.017" Score="13" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Summary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This previous &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8626/4271&quot;&gt;PMSE answer&lt;/a&gt; clearly summarizes why there is an inherent conflict in having a Development Team Member perform double-duty as Scrum Master:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master role is a process referee role. This is inherently a conflict of interest with the Team Member role. For the same reason that you have (theoretically) impartial referees in professional sports, the Scrum Master role should be separate from developer roles.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash; CodeGnome, &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8626/4271&quot;&gt;PMSE Answer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Scrum Master and Development Team Member are Separate Roles&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master is defined as a separate role within the framework by &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Portals/0/Documents/Scrum%20Guides/Scrum_Guide.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Team consists of a Product Owner, the Development Team, and a Scrum Master.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash; &lt;em&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/em&gt;, Schwaber &amp;amp; Sutherland, p. 5&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While a separate role doesn't always require a separate person, effective Scrum practice requires that this triumvirate should have a clear separation of duties in order for the framework to operate as designed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master is also has a full page of unique responsibilities within the framework. See &lt;em&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/em&gt; (Schwaber &amp;amp; Sutherland, pp. 5-6) for the complete list, as it's too long to simply and copy and paste here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, while the framework doesn't forbid a team member from also wearing the Scrum Master hat, it is extremely unlikely that a full-time developer will have the bandwidth to be an effective Scrum Master (or vice-versa). Part of a Scrum Master's job is to manage Scrum artifacts and provide an interface to the broader organization; such tasks limit the capacity of a single person to provide service delivery as members of the Development Team, and will create a more or less permanent drag on the team's potential velocity. In my considered opinion, this unnecessary drag is itself a conflict of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Responsibility vs. Authority&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any organization that doesn't value the Scrum Master role sufficiently to create a proper separation of duties is unlikely to understand the inherent conflict of interest between service delivery and process refereeing. This means that the Scrum Master's job of removing process impediments and enabling organizational change may be limited by politics and org charts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any time a position has responsibility without sufficient organizational power or delegated authority to carry out those responsibilities creates a situation ripe for failure. Even if one disregards the inherent conflict of interest in the &lt;em&gt;roles&lt;/em&gt;, the consequences to the &lt;em&gt;project&lt;/em&gt; in disregarding the separation of duties may be dire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps your organization will understand that you will have less time to develop when wearing the Scrum Master hat in addition to your other responsibilities. Perhaps they are also enlightened enough to see you as more than just another member of a service delivery team, and will actively engage with you on essential business process re-engineering issues. Perhaps and perhaps...but I have never personally seen this work out well for a project, or the dual-hat wearing person stuck in the middle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your mileage &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; vary. However, &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; wouldn't bet my career on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T13:42:32.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11356" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11359" CreationDate="2014-04-17T15:23:46.800" Score="3" ViewCount="297" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have been trying to implement an Agile workflow for at least a year.   We have tried Scrum and now we are trying Kanban.   The problem we are having is that our manager constantly resets our priorities and workload.   Whatever we are working on, as soon as he gets any feedback or a new task, that becomes the new &quot;hot&quot; item that we all have to shift our focus to.   We also have no fixed release schedule - we push a release whenever he tells us to (often with only minimal testing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't seem to me that this is &quot;Agile&quot; development in any sense of the word.   It's more like Waterfall, or perhaps best described as &quot;chaos.&quot;    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I right in thinking that this is not how Agile is supposed to work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8838" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-04-17T17:33:29.920" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T19:23:09.390" Title="How can we be doing &quot;Agile&quot; development if our manager constantly sets our priorities?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9914" CreationDate="2014-04-17T15:43:47.110" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're transitioning from TFS to Redmine nowadays, and we decided to follow the Scrum way of workflow parsing. We are used to MS Scrum templates and they reflect the Scrum methodology very succesfully. Here is how we are going to do it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are planning to use two main workflows to adapt Redmine's workflow logic to the Scrum methodology. One of them will use two trackers called PBI and SBI. (Product Backlog Items and Sprint Backlog Items) They will be used mainly for the Stakeholders, Product Owners etc. Of course the Team will be responsible of them, too but their main responsibility will be the Work Items. Completing the Work Items will cause the completion of the related SBI. PBIs will be converted into SBIs throughout the whole product cycle (sprints) and declined or refused PBIs will be leftovers which can be analyzed after the product finalization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second main workflow is for the Work Items. We won't create a new tracker for those. Any Work Item planned by the Team during the Sprint Planning meeting will be created with the default 'Task' tracker. The 'Bug' tracker will be treated as Work Items, too. We aren't going to use the default 'Feature' and 'Suggestion' trackers because they'll be represented by the PBI and SBI trackers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two main problems here are that it needs a manual controlling mechanism to reflect the &quot;Work Item - SBI&quot; relations, and a manual process to change the related statuses of those two trackers. The Scrum Master needs to change the SBI statuses regarding to the related Work Item statuses and vice versa. The Work Items have to be related manually to the SBIs. This part is the only weakness in our plan. I'm trying to find a way to do that automatically. This question is about this problem: &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23114198&quot;&gt;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23114198&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8171" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:41:23.897" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T15:43:47.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11356" CreationDate="2014-04-17T16:34:22.617" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you describe is far from a Waterfall process. It might be chaos, but it might also be close to Agile. Your manager is responding to the reality that customer priorities are constantly shifting. Responding quickly to those shifting priorities is precisely what Agile is about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have Sprints? Having time-boxed sprints (think 2 weeks) is your protection from being pulled off a development task halfway through. The trade-off is that the development task needs to be small enough to fit within the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is absolutely what Agile is about for the composition of a Sprint to be changed only minutes before the Sprint starts. This is how your team responds to customer needs with agility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As part of the deal, you get to work on a Sprint for a set amount of time without a new direction. But what you're giving to your manager and the customer is the ability to have a new top priority addressed in no more than a Sprint's length of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More details may produce an answer better-tailored to your situation. Bottom-line reality, however, is that you will &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; be shifting to new, hot, top-priorities. If you're still working on a priority that was identified a year ago, you're probably not really addressing the top priority. And why would you want to work on anything except the top priority? Once you address the current top priority, you move on to what is identified as the next top priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your desire for a fixed release schedule tells me that you're probably not doing Continuous Integration and Continuous Testing. The hope in Agile is that at the end of every Sprint, you have production-ready code, so you shouldn't care that a given end-of-Sprint product is chosen for release. This takes a &lt;strong&gt;LOT&lt;/strong&gt; of discipline, but is again about responding to the reality that releases on a regular schedule do not necessarily meet the customer's needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8340" LastEditorUserId="8340" LastEditDate="2014-04-17T17:30:31.437" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T17:30:31.437" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11356" CreationDate="2014-04-17T17:16:41.090" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Embrace Change...But Only At The Proper Inflection Points&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The problem we are having is that our manager constantly resets our priorities and workload. Whatever we are working on, as soon as he gets any feedback or a new task, that becomes the new &quot;hot&quot; item that we all have to shift our focus to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within the Scrum framework, there are inflection points where changes in scope or priorities can be made &quot;for free.&quot; Within the team, these inflection points are generally Sprint Grooming and Sprint Planning, where the Product Owner can re-prioritize the Product Backlog to suit the current needs of the stakeholders. From a stakeholder's point of view, the inflection points are the start or end of each iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, changes to scope or priorities &lt;em&gt;within&lt;/em&gt; a sprint are not free. Any changes that would prevent the team from meeting the agreed-upon Sprint Goal should trigger an Early Termination and a return to Sprint Planning. This additional overhead is a visible cost to the project, but Early Termination is a valuable tool available to the Product Owner if the organizational needs are strong enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your Scrum implementation lacks the rigor to enforce the integrity of the Sprint Goal or the need for an Early Termination, then this is an issue that the entire Scrum Team (and especially the Scrum Master) needs to take on board. You should raise these process issues at a Sprint Retrospective, and allow the team as a whole to address the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Release Planning&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We also have no fixed release schedule - we push a release whenever he tells us to (often with only minimal testing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A well-run Scrum should release a potentially-shippable increment at the end of each sprint. To do this properly, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Resources/Scrum-Glossary/Definition-of-Done&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Definition of Done&lt;/a&gt; may need to include continuous integration or user acceptance testing, and the team should factor releaseability into its estimates and the amount of work the Development Team accepts into each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, some Scrum teams estimate the number of iterations needed for a given milestone or release, and the Product Owner ensures that the relevant release stories are moved to the top of the Product Backlog for the sprints where this work will be performed. While somewhat less flexible than a (potential) release per sprint, this still gives the Product Owner and stakeholders enormous power to manage the release schedule without interfering with the team's productivity within a given sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T17:16:41.090" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11360" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-17T18:54:33.257" Score="3" ViewCount="181" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been learning about CMMI and one thing that I'd like to know, say for example an organisation satisfies some key process areas such as Requirements management, software quality assurance. What does the organisation need to include to achieve level 2 maturity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7493" LastActivityDate="2015-10-30T20:13:48.840" Title="Does an organisation have to satisfy all key process areas to achieve a maturity level in CMMI?" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;process-improvement&gt;&lt;cmmi&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4251" CreationDate="2014-04-18T06:43:34.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think if we put this in a better perspective and we draw the spiral out it shows a better perspective of time spent. So if I go 1 to 2 that is a very small circle in a time frame, but if I go from 1 to 21 and look at the arc it becomes much better to understand in time spent. So although hard to explain with out graphics, take a compass (you remember those) put it on 1 as your point then circle it to your next number or point value and you will get a much better picture of time spent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8842" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T06:43:34.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11363" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11374" CreationDate="2014-04-18T07:31:44.140" Score="9" ViewCount="1546" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I have started to work on a team in a new project. Our company is attempting to run things in an Agile manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project team consists of 4 developers each from different teams and with different business domain knowledge of the new project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our first get together involved going through a list of user stories and using Planning poker attempted to give estimates for the stories presented. However I really struggled with this process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here for a few things that I struggled with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A-lot of the stories were UI driven and the complexity of it could depend on the complexity of the UI which we had no idea of. Hence I struggled to estimate appropriately.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The PM wanted us to estimate all the stories. However some of the stories had huge unknowns and questions which the PM couldn't answer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some of the stories involved knowledge about how we were going to implement the system from a code design point of view. We couldn't really agree on anything in particular as it involved some decisions from external people.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In our estimates there was no tester involved to add their input.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of a couple of the user stories looked like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an Account Manager / Field Office I want to to install the&#xA;application locally so that I can use it when offline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a CRM Administrator I want to be able to store the xml files from&#xA;the application into  the company CRM system  so that I can print&#xA;branded reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite all of this, we still went through estimating using relative story points.  The PM was then going to go away and cost up the project and estimate it time wise so she can do a quote for the company requiring the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As developers is it our responsibility to ensure we have enough information in order to estimate.  If we have unanswered questions should we push back and require more.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should you estimate all user stories at the start of a project?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Given our estimates what is the best way for the PM to determine the hours per point so that she can estimate a total cost?  I believe typically we use the average time from a previous project however this project consists of 4 new developers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should we do UI mockups and design discussions during this process to help us better estimate?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8841" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T18:46:36.090" Title="Estimating user stories at the start of the project so that the PM can determine a quote for the client" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11363" CreationDate="2014-04-18T09:54:35.730" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are just some thoughts and experiences on UI driven projects.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3 months ago we have started a new project to completely re-develop the backbone of our 10 years old industrial automation products. We did many brainstorming meetings for the hardware, software, firmware etc aspects of the project. Then we decided to approach the project in a multi-team fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The software part of the project did include a complete redesign of the whole UX area. So as the developers are still developing the base of the code we're working with a freelance UX expert who coordinates us with his expertise. We created personas, laid out scenarios and use cases, designed mockups and wireframes, and nowadays are starting to select the proper technology based on the requirements which emerged from all these studies and the prototypes. We are just at the beginning of the UX part of the project. There will be much more steps along the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see and I think already know, UI is not a one step/one time issue in a product's design lifecycle, instead its the main driver of the backbone. You should warn your PM on the consequences of omitting this phase of the project. The contrary decision would lead the project into chaos in the long term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8171" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2014-04-18T10:30:28.637" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T10:30:28.637" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11360" CreationDate="2014-04-18T12:32:25.380" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order for an organization to reach a maturity level, they are following the Staged Representation of the CMMI. But there is also another representation - the Continuous Representation - that has different requirements. Both are explained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Staged Representation allows an organization to achieve maturity level ratings. Every maturity level is associated with a set of process areas. For example, an organization that is Managed (Level 2) is achieving the goals of Configuration Management, Measurement and Analysis, Project Monitoring and Control, Project Planning, Process and Product Quality Assurance, Requirements Management, and Supplier Agreement Management. In order to achieve a certain maturity level, the specific and generic goals of every process area associated with that maturity level (and any lower maturity levels) must be satisfied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there's also a Continuous Representation. This allows an organization to achieve capability level ratings. There are four capability levels, numbered 0 through 3 and named Incomplete, Performed, Managed, and Defined. Process areas are examined individually, and not all process areas may be examined (it could just be a subset of the 16 process areas). Again, the specific and generic goals of the process area can be satisfied, but each process area is examined in isolation from the others, and each process area receives its own capability level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T12:32:25.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11366" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-18T17:23:37.240" Score="4" ViewCount="13337" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to be able to see a weekly summary of scheduled hours of work across all TFS Team Projects in TFS 2013 for myself and other team member. This would, for example, let me look a few weeks out and see that in two weeks I can schedule an iteration for myself and a co-worker without fear of overloading either one of us. I am interested in data and charts similar to the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hRSsa.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Example data&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pZ1ex.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Example pivot chart&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the most part each team member manages their own workload, and is assigned to a couple active projects at any given time with one or more other team members. Member/project relationships look like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Members A, B assigned to Project A&#xA;Members A, C assigned to Project B&#xA;Members B, C assigned to Project C&#xA;Member C assigned to Project D&#xA;...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having recently started using TFS 2013 and the Visual Studio Scrum 2013 process template, I have not been able to figure out how to tease this information out. Each project our group writes or supports has its own TFS Team Project within a single collection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/9443/how-to-get-a-good-overview-of-projects-using-tfs-2012&quot;&gt;How to get a good overview of projects using TFS 2012&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/8916/how-can-i-schedule-resources-across-multiple-projects&quot;&gt;How can I schedule resources across multiple projects?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8847" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2015-04-09T21:02:05.917" Title="How to get a good overview of team member utilization across multiple projects in TFS 2013" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11363" CreationDate="2014-04-18T18:28:46.640" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can see several red flags here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Your stories as posted have no acceptance criteria.  How is the customer/PM going to be able to tell whether something is complete besides personal whim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Your stories as posted have no behavior in them... they talk about the goals of the system, but have no information about how it behaves based on what the user is doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) You also made no mention of &quot;elaboration&quot;.  You don't do estimation until the story is elaborated enough for you to make a reasonable estimate.  Do you feel that you could reasonably implement these stories as given?  If not, then it isn't ready to go into the backlog, and isn't ready do be estimated.  From what you've posted, the PM is treating the backlog like a wishlist, not a priority queue of &quot;shovel-ready&quot; tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As an Account Manager / Field Office I want to to install the&#xA;  application locally so that I can use it when offline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something tells me that's an epic or story arc, and should be split into multiple, independently implementable stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8849" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T18:28:46.640" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11363" CreationDate="2014-04-18T18:45:43.523" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently wrapped up a project that had a similar start. She needs the quote, and to build the quote, she needs your estimates. But for you to estimate, you need a level of detail that isn't always possible at this phase. It's a vicious cycle! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our approach was to associate as many assumptions as we could drum up when putting together the estimate for each piece of functionality, and then put a risk value on those assumptions. When she's presenting her quote, she can then &lt;em&gt;somewhat&lt;/em&gt; confidently tell the client: here is our cost range estimate, which is based on these assumptions that we estimate to have this level of risk involved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully that helps a bit, and best of luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8818" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T18:45:43.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4251" CreationDate="2014-04-18T19:02:39.197" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because the complexity of interactions in a system scales non-linearly with the number functional components.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To a first approximation, let's say you have three components in a system that all interact with each other.  That's 3 &quot;interface points&quot; that might cause you to have to change the components to all work correctly with each other.  If you have four components, it's not 4 interface points, it's 6, and with 5, it's 10, etc.  In general, a complete graph with n nodes (all nodes collaborate directly) has n(n-1)/2 edges, so a system with all components talking to each other has n(n-1)/2 interactions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 &amp;lt;- Fibonnacci&#xA;0, 1, 2, 3, 6, 10, 15 &amp;lt;- n(n-1)/2 (hypothetical ideal)&#xA;2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 &amp;lt;- 2^n   &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[edited table based on comment]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, Fibonnacci tracks, but &quot;falls behind&quot;, while powers of two wildly overestimate things with more than 5 components.  In the end, Fibonacci is usually chosen because in most systems, n(n-1)/2 over-estimates the number of real interactions in your system: rarely do all components interact with each other directly in a real-world application. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8849" LastEditorUserId="29355" LastEditDate="2017-08-02T09:12:11.153" LastActivityDate="2017-08-02T09:12:11.153" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11356" CreationDate="2014-04-18T19:23:09.390" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It doesn't seem to me that this is &quot;Agile&quot; development in any sense of&#xA;  the word. It's more like Waterfall, or perhaps best described as&#xA;  &quot;chaos.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Am I right in thinking that this is not how Agile is supposed to work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Agile&quot; doesn't work in any particular way as it is not a process.  It's buzzword adjective to describe a set of principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are doing Scrum, sprints are (should be) locked.  If your boss has a priority mid-sprint, it will either have to wait until next sprint, or something in the current sprint backlog as to be taken out and replaced with that, which has minimal impact.  If you have an emergency lane in your Scrum, see below in KanBan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are doing KanBan, you have two options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) All your boss can do is reorder the backlog stack and put it up top.  When the next developer becomes free, he will start work on it as soon as he can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) If you have the emergency lane, &lt;em&gt;all work&lt;/em&gt; on &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; stops when your boss does this.  He will soon learn that it better be a real emergency to do this, because the entire pipeline from PM to Dev to QA to Deployment is halted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice that at no time are you being randomly pulled off what you are currently working on and thrown onto something else, unless &lt;em&gt;the entire team&lt;/em&gt; is stopping too, so you know it's serious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We also have no fixed release schedule - we push a release whenever he&#xA;  tells us to (often with only minimal testing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the ideal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum - Through continuous integration and acceptance (QA), by the end of a sprint the project should be deliverable to the client in a stable state.  How else are they to review that sprint's work for correctness and have a tight feedback loop?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;KanBan - The way I've done it in the past is simply at any point, the boss can say &quot;release time&quot;.  At that point we but a little mark at the top of the backlog, and no new work is pulled in until the pipeline clears and the release is built.  Through continuous integration, etc. it can work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8849" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T19:23:09.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11028" CreationDate="2014-04-20T18:39:54.590" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I like the following statement from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Portals/0/Documents/Scrum%20Guides/Scrum_Guide.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum recognizes no titles for Development Team members other than&#xA;  Developer, regardless of the work being performed by the person; there&#xA;  are no exceptions to this rule;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately not all developers are happy with testing or writing user guides so testers, tech writers, user doc writers are needed. I think that development team should be responsible for providing &quot;ideal head-count ratio&quot; for that roles since testers, tech writers, user-doc writers belong to the Development Team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Testers, tech writers, user-doc writers might not be needed at all if development team can provide acceptance testing, technical and user documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8738" LastEditorUserId="8738" LastEditDate="2014-04-20T18:45:11.927" LastActivityDate="2014-04-20T18:45:11.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11352" CreationDate="2014-04-20T19:43:49.273" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an experience wearing two hats simultaneously. There are some my thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I do not think that there is enough work for Scrum Master if he coaches one team only on a regular basis. After a while Development Team, PO and Company can follow Scrum process without Scrum Master or have technical part-time one.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I think that &lt;strong&gt;the main challenge for the Developer/Scrum Master is to stop influence on a team and let them make decisions by themselves&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...They are self-organizing. No one (not even the Scrum Master) tells the&#xA;  Development Team how to turn Product Backlog into Increments of&#xA;  potentially releasable functionality...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...Self-organizing teams choose how best to accomplish their work, rather&#xA;  than being directed by others outside the team...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Only a person that understands Scrum and can coach others (Development Team, PO, Organisation) should be chosen for the Scrum Master role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master is responsible for ensuring Scrum is understood and&#xA;  enacted. Scrum Masters do this by ensuring that the Scrum Team adheres&#xA;  to Scrum theory, practices, and rules. The Scrum Master is a&#xA;  servant-leader for the Scrum Team.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master helps those&#xA;  outside the Scrum Team understand which of their interact ions with&#xA;  the Scrum Team are helpful and which aren’t. The Scrum Master helps&#xA;  everyone change these interactions to maximize the value created by&#xA;  the Scrum Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you &quot;have the most Agile development experience&quot; in the Development Team then you are the only one right person for the Scrum Master role. &lt;strong&gt;There will be you challenge to make sure that everyone will be experienced in Agile as you in a while.&lt;/strong&gt; If you decide to be a Scrum Master I suggest you read &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Portals/0/Documents/Scrum%20Guides/Scrum_Guide.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8738" LastActivityDate="2014-04-20T19:43:49.273" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11363" CreationDate="2014-04-20T23:04:56.453" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If project is new and there is no previous experience then &lt;strong&gt;I suggest you use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/how-can-we-get-the-best-estimates-of-story-size&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;story points&lt;/a&gt; to estimate user stories&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A-lot of the stories were UI driven and the complexity of it could&#xA;  depend on the complexity of the UI which we had no idea of. Hence I&#xA;  struggled to estimate appropriately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If complexity depends on UI then usage of story points is the best choice. Relative estimations is not as fragile as absolute ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The PM wanted us to estimate all the stories. However some of the&#xA;  stories had huge unknowns and questions which the PM couldn't answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For that stories &lt;strong&gt;you can either ask for clarifications or give raw estimations/guesstimate&lt;/strong&gt;. It is up to you. &lt;strong&gt;If stories are really huge and not clear I suggest you ask PO to split them and participate your estimation meeting&lt;/strong&gt;. I'm sure you'll get the fastest feedback then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should you estimate all user stories at the start of a project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Estimated backlog is required for efficient product backlog management by Product Owner&lt;/strong&gt;. It is a good practice to fill in and estimate the whole backlog when project starts in order to provide a high level estimation of the product. It is obvious that new stories will be added in the future anyway but it can provide a starting point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Given our estimates what is the best way for the PM to determine the&#xA;  hours per point so that she can estimate a total cost? I believe&#xA;  typically we use the average time from a previous project however this&#xA;  project consists of 4 new developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, experience from previous projects can be used. You can calculate an average amount of story-points per developer per sprint.&lt;/strong&gt; Anyway, it is better to calculate an actual team's velocity after 2-3 sprints since &quot;Scrum is founded on empirical process control theory, or empiricism. Empiricism asserts that knowledge comes from experience and making decisions based on what is known.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should we do UI mockups and design discussions during this process to&#xA;  help us better estimate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If development team consider that UI mockups are needed for their development then there are no reasons to avoid them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In our estimates there was no tester involved to add their input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you follow Scrum/Agile then there is no value in the increment without testing since it is a part of Software Development process. Every story requires acceptance testing. &lt;strong&gt;After several sprints you'll define the team's velocity - how many story points your team can finish within one sprint.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8738" LastActivityDate="2014-04-20T23:04:56.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11342" CreationDate="2014-04-21T17:53:15.093" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This starts with your business case. In that document you should have documented all of the benefits that you expect to accrue and that justify the money to be spent on the project. Integrated with your business case is a benefits realization plan, which documents the benefit to be accrued, who is accountable for accruing it, the metric(s) used to measure this accrual, the frequency of measurement, and what the targets are that define success. &lt;strong&gt;If a benefit cannot be measured it should not be in your business case.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need to make this a success is buy-in and accountability from your management.  For example, if a benefit is reduced effort and therefore headcount the person who owns the staffing budget for that unit has to be accountable for achieving that reduction. Beyond that, you also need clear ownership of the process of assessing benefits, specifically someone in your organization who is not in a conflict of interest in terms of benefits realization.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T17:53:15.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11380" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-22T17:50:30.247" Score="0" ViewCount="278" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm having a job interview tomorrow with a group that typically has projects between 3-5 days in length. Of course, I'm not sure what exactly my duties will be, but I'm more used to projects around 2 months in length. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was hoping that someone might suggest strategies or resources for dealing with projects so short in length?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*edit&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry, it's a job interview, though the company is fairly small. I do know that there is a tech lead, and that the job is mostly managing projects, not people. The focus is IaaS/Cloud networking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8877" LastEditorUserId="8877" LastEditDate="2014-04-22T21:10:57.470" LastActivityDate="2014-10-28T16:51:50.697" Title="Agile resources for very short projects?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11380" CreationDate="2014-04-22T21:04:19.687" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The good news is that all of the same techniques work in short projects as longer ones. I've done a number of week-long projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When we did it, we usually did either 2 stand-ups per day or just one if we were collaborating heavily on most tasks. We did need very heavy product owner involvement and talked to him a few times a day. Lots of reviewing, adapting, and pivoting, but a ton of fun too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T21:04:19.687" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11366" CreationDate="2014-04-23T10:27:43.323" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hi there I belive TFS 2013 comes with an Agile Portfolio Management tool. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It allows you to define a management team and then members of that team can see the backlog and I belive capacity of team members across multiple projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn306083.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn306083.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should caveat this by saying we have not moved to TFS 2013 yet so I don't know how it works in practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T10:27:43.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11366" CreationDate="2014-04-23T11:12:01.567" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;TFS 2013 has very comprehensive web portal which was not available in previous versions. &#xA;In order to see the distribution of developers among different projects,  first you have to write the new query. In you new query delete the 'Team Project' clause which comes by default.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your new query should look  like this&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hZV88.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Than click run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The system will bring all the team projects and workers. If you want to narrow down your search, you have select 'Assigned to' and select Member A, Member B and Member C, in your case.&#xA;This look like this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Rk7m1.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, all the information is dispalyed so that you can see if Member A is assigned to multiple projects, and how much time is remaining for the work to be completed. &#xA;You are free to edit the columns to display the info which is relevant for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may get any sort of data and reports out of TFS 2013. Go to 'My query', go to 'charts' and there you will see 'New chart' button. Here you can specify rows and columns to obtain report, like this&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wc5zH.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These charts indicates exactly what you need, besides the calculations you have done.&#xA;If you need further analysis, you can use SQL reporting services if it is configured for TFS 2013 . In web portal, there is 'View reports' link, which directs you to the report builder. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The spreadsheet you posted cannot be generated exactly in this way. Unfortunately, tfs displays the tasks for the entire team project, and not for iteration starting on a fixed start date and stopping on a fixed finish date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8146" LastEditorUserId="8146" LastEditDate="2014-04-23T15:45:08.787" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T15:45:08.787" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11387" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-23T12:08:49.093" Score="0" ViewCount="11944" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have tasks set to fixed duration which means I can change the work hours independently.  However, when I change the duration it changes the work hours.  Can I stop this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8889" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T07:33:05.347" Title="How to change duration without changing the work hours?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9653" CreationDate="2014-04-23T18:58:20.723" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;How Agile projects are different from Waterfall projects&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To elaborate on what @Brett Maytom PST said on the differences side:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Minimize project risk&lt;/strong&gt;: If you have features that are high risk (any unique value proposition that has not been built before), you can schedule them early on to validate whether it is at all doable. If you determine that it is either not possible or too costly to build, you can rethink the project viability. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fast feedback&lt;/strong&gt;: Agile projects produce &quot;shippable feature increments&quot; at the end of each sprint. So, you can deploy this and get business users to play with it, do usability testing and sign up beta customers to get early feedback. This gives you an opportunity to change direction or even abandon the project before pouring the full budgeted amount into the project. In waterfall projects, you get a shippable product only at the end of the actual project completion - which itself may be above budget and behind schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Value negotiation&lt;/strong&gt;: When we do an estimation session, too often our Product Owner is surprised. Some things the PO thought would be hard, turn out to be a simple setting in the library that the developers opted to use. While others that look simple enough require extensive custom coding. Looking at the estimate, our PO may drop some features and lower prioritize others. In waterfall projects, once the requirements are written, it is carved in stone (subject to change control, which is painful).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T18:58:20.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11387" CreationDate="2014-04-24T00:24:06.727" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;These two values can not be worked on independently.  If the the duration, is fixed, the hour worked will be adjusted as the duration changes.   If my task is wait for Monday, and you change the duration to end on Friday, I now have four more task days. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If duration is not fixed, then start date will move when a fixed end date is moved.  If my task is wait four days, then I will start Monday if the end date is Friday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally, I would set a milestone, and use effort constrained tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the software you may be able to level fixed effort with a fixed start date, when you move the end date.  This may allow you to setup unreasonable schedules.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T00:24:06.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11387" CreationDate="2014-04-24T00:39:45.210" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have resources already loaded against a package that has a duration value and a work value, then when you change duration, it will adjust work based on the assumption that the resources loaded do not change their utilization level.  If you want to alter the duration, then you need to type in the work value again; that will adjust the resource(s) utilization accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The default logic in the tool for fixed duration is for it to automatically adjust work, then resources, in that order.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do not have resources loaded, and you play around with duration, the work will NOT change, because there is no third variable against which to change the work value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know if you can change the logic in the tool.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T00:39:45.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11391" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11395" CreationDate="2014-04-24T00:55:15.703" Score="1" ViewCount="550" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just passed by Prince2 foundation exam (through online material), and I've scheduled my practitioner exam in 2 weeks. My understanding is that the practitioner exam doesn't cover any new material, but is just more in depth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I prepare for such an exam? Should I keep trying to memorize definitions etc? Or should I be trying to apply Prince2 in my organisation to get more a feeling of it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8892" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T11:48:51.423" Title="How to prepare for the Prince2 Practitioner exam" Tags="&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11363" CreationDate="2014-04-24T06:34:48.603" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I had similar situation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;new team without QA at the beggining&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;new customer that work with domain unknown for us&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a lot of legacy code on which we had to develop&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Customer asked us to provide planning with documentation consists of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;delivery date for the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how the provided requirements influences over current product we had to change&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;technical information what code changes are required&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We wanted to run the team in Agile manner (Scrum), so we decided first to find as many User Stories as we can - we spent on it several days discussing and analysing requirements.&#xA;Then we found out that even if we estimate user stories in points, we won't be able to calculate it into mandays, so we didn't do that. Having user stories, our understanding of the system was much better so the work we did wasn't unnecessary.&#xA;Eventually we started analysing technical aspects of the project and building WBS with technical tasks. We used PERT (&lt;a href=&quot;http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/PERT&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/PERT&lt;/a&gt;) as an estimation technique (there are many others but this seems to be the easiest and quickest to implement).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks to this approach we prepared two offers, pessimistic and most likely (from PERT). Cone of uncertainty was used as a one of the arguments why we cannot be sure about delivery costs and date. Customer accepted that and didn't try to undermine it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What was next? Customer suspended the project because of other reasons and gave us another, smaller project that gave us time to introduce better into the domain. The team is much experienced now:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;we know the domain&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;legacy code is understandable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;we work in Scrum so our 'agile experience' is also much higher&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the summaries from retrospective about planning we did is that happily customer hadn't decided to start this project, because even pessimistic version was wrong:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;lack of QA at the beginning is bad - we tried to think about testing the software, but from &quot;developer point of view&quot; which is limited&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;legacy code is not so easy to developed as we thought&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there was no Product Owner that can answer for all our questions, so many assumptions we did (because we had to) were wrong&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2939" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T06:34:48.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11387" CreationDate="2014-04-24T06:53:51.630" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First: Double click on the task name (not on the Gantt bar!) -&gt; Advanced -&gt; Task Type -&gt; set &quot;Fixed Work&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then: Now you can add resources or change the duration without changing the &quot;Work&quot; hours or days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to add the column &quot;Work&quot; to the task grid in order to verify that this works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also see: &lt;a href=&quot;http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/training/fixed-work-task-type-RZ001077906.aspx?section=8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/training/fixed-work-task-type-RZ001077906.aspx?section=8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6266" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T06:53:51.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10798" CreationDate="2014-04-24T10:34:30.720" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A user story is not about a User, it's about an Actor which could be somebody who performs an action like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Visitor I want to be able to do thing so I can get stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you write the user story, you need to define your Actors, who are responsible for an action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my perspective an Actor can be a visitor, administrator, or even a system task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User as an Actor is too broad of a term to be used in a user story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2847" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T10:34:30.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11391" CreationDate="2014-04-24T11:48:51.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No new ground but very different style of questions. They are still multiple choice, but include types like &quot;assertion-justification&quot; that I had never seen before. The other catch is that the questions are based on a scenario that you are provided with, so they are all to some degree inter-related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your best bet is to track down practice exams online and try them out. The body that regulates the PRINCE2 exams has an example at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apmg-exams.com/index.aspx?subid=9&amp;amp;masterid=4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt;. Once you are comfortable with them and consistently scoring reasonably well on a consistent basis you may as well give the real exam a shot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T11:48:51.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11396" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-24T11:57:08.660" Score="3" ViewCount="161" Body="&lt;p&gt;My question is specific to Project Management, Agile practices, and Architecture. This might be helpful to many of us working in a startup company atmosphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What are the key points I have to consider in terms of Project Management and Agility.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Project is clear, but priority of story is shifting from time to time by management team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Should I start work with 1 module and parallely provide training to team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;or basically how to move in this project where I have lots of challenges like, fresher team, provide training, frequent changes in priority.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8438" LastEditorUserId="8005" LastEditDate="2014-04-24T17:21:39.407" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T16:38:09.357" Title="What are the key Agile points to be considered in a small startup company, with a team of 5-6 people" Tags="&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11400" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11427" CreationDate="2014-04-24T16:07:16.473" Score="10" ViewCount="14509" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you deal with assumptions and constraints and managing risks?  Do you consider assumptions and constraints risks themselves or drivers of risks or not risks as all?  Why or why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this is bit of a polling question without necessarily a &quot;right&quot; answer; however, I think a bit of inductive reasoning on this topic might be very beneficial to all of us.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="13576" LastEditDate="2014-11-17T12:23:31.857" LastActivityDate="2015-07-18T01:14:36.763" Title="Assumptions and Constraints and Risk Management" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11400" CreationDate="2014-04-24T16:48:12.973" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this question makes a simple concept unnecessarily complex. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assess risk.  Assess any risk that you think might affect the project.   &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2123314&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Risk Management is Project Management for Adults&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The definition of an assumption is a statement that you don't have enough evidence to conclusively prove.  Isn't that also the definition of a risk?  You're just looking at the  problem through different lenses.  (I'm drawing a blank on which of the big name risk management experts advocates treating every assumption as a risk; although I can't remember the source/citation, this practice is well supported.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a constraint has a known, fixed likelihood and a known, fixed impact on the project, then it is an issue, not a risk.  If you aren't sure of the likelihood or the impact, then it is a risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Begin with a risk assessment; estimate the likelihood and potential impact of the assumption or constraint.  If there is a risk arising from the assumption or constraint, manage the risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T16:48:12.973" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11400" CreationDate="2014-04-24T16:52:27.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I look at assumptions and risks as two sides of the same coin, as every assumption carries with it the risk that it will fail to hold true throughout the lifespan of the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Constraints are a bit different, though you could view them as opportunities (&quot;happy risks&quot;) if it turns out the constraint doesn't really exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T16:52:27.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11400" CreationDate="2014-04-24T17:28:28.747" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you consider assumptions and constraints risks themselves or drivers of risks or not risks as all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assumptions carry risk, but &lt;em&gt;a priori&lt;/em&gt; assumptions are not really the domain of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_management#Risk_management_activities_as_applied_to_project_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;risk management applied to the project management field&lt;/a&gt;. Risks are project variables to be managed; assumptions, on the other hand, are foundational expectations which may invalidate a project or plan if they do not hold true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Risks&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A risk is something that falls into one of two categories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quantitative risk, which can be measured and (often) assigned a dollar value.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Qualitative risk, which is more subjective and largely based on &lt;em&gt;interpretive&lt;/em&gt; assessments of threats and consequences.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, a risk is something that you can &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_management#Potential_risk_treatments&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;control, transfer, or accept&lt;/a&gt;. Risks don't inherently invalidate a plan or project; they are simply variables that may impact the project's budget, schedule, or level of success, and should be managed accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Assumptions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While an assumption carries risk (e.g. that the assumption will not prove true), the use case is different. An assumption is an &lt;em&gt;a priori&lt;/em&gt; input into the planning process, in order to allow the project planning process to proceed. In general, I find that assumptions are best used as contracting or scoping tools, and carefully spelled out in the most explicit way possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, a contract to deliver widgets might include some necessary planning assumptions such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Widget goo is readily available to the project as a resource.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The widget stamper is not part of the widget-project budget.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The organization has the necessary expertise to build widgets.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If any of the assumptions are false, then the project goals, deliverables, budget, and schedule may need to be reassessed. Unlike a typical project risk, an assumption is a driver for the planning process and a stated expectation, rather than something that can be controlled for within the plan. For example, if widget goo is no longer available anywhere in the world for any price, any plan that assumes the existence of widget goo would no longer be viable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, failed assumptions require a big &quot;reset button&quot; rather than process slack or additional variance controls. Another way of looking at it is that an assumption, unlike a risk, can invalidate a project plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider this (admittedly contrived) example: Your project assumes that Earth is an airless moon, and the project can't succeed when performed on a planet with an atmosphere even with the aid of vacuum chambers or other technical controls. The fact that Earth has an atmosphere isn't a risk that you can control, transfer, or accept in a meaningful way because the failed assumption violates the project's foundational expectations; it places the whole &lt;em&gt;premise&lt;/em&gt; of the project into question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's what a project management assumption is: something so basic to the premise of the project that, if it doesn't hold up, the project as a whole should be reviewed for viability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T17:28:28.747" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11404" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-25T00:41:13.473" Score="-2" ViewCount="193" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it a requirement to have a high school diploma in order to take the PPM exam? I have been doing project management for the past 5 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8900" LastEditorUserId="27722" LastEditDate="2018-08-31T13:51:54.367" LastActivityDate="2018-08-31T13:51:54.367" Title="Is having a high school diploma a requirement to taking the PPM exam?" Tags="&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4599" CreationDate="2014-04-25T05:00:24.610" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The combination of Microsoft Excel and Email continues to be the &quot;killer apps&quot; for most project managers, but my experience tells me that different disciplines (IT, marketing, design, dev) have different needs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I spent many years as a product marketer and product launches were my thing, and I executed well with a spreadsheet and email.  When I moved into managing a creative team, there's no way I would have been able to keep up with comments/approvals/feedback that goes into managing creative processes, like proofing a video, or getting an annual report completed.  We used a wide range of tools like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.proofhq.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ProofHQ&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlassian.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jira&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.attask.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ATTask&lt;/a&gt; to get our work completed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think at the very least you need a system, a plan and then you decide how specialized your task is and if there's purpose-built apps, great.  If not, break open Excel and Email. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8901" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T05:00:24.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11404" CreationDate="2014-04-25T10:47:30.273" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you mean PMP, the answer would be yes.  It has two criteria, one for high school graduates and the other for college graduates.  There is no third criterion for ones without high school diploma.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T10:47:30.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11404" CreationDate="2014-04-25T11:35:49.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Impossible to say without knowing which PPM exam.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apmg-international.com/en/qualifications/ppm-certificate-diploma/ppm-certification-diploma.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;APMG offers a PPM exam&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spsu.edu/cec/courses/qm/ProfProjMgmtCert.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SPSU offers a PPM exam&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ca.com/us/education/accreditations/certification-for-ca-clarity-ppm.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CA offers a PPM exam&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Some people refer to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/en/Certification/Portfolio-Management-Professional-PfMP.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PfMP&lt;/a&gt; certification as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://pmzilla.com/whats-difference-betweem-pmp-and-ppm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PPM&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is one of the reasons I strongly prefer to provide URL/links for terms in the question that are not common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T11:35:49.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11408" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11409" CreationDate="2014-04-25T12:11:20.690" Score="1" ViewCount="352" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Let me tell you the scenario-&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Few months ago I have started a business in Software Development sector and we are working good. We are getting jobs and earning well. Actually, my team members was my colleagues in two different Software Development firm. They are working with me right now. We are 8 person. We decided that we are going to start work as commission based. Commission as follows-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;35% who getting job&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;65% who developing the software&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;35% is really safe zone. But, 65% is really tough zone.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; Because, we are sharing our skills and doing jobs together. Problem facing when we are distributing the 65% to multiple developers. Actually, I am working as a project manager. I am distributing the projects to the team members. Sometimes, I swapping the task to different team members. I am struggling to distribute the amount to the developers who are working/developing. Someone is being happy someone is being sad. Sad person thinking the distribution is wrong. He should get more amount for his development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, My question is- How can I face this kind of situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8903" LastEditorUserId="8903" LastEditDate="2014-04-25T12:18:46.987" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T20:34:42.587" Title="How can I fairly allocate payment among a group of developers" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11408" CreationDate="2014-04-25T12:20:20.883" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a disaster waiting to happen.  I am willing to bet the entire 65% that someone on the team will perceive the distribution as unfair, and furthermore that very quickly people will start adjusting their work based on the perceived unfairness. I suggest that you dispense with this notion immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; divide the 65% among a team of developers, I would suggest two alternatives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Everyone gets an equal share. Everyone's success depends on everyone's effort. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Everyone gets two equal shares - one they keep, and the other they anonymously donate to whomever they think was the most important developer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you allocate the tasks and the bonuses, you are going to be the center of a lot of discontent. I wouldn't take that job no matter how much you paid me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T12:20:20.883" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11408" CreationDate="2014-04-25T12:22:09.400" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is actually quite easy to solve.  It is based on the concept of a high performing team.  A team is one that has a collective sense of success and failure and is one where all aspects of the team--e.g., the team roles, skills, tasks--are considered essential and weighted equally.  A weak link in any aspect means weak team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, distribute the commission equally.  If the team balks at this, then you have a problem with your teaming.  They are not yet a team.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to recognize one or two for &quot;above and beyond&quot; efforts, like a bonus, withhold a piece to be distributed in that manner, but make sure you choose that above and beyond appropriately.  In other words, it has to be truly above and beyond.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T12:22:09.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4599" CreationDate="2014-04-25T14:15:22.230" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No you do not need software, but if you have multiple teams (that need to share knowledge) or on very large projects it might be wise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can only speak for software development projects, but I guess it will work for other industries. You could use a whiteboard as planboard with post-its as work items.&#xA;Project management methodologies like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28software_development%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_%28development%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt; work fine outside the software world too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I once heard &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Sutherland&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jeff Sutherland&lt;/a&gt; say something about tooling and I think he said that tooling should be limited to the least you need to get the job done, because its extra overhead and is often in the way. He used &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pivotaltracker.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pivotal Tracker&lt;/a&gt; for his current company to plan and monitor progress though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I would get two white boards&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;one for the task/product backlog and prioritization&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;one for the current workload with at-least three columns: Todo, in progress and Done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe a third for some metrics :)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some framework for process, communication flows and DAILY updates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Profit! :)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I love &lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt; if physical whiteboards are out of the questions or of teams are not located in one location.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2014-06-18T19:47:07.747" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T19:47:07.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11396" CreationDate="2014-04-25T16:38:09.357" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Getting started with Agile Project Management&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are the key points I have to consider in terms of Project Management and Agility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Looks like you want to follow agile project management, but others&#xA;may not know what that means. Try to get at least a couple of people&#xA;trained. Scrum is the most popular agile process.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Assign the key roles of Scrum Master and Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Let the Product Owner conduct a few sessions with the team to create the product vision, road-map and the backlog. You said the project is clear. Then this should not be so hard.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the backlog, write only the higher priority stories. Others can be written as epics. The epics can be broken up when they get to the top of the backlog. Make sure the stories have clear acceptance criteria. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then the team can do some estimation in story points. &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumcrazy.wordpress.com/2011/03/11/whats-a-good-way-to-get-started-with-story-points/&quot;&gt;Here is an article about how to establish an initial scale for story points.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Decide on a sprint duration. You can do 2-week sprints unless you have a specific reason to make them longer or shorter.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You need at least 3 sprints before you can establish a rough velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At the end of each sprint, invite the management team to see a demo of what features have been completed and seek feedback. This should be working software, not a slide presentation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Project is clear, but priority of story is shifting from time to time&#xA;  by management team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto, &quot;Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, you still need to maintain some discipline about changing priorities. Make a deal with the management team (the people who change the priorities):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Changes are welcome until the sprint starts. Once the sprint starts, no changes can be made. This will allow the team to focus and get the work done. It is the Scrum Master's job to enforce this.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;All requests for changes must be routed through the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I start work with 1 module and parallely provide training to&#xA;  team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This entirely depends on you and the skill level of your team. But I do think that training in the context of specific work to be done will be more effective. So, you can plan for lower velocity initially, giving time for team members to be trained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T16:38:09.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11413" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-25T20:05:44.240" Score="10" ViewCount="247" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I started to manage a team of software developers 3 years ago; I realized that there was no development process. First of all; i created 3 groups: backend, frontend and graphic design. After a year; the process of development cycle (backend-&gt;frontend-&gt;graphic design) was working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last year; one of developers in our team said that: &quot;we created a good working process in our team and this worked without plan, it just happened&quot;. After this speech; I realized that as a manager I created a process that works, but my team was thinking that; there was no plan, it just happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am trying to understand that if it makes me a good or a bad manager?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5465" LastEditorUserId="5465" LastEditDate="2014-04-25T20:15:49.107" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T07:29:04.893" Title="creating a process that works &quot;without team members' realizing&quot; makes a manager good or bad?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11413" CreationDate="2014-04-26T11:36:56.323" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;An excellent manager. How should we judge the quality of a manager?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the work get done?  Yes, and the processes improve to make the future brighter &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are the employees happy?  Yes. They believe they are responsible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can see two possible risks. First if the employees have a false sense of empowerment and capability,then whemn they discover the illusion,  they will question their positive self image. You have to work with them to ensure that the team is capable of continued self improvement. Second if you reside in an organization that values style over substance, you may not be credited with the achievement, which may compromise your future career.  You may wish to work with you management to plan the next improvement.  It is difficult to not be credited if you plan and predict the outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I am not sure this question is about project management.  Perhaps questions about supervision and careers should be moved to workplace.se?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2014-04-26T11:36:56.323" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11415" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11416" CreationDate="2014-04-26T12:40:53.520" Score="3" ViewCount="1411" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a part of job interview for Product Management position, I am asked to propose a new product functionality for existing product, determine its business value and calculate the increase on MAU(Monthly Active Users) after launch of the new functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product is a web app. The only data given is current MAU and DAU.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For example&lt;/strong&gt; product is an image-sharing site and new functionality is searching the images depending on their dominant colors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How I can determine the business value and increase in traffic? What are the things to check while determining these? What type of data do I need to make precise calculation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8911" LastActivityDate="2015-01-28T01:26:46.127" Title="How to determine the business value of a new product functionality?" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;business-improvement&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11415" CreationDate="2014-04-26T15:21:02.330" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since this is a job interview question and you only have MAU and DAU, you cannot possibly answer it with a precise calculation.  It appears they are evaluating your problem solving skills to be able to make the calculation once you have additional information.  So the answer they are likely looking for are the additional questions you need to ask in order to continue the analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the current MAU compared to the MAU of the entire population user set?  I.E., what is your MAU share?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What functionality are your competitors using, similar or the same to the proposed new functionality, and what are their market share?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What research has been done to date in the current customer segments that indicate this desired functionality?  What additional market research can I conduct, surveys, focus groups, proof of concepts, experiments?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What level of investment is the company prepared to make and what is the desired increase in MAU?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What were the results of other new functionality projects in this company?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My approach would be to outline the kinds of questions I'll need to answer in order to answer the business value question and then outline my approach to get those answers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are likely more kinds of questions that need to get asked but I'll leave that to those who are far deeper in web page development.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-04-26T15:21:02.330" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11418" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11421" CreationDate="2014-04-27T07:09:50.580" Score="0" ViewCount="1527" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just completed prince2 and I'm wondering what is considered a project in day to day work. I work as a software developer, so everything i do created business change. At what point do I assume that &quot;this is a lot of work, I need to set up a plan, tolerances, stages with my manger&quot;. Is it more then one weeks worth of work? More then a month? Only when involving external parties??&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8892" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T13:40:14.847" Title="What are the minimum requirements for a project?" Tags="&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11418" CreationDate="2014-04-28T08:58:44.687" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your company will probably have set tolerances for BAU / Small Change / Small Projects / Large Projects / OMG we're doomed projects&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not then defiantly it's worth setting this guidance up. Discuss with your management and any other PMs and if you have it a PMO in the company, what governance the senior mgmt team need for projects depending on their estimates. In my current organisation it's &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;lt;5 Days - BAU&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;lt;30 Days - Small Change&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;lt;100 Days - Small Project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;lt;300 Days - Large Project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now it's not just based on this. &lt;br/&gt;You will have different tolerances dependent on (as you mentioned) working with external suppliers, or is the change dictated by an external body (key client or Government), does the change impact more than one of your systems or is the system a critical system which if it falls over your Sales team start throwing themselves out of the 5th floor windows&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T08:58:44.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11418" CreationDate="2014-04-28T12:47:39.643" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this question is more about degree of formality and rigor.  No matter the size or complexity of a project, we plan, we buy, we schedule activities, we think about and monitor our risks and issues, we may seek help, we use tools, we track and control and we finish up.  What changes with size and complexity is the degree formality and rigor used.  And formality and rigor come down documentation and reporting and the various PM tools one might deploy.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question really is, when do you start the formality?  As Richard suggests you could define the size of project via length of duration or money spent or some other scale.  The benefit with this is you could expect a good degree of standardization across the organization.  Other times, it might come down to &quot;you'll know it when you see it.&quot;  As complexity rises, the number of stakeholders increase, conflict is present, the environment is of high risk, you are little worried for your job, you can almost sense the gravitational pull to document, track, report, and use more and more expensive but high quality tools to help you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally steer clear of heuristics that might define the &quot;minimum requirements&quot; to do something.  Instead, I prefer the deploy what you need when you need it mentality.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T12:47:39.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11418" CreationDate="2014-04-28T13:40:14.847" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check the chapter in your PRINCE2 text regarding tailoring of the method. The key considerations are the complexity of your project and it's criticality to your organization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing to keep in mind is your own role on the project. As a developer, you should focus on appropriate tailoring, in conjunction with the Project Manager, of components that directly touch you. The most important piece here is the Work Package, but also includes things like the Product Description, Product Status Account, configuration item records, any kind of team plan that exists, expectations on delivery of checkpoint reports, etc etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T13:40:14.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11423" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11443" CreationDate="2014-04-28T19:01:17.017" Score="2" ViewCount="1604" Body="&lt;p&gt;Those concepts are usually mixed everywhere. It seems both are based on Lean, but that's all. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://theleanstartup.com/principles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;core of the Lean Startup aproach seems to be to develop the MVP (minimum viable product)&lt;/a&gt;. Whereas the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allaboutagile.com/7-key-principles-of-lean-software-development-2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;core of the Lean software development seems to be to eliminate waste&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could we say that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lean software development are principles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lean Startup is a methodology which aplies those principles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kanban is a method to apply either those principles or that methodology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8766" LastActivityDate="2020-07-27T09:08:24.440" Title="Lean software development VS Lean Startup. Is it the same? Differences?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;lean&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11413" CreationDate="2014-04-28T22:18:35.310" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;T think this actually marks you a s good leader even more than a good manager. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has always been one of my favorite quotes:&#xA;“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worse when they despise him. But of a good leader who talks little when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: We did it ourselves.” – Lao-Tzu&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sounds like your situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T22:18:35.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11400" CreationDate="2014-04-28T22:42:20.200" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Risk is the by-product of Assumptions and Constraints. The entire process of Risk Identification is the examination and review of what we assume is going to happen during the life of the project (Assumptions), and what are the limitations that could cause impact the project, either in execution or expected results (Constraints). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here I differ with Mark - risk management (and more importantly, risk ID) is the PM's job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example - I am currently completing a large public works project. Installation of a portion of my work is dependent on the designer's (external vendor) hydraulic calculations being correct. We can't know if they're accurate until the system is installed and 'start-up' is begun. The Assumption is that the design calcs are correct. The Risk is that they aren't, and I'll have to do some re-work to accommodate for this change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Constraints work much the same way. I have a Schedule Constraint dictated by the Grand Opening date of the facility. This is non-negotiable. This Constraint makes EVERYTHING upstream of completion a Risk for not being completed on time. A Budget Constraint also means I can't simply crash the project to avoid the risk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given this, in my Risk ID I have to review everything, Assumptions, Constraints, Schedules, Budgets, etc, and do my best to avoid or mitigate the Risks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T22:42:20.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11415" CreationDate="2014-04-29T03:27:42.980" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Business value is likely difficult (if not impossible) to determine in advance for such features.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One pattern is to advertise for this feature even though it doesn't exist.  Depending on existing traffic, one could compare the interest in 2 fictional products - one that has the feature, and one that does not.  The difference in activity would be one empirical way that could be a basis for the value of such a feature and seeing if it is worth further investment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another pattern is to survey the existing user base and just ask them if they would be willing to pay for such a feature.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4244" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T03:27:42.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11429" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11432" CreationDate="2014-04-29T06:17:42.963" Score="3" ViewCount="130" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a team of 7 developers and we are doing a software maintenance project for our client. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to give objective feedback to my subordinates and will like to include productivity as one of the parameters in the feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to calculate individuals productivity? I was thinking of using FP (function points) per week as a measure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any other industry standard which I can utilize?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6209" LastEditorUserId="6209" LastEditDate="2014-04-29T06:27:07.557" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T19:11:01.800" Title="Calculating Team's productivity" Tags="&lt;feedback&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11431" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11438" CreationDate="2014-04-29T10:58:15.230" Score="3" ViewCount="312" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently work in a small development team that works for multiple clients simultaneously. Some of the work is developing new software for these clients and some of the work is supporting the clients with any problems they have with our software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any suggestions of a lean/agile process that could be used to manage this workload for a team of 6?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not lean, is there any other project management method that would help manage this work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2244" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T07:36:16.267" Title="Use lean project management in a multi-project/support environment" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;lean&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11429" CreationDate="2014-04-29T12:30:50.253" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if it is a standard, but probably the best way to assess productivity is to track the number of deliverables completed and accepted by the client. The advantages to this approach are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Truly objective and simple to measure.&lt;/strong&gt; Something is either done and accepted by client or it is not. And you avoid the risk of something sitting around being 90% complete for a prolonged period of time as the developer tries to fix that one last thing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Incorporates quality of work done.&lt;/strong&gt; By having the client accept the deliverable before it is considered complete you avoid the risk of incenting your developers to churn out code without considering how well it works. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;From the client point of view it is the only measure that matters.&lt;/strong&gt; By paying attention to this you integrate productivity measures with customer satisfaction, which is presumably a key business objective.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The primary disadvantage with this approach is that someone with a very complex deliverable could appear to be less productive than someone with several very simple deliverables. You avoid this if you look at &lt;strong&gt;team productivity&lt;/strong&gt; as opposed to individual productivity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T12:30:50.253" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11423" CreationDate="2014-04-29T16:10:28.853" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that Lean software development as discussed at length by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_software_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mary Poppendieck and Tom Poppendieck&lt;/a&gt; is a methodology closely related to the Agile family of software development methodologies such as Extreme Programming and Scrum, each with its own design emphasis, rituals and community. However, at the heart of all Lean/Agile culture is the core belief that rapid feedback cycles - where feedback is meant to be in the form of ‘live’ reactions (such as sales or usage spikes) from the ‘real environment’ (from clients, prospects and users most importantly) – are required to discover the important but false assumptions often hidden in planning or requirements documents. So you can think of the ecosystem of Lean/Agile practices as vehicles for enabling fast feedback cycles - ‘fail fast to succeed sooner’ – in order to expose and manage the risk associated with false assumptions about the development environment.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lean Startup simply applies the idea of using rapid feedback cycles to expose false assumptions to the customer development and business side of the organization. &lt;a href=&quot;http://steveblank.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Steve Blank&lt;/a&gt; coined the term and created the processes around ‘Customer Development’ which Eric Reis built upon to develop ‘Learn Startup’.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban is a tool, like you mentioned, that can be used in any project management style, even Waterfall. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8941" LastEditorUserId="8941" LastEditDate="2014-04-29T19:14:43.883" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T19:14:43.883" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11429" CreationDate="2014-04-29T19:11:01.800" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will second Doug's answer of using deliverables as the metric, but add one additional caution point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're rating someone on productivity, you (and the team member) need to be clear on what the baseline is - productive based against 'what' expectation? For this you and the team member would need some estimation of how long the deliverables/tasks should take, so you can then measure against these expectations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also allows for the differing complexity that Doug mentioned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my suggestion is let them know that this will be a rating metric, and then work with them to establish the expectations, and only after that begin the measurement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T19:11:01.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11431" CreationDate="2014-04-30T07:36:16.267" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend a mixed practice called &lt;strong&gt;scrumban&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you need to manage small group of people who are doing project and support work at once, you would not want sprint based approach like in scrum because your support will ruin them. Or you cannot split those two because you do not have clear team boundaries between support and development. Scrumban offers nice techniques like planning on demand and is a little bit loose compared to scrum, but that is what you would want. I have tried many practices and this one is the best for highly dynamic environment.&#xA;Still it will maintain team workload and transparency in your projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read more about scrumban &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aboutscrumban.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eylean.com/blog/2013/06/scrum-vs-kanban-vs-scrumban-boards-rules-and-who-should-use-it/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5562" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T07:36:16.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11440" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11441" CreationDate="2014-04-30T10:52:49.517" Score="2" ViewCount="92" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a project to be pitched to a owner who needs to greenlight the production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering if there is any format to follow for the presentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since, this is first time I'm making this, if some one can help me out with the process I should follow for my thinking, it'll help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6251" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T12:45:22.617" Title="Green light presentation for a project" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11440" CreationDate="2014-04-30T11:32:09.740" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is just an example of a situation where you need to propose something to someone and you need them to agree to your proposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to work out what is important to the audience, what information will be key for them in their decision making and what barriers might exist in their mind to agreeing your proposal(s). Then you need to tailor your pitch to address all these points and then ask for their agreement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These things will differ from project to project, but obvious points to cover are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Scope - What are you proposing they get in return for approving your proposal. I assume they will get something out of the &quot;production&quot;, a new building, a new software system, a new website, or whatever it is. They probably need to know in fairly fine detail what they get for their money and, just as important, what they &lt;em&gt;won't&lt;/em&gt; get for their money&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cost - What will your proposal cost them in hard cash&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How long will it take - Having approved your proposal, how long is it until they take delivery of whatever it is you are producing?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do you intend to do it? What assurances can you give them that they will get what they paid for on time, to cost and within agreed quality metrics? What controls and tests will you put around the production to ensure this happens?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2014-04-30T12:45:22.617" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T12:45:22.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10926" CreationDate="2014-04-30T13:58:31.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've tried this a few times and the only solution that's satisfied my needs is to break the task into smaller tasks. In your example, you'd edit the 8-hour task by breaking it up:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(1) 4-hour task, 100% complete&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(1) 4-hour task, 0% complete&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8929" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T13:58:31.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11423" CreationDate="2014-04-30T17:29:02.477" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the following couple of articles are perfect to understand the difference easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20140228151853/http://oxzigen.com/category/lean-software-development/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;oxzigen.com - lean software development&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It’s easy to confuse the Lean IT and Lean Startup methodologies. (...) I sometimes use the analogy of a restaurant to describe these different roles. According to this analogy, the Lean Startup activities are taking place mostly in the “dining room” where there is direct contact with the customers. (...) Lean IT activities, on the other hand, are taking place mostly in the “kitchen.” Their goal is to deliver a high-quality product quickly and efficiently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20180820134002/http://www.w2lessons.com/2010/10/minimum-viable-product-dissected.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;w2lessons.com - minimum viable product dissected&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the fundamental and most misunderstood tenants of the lean startup is the minimum viable product (MVP). (...) For starters you must look at the MVP not as a product but as an experiment. (...) The fact is that the actual product does not have to exist at all. (...) Rather than build a whole system, build a simple landing page with some screenshots from your graphic designer (think of about.me).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8766" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-27T09:08:24.440" LastActivityDate="2020-07-27T09:08:24.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="11445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4599" CreationDate="2014-05-01T10:02:24.713" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes planning software is very necessary before creating any software.Planning software is a part of project management.In software planning you have to plan about the each and every thing you are going to do in every step.This plan consist of initial to the last step of the software.From the name of the software to the tools and techniques needed for that software and the planning also contain the cost and estimation of that software.You should also take care of the risk arises while creating the software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8959" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T10:02:24.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11185" CreationDate="2014-05-01T10:13:34.630" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Project Manager is the responsible person for coordinating the activities and the various sources needed for the project.The project manger is only person who has to take care of the projects  and needs of the clients.Project Manager is the person for the overall working of a project,direction,implementation,execution and successful completion of projects.The Project Manager has the complete knowledge of all phases of system development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8959" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T10:13:34.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11447" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11448" CreationDate="2014-05-01T12:02:05.843" Score="0" ViewCount="73" Body="&lt;p&gt;What kind of future position can a project manager expect in a start-up? Should I expect to be let go once the product is up and running or will I be expected to morph into something else? The partners say &quot;we can work something out&quot; so I'd just like to know from people in the field what usually happens. It's my first job as a salaried project manager in a start-up&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One big reason I ask this is because I am getting options, which will be vested over 5 years. I think the project as I'm working on it will be completed in 3, so if the job will most likely end, then I need to have the vesting schedule match.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for your feedback!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8960" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T20:17:30.497" Title="Expectations - In a start-up, what happens when the project is finished?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;pay&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11447" CreationDate="2014-05-01T14:05:28.053" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your being retained is going to be based on at least four variables:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your performance.&lt;/strong&gt; This is pretty self-explanatory. You add value you will likely keep your job all things being equal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pipeline.&lt;/strong&gt; If your company is a one-trick pony you will be out of a job no matter how well you do. Hopefully yours is not the only project they have going.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Business strategy.&lt;/strong&gt; If your company plans to be bought out you have less job security than one that plans to stick around. You may be able to get a feeling for this by looking at how competent your sales force is.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cashflow.&lt;/strong&gt; You want [(Investment Capital Available in $$) / (Burn Rate in $$ per year)] to be larger than the duration of your project. How much larger depends on your risk tolerance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, if you aren't a founder/partner in the organization you can only exert control over the first item on the list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T14:05:28.053" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11447" CreationDate="2014-05-01T14:30:19.773" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should expect to remain employed with a start up or a 100-year-old company for 1) only as long as you're needed, either your role or your capability set; 2) only as long as they can afford you; or 3) only as long as the company remains a company.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are really asking for is a risk assessment.  Start ups have higher risks all the way around; that's why they offer stock options, to counter-balance the risk you assume.  Everyone's at risk, so asking for a different vesting schedule for you is a bit one-sided and not likely to get approved.  I am not even sure if a company is even allowed to offer different vesting schedules.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T14:30:19.773" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11380" CreationDate="2014-05-01T15:17:33.497" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm having a job interview tomorrow with a group that typically has projects between 3-5 days in length. Of course, I'm not sure what exactly my duties will be, but I'm more used to projects around 2 months in length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, shorter projects require shorter iterations, but shorter iterations create more process overhead and reduce the amount of work that can be accepted into each iteration. It's a trade-off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, I'd question whether entire projects are really only a week long. In that range, it seems more likely that what you have is a repeating process rather than actual projects. If that is the case, then Lean or Kanban might be a better fit than a project-based framework. Your mileage will vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T15:17:33.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10580" CreationDate="2014-05-01T19:57:38.213" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can do a functional analysis on the workload to determine an estimated count of employees.  Here are the steps I used in a similar effort to consolidate an IT application packaging team that originally all reported to different areas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build a breakdown of how each person spends their time: &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ex: Employee A, 50% time resolving tickets, 25% changes/adds, 25% reporting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Determine how much time is spent on each functional work area currently:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ex: Total current time spent resolving tickets = .5 Empl A + .75 Empl B...etc. = total of 4 employee's time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Determine how much efficiency expect to gain by combining this area.  This is more art than science, but you can get pretty close.  In my effort, most efficiency came from specialization.  This is where you can look at different things organizationally: make full specialists (e.g., one person does only resolving tickets) or consolidate to a location or whatever options you have.  Obviously, you must keep in mind how people may perceive or react to these changes.&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ex: If current time resolving tickets = is 4 employees, consolidating the work might improve that by 25% = 3 employees.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add up total employee time for each functional area...there's your total count and a way to determine cost per employee after the change.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When we did this, the consolidation included tasks that weren't in the new team's scope.  This actually helped us NOT to have reduce staff so much as those people who weren't in the new team were assigned other roles.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond cost efficiency of the team, the biggest gain we had was the EFFECTIVENESS of the team.  Cycle time for application packaging requests went down 70%!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8966" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T19:57:38.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11447" CreationDate="2014-05-01T20:17:30.497" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're competent and the project is successful, you can expect to be a PM at a start-up.... as long as they have a project for you to manage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You asked what happens 'when the project is finished' -- You either start managing the next project, or, lacking a 'next project', move to a new role with the same company, or move to another company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, as your project enters it's final phase or two I'd be looking at and talking to them about what they've got on deck. If you don't see anything then you should be looking at options well before the project closes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T20:17:30.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11453" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11456" CreationDate="2014-05-02T03:29:21.617" Score="0" ViewCount="96" Body="&lt;p&gt;Friends of mine want to take their in-house programming language and take it into the open source arena. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many challenges, one of which is how to begin to create a community of users. Where does one start?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original was written, as I understand it, in VB6 (with components written in Ada, Perl, assembler, Fortran etc.) There are discussions about what to write the new version in: C#, D, Go ... and the list goes on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also there are discussions about whether to stick to the Windows platform or go cross-platform. Huge questions and not many good answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And they worry too about having someone fork the repository and develop a competing and perhaps more successful version. Perhaps they need to find a &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/143236/how-were-some-language-communities-eg-ruby-and-python-able-to-prevent-fragmen&quot;&gt;benevolent dictator&lt;/a&gt;. Are there other means of keeping a name with one version and not letting it drift to others?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest challenge is the business plan: how do you monetize a programming language community? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. Is this the right place to ask these questions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8968" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:31:53.287" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T05:19:59.757" Title="How do I advise someone creating a programming language and user/developer community?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-05-03T18:52:17.603" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11453" CreationDate="2014-05-02T05:19:59.757" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, risks exists in many commercial endeavors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How does one create a community of users?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;A community is created when you promote your cause and when people adopt your programming language. As long as the community, documentation, support and the language itself is to their liking, users will share their thoughts with others and slowly grow into a community. Many things affect this situation and it's hard to pinpoint exactly how to become successful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give you an indication; maybe you've heard about Dart, built by Google, I've only heard about it through one of the owners from a start-up. Dart is being promoted intensively and many real life demonstrations and meet ups have already taken place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What to write the new version in&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;This is a matter of taste. The team will have to run the necessary comparisons and decide for themselves. Go is rather new, seems to be growing fast as a community; but my knowledge on that matter is rather limited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cross-platform&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Going cross-platform is absolutely is smart consideration. Don't underestimate how big the linux and apple communities are. Even though developing for multiple OS'es is time intensive, ruling out one community might reduce the adoption rate of you programming language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Forks and licensing&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;It's fairly easy to create a license for your programming language that allows open-source usage of it, but rules out selling it in the same or a mutated form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Monetization&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;There are plenty of possibilities to earn money. For example to offer premium services, a cloud hosting platform, becoming a premium developer, online courses, commercial licenses, on-site courses, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Open source sounds attractive. However building a community might take a very long time. In order to arrange for fast growth you'll have to convince people to adopt your programming language, provide massive amounts of documentation and help them make the move from whatever language they come from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Building a programming language with the goal of monetization actually makes the programming language a product. Therefor you would need to create a business model and set up the necessary growth path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8700" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T05:19:59.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11458" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11459" CreationDate="2014-05-02T13:11:06.873" Score="6" ViewCount="1982" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am learning a little bit about project management with the book, &quot;Making things happen&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I'm confused what the vision, requirements, design, and specification are.  If I read the book everything seems logical but if I try to write such documents everything falls apart. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example (based on a mixed hardware/software product where we will develop a next generation):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Vision:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Generation 2 of product should be easier to manufacture and support&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The user should be able to configure the system&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Requirements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Production cost targeted at Generation 1 less $1,000&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product shall be bluetooth capable with an Android App&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Design/Specification (I haven't understood the difference):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Replace the motors with cheaper ones&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add an arduino with a bluetooth shield to communicate with the android app&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the points i have as vision and requirements okay? I have no idea what should be in the design and what in the specification. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for your help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8970" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2014-05-02T13:34:15.443" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T14:12:41.477" Title="Vision vs Requirements vs Design vs Specification" Tags="&lt;learning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11458" CreationDate="2014-05-02T13:46:17.627" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A vision is typically a high level view of what you ultimately want to achieve as a result of the project. You would use it to describe the project, identify stakeholders, define success criteria, and goals and priorities. You may also use such a thing to begin to define the most important assumptions, dependencies, constraints, and risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0066620023&quot;&gt;Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers&lt;/a&gt;, Geoffrey Moore presented this template for a vision statement, that would be the most minimal format for a project vision:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For {target customer or user} who {statement of need}, the {product} is a {product category} that {key benefit(s)}, unlike {current state, alternatives}. Unlike {competitors or current state}, our product {primary differentiation and advantages}.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a vision, scope, or charter, you develop requirements. A requirement is a statement of need of the product or process that is being developed. There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requirement#Characteristics_of_good_requirements&quot;&gt;several qualities of a good requirement&lt;/a&gt;: cohesive, complete, consistent, atomic, traceable, current, unambiguous, specify importance, and verifiable. A requirement could appear in multiple formats, from a more traditional shall statement (&quot;the system shall compute the distance between two points to an accuracy of no less than 6 inches&quot;) to a user story (&quot;as a buyer, I want to be able to add one or more items to my shopping cart for later purchase&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A requirements specification is the set of requirements that a system is to fulfill. Customers and users may have many requirements, but some may not be fulfilled by the system. In a complete system, you can look at its requirements specification as a list of its characteristics. In a system under development, it is the intention for the next milestone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A design indicates how the requirements specification will be realized. It's a model, simulation, prototype, or other conceptualization of a system. It provides details as to how each requirement will be met and how pieces of the system interact with each other. Sometimes, however the final design is captured is referred to as the system's design specification - this is exactly how the system is to be instantiated by the creators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The formality, ceremony, and types of artifacts produced for each of these depends on your product development lifecycle, engineering methodology, and project complexity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going back to your specific examples for each phase:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Generation 2 of X should be easier to manufacture and support&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, this isn't quantifiable enough. What is &quot;easier to manufacture and support&quot; mean, exactly? You should quantify this in terms of reducing the need to support (by increasing quality), amount of time to build or repair, or some other measurable goal so you know what current state is, what optimal state is, and what would be considered success or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The user should be able to configurate the system by himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may be something you would want to include in your vision, moving configuration out of the hands of technical experts into the user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Production cost should be 1000$ lower than Generation 1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't like the use of the would &quot;should&quot;. In order to be successful, is there a minimum amount that should be reduced from the production cost? If so, I would state that as a requirement explicitly with a &quot;must&quot; or &quot;shall&quot; statement. If there are stretch goals, you can use &quot;should&quot; to set a stretch goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;X should be configurated over bluetooth with an Android App&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, requirements that are mandatory should be &quot;must&quot; or &quot;shall&quot; statements. I would also consider breaking this up into two requirements: one to allow configuration over Bluetooth and a second to require an Android application to support configuration. This would make the requirement atomic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;replace the motors with cheaper ones&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Add an arduino with a bluetooth shield to communicate with the android app&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of these are things that I'd expect to be realized in a design. I wouldn't necessarily include these anywhere, unless you were on the engineering team doing the design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a business requirement to reduce cost. However, mandating a particular part be replaced with a cheaper (often meaning lower quality) part may compromise product quality. Let the engineers determine if there are ways to achieve the requirements without compromising quality. Somehow, a different motor would be captured, perhaps on a parts list or a drawing or model, if that was one of the things that was changed to continue to meet the requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choosing Arduino and a Bluetooth shield is indeed a design decision. But again, that's something that flows out of requirements. Often, you may develop multiple designs that are valid. It becomes a matter of choosing which design (or perhaps elements from multiple designs) are best suited to achieving the requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're interested in books about the early phases of a project, I can recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0735625212&quot;&gt;Practical Project Initiation&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0735679665&quot;&gt;Software Requirements&lt;/a&gt;. Between the two of them, they cover from early project initiation, vision, and scope, right up to the start of engineering design. They are focused on software projects, but would be applicable to multidisciplinary projects that involve some level of software as well. &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1572316217&quot;&gt;Software Project Survival Guide&lt;/a&gt; is also an interesting read across software-intensive project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T13:46:17.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11458" CreationDate="2014-05-02T13:52:51.710" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take this with a grain of salt because my corporate world may be different from your corporate world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Vision&lt;/strong&gt; is your richly-imagined future, addressing what it is and why you want to be there, and what your guiding principles are. An example is the mission/vision statement for Target stores &quot;Our mission is to make Target the preferred shopping destination for our guests by delivering outstanding value, continuous innovation and an exceptional guest experience.&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In order to achieve your Vision you need to define key &lt;strong&gt;Business Capabilities&lt;/strong&gt; that will bring you to the end-state. The &quot;vision&quot; that you list reads more like business capabilities to me.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business Capabilities are fleshed-out by defining &lt;strong&gt;Functional and Non-Functional requirements&lt;/strong&gt;. I think your second bullet under requirements falls in this category.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Design&lt;/strong&gt; describes how the requirements will actially be implemented. I think your bullets under design would fit here.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Specifications&lt;/strong&gt; refer to acceptance criteria that define successful achievement. I think your first bullet under requirements is a specification. Others could include e.g. processing time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T13:52:51.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11352" CreationDate="2014-05-02T13:56:32.533" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A conflict of interest only happens in this situation if the person in question allows corruption on the roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to think you could not be. However I changed that to should not be, because I have known someone balance it very well with great integrity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can it be done? Yes. &lt;br&gt;&#xA;Should it be done? Probably not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a look here for more&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://adaptagility.co.uk/can-the-scrum-master-also-be-a-developer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://adaptagility.co.uk/can-the-scrum-master-also-be-a-developer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8973" LastEditorUserId="23473" LastEditDate="2017-05-22T10:08:49.360" LastActivityDate="2017-05-22T10:08:49.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11458" CreationDate="2014-05-02T14:12:41.477" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me, this is a Vision Breakdown Structure, just like a work breakdown structure.  You are taking something from the abstract and strategy level and breaking it down to the very specific and tactical.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is easier to see if you think about a product with which we are all familiar, like a car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vision:  To be able to transport people and material quickly and efficiently using green power technology&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Requirement:  Move family of five with up to 500 pounds of cargo; between $30K to $50K price; adverse driving conditions capable; several configuration choices; hybrid technology&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Design:  SUV with four doors, 6- and 8- cylinder engine between 250HP to 300HP enabled by both fuel and battery, both manual and automatic transmission&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spec:  Specific body structure, specific engine model, specific transmission types.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of these levels is linked by degree of abstraction.  If you meet the tactical, you fulfill the strategy and vision.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T14:12:41.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11465" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-04T04:11:55.507" Score="1" ViewCount="573" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have begun working for a company that resell BPM products, for improvement and automation, including small Sw development sometimes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly, they have a colosal rate of failure when estimating time and other resources. I have been asked to provide ideas from my agile/waterfall developer experiences, but I do realize this is not a sw project entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that processes are design/maintenance heavy, and that have more people involved, sometimes unwilling to review/help on their own process automation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen handy practices from Sw projects to be present in BPM tools (versioning, project descriptors), but that's pretty much it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes me wonder, could they have metrics in common? Or even a methodology? Or are they 2 different worlds?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8982" LastActivityDate="2014-10-17T13:35:12.697" Title="Similarities / Differences between BPM and software projects" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3122" CreationDate="2014-05-04T19:22:12.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project success is evaluated continuously by various measure, numbers, ratios, values and attributes. Project success can be measured before during and after project completion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In simple terms, project success can be defined as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Achieving project objectives within schedule and within budget, to satisfy the stakeholder and learn from experience&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can use PMBOK standard to measure project success:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Time frame&lt;/strong&gt;: &#xA;Successful projects should take place as close as possible to the baseline plan. Any deviation or variation is unpleasant. &#xA;We can measure schedule success as a percentage =  1 - (Actual time - Planned time)/Planned Time * 100 = %&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cost&lt;/strong&gt;: &#xA;Successful projects should take place as close as possible to the planned budget.&#xA;We can use cost success as a percentage = 1 - (Actual cost- Planned cost)/Planned Cost* 100 = %&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Communication&lt;/strong&gt;: Successful projects should take place with least conflict, and most collaboration and ease of communication. This could have subjective measures like project team rating of ease of communication. We can also have objective measures, like the number of conflicts aroused as percentage of number of conflicts resolved.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scope&lt;/strong&gt;: Successful projects should take place with least unnecessary change, and most effective configuration management. We can use the ratio = (number of reasonable changes completed divided by number of reasonable change-requests) %&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stakeholder&lt;/strong&gt;: This is subjective, but a successful project should leave the stakeholders satisfied and willing to do further projects.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Quality&lt;/strong&gt;: Quality standards can be used to measure the quality of outcomes. Like Statistical Quality control SQC and other quality standards.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Human Resources&lt;/strong&gt;: Successful projects should use least human resources and keep the team members involved and satisfied.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Procurement&lt;/strong&gt;:  Successful projects should enhance relationship with vendors and other members of the supply chain.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Risk&lt;/strong&gt;:  Successful projects should take place with minimum risk. We can measure risk by number of risky events that were identified and how each risk was dealt with.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will come back to improve my answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8984" LastEditorUserId="8984" LastEditDate="2014-05-05T05:55:57.980" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T05:55:57.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1533" CreationDate="2014-05-04T19:39:22.140" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;PRINCE2 has basically the same general ideas and concepts in PMBOK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion &lt;strong&gt;PMBOK is:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More detailed; explains more concepts and processes and in details.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More versatile; and covers more concepts and ideas.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discusses almost every aspect of project management. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Uses professional and advanced terminology  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;uses charts and visualization extensively.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More known and used internationally.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PRINCE2 is:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Less detailed, gives you general idea.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;uses easy terminology and simple concepts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gives you strict directions (especially in Roles and Responsibilities charts)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;doesn't use charts and flow diagram as much as PMBOK&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Less known and used mainly in Europe.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8984" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T19:39:22.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11470" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-04T21:15:40.463" Score="0" ViewCount="451" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work with a non profit that offers programs for high school students in low resource settings. We don't certify them in anything but we run workshops and six, eight and ten week projects to get them to learn skills that will help their job prospects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of my students are not considering college at all. Some are considering community colleges. This isn't something I can persuade them to reconsider. But having skills that employers look for is something I can hold their attention with! Project management is a big one, in my mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm hoping to offer a six or eight week class on project management and would like to know if there are any open source project management that you may know that would be useful for my purposes. Even if it's a basic program, I hope that having a good understanding of how a project is run from start to completion will be a useful to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8401" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T13:45:38.010" Title="Free management software that is useful for beginners" Tags="&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-05-06T15:25:23.680" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3414" CreationDate="2014-05-04T22:30:32.523" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start-to-Finish relationship is used to schedule the timing of the successor task. i.e when task B should start so that to finish with the start of task A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: in this project, critical tasks are design, construction, assemble and deliver. But there are 2 non-critical tasks that need to be &amp;quot;ready&amp;quot; exactly on the day when the assembly task starts; those 2 tasks are (purchasing electric components and purchase fasteners).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those 2 tasks should be scheduled to start early enough, so that to finish (and be ready) on the day assembly starts - not sooner or later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Purchasing tasks should not finish too early, so that not to waste resources on inventory costs to store those components, but also those components should not arrive too late, because they are needed for the assembly. So the purchasing those components should finish just the day construction starts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Purpose of this type of dependency:&lt;/strong&gt; is to schedule tasks in order to finish relative to the start of the predecessor task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this example,&#xA;&lt;em&gt;purchase electric components&lt;/em&gt;: should start on May 13th in order to finish on May 15th&#xA;&lt;em&gt;purchase fasteners&lt;/em&gt;: should start on May 12th in order to finish on May 15th&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the timeline: The pink tasks are critical tasks, while the two dark tasks are non-critical, and their dependency on the task &amp;quot;Assemble&amp;quot; is defined as Start-to-Finish, as shown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qW8Mt.png&quot; alt=&quot;Purchasing tasks should Finish-to-start construction task&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8984" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T21:20:52.473" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11473" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11474" CreationDate="2014-05-05T07:18:46.143" Score="1" ViewCount="1246" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working in Microsoft Project for creating Low level plan in &lt;code&gt;.mpp&lt;/code&gt; files. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am having the circular dependency error as shown in below snapshot:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VbvIQ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know, is there any out-of-box functionality/tool/macro to find the circular dependency in Project(.mpp) files. I am debugging manually right now &amp;amp; plan has many thousand lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help is appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6128" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T04:38:45.297" Title="How to resolve &quot;Circular dependency&quot; in Microsoft Project" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11473" CreationDate="2014-05-05T08:51:54.120" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I finally found a easily approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Insert a new column in MSP copy all predeccessor column value in the new custom text field(say Text1_Pred)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;now bulk delete all values in predeccessor column&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now copy back all the value from Text1_Pred into Predeccessor Column&#xA;again&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it would start giving error with &quot;Task ID No&quot; as pasting error for&#xA;circular reference. Note TaskId.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It give you option to ignore problem or continue without problem or cancel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Choose NO (&quot;continue without problem &quot;) option to remove.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it will help someone else with the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.domorethanmanage.com/articles/2008/05/29/Resolvingcircularreferenc.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.domorethanmanage.com/articles/2008/05/29/Resolvingcircularreferenc.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pranavwithyou.wordpress.com/2014/06/02/how-to-resolve-circular-dependency-in-microsoft-project/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://pranavwithyou.wordpress.com/2014/06/02/how-to-resolve-circular-dependency-in-microsoft-project/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://go4answers.webhost4life.com/Example/resolve-circular-reference-sub-project-160953.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://go4answers.webhost4life.com/Example/resolve-circular-reference-sub-project-160953.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6128" LastEditorUserId="6128" LastEditDate="2014-06-03T04:38:45.297" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T04:38:45.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11475" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-05T11:05:46.180" Score="4" ViewCount="1524" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having great communication skills is widely acknowledged as a must-have for any aspiring or seasoned Project Manager, and communications regularly cited as a key success (or failure) factor in projects. I don't recall ever seeing a job advert for a PM that didn't include &quot;outstanding/exceptional/advanced commnunications skills&quot; or a PM candidate who didn't claim they had them. I personnally embrace the idea that the ability of a PM to communicate well can make or break a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in practice, how do you evaluate a Project Manager's communications skills? What sort of tangible evidence do you look for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT - To clarify the question: the need to evaluate a PM's communications skills pertains to both interviews and individual performance management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1722" LastEditorUserId="1722" LastEditDate="2014-05-07T10:25:00.777" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T08:13:50.647" Title="How do you evaluate a Project Manager's communications skills?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11475" CreationDate="2014-05-05T11:27:10.410" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a rather subjective assessment.  During the interview, you can easily assess their verbal skills and non verbal skills as they are answering your interview questions.  Likely, the way the candidate is resonating with you is due to their communication skills and not due to your prediction of their future performance.  You can assess their writing skills based on the messages they send you before and after you meet them, but you will not know if they received some help.  You can always test them when you are with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, PM communication skills are way more then their ability to talk and write. Project communications involve specific processes that enable two-way communications, understanding stakeholder communication needs based on the various segments, reporting tools and mechanisms, archival, setting comm cadence, etc.  I would argue this is far more important to a project than a single person's ability to talk.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T11:27:10.410" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11475" CreationDate="2014-05-05T11:29:33.983" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can evaluate a persons communication ability by giving him simple tests which can test his communication skills on three parameters &#xA;1. Clear&#xA;2. Concise&#xA;3. Complete&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had been to one interview where there was a test to listen to a telephonic (recorded) conversation and then answer questions based on the conversation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then we had a written test to draft emails in response for certain type of situation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then there was face to face interview where we were asked to talk about self for 2 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This tested the listening, writing and spoken abilities of a person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A manager is supposed to have honest, clear, concise and complete communication with all stake holders. If you can design the test/interview for your candidate based on the above factors you will have an awesome candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6209" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T11:29:33.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11475" CreationDate="2014-05-05T12:46:22.317" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me, the communication skills are mainly around the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Being able to convey complex topics in a way that is relevant to different audiences (technical and non-technical);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Knowing when and how to give bad news about project progress / cost overruns / risks and issues in a way that allows constructive discussion;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Being able to take the lead and facilitate discussion about how to resolve issues and problems, or how to develop an approach to allow solutions to be identified and developed. This requires the ability to elicit input from groups of subject matter experts who won't all be equally effective communicators, but who may all have something of value to add;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Being able to stay on track when others are trying to pull the discussion into different - often irrelevant - areas, and to do so without upsetting people.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But your question was about evaluating the skills. This is a complex matter which can only really be done in hindsight. However, assuming that you are looking for methods to use in interviews, one option may be to ask the candidate for examples of when he or she had communicated the different types of message in the past: ask what exactly had to be communicated, how was it conveyed (verbal? in writing?), who were the audience, and what was the outcome. Add on &quot;what would you do differently now?&quot; and you have a reasonable set of questions... but you must still be aware that some people will always &quot;talk a good game&quot; while others may be less confident, but equally effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also ask about the normal means of communicating in a candidate's previous organisation, and ask for a description of the pluses and minuses of each. The candidate should be able to explain what works and what doesn't work for the different types of communication - so, for example, a few PowerPoint slides really isn't enough to communicate a complex technical design, but a regular weekly update on progress might be done using that medium. Equally, a weekly status report might possibly be done as a verbal update (depending on the circumstances), and should almost certainly not be a 40 page densely written report. If the candidate can explain this sort of thing, they have at least a grasp on what good communication looks like, and that's a major step in the right direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T12:46:22.317" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11479" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11483" CreationDate="2014-05-05T13:11:49.413" Score="0" ViewCount="129" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have two user account types: free and premium. Free users can upload one file per day. Premium users can upload unlimited numbers of files per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it correct to split user stories by user types, as in the examples below?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a Free User I can upload 1 file per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a Premium User I can upload unlimited files per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2847" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-05-05T16:04:49.693" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T16:04:49.693" Title="Is it correct to split user stories by user types?" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11470" CreationDate="2014-05-05T13:51:19.697" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectlibre.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ProjectLibre&lt;/a&gt; is a good project management software that can be a replacement of Microsoft Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it could fit your needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kind regards&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8993" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T13:51:19.697" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11479" CreationDate="2014-05-05T13:58:13.810" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want or need to split the story this is a good approach. Each part is complete/ independent and generates user value. There is probably a technical overlap which means the second story to be build will be easier. But there is no necessary order. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4331" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T13:58:13.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11470" CreationDate="2014-05-05T14:07:16.230" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For PM training the best &quot;tools&quot; are a piece of paper, a pencil and an open mind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the limited time that you have available I don't think it is in your student's best interests to devote any of a software PM tool because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The key features of PM have little to do with tool use, they are process-related skills and an understanding of key underlying principles (have a justificable business case, focus on end products, learn from experience, defined roles/responsibilities, etc etc). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In addition, the really good PMs have incredible soft skills. These are also IMHO basic life skills, better to focus on them than learning software.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You teach them tool X, while in the real world they will have to learn tool Y.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T14:07:16.230" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11479" CreationDate="2014-05-05T14:33:31.803" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having separate user stories for each type of user / persona is a valid approach however another approach could be to &lt;strong&gt;write/split stories based on expected/intended value&lt;/strong&gt;. In your example, there could be one story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user, I want to upload file(s) so that I can store my data on the server&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and then this story can have 2 acceptance criteria:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Free user can upload 1 file / day &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Premium user can upload unlimited number of files&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Separate story for each persona would make more sense in case when each user expects a different value from the system, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;As a contributor, I want to upload my article so that my work can be published&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;As an editor, I want to review uploaded articles so that articles can be published&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;As an admin, I want to remove articles so that I can maintain site's content policy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T14:33:31.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11479" CreationDate="2014-05-05T14:55:18.353" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it correct to split user stories by user types?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe. Maybe not. It really depends on your organizational context. There is no universally correct answer, but one suspects that in this case you are splitting user stories this way because you are treating stories as specifications rather than vertical slices of functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Why Your Current Stories May Be Specifications&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is often best to allow the development team some latitude in determining implementation details, and to avoid creating &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_number_%28programming%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;magic numbers&lt;/a&gt; and technical debt by over-constraining user stories. Obviously, this must be balanced against the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_aren%27t_gonna_need_it&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;YAGNI&lt;/a&gt; principle to guard against over-engineering, but allowing flexible design within a team's self-organizing process is generally a more agile approach than detailed specifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you say how many uploads per day a given user may have, the easiest thing that could possibly work might be to hard-code an upload limit on &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; user records. One could argue that refinements could be done in future iterations, but one could also argue that this is unnecessary technical debt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Truly iterative development doesn't ignore the design and architectural phases of product development. Rather, it encourages a just-in-time (or perhaps a &quot;just enough&quot;) model where teams do sufficient planning to complete the features within the iteration with a minimum of technical debt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The stories you have, as currently constituted, spell out &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; the feature is to be implemented, rather than describing a missing feature (e.g. the ability to define upload limits) or explaining how the feature adds value. This may be perfectly acceptable in some cases, but overuse of stories as specifications can inhibit agility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;User Stories, POV, and Verticality&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User stories should definitely have a point of view, but the POV need not actually be the end user. For example, both of your stories may be addressed by a common story, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;As the marketing/sales director,&#xA;I want user upload limits to be set by some sort of permissions table&#xA;so that we can monetize our freemium model.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This story would probably get you to the same place as the stories in your original question, but has a different focus. The change in point of view provides the story more flexibility in its implementation (e.g. what if you wanted a third tier of bandwidth?), and provides a clearer statement of value and more context to guide the implementation details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this counterexample doesn't mean your original stories were &quot;wrong.&quot; The point is that you should split stories up in any way that makes sense for the team and creates a deliverable unit of value. However, limiting stories to functional specifications often creates artificial constraints, so it may be useful to consider higher-level goals when deciding on how granular to make a given set of stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T14:55:18.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11247" CreationDate="2014-05-05T18:52:13.777" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some good answers, won't duplicate what they said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At one company I worked for, it was widely disseminated knowledge (not sure if everyone knew, but many people did) that the Finance department budgeted $X for a team sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few reasons why this was useful and different from what you are proposing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Product Managers/Business stakeholders could easily look at what the ROI of stories are.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Developers could discuss things in terms of story points, then given a team's velocity, the cost could easily be figured out&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You want to separate cost for the same reason you want to separate time. It may take different developers different amounts of time to do a task, which in turn affects the cost.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is better to look at what a team can accomplish in a sprint, not an individual.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3697" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T05:47:27.350" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T05:47:27.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11486" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-06T00:55:52.963" Score="0" ViewCount="489" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently our company has taken the plunge into using Atlassian for our project management tool. Right now we're using Jira and Confluence. As an architect at our company, one of the things I've begun to maintain is something we call a &quot;Preliminary Project Assessment.&quot; This includes very high level project components, risks, assessments, notes, things we will be ignoring for this project and estimates. Specifically, the components are technically formed chunks of work. For example, a component would be &quot;create new mobile application.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the scrum teams kick off, they're working off the user stories and breaking them off into tasks. What I'd love to have is a nice way to map the user story back to the larger components they effect. Hopefully this will not only help me with traceability, but will also help the team easily get back to my initial thoughts on the piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today we've got all of our users stories and sprints captured in Jira but this document in box. Before I go through and start adding super terse comments into each story, does anyone else have a thought on how I can use the Atlassian suite of products to help achieve what I'm looking for? Above and beyond that, does anyone have experience adding traceability from initial project planning down to the tasks the team executes on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9002" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T01:09:53.040" LastActivityDate="2016-08-13T22:04:37.717" Title="Requirements Tracking in Jira for &quot;Preliminary Project Assessment&quot;" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11486" CreationDate="2014-05-06T01:07:52.073" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to an Atlassian Knowledge Base &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRAKB/Using+JIRA+for+Requirements+Management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; on the subject:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While JIRA has been developed primarily as an issue and project tracker out of the box, you can use JIRA for requirements management in conjunction with Confluence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among other things, the article discusses issue-level requirements, &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Product+Requirements+Blueprint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Confluence Blueprints&lt;/a&gt;, and provides a link to a third-party add-on named &lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.optimizory.rmsis.plugin.jira-rmsis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;RMsis&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T01:07:52.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11488" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-06T08:06:38.743" Score="2" ViewCount="488" Body="&lt;p&gt;If i work in a software team which is typically driven by delivery, and if we want to study the introduction of peer review, test driven development and refactoring, how much time delay can be expected in a typical delivery cycle ? Would it be 30% slower, costlier ? Would it reduce over time ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that most managers want to introduce these but are under time and cost crunch and so do not introduce them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9005" LastEditorUserId="9005" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T09:55:32.050" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T21:15:21.227" Title="How much overhead for code-review , test driven development , refactoring" Tags="&lt;quality&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11489" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11500" CreationDate="2014-05-06T10:06:57.810" Score="0" ViewCount="1118" Body="&lt;p&gt;When defining the constraints of a project, the classical Iron Triangle defines three concurrent constraints: Resources, Scope and Time. Some more complex models (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle#Evolution_of_the_Project_Constraint_Model&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Project Constraint Model&lt;/a&gt;) add Quality to the above list. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that view in a classical waterfall view, where quality is a separate process. It makes perfect sense at some level when QA team is some independent entity. The QA team spend time to test product, count defects or missing features and ask for product changes to development team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I wonder if it is meaningful to see Quality as an adjustment variable inside an Agile team. As I understand it, Quality should be on par with Velocity. Some structural property of a team that you can measure and try to improve but never really control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the past I've seen managers trying to use it as a lever and that lead to unpredictable results. In some cases trying to lower Quality lead to higher Costs, Resources and Development times (defects were caught later in the process, and that has a well known cost). I've also seen exactly the opposite: well meaning teams trying to get higher Quality which translated to heavier processes (more code reviews for instance, or more tests written), and more complex definitions of done... but without any observable positive relationship with customer value reached in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end I believe Quality is not a true adjustment variable of Agile process inside of a team, as you can neither control it nor measure it, but merely something like Velocity that can be used for it's predictive power (how many bugs will there be in the final product?) but not really use as an adjustment variable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is Quality a legitimate constraint in Agile teams? How should it be measured? Can it be used as an adjustment variable and how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9008" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T17:46:51.087" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T01:03:09.563" Title="Can Quality be an adjustable constraint of an agile process?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;quality&gt;&lt;process-controls&gt;&lt;constraints&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11488" CreationDate="2014-05-06T10:31:27.960" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;how much time delay can be expected in a typical delivery cycle?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no pre-determined number which can be attributed to delays but it is certain that introducing these elements into your current process will reduce team's velocity and delivery, at least in the short term. This number may vary from company to company and team to team based on skills, cohesion, culture, and environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One suggestion would be to introduce these items one by one instead of starting all of these items at once. Include one such improvement into the process and measure its impact on velocity and delivery cycle. Let it go on like this and fine tune it according to your needs and situation. Once the team has a good handle on it, introduce another process improvement and repeat the cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These measures should be considered an investment. Delays due to such measures would give you profits in the future in terms of better quality, less headache in code maintainability, evenly distributed code knowledge in the team, etc. Some of these items such as Refactoring are essential. Regular refactoring should be part of your delivery estimations. Sometimes it is necessary to refactor code in order to implement a new feature. You cannot (rather should not) ignore it in favor of feature delivery, otherwise it is going on haunt you in the long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T10:31:27.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11488" CreationDate="2014-05-06T12:11:29.303" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I find that most managers want to introduce these but are under time and cost crunch and so do not introduce them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly it is the norm that there is always time and money enough to fix problems but never enough to do things right the first time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to build a business case for peer review etc ask yourself how much it is costing your organization in time and effort and customer dissatisfaction to fix problems that are identified after delivery. I would wager that adding peer review into the mix would be cost and time neutral at worst if you look at your systems end-to-end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T12:11:29.303" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11470" CreationDate="2014-05-06T13:45:38.010" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eylean.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eylean board&lt;/a&gt;. As it provides dynamic and playful interface with easy to get started and intuitive use. It can be used as a free stand alone version for personal and commercial use according to license. It packs all the modern features for project management based on lean and agile: task board, time tracking, team resources, reporting. Also, it can be extended by importing tasks from office tools like:&#xA;1. Microsoft project&#xA;2. Outlook&#xA;3. Excel&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OEYLE.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Agile task board&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5562" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T13:45:38.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11488" CreationDate="2014-05-06T15:28:19.597" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been part of the introduction of Test Driven Development (TDD) at a previous company and 30% was a good thumb suck  for how long it initially took, however the reduction in defects discovered in Test and then release was significant and sold the entire dept on the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the next few projects it did reduce but not by any great amount (perhaps 5%), however the defects remained at a much lower level than other projects and freed up the developers to do more work rather than be bogged down in BAU defect resolution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot say how it worked in the long term as I moved on and in my current workplace they do not use TDD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T15:28:19.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11495" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-05-06T17:55:39.923" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Related links:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_constraints&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Theory of Constraints&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Management Triangle&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/project-success&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Success Sliders&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?&amp;amp;q=pmbok%20constraints&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google search&lt;/a&gt; for &lt;code&gt;PMBOK constraints&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T17:55:39.923" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T17:55:39.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11496" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-05-06T17:55:39.923" Score="0" Body="For questions about project or process constraints, or about the Theory of Constraints management paradigm." OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T17:55:39.923" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T17:55:39.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11489" CreationDate="2014-05-06T19:51:03.580" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quality has to be a constraint, whether or not it is measurable by itself or is so intrinsic to scope is another question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I disagree with your assertion that you can't control quality and that it cannot be measured. The key is that you have to define what you mean by &quot;quality&quot; up front, in other words how well does a piece of functionality have to work in order to be acceptable to the client. That will not only inform your assignment of story points to a deliverable, but will also give you some level of predictability in terms of effects if taking shortcuts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The challenge is to get the client to define quality objectively. The easy ones are quality measures like &quot;No more than X defects reported in Y transactions during UAT&quot; or &quot;Processing time of less than Z seconds&quot;, these can be measured and can give you the opportunity to use them as adjustment variables. But you will also need to consider inherently more subjective metrics like how intuitive the UI is or how pretty the formatting of output is, though if you can turn them into a yes/no type metric you could possibly use those as adjustment variables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T19:51:03.580" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11488" CreationDate="2014-05-06T21:15:21.227" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;You can reduce post-release issues and make changes with confidence&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;how much time delay can be expected in a typical delivery cycle ?&#xA;  Would it be 30% slower, costlier ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We were in a similar situation in one of my previous assignments. When one of the deployments caused a significant disruption of service, we did a retrospective and decided that peer review was the only way to catch those kinds of problems. The cost was only about 10 to 15%. However, we were able to see the payoff in the increased confidence level with which we were able to deploy and fewer post-release issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Test driven development and refactoring are a different kettle of fish. For one thing, you don't want to venture into refactoring unless you already have unit tests written for that part of the code. Otherwise, you will end up with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Heavy regression testing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Subtle bugs that surface only under production conditions, in spite of heavy regression testing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you have to invest upfront in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Selecting a suitable TDD framework.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Training your dev team in TDD.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The payoff would be harder to pin down unless you take the following steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explicitly call out what benefits you are looking for.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implement it in one app or one module and see how it compares with the others.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would it reduce over time ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not really, except from climbing the learning curve. But, the production issues and the consequent fire fighting should go down. If you have QA testers, they can focus less on code coverage and more on user experience, performance testing and so on. Also, developers can take on code refactoring with more confidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T21:15:21.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11489" CreationDate="2014-05-07T01:03:09.563" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quality is a widely-recognized project management constraint. To the extent that one can modify the quality controls applied to a project, one can impact the quality of the deliverables. In addition, by adjusting quality, one can impact other constraints that affect (or are affected by) the quality control process such as schedule or budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile processes should have explicitly defined quality controls. A well-defined control is measurable, even if the measurement is simply pass/fail, so agile frameworks certainly support the ability to measure &quot;quality&quot; as defined within the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Quality Defined by &quot;Definition of Done&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By definition, &quot;quality&quot; is a &lt;em&gt;qualitative&lt;/em&gt; assessment. From a purely pragmatic point of view, it means that quality &lt;em&gt;controls&lt;/em&gt; are what you should measure against.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within an agile framework like Scrum, quality should be defined by the Definition of Done. The organization or the team generally defines &quot;quality&quot; in terms of fitness for purpose, and the Definition of Done should therefore describe the steps necessary to certify a potentially-shippable increment as fit for that purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Constraints and Sliders&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within project management, constraints and sliders are generally used to focus a project and to define the trade-offs inherent in a system. The Iron Triangle is an &lt;em&gt;example&lt;/em&gt; of such a constrained system, and the paradigm posits that the third side of such a triangle is determined by the other two sides. If your sides are Scope, Schedule, and Cost, then:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can control Cost by modifying Schedule and Scope.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can affect Schedule by modifying Scope and Cost.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can impact Scope by modifying Schedule and Cost.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While a useful concept, the theory of constraints doesn't limit you to exactly three sides, nor does the paradigm insist that the constraints be the same across all projects. In fact, the Project Management Book of Knowledge currently advocates a model with six constraints:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scope&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Schedule&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Budget&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resources&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps a more agile alternative is Mike Cohn's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/project-success&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Success Sliders&lt;/a&gt;, which provides a less-geometrical way to visualize the trade-offs inherent in the theory of constraints. Among other reasons, I personally recommend this approach over the more traditional triple-constraint precisely because it sidesteps definitional arguments about the commonly-accepted constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Measuring Quality&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quality within an agile process is both measurable and adjustable, and fitness for purpose is tightly bound up with a project's scope. One measures quality against the Definition of Done, and by the metrics associated with any process controls created to meet that definition. For example, a partial Definition of Done for a software project may state that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unit tests shall provide at least 60% code coverage.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each feature shall be accompanied by measurable acceptance tests.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All integration and acceptance tests shall be 100% green at the end of each iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A build must run without error on a continuous integration server before being added to the iteration's release.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of these quality controls can be measured and adjusted to suit the needs of the project. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Code coverage requirements could be increased to improve long-term maintainability at the expense of higher labor or infrastructure costs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The requirement for continuous integration could be sacrificed for speed or budget reasons.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By modifying the quality controls within the process, one can therefore impact other constraints. In addition, by feeding the results of the quality controls into the inspect-and-adapt cycle, the organization gains the ability to gauge the quality of the product and the sustainability of the project itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T01:03:09.563" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8955" CreationDate="2014-05-07T07:09:03.683" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some answers are refering to the Scrum Guide when they say no. However, according to that reference I'd say it would be no problem for both the SM and the PO to develop, given the right circumstances:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner and Scrum Master roles are not included in this&#xA;  count [the development team size] unless they are also executing the&#xA;  work of the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9015" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-02-05T14:12:58.780" LastActivityDate="2019-02-05T14:12:58.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="11503" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-07T22:25:13.793" Score="6" ViewCount="5561" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for a multinational IT consultancy firm that has a number of 'software assets' that it sells and develops for its clients. I started with the company straight out of University in a software testing position on a team implementing a solution using one of these assets. In the year I was in that role, I became very familiar with the workings of the system, much more so than the other testers. I was offered a product owner role on one of the development teams and took it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is &quot;where do I go from here?&quot;. I am currently working as a product owner now, but I would like to know what are the future career options from this role. I have been looking online and there isn't really a whole lot of info there. What should I be doing to achieve the next step, and what would that next step be with my experience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9025" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-06-22T22:48:56.103" LastActivityDate="2020-04-27T13:53:59.343" Title="Career Progression from Product Owner" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;career&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11504" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11508" CreationDate="2014-05-07T23:59:48.913" Score="3" ViewCount="2128" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've set up workflows, workflow schemes, issue type schemes, and everything else required to get a project through my customized steps from new idea to live release. The default behavior of &quot;Agile&quot; JIRA has caused a problem, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When using the Plan tab under the Agile view, it shows any sprints and the Backlog of issues in your project. &lt;strong&gt;If an item is not shown in one of the columns&lt;/strong&gt; (seen under the Work tab for a sprint), &lt;strong&gt;it will not show up in the Backlog.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to make these items appear, without having to show the column?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Explicit Details&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Columns: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All Issues Column || To Do || In Progress || Done&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I have 50 items in All Issues Column, it shows all 50 in each sprint. So I remove the All Issues Column, leaving:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To Do || In Progress || Done&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But now the 50 items don't even show up in the Backlog in the &quot;Plan&quot; tab.  I want them to show up with the &quot;Plan&quot; tab view but without having to include the column.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9026" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T02:18:34.767" Title="In JIRA, is it possible to have items show up in a project backlog but not show up in a sprint's column?" Tags="&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11503" CreationDate="2014-05-08T05:11:33.883" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Job titles mean whatever an organization wants them to mean. However, in my experience a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28software_development%29#Product_Owner&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Product Owner&lt;/a&gt; (or, in less agile environments, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_manager&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Product Manager&lt;/a&gt;) is often responsible for a single product or a closely-related suite of products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advancement within Product Management is generally into managing a &lt;em&gt;portfolio&lt;/em&gt; of products. In some companies, a Product Portfolio Manager or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_management&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Program Manager&lt;/a&gt; role might be considered a step up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my personal experience, I've also seen people move from product ownership roles into sales or marketing leadership positions. This may or may not be a typical career progression, but it certainly happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said all that, there's also something to be said for staying with a given role but expanding your scope. For example, you might consider becoming a Product Owner on a larger project, or within a larger company. One doesn't necessarily have to change job titles to experience career growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T05:11:33.883" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11504" CreationDate="2014-05-08T09:14:06.610" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seem to be two orthogonal issues involved with your current &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/agile&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;JIRA Agile&lt;/a&gt; board configuration/usage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If I have 50 items in All Issues Column, it shows all 50 in each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether an issue shows up in a specific column in &lt;em&gt;Work mode&lt;/em&gt; depends on how you have been &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AGILE/Configuring+Columns#ConfiguringColumns-MappingColumnstoJIRAStatuses&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mapping Columns to JIRA Statuses&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By default, a board's columns are mapped to the default JIRA statuses as shown in the following tables. You can change this if you wish. For example, if you are using additional, customised JIRA statuses, you will probably want to map them to appropriate columns in your board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the default &lt;code&gt;Done&lt;/code&gt; column shows issues with either the &lt;code&gt;Resolved&lt;/code&gt; or the &lt;code&gt;Closed&lt;/code&gt; status&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;alternatively you could also add another column &lt;code&gt;Closed&lt;/code&gt; and move the &lt;code&gt;Closed&lt;/code&gt; status to that one if you wanted to visualize this aspect or allow users to execute the &lt;code&gt;Resolved&lt;/code&gt;=&gt; &lt;code&gt;Closed&lt;/code&gt; workflow transition by 'moving it across columns'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given your issues apparently only showed up in your custom &lt;code&gt;All Issues&lt;/code&gt; column, I suspect you have a custom status in place or moved the default ones to that column specifically. Since you now removed that column, the workflow steps formerly mapped to that column should now show up in the &lt;em&gt;Unmapped Statuses&lt;/em&gt; column in your board configuration and you need to remap them to the other columns according to your desired configuration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But now the 50 items don't even show up in the Backlog in the &quot;Plan&quot; tab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An issue only shows up in the &lt;em&gt;Plan mode's&lt;/em&gt; backlog as long as it hasn't been assigned to one or more sprints - in order to make it reappear in the backlog, you need to remove it from any sprint, there are two possible scenarios:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the sprint has already been started (that seems to be the case for you) - please refer to &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AGILE/Removing+an+Issue+from+a+Sprint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Removing an Issue from a Sprint&lt;/a&gt; for how to achieve this&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the sprint hasn't been started yet - just drag the issues from the sprint down to the backlog again&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to the column configuration addressed above, please also note the additional constraints outlined in &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AGILE/Using+Plan+Mode&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Using Plan Mode&lt;/a&gt; - in particular, &lt;em&gt;An issue will only be visible in Plan mode if&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;the issue is not a Sub-Task;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;the issue matches the board's Saved Filter (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AGILE/Configuring+Filters&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Configuring Filters&lt;/a&gt;);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;the issue's status maps to one of the board's &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AGILE/Configuring+Columns&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;columns&lt;/a&gt; (but not the 'Done' column);and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;there is at least a status being mapped to the right most column. Eg. If you have the columns To Do, In Progress, and Done, ensure that&#xA;  you have a status mapped to In Progress at least. If you map all the&#xA;  statuses to the first column (To Do), you will not be able to see any&#xA;  issues in the Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="177" LastEditorUserId="177" LastEditDate="2014-05-09T02:18:34.767" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T02:18:34.767" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11512" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-08T14:59:43.460" Score="3" ViewCount="738" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a small company, we don't have clear roles and depending on the case somebody different can take the role of project manager, this is great but each one organizes the project different which can create some confusion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been wondering whether it would be a good idea to create a document specifying the process required for each type of project. What is important to include in the document? How can one handle improvements and measure what works best?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9033" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T20:28:57.423" Title="How to define clear processes for different projects?" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;process-improvement&gt;&lt;process-controls&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11512" CreationDate="2014-05-08T20:48:42.143" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you're talking about is creating a 'methodology', and yes, it's a good idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The methodology is created for the reason you mentioned - so that (most) anyone can step in and keep the project moving, because it follows an established process and requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for what to include - that depends on the project type and what your company feels is important. At the very least you will probably want a project charter or scope statement (what it is we're doing, what's included, who's the client, etc.), an estimate and budget procedure (how do we develop the estimate, how do we define the budget), the processes for execution of the project, the monitoring processes, and the close out procedure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Monitoring process addresses the improvement and measurement aspect of your question. It's here that you'll determine what's important and needs to be monitored/evaluation, how often, what metrics, what variance tolerances are acceptable, etc.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T20:48:42.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11514" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-09T01:33:16.073" Score="3" ViewCount="150" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say I have five columns in my project. They are visible in a Scrum project when a sprint begins, as expected, when you click on the &quot;Work&quot; tab in the Plan / Work / Report options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One || Two || Three || Four || Five&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'd like is for one user or group of users to see the following when they click &quot;Work&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Two&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Three&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then I'd like another user or group of users to see the following when they click &quot;Work&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Three&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Four&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Five&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9026" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T10:31:49.077" Title="In JIRA, how can I show certain columns to specific users?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11515" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11528" CreationDate="2014-05-09T08:13:48.150" Score="5" ViewCount="897" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently come across this situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;user stories are estimated using story points&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;timebox planning session has taken place and everything is agreed on&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;timebox (three weeks) is in week three&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;team decides a story has been estimated too small but still thinks that they can get it done in the timebox&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the team wants the original estimated story point value to be increased, say from 5 to 13 to reflect how much effort is now involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own feeling is that the story points have been estimated as a best guess to aid with planning. Now that the timebox is under way, I think the team questions if the story can still be fully completed within the timebox. We should not re-estimate it. However, it may be useful to keep a note for future estimating or planning sessions for similar items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The culture is that story points are used as justification of what team members contribute to the timebox, and therefore always get mapped to days:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 = 1 day&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;5 = 2 days etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I don't agree with this approach and re-estimating the story seems another symptom of this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally, if the team has committed to delivering 100 points based on previous velocity and the client asked to add 8 points during the timebox we would say no as the velocity is 100, the timebox is fixed and we couldn't possibly add more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, it should not then be OK for the team to effectively increase the velocity to 'fix' a perceived estimation problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess my question is: What would be recommended practice for re-estimating a story mid timebox and what are the pros and cons of the approach my team wants to take?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, I am not the project manager in this team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1855" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2014-06-03T10:25:13.260" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T10:25:13.260" Title="Re-Estimating a story's points midway through a timebox" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11514" CreationDate="2014-05-09T09:32:54.337" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's not available as a direct feature for a single board that you can enforce as the board creater/owner, however, you can easily &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AGILE/Creating+a+Board#CreatingaBoard-CopyinganExistingBoard&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Copy an Existing Board&lt;/a&gt;, then &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AGILE/Configuring+Columns&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Configure the Columns&lt;/a&gt; in each one as desired and make the board available to the resp. target audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Please note that the &lt;em&gt;ability to access JIRA Agile Scrum board is controlled by the &lt;strong&gt;filter that is currently in use by that board&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. So if this isn't only about usability, rather also about security, you would need to also adjust the &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Using+Filters&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;filter&lt;/a&gt; in use, see &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AGILE/How+to+restrict+the+access+to+JIRA+Agile+Scrum+board&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How to restrict the access to JIRA Agile Scrum board&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="177" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T09:32:54.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11519" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11529" CreationDate="2014-05-09T14:42:58.193" Score="3" ViewCount="3310" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read some articles and questions, but didn't come up with an answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a number of different opinions about it. Some say, development team should make a decision on this matter to achieve best productivity, some other say there's almost no need to do it, because of the development team's commitment to deliver the work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've noticed, that scrum teams doesn't see a big difference in ordering of user stories. The only thing they're trying to achieve is delivering user stories in a sprint backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe it's lack of defining sprint goal on sprint planning or writing bad user stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8983" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T16:42:44.883" Title="How is sprint backlog prioritized?" Tags="&lt;prioritization&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11520" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11523" CreationDate="2014-04-23T12:12:13.887" Score="1" ViewCount="179" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about to become a Scrum Master in one of two teams in a small software company. This is completely new for us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What bothers me is that our current manager will become the Product Owner and although I try I can't extract from him how his current responsibilities will translate to his new role. Although he is all behind this change, I gather that he is going to continue being &quot;in charge&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off, he convinced the execs to purchase Jira and expects complete and immediate sync with the Scrum board. I pointed out to him that we will probably have enough on our plates at least at the start, but he seems innegotiable. There are other points as well, e.g. he insists we use &quot;planning poker&quot; over anything else, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to put it in a more general question: How does one deal with this sort of situation? WHO gets to deal with it? Where did &quot;escalation&quot; go? Is it still there, do I simply escalate to someone else? Do I argue with the guy, who is still my boss?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9124" OwnerDisplayName="Karol Trojanowski" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T14:43:51.277" Title="How to deal with the current corporate food-chain going in the way when adopting Scrum?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11520" CreationDate="2014-04-24T19:42:23.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see that he does not fully understand the scrum. If it’s possible send manager to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Courses/Professional-Scrum-Product-Owner&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;product owner training&lt;/a&gt;. Or, you can try work with new product owner from business (not IT manager) and transform your current manager to line manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9153" OwnerDisplayName="Mariusz" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T19:42:23.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11520" CreationDate="2014-04-30T11:32:53.857" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My recommendation is to refer to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Portals/0/Documents/Scrum%20Guides/2013/Scrum-Guide.pdf#zoom=100&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; any time there's a disagreement. If you read it carefully, it clearly explains all the details of Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Owner's responsibilities are clearly defined in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Portals/0/Documents/Scrum%20Guides/2013/Scrum-Guide.pdf#zoom=100&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;. Remember, your role as a Scrum Master is to make him aware of his responsibilities and at some points tell him to back off and let the team self-organize&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jira Agile works well with Scrum. Why not make a task to configure Jira, estimate it and assign to the first sprint? Usually the first sprint provides very small business value, as there're lots of configuration and setup tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Guide says: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Development Team is responsible for all estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in my opinion the Team chooses a way of estimating tasks. PO just needs to know the estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Escalation - the power of Scrum lies in its simplicity. It's easy to find arguments on the web to support various Scrum concepts. So first try to prepare and talk with your manager. If that doesn't work, you may try to escalate, provided that someone on a higher level supports Scrum ;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8992" OwnerDisplayName="Dominik Kapusta" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T11:32:53.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11520" CreationDate="2014-05-06T19:58:07.443" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although he is all behind this change, I gather that he is going to&#xA;  continue being &quot;in charge&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, the Product Owner is technically &quot;in charge&quot;, but only when it comes to decide &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; needs to be done, not &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt;. The PO is the ultimate responsible for the delivery of the product, the &quot;&lt;em&gt;single throat to choke&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, but that doesn't equate to them making all decisions, especially when it comes to process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @Dominik correctly pointed out earlier, your role as Scrum Master includes making sure all team members (including the PO) stay within their role boundaries. The problem, of course, is that he's your boss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how's your relation with him? How much &quot;trust reservoir&quot; have you accumulated so far, so that you can use it to (gently) push back?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Managers in that situation may feel they will loose control of the team, and with that the ability to deliver. You could have a conversation to reassure him that he's not loosing control, but just exercising it from a different angle: rather that making decisions on how the team will do their tasks, he's still in control of what pieces of work get done and in which order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also may be making those decisions simply because he is just used to make them in the past. Maybe the solution is as simply as having a conversation showing that the team (with your help as SM) is willing to take care of those aspects of management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in more general terms, and going back to your question of  &quot;How does one deal with this sort of situation?&quot;, the answer is that you're moving into the territory of &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.peace.ca/crucialconversations.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;crucial conversations&lt;/a&gt;&quot; and &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_to_YES&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;principled negotiation&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, and there's no simple solution for this. However, if you decide to move to the Scrum Master career path, you'll have to get familiar with that sort of &quot;soft skill&quot; topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This involves watching for the safety of the conversation (&quot;he's my boss, can I say this?&quot;), moving the conversation from position (&quot;we need to use Jira&quot;) to principle (&quot;we need to track our work&quot;), seeking common ground and understanding of problems, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, the Scrum Master and the Product Owner need to work as peers, and that's the problem you're facing, so the solution is not about a technique, special procedure or escalation mechanism, but about building that relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9070" OwnerDisplayName="Fernando Cuenca" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T19:58:07.443" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11524" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-08T09:22:48.110" Score="2" ViewCount="1189" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have some user stories that have little tasks on basic design with highest priority. This tasks will lead to a conversation about the basic design of the user story and will generate other tasks for the user story. So, how would you handle this?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been told that the design should be done in the sprint for each user story but this would change the sprint backlog because it will generate new tasks derived from the created design what is not good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One option would be just to add a full iteration where just design (just the necessary not the whole) is done and will generate tasks for the next iteration. But I guess this is not the right way to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could you comment how you solve this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8834" OwnerDisplayName="Notbad" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2014-06-10T19:16:35.593" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T15:18:40.723" Title="User story contains a design task that generates other tasks" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11524" CreationDate="2014-05-08T10:05:54.747" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sprint Backlog is created and managed by the development team. According to the Scrum framework, generally &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8215/&quot;&gt;nothing goes from the product backlog into the sprint backlog once a sprint has started&lt;/a&gt;. The whole concept of sprint estimation and team velocity depends on this rule. If the sprint backlog keeps on changing and is a moving target then the team may not be able to meet the sprint goal and may not get a measure of team's velocity. However, as the stories are being worked on during a sprint, the team may get more clarity/information on the stories. In this case, the team may decide to add/remove tasks from the sprint backlog if it helps them in completing the sprint goal. For example, a minor UI validation task for an existing sprint story can be added to the sprint but adding a task to change whole UI flow may jeopardize sprint delivery. If the Product Owner thinks that, after discovering this new task, there is no point in continuing with the sprint then he/she may terminate the current sprint and start a new sprint with the top priority items from the product backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feedback and conversations may generate new stories. By default all new stories go into the product backlog. The product owner is responsible to regularly prioritize the backlog. From which a sprint backlog is populated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are correct that design should be part of the user story and should be done in the same sprint. However, its not such that once designed can never change. During sprint review/demo there can be feedback/changes on the existing design, add that to the product backlog and handle it based on the priority set by the PO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" OwnerDisplayName="Aziz Shaikh" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T06:22:58.767" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11519" CreationDate="2014-05-09T15:25:21.863" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is correct that its up to the development team on how to tackle the sprint backlog because they have agreed to complete the backlog in the sprint timebox (there should be no half done stories at the end of the sprint). Neither the Scrum Master nor the Product Owner have any say in this matter. The team may find dependencies between sprint stories and may decide the priority in that way or they may start with the hardest story first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is recommended that the team writes technical tasks for each story. Then the whole team works on one story (or as minimum as possible). Each member working on one technical task of the same story. This way the number of stories with work-in-progress status is at a minimum.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T15:25:21.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11515" CreationDate="2014-05-09T15:35:53.990" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story estimates are &lt;em&gt;estimates&lt;/em&gt;, not guarantees. They contribute to an overall average velocity range that is useful for capacity planning. They are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; management targets, and changing story points within a Sprint tends to sweep process problems under the rug and artificially inflate/deflate a team's velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An accepted axiom of agile planning is that story points are a measure of &lt;em&gt;relative size&lt;/em&gt; (not time). The estimates are often wrong in the specific, but in the statistical aggregate they approach a &quot;good enough&quot; number for planning purposes and scheduling control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Handling Inaccurate Estimates&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We should not re-estimate it. However, it may be useful to keep a note for future estimating or planning sessions for similar items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is correct. The estimate developed in Sprint Planning is the estimate; it must not change within the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, if a story has been mis-estimated, you have several choices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do the best you can with it; the story will then either be &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;not done&lt;/em&gt; at the end of the Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the story is essential to the Sprint Goal, coordinate with the Product Owner to see if the story's scope can be modified without negatively impacting the Sprint Goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If neither the Sprint Backlog nor the story scope can be changed without risking the Sprint Goal, then:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the team can swarm over the story at the expense of other (perhaps less critical) stories, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the team can ask the Product Owner to call for an Early Sprint Termination and a return to Sprint Planning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of how you deal with the issue, the mis-estimation (including assumptions, unexpected process issues, roadblocks, and so forth) should be grist for the mill at the next Sprint Retrospective. The point is not to lay blame for the incorrect estimate, but to understand the root cause and to continuously improve the estimation and planning process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-05-09T17:40:03.890" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T17:40:03.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11519" CreationDate="2014-05-09T16:42:44.883" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no &quot;one true way&quot; to organize a Sprint Backlog. A lot depends on the granularity of the stories, the idempotence of each story, and the overarching Sprint Goal. However, I would strongly recommend that Sprint Backlog prioritization be a continual focus within each Sprint Retrospective, so that the team can inspect-and-adapt that process until it is optimal for the team and the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Guidelines for Prioritizing a Sprint Backlog&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint Backlog contains stories accepted into the Sprint by the Development Team from the Product Backlog. During the second half of Sprint Planning, the Development Team should decompose each of the stories into tasks to be placed on the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some teams may skip task breakdowns because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the stories are extremely granular and self-explanatory;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the back of each story card is used to itemize the tasks required to make the story meet the Definition of Done; or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;for some other reason that seems good (and has proven effective) for that particular self-organizing team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories and tasks (if any) are then grouped in one of several ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Low-hanging fruit first. In other words, prioritize the easy stuff to leave more room in the Sprint for more complex tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Big items first. The assumption here is that the bigger or harder stories are more essential to the Sprint Goal, and that the smaller stories can be done in whatever slack time remains later.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dependency order. Stories (and tasks) which are prerequisites to other items in the Sprint Backlog are prioritized so that stories with intra-Sprint dependencies are completed in the necessary order.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tasks should be grouped with the stories to which they belong, and listed in some logical or dependency order within the story. Stories and story groups are then prioritized within the Sprint Backlog in accordance with the team's current practices. These practices evolve over time, so you may need to experiment with the prioritization techniques that work best for each team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T16:42:44.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11530" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-09T17:25:32.773" Score="-3" ViewCount="117" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problem:&lt;/strong&gt; How to make sure the project keeps reliable knowing that its parts are reliable when tested separately?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background:&lt;/strong&gt; Our project is currently structured as having each team working in a specific deliverable. Each deliverable is being built in its specific code branch and there's automation processes testing each deliverable over the branches. As each deliverable progresses, they're merged back into Trunk along with other deliverables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not possible, however, to apply the same automation applied into software pieces into the whole project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should exist a specific team to test the integration between deliverables?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5576" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2014-06-07T12:42:21.317" LastActivityDate="2014-06-07T13:07:15.883" Title="In a programming project, how to ensure the project reliability when going up-level on the WBS?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11486" CreationDate="2014-05-09T20:58:46.467" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jira has an issue type called an &quot;epic&quot;. When you create new user stories, you can link them to an epic. The epic / story categorization is intuitively presented and displayed on the Jira Agile board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to report only on the Jira issue &quot;component&quot;, using the search and filter capabilities, and then if need be, exporting to xls, is an approach that, perhaps not elegant, generally works for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Traceability is an interesting topic. I've traced tests to stories (Requirements) by just typing in the issue id(s) of the story(ies) within the parent test issue (using Zephyr). The same concept applies to other types of issues you want to trace. Similarly, you can &quot;link&quot; issues. I've found it all somewhat a crude solution though, in terms of getting clear visualization. Another approach for traceability might be a two-dimensional gadget on your dashboard. These are great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9051" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T20:58:46.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11532" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-10T01:22:46.597" Score="1" ViewCount="226" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just came out of an &quot;Agile&quot; team where the sprints are 3-weeks long, and during this same time, about 12 hours of that time is spent on exercises such as Scrum grooming, reviewing, Scrum, and retrospective, and the team works to develop and test within the time left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this is the typical Agile implementation you find in many small/medium sized companies. You hear talks of avoiding code smells etc. in many of these settings, but the fact is many Agile teams I have worked with rarely spend more than 1 hour thinking of the design for the story/tasks on their plate. My question is, to ensure you do not end up with spagetti code, how much of the sprint-time should be allocated to ensuring that each and every new feature, new tweak,patch, passes the &lt;a href=&quot;http://martinfowler.com/design.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;good design&quot;&lt;/a&gt; test?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I came across this article on Martin Fowler's blog, &lt;a href=&quot;http://martinfowler.com/articles/designDead.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Is Design Dead?&lt;/a&gt;. I do believe that is an excellent read &lt;strong&gt;however&lt;/strong&gt;, real-world implementation of these methodologies (XP, Scrum and Agile included) tend to throw design out the window. My question is, is there really room for good design in today's 2-3 week sprint &quot;Agile&quot; implementation world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe I should re-state that nowhere have I suggested that the Martin Fowler article included above says there is no room for good design. That article actually argues otherwise. &#xA;My question here is simply to understand where 'good design' fits into real world implementations of the various &quot;agile&quot; methodologies. In a typical agile team, you may find that some of the stories where created long before many of the team members were brought on board. When you have a team of ,say, 10 developers that pick up 30 tasks to work on for the next sprint, how do they ensure that each piece is correctly designed to integrate and scale with the rest of the application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8478" LastEditorUserId="8478" LastEditDate="2014-05-10T17:44:43.800" LastActivityDate="2014-12-29T01:44:40.820" Title="Is there room for good/tested design in &quot;Agile&quot; setting?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2114" CreationDate="2014-05-10T02:28:01.160" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually read articles in the Agile area of DZone &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dzone.com/mz/agile&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.dzone.com/mz/agile&lt;/a&gt;, this place is maintained by Atlassian (JIRA maker), and it's filled with articles written by good authors like &lt;a href=&quot;http://java.dzone.com/users/martinfowler&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Martin Fowler&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://java.dzone.com/users/romanpichler&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Roman Pichler&lt;/a&gt;, etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can look for Scrum specific articles with this tag: &lt;a href=&quot;http://agile.dzone.com/category/tags/scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://agile.dzone.com/category/tags/scrum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9052" LastEditorUserId="9052" LastEditDate="2014-05-10T16:15:24.493" LastActivityDate="2014-05-10T16:15:24.493" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1151" CreationDate="2014-05-10T04:23:08.763" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum is not enough. Some people think that if they pass scrum master or scrum product owner certs, they will be able to ship software flawlessly. The learning doesnt stop there. The team should also learn some technical stuffs like for example from XP. I  had seen a team using scrum and when the customer requirement was changed, they found out that the  refactoring is very difficult because they didnt apply or didnt have the knowledge in applying OOP. In the end, they just stick to the current implementation because it will be painful to change things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing is the commitment and teamwork. There will be cases that some people in your team will be against scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8980" LastActivityDate="2014-05-10T04:23:08.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11532" CreationDate="2014-05-10T08:41:02.453" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is predicated on the idea that design is somehow a separate activity to coding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile methodologies view, &quot;a design&quot; (i.e. documentation of how to build your software), as less valuable than working software. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;read[sic]-world implementation of these methodologies(XP and Agile-SCRUM include) tend to throw design out the window.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you may have missed the point of, &quot;Is Design Dead&quot; article. Fowler answers the question himself, for XP, with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not by any means, but the nature of design has changed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest you re-read the article and consider raising new, more specific, questions &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6608" LastEditorUserId="6608" LastEditDate="2014-05-10T08:46:08.450" LastActivityDate="2014-05-10T08:46:08.450" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2114" CreationDate="2014-05-10T10:03:55.770" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend the online training materials of international scrum institute. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrum-institute.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scrum-institute.org/&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also like their discussion regarding large teams and the recognition of having feature and component team in a scrum environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8980" LastActivityDate="2014-05-10T10:03:55.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11538" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11541" CreationDate="2014-05-10T18:34:34.277" Score="2" ViewCount="197" Body="&lt;p&gt;To overcome the obstacle of clients not responding on time, an idea our management (not PMs) team has proposed is to send multiple email meetings invites ahead of milestones that are outlined in the schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: On Project A, the milestones are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Approval of technical specifications - Meeting 1 Approval of Network&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Systems Management Plan - Meeting 2 &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Completion of UAT - Meeting 3&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this example (a smaller project), each of these meetings can have a gap of about 3-4 weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it wise to send email meeting invites in advance for each of these 3 meetings in a single email? Should we include this in our Communications Management plan?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The meetings, to add a bit more detail, are &lt;strong&gt;only&lt;/strong&gt; done via conference calls to save time, not in-person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concern is what happens if one milestone isn't going to be completed on time. In that case, Meeting 1 is no longer possible and this means a rescheduling of all subsequent appointments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8276" LastEditorUserId="8276" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T02:14:43.637" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T11:13:28.960" Title="Communication Management: Booking meetings in advance via email" Tags="&lt;meetings&gt;&lt;communication-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11540" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-11T16:28:36.563" Score="5" ViewCount="1535" Body="&lt;p&gt;To set some things straight. I have got experience with scrum and I know how the planning process goes in a Scrum project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question I have relates to the start of a project. Let's say I as a PM or Scrum master get a document from a client where it says roughtly what he wants. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An online platform&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some information what the website is about (lacking many details)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Various couplings  (of which the description is ambigous)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And some deadlines. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the client wants a price quote. Now the question is how to go about this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The customer wants his product on Time &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We both don't want to have disagreements about the delivered work. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was it promised or not. The customer wants a price quote while the specs are not clear yet&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know how others deal with this problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9059" LastActivityDate="2018-01-10T07:54:41.507" Title="Scrum and Project planning for a price quote" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11538" CreationDate="2014-05-11T19:09:11.907" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it wise to send email meeting invites in advance for each of these 3 meetings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. It allows the attendees to plan their own diaries and helps to ensure they will be available at the time of the meetings, which is good for your projects&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should we include this in our Communications Management plan?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That depends on practise at your organisation. Some comms plans will go to this level of detail and some won't. If you are trying to get buy-in to the meetings then I suggest it &lt;em&gt;would&lt;/em&gt; be a good idea to include in the comms plans that you will publish milestone meetings in advance in order to obtain guaranteed attendance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2014-05-11T19:09:11.907" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11540" CreationDate="2014-05-11T20:25:41.507" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can almost spend infinite amounts of money on software, therefore an important question to ask is, how much are you (the customer) will wanting to spend. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is feasible to create something for their project, in that time, then you can introduce them to the process of Scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum aims to keep quality and time fixed, you can however adjust scope. If they aren't interested in being involved in the Scrum process (as frequently happens), then it is not the methodology for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agree a minimum scope and the rest is prioritised backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other answers to your question, but this should be the default position for a Scrum team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6608" LastActivityDate="2014-05-11T20:25:41.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11540" CreationDate="2014-05-11T20:58:21.600" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In agile a price quote is given in terms of the cost of hiring a team for an iteration. The number of iterations is variable and depends on changing requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your customer insists on a specific quote then they are probably not interested in doing agile. Another possibility is that one wants to propose agile development to a customer that does not know it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the proposal is appropriate, then agile must be explained first. Once the customer accepts to work in an agile manner, then it becomes obvious that a quote is in terms of a &quot;per month&quot; quota and not as a package.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically a team will deliver minimally working software within 1 or 2 iterations. So your customer will get &quot;version 0.1&quot; in 2-4 weeks. It's up to them to decide if to proceed and spend more or if not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you can give a general estimate by comparing with other projects, but at the end of the day -- agile work is not a fixed-scope, fixed-cost matter. It's open-scope, and fixed regular deliveries which are planned on the go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not so sure what else your customer would expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6300" LastActivityDate="2014-05-11T20:58:21.600" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10767" CreationDate="2014-05-12T01:35:03.263" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I ran into a very similar problems about two years ago. In my case, after we had hammered out the scope and had finalized the requirements, the endless cycle kept continuining due to lack of a formal bug tracking system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As are result, after UAT, when the business users would provide their list, there was a large overhead keeping it in sync with our tickets (our bug tracking system was not client-facing). Example: Users provides bugs 1, 2, and 3. On our side, it would be tickets ABC, DEF, and GHI. There were spreadsheets that kept a track of the users' bugs, our corresponding tickets, and then tickets we opened for issues found internally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long story short, the moment we implemented a consolidated bug tracking method (which meant pausing the project for a while), things picked up very quickly and we were able to wrap up the project in 4 weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To not freeze the project would have been a classic case of, &quot;the lumberjack not sharpening his axe because there were too many trees and he didn't have enough time&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8276" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T01:35:03.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11545" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-12T12:01:03.630" Score="3" ViewCount="6271" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working with MS Project, and I have created a Gantt chart. How would I save a Gantt and PERT file as a GIF image? I did it once, but I cannot find it anymore. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9067" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T01:50:46.440" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T01:53:13.617" Title="How to save Gantt and PERT as a GIF image?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11545" CreationDate="2014-05-12T12:30:38.917" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not aware of a way to directly save to GIF, but I frequently use the &quot;Copy&quot; functionality (Under Clipboard functionality on the Task tab of MS-P 2010) to grab an image snapshot of the project Gantt into the cut buffer, from where it can be pasted into an email, or a Word document, or into Paint to be saved as a JPG or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are on a prior version of MS-Project, the same functionality is there and it is behind the menu button that looks like a little camera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T12:30:38.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11545" CreationDate="2014-05-12T12:49:53.077" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For Microsoft Project 2007, go to &lt;strong&gt;Report menu&lt;/strong&gt; and then &lt;strong&gt;Copy Picture...&lt;/strong&gt;. It will show the following popup:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MwK2Z.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choose &quot;&lt;strong&gt;To GIF image file&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; option to save the Gantt chart as a GIF file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T12:49:53.077" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11548" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11549" CreationDate="2014-05-12T14:15:55.520" Score="4" ViewCount="681" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the Agile philosophy, it is important for the team to work together as one to achieve the goal fixed at the begenning of an iteration. With that in mind, I know that developpers and analysts can help the QA at the end of an iteration to make sure all the testing is completed in time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can the QA help the team at the begenning of a sprint if no Stories are completed and that test plans are ready.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(We are team of 5-6 people with 1 QA and we are on 3 Weeks sprints so the dead time can be long for the QA)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9069" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T16:55:30.580" Title="Help of the QA in the sprint first days of a sprint" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11548" CreationDate="2014-05-12T15:08:31.737" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;QA Should Never Become a Separate Process Track&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quality Assurance (QA) is an integral part of the agile delivery process. Passing tests are often a formal part of the Definition of Done, and Test-Driven Development (TDD) is a common practice that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules/testfirst.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;originated with Extreme Programming&lt;/a&gt; and has been widely adopted by other agile frameworks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The QA specialists on a cross-functional team have several ways to contribute from day one of a Sprint:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They must help estimate stories, because the time and effort required for proper testing needs to be part of the story-point estimate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They should work &lt;em&gt;alongside&lt;/em&gt; the developers to ensure that unit and acceptance tests are baked into the team's process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They may handle stories &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the developers to ensure that new features are written to pass defined acceptance tests.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They may handle stories &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; the developers to ensure that all new work is fully testable at the unit- and integration-test levels.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They may pair-program with the developers so that the developers and testers cross-pollinate, share their particular expertise, and increase knowledge transfer within the cross-functional team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While all of the examples above apply most strongly to software projects, the same general concept is largely transferable to manufacturing or business-process projects. Everyone on the team has something to contribute, and the best teams never &quot;toss something over the wall&quot; to other team members; the work should always remain collaborative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T15:08:31.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11532" CreationDate="2014-05-12T15:12:20.333" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Development team is in full control of how to do the work that's included in the sprint, and that includes deciding how to deal with design and overall conceptual integrity of the product you're building.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to do that is to split the Sprint Planning meeting in two sections: an initial selection part where you pick the work to allocate to the sprint, followed by a second part where the team as a whole looks at that work to see how it impacts the design, and how the design needs to evolve to accommodate the new functionality. Based on that discussion, you'll add design and refactoring tasks to the sprint backlog. Other teams hold design meetings during the sprint, or have quick design sessions with the architect each time a team member picks up a new story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's an assumption behind this, though: that the stories were framed from a user's perspective, and that they don't imply a particular technical implementation, which is then left for the team to decide. Perhaps what you saw in your project was that the stories in the Product Backlog were really defined as implementation tasks, with a particular design in mind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9070" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T15:12:20.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11548" CreationDate="2014-05-12T15:25:23.233" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some teams, the testers take care of implementing automated acceptance tests while the programmers work on implementing the new features. In other cases, they start preparing test data or test scripts that will be used once the new stories are included in the build.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, programmers may not know exactly what the impact of the new feature is going to be. Testers can help by doing exploratory testing, simulating the new functionality or similar scenarios to provide advance feedback to the programmers. Or they can talk to business users to get further clarification on their expectations, or getting ideas about how to test tricky corner cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But beyond all that, testers could also consider picking up development tasks, and grow their skills laterally in other areas of expertise. A good way to do that is, as mentioned in other answer, to pair with programmers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9070" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T15:25:23.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11512" CreationDate="2014-05-12T17:48:00.927" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Trevor that you are talking about establishing your methodology and that it is a good idea. Before you just in with both feet, you may want tot do a bit of review of available methodologies that are used in your field. For instance, in many construction projects, a traditional waterfall methodology with most of the artifacts discussed by Trevor and codified (sort of) in the PMI PMBOK, is the methodology used with some tailoring to suit the project size. In IT development, there is a lot of use of agile methods, e.g. Scrum, Extreme, Test Driven Development, Feature Driven Development, etc. Each project will likely have a methodology that fits it best, but you have to be sure that your company's methods policy doesn't try to fit all projects into only one method, unless all projects are the same kind. Make sure your policy calls for a method evaluation at the beginning of a project, and that you standardize enough different methods to accommodate variations in what your company does. The bottom line though is that having a standard procedure for whichever methods you choose is going to be a huge benefit int he long run, particularly if future work will ever have to look at the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7689" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T17:48:00.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11540" CreationDate="2014-05-13T01:02:34.843" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently working on a paper and it is also to some degree related to this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the literature there have mentioned several solutions. Indeed, the selling of a number of iterations is an option. However, you could allow the customer to swap requirements in later stages. There are several clauses that can be added to the contract, which will reduce your risk but also give the customer a fair estimation of the cost. However, it is often hightly context dependend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps a target-cost (sharing the pain/gain) might be feasible solution? But it will also depend on your relationship with the customer. However, if the customer does not accept scrum to manage the development, other solutions might be needed. Again, it will depend on the willingness of the customer also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9072" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T01:02:34.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11554" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-13T08:12:38.330" Score="1" ViewCount="219" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can one estimate the resource usage breakdown of a project at initial proposal time? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example in fixed price project, say a ten-member team project with project duration 12 months&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 PM&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 Architect&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 PL&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;8 Developpers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any standards (in terms of percentage of resources) available to estimate the team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9074" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T12:57:37.360" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T16:35:34.837" Title="Estimating the resource usage breakdown of a project at initial proposal time?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7858" CreationDate="2014-05-13T13:22:40.323" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree, that in general Kanban is not about tracking time spent on tasks. However, I understand a need for that. It seems to me that you need a virtual Kanban board with build-in time tracking and reports. The solution that offers such a powerful combination is &lt;a href=&quot;http://kanbantool.com/time-tracking&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kanban Tool&lt;/a&gt;.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7285" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T13:22:40.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11524" CreationDate="2014-05-13T15:52:47.057" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have been told that the design should be done in the sprint for each user story &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Correct. Implementing a story as part of a sprint includes doing whatever design activities the team considers are required to accomplish the sprint goal (assuming that it's conducive to delivering working software; i.e. don't just do design, also work on implementation.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;but this would change the sprint backlog because it will generate new tasks derived from the created design what is not good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The development team is in full control of the sprint backlog, and they can add or remove tasks as they see fit, at any time. What Scrum doesn't allow is for people outside the technical team (Product Owner, stakeholders, etc.) to change the composition of the sprint backlog once the sprint is underway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, the team should keep an eye on how much work they are adding to the sprint backlog, and whether that will still allow them to reach the sprint goal and keep their initial commitment. They should also be careful not to introduce completely new stories in the sprint backlog: adding new tasks that clarify the original intent, or new work that  is discovered as part of doing the committed work is fine, but adding completely new stories is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One option would be just to add a full iteration where just design (just the necesary not a whole) is done and will generate taks for the next iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally, you should try hard to avoid having &quot;just design&quot; iterations. Try simplifying the story scope, building something smaller, less sophisticated, but that gives a tangible result (in the form of real, running software.) Use that as an opportunity for learning, to identify new items for the backlog to be scheduled for future iterations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9070" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T15:52:47.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11554" CreationDate="2014-05-13T16:35:34.837" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Calculating a Person-Year&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A twelve-month project is essential one person-year per resource. There are a number of ways to calculate a person-year, but in the US the typical baseline figure is 2,000 hours annually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;(40 hrs/week * 52 weeks) - 10 days paid time off&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calculations can vary. Some companies subtract holidays, sick days, vacation days, and paid time time (PTO) as separate line items from the annual total, while other companies use a different starting figure than 2,080 working hours per year. In other words, your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Your Estimated Labor in Man-Hours&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming you use the baseline figure of 2,000 man-hours per resource per year, you will have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;2,000 man-hours per resource * 11 people = 22,000 man-hours per year&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One assumes they won't all have the same hourly rate or salary, but you could certainly average it out for a quick-and-dirty estimate, or provide a resource-by-resource breakdown if you need a more accurate figure. For example, if your 11-person team has an &lt;em&gt;average&lt;/em&gt; salary of $80,000 per year, then you might estimate $880,000.00 for your annual labor budget, or round it up to $1M as a modest fudge factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Breaking Down Utilization&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm unaware of any way to get a finer-grained estimate of per-resource utilization unless you front-load the work of defining your work breakdown structure (WBS) and assigning resources to each work package. In other words, if you estimate you will only need 3 developers for Package A, but six developers for Package B, you can certainly create some pretty charts with that sort of information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my personal experience, though, it's all hogwash. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Parkinson's Law&lt;/a&gt; is often generalized to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The demand upon a resource tends to expand to match the supply of the resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meaning that if you have 11 people assigned to a project, it will take 11 people working full time to complete the project. Charts and plans to the contrary, you should pragmatically assume full resource utilization and around 60-80% productivity. Your mileage may vary, I suppose, but I wouldn't risk the success of a fixed-price contract on the assumption that your best-case estimates are the likeliest outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T16:35:34.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11560" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11562" CreationDate="2014-05-14T07:38:20.447" Score="5" ViewCount="882" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work as a scrum master in a place where we have two distinct products. And these products have submodules:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Product A: (The bigger product)&#xA;  Submodule A.1&#xA;  Submodule A.2&#xA;  Submodule A.3&#xA;  etc.&#xA;&#xA;Product B: (The smaller product)&#xA;  Submodule B.1&#xA;  Submodule B.2&#xA;  Submodule B.3&#xA;  etc.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now we have two teams. Product A team (Consisting of 12 developers) And Product B team (Consisting of 3 developers)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And also we have two testers who are not actually part of these teams and have a diffrent backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our teams we have code reviewing process which is done before an issue is resolved. So a code which is unreviewed by a peer cannot be marked as done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know 12 developers is much for a scrum team and 3 developers is a small number for a scrum team. Because of this and for some other reasons we are facing some problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Product B team is moving at a slow pace and losing too much time on issues. The code reviews are not done throughly and buggy codes are being marked as done. The B team is actually not much like a team, everyone having their own goals. That is because one developer is always working on the core features and on an operating system level. The other developer is always working on the User Interface side (actually he is not a UI designer, but a backend developer) and the other developer has joined the team recently and working on ways and making research on how to make the product run with more performance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the developer working on the operating system level is reviewing the UI codes. The UI developer is reviewing the OS level codes. They actually do not have the expertise to review each others code and doesn't really know or isn't really interested on what another is doing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Product A team is a big team and the product is a huge product. It consists of several (like 10) submodules. All submodules are distinct modules on the server side (sometimes they use common libraries and common conf files, modules etc. but generally distinct) but they all share the same GUI (A java swing application is used to manage all these modules) So 2 developers are always working on the GUI, some developers work on most of the modules on backend side. And some developers are always working on the same submodule (For ex: Submodule A.1 and Submodule A.2) So those guys have much expertise on that module, but doesn't know much about the rest of the product. Whereas the other developers know much of the product except from those submodules (Submodule A.1 and Submodule A.2)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually all of our developers are good developers who can handle whatever you throw at them. But of course some of them are better on the UI side whereas some of them are better on the backend side. Some have gained much expertise on a specific module, so a job on that specific module is always done by that specific person. This leads to one man shows, the failure and success becomes his not the teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my main question is how should we form teams and backlogs? Right now we have to teams (product A and product B team) and two backlogs (Product A and Product B backlog). Should we keep this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are planning to create teams like OS Team, Platform Team, Frontend team, Architecture team, Implementation Team, Test team, Security team, Documentation team. Actually I don't even know how this will happen, we don't even have that much developer. Maybe one person will be in multiple teams, I don't know. And if we create teams like this how should we form the backlogs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think this kind of team structure is against scrum, because scrum teams should be cross functional. All kinds of expertise should be in teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or should we create new teams at the beginning of each sprint according to the sprint's needs. But how will this be (Who will attend which sprint planning meeting?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S: Product A and Product B developers are skilled enough to work on the other product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And according to the team structure you will recommend how many scrum masters should we have. Is one scrum master is enough or should each team have their own scrum masters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9084" LastActivityDate="2019-01-16T22:43:11.747" Title="How to form scrum teams" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11561" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-14T07:57:14.563" Score="0" ViewCount="143" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our organisation, we're using a MS Project Server setup that's pretty much out of the box. I'm now struggling to find a fit with one of the requirements put forward by our PMO:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our company has multiple consultants working for multiple clients. Clients order our support services for several days a week - for example, 1 day/week or more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consultant X works for clients A, B and C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A: 1 day / week&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;B: 2 days / week&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;C: 2 days / week&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on client demand, the consultant can freely choose which days he spends at which client. Mostly, these are fixed schedules (e.g. Mondays at client A). But suppose if, one week, client A asks him to come in on Tuesday instead of Monday, our consultant simply switches adapts his schedule and swaps both appointments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, in retrospect a consultant's wereabouts on a given day can easily be seen depending on the filled-in timesheets. What our PMO wants to see is a consultant's schedule for the &lt;em&gt;future&lt;/em&gt;. Basically, the process should be this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PMO tells a resource to work at clients A, B and C during a certain time (e.g. 20 days at client A / semester)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The resource schedules the assignment on certain days as needed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas on how I can accomplish this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6448" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T07:49:37.303" Title="Allow resources to pick assignments on a day to day basis?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11560" CreationDate="2014-05-14T09:01:44.837" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your asking many questions here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;component teams (platform, front end ... ):&#xA;You are correct, that goes against Scrum. If you want to lose time with handover then do this :-)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;shared team members&#xA;Also goes against Scrum. Multitasking slows people down, makes them lose focus. Good for bad quality :-)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How to deal with a really large and really small team? The obvious solution is to shift team members. Just make don't order it. Address the issue with the teams. Maybe some of large team would like to help out in the small team. This may be for a limited amount of sprints or permanent. It could be a kind of sabbatical.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some people work on the same all the time: Remember t-shaped worker? It is okay if some team members a really good at one thing and do this a lot. But if the do it exclusively you run into bottlenecks. Inspire the specialist to teach and share their know how. They will stay the specialist but others can and should help out.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How many backlogs? Maximal one per product, independent of the number of teams.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;New Team structure every sprint: Been there done that, does not work. A team needs time to form. Building new teams every sprint makes really bad teams. An extra effect is that after a while everybody seen just a bit of everything but has no deeper understanding of anything.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How many Scrum Masters: With that may issues a Scrum Master per team is necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4331" LastEditorUserId="33598" LastEditDate="2019-01-16T22:43:11.747" LastActivityDate="2019-01-16T22:43:11.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="11564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11561" CreationDate="2014-05-14T10:19:54.937" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When ms-project don't have the functionality-adaptability your require, the way to go is programming macros. Use the macro recorder as first step. Is the same with ms-word or ms-excel.&#xA;Sorry I can't be more concrete, last time I worked on ms-project macros was more than 10 years ago.&#xA;Regards&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9087" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T10:19:54.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11561" CreationDate="2014-05-14T10:24:26.070" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;That is some intense micro management.  The schedule should reflect the best prediction of future activities one knows at the time when scheduling.  It can reflect known changes--that go through your change control--to a certain degree.  Otherwise, the schedule will reflect variances.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you are using the wrong tool for what you are doing.  This sounds more consistent with a work-order / ticket solution, where a consultant is dispatched to a certain client each day.  I think you need to rethink your BPM strategy, not your scheduling tool solution.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T10:24:26.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11566" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-14T11:18:29.543" Score="0" ViewCount="231" Body="&lt;p&gt;1)  The sponsor will not accept a risk or the schedule being delayed by 20 working days or longer. This is an example of ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;risk tolerance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;risk acceptance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;risk aversion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;risk threshold&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;can anyone answer this question? (source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmgurus.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;www.pmgurus.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2)  Your company is a multinational and has many offices in different locations. You have signed a multi-billion contract with one of the leading companies which has several offices around the world. Your company is planning to execute the project from one of the new locations but you find the local rules and regulations prevent such a project to be carried out in the location. You work with the administrative team to find a new location. The strategy that you use to deal with the problem is best described by :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;accepting risk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;mitigating risk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;transfering risk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;avoiding risk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;source &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmgurus.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;(www.pmgurus.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9090" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T13:41:49.057" Title="PMP Certification - Mock exam and Practice questions - Can any one answer this question?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11567" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11573" CreationDate="2014-05-14T11:32:15.513" Score="9" ViewCount="10415" Body="&lt;p&gt;We &quot;teached&quot; our product owner to write user stories using the template &quot;As a ... I want ... so that ...&quot; (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_story#Format&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_story#Format&lt;/a&gt;) . However he/she is now writing the user stories like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a product owner I want ... so that ... .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a way how user stories could be written?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8693" LastActivityDate="2019-02-08T11:27:40.987" Title="Do user stories which start with &quot;As a product owner I want ...&quot; make sense?" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11566" CreationDate="2014-05-14T11:35:10.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Question 1: risk tolerance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question 2:  risk avoidance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Explanation:  #1:  The definition between tolerance and threshold is a distinction that I don't think adds a lot of real value; however, for the purposes of the test, it matters.  Tolerance suggests a firm number that you cannot exceed.  It is a yes or no equation.  In this case, it is 20 days unfavorable variance.  Threshold suggests more of a range as you approach your tolerance.  In this case, the threshold might be 12 to 16 or 17 days unfavorable variance, which is where you may begin mitigating or contingent activities for recovery.  #2:  The local rules prohibit the work from taking place at that location.  If you choose to do the work anyway, you are taking on risk of getting caught or other adverse consequences.  If you did that, you are accepting the risk and possibly mitigating by doing whatever actions to prevent getting caught or minimizing the impact of getting caught.  By choosing a new location, you are avoiding that risk.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  One More Question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think PMI would expect the answer to be &quot;transfer.&quot;  The PMBoK Guide over simplifies risk management to these very simple constructs that are to be used for complex situations.  And so, often times, you really have multiple answers that are correct and, even more precise, you are doing several risk treatments at once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But transfer, as far as PMI is concerned, I think best fits the situation.  Not have the right skills is an issue...which becomes a risk factor for performance issues down the line.  By outsourcing, you are transferring the probable performance issues to another organization...just like buying insurance.  In reality, however, you are mitigating, avoiding, and transferring all at once since not having the right skills has multiple downstream probable impacts.  But you have to answer it the way PMI wants you to answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is my opinion of the answers.  It is best, the way the questions are framed, to get other opinions, too.  I passed the test but did not get all the answers right.  :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T13:41:49.057" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T13:41:49.057" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11567" CreationDate="2014-05-14T11:46:35.917" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, the product owner is the stakeholder representative and voice of the customer. I would expect the user stories that they write to identify which stakeholder or customer group (or groups) are impacted by the story. Because the product owner can be considered a stakeholder, though, I don't see the issue with stories written from the perspective of the product owner or even the development team. Without an understanding of the project and taking each story into individual consideration, I'm not sure that someone can say if it's well-written or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T11:46:35.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11567" CreationDate="2014-05-14T13:04:42.953" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Product Owner is the name given to a role which is specific to the process/framework you are using to manage the project or to execute software development. This particular name has no meaning outside the context of this process. The system which you are trying to build will have its own specific users. Each of those real users may have a different expectation, different usage, different value to be derived from that system. So your Scrum team (including the Product Owner) should identify the real users of the system and write stories from their perspective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that, for the intended system, real users and company roles (or job titles) are two different things. For example, two persons can have the same title &quot;Customer Sales Representative&quot;, however one person could be handling inbound queries and the other could be making outbound requests. If they will be the real users of the new system then expectations and usage of these two types of users could be different from the new system. If that is the case then your users stories should be written separately, some stories will deliver value to the &quot;inbound representative&quot; and some stories will be for the &quot;outbound representative&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach will give a clear picture to the team about why are they adding a particular feature to the system. Team will be able to connect the &lt;em&gt;real user&lt;/em&gt; with the &lt;em&gt;story goals&lt;/em&gt; and its &lt;em&gt;benefits&lt;/em&gt; thus creating a sense of empathy with the actual user. Team understands the &quot;bigger picture&quot; of why they are implementing a task which they have been asked to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to your question, no it is not appropriate in normal situations to write stories like &lt;i&gt;As a product owner I want ... so that ... &lt;/i&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T13:04:42.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11567" CreationDate="2014-05-14T13:13:45.433" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, they would only make sense if you were writing a product where a &quot;product owner&quot; was a customer -- for example, a tool for keeping a backlog would have stories that start with &quot;As a product owner&quot; because &lt;em&gt;a product owner would actually be using the product you are developing&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But normally, no. The product owner is generally not a customer/user of the product so it doesn't really make any sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6300" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T13:13:45.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10613" CreationDate="2014-05-14T13:43:57.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Patrick, let me tell you very briefly how Jira manages this. Why? Because I believe it is the right way to handle it :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Jira you start the sprint explicitly. Once it is started, all changes to the sprint in regards to content leads to a changed sprint scope, either increased or decreased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case - starting off with 200 hours and then adding 18 hours will never give you an &amp;quot;updated&amp;quot; start point of the burn down (e.g. 200 hours + 18 hours) because these are considered as a change to sprint scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you will see is that the burn down get a spike equal to 18 hours on that day and, if burned down the same day, you will also burn down those same hours (see below around feb 12).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HrFXZ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In theory (and our practice), if you start off with 100 hours because that is your capacity, and you suddenly find 50 more, you cannot just add them into the sprint. Because you do not have the capacity (unless you initiate lots of OT). If those newly found 50 hours must be done in the sprint you should remove another set of 50 hours because those hours are not what your team initially committed to (they commit to 100 hours, not 150).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that the TFS burndown is wrong. But because it doesn't show the spike as Jira does, not because it doesn't increase/update the additional work added during the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9160" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T13:43:57.527" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11575" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-14T14:59:17.257" Score="7" ViewCount="955" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a product owner, can I completely remove a story from the &lt;strong&gt;Product&lt;/strong&gt; Backlog?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know everybody can add stories at anytime to the product backlog, but is the PO's only way to remove a story to put it at the bottom of the stack, or can he/she simply remove it from the backlog?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9069" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2015-06-18T14:38:42.890" LastActivityDate="2015-06-18T16:57:38.140" Title="Can the product owner remove user stories?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11567" CreationDate="2014-05-14T15:15:05.920" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Some stories can be written only from the point of view of the Product Owner&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me give a couple of examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Analytics stories: The end users of the application do not care whether you collect any analytics data at all. In fact some end users may not want you to collect analytics data because of privacy concerns (rightly or wrongly).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Branding: End users care about usability. But they do not care about whether the company's brand is displayed more prominently or whether the color scheme aligns with the branding. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the Product Owner does. So these stories can only be written in the format of &quot;As the Product Owner I want...&quot;. The Product Owner represents the interests of the business, which sometimes may have to override the interests of the end users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you want to be careful not to use the Product Owner as a proxy for end users. Because you can potentially write every story from the point of view of the Product Owner. Make an effort to identify who truly wants a feature and why. Making this extra effort to think through who wants it and why will help you to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;drop some stories that do not really add value to anyone.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;enrich the stories by writing the relevant acceptance criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T15:15:05.920" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11575" CreationDate="2014-05-14T15:23:29.077" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, the PO can choose to add, remove or re-prioritise stories in the product backlog as they see fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it shouldn't just be gut feel.  A good PO will be talking to stakeholders, looking at usage stats, user research etc to decide which stories are not valuable enough to deliver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They should also make sure that when stories are removed from the backlog altogether, people who are hoping for that change or feature are kept informed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T15:23:29.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11575" CreationDate="2014-05-14T16:20:18.547" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can do whatever you need to do, however removing stories is not advisable unless they are  either wrong, duplicates or obsolete. The reason is that it takes time to write a story, and for you to read it and prioritize it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a story you think is very low (or no-) priority at the bottom of the pile still has a value because it theoretically prevents new duplicates from being presented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there's usually no cost in not removing a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6300" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T16:20:18.547" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11538" CreationDate="2014-05-14T19:59:20.317" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I would do is send one email up front, explaining how the meeting schedule will be handled.  Explain that each is tied to a milestone, and outline the general flow and objectives you hope to achieve from a typical meeting.  In short, set expectations early.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I would send each meeting invite separately, even if that means sending the person 20 invites.  Doing it this way allows flexibility to move an individual meeting date without having to resend one extra-large invite that contains all meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on your organization's best practices as to how detailed you need to be in your Communications Plan.  For my organization, we would probably enter something basic such as, &quot;Milestone meetings are planned in advance and sent via MS Outlook to all stakeholders listed in Section 123 of the Project Plan&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7361" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T19:59:20.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11512" CreationDate="2014-05-14T20:28:57.423" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am part of a small app development company and we are also in the process of defining our processes and &quot;know-how&quot; principles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as the project proposals go, we have defined a process that has resulted in landing more sales of our projects (mostly with big companies). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can share with you some of the learnings: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The document is 5 pages long with the least text possible. (Think&#xA;about how Twitter obligues you to write only 140 characters per&#xA;tweet). We do the same with our project proposals. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The document's &quot;speech&quot; is inspired in Simon Sinek's Ted&#xA;Talk about the purpose of the projects.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One of our greatest inspirations for defining the document is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pinterest.com/pin/42080577738870745/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this infographic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One important aspect about this document is to remind that &lt;strong&gt;the main goal of it is to create interest in the client for a further meeting or negotation.&lt;/strong&gt; Tough, it is important to pay attention to design, speech and the organization of your document because it generally creates a first impression. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The structure of our project proposal defines much of our operations process, for example, we structure our development process like this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the objective of this new project? (Why are we doing it)&#xA;1.1. What problem are we trying to solve&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How are we going to solve it? (Technologies, proccesses, stages, tools, methodologies)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the short term, mid term and long term benefits of working on the solution. (Define tangible and measurable objectives)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finally, define the costs in time and money.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an advice, do not forget to include a &lt;em&gt;terms and conditions&lt;/em&gt; page with all the specific measures to avoid, e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Never-ending changes to the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Future feature additions without any cost&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The client extending the project deadlines or milestones because of not providing the content or appropiate information&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an interesting article from Jessica Hische where she talks about how she handles the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fastcodesign.com/3025992/how-much-should-you-charge-for-design-work-a-guide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;project proposals for her clients&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this information works for you and maybe you can add to it with your future experiences. (Sorry if I mispell something, the english language is not my first language.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9094" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T20:28:57.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11408" CreationDate="2014-05-14T20:34:42.587" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Distributing compensation and recognizing efforts are some of the difficult but necessary aspects of being a manager.  I have yet to work anywhere where all employees at the same level were paid the same.  Many factors go into a person's compensation:  skill set, experience, working relationships inside and outside the firm, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you believe that some of your development staff are providing more valuable work than others, then stay with your current distribution.  If you believe they all contribute equally, then distribute all compensation equally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Employee turnover is part of the business world.  Eventually someone will choose to leave, whether due to compensation issues or for other reasons.  You could just as easily drive an employee away from your company by doing equal compensation distribution, as by doing unequal distribution.  They may feel they are more valuable than someone else and should get more than that person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whichever route you choose to go -- either equal or unequal comp distribution -- be prepared to stick with your plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7361" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T20:34:42.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11538" CreationDate="2014-05-15T11:13:28.960" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that due to the PM meetings not having to be done in a personal and face to face settings, I would have a mass email to all the participants in this particular project, and I would have a phone number on the email asking if we can get in touch with you at this number in case of any of conflicts with the scheduling and I would have one day before each meeting a auto dialer. I would have it ask if they are able to make sure to check their schedule and press a button to confirm your attendance. This will help you remind them of their respective part's of the project, and for you to know that if the person doesn't show up that you can find out if the person answered their phone and confirmed so that you already know that when you get a chance to see what happened or reason for the attendance and know that the excuses for the missed meeting is going to be a lie and there's not much of emergencies that can be used for the excuse for not having shown up. This is a great way to weed out some of the people who are not as reliable and if you are looking at it becoming a important project, you will have the option to have a stand by in case you need to get a good replacement without having to go over the past information and save money and time to get the best of the project to be a good success.  Hopefully this can be a good time saving process and good luck with your project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9099" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T11:13:28.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11575" CreationDate="2014-05-15T15:06:04.587" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is the absolute owner of the Product Backlog. As such, he/she has the last word on what goes in, stays in, or gets out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't recommend to keep stories in the backlog &quot;just in case.&quot; True, there is a cost associated with creating a story, but each item in the backlog will have to be maintained, reviewed, reprioritized, etc. and that represents a cost as well (in lean thinking, it's &quot;inventory&quot;, and considered a waste.) I'll argue that the cognitive load of all that work is significantly higher than the creation cost (unless, of course, a lot of effort is spent specifying and detailing the work items, but that's a separate problem in itself.) Ultimately, if something is important enough, it will come back at the appropriate time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that being said, it's possible that in your particular situation you might feel that, as a PO, you don't have the final authority to remove items from your Product Backlog. Many organizations declare their Business Analysts to be Product Owners, but they don't give them full authority over the Backlog (and the project in general.) If that's your situation, then think who in your project organization has that final say about what goes in and out of the backlog, who can decide on the project direction, who is the &quot;single throat to choke&quot; if the project goes south; that person is really the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9070" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T15:06:04.587" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11586" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-15T15:44:31.863" Score="2" ViewCount="6666" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to ask what the best approach would be in the following scenario.&#xA;I have a project with all the tasks.  I've created the baseline but my boss comes and&#xA;says: I need you to add these other tasks (let's say 10 more tasks).  How can I add those tasks to the existing baseline or should I create and save a new baseline?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9101" LastActivityDate="2019-12-11T02:29:52.393" Title="Adding new tasks to the current baseline" Tags="&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11586" CreationDate="2014-05-15T16:58:27.040" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different scenarios yield a different answer, and even each scenario could have caveats where another answer might be better.  If the project is about building a tangible product, adding and deleting tasks can occur all day long without change orders but also with out a baseline change.  They just produce variances that you need to track and control.  There are caveats to this, however, and some that come to mind are with the type of contract that is in place.  For example, a seller may have added a stop loss clause in the level of effort required to produce the product, in which case adding two activities could exceed that threshold.  Then a formal change, adding budget, and a new baseline are appropriate.  So to answer your question definitively, you need to describe the specifics.  I'll add to my answer once those specifics are known.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T16:58:27.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11524" CreationDate="2014-05-16T13:47:17.393" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The practice that works good enough is to have (UX)Designer and Product Owner working together on designs one sprint ahead of the sprint in which those designs would be implemented. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some risks connected with this approach. By knowing them you can act up-front to mitigate them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Design-Driven development&lt;/strong&gt;. Designers like to create beautiful designs which might be hard to implement. To manage this risk have the Development Team review what they are working on before the Sprint Planning session.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Team erosion&lt;/strong&gt;. Designer might feel he is not part of the team. To manage this risk make it clear that Development team would like to commit to 'stable' User Stories, which makes them more predictable and increases the chances that sprint will be completed. For terminology - everyone involved in the project is a part of the project team. At the same time there might be sub-team(s) that focus on one aspect of the project, ie. designs or development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pixel Perfection Trap&lt;/strong&gt;. By accepting User Stories with high fidelity designs the Development Team might strive to have pixel perfect implementation of those. To avoid this risk make sure that developers don't focus on tiny details by sacrificing working software. Details can be implemented later, in following Sprints.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastEditorUserId="4422" LastEditDate="2014-05-19T21:44:41.987" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T21:44:41.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11591" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11592" CreationDate="2014-05-18T05:18:15.483" Score="0" ViewCount="2109" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Crashing a project, if for an activity [Normal time - Crash time = 0], what does it mean?&#xA;Since Crash cost per day = |(Crash cost-Normal cost)/(Normal Time- Crash time)|&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Crash cost per day becomes infinite. what does this implies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9114" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T07:15:23.203" Title="What does (Normal time-Crash time=0) implies?" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11591" CreationDate="2014-05-18T12:16:50.737" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You would be using this as a prediction, right?  If you are predicting your normal time and your crash time are the same, as evidenced by the zero, then you are essentially predicting increased costs with no gain in days, which produces an error in the ratio.  That implies: DON'T DO IT!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under what scenario would you try to get approved money to crash a schedule that you are predicting you cannot crash?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T12:16:50.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11593" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11595" CreationDate="2014-05-18T23:03:23.547" Score="1" ViewCount="707" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been developing a website for my organisations - its taken around 3 months so far, and I'm now gearing up for the next stage which will probably involve more people and complexity. Around 4 or 5 months worth of effort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also just completed a PRINCE2 course (which I'm trying to bring into the organisation), and I'd like to apply the framework to the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given my project is small, low risk, and has already started. What are the number of management artifacts I need to produce, ensuring that I cover all principals and themes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe I need:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the Project Initiation document (including a small business case,&#xA;project plan, and the strategies) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;risk and quality registers and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;lessons and issues logs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point, I can't see the value of the Project Brief or Benefits Review Plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there are other documents I need to create to ensure I've following the framework?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8892" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T11:26:26.637" Title="What are the minimum number of documents required for a project to adhere to PRINCE2" Tags="&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11593" CreationDate="2014-05-20T06:38:39.487" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends very much on the project and your organization I believe. I would say that you should consider having a communication mgmt. strategy in place to know who to and how to communicate (stakeholders, end-users, mgmt.). This to avoid confusion and to make sure that people are informed about what is going on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A clear setup with roles and responsibilities is also very nice to have. Who can you discuss matters with, who have have the mandate to make decisions, who to escalate issues to, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that, even though small right now, these documents might be your best friends in the future :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9160" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T06:38:39.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11593" CreationDate="2014-05-20T11:26:26.637" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pretty much all of the documents are covered in the PID, but I think you have two main gaps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A lack of project product description and work packages.&lt;/strong&gt; If you lack a PPD and work package structure you will make it more difficult for you to adhere to the principle of &quot;Focus on Products&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Nothing around reporting.&lt;/strong&gt; This is where you get most of the overhead for your project, and you'll need this to adhere to the principles of &quot;Manage by Exception&quot; and &quot;Manage by Stages&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, to better tailor you project you should be asking &quot;What level of detail is required in the documents produced?&quot; rather than asking about number.  For example, a simple project could cover benefits realization within the business case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T11:26:26.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11597" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11599" CreationDate="2014-05-20T14:34:24.857" Score="3" ViewCount="15455" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been searching for management role for a long time and finally got myself hired into a new start up company as Project Manager. I'm managing a project (Multi Level Marketing Apps) Team. I estimated the project will be finished around 5 months; everything went well for the first the 3 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then there were certain milestones (Calculation Pyramid Structure) that the developers didn't meet. The developers say they need more time to carry out the tasks. After looking at the original schedule, there is a high possibility that the project might be delayed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the best way to ask the client for more time? I estimate the bug fix will take an additional month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8482" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2014-06-24T10:59:48.533" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T10:59:48.533" Title="How to ask for more time if project misses a milestone and will be delayed?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;clients&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11597" CreationDate="2014-05-20T15:01:31.713" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project managers manage variances.  You will have both favorable and unfavorable ones.  It is not a matter of &quot;asking&quot; but rather informing.  Planning values that you choose, both cost and time, are single values that live in a probabilistic range of results.  For example, your project has an estimate of finishing between three to nine months.  You targeted five.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your customer &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be aware that there is both risk and opportunity for coming in late or early. So part of your reporting needs to expose the variances you have, the risks you are predicting, e.g., project is at risk coming in late, and any mitigating activities you think may help.  If you customer comes back and says being late is unacceptable (and there are many reasons why that could be) then something else has to give.  Scope drops, bring in more resources (be careful with that because that can backfire), something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good PM's do not guarantee coming in on time.  PMs who are liars do.  Good PMs manage variances and communicate them early and often, good news and bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T15:01:31.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11597" CreationDate="2014-05-20T20:22:13.613" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way in every circumstance will boil down to understanding your client's perspective - including, but not limited to, the extent to which they value time as compared to cost and quality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's always tempting for the project manager to paint a rosy picture and not inform the sponsor/client of a risk. That is usually the wrong thing to do because it deprives the sponsor/client of their power to make decisions that steer the project in the right direction on the time/cost/quality spectrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The right way will vary, but is probably to present the risk alongside your analysis of the options to mitigate that risk. The analysis should represent your understanding of the client's needs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, produce a table with options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Option 1&lt;/strong&gt; - throw money at the problem - maybe you can bring in extra resource/work extra hours. Pros - gets the job done more quickly, cons - more costly, maybe detracts from quality if you're bringing in non-experts or, if they're inclined toward caring about staff well-being, may add to stress levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Option 2&lt;/strong&gt; - reduce scope and/or test time. Pros - gets job done more quickly, cons - quality may be diminished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Option 3&lt;/strong&gt; - focus on quality outputs &amp;amp; extend timelines. Pros - high quality project Cons - more time and, therefore, may eat into contingency budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Option 4&lt;/strong&gt; - maybe you can come up with more out-of-the-box options like a phased delivery? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then produce a thought-out recommendation to the client based on what you think is most important to them. They may disagree with you, but they will appreciate your efforts to a) give them a choice and b) make the problem &amp;amp; decision as simple as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9145" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T20:22:13.613" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9287" CreationDate="2014-05-21T15:50:16.697" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a developer myself (now working in Programme Management) I can say with absolute honesty that in all projects in which the assigned developer/development team (myself included) were tasked with completing all testing there were increased post-release bugs and errors identified, and a decrease in  client satisfaction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a project management perspective saving time/resources etc. by combining the testing with development creates something of a false economy. Especially if the  project is delivering to an external client, this is likely to result in either financial penalties (if there are delivery clauses within the contract), lack of potential future business/income and a poor perception of the delivering company and likely, although perhaps misplaced, the Project Manager themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a developer I would expect to complete component, integration, basic functional and deployment testing. In addition to producing functional test scripts for use by testing resources. If appropriate to the development I would also expect to complete volume/stress, availability, and performance testing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've worked in organisations where we support the client and the Project Manager to set the acceptance criteria for these and others where it's established independently of the development team and neither seems to have any particular impact upon the outcome. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would always advocate that full functional testing and user acceptance testing (which will likely also include non-functional requirements e.g. branding, UI and usability, other emotional factors, documentation, etc. should always be completed by a designated Quality Assurance resource provided by the client (whether the client is internal or external). If an external client is unable to resource this role then it can be fulfilled by an independent (unrelated to the development work) resource from within the delivering organisation. Similarly regression testing if appropriate should be completed by an independent QA resource. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If penetration/security testing is required (financial/healthcare/other public sector or high risk organisations will often require this) then an independent company can be contracted to provide assurance (and mitigate any potential liability on the delivering organisation). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9155" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T15:50:16.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11601" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11603" CreationDate="2014-05-21T17:51:00.620" Score="1" ViewCount="2710" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to tet MS Project adjust previous dependent tasks' schedule based on last task's due date. I'll try to tell my requirement via image below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;last row is a milestone (final report) and has a due date that CAN'T, MUST NOT change. So I chosed it's constraint as Finish No Later Than and entered its due date manually. I also entered its predecessor task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also entered 1-5 tasks' duration and predecessor tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't care about start and finish date of the first 5 tasks. I require MS Project adjust the start-end date for these 5 tasks automatically based on due date of the last row + predecessor relations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see from image, milestone (last row) is not at the right of task 5; but it should. Milestone point is fixed and MS project should layout all other previous tasks at the left of it with proper start and end dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm using MS Project 2007.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also tried start-to-finish relations but I created conflicts. So the image is best I could do but it's not reflecting what I need. I have hundreds of rows and relations like this, so I need to cope with this simplified scenario firstly. Googleing also didn't help me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my real case, I will use resources with percentage values. (I gave this info because it may effect your answer, I'm not sure)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not good at MS Project so this was my best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you please tell me the correct way to achieve this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;regards&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DRX6I.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6968" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-15T09:16:04.013" LastActivityDate="2019-01-15T09:16:04.013" Title="Let MS Project adjust previous dependent tasks' schedule based on last task's due date" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11601" CreationDate="2014-05-21T18:09:22.767" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;DO NOT CONSTRAIN ANY FINISH DATE WITH A MUST FINISHED DATE!!!!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let the project push a date out.  That's what you want the tool to do for you.  That is how you can determine if you are creating an unfavorable variance that you need to mitigate.  If you constrain the schedule, you will mask the milestone delayed finish threat.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The baseline finish date does not change.  So that remains fix.  The calculated finish date needs to be dynamic, i.e., it moves left and right as you plug in your actuals.  That way, you can see the damage done by previous late tasks based on your schedule network logic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in your example, if you unconstrain your milestone, it will show x days unfavorable finish variance (FV).  That's your risk.  Then you have the information you need to go mitigate it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T18:09:22.767" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11601" CreationDate="2014-05-21T21:23:46.187" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can allow Project to schedule backwards from a finish date.  Select &lt;strong&gt;Project &gt; Project Information&lt;/strong&gt; and in the &quot;scheduled from&quot; select finish date.  As you add your tasks, all tasks will align themselves with the finish date.  You may add F to S predecessor relationships and Project will move the predecessor task to earlier dates.  Using this method, Project will calculate when you should start the proejct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that I have told you how to do it - I'll tell you &lt;strong&gt;why NOT to do this&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Project will calculate when you should have started the Project.  If it is before today - you have a problem that Project will NOT fix for you.  It cannot adjust the finish date so you must figure out how to shorten the task path.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your estimates of work and duration must be spot on.  When Project calculates the Project start date - it will be based upon the estimated work and durations you entered.  Again, if you missed a work estimate by 40 hours, Project cannot move the finish date.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2014-05-22T05:33:52.143" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T05:33:52.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10380" CreationDate="2014-05-22T23:13:46.003" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Loading 1000 bags of cement into a truck is a fixed-work task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gestation is a fixed-duration and fixed unit task. It takes 100% of one resource (fixed-unit) and 9 months (fixed-time) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Burning 10.000 copies of a finished software is a fixed-work task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Testing a process workflow may be a fixed-time task, if you have to actually wait for real events to happen (i.e.: accepting a purchase order, shipping and receiving the delivery confirmation)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fixed-unit examples are harder to find, but usually are the tasks where you use a fixed percentage of a resource, as in the pregnancy example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2462" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-05-07T03:22:12.220" LastActivityDate="2015-05-07T03:22:12.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11609" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11620" CreationDate="2014-05-23T02:55:45.817" Score="4" ViewCount="1127" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have been asked the following question during an interview. What would be your answer? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have only 2 weeks before the deadline to fix 500 bugs. Since there is no more other programmers available to join your team, your programmers will have no other choice than to work overtime, including 2 week-ends. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you convince your programmers to work that hard?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide the keys of your speech to your team.       &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide some concrete ideas to keep them they motivated during the week end.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am particularly interested in what key points would you give in your speech&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7888" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T20:26:21.550" Title="Interview question on &quot;convince your programmers to work that hard&quot;" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;interview&gt;&lt;workload&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9287" CreationDate="2014-05-23T06:28:38.140" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In (at least) agile team context i don't see any problem with this. IMHO when planning the user story the tests should be first things to sketch, and never alone, so in a sense BDD approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach with continuous integration and good review tools &amp;amp; practices will ensure that the tests are not just testing what the implementation does, rather what it should do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7658" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T06:28:38.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11613" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11614" CreationDate="2014-05-09T05:51:50.357" Score="2" ViewCount="685" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a very basic knowledge of Scrum. Please guide me about the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What is role of the &lt;em&gt;Product Owner&lt;/em&gt; in daily Scrum, should &lt;em&gt;PO&lt;/em&gt; be a part of this meeting?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In a real world scenario a Product Owner is the person who acts as the customer. Can a &lt;em&gt;team member&lt;/em&gt; be nominated &lt;em&gt;as a Proxy&lt;/em&gt; of product owner?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can we say that a &lt;em&gt;Project Manager&lt;/em&gt; who directly interacts with the customer is nominated &lt;em&gt;as the proxy of a Product Owner&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When we use term &lt;em&gt;External Stakeholders Engagement&lt;/em&gt;, are we referring to a Product Owner or someone else?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9169" OwnerDisplayName="Hassan Nisar" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2016-01-28T06:35:37.087" LastActivityDate="2016-01-28T06:35:37.087" Title="Product Owner role in Scrum" Tags="&lt;product&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11613" CreationDate="2014-05-09T07:40:19.707" Score="5" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is not a mandatory attendee at the Daily Scrum, which is only for the Development Team.  If the Product Owner does turn up, they should not speak or take any active role in the meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A Product Owner reflects the wishes of the stakeholders and is the single decision maker in terms of ordering items on the product backlog. They can appoint a proxy but it's considered a poor practice as you've added a layer of communication and increased the chances that the actual Product Owner might overrule a proxy's decision(s), which negates some of the positive elements of scrum. This could be a huge waste and very harmful to productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is no role called Project Manager in scrum and best advice is to avoid appointing proxies, where possible.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As point 2 above. The Product Owner reflects the wishes of the stakeholders. They are a central point of reference for both stakeholders and the scrum team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7835" OwnerDisplayName="Derek Davidson PST PSM II CSP" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T11:41:31.817" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11615" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-01T07:08:26.790" Score="4" ViewCount="427" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having used &quot;days&quot; as the unit for estimation of tasks in Scrum I find it hard to change to using Story Points. I believe story points should be used as they are more comparable to each other - being less dependent on the qualifications of whoever addresses the task etc. However, it isn't easy to make a team start using Story Points when they're used to estimating in days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how to make a team change to Story Points? What should motivate the team members to do so, and how should we apply the switch?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user127145" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T11:02:39.230" Title="Story Point Estimation" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11615" CreationDate="2014-05-01T11:09:38.670" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What should motivate the team members to make the switch to Story Points?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the team good at estimating using days? &#xA;Do they accurately predict what how long a task will take in elapsed time?&#xA;If so, then keep using days!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, then what is the point in calling them days? If they aren't accurate then it is kind of meaningless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;how to make a team change to Story Points?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adopting story points is easy if the team is sufficiently motivated. Just make the switch, start doing the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to make a more gradual transition, as an intermediate step between days and story points, you could try using Ideal Man days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team try to predict the relative effort required to implement a story. One ideal man day, is the work you can get done, in one day, with no distractions, email, interruptions or unpredictable problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of drawbacks with Ideal Man Days. The biggest being the idea that it is possible to achieve this perfect day. It can be used as a stick to beat the team, for example, with management saying that, &quot;0.3 Ideal Man Days isn't enough!&quot;, and, &quot;you need to take away distractions so that they can achieve this Ideal Day&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In theory, using Ideal Man Days, requires more prediction than Story Points, because it means you have to extrapolate ahead. Whereas, Story Points should be estimated based on the complexity that you see. However, in practice, Stories can also have hidden complexity that is not discovered until you attempt to implement them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story Points are usually assigned by grouping stories of similar complexity together. The point value is supposed to be proportional to effort required to complete a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use a very similar process for estimating with Ideal Man days. Take examples, preferably from completed stories as benchmarks for each estimate then group the new stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do a second pass over the stories to ensure that their complexity is relative to each other, that is a 1 Ideal Day Story is half as complex as a Two Ideal Man Day story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you're estimating your stories relative to each other and checking their relative complexities, it is just a name change from Ideal Man day to Story Points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6608" OwnerDisplayName="Dave Hillier" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T11:29:48.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11615" CreationDate="2014-05-01T11:44:10.980" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Excellent answer from Dave; I would like to add, from my personal experience, how you might be able to start to do the switch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get one or two medium sized, but well specified and clear user story&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set them to a medium value (e.g. in the classical scheme at about 8 story points)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimate the other user stories relative to above values&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I don't like the approach of using ideal person (not man :) days. You add another uncertainty to the estimation process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, with a new project and motivated team, the advantages will become clear soon enough: Estimation gets easier and people commit, in the end, to a sprint goal (e.g. 90 story points) and not to single story estimates in days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that the people are still reporting real time on the stories or their subtasks, it helps to calculate after 4 or 5 sprints how many hours are in a story point. &lt;em&gt;Not&lt;/em&gt; to attach a number to a story point, but to analyze deviations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="marco" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T11:44:10.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11609" CreationDate="2014-05-23T14:14:34.433" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll answer as if I was a project manager actually in that situation.  I'm also going to assume you're looking at a normal sized project team (4-8 people) rather than a programme of work spanning multiple teams (and perhaps 50+ devs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being in a situation where you have 500 bugs to fix in two weeks is a sign of a project in failure mode. There's no easy way out from here but giving a nice speech and smashing hours of overtime at the problem is likely to make it worse not better as motivation &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; drop and quality will likely slip.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Steps I would take:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question the date&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find out what the importance of the date is.  Sometimes hard deadlines are unavoidable but these are pretty rare.  Perhaps you need to demo a product at a trade show.  There might be a product launch you had loads of press coverage on.  Maybe you promised a client you'd have things fixed on a date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever the reason for the deadline, understand the importance and if possible, negotiate some extra time.  Ultimately, make sure it's communicated to the team.  No-one gets motivated if they don't understand why they're doing something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Assess priority&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd run a workshop to de-prioritise as many of the bugs as I can.  Gather the stakeholders needed and either create a linear list or use something like the MOSCOW technique to get an idea of what is absolutely needed and what could slip.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It'll be pretty much impossible to actually motivate people to work overtime unless they absolutely buy into the importance of resolving them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Estimate the work&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Starting with the most important, estimate the work with the team to get an idea of scale. Stop estimating as soon as you have 3 weeks of work (or deadline +1 week if you couldn't arrange an extention).  There's little point continuing to discuss past that point as there is little chance you'll deliver further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point you can set an expectation with stakeholders about what is actually achievable.  Commit to getting the stuff you estimated as possible in two weeks as things you will fix.  Show the additional week of estimates - you'll do these if some of the others are easier than at first thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Set a reward&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd avoid anything financial and I wouldn't tie it to delivery.  Simply saying 'we know the next few weeks is going to be tough, we'll go for a meal out when we're done' is likely to feel better than if you do this then I'll give you that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Communicate&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've started the bug fix period, make sure you're communicating with the team about progress daily.  If possible, have a dashboard visible to the team showing progress towards the goal.  Sense of progress and achievement is likely to spur people on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep stakeholders informed of progress daily too. Encourage them to thank the team regularly, particularly as the really important issues get fixed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T14:14:34.433" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11609" CreationDate="2014-05-23T14:59:15.807" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer would be that, if I had to come up with a speech and find ways to motivate them with only two weeks remaining to recover from this type of an issue, I am already too late and have already failed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Building a high performing team starts at day one.  Motivation for success is a symptom of a high performing team.  If a high performing team was faced with such an issue, no speech or key motivating phrases would be required.  The team would persevere, find solutions, create workarounds, support each other, and implement its best efforts to recover from this issue without any unique intervention from the PM.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T14:59:15.807" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11624" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-23T20:12:26.863" Score="9" ViewCount="1437" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is not about project estimation techniques, initial processes, etc. Assume everything was done correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, we gave an estimation for an Android application with development team. The initial estimation was 2 months. Now, when we are about to deliver the project, we will be at least 5-10 days late.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The app which we are developing is Facebook specific. It is like a 2nd FB client, something like a Facebook plugin, so the majority of our work is with Facebook and its API and guidelines. During our work, we found out that we need additional permissions from FB, and have to submit the app for review. Then it turned out that FB does not provide data we need via its API and we need to find other ways to do the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum up, Facebook permissions and guidelines hindered us in meeting the deadline. While estimating, we could not go through all the APIs, data they provide, access, requests, and permissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there &lt;strong&gt;any cases&lt;/strong&gt; where wrong estimates can be justified? Should the client share the additional costs with us, or can the client blame us? I know that client estimates are important, but can we present specific cases to client and protect our rights? I did not find any professional resources that address that issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8146" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-05-24T22:54:21.277" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T23:02:30.393" Title="When can a project's wrong estimates be justified?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;clients&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11624" CreationDate="2014-05-23T20:51:11.973" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great project management is not about hitting your targets 100% of the time.  Much of our performance is probabilistic where many of the drivers of our results are out of control and very random.  Missing your targets becomes a problem if it became a surprise for you as the PM and your customer.  If you were monitoring properly, such as using critical path technique or earned value or earned schedule, you would have had early indicators that you were trending to be late and, as a great PM, you would have communicated this delay early and often.  Obviously, it is great to meet your targets but often times it is not possible; so greatness becomes knowing before you are late, mitigating what you can, communicating early and often, and then creating resilience via your contingency plans so that recovery is less harmful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, all that said, your contract with your customer becomes key on how this late project is handled.  Did you have awards and penalties tied to the schedule?  Were you paid under a firm fixed price, T&amp;amp;M, cost plus?  The T&amp;amp;Cs of your contract has to be met.  If early in your proposal you identified FB as a possible risk and built an assumption around FB's behavior and a stop loss clause of your company, then you have a case to argue to help if you have any financial loss secondary to this delay.  If not, capture that as a lesson learned for your future engagements.  External dependencies are always a risk factor that you need to build protections around since your ability to mitigate is near zero.  Good luck!                           &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T20:51:11.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10721" CreationDate="2014-05-23T22:38:11.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You'll need to have all the team members set their task dashboard view to &quot;View Tasks by project&quot;. This will reflect any changes made in the project's dashboard to theirs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BuU3z.png&quot; alt=&quot;Asana-My Tasks View&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3263" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T22:38:11.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11629" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11634" CreationDate="2014-05-24T13:53:14.417" Score="2" ViewCount="118" Body="&lt;p&gt;so I'm managing a project thats larger than my normal scope - and while I'm pretty much on my own, some tasks will be handed out to others, and I need to report nearly daily on where we are at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now I have the following documents on the go:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;project libre plan/gannt with a WBS list of tasks etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;similar structure in a word document, where I update with ideas, links, thoughts, next actions etc for each task&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a word document with key points - for sharing with the boss&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... and I'm starting to get lost in constant collating of notes back and forth between these systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do real PMs handle this?! :) Is there a better way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9175" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-02T14:25:48.033" LastActivityDate="2019-01-02T14:25:48.033" Title="linked tools together without micro managing?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;micro-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11630" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-23T19:50:28.967" Score="1" ViewCount="3949" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been in several organizations that have a PMO - Project Management Office.  But I've never gotten a clear take on what the person who runs it should really be called.  I've sometimes heard him/her referred to as &quot;the PMO&quot; but that really doesn't make any more sense than calling the person who runs the HR department &quot;the HR&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have a better title for this role that makes sense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9172" OwnerDisplayName="user249493" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2014-05-25T17:59:46.723" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T03:44:12.117" Title="What's the Title for the Person Who Runs a PMO Office?" Tags="&lt;roles&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11624" CreationDate="2014-05-24T22:45:56.933" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;The Problem&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Are] there any cases...when wrong estimates can be justified?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimates are not guarantees. They are &quot;educated guesses&quot; based on experience, historical data, and a set of assumptions. If you're being asked to &quot;justify&quot; your estimates, you are already playing the Blame Game&amp;trade; and starting from a false premise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't win the Blame Game&amp;trade;. Don't play it; instead, use it as a teachable moment to educate your organization about how projects should be initiated and managed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Document Project Assumptions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any project plan I can imagine involves making assumptions. Ideally, these assumptions should be clearly documented (and regularly updated) within the project, and clearly communicated to everyone involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I typically create project plans that contain an explicitly-titled assumptions section. This section calls out the underlying assumptions for the project, and identifies project prerequisites that are essential to its success. This section always notes that if the assumptions are flawed, or the prerequisites aren't met, then the entire project plan should be thoroughly reviewed to ensure that the plan remains valid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&quot;Why&quot; Doesn't Really Matter&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you bid a fixed-price contract, then it doesn't matter &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; you took longer to complete it than expected. You'll have to eat any additional project costs, and bid better next time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are on a time-and-materials contract, then it still doesn't matter why it took longer. From a client relations point of view you may certainly need to haul out your implicit assumptions to explain the variance, but the client will still generally be stuck with those extra costs unless there's been some sort of malfeasance or gross negligence on your part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's nothing wrong with trying to smooth things over, but it ultimately comes down to your contracting process and how well your organization manages the client engagement. A client shouldn't hear about a two-week delay &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the fact; that's a communications failure, rather than a failure of the original estimation process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-05-24T22:45:56.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11630" CreationDate="2014-05-25T14:28:56.783" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I know the title of this role is &quot;PMO Manager&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T14:28:56.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11597" CreationDate="2014-05-25T18:25:08.023" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I second David's opinion (+1!): your main duty is to report, clearly, when any delay can happen in the future. As the post stands, it seems this delay has been identified before the deadline, which works in your favour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back to the original question, &quot;how to ask for more time if you identify a potential delay ahead&quot;, some rules I'd suggest you to follow:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do not &lt;em&gt;ask for more time&lt;/em&gt;, expose the options.&lt;/strong&gt; As there's a possibility that the original plan won't be met, you need to expose the options and let the client do the call. Depending on the project, the client may not be interested to extend the schedule. What happen if this project was a kind of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2000_problem&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Millennium Bug&lt;/a&gt; and the schedule is missed by a day? In this sense, Khris already provided a good list of options.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Avoid blaming the team.&lt;/strong&gt; Your client is not interested if your dev gave wrong estimates, if someone got sick for weeks or if a scenario wasn't considered. In the end, it's your duty to report the problem and the deviance on the original project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If such risk was reported at the beginning of the project, refresh client's mind.&lt;/strong&gt; Project estimates are never 100% accurate... that's why they're estimations. If the delay was caused by one of the reported risks, you might have more comfort raising it. Again, problems are always inherent to the work to be delivered, not to people. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Avoid falling into &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Brooks Law&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/strong&gt; Your client might be tempted to throw people into the project. I'd avoid this as much as I could, unless the knowledge required is 100% technical and the learning curve would be very small.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be always transparent:&lt;/strong&gt; There might be a temptation on avoiding report today as the problem may solve itself magically before the deadline. Just don't. It won't work. You must flee from falling into another law, this time &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Murphy's&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, missing estimates is eventually part of PM job. You'd only hit all estimates if you'd be adding a huge amount of padding on them, which wouldn't make you a good PM either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T18:25:08.023" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11629" CreationDate="2014-05-25T18:52:49.677" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As PM, one of your main tasks is to make sure the communication and information is flowing to the correct people in the correct way. There's no one-size-fits-all solution (that I'm aware of, at least!) but some important points must be taken into account when dealing with all the documents you have to deal with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Documentation must be useful.&lt;/strong&gt; Every line of document you write must have a purpose. Documents are built for an end, there's no sense maintaining a document for the sake of having the document. Remember / review &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/9819/timetabling-solution-for-small-tutorial-college/&quot;&gt;CodeGnome's law&lt;/a&gt;, it's also useful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Understand your audience.&lt;/strong&gt; As you mentioned, you have a specific report for the boss to track how's things going in a high level view. When dealing with senior management, is important to make sure the documentation is as objective as possible. The time one have available to dedicate to a task (like reviewing a plan) is inversely proportional to his pay rate. Likewise, tracking tasks directly into a Gantt may sound complex, you may think of using a &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/3683/software-for-task-tracking&quot;&gt;task tracking tool&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Assess what are the common documentation used in other projects.&lt;/strong&gt; The WBS and Gantt you mentioned are known and should be kept. The word doc you mention you have could be translated into a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/raid-log.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;RAID log&lt;/a&gt;, which would be more easily understood by other PMs when discussing about what you have in your project. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Assess what are the documentation with redundant information.&lt;/strong&gt; And get rid of it. In a project I was working on, there was one Excel to track resources and a MS project to track tasks. Needless to say the first thing I did once I joined the project was to get rid of that Excel.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, keeping documentation up to date and making sure the communication and information is correctly flowing across the project is your main role, so it's expected it to take a considerable part of your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T18:52:49.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11635" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-25T20:04:43.933" Score="4" ViewCount="498" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a project that is reaching a deadline for the final production release. It's a fixed price project and up till now we've managed to work in 2 week iterations, doing regular releases to our &quot;inner test environment&quot; where BAs and people acting as POs from the client's side had a chance to have a look, give feedback etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're now at the point where we have only 4 weeks to end this project and as we go to deploy the separate modules of this application to the client's environment, we've been struggling with a lot of bugs appearing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have some functionality to be done still but my question is - what is the best way to handle those bugs as they appear? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since theres really a lot of them; due to project specifics, we didn't have the ability to test it on client's environment earlier. It is impossible to estimate them up front + we have only 4 weeks till the end, does it make sense to keep Scrum or switch to Tech Lead dispatching work daily to the devs directly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9182" LastEditorUserId="6608" LastEditDate="2014-05-27T21:38:55.557" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T11:34:36.153" Title="Bug fixing in Scrum, at the end of the project" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11630" CreationDate="2014-05-26T03:44:12.117" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PMO Leader&lt;/strong&gt; is occasionally used but the PMO Manager mentioned by @Marv Mills is far more common in the places I know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T03:44:12.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11637" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11641" CreationDate="2014-05-26T04:39:13.490" Score="3" ViewCount="8648" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm having trouble writing a user story for a back-end process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let say you are building a website that sells widgets.  You have a page on the site where your site visitors can see all the details of the widget - pictures, videos, and detailed specifications.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All widget details are sourced from a third party provider.  There is a scheduled task that picks up an XML file with the widget specifications, and related images/video and imports these into your database.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to write some user stories that capture all of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can think of a story such as &quot;As a widget researcher I can view the pictures, videos, and specifications for a widget&quot;.  This would cover the building of the actual web page to view the details of a particular widget.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also need a story for the back-end process that populates the database with all the widget data.  It could be a task of the story above, but then it would be too big - it's probably a sprint or two of work in it's own right.  When trying to frame this import from a user perspective, I just end up with the same user story, i.e. &quot;As a widget researcher I can view the pictures, videos, and specifications of a widget&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an alternative wording I could use for the import, frame it from a user perspective, and prevent confusion between the story for the import and the story for building the page to view the data itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9185" LastEditorUserId="9185" LastEditDate="2014-05-26T20:56:41.990" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T22:20:19.513" Title="Creating a user story for a back-end process" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11629" CreationDate="2014-05-26T09:05:17.743" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess it is one of the most common problems - a PM needs to use bunch of tools and methods to steer the project and keep everyone happy except himself. It is true that you need 4 core aspects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planning/schedule&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Organizational environment for collaboration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Analytics and metrics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reporting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest taking a look at tools that offer everything in one place. MS Project is a great tool for planning but it is weak on all the other parts. Take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eylean.com/?utm_source=link&amp;amp;utm_medium=text&amp;amp;utm_campaign=vv&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Eylean board&lt;/a&gt;. It is simple to use and quick to learn but contains variety of features for mature project management and collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5562" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T09:05:17.743" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11639" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11640" CreationDate="2014-05-26T17:10:49.667" Score="6" ViewCount="413" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work as a developer in a small IT firm with 4 developers and 2 project managers.&#xA;We currently implement some sort of traditional project management, in which the workflow for a given project is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project manager gathers functional requirements with client&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lead developer analyses the requirements and puts estimated execution times on these requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project manager calculates project price based on estimated execution time + management overhead + some margin for error.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The client agrees to the project price and is promised a deadline.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project gets developed and delivered.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The client notifies us in case of bugs / need for additional features/ ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Eventually, the bug notifications/feature requests fade out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every project we make is tailor made to the specific needs of our client. This means that task estimates are sometimes off (it's hard to estimate a task you've never done before) or that certain technical issues only arise when we are in the middle of development. This frustrates our project managers greatly, as this usually means we overshoot our estimated cost of development and our profit margin for the project slinks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the greatest frustration originates from missing deadlines which were promised to clients. This is because we have, at any given time, always 3 or more projects in active development. Next to that, the developers are often called directly by clients for questions/technical issues/emergencies. There's also the extra overhead when tasks are shifted from one developer to another, which then have to be explained to the developer that receives the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every week, one of the project managers assigns tasks to the developers that need to be finished that week to meet the deadlines. Of the 38 assignable work hours per developers, 4 hours are left unassigned to account for unforeseen events. There's also a new developer that just joined us three weeks ago, and he needs some technical help from time to time which also, on average, takes about 2 to 3 hours of my time every week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, these 4 hours have so far never been sufficient. Communication with management, high priority bugs, ... takes longer than 4 hours every week. Management blames the developers for being unable to prioritize and says we should put more effort in making accurate estimates and actually meeting our deadlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is this: what is the right approach here? How can we better estimate the scope and duration of a project and effectively set and meet its deadlines? What needs to change?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9190" LastActivityDate="2016-09-27T10:12:36.300" Title="Small firm with 4 developers and 2 project managers in need of some guidance for project workflow" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;deadline&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11639" CreationDate="2014-05-26T20:13:27.390" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are so many classic issues contained in this approach it is hard to know the best place to start! Firstly I will say this, an Agile approach may suit you better because of the way it handles functional requirements and technical debt (bugs and issues) however I personally have no direct experience with that model. I'm sure someone will come along and discuss that as an approach. However, in the meantime, assuming you want to stick with a waterfall model: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Project Managers gathering functional requirements: This is not a traditional PM task and is more suited to business and systems analysts. BAs are trained in teasing out the exact functional requirements and presenting them in a way that the client can approve and (hopefully) the development team can use in their estimation and development processes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Planning: Clearly the PMs are not planning the projects with enough contingency to allow for unforeseen issues, impacts from other projects overrunning and critical bugs and issues. It doesn't sound to me like this is an estimation issue (depends on how wild the developers' estimates actually are and how much they differ from reality). It sounds more like hopelessly optimistic planning and mismanagement of expectations. These are all areas where perhaps the PMs could benefit from additional training.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Capacity planning: The people that are responsible for planning how the resource pool is allocated and assigned (you don't say whether this is also the PMs) need to get smarter with their understanding of the different output rates of the team- Some will always be faster/more prolific that others and when making up the team for any given project this knowledge has to feed in to the planning- pretending that everyone works as fast as the fastest member of the team is somewhat delusional and will always result in over-optimistic planning. It is also important to take into account the impact on the existing team members of adding new members that need to be trained/mentored or even just assimilated into the team- the effect is never just on the productivity of the new person, it affects the productivity of everyone around that person. The other side of the capacity-planning coin is that in a pure software house/consultancy environment, utilisation is king. No company can afford to have people on the bench, so a sales driven environment will always overload the personnel (&quot;sweating the assets&quot;) - This will never go away and it goes with the territory, however by better planning and understanding of the productivity of the people it could be better. Management must also play a part in this and be led to understand that if you push people too hard corners will get cut, quality will fall and more time will be spent fixing the quality issues. Additionally there will usually be relationship or reputational damage. Balancing this against a non-charging &quot;bench&quot; of under-utilised people is always a tricky task. Easy to get very wrong and very very difficult to get right.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Management blames developers for being unable to prioritise : This has a simple answer- Developers DO NOT prioritise the issues. The PMs, maybe. The BAs, maybe. The client, always (once you get to UAT). Someone somewhere should be discussing and balancing the outstanding issues and informing the development team of the priority order of the bugs. Simple as that- Developers are probably the worst group of people to ask to prioritise the bugs and issues as they (usually) do not have the higher level/business-oriented view of the project. In my personal experience I, as PM, usually facilitate the prioritisation of issues. During the SIT stage we do it using a risk-based approach (to over-simplify it, fix the things that move the product closest to the Acceptance Criteria) and during the UAT stage I work with the client to figure out what is most important to them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last thing, you don't mention testing in your waterfall process. Is that because you don't do it or just because it is &quot;so obvious&quot; that it doesn't need mentioning? If you go straight from Developer/Unit Testing to the client/go-live, then you are asking for trouble. The team needs to do System and Integration Testing (SIT) before the client ever sees it and that needs to be properly planned by someone who understands testing; not a PM and definitely NOT a developer. This is where the tasks undertaken by proper BAs come into their own as their specifications are used by testing professionals to construct test cases and then to prove the product works against those test cases. By the time the client gets to see the code it should already pass all the tests the client will ever run against it. UAT &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be a simple thing (though somehow it never is!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT after re-reading question: Given it's a small company you probably don't have the scope for adding BAs and testing resources. However I would seriously question why two PMs are needed for four developers- For that many people I cannot see how you need more than one PM running multiple projects. If you dropped a PM and replaced then with a BA who has testing experience that would be a much better mix in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2014-05-26T20:20:37.080" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T20:20:37.080" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11637" CreationDate="2014-05-26T22:00:21.540" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few ways I might write these stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Vertical slice (preferred)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than implementing all of the front end in one story and all of the back end in another, you could try having multiple stories that do a bit of both.  For example, the first you play might be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;As a widget researcher &#xA;I want to see specifications of a widget &#xA;So that I know if it's suitable for my use&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This story might include getting the XML file with the specs, adding to DB and rendering on the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could then introduce separate stories for the other media that do both the back end and front end together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Manual import (3rd choice)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If doing the import of the specifications and front end was too big (I usually wouldn't accept a story that's bigger than half my velocity) you might consider a manual import of the data first:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;As the widget display app&#xA;I want to be able to access specifications about widgets&#xA;So that I can display them to the user&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This story would be a one off, manual data import that puts only the specs data in the DB.  Once done, you then have some flexibility in what you do next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could then play a story to do the front end for displaying widgets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, you can choose what is more important.  If having the most up to date widget information on the site is critical, play a story to automate the data import.  If the widgets don't change that often, it might be preferable to play a story to add one of the additional media types (again with a one off manual import).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd probably still include some sort of front end with this story.  Perhaps just spit out the specs for a widget unstyled on the page so a non-technical product owner can still sign off without resorting to showing the the database!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hybrid (2nd choice)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A better solution if vertical slices are too big might be to try a hybrid approach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep the story from the vertical slice option (note, that story didn't have any implementation details about where the data comes from or is held) but change the acceptance criteria to not expect a scheduled import but put the data in the DB manually (as in the manual approach).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This allows you to still play a story that covers both DB and front end while not requiring you to automate the import process.  As with the manual option above, you can then choose whether automating or adding additional media is more important to do first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastEditorUserId="1185" LastEditDate="2014-05-26T22:20:19.513" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T22:20:19.513" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11635" CreationDate="2014-05-27T12:28:36.980" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you haven't really been doing Scrum, or at least, environment in which you're developing is not best for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum has the concept of &quot;Potentially Shippable&quot;, that is, your product &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be released at the end of any Sprint. You have not been following that practice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum also focuses on developing products, not component teams. Scrum expects the team to work end-to-end. By saving up integration till the end, you've introduced a massive amount of risk. You can not deliver any value until you have integrated. In Scrum, you should prefer to do this continuously (i.e. every Sprint).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you have a list of bugs and four weeks to do it, then you should probably just fix as many bugs as you can in four weeks. I'd suggest you keep the list prioritized and just let developers pick the most important bug until they're done. There would be very little value in actually trying to do Scrum at this stage. Just keep things simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not much else you can do. You're paying the price for diverging from the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6608" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T12:28:36.980" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11643" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-27T20:25:11.303" Score="5" ViewCount="790" Body="&lt;p&gt;My current team is not following the working model I'd expect they follow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They're programming on their own, without much interaction with other members and they are not interested into testing their code as it was expected to be. In sum, I have a team formed by &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/4241/advice-for-dealing-with-a-cowboy-programmer-in-an-agile-team&quot;&gt;Cowboy coders&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How such a team could be get back on track?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9199" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T22:21:15.130" Title="How to deal with a team of Cowboy coders?" Tags="&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11643" CreationDate="2014-05-28T03:25:47.737" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cowboy coders generally come from one of two places, either an organization that has promoted quick development (usually start ups) or from lack of experience.  Coming from an organization that transitioned from a start up and moved on where a large organization bought the company and then hired a consultant to kick our butt, I have experience with a group of cowboy coders.  Generally cowboy coders like to code and create.  Cowboy coders like the freedom to create what they want and may not want to interact with their team.  Generally that means lack of testing, organization and belief they are doing what is best.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To combat this you just need some interaction and training.  This is something that will take time but a little structure will go a long way.  Spend some time making team activities.  We play basketball on regular (manager and team), but it can be anything.  Something that gets the team to like to interact with each other.  If you can set aside project that requires a team to work together and collaborate perhaps start with a new technology nobody knows and require team time to come up with ideas to create the product but only allow work on this project during meetings only.  Play the devils advocate and try to make every person discuss why they want to do something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also scrum meetings are very helpful.  Getting people to interact and own their meetings will make them feel empowered and get the group interacting.  This has multiple benefits, I won't explain but you can look into them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next start training them on how a tested software can be better.  Train them on techniques that will make testing easier and can be rewarding.  Show them and explain.  Bring up references that show how a well developed software will produce better.  Break their software and use a technique they are not using to show how it can help them more then help you. Also keep sending their work back until tests are completed to your satisfaction.  They will eventually get tired of bringing bad work to you.  You then will have to praise well when they do well too.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to introduce code reviews as well.  If the team is reviewing each others work they will get an understanding of what else is happening and people happen to start to interact more when they know someone else is looking at their work.  Also you won't have to spend all your time looking at their code.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is more you can do this is a start. Don't try to do it all at once but definitely start layering it in there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8899" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T03:25:47.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3074" CreationDate="2014-05-28T09:44:34.143" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend you to check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.proofhub.com/?ref=ak&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;proofhub&lt;/a&gt;. It’s a powerful tool that blends project management and online collaboration software. Features like time tracking, sub tasks, gantt chart, calendar and chat makes it very easy to use. Currently proofhub provides user interface in 5 languages including English, Spanish, French and Portuguese, Polish. With simple pricing model without “per user” charges, proofhub is an affordable and attractive tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8626" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T09:44:34.143" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11609" CreationDate="2014-05-28T11:09:28.013" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First and foremost thing is to prioritize the task, set the time frame for every task, distribute the tasks among the team members. And last but not the least, motivate team members to work hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9207" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T11:09:28.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="812" CreationDate="2014-05-29T10:33:03.527" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project Charter Vs PID ( Project Initiation Document)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Initiating a project usually involves writing one of two documents; a Project Charter or a Project Initiation Document (PID). Now a great many things happen during initiation. High level scope is determined, deliverables set and budgets estimated.&#xA;If these aren't investigated and documented effectively it can adversely impact the entire successful delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well to give a quick overview, a PID is a highly detailed paper which forces a PM to spend time upfront in seriously thinking about the deliverables, processes and governance required, before it even starts. A Project Charter is far less detailed and hence requires much less from a PM. It is essentially a quick way for work to get underway fast.&#xA;However, despite this, both documents have a similar feel and endeavour to fulfil the function of enabling effective initiation. But as you will have already seen, both definitely put the emphasis in different areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So which is better? Well if you have a small project then writing a long, convoluted PID doesn't make sense. On something this size it is highly likely the deliverable will be simple, the amount of resources utilised small and there will be just the one Sponsor.&#xA;On bigger or more complex projects, writing a PID will definitely make sense. Yes it is a detailed paper to complete, but ironing out issues surrounding scope, roles, responsibilities, development process and governance upfront is absolutely vital to prevent confusion later on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The approval process for each document certainly bears this out. A Charter can be approved simply by the sponsor. A PID requires all the sponsors and other key individuals to formally approve it. This is harder to get and certainly takes time, but it means that activities start with all the stakeholders signing up to the same understanding of what is being delivered and when.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9219" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T10:33:03.527" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11624" CreationDate="2014-05-29T16:51:05.427" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your question a generic sense - ALL estimates are wrong. Whether or not deviations are justifiable (or should be compensated) depends on the 'why' they were wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To address it in a more specific way - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the beginning of your question you said 'assume everything was done correctly' (i.e.: we were not at fault). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later you said 'we could not go through all the API's, data they provide, access, requests, and permissions.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why not?  You said the delay was specifically due to the requirements of FB, and at the same time say you didn't review all of their requirements. Were these not available, or did you just not take the time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to that question will also give you the answer to your original question about justification. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T16:51:05.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11609" CreationDate="2014-05-30T19:40:59.337" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a great interview question, because it tells you a lot about the company asking it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, it tells you you don't want to work there, which means you can answer, &quot;Thanks, but no thanks,&quot; skip the rest of the interview, and go get some ice cream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8644" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T19:40:59.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="123" CreationDate="2014-05-30T20:52:54.507" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ignoring the elephant in the room&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or: Major issues that do not get addressed (or better: they are addressed but get ignored), while the project keeps on going, eventually trying to deliver without resolving the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T20:52:54.507" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-05-30T20:52:54.507" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="123" CreationDate="2014-05-30T21:14:53.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Making promises the project can't deliver.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talk with all possible stakeholders to make sure their input is given and understood, and agree to any reasonable request. Secretly realize that the project can never deliver all these requirements, as many are contradictive or co-dependent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't talk to the stakeholders about this, hope that they will forget about it, and let the project carry-on regardless. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the project is in danger, enough work and money will have been spend so you will have to deliver anything at all, upper management can only decide to push through, ignoring all stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When upper management decides to cancel the project (not likely) you can always blame the stakeholders and their impossible requests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T21:14:53.000" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-05-30T21:14:53.000" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11624" CreationDate="2014-05-30T23:02:30.393" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ideally, you would have done a risk analysis on the estimates that would have covered the costs of the permission issues and FB workaround. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also if you were far from sure of the estimates, you should not offer a fixed-price. Instead use other models like time/material, tiered / phase fixed-price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The customer hired you as an expert in the domain, and would expect you to include margins to cover unforeseen circumstances within reason (10-20% in this case).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd not chase the customer to pay more for this project. Rather, try and get more business from them. Meanwhile you can work on risk analysis and payment model, so you avoid this situation in the next project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8592" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T23:02:30.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11662" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-02T17:30:59.407" Score="1" ViewCount="1236" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was looking for a good StackExchange site to deliver this question. I feel like it could be a fit here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for an answer on what is considered the most effective means of information retention in a meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, let's say I have 3 points of topic to cover in a meeting, all of varying degrees of importance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it best to deliver the strongest point first or last in order to maximize information retention and efficiency in the audience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it change if it is phone based vs. face-to-face?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My initial thought would be last*, but I figured studies may have been done on this before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10234" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T19:00:57.567" Title="Is it more effective to deliver the most important point first or last in a meeting?" Tags="&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11662" CreationDate="2014-06-02T18:05:49.070" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While this is not a PM question per se, but very interesting topic.  There have been studies on Serial Position Effect.  Primacy and recency biases seem to be linked to long and short term memories.  Here's one study I just found:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.simplypsychology.org/primacy-recency.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.simplypsychology.org/primacy-recency.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the question might be answered based on when you think the information will be recalled.  Primacy seems to be linked to long term while recency for short term.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T18:05:49.070" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11664" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-02T21:22:11.780" Score="1" ViewCount="1084" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I determine a project end date when Product Backlog Items (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28software_development%29#Product_backlog&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PBIs&lt;/a&gt;) are not estimated? Consider the following two examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am on a project that is at the beginning. I'm asked when the project will end, but I do not have a product backlog that has estimates for the PBI's, especially epics and stories too big to size. How do I approach this so that I can provide the stakeholders an end date? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have a prioritized backlog and I provide the stakeholders with an end date but we discover new information or PBIs that were estimated at 5 story points but are actually 8s, resulting in the end date being pushed back and back and back. Is this normal behavior and how do I approach this situation?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6390" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2014-06-04T19:07:17.823" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T18:17:18.197" Title="How can I determine a project end date when PBIs are not estimated?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11665" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-02T22:54:43.740" Score="11" ViewCount="1356" Body="&lt;p&gt;How to quantify time requirements for tasks that are almost purely problem-solving or creative? And how to set deadlines based on those estimates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Practical scenario in my team:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Steve must find a solution to a never seen before problem A, which includes researching/reading up about similar problems, analyzing the problem A and trying out various ideas until he finds the solution. The company wants problem A to be figured out and solved by end of this week.&#xA;At the same time, there is another task B which we know will take around 30 hours, and that needs to be done by end of next week. Senior management wants regular updates on status of B and is not keen on doing it last minute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both A and B must be done by Steve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How exactly can I quantify A so that I can, for example, ask senior management that we start B later?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gut feeling says researching and figuring out what A is may take a whole day, implementing it four-five days. Could I then say that A will take six days, after which we can dedicate four full days to problem B?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any other ideas how I can tackle a problem like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="YetAnotherNewbieManager" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2014-06-03T06:37:05.237" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T19:34:36.130" Title="How to estimate time required and deadlines for creative and problem-solving tasks?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11665" CreationDate="2014-06-02T23:38:06.987" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd get Steve to run A and B is parallel on the first day - a few hours of B, and A for the rest of the day. I want Steve to give me a time estimate for both projects by the end of the day at the latest,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can Steve tell you that he expects that both A and B can be completed by the end of next week? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If he doesn't expect to meet the deadlines, can Steve say what kind of support does he needs to complete both A and B by the deadlines?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the resources that Steve needs are not available to help him complete A and B on time, which deadline has more give, the deadline for A or the deadline for B?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have Steve email you twice a day on his progress completing both tasks and letting you know whether he is still on track about meeting the deadlines. In particular, look for any evidence that Steve is stalled and needs some backup. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Follow-up comment from @teego1967 &quot;One sign that a project is going to hell in a handbasket is a requirement for &quot;realtime&quot; email updates to management about progress. Just briefly chat with Steve to make sure he's on track, that will do the job without wasting his valuable time. Requiring frequent status-update emails is a major demoralization. It signals a lack of trust.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My boss required regular email updates from me on my projects - nothing verbose - just to make sure that I wasn't getting mired somewhere without assistance. I am not aware that I ever got demoralized from this requirement. In turn, my firm's clients also required my boss to give them regular email updates and my boss complied. No skin off his nose either. It takes three minutes to put a status email together and send it. What do you mean. &quot;wasting Steve's valuable time?&quot; I take more time to wipe my nose and stare out the window. Reagan used to say: &quot;Trust and verify&quot; - Following up on action items is a basic, fundamental tenet of supervisory management. Trust or lack of it are irrelevant to follow up and verification, but due diligence have plenty to do with both. No manager that I ever worked with likes nasty surprises. And I have done enough management to hate it when a nasty surprise happens to me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Vietnhi Phuvan" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T00:30:17.063" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11665" CreationDate="2014-06-02T23:55:56.990" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many times you JUST CANNOT predict how long some things will take. Even the most experienced managers in organizations with infinite amounts of money at their disposal frequently FAIL to meet deadlines when attempting something new. This is especially true when you're dealing with small groups who have a lot of responsibilities on their backs to begin with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Steve needs to triage both problems and report back on the feasibility of doing each one or at least indicate what portion of each one can be realistically completed in a estimable amount of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your job is to back-up Steve and make upper management understand that project A is an unknown which requires some discovery before an implementation can be planned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due dates are rarely carved in stone. It is up to you to make sure that your people are diligent in meeting the challenges.  You also have to set expectations with your bosses-- this means saying &quot;no&quot; to unrealistic demands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some managers think that being able to predict completion dates is their prime priority. That's only half (or less of) the job. The other half is removing obstacles. What are you doing to keep your team's velocity up? What obstacles are you removing? What resources are you providing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="teego1967" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T23:55:56.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11668" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-03T08:32:50.080" Score="5" ViewCount="1807" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let us suppose that today is Monday and that a Scrum sprint starts today. Should Sprint Planning for this sprint be done today, or should Sprint Planning have been done on Friday?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10235" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-06-03T14:20:49.753" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T08:00:37.430" Title="Is planning part of the sprint in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11665" CreationDate="2014-06-03T08:56:19.183" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question is how to quantify your estimate to allow management to let Task B start later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to set the expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You know each Task is going to take around a week. This leaves no contingency and assumes he has no distractions or illness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could use a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-point_estimation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Three-point estimation&lt;/a&gt;  technique to give a Best Case, Worst Case and most likely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After this let your business know you will provide an update refining the Task A estimate on the 3rd or 4th day after an update from Steve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T08:56:19.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11665" CreationDate="2014-06-03T09:40:25.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;How exactly can I quantify A...?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would split A in 2 stages - research and implementation, and would give the management an estimated deadline for the research stage. One of the results from the research should be a plan how to solve the problem, with estimated time needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the order of work - it depends on the priorities of the company about these particular tasks - are there customers waiting for the results of A or B, are there any relations between A and B, the overall impact of either task, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is imperative that both tasks are completed by the end of the week, I would look for a way to help Steve. For example, if Steve is the only person with specific knowledge required for A and B, are there any subtasks that can be done by someone else - like browsing internet and downloading/bookmarking potentially useful information, so Steve can concentrate on the research. Or preprocessing some data, or making the interface nice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10236" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T09:40:25.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11668" CreationDate="2014-06-03T11:48:09.953" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Convention would be to do it as the first activity in the sprint.  In reality, it doesn't matter too much when you do it provided the team is happy with the timing and it's close enough to the start of the next sprint that everyone can remember what was discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important part is that it's a consistent ceremony that happens every sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T11:48:09.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11668" CreationDate="2014-06-03T12:41:33.973" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The planning of the sprint have to be done on Friday in this Scenario.&#xA;It is a part of the project alignment then the sprint have to been planned and the approval is done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10239" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T12:41:33.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11668" CreationDate="2014-06-03T14:45:43.003" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprint Planning for the current Sprint is contained &lt;em&gt;within&lt;/em&gt; that Sprint. In part, this ensures that planning isn't wasted on features outside the scope of the current sprint, or on stories that may change or be re-prioritized within the Product Backlog before they are in scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Sprints &lt;em&gt;Contain&lt;/em&gt; Both Planning and Execution&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Canonically, Sprint Planning is contained within the Sprint. As explicitly defined in the &lt;em&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sprints contain and consist of the Sprint Planning, Daily Scrums, the development work, the Sprint Review, and the Sprint Retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash; &lt;em&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/em&gt;, Schwaber and Sutherland. 2013: p. 7.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Broadly speaking, the intention is to treat planning and execution as a vertical slice that can deliver a potentially-shippable increment. By making Sprint Planning part of the Sprint itself, Scrum ensures that planning is tightly coupled to the current state of the project, the current capacity of the team, and the immediate Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, Sprint Planning is a form of &lt;em&gt;just-in-time planning&lt;/em&gt; that is focused on what can be achieved within the current sprint. Longer-range planning can be addressed in Backlog Grooming, or by other meetings or processes that suit the self-organizing needs of the Scrum Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T14:45:43.003" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11675" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11676" CreationDate="2014-06-03T16:59:24.923" Score="12" ViewCount="2364" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're getting started with Scrum and have had a few debates about whether we should estimate in story points or ideal hours.  The team is pretty divided, so I'd like to know if any real studies have been done about which is more effective.  I've certainly read a lot of opinions on which is better and, while there are good arguments for each, I haven't found a single book, article, or post on a web page that's backed up by concrete numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, have there been any studies done that I haven't come across?  How about psychology research on absolute vs. relative estimates?  If those don't exist, what about real-world examples of what has worked for different teams in various types of companies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7845" LastActivityDate="2019-07-12T06:07:16.657" Title="Is there any published research about story points vs time estimation?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11675" CreationDate="2014-06-03T20:12:12.030" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mike Cohn in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/books/agile-estimating-and-planning&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Agile Estimating and Planning&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; describes estimation using story points vs ideal days in Chapters 4-5, then compares them in Chapter 8. Regarding research:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is credible evidence that we are better at estimating “this is&#xA;like that” than we are at estimating the absolute size of things&#xA;(Lederer 1998; Vicinanza 1991).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sources of these citations are given as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lederer, Albert L., 1998. A Casual Model For Software Cost Estimating Error.&#xA;IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 24(2):137–148.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jørgensen, Magne. 2002 A Review of Studies on Expert Estimation of Software&#xA;Development Effort at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.simula.no/departments/engineering/.artifacts&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.simula.no/departments/engineering/.artifacts&lt;/a&gt; Simula Research Lab, actual paper at ..../expertsubmitnovember2002_copy-1.pdf (these links seem to be obsolete, a working link to a potentially different version of this is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.simula.no/research/se/publications/SE.4.Joergensen.2004.c&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.simula.no/research/se/publications/SE.4.Joergensen.2004.c&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, ideal days may be easier to comprehend for some people / teams, however the risk is that it is too easily interpreted (even unconsciously) as concrete days (&lt;em&gt;elapsed time&lt;/em&gt;), which then may even be viewed as a commitment (by e.g. management). This is mainly why story points are used by many, to avoid any chance of misinterpretation. With story points it is always clear that we are estimating relative size, not duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may also be important to note that story points can not be directly translated into effective task hours / days; over a longer time period, a team of course is able to calculate how much time a story point may take to complete &lt;em&gt;on average&lt;/em&gt;; however that does not mean that you can use that value to calculate the time required to complete a specific item. In real life, a concrete item of 2 story points may turn out to require the same amount of time to complete as another item of 1 story point - or it may require 3 times as much time. However, in a larger sample these individual fluctuations tend to cancel each other out nicely, hence story points can be used to estimate team velocity in the long term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mike himself clearly favours story points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My preference is for story points. I find that the benefits they offer&#xA;as pure measure of size are compelling. That story points help promote&#xA;cross-functional team behavior is a huge advantage. Shifting a team’s&#xA;thinking from “my part will take three ideal days and your part will&#xA;take two ideal days so the total is five ideal days” is very different&#xA;from “overall this story seems about the same size as that one so&#xA;let’s call it five story points also.” That a story point to me can be&#xA;the same as a story point to you, while the same may not be true of an&#xA;ideal day, is another big benefit. Two developers of different skill&#xA;or experience can agree on the size of something while disagreeing&#xA;about how long it will take to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The shortcomings of story points are indeed short. Yes, it’s easier to&#xA;get started with ideal days. However, the discomfort of working with&#xA;nebulous story points is shortlived. Ideal days are definitely easier&#xA;to explain to those outside the team but we probably shouldn’t choose&#xA;based on how hard it will be to explain to outsiders. That ideal days&#xA;are so easily understandable causes problems as well. In some&#xA;organizations there will be pressure to make an actual day closer to&#xA;an ideal day. Pressure for more focus and concentration on our work is&#xA;fine. But organizational pressure for each actual day to be close to&#xA;an ideal day will also have the effect of causing us to estimate in&#xA;actual time while calling it an ideal day. That is, an ideal day will&#xA;become redefined as “a day where I make six hours of progress and do&#xA;other things for two hours.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Update&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just bumped into another article from Jeff Sutherland's blog with research details and links:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrum.jeffsutherland.com/2010/04/story-points-why-are-they-better-than.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Story Points: Why are they better than hours?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10244" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T20:06:14.147" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11675" CreationDate="2014-06-04T03:00:31.213" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Story Points: Why are they better than hours?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a look at this blog post by Jeff Sutherland on &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrum.jeffsutherland.com/2010/04/story-points-why-are-they-better-than.html&quot;&gt;Story Points: Why are they better than hours?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is further vigorously defended by him in the discussion below the blog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this blog post he cites the following examples. These may be helpful to you as &quot;real-world examples of what has worked for different teams in various types of companies&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A study of 80 multimillion dollar projects at GSI Commerce (now owned by eBay) showed that the best experts in the company were totally incapable of estimating how much time a project would take by the people who actually implemented it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Rand Corporation research in the 1940's showed clearly that humans are not good at estimating hours and practical experience repeatedly confirms the research. The recommended Delphi approach to estimation which was adopted in software development as the Wide Band Delphi technique. The same technique is now embedded in the practice called Planning Poker for agile teams.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A CMMI Level 5 company determined that story point estimation cuts estimation time by 80% allowing teams to do more estimation and tracking than a typical waterfall team. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A telecom company noticed that estimated story points with planning poker was 48 times faster than waterfall estimation practices in the company and gave as good or better estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T03:00:31.213" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11664" CreationDate="2014-06-04T17:35:40.737" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Create a goal oriented roadmap&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears that you are following an agile development process. However, your (or your stakeholders?) expectation seems to be more waterfallish - fixed scope (list of features) and fixed time (committed delivery date) without even putting in the effort to do a detailed estimation! This is a recipe for disaster! No wonder you are seeing &quot;the end date being pushed back and back and back&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend a different approach. Your Product Owner should set up a series of meetings with the stakeholders:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I expect that you already have your Product Vision documented. If not, you can use something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/the-product-vision-board/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Roman Pichler's The Vision Board&lt;/a&gt; as a template to create one. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Create a goal oriented roadmap along the lines suggested by the same author in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/agile-product-roadmap/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Working with an Agile Product Roadmap&lt;/a&gt;. &quot;The benefit of a goal-oriented roadmap is that it shifts the conversation from arguing over features to agreeing on shared goals.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The timeline for the goal oriented roadmap is still a judgement call for the dev team. However, the difference here is that nothing will be scheduled into the sprints that is not absolutely essential to achieving the goals. And the dev team is empowered to come up with better and more productive ways to achieve the goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T17:35:40.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11680" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-04T18:47:31.660" Score="-1" ViewCount="206" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.omnigroup.com/omniplan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Omniplan 2.3.5&lt;/a&gt;, Is there any way to create a Resource report similar to the report Microsoft Project offers? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This report should include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how many hours does a resource work &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;when do they start&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;when do they end and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;export this in report or chart&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, would it be possible to do by importing the project file to a different program? I tried using  Microsoft Project, but the data is not correctly transferred (I get wrong days and no resources). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10252" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2014-06-04T20:05:15.237" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T08:35:59.083" Title="Support for Resource Overview in Omniplan" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11682" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-05T17:09:24.287" Score="3" ViewCount="3110" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a person who is currently working as Consultant at an IT Consulting Firm which roles have ranged from Project Manager, Project Coordinator, Project Expeditor and Project Contributor, how should I fill out the application for the PMP certification?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What should I put down as my project role?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should it be &quot;Consultant&quot; for all client projects?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I put down &quot;Other&quot; and then say &quot;Consultant - Project Coordinator&quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does anyone know the exact definitions of the roles listed in the PMP application form? They do not match the roles defined in PMP terms&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For organization details, &lt;strong&gt;should I put the information of the consulting company I work for or should I put the information of the client organization&lt;/strong&gt; for whom the project was being conducted?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All constructive feedback is appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10260" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2014-06-05T22:50:08.523" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T13:52:25.137" Title="Filling PMP Application as Consultant - Project Role and Organization Details" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11682" CreationDate="2014-06-06T04:48:10.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What should I put down as my project role?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;It should be our current Role. Your roles will be different for different projects,  sometime Project Lead/TL, consultant, Developer, Analyst, Module Lead etc&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For organization details&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Your payroll company and the institution which got the contact hours.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10254" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T04:48:10.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11668" CreationDate="2014-06-06T08:00:37.430" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have tended to have a check point on the Monday so that everyone is sure what we're delivering but for anything but the most basic of projects the sprint planning should be done in the previous sprint before because you need time to dive into those user stories and ensure you have enough detail, know what the quality criteria are and that this is agreed with the customer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wait until Monday to start your planning, then unless you're in the holy land of having an engaged customer on site you may not be ready to start until almost halfway through your sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T08:00:37.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11687" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-06T13:14:42.567" Score="-4" ViewCount="577" Body="&lt;p&gt;Though Scrum is an excellent solution for many situations, it is not the proper solution in all circumstances. The Cynefin framework is a framework that helps understand the situation in which we have to operate and decide on a situation appropriate approach. It defines and compares the characteristics of five different domains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone developed a scoring matrix using the Cynefin framework or similar to provide consistency in determining the appropriate solution approach to take, and if so, what are they and how have you applied them?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6390" LastEditorUserId="6390" LastEditDate="2014-06-10T09:42:20.117" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T09:42:20.117" Title="How to determine which project is best suited to Scrum" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11687" CreationDate="2014-06-06T16:42:10.487" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;What Scrum is Designed For&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum was designed to fit an iterative development model, where each iteration (or &quot;Sprint&quot;) delivers a potentially-shippable increment of value. It is also well-suited for projects where time and resources are relatively fixed, but scope is negotiable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What Scrum Wasn't Designed For&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my personal experience, Scrum is poorly-suited for projects that have heavily-constrained scope, an organizational requirement for upfront planning, or insufficient resources to perform the just-in-time planning and testing that ensures a successful iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Scrum Artifacts&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum only defines three artifacts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Product Backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Sprint Backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Increment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team can use other artifacts, tools, and practices such as burn-down charts or project success sliders to assist in decision-making, but these aren't defined by the Scrum framework. Each team is free to select the processes and tools that work best for them within the Scrum framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T16:42:10.487" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11016" CreationDate="2014-06-06T20:37:19.007" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend using the native version logic in JIRA to fulfill this visibility need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I.e. each issue (feature, bug fix etc) will be associated with a fix version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your fix versions might be &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;K Module, 1.1&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;L Module 1.1&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;M Module 1.1&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will allow you to view burndowns for each fix version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More on Versions here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Managing+Versions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Managing+Versions&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10271" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T20:37:19.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11530" CreationDate="2014-06-07T13:07:15.883" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_testing#Testing_levels&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;software project testing cycle&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; encloses several steps - including the ones you mentioned. However, happens that in most of the cases such testing cycles overlaps each other pretty much because the projects aren't big enough. In the end, both technical and functional aspects are tested all together, as a big pile of tests and checks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are cases, however, when testing cycles must be split and clearly defined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The test you have right now, as per your description, sounds like an automated &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_testing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Unit Testing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (or a pack of Unit tests). The objective of this is to make sure each functionality or deliverable (you name it) works fine from a &lt;em&gt;technical&lt;/em&gt; perspective. That's the kind of testing most of the projects have. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I assume you might also have some sort of &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_testing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;System Testing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, to make sure that the changes are fine from a &lt;em&gt;functional&lt;/em&gt; point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What seems you're missing now is the testing to be applied in between both, which is called the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integration_testing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Integration Testing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In big projects, such tests are usually covered by specific team(s) with specific checks to be done. Is important to make sure that the testing pack used by the &lt;strong&gt;Integration Testing&lt;/strong&gt; is not the same as the &lt;strong&gt;System Testing&lt;/strong&gt;, as the objective of the former is to make sure the interfaces between modules are working as expected. If you don't define clear boundaries, you'll have a never ending testing cycle, so good to define beforehand the expected results and coverage of each testing cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, what you need is &lt;strong&gt;a specific team&lt;/strong&gt; (that could be built by one resource from each module) with a &lt;strong&gt;specific set of integration testing&lt;/strong&gt; to be done. To build up this test pack, I'd strongly suggest to &lt;strong&gt;have clear the interfaces&lt;/strong&gt; between each deliverable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A last tip:&lt;/strong&gt; The testing lifecycle names, expressions and flows depends a lot on the company methodologies, so when talking with other PMs make sure what's the phase you need assistance for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2014-06-07T13:07:15.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8679" CreationDate="2014-06-08T00:45:13.440" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would look at the complaints in the past years (if some files were kept) and if some clients have asked for reimbursements in the past + what part(s) of the product broke or what the clients were not satisfied with. I would call the customer service and the technical support of your company + those who can repair your product (even if another company does that for you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10273" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T00:45:13.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11016" CreationDate="2014-06-08T05:07:43.420" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have worked in organizations, that deliver a single product, but have multiple teams working on different components of the product. We setup our JIRA as such:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project = Product. In your case, this would be your Web Application&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Setup Components for each team. I would imagine you have an API team, a UI Team etc. In this case, you would have a UI Component and an API Component part of the Project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can view the burn down/issues related to the Components only if you want to get granular. If you want to see an aggregate view, you can view the Project, which will combine all of the statistics of each Component.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10274" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T05:07:43.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11680" CreationDate="2014-06-08T05:13:18.083" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;See: &lt;a href=&quot;http://downloads2.omnigroup.com/software/MacOSX/Manuals/OmniPlan-2-Manual.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://downloads2.omnigroup.com/software/MacOSX/Manuals/OmniPlan-2-Manual.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Search for the Resource View.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will allow you to allocate the number of hours worked, start/end times, and can be exported as a PDF or Excel document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10274" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T05:13:18.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11322" CreationDate="2014-06-08T05:17:02.743" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should be able to sync Asana and Pivotal Tracker with Zapier: &lt;a href=&quot;https://zapier.com/zapbook/asana/pivotal-tracker/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://zapier.com/zapbook/asana/pivotal-tracker/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, choosing the tool should really reflect the process you have in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears you are managing your development in sprints, therefore a sprint planning tool like Pivotal Tracker makes sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IT Support is usually based on Service Level Agreement's which determine due dates. Asana, ZenDesk, or a Ticketing Based System makes sense, as you can manage the lifecycle of a ticket through completion. IT Tickets don't require planning. They require scheduling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10274" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T05:17:02.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10326" CreationDate="2014-06-08T06:04:26.157" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out Instagantt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It turns your asana tasks into a gantt chart, which you can resource level etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://instagantt.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://instagantt.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10274" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T06:04:26.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3893" CreationDate="2014-06-08T10:05:06.103" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did practice for my exam here &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quizlib.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.quizlib.net&lt;/a&gt;. There are around 2000 free PMP questions inside. Hope this help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10275" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T10:05:06.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11664" CreationDate="2014-06-08T18:17:18.197" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can I determine a project end date when Product Backlog Items (PBIs) are not estimated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short answer is, &lt;em&gt;You can't.&lt;/em&gt; If your project schedule isn't based on empirical evaluation, then it's arbitrary. If it's arbitrary, then you might as well throw darts at a calendar to pick your milestone dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To have a &lt;em&gt;meaningful&lt;/em&gt; end date for your project, you need to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Differentiate between scheduling estimates and targets.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Continuously revise your project plan based on evolving constraints such as scope or time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Projecting Schedules&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are fundamentally two ways to determine a project's end date:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;By Scope&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work packages, project management overhead, and fudge factors (e.g. slack or padding) are estimated in calendar time to define an end date based on the scope of the deliverables.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;By Fiat&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project's delivery dates are fixed targets defined by management. The project then adjusts scope as necessary to deliver as much value as possible within the management-defined time box.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Picking the Right Scheduling Method&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which method you choose depends on the project constraints you are best able to adjust within your project. As an illustration, consider the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Project Management Triangle&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/The_triad_constraints.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Project Management Triangle&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a matter of empirical experience, one can generally choose between feature-completeness or inflexible delivery dates. One generally can't have both without sacrificing quality or expanding the budget. In addition, if you jettison quality or bust your budget, your project is more likely to fail (given any reasonable definition of &quot;failure&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Estimation Errors Require Adjustments to Scope or Schedule&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have a prioritized backlog and I provide the stakeholders with an end date but we discover new information or PBIs that were estimated at 5 story points but are actually 8s, resulting in the end date being pushed back and back and back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is &quot;normal behavior&quot; (not desirable, but normal) for projects that have poor estimation techniques and have not clearly differentiated between &lt;em&gt;schedule estimates&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;schedule targets&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your &quot;end date&quot; must either be an estimate based on reasonable decomposition of your work packages, or a fixed management target. Since you didn't determine your end date by scope, your projected end date was determined by fiat. Therefore, you must continually adjust &lt;em&gt;scope&lt;/em&gt; (e.g. the features or value that the project will deliver) until it fits within the agreed-upon time box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, this is handled during Backlog Refinement and Sprint Planning by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Re-prioritizing the Product Backlog each Sprint to maximize value.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Limiting the stories accepted into each Sprint based on current team capacity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of whether you use an agile methodology or not, the point is that failure to estimate (or a continuing pattern of poor estimation) requires that you routinely adjust your project plan. This may mean routinely adding or removing features from the project's scope to fit the remaining time available, or continuously adjusting the projected delivery date based on the project's current progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All projects have variance from planned values. How one deals with the variance depends on the current business objectives and the project management framework in use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T09:42:46.867" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T18:17:18.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11665" CreationDate="2014-06-08T19:34:36.130" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If everything is &quot;top priority&quot; then stakeholders have failed to prioritize.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management targets are not guarantees that a goal is achievable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimation by proxy rarely works; estimates should be provided by the person who will actually perform the task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The is no magic formula for delivering undefined work packages on time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Senior management is responsible for clearly defining priorities. The project manager is responsible for tracking the project and providing senior management with information about the status of, and risks to, the project. Poor Steve (the person mentioned as the sole resource in your post) is responsible for providing you with reasonable estimates of how long it will take &lt;em&gt;him&lt;/em&gt; to complete a &lt;strong&gt;clearly-defined task&lt;/strong&gt;, and then slogging through one task at a time in whatever order senior management decrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Use a Story Spike&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The company wants problem A to be figured out and solved by end of this week. At the same time, there is another task B which we know will take around 30 hours, and that needs to be done by end of next week. Senior management wants regular updates on status of B and is not keen on doing it last minute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have a dependency of unknown size, you can use a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules/spike.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;story spike&lt;/a&gt;. A story spike can be &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeboxing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;time-boxed&lt;/a&gt;, and the results of the spike can be fed back into your project plan and your estimating process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Your Next Steps&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your specific example, you have a number of management targets with fixed delivery dates. However, you also have scheduling dependencies on a task that has not been properly estimated. To address these issues, you might take the following steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Inform the stakeholders that Task A can't be estimated yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether getting it done by the end of the week is a &lt;em&gt;management target&lt;/em&gt;, not an indicator of whether or not the goal is reasonable, and this difference requires two-way communication and some education of your stakeholders. &lt;em&gt;Estimating Task A&lt;/em&gt; is a missing milestone in your project plan, and you need to make time in your plan to accommodate the activity.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Inform the stakeholders that Task B can't be started until Task A is completed unless the stakeholders want to re-prioritize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that there are no dependencies between tasks A and B, if Task B is the most urgent then it should be done first. In such cases, revise the project schedule and perform Task B first. On the other hand, if there is a dependency or if Task A really does take precedence, then stakeholders simply must accept that Task A must &lt;em&gt;finish&lt;/em&gt; before Task B can &lt;em&gt;start&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Allot some percentage of the current week to your story spike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have four days left in the week, and a fixed delivery target of Friday afternoon for the feature, then a reasonable approach would be to allocate one or two days to researching Task A in order to estimate whether the task can be completed within the target time frame.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Perform Task A or escalate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the spike indicates that Task A is feasible within the desired time frame, spend the remainder of the week performing it. Otherwise, provide as accurate an estimate as possible to the stakeholders, along with identifiable schedule risks to other tasks such as Task B, and let the stakeholders figure out which task is more important to complete first&amp;mdash;or whether Task A should even remain in scope, with or without modifications.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T19:34:36.130" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11609" CreationDate="2014-06-08T20:26:21.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would focus on making a speech as my main means for conveying the news. I would make a short notice instead and then discuss the challenge with every single member of the team in person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different people have different motivations, different productivity, different energy levels, etc and this must be taken into account. Plus, only in a private conversation do they have the opportunity to share their views and concerns in an adequate way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I'd retire to think what would be the best solution for each person against the optimal solution for the present circumstances. Once I decide, I'd announce my final decision publicly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4551" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T20:26:21.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11682" CreationDate="2014-06-09T14:47:52.050" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rather than just put Consultant, you should put down the actual role you were fulfilling on each particular project (PM, Project Coordinator, etc).  For the organization, put down your consulting agency since you were directly employed by them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7361" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T14:47:52.050" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11662" CreationDate="2014-06-09T14:57:46.543" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your situation, my experience is that the two points of lesser importance should lead up to the third point.  This emphasizes the importance of point #3 and shows why the three points are being presented together.  Presenting this way helps your audience understand why you think point #3 is of the highest importance.  Remember, you are trying to get them to think of the three points as you do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would be the case whether the meeting is in-person or via phone conference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7361" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T14:57:46.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11662" CreationDate="2014-06-09T19:00:57.567" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider focusing on only one point and reinforce it throughout the meeting by presenting it in different ways. People tend to be distracted in meetings, even more so in phone meetings, and rarely give their &quot;full&quot; attention to something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T19:00:57.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11643" CreationDate="2014-06-09T19:24:48.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use your project management techniques to reign in the cowboys.  Create iterative deliverables which not only help you keep track of what the coders are doing, it presents them with clear targets to meet and with specific deadlines.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Provide regular feedback with the team.  If you need to talk to a developer whose work is causing project delays, explain the risks to the overall project and how it is affecting everyone.  If that does not seem to work, explain how their performance will affect them directly (annual reviews, chances for promotions and raises, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can try team building exercises, but I would start small since you may not know ahead of time how well the team gets along with each other.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you encounter team members who simply refuse to follow plans and continue in their renegade ways, then you will need to do your best to replace them on the team.  If they are on loan from a functional manager, reach out to that person to apprise them of the situation.  If replacing the team member is not an option, then all you can do is put them in a position where they will have minimal negative impact on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7361" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T19:24:48.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11710" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11711" CreationDate="2014-06-09T22:49:01.200" Score="2" ViewCount="5868" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been searching all over the internet for templates of RUP documents(e.g. Requirements, Software architecture...). If I'm not mistaken the documents are called artifacts&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to understand which should be the exact content of these documents. Based on the name one could get a general idea, however, it's good to understand what the RUP methodology expects to see in each document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know where I could find these templates?&#xA;Are they for free, or maybe I have to pay for them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10286" LastActivityDate="2015-03-16T13:04:08.630" Title="RUP document templates" Tags="&lt;templates&gt;&lt;rup&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11710" CreationDate="2014-06-10T13:27:25.277" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’m assuming that you are referring to &lt;em&gt;Rational Unified Process&lt;/em&gt; as the software engineering process rather than the &lt;em&gt;RUP&lt;/em&gt; product licensed from Rational Software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The methodology, including the phases at which specific artifacts are initiated and completed is well documented in several texts, of particular note are &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0321197704&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Rational Unified Process: An introduction by Phillippe Krutchen&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0321166094&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Rational Unified Process Made Easy: A Practioners Guide by Phillippe Krutchen and Per Knoll&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many organisations make use of the RUP product as it offers a knowledge base, document templates, Microsoft Project plans and resource centre. However, the methodology can be adopted outside of the product use. To that end I’ve attempted to outline the main artifacts created and a brief description of what is contained within them. Please note that these are based solely on my use of RUP within organisations. Like any methodology unless a specific product is used it’s likely that there is significant variance between organisations and experiences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Vision Document&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This document should contain the general vision of the project, including the key requirements, features and identified constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use Case Model (the what)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other project management methodologies you would consider this to be your requirements documentation.&#xA;RUP tries to reduce one of the more common failings of software development projects, the ‘this isn’t what we wanted’, by creating common language between developers and users. To this end, use-cases are defined, which represent the required behaviours from the system as defined by Actor’s needs. Actors in RUP represent users and systems which will interact with the system to be developed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with any project there will inevitably be a degree of trade-off, i.e. in order to deliver one use-case another must be dropped or amended. The full history of these amendments should be captured and documented within the Use Case Model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Use Case Model is very much a collaborative document with significant input from both development and Actor resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Business Case&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for any other project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Risk Assessment&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for any other project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Plan (the when and by who)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aas for any other project. The level of granularity required will be entirely dependent upon the organisation. The plan may start as a phase plan indicating iterations only and major milestones before evolving into something more sophisticated at a later stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Prototypes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At various stages of the project, e.g. Inception and Construction it is likely that multiple prototypes will be produced. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Design Model (the how)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other methodologies this could be named Solution Architecture of Design Overview. &#xA;The Design Model contains the concept of how the development will be designed. It is not actual source code. It will consist of a full breakdown of the proposed architecture in degrees of granularity e.g. The Design Model&gt;Design Case&gt;Design Classes&gt; Design Packages&gt;Components.&#xA;It is crucial that that each design case should be easily referenced back to the use-cases outlined in the Use Case Model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Test Plan&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for any other project. The use-cases set out in the Use Case Model can be re-used to form the test plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Test Evaluation Summary&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Containing the summary of the results of the Test Plan. Often split into Use Case results and Code Based results, comparative analysis based upon each iteration of development and trends identified should be presented and recommended actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;User Manuals&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Produced to transition the product from development to live.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Deployment Plan&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with any other project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are available templates out there, however, if an organisation is new to RUP then it may be worth establishing the methodology for development first and allowing the document templates to be established through trial and error using some online resources as a ‘starter for ten’ so to speak until you've found your feet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9155" LastEditorUserId="4716" LastEditDate="2015-03-16T13:04:08.630" LastActivityDate="2015-03-16T13:04:08.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11712" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-10T15:38:50.977" Score="5" ViewCount="1077" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I have recently taken on a role of Business Analyst for a Software team, and I am currently the only 'Project Management' to speak of.  My company had a Project Manager before, but it was mostly just a title.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now with some recently organizational changes I am being moved under a QA manager to report directly to him.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been attempting to find reasoning as to why this is a bad move, and I believe that I should be separate from the development and QA teams mostly as I believe that Project Management will take a backseat with this move, and that he will focus primarily on QA.  The problem is that I don't have a lot of ammunition, and have struggling to find articles that address this specifically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10292" LastActivityDate="2018-04-19T13:13:49.687" Title="Should Project Management be its own department?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11712" CreationDate="2014-06-10T16:55:13.527" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A reference generally accepted in project Management is the &quot;PMBOK&quot; issued by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org&quot;&gt;PMI&lt;/a&gt; Which does cover the question about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_office&quot;&gt;PMO&lt;/a&gt; and organizational structures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there seem to be a mountain of confusion regarding roles and responsibilities in your organisation. BA and PM for a start are very different roles. Although it can make sense for a BA to report to QA, for PM it is much less common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That seems to indicate that there is a gap between what you perceive your job to be and what your management thinks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10284" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T16:55:13.527" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10804" CreationDate="2014-06-10T18:50:46.317" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on the methodology used (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumalliance.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SCRUM&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-Model&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;V model&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/comparing-agile-project-management-and-the-traditi.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;traditional waterfall&lt;/a&gt;) AND depending on the type of engagement(projects with a clear start and a clear end or on-going Service) your &lt;strong&gt;metrics&lt;/strong&gt; and key performance indicator (&lt;strong&gt;KPIs&lt;/strong&gt;) will be different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding software, however I can tell you that the vast majority of engagements is in practice managed using &lt;strong&gt;spreadsheet&lt;/strong&gt; (like MS excel).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Service Management&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case ITIL is often considered a reference framework. The main indicator are defined in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sla-zone.co.uk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Service Level Agreements&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;strong&gt;SLAs&lt;/strong&gt;) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_Level_Agreement&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Operation Level Agreement&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;strong&gt;OLAs&lt;/strong&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually Service engagement will rely on &lt;strong&gt;workflow management&lt;/strong&gt; or in IT &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issue_tracking_system&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;issue management&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; tools (like Jira or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_issue_tracking_systems&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;others&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Project Management&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often in non agile IT projects &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_value&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Earned Value&lt;/a&gt; is used to provide indication about the progress.&#xA;Scrum methodology comes with its own set of metrics usually mixed with custom indicator relevant to the engagement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In term of software, &lt;strong&gt;Source code repositories&lt;/strong&gt; (like TFS or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_revision_control_software&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;others&lt;/a&gt;) provide very relevant data but dedicated &lt;strong&gt;project planning tools&lt;/strong&gt; (like MS project or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_project_management_software&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;others&lt;/a&gt;) are often used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;In all cases&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will need to identify the stakeholders of your engagement. Take the time to discuss with them what is important for them to monitor and define custom indicators as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10284" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T15:00:03.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11712" CreationDate="2014-06-10T19:02:35.223" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Creating silos in your organization along non-value delivery lines is almost always a bad thing. You're essentially informing your employees that optimizing their piece of the value-delivery stream is where they should focus their efforts, rather than focusing on delivering value to your customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should you be your own reporting tree? No. Should you fall under the QA reporting stream? No. You should fall under the value delivery reporting stream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit for clarification&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;The typical strategy is to split your organization into functional silos, i.e. we have a QA department, an IT department, a PMO etc. This method is inherently flawed, as it gives incentive for each department to optimize their limited scope of responsibility at the expense of the flow of value through the system. For example, optimizing QA efficiency almost always leads to longer cycle times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more intelligent way is to create a value-driven reporting structure where each department is responsible for the complete delivery of a unit of value. If you want a concrete example of a large organization that is doing this, check out this video from Spotify: &lt;a href=&quot;http://labs.spotify.com/2014/03/27/spotify-engineering-culture-part-1/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://labs.spotify.com/2014/03/27/spotify-engineering-culture-part-1/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastEditorUserId="4422" LastEditDate="2014-06-11T18:44:32.640" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T18:44:32.640" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11712" CreationDate="2014-06-11T04:44:56.053" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on your comment, I don't think you need to have a PM and a QA manager for a total of 5 devs and 5 QAs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding separation of teams, in general, every team tends to worry only about itself. It puts itself ahead of other teams. This is called local optimization and it exists to a lesser or greater extent in all organizations. Therefore it is better to have  that map to business outcomes (e.g. a department per product) than those that map to internal functions (e.g. project management, development, testing etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2247" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T04:44:56.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11718" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-11T14:30:05.153" Score="1" ViewCount="73" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose you allocate to your customers 3 of Activity A/month and 5 of Activity B/month.  How do you keep track of what you've allocated and what they've used every month?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something that is going to show me this on the first of the month:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;                   Activity A          Activity B&#xA;Customer Lily          3                  0&#xA;Customer Chuck         3                  5&#xA;Customer Francis       3                  5&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and this in the middle of the month, etc:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;                Activity A          Activity B&#xA;Customer Lily          3                  5&#xA;Customer Chuck         1                  4&#xA;Customer Francis       1                  2&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I know what they've used and how many are remaining. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the terminology used to describe this &quot;activity tracking&quot;?  What best-practices are recommended for doing this efficiently?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10295" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-06-22T22:54:59.673" LastActivityDate="2014-06-22T22:58:51.240" Title="How to manage monthly customer activities?" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11719" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-11T16:23:16.100" Score="1" ViewCount="258" Body="&lt;p&gt;Post completing a Psychology degree I've found myself in a health-tech startup acting as Research and Development Manager. As there's only three of us in the team, we have hybrid roles and as a result I've been engaging and leading projects somewhat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I enjoy working in the start-up scene and like the way 'agile' works but wonder do I need a prince background to further my [lack of] understanding? Or would a Agile course (Please link me to one?) be better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm self funding this which sucks but I think is something which should be taken into account. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10296" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T15:25:57.310" Title="Green as grass: PRINCE2 or Agile?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;career&gt;&lt;certification&gt;&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-06-20T04:06:11.853" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11721" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11765" CreationDate="2014-06-11T20:05:00.697" Score="2" ViewCount="10627" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a technical question regarding Microsoft Project 2003.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am trying to schedule resources who have other (management) duties not related to the project. My initial thought was to reduce their availability (Max Units) - for example, a manager might be set to 85% availability. If I'm using work-driven tasks, then this as the desired effect of spreading the duration out over a longer period of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things get problematic when I want to schedule, for example a meeting where that resource attends along with other resources. The meeting would be a duration-based task, say 3 hours in length. If I have 4 resources attending, I want that listed as 12 hours of work for billing purposes, so in that case all 4 resources need to be allocated at 100% for that task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is where it gets ugly - when leveling the resources, I always get errors, because you're not supposed to be able to allocate an 85% resource for 100% on a task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is using resource allocation / Max Units the way to go here? The objective is to have a project-based task take longer (Duration) when assigned to someone who has other (non-project) duties in order to better predict the total length of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5577" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T18:54:00.530" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T18:54:00.530" Title="Handling resources who do not have 100% availability in MS Project 2003" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;ms-project-2003&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11719" CreationDate="2014-06-11T20:56:51.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recommendations for stuff like course are usually off topic for most SE sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The name Prince2 stands for PRojects IN Controlled Environments. The name itself shows its difficulty in applying to software projects. I have never seen a software project that could be described as a controlled environment. Requirements always change; software development is a process of discovery. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile methodologies embrace this change. One of the points from the Agile Manifesto: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Responding to change over following a plan&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not that it doesn't allow for planning, but it values allowing change more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if your projects are more controlled, I would suggest that it is too heavyweight for three people. For example, there are a lot of roles and you would be unlikely to fill all of them, so you'd probably end up having to apply the method quite ad-hoc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of for a beginner, I'd recommend Scrum to start, with the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Scrum-Guide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;. There are only two roles, aside from the team itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6608" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T20:56:51.377" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11643" CreationDate="2014-06-11T22:21:15.130" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;They're programming on their own,&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is this a problem?  Are you wanting them to pair program?  If so, please rethink ;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;without much interaction with other members&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is this a problem?  If their current programming efforts don't overlap, they don't need to collaborate much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;and they are not interested into testing their code as it was expected to be.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ah, finally, a concrete problem, and an easy solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Add a new step to your process where you code review (as in you specifically).  Reject all code that is not tested properly.  If this doesn't solve your problem (i.e. stubborn programmers), make it clear that they will be coding to your standards, and if they can't, they need to seek employment elsewhere.  Professional software engineering requires professional software engineers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seek to engage their sense of pride and professionalism as a psychological ploy if you meet resistance.  Most developers long to be taken more seriously and more professionally: show them you want them to be professional, and treat them like professionals, and rapid attitude shifts are possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8849" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T22:21:15.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11724" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11731" CreationDate="2014-06-11T22:42:53.503" Score="3" ViewCount="1467" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently working on a project where a task requires a block of time to achieve a total amount of exposure, so I've been using the elapsed days duration function. In this case, the task requires 17 days of exposure, but the end lands on a Saturday. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that the next task must start immediately after the end of the exposure time, but it has to start on a weekday. Is there a way to connect the tasks so the the previous one pushes up if required or forbid ending on weekends?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry if this is obvious, I'm really new to MS Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10298" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-06-12T01:49:12.763" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T10:59:48.057" Title="MS Project Elapsed Day Task Ends on Weekend" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11712" CreationDate="2014-06-12T03:22:52.477" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PMBoK has an entire section on Organizational Structures so if you can either buy a copy or find a library with a copy, you can get some valuable information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specific to this question, it sounds like your organization was and continues to move toward being a Functional organization. In a functional organization, the Project Management role has little power or authority over things such as budget, schedule, and resource management. Project coordination happens at the function-head level and each department pursues project management independently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some businesses, that approach may be just fine but it does make cross-department coordination slower and less reactive. I like the description posted at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pm-primer.com/the-pmbok-organization-structure/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PM-Primer.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This type of organisation structure is sometimes called a stove pipe&#xA;type of organisation.... Problems occur when one function employee&#xA;needs to speak to another functions employee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way to do this is to escalate upwards to the functional head,&#xA;then across to the other functional head, and back down again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Effectively, project management only occurs &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;under&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; the functional manager and cross-team projects are a nightmare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T03:22:52.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11591" CreationDate="2014-06-12T07:15:23.203" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Practically, this means that the project cannot be crashed. Throwing more resources at the project will not get it done faster and in fact will be wasted effort/cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of real-world projects in which this has been the case.  A book called &quot;The Mythical Man-Month&quot; would be a good way to explore this further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10302" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T07:15:23.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11724" CreationDate="2014-06-12T08:01:08.627" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hi this will be down to the calendar you have set up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what version of MSP you are using but if you go to Project &gt; Change Working time you can control what type of calendar you use and set weekends as non working time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just another quick tip if your linking tasks. If you want tasks to start one after another make sure they are set to &quot;Auto Schedule&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T08:01:08.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6603" CreationDate="2014-06-12T10:34:19.323" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can refer to the eligibility prescribed by PMI for PMP - if you’re Secondary degree/High school Diploma, Associate’s degree or global equivalent, PMI expects one to have project management experience of Minimum 5 Years/60 months unique non-overlapping professional project management experience during which at least 7500 hours are spent leading and directing project tasks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, if you’re Bachelor’s degree or global equivalent, one need to have Minimum 3 years/36 months unique non-overlapping professional project management experience during which at least 4500 hours are spent in leading and directing project tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both the cases, one needs to have a 35 contact hours/PDU of formal project management education. So, based on above criteria’s, you can decide in which category you’re fit in.&#xA;Most for PMP exam aspirants enroll themselves for some training program in PMI REP to get the necessary guidelines which includes study materials, mock tests, doubt clearing sessions and other features. I’ve come across simplilearn PMP training equipped with more user friendly features along with certified trainers’ and quality course ware. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you’re interested, you can check out their website &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.simplilearn.com/project-management/pmp-certification-training&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.simplilearn.com/project-management/pmp-certification-training&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it serves your purpose, Good luck! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9189" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T10:34:19.323" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5108" CreationDate="2014-06-12T12:35:21.323" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think what people are getting at is there is no one way for a vision document or exercise&#xA;If you want a vision then it's not just the product owner, it's the whole team to create. Yes the PO will have alot of input but it's a team document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Johnothan Rasmusson in the Agile Warrior uses the idea of an inception deck. I've used this on previous projects and have to say it's a good way of pulling the team together at the start and really making sure everyone is on the same page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article along with a blank inception deck can be found here &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilewarrior.wordpress.com/2010/11/06/the-agile-inception-deck/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://agilewarrior.wordpress.com/2010/11/06/the-agile-inception-deck/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T12:35:21.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11724" CreationDate="2014-06-12T13:57:13.403" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to use the Change Working Time method described by Richard to alter the working time of two different resources; those that can work weekends and those that cannot. So you make those changes on the Resource calendars, not the Project calendar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then for the task that must start on the following weekday apply a resource that cannot work weekends- it will automatically schedule to the next non-weekend slot. However for those tasks that are allowed to spill over into a weekend, apply resources where weekends are allowed as working time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want the combination, where a task must start on a weekday but may overspill into a weekend, then there is currently no way to handle that automatically within MS-Project. You will need to force the scheduling to conform to your requirements by manually setting start dates or adding lag to the predecessor dependencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2014-06-13T10:59:48.057" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T10:59:48.057" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11524" CreationDate="2014-06-12T15:18:40.723" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One path that can be followed is to do a research spike for the story where the team can do a research and discuss the design in brief. As a result of the spike the team will have more clarity on the design and will have an idea of the user story that will be generated in the design process for the user story. So when they take up actual design and development of that user story they should already have an idea of the related story and will have their time allotted accordingly so that the team is not swamped in the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10305" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T15:18:40.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11719" CreationDate="2014-06-12T15:25:57.310" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;With a number of assumptions, in this case I would recommend Agile as it keeps you more focused on the delivery of a product still presumably young and therefore very likely to evolve quickly as it matures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience one major pitfall for startups with a good idea is the lack of delivery in a search for perfection and agile can help to avoid that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said ANY knowledge of PM gives valuable insights whether from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMI&lt;/a&gt; the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumalliance.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;scrum alliance&lt;/a&gt; or indeed &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRINCE2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Prince2&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10284" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T15:25:57.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11721" CreationDate="2014-06-13T12:38:56.870" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have a couple of options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set the resource's max units to 85% and don't worry about the small overallocation created by the assignment at 100% to meetings. (Assuming the meetings are fairly short in duration.  You'll need to review allocations regularly to make sure that you are not ignoring more serious issues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set the resource's max units to 100% but assign them to most tasks at 85%.  The problem this will cause is the potential of having the resource truly be overallocated (assigned at 100%) to those non-meeting. tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also want to set your leveling calculations to week by week to ignore minor overallocations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastEditorUserId="6840" LastEditDate="2014-06-17T01:29:05.267" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T01:29:05.267" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11736" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11738" CreationDate="2014-06-13T16:28:31.650" Score="10" ViewCount="5653" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've often seen it recommended to include a &quot;single point of contact&quot; clause in the contract. This stipulates that all communication between a client company and your own company must be made between a single representative on each end. This greatly helps prevent miscommunication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is this: how do you deal with that when working with a project management tool like Basecamp? Do you only add your point of contact to the project? What if he wants to show the work to other members in the company?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE:&#xA;This is the recommended single point of contact clause provided in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://graphicartistsguild.org/handbook&quot;&gt;Graphic Artist's Guild handbook&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Studio will make every good faith effort to test all deliverables&#xA;  thoroughly and make all necessary corrections as a result of such&#xA;  testing prior to handing over the deliverables to the Client. Upon&#xA;  receipt of the deliverables, the Client shall either accept the&#xA;  deliverable and make the milestone payment set forth herein or provide&#xA;  the Studio with written notice of any corrections to be made and a&#xA;  suggested date for completion which should be mutually acceptable to&#xA;  both the Studio and the Client. The Studio shall designate&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;__________&lt;/strong&gt; and the Client shall designate &lt;strong&gt;_________&lt;/strong&gt; as the only designated persons who will send and accept all deliverables and&#xA;  receive and make all communications between the Studio and the Client.&#xA;  Neither party shall have any obligation to consider for approval or&#xA;  respond to materials submitted other than through the designated&#xA;  persons listed above. Each party has the right to change its&#xA;  designated person upon ____ day(s) notice to the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm just wondering how this is even relevant if you're communicating with many different people throughout the course of the project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10311" LastEditorUserId="10311" LastEditDate="2014-06-13T19:09:04.123" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T13:54:48.917" Title="Working with a &quot;single point of contact&quot;" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;communication-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11736" CreationDate="2014-06-13T17:05:35.447" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my professional experience, the &lt;em&gt;single point of contact&lt;/em&gt; is a gatekeeper or clearinghouse, rather than a sole resource. This person functions as a spokesmodel for the contract, but may certainly delegate responsibilities or facilitate communications between parties as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This point of contact is the first call you should make with questions, and should be the escalation path for any issues in execution, planning, or delivery. However, as a matter of practice, that person is rarely the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; person you will deal with during the project lifecycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T17:05:35.447" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11736" CreationDate="2014-06-13T21:49:00.300" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is highly unlikely that your &quot;single point of contact&quot; (SPC) is the only stakeholder [person with an interest in the outcome your project]. Although contracts will identify a SPC such as a contracting officer or contracting officer's technical representative, this responsibility is a contractual requirement to ensure that contracts are not modified by just anyone with an interest.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However as the project manager, you must be alert to all parties who have a positive or negative interest in your project.  Stakeholders have varying degrees of significance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Critical stakeholders&lt;/strong&gt; are those persons that can start (and stop) your project; their names appear on the project charter and contract. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Involved stakeholders&lt;/strong&gt; are users of the deliverables, or functional offices like HR and finance, and procurement, and of course your project team members. &quot;Involved stakeholders&quot; can't start or end your project but they can thwart your progress and scuttle the deliverables if you don't address their concerns.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Casual stakeholders&lt;/strong&gt; have a passing or occasional involvement; auditors, other project managers and their teams, and other program offices can be examples of casual stakeholders. Quality assurance staff may be either involved or casual stakeholders, depending on the CMMI or ITIL maturity of your organization. So your stakeholder analysis should be flexible as circumstances change.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will need to address all these stakeholders from time-to-time based on the inputs and outputs of each work package in your work breakdown structure. So you will need to clarify the role of the SPC so that your ability to address each stakeholder is not impaired.  If your SPC declares that stakeholder relations is their responsibility, then they are taking over the vast majority of your duties as a PM, putting you into the role of project scheduler. If the SPC knows what they are doing, and you aren't so sure, perhaps that is for the best. Usually this is not the case, and the project could be in jeopardy because the SPC does not take the necessary time to attend to the stakeholders. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8524" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2014-06-15T13:54:48.917" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T13:54:48.917" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11465" CreationDate="2014-06-14T01:47:05.877" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;BPM is great at automating processes so in principle you can define your delivery process and run it. I have on many occasion documented SDLCs using BPMN.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the SDLC and various methodologies are fairly common and several existing tools are specialized in it. Therefore BPM is somewhat at a disadvantage in the sense that you have to reinvent the wheel and custom develop many features which come out of the box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This said, as you pointed out software development is about implementing change as is often BPM in practice. That mean that there are a lot of similarities in term of approach, methodologies and terminologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10284" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T01:47:05.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11718" CreationDate="2014-06-15T13:44:09.637" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Welcome to PMSE!  Focusing on your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the terminology used to describe this &quot;activity tracking&quot;?&#xA;  What best-practices are recommended for doing this efficiently?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I strongly believe all terminologies and best-practices you need will be answered by &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Technology_Infrastructure_Library&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ITIL&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, as ITIL is a set of practices / best practices to make IT services fit business needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On your specific question, you might want to check the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Technology_Infrastructure_Library#Service_operation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ITIL Service Operation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; process, as your project is already built and being maintained. There are plenty of softwares out there to help tracking requests, but, as mentioned before, PMSE isn't the right place for software recommendations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding how to make such activities more &lt;em&gt;efficient&lt;/em&gt;, you can also check out the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Technology_Infrastructure_Library#Continual_service_improvement_.28CSI.29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ITIL Continuous Service Improvement&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.  Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-06-22T22:58:51.240" LastActivityDate="2014-06-22T22:58:51.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11016" CreationDate="2014-06-15T20:32:10.283" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To see the progress beyond sprints you could either use epics or milestones / releases. &#xA;Both enables you to see how much work - measured by story points - has been done / have to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using story points and different teams might let you run into problems due to the fact that story points / estimates are individual per team. You can compare burn downs of different teams just if they have a continuous burn down and if they reach their planned points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The initial idea of the burn down is to get a feeling of realistic estimates for future sprints. Usually, if you don't have a well harmonized team, you will experience adaption in the estimates in the beginning of the project until the team finds it's way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T20:32:10.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11743" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-16T15:53:40.367" Score="4" ViewCount="201" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm starting a new department as a manager, and this will be my first time having direct reports.  I have directly managed people on-and-off for the last 4-5 years, but the reporting structure has never been formalized.  I have some ideas I'd like to implement.  I will be hiring all new people (data analysts).  My experience with my current company is that everyone is overworked and priorities are constantly shifting.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concerns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm concerned my team members will get pulled into too many meetings.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm also concerned that we will agree to do things in conflict with the vision my boss has for our department.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm concerned my boss's boss and my boss have conflicting ideas about the tasks my department should do.  I want to avoid surprise in this area and flush out any and all issues on this point when I can.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm very concerned we will overcommit ourselves (a weakness of mine).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideas to deal with concerns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Department &quot;Backlog&quot; or Activity Log - I have read about Scrum backlogs, and I like the idea of having a public list of current activities viewable by all, along with a list of the next tasks we will do, with the order of priority. I have tried this in my past position, and people (above me) were downright opposed from having to log in to a system to check it, so I just sent weekly updates.  Another issue is getting my team members to buy into this.  I would like to do this on SharePoint.  I know these backlogs are usually project specific, but we are small enough that I would like to expose the entire department's log to the other departments.  Good idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Steering Committee - I would like to have quarterly (monthly?) meetings with my &quot;customers&quot; throughout the organization to get their input on priorities and new projects.  My boss does not like this idea.  I believe she wants to have ultimate say over the priorities, but this is complicated by the fact that she is very liberal in letting me work out tasks, timelines and projects with other teams, with almost no guidance from her.  I believe I could convince her to do something like this, but I might need to be creative about the process and the naming.  Any tips?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10318" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T14:51:02.497" Title="Product Backlog for Entire Department?" Tags="&lt;prioritization&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11743" CreationDate="2014-06-16T21:12:03.840" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds as though you might get buy-in from your boss if you make her your Product Owner and give her some more information about what a Product Owner's responsibilities are. Here's a good video that explains product ownership in 15 minutes: &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/502ILHjX9EE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://youtu.be/502ILHjX9EE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of naming, you can call her your Primary Stakeholder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As someone familiar with Scrum, so you know that a primary responsibility for your Product Owner (Primary Stakeholder) will be the prioritization of the product backlog. Backlog Refining sessions, and sprint planning meetings will give you the opportunity to comment on why you and/or your team might think something else should take priority. This is the opportunity for your team and the Product Owner to have a conversation about what should be worked on next. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You and your team would be responsible for the prioritization of items in your sprint backlog, breaking up your &quot;activities&quot; into tasks, and deciding on your time commitments for different activities (your timelines). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's possible your boss is concerned that she will be excluded from the process but by adopting Scrum you are actually increasing your visibility. Stand-ups, or quick &quot;status update&quot; meetings with her might help your boss feel involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your quarterly meetings sound like &quot;Sprint Reviews&quot; where your stakeholders (committee) and Primary Stakeholder get together to review the work that has been done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing to keep in mind is that you can still ask your customers/steering committee for input on priorities and new projects, and make sure you capture those in your backlog (Activity List) but the key to getting your boss' buy-in will probably be giving her the final say in terms of prioritization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're adopting elements of Scrum it is good to make sure you do have one Product Owner/Primary Stakeholder, and not a committee because you want to make sure there is one voice/advocate for the stakeholders and not a multitude of people sending your team in different directions. The importance of a Product Owner/Primary Stakeholder cannot be overstated, and as such is a really good pitch to use to get your boss' buy-in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10312" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T21:12:03.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11745" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11749" CreationDate="2014-06-16T21:20:37.333" Score="2" ViewCount="11338" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I create a new task in Microsoft Project it defaults to &quot;Fixed Units&quot;, however most of the projects we do are estimated upfront so we need to schedule based on fixed amount of effort but variable amount of resources, i.e. we can add more resources to meet a deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment, I have to go in and change the tasks to be &quot;Fixed Work&quot; by selecting all tasks and editing them in the Advanced menu.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way this can be set as the default?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&#xA;Marko&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10320" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T18:56:35.157" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T18:56:35.157" Title="Change default Task Type to 'Fixed Work' in Microsoft Project 2013" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11747" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11793" CreationDate="2014-06-16T23:27:35.400" Score="4" ViewCount="141" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; How to broadcast to the whole IT team the current and future environment usage plan, in a fluid project with constant changing priorities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a project is relatively small (5 to 10 people working with a specific module and with a dozen artifacts), the development cycle is relatively controlled: All stakeholders are aware of what's the status of testing in progress in each (physical) environment. It is possible to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;build local -&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;promote into testing environment for integration testing -&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;promote for user acceptance -&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;promote into PROD. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's bread and butter. There's no need to track 'environment usage' because it's natural.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, on bigger projects, having a controlled environment usage is a must to avoid overlaps and clashes. Assume the following scenario:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;100+ developers and analysts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;10 Internal testing environments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;4 User testing environments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;6 project 'components' (a.k.a. sub-projects with specific team leads)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;9 clients (the project is 80% shared between clients, with a few specificities)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;50+ artefacts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 branches per artefact (development / testing / pre-production)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking into account each 'sub-project' can be touching several artefacts at once for different project phases and clients, planning and controlling such environment usage is a terrible pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any methodology or best practice recommended for or related to control and communicate environment usage&lt;/strong&gt;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any default view to present this to all stakeholders? Having one Excel sheet with a calendar with all the above aspects, as one might deduce, is terribly complex and hard to read for a new joiner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider a physical environment as one resource, &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt;, doesn't address the question, since you can be operating with 1 or 9 clients at once over the same resource, as long as the development phase is the same. Likewise, you cannot have in the same environment two clients working on different development phases - as the maturity and requirements are different at each stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2014-06-19T10:24:12.910" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T11:31:12.460" Title="On an IT project, how to manage and publicize (development and testing) environment usages?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11745" CreationDate="2014-06-17T01:31:19.480" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.  &lt;strong&gt;File &gt; Options, Schedule category&lt;/strong&gt;.  Select &quot;All New Projects&quot; and set the default task type as needed.  You can also edit multiple tasks by selecting them and using the Information button on the Task Ribbon or you may add the type field to a task table and fill down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T01:31:19.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11747" CreationDate="2014-06-17T03:57:50.503" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scaling out brings a lot of overhead.  There will be more of everything to co-ordinate.  Try to have as few test environments as you can.  This will simplify the co-ordination.  It will also force your developers to deal with the integration issues up front rather than once they have completed development.  Good development practices should reduce the integration issues, but some will still occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You likely want a testing environment containing production code, and possibly one with the prior release.  This eases determining if a bug is new or existing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Add some testing environments for the next X releases.  Keep X low.  Once an testing environment is assigned to a release keep that release there.  This will simplify tracking which release is where.  You may want environments for development and testing for each release.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pre-production branches / release candidates would be assigned to a user testing environment.  You may want production and the next 2 or 3 releases.  Rotate the release environments so only one is changing at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is any integration between the artifacts, it helps to have all projects integrating into the same environment.  This should make integration issues visible at the earliest possible time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep all the clients in the same environment if their release date is the same.  Making changes to the same code for multiple clients will require some co-ordination.  It may also require some negotiation of conflicting requirements. This should be dealt with as soon as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a good idea to have automated regression tests which can be run in each environment.  These should test functionality, not look and feel.  My experience with commercial tools is they make the look and feel easy, but not the functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T03:57:50.503" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11753" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-17T15:20:02.540" Score="1" ViewCount="513" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a practice of saving a copy of our project plan with the status date in the filename every time we update status. This messes up the shared resource pool, because the resource pool now thinks that the updated file is ANOTHER project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The workaround is to open the older version, remove the shared resource, and edit the resource pool and break the link to the older version(s). But this seems tedious and overly manual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a technique on the resource pool / save a copy side that can deactivate the older versions of the project, or tag two versions of the project as actually being the same project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is our approach of saving backups of our project plans the incorrect workflow, and if so, what do you recommend as a safeguard against project corruption or user entry error?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5577" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T17:14:43.813" Title="Working with a Shared Resource Pool and project plan revisions" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;resources&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11754" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-17T15:30:50.397" Score="15" ViewCount="295" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to communicate between project teams so that your staff feels &quot;in the loop&quot;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Context: I work in a small research center (about 40-50 researchers, statisticians, and support personnel at any one time). Our staff values communication highly, but in a recent SWOT it became clear that each project team feels isolated and has no idea what the other teams are working on. While they don't &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; this information to do their our tasks, the opacity is contributing to resentment and frustration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone suggest a simple, practical way to keep our people informed? (Caveat: We are trying to avoid the dreaded All Staff meeting approach.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10327" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T07:25:17.283" Title="Communication Among Teams" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;conflicts&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11754" CreationDate="2014-06-17T16:22:37.023" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Feels in the loop is not a communication need.  Communication should be dictated by a project's stakeholder analysis.  In other words, a project will scan its stakeholder environment, segment accordingly, and determine what communication requirements exist both outgoing and incoming.  If a stakeholder segment is determined not to have any real requirements of either being informed or informing, then no communication message should be transmitted.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is, communication is costly and have risk for various penalties.  Peppering stakeholder groups with messaging, e.g., group emails or newsletters or some other mass distribution solution, costs money to build and distribute and you run the risk of training people to ignore these transmissions if the information provided becomes irrelevant.  And &quot;feeling in the loop&quot; type messages run that risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your stakeholder analysis for each project needs to dictate the communication plan and segmented requirements need to be real.  Otherwise, it is far more beneficial to disappoint your people and making them &quot;feel out of the loop&quot; then to try to satisfy that and open the door to secondary risks and penalties.  This may feel counter intuitive in the feel good management style that is promoted these days, but the costs are real and you must, as a manager, weight the benefits carefully.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT to respond to rwong:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there was a true psychological need by an entire stakeholder group to be kept aware of something, then there would likely be consequences of not keeping them in the loop such that your analysis would reveal a beneficial communication need.  If it is solely to be 'kept in the loop', which suggests someone just wants to know something, then I stick by my answer.  It is not likely there would be any real consequence of denying him information but you would have other secondary risks, penalties, and costs of not denying him that information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Management, including project management, sometimes is about tough decisions that benefits the organization as a whole but can make individuals mad.  It's a tough job.  You cannot please everyone all the time.  Pick and choose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2014-07-05T10:55:57.343" LastActivityDate="2014-07-05T10:55:57.343" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11753" CreationDate="2014-06-17T17:14:43.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no other work around nor technique for re-naming or saving a connected file.  The ultimate answer is Project Server either on premises on hosted through Project Online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also be scrupulous about backing up the pool file. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T17:14:43.813" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11757" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11766" CreationDate="2014-06-17T17:47:28.923" Score="8" ViewCount="1694" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL; DR;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the difference between:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A) The details evoked &amp;amp; scope definitions &amp;amp; acceptance criteria gained from the ongoing &quot;user story conversation&quot; a team should have with the PO, BAs, and stakeholders during a sprint&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AND&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B) Unplanned Scope Creep (which causes a story estimation to be missed, a story to not finish the sprint, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More specifically, how do you evidence scope creep &amp;amp; estimate/schedule slip caused by A vs. B?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Full Story&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have an agile team of cross-functional front- and back-end engineers, designers, QA testers.  We work in a Kanban continuous pull-based flow, decoupled from a number of Scrum ceremonies like stand-ups, backlog grooming, retros, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We receive project/feature documentation from the executive team defining high level business value and high level low-detail specifications of a desired project/feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I act as the PO (among other hats I am wearing), which means I am involved in this executive level scoping, learning the feature vision, business need, and finer business logic during this process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, the team kicks off feature development and breaks this initial documentation into user stories, each story defining a MVP-type story which can deliver value on its own. The team grooms the story and comes to a common agreement. At this point, the team &amp;amp; PO aim to have 99.99% defined business logic, but leave the &quot;how&quot; open.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When development starts, the team is encouraged to continue the user story conversation to evoke finer and finer detail regarding UI, UX, and minor business logic behavior. This requires conversations with myself, our creative director for art/design direction, and our CEO for strategic product direction. Along with this conversation, development and UI exploration is underway, which generates knowledge, which in turn generates new understanding and possibly new or modified business requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem I run into is a near infinite &quot;internal iteration&quot; on this user story conversation. The creative director goes into perfecting the UI/UX, the CEO goes into perfecting the business behavior of the feature, and I struggle finding a balance between delivering a MVP and delivering a feature that all stakeholders are happy with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current solution is to ride this fine line by breaking major departure from the initial user story into a separate user story, while allowing minor tweaks of all kinds to proceed as part of the existing user story. This approach feels &lt;em&gt;OK&lt;/em&gt;, but I feel it might contradict agile/lean thinking. Then again, I feel that A) &lt;em&gt;MVP with PO/stakeholder sign-off&lt;/em&gt; and B) &lt;em&gt;User Story Conversation&lt;/em&gt; might be contradictory in their own way and that they can't both be applied at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10330" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T11:47:14.620" Title="User story conversation vs. scope creep" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11754" CreationDate="2014-06-17T18:27:57.003" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming that each project team has meetings where they discuss progress and actions, make these meetings open for everybody. Have a board / webpage listing all such meetings. This works best if these meetings are short and don't overlap.&#xA;To make this light weight:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;only one person at a time goes to an other teams meeting and than informs his team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a different team member every time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;only interested people go&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The people who want to know will participate without spending all their time on it. The people who don't care will not have to go to any extra meetings. The manager have no extra tasks but to check once in a while whether the teams stick to the rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4331" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T18:27:57.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11757" CreationDate="2014-06-17T19:28:34.360" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your situation feels pretty familiar to me (as well as to many others out in the real world, I suspect).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Agile approach welcomes change, even last minute change, so it is fine for stakeholders to continuously refine / extend user stories and add more details or even new requirements. As you say, it is not easy to keep individual user stories &amp;quot;under control&amp;quot; though. Once a story is in progress, it should not be changed or extended so much so as to render previous estimates and plans invalid. However, it is fine to change or refine smaller details based on feedback from stakeholders. As you note, there is a fine line of balance to find here. But there is nothing inherently un-agile in it; I believe that all agile teams face this dilemma all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The real contradiction&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is, as you too note, between creating signed off project/feature documentation early on, versus ongoing story grooming. I sense there may be an organization level gap between your team's agile process and the more traditional approach of other departments, including the executive team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think from their perspective a part of the problem may in fact be that they don't see the individual user stories your team created, only the original full document, which has no clear boundaries between the different features. Thus they don't perceive when they are extending an existing story &amp;quot;too much&amp;quot; so that they are adding a completely new story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Agile transformation&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may help to explain them in detail how your team is working, what the agile approach is and why, what are its benefits compared to the traditional Big Specification Up Front approach. And also to explain them the current problem from your team's perspective. Ideally, you could convince them to adopt user stories from the very start of the process. That may make it easier to sense the relative size of each story (using feedback from the dev team) and to avoid bloating them too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This may be tricky or - in the worst case - even impossible, depending on a lot of factors including the way of thinking of higher management, your and your team's situation and departmental status, organizational culture, &amp;quot;politics&amp;quot;, the state of agile transformation within your organization etc. So assess these and proceed with caution, or not at all if you feel it too risky. Without more details, it is impossible to give more concrete advice on this. Except maybe two:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;get allies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if you haven't yet, get and read &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0321579364&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Succeeding with Agile&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; by Mike Cohn - you will find a wealth of useful and practical advice in it.&#xA;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Make stories smaller&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another important factor is to ensure that only sufficiently small stories get into a sprint. A story at this point should be small enough to be conveniently finished within a single sprint; preferably it should not require more than a few person days' worth of work. If it's too big, it should be sliced up into smaller stories. Working with small enough stories help control &amp;quot;scope creep&amp;quot; as well, as you can only add so much to a small story before you notice that it's starting to grow overly large, so it's time to slice it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&amp;quot;Infinitely&amp;quot; refining stories&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is fine and fully agile, at least if done the right way. That is, as long as the stakeholders and the team can agree on a set of successive refinements to a story or epic, so that the team can deliver the new features to stakeholders as a series of valuable product increments. Learning to slice up stories into suitably small increments is an art which requires patience and long term practice. And feedback from you and your team towards stakeholders can help a lot here, as well as regularly demonstrating completed, working product increments to them - I don't know how often you do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10244" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T20:04:29.483" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11757" CreationDate="2014-06-17T19:45:26.970" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Attempt at answering my own question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My initial feeling is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Need more &lt;strong&gt;executive buy in&lt;/strong&gt; into Agile: executives are too involved in the details and implementation &quot;how tos&quot;; this creates a more top-down, contract-based approach than an iterative, hypothesis-driven approach.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If team did true &lt;strong&gt;iterative development&lt;/strong&gt;, this wouldn't be an issue: the team would iteratively and incrementally &lt;em&gt;evolve&lt;/em&gt; to the right solution. The exec and product/BA team needs to continue defining high level strategy and vision, and let the team do the business and UX exploration necessary to arrive to the optimal solution.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If &lt;strong&gt;PO/BAs did true hypothesis- and data-driven product specs&lt;/strong&gt;, this wouldn't be an issue. Instead, PO/BAs and executive team engage in historical and &quot;gut feel&quot; feature design, based on &quot;what has worked before&quot; and &quot;what I think will work&quot;; this causes &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Team needs to &lt;strong&gt;learn the business&lt;/strong&gt; at a much deeper level to be able to make certain decisions in the name of the customer/user without needing as much PO or executive input. If the team was able to decide between two business logic options based on their knowledge of the product, user, and market, they would move towards true self-organization an product ownership.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Clear &lt;strong&gt;team accountability&lt;/strong&gt;: drive the team to know why they are building a feature a certain way and to take responsibility for its success. This requires giving teams the ability to make independent decisions, and then to measure success/failure. More independence comes with more responsibility and accountability.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Product needs a &lt;strong&gt;full time dedicated PO who is a subject matter expert&lt;/strong&gt; and who has a team of BAs and/or data analysts at his disposal to engage in true hypothesis- and iteration-driven development.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, this is a process that is very complex and time-consuming to implement, not to mention risky. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10330" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T19:45:26.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11754" CreationDate="2014-06-17T20:18:19.003" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may take these three ideas from Scrum that may be useful to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum of Scrums&lt;/strong&gt; - a regular meeting of team representatives (usually one per team). In Scrum, the point is to communicate and resolve team level problems and blockers together. So the meeting is focussed (although not as strictly as the daily calls) to avoid wasting time. But you may adopt it to your needs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product demos&lt;/strong&gt; - whenever a team completed an important milestone or new feature, arrange a public demo and invite other teams as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Communities of practice&lt;/strong&gt; - these involve subject matter experts across teams. I.e. you may create a CoP for testers, another one for statisticians etc. These may run own mailing lists, organize more or less regular events like brown bag sessions, pub nights etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/11755/10244&quot;&gt;David Espina points out&lt;/a&gt;, communication has its cost so it should be kept under control. However, not all communication can be planned in advance based on project needs; we don't always know what we don't know! So one should leave &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; room for unplanned ad hoc, free form discussions as well. The question is of course, how much that &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; should be; too little is as dangerous as too much. The needs and ways should be tuned individually for each team / organization via &lt;em&gt;inspect and adapt&lt;/em&gt; cycles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To show the other side of the coin, insuffficient communication may also lead to problems in the long run, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;duplicated features, reinventing the wheel again and again&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;misunderstandings, which may even result in &lt;a href=&quot;http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric.02/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;costly project failures&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;us versus them&quot; type of conflicts between persons / teams, resulting in burnout or high turnover as well as project problems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10244" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T20:28:58.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11754" CreationDate="2014-06-18T00:56:16.177" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Distributing information is not the problem. The problem is making people feel like they are in a collaborative environment and not restricted to the silos of their projects or domains, which is a communication design challenge. This is especially important at research centers where people are focused on sharing and creating knowledge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are multiple paths you can go down to design the right communication environment to foster this feeling. I've written a book on the subject so could go for hours. But, in the near term, make sure there are unstructured activities/times (like lunch) where people can freely communicate and are encouraged to discuss their work in a judgement free environment.  You can also create office activities that require people to work together across departments/domains. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find it helpful, a link to the book and other communication resources can be found on my PMSE profile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T00:56:16.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11721" CreationDate="2014-06-18T03:00:19.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Julie suggested, level your resources on a longer time scale than the tasks you're leveling. An example helps to see why this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If in a given month your PM has 85 percent availability. This represents they mostly support the project, but there's an expectation that 15 percent of their time will be spent doing things not in your schedule. That could be supporting another program or even assisting with other tasks their not explicitly assigned to in Project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now in a given month that resource may be assigned to a number of smaller tasks: a 3-hour meeting at 100 percent, reviewing a report at 25 percent, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as the total number of hours within the leveling timeframe is less than 85 percent of full-time the resource won't be over-allocated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Project error you're seeing is a legitimate one. You've told the software someone is only available 85 percent of every hour, but they are asking them to support a 3 hour meeting full time. That's impossible. But it's totally reasonable for them to be 85 percent for a week (i.e. 34 hours), and spend 3 hours it at a single meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="360" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T03:00:19.907" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11757" CreationDate="2014-06-18T11:47:14.620" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It looks like you have a problem in the ways stories are written. Stories represent an &lt;em&gt;aim&lt;/em&gt; which has a &lt;em&gt;value&lt;/em&gt; for an &lt;em&gt;actor&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think about the Mike Cohn version of user stories: &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;[The actor]&lt;/em&gt; wants to do &lt;em&gt;[the aim]&lt;/em&gt; in order to get &lt;em&gt;[the value]&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot;. If you can identify these three elements, the scope follows logically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conversation that needs to happen on the user story is about the &lt;em&gt;simplest, or cheapest way&lt;/em&gt; to get to that &lt;em&gt;value&lt;/em&gt; delivered to the &lt;em&gt;actor&lt;/em&gt; by enabling the &lt;em&gt;aim&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example imagine this story for Stack Exchange sites:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a &lt;em&gt;registered user&lt;/em&gt; I want to &lt;em&gt;change my avatar&lt;/em&gt; so that &lt;em&gt;my avatar is the same as other sites&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the simplest, cheapest way of achieving this? Here's where the discussion needs to happen. It should start during planning and it could go like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team member A: &amp;quot;We could add a new form with a file upload on the user page&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team member B: &amp;quot;What about dragging and dropping an image from a file to the avatar itself?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team member A: &amp;quot;Yes that's simpler, let's do that&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The decision is then annotated on the card (or whatever you use to track stories). It's an implementation detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During development, a couple of problems/opportunities emerge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's not easy for a user to know they can drag and drop to customize&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A developer realizes that it would be cool to support copy/paste as well as drag and drop.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do we handle these cases?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Item 1 means that, in order to provide the agreed value to the user, an extra piece of work is necessary, in particular in this case it could be a label explaining the functionality to the user. &lt;em&gt;This is clearly part of the story&lt;/em&gt;. It needs to be done in order for the story to be complete and valuable. The decision should be noted on the card.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Item 2 is an insight that was gained as the team acquired more knowledge on the subject. It does provide extra value, but is not necessary to achieve the aim agreed on: the value is over what was agreed. Therefore, in this case a new story is added to the backlog: &amp;quot;As a &lt;em&gt;registered user&lt;/em&gt; I want to &lt;em&gt;change my avatar via copy/paste&lt;/em&gt; so that &lt;em&gt;I can change it without saving a local file on my system&lt;/em&gt;.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, it should be quite easy to understand what is &amp;quot;scope creep&amp;quot; and not. Keep in mind that there is no such thing as scope creep in agile: scope creep is an essential by-product of the methodology, it is something we &lt;em&gt;actually encourage&lt;/em&gt; and it has a correct place, as new stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6300" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T11:47:14.620" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="399" CreationDate="2014-06-18T19:42:15.210" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless they become a full member of the team I would say &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;. They would not have any commitment to your sprint goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead I would organise an extra daily (short and time-boxed) meeting with external dependencies. This could be with developers from other teams, other companies or external designers. Some could call it a sort &lt;a href=&quot;http://guide.agilealliance.org/guide/scrumofscrums.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum-of-Scrums meeting&lt;/a&gt; for externals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have worked in a team where we where depended on another (external) teams Web-service / API. The daily meetings where a great place to discuss impediments we would run into and to discuss upcoming changes to adapt (update the backlog) in time. If you are fully depended on a feature of the other team (that they need to deliver in the same time span), I would suggest to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.programmableweb.com/news/top-tools-to-help-you-mock-web-services/how-to/2014/01/13&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mock&lt;/a&gt; their work so you can deliver a &quot;working&quot; product within the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T19:42:15.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4599" CreationDate="2014-06-19T06:33:08.910" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not necessary.&lt;/strong&gt;. But for the tracking purpose it is better to note it somewhere.. Simple Excel or a notepad would be enough to track the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10254" LastEditorUserId="10254" LastEditDate="2014-06-19T06:38:43.287" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T06:38:43.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11771" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-19T09:08:10.117" Score="3" ViewCount="275" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm the leader of a small team (a few programmers, plus product manager) practicing continuous delivery. The development stages for features are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Coding&lt;/strong&gt;: A programmer prepares a branch with the feature, up to a specification. The feature is reviewed by Product Manager at the end of this stage.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Code review&lt;/strong&gt;: Implemented with merge requests. A fellow programmer looks at the code, points out issues, programmer works to fix them. When everything is OK, the feature is integrated to main development branch.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Deployment&lt;/strong&gt;: after passing the automated tests suite, the contents of main branch gets pushed to production servers. This currently happens twice a week.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For planning our work, we're using 2-week iterations - Product Manager proposes feature to work on, we estimate them, and based on that allocate them to programmers for the iteration. My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;During an iteration, what should we commit to&lt;/strong&gt;? Right now we're saying that by the end of iteration, the coding (stage 1) has to be finished. This is because there might be some delay between coding and review (since the reviewer is also working on something).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a bit hesitant to include all 3 stages as required to finish, because this means by the end of iteration, everyone is working on code review, instead of the features following their development cycles unconstrained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How much should be planned regarding &lt;strong&gt;delivery date&lt;/strong&gt;? With the current setup, we can only say that the feature should be deployed &lt;em&gt;sometime during the next 3 weeks&lt;/em&gt; (iteration + a window for code review and deployment). Can we do better? Should we?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Because of the above: how much should we plan regarding &lt;strong&gt;work ordering&lt;/strong&gt;?   Should we, for instance, say during which days which features will be worked on, and reviewed? Or specify a strict order in which the features will be worked on during an iteration? Or give the order as priorities, but allow more freedom?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, I don't want to constrain the programmers too much here. Detailed up-front planning doesn't sound very useful for me, and the actual ordering of work is something I'd rather give freedom at as well (perhaps with the priorities as a soft guideline). But I'm not sure if that makes the delivery date much more certain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9042" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T12:27:50.637" Title="How to combine continuous delivery cycle with iterations?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4599" CreationDate="2014-06-19T14:54:42.397" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, whether or not to use project planning software is up to you. I have seen great managers that use it and great managers that do not. So I think this is a question that you have to answer for yourself. Maybe this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eylean.com/blog/2014/06/what-project-management-tools-would-your-manager-choose/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; about the tools different managers like to use will be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10336" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T14:54:42.397" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11773" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-19T18:01:19.963" Score="3" ViewCount="3457" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to divide a task between resources at different usage levels to get the shortest duration for the task.  For Example&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task A : 80 hrs work&#xA;Resource 1: 100%&#xA;Resource 2: 50%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want this to result in something like 7 days duration: Resource 1 = 54 hours, Resource 2 = 26 hours&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MS project divides the work evenly between the two resources and completes the task based on the slowest (least utilized) resource: 10 day with 40 hours each for resource 1 and 2. Thus resource 1 stops working once they've done their 40 hours &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JlC4U.png&quot; alt=&quot;screen capture&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I get MS project to keep all resources working at their maximum rate until a task is complete?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10345" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-02-17T20:28:04.627" LastActivityDate="2015-04-18T21:26:44.703" Title="How to divide work unevenly between resources in MS Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resources&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11771" CreationDate="2014-06-20T01:18:41.830" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can release every couple of days, it makes sense to stop thinking of things in terms of batches (iterations) and start focusing on the flow of work through your process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban, for example, doesn't use iterations but prevents overloading and allows predictability by limiting the amount of work that can be in any given stage in your delivery pipeline at one time, and measuring the rate at which you deliver features (rather than velocity as in Scrum).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a good guide available here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crisp.se/file-uploads/Kanban-vs-Scrum.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.crisp.se/file-uploads/Kanban-vs-Scrum.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also recommend reading 'Kanban' by David Anderson.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as answering your specific questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focussing on flow rather than on a batch commitment removes the need to jump everyone onto code reviews at the end of an iteration.  I won't dwell on this one since it's a problem that just goes away if you're not doing sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than doing a planning session every two weeks, perhaps spend a few minutes every morning where the product owner reviews progress of things in flight and has the opportunity to re-prioritise the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of planning and work ordering, I prefer to have a prioritised list to work though and would never recommend trying to assign work or specify what day something will get done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a developer has finished a task, they should look at the board and decide what needs doing next.  Finishing things should always take priority so if there are things that can be pushed to live or need code review, these should be done in preference to starting new work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they can't work on anything in progress, they should take the next item in priority order to start coding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd encourage them to take initiative and not just blindly pick the next task though.  If the second priority item is something they have particular skills or knowledge to do best, by all means pick it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T01:18:41.830" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11776" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-20T11:21:30.633" Score="0" ViewCount="114" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say we need to create a new system for internal use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will have to set up priorities for the team of developers. To start using this new system, the product could be released with 6 elements only.&#xA;What will be the priority of each element according to your personal criteria?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please list the priorities by order of importance from 1 to 10, where 1 means highest priority and 10 means lowest priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;List:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Design &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Functionality of each page&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;System speed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Usage of new technologies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bug free code&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Access from all devices&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Full description    of all features&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Centralized system&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Intuitive layout and usability&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other (please clarify)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: You need to specify all 10, and any others you consider important (for example AB testing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please explain your reasoning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10347" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2014-06-20T16:51:37.610" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T16:51:37.610" Title="Setting up priorities for the team of developers" Tags="&lt;prioritization&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-06-21T13:58:34.720" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11771" CreationDate="2014-06-20T11:26:35.823" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rather than answering each of your questions separately, I'd like to share how we implement CD at our end. Hopefully you'll find this info useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Requirements Planning&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;All of our stories are the same size - we don't do relative story sizing anymore. Furthermore, our story slicing method mandates that the estimated &quot;dev&quot; effort does not exceed 2 days (to push to staging) for any story.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Our project plan contains the following Horizons: Releases, Features and Stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 or a max of 3 stories comprise a Feature, So, a feature is about a week long.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;4 to 6 features in a release. So, a release is about 1 to 1.5 months long.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We use the &quot;average cycle time&quot; metric (from Kanban) to track our progress against the above schedule. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dev Practices&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We stopped using branches a few years ago. All of our code is directly checked into the master branch. Of course, devs are expected to checkin to the master only if all tests pass on their local environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://martinfowler.com/bliki/FeatureToggle.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Feature Toggles&lt;/a&gt; are very useful in those situations when code is checked in, but the corresponding feature is still pending review from say, the product owner. As long as the number of toggles is kept to a minimum, this is a very useful technique to maintain &quot;flow&quot;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We practice pair programming - so code reviews are done almost always while the code is being written. Once in a while though, we do switch pairs or get reviews done by members outside the team. CodeClimate is also pretty cool - in helping us keep our technical debt low. [We also love the alerts from CodeClimate - they're useful triggers to refactor certain neglected parts of the code]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10342" LastEditorUserId="10352" LastEditDate="2014-06-20T12:27:50.637" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T12:27:50.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11776" CreationDate="2014-06-20T12:02:09.780" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Surveying for opinions about how to prioritize this list would product interesting but not very useful results.  You need to score each of these based on benefits, costs, risks, and penalties, quantifying as much as you can, and then prioritizing based on the score.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T12:02:09.780" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11776" CreationDate="2014-06-20T16:09:23.790" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your original question cannot be answered meaningfully outside of your organization because you are missing a &lt;em&gt;prioritization process&lt;/em&gt;. You can use any documented, repeatable process that works for your team and your organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have a process, you could then use techniques like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/relative-weighting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;relative weighting&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/theme-screening&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;theme screening&lt;/a&gt; that support your process. However, you must define a process &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you can select an appropriate tool or technique to implement that process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T16:09:23.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11783" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-22T05:53:54.650" Score="6" ViewCount="398" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a prediction of future growth of a &lt;strong&gt;workshop (50 – 100 manual workers)&lt;/strong&gt;. The idea is to develop how and in what way we would like to &lt;strong&gt;grow this facility&lt;/strong&gt;. I am looking for a &lt;strong&gt;methodology or conceptual framework&lt;/strong&gt; that would put me on rails, something that would give me a direction in developing this plan. Our company is a manufacturing company and we are using a form of &lt;strong&gt;Kanban&lt;/strong&gt; so if you know any approach that is connected to this methodology then even better. I welcome any level of approach, from basic to complex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7888" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-06-22T14:57:02.990" LastActivityDate="2020-07-27T06:18:48.020" Title="Methodology to Predict Future Workload" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;process-engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11783" CreationDate="2014-06-22T14:55:41.310" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should continuously inspect-and-adapt your entire system as an integral part of running a successful Kanban implementation. To successfully manage growth, you will need to make changes to your processes if you expect to reduce (rather than increase) lead time as your input queues grow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Workload as Empirical Data&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban is a great framework for estimating lead time, throughput, or cycle time. However, in the Kanban framework, &quot;workload&quot; is an empirical datum rather than a prediction. If we agree to define workload as &lt;em&gt;the volume of stuff to be done within a given time frame&lt;/em&gt;, you can then measure the queue sizes within that time frame. For example, you could:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Average the length of an input queue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find the median of all input queues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify the minimum or maximum lengths of each queue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Predicting Workload&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Kanban, you might predict future workload (e.g. queue size) by graphing queue growth over time. You might also simply make planning assumptions, such as &quot;Workload will grow at a rate of 15% per quarter over the next 18 months.&quot; Either way, you would project the growth rate onto the size of your queues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a pull system, growth of input queues increases lead time, but shouldn't directly affect your cycle time or throughput. Therefore, if you expect growth but do not want to increase lead time, you should examine your processes in light of your growth projections to determine if:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can add more labor to increase work-in-progress (WIP) limits.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can add additional queues to reduce lead time for a given sub-process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can improve throughput (by reducing waste, not by management fiat) in order to meet your lead-time targets.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also find other ways to manage the work. As long as you are continuously inspecting and adapting your processes, and making optimal use of the metrics your framework provides, then you are more likely to successfully absorb the additional work into your processes. There is no silver bullet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-06-22T14:55:41.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11787" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11790" CreationDate="2014-06-23T17:07:33.933" Score="7" ViewCount="666" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working in a pretty small startup and we've just started doing scrum. The team consists of me as the scrum master (but also a developer), the product owner which is also the owner of the company and 5 other developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today we had our first Review and it felt a bit wrong to me. Because we didn't have any Stakeholders to show the results. There is nobody else interested in the process of the project which I could invite to the review.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the review was actually a meeting where we were showing the finished backlog items to ourselves. Does that make any sense? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean not every developer worked on all stories, so for some of us it was good to see the end result of the other stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the actual goal of the review should be to get impact and ideas from the other stakeholders to improve the backlog, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't say the meeting was totally useless, but almost. Any suggestions how to handle this and how the review should look like without stakeholders?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10375" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2014-06-24T22:32:09.750" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T22:32:09.750" Title="Scrum Sprint Review without the stakeholders" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;&lt;reviews&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11787" CreationDate="2014-06-23T19:58:51.803" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ideally the review meeting should include the product owner and the client to share their feedback with the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you're working on an internal product or a client based project, it's recommended to invite both of them and have the team walk them through the done features and if you have time run the acceptance tests together it would be great, just to make sure that everything is working as expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they can't attend the meeting in person then it can be done online, as it's very important to have their feedback before proceeding to the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3263" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T19:58:51.803" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11787" CreationDate="2014-06-24T10:23:00.060" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would ask myself a fundamental question: If I don't have stakeholders, who am I building this product for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your situation, it sounds like you're building it because the owner of the business, your product owner, said so. No problem. In other words, your product owner isn't representing stakeholders, he &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; your stakeholder. Cool! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there's a catch. The owner has to realize that it's all too easy for the scrum master and the development team to defer to them. This breaks the 'self-organizing' requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The owner will have to be clear that he's working as the product owner and not the business owner and respect the interaction with the scrum master and the development team. That's a tough call, especially for a start-up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7835" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T10:23:00.060" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11567" CreationDate="2014-06-24T11:46:36.403" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;We should always write stories from the perspective of user role you are catering to. The user stories are the foundation to 3C's. &lt;a href=&quot;http://xprogramming.com/articles/expcardconversationconfirmation/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Reference Link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Card&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conversation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Confirmation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Card&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; : This is to write user stories which will help the person who will be using the feature. This explains what the user wants in simple words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conversation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; : The user story written on the card should be a conversation starter among the team including customer. This should ideally happen before development starts for a feature. This conversation is useful to figure out what the end user of the feature is trying to solve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Confirmation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; : As part of the conversation, acceptance criteria (and ideally, &quot;examples&quot; ) are also discussed and documented. Once the story is coded, these criteria are used by the customer to &quot;confirm&quot; that the story can be &quot;accepted&quot; and pushed to production. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing the user stories with &quot;end user perception&quot; will also make the team/customer think of possible scenarios in the real world. This will eliminate possible scenarios that can be missed if we do not keep the users' roles in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would prefer to write the user stories as below :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As an admin, I should be able to (ISBAT)...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As an employee, ISBAT..&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a premium user, ISBAT..&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10368" LastEditorUserId="10379" LastEditDate="2014-06-25T03:41:11.603" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T03:41:11.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11743" CreationDate="2014-06-24T14:51:02.497" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To address your concerns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are the direct manager of the team, you should have final say over what meetings they need to attend.  Step in if necessary and let the meeting organizer know if the team member is able to attend or not.  Sometimes you can satisfy a need for input by simply having your team member available to answer questions before or after a meeting.  That way the team member can address the request per their schedule.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need to sit down with your boss and establish a clear set of goals for your team.  If you are allowed to help set the goals, make sure they include some level of decision-making authority for you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you have the meeting with your boss, also ask what the boss’s boss has in mind for overall goals and vision for their area.  Make sure the goals established in #2 above do not have a direct conflict with these goals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stem concerns of over committing by saying “no” where appropriate.  This is especially important when dealing with others outside your direct chain of command.  I have encountered numerous situations where an outside department wanted to dominate my department’s time and focus.  Make sure when you establish your goals in step 2 above, you discuss this angle. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Activity Log.  It is reasonable to prepare some easy-to-digest report or update for upper management.  I personally would not expose your entire log to other departments.  You would open yourself to being questioned as to your project goals, milestones, etc, and why another department’s requests cannot be handled sooner (see item #4).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Steering Committee/meetings with customers.  It would seem you could have such meetings but be sure to include your boss on them.  She may or may not attend, but at least you’re giving her the opportunity.  Discuss the meeting format when you set your team goals (item #2).  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7361" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T14:51:02.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11747" CreationDate="2014-06-24T17:29:00.933" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should designate someone on the IT team, probably a System Administrator, as coordinator of the various environments.  They should be able to coordinate and control when environments are refreshed, when code packages are migrated from one environment to the next, and what the schedule is for vendor-supplied patches and updates (if applicable).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best practices say to have as few environments as possible. When you have too many , keeping them up to date with vendor upgrades and production refreshes becomes very difficult.  When using vendor-supplied software, always keep one as a “vanilla” environment that contains the software as delivered off the shelf.   Another must-have is a “hot backup” of production, probably refreshed daily or even multiple times per day.  This is practically a must to debug production issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your Sys Admin should meet with the developers and testers to come up with an agreed-upon migration schedule.  It is also a good idea to have a standard way for developers to document what is in a particular code release.  As far as communicating this with the project team, I think a calendar-based tool – such as in Sharepoint – provides a quick and easy way to see the upcoming code migration and patching schedules.  If more detailed information is needed, that can be tracked in a spreadsheet or similar way.  Sys Admins and DBAs in particular might need the more detailed information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7361" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T17:29:00.933" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11586" CreationDate="2014-06-24T19:14:42.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a strictly mechanical viewpoint, if you are forced to make changes tot he baseline, then I would create a new baseline from that point forward. If you are using a tool, say MS Project, then you can preserve the original baseline to latter use to instruct upper management on the impact of the additional tasks and the changes to the cost and schedule to the project. If you are using EVM, I believe you would be forced to re-baseline, but again I would keep the historical baseline to get management buy in in the future for setting and sticking to the scope. On the other hand, if the new tasking is vital and obviously important to the whole of the project, then re-baselining as new is likely the way to go once management concurs with the new schedule and cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7689" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T19:14:42.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11567" CreationDate="2014-06-25T01:37:06.320" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here some examples I pulled this template off scrumalliance.org and its worked nicely when I've adapted it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User story in front, acceptance criteria at the back&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;First Example&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As a student&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;User stories title:&lt;/strong&gt; Student registers&#xA;I want to register with on the website&#xA;So that I can view and apply for IT jobs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Acceptance Criteria:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Given that the students ID is valid in the system&#xA;When the student first enrolled at the campus&#xA;Then the student will register with email validation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Second Example&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;**User stories title:&lt;/strong&gt; Students edits profile**&#xA;I want to edit my profile on the website&#xA;So that I can access everything a student user can and apply for jobs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Acceptance Criteria:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Given that the student has registered and logged into the website&#xA;When the student validates his account using their email&#xA;Then the student will have access to everything a student user can access&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Third example&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As an employer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;User stories title:&lt;/strong&gt; Employer registers on the website&#xA;I want to register on the website&#xA;So that I can list job vacancies for students&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Acceptance Criterion:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Given that their login details have been given by &lt;strong&gt;******&lt;/strong&gt; administrator&#xA;When the employer has first contacted &lt;strong&gt;****&lt;/strong&gt; IT administrator via email or phone&#xA;Then they can list job vacancies for students&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Fourth Example&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;User stories title:&lt;/strong&gt; Employer post jobs on the website&#xA;I want to post student job vacancies&#xA;So that I can hire one or more students&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Acceptance Criterion:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Given that the employer has access to the website&#xA;When they want to post a job vacancies&#xA;Then the employer can list position details and requirements for the job&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10388" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T01:37:06.320" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11635" CreationDate="2014-06-25T04:33:12.563" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, you problem is &quot;solved&quot; already, but maybe this helps someone else. Scrum requires &quot;definition of done&quot; be applicable for each story. In my opinion, those definitions should include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Update of documentation (test procedures, system documentation; but manuals should be written after development)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Formal testing including test reports.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This usually results in higher estimates regarding story points but is (again IMHO) the only way to be (almost) all-the-time deployable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For your problem:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stop development of new functions. If you keep going as usual, this will just result in new bugs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prioritize the bug list together with some of your user experts / representatives from show-stopper to nice-to-have.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start with twice-a-week bug sessions, discussion progress, supporting activities, possible solutions, etc. for the top bugs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-06-25T05:40:24.850" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T05:40:24.850" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11797" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11800" CreationDate="2014-06-25T09:34:50.790" Score="4" ViewCount="1633" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why is the most common Agile software development approach a hybrid of Scrum and XP?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do you think its a good idea to use them together?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(if I am not aloud to ask for opinion based question please lock or delete this thread thanks)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10388" LastEditorUserId="10388" LastEditDate="2014-06-25T12:00:19.670" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T07:44:44.583" Title="Why use hybrid Scrum and XP?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11747" CreationDate="2014-06-25T11:31:12.460" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my point of view and being very pragmatic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Required a release and enviroment manager.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He/she will coordinate the releases and will have an updated picture of the usage of each environment. In a shared document.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This manager will establish a rigid policy for deploy/env. usage, at least until all teams are conformatable with the new procedure in place.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the concept of application version instead of artifacts.&#xA;I do not see any benefit to work with artifacts separatelly. The deploy procedure should work at application level and if a promote is required, then all artifacts should promoted under a unique application version (but with different artifact version). This will simplify a lot the process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To help to the above process, the packaging and deploy process should be optimized as much as possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10393" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T11:31:12.460" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11797" CreationDate="2014-06-25T12:17:32.923" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion mixing methodologies is a natural case where there are tools for particular purposes. And when new purpose arise which has none of the techniques mapped anyone can try to mix existing ones and adopt. Scrum is more of a process toolset covering many aspects and parts of software development. While XP is more of a manufacturing related toolset bringing values for smaller area of application. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I would suggest looking into &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aboutscrumban.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrumban&lt;/a&gt;. It has mature results of mixed practices which serve very unique needs for dynamic and SMB companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5562" LastEditorUserId="5562" LastEditDate="2014-06-26T05:44:08.650" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T05:44:08.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11797" CreationDate="2014-06-25T12:37:05.727" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum doesn't mandate (or even suggest) any specific engineering practices so teams often adopt TDD, Pairing, Continuous Integration etc from XP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's probably be more accurate to say the most common agile implementations use the Scrum framework for defining how work is specified and the process with which features are delivered while making use of XP engineering practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This article by Mike Cohn discusses some of the similarities and differences between XP and Scrum in more detail.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/differences-between-scrum-and-extreme-programming/&quot;&gt;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/differences-between-scrum-and-extreme-programming/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T12:37:05.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11797" CreationDate="2014-06-25T13:14:23.047" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum&lt;/strong&gt; defines three roles, three rituals and three artefacts. It is not a thorough software development methodology, but a minimal &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28development%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;product development framework&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. While its phrasing is focused on software, what it actually defines is a power equilibrium between different stakeholders developing a product, and specifications on interactions and feedback to regulate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;XP&lt;/strong&gt; (eXtreme Programming), on the other hand, is a &lt;strong&gt;software development methodology&lt;/strong&gt;. It is often confused for the set of engineering practices it mandates (pair programming, test-driven development…), even though it also defines elements that fall into the product development category, such as the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_programming_practices&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Planning Game&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, it is indeed very common for software development teams to integrate (a subset of) XP’s &lt;em&gt;engineering practices&lt;/em&gt; in (too often a subset of) the Scrum &lt;em&gt;framework&lt;/em&gt; because &lt;strong&gt;the two aim at solving different problems&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; thus be used together because the mandated practices are orthogonal: XP’s engineering practices only impact the Team, but don’t change this Scrum role’s definition, nor the other way around. And they &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; used together simply because both have proven very efficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2523" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T13:14:23.047" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11586" CreationDate="2014-06-25T16:41:58.090" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend to review the additional tasks to determine if these will impact your project, such as your milestone dates or project costs. If there is an impact to your existing project schedule or budget, I would seek sponsor/business owner approval for the changes requests and re-baseline the entire project accordingly. If the additional tasks can be done without impacting the key milestones or budget, I would add the new tasks and just re-baseline only the new tasks (In MS-Project 2010, use “Project..Set Baseline..Set Baseline..For..click Selected Tasks”).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have used the “Selected Tasks” re-baseline feature in MS-Project several times. For example, consider a new floor build-out. The project includes deployment for all IT components for a new office floor. If a change request comes in to add a conference room, I can add those new tasks to the project schedule without impacting existing project plans and schedule for the current scope. Of course, the change request needs to be approved and project cost updated accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10384" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T16:41:58.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11803" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-25T18:17:29.347" Score="18" ViewCount="5596" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have an Android native app and now want to build an iOS native version. We work scrum / kanban process. How best can we ensure that the Features / User Stories implementation on both versions align? We use webservices so they will share that as their common backend which is good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you keep the iOS and Android developers on the same page?&#xA;What other practices help you ensure that a feature / user story is being implemented the same way on both apps? &#xA;What are standard practices? e.g. Do you duplicate the post-its for a user story and mark one post-it as android and the other as iOS? or what?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;p.s. the android and iOS developers will be different individuals&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4574" LastEditorUserId="4574" LastEditDate="2014-06-27T14:01:12.820" LastActivityDate="2016-08-19T16:50:51.653" Title="When developing the same app for multiple platforms how do you keep the implementation aligned" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11803" CreationDate="2014-06-25T19:04:36.813" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There shouldn't be any difference in the user stories or acceptance tasks\tests because both are explaining functionality, which will be the same for both apps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, it's recommended to create tasks for each platform (even if they are the same)as it will be easier to track the progress for each version because of the following reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.Time estimation may differ&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.Different Assignee&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3.Give each team the flexibility to manage their tasks, maybe iPhone team would like to start working on task #4 then #3 given that they're not dependent on any other tasks of course, but Android team will start working on task #3 then #4. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use color coding (e.g. Red post-its for Android, Yellow post-its for iPhone)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take the login screen for an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;User Story:&lt;/strong&gt;  As a user I want to enter my credentials to view my profile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Acceptance tests:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;use valid credentials, the user should login to his/her profile.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;use invalid credentials, a message &quot;Wrong user name or password&quot; will appear to the user.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click Submit without entering data, a required field message will appear.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tasks&lt;/strong&gt; (the post-its)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;iPhone visual design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Android visual design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3263" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T19:04:36.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="36" CreationDate="2014-06-25T19:57:47.407" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that if it the prerequisites do not explicitly restrict you from acquiring the PMP and you have the wherewithal to do it, go for it. Learning the language of project management is valuable. However, it seems that getting a PMP certification is less of a golden ticket to landing a new career than committing yourself to an effective management framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10398" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T19:57:47.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11413" CreationDate="2014-06-26T07:29:04.893" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion this makes you a great manager. The ability to fix the problems within the team without burdening the team with it, is something i would like to be able to do. This not only improves the work processes, it gives better morale to the team and in the end makes the managers life easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, i would say that in some cases this might turn against the manager as well. The way i see it happening is if you have a team that is hostile towards you because of one reason or another. In that case implementing managerial decisions without the full knowledge of the team will be great - they cannot protest what they do not know, but it will not solve the lack of respect the team has towards you. Because if they do not understand the decisions you have made, they will keep thinking they are a great team without you and keep being hostile towards you. So maybe if i was in that position specific position, i would not go with the unseen route, but that's me not liking the hostility between the project manager and the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10336" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T07:29:04.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11797" CreationDate="2014-06-26T07:44:44.583" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum is a framework. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;XP consists of a number of techniques that you can apply on top of that framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While XP is popular, you're not limited to using XP. You can choose whichever technique works best for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7835" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T07:44:44.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11475" CreationDate="2014-06-26T08:13:50.647" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to test the communication skills of a manager, there are quite a few ways to do it in the interview by asking various questions, giving tasks to perform, getting information from their previous workplace, etc. However, i would say that first you need to understand what communication skills you are looking for. When looking for a project manager you know the type of projects they will be handling, the type of employees that will be in their team and what are the most common issues in those cases. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on these factors, you will know if you need someone that is good at explaining the tasks, relaying information, managing the workflow or resolving disputes between team members/clients. Then you can test the project managers abilities based on these requirements. Also, when you know the requirements it will be easier to come up with ways to test them as you will know exactly what you are looking for. For example, according to the skills needed you will be able to pull real-life situations from your past and see how they would cope with them. I would think it would give you a better understanding of the project managers abilities, before you see them in action as part of your company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10336" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T08:13:50.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11803" CreationDate="2014-06-26T20:09:06.387" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a PM point of view it is two separate projects. If the same developers work on both Android and iOS client, you could however run it as one project. You could achieve a reasonable feature alignment, by having two versions of the user stories (iOS / Android) and prioritize them one after the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if it's two different teams you can't and shouldn't attempt to align functionality development across the two projects. You can of course give the same user story prioritization in the two versions, but don't make dependencies from one project to the other. This will inevitably cause delays in one team, as the same story might vary widely in time required across the two platforms. In this situation you're better off by running it as two different development processes with separate kanban boards etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do Scrum, you'd run two different Scrum processes simultaneously, and then make a daily or weekly &quot;scrum of scrums&quot; where leads from each team meet and discuss progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8592" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T20:09:06.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11810" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-26T20:12:13.737" Score="1" ViewCount="1174" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand how to create a subproject and insert the subproject into a master project. Is there a way to take an existing task (and its subtasks) in a master project and convert them to a new subproject?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do have relationships that cross the boundary of the desired subproject. Cut/pasting the task/subtasks into a new file and inserting that into the master seems undesirable as it will require relinking all dependencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10403" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T18:54:59.940" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T18:54:59.940" Title="How can I convert existing tasks and subtasks to subprojects in Project 2010" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11586" CreationDate="2014-06-26T20:18:25.603" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The scope has changed, so you'll need to create a new baseline and new estimates. This needs to be clearly communicated to the customer regardless if they are internal or external.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8592" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T20:18:25.603" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10957" CreationDate="2014-06-26T20:22:23.897" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't already have a &lt;strong&gt;code review&lt;/strong&gt; process, put one in place. Every piece of code checked into source control should be reviewed for approval/rejection by at least one other developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3924" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T20:22:23.897" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="442" CreationDate="2014-06-27T06:05:36.710" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any meeting going above and beyond 15 minutes is not worth it. Long meeting results in one or two members of the team contributing actively and others in the meeting feeling prisoners because of the fact that they are not able to contribute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If meeting are scheduled, then the chances of finishing it within the expected time is more. In case of non critical impromptu meetings, start the meeting with a time limit (ex : 10 mins). Make everyone in the meeting aware that they have 10 mins to discuss on the topic. This will cut the chase and topic discussed in the meeting are more effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Decide the next steps during the end of the meeting so that the person who has called for the meeting know what everyone thinks. If there is no outcome from the meeting, do the least thing possible, schedule a meeting to start where you had stopped earlier or start a e-mail thread discussing the same including all the members in the meeting.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10368" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T06:05:36.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11803" CreationDate="2014-06-27T18:59:46.213" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;please view it as a two different projects because.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issues that crop up while dealing with creating user interfaces for different mobile phones or smartphones are not merely restricted to the way the designed content appears on the screen. For instance, designing a UI for non-touchscreen phones is very different from that of designing for touchscreen phones. One interface type does not necessarily suit the technical requirements of all devices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10413" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T18:59:46.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8344" CreationDate="2014-06-27T19:40:20.840" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can say in one phrase why I don't hate, but &lt;em&gt;am&lt;/em&gt; skeptical of certain PMs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;lack of domain knowledge&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easier to sound to management like you know what you're talking about than it is to know what you're talking about. It's easier to use management as a bludgeoning tool than to listen to your teams and remove obstacles to their success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To avoid being hated...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn, learn, learn till your head hurts. Get reading recommendations from the teams, and then read them. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go to their meetings, listen, take notes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Know the bug tracking and version control systems inside and out. Look at them daily. Learn them better than the team members do. Get the access needed to check out code and look at it yourself if possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have the courage to be the reality check on the expectations of non-technical upstream decisionmakers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Understand both worlds enough to be able to translate high-level goals into concrete, measurable targets. If a high-level goal is vague or incomprehensible have the guts to politely but firmly keep asking for a clarification until it is articulated precisely enough to be actionable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep management overhead as small a part of your teams' lives as you humanly can so they can spend as much of their time as possible doing the specialized tasks they were hired to do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read &lt;a href=&quot;http://joelonsoftware.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Joel on Software&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To the extent you have influence on who does what, and to the extent that external constraints permit, try know what each team member loves to do most, and try to match them up with it. Free boost in performance and morale.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Never, ever, act like you know something you don't. Say &quot;I don't know&quot; and then find out. If you need to make a guess, state that you are making a guess. Make it safe for others, above or below you in the food chain, to admit ignorance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10409" LastEditorUserId="10409" LastEditDate="2014-06-27T20:10:27.573" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T20:10:27.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11810" CreationDate="2014-06-27T20:52:08.507" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid there is no way to separate tasks into a new subproject without having to re-link.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T20:52:08.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11803" CreationDate="2014-06-27T21:05:16.413" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In general:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A well-designed app could be different implementation according with&#xA;the platform. An example: The iOS app navigate from one screen to another and the back botton is in the navigation bar at the top left. The back botton for Android app is physical button in the bottom on the phone not in the application.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A well-designed app follows the guidelines proposed by each company (Apple or Google), seeks to provide the best user experience, and try&#xA;to avoid making things that do not exist on a platform.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;So, the implementation of each of the features / user stories could be different according to each platform.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You will have two Scrum process in parallel, and you will have all the user story duplicated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;According to the business rules, each app could have the same amount of Features / User Stories, or not.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Data:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For applications with persist data, it is possible to use a shared data repository or a webservice to share data models.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Best practices:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To ensure the behavior for each features between apps (despite of possible differences on how to perform an action depending on the device) you need to have a team of QA and QC, with very clear test cases and agnostic to the platform.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If after running (manually or automated) all test cases, the results are all valid, you will have 2 applications with the same functionalities and possible different implementations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8707" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T21:05:16.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11821" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-28T08:22:21.877" Score="0" ViewCount="1389" Body="&lt;p&gt;I face a recurrent issue where actual work  done for my projects by team constantly surpasses the planned work for the same. Primary reason being scope changes that leads to inclusion of new requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm able handle this in terms of execution but of course it eventually leads to delays in subsequent planned projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is how can I keep track of all this to monitor the risks and for presentation/evidence later in case there are questions from higher management. I'm looking for a representation/tool to record this data (planned v/s actual time) for myself and project stakeholders. Or may be if you could just share how do you keep track of this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm presently planning to use graphs (in Excel) comparing planned and actual work by manually taking data but it's a bit time consuming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: I'm using Microsoft Project for planning but I'm not an expert in it. The solution doesn't needs to be restricted to Microsoft Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10417" LastActivityDate="2017-04-19T23:28:29.130" Title="How to track impact on planning due to scope changes?" Tags="&lt;scope&gt;&lt;scope-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11821" CreationDate="2014-06-28T10:36:38.933" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't need any of that; close your spreadsheets.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need a change management process which include a governing body.  Scope changes via new requirements is the type of change that would go through this process.  If approved, you get a new plan.  You get to rebaseline.  You get more money.  You get more time.  What you have now is scope creep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, after you get a set of new requirements, you update the plan and set a new baseline.  Then, the so called delays you have are compared to the new baseline, not the old, and those delays go away, except for normal schedule variances caused by inherent risk in doing work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone can chime in about Agile methods, which may help you, too.  But you need a change management process either way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T10:36:38.933" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11823" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-29T09:42:54.163" Score="0" ViewCount="84" Body="&lt;p&gt;in the Project Management framework I am developing &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lowcoupling.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.lowcoupling.com&lt;/a&gt; I have defined a Domain Specific Language enabling a declarative description of schedules and plans. Like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;   Project project1 {&#xA;&#xA;        Activity activity1 {&#xA;        starts '31/08/2013' ;&#xA;        ends '20/9/2013';&#xA;        completeness 20 % ;&#xA;        }&#xA;&#xA;       /*&#xA;        * activity2 description&#xA;       */&#xA;       Activity activity2 {&#xA;        after project1.activity1 offset 1;&#xA;        duration 30;&#xA;        completeness 0%;&#xA;        dependsOn project1.activity1;&#xA;       }&#xA;  }&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see you can define the starting date of an activity, its end date or its duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gCayJ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively you can express you want an activity to start after (the end of) another with an offset (in days). As you can see the keyword to that is 'offset' and it can be either positive or negative (days before the end of the related activity).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: Do you think it would be more appropriate (and maybe elegant) to use the keywords '&lt;strong&gt;lead&lt;/strong&gt;' and '&lt;strong&gt;lag&lt;/strong&gt;' instead of '&lt;strong&gt;offset&lt;/strong&gt;'? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10416" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T03:37:23.080" Title="lead and lag times" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11821" CreationDate="2014-06-29T18:57:35.790" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This answere focuses on the question how to visualie actual vs. planned schedule:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MS Project allows to save a base line and let you draw the current schedule in compare to a saved base line. You will find a detailed description here:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project-help/create-or-update-a-baseline-or-an-interim-plan-HA010156784.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project-help/create-or-update-a-baseline-or-an-interim-plan-HA010156784.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as mentioned by others: implement a change management process...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T18:57:35.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11825" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-28T20:55:38.573" Score="2" ViewCount="329" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my current project I'm very confused about my role and who I should go through in regards to getting information about requirements/stories and who I ask questions from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 x Project manager (this is the main role I'm confused with).  Also acts as Scrum master&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 x Team lead developer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 x Developers (I'm one of these)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 x Tester&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NOTE&lt;/strong&gt;:  I don't think we have a project owner as such but if I had to guess I suppose it would be combination of our Project manager and the clients project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project steps to date:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project manager met with the client to identify initially project scope&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project manager and two developers met with the client to further discuss scope&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project manager worked with client to identify stories and prioritization&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project manager discussed stories with development and asked for estimation&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;The PM needed this as the client needed a quote for the work&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Development team estimated stories but also had questions which Project manager took back to client (This occurred a couple of times) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project manager and development lead met with client a few times to discuss work/questions as well as future work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rest of team members started development work.  Team lead was stuck on other projects &#xA;for first sprint only attending client facing meetings.&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team lead decided which stories each developer would do and assigned them at the first scrum.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After assignment of tasks developers started developing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Towards the end of the sprint the tester started working on Acceptance criteria (tester did not work with programmers at the beginning on creating these which I thought strange?).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On completion of a task the tester tests the story and assigns back to tester if not complete.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the part as well I'm getting confused with especially:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When a developer has a question about a user story they have gone back to the project manager who has then contacted the customer contact person directly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We did not complete anything for the customer after the first sprint, and we are yet to start the next one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my core questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There seems to be something wrong with our approach to agile here.  But as I understand agile is all about being agile and favoring people over processes, maybe we are just flavoring it to suite our clients needs?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Should developers contact the customer representative directly, or should we do it through our PM?  This I have found hard because of things like &quot;&lt;em&gt;questions lost in translation&quot;&lt;/em&gt; and &quot;&lt;em&gt;time delay in getting answers&lt;/em&gt;&quot;.  It's a good point that one of our developers English (not saying they are not a good developer) is not that good so maybe this is the reason we have gone down that route?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8841" OwnerDisplayName="dreza" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T19:34:29.590" Title="Project manager in scrum and communicating with the customer" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11825" CreationDate="2014-06-29T19:34:29.590" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, you are not using Scrum :)&#xA;Have a quick look on &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28software_development%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(software_development)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are missing a Product Owner, which would be the person you could ask with respect to requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I start with some interpretation of the rare facts.&#xA;Companies not running on Scrum sometimes perform something between Scrum and classical project management concepts. Leading to a project manager who tries to act as scrum master and usually as product owner. Within classical project management, the project manager should bring enhanced communication capabilities. Those would enable him to communicate with a customer from the companies point of view. In addition &quot;one face to the customer&quot; is a well known approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to the second questions is quite simple:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Follow your company / project rules. May be you have some kind of Communication Management Plan?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you don't agree with you company / project rules, talk to your PM / manager. Try to present an improved alternative.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T19:34:29.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11827" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-29T21:32:03.523" Score="0" ViewCount="183" Body="&lt;p&gt;I sometimes find myself wondering if some of the user stories we are elaborating should just be implicitly implied.  For example, if I had a user story of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As an administrator I wish to be able to edit a user so that I can&#xA;  change their details when required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a story implied by this such as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As an administrator I wish to be able to view all my users so that I&#xA;  can select one to edit&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to the fact that in general you can't edit a user unless you can first find them to edit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8841" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T22:23:23.973" Title="Are some stories implicit in agile elaboration" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11827" CreationDate="2014-06-30T01:22:02.210" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well,I think both  user stories are aiming for the same target (editing the user) but the acceptance tests for each one will  definitely differ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As in user story #1, you don't have to test the steps of selecting the user before editing and listing all the users functionalities; you'll just test the editing part while in user story #2 you'd need to test them to make sure that there is nothing wrong with the flow of the user story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I believe it depends on how you design the user stories general structure/theme (each user story explains only one functionality or multiple functionality?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3263" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T01:22:02.210" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11823" CreationDate="2014-06-30T03:37:23.080" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My two cents: It is clearest if you use &quot;Offset&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8707" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T03:37:23.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11827" CreationDate="2014-06-30T13:42:58.770" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think both your stories should be written better, in which case the problem vanishes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As an administrator I want to change details of users so that (missing this)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As an administrator I want to browse users so that (missing this)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all sentences in the &quot;As... I want... so that...&quot; format are good or acceptable stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the stories I'm suggesting pre-empts your problem. If you are building user editing that's the goal you need to achieve -- whether you need a specific set of steps or another is a matter of negotiation, not a concern of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need a user browsing feature, and you only know this if you know whether it has a value, then it should stand on its own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More in general, good stories are &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_%28mnemonic%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt; and yours aren't:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they aren't &lt;b&gt;I&lt;/b&gt;ndependent, as the first depends on the second&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they aren't very &lt;b&gt;N&lt;/b&gt;egotiable because they presume an implementation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they aren't &lt;b&gt;V&lt;/b&gt;aluable in the way they are specified&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6300" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T13:42:58.770" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8681" CreationDate="2014-06-30T20:22:45.210" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The method I use to move activities to progress to current date even they have not been started or partially started is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Select Project tab, &#xA;Change status date to current date or progress date, &#xA;select update project, select &quot;Reschedule uncompleted work to start after &quot; &amp;amp; check date, &#xA;select Entire project &amp;amp; OK.&#xA;This is similar to progressing in P6&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10429" LastEditorUserId="10429" LastEditDate="2014-06-30T20:45:02.457" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T20:45:02.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11827" CreationDate="2014-06-30T22:23:23.973" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As an administrator I wish to be able to edit a user so that I can change their details when required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your story is missing a meaningful value proposition. Specifically, your &quot;I want&quot; and &quot;so that&quot; section are largely duplicates of each other, and don't really explain the why of anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All stories contain organizational and team assumptions, are built on an organizational lexicon, and implicitly include the team's Definition of Done. These stories are placeholders for a larger conversation about a feature. However, getting the story &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; adds a lot of clarity and places some scope around that larger conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A Worked Example&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, let's imagine that your current application doesn't let anyone but the database administrator (DBA) change user data. Currently, the application administrator is getting lots of support calls that have to be tossed over the wall to the DBA, because there's no interface in the application for changing a user's mailing address.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your story now has some additional context that we might want to capture like so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As the Foo Application Administrator&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want to be able to change a user's mailing address&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that support tickets can be closed without escalating to the database administrator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this story, we now have a concrete problem to solve, and the value proposition of the feature is much more clearly defined. This is progress!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Re-Working the Example&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then again, perhaps the real problem is that customers have to call in for support in the first place. Maybe the &quot;feature&quot; above is exposing the real problem. For example, consider this restatement of the original problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a Foo Application &lt;em&gt;User&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want to be able to change &lt;em&gt;my own&lt;/em&gt; profile data&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I don't have to call technical support to update my account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that this is the root cause that was feeding the original story, this new story might provide even more bang for the buck. Remember, at the planning level it's important to look at the whole process, and not just the story in front of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if the examples above don't really apply to your specific example, hopefully they show how a more contextual and tightly-scoped story can be written. Agile practices rely on transparency and visibility, so it's very important to avoid &quot;invisible work&quot; while still ensuring that the stories are written at a level that communicates level-of-effort without dictating implementation details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T22:23:23.973" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4599" CreationDate="2014-07-01T08:30:56.273" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An effective planning guide should outline the questions that need to be answered at the outset in order to establish clear and measurable project goals and identify the budget and departmental resources required for its completion. So for effective planning we need planning tools. You may try something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.proofhub.com/?ref=nan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Proofhub&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8972" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T08:30:56.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11834" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11835" CreationDate="2014-07-01T14:32:27.253" Score="1" ViewCount="167" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm aware that this question has some similarities to one that has already been asked but my position is slightly different I feel and therefore hopefully justifies asking for some advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The organisation I've recently started to work for has something of a methodology for projects, PRINCE2 is perhaps the most comparable  methodology to liken it to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite there being a number of checkpoints throughout their methodology e.g. initial business case for a proof of concept followed by a review of tangible benefits and in theory either shelving it, re-working it or submission of a full business case from then. Set stage checkpoints where the project should be reviewed and approval to proceed or close is sought and tolerances on set metrics to name a few. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I manage the development team and a large part of my daily role is to provide a bridge between the development team and non-technical project managers who are in charge of the wider project deliverable's outside of the code we develop or systems we are looking to procure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so now onto my problem, there have been multiple occasions now where we have communicated quite clearly that the proposal is either not feasible or will not deliver the anticipated benefits at various stages throughout the project such as those I mentioned earlier. Unfortunately these don't seem to be making much of an impact as in all instances they have persisted with the project. Obviously this has a host of implications for the organisation, not least in terms of the money spent to deliver a poor quality solution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From an entirely self-serving perspective I'm concerned about the negative association between my team and the wider organisation, recent releases of procured software that we've been involved in (despite our recommendations that it not be purchased or that the project be reviewed at various stages) have not been well received by the wider organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was initially concerned that perhaps the reporting lines (me communicating with the appointed project manager) was the issue i.e. our reports not being heard by the decision makers. To address this I now attend all the individual project boards in a Supplier capacity and yet again the recommendations and our feasibility studies are swept aside with barely any consideration given. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any advice on how to get an organisation to adhere to it's own prescribed methodology? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9155" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T13:19:56.270" Title="Non-viability of a project" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11834" CreationDate="2014-07-01T16:19:27.657" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you are doing everything you are supposed to do.  Not seeing your reports and recommendations, perhaps the language and presentation you are using need to be more compelling.  Or, have you established the credibility and trust, yet, that would make your report more compelling.  Perhaps try another messenger?  Other than that, your scope ends at the recommendation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Organizations, project sponsors, CEOs, and ordinary people who are hiring a contractor for house work, have the right to continue down a path that is seemingly absurd.  Your role, as the advisor, is to present your findings, banged up against their established criteria, and provide a recommendation from several alternatives, which you did or are doing.  Notwithstanding the established criteria, they--the sponsors, CEOs, etc.--are within their right to deviate from that and make another subjective assessment against whatever criteria are in their heads and choose to continue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your risk that it will be your team and you who get scapegoated and have reputation decay, yes, that is your risk.  Politics.  Someone will get blamed.  Document well, but not in a CYA_I'm_not_part_of_this_team way.  Be political, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T16:19:27.657" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11834" CreationDate="2014-07-01T18:54:15.740" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Identify Motivations and Use Influence&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any advice on how to get an organisation to adhere to it's own prescribed methodology?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An organization is made up of people. Questions of the form &quot;How can I make X do Y?&quot; are invariably answerable in just a few simple ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can't actually &lt;em&gt;make&lt;/em&gt; anyone do anything.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can engage someone's enlightened self-interest through threat or inducement in order to get them to behave in desirable ways.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, you will need to motivate your steering committees through &lt;em&gt;influence&lt;/em&gt; if you can find a better motivator than whatever is behind their existing decisions. There &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; always something behind those decisions&amp;mdash;the trick is figuring out the intrinsic motivator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Your Role Is Not &quot;Scapegoat&quot; or &quot;Nanny&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a department manager, your role is to manage your team through the organizational authority delegated to you. Within the framework you describe, you have a professional responsibility to raise valid personnel and business concerns, but the success or failure of a project is the responsibility of your steering committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Line managers and project managers don't usually set strategic objectives. That is senior management's collective responsibility. If you've identified legitimate project risks, documented them, and presented them to higher management, you've done all that can be expected. The decision, and the consequences, belong to the decision-makers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Document the risks that you're identifying, and keep a paper trail of your reports to senior management. That's really all you can do to &quot;CYA.&quot; If you feel like that's not enough, then you're likely in a toxic organization and might need to explore other opportunities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T18:54:15.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11803" CreationDate="2014-07-02T05:59:11.943" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order of your questions..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do you keep the iOS and Android developers on the same page?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are building different clients for the same product. I would treat this a single project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is a scenario where you have to have a bit of union &amp;amp; separation at the same time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Both iOS &amp;amp; Android Developers should belong to one scrum team ( Other wise communication gaps are inevitable , they will attend the same scrum ceremonies making communication effective &amp;amp; seamless)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This way you will be able to keep both iOS &amp;amp; Android teams on the same page on product vision, expectations on timeline, stakeholder concerns &amp;amp; general communications&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What other practices help you ensure that a feature / user story is being implemented the same way on both apps? What are standard practices?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what I have done..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Development/ QA / Design tasks are separate as these tasks need to be separately executed for each platform, so yes you will have one product backlog but duplicate tasks for each platform&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Considering implementation of feature A, there will be a post it for Android and another post it for iOS with most probably different estimates &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In your case different developers will commit to implementation if feature A in iOS and Android so it makes more sense to have different tasks &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You could also use one burn down chart (Cause as far as product owners are concerned in a given iteration selected backlog items should be released for both iOS and Android &lt;strong&gt;together&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So like I pointed above, for all communications related to features, requirements,sprint planing, UI design team members working on both platforms need to come together, as they demand a certain amount of synchronization&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During implementation,QA &amp;amp; Release team members working on each platform will have platform specific tasks &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10437" LastEditorUserId="10437" LastEditDate="2014-07-03T10:08:30.387" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T10:08:30.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11834" CreationDate="2014-07-02T05:59:42.017" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you are doing what ever you can. But I think following points might answer your dilema.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The recommendations you gave are probably not the only criteria for selecting a software of vendor for that matter. There are other implications like service record, cost, relationship etc. which you are not aware of&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Probably you dont see a bigger picture and hence are worried. May be the same vendor might be giving a better deal in other department which might offset the negatives which you pointed out in your recommendations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;People making decisions have already made up the mind and asked for your recommendation just to complete the formality. In this case you just need to shut up and make sure you have documented your recommendations in clearest way possible.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6209" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T05:59:42.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="947" CreationDate="2014-07-02T06:05:35.070" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;you can say that let us move ahead with what ever is coded and we can take up additional requirements/improvements later as part of enhancement project or maintenance work. This will ensure that you deliver what has been agreed in the original requirement specs. this also means that you will get paid for the maintenance work which will follow.&#xA;Good luck with such customers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6209" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T06:05:35.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11352" CreationDate="2014-07-02T09:18:12.733" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you think that is a conflict of interest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on my experience I personally feel this is a conflict of Interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to what is mentioned by &lt;strong&gt;CodeGnome&lt;/strong&gt; , there are high priority items for a developer for example, high severity defects, a build break.. As a developer you should be able to prioritize these &amp;amp; might require addressing them ASAP&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a scrum master you have to give priority to removing the biggest blockers for team in addition to other role related duties&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At one point your high priority developer duties &amp;amp; high priority scrum master duties will complete for your time. As a result the quality of output on both roles will suffer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10437" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T09:18:12.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11803" CreationDate="2014-07-02T11:45:59.387" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think multiple people have said that you need to treat it as two separate projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you need to treat it as a program - a suite of projects managed with similar methodology and with a coherent aim in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you keep the two projects aligned?  Align the projects. Ensure that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The scope statements match&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The KPI match  - how you measure performance and effectiveness has to match&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risks match (or at least every risk is examined to see if it has implications for the other project).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change control/Change management are aligned.  Any change to either project should be examined to see if it has implications for the other project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Final Operational Acceptance testing matches.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where the two don't match, make sure there is a reason why.  If &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; do your part in setting this up, you'll also clearly identify what part of the work is the core of your project, and what parts are platform specific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is something you're going to do regularly, it may be useful to treat this as three projects&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A project to produce a new product - emphasis on architecture, functionality, etc.  Once the architecture and functionality are determined, all the work is outsourced to one of the other two teams, who are treated as subcontractors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A project to implement the product on Android. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A project to implement the product on Apple.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although there is much more overhead in setting it up that way, I think it is possible that in the long run, everyone on the team will understand what they're doing.  &quot;I'm developing the architecture for product X&quot;.  &quot;I'm implementing the product X User Interface on Apple.&quot; etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T11:45:59.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11843" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-02T13:03:53.253" Score="3" ViewCount="209" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's assume that I have a kanban board that has a &quot;Test&quot; column with a WIP limit of x. In the general case, I should not add a card to this column until there is a free space -- at least one card has moved to &quot;Done&quot;.  Instead, I should give as much help to whomever so that the card currently there can be progressed so they move onwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, in our case, we have to wait for hardware so no matter how many bodies, as long as the hardware is not ready, we cannot progress this. The way we deal with this is to have a limitless WIP swim lane that hold such stalled cards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this reasonable?  Is there a better way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6335" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-01-16T08:53:15.593" LastActivityDate="2019-01-16T08:53:15.593" Title="When (if at all) is it okay to break the WIP limit?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;work-in-progress&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11845" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11847" CreationDate="2014-07-02T17:15:05.707" Score="4" ViewCount="962" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the value of experience in a role of a &lt;strong&gt;Project Manager&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;strong&gt;Technical Manager&lt;/strong&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problems I am facing is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;During assigning tasks I do not know about dependencies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have to rely on what my developer says.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I do not know how to set a project time limit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I do not have skilled team members.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Higher management forces us not to work but only manage. Will this job fit us as 1 year experienced Post Graduate Computer Guy? I need some advice from people who has experience in this field. They can guide me in proper career building.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a person is having graduate degree and if a person have a post graduate degree, does it mean to make a person manager even though he/she does not have experience in project execution? Is management dependent on experience? Is management dependent on degree? Should I consider &quot;A good coach may not be a good player&quot; or should I first grow my technical skills?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8653" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-01-05T11:38:54.297" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T11:38:54.297" Title="Can an inexperienced person be a project manager?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;learning&gt;&lt;technical-leader&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11845" CreationDate="2014-07-02T18:21:03.160" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Experience is necessary for capability and competency growth; however, the weight we tend to put on experience, I believe, is grossly overrated.  The velocity and degree of capability and competency growth over a period of time practicing an activity can range from decay to something very extreme over a short period of time.  So, in the aggregate, when you are looking at a large population of practitioners who boast some years of experiencing doing something, you will have quite a range of performers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only that, but also there is quite a bit of transferability of skills and knowledge from other activities that will help quite nicely in a new-to-you activity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Predicting performance is very difficult; most of the indicators we commonly use have very little predictive validity, including experience.  So, to answer your base question, it is very possible for an inexperienced person to be a manager...and a good one, too.  Your odds might go up a bit with someone with experience, but not much.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T18:21:03.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11845" CreationDate="2014-07-02T19:16:57.253" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I completely second David (as usual). &lt;strong&gt;Having experience MAY increase the likeliness of a professional being a good manager, but it's not mandatory&lt;/strong&gt;. I believe this &quot;increase&quot; might come pretty much from the past experiences this professional might have been through in the past. Also, it seems you're over evaluating the study degrees... they give you theoretical knowledge, but the experience you'll only pick in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, to reinforce my point of view, let's think from the opposite perspective: if experience means good management, then all managers with years of experience would be good managers. And we know that's not true at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having that said, &lt;strong&gt;you started quite well: You're looking for support&lt;/strong&gt;. You know your weakness, and you want to overcome this. That's the first (and maybe, one of the most important!!) steps to become a good manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, what would be advisable in such situation is to establish as clear as possible what's expected to be delivered and when it's expected to be delivered. The management work is to track progress and make sure the communication is flowing. You act as a gateway between the stakeholders and the development team. If the expectations are too high, you must state this now, adding on top of it that the level of uncertainty due to all variables is quite high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T19:16:57.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11845" CreationDate="2014-07-02T22:45:23.777" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you be a good Project Manager without experience?  Certainly.  It has been done before, and it will be done again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/AboutMe.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Joel Spolsky&lt;/a&gt;, who founded &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt;, who wrote &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Joel on Software&lt;/a&gt;, and who founded &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fogcreek.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fog Creek Software&lt;/a&gt;.  In his words, &lt;code&gt;&quot;I started my career at Microsoft, a little software company outside of Seattle, where I was a program manager on the Excel team.&quot;&lt;/code&gt;  He must have done a good job because the product he helped develop (Visual Basic for Apps) is something I continue to use on a daily basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel like you're deficient in a skill, then &lt;strong&gt;learn the skill.&lt;/strong&gt;  If you are managing people, read books, attend classes, and work at it until you're good at managing people.  If you need to know a specific framework or API, then read the documentation, build projects, and learn it.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/06/16.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here's an awesome story&lt;/a&gt; about how Mr. Spolsky did just that, and rocked his employee review with Bill Gates because of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not saying it will be easy.  I'm just saying it's possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10449" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T22:45:23.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4599" CreationDate="2014-07-03T05:29:44.393" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No it is not necessary. Some teams may find it easier to use a tool than to draw on a whiteboard though, because they are used to using technology. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4481" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T05:29:44.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11853" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-03T10:00:52.767" Score="9" ViewCount="848" Body="&lt;p&gt;Could anybody share whether &lt;a href=&quot;http://scaledagileframework.com/&quot;&gt;SAFe&lt;/a&gt; has helped practically scale agile development in bigger organizations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any other similar methodology or best practices document that could help with agile in bigger organization - projects with 100+ members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1726" LastActivityDate="2019-02-01T14:19:06.857" Title="Does Scaled Agile Framework really help to scale agile in bigger organizations?" Tags="&lt;safe&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11754" CreationDate="2014-07-03T10:40:06.007" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you have mentioned &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While they don't need this information to do their our tasks, the opacity is contributing to resentment and frustration&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If this communication is not important for their daily tasks, a suitable interval needs to be identified.If not teams will be overwhelmed &amp;amp; their productivity will be impacted&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product Demo's / 'Tech' talk&lt;/strong&gt; is probably a good idea ( In my current organization we do this &lt;strong&gt;weekly&lt;/strong&gt; but essentially it will depend on how frequent different teams have &lt;strong&gt;success stories/ lessons learnt&lt;/strong&gt; to share). This will also create a platform to increase visibility for teams and will also create a seamless knowledge sharing culture&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Enterprise Social Network :)&lt;/strong&gt; - My current organization has recently adopted an enterprise social networking platform and many teams (including mine) use it effectively for collaboration. This also improves visibility to teams within the organization and I think this motivates teams to use the platform more..&#xA;You should be able to find services which allow free accounts for a small team. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hoe this helps &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10437" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T10:40:06.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11855" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-03T12:23:57.707" Score="1" ViewCount="165" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are using Earned Value, you can create an S Curve that shows your planned value across time.  As you add actuals and take earnings, you can show the AC curve and EV curve and compare it visually with the PV curve, as well as calculate your indices.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are not doing Earned Value, is there way to create similar curves using Work values instead in MS Project?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project is an IV&amp;amp;V type effort where the vendor is contracted firm fixed price.  As such, true dollar values will not be known to the IV&amp;amp;V vendor.  Only schedule data is visible.  The schedule is baselined and they are capturing work percent complete as their method and finish variance is known.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for the help.  Julie??&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T00:08:20.557" Title="S Curves, Comparing where you should be and where you are" Tags="&lt;evm&gt;&lt;schedule&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11843" CreationDate="2014-07-03T13:35:30.430" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this reasonable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my personal experience the answer to that is no. WIP limits exist for a number of very good reasons, one of which is to identify bottlenecks such as that which you have described. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the hardware is necessary for the HW testing to be completed then by creating a swimlane with limitless WIP you're establishing something of a false economy. It may look as though things in preceding columns are progressing in the short term but once the hardware comes in, those stalled cards will need to be completed and the progress you've established is going to suffer, as you pull all available resources to complete the subsequent columns, or your allocated resources for the later columns will be overwhelmed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The identification of bottlenecks such as this is not intended to be a paper exercise only, you have the evidence of the bottleneck and now action should be taken (by whomever has the ability e.g. management) to resolve it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is a one-off project then the method you've described is as good as any I can think of to address the issue, just be sure that you're forward planning how you're going to deal with the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9155" LastEditorUserId="9155" LastEditDate="2014-07-03T14:59:23.083" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T14:59:23.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11857" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11860" CreationDate="2014-07-03T13:51:34.657" Score="0" ViewCount="25813" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am using MS-Project 2010 and have noticed something peculiar in how &quot;end-date&quot; of the task is dislayed. I obeserve the following behavior:&#xA; 1. I set the task to start on Monday.&#xA; 2. I set the duration for 5 days.&#xA;Strictly speaking my task should finish at the end of the working day on Friday, yet MS Project shows the completion date as the following Monday. Linking next task to this one, sets the start date correctly to the following Monday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advise, on how to interpret this behavior and whether it is possible to show the completion of the task as Friday in my example?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks,&#xA;Denis&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10452" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T18:53:45.290" LastActivityDate="2019-10-11T04:14:21.950" Title="MS-Project 2010: Task end-date seems to be calcuated incorrectly" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11858" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11863" CreationDate="2014-07-03T14:01:46.290" Score="2" ViewCount="2292" Body="&lt;p&gt;As we all know Scrum defines 3 roles Product Owner, Scrum Master and the Team.&#xA;Kanban chart is used to track progress, Velocity is used to measure SPI, Epic, Story and tasks are actually used to manage WBS.&#xA;I am wondering what different things should a Project Management Officer focus on in this set-up, other than providing already known metrics as reports?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7883" LastEditorUserId="22629" LastEditDate="2016-05-01T11:40:27.387" LastActivityDate="2016-05-01T11:40:27.387" Title="What should be the PMO's role in a Scrum Environment?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;pmo&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11853" CreationDate="2014-07-03T14:07:24.377" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;SAFe is the most popular scaling framework by far and probably the one I would consider investigating further. We have used it at a handful of clients and all have been happy with the results.  It really helps with alignment of various teams so they can work together better and deliver consistently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is good for multiple teams working on the same Program, or if you have lots of competing business requirements for the same development team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The website has a ton of free resources.  I'd also be happy to talk off-line about my experiences in more detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10453" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T14:07:24.377" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11857" CreationDate="2014-07-03T14:16:24.583" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple of things to check:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As David notes, change your date format to show date/time.  &lt;strong&gt;File &gt; Options, General&lt;/strong&gt; under &lt;strong&gt;Project View&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may have a mis-match between the number of working hours in your calendar and the definition of &quot;day&quot;.  Are you working with a calendar that has less than 8 working hours per day?  If so, you need to modify the Calendar options to match.  For example - if you have altered your calendar to a 7.5 hour day - the calendar options need to match.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you enter &quot;5 days&quot; Project interprets that as 40 working hours.  If you calendar only allows 7.5 working hours per day - it will run in to Monday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T14:16:24.583" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11861" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11866" CreationDate="2014-07-03T19:14:57.527" Score="0" ViewCount="98" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a Java/Web team with several Java developers and a web designer.   The &quot;developers&quot; handle everything from the database layer up to the sending of pages to the browser (using JSP pages).   The &quot;designer&quot; is responsible for image creation, skinning the pages using CSS and tweaking the JSP pages to make them look &quot;right&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately this division of responsibility leaves a gap between the &quot;developers&quot; and the &quot;designer.&quot;    For example, Javascript tasks tend to get kicked back and forth.   The developers say that it's a browser thing, therefore it should be the designer's job, and the designer counters that it's programming, therefore it's the developer's job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another problem is source control - our designer, after several years, still refuses to do merges in Git.   He typically will put his code in a feature branch and send an email to the development team saying &quot;branch so-and-so is ready to merge.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This problem could probably be solved with some simple guidelines like &quot;All team members should perform their own source control maintenance&quot; or similar general rules.   But we don't have any. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the general rules that could be applied in this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10455" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T00:57:46.080" Title="How much Java should a Web Design team member know?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-07-07T01:22:11.977" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11862" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-03T19:21:04.117" Score="-6" ViewCount="124" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is physical contact making a difference in efficiency, motivation and profitability?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10273" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T06:39:47.407" Title="Are you more efficient leading you project virtually or in person?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;leadership&gt;&lt;feedback&gt;&lt;project-leader&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-07-07T01:21:54.677" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11858" CreationDate="2014-07-03T19:46:52.900" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;PMO's (Project Management Officer) role in a Scrum Environment&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project Management Officer can focus on the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In a large organization the Scrum Master will inevitably run up against organizational impediments. The PMO can be the escalation point for such issues and help overcome such impediments, if the Scrum Master has difficulty dealing with them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Run scrum-of-scrum meetings with the Scrum Masters and Product Owners of multiple teams and resolve resource contention and priority issues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Designate back-ups or step-in directly to cover for Scrum Masters who are on vacation or training.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some stakeholders are difficult to pin down and don't take the time to see the end-of-sprint demos and provide timely feedback. PMOs may have to step-in to make this happen so that problems are not surfaced late in the cycle.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In general, be a champion/evangelist for Scrum/Agile process with senior management.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T19:46:52.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11862" CreationDate="2014-07-03T20:26:52.280" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;The gold standard is &quot;in person&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a good depiction of the effectiveness of different modes of communication from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alistair_Cockburn&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Alistair Cockburn&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lKzqA.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the twelve principles behind the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to&#xA;  and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have managed teams that are entirely in one physical location as well as virtual teams including, in some cases, team members not in the same time zone. In each instance my effort was always trying to keep the communication channel as warm as possible with text chat, video conferencing and other such means. We can try to approach &quot;in person&quot;, but not be able to match it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With offshore teams, if I could get some of the team members to travel and meet other team members in person, even if infrequently, it made a huge difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, we may have to settle for virtual teams for a variety of practical reasons. We then strive to mitigate the shortcomings of virtual teams by using technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2014-07-17T06:39:47.407" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T06:39:47.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11855" CreationDate="2014-07-04T00:08:20.557" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sorry for the delay - I usually only follow questions tagged with MS Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have access to actual work values and baseline work?  A suggestion is to assign all resources at $1 per hour.  Using those values, you can still get somewhat meaningful EV measures as 1 hour work = $1. (or whatever currency).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T00:08:20.557" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11861" CreationDate="2014-07-04T00:33:58.117" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ideally the front-end developer/designer job is to create visual design of the website, slice it and develope the javascript, jquery,html and CSS then s/he's done; as there is no way s/he'd be familiar with all the programming language out there to be able to integrate the output into the target website.Unless s/he volunteered to learn it of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the developer should integrate the output because s/he's more aware of the used language which is JSP in this case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What about pair-programming&lt;/strong&gt;? I think if you tried to have the developer and the designer work together on one or two screen(s),then they'll share the knowledge they have and avoid future conflicts because they'd understand each other work better then hopefully the gap will shrink somehow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the git issue, most of the designers I worked with have the same issue. Git is not a very easy tool for them to use, usually we keep searching for plugins or scripts to make the process of committing their work easier for them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you talk with your team and understand why the tool is bugging the designer and try to figure a way to solve it. If there is no solution then you should start define some guideline/policies and all the team should adhere to it equally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3263" LastEditorUserId="3263" LastEditDate="2014-07-04T00:57:46.080" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T00:57:46.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11868" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11943" CreationDate="2014-07-04T21:25:14.487" Score="0" ViewCount="174" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am acting as Project Support to a large multinational that is keen to embrace &lt;em&gt;Agile&lt;/em&gt; - although it is really just Scrum that they are referring to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ERP migration is traditional Waterfall but they want Agile used, probably for the refactoring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you recommend any case studies, whiter papers or best practice for Agile within Waterfall?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T19:46:32.490" Title="Is there guidance for Agile Refactoring within a large Waterfall Project?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;prince2&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6174" CreationDate="2014-07-04T23:37:33.397" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a previous responder has said, your focus should be on capacity. If you haven't read &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/business/operations/2012/06/the_goal_eli_goldratt_s_gripping_thriller_about_operations_theory_.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Goal&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Eliyahu Goldratt, you really ought to. In the book, we learn about the Theory of Constraints, which posits that an entire production chain can only move as quickly as the slowest element of the chain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book uses a factory as a framework for the Theory of Constraints, but service organizations can learn equally well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's important we do is measure capacity by person. Can this person design 10 graphics in a day or can they write three blog posts in a week? From there, you can identify bottlenecks and increase capacity by either educating your employees, creating process efficiencies, or hiring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Measuring throughput can be difficult, but organization-level task management software like Asana or Basecamp allow you to see what individual capacity is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10463" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T23:37:33.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11858" CreationDate="2014-07-06T10:01:28.453" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;None. Scrum has no role for project managers or a PMO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7835" LastActivityDate="2014-07-06T10:01:28.453" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11875" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-07T07:44:14.717" Score="4" ViewCount="462" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a small company, with projects requiring 1 to ~5 coworkers at a time, that are nearly never in our own offices. In short, we are highly distributed and have very rare chances to spread knowledge internally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now we want to change that and achieve some progress in knowledge management, firstly by using our centralised wiki, using internal articles, reports and themed topics related to the fundamentals of our work, that should be written and reviewed by our coworkers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The wiki has been there for a long time already. It does not look very nice and usabilty could be far better, but it is usable. As it was an expensive piece of software there is currently no chance to replace it with another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point of this question is, how can we motivate our coworkers to contribute to the wiki? What kind of incentives (other than money) can be practical? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10459" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2014-07-07T15:46:41.843" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T08:23:21.590" Title="How to encourage coworkers to engage in knowlege-transfer?" Tags="&lt;knowledge-management&gt;&lt;leadership&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11876" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11928" CreationDate="2014-07-07T11:32:35.610" Score="10" ViewCount="6146" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently joined a fantastic company which prides itself on its Agile philosophy and work ethic. I am a VERY junior Project Manager, and the more I learn about Scrum and Agile, the more I want to specialise in this space. However, I see two potential problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am not technical (Ie: I cannot code) and am concerned this will interfere with my efficiency when liaising with team members&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am a junior and so acting as a team mentor/servant leader sounds fantastic in theory, but I know how I would perceive such a person were roles reversed, and so I really don't want to tread on anyone's toes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have trained as a counselor and psychologist, and so my real passion is people and bringing people together. What I love about the Scrum master role is that it is that of an enabler, empowering people in the work place. The company took me on as they saw potential and wanted to train me in this arena. However, I am concerned that without a technical background coupled with being so junior, I might not be effective in this particular role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it feasible or even possible to enter the IT industry in a Scrum Master role? If so, does anyone have any recommendations, or lessons learnt from being in a similar position once upon a time? Any practical tips would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10289" LastEditorUserId="10289" LastEditDate="2014-07-07T11:56:47.713" LastActivityDate="2017-08-18T18:25:29.147" Title="Advice for a Non-Technical Newbie Scrum Master" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11875" CreationDate="2014-07-07T12:38:07.340" Score="4" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can hold an online knowledge sharing session,in each session a team member will present a topic in his/her areas of expertise and then s/he uploads it to the wiki then the other team members share their feedback on the wiki page.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the time difference will make it hard to meet online then, the team can agree on reading an article or watch a video on a specific topic (e.g.flat design), then share their thoughts in the same post (shouldn't be long)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At first, you may want to make knowledge sharing time from the official working hours to emphasis the importance of it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Generally they need to see the value of their contribution to be excited about the idea of knowledge sharing, for example if a team member posted an article it would be great to hold a meeting with the team,even for 30 mins to give their feedback and share their thoughts :) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the team members feel that they have an audience that is looking forward for what they'll share, they will be more interested in researching and sharing their knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3263" LastEditorUserId="3263" LastEditDate="2014-07-07T14:01:45.050" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T14:01:45.050" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11878" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11882" CreationDate="2014-07-07T12:44:26.797" Score="6" ViewCount="1192" Body="&lt;p&gt;Noob PM here - I have a project with 3 developers (one of whom is tech lead), a BA, and a tester. The tech lead (hereafter referred to as TL) is responsible (on the RACI) for the technical output of the team, i.e actually delivering the software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL would like to deliver the project using a kanban-like methodology, and has asked the BA to deliver high level epics which they have then together broken into stories. This was all pre-project. Now the project has kicked off, TL has organised planning meetings which everyone is attending, with the view of breaking down the stories into tasks and estimating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, at first planning meeting another of the developers who had worked closely with the business area in question to produce a very basic proof of concept as part of our requirements gathering, rejected the approach out of hand, saying that there was no point in going back to basic user stories when we already understood most of the process and what needed to be delivered, and refused to take part in the task break-down and estimation activities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL has recently come to me and stated that they can no longer be responsible for the output of said team member. I'm at the point where I don't care what methodology they use but we need to get started and I am unsure how to intervene (or if I even should) to best continue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there another methodology I can suggest which will mollify the team member who doesn't want to estimate tasks, and also give us the ability to be agile and transparent in our delivery?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would it be feasible to allow said developer to continue along their line of development in parallel to the rest of the team and somehow allow the two resulting solution-strands to merge at some point?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What would any of you do in my place?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for your advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10480" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T16:42:29.977" Title="Having problems within development team re approach" Tags="&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;conflicts&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11878" CreationDate="2014-07-07T13:13:32.337" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a tricky one, because of the complex management structure you're stuck with, and it doesn't help that the TL and the developer are being rather immature about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would generally say to kick this one over to the manager of the developer who's being a problem, because from what I see, he's refusing to play nice with the team and that's a performance problem.  The biggest potential problem with that is that his manager will agree with him, and the TL's manager will agree with the TL, and you get stuck with different teams having some stupid political battle over methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also try having a one on one conversation with the problem developer and see what his objection is, explain the reasoning behind the agile/kanban approach and see if you can address his reservations.  From my own experience introducing agile to developers who are new to it, they often feel like there's unnecessary overhead and they would be better off spending that planning time writing code (you know, &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; work).  If you're not able to resolve the issue one on one, then try to get all three developers in a room to figure out the best approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a guiding principle, I would lean towards supporting the TL (even with his asinine insistence that he isn't responsible for his team anymore), because his role is to be responsible for the methodology (making an assumption here; is it correct?) and because you're depending on him to make this project successful.  I would not, except as an absolute last resort, dictate an approach.  The most likely outcome of that is three angry developers who don't want to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Final note: so much of the approach to this problem depends on the personalities involved.  Use the PM who's ultimately responsible for the project as a resource if you don't know the people well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1896" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T13:13:32.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11878" CreationDate="2014-07-07T13:16:31.503" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wow. Tough break!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, do you have a PID that outlines the approach to project delivery, including the development model to be used to deliver the project. I'm assuming not, which is a shame since that could be waved as the agreed approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, my advice is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Trying to find a new methodology or approach that would mollify the disruptive team member would be a mistake. You are not in charge of deciding the development methodology (are you?)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It would likely be catastrophic to try and allow a sub-team of 1 within the wider team to plough their own path&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I assume that the Tech Lead gets to decide on the development approach and that is certainly what has happened here. In that case it is not your responsibility to fix- The Tech Lead is (or should be) accountable and responsible for the technical output and if one of the technical team members is jeopardising their delivery they need to solve that problem. As PM you should take note of the risk and log it in your risk log (and make it  visible in the project board meetings), you should also work closely with the Tech Lead to understand the risks, issue and constraints around this, and help to facilitate where possible/appropriate- but the Tech Lead needs to resolve or escalate to their technical management.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time you should escalate to the Senior PM to whom you are reporting- This is a sensitive and tricky issue and leaving an inexperienced PM to try and resolve it is asking for trouble. It is a characteristic of inexperienced PMs that they try to solve all problems and keep everyone happy, believing that any failure that results in project problems are, by definition, their problems to solve. This is not the case. Your job is (amongst other things) to track progress against the plan and ensure that risks and issues are tracked and mitigated. If the developers came up against a thorny technical blocker they would not turn to the PM to solve the problem, and nor should anyone turn to you to solve this problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you record and manage the risks transparently and without emotion. Stick to the facts. Similarly record and manage all issues in the same way. However you do have to be aware of sensibilities, you cannot, for example just cite the problem person as the issue in your logs! Let the people best placed to resolve the issue, resolve the issue- they are the Tech Lead and the personnel respective managers. If everyone signed up to an approach, or even if they didn't but the TL decided it and that is usual behaviour for your company, then the technical teams should resolve it and your job is to call out the risks and issues and any delays and costs caused by the problem(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T13:16:31.503" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11878" CreationDate="2014-07-07T13:29:55.090" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You cannot refuse to do work.  You can offer up an objection, you can propose a few other alternatives and state your case, but you must always support the decision and the team and continue.  As a PM, you cannot allow a team member to &quot;refuse&quot; to do work.  The only time refusal is remotely acceptable is when something catastrophic is predicted: safety, life threatening.  If you feed into this by trying to &quot;negotiate&quot; with this developer, you are reinforcing the act of refusal, which means you can expect it to occur again down the line.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remove the developer.  Walk him/her out the door.  Document your risk, do the best you can while you are searching for a replacement.  Doing anything else weakens your position as a leader and pretty much stomps on your technical lead.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, the technical lead saying he can no longer be accountable for....  You need to set him straight on that, too.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  I would concur that, as much as possible, conflict should be resolved where it is occurring, in this case with the technical folks.  However, your TL is escalating, using words like I am no longer accountable and this developer is refusing....  At the point of escalation, the TL is asking for your help, which means it is time to step in.  And if &quot;refusing&quot; is accurate, then time to cut bait.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2014-07-07T16:42:29.977" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T16:42:29.977" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11878" CreationDate="2014-07-07T14:15:52.693" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;David is absolutely right, there are very few instances whereby refusal to work can be considered acceptable, generally the accepted norms would be if to continue would compromise yourself and/or the organisation legally or as David has already said if to continue would constitute recklessness and present a risk to life etc. The developer’s behavior is unprofessional at best and sufficient to show them the door at worst. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I did have some thoughts whilst reading your post which may be worth considering;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You’ve mentioned that the Technical Lead wants to deliver the project using an agile/kanban-like methodology. Is it safe to assume that this is a deviation from the standard norm within the organisation? If so, and judging from the comments made by the ‘problem developer’ regarding there being no point going back to user stories etc. It may be a case of not understanding the purpose and other benefits to be gained through adopting the proposed methodology even if it does mean covering some ground that (s)he feels has already been covered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been in similar situations as a developer myself whereby someone would complete a training course, read a book, attend a seminar etc. and come back full of ideas on how they were going to completely revolutionize the way we worked and delivered projects. The problem is not the methodology, in many instances the new ways of working  were an improvement, most emerging methodology’s are improvements on previous ones so it stands to reason that they deliver benefits. The problem was that not everybody had attended that course/seminar or read that book in addition to the normal human factors associated with change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Technical Lead has the right to determine the approach used and is adopting a methodology that’s unfamiliar to others then I’d suggest that the stage be set through an ‘introduction to …’ session (it needn’t be hours long) whereby the principles are established, the framework to be used is clearly outlined, the win-win scenarios to bring everyone on board are set out and lastly that it is clear that this is not ‘optional’. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In direct response to the points you have raised however;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1)  Attempting to mollify an individual will only undermine your authority and credibility in the long term. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2)  In addition to the above allowing for 2 separate work streams to be undertaken where there is no common understanding or agreement i.e. in the form of user stories and then hoping that these will somehow merge at a later date without problem is in my view a mistake and not one I would be willing to risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3)  If I were in your position I would take the action expected of me within the remit of my role. In the scenario you’ve described that would be to document the risk, thoroughly and with the input of the technical lead. Escalate the issue to your accountable Project Manager so that this doesn’t come as a surprise to them and to ensure that this is visible to the project board and ensure that the Technical Lead is aware that his current stance is also unacceptable. If he feels that he is unable to manage the output of the assigned development resources then he needs to escalate this via his normal channels. Denial of responsibility does not constitute removal of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9155" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T14:15:52.693" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11883" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11912" CreationDate="2014-07-07T17:14:28.623" Score="7" ViewCount="1576" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a small- to mid-size company trying to implement scrum, it may very well happen that the hierarchical superior of the Team members becomes the Scrum Master (short of being able to fund a full-time Scrum Master position). For example, it could be the CTO in a software start-up company with, say, seven employed developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By implementing scrum, the CTO would of course agree to &quot;lose&quot; the authority on the team organisation, task allocation, etc. as it should be. Rather, my question is whether or not the &quot;natural&quot; authority that the Scrum Master has over the Team members (e.g. due to him being CTO) would be an impediment for the process. What are the issues with such a situation? Is it common? Are there any measures that can be used to alleviate the disadvantages?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10465" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-01-13T20:19:36.593" LastActivityDate="2017-01-13T20:19:36.593" Title="What are the disadvantages of the Scrum Master being the hierarchical superior in the company?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11876" CreationDate="2014-07-07T17:25:10.390" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technical skills are not absolutely necessary. You could argue both ways, in fact:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;By lacking technical skills, you are freed from trying to analyze the technical issue and trying to deliver a technical solution, while helping the team identify the collaboration and communication issues and address non-technical obstacles. With your background in psychology you would be able to ask direct, thought-provoking questions to the team members which would lead to a resolution of the obstacles or would help you escalate to the right people.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Having technical skills would allow you to discern between simple obstacles caused by small  issues or lack of knowledge, vs. much larger issues caused by deep complexities which might not be resolved on the spot. A deeper understanding of the technology would allow you to quickly identify who to escalate an obstacle to, or even suggest to the team that &quot;digging deeper&quot; on a certain obstacle/topic is not worth the business value.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding being junior and acting as a mentor, IMHO you have to see the Scrum Master role as a servant leader role rather than a mentor role. While you do act as a mentor with respect to the process itself, you are a servant to the team with respect to the daily flow  and the goal of delivering business value. You focus on eliminating those obstacles that developers don't like dealing with anyway (&quot;people stuff&quot;, management issues, etc), and focus on bringing the right people together at the right time. From my personal experience as a Scrum developer, Scrum master, and now team manager, I can say that so far I have not experienced developers reluctant to work with a junior Scrum Master just because of age/experience. I &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; seen developers reluctant to work with a Scrum Master who doesn't fully understand the process: i.e., as a junior Scrum Master, focus 100% on understanding Scrum, Agile, and Lean, and providing business value by constantly questioning and improving the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10330" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T17:25:10.390" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="389" CreationDate="2014-07-08T00:00:15.127" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have three factors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Money&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If &lt;strong&gt;money and time are fixed&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;requirements can change&lt;/strong&gt; then you would go after &lt;strong&gt;SCRUM&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If &lt;strong&gt;requirements are fixed&lt;/strong&gt; then you would go after &lt;strong&gt;waterfall&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10490" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T00:00:15.127" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4599" CreationDate="2014-07-08T00:04:45.953" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is definitely necessary. It's the root of the development and without good planning you will likely fail delivering (meaning that you might finish the project but not within the given constrains). Therefore you should always plan. If you would like to minimize planning then &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_software_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;lean development approach might be good for you&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10490" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T00:04:45.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4760" CreationDate="2014-07-08T00:10:10.217" Score="0" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Undocumented requirements. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Documented requirements but not updated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Over-promising to customers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Under-estimating tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Building before build-specification is signed off.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10490" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T00:10:10.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11888" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-08T00:26:27.617" Score="5" ViewCount="28344" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is a good mechanism to evaluate software engineers' performance? We need to have a PAR session every year so would like to know how to proceed and what mechanism is used within the industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should it cover following areas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management Skills&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communication Skills&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deliveries&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attitude and behavior&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Punctuality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard that checking SVN on a daily basis to review codes and to assess how much code has been committed by each developer is a good way. Is it fair and used within the industry?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6843" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2014-07-08T13:13:56.907" LastActivityDate="2018-03-20T14:47:33.277" Title="Best way to evaluate software engineers' performance?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;performance&gt;&lt;reviews&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="323" CreationDate="2014-07-08T01:07:43.027" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the developer hasn't been able to deliver it (in a year) then look for mistakes somewhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bad documentation / no documentation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wrongly specified user requirements and translating them to the developer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No clear planning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bad communication with the developer and the management.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lack of training.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Go and ask him what he thinks went wrong and what could have been done better.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make him someone you want to work with rather than you wanting to get rid off him.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10490" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T01:07:43.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11888" CreationDate="2014-07-08T01:21:56.370" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;it is definitely not fair. Different tasks require different approach. You might spend more hours just designing your solution rather than implementing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Frequent code reviews.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask the developer to do code review for others and look at that provided review.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inspect their documentation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Observe how they are enjoying work / work in team. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sit down one on one frequently and ask questions about the project. How he thinks about the project. Positive/negative sides. I believe it is all individual and it is hard to rate the performance by using tools and counting check-ins. Personal approach should tell you more.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10490" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T01:21:56.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11875" CreationDate="2014-07-08T03:00:12.483" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two of my experiences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Re-build the wiki page&lt;/strong&gt;. If it is not easy and intuitive to use then no-one will want to use it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As mentioned above the sharing knowledge sessions work. Let the people to choose a topic, don't limit them to just technical topics. Invite speakers from outside of your company, get them interested. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resource hours dedicated just to updating your wiki.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10490" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T03:00:12.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11883" CreationDate="2014-07-08T05:46:37.160" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out the definition of Scrum Master:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28software_development%29#Scrum_Master&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(software_development)#Scrum_Master&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/scrum-master&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/scrum-master&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll see and probably know that the Scrum Master has two major jobs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take care of the Scrum process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deal with impediments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second one is the crucial with respect to your impediment/issues-question: The team should trust the Scrum Master to provide him insights and information to enable him to cover their backs. Flat hierarchy usually very helpful here. In addition the Scrum Master should not be afraid to argue with management to protect the (scrum) process and the team. One could think that it might be helpful to give the Scrum Master more power (in sense of hierarchy). But that will not help. More power leads to a shift of responsibility from process and team to organisational aspects which might conflict. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it common? - I don't know but won't be surprised because it is simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there measures? - Beside project success? I don't think so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is is a good idea to take the CTO as Scrum Master? It depends on his standing within the company: Does the team trust him? Is there a atmosphere of trust and appreciation? &#xA;Nevertheless, he will get conflicts living two roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T05:46:37.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11893" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-08T05:49:06.283" Score="0" ViewCount="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have attended a class room training from a REP two years back and some how I was not able to prepare for the exam and I didn't register with PMI either. Now I want to attend the exam and going to register. the training I attended two years back is eligible for 35 contact hours for now or do i need to get training again?&#xA;Appreciate your feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&#xA;PP &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10491" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T06:10:55.353" Title="REP training - 35 hours expiry" Tags="&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11888" CreationDate="2014-07-08T06:40:34.203" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;checking SVN in a daily basis to review codes and to asses how much codes have been committed by each developer is a good way. is it fair and used in industry ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is definitely not a correct measurement for a PAR for Software Engineers. As &lt;strong&gt;Jakub&lt;/strong&gt; has also mentioned, design takes time,sometimes there are blockers which prevent dev team from finishing a feature &amp;amp; making a commit (e.g. - unavailability of dev/test servers) and also in a cross functional team some members could be helping another member with their work. The list could go on.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion following list is a basic set of objectives for &lt;strong&gt;software engineers of any level (Junior/Senior)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Completeness&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;Quality&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;amp; &lt;strong&gt;Productivity&lt;/strong&gt; of deliverables (&lt;strong&gt;Code, Documentation, Defect Resolution&lt;/strong&gt; - Please note these accepted standards and values need to be communicated prior to commencement of work)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Team work&lt;/strong&gt; (How collaborative, Supportive they are when working with a team)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Communication&lt;/strong&gt; (Correct, Clear,Timely)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Common Professional Etiquette&lt;/strong&gt; (Punctual for meetings,Adherence to accepted boundaries on attendance/HR policies at organization,Respect to others)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;addition to above&lt;/strong&gt;, for a &lt;strong&gt;senior Engineer&lt;/strong&gt; following parameters will be more applicable as senior engineers are expected to guide at least few other junior engineers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Completeness&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;Quality&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;amp; &lt;strong&gt;Productivity&lt;/strong&gt; of team deliverables (If possible if this can be applicable to engineers of all levels theoretically the overall completeness, quality &amp;amp; productivity should improve , but I haven't had the chance to see this at first hand)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contribution to &lt;strong&gt;competency development&lt;/strong&gt; (Training to team, Tech Talks &amp;amp; etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to define measurement criteria for each highlighted area above I would leave for respective technical leadership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10437" LastEditorUserId="10437" LastEditDate="2014-07-08T10:43:44.583" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T10:43:44.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11883" CreationDate="2014-07-08T06:50:31.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experiences the one of disadvantages being a Scrum Master is when the organization (small to mid organization usually) not understanding enough SCRUM as a whole package, especially the new Scrum adapting organization, which mean there is still conventional project manager paradigms that organization expect from a Scrum Master.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10493" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T06:50:31.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11888" CreationDate="2014-07-08T09:26:53.847" Score="12" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;checking SVN in a daily basis to review codes and to assess how much codes have been committed by each developer is a good way. is it fair and used in industry?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proposed metric is utterly unfair, regrettably is used in some organisations and is in my personal opinion a recipe for disaster. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HasaniK and Jakub have already identified some very valid reasons as to why it is unfair. However there are some very serious considerations to be given to the implications that can emerge as a result of introducing this as a performance related metric.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using LOC (and in fact any other sort of linear metric e.g. bug fixing) for assessing the productivity or performance of engineers is fundamentally flawed, it essentially penalizes desired behaviors such as refactoring. If I developed a function point and committed 350 LOC to do so then I review it, perhaps after some collaborative work with a peer and discover it can be done in just 150 LOC am I going to do it? Unlikely if it’s going to impact on my perceived productivity or performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the worst examples I've ever seen in place was the use of both LOC and bug fixing as performance metrics, this essentially encouraged developers to commit reams and reams of appallingly buggy code and then fix their own bugs! Not exactly conducive to increasing velocity and quality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my view this approach can single-handedly be responsible for creating a culture of poor quality design, code, and documentation as engineers become increasingly focused on the committal of code rather than robust and sound design, collaboration and innovation. I've seen good teams of enthusiastic and quality engineers be converted into unenthusiastic robots dedicated solely to delivering what they consider to be the expected measure each day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Needless to say that I left the organisation mentioned as soon as was humanly possible and since then have made it a point to ask at every single interview since then what PAR framework is in place, how can I expect my performance to be measured? If LOC is mentioned then I thank them very much for their time and if offered the post politely decline their kind offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've personally found the best PAR frameworks for developers to be largely subjective, the use of 360 reviews can help to ensure that the desired behaviors e.g. communication, teamwork etc. are being adhered to and identify opportunities to improve (ensure that the 360 reviews contain feedback based on demonstrated behaviors and are not ‘complaining’). Code and documentation review are a genuine and unbiased method of measuring quality, completeness and accuracy of output. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9155" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T09:26:53.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11893" CreationDate="2014-07-08T09:41:13.493" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're fine, as long as you have some proof that you attended that course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The time of education doesn't matter (even college courses about project management comply). The PMP handbook clearly states &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Record all education hours regardless of when they were accrued.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T09:41:13.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11900" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11901" CreationDate="2014-07-08T15:13:51.013" Score="0" ViewCount="6659" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the moment in my company we have only PM, and as we are a small team we know who would fit for the type of project we have, based on our experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As our company grows rapidly, we hired a HR manager and he asked me to define career path for our project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't figure out when the &lt;strong&gt;junior become senior&lt;/strong&gt;. I could say it's after x projects or x years of experience, but as I'm young I don't believe the experience is the unique factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6734" LastActivityDate="2017-05-11T09:50:53.837" Title="When does a junior PM become a senior PM?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11900" CreationDate="2014-07-08T15:33:34.917" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is always going to be a subjective measure because it is not a binary decision-it is not like an exam that you have either passed or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, in most situations I have come across it is decided through defined (and somewhat arbitrary) combinations of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;years of experience in Project Management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;experience with different team sizes (i.e. small project teams to large project teams)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;experience with different project types (i.e. software delivery, business change, infrastructure delivery etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;experience with a range of project budgets (i.e. &quot;small&quot; ~25k, &quot;medium&quot; ~ 25-250k, &quot;large&quot; 250k-2M etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;experience of deliveries across different areas of the business (e.g. in my line of work Claims, Underwriting, classes of business etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is usually fairly easy to understand if someone is either a Junior or Senior, it is much more difficult to define what makes them one or the other!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is made even more difficult by the fact that how your organisation might want to measure/judge it which could be different from how another will decide, so it is not really possible to provide meaningful thresholds - your mileage will indeed vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="28517" LastEditDate="2017-05-11T09:50:53.837" LastActivityDate="2017-05-11T09:50:53.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11902" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-08T19:35:20.567" Score="-1" ViewCount="12293" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can a Summary task reflect a running sum of subtask input amounts?&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/b4wwM.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;subtasks to sum&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10501" LastActivityDate="2017-11-01T15:48:05.877" Title="Calculating a running sum of subtask cost amounts" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11902" CreationDate="2014-07-08T21:10:14.630" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm guessing you are trying to sum the custom currency field you have named AMT $ ?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Right click on the column heading to show the shortcut menu.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select &lt;strong&gt;Custom Fields&lt;/strong&gt; to open the Custom Fields dialog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From the &lt;strong&gt;Calculation for task and group summary rows&lt;/strong&gt; section, select &lt;strong&gt;Rollup&lt;/strong&gt; and then select &lt;strong&gt;Sum&lt;/strong&gt; from the list.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PWd09.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T21:10:14.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11883" CreationDate="2014-07-09T04:39:12.790" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In real life experience of having a &lt;code&gt;superior&lt;/code&gt; as scrum master has a higher possibility of doing the following,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;does not listen to team during retrospect,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;skips retrospect as he thinks it is not necessary,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;marks task as done with his belief, not according to definition of done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;changes agenda of scrum activities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;skips other scrum activities and artifacts,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;fails to &lt;code&gt;time-boxing&lt;/code&gt; activities &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Measures are,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;keep reminding him scrum would bring us success if we had discipline&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;or wait until scrum dissolve silently&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5305" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T04:39:12.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11843" CreationDate="2014-07-09T07:51:47.840" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adding a &quot;Waiting on Hardware&quot; zone at the bottom of your Testing column could be a workable approach. It would allow you keep you WIP limit as a firm limit while still showing the backlog in the correct area of responsibility. Color coding the overhang/delayed demand to highlight it for everyone is probably a good idea. In a way, you are moving it off the board for a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I could not find examples of people using this approach. It would probably be a bit of experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T07:51:47.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11900" CreationDate="2014-07-09T09:00:46.253" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider this: &lt;br&gt;&#xA;If you would open a Senior PM position in your company what would you put as the requirements for the job description and requirements?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If a junior is near those reqirements you may consider him/her as Senior. Generaly speaking when people get more responsibilities they try to step up to it and also it is a good motivator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7883" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T09:00:46.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11783" CreationDate="2014-07-09T09:23:07.000" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have historical data on how many production orders you get, number of workers and the output per week/month, then you can use simple excel pivot &amp;amp; chart to see your progress.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Excel charts have a great feature that shows trend lines and predictions for next couple of periods based on the information at hand, you can use these to have an insight. &lt;p&gt;&#xA;Since you mentioned that you are running a workshop i would also like to point to you &lt;b&gt;&quot;Law of Diminishing Marginal Returns&quot;&lt;/b&gt;. It tells you that your output will not increase by having more workers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7883" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T09:23:07.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2995" CreationDate="2014-07-09T12:35:05.207" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For our project management, we use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eylean.com/?utm_source=website&amp;amp;utm_medium=text&amp;amp;utm_campaign=DMaction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Eylean&lt;/a&gt;. It is not nescecerally created for deveoping project timelines, as it offers more funtions, but with it you can create the exact timelines you described. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It offers you a taskboard with all the tasks represented on the board. So the team can see which tasks are waiting to be started, which ones are in progress and which ones are already finished. The taskboard is clean, simple and convenient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10336" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T12:35:05.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3540" CreationDate="2014-07-09T12:38:38.683" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I could also suggest &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eylean.com/?utm_source=website&amp;amp;utm_medium=text&amp;amp;utm_campaign=DMaction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Eylean&lt;/a&gt;. We have been using it succesfully in our projects for quite a while and it offers all of the features you are looking for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding Outlook integration, you can also get notifications on the tasks directly to your e-mail, as well as the possibility to turn an e-mail into a task on the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10336" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T12:38:38.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11900" CreationDate="2014-07-09T13:02:36.887" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Junior&quot; and &quot;Senior&quot; are &lt;em&gt;relative&lt;/em&gt; titles.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Semantically speaking, you would need &lt;em&gt;minimally&lt;/em&gt; 2 PMs in order to quantify that one was &quot;Sr&quot; to the other.  Comprehensively, you may need 3 or more PMs, since &quot;jr&quot; and &quot;sr&quot; titles define &lt;em&gt;classes&lt;/em&gt;, and a population of 2 hardly creates differentiated 'classes'.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.G. &quot;junior&quot; PMs would often report to the &quot;senior&quot; PM.... not just have a mentorship exchange with the Sr. PM.  I hope you can see from the tiny illustration how such titles are really more about your company's organization structure, rather than having to do with an industry-absolute-skill level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why must you define &quot;Jr&quot; and &quot;Sr&quot;?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it to motivate the employees? Are there retention and satisfaction issues that are being covered inadvertently?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it to empower their career development beyond the scope of employment with your firm?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it to define compensation levels? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look to the driver for why such titles are needed.  It may reveal a more important matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4718" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T13:02:36.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11883" CreationDate="2014-07-09T13:17:14.893" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;See a very similar question I asked: &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/213395/what-are-the-negatives-of-development-managers-as-scrum-masters&quot;&gt;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/213395/what-are-the-negatives-of-development-managers-as-scrum-masters&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not handled very carefully, the authority can get in the way of the honesty and transparency that Scrum relies on.  I did it for 2 years, and it worked excellently in our case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6825" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:31:53.287" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T13:17:14.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3522" CreationDate="2014-07-09T14:09:47.697" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you are doing scrum by the book, focusing on following the processes rather than building a team that is delivering the best software possible.  If you have a team functioning well, look to break the rules to improve things.  As a Scrum Master your role is to help a development team improve.  If you have 'nothing to do', you are implying you are working with 'the perfect team'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find areas of improvement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paying more attention to the team, getting inside team members heads to help find areas that could be improved.  I've worked with teams that think it is normal for the build to take an hour, so they don't mention it but it is a constant pain they feel.  There can be both obvious and very subtle blockers that could be removed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talking to people outside the team - could communication between the team and other stakeholders be improved? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Researching new things - there might be a useful tool or method to improve communication / development / deployment / make tastier snacks, anything that helps the team really.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn more about agile and other development methodologies.  Scrum is an easy way to get a team understanding and doing agile development, but maybe the team would work better using Kanban, or some other approach.  Learn other methodologies, or inspect and adapt to come up with your own that works even better in your case.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make everyone a cup of tea / coffee.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having spare time is a blessing - use it well to invest back in the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6825" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T14:09:47.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11915" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-09T14:22:18.087" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-07-09T14:22:18.087" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T14:22:18.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11916" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-09T14:22:18.087" Score="0" Body="The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is a framework for implementing agile practices at an Enterprise level.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More information available at http://scaledagileframework.com/" OwnerUserId="6825" LastEditorUserId="6825" LastEditDate="2014-07-09T21:04:23.570" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T21:04:23.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11918" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11931" CreationDate="2014-07-09T16:09:23.747" Score="1" ViewCount="97" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today, we stumbled upon an abstract problem due to the lack of experience. Five of us are starting a company, everything is carefully planned and organised, but... When we tried to split responsibilities between us for the activities and projects we so far have - we did not know in what effective and logic way to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thing is.. We as a company &lt;strong&gt;X&lt;/strong&gt; have a few subset operations. &lt;strong&gt;A&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;B&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;C&lt;/strong&gt; for example. &lt;strong&gt;A&lt;/strong&gt; is dealing with web development and social media. &lt;strong&gt;B&lt;/strong&gt; is our own project that we are developing. &lt;strong&gt;C&lt;/strong&gt; is tourism counseling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A&lt;/strong&gt; then later on splits on different clients &lt;strong&gt;a1&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;a2&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;a3&lt;/strong&gt;, projects and so on. So can &lt;strong&gt;C&lt;/strong&gt; too in near future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to award one person to be responsible for a certain project, activity, etc.. But in this multi-leveled structure we just don't see the way how to do so, when does the responsibility of one level end, and when another one starts. Is a person responsible for &lt;strong&gt;A&lt;/strong&gt; also responsible for &lt;strong&gt;a1&lt;/strong&gt; or does the responsibility end before branching into &lt;strong&gt;a1&lt;/strong&gt; and another person takes in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further on, how to keep track of it all? We are using Trello for simple task management, it would be amazing to somehow implement responsibility overview chart too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10509" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T16:02:38.947" Title="Awarding responsibilities in a small, but multi-leveled company" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;responsibility&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11919" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-09T16:58:31.280" Score="4" ViewCount="260" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am struggling with finding a good solid name for development processes that is described best as either &quot;Non existing&quot;, &quot;Homegrown&quot; or &quot;We whipped it out ourselves and it rocks&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need this name so I can create a comparison between other development methodologies like agile and waterfall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you call this type of development methodology? Please provide an in-depth explanation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-07-09T22:36:09.017" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T08:00:27.613" Title="Whats the definition and name of the &quot;No development methodology&quot;" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3522" CreationDate="2014-07-09T18:23:00.903" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good Scrum Master can manage three scrum teams; a great Scrum Master&#xA;can manage one scrum team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I think one of the most important tasks of a Scrum Master is not just his team, but also making sure the organisation and the clients understand and conform to Scrum. This will improve the process end-to-end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also see these lists of possible tasks and team improvements you can work on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agiletrail.com/2011/11/14/42-tasks-for-a-scrum-masters-job/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;42 tasks for a scrum-master's job&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160428022646/https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2010/november/an-example-scrummaster-s-checklist&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;An example scrum-master's checklist&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-10T08:24:53.363" LastActivityDate="2020-07-10T08:24:53.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="11921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3232" CreationDate="2014-07-09T19:38:05.963" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not specially difficult if you read and practice before. &#xA;And I am completely sure that you have already certificated, however if not, a strong preparation could mitigating the possible dificult level of the exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Obtain real experience in Scrum Projects: This point is invaluable, because it is easier understand concepts and ideas if you have had experience in the real world.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read the Scrum guide.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read the The Definitive Guide to Scrum: The Rules of the Game to take more concepts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Practice a lot the open assessment provided by Scrum.org. &#xA;Please pay attention to your wrong answers, and learn why you felt them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Request feedback within forums and scrum community.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a lot of books equally interesting that you can read to help yourself in visualize how to manage a project using Scrum, one of them is &quot;Scrum and XP from the trenches&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8707" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T19:38:05.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11783" CreationDate="2014-07-09T21:04:16.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Maximize the contribution margin from your constrained resource&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To grow such a business you want to maximize the contribution margin. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contribution_margin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Contribution margin is the selling price minus the variable cost per unit.&lt;/a&gt; In a job shop business of this type your key decision point is the desired product mix you shoot for. For example, if you would like to get more orders for Product A, you can create promotional materials for it, give better incentive to your sales team and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you determine which product to push and which one not? In general, you will push those products that give you the most contribution margin. If you do that though, you may be up against some bottlenecks also known as &amp;quot;constraints&amp;quot; in accounting jargon! For example, in a job shop that I worked for earlier, our vertical boring machine was the constraint. It was the most expensive, required the most skill and could also be the most profitable. So, you want to maximise the contribution margin from such a constrained resource. You have to figure out which is the constrained resource in your shop. &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170526164925/http://catalog.flatworldknowledge.com/bookhub/reader/4402?e=heisinger_1.0-ch06_s05&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Once you do, here is a good article that shows you how to model that.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you have booked the orders, as @CodeGnome pointed out, you apply Kanban to continually improve your processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-27T06:18:48.020" LastActivityDate="2020-07-27T06:18:48.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="11923" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-03T08:27:52.623" Score="1" ViewCount="128" Body="&lt;p&gt;What factors are taken in consideration when adding/eliminating features, and who is responsible to add new feature in any project or to change -lets say-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;UI components to increase usability&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;new module or new functionality;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The case I'm asking about there are no contract or SRS document involved -which means no request from the clients to add this specific feature or module.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6336" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T22:25:17.567" Title="Who decides to add new feature in any project or not and what factors are taken into consideration?" Tags="&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11923" CreationDate="2014-07-03T08:40:38.650" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This greatly depends on the used &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_methodology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;software development methodology&lt;/a&gt;, but in all cases there should be a central point to collect new features and a person to schedule a kick off of the process from design till implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Resources/What-is-Scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SCRUM&lt;/a&gt; methodology (a popular agile process framework) there is a role called &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=502ILHjX9EE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Product Owner&lt;/a&gt;. This is the person who decides what goes in and what not. He represents the client, defines what the business value is and prioritizes new features. See the great 15 minutes &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=502ILHjX9EE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Product Owner in a Nutshell video&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Agile manifesto principles&lt;/a&gt; is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount  of work not done--is&#xA;  essential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So a drive to minimize unrequested features is a solid one, since you will have to maintain the feature and make sure it is covered by testcases. Adding unneeded features to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;software development life cycle&lt;/a&gt; will only increase the total cost on the long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" OwnerDisplayName="Niels van Reijmersdal" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T08:40:38.650" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11923" CreationDate="2014-07-08T14:17:01.653" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a basis for all our development cycles, from when we were Waterfall, to Agile and now Iterative, we have always had a change request process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a change to the system is new and not a bug, then it should be raised with the individual who own's the project manager/product owner. That change should then be assesed to ensure it meets the needs of the business, the cost (Physical and resource) and the impact to timelines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have worked on a few deliverables, where this has not been the case. In each instance, the unverified change has lead to the timeline extending, more resource being required and more bugs being found. I have also found it encourgaes people not to communicate, so test environments become unstable and bugs are found in live as a result of testers not knowing that the change existed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3793094" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T14:17:01.653" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11876" CreationDate="2014-07-10T04:57:33.597" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is feasible to enter the IT industry in a Scrum Master role even with a low technical background. That is not the key point within your job. It is more about to understand a team and removing obstacles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, I would like to encourage you to create your own small technical background, because in some occasions you will need to understand some technical issues expressing during meetings, or perhaps to remove obstacles or to request help for other areas of the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pay attention, hear what happens and after that, read and learn about the concepts.&#xA;Only concepts, only the main ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When you understand the basic concepts and how the concepts are related, perhaps it would be a moment to give one extra step: checking what happens with X concept, generating questions to your team in an informal way by asking: I understand Y, because in the last meeting it happened Z, am I wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8707" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2016-01-12T18:59:23.117" LastActivityDate="2016-01-12T18:59:23.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11876" CreationDate="2014-07-10T08:47:45.967" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would take great care diving straight into being a Scrum Master, as you risk being perceived very negatively by teams.  I am a Scrum Master who has come from a development background, which makes it much easier to fit in with the team naturally and not come across as 'management'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are three stages of Scrum Teams, sometimes referred to using Shu-Ha-Ri; a martial arts term.  Your background will mean you fit into teams in some of these states much easier than others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the 'Shu' (Obey) stage teams are learning the fundamentals.  This requires more of an enforcement attitude from the Scrum Master, and is where technical knowledge would be most useful.  This is where teams are likely to be creating their 'development best practice' - so to me the scrum master should be enforcing code reviews, helping to implement XP or whatever approach the organisation are taking, and suggesting (often technical) additions to the definition of done.  This is where many 'Scrum Consultants' (who are often not technical) seem to be failing the industry to me - they bring in 2 week sprints, self organised teams, and backlogs, but do not address the most important part - the underlying development standards that Scrum was built and relies on.  Most teams never leave this stage, and this is where Scrum Masters who are not technical are really hurting the industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next stage teams reach is 'Ha' (Digress) where they are working as a good Scrum team, and start to understand why they are doing things, rather than just following the process.  This is where the team have the basics down and are working as a good team already.  At this point they must have good development practices in place, so a Scrum Master who is less technical could probably get by.  The team is motivated to keep up their technical excellence, so the Scrum Master doesn't need to be driving this, but might want to keep reminding the team to keep up their technical excellence.  There is still a risk development practices could slip and the team not notice, and without being technical a scrum master may never know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you get the rare chance to work with a team at 'Ri' (separate) who is hyper-productive, I don't think you need to be technical.  This is probably the best sort of team fitted to your situation.  Your psychology background would probably make you better than most Scrum Masters at really getting to the bottom of deep, hidden issues that many Scrum Masters might miss, so you may want to try to specialise in working with awesome teams that are trying to etch out additional improvement.  This is where teams are coming up with their own ways of working, maybe abandoning Scrum all together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a software development background, and have led multiple organisations through the Shu and arguably Ha stages - often after agile consultants have already done a lot of damage by bringing in Scrum without any consideration of the development practices it relies on.  If you are involved in agile adoptions, ensure to work with a development manager or senior developer to put best practice in place BEFORE bringing in agile.  Without this, non technical Scrum Masters can seriously break teams and organisations.  You can do it, but the more technical knowledge you can get the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6825" LastEditorUserId="6825" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T09:13:09.757" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T09:13:09.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11919" CreationDate="2014-07-10T09:35:15.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always gone with 'Chaos' - but that has been scarily accurate in my situation.  If you are trying to explain it to management, I would simply call it 'the current process'.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6825" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T09:35:15.850" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11918" CreationDate="2014-07-10T16:02:38.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest not over-complicating, which is very easy to do. i.e. people might suggest that you need a RACI chart which equates to 'Responsible, Accountable, Consult, Inform' - this is probably too much...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ownership is very important, you should have an owner for a business area i.e. A, B and C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you follow a Scrum or Kanban development process. The tasks you have on your scrum board in trello should be labeled in catagories 'A, B and C'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your backlog column or 'to do' column leave all tasks un-assigned but in a prioritised list. When one of the 5 of you is ready to do some new work, pick off the top of the queue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you mature, develop teams under each 'A, B, C' business unit. Split the backlog by business unit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should have a daily stand-up meeting or 'scrum' and review three items 'what did you do yesterday, what are you going to do today, do you have any blockers'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally review progress on a weekly basis with a status update for each area. Figure out what went well and what went badly (focusing on process). Take actions and adjust accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For further guidance and reading I'd recommend reading Amazon's leadership principles as they're excellent guides for running a business: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/Values-Careers-Homepage/b?node=239365011&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Values-Careers-Homepage/b?node=239365011&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this model on scaling agile at Spotify: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ucvox.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/113617905-scaling-agile-spotify-11.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ucvox.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/113617905-scaling-agile-spotify-11.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11519" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T16:02:38.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11853" CreationDate="2014-07-10T16:26:47.890" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm really not convinced by SAFe at all - I think it's too prescriptive and not nearly agile enough. It also encourages focus on vanity metrics that really don't mean much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the best way to scale Agile in an enterprise is to allow teams to evolve independently and create a culture of sharing learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To solve the problem of portfolio management/dependency management or programme delivery across a large organsiation assign the responsibility to a strong programme manager who will cover the breadth of the organisation; Establish them as the defacto 'transient' PMO. close this PMO when the programme has completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All you need to present to senior leaders is a weekly one-line status for each workstream including Red, Yellow, Green; progress against stated milestones and any blockers (Top Risks and Issues).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the method I used at a large online global US based retailer and am using at a large global UK based physical/online retailer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper also alludes to a similar method used by Spotify to implement agile at scale: this model on scaling agile at Spotify: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ucvox.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/113617905-scaling-agile-spotify-11.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://ucvox.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/113617905-scaling-agile-spotify-11.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11519" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T16:26:47.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11934" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11940" CreationDate="2014-07-11T05:57:01.317" Score="9" ViewCount="2086" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a small software company (1-50 Employees) as an Assistant Project Manager. I have been studying the PMP study notes for quite a while now and wondering if there are too many documents involved in a project; e.g. Project scope document, requirements traceability matrix, etc. Now, the projects we develop are mostly outsourced to us and the duration is mostly 3-6 months. We prepare only 2 documents, that is, a requirements document which describes all the requirements in detail and second, a technical design document providing all the technical design of the product we are developing. It has been working fine so far, we have had lots of successful projects with just these 2 documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the last few months, we have lost some customers, and in one case, the log of open issues was not maintained, and in another case, the communications plan was not laid properly. Which means we need to adopt some of the processes of PMBOK, but I do not think we can adopt all of these in our small projects. So what are the minimum essential documents to make (ie. WBS is mandatory) which will almost ensure the success of the project? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11526" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-12-06T14:56:08.610" LastActivityDate="2016-12-06T14:56:08.610" Title="Minimum PM documents for a small IT company" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11875" CreationDate="2014-07-11T07:36:08.390" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to Yassmeen's answer just want to add that you need an enthusiastic person who'll keep this knowledge sharing alive, by personal example and/or motivating others. From my experience everybody has something to share, I just need to come to him/her and ask to make a presentation on a specific topic I know the person is experienced in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also don't limit your people to wiki, especially if it doesn't work out. Ask some people to share their knowledge in a format they prefer, and later you'll be able to come up with &quot;one size that fits all&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9034" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T07:36:08.390" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11936" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11939" CreationDate="2014-07-11T08:17:15.653" Score="5" ViewCount="2749" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need some clarification about how the changes should be introduced within the process in a Scrum Team and how a Scrum Master should approach it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By changes in the process I mean for example: changing the length of a sprint, introducing some practices such as limitting Work In Progress, pair-programming etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;My considerations:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum Master manages the process. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/scrummaster/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mike Cohn's webpage&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ScrumMaster has no authority over Scrum team members, the &lt;strong&gt;ScrumMaster&#xA;  does have authority over the process&lt;/strong&gt;.” (...) ScrumMaster &lt;strong&gt;can&lt;/strong&gt; say,&#xA;  “I’ve decided we’re going to try two-week sprints for the next month.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also compares Scrum Master to a personal trainer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The trainer &lt;strong&gt;cannot make you do an exercise you don’t want to do&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;  Instead, the &lt;strong&gt;trainer reminds you of your goals&lt;/strong&gt; and how you’ve chosen&#xA;  to meet them. To the extent that the trainer does have authority, it&#xA;  has been granted by the client. ScrumMasters are much the same: They&#xA;  have authority, but &lt;strong&gt;that authority is granted to them by the team&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand Scrum Guide says: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum Teams&lt;/strong&gt; are self-organizing and cross-functional. Self-organizing&#xA;  teams &lt;strong&gt;choose how best to accomplish their work&lt;/strong&gt;, rather than being&#xA;  directed by others outside the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the retrospective, &lt;strong&gt;the whole Scrum Team&lt;/strong&gt; (including SM) decides about improvement in the process they will introduce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question(s):&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is it like this that :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.&lt;strong&gt;Scrum Master decides&lt;/strong&gt; that a change will be applied (becuase he has the authority to do so - authority granted by the team). And the team members follows this change, because they trust SM and have respect to SM role.&#xA;So SM says: &lt;strong&gt;“I’ve decided we do this and that”&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.Scrum Master just proposes the change and then &lt;strong&gt;the team makes the decision&lt;/strong&gt; that they commit to introduce this change?&#xA;SM says: &lt;strong&gt;“What do you think if we try to do this and that?”&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And what if they do not want this change - he cannot force them to do so, and he can “only” remind of goals and try to convince to follow a change?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6324" LastActivityDate="2014-12-12T03:49:16.543" Title="Who should decide about changes in the process - Scrum Master or the whole Scrum Team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11875" CreationDate="2014-07-11T08:23:21.590" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following are some few creative ways I have seen my current organisation handle this challenge&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tech Talks: Tech talks area good way of improving visibility to those who are delivering the content and you receive feedback immediately which can be more rewarding. Chances are you'll find more members willing to 'talk' about a topic other than 'writing' about it. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Events : Create small in-house events around these tech talks (with invitations, get some one to take photos are add to wiki &amp;amp; write about the event). Make this news available in your company web site &amp;amp; mention during your social media activity (Again this is great visibility to those contributing &amp;amp; will motivate them)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fix your wiki: As &lt;strong&gt;Jacub&lt;/strong&gt; has also mentioned, &lt;strong&gt;if you want the wiki to be part of your knowledge sharing process&lt;/strong&gt; you'll need to find a way to make it user friendly by contacting the vendor. If it's really bad get rid of it all together.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publish great articles :Treat the internal wiki as an initial collection and if you find and exceptionally good articles you could always publish in the company blog(if you have one already). Please make sure the contributor get the recognition as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You shouldn't only focus on writing articles to accelerate the knowledge transfer since different people accumulate knowledge in different ways. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10437" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T08:23:21.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11934" CreationDate="2014-07-11T08:26:10.443" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work more in infrastructure and systems and I consider the absolute minimum documents are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scope Statement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deployment Plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally push hard for the Project Charter but our management team has not been interested in following most PMBoK ideas (lots of silos - very functional organization). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why these two? The scope statement is the primary method to explain what is included and &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; included so that we can avoid scope creep. It is amazing how even simple projects can mean completely different things to different people. Having a written document published in a public location helps minimize that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deployment Plan is not a normal part of the PMBoK but it as close as we get to a project planning document. Our version of the deployment plan includes the communications plan, most of a WBS, and most of the stakeholder registry. Unfortunately, it is the only document where cross-functional review and approvals are addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a software development team, I would recommend:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stakeholder Registry (that includes the communications method that works best for that stakeholder)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Basic WBS such as New Feature List/Bug Fix List for the current  release &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Schedule (rough or estimated if probably fine)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communications Plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could combine these into one document and call it a &quot;Pre-Release Plan&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T08:26:10.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11936" CreationDate="2014-07-11T09:00:37.123" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a proper Scrum, it's definitely option 2. It's the team as a whole who decides about process changes. The Scrum Master is a &lt;em&gt;servant-leader&lt;/em&gt;, not a command-and-control style leader. So even if she is convinced that a specific change in process is necessary, she shouldn't (and can't) force it to the team: she has to convince them, or preferably explain the situation, the problem(s) she sees and the available options to resolve it, then let them come to the decision themselves. That's one of the biggest challenges of being an SM, to keep one's mouth shut and instead just wait and listen to the team :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that even if the SM is perceived by the team to have the authority to make process changes by herself, if the team members don't fully accept such a change, it won't work; they will have buried resistance which may very well sabotage the process and eventually even break the team if not handled properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Exceptions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;are always possible, of course :-) So the above is not to say the SM can never, ever impose process decisions onto the team. I can imagine situations when e.g. the team is undecided for some reason (they are new to Scrum, and/or they are not accustomed to be a self-organising team so they need some hand-holding), so the SM has to make a decision on their behalf. However, she should still coach and support them towards becoming independent as soon as possible. Or if the proposed change is small and experimental, like &amp;quot;let's try the Boat Retrospective this time for a change&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But by and large, these should be rare and limited exceptions rather than the norm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10244" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T11:58:36.247" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11934" CreationDate="2014-07-11T12:25:02.373" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The issue is not just that documentation was poor, rather that some of your planning deliverables were either not done or not implemented. Documentation in and of itself won't help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, documentation provides evidence that your team has thought through what you need to do and has developed a reasonable, feasible and achievable plan. The key thing to remember is that you can reduce documentation but &lt;strong&gt;you cannot short-change the planning process&lt;/strong&gt;. For a simple project there is no reason why you can't have a single, relatively brief document that covers the same ground that would require multiple documents on a complex project. Where the challenge lies is in tailoring the level of detail in your documents to the needs of your project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So let's talk about minimum content rather than minimum documents. In my opinion, there are three broad buckets that you need before you start a project:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A business case&lt;/strong&gt;. Without this you can't tell if your project will deliver value for money, which ultimately is the only real measure of success of a project. So some kind of cost/benefit analysis that you can revisit regularly to ensure your effort remains justifiable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project product description&lt;/strong&gt;. A description of the end goal and how the different sub-products fit into the overall picture. This provides you with a basis for developing things like a WBS.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Project initiation information&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;. The sum total of what you need to know to be able to actually manage the project. So things like milestones/schedule, governance structure/stakeholder analysis/RACI matrix, WBS, scope statement, budget, key risks, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once a project is underway you will need to manage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reporting&lt;/strong&gt;. You need a way to report status to your team, customer and leadership, as well as tracking things like action items, decisions, risks, lessons learned etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Delivery&lt;/strong&gt;. This will be sector dependent, but generally things like requirements, acceptance criteria, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once a project is complete you will need to be able to communicate how your project performed against it's business case (so some kind of planning around benefits realization), lessons learned, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T12:25:02.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11888" CreationDate="2014-07-11T12:48:34.173" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;LOC is only one simple factor to measure when it comes to evaluate performance of people who are working as Tech Lead/Team Lead or above that positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because they are doing more work compare to development (code writing). &#xA;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requirement gathering.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Designing solutions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Documentation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Weekly progress update calls with customers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Review junior people’s codes for best practices and company standards.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Review code for good quality (As &lt;strong&gt;@Clair&lt;/strong&gt; mention to identify “If developer developed a function point and committed 350 LOC to do so, perhaps after some collaborative work with a seniors could be done in just 150 LOC”).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When evaluating these peoples (Tech Lead/Team Lead or above positions) I think we should consider areas which &lt;strong&gt;@timeman789&lt;/strong&gt; points out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But when it comes to developers who are set clear goals &amp;amp; clear tasks with the help of they are superiors I think LOC give acceptable portion to evaluate his/her performance.&lt;/strong&gt; But I think it should not be LOC, rather whether it is Source Lines of Code (SLOC) or Effective Lines of Code (ELOC). Apart from that FP (Functional Points) also can use as counter measure to evaluate these members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all I think you better to do a research and come up with different set of measures for different role of people; to evaluate performance of peoples your team or company have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11530" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T12:48:34.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11936" CreationDate="2014-07-11T15:02:47.677" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master is a full member of the Scrum Team with an assigned role within the framework. The Scrum Master can therefore recommend changes in the process to the team without being wishy-washy about it, but should not dictate processes or practices unless that authority has been specifically delegated by the Scrum Team or by the broader organization. Even then, such delegated authority is likely a &quot;project smell&quot; that indicates a team or organization is not yet truly agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Scrum Master as Process Referee&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question quotes a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/scrummaster/&quot;&gt;blog or wiki post&lt;/a&gt; from Mountain Goat Software. With all due respect to the author, &quot;process owner&quot; tends to lead readers into a common trap because the phrase connotes authority rather than stewardship. In my experience, effective Scrum teams know that the Scrum Master is a &lt;em&gt;process referee&lt;/em&gt;. That means that the Scrum Master doesn't &lt;em&gt;own&lt;/em&gt; the process; rather, the Scrum Master:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;evangelizes&lt;/strong&gt; the framework;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;calls &quot;framework fouls&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; when the team or the organization doesn't follow the tenets or principles of the framework;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;educates the team and the organization&lt;/strong&gt; about Scrum; and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;facilitates communication&lt;/strong&gt; within the team, and between the team and the rest of the organization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the extent that teams or organizations delegate authority to the Scrum Master to &lt;em&gt;manage&lt;/em&gt; the framework or other processes, the Scrum Master may be able to make unilateral decisions, but that is certainly not a given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Agile Principles Lead to &lt;em&gt;Recommendations&lt;/em&gt;, Not Dictates&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assigning authority beyond the basic role defined by the framework is something that should be carefully weighed against the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot;&gt;core principles behind the Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt;. Specifically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The best architectures, requirements, and designs &#xA;  emerge from self-organizing teams.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At regular intervals, the team reflects on how &#xA;  to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts &#xA;  its behavior accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The framework itself defines a number of core responsibilities for each role, but the transfer of responsibility &lt;em&gt;away&lt;/em&gt; from the team as a whole (including the Scrum Master and the Product Owner) and to a single individual fundamentally undermines the ability of the group to continuously improve their own processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, the Scrum Master would be within the scope of the role to point out that recent Sprints had fallen short of the quality required by the definition of done. As a member of the Scrum Team, the Scrum Master could then suggest that other teams have solved similar problems through changes to Sprint length or by introducing pair-programming practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Development Team also has a voice, though, co-equal with the Scrum Master's and the Product Owner's. They can't simply dismiss the recommendations of another member of the Scrum Team, but they are also welcome to veto, amend, or improve upon those recommendations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as the Scrum Team as a whole is routinely meeting their mutually-agreed Sprint Goals, &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; the team gets things done is entirely up to them. However, if the Scrum Team is frequently &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; meeting its agreed-upon Sprint Goals, then the Scrum Master is certainly expected to call a &quot;framework foul&quot; and insist that current processes (including the Scrum process itself) be inspected and adapted to address the impediments to success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T16:01:13.867" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T16:01:13.867" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11868" CreationDate="2014-07-11T19:46:32.490" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question might be best stated as, &quot;Is is possible to implement Scrum methodology within a multi-national Waterfall ERP migration?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My answer to this question would be an emphatic yes, based on experience leading projects where we did just that (both before the principles that make up Agile were canonized, and after). The key is to look at Scrum functionally as opposed to literally and transfer the concepts to an understanding of: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what you are trying to achieve in each &quot;time-slice&quot; of the waterfall project; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;who are the customers for that time-slice; and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what work items can or should be iterated in that time-slice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case &quot;time-slice&quot; equates to the period of time that most parallels a sprint for your project. I try to avoid the word sprint since it &lt;em&gt;sounds&lt;/em&gt; antithetical in the Waterfall context.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/techjournal/0907_hines/09d07_hines.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/techjournal/0907_hines/09d07_hines.html&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/srayhan/scrum-at-a-waterfall-organization&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.slideshare.net/srayhan/scrum-at-a-waterfall-organization&lt;/a&gt;.  Both these came from a Google search, and I have only scanned them to see if the projects and results were related to this discussion. I would suggest not following any links that lead down the path of Agile vs. Waterfall; they will likely distract in this case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you would like to share some of your project activities planned for the next few months, I (and perhaps others) can be more specific. There is no reason to limit the discussion to refactoring, nor would you get the most benefit from doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5593" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T19:46:32.490" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11944" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-12T08:43:04.003" Score="-4" ViewCount="82" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been given a school project where I have to come up with a name for our junior prom. I already made some up like &quot;rendezvous under the stars,&quot; but I can't think of anything else. How should I approach this project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11541" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T15:30:14.180" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T08:06:03.443" Title="How to approach a project naming activity for Junior Prom?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11934" CreationDate="2014-07-12T10:52:11.860" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are looking at this incorrectly.  A document itself is only as valuable as the paper on which it is written.  Like the risk log, for example, folks will typically labor over the log so it is almost museum quality and forget they are supposed to be navigating rough waters.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Documentation is nothing more than 1) evidence that some type of planning took place, some type of analysis took place, to keep track of something, and some type of decision was made; and 2) to communicate those things and keep everyone on the same page.  So the answer to your question is, you document so you can achieve those two objectives.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question or point of view you need to ask or have is, what level of formality of the document do I need for this particular project.  If you are working on a rather simple project, rather short duration, only a few resources, not a lot of money, not a ton of risk, you can get by documenting your plan on the back of napkin, i.e., short and simple, two or three pages, maybe four.  If you are working a complex project, never been done before, 200+ team members, millions of bucks, etc., you are writing volumes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:52:11.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11944" CreationDate="2014-07-12T11:48:13.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is loosely about PM, not 100% off topic.  Part of major projects where some serious material organization transformations take place, PMs would deploy a concept called Organization Change Management.  This focus is all about preparing the organization to change so that resistance to such change is minimal.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the critical success factors is stakeholder participation, meaning the change is more likely to be accepted and enabled if key stakeholders had something to do with the change, even if only a little.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With your project, the theme or name of it needs to resonate with your stakeholders, including students, teachers, and likely parents.  So your problem is not a lack of imagination on your part but the method you are using to generate ideas and then to narrow it down to the chosen one.  This is NOT a solo event, not if you want the name to resonate and be accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what you need to do is come up with some ideas of how to get stakeholder involvement.  Focus groups?  Surveys?  A friendly competition?  All of these?  What you want to do is derive a method of name identification, testing across a representative sample of your stakeholder population, and then choosing.  Implement that and the name will be the result and will likely be accepted by majority of your stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T11:48:13.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11900" CreationDate="2014-07-13T08:28:19.983" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Senior is when you can let them or you trust them to work by his / her own decission. On the other hand when u deal with Junior, you probably need to always monitor his / her act regarding on every work he / she responsible to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10493" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T08:28:19.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11949" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11954" CreationDate="2014-07-13T10:57:45.037" Score="5" ViewCount="824" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for a small, independent software development startup. We’ve been in business for nearly three years now and things are going pretty well. We’ve got a pretty steady stream of projects for an ever expanding client base, and as a result have carefully started hiring new staff and temporary help. We’re now at five permanent members of staff, of which two are full-time developers and one divides his time between development, design, and managing the business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the workload has been getting higher, we’ve run into some problems: we’re making long hours, are missing deadlines, are unable to give accurate estimates regarding when a project will be completed, and the quality of our code is dropping. I’ve been asked to come up with a development process that better fits our company and projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We usually work on several projects at once – this is inevitable duet to the amount of projects we’ve taken on and the small number of developers we have. We currently more or less divide this up in two week intervals: work on project A for two weeks, work on project B for two weeks, and then inevitably some problem with project A or C will pop up and we’ll spend a day intended for project B on project A and C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our clients are from all over the country and from various backgrounds. Some are talkative, some are not. Some expect weekly updates, some have no problems with not hearing from us for two months. We prefer to work in small iterations: get a prototype out the door and into the client’s hands as fast as possible (usually about a month after development started) and then iterate on that every two to four weeks. We’ve found that this is essential for the kind of projects we do and the fact that our clients often have no real idea what they want until they’ve had something approaching what they want in their hands for a while. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, our development process is pretty straight forward, but obviously lacking. Our designer comes up with an idea for an application and a rudimentary graphic design, and our developers (one, two, or all three) sort of divide the work on an ad hoc basis and start building. Every now and then, we check where we are, and adjust if necessary. There’s not much more to it than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’ve been thinking of doing code reviews: every piece of code is checked at by at least one developer who didn’t write it. This seems like a good way to start improving the quality of our code, but it takes a lot of time that we just don’t have. The same goes for unit testing: we’ve spent weeks writing tests and often found ourselves constantly having to tweak the tests because we found out they weren’t testing the right things, or weren’t testing enough. That project took significantly longer than projects where we didn’t unit tests and just squashed bugs when we found them. Also we didn’t have anything to show the client for weeks. Possibly we were just doing it wrong, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’ve also been thinking of adding a dedicated tester to our team: someone who finds, categorizes and reports bugs to us, so the developers have to spend less time finding bugs and playing support for our clients, and have more time to spend on actually fixing bugs and developing the application. Obviously this is a significant investment for a small team like ours, but I have a suspicion that it’s a more effective way to spend money than just throwing more developers at a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to providing better estimates, I have no real idea. We’ve dabbled in planning poker, but in my experience that amounted to little more than the wildly inaccurate guesswork we were already doing. Finally, I want to formalize the design process more, to a certain extent. Obviously due to the iterative development we can’t really set any design in stone, but it probably wouldn’t hurt if we spent some more time up front formalizing both the application architecture and the graphical design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, I have a reasonable idea of what we can improve and what we’re currently lacking, but I have no real concrete ideas about how we can achieve this goal. Hence, I turn to Stack Exchange. There are probably many of you in companies similar to ours who struggled with the same problems. How did you overcome them, or what traps did you fall into that you’d suggest we avoid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11550" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T17:19:09.157" Title="How do I improve the development process at our small startup?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;quality&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11951" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-14T13:25:52.723" Score="2" ViewCount="3332" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I moved a bunch of JIRA issues from one of my projects to another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I created a JIRA Agile board for the new project (just based off on the new project, no special filters) I could not see any of the issues I created. Whenever I create a new issue, it also doesn't show up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I do a query fro the project issues, they all show up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I checked the Board filter: &lt;code&gt;project = IT ORDER BY Rank ASC&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seems fine...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas on troubleshooting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11557" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T10:48:46.990" Title="In JIRA, when I moved issues from one project to another, they don't show up in Agile view, but show up in project view" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11949" CreationDate="2014-07-14T14:29:18.357" Score="3" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not take on any more extra work, there is a temptation but if your organisation is brought into line then the money will come. Just keep enough to maintain your cash flow.  Greed is a very destructive force in business.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use something like a SWOT Analysis to ascertain your current position.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Produce a Risk Matrix to find where the emergencies are so you can produce a plan of action.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use SMARTER principles to help produce goals or milestones.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get some good controls in place.  Find from your risk analysis some indicators that will show deterioration in your change program.  First stabilise, then look to improve - gradually.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take the initiation of work projects away from designers. Their jobs are to design what the customer needs ... your customers should be providing the pull.  If you are producing products then having to find buyers for you are wasting resources in the worst way.  Simple economics :  supply and demand.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pull the whole team together, include all stakeholders (anyone who interacts with your company in anyway) start to find where you can standardise your procedures.  Is there a way to standardise your reporting methods?  The more you can bring common elements together the more time you will save.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start to look for areas of constraint or &quot;bottlenecks&quot; in your production process.  This will help find where the quick wins can be made.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not look to update your practices all at once, this can lead to a lot of instability.  You should create a plan with input from everyone in your organisation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look to staff skills :  is there any crossover?  Are there any who are multi-skilled?  Your staff are your greatest resource, try to find a way to best utilise all of their abilities, they will feel better appreciated and your productivity will increase.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look at the mood of the staff ;  long hours and missed deadlines can lead to decreases in motivation with a knock on effect on production.  Keep an eye on management ;  their job is to manage, it may sound patronising but all too often they can forget their roles ;  rolling up one's sleeves to help the workers is sometimes not the best way to assist.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For time management find a couple of good tools and indicators and stick with them.  Too many times people go after the next big thing, stay with it for five minutes are then after the next tool.  Ensure you understand how they work and if they are what you need.  I would humbly always suggest the simplest things : Gantt charts, Product flow diagrams, Takt time to name a Few.  Keep it simple ;  everyone in your organisation must be able to understand them so you can all work to the same rhythm toward the same goals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get in a consultant.  You need to balance lost revenue against the cost of getting a professional to help you solve these issues.  Change management should be handled by someone who does not get caught up in the business-as-usual affairs of the company.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many books on your situation and books on every point I have mentioned here.  The most important point I will repeat though is to deal with your current situation.  You must stabilise and create a firm foundation before anything else. I have seen too many companies in the situation where they have &quot;built houses on sand&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11558" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T14:29:18.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11951" CreationDate="2014-07-14T19:27:14.777" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are using a Scrum Board in Jira then you would be able to switch views between &lt;strong&gt;Plan&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Work&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;Plan&lt;/strong&gt; view will show all the Jira tickets, where as &lt;strong&gt;Work&lt;/strong&gt; mode will show only the current sprint's tasks. Create a new sprint and assign that sprint number to Jira tickets, this will populate the &lt;strong&gt;Work&lt;/strong&gt; view of your Agile Board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/poIDC.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Creative Commons image copied from &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AGILE/Using+Plan+Mode&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AGILE/Using+Plan+Mode&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T19:27:14.777" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11949" CreationDate="2014-07-14T20:16:10.870" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Focus on quality and estimates&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You identified four problems. Of those, I would view the following two as your main issues (long hours and missed deadlines are likely resulting from these):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Quality of your code is dropping&lt;/strong&gt;: When the quality is bad, you end up doing a lot of unplanned work. This results in long hours and missed deadlines not to forget the hit to team morale.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Unable to give accurate estimates regarding when a project will be completed&lt;/strong&gt;: This would also result in long hours and either poor quality of code or missed deadlines or both.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You seem to have tried or considered several options for improving the quality of your code:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Code reviews&lt;/strong&gt;: In my previous assignment, we had code quality problems. By introducing code review, we were able to catch bugs prior to release and improve release quality substantially. At the very least, review high risk code.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Unit tests&lt;/strong&gt;: We struggled a lot trying to introduce unit testing. If you have already introduced it, my suggestion is to keep continuing it at least in some projects. &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/67299/is-unit-testing-worth-the-effort&quot;&gt;Some users have reported huge benefits from unit testing.&lt;/a&gt; Determine for yourself that it is not yielding the benefits before abandoning it. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dedicated tester&lt;/strong&gt;: I would strongly suggest a dedicated tester. Developers have blind spots. Also, developers do not have the patience to do repetitive tasks, which are often needed for meticulous testing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For better estimations, I have three suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Continue planning poker&lt;/strong&gt;: At a minimum, it breaks down the monolithic project into smaller chunks (epics/stories). By reviewing the estimates with the actuals, you can see what are the areas where your team tends to get it wrong. Also, it gets the team members talking about the scope of work, development approach and any risks/assumptions at an early stage. Capture these in the story/epic.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Schedule provisions&lt;/strong&gt;: Make the following provisions while coming up with schedules for new projects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;10% (one day out of every two week sprints) for maintenance work on existing projects.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;10% for vacations, training and helping with bidding on future projects.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Refine your estimates and schedule after prototype feedback&lt;/strong&gt;: When you get the feedback from your client that is when the scope is clearer (to your client and to you). It is time to refine your estimate and indicate any change in schedule to your client.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:41:23.897" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T20:30:22.227" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11949" CreationDate="2014-07-14T23:18:32.910" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you may be asking the wrong question here.  You've mentioned that the problem is that you're missing deadlines and are unable to give accurate estimates of when work will be complete.  The natural instinct of most technical people is to look for a delivery management solution - which is what you've done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest, however, that what you're experiencing is a customer relationship issue.  If customers are complaining about missed deadlines and inaccurate delivery estimates, you could approach those issues by managing the relationship with your customers better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend that you assign someone, perhaps a different person per customer, as the contact point for each customer.  They should establish a relationship with that customer which will allow them to negotiate on timelines and delivery expectations.  This will release the pressure you're currently feeling to work long hours and deliver against tight timelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also find some process improvements which help you, but the reality is that the majority of research in this area relates to larger, more well-structured teams.  As you've found, trying to apply &quot;best practice&quot; for the industry tends to be very problematic for small start-up groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't disagree more with the answer which suggested &quot;don't take on any more work&quot;.  Winning work is the lifeblood of small organisations and you should absolutely sign up every customer you can.  But don't fall into the engineer's trap of thinking that the only solution to a customer perception issue is to improve delivery quality.  Customers may be more easily satisfied with improved customer service and some personal attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11564" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T23:18:32.910" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6292" CreationDate="2014-07-15T18:03:18.160" Score="1" Body="&#xA;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &#xA;    What I myself prefer is clicking the AutoFilter button to show the dropdown menu buttons on all of the columns. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FNNdQ.png&quot; alt=&quot;Column filter menus are displayed.&quot;&gt; &lt;br&gt;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &#xA;     Assuming you have &quot;Start&quot; and &quot;Finish&quot; columns, you can press the little button on each column to set yourself the start and end dates. &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gWLq5.png&quot; alt=&quot;Here is the drop-down menu expanded.&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&#xA;     If you want something really specific, like a range of start dates, click &quot;Custom...&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;    &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hKsnh.png&quot; alt=&quot;You can choose a number of conditional options.&quot;&gt;  &lt;br&gt;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&#xA;     My absolute favorite thing to do is to click &quot;Save...&quot; in the custom filter window, and save all of my filters on at that moment to the main filters drop-down menu. What that lets me do is apply the filter while I'm in Calendar view, to print a specific set of tasks in a format that looks great. However, Calendar doesn't seem to always behave properly. &#xA;&lt;br&gt; &#xA;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&#xA;Anyway, I hope this helps your organizational endeavors!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11574" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T18:03:18.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11561" CreationDate="2014-07-16T07:49:37.303" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're not married to your processes and your tools, I would take a step back and ask why it is that you need to use MS Project for this.  Its not the right tool, and although you may get away with macros and whatnot, I'd reevaluate first the need to manage this in MS Office and then of course the need to manage resources in a tool like this.  Is it for billing purposes?  e.g. Client A charges more than Client B and therefore we need to track that, etc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would instead encourage you to create something more visual, like a whiteboard with people's names on it and where they will be.  Sometimes the easiest solution to such a problem is a low-tech solution -- always go for the simplest solution when managing these types of problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it sounds like the way you manage projects requires a more Agile approach.  Here is a great resource that talks a bit more about this:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jrothman.com/blog/mpd/2011/04/cards-stickies-whiteboards-or-tools.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.jrothman.com/blog/mpd/2011/04/cards-stickies-whiteboards-or-tools.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the work is done for each client, you can then record the actual work performed for billing purposes and track this on a rolling basis. (This should satisfy your &quot;PMO tells a resource to work at clients A, B and C during a certain time&quot; requirement.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6725" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T07:49:37.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11961" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-16T09:40:16.643" Score="5" ViewCount="1829" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently been working and immersing myself in the Agile space. Among other things, I have been inspired by the promise it holds for empowering a team and maximizing efficiency. However, I have had one niggling concern which I am yet to find a concrete solution for: reward schemes and incetivisation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is hardly debatable that one of the core focuses of Agile is &quot;The Team&quot;. Cross-functional teams get together and commit to completing units of work as a team. This often involves testers helping developers and vice versa. Individual lines and roles are blurred in favour of maximising team cohesion. While the team is encouraged to self manage, realistically they cannot be responsible for ultimate reward and incentivisation schemes at an organisational level. Retrospectives are geared towards openness and trust, and are hardly the place to evaluate individual behaviour. However, this system in many ways resembles communism. This is obviously a harsh comparison, yet when I research reward schemes, for individuals who spend long durations in their Scrum/Kanban team, the focus is always team performance and thus comparing two developers from different teams is somewhat futile. While there absolutely is value in moving away from traditional, bureaucratic appraisal methods, I still feel anxious at the prospect of people not being rewarded on an individual basis too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus my question is this: are individual reward systems completely contradictory to agile philosophies (is Agile literally ushering in a completely new paradigm in this respect?) and if not, how does one incorporate individual reward systems into an Agile landscape without completely sacrificing team cohesion?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10289" LastEditorUserId="10289" LastEditDate="2014-07-16T12:14:14.603" LastActivityDate="2019-12-09T06:45:48.203" Title="How does one integrate reward systems at an individual level into an Agile landscape, without damaging team cohesion?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9962" CreationDate="2014-07-16T10:37:01.680" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using a new column for specific &quot;Marked Tasks&quot; is a pretty good way ahead, see :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://support.microsoft.com/kb/141654&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://support.microsoft.com/kb/141654&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11582" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T10:37:01.680" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11961" CreationDate="2014-07-16T11:51:01.833" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Q: Are individual reward systems completely contradictory to agile philosophies &#xA;A: Yes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is research showing that bonuses, rewards coupled to some deliveries are actually counter productive in any project, agile or not. (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B004X8WB48&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Get Rid of the Performance Review&quot;&gt;Get Rid of the Performance Review&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just think about what you want. Is it a successful project or maximal utilisation of all resources ? Any goal you set beforehand or by example that is not &quot;delivery of a successful project&quot; distracts from that goal. You want all involved to work towards that one goal. If the project needs a specific skill you don't have in the team do you want to punish the person doing it because he is not working as efficiently as in his comfort szone? Do you want to appraise people for working longer or for working smarter? The moment you award behaviour other than &quot;successful project&quot; you tell people your real priority and ask for gaming the system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an agile environment you want people to work together. Individual rewards makes them work against each other. Sometimes they will have to choose between the good of the project and their bonus. Why do you want a system like that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4331" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T11:51:01.833" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11964" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11967" CreationDate="2014-07-16T12:47:29.527" Score="1" ViewCount="1055" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently working on a high level project plan with all our department's projects and resources allocated to each project (roughly like 10% during 2 months, 20% during 2 weeks, etc.). This is to get a rough idea about (over)allocations and free capacities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our team it's the culture to ALWAYS make an &lt;strong&gt;assignment of any team resources&lt;/strong&gt; for a &lt;strong&gt;MINIMUM of 0.5 person-days (4 hours)&lt;/strong&gt;. Everything below this would be too much micromanagement - and especially on my high level project plan, this would be far too detailed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I basically have is 1 Task for each ongoing Project. Those &quot;Tasks&quot; are defined as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fixed Duration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Constrain: start no earlier than DATE XY (each Project's start date)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Duration: eg. 2 months&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Effort driven: NO&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To these Projects I assign the according resources with a percentage or work amount. Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project A (Duration: 2 Months, fixed duration)&#xA;-- Resource A: 80% (= 4 person-days/week)&#xA;-- Resource B: 20% (= 1 person-days/week)&#xA;-- Resource C: 10% (= 0.5 person-days/week)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this works fine, Project is automatically calculating the work hours and dividing it based on the task's duration time. But this also means that I end up with stuff like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resource A: &lt;em&gt;7.24&lt;/em&gt; hours/day&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resource B: &lt;em&gt;0.82&lt;/em&gt; hours/day&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resource C: &lt;em&gt;0.12&lt;/em&gt; hours/day&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is bascially useless for me, because our People just do &lt;em&gt;not work less than 0.5 person-days on a day&lt;/em&gt;. So I'd rather have &quot;Resource B&quot; work 1 full day or 2 half-days per week, than a little bit every day during a week. I feel like MS Project is pushing me into micromanagement of my resources...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it possible to define this kind of calculation-rule in MS Project? Something like telling Project &quot;do not assign a resource less than 4 hours per day&quot;?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for any inputs and possible solutions! It might be that I am approaching this wrongly :)&#xA;~ Oliver&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11583" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T18:18:35.810" Title="MS-Project: any ideas on how to approach defining a MINIMUM work assignment per day for resources?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;workload&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11936" CreationDate="2014-07-16T13:09:53.390" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, the ScrumMaster should be working collaboratively with the teams to first devise recommendations and experiments based on some patterns being experienced or issues that come up via retrospectives. The whole team should then determine if the new practice should be a part of the teams working agreements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you wanted to switch to 1-week sprints from 2-week sprints, first work with the team to help understand what problems you are trying to solve, what questions need to be answered, how you long your experiment will take place and what is a successful outcome. Once the experiment time box has closed, the team should determine if this should be part of their working agreements.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can apply these basic principles to any new process but making it a team decision will ensure the ideas stick!   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1159" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T13:09:53.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11961" CreationDate="2014-07-16T13:41:31.620" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree individual performances should be frowned upon for this contradicts the &quot;whole team mentality.&quot; However, why not try introducing some whole team activities that are both fun and help keep team activities fresh. Here are couple things I have done with my teams in the past that have worked well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;New team names every sprint - we would brainstorm new team names every 2 weeks and the team would then vote on them. The names would always be a derivative of a person on the teams first or last name. For example, incorporating someone with the last name Smith, could equate to Fresh Prince of Bel Air (for Will Smith). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make working agreements memes - Create memes from one of the many meme generators out there and post them around your team area. It keeps things light and adds some humor to the day. For example, we had a Confucius meme that read: &quot;Confucius say all user stories have acceptance criteria.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Play Together / Have Team Outings - regular team outings at least once a quarter are great to keep things fun and get to know each other in a different way. For example, we would regularly play mini-golf as a team and bragging rights for the winners. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Give Thanks - In your retrospectives, hold the last agenda item before you break as an opportunity to say thanks to someone who helped you out or was responsive or in some other way awesome. It is great way to end the meeting on a high note and everyone appreciates being recognized publicly.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1159" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T13:41:31.620" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11964" CreationDate="2014-07-16T18:18:35.810" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not be terribly concerned about the math Project is doing.  Project has to spread the work per hour based upon the assignment unit.  I would present the information to your users on a weekly basis.  If they work 8 hours in one day, record it as such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only other option is to manually edit the spread of the work in the Task Usage view.  Enter the 4 hours of work on a specific day - but it sounds like too much detail for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T18:18:35.810" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11961" CreationDate="2014-07-17T07:08:56.697" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Individual rewards and incentives rarely work the way that was intended. Especially not in an agile team. As the old saw goes &quot;Tell me how you'll measure me and I'll show you how I'll behave.&quot; As Spock would put it &quot;The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But perhaps more importantly, consider &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; you want to reward individuals and what you would reward them with. Mostly, we reward people to motivate them to do better. Turns out, financial incentives don't work for this. If you really want to motivate individuals and teams, appeal to their sense of autonomy, mastery and purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a read of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Drive-Surprising-Truth-About-Motivates/dp/184767769X&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Drive&quot; by Dan Pink&lt;/a&gt;. Fascinating read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7835" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T07:08:56.697" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11961" CreationDate="2014-07-17T07:37:53.640" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with other answerers in that individual incentivization is not compatible with agile. A few more thoughts to add:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It may be just me, but (during 15+ years in the industry) I have never seen a working approach to measure the real life performance of an individual developer / tester, in a way that is a) objective and b) can't be gamed. Team performance OTOH can be measured by delivered product increments and customer satisfaction.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agile approaches attempt to motivate people &lt;em&gt;internally&lt;/em&gt;, by giving them control, autonomy and purpose, and offering them worthy challenges to overcome together. Financial incentives are &lt;em&gt;external&lt;/em&gt;, and it is shown by research that external incentives tend to kill internal incentives. So in general one should be very careful in how to apply external incentives. (No wonder Agile is focusing on the internal incentives :-)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Instead of trying to invent &quot;objective&quot; metrics / measures of one's performance, it may actually be better to rely on the subjective experiences of team members themselves, as they know each other much better than any manager or HR personnel. This of course can work only if they are assured that they are free to tell what they think / feel, without negative consequences. (I.e. if praising another team member for her contribution means I get less bonus myself, not many will do that, rather the contrary... which can swiftly kill a team.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus one working approach may be to share the external incentives across the team equally, but tie the individual performance to internal incentives only, and in a way that helps the team bond.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. have them evaluate their own and their peers' performance every now and then in an informal way, such as giving praises to each other at the end of a sprint or thanking others for their valuable help. This may even take a written form, e.g. if you write down all such praises and list them at the end of a project / release on a &quot;certificate&quot; handed to each team member, I am pretty sure they will love it and hold it dearly for the rest of their lives!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10244" LastEditorUserId="10244" LastEditDate="2014-07-17T14:31:43.097" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T14:31:43.097" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11961" CreationDate="2014-07-17T11:25:16.930" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think rewarding Individuals is against the agile philosophy/mindset.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as the individuals being rewarded have demonstrated great &quot;attitude&quot; above all else, I think it'll actually help to further the cause of agile - which in IMO, is to focus on the desired &lt;em&gt;Outcome&lt;/em&gt; rather than generating just more &lt;em&gt;Output&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think its also important to celebrate the chosen individual's contribution - in a manner that helps to remind everyone else on the team as to what the agile mindset is all about. One way to do this, is to specifically mention a list of the individual's achievements that demonstrate good leadership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10379" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T11:25:16.930" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11773" CreationDate="2014-07-17T13:06:15.530" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you have defined the task as &quot;Effort driven&quot;? I think with that setting enabled, Project should calculate it based on the max. availability to finish the task as quick as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11583" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T13:06:15.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11949" CreationDate="2014-07-17T15:37:26.427" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd highly recommend James Shore's 'Art of Agile Development' for kickstarting the migration to an agile culture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Baked within the practices suggested in the book are concepts such as 'less is more' along with a good definition of 'success' (intersection of technical, personal and organizational success) and how to achieve it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10379" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T15:37:26.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11975" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-17T23:26:57.023" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the ITIL world, maintenance activities are all tasks and practices described as part of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Technology_Infrastructure_Library#Service_operation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Service Operation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such activities may have slightly different names depending on the market or company, such like Ops (Operations), maintenance, support, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acronymfinder.com/Run-the-Bank-(RTB).html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;RTB&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;RTB (Run the Bank) is more used on the Financial sector, enclosing all support to users and platform maintenance once a new application is live. It appears in contrast to CTB (Change the Bank) which is used for the development stage of the application (i.e. before going live).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2014-07-17T23:39:20.147" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T23:39:20.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11976" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-17T23:26:57.023" Score="0" Body="Questions related to the activities carried after a project, product or application is delivered." OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2014-07-17T23:39:20.147" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T23:39:20.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11936" CreationDate="2014-07-18T08:26:20.920" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As part of Scrum the improvements/changes to scrum process are made as part of Scrum Retrospective which is a team exercise. Scrum guide says that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Sprint Retrospective is an opportunity for the Scrum Team to inspect itself and create a plan for improvements to be enacted during the next Sprint.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Role of the Scrum Master in the retrospective is to facilitate and teach the scrum team how to conduct the retrospective and to understand its purpose. Scrum guide states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;The Scrum Master ensures that the event takes place and that attendants understand its purpose. The Scrum Master teaches all to keep it within the time-box. The Scrum Master participates as a peer team member in the meeting from the accountability over the Scrum process.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the improvements in the scrum process is a collective exercise as scrum guide states the following:&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;By the end of the Sprint Retrospective, the Scrum Team should have identified improvements that it will implement in the next Sprint.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the teams which are new to scrum should start with &lt;strong&gt;SU&lt;/strong&gt; level of Sprint retrospective which includes &lt;strong&gt;three questions&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;1. What went well with this sprint?&#xA;2. What could be improved ?&#xA;3. What will we commit to in the next sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum team should collectively create &lt;strong&gt;Retrospective Improvement Backlog&lt;/strong&gt; , order it and select from it each sprint one or two things that they'll work on improving in the next sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprint Retrospective is teams commitment to quality and continuous improvement which can never happen if development team members don't commit to these decisions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11563" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T08:26:20.920" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11980" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11984" CreationDate="2014-07-18T14:01:59.540" Score="3" ViewCount="304" Body="&lt;p&gt;In every complex project, we use a lot of external dependencies and tooling. Of course, they have bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks to Github and the like, it is very easy to fork a project and track issues in libraries dependencies so that's not the scope of this question.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The tooling however, can me much more complex to inspect, debug, and submit. Let's restrict here to the Open Source tooling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the tool is only used for development and testing purposes, the priority for fixing these annoying bugs is quite low. That's why often, we don't even report the issue as soon as someone found a workaround.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is bad. We should keep track of the tooling issues as it explain a lot about the life of the project and having them somewhere show everyone that we &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; fix it, and it &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; be some value in these fixes. But in the other hand we can't put these issues in the same bucket that the project because they are unrelated and will pollute our issue tracker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Happiness of my team is one of my top priority, and I cry inside when I see them having to document complex rituals for random situations involving specific conditions met once a week or less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you handle the issues related to your tooling ? How do you prioritize these bugs ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that my question is quite vague, but I hope it's clear anyway. I will be happy to improve it if you see some flows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11606" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2014-07-18T16:56:05.340" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T16:06:36.793" Title="How to track and manage tooling issues?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11465" CreationDate="2014-07-18T17:58:43.967" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like root cause is less the implementation of the software (or even the features in it) and more unthinking application of the default processes your software ships with. I would say you have two very different efforts that are being co-mingled - a software configuration process (resell, install, configure) and a business process re-engineering effort. I would suspect that many companies looking for BPM software are also looking for some process re-engineering. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might consider trying to track and split the two separately, at least internally. One potential methodology that might help is to think of the two in terms of the Cynefin framework (here's a good description &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumsense.com/blog/cynefin-framework&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scrumsense.com/blog/cynefin-framework&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see the two efforts like this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A) Select, install, config the appropriate BPM SW - this is a complicated problem, and I would expect the one you already have decent processes for&#xA;Sense - get the initial requirements &#xA;Analyse - understand the appropriate config and customization based on what you know&#xA;Respond - figure out how actually implement&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B) Work with the company to determine which processes they clearly wish to keep static and which have new (potentially implicit) requirements - this is a complex problem, and calls for a methodology more along the lines of a Scrum, Lean, or Kanban approach&#xA;Probe - quickly model the new / changing processes in a working instance&#xA;Sense - review (a la sprint review) with the client, get stakeholder feedback on what worked and what didn't&#xA;Respond - Amplify the positive signals (this worked, do more things like this, in the way you did them last sprint) and dampen the negative signals &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can get clients to agree to model their contracts with you on this framework, so much the better; if not it is still an approach that allows you to clearly delineate where you can and cannot predict work and resourcing. At the very least you can have the conversation about your 'a colossal rate of failure when estimating time and other resources' in the context of a new framework, rather than in a witchhunt. Sounds very challenging - good luck! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11612" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T17:58:43.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11982" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11992" CreationDate="2014-07-18T18:03:56.430" Score="11" ViewCount="905" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of a (reasonably) rigorous study done on benefits and drawbacks of different sprint lengths? I certainly have read (and have my own) anecdotal experience, but am curious to know if anything more quantitative exists - thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11612" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T23:15:05.647" Title="Scrum Sprint Length Study?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5876" CreationDate="2014-07-18T20:57:54.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is thicket and as the PM you have the responsibility to shepherd your project through the maze.  Some firms establish &quot;clean rooms&quot; to insulate their developers from the team that reverse engineers the specifications from the binaries (or even source) being reverse engineered.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The community supporting open source software your team &quot;borrows&quot; may get frosted if they find out; many OS licenses (e.g. GPL and LGPL) will &quot;contaminate&quot; the intellectual property rights of your software should you copy that code. So the corporate guidance of applying the license terms upon download is prudent - and definitely not nonsense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;StackExchange founder Jeff Atwood has a great article on the subject entitled &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.codinghorror.com/pick-a-license-any-license/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pick a License, Any License&lt;/a&gt;.  The bottom line from Jeff is pick a license at the start of your project.  Your developers may be operating on the WTFPL which is likely not what corporate wants. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See the Stack OverFlow article &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2625167/is-there-an-open-source-licence-matrix&quot;&gt;Is there an Open Source license matrix?&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8524" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:41:23.897" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T20:57:54.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11980" CreationDate="2014-07-19T18:50:42.657" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Tribal Knowledge is Normal&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We should keep track of the tooling issues as it explain a lot about the life of the project and having them somewhere show everyone that we can fix it, and it will be some value in these fixes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All projects accrue a certain amount of tribal knowledge during the typical project lifecycle. What you seem to be struggling with is how to properly capture that knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Don't Constrain Solutions by Tools at Hand&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of your process difficulty may stem from the belief that all processes can fit into a single tool&amp;mdash;in your case, that would be Trello. While it can be tempting to use a single tracking technique to track &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt;, this can sometimes be counterproductive. Don't be afraid to add additional trackers, knowledge repositories, or tools at need. The important thing is to ensure that everyone on the project knows where essential information is likely to be found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Some Common Solutions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two obvious routes. For external tools, such as open source projects on GitHub, you don't have to patch the tool to contribute effectively. GitHub in particular generally supports repository-specific issues and wikis, and these are a good place to document problems and work-arounds even if you aren't able to provide a permanent solution. Non-GitHub projects have other mechanisms, of course, but contributing upstream is really the best long-term solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For internal tools, or for external projects that don't provide a way to contribute knowledge back to the community, I often find that a project-specific knowledge base or wiki is immensely useful. The tool used for knowledge capture isn't what's important here; what matters is that you are capturing your workflows and work-arounds in a central clearinghouse that is available to the entire project team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Documentation and Automation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To ensure process efficiency and repeatability, tooling and infrastructure should always have a documented process for implementing components. This should be a living document, and if kept up to date will contain those bits of tribal knowledge that are currently going astray.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On software projects, this &quot;living documentation&quot; can often be in the form of provisioning or setup scripts. No one has to spend time &lt;em&gt;reading&lt;/em&gt; the documentation as long as the project team takes the time to keep the scripts up to date. This is essentially a way of continually paying down technical debt, and should probably be a recurring task melded into your Definition of Done for each iteration (if you're agile), or be revisited at critical milestones or checkpoints if you're following a more traditional methodology. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T18:50:42.657" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11982" CreationDate="2014-07-20T07:49:44.773" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The longer sprints are used for more stable situations, and the shorter Sprints are used for more opportunistic or challenging situations. Ken Schwaber explains in the book Software in 30 Days the reasons which can be used to determine the best length of the sprint :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Overhead of shorter sprints&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Greater flexibility and control&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. Realistic Sprint Planning&#xA;b. Feedback Loops&#xA;c. Establishment of velocity stability&#xA;d. Volatile team/technology/market&#xA;e. Risk Control &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Overhead of the Shorter Sprints:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Overhead from project ceremonies can impact how much you can get done because there is less overall time available. &#xA;Two 2-week Sprints cost more than one 30-day Sprint. Twice as many Sprint Planning, Review, and Retrospective Meetings will occur. The Scrum Team will have to formulate a new design twice as often. The natural ramp-up and wind-down from Sprints will happen twice as often.&#xA;The price of shorter Sprints is the increased time needed for planning and review. So we will have less available development time for shorter duration sprints as compared to sprints with larger duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Greater flexibility and control&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;In case your work requires more planning, reassessing, feedbacks we should have sprints of lesser duration. Lesser duration sprints provide more flexibility and control than 30-day Sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. &lt;strong&gt;Realistic Sprint Planning&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;For what length of the sprint team can accurately plan the work. if the team cant forecast the work accurately for a one month sprint than it doesn't make sense to have sprint of this much duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b. &lt;strong&gt;Feedback Loops&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;how often we require feedback from the user.shorter duration sprints will have more frequent feedback loops &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c. &lt;strong&gt;Establishment of velocity stability&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;The best way to forecast the cost of a project is to review past productivity on similar projects, identical technologies, and teams that have worked together for a long time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;d. &lt;strong&gt;Volatile team/technology/market&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Length of the sprint determines how often we can redirect and replan a product. So if market is volatile than we will like to reassess and redirect the product more frequently.&#xA;Shorter duration sprints help teams become more proficient and productive &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e. &lt;strong&gt;Risk Control&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;The limited duration though has some other advantages like limiting risk. The investment in the project is limited to the duration of the sprint and in case market,people or tech are volatile gathering the cost and benefit information is very critical. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But considering the greater predictability, control, and flexibility, most teams adapt shorter Sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11563" LastEditorUserId="11563" LastEditDate="2014-07-20T08:07:40.663" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T08:07:40.663" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11986" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-20T08:51:57.673" Score="5" ViewCount="1216" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question deals with introducing Scrum and/or Kanban in a small organisation (currently 9 employees), but with several more or less distinguished areas of focus, some including only one person. Mainly my concern is with how to keep everyone in the organisation involved in where we are heading as an organisation, but finding a better method than less-than-productive weekly meetings, like we have now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are a community TV channel, with our main sources of income being either paid video/TV productions or projects with grants for a limited time (usually 1-3 years), plus some &quot;general income&quot; such as membership fees and sponsoring. The projects are in that sense partly separate (as they have their own aim, purpose &amp;amp; budget, stated in the project application), but still an integral part of the organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Current organisation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our current organisation looks like this (some staff are involved in several projects/teams):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;1. Executive Director&lt;/em&gt; (100%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;2. Director of Operations&lt;/em&gt; (100%)&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;9. Marketing&lt;/em&gt; (25%, not technically a paid staff role, but at the moment rather an extra responsibility of one of the project leaders below)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;3. Financial administrator&lt;/em&gt; (20%, accounting, human resources)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;4. Programming manager, incl. IT &amp;amp; administration&lt;/em&gt; (100%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Production Team (also includes others when there is demand)&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;5. Producer&lt;/em&gt; (50-60%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;6. Technical manager&lt;/em&gt; (50%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Projects&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project 1&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;7. Project leader&lt;/em&gt; (100%, but up to 25% also with general productions)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;8. Developer&lt;/em&gt; (50%, server management, programming, web - including about 10-15% with development of the organisation's website)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;5. Producer&lt;/em&gt; (40-50%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;3. Financial administrator&lt;/em&gt; (15%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project 2 &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;9. Project leader&lt;/em&gt; (75%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;5. Producer&lt;/em&gt; (about 10%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;3. Financial administrator&lt;/em&gt; (15%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To complicate further, The Director of Operations, Technical Manager &amp;amp; the Project Leader for Project 1 are all available for productions when demand arises. Even the Executive Director at times. And the developer, employed at 50%, is using 25% of his time for the general website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;100% means 40 hours per week. Thus, the Project Leader for Project 1 is working 30-40 hours per week with Project 1, since he's also available for productions that require more people, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Going forward&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My idea is that the Director of Operations (me) will also be the Scrum Master both for the Production Team &amp;amp; Project 1. Project 2 is on its last year and consists mainly of the project leader. For Project 1 Scrum would fit well, particularly for the developer parts, but Kanban would be more fitting for the Production Team, as well as the production parts of Project 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But how then to keep the financial administrator &amp;amp; the programming manager in the loop? The financial administrator will not really benefit from participating in daily scrums &amp;amp; the programming manager is kind of independent, although partly connected to the Production Team. And the producer is divided between the Production Team &amp;amp; the two projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One reason I've been looking into agile project management is to assist the project leader in Project 1, as his experience in planning &amp;amp; leading projects is very limited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for a long post. But do you think some combination of Scrum and Kanban would work for an organisation like this? Some of us have started to use &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.trello.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And how to keep everyone in the organisation in the loop with what's happening in the other teams and for the organisation as a whole? We have started using &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slack.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Slack&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for team communication, but since we're all physically in the same facility, some sort of physical meetings with the entire staff would also be good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11615" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2014-07-21T10:17:28.863" LastActivityDate="2014-12-29T17:58:11.840" Title="Would Scrum &amp; Kanban work for a small organisation with several &quot;projects&quot;" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11986" CreationDate="2014-07-21T06:45:49.420" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In such small teams and intersecting boundaries scrum won't do any good. It would be an overhead instead of help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend using only loose process with direct overwatch. For instance - take kanban for project task management. Take &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aboutscrumban.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;scrumban&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;planning on demand&quot; for project planning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the member of financial side is always the same one he can be separated and involved only in weekly or monthly meetings, if no, then you need to provide more details about his daily duties. &#xA;Project 1 and Project 2 teams should do their own cycles with daily standups and planning on demand meetings. Also it would be good for top level management to have kaizen or restrospective events once a month with teams, to hear about the problems and talk about solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you are physically located in one office you do not need any communication tool except task board, maybe start with a physical one, a thing that can be put on a wall and seen by everybody. A wall of transparency in your company. A wall to remind everybody what is going on and what are the responsibilities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you should start with task board, meeting routines and later iterate to &lt;strong&gt;estimating&lt;/strong&gt; and measuring performance. As basically there is only one way to evaluate if methodologies are helping - try to measure performance and see how it is improving or failing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. Work on some company culture which could teach everyone that process based work is less stressful and beneficial than chaotic environment. And of course this is the quality assurance included. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5562" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T06:45:49.420" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11980" CreationDate="2014-07-21T16:06:36.793" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Create the tickets in the bug tracker of the respective Open Source tooling&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could be wrong, but it sounds like you have a fond hope of fixing these bugs, but may not ever get around to assigning developers to fix them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead please ask the team to spend the small amount of time it takes to create the tickets in the bug tracker of the respective Open Source tooling. Please add steps for reproducing, error messages, screenshots...and so on. If you have found work arounds, please add them as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This helps in the following ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you ever find the time, you can always go back to find these tickets and fix them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the meantime, anyone else is able to fix them as well.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;And you won't be polluting your issue tracker.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T16:06:36.793" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4924" CreationDate="2014-07-21T18:02:03.787" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the two topics go along together quite well. Project (especially Project Server) deals with 'remaining work' and 'completed work'. Project Server integrates with TFS, and these two fields can be custom configured in TFS (some work item templates already contain these) and integrated into Project Server. &#xA;About time tracking, check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tfs-timetracker.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.tfs-timetracker.com&lt;/a&gt;. It is fully integrated into TFS, allows tracking directly against workitems and offers data export as well as automatic filling of the fields mentioned above.&#xA;TFS, Project Server and TFS Timetracker so perfectly integrate into each other so that the developer has great orientation and instant analytics, plus project manager have all times based on rules automatically reported back into MS Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11627" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T18:02:03.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11982" CreationDate="2014-07-21T23:15:05.647" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was pointed to a single study, highlighted here &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/LMaccherone-2152249-impact-agile-quantified-de-mystery-thriller/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/LMaccherone-2152249-impact-agile-quantified-de-mystery-thriller/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still would love to see any others&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11612" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T23:15:05.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11834" CreationDate="2014-07-22T00:15:18.977" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And so now onto my problem, there have been multiple occasions now where we have communicated quite clearly that the proposal is either not feasible or will not deliver the anticipated benefits at various stages throughout the project such as those I mentioned earlier. Unfortunately these don't seem to be making much of an impact as in all instances they have persisted with the project. Obviously this has a host of implications for the organisation, not least in terms of the money spent to deliver a poor quality solution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do not indicate that you provided an alternative. Providing an alternative and a comparison of the original proposal with the alternative could make the difference.  There is some need the proposal is fulfilling.  Without an alternative, what your issues are really saying is that the need will go unfulfilled.  That is not likely to get much traction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, does your organization have a formal risk management process? Is there a tracking system that provides visibility of risks?  You might be able to get your issues more attention by making them risks. In a good organization that should result in getting help to mitigate the risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11631" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T00:15:18.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11635" CreationDate="2014-07-22T08:34:38.250" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The possible changes I can recommend you to implement based on my experience from similar situations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Changing 2-week sprints to 1-week sprints to allow the team to faster handle the feedback from the customer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a user story for bug handling and add bugs as subtasks ( estimate the user story the same way as any other user story )&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If there are A LOT of bug reports, create a separate Kanban board for those reports and set a time limit for each sprint, which can be used to work on Kanban tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your priority is fully on fixing bugs, then switch fully to Kanban&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience it is likely that to the end of a project there would be more bug reports, no matter how perfectly polished is your Scrum process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11637" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T08:34:38.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11635" CreationDate="2014-07-22T11:34:36.153" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would mostly agree with the above, with two small suggestions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) You shouldn't feel terrible about yourself because you need a hardening sprint or two - these should be a great opportunity for retrospective cycles to help you understand ways of getting quality up in each sprint (one thing that leaps to mind is to spend time in future projects more closely replicating the client's system if possible)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) I wouldn't say you need to abandon all of scrum's rituals in order to complete your work - just take the ones that you can continue to use and explain why you're keeping them.&#xA;Example - daily standups are still a good way to ensure that the work the team is taking on is the most valuable - it may be that the tech lead acts more as the product owner and the &quot;sprints&quot; are one day long, but you can keep that cadence and practice intact. I'm sure there are other parts of your scrum implementation that still apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to not confuse, would that I were to go this route I would be explicit that we are taking some good practices and NOT modifying our implementation of Scrum. Explaining how you're thinking about what's good practice and why the combination falls short of Scrum is another place to guide understanding of the framework - never waste a teachable moment!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11612" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T11:34:36.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11883" CreationDate="2014-07-22T12:21:24.103" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have an analogous situation on my team.  Our Scrum Master organizationally is supervisor over the POs on our various scrum teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has created several problems on our team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Our SM was previously a PM for our team's project, and as such he has a hard time stopping himself from micromanaging the PO.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Because the SM is also organizationally the PO's boss, when he decides to steamroll over the PO, it screws up the entire team dynamic because we all know that technically he's her boss, even if within the scrum team we know he's not supposed to have that kind of authority.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The above becomes a major issue when the PO and SM strongly disagree on how to attack a PBI.  As the lead dev on the project, I've no idea which one of them I'm supposed to listen to.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We've tried to address these things in our retrospectives, and the SM pays lip service to taking a step back, but within a sprint or two he's back to micromanaging.  Because of his position within the company, there's just not much we can do about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on all that, my personal experience is that I really do believe that &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; you're going to have the SM and PO roles be assigned to different people, the SM role needs to be someone with no organizational authority over the team, but who is still in the proper position to remove impediments.  Our situation has created a dynamic where we have essentially two POs - one who is PO so long as the SM agrees with her, otherwise the SM becomes de facto PO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11640" LastEditorUserId="11640" LastEditDate="2014-07-22T13:33:04.113" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T13:33:04.113" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4570" CreationDate="2014-07-22T13:03:49.103" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Taking minutes is important for virtually any meeting. Despite the importance of this task, it is not easy especially if you are not well prepared for it. Fortunately, with the following tips, anyone can effectively take minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Prepare For the Meeting&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first step to taking minutes effectively is by preparing for the meeting. You need to have all the relevant tools that you need before the meeting kicks off. Other than gathering information about the meeting, you should invest in a template that can help you in taking minutes. You can get a nice meeting minutes template for this task REALLY from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dotxes.com/topics/minutes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;online sources like Dotxes&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Prepare a Seating Chart&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When taking minutes, you will need to refer to people as you indicate whatever issues that they raised. Preparing a seating chart will help you identify all the speakers easily so that you can reference them in the minutes instead of repeatedly asking for their names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Take Down Essential Information&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be good at taking minutes, do not attempt to illustrate the entire conversation as you hear it. On the contrary, take down only the important points in a short and concise manner. Remember to ask for clarification of any issues that you may not have grasped well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Always Proof the Minutes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just like any other write-up, you must always proof your minutes after the meeting to ensure that you have captured everything correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With these tips, taking minutes is simplified, and you also get to produce an outstanding piece of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11624" LastEditorUserId="11624" LastEditDate="2014-07-22T13:15:56.827" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T13:15:56.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11986" CreationDate="2014-07-22T23:06:21.343" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[D]o you think some combination of Scrum and Kanban would work for an organisation like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possibly, but not the way you're thinking of implementing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[H]ow to keep everyone in the organisation in the loop with what's happening in the other teams and for the organisation as a whole?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a communications plan, or leverage your framework ceremonies such as Sprint Reviews. Don't bog people down in details they don't need or want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Rethink Your Problem&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the key principles of agile development is that most team ceremonies only include those with &quot;skin in the game.&quot; Stakeholders are not allowed to actively participate in daily stand-ups, and teams are kept to the smallest cross-functional unit that can do the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, whatever you're trying to do isn't Scrum or Kanban. What you seem to be missing is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An effective &lt;em&gt;communications plan&lt;/em&gt; for radiating project information to stakeholders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A designated person (perhaps the &quot;project leader&quot;) to manage &lt;em&gt;information artifacts&lt;/em&gt; and execute the communications plan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An acceptance that as a company grows, there may be people who you think &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; care about related or unrelated projects, but who very possibly have zero interest. Such people shouldn't be force-fed extraneous information unless you're prepared to have the feeding process slow down your entire organization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum it all up: trim the fat. Your project participation should be lean, but with very tight feedback loops from actual customers or from a Product Owner that represents them. Everything else probably belongs in a &quot;management silver bullet&quot; book, of which you have an infinite number to choose from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T23:06:21.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12004" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12019" CreationDate="2014-07-24T15:45:12.993" Score="13" ViewCount="1411" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for a tactful way to help a team member improve their communication skills to be more concise and direct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to introduce a daily standup into a startup team of 3, which will soon be growing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The challenge is that one of our team members has a tremendous amount of difficulty in being concise, and getting to the point. As soon as he begins his update, he goes off on wild tangents outlining whatever he's been thinking about recently, whether or not his thoughts or well formed yet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This leads to meetings that take up to 45 minutes, which of course makes daily meetings unsustainable. We often don't do them, which I believe is due to the perception that they'll always take way too long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He is aware of the issue, and acknowledges it when asked to &quot;get to the point&quot;, but doesn't seem to be making adjustments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although the hierarchy is very flat, he is by title and ownership the most senior team member. Both of the other team mates take turns reminding him, so I'm afraid that eventually he will begin to feel undermined, defensive or embattled. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, this is a rather serious issue, as it also spills into meetings we have with external parties. Frankly, it's also just annoying, and unbecoming of a leader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like input on how to address this in a tactful manner so that our scrum meetings are more efficient and productive, and hopefully work with him to find a polite cue which we can give to remind him to be direct and concise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5948" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-07-27T22:39:55.243" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T14:38:08.117" Title="How to properly handle a team mate who rambles during daily standup and other meetings?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12004" CreationDate="2014-07-24T15:51:25.407" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You do need to make him aware of the impact of his pontification, and it sounds like he has some awareness now.  However, it will not cure the issue.  It is a well constructed behavior pattern he has developed over his life time and is likely consistent with his personality make-up and a ton of social engineering, i.e., he has been rewarded in his past for this behavior.  He will die pontificating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your solution is meeting facilitation.  You have a weak facilitator (if that's you, no offense).  Facilitation requires staying on the meeting plan and controlling those who are talking.  If the topic strays, the facilitator interrupts; if the time it is taking to cover a topic strays from plan, the facilitator interrupts.  It can appear rude, but that's a narrow interpretation.  It is part of a properly managed meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T15:51:25.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12004" CreationDate="2014-07-24T21:23:51.673" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What about having the Scrum Master commence the meeting by reminding the team with the goals and flow of the daily stand up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something that goes along the lines of the following: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Goals&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Helps setting the context/scope for the coming day's work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Helps getting everyone up to date and to identify potential roadblocks ahead&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Flow&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each team member answer the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What did you do yesterday?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What will you do today?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any impediments in your way?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it would help if the team prepared a written version of the meeting content before starting. They take like 5 mins before the meeting,and each one draft the answers to the 3 questions quickly on a piece of paper or something. I believe this will help them sort out their thoughts and keep it short and to the point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3263" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T21:23:51.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12004" CreationDate="2014-07-24T22:02:04.210" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I faced with a similar situation sometime back with my team.In my case it was not just one team member but many of us talking about accomplishments/impediments in great detail ( and occasional jokes :) ).And most of the time the meetings went up to 30 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did the following&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Explained to the team that &lt;strong&gt;&quot;We&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; are taking too long than we should and pointed out the number of hours &lt;strong&gt;we are collectively&lt;/strong&gt; wasting as a result.(It's important to point out that all of us are wasting time &amp;amp; to understand the problem/business impact)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Expected time to take for a meeting = 15 Minutes   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Extra time we were taking = (30 - 15) Minutes  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time waste for a Month (10 Member team)= 50 Person hours&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Discussed with the team how long they feel we should take (Make your suggestions as well) and ask for a volunteer to keep track of an alarm&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each Member will start giving their update with emphasis on &lt;strong&gt;what they did the day before, what they are going to do today &amp;amp; any Blockers?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stop!&lt;/strong&gt; exactly when the agreed upon time(15 minutes in my case) finish. Do this very strictly.Chances are for the first 2-3 days not all members can give the update but believe me they will improve &amp;amp; you might be able to finish a little sooner as the team get used to this (in my experience)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Few things you might want to address&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Since some team members will be left out during first few days you need to meet them offline and just have a chat if they have any impediments(Nothing more!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Start the update with different people on different days so that the same people don't get the chance every time (until team achieve the perfect time) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addition: I need to give credits to my SCM trainer Pete Deemer for above &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10437" LastEditorUserId="10437" LastEditDate="2014-07-27T00:50:21.733" LastActivityDate="2014-07-27T00:50:21.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12009" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12010" CreationDate="2014-07-25T10:45:41.373" Score="5" ViewCount="828" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a big fan of story points to gather relative estimates for stories. During task breakdowns I take a back seat answering any additional questions that might come up, however I have never seen the need for an additional estimation for tasks in hours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the team have already provided estimates for the story as a whole in story points, what are the benefits of the team providing estimates for tasks in hours during the task breakdown?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4349" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T22:01:16.953" Title="What are the benefits of estimating hours during the task breakdown?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12009" CreationDate="2014-07-25T11:45:59.920" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Story points and ideal hours serve completely different purposes and are not comparable in any way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Story Points&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are part of a &lt;em&gt;double&lt;/em&gt; estimate. The &lt;em&gt;capacity&lt;/em&gt; of a sprint is estimated in points (&lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;How many stories of small size can we fit in these two weeks?&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;), and the stories are also estimated in points (&lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;How does this story compare to this small one?&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Together, these two estimates are used to determine how many stories can be fit in the next iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Ideal Hours&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are part of a &lt;em&gt;single&lt;/em&gt; estimate. They estimate the amount of ideal hours &lt;em&gt;left&lt;/em&gt; until the task is completed. Since this value changes constantly, these are estimates that are updated as work progresses and become more accurate in time. They are clearly 100% accurate when there's no work left and they are zero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are used to monitor the progress of a sprint with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2013/august/burn-down-chart-%E2%80%93-an-effective-planning-and-tracki.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sprint burndown chart&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6300" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T11:45:59.920" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3225" CreationDate="2014-07-25T13:16:39.780" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A nice software alternative to the whiteboard and post its is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eylean.com/Features/ProjectManagement?utm_source=website&amp;amp;utm_medium=text&amp;amp;utm_campaign=DMaction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Eylean&lt;/a&gt;. We have been using it for a while and quite enjoy it. The task board is very traditional and simple, but the additional features, integrations and reports is where the tool is great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10336" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T13:16:39.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11834" CreationDate="2014-07-25T13:19:56.270" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be careful that you are not &quot;crying wolf&quot; too. Sometimes there will be products / development tasks that are literally impossible to provide within any reasonable timescale, but it's rarely the case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure that you clearly distinguish the &quot;This will not work&quot; from the &quot;It could work but will be difficult and we don't have expertise in the area&quot;. &#xA;Developers, (disclaimer: I am one), will often say something can't be done if it is difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're recommending that they scrap 75% of plans then they have probably stopped listening because your department always complains. Maybe even something as simple as a traffic light coloured headline from your team could work to highlight this sort of &quot;impossible / tricky / fine&quot; concept. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="509" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T13:19:56.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11853" CreationDate="2014-07-25T17:40:51.640" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found Ken Rubin's Keynote at this year's Global Scrum Gathering in New Orleans to be a useful and thought-provoking presentation on scrum at scale&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcePFHD_p70&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcePFHD_p70&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His presentation is available here &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.innolution.com/uploads/presentations/Economically-Sensible-Scrum-2014-Scrum-Gathering-Ken-Rubin-Innolution.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.innolution.com/uploads/presentations/Economically-Sensible-Scrum-2014-Scrum-Gathering-Ken-Rubin-Innolution.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'd recommend listening to him while you follow along with the deck - he has a lot of useful things to say that are not sufficiently captured in his slides&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11612" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T17:40:51.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12004" CreationDate="2014-07-26T15:11:32.850" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't be tactful, be &lt;em&gt;clear&lt;/em&gt;. The Scrum Master is responsible for refereeing the daily stand-up, and a referee's calls need to be unambiguous.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If being clear is still insufficient, the team needs to adapt its process. That means the organization, the team, and the Scrum Master all need to take ownership of the problem, rather than allowing a single individual to derail your process.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Failing that, the problem team member needs to be removed. Managing team composition is part of the inspect-and-adapt process, too.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Stop Doing the Same Thing and Expecting Different Results&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say that this person already knows there's an issue, so &quot;being tactful&quot; about addressing the issue serves no useful purpose. The real issue is that you keep expecting the &lt;em&gt;team member&lt;/em&gt; to change, rather than adapting your process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have an infinite number of choices for adapting your process, and are only limited by your team's creativity and commitment to the Scrum framework. Some examples include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Stop asking open-ended questions of this person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask him which &lt;strong&gt;user stories&lt;/strong&gt; he worked on &lt;em&gt;yesterday&lt;/em&gt;, rather than task-level details about what he did with each story. The detailed information should be available to other team members through transparent means such as source control or the team kanban if anyone needs that level of detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then ask whether he has any dependencies on other stories &lt;em&gt;today&lt;/em&gt;, and if there's any help he needs to complete work he's attempting to complete &lt;em&gt;today&lt;/em&gt;. Keep the scope of the questions narrow and concrete.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Change the format of your stand-up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The stand-up isn't for &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; benefit. It's a coordination and dependency-planning meeting for the whole team. Consider having team members bring in an index card listing tasks, dependencies, and blockers &lt;em&gt;for the current day&lt;/em&gt;, and don't open up the floor for anything that isn't on a single side of one index card.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Vote the team member off the island.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes a given person isn't a good fit for a team. The &lt;em&gt;reason&lt;/em&gt; the person is a poor fit doesn't matter. If someone is toxic to the team, or if adapting the team's process would put an &lt;em&gt;unreasonable&lt;/em&gt; burden on the rest of the team, then the only responsible thing is for the &lt;em&gt;whole team&lt;/em&gt; to recommend that line management remove or replace the problem team member.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-07-26T15:11:32.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12004" CreationDate="2014-07-28T07:34:47.463" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't specifically mention scrum in your question but I note you have used the scrum tag, so I've written my response accordingly. Two main things come to mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In scrum, there are only three roles: Scrum Master, Product Owner, Development Team. On the development team, everyone is considered a developer irrespective of their specialisation. They are a group of peers and there is no concept of 'senior' or 'leader'. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, the team can, and should, remind the individual that they should be sharing only three items: What they did yesterday, what they're doing today and any impediments. Anything that requires longer can be held after the daily scrum and involve only those people that need to attend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The daily scrum is a time-boxed meeting. Part of the scrum master's role is to ensure that the timebox is adhered to. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, stop the meeting at 15 minutes and resume work. This may be difficult for a few days but it forms good behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to your actual question. How do you tactfully get the individual to follow these rules? Here's one approach you could try: Ask the individual to ensure that the daily scrum is operated within the rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7835" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T07:34:47.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12022" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12026" CreationDate="2014-07-28T15:25:21.047" Score="1" ViewCount="920" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Background:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work for a small, 7-person Analytics/Consulting company. Originally, I was taken on to be a data analyst, but the needs of the company changed, and the principle requested I take up the role of Release Manager and QA tester. Note that my degree is in economics, not software. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;My Problem&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest difficulty I've had stepping into this role is managing our projects. We currently do not use a bug tracker, we do not use a project management tool, and we are struggling to find an efficient way to produce release notes and communicate todos. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have over 150 git repositories and at any given time, 50 are being developed on. On average, each project has 3 dependencies, each with a specific development or release version. I find this to be a bit overwhelming, and our current way of communicating is to talk or print notes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't seem efficient or scalable. A further problem is that the principle is vehemently against using a bug tracker since we're small. I find that troublesome because it means we have no audit trail, and it makes keeping track of progress difficult for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Going Forward&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going forward, there are two big questions I'm trying to grapple with:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How should I actually go about 'managing' our projects?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What technologies and concepts should I be familiarizing myself with to succeed in this role? Currently, I am somewhat familiar with the following tools:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ant&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Artifactory&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Git&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grunt&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jenkins&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maven&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11681" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T12:33:40.843" Title="'Promoted' to Release Manager - Now What?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12022" CreationDate="2014-07-28T20:42:27.790" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Forget about PM tools for now. I think you need to triage this situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At least version control seems somewhat in place (puh!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get a SIMPLE bug/feature tracker. I would start with a hosted one. Look for stuff like&#xA;JIRA, Bugzilla, etc. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Merge Bug/feature tracker with your version control (start with simple commit comments referencing to the issue number)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start getting data on cycle and lead time to improve the situation later on&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8057" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T20:42:27.790" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12024" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-29T00:18:28.787" Score="1" ViewCount="146" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been in web development field for past 8 years , and i got myself a management role as a Project Manager several months back. Most of the time i'm dealing with open source web technology ( LAMP )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;My Problem&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently i got myself a job offer which is a good paid job.&#xA;The things that trouble me is , the new employer require me to write project specification in .NET which i do not know how at the moment. In my previous company , system analysis are the one that write all the specification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Thoughts&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since i'm not very good in .NET i will for sure pick up the language in near future so that i can communicate well with the project team. But then at the moment , it's a good idea to arrange a meeting with the project team especially the team leader to go through the project specification that my upper management require me to write? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should i only arrange a meeting with Team Leader to go through specification? OR the whole team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8482" LastEditorUserId="8482" LastEditDate="2014-07-30T02:04:50.777" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T02:04:50.777" Title="Project Manager - Writing Project Specification" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12022" CreationDate="2014-07-29T01:33:07.623" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your question&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Q1: How should I actually go about 'managing' our projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMHO, there are few key concerns for anyone in a &lt;strong&gt;Release Management Role&lt;/strong&gt;. Maybe you already have some of this under control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are we delivering the right product ( Did we get the requirements&#xA;correct ) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a method the team uses to effectively capture &amp;amp; log requirements (Need finding sessions, detailed user stories)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you facilitate a change requests (Cause they do come)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Identify a &lt;strong&gt;single point of approval&lt;/strong&gt; for scope changes &amp;amp; anything related to scope within your organisation for each project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Transparent communication related to all scope changes   &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are we delivering the product right ( Low defect density, Without surprises, on time)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Q2: What technologies and concepts should I be familiarising myself with to succeed in this role? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is where most teams spend most effort. Based on my experience I'm going to share a list of primary concepts you should be familiar with.Looking at your list of tools I assume your product is mainly Java. I will try not to talk about a specific tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Release planning (A list of what will be done for a given period of&#xA;time, Estimations, The team responsible for delivery) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Version Control (Your teams seems to use Git &amp;amp; seems to have it in place)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Code Review ( Static code analysis; review the code using a tool so code reviews are more productive, Coding guidelines, Peer review,Lead Review)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quality Assurance (Defect Tracking is only one part of QA, You need to be familiar with writing Test Cases, Unit Testing,Acceptance Testing, Mechanism to open/close QA Tickets with details on how to reproduce them a.k.a bug tracking,Test Automation, Test Coverage,Dedicated QA Environments)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Retrospectives &amp;amp; Reviews ( So the team can learn &amp;amp; improve with each iteration)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Continuos Integration (Very Important aspect of agile delivery but you need to have the test cases,unit tests,acceptance tests,version control[which you have] in place before you implement CI)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3.Are we within budget ? &#xA;    In my opinion scope creep is the primary factor that makes a project over budget&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to above any agile team should have &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A transparent communication model (&lt;strong&gt;Daily standup&lt;/strong&gt; combined with with Emails, Collaboration Tools; what suites your team)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Frequent reports/status updates on the current direction of project to project stakeholders &amp;amp; team alike&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Quick Addition&lt;/strong&gt; :&#xA;  If the team is reluctant to follow something that is widely accepted as a best practice (Usually they have valid points), you can request them to use it for few sprints and see if it makes sense.If it doesn't by all means try to find out why and improve.The fact that the change is temporary makes it more tolerant for members in disagreement. I was thinking you can use the same to encourage your team members to adopt defect tracking.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And good luck! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10437" LastEditorUserId="10437" LastEditDate="2014-07-30T11:22:52.690" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T11:22:52.690" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12027" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12028" CreationDate="2014-07-29T08:48:23.323" Score="0" ViewCount="114" Body="&lt;p&gt;How Test Driven Development can pretend to be Agile? To do Test Driven Development you need to write your test first. Then you need to know your methods, your business and your scenario before coding. Actually you need a full business and technical analyze of your software. You are definitively not agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And what about refactoring? How wan I refactor my tests or unit tests before my code. Each time I want to refactor or change something in my code I need to adapt first my tests. It's not really Agile. It's too heavy to be Agile. Eventually you can say than with testing you are Agile but you are even more Agile without testing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3687" LastEditorUserId="10244" LastEditDate="2014-07-30T01:55:14.847" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T01:55:14.847" Title="How Test Driven Development can pretend to be Agile?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12027" CreationDate="2014-07-29T08:55:22.537" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Actually you need a full business and technical analyze of your software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your assumption is wrong: actually you only need a &lt;em&gt;good enough&lt;/em&gt; business and technical analysis. That's how you can still be agile (with or without TDD).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At any rate, TDD works on a lower level than the full system. When working in TDD fashion, you are focusing on a single task / story, not the whole system. You need to have a good enough understanding of that single story to get you started. And of course, the story requires &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; context to make sense. But that some context is usually much less than what a full business and technical analyses encompasses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before starting to work on the product backlog, the Product Owner (if necessary) gives the team an overview of the system, the team members ask questions and discuss them to gain a good enough common understanding of the purpose of the system, its users, the way it is (going to be) used etc. Then they start breaking down stories into manageable backlog items and working on the product backlog. Again they discuss each backlog item / story to get a common understanding on what it means, how it fits into the big picture etc. Once the team members get a &lt;em&gt;good enough&lt;/em&gt; understanding of an item to estimate its relative size, they estimate it, then move on to the next PB item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When an item is selected into the next sprint, again the team discusses it in detail enough to understand what tasks need to be done in order to complete the item. This gives them a &lt;em&gt;good enough&lt;/em&gt; understanding to start working on individual tasks in TDD fashion. If, during work, a team member finds an unclear spot or needs more information or clarification, s/he discusses the issue with the PO. This way, the team has the needed information, and only that, just when they need it, to define their test cases and interfaces, then implement them in TDD fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10244" LastEditorUserId="10244" LastEditDate="2014-07-29T09:06:56.337" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T09:06:56.337" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12030" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-29T09:13:44.043" Score="-1" ViewCount="1316" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know if a Scrum Master can be the Product Owner in Scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3687" LastEditorUserId="3687" LastEditDate="2016-10-08T02:30:45.227" LastActivityDate="2016-10-08T02:30:45.227" Title="Can a Scrum Master be the Product Owner in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-10-09T00:45:31.730" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12030" CreationDate="2014-07-29T10:12:20.427" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is possible, but not recommended by most experts I know of, as these two have conflicting roles and responsibilities. PO is focusing on getting the most bang for the bucks, while the role of SM is to help the team get to and maintain its full potential in the long term. This includes shielding the team from external discruptions and ensuring they get only as much work as they can handle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the PO is continually pushing the team to deliver more value, while the SM is pushing back to avoid overloading the team. If these two roles are being handled by the same person, one side usually wins over the other, resulting in imbalance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mike Cohn explains this with a nice historical example in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/avast-combining-the-scrummaster-and-product-owner-matey&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;his blog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question was &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/106966/in-scrum-why-shouldnt-the-product-owner-and-scrummaster-roles-be-combined&quot;&gt;also asked on Programmers.SE&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10244" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:31:53.287" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T10:19:39.067" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12030" CreationDate="2014-07-29T16:47:14.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Normally, it is not recommended. Especially because sometimes, PO is the one introducing disturbance within the sprint with &quot;&lt;em&gt;always-super-urgent&lt;/em&gt;&quot; issues, and SM is supposed to hold them off as long as possible. SM in this case has to use his negotiation skills on the PO and the stakeholders to keep the sprint disturbances as much as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I did come across one scenario where I played the role of Scrum Master and &lt;em&gt;&quot;mirrored&quot;&lt;/em&gt; the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was due to the team being a distributed one (Offshore with 4 hours of time difference), where the development team was on one end together with me, and the PO was on the other end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had several one-on-one talks with the PO to have much better understanding of the product, and also various satellite issues revolving around the product, which helped in answering most of the team's questions when the PO was not directly reachable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11695" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T16:47:14.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12024" CreationDate="2014-07-29T18:37:07.687" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;All else being equal, I would meet first with your supervisor to get his/her view of yur duties and your relationship with the team and its members, particularly the Team Leader (TL).  Next meet with the TL to get insight into the project requirements and team organizational issues. Also you will need to get clarity of your respective roles before involving the rest of the team.  You don't want to upset your TL with a public misinterpretation of your roles or upset your team with a open disagreement with your TL. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most employers would expect you, the Project Manager (PM), to understand the policies, processes, and practices that the development team employs but not necessarily to be proficient in the technology being implemented.  However some employers will expect the PM to additionally perform as a subject matter expert or developer; this can put you in the awkward position of balancing your role as a PM with executing work packages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did you employer hire you knowing your LAMP experience and that this was a .net application? If yes to both, they should be understanding your dilemma and let you be the PM, not a part-time PM and part-time developer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not being experienced with .net may be a blessing in disguise. As a former web developer you may be tempted to roll-up-your-sleeves and pitch into the work - at the cost of doing your job as a PM. At the project schedule slips and/or costs rise, you may become stressed and revert to a role you are more comfortable with: web developer.  Resist this temptation.  Otherwise you will leave the project without a steady hand at the wheel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a project of any magnitude, they will be numerous stakeholders to manage; you will have your hands full keeping them happy - or at least pacified.  For more on stakeholder management, see my answer at &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/11736/working-with-a-single-point-of-contact/11738#11738&quot;&gt;Working with a &amp;quot;single point of contact&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;. In addition, the PM needs to be vigilant for scope creep, resource attrition, team morale, change control, and a thousand other concerns aside from the tech being developed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8524" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T18:49:02.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12034" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12039" CreationDate="2014-07-29T19:57:13.270" Score="0" ViewCount="330" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Scrum team I'm currently working with are finding it harder and harder to work on user stories that have been forecast, so I've been looking into &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.axisagile.com.au/blog/planning-and-metrics/scrum-metrics-and-reporting-measure-what-you-manage/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sprint Interference charts&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I take holiday/sickness etc into consideration? Should I track that separately or just treat it as interference or something else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10424" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T12:08:49.600" Title="Sprint Interference chart and Capacity" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12035" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-30T02:06:30.237" Score="0" ViewCount="163" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a realtively new BA and I am having trouble finding the best way to write out a requirement that has multiple points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are trying to build a dashboard, and I am getting conflicting opinions on how the required elements of the dashboard should be written in the document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example should it be written like the following with everything in bullet form within a single requirement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The dashboard shall display:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Client first and last name&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Client Address&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Current account Market Value&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or break each requirement into its own numbered requirement row with a prefacing sentence&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5.0 The following shall be displayed on the dashboard.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;5.1 Client first and last name&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;5.2 Client Address&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;5.3 Current account Market Value&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;5.4 etc.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or break each requirement into its own number requirement and be repetitive in each requirement&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5.0 The dashboard shall display client first and last name &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;5.1 The dashboard shall display client Address&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;5.2 The dashboard shall display current account Market Value&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;5.3 etc. &lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11699" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T12:20:04.203" Title="How to write a multi-point requirement for a requirements document?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12034" CreationDate="2014-07-30T07:23:34.783" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I get this question quite a lot, usually from newly formed scrum teams. My answer is always the same: Don't worry about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are so many things can interfere with a sprint that it's impossible to calculate. Just let things settle and trust in your velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One final thought: You describe a situation where the scrum team are finding it harder and harder to work on user stories. I'd hope that this is being discussed at the sprint retrospective and changes made, ie: Take in less for the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7835" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T07:23:34.783" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12035" CreationDate="2014-07-30T11:20:33.897" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The point behind numbering items is usually traceability. If you have a numbered item you can reference it easily in test cases and defects. In my opinion, numbering items in requirements specifications is A Good Thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, you need to think a little about whether these are Business Requirments Specifications or Functional Requirements Specifications - The issue here is the detail you need to go down to, with the FRS being at a lower level of detail than the BRS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming this is a FRS I would:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start a section called DashBoard Specification (or similar)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start a subsection called Required Display Fields (or similar)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Either include a table containing all the fields to display or Start sub-sub-sections, one for each display field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you use a tabulated list or document subsections is largely up to you or the style preferred in your organisation, &lt;em&gt;but&lt;/em&gt; you need to ensure that the correct level of detail is present and a table could be good for this as you will likely need to include such things as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Field label&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Label Font&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Data source&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Presentation style (i.e graph, pie chart, text etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...and indeed any number of local field level specifications that are important to you&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The specification should be to a level of detail that a) allows the developers to develop what is required and b) allows the testers to write test cases that prove the requirements are present (and for this, table rows should be numbered as the test cases will likely match a field specification and so needs to reference a specific row in the specification table).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this is also a visual element, you will probably need to have a section including some kind of visual/layout design that has been approved or requested by the users- that way the developers will know how to lay the dashboard out and the testers will know what it is &lt;em&gt;supposed&lt;/em&gt; to look like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T11:20:33.897" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12038" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-30T11:32:55.520" Score="0" ViewCount="7683" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am preparing a business case for a new Project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have been debating the implementation model and the differences between a big-bang implementation, and one that is phased either but business unit, function or geographic location.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my research, the big bang is generally quicker, cheaper but higher risk that a phased implementation.  I understand the reasons and are happy with those but I haven't been able to find anywhere where they discuss just how much quicker the big-bang is compared to the phased roll-out, not even a rule a thumb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of a rule of thumb or have some experience with this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks,&#xA;Brett&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11702" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T11:57:27.377" Title="Big Bang vs Phased Implementation - Impact on Time and Cost" Tags="&lt;business-case&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12034" CreationDate="2014-07-30T12:08:49.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems to be a few different questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. How do I take into account holidays?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With teams I encourage them to use their velocity as one of many things to reference when planning the next sprint, not a hard and fast rule.  Lets say we have a team of 5 members with a velocity of 20, if one of the team are off for the next sprint I would suggest aiming for around 16 points.  Of course, this could be much higher or lower depending on the individual pieces of work, and the team circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. How do I plan for unexpected interruptions?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is where the velocity is really useful.  If you find the team are delivery as much as expected and everyone is happy with the output you don't really need to worry about these interruptions - they are absorbed into your velocity and vaguely consistent between sprints.  On the other hand, if the teams velocity is dropping (or has a lot of variation caused by interruptions), the customer is not happy with the team output, or the team are not happy with the amount of interruptions, it sounds like you need to focus on reducing these interruptions.  Something I have done in the past is create a separate 'task board' where team members make a note of all non sprint related work.  This creates visibility of all their interruptions, giving you empirical evidence to use to focus on the reducing these. Often, a few people are identified as the main 'time bandits', and having a chat with them explaining why they should come to the Scrum Master rather than developers  directly can help with this.  Sickness can be identified here, but not really planned around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6825" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T12:08:49.600" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12040" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-30T12:35:18.573" Score="0" ViewCount="871" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to know the Planned work until the status date to compare with the Earned work done to this date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a value calculated in ARTEMIS , but I'm new in MS Project and I don't find it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like the PV and the EV but in days not in $.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The result is to know the % of work that should have been done at the status date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's the &lt;strong&gt;sum of planned work at status date&lt;/strong&gt; that I'm searching for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11703" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T19:43:47.593" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T19:43:47.593" Title="Planned work until date in MS Project 2007" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2007&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12041" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12043" CreationDate="2014-07-30T11:18:26.583" Score="12" ViewCount="4328" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to choose an agile method of development for my team; we tried Scrum for the first two weeks, but since we have to make a simple universitarian project, we thought that Scrum was more appropriate for bigger projects (prioritization of user stories, deadline sprints, ...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I came across Kanban, but I couldn't find specific explanations about this method: I don't know how the work is modularised at the beginning, what is the work environment (what table should we use, what columns should we put in it), and the most important thing:&#xA;is Kanban officially considered an agile method?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11704" OwnerDisplayName="elmazzun" LastActivityDate="2020-06-10T19:31:10.903" Title="Is Kanban considered an agile methodology?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12041" CreationDate="2014-07-30T13:20:25.600" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the words of my tutor Dr. Strode... Kanban is not an agile methodology I cant remember the exact details why though sorry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Off topic scrum is more ideal for smaller projects it doesn't work well with large projects, and if you were in a large project RAD might be a more better option. But it sounds like you need to hire a good scrum master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10388" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T13:20:25.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12041" CreationDate="2014-07-30T13:22:25.637" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can't compare Scrum and Kanban. Scrum is a project management framework, while Kanban is a scheduling system to support Lean and Just-In-Time operations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban is one of the tools used in Lean. There is a form of Lean for software development called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_software_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lean Software Development&lt;/a&gt;, but even that can not be compared to Scrum. However, there is &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/3754/is-agile-lean-or-are-agile-and-lean-totally-separate-philosophies&quot;&gt;a relationship between Lean Software Development and the other agile practices&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T09:58:45.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12041" CreationDate="2014-07-30T14:10:10.453" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your question, Kanban is not considered an Agile method, it is more related to the Lean methodology. Check out this short guide on starting doing Kaban. It sums up the key points and should make it clearer for you what Kanban entails.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eylean.com/blog/2014/07/5-steps-to-start-doing-kanban/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.eylean.com/blog/2014/07/5-steps-to-start-doing-kanban/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10336" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T14:10:10.453" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12041" CreationDate="2014-07-30T14:23:59.217" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You'll often see the word agile around the context of Kanban which can be confusing, e.g. here it's used in the context of &quot;for agile teams&quot;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.versionone.com/what-is-kanban/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.versionone.com/what-is-kanban/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BUT...You ask &quot;is it an agile methodology?&quot;, and the previous respondents correctly answer the question along the Stack Exchange guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If instead you'd asked &quot;where can I find info about Kanban so I am better placed to make decisions on it&quot; I'd refer you to this series of videos, or even just watch the first video in the series: &lt;a href=&quot;http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/Using-Kanban&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/Using-Kanban&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11705" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T14:23:59.217" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12030" CreationDate="2014-07-30T14:34:05.087" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber's Scrum Guide (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Portals/0/Documents/Scrum%20Guides/Scrum_Guide.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.scrum.org/Portals/0/Documents/Scrum%20Guides/Scrum_Guide.pdf&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The product owner has a specific responsibility to give the team work:&#xA;&quot;No one is allowed to tell the  Development Team to work from a different set of requirements, and the Development Team isn’t allowed to act on what anyone else says.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and the Scrum Master has a specific responsibility to coach and guide (see the sections on the Scrum Master's responsibilities).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd add that even where the team and Product Owner do not operate in any sort of conflict, part of the Scrum Master's responsibilities include coaching the Product Owner. One can self-coach, but it's often more effective to have someone else in that role. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11612" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T14:34:05.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12004" CreationDate="2014-07-30T14:38:08.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You ask for a &lt;em&gt;tactful&lt;/em&gt; way, here's one: Get a large timer/clock, tell everyone that 'for a trial period to help speed up the meetings' each person will get X mins each. Then HAND each person the clock so they 'own' their own time as it were. They can talk until the timer is up then they MUST stop and pass it on (+ next person resets clock before they speak). To be super tactful, talk with the long talking person separately beforehand and say you've had this idea about a clock to help speedup the meetings, but you need his buy-in first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't the &lt;em&gt;best&lt;/em&gt; way (I prefer the other answers) but it is a &lt;em&gt;tactful&lt;/em&gt; way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11705" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T14:38:08.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12041" CreationDate="2014-07-30T15:42:35.343" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me start out by saying that I'm speaking about The Kanban Method as pioneered by David J. Anderson and that I am the Program Director for the KCP program at LeanKanban University.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;David has been on the record numerous times as saying that The Kanban Method is not an Agile software development methodology, but rather a methodology that is an alternative path to agility. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He expounds his views on this in his article &lt;a href=&quot;https://djaa.com/kanban-the-alternative-path-to-agility/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;kanban alternative path agility&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The distinction is important because very often we see organizations adopt a defined Agile method (Scrum, DSDM, XP, etc) but are not agile. They are performing the rituals but have not embraced the values and mindset required to be agile. So in these cases, the adoption of the Agile methodology was intended to be a path to becoming an agile organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Kanban Method is significantly less prescriptive regarding what you have to do from a ritualistic point of view and focuses more on observable improvements in service delivery and experimenting with numerous kinds of practices. As an example, a team may not feel that weekly sprints are helpful and want to move to a continuous flow model. The simplest experiment might be to move to on-demand (or more frequent) queue (sprint backlog) replenishment and see if that made the team more effective in providing services to the customer. If it didn't work, we'd roll back the policy change and try something else to improve the team's capability. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important distinction is that the goal of The Kanban Method is to improve an organization's or team's ability to provide services to downstream partners (customers) in the workflow, using any practice that demonstrates an improvement. So we use The Kanban Method to achieve organizational agility vs seeing it as an Agile method that can be installed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a practicing point of view, you'll often see well-functioning Kanban teams and Scrum teams looking very similar because many of the practices are just good things to do. The Agile Manifesto is as valuable a guide to good behaviour for teams when you are talking about software development. Kanban also works in non-product development situations such as marketing, digital content creation, legal workflows, etc as described in numerous white papers from our &lt;a href=&quot;http://conf.leankanban.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LeanKanban conference series&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you'd like to review my thoughts on the practical differences you'll see between two software development teams practising Kanban and Scrum, please check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://agileramblings.com/2013/03/10/the-difference-between-the-kanban-method-and-scrum/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this blog post&lt;/a&gt; as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1535" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T19:31:10.903" LastActivityDate="2020-06-10T19:31:10.903" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12040" CreationDate="2014-07-30T16:17:24.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Finish Variance.  Open up the FV column.  As you progress your packages, if you have a healthy horizontal logic built in your schedule, you will accrue both favorable and unfavorable variances in your schedule network and the FV will show you in days what that variance is.  Positive numbers are unfavorable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T16:17:24.663" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12038" CreationDate="2014-07-31T11:57:27.377" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience it's a horses for courses type of a situation . In case of some projects the Big Bang approach works brilliantly while in some other projects I would settle for the Phased Implementation approach .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A number of factors have to be considered before deciding which approach serves best .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few of these factors are :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the implementation cover a single site or multiple sites?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the implementation cover a single business or multiple businesses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a phased approach is adopted, what will this mean for integration between the new system and legacy systems during the interim period?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any other competing business activities that need to be taken into account?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What level of risk is acceptable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which costs more – big bang or phased?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lumeniaconsulting.com/blog/john-donagher/big-bang-versus-phased-erp-implementations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.lumeniaconsulting.com/blog/john-donagher/big-bang-versus-phased-erp-implementations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the Pros &amp;amp; Cons of these two approaches are : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pros of BIG BANG approach&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one has to operate their business in two different computer systems&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;·      Everyone in the company moves forward on the same day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;·      Cuts out the ability for people to say, “oh we’ll fix that issue until we convert fully”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;·      Shorter implementation time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;·      Pain and frustrations are condensed into one time period, not drawn out&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;·      Lower costs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;·      Training needed only on the new system, not a changeover&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cons of BIG BANG approach&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;High risk&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;·      A number of things can go wrong&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;·      More pronounced problems&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;·      Small details or issues can be overlooked in the rush&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;·      Sink or swim for employees when it comes to learning the new system&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;·      Testing can be tough prior to the implementation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;·      Failures in one part of the system can cause problems and failures in others&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;·      Fall back plans do not always work out&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;·      Performance can temporarily decline after the initial implementation as a result of employees adjusting to the new system&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pros of PHASED IMPLEMENTATION approach&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Less risk&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;·      Employees learn as they go, there is no dip in performance after&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;·      More time for users to adapt to the new system&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;·      Not a sink or swim environment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;·      Small details and issues can be fixed as you go&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;·      Skills and experience are gained with each step/phase which can help smooth the process as you get further along&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cons of PHASED IMPLEMENTATION approach&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Takes longer to be fully converted&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;·      Not as focused as the big bang&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;·      A state of continuous change can sometimes be disruptive&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;·      Can have missing information because each module relies on info from others, so in a transitional period there may be some gaps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;·      Temporary bridges need to be made from old to new&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://erpvar.com/blog/bid/98952/ERP-Implementation-Strategies-The-Pro-s-and-Con-s-of-Big-Bang-vs-Phased-Roll-Out&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://erpvar.com/blog/bid/98952/ERP-Implementation-Strategies-The-Pro-s-and-Con-s-of-Big-Bang-vs-Phased-Roll-Out&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the project one may even choose the Parallel Adoption approach . The Pros &amp;amp; Cons of this approach are :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PROS&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;·      Least risky&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;·      Users learn the new system while working on the old&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;·      Slower pace than the big bang but faster than a phased roll-out&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CONS&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;·      Most expensive&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;·      Employees have to enter data in both systems- this can be inefficient and breed data-entry problems&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;You may also choose to use a Combination of the above mentioned 3 approaches&lt;/em&gt; .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11712" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T11:57:27.377" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="55" CreationDate="2014-07-31T13:33:26.523" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, the most effective PMs have both a technical background &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; an understanding of the business model of the domain of their project. Otherwise their ability to participate constructively in planning is limited and they cannot effectively question developers or business owners about the relative value and priority of features – something that must be done on many projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen PMs operate without technical and business knowledge but in my experience their value is limited to being a scribe and a facilitator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11713" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T13:33:26.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8344" CreationDate="2014-07-31T21:13:58.287" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience project managers are disliked if they get in the way of what developers are trying to accomplish.  Trust good developers to do their work without any micro-management, and ensure they understand why taking their time on seemingly useless tasks is truly important, and ultimately good for them.  For example: understanding the status of the project requires taking time from development efforts, but explain why project visibility is critical to a project's success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11717" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T21:13:58.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="55" CreationDate="2014-07-31T21:55:49.897" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In management, you have strategies and techniques. A strategy is a ensemble of techniques coherently used to achieve a goal; a technique is a mean, an ensemble of tasks. Usually the word technique or technical is used for computer science and/or computer programming : a technician applies in his tasks the orders of a project manager; he or she (the technician) do not decide the way the tasks are done; he or she do them. A project manager should hire technicians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10273" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T21:55:49.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12009" CreationDate="2014-07-31T22:01:16.953" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my life I have noticed that employee rarely ask question, technical or not to the project manager. If the project manager ask : &quot;Do you have any questions?&quot; He or she faces a wall of silence. Employees prefer to help themselves creating alliances and clans; it neutralize the project manager abilities to know what is going on and what his or her employees do; so the risk of going over budget is higher; it is a way to kick out the project manager. An alliance can be made with another manager that will replace the current one, rewarding after those who did the job. Or they do that just to have status quo. That process is in larger companies, for board meeting for example, and also in small project computer programming management team. It is a dysfunctional pattern because the goal is not the satisfaction of the customer first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10273" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T22:01:16.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12059" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12060" CreationDate="2014-07-31T23:07:29.657" Score="0" ViewCount="386" Body="&lt;p&gt;A quick summary of the facts -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Multinational Company &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Traditional Waterfall Project Management&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Agile/Scrum being used for the Design/Test/Build (&gt;25 Sprints) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Traditional Waterfall Gates must be approved to progress &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Stakeholders want a mini-gate to bookend each sprint to measure&lt;br&gt;&#xA;adherence to schedule&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can this approach work and what artifacts should suffice for the Waterfall Governance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T04:31:13.253" Title="Can you Gate each Agile Sprint to provide comfort to Stakeholders in Waterfall?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12059" CreationDate="2014-07-31T23:34:54.510" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is basically what Sprint Reviews in Scrum are about. At the beginning of each sprint, the team commits to deliver a working, deployable product increment including a certain number of backlog items. And in the end of each sprint, the team demonstrates to stakeholders the new features they have completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum (and Agile approaches in general), the only real measure of progress is working software. In my experience, most stakeholders can be made pretty happy by showing them working, deployable software instead of (or on top of) documents, charts and promises of future results. YMMV - your stakeholders may want to see some documents like test reports, user documentation etc. on top of the product demo itself though, so be open to negotiation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10244" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T23:34:54.510" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12059" CreationDate="2014-08-01T04:31:13.253" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Vote up for Péter for the input on Sprint Review&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been in a similar traditionally non-agile environment. Based on my experience,to answer your questions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can this approach work &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it could work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it depends on how available the stakeholders are for the review &amp;amp; for approval. Any delays in approvals could create delays in progress &amp;amp; planning of next sprints. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also depends on their understanding of Agile which enables your stakeholders to make correct decisions on which &lt;strong&gt;artifacts&lt;/strong&gt; are optional for waterfall governance &amp;amp; see what artifacts in Scrum replaces them&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the other thing I want to emphasise is that stakeholders are mainly concerned about &quot;&lt;strong&gt;adherence to schedule&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; which might communicate to the team that completing the tasks is the biggest priority while reality could be far from this&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;what artifacts should suffice for the Waterfall Governance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Different organisations have different time tested waterfall methodologies and require different artifacts for governance. So it really depends on the process your organisation is following.&#xA;The artifacts defined in scrum (Product backlog, Sprint backlog &amp;amp; any other similar reports) &lt;strong&gt;should be sufficient for successful governance of the project&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;since the requirement is usually at the organisation end, a good starting point is to consult the process team (I hope your organisation have one based on the summary you have given, your stakeholders might also be able to give an input on this :) ) &amp;amp; try to identify what artifacts in your governance model can be replaced with scrum artifacts and what are optional.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10437" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T04:31:13.253" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12063" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12067" CreationDate="2014-08-01T15:06:10.733" Score="3" ViewCount="1605" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, is it mandatory to estimate the amount of hours needed to finish every user story before putting it in the Sprint? Or should we use planning poker and use points instead of hours?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11704" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2014-08-04T09:55:08.420" LastActivityDate="2014-10-30T01:30:44.583" Title="Estimate hours of work for every user story" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12040" CreationDate="2014-08-01T15:07:47.737" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project calculates earned value data as long as you have assigned costed resources, saved a baseline, updated the status date, and provided tracking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Baseline cumulative work will also show you the planned work to date. (Project 2013)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although it references Project 2007 - all still applies in later releases.  See:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tacticalprojectmanagement.com/how-to-calculate-earned-value-in-microsoft-project-2007/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.tacticalprojectmanagement.com/how-to-calculate-earned-value-in-microsoft-project-2007/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T15:07:47.737" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11586" CreationDate="2014-08-01T15:09:31.293" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In fact the answer is: it depends. On what?:&#xA;You do not need to change scope to take baseline but if it does change you have to.&#xA;Baseline is normally link to scope but in real life it's not so simple.&#xA;If you want to track correctly your project you might want to baseline the new activities without re-baseline the old ones.&#xA;If you have a really tight project with a lot of activities (hundreds) and a solid project management support by your company you'll prefer to not do a baseline on those activities if they do not change the scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And depending the software you use, it could give you some opportunities with this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2019-12-10T14:14:57.060" LastActivityDate="2019-12-10T14:14:57.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12063" CreationDate="2014-08-01T23:05:36.020" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum does not mandate estimation of any kind, actually. It doesn't even mandate user stories to be honest. Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber put together a quick guide with the essentials of Scrum here&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scrumguides.org/&lt;/a&gt; - it's worth a read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it is very hard for a team to consistently deliver on their sprint commitments AND be taking some risks to innovate and push their productivity incrementally without consistent measurement of all the work to be completed in that time-frame. If you don't estimate smaller stories, or tasks that you're not calling stories but are going to be working on, or a technical investigation (spike) that are being taken into a sprint, how do you know what level of effort you should be able to accept in subsequent sprints? How do you know if a particular kind of story (or task, or investigation, or whatever) is one that your team consistently has a good handle (i.e., accurate estimate) on or not? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask my teams to estimate all the work they take into a sprint, usually with fibonacci story points. It has been very successful in helping to uncover problems with poorly written user stories, unknown technologies,  insufficient communication, and many other problems that keep a team from being high functioning. It can be a pain, and you don't want to obsess about the accuracy of estimates or overweight their value, but estimation is a great tool for driving out development inefficiencies throughout the process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11612" LastEditorUserId="13383" LastEditDate="2014-10-23T09:08:24.773" LastActivityDate="2014-10-23T09:08:24.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12063" CreationDate="2014-08-02T11:03:09.743" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Story points are used to estimate the &lt;em&gt;relative size&lt;/em&gt; of stories (i.e. &quot;Story A is about twice as big as Story B&quot;), but this intentionally doesn't tell anything about the &lt;em&gt;absolute size&lt;/em&gt; of stories (i.e. &quot;Story A takes about 6 hours to finish, while Story B 3 hours&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Planning poker is a way to optimize time spent on estimation, and to make team members discuss stories, to get to a common understanding of the tasks, open questions and risks included in them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all Scrum teams use story point estimation and planning poker, although both are recommended by most experts I know of. Some level of estimation is always required in any kind of project planning; Scrum's point is to make only the absolute minimum necessary effort to get good enough estimates, and then to refine and adjust these during the project as needed. (As opposed to other, traditional methods which may put a greater emphasis on detail and accuracy of estimation, while the end results in practice hardly justify the effort spent, and give only a false sense of security to management.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you want to make any plans regarding when can you deliver the next release or get to an important milestone, you must estimate your team's &lt;em&gt;velocity&lt;/em&gt;, i.e. how fast they can complete stories on average, or how many stories they can complete in a given time frame (sprint). And for that to be meaningful, you also need to know the relative size of stories. This is why it is recommended for Scrum teams to estimate story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then during sprint planning, the team commits to complete a certain number of stories within the upcoming sprint. This is hard especially for inexperienced teams who don't have a feeling for their velocity yet, aren't good at story point estimation and/or have a fluctuating performance. This is where it may help to go through a second round of estimation, where each individual task belonging to a story is estimated in hours/days. This requires the team to have a deeper discussion about the details of the story, giving them more chance to even out estimation errors and to take into account all factors. And in the end, they can double check their estimation by adding up the total time required to complete the stories selected for that sprint. It may easily happen for a novice team that the estimated time is significantly more (or less) than the time they have available in the coming sprint, requiring an adjustment (dropping stories from or adding more to the sprint). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The back side of estimating for hours is of course that it requires more time, slowing the team down, and it may not bring enough value to justify that. Experienced teams therefore may decide to estimate only story points, not time. But at the early phases of adopting Scrum, or when forming a new team, it may be useful to estimate hours as well as story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10244" LastActivityDate="2014-08-02T11:03:09.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12071" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-02T16:26:23.460" Score="0" ViewCount="398" Body="&lt;p&gt;My workflow process looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I get some info about the number and complexity of project tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have time-data about past tasks of the same complexity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have prices for current tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I associate them. (This is a lot of repetitive work.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I apply some a coefficient. (This is a lot of repetitive work.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I perform the calculations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hooray, I have an evaluation!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I reduce the repetitive work and human computation in this workflow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11726" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-08-02T16:42:54.257" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T07:55:15.717" Title="How can I calculate required project resources with less manual computation?" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12071" CreationDate="2014-08-02T19:35:43.920" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even after editing your question does appears a lot like a request for a tool recommendation.  I'll take the approach of recommending a tool type, and leave it to you to decide on your selection criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimating costs is done for all sorts of projects, and I have seen estimation tools used for other services. I would be looking for an estimation/price quotation tool.  However, it can be done with a spreadsheet (explore the lookup functionality). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;I get some info about the number and complexity of project tasks.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is basically a bill of materials for the project.  Ideally your tool will allow to to add notes to each line item and add/change the product later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;I have time-data about past tasks of the same complexity.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is your product list (tasks that your can estimate somewhat accurately).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;I have prices for current tasks.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is your pricing structure.  Depending on the tools, you may have to calculate the costs.  If the tool supports assemblies then, your product lists would be assemblies of tasks (hours * rate).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;I associate them. (This is a lot of repetitive work.)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is done once you have done the above. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;I apply some a coefficient. (This is a lot of repetitive work.)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this your estimation error?  I would build this into the product list.  If the tool allows for uncertainty about quantity, all the better.  If it is a markup/markdown for overhead, than apply the appropriate discount or overhead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;I perform the calculations.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tools would do this for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Hooray, I have an evaluation!&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2014-08-02T19:35:43.920" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10088" CreationDate="2014-08-03T09:30:08.227" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, it is not possible in Project to distinguish multiple critical paths without artifically modifying durations (to highlight specific tasks on the critical path with that single task).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, it may be possible to script something up to handle those calculations for you programmatically, rather than having to do so by hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2137" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T09:30:08.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12022" CreationDate="2014-08-03T12:33:40.843" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Managing a Project Requires Goals&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How should I actually go about 'managing' our projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project and release management are complicated subjects that fill shelves of books. However, the key concepts essentially boil down to the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identifying the project's objectives.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identifying the process the organization will follow to meet the objectives.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identifying the metrics needed to track progress and resource usage on the&#xA;project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identifying the process controls needed to manage the project's deliverables, &#xA;schedule, and budget.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your job isn't to define all these things yourself. Your job is to help the &lt;em&gt;organization&lt;/em&gt; (and specifically senior management) to define them, provide senior management with &lt;em&gt;input&lt;/em&gt; into their creation of process controls, and then to provide &lt;em&gt;information&lt;/em&gt; about the ongoing status of the project to interested stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Technical Controls are Secondary Considerations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What technologies and concepts should I be familiarizing myself with to succeed in this role?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a no-op. &quot;Technologies&quot; are a way to implement your processes and procedures, and are not the framework itself. You must define a process before you can design effective process controls for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, you should familiarize yourself with the business objectives (and unwritten expectations) for the project, and research project management frameworks and controls that would fit well with both the objectives &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; culture of your organization. The technical and administrative controls will then be designed to fit your process, rather than the other way around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T12:33:40.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12076" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12080" CreationDate="2014-08-03T16:25:14.110" Score="4" ViewCount="1038" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am hiring a contracting firm to rewrite a small application for my group.  The dev team is going to be a single person.  Based on past experiences with other developers, I'm concerned that the code produced is going to be functional, but inconsistently styled.  I'm negotiating the Statement of Work now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I add something to &quot;Client Obligations&quot; about code style?  What about requiring use of ReSharper or something similar?  Is there sample boilerplate I can use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2659/would-should-the-pm-define-the-code-style-for-a-software-project&quot;&gt;I read the related question about a PM enforcing code style on devs;&lt;/a&gt; this question is different, in that I'm asking about adding specific language to the SoW.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11732" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T19:11:17.403" Title="Should a Statement of Work (SOW) include &quot;coding style&quot; under the Client Obligations section?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;quality&gt;&lt;contracts&gt;&lt;deliverables&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12076" CreationDate="2014-08-03T18:09:58.147" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can add whatever you want to the SOW that you are trying to control or wanting to require.  Whether you should depends on what you will get because of the language versus what it will cost you, the risks you incur because of it, and any other penalty.  For example, &quot;client obligations&quot; is a bit ambiguous.  How would a developer control for that in terms of his risk, i.e., &lt;em&gt;changing&lt;/em&gt; obligations, rock not shiny enough, etc.  The developer, because of this language, would build risk into his price.  If firm fixed, the price will climb.  If too risky for a firm price, then you will need to manage T&amp;amp;M, which is costly and risky, too.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example might be a penalty like what might have the developer offered that would prove to be better than your intended obligations.  Too much control on how to do it stifles innovation or other interesting ideas.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you have some analysis of alternatives to do and some really good risk management.  If you do the analysis right, score it right, your answer should materialize.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T18:09:58.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12063" CreationDate="2014-08-04T07:32:30.790" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simple answer: No. Scrum does not require that you provide an estimate of hours needed to finish every product backlog item, before putting it in the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, scrum simply invites you to provide an estimate. How you do that, is up to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most common technique I come across is estimating product backlog items in story points and tasks in hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7835" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T07:32:30.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12076" CreationDate="2014-08-04T14:54:27.550" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I add something to &quot;Client Obligations&quot; about code style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; do this, but you may be measuring the wrong thing. This smells like an X/Y problem: you have a problem to solve with the deliverables hand-off, have decided that coding style is the thing that will fix the problem, and are now trying to solve for &quot;coding style&quot; rather than the underlying process issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While agreeing that a consistent coding style is important, define the risks you're trying to mitigate. Then consider focusing your attention on measurable quality metrics and acceptance testing as project controls, rather than style issues as a proxy for your actual risk model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Think &quot;Quality&quot; and &quot;Definition of Done&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can put anything you like into a statement of work, but this is not the path to actually getting what you want. I interpret your &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; motivation as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You want the deliverables to be &lt;em&gt;readable&lt;/em&gt; as an aid to &lt;em&gt;maintainability&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You consider consistent coding style to be an important element of readability and maintainability.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you really want to do here is to ensure that the deliverables meet some defined criteria (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PEP-8&lt;/a&gt; or the &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/bbatsov/ruby-style-guide&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ruby Style Guide&lt;/a&gt;) as part of the &quot;Definition of Done.&quot; The title of the contract section is unimportant; what matters is that you ensure the contract states what is (and is not) an acceptable level of quality for your deliverables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is no different than a factory specifying machining tolerances for a widget. However, you need to ensure that your quality criteria are reasonable, concrete, and measurable, rather than simply subjective. This is why the use of a documented style guide is essential; you should not move the developers' cheese after the fact because of undocumented specifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Acceptance Testing as an Alternative&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A less stringent, but possibly equally useful alternative, is acceptance testing. People often think of acceptance testing as something that end users do to test a user interface or application functionality, but it can also be applied to code readings or rebuilds performed by a development team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your style requirements are really just a means to an end: can my internal team, or someone other than the original developer, make sense of the code? The only way to be sure of that is to have another person or team look it over, run the unit tests, compile the code, or try to make some changes. I hereby dub this &lt;strong&gt;Development Team Acceptance Testing&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter how pretty the code is. Code can follow style guides all day long and still be poorly documented, needlessly complex, or improperly designed. For example, imagine you want to convert some financial application from dollars to euros; if the exquisitely beautiful code you receive as a deliverable makes it impossible to figure out how to make a basic change like that, then the code is spaghetti code even if it's indented properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, these sorts of acceptance tests ought to be part of your &lt;em&gt;documented acceptance testing criteria&lt;/em&gt;, and clearly communicated as part of the work to be done. You can't guarantee 100% coverage of every eventuality, but a specification that says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All magic numbers will be stored as module constants at the top of the module file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is a whole lot better for everyone involved in the project than:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Make sure your code looks pretty so it doesn't make my eyes bleed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be as specific as you need to be, but leave enough wiggle room to ensure that the guidelines don't become a straitjacket. Remember, you get what you measure, and if you measure the wrong things, you'll have some great Gantt or pie charts and a thoroughly useless set of deliverables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-08-04T15:03:57.910" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T15:03:57.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12071" CreationDate="2014-08-04T17:14:21.897" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have used liquidplanner for similar tasks in the past.  Enter project, tasks, and resources.  Then enter low/high estimates for each task.  LP will then use its algorithm to give you the best guess as to total effort.  If you have cost ranges, then instead of hours, you can put in $/EU.. and it will give you the best complete estimate.  If you have resources, and a cost per resource you would put in hours est effort.  Not sure if LP will give you a time estimate, and a cost estimate, or if you will have to calc the cost estimate yourself.  More complex estimating/scheduling tools generally require significant investment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5670" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2014-08-05T10:27:23.733" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T10:27:23.733" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12083" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-05T18:14:28.003" Score="2" ViewCount="895" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your experience, have you found it beneficial to enforce Change Control upon a Product Owner &lt;strong&gt;after&lt;/strong&gt; the Product Backlog has been agreed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IE If he/she wishes to change the scope by adding in/taking out/re-prioritizing the Backlog the PO must submit a Formal Change Request/IOCA before taking an approved Change to the Scrum Master for Planning consideration.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2017-09-07T19:12:49.647" Title="Does a Product Owner submit to Change Control before re-grooming Product Backlog?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;&lt;scope&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12083" CreationDate="2014-08-05T22:59:51.747" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Change Control Isn't an Agile Scoping Tool&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If he/she wishes to change the scope by adding in/taking out/re-prioritizing the Backlog the PO must submit a Formal Change Request/IOCA before taking an approved Change to the Scrum Master for Planning consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the antithesis of agility. While Scrum works just fine in environments that require formal change control, the change control process is generally intended to safeguard the integrity of the production environment rather than keeping the Product Backlog sacrosanct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis and Recommendations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect the &quot;change control&quot; requirement is really an attempt by the stakeholders or steering committee to control project scope or budget. If that's the case, the Scrum Master needs to educate the organization better on how iterative development actually works, and work with the team to ensure that the product is always in a releasable state at the end of each iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The stakeholders, through the Product Owner, can add or remove items from the Product Backlog &lt;em&gt;at any time&lt;/em&gt;. The only thing they can't do is change the stories within the current Sprint &lt;em&gt;unless the Product Owner calls for an early termination and a return to Sprint Planning.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technically, there's nothing in Scrum that requires or prevents stakeholders from enforcing change control on the requirements they pass on to the Product Owner. &lt;em&gt;How&lt;/em&gt; the Product Owner interfaces with stakeholders is an externality to the Scrum framework, which simply mandates that the Product Owner is in charge of the contents and ordering of the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, such heavyweight quarterbacking is a significant &quot;project smell&quot; that typically indicates that the organization has not embraced the iterative development model, and probably doesn't understand how to effectively use the framework's built-in process controls. Educating the organization about the Scrum framework is the Scrum Master's job, and effectively managing the stakeholders is the Product Owner's job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Reconsider the Framework Choice&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Education would seem to be the missing ingredient here. Of course, Scrum is also not a silver bullet, is not right for every organization, and may simply be a bad fit for a command-and-control organization. Good waterfall isn't any more likely to fail than improperly-implemented Scrum, so it may also be worth reconsidering whether Scrum is the right framework for the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different frameworks may fit better. Your mileage can certainly vary!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T22:59:51.747" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12086" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-06T09:46:59.660" Score="0" ViewCount="2153" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been working for big and small companies, for the last 5 years. I've noticed that nobody, or at least on the places where I've worked for, is worried about the source code of the applications. For example I could at any time bring my usb key and get a copy of the whole system, some companies put it on a contract that you can't take the source code, but if you never make your copy public nobody will never note that you took that code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, how could I organize a project/company in order to avoid developers to steal the source code? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could that be a good option make everyone just work on one part of the software and then the have the manager to merge it and only risk that the manager will get a copy of it? For example will a software developer that work at Salesforce or at adobe has a full copy of the source on his pc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11752" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T12:47:55.277" Title="Avoid employees from stealing source code on a project" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-08-07T08:04:46.970" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12086" CreationDate="2014-08-06T12:47:55.277" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the very least you need to provide the developers the code they work on.  This limits your ability to restrict their access.  You can provide libraries for other sections of code, but this can create barriers to resolving bugs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been cases where employees stole code and tried to create competing services.   Those I know of have been successfully dealt with through legal means after the fact.  Ownership of the code should be handled by contractual terms with those that use it.  Copyright may also apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than frameworks and libraries, which are increasingly pulled from or available the open source community, their is little code I have worked on that would be of much use on future projects.  Those in-house frameworks that I have used were not as robust as the competing open-source frameworks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have worked in restrictive code control environments, but they only had checkpoints and future code work was done on code version not extracted from teh code control environment.  This lead to significant issues, where source code for released versions could not be retrieved as it wasn't tracked anywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having managers merge the code limits the access to the full copy.  However, managers may be more likely to be able to successfully make use of that access.  I would rather restrict the code access to the developers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most developers will only have the code they need to work with on their system.  This can be a significant portion of the system, but likely not the full system.  With good code reuse, they may have a significant portion of the system available as libraries.  Larger sites generally have multiple repositories, and limit access to the teams requiring access.  Code browsers can allow developers to browse the code from other projects they need to resolve related bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Code locking systems tend to add friction to the development process.  I have seen little if any value added by code locking.  Good communication and revision tracking add significant value.  Having a manager merge the code would appear to be a another approach to code locking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are advantages to using a review process to gateway changes into the released code.  There are various approaches that can be used.  They all require tracking changes, which increases change management overhead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T12:47:55.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12091" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12097" CreationDate="2014-08-06T16:30:39.480" Score="13" ViewCount="3631" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ORIGINAL QUESTION&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We carefully plan out a sprint and decide which stories should be worked on however some developers are working on stuff outside of this planned work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is undermining the whole process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What techniques can we use to encourage/enforce developers to stick to the planned stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATES:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having talked to the developers we know they are working on the stories because they find them interesting or consider them important. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have tried no techniques so far except asking/telling the developers not to. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developers are working on both planned and 'personal' stories in parallel.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The planned stories are sometimes completed but often not.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The non-planned stories being worked on are legitimate pieces of work, just ones not prioritised into the current sprint. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The extra tasks being worked on are not refactoring. We consider refactoring to be part of a story, not a separate story in itself. &lt;a href=&quot;http://xprogramming.com/articles/refactoring-not-on-the-backlog/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://xprogramming.com/articles/refactoring-not-on-the-backlog/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is only a small number of developers in the team that are doing this, and they are a mixture of experienced and junior developers. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have contractors on the team however it is the permanent staff&#xA;that are going off-piste.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team has been working together for a few years although there are some new members of the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We recently moved from Kanban to Scrum. We are in our 2nd Sprint. The developers in question have a history of going off-piste. I guess the original question might have been better worded: &quot;In the Scrum methodology, what techniques can we use...?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The issue has been raised in the retrospective and the problem persists&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11758" LastEditorUserId="11758" LastEditDate="2014-08-08T06:43:10.140" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T06:43:10.140" Title="How can we stop developers from working on stories that are not planned into the current sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12091" CreationDate="2014-08-06T17:14:20.850" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are they strictly working on only unplanned stories, are they working both in parallel or are they finishing the plan and taking on additional load? so first of all it is essential to know the reasons behind. Are they personal reasons? Preferability tk work on some aspects and not others?or are the stories mature enough to be developped? What you can do is stick to their overall time estimate, enforce them to breakdown their tasks and call for an immediate meeting after the time us up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8302" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T17:14:20.850" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12091" CreationDate="2014-08-06T17:22:00.840" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind that any approach needs to be aligned with the personality of your organization. For example, addressing compensation may mean giving out net new bonuses as an incentive at one company, while at another it could mean taking money or perks away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you want to appeal to the mercenary in them you could try tying compensation to on-time, on-scope completion of sprints. This should get most of your team focused on completing the planned sprint before doing the &quot;fun&quot; stuff.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Along these lines you could tap those that are regularly delivering according to sprint scope/schedule for recognition.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a last resort, if sprint scope/schedule are regularly being impacted and the carrot approach isn't working you may need to consider the stick of some form of disciplinary action. For example, you could make adherence to sprint scope/schedule a category on their annual performance reviews. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T17:22:00.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12094" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12104" CreationDate="2014-08-06T17:59:52.783" Score="3" ViewCount="2210" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been running into this a lot lately between bosses and clients. I am told about a problem where there is only 1 solution. e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When asked to create a job posting and in describing what we do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;me:&quot;we want to use the term accepted by the industry&quot; &#xA;boss:&quot;well that's unacceptable - I think the term is outdated - find another&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or When implementing a training course and the client wants to have a quiz where they can tell who has taken it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;me:&quot;the solution has to be routed through authentication services to ensure they are a member of your staff and to identify who is using the system like you want&quot;&#xA;client:&quot;well that is unacceptable - they shouldn't need to authenticate&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it goes back and forth and eventually the project is forgotten or abandoned. Is there an approach to dealing with these sorts of situations that can achieve a more direct compromise rather than just abandoning things?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7911" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T19:17:01.580" Title="What to do when someone says &quot;that is not an acceptable solution&quot;?" Tags="&lt;scope&gt;&lt;clients&gt;&lt;scope-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12095" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-06T17:59:55.883" Score="1" ViewCount="1776" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have Project 365 and I am trying to create a view where a task will display all the resources it uses, and then total them by group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example I have the Group &quot;labour&quot; where I've put all my employees, now that I've assigned them to a task I would like to see total man-hours or man-days for that task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11759" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-01-14T14:09:37.820" LastActivityDate="2019-01-14T14:09:37.820" Title="Microsoft Project, total resource usage by group" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12091" CreationDate="2014-08-06T18:17:40.813" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Address the legitimate concerns of the developers first&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product Owners tend to be razor (!) focused on delivering features to the end-users. Technical debt tends to be put in the back burner. Hard-to-read code, duplication, tangled dependencies are all examples of technical debt that you have to pay down. Otherwise the developers end up paying interest in every sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in one of my earlier projects, we used to make a copy of the schema for new data loaded for each year. We proposed converting that to a single schema using the year as a key so that multi-year data can stored in the same schema. This involved some amount of development and a lot of testing to make sure the existing production sites don't break. The Product Owner was just not convinced that we should invest the limited bandwidth to fix this. The tech team finally convinced the PO by providing estimates of how much less effort it would take in subsequent years to do this repetitive annual work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Provide a process to discuss what work the developers consider important. Possibly this can be done during story time (backlog grooming). Make room in the sprint for work that is accepted as important. After you provide such a legitimate avenue to address the developers' concerns, then you can be strict about any deviations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T18:17:40.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12091" CreationDate="2014-08-06T18:26:51.153" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We carefully plan out a sprint and decide which stories should be worked on however some developers are working on stuff outside of this planned work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is a results-oriented framework, where &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; is delivered is more important than &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; it is delivered. Since you mentioned that Sprint Goals aren't being met, you definitely have a process problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are really two fundamental approaches you can take, depending on the skill level and maturity of your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use your daily stand-up to keep people on track.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Educate the team and involve line management in tracking the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Use the Daily Stand-Up&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The daily stand-up is where team members coordinate with one another about current work, but it can also serve as a reminder about what stories are on-task. This works very well with short feedback loops of 4-16 clock-hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story should be granular enough that it takes one-half to two days to complete. If a story isn't done within that time frame, the team should be hunting for process impediments. In this case, the process impediment may very well be that team members are working on the wrong things, but it could &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; be that the team has done a poor job of estimating or decomposing tasks for the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As this is a significant problem, I wouldn't wait for the Sprint Retrospective to address this issue. Anytime you have dramatic slippage from the team's commitments, it may be worth involving the whole team (including the Product Owner) and deciding whether the Sprint Goal can be salvaged or whether the PO needs to call for an Early Termination and a return to Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Involve the Scrum Master or Line Management&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While Scrum talks about not allowing outside interference with the team, this has more to do with scope management and self-organization than it does with personnel management. Ideally, a mature team with experience in Scrum would be able to maintain focus on the Sprint Goal, and to use the framework properly to adjust for unplanned work. Of course, not every team is an ideal team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that the problem really is &quot;side work&quot; rather than a systemic problem with estimation, overcommitment, or externally-defined tasks, it is not unreasonable for the Scrum Master or line management to periodically follow up with team members to ensure that the work they're doing is relevant to the Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, the Scrum Master's job is to educate the team about the central nature of the Sprint Goal, and to empower them to focus and drive towards its successful completion. Some practical examples might include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decomposing tasks on the Sprint Backlog into less than a day each.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Asking team members during the stand-up which of the Sprint Backlog tasks they will complete today.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Checking in with each team member at least once during the day to see if they are on track for completing the task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the end of each day, a task is done or not-done. If it's not done, finding out &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; is not unreasonable, especially if it's the team that has estimated the task at less than a day's work in the first place.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Accountability, Not Blame&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, the goal is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to hold team members accountable for externally-defined timetables. Rather, the goal is to expect team members to be accountable &lt;em&gt;for their own estimates&lt;/em&gt;, and to communicate promptly and effectively about anything (including faulty initial estimates) that might jeopardize the Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless the team is composed of incompetent slackers, the objective is to fix the Scrum implementation. Blame doesn't fix processes; motivated people do!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T18:26:51.153" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12091" CreationDate="2014-08-06T21:17:18.567" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the excellent answer by CodeGnome I would also investigate the following items:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are the Developers finishing the Sprint Backlog and have the &lt;em&gt;capacity&lt;/em&gt; to work those stories they now deem interesting?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the answer is [YES] then the Scrum Master should reevaluate the Planning Poker to find out why the Sprints are so conservative in their planning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the answer is [NO] then the Scrum Master has a duty to ensure the Product Owners priority is being communicated and &lt;strong&gt;adhered to&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Has the issue of personal priority of the backlog been raised at a retrospective?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the answer is [YES] then the Scrum Master must take action if the issue is undermining the team.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;This issue seems like it stems from a weak Scrum Master.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To add some context can you elaborate on the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are the Developers contractors?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have the Team been working together long?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many Sprint Retrospectives have you had?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the Team have a history of going off-piste?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it one sub-set of developers or the whole team?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-08-07T07:47:53.697" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T07:47:53.697" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12095" CreationDate="2014-08-06T21:37:32.660" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apply the task usage view to show all tasks andm indented underneath, the assignments.  You can create a custom group to group first by ID (Task Field), then by Name (Task field), and then by Resource Group (Assignment).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if all of your resources are in one group &quot;Labour&quot; then you really shouldn't need to group the Task Usage view at all.  The Work field will show you total work per task and the duration field will show how many days the task takes from beginning to end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T21:37:32.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12091" CreationDate="2014-08-06T23:51:02.680" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think I'll be contrarian here, perhaps because I'm a developer rather than a product manager. To me the developers consistently working outside of the the &quot;agreed upon&quot; task list suggests that there really is not buy-in to the task list, but rather the developers are acquiescing to it for political reasons while not actually agreeing with it. A well-functioning Development team feels great ownership in their work and the product, and will defend the product if they feel that it is being threatened. (Although they may be right or wrong in their perception).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to me the real question is why, as a team, you can't agree on the direction to take. You have stated that a major reason for the unauthorized work is that Development believes it is important. There really seems to be a fundamental disagreement regarding what needs to be done. That needs to be resolved politically with Development. Rather than asking &quot;how do we make them do what we want?&quot;, you should be asking &quot;how do we all get on the same page?&quot; It would also be interesting to know what the rest of the development team feels about what's going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll also note that, as inconvenient as this may be, programmers really are artists, and they're kind of going to do what they want to do regardless of what anyone else thinks. Or, alternately, they will be dramatically more productive when doing things that interest them or that they feel are important. Effective management will aim individual programmers at tasks that they are attracted to. I know that the Agile model frowns upon this, and actively takes steps to try to negate it. Nevertheless, if you want a productive team, I wouldn't ignore it. If the &quot;disobedient&quot; developers are high performers, then I would suggest giving them leeway. (And that would also further suggest taking their concerns seriously). If they are low performers, then perhaps the team would be better off without them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11762" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T23:51:02.680" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11919" CreationDate="2014-08-07T07:17:41.363" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In comparison I use &quot;JFDI&quot; - just f* do it or &quot;JDI&quot; - just do it (more polite one, I use this when presenting to students)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11764" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T07:17:41.363" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12102" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12103" CreationDate="2014-08-07T11:19:36.157" Score="6" ViewCount="169" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile promotes the use of giving your software to users as soon as possible so they can provide feedback and so we overcome the Waterfall problem of making an app no one wants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But recently, I ran into this issue where giving it earlier would not work since the users of my app would be dissuaded due to it not being as user friendly as possible etc. EVEN THOUGH it is in Beta. The end users want a 'fully working' version as opposed to what I have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also heard horror stories of where games/software is given harsh reviews even though over time after releasing their app they were able to improve useability/features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the tradeoff here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11771" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T06:12:03.233" Title="Agile Development and when to deliver" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12102" CreationDate="2014-08-07T12:13:21.170" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key is to put your energy into defining a solid MVP. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cut back on features, not on quality. It should always be as bug free and user friendly as possible. Quality is non-negotiatiable but scope is flexible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As soon as your MVP is ready ship it. Ship it early, measure it, build another iteration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11758" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T12:13:21.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12094" CreationDate="2014-08-07T13:44:14.670" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see two (or well, three, if getting a new job counts ;-) ) possible ways to deal with such situations in general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;When you receive a refusal like above:&lt;/em&gt; ask for clarification or more explanation, open a discussion to understand the other party's view and to come to a common agreement based on facts instead of feelings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;To avoid receiving refusals:&lt;/em&gt; make sure you fully understand the problem and see all possible solutions, then present your opinion in a more cooperative, softer way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;To deal with refusal&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You told your client &amp;quot;we have to do so-and-so&amp;quot; and got refused. As you are most likely well aware, &lt;strong&gt;it is quite difficult to move forward from such a direct conflict.&lt;/strong&gt; You may try to navigate back towards an open-ended constructive discussion, as well as increase your own awareness of the situation, the other party and the available options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask the client in order to understand why (s)he thinks your solution is unacceptable, and what would be an acceptable solution (and why). You may use questions like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;Could you explain what makes you think this is unacceptable?&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;Is there any information you are aware of (but I may not be) which makes this suggestion unacceptable for you?&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;Is there a way to improve my original suggestion which solves your concern?&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;Is there a better alternative?&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;Why do you see X as a better solution than my original proposal?&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is crucial at this stage is to &lt;strong&gt;stay very calm and professional, to avoid making this a personal confrontation&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;you dare to refuse my idea, so I will show you who is the boss by crushing whatever alternatives you offer!&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;). Keep focusing on the technical aspects, pros and cons of each proposal. Try to forecast the consequences, benefits and risks of each option. Get a realistic, fact based evaluation agreed upon by both parties. E.g. to your boss's reply above you may propose collecting some Google stats to determine which is the most used term, or look up Wikipedia to clarify the commonly agreed meaning / usage of the terms in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this does not guarantee success, but may give you a chance (depending on the personalities involved, past conflict history, office politics etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;To prevent refusal&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I noted above, once you get a straight refusal to your proposal, it is very difficult to navigate out of it and get to an agreement without one of the parties losing face. So to give yourself better chances for success, it is recommended to present your suggestions in a way to avoid straight refusal if at all possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see basically two ways to help this: first of all, &lt;strong&gt;make sure you actually understand the problem to be solved.&lt;/strong&gt; The refusal may be the result of your proposed solution being inappropriate due to some factor you are unaware of. So have a discussion with the client to ensure you are aware of all important information prior to making your proposal. And also try to think with your client's head: e.g. you may be a technical guy, whereas (s)he is a businessperson, seeing the same facts in a totally different light. Presenting a technically sound solution which does not take into account the needs of the business is surely not going to work. So make sure you understand what's important for her, what's her actual problem and what kind of solution would be acceptable for her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other important factor is how you present your solution. If you say &amp;quot;we want to do this and this&amp;quot;, you basically offer an &amp;quot;accept or refuse&amp;quot; choice, which obviously increases the risk of refusal. (And even if the client accepts, she may not be fully satisfied with it, may be just too timid to voice her concerns, but these concerns may surface in the long run in much more unpleasant ways...) So it is better to &lt;strong&gt;present your suggestion in an open-ended manner&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;Based on my understanding of the problem, we have the following options: A, B and C. Of these, I think B has very high costs as it requires setting up a new server. And I think C is quite risky because it allows unauthenticated users to access our services. So I think A is the best option overall.&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you really only see one possible solution (which is rarely the case), you can present it in a softer way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;After evaluating our options, I think the only feasible solution is A.&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is better than saying &amp;quot;We have to do A&amp;quot; because it is easier for your partner to ask for clarification, suggest alternatives or point out problems without openly confronting you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10244" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T15:38:01.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12094" CreationDate="2014-08-07T14:05:31.627" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You control scope, cost, schedule; everything you do responds to those numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, I'd make sure that my team and if possibly my customer have received the &lt;a href=&quot;http://dailypicksandflicks.com/2014/03/27/the-expert-perpendicular-red-lines-video/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;requisite training&lt;/a&gt; (that's a joke - go view the video, you'll thank me).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I just add the clients' requirements to the requirements, project the impact on cost, scope, schedule, and quality and let the client make an informed decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;me:&quot;we want to use the term accepted by the industry&quot; &#xA;  boss:&quot;well that's unacceptable - I think the term is outdated - find another&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK, We'll check on that and see which way the industry is evolving. I'll just insert a new workpackage here that will delay your schedule by between 1 and 4 weeks - we'll project 1, and that will increase the cost by $X.   Of course if you are right and the term is outdated, it will also increase the costs in other ways - as I said, the industry uses this term, and resumes, capability statements, etc. will be phrased in terms of industry best practice.  I'll work up a better cost estimate after the research, but I'd estimate it will increase the total cost project by 10%.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;me:&quot;the solution has to be routed through authentication services to ensure they are a member of your staff and to identify who is using the system like you want&quot;&#xA;  client:&quot;well that is unacceptable - they shouldn't need to authenticate&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understood; we can do the project without authentication. Let me draw your attention to the tension between that new requirement and your earlier non-functional requirement on security. The only way to reconcile those two requirements is to implement some pretty cutting edge technology that I can't guarantee is reliable, nor can I guarantee that the user experience will match your requirements in that area.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not comfortable with this new requirement, so we're going to re-assess the impact on the project and let you know of any changes in cost/scope/schedule.  We're also going to do a quick risk assessment (at our own cost), and as a part of the project acceptance test/closeout, we'll ask for a letter from your general counsel stating that we did the project according to your requirements and that we are indemnified from any legal, ethical or other consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2014-08-07T14:15:38.277" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T14:15:38.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11919" CreationDate="2014-08-07T14:13:36.320" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd opt for a rather neutral descriptor that doesn't attach any positive or negative connotations to the approach. Particularly if you're completing a comparison exercise whereby the pro's and con's of each approach should be outlined. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've used 'customized' and 'bespoke' as neutral descriptors for something that's not a traditionally recognized methodology but is, through either tried and tested experience or to fulfill the specific needs of the organisation that uses it, an existing approach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9155" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T14:13:36.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12102" CreationDate="2014-08-07T14:50:52.953" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Potentially-Shippable Increments&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile frameworks don't require that the software be delivered to end-users before it's ready. The goal of iterative development is to product a &lt;em&gt;potentially&lt;/em&gt; shippable increment at the end of each iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Stakeholder Feedback Loops&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The feedback loop must eventually involve stakeholders to be effective, but acceptance testing is generally driven by the Definition of Done. Acceptance testing can also involve the Product Owner, business analysts, QA resources, or other stakeholders as proxies when appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing is that stakeholders are actively engaged in Sprint Reviews so that they can see progress and provide feedback to the project. Providing them with actual software (as opposed to a demonstration of new functionality during the review) is not a fixed requirement of the Scrum framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T14:50:52.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12102" CreationDate="2014-08-07T16:19:51.200" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Continuos shipping doesnt mean delivering to end client. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should set a milestones with your client to review the product and provide feedback when a specific milestone has been achieved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But internally you may run multiple sprints to achieve a milestone and with each sprint you are shipping a feature to your internal teams. (QA, other teams etc)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7885" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T16:19:51.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12076" CreationDate="2014-08-07T19:11:17.403" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Statement of Work should specify anything that matters to you. If programming style is on that list, there is nothing theoretically wrong with specifying it, although it opens up the risk of unintended consequences. Other responses have gone into that in more detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a company where I worked until recently, we got tired of web subsites being handed off to us without documentation, dependencies sporadically noted, and the whole not readily integratable into our extent CMS. We decided to provide developers with a clone (via Adobe AMI at the time; now I think the org. uses Puppet) of our system in all of its extant messiness. One condition of acceptance written into the SOW was that the code be checked into a VCS such that we could follow documentation and check it out into another clone of our deployment for testing, then production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It did add considerable sanity to the end of the process and the &quot;definition of done.&quot; It removed many vendors from our list, but also told those who did work with us how to best present their work in a usable fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11776" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T19:11:17.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12094" CreationDate="2014-08-07T19:17:01.580" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others note, data is your friend. Never argue with the premise. Treat it as rational, and then present the consequences (as noted above). The requirement conflicts with...., The requirement would add x dollars and/or y time to the project; the requirement adds these new risks based on this data....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, as others have noted, you don't want to turn the discussion binary--my &quot;knowledge&quot; vs your opinion. You want to tease out what lies behind the requirement and answer with enough detail that the client has the opportunity to &quot;rephrase&quot; or rethink (and you have the opportunity to re-hear--sometimes what we hear isn't what was said or intended) without getting ego involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, sometimes, the culture is too toxic to address such issues. In that case, your resume and the many recruiters and online job forums are your friends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11776" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T19:17:01.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11949" CreationDate="2014-08-08T05:02:58.837" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you are facing the classic &quot;victim of your own success&quot; situation. The process that has made you successful, is hindering your future growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest that the first place to start is to understand all of the reasons why you are missing deadlines.  It is unlikely to be just one.  I'd suggest using a tool such as a Ishikawa diagram, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishikawa_diagram&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishikawa_diagram&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;Make sure your team are involved in helping identify all of the reasons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, prioritise the issues, which reasons will have the greatest impact, in the shortest time.  This is the issue to attack first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you decide to improve a single issue, be tenacious. For instance, if you determine that bugs are stopping you from missing deadlines, implement early code reviews. Keep at it, until you see improvement and the change becomes adopted into your culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, try to capture data on your process wherever possible, how many delays are you finding, what caused them. This is will help you demonstrate the value of your improvement efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also advise not to Ty to fix more then one issue at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11778" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T05:02:58.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12102" CreationDate="2014-08-08T06:12:03.233" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An option to consider when planning releases is to work based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilebok.org/index.php?title=Minimally_Marketable_Feature_%28MMF%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Minimum Marketable Features&lt;/a&gt;. Each adds something of value to the product, something the user might want to pay for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10405" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T06:12:03.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12113" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12134" CreationDate="2014-08-08T15:09:19.740" Score="3" ViewCount="1600" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are about to make a huge decision and change of ERP. The current solution is outdated and failing on us. The burning question is: Do we buy a solution like SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle or do we extend our already existing sales software with ERP functionallity ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I just said, we already have a custom software solution which is being used in almost the whole company. We also have 3 developers working on this. We are only interested in the financial/accounting part of an ERP system, so I am not talking about a complete ERP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other option is to buy an ERP system and come up with some kind of interface between our sales software and the ERP system. According to SAP this is possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I came up with some pros and cons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Custom Solution:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;100% fits business needs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cheap customization&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 solution for the entire company&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Flexibility in future changes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Low initial investment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We can make it so that the people using it don't have to change the way they are used to work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Vendor Solution:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Faster implementation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Less risk&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Build vs. Buy Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I already have some pros and cons listed, but don't have a formal risk assessment. What is a workable process for comparing a build vs. buy decision for this type of project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11783" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-08-12T16:59:13.517" LastActivityDate="2019-01-14T09:53:48.947" Title="How should we assess &quot;Build vs. Buy&quot; for an ERP System?" Tags="&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12114" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-08T19:09:10.087" Score="0" ViewCount="697" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have three groups of resources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Group one - onshore permanent employees that work 7.5 hours max per day&#xA;Group two - onshore contact employees that work 8 hours max per day&#xA;Group three - offshore contract employees that work 9 hours per day&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've created individual calendars for each group with the work hours allowed per day as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Group one - 8:00 AM to noon and 1:00 PM to 4:30 PM&#xA;Group two - 8:00 AM to noon and 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM&#xA;Group three - 8:00 AM to noon and 1:00 PM to 6:00 PM&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I cannot determine how to change the &lt;strong&gt;max hours per day&lt;/strong&gt; to differ across the three groups, as this seems to be a global setting for the entire project schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tx.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11787" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T22:42:08.497" Title="How to configure resources that work different max hours per day" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12114" CreationDate="2014-08-08T22:42:08.497" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure I understand your comment regarding &quot;&lt;strong&gt;max hours per day&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;.  Are you referring to the setting in &lt;strong&gt;File &gt; Options, Schedule&lt;/strong&gt; - &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Hours per day&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; and &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Hours per week&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; setting?  Those settings merely translate &quot;days&quot; and &quot;weeks&quot; expressed in the duration field into the correct number of hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/b8f9I.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming the majority of work is being done by your permanent employees, I'd set &quot;day&quot; to 7.5 and &quot;week&quot; to 37.5.  If you then assign a 2-day task to a 8 hour per day contract employee, they will accomplish the 15 hours of work in less time (finish date/time will adjust.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T22:42:08.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12117" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12129" CreationDate="2014-08-09T10:53:19.847" Score="5" ViewCount="3326" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it ok to communicate that a project is delayed due to a team member being sick? The reason I ask is because to some extend I feel it sounds pretty bad. But maybe there are some way to communicate it better than saying &quot;sorry we're late because the main programmer puked all day and is unable to write a line of code&quot;.&#xA;How do communicate a delay due to a sickness within the team? Examples/Specifics are welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11789" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T23:00:10.610" Title="How to communicate a delay to a client when team member is ill?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12117" CreationDate="2014-08-09T11:43:53.557" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If this is the driver why you are running late, then you must communicate it.  However, in doing so, you will be exposing your lack of risk planning.  This is one of the most basic threats to any project or operations.  It is an organic risk and should have already been mitigated via back-up resources to eliminate a single point of failure and / or contingency reserve to buy down loss when you have an illness on your team.  Too late, so you need to communicate.  Then go fix your risk capabilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T11:43:53.557" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3782" CreationDate="2014-08-09T16:18:38.497" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with ssdscott. Same thing happened to me. So, experience within last 8 years is only valid from PMP application point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11792" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T16:18:38.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12113" CreationDate="2014-08-10T03:38:42.340" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Chancho, welcome to PMSE! Recommend you look at the Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, 5th Edition, section 12 which is entitled &quot;Project Procurement Management&quot; and specifically section 12.1.2.1 entitled &quot;Make-or-buy analysis.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T03:38:42.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12121" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-10T19:24:23.330" Score="1" ViewCount="1919" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an ideal world, each new joiner is expected to be trained with the practices and standards applied on the project. Happens that the ideal world is far from reality. When project starts getting off track, is not rare to have more manpower added on it, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks&amp;#39;s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;which is doomed to failure&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, the project is lacking people and a new developer has joined the team. His programming background is known for his low quality. On his first experiences on the team, he demonstrated a lack of a clarity on what he was doing, and if he keeps work like this he'll increase the project's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;technical debt&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, the first mitigation - which is already proven valid - is the implementation of code review. However, it takes time and dedication from both people involved, which would impact the project plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should this situation be dealt with?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11795" LastEditorUserId="11795" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T08:35:32.190" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T10:10:20.753" Title="How do you ensure code quality when having a weaker programmer on your project?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;quality&gt;&lt;engineering-practices&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12121" CreationDate="2014-08-10T22:21:38.033" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's great to hear that Code Reviews went smoothly and you are seeing results soon, you have seen it's effective and that means the junior programmer is keen to learn (All good stuff)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Few things I would like to suggest which can be done at &lt;strong&gt;your end&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Good code samples from existing code base - You probably have some star quality code in your existing code base(with expected formatting/styling, naming conventions, well designed &amp;amp; &lt;strong&gt;reviewed&lt;/strong&gt;) . Point this out to your junior developer so he can gauge the benchmark he has to meet.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Static Code Analysis - Invest some time to identify a correct static analysis tool for your project(If you don't have one already). There are tools which help to correct coding style, find tech defects such as cyclomatic complexity &amp;amp; security issues. This could however take time. But a static analysis tool will reduce overhead at code review sessions. Will be useful for the entire team. ( Few examples from java world - &lt;strong&gt;checkstyle&lt;/strong&gt;,&lt;strong&gt;Findbugs&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Peer reviews - Can you find at least one more developer at his level? (not skill level but in team structure) If so, you can introduce peer reviews between &lt;strong&gt;all junior members&lt;/strong&gt; before the code is reviewed by a senior. This way there will be less overhead for the senior reviewer. &#xA;If possible, avoid doing peer reviews for the developer in question only. That might create negative team dynamics. &#xA;Also it'll be a good learning experience for the whole team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Code review by Senior/Lead developer  - With above steps implemented before reaching this point the overhead will be less.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarise above, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First we clarify expectations &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Automate with static code analysis &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduce overhead &amp;amp; increase learning opportunities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure quality is met with a final review&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10437" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T22:21:38.033" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12121" CreationDate="2014-08-11T04:01:40.803" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't have much time (and you do follow the advices mentioned above) then I would book a meeting with him and personally go with him through his code and tell him what you don't like or even better agree on a plan on how to structure/write code on your projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way you can get mutual benefits that can be effective immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10490" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T04:01:40.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12063" CreationDate="2014-08-11T12:20:47.420" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, Scrum does not require hours at the Story level.  In fact this would be considered an antipattern.  If you want to use hours they are applicable only at the Task level, where tasks are considered to be the &quot;steps&quot; needed to complete a story based on your team's Definition of Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is to skip tasks and hours altogether.  Hours are often estimated by individuals and are subject to a wide range of uncertainty.  Story Points (or just points) are estimated by the team and subject to refinement and improvement over time as the team gets better at estimating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11787" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T12:20:47.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12127" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-11T17:23:06.283" Score="-4" ViewCount="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not sure if this would fit in this community, but could not find any other more suitable :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short.. IT company, 5 co-founders, 2x backend devs, 1x frontend dev, 1x social media manager and 1x database expert.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the near (we hope) future, we would like to dedicate most of our time leading the company and teams of people, but for now we are most accurately identified as I listed above. Aside all the paper work, bureaucracy and planning for the past few months :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However.. Seems we should have some &quot;higher&quot; level titles also, so we decided on c-level ones. They are hip. They sound cool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, how to divide where this &quot;higher&quot; level title ends and &quot;lower&quot; level one begins? Do I introduce myself as Frontend Developer or Chief Creative Officer? What is stated under my name on our website and on my business card?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it OK for me to be called Chief if I'm not the boss of anyone at the moment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not to go any deeper in our thought process, do you maybe have any experience, tips and tricks considering titles in such situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. All of the co-founders are completely equal inside the company&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10509" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T18:04:02.997" Title="Company business titles for its founders" Tags="&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-08-11T18:15:41.267" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12127" CreationDate="2014-08-11T18:04:02.997" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use any titles you want. However, be aware of the communication potential (or lack thereof) in misusing titles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Titles &lt;em&gt;Should&lt;/em&gt; Carry Semantic Content&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Titles mean whatever you want them to mean. &quot;Junior Assistant Flunky&quot; may or may not be more important, or get paid more, than &quot;Captain of the Mop Brigade.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, titles can communicate useful information if they are part of a shared vocabulary within an organization or with one's clients. Industry-standard titles are standard for a reason. Even non-standard titles like &quot;Senior Code Monkey&quot; can still communicate about what someone does or the scope of that person's responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It isn't so much the title itself that matters. From a project perspective, the risk is largely in semantically-null titles or excessive title inflation that interfere with, rather than enable, efficient communication about role, scope, or responsibility. YMMV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T18:04:02.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12117" CreationDate="2014-08-12T06:20:51.063" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even when one programmer is not available, the team should be able to recuperate by pulling in another programmer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We follow pair programming in our company and even when one programmer is not available due to any organic risk or unplanned reason, the other programmer will be able to continue alone, this ensures that there is no high impact on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While communicating to the client, I would follow this template:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mention the absence of the programmer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Convey the impact.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mention the plan for compensating for the delay. (If was included in the risk planning, mention that it doesn't have any impact.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10329" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T06:20:51.063" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7937" CreationDate="2014-08-12T10:22:29.383" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think as soon as a releasable package is ready, it can be released. That is why I wrote about why sprints should be time-boxed and fixes and releases can happen whenever a releasable package is ready. You can decouple the sprint process from the release process:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thanks for advance CI and Continuous delivery process, we are able to release even multiple times a day....The release process in most places can be almost independent on sprint completion.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash; Excerpted from &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140808230234-2622543-why-time-boxed-sprints-what-happens-to-releases&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Why time boxed sprints? What happens to releases?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11809" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-08-14T00:04:11.523" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T00:04:11.523" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12113" CreationDate="2014-08-12T14:14:52.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the budget you want to allow, the scope you want to cover and the number of user. If you want only to cover finance/accounting it will be difficult to have the quality of existing software. It may be also difficult to be in line with accounting rules from your country. &#xA;If you choose an existing software, you can still develop the interface with your sales tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pros for vendor solution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tax and accounting rules covered&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Support and continuity of the solution&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Opportunity to review your process and improve&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see a good reason to develop a software from scratch for a process that is repeated in most of companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6734" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T14:14:52.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12113" CreationDate="2014-08-12T14:44:37.497" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Developing a Pro v. Con list is a start; however, for a decision of this magnitude, you need a bit more rigor.  In other words, your analysis needs to be along the lines of benefit v. cost v. risk and you need to quantify these three categories to the degree possible.  You can decompose each as you desire and score at the lower levels and you can apply weights if you desire.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the steps I would use: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generate the criteria under each category of benefit, cost, and risk;&#xA;Conduct workshops with the appropriate technical and business SMEs;&#xA;Iterate scores;&#xA;Conduct workshops to validate which came out the highest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is an iterative process and the scoring is more subjective than we would like; however, you have to start somewhere and if you use enough SMEs in the scoring, the extremes will level out.  Watch out for bias and hidden agendas and control for those things as best you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T14:44:37.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12135" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12137" CreationDate="2014-08-12T19:52:55.757" Score="10" ViewCount="934" Body="&lt;p&gt;As part of the audit and compliance for my company (PLC), any Agile Projects are treated as a normal Waterfall Projects for review purposes although run according to Scrum best practice.  We don't interfere in the process, we simply treat them equally for compliance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much software documentation is reasonable for an Agile Team to produce whilst working to fortnightly Sprints?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The new Scrum Master balked at &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; documentation and we seem to have settled upon documenting any aspect which has the risk of impacting another departments dependency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(In short - if they break something that is not theirs, they have some documentation to back up the process, intent and reasoning).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much documentation would you expect a Scrum Team to produce working within a Multinational Corporation?  Current tools in use for administration are Confluence/JIRA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The primary rebuttal against in-depth documentation was that&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It needs factored in as a User Story and given a points value (which I accept)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It ruins the flow of the developers work (also accepted)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Documentation is out of date within a week because of code changes/improvements etc (which I do not wholly accept)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Documentation is contained within the code (Which I have rejected outright as worst practice)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My concerns are&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In 3,5 or 10 years time a new developer might require documentation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having read Code Complete and been a Front-End Dev I was taught to document&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agile purists use the &quot;working software&quot; principle as a shield for &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt; docs &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Compliance with external auditors, internal governance and shareholder value&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope I have provided sufficient detail for someone to answer or guide me in my learning.  Have any writers touched on this aspect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My hopes are that&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A piece of software can extract code comments and package them as a report &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Scrum Master is just being protective but a consensus can be reached&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="10462" LastEditDate="2014-08-12T20:10:22.170" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T21:07:54.153" Title="How much code documentation should an effective Scrum Team produce?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;responsibility&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12135" CreationDate="2014-08-12T20:07:41.707" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well the answer is really &quot;It depends&quot; mixed with &quot;Why do they need it?&quot; and &quot;What's the least you can get away with?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is really about interviewing your stakeholders and doing a 5 Why's type analysis. Find out why they need something, so you can then work to meet that need with the minimum work on your part or even not at all because it doesn't apply. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to be the PMO lead for an agile group inside a massive waterfall, Six-Sigma, quality control driven company. We needed to be able to release hardware products to the market often in as little as three months. The mothership took two to three years to release a product. While the main company needed that 2-3 years, we were taking their finished products and putting them into our product so we were using all finished components which we then added software to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The waterfall/quality process of the main company added months to our projects. Because the quality team could stop us from shipping, we couldn't ignore the process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I scheduled stakeholder interviews with all organizations we touched. I found out what they needed and why they needed it. By digging into the why, I was often able to see that it really didn't apply to us. It was just a process so entrenched that no one questioned it. I was then able to explain how our projects worked and why we didn't need to meet these requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the instances where we had to meet some corporate requirement, the why analysis let us see what was the minimum we needed to do in order to satisfy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh and in some cases, the why analysis showed us that much as we thought we were special, we really weren't. Sometimes our team had to suck it up and realize we had to do all that work because it really was needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T20:07:41.707" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12135" CreationDate="2014-08-12T20:26:55.300" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There can be no general answer to this. Multinational or public companies do vary greatly. Software developed by such companies varies even more in size, type, purpose, usage, life expectancy etc. In general, the bigger, longer used and maintained, more complex the software is, and the more people are involved (at the same time and/or over the long term), and the more regulated the domain is, the more documentation it requires.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The new Scrum Master balked at any documentation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... which sounds a bit overzealous to me. All these people can most likely quote the relevant parts of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; by heart:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] we have come to value: [...] &lt;strong&gt;Working software&lt;/strong&gt; over comprehensive documentation [...]  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They often forget to quote this though:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on&#xA;  the left more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;we seem to have settled upon documenting any aspect which has the risk&#xA;  of impacting another departments dependency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(In short - if they break something that is not theirs, they have some&#xA;  documentation to back up the process, intent and reasoning).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which to me sounds a pragmatic approach, the same as I would follow. There is indeed no value in producing documentation just for the sake of it, but whenever stakeholders request documentation, and/or there is a problem identified stemming from inadequate or out of date documentation, the Scrum team must address it. Of course, face to face conversation is more effective on many levels than written documentation; however, it lasts only as long as participants' memories, and it is not feasible in some cases (e.g. distributed teams). Whenever we need more lasting and/or more transferable traces of things, we need to document them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The primary rebuttal against in-depth documentation was that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;It needs factored in as a User Story and given a points value (which I accept)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;It ruins the flow of the developers work (also accepted)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, one may also say that testing ruins the flow of the developers work. As well as lunch breaks ;-P &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that whatever one is not accustomed to, tends to break the flow indeed. Once we get used to it and gain experience, it will become part of the flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Documentation is out of date within a week because of code changes/imrpovements etc (which I do not wholly accept)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is indeed a risk, but it depends entirely on what is documented. Document not the low level details of the code which may change by next week, but the higher level aspects - architecture, design decisions, patterns used, interfaces etc. - which don't tend to change that often and/or are not directly present within the code, but are crucial for e.g. an outsider or a new team member to quickly get an overall picture of the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Documentation is contained within the code (Which I have rejected outright as worst practice)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depends on what this means. If this means autogenerating documentation from code comments like Javadoc, it is fine although in my experience mostly of limited use (except for public interfaces). If it means embedding explanatory comments within the code, IMHO it is almost always a Bad Idea (except for rare and limited cases like implementing a specific algorithm, or performance tuning changes). If it means writing readable, self-explanatory, fluent code, I fully agree. IMHO well written, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0132350882&quot;&gt;clean code&lt;/a&gt; rarely needs any comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to sum up with a few rules of thumb:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to your PO, stakeholders and the Scrum team, to &lt;strong&gt;find out who needs what kind of documentation and why&lt;/strong&gt; (and whether their reason is good enough).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(during e.g. reviews and retrospectives) &lt;strong&gt;Identify any problems caused by missing or inadequate documentation.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If there is a justified need, do the minimum necessary work to fulfill that need.&lt;/strong&gt; (Taking into account the expected lifetime of the need / artifacts - you may want to optimize for the long term, not the short term. E.g. writing a script to autogenerate a document from config files is obviously costlier than copying it manually once, but if this document needs to be updated every week for the next 5+ years, the script will quickly pay for itself.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Always strive to &lt;strong&gt;avoid duplicating info&lt;/strong&gt; as much as possible. Ideally every piece of information has a single source, so if it needs an update, you can do it once at the source. It may need to be replicated / copied to other places, but strive to solve this via automation instead of manual work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If (and as much as) you produce documentation, strive to &lt;strong&gt;make it in the most accessible, easiest to maintain format&lt;/strong&gt; (unless of course it is confidential). In my experience, this means a wiki like Confluence you mentioned. It can import Word docs, it keeps a history of all changes, and it can even be autoupdated using scripts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also - as processes and needs change - &lt;strong&gt;look for out of date, out of use documentation&lt;/strong&gt; and if you find such stuff, eliminate it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10244" LastEditorUserId="10244" LastEditDate="2014-08-12T21:07:54.153" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T21:07:54.153" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12138" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-12T20:50:52.790" Score="0" ViewCount="343" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been using Scrum for ages on my own projects, which are usually part-time (couple of hours per week -- maybe up to 10 hours a week) and usually solo (although occasionally include teams of up to 3-4 people).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like certain benefits which I get from using Scrum:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Centralized backlog of work (previous, current, and future)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Breaking down work into small, user-facing packages (stories)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quick/cheap estimating of stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some issues that I struggle with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimating stories seems like a waste, especially if I'm the only developer, there's no concept of a release/goal/deadline.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint velocity swings drastically. For example, if I get sick, it drops to near zero; if other commitments back off, it can double.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I end up changing story velocities often to try to reflect &quot;real&quot; effort (not estimated effort), especially if they were off by more than one Fibonacci number (eg. 3 =&gt; 13)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trying to use velocity for capacity planning (&quot;how long will it take for ...&quot;) is almost impossible. In fact, other than breaking work into smaller pieces, it's mostly overhead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a tweak or better way to get meaningful velocity under this kind of situation? Longer sprints may work (average out better, eg. one month), but I'm still not sure that my velocity is actually meaningful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36" LastActivityDate="2019-08-29T08:11:33.200" Title="Meaningful capacity planning for part-time, small-team projects" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12117" CreationDate="2014-08-12T23:00:10.610" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not only ok, it's a bad idea not to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be upfront and apologetic.  Most importantly be ready to update expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11813" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T23:00:10.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12138" CreationDate="2014-08-12T23:56:49.953" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found that &quot;scrum&quot; can mean very different things to different people. To me what differentiates it from other agile processes is the focus on commitment based sprints. Since you have not listed delivering sprint based deliverables as an important benefit for these projects you might get more value out of other lightweight agile processes rather that sticking to the activities prescribed by scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimating stories can have limited utility. I've found that if you're good about keeping stories small and about the same size then it works just as well to count stories instead of points or assign all stories the same point value as soon as you believe they are well defined. I've even have team projects fall into this pattern and we spent &quot;estimation&quot; activities getting stories to be appropriately small rather than debating point counts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to get a useful velocity I think you should try to measure points or stories delivered per hour across each iteration. That should eliminate much of the variability you are seeing. If the time you spend on each iteration is highly variable then you won't be able to project a completion date but you should be able to project roughly how many hours of work remain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many tools include the ability to adjust team strength per iteration to account for these sort of changes. For example Pivotal Tracker allows you to set a percentage of normal team strength for each iteration which allows you to account for team members on vacation, reduced hours, or other variations. Alternately you might count an iteration as X hours of work rather than Y days elapsed and an iteration could take 1 to 3 weeks to complete but you'll get a more useful estimated number of iterations remaining in the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7255" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T23:56:49.953" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12138" CreationDate="2014-08-13T07:19:29.303" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The value of Scrum starts with a dev. team of minimum 3 people and is actually felt from 5 people onward. &#xA;If you are the only developer, I would not bother with Scrum, you can get inspiration from it, but really it boils down to a good features prioritisation and personal management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11789" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T07:19:29.303" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12143" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20131" CreationDate="2014-08-13T09:37:51.340" Score="0" ViewCount="4399" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to love the fact that there was a text editing box at the top of the screen in old versions of MS-P, allowing you to edit Task Name directly without having to open the Task Information dialog. This is so useful when setting up a project as the wording continually changes and also to allow quick entry of tasks...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it can be done in MS-Project 2010, I have done it in the past- You can add the Task Name field to the Quick Access ribbon and it operates exactly as it used to. But I cannot, for the life of me, remember how I did it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been through the Customise Quick Access Ribbon screens and cannot find anything relevant and I have visited the fields in Task Information to see if a right-click gives me the ability to add to the ribbon, but to no avail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a massive plan to set up, with many 100s of tasks, and it is driving me crazy that I have to go into each Task Information just to amend some text as I am organising the tasks...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2016-09-20T11:39:02.120" Title="MS-Project 2010 - How to add Task Name to the Quick Access ribbon?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12143" CreationDate="2014-08-13T09:42:31.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typical. As soon as I post the question I realise the answer... You can edit the tasks names in-line directly within the Gantt Chart grid by clicking into the field and then clicking again. How did I miss that?! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T09:42:31.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12145" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12160" CreationDate="2014-08-13T11:05:17.273" Score="0" ViewCount="477" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the middle of a project that consists of 2 different teams, one team does migration of websites while the other team does development of features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My challenge is to maintain an overview of which ressources are allocated to which features at any time given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the features require 1 developer while others require 2-3 developers at the same time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am trying to get a spread sheet together where I can see what developer is allocated to what feature in order to plan when the next feature should be planned for development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any good templates out there, MS excel or Google Spreadsheet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1568" LastActivityDate="2014-08-15T21:14:08.870" Title="Resource planning within large project" Tags="&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;templates&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12146" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-13T12:15:00.903" Score="5" ViewCount="807" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you handle developers who every time they encounter a problem immediately forwards it to the tech lead without doing enough of their own research to resolve it?&#xA;The tech lead is getting frustrated because the issues are relatively basic and the developer should have been able to work it out for themselves. Yet time after time the tech lead is having to resolve very basic issues for them and it ends up in the tech lead becoming a bottleneck for progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We don't understand why the developer is struggling with what we think are basic common issues when they're supposed to be a senior developer with experience in the tech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is like that management book &quot;the one minute manager meets the monkey&quot; but would like to see how others have addressed this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4574" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T15:35:34.757" Title="How to get developers to take more initiative and ownership and think through problems before escalating?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;conflicts&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12146" CreationDate="2014-08-13T12:37:34.257" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds to me like you have two possible root causes here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The developers &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; triage but are instead escalating&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The developers &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be capable of triage but are not able to because they do not have the knowledge or skill, and so escalate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first instance, if you want to change their behaviours you need to do several things; you need to inform them of the required behaviour, you need to measure and monitor their on-going behaviour (i.e. track their escalations) and you need to feed back whether their performance meets expectations on an on-going basis. It is also worth pointing out that the Team Lead could surely reject their escalation and demand they do more triage before bringing the issues back to him/her. Before long they would learn that if they are going to escalate then they need to triage first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second instance, irrespective of whether you believe they &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be able to undertake the basic level of triage, it is clear that they are not able to for whatever reason. You need to look at your hiring policies and practises to understand how this key requirement was missed and you also need to examine options for how to increase the skillsets of the developers- this could be more hires, internal and external training, walkthroughs, peer assistance etc. But you need to recognise as an organisation that your capability is not as effective as it needs to be and find ways to make it more effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In respect of &quot;We don't understand why the developer is struggling with what we think are basic common issues when they're supposed to be a senior developer with experience in the tech.&quot; - Have you tried asking them why they are struggling?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T12:37:34.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12143" CreationDate="2014-08-13T16:08:33.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Also F2 drops you into edit mode if the clicking twice doesn't work for you.&#xA;Previous releases had the Entry Bar enabled by default. You can display it in later releases through File, Options. However I had to turn off my edit bar due to some repeated profile corruption in Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T16:08:33.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12149" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-13T21:08:29.393" Score="1" ViewCount="869" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a way for MS Project 2007 to calculate durations based on a give time/part and total number of parts.  For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A manufacturing process can process 1 part every 30 sec and we want to build 100 parts.  This would take us 50 min to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I have a series of processing steps listed as tasks in project, can I calculate the duration of each task based on a given quantity of parts to build.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal is to create a template and have it basically auto calculate the build time for a given build size for each build cycle.  Project would be much easier to manage the build cycle than trying to do this in say Excel but the auto calculations are a must.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11825" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T18:53:33.737" LastActivityDate="2019-03-30T07:20:08.060" Title="Using MS Project 2007 for Manufacturing Build Time" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;ms-project-2007&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12146" CreationDate="2014-08-13T21:19:51.250" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a team lead i experienced similar behaviors in my team , in my case the impact was worse as the tech lead was external and the dependency almost slowed us down to a crawl.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How I handled it ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Got the team together (including the tech lead) and brought the problem out in the open . I needed to balance my message , so that it did not come across as not supporting the team or trying to overly emphasize impact on the tech lead. The key message to the team was &quot;it is hurting the team's throughput, it is impeding the tech lead and most importantly it is impeding your learning as the team's capability to solve problems is not rising&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Set out some escalation ground rules....every issue that needs escalation or external resolution  need through go through an evidence based triaged process .... &quot;why does this needs to be escalated?&quot; &quot;what have we done to solve this problem..as an individual and within the team ?&quot;  &quot;why are we not able to solve this problem?&quot; &quot;how is this problem impeding us&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The above questions prompted the team to look within /internally in the team first and drove the team towards taking &quot;initiative&quot; to solve their own problems&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then only &quot;genuine&quot; problems got escalated &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;And I also worked with the tech lead to ensure that he just does not jump in and solve the team's problems ...that they hand hold the team and work with them through a learning exercise and ensuring that the learnings are documented to be reused. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T21:19:51.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12146" CreationDate="2014-08-14T11:58:06.770" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Marv's answer is a good one but I think there is one missing element and that is the REAL expectation of the organization.  I highlight &quot;real&quot; because organizations often pitch an ideal expectation that sounds forward thinking, enlightened, etc., but behaves inconsistent to it.  For example with this scenario, the organization is wanting the team to take more initiative and ownership but may also inadvertently punish that exact same behavior when it occurs, thus training its folks on what is &quot;really&quot; desired.  How does this occur?  Someone takes ownership of a problem, does outstanding analysis of alternatives and chooses a course of action, the results turn out poor (one of those pesky things when you make a decision without all the information--which we never have), and that someone takes it on the chin versus rewarded for the outstanding analysis and taking control.  This happens all the time, in my observations.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bad decisions yielding good results are rewarded; good decisions yielding bad results are punished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So take a hard look at the organization's true behavior.  You may be inhibiting the very thing you are wanting to enable.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T11:58:06.770" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12146" CreationDate="2014-08-14T15:35:34.757" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I usually do is when someone come to me with a silly question or silly issue, I sit beside him/her, and I ask to show what s/he has tried, then I suggest things that won't solve the problem, I make them research in front of me, reproduce the issue, explain me the issue, etc. So the conclusion, is that the next time, because when they ask me it require them to work more, they won't ask again. This solve the problem if they are lazy, but if they were not able to solve the problem even if they tried, I will drive them to find the solution, so the next time they will find the solution/answer themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11752" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T15:35:34.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12149" CreationDate="2014-08-14T16:42:05.790" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Duration field cannot be customized by calculations.  However, there are spare number fields (Number1 through Number10) where you could perform the calculations and copy/paste into the Duration field.  If you have some skills with VBA you could automate the copy/paste process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T16:42:05.790" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12113" CreationDate="2014-08-15T02:04:41.237" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have &lt;strong&gt;multiple&lt;/strong&gt; solutions to consider, not just Build vs Buy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding Buy you will need to consider a number of different purchasing choices;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gap Analysis of your proceses and business goals against on a number&#xA;of ERP products (they are all different, with natural fit to different verticals)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Delivery models (iterative or big-bang)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Combinations of smaller best-of-breed products rather than just a single ERP&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hidden costs such as cost of implementation, customisation, change management and ongoing maintenance and support contracts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding Build you will need to consider a &lt;strong&gt;number&lt;/strong&gt; of different solution choices;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Platform/Technology/UX choices (cloud vs local vs thick-client vs&#xA;web vs mobile or a combination)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Release Plan (short iterative vs. big-bang), and the different speed&#xA;of ROI that provides&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The good/bad news is you shouldn't even &lt;strong&gt;start&lt;/strong&gt; this investigation until you have listed and analysed &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; your processes, to a sufficient extent that you can do 1) detailed Gap Analysis against at least 2 two ERP products and also Gap Analysis against an integration-based solution (&quot;A Combination of smaller best-of-breed products&quot;) (which is often better than an ERP, with faster ROI and better fit-to-need)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will end up with a gap analysis summary of Product or Dev choices mapped against processes (picture a great big spreadsheet). You will then need to assess the size and cost of closing the gaps, which usually requires Vendors and Development companies to engage closely with you. If any solution is less than 70% fit out-of-the-box then it probably should be discarded immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line, I believe no ERP solution will fit your needs out of the box. I have been doing this for 25 years and this is ALWAYS the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So... Gap Analysis is the key, and expect a lot of options to choose between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11836" LastActivityDate="2014-08-15T02:04:41.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12157" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-15T15:28:31.740" Score="2" ViewCount="459" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our company has accepted to do a full-scale refactoring of our core IT product and I'm supposed to act as PM for this project. &#xA;First some background info: The project is 5-6 years old, build as a monolith of code by  a single guy (for about 3 years) and then developed further by a small team (without the first guy). Right now the company and team further extended so it became problematic to accommodate a large team being productive by working on such an outdated (architecturally speaking) project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of such refactoring came from one of the senior developers (from the ones that took over from the creator of the project) in form of various technical documents about how the project should be modularized, structured in correct layers, adapted to modern models and frameworks, etc. So this guy (let's call him Mike), ended up as an teamleder/architect of this project to which management committed some important resources. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the problems is that this guy is a difficult/conflictual person to work with so I was also bought in as (non-technical) PM to handle this project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main problem here is that the project is purely technical (e.g. if everything that Mike suggested will be done, business wise the product would have the same functionalities/look the same) so it will be very problematic for me check the deliverables of such project. Mike's difficult personality will make this even more cumbersome as he can't really find (by himself) the way to explain the business scope of the various &quot;tasks&quot; that he suggested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of other seniors (that will be part of this team) that I would trust more with translating technical plans into business understandable projects, but they are not the ones who came with this project so this is a bit of &quot;Mike's project&quot;.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course having a good relationship with Mike is one of my main goals (and one of the reasons I ended up in this position is because I was the only PM to accept/be able to work with him in the past:) ), but I can not let him solely lead the project and trust him. Especially since it seems the project can not really be delivered in steps, which make it even more complex to follow it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11841" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T21:05:43.693" Title="How to deal as PM for a technical-only refactoring project" Tags="&lt;technical-leader&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12157" CreationDate="2014-08-15T19:48:56.017" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Looks like it is a rewriting project not a refactoring project&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I know this? You said, &quot;the project can not really be delivered in steps&quot;. Refactoring can (and should) be done a little at a time, say for example, in each sprint as part of feature development and bug fixes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Stack Exchange cofounder Joel Spolsky calls rewriting &quot;the single worst strategic mistake that any software company can make&quot;.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Others have said similar things. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/2596/Why-You-Should-Almost-Never-Rewrite-Your-Software.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Why You Should (Almost) Never Rewrite Your Software&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, now that you have the PM role on this project here is what I suggest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The first thing you must do is to articulate the business drivers of this project - maintainability, large team productivity and whatever else - and get buy-in from the stakeholders. List the changes that are planned and tie them back to the business drivers. This will help you to manage the scope of the project, to some extent. Otherwise whatever catches Mike's fancy is what will get done.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Press to deploy code to end-users at the end of each two-week sprint. If this is not at all possible, at a minimum, ask to deploy three or four times as the project progresses. This will help to minimize project risk.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2014-08-15T19:54:56.210" LastActivityDate="2014-08-15T19:54:56.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12159" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12169" CreationDate="2014-08-15T20:06:15.810" Score="3" ViewCount="673" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/10407/can-i-have-a-have-a-project-without-having-a-portfolio&quot;&gt;Can I have a have a project without having a portfolio?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This issue has been slightly touched on in the above link but I am hoping the collective expertise of this community could expand it.  I have been reading PMBoK 5e.  From what I gather the only functional difference between Progam management and Portfolio Management is that programs should be grouped by a common outcome or capability whereas portfolios can contain projects that are drastically dissimilar in goals or requirements.  Also Projects within a portfolio will necessarily share a strategic objective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this reflect the real business world?  Is an organization with projects within programs within one of many portfolios a common structure?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering if this is an example of jargon for the sake of jargon or if there are enough real world applications of this organizational structure that it is useful to understand it (beyond for testing purposes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11813" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2016-04-03T16:25:49.213" Title="Real world differences between Portfolio and Program" Tags="&lt;program-management&gt;&lt;pmbok&gt;&lt;portfolio-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12145" CreationDate="2014-08-15T21:14:08.870" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't recommend using excel for managing tasks as it's not easily maintained, customized and developers don't find it user friendly most of the time (if they are going to use it to track their tasks).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend using a tool to plan the whole thing (project road map, milestones and  resource allocation).There are many tools that offer plan/see team workload feature like wrike,JIRA and droptask for an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'd want to start with something as simple as wrike,then take it from there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3263" LastActivityDate="2014-08-15T21:14:08.870" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12041" CreationDate="2014-08-16T03:49:11.363" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First you have to keep in mind there are two different Kanbans out there.  There is the Kanban Method, which is often quite useful but is not often my transition method of choice and then there is Kanban as an approach for managing the development part of a value stream. This is often called Lean-Kanban, Open Kanban, Kanban Thinking.  While it is quite different from Scrum, it can be used in the same places that Scrum can be used.  Kanban as a team approach can be very powerful. &#xA;I consider Kanban, Kanban Method and Scrum as point solutions in the bigger lean space.  The thing to keep in mind is that you want to consider which approach will help you achieve the results you want in your situation.  There are several blogs I've written on this that you can find at www.netobjectives.com/blog&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Insights at Agile 2014 Part 1 of 3&#xA;Insights at Agile 2014, Part III: Lean-Agile Development, 3rd Generation Agile&#xA;The Scrum to Kanban Method Spectrum: Deciding Which Approach To Use&#xA;Extending the Kanban Method - Updated&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Al Shalloway&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11845" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T03:49:11.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8711" CreationDate="2014-08-16T03:50:11.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having been a Scrum coach and an Agile practitioner for more than 6 years now, I can tell you that we encourage physical boards for their ability to produce &lt;strong&gt;better team interactions&lt;/strong&gt; and electronic tools for their ability to effortlessly &lt;strong&gt;track performance metrics&lt;/strong&gt;.  As an information management and measurement tool, physical boards are mediocre at best and certainly can't compete with electronic tools.  As an interaction tool, they are far superior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why Physical Boards are Better for Interaction&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;In stand ups and planning sessions, physical boards are more fluid and less clunky than electronic ones.  Changing the board simply involves walking up to it and moving things around.  You don't have to be logged in at a computer to do it, there's no refreshing, synchronizing, or other technology induced awkwardness to deal with.  It just works, and when you have a co-located team everyone can see it and change it in real time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course when you have a distributed team and few (if any people) occupy the same space, a physical board will likely not be maintained and go to waste quickly.  Like everyone else has said, do what works for the team and their current situation and &lt;strong&gt;if you can be co-located, the certainly do&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why You'll Want Both&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Now, I'll tell you why you really want both a physical board as well as an electronic one.  You want the physical board for the effortless interaction, you want the electronic one because it can help your team track and improve its performance data.  The synchronization tax is worthwhile and actually pretty minimal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recording precisely when tasks are moved by whom and what the impact on the related story is would be silly to attempt in any other way but by using an electronic system.  In the perfect co-located world, maintain the physical board and sync it with the virtual one so you can see trends and do analysis on your data to understand bottlenecks and continually improve your team processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Consider Media Richness Theory&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;I like and completely agree with the other commentary on non-verbal communication and its importance.  This falls directly in line with what we know about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_richness_theory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;media richness theory&lt;/a&gt; - that some mediums of communication are more capable of conveying complete information than others.  You have to choose, given your team's unique constraints what the richest &lt;strong&gt;available&lt;/strong&gt; method of interaction is while recognizing and hopefully compensating for the costs of the method that you choose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make Your Physical Board the Easy Way&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;If you want the benefits of a Physical scrum or Kanban board without the headache of making one with whatever you have laying around the office, consider getting a professional, ready-made Kanboard from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kanboard.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kanboard.com&lt;/a&gt;.  It's perfect for getting going quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11846" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T03:50:11.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12159" CreationDate="2014-08-16T06:22:57.053" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The confusion here can sometimes come from people using the term &quot;program&quot; when we would technically mean &quot;project&quot; in the organizational framework (afterall a &quot;program&quot; could be your project!). You are correct in that strategy is the common linkage from project &gt; program &gt; portfolio. It's often thought of as a pyramid with projects at the bottom, but the reality does look a bit more multidirectional than just one-way vertical. I like the enhanced visual that Stanford employs (copyright to Stanford Advanced Project Management) for the image. I think the more complex depiction of the relationships and intersections of elements more closely depicts the business reality of the differences between program and portfolio. Technically speaking, you may not have a &quot;defined&quot; portfolio from your organization that identifies it as such but it certainly sits within a strategic framework and mission of some sort. Formal clarification can be important to consider investment in project maturity and sustainability of efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mBYHf.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11847" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T06:22:57.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12113" CreationDate="2014-08-16T06:39:58.427" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently walked my team through a similar question. Here's a hybrid approach I used that considers typical build or buy logic and cases with a team-based problem solving method: .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course the usual cost/ROI and speed/accuracy questions are important. But you may want to do a bit more pro-active risk planning. For this I employ what HBR likes to call the &quot;pre-mortem&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research conducted in 1989 by Deborah J. Mitchell, of the Wharton School; Jay Russo, of Cornell; and Nancy Pennington, of the University of Colorado, found that prospective hindsight—imagining that an event has already occurred—increases the ability to correctly identify reasons for future outcomes by 30%. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although many project teams engage in prelaunch risk analysis, the premortem’s prospective hindsight approach offers benefits that other methods don’t. Indeed, the premortem doesn’t just help teams to identify potential problems early on. It also reduces the kind of damn-the-torpedoes attitude often assumed by people who are overinvested in a project. Moreover, in describing weaknesses that no one else has mentioned, team members feel valued for their intelligence and experience, and others learn from them. The exercise also sensitizes the team to pick up early signs of trouble once the project gets under way. In the end, a premortem may be the best way to circumvent any need for a painful postmortem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read more on it here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://hbr.org/2007/09/performing-a-project-premortem&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://hbr.org/2007/09/performing-a-project-premortem&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11847" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T06:39:58.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12157" CreationDate="2014-08-16T07:05:02.393" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are really two questions to answer here: the technical aspect and the project management aspect. I'll focus on what appears to be your concern: managing a difficult team member who has perceived authority and (possibly) detail you don't have. I do think this can be managed with skill by drawing on the other technical expertise in your company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relationship building is important but so is facilitating open exchange. When people CAN act as gate keepers due to their key role on a project they DO tend to function that way to assert their influence or power. So the heart of this problem seems political. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest framing your solution to these issues as part of the project plan and your own management processes; a few suggestions that I've used with a somewhat similar scenario:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) &quot;The Bus Rule&quot; &#xA;-My concern was that at any given time a project member with important knowledge in their specific role was the only person with that information. Thus, everyone was required to participate in knowledge-sharing that looked something like a rotating &quot;knowledge download.&quot; For project stability I feel that each person should have someone who could step in should something catastrophic happen -- as in getting hit by a bus. This also helps take the keys from the gatekeepers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) &quot;Red Team Tactical Response&quot;&#xA;A red team is an independent group that challenges an organization to improve its effectiveness. The United States intelligence community (military and civilian) has red teams that explore alternative futures and write articles as if they were despotic world leaders. Little formal doctrine or publications about Red Teaming in the military exists.[1]&#xA;Private business, especially those heavily invested as government contractors/defense contractors such as IBM and SAIC, and U.S. government agencies such as the CIA, have long used Red Teams. Red teaming refers to the work performed to provide an adversarial perspective, especially when this perspective includes plausible tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP) as well as realistic policy and demands. The key here is to make &quot;criticism&quot; a regular part of the group process. The red team role is often random and rotated (I would include Mike as a part of this as well). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are perfectly normal practices for risk mitigation that take the focus away from a possible negative individual personnel matter to a &quot;business as usual&quot; that helps make everyone more comfortable with ownership and speaking up. By increasing interdependence and engaging the technical expertise you may not be comfortable with, you've built in content-specific oversight into the overall project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By making this about collective-task management and project responsibility it removes the possible &quot;me against him&quot; issue. Remember: this is not &quot;mike's project&quot; the project implementation and ownership rests with you. Let Mike know you need his support in ensuring the success of the project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11847" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T07:05:02.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12157" CreationDate="2014-08-16T10:54:14.377" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you primary issue on which you should be focusing is your problem employee.  A hard_to_work_with person decays teaming and sustainable, predictable overall performance despite whether or not this person produces good work product. No organization, except for maybe those focused on extreme cutting-edge, innovative research (and I am not even so sure here), should put up with this.  If it were a problematic cog on a machine, you'd turn the machine off, unbolt the cog, grab another, replace, and turn the machine back on.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concept here is no one is irreplaceable.  We are all cogs that can and should be removed when we are no longer fit for service.  Not a popular concept, I know, but businesses are not here for us; we are there for them, to produce whatever it is we produce to achieve whatever mission.  The great work product of a problem employee NEVER outweighs the degradation of overall organization capability that a problem employee causes.  It seems to because you can easily see it and you assume the organization can 'work around' him/her.  And what the organization is now producing by way of results becomes your new normal, so you don't even recognize the decay anymore.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Replace and finish your project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T10:54:14.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12157" CreationDate="2014-08-17T19:12:42.450" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Refactoring an existing product gives you some advantages in dealing with a &quot;difficult&quot; lead dev compared with developing new products or features. You have a clear, objective definition of done (product must externally behave exactly as before), so you'll largely be spared from clashes over which feature are important or different interpretations of requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It helps to have a comprehensive spec of the current behavior of the system. If you don't have this, I would argue that developing such a spec should be your first priority. This will represent your objective yardstick for progress and definition of done. It's also a task that won't depend on the lead dev to complete. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Better yet would be a comprehensive automated test suite that continually verifies the proper functioning of this system. At the start, all the tests will be red. You're done when all the tests are green. Yes, it requires writing a lot of test code before touching that product code, and it can be harder for a non-technical PM to champion. But it will not only aid in the refactoring but will make future maintenance safer and faster. If Mike is truly focused on modernizing and properly structuring the codebase, he should be a fan of this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I question the notion that the project can't be delivered in steps. It may not be able to be pressed into production in steps, but any project of size ought to be splitable into steps for the purpose of managing the workflow. Features that are dependent on multiple parts can have some parts faked/stubbed in so that you can check them off as complete. I would push hard for this, and enlist the aid of other stakeholders (like Mike's boss). Your bosses should be expecting incremental progress reports, so make it about you and Mike working together to keep them off your backs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11850" LastActivityDate="2014-08-17T19:12:42.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12041" CreationDate="2014-08-18T06:36:00.703" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kanban (the original) is quite old, is was developed in Japan by Taiichi Ohno at Toyota. The Kanban principles are quite simple to control the product flow in a production chain. (See &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can transfer this concept simply to other things like task of a backlog or bugs to check in testing and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see any agile concepts in Kanban it is just an control flow mechanism and is one of the tools of Lean. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile and Lean has some similar principles (e.g. both focus on people) but with different goals. Agile methods like Scrum is a Project Management approach. Lean try to reduce &quot;waste&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you tied Scrum for two weeks you just covered one sprint or what was your timeframe?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why consider an agile PM method, are your requirements not clear? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you like to have a regular validation cycle with your &quot;customer&quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do you develop? SW?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to explain more about your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11857" LastEditorUserId="11857" LastEditDate="2014-08-19T06:00:44.357" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T06:00:44.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12159" CreationDate="2014-08-18T08:42:01.697" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience a Programme is a collection of projects where each project delivers part of the overall programme outcomes (i.e the programme is like a super-project but with several substantial sub-projects), whereas a Portfolio is merely a collection of projects managed together (like a portfolio of stocks you may have invested in). I have also seen portfolios containing project aligned to different strategic goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2014-08-18T12:29:32.537" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T12:29:32.537" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12170" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-18T09:48:41.743" Score="0" ViewCount="319" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may be general question, but I would like to ask. &#xA;What is your best advice/practices in managing eShop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What methodology is best for managaing operations (orders, payments, logistic etc.)?&#xA;And what methodologies is best for projects parts like (marketing campain, developing new feature in shop). How to connect everything together, to avoid further problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is my current team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;team is 5-10 person&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;each team member has different competence (1 graphic, 1 programmer, 1 copywrither, 1&#xA;logistic etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;team is distributed and works independently (team&#xA;works from several location, and on different shifts)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;team meets once a week in main office&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7819" LastEditorUserId="7819" LastEditDate="2014-08-19T13:55:04.597" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T13:55:04.597" Title="Best practices for managing eShop eCommerce?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-08-19T03:55:30.620" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9443" CreationDate="2014-08-18T13:48:22.037" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are looking for a tool that makes TFS more user friendly, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eylean.com/tfs?utm_source=website&amp;amp;utm_medium=text&amp;amp;utm_campaign=DMStack&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Eylean&lt;/a&gt; could be a great option. It offers a two way integration with TFS and represents the tasks in a clear task board that can be projected on a big plasma tv or elsewhere. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10336" LastEditorUserId="10336" LastEditDate="2014-09-03T11:46:58.617" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T11:46:58.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12170" CreationDate="2014-08-18T17:35:08.893" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think that there is a &quot;Best methodology&quot;. You should choose the one that you feel comfortable with, understand and respect the basic principles and suits your needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you do some research on all of them and based on that you make a decision&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11783" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T17:35:08.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12170" CreationDate="2014-08-18T19:26:59.077" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Separate the discretionary spending from operations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any business has, broadly speaking, two kinds of spending:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Operations: This will cover resources and activities that are required to &quot;keep the lights on&quot;. In your case this might include managing orders, logistics, maintenance etc. If you cut any of this, the business will come to a stand still. So, this is not discretionary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Projects: You might have one or more discretionary projects. You will go through a cost-benefit analysis to determine which ideas you want to invest in and how much. Once one is approved, it becomes a project. Such a project will have a definite end date based on how much you decided it would be prudent to invest.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You use different methodologies for Operations and Projects. Without knowing the specifics of what you are trying to do, it is hard to answer. However, here is one example. Some people use Scrum for developing new features while they may use Kanban for the ongoing repetitive work. This may not apply in your case. As @Marv Mills said, please ask separate questions for each, providing more details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T19:26:59.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11586" CreationDate="2014-08-19T06:16:34.450" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have a baseline of what? The Product Breakdown Structure (PBS) or the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) or both?  Adding tasks sound for me like extending scope, in this case work scope which need further efford and therefore money. If you just update your work packages structure by rearaning your tasks may not have an impact on scope. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless any change lead to an update of the baseline and should be managed by a Change Control Board with the clear intension to communicate who have to do what.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11857" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T06:16:34.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12175" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-19T10:18:02.743" Score="2" ViewCount="795" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say you have a piece of software that you know can be improved on various quantifiable metrics (time to boot, CPU and memory usage, latency for various actions, accuracy of recognition tasks, etc.), but you don't know by how much - how would you write User Stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it better to guesstimate an improvement? (ideally with the team) To just write &quot;improve such-and-such metric&quot;, without specifying by how much?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Our organisation is new to Agile and we're trying out Scrum, and I've found we spend a bit too much time discussing these details and the meta topic of how to formulate them, so I'd like to know how others would cover this; we don't have specific formal requirements from our client on those, but know (from UX testing etc.) that those improvements are needed for a better user experience)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11863" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T15:34:35.180" Title="What's the best way of writing user stories about &quot;improve this metric&quot; if I'm not sure how much improvement is possible?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12175" CreationDate="2014-08-19T12:12:09.897" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often these types of stories come from high level stakeholders - in our case it was the CEO complaining the site is too slow.  He was asking for sub-second performance, which was not realistic due to the data processing involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We used vague stories such as 'Improve performance of X', which gave us enough of a goal to identify some different technical stories that were all likely to improve performance.  We then prioritised these based on effort and likely impact.  We then started at the top, until we got to a point that our product owner was satisfied we had made enough of a positive impact, and the remaining effort outweighed the benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't like placing a concrete target on these sorts of things, as you may later find out you can get 90% of the way with 10% of the effort, and that is good enough.  If the work you have done hasn't made enough of a difference it will definitely be raised as an issue again and you have confirmation you need to do further work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6825" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T12:12:09.897" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12175" CreationDate="2014-08-19T15:12:20.963" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't invent meaningful targets out of whole cloth. Pragmatically speaking, both business analysis and user experience requirements all require forming a hypothesis, testing the hypothesis, and then drawing an actionable conclusion (e.g. your specifications) from the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your team (and particularly your Product Owner) don't appear to have the right &lt;em&gt;processes&lt;/em&gt; in place to gather meaningful specifications about non-functional requirements related to the user experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Gathering Requirements is a &lt;em&gt;Real Job&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My question is precisely about how to make good stories. Say you're making a game, and starting a level takes two minutes, which frustrates playtesters. The user need is concrete (&quot;goddamit I want it to load faster!&quot;) but vague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good requirements gathering often entails experience in performing multiple drill-downs until you get to actionable specifications. &quot;The load time is too slow&quot; is not an actionable statement. However, a management target based on industry research (e.g. &quot;load times must be less than 8.3 seconds to maintain engagement&quot;) or actual experimental data can certainly be turned into user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Product Owner should be working with Business Analysts (BAs) and User Experience (UX) designers to construct tests. For example, the UX team might develop a minimum viable product with load times of 5 seconds, 10 seconds, and 20 seconds. A good UX team would then gather data in the form of opinions or testable human behaviors to determine how &quot;sticky&quot; the product is at different load times to see what level of load time leads to actual disengagement or lack of interest in the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;User Stories Are Not a Substitute for Understanding the Knowledge Domain&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User stories are conversational placeholders between the development team and the Product Owner or end users. They are not specification documents, nor are they a substitute for essential business skills. A great cross-functional team may include UX expertise within the team, but most often requirements-management of this kind is really external to the team, and proxied by the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, your problem isn't that you are having trouble crafting the user stories. The real problem is that your team (and particularly your Product Owner) doesn't have the right &lt;em&gt;processes&lt;/em&gt; in place to gather meaningful specifications about non-functional requirements related to the user experience. Whether internal or external to the team, the organization needs to ensure that those processes exist and are properly hooked into the product development process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T15:12:20.963" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12175" CreationDate="2014-08-19T15:34:35.180" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Performance improvements are often an exercise in cost-benefit trade-off. The executive who &quot;just wants it to be faster&quot; might find adding one server to boost speed by 50% an acceptable cost, but not two more servers for the next 20% boost. Also, there are usually many possible technical approaches to boost performance -- code refactoring, infrastructure changes, switching out components. So some degree of research and exploration is often required to discover the optimal solution for your current technical and business situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest you start with a time-boxed spike to brainstorm, research and possibly experiment with some possible approaches. (Sometimes this can even reveal some no-brainer quick fixes.) Then report back to stakeholders about the options, each with rough estimates of cost (in time or money) and expected benefit. Then a decision can be made on which to implement. At that point, the stories can essentially be in the form &quot;do option B.&quot; Make sure to benchmark the metric before and after to determine if the expected costs and benefits were on the mark. Then a decision can be made about whether to proceed with additional steps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11850" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T15:34:35.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12179" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-19T16:26:24.513" Score="7" ViewCount="1123" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a certified scrum master and, by trade, a UI/UX/Front end dev guy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More than most I come across the issues faced by having folks with my skill-set within a cross functional team (the 'vertical slice')&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problems are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Front end dev effort and back end dev effort aren't pinned. 2 extremities of this are: A sprint backlog contains 40 story points and all are UI specialist work, and only 1 person is available to do them with another 5 being left with nothing to do. Polar opposite: A sprint backlog contains 40 points of which 0 front end / UI effort is required. 5 devs are busy but Mr/Mrs UI has nothing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nearly always UX, usually UI and sometimes front end development can be forerunners to development. If you wanted to follow the vertical slice strictly you'd be creating a severe bottle-neck by waiting on that work before development starts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen solutions batted around, some better than others...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't have specialists, teach everybody to do everything.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think this works. Developers can't design and UI/UXers are not going to learn Java overnight. Likewise we've all seen what happens when we &lt;a href=&quot;http://devopsreactions.tumblr.com/post/88260308392/testing-my-own-code&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;test our own code&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have a separate UI/UX/FED team&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I like this solution and have implemented it in the past, but it's oft criticised as it introduces a specialist team. It also plays with velocity as you're taking work away from the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My chosen solution, which I'm looking to improve on&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The UI team is a Kanban team working alongside scrum dev teams. When a story goes in to a dev team's sprint, if any UI work needs doing a card also goes on to the UI team's kanban board. Stories can also appear on the UI Kanban board from Business Analysts, Product Owners, other Scrum Masters, Devs. The TODO columns is very fluid and constantly re-prioritised. Story estimation works as before. The difference here is that there is a constant throughput, based on priority, from UI. The problem you might have (going back to our all-UI example) is that when a large story gets dropped on UI this last-minute it becomes a bottleneck. The benefit with this system is that the product owner or BA could have dropped that on the UI team ahead of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a better way to make sure specialist skills are kept busy in a sprint which you believe to be better than my chosen solution above?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11866" LastActivityDate="2018-09-20T19:32:57.090" Title="UI in scrum - what's the silver bullet?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;user-experience-design&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12179" CreationDate="2014-08-19T17:19:10.353" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A smattering of thoughts and suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How &quot;complete&quot; do you require UX specs to be before dev work can start? Can UI pre-work take it as far as approved wireframes, then detailed &quot;pixel&quot; design done in parallel (and in close collaboration) with development?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does your UX team do much usability testing or focus group work? This is valuable but non-urgent work that can fill UX team cycles when the dev team is busy with non-UX dev work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;UI/UXers learning Java may not make sense, but they may be able to handle CSS or other stylesheet notations, if the product code is architected well to modularize stylesheet code away from functional code. Thus a UI team can engage in some global design improvements more independently from dev. You may even be able to give them a test environment where they can experiment with and user-test minor design changes independently of the dev team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11850" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T17:19:10.353" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12157" CreationDate="2014-08-19T21:05:43.693" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you cannot simply replace Mike then you will need to figure out a way to work alongside him. If you take the lead on the non-technical aspects of the project, and Mike is able to deliver on the development and team lead responsibilities then it will still be difficult but it can be a successful project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The part missing from your question is the business benefit of doing the refactoring. Technical reasons are usually to improve the efficiency (so performance improvements) or the elegancy of the code that should make it easier to maintain in future. Both of these can save a business money in ongoing development, after the initial overhead of the refactoring effort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first step is identifying roles for the project and bringing in someone senior from the business to look at what the financial benefits to the business will be for the refactoring, and sponsor your project to support/strengthen any decisions you need to make that may be opposed by Mike. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it makes commercial sense to refactor then Mike can be made responsible for the technical implementation, but you take control of scheduling and resource prioritisation* and bring in technical QA resource (if you can) to get an effective dev &gt; QA &gt; sign-off delivery process going. The QA resource can then support you in pushing back any technical issues to Mike allowing you to concern yourself with scheduling and liaising with any business stakeholders through to project completion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*  It may help your relationship with Mike if you give him the lead on deciding which resource works on which task. One way of doing this is planning all the tasks with the team then putting then letting the team choose which ones they want or allowing Mike to allocate resource. BUT you must ultimately be able to make any final decisions on resource priorities over Mike if e.g. a resource is required on another project that is higher priority. You may need your project sponsor / senior management to support any such decisions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3915" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T21:05:43.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12182" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-20T04:48:01.487" Score="7" ViewCount="306" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've ended up with non-linear weighing of our points. I worry this makes reporting velocity data erroneous. Background:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://store.mountaingoatsoftware.com/products/planning-poker-cards&quot;&gt;A fairly traditional deck&lt;/a&gt; is used: &lt;code&gt;?, 0, ½, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, 100, and ∞&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only the low end of the scale is ever used for story estimates, we rarely go over 5 points and only had one thirteen-pointer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The point value is inconsistent across stories of different size. That is, one-pointers use &quot;lighter&quot; points and eight-pointers use &quot;heavier&quot; points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;1p&lt;/code&gt;: add tooltip text to a couple of icons; format date&amp;amp;time strings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;3p&lt;/code&gt;: create new user role and specify their permissions; automatically create a new case in CRM whenever certain actions are performed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;5p&lt;/code&gt;: watchlist functionality; filtering functionality on several facets&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;8p&lt;/code&gt;: integrate with a third party provider &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; introduce a persistence layer to cache their responses&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a textbook scrum &lt;code&gt;1x 8p&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;8x 1p&lt;/code&gt; should require same effort, in fact this is exactly what I'm trying to achieve! However in our estimate examples provided, &quot;integrating with a third party&quot; is a lot more difficult than &quot;adding a tooltip... 8 times&quot;. So in our sprint planning &lt;code&gt;1x 8p ≠ 8x 1p&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can our team break the &quot;anchoring&quot; to this estimating practice? What's the best way to flag up and approach this concern?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11873" LastEditorUserId="11873" LastEditDate="2014-08-20T07:27:10.837" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T14:10:44.360" Title="Aligning story points' value" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;planning-poker&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12113" CreationDate="2014-08-20T13:26:44.957" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're only interested in the financial/accounting part of the system, I'd certainly look at a program that does just that and nothing else, like Exact Online.&#xA;ERP systems are specifically developed for a production environment, and from what I've seen, the more options a program has, the more complex it is and the harder it is to implement, even if you don't use other modules of the system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost all self-respecting ERP (and other business administration) systems have possibilities to link with other programs. This is almost always the result of collaboration between the companies: inquire with your present software company which systems are compatible, and used by their other users. This also illustrates a disadvantage with building your own system: you'll have to work around certain parts of the existing software if you want your new system to work together with your existing package. (I've worked around it earlier with f.e. data dumps but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd only recommend an entire ERP system if you are planning on implementing throughout an entire (production) company. I'd look for a tailor made system if you need something very simple, otherwise the benefits of having support from the software company could outweigh the disadvantages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11877" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T13:26:44.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12185" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12205" CreationDate="2014-08-20T23:22:28.297" Score="4" ViewCount="235" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been wondering about this question for a while. I'm aware that Job Titles are not completely meaningful (specially, in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://financecareers.about.com/od/jobtitles/a/jobtitles.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;financial&lt;/a&gt; sector) but still, calling one as 'Project Manager' should represent a standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Job Title usually goes along with the role the professional executes on his daily work. Controlling Scope and Schedule is the basics, and usually it implies in leading a team. However, there's one Constraint, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cost&lt;/a&gt;, which - I believe - would differentiate a 'Team Leader' or a 'Project Leader' from a &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; 'Project Manager'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/About-Us/About-Us-What-is-Project-Management.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PMI definition&lt;/a&gt;, it states that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(...) project management brings a unique focus shaped by the goals,&#xA;  resources and schedule of each project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which makes no clear reference to &lt;em&gt;costs&lt;/em&gt;. In this same link, is mentioned the knowledge areas the PM is expected to cover, which are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Integration   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scope     &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cost  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quality   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Procurement &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Human resources  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communications    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk management &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stakeholder management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where some of them, as previously stated, are 'basics' for a Project Leader / Manager, and others will... well... fall into a 'gray' area that varies from company to company and maybe from market to market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've checked some similar questions like &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/1003/430&quot;&gt;'The difference between a Functional and a Project Manager'&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1497/what-are-the-differences-between-project-leader-and-project-manager&quot;&gt;'The difference between a Project Manager and a Project Leader'&lt;/a&gt; and turns out that the former is focused on two specific and not overlapping roles (from my point of view) whereas the latter is understanding both Leader and Manager from a 'controlling' perspective (by force or by willing) which is not what I'm referring to in my question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Bottomline:&lt;/em&gt; Is it correct to call one &lt;em&gt;Project Manager&lt;/em&gt; even if this 'Leader', 'Manager', or any other expression we want to use, does not deal with project &lt;em&gt;costs&lt;/em&gt;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2018-02-02T00:13:28.417" Title="Is it correct to define oneself as Project Manager even without dealing with all Project Constraints?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;career&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;pmi&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12182" CreationDate="2014-08-21T10:17:55.063" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keepin mind that estimating story points is about getting the most benefit per effort expended. We know that estimates are not going to be correct, however we also know that no amount of extra effort will make them ever correct. So Scrum tries to optimize the effort by choosing a simple and easy method to get relatively good estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the questions in your case are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is the assumed skew in your estimates going to affect your velocity strongly enough to make release planning unreliable?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if so, how to correct it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Re 1,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(As you noted too) story points give a relative, not an absolute estimation, thus e.g. doubling the story points for each item would double your velocity value as well, but none of this affects your team's actual speed, i.e. how much they can actually complete per sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Underestimating the relative size of bigger stories&quot; can also be put as &quot;overestimating the relative size of smaller stories&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bigger tasks obviously affect velocity stronger than smaller tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From these, my conclusion is that as long as &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the skew in your estimation is consistent per item size (i.e. you under- or overestimate items of the same size more or less the same way), and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the deviation of the average size of items between sprints is not big (i.e. you don't have one sprint with mostly huge items, then the next full of small items),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the calculated velocity value may indeeed come out as smaller than &quot;ideal&quot;, however since the bulk of tasks are correspondingly underestimated, the two errors will more or less cancel each other out. So in the end you will fit more or less the same number and size of items in your sprints either way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Re 2, if you are still concerned, you should first of all devise some measurements to verify whether there actually is any noticeable error in your release plans. If so, you should raise the issue on the next retrospective to work out a solution together with the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10244" LastEditorUserId="10244" LastEditDate="2014-08-21T14:10:44.360" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T14:10:44.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11919" CreationDate="2014-08-21T15:37:22.193" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion there is no development without the methodology. Development process always has some rules by which it is built. Even if seemingly there are no rules, &quot;no rules&quot; is also a rule. If you have one of that kind of process with minimal regulation, it looks like &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboy_coding&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cowboy coding&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, where developers have minimum constraint from developing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T15:37:22.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12189" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-21T16:21:01.353" Score="2" ViewCount="6384" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the definition of &quot;development model&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: Waterfall model, Iterative model or Spiral model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case &quot;model&quot; is just synonym of &quot;methodology&quot; (wikipedia keep articles about this models in &quot;methodologies&quot; section), or &quot;model&quot; is a model for methodology and metamodel for development process (i.e. set of principles on which build methodologies)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If second case is more correct, are there some models, that not related with life circle of software? For example, can we name &quot;agile&quot; model and &quot;non-agile&quot; model? Or &quot;agile&quot; it is not a model, it is just family of methodologies? Looks like I'm confused again :-/&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2014-08-22T11:41:11.303" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T00:25:12.707" Title="What is the definition of &quot;development model&quot;?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;definition&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12190" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12195" CreationDate="2014-08-21T16:40:58.387" Score="2" ViewCount="7403" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw many times that this two terms are used like synonyms. For example in wikipedia write that Agile is &quot;a group of software development methods&quot;, but Extreme programming is &quot;a software development methodology&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe these terms have some differences in the shades of meanings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T09:54:50.073" Title="Is there any difference between &quot;method&quot; and &quot;methodology&quot; terms?" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;definition&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6290" CreationDate="2014-08-21T17:43:27.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's pretty easy but you have to do it in a weird way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Go to Reports - Visual Reports&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Select New Template, Excel, Assignment Usage, and click OK.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your report is now being created in Excel.  Switch over to Excel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Add Time Weekly Calendar to the Row Labels section.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Check Cumulative Work, Actual Work and Baseline Work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Move Values to the Column Labels box.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you have all the data you want to manipulate and create your chart. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11703" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T17:43:27.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12192" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12299" CreationDate="2014-08-21T19:11:29.650" Score="9" ViewCount="1144" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working in a creative agency, with 8 people sharing the same physical space. Some of us travel often, and we are loosely organized in the following departments: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;RnD,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Design,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Social, and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We mostly work on client projects, with the departments usually working in parallel. Our current workflow is - roughly - the following: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requirements: Management talks to clients and gathers requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Design: Our designers propose and finalize the UI&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go Live and Social &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, we switch between projects very often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are looking for a better way to collaborate (individually and between departments), fix our workflow and store information (issues, tasks, ideas, etc) and are currently investigating Kanban, mostly because of its ability to adapt to current workflows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can we adapt Kanban to our workflow? Should we organize this workflow into columns or have it like labels on it's task? Social tasks and development tasks have a lot of differences. Should we put all of them in the same backlog? In what abstraction level?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a more optimal solution for our workflow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11889" LastEditorDisplayName="user1326" LastEditDate="2014-08-28T10:44:40.947" LastActivityDate="2017-03-25T11:20:44.073" Title="How can we adopt Kanban to our workflow?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12194" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-21T20:04:13.357" Score="1" ViewCount="935" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Office version 2007, I have some tasks that are all fixed duration.  I'm a prime contractor with subcontractors and I'm trying to schedule out events.  I have add the duration and assigned the resources, however on some of them I count up the days and they don't add up correctly or one does not start until another ends.  Here is an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task ID 4 - Design Approval Start Fri 8/29/29/2014 Finish 9/5/2014&#xA;Then I have order equipment with each manufacture having a different lead time for delivery and all the predecessors are on task ID 4.&#xA;Task 6 Vendor 1 Duration 2 wks Tue 9/9/2014 Finish 9/23/2014 Resource Company A&#xA;Task 7 Vendor 2 Duration 3 wks Fri 11/14/2012 Finish Wed 12/10/2014 Resource A&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See the problem task 7 should start on the same day as Task 6 because the predecessor is the same task ID 4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All constraints are as soon as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11890" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-09-05T06:25:39.580" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T06:25:39.580" Title="Scheduling not calculating properly" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-09-05T06:24:54.593" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12190" CreationDate="2014-08-22T09:16:56.483" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is a universally well defined difference, but usually &quot;methodology&quot; is used to mean something bigger, more complex and/or more detailed than &quot;method&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, Agile folks don't like the term &quot;methodology&quot; much as it has been traditionally associated with complicated, top-down organized, fundamentally un-agile processes like CMMI or RUP. So in this manner, even calling XP a &quot;methodology&quot; may be sneered upon by some Agilists. At any rate, XP is one of the Agile approaches, be it a &quot;method&quot; or a &quot;methodology&quot; :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10244" LastEditorUserId="10244" LastEditDate="2014-08-22T09:23:02.277" LastActivityDate="2014-08-22T09:23:02.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12194" CreationDate="2014-08-22T10:25:08.683" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most probably you are having this problem because you assign the same resource to all the tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&#xA;If your tasks are in auto-schedule mode then msproject will auto level your resources based on the availability. You can raise the resource availability set to %200 (or more depending on the concurent tasks) from resource sheet or assign another resource to the task to make them not have a FS relationship or make the tasks manually-scheduled. In the last case you will get warnings about over-allocation of the resources.&#xA;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7883" LastActivityDate="2014-08-22T10:25:08.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12194" CreationDate="2014-08-22T13:47:06.993" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming you have different resources assigned to Task 7, resource leveling would not be an issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are a couple of questions.  If Task 6 is linked to task 4 in a F to S relationship without any lag, the task should start on Sept 8, Monday.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you modified the project calendar in any way?&#xA;Have you modified the Resource A's calendar in any way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2014-08-22T13:47:06.993" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11919" CreationDate="2014-08-24T13:38:28.280" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many years ago, I attended a talk given by Grady Booch, and he referred to this type of development process as &quot;heroic&quot; I.e. any success was dependent on the great efforts of the participants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have always liked that description, as the lack of a process shouldn't detract from the talents of the team members. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8091" LastActivityDate="2014-08-24T13:38:28.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12201" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-25T07:01:01.900" Score="4" ViewCount="246" Body="&lt;p&gt;I could have sworn I read a quote by Steve McConnell or perhaps Fred Brooks about teams that make conservative estimates and pessimistic deadlines but meet them every time garner more trust and respect than pretty much every other kind. But, I couldn't find it. Maybe I imagined it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know if such a quote exists?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11903" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T10:04:56.090" Title="Estimation Quote on realism vs optimism - does it exist?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12201" CreationDate="2014-08-25T10:04:56.090" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't find quote of Steve McConnell about conservative estimates and pessimistic deadlines, but I know his words about optimistic estimates: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Considering that optimism is a near-universal fact of human nature,&#xA;  software estimates are sometimes undermined by what I think of as a&#xA;  Collusion of Optimists. Developers present estimates that are&#xA;  optimistic. Executives like the optimistic estimates because they&#xA;  imply that desirable business targets are achievable. Managers like&#xA;  the estimates because they imply that they can support upper&#xA;  management's objectives. And so the software project is off and&#xA;  running with no one ever taking a critical look at whether the&#xA;  estimates were well founded in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By reading this, it's not hard to understand, why he like conservative estimates more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T10:04:56.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12121" CreationDate="2014-08-25T15:15:37.747" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do Pair Programming. I often find that Code Reviews tend to demoralize people, because you criticize (potentially a lot of) their completed work. Even if you are good at giving feedback and the other one is good at taking it, this will be an issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Pair Programming, on the other hand, you start a task together from scratch. Let him take the lead, listen to how he want's to solve the problem, and make suggestions about how to do it better. Do this for 1 hour or 2, at most. Then he should continue on his own for a while. Afterwards, you can do a code review. You will find that there is much less to criticize this way. And he will feel encouraged, because of that and because of the cooperation. Repeat this ritual and change pairs. After a while, he'll get your values and improve. And in the end, maybe you can learn something from him, too ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6990" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T15:15:37.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12185" CreationDate="2014-08-25T19:09:13.503" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my organization many PMs get very little say in Human Resources decisions for their projects.  The functional manager says who they can spare that fits the criteria and that is who the project manager gets.  This said I don't think there is anyone who doubts our PMs are in fact PMs.  I think the same holds true for costs.  If you are managing projects you are likely a project manager regardless of the fact that some details are not within your control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;To back this up PMBoK 5e p 555&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Project Manager (PM). The person assigned by the performing organization to lead the team for achieving the project objectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No mention of any specific aspects other than leading the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also PMBoK 5e section 1.3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Managing a project &lt;strong&gt;typically&lt;/strong&gt; includes but is not limited to:  ... Balancing the competing project constraints which include but are not limited to: scope, quality, schedule, budget, resources, and risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that &quot;typically&quot; answers the question.  These are not absolutes, sometimes you have a budget contraint but not necessarily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11813" LastEditorUserId="11813" LastEditDate="2014-08-25T21:40:46.113" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T21:40:46.113" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12206" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-25T19:17:47.323" Score="-2" ViewCount="240" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a programmer and I'm used to work in a way where I do my work, do not check if I am wrong or not, present the work to my manager / client and wait for their feedback on my faults.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard that there are some cultures where's implied that I should be responsible for doing such checks, but that's not the way I'm used to work. What to do in such a situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11906" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2014-08-25T20:30:25.470" LastActivityDate="2014-08-31T22:27:57.623" Title="What do to when there's a discrepancy between what the team produces and what the management expects?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12207" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-25T19:39:38.007" Score="2" ViewCount="570" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, I am the Scrum master for my team, and my team's manager insists on putting stories in the sprint that are ill-defined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, while they have a end goal in mind, it is a poorly defined story... we are not even sure of the systems involved or the level of effort required.  Mostly what the story contains is people to talk to to gather requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, normally I'd relegate this story to the backlog and schedule some elaboration meetings, by my boss &lt;em&gt;insists&lt;/em&gt; this story must be started this sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I tell him we can't commit to finishing something if we don't know what it is, he responds he doesn't care, it's got to be started this week.  The story isn't even for our project, it's someone else's systems and requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also makes it quite clear that we are judged based on stories that aren't finished by the end of the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How in the world can I deliver effectively on this?  I can't have my programmer do the business analysis work and create a story for next sprint... two weeks is too long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I just say &quot;no&quot;, remove the story from the sprint and let him fume, or break process on a fairly routine basis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this indicative of a mindset/culture where Scrum just isn't going to work, and I should stop trying to do the square peg/round hole dance?  How can I effectively push back?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8849" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T11:44:03.663" Title="What to do with ill-defined stories?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;culture&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12206" CreationDate="2014-08-25T19:55:20.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Answering the comment, I believe this question is a perfect project management question, about leadership, and about how to process tasks, and about expectations how to work in projects. I see two working models:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Shall a project participant work accurate, by checking each work result before it is presented to the team leader,&#xA;to be sure that lazy and obvious faults are eliminated from the result,&#xA;so that the team leader's limited time may be used to discuss the contents of the work,&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;or is it acceptable that the project participant just does lazy work,&#xA;and presents work results with lazy and obvious faults to the team leader,&#xA;expecting that the team leader invests much time to find all the faults,&#xA;and then just tries to correct the faults the team leader finds in the limited time available, and so that discussion about the contents of the work is disabled due to the massive number of faults which must be corrected first ?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It a work philosophy, important to know when you work in a team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In western society, (1) is expected both from simple workers and academic staff. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There might be societies or industries, where (2) is standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11907" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2014-08-25T20:35:08.060" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T20:35:08.060" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12207" CreationDate="2014-08-25T23:19:52.940" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there is a deeper problem, if your boss tells you to do something he's not able to properly define. But from the few information you gave, I cannot judge what it might or might not be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I'll try to tackle your current problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cannot decide whether the story is an epic or not, treat is as an epic. First, separate stories for the things the devs know how to solve. Pull these. Then separate stories for further investigation on the things they are not sure about. Estimate how much effort you want to spent in searching for solutions. Pull these stories too, if they fit. What remains is a ill-defined story with an ominous &quot;rest&quot;. You cannot pull that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As devs work on the sprint, they either find solutions to the problem-stories -- then the &quot;rest&quot; disappears -- or they get, at least, a better understanding of the problem. If the problem wasn't solved, they can then better estimate the remaining effort for the next sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The crucial point now probably is, how much to invest in the research stories. This depends on the stories importance to your boss/the client (btw. who of them is the PO? There should only be one...). Estimate more effort, if you're unsure and the part is crucial. Less, if it's optional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6990" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T23:19:52.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12189" CreationDate="2014-08-26T00:25:12.707" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interesting question, I have given it some though now. I think you make one wrong assumption, and that is why you are confused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, a very simple and practical, but not fully correct, answer: some sites suggest that model in this would be the same as method (so the first option; e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://istqbexamcertification.com/what-are-the-software-development-models&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://istqbexamcertification.com/what-are-the-software-development-models&lt;/a&gt;, not sure though how reliable this is). I think that is a nice daily life solution, but if you need a more academic answer, read on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My real answer (I think this might be the answer):&#xA;I think you make one wrong assumption. I think the biggest part of your confusion, is the that you categorize waterfall, spiral, agile approaches at the same abstraction level. I think that if you want place them into one category, the word 'approach' is more appropriate, since these terms (agile, waterfall, iterative) are not at same abstraction level. Let me explain why:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile is actually a very broad term, although relatively new in software development, the term exists quite a while now. The &quot;agile manifesto meaning&quot; of Agile is a set of core values and principals. Making it therefore something to similar to a metamodel (though not exactly a metamodel I believe, but generally the idea is similiar/groups well together).&#xA;Scrum, XP and so are &quot;compliant&quot; with the agile manifesto principals (though it should be noted that the methods are not really build on the manifesto, since many existed before the manifesto). However, the agile manifesto can be interpretered as a kind of metamodel (though it is not exactly following that description either I my opinion), while SCRUM, XP are actually methods(!) of achieving agility. The implication of this at the the agile manifesto is one abstraction level higher than the actual agile methods, such as SCRUM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The waterfall approach, is much more concrete than the term agile. The waterfall method is (although there are variations) more concrete and more prescriptive (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model&lt;/a&gt;), making the abstration level of the waterfall approach similiar to that of SCRUM. SCRUM and Waterfall approaches describe and prescribe how things need to be done (well, the procedure). They are at the same abstraction level and are methods of software development management (while terms as agile and traditional are more abstract).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, the concrete approaches such as SCRUM and Waterfall are at the same abstraction level, while a term as agile is a bit more abstract and therefore the term agile does not fit your definition &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this answers your question and makes sense. If not, let me know. Perhaps you can tell us why you ask this, with a bot more context I or others might be able to formulate a better answer. I think you should note that methods such as scrum are highly defined, but terms such as agile less obvious. Defining terms is often a part of a research paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9072" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T00:25:12.707" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12211" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12216" CreationDate="2014-08-26T08:29:47.450" Score="6" ViewCount="765" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the purpose of the Sprint Retrospective is to: &quot;inspect how the last Sprint went with regards to people, &lt;strong&gt;relationships&lt;/strong&gt;, process, and tools&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What mean relationships?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9153" LastActivityDate="2017-11-13T14:24:11.257" Title="What do you mean by inspect relationships during sprint retrospective" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12207" CreationDate="2014-08-26T09:16:07.613" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You aren't doing Scrum. You're possibly doing something Scrum-like, but your boss needs to read &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Scrum-Guide&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;, and the Scrum Master needs to take an active role in educating this manager about his role (if any) on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Who Manages the Product Backlog&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[M]y team's manager insists on putting stories in the sprint that are ill-defined. Mostly what the story contains is people to talk to to gather requirements....[and] my boss insists this story must be started this sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only the Product Owner may manage the prioritization of stories on the Sprint Backlog. If your &quot;boss&quot; (who is presumably line management) is also acting as the Product Owner, this is a conflict of interest. If he's &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the Product Owner, then he's overstepping his role as a stakeholder within the Scrum framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, while the Development Team must work on user stories from the Product Backlog in ordinal sequence, it is &lt;em&gt;solely&lt;/em&gt; up to the Development Team to estimate stories and identify how many of those top stories will fit within each Sprint. In other words, you accept the amount of work you are confident that you can finish each iteration; the volume of work can &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; be assigned from outside the Development Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Requirements Gathering as Stories&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; acceptable to have a significant scope or requirements change within a given Sprint unless the Product Owner calls for an Early Termination and a return to Sprint Planning. Having your organization violate this basic principle is a serious process problem for the team and potentially breaks the framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, one of the biggest causes of framework failure is the inability to deliver a refined Product Backlog to Sprint Planning. The &lt;em&gt;Product Owner&lt;/em&gt; (not line management, stakeholders, or anyone else) is responsible for delivering actionable stories to the Sprint Planning Meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it's okay for the Product Owner to work with the Scrum Master and Development Team during Backlog Refinement to clarify or decompose stories, &quot;requirements gathering&quot; can't pragmatically be a baked-in part of a user story; at the very best, one might &lt;em&gt;add&lt;/em&gt; additional user stories about requirements gathering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good cross-functional team might have a business analyst. Even if not, as story that says something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a Development Team member,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I need to discuss feature XYZ with marketing&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  to help define the scope of work for the feature &lt;em&gt;for the following Sprint&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you call this a story spike or simply requirements gathering, this is an acceptable story because it clearly makes the cost to the project visible (e.g. that requirements gathering isn't free), and allows the refined story to be fed onto the Product Backlog during Backlog Refinement to be prioritized by the Product Owner, and eventually estimated and accepted by the Development Team during some future Sprint once the story reaches the top of the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Scrum Master as Educator and Referee&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master is the process referee. When you see &quot;framework fouls&quot; like this, you need to pull out the red card and blow your metaphorical whistle. Furthermore, you need to provide adequate education about the framework, its defined meetings and artifacts, and the roles and responsibilities within the Scrum framework and the organization to everyone in the organization. Whether or not your boss is properly a member of the team is something I can't assess (although I suspect not), but &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; role as Scrum Master is to work with him to define framework-appropriate ways for him to interact with the team within the scope of the framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are unable to do that, or if he is unwilling to adapt to the requirements of the framework, then you may want to start dusting off your resume. It doesn't matter whether the problem is an inexperienced Scrum Master or a command-and-control line manager; both are key ingredients that are statistically likely to lead to project failure, and unless your job title is &quot;Professional Scapegoat&quot; I wouldn't stay in a situation that is likely to lead to a career train-wreck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As always, your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T09:16:07.613" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12206" CreationDate="2014-08-26T09:33:35.167" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Process and Quality Controls are Essential to a Successful Project&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What do to when there's a discrepancy between what the team produces and what the management expects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is certainly a communications failure. On any reasonably-sized project that values success, quality controls, defect management, and coding standards should be clearly agreed upon and communicated throughout the development team and the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within the Scrum framework, there is a &quot;Definition of Done&quot; that explicitly states what is necessary for a task to be considered complete. Generally, for a software project that definition includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unit testing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Working code that meets all test-driven specifications (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TDD&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acceptance_test-driven_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ATDD&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clean integration with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_integration&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Continuous Integration&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some level of peer review, quality assurance testing, or other process by which the team establishes community ownership over a potentially-shippable increment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you aren't delivering a potentially-shippable increment, you aren't doing Scrum and your aren't following an agile methodology. You are also exhibiting many symptoms of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboy_coding&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cowboy coding&lt;/a&gt;, and generally placing the responsibility for the quality of your work onto your co-workers or project leadership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I honestly can't imaging &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; professional software shop where this state of affairs is acceptable, although I've certainly &lt;em&gt;seen&lt;/em&gt; my share of shops that operate in this way. Unless this, um, &quot;process&quot; is acceptable to your leadership and your customers, I would say that what you are doing is not meeting the minimum standards of producing a professional and workman-like product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like your organization lacks rigor in its project management, process controls, code quality, and potentially other things as well. As a programmer, your main responsibility is to product the best work that you can; organizationally, someone higher up on the food chain needs to take ownership of this lack of formalized process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T09:33:35.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12121" CreationDate="2014-08-26T11:24:36.637" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like other answers as they're trying to mitigate your immediate situation and work around your problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To expand on those answers if you are Manager / PM and have some authority over what is being done on the project, in my opinion you should seriously assess whether it's worth to keep programmer that is far from your standards of hiring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking into aside problem of being forced to incorporate this person on the team without proper recruitment, &lt;strong&gt;possible negative implications on your team of current situation are&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Brook's law already mentioned by you&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lower overall team productivity&lt;/strong&gt; due to need of &quot;baby sitting&quot; under performing developer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Morale degradation among other team members&lt;/strong&gt; and higher attrition risk due to the fact that great engineers want to work with great engineers. Accepting person with weak performance takes away sense of eliteness from your team and makes it less compelling for engineers to stay on the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As PM / Manager you should start discussion and try to raise awareness of the fact how bad for team dynamics is tolerance of weak performers.&#xA;Also, surprisingly many Managers in organizations still treat managing knowledge workers like they would be working on factory plant and not on creative work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0321934113&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Peopleware&lt;/a&gt; is unfortunately still valid and more relevant than ever. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3501" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T11:24:36.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12211" CreationDate="2014-08-26T13:52:14.483" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some tasks, it's a good idea to work in pairs. So, at this point, in a retrospective, it can be useful to talk about how things worked in a pair. For instance, you can talk about any coordination problems between the colleagues, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Edited]&#xA;For example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Product Owner -Named Y- defines his User Stories (US) with X AT's. US is revised and estimated but, when a programmer is working in this US PO sometimes adds news AT's and the US grows (more complex, more time...). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, in the retrospective we must talk about the problem when tech team works with PO Y because tech team has problems for completing Y's tasks caused by his bad praxis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11912" LastEditorUserId="11912" LastEditDate="2014-08-27T16:33:16.747" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T16:33:16.747" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12211" CreationDate="2014-08-26T14:30:20.730" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other three are pretty self explanatory: people are the individuals involved in the project and how they conducted the work, processes are how the work was done, and tools are the things necessary to achieve the work. Relationships refers to the connections between these things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the people-orientation that the agile methods have, that it tends to refer to the relationships between stakeholders (within the Development Team, Development Team/Product Owner, Development Team/Scrum Master, Product Owner/stakeholders, Scrum Master/Product Owner). However, it could also refer to the relationships between the tools and processes (if the tools are helping or hindering the team's workflow), the processes and the people (if the process preventing people from being their most productive), or the people and the tools (if the people have the knowledge and skills to use the tools effectively).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What this is suggesting is that you look at all factors of the sprint to find things that are going well (so that you can continue to do them or do them on other projects) and to find things that aren't going well (so you can correct them), even if that means looking beyond a single unit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2017-11-13T14:24:11.257" LastActivityDate="2017-11-13T14:24:11.257" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11919" CreationDate="2014-08-27T07:20:49.447" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can also use &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CMMI&lt;/a&gt; definition of level 1 maturity:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Level 1 - Initial (Chaotic)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is characteristic of processes at this level that they are (typically) undocumented and in a state of dynamic change, tending to be driven in an ad hoc, uncontrolled and reactive manner by users or events. This provides a chaotic or unstable environment for the processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3501" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T07:20:49.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12219" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12224" CreationDate="2014-08-27T09:36:29.707" Score="4" ViewCount="262" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our Software Requirements Specifications (SRS) we have a clause which states that the user should be able to make push notifications from the website to the mobile devices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should we inform the client about the constraints of the feature? For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Android limits push notifications to &lt;strong&gt;1024&lt;/strong&gt; bytes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;iOS limits push notifications to &lt;strong&gt;256&lt;/strong&gt; bytes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I inform the client that they will be limited to 128 characters in push messages, with translates to 1-2 sentences at best?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The General Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is better:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Constantly email and request meetings from the client informing them about literally all the details and constraints which technology enforces on all different features?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep a &quot;smart amount&quot; of information which is withheld as &quot;technological details?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are currently at the point where we are emailing the client at least once or twice a day, and sometimes even three of four.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11918" LastEditorUserId="11918" LastEditDate="2014-08-28T17:43:21.973" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T17:43:21.973" Title="Should I disclose technical constraints and details to the client?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;clients&gt;&lt;constraints&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12219" CreationDate="2014-08-27T12:56:12.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keeping the client informed is never a bad thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, &lt;strong&gt;how&lt;/strong&gt; you communicate this should depend on the impact of the discovered constraint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the event that a constraint means that a specified requirement cannot be delivered, I'd communicate that early, preferably face to face, along with (where possible) some options on how to proceed to meet the requirement (maybe you need to agree more time, cost spent on different tech etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For things discovered that don't directly compromise a requirement, you could communicate these less urgently via pre-existing channels (e.g. as part of a regular status meeting or risk/issue report).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another consideration might be how easy it is to change direction later.  Be more active about communicating things that will be difficult to reverse at a later date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T12:56:12.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12219" CreationDate="2014-08-27T13:38:18.680" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Developing the means and levels of communication early in the project is an important PM detail.  Some clients will want every detail, other will only want communication regarding specific issues.  If this hasn't been established it may be a good idea to talk to the client regarding the frequency of communication and see if they are happy with the status quo or if they would like non-urgent issues bundled into a daily or weekly communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a specific to this situation, you are creating the functionality as required and you can't adjust Android or iOS system contraints so this is non-urgent unless the wording of the clause implies functionality that you are not able to deliver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Welcome to PM SE!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11813" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T13:38:18.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12219" CreationDate="2014-08-27T14:08:21.977" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Have a Communications Plan&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You appear to be missing a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Project_Management/PMBOK/Communications_Management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Communications Plan&lt;/a&gt;, which is an essential aspect of most projects. This plan would include details such as what your stakeholders need to know and when they need to know it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Be Agile: Don't Prescribe Implementation Details&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a more agile perspective, a better question is whether or not the implementation details prevent the team from reaching the objective. For example, if the Sprint Goal for an iteration is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Enable push notifications from the website to mobile devices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it is generally up to the Development Team &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; the goal should be implemented. There are many technical solutions to protocol and transport issues; the questions will generally boil down to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What's the easiest thing that could possibly work?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the trade-offs in terms of time, money, or effort to implement any given solution?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;When You Can't Meet the Objective&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think your example is such a case, but there are certainly times when a feature or goal can't be implemented on time, within budget, or with the skills or resources available to the project team. Those types of blockers should absolutely be addressed with the stakeholders in a framework-appropriate way. This allows the project's sponsors to make informed strategic choices, and is a key responsibility that belongs to the project manager or Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Determining whether something is really a blocker, or whether it's simply a challenge that needs to be resolved, is the core differentiator in how to communicate effectively about an issue. How you make this determination will depend a lot on your project management framework, your communications plan, and (ultimately) the skill level and experience embodied by the project's leadership. Your mileage will therefore vary greatly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T14:08:21.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12219" CreationDate="2014-08-27T21:07:28.310" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is yes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You absolutely want to keep the client informed of limitations or other gotchas in the project. You rarely will know the full story and thus lack the perspective to know if this will be a major impact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A longer answer needs to dig into how you got where you are. Ben, Miles and CodeGnome all touch on this in their answers. I'd boil this down to two key points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- Spend more time designing with the customer: Even in agile, you need to spend some time understanding what will be done, with the customer. The requirement &quot;should be able to make push notifications from the website to the mobile devices&quot; is extremely vague. There is no use case here. What will the customer being pushing? How often? How mission critical is it? If you understand how the feature will be used, you can then design the feature better. If using Scrum, having the customer in your Sprint Planning meetings means they can answer questions real time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the very least, you need to document what the acceptance test is for this feature. What is the measurement of &quot;done&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2- Don't be afraid to over communicate. Instead, embrace it as part of the project. Set regular meetings with your customer (say maybe Sprint Demos) where you can go over the product. Not only can you share limitations, you get to show them how the project is going. It may turn out they really thought they wanted a blue GUI, but on seeing it they realize they really need a green one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make this kind of communication a regular part of your project. You will find you are much less surprised along the way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T21:07:28.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12207" CreationDate="2014-08-27T21:14:32.720" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;CodeGnome has a good summation of the root cause. Your boss doesn't understand or is not bought into how Agile works. That's a pretty big problem. That falls into agile adoption issues, which is a bigger question that you asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short term fix, for this sprint, is acceptance test. Take a few minutes with your boss and find out what would be his measure of if the feature is done. Apply the 5 Why questioning technique and drill down. It can be done pretty quickly, so as to not &quot;waste&quot; his time. With a solid understanding of what he considers a success, your developers should be able to figure out what to build. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best- &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T21:14:32.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11919" CreationDate="2014-08-28T08:00:27.613" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ad-hoc.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It means, &quot;for this&quot;; the processes have been created specifically for the situation at hand. It can also rock, especially for small teams. I've worked with a lot of start-ups and find their processes tend to be more similar to Lean Start-Up than any other methodology, especially if you start including metrics for the artifacts you're producing and their use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Commonly consists of a little documentation knocked up on a wiki, co-ordination of work through Google Docs or a whiteboard rather than an electronic project tool, and a higher focus on delivery over estimation and prediction compared to Agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T08:00:27.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12207" CreationDate="2014-08-28T08:13:32.330" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your boss has probably identified the technical uncertainty you're facing. For him, it's a risk. That's why he wants the story started now; so that this risk can be fleshed out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of committing to getting something done, embrace the uncertainty and commit to having something on which you can get feedback. Break this into a spike, with the rest of the story to follow afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rigid adherence to Agile / Scrum principles in these situations has a tendency to push high-risk (and usually high-value) items further down the backlog. Even trying to get clear acceptance criteria on something the business have never tried before can be tricky. By all means have the conversation with your boss, but let him know that it will be more than two weeks until you're finished, and that you'll keep him updated with progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, after this, your boss still insists on holding you to rigid estimates in the face of uncertainty then he's an idiot, and it's time to find a new job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to know more about spiking vs. analysis and when to do each, &lt;a href=&quot;http://lizkeogh.com/2012/03/11/cynefin-for-devs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;look up Cynefin&lt;/a&gt; or some of the recent articles I've written on &lt;a href=&quot;http://lizkeogh.com/2014/07/29/using-bdd-as-a-sensemaking-technique/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BDD and uncertainty&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T08:13:32.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12228" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12229" CreationDate="2014-08-28T08:19:46.173" Score="0" ViewCount="71" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to work out how to allocate work to different teams, and my brain is struggling with the logic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have three different teams who arrive in a geographic area at different dates. There's a set number of jobs in the area, and each team has a set productivity (the number of jobs they can complete per day). I'm trying to work out what percentage of the jobs each team needs to complete in order for all of the jobs to be completed, and for the teams to leave the area on (roughly, give or take 1 or 2) the same date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some sample:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Area A has a total of 3,030 jobs which need to be completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team 1 arrives in Area A on 2014-09-30 and has a productivity of 33.25 jobs/day (fractions of a job are okay!).&#xA;Team 2 arrives on 2014-10-10 and has a productivity of 28.5&#xA;Team 3 arrives on 2014-10-23 and has a productivity of 42.75&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By pure trial and error I've worked out that if each team does the following % of work, they'll all finish up on 2014-11-21 and all the jobs will be completed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team 1: 42% of the jobs&#xA;Team 2: 28%&#xA;Team 3: 30%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any clues on a formula for calculating these percentages?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11928" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T12:42:50.340" Title="Scheduling teams to complete a percentage of work" Tags="&lt;schedule&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12228" CreationDate="2014-08-28T10:13:50.577" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off all, let's find out when all jobs will be done:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;                       It's timeline&#xA;09.30       10.10          10.23           end of works&#xA;  |-----------|--------------|------------------|&#xA;  |   11 days |     14 days  |      X days      |&#xA;  |Team 1 work|              |                  |&#xA;  |                          |                  |&#xA;  |      Team 1 and Team 2   |                  |&#xA;  |        work together     |                  |&#xA;  |                                             |&#xA;  |        All three Teams work together        |&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, let's find &quot;X&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(11+14+X) * 33,25 - all jobs, that Team 1 will do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(14+X) * 28,5 - all jobs, that Team 2 will do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;X * 33,25 - all jobs, that Team 3 will do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3030 - all jobs, that all three teams will do&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(11+14+X) * 33,25 + (14+X) * 28,5 + X * 33,25 = 3030&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After solving the equation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;X ~ 17.22&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Substitute the X in the original data:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(11+14+17.22) * 33,25 = 1403,815 - all jobs, that Team 1 will do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(14+17.22) * 28,5 = 889,77 - all jobs, that Team 2 will do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;17.22 * 33,25 = 736,155 - all jobs, that Team 3 will do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To find done work in percentages, we should divide work of team by all amount of work, and then multiply the results by 100:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(1403,815/3030) * 100 ~ 46% - all jobs, that Team 1 will do.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(889,77/3030) * 100 ~ 30% - all jobs, that Team 2 will do.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(736,155/3030) * 100 ~ 24% - all jobs, that Team 3 will do.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1403,815/3030) * 100 ~ 46,3%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(889,77/3030) * 100 ~ 29.3%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(736,155/3030) * 100 ~ 24,2%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And sum of these works isn't exactly equal to 100 percent. It happened, because we lost accuracy due to the approximation X in our calculations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2014-08-28T12:42:50.340" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T12:42:50.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12207" CreationDate="2014-08-28T17:46:12.767" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;It's simple.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be harsh and delete the entire story and make the person who wrote it to re-write it properly + report to the boss, CTO and the CEO. It is the only thing which works. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Wise men build and destroy.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11918" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T17:46:12.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12207" CreationDate="2014-08-29T07:17:12.373" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you heard of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;5 Whys&lt;/a&gt;? See if you can get some context for the stor[y|ies] they want to add. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it because your team is much more consistent at delivering value? Show that adding work leads to multitasking that will slow you down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it because of a date dependency? Make that information transparent and negotiate|prioritize based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://playbookhq.co/blog/cost-delay-critical-project-metric-calculate/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cost of delay&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it because your boss just doesn't know how to write stories? Work with them to get better at it and understand there are acceptance criteria for work to be started much like there are for work to be completed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it because they believe in extrinsic pressure over intrinsic motivation? Show numerous studies that this is detrimental to performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Change &lt;em&gt;the organization&lt;/em&gt;, or &lt;em&gt;change&lt;/em&gt; the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11943" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T07:17:12.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12190" CreationDate="2014-08-29T07:48:57.190" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is, of course, difference between &lt;strong&gt;method&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;methodology&lt;/strong&gt; terms, since etymologically &lt;em&gt;methodology&lt;/em&gt; is theory of &lt;em&gt;methods&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Saying it simply and not being entirely accurate, a &lt;em&gt;method&lt;/em&gt; is a way of doing things, and a &lt;em&gt;methodology&lt;/em&gt; is a collection of &lt;em&gt;methods&lt;/em&gt;. &#xA;Dictionary definitions describe briefly these terms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/methodology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;methodology&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;: A set of methods, rules, or ideas that are important in a science or art. A a particular procedure or set of procedures.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;method&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;: A way of doing something. A careful or organized plan that controls the way something is done.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most common definitions suggest that &lt;em&gt;methodology&lt;/em&gt; is the overall approach to research linked to the paradigm or theoretical framework while the method refers to systematic modes, procedures or tools used for collection and analysis of data. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iier.org.au/iier16/mackenzie.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mackenzie, N., &amp;amp; Knipe, S. (2006). Research dilemmas: Paradigms, methods and methodology.&lt;em&gt;Issues in educational research&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;16&lt;/em&gt;(2), 193-205.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, misuse occurs between these two terms. Methodology has been increasingly used as a pretentious substitute for method in scientific and technical contexts &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefreedictionary.com/methodology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.thefreedictionary.com/methodology&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1712" LastEditorUserId="1712" LastEditDate="2014-08-29T09:54:50.073" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T09:54:50.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4571" CreationDate="2014-08-30T18:06:42.617" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have found that the weekly report works well for &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.exavault.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;us&lt;/a&gt;, but it works best with the right tool. We created our own tool that allows everyone to see what everyone else is doing, and everyone can compare their week's tasks side by side with the rest of the team to ensure fewer conflicts from the beginning. We also kept it simple, because all of the existing options out there have a lot of bloat trying to make them project management tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of that said, we still do one-on-one weekly checkins at the beginning of the week, though I don't think it's necessary for many small teams as long as everyone is doing their best to look for conflicts and ways that their tasks can sync up with others as they build their report. Obviously this part is next impossible via email if there is much detail involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyhow we have just recently decided to allow anyone to use what we built, so if you want to check it out it's at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nextfive.co&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nextfive.co&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11950" LastActivityDate="2014-08-30T18:06:42.617" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12206" CreationDate="2014-08-31T22:22:16.750" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The original question was,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a)&#xA;whether a project team member should do the work &quot;as best as he/she can&quot;, and of course this includes a look at the final work before it is handed to the project manager / team leader / customer,  of course regarding the Pareto principle,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b)&#xA;or if the project member thinks that if he/she &quot;somehow&quot; finished the work,&#xA;should not regard the quality of his/her work,&#xA;like in ancient &quot;Accord&quot; work where you are paid for the number of items you produced,&#xA;and so though aware that your work &quot;quality&quot; is awful,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;give it to a manager / team leader,&#xA;assuming that the manager has time to find and correct all the faults and bugs,&#xA;or if not the manager, the rest of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, most of the answers here were not of high competence,&#xA;as they focused on &quot;unit tests&quot; and some other modern software procecures,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;while the original questions was,&#xA;to bring it to a point&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) Shall I do work of which I a proud of, as I did my best &#xA;b) Or am I a lazy guy/lady who let my boss do my work, as my work is usually so full of ( easy to find bugs and faults, even for me), that it sometimes even need more time to fix it, than to let do it the receiver of the work, i.e. the manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question was a classical project management question:&#xA;Does delegation of work fit, if the result is that the manager has to fix all the bugs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer the question,&#xA;I would prefer to work with (a),&#xA;while (b) would make me unhappy,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but many people LOVE (b) as they so just invest a minimum of power and time,&#xA;and let others correct their faults again and again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually the (b) people are not liked by others, nor by the boss,&#xA;no matter &quot;how cheap&quot; they are...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the word is full of lazy people.. who like to that other do their work ( I don´t mean the principle of capitalism by that ) :-(.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sincerely&#xA;Rolf&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11907" LastEditorUserId="11907" LastEditDate="2014-08-31T22:27:57.623" LastActivityDate="2014-08-31T22:27:57.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12244" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12247" CreationDate="2014-09-01T01:41:23.967" Score="6" ViewCount="211" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to determine how I would deal with a story/epic that appears to potentially spread across every sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user I wish to have see help information against data inputs so&#xA;  that I can see a description and get assistance for inputting the correct&#xA;  data values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;* Now that story might not be perfect but I hope it illustrates the kind of story I'm talking about.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My query is how you might go about dealing with this in agile.  My thoughts were:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implement this as an architectural story in that you do the framework for making this happen but each specific instance is incorporated into other stories that needs specific help.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify all places where help will be required and make that tasks/sub stories.  However what if you don't know where these places will be exactly?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This shouldn't be a story at all?  In this case, how would we handle it better.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;None of these points and something entirely different as the story is written poorly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8841" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T09:08:28.213" Title="Dealing with stories/functionality that will spread across the entire lifetime of the project" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12244" CreationDate="2014-09-01T03:23:08.463" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your stories aren't granular enough. You haven't identified anything truly actionable in your story, and it's extremely unclear how the feature will actually benefit the value consumer (in this case, &quot;a user&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Make Your Stories More Granular&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You gave this as your example story/epic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user I wish to have see help information against data inputs so that I can see a description and get assistance for inputting the correct data values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is overly broad, not granular enough, and doesn't lend itself well to acceptance testing of any sort. In particular, the way it's written seems to violate most of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_%28mnemonic%29&quot;&gt;INVEST criteria&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that I understand what you're really trying to do here, you probably have a set of input fields that need some sort of help text and/or validation. You need to define stories that deliver measurable value and provide testable criteria for these input fields. For example, a typical suite of related stories might look like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;As a user,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;   I want to see a sample entry in the &lt;em&gt;foo&lt;/em&gt; widget box&lt;br&gt;&#xA;   so that I have an example of what I should type into the box.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;As a database administrator,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;   I want the &lt;em&gt;foo&lt;/em&gt; widget box to validate the correctness of its data&lt;br&gt;&#xA;   so that I don't have to perform data cleansing activities later to remove &lt;em&gt;bar&lt;/em&gt; entries from the &lt;em&gt;foo&lt;/em&gt; table.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each story should be independent and testable. How &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; of these stories you will actually need will depend a great deal on the skill level and process maturity of your development team. While I can certainly imagine ways to write a single story that captures the intent of the whole epic, I imagine that your team's process would benefit immensely from the clarity that comes only from decomposing this set of stories into one such story pair per unit of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my personal experience, it's usually better to &lt;em&gt;make the work visible&lt;/em&gt; by being too granular than it is to commit to stories that are too big to deliver (especially in a testable way) within a single iteration. Fine-tuning story granularity is an ongoing process, and is a normal part of any team's inspect-and-adapt process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep your stories small. Only go up a size when you can do so without violating the INVEST criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T03:23:08.463" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12244" CreationDate="2014-09-01T07:01:01.853" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's two parts I see in your story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need infrastructure for your help system. That's a story on its own and has a defined end (though the required effort depends on how fancy you want your help infrastructure to be ;)).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need create help information, whenever you add some &quot;data inputs&quot;. That's not a story, because it never ends. It's more like a quality that applies to every story that changes ui. Therefore, you could either &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nofluffjuststuff.com/blog/ryan_shriver/2008/10/qualities_user_stories_and_sad_state_of_scrum_requirements&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;manage it as a quality&lt;/a&gt;, make it an &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrummethodology.com/scrum-acceptance-criteria/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;acceptance criterion&lt;/a&gt;, or make it part for your &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Resources/Scrum-Glossary/Definition-of-Done&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Definition of Done&lt;/a&gt;, which requires Devs to check it before they can close a story (you want to make sure it's not forgotten in 3 month from now).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6990" LastEditorUserId="6990" LastEditDate="2014-09-05T07:36:21.537" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T07:36:21.537" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12244" CreationDate="2014-09-01T11:19:27.090" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend looking at @Sven part of answer on Definition of Done. If you haven't done so yet, get together with the team and Product Owner and agree on Definition of Done for this particular product/project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See how Scrum defines DoD: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Resources/Scrum-Glossary/Definition-of-Done&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.scrum.org/Resources/Scrum-Glossary/Definition-of-Done&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3501" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T11:19:27.090" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12249" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-01T23:38:01.783" Score="2" ViewCount="974" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am using MS Project at work, and I noticed on one job when I print the calendar, certain tasks do not show up. It appears that every task that is lower in the day cell does not show up on the Print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See picture. On the left is the print, on the right is the calendar view of the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4mrSm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;print and calendar view&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not understand why some tasks are toward the bottom of the day cell, and others are at the top.&#xA;Any ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11965" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-14T09:43:33.423" LastActivityDate="2019-01-14T09:43:33.423" Title="Tasks on my Project do not print" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12121" CreationDate="2014-09-02T10:10:20.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest, the new member be involved in testing of existing module rather than coding as this would introduce the new members in existing coding practices and standard. Once the new members has a basic idea of the coding practices, it would be best to introduce the new programmer in programming reports or basic forms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11968" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T10:10:20.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12251" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-02T14:21:00.747" Score="1" ViewCount="218" Body="&lt;p&gt;Within a newly formed Programme Support Office, a number of new starts have been asked to evaluate their roles but they are all former Project Support Officers and &lt;strong&gt;some&lt;/strong&gt; are straying into Project Support under the guise of helping the Project Manager in order to help the Programme Manager in the long run.  A number of other Project Managers have expressed the unfairness of &quot;free&quot; Project Support.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the primary differences in the roles of Project Support and Programme Support?  Which control documents should be in maintained by the Programme Support Officer?  What is the best use of their time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any and all advice appreciated in helping to craft the job description of the new role. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2014-10-30T13:30:36.137" Title="What are the primary differences when promoted to a Programme Support role out of a Project Support role?" Tags="&lt;prince2&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;&lt;program-management&gt;&lt;portfolio-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12249" CreationDate="2014-09-02T16:22:21.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can move tasks in the Calendar view around and my guess is, that is how the bars are now appearing in the lower part of the day.  Right click in the background of the Calendar view, select &lt;strong&gt;Layout Now&lt;/strong&gt; to apply an auto layout to the view.  However, if you have more than 4 to 5 tasks on any day, they will not all print - they will show on an &quot;Overflow page&quot; in the print out.  If you have multiple overlapping tasks, consider filtering the view to remove tasks that are not of interest - for example, filter the view for a specific resource or resource group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T16:22:21.850" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12253" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-02T20:15:16.030" Score="0" ViewCount="1290" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm attempting to use the &quot;Level All&quot; button in MS Project 2013 Professional.  There are three resources, which you can see in the screenshot, with two of the resources working on the same item, shown in gray.  Since both resources are assigned to the same task, why on earth would MS Project leave a gap for one of these resources, effectively keeping him idle, while the task assigned to him is not yet complete?  Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pd23u.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11974" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T18:56:08.077" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T18:56:08.077" Title="Gaps in resource scheduled time" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12253" CreationDate="2014-09-03T10:47:51.230" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the second resource working the same number of hours at the same assignment unit?  Look at the Task Usage view and add &quot;peak&quot; to the left side of the view to see assignment units.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the gap - my guess is the other task is a successor to the gray task.  The resource leveling command will not ensure the resource is assigned to something every day in the project.  It is merely to solve resource overallocation by delaying tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T10:47:51.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11366" CreationDate="2014-09-03T11:54:43.020" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not know how to tease the information out of TFS, however if you are willing to use another tool that integrates into TFS, I would suggest &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eylean.com/tfs?utm_source=website&amp;amp;utm_medium=text&amp;amp;utm_campaign=DMStack#Manageperformance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eylean Board&lt;/a&gt;. It offers time tracking as a feature and generates time reports based on what you need. The reports are generated for each team member individually, including all of the projects they are working on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/070wv.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10336" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T11:54:43.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4227" CreationDate="2014-09-03T13:52:00.050" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Program is to deliver a number of components to a single outcome, a Project is one of those components. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Project Manager is responsible for the delivery of a single component.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A portfolio Manager differs from a Program Manager in that a Portfolio Manager is responsible for the delivery of a number of Projects which have no direct correlation whereas the Projects within a Program have a single  outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11985" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T13:52:00.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12257" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-03T18:35:38.540" Score="4" ViewCount="769" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently running a project where a very simple Kanban setup (Backlog/Doing/Done) is working great for us&amp;mdash;most of the time. But we're also highly dependent on a lot of other teams' output&amp;mdash;easily 1/3 of our tasks are at least potentially blocked if those other teams don't provide their pieces. These other teams are a mix of freelancers, other groups in our company, other companies working on the same large contract, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have fairly good &lt;em&gt;communication&lt;/em&gt; with those teams about the status of those tasks, but for various reasons, some of them don't use our tools, they don't want to, and we can't make them. (For one thing, a lot of them don't even work for our company.) We're very happy with a super-lightweight Trello setup, but I'm looking for a better way to tag tasks assigned to different people &lt;em&gt;who do not have accounts in our tools.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, I need to assign tasks to external groups or individuals, communicate with them on my own, and move the tasks around the process, without them needing to have accounts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's a lightweight way to do what I want?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11990" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-09-03T19:21:28.133" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T11:31:38.273" Title="Process for tracking work external to the team?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;dependencies&gt;&lt;external-project-members&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12258" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-03T19:13:55.633" Score="0" ViewCount="62" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had an idea and started working on a web site which aims to be of societal value. I believe making it open-source would benefit the project. Doing this will be a turning point where I no longer have full influence on the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit (HS Truman) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I don't want to see the project not reaching the goals of my vision because the direction of the project changes. Can I, and should I, set the project foundation &quot;in stone&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11991" LastEditorUserId="11991" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T14:13:27.370" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T14:13:27.370" Title="Ensure direction of project is kept after opening source" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-09-04T05:56:51.940" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12257" CreationDate="2014-09-03T19:16:30.700" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[W]e're also highly dependent on a lot of other teams' output - easily 1/3 of our tasks are at least potentially blocked if those other teams don't provide their pieces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your underlying question is about how to deal with externalities with a Kanban system. The short answer is that you need multiple processes: one for pulling from vendors, and one for pulling work into the team's iterative cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Think Processes, Not Tools&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't really a tool question, it's a &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; question. You're missing an input bucket that these people fill for your team to pull from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Kanban, work is &lt;em&gt;pulled&lt;/em&gt;, never pushed. So, your process needs a way to fill the input queue with stories, artifacts, or whatever goods/services are coming from these outside teams so that your team can pull them as work-in-progress at the appropriate time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Externalities Generally Require a Separate (But Related) Process&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of it this way. In a manufacturing system, you build your widget with parts. When you run out of parts, the kanban card at the bottom of the parts box gets turned in to central supply, and a new box of parts (with another card at the bottom) is handed back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This works fine, so far as it goes. However, the process by which kanban cards (which could be pre-filled purchase orders, for example) are used by central supply to restock the supply depot isn't defined for you, but you can leverage the system to ensure that the supply depot uses those artifacts to &lt;em&gt;pull&lt;/em&gt; supply from vendors when needed, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, whether or not you use the same framework, these are really separate processes. Your vendors shouldn't be intrinsic to your team's process, but you should definitely define an extrinsic process for pulling work from the vendors in order to make that work available for your team to pull.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T19:16:30.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12258" CreationDate="2014-09-03T20:48:30.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think what you are looking for is called &lt;strong&gt;Crowdsourcing&lt;/strong&gt;. From Wikipedia: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Crowdsourcing is the process of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are tons of websites related to this.. Basically, you show what your idea is about and people that might find it interesting join your team to put it into practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11989" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T20:48:30.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12257" CreationDate="2014-09-04T11:31:38.273" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's great that you already have simple Kanban working for you, now probably it's time to look at it and do&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Value Stream Mapping&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically you visually outline whole process and how the work &lt;strong&gt;flows&lt;/strong&gt; through the board. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What will be critical for you is to setup boundaries of the process.&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;You correctly noticed that way &lt;strong&gt;external team organizes work is outside of your influence. &#xA;It's ok. Don't try to change it yet.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Kanban you shouldn't try to optimize the process before actually laying it down and starting flow of cards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this doesn't help you at all... there is good chance you already have/know it. &#xA;So, now to the next step: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Negotiation of terms with upstream teams&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider technique described by Anderson in &lt;a href=&quot;https://kindle.amazon.com/work/kanban-david-j-anderson-ebook/B004XUDW6C/B0057H2M70&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt; and try to setup &lt;strong&gt;Queue replenish Meeting&lt;/strong&gt; with stakeholders and potentially members of those upstream teams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way you will provide visibility in your value stream, will make process explicit and in future you might even get external team to be included in your Value Stream that would lead to pushing Value Stream boundaries further up the chain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only at this point you guys can decide what tool will be used for that. &#xA;And please don't forget about ex-explicitly putting your &lt;strong&gt;Kanban Policies&lt;/strong&gt; in written form and making them available for everyone to see. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3501" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T11:31:38.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12263" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12271" CreationDate="2014-09-04T14:17:21.613" Score="3" ViewCount="1348" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of people mix Scrum and XP methodologies. But these methodologies have different set of roles. I tried to make mapping between them. This is result:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt; ________________________________&#xA;|    Scrum roles    |  XP roles  |&#xA;|___________________|____________|&#xA;| Development Team  | Programmer |&#xA;|                   |   Tester   |&#xA;|___________________|____________|&#xA;|   Product Owner   |  Customer  |&#xA;|___________________|____________|&#xA;|    Scrum Master   |   Coach    |&#xA;|                   |  Tracker   |&#xA;|___________________|____________|&#xA;|        N/A        | Consultant |&#xA;|___________________|____________|&#xA;|        N/A        |  Big Boss  |&#xA;|___________________|____________|&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this correct? I have big doubts about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A little explanation of my question. The question is, to which roles in Scrum I should delegate authority of XP roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case of the Development Team it's easy. All teams already have Programmers and Testers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Product Owner it's easy too. Product Owner speaks on behalf of the Customer. So, Product Owner in Scrum is the same that Customer in XP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Delegate authority of Coach is harder. Should it be Scrum Master, because he controls compliance the methodology. Or Scrum Master responsible only for Scrum, and XP Coach should be another person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same problem with Tracker. Who should be the conscience of team? Scrum Master or it's better to appoint this to another person?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2014-09-04T20:20:41.960" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T11:50:25.710" Title="Roles mapping between Scrum and XP methodologies" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;extreme-programming&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12264" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-01T14:53:06.817" Score="2" ViewCount="1754" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a lot of stories of the type: &quot;&lt;strong&gt;As a passenger, I want this plane to fly so that I can get to places&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;. The amount of work that the end user doesn't care about from this point on is enormous. Obviously the team will have to do a lot of work before the plane flies but the customer will just be waiting and getting nothing until the plane actually takes off. How would you break this into smaller stories that add value to the customer so you can deliver something at the end of each sprint? How is a non technical product owner going to be involved in writing stories or thinking of fit criteria? How would a sprint review look like?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: clearly, my plane example wasn't the best. Let's try this one: &quot;As a customer (in an online shop) I want to be able to pay my cart using MasterCard so that I don't need to get a Visa&quot;. This is a very concrete and precise feature but the technical work required may exceed the sprint length and add no value until it's actually done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12023" OwnerDisplayName="Lezka" LastEditorUserId="8738" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T12:18:24.887" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T18:53:15.983" Title="What to do with epic technical stories?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12264" CreationDate="2014-09-01T15:03:04.227" Score="3" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a passenger, I want to be able to board a plane.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a passenger, I want to comfortably sit in a plane for a few hours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a plane, I want to be able to take off.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a plane, I want to be able to remain aloft for a few hours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a plane, I want to be able to safely land.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are lots of things that an airplane does, and it takes a minimal amount of thought to enumerate them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The amount of work that the end user doesn't care about from this point on is enormous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is that if the customer and/or product owner &lt;em&gt;don't want&lt;/em&gt; to put in that minimal amount of thought, and just want to wave their hand and say &quot;tell me when it's done&quot;, they that customer and/or product owner is effectively &lt;em&gt;relinquishing control&lt;/em&gt; of the direction of that product to &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the main reasons agile methodologies exist is to provide direction and control to the customer and/or product owner.  If they don't &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; that control, then it sounds like agile isn't the right fit for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone, somewhere is managing those individual features which contribute to the product as a whole.  That someone might be the customer, might be the product owner, might be the company CEO, might be the development manager... might even be the most junior developer on the team.  That level of management and decision-making exists.  Any member of the overall team who absolves themselves of the responsibility of managing it simply delegates that management to other members of the team.  If everybody absolves themselves of that responsibility, then it falls on the most junior member of the team by default.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is a pretty silly place to put such management decisions, but it happens more often then you'd think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, consider the simple act of prioritizing work items.  Let's say you have 50 individual work items that need to be done on a tight deadline.  It's entirely possible, perhaps even likely, that they can't &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; be done in that time.  So they need to be prioritized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When upper management is asked to prioritize, if their response is &quot;everything is top priority&quot; then what they're effectively saying is &quot;you go ahead and prioritize it for me.&quot;  Given that you can't do 50 things at once, prioritization &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; happen simply as a matter of reality.  By choosing not to make a decision, the product owner implicitly (perhaps even unwittingly) delegates that decision to other team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="David" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T15:03:04.227" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4571" CreationDate="2014-09-04T22:04:04.907" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is the way we work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For each project we have a specific area in our ECM solution. In this area we store our documents and information about the status (Open, Pending, ...) and the stage (initialisation, Design, Implementation, ...). These information are useful to our steering committee in order to have a global overview over all projects at any time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The methodology we have adopt is Hermes 5 (sort of OpenUP process framework with a set of document templates)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Said that, we have a simple rule in order to share the project status to the steering committee and other PMs. Every week we update a &quot;project status report&quot; for each project. This document is versioned in our ECM solution in order to keep the history. Those documents are opened on our friday afternoon meeting where each PM tell about the status of is project. Each PM has about 5 min for each project during the meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the specific Hermes 5 template we are using: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hermes.admin.ch/szenarien/szenario_01_IT-Individualanwendung/templates/fr/rapport_detat_du_projet.docx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;project_status_template&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3221" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T22:04:04.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4570" CreationDate="2014-09-04T22:23:23.957" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Minutes of meetings should be written during the meeting. Just keep it simple and note down a resume of each argument classified by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decisions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Suspended task&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Informations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discussions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Minutes should obviously be shared to participants at the end of the meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a simple and useful template &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hermes.admin.ch/szenarien/szenario_50_Alles/templates/fr/proces_verbal.docx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;meeting minutes&lt;/a&gt; (hope you understand french)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3221" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T22:23:23.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12264" CreationDate="2014-09-05T17:08:51.827" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Let't try this one: &quot;As a customer (in an online shop) I want to be&#xA;  able to pay my cart using MasterCard so that I don't need to get a&#xA;  Visa&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an excellent example.  It's a story whose components are opaque to the PM, but probably has several tasks underneath it to the developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You sit down with a developer (ideally, the one who will actually be doing the work), and ask them just talk through how they'd go about doing the story, writing down what they say as you go (rough notes are fine here, you don't need every word).  When they're done, take each sentence or topic and ask how long each one will take, and what their level of confidence is in their estimate (confidence level can just be a sentence, it doesn't need to be a number).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If any of the time estimates are too large, ask the developer to go into more detail about that specific task and see if it's something that can be broken into smaller ones.  Same for tasks in which the developer has little confidence in their own estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These time estimates can then be used to create a timeline, which in turn can be used to track progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which brings us to another question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How would you break this into smaller stories that add value to the customer so you can deliver something at the end of each sprint? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all individual tasks have benefit to the customer.  If the overall story does, as in the Mastercard example, then you can report a percentage of progress toward the customer-facing end result.  If the overall story doesn't (like say migrating to a new database), then you can decide whether or not to educate the customer about the change, depending on how technically savvy they are, and whether there are knock-on benefits from the change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12008" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T17:08:51.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12263" CreationDate="2014-09-06T11:50:25.710" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Delegate authority of Coach is harder. Should it be Scrum Master,&#xA;  because he controls compliance the methodology. Or Scrum Master&#xA;  responsible only for Scrum, and XP Coach should be another person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately best answer for above part would be: &lt;strong&gt;it depends&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;You need to take into accounts couple aspects of your question: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Scrum and XP operate on different levels&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;XP defines very rigorously set of engineering practices that have to be used by the team and process around them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand &lt;strong&gt;Scrum treats engineering practices&lt;/strong&gt; and exact way the team does the work as &lt;strong&gt;black box&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Who is your Scrum Master&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum Master as defined by &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Scrum-Guide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; is management role responsible for the process, coaching the team, resolving impediments and guarding team from external interference. &#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum Master doesn't have to be technical person.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many people (including me) claim that having significant technical expertise is definitely helpful in Scrum Master role and such Scrum Master tend to be much more effective. However having SM that is technical is not Scrum requirement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;How this applies to you&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If your SM is strong technical person&lt;/strong&gt; that is naturally seen by Team as someone that can provide valuable feedback regarding code quality, design and architecture &lt;strong&gt;I don't see reason why SM couldn't take on XP Coach this role&lt;/strong&gt; as long as he/she has enough time to keep up with both roles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Don't overload your SM&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you decide to give SM additional role&lt;/strong&gt;, please be cautious. &lt;strong&gt;Don't overload your SM&lt;/strong&gt; with other work than being SM. You need him/her to be focused on resolving impediments, inspecting and adapting process. This is crucial at this role and as i**t's hard to tangibly quantify SM work** it tends to be diminished when SM has more tangible work on his/her plate. You don't want this to happen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The same problem with Tracker. Who should be the conscience of team?&#xA;  Scrum Master or it's better to appoint this to another person?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the contrary to XP Coach, this one is in my opinion no-brainer. Scrum Master should be doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3501" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T11:50:25.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12244" CreationDate="2014-09-07T09:08:28.213" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That is not a proper story, that is just a guideline on how to write good user interfaces.  It must be easy to check if a story is implemented, otherwise the story is useless. If stories like that were okay we would only ever need this one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a user using this application, I would like the application to fill my needs, be free of bugs and be easy to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acceptable stories that are similar to the yours would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a user filling a date field, I would like the application to give show which date format it wants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a user filling a number field, I would like the application to give show which format the number should be in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a user filling a field, I would like to see an example of valid input for that field to make it easier to understand what format the field should be in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are concrete and easy to verify. If you add more number or date fields in the future then we just apply the same functionality to those fields as well. However if we get a new kind of fields we will need a new user story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In cases where you get unworkable user stories it is important to reject them and explain why. A user story like that only hurts the development process and gives the testers an endless amount of things to complain about since the story can't ever be completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12010" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T09:08:28.213" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12273" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-08T08:27:30.190" Score="2" ViewCount="466" Body="&lt;p&gt;The formula involved for calculating defect density is simply (number of defects) / (lines of code). So if lines of code would be less it increases the chances of having a high defect density. In other words, if in a project design principles are strictly follwed and all duplicacy, all dead code, all redundancy is removed, it will only lead to lesser lines of code. Now this might be called an optimized piece of code. But that does not help with the defect density parameter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one is working on a project, where ultimately defect density is to be calculated, wouldn't it lead the programmers to ignore code duplicacy and dead code ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is Defect density a valid technique at all ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12017" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T05:08:21.333" Title="Is Defect density a valid technique at all?" Tags="&lt;quality&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12274" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-08T09:07:47.100" Score="14" ViewCount="2362" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are 3 Scrum teams (with ~15 people) whose work is tightly connected so it's necessary that teams to be up to date with the others' progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is it possible to exchange info between teams on a daily basis in an effective manner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A big stand-up with all of the members are too long. We've tried that each team delegates an &quot;ambassador&quot; who participate on the others' stand-up too but in that case the info flow was not the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know a good way to keep updated connected Scrum team about each other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12016" LastEditorUserId="13496" LastEditDate="2015-02-06T20:03:38.967" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T07:56:53.910" Title="Daily stand-up with multiple Scrum teams" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12273" CreationDate="2014-09-08T09:08:39.667" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd avoid any metric that uses lines of code as part of it's calculation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you say, it creates an incentive for developers &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to optimise code to make things look better.  Even worse, you can just make the code far more verbose than it needs to be to 'improve' defect density.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T09:08:39.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12274" CreationDate="2014-09-08T09:42:37.067" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;All of this below is from my own painful experience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Be in the same room.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Talk to each other while working or at lunch breaks.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Make sure to have a general meeting with everyone gathered (standing or not) where every single person is being asked:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What have you done yesterday&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are you working on today&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If there are any problems or he/she needs help&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Meeting are a must and if you compromise them the results may be devastating.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11918" LastEditorUserId="11918" LastEditDate="2015-02-06T17:18:11.993" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T17:18:11.993" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12274" CreationDate="2014-09-08T10:21:02.933" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some months ago I have an experience with two teams: Product and Data scientists. In their moment, we change &lt;em&gt;what have you done yesterday&lt;/em&gt; for &lt;strong&gt;What you get yesterday&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a simple change but I think a very important change facing that situation. It's more important explain the goal obtained that the way for doing it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with the Hellen experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11912" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T10:21:02.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12274" CreationDate="2014-09-08T11:26:10.467" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pay attention to information overload. There shouldn't be that many interactions that each one needs to keep up with everyone's status&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Super-stand-ups have limited interest for members. Their role is to keep the management posted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get a team &lt;strong&gt;chat tool&lt;/strong&gt;. If someone has a public announcement, he can get it across over the chat. Atlassian's HipChat is especially tailored for teams, for example if someone mentions you in a public room or if you're away, it emails the chat you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get a &lt;strong&gt;team wiki&lt;/strong&gt;. E.g. in Atlassian Confluence, every time someone updates a page you watch (such as the status on every major change), everyone gets notified.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way, there is less pressure on the completeness of the daily stand-up and everyone can keep up with information that is relevant to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I used to work at Atlassian and I'm still a fan, so feel free to replace the tools I suggest with competitors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12019" LastEditorUserId="12019" LastEditDate="2014-09-09T08:22:35.973" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T08:22:35.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12274" CreationDate="2014-09-08T12:51:33.913" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Thomas Owens noted, one of the solutions to scaling up Scrum is the Scrum of Scrums. What you describe in the OP, however, is different:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We've tried that each team delegates an &quot;ambassador&quot; who participate on the others' stand-up too but in that case the info flow was not the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of each team sending an ambassador to other teams' daily Scrum, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/articles/advice-on-conducting-the-scrum-of-scrums-meeting&quot;&gt;Scrum of Scrums&lt;/a&gt; is a separate, higher level meeting including usually a single ambassador from each team. It may not necessarily be a daily meeting, often it is best for the team to have it 2-3 times a week. And its focus is somewhat different from that of the team level Scrums. Fairly obviously, it focuses on team level status and blockers. But it is also more oriented towards rapid removal of blockers, so it may not have a strict time limit, and it may (by common agreement) transform into a problem solving session when needed. The participants may - and should - vary, ideally each team could be rotating their ambassadors more or less regularly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another approach to help information flow is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/cultivate-communities-of-practice&quot;&gt;Communities of Practice&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A community of practice is a like-minded or like-skilled group of&#xA;  individuals who voluntarily come together because of their passion and&#xA;  commitment around a technology, approach, or vision. On a large&#xA;  project, these communities of practice are helpful for cutting across&#xA;  the boundaries of and pulling together individuals from the many&#xA;  crossfunctional teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10244" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T12:51:33.913" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12273" CreationDate="2014-09-08T13:59:33.217" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are right in that defect density - as well as any other statistical measure - can be abused, so it should never be used as a sole measure per se. However, when used judiciously, it may provide useful insights into the codebase. (That said, developers reasonably familiar with their codebase and the product can usually identify the most critical modules / components without the need of statistics.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few comments to your reasoning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;bug fixing should have priority over refactoring, so in a well working team, code being refactored should already be bug free as much as the team is aware&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;code duplication in itself is a source of bugs, e.g. when the same modification needs to be done in several different (duplicated) parts of the code, forget one place and you have a bug&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;when using any kind of statistical data in a software development team, it is crucially important not to tie any personal assessments, benefits or drawbacks to it, lest team members will find their way to skew the metric to their benefit (and to the project's detriment in the longer term)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10244" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T13:59:33.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8916" CreationDate="2014-09-09T13:20:32.537" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Collaborative resource scheduling software is the answer to your question.&#xA;You can give a free try to Enbraun's &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/user/enbraun123&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;eResource Scheduler&lt;/a&gt; (multi user resource planning software).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can have Gantt Chart view of all your resources and projects on a single dashboard and can export this chart to MS Excel that facilitates sharing the data among multiple users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Gap Report highlights resource gaps at project level by comparing resource requirements and allocations in different views and units.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This application facilitates importing multiple tasks from MS Project file, and individual notes can be entered in tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It facilitates task level scheduling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10481" LastEditorUserId="10481" LastEditDate="2014-09-10T05:23:16.173" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T05:23:16.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12283" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12307" CreationDate="2014-09-09T18:28:33.853" Score="3" ViewCount="2162" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm using Agile views/boards in JIRA to manage issues of a project.  Is there a mechanism to signify issues that are important (hence high priorities) but for technical difficulty and human resource availability are currently in a sort of stalled state?  In other words, the tickets has not been updated for a long time.   I want some way of flagging those tickets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12029" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T07:30:45.443" Title="Mechanism in JIRA to signify issues/tickets that are stalled" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12283" CreationDate="2014-09-10T07:09:29.523" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm no JIRA expert, but i guess you could just add a specific label to your issues. It would allow to filter on this label if you want to hide those issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is deeply linked to your process, and you plan to use it often, you could even create your own field, but it would imply to tweak your screens…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12033" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T07:09:29.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12283" CreationDate="2014-09-10T07:36:06.850" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apart from internal JIRA mechanisms such as (obviously) sorting by creation date, I advise practicing the &lt;em&gt;Zero Bug Policy&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you receive and triage issues, it is important to label them or include them in an Epic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At each sprint planning, you pick a dozen in a list of 40-100 issues related to your Epic/labels. Don't include stalled issues. Only include issues that you are confident you'll complete during the sprint;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your stalled issues naturally stack at the bottom of the suggested issues for your sprints,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the end of a release period, the best practice is the &lt;em&gt;zero bug policy&lt;/em&gt;: &lt;strong&gt;Take a decision&lt;/strong&gt; about your stalled issues. Your clients know that, in fact, there's nothing you will realistically do about them. Close them as &quot;Won't fix&quot;. It's an exercise about sincerity and accuracy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry to bring that up. A 1000-issue backlog brings discredit on your decisions and drags unnecessary brainpower off your teams. Once you succeed to close them, projects feel light and fresh again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12019" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T07:36:06.850" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12287" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-10T07:48:58.677" Score="16" ViewCount="3784" Body="&lt;p&gt;When the deadline is tight and when there are not enough QA people, the Product Owner asks developers to join in with QA to meet the deadline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What should the developers do when this happens?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What's the right thing to do from a Scrum perspective?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12034" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-09-10T16:21:32.240" LastActivityDate="2018-08-21T22:15:44.560" Title="Should a Product Owner be asking developers to do QA to meet deadlines?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12287" CreationDate="2014-09-10T08:09:04.717" Score="9" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Should developers do QA?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess it depends on what's more important to you: sticking to your job description to the letter (and interpreting being a developer as &amp;quot;I ain't do testing stuff, only write code&amp;quot;), or delivering working software as part of a team (which would imply that everyone is helping out each other as needed, even by doing unpleasant or boring stuff when it has to be done).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though you may be employed as a &amp;quot;software developer&amp;quot;, in Scrum job titles are not that important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Scrum team in a Scrum environment does not include any of the&#xA;traditional software engineering roles such as programmer, designer,&#xA;tester or architect. Everyone on the project works together to&#xA;complete the set of work they have collectively committed to complete&#xA;within a sprint. Because of this, Scrum teams develop a deep form of&#xA;camaraderie and a feeling that &amp;quot;we're all in this together.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Quoted from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/team&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, if Joe is held back with his task and can't complete it till the end of the sprint, it is of no use to the team if Jim is fully done with &amp;quot;his tasks&amp;quot; and sitting idle, or is working on something less valuable rather than helping Joe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, in a well functioning Scrum team, even though members may have different primary expertise areas, still developers occasionally (or even often) do testing, testers may help out writing SQL scripts, DBAs sometimes jump in to configure a development server etc. etc. It is often said that Scrum teams need &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.velocitycounts.com/2013/05/agile-teams-cross-functional-people/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;T-shaped people&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case you are worried how this affects your marketability and long term prospects as a developer, Geoff Watts has good news for you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;growing evidence suggests (unsurprisingly) that the rates for developers with good testing/quality skills are much higher than those without.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(From &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0957587406&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Scrum Mastery&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, p. 149)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note also that emerging best practices in this industry include developers writing unit tests and doing at least some integration testing to ensure that their changes work as intended before commit. From this, it is not a huge leap to assist in other types of testing as needed. In fact, I used to work in a Scrum team where we had no dedicated QA personnel at all; only four developers. And we did all the testing ourselves. It included building an automated, shell script based testing framework alongside developing the product and writing our unit tests. And actually it was much more fun than you might expect. But of course, the most fun was actually to see the project succeed :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Why is there too much QA work for your team to handle?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at the larger context, your question raises some general concerns though. Sounds like your team may not be actually producing a potentially shippable product increment at the end of each sprint, instead you have one or more integration/testing sprints before the planned release. This does create an imbalance and slows down your team in the long run, so depending on the circumstances it may be worth raising the question how your team can move towards more frequent deliveries. The answer may include test automation, involving the testers earlier, slicing up your backlog items into smaller chunks... But these are just shots in the dark, without knowing more details about your actual situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10244" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T07:10:46.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3256" CreationDate="2014-09-10T09:11:02.090" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Atlassian Confluence&lt;/a&gt; with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://documentation.play-sql.com/display/RY/Requirement+Yogi&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Requirement Yogi&lt;/a&gt; add-on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Easy for non-techies: Confluence has an easy, MS Word-style wysiwyg editor,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unique number: Yes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you link to a requirement, you can see an excerpt when you hover over it,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Versionned: Yes for Confluence pages,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Search: Yes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Links: As you suggested, traceability matrix aren't human-ready, so it's just links,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Export to Excel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example of inserting a link to a requirement key and showing an excerpt in view mode:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YImaf.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Requirement Yogi showing a requirement excerpt&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I'm the author of Requirement Yogi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12019" LastEditorUserId="12019" LastEditDate="2014-09-10T11:57:07.460" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T11:57:07.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12287" CreationDate="2014-09-10T09:27:59.457" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my teams all developers would cross-check their developments/bugfixes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Review their code using a GIT pull request,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Validate the behaviour by testing it in the browser,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Validate the functional behaviour too - if it's illogical, it's the role of the peer to go to the functional expert/PM and check the development still makes sense.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a great way to spread and exchange knowledge so both developers have knowledge on the ins and outs of the software. Since it's a peer review, all developers put their issues in QA at the same time of the sprint and test their colleagues' issues, so it doesn't add lag and it rather empowers them to discuss and fix issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your situation, it seems QA hasn't been done during the development process and you're doing it altogether at the end of a cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12019" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T09:27:59.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12287" CreationDate="2014-09-10T10:14:57.663" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;They should absolutely be doing QA. In fact, in the &lt;em&gt;ideal&lt;/em&gt; agile team there are no specific roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile development is quite the opposite of the &quot;throw it over the wall&quot; mentality of development vs. QA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly the problem is: if a feature is not Done, should people get off the story and do something else? And if QA is not irrelevant (in other words, it actually finds bugs), who is going to fix them and when? Clearly if QA is part of the development team, stories need to be &quot;bug-free&quot; before they are Done. On the other hand, realistically, this means that some development must happen necessarily after QA, but within the same sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why I've often advocated pairing between QA and developers. A story should be developed and QA'ed &lt;em&gt;at the same time&lt;/em&gt;. This can be achieved when there's coordination, and development introduces QA features in code (e.g. &lt;em&gt;tests&lt;/em&gt;), which removes work from QA, and when QA codes automated features and avoids manual testing. In this way it's much easier to get everything done at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6300" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T10:14:57.663" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12287" CreationDate="2014-09-10T11:48:13.270" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know the specifics of agile, but having the same individual checking his/her own work is like having an inmate holding the keys to his cell.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The incentives are different.  The QA / QC person is incented to find as many defects as possible while the builder of product is incented to boast what a great job was done first time around.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now let's get to the human factors, the biases that affect ALL of us.  We don't see what we don't want to see.  If we think we did a great job building something, then we intuitively look for evidence that shows that and ignore, dismiss, minimize, justify the evidence that contradicts it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have developers do their own QC, then you are essentially degrading the QC capability to the point where you could be better off cost wise to just deliver without it and go at risk.  Conduct QC is expensive, paying for lousy work is very expensive.  Delivering a product with defects is also expensive...but you didn't do anything to minimize that cost so you might as well just pay once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T11:48:13.270" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12283" CreationDate="2014-09-10T13:10:55.803" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The agile part of Jira in fact is still an add-on to the base Jira application. It uses a workflow system to define what processes a task should go through. You can create a workflow scheme for you Agile/Scrum items to move to a new state once no action has been done to them. I believe this is possible. Sadly I have no applied experience aside from a &quot;course request&quot; workflow set up recently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The schema's can be found under administration &gt; issues &gt; workflow schema's. Note that you'll need to apply the new schema to the correct project. You can easily test whether your wishes are possible by applying the 'work in progress' schema to a temporary project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8700" LastEditorUserId="8700" LastEditDate="2014-09-11T06:52:45.243" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T06:52:45.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12287" CreationDate="2014-09-10T16:16:55.847" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;What's Wrong with Your Team's Processes&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When the deadline is tight and when there are not enough QA people, the Product Owner asks developers to join in with QA to meet the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your process problems are legion. Let me count at least some of the ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your Product Owner should never, ever be assigning work to the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your &quot;developers&quot; and &quot;QA people&quot; are not on the same team, or not working closely enough together within the same team to meet Scrum's definition of a Development Team. A good Scrum team should contain all the skills needed to meet each Sprint Goal within the Definition of Done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quality assurance doesn't sound like it's part of your Definition of Done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have deadlines instead of iterations with potentially-shippable increments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team has accepted stories it may not have the bandwidth to complete according to the Definition of Done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your team (or teams) are not on schedule for successful completion of accepted work, but no one has identified a root cause or actionable impediment, or asked the Product Owner to consider an Early Termination and a return to Sprint Planning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A team with chronic resource constraints is either not following the Scrum methodology properly, is consistently mis-estimating tasks, or treating velocity as a management target. Fix the process!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may have other process problems, too. However, these are the ones that really stand out for me, and I generally recommend teams start with the low-hanging fruit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How to Fix Your Team's Processes&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some suggestions for improving your processes. Feel free to adapt or refine the suggestions to fit your specific team and organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Enforce the Scrum framework rigorously.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure that Product Backlog stories are properly refined, and granular enough to fit within a single Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure the team uses Sprint Retrospectives to inspect-and-adapt its estimating practices and its Sprint Planning Process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure the team only accepts work into each Sprint that fits within the established velocity range, while still providing enough slack for unforeseen events. Don't fall prey to the &lt;em&gt;%100 utilization fallacy!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure unit tests and acceptance tests are part of your Definition of Done, and make sure the &lt;em&gt;whole&lt;/em&gt; Development Team shares responsibility for swarming over stories that need additional resources.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whenever the Sprint Goal may not be met, meet with the Product Owner to refine scope or request an Early Termination.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may certainly find other ways to improve the process, too. Don't stop there; Scrum (and agile practices in general) are all about continuous process improvement!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-09-10T16:24:52.883" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T16:24:52.883" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3256" CreationDate="2014-09-10T16:54:30.823" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend taking a deeper look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Atlassian's JIRA&lt;/a&gt; with the &lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.pyxis.greenhopper.jira&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;JIRA Agile&lt;/a&gt; plugin. If you need to document relatively extensive requirements or general documentation in the future, it integrates well with Atlassian's Confluence. When used appropriately with a workflow that everyone understands, this can be a very effective team of tools and it looks like they meet most of your requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an admin user of JIRA, you can customize the interface, permissions, etc. There are a lot of options available on the default interface that could be confusing, but you can customize the interface and simplify it to the point where it's easily understood by your &quot;non-techies&quot;, but still has the robust features that are needed to meet your requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was the system I had in place and it worked well for the context of our organization. The biggest issue we had was applying a standard; everyone needs to understand the workflow (and actually follow it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12036" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T16:54:30.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12274" CreationDate="2014-09-10T17:16:55.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For this context, I actually highly recommend &lt;a href=&quot;https://idonethis.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;iDoneThis&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, iDoneThis sends an email to everyone on your team (so in this case, everyone on your 3 Scrum teams) and every person writes a quick reply to the email about what they've done that day (you can have it sent out whenever you want). The next day, iDoneThis sends a digest to the entire team with those replies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's fantastic; everyone can see the information, but if something specific needs to be addressed, those people who it applies to can deal with it between themselves. In this way, it doesn't waste others time who aren't involved. Those people can then include an update on the next day's email if needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did find that it wasn't efficient for smaller teams. For example, we used it on my 6-person team and loved the idea, but found that we could just easily have a short daily stand-up in addition to a chat client. But for a large team, I bet this will be invaluable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is still important to have occasional all-hands team meetings, but for an everyday update, this is perfect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not free but it's only $5/member/month, and worth it in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Side note: this is also great to just use as a tool just for yourself (a &quot;work diary&quot;, if you will). For this purpose (1 person), it's free. This is how I use it now and love it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12036" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T17:16:55.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4570" CreationDate="2014-09-10T17:53:27.747" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the great answers here that are specific to note-taking techniques, nothing can replace that, I have also used &lt;em&gt;tools&lt;/em&gt; to compliment effective techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding this statement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am a trainee and recording minutes during meeting hours creates bad impression because they may think I'm neglecting them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are the &quot;dedicated note taker&quot;, I'd bet this is expected and wouldn't worry about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my situation where I &lt;em&gt;wasn't&lt;/em&gt; the note taker, but rather someone just taking notes that everyone would happen to reference, my solution was recording audio, specifically &lt;a href=&quot;http://store.livescribe.com/by-series/sky-wifi.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Livescribe&lt;/a&gt;. It records the audio of the meeting and syncs it with the notes you're taking. In this way, you have the entire meeting to reference, and can just make a note of something important making it very easy to find later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also just use a regular audio recorder and take physical notes at a later time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I starting doing this because in the beginning of my career, my meetings would often entail highly technical discussions with engineers that were way over my head. Using this method, I could go back and study the conversation later and be magically smarter the next time we spoke. Now that I'm more familiar with the field (and the jargon), I don't really use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Cons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's expensive (specifically Livescrive)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found it a good investment for me at the time because I also used it for other contexts, like my classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make absolutely sure you ask permission to record the audio. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every time I wanted to record, I would ask &quot;Do you mind if I record our discussion for me to reference later?&quot;. Usually everyone was fine with it, however I worked on an open source project, so people were very transparent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not everyone will comfortable with it, especially for one-on-one meetings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's definitely not always the best solution for every context, so your mileage may vary. Especially since you're a trainee, people may not &quot;trust&quot; you yet. But, this may be more helpful in the future as your responsibilities grow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12036" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T17:53:27.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4571" CreationDate="2014-09-10T18:06:43.740" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But... these are the downsides:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at all your downsides, there's actually a little program that can do most of this automatically for you called &lt;a href=&quot;https://idonethis.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;iDoneThis&lt;/a&gt; that I mentioned in &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/12296/12036&quot;&gt;another post&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See that post for more details, but basically iDoneThis automatically sends an email to everyone on your team and every person writes a quick reply to the email about what they've done that day (or week - I think you can have it sent out whenever/however often you want). The next day, iDoneThis automatically sends a digest to the entire team with those replies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; you can also customize the message that accompanies the automated email, so you can include the requirements you have for everyone's replies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: I am &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; affiliated with iDoneThis, I just really like this simple solution and have yet to find better alternatives.&lt;/em&gt; =)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12036" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T18:06:43.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12192" CreationDate="2014-09-10T20:08:39.690" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just came across your question - I am not sure if you are still looking for an answer, but nevertheless, here goes.  (Just as a background, I am the product owner in a Kanban product company - and have experience with product development within our organization using Kanban; as also talking to many application/ product dev teams, so my response comes from the lessons from all of that experience).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, it would be interesting to know some additional information - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many projects do you typically have active at any point of time? How long do customer projects run, on average? Do people work on multiple projects at a time (I believe the answer to this last question is yes.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would you let your customers see the Kanban boards, if you were to set up Kanban boards?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, in any case, based on what you have said, let me respond. Two main things you have said you are trying to solve make Kanban a really good choice -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To collaborate better, and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To fix your workflows&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our experience, the visibility and the 'cross-tribe' view that Kanban provides, where you are able to easily see what various people in each function (tribe) is busy with, where they might be stuck and need help, etc. makes it an awesome team for people across functions to communicate better, collaborate better, help resolve issues and make task assignment (self-assignment with Pull) and resource balancing (thru WIP limits and the ability to see visually who is loaded how much) decisions more effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban's very nature - at least Kanban Method, as defined by David Anderson - is to help you start with your current workflow - and then go from there to improving it gradually as you identify the problem areas - bottlenecks, WIP limit violations, resource overloading, etc. - and fixing them one by one. (In fact I recently blogged about this here in case you are interested - &lt;a href=&quot;http://bit.ly/2n4frr8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://bit.ly/2n4frr8&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my opinion (altho I may be considered biased!) is that Kanban should be a great solution for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to how you might draw up your initial Kanban board, answers to my questions above would help - but you could easily start with either a simple Kanban board with a single swim lane for the entire company, with columns for each workflow step, between a common Backlog and Ready at the beginning (left of the board) and a Done/ Deployed/ Archive columns at the end on the right.  You might use color coding of cards/ stickies to show work for different projects/ customers - and other stickers to be used on each card to show who is working on it, what type of work is it (user story or defect or change request or just a simple task) and other things such as a blocked status or other attributes of the card.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8RzfE.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A different alternative would be to define multiple swim lanes - one for each Client or each project. (The project disadvantage may be that depending on the number of projects you do at a time, you might end up with a huge board - AND - at the end of each project, you will have to re-label the board with another project's name.  Since you might be doing repeat work for each client, it may be better to have client-specific swim-lanes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XYnYV.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A third alternative, which most medium/ large organizations use is to have a complete board for each project. The board remains active as long as the project is active and simply closed when the project is done. This is better suited if you use an electronic Kanban board OR if you have a few long running projects. Otherwise, if you use physical boards, you will end up in a situation where all your team members will be forced to make updates on multiple boards in multiple locations, which would be a real challenge! Even in an electronic Kanban situation, this may not be advisable if most of your people work on more than 2 projects at a time. (Ignore the actual labels in the picture below!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/In6gp.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there are many options possible, including having some sort of a board hierarchy, where you might have a organization --&gt; client --&gt; project hierarchy of boards - some of which may be more easily doable with an electronic Kanban product if and when you are ready for it. (Electronic products will also provide you some cool things such as defining a standard set of tasks on a card for each workflow column - so that on a single card, you can define tasks and map them to social vs. development stages - and track them as the card moves from the left to the right side of the board.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, start with simple and then go on to more sophisticated as you adopt Kanban more effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To your question about defining workflow stages as columns on the Kanban board or as labels on each work item, having the Kanban board allows you to visualize your workflow like no other tool.  It then provides you a powerful information radiator of where (what stage of the development cycle) your overall body of work is, where there may be overloading, etc. So, if you use Kanban, the columns as workflow stages is the best option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps! If you have any questions/ clarifications, I'd be happy to answer here or you can also reach me at mahesh@digite.com. Cheers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastEditorUserId="8132" LastEditDate="2017-03-25T11:20:44.073" LastActivityDate="2017-03-25T11:20:44.073" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12071" CreationDate="2014-09-11T05:08:28.680" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been using enbraun's eresource scheduler for the same. It allows me to perform every single thing you have mentioned. Enter resources, projects, tasks, locations, teams, offices etc. and easily allocate resources on projects and tasks. Its graphical reports allows you to make necessary decisions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10481" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T05:08:28.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11951" CreationDate="2014-09-11T10:48:46.990" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just had a very similar issue.  For me, I had a 'Work Sub-Filter' auto applied when I created the board.  Removing that fixed the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find the setting on the general settings page of board configuration:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7lYLj.png&quot; alt=&quot;Jira settings screen&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T10:48:46.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12303" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12304" CreationDate="2014-09-11T14:14:18.623" Score="7" ViewCount="7355" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was asked to adjust our ticket-workflow and I don't know if it's a good route that we're taking here. So I'd like to ask for your opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our project is being developed based on a Scrum process with weekly sprints. As project management we use JIRA + Agile. We're around 10 people working on that project. However, around 50% are working from remote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our current workflow of issues is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[Product Owner] Open &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[Developer] In Development &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[Developer] In Code Review&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[Tester] In Testing &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[Product Owner] In Acceptance &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[Product Owner] Done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, if a ticket / user story is marked as done, the code changes get merged into the master branch. We also at the moment can't reopen a closed (Done) ticket. If there is a defect which - maybe directly - can be connected to a previously closed ticket, we create a new one. However, we had a discussion on adding the possibility to reopen a ticket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your point of view, does this fit within a Scrum-process? Does it make sense to reopen a closed / into master-branch integrated ticket? Should this only be applicable for tickets from the current Sprint or release? What are the advantages and disadvantages of such an approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12047" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-03-19T13:29:53.280" LastActivityDate="2018-03-19T13:29:53.280" Title="Does it make sense to reopen closed User Stories in a Scrum project" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;scrum-of-scrums&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12303" CreationDate="2014-09-11T16:20:37.190" Score="14" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Newly-discovered bugs and defects are new work. As such, they must be made visible and move through the standard Scrum processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis and Recommendations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If there is a defect which [maybe] connected to a previously closed ticket, we create a new one. However, we had a discussion on adding the possibility to reopen a ticket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you knew about the defect before closing the old ticket, it should never have been closed since it likely didn't meet the Definition of Done. However, a &lt;em&gt;newly-discovered&lt;/em&gt; defect isn't a continuation of old work; it's actually &lt;em&gt;new work.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;All work must be made visible as a cost to the project.&lt;/strong&gt; This certainly includes defects. The fact that the defect was discovered &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; feature development was ostensibly completed should be made visible, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, the rule of thumb is that you should start a new user story (e.g. open a new ticket) that captures the work and the project value for fixing the defect, and then allow the Product Owner to prioritize this new work on the Product Backlog as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ticket can certainly refer back to the previous ticket if doing so adds useful information or adds value in some way, but it's still new work and needs to make its own way through the Scrum process, including Backlog Refinement, Estimation, and eventual transfer to a Sprint Backlog whenever it's accepted during Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recycling completed stories is generally an attempt to shortcut the planning and estimation processes in Scrum. Even if this isn't what you're trying to do here, just remember that there are &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; any shortcuts allowed in the Product Backlog-&gt;Sprint Backlog lifecycle; that lifecycle and its related processes are &lt;em&gt;fundamental&lt;/em&gt; to the successful implementation of Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T16:20:37.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12303" CreationDate="2014-09-11T19:44:22.860" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;it usually depends on your team process. In our team, once we close the story the QA starts opening up defects. However, the story only gets the QA approval when there is no outstanding sev 1 or sev 2 issues at the end of the last iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12051" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T19:44:22.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12303" CreationDate="2014-09-12T10:09:09.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question about the sense of reopening stories &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be the wrong question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to reopen a story, this may have the following reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.) You accidentally closed it. &#xA;It is completely okay, to reopen it in this case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.) The closing of the story was okay, but the result is not satisfying. Do with the story what ever you want - quickly - and concentrate on the important work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Team misunderstood the acceptance criteria =&gt; Improve the understandability of future stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The acceptance criteria were incomplete =&gt; Improve the completeness of future stores.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is missing sth. in you DoD =&gt; Improve the completeness of you DoD for the future. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, it's important to make things transparent. Try to avoid reopening userstories. In most cases, this is a sign for the need to change something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12056" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T10:09:09.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12283" CreationDate="2014-09-13T10:31:01.527" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From any JIRA Agile view (Plan or Work), you can simply right-click on a ticket and select &quot;Flag&quot; (or something that sounds like &quot;Flag as Impediment&quot;, I forgot a bit now).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively you could write a JQL Query like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Project = &quot;project_key&quot; and Status = &quot;the_status&quot; and updatedDate &amp;lt;= &quot;-5d&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will give you all the tickets in a Project in a certain Status and that have not been updated for more than 5 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8487" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T10:31:01.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="389" CreationDate="2014-09-13T22:57:54.440" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From experiencd of using both, to be honest there is no real advantage of using waterfall unless the project is so small that it fits within a short time period eg. One month.  Scrum actually repeats mini waterfall phases in each sprint anyway.  The value of Scrum is that no time is wasted doing big upfront Analysis and Design while priorities and market conditions are changing.  There is an overview [here] (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pashunconsulting.co.uk/what_is_scrum_blog.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pashunconsulting.co.uk/what_is_scrum_blog.html&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12066" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T22:57:54.440" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12274" CreationDate="2014-09-14T20:09:50.590" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the 3 team can conduct their scrum meeting individually. But the Scrum master being the common factor in all 3 meetings can pass on the info/dependencies from one team to another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12002" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T20:09:50.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12287" CreationDate="2014-09-14T20:14:19.937" Score="1" Body="&lt;h1&gt;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An agile team is a cross functional team. Their ultimate aim is to complete User stories committed for current sprint. Thus it is absolutely fine for developers to do QA when time permits and to meet deadline. However, the Product Owner asking for this change is against the rules. A product owner is there to define the product requirement, furnish details, clarify queries, participate in product demos, and in the end accept/reject a sprint. The Scrum master can make this decision to deploy the resources more efficiently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12002" LastEditorUserId="12034" LastEditDate="2014-09-24T00:03:59.753" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T00:03:59.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4570" CreationDate="2014-09-15T04:54:29.113" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Taking Minutes of Meeting (&lt;strong&gt;MOM&lt;/strong&gt;) is crucial, and in fact mandated by some of the international process methodologies and standards (CMMI, PMBOK, ISO, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say that your organization is not following any of the process or methodologies, then you may need ask permission at the beginning of the meeting, to take personal notes and if it is okay to publish and circulate it as informal MOM email. If permitted, you may jot down notes as follows - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Status of tasks/agenda points&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decisions made during the meeting related to the tasks/agenda points&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;List of action items/tasks and person assigned to it and deadline for the task&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now suppose your organization is following any of the project or process management methodologies, then usually for regular meetings, the minute taker (in this case, you) is pre-determined. In this scenario, it is advised to jot down quick personal notes on a writing pad during the meeting, and towards the end of the meeting summarize those notes with everyone. After the meeting, usually within 24 hours of the meeting, you need to formally record the notes into minutes, in a formal MOM template or document, which may have the following minimum required sections -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Meeting name, date, time and place&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Classification of the document (whether internal, public, confidential, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Document version control or revision history&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;List of participants (both present and absent in separate columns)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;List of agenda items intended for discussion during the meeting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;List of meeting results (including decisions, action items, status updates, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Distribution list for the MOM circulation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, remember to &lt;strong&gt;KISS&lt;/strong&gt; (Keep It Short and Simple)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12072" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T04:54:29.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12273" CreationDate="2014-09-15T05:08:21.333" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my organization (which uses CMMI-DEV V1.3 Staged), we use the concept of Defect Injection Rate (number of defects / hours of development), rather than the Defect Density Rate. This formula can be made granular for each individual feature/module/component and the technique gives a practical real picture on &lt;strong&gt;Cost of Quality&lt;/strong&gt;, since the hours are billed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12072" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T05:08:21.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4227" CreationDate="2014-09-15T06:12:14.530" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Program/Project Management Consultant, I would recommend to rely on the current standards such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://drm.pmi.org/Default.aspx?doc=StandardForProgramMgmtThirdEd.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMI's Standard for Program Management (3rd ed.)&lt;/a&gt; and/or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.axelos.com/Online-Shop/Programme-Management-MSP#GEMS6528286&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OGC/AXELOS Managing Successful Programmes Manual (MSP 2011 4th ed.)&lt;/a&gt; for the appropriate definitions and roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, as PMI Std. for PgM, a Program Manager works within 5 Program Management Performance domains and interacts with each PM to provide support and guidance on their individual projects, but also is responsible for the relationship to each project to the overall program and organizational performance objectives. Leadership is the key skill for a Program Manager and he/she needs to employ strategic visioning and planning to align the program goals and benefits with the long-term goals of the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, as per AXELOS' MSP Manual, The Programme Manager is responsible for leading and managing the setting up of the programme through to successful delivery of the new capabilities, realisation of benefits and establishing the required governance arrangements. He/she is also responsible for the set-up and day-to-day management and delivery of the programme on behalf of the SRO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would advise to through the standards and manuals, as they have already defined and listed down the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12072" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T06:12:14.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12251" CreationDate="2014-09-15T06:33:16.407" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your organization is following PRINCE2 and/or MSP or the whole P3O/P3M3 standards, then for project management using PRINCE2 there is a formal but optional role/department for &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Project Support&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, which may help in  providing administrative services or advice and guidance on the use of project management tools or configuration management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, for programme management using MSP, the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Programme Office&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (and not just Programme Support) is more of a necessity since programmes are major undertakings, often affecting large numbers of people and organisations and generating substantial volume of information. Hence, it becomes The nerve centre and information hub of a programme. All information, communication, monitoring and control activities for the programme are coordinated through the Programme Office, and it also acts as the standards &#xA;custodian for the programme and its delivery objectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is very important to note that the Project Assurance and Programme Assurance roles are totally different from the above mentioned roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12072" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T06:33:16.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12283" CreationDate="2014-09-15T07:01:42.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;JQL in JIRA is very powerful, and I used a very similar query to filter out tickets that are high priority and are stalled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Project = &quot;your-project-key&quot; AND Status in (Open, &quot;Needs Verification&quot;, &quot;Ready for Review&quot;, &quot;To be reviewed&quot;, &quot;Needs Triage&quot;, &quot;Awaiting Review&quot;, &quot;Under Review&quot;, ToDo, &quot;Open - untriaged&quot;, Parked, &quot;To Do&quot;) AND resolution = UnResolved and priority in (Blocker,Critical,Major) ORDER BY updatedDate&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12072" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T07:01:42.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12264" CreationDate="2014-09-15T07:46:15.013" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the things I like to do is to pretend that we're not writing software, or that the software is just a very thin veneer on some other manual process at the back end. Sometimes it might be useful to pretend we're just doing 1 customer, or 1 bit of the journey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could imagine having a situation where people entered their card details and it was dealt with manually. Or boarded a plane, but had no assigned seats. I'd start breaking the stories down like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The customer can pay by master card (manually, storing all details, which we know is bad).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The card details aren't in plain text and easy to copy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The payment is automatically sent to Master Card (without validation).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We wait to see if the payment is accepted before continuing (validation).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The customer gets a chance to redo their details if they're wrong.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The customer can optionally store their details in their account.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And we can add validation, etc. And for the plane, assuming that making planes fly is the new thing you're doing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The plane can take off and land.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The plane can carry enough fuel for its whole flight.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The plane can report the level of its fuel.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The plane can report altitude, speed and angle measurements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The plane can seat people.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The plane can carry baggage separately.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People can get out of the plane easily in an emergency.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately software is a lot easier to change than planes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see that these &lt;em&gt;are not&lt;/em&gt; technical stories, even though the implementation might be heavily technical. The customers can clearly see the business benefits of each stage. If you have trouble thinking about those business benefits, think, &quot;What would happen if I &lt;em&gt;didn't&lt;/em&gt; do this? When would the first situation where the business noticed actually be?&quot; That will help you work out how to describe them to the business in ways which sell their benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can split the story by only considering particular outputs, or particular inputs, or particular aspects of behaviour, or different customers or personas, or just split off one single scenario at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing is to do something small which will enable you to get feedback quickly, either from the business themselves or on the technical feasibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T07:46:15.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12317" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12319" CreationDate="2014-09-15T08:06:22.293" Score="0" ViewCount="547" Body="&lt;p&gt;A very common theme in project management/software engineering resources is that goals should be &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SMART&lt;/a&gt;. This question is targeted to the &quot;M&quot; in SMART: Measurable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The examples commonly found in literature or lectures often times seem unrealistic and far fetched to me. See for instance this example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Analyst Question: How much would you like to reduce your chemical expenses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Executive Response: By 25% within one year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wiegers, Karl; Beatty, Joy (2013-08-15). Software Requirements (3rd&#xA;  Edition) (Developer Best Practices) (Kindle Locations 2180-2181).&#xA;  Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So a business objective is to reduce chemical expenses by 25% within one year. That's a great measurable goal. But it sounds extremely unrealistic to hear such a thing from a customer. The customer does not want to reduce expenses by 25% in one year, he wants to eliminate the costs altogether and he wants to do so immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would sound somewhat more realistic to me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Executive Response: Within 10 years the software must have saved us as much money as we invested to develop it. Because if it does not we would better have invested our money in another project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do real projects get to those numbers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12074" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T23:34:44.570" Title="How do I elicit measurable business objectives in the real world?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;goals&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12317" CreationDate="2014-09-15T11:34:11.080" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are mixing up Goals and Objectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Goals are not required to be SMART, they are high level, possibly visionary, descriptions of the desired end state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Objectives, on the other hand, need to be SMART. These are the statements that define exactly what the project is tangibly delivering that contributes to achieving the Goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the Goal of your project might be to reduce expenses to zero as quickly as possible and analysis at the time of the Business Case might have shown that this can take place over a three year period, with 50% reductions expected from &quot;quick wins&quot; in the first year. So an objective of the project would be &quot;Reduce expenses by 50% within the first 12 months&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of how you get the &quot;right&quot; measures and targets in objectives- This is where you work and help the business to determine their goals and objectives for the project at the pre-initiation stage (sometimes call the Feasibility stage by old-school organisations :) By doing that you end up with achieveable Objectives and more importantly, Acceptance Criteria. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In essence, for the stats and measures you take what is both appropriate for the project and agreed to be the &quot;right&quot; level between the project and the business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T11:34:11.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12317" CreationDate="2014-09-15T12:43:44.213" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The general process I've seen work is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ID Ownership.&lt;/strong&gt; Figure out whose neck is on the line for achieving project benefits. These are the benefit owners. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ID Metrics.&lt;/strong&gt; Work with the benefit owners to determine valid metrics for measuring each of the project's benefits. Every one of the benefits (even soft beenfits) must map back to a valid metric, if it can't then remove that benefit from the business case.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Define Your Plan.&lt;/strong&gt; Again working with the benefit owners, for each metric establish who will measure, when/how often it will be measured, how it will be measured, and how/to whom the benefits will be reported post-project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Set Targets.&lt;/strong&gt; Now the hard part - get the benefit owners to establish realistic (in their minds) targets for each of the benefits based on the metrics that have been defined.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You now have a benefits realization plan for which you can obtain approval from your project's steering committee (or other appropriate executive body). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T12:43:44.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4570" CreationDate="2014-09-15T14:44:13.527" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Prior to the meeting, the meeting organizer should have prepared an agenda.  If you have this ahead of time, you will know which topics to expect.  There may be additional topics brought up as well, especially at the end.  Be prepared to note these as you go along.  Note any topic that seems significant.  You can decide later whether or not to include them in your notes. If a topic is just an aside, I will often note something basic such as, &quot;the topic of database connectivity was raised.  Joe agreed to check with the DBAs to have them run tests&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An agenda will also help you by having a roster of attendees.  If you do not have an agenda, do your best to note who was in attendance.  Note any absences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep your notes simple but most importantly, you need to be able to decipher them later.  Taking down a note won't do you any good if you cannot remember what you wrote or why you wrote it.  When key points are raised, note who brought up the topic and who gave key responses.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see why you taking meeting minutes would create a bad impression.  On the contrary, I think note takers are some of the most engaged attendees in a meeting.  Sometimes I will take notes even if I'm not the organizer or officially-designated person to do minutes, simply as a way of staying focused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually work on meeting minutes right after the meeting or at least that same day.  Otherwise, key information becomes forgotten over time, both by you and and the attendees.  Be sure to note any key decisions agreed up on during the meeting and any resulting or still-outstanding action items.  Finally, note the date and location of the next meeting, if one is scheduled.  When I send out the meeting minutes, I always say that recipients should respond with any corrections or questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7361" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T14:44:13.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12251" CreationDate="2014-09-15T15:04:36.763" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you say some new hires in the Program Support Office are straying into project support, that may depend on what exactly they are doing.  Contact the manager who oversees the entire Program Support group and find out what their expectations are for these new hires.  What one PM sees as unfair, “free” support, upper management may see these actions as necessary to get struggling or underperforming projects back on track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Program Support should accountable for multiple projects to be working toward overall Program goals.  The goals are often more closely tied to company mission statements than those of individual projects.  If these new hires are truly getting too far down into the details of one project, you need to find out why.  Perhaps some are helping to support PMs that they used to work for.  In that case, you may have office politics in play.  Consider rearranging what projects a Program Support person is accountable for.  This may help avoid a conflict of interest.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7361" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T15:04:36.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12317" CreationDate="2014-09-15T23:34:44.570" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aiming for Measurable objective is very good. As you mentioned &quot;targets&quot; as stated by stakeholder are all too often  either vague or apparently unrealistic. &#xA;However if you are told that the project ought to &quot;reduce waste by 25% in a year&quot; or that &quot;productivity will double upon completion&quot; it is up to you to analyse how realistically that objective will be reached and to document your findings. There is no point in dismissing an ambitious target unless you have rigorous evidence. Furthermore you may be able to identify pertinent metrics and refine the objectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10284" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T23:34:44.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10633" CreationDate="2014-09-16T02:52:30.510" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First and foremost stop mixing sprint(extreme programming) with iterations(Scrum). Sprints are 2-3 weeks, iterations are 30 days. Mix waterfall with Agile Scrum and Extreme programming (3 week sprints) in the following way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carry out your envisioning and planning the waterfall way producing work items the WBS way with a 8/80 rule. Prioritize the work items. Once you have your WBS, you can define your schedule baseline. Include you your design in the plan in process as &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next is development. Adopt Scrum. Create a definition of done. Add your work items as prioritized backlog items. Pick your work items during sprint planning and focus on completing at least one work item. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During sprint planning, have the team members(Dev, BA, Testers,etc.) add tasks and start development on 1,2,3 work items with focus on completing the top prioritized item (1). Monitor and control development - ScrumMaster. Within 2-3 iterations you will know your velocity. The burn down chart will spike up and then start going down for the rest of the sprints (if faster pace is needed). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do Not Micro-manage. Do not assign tasks. Let the team define their tasks and pick them up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Upper management is happy getting a schedule baseline. Development team is happy coding and completing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stop using the word &quot;Agile&quot;. Just do it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12085" LastEditorUserId="12085" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T04:01:26.263" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T04:01:26.263" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4072" CreationDate="2014-09-16T12:24:01.890" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;That was one of my first lessons in the antepenultima year of master's degree:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We were teams of 6 people (across 130 students),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Every team in the class was free to choose to have a PM or to have everyone equal,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We'd go through ~40 projects in one year,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We were all the same kind of students, same background, no individual ability at the beginning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We all started with self-organized groups. 50% of us failed our first projects and others got angry, mostly because one person didn't respect the deadline or because of the discordant directions we took (Our divergent was &gt; 0).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third or fourth project, we all decided to choose a PM, a quality person who'd provide the document templates, and 4 active workers. The PM had all credit to choose an option when several directions were available, and at the end of the year, the PM could decide how to assign the marks. We all performed properly at the 3rd project, met 95% of our delivery dates, and got on well much better together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most groups reused the same pattern on the 36 other projects of the year, albeit we switched roles between the workers, quality person and PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We did the experiment, and the answer was: &lt;strong&gt;Yes, everyone created equal, we needed a PM&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12019" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T12:24:01.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12327" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-16T14:27:41.170" Score="4" ViewCount="2051" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am having an interview for an Iteration Manager position and they have given me a scenario to prepare for which we will talk about during the interview. The scenario is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;There is a piece of high priority regulatory work that gets assigned to your team. There is no Product Owner. The Business Analyst is split in 4 other projects to look after. Your team has estimated the stories and indicate it will take about 4 iterations. The Project Manager keeps questioning every estimate they have done, because he communicated to the Project Steering Group that it was only 1 iteration of work. More people get assigned to the team. There is high pressure from the Project Manager and Senior stakeholders to deliver on the estimated planned date. &#xA;How do you deal with this?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It definitely seems like a very Kobayashi Maru sort of situation where the only solution is a no-win solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are my thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No PO&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When there is no PO you lose customer focus. Without a PO you are&#xA;losing the person who is helping the team understand what the&#xA;customer truly requires in their product&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no feedback about the product that the team is developing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Without a PO the team decides how the product is to be built. The PM&#xA;can get involved but that allows the business to be unaccountable for&#xA;developing the system. This responsibility is deferred to the team in&#xA;this situation and this is not a good thing to have happen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Without a PO who is determining the requirements and assisting with&#xA;the Product Backlog? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BA focus is split between 4 other projects&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find time with the BA to discuss the stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PM doesn’t trust the estimations from the team&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The PM is not the customer nor are they the person who can set the&#xA;acceptance criteria&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The PM can see a demo but they cannot say for certain that the team&#xA;is developing the correct requirements in the correct order /&#xA;priority&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PM communicated to the that the work will take 1 iteration. Team&#xA;   estimated 4 iterations More people get assigned to the team&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is unreasonable to expect the teams output to increase 4x, however&#xA;assigning more people to the team may not result in the work taking&#xA;less time. Ramp up time to get new members up to speed would need the&#xA;original team members to get the new members of the team on the same&#xA;page regarding progress and code etc. (Brooks law: adding man power&#xA;to a late software project makes it later).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pressure from PM and Senior Stakeholders to deliver on the estimated planned date&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was there a miscommunication between the PM, Senior Stakeholders and&#xA;the unknown PO?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain to the PM and the Senior Stakeholders that by not having a PO&#xA;for this product the end result may be the development of a product&#xA;that doesn’t match with the customers / regulatory works&#xA;requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attempt to break down the estimated stories further. By doing this,&#xA;the stories may be able to exist on a more granular level allowing&#xA;the PM to better understand the reasonings behind the teams original&#xA;estimates as well as seeing the amount of work / effort is required&#xA;for each story to be completed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team along with the PM could triage these smaller stories which&#xA;would allow for better prioritisation in terms of the product&#xA;backlog, however this could be hindered due to there being no PO and&#xA;the BA being split amongst 4 different teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the PM&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe some misunderstanding in the requirements based of the&#xA;regulatory work?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I understand why he’s questioning the estimates from the team, but I&#xA;would trust the teams estimates as I’m not sure where he got his&#xA;estimates from. And is he now trying to cover himself from blame?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There may be a miscommunication / misunderstanding between the PM and&#xA;the product due to the lack of the PO&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any existing products that the team can use as an example for development?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best course of action:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make clear to the PM and the Senior Stakeholders that expecting the&#xA;full product in one iteration will not be possible and that the team&#xA;will try their best to hit the planned date with as many high-quality&#xA;deliverables as they can. If theres been budget set aside for&#xA;completion bonuses, it would be a good time to use it now as a&#xA;motivator for the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stress that in future, any order for high priority work which needs&#xA;to be delivered by a set date that there must be a PO for the work&#xA;with a PM that communicates and trusts the estimates of the team and&#xA;the IM.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Depending on the regulations and the Senior Stakeholders / Project&#xA;Steering group, it may not actually matter if it hits a specific&#xA;date. If there was a PO this may have been clearer. Maybe the latest&#xA;version isn’t compliant for the estimated 1 week iteration date&#xA;mentioned by the PM but the product may not be launching until&#xA;another date.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apologies for the long read. Any thoughts would be appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12092" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T20:44:06.697" Title="Interview question for an Iteration Manager position" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-10-11T22:43:56.297" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12063" CreationDate="2014-09-16T16:34:56.127" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just like @Péter Török already explained, Scrum uses points to estimate user stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are different &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/system/asset/file/15/aep_sample.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;techniques&lt;/a&gt; for estimations (Fibonacci, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_poker&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Planning Poker&lt;/a&gt;, Powers of two, etc.) and they relate to how important, big and complex is the story. When combined all those point result in velocity of the Sprint (how much work the team is capable of doing in future sprints). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's recommended that developers are the ones who estimates each story as they know best how much effort and time they are going to take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8894" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T16:34:56.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12329" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12331" CreationDate="2014-09-16T17:49:21.350" Score="0" ViewCount="4075" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given that a unit has a Director and a Manager, whom does the Project Manager of that unit ordinarily report to, the Director or the Manager?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that if the Project Manager reports to the Director this would create all kinds of issues since the PM has no tasking authority over employees who are supervised by the Manager. If the PM reports to the Manager though then the Director has no direct line to the PM to execute tasks the Director may need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is probably no right or wrong way to set this up, but how is it usually done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6396" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-09-17T03:25:45.253" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T12:01:45.757" Title="Where does a project manager fit in a business unit's organization chart?" Tags="&lt;roles&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12327" CreationDate="2014-09-16T20:44:06.697" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd focus my answer on the levers that I can move, either easily or with some effort.  The levers I cannot move, such as no product owner or the answer provided by the PM to the Steering Committee of a single iteration, are simply facts that create the environment in which you are working.  Serves no purpose to ask questions about it or analyze it.  It just is.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The four iterations is a work estimate.  It lives in some probabilistic distribution that can be as optimistic as one or as pessimistic as 10.  Since it was not provided in this blurb, then my first course of action is to try to uncover where the four iterations live within the range.  This drives the risk of the work from a time perspective and how I will track and report progress.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding additional resources could help.  It obviously depends on the resource elasticity of the work, which varies from job to job.  To assume Brooks Law will always adversely affect you is simply wrong.  That said, my next action would be to analyze the elasticity of the work and determine where I am in resourcing compared to where I think the point of diminishing returns is.  Then, I will recommend staffing the project to that point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, I will determine if the BA's limited utilization on this project has any adverse effect.  If not, then leave it.  If so, then I would argue resetting his/her priorities such that (s)he becomes full- or near full-time on my gig.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once these levers are pulled, I would analyze the likelihood of my end date and report in a non emotional way where I will most likely finish.  Pressure and potentially angry senior stakeholders notwithstanding, an answer well substantiated by thoughtful analysis is the answer.  I would continue tracking, reporting variances and updated forecasts, in a non emotional and frequent way.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T20:44:06.697" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12329" CreationDate="2014-09-17T03:23:08.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no canonical answer to this question. A project manager might report to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The PMO for the organization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A steering committee.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project sponsor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The line manager or executive responsible for the project's deliverables.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A customer-facing engagement manager.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The budgeting authority for the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All of the above.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other answers are also possible. Not only is the reporting structure variable, but the scope of the role and its &quot;authority&quot; (real or imagined) are also highly variable between frameworks and organizations. In short, your mileage will vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T03:23:08.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12333" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12336" CreationDate="2014-09-17T09:09:28.497" Score="5" ViewCount="3124" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am using scrum board in JIRA, I have customized column set. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    To Do &#xA;    Development In Progress &#xA;    Ready For Code Review &#xA;    Code Review In Progress &#xA;    Ready For Testing &#xA;    Testing In Progress &#xA;    Approved For Release &#xA;    Released &#xA;    Approved&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;instead of &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;new&#xA;in progress&#xA;to do.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my burn-down chart, even after I added spent time or make the task approved, the burn down chart is shown as a straight red horizontal line, why is that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12075" LastEditorDisplayName="user16244" LastEditDate="2015-07-14T05:42:09.623" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T05:42:09.623" Title="Burndown chart show as a red horizontal line even after spent time is updated" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;burndown-chart&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12333" CreationDate="2014-09-17T15:37:17.353" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It looks like you should configure &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AGILE/Configuring+Estimation+and+Tracking&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Estimation and Tracking&lt;/a&gt; for your board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jira can track progress in either story points or hours:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you select Time Tracking &lt;em&gt;&quot;None&quot;&lt;/em&gt; then issues will burn down their Story Points value upon completion.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you select &lt;em&gt;&quot;Remaining Estimate and Time Spent&quot;&lt;/em&gt; the Burndown Chart will be based on &lt;em&gt;&quot;Remaining Estimate&quot;&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;&quot;Time Spent&quot;&lt;/em&gt; fields.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Board =&gt; Configure =&gt; Estimation&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9Wyvo.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8738" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T15:37:17.353" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12264" CreationDate="2014-09-17T15:55:08.463" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I wouldn't say that it is a technical story.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Technical stories refer to technical debt, investigations, spikes or infrastructure usually.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a common huge user story that should be developed and &lt;strong&gt;it is responsibility of the Development Team (developers, QAs, BAs, ...) to estimate it right and notify PO about its complexity.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It looks like a good candidate for splitting into smaller stories.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many techniques how to split user stories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agileforall.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Story-Splitting-Flowchart.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to split a user story (Agile for all)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/04/how-to-split-user-stories&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How To Split User Stories (InfoQ)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.christiaanverwijs.nl/post/2013/05/17/8-useful-strategies-for-splitting-large-user-stories-(and-a-cheatsheet).aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;8 useful strategies for splitting large user stories (and a cheatsheet)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How is a non technical product owner going to be involved in writing&#xA;  stories or thinking of fit criteria?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is a responsibility of the whole Scrum Team (Development Team + PO + Scrum Master) to split it into smaller stories&lt;/strong&gt; that can be finished within a Sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And PO is responsible for setting right priorities to these small stories and set up delivery date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How would a sprint review look like?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite the fact that the whole functionality of the epic (module, sub-product, release) is not finished, development team has worked the whole sprint and if you ask them to show the results, they will show. It is pretty enough to get feedback from PO and step into the next sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The amount of work that the end user doesn't care about from this&#xA;  point on is enormous. Obviously the team will have to do a lot of work&#xA;  before the plane flies but the customer will just be waiting and&#xA;  getting nothing until the plane actually takes off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After each sprint increment should be &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Potentially Shippable&quot; (Done)&lt;/strong&gt;. But if your team works on a really big epic then only PO can decide when the version meets requirements for &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Minimum Viable Product&quot; (Shippable)&lt;/strong&gt; and is ready to be delivered to users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/02/done-shippable-quality&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Does &quot;Done&quot; Mean &quot;Shippable&quot;?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18265807/difference-between-potentially-shippable-product-psp-and-minimal-marketable-fe&quot;&gt;Difference between potentially shippable product (PSP) and Minimal Marketable Feature (MMF)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;As a customer (in an online shop) I want to be able to pay my cart&#xA;  using MasterCard so that I don't need to get a Visa&quot;. This is a very&#xA;  concrete and precise feature but the technical work required may&#xA;  exceed the sprint length and add no value until it's actually done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For every single project/product an answer will be different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say that we have an implementation for Visa an we want to support Master Card also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would raise the following questions before puling story into the sprint:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do we need to change UI? (UI can be developed separately from the server side and in different sprints.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do we know how to add support of Master Card? (If team knows nothing, there is a good practice to allocate time in previous sprints for investigation/spike. &lt;strong&gt;It is a real &quot;technical story&quot;, usually time-boxed&lt;/strong&gt; and can be finished within one sprint.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it needed to refactor implementation for Visa to extract common interfaces? (It can be done before as separate story)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can we start working on this story immediately?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can we estimate it? (When team cannot estimate the story it a sign that it shouldn't be pulled into sprint and should be either clarified or split into smaller one steps)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it possible to split the whole payment workflow into steps? (How many new screens/pages/steps should be added? POs usually are OK when stories are developed incrementally an they can see at least part of the functionality. It do make them confident.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8738" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:41:23.897" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T21:45:18.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12338" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12342" CreationDate="2014-09-17T16:15:17.000" Score="1" ViewCount="623" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to initiate a project to enable communication within the organization. Although the cost is pretty clear, the benefits are obvious but not easily quantifiable. I am reticent to make unsubstantiated statements. Also there is no clear and present risk that this initiative aims at mitigating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To some extent this question is &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/278/how-to-use-roi-to-justify-a-project-that-is-solely-a-replacement-of-an-out-of-da&quot;&gt;related to a previous one&lt;/a&gt;. however this project is purely a strategic enabler which can after be leveraged by many other projects with much clearer ROI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I quantify a Return On Investment for this initial initiative? Should I even try to justify it by a classic cost/benefit analysis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10284" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T18:00:10.510" Title="How to articulate ROI for &quot;strategic&quot; project?" Tags="&lt;initiation&gt;&lt;return-on-investment&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12339" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-09-17T16:18:42.587" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_on_investment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki definition&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Return on investment (ROI) is the benefit to the investor resulting&#xA;  from an investment of some resource. A high ROI means the investment&#xA;  gains compare favorably to investment cost. As a performance measure,&#xA;  ROI is used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare&#xA;  the efficiency of a number of different investments. In purely&#xA;  economic terms, it is one way of considering profits in relation to&#xA;  capital invested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Links&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_on_investment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki atricle about ROI&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-02T19:50:19.200" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T19:50:19.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12340" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-09-17T16:18:42.587" Score="0" Body="For questions regarding Return-on-Investment (ROI) calculations for project justification." OwnerUserId="10284" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T20:29:32.837" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T20:29:32.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12341" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12389" CreationDate="2014-09-17T17:59:33.450" Score="2" ViewCount="149" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a web site that was written five years ago by people that didn't know what they were doing.   (I feel justified in saying that because I was one of them.)   The resulting site was (and is) slow, unreliable, frequently crash-prone, and a maintenance nightmare - the smallest change often requires refactoring or rewriting large chunks of code.   Additionally, we are stuck using a javascript library (Dojo 1.4) which is so old that it's not even supported anymore.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, with five years' experience and a much better grasp of the site's requirements, the team I am part of is in a great position to write a new site from scratch, using current technology and fixing a number of fundamental flaws in the design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, every time I bring up this subject I am told two things by fellow team members:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shut up, we'll handle this piecemeal as things break. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have any questions, see point 1.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing I can deduce is that my fellow team members view this ongoing maintenance nightmare as &quot;job security&quot; - no one else could keep this code running, so they basically have employment for life.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several problems with this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, ethically speaking, I hate doing crummy work just to pad my timecard.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, everyone hates the site as it is - it is a constant source of pain for everyone who uses it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third and finally, my suspicion is if we don't step up and make the site radically better, we will one day all get fired and people will be brought in who can do this right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to advocate or lobby management for a complete rewrite of this system before some disaster strikes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10455" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T02:40:03.873" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T20:06:50.847" Title="Getting support for a software system rewrite?" Tags="&lt;sdlc&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12338" CreationDate="2014-09-17T18:00:10.510" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of whether or not you use ROI or something else as a core metric, your &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; problem is that you need a way to measure the current and future &lt;em&gt;value&lt;/em&gt; of communications. Measuring value often requires some &lt;em&gt;a priori&lt;/em&gt; assumptions about the dimensions you will use to measure value, but once you have those dimensions you can generally assign a cost or potential return to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Estimating Current Communication Costs&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a thought experiment, consider some ways you might measure the current cost of your present communications:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time elapsed for &quot;messages&quot; (whatever that means to you) to initiate with a customer and filter down to the development team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Man-hours required to create, collate, approve, disseminate, or transmit information throughout the organization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Opportunity costs associated with missed or outdated communications.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Labor costs associated with &quot;idle hands&quot; directly attributable to message cycle time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is by no means a thorough or canonical list. It's just some ways you might be able to attribute costs to the current communications processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Estimating Potential Value of New Processes&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have those numbers, you can then plug in the numbers for your proposed efficiencies. For example, you might say something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Currently, it takes 5 business days to solicit feedback about a feature from the customer. This cycle time represents a risk of US $237k in time, labor, and task-switching overhead in the event that the deliverable needs to be reworked or re-prioritized within the project. In comparison, a cycle time of 24 hours for feature approvals would result in an a risk profile of only US $7k, for a net risk reduction of US $230k.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't the ROI calculation itself. Rather, it is a way to assign an estimated value of some sort to your proposed process. This estimate can then be used within your ROI calculations and projections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Calculating ROI for Communications&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that you have a set of costs and value estimates, you can estimate how much your business process change might cost to implement, and how long it might take to recoup those costs. For example using &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_on_investment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this calculation&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;return on investment = (gain from investment - cost of investment) / cost of investment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;would use your proposed cost-savings to determine if the investment in new communications processes and infrastructure would pay off within some acceptable time horizon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T18:00:10.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12343" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-18T10:24:47.590" Score="4" ViewCount="1178" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been tasked to manage multiple agile teams in different business areas and geographical regions (time zone problems). Has anyone got any experience with this? It seems like the job will be more of a traditional project management over seer position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12107" LastActivityDate="2017-11-28T10:23:03.217" Title="How do I manage/oversee multiple agile teams around the world?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;distributed-team&gt;&lt;multi-team&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12343" CreationDate="2014-09-18T11:08:06.423" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had 2 experiences in the same company with distributed teams:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the first experience, I was Scrum master and I had 2 members abroad (with 8hrs difference). We just couldn't control how much time they were exactly working on the project and they were constantly pulled onto other projects of the remote location. It didn't work smoothly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the second experience, I was a developer among a 20-people local team and 6-people remote team (4hrs offset). They had their own component and Product Manager. We sent 2 people over and changed them every month until they mastered the art. It worked great. We had a very defined trust for them and they had their autonomy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Agile explicitly says team should be colocated. If you have to distribute teams remotely, do attempt to give them as much autonomy as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2013/02/why-we-still-believe-in-working-remotely/&quot;&gt;the &quot;How We Do It&quot; of StackOverflow's blog&lt;/a&gt;, since StackOverflow is well known for being a remote-workers company. Zappier is also &lt;a href=&quot;https://zapier.com/blog/how-manage-remote-team/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;communicative about managing remote teams&lt;/a&gt;. I recommend Atlassian tools. Common traits are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A persistent video chat&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;RapidBoards / Trello / any visual ticketing system&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Emails&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A team collaboration tools to write and talk: Google Docs, Confluence, CampFire...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I would add a good code management system: Stash + Bamboo (or any good code review + git + continuous build system).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I used to work at Atlassian.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the cultural side:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hire people you trust,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hire people who can write,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Arrange real-life gatherings from time to time,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Develop a strong culture about delivery and expectations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two linked blogposts are really interesting about culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12019" LastEditorUserId="12019" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T11:37:40.837" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T11:37:40.837" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12343" CreationDate="2014-09-18T16:03:39.607" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Communication is key&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was the Scrum Master for 2 teams in Hyderabad, India (contractor), one in Montevideo, Uruguay (contractor) and one in Washington DC for a previous company. The time difference with Hyderabad is 9.5/10.5 hours. Here are some best practices that we developed over a period. You may not be able to implement all these. Strive to get there or mitigate them where possible:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Face-to-face contact&lt;/strong&gt;: Arrange for the overseas team members to travel to your location and vice versa. It is harder to develop good communication, collaboration and team spirit between people who have never met.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Overseas team should be able to operate fairly independently&lt;/strong&gt;: To be effective the overseas team should have all the skills/roles to be able to operate fairly independently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Initially we had developers and testers in Hyderabad and the designers in DC. Web front-end development requires close coordination between the dev team and designers. We could see the improvement when we hired a local designer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We trained a local Scrum Master in Hyderabad and arranged for local Scrum stand ups. This improved team coordination overall. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We could see the limitations of not having a local Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Arrange for more time overlap&lt;/strong&gt;: Some of our architects used to log in at night to answer questions from Hyderabad. The Hyderabad dev team members used to come in late and leave late to have better overlap with DC.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Virtual work-spaces&lt;/strong&gt;: Use web based tools to make story/task status, shared calendars, holiday schedules, contact info... visible to the entire team. Ideally the tool should allow threaded discussion in the story/task. If you try to do this using email, people will be buried in emails and things will fall through the cracks causing much frustration.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get communication channels as close to face-to-face as possible&lt;/strong&gt;: Group video calls for the daily Scrum stand ups, ability to share screens/whiteboards, team members logging into chat when at work are some things you can try.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T16:03:39.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12347" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-18T17:18:24.947" Score="2" ViewCount="629" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was recently told that you shouldn't have or minimize the use of leads and lags in your schedule as it somehow affects the calculation of critical path.  I do not know if this guidance is limited to MS Project or if it is consistent with all scheduling tools.  Was also told that the the logic should be limited to finish-start (FS) relationships and to minimize start-start, finish-finish, or start-finish.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these recommendations accurate and, if so, why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T14:30:39.103" Title="Schedule Logic, Use of Leads and Lags" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12348" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12353" CreationDate="2014-09-18T17:24:05.463" Score="3" ViewCount="302" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently I am working as a Project Manager in a big software project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently my supervisors require me to report each week to report the project's progress in percentage form, as in the example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;75% (out of 100%), where 100% means the project is finished, delivered to the client and the client will pay the final sum for it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My aim with this question is to gather data from experienced project managers if such practice is acceptable and reliable or not in Software Engineering? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it something which might actually help to get an insight on the project progress or it is a door which leads to anti-patterns and misconceptions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11918" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2018-04-30T13:13:12.520" LastActivityDate="2018-04-30T13:13:12.520" Title="Is reporting project progress in % to supervisors acceptable?" Tags="&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;progress-report&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12348" CreationDate="2014-09-18T18:04:14.233" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's anything wrong with reporting percent complete so long as you have both a reliable and valid way of doing so.  This means you have a performance measurement baseline against which to track progress, one which was developed using proven methods and is under control, and where tracking progress or claiming earnings is reliable and valid.  For example, it would not be very reliable to simply collect the workers' opinion as to how much work they completed.  Nor is it reliable to calculate it based on how many days or hours have been exhausted as compared to the total days or hours planned.  It needs to be against something physical or tangible so that there is very little ambiguity about how much work was done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I think just showing % complete is only 1/2 the story.  You need to report the variance to date, i.e., how much you completed compared to how much you had planned to complete by that date, and you also need to predict where you are headed.  And there are better methods of forecasting than others so choose wisely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T18:04:14.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12348" CreationDate="2014-09-18T18:45:35.393" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not only acceptable but expected in many environments.    If you do project management for the US government, OMB &amp;amp; ECPIC absolutely require you to report progress in %.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a deeper problem however; not how you report the %, but how you measure progress.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://herdingcats.typepad.com/&quot;&gt;Glenn Alleman&lt;/a&gt; has many blog posts and at least one book that touches on the topic. (My only reservation in citing him is that there is too much good.) How you measure % complete can either make you look very good, or it can make you look like an utter fool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of conventions for reporting % complete. All of them assume that you first rate the smallest work package and then roll up the reporting (usually weighting the roll-up by duration so that a one month long work package is 4x more important than 1 week work package.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;0/100 - a work package is either complete or it is not, and it is reported as 0% complete until it is accepted.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;0/50/100 A work package is 50% complete as soon as someone starts real work, and 100% complete when it is certified finished.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;0/33/66/100 - A work package is 33% complete once you start work.  The work package is 66% complete when you enter the testing/customer acceptance phase. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Planned Complete - the best situation is when you have planned the work so that every work package has a plan and schedule (an EVM anticipated burn curve).  When you plan the work, you set out a schedule and at any moment you can compare actual progress to planned progress and report a % complete.  This is easy to do for some things (I will produce 10 widgets/week for 10 weeks and produce a total of 100 widgets), and hard to do for other things, (&quot; I will stare ferociously at the screen for 9 weeks and in the 10th week produce the great American novel&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In each of these cases you've got a plan (or a convention) that allows you to report % complete reliably and transparently.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NEVER ever make up the numbers.  Sounds simple, but I've worked far too often with people who will pull the numbers out of the air, &quot;I'm 63% complete&quot;. Unless you know and trust the person, ask &quot;based on what? What would make it 65% complete?  You &lt;strong&gt;never&lt;/strong&gt; want to be in the position of defending a number chosen arbitrarily by someone who has left.  I've found myself trying to explain why Joe Smith estimated 63% complete, then was fired the next day and his replacement estimates that we're 37% complete.  That makes management very very angry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Additional thought: I've read (don't remember where) that the better summary statistic is the &lt;strong&gt;time to complete&lt;/strong&gt;.  Management should be coached to not care about % complete.  The conversation between the PM and the sponsor should focus on &quot;When will we be done?&quot;, which is the business relevant question.  &quot;What % complete are we?&quot; has no intrinsic meaning.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T11:20:03.497" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T11:20:03.497" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12351" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12354" CreationDate="2014-09-18T19:00:21.583" Score="2" ViewCount="757" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Version:&lt;/strong&gt;  Microsoft Project 2013 Standard (15.0.4420.1017)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hello -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am creating a report in MS Project 2013.  When I create a time-phased line chart containing ACWP, the ACWP shown in the chart for the current status date does not match the ACWP shown in a table (same status date) or in a column chart within the same report.  The table and the column chart show $10,401.45, while the line chart shows $90,401.45.  Images provided below for reference.  Also for reference - the ACWP shown in the report's tabular view exactly matches the ACWP shown in the Earned Value table in Project's Gantt chart view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ACWP for 9/8/2014&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Miip7.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Matches values shown in Gantt view and in a column chart in the report.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/IaZ9r.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZzuPc.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/meahg.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference between the two ACWP values is exactly $80,000.  This precisely matches the value of a specific task in the schedule that is set up as a milestone and has no associated hours, but DOES have a cost resource assigned with an $80,000 cost.  I am not certain why the chart is picking up this additional $80,000 when the tables do not show it.  (Also note that when I export the data to Excel using &quot;Visual Reports,&quot; the $80,000 task is not included in the exported ACWP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any idea why I am seeing this seeming inconsistency?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12115" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-01-15T09:14:43.553" LastActivityDate="2019-01-15T09:14:43.553" Title="MS Project 2013 Reports: ACWP in Timephased Line Chart does not match ACWP in Column Chart or Table" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12347" CreationDate="2014-09-18T19:00:43.647" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the problem isn't leads and lags, it is what you mean when you insert a lead.  One of my colleagues used to insert a lag because he thought that delaying the start of an activity was more realistic.  He was right, but the resulting project plan was unmaintainable.  Critical path had no meaning. if the duration of an activity changed, nobody could tell what effect that change had on other activities because &quot;it seemed more reasonable&quot; could only be evaluated by the original author.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The classic case of a lag is if task 1 is paint the surface; Task 1 is complete when the labor stops painting, but task 2 cannot start until the paint is dry.  Alternatively, management may request that when the software is configured that there is a burn-in of X hours before critical data is loaded or operations are migrated.  You don't want to program resources against &quot;Paint Drying&quot; or &quot;Software burn-in&quot;, but you need that delay before the next task starts.  These are also cases where the time isn't going to change.  If management wants to crash the project, they can't demand the paint dry faster. They can't assign more labor to the &quot;burn in the software&quot;. (Yes, if I were trying to crash/fast track a project, there are options I could suggest; but the point is that these are not &quot;tasks&quot; with resources and labor.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the advice you're citing is similar to the medical axiom of &quot;think horses not zebras&quot;.  Most of our theory of critical path is based on FS, and if you violate that assumption you become responsible for the consequences. I would look carefully and skeptically at any plan that required other relationships and examine the implications of modeling the problem with just FS.  I would only use the fancy relationships after careful consultation with the project management team and the stakeholders and if everyone were convinced that it was the best way.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately I haven't found a lot of good solid advice on project scheduling, which is why I cite the Sensei tools. (I don't claim to be a scheduling guru.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Aside: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.senseiprojectsolutions.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sensei Project Solutions&lt;/a&gt; has a couple of quality assessment tools for project management plans.  (They used to be free tools, but I think you have to write and ask for them).  These tools help you to find patterns in your project plan that will cause you problems.  Note: I have no affiliation with them, I'm not even a customer.  They presented at a PMI dinner I attended and I've been very impressed.  I had thought that these resources addressed leads &amp;amp; lags, but I checked and my memory was incorrect.  They are excellent resources, but they don't address leads/lags.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T14:30:39.103" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T14:30:39.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12348" CreationDate="2014-09-18T19:43:17.657" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some other good answers here, but &quot;percent complete&quot; is not only tricky to calculate &lt;em&gt;reliably&lt;/em&gt;, but it's often implicitly tied to scheduling. That makes it difficult to talk about it without talking about schedule variance, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Percentages of Tasks Completed&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We've all seen software installers that zoom from 0% to 83% complete in a matter of seconds, and then sit there for a long period of time (minutes? hours?) before moving upwards again. This is an example of task-based completion versus time-based completion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to address this discrepancy is to report your percentages based on &quot;planned man-hours consumed&quot; and &quot;plan man-hours remaining.&quot; For example, if a project has budgeted 100 man-hours for a task, and you've spent 75 man-hours so far and have &lt;strong&gt;a reasonable level of confidence&lt;/strong&gt; that you have 25 man-hours remaining, then it would be logical to report that the task is 75% complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think that if you report percentages at all, you should report them as a task-completion range with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_interval&quot;&gt;confidence interval&lt;/a&gt;. I'd much rather say &quot;Task A is between 68-76% complete, at a confidence interval of 80%&quot; than just throw a single number out there without context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also take pains to differentiate task-completion percentages from schedule variance, unless you're extremely confident that &lt;em&gt;tasks remaining&lt;/em&gt; is accurately tied to &lt;em&gt;time remaining&lt;/em&gt; in your project plan. For example, &quot;Task A is 75% complete, but it's estimated the task will require another 7-10 days to finish&quot; is likely to be more useful from a planning perspective than how fractionally-done the task is. After all, unless you can extract value by shipping a feature that's only 75% complete, the feature probably has no value until it's 100% done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your mileage (and organizational requirements) may vary. Adjust your reporting methodology accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Agile Percentages: Done or Not-Done&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile frameworks like Scrum take a different approach, where tasks are either &quot;done&quot; or &quot;not done.&quot; This makes reporting percentages simpler in the sense that you are simply reporting which tasks are 100% complete as a percentage of total tasks for the project. Because of the iterative approach, the percentage of tasks completed is assessed separately from schedule estimates, management targets, and variance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This avoids the common pitfall of saying things like &quot;60% of our tasks are 80% done.&quot; Such statements are often semantically null; they typically don't provide accurate information on tasks remaining, budgeted man-hours remaining, or schedule variance. This can lead to faulty strategic planning based on incomplete information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Organizations that don't make the distinctions between task completion and schedule variance often assume they are the same thing, and this increases the risk of project failure. Agile methodologies attempt to make this distinction, but the difference still must be clearly articulated and successfully communicated to be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T19:43:17.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12351" CreationDate="2014-09-18T21:25:02.827" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see exactly what you are reporting.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ACWP over time (third picture down) appears to actually be Actual cost, not ACWP (which excludes the Cost resource).  Usually cost resources are excluded from ACWP calculations as they are not performing any work.  In the picture below, you see what you report - ACWP in the table = $184 ACWP over time in the Task Report shows $5,184 (which includes a $5,000 cost resource).  However, the ACWP pulled from resource data shows the correct value - as it excludes the Cost resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best recommendation I have is to use Fixed Costs and not Cost Resources where possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Irh4g.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T21:25:02.827" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12356" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12358" CreationDate="2014-09-22T15:06:13.930" Score="4" ViewCount="279" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am developing a SaaS app using Scrum and wondering if there are any best practices when it comes to having multiple &quot;Product Owners&quot;. This is because I am working with some &quot;users&quot; who will help balance requirement from potential users. Just wondering if this will ever work out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far it has been extremely taxing since each &quot;Product Owner&quot; seem to have an epic list of cards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12130" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T00:19:48.563" Title="Product owner for SaaS app" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;product&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12356" CreationDate="2014-09-22T20:46:29.060" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Per the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Portals/0/Documents/Scrum%20Guides/2013/Scrum-Guide.pdf&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; Page 5: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is one person, not a committee. The Product Owner may represent the &#xA;  desires of a committee in the Product Backlog, but those wanting to change a Product Backlog &#xA;  item’s priority must address the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11937" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T20:46:29.060" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12283" CreationDate="2014-09-23T07:30:45.443" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If there's a specific ticket (or if there should be one) blocking another one, I make liberal use of linking tickets together with the &quot;blocks&quot; relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12134" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T07:30:45.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12287" CreationDate="2014-09-23T10:01:13.960" Score="1" Body="&lt;h1&gt;No.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that QA is completely different kind of work than development is, that it requires a completely different skillset, that it is repetitive and therefore quite annoying for a developer, and as such - I think - unnaceptable to be transfered to developers just becuse they are capable of doing it. Why is QA team never asked to do development? Why are DBA never asked to do development? Devs are on top of a pyramid and POs are taking advantage of this to fill in their organizational mistakes and miscalculations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12034" LastEditorUserId="12034" LastEditDate="2014-09-23T10:11:34.347" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T10:11:34.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12356" CreationDate="2014-09-23T16:01:46.240" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agreed, you will certainly have multiple stakeholders from in and out of the organization, but only one Product Owner -- whose role calls for her to represent and prioritize based on these various interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11781" LastEditorUserId="11781" LastEditDate="2014-09-24T00:19:48.563" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T00:19:48.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12362" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-23T16:13:19.667" Score="4" ViewCount="490" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking to take the exam and am wondering if any vendor/trainer listed through the Scrum Alliance will do or if I should be selective in who I pick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, I have the option of taking the class locally, or paying an extra few hundred dollars for a flight to take a class with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/training/available&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mike Cohn of Mountain Goat Software&lt;/a&gt;, who I'm a big supporter of. Is the premium worth it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11781" LastEditorUserId="11781" LastEditDate="2014-09-24T00:11:32.790" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T18:20:12.760" Title="Does the quality of a Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) training course vary from vendor to vendor?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;certification&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12362" CreationDate="2014-09-23T17:36:20.470" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I refuse to offer a personal opinion on the qualifications of individual instructors because we don't allow polling questions on PMSE. In addition, evaluating the cost/benefit of any particular class is out of scope for PMSE. However, the question about whether instructor qualifications &lt;em&gt;matter&lt;/em&gt; for Scrum training seems valid and on-topic here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Define Your Educational Objectives&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certification training has two goals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get certified.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get educated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you only care about #1, then it doesn't matter who the instructor is as long as you learn enough to pass the exam. On the other hand, if you want to &lt;em&gt;learn things&lt;/em&gt; and get an education, then of course the experience, teaching skills, and background of the instructor will matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you rather learn about space-time theory from Stephen Hawking, or from my cat &quot;Mittens?&quot; My assumption is that you'd learn more from a respected expert in the field, but it's up to &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; to assess whether any given instructor is sufficiently expert (and talented at teaching) for &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; educational needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-09-23T17:41:20.907" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T17:41:20.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12362" CreationDate="2014-09-23T20:25:35.953" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most people, when they learn a skill, start by learning the practices and simply performing them, until they understand a bit more about why those practices work. Martial arts has the concept of &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuhari&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;shuhari&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. In the Agile domain I've heard these mapped to concepts like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;shu: follow the master; perform the steps&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ha: understand, apply in context&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ri: adapt, add to the body of knowledge.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you're after &quot;shu&quot; level training, it won't matter; just follow the steps, take them away, practice them. You may find yourself frustrated if your context doesn't lend itself to the practices preached.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people really want &quot;ha&quot; level. They want to know what the basic practices are that work in most contexts, but also have a bit of an understanding of the theory, so that they can make them fit better for the context they're in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;ha&quot; teachers tend to focus less on practices, and more on principles and outcomes. So for instance, compare this course outline:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You will learn how to run a planning meeting, showcase and retrospective, and how to facilitate a Scrum or stand-up&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;versus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You will learn how to adapt plans to discoveries made during the sprint, how to gain stakeholders' trust, and how to encourage a team to reflect and continuously improve on their processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be fairly easy to work out which one to go for. Look for the courses which skip the buzzwords, and provide advice which could work in &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; context. The learning will last longer, and outlast the buzzwords.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T20:25:35.953" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12362" CreationDate="2014-09-23T21:00:30.533" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like CodeGnome's 1. Get certified, and 2. Get educated.  This is key to every type of training and education, from formal universities and professional degrees to the trades to certificate programs, etc.  We get educated because that is one of the necessary elements of growing our capability.  The getting educated part is for you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We get degrees, certificates, licenses so that others have some degree of confidence that you possess a capability.  The certificate part is for others to evaluate you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The predictive validity of both the education and the certificate / degree is never a guarantee and can range from zero to rather strong, depending on a lot of different factors.  Where you get the education is one of the factors and can really drive your performance with real results or can really drive someone's biased assessment of your performance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not really observe, in my limited experience, hiring managers worrying about where and how a candidate received his/her certificate but just that (s)he possesses one.  That is not the case for degrees; there is a lot more bias with the schools from which one hails whether or not it really matters.  So the answer to your question is what hiring managers are asking for in your geographical area and industry.  Are they checking off the box that you have the certificate or are they digging deeper and asking how you got it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you framed the question the way you did, I am assuming you do not really care about CodeGnome's #1, getting educated.  If you did, then you would not have asked the question because you already have the right answer.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, find out in your area what will get you noticed. My guess is, just get the certificate as cheaply and quickly as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T21:00:30.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4227" CreationDate="2014-09-24T00:15:22.833" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This was hard for me to understand at first too. Without having to echo what many have already said, my view of a Program Manager is someone who is responsible for an entire portfolio of work, which could consist of several projects and project managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11781" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T00:15:22.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10407" CreationDate="2014-09-24T04:51:08.480" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to make it a bit clear between Portfolio and Project Management&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Portfolio referred to as         : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Doing the right work&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project Management referred to as: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Doing the Work right&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in the Portfolio case you try to get all the projects be evaluated, selected, prioritised and then allocate resources to it. Portfolio process impacts the Project as reprioritisation and maybe termination of the project as well or setting it to be on hold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this may help&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12140" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2014-09-25T16:35:26.173" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T16:35:26.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12369" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-24T13:50:51.723" Score="2" ViewCount="87" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two distinct projects where we are trying to define a bug prediction model. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We used bug at file level and defined co-factors: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Number of changes per file, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developers who left per file. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project 1 presented for both positive co-factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project 2 presented changes per file positive and developers leavers negative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can interpret in project 1, more changes in file more bugs. More developers leave (lose know-how) then more bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How come project 2 we can have the less developers leaves the project, the more bugs? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing come in the top of my mind is that people are not skilled, or that the project is too old and people must be very careful to touch the project and to not break anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12146" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2014-09-24T14:48:14.530" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T13:21:24.053" Title="Predicting software errors" Tags="&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12287" CreationDate="2014-09-24T14:47:27.553" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First and foremost, the project manager should be setting the direction for the team and assigning work.  Product Owners should not be doing this.  It sounds like there is either no PM or there is one &quot;in title only&quot;, and their influence is weak.  You should seek to correct that situation first, so everyone understands their role on the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile team principles would say that developers should be able to help with QA.  But I would add these qualifications:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A developer should only do QA for someone else's development, not their own.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It would be preferred for the more senior developers to do QA, not the junior members.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If at all possible, a brief review of what was tested and the results should be held with a member of the QA group.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7361" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T14:47:27.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12369" CreationDate="2014-09-24T15:37:22.847" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Don't Perform Bad Science&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fields of computer science and project management currently have no models that can accurately predict software errors. There are various theories and models, but none of them will provide you with guaranteed results. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclomatic_complexity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cyclomatic complexity&lt;/a&gt; as just one example where there is disagreement about the measure's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclomatic_complexity#Correlation_to_number_of_defects&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;correlation to defects&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, you are attempting to perform statistical analysis without sufficient thought given to either test construction, controlled variables, or the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_hypothesis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;null hypothesis&lt;/a&gt;. You are also confusing &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;causation and correlation&lt;/a&gt;. Even if you have a validly-constructed test with adequate controls, and even if you are able to reject the null hypothesis, you would be extremely hard-pressed to use either of these projects as direct proof of &lt;em&gt;cause and effect&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Introspect Your Projects&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A better use of your time would be to look at Project 2 carefully to see why you have such a high defect rate. Inspect your processes, form a hypothesis, and then attempt to adapt your processes to reduce the defects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good project manager won't spend time attempting to form a &quot;universal theory of everything&quot; based on extrapolations from two projects. Instead, an experienced project manager would spend that time &lt;em&gt;fixing&lt;/em&gt; Project 2 to improve its chances of success, or communicating the likelihood of failure to the portfolio manager so that a strategic decision can be made about whether or not the project should be terminated as a cost- or quality-control measure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T15:37:22.847" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12372" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-24T15:55:58.970" Score="3" ViewCount="283" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any recommended practice for how frequently code quality metrics should be reviewed by the team? I'm not sure how often should we be conducting a review of code quality metrics to look for potential issues that need to be addressed. We are working in Scrum sprint cycles, but I don't know if Scrum provides any advice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should it be reviewed daily, weekly, end of every sprint or what?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking here of code quality metrics such as cyclomatic complexity, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4574" LastActivityDate="2019-07-04T17:56:45.233" Title="How often should a development team review code quality metrics so that we keep reasonable control over technical debt and code quality" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;quality&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;technical-leader&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12372" CreationDate="2014-09-24T17:17:34.643" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a technical standpoint, code metrics should be baked into your test-driven development (TDD) or acceptance testing, preferably in an a fully-automated way. However, from a Scrum perspective, the framework is not prescriptive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The correct framework perspective is that gathering and checking your current code quality metrics should be part of your Definition of Done. Reviewing the &lt;em&gt;usefulness&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;accuracy&lt;/em&gt; of your metrics should be an ongoing part of your inspect-and-adapt cycle, which means:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any impediments related to metrics that are raised during the stand-up should trigger a review.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your current processes (including code quality metrics) should be reviewed during each Sprint Retrospective, provided that the issue fits within the time box and you don't have higher-priority process issues to discuss.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At any time, work related to your code quality metrics can be added to the Product Backlog for prioritization by the Product Owner.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T17:17:34.643" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12369" CreationDate="2014-09-24T18:13:07.730" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may or may not be valid to assume the developers on Project 2 are not skilled.  You would need to gauge their performance across multiple projects before you could come to a reasonable conclusion as to their skill level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps with regards to Project 2, it does not matter who is working on it.  Perhaps the project is so complex that, as you say, anyone touching it is likely to break something.  I would focus more on that issue than anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7361" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T18:13:07.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12375" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12379" CreationDate="2014-09-25T04:12:26.540" Score="-2" ViewCount="4649" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just passed the PMP 2 months ago, and I would like to start PRINCE2 foundation and practitioner exam as soon as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I self-studied the PMP too and am looking for good study material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have search on this Q&amp;amp;A site, and I found the following recommendation. &#xA;1. Official Prince2 Manual (equivalent to PMP PMBOK)&#xA;2. PRINCE2 For Dummies&#xA;3. PRINCE2 Study Guide by David Hinde&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I need study all three books above? Or do I just need to study one of them?&#xA;Where can I find the official PRINCE2 manual? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8508" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-09-25T04:29:16.037" LastActivityDate="2016-08-10T15:03:08.100" Title="Where can I find the PRINCE2 study material?" Tags="&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12372" CreationDate="2014-09-25T09:17:35.343" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may not be an industry standard, but instead of measuring quality we're preventing it from decreasing. We simply do not allow programmers to commit anything to the master branch, unless it passes all quality checks. For example, cyclomatic complexity, which you mentioned. No programmer can merge anything into master branch, if his/her code has complexity higher than 5.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These two articles explain this approach in more details: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yegor256.com/2014/07/21/read-only-master-branch.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Master Branch Must Be Read-Only&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yegor256.com/2014/08/13/strict-code-quality-control.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Strict Control of Java Code Quality&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T09:17:35.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12329" CreationDate="2014-09-25T12:52:47.987" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience the best outcome is realized when the Project Manager reports directly to the Project Owner and not to multiple parties at a higher level.  The answer is really in the title, Project Manager, that individual should only be tasked with managing the project and providing metrics to the Project Owner on how the project is going.  I have seen too many cases where the Project Manager manages the project from behind, meaning they spend all their time putting out reports about what has been accomplished or not accomplished to different groups as opposed to leading the project.  In those cases the Project Manager just becomes a reporter and the lead developer spends all their time trying to play project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12155" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T12:52:47.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12378" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-25T12:54:05.410" Score="0" ViewCount="106" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say I have a process taking 19 h.&#xA;Some improvement measures allow to reduce the required time to 17 h (to reach the same level of output).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it make sense to say that the process is now (1-17/19)*100 ~= 10% more efficient?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, what kind of quantification of the process improvement would make sense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12156" LastActivityDate="2019-09-16T19:19:29.620" Title="Calculation of increased process efficiency" Tags="&lt;process-engineering&gt;&lt;process-improvement&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12375" CreationDate="2014-09-25T13:05:52.990" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your most cost-effective approach is probably to go to any of a number of online education providers. They will provide you with the manual (~$100) and should also cover the costs of the examinations (IIRC ~$400 each) as well as practice questions, webinars, etc etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to go it alone the title for the Prince2 manual is &quot;Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2&quot;, it is widely available through online book sellers. It is fairly well written (far better than PMBOK) so I didn't have a need to go with other books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T13:05:52.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12362" CreationDate="2014-09-25T18:20:12.760" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One might think that when one wants Scrum training all they have to do&#xA;  is pick a CST near them. Unfortunately, there is a tremendous&#xA;  variation in the curriculum and quality of Scrum training in the&#xA;  industry today. Picking on the basis of location or their&#xA;  certification alone has resulted in many teams being taught a CSM&#xA;  course that really doesn't meet their needs. This, of course, makes it&#xA;  difficult to achieve the results they desired. What you experience at&#xA;  a CSM course is basically at the discretion of the individual trainer&#xA;  - certification does not mean any standardization. Some teach the class assuming people already understand Scrum and focus on the Scrum&#xA;  Master role. Some recognize many people there won’t know much about&#xA;  Scrum so teach more of an introduction to Scrum class. At a minimum,&#xA;  you should know what is being covered in the class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the variety in curriculum is not the greatest&#xA;  challenge. Nor is style – different trainers have different styles –&#xA;  an interactive lecture course is not necessarily better or worse than&#xA;  a fully experiential course. Ironically, it is the mindset of the&#xA;  trainers that often causes the problem. Not that any CST's mindset is&#xA;  wrong. It is just that this too has great variation and may not match&#xA;  the mindset that would work best for the client at hand. By mindset, I&#xA;  mean a person’s view of how the world works - software development in&#xA;  particular. Many in the Agile community are firm believers that the&#xA;  team is king and that management needs to stay out of their way. In&#xA;  our mind this is an over-reaction to when management over (micro)&#xA;  managed. The new paradigms of Lean and Kanban allow for a better&#xA;  collaboration between management and teams. Some CSTs have embraced&#xA;  this while others have not. This variation also needs to be addressed&#xA;  to ensure the effectiveness of your training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.netobjectives.com/what-to-ask-your-trainer-about-their-csm-training&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.netobjectives.com/what-to-ask-your-trainer-about-their-csm-training&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11781" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T18:20:12.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12378" CreationDate="2014-09-25T20:06:31.153" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would call that a 10% savings of time.  But time is only one factor of efficiency.  To look at the efficiency savings you need to capture the ratio of output/input of the before and output/input of the after and compare the delta.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2014-09-26T10:31:22.423" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T10:31:22.423" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12372" CreationDate="2014-09-26T08:25:24.033" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience metrics are not a very reliable tool to gauge code quality. They are useful to a certain limited extent, if used as an indicator rather than an absolute measure. And they can cause even more harm if used without thinking or overzealously.* Ultimately only the expert developers familiar with the code can assess its quality. So I wouldn't spend an inordinate amount of time trying to &quot;perfect&quot; automated metrics - IMHO team members' energy is probably more efficiently used to fix blockers or work on value generating tasks instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once they are set up and tailored to our needs, I prefer to use criteria similar to what @yegor256 describes in his answer. IMHO it may be enough to do a full review of the metrics a few times a year. I would rather look at it from the other end of the pipe: whenever we find a code defect (in the broadest sense), inspect how it could have been prevented. If we find that better code quality metrics or different evaluation criteria would have prevented it, change the rules accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* Recently in one of our projects, higher management requested that &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; issues brought up by an automated code quality metrics tool be fixed. And the task was given to a junior developer who completed it to the letter... The end result was a stinking heap of mysterious bugs all over the codebase (mysterious until we realized their source, that is).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10244" LastEditorUserId="10244" LastEditDate="2014-09-26T08:51:57.270" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T08:51:57.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12329" CreationDate="2014-09-26T12:01:45.757" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer definitely depends on the circumstance. Company culture will also impact the hierarchy. In my company, the PM reports to the Director, but the team members report to a Manager. Me, as the PM, struggles with resource loading, as its a cultural thing that we are working on changing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12164" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T12:01:45.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12386" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-26T16:23:45.140" Score="1" ViewCount="244" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can (or should) the activities relating to collection of requirements for the Requirements Matrix be included in the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12169" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-09-26T21:31:45.980" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T05:16:28.230" Title="Should requirements collection be included in the Work Breakdown Structure?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12386" CreationDate="2014-09-26T18:27:46.337" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_breakdown_structure&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WBS&lt;/a&gt; should include &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt; the work needed to successfully complete the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The 100% rule states that the WBS includes 100% of the work defined by the project scope and captures all deliverables – internal, external, interim – in terms of the work to be completed, including project management. The 100% rule is one of the most important principles guiding the development, decomposition and evaluation of the WBS. The rule applies at all levels within the hierarchy: the sum of the work at the “child” level must equal 100% of the work represented by the “parent” and the WBS should not include any work that falls outside the actual scope of the project, that is, it cannot include more than 100% of the work… It is important to remember that the 100% rule also applies to the activity level. The work represented by the activities in each work package must add up to 100% of the work necessary to complete the work package. &lt;em&gt;Effective Work Breakdown Structures By Gregory T. Haugan, Published by Management Concepts, 2001, ISBN 1567261353, p.17&lt;/em&gt; (filched from wikipedia).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All work necessary for completion of the project, should be in the WBS.  For completeness, I'll mention what I call the &quot;decomposition threshold&quot; - set a threshold of N hours; any activity that takes less than N hours should not be explicitly listed in the WBS, it should be part of other activities in the WBS.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, The Requirements Matrix is (should be) a deliverable for the project; it should be in the WBS.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T18:27:46.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12264" CreationDate="2014-09-26T18:53:15.983" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll address your edited story instead of the original as I think I can get to the point better there. Let's start with the golden rule:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You should do no technical work that is not providing customer value.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That sounds like something that has to have exceptions, but it's going to make you justify why you're doing the extra work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With your story about Mastercard over visa, let's start with two stories (and I'm definitely making some assumptions about your system):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a customer, I would like the site validation to accept Mastercard&#xA;  numbers so I can enter my credit card number (I'm assuming number&#xA;  validation here).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a customer, I want to be able to authenticate a transaction with my&#xA;  Mastercard so I can use this type of payment method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first is independently releasable (though I wouldn't because you'd have a site that accepts the card and then can't process it). The second does the bare minimum to process that card. In my experience, this is probably adding an extra argument to a function and accounting for it in the call to the card processor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With these two stories, you have your happy-path minimal feature. It will not have frills, like highlighting a Mastercard logo to indicate to the user it understands the card being used. It will also not have failed card handling. Again, the feature is releasable, but if you release it is a business decision. In most cases, you wouldn't because sometimes people's cards are declined and you want to handle that. On the other hand, maybe a big customer wants to make the largest purchase your site has ever had and releasing it means they can submit their order. Then, you probably would. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you've got all your frills and your decline handling. The declined card handling is time consuming, so you might break that down further. Instead of having a story that reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a customer, I would like the site to give me a helpful message with&#xA;  my card is declined so I know how to proceed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you may instead of a number of stories like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a customer, I would like the site to indicate when the data I&#xA;  entered is invalid so I know to correct the data and try again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a customer, I would like the site to direct me to contact my&#xA;  financial institution if my card is declined due to suspension so that&#xA;  I can correct the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a customer, I would like the site to indicate when my card was&#xA;  declined for balance reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two advantages here are that 1) it breaks up the story and 2) it lets you prioritize your work. Also, if you look back at that golden rule, maybe you decide that the customer doesn't derive value from knowing that their card is suspended. If it has no value to the customer, cut that story out and let those decline codes fall out to a default decline response. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T18:53:15.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12341" CreationDate="2014-09-26T19:36:32.157" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like Mark Phillips commented, this is a question of initiating a project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, understand that when initiating a project, it's all about value. If people generally feel that the system does its job, then you will have your work cut out for you to push the project on technical concerns. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are functionality sets or flows that cause real business problems, focus on replacing those. A project to replace a problematic &quot;Click to Chat&quot; feature set is going to be a lot easier to get support for than a whole overhaul - especially if it causes tangible business problems, like it takes so long to connect the user with someone that they leave, potentially taking sales with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have one or two of those sorts of things, pick someone with a lot of clout if you don't have the pull in the org and explain how a small project like this will have a real business impact. Keep it as small as is reasonable and as tangible as possible. It'll be a lot easier for those in charge of picking projects to understand and increase your chances of getting it through. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that goes through and you can do a rip and replace on that work, the business will be able to see the value it generates and pitching the next piece will be that much easier. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tackling the technical challenges of working through a redo this way can be difficult, but I've seen teams do it and it beats the heck out of being told no until the day the whole thing falls apart and it becomes a disaster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T19:36:32.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12378" CreationDate="2014-09-26T21:49:56.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Many Paths to Process Improvement&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Processes can be improved in a variety of ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Speed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quality.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cost.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cycle time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lead time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and probably tons of other dimensions, too. If your process is &lt;em&gt;repeatably&lt;/em&gt; two hours faster, rather than a statistical outlier, then you could certainly say your new-and-improved process is &lt;strong&gt;10.5% faster&lt;/strong&gt; than before, but it may or may not be more &lt;strong&gt;10.5% more efficient&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Speed &amp;lt;&gt; Efficiency&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not your process is actually more &lt;em&gt;efficient&lt;/em&gt; depends on how you choose to interpret efficiency and what you want to get out of an optimized process. Consider these examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your process is 2 hours faster because you've added another person to the team, is that more efficient?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your process is 2 hours faster, but has an increased defect rate, is it more efficient?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your process is 2 hours faster but requires more fuel per widget produced, is it more efficient?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These aren't trick questions. The answer is just as likely to be &lt;em&gt;yes&lt;/em&gt; as it is &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt;, because for most organizations &quot;efficiency&quot; is a buzzword that's really a proxy for something else. In my own experience, it's most often a proxy for &lt;em&gt;value/time&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;value/cost&lt;/em&gt;, but an engine manufacturer might think an improvement in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;rate of energy capture&lt;/a&gt; is what the process ought to be optimized for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike some of the hard sciences, efficiency is a less objective term in project management. Therefore, your mileage will vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-09-27T07:10:25.863" LastActivityDate="2014-09-27T07:10:25.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12391" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-28T16:55:16.253" Score="4" ViewCount="253" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just enrolled on the Open University's Open degree to allow me to pick and choose my modules to tailor a path toward attaining a position in the career I want to pursue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project management in an IT setting seems to tick all the boxes for me but I would appreciate some advice from you fellow Project Managers on how you initially got started in this career.   I am planning on taking the PRINCE2 course in 2016 after completing my second year of study at the OU, I can then finalise my degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far the modules I have picked include:&#xA;- IT Project and Service Management&#xA;- Object Oriented Java Programming&#xA;- Leadership (this is a business module the OU offers, is it necessary?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above modules make up my 120 credits for year 2, I am aware that picking some code and theory based modules will round my knowledge of IT better, thus potentially making me a better project manager, so would you recommend swapping the Leadership module for 1-2 IT theory based modules or should I keep the business aspect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12178" LastEditorUserId="12178" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T17:03:12.710" LastActivityDate="2014-10-28T18:49:28.533" Title="Advice on becoming a Project Manager in IT" Tags="&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12391" CreationDate="2014-09-29T13:44:46.170" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the best advice is to go online and find out what types of IT PM-type jobs are out there and what they require. By and large they will ask for XX years experience in IT, maybe also specifying development and/or PM methodologies, but these can be looser for job titles like &quot;Project Coordinator&quot;. If you review a dozen or so job postings per month for 2-3 months you should have a reasonable sample of what industry is looking for today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T13:44:46.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12391" CreationDate="2014-09-29T15:00:41.970" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends. In some companies Project Managers do nothing but chat with the client and report to supervisors how the project is going while having little power or responsibility on anything. In other situation (I call em, &quot;The real PMs!&quot;), the Project Manager is the steel of your project: All functional changes, issues, beefs, dramas and decisions are hanging on your head. If you leave the project, you are all dead. So, it just depends in what company you will be and what kind of responsbilities you will have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In my opinion:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;If you want to be a really good project manager, &lt;strong&gt;you-have-to-have-experience-with-what-the-programmers-do&lt;/strong&gt;. I have seen many project managers with just economic/management background and while they do posses the key character trait to being a PM - ruthlessness and and being able to make people actually do what they are supposed to do - when it comes to taking technical tasks they either rely purely &quot;in good faith&quot; to the words of some tech-savy guy or they just make up some numbers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Oh, this feature is going to take us 48h!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, no one doubts, PM is about planning, managing risks, being the leader and all that stuff you read in the good shiny books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you want to be one for real... You need to know some programming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, you will be always &quot;that prick who just fucks around giving orders and torturing me&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11918" LastEditorUserId="11918" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T15:11:48.280" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T15:11:48.280" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10407" CreationDate="2014-09-29T15:05:18.220" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: &lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long answer: &lt;strong&gt;Yes, never care what they do or think.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11918" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T15:05:18.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12391" CreationDate="2014-09-30T07:01:55.660" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My view is even before hopping on this journey to be a IT Project manager or not understand what it takes to be there. As matter of fact based on your experience with the technology and working with the teams you get to do various tasks right from handling requirements, to managing teams and then the financials. Key point is not every one does everything. Though most of us start being Team leads handling technical issues, interacting with clients and then handling teams&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12193" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T07:01:55.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11586" CreationDate="2014-09-30T08:55:26.703" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is unclear from your question these new tasks needs to be added because of what reason. Still if I were you I will create a new baseline if this is increasing my scope of work and subsequently the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the tasks are breakdown of your already present activities with no change to scope then you can add it to the current baseline itself&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12193" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T08:55:26.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12303" CreationDate="2014-09-30T10:38:15.720" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand once you said the user story is done it means there was acceptance from the Product Owner if not from the user and then only the code was merged to your master. If that is a case then from in my view your user story is accepted &amp;amp; closed, any changes should be recorded as new story to the product backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12193" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T10:38:15.720" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-09-30T10:38:15.720" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12251" CreationDate="2014-09-30T12:52:18.737" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even before you start defining the roles of the Project Support office and Program Support officer in my view one should check with the Program Manager / owner to understand the rational behind creating these roles and also what was it that the project support officer was not able to fulfill as per the organisation needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be that as project support officer the common program objectives were not being met. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12193" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T12:52:18.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12403" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-30T16:48:52.917" Score="20" ViewCount="5135" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is one thing that I've always taken as a given, the &quot;status quo&quot; in my line of field (software development) but never really gave it a deep thought. And even now that I do, I still don't understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not talking about estimating something you've done over and over again, but stuff you have never built, you don't have the experience for, the specifications are incomplete (if you even have such a luxury), placing an estimate effort on powerpoint presentations during the presentation, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean, it defeats all logic, but this is constantly what happens. Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why does this always happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mqxMR.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12198" LastActivityDate="2014-12-07T23:44:07.093" Title="Why are estimates treated like deadlines?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;deadline&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12403" CreationDate="2014-09-30T18:28:07.623" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I won't say that it is &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt; about communication, but I think a large portion of the problem you see can be contributed to communications that could be improved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work in the same field, and I've seen this behavior from many clients in different industries. What took me a long time to understand was that the way I initially present estimates can have a huge impact in how the client treats those estimates later on. And then, during the course of the project, the way I present additional information can have a big impact on how anchored to the original estimates the client is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the biggest things to keep in mind is that any time you give estimates, you are setting expectations. The more precise your estimates sound, the more likely the client is going to treat them as a hard deadline. Why? The client is hiring you as an expert, and you've given them your expert opinion. Surely an expert is going to know what they are talking about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, consider how your client would react to you telling them that the project that you estimated would be done on November 6th won't actually be done until November 20th.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now think about how that same client would react if you had instead originally told them that you estimated that you would be done between October and November, with a 75% likelihood that you'd be done the first week of November. Your slip to the 20th means you still missed your 75% likelihood, but you still fell within the range that you had originally established with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most (though definitely not all) clients will have a much more accepting reaction to the second case than the first one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other big factor is to make sure to have frequent and clear communications with the client as the project progresses. Make sure that the client sees where the project is compared to where the ideal progress would be. Make sure to talk about any issues that may be impacting the project's schedule compared to the original estimates. Make sure the client has visibility about how decisions that are being made are causing additional scope to be added, existing scope to shift, unplanned work to need to be undertaken, or impediments that are keeping progress from proceeding at the original expected pace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't simply use text to present this information. Having something like a burnup chart can make increasing scope much more visible to the client (and more impactful to their understanding) than simply listing percent complete numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T18:28:07.623" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12403" CreationDate="2014-10-01T04:49:05.947" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When the client request for the timeline estimate they are looking upto the PM as an expert who can tell them what they need to communicate to stakeholders that the client is working with. So while communicating the time estimates it's important that the factors defining the time estimates and criteria of meeting those should be highlighted. Many a times as project managers when being asked by when you can finish most of us end up giving only the schedule and lot of times only the deadlines without emphasizing the factors that will enable us meet timeline and by what percentage there could be variation. Again when we communicate variation one cannot simply tell it is at 50% variation that needs to be quantified on what factors we conclude it is so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Client will accept timeline as estimate if it is supported with 1. Factors of achieving the timeline 2. Potential risks to schedule 3. High level unknown's which could become issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12193" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T04:49:05.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12386" CreationDate="2014-10-01T05:16:28.230" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The activites related to collection of requirement is part of the project and hence should be included in the WBS and effort and time tracked agains the same. It is important that one includes every activity that is needed to complete the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12193" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T05:16:28.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12403" CreationDate="2014-10-01T10:46:40.270" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a difference between estimates and planning values and I find most either ignore or confuse the two...probably the latter.  Work effort is probabilistic and a proper estimate should reflect that and be provided as a range of possible results.  For example, an estimate to build a wall might be six to 15 days, most likely nine.  If you built that wall 100 times and documented the number of days, your actual results should mirror this distribution.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your planning value is a number within that range that reflects your target and should be a value that reflects the degree of risk you are willing to assume.  In the wall estimate, my planning value might be eight days, suggesting my risk appetite is more aggressive than what I am most likely to achieve.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to have planning values, and these become deadlines.  Projects cannot be approved open ended.  No one will put their money on the line with the expectation it will take as long as it takes and cost as much as it costs.  Would you hire someone who says that?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are types of projects that are extreme innovation events or research in nature and those are approached a bit differently, but even then you have established limits where you would cease the project if progress is not achieved.  Those limits are, in a way, planning values or targets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T10:46:40.270" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12391" CreationDate="2014-10-01T12:53:19.807" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it helps a lot as an IT project manager to have training and experience in coding and development. It gives you credibility with developers when you can speak their language and understand the concepts that are important to them. It helps you evaluate developers' skillsets, and know when they're giving you targets that are reasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started as programmer and moved into project management over time. Coding is still my main interest; I like building things... understanding the nuts, bolts and moving parts. This continues to inform my project management style, and it has worked well for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, I think PMs with a coding background understand better that software development is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.codinghorror.com/development-is-inherently-wicked/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wicked problem&lt;/a&gt;. Many traditional PMs, in my experience, often see building an application as no different from building a house. This leads to uneven expectations, and ultimately confusion when things don't go to plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So personally, would I drop the Leadership module and choose something more coding-oriented? Yes I would.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12208" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T12:53:19.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12410" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-01T13:33:37.690" Score="2" ViewCount="5971" Body="&lt;p&gt;My customer asked if I can do an MOS and RA.  RA should be risk analysis if I'm not mistaken.  But what is MOS?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12203" LastActivityDate="2018-07-25T21:00:03.223" Title="What does MOS and RA stand for in IT project?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;performance&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12391" CreationDate="2014-10-01T14:44:20.040" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will speak from a developer perspective. I am working for  IT company (US based) for 10 years so far. I had a lot of PMs, after 2 years I become a Front End Team Lead. So I had to PM smaller task and do coding in the same time, and report to a PM it was crazy and I burned out after 3 years. From my perspective good IT PM should have following skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be calm, open and sincere&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Knows how stuff works form a broader perspective so you are not lost hence getting credibility and having confidence. Take some time to learn whats new in IT &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reward team/member if they are doing a good job (even nice word will be enough) otherwise rise an issue and discuss it &lt;strong&gt;calmly&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Always be open to dev suggestions , you will learn a lot.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a way to get anonymous feedback from your team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leave to dev to set a deadline (Currently I am working on a complex project that I need 2 weeks , but PM gave me 2 months ).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your team will consist of different devs so pick ones that you can give more responsibility and offload your tasks. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;NEVER put junior person to lead a senior even if he knows UML ;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I you are going to dig into dev code, do be very careful if you have negative feedback&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Forget about your ego&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't let one spoiled apple spoil whole team, fire it ASAP. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And lastly , all above can be summed up as &lt;strong&gt;treat your team as they are your second family&lt;/strong&gt; your are their mother and father work-wise emotion-wise etc &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There will be fights but they are easily overcome. &#xA;I hope this helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Just wanted to add that having over 8 different PMs none of them had all of above so this is a imaginary PM that I would like to work with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12210" LastEditorUserId="12210" LastEditDate="2014-10-01T14:59:40.950" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T14:59:40.950" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8266" CreationDate="2014-10-01T14:45:40.323" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Earned value metrics is the end of the story. In other words Earned Value looks back at the result and ensures the value earned(profitability) and that is the end. But Velocity's main purpose is to provide data for upcoming work. So to bring this to waterfall, developer needs to manually do it. Remember SCRUM is a framework and velocity is brilliantly calculated by the framework(not by a PMP certificated Manager or a Scrum Master). Since in waterfall there is no framework backing, we need to do it ourselves. So the best option will be the developer creating a estimation history database and put in junks of data in the form of web pages, or hours, etc. There could be more parameters like the experience of the developer , work location, development framework used etc. Which ever the developer thinks affects estimation. And then pull the info from database. Try to get this as early as possible and perfect it as we move on. This is a standard practice in product development companies even before Scrum came into existence. Mainly because Product development companies uses standard company wide process and development frameworks. This way the equivalent of velocity can be calculated in non agile /waterfall projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12195" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T14:45:40.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12403" CreationDate="2014-10-01T16:22:42.287" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why are estimates treated like deadlines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Because human beings are inherently bad at statistics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Because business schools teach managers to set &lt;em&gt;targets&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Because the project manager has failed to educate stakeholders about the difference between an estimate and a target.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Examining Each Item In Greater Detail&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;People are bad at statistics.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimates are, at heart, risk assessments. They are often used as proxies for schedule risk, potential process impediments, and the level of chaos or risk of the unknown within the project. The psychological literature is filled with examples of how poorly people estimate risk. In the security domain, Bruce Schneier often writes about the gap between &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/11/perceived_risk_2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;perceived risk vs. actual risk.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this might seem like it just makes for bad estimates, if you think about how people &lt;em&gt;use&lt;/em&gt; estimates for measuring schedule risk, project risk, or other risk, you'll quickly find that people are emotionally wired to treat estimates as high-probability action items. This is no different than how most human beings treat probabilistic weather reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the typical weather report that says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Today will be clear in the morning, with a 60-80% change of thunderstorms in the afternoon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadness. Well, cognitively there's a non-zero chance that it will rain all day, a non-zero chance that it won't rain at all, and a statistically signficant chance that it &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; rain sometime after lunch and before I leave work. That's a lot of information, which I'm sure most of us simply treat as shorthand for &quot;I guess I'd better take an umbrella to work, just in case.&quot; We've just turned an &lt;strong&gt;estimate&lt;/strong&gt; into a &lt;strong&gt;firm target&lt;/strong&gt; for how to plan our day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Business Schools Teach Targeting&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure how to prove this one except anecdotally, but every freshly-minted MBA I have personally ever worked for worships at the altar of MS Excel. Business schools teach accounting and financial analysis, but either don't teach rigorous statistics or don't emphasize them enough within the realm of business processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of this is the nature of higher education (e.g. it is often teaching lessons learned from the prior business generation), and part of it is that higher education often suffers from an ivory tower syndrome. This isn't peculiar to management; ask any recent computer science graduate if a computer science degree really prepared them to work on a large, mission-critical e-commerce application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enough soapbox material. Here's a more practical example. If you are a manager, you read articles &lt;a href=&quot;http://guides.wsj.com/management/strategy/how-to-set-goals/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;like this one&lt;/a&gt; in the Wall Street Journal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Begin with the end in mind.&lt;/strong&gt; It’s not enough to simply choose a course; you must have a clear sense of where that course will lead you. You need to decide both what you are going to do and where it is going to take you. In short, you must have a strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reader could be forgiven for confusing estimates with goals. Management-speak is all about strategies, goals, and (of course) budgeting. An estimate is a probability, not a strategy, but if you squint really hard it might look like one. Your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Project Managers Must Communicate the Distinction&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project managers, Scrum Masters, or other project referees have the responsibility of ensuring that stakeholders understand the difference between an estimate and a contractual guarantee. This is not easy to do, and can burn political capital if it's not a message stakeholders want to hear. Still, it's &lt;em&gt;part of the job&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, the Scrum Master shares this responsibility with the Product Owner. The Scrum Master is responsible for the process, including making sure that the Development Team communicates effectively and transparently about its processes, &lt;em&gt;including&lt;/em&gt; the estimation process. However, the Product Owner is the person primarily responsible for managing stakeholder expectations; even if this responsibility isn't explicit, it is essential to the core tasks of prioritizing Product Backlog items and setting Sprint Goals for each iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If none of the project's guardians or executors can communicate the distinction between an estimate and a guarantee, then this is a &lt;em&gt;communications process failure&lt;/em&gt;. Inspect-and-adapt your communications process until the point is effectively made, and just accept that the point will likely need to be made again and again, especially when something is mis-estimated and there's a budgetary or scheduling consequence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T16:22:42.287" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12410" CreationDate="2014-10-01T19:09:32.710" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Context Matters&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acronyms and initalisms are useful shorthand when discussing a problem domain with others who share the same lexicon. However, such shorthand is highly contextual. For example, an &quot;R.A.&quot; might mean Risk Analysis in an information security context, but a Residential Assistant in a college dormitory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Inspect-and-Adapt Your Communications Plan&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to know what a customer means by a given acronym, just ask. Strangers on the Internet won't know what the &lt;em&gt;client&lt;/em&gt; thinks a given acronym means, especially if they're using an acronym or concept in an unusual way (as sometimes happens in the real world).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Better yet, &lt;strong&gt;ensure that your project maintains a glossary&lt;/strong&gt; that includes the acronyms, initialisms, and domain-specific terms that your project actively uses. This avoids a great deal of ambiguity, and can be surprisingly effective at improving project communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T19:09:32.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12416" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12417" CreationDate="2014-10-01T19:30:09.533" Score="1" ViewCount="332" Body="&lt;p&gt;After taking the PMP test, upon failure, you get a report with scores of below proficient, moderately proficient, and proficient results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Initiating the Project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Planning the Project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Executing the Project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Monitoring and Controlling the Project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Closing the Project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can that report guide passing on a second attempt since most training materials are divided up in alternative topics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12214" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T00:08:00.530" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T00:08:00.530" Title="How do I interpret the results of the PMP exam to do better next time?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12416" CreationDate="2014-10-02T00:06:26.267" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PMBOK Guide 5th Edition clearly lists the specific knowledge areas for each of the process groups you've mentioned above. See page 60, Table 3-1. The results are telling you with knowledge areas you need to work on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T00:06:26.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="77" CreationDate="2014-10-02T07:39:04.320" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Leadership&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;For a project manager it is very important to have leadership qualities. This hugely determines the success of the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Empathy&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Moreover, empathy is other quality that is very much needed. Project is executed by human beings. Understanding their view points will help you to take the project very far. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Negotiation skills&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;A project manager should have good negotiation skills to negotiate well for resources and deadlines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12201" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T07:39:04.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12420" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-02T14:55:52.707" Score="2" ViewCount="433" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our company is currently using Jira Agile to manage user stories/tasks in two-week sprints. However, there are business deliverables that also need to be completed (e.g. install guide, internal FAQ, etc). These deliverables don't necessarily need to be completed inside a sprint so we don't know if we should just add them as tasks and include as part of the software iterations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Curious as to how other PMs/companies are handling this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11781" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T19:06:38.160" LastActivityDate="2014-10-16T05:27:52.543" Title="What's the best way to manage business tasks alongside technical tasks?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12420" CreationDate="2014-10-02T18:51:13.210" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A task doesn't have to be completed in the &lt;em&gt;same&lt;/em&gt; Sprint as some other task to be considered project-related work. Dependencies and related work can be done in future Sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;100% of project-related work belongs on the Product backlog. There are &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; exceptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Decompose your documentation epics into bite-sized stories, and then prioritize those granular stories as team capacity and business priorities permit. See below for a worked example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Supplementary Tasks Live on the Product Backlog, Too&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A common misconception is that only product features belong on the Product Backlog. This is untrue. &lt;em&gt;All&lt;/em&gt; project work must be made visible through the Product Backlog, including things like internal documentation, installation guides, and other technical writing. In Scrum, anything at all that consumes team capacity or resources should be managed the same way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Decompose Larger Stories&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just like any other user story, if your documentation features are too large to fit within a single Sprint, decompose them. Rather than a single story that says &quot;write an installation guide,&quot; you might have any number of smaller stories like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Document how to download the source tarball.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Document how to compile the project sources.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Document how to configure feature foo within the application.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These smaller stories can then be slotted in as team capacity and business priorities permit. A small documentation feature might fit in alongside other work, while bigger (or multiple) documentation features might need a dedicated Sprint or two. However, right-sizing the stories creates the needed flexibility to manage the work within the same framework as all other work, and to make sure that each feature is either &quot;Done&quot; or &quot;Not Done&quot; at the end of its Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Prioritize Dependencies Using the Product Backlog&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many cases, a cross-functional team will have technical writers that can write documentation &lt;em&gt;while the product is being developed&lt;/em&gt;. This is the best-case scenario, and the goal to strive for under optimal circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there may be legitimate reasons why documentation can't be done until after a feature is complete. This is a dependency, which Scrum handles quite well. In such cases, the Product Owner should ensure that the documentation is prioritized for inclusion in a &lt;em&gt;future&lt;/em&gt; Sprint once the prerequisites are completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Backlog items should generally be re-prioritized by the Product Owner during Backlog Refinement or Sprint Planning. The latter is perfectly fine, as it allows for dependent stories to be moved to the top of the queue, right &lt;em&gt;below&lt;/em&gt; the list of stories that will be accepted into the current Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, let's say that you have six items on your Product Backlog. For this example, we'll assume that all stories are estimated at one story point each, and that your team's velocity is exactly two. During Sprint Planning, you determine that you have one or more dependencies, and that feature &lt;em&gt;bar&lt;/em&gt; is more important right now than documentation for feature &lt;em&gt;foo&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you can't fit three stories into the current Sprint, you prioritize (or re-prioritize) the documentation so that it is enqueued for the next Sprint. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint 101 (current Sprint).&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build feature &lt;em&gt;foo&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build feature &lt;em&gt;bar&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint 102 (next Sprint).&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Document feature &lt;em&gt;foo&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Illuminate the &lt;em&gt;foo&lt;/em&gt; documentation with medieval calligraphy and iconography.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint 103 or later.&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build feature &lt;em&gt;baz&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write an FAQ for feature &lt;em&gt;baz&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T18:51:13.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12341" CreationDate="2014-10-02T20:06:50.847" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the best way to advocate or lobby management for a complete&#xA;  rewrite of this system before some disaster strikes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's all about ROI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Calculate how much time your development team currently spends fixing this website of horror.  (i.e. 10 hours/week) (CurrentDevTime)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add in how much time people waste using the product, because there are certain &quot;unfixable&quot; issues (if any). (Waste)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a target work reduction percentage... i.e. I think if I rewrite this it will take 40% less time to keep it functional. (ReductionPercent)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assume you can mitigate all unfixable problems in your new architecture (you will architect it so that this is true).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimate how long this software will remain in use after the rewrite. (UseTime)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimate how long it will take to rewrite (WriteTime)...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if (CurrentDevTime * UseTime + Waste) - (CurrentDevTime * (1 - ReductionPercent) * UseTime) &gt; WriteTime, then you have a positive ROI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All you have to do then is remind them of opportunity cost too... all that time you spend on this is keeping your from developing other stuff that will also save people time and energy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want, you can also estimate WriteTime as not a constant, but as increasing as time goes on.  Then you show them the trap... ultimately there will not be a point at which it is too expensive to change, but also wastes &lt;em&gt;massive&lt;/em&gt; amounts of time and resources to maintain.  The longer this goes on, the worse it will be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People who aren't techs don't care about the tech, really.  Translate it into dollars and cents and man-hours (which, to them, are also dollars and cents, really).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8849" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T20:06:50.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12425" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12426" CreationDate="2014-10-03T08:32:27.377" Score="5" ViewCount="1046" Body="&lt;p&gt;In kanban, you shouldn't move the card reverse to previous state right? If that so, what should I do when there's something like temporary stop this card until the committee board approve the change to this card. Do it need to stay there to waste the WIP? Should I need to remove it from it from kanban board temporary and redo the flow again when the committee board approve?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12230" LastActivityDate="2014-10-06T08:42:16.270" Title="In kanban, what did you do when there's a temporary delay on some card?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12425" CreationDate="2014-10-03T09:54:44.060" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the main principles of Kanban is visibility.  In this case, the fact an item is stuck and counting towards your WIP for that step in your workflow is giving you visibility of a blockage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for actions you can take, find out whether this problem has occurred before or if is it an extraordinary event.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a one off event, just do whatever you can to remove the blocker in this instance. If you need approval from a committee before the item progresses but they don't meet for a couple of weeks can you call an emergency session or get approval via email for this item?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the same blocking issue is happening repeatedly, you might need to adjust your workflow to account for something like approval.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g. if your current workflow is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Analyse &gt; Code &gt; Test &gt; Release&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and some items need an approval before work can start, you might add an approve step where items can queue giving you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Analyse &gt; Approve &gt; Code &gt; Test &gt; Release&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could consider having a separate swimlane on your board for items that need approval.  This might help you monitor the number of things coming up that need to go through this step so you can sequence the approval meeting to better suit the arrival rate of this type of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T09:54:44.060" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12427" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12428" CreationDate="2014-10-03T14:11:42.557" Score="2" ViewCount="528" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that in Scrum this is the hierarchy for defining things to do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Theme -&gt; Epic -&gt; Story -&gt; Tasks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is. I got some tasks that I consider story-independent, for example, configuring some stuff in the production environment for a web app.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I define &lt;em&gt;Tasks&lt;/em&gt; that are not related to a &lt;em&gt;Story&lt;/em&gt;?. Or, how is the correct way to define this?.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance!!!.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12236" LastActivityDate="2014-10-15T23:07:58.880" Title="Defining Story Independent Tasks in Scrum" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12427" CreationDate="2014-10-03T14:20:14.737" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;What&quot; goes on the Product Backlog. &quot;How&quot; goes on the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Stories, Tasks, and Implementation Details&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner never handles anything more granular than a user story. The Product Backlog should &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; contain tasks or implementation details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint Backlog is where tasks live. In Scrum, stories define &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; functionality should be delivered, not &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; that functionality is to be implemented. That level of detail is the sole province of the Development Team, who decompose stories into tasks for the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Stories are Project-Related Work&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I got (sic) some tasks that I consider story-independent, for example, configuring some stuff in the production environment for a web app.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are defining stories incorrectly. A user story isn't just a product feature; it's &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; project-related work above the level of the implementation-specific details. Ideally, a story captures &lt;em&gt;value&lt;/em&gt; and deducts from the pool of available team capacity or resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, your story should read something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a DevOps engineer,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I need to reconfigure the web application&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  to reduce its memory footprint for use on small Amazon EC2 instances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not this is your actual use case, it clearly shows that what you're calling a &quot;task&quot; is really a legitimate user story that can add value to the project. By placing it on the Product Backlog, you have correctly made this story a visible cost to the project. &lt;em&gt;No invisible work, ever!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Tasks&quot; should never be created except as a descendant of a Product Backlog item. All tasks on a Sprint Backlog should be traceable to a Product Backlog user story or the Definition of Done. It's never okay to put unrelated tasks on the Sprint Backlog; doing so is a project smell, and generally leads to invisible work or hidden project costs that are kept &quot;off the books.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just don't do it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-10-03T14:42:23.330" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T14:42:23.330" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12429" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-03T14:41:32.973" Score="2" ViewCount="1653" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have recently moved to the TFS KanBan boards and I am loving this organization.  Breaking our stories up into smaller, more manageable tasks has been a huge help.  We currently size in hours, and these sizes are on our parent work items.  As new tasks are discovered during our sprint, we add a new child work item to the parent and size it in the &quot;Remaining Work&quot; field in TFS.  The problem is, once I move this child item to the &quot;Done&quot; column, the Remaining Work field is cleared.  I am looking to see the total &quot;Remaining Work&quot; entered on child works items, compared to the size we entered into our parent work item.  Is there a way to pull this information after the completion of the sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I am not the project manager on my team, just trying to help us improve our sizing efforts as it has gotten us into trouble in the past)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12237" LastActivityDate="2014-11-21T23:14:24.927" Title="TFS KanBan, How do you view total work done?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12425" CreationDate="2014-10-06T08:42:16.270" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend you to leave the card in the column where the problem occurred and not count it in the WIP limit. Also, use a visual sign as an information for your team members that there is a problem with this issue and write a description, explaining what it is. See how you can do it using online kanban board on this &lt;a href=&quot;http://kanbantool.com/card-blocking-and-other-goodies-from-kanban-tool&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kanban blog&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7285" LastActivityDate="2014-10-06T08:42:16.270" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3931" CreationDate="2014-10-06T11:05:27.727" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_package&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; provides a definition of work packages.  @DavidEspina provided a better definition.  The things you think you need &quot;use-cases, . . .  requirements&quot; are not characteristics of work packages.  I think you may need to take a step back and figure out what you really need. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is considerable variety in how people define work packages. My practice, based on the advice of my mentor and the best practices I have seen in the industry is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Less than 40 hours of effort, but more than 1 hour of effort.  &lt;em&gt;0 hours of effort is a milestone, not a work package&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Produces a single complete object/deliverable.  &lt;em&gt;e.g. &quot;set of requirements&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Described by an active verb and predicate.  &lt;em&gt;e.g. &quot;Define Requirements&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cannot be decomposed further without breaking the rules. &quot;e.g. &quot;define requirements&quot; could theoretically be broken down in to &quot;define first requirement&quot;, but &quot;first requirement&quot; isn't a single deliverable, it is a partial deliverable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Define requirements&lt;/strong&gt; is frequently a work package&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I/O&lt;/strong&gt; is probably not a work package - Although in some cases writing the I/O portion of software might be a deliverable, in the general case, I prefer that the deliverable have a stronger tie to value to the customer.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Example workflows .... Depending on the size &amp;amp; complexity of the application, there are situations where this might be a deliverable, but in general, capturing workflows is a technique to define requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use cases - almost always a tool to develop/capture/ requirements.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said at the beginning, I'm not sure we understand what you are really asking for.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2014-10-06T11:05:27.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12435" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12443" CreationDate="2014-10-07T02:18:35.160" Score="4" ViewCount="195" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently building a Project Management Plan for a new project where members will come from different cultural background. I clearly identified that not all the project members will share proficiency in a common language (e.g. English).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a project management approach which can efficiently take this limitation into consideration? Is it just a human resource management issue, or can we address this limitation within the project management practice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can our team overcome communication issues within the project when members are not sharing the same language?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6316" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2014-10-09T08:37:51.137" LastActivityDate="2014-10-09T08:37:51.137" Title="How to manage a project when not every member is proficient in a common language?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;distributed-team&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12435" CreationDate="2014-10-07T02:59:08.573" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my perspective it is a human resource issue but then with project operating from multiple location / countries across the globe it is one of the situation that you will find occurring quite often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Approach that I would follow given this situation is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Figure a common language which most of the people are comfortable if not fluent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep communication in writing over emails and presentation over communicators as far as possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plan for the cross cultural training and some kind of basic language skills for all the team members to understand each other better in terms of culture and language both.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify this as one of the risks and budget for training of resources in terms of time and schedule as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12193" LastActivityDate="2014-10-07T02:59:08.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12435" CreationDate="2014-10-07T10:54:02.627" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have two choices:  Hire interpreters or hire resources that speak whatever primary language you want.  There's nothing to over think here.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-10-07T10:54:02.627" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12435" CreationDate="2014-10-07T12:55:26.827" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Communications planning is an essential part of the project initiation process, and some methodologies (e.g. PRINCE2) include it as a formal &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Initiation_Documentation&quot;&gt;documentation process for that phase&lt;/a&gt;. The specifics of your plan, as well as the pros and cons of any given control, are very situational. Specifics can't be effectively addressed outside the context of your organization or your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Address Communications Within a Project Plan&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a process question, there are certainly steps that should be taken as part of the overall project planning and management process. Regardless of the project management framework, the following list identifies basic steps you can apply to your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communications impediments should be clearly identified as project risks in your project plan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project &lt;em&gt;controls&lt;/em&gt; should be designed to limit or remediate the risks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any residual risk should be formally accepted by the organization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The costs to implement, design, and maintain the controls, as well as the costs of any residual risk, should be quantified and applied against the project's budget.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All impediments, risks, controls, and costs should be made &lt;em&gt;visible&lt;/em&gt; to project participants and stakeholders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Some Practical Suggestions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It isn't possible for anyone outside your organization to determine all the constraints faced by your project, so there isn't a canonical list of ways to address language barriers on a project. However, here are some common-sense suggestions that may help your planning process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hire one or more interpreters, and build those costs into your project plan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add ongoing communications training activities to your budget and your project plan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acknowledge that communications deficits will slow the project throughout its lifecycle, and factor that into your estimates and scheduling.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put extra slack into your processes to allow for re-work attributable to communications failures.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use an iterative development process rather than a framework that depends on clearly-communicated, up-front specifications and requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Design your project plan with &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; additional opportunities to inspect the work and the process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep everything about your communications process visible and transparent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Focus on making impediments highly visible so they can be fixed, rather than on &quot;holding people accountable&quot; or sweeping delays and mistakes under the rug.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your project team may also identify other controls and processes that are better for your organization. Use this list as a starting point for developing your own project controls, but be creative and don't limit your project's potential by assuming that there's a ready-made solution already out there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-10-07T16:23:03.050" LastActivityDate="2014-10-07T16:23:03.050" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12439" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-08T10:47:11.097" Score="2" ViewCount="4652" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a master project which contains 11 sub projects. Whenever I send the master project to anyone, I have to send all the 11 sub project MPPs out to them too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way of creating the master so that I dont need to send the sub projects too?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, I want to be able to take a &quot;snap shot&quot; of the master, so the sub projects are no longer referenced from seperate MPPs, and instead are just ready only data within the master. [UPDATE: when I say &quot;snap shot&quot; I don't actually mean using the snapshot function in MS Project]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that makes sense! Happy to clarify!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&#xA;Confused Planner&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12268" LastEditorUserId="12268" LastEditDate="2014-10-09T10:58:07.820" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T03:05:25.030" Title="Master Project with Subprojects - need to share master but without the subprojects included" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12441" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22091" CreationDate="2014-10-08T15:51:31.247" Score="0" ViewCount="231" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our department recently brought in Power Steering for waterfall projects but in the absence of an agile-focused software (Jira, Rally, VersionOne) there is some appetite to experiment with Power Steering for agile projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At present the tool is set up to Gate waterfall projects with a number of templates.  Is it possible to modify the templates to reflect the needs of an iterative project; if so, how is this done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very little &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; documentation exists online and the Upland guides are pretty spartan to be honest so am hoping the SE community has tinkered with it and found a solution.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-01-29T21:45:51.280" LastActivityDate="2018-02-28T21:59:08.957" Title="How can I modify the Upland PowerSteering templates for Iterative/Agile Management?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10433" CreationDate="2014-10-08T18:13:28.443" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently, you can not include &quot;Priority&quot; in the planning mode sidebar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a feature request for 6.3.0.2 that relates to this here: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/GHS-9741&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/GHS-9741&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were to guess, the reason you don't see it on the plan mode sidebar (that includes issue details) is because the priority is listed on the task's bar in the planning area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is also applicable to the version I use, 6.3.11.0.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To see fields that are eligible to be added in that area:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go to Agile &gt; Manage boards&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click Configure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click the Issue Detail View tab&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add fields by selecting them from the dropdown and clicking the 'Add' button.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remove fields from that view by clicking the 'Delete' button. Note that removing the fields from view will not remove the data itself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Re-order the fields within their respective section as needed by clicking and dragging on the left side of the bar (to the left of the field name). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further details can be found here: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AGILE/Configuring+the+Issue+Detail+View&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AGILE/Configuring+the+Issue+Detail+View&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12271" LastEditorUserId="12271" LastEditDate="2014-10-08T18:44:00.837" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T18:44:00.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12435" CreationDate="2014-10-08T19:51:44.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;How big are groups of people in a specific language?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile Practices like scrum typically work around this kind of situation by creating smaller independent modules and sprints. You then form smaller groups of people who are comfortable with a specific language and ask them to work on individual sprints. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So a group of people who are confident with English can work on Module X where else a different team proficient in another language works on Module Y.  Both these modules run their independent sprints. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each team has their own scrum masters (basically a lead or senior developer within that team who knows some level of English can play this role). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each team has their own daily scrums in the language of their choice. Other team members don’t have to be a part of that scrum since they have scrums in their own languages focused on their specific modules that they attend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day you have a “Scrum of Scrums” – a quick five minute stand up call where these scrum masters / team leads / senior developers (or what ever it is that you want to call them) show up and instead of answering scrum questions like “What did I work on, What am I going to working on tomorrow, and is there something I need from the team?”, answers questions like, “What did we (as in me and my team) work on today, what will we be working on tomorrow and is there something we need from the team?”. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put simply the local lead, becomes your default interpreter for the rest of the team. This lets these teams work autonomously without a lot of Micromanagement from your side and will also eliminate a lot of friction resulting out of cultural differences. Usually works really well if you have two to three members in each language – which is a perfect size to make pizza teams that can deliver small sprints autonomously. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The leads coming together daily will also ensure that there are no issues with integration. Besides you can use continuous integration to ensure that what each team is building fits in the larger image. Standard XP practices will help you with that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8143" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T19:51:44.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10129" CreationDate="2014-10-09T13:31:48.087" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see this question is old and relates to Ms Project 2013 (standard) and I'm on the Pro version, but just in case anyone else (like me) comes here looking for the answer to this question, here's what I found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;REF: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ntrajkovski.com/2014/07/21/cancelling-project-when-using-resource-pool-in-ms-project-2013/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ntrajkovski.com/2014/07/21/cancelling-project-when-using-resource-pool-in-ms-project-2013/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I found it better to use 'Resource Usage' view in the resource pool so you can see you changes taking effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12281" LastActivityDate="2014-10-09T13:31:48.087" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11721" CreationDate="2014-10-09T13:37:59.167" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should use week-by-week leveling so that a less than 100% resource will not be judged to be over-allocated needlessly.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The big issue however is that the on-board MS Project leveling engine has documented problems (it can give crazy results) if you try to set any resource's max units (Resource Sheet) to anything but 100%. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you really need is an automatic leveling engine that provides &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) variable availability (ie your resource is available 85% the first week, 70% the next week, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) an algorithm that calculates over-allocations then changes the Gantt chart by &#xA;   a) adding delay to the task predecessor and/or &#xA;   b) adding splits to the task &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: the MS Project leveling engine doesn't change (add delay to) task predecessors in the Gantt chart - it (instead) changes (delays) the assignments in the Task Usage view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, MS Project's leveling engine over-rides the predecessor logic -- the result being that your carefully crafted Gantt chart logic doesn't seem to make sense anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only tool that can do all of the above and keep all leveling changes Gantt-visible (not confusing) is a recently released leveling engine call MSP_LEVELING.  It works on MS Project files.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MSP_LEVELING isn't free but it should do the job for you. See website: ara-project.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12269" LastActivityDate="2014-10-09T13:37:59.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11876" CreationDate="2014-10-09T18:56:33.167" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whew.  Please don't do this.  I really don't think you know what you are getting into.  Let a developer be the &quot;Scrum master&quot; and you should focus on the project manager type stuff like scheduling meetings and doing spreadsheets and whatnot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look, I can understand why tertiary players on the stage want to get involved with these things.  Pad out the resume with buzzwords, gain some credibility &quot;on paper&quot; in the industry, etc.  But from a pure standpoint of efficiency, it does not work.  I have seen it several times - it really can rip a team apart.  This whole deal about &quot;psychology&quot; and &quot;helping people come together&quot;, that's great and all and noble but that is not what will happen, it will be the opposite.  Trust me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12286" LastEditorUserId="12286" LastEditDate="2014-10-09T19:03:35.190" LastActivityDate="2014-10-09T19:03:35.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12449" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-10T02:02:58.890" Score="12" ViewCount="274" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine has come up with a great idea for a product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He has gathered up a group of friends, who think the idea rocks,&#xA;and is well on the way to convincing them(/us)&#xA;to donate 16 hours/week of our time to make this dream a reality.&#xA;While there is no money involved (yet) he would like to handle this as a proper commercial project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He came to me and knowing that I have abit of project management experience,&#xA;asked if I could be the PM for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;He doesn't want to handle the management.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;while it was initially his dream and his charisma that is getting a team together,&#xA;once it is underway, &lt;strong&gt;he just wants to do dev work.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However at the end of the day, He is still the 'Owner', still the guy to sign off on the finished product etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How is this going to play out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In all my experience the Product owner/sponsor has been well above the devs, and is generally extremely hands off. Often only getting updates monthly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What conflicts are likely&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I create a semiformal written social contact outlining various peoples responsibilities and rights for the development of the product?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8279" LastEditorUserId="8279" LastEditDate="2014-10-10T22:30:41.760" LastActivityDate="2014-10-11T23:01:06.940" Title="Managing a project with the Boss/Owner as a Development Team Member" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;team&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12450" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12451" CreationDate="2014-10-10T06:39:12.053" Score="2" ViewCount="632" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are building a software project (using &lt;strong&gt;python Django&lt;/strong&gt; and a bunch of other Open Source technologies). The project is fairly big. To give an idea, it has over 50 templates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our team is composed of people inexperienced in Django. Its the &lt;strong&gt;first django project&lt;/strong&gt; for all of us. As such, whenever a feature is wanted, everyone just follows the first approach that comes to their mind, with hardly any idea of its consequences on what has been done earlier. Nobody looks at the big picture. As a result, things that were working in the past break down often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have &lt;strong&gt;two major problems&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;First&lt;/em&gt;, as mentioned above, what worked earlier breaks later. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Second&lt;/em&gt;, when the developers are given features to implement, they do that on their own computers and show them to be working in the weekly demo to the client. But when these components of the project are integrated into the main part, something or the other breaks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At present, we have somehow managed to finsh half of our project (also, the project has been delayed by 1 year). Half of it still remains. Also, a new project has come up. I have been given the task to &lt;strong&gt;identify the root causes&lt;/strong&gt; of the above two issues and suggest &lt;strong&gt;how to minimise them&lt;/strong&gt;. If we do that, the new project would be developed in a better way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Integration testing with automated tests is one way that I can think of to catch the bugs. But my aim here is to somehow prevent them from being created in the first place, at least minimise them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I &lt;strong&gt;increase robustness&lt;/strong&gt; of our code. In other words, what are &lt;strong&gt;best practices for enterprise level Django projects&lt;/strong&gt; ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone, specially people experienced in managing projects please suggest me the right approaches or point in the right direction ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12289" LastActivityDate="2014-10-19T13:59:15.910" Title="Best practices for robust enterprise level software development (using python Django)" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-10-19T13:22:46.340" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12450" CreationDate="2014-10-10T09:00:45.607" Score="4" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;set up &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_integration&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Continuous Integration&lt;/a&gt; and (as you noted) automated &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_testing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;unit&lt;/a&gt; and integration tests&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;get the team agree on a common &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2008/september/what-is-definition-of-done-%28dod%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Definition of Done&lt;/a&gt;, including that no feature is completed until it is integrated back into the whole system and is proven to work there&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;get better Django developers by one or more of&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;arranging training for your existing developers,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;hiring some experienced devs and using them at least partly as mentors / coaches,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;introducing pair programming,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;promoting and supporting self-learning and sharing knowledge with each other.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;start regular &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/sprint-retrospective&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;retrospectives&lt;/a&gt; to ruthlessly analyse every single problem and failure, get to the root causes and eliminate them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The order of these can be debated, ideally you should start doing all of them as soon as possible :-) There probably are a lot more potential improvements, but I think these are the key actions that may get you a long way ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to understand better the principles / phrases used above, you may want to read up on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;agile&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0321437381&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;lean software development&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may miss suggestions specific to Python or Django; other answerers may (and hopefully will) give you such advice. My perception is that your problems are not specific to Python or Django, rather systemic problems, so solutions must be systemic too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10244" LastEditorUserId="10244" LastEditDate="2014-10-19T13:59:15.910" LastActivityDate="2014-10-19T13:59:15.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12449" CreationDate="2014-10-10T20:51:02.787" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The roles are inherently a conflict of interest. For example, in Scrum the role of Product Owner is distinct from that of a Development Team member. However, many startups have founders who are also developers, either out of desire or necessity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest of your question is simply too broad and too much of an opinion poll to address in the general case. You'll need to be guided by your experience of the people involved in structuring the team; no one outside your group will really be able to advise you on what will work best for the individuals involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-10-10T20:51:02.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12449" CreationDate="2014-10-11T00:51:43.723" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project managers are often used in flatter or matrix style organizations. It's quite possible for you to take on the project management side of things, such as managing schedules, costs, communication, etc, while offloading the functional management to the &quot;owner&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The functional manager, in this case, would work directly with the team building the project, whereas as a PM you're not directly involved in any of that. Being a PM doesn't mean you necessarily run the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of a functional manager would be the dev team lead, or a marketing manager, or a sales director -- people who possess a set of skills and who lead others with those same skills. For instance, a sales manager would lead a team of salespeople. A project manager, on the other hand, works with those different teams to help coordinate everything. In many cases, there's no formal authority. Your friend, being a developer, would likely fill something similar to a dev lead role. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you'll definitely want to create a written contract, one which clearly defines your roles, what your level of authority is, and how you'll resolve disputes. It's impossible to do your job effectively if you're being micromanaged, but this can be done.  There are executives who are used to delegating responsibility to others. In fact, an organization cannot succeed unless executives can let go of the wheel in some areas and let others drive.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to conflicts, the one that I see most likely to occur is either disagreement between the owner and other developers, or disagreements between you and the owner regarding some PM process.  Anything PM related should ideally be your responsibility and your decision, so this should go in the contract. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as disputes between other developers goes, your friend simply cannot be &lt;em&gt;an ordinary, blissfully ignorant developer.&lt;/em&gt;  He's not an ordinary developer; he's the founder and leader of the project, whether he likes it or not. It's his product vision; thus, he should most likely deal with anything that involves technical decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2014-10-11T17:15:05.747" LastActivityDate="2014-10-11T17:15:05.747" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11322" CreationDate="2014-10-11T11:27:35.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider using &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_(development)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt; flavor of agile for your Ops management. Kanban works well when units of work move through a repeated sequence of steps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban may also be useful during development; however, can be more challenging for development teams to adopt since uncertainty has more significant influence on task duration when a task is being figured out for the first time. In the Wikipedia article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_(development)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt; you'll notice the sample Kanban board shows that the development process step is managed using Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The power of Kanban is that it can help you to identify process bottlenecks and to allocate the right number of people to each step in your organization's product development process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2305" LastActivityDate="2014-10-11T11:27:35.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12456" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-11T17:46:41.203" Score="2" ViewCount="576" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working in a private technological center, performing only R&amp;amp;D projects for industrial clients and institutions...&#xA;I'm looking at applying Agile methods to our activities. From all my readings, I'm looking towards scrumban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I have doubts about its applicability and how to set this up.&#xA;We have NO experience on Agile. All is based on project managers experience, PMP or intuition...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to sum-up, I think that my main doubts are related to:&#xA;-  team size for scrumban to be manageable&#xA;- issue of resources allocated to multiple projects at the same time (and we can't do it in other ways due to the nature of our activities)&#xA;- issue of resources required for my project but managed in a different sub-team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So first let me give you context, and then ask concrete questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm working in a business unit of about 50 people.&#xA;We have about 150 ongoing projects. minimum project time 6 months, maximum 4 years. &#xA;Projects have their uncontrollable lifecycle with intensive sprints followed by lengthy dead time due to delay in the clients feedback, waiting for purchased components, or just fixed long timeframe but at low intensity.&#xA;We are of many different specialties, so some tasks can only be performed by one person.&#xA;Executing only R&amp;amp;D contracts we have LOTS of uncertainties and risks and almost no repeatability between two projects. But since we are a private company, we need to ship results to our clients on time, within the fixed budget and with adequate quality...&#xA;All the projects (mainly related to robotics, machine tools, and factory automation) require many profiles to collaborate at different stages: conceptual design; architecture design, prototyping, testing, redesign, software, electronics, mechanics etc...&#xA;All this is coordinated by project managers and our head of Operations performs a monthly resources (person hour)  allocation based on a project/person matrix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm leading a sub-team, targeting a specific market segment, but we are not autonomous and independent (robotics requires a tight integration of software, mechatronics and hardware integration). So we always need to interact with the other sub-teams, get tasks executed by the mechanical engineers etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my questions are:&#xA;1. How can I plan my delivery date and budget in the commercial offers if later on we're using an Agile method, tending to Pull processes...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Related to question 1, how can I maintain a Gantt or any other system to estimate delivery date when using kanban or scrumban??? Are both compatibles? &#xA;I'm feeling that switching to iterative and lean processes will improve our efficiency and resource allocation efficiency, but that we will lose on predictability (on the other hand, I've never seen a Gantt plan correctly executed on time ;-) ). Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On what team should I deploy the scumban: on the 50 people?? Hardly manageable, no?&#xA;But if I do it on my 12 people sub-team, it will not be complete since I need engineers from the other sub-group to work on my projects...? So I would need to &quot;add cards&quot; on the other team backlog and try to fight to get them with high priority...?&#xA;So what's the adequate team size?&#xA;And to manage interactions between teams??&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Related to question3: how should I manage the multi-projects aspects?&#xA;I mean: should I try to impose scrumban at project level, or a team level?&#xA;I fear that project level is not ok, since the resources in my project are also allocated to other projects and I have NO visibility on their current load and task priorities and emergencies...&#xA;But at the 50 person group level, I fear that it will not be manageable, unless we perform micro-management up to the very fine tasks, with the associated management overhead... and headaches!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope I transmitted well our situation, that I understand as quite complex, but found in so many other companies...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance for sharing your opinions and advice on how/if we should deploy Agile processes in our business unit (preferably scrumban I believe)!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very best, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Damien Sallé&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12298" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-01-07T14:15:19.877" LastActivityDate="2019-01-07T14:15:19.877" Title="How would you implement scrumban to large team performing concurrent multiple R&amp;D projects" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;micro-management&gt;&lt;scrumban&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12449" CreationDate="2014-10-11T23:01:06.940" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I strongly support J's suggestion: you have a delicate situation, and write things down might help a lot down the road. What you might be looking for is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_assignment_matrix&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;RACI Matrix&lt;/a&gt; where you need to specify two very distinct roles your mate will cover: client / product owner and developer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, this diagram will make things easier to understand who should make the calls. &lt;strong&gt;The main role of a PM in a project is reporting and making sure project is on track&lt;/strong&gt;. As the 'product owner' will be part of the team, he'll be up to date on the overall progress... so not a big problem. What I'd make clear on the RACI is who's supposed to make the calls on tuff decisions. &lt;strong&gt;It's NOT the main role of a PM to take decisions&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMs are expected to propose scenarios, the client / product owner / your buddy / a small group within the team takes the decision. That's the sort of thing that worth put some time on and draft a few rows. You don't need to do an extensive exercise, draft some roles and, as the time goes by, go back to the drawboard and add some more roles onto it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2014-10-11T23:01:06.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12456" CreationDate="2014-10-12T08:10:18.090" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's too much going on in your question to give concrete advice but here are some basic rules I usually apply:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If a project is complex or complicated and non-repeatable, use scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If your project is simple and/or repeatable, use whatever process method you prefer&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If your project is in chaos, do anything but get out of the chaos and into the simple, complicated or complex zones&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If your project has a large element of support, maintenance or frequent demands for changes in priority or a need to re-order work items more often that weekly, consider kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you have more projects than you have teams, you have a management prioritisation issue. Managing multiple projects is hugely inefficient (please see my article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://webgate.ltd.uk/one-simple-killer-idea-boost-software-development-productivity/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;One Simple Killer Idea to Boost Software Development Productivity&lt;/a&gt; (Sorry for the eye-tearing title)  I advise you ask your management to prioritise the projects.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more advice on how to categorize projects, please see any reference to the &quot;Stacey Matrix&quot; or &quot;Cynefin&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I'd highly recommend that you have some of your people attend scrum master &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; (vitally) scrum product owner training, as well as kanban training. You may also want to consider the services of a good agile coach to boost your agile adoption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7835" LastActivityDate="2014-10-12T08:10:18.090" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12459" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-12T10:21:07.043" Score="6" ViewCount="5892" Body="&lt;p&gt;In practical terms, how do you suggest that a technical lead (me) work with a non-technical PM who is responsible for multiple projects? How should dependencies between stories, and external dependencies, be identified, discussed, planned for, scheduled and resolved? What should the division of responsibility be between me and the non-technical PM?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A non-technical PM cannot identify certain dependencies because they have no idea that they exist. Hence my question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are not using Scrum of Scrums (indeed we are not using full Scrum), but we are using an issue tracking system (specifically, Jira).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5705" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2014-10-12T15:27:40.637" LastActivityDate="2014-10-18T22:45:06.277" Title="Splitting PM responsibility between technical lead and non-technical PM on an agile project?" Tags="&lt;roles&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;communication-management&gt;&lt;technical-leader&gt;&lt;responsibility&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12459" CreationDate="2014-10-12T14:04:58.383" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, you could use different methods/frameworks to run projects. Scrum wouldn't necessarily be the solution here as your prime concern is around the line in responsibilities between these two, both different and both required, roles. As well as getting the right level of communication set up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have grasped something from the tone of your question that seems to highlight already a problem. In your question you say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A non-technical PM cannot identify certain dependencies because they have no idea that they exist. Hence my question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On this note I would strongly recommend you start removing the 'non-technical' attribute to the role. That's not the real problem. The role of the PM is not to work out the technical dependencies by himself/herself but to manage them with the support and expertise of the team involved. If you are the Technical Lead, that's what you are there for. You have the best detailed information about the technical aspects of the project and understand better the dependencies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coming back to the separation of duties you could refer to Project Management and Delivery frameworks like &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dsdm.org/dig-deeper/book/dsdm-atern-handbook&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DSDM Atern&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. If you take a look at the DSDM Atern Roles and Responsibilities diagram below you can appreciate that the &lt;strong&gt;Project Manager&lt;/strong&gt; (blue) and &lt;strong&gt;Technical Coordinator&lt;/strong&gt; (green) roles work together towards delivering business value (working along side with Business Sponsor and Visionary).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/X7cxy.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the responsibilities of the &lt;em&gt;Project Manager&lt;/em&gt; in this model would be: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communicating with senior management and the project governance&#xA;authorities (Business Sponsor, project board, steering committee,&#xA;etc.) with the frequency and formality that they deem necessary&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;High-level project planning and scheduling, but not detailed task&#xA;planning &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Monitoring progress against the baselined project plans&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Managing risk and any issues as they arise, escalating to senior&lt;br&gt;&#xA;business or technical roles as required&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Managing the overall configuration of the project Motivating the teams to meet their&#xA;objectives &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Managing business involvement within the Solution Development Teams&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resourcing Specialist Roles as required Handling&#xA;problems escalated from the Solution Development Teams&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coaching the Solution Development Teams when handling difficult situations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While for the &lt;em&gt;Technical Coordinator&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agreeing and controlling the technical architecture&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Determining the technical environments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Advising on and co-ordinating each team’s technical activities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identifying and owning architectural and other technically based&#xA;risk, escalating to the Project Manager as appropriate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensuring the non-functional requirements are achievable and&#xA;subsequently met&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensuring adherence to appropriate standards of technical best&#xA;practice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Controlling the technical configuration of the solution&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Managing technical aspects of the transition of the solution into&#xA;live use&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resolving technical differences between technical team members&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The combination of the two roles is really powerful and usually leads to project success.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, we need to address the communication problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always say to people they need to stop waiting for things to happen and point the finger later if things didn't work out the way they expected. This behaviour helps nobody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Project Manager in your team has not come forward to work with you on how regularly you guys should meet or the tools to report please feel more than empowered to start that conversation yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mentioned that you are already using Jira so maybe you two could sit together a couple of hours to determine the best way to use the functionality to capture technical dependencies - &lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/133164/how-do-you-manage-dependencies-across-various-stories-tasks-and-sprints&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;linking issues from different projects back to a &quot;Dependencies&quot; project list&lt;/a&gt;- report status, and advise whether there is a team already looking at the issue, etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have personally used Jira with GreenHopper for similar reports and it has worked very well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2014-10-12T15:24:23.153" LastActivityDate="2014-10-12T15:24:23.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12461" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-12T14:55:23.990" Score="2" ViewCount="299" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several years ago I was in a startup and they explained to us about roadmap growth. That in the first year a startup should earn XXX money and the year after it should be YYY. &#xA;the increment in money should be Z% between quarters, etc... and this way you can measure, more or less if a company is on the right path. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nowadays I run a project for a company who has been around for 13 years, so it is doing fine. My project is new in the company - only 2 years - and there is an annoying pattern I have noticed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the company gets more customers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The amount of tasks increases&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I ask for more resources&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the company is not convinced I need more resources&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the project experiences a failure to make a deadline due to lack of resources&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the company gets half the resources I really need. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think, perhaps the company has a difficulty to assess how many resources this project should have, and the resources we do get always come too little too late. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to find something like a &quot;growth plan&quot; similar to the financial one I saw at the startup but without money. &#xA;something that will not be as debatable as the process we have now and that will break this vicious unhealthy cycle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be a rule of thumb, or some other model we should follow, but anything will do at this point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example - for a social network you will need 1 developer per 1000 users.. this might not be true, but it is a plan to follow. Something that we can measure and decide upon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My units cannot be money or users (even though I would like to hear answers about them as well, perhaps I will catch the drift and apply it to myself)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My units should be tasks/responsibilities per resources. perhaps man-hours per resources. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and the result should enable us to say &quot;if everything goes according to plan, we will need another resource within the next 2 months..&quot; - and so prepare ourselves and start interviewing beforehand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;EDIT&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have recently heard about the term &lt;code&gt;working capital&lt;/code&gt;. I can't exactly understand if it is relevant for this question, but sounds like it should. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone can help me understand this it would be great. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7194" LastEditorUserId="7194" LastEditDate="2014-11-10T08:13:02.747" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T22:33:32.607" Title="How to plan ahead your resource growth?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12461" CreationDate="2014-10-13T03:29:28.900" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see a conflict here: You think the project needs more resources while management doesn't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The budget planning here is quite questionalbe, it looks waterfall and top-down. First, I think you have to discuss about XXX, YYY and Z, are they realistic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;for a social network you will need 1 developer per 1000 users&quot;: This is not a good metric to determine how many team members you need. I suggest you the following metrics (that cannot be fit with your project): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Numbers of issues, daily, weekly, by sprints&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time-to-resolved those issues&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which skills that your team is lacking of.&#xA;(4. And how many team members do you need to solve that)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on 3., you can propose a HR enforcement to your management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar to that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;5&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why are you missing deadlines? What are the root-causes for that?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can it resolved by adding more members? Or improving skills of existing members? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can it be resolved by improve the PM's skills -&gt; watch out for that! Ask them for frankly answers and advice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, I see that you can solve your issue, slowly by &#xA;* Negotiate the requirements/deadlines with your management/stakeholders,&#xA;* Adaptive planning in an Agile way.&#xA;(to deal with the so-called &quot;growth plan&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8647" LastEditorUserId="8647" LastEditDate="2014-10-13T07:49:25.347" LastActivityDate="2014-10-13T07:49:25.347" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12459" CreationDate="2014-10-13T03:41:19.737" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand that the situation are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are a technical lead (TL),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You report to a PM that has no or almost no domain knowledge, technical knowledge.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The PM does not understand you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;A non-technical PM cannot identify certain dependencies because they have no idea that they exist.&quot;: He doesn't have to. I think it is your main responsibility to explain the issues so that he can understand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were you, I will talk in the language that the PM can understand and agree with me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talk directly to the PM and define a clear &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_assignment_matrix&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;RACI matrix&lt;/a&gt; will be good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main point for the RACI matrix here could be:&#xA;1. The Tech lead manages and reports technical issue, alert possible non-technical issue he can sense&#xA;2. The PM manage all the non-technical aspects of the project, such as: HR, requirements, risks, communications, budget...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may google for&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;technical lead&quot; &quot;project manager&quot; RACI&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;to see how a TL and a PM are different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8647" LastEditorUserId="8647" LastEditDate="2014-10-13T08:59:30.510" LastActivityDate="2014-10-13T08:59:30.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12464" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-13T10:38:31.373" Score="0" ViewCount="323" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have set up a recurring task to recur every 4 weeks for 4 occurrences. To me, this means the duration should be 4 x 4 x 7 = 112 days, but the duration is set to 253 days. Can someone explain?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13303" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-10-13T15:39:29.680" LastActivityDate="2014-12-12T16:13:40.603" Title="Duration of Recurring Tasks in MS Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12465" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-13T11:10:09.133" Score="6" ViewCount="901" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that the agile concept requires the teams to be small, autonomous and self-sufficient, but &lt;strong&gt;how to organize teams when forming small and autonomous teams is almost impossible as each member controls a specific technology and thus must work in 10 different concurrent projects?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any best-practice on defining a business unit structure to be able to apply agile management and cope with concurrent projects and understaffing issues?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it really hard to redefine the structure of our business unit to be able to generate Agile-compatible teams where all members are only allocated to one project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same complexity to try to allocate a project to only one of these agile-teams.&#xA;We need that all developers work concurrently on various projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could do a complete business unit Kanban, but we are 50 people, so I anticipate hell when having to manage Backlogs and team meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice on if/how to structure our group to allow for agile project management?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further details&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Business unit structure:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;about 50 people&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;about 150 ongoing projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;working like a small company with Project managers, SW developers, mechanical and electronics engineers, workshop technicians etc… with a very wide field of technologies to manage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;all customer specific projects (we do not develop and sell products, but specific &quot;engineering&quot; projects) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;minimum project time 6 months, maximum 4 years&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;R&amp;amp;D projects only, so requirements are changing during the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Projects have their uncontrollable lifecycle with intensive periods followed by lengthy dead time due to delay in the clients feedback, waiting for purchased components, or just fixed long timeframe but at low intensity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bottlenecks we have:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;each individual member of the group has a specificity required in various project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;other members are not proficient (enough) on this other technology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12298" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-03-03T20:09:43.953" LastActivityDate="2019-03-03T20:09:43.953" Title="How to structure our organization and define agile teams in a multiple concurrent projects context?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12464" CreationDate="2014-10-13T15:30:21.073" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The recurring task duration is not the sum of the durations of the detail tasks.  It is the span of working time from the start of the earliest of the details to the end of the last.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2014-10-13T15:30:21.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12467" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-13T15:56:49.247" Score="0" ViewCount="212" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if the name of the question is clear what I would like to do is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need to adjust the most likely time for an activity of my project in purpose of the probability of any path through the network being completed in x days must not be less than 0.94.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know how to calculate the probability for a given time and a given path. But I don't know to solve this problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13307" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2014-10-13T16:43:30.037" LastActivityDate="2015-03-03T20:29:21.993" Title="PERT adjust most likely time with probability and duration time" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12468" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-14T00:11:43.733" Score="-2" ViewCount="486" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to understand if our team budget is aligned with the outside world,&#xA;&lt;BR&gt;This is the closest sub forum out there...&#xA;&lt;BR/&gt; For a big company (500+ employees)&#xA;&lt;BR/&gt; What is the budget for 5-10 developers for social activities and educational activities &#xA;Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13311" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2014-10-14T12:21:32.067" LastActivityDate="2014-10-14T12:21:32.067" Title="Development team budget for training and social activities" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;budget&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2014-10-15T20:35:44.510" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12468" CreationDate="2014-10-14T02:49:51.020" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am going to ignore internal on the job training, mentoring, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Training budgets are important; it's allows for your employees to be better equipped to do their job, and gives the employer more bang for the buck - in that with proper training you can get junior developers up to more senior levels of expertise. General expenses include;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Monthly subscriptions to online training like pluralsite; $100/month/dev&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quartlery Conferances; $1000/quarter/dev&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Serious training and certicatation courses: $2500/year/dev&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Activities are important not just for moral, but breaking out of the day to day grind that can become a burden to both managers and staff;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quarterly team building; $200/quarter/month/dev&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Weekly drinks, coffeess, lunches etc; $200/week/per team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things to keep in mind is that in the budgeting world this is part of the overall employment package - I've had to work with budgets where the previous manager had used the entire budget for salaries - getting more budget was hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And although I am all for higher salaries, having a good work culture, and ongoing training is important. Make sure your team is aware at how their entire employment package is structured, point out the impact of training on their careers. Sometimes it's a salary/benefits balance and this needs to be comminicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13313" LastActivityDate="2014-10-14T02:49:51.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12471" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-14T13:08:36.510" Score="0" ViewCount="171" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a Project Plan in MS Project, its a construction project which has repetitive tasks and multiple gangs.&#xA;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Building 1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Strip&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clean&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Varnish&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Building 2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Strip&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clean&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Varnish&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Building 3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Strip&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clean&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Varnish&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Building 4&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Strip&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clean&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Varnish&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I have 4 Paint Gangs (PG1, PG2, PG3 &amp;amp; PG4) currently I assign them in leapfrog order, so &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Building 1 = PG1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Building 2 = PG2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Building 3 = PG3&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Building 4 = PG4&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Building 5 = PG1&#xA;etc...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that should I wish to reduce the number of Paint Gangs to see if the project still finishes on time, currently I apply a filter to the task list to display only 'Paint' tasks I then highlight the resource column &amp;amp; predecessors column and delete them. &#xA;I then select the resource column next to each building's paint task and select the paint gang that's next in the order PG1,PG2,PG3,PG4,PG1,PG2,PG3,PG4 but obviously this takes a lot of time and then linking them back up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an easier way to do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13317" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2014-10-14T14:34:30.183" LastActivityDate="2014-10-17T02:56:47.780" Title="Finding the minimum number of functional teams needed to do repetitive tasks" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12465" CreationDate="2014-10-14T13:38:17.683" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Create stable scrum teams of about 5 to 9 people per team&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/stable-teams/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;To create stable scrum teams, follow these recommendations from Roman Pichler&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First, carefully consider who should be on the Scrum team. Find the right individuals to play the product owner, ScrumMaster and team role... Having the right individuals on board is most likely the biggest success factor for any development effort.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Second, minimize any changes to the Scrum team within and across releases. It takes some time for a group of individuals to become a true team – a tightly knit unit with members that trust and support each other and that work together well.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Group the 150 projects into 5 or 6 clusters based on key technology or, preferably, by market. Assign each cluster to one team. Of course, you will find that sometimes the skills needed to complete a project is on another team. Plan for some cross training. Hold twice weekly Scrum of Scrums meetings to coordinate such cross-team dependencies and priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-10-14T13:38:17.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12471" CreationDate="2014-10-14T21:11:45.630" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Calculating &quot;Time to Complete&quot; Kanban-Style&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if this can be done in MS Project or not, but it seems that what you really are trying to do is determine (in a Kanban-like fashion) how much time you would need to &lt;strong&gt;empty a job queue&lt;/strong&gt; assuming some variable number of teams. You would normally do this by calculating &lt;em&gt;throughput&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;cycle lead time&lt;/em&gt;, and then applying those figures to the size of your input queue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider an example where &lt;em&gt;throughput&lt;/em&gt; is the average amount of time it takes for a paint task to move from &quot;started&quot; to &quot;finished,&quot; and &lt;em&gt;average_lead_time&lt;/em&gt; is the time a paint job spends in the input queue before the job is started. The formula might look like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;time_to_complete =   &#xA;    (paint_jobs_in_queue / (paint_gangs * throughput)) + &#xA;    (average_lead_time * paint_jobs_in_queue)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This formula is based on the idea that painting jobs are all similarly-sized, and that each Paint Gang's throughput is within two standard deviations of the mean. You may need to use a more complex formula if these assumptions don't hold true for your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-10-15T14:32:53.027" LastActivityDate="2014-10-15T14:32:53.027" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12476" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-15T14:05:27.377" Score="0" ViewCount="197" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some subtasks and their hours need to be tracked. They are not directly related to Sprint work but indirectly related to Sprint. There are not related to particular story so they cannot be added as a subtask of the Userstory. How can Jira be used for this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12299" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2014-10-15T15:59:40.777" LastActivityDate="2014-10-16T13:44:20.590" Title="In Jira where to login hours for tasks that is not part of sprint" Tags="&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-12-05T22:29:31.770" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12476" CreationDate="2014-10-15T15:24:20.373" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;If it is not in the Sprint, you should not be spending any time on it &lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are following the Scrum process - and it looks like you are - you should not be spending anytime on doing work that is not part of the Sprint. However, if new work is discovered during the Sprint that is needed to accomplish the Sprint Goal, you can add it to the Sprint. Please see the extract from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;As new work is required, the Development Team adds it to the Sprint Backlog. As work is performed or completed, the estimated remaining work is updated. When elements of the plan are deemed unnecessary, they are removed. Only the Development Team can change its Sprint Backlog during a Sprint. The Sprint Backlog is a highly visible, real-time picture of the work that the Development Team plans to accomplish during the Sprint...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can add it as a subtask to one of the stories in the Sprint, even if it is indirectly related to it. If not, and if you are convinced that it is necessary to accomplish the Sprint Goal, add a new story to the Sprint and create a subtask there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-10-15T15:24:20.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12427" CreationDate="2014-10-15T23:07:58.880" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you? Of course you can. Do whatever you want. Don't treat Scrum like a process to follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should you? It depends. I prefer not to. I prefer to find a story that will force me to perform the task, then make the task part of that story. If I can't find an urgent story that forces me to do the task, then perhaps I don't need to do that task now. The longer I defer doing that task, generally speaking, the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I have to ask: why would you configure stuff in a production web app except to be able to deliver a story? I know you might think &quot;I'll have to do this anyway, so I'll do it now&quot;, but I find value in challenging that thinking. You'd be surprised what we can defer until later. You'd be surprised what we can avoid doing altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you believe that this configuration task has to happen before you can release any other story, I would still recommend doing it as part of completing a story. You might even find that you can do 20% of the configuration now--just enough to deliver the current story--and do the rest later. Even if splitting up the configuration work doubles the cost of that work, if you can complete stories by doing only 50% of the configuration work, then you can release those stories sooner, and releasing stories sooner (not necessarily for the least cost) lies at the heart of the philosophy of Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to add that all this assumes two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your organisation wants to practise releasing features sooner in order to eventually start collecting revenue sooner from releasing features. (Even if they can't realise that value now, they need to start practising if they ever want to become skilled at it.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your organisation values earning revenue sooner at all. If they don't, then why the hell are they doing Scrum?!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1243" LastActivityDate="2014-10-15T23:07:58.880" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12420" CreationDate="2014-10-15T23:25:38.670" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can really deliver those things (install guide, FAQ, and so on) separately from the features, then in your position I would treat that as a downstream (and optional!) project. The software feature mechanism produces features as before, and the documentation project takes those features as input and produces documentation. I would manage them as completely separate pipelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, we run a risk here of moving back in the direction of Waterfall-style phases if we're not careful. This only works if the documentation project is completely optional. &lt;strong&gt;If features need documentation in order to deliver value, then do not split this work into two projects! Instead, work to integrate producing documentation into the story.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm basing this advice on the assumption that your documentation provides an optional added value to the software features, and that, in an emergency, you have the option of diverting investment away from the documentation project and onto the software feature delivery project. If you find yourself in this situation, then the capacity that you invest in the documentation project can act as slack for the software feature delivery project. You would do well to reserve that capacity (keep people working on documentation) so that you have it available to deal with spikes in demand for software delivery work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1243" LastActivityDate="2014-10-15T23:25:38.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12420" CreationDate="2014-10-16T05:27:52.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the work is expected to be completed by the sprint team, you will want to add it took the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you add the work to the sprint and it's a fairly large task then:&#xA;[1] Don't add story points and roll the task until it is completed (not my preferred solution)&#xA;[2] Break it up so that the work can fit into the sprint&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if the work is NOT to be completed by the sprint team, setup a separate rapid board to manage those tasks independently. I would advise having the tasks visible in both backlogs with the 2nd backlog filtering for just those specific issues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds like it might be a good opportunity to utilize a Kanban board if you are less concerned about tracking the time spent, don't want to break up tasks, and deadlines are less rigid. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13331" LastActivityDate="2014-10-16T05:27:52.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12476" CreationDate="2014-10-16T13:44:20.590" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That depends&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The non-sprint-tasks are recurring activites, or all non-sprint-tasks are of a similar size every sprint&lt;/strong&gt;. In this case they do not cause changes in your velocity, and therefore they don't need to be logged at all since they just &quot;average out&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The non-sprint tasks are extra work that mean you won't be able to fulfill the amount ow work the team has comitted to for this sprint.&lt;/strong&gt; In this case there are two options, depending on how critical these tasks are. Either you don't do them until after the sprint is done, or you abort the sprint, perform the tasks and then you start a new sprint planning.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7543" LastActivityDate="2014-10-16T13:44:20.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3163" CreationDate="2014-10-16T14:27:34.360" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I used to have precisely the opposite problem; I would not consider any task pressing enough to prioritize it accordingly and my delivery would suffer quite badly.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;100 Day System&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I devised the following method to become more productive and I recommend to everyone; it uses a standard notebook (Moleskin, Leuchturm, etc) and divides the day into two components&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Productive Output&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Creative Output&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You can find the methodology in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/stevenfeeney/10-reasons-why-google-journal-is-changing-the-game-24448822&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SlideShare&lt;/a&gt; &amp;lt;&amp;lt; LINK which gives you more than enough to get started.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;em&gt;Disclaimer&lt;/em&gt; : Ignore the front page; it was a marketing hook for viewers because I originally planned to turn the methodology into a fully published book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Reception&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The system of time management was praised by &lt;a href=&quot;http://geekdad.com/2013/07/increase-productivity-with-100ds/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;GeekDad&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.43things.com/things/view/18313/prioritize&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;43 Things&lt;/a&gt; and a few other productivity &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.trainingzone.co.uk/anyanswers/question/time-management-avoiding-procrastination/187659&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;outlets&lt;/a&gt;.  It was also elevated to the front page of SlideShare and rated as one of their Top 10 Presentations of the year. (They sent me a little email and stuff haha)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-10-16T15:51:36.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12483" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-16T23:22:44.223" Score="8" ViewCount="3173" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often work in companies where functional departments are rigidly separated. To me this seems inefficient, as adds a lot of communication overhead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there reasons why companies prefer this type of structure? Does it offer more opportunities to learn from team members working in the same field?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've especially seen this in agencies where people are involved in many projects simultaneously. Are there environments where cross-functional teams are a bad idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13336" LastActivityDate="2014-10-21T14:03:33.770" Title="What are reasons against cross-functional teams?" Tags="&lt;organizational-structure&gt;&lt;cross-functional&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12483" CreationDate="2014-10-16T23:53:42.583" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends pretty much on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_structure&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Organizational Structure&lt;/a&gt; each company wants to follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that what you meant by a cross functional structure would follow a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_management&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Matrix Management&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As your question is related to the &lt;em&gt;disvantages&lt;/em&gt; of it, follows the quote from Wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&lt;em&gt;Key disadvantages of matrix organizations include:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mid-level management having multiple supervisors can be confusing, in that competing agendas and emphases can pull employees in different&#xA;directions, which can lower productivity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mid-level management can become frustrated with what appears to be a lack of clarity with priorities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mid-level management can become over-burdened with the diffusion of priorities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Supervisory management can find it more difficult to achieve results within their area of expertise with subordinate staff being pulled in&#xA;different directions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-10-16T23:53:42.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12483" CreationDate="2014-10-17T02:31:21.460" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've observed many organizations using Project teams from different functional groups.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Functional groups allow people with the same or similar functions to learn from each other.  This assumes interest on the group members, and opportunities for sharing knowledge.  These don't always exist.  This structure works well for establishing best/standard practices.  Administrative functions tend to work well as functional groups.  Organizations with a stable environment may also work well using functional groups.  However, the functional groups may be partially disconnected from the organization as whole. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project groups often require people with a variety of different skill sets.  These may be available from existing functional groups, or may need be source externally.  Projects often result from or create change.  A project group can provide expedited communications between representatives of various functional groups.  Team members may gain cross-functional exposure, but can have limited contact with their functional counterparts.  The lack of contact with functional counterparts can result in non-standard practices.  If the project does develop some best practices, they may have trouble getting the adopted by the organization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Matrix organizations typically have members of a functional group assigned to projects.  This is common in some consulting organizations, and other project based organizations.  It can be difficult to maintain a balance between the functional organization, and the project requirements.  Functional groups that don't have a significant organizational role outside projects may not be cohesive.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be difficult to manage project groups with or without a matrix organization.  Matrix organizations create a dual set of responsibilities that can be difficult to manage.  Projects schedules may leave little time for maintaining ties with the functional organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2014-10-17T02:31:21.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12471" CreationDate="2014-10-17T02:56:47.780" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should be able to assign the gangs to a resource type.  Then specify the resource type to the tasks for each building.  It should then be possible to level your resources. Setting date limits on start and end dates can help order assignment to buildings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you don't end up with things on a critical path, you can calculate the number of gangs required manually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sum the number of days effort.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Divide by the number of work days until all work needs to be completed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Round up to the next number. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;231 days effort. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;68 days until completion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Calculates to 3.4 gangs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Round up yeilds 4 gangs. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you can use the project software to allocate the teams to particular buildings.  Watch out for unexpected idle time, or resource overloading.  Holidays and other events can cause unexpected deviations from planned activity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2014-10-17T02:56:47.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12465" CreationDate="2014-10-17T09:41:46.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are in a similar situation, where we have a few 'experts' that need to be spread between teams, however our core teams sound slightly more stable. We have a long term goal of fully independent teams, but in the short term our experts are sitting outside of teams and either slot into a team for a sprint, or work with multiple teams at once.  They don't really do  any work independently and are focused on helping teams learn how to do their tasks, to reduce the dependency on them over time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6825" LastActivityDate="2014-10-17T09:41:46.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12483" CreationDate="2014-10-17T10:59:30.850" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the biggest advantage of creating functional teams is that it is easy...or perceived to be easy.  And, I think there is a huge perception of control.  By control, I mean the organization would believe that if you put an entire function in one team led by a functional manager, you would naturally build a high performing competency and set of very efficient processes.  Sadly, I don't think that comes true often.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creating cross functional teams there is a sense of functions evolving differently, creating different processes, different policies and rules, different relationships, etc., as they figure out how to deliver whatever it is they are delivering.  For example, each team's procurement function would solve the buying problem differently over time, giving the organization a sense of &quot;out of control&quot; because each team buys differently.  It takes a very mature performance measurement system to prove out the advantages of this type of org design and how many organizations have a mature measurement capability?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Functional teams are intuitive and seemingly easy but too often underwhelming.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-10-17T10:59:30.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12489" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-17T12:38:29.997" Score="0" ViewCount="685" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any ideas on where to acquire a pre-drawn physical scrumboard? I want to save the hassle of preparing one and to just buy it somewhere. If there are nice boards like that would also look professional and stylish I would definitely get one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas? Was anyone interested in this before?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks, &#xA;Tim&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13343" LastActivityDate="2014-10-17T14:35:29.757" Title="Purchase a physical scrumboard?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-10-19T00:32:42.883" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12490" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12497" CreationDate="2014-10-17T13:13:22.553" Score="4" ViewCount="1026" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does the Agile community have recommended processes for a single Scrum Team managing tasks coming in from multiple backlogs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Context and Problem&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One Scrum Team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One Scrum Master&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Delivering value to an Enterprise Organisation (+10,000 employees, +$2billion revenue)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tasks come into the Team from each Business Function (Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 week sprints&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Senior Management (Steering Board) review Scrum effectiveness monthly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tasks will be ongoing for at least the next 3 years as part of a massive Change Management implementation enterprise-wide&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Scrum Team has a developer from each Function which knows the Function intimately but not necessarily what they are going to request from the Scrum Team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In addition to Functional Requests the Scrum Team also have other demands from ad-hoc Projects (which have a Project Manager but not a Product Owner)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum Team still has tribal mentality of &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;I am a Sales Developer and he is a Marketing Analyst.  I put more points on the board than he did and he only worked on stories for his buddy in Marketing.&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Considered Solution&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current plan is for the following action to take place (but I am happy to have the process reviewed by the SE community)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each function present their requirements as part of a Function Backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each function is responsible for grooming their own backlog and having a Product Owner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Function requirements must be in the form of User Stories (basic level)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A member of each function attend the Sprint Plan to argue their prioritization over the other Functions (no more than 30 mins time)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The most compelling business case wins (prize  = approx 30-50% of the Sprint Plan)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The remainder of the Sprint Plan is dedicated to &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; High Priority functional item from any Function with an even split between Functions (Any Sales, Customer Service or Marketing M or S user story on the MoSCoW scale can be included.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Personal Opinion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot imagine a fairer way of bringing together equal Functions with fluctuating Business cases from Sprint to Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Considerations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Luckily, all of the requirements are based in the same development environment centered around SAP functionality so the development team (and testing) does not massively vary between user stories/function.  What Marketing ask for is well within the sphere of what Customer Service will ask for; just a different end user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that changes is which stakeholder gets the value at the end of the Sprint, which department gets the asset added to their bottom line and who gets the bill for the Scrum Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Request&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Happy to accept any thoughts, white papers or guidance from the Community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In addition, I have really tried to frame this question for SE so please drop a line if the format is useful including explanations etc.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-10-18T09:06:56.120" Title="Which guidelines are applicable for a single Scrum Team managing multiple backlogs?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12489" CreationDate="2014-10-17T13:25:31.670" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I doubt you'll find a pre-created scrum board.  A pre-made scrum board would be a pretty niche market for a manufacturer to target.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It gets more complicated though. Different teams have different workflows and thus need different numbers of columns (looking around at the 4 team boards I can see at the moment I see teams with 3, 5, 6 and 8 columns).  This would mean that in order to maximise sales to an already small market, you'd have to produce a variety of column options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make matters worse, on most boards I've used we have swim lanes for different types of work or themes and some columns may not require as much vertical space so you might get two workflow steps in one column.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With so many permutations, you'd probably have to build them to order otherwise you'd be tying up lots of cash in stock.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it is possible to buy pre-gridded boards which might help?  (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ultralon-Gridded-Whiteboard/dp/B00G9FTVTG&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ultralon-Gridded-Whiteboard/dp/B00G9FTVTG&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, invest in some gridding tape, a set square and a spirit level :D&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nobo-Self-Adhesive-Gridding-Black/dp/B000J6F4NI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nobo-Self-Adhesive-Gridding-Black/dp/B000J6F4NI&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2014-10-17T13:25:31.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11465" CreationDate="2014-10-17T13:35:12.697" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;BPM software implementations are difficult because it's like changing an aircraft engine while the plane is still flying. You can't tell the company 'ok, you have to stop making widgets for two weeks while we change your processes'.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt; In addition, some of the people working in the company might feel (possibly justifiably so) that their jobs will be put at risk if the BPM implementation is successful.  This is different from your typical app development where the stakeholders and project participants typically want the project to succeed.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;Another factor to consider is that there are usually interfaces to other systems e.g. accounting.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt; The following really are essential for a successful implementation:&lt;br&gt;   *A step by step process&#xA;    so as not to overextend the organization (try to avoid a 'big bang' changeover), &lt;br&gt;&#xA;    *Early involvement of users&#xA;    with simple tools so that the results are supported and in the end are accepted &lt;br&gt;&#xA;    *Inclusion of IT-people&#xA;    so that the integrations are technically feasible&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    *Inclusion of a process manager&#xA;    who has a general overview&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    *Assertive project management&#xA;    and clear statements from management so that everybody is pulling together.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;So you need to have small incremental measurable improvements, as is typical in Agile, but not to lose sight of the bigger picture. Getting a small group from the client company as early adapters is usually a good step, as you can use a more Agile approach in this context.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;You should also consider using Agile methodologies in the design stage  - (try replacing 'software' with 'design documentation' in the Agile Manifesto) - so, lots of iterations of the design process with small incremental improvements and granularity of detail before starting to actually configure/customize the BPM software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8614" LastActivityDate="2014-10-17T13:35:12.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12489" CreationDate="2014-10-17T14:35:29.757" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I did this for a few teams, I bought really large magnetic white boards (the high quality kind that don't suffer from marker burn-in)  I believe these were 12ft x 5ft (3.5m x 1.5m).  You can then also purchase either electrical tape (comes in colors) or &quot;chart tape&quot; (which can create much thinner lines)  Then you can lay out your board as you want.  Neither tape leaves a residue, so easy with 10 min of work to change the layout.  The magnetic nature of the board is great in general as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: We also had &quot;movable&quot; whiteboards that could be unhung, moved to a different conference room then rehung.  For those, we created things like a &quot;risk board&quot; where we drew in permanent marker on those boards for the background then in dry-erase for the variable data this worked well and the Sharpie will actually come off (draw over with dry erase, then wipe off) but since these layouts didn't change much, we were okay with the permanent nature of the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: This is an &quot;expensive&quot; option.  I think the magnetic whiteboards were $850 each (we bought one for each team) and the movable were about the same, but much smaller (figure 3-4 for each team)&#xA;Note2: This lasted about 6 months where the managers were &quot;doing everything by hand&quot; to become familiar with the process.  After a few months they knew the process well enough to know what to look for in a tool.  Then, we went SW and never looked back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ymmv&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2014-10-17T14:35:29.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12483" CreationDate="2014-10-17T16:50:05.333" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I address this topic in detail in my upcoming book: Agile IT Organization Design.&#xA;In brief:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cross-functional teams are indeed the way to go to reduce cycle times and improve business agility&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Traditionally, a functional organization is seen as more cost-efficient since it affords greater utilization of specialists across several teams. However, this reduces responsiveness.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also traditionally, a functional organization is seen as the best way to nurture the competency. You allude to this in your question (Does it offer more opportunities to learn from team members working in the same field?). However, cross-functional teams address this using communities of practice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you seen the Spotify videos on this topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://labs.spotify.com/2014/03/27/spotify-engineering-culture-part-1/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://labs.spotify.com/2014/03/27/spotify-engineering-culture-part-1/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2247" LastActivityDate="2014-10-17T16:50:05.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12490" CreationDate="2014-10-17T16:58:57.297" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;You need a full-time dedicated Product Owner for the Scrum teams&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one of my previous assignments, as the Scrum Master, I worked with a group of Product Managers similar to what you describe. Also, the Product Managers had many other priorities and so getting requirements clarifications or Customer Acceptance Testing (CAT) from them in a timely manner was hard. Each of the four Product Managers lobbied for getting more of the dev team's time for their features, similar to what you describe. However, my situation was better than yours in two aspects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The lobbying happened in a Roadmap or Backlog Grooming meeting without the full dev team present. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Luckily one of the Product Managers was senior and could make the final call when it got contentious. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After doing that for more than a year, we got smarter and appointed a full-time dedicated Product Owner (for 3 Scrum teams). The Product Owner worked offline with the different Product Owners and fed the resulting unified  priorities to the dev teams. The Product Owner also sat in the Sprint Planning meeting as well as was available to the dev team to clarify requirements across the table and do CAT testing at short notice. The improvement in team productivity and morale was dramatic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on this experience, in my opinion, your considered solution won't work. At a minimum consider implementing 1 and 2 above. Better still name a full-time dedicated Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-10-17T16:58:57.297" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12490" CreationDate="2014-10-18T09:06:56.120" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does the Agile community have recommended processes for a single Scrum Team managing tasks coming in from multiple backlogs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sure: &lt;em&gt;don't do it.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multiple teams can work from a single Product Backlog, but never the other way around. A single team working from multiple Product Backlogs isn't Scrum, isn't agile, and is extremely unlikely to work at &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; scale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, determine whether you have a single unified project or many separate (although possibly related) projects. Once you nail down that critical datum, you can redesign your project management processes accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Product Backlog Must Be Unary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within the Scrum framework, there is always a a one-to-one relationship between:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a project and a Product Backlog;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a Product Backlog and a Product Owner;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a Scrum Team and a Product Owner;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a Scrum Team and a Product Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there are ways to scale Scrum across multiple teams and projects such as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://guide.agilealliance.org/guide/scrumofscrums.html&quot;&gt;Scrum-of-Scrums&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://scaledagileframework.com/&quot;&gt;SAFe&lt;/a&gt;, your Scrum implementation has gone off the rails if you are funneling more than one Product Backlog directly into a single Scrum Development Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Unified Project: Many Stakeholders, One Backlog&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation you're describing, where there are many stakeholders with different agendas, is actually quite common. Assuming that you have a single project with a reasonably-unified aim, the correct way to deal with this within the Scrum framework is to treat each of these business interests as stakeholders, and allow the Product Owner to manage a unified Product Backlog in whatever way seems most appropriate to balance the interests of the stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner can use techniques likes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/theme-scoring&quot;&gt;Theme Scoring&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/relative-weighting&quot;&gt;Relative Weighting&lt;/a&gt; to assist the stakeholders in balancing their interests, but the singular Product Owner ultimately creates a single, sequenced Product Backlog for the Scrum Team to work from. This is absolutely fundamental to the framework, and is not negotiable if you want to call what you're doing &quot;Scrum.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Multiple Projects, Multiple Teams&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another fundamental concept of Scrum, and agile frameworks in general, is that multitasking is bad because it creates task-switching overhead and reduces throughput and effectiveness. A project is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=define:project&quot;&gt;generally defined&lt;/a&gt; as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;an individual or collaborative enterprise that is carefully planned and designed to achieve a particular aim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all of the business units are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; working towards the same unified aim, then you don't have a unified project; you have &lt;strong&gt;multiple projects&lt;/strong&gt;. Multiple projects require that you sequence your projects through one team, or distribute the projects across multiple teams. Either way, you should organize your project teams and project management framework to align with the reality that you don't have a single, cohesive project; pretending that you do will not &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipstick_on_a_pig&quot;&gt;put lipstick on the pig&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-10-18T09:06:56.120" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12483" CreationDate="2014-10-18T21:55:57.587" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three independent questions in your question and so let’s attempt to answer each one of them one at a time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your first question – &quot;Are there reasons why companies prefer this type of structure?&quot; - has two Reasons depending on the kind of organization you are dealing with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reason 1 – Organizations / Managers who believe in the idea of focus and very little multi-tasking.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These breed of organizations / managers / leadership believe that every time you perform a task switch you lose out on time and efficiency. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These folks would strictly advice against multi-tasking. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000022.html&quot;&gt;Joel Spolsky&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://tinyurl.com/avoidmultitasking&quot;&gt;Scott Berkun&lt;/a&gt; are from this school of thought and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thousandtyone.com/blog/ThePerilsOfMultitaskingInSoftwareDevelopmentAndLife.aspx&quot;&gt;so am I&lt;/a&gt; . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few organizations take this forward and prefer specialized teams where each person is doing just one function and doing it really well without any deviations or indulging in cross functional tasks or even multiple tasks of the same kind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case of these companies the underlying intention is to keep the focus of the team on one thing and cultivating serious specializations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reason 2 – Organizations and Management which is built of the foundations of insecurity.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This breed of organizations / managers / leadership believe that employees are replaceable cogs in a larger organizational machinery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each part of a machine performs one and only one function and is replaceable with another part that performs that function. Cross function teams who see their work as art with a passion to excel in more areas than one will make this breed of organizations / managers very nervous. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you ask me, 8 / 10 companies who prefer rigidly separated departments compared to cross functions do so because they have a culture and management built around the idea of insecurity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course there are some who genuinely want to encourage focused expertise but those organizations are hard to come by. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now on to your second question - Does it offer more opportunities to learn from team members working in the same field?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes it does if the intent is to build teams around focused talent and very little cross functional task switching. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if these rigidly separated departments are built with the intentions of turning employees into cogs, learning opportunities are going to be very few and people are mostly going to act as automatons doing their tasks in a for-loop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moving on to third question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I've especially seen this in agencies where people are involved in many projects simultaneously. Are there environments where cross-functional teams are a bad idea?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well if people are involved in multiple projects simultaneously, there is very little attempt to avoid multi-tasking. In most of these cases I would think that Reason 2 I talked about applies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you are someone writing a specialized module that controls an aircraft or a defence submarine and that’s all you've done for the most part of your life, I would invariably prefer cross functional teams compared to rigid department. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multi-tasking can still be avoided by ensuring that folks only have one thing on their plate at a time but they can work on multiple areas or functions one at a time helping both them and the team grow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learning in a cross function team tops learning in a specialized team in most day-to-day cases.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8143" LastActivityDate="2014-10-18T21:55:57.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12459" CreationDate="2014-10-18T22:29:17.677" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To be blatantly honest, if your project has a non-technical project manager who is not very strong on the business logic or functional aspects of the project and is also involved with other projects, his involvement in the project should be no larger than that of managerial tasks – which is a nicer way of saying – &quot;Getting the crap out of your team’s way and letting you and the development team focus on actual work&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He could:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attend never ending business meetings and brief the development team and you about the relevant stuff in 5 minutes thus freeing the team (and you) to focus on doing real developmental work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Help maintain time-sheets and project plans and update these meticulous so that the rest of the team doesn't have to file &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TPS_report&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TPS reports&lt;/a&gt;. :) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do all other non-technical documentation that no-one in the team is interested in doing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Catch up with you and the team informally and help the team get what they need to do their work (servers, licenses, hardware, pizzas, coffee etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Promote the team and the work that the team is doing to rest of the business. Positive vibes and perceptions about the project and team go a long way in making the project successful. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thousandtyone.com/blog/BuildersStoryTellersAndWhinersPart2.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Story-Tellers&lt;/a&gt; are just as important as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thousandtyone.com/blog/BuildersStoryTellersAndWhinersPart1.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Builders&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With managers who are non-technical or playing a non-technical role, the best ones know how to get out of team’s way, keep problems out of the way of the team, show empathy, create a positive vibe and perception about the project and the team, get the team what they need to get their work done (servers, licenses etc.) and allow the development teams do the real work with undivided focus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Steve Yegge describes in his legendary yet controversial post, &lt;a href=&quot;http://steve-yegge.blogspot.in/2006/05/not-managing-software-developers.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;any other attempt by non-technical managers to manage programmers can be dangerous&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you didn't click on the link above this:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://steve-yegge.blogspot.in/2006/05/not-managing-software-developers.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://steve-yegge.blogspot.in/2006/05/not-managing-software-developers.html&lt;/a&gt; is a must read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8143" LastEditorUserId="8143" LastEditDate="2014-10-18T22:45:06.277" LastActivityDate="2014-10-18T22:45:06.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12450" CreationDate="2014-10-19T00:28:09.767" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see two problems, and you've identified one of them yourself: nobody has technical oversight of the system as a whole. Things are breaking in integration because nobody is thinking about the whole system until that point. The other is that your people appear to be functioning as a collection of solo developers, rather than as a team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfamiliarity with Django is a bit of a red herring. A bigger problem is that your team doesn't have enough familiarity with the code you yourselves are writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your developers don't know the APIs that will break things if they are not respected, or the assumptions in the design that will break things if they are violated, or the approaches that other people have already taken to solve similar or related problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Programmer's Documentation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first two can be documented, in the code itself and/or in a developers' guide. Use a tool like &lt;a href=&quot;http://sphinx-doc.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sphinx&lt;/a&gt; that can auto-generate documentation from properly-formatted docstrings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing tests that focus on the APIs is a simple practical exercise that will both start to develop that knowledge (if you have everybody do some of it) and will help prevent some of the integration problems you're having (if you mandate running these tests before commit).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Code Reviews&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the third, you need to get everybody's eyes on more code than just their own. Start requiring code reviews for any change that is non-trivial. Use an online tool like ReviewBoard or GitHub's pull requests that let reviewers make comments inline, as well as general comments. Make sure people post code for review when it is in &quot;first draft&quot; stage rather than &quot;polished and finished&quot;, and focus discussion on how and why things were done a certain way, pros &amp;amp; cons of different approaches, rather than on style and adherence to coding standards. Set expectations that the outcome of the review may include significant rewrites, if a better approach is identified during review, and that blocks of code that confuse reviewers should be commented with explanations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully your team realizes they are inexperienced with the technology they are using, and want to improve their skills. Pitch the code reviews as an efficient way to build up and share knowledge (and avoid like the plague anything that smacks of competition or shaming). Make sure they understand that regular reviews are &lt;em&gt;part of&lt;/em&gt; their job as developers, not an optional addon. If your people are charging or tracking work for each feature, they should charge the review work for the feature under review: that will also help with a sense of team ownership of the whole product. Eventually, you should start to see some common approaches to problems emerge, as your devs start to recognize that &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; problem is similar to &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; one that was implemented in the last build, and can be worked in a similar way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Planning Poker&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend you do something similar up front, too. You didn't say anything about the process by which features are assigned to developers, but bring that into a team process as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My team has found that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_poker&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Planning Poker&lt;/a&gt; is even more valuable as a structure for technical discussion than it is for its nominal purpose of estimating effort. It gets us all talking about the scope and complexity of each task before we try to estimate it; then when estimates vary, it is often because of differences in approach that get discussed. This will help with your problem of individual devs implementing the first approach that comes into their heads. It will also help with the code reviews, because all your devs will have been in on the prior technical discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that your people are still inexperienced with the tech you're using, make sure you circulate the list of tasks to be estimated a week or two in advance, to give people a chance to get familiar with the feature request and read up on possible approaches in advance of the game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once all the tasks have been estimated, I typically let my team divide the work up among themselves, as long as the effort and the high priority tasks are evenly spread. (Of course we may reallocate as the development cycle continues, if it turns out that some work took more or less effort than estimated.) Again, avoid anything that smacks of competition or shaming. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;System Oversight&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These two practices will gradually help your devs be aware of the big picture and collectively perform the necessary system oversight, but it will take time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the meantime, if possible, I would consider identifying one or two people in the team who are good at thinking systemically and whose expertise is generally respected, and task them with providing system oversight: understanding the architecture &amp;amp; APIs, and identifying and curating common approaches to common problems. This person should participate in all code reviews, if possible; not as the lead reviewer (that would undermine the goal of spreading knowledge and responsibility), but at least as a final reviewer to raise any system-related issues that weren't already identified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team lead can do this if s/he has time; the people who were involved in the initial design would also be logical candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you engage in code reviews and planning games on the new project from the getgo, there will likely be less need to explicitly task someone as system architect/curator. On the other hand, given the problems you've had in the past, it might be worth doing anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tests and Retrospectives&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definitely build your team a standard set of tests, including integration tests, that are run every night and that every developer can run routinely while developing. Set expectations that every new feature should be delivered together with new tests, and that developers should test before committing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Retrospectives after each build/delivery/sprint are an essential element of continuous process improvement. I like to bring goodies to these, to show appreciation and set a relaxed atmosphere. As team lead, I start off by asking the general questions, &lt;em&gt;What worked well? What didn't? What do we want to change about our process next time?&lt;/em&gt; Then I mostly just take notes (on the projector so everyone can see) and facilitate the discussion and decisions. It's important to identify the good stuff as well as the bad, and it's okay to have some griping about stuff that didn't go well as long as you also then get some proposed solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are more structured approaches to retrospectives out there that I haven't tried, though they look interesting. But this very basic approach has worked well for my team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(BTW, I lead a small team that developed and maintains a medium/small Python Django web application. We were inexperienced with Django when we started. We have used everything I've recommended here.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2014-10-19T00:28:09.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9702" CreationDate="2014-10-20T13:31:43.480" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Assessments/Professional-Scrum-Master-Assessments&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Professional Scrum Master&lt;/a&gt; (PSM) exam is not straight-forward at all. You can study all of the materials, have tons of hands-on scrum experience, and still not reach the 85% mark. Most of the questions are highly subjective and support is unresponsive. The forum is full of theoretical debates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you aren't sure of the answer they're expecting, you won't get it without a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_8-Ball&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Magic 8-Ball&lt;/a&gt;. For me, a total waste of money. Luckily, I have an awesome job, so pass or fail this PSM certificate from Scrum.org really delivers no value or holds any weight. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck to anyone pursuing it, but as a manager who is heavily involved in the hiring process I stopped considering it. Just my two cents!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13360" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-10-20T19:26:39.847" LastActivityDate="2014-10-20T19:26:39.847" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12483" CreationDate="2014-10-21T14:03:33.770" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a big fan of cross-functional teams, and I insist upon them when resourcing an Agile project, but in my experience they aren't without their drawbacks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, it's very difficult to find software developers who excel at both server-side programming (Java, ESBs, Database Design) and front-end web development (CSS, AngularJS). Throw in some DevOps requirements and you're looking for a bit of a unicorn. That doesn't mean they don't exist, but the pool of talent I have to draw upon is much smaller and it usually means sacrificing the front-end skills a little.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could argue that this is more of an architectural problem though. Perhaps if the software stack was Javascript all the way down (eg, NodeJS and AngularJS) then I would only need to hire good Javascript developers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, having a cross-functional team has dramatically improved the overall efficiency of the development and quality of the code. I've also found the developers to be significantly more invested in the project as a whole. However, there are some downsides and I think these need to be considered before just accepting the concept as dogma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1537" LastActivityDate="2014-10-21T14:03:33.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12504" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-21T16:56:51.777" Score="3" ViewCount="131" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new to software engineering and looking for someone with agile experience to help me understand what the recommended practice is and why. If this question can be related to a better site please note that site please.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13368" LastActivityDate="2014-10-23T20:05:00.277" Title="What is the recommended practice for adding and organizing technical debt for a project?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-10-24T03:15:05.050" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12504" CreationDate="2014-10-21T18:56:27.543" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technical debt is not really &quot;added&quot; to projects (or rather products), it just accumulates like dust or mould if not taken care of. Technical debt is basically undone work, like not cleaning up the dishes after cooking. You can get away with it for a while, but the longer you keep it, the more it costs to actually get rid of it, and the more it slows you down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the recommended ideal approach is not to let technical debt accumulate, rather do the cleanup right away whenever it is required. In software, cleanup is called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_refactoring&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;refactoring&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. If you are living in a less than ideal world like most of us here do, technical debt is prone to accumulate though every now and then. So one should focus on dealing with it regularly, in small but frequent steps, rather than trying to resolve it in a large chunk at once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10244" LastEditorUserId="10244" LastEditDate="2014-10-21T19:04:58.187" LastActivityDate="2014-10-21T19:04:58.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12504" CreationDate="2014-10-22T10:35:19.873" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;On some projects, you inherit several thousands of bug reports. It can be daunting if you attempt to encompass all of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The best way is to go forward: You can develop new features, but make sure you don't repeat the same mistakes - Do include enough time for clean-ups and refactors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Practice the &lt;a href=&quot;http://galzellermayer.blogspot.fr/2013/05/0-bugs-policy.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Zero Bug Policy&quot;&lt;/a&gt;: At the end of each release, either you still have bugs and you postpone the release, either you close all bugs as &quot;Won't fix&quot;. Please read the linked article, it says a lot about 1,000-bugs long backlogs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're given a project with enough slack time to look at the technical debt, it's not a good sign. The added value of your work may be difficult to demonstrate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You should prioritize user stories according to their value and estimates. If a user story includes a technical debt item, you'll have time to refactor. If a technical debt item isn't linked to a user story, it doesn't have any value to improve it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've regularly worked on projects with more than 3,000 open bugs and we just ignored them and closed old ones regularly. Those who care about those bugs may reopen them in time, but most probably most of them are long forgotten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12019" LastActivityDate="2014-10-22T10:35:19.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12511" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-22T20:04:07.253" Score="2" ViewCount="9437" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are already using Jira to visualize the work of ~30 people, and it's being rolled out to other teams too, so this number will increase dramatically.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the enhancements we need, is to be able to tag a ticket as blocked - and to be able to collect the blockers at the end of a month (or week, or whatever), and discuss them in a retrospective, for the purpose of spotting trends and solving blocker clusters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way I've come up with, is to create a new issue type called &quot;Blocker&quot; and to log new blockers whenever needed.  This lets me put as much detail as I want into the blocker, and it also lets me measure their lead &amp;amp; cycle time.  There's a gaping hole with this approach though - how do I make the blocker look attached to the related project ticket?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there some other way I'm not thinking of?  It would be ideal if we could put some kind of indicator on an issue in Jira-Agile, to highlight it as blocked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3554" LastActivityDate="2014-10-29T17:26:26.550" Title="How to use Jira to indicate blockers in a Kanban system?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12511" CreationDate="2014-10-22T21:53:29.117" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few ways you could do this in Jira.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You could change the priority of the task to &quot;Blocker.&quot; You would see the ticket in the kanban as a blocker with the blocker task icon. Later search for tasks of that priority within the period applicable for your retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you do not want to change the priority you could add a label to all the blocked tickets. That is not visible quickly in the Kanban board, but will show in the details on the right. Search is easy, just specify the blocker label.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your team members should probably be indicting which tickets block others already with the &quot;Issue Link&quot; field, but that could be another mechanism of doing this. Like the label, it alone isn't immediately visible on the kanban board, but it can be see in the details pane. Unfortunately relying on this field alone can be a little tricky to search for, there is support with the JQL-pro add-on. Use &quot;linkedIssuesHaveStatus([blocker])&quot;  See the last few answers &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3918255/jira-searching-issues-by-issue-links&quot;&gt;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3918255/jira-searching-issues-by-issue-links&lt;/a&gt; for other ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13383" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T11:33:46.223" LastActivityDate="2014-10-22T21:53:29.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12429" CreationDate="2014-10-22T22:14:38.493" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not use TFS, nor do I have access to the tool, but from looking at the help page. It appears you specify a &quot;flat-list query&quot; that queries completed tasks and visualize that with a &quot;stacked bar chart&quot; while perhaps specifying size in the &quot;Values&quot; field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ref: &lt;a href=&quot;http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn407521.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn407521.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13383" LastActivityDate="2014-10-22T22:14:38.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12514" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12517" CreationDate="2014-10-23T06:39:53.683" Score="16" ViewCount="5630" Body="&lt;p&gt;If at that time, development team is currently at max WIP, then there's an urgent task like critical bug that need to be fixed immediately, do we need to violate the max WIP and allow to do work more than max WIP temporary until that task is done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12230" LastActivityDate="2014-10-25T01:01:24.447" Title="In Kanban, what should we do about an urgent task?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12514" CreationDate="2014-10-23T16:58:05.277" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on how often this happens, you could consider defining your Kanban board by 'class of service' - where you can use the Class of Services defined by David Anderson in his book: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0984521402&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for your Technology Business&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might consider all of the classes of service - Standard (normal work), Expedited (customer or other interrupt driven work), Fixed-Delivery Date or Intangible (such as refactoring work) - or you could take a subset.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you do that, you can define WIP limits for each lane separately.  A common practice - depending on organization/ team size - is to limit WIP of the Expedite lane to just 1 - which communicates to your stakeholders and to the team itself, that you will not accept more than 1 urgent task at a time.  Dennis Stevens has written a great &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dennisstevens.com/2010/06/14/kanban-what-are-classes-of-service-and-why-should-you-care/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt; post about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Dpqo2.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, you should think about using 'blockers' on cards your team is currently working on to show that some card(s) got blocked when the people working on those cards got diverted to working on the Expedited card.  This can provide some great analysis on your team's interrupt driven work and its impact on regular work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have any other questions on Kanban, I'd definitely recommend the book - and you can also find some great information on our &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.swiftkanban.com/kanban.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt; (David is an advisor to us) as well as our &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.digite.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastEditorUserId="8132" LastEditDate="2014-10-24T14:23:13.303" LastActivityDate="2014-10-24T14:23:13.303" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12504" CreationDate="2014-10-23T20:05:00.277" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is that there's no magic formula.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found however &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sei.cmu.edu/community/td2013/program/upload/TechnicalDebt-ICSE.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this document&lt;/a&gt; of the Construx guys (the same guys of the classical mistakes paper) in the Software Engineering Institute repo very rich to make my own definitions. BTW this is a &lt;em&gt;lite&lt;/em&gt; version of their Technical Debt Management approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope it's as useful for you as it was for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="823" LastActivityDate="2014-10-23T20:05:00.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12514" CreationDate="2014-10-23T23:01:53.010" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are facing a business-critical bug that needs to be fixed, you definitely have to break any kind of rules you have, including WIP limits. You are not going to jeopardize the whole business for the sake of the process and its rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a team I used to work with we called this a &quot;panic situation&quot;, not that we would actually panic. When a &quot; panic situation&quot; happened, the whole team usually stopped whatever they were doing to &quot;swarm&quot; around the new work item. The process was de facto suspended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong with breaking the rules in case of emergency. Now if you realize that emergencies are...usual, you might want to consider including them in your process. To do so you can, for example, permanently allocate some empty slot so that you won't have to suspend the normal execution of your process in case of emergency. This would help you keep the system in a statistically stable situation, which is what you want to keep a high level of predictability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4071" LastActivityDate="2014-10-23T23:01:53.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12514" CreationDate="2014-10-25T00:45:04.070" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disruptive requests are &quot;waste&quot; that can be accepted, managed, or removed. While the needs of the business must be served, every such request is an opportunity for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen&quot;&gt;kaizen&lt;/a&gt; and a chance to make sure that a recurrence is less likely in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How to Handle Urgent Requests in Kanban&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[If] there's an urgent task like critical bug that need to be fixed immediately, do we need to violate the max WIP and allow to do work more than max WIP temporary until that task is done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. In Kanban, WIP limits and classes of service should be &lt;strong&gt;agreements made in partnership with the business&lt;/strong&gt;, rather than something fixed by the framework. That means that when &quot;urgent&quot; work comes in, you should:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Consume reserved capacity.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use any pre-negotiated buffers, high-priority swimlanes, or Expedite queues that have already been set up, provided that this new request fits within the the reserved capacity. In other words, the card wall has reserved some slack for just this purpose, and you now use that capacity to fulfill the urgent request.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Review organizational agreements about WIP limits and classes of service.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is no Expedite class of service, or it is already in use, you should generally remind the business of the agreements about WIP limits and classes of service. You should also review the costs to the business of disrupting flow and cadence, and extending lead times, that are the natural consequences of out-of-band work. Sometimes it turns out that the &quot;urgent&quot; work item isn't really that urgent when carefully re-evaluated, and the business will accept the lead time of a standard class of service rather than disrupt the entire process.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Evict WIP to make room.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just because something is urgent doesn't mean there's actual capacity to deliver it. You have to &lt;em&gt;extract&lt;/em&gt; the capacity from elsewhere in your system. If the need truly &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; business-critical, and the business is therefore willing to absorb the costs of disrupting the process to ram something through, then ask which active WIP items should be suspended to make room for the urgent item.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Inspect and adapt (after the fact).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this sort of thing happens enough that it creates statistically significant perturbations in your flow over time, then you should adapt the process and the partnership agreements until the flow smooths out again. A one-off emergency can't be predicted, but &quot;routine emergencies&quot; are wasteful process problems that must be fixed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is value in a smooth flow and a predictable cadence. When the process is disrupted, the cost to the organization should be made visible on the card wall and through reported metrics. Since Kanban is based on agreements, part of that agreement needs to be an acceptance of responsibility &lt;em&gt;by management&lt;/em&gt; for the natural consequences of disrupting the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;When Nothing Else Works&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When necessary, you can also gently remind stakeholders of the following unpleasant (but unavoidable) reality:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Management is always free to disrupt a process, but the cost of disrupting the process is not &quot;free.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash; CodeGnome's Iron Law of Process Economics&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A healthy Kanban is done in full awareness of this truth. A dysfunctional organization typically ignores it. Perfection is not required; only a desire for &lt;em&gt;kaizen&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-10-25T01:01:24.447" LastActivityDate="2014-10-25T01:01:24.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12523" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-27T14:51:43.850" Score="0" ViewCount="519" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like in MS Project 2007, there was a button “reschedule”. We clicked it after entering actuals on activities. The “reschedule” button calculates activity’s remaining duration and changes it accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I dont see this button in MS Project 2010. How do we reschedule activities after entering actuals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13413" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-01T10:03:24.457" LastActivityDate="2018-11-01T10:03:24.457" Title="How to reschedule activities after entering actuals in MS Project 2010" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12523" CreationDate="2014-10-28T12:25:58.130" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the Project tab, under status date, there is an &quot;update project&quot; button.  Is this what you mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-10-28T12:25:58.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12526" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-28T18:06:36.223" Score="2" ViewCount="1045" Body="&lt;p&gt;How much detail should go into putting together a high level budget for a project charter? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, should I blindly accept the Suggested Budget for the Project before I even breakdown the tasks or the Planning Phase?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13419" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2014-10-29T20:45:42.763" LastActivityDate="2014-10-29T20:45:42.763" Title="High Level Budget for Project Charter" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12391" CreationDate="2014-10-28T18:49:28.533" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many paths you can take.  I started out as a developer, moved into senior developer/System Analyst roles, and then into more of a PM type role.  This occurred across multiple jobs over many years.  I obtained my PMP certification five years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend starting out in a developer role.  No matter what kind of project management you may do, it is good to have a base knowledge of the technical work involved.  Classic project management (i.e., by the book) dictates that the PM does not do any of the actual detailed work.  However in my experience and from what I learned from my PMP course instructors, that is not usually the case in the real world.  At a minimum, having the base technical knowledge will help you to communicate more effectively with developers, testers, DBAs, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you are established in a PM position, keep current on changes to industry standards, methodologies, etc.  If you find yourself in an environment which has become stagnant, consider changing positions to keep yourself and your career on track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7361" LastActivityDate="2014-10-28T18:49:28.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12526" CreationDate="2014-10-28T20:52:20.660" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is your alternative?  The process of estimating is all about iterations, beginning with a rough order of magnitude that has a rather huge positive and negative variation.  This value goes into the charter so you can get your project approved.  But there should be no expectation that the value given there would not change as further iterations and estimating are conducted.  The execution budget could be higher or lower than what was published in the charter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-10-28T20:52:20.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6635" CreationDate="2014-10-29T11:29:16.710" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Allow me to offer a different viewpoint, based on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.artofmanliness.com/2013/10/23/eisenhower-decision-matrix/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Eisenhower grid&lt;/a&gt; - priority is different from urgency.   Task priority depends on the consequences of failure.  Task urgency depends on the time remaining until options foreclose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Signing my timesheet is very high priority, but it is only high urgency on one or two days a pay period.  Telling my loved ones that I love them is always high priority, but is rarely high urgency.  On the  other hand as their birthdays approach, purchasing a gift becomes urgent. When I get home in the evening, if I don't put dinner on immediately, it won't be ready to eat before bedtime.  The task is urgent (because delay will foreclose options), but it isn't that important (If I don't cook dinner, we'll get takeaway, or go out, or just have a bowl of cereal).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Urgency is simple and mono-dimensional.  Priority is complex and &lt;em&gt;usually&lt;/em&gt; involves stakeholders.  My team tells me that the annual report is low priority, but my boss insists it is high priority.  The distance we travel on Thanksgiving is of moderate priority for me, but is of very high priority for my girlfriend.  Priority frequently involves soliciting the opinions of many stakeholders and making compromises. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2014-10-29T11:29:16.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12526" CreationDate="2014-10-29T16:24:35.467" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with David and would also say that (though I would hope the suggested budget was based on this information) you could look at similar projects to see what their final budget looked like. Also, if there is any Lessons Learned/Post-Mortem files look for budget related items for highlighting risk. (Plus any input that comes in as the Kick Off is prepared or after it is given) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Suggested Budget would in my mind have to be based on something &quot;semi-solid&quot; I would think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13426" LastActivityDate="2014-10-29T16:24:35.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12511" CreationDate="2014-10-29T17:26:26.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team uses the blocker tag:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/v5ubr.png&quot; alt=&quot;Flagged option in JIRA&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This flags the item on your Kanban or Scrum board with an easily visible flag:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jZkaS.png&quot; alt=&quot;Kanban item flagged&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13427" LastActivityDate="2014-10-29T17:26:26.550" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12063" CreationDate="2014-10-30T01:30:44.583" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, only two things are mandatory: (1) ship something every month that you think you can sell and (2) look at how you did it and try to improve at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;story points or hours?&quot; question has been hotly debated for 15 years. Many people report that merely counting the number of stories (neither story points nor hours) correlated better with long-term capacity than any other estimating technique or scale they'd used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still other people recommend throwing away cost estimates of stories, and instead focusing on completing the most valuable stories as soon as possible. When you get good at that, it matters much less whether Story 128 was a 2 or a 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question makes it sound like you'd prefer not estimating the cost of each story in hours before putting it in the sprint. So don't do it. I bet you it'll be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1243" LastActivityDate="2014-10-30T01:30:44.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12534" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-30T13:21:02.467" Score="1" ViewCount="1158" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to write an agreement with a company who is developing software for me. I want to make sure that if the company fails to develop software as agreed they will refund money I paid to them up to that point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have compiled the following sentence. Is this the best format to put the clause?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'In any unfortunate situation the 'company' fails to complete the project as outlined in the requirement document published by Mr.Mark. 'Company' should offer full refund of money paid upto that period by Mr. Mark'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5269" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2014-10-30T14:07:29.913" LastActivityDate="2014-10-30T14:12:25.587" Title="What is the best way to include a &quot;refund money&quot; clause in a project agreement?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;clients&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12534" CreationDate="2014-10-30T14:04:19.743" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, if the company is already developing software for you or if money has already been paid then you are probably too late.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Penalty clauses are fairly common, but you will find that your success with introducing this one comes down to risk. In effect, what you are asking the company to do is accept all the risk of failing to deliver to requirements. The company will, rightly, want to protect themselves from this risk and will probably push back hard on inclusion of this clause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason is that it is very difficult indeed to deliver 100% of requirements, usually because the requirements lack absolute clarity on every single point. So the company will ask you to specify with absolute clarity &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; what you want because, if they don't, they run the risk of you asserting &lt;em&gt;after the fact&lt;/em&gt; that they did not deliver to your specification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that not only will you get into a potentially damaging and costly analysis and specification cycle where every single detail and decision is considered, argued and documented up-front, the company will refuse to apply any kind of sensible initiative in the face of design problems that were not foreseen (and these are always present) - You will be asked to make an absolute decision on all design points, because if they don't ask you to do this they run the risk of not delivering &quot;what you want&quot;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will also get into a protracted discussion on definitions of Scope and Acceptance Criteria. For example as we all know, it is not possible to guarantee defect-free software, therefore it is possible and quite likely, that you will be expected to accept a level of defect in the system. This is quite normal. You will need to define exactly how much deviation from &quot;perfect&quot; you are willing to accept so that the company knows where they stand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that the only way you could achieve this would be to develop the specifications first then allow the company to estimate against the specifications. The only sensible arrangement for this is Fixed Price because otherwise you are agreeing to continue spending until the job is complete. However if you force them into Fixed Price they will assess the risk to their fee based on the clarity of the specification and you will likely face a heavily inflated cost to cover their uncertainty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;can both agree on the specification&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;never change your mind on any detail&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;agree a cost for the entire job&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;accept the cost of testing to the nth degree of detail to ensure compliance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... then they may agree to it. But I would never ever agree to this clause and I doubt they will!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your original question, if you absolutely want to proceed then you will need to find yourself a contracts lawyer to put the contract together using the right words. If you try to do it yourself you run the risk of not protecting your interests properly and in any case the company will probably insist on a formal contract and their lawyers will pick it apart to ensure they are adequately protected from risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2014-10-30T14:12:25.587" LastActivityDate="2014-10-30T14:12:25.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12536" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-30T21:13:05.950" Score="5" ViewCount="1812" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it OK to repoint the story at the beginning of the new sprint to reflect the size that we have now discovered it to be so our velocity is more accurate?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On rare occasions, our team will work a story we thought we broke down into a small, granular story, but it ends up taking the entire sprint and carrying over (it may or may not have an impediment on it). Can we assign a different story-point value to it to reflect the effort it actually took to complete?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an alternative, can we update the definition of done so that the story can be closed in the current sprint? I understand this is not ideal and could be abused so that everything closes at the end of a sprint, but I am talking about the stories where you know you have gone WAY above the original estimate of points and you don't want your velocity predictor to be skewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13439" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-10-31T15:06:24.480" LastActivityDate="2014-10-31T15:06:24.480" Title="What can we do with a &quot;mispointed&quot; story in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12536" CreationDate="2014-10-30T23:16:19.930" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMHO debating over whether or not to reestimate the story and how this affects your velocity is treating the symptom instead of the root cause. In the next retrospective (or even earlier, in a dedicated meeting, if this is really such a recurring problem), you should focus on why this occurs, and how to avoid it in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This signals a problem in your backlog grooming and sprint planning process (as you say this happens only rarely, which makes me assume that you do practice backlog grooming in general, nevertheless). You accepted a story into the sprint which was not yet understood well enough to be ready for development. You failed to identify in time a significant part of the work to be completed and now you have a huge story which is too big for the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it OK to repoint the story at the beginning of the new sprint, [...] or update the definition of done so that the story can be closed in the current sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories absolutely never should take up an entire sprint. But if you discover this mid-sprint, IMO neither of these options are really good. I think the best is to chop the oversized story up into smaller new stories based on your freshly gained understanding, rather than keeping it in one piece. Then you can reestimate each new story, prioritize them and decide how much you can handle in the current sprint. This is still messy at best, so at this point you may actually want to cancel the sprint in agreement with the PO and start sprint planning anew. It is a drastic measure, for sure. But your sprint is seriously messed up, so it may be better and more in the spirit of Scrum to bring the problem up to the surface and deal with it up front, rather than trying to shove it under the carpet by just readjusting your sprint backlog and pretending everything's back to normal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10244" LastEditorUserId="10244" LastEditDate="2014-10-31T09:27:16.973" LastActivityDate="2014-10-31T09:27:16.973" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12536" CreationDate="2014-10-31T13:46:50.953" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mis-estimates happen. Small variations in the accuracy of your estimates should be expected, and can be absorbed by your process if you aren't over-committing. However, large variations in accuracy or wildly inaccurate estimates are a process problem that should be addressed by the whole Scrum Team, &lt;em&gt;including&lt;/em&gt; the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, you may not have a well-articulated Sprint Goal. Managing estimates and backlog items in the absence of a defined Sprint Goal for each Sprint is an exercise in futility. Don't do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Identifying Invalid Estimates&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A single Sprint Backlog item should never be sized larger than about 2-3 business days. The rule of thumb is that each task on the backlog should be &quot;done&quot; or &quot;not-done&quot; in 1/2 day to 2 days, so you should have a good idea within a couple of days whether a story is on track or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the daily stand-up, stories that are slipping should be identified. In addition, your Sprint Backlog or Kanban board should clearly identify stories in progress that are stuck so that the team can address any impediments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum, like other methodologies, expects a certain amount of slack in your process to keep flow smooth. A &lt;em&gt;slightly&lt;/em&gt; mis-estimated story can usually be absorbed without fuss, but wild miscalculations require more disruptive techniques to manage them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an informal rule of thumb, if your Sprint burn-down is out of whack by more than 30%, or if you have a single critical-path story that's more than 50% over estimate, then it's probably worth escalating the matter. Even if the team recovers from the miscalculations during the current Sprint, it should be grist for the mill at your next Sprint Retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Handling Invalid Estimates&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An improperly-estimated story should be identified within 2-6 business days. Allowing a task to slip 200% without triggering &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; action or awareness within the team would just be silly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At that point, you should:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Determine whether the story is essential to the Sprint Goal.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, discuss pulling it from the current Sprint with the Product Owner. You can do this together so long as it doesn't compromise the Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Re-estimate the task.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the story is essential to the Sprint Goal, you should take 10-15 minutes with the team to re-estimate the story to determine if the story can fit within the current Sprint, with or without changes to the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Add capacity by trimming other scope.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your story is essential, but you have other stories that aren't, the Product Owner can eject the non-essential stories to trim scope. In addition, you may be able to trim scope from a variety of Sprint Backlog items &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; compromising the Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Request an early termination of the current Sprint.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the story is essential to the Sprint Goal, and sufficient scope can't be trimmed to finish the story within the current Sprint, then you should request that the Product Owner call an Early Termination to the Sprint, followed by a Sprint Retrospective and a return to Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Formally Re-Estimating Unfinished Stories&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any story that is not done by the end of a Sprint is returned to the Product Backlog for disposition by the Product Owner. The Product Owner may de-prioritize or re-scope the story, remove it from the backlog, or may choose to put it back at the top of the Product Backlog for inclusion in the next Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the story remains in scope for your next Sprint, then it should be re-estimated and decomposed again during the Spring Planning process, just like any other story. Hopefully, the Scrum Team will have a better handle on it the second time around, and the estimates and decomposed tasks should be more reliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a story makes the rounds a third time, then you have a bigger process problem than a single mis-estimated story. Fix that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-10-31T13:46:50.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12536" CreationDate="2014-10-31T14:08:13.443" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Software work is not fully predictable&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@Péter Török gave you a great answer. However, I would like to disagree with one aspect of what he said, &quot;You accepted a story into the sprint which was not yet understood well enough to be ready for development. You failed to identify in time a significant part of the work to be completed...&quot; He seems to expect that you can fully predict the work during the sprint planning and there should be no surprises. Not really!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Software development, by its very nature, is part R&amp;amp;D and is unpredictable. This is the very reason why we practice Scrum - with its transparency and inspect/adapt cycles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the relevant extract from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#artifacts-sprintbacklog&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Development Team modifies the Sprint Backlog throughout the&#xA;  Sprint, and the Sprint Backlog emerges during the Sprint. This&#xA;  emergence occurs as the Development Team works through the plan and&#xA;  learns more about the work needed to achieve the Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As new work is required, the Development Team adds it to the Sprint&#xA;  Backlog. As work is performed or completed, the estimated remaining&#xA;  work is updated. When elements of the plan are deemed unnecessary,&#xA;  they are removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in my opinion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If it happens frequently, do everything that Péter suggested.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Exercise adequate due diligence to avoid such surprises. Two of the valuable practices that I can recommend very strongly are - doing a research story to size unfamiliar work and building a proof-of-concept to minimize risk in unpredictable work. If, after doing all that you do run into an issue, as you said on rare occasions, you can re-estimate the remaining work at the beginning of the next sprint, reprioritize and move on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2014-10-31T14:54:54.020" LastActivityDate="2014-10-31T14:54:54.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12536" CreationDate="2014-10-31T15:02:26.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This answer focuses less on &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/12538/4271&quot;&gt;what to &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; about improper estimates&lt;/a&gt;, and more on why you shouldn't tamper with historical estimates. You ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it OK to repoint the story at the beginning of the new sprint to reflect the size that we have now discovered it to be so our velocity is more accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short answer is &quot;no.&quot; This is a misunderstanding of what velocity is, and what it's for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ret-conning your velocity metrics is a project smell that indicates that velocity is being misused to set management targets, or to somehow justify the team, rather than as a planning tool that measures team capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Leave Inaccurate Story-Point Assignments Alone&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity is not a single number. Ideally, velocity is a statistical range over a trailing period. Velocity is useful for estimating overall team &lt;em&gt;capacity&lt;/em&gt;, but is not intended as a metric for tracking work-items completed or historical levels of effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, velocity implicitly measures the maturity of your estimation process, and should therefore not be retroactively tampered with. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you estimate a story at 1 point, but it results in a failed Sprint because it blocked all other stories and was never completed, &lt;strong&gt;your points for that Sprint are 0&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;em&gt;That&lt;/em&gt; is the number that must be averaged with your other Sprint totals to calculate velocity, not the 1 point (or 20 points) that didn't get done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you incorrectly estimate a story at 1 point, throw out 19 other points of work to complete the story on time, and then retroactively assign 20 points to the single story, you haven't really increased your capacity twenty-fold. You &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to show that your velocity for that Sprint was 1 rather than 20 so that you can &lt;em&gt;see&lt;/em&gt; the impediment in your project burn-down. This also ensures that when you recalculate your trailing average, you reduce your planned Sprint capacity to match your team's &lt;strong&gt;current ability to estimate&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if a story remains undone at the end of a Sprint, it can be re-estimated&amp;mdash;hopefully in a more accurate way&amp;mdash;during a future Sprint Planning session. That doesn't change the story points it was assigned in a previous Sprint (irrelevant), or the story points it subtracted from your project burn-down (zero). Instead, when it's peeled off the top of the Product Backlog at some point in the future, it will simply be a new estimate &lt;em&gt;for the current Sprint&lt;/em&gt; based on what the team knows at that point in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2014-10-31T15:02:26.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12541" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-31T15:28:55.380" Score="0" ViewCount="1283" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have gotten approval of our Project Charter and have a kick-off meeting scheduled already and I'd like to know what documents do I need to create prior to this kick-off meeting and/or what information is normally discussed at the initial team meeting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12224" LastActivityDate="2014-11-03T16:26:46.537" Title="Documents to create prior to Kick-off Meeting" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;&lt;deliverables&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-12-05T22:28:20.340" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12465" CreationDate="2014-10-31T17:51:17.577" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Damien,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could look at the overall objective of the project and then divide it into EPICs. These EPICs can have EPIC managers. The EPICs then get divided into Features and Components. There will be overlap from one team to another as they will be cross-functional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to look at Scaled Agile Framework for complex projects on longer durations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10373" LastActivityDate="2014-10-31T17:51:17.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12543" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-31T21:36:15.287" Score="0" ViewCount="199" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the questions in Scrum is What impediments have you encountered? But what exactly is an impediment? Can you give me an example?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13445" LastActivityDate="2014-11-01T13:16:36.467" Title="In Scrum, what is an impediment?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-11-12T00:42:23.203" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12543" CreationDate="2014-10-31T22:03:45.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Somethat that prevents you from doing the a task that you should be working on. Some examples: Broken computer. Don't have the (x) from (y) that I need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrummethodology.com/scrum-impediments/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://scrummethodology.com/scrum-impediments/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="158" LastActivityDate="2014-10-31T22:03:45.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12543" CreationDate="2014-11-01T13:16:36.467" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are referring to the third question in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-daily&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Daily Scrum&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; meeting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do I see any impediment that prevents me or the Development Team from meeting the Sprint Goal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This meeting is all about synchronizing the team's work towards reaching the &lt;strong&gt;Sprint Goal&lt;/strong&gt;.  Think about it: The Team &lt;em&gt;works together&lt;/em&gt; to reach the goal.  An impediment is &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt; that &lt;em&gt;could prevent&lt;/em&gt; the Team from reaching the goal, and it is very important to identify those early, and take actions if necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13452" LastActivityDate="2014-11-01T13:16:36.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12548" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12549" CreationDate="2014-11-02T19:38:11.630" Score="9" ViewCount="7011" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a consultant working for a consulting firm, planning projects using Agile/Scrum methodology can be quite challenging. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering we do not work full-time for our clients, it is hard to use Scrum to analyze velocity, make good time estimates and always keep work in the pipeline. It is possible to manage the user stories, assign the product owner / scrum master / dev team role or estimate using points, but the whole idea that we can't track our velocity makes us lose a big part of what Scrum is all about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you approach that challenge? Is it possible or recommended to put every client's user stories in one shared backlog, including our internal user stories (like Website development, looking for additional clients, developing in-house projects) and prioritize them depending on the budget or availability they have? This way, we could track our internal velocity, collaborate on multiple projects together and track our consulting firm ROI at the Product owner level (which could be the Practice owner?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8904" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2014-11-03T13:07:43.783" LastActivityDate="2014-11-04T13:40:29.520" Title="How can we apply Agile to a consulting firm" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12548" CreationDate="2014-11-02T22:06:02.773" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why do you think you need Scrum in the first place? You may want to start with Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using it, you will:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;get a clear stage by stage overview of your process/pipeline&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;identify the bottlenecks that prevent you from delivering projects in time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;identify the pace with which tasks flow through the process, which should help you with estimates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal (besides limiting work in progress) would be need to get an even &quot;work in progress&quot; surface over your stages. If you manage that, then your results will be predictable and repeatable. You can tweak your process over time and observe changes on your board(s) to see the feedback earlier rather than later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Travel time for one work item through the process would provide you an idea of how much you can accomplish in a given time, and how delays are going to impact you, as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your process is large enough, you may need to have a larger board for &quot;projects&quot;, and a set of smaller boards for &quot;tasks&quot; per stage - a view of the same process on a different scale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried this approach for a service-based team (comparable to a consultancy), and it proved quite useful in seeing what we can and cannot do, and what we should do to improve our delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13461" LastActivityDate="2014-11-02T22:06:02.773" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8157" CreationDate="2014-11-03T15:14:01.103" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quality Assurance would be your philosophy or mission statement, if you will, that explains how you assure that quality is part of your process.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quality Control would be the detailed methodology and steps taken which help ensure quality is built into your end result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, Quality Assurance would include activities that are taken to confirm that Quality Control measures are being properly executed.  In that respect, I think of QA as an audit of QC and I think of QC as sort of a gatekeeper to catch issues before the end product is &quot;out the door&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7361" LastActivityDate="2014-11-03T15:14:01.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12541" CreationDate="2014-11-03T16:26:46.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;So many of these sorts of questions depend on what govenance your company sets out but Marv said it best. Think about what you need to achieve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me (in my company) then the Project Initiation Document(PID) or Starter deck or whatever you call it is the main deliverable for this meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before I go into a kick off I'm probably going to know what the basic outline of the project is. Normally I'd know who's going to be involved (or at least what teams) and I'm going to have an idea of when it's needed by.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business Case / Terms of Reference - Why are we all here, what's the goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Timeline - What dates both internal and external do we have to work to&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Outline of Scope (Not just in and out but at this stage including what are the maybes)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team Structure (known so far) - Who's the team what do we all do?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start of the RAID Log - Risks, Issues, Assumptions &amp;amp; Dependencies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communication Plan - How are you going to report, what is expected of you and what do you expect from the team. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Approach - What do you know so far about how it's going to be delivered to the business / client&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me the kick off is really about getting everyone in the project a basic understanding of the shape of the product or service thats needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastActivityDate="2014-11-03T16:26:46.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12548" CreationDate="2014-11-03T19:26:50.353" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't get to hung up on following a framework. All the frameworks are the practices others came up with to reach the agile principles and values. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a step back and ask &quot;why&quot; you want some of the benefits of scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What principles are you trying to achieve? &#xA;What are the problems or pains you are trying to solve? &#xA;What are you trying to change? &#xA;Why are you trying to change it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From that place maybe you are better informed on why you could pick a few of the scrum/kanban/agile practices and see if you benefit from them. Example: Build a backlog and see how that informs your daily decisions as a team. Then pick another thing to change. The goal shouldn't be to force your environment to look like &quot;scrum&quot; but to solve the business problems you are facing in the best way possible. There are all sorts of ways you can achieve it, so why not look at what it is about scrum is going to improve your environment and then trying asking, what parts of scrum could get us that and what parts do we need to adapt to fit our context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1766" LastActivityDate="2014-11-03T19:26:50.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12561" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-04T05:27:51.483" Score="2" ViewCount="3561" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;We are trying to adopt Scrum in my current development team. One of the action items is to hire a ScrumMaster to help us in the Scrum implementation. But there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://flowchainsensei.wordpress.com/2014/11/02/scrum-master-role-wasted-human-potential/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;some&lt;/a&gt; articles suggesting it's a waste of money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to convince the management to hire a ScrumMaster, I need to know the benefits of having a ScrumMaster. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How will such help us in the Scrum implementation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13473" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2014-11-06T04:53:14.543" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T08:37:15.983" Title="What are the benefits of hiring a ScrumMaster?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12561" CreationDate="2014-11-04T10:20:14.283" Score="5" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Absolutely yes (at least if you believe the author ;-)&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note also that according to him,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the best thing we can do is to throw Scrum onto the garbage heap of history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you believe a short blog post showing no factual evidence to support his claims, then not just hiring a Scrum Master (SM) but the whole of Scrum is a waste of money. Hence stop adopting Scrum asap and go back to the good old process you previously used (or search the author's blog site for his silver bullet method).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;...Or else...&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can start to analyse the post a bit. To me his main point seems to be that the vast majority of existing SMs spend their time fighting fires, and don't have time to what he claims to be the main role of SMs, which would be interacting with outside parties and help optimizing their interactions with the Dev Team. IMHO the relevant quote from the Scrum Guide is taken out of context. Interacting with outside parties is definitely important, however it's only a part of what a good SM does. Other chores include&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;fighting fires, yes - aka removing impediments from the team's progress&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;educating people both inside and outside of the team about Agile and Scrum&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;coaching / mentoring team members for better performance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;solving conflicts within and without the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;helping the Product Owner and the team groom the product backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;shielding the team from the outside world so that they can focus on their work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ensuring the team can keep a consistent pace over the long term (e.g. they aren't overloaded)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's just what quickly came to my mind, surely a lot more could be added. It's certainly true that if an SM spends almost all his/her time doing only the first of these, it is a problem. However, in the best case it may be a temporary problem, and once the crisis is over, the SM may return to a more balanced activity pattern. On the other hand, if the crisis is permanent, I wouldn't say it's a problem with the role per se, rather with the environment where there are so many impediments and/or removing them is so time consuming that it takes up all of the SM's time. And if you have that problem, it is going to bite you with or without SM, and with or without Agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My firm belief is that a good SM is worth his/her price many times over, as without SM, the team may just never get even close to reaching their potential top speed and efficiency. If the SM can help the team double their productivity as well as customer satisfaction in, say, one year, was it worth that one extra salary? Of course, missed opportunities are hard to quantify as they never show up in the balance sheet the same way as salary expenses do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Recommendation&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to find a good SM with a proven track record and challenge him/her to bring the best out of your team. You may agree to establish a trial period of a few months, during which (s)he assesses the team and you assess him/her. After that, your SM may be able to predict more accurately just how much better your team can get, and based on that you decide whether you want to continue working together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Disclaimer&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this is not meant to say that Scrum is faultless - it has its limitations and problems for sure, and it may not suit all teams and all products. There are other Agile and Lean approaches as well, like Kanban or XP. I think what is important though is to understand that all of these require a big shift in both developers' and managers' mindset, communication and problem solving approaches, which does not come easy and fast. So my suggestion is to make your due research, pick the process which looks most promising to you, get a good coach to help you adopt it properly, and give it enough time to see whether and how it really works. In my experience, most of Scrum adoption failures are due to people not fully understanding the mental shift required and the depth behind its seemingly simple rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I am a Scrum Master myself, striving to prove day by day not being a waste of time :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10244" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T08:37:15.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12548" CreationDate="2014-11-04T13:40:29.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the other answers in that Scrum may not be the best for you and you need to identify your current problems first, then look for suitable solution approaches. To help this, I would suggest studying the Lean approach to software development, as Lean can be viewed as the wider foundation of all Agile approaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a nutshell, Lean is focused on&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;empowering the people actually doing the work to make as much of the decisions affecting the work and the process as possible, and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;eliminating all waste (of time, energy, information, ...) from the development process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find this quite a universal approach. Their recurring statement is that one of the best measures of quality for a software development organization is their average response time, i.e. the time it takes on average from the moment the client explains her new concept to when it is actually delivered as a new feature, ready to use and bring in cash. It seems to me that for a consulting firm like you describe, this may be a more useful measure than trying to apply velocity on an area it's not really meant to fit to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0321437381/ref=ox_sc_act_title_7?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;psc=1&amp;amp;smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; by Tom and Mary Poppendieck gave me a host of new insights and widened my horizon a lot, casting new light onto a lot of things I already thought I knew. I believe this book would probably help solving your dilemma too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10244" LastActivityDate="2014-11-04T13:40:29.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12565" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12566" CreationDate="2014-11-05T14:17:26.063" Score="2" ViewCount="277" Body="&lt;p&gt;My goal is to implement business application. I have 10 days to complete, and my estimation says that i need 40 days. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a team there are two programmers and one programmer-PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume one functionality takes 3-4 days to implement. So estimation makes us  around 6 functionalities possible, and also five is completed. We have to create 20 functionalities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to complete complete application in this circumstances?&#xA;If we assume that not - should we trim user stories for most important?&#xA;Or it is a dead march?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13378" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2014-11-12T00:40:41.243" LastActivityDate="2014-11-12T00:40:41.243" Title="Reduce Scope or Kill the Project?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scope&gt;&lt;deadline&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12565" CreationDate="2014-11-05T15:42:47.880" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, there are a few things important to note. &#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;#1 - Assumptions&lt;/strong&gt; - You assume one functionality takes 3-4 days to implement.  Has this been confirmed with your team?  Some tasks might be shorter (or even longer) depending on the work being done.  One of the first things you should do is get with you team and get rough estimates (is this 1 hour, 1 day, 2 days) - don't worry about getting precise. All your tasks could be impossible to complete in this time, you will find out.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;#2 - &lt;strong&gt;Prioritize&lt;/strong&gt; - You need to prioritize your user stories immediately.  Get your team working on whatever code needs to be completed first while you get with someone to prioritize work (unless you are empowered to do it yourself).  Work from top priority to lowest priority.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;#3 - &lt;strong&gt;DEMO/TEST&lt;/strong&gt; - in such a sort iteration you want to have whoever will be using this testing as you go, not at the end.  Take them rough drafts, print-offs, whatever you have to.  Make sure they understand and have buy-in with the product.  Nothing would be worse than going off for 10 days and finding what you developed didn't meet what was expected and then be way past the due day.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;#4 - &lt;strong&gt;Pushing your team&lt;/strong&gt; - this is probably debatable.  I believe in pushing my team to work overtime to achieve goals and necessary deadlines.  But that said, this only occurs once every few months and I make sure they are compensated for it.  If it is not a rare occurrence there is a bigger problem and I wouldn't recommend it.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;#5 - &lt;strong&gt;Time&lt;/strong&gt; - if there isn't enough time, then make sure your team is pulling work from top priority to lowest priority.  I would also push back against management and try to get a few extra days.  Understand why is this the delivery date, and do we have to deliver all of these user stories within that date?  Is there potentially a Minimum Viable Product you can deliver and have one or two more iterations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13490" LastActivityDate="2014-11-05T15:42:47.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12561" CreationDate="2014-11-05T20:22:08.833" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master should also a part of the Project Management organization&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Process and Communications Engineer&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master's deliverables should include agile measurement reports / charts that depict fine-grained aspects of each teams' work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;These reports should aid engineering managers, and possibly project managers, regarding where the employees on their teams can improve.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;These reports should reveal how the planning, estimating, etc processes can be improved, timebox-to-timebox, or in some other Kanban window&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is really a kind of 'human engineering'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Charisma &amp;amp; Tempo&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bringing someone for this role may be appropriate because no one on the related team has the charisma or presence to keep the meeting in order, moderate disputes, etc.  This personality characteristic is incredibly important for the role – regardless of whether you carefully word that fact to parties who may need personal development to not feel 'wounded' by hearing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Not a stand-alone role&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend that you &quot;hire for&quot; this role only if the person is thorough-integrated in the org.  If their job is only to 'scrum master' one or more teams, then likely this is a waste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4718" LastEditorUserId="4718" LastEditDate="2014-11-05T20:29:10.860" LastActivityDate="2014-11-05T20:29:10.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12565" CreationDate="2014-11-05T21:19:25.213" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you combine this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My goal is ready to use application for employers and employees. [...] The bad thing is that i have ten days to finish this application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;with this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We use something based on scrum, making everything in system as needed of working time evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then it's quite clear, that you have just one run. No sprints, no Scrum. Another matter, if you are generally using scrum and want to use it for the project. In this particular case, I would advise against it, and I'll explain it later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you combine this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have 20 user stories from our project managers and we have to achieve implementation of this goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;with this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We all are new to [...] technology and we have to do this in [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and add this on top:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I assume one functionality takes 3-4 days to implement. So calculating makes us 6 functionalities, and five is completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then it's also quite clear, that you cannot achieve the goal of &quot;completing everything&quot;. One can say, that it is highly improbable, however upsetting this may be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you should avoid assumptions and try to do rough estimates upfront. In such a short time frame, wrong assumptions can be devastating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to complete goal in this circumstances, which is completed application? Is it possible? [...] if we assume that not - should we trim user stories for most important?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your resources and time are limited. Hence your best option is to reduce the scope. While there are a couple of ways of doing that, combining them may give you better results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define a minimum viable product. Literally cut off &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; that is not mission critical. You can come back and revisit those parts later, after your deadline.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get a person, who is capable of prioritizing stories from the end user perspective, and arrange them in order of decreasing value.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start working on the stories from the top to the bottom.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What will happen in the end is you will, likely, not do everything. At the same time, you would have built a valuable &quot;demo&quot;, or a part of the final system, which will at least be usable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What matters in this case is progress tracking. Kanban will be the simplest way to do that, considering the small team and short timeframes. Make a goal of pushing stories through one by one: dev-test-done, as a production line. Preferable testing will start as soon as the first story is completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also want to sacrifice some quality, thus testing only the main paths and making sure other ones do not damage the data (it is probably OK if they don't fully work anyway).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13461" LastActivityDate="2014-11-05T21:19:25.213" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12570" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-06T02:59:33.990" Score="4" ViewCount="928" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of our projects get held up by waiting on client assets. Working under waterfall, we're often on many projects at once and can work on something else while waiting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We really want to do scrum &quot;by the book&quot; and have one team on a project at a time so we can really focus on those individual projects. But what happens when we get held up waiting on the client? In some cases, assets not provided by the beginning of the sprint could cause project backlog items associated with those assets to go back into the backlog in exchange for those that actually can be accomplished, but what about when it gets to the point where everything left in the backlog depends on those assets?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pausing on the project to work on something else would be very disruptive and the team would lose momentum, and waiting around doing nothing until the assets arrive isn't an option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T06:09:26.260" Title="How do you deal with client-related hold-ups in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;dependencies&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12571" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-06T07:52:29.817" Score="2" ViewCount="847" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know what is the role of the a Product Owner in a Scrum team. I already worked in many Scrum team as developer, tester. In all teams the product owner was always the guy that created the process, explained the business with UML or other modeling tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could we say that the product owner is in fact a business/functional analyst in Scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3687" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T18:56:41.807" Title="Is the a Product Owner the business/functional analyst in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12571" CreationDate="2014-11-06T08:57:45.680" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is the person accountable for the product backlog. She is responsible for maximizing the value of the product and the delivered work (the effectiveness).&#xA;Furthermore she is accountable for expressing the product backlog items and one way to do this is to use UML or other modelling tools. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bussiness Analysts or Functional Analysts or Product Managers are job titles and often when the Scrum Framework is implemented within a company, such positions are used for the Product Owner Role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Theoretically any position could be a Product Owner, as long as she can be accountable for the following activities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Clearly expressing Product Backlog items;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Ordering the items in the Product Backlog to best achieve goals and missions;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Optimizing the value of the work the Development Team performs;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Ensuring that the Product Backlog is visible, transparent, and clear to all, and shows what the Scrum Team will work on next;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;and, Ensuring the Development    Team understands items in the Product Backlog to the level needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13496" LastActivityDate="2014-11-06T08:57:45.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12570" CreationDate="2014-11-06T09:58:27.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, the client (or its representative, the Product Owner) is meant to work very closely together with the development team and be available practically all the time, precisely to avoid blockers like the ones you describe. This requires a close involvement and much more time and energy from the client's side, which may indeed be hard to understand and accomplish for a client used to waterfall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you haven't talked to the client about these issues, do it asap. Raise the general problem on the table and make them understand that it is their eminent interest to find a better solution, otherwise their own project will suffer, and that you both are working together for one common goal: to make the project successful. Be patient though, as it is probably not easy for them to rearrange their schedule and commitments. It may also be necessary for you to adjust your process to help the client help you. Adjustments may include&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;shortening or lengthening your sprint to intensify or reduce the level of needed client involvement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;arranging regular meetings with the client at specific preset days / times during the sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;adjusting the start / end date of your sprints to allow the client to participate in reviews more actively&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the worst case, if the client is unable to significantly increase their involvement, you may want to minimise waste of time and disruption to team flow by focusing on one project per sprint. So when there are not enough ready stories in project A to fill up your next sprint, you switch to project B for one or more sprints, then return to A once the necessary information is provided. I know it's not ideal, still this way at least you can work in an uninterrupted flow within individual sprints. For this to work well, you must strive though to fully complete all stories and leave the actual project in a consistent state at the end of the sprint (which hopefully you do anyway, in the spirit of Scrum).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10244" LastEditorUserId="10244" LastEditDate="2014-11-06T10:09:21.063" LastActivityDate="2014-11-06T10:09:21.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12575" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12576" CreationDate="2014-11-06T10:24:37.447" Score="1" ViewCount="1244" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've set some simple color formatting up to distinguish late, completed and future planned tasks on a project plan in MS project for ease of use for sponsors who just want to glance at the plan. The project is split into sub tasks, which have further sub-tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some reason, despite the summary roll up displaying just fine for the first 2 entered it is now failing on the 3rd entry and displaying as a task rather than summary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The summary seems to be 'sitting behind' the task on the gantt view but I've no clue why it is displaying as a task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure there is an obvious explanation for this but I'm no MS Project guru...&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bndz2.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Dmn44.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9155" LastActivityDate="2015-03-06T12:52:01.557" Title="Summary task in MS Project displaying as task on Gantt chart" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12575" CreationDate="2014-11-06T10:33:35.563" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Spotted it as soon as I posted. The summary formatting was set for Active only. Future dating caused the issue. Amended formatting to include planned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9155" LastActivityDate="2014-11-06T10:33:35.563" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12570" CreationDate="2014-11-06T21:10:36.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In some cases, assets not provided by the beginning of the sprint could cause project backlog items associated with those assets to go back into the backlog &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you have a problem with a backlog. The sole owner and responsible for the product backlog is a Product Owner. Therefore, you should work on this directly with him. While you can and should contribute to the backlog as well, it is neither your team's nor client's problem per se.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To work with backlog items effectively, you need a &quot;definition of ready&quot;. If it is agreed between the team and the PO, then at any moment in time PO can check, are there enough (or not enough) backlog items ready for the next iteration, and take action in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;what about when it gets to the point where everything left in the backlog depends on those assets?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If proactive backlog monitoring by PO is being done, and you still have under-populated backlog, then you simply do not have enough scope on that project to fill your capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have an option of taking another projects on, or helping your PO in preparing the backlog items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We really want to do scrum &quot;by the book&quot; and have one team on a project at a time so we can really focus on those individual projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you stand by that, you should spend your effort on improving backlog items, assisting the PO (and, by extension, the client). This should keep you busy, especially if you do just enough to keep your next iteration's scope topped up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pausing on the project to work on something else would be very disruptive and the team would lose momentum, and waiting around doing nothing until the assets arrive isn't an option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really have many projects with mostly empty backlogs, and you have to switch between them to avoid wasting time, then it looks more like a service, not a project development. In such case you are essentially performing occasional services to one or many customers. Maybe, you should consider other agile approaches, like Kanban, which will be better suited for that (having work-based view, not project-based one).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13461" LastActivityDate="2014-11-06T21:10:36.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12578" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12580" CreationDate="2014-11-06T21:50:18.383" Score="5" ViewCount="472" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Guide_to_the_Project_Management_Body_of_Knowledge&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PMBOK&lt;/a&gt; defines 10 knowledge areas, &quot;that are typical of most projects, most of the time&quot;. Some Scrum processes/artifacts clearly fit corresponding knowledge areas. E.g. Daily Standup is an implementation of Communication management and Backlog grooming is part of Scope management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can one claim that Scrum is fully covered by PMBOK knowledge areas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13500" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T06:12:48.050" Title="Does Scrum fit PMBOK knowledge areas?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;pmbok&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12570" CreationDate="2014-11-07T06:09:26.260" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well first off let's get rid of this notion of doing Scrum &quot;By the Book&quot;. Agile is about continuous improvement. It's about the core values and principles to doing software better. If you can look back at last sprint, month, release and say &quot;we're doing better than the last cycle&quot; then you're doing it right. If you look back and say &quot;we did everything by the book and the project didn't ship.&quot; then you're not doing it right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now stepping off the soap box I suggest turning this problem around. Right now you're focusing on the client and the projects (as well as getting tied up in  &quot;by the book&quot;). Instead focus on the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What will make them more the team more effective? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on what you've said so far, have you thought about a unified backlog for all your client projects? Instead of focusing your sprints on a specific project, focus them on what the team can do. You might end up working on three different client projects in a single sprint. Yes, Scrum talks about every sprint should be a &quot;shippable&quot; release. But is that serving the team? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the advantages of scrum is flexible requirements via a backlog that is constantly being groomed. So when a client gets there stuff together, you can more that work to the top of the backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're keeping the team busy, you're producing and the quality is good, then you're being  successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thought would be to move away from Scrum and go to a Kanban approach. Instead of team sprints you have WIP limits for the individual and the team and as each backlog item is completed you tackle the next one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T06:09:26.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12578" CreationDate="2014-11-07T06:12:48.050" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMI itself has made this claim. I don't have exact citations right now, however as a PMP, PMI-ACP and a Certified Scrum Professional I've been in many conversations around how the PMBok can support agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that PMBoK is a &quot;Body of Knowledge&quot;. That's pretty much a fancy way of saying &quot;Best Practices&quot;. The PMBoK is not a process or a methodology. It is designed to work with any project. Even today I lean on things I learned from the PMBoK in agile work I do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T06:12:48.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12581" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12584" CreationDate="2014-11-07T09:26:49.493" Score="5" ViewCount="258" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my current team of 3 dedicated testers and 3 dedicated developers we often find ourselves in a scenario towards the end of our sprint (usually the last 2-4 days of our 2 week sprint) where the developers have nothing to do yet cannot commit to any stretch goals because the testers are at full capacity testing the code written in the first half of the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have on occasion been asked to just commit to development work on a particular story but this feels wrong as it isn't potentially shippable at the end of the Sprint and we end up having a test only task for this story in the subsequent sprint. We have also tried asking the developers to test (this hasn't gone down well), but in any case the stretch task (based on the estimates) still won't fit into the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a feeling that this is a common problem in SCRUM but I can't any solutions to this. I would appreciate if anybody has any experience in dealing with this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13504" LastActivityDate="2014-11-18T21:40:55.173" Title="Test capacity prohibiting stretch goals" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-capacity&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11934" CreationDate="2014-11-07T11:26:09.253" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Coming from a similar sized company within the software development industry, producing similar IT projects for clients ranging from 2-6 months builds I have a good understanding where you're coming from. It sounds like you have good processes in place for managing your projects, which includes documentation processes, however the problem that I'm hearing is that these processes are not being &lt;strong&gt;enforced&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question, I believe the following documentation &lt;em&gt;(templates provided as download links)&lt;/em&gt; are essential for any project (regardless of size). This assumes that your proposal/costing document has been accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4380460/templates/yyyy.mm.dd%20Client%20Name%20SOW%20v1.0.doc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;STATEMENT OF WORKS (SOW)&lt;/a&gt; - this is a formal document that captures and defines the project requirements, deliverables, and timeline that you will stick to in order to deliver the specified work for a client. The statement of work should also include how success will be assessed. The SOW document comprises of the following sections:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Stakeholders:&lt;/strong&gt; list each of the key project stakeholders &amp;amp; their role/s in the projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Summary:&lt;/strong&gt; outline in 1 or more paragraphs, who the client is and what the project is about&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Success Criteria:&lt;/strong&gt; provide a summary of and list of the criteria that must be achieved in order for this project to be deemed successful. What does the client want to achieve, from which ROI for the project will be measured?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Requirements, Goals &amp;amp; Objectives:&lt;/strong&gt; List all the clients feature, functionality &amp;amp; design requirements. What are the project goals &amp;amp; business needs? What needs to be achieved as result of this project going ahead? Describe the key project objectives here.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Templates/Screens:&lt;/strong&gt; list the key website / app templates and screens here. Highlight any screens/templates that are Phase specific. For example if something is mentioned as a feature requirements but cannot but delivered within Phase 1 budget, then list it here as a Phase II feature request.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Functionality:&lt;/strong&gt; here you should list all the projects functionality in more detail. Make sure that you thoroughly think through each piece of functionality and if/how it would work within the overall project development. If it is an app development project, ensure that you have considered how both the online &amp;amp; offline functionality will work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Technical Requirements:&lt;/strong&gt; list all the technical requirements here&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4380460/templates/yyyy.mm.dd%20ClientName_ProjectPlan.mpp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PROJECT PLAN&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A Project Plan is a formal, approved document used to guide both the execution and control over the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project manager creates the project plan with input from the project team and key stakeholders. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The plan should be agreed and approved by the project team members and its key stakeholders. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you work in an agile manner like we do, then break down your project into Sprints (as per the template).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As the project progresses and things change the project plan should get updated accordingly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4380460/templates/yyyy.mm.dd%20Client%20Name%20Functional%20Specification%20v1.0.doc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FUNCTIONAL SPECIFICATION DOCUMENT (FSD)&lt;/a&gt;: A Functional Specification Document (FSD) is the document that describes the requested behaviour of the end software solution. Some comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Our FSD's cover all technical and functional aspects. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For every piece of functionality, try and provide details from both a Users point of view (i.e. User Stories) AND a Functional perspective. You will see in the template provided how we do this. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Think of everything when writing the document. Ask yourself what if a user does this? And then what happens? And then? This will help you get to the functionality 'endpoint'.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As your project changes, update the FSD. The FSD by the end of the project should be the software manual, which then gets used by your QA Testing team to test against. As the testers complete their QA, they should highlight the FSD section in a colour (we use green), so that the client can see progress during sprints as to what functionality is complete vs incomplete. By the end of the project the entire FSD should be green - meaning all functionality defined in the FSD is correct and has been implemented.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are more documents that you can use, but the above 3 are the absolute minimum for a smooth project delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8152" LastEditorUserId="8152" LastEditDate="2014-11-10T11:50:10.377" LastActivityDate="2014-11-10T11:50:10.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12581" CreationDate="2014-11-07T13:11:27.473" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum expects cross-functional team members, when developers do not help with the testing part of product backlog items, then they are not cross-functional. Everyone should focus on getting work done, its a team effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I get the feeling you guys are doing &quot;Mini waterfall&quot; in short iterations and pushing testing to the end. Its hard to turn around a culture to prevent mini waterfalls, but &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2012/january/a-sprint-is-not-a-mini-waterfall&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a Sprint is not a mini waterfall.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keeping tasks small will help if you have to keep seperate roles between creating code and testing. Testers can start testing after the first tasks are done. Trying using &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt; to define upcoming sprint backlog items to keep them small and testable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are always some tasks developers could do during any downtime:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write and extend automated (unit) test-cases coverage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules/spike.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;spikes&lt;/a&gt; for upcoming features in the product backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improve API documentation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possible solution for your problem is &lt;a href=&quot;http://eugenedvorkin.com/continuous-integration-strategies-for-branching-and-merging/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a branching strategy&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work in feature branches&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Merge features into a test branch&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Merge tested features into a release/sprint branch&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes sure that the release/sprint branch is always in a releasable state, and that it does not contain any unfinished work. At the end of sprint you release all finished work and you can continue with any unfinished work in a new sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2014-11-07T16:01:05.520" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T16:01:05.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12581" CreationDate="2014-11-07T13:14:57.890" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some things that we've found that help with this situation. Of course this relies on our definition of tester and developer, which may differ from what those roles do where you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ensure stories are being appropriately sized. It is easier to avoid the problem you discuss if your stories are truly stories rather than epics disguised as stories. If you are 4 days away from the end of your sprint and you have no backlog items that can be pulled in because they won't fit, then story size could be an issue.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have testers involved in stories from the start. Make sure that backlog grooming includes one or more of the testers to ask questions that the developers may not think about. When a story begins in a sprint, make sure to have a tester go through the story with the developer. The tester may not be able to perform their testing until the developer is done, but the tester can be planning the test cases that they will be running (or automating) and can think through the steps needed by those test cases.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have developers writing automated tests paired with testers. Testers are likely better at understanding what needs to be tested, but they can probably test things faster if they have a developer to help them automate them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Developers can address technical debt. Are there smaller bugs, refactoring, or optimizations that the developers can address without adding to the testers workload?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T13:14:57.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12571" CreationDate="2014-11-07T18:56:41.807" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Could we say that the product owner is in fact a business/functional analyst in Scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. While the Product Owner may perform analytical tasks, the role of Product Owner is significantly broader and more central to the process than the typical business analyst role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Product Owner (PO) Role vs. Business Analyst (BA) Role&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among other things, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28software_development%29#Roles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Product Owner&lt;/a&gt; &quot;negotiates priorities, scope, funding, and schedule[.]&quot; Compare this to less authoritative role of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_analyst&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Business Analyst&lt;/a&gt;, which typically will &quot;recommend solutions that enable the organization to achieve its goals.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner often has budgetary authority in the form of Product Backlog prioritization, and the role's ability to set goals and priorities for a project are generally much broader than the typical analyst's role of defining or refining specifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some Scrum teams may actually have business analysts as members of the team. On other teams, the business analysts may be extrinsic to the team, but work with the Product Owner or the Development Team as an interface to (or proxy for) the actual end customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you could technically appoint a BA to the Product Owner role, it would be a mistake to consider the two roles as functionally equivalent. In general, a Product Manager or Executive Sponsor would be a more comparable job title for the person assigned to the PO role. However, keep in mind that job titles (and job responsibilities) outside of Scrum's well-defined framework may vary widely between organizations, so your mileage in drawing comparisons may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T18:56:41.807" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12587" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-09T21:19:00.590" Score="1" ViewCount="113" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been asked to help a company review a software project that has been very very painful,  putting a lot of strain on the client relationship as well as between individuals as well as teams in the company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both based on research I have undertaken previously as well as various blogs I've read on the topic I intend to undertake various stakeholder interviews, attend the project sunset meeting and a sprint retrospective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have started conducting causal analysis focussing on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Specification: Quality/ambiguity, scope creep, documentation. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communication:  How were individual issues communicated? how well were the project teams included in the planning process? How did the distributed team (5 office locations - 12 people) affect communications.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resourcing and Planning: How well was the project planned in advance, how well were estimates met? Were people available when they were meant to be on the project? Did skills of the people match requirements?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Causes of Rework: How well were the individual team members qualified for the tasks they had to repeat? How long did it take for completed tasks to be tested and errors to be identified?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Complexity: How complex were the tasks? Eg. was there a need to include an architect to help a developer plan the design? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When conducting a project review are there any additional areas that you think I should be considering? Can you share best practice for soliciting information and communicating my findings in a practical and constructive way? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5031" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2014-11-27T16:10:54.067" LastActivityDate="2014-11-27T17:58:07.077" Title="Reviewing a difficult project" Tags="&lt;learning&gt;&lt;failure&gt;&lt;reviews&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12588" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-10T07:46:55.660" Score="3" ViewCount="1313" Body="&lt;p&gt;The higher management in most places seems to have a pigheaded tendency to avoid hiring more resources at all costs. The company has been growing in the last few years and a lot more functionality has been added to the product. The team size should also gear up to scale. In my case, every time I approach them on the subject of hiring more resources they give me one of the following answers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We cannot add more resources right now because we are in a financial situation (while the company reports a consistent double digit growth in profits)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The argument about improving existing resources so they scale up and become more efficient&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The philosophy about how we are &quot;passionate, relentless, courageous people&quot; who are so &quot;committed to our customers&quot; that we would &quot;gladly go over the extra mile&quot; to get our job done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My own leadership capabilities start getting questioned - that I'm not &quot;motivating them enough&quot; or they would &quot;stretch themselves for completing their work&quot;, or I need to find ways to increase efficiency, output. It's always something that I should be doing or the team should be doing besides hiring more resources.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way I can prove, on paper at least, that we need to have more resources?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="358" LastActivityDate="2014-11-25T22:01:43.817" Title="How can I prove on paper that we need more resources for our team?" Tags="&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12588" CreationDate="2014-11-10T12:58:17.490" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you truly need resources, whether it is human, financial, space, tools, etc, you will experience capability degradation.  That degradation will cause some unfavorable result such as quality, time, morale, employee turnover, and costs.  So the proof is embedded in your operations and / or project performance metrics.  You should be able to show special cause movement on your numbers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, there are too many organizations and leaders who are too quick to blame people--blame the manager, blame the team--and assume that someone else, another team, would perform in this exact same environment.  So despite the numbers, if your organization culture is like this, you may not get very far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, keep in mind that organizations tend to get fat and happy over time, meaning there are typically a ton of efficiency enablers untouched and there is a lot of resistance from existing teams to find them.  Denying resources that a team is screaming for often causes a team to adapt and evolve, returning to pre-change performance levels while maintaining pre-change resource levels.  Good leaders know this, too, so you really need to examine your current practices to ensure you have pulled every efficiency enabler lever you know how to pull.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-11-10T12:58:17.490" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12591" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-10T20:49:13.713" Score="1" ViewCount="120" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is quite a simple request.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a 150 line Gantt Chart showing project planning to FY end.  Approx 30 of the lines are dependencies with Finish to Start attributes.  I would like to run scenarios on the timelines similar to &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A loss of 20% resource will have the following impact on timing&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Doubling resource will have the following impact&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;If Dependency A is delayed by 2 months it will have X effect on the timing of the plan&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does any software allow one touch scenario modelling? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2014-11-11T13:15:55.807" Title="What is the best process to model planning estimates?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12588" CreationDate="2014-11-11T00:04:09.883" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt; you aren't selling the right thing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there a way I can prove, on paper at least, that we need to have more resources?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't look like your goal is to prove anything. Even if it was, it would be rather pointless: in most cases a person who you have proven a point to won't like you after that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You aren't going to get more resource by proving that your existing ones aren't enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The team size should also gear up to scale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why? What would happen if it doesn't gear up? &quot;More strain&quot; on an existing team is not, unfortunately, enough to trigger hiring. Until you dramatically fail, you are &quot;enough&quot; for the most real-life business cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would advise you to do, is to come up with the tangible value for the company in hiring new people. If bringing additional resources brings more value to the company, then it will be viewed from a different standpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &quot;having more resources will&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;increase customer satisfaction by reducing issue resolution time &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;improve product quality by doing better testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reduce time to market for new features by having more development capacity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also try very hard to make these quantifiable, rather than abstract, if you have some historical productivity data at hand. Once you have numbers, ditch your text and draw a simple chart showing, for example, improvement of quality of service depending on more resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, you should protect your other ends, like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The argument about improving existing resources so they scale up and become more efficient&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you have an improvement plan (remember, that to improve something you have to be able to measure it first), and consistently show something to your management. Almost no manager likes being in the dark, and until you show ongoing progress, it won't be noticed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The summary:&lt;/strong&gt; shift focus from what &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; want, to what &lt;em&gt;your company/manager&lt;/em&gt; wants. Highlight the value for the company at each point and cut off everything that doesn't contribute to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13461" LastActivityDate="2014-11-11T00:04:09.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12591" CreationDate="2014-11-11T01:26:50.313" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not sure about one-touch scenario modeling, but I know Microsoft's project does attempt to come up with a completion date, which would be impacted by a resource being 20% unavailable. The 2mo part could be done too, as each resource has a calendar, but it may be a little bit of a pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am actually currently working on a feature just like this for my &lt;a href=&quot;http://task.hillsandfog.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;own product.&lt;/a&gt; I represent resources with profile pages. Each resource profile page has their availability per project and working dates. It is not designed for this one-touch-change-and-see modeling, but with few touches it one could use it to simulate scenarios.  Would that work for you? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13383" LastActivityDate="2014-11-11T01:26:50.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12594" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-11T08:57:02.883" Score="1" ViewCount="27202" Body="&lt;p&gt;so I don't completely understand dummy activities(arrows) in AoA diagrams, so I decided to do some practice questions related to it. I was wondering if anyone have a look at my solution and tell me if i am right or what i did wrong, it would be great help! Thanks.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ouzeq.png&quot; alt=&quot;information in the table on the right&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13527" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2014-11-12T13:44:19.867" LastActivityDate="2015-11-17T12:01:54.577" Title="Activity-on-arrow (AoA) diagram review" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12595" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12600" CreationDate="2014-11-11T10:32:33.390" Score="1" ViewCount="152" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some of the projects my team works on, there are no stakeholders or it's unclear who the actual Product Owner is on the client's side. For example, we have to write user stories and acceptance criteria from the client's perspective. As developers, we are probably not good at this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a developer and not a PM, it's sometimes difficult to bring all the parts of such a project together successfully. What should we do in such situations? How can we push the client to step in and take more interest in the agile process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8894" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-11-11T10:42:08.757" LastActivityDate="2014-11-12T19:39:53.233" Title="What can we do without a clear Product Owner or stakeholder on the client's side?" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12591" CreationDate="2014-11-11T13:15:55.807" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a Monte Carlo Simulation exercise; however, you are approaching scenarios too simplistically, in my opinion.  You are creating very simple if-then scenarios in which you can make a very simple but inaccurate calculations.  For example, doubling your staff will decrease your duration in half, assuming a linear relationship between work, duration, and resources.  You can make a similar calculation reducing your resources' utilization by 20%.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, work is not this deterministic.  In fact, you have hundreds of probabilistic variables banging up against each other with varying degrees of cause or correlation, INCLUDING aleatory variability.  Using Monte Carlo simulation, you would load in the tool your assumed distributions for the variables at play, e.g., costs, resource utilization, time, etc.  The tool will run thousands of simulations randomly choosing a a value within those distributions and produce a final result on whatever metric in which you are interested.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The resulting distribution, say on costs, is far more valuable to you for planning purposes and risk management then a simple calculation that says, reducing 20% in resources will cause x% increase in time.  That is a deterministic result that has an extremely low probability in occurring.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-11-11T13:15:55.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10508" CreationDate="2014-11-11T16:41:35.843" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Altough I realize this is an old question I believe it is still relevant. I am currently in the same situation. That is, trying to figure out how to best implement the UX perspective into a scrum process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We do not have the resources to allocate a UX-designer per se in the scrum team but we do have different people responsible for areas such as navigation, design and accessibility - all of the essential components of the user experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our current solution to this (which granted could very well change during the course of the proejct) is to let design manuals, accessibility checklists and navigation principles guide the developers in their efforts to solve the user stories/tasks at hand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also realised early on that there could be user stories where the answer could not be found in those guidelines or where it could become a matter of interpretation. Therefore we've opted for a &quot;UX-group&quot; made up of the three people responsible for design, navigation and accessibility, together with a external consultant (for an outside-perspective). This group will look at the prioritised user stories and have the mandate to add UX-relevant acceptance criteria to them, to further guide the developers and promote a holistic approach to the user experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13535" LastActivityDate="2014-11-11T16:41:35.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12598" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12599" CreationDate="2014-11-11T19:50:39.347" Score="2" ViewCount="115" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lets say in a current project the team asked for training in a particular area to help them in the rest of the project and the product owner agreed and saw the value behind this training so it was put in the product backlog as a story &quot;As developers we want to have training in X to be able to do Y&quot;. Now this story can fit in a single sprint and it is well detailed with acceptance test and every thing. Now in the sprint planning we will add this story and we need to split it to tasks with different training resources to take. Now all tasks must be done by all team members lets say one task is &quot;Take the course here (url) to learn X&quot; now when we try to put the effort hours of this task we make it normally as if it is one task then we multiply be all team members who are going to make it? as this task should be duplicated by all team members or what should be done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13537" LastActivityDate="2014-11-12T00:09:37.507" Title="Acquiring knowledge story and splitting to tasks" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12598" CreationDate="2014-11-11T21:13:13.340" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You shouldn't need to multiply anything. The story can be &quot;As developers we want to have training in X...&quot; with its appropriate tasks which is correct form. The decision on if the story was met would be the acceptance criteria. The criteria should simply be that all developers [named here] have completed the training [successfully if there is a grade factor?]. In this way the story is not complete until all have done the training which is what you are looking for here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit per question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would still estimate in the same manner as any other task except it would become a &quot;team&quot; task. Lets assume that this course is a 4 hour course and every one is taking it at the same time. You could simply apply 4hours * X people to the individual task estimation. Remember that by estimation here we are trying to account for nothing more than man hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going back to the example, the estimation would be 16 hours (4 people * 4 hours) then that's all we care about here for tracking purposes. i.e that 16 of the teams total hours were dedicated to this task. This &quot;team&quot; task can be assigned to the project manager or team lead since they are responsible for everyone attending. This is how you use the task for accountability and ownership as well as tracking the time for the whole team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note to estimation: If you assume 40 hours per employee from my experience then you usually find out you over estimated for the sprint. i.e its often the case that hours are shorter than planned. We plan around 32 hours per employee a week. You can't plan around unanticipated interruptions or client calls etc so you build that slack time in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this example that means 16 of 128 hours of the teams time was spent on training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8716" LastEditorUserId="8716" LastEditDate="2014-11-12T00:09:37.507" LastActivityDate="2014-11-12T00:09:37.507" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12595" CreationDate="2014-11-12T19:39:53.233" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;there are no stakeholders&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there were no stakeholders, the projects wouldn't have existed or had money in the first place. Chances are, they are not properly identified, and this is where you have to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not like the whole team should go search for random stakeholders. You can have a single person doing that, and, unsurprisingly, it better be a Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it's unclear who the actual Product Owner is on the client's side&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't have PO on a client side (as opposed to a PO on your side). You just have a PO. If the client cannot provide one, then you need to make a proposal. The job of a PO, according to the Scrum guide, is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the product and the work of the Development Team. How this is done may vary widely across organizations, Scrum Teams, and individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is the sole person responsible for managing the Product Backlog. Product Backlog management includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clearly expressing Product Backlog items;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ordering the items in the Product Backlog to best achieve goals and missions;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Optimizing the value of the work the Development Team performs;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensuring that the Product Backlog is visible, transparent, and clear to all, and shows what the Scrum Team will work on next; and,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensuring the Development Team understands items in the Product Backlog to the level needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of these require him to be either client-side or supplier-side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A best call would be to appoint a person with biggest industry knowledge and best customer communication skills to be your PO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, we have to write user stories and acceptance criteria from the client's perspective. As developers, we are probably not good at this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your PO should be accountable for it. Having said that, you are encouraged to add stories and work with PO to specify and refine acceptance criteria. The goal is not to do the requirements gathering work instead of your client, but to have something that you can commit to deliver. This is one of the points that should help with this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can we push the client to step in and take more interest in the agile process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You cannot simply push anyone, unless they are your direct reports (and even that would be unwise). You should show the value of the agile process to the client. For example, reduction of time to market, better feedback cycles, less unpleasant surprises upon delivery, cheaper overall cost of development, etc. There is plenty of material available around that highlights benefits of agile in general, and Scrums, for example, in particular. Slideshare alone has tons of slide decks pursuing the same goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13461" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-11-12T19:39:53.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12594" CreationDate="2014-11-12T21:35:40.190" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_diagramming_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Activity on Arrow (AoA) diagrams are normally drawn with the length of the arrow representing the duration of the activity.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't seem to be following that approach. For example, your H is not 6 times as long as your A. Given that, here is the question - why do you need the dummy activity from Event 4 to Event 5? You can directly connect Activity D to Event 5. Similarly, you can directly connect Activity H to Event 6 and directly connect Activity I to Event 6.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you do decide to make the length of the arrow represent the estimated duration of the activity, you may need some dummy activities to bridge the gaps. &lt;a href=&quot;http://asq.org/learn-about-quality/new-management-planning-tools/overview/arrow-diagram.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;You can see other examples of dummy activities given in the American Society of Quality site here.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-11-12T21:35:40.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12604" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-13T13:52:20.653" Score="3" ViewCount="133" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a risk for a software project that had to do with &lt;strong&gt;something I could not control&lt;/strong&gt;. That was (really long delays on delivery of the hardware).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work on a big company where IT has it's own budget and projects, and of course priorities. The tecnology area had to give us the stuff we needed to start with the Quality Control testing... and I knew they could very likely delay. And as I thought, they did. Even when this was talked with the IT area manager, he would do &quot;whatever he could&quot; but our project had other priority to him than what it had for us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem was that the company works on such a way that &lt;strong&gt;on a given time the associated budget to my project would close&lt;/strong&gt; and with it the whole project would go down. So time was a constraint. I tried talking with administration, but if I ask for extra time they need an estimated date to close the budget, and that had precedence on the raw IT material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the project was ongoing, every week, starting on the week before the expected delivey date, the IT area manager said &quot;&lt;em&gt;It will very likely be next week&lt;/em&gt;&quot; and 5 months passed. On that time I also went to my boss to make the highly positioned guys on the company solve their issues and priorities, but they are also like &quot;racing against each other to get most of their projects done the best way possible&quot; and from software we have no leverage to exchange favors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What ended happening was that the project went out of budget and we had to make another project, where the CIO of the (really big) company had to intercede.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What shoud I have done different? How can I save my project next time? and how should I otherwise be handling this risk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="823" LastActivityDate="2015-07-18T01:12:18.107" Title="How should you handle a risk when the only mitigation or contingency you can come up with is not on your hands?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12604" CreationDate="2014-11-13T14:09:07.580" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Limits of Responsibility for Risk&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A project manager (and to some extent the members of the project team) are responsible for &lt;strong&gt;identifying&lt;/strong&gt; risks and impediments, and &lt;strong&gt;recommending&lt;/strong&gt; risk-mitigation options whenever possible. The responsibility for &lt;strong&gt;managing&lt;/strong&gt; risks belongs solely to senior management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once management has been informed of risks by the project team, it is entirely up to the management team whether to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Control the risk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Transfer the risk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accept the risk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they do none of these things, the project is likely to fail. All &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; culpability for such failures rests with senior management, but politically the project team will likely be blamed anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, members of a project team are not empowered to drive significant process improvements in a grass-roots fashion. If you're dealing with an ineffectual organization, you can either accept such failures as par for the course or dust off your resume and look for another job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-11-13T14:09:07.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12606" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-13T14:43:11.897" Score="2" ViewCount="188" Body="&lt;p&gt;To place in context, I made a document that went to tender where I stated the objectives and timeframe of the product, but because of an NDA I couldn't be explicit with a lot of it in case the potential tenderers saw a benefit of making it on their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said the product tender was awarded, I gave the tenderer with the details and they assured me they could do it. They are offshore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I provide to the outsourcer the testing, validation and certification documents of each component &lt;strong&gt;before they started&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the build, when I'd planned every component delivery of the turnkey product and I wanted to know what where they doing, they told me that they were doing great and that I should wait until the end of the week to see the demo and the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I saw the first component and compared it to the expected, I knew I had to change the way they were working because we had lost possibly half of the week making the developers work on something different from what I expected on that delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wanted to be closer to the construction and offered my daily involvement, but they told me &quot;that would be micromanagement&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I only wanted short interruptions and reports, however it's not my company, it's the outsourcer's, and I have no authority there to determine how should they work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing that is at stake here is that I don't want the project to fail because of poor management of the outsource. Nor do I want to take out the document where it states the terms and conditions of the service, thus eroding the relationship when 5 or 6 components are still to be completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;we'll do it later&quot; approach has not worked for me in the past, because &quot;later&quot; they will need extra budget to complete what was originally requested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what how can I work effectively with this kind of outsource relationship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="823" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-11-14T18:39:28.257" LastActivityDate="2014-11-14T18:39:28.257" Title="How to handle poor delivery from an Outsourced relationship?" Tags="&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;quality&gt;&lt;deliverables&gt;&lt;outsourcing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12606" CreationDate="2014-11-13T17:33:33.930" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As it is a fixed-price arrangement I would expect that you have a payment plan or structure in place that means you pay most or all of the fees on acceptance of the finished product. Therefore you are somewhat covered here- if the third party does not produce acceptable work then you simply don't accept it and don't pay their fees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to making this work, for both sides, is a clear and agreed specification for the work that they will do- you don't ask a builder to build a house without providing the plans and you shouldn't engage a software provider to create some software without providing the full and clear specification. It worries me that you have not actually used the word &quot;specification&quot; in your question - Did you provide one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you did not provide a specification then how can you explain to the third party what they have not delivered to expectation? You will get into a long and potentially damaging argument about what was expected versus what was delivered. You will say it is not what you expected, they will say it is what you told them - A specification would remove the grounds of this argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to ensure you provide them with a specification of exactly what it required as quickly as possible, though you must be prepared for a revision to the cost as it will almost certainly be different in some respects to what they quoted for (else they would be delivering what you expected even without the spec).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you did provide a specification then you need to test the output against that specification and then ensure you raise with the third party where their deliverable deviates from the agreed specification. They will then need to fix the product until it complies with the specification, &lt;em&gt;at their cost&lt;/em&gt;, until you both agree the product delivers what the spec demands. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There should not be any issue with this, it is a basic principle of a fixed-price agreement. You may find, however, that if they have not been good at working to the spec then the product may deviate substantially from the spec and therefore require a lot of re-work, and therefore &lt;em&gt;time&lt;/em&gt;, to put right. Depending on the product and your downstream business dependencies on the work your placed with them, this delay may cause you a serious issue. If this is going to the be the case you had better hope you have a time-related penalty clause in the contract that means they recompense you for the impact of significant delays. However, on the basis of what you have said so far, I am not hopeful this will be the case :) In software delivery, from both the client and the supplier side, every day is a school day!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2014-11-13T17:33:33.930" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12604" CreationDate="2014-11-13T17:51:12.613" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;With most projects, and in life in general, most of the drivers that can impact your objectives are out of your control.  And many of those drivers are stochastic, random, and out of EVERYONE'S control.  It is YOUR job as PM to build resilience in order to cope with those risk events and to keep things going.  In some cases, no matter what you do, you may fail and the project stops.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You identify the threat.  You assess its probabilistic impact.  You design and implement whatever mitigating actions you can do, and you come up with several contingency actions for resilience.  First question I have in your case is, did you analyze the opportunity of sourcing hardware from another source?  Borrow, beg, steal something to use while your shipment comes in?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming you did this, and assuming you pulled every other lever you know how to do, but still failed, that is still good project management.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-11-13T17:51:12.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12606" CreationDate="2014-11-13T22:53:54.780" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When I saw the first component and compared it to the expected, I knew I had to change the way they were working because we had lost possibly half of the week making the developers work on something different from what I expected on that delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you work with a third-party vendor, you can generally specify &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; will be provided and &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; it will be paid for, but cannot generally determine &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; they will perform the work internally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it sounds like you have provided acceptance criteria, no one but you and the vendor can determine the quality of the project documents or their fitness for purpose. It may be worth having a conversation about that; it is always conceivable that the specifications and acceptance criteria are not as useful to others as they are to the original author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also may have some unrealistic expectations of your engagement. If they are an agile shop, and you are paying on fixed price, then a few iterations to level-set the project are not out of line unless you've created a project timeline that has unrealistic deadlines or insufficient slack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Recommendations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[H]ow can I work effectively with this kind of outsource relationship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Review the project plan with the vendor. You need to understand how &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; have structured the work on the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Review your project documents with the vendor. Ensure that &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; have the same understanding of the requirements, specifications, or user stories that you do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they are an agile shop, be prepared to engage with them during defined inflection points such as Sprint Planning or Sprint Review rather than doing daily status pulls. Educating yourself on their project management framework may help you work with them more successfully during these inflection points.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure both you and the vendor have a shared understanding of the project delivery schedule. Be prepared to make changes in scope or quality if the price and schedule are fixed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Actively manage the priority of the features you are asking them to deliver. In this way, you may be able to achieve a Minimum Viable Product even if your entire feature set is never completed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make yourself available (as you have) to answer questions about specifications or scope, but ensure you allow them room to determine implementation details. Your focus should generally be on the usefulness of what is delivered, rather than on how it works internally.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give the vendor a reasonable period of time to demonstrate competence, or lack thereof. Three days into a long engagement is not sufficient time to determine success or failure for most real-world projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the project is failing to deliver sufficient value after a reasonable period of time (e.g. three to five iterations), pull the plug. Since &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zdnet.com/blog/projectfailures/study-68-percent-of-it-projects-fail/1175&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;68% of IT projects fail&lt;/a&gt;, the key is to fail early enough to conserve capital.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-11-13T22:53:54.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12611" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-14T01:55:23.443" Score="26" ViewCount="9452" Body="&lt;p&gt;I intend to introduce sprints to my company, fairly new to it myself. Not sure if it's appropriate for my current situation, we have several on going projects, all of them are ERP scale size and most of them I would say are nearing completion(Ready to deliver).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However during this time, there are a few customers whom we have no choice but set them as priorities so as bugs are still present hence if they discover issues with the system, they will contact us and we will have the team to sort it out asap. For now, this is the current practice. At such, if agile is introduced and we start using sprint, what can be done for add-hoc / urgent / pushy customers that requires almost immediate attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problem is the company is lacking in manpower, only 3 devs in total and there's no dedicated testers around, hence till date, there will always be bugs lying around and customers will keep coming back. I understand that once a sprint starts, there shouldn't be any changes made to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advices?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28972" OwnerDisplayName="k80sg" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2014-11-15T17:20:12.097" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T21:17:10.693" Title="How do handle adhoc work during a sprint from pressing customers" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;management&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12611" CreationDate="2014-11-14T03:58:20.570" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;With Scrum implementation, you will have a set of Stories with associated tasks to complete within a fixed time frame of approx. 2-3 weeks. Now, if anything new arises for the team to work on it should be prioritised for the next Sprint (assuming it can wait for this time). Otherwise someone has to make a priority call on it and whether the team should work on the new piece within the current stories. A stakeholder (PM) could move a lessor priority story for next Sprint, if that is possible. Otherwise all the stories should be completed within agreed time frame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively you could set a Support process up between Development and the Customers (in they are not thousands of them) and allocate some of the team's time to it and work on these tasks in parallel with the assigned planned Sprint Stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13556" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2014-11-15T17:33:17.313" LastActivityDate="2014-11-15T17:33:17.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12611" CreationDate="2014-11-14T09:48:15.543" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are different ways of tackling this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Zero-bug policy&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;If you plan your sprint just with new features, but keep a zero-bug policy then your &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2014/february/velocity&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;velocity&lt;/a&gt; will drop. Eventually you will know how much stories the team can get done while fixing any open and new bugs first. Understand &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilenutshell.com/yesterdays_weather&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yesterdays Weather&lt;/a&gt; and plan accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Placeholder PBI&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Each sprint add a story that counts as a placeholder for any bugs that come in. You reserve a fixed part of the sprint todo maintenance work. If it it takes up much more time, break up the sprint and start a new one.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Assign a Batman&lt;/strong&gt;: Read &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/15784/8528&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; to another question for details :) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Shorter sprints&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;If you have one week sprints and always put defects on the backlog, then the longest a client needs to wait is two weeks for a fix.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Kanban&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Use &lt;a href=&quot;http://kanbanblog.com/explained/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;kanban&lt;/a&gt; instead of sprints and focus on getting started work done, start working on high prio defects when picking up new work. Use &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt; to keep your tasks small, so that you can keep finishing work in small steps. Release all done work on a set date or release when you reach a certain point in your backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For maintenance teams I would prefer Kanban, other wise use the zero-bug variant to get a realistic view on how much new work a team can get done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind you want developers to focus on their current task. Find a way to prevent bugging them during actual work with incoming defects. A daily stand-up would be a nice time to discuss new incoming work and re-arranging a sprint if needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T11:32:58.333" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12611" CreationDate="2014-11-16T13:13:45.360" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This can be actively managed through some enterprising &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_(development)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt; and a normal Scrum delivery team method.  Some agile coaches struggle with the concept that an organisation can have a single Scrum Team delivering the business change from a portfolio of programmes with multiple projects all with their own '&lt;em&gt;backlog&lt;/em&gt;'.  Sometimes Agile methods need adapted regardless of the guidelines.  I humbly suggest the following solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds to me like you are working in a business intelligence centre/role - am I wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Preparation&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Divide&lt;/strong&gt; your sprint into two separate components.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;BAU Work (work outside the normal product backlog)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Backlog Work (standard project work on behalf of the PM or Product Owner)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Decide&lt;/strong&gt; how much of your sprint you are willing to sacrifice to BAU work.  To help focus your delivery I suggest using the mantra&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;people must be forced to make decisions.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You simply cannot deliver new change if business stakeholders continually want functionality repaired in the old system.   Force people to make changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this example I will suggest dedicating 20% of your fortnightly sprint capacity as BAU work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Calculate&lt;/strong&gt; your capacity of work per sprint in hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;For this example we will use 3 x Full Time Resources coding for 7 hours per day for 8 days per sprint.  A full day is devoted to planning and a full day to reviews and retrospectives.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That gives you an approximate capacity for 21 hours of work * 8 days = 168 hours of work capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;20% of that capacity is now earmarked for BAU work = &lt;strong&gt;34 hours&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;80% of thatcapacity is now earmarked for Product work = &lt;strong&gt;134 hours&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Create&lt;/strong&gt; a stack of user cards in a separate colour for the Kanban Board.  These are your BAU cards.  Give each of these cards a rough hours value adding to 34 and put them onto the board blank.  For example: &lt;em&gt;1,1,1,1,1,2,2,2,2,3,3,5,10&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Delivery&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use&lt;/strong&gt; the cards to ensure you stick to your BAU budget.  Any tasks that comes into the team is given a high level planning estimate in hours and the corresponding cards is then used to track the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you run out of cards for that sprint you know you have exhausted your BAU capacity.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Report&lt;/strong&gt; on the BAU workstreams as a separate delivery report tracking the amount of hours planned and accomplished for BAU tasks including the nature of the tasks and the RoI of the work completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-11-16T13:20:42.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12616" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12639" CreationDate="2014-11-16T15:18:27.443" Score="3" ViewCount="361" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some teams have to work with collaborators without face-to-face discussions. In our case all conversations are by email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a problem with a this method: it's very difficult to keep developers engaged. They work on a project in teams of two, and all contact is by group email. They don't have physical contact and it decreases their motivation over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I keep the team members involved in their work and increase teamwork &lt;em&gt;without using money or threats&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10378" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-11-18T23:27:46.357" LastActivityDate="2019-02-21T04:24:42.347" Title="How can I motivate/manage developers who only use email to communicate?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;distributed-team&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12617" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12619" CreationDate="2014-11-17T07:38:03.257" Score="14" ViewCount="7861" Body="&lt;p&gt;As in many other projects, we are also using JIRA to manage tasks and user stories, and Scrum as the Agile methodology.&#xA;At the end of each day, the ScrumMaster provides the burndown chart to the PMO team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the first set of questions that get raised during each weekly meeting with the PMO team, are:-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why is the team not burning hours properly in JIRA - 5 hours per day?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If each team member is burning hours (~ 5-6 hours per day) and logging them properly in JIRA, then why is the &lt;strong&gt;red line (of Remaining Values) in burndown chart not coming down as close to the Guideline&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who in the team is not logging hours?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why the team has to be reminded each day to log hours in JIRA?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frankly speaking, the whole team is quite fed up with all these silly questions, and all of us wonder whether we are actually following Scrum values, or instead just maintaining JIRA to show PMO that we are all following Scrum and have a near-to-perfect burndown chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, I have always been wondering on three points:-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why the management is more concerned of JIRA burndown chart than of following Scrum values in project development?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why do some members of the team don't like to log hours in JIRA diligently every day?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there anything that the team can do to make this logging of hours (by each team member) a more easy process, so that the management does not bother us by asking such bad questions?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone of you please clarify my above-mentioned three doubts, so that we all can become a better Scrum team?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Thank you all in advance, and I appreciate your time and suggestions to help me!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13576" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-04-06T15:22:23.697" LastActivityDate="2019-04-06T15:22:23.697" Title="Why management is more concerned of JIRA hours than of following Scrum values?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12617" CreationDate="2014-11-17T08:04:29.650" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;To make it easier to log hours in Jira you can use the worklog assistant program. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://worklogassistant.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;worklog assistant&lt;/a&gt; grabs all filters from Jira, you get a list of the current sprint issues for example. It warns you when not logging time. Its possible to publish automatically or do it manually and correct some logging when needed. Create some place holder tickets for down time like sprint meetings and or other non sprint overhead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not sure if you do, but don't estimate tasks in hours, switch to story points (this is supported by Jira). For management its harder to convert done work into hours and compare them. Work is done when its done, not when the team estimated it. Some tasks will take longer others will take shorter. The burn-down is there to give insights if you are going to finish your forecast and adapt accordingly if the plan does not come together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think management is worried about hours, because they pay developers per hour. Every hour is extra money. Explain how Scrum gives developers more focus and that its harder to side-track on non important things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I once was at a Scrum introduction by &lt;a href=&quot;http://jeffsutherland.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jeff Sutherland&lt;/a&gt; and he said that the first thing he changes in a company is to remove time tracking. Also read his blog post &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scruminc.com/time-tracking-is-anti-scrum-what-do-you/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Time Tracking is Anti-Scrum: What do you do when you need it for billing?&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was generally agreed in a Scrum training class in Copenhagen yesterday with experienced project leaders operating at CMMI Level 5 at IBM and elsewhere that asking developers to fill out time sheets reduces team productivity by at least 10%. They hate to do it, it is duplicate work, it is obviously “waste”, and is only done by companies that do not have a clue about lean product development&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2016-07-27T08:01:10.300" LastActivityDate="2016-07-27T08:01:10.300" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12617" CreationDate="2014-11-17T08:13:04.090" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can feel the frustration in your post.  As someone who made the transition from a PMO to an Agile role I can understand both sides of the coin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question has multiple components which I will take in turn but all of them have &lt;strong&gt;effective communication&lt;/strong&gt; at their core.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Why are management more interested in logging hours?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could be a number of things but management absolutely must track hours of work accomplished.  It could one or a combination of the following reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The company must &lt;strong&gt;account for shareholder value&lt;/strong&gt; being invested.  Effective delivery is only one way of tracking value, it is also necessary to ensure that the delivery is roughly allied to the amount of predicted hours of effort.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;External auditing&lt;/strong&gt; and governance compliance.  If your company is a PLC then the auditing and regulatory burden increases and logged hours are a critical component of that process.  Remember; when someone gets their monthly salary that is someone's shareholder investment being transferred across and that shareholder expects a minimum level of return on investment for paying that salary. It is not unreasonable to simply log hours worked is it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Timesheeting&lt;/strong&gt;.  If you are attached to a PMO it is likely the development team have multiple project or programme workstreams coming in.  The department is not a free resource, your developers need to be apportioned to a cost centre for the work they do so that projects can be tracked to ensure they are on budget.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Resource Demand&lt;/strong&gt;.  Do not underestimate that the primary way management decide to scale up and down resource is by contrasting planned effort in man days / man hours against a fixed dead-drop timeline.  If the resource demands exceed the deadline they will bring resource in.  Logging hours is a critical part of ensuring that planning is effective and accurate.  You get additional developers and testers if required but logging hours is critical to making that business case.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Trust.&lt;/strong&gt;  Right now it appears management have some trust issues regarding the department.  It is possible you are a fledgling Scrum team, the process is new to them, it was not sold in the right way or they need to control the full time resources of the department.  All of these symptoms are a lack of trust.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hard truth is, I would never allow an employee to forego tracking his/her hours if he cannot even manage to track his hours.  Does that make sense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the military we used to have a saying -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;When you can administer yourself, we will give you a rifle.  When you&#xA;can administer your rifle, we will give you a vehicle, When you can&#xA;administer a vehicle we will give you subordinates...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your team cannot even &lt;strong&gt;accomplish&lt;/strong&gt; hours tracking then why on earth should they be released from the task?  It's a simple item that takes less than 5 minutes.  I am surprised management has not taken more stringent action already.  If your team want independence they have to earn it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Why are my team not logging hours?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is partially a psychology issue but it also indicates they have not had the value of hours tracking explained to them.  If they have had the value explained and they continue to discount a process that Management feel is valuable then you have a &lt;strong&gt;dysfunctional team&lt;/strong&gt;, possibly centred on one or two strong characters who are driving the rest of the group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that instance you must take action to instil discipline in the team.  A Scrum Master is the master-servant of the team.  Most people focus on the servant part to show humbleness but do not forget the master role.  Impose your will onto the team to ensure they understand exactly what will and will not be tolerated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Communicate to the team that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hours must be logged at the end of each day&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You will consolidate all logs daily and report on those missing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consistent offenders will have it reported on at their annual appraisal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consistent offenders are letting the team down because the sooner they comply the sooner management may trust the team and remove the process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is always easy to blame the management process rather than do a root cause analysis; in my experience most managers have sound reasoning for the reports and processes they request.  Also, in the future if you need to scale up or challenge planning estimates and you don't have logs supporting your business case then expect the resources to go to a department head who can enforce logging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck, even raising this issue in PM.SE indicates you have some excellent qualities to fix the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;2019 Update&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This answer represents a snapshot in time of where I worked and how I approached Agility.  I should say that, nowadays, I absolutely do not support time sheeting and timesheeting itself is symptomatic of a project smell which requires root cause analysis.  It indicates lack of trust in a team or resources split across deliveries.  It is, in short, a terrible way to facilitate software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, working software is the primary method to demonstrate value.  All other artefacts are smoke and mirrors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I stand by my answer as it shows the journey that we all take towards the Agile values but I no longer support it as advice to the development or project management community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-04-06T13:50:54.987" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12621" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-17T10:03:09.047" Score="1" ViewCount="1263" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose we have a project, that its progress is not going exactly on the plan (e.g. we have worked on some future tasks and some previous tasks are not completed on the schedule). and also some previous tasks have been interrupted for a while and these interruptions demonstrated in tasks using &quot;ms project split&quot; feature. these interruptions are not supposed to be calculated as missed time in the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now we know how much work has been done using &quot;% Work Complete&quot;, but my question is that how can we determine how much of Project Work time has been passed? exactly:&#xA;(times we worked on previous tasks + times we missed to work in previous tasks - interruptions - nonworking times)/(whole duration of project)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: if we do nothing through project, &quot;% Work Complete&quot; would not grows, but percentage of elapsed work time would grow to 100% until end of plan time disregard how much project has been progressed. So comparing these two parameters should tel us, how the project is going to be ended on time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've written this formula for Custom Field to find ratio of elapsed calendar:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;ProjDateDiff([Start],Now())/[Duration]&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if this returns right value for ratio of elapsed calendar, but even for right value for sure it does not consider effect of &quot;Interruption&quot; and &quot;NON-Working Times&quot; in the ratio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13579" LastEditorUserId="13579" LastEditDate="2014-11-18T14:36:06.710" LastActivityDate="2014-11-18T14:36:06.710" Title="MS Project: Percentage of elapsed work time of project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;progress-monitor&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12622" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12628" CreationDate="2014-11-17T13:54:09.917" Score="0" ViewCount="1454" Body="&lt;p&gt;e.g. I have a task that has to be fulfilled by two persons, but person B cannot start before person A has finished his part of the task. How do I scedule this in MS project 2010 without having to split the task in subtasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how do I enter resource dependencies/constraints?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13580" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T18:54:20.837" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T18:54:20.837" Title="Create resource dependencies in MS project 2010" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;&lt;resources&gt;&lt;dependencies&gt;&lt;constraints&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12623" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12626" CreationDate="2014-11-17T14:32:30.123" Score="20" ViewCount="5108" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently we have three teams who start their two week sprint on Monday and end it on Friday. We have some team-members who have every Friday off. Planning sprint reviews on Thursdays or earlier is awkward, since the sprint is not yet done, or the whole Friday goes to &quot;waste&quot; on non functional tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We want all the team members to be in the Sprint review and retrospective meetings and want to plan them at the end of the sprint. (We record Sprint review sessions for part-timers already)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now we have figured out some possible solutions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask team-members to take another day off. (Asking the developers to re-arange their free day is no short-term option, mainly because of complex planning of child-care.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start Monday with sprint reviews and retrospective meetings. Afterwards (after lunch) start the Sprint planning session and hope to finish on Monday. This leads to a very long &quot;Talking&quot; day and this might bore some and will feel ineffective.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start the sprint on Wednesday and end on Tuesday.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we are evaluating option 3, my question is: &lt;strong&gt;Are there teams who have experience with mid-week start and end of sprints?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the pro's and con's? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe we overlooked an option?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any other suggestions to handle and plan sprints around availability of part-timers is welcome.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Found a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2014/april/what-is-the-best-day-to-start-a-sprint&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt; which supports that this might be a good idea, should have googled first before asking this question maybe. Still interested in your experience though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;We have been running sprints from Wednesday till Wednesday now for a couple of iterations. I have the feeling everyone is pretty happy with it. The teams asked to plan all the meetings on Wednesday, our day looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;9:15 Setup meeting room and screen-cast recorders, dial-in external stakeholders&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;9:30 Start review sessions per team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start evaluation meeting after a short break.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lunch&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start planning sessions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;17:00 Have a beer and snacks :)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2015-06-01T09:50:59.883" LastActivityDate="2018-06-08T14:29:59.337" Title="Running a sprint from Wednesday till Wednesday" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12616" CreationDate="2014-11-17T15:01:31.597" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;agile manifesto&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The most efficient and effective method of  conveying information to&#xA;  and within a development  team is face-to-face conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not without reason. For small dislocated development teams I would use a free conferencing tool to schedule weekly meetings, like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Skype&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Google Hangouts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bigbluebutton.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://bigbluebutton.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project management tool&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that is not possible try to use a tool like &lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt; to maintain some sort of backlog and progress indicator. Trello supports notifications over e-mail automatically if you subscribe to a card, its possible to add users to cards to inform them that you require action. This will ensure all the communication is central, logged and visible to the whole team. Aslo read this blog post about using trello as a PM tool: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.lingohub.com/industry-updates/2014/05/getting-the-most-ouf-trello-project-management/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.lingohub.com/industry-updates/2014/05/getting-the-most-ouf-trello-project-management/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I would try prevent the use of e-mail&lt;/strong&gt;. To quote &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fogcreek.com/fogbugz/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fogbugz&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many development shops use email, spreadsheets, or sticky notes as ad hoc bug tracking tools. These have poor visibility, poor communicability, and poor accountability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this also counts for new features or your product planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2014-11-17T15:30:40.817" LastActivityDate="2014-11-17T15:30:40.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12623" CreationDate="2014-11-17T17:05:39.750" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was working with 3 teams which had mid-week start/end of the sprint. They were  starting on Wednesday afternoon (17:00) with planning and finishing sprint an hour before (16:00). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comparing to monday-friday the advantage of mid-week cycle is that there is a weekend in the middle of the sprint, when already some issues should have been discovered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm far from advocating working on weekends, but as software development is mostly thinking I have experienced that some developers just thought over some issues during the weekend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastEditorUserId="1021" LastEditDate="2014-11-17T19:11:24.063" LastActivityDate="2014-11-17T19:11:24.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12623" CreationDate="2014-11-17T20:47:57.923" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Working sprints that end/start mid week is usually more effective/efficient than ending on a friday and starting on a monday for several reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It makes the last minute rush to complete work more painful and less desirable for the development team (eliminates the excuse of, &quot;hey we can finish it over the weekend).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reduces the risk of paying weekend overtime for non-salaried employees&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tuesday/Wednesday are peak productivity days.  Monday is usually a, &quot;warming up to the work week day,&quot; and fridays are often a, &quot;I'm not feeling too motivated, want to get the hell out of here day.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a centralized, 9-5 team, ideally a retro/review is held on a tuesday at around 3 or 4pm and the planning is run the next day first thing in the morning (9 or 10am).  Consider cancelling the normal standup you have on planning day as well and saving the team a little time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've employed this schedule for 4 teams over the last 2 years running 2 and 3 week iterations (they started off using monday/friday schedules.  Switching definitely improved effectiveness of planning/retro's while helping the team stick to their commitments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2014-11-17T20:47:57.923" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12617" CreationDate="2014-11-17T20:57:00.250" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why is management is more concerned of JIRA burndown chart than of following Scrum values in project development?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3 common reasons for this type of behavior are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lack of trust&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Poor understanding of Agile methodologies; still thinking in waterfall terms&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Delivery Team is not meeting commitments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do some members of the team not like to log hours in JIRA diligently every day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its either perceived as a waste of time, or the team member doesn't understand the value of performing the activity, or they haven't received reinforcement on continuing this practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything that the team can do to make this logging of hours (by each team member) an easier process, so that the management does not bother us by asking such bad questions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build trust&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Honor commitments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Educate PMO on agile methodologies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Show them an alternative way for tracking the progress of work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fire current PMO, and hire one that understands Agile ;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-07-20T17:06:06.223" LastActivityDate="2018-07-20T17:06:06.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12622" CreationDate="2014-11-17T22:12:17.470" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless this is supported in Project Server, of which I have no experience, you cannot do this in MS-Project. It simply does not include the concept of resource dependencies within a task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, despite the fact you say you do not want to split the task, the fact that it has two parts fulfilled by two separate resources with a strict linear order, means that the overall task &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; consist of two subtasks. If that is the reality then modelling it any other way in MS-Project does not make sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know whether it is any more palatable to you, but if I were doing this I would create an umbrella task and indent one level for the two sub-tasks which you can then order using a Finish-to-Start constraint. Then just use the umbrella task as if it were one task, i.e. it have its own constraints and scheduling (to a certain extent), it just happens to be made up two separate tasks internally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2014-11-18T14:01:27.730" LastActivityDate="2014-11-18T14:01:27.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12622" CreationDate="2014-11-18T02:12:36.083" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can alter when resources work on tasks in the Task Usage view or in the Task form with the Schedule format applied.  However, as Marv notes, there is not a way to create a resource dependency -only task dependencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2014-11-18T02:12:36.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11853" CreationDate="2014-11-18T08:33:23.030" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ken Schwaber, one of the initial signers of the Agile Manifesto, in his blog post recommends to &lt;a href=&quot;https://kenschwaber.wordpress.com/2013/08/06/unsafe-at-any-speed/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Unsafe at Any Speed&lt;/a&gt; and states that SAFe is a &quot;reincarnation&quot; of RUP or even Waterfall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3958" LastActivityDate="2014-11-18T08:33:23.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12631" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12632" CreationDate="2014-11-18T20:11:46.103" Score="2" ViewCount="237" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my organization, the developers are using Scrum (which started recently), but the sysadmins are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're about to start a large project, and we've been asked for detailed description of our hardware needs so it can be added to the budget, and because the sysadmins have a long queue of work so we'd need to request a new server far in advance, if we need one. The person the heads of both departments report to is not fully on board with the process, seeming to prefer waterfall, so I may need to be delicate in my suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone suggest a better or at least more-consistent-with-Scrum way of handling this, other than just guessing what we'll need and hoping it doesn't change?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13595" LastEditorUserId="13595" LastEditDate="2014-11-18T21:34:23.697" LastActivityDate="2014-11-18T21:34:23.697" Title="What's a good way for a Scrum team to handle budgets and work with other departments?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;budget&gt;&lt;politics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12631" CreationDate="2014-11-18T21:24:05.297" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Use Backlog Estimation to Provide Planning Values&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, teams often perform a first pass through the Product Backlog (generally at the Theme or Epic levels) at the start of a project in order to define project scope and to set initial target dates. While story points, Sprint Goals, and the Product Backlog frequently change over the life of the project, target dates are generally modified less often when used for time-boxing the project's deliverables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This same first-pass process can be useful in determining resource requirements. While the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot;&gt;cone of uncertainty&lt;/a&gt; is largest at the start of the project, it is still possible to present an approximation based on documented assumptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you're building a new web application, during your first-pass estimate of the backlog you might identify:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The need for a database server, a web server, and an email server in each environment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The need for three environments: development, quality assurance, and production.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A requirement for high-availability in production, which the team assumes will be one hot and one standby server per service.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could take this initial set of assumptions, and present a request for 12 servers based on &lt;em&gt;what the team knows today&lt;/em&gt;. You might even present it as a range, representing your level of confidence in the assumptions. For example, you might say something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on the team's initial assessment of the project requirements, we expect that the project will require a minimum of 12 servers. These assumptions are based on X, Y, and Z with a current confidence interval of approximately 60%. We therefore recommend that the project budget for 18 servers, and that the project assumptions be reviewed quarterly to determine if:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Resource requirements have changed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Planning values remain valid.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By providing transparency in your estimating process, you provide the organization with visibility into the project's assumptions and make it clear that these are &lt;strong&gt;estimates that can be revised&lt;/strong&gt; as the project evolves and the cone of uncertainty narrows, as opposed to fixed guarantees. After all, the ability to inspect-and-adapt is the very hallmark of an agile process, and provides management with the levers they need to manage the project successfully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-11-18T21:24:05.297" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12631" CreationDate="2014-11-18T21:26:59.973" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum focuses on development work delivered over a set interval (i.e iteration or sprint).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the scrum team is not physically setting up the hardware, the scrum framework doesn't apply to your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For agile-scrum projects, there are high level planning requirements which include creating a product roadmap.  This roadmap should outline the progression of epics or features and provide sufficient detail to estimate when additional hardware resources need to be ramped up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hardware usually consists of two budgeting components; fixed, re-occuring expense for maintenance/support of the hardware plus a one time purchase or configuration fee.  It really depends if your project uses cloud/VM/physical &quot;servers&quot;, but these costs can be easily budgeted for at the onset of any waterfall or Agile type project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The re-occuring and one time costs for an Agile-Scrum project can all be derived from the product roadmap and the System Admin managers needs not hear a mention of the words Agile, Scrum, Waterfall, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind budgeting is an estimation exercise.  Whether your project is waterfall or scrum, most budgets contain a % hedge for uncertainty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2014-11-18T21:26:59.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12581" CreationDate="2014-11-18T21:40:55.173" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very common problem with Scrum.  The only way to completely eliminate this issue is to switch to Kanban :).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some ways to alleviate the scenario you describe are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mix and match the stories within your iteration so that it contains a number of different sized stories.  This helps ensure smaller stories can be checked in sooner allowing testing to begin and not leading to a rush at the end of the sprint to test everything.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have your dev team write happy path automated tests before they can commit to trunk&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have devs become testers when a certain work in progress limit is reach for stories in &quot;testing&quot; state (I know, you said this was unpopular)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have a number of tech debt or minor defect fixes mixed into the iteration that do not require extensive manual or automated testing (not always possible, but devs can usually provide ideas about refactoring or enhancing code during a retrospective)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, consider that having a little developer slack at the end of an iteration is not always a bad thing.  Take this time as an opportunity to get devs reviewing upcoming iteration stories and defects for completeness, have a pre-estimation exercise, fish for tech debt and enhancement stories, write automation tests for previously fixed defects or newly discovered edge cases, take time to do code reviews, and most importantly reflect on the quality of the work that was committed in the current iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2014-11-18T21:40:55.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12616" CreationDate="2014-11-18T22:10:34.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Death by a thousand emails.  Turn your autoresponder on telling the team members not to email you anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then get an Agile tracking tool like ScrumWorks, Rally, Jira, or VersionOne.  Most of these offer a free basic version for smaller projects/team sizes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of these apps also feature built in conversation features for team members to discuss stories and defects within the tool and without generating hundreds of email threads to track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Skype or Google Hangouts are popular face to face tools.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make it painful.  Everytime you get an email, respond with a text message :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2014-11-18T22:10:34.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12616" CreationDate="2014-11-19T01:50:27.350" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Email is definitely a hard way to manage developers and that is why more conversations are more preferred. However if you just want to do emailing, be sure to check in on them every so often and also let them know where they should be. &#xA;Motivation changes but as manager you have to stay focused and have them realize if they are on track of where they are suppose to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully this helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13599" LastActivityDate="2014-11-19T01:50:27.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12623" CreationDate="2014-11-19T04:51:04.297" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our team switched to a mid-week sprint cycle 14 sprints ago and we love it. Our team consists of six developers (4 in main office, 2 offshore) working in two-week sprints. Our every-other-week meeting schedule is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wednesday morning: Sprint Review &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wednesday afternoon: Backlog Review (PO and SM adjust priorities, finish cards)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thursday morning: Sprint Planning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The activities at the start and end of a sprint are crucial to its success, so scheduling them during the peak midweek days ensures they get the focus they deserve. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It’s also great not to interrupt the boundary between sprints with a weekend. We essentially treat Wednesday as a between-sprints day — i.e. a day set aside for reflecting on the previous sprint and gearing up for the next. It’s so much better to do that when everything is fresh in people’s minds and their attention isn’t turning to the weekend. It also greatly improves the life of the PO/PM/SM. (I can’t tell you how many of my weekends in past jobs were spoiled by scrambling to finalize plans for the next sprint!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, it’s great to have a solid week of uninterrupted work in the middle of the sprint. I've found this has a subtle beneficial effect of discouraging coding right to the end of the sprint —  i.e. Friday becomes a natural target for finishing heavy-duty coding, with Monday and Tuesday reserved for code reviews, acceptance testing and deployment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those are pros. Cons? Haven’t found any. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11850" LastActivityDate="2014-11-19T04:51:04.297" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12638" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12640" CreationDate="2014-11-19T11:34:00.610" Score="1" ViewCount="2627" Body="&lt;p&gt;What if I would have a task A, split into three sections.&#xA;Could I set a finish-finish relationship between task B and the end of the second section of task A?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if not, what would be a recommended path to take?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13580" LastActivityDate="2014-11-20T23:01:39.180" Title="Can you add constraints to a split task in ms projects?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;constraints&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12616" CreationDate="2014-11-19T12:09:56.547" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a poor workman who blames his tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The false premise underlying this question annoys me; I have rewritten this answer several times to try to take out the withering sarcasm and the ire, but I think that ultimately it is more honest and effective to admit that I am working hard to be respectful while I am annoyed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have worked on teams that rely heavily on email and I've never been demotivated by it. &#xA;I've also worked on teams that rely heavily on physical presence, and I've found that to be soul deadening.   Different people prefer different modes of communication; it is your job to recognize that and to select a communications path that is most effective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) It is your job to motivate the team using the communications mechanisms at your disposal.  You choose that, and you need to own your choice. If you believe that email is the wrong choice, don't use it.  On the other hand if there are management constraints/Organizational Operational Factors that constrain you to only email, then use email.  But the tool isn't the problem, the deployment is. Concentrate on the job, not on factors that are outside your control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) There are multiple theories of motivation;  none of the credible theories reference email.  What &lt;strong&gt;does&lt;/strong&gt; motivate your staff? Money? respect? Challenge? Flexibility? Autonomy? really excellent coffee?  Each of these can be delivered by email; each of these can be delivered through some other communications mechanism.  Failing to identify the factors that motivate/demotivate your employees is a &lt;strong&gt;failure&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) If they say that they are demotivated by email, and if email is the only tool that is permitted, it is still your problem to solve.  You need to (a) find ways to make the email motivational and (b) work with management to find alternatives.  Perhaps you use SMS or Skype or Google circles or Facebook, or telepresence, or annual conferences.  If they really find email demotivational, then I suggest that they find a new job outside the technology industry. There are many career fields that don't require email.  many of them are lower paid and less respected, but part of that pay and respect is compensation for being professional and recognizing that it is our obligation to prioritize the job over personal preferences and to work as a team towards achieving the goal, even if it means that we sometimes have to bring our own motivation to the table to counter innate demotivational forces in the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a demographic in the community who want to blame email for all the world's problems; it is a simple answer and a popular answer, but like most simple, popular answers it isn't very useful at solving problems.  I'd be willing to trade 100 emails a day for the rest of my life in exchange for not enduring another phone call or meeting where someone drones on about their vanity project and demonstrates desperate need for an interpersonal spam filter, or one of the phone calls where the clear agenda is to continue the phone call until everyone involved agrees out of sheer exhaustion.  My point is not to vent my spleen here, my point is that different people respond differently to the same communications channel, and assuming that everyone responds the same way you do is &lt;strong&gt;far&lt;/strong&gt; more demotivational than the channel could be; I'm not asserting that you're doing this, I don't have sufficient information.  But it is common and there isn't enough information in your posting to exclude that possibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is demotivated employees.  Blaming email probably isn't a useful analytic framework.  Keep trying alternative analytic frameworks until you find one that both describes the problem and presents a potential solution.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2014-11-19T12:09:56.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12638" CreationDate="2014-11-19T13:35:08.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tasks are split by MS-Project when higher priority tasks take precedence over resources assigned and the position of the splits within tasks is therefore somewhat arbitrary and can move (according to resource levelling across the project). Accordingly there is no sense whereby attaching a constraint to a section of a split task has any meaningful use in terms of project planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about what you are actually trying to achieve and then model that in the plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may be trying to start task B when task A is part way through because that is how you expect it to happen in the real world even though there is no other dependency between the tasks? If that is the case investigate the use of the Lag column in conjunction with the constraint type. The easiest to grasp is a F-S constraint with positive or negative lag. Simply put, start Task B when Task A finishes, with either a gap (positive lag) or before Task A finished (negative lag). Then if you want to start getting clever, change the Lag from a duration to a percentage so you could, for example start Task B such that 25% of the duration of Task B is planned to happen prior to the end of Task A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Constraint type and Lag are extremely powerful when used in non-default combinations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2014-11-19T13:35:08.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12641" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12645" CreationDate="2014-11-19T15:15:02.343" Score="6" ViewCount="779" Body="&lt;p&gt;I already read: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/9914/how-to-map-user-stories-into-tickets&quot;&gt;How to map user stories into tickets?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I still have difficulties understanding how I exactly should use a ticket system, especially in the case of tickets for new features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's assume the project is at a point, where we know what we have to do, but didn't start any coding. The first thing I want to do now is to bring all the requirements into the tickets system as tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would a Task-Ticket look like?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it a user-story like: &lt;strong&gt;As a guest I want to be able to register myself with the site&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;or should I split them into tickets/tasks like &lt;strong&gt;Create a registration page/form&lt;/strong&gt;,&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Send an email to to the user when registered&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;Is it a good practice to use user stories, or what is the best way to go?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this information in relevant: We're going to use the github issue tracking system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13602" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2015-09-22T17:06:29.413" Title="What is the way to go to create tasks?" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12642" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-19T15:50:37.333" Score="3" ViewCount="503" Body="&lt;p&gt;What if a task takes 10 days to complete, of which person A works 10 weeks and person B only helps the last 2 weeks? &#xA;I can choose that person B works 20%, but project plans other activities in person Bs spare time on all 10 weeks, it does not get that he only helps the last 2 weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I need to create a new task for person B? For the last 2 weeks? Or is there a smart way to incorperate this in the already existing task?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13580" LastActivityDate="2014-12-18T15:19:11.840" Title="MS project. Shared tasks" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12643" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-19T20:33:38.617" Score="3" ViewCount="1860" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mid sprint demo seems to be a popular practice among scrum teams but I struggle to see how it fits in with high performing Agile-Scrum teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two sets of questions.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When should a formal midsprint demo be employed?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What issues do you see resolved through this meeting?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the indicators that a team no longer needs a midsprint demo?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What strategies do you use to steer your team and management away from using the practice?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2014-11-20T02:10:11.230" Title="Mid Sprint Demo" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12641" CreationDate="2014-11-19T21:57:02.727" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tasking is usually performed below the story level.  Most commonly I see tasks written as directions, i.e., &quot;Do xyz...Create something...Research ABC,&quot; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Development stories are generally broken down into 4 different groups of tasks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implementation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Code Quality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;QA/Testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is important is to maintain the relationship between the task and the parent user story as the story conveys the value to the customer that underlying tasks should enable upon implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use Github to track your tasks, your stories ideally will be stored in Github as well or at least be cross-referenced with whatever other story tracking tool that is employed.  Otherwise development members run the risk of losing the context of the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, consider that issue tracking and task tracking are 2 distinct activities.  Issues are often items that may be transformed into stories or defects after product owner or a lead reviews, judges, and validates the issue.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories and defects are the items that are tasked out and worked on by the delivery team.  Is there a risk of the delivery team getting pulled into non-task issues if they are tracked in the same system?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastEditorUserId="20569" LastEditDate="2015-09-22T17:06:29.413" LastActivityDate="2015-09-22T17:06:29.413" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12643" CreationDate="2014-11-20T02:10:11.230" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mid-sprint demos are not part of the Scrum framework, and are likely an &lt;a href=&quot;http://mywiki.wooledge.org/XyProblem&quot;&gt;X/Y solution&lt;/a&gt; for some unarticulated process problem. Instead, you should ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What problem are we trying to solve with mid-sprint demos?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If neither the stakeholders nor the Scrum Team can readily identify the underlying problem, I've listed quite a few common issues that might lead teams into applying this kind of Scrum anti-pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Mid-Sprint Demos: An Anti-Pattern&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mid-sprint demos are an anti-pattern. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-review&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; says (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Sprint Review is held &lt;strong&gt;at the end of the Sprint&lt;/strong&gt; to inspect the Increment and adapt the Product Backlog if needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Soliciting feedback about a half-finished increment makes no sense, especially since many full-stack features&amp;mdash;or vertical slices of value/functionality, if you prefer&amp;mdash;rely on other stories that may not yet be done within the current Sprint. In addition, such a demo would be unable to meaningfully demonstrate the completion or value of a Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Mid-Sprint Demos: A Poor Solution for Process Problems&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A mid-sprint demo is a &quot;project smell,&quot; generally indicating that the organization is trying to use the additional demos as a stand-in for more comprehensive project controls. Some reasons that companies might make this mistake include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprints that are too long.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider shortening your Sprint length to one or two weeks to enable a tighter feedback loop. Shorter iterations provide stakeholders with more opportunities to inspect the process and iteratively refine the product, but at the cost of higher framework overhead.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprints that consistently deliver the wrong thing.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider working more closely with stakeholders during story writing, or during the development of acceptance testing criteria for each vertical slice of functionality. Remember that user stories aren't specifications; they're placeholders for conversations with a story's value consumers!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A lack of trust between the stakeholders and the Scrum team.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider increasing the level of engagement between the Product Owner and the Development Team during Sprint Planning. Also consider increasing the level of engagement between the stakeholders and the Scrum Team during story-writing and Backlog Refinement. Perhaps most important of all, &lt;em&gt;consider reducing the number of stories accepted into each Sprint until the Scrum Team can reliably deliver on its commitments!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lack of stakeholder participation in Sprint Reviews and Backlog Refinement.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stakeholders should always participate in Sprint Reviews, and in extra-framework discussions with the Product Owner about the contents of the Product Backlog. The Product Owner should follow every Sprint Review with some refinement of the Product Backlog that reflects the reactions and feedback provided by the stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Poorly-specified requirements, or unclear value propositions.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User stories that don't adequately specify who who must benefit from the story, or that aren't granular enough to properly identify the value a completed story should provide, will often lead to building the wrong thing. Consider refining or decomposing your user stories better.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not writing the acceptance criteria &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is closely related to &quot;building the wrong thing.&quot; Agile processes often work best when everyone agrees on a goal. Consider making the creation of testable acceptance criteria (such as customer-facing Cucumber tests, for example) as part of your &quot;definition of done&quot; for each story. Make sure that you work &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; the stakeholders to write the tests &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you start working on the feature in order to make sure that everyone agrees on what the &quot;right thing&quot; should do when it's finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;NB: Don't forget to factor the additional time and effort required to write and execute user acceptance tests into your story estimates!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There can certainly be other reasons, too. Your best bet is to &lt;em&gt;ask&lt;/em&gt;. &quot;What problem are we trying to solve with mid-sprint demos?&quot; is not only a reasonable question, but it can immediately improve communication and help the Scrum Team and the organization address the &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; issues head-on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-11-20T02:10:11.230" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12641" CreationDate="2014-11-20T02:35:21.367" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team is still shaking down our toolset and processes, but I am planning to try creating a GitHub milestone to correspond to a feature or user story when we are ready to start decomposing it, then file an issue for every associated task and assign it to that milestone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way, I (and my customer-partners, and my management) will easily be able to see all the work associated with the new feature, see progress through the sprint, see new associated work appear as we discover that tasks need further decomposition, and so forth.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Milestones can have due dates, so I can use that for the end date of the sprint. If we're working multiple features/stories in a given sprint, I can just have multiple milestones with the same duedate: this will let me see the progress of each feature independently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in your example, you could have a milestone with a shortname, like &quot;Guest self-register&quot; and a description containing the actual story, &quot;As a guest I want to be able to register myself with the site.&quot; Then you would have separate issues for &lt;em&gt;Create a registration page/form&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Send an email to to the user when registered&lt;/em&gt;, and so forth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as I say, we haven't actually tried this yet; so I'll be interested to see other answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2014-11-20T02:35:21.367" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12649" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12650" CreationDate="2014-11-20T13:14:03.107" Score="1" ViewCount="254" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a number of summary tasks consisting of 4 or 5 subtasks (max 4 days each).&#xA;These subtasks have dependencies, but the different summary tasks are not dependent on each other. The subtasks are performed by different persons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I scedule this in Project, the summary tasks scedule themselves on a long stretch taking up to 100 days per summary task, because some persons are available way sooner than others. &#xA;Without wanting to set a 'start no earlier than' dependency, how can I set the summary tasks at a maximum of 20 days each? When I enter 20 days at the summary task it has allocation problems. As it does not rescedule the subtasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13580" LastActivityDate="2014-11-20T14:00:03.043" Title="ms project shorten summary tasks" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;dependencies&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12649" CreationDate="2014-11-20T13:44:33.363" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Summary tasks are only representations of the durations of their subtasks taking the available resource into account. You cannot limit Summary tasks in this way, it would make no sense. If you have one resource that has to do many tasks then MS-Project works out the durations of all the tasks they work on, on the basis that they can only do one thing at a time- therefore the tasks themselves have to stretch out in time to match how long it will take them to do things. When you have dependencies on other resources the same effect is amplified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need to do is arrange the tasks and the resources in such a way that you are maximising parallel working- make it so that people are not tripping up over each other and artificially elongating their tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Investigate setting tasks to 'Fixed Duration' and also setting task Priorities to ensure that some tasks are done before others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2014-11-20T14:00:03.043" LastActivityDate="2014-11-20T14:00:03.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12651" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12675" CreationDate="2014-11-20T15:19:53.940" Score="2" ViewCount="12275" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a client that wants to add a &quot;Percent Tasks Complete&quot; column to the tasks sheet. For example, the summary task &quot;Safety Tests&quot; contains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;SafetyTest1&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;SafetyTest2&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;SafetyTest3&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SafetyTest1 is 100% complete (in the &quot;% Work Complete&quot; column). The other two safety tests are 90% complete. The percentage of tasks complete column should show &quot;33.3%&quot; in the &quot;Safety Tests&quot; summary task under the &quot;Percent Tasks Complete&quot; column because 1 out of the 3 tasks under that summary task are 100% complete, and 1 out of 3 = 33.33%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There does not seem to be any easy way of adding a column like this. I tried creating a custom field, and I can get it to say &quot;1&quot; for each complete task and &quot;0&quot; for each incomplete task, which I thought could be a step along the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I do the rollup to summary tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13614" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-02T14:31:32.983" LastActivityDate="2018-11-02T14:31:32.983" Title="How to Add an &quot;Percent Tasks Complete&quot; Column with Rollup to Summary Task (MS Project 2010)" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12642" CreationDate="2014-11-20T16:12:31.793" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer depends on (1) your confidence in the stability of the plan and (2) your available time to create and refine the plan and (3) how far in the future the work activities will occur and (4) if the work is on your project's critical chain of activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have the time and are confident that the plan is stable, then create a separate task and use either a finish-to-start relationship or a finish-to-finish relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have a lot of time, but these tasks are on the critical chain of your project, then it might be a good idea to put in the detail so that your resource plan is valid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you aren't confident in the stability of the plan and the activities won't happen for a while, then consider creating a placeholder task C that is duration A + B and uses both resources. When you get close to performing the work (2-4 weeks in advance) and there is less uncertainty, then replace C with A and B. This approach will help minimize the wasted effort of re-planning, especially important if re-planning will involve participation from the team and take them away from doing the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2305" LastActivityDate="2014-11-20T16:12:31.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12651" CreationDate="2014-11-20T18:03:02.750" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try using &quot;% Complete&quot; rather than &quot;% Work Complete&quot;, Project will calculate % Complete automatically for &quot;SafetyTest&quot; if you have &quot;SafetyTest1&quot;, &quot;SafetyTest2&quot; and &quot;SafetyTest3&quot; as subordinate tasks (you just need to ensure that the three subordinate tasks are immediately below and indented to the right relative to the &quot;SafetyTest&quot; task).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the example you provide where SafetyTest1 is 100% complete and the other two are 90% complete, Project will calculate % Complete for SafetyTest as 93% if we assume that all subordinate tasks are the same duration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2014-11-20T18:03:02.750" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12638" CreationDate="2014-11-20T23:01:39.180" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Constraints can be applied to a task's start or finish, but not to its parts split.&#xA;I would suggest you to place split parts of the task as separate tasks under a summary and then create dependencies and apply constraints as you want. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13318" LastActivityDate="2014-11-20T23:01:39.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12656" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-21T00:01:09.300" Score="2" ViewCount="5942" Body="&lt;p&gt;How is Project Scope different in 'Project Charter' different from Project Scope in 'Project Plan' considering they both have to be brief ... isn't it redundant ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13419" LastActivityDate="2019-02-13T17:18:35.147" Title="Project Scope in Project Charter Vs 'Project Plan'" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;initiation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12616" CreationDate="2014-11-21T04:27:22.253" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Emails are part of the few electronic means to communicate that are admissible in court. Many prefer tex messages that are not in the USA to my knowledge. A vast majority of people believe that emails are out dated; I would be very surprised if more than 10% of the work force in any kind of industry use email now a day to receive order or information. Twitter is the best loved device to receive a quick info on what to do at a precise moment; but I would be very surprised that a twit is admissible in court. Workers, especially managers used to hide behind emails : mainly not answering to look all day occupied : it is a manager well known trick. Email permit a manager to control the pace of a worker; it has good side but also pervert sides. I can be used for a disguised way to fire an employee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10273" LastActivityDate="2014-11-21T04:27:22.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12588" CreationDate="2014-11-21T04:32:52.747" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have to write down the task that every of your employee do : we call that a description of task. It is very rare now a day that an employee is given a clear description of task, if given. After you have to establish the deadline of your project : the starting date and the date of delivery. When you make you plan your project, you have to know day by day what you need : the amount of employee, the amount of money, the material parts to build your device or make your project. At the deadline, the date of delivery you must give to the customer(s) what they pay for. In advance, you have to know if there is a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10273" LastActivityDate="2014-11-21T04:32:52.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12656" CreationDate="2014-11-21T12:09:27.647" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project charter is part of the initiation phase; project plan is part of project planning. The scope should be substantially the same in both places. The scope is so important to the success of the project that (literally) it bears repeating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the project scope is well defined in the project charter, then it is possible to simply copy it into the project plan.  In a perfect world, the scope in the project plan could merely be a reference to the scope in the charter; in the real world it is frequently necessary to be more specific or to address the scope in more detail. In the scope section of my project plan I am more likely to explicitly address issues that are out of scope, or to clarify the boundaries of specific activities.  There are times when I revise the wording of the scope to facilitate planning.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also cases where some other document serves the purpose of the charter (sometimes the Statement of Work serves as a charter; in one of the project management methodologies they use a project initiation document). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case the project plan should emerge from and terminate in the scope (the scope, the whole scope and nothing but the scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2014-11-21T12:09:27.647" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12662" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12670" CreationDate="2014-11-21T23:57:40.773" Score="7" ViewCount="1522" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm faced with the duty of managing a small design and web agency's (3 full stack developers, 3 designers, 1 help desk, sales people...) technical department. The company is selling quite well (it has a lot of work) but is very badly organized right now. At present time they have a certain amount of projects that exceeded deadlines and don't have a clear picture of all tasks which need to be accomplished to close these projects and the time they will require: they have long lists of to-dos and client requests inside e-mails, which are approximately represented on a Google calendar (no tracking software except for that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First thing I'm doing is trying to give an order to things by installing a software to be able to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) have a centralized repository for the tasks (with their execution time estimates) and possibility to assign them to people and for people to see their progress&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) allow people to update progress without requiring a person to manually move stuff on a calendar&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I choose Atlassian Jira for the purpose because I am also using it for my freelance job. I'm absolutely no expert at it but I find it useful for keeping things sorted.&#xA;I use a Scrum board for my tasks and plan things into Sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now my questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;does it make sense to have an agile approach and use tools like gantt charts at the same time (to have a longer period perspective)? If applicable how can it be achieved in Jira (any strongly suggested plugin)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do you have strong alternative software suggestion for the job?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This one is related to &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/12665/in-jira-is-it-possible-to-have-a-gantt-chart-or-calendar-view-or-similar-deriv&quot;&gt;my other question here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13629" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2014-11-25T08:37:16.800" Title="How to use Agile in a small web agency managing a lot of different projects?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12663" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-22T18:45:28.830" Score="5" ViewCount="679" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just started to manage the technical department of a small web design firm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's the first time I'm faced with such a job and I'm trying to figure out how to improve their project management practices, which now are reduced to keeping long lists of to-dos scattered around a number of internal and client e-mails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm opting for gradually introducing an Agile approach but I have some doubts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how do you estimate in advance the amount of new projects to be brought in in the long term when using an Agile methodology?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how do you manage client's time promises/expectations with agile (especially if you need to do some bug fixing in the meantime)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;does it make sense to have an agile approach and use tools like gantt charts at the same time to have a longer period perspective?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do you have any strong suggestion on a software to adopt for managing the projects?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13629" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T14:44:59.293" Title="How to make realistic long term time estimations when adopting Agile methodology?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;clients&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12663" CreationDate="2014-11-22T22:27:58.887" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, &lt;em&gt;why are you adopting Agile&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, &lt;strong&gt;Agile is a methodology, and as any methodology, is a means to obtain a result&lt;/strong&gt;. I may be wrong, but if you're expecting Agile to solve all your problems only for being Agile, &lt;a href=&quot;http://s.quickmeme.com/img/de/dec94542f9730183e0c282a35ae3803702961c0ebbd243c310813fcda8620995.jpg&quot;&gt;you're going to have a bad time&lt;/a&gt;. You may be addressing a symptom without dealing with the disease. If you try to go Agile only on your IT side and keeping the same ol' agreements with your stakeholders, you may put yourself in a very complex situation. Or you may not. But be prepared, it might not be easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having that said, &lt;strong&gt;your job is to manage expectations&lt;/strong&gt;. How to estimate big projects? You don't. If you go Agile, you can break down the long term plan into smaller pieces and go Agile over these minor deliverables, where you could provide more certainty and confidence to your stakeholders. You give a high confidence estimate for the first deliverables, and then provide further estimates with less confidence for future deliverables. Needless to say, &lt;strong&gt;estimates are NOT dates your team will commit to&lt;/strong&gt;. They give a high level view of the effort required. As less confidence, as bigger the variation over the given estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These projects are likely to have different views, depending on each stakeholder. In my case, I'm used to &lt;strong&gt;use a Kanban board with my IT team and keeping the Gantt to 'speak the same language' of business stakeholders&lt;/strong&gt;. They're only interested in two things: if we are on track and when are we going to finish... and in this case, the Gantt gives them a bit of comfort (as they're used to it). But again, if you go full Agile, you could provide a similar view using burn down charts... I'd just make sure to have this 'transition' incremental to avoid big impacts (and fear from the unknown).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer:&lt;/strong&gt; I'm an Agile newbie (my project is not even Agile, as you see I'm using Kanban), so take my advice with a grain of salt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2014-11-22T22:27:58.887" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12665" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-23T00:53:08.867" Score="5" ViewCount="2502" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm very new to Project Management, Agile and similar. I just started trying out Jira to manage the work of a small dev team which clearly needs to become organized (right now they are keeping track of their tasks/issues/bugs on paper and e-mails, no recorded per task time estimates).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a starter I planned to put all the open issues in Jira and have the team members give their time estimates for each issue, so I can be able to have a clearer overall view of the work they are doing and what needs to be done, and prioritize it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a plugin/tool integrated with Jira which can represent on a calendar or a Gantt chart the time the team is busy and the time issues are expected to last based on a work time map (work hours per day, work days...), task assignees and time estimates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't know if it makes sense but I imagine working on an agile board (say the backlog) prioritizing tasks and having the team assign time estimates, and then from that visualize in a graphical way a self-updating projection of the issues over time, based on new &quot;remaining time&quot; estimates given by the team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not Jira is there any software you would suggest which does something similar to what I'm looking for and do you think this approach does make sense in the first place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question could relate to &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/9189/is-there-are-a-resource-handler-or-gantt-chart-creator-tool-for-jira&quot;&gt;Is there are a resource handler or gantt chart creator tool for JIRA?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13629" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2020-08-08T03:58:03.897" Title="In Jira is it possible to have a gantt chart (or calendar view or similar) derived from your agile board?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12663" CreationDate="2014-11-24T18:25:19.320" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Estimate story points and apply a velocity range&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the simplistic arithmetic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You use velocity (in story points) as a measure of how much work you can accomplish in a unit of time (sprint).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You estimate the size of the project in story points.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Based on these two numbers, you can assess what commitments you can make for future delivery. For example, you can say something like, &quot;I have 5 sprints worth of work on hand (already committed). This new project that is under negotiation is 2 sprints worth of work. So, I think I can commit to delivering this 7 sprints from now.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in order to implement this simple model, there are many prerequisites:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You need velocity numbers over a reasonable period of time. Minimum is three sprints, more is preferred. Even if you do have velocity numbers over several sprints, it is recommended that you use a range rather than a precise looking number (&quot;Our velocity is between 25 and 35 points.&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The harder part is to estimate the story points for new projects under negotiation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You may not have enough details to be able to estimate story points well. In one of my previous companies, all we would have at that point were some bullet points. These, may be, could become epics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You may be already familiar that in Scrum, the story points should be estimated by the team that will actually do the job. Preferably using a process such as Planning Poker.  Even if enough details are available to write the stories, the dev team may be bogged down putting out today's fires. And may not be able to spare the time to do Planning Poker for a project well in the future. In my experience Planning Poker gives very good results, but is very slow.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully this helps to point you in the right direction. Here is a link that can lead you to additional material on this topic:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/presentations/agile-estimating-and-planning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Estimating and Planning&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2014-11-25T13:22:18.710" LastActivityDate="2014-11-25T13:22:18.710" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12668" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-24T19:05:32.733" Score="3" ViewCount="8054" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's it. How can I have Time Tracking fields (Original Estimate, Remaining Estimate) show up in Issue Detail View when using a Kanban Board (in &quot;Work&quot; mode) in Jira?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looks like this feature can only be enabled when using a Scrum Board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask this because I'm very new to Agile and Scrum (and Project Management in general) and I just started working in a new firm as Project Manager. So I'm still learning Jira and gradually introducing the team to new practices. I think a Kanban approach is less invasive but I'm keeping a Scrum Board of the same issues at the same time (luckily they seem to stay quite in sync).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13629" LastActivityDate="2018-02-01T09:16:34.783" Title="How to display Time Tracking fields in Issue Detail View using Kanban Board in Jira?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;timekeeping&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12616" CreationDate="2014-11-24T21:22:26.673" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Check every team member's motivation triangle&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/44m66.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/44m66.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;motivation triangle&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hyperthot.com/pm_mot1.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;hyperthot.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, surely, &lt;strong&gt;at any cost&lt;/strong&gt; switch the team communication from emails to daily Skype calls. You will be surprised by team motivation/performance increase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Emails as a team communication:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take huge time to write&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take huge time to read&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cause question-answer delays&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Easily confuse meant vs understood&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Usually produce new emails&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13500" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2019-02-20T11:06:25.420" LastActivityDate="2019-02-20T11:06:25.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12662" CreationDate="2014-11-24T22:11:16.053" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're starting in a quite common environment. 6 people in production, no quality assurance people, several concurrent projects. And, let me guess, you've got ASAP requests pretty much every day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what you should do &lt;strong&gt;first&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sort out your &lt;em&gt;development&lt;/em&gt; (new features) and &lt;em&gt;suport&lt;/em&gt; (bugs, changes) projects.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now separate your production team across development and support projects. This will depend on your average workload. Let's say you will get 4 people on development and 2 on support.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do not&lt;/strong&gt; reallocate people back and forth for at least one month. If support got more tasks than expected, let it take more time. If support people have not worked with this project before, have them sort it out. It's painful. It's worth the results.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rotate development - support people every month.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's see what you got:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Support team shields the development team, dealing with unpredictable requests.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Development team deals with known scope, which you can measure and plan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now it's time to set up some processes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set up &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt; for your support team. Get a board (Jira or physical one) and launch daily meetings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set up &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(software_development)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt; for your development team. Migrate project tasks into backlog items, plan releases, plan first sprint, launch it and launch daily meetings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, you can plan with hour estimates and the releases this way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have 30 tasks in this project, which are estimated in 300 hours total.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As we see, we close about 100 hours worth of tasks during our 1 week sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adding one sprint as a reserve, we plan to release this project in 4 sprints.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you handle retrospective meetings after each sprint, so you improve your process as you go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yes, do not waste your (and others) time on Gannt charts. This tool only works to present your management a nice picture, which has nothing to do with the reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13500" LastEditorUserId="13500" LastEditDate="2014-11-25T08:37:16.800" LastActivityDate="2014-11-25T08:37:16.800" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12671" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-24T22:40:46.453" Score="3" ViewCount="339" Body="&lt;p&gt;I get an understanding of what good code is and what skills will be needed on my project. I can assess a software developer's skills and knowledge by looking at his code and asking technical questions. That's not always easy, but at least I know the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I get an understanding of what makes a good Project Manager. But how do I tell a good PM from a wannabe on the interview? I can not usually look at his/her projects. I can come up with some general questions like &quot;What motivates people?&quot;. But that's not enough I guess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do I do to indicate a good Project Manager?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13500" LastEditorUserId="13500" LastEditDate="2014-11-24T23:09:50.467" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T16:37:47.757" Title="What indicates a good Project Manager?" Tags="&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12651" CreationDate="2014-11-25T15:06:23.740" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A colleague of mine came up with the following solution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is achieved by using formulas which adapt according to the row type on tasks sheet such as:&#xA;IIf([Milestone],0,1) &#xA;(which when rolled up creates a straightforwards count of the number of tasks)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Column &quot;Number1&quot; is set to the custom field expression: IIf([% Complete]=100,1,0) and that field has Rollup set to Sum. This creates a count of completed tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Column &quot;Number2&quot; is set to the custom field expression: IIf([Milestone],0,1) and is also rolled up using Sum. This creates a count of the total number of tasks, either complete or incomplete. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the values provided by these fields are combined to give the required result by means of this calculated field expression:&#xA;IIf([Summary],Format([Number1]/[Number2],&quot;###%&quot;),&quot;&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Checking that it is Summary task line ensures that the percentage of completed tasks only gets filled in for Summary tasks, not for individual tasks where it doesn't make sense to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first two columns can be hidden if not needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13614" LastActivityDate="2014-11-25T15:06:23.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12676" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12678" CreationDate="2014-11-25T15:35:31.920" Score="1" ViewCount="423" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a problem:  I have a schedule that is baselined, constructed using horizontal and vertical logic, constraint free, fixed duration.  I have a work package / task that has a FS dependency.  The predecessor is not finished; however, the dependency is soft and we were able to start the successor.  I want to enter the actual start date but, when I do, schedule removes the start date and replaces it with NA.  It will also not allow me to update the percent complete.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The weird thing is, I have a duplicate task in another control account, same dependency, same duration, same set up, and it did allow me to enter an actual date.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What could be the cause of this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update:  I need help asap.  Hypotheses are welcomed!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2014-11-25T15:53:51.090" LastActivityDate="2016-03-05T22:04:38.367" Title="Actual Start Date in MS Project" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12656" CreationDate="2014-11-25T16:38:38.017" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;They are redundant if you are authoring both documents at the same time, but the PMBOK process is designed so that the Charter would be done first, reviewed, updated, resubmitted, and approved before the Project Plan would be started. After the Charter is approved, through your activities in finalizing the project plan, you should be able to able to provide more detail to the scope of work over what was included in the Charter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way I've done this is to keep the scope in the Charter very high level (E.g. &quot;Renovate reception area&quot;) but provide a nother level of detail in the Project Plan (E.g. &quot;Renovate reception area by: 1) painting all walls 2) replacing the carpet 3) installing new signs&quot; ). If you are authoring both documents at the same time, you could document the scope in an external document and refer to it from both the Charter and the Project Plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13650" LastActivityDate="2014-11-25T16:38:38.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12676" CreationDate="2014-11-25T18:52:37.770" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Moved from &quot;Comments&quot; secton - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no idea of the cause but when I get a MSProject task acting &quot;wonky&quot; I create a new, identical task and then delete the misbehaving one. Copy/paste doesn't seem to work, I have to create the new task manually. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2014-11-25T18:52:37.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12679" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-25T18:59:39.963" Score="1" ViewCount="2010" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master, what actions or steps do I need to take when team members are not engaged or motivated, especially when the team members realize they don't have to report to me and that I don't do their appraisals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5576" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-11-25T22:09:52.233" LastActivityDate="2019-02-19T16:11:27.033" Title="How can I handle disengaged and unmotivated employees on my Scrum team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12671" CreationDate="2014-11-25T19:30:39.367" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;What constitutes a good PM is highly subjective but I'm going to take a stab at this based upon what I would look for in a good project manager to see if that helps you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Leadership skills / attributes: I would look for someone who is a leader. Michael Hyatt did a recent podcast on this which is a good reference: &lt;a href=&quot;http://michaelhyatt.com/episode-12-leader-12-ways-know-sure-podcast.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://michaelhyatt.com/episode-12-leader-12-ways-know-sure-podcast.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;PMI PMP certified.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below are a list of things I would look for as broken down by the PMBOK knowledge areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Integration Management:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask them to provide you with a project charter / plan they have authored. (They might take one that someone else has authored)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Get them to interview you about one of your projects during the interview, and draft and submit a project plan to you for review.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask them about how they manage changes, any tools they have used, best practices they follow, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask them about a project that they recently completed, specifically the tasks they undertook to formally close the project&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Scope Management:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask them to describe how they would define, validate, and control the scope of a project. (basically describing a scope management plan)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask them how they would go about collecting requirements. How do they know when they have all the requirements?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask them how they would break down the work into manageable components.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Time Management:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that they were on time for the interview, ask them what they did to ensure they did arrive on time, and ask them questions what they would have done if something went wrong (I think a good PM always has a backup plan. If their car breaks down, they have a friend they can borrow from, or the ability to take transit.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask them how they will come up with a realistic schedule. I would look for someone who investigates every item and double checks it against facts. Past experience is sort of good, but too much reliance can be a crutch.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now that they have a schedule, what will they do to keep everyone on track? Good PMs monitor the critical path and keep all the stakeholders in the loop of critical milestones. I would look for someone who indicates they would remind people in advance of pending deadlines. (e.g. email to co-worker: &quot;Hey, just a reminder that (key deliverable) is due on friday. Let me know if you need anything to complete this.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Cost Management:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask them about how they will manage and control costs. I would look for someone who spends a lot of effort on clarifying the budget and detailing the scope including assumptions and exclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask them if they have had any experience estimating. Give them an example item and ask them how they would go about finding out how much it cost. If they give you a price from memory, ask them to describe why they think that is a good price. I would look for someone who is resourceful and seeks out the information from multiple sources.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Quality Management:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask them to describe what quality means to them. I would look for someone who makes the distinction between quality and grade. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask them to describe how they would make sure the team delivers quality results. I would look for someone who clarifies the scope with everyone to make sure they are on the same page. (E.g. If you want a new floor and simply tell the contractor &quot;new floor&quot; he may understand that to mean &quot;the cheapest new flooring possible&quot; while you are envisioning bamboo planks. A good PM would demand the scope be clarified to indicate &quot;new bamboo flooring&quot; and also follow up with the contractor to make sure they caught this note.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Human Resource Management:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask them to describe to you how they would acquire, develop and manage a project team. How do they make sure team members have the required skills to get their jobs done, and know what their responsibilities are.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Communications Management:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask them how they would manage project communications. Is there a tool they recommend? Have they used your internal communication tool before? What are their thoughts on email / phone / SMS / IM communication? When is it appropriate to use each? (I would look for someone who identifies the strengths and weaknesses of each tool and is willing to adapt as required)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Risk Management:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask them how they will identify project risks? Do they have pask experience with projects similar to yours? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask them how they assess project risks? Do they have any tools they use to help determine which risks are most important to address?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask them to describe a risk that was successfully mitigated, followed by one that wasn't and what they would do looking back&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Procurement Management:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask them about their experience procuring the services involved in your projects. Have they done this? How many have they done? Was it sole-sourced, public, somewhere in-between?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask them to describe a successful procurement and an unsuccessful procurement that they participated in.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask them how they closed out a previous procurement.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Stakeholder Management:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask them how they identify stakeholders on a project. How do they know they have identified all the stakeholders?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask them how they manage diverse stakeholders, and what are their tactics to deal with a disengaged or adversarial stakeholder.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully this is helpful!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13650" LastActivityDate="2014-11-25T19:30:39.367" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12671" CreationDate="2014-11-25T19:52:10.610" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hunter &amp;amp; Hunter 1984 and others have described consistently how incredibly weak our employee selection tools and processes are.  Conducting an interview is one of the weakest selection tools in terms of predictive validity, although adding structure helps to a decent degree.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all you have in your employee selection tool box are resume reviews and interviews, your odds of selecting a quality employee, no matter the role or level of seniority, are low and, if you are successful, will most likely be due to pure luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Soliciting questions on this site is a non starter, since the answers are not tested or correlated with future performance and is subject to extreme bias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your issue is not soliciting for indicators but you need to get schooled in the tremendous issues in hiring predictive validity, human cognitive biases, and decision making issues.  Just google this and start reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-11-25T19:52:10.610" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12679" CreationDate="2014-11-25T20:12:29.513" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you tried convincing their bosses (and their bosses bosses) that your project is important? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frankly, you aren't that important to your team if they aren't reporting to you. To get around this hurdle you will need to get people with real authority over your team on your side. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my advice is to sit down with the leaders who can impact your team and get their buy in that (a) your project is important (business case is solid!), (b) your project is worth prioritizing over other projects, and (c) they will work with you to promote the project with your team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2014-11-25T20:12:29.513" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12679" CreationDate="2014-11-25T20:48:13.263" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You&lt;/strong&gt; do not motivate people. This &lt;strong&gt;triangle&lt;/strong&gt; does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XdTt2.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XdTt2.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;motivation triangle&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hyperthot.com/pm_mot1.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;hyperthot.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So make sure every team member:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Owns a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SMART&lt;/a&gt; task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Got sufficient knowledge and tools to complete the task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has given a regular feedback on the task progress.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, with all the above satisfied, the team member remains not motivated, consider replacing him/her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13500" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2019-02-19T06:02:16.177" LastActivityDate="2019-02-19T06:02:16.177" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12668" CreationDate="2014-11-25T21:08:28.243" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's one of top Google results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/283083/time-tracking-feature-in-jira-agile-kanban-board-issue-detail-view&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/283083/time-tracking-feature-in-jira-agile-kanban-board-issue-detail-view&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13500" LastEditorUserId="13500" LastEditDate="2014-11-26T22:21:33.110" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T22:21:33.110" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12588" CreationDate="2014-11-25T22:01:43.817" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are actually embarked on an experiment to help document exactly that need by using Kanban. The idea is to have data to give to management about where User Stories back up and for how long. That's where the kanban board comes in--we're tracking when the stories get to what spot in the workflow, how things back up, how long it takes to get work out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sort of data is an important first step. Sometimes it helps. Sometimes you need to think of other data to gather, or other ways to show management what is happening. If nothing else, a kanban-based push for limiting work in progress (WIP) based on kanban principles can still speed up the velocity with which changes make it from request to production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not of this will stop management from whining about lack of money or how everyone should get more efficient, etc. There may, in fact, be no money to staff up. You may need to dig up some articles about working routine overtime makes software develop more slowly, with more bugs, and increases staff turnover, but facts are not always the cure for belief. (&quot;Code Complete&quot; is a good reference for a lot of this; so are many books on Agile development, and of course, Anderson's original book on Kanban).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, if management is impervious to data, you also know that you need to move to your next position elsewhere. Faith-based (in the sense of ignoring data) technology companies do not have a great track record of survival ;-).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11776" LastActivityDate="2014-11-25T22:01:43.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12679" CreationDate="2014-11-25T22:34:51.133" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;The Scrum Master Isn't a Team Mascot or Cheerleader&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master, what actions or steps do I need to take when team members are not engaged or motivated, especially when the team members realize they don't have to report to me and that I don't do their appraisals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You and your organization have failed to understand the role of the Scrum Master. The Scrum Master is not supposed to be an authority figure, and is not generally delegated managerial authority. By the same token, while you are expected to use your soft skills and influence to improve the cohesion and effectiveness of the Scrum Team, &lt;strong&gt;the Scrum Master is not responsible for motivating or engaging the team members.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master is a process referee, not a functional manager. The Scrum Master's job is to provide coaching and guidance to the team and the organization, and to evangelize effective Scrum practices. You are there to facilitate process and communication; if instead you are trying to engage or motivate disenfranchised team members, then You Are Doing Scrum Wrong&amp;trade;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Perform Your Responsibilities So That Senior Management Can Perform Theirs&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While fixing dystopian organizations is not in the Scrum Master's job description, facilitating the flow of information and encouraging clear communication are core job requirements. Therefore, you should:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work with your team and your organization to identify why your Scrum process is broken.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work with your team members to identify why they feel unmotivated or disengaged.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use Scrum meetings like Sprint Retrospectives to see if there are any ways the Scrum Team can address any of the identified deficits, with or without assistance from the broader organization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide transparency about the problems to the organization, and open communications channels between the team and senior management to address the issues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure senior management has the information they need to make strategic decisions, and are given every opportunity to correct the organizational problems that they are ultimately responsible for.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-11-25T22:34:51.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12665" CreationDate="2014-11-26T07:20:50.993" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What kind of method are you using? If you're using Scrum, keep in mind that you don't estimate by time, you decouple the real time from the effort required by using (story) points. These don't translate directly to time, so you can't map into the future. Scrum wants to gain planning experience by empirically measuring effort you've already invested, by measuring your actual team velocity in the past, not some fantasy of how the team might perform in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do need estimates for larger future work, it helps if the team you're working with has already worked together for some time and on similar projects. Then you can use something like the worst case/best case estimates per epic as suggested by Mike Cohn in Agile Estimating and Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're using some other agile method, I don't have enough real experience to give good advice. But it seems that in general in agile, Gantt charts may give a false picture:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/75/are-gantt-diagrams-compatible-with-agile-methods&quot;&gt;Are Gantt diagrams compatible with Agile methods?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13654" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T07:20:50.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12663" CreationDate="2014-11-26T14:44:59.293" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are not so much questions about Agile methodologies, but of estimation skills generally. Thinking outside IT for a minute, what if you were an oil company trying to decide whether to exploit gas fields instead of oil fields based on where the oil price might go in the next 40 years? Or maybe you work for a government department that needs to estimate the demand on its services five years from now?Or an insurer who needs to figure out the best premium for a particularly risky but high profile new customer (like a life insurance policy for Evel Knievel).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All these decisions involve a fair degree of uncertainty, yet these businesses have a tried and true approach to quantifying and dealing with that uncertainty - probabilistic risk estimation. If you want to learn about it, a great place to start would be a book called &quot;How to Measure Anything - Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business&quot; by Doug Hubbard. I stumbled across this book a couple of years ago while working at a large oil company and it was a total revelation. I try to apply its principles whenever I'm allowed to, because it means I can generate much more accurate estimates than the people around me!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The techniques do require some application of basic statistical analysis and Monte-Carlo simulations, but Doug explains that fairly well in the book, so it's nothing to be scared of. I do get a lot of resistance from my IT colleagues when I try to introduce these methods to IT estimation though, so be prepared for that. What's fascinating is when those people work in the same building as the non-IT estimators in the business, but insist that probabilistic techniques can't be applied to IT projects (totally unaware of the fact that they are applied to the much larger and less certain core business estimates/decisions because there is simply no other way!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Re: software, have a look at Oracle Crystal Ball or Palisade Decision Tools - Decision Tools is a lot prettier and has MS Project integration, but also costs about 5 times as much. But that's still a tiny cost compared to the potential savings to someone in your situation. The oil company I was working at uses Crystal Ball heavily - pretty much every core business decision gets modelled through it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13661" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T14:44:59.293" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12671" CreationDate="2014-11-26T16:37:47.757" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Other answers have provided good detail on the 'hard' skills (budget management etc) that good PMs should be able to demonstrate but I'd be most interested in the &lt;strong&gt;soft skills&lt;/strong&gt; - negotiation, persuasion, communication etc - that are sometimes overlooked but are (in my experience) most critical to success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you ask and how you ask it should be guided almost entirely by the kind of organisation you are, the kind of people the PM will work with, and what you actually need/want them to do (fit in with existing systems? instigate change? reinvigorate a struggling project?). There's no point hiring someone who's great at sticking to existing systems and approaches if what you really need is someone who's going to tear things up and start again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that using &lt;strong&gt;scenarios&lt;/strong&gt; ('imagine you have a deadline looming and three team members are sick...') in interviews is a good way of teasing out the ways in which an individual will respond and react in a particular situation. It's no guarantee of course - without putting someone in a real life crisis (which is probably excessive in an interview!) you just won't know how they'll respond.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also emphasise the importance of providing &lt;strong&gt;examples from previous roles&lt;/strong&gt; ('tell me about a time when you had to deal with a difficult team member...'). This will give you confidence that the candidate has actually done this stuff and not just read it in a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T16:37:47.757" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12461" CreationDate="2014-11-26T21:19:18.057" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Instead of a solid calculation, you could use a demonstration to make your need more transparent.. thus facilitating a conversation that can arrive at an optimum number of man hours.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4sN1Y.png&quot; alt=&quot;screenshot of computer model&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a draft functional model that I made using the specs above. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Square in the middle (marked OPTIMUM FUNCTIONING) represents a healthy product. &#xA;The BLUE line in the graph represents that square, going up or down depending on a variety of factors as you adjust the sliders. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really intuitive. I have the original file if you would like to tinker with it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Left to right on the graph is the passage of time. The BLUE line is for optimum resources. (The PINK and ORANGE lines are just markers for TOO MUCH and TOO LITTLE.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13666" LastEditorUserId="13666" LastEditDate="2014-11-26T22:33:32.607" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T22:33:32.607" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12693" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12694" CreationDate="2014-11-26T23:34:32.913" Score="15" ViewCount="13612" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a Scrum Master in a project. The development team was merged from two separate teams and now counts 8 people. John and Peter are previous teams leads - very experienced C++ developers, who know the business domain and the product very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue is that those two are just like cat and dog. They clash daily. Mainly due to different technical opinions. Like we should/should not use this pattern across the application, code style etc. They do their best to keep the communication professional, but I see it becomes harder every new day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the Scrum self-regulated team does not happen. Nobody comes to me and says &quot;We need to get rid of John, as he is the troublemaker&quot;. And frankly I also doubt who the troublemaker is. Each one separately is technically good and able to lead the team. They just do not cooperate at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Needless to say, that the rest of the team is frustrated. Some guys support one or another side, others try to remain neutral. As we plan to release quite soon, removing one (or both) is not really an option for the project sponsor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I do now is primarily serve as a mediator between the two. Holding endless meetings, listening to the points, facilitating agreements and so on. This takes vast amount of time and decreases level of hate for couple of days till next conflict arises. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What else can I do with conflicting team members?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13500" LastEditorUserId="13500" LastEditDate="2019-03-25T15:36:19.150" LastActivityDate="2019-03-25T15:36:19.150" Title="How to deal with conflicting developers in Scrum team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team&gt;&lt;conflicts&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12693" CreationDate="2014-11-27T08:06:57.270" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am dealing with a similar situation; previous teams merged into one with subsequent respecifying of roles and grades.  Some legacy &lt;em&gt;political forces&lt;/em&gt; were in play.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the Scrum Master you are the master-servant of the team including coaching.  Many agile commentators forget the master part but the business is paying you to impose your will upon the team to make them a productive, cohesive unit.  You are not a tea-boy.  Reaffirm to yourself that you are in control of team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;strong&gt;immediate&lt;/strong&gt; instance I took the following actions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Commitment to the Team&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sit the entire team down including the warring developers and tell them that from now on the team will finish all discussions with the following &lt;a href=&quot;http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=1642&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;mantra&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agree and commit&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Disagree and commit&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, the meeting will close with a commitment to the team that an approach will be used and each developer will do their utmost to see the course of action succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Non-commitment will not be tolerated.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When Developer A and B next decide to engage in a lengthy debate about a particular aspect simply tell them that the matter is decided and as a team we (IE you) now expect commitment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know some individuals on this forum may take issue with treating developers with such a hard line but in my experience not all team members respond to gentle encouragement to adopt a team spirit.  People love change but some hate &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;being&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;strong&gt;longer&lt;/strong&gt; term you could invest time in&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;5 Dysfunctions of a Team&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 5 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Dysfunctions_of_a_Team&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DOAT&lt;/a&gt; is a fairly popular framework for producing high-functioning teams.  Each dysfunction is, coincidentally, mirrored by the 5 Scrum &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thenetcircle.com/2011/10/18/the-five-scrum-values-and-why-they-matter/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Values&lt;/a&gt; of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Commitment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Focus&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Courage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Openness&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Respect&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 5D book is a very short read and a number of different workshops and team building events can be organised around the themes.  I have attended two Workshops whereby we implemented the 5D and in each time the team emerged stronger, with more empathy and with a higher output.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To illustrate the differences in the team considering using the &lt;strong&gt;personal timeline&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://toolkit.epic-hub.com/uploads/files/courses/five_dysfunctions_03.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;tool&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each team member draws up a personal timeline of high points and low points across a horizontal axis of time.  It can be as detailed, colourful or personal as you like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It requires high levels of &lt;strong&gt;courage&lt;/strong&gt; to be the first presentation which is why the Scrum Master should go first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our sessions normally half the team end up crying as people tell the stories of their life that led them to the current team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories of family deaths, heroic war actions, divorces, bankruptcies, abusive husbands followed by educational attainment, spiritual fulfilment, marriages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The personal timeline over a couple of bottles of wine and pizza was the best team building exercise we ever did to understand everyone's motivations and empathise with them. You will learn which developers fear being a bad father allowing you to prioritise their children's events, which developers were high achievers (harness their ambition), which team members suffered a life-event which impacted their productivity etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be that Developer A and B both list joining the new team as a low point and by offloading that vital information to the team you see an immediate improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short you build a tribe that has an inherent loyalty to itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Lastly, consider letting one of the developers go.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does the following&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reaffirms who is in control during the forming stage.  You.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Solves the issue&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sends a strong message to the team that you expect team loyalty and productivness&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will not tolerate negativity for the sake of old allegiances, it is a new day.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally do not believe that any new scrum team survives first contact with the process without losing an individual who refuses to accept the new status quo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Results&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should also add that my approach, focussing more on the master part, has worked extremely well.  We had to let one developer go (the team had lost all confidence in him) but everyone else has gelled and adopted a Scrum mindset.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have month-long sprints with Planning sessions have decreased from 18 hours in total to lasting less than 6 hours (due to disagree and commit) and our stand-ups went from 41 minutes to 23 minutes on average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, senior management were happy that the team were under the Scrum Master control rather than a runaway train they were previous.  The Product Owner is much happier that the Scrum Master is willing to lead when required and allow Agile principles to guide wherever possible.  I am writing a white paper on our experience at present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those horrified at my strong line I should also add I took a similarly strong attitude to management, streamlining the amount of meetings, updates and reports the team were scheduled to attend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can already envisage a time when I leave the role as I feel the team will be a completely self-managing unit who no longer require a Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-11-27T08:14:36.450" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12696" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-27T10:23:30.177" Score="-2" ViewCount="1183" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you deal with a team member who doesn't share information with you at the right time? On asking he gives one word replies and usually counter questions for more details on &quot;what exactly do I want to know&quot;. And then pretends to not understand the question. He's generally like a sponge where he soaks up all information from you when he doesn't know something but doesn't respond back properly when he knows something. It gets more difficult to tolerate as the months go by.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to clarify the communication is done properly whenever I ask him questions. These aren't &quot;what do you think of&quot; kind of questions. These are pretty direct questions like &quot;what is X&quot;, &quot;How does Y work&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="358" LastEditorUserId="358" LastEditDate="2016-11-13T18:41:18.677" LastActivityDate="2016-11-13T18:41:18.677" Title="how do you deal with a team member who isn't sharing information and disturbing a lot with several questions" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-12-10T16:14:35.830" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12696" CreationDate="2014-11-27T11:06:31.523" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The quality of communication is one of the determining factors of a project's success. There are many reasons why people don't communicate. This can be a trust issue. The person does not think you actually contribute to the project's success. This could also be that the person has only little to communicate, because the work done is not on par and through obfuscation tries to cover up that fact. No matter what it is you are in trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would take a page out form the agile playbook. All agile/lean methodologies have some form of &quot;forced communication&quot;, such as the stand up meeting, the scrum or the huddle. A simple &quot;What I did since last meeting? What do I plan to do next? Where do I have trouble?&quot;. If you extend it on the entire project team, the troublesome team member will not feel singled out.  It may not be perfect, but at least you will get something out of the person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also regular 1v1 meetings may help. If you can keep it cordial, a nicer interpersonal relationship can develop with the team members and they may start to trust your more; including the uncommunicative one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing you need to consider is that you should gear your efforts in a way that does not single out the troublesome individual. If it is a trust issue, it will have the exact opposite effect, if that team member the &quot;special treatment&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5270" LastActivityDate="2014-11-27T11:06:31.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12696" CreationDate="2014-11-27T14:44:25.267" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you clearly communicated your problems with this person? I know I've assumed many times in the past that someone &quot;just doesn't get it&quot; but they really didn't understand what was important to me because it wasn't clearly communicated back to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do confront them about their communication style I would make sure to use a lot of &quot;When you [their action], I feel like [your feelings]&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not attack who they are, just describe the implications of their actions. Make sure to do this in person and in a private setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible script: &quot;I've been feeling a bit frustrated for the past (days, months, years). There have been a few occasions (make sure you have specific details) where I've found out after the fact that you were aware of key details that would have helped us (days, weeks, months, etc) ago but you didn't let us know. This makes me feel like you aren't paying attention to what is going on and I'm frustrated because this is (potentially) wasting time (for me and our team). Is there anything you need from me (or us) to be able to give us the information we need when we need it?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13650" LastActivityDate="2014-11-27T14:44:25.267" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12700" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12702" CreationDate="2014-11-27T16:26:03.197" Score="0" ViewCount="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;When choosing an IT-contractor I have only vague ideas on how I can discern the quality of an IT-firm. Below I gather some criteria I have thought about and &lt;strong&gt;would like to know if those points are essential and what else I might have to consider&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The cooperation&lt;/em&gt; should potentially include a software project (e.g. a Webshop, connected via back office to production states like availability of material) and long-term support including smaller adjustments of firm-intern, software-based processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The criteria&lt;/em&gt; of a qualified IT contractor might be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;contact and exchange with developers or team leader during development on a regular basis is available&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if mother tongue is not the same: minimum language requirement English&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if not locally available: find out how communication is established&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if contractor is an outsourcing and consulting company for software development: communication with team leader/ programmer must be possible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;contacting other customers of the IT firm to find out about there experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What else is important to check or ask? What are (kind of) standard qualities an IT contractor should deliver?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13487" LastActivityDate="2014-11-27T21:45:48.083" Title="Seeking professional advice on choosing/evaluating of an IT-contractor" Tags="&lt;subcontractor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-12-10T16:13:45.330" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12587" CreationDate="2014-11-27T17:58:07.077" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are concrete approaches to analyze a troubled project.  The best that I have witnessed, being on both sides of the analysis, is an Issue Based Method.  You can easily google this method to learn the specifics, but it is essentially a great approach when 1) you do not know what the cause is and 2) you do not know what the solution will be.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The approach causes the examiner to develop a series of possible causes of project poor performance, called hypotheses, around which you would develop your testing approach / questions / areas of research.  Most troubled projects are caused by the same things over and over.  If you have been asked to study a troubled project, that implies you have experience in these types of projects and in the industry; you ought to be able to name the top ten causes quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to look for the most simplest, easiest, and basic explanations, such as inadequate resources--both human and otherwise--lack of plans, lack of documentation around processes and procedures, lack of policy guidance.  Those are my initial hypotheses.  Then I go test each and go from there.  The basics:  everyone knows to do them but they seldom get done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-11-27T17:58:07.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12700" CreationDate="2014-11-27T21:45:48.083" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You will never know if you have chosen a quality contractor, untill their first delivery&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, contracting Accentures will improve your odds. But you still won't get 100% probability of getting what you want in expected time, cost and quality. There are just too many unknown variables in your success equation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So do not rely on questions or titles. Instead, try the next steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Slice your project in a way, that the first feature may be delivered in maximum two weeks. Where &quot;delivered&quot; means &quot;up and running on the production environment&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure to provide at least 1 page of specific requirements for this first piece. For the webshop this might be it's landing page. With main functionality on stubs, but clean layout, meaningful controls etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Choose any contractor, which looks good to you and agrees to do deliver this feature first and then to be/not to be contracted for the whole project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure this is reflected in a contract you sign.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collaborate and look forward for your first delivery.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The further steps are ovious. If you're happy with &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; you got and &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; you got that - proceed. If not - contract another company on the same basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13500" LastActivityDate="2014-11-27T21:45:48.083" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12704" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12706" CreationDate="2014-11-28T12:54:18.087" Score="5" ViewCount="301" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it correct to assume that the criticality of a defect can change along with the project's progress? If so, when is this acceptable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Criticality is one of the indexes we've used to use to define what can fit into a release or not. There were cases when the criticality has changed when users were not willing to add specific functionality because at that point in time the functionality was not priority. When the functionality became priority (and other critical defects were fixed), we have had a second round of criticality reviews moving entries into the queue for prioritization, since now they are considered critical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My impression is that if this functionality is critical for business operation, then it should have the same level since day one. Once the defect is clear, the criticality isn't expected to change. On the other hand, if the defect wasn't clear enough, it's &lt;em&gt;expected&lt;/em&gt; to have the criticality changed as the project gains clarity about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-11-28T16:44:37.930" LastActivityDate="2014-11-29T21:40:51.357" Title="Should defect criticality change based on user needs?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;&lt;defect-fixing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12704" CreationDate="2014-11-28T13:55:19.813" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love defect management, it throws up some wonderful logic problems :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What actually &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; Criticality? If you could define that then you would know the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe it is the combination of Severity and Priority, both of which should &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; be defined independently in defect management. The severity of a defect, i.e. the impact it has on the suitability of the system, should not change other than if external factors cause it to become more or less of an impact. Whether or not it is to be fixed and when dictates the priority. The priority can change depending on the needs of the project, the needs of the stakeholders/user, or a million other variables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So therefore the &lt;em&gt;Criticality&lt;/em&gt; of a defect is infinitely changeable :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I often structure my Acceptance Criteria to specify the levels of known defects to be allowed into the deliverable without the project being deemed a failure. Typically this will say something like &quot;No Priority 1s, no more than two Priority 2s and 3s and any number of Priority 4s&quot;. Note that this is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; graded on Severity because a very Severe bug might only occur once in a blue moon whilst a less severe defect might cause daily operational problems- Therefore fixing the lower severity issue becomes the top Priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This latter approach also has the beneficial effect that you can manage a deliverable through Acceptance Criteria merely by reclassifying the priority of outstanding issues- This is often welcomed by the project team and the UAT teams alike, even though it seems like cheating! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2014-11-28T13:55:19.813" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12704" CreationDate="2014-11-28T16:36:30.073" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Super-Short Summary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The criticality of an issue is &lt;em&gt;contextual&lt;/em&gt;, and can change over time as well as due to framing or extrinsic factors. I describe some silly but illustrative examples below, as well as a couple of more practical considerations of &quot;value.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;When is &quot;Critical Bug&quot; Really Critical?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine you have a new phone app, which has a serious bug: every time the user taps the screen inside the app, the user is electrocuted with 200,000 volts of electricity. The organization has labeled this bug as &quot;critical&quot; because electrocuting customers creates bad PR, and reduces the rate of future in-app purchases from customers who are...well, dead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what if &lt;em&gt;circumstances&lt;/em&gt; change? Can this impact the criticality of the bug from a business point of view?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Same Bug, Present But No Longer Critical&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Reinterpretation as a Feature&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps your marketing department discovers that there's a huge, untapped market in Transylvania by selling the app to the laboratories of a Dr. Frankenstein. You are now selling 1,500 units per week to the good doctor, and your sales are therefore stable. This bug is now considered a &quot;feature&quot; for some sub-set of your customers, so it is re-labeled as a wish-list item to make high-voltage discharges an &lt;em&gt;optional&lt;/em&gt; feature rather than an automatic one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Compensating Controls&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, perhaps each copy of the app now sells with an absolutely-free grounding rod and a non-conducting pair of gloves. The PR department says every existing or future customer will get this safety gear &quot;out of an overabundance of concern for customer safety, even though we have zero post-discharge complaints from customers who have personally experienced our market-leading voltage enhancement feature.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Same Issue, Different Criticality&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, the issue is deemed less critical because of changed circumstances, a different context, or even plain old marketing spin. The issue is no less real, nor has it gone away. Instead, the value proposition of the issue has changed&amp;mdash;perhaps sufficiently that it isn't even considered a bug any longer&amp;mdash;due to external or internal factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Value of Features (and Bugs) Change with Time and Lessons Learned&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even aside from the contrived example above, a bug that seems like a show-stopper early on in a project may not remain on the critical path or provide the same level of value later on in the same project. Value changes over time based on a wide variety of factors, and the severity or urgency of any given bug will also change as the value proposition of its related functionality changes, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider a less silly example where a system has usernames, and the bug is that usernames aren't unique within the system. Is this bug still &quot;critical&quot; if the system moves to using email addresses as account identifiers? What if the application switches to an open, CB-style chat application that doesn't need to retain account information at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bugs are only bugs insofar as they prevent a system from performing a desired function. In other words, a bug subtracts &lt;em&gt;value&lt;/em&gt; from a product. In an agile project, the &quot;bugginess&quot; of any issue should change along with the project's evolving notion of value. Your mileage with the WaterFailure&amp;trade; model will of course vary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-11-29T15:50:20.707" LastActivityDate="2014-11-29T15:50:20.707" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12696" CreationDate="2014-11-28T16:36:40.077" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Taking this question under the umbrella of project management and assuming you are the project manager, you need to implement a timely intervention.  As indicated in a previous answer, communication is critical and there are an infinite number of reasons--some of them being your fault--for this person's behavior.  Since you are delivering a project, you do not have the luxury of an infinite amount of time to investigate the cause(s) and implement an intervention.  That you said, 'as months go by', this implies that you have likely exhausted more than the available time you have to promote quality communications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notwithstanding you might be the root cause, which you should take a serious self examination for your future success, you need to remove the non working cog and replace it with another cog.  Most here do not care for when I equate humans with cogs, but the fact remains, as a leader of a project, that you need to deploy all your resources, human and otherwise, that are fit for purpose and that are performing as expected.  This is the cold side of leadership.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a reasonable attempt to cure, replace.  You can only accrue so much cost of intervention before the benefits will no longer make sense.  And EVERYONE is replaceable, just like a cog.  That is the analysis you need to make here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-11-28T16:36:40.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12709" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12713" CreationDate="2014-11-29T19:48:51.747" Score="5" ViewCount="7529" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing research for school. My research is covering how we could have one Scrum board for one team that works on multiple projects simultaneously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum methodology is not just for working on one project. Scrum tells us what kind of work we have to complete and how we are going to complete it, and in what timespan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of companies and articles say that we can have one Scrum board where we include different tasks for different projects. Most projects cover the same bases: they have a UI, they have a domain model, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering how companies manage their single Scrum board for different projects, what the advantages/disadvantages are, and if we should have one board or multiple boards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13686" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-11-30T16:35:16.050" LastActivityDate="2014-12-01T23:26:10.403" Title="Can we use only one Scrum board for a team with multiple projects?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;&lt;visualization&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12709" CreationDate="2014-11-29T20:04:02.983" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer: in Scrum you use 1 board per team. The Scrum board is simply a visual tool for tracking tasks during a Sprint. It is project/component agnostic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastActivityDate="2014-11-29T20:04:02.983" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12704" CreationDate="2014-11-29T21:40:51.357" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Defect is a gap between actual system behaviour and expected by user. Defect criticality is a size of this gap. Either system behaviour or user expectations change - so does defect criticality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13500" LastActivityDate="2014-11-29T21:40:51.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12712" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12714" CreationDate="2014-11-29T22:13:24.457" Score="1" ViewCount="2944" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new to project management and need a clarification. I want to create the work break down structure for a software project. The definition is that WBS must contain 100% of the work. How can I determine 100% of the work unless I have done the detailed requirements gathering. But I read somewhere that WBS should include gathering requirements as a work package. To me it looks like an input to WBS. Can someone with real experience please clarify. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13640" LastActivityDate="2014-11-30T15:34:52.863" Title="WBS (work breakdown structure) vs SRS (software requirements specification document)" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;scope&gt;&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12709" CreationDate="2014-11-29T22:28:18.710" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My research is covering on how we could have 1 SCRUM board for 1 Team that works on multiple projects simultaneously. SCRUM methodology is not just for working on 1 project, it tells us what kind of work we have to complete and how we are going to complete it (and in what timespan). [&lt;em&gt;Sic transit&lt;/em&gt; throughout.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working on multiple projects simultaneously is neither agile nor Scrum. Scrum is not prescriptive, and doesn't tell you how to do your work or how to implement anything not expressly mandated by the framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you're doing, it isn't Scrum. It doesn't even sound very agile. Your research project is off to a very bad start if it considers these anti-patterns to be part of the canonical Scrum framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;There's No Such Thing as a &quot;Scrum Board&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &quot;Scrum board&quot; is not a defined artifact in the Scrum methodology. However, many Scrum teams borrow the concept of a visual board from Kanban; this can provide a visual representation of the Sprint Backlog for the team during each Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, neither the format of the Sprint Backlog nor the use of a Kanban-like story board to visualize user stories is mandated by the Scrum framework. Scrum simply mandates the &lt;em&gt;existence&lt;/em&gt; of a Sprint Backlog for each Sprint, and leaves the specific details of the &lt;em&gt;implementation&lt;/em&gt; up to the Scrum Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;One Team, One Product Backlog&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Scrum Team works from one, and only one, Product Backlog. Multiple projects can feed into the Product Backlog, but it is the job of the Product Owner to sequence &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; inputs into a single, prioritized Product Backlog for the Scrum Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Scrum Team uses a kanban to represent its Sprint Backlog, it must use a single board. Since a Scrum Team can only participate in one Sprint at a time, the idea of having multiple Sprint Backlogs in &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; form (whether spreadsheet or story board) is simply not acceptable within the official framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;You Can Do Almost Anything You Want, But It Won't Be Scrum&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can, of course, do almost anything you want and call it a project management process. You can have one team work on 57 projects at a time. You can fill your walls up with dozens of story boards. You can even write user stories on paperweights stored inside Hello Kitty lunchboxes if you genuinely feel it adds value to your process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one thing you can't do, though, is call what you're doing &quot;Scrum.&quot; Scrum is a well-defined framework, with the framework specifics clearly spelled out in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;. If it isn't documented in the Scrum Guide, it isn't officially part of the Scrum framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many experienced Scrum teams add or borrow practices that are not incompatible with the Scrum framework, so long as those practices adhere to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; or its &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Twelve Principles&lt;/a&gt;. However, principles aren't practices, so you'd be hard-pressed to call Scrum anti-patterns agile practices even if they aren't actually prohibited by the framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-11-29T22:28:18.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12712" CreationDate="2014-11-30T03:08:48.007" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;WBS must contain 100% of the work&quot;...that means we must consider all pieces works to be done under the scope of a particular project. WBS elements are defined in terms of &quot;outcomes or results&quot;...not every action/detail required to produce that result (minute detail would part of SRS and Low level Design etc document). How to determine the level of breakdown is described at &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_breakdown_structure&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_breakdown_structure&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of WBS is to define and organise the scope of the total project in order to assigning responsibilities, resource allocation, monitoring the project, and controlling the project. So it just have project objectives/deliverables. But in case of SRS the purpose is encompassing all the functional and non-functional requirements of every objectives/deliverables. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a small/medium level project we generally have one WBS document and several SRS documents. For big projects we do the same after dividing the projects in Modules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this will help. You are welcome with further specific questions. Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13581" LastActivityDate="2014-11-30T03:08:48.007" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12709" CreationDate="2014-11-30T09:47:09.257" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although I cannot fault CodeGnome's answer above, I feel like the question has not been fully answered and we circle back once again to the flexibility of the names Agile, Scrum, Kanban etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maxim, you have several component parts to your problem which; all of which we face in our department.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multiple Project Requirements (Backlog)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Backlogs merging into one (or several) unified backlogs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Visualisation of current sprint tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Forward sight of tasks occurring in future sprints&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently attended a meeting where one of Jeff Sutherland's friends and original Scrum adopters reiterated that Scrum is adaptable and multiple backlogs may simply be a fact of life imposed by management.  It does not magically stop being Scrum.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our process works with the following ceremonies and artifacts Maxim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Owner for Sales and Marketing generates his Product Backlog (14 Projects)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Owner for Finance generates his backlog (11 Projects)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Owner for Commerce generates his backlog (60 projects prioritised to 12)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All individuals attend a quarterly planning ceremony where we generate the Kanban Baord for the year at Portfolio/Programme Level&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;12 x Monthly Sprints&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint Planning takes place monthly merging 3 Product Backlogs into a single Sprint Backlog according to the prioritisation of the business&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint Kanban Board produced for User Story and Task Level items&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two Kanban Boards are colour coded showing the dependencies between both so that each developer can see at a glance where the User Story (also colour coded) fits into the wider picture.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2014-11-30T09:47:09.257" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12716" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12718" CreationDate="2014-11-30T12:53:34.917" Score="1" ViewCount="786" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand that a project plan (schedule) is much more than a WBS task list. It depends on how you organize your project schedule - may be into phases, may be modules. Phases might have overlapping WBS items, where as modules may not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also understand that the plan will contain more items than WBS. But I would hope that it is good to track your plan has accommodated all the WBS items in it as they are deliverables. I am using MS project and there is a WBS code column. Shall I be using it for cross reference? If so, is it ok to have that column blank for many activities that will not have a corresponding direct package reference. Or shall I use the code for the parent item that activity may fall under?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for clarifying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13640" LastActivityDate="2019-07-09T21:14:24.460" Title="breaking down WBS in a project plan into activities" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12717" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-30T14:35:26.787" Score="4" ViewCount="5625" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering on when a small development team would use kanban when they have multiple simultaneous IT projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a reason why someone would rather go with kanban instead of Scrum when managing multiple projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My guess is that they will have a seperate work board per project and define on a different board which tasks they will complete in this given timespan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13686" LastActivityDate="2020-08-05T18:15:12.877" Title="1 team practicing kanban with multiple projects" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12716" CreationDate="2014-11-30T14:52:32.850" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A project plan (schedule) must accommodated all the WBS items along with time needed for staffing, logistics, environment setups, required approvals, holidays, team member's time off (not all people work 40 hours a week),  planned vacations, needed training and other such activities too. Not all activities in project plan would be having WBS code. So it is absolutely fine to have the column blank for many activities. &#xA;Alex Burton wrote a blog post &quot;Effective Project Management with MS Project – Planning for holidays&quot; here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://epmsource.com/2010/01/11/effective-project-management-with-ms-project-planning-for-holidays/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://epmsource.com/2010/01/11/effective-project-management-with-ms-project-planning-for-holidays/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this will help. Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13581" LastEditorUserId="13581" LastEditDate="2014-11-30T15:20:19.247" LastActivityDate="2014-11-30T15:20:19.247" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12712" CreationDate="2014-11-30T15:00:17.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Notwithstanding Praveen's answer, which is a good one, I want to address the WBS, progressive elaboration, and EVM.  While the WBS of any given project in any given industry must contain 100% of the product / service to be delivered, and at the lower levels, the actions required to produce product / service, there is no requirement that 100% of the WBS be developed and / or known before the project begins.  In many cases and circumstances, it is simply unknown what will come next until some work is accomplished, which can include developing the lower level requirement or spec documents.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further identifying and iterating the WBS as you become &quot;smarter&quot; are perfectly acceptable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conducting EVM in this scenario is also perfectly doable.  As the work is further elaborated, it informs the planning values to be used in the baseline and, under control, you simply process a change to the baseline and keep working.  Under this scenario, you can expect the BAC (baseline at completion) to be in flux while elaboration occurs.  While this is normal and can be expected, it does become a stakeholder communication issue.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT to answer Comments:  With EVM, you ALWAYS have that option because, despite the ton of uncertainty with which we deliver projects, change is 100% certain.  Your EVM capability needs to be able to handle change.  Indeed, you could create a &quot;baseline&quot; of budget based on the rough order of magnitude cost estimates for the work of which you are not certain.  When you learn more, you re-estimate / refine the later stages of work and, under your approved change process, adjust your budget accordingly.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you strike a new baseline for downstream work, you should not be overwriting work that has already begun, so you would not be altering a baseline for work underway or already completed.  You are rebaselining future work, where actual and variances have not accrued.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In cases where you want to, after a formal approval, rebaseline an existing work package, there are methods to do so without overwriting actuals and variances accrued.  This can be complex but, simply put, you would close down the existing work package thus saving the actuals and variances and open a new work package with budget.  There is way more to it than this but it is hard to get very detailed here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mark directed you to MIL-STD-881 above.  Start there.  There are other sources, as well, you can find out there for very detailed instructions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2014-11-30T15:34:52.863" LastActivityDate="2014-11-30T15:34:52.863" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12716" CreationDate="2014-11-30T15:26:46.237" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The two objectives of maintaining a schedule is to 1) know when to bring resources--both human, materials, and money--to bear and 2) build a capability to know how you are progressing in both actuals compared to plan and your prediction of where you are headed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The questions you are asking are the right things to ask but it really comes down to WHAT MAKES SENSE TO YOU so that you can maintain control.  I have seen so many approaches that work so your approach really needs to evolve through experience, where over time you develop the one that fits your mental model such that you can safely say your project is under control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My approach is to keep it as simple as possible, where I overlay the WBS into the schedule.  My leaf level WBS is what I consider the work package and I may or may not decompose the package into lower level activities, depending if I think it makes sense.  Some types of activities I would use a separate calendar, such as JAD sessions, because they can shift a day or two at a moment's notice, you can add or delete as you need them, and putting them into the schedule that is supposed to be under change control simply does not make sense.  It would quickly not represent reality since reality can change tomorrow.  And sessions moving around, adding or deleting, does not affect the baseline at the work package level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that is what makes sense to me.  It is extremely important you develop an approach that makes sense to you.  Trial and error is the way to go.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-11-30T15:26:46.237" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12722" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12724" CreationDate="2014-11-30T15:47:49.080" Score="4" ViewCount="626" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you have a small company with some programmers, designers and a project manager, who is responsible for the testing? Does everybody have to write tests, or is it always the same person?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13687" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-11-30T16:24:55.510" LastActivityDate="2014-12-23T19:05:34.940" Title="In agile projects, who is assigned to do the testing?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12723" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-30T16:06:08.060" Score="1" ViewCount="427" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm preparing a time phased budget - basically my project schedule with all resources and cost allocated. When its reviewed, I will need to baseline it for calculating variance (tracking) in future. So far so good in concept. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to make this plan happen, I assume I would need to have the detailed requirements gathered for proper estimation etc (assume a waterfall model for EVM). The question is does this project plan then contain information about work that has already been completed - such as requirement gathering/WBS etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13640" LastEditorUserId="13640" LastEditDate="2014-11-30T16:36:54.940" LastActivityDate="2014-12-02T02:20:44.980" Title="Adding requirements gathering to the project plan - time phased budget baseline (PMB)" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;budget&gt;&lt;evm&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12722" CreationDate="2014-11-30T16:21:52.957" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Testing is Everyone's Job&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile teams should strive to be cross-functional. Even when some members of the team specialize, &lt;em&gt;everyone&lt;/em&gt; should be involved in some aspect of test execution or test development. For example, on a software project limited to the roles you've defined:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Designers should be involved in Acceptance Test-Driven Development (ATDD), perhaps using Cucumber or Watir to specify the behavior or contents of their user interface.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Programmers should be involved in Test-Driven Development (TDD), writing unit tests for all significant aspects of the product's behavior.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Programmers should also be involved in writing tests for Continuous Integration (CI), to ensure that the code base is &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; in a potentially-shippable state.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Product Owner and Project Manager should be involved in writing tests for Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) and any non-functional requirements, ensuring that the product meets the team's &quot;definition of done&quot; at the end of every iteration or milestone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the same way, systems administrators, database administrators, network administrators, or other specialists that work with the the Development Team (whether or not they are actually members of the team) should also be involved in testing. While cross-functional generalists are often the ideal for an agile team, in practice teams may contain (or matrix in) specialists for certain aspects of the project. These resource specialists are the ones best suited to develop tests that exercise their particular domains of expertise, and can help the rest of the team ensure that each vertical slice of functionality works as intended throughout the entire stack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not doing software, the concept remains the same but the types of tests (and who needs to be involved in developing each type of test) will certainly vary. What should &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; vary, though, is the participation of the entire team in continuously testing the team's product and its fitness for purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-12-01T23:03:43.473" LastActivityDate="2014-12-01T23:03:43.473" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12725" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12727" CreationDate="2014-11-30T17:46:39.007" Score="4" ViewCount="163" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background&lt;/strong&gt;: I am managing a Project where I am responsible planning the construction of a visitor center on the peak of a mountain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Problem&lt;/strong&gt;: During reading the brief, I have came across the following statement: &quot;Poor weather conditions often make the peak inaccessible from November to March each year.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Question&lt;/strong&gt;: How would I adjust for the period between November to March? The statement above states &quot;often,&quot; which I believe implies that some days between November to March will be accessible. However, how would I go about this? Do I simply assume the number of days which will be available for work by calculating number of days from November to March and finding the average? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13695" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-11-30T18:34:04.403" LastActivityDate="2014-11-30T19:46:18.007" Title="How should I schedule around a resource that may be unavailable for up to 5 months a year?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;constraints&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12723" CreationDate="2014-11-30T18:06:35.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First as we all know that estimations are uncertain(&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cone of Uncertainty&lt;/a&gt;). Second,  detailed requirement may not available at the initial phase of project (It may be a artifact in plan itself and many new things or changes may arise while development). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, Baseline plan is an interim plan with initial estimate of project factors to track the changes. So it is &lt;strong&gt;not necessary that baseline project plan must contain  information about work that has already been completed&lt;/strong&gt;, but it may have those if few parts are done before the plan is declared and used as baseline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this will help. Feel free to ask further queries. Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13581" LastEditorUserId="13581" LastEditDate="2014-12-02T02:20:44.980" LastActivityDate="2014-12-02T02:20:44.980" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12725" CreationDate="2014-11-30T19:46:18.007" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is no different than the probabilistic of weather events and those projects that can be affected by weather.  And it is even similar to the probabilistic availability and performance of labor and machine resources.  The key is to understand the distribution of weather impact on the mountain over many years.  This means, in order to properly plan work on the mountain, you need to find credible, historical data on weather patterns over the mountain; plot the distribution of those events, and then choose the planning value that represents the degree of risk you are willing to assume.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using mean average can be very flawed depending on the skew of that distribution.  So it is important to understand the distribution.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You cannot mitigate weather; you can only plan for resilience to the degree possible.  That might only mean a decent amount of cash in reserves in order to fund weather delays that are out of everyone's control.  It could mean doing other work at another location when access to the mountain is closed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-11-30T19:46:18.007" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12722" CreationDate="2014-11-30T20:23:37.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Agile: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team is self organized.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The whole team is responsible for the product quality.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So let the development team decide who will do what.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13500" LastActivityDate="2014-11-30T20:23:37.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12723" CreationDate="2014-11-30T22:24:06.637" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may create multiple baselines in Project using interim plans or by baselining selected tasks.  Many organizations have specifications about when an initial baseline (initiation phase) is taken, and then when another baseline is saved - usually after requirements and stakeholder sign-off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2014-11-30T22:24:06.637" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12730" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12731" CreationDate="2014-12-01T02:38:00.537" Score="1" ViewCount="6100" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen some project plans where a task that spans 80 hours has two resources assigned to it, one at 100% and the other at 50%. Is this correct? Shouldn't the task be broken down to two parts and be assigned to each resource appropriately, for better tracking?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What will be an example legitimate scenario for doing the same? or is the PM just lazy to expand this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13640" LastActivityDate="2014-12-01T13:14:38.013" Title="assigning multiple resources to a single task in MS project - is that right?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12730" CreationDate="2014-12-01T08:58:18.863" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There can be cases where multiple resources are assigned to a task. This can be understood if you keep in mind that &lt;strong&gt;resources&lt;/strong&gt; can be &lt;strong&gt;people&lt;/strong&gt; as well as &lt;strong&gt;equipment&lt;/strong&gt; (and &lt;em&gt;material&lt;/em&gt; too, for the sake of completeness). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, a task in a construction or manufacturing project requires a specialized joint which can be done using a specific machine. Other work resource, assigned to this task, can prepare the material in lets say 4 hours and then require another 4 hours to join it using the machine. So one resource is used 100% and the other is used 50%. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar concept can be used in Software Development projects. Consider a web application which is used connect with remotely deployed specialized equipment (let say on-field spectral analysis devices) and change its various configuration settings. Now consider that during active development there are two testing/qa task, one to verify backup frequency of the device (set from web control panel), and second task to verify the data upload frequency of the device. Two QA team members will be assigned (one for each task). However due to limited availability of on-field device, it will be shared. Each QA member can start his/her task with testing the web interface first and then complete the end-to-end testing on the device. So for each task in the project plan, we'll have 1 person assigned 100% and the equipment assigned for 50%. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possible example, where there is no involvement of &lt;em&gt;equipment&lt;/em&gt; could be, a safety/quality inspector who spends 2 hours daily on each of the 4 different project sites. At each of the 4 sites, one person is assigned 100% to his/her task and the inspector assigned 25% to those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2014-12-01T08:58:18.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12730" CreationDate="2014-12-01T10:18:39.630" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the real world, any amount of resources can be assigned to a task. How many people, working together, does it take to get a piano up some stairs? Suppose it was up 20 flights of stairs and one person was available all day and the other only in mornings. Then in each day you could only assign one and half people to getting that pesky piano up the stairs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this ability to add multiple resources, in varying amounts, to a task to get it done is present in the real world, MS-Project allows you to do it in the computer-based planning world too!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2014-12-01T10:18:39.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12730" CreationDate="2014-12-01T13:14:38.013" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Loading differing utilization planning value levels expected of each resource serves two purposes: 1) to inform the impact on duration (less expected utilization should pressure duration to expand) and 2) to calculate costs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you need to remember that everything is probabilistic including a ton of random variables that influence both favorably and unfavorably where actuals come in.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So trying to plan precisely and / or track precisely any given resource that is one of many in a complex package will cost you a lot but bring in very little value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So creating multiple packages for in order to load one resource will provide no benefit for tracking purposes.  At the end of the day, you are managing variances, not trying to actually achieve a planning value for a specific resource.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-12-01T13:14:38.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12717" CreationDate="2014-12-01T16:25:41.623" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key phrases to remember with Kanban are 'visualise the backlog' and 'limit work in progress'. For this reason I think Kanban is best managed using a single board. Otherwise people find it hard to visualise the total amount of work that needs to be done or that is currently in progress. Multiple boards also make it harder to set hard limits on the total number of tasks that the team can have in progress at any given time because you'll need to count up the total across several boards to keep track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To manage multiple projects (or even themes within a single project) I use swimlanes to visually split the work out but keep it on the same board e.g:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt; ----------------------------------------------&#xA;|           | To do       | In progress | Done |&#xA;|-----------|-------------|-------------|------|&#xA;| Urgent    | T-69        |             | T-6  |&#xA;|-----------|-------------|-------------|------|&#xA;| Project 1 | T-103 T-204 |             | T1   |&#xA;|-----------|-------------|-------------|------|&#xA;| Project 2 | T-30        | T-97        | T-12 |&#xA;|-----------|-------------|-------------|------|&#xA;| Project 3 | T-465 T-500 | T-34        |      |&#xA; ----------------------------------------------&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way you can set per column limits for total workload rather than per project, and you can get an instant visual representation of the total number of tasks in each status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can, of course, become quite unwieldy, especially if you're using a physical board. I use &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/agile&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;JIRA Agile&lt;/a&gt; to manage the process, using &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/configure-quick-filters/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Quick Filters&lt;/a&gt; pretty heavily to quickly switch between views of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-27T13:27:17.117" LastActivityDate="2020-07-27T13:27:17.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12722" CreationDate="2014-12-01T23:01:05.957" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;+Vote to CodeGnome's answer!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While testing is everyone's job, keep in mind that, depending on the maturity of your team, it can be very practical to designate a primary tester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having teams where everyone tests, but no-one is accountable for the results, can lead to very low quality products.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On Agile teams, a lead QA resource or equivalent is often designated.  While this individual doesn't do all testing, they are an expert practitioner that also leads the charge in helping the team stick to their chosen testing practices as well as helping the team innovate new testing practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A great lead QA will have a deep understanding of TDD, automated tests, unit tests, etc as well as understanding how each person on the team can best be motivated and employed to improve product quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2014-12-01T23:01:05.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12709" CreationDate="2014-12-01T23:26:10.403" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you stick to a strict interpretation of Scrum, 1 story board = 1 team = 1 project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could you use multiple story boards?  Sure, but purists would probably argue you're not doing Scrum anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you doing Agile-Scrum?  Yes, possibly...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the solution you choose (one or many story boards) is desired by the team(s) and improves their ability to deliver on commitments, then I'd argue you are still doing Agile-Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is a proscribed set of tools/processes for delivering software.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile is more focused on results and is a school of thought; it does not proscribe the specific tools/processes to get there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At some point Agile-Scrum becomes a contradiction; when Scrum limits the capabilities of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2014-12-01T23:26:10.403" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12739" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-02T12:31:02.283" Score="4" ViewCount="904" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working in a big project, where we're creating a standard software A for several customers and in parallel extending that software for one customer (software B). There are several Scrum teams. The teams, which work on A, are geographically and contractually separated from B teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often we need to have something fixed or changed in A to complete our user stories in B. That causes a lot of friction, because we often cannot complete our planned tasks. We try to analyse user stories to avoid in-sprint dependencies on A, but when we discover a bug in A, we have to wait for the next sprint to get a fix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another problem is that we had to chose between long implementation cycles (sprint of A + sprint of B) or integrating mid-sprint deliverables with incomplete or buggy features. So far we've chosen to use mid-sprint deliverables, because we can continue our tasks faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now we're rethinking our approach: How should we setup Scrum in teams, which depend on some other team's work? How can we reduce canceled tasks in mid-sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1264" LastActivityDate="2014-12-02T23:57:25.977" Title="Scrum team is dependent on other team's work" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;&lt;multi-team&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12739" CreationDate="2014-12-02T13:53:41.130" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make sure you are communicating.&lt;/strong&gt; Make sure the Product Owners responsible for A understand the dependencies that B is relying on. Work with them to get agreement on prioritizing the items that are needed for the teams working on B to be able to make progress. If necessary, escalate this to whoever is in a position to care about both A and B succeeding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be more cautious in your sprint planning.&lt;/strong&gt; If what you have described is a recurring problem, consider adjusting your process. Do not bring a story into a sprint unless you know that the dependencies from A have been addressed and that they are working as expected. If you are not sure, then bring in a technical spike to investigate. Depending on the outcome of the spike you can be more certain about the commitment to complete your task in the following sprint, or if the outcome of the spike is not positive, you'll at least know what needs to be addressed and can avoid that story until the dependency is fixed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have B help out A&lt;/strong&gt; I've seen a similar situations where B was started while A was not actually far enough along. This led to the problems that you've described, and part of the solution was to have the teams working on B spend some amount of time helping the teams working on A (even if just addressing the issues that you run into). This will likely take a higher-level discussion, but it is likely a better use for your team than to have them constantly hitting roadblocks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastActivityDate="2014-12-02T13:53:41.130" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12739" CreationDate="2014-12-02T23:57:25.977" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some ideas coming from working in the same environment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Small Changes&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Shorten the duration of iterations for team A so that they are required to ship product more frequently and in smaller increments.  Shortening the iteration will allow for quicker response to changing priorities at a higher coordination cost.  You're still doing scrum but basically marching towards CI and a more Kanban style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Improve Team A's ability to promote to a staging environment frequently within an iteration.  My last scrum team served lots of other teams with integration work. They started off having 1 big promotion to staging every 2-3 weeks where the integration could then be tested externally and consumed.  With better prioritization, smaller stories, done criteria, and PO communication the same team was able to promote a release candidate every 2-3 days  to staging.  You're still doing Scrum, but it requires the team to have a very tight developing to QA cycle.  Developers need to be able to write code on day 1 of the sprint and can't lose time clarifying requirements and story scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) When dependencies arise, have members from team A attend team B standup when work is occurring in parallel.  This will create a transparent dev-to-dev relationship and force a daily sync on the dependency at slightly higher coordination cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Big Changes&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Merge team A and team B to deliver 1 backlog.  Use something like a feature toggle framework to control which features are always part of vanilla and which features can be toggled on/off for certain customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) Alternatively don't do scrum at all for Team A, do Kanban instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2014-12-02T23:57:25.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12743" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-03T14:51:07.197" Score="5" ViewCount="449" Body="&lt;p&gt;We recently began working on Scrum with one of our products. Prior to that we worked with a Waterfall methodology. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have created stories for the new feature and also included the bugs for the next release and we are estimating stories in story points. We are not sure how to deal with bugs. Do we need to estimate in story points or number of days for bugs? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team finds that, for some of the bugs, most of the effort is taken up by analysis since the bug requires debugging and trouble shooting efforts rather than actual code implementation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do we estimate these specific cases, where the bulk of the effort is spent on analysis and some of that analysis may take days to weeks to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please help&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5576" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2014-12-03T16:54:32.593" LastActivityDate="2014-12-04T20:35:44.257" Title="How do we deal with bugs in scrum environment" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12743" CreationDate="2014-12-03T20:39:23.183" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Choose a consistent estimation approach that uses story points (don't rely on hours).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option 1:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Don't ever estimate the size of the defect in story points.  Reasoning, a defect arises when a previous acceptance criteria from an existing (already estimated) story was not met.  Estimating the defect in a way then double counts the part of the work required to deliver the story.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outcome, iterations with many defects show a lower velocity.  The team is forced to discuss why their velocity has dropped and why so many defects are occurring.  Con...its harder for the team to commit to completing everything in the iteration if they haven't sized it formally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option 2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always story-point estimate the size of the defect.  Reasoning, in an iteration we want to align the story/defect workload with what the team has capacity to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Outcome, the team maintains a consistent velocity and can accurately commit to work within an iteration.  Con...it isn't as obvious empirically that value added work is dropping as defect load increases.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hour estimation and tasking are at your discretion in Scrum.  Personally I advise against formally tracking tasks or hours in your scrum software as it creates additional overhead and can give an undesirable micro-management feel to some teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2014-12-03T20:39:23.183" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12745" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-03T21:31:00.690" Score="0" ViewCount="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;My company is setting dates for planning the version on the first day of the version. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me it seems to be waaaay too late.. I think it should be at least a couple of weeks before that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When should we start the planning process? Is there a standard for this process and how it should be handled?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7194" LastActivityDate="2014-12-03T21:49:11.110" Title="When should I start planning for the next version?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12745" CreationDate="2014-12-03T21:45:36.320" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no standard process for this, only recommendations: it is a good practice to start planning as early as possible until it is clear to everybody that a &lt;strong&gt;plan is not a commitment&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were you, I would follow the &lt;em&gt;1/3 rule&lt;/em&gt;: plan the first 1/3 very detailed on the task level, plan the second 1/3 on the user story level, and finally plan the last 1/3 on the epic level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this approach you can have an idea &lt;strong&gt;when you might finished the project&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;what are your next steps&lt;/strong&gt;. With this information you can go to your boss or supervisor and see whether this is fine with him or her and &lt;strong&gt;talk about risks&lt;/strong&gt;. If you can do this before the start you can eliminate problems before even officially starting the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a several days or weeks, you do you planning again using the information from the past days/weeks, but this time user stories might become tasks, and epics might become user stories etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2014-12-03T21:45:36.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12745" CreationDate="2014-12-03T21:49:11.110" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Planning Within the Project Schedule&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's nothing wrong with putting most of your planning processes inside your project schedule. In fact, planning is a necessary part of most work packages, so &lt;em&gt;scheduling&lt;/em&gt; your planning activities within the overall project plan can make a lot of sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Planning Lead Time Can Vary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for when you should start planning, I don't believe there's a canonical answer to this; a lot depends on your chosen project management framework. For example, frameworks that require a lot of up-front planning and design (e.g. WaterFailure&amp;trade;) will likely require a great deal more lead time for planning than agile frameworks (e.g. Scrum or Kanban) that make use of &quot;just enough&quot; or &quot;just-in-time&quot; planning at the start of each iteration or milestone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-12-03T21:49:11.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12743" CreationDate="2014-12-03T21:50:00.180" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are doing Scrum make it as a policy that you are going to talk about the progress of bugs during the daily standup meeting. When you know what the root cause is you can start to handle the bug as a user story: you can give size or estimates because you know what you are dealing with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you hear no progress - let's say in 2 or 3 days - about the issue you should do something about it because a serious bug can risk your project. You can either suggest to have more people on the problem, you can cancel the sprint (discuss this possibility with your PO), or you can escalate the situation and ask for suggestions from the PO or other teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2014-12-03T21:50:00.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8377" CreationDate="2014-12-03T21:50:45.817" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Agile, everyone is responsible for bringing value to the customer's project. However, in a more traditional sense, the Business Analyst has been more directly responsible for eliciting the requirements, translating them against suggested solutions, and working with the system architect/project manager/lead programmer. In some cases the role of the Analyst will go further in helping to create documentation, and training materials on the resources that were created as they are supposed to be the closest to the end user. If there is a specification that your team is using specifically to handle Requirements, the Business Analyst would be the closest role to this document. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Project Manager on the other hand looks at the full picture of the project to create the necessary environment for everyone to do their job. They would be responsible for managing all documents created by the team, organizing them and agreeing on a single format, interfacing with your final customers, gaining their sign off on what can and can't be done, as well as mitigating any obstacles that might prevent tasks from being completed. In the end, they are two separate roles that will be working closely together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12261" LastActivityDate="2014-12-03T21:50:45.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12717" CreationDate="2014-12-03T21:56:32.530" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kanban and Scrum is not comparable but think about this: Scrum is for one project in an iterative fashion. You have more than one project, possibly in a continuous fashion, so you are better of with Kanban. Nevertheless, have every second week a retrospective to see how you are doing and what you can do better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2014-12-03T21:56:32.530" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12717" CreationDate="2014-12-04T07:58:00.783" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our team personally use different coloured cards to ally each user story to a particular project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each Project is treated as an Epic with it's own requirements documentation and a it's own timeline.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2014-12-04T07:58:00.783" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12743" CreationDate="2014-12-04T12:44:09.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First things first&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the bug fix takes days or even weeks, this is a clear sign of &lt;strong&gt;poor code design&lt;/strong&gt;. This means your project code is hard to test, which should be much more of your concern than bugs estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Estimation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you start with Scrum and are used to days/hours estimates, I suggest you handle four types of issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User Story. Adds up the user facing product functionality. Example: &quot;As a user I want to log in via Facebook&quot;. Estimate &lt;strong&gt;User Stories&lt;/strong&gt; in &lt;strong&gt;Story Points&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Subtask. Child of a User Story. Reflects what should be done in order to complete the Story. Each Story should have at least one Subtask. Example: &quot;Implement Login view&quot;. Estimate &lt;strong&gt;Subtasks&lt;/strong&gt; in &lt;strong&gt;hours&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bug. The mismatch of how the system expected to work vs actual behaviour. Example: &quot;Placing an order redirects a user to 404 page&quot;. Estimate &lt;strong&gt;Bugs&lt;/strong&gt; in &lt;strong&gt;hours&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task. Anything, which has nothing to do with user experience and does not belong to any User Story. Example: &quot;Set up and configure Jenkins&quot;. Estimate &lt;strong&gt;Tasks&lt;/strong&gt; in &lt;strong&gt;hours&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is how do you benefit from such approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can measure how your Product evolves. Just use Sprint velocity based on Story Points. Which clearly shows that if your Sprint is filled by tasks and bugs your Product does not evolve.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can trace your Sprint Burndown. Everything you do in the Sprint is either Subtask of a Story, a Bug or a Task. You estimate them in hours and can track the performance within the Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But pay attention to the first paragraph please. Bug fixes should never take days or weeks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13500" LastEditorUserId="13500" LastEditDate="2014-12-04T20:35:44.257" LastActivityDate="2014-12-04T20:35:44.257" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12758" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12760" CreationDate="2014-12-04T19:28:09.537" Score="10" ViewCount="1747" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team is having an issue with integrating software product features. Specifically, when do features get pull requested into our &lt;em&gt;integration&lt;/em&gt; branch of code?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently our understanding is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Product Owner is the only person who can say that a feature or User Story is &quot;done&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Product Owner makes his decision on whether a User Story is &quot;done&quot; at the end of sprint, during the Sprint Review Meeting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the points above, it appears that pull requests for our &quot;done&quot; features or User Stories should occur at the end of our sprints. But how can this be the case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we merge several features together after we get the Product Owner's approval, it may be the case that the features conflict or break each other. Now the features are no longer &quot;done&quot;, additional work to resolve conflicts must be done, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can we continuously integrate our new features (allowing us to do realistic integration testing) while retaining the fact that the Product Owner is the final say of whether or not a feature is &quot;done&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13724" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-12-04T22:03:33.050" LastActivityDate="2014-12-11T03:31:37.323" Title="How can we continuously integrate new features when the PO only determines whether a feature is &quot;done&quot; at the end of each Sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;definition-of-done&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12758" CreationDate="2014-12-04T20:55:14.170" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a good question, which many teams struggle with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner makes his decision on whether a User Story is &quot;done&quot; at the end of sprint, during the Sprint Review Meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nope. &lt;strong&gt;The Product Owner accepts &quot;done&quot; User Stories during the Sprint.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the whole Story lifecycle (To do - In progress - Done - Pushed to master) happens before the Sprint Review. And once Story is pushed to master branch, other branches should pull it in and fix conflicts if any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User Story acceptance may take couple of days, so the Sprint Review meeting is not held to accept User Stories. It's held to compare planned vs actual and assess if the Sprint goal was met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13500" LastEditorUserId="13500" LastEditDate="2014-12-05T19:35:07.387" LastActivityDate="2014-12-05T19:35:07.387" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12758" CreationDate="2014-12-04T21:29:26.883" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The team says the story is done.  Think of this on a storyboard where the team marks the story as ready to pull (done or completed) into accepted status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner accepts the story, (by pulling it into accepted) but their acceptance only indicates the story is done in terms of business functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So acceptance from a product owner, is only partial to saying the story is done.  Done goes beyond PO acceptance because it encompasses the non-functional portions of finishing a story as well. QA, tech debt, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One model for handling integration and done stories is to land these stories into a staging environment.  Staging is a clone or close replica of your production environment. Its also where integrating teams would go to consume any code.  Your Product Owner uses this environment to validate that the functional requirements of the story are met and accept the story.  This doesn't need to happen during the review ceremony.  It can happen anytime throughout the iteration, but ideally is completed soon after the iteration finishes (otherwise you hold your stage environment hostage and can't check in new features).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to get to staging, all your done criteria (functional and non-functional) must already be completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm simplifying a bit with this model as there are done criteria that can happen in production in some situations.  But the majority of done criteria must be met by the time code goes to stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2014-12-04T21:29:26.883" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12758" CreationDate="2014-12-04T21:59:19.783" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your Scrum implementation has some misconceptions, which appear to be based around how to implement the &quot;Definition of Done&quot; in a properly-collaborative fashion. If you address this communications failure, your continuous integration efforts should become much smoother.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, it will help your team a great deal to focus on the iterative nature of agile methodologies; agility stresses refinement of the product over time, rather than on perfect execution of &quot;specifications&quot; within each increment. The Product Backlog is a living document, and stories on the backlog are added, changed, or removed at least every iteration. It is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a one-pass set of requirements, and your team needs to leverage that flexibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;When is Something Done?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, a user story or increment is considered done when it has achieved its stated goal &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; met any existing criteria to which the Scrum Team as a whole (which includes the Product Owner) has previously agreed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the following user story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a web-browsing customer,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want to see everything on the page in 300-point type&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I don't suffer from eye strain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This story would be done when:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The web site's default font had been set to a ridiculous size.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team agrees that the implementation meets the goal of avoiding eye strain.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The current &quot;Definition of Done,&quot; which applies to all stories in the project, has been met. This definition varies from team to team, but might include unit tests, user acceptance tests, pushing to a continuous integration server, or slapping each other with wet mackerel. Whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;NB: The point here is that the team (including the Product Owner) agrees to the definition &lt;strong&gt;beforehand&lt;/strong&gt;. There is no post-facto &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retroactive_continuity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;retconning&lt;/a&gt; of &quot;Done.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Someone on the team marks the story &quot;done&quot; on the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's it. The story is now done. It may or may not be done &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt;, but it's considered complete for the purposes of Scrum. The Product Owner should have been involved throughout the Sprint, so if the feature has completely slid off the rails, the PO's lack of involvement is likely the problem and should be addressed during the next Sprint Retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What About Stories That Aren't Done &lt;em&gt;Right&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the Sprint, the team collects points for all stories that the whole team (including the Product Owner) agree were completed according to the Definition of Done. If the stories were thus completed, but are unsatisfactory in some way, that's grist for the mill during the Sprint Retrospective and for other inspect-and-adapt meetings. It doesn't change the fact that the stories were done in an agreed-upon way&amp;mdash;an agreement to which the Product Owner was an active party&amp;mdash;and so there's no &quot;acceptance&quot; of the stories to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-review&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;during the Sprint Review&lt;/a&gt; (my exposition in bold):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Product Owner explains [to stakeholders] what Product Backlog items have been “Done” and what has not been “Done”. &lt;strong&gt;This is a status report, not an opportunity to accept or decline stories.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Development Team demonstrates the work that it has “Done” and answers questions about the Increment. &lt;strong&gt;This is often a great place to explain misfeatures that are nevertheless &quot;Done,&quot; and to solicit stakeholder feedback about how to improve them in a future iteration.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Product Owner discusses the Product Backlog as it stands. He or she projects likely completion dates based on progress to date (if needed). &lt;strong&gt;This is another inflection point where stakeholders can decide if an imperfect feature is &quot;good enough,&quot; or if it needs to be reworked or added back to the Product Backlog as-is.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The entire group collaborates on what to do next, so that the Sprint Review provides valuable input to subsequent Sprint Planning. &lt;strong&gt;This is where some limited discussion of misfeatures could take place, but most process problems should be addressed in the Sprint Retrospective.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, during Backlog Refinement or Sprint Planning, the Product Owner can take any stories that were completed but didn't deliver the desired value and:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write new stories to address any shortcomings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put stories back onto the Product Backlog, hopefully with more detail or a better understanding with the team of the story's goals and objectives.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decide that the features, as delivered, are &quot;good enough&quot; or don't need to be iterated over again.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum up, the Product Owner doesn't get to single-handedly declare whether or not a story is done. After all, the &quot;definition of done&quot; is a collaboration between &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the members of the Scrum Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the Product Owner (as the sole custodian of the Product Backlog) &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; get to determine if a story can be marked completed on the Product Backlog or if elements of it need to be done again in another Sprint. Simply throwing the original story back onto the top of the Product Backlog without addressing the underlying problems with the story, the Scrum process, or the Scrum Team's communication is probably a bad idea though, so the Scrum Master should definitely assist at that point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-12-04T22:04:55.187" LastActivityDate="2014-12-04T22:04:55.187" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12762" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12766" CreationDate="2014-12-05T10:17:43.413" Score="1" ViewCount="238" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am running a project that is no longer viable due to an incorrect assumption. Therefore the project needs to be canceled/discontinued/killed/deleted/scrubbed. What is the correct name for this stage of a project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13727" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-12-05T14:50:06.457" LastActivityDate="2014-12-05T14:50:06.457" Title="What is the correct name for terminating a project before it's complete?" Tags="&lt;terminology&gt;&lt;pmbok&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12763" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12772" CreationDate="2014-12-05T10:45:22.030" Score="2" ViewCount="271" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently I am a Project Manager of the following team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 Android Developers &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 Web Developers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 iOS Developers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and we are currently between the project initiation and development stages since the client has not yet clearly identified all the exact details of the system but we know the basics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every now and then I need to contact the client and ask them for more information regarding the project (documentation acceptance, asking questions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I include the developers in these emails or not?&#xA;The good thing is this way they are able to see the answers of all technical questions themselves but once I was told the less the developers are exposed to the clients the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What is the best practice in this case for projects which contain up to 10 developers in them and are for small to medium size projects (1-6 months in length)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11918" LastActivityDate="2014-12-06T02:34:55.620" Title="Should I include the developers in the official email communication with clients?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;clients&gt;&lt;communication-management&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12763" CreationDate="2014-12-05T11:46:52.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The roles are irrelevant.  What is important is who benefits and what the benefits are from receiving the message as compared to its costs, risks, and penalties.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should be able to articulate that, if the developers are in the communication loop, the receipt of a message has specific benefits for their work.  The benefit can even be indirect and intangible such as the feelings of being involved, being in the know, and transparency.  However, including the developers can raise costs, risks, and penalties, such as actual increase in dollars to include them, the risk that some type of misunderstanding or disagreement can occur that really did not need to, or that the information is really not that beneficial and you are slowly training your developers to ignore e-mails, causing them to ignore something they should not have.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want thoughtful communication practices, you need to think about these things.  Don't just adopt an easy include or exclude policy--as likely most of us do--as the damages could be very high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  Based on the bolded question on best practice, you are clearly looking for the one size fits all answer...do so at your detriment.  There is NO SUCH THING.  Google a bit on audience analysis.  It works both ways, one to define the message in content and abstraction based on who the audience is as well as defining who the audience needs to be based on the message to be delivered or messages you need to extract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your best practice will work some of the time and will yield varying degrees of adverse consequences the rest of the time.  Communications are hard.  It requires some thought.  The best practice answer you need is, analyze the audience and message and make them consistent.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2014-12-05T20:11:36.680" LastActivityDate="2014-12-05T20:11:36.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12762" CreationDate="2014-12-05T13:19:31.763" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I am aware the most common terminology for this stage is &quot;Project Close[down]&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2014-12-05T13:19:31.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12762" CreationDate="2014-12-05T14:45:24.777" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;The Project Management Perspective&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will vary by organization, and a lot depends on what you're trying to communicate. Formally, the PMBOK calls this stage the &quot;Project Closeout Group&quot; and says that &lt;a href=&quot;http://4squareviews.com/2013/02/09/5th-edition-pmbok-guide-chapter-3-closing-process-group/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;it contains types of closures&lt;/a&gt; such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Complete&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Terminated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Premature Closure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a more practical project management perspective, this phase of the project is generally just called &quot;Project Closeout&quot; regardless of the &lt;em&gt;reasons&lt;/em&gt; you are closing the project. The key is to use the term that's most effective at communicating the project management stage and (if necessesary) the reasons for the closure to the project team, senior management, and the rest of the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Other Roles, Other Terms&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a portfolio management or agile perspective, you might spin this as &quot;reallocating resources to more promising projects,&quot; or simply state that your project has &quot;correctly failed early.&quot; This positions the message within your organization, but it doesn't really change the fact the project management team must close out the project in some fashion, rather than simply dropping the plan on the floor and walking away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, regardless of framework, &lt;em&gt;communication&lt;/em&gt; is the goal. The name you use to designate the process is only meaningful in the context of communication with others, so your mileage will vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-12-05T14:45:24.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12763" CreationDate="2014-12-05T15:15:24.680" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Email as a medium for capturing, documenting and disseminating requirements is a bad idea&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developers are not trained in the art of handling clients diplomatically. If you include them in the email, they will respond as they see fit and you may be left handling the damage control.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The assumption that the entire development team will somehow absorb all the requirements based on emails back and forth is naive.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You may be setting yourself up for nasty disputes with your clients as to what exactly you committed to deliver.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need a better way to capture requirements. If you are following the Waterfall process, use the email communication with the clients as a source of information for what goes into  the requirements document that you will get the client to approve. After that any changes should be handled through change control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I strongly recommend that you follow the Scrum process. Designate a Product Owner (PO) on your side to engage in this communication with the client to understand their business goal and what would constitute success in what you all are setting out to build. Then this PO should be able to work with the dev team to write user stories in the form of &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a [type of user], I want [some goal] so that [some reason]. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And also write testable acceptance criteria for each such user story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/the-product-owner-responsibilities/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here is the opinion of Roman Pichler, author of Agile Product Management with Scrum, on the PO role in small teams.&lt;/a&gt; You will see it in the Q&amp;amp;A below the blog post:&#xA;&quot;I have worked with a few teams where one of the team members played the product owner role successfully. Generally speaking, I find combining the roles challenging.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2014-12-05T18:16:04.030" LastActivityDate="2014-12-05T18:16:04.030" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12768" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12769" CreationDate="2014-12-05T16:00:12.847" Score="1" ViewCount="1165" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to begin a universitarian project with my fellows. It is required that we use one of the Agile Methods together with Bitbucket. We'd like to begin with Scrum. I've read its documentation and it seems very powerful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is about the &lt;em&gt;Sprint&lt;/em&gt; in Scrum and the &lt;em&gt;branch&lt;/em&gt; in Bitbucket. Can we say that a Sprint and a branch are almost the same things?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, we will open our very first branch in BitBucket and this will be our first Sprint. Is this the correct interpretation of this method, or it would be more appropriate (by &quot;appropriate&quot; I mean &quot;following best practice&quot;) for every member of our group to open his own branch?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11704" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-12-05T18:28:30.353" LastActivityDate="2014-12-06T05:15:21.263" Title="Can we say that a Sprint and a source code branch are almost the same things?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12768" CreationDate="2014-12-05T16:41:44.520" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Sprints and Branches Are Separate Concepts&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can we say that a Sprint and a source code branch are almost the same things?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-sprint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum Sprint&lt;/a&gt; and a &lt;a href=&quot;http://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Branching-Basic-Branching-and-Merging&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Git branch&lt;/a&gt; are not at all the same things. While you can &lt;em&gt;use&lt;/em&gt; an online Source Code Management (SCM) system like BitBucket or GitHub in the development process, there is no one-to-one mapping between the project management framework (in this case, Scrum) and your SCM workflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Sprint is a time-boxed iteration with a cohesive Sprint Goal, and a set of features that help the team to achieve the Sprint Goal. These features also comprise one or more increments of potentially-shippable value. These increments are the deliverables for each Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SCM workflows are negotiable processes that can vary between projects and teams. There is no canonical answer to the question of how one should use source code management across teams, projects, or organizations. That is really a question for the Development Team to address within the project framework, and is ultimately more of an engineering or architectural concern than a project management practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-12-06T05:15:21.263" LastActivityDate="2014-12-06T05:15:21.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12763" CreationDate="2014-12-05T19:58:47.577" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Even more - you should get your client and dev team on a regular requirements call.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's your client who knows what should be done and it's your team who knows how to do that and what time it will take. Facilitating a regular requrements clarification call &lt;strong&gt;with the team&lt;/strong&gt; is the best option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use the following call agenda:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PM gets the client and the team on the call.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PM shares the screen with the backlog of requirements, mockups and other details.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Client goes through what should be done. Team provides feedback.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PM updates requirements &lt;strong&gt;on the fly&lt;/strong&gt; right on the shared screen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PM sets up next requirements clarification call as needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13500" LastActivityDate="2014-12-05T19:58:47.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12758" CreationDate="2014-12-05T20:12:58.340" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;From Scrum.Org:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The DoD is usually a clear and concise list of requirements that a&#xA;software Increment must adhere to for the team to call it complete.&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Until this list is satisfied, a product Increment is not done&lt;/strong&gt;. During&#xA;the Sprint Planning meeting, the &lt;strong&gt;Scrum Team develops or reconfirms its&#xA;DoD&lt;/strong&gt;, which enables the Development Team to know how much work to&#xA;select for a given Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key sentence there for me is that the Scrum Team (especially the Product Owner) develops and confirms the DoD.  It is an agreed standard prior to the Sprint work commencing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Product Owner does not consider the Definition of Done to have been met then technically the Scrum Team have not accomplished the Definition of Done and the PO reserves the right to reject the User Story(s) as not done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Edit to Add&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Alliance have a handy chart for ensuring that the Definition of Done is simple, transparent and consistent.  Please note the two boxes stating&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Owner Approval&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acceptance Testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zJhUA.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Definition of Done Framework&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know some in the community will respond with anger at my strict siding with the Product Owner but in my opinion it is absurd to think that the Developers are allowed to decide when to take work, what constitutes completion of that work and then force that work into the done column regardless of the Product Owner expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner manages the stakeholders, the business requirements and assumes the risk on behalf of the business entity.  Of course, they absolutely &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; own the Definition of Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a balancing act the Scrum Team own the Definition of Ready which allows them to reject User Stories from the Product Owner due to unclear specifications, technical problems, dependency work or any other valid concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, if we allow Scrum Teams to mark their own homework and push products to a business without Product Owner due diligence the results could be terrible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, that does not scale to Scrum of Scrums otherwise each Scrum team would simply proclaim their dependency was 'Done' without a Product Owner to consider that they whole product was progressing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Personal Approaches&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside I thought it would be helpful to illustrate how I control this issue as the Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When a Back End Developer user story has been Tested it goes into &amp;quot;Being Verified&amp;quot; where we discuss it with the PO.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the PO disagrees then I ask for the Business Specifications or Requirements that demonstrate that it is not 'done'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;95% of the time I side with the Developer and reason the Product Owner to either produce a new card for the Product Backlog or accept the current completion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business Intelligence Front End Development in our environment is trickier since much more testing is required including UX and data reconciliation between old and new outputs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At this point the PO represents the End User and acts a customer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We give the Product Owner much more capability to reject reports at this stage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like all things Scrum (and Agile) a balance must be struck to ensure team harmony, trust and a high functioning team.  I take the parts of Scrum I need to achieve that and adapt the rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some might say I am not doing Scrum anymore but the truth is, I don't need the label, what I need is a highly productive Business Intelligence Centre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the OP, I say this -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it suit your needs to have the Product Owner reject User Stories?  Be honest.  If he/she is truly skilled and good at their role, their rejection of User Stories may be the best thing that happens to your delivery saving the team a higher amount of rework in the long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-12-10T20:22:12.293" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12763" CreationDate="2014-12-05T21:15:42.330" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I include the developers in these emails or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Increased direct communications, if done effectively, can improve the viability of a project. However, there are often pros and cons that must be considered. A lot depends on your project management framework, your project communications plan, and on the type of relationship you have with your client. In short, your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Direct Contact with Agile Frameworks&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; recommends direct interactions and customer collaboration whenever possible. This often stands in contrast to more traditional project management frameworks that value formal communications plans and carefully-managed client communications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the XP framework, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules/customer.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;direct contact between the development team and customers&lt;/a&gt; is both expected and required for success. Consider the following excerpt:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of the few requirements of extreme programming (XP) is to have the customer available. Not only to help the development team, but to be a part of it as well. All phases of an XP project require communication with the customer, preferably face to face, on site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, sometimes the Product Owner proxies for the customer, while at other times the Product Owner &lt;em&gt;facilitates&lt;/em&gt; appropriate interactions between the customer and the Development Team. Both proxy and direct communication methods have their pros and cons, and neither approach is actually mandated by the Scrum framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;There Are Always Downsides&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An unmediated interface between customers (or end users) and the Development Team is generally The Right Thing&amp;trade; for mature agile teams, but there can certainly be counter-indications. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teams or customers with low process maturity often need a mediator.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Development teams with poor communications skills, or team members with significant personality deficits, should not be client-facing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customers who are not on-board with a cooperative, negotiation-based, or back-and-forth approach to product delivery should be insulated from the Development Team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Projects based around &quot;big up-front design&quot; or that rely on detailed specification documents are often designed to minimize ongoing communications.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not the benefits of increased direct communications outweigh the potential social, political, or contractual consequences is something that each project must determine for itself. There simply is no universal answer to this complex consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-12-05T21:15:42.330" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12773" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-05T22:32:07.037" Score="3" ViewCount="2307" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it OK for the scrum master to be remote when the rest of the team is co-located?  I.e. the team is located at one office but the scrum master lives in another city and serves the team remotely?  (I ask because we are hiring a scrum master.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pros/Cons?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13730" LastActivityDate="2014-12-12T09:21:19.713" Title="Is it OK for the scrum master to be remote?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-12-15T05:18:44.033" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12763" CreationDate="2014-12-06T01:13:10.533" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really depends on your team, but here are a few thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having all your developers on all email chains is probably not a good idea as it can't all be relevant to the work they do.  Too much data is just noise and slows teams down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beware of loosing requirements in email chains.  An email is not the right place to define a story or be the source of record for a scope change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider appointing a tech lead or equivalent to screen emails for the first iteration and have them discuss with other devs as necessary to get feedback on if the team wants to undertake this practice.  Go from there and decide if you really wish to involve all your technical resources in customer facing emails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During retro or informally, make sure you occasionally ask the participants something like &quot;was this useful, were all the RIGHT people in on the communication?&quot;  Be willing to adjust accordingly based on your dev and customer feedback.  There are devs that are business savy and there are devs that should be kept as far away from customers as possible.  Figure out where your devs lie on this scale before creating the direct customer-dev link.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about the benefits of having a dev on the chain vs the cons.  Think about devs and customers as distinct audiences.  Can their needs be met through this form of collaboration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2014-12-06T01:13:10.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12763" CreationDate="2014-12-06T02:34:55.620" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The good thing is this way they are able to see the answers of all technical questions themselves&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is your goal, then you can accomplish this goal without risk of client-dev email interactions going south by forwarding the emails to your devs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I will also pause here to agree with those who caution against using emails to capture requirements. They can provide useful background and context info tho.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My team's situation is different (my &quot;clients&quot; are not external), but I've found that productive client-dev working relationships usually take some time to develop. For short 1-6 month projects, I would avoid it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Unless of course you're taking an agile customer-embedded approach.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2014-12-06T02:34:55.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12768" CreationDate="2014-12-06T03:13:43.683" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, but I see why you might think so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some ways they are analogous:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a Sprint (which is a clearly separated period of development work towards a specific goal) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is to the Set of Stories Completed Thus Far (which is a description of all the development work done so far)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;as a Branch (which is* a clearly separated location in a repository for source code under development for a specific purpose) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is to the Trunk or Master (which is* the source code that reflects all the work that's been done so far) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*assuming one is using a model in which development work for features is done on branches, and branches are merged back to master as each feature is completed. There are other models, but this one is pretty common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if this is the model you're using, then during a sprint, there will be one or more active branches; and at the end of the sprint, assuming that you completed all the planned work, all those branches will have been merged back to master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As CodeGnome said, the workflow you use to manage source code during development is very different from the methodology you use for project management. If you've spent most of your time so far as a solo developer, it can be hard to understand that there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; anything else involved in development methodology besides how you manage and manipulate your source code. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, think in terms of how you are going to plan, divide up, and manage the work required to complete the project. That's where Sprints come in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastEditorUserId="11661" LastEditDate="2014-12-06T03:27:01.243" LastActivityDate="2014-12-06T03:27:01.243" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12777" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-06T17:55:31.717" Score="1" ViewCount="537" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the title suggests: for example, the following user story too generic? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&quot;A registered user wants to login in order to use the site's services&quot; &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, should I use more detailed user stories, like the following ones?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1. &quot;User insert email and password in the textboxes and click the login button&quot;;&#xA;&#xA;2. &quot;Server receives login data and check if they contain errors&quot;;&#xA;&#xA;3. &quot;Server puts the new user in the database if the login data are correct&quot;;&#xA;&#xA;4. &quot;The logged user is brought to his profile page&quot;.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems the more it is specific, the more we understand the part of codes required ( 1)&quot;textboxes&quot;, 1) &quot;login button&quot;, 3) &quot;database&quot;, ...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is the correct way between these two?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11704" LastEditorUserId="4718" LastEditDate="2014-12-25T20:37:17.490" LastActivityDate="2014-12-25T20:37:17.490" Title="Defining user story in Scrum: how specific must they be?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-12-29T03:22:23.497" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12777" CreationDate="2014-12-07T05:00:20.483" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;User stories should have enough basic information like who (type of user) wants what &#xA;functionality and why is the functionality needed. Also, what is his or her success critrion for the story. Details should be avoided in the user story as they will be discussed as part of sprint planning meeting. it is very tough to strike the right balance but an experienced scrum master can really facilitate the productive discussion. As a rule of thumb, it should be specific enough so that the story has a good chance of being completed in a scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the example you are giving above seems to have some tasks that are defined and decided by the team members. User stories should generally come from Product Owners (PO)    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13734" LastActivityDate="2014-12-07T05:00:20.483" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12779" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-07T09:04:00.410" Score="1" ViewCount="686" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Microsoft Project 2013, what is the best way to show delay in schedule as KPI?&#xA;In EPM, I want to highlight the projects with more than 20% of schedule delay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13735" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T19:55:59.540" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T19:55:59.540" Title="delay in schedule as KPI?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;&lt;kpi&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12773" CreationDate="2014-12-07T11:27:56.787" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is advised to have the Scrum Master to be along with the team. Otherwise, it defeats the purpose of having a Scrum Master. The ScrumMaster is a &quot;servant leader&quot;, helping the Dev Team and Product Owner use Scrum to achieve the best possible results today, and improve their results in the future. To perform his/her duties effectively, Scrum Master's presence along with team is very essential for the project success. &#xA;I have had distributed team for my project. But I chose to have the SM sitting with the team/location where maximum number of team members were based. This allowed the team to address their issues to SM quickly, feel connected, get moral support etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13736" LastActivityDate="2014-12-07T11:27:56.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12781" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12795" CreationDate="2014-12-07T17:30:25.187" Score="4" ViewCount="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to automate a manual process in my organization. There's one component which has a very repetitive coding. So i decided to automate it. Before jumping on to the automation, I want to quantify my reasons for automation. So i decided to come up with a set of metrics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Problem&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider 3 sub-components within the main component. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every sub-component can have two parameters:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Frequency of repetitiveness of code(rated 1-5; 5 being highest) and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;manual effort (rated 1-5; 5 being highest). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on these two parameters, I can devise an automation index. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Some facets of the question:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how to devise the automation index which gives me a rating so as to help automate a particular sub-component? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do i multiply or add the values from frequency and effort? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are these parameters sufficient for my scenario? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please Advise!! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13740" LastEditorUserId="4718" LastEditDate="2014-12-09T15:39:17.607" LastActivityDate="2014-12-09T15:39:17.607" Title="Metrics for changing a process" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12773" CreationDate="2014-12-07T19:56:20.827" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Try to avoid hiring remote SM&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's significantly harder for a Scrum Master to work with remote team.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum Master deals with non tangible things like the team perception of Scrum activities and artifacts, motivation, cooperation, focus etc. These are very hard to manage through the Skype calls. The complexity nearly triples if your team is starting a new project and SM has to set all things up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can try your luck and hire a &lt;em&gt;great&lt;/em&gt; Scrum Master, who will arrange reasonable business trips schedule and get things running well. But chances are that you will hire a Scrum Master, who is used to work with co-located team and will shortly become clueless on internal team/process issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's significantly harder for you to manage your remote Scrum Master.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The another side of the coin is that it won't be clear for you to control your SM as a resourse. Again, SM does not provide tangible results and usually does not have tasks in task tracker. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is your SM loaded with work? What does he/she do in between of the meetings? Can you assign him/her another project? Can SM contribute to the rest of the company agility? You never know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13500" LastActivityDate="2014-12-07T19:56:20.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12781" CreationDate="2014-12-07T20:02:41.937" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I got your question correctly, you are trying to quantify the quality of the program code. That's better to do with automated code quality tools, like Sonar:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sonarqube.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sonarqube.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can set it up and see what indexes of code duplication you'll get for the components you mentioned. You can use the indexes as justification for code optimization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13500" LastActivityDate="2014-12-07T20:02:41.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12403" CreationDate="2014-12-07T23:44:07.093" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;@user12198 The reality is that sometimes deadlines is what they want, and in software we have a way of fixing the time instead of features. But that has to be the process, and it has to be built into the triangle. &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XAUto.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;triangle&quot;&gt; Remember a team/project must choose two. Many software development plans attempt to fix all of them, or at least don't explicitly say that one WILL be neglected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, it sounds like you want to fix the number of features (scope) to what the client wants, and fix resources. The issue is that you probably haven't said that schedule MUST be variable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A solution that a software PM could take is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeboxing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Timeboxing&lt;/a&gt;. This allows for a fixed schedule and resources but NOT fixed scope. A software plan would have to use some sort of prioritization scheme like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoSCoW_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MoSCoW&lt;/a&gt;. Where the client must quantify features, and that way in a time box you only do the highest value things - your goal for a project can't be to complete all features but instead to finish on time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13743" LastActivityDate="2014-12-07T23:44:07.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12786" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-08T01:53:25.267" Score="2" ViewCount="193" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider that we have 10 Product Backlog Items (PBIs) that have been estimated and, if all goes well, will make it into our next sprint, after Sprint Planning.  At what point would it be appropriate to have the team think about ALL 10 PBIs as sort of a way to understand the end goal of this 10 PBI effort (assuming all PBIs are associated with a common theme/epic)?  While it's understood that each PBI will deliver value on it's own, it's often helpful for the team to know what is next since it can help inform technical decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meetings that I've considered for this work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grooming - Doesn't seem like the right time because this would be too much about the &quot;HOW&quot; when we should be discussing the &quot;WHAT&quot;&#xA;Planning - Too late since the PBIs have already been defined.  I always assumed that, by this time, everyone would be ready to sign up and task out the PBIs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When is the right time to do this?  Or is this a PBI quality issue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would this be in the tasking phase of Sprint Planning?  I would think that is too late in the process, since it's possible that information gathered during this effort would help restructure PBIs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13745" LastEditorUserId="13745" LastEditDate="2014-12-08T03:44:16.453" LastActivityDate="2014-12-09T21:20:53.207" Title="When to consider multiple PBIs when determining the HOW?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12788" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12798" CreationDate="2014-12-08T09:34:58.710" Score="0" ViewCount="21177" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing a project for college and I am being forced to use project 2013... I have got a very basic understanding, but I need to push all dates from a certain point back by 7 days, I was wondering if this was possible? I was very optimistic about my dates and I am now in need to of changing the dates, but don't want to do so manually if possible. Any help will be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13748" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T19:56:13.830" LastActivityDate="2020-04-29T14:38:59.133" Title="Push all dates back by 7 days in a project (project 2013)" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12789" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-08T15:17:54.067" Score="3" ViewCount="5165" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a team of 3. Given a task X, developers A and B would each take about a day to do it. Developer C will take a full week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to deal with this? I don't want to just fire them, because it's so hard to find competent developers, but at the same time it's a hassle only being able to give them non-critical tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13751" LastActivityDate="2014-12-12T03:33:05.423" Title="How to handle a slow developer?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12790" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-08T16:55:07.237" Score="11" ViewCount="1145" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our team is composed of both software and hardware engineers. The software team uses Scrum project management while the hardware team uses waterfall. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The priority of our software requirements change quite frequently, so staying Agile makes sense for us. The priority of our hardware requirements are rather static and slow-moving, so again sticking with waterfall makes sense for us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tricky part is the integration of hardware and software. Are there any methodologies for deterministically synchronizing these two contrasting project management styles? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've worked within DO-178B for some time, and what we used to do was have designated milestones where software and hardware teams would integrate and get preliminary feedback (identify requirement deviations, new requirements, etc.). However we're looking for methodologies which incorporate tighter feedback loops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13724" LastActivityDate="2014-12-09T20:44:19.247" Title="How to synchronize an agile software team with a waterfall hardware team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12789" CreationDate="2014-12-08T17:41:59.090" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is a good project management question because it exposes the huge gap between three things: an estimate, a planning value, and actual performance.  Both the estimate and actual performance are probabilistic and span across a range of performance values, such as one day to one week as described in the OP.  The planning value is deterministic, some single value within the estimate on which a PM would base his/her schedule.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A whole host of variables influence in a very random way where actual values actually come in and will change if you performed the activity over and over again, yielding the range of actual results spanning from best case performance to worse case.  One of those many variables are both human and machine performance, where you can safely expect some humans to out perform others and where an individual's performance will also vary.  You only have so much control over those phenomena, so your planning value needs to reflect that risk.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in the OP's example, if the estimate is one day to five days (assuming the most likely is somewhere in the middle), then the planning value might be two or three days.  From here, you manage those variances across all the tasks in your schedule, where in some cases you come in fast and others you are late.  With early signals, you mitigate where you can and with a little luck you come in reasonably close to your planning values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should not be frustrating as you should have planned for this stochastic variability in your schedule and have enough reserves to play with.  Monitor your variances and, if the lower performer continues to exacerbate your variances, then replace if you are able.  If not, communicate early and often where you think you are headed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-12-08T17:41:59.090" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12790" CreationDate="2014-12-08T19:46:41.573" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt; You should use Scrum in both teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;sticking with waterfall makes sense for us&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no benefit in having hardware team doing waterfall whatsoever. In fact, it applies to any team. Choice between it and agile methods is not simple requirements priority. Why would you stick to a process with long lead times, large overheads and low time to market if you can avoid it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;what we used to do was have designated milestones where software and hardware teams would integrate&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, the team produces working, potentially shippable increments of a product on a regular basis. When you have two teams running Sprint in parallel, their combined definition of done should cover integration as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The end of each sprint is a milestone you are talking about. If combined output satisfies the definition of done, you are synchronized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However we're looking for methodologies which incorporate tighter feedback loops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More reasons to ditch waterfall altogether :) Wouldn't you want your hardware team deliver something of value in a month rather than in a year?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it makes sense to use the same methodology in all your projects - this will, at least, simplify learning. You could use any other agile approach with the hardware team, but this diversity won't do you any good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13461" LastActivityDate="2014-12-08T19:46:41.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12789" CreationDate="2014-12-08T20:02:56.073" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best thing you can do for the project is to make C better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, you need to figure out the source of the problem. It can be related or unrelated to their skills. Having an open discussion with C really helps, if you are delicate and appreciative of the effort he already puts into work. In most cases a person is not deliberately working slow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you know the source of the problem (lack of education, personal issues, whatever else) you can devise a plan to train or coach him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the problem is in lack of education/skills, then consider allocating time from A and/or B to work in pair with C. Technical guidance from more senior people is, in my experience, the main source of skill improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the problem is in C being disorganized and wasting a lot of time, consider coaching him/her to use the time and spend effort more thoughtfully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There can be other reasons (lack of motivation, personal issues etc.), so you'll have to be creative in solving them. There's plenty material in the internet on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a start for you it is worth listening to this podcast: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.manager-tools.com/2006/02/how-to-fire-someone-well-almost&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.manager-tools.com/2006/02/how-to-fire-someone-well-almost&lt;/a&gt; . It shows how to take a poor performer and turn them into a good performer (if at all possible) through gradual and consistent feedback and coaching. To simplify, you openly discuss with C your concerns and them coach him/her to become better. Rinse and repeat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13461" LastActivityDate="2014-12-08T20:02:56.073" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12786" CreationDate="2014-12-08T20:16:10.290" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The right time (or process) for it is Backlog Grooming. Its goal is to get PBI to &amp;quot;Ready&amp;quot; state. And it is not a standalone meeting, as in Scrum Guide (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#artifacts-productbacklog&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#artifacts-productbacklog&lt;/a&gt;) you can see that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product Backlog refinement is the act of adding detail, estimates, and order to items in the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also clearly described in Jeff Sutherland's video &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkhJDbaW0j0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkhJDbaW0j0&lt;/a&gt; :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ready-ready [...] is not just a good list. It has certain characteristics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first characteristic that's really important is that &lt;strong&gt;it needs to be immediately actionable by the team&lt;/strong&gt;. They need to know what to do and they need to be able to do something now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you didn't do any investigation and have no idea on how you will do it, you'll have a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second thing is that the product backlog in Scrum [...] is designed to be a negotiation [...] &lt;strong&gt;needs to be something that's talked through between PO and the team, before Sprint Planning&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are right about planning being too late for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next thing [...] is to be estimable. The team needs to be &lt;strong&gt;able to estimate it clearly and size it properly&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you do technical investigation, in most cases, you won't be able to do a clear estimation. A guidance form senior technical people is invaluable in such situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To sum up, you need to do proper investigation as a part of backlog grooming to remove uncertainty and get your PBI to &amp;quot;Ready&amp;quot; state.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13461" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-12-08T20:16:10.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12781" CreationDate="2014-12-08T20:23:39.523" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I want to quantify my reasons for automation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best reason for automation is cost reduction. This is your ultimate metric.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calculate how much time your automation + execution takes, and how much time execution without automation takes. The difference is your reason. If you can show how automation provides cumulative settings over time, you'll get a management buy in without problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would expect automation and execution effort to be higher than normal work in the beginning, and decreasing over time first to the zero balance, and then to the savings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yes,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So i decided to come up with a set of metrics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cannot make sense of metrics, ditch them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13461" LastActivityDate="2014-12-08T20:23:39.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12789" CreationDate="2014-12-09T00:13:39.487" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to understand &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; developer C takes 5 times longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's an awkward conversation, but you need to let C know that you feel he takes significantly longer than the other developers to get X done. Then simply ask him why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are countless valid reasons that developer C might be performing under power, from needing to skill up in a tech but being afraid to ask for time to do so, to personal problems he is trying to work around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's important I think for people to know if they are being viewed negatively. It gives them and you an opportunity to fix the problem together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But bottom line, is if it can't be fixed, then you need to let them go and find someone who can do the job, even if it takes a while. Although you may feel an under achieving developer is better than none, thats because you can't measure the adverse affect he is having on the other developers A and B, it's very possible that team would be more efficient without C holding them back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13755" LastActivityDate="2014-12-09T00:13:39.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12788" CreationDate="2014-12-09T01:31:43.337" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming your tasks are linked: if all tasks in the project are to be changed, go to Project Ribbon, Project Information, and change the project start date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not all tasks need to be moved, select the tasks you wish to move and choose Update Project.  Choose &quot;Reschedule uncomplete work to start after&quot;, set the new start date and ensure you have &quot;selected tasks&quot; selected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also select the tasks and use the Move Tasks command on the Task ribbon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastEditorUserId="6840" LastEditDate="2014-12-09T01:37:13.650" LastActivityDate="2014-12-09T01:37:13.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12789" CreationDate="2014-12-09T13:50:57.340" Score="14" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have already decided, &lt;em&gt;a priori&lt;/em&gt;, that team member C is the problem. This is based on information you have &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; provided in your post. As a result, this appears to be a false conclusion that papers over a &lt;em&gt;process problem&lt;/em&gt; that you (as the project manager) are responsible for uncovering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Problem&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Given a task X, developers A and B would each take about a day to do it. Developer C will take a full week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this is caused by...what? Difference in typing speeds? Perfectionism in C? Sloppy work from A and B? You have thoroughly failed to define a root cause, so I will define one for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &quot;performance gap&quot; is not necessarily a performance gap. It is a &lt;em&gt;communications gap&lt;/em&gt; where the project manager lacks understanding of the team members individually and the team's gestalt dynamics, and has failed to address underlying process issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Solution&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to inspect (and possibly adapt) your process. Until you thoroughly understand &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; members of your team are performing at different rates, you can't formulate a different approach. In short, you need to fix your communications problem with the team quickly, so that you understand all of the contributory factors to this disparity between your team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you understand &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; your team members are developing at different rates, you can adapt your process as you see fit. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can fix whatever underlying process problem is causing this differential (e.g. skill deficits, poor specifications, poor communications, lack of time-boxing, or lack of product ownership, regardless of which team member is exhibiting the problems).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can acknowledge the problem, and take it into account in your scheduling. You can create aggregate estimates for the team that average out speed differences, or you can assign more realistic targets &lt;em&gt;based on actual, historical values&lt;/em&gt; for the team or its members when updating your project plan. Either way, you must get away from assuming your desired targets are delivery guarantees, when clearly they aren't realistic based on your team's current overall output.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can replace team members that are under-performing. Whether this means replacing the slower developer, or replacing the two developers that are turning in faster (but potentially less-complete or less thoroughly-tested work) is entirely up to you. You need to base this decision on what the project and the organization &lt;em&gt;value&lt;/em&gt;, and no one outside your organization can make that determination for you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Holding people accountable&quot; for management targets is a common project smell for projects that will fail. It's much better to work with accurate &lt;em&gt;estimates&lt;/em&gt; from the task performers, and to ensure that the schedule has accounted for as many variables in its processes as possible, including human variables. Always examine the root cause (or causes) of a process problem before assuming its a people problem. While people can sometimes be the real reason, more often than not it's the process or framework that is at fault. Your mileage will of course vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-12-09T13:50:57.340" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1147" CreationDate="2014-12-09T16:29:05.133" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I highly recommend Andy Crowe reading vs Rita. He is by far more insightful and truly a thought leader in PM. Also, further reading,his book&quot;Alpha Project Managers&quot;, a longitudinal study on how 36 of 856 Pm's assessed significantly  outperformed their peers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13763" LastActivityDate="2014-12-09T16:29:05.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12786" CreationDate="2014-12-09T19:28:48.753" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;When to think about a block of stories together&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@Alex Leonov gave a good answer covering the basics of getting stories &quot;Ready&quot;. However, I have a different take in response to your specific question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At what point would it be appropriate to have the team think about ALL&#xA;  10 PBIs as sort of a way to understand the end goal of this 10 PBI&#xA;  effort (assuming all PBIs are associated with a common theme/epic)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the time of Sprint Planning and during the Sprint, if they have been scheduled into that Sprint. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The Development Team modifies the Sprint Backlog throughout the Sprint, and the Sprint Backlog emerges during the Sprint. This emergence occurs as the Development Team works through the plan and learns more about the work needed to achieve the Sprint Goal.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, as you say, &quot;information gathered during this effort would help restructure PBIs&quot;, go ahead and restructure them during the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prior to the Sprint Planning these PBIs are just stand alone stories. If you do any work assuming that these 10 PBIs will stick together, that will be wasted effort. The Product Owner is free to move some up, others down and remove some altogether. Also, from the Scrum Guide:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The Product Owner is responsible for the Product Backlog, including its content, availability, and ordering.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-12-09T19:28:48.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12790" CreationDate="2014-12-09T20:44:19.247" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Converting your hardware team to Scrum will certainly help. However, as Steve McConnell said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...if you buy into any single methodology 100 percent, you’ll see the whole world in terms of that methodology. In some instances, you’ll miss opportunities to use other methods better suited to your current problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So let's assume waterfall works fine for your hardware project and you just need to sync the two. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend using the &lt;strong&gt;release plan&lt;/strong&gt; as a dependency point. Like Apple announces new iPhone release coming, your hardware team should announce new hardware release. In your case you're lucky to know the features list beforehand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Software team, in turn, should plan releases accordingly. Having 1-2 reserve Sprints to go through, if hardware team release is delayed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13500" LastActivityDate="2014-12-09T20:44:19.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12786" CreationDate="2014-12-09T20:58:34.137" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We faced similar concern with the team and ended up having &lt;strong&gt;two Backlog grooming sessions&lt;/strong&gt; during the 2 weeks Sprint. Our Schedule was the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thursday. Sprint start. Planning day.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team starts a Sprint and does not care about next one for couple of days.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Monday. Standup meeting. Backlog grooming (45 min) - focus on WHAT.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team got a week to discuss/research/thnk over the next Sprint candidate PBIs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Monday. Standup meeting. Backlog grooming (45 min) - focus on HOW.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finalizing current Sprint with 90% understanging of what the next Sprint is about.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wednesday. Sprint demo. Sprint end.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That worked fairly well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13500" LastActivityDate="2014-12-09T20:58:34.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12806" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12810" CreationDate="2014-12-09T21:00:43.030" Score="0" ViewCount="402" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Problem&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a team, we need to set up our e-mail so that everyone can see everyone else's received and sent messages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;More info&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation is that there are 4 people who are communicating with customers. In the spirit of Scrum, each person needs to have access to all communication to and from the customer so that when they communicate with the customer next, they have access to all the necessary information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have an idea of how to go about implementing this, but I'm not confident that it doesn't have a fatal flaw or two in the details somewhere and that there might be better ways to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My idea is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Everyone to uses an E-mail application such as Microsoft Outlook.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each person has their own e-mail address, but registers every other e-mail account with the e-mail application so that when the sync, all e-mails to all four people are synced to the client application&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In order to differentiate e-mails sent directly to them as opposed to e-mails sent to someone else, rules are set up to color-code which are meant for them and which are meant for someone else. The messages could be separated into folders, but I would like for everyone to at least glance at everyone else's messages.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Instead of syncing the &amp;quot;sent&amp;quot; messages folders, rules would be set up on each application so that every message they sent was BCC'd to the rest of the team. That way sent messages would pop up in their inbox and they can glance at them as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concerns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I know Outlook has these &amp;quot;rule&amp;quot; features, but I'm not sure how about Mac OS e-mail applications and Open Office.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this implementation going to cause too much chaos and confusion in everyone's inbox?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Clarification:&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on content in the comments and answers, the following information should be helpful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The goal is not to restrict private communication&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The goal is to enable open communication&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each employee at this company works from home, on their home computers. Employees control their computers and working environment. Employees are not restricted from using any applications such as private e-mail.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This company does not sell software&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customers are people who are purchasing a service in the $200 range.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many customers are one-time customers. Customers who are not one time would make purchases 1-2 times a year.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Typical sale usually involves one 5-15 minute phone call&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The most a sale takes would be a few e-mail exchanges and a few phone calls&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customer service people need to have access to details such as:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What discount did the customer get last time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where did they hear about us&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What concerns the customer wants the service to address&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Internal e-mails do not need to be shared&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each person in marketing/customer service probably needs to have access to the entire communication thread with each customer&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customer service people need to have access to this information so that they can be knowledgeable about the customer's history with the company if and when they call to schedule another service&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Marketing people need to have access to this information so that they can send customized materials to previous customers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Marketing people study previous exchanges with customers in order to help optimize lead conversion rates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each person in the company already has access to recordings of phone calls&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is a feature that my team requested that I implement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13764" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-12-18T18:27:09.263" Title="Open e-mail (everyone can see everyone else's received and sent messages)" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12806" CreationDate="2014-12-09T21:20:30.407" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem as you put it is one of the possible solutions to &lt;em&gt;the problem&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the spirit of Scrum, each person needs to have access to all communication to and from the customer so that when they communicate with the customer next, they have access to all the necessary information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While true, it does not imply that they share a mailbox. More than that, it does not imply that they need every single email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you set up a system like you describe, it will lead to &lt;em&gt;huge&lt;/em&gt; amount of waste (consider the time needed to glance through or read all those numerous replies nobody cares about anymore). It usually takes many emails to find a solution or come to an agreement for one question. The rest of the team should be interested in the outcome, not in the whole thread.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your team shares the &lt;strong&gt;outcomes&lt;/strong&gt; of discussions within itself, you should be fine. This can be done by either forwarding the last email to the rest of the team, storing it into a shared folder, or putting it into some kind of a wiki - plenty of choice there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13461" LastActivityDate="2014-12-09T21:20:30.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12786" CreationDate="2014-12-09T21:20:53.207" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Themes and Epics Aren't Sprint Goals&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At what point would it be appropriate to have the team think about ALL 10 PBIs as sort of a way to understand the end goal of this 10 PBI effort[?]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Never. You are misunderstanding the relationship between the Sprint Goal and the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-planning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sprint Planning&lt;/a&gt; is the definition of an over-arching Sprint Goal. In general, all stories selected for the current Sprint should build towards that unifying goal. In this way, a Sprint can succeed even if 100% of selected stories aren't done so long as the defined Sprint Goal is met, or stories can be trimmed from the current Sprint so long as the agreed-upon Sprint Goal is not jeopardized. This is part of what makes Scrum such a flexible and powerful framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, the Product Backlog is a series of items that have been assigned an ordinal value by the Product Owner and a relative level of effort (e.g. story points) by the Development Team. The Development Team pops items off the top of the Product Backlog one at a time, &lt;em&gt;provided that there is sufficient capacity within the Sprint to complete that story within the iteration&lt;/em&gt;. The team &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; accepts stories into the Sprint simply because they are related to other stories; all such decisions must be based on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The ordinal value of the stories, which can be changed on the fly by the Product Owner during Sprint Planning as part of negotiation of scope. Stories must always be popped off the top of the stack &lt;em&gt;in sequence&lt;/em&gt;, but the Product Owner can cooperate with the Development Team to change that sequence during Sprint Planning to facilitate the composition of a sensible Sprint Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Development Team's expected capacity for the Sprint. This is most often the team's velocity range, adjusted by current fudge factors that account for vacations, sick time, trade shows, or other factors that may impact team capacity during the current Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Team must work, each and every Sprint, towards a unified Sprint Goal. At no point does the team ever consider stories on the Product Backlog this way. However, during Sprint Planning the Development Team must always keep the Sprint Goal in mind while planning and organizing the Sprint Backlog, and the Development Team should consider all of the &lt;em&gt;accepted&lt;/em&gt; Sprint Backlog items together when planning the current Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-12-09T21:20:53.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12806" CreationDate="2014-12-10T02:26:09.987" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have decided to have a stab at answering this because, despite my reservations, this forum is to gain answers to questions not necessarily invoke criticism.  It also fits haphazardly into the Project Management box so here goes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Case Studies&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both the relatively new startup &lt;a href=&quot;https://open.bufferapp.com/buffer-transparent-email/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Buffer App&lt;/a&gt; and the mature startup &lt;a href=&quot;https://stripe.com/blog/email-transparency&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Stripe&lt;/a&gt; practise completely transparent email company-wide as a policy and advocate it's use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Buffer Technique&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To keep things fully transparent, we’ve put some practices in place to ensure that all email gets shared across the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For starters, we have &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;several internal email lists&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, one for each team and many more for different aspects of the company. I’ve been at Buffer for four months, and I just now discovered there’s an Android list, so the following might very well be missing a few I’ve yet to catch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;team@ – this goes to the entire team&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;engineers@ – includes all our engineering team&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;heroes@ – for our happiness hero (customer support) team&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;crafters@ – related to content marketing&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;design@ – for design discussions&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;product@ – for product feedback and signals&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;metrics@ – anything to do with company metrics&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;bizdev@ – for BD activities (partnerships, integrations)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;marketing@ – related to press activities&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;improvements@ – for team improvements&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;hiring@ – anything related to hiring and applicants&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;ios@ – for iOS app discussion&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;android@ – for Android app discussion&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;champions@ – related to community engagement&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;housekeeping@ – anything to do with bills, insurance, and misc.HR&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;retreats@ – for retreat discussion&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;culture@ – for culture and value discussion&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These lists can either be sent to directly, cc’ed, or bcc’ed depending on the context. Here’s generally how we decide how to send to a list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;email a specific team member and cc a list&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;email an external person and bcc a list&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;email to a list to notify a whole team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Stripe Technique&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Over the last two years, we’ve gradually added structure as necessary in order to keep things under control. What we have today works pretty well for our current size—around 45 people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We use &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Gmail for email and Google Groups for lists&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. We’ve been able to scale our particular usage with a custom list management interface built on the Google Groups API. The interface makes it easy to manage list subscriptions, get notified of new lists being created, and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have 119 lists as I write this post. Most of the lists are specific to a particular project, but some (such as 311@, if you have an issue you’re otherwise not sure where to send, or shipped@, where you announce something you’ve launched or completed) are company-wide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;foo-announce@: Email from the foo project to the company at large. These lists are generally low-traffic, have self-contained postings, and are intended for people who aren’t keeping up with the project in real time. For example, recruiting-announce@ is where we post notifications of job offers and outcomes thereof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;foo@: Email that would be on a traditional discussion list goes here. In other words, pretend that foo-archive@ did not exist. In that universe, would you send you mail on-list or off-list? If on-list, send to foo@.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;foo-archive@: Email that you want to grant other people read access to, but don’t have any real expectation of them reading. Use this for email that would traditionally be off-list, whether due to volume or being targeted to a particular recipient or just being generally uninteresting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;foo-bots@: Automated mail for the foo project goes here. Depending on the project, it may be important for you to read this email. (For example, all breakages go to breakage-bots@, and so people who are triaging breakages should watch that list.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In general, if you’re debating including an archive list, you should probably just include it. This includes internal P2P email which you would normally leave off a list, emails to vendors, and scheduling email. (If the email is sensitive in some way, though, it’s fine to leave it off-list.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of these approaches are covered in much more detail in the hyperlinks I posted above. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="12235" LastEditDate="2014-12-12T22:37:33.480" LastActivityDate="2014-12-12T22:37:33.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12811" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-10T04:27:39.003" Score="5" ViewCount="1001" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a software development program manager who has experienced many of the benefits of test-driven development and continuous integration. But some of the dev teams I work with don't follow these practices. It's not my place to tell them how to do their jobs, but how can I encourage them to adopt these practices without overstepping the bounds of my role?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11850" LastEditorUserId="11850" LastEditDate="2014-12-11T03:37:21.263" LastActivityDate="2014-12-29T02:13:53.403" Title="How to get a dev team to use TDD and CI?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12758" CreationDate="2014-12-10T06:14:18.057" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main source of your conundrum is the Product Owner waiting until end of sprint to accept stories. The function of the Sprint Review is not for the Product Owner to review and accept the work of the Team. It is for the Team to review itself and present what was done to other stakeholders. Time for Product Owner review, feedback and iteration should be built into your sprint schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind, let's answer your main question &quot;when do features get pull requested into our integration branch of code?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When to integrate can be a tricky decision. It's common to have a staging environment that serves as the environment both for integration and acceptance testing. But merging a feature can be hard to turn back from. If the Product Owner finds significant issues, now you have a potential blocker to pushing to production, and an untrustworthy branch for other features to branch from. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If possible, the Product Owner should review and approve each feature in isolation before it is merged with other features. Acceptance of the feature at this stage means that it has been realized as envisioned, although more work may be needed to make it shippable. Product Owner approval at this point should be the green light to proceed with completing the work of integrating and deploying the feature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's one way integration and merge conflicts can be handled:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say two features, A and B, are being developed simultaneously. Feature A becomes reviewable first and is accepted by the Product Owner. It can now be merged into the integration branch. All other features, as they approach reviewability, should be paying attention to the progress of the integration branch and updating themselves from the integration branch. This is the point where merge conflicts can arise and be resolved. Now the onus is on Feature B's developer to resolve any conflicts. This may even require modifications to Feature A. Once this is done, Feature B, along with the modifications to Feature A, can now be reviewed by the Product Owner. Once accepted, it too can be merged to the integration branch. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11850" LastEditorUserId="11850" LastEditDate="2014-12-11T03:31:37.323" LastActivityDate="2014-12-11T03:31:37.323" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12811" CreationDate="2014-12-10T09:22:21.570" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience this is a process of years. Developers who do not practice &quot;Quality Build In&quot; in their daily process will see it as extra work. They rather be programming...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lean-manufacturing-junction.com/quality-built-in.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Quality Build In&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lean manufacturing companies will have quality built in their processes as much as possible. By building quality into your process, you prevent unnecessary rework and scrap. This means that your machines are capable of detecting abnormalities (jidoka) and your fixtures have mistake proofing to avoid mis-assembly (poka yoke).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Management commitment&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my perspective this should be management vision, they should communicate to these teams that this is what is expected from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that automated testing adds extra effort in the short term, while being really agile and lean on the long run. Developers time will be spread around 33% requirements, 33% programming and 33% automated testing. This will slow the team down and this might be a issue if management is not in on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain why this is a good practise&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give the team time to experiment with it, writing and running automated tests&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set realistic goals for code coverage increase per release/cycle&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2014-12-10T10:04:00.330" LastActivityDate="2014-12-10T10:04:00.330" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12814" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-10T11:42:00.370" Score="0" ViewCount="413" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to set up a resource with the following availability in MS Project:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mon 50%&#xA;Tue 50%&#xA;Wed 100%&#xA;Thu 50%&#xA;Fri 0%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help is greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Laszlo&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13770" LastActivityDate="2015-02-25T22:47:43.080" Title="MSProject: How to set up different resource availability for different workdays?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resources&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12814" CreationDate="2014-12-10T12:12:04.217" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's a tremendously low level of granularity.  Tracking that would offer very little value over taking it up a notch and tracking at that level.  For example, instead of changing the unit value per day, take an average or something close based on that variability per week.  Even better, per month...depending on the scope of your project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our work performance is probabilistic.  Not deterministic.  Getting that precise only means you are banking on something that has an extremely low likelihood of coming true.  You will end up chasing this degree of exactness and you WILL lose sight of the bigger picture.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-12-10T12:12:04.217" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12814" CreationDate="2014-12-10T13:54:17.833" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could model this in the Resource Calendar by having the Resource &quot;work&quot; only between certain times of the day on certain days of the week. Henceforth that resource can be applied 100% to a task but will nonetheless only perform work on the days/times on which you have declared it is available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A downside of this will be that you will need to set it up manually in each sub-project if it is time-shared amongst projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2014-12-10T13:54:17.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12789" CreationDate="2014-12-11T03:43:42.773" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is exactly the problem I faced and just solved it. The solution is not as elegant as others are proposing but this is the only solution that worked for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was handling a team of 4 developers. All are having variable speed if you see from hours perspective but 3 of them were decently paced differing with each other by maximum 3-4 hours from each other. So as a PM I could manage the timing and predict/estimate that when the work will be complete. But the 4th developer was too slow. Differing others by more than 30-40 hours at times. This threw all my plans off the window. I always tried that he does not get to work on a module on which other team members' modules were dependent but still he slowed down the entire project. I put that 4th person in PIP(Performance Improvement Plan) where he is interviewed and trained again on the basics he lacks in. Yet no improvement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We continued like this for almost 3 months. When I compared the estimates provided by the 3 well performing team members there was a gradual increase in the their estimates. When I asked about the increasing timelines they shot back with an argument that 4th one gets whatever time he wants and no one questions him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was the time when I realised that if you want your A team to work and perform get rid of B grade people. Finally I had to asked HR him to be put him on bench or ask to leave and get me a new team member. This new member is performing better. Timelines and production has improved. Team is more motivated to beat each other in a healthy competition of completing the work before the other person with least number of bugs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if this works for you, but believe me, I have learnt after wasting a lot of time, that A grade team members shall never be mixed with B Grade team members. Only few B Graders will improve themselves to A Grade, but possibility of B Grade pulling down A graders to B grade level is higher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone comes back to me saying that you should appraise them separate as per their performance. Please be informed that appraisals in our organization happen after 1 year. One cannot wait for 1 year show displeasure on the performance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13776" LastActivityDate="2014-12-11T03:43:42.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12819" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-11T16:13:14.297" Score="15" ViewCount="142" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just got an argument with a friend about whether deciphering the Voynich manuscript (a mysterious book dated in the 15th century, written in an unknown script) should be deemed a &quot;project&quot;. He told me that, since there is no compelling evidence that the text is meaningful (i.e., either being a natural language or an encrypted code), and the outcome is not guaranteed, it cannot be called a &quot;project&quot;. He told me that the objective of a project must be absolutely clear; and I argue that deciphering the book itself is the objective. And the risk is that, the book MAY a deliberate hoax, in which case the deciphering effort is doom to fail. I want to know if such an effort, which may involve many mathematicians, cryptographers, computer experts, can be called a &quot;project&quot; or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I study math, and I have little idea about engineering.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14784" LastActivityDate="2014-12-12T21:11:05.683" Title="Is deciphering a book a project?" Tags="&lt;definition&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12819" CreationDate="2014-12-11T19:43:38.357" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt; it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take a look at the definitions of the &quot;project&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PRINCE2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Project is a temporary organization that is created for the purpose of delivering one or more business products according to an agreed Business Case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMI:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A project can be defined as a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service. Projects are different from other ongoing operations in an organization, because unlike operations, projects have a definite beginning and an end - they have a limited duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, in your situation, you have a &lt;strong&gt;temporary organization&lt;/strong&gt; (all those mathematicians and experts will not be involved for undetermined duration, I suppose) &lt;strong&gt;that is created for the purpose of delivering a product&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;em&gt;decrypted manuscript&lt;/em&gt;). This &lt;strong&gt;endeavor has a definite beginning&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;em&gt;you start with the current knowledge of the manuscript in its encrypted form&lt;/em&gt;) &lt;strong&gt;and an end&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;em&gt;the goal is to have a meaningful decrypted text&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He told me that the objective of a project must be absolutely clear; and I argue that deciphering the book itself is the objective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are both right. The objective must be clear, and it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the outcome is not guaranteed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is almost never guaranteed in any project. Even when throwing out a trash you may find that your dumpster is gone. That does not prevent it being a project of its own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And the risk is that, the book MAY a deliberate hoax, in which case the deciphering effort is doom to fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A big part of the project management is managing risks. It is good to start with at least one that is clearly identified. You should plan resources and activities accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13461" LastActivityDate="2014-12-11T19:43:38.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12773" CreationDate="2014-12-12T09:21:19.713" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Its not OK. This defies the basic principles of agile working. If the servant-leader is co-located......&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Agile manifesto&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The most efficient and effective method of  conveying information to&#xA;  and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2014-12-12T09:21:19.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12806" CreationDate="2014-12-12T19:04:57.097" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why wouldn't you use some sort of Customer Relationship Management software to track things?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Might be a bit more work to reply to an email, but should make it easier to track conversations and promises...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14792" LastActivityDate="2014-12-12T19:04:57.097" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12819" CreationDate="2014-12-12T21:11:05.683" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research and science projects are certainly &amp;quot;projects&amp;quot; from a project management perspective. Your friend owes you the socially-appropriate beverage of your choice if you two were betting on the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Defining a Project&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;defines a project&lt;/a&gt; as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contemporary business and science a project is defined as a collaborative enterprise, involving research or design, that is carefully planned to achieve a particular aim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Projects can be further defined as temporary rather than permanent social systems or work systems that are constituted by teams within or across organizations to accomplish particular tasks under time constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So long as your research is goal-oriented and structured, as opposed to flailing around in a haphazard way, then it would certainly seem to fit a widely-accepted definition of a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-12-12T21:11:05.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5107" CreationDate="2014-12-12T22:16:30.940" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly  with a phd you are good to go on any project. It all depends on your drive. as you have all the requirements to excel on any project either technical or non-technical. I would say you should face any interview panel and politely tell them what you had done in the past, on your projects and how you will improve their business.  goal getting and confidence is the key.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14793" LastActivityDate="2014-12-12T22:16:30.940" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12832" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-12T23:58:11.123" Score="1" ViewCount="406" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working mostly in &lt;a href=&quot;https://asana.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Asana&lt;/a&gt; right now, and am hoping to find a way to associate completed tasks with a versioned cut of product (software in this case).  Am I supposed to hack my workflow by creating a project for every release, then move some tasks from the long-list to each project version?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14795" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-05-08T10:40:36.863" LastActivityDate="2015-05-08T10:40:36.863" Title="In Asana is there a way to associate completed tasks with a release version?" Tags="&lt;task-management&gt;&lt;asana&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12834" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12835" CreationDate="2014-12-14T00:26:50.337" Score="1" ViewCount="1187" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the following queries regarding Risk Management:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Upon identifying a risk, a contingency plan is usually developed, what does this involve? An example would be great.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What effects would risks have on the duration of a project? and how do I atone for any delays?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What diagrams are good to depict severity of risks? or in general recommended to use to represent risk related activities? So far I have only came across the Decision making tree.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Where, in MS Project, do I input information regarding Risk management?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13695" LastEditorUserId="13695" LastEditDate="2014-12-14T17:35:55.233" LastActivityDate="2014-12-14T17:35:55.233" Title="Assessing Risks in Project Management (Microsoft Project)" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2014-12-29T03:22:40.570" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12834" CreationDate="2014-12-14T15:29:47.373" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When conducting risk management, after identifying a particular threat, you need to determine how to treat it.  Typically risk treatment involves some type of mitigating action and then a contingency plan to be deployed in the event the risk is realized or that certain indicators are met that suggests risk realization is imminent.  PMBOK describes risk treatment as:  mitigation, acceptance, transfer, and avoidance.  For favorable risks, or opportunities, PMBOK describes treatment as: share, enhance, and exploit.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter what you call them, the idea behind managing your risks is to eliminate or minimize the likelihood and / or impact of the event.  And if it should occur, to have resilience (contingency plan) to keep on going.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A contingency plan involves actions you can take that enables you to recover from the risk event and keep on going.  Think spare tire.  You suffer a flat tire; you change to the spare; you keep on going.  It serves to understand that a contingency plan for one risk event can be a mitigation plan from a downstream risk event.  Everything's connected.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You have two types of uncertainty: aleatory and epistemic.  Aleatory is random variability while epistemic is a specific risk event.  Both can cause a PM to increase duration in order to load reserves into your planning values.  For example, we may estimate a task could take four to 10 days to complete.  If there is a lot of uncertainty in the work, you may load a planning value that is closer to 10 days, like eight or nine or even ten, causing costs to climb but creating buffers for the unknowns.  Conversely, if your super confident in the work, you could plan something closer to four days.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One of the most popular is a 5x5 matrix where you have probability on the Y axis and impact on the X axis.  It is convenient to report to your stakeholders where you place a risk on the matrix, based on the predicted likelihood and the impact.  It is very two dimensional, however, and does not really convey a probabilistic impact scenario for some type of risks.  But it is a good reporting tool that seems to resonate with stakeholders but limited value for serious risk managers.  Another powerful tool is simulation.  The resulting probabilistic distribution is a powerful diagram.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I load &quot;risk management&quot; as an Level of Effort task that simply spans across the entire duration of the project.  For known risks where we have mitigation plans, I load those work packages directly into the schedule and load them with resources--both money, labor, and materiel.  For contingency plans, I load reserves into my budget and will deploy it to a schedule in the event I have to use them.  But at baseline, my contingency budget is NOT part of the performance measurement baseline.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-12-14T15:29:47.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12836" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12839" CreationDate="2014-12-15T09:38:50.780" Score="6" ViewCount="1036" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are taking our first steps in the Agile development world, and while we have a long path to follow, I'm having difficulties incorporating our graphic designer in the development process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The previous PO believed in a &lt;code&gt;Product definition =&amp;gt; designer =&amp;gt; Developers&lt;/code&gt; flow. The designer worked with the product manager to create a presentation of exact images of the app, sending it to the developers for implementation. This created a huge waste as any change required the designer to update many slides. As well, since he made all images for the whole app beforehand, when the app development progressed, there were changes to the design which again made him change many many slides. Another problematic issue was that the images do not explain expected behavior - what happens when there's an error? using what animation a popup should appear? this caused a lot of expected-behaviour related bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To eliminate this waste, I've asked the designer to create a set images for each story, when most of the image is a sketch of the app and only the parts related to the current feature are actual images. In addition, I've asked the product manager to write the acceptance criteria defining the expected behaviour (which includes any behaviour or specific error messages).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was just a shot in the dark, and I am not sure that is the way to go. I would appreciate anyone who can share his thought about the process described here, if there is anything I should do differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14806" LastActivityDate="2015-02-19T17:40:27.460" Title="From user stories to product, where and when to do graphic design?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11575" CreationDate="2014-12-15T12:03:14.977" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best explanation for Product Owner can be found in the below video, which talks about how to do planning and prioritizing of stories. A must watch for every.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=502ILHjX9EE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=502ILHjX9EE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The summary of the video is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PO knows the  vision of the product, why the product is being built and whats the problem domain&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Knows the stakeholders and/or the end users&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is the communicator between the Stakeholders, users and the team&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;So in summary, PO works with the team to &quot;build the right thing&quot; which means:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The most important tool at his disposal is the ability to say &quot;No&quot; to feature requests that won't provide value and &quot;put them in the trash bin&quot;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prioritises the Product Backlog by balancing the following risks:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cost and Schedule&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical Risk(s)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business Risks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lGGQV.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Agile In Nutshell - Diagram&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer the question, yes, the product owner can remove stories from the backlog and should regularly do so in order to make sure the backlog stays focused on providing the most value to stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10350" LastEditorUserId="10350" LastEditDate="2015-06-18T16:57:38.140" LastActivityDate="2015-06-18T16:57:38.140" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12838" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-15T19:55:58.743" Score="2" ViewCount="3572" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a project doesn't meet its planned schedule, how do you calculate any losses per day incurred? Is there a graphing function in MS Project that I can use to depict losses per day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13695" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-12-15T21:58:31.007" LastActivityDate="2016-09-19T10:53:15.487" Title="How do you calculate extra costs incurred if a project overruns its schedule?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;&lt;pmbok&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12836" CreationDate="2014-12-15T21:27:53.943" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The process you describe is pretty good and fits pretty well into Agile-scrum visual design practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the visual design process that has worked well for me across several Agile-Scrum projects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start with rough wireframes 1-2 weeks before entering an iteration&#xA;Have your designer work with the PO to create the wireframes&#xA;Try and have the wireframes focus on the functionality that will ONLY be covered in the story&#xA;   -If you need to add other elements to your wireframe for context, make sure its absolutely clear what part of the functionality the wireframes cover and what is extra.&#xA;Review the wireframes ~1 week prior to iteration start with a technical lead or developer to get feedback.&#xA;Negotiate story changes/wireframe changes with the PO after getting technical feedback&#xA;At iteration start, attach final wireframes and/or visual designs to the corresponding user story&#xA;The user story should references the visual design&#xA;The user story should still provide descriptions in the acceptance criteria of how UI elements interact&#xA;During demo/acceptance, compare the wireframes/visual design to the actual product.  Discuss any discrepancies and adjust the design or create a defect if needed to ensure both stay in sync.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some wireframing tools are interactive and can actually show UI elements; pop-ups, modals, inter-page navigation, etc to help bring even more depth to the visual design components of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a visual design or wireframe change during the iteration, make sure the visual assets are updated to match the story.  Ive seen so many designers work off of outdated visuals that keep getting re-used in stories.  This creates a ton of confusion for developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, try and get your designer embedded into the team.  Many designers can double as a QA resource by looking at local, or QA level work-product and ensuring it meets design criteria before it goes to the PO for review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wireframing can be incredibly simple; I've seen great wireframes come off a whiteboard. It doesn't need to always be pretty. Furthermore, you can often avoid detailed visual design on each story if your project re-uses design elements.  Keep this in mind when looking for areas to squeeze efficiency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2014-12-15T21:27:53.943" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12836" CreationDate="2014-12-15T21:31:27.220" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're on the right way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best plase for the graphic design is a &lt;strong&gt;Definition of Ready&lt;/strong&gt; for a User Story. The Story is percieved as Ready to start development by the team when:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Title and description is specified&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acceptance criteria defined&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Graphic design screens attached&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Story Points estimation assigned&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[whatever other criterias you define]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13500" LastActivityDate="2014-12-15T21:31:27.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12841" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-15T21:42:38.397" Score="0" ViewCount="666" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have successfully implemented fixed costs for a few of my tasks, one of them being accommodation cost which is a &quot;one off&quot; cost. However, how do I input fixed costs for tasks which rely on the duration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, one of my tasks involves renting special machinery for 2 days (which is my duration), the cost of renting this equipment is £13,500 per day. So how do I work out the cost, baring in mind that 2 days is the estimated period, in best case scenario the task may take one day,in worst case scenario it may take four days. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how do I input renting costs? do I just calculate them based on the duration so £13,500 x 2 (days) .. making the fixed cost of £27,000?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13695" LastActivityDate="2015-03-05T20:15:07.900" Title="How to atone for Fixed costs within MS Project which are based on duration?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12838" CreationDate="2014-12-15T21:56:38.430" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There isn't really any such thing as a &quot;daily loss&quot; in project management, since most projects are cost centers rather than profit centers. For example, you'd be hard-pressed to treat most projects as the sole topic of a profit-and-loss statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you can certainly calculate the expenses of cost overruns due to a project exceeding its planned budget or schedule, and you may also be able to capture additional liabilities attributable to exceeding your planning values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Costs of Exceeding Your Planning Values&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Cost Overruns&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_overrun&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cost overruns&lt;/a&gt; are generally caused by exceeding your planned budget, which is often tied to your schedule. Overruns can often be calculated based on a daily &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burn_rate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;burn rate&lt;/a&gt;&quot; for the project. For example, if your project costs $10,000/day in labor and resources to operate, then a project that is two weeks overdue will probably have exceeded the planned budget by around $100,000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Other Costs&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there are other costs that aren't really cost overruns, but may still be liabilities to the project or the business when a deliverable is late. Some examples include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contractual penalties for late delivery.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Opportunity costs&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lost market share.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Intangibles such as tarnished branding or loss of goodwill.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of these numbers will be represented by project-specific planning values, and can't be generically calculated across projects, organizations, or industries. Your sales or marketing departments may be able to assist you in developing plug-in values for these additional liabilities if they aren't already part of your project's plan or cost structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-12-15T21:56:38.430" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12844" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-16T01:20:25.500" Score="0" ViewCount="169" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example, if lack of resource commitment is identified as an issue, then what would the contingency plan look like? does it have a specific structure? what key factors must I consider when implementing a contingency plan?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13695" LastActivityDate="2014-12-16T12:19:40.230" Title="What does a &quot;Contingency&quot; Plan involve?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;scope&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2014-12-29T03:24:53.123" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12845" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-16T10:08:18.607" Score="-2" ViewCount="266" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the most important concepts that should be added (as notes on ms project)? for example: Defining the project scope, risk management .. what others? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13695" LastActivityDate="2014-12-16T22:22:03.840" Title="Important Concepts In Project Management" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;&lt;scope-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-12-29T03:22:56.093" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12844" CreationDate="2014-12-16T12:19:40.230" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A contingency plan is a set of actions you would deploy when certain predefined variables have been met.  Prior to those variables coming true, the plan sits on the shelf.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The specific structure of your contingency plan, or any plan, should be defined by you or your organization.  It is great to reuse someone else's work but you need to hold the authority to modify it so that it works for you and your project.  At the most simplest core, your plan needs to answer who, what, where, when, why, and how.  If you answer those all of those questions and write it to the detail where anyone in your profession can pick it up and go, it is a good plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding resource commitment, a contingency plan might look like the acquisition of resources from another source if that were possible.  If human, you might source out a vendor to supply talent or even hire directly off the street.  Your contingency plan would have reserves in order to fund those activities.  If materiel or tools, have vendor B or vendor C ready to go if vendor A does not produce.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the plan, I would identify the variables that have to be present before I deploy.  For example, if human, I might use a schedule/finish variance that exceeds so many dollars or days that would trigger my contingency plan.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-12-16T12:19:40.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12845" CreationDate="2014-12-16T13:52:38.450" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have formulated and defined the following view over many years and now use it quite successfully when I am at an interview seeking a role, and of course in real life when managing projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Successful delivery (Waterfall method) comprises the following key elements to the Five-point Plan (MarvTM)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Know your requirements in clear, accurate and unambiguous detail - You must know what it is you are delivering else how will you know when you have achieved it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Get the &quot;right&quot; team - You must have a team comprised of competent people who have expertise in the specific technical areas required by the project&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Work out the most accurate estimates you can - We all know the limitations of estimation, but do the best you can with what you have got, taking into account the views of the people who are well-versed in actually doing it&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Develop a detailed plan - Descend in the plan to as low a level of detail as required for you (i.e. the PM) to be able to map activities with a reasonable degree of accuracy. This level will be different for different projects. Don't keep the plan too high-level and don't make it too-low. Herein lies one of the black arts of the seasoned PM :)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Manage the hell out of the project - I don't mean micromanagement, I mean:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;active&lt;/em&gt; risk and issues management on a frequent basis (daily if appropriate)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;continuous tracking of actuals against plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;continuous re-planning as you move towards completion and new things become known and old things get finished late, early or on time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;open, transparent and &lt;em&gt;regular&lt;/em&gt; communications with the team, with the sponsors and with the stakeholders as often as &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; need (not when &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; need it)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;regular progress reporting at the level of detail right for the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It works for me, YMMV, and different methodologies, frameworks, manifestos and mindsets all have different (and probably equally valid) points of view!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2014-12-16T22:22:03.840" LastActivityDate="2014-12-16T22:22:03.840" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12849" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12850" CreationDate="2014-12-17T13:54:19.680" Score="-1" ViewCount="937" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to calculate the monthly turnover rate of my team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The formula I am using is the same as described in (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.payscale.com/compensation-today/2010/02/how-to-calculate-employee-turnover&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.payscale.com/compensation-today/2010/02/how-to-calculate-employee-turnover&lt;/a&gt;): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VXadr.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is in the beginning of the month I had no employees and in the end of this month I have no employees. We had 5 people that have joined the team and the same 5 people that  have left the team in the same month. Replacing this data into the equation I have: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Monthly turnover rate =    [  5   /    ( (0 + 0)  /  2 )    ]    *   100  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, division by 0 does not exist. How should I report this turnover rate?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12162" LastEditorUserId="12162" LastEditDate="2014-12-17T14:40:43.717" LastActivityDate="2014-12-17T15:13:26.767" Title="Turnover rate in a project" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12849" CreationDate="2014-12-17T14:26:03.213" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;At a high level the max turnover rate is 100% if everyone leaves. It can exceed 100% if you hire new people during the month and they are also gone by the end of the month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The formula you are using is good for typical (low) turnover rates, not for extreme situations like this. In your example simply taking the headcount at the beginning of the month and end of the month and averaging that won't work. You should do a more granular average - by number of weeks or even days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let us say the five employees stayed for 12 days each. Your average employees during the month would be = 5x12/30 = 2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Monthly turnover rate = (5/2) x 100 = 250%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2014-12-17T15:13:26.767" LastActivityDate="2014-12-17T15:13:26.767" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12439" CreationDate="2014-12-17T15:28:38.857" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Double click on the subprojects in the master project and go to the advanced tab. Un-tick the box &quot;Link to project&quot;, this removes the link to the subproject (&lt;strong&gt;BE WARNED&lt;/strong&gt; if you unlink it you can not link it back, so do not click save, do a &lt;strong&gt;SAVE AS&lt;/strong&gt;). The subproject tasks becomes tasks in the master project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have shared resource pool you will want to remove this link, otherwise all resource will be double booked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found that this is the best workaround if you need to send you master project out using email etc without sending multiple files. This obviously means this file will not update with changes made to the subprojects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14822" LastActivityDate="2014-12-17T15:28:38.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12852" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-17T17:01:44.803" Score="1" ViewCount="5629" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a task within my project criteria which states:&#xA;&quot;Purchasing lead-time for the steelwork is estimated at 60-80 days&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does lead time mean? Do I have to make special considerations for this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13695" LastActivityDate="2015-01-14T12:33:26.927" Title="What is &quot;Lead Time&quot;?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;constraints&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12852" CreationDate="2014-12-17T18:50:16.137" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_time&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lead time&lt;/a&gt; is the delay between the initiation and execution of a process. For example, the lead time between the placement of an order and delivery of a new car from a manufacturer may be anywhere from 2 weeks to 6 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the Business Dictionary, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/purchasing-lead-time.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Purchasing lead-time&lt;/a&gt; is the, &quot;Interval between a decision to purchase an item and its receipt at the warehouse or stores. It is the total of order preparation time, order release time, supplier lead time, shipping or transit time, and receiving, inspection, and put-away time.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, you do have to give special consideration for this. You must factor this lead time in your plan. More importantly, you must note that the Purchasing lead-time doesn't include time to create the design and specification for the steelwork, time to locate and qualify vendors, get quotations and conduct negotiations and make a decision. You should make sure that these tasks are properly incorporated in the plan and time estimates are accounted for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2014-12-17T18:50:16.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12852" CreationDate="2014-12-17T20:13:58.613" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a note, lead time in Microsoft Project is expressed as a negative value in the lag field on a predecessor/successor relationship. So if you had a two tasks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task 1: Purchase Steel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task 2: Erect Steel Structure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the link relationship for Task 2 would be &lt;code&gt;1FS+80days&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastEditorUserId="6840" LastEditDate="2014-12-18T15:12:26.943" LastActivityDate="2014-12-18T15:12:26.943" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12841" CreationDate="2014-12-17T20:16:28.443" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider using a material resource with a cost of 13500.  Then assign the material resource at 1/day in the task form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Resource Names column it should look like this:  Auger[1/day]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Additionally, if there is a fixed cost plus a daily cost ($10,000 + $3,500/day) you can show this by entering $10,000 into the Cost Per Use column of the Resource Sheet and entering $3,500 into the Std. Rate column.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastEditorUserId="16300" LastEditDate="2015-03-05T20:15:07.900" LastActivityDate="2015-03-05T20:15:07.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12856" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12861" CreationDate="2014-12-18T08:52:25.027" Score="0" ViewCount="128" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're currently working on a project and debating with others how best to break the project down. Below I'm just providing titles, not writing the full User Stories, to make it quicker to read through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project:&lt;/strong&gt; My Account (Online)&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Theme:&lt;/strong&gt; Personal Contact Information&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Theme Epics:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contact Address&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contact Numbers&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Epic 2 Stories:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;View and update Home Telephone number, plus validate the format.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;View and update Mobile number, plus validate the format.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, there is some debate over whether Contact Numbers really needs to broken down into two separate stories. My opinion is that there is a need. We may launch with just the capture of Home Telephone number, then Mobile number at a later date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second debate is that I would break these down further to have a separate Story for the validation, example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Validation of the Mobile number&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the argument may be that there is no value to the customer of this story. However, there is some value, in that it is to help the customer to ensure they have entered a valid mobile number i.e. UK starts with 07 or +447. Aside from that, my reason for having separate stories for validation is that we could launch without validation of the mobile number, although it would be nice to have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Breaking things down into smaller chunks makes it all more manageable: easier to progress, easier to track progress, and the progress is much more visible. Plus it makes it easier to iterate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, I would be even tempted to breakdown the View and Update of the Mobile number into separate stories because, again, we could just go live with View only. I feel this reflects building incrementally, much like Spotify suggest with their example of Skateboard, Scooter, Bicycle, Motorbike, Car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is my approach valid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14829" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-12-18T16:41:32.140" LastActivityDate="2014-12-21T22:34:48.927" Title="Is my &quot;Personal Contact Information&quot; theme broken down properly?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12856" CreationDate="2014-12-18T14:38:19.170" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looks good to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would probably break the stories down like so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;View Mobile Number&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;View Home Number  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Update Mobile Number&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Update Home Number&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then the PO/business can balance their relative priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for validation of phone numbers there is a decision to be made on whether they are stories in their own right or additional acceptance criteria on the two update stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is a right or wrong answer to that. It depends on the value to the business of the validation and the cost of cleaning up any invalid phone numbers if and when the validation stories are eventually implemented. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I'd make the phone number validation part of the acceptance criteria on the assumption that it is a very small task and it will avoid waste (invalid data that will have a cost to clean up in the future) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14834" LastActivityDate="2014-12-18T14:38:19.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12642" CreationDate="2014-12-18T15:19:11.840" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can delay a resource's work on a task by using the Task Form. (Split from a Gantt view). Assign Resource A - Project will calculate 400 hours of work.  Assign Resource B, manually entering 80 hour of work. (2 weeks).  Change the format of the Task Form (use the Task Form Tools Format Ribbon) to Schedule.  Add 8 weeks in the delay field for Resource Bs assignment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2014-12-18T15:19:11.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12806" CreationDate="2014-12-18T16:53:46.393" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Shared email sounds over-complicated and inappropriate to me. A CRM system or customer service ticket management system feel like the most appropriate tool to achieve what you are after.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use &lt;a href=&quot;http://zendesk.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Zendesk&lt;/a&gt; to communicate with customers. Depending on the way it's set up every 'agent' can access everyone else's comms (including phone calls) with customers but generally speaking one agent 'owns' that communication. This can change depending on whether issues need to be escalated or dealt with by a specialist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We integrate Zendesk with JIRA so that customer issues can be escalated to our technical team. You can set this up so that customers can see everything that happens in JIRA or you can keep it separate so that agents can see JIRA comments and supply further customer info but customers don't see what developers are saying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel like you want team members to be alerted to particular events then I'd recommend a group chat tool like HipChat, FlowDock or Slack. Most of these integrate quite nicely with CRM and customer service tools so everyone has visibility of activities but doesn't necessarily need to read through all of them to get to critical info.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your team will have more flexibility with a system like this without losing the benefits of email (private, one-to-one comms). There are dozens of tools out there that you could try but you might find &lt;a href=&quot;http://zapier.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Zapier&lt;/a&gt; a useful place to start. It's a service that joins up hundreds of services by triggering actions in one from actions in another (like pinging a chat service when an email with a certain subject is received). It's pretty powerful and we use it for a load of time saving integrations between our various services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2014-12-18T16:53:46.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12856" CreationDate="2014-12-18T17:29:53.107" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your approach appears valid, but only you and your team can determine whether it's optimal for your current process. Decomposition is about finding the optimum story size &lt;em&gt;for your team's process&lt;/em&gt;; while smaller stories help maintain flow, some stories can be so small that the size of the work unit is swamped by the process overhead each story entails. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Evaluating the Level of Decomposition&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is my &quot;Personal Contact Information&quot; theme broken down properly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no canonical answer to this question, since the necessary granularity of user stories (or traditional work breakdown packages, for that matter) will depend a great deal on things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your team's Definition of Done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The complexity of the problem domain.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The length of your iterations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The maturity of your team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether it makes sense &lt;em&gt;for your team&lt;/em&gt; to decompose stories further.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, consider whether making view, update, and validation steps separate stories makes sense for the project. This will depend a lot on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some frameworks make it trivial to treat all three deliverables as a single unit of work, while others don't. Your mileage will therefore vary.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your dependencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the stories can be done independently, then you can certainly make them separate stories if that adds value for the project. However, treating interdependent task-level items as separate user stories is often a project smell.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The delineation between a story and a task within your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Treating a bunch of sub-tasks as multiple user stories simply adds process overhead. As an additional consideration, a story should rarely (if ever) be prescriptive, and task-level items are generally prescriptive by nature. Try to keep your stories as granular as possible while ensuring that even the smallest story remains above the task level.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your unit of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a shining example, while there's nothing inherently wrong with breaking the stories into smaller stories that remain above the task level, on a Rails project with a mature team I might make a single story out of &quot;support validated cell phone numbers on the contact page.&quot; To me, that unit of work seems relatively small and idempotent. Again, your mileage may vary depending on context and capabilities.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Validity of Your Current Approach&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is my approach valid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your approach certainly seems valid in the abstract, but whether it's &lt;em&gt;useful&lt;/em&gt; within the context of your particular project is something on your team can determine. The underlying question is whether the additional level of detail helps or hinders the team. If a story generally follows the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_%28mnemonic%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;INVEST principles&lt;/a&gt; and fits within a single iteration, then further decomposition may simply add overhead or complexity to the planning process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two things of special note to consider here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;V&quot; for value in INVEST doesn't always have to be value for the end user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Value can be for the &lt;em&gt;project&lt;/em&gt;, rather than just and end user. As long as there's a clearly-identified &quot;value consumer&quot; for the story, and so long as the Product Owner (or comparable stakeholder in your framework) finds value in the story, then that's sufficient for &quot;V&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Decomposing stories is a trade-off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you say, smaller stories are easier to manage in a variety of ways, and are generally more &quot;agile.&quot; However, all stories carry a fixed amount of process overhead, so there's a balance to be struck between keeping the story as small as practicable without making it &lt;em&gt;so&lt;/em&gt; small that it adds unnecessary bookkeeping or framework overhead. This balancing act will require different trade-offs for each project, team, and story, so your team will have to find its own optimum.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-12-21T22:34:48.927" LastActivityDate="2014-12-21T22:34:48.927" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12856" CreationDate="2014-12-19T12:22:04.007" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to disagree with the other two answers here and say: no, your approach is not valid. Consider the simple use case of a contact that doesn't have a home phone, just a mobile one. They are going to be frustrated by a system that rejects their only phone as having an invalid home phone number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead I'd suggest you think in terms of breaking the stories down into:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;View and update primary number&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Validate primary number against a simple validation set, eg that mobile numbers start 07 or +447 (with warning if it doesn't appear valid)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Validate primary number against full validation (not sure if only UK national numbers are needed here, or world-wild, but eg 076xxx numbers are not valid mobile numbers in the UK).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;View and update a secondary number&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Validate a secondary number&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story 1 would be the highest priority, but depending on your achived velocity against expected, you could eg drop Story 2 completely and go straight to 3, implement story 5 after 1 etc, thus giving you flexibility in what's delivered in each release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14835" LastActivityDate="2014-12-19T12:22:04.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12863" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-19T12:58:55.150" Score="5" ViewCount="5914" Body="&lt;p&gt;The burn down chart will have story points on the Y-Axis and duration (number of days) on the X-Axis. My team is able to complete the stories almost at the end of the Sprint. This means the burn down chart is never linear in relation to the 'ideal working line.' Instead, the actual working line suddenly dips towards the ideal working line almost on the last day of the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master, I am unable to predict if the stories are progressing and getting completed as expected. I read that with the burn-down chart the team is burning hours and the tracking will be based on hours and not story points. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With story points on the Y-Axis and duration (number of days) on the X-Axis, how do I track hours? Secondly, how should I follow the process to make sure that the ideal line and actual line are symmetrical, or close to symmetrical?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5576" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2014-12-19T15:36:39.917" LastActivityDate="2019-07-29T09:10:58.563" Title="What is the value of tracking hours in a Sprint burn-down chart?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;burndown-chart&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12863" CreationDate="2014-12-19T15:39:44.170" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the interests of trying to provide a good answer to the question, I've rewritten my original answer to both better explain it and to address a number of the points in the comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, a quick overview of agile ideas and methodologies, to set the stage for the answer. There are two important rules to agile development that everyone should know and remind themselves of regularly. Combined they can save a lot of misunderstanding and misinformation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agile is an adjective; not a noun. If someone says &quot;We do agile&quot;, or &quot;Agile is ...&quot; then they have misunderstood the whole idea of agile development. Agile isn't a thing, any more than rapid in Rapid Application Development (RAD) is a thing. A good rule of thumb for determining if you are using the word correctly is to swap it for &quot;nimble&quot;. &quot;We do nimble&quot; sounds silly; so this tells us &quot;We do agile&quot; is a bad use of the word. &quot;Nimble is a mindset&quot; sounds silly; this tells us the &quot;Agile is a mindset&quot; is also a bad use of the word. &quot;We have adopted a set of nimble processes&quot; and &quot;we are a nimble development team&quot; both make sense, which tells us these are good ways of using the word agile.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One of the key principles of agile development is &quot;Individuals and interactions over processes and tools&quot;. In other words, put what works for you at a given time before all dogma, &quot;best practice&quot; (a poisoned chalice of a phrase, if there ever was one) or any real or imagined rule of how to take an agile approach to development. If you come across someone saying &quot;story points are only for stories, thus the name&quot; or &quot;Story points and ideal hours are not interchangeable&quot; then they have forgotten this core principle and are putting process before people. If you want to measure stories in hours, tasks in elephants etc, then do so. If anyone tells you you are doing it wrong, point them to the agile manifesto and politely ask them they are advising you badly. There's an excellent article on real &amp;amp; ideal hours and story points at &lt;a href=&quot;http://vladhorby.wordpress.com/2007/09/04/agile-adventures-ideal-vs-real-time/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://vladhorby.wordpress.com/2007/09/04/agile-adventures-ideal-vs-real-time/&lt;/a&gt;, which is well worth a read.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So back to my original answer, which I have rewritten to clarify what I was trying to advise; it was clearly badly phrased initially as it confused a number of people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scenario described is of a situation where a team has estimated a set of stories and these are being assigned to each sprint in turn. However, due to the duration of each story been similar to the length of the sprint, the scrum master's job of tracking progress is made difficult. Scrum guidelines suggest that a activity only be marked down on the burndown once it is done. Thus, the progress line flat-lines until the end of the sprint, before plummeting as the stories finish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The simple reason why this happens is because the activities aren't granular enough. A solution to this is to take each story and decompose it into tasks during the sprint planning meeting. that way, each task reaches done more quickly and so can be marked down on the burndown chart. Thus progress is more accurately recorded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whilst it might be tempting to estimate the tasks in hours (or days) during the sprint planning meeting, there is an alternative approach that can provide valuable information to the scrum master on the the velocity that the team is achieving. That alternative approach is to estimate the tasks in story points (or &quot;bolitas&quot; - see the link above) too. These remain arbitrary amounts. Though some teams choose to equate a story point with an idealised &quot;man day&quot;, this isn't universal or even necessary for some teams. As always with agile development, do what works best for your team. If you estimate tasks in story points, and record the hours spent, you can obtain hours spent vs estimated story points metrics. This can form a good way of determining the team’s velocity and estimating accuracy. These figures can then help inform discussions around improving estimating in the retrospective and in giving more reliable real duration estimates of story points in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Addendum&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I have been asked by &quot;Venture2099&quot; to expand upon what &quot;Individuals and interactions over processes and tools&quot; actually means in practice. What this means in the real world was superbly expressed up by a talk at QCon London in 2013 by Glen Ford. The slides are available at &lt;a href=&quot;http://qconlondon.com/london-2013/qconlondon.com/dl/qcon-london-2013/slides/GlenFord_PeopleOverProcessApplyingItInRealWorldSoftwareDevelopment.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://qconlondon.com/london-2013/qconlondon.com/dl/qcon-london-2013/slides/GlenFord_PeopleOverProcessApplyingItInRealWorldSoftwareDevelopment.pdf&lt;/a&gt;, but without the video, they likely lack enough words to fully get the message across. However, the following quote superbly sums it up:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Process is not the rule of law. Rather it is a set of concepts in which to frame the interaction between individuals in order to facilitate the efficient generation of value. The advantage of quality interactions is you decrease the reliance on process. Encourage quality interactions&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a manufacturing environment for example, one needs strict processes. However, in a creative exploration of the unknown, which typifies software development, they are largely a hindrance. Unless those processes are agile themselves. The most agile of process is one that grows out of good inter-relationships between a team of people that want to do the best job they can and are empowered to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All agile methodologies should embrace the &quot;people before processes&quot; ideal by offering guidelines, rather than rules. Rules beget inflexible processes and a belief in some that there is &quot;one true way&quot; of &quot;doing agile&quot;. That's why it's always important to remember the &quot;people before processes&quot; idea when insisting that an agile method must be implemented in a certain way or before talking of agile &quot;best practice&quot; and the like. Such behaviour undermines a fundamental principle of agile development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14835" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2014-12-29T11:34:59.070" LastActivityDate="2014-12-29T11:34:59.070" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12863" CreationDate="2014-12-19T15:59:32.583" Score="12" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master, I am unable to predict if the stories are progressing and getting completed as expected. I read that with the burn-down chart the team is burning hours and the tracking will be based on hours and not story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The burn-down chart is the wrong tool for measuring progress. The correct tools would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The daily stand-up, which you should be facilitating, where progress and blockers are coordinated among the Development Team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Sprint Backlog, which can be used to track both stories and tasks for the current Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Kanban board, if your team happens to use one, which will visually identify where certain stories have gotten stuck.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The burn-down chart measures work remaining, but in your case it's unlikely to be useful as anything other than a visual warning that the team is only closing stories at the very end of the Sprint. If you didn't know that, then that's useful information. If you already knew that, then the burn-down chart is tangible evidence that you can present to the Scrum Team that there's a process problem that needs to be addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Burn-Down Charts and Plateaus&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My team is able to complete the stories almost at the end of the Sprint. This means the burn down chart is never linear in relation to the 'ideal working line.' Instead, the actual working line suddenly dips towards the ideal working line almost on the last day of the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you measure in ideal hours or story points, a burn-down chart should measure &lt;strong&gt;work remaining for the Sprint&lt;/strong&gt;, not work in progress or effort expended. As a result, short plateaus and rapid dips are fairly common in burn-down charts. Since stories are either done or not-done, stories that are in-progress may cause a plateau (or even as a rising line as new tasks are discovered) until the story meets the Definition of Done. Once the story is done, there will be a sudden dip in the burn-down chart as the story or ideal hours are removed from the amount of work remaining for the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your burn-down only moves downwards at the very end of your Sprint, then it's likely that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your stories are too large.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your stories are too interdependent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your work-in-progress (WIP) limits are too high.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have some other process bottleneck that's preventing a reasonable cadence of task completion throughout the length of the iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last-minute integration tasks or mass story completions are generally a project smell indicating a fundamental process problem. Your team should carefully review your estimation and workflow practices during an upcoming Sprint Retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Understanding the Burn-Down Chart&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[H]ow should I follow the process to make sure that the ideal line and actual line are symmetrical or if not close to symmetrical?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal of a burn-down chart is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to make the lines symmetrical. The goal of a burn-down chart is to act as an early-warning system, warning the team that there are unidentified blockers or hidden process problems where actual delivery is being skewed away from the original estimate beyond what might be considered reasonable deviation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a common rule of thumb in Scrum is that a single story should take between one-half and two days to complete. If your burn-down has plateaued for several days during the Sprint, but no one has raised any blockers during the daily stand-up, then you likely have a hidden process problem that the team needs to uncover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-12-19T15:59:32.583" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12863" CreationDate="2014-12-19T19:16:12.420" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Burndown is not a great tool for tracking work progress during an iteration.  Unless you have a ton of really small/granular stories and the team is good at continuous integration your burndown will look more like a staircase with 2-3 large steps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could create a task based burndown with days on the X axis and Hours on the Y axis, but honestly hour estimates for most teams do not reflect the actual progress towards getting the story done (people inflate values, forget tasks, and don't update their tracking tool regularly).  Getting and keeping tasks accurate for many teams creates more overhead than the value it brings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In scrum the simple ways to determine iteration progress are through daily standup and the kanban or story board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Standup is a qualitative way of assessing iteration progress.  Good team member communication and transparency are the key.  Experienced scrum masters can tell from standup alone roughly where the team is, which stories are at risk, and if the team is over or under capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story or kanban board can help visualize the progression of work and is a more quantitative tool for understanding iteration progression.  If your board tracks cycle time on the story or defect and the same has a story point estimate it is easy to determine the rough progress of a story.  While story points don't equal time, there is a strong correlation between the complexity (Story points) of a story and the median, mean, or mode number of days that sized story takes to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take for example a 3 point story (assume the team defines this as an &quot;easy/small&quot; story).  If you look at the distribution of days it takes to complete 3 point stories for this hypothetical team you will find that ~90% of their 3 point stories are completed in the 3-5 day range.  So if you see a 3 point story on your board that has now be in progress for 3-4 days its fairly safe to assume the team is should be wrapping it up.  If it hits the 5 day mark, you may want to start diving deeper into the progression of story and see if there are concerns/blockers that are not being communicated during standup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2014-12-19T19:16:12.420" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12722" CreationDate="2014-12-22T10:23:02.970" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have a &quot;small company with some programmers, designers and a project manager&quot;, then employ a tester too, preferably one that subscribes to context-driven testing principles. Testing is a specialist skill. Sure everyone can test, just like everyone can code, project manage etc. We can all do these things, but we tend to do the stuff we are not specialised in badly, compared to specialists. If you want the best possible level of testing for the effort spent, you need a tester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14835" LastEditorUserId="14835" LastEditDate="2014-12-23T19:05:34.940" LastActivityDate="2014-12-23T19:05:34.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11532" CreationDate="2014-12-22T10:46:43.957" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer: Yes there is: use tasks in your sprints, use code reviews (or pair programming) and use print reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The longer answer:&#xA;The aim of a sprint planning meeting should be for the whole team to take one or more stories from the backlog and decompose them into a set of tasks. As such, we partially go from just &quot;what should it do&quot; to &quot;how will it do it&quot;. Every member of the team is involved, so everyone on the team should have an understanding of how the tasks interrelate and thus how the design of one might affect the others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each task is only then done when someone has implemented it, another has reviewed its quality and another has tested it (though the last two may be performed by the same person). Finally, should ideally be reviewed by the product owner too. The purpose of the review is to consider the quality of the code, as well as how well that solution fits into the overall design of the product. If you adapt a pair-programming approach to developing code, then the code review is implicit in the development itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, in the sprint review, the results of the effort for that sprint are presented to the customer. At that point, they then get the right to reject the efforts as not having achieve what they (thought they) wanted, thus ensure the product is not only high quality, but actually does what's needed too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Edited to address inaccuracies pointed out by Venture2099)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14835" LastEditorUserId="14835" LastEditDate="2014-12-23T19:01:24.453" LastActivityDate="2014-12-23T19:01:24.453" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12832" CreationDate="2014-12-22T13:12:13.867" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. Actually, Asana doesn't handle software releases or other software development related project steps. You'll either have to change to another service or build when you need with &lt;a href=&quot;http://developer.asana.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Asana API&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;[Edit]&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are looking for something similar to Jira, you can use Jira together with Asana (&lt;a href=&quot;https://asana.com/apps/jira&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;see here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11653" LastEditorUserId="11653" LastEditDate="2014-12-22T13:49:53.047" LastActivityDate="2014-12-22T13:49:53.047" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11532" CreationDate="2014-12-22T22:42:27.720" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Design is a necessary component in any Agile implementation.  However, where and when design work is done depends on the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll see all kinds of design practices from the very formal, &quot;lets task out all our stories at the beginning of the sprint (if you are doing Agile-Scrum)&quot; approach to &quot;hey, I'm picking up a new story; maybe I should have a chat with my architect or tech lead.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Agile-Scrum, the planning ceremony is not a great place to do design.  Its not relevant to participants such as the PO or QA resources.  If you need to, have a formal design meeting with the dev members shortly after planning.  Try and keep design out of planning since it will (usually) turn the ceremony into an arduous 3+ hour journey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think your team is struggling with getting their design nailed down, steer toward the a more formal approach of taking stories and breaking them into documented implementation tasks through a formal meeting or check point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very high maturity teams may be more comfortable with ad-hoc design sessions throughout the iteration (if you're doing Scrum) and only a very high level architectural discussion at the beginning of the iteration to make sure everyone is headed in the right direction.  These type of teams generally don't rely heavily on tasking stories in their agile tracking tool as its seen as a documentation overhead rather than planning/learning activity.  They will rely more on code reviews and ad-hoc communication to ensure they have sustainable designs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind, any story that does not convey the customer perspective or underlying business value is also likely to make design activities harder for the delivery team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastEditorUserId="13568" LastEditDate="2014-12-22T23:00:47.557" LastActivityDate="2014-12-22T23:00:47.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12777" CreationDate="2014-12-24T13:53:47.097" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber/wiki/Gherkin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Gherkin format&lt;/a&gt;. The detail you describe would be scenarios, more detail can be caught in the scenario steps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Feature: Some terse yet descriptive text of what is desired&#xA;   As a ....&#xA;   In order ...&#xA;   I want ...&#xA;&#xA;   Scenario: Some determinable business situation&#xA;     Given some precondition&#xA;       And some other precondition&#xA;      When some action by the actor&#xA;       And some other action&#xA;       And yet another action&#xA;      Then some testable outcome is achieved&#xA;       And something else we can check happens too&#xA;&#xA;   Scenario: A different situation&#xA;       ...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2014-12-24T13:53:47.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12777" CreationDate="2014-12-24T23:33:52.750" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the Agile philosophy, as by Thoughtbot, the Gherkin-style feature steps would be written in a pair/extreme process between Developer, Business Analyst, and SQA/SDET.  This process would happen in a grooming sessions, prior to any daily scrum.  Daily scrums might re-align the story, if new things came to light, but would never write it entirely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The feature title would look like your example #1.  The Scenario would be described by your example #2 lines.  Although, concepts like &quot;database&quot; probably not not be present, as they are too implementation specific for a feature file.  Such implementation details would be held in step-definitions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;An Unauthenticated User enters email and password in the login form, and clicks the login button&quot;;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strike&gt;&quot;The Server receives login data and check if they contain errors&quot;; &lt;/strike&gt;  (I would remove this, as it is a test that should happen elsewhere, probably in a unit test)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The authentication service returns an authentication token, and the user is now an Authenticated User&quot;;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The Authenticated User user is brought to the user's profile page&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4718" LastActivityDate="2014-12-24T23:33:52.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12656" CreationDate="2014-12-25T21:42:11.573" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer has been really covered in the above posts but I would like to link it to the concept of &quot;progressive-elaboration&quot;. The level of detail available (and hence provided) at the time of charter is generally not as in-depth as it would be at the time of planning. Hence, although brief, the level of detail will be more during planning phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13734" LastActivityDate="2014-12-25T21:42:11.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3414" CreationDate="2014-12-26T00:10:12.057" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My project has a fire pump. I can start the electrical work for the fire pump but I cannot finish it until the fire pump installation has started, but the fire pump does not have to be complete for the electrical to finish, i,e, start to finish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14888" LastActivityDate="2014-12-26T00:10:12.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12811" CreationDate="2014-12-28T23:01:25.067" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lead by example. You can't force people to do what they don't believe in, particularly in your role. But if you work the way you believe is right, and if you quietly show results, then you should eventually win people over to your side. Don't force anyone, simply work in the way you believe is right, mention your positive results, and if they are interested then show them more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I first realised the power of TDD when one of my team insisted on doing it for his own work. I thought he was wasting time, but I trusted him enough to let him work the way he thought best. Then one day he showed me dozens of bugs he'd found in our software and quietly corrected. He'd found these because he wanted to check the behaviour of the code he was working with, written tests for it, and found holes. He didn't convert the whole team at that moment, but he did convert me. I'm sure he did it for other people, too... just quietly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a related note, see this video from Dan North, and in particular story #3, The Coach. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/presentations/interactions-career&quot;&gt;http://www.infoq.com/presentations/interactions-career&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14893" LastActivityDate="2014-12-28T23:01:25.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11532" CreationDate="2014-12-29T01:44:40.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile frameworks don't do away with design. Instead, effective teams treat design as an integral part of each potentially-shippable increment; this keeps the design work narrowly-focused on&amp;mdash;and temporally adjacent to&amp;mdash;the implementation of each feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my own experience with agile methodologies like Scrum and XP, I generally find that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some high-level design work naturally happens when stories, specifications, or requirements are decomposed into tasks for the current iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The bulk of the remaining design work happens during the development of unit or acceptance tests.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Integration work is more often about validation than design (although reasonable people might disagree about definitions), but either way integration should be part of the Definition of Done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Just-in-Time Design&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile methodologies certainly support design as part of the development process, but the iterative development model lends itself to &quot;just-in-time&quot; or &quot;just enough&quot; design rather than the big, upfront design one finds in traditional waterfall projects. When done correctly, a team will do just enough design during the iteration to support the current development effort; extensive engineering for features that may or may not remain in scope during future iterations fall under the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_aren%27t_gonna_need_it&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;YAGNI&lt;/a&gt; rubric.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Driving Design with Tests&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile practices such as Test-Driven Development (TDD) and Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) can also provide design within the iterative development model. When done properly, test-driven approaches provide a mechanism for driving implementation directly from the design process. A test-first approach can also help a team limit its design efforts to the features actively in development during the current iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Design as a Deliverable&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the rare case that a design &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; the deliverable, rather than something that is implicitly estimated as part of the level of effort for a given feature, it can be treated like any other increment within the framework. For example, in Scrum you might:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write one or more user stories describing the design work to be done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prioritize the design stories on the Product Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimate the level of effort for the design work during Sprint Planning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accept the design work into a Sprint that has sufficient capacity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decompose the design work into tasks on the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deliver the design artifacts during the Sprint Review.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Accounting for Design Costs&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that design work is never free. Design consumes time and resources during each iteration, and this work must always be accounted for and factored into the team's estimates. Design work can be estimated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explicitly, such as when using design stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implicitly, when design is part of feature development, the Definition of Ready, or the Definition of Done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-12-29T01:44:40.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12811" CreationDate="2014-12-29T02:13:53.403" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;A Results-Oriented Approach&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm a software development program manager who has experienced many of the benefits of test-driven development and continuous integration. But some of the dev teams I work with don't follow these practices. It's not my place to tell them how to do their jobs, but how can I encourage them to adopt these practices without overstepping the bounds of my role?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you may not be in a position to dictate good work practices, it seems likely that you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; in a position to drive a results-oriented approach. Generally speaking, TDD and CI are practices that are designed to reduce defect rates, and &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; should be your focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As one example, you might draw up a pie chart showing how much time is consumed fixing bugs rather than doing greenfield development on new features. By making the defect rates a visible cost &lt;em&gt;to the developers&lt;/em&gt; (who will generally prefer working on new features to fixing bugs), you create an incentive for the developers to inspect-and-adapt their workflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't a question of &quot;holding people accountable.&quot; Rather, the goal is to create a causal link that helps the developers see the natural consequences of their current development practices. This may be all that's necessary to invite change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that at the end of the day you probably &lt;em&gt;shouldn't&lt;/em&gt; care whether they're writing software using TDD and CI, or writing code on stone tablets using cuneiform. What you really care about is software quality and efficiency of delivery, and you should definitely maintain reasonable targets for both of those things. It is then up to the development team whether they want to do things the easy way or the hard way; you can provide guidance if they'll take it, but you have to let some people learn by making their own mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on tangible results (e.g. defect rates or feature lead times). Set reasonable objectives for your projects. Challenge your teams to improve their processes or toolchains when they fall short of reasonable expectations. You can't protect people from themselves, but you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; encourage professional growth, especially if you're providing the time, money, and equipment necessary to implement real process change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2014-12-29T02:13:53.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11986" CreationDate="2014-12-29T17:32:46.113" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I can't use Scrum, I use Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think you can deliver the functional product every two or four weeks, go for Scrum!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, Kanban provides a great tool for visualization of tasks. Visual board should let everyone in your small organization see who is doing what and should help to detect the bottlenecks to improve the processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that your board will have high value if it will be relevant all the time. Maybe letting people to move tasks by themselves and letting everyone know (Trello service does that in the Activity panel).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimation of tasks may be sometimes skipped as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should agree on the frequency of your stand-ups. If the communication is very good, every day meetings may become not necessary. Discussions of every project in separate Skype groups or/and email can serve better than standups. Weekly meetings can be very useful as they can be taken more seriously, can be better organized, and can produce a better tool for the incremental improvement in your organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5851" LastEditorUserId="5851" LastEditDate="2014-12-29T17:58:11.840" LastActivityDate="2014-12-29T17:58:11.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12890" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12919" CreationDate="2014-12-30T13:09:52.063" Score="0" ViewCount="122" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in charge of the &quot;processes and training&quot; department in my company. Our main activities are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Document and publish the process of the company as well as procedures and functions of each sector&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Develop and document efficiency metrics to measure the performance of certain sectors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide training on demand on various issues, internally and for clients&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be an appropriate &lt;em&gt;agile&lt;/em&gt; way to manage the tasks of such department? How would such way be best implemented in TFS?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14871" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2014-12-31T12:07:29.437" LastActivityDate="2021-05-16T03:53:16.450" Title="Which would be the best agile approach in order to manage a Process Department?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2765" CreationDate="2014-12-30T13:49:48.790" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Points add an abstraction away from time for psychological reasons, implicitly to prevent programmer burnout. Somebody still has to turn the abstraction into a time/financial cost. It just passes up the chain until somebody is willing to take responsibility for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own view is that programmer burnout is not caused by attempting to estimate in time, it's caused by inappropriate management reactions when things take longer than expected. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're making up abstractions to avoid giving a commercially useful estimate because you fear punishment that much, the problem is with your management culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's better to have a supportive environment where sincere and hard working people are understood to make some mistakes, but where's there's transparent feedback, rather than adding layers of abstraction so they don't have to confront realities like 'I thought this would take a day and it's taken over a week'. To my mind, that's treating engineers like children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14904" LastActivityDate="2014-12-30T13:49:48.790" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12892" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-30T15:43:09.510" Score="1" ViewCount="530" Body="&lt;p&gt;we are into Agile project development. Our onsite PM wants us to attend every possible meeting happening for everybody in the whole team.&#xA;This consumes daily 5 hours on average.&#xA;I dont want to make onsite PM feel bad about my suggestion that I want to cut down on meetings, atleast for developers.&#xA;Is there anyway I can put my point across about reducing the meeting timings/better management to onsite PM without hurting her ego?&#xA;I am an offshore PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14907" LastActivityDate="2015-01-03T04:39:05.170" Title="Meetings in agile project" Tags="&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12895" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-30T18:09:08.437" Score="0" ViewCount="276" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a trouble. Consider a task 'developing software'. This task has 1000hrs of work.&#xA;A single developer might work for 1000hrs, or two for 500hrs.&#xA;Duration, in a standard 5d with 8hr/day, is 125 day with one developer, or 62.5 with 2 developer.&#xA;However, there's a third resource, the team leader, that need to spend 5% of total work on the task, but should not affect the duration.&#xA;In MS Project, when I insert this third resource, the task duration is recalculated and work is spread on this resoure, like 475hr for each of two developers and 50 for the team leader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to prevent this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14912" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-01-15T09:14:25.933" LastActivityDate="2019-01-15T09:14:25.933" Title="Duration and work of additional resources in MS Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12896" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12898" CreationDate="2014-12-30T18:39:00.007" Score="5" ViewCount="796" Body="&lt;p&gt;A short introduction to the question: I'm a Scrum Master in a small web development organization (10 employees) and we do a lot of projects that'll last for 3 or 4 sprints, with an average duration of 2 months total.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm currently in a situation where we actively involve the Product Owner during backlog refinement meetings and sprint plannings, even though some of the companies we work with were hesitant at first because they're not familiar with the Scrum framework. That being said, they were happy to to tag along as it gave them a lot more control of the proces. The problem is: although they know the rules about not changing the sprint backlog during a sprint, most of 'em change the backlog at least once every sprint. Their intentions are good (&quot;we found out a different color works better, change it&quot; / &quot;Our client wants to test in browser X today, please make a testing server now&quot; etc) but they don't seem/want to understand that this will impact the work we can finish during a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now we thought it would be a good idea to let the Product Owner sign a sprint release contract, containing key dates, the sprint backlog and definitions of done. While researching scrum theory we kind of assumed the presence of the PO in sprint planning meetings and a verbal agreement to commit to the backlog was enough, but in reality that's not always the case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question: is it a good idea to let the PO sign a contract containing the sprint release details? And is there any example of such document in Scrum literature I can reference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14914" LastEditorUserId="14914" LastEditDate="2014-12-30T22:40:22.780" LastActivityDate="2015-06-10T08:39:18.870" Title="Committing the Product Owner to a sprint backlog with a contract" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;&lt;contracts&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12895" CreationDate="2014-12-30T19:31:02.110" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, there's a third resource, the team leader, that need to spend 5% of total work on the task, but should not affect the duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the work is intrinsic to the task, it should increase its duration, otherwise what are those 5% your team leader is working on? It's 5% of the 100%, not of the 105%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the work is external to the task (a &quot;management overhead&quot;), then it should be placed outside of the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likely (it is an assumption) your team leader will have his work spread all over the project as some percentage of his time, not a percentage of each task. In this case you there is nothing to track in the project plan, since such work is not &quot;completed&quot; or &quot;not completed&quot; - it is just being done on a regular basis and there is no progress to check upon. You can account for this in a flat calculation over your project total duration, and adjust this resource's availability correspondingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;standard 5d with 8hr/day&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a side note, you should never plan for 8 hr/day - this is not achievable because you cannot get 100% productivity from the person on a constant basis. Allow for some buffer here (or in your estimates, for that matter - depending on who you want to pay for this).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13461" LastActivityDate="2014-12-30T19:31:02.110" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12896" CreationDate="2014-12-30T19:59:32.367" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt; No, because what you describe is not strictly Scrum - you should fix the process instead of inventing a workaround. The PO can change the product backlog, but not the sprint backlog. If the team does not agree with the required change, or cannot implement it without endangering the sprint, PO may cancel the sprint (and incur all associated costs), or let it be and put a new story on the product backlog to address the changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is there any example of such document in Scrum literature I can reference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main document for you is a Scrum Guide (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&lt;/a&gt;). I'll refer to it several times below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is: although they know the rules about not changing the sprint backlog during a sprint, most of 'em change the backlog at least once every sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the guide,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the Sprint:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No changes are made that would endanger the Sprint Goal;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quality goals do not decrease; and,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scope may be clarified and re-negotiated between the Product Owner and Development Team as more is learned.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Only the Development Team&lt;/strong&gt; can change its Sprint Backlog during a Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the change asked by PO is endangering the sprint goal, then it should not be accepted. You as a Scrum Master is in charge of that. Your backup in conversation with the POS is the Scrum Guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;they don't seem/want to understand that this will impact the work we can finish during a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's your job as a Scrum Master to explain it to them. Likely, they actually understand that it impacts your work, but do not pay enough attention to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now we thought it would be a good idea to let the Product Owner sign a sprint release contract, containing key dates, the sprint backlog and definitions of done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. No and no. Again, by the guide,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a Product Backlog item or an Increment is described as “Done”, everyone must understand what “Done” means. Although this varies significantly per Scrum Team, &lt;strong&gt;members must have a shared understanding of what it means for work to be complete&lt;/strong&gt;, to ensure transparency. This is the definition of “Done” for the Scrum Team and is used to assess when work is complete on the product Increment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your definition of done is a contract. The sprint itself is a time box, which cannot be changed, only cancelled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum up, you should work with the PO and explain the rules of the process that you are trying to follow. Introducing additional &amp;quot;contracts&amp;quot; shows a lack of transparency and trust, and those are the things that should be addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13461" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2014-12-30T19:59:32.367" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12896" CreationDate="2014-12-30T21:10:49.553" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, its not a good idea, as it defies one of &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the core Agile principles&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cancelling a Sprint&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the changes are so big that it brings the sprint goals in danger tell the Product Owner to break up the sprint and start a new one. The costs should be that all unfinished work is lost, make sure the price is clear. Afterwards the PO can decide to continue and finish the current sprint and put the extra work on top of the backlog or stop the sprint and start a new one with the new gained knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also see canceling sprints in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-sprint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Scrum guide&lt;/a&gt; for more information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sprint can be cancelled before the Sprint time-box is over. Only the Product Owner has the authority to cancel the Sprint, although he or she may do so under influence from the stakeholders, the Development Team, or the Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://kanbanblog.com/explained/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe Scrum is not the thing for your clients and they prefer more flexibility. Take a look and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2014/july/scrum-vs-kanban&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;compare Scrum vs Kanban&lt;/a&gt;. Focus on getting started work done before taking up new work, but change the short term backlog continuously as it fits the need of your clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2014-12-30T21:24:22.707" LastActivityDate="2014-12-30T21:24:22.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12892" CreationDate="2014-12-31T00:53:25.617" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile-scrum?  XP?  Kanban?  If you are using a particular methodology you may want to first focus in on which meetings (if any) are proscribed by the specific methodology and point out whether or not her meetings fall within the methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's always best if recommendations come from a number of people on the team or if you have quantitative information to back up your request.  &quot;I feel we have too many/too long meetings&quot; isn't that compelling and can make it feel personal.  You are trying to influence a peer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead approach it more impartially.  Something like, &quot;Dear PM, x of y members of the team have stated that meetings take up too much time.  I'd like to discuss the validity of their concerns.  Why are we having so many meetings?  Are there other ways we could achieve the desired outcomes of all these meetings?  Why do we invite everyone to every meeting?&quot;  Could be a more effective foray into starting a productive conversation about the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2014-12-31T00:53:25.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12901" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-31T03:23:23.497" Score="1" ViewCount="657" Body="&lt;p&gt;We were recently having a debate around what is the ideal and most effective / efficient way to do integration testing in complex environment with large number of applications to try to get software delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an organization that has a number of different application teams doing work and releasing independently.  These  teams independently are &quot;agilish&quot; and they do unit testing and functional testing early on in their cycle and can deliver when their changes are in their own application silo without any other impacts.  That being said, when it comes to integrating more complex changes that have larger impact on other apps and teams, and having to get into the environment  with every other team that is making changes, it causes large perceived bottlenecks in our ability to do proper integration testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem exists where there is a perceived &quot;integration testing bottleneck&quot; due to a few reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The perception that a separate set of folks (outside any of the individual teams) need to do this work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Its quite possible that each team is doing &quot;too much dev&quot; as they don't realize that the system as a whole can't absorb so much change given the integration testing that gets required so we are wasting time developing features that we can get shipped.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only recommendation so far is to have teams push their changes into the integration environment as soon as possible (so changes are visible to all teams as early as possible and issues get detected as early as possible) but I wanted to see if there are other recommendations for how to &quot;optimize&quot; in this situation around large integration testing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any experimental and unorthodox ideas are welcome (technical, organizational, etc).  Also, any case studies or references to companies who allegedly do this well and have best practices would also be great. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1087" LastActivityDate="2014-12-31T04:14:33.857" Title="Best strategies for dealing with integration testing bottlenecks?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;testing&gt;&lt;integration-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12901" CreationDate="2014-12-31T04:14:33.857" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt; instead of dealing with the bottleneck, focus on its root cause: teams not having integration testing as parts of their &quot;definitions of done&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These teams independently are &quot;agilish&quot; and they do unit testing and functional testing early on in their cycle&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, they should be agile, not &quot;agilish&quot;. It will provide lots of value alone, before getting to the integration part. The rest of the answer assumes that you have more or less working agile environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These teams [...] can deliver when their changes are in their own application silo without any other impacts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This implies that they have a stable definition of done and can get stuff to that level. Now, integration part comes in. Going by the lines of the answer to a question with similarities (&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/12792/13461&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/12792/13461&lt;/a&gt;), a combined definition of done for the teams involved should cover integration as well. I.e. whatever changes a single team does should leave the whole system functional and should not break anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The only recommendation so far is to have teams push their changes into the integration environment as soon as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't have any other option to test integration other than actually testing the integration. Delaying that creates an inventory of untested code that is bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;if there are other recommendations for how to &quot;optimize&quot; in this situation around large integration testing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't really matter if integration is large or small. If you have changes coming that affect multiple systems, you should be delivering working increments often, and therefore test integration often. This way you will not be accumulating untested parts, and there won't be a bottleneck in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;best practices&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The stuff above is not a result of a thought experiment and comes directly from the Scrum Guide (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&lt;/a&gt;) (if you are not using Scrum, it is still a good point):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The heart of Scrum is a Sprint, a time-box of one month or less during which a &lt;strong&gt;“Done”, useable, and potentially releasable product Increment&lt;/strong&gt; is created. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the thing that team delivers did not undergo integration testing, it is not done, not useable an cannot be released. Therefore, such sprint did not finish successfully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13461" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2014-12-31T04:14:33.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12863" CreationDate="2014-12-31T12:12:03.197" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;CodeGnome already clarified precisely what is a burn-down chart and that is not the best tool for tracking progress (it's instead useful for the team itself and to show to the stakeholders that the team is in control).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not think is a process problem but probably the wrong tool (using hours or story points doesn't matter).&#xA;If you would like to track the progress you could improve the daily meeting and maybe having more conversations / discussions.&#xA;If you would like to improve the estimations you can try with other tools, for example a kanban board associated with smaller and independent tasks and possibly some simple automatic tracking calculation (i.e., it starts when moving into &quot;progress&quot; and stops when moving into &quot;ready for test&quot; or whatever statuses you would put in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: my suggestion is feel free to experiment (an agile principle is to inspect and adapt your own own process), unless you are applying / want to apply Scrum exactly as prescribed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14922" LastActivityDate="2014-12-31T12:12:03.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12895" CreationDate="2014-12-31T12:44:50.313" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are making this far too complex than it needs to be.  If you want duration to be fixed, then choose that option and distribute the 1,000 hours among the developers and add an additional x number of hours for the team lead.  If x is 50, then the work planning value becomes 1,050.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to remember you are creating deterministic planning values on work, duration, and resource units that are, in reality, extremely probabilistic and somewhat independent.  These deterministic planning values establish the baseline and let you calculate costs and price if you are selling the work.  Once that baseline is established, reality will not look anything like that.  These variables will appear very random and are largely random.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2014-12-31T12:44:50.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12623" CreationDate="2014-12-31T13:52:06.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've been working with that setup in our project for months now. Two week sprints start on Wednesdays and finish on Tuesdays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PROs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mondays (slow start) and Fridays (I wanna go home already) are low productivity days as WBW mentioned before&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In our country also several Mondays and Fridays are considered holidays, as mentioned in the blog post&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's the way the other teams we work with are already working, so we can coordinate the Demos and Reviews with them when needed (common deliverables)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CONs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Weekly reports to management can show &quot;too little&quot; or &quot;almost everything&quot; done because progress review meetings taking place on Fridays show little progress the first Friday of the sprint. Anyway, this is a minor concern for the team, just for the SM :)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14923" LastActivityDate="2014-12-31T13:52:06.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12895" CreationDate="2014-12-31T15:48:38.280" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the task is Effort driven (the default in pre-2010 releases and for all Fixed Work task types) the total work on the task remains the same and will be divided among the assigned resources based upon their assignment units. By default, the duration of the task is recalculated.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, a couple of options to accomplish what you need: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Temporarily turn off Effort Driven for the task. (You'll need to set the task as Fixed Units). Double click to show the Task Information dialog, change the task type to Fixed Units and uncheck Effort Driven on the Advanced tab.  Assign the supervisor resource at 5%.  His/her work will be calculated of based upon Duration * 5%.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the Task Form and enter the estimated work for the supervisor upon assignment.  Even if the task is Effort Driven, Project will not recalculate duration as you have manually added the work for the supervisor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2014-12-31T15:48:38.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12892" CreationDate="2015-01-01T11:47:19.397" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my current environment, people usually tend to have lots of meetings, to the point that, during a meeting, a discussion is opened and &lt;em&gt;&quot;ok, let's schedule a meeting to discuss this&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. Come on, we are already in a meeting, for Saturn's sake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a PM, I started to ringfence my team from attending meetings whenever possible (and logical). The rationale was fairly simple - and might work for you as well: Every meeting's attendee should answer a simple question: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.codinghorror.com/meetings-where-work-goes-to-die/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;What's the value this meeting has added to my current work?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the project phase, meetings are a must because requirements are unknown. These meetings are needed (assuming there's no other way to clarify requirements), so we just go ahead with them... as they clearly add value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, having a 1h meeting with 10+ people for status reporting is obviously a waste of resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind, you can &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;assess if the meetings are required / useful / valuable and then, based on the results of this assessment, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you'll be able to approach your PM with evidences (instead of feelings).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your quesiton it's not clear (for me) if the dev team is also offshore with you (I'd assume so). Assuming that's being true, your onshore PM is probably trying to have more visibility on overall progress. If that's the case, instead of entering into task-detail meetings with PMs and dev team, you should be gathering status with dev team and then reporting back to the onshore PM. As long as the communication is clear and objective, your PM will be comfortable &lt;em&gt;with your status&lt;/em&gt;, releasing dev team to actual work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2015-01-01T11:47:19.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12892" CreationDate="2015-01-02T19:11:05.797" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Too many meetings is a symptom - of lack of confidence&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Too many meetings is a symptom, not the disease. Looks like the Scrum Master (or PM) does not have confidence in the dev team's ability to deliver at the end of the Sprint. Based on my experience working with multiple offshore teams, here is what the dev team can do to give them this confidence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Requirements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask for all requirements clarifications at the time of the Sprint Planning meeting. And write them down as Acceptance Criteria in the story. This will make sure that the Dev team is on the same page as the Product Owner.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If requirements are not clear or complete, refuse to take that story into that sprint. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If as an exception, one or two clarifications are promised in a day or two after the sprint starts, keep reporting that as an impediment in every Scrum call.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprint workload: One of the main reasons why Scrum Masters (or PMs) keep asking for status is because some dev teams make a habit of leaving stories incomplete at the end of the sprint and offering various excuses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Commit to only stories that you are very confident of completing within the Sprint. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once committed, the Scrum Master should be able to have confidence that the dev team will make every effort to complete them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Status reporting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask the dev team to update status of stories, at the least, every day prior to the Scrum call. How many hours of work is remaining to complete each task should be readily visible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you develop a track record of delivering on your promises, the need for meetings will go down drastically. If not, you can confidently ask to cut down on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-01-02T19:11:05.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12911" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12916" CreationDate="2015-01-04T01:04:39.270" Score="7" ViewCount="2732" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is posed as a genuine attempt to seek a best answer but also hopefully a wider-thought piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do more experienced agile teams (especially Scrum) handle a sprint being interrupted by the holiday season (or &lt;code&gt;Generic.Event&lt;/code&gt;) which greatly disrupts the standard workflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To focus this question further I will use the most pressing concerns that our team faced over the Christmas period&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Owner was absent (mid-Dec to early Jan) over 60% of the Sprint including the planned Review&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deputized Product Owner was the same&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Senior Management were likewise&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;50% of the development team took mandated holidays for 50% of the Sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;50% of the development team wished to keep working and only had Xmas Day and Boxing Day off&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The timebox was scheduled to end on Xmas Eve as all of our Sprints end on the 24th of the month&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Critical members of the team were unavailable until early January to plan or estimate stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know how we handled this situation but it would be great to crowdsource an optimal solution from SMs or POs or Project Managers who have faced this problem numerous times across various organisations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2015-01-30T12:38:37.087" Title="What solutions exist for ensuring Sprint continuity over holiday or extremely turbulent periods?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12912" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12913" CreationDate="2015-01-04T10:44:21.133" Score="5" ViewCount="1450" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a student studying game development, While researching into Agile, I kept seeing the term &quot;Product Backlog Delta report&quot; Usually in articles pertaining to Scrum. &#xA;Upon looking deeper into what that Artifact was I couldn't seem to find a concrete answer, many of my efforts ended up looping back into a standard Product Backlog or a Backlog Burndown. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, What exactly is a Delta report? and how does it differ from a standard Product Backlog?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14935" LastActivityDate="2015-08-21T14:14:38.130" Title="What is a &quot;Product Backlog Delta report&quot; in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12912" CreationDate="2015-01-04T18:00:52.963" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd never heard of this specific term, but after reading a few sites (&lt;a href=&quot;http://projectized.blogspot.com/2006_08_01_archive.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://developer.actuate.com/community/forum/index.php?/topic/30585-product-backlog-delta-report/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;) and an &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=quJ0AgAAQBAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA341&amp;amp;lpg=PA341&amp;amp;dq=%22product%20backlog%20delta%22&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=xoqWX90c2d&amp;amp;sig=9aCQyClhUZWixZQ_B-qBqrUsYAg&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=iX6pVLbrIpGGNtCGg-gN&amp;amp;ved=0CDUQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22product%20backlog%20delta%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;excerpt from &lt;em&gt;Development of the enterprises’ competitiveness in the context of demographic challenges&lt;/em&gt; provided by Google Books&lt;/a&gt; and using past experiences, it appears that a Product Backlog Delta Report simply shows the changes to the Product Backlog between sprints. Each story can be in different states (not done, in progress, done). The Product Owner can also reorder stories, remove stories, and add new stories, so it will show the number of stories that have changed. If you are using tools, you could even identify what stories were added, removed, deleted, or changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2015-01-04T19:40:08.773" LastActivityDate="2015-01-04T19:40:08.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12911" CreationDate="2015-01-05T10:18:24.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simple answer is to be be flexible, ie be &lt;em&gt;agile&lt;/em&gt;: adjust things to cope with the events. If the Product Owner is known to be away for a planned review, then don't plan the review for that date. Just because it has always happened on that date doesn't mean it always has to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your problem is that you always have sprints finishing on a fixed day. In this case, it would have been better to eg have run a shorter sprint that ended a week earlier and then have planned around known absences over Christmas for the following sprint. Either than could have been a longer sprint *(finishing 24th January) or you could have had two more shorter sprints that ended early January and then on the 24th.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The moral of the story is: agile development is all about being flexible and responding to events, rather than rigidly sticking to long term plans and schedules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14835" LastActivityDate="2015-01-05T10:18:24.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12915" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12917" CreationDate="2015-01-05T13:36:42.563" Score="5" ViewCount="574" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do we still create/maintain a copy of a product specifications when subscribed to the Agile/Scrum framework?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been tasked to provide a product specification as team members would like to always have an 'overview' of the functionalities/features of the product we are developing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this make sense or do we stick to the product backlog only?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12130" LastActivityDate="2015-01-22T22:04:54.773" Title="Product Specification for Scrum teams" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;&lt;product&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12911" CreationDate="2015-01-05T16:17:24.377" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Apply a Fudge Factor&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proper way to deal with reduced team capacity is to apply a fudge factor to the team's planned story points for the Sprint. The size of the time box doesn't change, but the planned capacity for the time box should. Since the Development Team is responsible for accepting only the stories it &lt;em&gt;expects&lt;/em&gt; to be able to complete into each Sprint, the team should use velocity as an input to estimating capacity rather than using it as a fixed management target.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team is in the best position to estimate the reduction in its capacity; there's no fixed formula that will work in all situations. However, as is common in project management, the limiting factor is often your largest resource constraint: if the Product Owner will be unavailable for 60% of the Sprint, it is unlikely that the team can do more than 40% of its typical velocity, and perhaps even less if the holiday absences don't overlap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, suppose your team averages 20 story points per Sprint. For the holiday Sprint, the team estimates that its capacity will be reduced by 75%. The team should therefore only accept 5 story points into the Sprint during Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Recalculate Each Sprint&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have more than one Sprint over your holiday period, then you should re-estimate and re-apply the fudge factor to your rolling velocity calculations each Sprint. The impact in your long-term velocity metrics is generally negligible, but the accuracy of your short-term estimates often improve by acknowledging the V-shaped changes in the team's capacity over the relevant time period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Don't Discard the Metric&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you properly include the reduced-capacity Sprint in your trailing-average or annualized velocity metrics, you will end up with a much more accurate view of your project's real capacity over time. It may be tempting to exclude the holiday Sprint from your velocity calculations as a one-off, but discarding historical data is likely to skew your long-term estimates, and there will of course be other holidays or capacity issues in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;point&lt;/em&gt; of velocity is that it reflects a sustainable average over time. Team capacity fluctuates, but if you keep the focus on the sustainable center of your bell curve then the majority of your Sprints will be a success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-01-05T16:17:24.377" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12915" CreationDate="2015-01-05T16:37:40.247" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Product Owner is required to develop a release roadmap&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrary to popular belief Scrum does not mean seat-of-the-pants management with no advance planning. &lt;a href=&quot;http://jeffsutherland.com/ScrumButtTest.pdf&quot;&gt;The Product Owner is required to develop a release roadmap.&lt;/a&gt; However, there are two key requirements for a release roadmap in Scrum:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The timeline in the release roadmap should be based on actual velocity of the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It should be made clear that the next release is nailed down but further out is a forecast that will change based on market conditions and customers contract signings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need help with the process of developing such a release roadmap and the format for presenting it, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.romanpichler.com/tools/product-roadmap/&quot;&gt;I can recommend the Goal Oriented (GO) Product Roadmap by Roman Pichler.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-01-05T16:37:40.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12890" CreationDate="2015-01-05T19:09:15.603" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Kanban is suitable for ongoing work&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;Kanban is suitable for managing ongoing work that does not have a specific start and an end. Sounds like the work you described is of this nature. &#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/VisualStudio/Announcing-Kanban-for-Team-Foundation-Service&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;I understand that TFS has a Kanban template.&lt;/a&gt; However, I have not used this even though I have used the TFS Agile/Scrum template.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some of the key aspects of Kanban:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Visualize the workflow: Everyone should be able to see what everyone else is working on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set Work In Progress (WIP) limits: To minimize context switching.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn and improve continuously: Monitor the flow and keep making small, continuous improvements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the key monitoring techniques for Kanban is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj838789.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cumulative Flow Diagram&lt;/a&gt;. This will show you where the bottlenecks are and they can become targets for improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also set up separate horizontal lanes (&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/bharry/customizable-kanban-swim-lanes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;swimlanes&lt;/a&gt;) for the three types of work that you described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2021-05-16T03:53:16.450" LastActivityDate="2021-05-16T03:53:16.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12920" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-05T23:25:44.100" Score="4" ViewCount="896" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am supporting and coaching several scrum teams working on different areas of the same software project.  Sprints are 4 weeks long, except that sprints spanning the Christmas/New Year holidays are 5 weeks long.  (The first six or so sprints were 3 weeks, before the teams decided to change them to 4.)  All of the teams' velocities have a very noticeable pattern of zigzagging, where velocity alternates between higher and lower values every single sprint.  In the graphs below, the Y axis is &lt;em&gt;points Done per sprint&lt;/em&gt;; the gray lines are 10 story points.  Each team has an independent backlog and estimates its own stories, so while points are not consistent between teams they are consistent within teams.  In raw numbers one team completes twice the points of the other teams, so the graphs are normalized across teams under the assumption that each team's average velocity is equivalent, to prevent &quot;point competition&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The teams explain this variation as having mostly Done stories carry over to the next sprint, so that some sprints finish fewer stories and other sprints finish more.  Teams typically commit to a third or a half more points than they actually finish, and many of these extra points are &quot;In Development&quot; at the end of each sprint.  Developers are resistant to smaller stories or shorter sprints as they &quot;wouldn't have time to finish anything&quot; and &quot;would always be in Scrum meetings&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is related to &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/8556/team-velocity-fluctuates-a-lot-how-to-find-the-root-cause&quot;&gt;Team velocity fluctuates a lot, how to find the root cause?&lt;/a&gt;, but I think it is a much more specific issue.  From those answers, I considered impediments and unbalanced work as possible explanations, but they aren't enough by themselves to cause this extreme zigzagging.  Turnover on the teams is low and much of the velocity variation has occurred during periods of stability.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Have you seen such consistent zigzag patterns in velocity on your teams?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Does this pattern suggest a problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) If so, what is the problem, how it is harmful, and how is it correctable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mr2TR.png&quot; alt=&quot;velocity charts&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-10-21T22:28:59.617" LastActivityDate="2019-10-21T22:28:59.617" Title="Is a zigzag, sawtooth velocity a problem if the trend is consistent?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;velocity&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12920" CreationDate="2015-01-06T05:47:22.983" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In theory and according to scrum, it is a problem. The amount of variation points to the a misunderstanding of the work, and if it's consistently off, then the teams determining how many points a given sprint is are doing it wrong. That means they don't know either how to determine points or what the work they're actually doing entails. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, it's just fine. In fact I'd say you have a fairly healthy stability because it tends to be roughly the same. With 4-week sprints (I have my team work on one-week sprints with 1-month planning sessions) you are going to get higher variance unless the team knows exactly what they're doing completely in advance and runs into no hiccups along the way. I've never seen that happen, no matter the maturity level of the teams...if someone is sick, you'll see a variance. Only robots would always have the same numbers regularly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, looking at your charts, it looks healthy though you may want to see if any individual stories are getting over/underestimated regularly. I've seen some teams mark investigative stories highly only to have them done in zero points time, and I've seen &quot;easy&quot; zero point stories turn into weeklong hauls. The more mature the team, the lower the variance, and with a little digging you'll be able to see where it's coming from. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14947" LastActivityDate="2015-01-06T05:47:22.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12923" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-06T08:56:21.303" Score="0" ViewCount="90" Body="&lt;p&gt;TO keep it simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a hard end date - a milestone. Lets call it 1/1 2016.&#xA;for the sake of argument lets say I have just one task that needs to be done.&#xA;That task takes 10 days and must be fininshed 20 days before launch date.&#xA;But the launch may be postponed up to 1 year depending on other factors and so theres a need to not start working on tasks until we absolutely need to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I would like project to show the schedule for when the task needs to begin/end according to the launch date - and update those dates if I change the launch date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;launch date 1/1/1016&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;task 1 start date end date &lt;strong&gt;predecessor&lt;/strong&gt;:1ff-20&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This looks good at first. But when I move the launch date, Task 1 DOES NOT MOVE WITH IT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that's my problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seems Project only tells me how fast I can get this done and NOT how late I can start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help is appreciated:)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14948" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2015-01-06T17:10:42.990" LastActivityDate="2015-01-06T20:07:53.730" Title="I have to plan a launch up against a fixed launch date - how can Project help me understand the LASTEST time I can start on processes" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;dependencies&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12923" CreationDate="2015-01-06T12:50:12.117" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In MS Project 2010, open the task information, go to the advanced tab and change &quot;As soon as possible&quot; to &quot;as late as possible&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than the FF constraint, I would schedule&#xA;1.0 Task I must work (10d)&#xA;2.0 Buffer between end of task and launch date (20d)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2015-01-06T12:50:12.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12926" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12930" CreationDate="2015-01-06T15:09:47.887" Score="0" ViewCount="760" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can Critical Chain as a scheduling approach be applied using only Microsoft Project 2010 with no add-ins or additional software? What settings and options need to be used, and what task types. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14950" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T19:47:41.323" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T19:47:41.323" Title="How can Critical Chain scheduling be undertaken with Microsoft Project 2010?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12920" CreationDate="2015-01-06T17:26:12.960" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are specific rules in diagnosing a run or control chart.  I quickly found this link that has a high-level explanation:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skymark.com/resources/tools/control_charts.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.skymark.com/resources/tools/control_charts.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything produces variance, including an automated or robotic process.  You need to determine whether the variance is &quot;common cause&quot;, i.e., purely random, statistical noise; or &quot;special cause,&quot; i.e., something is wrong with the process.  The way a variance is produced will indicate with some degree of validity (meaning there are both type I and II errors in doing this type of analysis) whether or not the variance you are noticing is random or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the source, you'll see different &quot;indicator&quot; rules but some common ones are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;six or seven consistent results above or below the mean&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;constant up and down results exceeding 14 observations (Team 1 is exhibiting this between observation 8 to 22 or so.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;four or five results above or below one sigma&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;two or three results above or below two sigma (Depending on the y-axis and the calculation of sigma, team 3 might be showing something.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;one result above or below three sigma (considered as upper and lower control limits.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Type 1 and 2 errors are an issue and you need to understand how they occur.  If your chart is too sensitive, you could get a ton of false positives and vice versa if too insensitive.  So you need to consider your findings as probabilistic, not deterministic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DISCLAIMER:  I don't know a thing about SCRUM so control charts may not be applicable, but I am not sure why it wouldn't be.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2015-01-06T17:32:01.870" LastActivityDate="2015-01-06T17:32:01.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12920" CreationDate="2015-01-06T17:28:41.613" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The zig-zag is usually caused when a majority of stories are longer than the length of the sprint, so you end up with one sprint where little is completed, and one where lots of stories are finished and velocity is high. Plot yourself a histogram of stories against how long they take to complete (actually take, not the story points), and you'll probably find this is the case. This also makes compelling evidence to persuade people to fix it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if the overall trend is upwards, at the moment you're getting feedback on a large number of items which have been in play for two sprints or possibly even longer. That becomes expensive to fix when the feedback tells you you got it wrong, since the knowledge involved in the work decays over time, and further work cements it in place. The whole point of Scrum and Agile methodologies is to be able to change course if something is wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, just because the velocity is healthy, doesn't mean that this isn't going to cause an issue. Check your bug count and whether that's rising, and find out how long it takes to fix those bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a couple of choices for smoothing the graph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Lengthen the sprints.&lt;/em&gt; I actually did this for one team because we were on one-week sprints and the overhead of performing all the rituals every week was too much anyway. In general, though, I prefer to...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Slice the stories more finely.&lt;/em&gt; Remember that the purpose of the showcase is to get feedback from and establish trust with stakeholders. If you can focus on that, you can probably slice the stories up more thinly. If you can get one scenario working, or a bit more of the output or input, or another business rule, then you have something on which you can get feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you encourage the development team to manage this split themselves, and help them focus on the need for feedback, they will be able to see that the overhead isn't huge; it's the same discussion, just sliced up differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I disagree with Jamezrp's assertion that mature devs get better at this. We get better at refusing to put estimates on things we've never done before and insist on doing spikes instead, and we get better at predicting managers' desire to have accurate estimates and add more points as buffers if they insist, making it appear that we have better predictability (and higher velocity). This gaming is &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; common in Scrum teams where pressure for accurate estimates is applied. If you track the length of time it takes to deliver whole features, and do it by measuring in time rather than points, this will give you a more accurate measure of true progress and show you whether the rate of delivery is really going up or down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A truly mature team slices things thinly enough that the points don't really matter any more, and you can usually assign an &quot;average&quot; number of points to a story with little impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the most successful teams of all are those that focus on feedback over accurate estimates (an oxymoron if ever there was one, hence the &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/search?q=%23noestimates&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;#noestimates&lt;/a&gt; movement).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2015-01-06T17:28:41.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12923" CreationDate="2015-01-06T20:07:53.730" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may also schedule a project from a fixed end date.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the Project ribbon, select Project Information to open the Project Information dialog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change the &lt;strong&gt;Schedule From&lt;/strong&gt; to &lt;strong&gt;Project Finish Date&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3mjNF.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Enter the finish date for the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project will automatically set each task constraint to As Late As Possible, the schedule each task's finish to align with the finish date of the project.  If the finish date needs to be changed, open the Project Information dialog and change the project finish date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-01-06T20:07:53.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12926" CreationDate="2015-01-06T20:10:52.037" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sorry, Project does not use critical chain methodology - only critical path.  There are add ins (ProChain for example) but not native to the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-01-06T20:10:52.037" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12931" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13931" CreationDate="2015-01-06T20:43:34.440" Score="1" ViewCount="1652" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am using MSP 2010 and have a fixed duration schedule.  We are monitoring only durations of tasks and using % complete to evaluate where we are.  We do not have a resource loaded schedule nor are we using earned value as a method of tracking this project.  Something I just noticed is an erroneous indication in the Status Field, where the field may indicate &quot;on schedule&quot; while we have an unfavorable finish variance of several days.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the baseline finish was not changed and still reads the original planned finish date.  The finish now shows the date we are estimating completion with is beyond the baseline finish.  The FV column correctly calculates the number of days late we are, but the status field now reads &quot;on schedule.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone explain why this is occurring?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T19:47:57.897" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T19:47:57.897" Title="Status Field and Microsoft Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;&lt;schedule&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12932" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-06T21:02:38.630" Score="3" ViewCount="143" Body="&lt;p&gt;I may need to cross-post, but I'd see if anyone has experience with this project management issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a core document, say, a series of standards, that, based on that, we create solution guides, promotional materials, or other supporting documents. The idea is that every time you change that core document, you have a way to trigger or flag all the downstream documents for checking to see if they have to be updated or are fine as-is. It's not always a direct citation of a particular standard, but something as general as &quot;because we have standard 1.3a, we wrote this explanatory document&quot;. If 1.3a changes, that explanatory document may need to change, or be removed, even.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been reading about document management systems, and they seem to have versioning, but I don't see this particular kind of feature out there. Are there specific terms I should be looking for in evaluating the product, or does someone out there have a workflow that they use to make this process relatively painless?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14955" LastActivityDate="2015-01-06T21:35:58.130" Title="Is there a document management system or process that keeps track of child/forked documents?" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;knowledge-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12920" CreationDate="2015-01-06T21:04:53.517" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) Have you seen such consistent zigzag patterns in velocity on your teams?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes this is a common observation, especially with teams that aren't accountable to a customer or 3rd party for delivery of an increment at iteration end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Does this pattern suggest a problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends.  If what they commit to delivering at the end of the iteration also goes to production or must be delivered to an external stakeholder this is definitely a problem.  If your scrum teams have delivery timelines outside of the iteration it may not be a problem for the customer, but should still be investigated as large variances are an indicator of inefficiencies/ineffectiveness on the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) If so, what is the problem, how it is harmful, and how is it correctable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many root causes of this problem.  Some common ones are (and please determine if any of these may apply to your situation): stories poorly defined at iteration start, stories not appropriately sized or decomposed, Scope changes on stories after planning, non-visible work is frequently injected into the iteration, large cycle times on stories (this can have several root causes as well), no incentive to honor commitments at the iteration level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately this is harmful if your customer frequently doesn't get the value they were promised at the end of the iteration.  It can erode trust and confidence in using Agile-Scrum as a delivery framework since mature teams should be able to deliver the majority of their commitments fairly consistently at iteration end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to correct the problem depends on the root cause(s).  Some corrections include: reducing the duration of the iteration, improving backlog quality and understanding during planning activities, allowing the team to under-commit and then back-filling extra work near iteration end until the team matures its estimation capabilities and commitment confidence, ensuring all real work is tracked, ensuring there is a real incentive at iteration end to meet commitments, introducing work in progress limits to focus the team on cycle times. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-01-06T21:04:53.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12932" CreationDate="2015-01-06T21:35:58.130" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Tracing Requirements&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may be talking about a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traceability_matrix&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;traceability matrix&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requirements_traceability&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;requirements traceability&lt;/a&gt;. There are certainly commercial products in that space (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/ratidoor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DOORS&lt;/a&gt;) that may be suitable, but in many cases a versioned spreadsheet or ASCII table under revision control may be enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-01-06T21:35:58.130" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13927" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-07T05:48:45.570" Score="1" ViewCount="341" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can anybody answer my question here? I have estimated for 5 to 6 tasks like analysis (4 hrs), design (3 hrs), logical review (1 hr), peer review (1 hr), unit testing (1 hr), coding (2 hrs) and release (1 hr). But during analysis itself I came to know that rest of the activity will not be applicable. In this scenario, should I make the hours zero for all the tasks that have become obsolete or should I delete the tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15953" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-01-09T17:31:49.957" LastActivityDate="2015-01-12T16:38:57.250" Title="What to do with the Sprint backlog tasks that we have decided are not needed any more" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13927" CreationDate="2015-01-07T10:17:00.420" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first point to make is that I'd suggest you are breaking your tasks down to too fine a detail and are creating a mini waterfall within your sprint. Unit testing and coding are typically done at the same time, so having two separate tasks will likely cause problems. If you adopt TDD principals, the act of writing the tests and developing the code is the design etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, your tasks are what they are. If one task has rendered others irrelevant then, depending on circumstances you'd normally do one of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If there are plenty of other tasks assigned to the sprint, then just remove the unneeded ones from it. Then discuss with the scrum master and product owner whether it's possible to add other tasks (from the backlog) to the sprint instead.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the tasks to be removed make up the bulk of the remaining sprint, then advise the product owner that the sprint should be abandoned and the end/start sprint meetings should then be bought forward and a new sprint planned.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14835" LastEditorUserId="14835" LastEditDate="2015-01-07T12:15:37.947" LastActivityDate="2015-01-07T12:15:37.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13930" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-07T11:33:34.570" Score="2" ViewCount="1820" Body="&lt;p&gt;I sometimes use Freemind in the early startup process of projects for brainstorming with the project team. With freemind, it is possible to save the mindmap as an ODT file which then creates a WBS for all tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to use this WBS in Microsoft project without having to manually indent tasks as subtasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: instead of marking all created activities i would like to copy/paste or import and get the hierarcy at start - as created from freemind export.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Freemind gives me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Activity 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.1 Activity 2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.1 Activity 3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.1.1 Activity 4&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.2 Activity 5&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is this possible? Does anyone have experience importing pre-made WBS hierarcies for MS Project?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;List item&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any alternative scheduling applications that I should look into with this possibility?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best regards, Pär&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7804" LastActivityDate="2015-08-08T21:30:35.977" Title="Edit the wbs column in microsoft project / import wbs + indent tasks" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12931" CreationDate="2015-01-07T16:36:34.807" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't worry MS-P is working fine. In the style of planning you describe, you may find that status is best used to help see how up to date your plan is and use Finish Variance as you already are, to see how likely your project will deliver to the timescales promised (baseline).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The explanation you ask for is:-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MS-P is looking firstly at the status date that you have applied to your plan. Think of this as the date you are reporting up to. It then looks at the start and finish dates of all the tasks in your plan. Think of these as your forecast dates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It then asks which of these tasks have a start date before or equal to the status date you have applied to your plan &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; do they have the expected % of the duration shown as complete if the task was progressed as shown in your plan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the % complete column has the expected % (or more)it marks the task as on 'onschedule'. Any tasks that should have started (prior to the status date) but don't have sufficient % complete will be shown as late. If the % complete field is 100%, it marks it as complete. It doesn't look at the &lt;em&gt;% work complete&lt;/em&gt; field though only the &lt;em&gt;% complete&lt;/em&gt; field. So it's not a good indicator of effort expenditure, but if you are only using the 'duration' field and not using the 'work' field, I wouldn't worry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At no point is baseline being considered, just whether progress is being made as expected against your forcasted start and finish dates. Finish variance as you have noted, shows the difference between what you are forcasting and what you promised (baseline). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still find status tracking helpful though. I use it in simple plans in conjunction with a filter to identify quickly which tasks in a plan need a progress update. If a task is showing as late in the status field, I know that either I have to apply progress (% complete) or re-plan it by extending the duration (if the work remains the same), or if no work has started, moving it forward to a date in the future when work will commence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the Gantt diagram, you can use 'Gridlines' to show a line for your status date that runs vertically through the entire picture. If your Gantt also shows % complete visually, you can very easily spot which parts of your plan are 'out of date'. Anything to the left of your vertical status line should either be complete of progressed upto the status line. If it isn't it needs to be replanned (unless you have a time machine and can go back and do the work on the dates in the past).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14950" LastActivityDate="2015-01-07T16:36:34.807" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13932" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-08T09:00:55.973" Score="3" ViewCount="3486" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a question on how capacity planning helps when the sign up the work at the beginning of the Sprint. Here is the scenario I am dealing with&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the beginning of every Sprint the team signs up work on what they think can be accomplished during the course of a Sprint. The team estimates the stories in Story points. As a first step in the Sprint planning, I estimate the capacity of the team – number of days each scrum member available during the course of the Sprint. Lately I realized that the calculating the capacity of team in terms of number of days is not making any sense because team is estimating in story points and NOT in hours – because story points should not be equated to number of days/hours. So, in this context, when the team is not in full capacity (Couple of team members not available for couple of days) how should the team sign up for the work (in Story points) with whatever capacity we end up with because we cannot take the historic velocity as the historic velocity is based on full team availability&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5576" LastActivityDate="2015-01-08T12:45:25.283" Title="Capacity planning creating confusion when the team is estimating in Story points" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13933" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13936" CreationDate="2015-01-08T09:03:07.290" Score="0" ViewCount="178" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know pair programming has lots of good point to use. However, I don't think it will be a silver bullet in every situation. Is there an example of bad case to use pair programming or bad situation in some team arrangement? Ex. Too much waste time when it's labor work that do not need much problem solving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12230" LastActivityDate="2015-01-11T04:37:34.237" Title="Pair Programming bad case?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2015-01-13T10:54:40.827" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13933" CreationDate="2015-01-08T11:00:27.980" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From personal experience, I'd say that pair programming offers excellent benefits in situations where two high quality developers, with good communication skills, get to work together. The code is automatically peer-reviewed as it's written, unit tests are more likely to get written and refactoring occurs more often as the temptation to cut corners and accrue technical debt is reduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the key here is &quot;two high quality developers, with good communication skills&quot;. In situations where a developer finds it hard to &quot;think aloud&quot;, doesn't have good communication skills or needs time to understand existing code or to design new code, then pair programming doesn't work so well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14835" LastActivityDate="2015-01-08T11:00:27.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13932" CreationDate="2015-01-08T12:45:25.283" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I inherited the current Scrum Team I am working with the previous ScrumMaster had produced a points to hours conversion chart which allowed the team to estimate in points and the business to track estimates in hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately that approach is the &lt;strong&gt;worst&lt;/strong&gt; of both worlds.  You do not have the flexibility of relative story points and you have extremely innaccurate estimations based on the Fibonnaci sequence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We moved to estimating User Stories in hours which would be my recommendation for your team as well, supported by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/why-i-dont-use-story-points-for-sprint-planning&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;arguments of Mike Cohn&lt;/a&gt; of Mountain Goat Software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't use story points for sprint planning because story points are a useful long-term measure. They are not useful in the short-term. It would be appropriate for a team to say “We have an average velocity of 20 story points and we have 6 sprints left; therefore we will finish about 120 points in those six sprints.” It would be inappropriate for a team to say, &lt;em&gt;“We have an average velocity of 20 story points so we will finish in the next sprint.”&lt;/em&gt; It doesn't work that way. Suppose a basketball team is in the middle of their season. They've scored an average of 98 points per game through the 41 games thus far. It would be appropriate for them to say &lt;em&gt;“We will probably average 98 points per game the rest of the season.” But they should not say before any one game, “Our average is 98 therefore we will score 98 tonight.”&lt;/em&gt; This is why I say velocity is a useful long-term predictor but is not a useful short-term predictor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chia Cheng of the Scrum Alliance also &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2012/august/story-points-versus-task-hours&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;argues&lt;/a&gt; that Sprint Planning should be accomplished in hours rather than points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The task-hour estimation, on the other hand, is a low-level estimation made to represent the actual effort in hours needed to accomplish all the requirements of a story. Such an estimation should be done during sprint planning for highest possible accuracy, as the actual development may start the next day. - See more at: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2012/august/story-points-versus-task-hours#sthash.aJgABGA6.dpuf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2012/august/story-points-versus-task-hours#sthash.aJgABGA6.dpuf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How we operate&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our Sprint Planning agenda includes the following capacity analysis&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Calculate the working days in the Sprint Timebox (minus planning and review)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Annotate each Scrum Team Member on the Calendar unless absent&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each Scrum Team member has a theoretical 8 hours&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Calculate the capacity of the team for the month in hours&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remove 20% of the capacity for standard industry productivity overhead&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The remainder will give you a fairly accurate figure of total development time available to the Scrum team.  Let's use a theoretical example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint is 10 days&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 day is removed for Planning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 day is removed for Review, Retrospective and mandatory business employment meetings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;8 working days remain&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum Team is six strong and highly cross functional (no bottlenecks)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team Member A is absent for 2 days&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team Member B is absent for 1 day&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;6 Team Members x 8 days (48) - 3 days = 45 days of total development time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;360 hours minus 20% productivity overhead = &lt;strong&gt;288 hours of development time in reality&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can then introduce the Product Owner and the User Stories to the capacity that we have available whilst always keeping 30% in reserve.  We would in this instance commit to approximately 200 hours worth of user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During each working day we maintain a close eye upon the Story estimates versus the actuals to ensure that what we committed to was accurate.  If our capacity remains unused near the end of the Sprint we hold a quick Product Owner update to pull a sheaf of user stories from the Product Backlog to plan and start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2015-01-08T12:45:25.283" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13933" CreationDate="2015-01-08T19:43:21.007" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are real challenges when doing paired programming, but I don't think there are usually &quot;bad projects&quot; to do it on. The classic argument against it is the work where you &quot;know what you have to do and you're just typing it in&quot;, or what you're calling labor work, but I think those are so few and far between that they're hardly worth addressing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I've had this conversation in the past, the notion is that the developer comes up with a plan of attack, then types it in. My experience would tell me that is wrong. When developing, I create a high-level planned approach, but I don't figure out all of my LINQ statements and other details up-front. Those things come as I'm entering them. Even as an experienced developer, there can be benefit in paired-programming that sort of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another common example I've heard is writing transforms. The assumption again is that you're just mapping one field to another. Again, I've rarely found this to be true. There are often data type conversions, error handling, and logic decisions that occur in that code. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, when people say they are doing a lot of mindless work, I've found that they are either a) incorrect that it is mindless or b) doing the work wrong. In both cases, paired programming can help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-01-08T19:43:21.007" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12915" CreationDate="2015-01-08T20:20:46.193" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me, the concerning word here is &quot;specification&quot;. I don't know what it means in your organization, but I'm used to it meaning a comprehensive description of the scope of the product. The development team should be trying to solve your user's needs, not fulfill a list of requirements in a spec document.Again, I don't know what a product specification is in your organization, but the concern would be that you're working with a fixed-scope project where the developers are rewarded for completing tasks to a spec, not creating valuable software. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like Ashok mentioned, a roadmap can be very helpful. However, remember that in agile we value responding to change over following a plan. Every step of the project is an opportunity to learn more about your customer's needs. As such, most projects find that their roadmap is wrong at some point through the project. It is important that you can change the roadmap as needed without unreasonable amounts of effort and without creating problems for yourself in your organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-01-08T20:20:46.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12915" CreationDate="2015-01-08T20:32:56.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer here is unfortunately...&lt;strong&gt;maybe&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends upon your organisation and the kind of development you are working in.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our department we have Business Requirement Specifications in addition to the Product Backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for this is two-fold &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have multiple projects coming into the same Scrum Team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have large scale dependencies that we require to be completed by other departments prior to the Scrum Team beginning their work. Since they require a BRS and we input into it it makes sense for us to help write the BRS and make sure our Backlog is reflective.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, our department handle Front End Business Warehouse and Business Objects Development and the Product Owner can speak on behalf of the Business. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the SAP R/3 architects (separate) require detailed specifications regarding the Business Warehouse back end preparatory work.  Therefore the Business Requirements Specification are produced although we have a more complex Product Backlog which we can draw upon for Task-Level Sprint Planning.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would argue that you absolutely should have a detailed requirements document if any of the following are true&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Scrum Team are upstream or downstream of another non-Agile team producing the same product or a derivative of that product &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Scrum Team / PO must anticipate the business needs of multiple projects, work streams or backlogs &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Non-Traditional Scrum processes are diluting the Scrum Framework due to business constraints &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Product Backlog is highly technical or a complex project and resistant to User Story Breakdown EG SAP Master Data with 1000+ stakeholders across global landscape.  There is very few ways of getting around the need for a large document detailing the exact scope, out of scope and risk management of this piece of work. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The truth is most Scrum examples always use the simplest possible explanation without considering the tailored work environment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not every Backlog can be &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a Customer of Amazon I want to be able to put items in a basket for future checkout. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Benefits of Scrum for our team are that we can respond exceptionally quickly to project changes, we can filter and work on multiple projects at once as a merged backlog, our capacity planning and sprint cycle provide more realistic planning timelines (they get an iteration time box and they can get some work done in that box, if the work exceeds the box, ask for another box) and most importantly we can foster innovation and cross-functional development.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="10462" LastEditDate="2015-01-08T20:40:10.683" LastActivityDate="2015-01-08T20:40:10.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13939" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13941" CreationDate="2015-01-09T11:46:43.233" Score="-4" ViewCount="90" Body="&lt;p&gt;hope this isn't out of the concept, I couldn't find any place better to ask. Me and my friend are working on a social networking app idea but we both don't know enough coding to develop that big of an app. We decided to hire a development team, approximately around 5-10 developers, which has developers for both frontend and backend development, and also which has designers for UI design and stuff. The problem is, I've been trying to find such team on oDesk and Elance but I can't trust those people, I don't know why. I have limited budget (enough for a prototype app, then I'm planning to try to get some investment or loan). Do any of you know a decent development team that fulfills my qualifications? Or can any of you give me some advice on what should I do? I'd really appreciate any help. Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15971" LastActivityDate="2015-01-09T12:26:59.540" Title="Finding a decent Development Team" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2015-01-14T17:26:00.760" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13939" CreationDate="2015-01-09T12:26:59.540" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Welcome to the world of hiring.  What you are essentially trying to do here is to predict future performance using indicators that have very low to no predictive validity.  Stronger predictors are expensive to develop and use and, therefore, used minimally.  And you will find that a lot of hiring managers truly believe in their ability to sift through a pool of candidates using their powerful interviewing skills so not a lot of real analysis is done around how to hire better.  We continue to rely heavily on this notion of experience, degrees, certificates, and our interview skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is, there really is no great answer to your question.  Hiring is full of risk.  It sounds like you do not have the money or time to really do this well so sift through the candidates you have, try to tease out the smartest of them, find the ones you think you can get a long with the best, try to reduce your biases, and then be quick to cut bait at the first signs of low performance.  Don't throw good money after bad.  But set your expectations properly.  Most likely, you will find mediocre to average performance and maybe you will get one or two you can really rely on.  This is what most of us live with everyday on our teams.  This the result of the performance distribution.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-01-09T12:26:59.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13927" CreationDate="2015-01-09T17:32:22.240" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Use research stories to minimize uncertainty&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#artifacts-sprintbacklog&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is what the bible of Scrum practitioners, the Scrum Guide, says about the Sprint Backlog&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As new work is required, the Development Team adds it to the Sprint Backlog. As work is performed or completed, the estimated remaining work is updated. When elements of the plan are deemed unnecessary, they are removed. Only the Development Team can change its Sprint Backlog during a Sprint. The Sprint Backlog is a highly visible, real-time picture of the work that the Development Team plans to accomplish during the Sprint, and it belongs solely to the Development Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you have determined that some of the tasks are not necessary, remove them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@David Arno suggested approaches for filling the gap in the Sprint.&#xA;However, if this frequently happens or if it is a major part of your Sprint, you should consider doing a time-boxed research story (also known as a spike) in a previous sprint. The same analysis, possibly including a minimal proof-of-concept, will allow you to plan with more confidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2015-01-12T16:38:57.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13927" CreationDate="2015-01-09T21:00:41.057" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Delete the tasks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find yourself writing the same tasks like j-unit, dev testing, etc for all your stories/backlogs, they are not tasks, they are done criteria and can be rolled into a higher level task such as &quot;implement XYZ as part of the solution.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try and minimize the overhead associated with creating and managing task level details within the iteration if it is not adding any value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-01-09T21:00:41.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13930" CreationDate="2015-01-10T10:52:57.740" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use Mindmanager to build WBSs, which does this automatically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you're a bit handy with XSLT (or you know somebody who is), then the following solution might help:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Import_and_export#To_MS_Project&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Import_and_export#To_MS_Project&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2015-01-10T10:52:57.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13945" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-10T12:28:50.570" Score="1" ViewCount="102" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently I am working in an outsourcing company and our management has decided to use the following scheme for &quot;Velocity of the developers&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each developer has a velocity quotient:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Senior Developer: &lt;strong&gt;Velocity: 1&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developer: &lt;strong&gt;Velocity: 1.4-1.8&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Junior Developer: &lt;strong&gt;Velocity: 2.8-3.6&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say a task X is completed by a Senior Developer for 8 hours.&#xA;This means:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Senior Developer: &lt;strong&gt;8 Hours&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developer: &lt;strong&gt;11.20 - 14.40 Hours&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Junior Developer: &lt;strong&gt;22.40 - 28.80 Hours&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way it is easier to give time estimates to clients from business point of view. I personally disagree with any such appliances of &quot;velocity&quot; since not considering every project is unique but it poses as a threat to encourage people trying to write their code as fast as possible in order to achieve a &quot;higher velocity&quot; which inevitably leads to compromise with quality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you guys share your opinion on this? Thank you in advance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11918" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-10-21T22:26:24.293" LastActivityDate="2019-10-21T22:26:24.293" Title="Outsourcing company: Usage of velocity for offers" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;outsourcing&gt;&lt;velocity&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13930" CreationDate="2015-01-10T18:41:34.793" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can export the data from Freemind to Excel with two separate columns some quick manipulation in Excel to translate the WBS codes into Outline Level, should allow you to import the Excel file into Project and have the task list created with the appropriate outline level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what I am guessing you have from Freemind in Excel&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A1 = &lt;strong&gt;WBS&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The WBS numbers from Freemind are in cells A2 and on down the column&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B1 = &lt;strong&gt;Task Name&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The task names start in B2 and on down the column&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In C1 add Outline Level as a column heading&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In C2 add the following formula:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;=IF(LEN(A2)=1,1,IF(LEN(A2)=3,2,IF(LEN(A2)=5,3,0)))&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The formula translates the WBS codes into an outline level that Project can use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, go to Project.  Open the Excel file and map the Excel fields to Project fields as below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WBS to WBS&#xA;Task Name to Name&#xA;Outline Level to Outline Level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That should bring you the outline and list from Excel to Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-01-10T18:41:34.793" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13945" CreationDate="2015-01-10T18:50:02.573" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Parametrics are used all the time to help estimate and choose planning values for project work.  But those values are only as good as how they were established.  If based on historical capture of a significant number of observations, then the validity is improved.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never seen parametrics applied to seniority of a practiitoner, however.  This assumes that ALL practitioners advance in performance equally over some period of time and that ALL practitioners at a certain level will outperform ALL practitioners at a lower level ALL the time.  This is not reality.  And this is why experience is a poor predictor of future performance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Parametrics established as you described removes both inter- and intra-performance variability and, as such, will introduce a ton of risk in the resulting planning values where your estimates just will not be credible.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Parametrics are great for estimation but, as you have them established here, I don't think will offer a ton of accuracy in your planning values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-01-10T18:50:02.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13948" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-11T04:28:39.697" Score="1" ViewCount="1406" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found that project managers/project leaders use this common sense approach to planning. Namely, they already have a deadline, then they set milestones in a backwards order. They apply the same approach on each milestone to figure out what they need to do to accomplish the goal of each milestone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Project: Super important business meeting in Las Vegas&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have an appointment in Las Vegas at 13hrs. So I set milestones in reverse:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;13:00 - Arrive to Destination. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;12:30 - Take a cab to my destination.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;12:00 - Landing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;10:00 - Departure.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;09:00 - Check-int at the airport&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;08:30 - Leave home&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After identifying the milestones by going in reverse I can tell that I need to leave home at 8:30 if I want to have enough time to arrive to my destination on time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen this approach being used in planning sessions for big and complex projects and I would like to know if this approach is backed up by any sort of theory of management. Our team is trying to learn how to do Scrum and so far I have not found this sort of approach in the materials that I have read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-01-11T04:58:14.423" LastActivityDate="2015-01-11T11:32:36.123" Title="Is there a theory of management that supports backward/reverse planning?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;deadline&gt;&lt;milestones&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13933" CreationDate="2015-01-11T04:37:34.237" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might find this report interesting: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idi.ntnu.no/grupper/su/publ/ebse/R11-pairprog-hannay-ist09.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Effectiveness of Pair Programming: A Meta-Analysis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It basically describes the trade-offs of pair programming, that is, when it's more or less conducive to increased productivity and reduction of mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastActivityDate="2015-01-11T04:37:34.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13948" CreationDate="2015-01-11T04:53:19.597" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Mikado Method&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a technical basis, this sort of &quot;reverse planning&quot; can be done using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.methodsandtools.com/archive/mikado.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mikado Method&lt;/a&gt;. The best in-depth treatment of this method can be found in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.manning.com/ellnestam/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Mikado Method&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, Ellnestam and Brolund, 2014. While not optimized for project management, &lt;em&gt;parts&lt;/em&gt; of the method (e.g. visualizing the dependency tree) may be useful in scoping a project, developing a work breakdown structure, or identifying milestones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Critical Path Method&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a project management basis, there are a number of techniques for scheduling backwards from a set of defined milestones &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependency_%28project_management%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;based on dependencies&lt;/a&gt;. One such technique is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_path_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;critical path method&lt;/a&gt;, using a modified PERT chart or activity-on-node diagram to graph out the project's schedule. You can certainly use this method by starting with a target end date for the project, and then working backwards along the critical path to determine the appropriate start date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-01-11T04:53:19.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13951" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13952" CreationDate="2015-01-11T04:53:22.697" Score="2" ViewCount="165" Body="&lt;p&gt;With the popularity of agile methodologies on the rise it comes the time to make decisions about what it means to be done with a given feature/task. Should the managers be involved in the decisions about which technical practices the team should or should not adopt? Examples of such practices are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test driven development (TDD)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pair programming (PP)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Continous integration (CI)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Continuous delivery (CD)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A common objection to adoption of such practices from a managerial point of view is that  they &lt;em&gt;&quot;make the progress slower.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; I'm not trying to imply micro-management is bad &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt;, but in modern times it has gained a negative connotation since the rise of trends like empowering your employees and the fact the a lot of people perform better when they are given more autonomy over their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any framework that deals with the question of when managers should micro-manage and when they should not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-02T14:26:13.667" LastActivityDate="2019-01-02T14:26:13.667" Title="Should managers be involved in decisions about what technical practices the team adopts?" Tags="&lt;technical-leader&gt;&lt;engineering-practices&gt;&lt;micro-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13951" CreationDate="2015-01-11T10:32:18.370" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an interesting question, worded well (thanks @CodeGnome for editing) and highly relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately the answer is, like many questions regarding ideal practices, a firm &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;it depends&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would depend on the&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nature of the Development Team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Existing Practices&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Organisation Culture&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Exact type of Agile implementation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Individual personalities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Management are &lt;strong&gt;imposing&lt;/strong&gt; practises upon the team&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would draw out two considerations;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Appraisal Targets&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A manager imposing particular types of technical practices may be forced to do so by an inflexible appraisal, bonus or review process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our organisation (and I suspect many Fortune 500 / FTSE 100) are committed to Continuous Improvement programs which mandate a CI target to be hit as part of the employee or department objectives.  Therefore, regardless of our Retrospective or team decisions CI is a mandatory aspect of our work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Matrix Management&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation can be complicated when the ScrumMaster, leading Sprint Retrospectives to improve team practices on behalf of the team can butt heads with the Line Manager of the team members because they feel like they own the working practices of the team and also write the appraisals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish I had a fuller answer for you but I don't; it is a very tricky ledge to navigate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;If the team wish to &lt;strong&gt;adopt practices&lt;/strong&gt; and management are challenging&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My Approach&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have banned any management from the Sprint Retrospective (even if they are part of the Scrum Team) and capture all of the feedback confidentially producing a highly sanitised Retrospective Report (less than 1 page).  Normally, supported by the team, I unilaterally impose changes to the working practises of the team without speaking to management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Scrum version of &amp;quot;Ask forgiveness, not permission.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team like this, it demonstrates the ScrumMaster will fight on their behalf and take the fight away from their work location and the truth is most managers are too busy to actually notice the micro-changes.  It took the upper management 3 months to realise we had binned velocity completely from the Kanban Board and reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Selling Practices&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a change is going to be a major undertaking and unlikely to fly under the management radar I would take a data-driven approach producing a &lt;strong&gt;Proposal&lt;/strong&gt; which contrasts the current practice with the old specifically drawing out the benefits.  Since Management never read it I also distil the proposal into a &lt;strong&gt;PowerPoint&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally any proposal would be backed up by a number of Lean Six Sigma models to demonstrate the benefits of the new approach. Managers respond to savings in time and/or money.  If you can demonstrate that I don't think you will have any problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2015-01-11T10:39:47.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13948" CreationDate="2015-01-11T11:32:36.123" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;CodeGnome provided an outstanding answer.  To add to it slightly: I have observed in my experience that backwards planning is done nearly exclusively.  Deadlines are typically driven by some business or legal need; thus, the project has no alternative but to work backwards from there.  The problem with this method is that the resulting plan may have no basis in reality at all or present with a high likelihood of failure.  But as the planning iterations develop, it is our nature (Optimism Bias) to begin accepting the plan as doable and even guaranteed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while you may find backward planning common sense and that you may be forced to backward plan because of a deadline, you should still understand the risk of that project by planning normally, forward planning, to see the size of the gap / risk you have.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-01-11T11:32:36.123" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13951" CreationDate="2015-01-11T11:46:04.973" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consideration should be given to the nature and size of the organisation, and the number of projects / initiatives being run. If the team is likely to flex significantly in terms of the people working within it, and if there are several (or many) teams all working on different projects, then it may be necessary to consider the reality of having people moving between teams and having to adapt, if each team is allowed to agree its own approach. If this is a genuine barrier within your organisation, then you may need some sort of management direction to be given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if the wider organisation is not geared up to accommodate continuous delivery (or similar) - for reasons of complexity, size, training, or a requirement to comply with external regulation (such as a highly regulated industry such as financial services), then again, there may be a requirement for management to lay down standard approaches that must be followed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You ask whether there is any framework that deals with the question of micro-management. I am not aware of any, and I would make two points here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is not necessarily micro-management, and if done carefully, it should be the strategic management of acceptable approaches that are relevant for your organisation. There may be good reasons why an approach may or may not be acceptable (as discussed above), and the role of management should be to consider these and make decisions on there appropriateness, then allow the teams to adopt which ever they feel will work for them. If the teams want to bring new approaches to the organisation, they should seek approval for them, then, subject to approval, get on and use them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I would not advocate micro-management as a general rule, especially if the teams and the team leaders are sufficiently mature in their thinking and experience to work effectively without managers breathing down their necks all the time. However, I have also experienced situations where teams don't work unless their managers are checking their work and their approach on a daily basis, in which case you have a different problem to fix, which is much wider than just the approaches to carrying out their tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2015-01-11T11:46:04.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13955" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-11T13:27:08.360" Score="3" ViewCount="402" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working as a Scrum Master. With an intention on continuous improvement I am coming up with ideas in order to deliver better software. I realized that the team is not making enough progress from an improvement perspective even though the ideas are small to implement. Not sure if this is a process issue or the team's incompetence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to make the improvements happen. An example of continuous improvement could be implementing automation, implementing TDD, embracing tools like SONAR for measuring code quality etc. If the team is not implementing the ideas, who should take the responsibility (in a positive sense; NOT complaining): the Scrum Master or the Development Team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5576" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-01-12T17:29:47.607" LastActivityDate="2015-01-12T21:07:37.650" Title="Who is reponsible when the team doesn't implement the Scrum Master's ideas for continuous improvement?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;process-improvement&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13956" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-11T20:18:27.690" Score="2" ViewCount="258" Body="&lt;p&gt;A head of software R&amp;amp;D would like to see high level information about the projects R&amp;amp;D works on. What is needed : project, milestones, features, risks. Ability to add features or report bugs if needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later this can be used even for reports to top management, etc.&#xA;There are different geographically separated offices, and there are some other outsourcing companies that work for R&amp;amp;D.&#xA;Every office and outsourcing companies use own project tracking systems like jira, tfs, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So our problem is how not to do double work (e.g. have another system in R&amp;amp;D) and give up-to-date information to the head of R&amp;amp;D. &#xA;On the other hand it's not easy to use centralized system since security and all other restrictions, especially with outsourcing companies.&#xA;Excel reports will not work :( either&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe somebody encountered similar case. Could you advise ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7644" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-01-14T13:53:44.120" LastActivityDate="2015-01-14T13:53:44.120" Title="System for high level project status" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;milestones&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13956" CreationDate="2015-01-12T01:35:30.453" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having been a Kerzner Award winner and Project Manager for over 20 years I have some experience in this area. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other issues that you have not listed here that need to be considered:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is work at the corporate offices and/or vendor locations weighted? In other words, does a vendor have critical path work while another office does not? How will you aggregate up at the summary level a status on schedule (for example) if the vendor's critical path work is behind and the corporate remote office work is ahead of schedule?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is rare that geographically separate or remote tasks are independent of other tasks located at the home office or at other locations. How will dependencies between tasks, across vendors etc be reflected when the vendor task is running late and the corporate office task is dependent upon its completion before it can start?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally there are two ways you can deal with the problems we have here:&#xA;1. Engage in a costly independent project that ties all of the information together and allows you to aggregate it up after you have spent $$$ on developing the business rules, tool purchase and configuration (Planview, Clarity etc.), and role out with supporting roles that are also costly&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work with representatives from each geographic location and/or representative of major components of work to define a manual report that they all contribute to manually on a regular basis. You will have to spend some time up front working through as a team, what needs to be represented in the report but you will save your company major $$$ and countless hours trying to do this programmatically. Furthermore, you can use your experience from this instance of work to make the case for a PPM tool like Planview, Clarity, Primavera that you can all use in the future to avoid this problem in the future. But be advised,these tools are full fledged ERP tools that typically take 6 months to implement followed by 2 years of corporate adoption, training etc. It is not successful without a lot of change management planning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feel free to contact me for further information or connect with me on Linked In at www.linkedin.com/in/scothanley/&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15984" LastActivityDate="2015-01-12T01:35:30.453" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13955" CreationDate="2015-01-12T09:51:16.797" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order for the team to improve, they will need:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clear goals, and a plan on how to get there. What's the desired outcome of the improvement?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resources. Do they have the time to learn new skills? The proper software to implement new ways of coding?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Motivation. Are the ideas for improvements coming from the team, or from management? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team doesn't know what to do, or don't have the time to actually do it, or simply don't see the improvement as necessary, nothing will happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3184" LastActivityDate="2015-01-12T09:51:16.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13955" CreationDate="2015-01-12T17:23:30.543" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on your question, it seems likely that you are practicing command-and-control project management rather than functioning as a coach or process referee within the Scrum framework. You should fully embrace &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot;&gt;the principles of the Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; and empower your team to find their own solutions within the twin constraints of the Sprint Goal and the Definition of Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Command-and-Control Isn't Agile&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am coming up with ideas in order to deliver better software...I realized that the team is not making enough progress from improvement perspective even though the ideas are small to implement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These statements are an indication of Scrum gone wrong. Agile frameworks like Scrum are based on self-directed teams, not top-down management directives. As a member of the Scrum Team, the Scrum Master may certainly &lt;em&gt;propose&lt;/em&gt; improvements during the Sprint Retrospectives, but it is up to the team &lt;em&gt;as a whole&lt;/em&gt; to determine how to optimize its processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, you seem to be trying to hold the team accountable for &quot;improvements&quot; that they have not agreed to, presumably have not estimated for level of effort, and for which you have not defined any objective metrics. Specifically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Who says the ideas are &quot;small to implement?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, stories, tasks, and processes must always be estimated by the task performers (e.g. the Development Team) rather than decreed from on high. Just because you believe a process change is simple or lightweight doesn't make it so; only the task performers are in a position to judge.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Who says they haven't made &quot;enough progress?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What problems are you trying to solve? How are you measuring progress? Are you measuring internal processes or deliverable outcomes? Unless you have clearly identified a process problem, and clearly defined a set of &lt;em&gt;objective&lt;/em&gt; metrics to measure outcomes, you're practicing voodoo management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, measuring adherence to a process is almost always a mistake; in Scrum, you want to measure value delivered rather than the process for delivering that value. In other words, focus on &quot;Does the sausage taste good?&quot; instead of on how the sausage gets made.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why isn't the team empowered and engaged in finding its own solutions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum will not make mediocre teams into superstars. All agile frameworks rely on self-directed engagement by the team members. If your team isn't populated by individuals who are self-starters capable of producing a workman-like product and interested in continuous improvement, then you should probably review your management and hiring practices before spending time on frameworks like Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you already have capable, engaged team members, then the best thing you can do is to empower them to build their own self-organized processes. If you've correctly defined the goals and the constraints, the power of Scrum lies in giving the team leeway to optimize the implementation details internally.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Leverage Retrospectives&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your software has a quality problem, you should review your Sprint Goals, your Scrum processes, and your Definition of Done to ensure that you are providing an adequate framework for success. If you're still falling short, then use your Sprint Retrospectives to ask the team about the problems and to brainstorm solutions that the entire team can get behind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-01-12T17:23:30.543" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13955" CreationDate="2015-01-12T17:29:52.417" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's start with your last question. The role of the scrum master according to the Scrum Guide is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master is responsible for ensuring Scrum is understood and&#xA;  enacted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If no retrospectives were occurring, maybe the responsibility for that would fall to you, but it sounds like they are but you're not sure the team is getting the most out of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the retrospective, the team should be identifying challenges that made it harder to meet their goals. After that, you should encourage the team to propose possible solutions to those challenges or at least improve in those areas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming all this is happening, the next issue would be if their improvement ideas are actually effective. One way I've found to help ensure that is to take a validated learning approach. When you decide to improve something, agree on what actions the team will take, what you expect the effect to be, and how you'll measure if it is working. That way you can show what improvements are helping and which ones aren't. It helps that whole part of Scrum be a little less nebulous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-01-12T17:29:52.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13955" CreationDate="2015-01-12T21:07:37.650" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Coach the team to self-organize and set up Release retrospectives&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your goal of continuous improvement is good. It is certainly the Scrum Master's responsibility to look for ways to improve the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@CodeGnome suggested some steps if your team is not self-organizing. In addition, you can influence and coach the team to get there. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/presentations/leading-a-self-organizing-team&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Read Mike Cohn's recommendations on this topic&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many would-be ScrumMasters and agile coaches go to the extreme of&#xA;  refusing to exert any influence on their teams at all. Others retain&#xA;  too much of their prior command-and-control management styles and fail&#xA;  to unleash the creativity and productivity of a self-organizing team.&#xA;  Many want to understand how to walk the fine line of leading a&#xA;  self-organizing team with agile project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Self-organizing is about the team determining how they will respond to&#xA;  their environment (and managers/leads can influenze that environment).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As you see the team self-organize you can influence, but not control&#xA;  or direct, its path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to Sprint retrospectives, you should also organize Release retrospectives. You can gather the data and set the agenda for these so that the team can come up with suitable solutions. &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.versionone.com/agile_management/2013/07/01/making-release-retrospectives-strategic-and-effective-part-1/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;See more about it in this article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sprint retrospectives are the right place for developing action plans&#xA;  consisting of small, tactical improvements that can be implemented in&#xA;  the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A release cycle is typically be 3 to 6 months long...At the end of a&#xA;  release cycle, a release retrospective should focus on strategic&#xA;  objectives that drive the agile transition of an enterprise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-01-12T21:07:37.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13964" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-12T21:18:13.047" Score="0" ViewCount="110" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a scrum master with a small team of developers.  We have had a difficult year but this year we are trying to get back into doing things correctly.  Part of this includes getting back into pointing properly, but I am receiving a lot of push back.  The developers do not like the idea of pointing, and they think it is a waste of time, especially since we are developing tools for internal clients only.  My manager is pressuring us to point, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My only argument is that by pointing we can quantify to senior management and other stakeholders how much we have accomplished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How else I can back up the concept of pointing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7207" LastActivityDate="2015-01-13T04:24:09.047" Title="How do I pitch and back up the concept of pointing to my team?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13965" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13967" CreationDate="2015-01-12T21:31:34.227" Score="5" ViewCount="1292" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm reading Mike Cohn's book about Agile estimation. At the same time I have a release planning in couple of days. &lt;br&gt;&#xA;It's going to be 6 months (12 sprints release). We have the ideas about what needs to be implemented, but they are all large, like themes. Mike Kohn suggest to  split all of them into the stories and estimate stories.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It will take couple of days and we don't need such precise information at that point.&#xA;For example: we will have to implement error logging. I don't need to plan for the exact levels of errors, etc. yet. We will need to implement Roles, but I don't need a list of roles and their permissions at that point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anybody tried to estimate themes/epics (I understand that epics are usually too big to estimate) during release planning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7644" LastEditorUserId="36330" LastEditDate="2020-07-31T09:16:53.943" LastActivityDate="2020-08-01T11:16:57.030" Title="Agile. Release planning. Why do I need stories instead of themes/epics" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;release-plan&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13966" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-12T23:03:21.080" Score="-2" ViewCount="329" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there in Kurt Lewin's 3 stage change process (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Lewin#Change_process&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki&lt;/a&gt;) any &quot;resistance distribution&quot; or all stages have nearly equal resistance level? If so, which stage actually has the most resistance level?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15991" LastActivityDate="2015-05-21T12:31:50.750" Title="Kurt Lewin's 3 stage change process: which stage has the most resistance?" Tags="&lt;change-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13965" CreationDate="2015-01-12T23:31:53.767" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Go for it but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't story point estimate your epics and assume that those story points will later be equal to story points on actual stories of the corresponding stories belonging to each epic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or t-shirt size your epics instead and putting a priority on them like high, medium, low.  An XXL, high priority epic is probably the first epic you actually want to invest your time into breaking up into stories during your first round of release planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For projects that span 12 months +, it can be kind of painful (in terms of time) and also misleading to think you can and should break everything down into a story during initial release planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Agile, release planning is continuous.  If you are trying to plan out all of your stories during initial release planning that sounds kind of waterfall to me.  Instead, take your top 2-3 epics and break them into stories that can be story pointed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have 2-6 iterations of stories with estimates derived from your epics take a break with release planning and see how things go.  But plan on returning to release planning every 1 to 2 iterations later so that you keep your product backlog up to date and that actionable stories are always ready for each iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Addendum:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I deal with projects where a hard, external delivery date has been promised to the customer that is so far out in the future and beyond the point where precise story point estimates can be reasonably provided?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Accept the fact that your project was &lt;strong&gt;not conceived as an Agile project&lt;/strong&gt; and that the customer was sold a product, rather than an Agile team capable of delivering value to the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Swag your epics&lt;/strong&gt;, personally I like to work with my teams to swag in terms of iterations.  Will this feature take 1,2,3,5,8 etc iterations to deliver?  Can this feature be delivered parallel to other features requested?  What are the max number of features we want to limit ourselves as a team to working on in an iteration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Come up with a visual (not visio necessarily) &lt;strong&gt;product roadmap&lt;/strong&gt; that lays out which epics/features will be delivered and in which order.  For big projects, your timeline can be pretty vague.  I like to bucket features into months or even quarters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now I have a &lt;strong&gt;rough timeline and duration&lt;/strong&gt; for each feature being delivered and a very waterfall-ish plan that I can present to managers to give them that &amp;quot;precise&amp;quot; plan for meeting their delivery goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Here's the hard part; set the expectation with managers and the customer that &lt;strong&gt;the roadmap IS NOT a commitment&lt;/strong&gt;.  It is a rough estimate of how things will go and one possibility for how the team could deliver.  Reserve the right to update and communicate changes to the roadmap to stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now here's the hardest part: &lt;strong&gt;sell Agile&lt;/strong&gt;.  Let managers and customers know that 1) its ok for the customer to change their mind, 2) the more customer face-time the team gets on a regular basis, the better the outcome will be, and 3) build trust and transparency between the customer, management, the team so that in the future the customer doesn't need a waterfall roadmap since they know they are not buying a project, but an Agile team instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2020-08-01T11:16:57.030" LastActivityDate="2020-08-01T11:16:57.030" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13964" CreationDate="2015-01-12T23:46:26.817" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's one side of the coin.  It may resound more with your team members to phrase the argument as,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;If you, team, do not [story]-point, you cannot quantify to management how much work you can deliver.  Management loves this because they want you to deliver an infinite amount of work in an iteration.  Management will give you more work than you can do and expect you to do it if you don't story-point.  They will blame you, the team, at the iteration end for not delivering because you didn't set their expectation of what was reasonable using story-point estimates and velocity.  Help me by story-pointing work, so that as a team we can say &quot;no&quot; to our managers when expectations are unreasonable.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also point out some other benefits of story pointing exercises:&#xA;-Understanding which items should be started sooner rather than later in the iteration&#xA;-Using story points as a discussion vehicle to clarify requirements/scope&#xA;-Using story points to say &quot;no&quot; to an epic in disguise&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-01-12T23:46:26.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13964" CreationDate="2015-01-13T01:11:46.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your goal is really to provide people external to the team with a good idea of your productivity, I'd argue story points aren't the technique you're looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not to say you shouldn't be estimating work but bear in mind that story points are really a measure for the team not externals.  As WBW says in their answer, they can be used to identify stories that are too big for an iteration and to drive conversation between team members over complexity.  Velocity (average points per iteration) is a great way to measure how consistent the team is and to guide how much work to commit to for a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with points (or velocity) for reporting outside the team is that they estimate the complexity/effort of a story not the value that the story delivered.  There is nothing to say an 8 point story is going to deliver any more value to the end user than a 1 point story, just that it is simpler to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For external communication, focus on the value the customer/stakeholder/user is getting.  Ideally, you should have sufficient tracking in place to measure the positive effects of delivering your product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you are adding features to a tool your contact centre staff use for logging calls, your key measures might be things like time to log a call, speed to retrieve an account, average caller wait time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Showing how the software you're delivering has a positive impact on actual business measures tells people a lot more about how your team is doing than story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2015-01-13T01:11:46.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13964" CreationDate="2015-01-13T04:24:09.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of the parties involved appear to understand the purpose of story points. Your management probably wants to use them as a performance metric or forecasting tool, and your development team is likely resisting a prescriptive process with the likelihood of having points converted to units of time anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless your organization fully buys into the value proposition of both &lt;em&gt;estimates&lt;/em&gt; (as opposed to fixed targets) and &lt;em&gt;estimating by size&lt;/em&gt; (instead of duration), there is little value in using story points at all. Story points have utility, but only when used properly and for their intended purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Don't Report Story Points Completed; Report Value Delivered!&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My only argument is that by pointing we can quantify to senior management and other stakeholders how much we have accomplished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story points are &lt;strong&gt;estimates of complexity&lt;/strong&gt;, not measures of performance. Likewise, velocity is an &lt;strong&gt;estimate of team capacity&lt;/strong&gt; over time, and has no relationship to the value delivered. Misusing either of these metrics for reporting rather than estimation almost always ends in tears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to report value, you need to find a better reporting metric. In general, the Product Owner is the person best-placed to determine a given feature's value to the business or its customers. Alternatively, if your Product Owner has used a system like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/relative-weighting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;relative weighting&lt;/a&gt; to prioritize the Product Backlog, you might consider using either the value or value-minus-cost from the exercise for your reporting needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Reasons to Use Story Points&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Entire books have been written on this subject. It's worth noting that most agile frameworks don't &lt;em&gt;require&lt;/em&gt; estimates in story points; you are certainly free to estimate in ideal hours, dollars allocated, or any other metric that works for your team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main reason agile practitioners choose story points over other metrics is that they &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; directly measure time. Consider the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A key tenet of agile estimating and planning is that we estimate size but derive duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash; Cohn, Mike (2007-10-03). Agile Estimating and Planning (Kindle Locations 1288-1289). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you accept this axiom, then measuring in story points would allow you to quickly estimate the relative &lt;em&gt;size&lt;/em&gt; of a story. Derivation of time is then usually done at the release planning level (measured in iterations), rather than within iterations where &lt;em&gt;capacity planning&lt;/em&gt; is more important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read the extant literature to determine for yourself whether the converse (e.g. attempting to derive iterative capacity or release schedules from per-feature time estimates) is possible, practical, or reliable. Perhaps more importantly, you will have to form your own opinion about whether it is faster or slower to estimate in units of time, and what the trade-offs in overhead vs. accuracy really are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The prevailing wisdom is that story points takes less time to estimate, and that they lead to more reliable estimates within an iterative framework. The effectiveness of your implementation may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-01-13T04:24:09.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13966" CreationDate="2015-01-13T12:54:43.023" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not know of Lewin discussed resistance anywhere in his work regarding his three stages; however, Kubler-Ross's stages of grief--&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model&lt;/a&gt;--have been expanded into the change resistance curve--&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newPPM_96.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;enter link description here&lt;/a&gt;--that is often used on transformation type projects.  This would suggest that the greatest degree of resistance, stages two through four on Kubler-Ross's model, might be consistent with the second stage of Lewin's model.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-01-13T12:54:43.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13973" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-13T13:22:25.877" Score="1" ViewCount="141" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm the Product Owner on a project, which is essentially the integration of a new technology into an existing product. A prototype has been written by an external developer and we are now tasked with integrating these changes into our code-base.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I understand from our, this is mainly about doing a large code-review and making sure that the code is in good enough shape for production.They estimate this work to take in the region of three-months and has many dependencies on other projects. The work hasn't been broken down to a level or form that can be expressed as user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I best break this down into user stories with a value that I can express to the business and ensure that the product ultimately delivers value to the end-customer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15998" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-01-13T15:51:00.150" LastActivityDate="2015-01-14T22:56:38.070" Title="Breaking Down a Code Review of a Prototype" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;return-on-investment&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13973" CreationDate="2015-01-13T14:19:28.700" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Gain the benefits of new technology and not break any existing features&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the Product Owner, I will focus on the what and why and let the dev team worry about the how, namely, the code review and so on. I will write 4 epics for each of the following and then break them down into stories and write acceptance tests and expected results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why are you integrating the new technology?: Presumably you have a large business benefit to justify all the cost. This epic and the set of stories should make sure that you extract the maximum ROI (Return on investment).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This appears to be a major rewrite - like rewiring a car: You want to make sure that all the existing features continue to function as they are. You need to write a set of stories to make sure all these get regression tested and validated.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You mentioned 'many dependencies on other projects': You want to make sure that you don't break the other projects. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Non-functional requirements: With such a major rewrite, you also need to safeguard non-functional requirements. This includes security, performance, reliability, availability, portability, scalability, usability, maintainability and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-01-13T14:19:28.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12779" CreationDate="2015-01-13T16:14:38.817" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You would need to ensure that every project housed on the EPM Server is a) baselined and b) has progress added and any late tasks have been reforcasted. &#xA;You could run a calculation I belive that would look at your project summary line and calculate what percentage of the overall duration the projects finish variance worked out as, and then using an icon to show any results on your server that were 20% or more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a bit fiddly though and provbably requires cusome fields and calculations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An easier approach might be to set a tolerance (in days) for finish variance for all projects and then just highlight any that breach the tolerance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14950" LastActivityDate="2015-01-13T16:14:38.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1400" CreationDate="2015-01-13T16:51:57.880" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You ask how can a project manager can manage external dependencies outside of their control that directly impact the feasability and progress of their own project?&#xA;This management cycle works well for me in that scenerio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;IDENTIFY-The PM should facilitate the identification of these external dependendcies. Host a workshop with your team and work out what you need from the external party and when you need it by.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;AGREE- Contact the external party and ensure they understand what you want and when you want it by. If they are able to deliver, great! If not negotiate. Either way formulise what has been agreed and write it down.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PLAN- This where your scheduling tool can be of help. I use MS Project and record my external dependencies as milestones. I give each depenendency a reference number so I can quickly find it across all documentation. I make sure the dependency is linked into the rest of my schedule so if does slip I know what the impact to the rest of the plan will be. The baseline date is the date that we have both agreed the dependency will be delivered by.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;VALIDATE- Any project could have a series of dependencies, which means a change in one can have a knock on effect to others, rippling up and down numerous projects. Therefore some dependencies are going to have a bigger impact than others if they slip. I find it useful to RAG rate (red,amber,green) dependencies according to the impact they could have. I check these ratings each month, that way validating the prioritisation and management attention I give to those dependencies I'm monitoring most closely. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;MONITOR &amp;amp; CONTROL- as part of a regular management cycle, I check with the external party that they are still on track to deliver the dependency to the date we agreed. Any changes to the date I need it by, I feed across as well. If the agreement needs to change then we can work that through as part of a change control process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key thing here though throughout is to maintain communication with the party you are dependent upon. As soon as that communication breaks down then any chance of 'managing' the dependency is lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nqu8F.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14950" LastActivityDate="2015-01-13T16:51:57.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13978" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-14T04:51:57.553" Score="4" ViewCount="898" Body="&lt;p&gt;Real Situation: you are the project manager for a small company, you have one senior developer and one junior developer. You have a big client (accounting for about 50% of company sales) breathing down your neck. The client wants you to deliver a project that your senior developer promised would be delivered over a month ago (side note: the client provided new requirements after this deadline was given but has refused to give you more than one extra week). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The client has two projects in the pipeline with you and desperately wants to see results on the first project. The first project is 95% complete and only requires mundane details to be completed. When these requirements are met it is likely more requirements will be given. The second project is barely started. You are getting worried that you will lose the client and/or second project if the first project is not delivered soon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your senior developer considers the changes remaining on the first project has no value left and so he does not want to work on the first project. He wants to move onto the second project as all the interesting / high value work on the first project is done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The junior web developer is attending to simpler, but higher priority projects, and cannot begin work on the first project for at least another day if not two. When the junior developer can begin work on the first project he will take vastly longer to complete the tasks than the senior developer (likey 3 days instead of three hours). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you give it to the senior programmer he cannot work on high value work for the second project, but if you give it to the junior programmer you unnecessarily continue to delay the delivery of the first project and further upset the client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you handle this situation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16004" LastEditorUserId="16004" LastEditDate="2015-01-14T19:36:19.793" LastActivityDate="2016-04-17T19:48:10.763" Title="How to allocate resources across projects with equal priority" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;&lt;resources&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13978" CreationDate="2015-01-14T10:18:20.123" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;You are solving wrong problem&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your &lt;strong&gt;PM is completely out of control&lt;/strong&gt; and #1 task is to get Projects back to PMs hands. They're now run by the Client and Developers, which is not really their job. .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many dangerous signs in case description:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;senior developer promised would be delivered over a month ago&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. What does &quot;developer promised&quot; mean? Isn't it the PM, who takes developer &lt;strong&gt;estimates&lt;/strong&gt; as an input and then comes up with Project Plan?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;the client provided new requirements after this deadline was given but has refused to give you more than one extra week&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. Again, isn't it the PM who takes client &lt;strong&gt;expectations&lt;/strong&gt; as an input and balances the scope, budget, time, risk and quality?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;The first project is 95% complete&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. We all know that poorly managed Projects are 95% complete for 95% of time. Who measured those 95%? Is that a well grounded KPI or just developer's perception?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, instead of deciding who will do what, PM should get Projects back on track first. This means:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get grounded &lt;strong&gt;estimates&lt;/strong&gt; for both Projects from the development team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sort out &lt;strong&gt;risks&lt;/strong&gt; (why the Projects were delayed before?) and apply risk contingencies/reserves.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Develop a &lt;strong&gt;REALISTIC schedule&lt;/strong&gt;. Have the team and the Client buy into it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Control Projects, so they are delivered to the schedule.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;The Client will not accept new deadlines&quot;&lt;/em&gt; is not an excuse. It's a PM job to work with the Client, play around scope, resources and time and develop balanced baseline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13500" LastEditorUserId="13500" LastEditDate="2016-04-17T19:48:10.763" LastActivityDate="2016-04-17T19:48:10.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13956" CreationDate="2015-01-14T10:28:58.397" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;We faced the similar need. The solution was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jira for each project detailed tracking (releases, sprints, stories, tasks, bugs etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gannt chart for high level cross project tracking (features, releases)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is that Gannt chart does not contain more than 10-12 entries per project. It's very high level and is not synced with Jira tasks, but updated weekly by PMs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was primarily used as PM - upper management communication tool and worked fairly well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13500" LastActivityDate="2015-01-14T10:28:58.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13978" CreationDate="2015-01-14T12:31:25.120" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Vadim suggests, it is crystal clear your PM capabilities are immature and under performing.  It could be the abilities of the PM himself or a combination of the PM and organization systems and capabilities.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To solve the short term problem, to begin work on the second project before the first is signed off seems to be like continuing ad hoc, out of control, and dysfunctional PM behaviors.  The threat of losing the project and the client is very high.  Seems like the first project needs to have priority; finish it up and then regroup.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Solving the longer term problem is where you need to focus a lot of your energy.  You need more PM discipline and documented planning, execution, staffing, and risk management processes...among others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A notion of a realistic schedule is a red herring.  A schedule is only realistic when your actuals meet it, which is after the fact.  However, credible estimates, planning values that are consistent with your risk appetite, and methods of tracking and control are what you are after.  Because if those things are high performing, your schedule was &quot;realistic&quot; even if you came in late.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-01-14T12:31:25.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12852" CreationDate="2015-01-14T12:33:26.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ashok gives a great definition for Purchasing lead-time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the term lead time, is a catch-all for a whole load of preceding tasks, its even more important to check how the estimate for its duration came about. A special consideration for you would be to check a little more rigoriously how the estimate has come about. Some questions you may want to consider are:-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In previous projects has purchasing steelwork always taken 60-80&#xA;days, is this estimate still valid today?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any circumstances that mean the purchasing for this&#xA;project will be different and could that effect this estimate?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why 60 to 80 day, what happens during that time and why the 20 day variance, is that contingency?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14950" LastActivityDate="2015-01-14T12:33:26.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13973" CreationDate="2015-01-14T22:56:38.070" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ashok gives a great answer.  To add to his #2, these code reviews will reveal the quality of the code.  While manual regressions are a good idea, they are costly and time consuming in the long run.  Consider thinking about requiring automated testing (integration, unit) as done criteria.  As a PO, you may request, in consultation with an Architect or technical lead, to see a minimum level of automated code coverage or documentation that prove business critical flows supported by the new code have test cases and/or automated tests in place.  You may also request that defects be documented during code reviews. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Automated tests that frequently execute and test integrations and basic logic are a great way to showcase/improve product quality and ensure the longevity of the solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-01-14T22:56:38.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13984" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-15T06:32:29.187" Score="-2" ViewCount="92" Body="&lt;p&gt;A company is offering me project with source code the offer is like following(generic):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grab your Last Chance to Buy &quot;product name&quot; with Source code for &quot;limited&quot; licenses&#xA;at just $.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am curious about that what is the benefit of source code with limited licenses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16009" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T13:46:14.923" Title="An offer for project with source code" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-01-16T06:23:30.650" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13984" CreationDate="2015-01-15T09:25:49.307" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The source code and the usage licenses are two different things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_code&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source code&lt;/a&gt; helps when the original manufacturer for some reason goes away. You can fix bugs or add features even decades after you purchased the product. Also you could audit the code for security issues and such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some companies also put the source-code in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escrow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Escrow&lt;/a&gt; to make sure that you can use and update the software, for example when the original manufacturer goes bankrupt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_license&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Licenses&lt;/a&gt; are usage agreements, it describes how you are allowed to use the product.&#xA;Even if you alter the source-code you still need to follow the license agreement. For example you cannot re-brand it and re-sell it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2015-01-15T13:46:14.923" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T13:46:14.923" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13986" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-15T11:54:46.860" Score="-3" ViewCount="667" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are an IT Solution provider and I work as a Business Analyst. We are in the phase of streamlining our processes and procedures for software development projects. One of our core activity is to participate as a software bidder for various tenders.In addition we also encounter change requirements coming up from existing and new clients. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our organization is projectised. We have  Team Leads(TLs) reporting to Development Manager(DM), whereas I as BA report to Project Manager(PM).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, we designed Standard Operational Procedures (SOPs) for the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SOP WWorkflow for New Project before being awarded&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SOP Workflow for New Project after being awarded&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SOP Workflow for Change Request/New Enhancement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are our flowcharts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/THZ1N.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/J1v6f.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cZ91w.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are seeking expert advice on the aforementioned processes and agile methodologies. Please justify your answers with sound and professional reasons based on proven experience for software projects in the real world.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2826" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T15:03:10.263" Title="What SOPs are best suited for projectized teams in order to seek customer satisfaction and delivery in software quality?" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;sdlc&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13986" CreationDate="2015-01-15T13:48:04.387" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: Those SOPs are not Agile at all and suffer from all the shortcomings of traditional Waterfall projects. In Agile methods:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requirements are never frozen. Changing a requirement that isn't realized yet is cheap.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Development &amp;amp; QA are close together, without any quality gates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Projects are executed in short iterations, with feedback from the client(-representative) at the end of each iteration. This feedback can change what gets implemented next and the Scope of Work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those flowcharts describe a fairly typical &lt;em&gt;Waterfall&lt;/em&gt; process, with all requirements being set in stone before the first line of code is written and the customer only seeing the final product.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The process does not seem to have any agility in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The process can work well if your client knows exactly what they want, but the only clients where I have seen that kind of up-front knowledge is if the client itself is developing its own products and has been doing that for a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the client doesn't have the expertise to ask for a quote based on a full requirements specification written by them, then you need way more interaction with the client during development to get timely feedback on&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;whether your understanding of the requirements still matches with the understanding of the client.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how the partial solution they have seen has affected their vision for the final product.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All Agile methodologies are all built around being able to react quickly to changes in reality, including the reality that clients repeatedly change their mind halfway through. This is mostly realized by &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; setting anything in stone except the work that is currently being done. Especially the work that has not been started yet can be changed at a moments notice and without (big) consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another characteristic of Agile methods is that development and QA are tightly integrated, often to the point that testers and developers are in the same team. There is also no quality-gate between implementation and QA.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Some Agile processes have quality gates at the beginning of an iteration (&lt;a href=&quot;http://guide.agilealliance.org/guide/definition-of-ready.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Definition of Ready&lt;/a&gt;) and for when the work is completed (&lt;a href=&quot;http://guide.agilealliance.org/guide/definition-of-done.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Definition of Done&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a project-based organization, it is best to apply a iteration-based Agile process (like Scrum), because then you can have a Stop/Continue decision at the end of each iteration. Processes that are based continuous flow (like Kanban) don't have a natural point to do those decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is easiest to see how to apply Agile methods in a time/material project, because the client essentially buys a single iteration of work at a time. And with a typical iteration length of under 4 weeks, it is quite possible to get good requirements from the client for that amount of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, it is also possible to apply Agile methods to fixed-price projects. The main difference with traditional Waterfall projects is that you don't agree on a set of requirements, but rather on a set amount of effort to create as much of the desired functionality as possible.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The amount of effort will be based on the initial Scope of Work, but the client should be able to make changes to the Scope of Work as the work progresses without going through a painful Change Request process as long as the remaining effort doesn't increase. So, the client should be able to say &quot;On second thoughts, I don't need Feature X. Can you do Feature Y instead?&quot; and not see an additional bill if Feature X wasn't implemented yet and Feature Y takes about the same or less effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Agile processes embrace the fact that requirement &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; change during the implementation, there is no point in trying to discuss detailed requirements before the project has been awarded. It is better to keep the discussion on the level of features instead at that stage. The detailed requirements will come when you are preparing to start working on each feature (or not, if the feature ends up being scrapped).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T13:48:04.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13986" CreationDate="2015-01-15T15:03:10.263" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Evaluating a process is more involved than just looking at a high-level view of the process flow exhibiting only the happy path.  Since it is just the happy path, there are substantially far more connections where information and product material flow in reality so no credible judgment can be made here.  Further, you need to examine the actual work within the process and the results to analyze and measure the seven deadly wastes of a process.  That also cannot be done evaluating a high-level, happy path process flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there are also probabilistic attributes of each process step that needs to be measure and analyzed, not exhibited here--for example, duration of each step, step failures, defects produced, costs, revenue, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my advice is to build a real process flow, capture the attributes, maybe simulate if you have the tools, observe the process in action, identify where you have some of the deadly wastes, adjust the process, re-measure, and on and on.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T15:03:10.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13951" CreationDate="2015-01-15T18:14:19.933" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Always.  You said the word &quot;involved&quot;.  Involved - yes.  Dictate - no.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the most often unseen aspects of a successful Agile development project is that the team is one cohesive team. Not the technical team and not the business team, but the singular Team.  Everyone has a stake and everyone has a say.  If I was to ask a different question, how would you respond? Should the software engineers have a say on the launch date?  The answer is of course yes. Ten years ago with Waterfall this wouldn't be true, but today with Agile the key aspect is to allow everyone a say.  This doesn't mean that everyone needs to be involved in every detail, but rather that everyone is striving for the same thing - a successful project - however that is determined by the cohesive Team.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16013" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T18:14:19.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5329" CreationDate="2015-01-15T21:16:05.333" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try to put the daily scrum right before lunch time and don't let it go past the 15 minutes. I have been using different timers to make this work. Only in seldom cases the 15 minutes are not engough, especially if you divide the time to the team members equally by such a timer.&#xA;With putting the timer on a place where everybody could see it - this is really helpful. Everybody sees the time that one has left...meaning has the right to speak. This time barrier is it which suprises me again and again...how the team members are getting better to say only the status and the necessary stuff and leave the discussions away.&#xA;There are plenty of timers out there...just google for daily scrum timer, time keeper... in apple or playstore&#xA;Despite of having the scrum in time and therefore make it more efficient and the people come because they know it lasts only 15 minutes...I am searching here in this forum for sth like gamification or fun factors in daily scrums? (I think I am going to ask this question)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16016" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T21:16:05.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13991" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14012" CreationDate="2015-01-15T21:23:25.540" Score="4" ViewCount="4596" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would be interested in stuff that might get some gamification and fun into the daily scrum. I find this very tricky. How to make the daily to be different|fun|interesting and still productive, aligned with the scrum rules?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not about daily scrum &quot;trainings&quot; like &quot;scrum-from-hell&quot; or &quot;agile-games/scrumheads&quot; but for the regular dailies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16016" LastEditorUserId="16016" LastEditDate="2015-01-18T10:38:26.780" LastActivityDate="2015-09-12T07:28:36.350" Title="Gamification, competition, fun and jokes in the daily scrum" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;&lt;gamification&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3119" CreationDate="2015-01-15T21:31:57.360" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you say you measure gamification...what kind of gamification did you try?&#xA;I try find also some answers in this area: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/13991/gamification-and-daily-scrum-anybody-ever-tried-sth-like-this&quot;&gt;Gamification and Daily Scrum - anybody ever tried sth like this?&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding measurement...if think doing anomynous surveys asking the team members about their opinion would be a way to find out...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16016" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T21:31:57.360" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13993" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14100" CreationDate="2015-01-15T21:45:42.720" Score="3" ViewCount="339" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes people don't make that much of a progress and even if they do, saying each day I will do something and the next day that I did...then you lose more time than it is worth it to mention it. In terms of speeding up the daily Scrum I would recommend to concentrate on one question &quot;What did I accomplish yesterday?&quot;.&#xA;Did you have the same experience, second that, disagree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16016" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-01-16T13:41:05.467" LastActivityDate="2015-01-29T10:48:47.517" Title="Is it necessary to address all three questions every day in the Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="55" CreationDate="2015-01-15T23:28:43.747" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Program Lead, I always take personal responsibility for the program success and guarantee that the resulting solution does meet business needs. It does require a proven delivery approach, technical expertise/ profound knowledge of technologies in additional to project/program management skills, people management and program governance. &#xA;Technical background helps not only to validate the estimates, or solution architecture. PM is the one who must be able to deliver as promised, who decides what is the best solution to meet business requirements, and who guarantees the return on investments. &#xA;PM as a true Leader must be able to step in and support the team with any challenges. Your team will appreciate it and will be well motivated by your support. Otherwise, PM becomes a PMO person, who does not influence the delivery process, but report on status and calculates costs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16015" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T23:28:43.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13995" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13998" CreationDate="2015-01-15T23:39:33.587" Score="0" ViewCount="359" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I show the Finish variance column in hours and not days? I am working in MS project Pro 2010.&#xA;Thank you for your help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16019" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T19:48:09.480" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T19:48:09.480" Title="Finish variance in Hours" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13993" CreationDate="2015-01-15T23:44:40.863" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your answer to the question of &quot;what will I do today&quot; is the same day after day, then you're not breaking your tasks down enough.  Or else you have a roadblock.  Or perhaps you're not making any progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that is one of the reasons for that question: are you making progress and how do you show that?  If you're not making progress, why not? (the roadblocks answer).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your answer to what you did yesterday is changing, then you should be able to figure out what you will be doing today that is different from yesterday.  If the answer to what you did yesterday is also not changing, it at least looks like you're not doing anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="735" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T23:44:40.863" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13997" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14005" CreationDate="2015-01-16T00:57:04.563" Score="4" ViewCount="279" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a master file with several sub-projects and resources assigned to them.&#xA;Is there a way to make a bar chart in Project Pro report that shows the work hours for resources based on the sub-projects they're working on (outline level:level 2)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just simply can't get the chart to show Level 2 outline as a parameter result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/r2cll.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Attached is a mock-up chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you kindly for your assistance and have a great weekend&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16019" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-02T12:23:15.300" LastActivityDate="2020-04-02T11:35:38.740" Title="Work statistics report for resources" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;&lt;project-charter&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13995" CreationDate="2015-01-16T00:58:54.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Go to Options in the File tab.  Open Schedule.  Third option group down, you can change how duration is entered.  Choose hours.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T00:58:54.303" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13993" CreationDate="2015-01-16T08:51:29.847" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the answer by Thursdaysgeek I would also add that the three question format serves an often overlooked but critical function within high performing teams;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It ensures that team members commit to their teammates they are working&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team becomes self-forming because it displays &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Transparency&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Motivation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical Aptitude&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Commitment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Honesty&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Courage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a a team is coming together in a stand up and one developer is continually saying no progress has been made the team will begin to form around that developer offering support or guidance.  However, if that developer is not progressing due to laziness or incompetence it will not be long before the team make that known and request action from the management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 3 question format is the quickest and easiest way for a Scrum Master and/or Product Owner to gain oversight of team effectiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a non-Scrum environment it can be easy for employees to coast, especially if they have a good working relationship with the Management.  In Scrum, that veil is pulled back for all team members to see on a daily basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However - thursdaygeek has the most complete answer and it should be considered superior to this one; I am merely offering an additional perspective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T08:51:29.847" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14000" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14004" CreationDate="2015-01-16T10:47:33.553" Score="2" ViewCount="471" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to define some concepts of risk management and I am having some trouble. I am using definitions from ISO 73:2009 and from &quot;A. Avizienis, J-C Laprie, B. Randell, and Landwehr. Basic concepts and taxonomy of dependable and secure computing.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to use the concept of dependability, but link it with hazards and not service failures. Is it correct to write the following?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;risk&lt;/strong&gt; is defined as the effect of uncertainty on objectives. It is&#xA;  often associated with events, their likelihood, and their&#xA;  consequences. Wether they are positive or negative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;hazard&lt;/strong&gt; is a source of potential harm. It can have the potential to&#xA;  give rise to a risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;service&lt;/strong&gt; delivered by a system is its behavior as it is perceived by&#xA;  its user. &lt;strong&gt;Correct service&lt;/strong&gt; is delivered when the service implements the&#xA;  system function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;service failure&lt;/strong&gt;, or simply failure, is an event that occurs when the&#xA;  service delivered by the system deviates from correct service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;dependability&lt;/strong&gt; of a system is the ability to avoid service failures&#xA;  that are more frequent and more severe than is acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The goal of risk assessment is to minimize hazards by reducing the&#xA;  risk of service failure and therefore to increase the system&#xA;  dependability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16021" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T12:05:15.533" Title="Risk management concepts definitions" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;definition&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14000" CreationDate="2015-01-16T12:15:02.833" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The goal of risk assessment is to minimize hazards by reducing the risk of service failure and therefore to increase the system dependability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think some of this statement is flawed.  First, the risk assessment is the analysis of the hazards in play and the likelihood and impact of service failure.  Risk treatment is the process of reducing or exploiting a risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hazards just exist.  I do not think one minimizes hazards.  You either put it in play or you don't.  For example, a frozen pond has some degree of hazard, based on the depth of ice over the pond.  If you don't put the hazard in play, i.e., you choose to not walk on it, then you avoid any risk the hazard provides...but the hazard remains in full force and effect.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think maybe this is better:  &quot;The goal of risk treatment is to reduce the risk of service failure and, therefore, increase the system dependability.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T12:15:02.833" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13997" CreationDate="2015-01-16T15:47:40.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;With some tweaking you can get the chart from the Baseline Work Visual report.  Open the master project you created using the pool and create the Baseline Work visual report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the data is in Excel make the following changes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Turn off the display of Actual Work and Baseline Work in the Pivot table field list.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Turn on Resources in the Pivot table field list.  They should be added to Row.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Drag the Tasks from Rows to Columns.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Turn off the Weekly Calendar&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your chart should now look like:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZZuMy.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T15:47:40.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12668" CreationDate="2015-01-16T16:42:06.300" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I'm not aware that you can. It is a long awaited feature for Jira that I have voted on in the ticket referenced in the thread that Vadim has linked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way I get around this on one project is to use 'sub-boards' for different roles. Not each team member needs to see what everyone else is doing all the time and may only need to see a small section. So if appropriate, I can make a scrum board for that team with a sub-set of columns, that way the main board is clean and friendly using Kanban, but a smaller board can see the estimates and time remaining etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as an example, say I have a reasonably complicated project on a Kanban board that has around 15 columns and about 20 statuses. That board overviews the entire project through a number of steps: writing stories/scoping, design, API dev, software dev, testing, release. Each of those sections of the process are carried out by a number of different teams and like anyone each team wants a really clear view of what they are working on, but also to see how the whole project is progressing. I could set up my boards roughly like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overview board - Kanban and all statuses&#xA;User story board - Kanban and first 5 columns&#xA;Design board - Scrum board and 3 columns&#xA;API dev board - Scrum and 3 columns&#xA;Software dev board - Scrum and 3 columns&#xA;Testing - Kanban and 3 columns&#xA;Release - Kanban and 3 columns&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other trick is that you don't have to call the columns the same thing in each board. So, the done column for design can be the to-do column for API dev.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not the most elegant solution, but until Jira possibly update to allow the time-tracking within a Kanban board its working for us as a workaround. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16011" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T16:42:06.300" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3939" CreationDate="2015-01-16T17:03:28.480" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll take a crack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) Estimating in Story Points.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Arbitrarily pick one story which everyone understands and give it a number. Say, 5.  Use that as reference when estimating everything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) Breaking stories down into tasks&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some things to try:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. Hold a Product Backlog Refinement session in the previous sprint with the Product Owner and team to get clarity on the stories.  This way you'll waste less time on arcane discussions in Sprint Planning.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b. Don't create tasks, or create as few as possible. Why do you need them? If your story is well understood, do you really need to invest the time in breaking them down further just so you could move something along the board?  As long as you're running effective daily standups, and your stories are well written, you'll identify your blockers, which is really what the point of tasks is (hey, my task is stuck in 'in progress', something must be wrong!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c. Detail the story, off-load the creation of tasks outside the sprint planning.  Especially effective if you only have one person working on the story, that way they can organize themselves in private and stick stuff on the board later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3) Technical Stories&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the grunt work that every team has to do, the &quot;setup&quot; work that's needed before you can start adding features.  There is nothing wrong with the story in your example. You could just rewrite it, as @Lunivore suggested, to reflect the business value.  The real question is are you able to demo something? Even if it's a technical demo where you see database tables or see a message being passed through Mule.  I'd say there is a way to do that, so you're good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6323" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T17:03:28.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14008" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14009" CreationDate="2015-01-16T19:32:31.800" Score="0" ViewCount="918" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I make a resource appear 'Inactive'? I see the 'Inactive' button on the 'Resource information', however it's disabled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a resource that's been working on a project, but is no longer in the company, so I'd want him to show on the past tasks but not be available in the Resource pool. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16019" LastEditorUserId="158" LastEditDate="2015-01-19T16:18:10.217" LastActivityDate="2015-01-19T16:18:10.217" Title="Inactive resources" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;resources&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14008" CreationDate="2015-01-16T23:09:34.017" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Inactive command only works if you are using Project Server.  You don't want to remove the resource from the pool if she/he has logged actual hours.  The best I can suggest is to change the resource's name to &quot;Jane Smith - DO NOT USE&quot; or something like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then routinely check the resource usage view to ensure Jane is not assigned to any tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T23:09:34.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13991" CreationDate="2015-01-17T03:15:51.763" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Just Say &quot;No&quot; to Scrum Anti-Patterns&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The daily stand-up is for team coordination. Gamification and intra-team competition are antithetical to the goals of the stand-up, and introducing &quot;fluff&quot; into a meeting that should be time-boxed to 15 minutes or less is counter-productive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep the meetings short and focused, and end them early when the meeting's objectives have been met. Save the other stuff for team-building exercises or quarterly lunches, but don't clutter your Scrum with unnecessary distractions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-01-17T03:15:51.763" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13993" CreationDate="2015-01-17T03:32:24.273" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Refocus the Stand-Up on Coordination&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the Scrum Guide calls out the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-daily&quot;&gt;standard &quot;three questions&quot;&lt;/a&gt; almost as a fixture, the questions themselves aren't the point. The real objective of the daily stand-up is to enable the Development Team members the chance to coordinate with each other, and to identify hand-offs and dependencies in the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speeding up the daily stand-up should never be an explicit goal. While teams should respect the time-box, artificially shortening the meeting without achieving the necessary coordination defeats the purpose of having the meeting at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Refocus your daily stand-up on coordination within the team rather than on pulling status. If you need to reword the questions to make that happen, do it, but don't skimp on the self-directed coordination between team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-01-17T03:32:24.273" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13991" CreationDate="2015-01-18T08:55:41.567" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tried to find different ways to keep the daily scrum interesting. Here is what I found and at the same time think that it would be worth trying. Always consider, to not bring somebody in a uncomfortable situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather neutral:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have been using smart phone app-&lt;strong&gt;timers&lt;/strong&gt; in the daily scrum. Passing them from one to the other. I think &lt;strong&gt;playing sounds&lt;/strong&gt; when somebody takes longer could also be a fun factor. From the description/pictures of &lt;a href=&quot;https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/daily-scrum-time-keeper-dstimek/id936244546&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/daily-scrum-time-keeper-dstimek/id936244546&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/istandup-daily-scrum-meeting/id523992974&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/istandup-daily-scrum-meeting/id523992974&lt;/a&gt; I see some extraordinary sounds (Smoke Detector, Fire Alarm, Groan, Ohh, ...). There are a lot more of such apps...on different devices...--------&gt; Extending this idea: As you can see here &lt;a href=&quot;http://yaazone.com/software/daily-scrum-time-keeper&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://yaazone.com/software/daily-scrum-time-keeper&lt;/a&gt;. Put the timer on a holder: operate freehand, peek on the time, respect more others talking time since you see their time&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Don't always go consecutively around a circle. Get the current speaker to &lt;strong&gt;randomly pick the next person to talk&lt;/strong&gt;, as long as that person isn't standing right next to them, or use a random number selection from a hat to set speaking order, etc. &quot; [from www.scrum.org/Forums/aft/95]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;change the roles / speak for somebody else&#xA;Ask a random team member to facilitate the scrum sometimes a week. Ask each team member to give the status of another random team member.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can be rather challenging:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;4&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;We usually &lt;strong&gt;use a bouncy ball as talking token&lt;/strong&gt;. You need to bounce the ball to a person which has not yet spoken in a random order. This makes everyone to focus an who has and has not yet talked. Simple but effective and makes everyone listen.&quot; [from www.scrum.org/Forums/aft/95]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Whoever is giving their update during the daily scrum &lt;strong&gt;needs to hold a 3 kilogram&lt;/strong&gt; [...] medicine ball at arm's length. This is light enough that you can hold the medicine ball while giving your updated, but it's heavy enough that you don't want to give a long update.&quot; [from www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/weighty-matter-daily-scrum]&#xA;Just a start...please add more&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16016" LastEditorUserId="16016" LastEditDate="2015-09-12T07:28:36.350" LastActivityDate="2015-09-12T07:28:36.350" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14013" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14014" CreationDate="2015-01-18T19:45:50.907" Score="2" ViewCount="931" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am pretty green and I am having an issue. I have 2 staff that can commit 50% of their time to the project. I opened the resource sheet and set their units to 50%. Then when I assign someone to a large task, maybe 15 hours, it shows they are over allocated. Sometimes it gives me the option to extend the duration and sometimes it does not. What are the conditions that make the system give that option? Can I force it to extend the duration? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The business case is this. The staff will be writing a piece of software, lets say the search functionality will take 20 hours to complete, I want to see how long it will take if the resource has 50% availability. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anyone can point me in the right direction that would help a lot! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16044" LastActivityDate="2015-01-18T20:50:38.633" Title="When a resource is over allocated why does the &quot;extend duration of task&quot; option sometimes not appear?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14013" CreationDate="2015-01-18T20:50:38.633" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you looked at how many units are allocated for the resource inside the task ? Double click on task and look the resources tab. There should be 100%, change it to 50%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also what is your schedule option? Fixed Units or Fixed work. If you have 20 hrs estimate, it seems you should use Fixed Work scheduling approach. This can be found in  project properties. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7644" LastActivityDate="2015-01-18T20:50:38.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14015" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14019" CreationDate="2015-01-19T00:24:09.123" Score="1" ViewCount="159" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple of days ago I got called into the PMO office asking me as to why certain developments were not communicated. This was not an easy conversation and though it is categorically stated in the communication plan the levels of correspondence to go out to the PMO office. Any ideas on how does one deal with situation like this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16046" LastActivityDate="2015-01-21T19:55:47.897" Title="Conflict with Programme Manager" Tags="&lt;conflicts&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2731" CreationDate="2015-01-19T10:59:26.380" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use following formula:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;IIf([Baseline Finish]=[Actual Finish],1,IIf([Baseline Finish]&amp;lt;[Actual Finish],ProjDateDiff([Baseline Finish],[Actual Finish])/480,IIf([Baseline Finish]&gt;[Actual Finish] And [Actual Finish]&amp;lt;=now(),0,IIf([Baseline Finish]&gt;[Actual Finish] And [Start]&gt;now(),1,ProjDateDiff([Baseline Finish],[Actual Finish])/480))))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Colour codes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Greater than 5: Red&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Greater than 2: yellow&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Greater than 0: Green&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Equals 0: Blue (already completed task)&#xA;Less than 0 - White (Yet to be started)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16051" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-01-20T00:24:04.607" LastActivityDate="2015-01-20T00:24:04.607" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14015" CreationDate="2015-01-19T12:43:17.330" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why is this a conflict?  I think your best approach is to follow the plan, the process and procedures, and the standards put forth by your project leadership and the PMO.  While no one can follow these things perfectly, it is your responsibility as either or both a team member or manager to pursue compliance as if perfection was possible and to understand what broke down when you failed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, deviation from a planned approach is sometimes required.  When you are consciously deviating from the plan, you should document that such that you can explain your decision when that time comes.  If your leadership and PMO were reasonably of quality, they would understand your decision--albeit may not agree--and move on.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-01-19T12:43:17.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13991" CreationDate="2015-01-19T19:18:39.183" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I regularly ask a random team member to facilitate the scrum 2 of 5 times a week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also once every few weeks I do a scrum where I ask each team member to give the status of another random team member during scrum so that they need to rely on our tracking tools to understand team progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-01-19T19:18:39.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14015" CreationDate="2015-01-20T05:24:22.803" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A direct approach will be good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should recollect PMO of the agreed communication plan and inform them that you communicated adhering to the plan. Additionally tell PMO that if any change in the plan is needed, you are open to discussion to avoid any similar confusion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15992" LastActivityDate="2015-01-20T05:24:22.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14015" CreationDate="2015-01-20T11:47:27.943" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First the good- you have a communication plan and by your post I'm assuming that it has been followed too! Now the bad- the communication plan hasn't worked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By that I mean the comms plan hasn't met the needs of the stakeholder engagement strategy (I'm assuming this beacause from your post someone senior to you wanted to be told or have stakeholders told something in a particular way at a particular time and that hasn't happened as it wasn't in the comms plan). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your comms planning approach probably is fine but it may be your stakeholder strategy needs a refresh. I'd suggest starting by re-socialising your &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_assignment_matrix&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;RACI&lt;/a&gt; with your PMO and working with them to to tweak the comms plan so that everybody is receiving the communications they need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14950" LastActivityDate="2015-01-20T11:47:27.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14022" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14024" CreationDate="2015-01-20T14:24:54.387" Score="9" ViewCount="11909" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our dev team estimates work in hours, but we do not include any testing time in the original estimate. For example if the devs say an item will take 4 hours that will become our estimate for that item, but it might take an additional hour for our QA team to test. Do you add that hour to the original estimate of 4 hours making it 5 hours?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please include as much detail in your answer instead of just saying yes or no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, please don't suggest to use story points as this did not work for us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16060" LastEditorUserId="5467" LastEditDate="2015-02-03T12:11:06.840" LastActivityDate="2015-02-03T12:11:06.840" Title="Do you include testing in the original estimate?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14023" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14026" CreationDate="2015-01-20T15:23:53.923" Score="9" ViewCount="10849" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any respected, or at least well-known, Kanban certificates? There are many Scrum certifications, some of them can be taken online (scrum.org), others require participation in a stationary course (scrum alliance), but I could not be able to find any Kanban course (preferably with certificate) that would encourage my trust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And by the way, do you find this kind of certificates any useful? Do you think, that candidate with such certificates (assuming the same achievements and experience) have any advantage over the others?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16062" LastEditorUserId="16062" LastEditDate="2015-01-20T15:40:56.543" LastActivityDate="2016-05-20T11:51:20.510" Title="Are there any respected Kanban certifications?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-05-22T12:06:04.430" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14022" CreationDate="2015-01-20T15:29:27.233" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The estimate for an item should cover how long it'll take to be done. Assuming what you define as &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt; covers testing as well as development, then it should be in the original estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to ensure everything that needs to be covered to reach &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt; goes into the estimate is to ensure everyone involved (eg the testers) are invited to the sprint planning meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14835" LastActivityDate="2015-01-20T15:29:27.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3738" CreationDate="2015-01-20T15:30:03.637" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the previous comments and think that a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;kanban&lt;/a&gt; board could be a great solution for you. It is based on separating the board into the progress columns (the most simple approach - to do, doing and done) and then moving your tasks through these columns from creation to completion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this you could use either a physical board or a software solution. There are plenty to choose from these days, so you would be able to pick out the one most suitable for your team. Most of the tools provide reporting, integrations with other software and resource, file and other detailing on the tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are currently using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eylean.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Eylean Board&lt;/a&gt;, it suits us well and allows for flexibility on how we arrange each project. However, if this does not suit your needs, there is plenty of similar software to choose from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10336" LastActivityDate="2015-01-20T15:30:03.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14023" CreationDate="2015-01-20T23:14:50.213" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kanban certifications are definitely not as well established as Scrum training/ certifications.  But they certainly are available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Lean Kanban University, with active involvement of/ direction by 'Kanban Method for Software' pioneer David J Anderson, has been issuing 2 kinds of certifications - AKT - Accredited Kanban Trainer - and KCP - Kanban Coaching Professionals.  Both of these require undergoing fairly rigorous training and evaluation by an Advisory Board that governs each of the AKT/ KCP Programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both require Kanban training from an AKT, work experience with Kanban in order to present a case study (for KCPs) and an application process including a review by the respective advisory board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that in the Kanban community, these 2 certifications carry the most weight.  You can find out more about them here - &lt;a href=&quot;http://edu.leankanban.com/lku-programs-trainers-and-coaches&quot;&gt;http://edu.leankanban.com/lku-programs-trainers-and-coaches&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, I know of other consultants/ coaches that also provide Kanban training and their own certification.  One of these is Dr. Masa K Maeda (Valueinnova) - who provides extensive Lean/ Agile Project Management training.  He has a complete approach that he refers to as Serious LeAP.  He has a Kanban Methodologist certification.  You can find more about it here - &lt;a href=&quot;http://valueinnova.com/training.html&quot;&gt;http://valueinnova.com/training.html&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HTH&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2015-01-20T23:14:50.213" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14022" CreationDate="2015-01-21T05:27:48.080" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;QA estimates must be included in the original estimates, because QA activities will also consume time and impact the project completion milestone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Development estimates are for the development team, and QA estimates are for the SQA team. We include both development and testing time in the estimates, but separately. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we merge them  - &#xA; - We cannot identify the estimates for development and QA separately.&#xA; - We cannot compare the estimates with actual time taken for development and QA separately.&#xA; - We cannot have separate milestone development complete and QA complete. &#xA; - We cannot track development and SQA progress separately. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Development and QA are (mostly) done by separate teams, so it is better to separate them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15992" LastActivityDate="2015-01-21T05:27:48.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14022" CreationDate="2015-01-21T11:12:33.010" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A quick counter question can probably answer this. &quot;Would you deliver to the client after 4 hours of Dev?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you can't deliver after just the dev work, QA's estimate has to be included to the original estimates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @David suggested, you should go for the Definition of Done which includes every activity needed to complete the job from initiation to delivery. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6172" LastActivityDate="2015-01-21T11:12:33.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14022" CreationDate="2015-01-21T15:35:54.893" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The estimate from the development team should include time to perform automated testing. In &lt;em&gt;addition&lt;/em&gt;, time should be estimated for a release QA period. Additional resources should be accounted for in the release QA period for user experience testing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My team has found this to be very helpful throughout multiple projects. The automated testing, generally completed through test-driven development, catches issues throughout the normal development cycle. Our User Experience Specialist performs release testing with test users during the release QA period to discover anything not caught in the automated testing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having designated release periods for user experience testing also frees up the development team to add polish to the application and incorporate learnings from the user testing that are within scope. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7485" LastActivityDate="2015-01-21T15:35:54.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12832" CreationDate="2015-01-21T16:50:55.340" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can put the Project title + Task Name + link on the code commit/check-in&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not ideal, but it works. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6208" LastActivityDate="2015-01-21T16:50:55.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14022" CreationDate="2015-01-21T17:55:26.087" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simple answer is that the scope of the tasks should be made clear, e.g. code, unit test, test, QA etc and then you will know where to allow for testing and all other efforts in your estimates - and if coding is expecting to include an element of testing by the programmer, then this must be included in their estimates&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16079" LastActivityDate="2015-01-21T17:55:26.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14000" CreationDate="2015-01-21T18:03:34.110" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming we are referring to '&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmis-consulting.com/articles/project-risk-management/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;project risk management&lt;/a&gt;' a 'risk' is typically and event or condition that would impact on project objectives - and there is a move to move away from classifying opportunities as risk, as people often find this confusing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;also, a hazard is not the same as a risk - a hazard is harmful but usually foreseeable - where as risk denotes uncertainty (chance of failure or chance of danger) - hope this helps you to sort out your definitions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16079" LastEditorUserId="16079" LastEditDate="2015-01-22T20:30:15.263" LastActivityDate="2015-01-22T20:30:15.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14015" CreationDate="2015-01-21T19:55:47.897" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thanks all for your suggestion, I did end up going the direct approach and it was agreed that with regards to the plan there was nothing amiss. We also agreed on having a revisit of the plan, and added a couple of more scenario based touch points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16046" LastActivityDate="2015-01-21T19:55:47.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14022" CreationDate="2015-01-21T22:43:36.880" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few things to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the QA finds a bug then the developers have to fix it. Then it is likely the QA will need to re-test to confirm the bug is fixed. So simply saying that the QAs need 2 hours can be quite misleading. Testing impacts on both the developers and the QAs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your QA resource is limited and you want to estimate in time units then you need to consider not overloading or underloading the QAs. For example, saying you have 100 hours of development work and 100 hours of QA work only works if you have the same number of developers as QAs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These complications are why a lot of people prefer to use story points. Story points are an estimate of the relative complexity of the story rather than the time you expect each discipline to spend on it (which is very difficult to guess correctly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-01-21T22:43:36.880" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14023" CreationDate="2015-01-21T22:54:38.093" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Certifications are (Just) Sales Tools&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[D]o you find this kind of certificates any useful? Do you think, that candidate with such certificates (assuming the same achievements and experience) have any advantage over the others?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I won't address the state of available certifications (as I consider that a searchable question with non-canonical answers) I think the question of the &lt;em&gt;value&lt;/em&gt; of Kanban certifications is really no different than that of certifications in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certifications are a sales tool &lt;em&gt;for the candidate&lt;/em&gt; and (sometimes) for the hiring company. The value of any certification will depend on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mind share of the skill that's being certified.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Market share of the certifying body.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How well the candidate is able to leverage the certification on a resume or cover letter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How valuable a company's clients find the certification, especially in the government sector or in regulatory compliance fields where the certification may be a contractual requirement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether the certification can be presented as valuable &lt;em&gt;to the hiring company&lt;/em&gt; because it adds perceived value to &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; client base.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example of the last item, a security certification like the CISSP might add value to a professional services company whose marketing pitch is that all their experts are certified security management professionals. If the project is a regulatory compliance project, this may be important as part of the sales cycle. Both the candidate and the hiring company might use the certification as a sales tool in such a situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most cases, though, a certification by itself has no value &lt;em&gt;unless you can sell it as a differentiator&lt;/em&gt;. A Kanban certification could certainly help differentiate a candidate from a more traditional PMI practitioner, but any value will depend on the role and how well the candidate sells it as a key differentiator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your mileage will vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-01-21T22:54:38.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3414" CreationDate="2015-01-22T12:58:39.423" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;SF is not a common, but can be a useful relationship under certain conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's primary use is when there is a requirement for continuity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of a 24 hour operation there must be at least one shift on duty at a time; Shift 1 could be linked to Shift 2 using a SF relationship.  If shift 2 is delayed, shift 1 must continue to work past the initially scheduled time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly if you had to transition from an old to a new system in an environment which required continuity, for example a large bank was making changes to its online banking system.  A Start to Finish relationship could be used to link the operations of the systems; I.e System 1 could not finish until System 2 had started.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This article goes into greater depth &lt;a href=&quot;https://scopetraining.com.au/project-management/finish-start-relathionships/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://scopetraining.com.au/project-management/finish-start-relathionships/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;code&gt;Start to Finish Relationships&lt;/code&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16086" LastActivityDate="2015-01-22T12:58:39.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14041" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-22T15:44:49.260" Score="2" ViewCount="624" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do I convince my team, which is working on three week long sprints, to work on two week long sprints instead? The idea is to get quicker feedback from the Product Owner. The team doesn't get that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5576" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-10-30T16:56:42.300" LastActivityDate="2015-10-30T17:03:59.470" Title="How do I convince my team to reduce sprint duration from three weeks to two weeks?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;timeboxing&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14000" CreationDate="2015-01-22T16:52:08.897" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would amend the hazard and risk definitions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;hazard&lt;/strong&gt; is something that is undesirable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;risk&lt;/strong&gt; is the potential occurrence of a hazard at some point in the future. It has two dimensions, the probability of it occurring (which can be modeled statistically), and the impact in the event it does occur. Glen Alleman writes very knowledgeably on the subject &lt;a href=&quot;http://herdingcats.typepad.com/my_weblog/risk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Herding Cats&quot;&gt;Herding Cats, Glen Alleman's blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can mitigate a risk (i.e. reduce its probability and/or impact) in various ways depending what it is, and you can put in place risk response plans to say what you will do in the event that the risk occurs (i.e the hazard actually hits your project/service).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could describe potential service failures in terms of the specific risks occurring, causing a service failure. For example, there is a 0.001% risk that our main data centre will have a major outage on any given day, leading to a complete service failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15997" LastActivityDate="2015-01-22T16:52:08.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12915" CreationDate="2015-01-22T22:04:54.773" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;surely the Product specification should be the features and themes as defined and agreed with the Product Owner as part of the Product Vision (or whatever name you wish to give it)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I prefer not to use 'roadmap' for this as roadmap to me conveys the notion of how you're going to get there, e.g. release plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16079" LastActivityDate="2015-01-22T22:04:54.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14041" CreationDate="2015-01-22T22:16:35.993" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Teams sometimes dislike the idea of shorter sprints as they worry that a larger percentage of their time will be spent in meetings. But the length of the sprint ceremonies should be proportional to the length of the sprint, so they will not be spending any more time than before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may also be technical concerns. Some teams worry that 2 weeks is not enough time to complete more technically complicated stories. This is when the importance of breaking stories down comes in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try and find out if these concerns (or others) are present in the team. If they are, work through them and build confidence in the team that shorter sprints can work. Remember though, at the end of the day it is the team's decision. So you need to win them over with reasoned argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-01-22T22:16:35.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12836" CreationDate="2015-01-22T22:28:14.980" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;one of the biggest advantages that Agile (and all other similar approaches) can bring, is that one or two functions (PO and Designers) should never make key decisions on their own - or those decisions will be subject to unnecessary re-work and downstream change - that is one of the major reasons why Agile can give you better product faster :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile encourages all key functions to work as single team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16079" LastActivityDate="2015-01-22T22:28:14.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12836" CreationDate="2015-01-23T00:02:31.643" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One question to ask is if all stories need to be finally designed when they go out. If not, it might help to only do the interaction/usability design up front and leave the visual design for later. &#xA;This might not be ideal as it drags one story over multiple sprints but it could save the up front rework of high quality slides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4481" LastActivityDate="2015-01-23T00:02:31.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14048" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14056" CreationDate="2015-01-23T09:23:01.317" Score="6" ViewCount="256" Body="&lt;p&gt;I run a dev team of 8. We have a few PMs here and they often ask about getting a good view of what free developer resource we have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other parts of the business have a shared outlook calendar but for developers I feel this comes down to micro-managing. There's always work to do, but its a question of priorities. I don't want PMs questioning the fact that someone is refactoring the build or holding a code review; suggesting that this work should be superseded by some project work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use trello for assigning people to support tickets etc, but this doesn't give a feel of how well we can resource multi-week/month projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone know of anything that works well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4739" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-02T14:26:51.113" LastActivityDate="2019-01-04T16:45:15.210" Title="Giving PMs a view of developer resource" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;micro-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14049" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-23T12:12:39.993" Score="5" ViewCount="494" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working with a team (but are not part of the team) that is consistently going over their WIP limits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They have decided on a WIP limit - they think it is realistic.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Regularly they break the WIP limit.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whenever they break the WIP limit they promise that next time they will keep to it.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I know if their WIP limit is realistic and if we need to change it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4940" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T19:07:21.413" Title="Team consistently exceeding their WIP limit" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14049" CreationDate="2015-01-23T12:24:15.493" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your WIP limit is within plus or minus two or three sigma of your actuals, it is realistic.  You need to change it if it falls outside of that.  If you want more assurance that they will hit it, then raise the WIP limit to a more pessimistic value, but your planned costs will have to climb accordingly.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-01-23T12:24:15.493" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14041" CreationDate="2015-01-23T12:26:56.730" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Playing with the sprint length is a good idea if you are facing issues. While getting early feedback is a good thing, you should also look at the concerns that the team foresees with the new sprint length. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would they be able to slice the stories small enough to finish in 2 weeks? You also said there is not a lot of automation which would mean that the testing for now would take longer. Try to look for a solution on these angles and you might be able to convince the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6172" LastActivityDate="2015-01-23T12:26:56.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14049" CreationDate="2015-01-23T16:16:56.800" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Other than the WIP limit being violated, is the team experiencing other problems due to this issue? For example, has their lead or cycle time suffered during such events? Have you seen impact on upstream or downstream lanes - where work might seem to either pile up or dry up ( too much or too little)?  Do you see an impact on team throughput?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, is the flow of work impacted in any manner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If cycle time has gone up or throughput gone down, that's an indication that WIP limits are realistic and they should not be exceeding them. If there is no impact and they are able to handle the extra work without impact, then perhaps the limits might be too low and need to be raised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to look at this might be to see how many cards each person is handling simultaneously. If they are more than 2-3 (which might also be too many!), the team is not taking the 'avoid multitasking' lesson of Kanban seriously - and it should impact Cycle time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you could convince them to - for a period of about 1-2 weeks - to strictly not exceed the current WIP limits - there again you might be able to show impact on cycle time - it should go down from current levels!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HTH&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2015-01-23T16:16:56.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14055" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-23T17:08:45.263" Score="0" ViewCount="169" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a cloud-based time tracking service for a 20 person company which allows employees to be logged in throughout the day and choose a work category from a drop down menu, choose the client ID number, enter the amount of time they spent working on a task for that client ID and briefly describe the task. Anyone have suggestions and could you include why you suggest it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16098" LastActivityDate="2015-01-25T12:58:24.373" Title="Cloud-Based Time Tracking Software" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;timekeeping&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-01-27T00:21:00.337" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14048" CreationDate="2015-01-23T18:25:19.817" Score="10" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Your Capacity Planning and Prioritization Processes Need Re-Engineering&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You appear to be attempting to solve the wrong problem by treating this as an individual-availability issue. This is most likely because you have a weirdly-matrixed organization that isn't based around project teams or &lt;strong&gt;team capacity planning&lt;/strong&gt;, but apparently based on the notoriously unsuccessful &quot;Is Joe busy right now?&quot; methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your team of eight should have a variable but generally predictable capacity. In Scrum, this is your velocity range over some trailing historical period. Whether or not you follow Scrum, this sort of historical estimate of future capacity is often your most accurate guide to determining whether a team may have capacity for additional work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, each project team should not be expected to context-switch without a visible and costly penalty to productivity. Your organization is clearly missing both a Product Owner for each project and a scaled framework that can prioritize work across multiple projects. As a result, everyone treats their personal priorities as &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; priorities, and when everything is a &quot;top priority&quot; then nothing gets done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your organizational process clearly needs work. Consider Scrum, Kanban, and the available scaled frameworks like SAFe or a Scrum-of-Scrums. There's no silver bullet, but almost any formal framework will be better than what the organization is doing now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-01-23T20:40:03.170" LastActivityDate="2015-01-23T20:40:03.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14022" CreationDate="2015-01-24T04:40:52.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We include testing that will be performed by our devs in our estimate (eg, writing tests for TDD, writing additional unit tests or feature tests for our nightly regression tests).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also discuss the type of testing that will be performed by the QA team, and the likelihood that they will find problems that we will need to fix (which tracks with various types of complexity or cosmetics). We estimate the amount of additional dev time that will be required to support or iterate with the QA folks, and include that in our estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's often useful to discuss things from the perspective of the testers, since that may cause us to realize there is some additional complexity, and revise our original dev estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2015-01-24T04:40:52.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13991" CreationDate="2015-01-24T04:54:24.407" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would avoid gamification. It's the kind of thing that some folks enjoy but others find extremely annoying and alienating. Even if your current team members all enjoy it (and I would never be 100% confident that nobody is faking enjoyment to fit in to what was expected), team membership changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Humor and fun, on the other hand, can be a positive thing. But I don't know if it's the kind of thing that lends itself to specific techniques. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2015-01-24T04:54:24.407" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14059" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14069" CreationDate="2015-01-24T07:37:17.047" Score="3" ViewCount="2970" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having gone through the IEEE standard document (IEEE 830-1998) on what a Software Requirements Specification should contain I'm now looking for guidance on the next steps following the creation of an SRS&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I believe it an SRS is designed to ensure that the development team and customer are on the same page when it comes to figuring out the functionality and scope of the project. What I'd like to do now is go from this document and write up how to implement the project for the development team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially I'm looking for the next step after completing an SRS. I realise that broadly this is &quot;implement the project&quot;, but how do you convert an SRS into something a developer can use? i.e. How do they know what tests need to be written? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16102" LastEditorUserId="16102" LastEditDate="2015-01-26T06:12:43.460" LastActivityDate="2019-04-27T01:34:07.710" Title="What do you do next after creating an SRS?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;specification&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14049" CreationDate="2015-01-25T08:08:14.920" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good limit is basically one that is hit often, but not all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Consistently&quot; could either mean the limit is too low, or could mean that it is good. How often is consistently?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a limit is being hit once or twice a week for example, it sounds pretty good. I would probably have to ask why are they breaking it? Why is breaking the limit a better option that doing some of the alternatives, like storming on something already in work, fixing impediments or working on a different task?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think to really get to the bottom of it I would have to hear what sorts of conversations are happening when that limit is hit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="763" LastActivityDate="2015-01-25T08:08:14.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14022" CreationDate="2015-01-25T08:12:43.887" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It doesn't actually matter in normal sprint planning as long as you are consistent, i.e. using yesterday's weather (i.e. velocity) to plan, or if you do some sort of traditional capacity planning instead, then you would exclude the available test capacity if you also exclude test from the estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are making an offer on a time &amp;amp; materials project or something, you probably do want to include test effort, unless know test costs are being covered with some buffer or something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="763" LastActivityDate="2015-01-25T08:12:43.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14055" CreationDate="2015-01-25T12:58:24.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a huge amount of options out there that will fulfil all your requirements. A few populair ones:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://toggl.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://toggl.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://getharvest.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://getharvest.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://paymo.biz&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://paymo.biz&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://letsfreckle.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://letsfreckle.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://yanomo.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://yanomo.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer:&lt;/strong&gt; As I'm the CTO for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yanomo.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yanomo&lt;/a&gt; I am biased. I will comment on it's capabilities and leave judging it to others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Calendar based with Google and/or Outlook integration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As well as Matrix based time entry (excel style)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Support for business units so and thus also good support for larger/growing organisations (though for 20 users you might still be fine without them)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Very flexible activity/rate support allowing for global/business unit/user/client/project/sub-project (or a combination thereof) rates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Labor and expense budgeting on the basis of lump sum/monthly retainer/weekly retainer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Support for sub-projects to any depth you need&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Very flexible reporting on client/project/user/activity/business unit/monthly/weekly basis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All exportable to CSV&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;API available&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2s5a3.png&quot; alt=&quot;Screenshot of the calendar entry screen&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16100" LastActivityDate="2015-01-25T12:58:24.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14041" CreationDate="2015-01-25T17:08:35.903" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I understood your situation (you explained in the comments) the problem you are trying to solve is the missing feedback from the PO. It seems that you only get it end of the sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want more feedback you do not necessarily have to shorten the sprint. You could&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduce a PO Acceptance as part of the Definition of Done so the PO checks the user story when it is considered implemented&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create smaller user stories that can be implemented within a shorter amount of time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13496" LastActivityDate="2015-01-25T17:08:35.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14041" CreationDate="2015-01-25T22:36:06.833" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;While my gut tells me that your team may benefit from shorter sprints, I would caution that you're being very prescriptive. That is, you've already decided that going to 2-week sprints will fix your problems and you're now trying to get people on board. It'll be better for the team in the long run if you help them develop good habits identifying and solving problems in the team themselves as a group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if the problem is that stories aren't meeting product owner needs, ask why. Maybe they say that they finish a story, then the product owner says it's wrong. Maybe that's because there isn't a proper understanding in sprint planning or maybe you need to touch base between the PO and devs more often. Ask the team for an idea of how to make it better and you can set up an experiment for a sprint or two to try it out. Experiments should be clear about what actions will be taken, what you hope to solve with it, and what to watch for as success and failure conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because you have longer sprints, maybe make sure to ask how it's going every few days or once a week. If I had to guess, I think somewhere in that process over the next few months, your sprints will become shorter, just because 3 weeks is a pretty long sprint for most groups, but who knows - Microsoft's VS team does 3-week sprints and seems to be doing fine with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-01-25T22:36:06.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14059" CreationDate="2015-01-26T13:39:01.320" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you were following a sequential process, the next step would likely be to design the product. There are different tools and notations that can be used for this, but if your process is expecting documents as outputs or evidence of completion, the document artifact would be a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design_description&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Software Design Description (SDD)&lt;/a&gt;. IEEE Std 1016 IEEE STandard for Information Technology - Systems Design - Software Design Descriptions provides the outline for such a document. The latest revision of this document was published in 2009.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The standard does not mandate any specific design tools or methods, but Table 1 does provide examples of design languages that may be used to satisfy each of the viewpoints presented in the document, which range from various UML diagrams to IDEF models to IDL to decision tables. Additional examples of what may be expected are captured in the text of this standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that design is often an iterative process. The SDD format is designed to capture both high level (architectural) and low level (detail) design. In an iterative process, this would be a living document, especially the lower level detail design sections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experiences, while the design and development team is off creating the SDD (and perhaps prototyping or even implementing some of the framework for the project), the SRS is also used by the test team to develop acceptance tests for the software. These are the requirements-based tests that will be used at the end of implementation to assert that the software meets the intended functionality. The development team will, throughout the design process, concurrently be working on the unit and integration level tests (perhaps in coordination with the test teams).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2015-01-26T13:39:01.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14070" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-26T16:07:30.767" Score="12" ViewCount="627" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is an example of s story that recently made its way into a timebox.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;As an Ecommerce Executive, I want to make improvements to the Request a Callback form which will make it easier to segment the callback request by purpose&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can the customer select their reason for requesting a callback? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can the customer specify whether they are a new or existing customer? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the form dynamic? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does it reflect the design and copy attached?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has the old 'Visual Website Optimizer' code been replaced with the&#xA;following 'Optimizely' code: &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that developers and testers have a responsibility to work out the detail of stories with whatever business representatives are available and I enjoy that part of my role.  However, I am left feeling a bit like I did all the analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last point in the acceptance criteria is part of another story and was completely unrelated.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what the owner of the story actually desired (actually I believe there should maybe be two stories here)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As an E-commerce Executive, I want to capture and send information to the Telephone Provider for MI purposes so that I have improved granularity in the MI reports.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can the customer select if they are an existing or new customer? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can the customer select the product they require a callback for? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can the customer select the reason that they require a callback for? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are the available reasons available dependent on the product selected and&lt;br&gt;&#xA;whether the customer is existing or new? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are the selected reasons sent to the provider?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;As a Sales Manager, I want to route telephone calls to a specific call handling team depending on how the customer has completed the Request a Callback form so that the customer is dealt with by a suitable call handler.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the customer is calling about Product X, is the new Product X&#xA;route I have created sent to the provider? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the customer is an existing customer, is the new Existing Customer route I have&#xA;created sent to the provider for all products excluding Product X? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the customer is a new customer, is the new Existing Customer route I&#xA;have created sent to the provider for all products excluding Product X?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even with the second stories, the developer an tester will still have to talk to a business representative to flesh out the exact detail.  I believe this is a good thing as it allows a certain level of negotiation in order to get the best solution.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe the original story is difficult if not impossible to reasonanly estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also believe that it can lead to disagreements to as when the story is 'done', leading to under/over delivering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have raised story quality at every retrospective for a long time, but in the view of the developers\testers the story quality hasn't improved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to my example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are my colleagues and I falling into the trap of wanting too much defined up front or is the first story under analysed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What level of detail\analysis should the team expect before being asked to estimate and develop the story?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1855" LastEditorUserId="1855" LastEditDate="2015-01-30T14:36:13.687" LastActivityDate="2015-01-30T14:36:13.687" Title="What level of analysis should the development team expect before being asked to estimate and develop a story?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;business-analyst&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14070" CreationDate="2015-01-26T17:55:10.193" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Your Posted &quot;Stories&quot; Are Goals, Not User Stories&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As an Ecommerce Executive, I want to make improvements to the Request a Callback form which will make it easier to segment the callback request by purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not in any way a useful (or even meaningful) user story. While user stories shouldn't be detailed specifications, user stories that are nothing more than vision statements aren't estimable or actionable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your other stories have similar issues. They all represent goals rather than concrete features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;User Stories as Features&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are lots of considerations that go into a well-written user story. Whole books have been written on the subject. However, it's safe to say that a story should use &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_%28mnemonic%29&quot;&gt;INVEST criteria&lt;/a&gt; to describe a measurable deliverable and a feature's context without becoming prescriptive about the implementation details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well-written stories will still involve some analysis and discussion to determine the best way to &lt;em&gt;implement&lt;/em&gt; the feature, but your current slate of stories don't seem to contain even baseline assumptions about your system architecture, user interface design, or customer workflow to use as a reference point for communicating about each story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What Better Stories Might Look Like&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should group related stories into an over-arching theme, and then strive to decompose stories into actionable features that clearly articulate the beneficiary (a.k.a. value consumer) of each feature. Each story should also contain sufficient context to guide the implementation of the feature without being overly prescriptive. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Theme: Improve callback request forms.&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Story: As a customer, I would like the form to provide a drop-down list of callback reasons so I don't have to enter common reasons manually.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Story: As a customer, I would like a place to fill in a callback reason that isn't covered by the drop-down list.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Story: As a call center employee, I expect a callback request to identify new and existing customers separately so that the calls can be routed to the right person on my team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Story: As a customer, I expect the system to determine whether I am a new or existing customer (perhaps based on whether I have an existing login) so that I don't have to check a box for something that the company should already know about me.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each story still invites conversations about user interface design, the trade-offs involved in implementation choices, and other considerations that affect the product and the product-development process. However, you'll know you have the right level of granularity if you don't have to read or write an entire set of Cliff's Notes just to communicate about the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-01-26T17:55:10.193" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14070" CreationDate="2015-01-26T18:20:58.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Designate a Product Owner and participate in refining the stories&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on some of your description, it looks like you do not have a designated Product Owner:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...work out the detail of stories with whatever business&#xA;  representatives are available...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here is what the owner of the story actually desired...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is one person, not a committee. The Product Owner&#xA;  may represent the desires of a committee in the Product Backlog, but&#xA;  those wanting to change a Product Backlog item’s priority must address&#xA;  the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it looks like the development team is passively awaiting the &quot;business representatives&quot; to write-up the stories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What level of detail\analysis should the team expect...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have raised story quality at every retrospective for a long time...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again according to the Scrum Guide:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Product Backlog refinement is the act of adding detail, estimates, and&#xA;  order to items in the Product Backlog. This is an ongoing process in&#xA;  which the Product Owner and the Development Team collaborate on the&#xA;  details of Product Backlog items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The development team should get fully familiar with the Product Vision and the business goals in the release plan and actively participate with the Product Owner to refine the stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to how much effort to put into this effort, again the Scrum Guide says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Refinement usually consumes no more than 10% of the capacity of the&#xA;  Development Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-01-26T18:20:58.750" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14070" CreationDate="2015-01-26T19:03:51.920" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL;DR;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much analysis is needed: enough analysis to enable the team to implement the user story. In most of the cases this means all information is available and there are no open questions. This should be done iteratively: the closer the implementation-sprint the more details are added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally think it is a good thing that you have the intendend goals and impacts as it leaves room for conversations and discovering the problem space. At some point however you should move forward and define features / solutions. But nobody says that you cannot do that as a team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In in an ideal world this works the following way: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Present the Vision and the Impact you want to make&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explore the Solution Space (map Features)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Devide those Features in smaller parts if necessary (one part should be doable in one iteration)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write as little requirement documentation as necessary for those parts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The closer the feature/requirement/user story gets to the iteration it will be implemented in, the more details are added (as much as necessary to implement it).&#xA;These steps are done iteratively. In Scrum e.g. you use Backlog Groomings as mentioned by Ashok.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Business People (e.g. Product Owner) define the &quot;Why&quot; and do the prioritization.&#xA;Together you can define &quot;What&quot; and the Developer define the &quot;How&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general the purpose of User Stories are conversations (check Kent Beck, Ron Jeffries) and can be seen as pointer to the actual requirements (Mike Cohn). It doesn't matter what template you choose as long as it makes sense to your team (e.g. Gojko Adciz states in his book that they used images once).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I highly recommend you to take a look at &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/system/asset/file/259/User-Stories-Applied-Mike-Cohn.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;User Stories Applied&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://leanpub.com/50quickideas&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;50 Quick Ideas ...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.impactmapping.org/index.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Impact Mapping&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://specificationbyexample.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Specification by Exampl&lt;/a&gt;e &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920033851.do&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;User Story Mapping&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13496" LastEditorUserId="13496" LastEditDate="2015-01-26T19:09:02.020" LastActivityDate="2015-01-26T19:09:02.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14070" CreationDate="2015-01-26T20:41:49.727" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &quot;stories&quot; you provide as examples aren't user stories because they don't describe tangible changes.  You have epics, which can be broken down into smaller stories that should follow INVEST principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often this is the case of a PO or business representative that knows what they want, but are too lazy or don't have enough time to write it down.  Instead they write an Epic that &quot;invites&quot; the developers to ask clarifying questions about their vision.  Avoid this; it leads to confusion and constant scope change within the iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master I see this all the time and I ask dev teams that struggle with poor stories to do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If its a story that impacts a UI, can the developer/tester visualize the impact of the story to the UI?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If its a backend story, does the developer/tester understand what data or framework needs to be moved/manipulated to make the story work?  What is the right data?  What makes the data timely?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the dev team can answer these questions, but they aren't implicit in the story we have a discussion and ask the PO to split or rewrite the story to make these answers implicit.  If they are unwilling to do this we go to option two:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option 2: If the team can't answer the above questions at all I ask them to throw the &quot;Epic&quot; story point estimate (for my teams that's usually a 13 or a 21).  The entire team has an agreement that we don't allow these size &quot;stories&quot; into an iteration and its a strong, empirical signal to the PO that he/she didn't do their part of the work.  We then either cancel the iteration or prioritize these stories out of the iteration and swap them with other tangible work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-01-26T20:41:49.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14075" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-27T01:22:47.013" Score="0" ViewCount="3159" Body="&lt;p&gt;In MS Project 2010, is it possible to show the entire predecessor path driving the start of one specific task in a Gantt Chart?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16121" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T19:48:58.347" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T19:48:58.347" Title="MS Project Predecessor Path in Gantt Chart" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14070" CreationDate="2015-01-27T10:51:19.317" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unlike many I don't think that the examples not being ideally written user stories is a problem here. I mean, they don't &lt;em&gt;precisely&lt;/em&gt; describe what is supposed to be built but I'm yet to see the scope of work that leaves no area for interpretation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, I consider sharing business goals in feature / story description is in my opinion a good thing as it allows the team to make informed decisions whenever they are about to make a choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question was about the expected level of details though. A proxy answer would be: the team should get only as many details to be able to build what clients or stakeholders want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't mean that all the details have to, or even should, be in a story. From my experience &lt;strong&gt;nothing beats good communication between the team and the client.&lt;/strong&gt; I'd go as far to suggest that the discussion about the exact level of details or form of the stories may be futile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a short chat on what is to be done between all interested parties will allow to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give developers enough relatedness to technical concepts they deal with&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explore edge cases that either party may be unaware of&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get on the same page on all the details that are not described in any version of the story&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explicitly discuss potential consequences of changing one feature in other part of the app&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words I don't think that the level of details in the stories is a problem. We often go with even more general descriptions of features (we don't even care to use the user story format).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is likely a problem here is a level of details covered in a discussion about stories or even insufficient communication around them. &lt;strong&gt;Conversations should be a natural tool to figure out all the details both before starting the work and once development is ongoing.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the more direct the discussions are, i.e. with no proxy, the better. This means that ideally business analysis role is distributed across the team or the team can use help from such a person on demand whenever they're discussing work items with stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2015-01-27T10:51:19.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14075" CreationDate="2015-01-27T13:04:44.850" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can do this easily if the specific task you are interested in is in the critical path. A short video demonstrating how to do this is at &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2nfc3-7Cc8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2nfc3-7Cc8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2015-01-27T13:04:44.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14078" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14080" CreationDate="2015-01-27T13:32:47.820" Score="2" ViewCount="138" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am performing an assessment on the effectiveness of a development team, the results of which will be used as the basis of introducing change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any appropriate resources or guides to assist me? ensuring nothing is missed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16124" LastActivityDate="2015-01-28T01:42:12.130" Title="Assessing the effectiveness of a development team" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-02-01T10:30:13.990" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14070" CreationDate="2015-01-27T14:26:35.380" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master should be helping your Product Owner write the user stories, as the ones you have given seem to be almost specifying what the team should do. They shouldn't - it's up to the team to decide how the goal is reached.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A better user story, in my opinion, is &quot;As an e-Commerce executive, I want to be able to know why callbacks were requested, so I can ensure we aren't calling customers at the wrong time&quot;. It doesn't describe how, it just defines what and why the user wants something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Cone of Uncertainty comes into play here - you don't know much to start with, and your backlog grooming should start to flesh out the details, both from a technical perspective as well as from a user perspective. The team gains clarity from the product owner by asking exactly the kind of questions you detail in your bullet points. Any assumptions and assertions are all recorded against the user story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to answer your question: LOTS of analysis should be done, but by the team. The Product Owner may also need to research some more depending on the questions asked by the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16073" LastEditorUserId="16073" LastEditDate="2015-01-28T11:51:14.057" LastActivityDate="2015-01-28T11:51:14.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14078" CreationDate="2015-01-27T14:55:10.640" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When considering such an assessment, there is one overriding priority that should guide you: talk to the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A team's effectiveness will be largely governed by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Their morale and enjoyment of the work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How well they feel they are able to do their work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many factors will affect these things, but the only way to identify them for sure, in a way that will improve their effectiveness is to ask them directly. Are they being allowed to explore new technologies and techniques? Are they being provided with the tools and equipment they need? Are they receiving enough training? And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the questions, the change should come from their desires. If they get the improvements they feel they need, they will become more effective. If you impose change on them without consulting them, you'll cause resentment and their effectiveness is pretty much guaranteed to decline, quite the opposite of what you seek to achieve. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14835" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-01-27T16:54:03.687" LastActivityDate="2015-01-27T16:54:03.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14078" CreationDate="2015-01-27T15:19:05.213" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Measuring effectivness is a really intersting topic, but in my oppinion hard to pinpoint. It is a rather abstract variable, can contain a lot of dimensions and furthermore strongly depends on your viewpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Peter Drucker had some interesting thoughts regarding that topic, take a look at this &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0061345016&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;book&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“There is nothing quite so useless, as doing with great efficiency,&#xA;  something that should not be done at all.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you look at it from a business perspective, a team could be highly efficient at creating a product (velocity increase, no defects etc.), but in the end they produced a product nobody uses. So you could argue that they were quite ineffective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Efficiency is doing the thing right. Effectiveness is doing the right&#xA;  thing.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at it from another perspective, they were quite effective as they used TDD, Test Automation, Code Reviews, shared understanding etc. instead of having dedicated Testers doing manual verification, silo thinking etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this make sense? :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13496" LastActivityDate="2015-01-27T15:19:05.213" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9377" CreationDate="2015-01-27T15:46:23.590" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been struggling with spikes as long as I've been a ScrumMaster. I'm finally starting to come to terms with them, and here's how:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team is self-organizing. If they say they need a spike, I take them at their word. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We do not estimate spikes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We set a goal of &gt;70% stories per sprint, leaving &amp;lt;30% spikes. (This may seem ambiguous, as the ratio is set in number of stories vs. number of spikes - not story points vs. spike time. But it seems to work so far)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Commitment to spikes is directly proportionate to associated business value. In other words, the product owner (with input from the team) determines whether the spike is necessary in a given sprint to deliver business value in the next sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We do not necessarily stick to the prescribed time-box of one sprint max per spike. I feel it places unnecessary pressure on the team and value-based stories may suffer as a result.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Related to 5: During our Sprint Review we highlight committed stories and spikes not accomplished during the sprint. Stories not accomplished have associated reasons; spikes do not.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within my organization, there is an ongoing debate regarding the usefulness of spikes. Once I accepted that the team is responsible for its own decisions, I removed myself from the debate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16130" LastActivityDate="2015-01-27T15:46:23.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14075" CreationDate="2015-01-27T16:10:56.457" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sadly not built-in to Project 2010.  It is in Project 2013 through the &quot;Task Path&quot; feature.  You can create your own Task Path Manually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Add the Marked field (or a flag field) to the Gantt table.  Using the Task Inspector you can view the driving predecessor to the selected task.  Set the Marked field to &quot;yes&quot; for the task and &quot;walk&quot; you way backwards in the file using the predecessor hyperlink in the Task Inspector.  If you have used the Marked field, you can then apply a highlight filter to show all marked tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to add different colors to the actual Gantt bars you can accomplish this by creating a new bar style and setting the &quot;Show for....tasks&quot; to marked.  If you need more detailed information, post back and I'll go a bit deeper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-01-27T16:10:56.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11415" CreationDate="2015-01-28T01:26:46.127" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am still going to answer this because young PM's ask me questions like this all the time and it might prove useful in the long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think there is one glaring problem here: If i understand the asker correctly they have asked how you can increase traffic?  Traffic comes from somewhere...usually other sites or search engines so the MAU and the DAU have literally zero to do with acquisition since they are both about visitors who have &lt;strong&gt;already&lt;/strong&gt; converted to users. Your challenge then is out further in the funnel...incoming traffic that have not converted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, there is no business value in a bunch of traffic or users unless the user pays to belong to the site, in which case, halting churn is one approach you can take a stab at. Suggest an experience or feature that users have been clamoring for to halt churn or find something meaningful that creates desire you can unpack from your own user interivews (that is a long-term goal anyway).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as the challenge is presented: let's say I have 1M MAU and none of them pay fees to belong to my site the business value is $0.00. Adding an additional feature?  It's still $0.00 unless your feature converts them to paying customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The critical thinker in me says that they are wondering if you see the problem with their shitty question instead of trying to come up with an even shittier answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do not need to know what other features and what other investments, blah blah blah. You need to know this: &quot;what are you guys trying to do?  Are you trying to just increase traffic? that literally has no monetary value&quot;  really?  I doubt it.  What they are likely trying to do is something truly specific, like upsell and cross sell existing customers- something way more tangible and goal-oriented than grow a user base which is just server-pollution IMO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;think about it more critically. And for heaven's sake don't believe for a second they know anything about what they are doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16137" LastActivityDate="2015-01-28T01:26:46.127" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14078" CreationDate="2015-01-28T01:42:12.130" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Team effectiveness can be measured using metrics (not exhaustive) such as – &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Number of projects completed by team on time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acceptance of team’s work &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team's level of collaboration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team's decision making ability  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team's problem-solving ability&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15992" LastActivityDate="2015-01-28T01:42:12.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14022" CreationDate="2015-01-28T20:56:43.053" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Quick answer:&lt;/strong&gt; YES&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always factor ALL the effort your team will need to commit towards a story or piece of work, regardless of the estimation technique used.  How you do testing, etc., should be a part of your Definition of Done, and your estimates should reflect that work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for grammar/spelling I am on mobile - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16148" LastEditorUserId="16148" LastEditDate="2015-01-30T12:34:13.863" LastActivityDate="2015-01-30T12:34:13.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13993" CreationDate="2015-01-29T06:44:38.560" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For your suggestion on only answering the &quot;what did i do yesterday&quot; question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Stand Up is a planning meeting. The yesterday question is necessary to see where we are so we can plan the next step. The team plans how to collaborate and go on towards the sprint goal. If you only answer the &quot;yesterday&quot;-question you are basically reading out loud the scrumboard. Then you really can skip the daily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16153" LastActivityDate="2015-01-29T06:44:38.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14098" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14117" CreationDate="2015-01-29T10:13:59.373" Score="4" ViewCount="1066" Body="&lt;p&gt;When there is a team which has multiple disciplines such as designers, artists and programmers. How should user stories be written to make them independent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: &quot;As a user, I want a beautiful and an easy to use UI for searching results&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That story requires design to make the UI easy to use and it requires artists to make it beautiful. But also it has to be programmed to actually work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can't be done one after another. If an artist concepts the UI by herself, it might not be as usable as the UI designer wanted. And it might not be even implementable by the programmer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far it has been done by sub-tasking the story to feature all these disciplines and what each discipline needs to do before it is done. But it is easily left hanging if one discipline is blocked from completing it e.g getting ill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If making stories independent is not possible, how should multi-discipline stories be handled?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastActivityDate="2015-02-02T22:38:27.300" Title="How to make user stories independent in multi-discipline teams" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14099" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14108" CreationDate="2015-01-29T10:18:57.017" Score="4" ViewCount="1978" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm the new Scrummaster of a Team that develops a software for a customer outside our company. This is my first time working as Scrummaster, I have no background in this field. Our company is just a small software development contracter and our customer is a big multi-national cooperation. We rely heavily on them in that a big portion of our projects are done for this customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our customer however doesn't really care that we're doing Scrum. They don't seem to have any product vision and constantly change their opinion about what they want next. That in and of itself shoudln't be a problem (the PO should have the vision and that the customer can't make their mind up is the whole point of agile), however it's happening to such a degree that our PO has no chance of creating a Product Backlog. Most of the things we work on are unknown until the day the Sprint Planning takes place. During Sprints we are constantly pushed to change the scope of the current Sprint (i.e. add more things).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has the following effect on our Team:&#xA;- We have no Product Backlog&#xA;- We never have a Sprint Goal, Sprints are just a combination of unrelated features/ change requests/ bug fixes&#xA;- There are things added to our Sprint Backlog during the Sprint&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And all this leads to us never getting anything done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My understanding is that those problems come from the fact that our Product Owner lacks the authority to say &quot;no&quot; to our customer. I understand that following Scrum-Theorie I as Scrummaster should refuse both the constant change of sprint-scope and the working on features which are completely unknown until the Sprint Planning. However there's no point in saying &quot;no&quot; to the PO, it's not him who wants to do those things anyway. He knows what the effect on our team is, but he's forced to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any ways to improve this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16052" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-02-10T21:09:56.470" LastActivityDate="2015-02-10T21:09:56.470" Title="How to improve a Scrum-Team with a Product Owner who lacks authority" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13993" CreationDate="2015-01-29T10:48:47.517" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, the purpose of the daily scrum is not to address the three questions. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/Agile-Development/What-do-team-members-report-during-daily-Scrum-meeting/answer/Karthick-Sundararajan-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The following is an answer I posted on Quora&lt;/a&gt; few days ago: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a slightly different view of the daily scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The daily scrum is a waste if everyone is talking about what they did in the previous day, what they are doing now and what they plan to do next. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be meet its purpose if everyone is seeing what they need to do together to get the highest priority story to completion. If that story is blocked, the team needs to look into the next story and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the difference?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When people talk about what they did, the focus is on the individual. I cannot tell you the number of times I have seen teams have daily scrums where people are not hearing what others are saying. This causes the team to stop working as a team. The focus moves from the individuals towards the stories and thus the value delivered.&#xA;It forces the team to think along the lines of taking up the different tasks involved in completion of a story and move it forward. This means that the stories are completed faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It ensures that none of the team members is caught doing over-analysis. As engineers, we like to analyze and understand things. While it is good in most scenarios, the person might be working on what might constitute a new story that can be taken up in the next iteration and effectively blocking the story from moving forward. In fact, in a team where everyone or at least more than 2 people work on the same story, this comes up even before the daily scrum and is resolved earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16154" LastActivityDate="2015-01-29T10:48:47.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14099" CreationDate="2015-01-29T11:19:35.413" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you are dealing with an external customer, who does not follow and presumably understand the problem, that is where you need to start. Talk to the customer. Call the stakeholders for a call along with the PO. Explain the churn on the team. Help them understand the solution (Scrum) and how it would be beneficial for them too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0130676349&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Development with Scrum&lt;/a&gt;. You will find many useful points in this book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16154" LastActivityDate="2015-01-29T11:19:35.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14098" CreationDate="2015-01-29T12:54:22.713" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general it is recommended to base User Stories on the user's functional problems. Having a beautiful design (whatever that means ;) ) is actually a non-functional requirement (in that case Usability) and is represented as a constraint that is attached to the User Story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Whole User Story&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore in an ideal case User Stories are layer independent, meaning they are not solely based on the frontend or backend, but represent a whole feature (going through all architectural layers). If you have features/User Stories that are too big, you do not seperate them by architectural layer, but using other criteria. There are various techniques depending on the User Story (compound vs complex), take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/system/asset/file/259/User-Stories-Applied-Mike-Cohn.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;User Stories Applied&lt;/a&gt;. Another possibility, which I highly recommend, is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agileproductdesign.com/presentations/user_story_mapping/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;User Story Mapping&lt;/a&gt; by Jeff Patton.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Design Spike&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need time to explore the UI and UX you could introduce something like Design &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/spikes/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Spikes&lt;/a&gt; which are used one or several sprints before the User Story is going to be implemented. Generally Spikes are used for functional or technical exploration, but this concept could also work for design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UI - UX Prototpyes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another approach is described by Marty Cagan in his book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0981690408&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Inspired&lt;/a&gt;. Summarized, you actually build bigger prototypes for new features and explore UI and UX concerns together with users. This created protoype is than used as a requirements base and guides the actual implementation. Additionall you could find some inspiration from &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1449311652&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lean UX&lt;/a&gt; to restructure your UI &amp;amp; UX process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13496" LastEditorUserId="13496" LastEditDate="2015-01-29T12:59:23.110" LastActivityDate="2015-01-29T12:59:23.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14022" CreationDate="2015-01-29T14:03:35.413" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the key is to focus on the 'Definition of Done', mainly from the perspective of the Product Owner. Now the team (cross functional team to be more precise) may have some (or a lot of ) questions which needs to be hashed out between the team (remember I am not saying the Developer or Testers) and the PO, so that they have a common 'Definition of Done'. This is where the skills of an experienced Scrum Master come into picture. He/She can really orchestrate the discussion so that both of them find the common ground. Btw, the appropriate place for such a discussion is Sprint Planning meeting.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13734" LastActivityDate="2015-01-29T14:03:35.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12911" CreationDate="2015-01-29T14:59:17.143" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Quick Answer:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a team calendar (confluence/sharepoint/anywhere accessible to the entire team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Before sprint/release planning, have the team and stakeholders update - review this calendar at the start of sprint planning to make sure everyone is on the same page with commitments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Towards the end of sprint planning, review how much work each team member has committed to and question whether it is feasible with the vacation calendar visible.  E.g my DBA may commit to deploying changes but may not be cognizant that tester 1 is out for x days and tester 2 is out for y.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This helps the team better manage commitments during vacation heavy times of the year&lt;/strong&gt;, it also helps set and adjust product owner expectations during that same time period. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for grammar/typos I am on mobile&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16148" LastEditorUserId="16148" LastEditDate="2015-01-30T12:38:37.087" LastActivityDate="2015-01-30T12:38:37.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14106" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-29T15:02:27.197" Score="7" ViewCount="953" Body="&lt;p&gt;The picture I saw far too many times over my career. A team of developers in a company driven by non-technical management, practising scrum, severely pressured to deliver points and features by certain deadline therefore having no chance to concentrate on quality or dealing with technical debt. Not many developers if at all understand what is going on in depth of code, tests coverage is not sufficient so any attempt of refactoring anything leads to bunch of regressions. It takes more and more time for a frustrated team to add a feature and then even more time to figure out why this feature broke the product in several places and how to fix it without breaking in further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Management understands that something is not right and hires a new head of dev expecting him to bring improvements resulting in more features delivered quicker. It is usually very difficult to explain to management that it will take time to repay technical debt and that the team will be even slower refactoring rather than delivering features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is usually the best strategy with that? Are there any links on success stories? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16159" LastEditorUserId="16159" LastEditDate="2015-01-29T15:09:23.080" LastActivityDate="2015-02-08T14:03:04.903" Title="How to repay technical debt still delivering features?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;relationships&gt;&lt;negotiation&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14106" CreationDate="2015-01-29T15:25:04.883" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Nothing in Project Management is Free&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is usually very difficult to explain to management that it will take time to repay technical debt and that the team will be even slower refactoring rather than delivering features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You already know the answer: you can't create a bigger pie by carving it into more slices. Ultimately, a team has a finite amount of capacity. The Scrum Master's job is to referee the process so that everyone (including the Development Team and the organization at large) understand that the Product Owner must make &lt;em&gt;choices&lt;/em&gt; in how it allocates the team's capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more bug-fixing and technical debt stories the team handles each sprint, the fewer feature stories it can do. Likewise, the more the team concentrates on features, the less time the team can allocate to addressing bugs or outstanding issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no free ride. There's no silver bullet. Scrum makes the &lt;em&gt;cost&lt;/em&gt; of the choices visible to the organization, but doesn't make things cost &lt;em&gt;less&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-01-29T15:25:04.883" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14099" CreationDate="2015-01-29T18:23:15.283" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have a couple different options here and I think it starts with Karthicks suggestion.  You definitely need to: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Facilitate a discussion with all stakeholders&lt;/strong&gt; and work to better understand what the vision and direction is for the project as well as set meaningful expectations for all parties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If the PO lacks authority&lt;/strong&gt;, spend time during that discussion and explain the PO role and the values that make them so effective, e.g., being &lt;em&gt;empowered&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;decisive&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If stakeholders are just looking to submit whatever they want to the team to work on, suggest that they form a committee (which the PO should be on) to manage and deliberate on inputs and which are then approved by the PO for development work.  I've personally seen this be successful on large enterprise projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If the work keeps changing day to day&lt;/strong&gt; and you want to stick to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(software_development)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt;, force that committee to chose which work to take out of the sprint.  E.g., if you &lt;em&gt;put something in you need to take something out&lt;/em&gt;- this will occur often at first, but over time you are reeducating the business on how to treat software development, be very strict about this and allow no exceptions.  Good scrum masters are assertive, delibrate, and tactful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Provide reports and metrics&lt;/strong&gt; back to this committee on how their change process is effecting the product, provide empirical data to back up why the existing process needs to change - demonstrate progress overtime by continually presenting this information back to that group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you are completely in an operations and maintenance phase&lt;/strong&gt; (as it kind of sounds), consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt; as an additional option.  E.g., focus on completely finishing a single item at a time, measure those lead times, and report back to the business side as your team improves.  This allows for flexible backlogs and also the ability to forecast when a work item, on average, will be completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16148" LastEditorUserId="16148" LastEditDate="2015-01-30T23:09:28.473" LastActivityDate="2015-01-30T23:09:28.473" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14106" CreationDate="2015-01-29T18:56:51.747" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Try to articulate the business value of technical initiatives&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of whether management is technical or not, it is good to question the business value of work that the developers want to prioritize. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, developers typically cannot wait to be on the latest and greatest versions of new software. However, many have found the hard way that waiting for a stable version is prudent. In some cases, we have skipped upgrading to a version altogether because it didn't have features of significant value to us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other developers come up with the idea of completely rewriting software from scratch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/12341/getting-support-for-a-software-system-rewrite&quot;&gt;Getting support for a software system rewrite?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/12157/how-to-deal-as-pm-for-a-technical-only-refactoring-project/12158&quot;&gt;How to deal as PM for a technical-only refactoring project&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Read here about why Joel Spolsky calls it the &quot;the single worst strategic mistake that any software company can make&quot;.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If after doing this due diligence, you are convinced that there is business value, then it should not be so hard to convince management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And people who take pride in their work deliver high quality and avoid taking shortcuts even when they are under time pressure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.linkedin.com/groups/Why-do-some-people-take-35313.S.198466220&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why do some people take pride in their work?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2015-01-29T18:56:51.747" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14106" CreationDate="2015-01-29T19:00:09.237" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Quick Answer:&lt;/strong&gt;  During each sprint planning meeting, discuss technical debt issues and create a placeholder card in each sprint with 5-8 or so story points that will be used to address re-factoring.  You can do this as well for releases.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a way to incorporate technical debt in your teams planning and the best way to describe it to management, is that it 'is a requirement'.  During sprint planning, discuss the importance of performing this function and why it adds value to the business.  Each sprint, set aside time within Sprint planning to discuss cards related to addressing technical debt and re-factoring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16148" LastEditorUserId="16148" LastEditDate="2015-01-30T12:14:11.707" LastActivityDate="2015-01-30T12:14:11.707" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14075" CreationDate="2015-01-29T19:27:19.617" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thanks for the answers.  I was able to view the path for a specific task (non-criticle path) by adding a text column and manually entering the unique ID for the task of interest in each of the prececessor's task lines, then filtering on that column &amp;amp; UID.  Kind of clunky and a little time consuming, but it got the results I was looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;If you can't beat the system, trick it.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16121" LastActivityDate="2015-01-29T19:27:19.617" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14106" CreationDate="2015-01-29T20:43:13.210" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a simplified, idealistic example of what is usually happening in this situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Management has Team A that they think has a velocity of say 100 story points/iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Management thinks Team A can deliver 100 pts of business value stories each iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality Team A is is always pressured to provide more and really they can do 90 pts of busines value while needing 10 pts allocated to defect and tech debt efforts.  Management doesn't distinguish between these efforts however when looking at the team velocity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Management has figured out the customer backlog is 1000 story points, so they plan that Team A needs 10 iterations to complete the project which fits within customer timeline.  Really the team needs more like 11-12 iterations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now PO/PM doesn't want to hear this above problem, because the project is fixed scope,budget, and timeline so there are 2 places to stretch: Deliver a fully featured, lower quality product or make your dev team work for free (salaried employees love this ;).  The PO doesn't want to negotiate scope with the customer; its easier to internalize this problem rather than work with the customer to find a solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a scrum master here's how I combat this:  I let the PO create a tech debt story that is worth 0 story points BUT I get him to prioritize it higher than some lower priority feature work.  I do this during iteration planning where I have all the technical folks tell the PO that this tech debt REALLY REALLY REALLY needs to be addressed now or it will hurt the project big time over coming iterations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the close of the iteration, that low priority feature work gets carried over to the next iteration and the PO is forced to do some expectation management with the customer.  In the meantime I have forced the team's velocity down from say 100 units to 90 units this iteration.  I keep doing this over and over again until the team's average velocity is actually representative of what business value they can deliver while still getting to work on tech debt and defects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next time this team is utilized on a project, management has a clearer understanding that they should only consider a business value velocity of 90 units when committing to a fixed scope/budget/timeline project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-01-29T20:43:13.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14098" CreationDate="2015-01-29T22:20:09.010" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having a team made up of specialists is very difficult to manage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One approach is to try and spread the knowledge around, so that, for example, the UI's might do a bit of design and the designers might do a bit of UI. I have worked with teams that do this and although the output of individuals is reduced, the output of the team is actually increased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another approach is to only take work in to the sprints that is constrained by the most bottle-necked discipline. Although this is far from ideal it does highlight where there is an inbalance in the makeup of the team. As an example, you could demonstrate that there are not enough back-end developers and as a result the UI and designers are unable to fill their time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to utilise the task board to optimise the throughput of stories. For example, you could have columns that represent 'in design', 'UI' and 'dev'. Use the daily stand-up to look out for potential bottle-necks and to determine which stories should be started next to best even out the spread of work across the disciplines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-01-29T22:20:09.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14116" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14120" CreationDate="2015-01-30T13:59:00.177" Score="3" ViewCount="275" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having evaluated a number of tools for managing an agile workflow, we are settling on Pivotal Tracker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is one desired piece of functionality it does not appear to have. It would be beneficial if only the Product Owner could move stories from the Icebox to the Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a feature?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16124" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-01-30T16:18:51.120" LastActivityDate="2019-04-24T11:24:53.710" Title="Can Pivotal Tracker prevent anyone other than Product Owner from moving stories from the Icebox to the Backlog?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;pivotal-tracker&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14098" CreationDate="2015-01-30T15:14:13.020" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Multi-disciplinary teams need to be collaborative&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There simply is no way around this.  Teams cannot do their individual work inside a vacuum.  Also, user stories should describe features, and should be developed in vertical slices, not horizontal:&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VlWQw.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA; e.g., your UI designer should not complete the UI design before discussing the designs with UX, web developers, and your DBA's.  Multi-disciplinary teams need to be working together constantly to ensure the right product is being built (&lt;em&gt;and the right product is being built correctly&lt;/em&gt;), furthermore, each team member should value and understand what feedback loops are and why they are important. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your original approach to breaking out the work is correct&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe you have the right approach and I have seen many successful teams do it this way.  Although your approach is correct, I believe you need to re-focus your user stories on the features/functionality that is important to the user as opposed to referencing a degree of quality.  I feel that quality is something the Product Owner and team should be addressing with Acceptance Tests as well as input that could be gathered from additional functions such as a user-feedback session.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Importance of Daily Scrums and Following the 3 Questions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like your team has trouble communicating and one discpline area is held up by another discipline area that causes the original work to become stagnant.  If this is the case then the Scrum Master needs to be asking these questions on a daily basis, forcing this information out of the team, and working to facilitate discussions regarding these stories early and as often as possible in order to ensure that the team is properly collaborating and that blockers are being addressed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reiterate the importance of Feedback Loops&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is a very simple process to follow, and at its core, it is simply an extrapolation of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scientific Method&lt;/a&gt;.  I think it's very important for every team member to understand this and to approach work with the idea that they need to apply this method, share their work, analyze their results, and update their approaches based on the feedback they receive with shorter cycle times being the most preferable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16148" LastEditorUserId="16148" LastEditDate="2015-01-30T15:37:09.440" LastActivityDate="2015-01-30T15:37:09.440" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14118" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14121" CreationDate="2015-01-30T16:03:01.830" Score="3" ViewCount="490" Body="&lt;p&gt;I may possibly inherit a new team which had toyed with Scrum but not found it the correct approach (largely due to the parallel not sequential nature of business projects).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are working to a fairly effective Kanban system but the development team are unhappy.  In previous roles they worked closely with customers and now they are &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; developers (their words) who report to a Product Owner of Project Manager who articulates the customer requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately this has led to a number of project delays as technical information or warnings from the developers are ignored until the Project Manager must return with their tail between their legs to the business customer and explain the timelines were unrealistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been asked to explore the feasibility of a development team where each developer could theoretically be assigned to a number of projects and be heavily embedded in the requirements gathering and backlog generation &lt;em&gt;alongside&lt;/em&gt; the Project Manager or Product Owner.  The management want to know if such an approach is still &amp;quot;Agile&amp;quot; which seems to be a fixation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The senior Product Owner would still decide the priority of the projects coming into the environment but the developers would be responsible for the priority of tasks within each project in conjunction with a PM/Deputy PO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What practices would lead to the potential success of such a system?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;TL:DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cross Functional 10 Man Development Team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Full Stack Developers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 Tier Environment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multiple ongoing high priority projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Current system is Kanban&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Toyed with Scrum&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developers have no contact with business customers apart from occasional Sprint Review&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customers hail from all business functions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Managers are non-technical often ignoring development wisdom&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management wish to explore Agile solution whereby;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developers can approach customers directly in conjunction with Product Owner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each User Story card is owned by a single developer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Considerations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know the temptation for some may be to fixate on the &amp;quot;Scrum did not work part&amp;quot; or the &amp;quot;developer is unhappy part&amp;quot; of the question but I gave that information for context.  I feel confident in turning around the morale of the team and improving each individual's self worth.  I am keen to explore whether a former Scrum team can survive when each developer is allowed to gather / re-prioritise requirements alongside a Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Edit to Add&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this question is somewhat theoretical and a bit more heavy than the normal fare at SE.PM but I felt if anyone could crowd source the cost-benefit of such an approach it would be here.  :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2015-02-02T19:58:26.210" Title="What practices would allow an Agile team to work effectively when every developer is allowed to gather requirements from the business customers?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14116" CreationDate="2015-01-30T16:17:29.450" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pivotal Tracker uses a rather simplistic permissions system that doesn't provide fine-grained technical controls. Process controls you impose on the the use of Pivotal Tracker by users with &amp;quot;member&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;project owner&amp;quot; permissions will need to be administrative rather than technical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Pivotal Tracker Has Open Permissions by Design&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the question, the original poster (OP) says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be beneficial if only the Product Owner could move stories from the Icebox to the Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pivotal Tracker supports only three levels of permissions: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pivotaltracker.com/help/faq#whatarethedifferencesbetweenprojectownersmembersandviewers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;project owners, members, and viewers&lt;/a&gt;. It doesn't seem to support finer-grained permissions, and apparently &lt;a href=&quot;http://community.pivotaltracker.com/pivotal/topics/how_to_set_member_permissions#reply_6249934&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this is by design&lt;/a&gt;. One Pivotal Tracker representative has said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tracker is used by many diverse teams, and it would be difficult for us to come up with a permission scheme which would satisfy everyone, and justify the additional complexity (we like to keep things simple).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, our philosophy is that these different roles for project members should be something that is agreed upon and communicated within your team (because communication is good!). If there are only certain activities which should be performed by project managers, this can be communicated to all team members. If someone makes a mistake, it is easily reverted in most cases by looking at the project history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short of making someone a &amp;quot;viewer&amp;quot; with read-only permissions, there is currently no way to restrict someone's activity within Pivotal Tracker in the way the OP describes. Any process controls imposed on the the use of Pivotal Tracker by users assigned to the &amp;quot;member&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;project owner&amp;quot; roles will therefore need to be &lt;em&gt;detective-&amp;gt;administrative&lt;/em&gt; rather than &lt;em&gt;preventive-&amp;gt;technical&lt;/em&gt; in design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2015-01-30T16:17:29.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14116" CreationDate="2015-01-30T16:23:04.033" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is not a feature&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pivotal Tracker is a nice tool, however it lacks verbose permission and role functionality.  Currently Pivotal Tracker only defines 3 specific roles for projects which are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Owner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Member&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Viewer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Account roles can be viewed &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pivotaltracker.com/help/faq#whatareaccountmembers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.  At this time, one cannot describe what a particular role should have access to/capability to perform.  For additional information on this request, you can see a discussion history of it &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20150522003839/community.pivotaltracker.com/pivotal/topics/add_a_role_or_option_to_allow_users_to_add_a_story_and_nothing_else&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16148" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-04-24T11:24:53.710" LastActivityDate="2019-04-24T11:24:53.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14118" CreationDate="2015-01-30T17:20:54.107" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the question of &quot;requirements gathering&quot; is based on a misunderstanding of the agile principles involved, and especially of how user stories are created and how the details of a story should be fleshed out into an implementation. Simply re-framing everyone's expectations properly may help a great deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it may not be feasible to have 10 developers acting as business analysts simultaneously, there is no reason that developers can't be involved in the story-writing process, in backlog refinement discussions, or in collaborating directly with customers. In fact, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; explicitly declares customer collaboration to be a core value, but leaves it up to the framework and the team to identify the best ways to &lt;em&gt;implement&lt;/em&gt; such collaboration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I offer some analysis in the next section, and some practical recommendations for collaborating effectively in the final section below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Stories as Conversation Placeholders&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A user story is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a specification or a set of requirements (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/articles/advantages-of-user-stories-for-requirements&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Advantages of User Stories for Requirements&quot; § User Stories Aren't Requirements Statements&lt;/a&gt;). Rather, a user story is a structured placeholder for a conversation about how to best implement a given feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even within Scrum, which has a fairly rigid definition of roles within the Scrum Team, there is nothing in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-po&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;description of the Product Owner role&lt;/a&gt; which prevents the Development Team from clarifying the intent of a user story or collaborating with the customer directly. The Product Owner should be involved in gathering requirements and developing user stories so that he can prioritize the Product Backlog properly, but this is supposed to be a way of structuring project priorities rather than a communications barrier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Guide says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is one person, not a committee. The Product Owner may represent the desires of a committee in the Product Backlog, but those wanting to change a Product Backlog item’s priority must address the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The focus here is on prioritization of stories and, by extension, allocation of project resources for each iteration. The common use of the Product Owner as a communications proxy for an absent customer is certainly not mandated by the framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, in Extreme Programming the customer &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules/customer.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;should always be available&lt;/a&gt; to the team. Further, they are expected to actively collaborate with the development team, as illustrated by this direct quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because details are left off the user stories the developers will need to talk with customers to get enough detail to complete a programming task. Projects of any significant size will require a full time commitment from the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Requirements must be gathered, but it is up to each project to determine how that should happen. The important thing is that the &lt;em&gt;user stories&lt;/em&gt; aren't treated as fixed requirements or detailed specifications, but rather as well-framed context for further elaboration and collaboration with the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Practical Recommendations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A desire to gather one's own requirements is often a project smell that indicates a desire to avoid being held accountable for management targets or imperfect communications. This &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; indicate a fundamental trust or process issue that should be addressed by the whole organization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developers &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; help write user stories when this improves the story-writing process, but this must be determined on a team-by-team basis. A lot depends on the agile maturity level of the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Product Owner &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; remain the single arbiter of priority for the Product Backlog or story queue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stakeholders &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; work through the Product Owner to manage the priorities and resource allocations for a project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customers &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; collaborate directly with developers whenever feasible; proxy communications are simply a fallback for situations where tight feedback loops aren't feasible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint Reviews are the last &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt; moment to gather feedback within an iteration, but they aren't the last &lt;em&gt;responsible&lt;/em&gt; moment. Tighter feedback loops are usually better.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customer collaboration throughout the iteration is preferable, provided that it doesn't invisibly change the goal or scope of the current iteration. Changes to scope &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be addressed through the framework, not via side-channels.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-01-30T17:26:51.700" LastActivityDate="2015-01-30T17:26:51.700" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14122" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-31T00:02:42.810" Score="-2" ViewCount="175" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the best or most suitable &lt;strong&gt;software development process&lt;/strong&gt; to follow when developing products like &lt;strong&gt;Microsoft Office product&lt;/strong&gt; (has no specific client)? and Why? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could it be Waterfall? or a modified one? &#xA;Could it be an agile software development method?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16178" LastActivityDate="2015-01-31T15:49:45.667" Title="Software development process for a product like MS-Office" Tags="&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2015-02-01T05:33:25.703" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14123" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14128" CreationDate="2015-01-31T00:05:59.387" Score="4" ViewCount="376" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say two tasks, A and B, have a F-S (finish-start) dependency, who actually decides this is the case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably not the greatest example, but here's one: During software development, let's say the development team decides they want the front-end interface to be developed after the design. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During execution, the customer says that these two tasks don't need to have a F-S dependency. The customer then says that the &quot;code base&quot; can be started without needing the designs as reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How are these discussions avoided? If they do occur, how is the schedule to be updated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16177" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-02-10T21:11:03.403" LastActivityDate="2015-02-18T04:18:43.273" Title="Who determines task dependency?" Tags="&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;schedule&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14124" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14131" CreationDate="2015-01-31T00:11:29.723" Score="3" ViewCount="167" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is based on David Espina's answer: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/14017&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/14017&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, the following portion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;On the other hand, deviation from a planned approach is sometimes required. When you are consciously deviating from the plan, &lt;strong&gt;you should document that such that you can explain your decision when that time comes&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where is information such as deviations to be documented?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16177" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2015-02-02T08:10:57.820" Title="Documenting diversions or delays from a schedule?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14123" CreationDate="2015-01-31T01:12:12.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here be dragons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;True dependencies aren't negotiable.  Design before construction is such a case.  However, there can be overlap.  In many fields, construction can begin before the design is complete.  However, once construction has begun many design options are no longer possible without (possibly expensive) rework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Resource loading dependencies are negotiable, and can often be reordered with little or no cost.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is possible to write code without documenting the design, there will be a design to the code base.  If the design step is omitted, the quality of the code will depend on a number of factors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How complex are the requirements?  Simple requirements can often be implemented without a formal design.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How similar is it to other components that have already been developed?  Developing something familiar is far simpler than something new and novel. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How skilled is the developer?  Skilled developers are likely to produce a better design.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How familiar is the developer with the subject matter?  Developers familiar with the subject matter are likely to make better assumptions about the design.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How uncertain is the design?  Many designs follow standard patterns, so construction of the standard components may not need to wait for the design to be complete. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the developer kept in the loop during the design?  If so, they can rework to match the design as it develops.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the code being used to flesh out and verify the design?  This may be a good approach for new and novel cases.  However, these cases usually require more design effort, even if it is the developer that does the design.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, design may not be complete until development (or testing) is.  There may be issues that arise that require rework on the design.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The degree of documentation of the design can vary significantly.  The factors above may provide some input on how detailed a design needs to be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a customer suggests skipping design, I would consider explaining what will be developed.  Work the extremes of the possible design.  Ask for their confirmation that this meets their needs.  It may cause them to rethink skipping design.  However, if the design is still clear, then the time allocated for design may be overstated and the customer has a point.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastEditorUserId="529" LastEditDate="2015-02-18T04:18:43.273" LastActivityDate="2015-02-18T04:18:43.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14118" CreationDate="2015-01-31T05:40:08.803" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Customer collaboration throughout the iteration is preferable,&#xA;  provided that it doesn't invisibly change the goal or scope of the&#xA;  current iteration. Changes to scope must be addressed through the&#xA;  framework, not via side-channels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This point can be made even a bit more general and independent of framework. The concern is the possibility that side-channel communications could circumvent existing agreements or introduce conflicting requirements, ie, requirements that meet the needs of one stakeholder without regard for the effect on other stakeholders or on the user experience of the system as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This risk can be mitigated by keeping the appropriate persons (product owner, project manager) in the loop: not necessarily present at every meeting but aware of the general topics discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: on one of my projects, I'm the dev lead, and I have a counterpart who is the customer lead. Customers are encouraged to communicate directly with me and with my devs -- which they prefer, because it's more efficient -- as long as they keep their lead in the loop. Occasionally they forget, and I bring her in. (We do a lot by email, so it's easy enough to cc the appropriate folks.) She knows the big picture on the customer side, and I know it on the dev side. There's an explicit agreement in place that nothing gets committed to without signoff from both of us. On the rare occasion that we can't come to agreement, we go to upper management &amp;amp; let them decide. It's informal &amp;amp; effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2015-01-31T05:40:08.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14123" CreationDate="2015-01-31T06:51:11.377" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming that the example you gave was merely illustrative and that you are interested in the more general question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The interesting thing about this question is that it reveals how many things can be assumed inside task dependencies. Dependency should be a matter of demonstration, not decision/power. If it isn't, then it seems there are problems elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe it's not clear what task A produces that is required for task B, or maybe it's not clear why task B requires that thing that task A produces. Maybe the granularity of the tasks is incorrect, and task A should be broken into two or more, only some of which might have a F-S relationship with task B. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing that raised my eyebrows is that this is being challenged after execution has already begun. How was the plan baselined? Shouldn't this discussion have happened during the review of the plan? Why is the customer challenging the dependency now? This seems like there is an underlying problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the project behind schedule, or is the customer unhappy with the planned schedule because of external factors that have changed? If so, maybe the project needs a global replan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has some downstream dependency emerged that had not previously been called out? eg, does some other group need the result of task B in order to do their work? If so, can this be handled as a granularity issue, ie, refactor task B into smaller tasks, one of which can produce the needed thing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to avoid these discussions: I think it's okay and even desirable to have these discussions during plan review, before the plan is accepted and baselined. That helps avoid having them later, when they are more disruptive to the project. But the focus should be kept on products and requirements, rather than ownership and control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes plans have to be changed, and schedules have to be updated. I'd think the important thing is to review the plan systemically, to be sure you've identified all the actual problems, rather than quickly and narrowly focusing on responding to the particular local item that is raising objections. That particular dependency may be a symptom rather than a cause. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2015-01-31T06:51:11.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14123" CreationDate="2015-01-31T12:13:22.177" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The dependencies between tasks are based on logic and choice.  Logic are hard dependencies and are created because one task cannot start until the other has finished--assuming a finish-start relationship--under any circumstances.  For example, you cannot paint a wall until you hang the dry wall, which you cannot do until the wall is framed.  You have no choice in the matter.  You also have resource created dependencies.  This is a bit softer than the previous example because you have some choice here.  You have resources committed to perform task A.  Same resources are assigned to task B.  Therefore, A needs to finish before they are capable of starting B.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last dependency type is very soft and is based on choice.  And this is simply how you choose to schedule the work.  You choose to do A before B and schedule it so.  You establish a finish-start dependency but, if necessary, you can break it and start B earlier or even first.  These type of dependencies are looked at first to fast track when you are trying to recover some schedule slips.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why would you avoid having those discussions?  If the customer wants to see a different approach on the last type of dependency, why not consider it?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is assumed once the schedule is baselined, the customer would have agreed on the scheduling logic introduced in it.  If you were doing scheduling simulations as part of your schedule risk analysis, changing the logic on those tasks where you can could have impacts on the probabilistic results and some of those impacts could be favorable.  So overall, I don't think it is a conversation you want to silence.  During execution, attacking those soft dependencies to recover a slip is very normal and the right thing to do if you are able.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-01-31T12:13:22.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14124" CreationDate="2015-01-31T12:19:44.413" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Funny to read my name in the question.  The documentation of this type of purposeful deviation could happen anywhere you normally document.  For example, if an issue was identified and documented in the issue log, the recovery plan--a purposeful deviation from method or process--might be documented in the same log.  It could be documented in a weekly report if you have such a report.  It could be documented in a variance analysis as part of a plan or even an explanation of the variance.  It could be a simple e-mail to your project boss or customer or another stakeholder explaining what you chose to do and why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think where the documentation needs to occur becomes evident simply how the issue was developed and how the decision to deviate came about.  But however this occurs, I don't think it needs to be over analyzed.  The objective is to have a formal description of the events that will survive in your project artifacts.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-01-31T12:19:44.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14122" CreationDate="2015-01-31T15:49:45.667" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the choice of development process it does not really matter if there is a paying customer behind it or if it is an investment by upper management with the hope of being able to sell the product later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is no paying customer who came with a concrete set of wishes, there will be someone within the organization who has a strong vision for the product and who can play the role of the customer for the project.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Budgets for products are not obtained from thin air, but someone will have made a proposal to make the investment in the product and probably also have done research on the properties that the product should have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2015-01-31T15:49:45.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14124" CreationDate="2015-01-31T17:02:15.853" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Documentation is a Communication Aid&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Where is information such as deviations to be documented?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There isn't a single answer for this, as it depends on what you're trying to document and the purpose of the communication. Deviations from a plan might even be documented in multiple places, and sometimes in different ways, depending on what you're trying to communicate and to whom. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deviations that result in schedule risk probably belong on the Project Risk Log.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deviations that impact budget probably belong in an information radiator such as a bi-weekly budget report.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deviations that affect scope or quality should be communicated with stakeholders in whatever report or communications format project status is usually used to share with that group.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deviations that impact the project team, or (perhaps more importantly) downstream project teams or matrixed resources, should be shared through updates to start/stop or lead-time estimates, as these deviations may have a direct impact on &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; schedules, budgets, and estimates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deviations that can be mitigated should be communicated through updates to the project plan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deviations that can't be mitigated should be communicated to upper management for strategic decision-making.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general theme of most of these items is &lt;strong&gt;effective communication&lt;/strong&gt;. If there's a problem, be transparent about the nature and (if possible) the root cause of the problem so that the organization can take the appropriate steps to fix things, or at the very least not be surprised by sub-optimal outcomes if they are unavoidable. Burying the critical input needed for strategic decision-making is a sure path to project failure, so don't do that!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that some deviations are also simply an expected outcome of normal variance. If that's the case, these routine but &lt;strong&gt;acceptable deviations should be reported as such through the project's normal communication channels.&lt;/strong&gt; A good project manager never covers up deviations from plan, but also doesn't cry wolf when such deviations are within acceptable tolerances and when the project plan has been properly built with sufficient slack to absorb expected variation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-01-31T17:02:15.853" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14099" CreationDate="2015-02-01T08:29:58.313" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just can agree with the answers before to get in touch with the customer. In additional thing you should do in this conversation is to figure  out if the customer is happy with the progress and fix the problems the customer is stating with Scrum practices. Most oft the time I get problems from the customer like planability. And then it is easier to connect their problems with solutions Mike an empowered PO and stabile requirements matching a vision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16153" LastActivityDate="2015-02-01T08:29:58.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14099" CreationDate="2015-02-01T21:45:32.923" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can establish metrics, get these accepted by the customer, and report these to your PO and to your customer, this is probably the most efficient mean to get a change in their behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you evaluate the amount of work (in point, or even better in $) that is not under control or wasted because of this constant change ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16135" LastActivityDate="2015-02-01T21:45:32.923" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14099" CreationDate="2015-02-02T08:07:26.583" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can have a face to face with your Product Owner. &lt;strong&gt;Talk about the risks that she is introducing by not saying 'no'.&lt;/strong&gt; For example, reduced product quality, burn out, and team demotivation. You can also tell her that Scrum may help her reducing these risks. While you are doing this, you can also learn about her motive, and figure out why is it difficult for her to say 'no'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this approach you can start a discussion with &lt;em&gt;all cards on the deck&lt;/em&gt;: she'll now your motivation and you'll know hers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I won't go to the customer until you have this talk. Imagine how would you feel, if your team members would go to the PO instead of you, when they have a problem with the way you do your job. Moreover, the customer may not be interested in the way you work and may also prefer to talk to a PO than to the team (although in Scrum it can work).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-02-02T08:07:26.583" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14124" CreationDate="2015-02-02T08:10:57.820" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the project plan and requirement document with a date and description of the changes, moreover in the delivery document (or change log) just to make sure that the receiving party is also informed about the changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-02-02T08:10:57.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14118" CreationDate="2015-02-02T19:58:26.210" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interesting situation.  My greatest concern from reading the scenario is that you have 1 person (a developer) wearing multiple hats (BA, PO, tester?) with potentially very little accountability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Foremost thing for this type of environment would be to ensure everything is very transparent and help developers avoid the pitfall of drifting from being a team to a working group with silo'd ownership of stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd probably look at doing some form of Scrum-ban.  Story sized backlogs but working off a kanban board with WIP limits and close attention to cycle times on each bucket of story point.  I'd also probably go pretty granular on the kanban board to clearly layout what's happening in process areas where each specialty does their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;product owner visioning and prioritizing, business analyst detailing, developer pre-committed code, developer post-committed code, manual QA, and whatever staging or integration activities that are supported as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd look at using the 3 Scrum ceremonies, but consider flexing the iteration duration by up to a week so that the team could adjust to rapidly shifting priorities.  Depending on the maturity of the team, retrospectives/reviews could be more informal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally I'd bucket work into high medium and low priorities instead of ranking, and put limits on how many high priority stores can be in an iteration to force constant discussion on what is most important to accomplish during the iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-02-02T19:58:26.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14138" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14141" CreationDate="2015-02-02T21:51:30.997" Score="3" ViewCount="3627" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's assume some software consists of 6 components where A, B, C are server side components and D, E, F are client-side components (different user interfaces). The dependency graph is as follows. This also describes the data flow. Data that is generated in A is processed in B and then can directly be used in F. Before D and E can use the data it needs to be processed in addition by C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DPDvF.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now A provides new types data that needs to be available in the client-side components D, E, F. &lt;strong&gt;The question now is: How to create a WBS that incorporates all the required changes so that all client-side components will show the new data.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While a WBS also, to some extend, represents the dependencies I have problems transforming this scenario into an appropriate WBS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Assumptions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Changes in A, B and C can be done in parallel because of well-defined interfaces&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On client-side, changing D has the highest priority, F the lowest.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Suggestion 1&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HyPb3.png&quot; alt=&quot;WBS suggestion&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first suggestion incorporates the fact that A, B and C can be done in parallel and D, E, F are placed in the order of their priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The downside here is that, according to the WBS, changes in F can only be done after D, and E are finished. But as can be seen in the dependency graph, changes in F can be started right after A and B have finished. So this WBS leads to the impression that developers will have to wait until D and E are finished wich isn't true. So if there is a developer that could do the job now he could start it right away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Suggestion 2&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YqbwD.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my second suggestion F is uncoupled from D and E. D and E stay in the same order due to their priorities. Changes in F can now be started as soon as A and B are finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this is not a WBS. While this sample still seams to be fairly easy, real world projects tend to be much larger. So when uncoupling such changes in that way your not just loosing the WBS but also the understanding of the resulting graph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can this scenario be modeled in a better way?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16188" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2015-02-03T09:16:18.437" Title="Dependency graph vs. Work-Breakdown-Structure" Tags="&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;&lt;dependencies&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14106" CreationDate="2015-02-02T21:59:55.340" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Overall, I think the answer to your problem lies in more transparency, but to get that, I think it may help to re-frame your issue a bit. It sounds like there are two things happening here and I think there's value in looking at them separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first is that the development organization needs time for things other than coding new features. This may be technical debt, maintaining their CI infrastructure, keeping up to speed on new techniques, or a dozen other things that go into maintaining a successful development team. Whether you allocate a certain amount of time in the sprint and do them on the back end or create stories/defects for them (I like this approach better, but some people don't) that is still work the team needs to do and should get factored in to how many feature-based stories the team can do. That allows teams to draw the lines on the dependencies for people who aren't familiar with the technical side of things. The PO then has to expressly say &quot;I value this new feature over correcting that broken feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that leads well into the second thing it sounds like your team is encountering: team empowerment. The team is clearly not setting the expectations. When a team takes on a story, they should be including reviewing the existing code, adding new code, writing tests, and refactoring (and anything else they feel is important to the story) in their estimate. I used to tell teams that Done on a story meant there was no more forseeable work that needed to be done on that feature. That means that if there are bugs that come up after the release, the story wasn't done. Again here, we loop back to transparency. If technical debt is really making it harder to deliver new features (which I fully believe; it's a common problem) then the team's velocity should be steadily declining. If it is, you can point to this as the cost of the current approach and the reason to change. If it is not, then either there's some dishonesty going on somewhere that is hiding the reality of the situation, or technical debt isn't really having such a significant impact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, that's probably going to be a tough reality for people to accept. My best advise is to work with that new head of development. They brought him in to affect a change and he's going to have the most leeway in being disruptive to expectations and processes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-02-02T21:59:55.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14098" CreationDate="2015-02-02T22:38:27.300" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Teams should be, by definition, cross functional, and so in a way, most stories are multi-discipline. In your example, I would imagine the developer, designer, and UX expert sitting down and brainstorming what they need from each other with a whiteboard for a little bit, then agreeing, perhaps, that the developer will return a set of results that will each have a title, URL, and brief description. Now the developer can code up the business logic and data layer interactions while the designer works on the CSS. Yes, it's true that if one of them doesn't do their part, the story isn't complete. That's fine because without both sides of that, you can't release the functionality to the customer, so it's not ready to be called done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where you may be encountering difficulty is if the UX expert is concerned about expanded functionality, like expanding the search for more results or inline results as you type your search terms. This is where you'd want to split the story so the basic search is complete and releasable, then you build on the functionality to make it more sophisticated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-02-02T22:38:27.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14138" CreationDate="2015-02-03T09:16:18.437" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you are trying to visualise is a &lt;strong&gt;network plan&lt;/strong&gt;, not a WBS. A WBS does not show dependencies, only the scope or deliverables and subdeliverables that needs to be realised in order to succesfully complete the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;network plan&lt;/strong&gt; places all WBS-elements in their logical sequence in order to show the growing maturity of the project deliverable. So Suggestion 2 is the correct representation of the plan or strategy on how to realise the project. I would make it go from left to right (arrows pointing to the right), or from top to bottom, to make it more clear how to proceed.But that's just personal preference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A network plan is usually created after you have completed the WBS (or scope).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;WBS&lt;/strong&gt; on the other hand would be very simple:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Project&#xA;  1.0 Server Side&#xA;     1.1 Component A&#xA;     1.2 Component B&#xA;     1.3 Component C&#xA;&#xA;  2.0 Client side&#xA;     2.1 Component D&#xA;     2.2 Component E&#xA;     2.3 Component F&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other elements to add might be Project management, implementation, testing ...all depending on the agreed scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps. Best regards,&#xA;Stephan&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2015-02-03T09:16:18.437" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14142" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-03T10:08:19.687" Score="4" ViewCount="1105" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working for a software company. We are using Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS) for our development workflow and it works very well. Now my boss wants to get an overview of the project budget, including the hourly rates of the employees and the stage of completion of the project integrated into Team Foundation Server.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to do this within a stock TFS implementation, or does it require third-party software? For example, is it possibile to edit the process templates in TFS to save and maintain this data?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16190" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-02-03T23:22:56.660" LastActivityDate="2021-02-24T22:08:34.130" Title="Is it possible to do project budgeting within TFS?" Tags="&lt;budget&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;&lt;process-controls&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14143" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14147" CreationDate="2015-02-03T21:42:44.557" Score="0" ViewCount="11043" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a large project plan using MS Project 2010.  The only change I am making is changing the % Complete of a task to 100.  It moves the finish date of the overall project and changes task dates for other tasks.  It does not change the date of the task that I marked as 100%, as expected.  When others make this change, the dates do not change.  The same thing happens when I change a resource on a task.  I am having difficulty determining what setting is causing this.  How can I stop Project from changing the dates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some info on the project settings:&#xA;All tasks types are Fixed work&#xA;Entire project is at auto schedule&#xA;No resource is set to 100%, everyone is either 70 or 50%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16196" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T19:49:59.530" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T19:49:59.530" Title="Task dates and project end date changes when adding a percent complete or changing resources" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14142" CreationDate="2015-02-04T03:35:24.903" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is not a feature that comes stock with TFS&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your bosses requirements, creating a TFS custom process template may be suitable, depending on how he/she wants to consume the information, e.g., graphs, roll-ups, etc.  For more information on custom process templates please reference TFS documentation &lt;a href=&quot;https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms243782.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are 3rd-party tools out there that may be able to provide some of the functionality you are looking for, here is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://urbanturtle.com/blog/2013/03/27/all-about-money-urban-turtle-4-4-for-tfs-2012/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;.  Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16148" LastActivityDate="2015-02-04T03:35:24.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14143" CreationDate="2015-02-04T12:42:42.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a bizarre quirk of MS-Project that setting a task to &quot;Complete&quot; by marking it as 100% Complete does not set the end-date to the current date. However I believe it does affect the task effort, since it reduces the outstanding amount to zero. If you had auto-levelling switched on, this could be allowing it to reschedule future work to take account of work planned for the future but now not required, and thus affecting the dates of other tasks in the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your colleagues have auto-levelling switched off then no such re-scheduling will take place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-02-04T12:42:42.200" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14152" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-05T12:17:26.223" Score="2" ViewCount="2981" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most of my projects, execution and testing goes pretty much in line, but as soon as client starts testing, we get delays in project and it gets delayed by almost 40% of entire project schedule. The major causes being &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Slow responses from client&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Small requests to make some modifications (If I prepare final list, clients keep adding to it indefinitely)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Training and support&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I make sure that the user acceptance completes as per the schedule and within the budgets&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16212" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-02-05T13:25:51.467" LastActivityDate="2015-02-05T13:25:51.467" Title="Project Sign-off / UAT completion takes very long" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14152" CreationDate="2015-02-05T13:06:53.790" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;UAT can be tricky because you are asking users to spend some time away from their day job doing testing for you. Users don't tend to give this activity a very high priority and you will always struggle to get time from them. It is counter-intuitive to us as project deliverers, but it is natural to the users. The first thing you have to do is accept that is the norm and then devise ways to work around it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Plan the UAT as robustly as you would plan the system testing. Plan for test/fix/redeploy cycles and fix them in time and duration (as much as you are ever able to do this).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Publish the plans to the users early and meet with them often to get and then then retain their commitment. Ensure you include in these commitments the people that arrange the working time for the users because they will listen to requests from them over and above any from you!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Include in the plan some time to train the UAT testers on the system so that they know how to test it. That should happen before the actual testing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Agree test-exit criteria and ensure the users know that you will move out of testing on agreed dates if the number and type of UAT issues raised is below this level.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make sure that everyone knows that you &lt;em&gt;cannot&lt;/em&gt; accept change requests at the UAT stage. Not now. Not ever. If users raise something that simply &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be done then the project comes out of UAT and back into development. Users cannot test something to accept it for Live and simultaneously make go-live a condition of some new development. That is scope change control pure and simple.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Arrange for user training to happen after the product has been signed off (and regression tested) and before it goes live. It should NOT go live at the point UAT signs off&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Plan for service and business-readiness throughout the project, not just at the end. You should know in advance what you need to do in terms of engaging and handing over to support well before UAT commences. Get everything ready and then follow the process, whilst admitting to yourself that the business and support have basic needs from you and the project before they can take on the live commitment. This is entirely natural and you need to make it happen.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-02-05T13:06:53.790" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14152" CreationDate="2015-02-05T13:08:47.727" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The easy way is to account for the risk of cost overruns due to things like this in the contract with your client. Some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In a firm fixed price contract scenario cost for how long UAT/sign-off takes on the typical project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In a time &amp;amp; materials contract you could bill by the calendar day or calendar week.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can similarly dis-incent them from making modifications to scope by providing them with an estimate of revised cost and time if you were to proceed, and insist on a contract amendment before you do the work. This requires well defined scope up front, but having that is a best practice in any case&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2015-02-05T13:08:47.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14156" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14170" CreationDate="2015-02-05T13:47:44.233" Score="5" ViewCount="307" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a Software Project Manager currently facing a hard situation: our company is having some hard times (mainly due to financial things) and lately people are generally pessimistic, apathic and/or easily angered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, I have a very strict and hard management style: I point out mistakes and fix them ASAP, raise warning flags and resolve small conflicts with a strong intervention so they cannot grow bigger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as my developers are getting more demotivated due to the things happening I am starting to lose my &quot;leverage power&quot;. People suddenly started to hate to be corrected, became less dedicated to delivery quality and delivering good quality becomes really hard for projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What approach is best for me to take up in such situation?&#xA;Lately I became slighly softer when I interact with everyone and I try explaining bad things with a calm and humble manner but this only barely buys time. I feel like I need a major strat change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you had such experiences? How did you overcome them? What has worked and what not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: If I look back in the history, good leaders had dealt with hard times by establishing even stricter rules. (to the very contrary of the humble soft PMs graduated various funny unversities nowadays). But I am afraid if I do this some people might resign (considering the bad background and the better choices they might have).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11918" LastEditorUserId="11918" LastEditDate="2015-02-06T17:13:09.577" LastActivityDate="2015-02-08T13:39:34.267" Title="Project Management in bad times - demoralized people and loss of power" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14143" CreationDate="2015-02-05T14:56:09.997" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming you are using Microsoft Project, take a look at your Calculation options in File &gt; Options &gt; Advanced.  At the bottom of the Advanced page, there are options for how Project deals with the % complete and the status date.  Those options will move tasks around based upon the status date and the % complete.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: you have a 5 day duration task that is scheduled to start on Monday and finish on Friday.  Your status date is Tuesday evening. In the options you have selected the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Move start of remaining parts before status date forward to the status date&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And move end of completed parts forward to the status date&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the original plan you should be 40% complete (2 out of 5 days) by Tuesday evening.  You enter 25% complete for the task.  Project will move the start of the task to Monday afternoon so the 25%  (1.25 days actual duration) aligns with Tuesday evening. The finish date will be extended to the following Monday so the remaining 75% (3.75 days remaining duration) begins after the status date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See: &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.microsoft.com/en-us/article/Set-the-status-date-41359205-4860-42e6-9b7b-2d702dcb52e3?CTT=1&amp;amp;CorrelationId=3b1355f6-4746-40a1-a689-c84594d08055&amp;amp;ui=en-US&amp;amp;rs=en-US&amp;amp;ad=US&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://support.office.microsoft.com/en-us/article/Set-the-status-date-41359205-4860-42e6-9b7b-2d702dcb52e3?CTT=1&amp;amp;CorrelationId=3b1355f6-4746-40a1-a689-c84594d08055&amp;amp;ui=en-US&amp;amp;rs=en-US&amp;amp;ad=US&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;for an in-depth discussion of how the status date and tracking changes schedules.  If you don't want Project to reschedule the remaining duration leave all the options unchecked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-02-05T14:56:09.997" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14159" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-05T20:11:39.987" Score="1" ViewCount="487" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to structure releases and iterations in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Foundation_Server&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Team Foundation Server&lt;/a&gt; (specifically Visual Studio Online) where &lt;strong&gt;some of the work in an iteration counts towards one release while the rest of the work counts towards another release&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some background: I'm working with a single team that has 2 code branches: the 1st branch is for maintenance with releases every 2 weeks, the 2nd branch is for a long term &quot;Version 2.0&quot; project (release is in 6 months). We work in both branches in each iteration, and we all work on both maintenance and the &quot;Version 2.0&quot; project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our current iteration tree follows the  &lt;code&gt;\&amp;lt;release&amp;gt;\&amp;lt;iteration&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; pattern like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Backlog&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maintenance Release 1&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Iteration 1&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maintenance Release 2&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Iteration 2&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem occurs when some of the work in &lt;em&gt;Iteration 1&lt;/em&gt;, for example, will not be released in &lt;em&gt;Maintenance Release 1&lt;/em&gt; but rather the future &quot;Version 2.0&quot; release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like the structure to be more like this, at least conceptually:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Backlog&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maintenance Release 1&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Iteration 1&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maintenance Release 2&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Iteration 2&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Version 2.0 Release&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Iteration 1&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Iteration 2&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I've considered trying: Restructuring our team to have maintenance-only and &quot;Version 2.0&quot;-only developers is not an option. Breaking down our iterations to be maintenance-only and &quot;Version 2.0&quot;-only is not realistic (we need quick turn-around on maintenance, so that work needs to be in every iteration). Planning 2 concurrent iterations seems like overkill. I would rather the tool conform to our reality than conform our team to the tool's limitations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16214" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2015-02-21T15:22:05.783" LastActivityDate="2015-02-21T15:35:21.033" Title="Parallel/branched releases in TFS" Tags="&lt;tfs&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14161" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-05T20:52:22.177" Score="4" ViewCount="162" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's the scenario: The main point of contact was fairly active up until the project came close to the launch date. At that point, the client started to miss the dates for requirements that were needed for the next set of tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the process for managing the schedule in this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say, to do X, we need Y. Client needs to provide Y on Jan 15.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does the PM do on Jan 16 assuming Y was not provided the day earlier?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going forward, would communication issues like these go into the Risk Register?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16177" LastActivityDate="2015-03-11T12:31:33.137" Title="What is the process of schedule management with clients who aren't very responsive?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;&lt;schedule&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14163" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-05T22:44:04.353" Score="3" ViewCount="3261" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm planning to take training to become a Certified Scrum Master. Which certification have you found provides the most long-term value (earning potential)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The training programs I was looking at were through Scrum Alliance or Scrum.org.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12027" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T20:58:37.633" Title="Scrum Alliance or Scrum.org?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-02-07T21:17:15.237" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14164" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14205" CreationDate="2015-02-06T05:57:49.927" Score="2" ViewCount="540" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working with a technical client ( means he himself developed that website from  some other developer by his instructions and code is now code is completely messed up ) and he has mentioned in the main document that he wants to change the raw code into a class based code and remove deprecated code and and performance issue of complete website code&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However when we make changes the client angrily asks why we are cleaning up the code and pushes us to do only the tasks which they assign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually we are doing only changes in those file but code is interrelated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose he said to change all mysql statements to PDO (PHP Data Objects as an abstraction layer used for accessing databases).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have two options. Either we create PDO connections in every page or change the db object from config file. If we change in the config file then it will stop working with all other pages where mysql code is running.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, how can we tell the customer that the changes we are doing have an impact on overall project so they will take time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1355" LastEditorUserId="1355" LastEditDate="2015-02-11T18:28:18.657" LastActivityDate="2015-02-11T18:28:18.657" Title="Communicating change impact to clients" Tags="&lt;change-management&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14165" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14167" CreationDate="2015-02-06T09:36:33.497" Score="1" ViewCount="377" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the 'life-cycle' of an issue and exception report. I've seen the reports, and it looks like only one sheet that needs to filled out once. Of course, it may not be filled out completely at the same time, but I have no idea what 'life-cycle' means in this content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16219" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T12:58:21.103" Title="What is the 'life-cycle' of an issue or exception report" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14164" CreationDate="2015-02-06T11:53:08.530" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your problem sounds like you have an rather immature functioning change process at play.  In a mature change process, when a change request is initiated, a board sanctions an impact analysis that is communicated to all affected stakeholders.  This impact analysis would detail what has to change, all the impacts--such as to other code as you indicated here, impact to costs, schedule, and whatever else--and then the board approves or rejects the change.  It appears an impact analysis and communication of same are missing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to sponsor a change board and have an explicit process that takes a change request through the life cycle to final disposition.  This will enable proper notification to your customer so they understand what is involved.  If your customer does not want this, then your project and success are simply at risk.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T11:53:08.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14165" CreationDate="2015-02-06T12:58:21.103" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What happens when someone raises an issue or exception report?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually it is something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Preliminary evaluation of the problem- Is it reproducible? Is all the required information present, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pass to development for their evaluation of the impact and fix options&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Review by a Change Board to accept or reject the change (or seek greater clarity), or perhaps add it to the list for a future release&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make the change (if approved) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;System test the change&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;UAT the change&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Close the issue or send back for more work&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is a lifecycle of an issue or exception, once raised, and the report or record of the issue or exception has to support that process in some way and information within it is usually changed to reflect status changes, new information and other relevant items, and that is its lifecycle; closely aligned to the lifecycle of the change itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T12:58:21.103" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14164" CreationDate="2015-02-06T15:52:52.703" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, the customer is paying for the changes. If you are undertaking more work than they requested, then they have every right to be angry with you as you are causing them to incur extra costs. You can explain the benefits to your proposed changes, but the ultimate decision has to remain with the customer, unless you are willing to undertake the extra work at your own expense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using your example, making a change to every page may be quicker in the short term, but it risks causing more expense in the longer term. Explain that, while your proposed change may take a little longer, the maintenance costs of making changes in future will be lower and the risk of introducing bugs will be lower. It then becomes their decision: higher cost now; or higher cost later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14835" LastEditorUserId="14835" LastEditDate="2015-02-06T17:09:47.633" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T17:09:47.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14169" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14173" CreationDate="2015-02-06T16:30:52.137" Score="4" ViewCount="1338" Body="&lt;p&gt;Occasionally,  I've been asked to produce a Gantt chart for a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of the time, I was the only person assigned to that project. This mostly happened back when I was a student, though my coworker is currently in this position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To my understanding, a Gantt-chart is used for planning out which tasks your resources (usually people) are going to be assigned to at a particular time. This also allows me to define the critical path, and get a sense of the time estimate of the project (e.g. if Bob has 3 tasks that each will take a day, I know that I need at least 3 days to get that part done. Or I can swap in Steve and Alice to do one of the tasks each to get it done in 1 day, but I have to pay 3 salaries).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subsequently, if I'm creating a Gantt-chart for a project only containing me, it seems a little pointless. Surely &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; is on the critical path. I can't do task 1 and 2 at the same time, even if task 1 and 2 have no other resources (apart from me) in common. If they do have some pre-requisite, then all the Gantt-chart will do is nail down the ordering. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By and large, I'm just writing down all the tasks that need to be done in some linear order. At this point, surely I can just have a table of dates and tasks? What value is a Gantt-chart adding for me here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When presented with something that doesn't make sense, I assume it's me that's misunderstanding something. So: &lt;strong&gt;Are Gantt Charts useful for single-person projects? How?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;To clarify, I understand the point of a &lt;em&gt;schedule&lt;/em&gt;. I have a little planner that has the tasks next to the deadlines (both external and self-imposed). I also can make time estimates of the tasks (so I know I can't start task B until next Monday because I'm doing task A until then). I could, if requested, produce a Gantt-chart from my to-do list, but it's not going to help organise anything: I'd just have a wall-poster of the stuff I've already got in the planner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16222" LastEditorUserId="16222" LastEditDate="2015-02-06T16:50:57.713" LastActivityDate="2015-02-08T14:05:52.517" Title="Are Gantt Charts useful for single-person projects?" Tags="&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14156" CreationDate="2015-02-06T16:41:48.677" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have had a similar problem to what you're describing; when I first began working with my current team I was very direct and it resulted in a lot of resistance from the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After running into the brick wall enough times, I hit a period where I would make an attempt to do something or a suggestion just to say &quot;Hey, I tried&quot; and then would give up and let them reign. I essentially snapped to the other extreme of the spectrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my scenario, I had the benefit of working in a Scrum environment so I was able to address this fact in a sort of &quot;Process Sanctioned&quot; way: I addressed the team in one of our retrospectives and brought up the fact that I had gone from a &quot;light touch leading from the background&quot; to nothing at all. I gathered examples of times my team disregarded me and the things I had to say (literally as they happened I would write down the conversation topic, my input, any response I received and the outcome).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My guys ended up appreciating my combination of honesty/openness and hard evidence of what I was talking about and the team as a whole came to an understanding: Despite my tendency to operate in the background, I need to try to have a more active presence within the team and the team needs to make a more honest effort to give my input their consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two months later: It's not perfect, but it's going well. I am still sometimes too hands off but my team will either call me out on it or make a note of it and I will do the same with my concern. Slowly, it's getting better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I don't have a &quot;management&quot; position within my team. That is, I am not their reporting manager. We are also a bunch of guys who are around the same age and have similar interests, so it's pretty easy for us to get over hurdles like this due to our common ground. Being open with your team may work for you, or it may be impossible depending on your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's my two cents on the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16215" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T16:41:48.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14156" CreationDate="2015-02-06T17:05:44.563" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am going to put my own view to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today we had our monthly meeting where we should discuss regular bullshit like &quot;what technologies we are using, what we can change&quot; and so on, stuff which no one really cares about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CEO was there. Then I rude-interrupted the &quot;bla-bla&quot; talk and stared speaking about our problems we had lately. Then three guys attacked my &quot;approach&quot; to them: &quot;You are too aggressive and you have a fucked up attitude.&quot;. I answered &quot;Yeah. I know. But I'm only human. And I am working on this part of my character&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the CEO and CTO did their share of moral/personal talks which relieved everyone. We all shared and admitted the hard moments we had during these past two months. The CEO instructed everyone to obey me strictly and I apologized for me being too pushy sometimes. Then the CTO went on and asked everyone &quot;How are you feeling about the future?&quot;. &#xA;Suprisingly, everyone said &quot;I am sure things will go better.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We smiled, shook hands and negotiated a new team building in order to start fresh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion I had for myself, as a Software Project Manager: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;People issues are more important than PM style and glossary. Be yourself. I am that kind of human and my team is this kind of team. We are both attempting to bear with each other. Bad times come and go. Good project managers stay in the bad times. We are going to pull through it using all the &quot;magic trix&quot; of SCRUM and the various other funny sounding PM methodologies.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was 18:00 and I think my job has been done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11918" LastEditorUserId="11918" LastEditDate="2015-02-06T17:11:50.947" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T17:11:50.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14169" CreationDate="2015-02-06T17:22:53.743" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with everything in project management the answer is &quot;it depends&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The task list you mention would deliver roughly the same value as a Gantt, assuming your project isn't really complex. If your project is complex enough (however you choose to define complexity) a Gantt could be more useful just from the perspective that updating a Gantt will also spit out a revised schedule which can be a lot easier than updating a table manually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately you have to decide what makes the most sense for your project to ensure that the management overhead you have is appropriate for the oversight needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T17:22:53.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14169" CreationDate="2015-02-06T17:40:21.407" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes there is value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you know the dependencies of all the tasks? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can you guarantee that you understand the critical path (your comment that &quot;everything is on the critical path&quot; strongly suggests that you don't fully understand the implications of critical path.)  Are there alternate ways to organize the tasks that would result in a better delivery date? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If task X is delayed by 2 days, what impact will that have on the final delivery date? Is there another task that you can work on during those two days?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have you really thought through each work package?&lt;/strong&gt;  This is the real value of the Gantt chart - methodically going through and defining the quality, constraints and risks of each work package and understanding how the work packages relate. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update:  Critical path is the set of tasks such that a delay of 1 day in any task will delay the final project by 1 day. On the other hand, if Task X is delayed (because resources aren't available), and effort can be switched from Task X to Task Y, then there is no delay in the final deliverable; arguably, there is a new critical path including Task Y.   (A great deal depends on the precise structure of the actual Gantt chart). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Allow me to modify my answer slightly; *Yes, there can be value to using a Gantt cart; you should select project management tools commensurate with the complexity of the project.  If your project is simple, a todo list may suffice; if your project is more complex, an excel spreadsheet will work.  But in the general case, Gantt charts are/can be useful to single person projects.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-02-06T19:35:45.493" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T19:35:45.493" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14174" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14178" CreationDate="2015-02-06T20:33:46.033" Score="3" ViewCount="13296" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am considering one of the following IT Management certifications: Scrum or ITIL. Could someone explain the difference between them, and which one is more relevant for IT Managers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16225" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-02-07T20:57:53.293" LastActivityDate="2015-02-07T20:57:53.293" Title="What is the difference between ITIL and Scrum certifications?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;certification&gt;&lt;frameworks&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14175" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14199" CreationDate="2015-02-06T20:49:37.027" Score="1" ViewCount="166" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am running the Earned Value Over Time visual report from MS Project 2010 and would like to  accumulate baseline cost for multiple baselines in Excel.  Since the Excel pivot table is linked to the .cub file that Project exports it won't allow me to modify the table data.  My plan was to add a column and use DAX or formula to accumulate the baseline cost fields but it won't allow any modification.  Does anyone know how to get it to allow modification?  Or a way to accumulate costs for multiple baselines?  The end goal is to see our original cumulative baseline cost against the current or other baselines we have taken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16224" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-14T09:40:04.280" LastActivityDate="2019-01-14T09:40:04.280" Title="After running visual report from Project 2010, why can't I modify the pivot table data?" Tags="&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14163" CreationDate="2015-02-06T20:58:37.633" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In asking this question, you are looking for a way to know/decide which certification will bring you the most long term earning potential. In asking this, I'm assuming you mean &quot;Which of these certificates will a potential employer look at and be more likely to hire me?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this assumption is correct, I think you're going to have a hard time finding a reliable answer; giving one would require experience with both organizations, experience hiring Scrum Masters, and knowledge of how these certifications are commonly viewed. Given that this combination is somewhat uncommon, you might be waiting a while for an answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Instead of Looking at the Value of the Certification&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lets look at the value provided by the organizations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FULL DISCLOSURE: I have a CSM from Scrum Alliance but I'm not entirely familiar with Scrum.org (aside from the basic info floating on the net about how it came to be, and what is available on the surface of their site)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get a CSM, SA requires a 2 day course and an exame I can say from experience the course was a 2 day 8 hours/day lecture type course and the test was pretty laughable (35 questions, multiple choice, iirc no time limit, and passing was 25 questions correct). In fact, some of the answers can be found by googling a few of the words in the question along with &quot;scrum alliance&quot;. The cost I believe was around 1.5k for both exam and course (and the course is required) and comes with 2 years of SA membership. Some quick checking of available courses (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/courses-events/course?type=Csm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.scrumalliance.org/courses-events/course?type=Csm&lt;/a&gt;;) indicates to me that the Scrum Trainer you choose sets the price of the course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum.org's certification (PSM I) does not require a course, and each exam attempt costs $150. The test is 80 quesitons with a 60 minute time limit and a pass score of 85%. Questions are multiple choice, multiple answer, and T/F. There is also a PSM II exam which costs $500 and is a 2 hour long test. (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Assessments/Professional-Scrum-Master-Assessments&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.scrum.org/Assessments/Professional-Scrum-Master-Assessments&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have the certification, one of the biggest benefits to having these ceritifications is access to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Communities&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick check of both member directories shows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum Alliance with ~259,000 Certified Scrum Masters (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/member-directory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/member-directory&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum.org with ~32,500 Profession Scrum Master I's (in order to get II you must first pass I) (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Assessments/Certification-Lists?AssessmentName=PSM%20I&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.scrum.org/Assessments/Certification-Lists?AssessmentName=PSM%20I&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What This Seems to Come Down To&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum Alliance has more members, which means a greater chance that there will be other community members in your area; it also means there is a decent chance of finding a course in your area. Because SA requires an in person course along with the exame, and becuase the bulk of the community support seems to come from it's vast numbers and user groups, if you are the kind of person who likes to learn in person &amp;amp; with others, this is likely to be the best choice for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum.org has fewer members, but allows you the OPTION of taking a course. Because the exam can be taken online, is less expensive, and does not require and in person course, it stands to reason that someone who is comfortable with a DIY approach may see more benefit from Scrum.org.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Why Have I Been Focusing On Learning When The Question Asks About Value?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because you're getting the certification to prove that you have a certain designated process. However, if the knowledge required to get certifications was the only way of measuring aptitude as a Scrum Master, this job would be incredibly easy. Your value is going to come from learning after the fact, which can then be applied to your work, which translates into meaningful experience, and in turns bolsters your ability to speak to your abilities as a Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16215" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T20:58:37.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14174" CreationDate="2015-02-07T07:10:27.590" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are working as a project manager, then in my opinion, Scrum would be more appropriate than ITIL, as it relates directly to project management for a specific style of agile projects, but please don't forget that Scrum isn't the only way to run a project. You may also wish to consider Prince 2 or PMBOK to give you a wider perspective on project management, although as the tags you have selected for this question imply that you are working in an agile environment, they may be less relevant. Having said that, I believe they can be combined with Scrum, although I have not personally had experience of this, or seen it work effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ITIL is less about project management, in my view, and is more about the wider aspects of managing IT. Admittedly, there are aspects of ITIL that will determine how you implement projects - change management, configuration management, and so on - but first and foremost, if you are a PM, then get a project management qualification. Then if you need some wider context, get yourself trained in ITIL later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2015-02-07T07:10:27.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14174" CreationDate="2015-02-07T11:22:37.143" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Redirecting the Scope of Your Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[C]ould someone explain what is the main difference between those two certifications, and which one is more significant for IT Managers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specific career advice is off-topic as it's too subjective. In addition, this site is specifically about the field of project management, not IT management in general, and therefore the focus of your question is outside of the scope of this site. Furthermore, the value of any certification is non-deterministic; &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/9711/4271&quot;&gt;this related answer&lt;/a&gt; provides some guidance on how to evaluate certification value as it applies to your own specific circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite the foregoing, understanding the difference in purpose and intent of the two frameworks is useful. I differentiate the frameworks below, and provide references and links so you can research the differences between the frameworks further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The ITIL and Scrum Frameworks&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia defines the frameworks as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Technology_Infrastructure_Library&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ITIL&lt;/a&gt;, formerly known as the Information Technology Infrastructure Library, is a set of practices for IT service management (ITSM) that focuses on aligning IT services with the needs of business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28software_development%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt; is an iterative and incremental agile...development framework for managing product development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The former is a framework for service delivery, while the latter is a product development framework. Service desks and operations management might concern themselves with ITIL, but it is unlikely to have central relevance to a project manager because &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;projects are temporary endeavors&lt;/a&gt; rather than ongoing services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;See Also&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The official &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBIT&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;COBIT&lt;/a&gt; (Wikipedia)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isaca.org/cobit/pages/default.aspx?cid=1003566&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;COBIT 5&lt;/a&gt; (ISACA)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2015-02-07T11:22:37.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14174" CreationDate="2015-02-07T13:46:45.207" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Set Certification Goals each Year&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is your organization more focused towards work involving ITIL?  E.g., does your company have contracts that have ITIL v3 certification requirements? If so, having an ITIL certification first may give you an advantage in this area.  It is a good practice to have knowledge of these requirements and set goals each year to improve your credentials.  For instance, I recently just received my CSP (Certified Scrum Professional from ScrumAlliance.org) and will be taking the PMP (Project Management Professional from PMI) later this year.  Instead of just getting one, why not get both?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;On the CSM&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CSM certification now has an exam component, however this was implemented only recently and most folks in the industry do not typically hold it in high regard.  With that said, consider the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/Certification/New-PMI-Agile-Certification.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMI-ACP&lt;/a&gt; as another option and one that carries a bit more weight than the CSM.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16148" LastActivityDate="2015-02-07T13:46:45.207" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14156" CreationDate="2015-02-08T13:39:34.267" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our company (we are using scrum process anyway), we never fix the development problems asap. We respect the time of the developers as they have some things to do in the sprint (but it is never an excuse to do a sloppy job). One thing is for sure, the goal is to fix all those bugs before the sprint ends. If not, its not the end of the world, we push it to the next sprint. We are still in the process of evolution, but changing to scrum definitely resulted in a positive way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that scrum is a nice framework. If nobody or only few had worked on agile/scrum process on your company, expect some resistance from some people (reasons may be political or they are not comfortable to change the way they do things)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8980" LastActivityDate="2015-02-08T13:39:34.267" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14106" CreationDate="2015-02-08T14:03:04.903" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This has happened to our team. our scum master and product owner placed all the bug fixing 1 month before the product launch which is a no-no. Although we need to adhere to that despite of debates and arguments. Technical debt is really a pressure to a development team. Here are some things that we learned along the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Always make sure that the architecture is being reviewed every now and then. A good and strong architecture will provide solid foundation for the product that you are building. at least someone must understand the overall flow and architecture of the product. Its also a big plus if that person has a good refactoring skill and good oop/design pattern skill.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;refactor whenever you can. Even a small refactoring effort everyday will add up on repaying technical debt.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;development team must work closely together and communicate frequently. we had an instance where two people solved the same bug because of miscommunication.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;try to negotiate to the po and sm regarding adding a week or two for repaying technical debt.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8980" LastActivityDate="2015-02-08T14:03:04.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14169" CreationDate="2015-02-08T14:05:52.517" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Additional benefits of a one-man-band gantt chart:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;understanding interfaces:&lt;/strong&gt; Even a simple project will have interfaces with other people, departments or processes. Are there any approvals, partial milestones, forms, inputs, meetings or reviews in addition to the start and end of the project? Something as silly as a meeting can take more than a week to schedule if participants are unavailable. A gantt chart helps to define them ahead and sequence the work accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;time benchmarking&lt;/strong&gt;: We all tend to underestimate task duration projects after projects. Project ends are often very busy and too often the close-out is skipped. Having an initial schedule at the end really helps to learn how to better plan in the future.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16230" LastActivityDate="2015-02-08T14:05:52.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14183" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-08T16:49:19.433" Score="2" ViewCount="651" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my understanding collective ownership will solve common problems with the antiquated such as quality, failure due to absence and knowledge-sharing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are some things that I don't understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the team a democracy? If so, what if the majority are wrong?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why choose technical correctness over &quot;people correctness&quot;? i.e. What's technically correct may not be most motivational/enjoyable choice for the people working on the project. An unhappy team is more likely to create bad quality than a motivated team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What about the individual's creativity, understanding, exploration and experimentation? These are likely to be neglected if the only decisions that get made are based on a mutual agreement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How is rogue activity handled? For example, if 99% of a project is done and the entire team except one person goes on holiday the next day, what stops that one person from changing things that were already agreed on during pair programming sessions, just before delivering the last 1%?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Won't code production time be massively increased? If the &lt;strong&gt;entire team&lt;/strong&gt; has to learn &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt; code that gets produced then technically only one thing can be produced at a time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;Added point 4 and 5.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16233" LastEditorUserId="16233" LastEditDate="2015-02-09T06:20:03.847" LastActivityDate="2015-02-10T15:57:58.727" Title="Misunderstandings about Collective Ownership in an Agile environment" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;team&gt;&lt;sdlc&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-02-20T22:41:09.733" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14183" CreationDate="2015-02-08T20:19:32.873" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Collective code ownership&quot; does not mean that everyone on the team gets a say on every line of code that's written. The code is still written by individuals (unless you're pair programming), and they are making the decisions they feel are best at the time. The point is that no individual &quot;owns&quot; a section of the code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If John wrote the Foo module, and for some reason there's a critical bug discovered while John is away, there should be nothing stopping Sue from jumping in and fixing it. It's not &quot;John's code&quot; it's the teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So then there's the question of &quot;how does Sue fix the code, if John wrote it?&quot; and the answer isn't that Sue and the rest of the team decided on every line with John, but rather that John, in the spirit of teamwork and cooperation, and knowing that he wouldn't be the only person working on the code, took the time to write tests and document the code so that Sue would be able to work on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sue might also have some experience with the code from code reviews which - again - are not a chance for the team to decide how the code should have been written, but merely to make sure it's serving it's purpose and up to whatever standards the team follows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for point 3, experimentation, exploration etc. belong in prototypes and personal projects, not in the production code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6232" LastActivityDate="2015-02-08T20:19:32.873" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14186" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-08T21:01:53.847" Score="5" ViewCount="1269" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a website project for a large e-commerce site that is suffering from delay that can be mostly attributed to the client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The client is requesting significant resource at our end (4 developers, 2 testers, 1 pm). We develop in a Kanban-style approach and wish to release every 3 weeks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whilst we complete between 6 and 10 user stories in the release timeframe, the client usually manages to do UAT on 1 or 2 only, frequently requesting changes - that we have a policy to accept. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The client is requesting backlog work to be started when resource is available. After 3 releases we now sit on a huge mountain of work that we deem ready for client approval. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually try to keep the inventory of unfinished work low, but in this case it keeps growing. We now regularly have issues with conflicts when merging feature branches to our release, costing us time and money that is not agreed with the client. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation has been raised with the client time and time again, to no avail. Our higher management is not willing to put too much pressure on the client, yet we have KPI's on estimates vs. cost that are heavily impacted by difficult merges. Our estimates were quoted to the client with a velocity factor of 1.5, we currently average at 2.8, making the team unprofitable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really would love to know how others in a similar situation have dealt with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5031" LastActivityDate="2015-02-11T05:35:47.467" Title="Dealing with Severe Client Delay" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;clients&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14183" CreationDate="2015-02-08T22:22:39.290" Score="4" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What if the majority are wrong&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can happen of course. I would expect any issues that arise from a wrong decision to be raised and discussed at retrospectives. Hopefully the team would then recognise the error it had made and adjust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why chose technical correctness over people correctness&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why indeed. The team should discuss the pros and cons of the different approaches. They may decide that a technically non-optimal solution is more appropriate. A healthy team will discuss this openly and make a decision based on their collective experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does individual talent get neglected&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good team is looking for ways to do a good job. They will do that both by collaboration and by reinforcing the strengths of individuals in the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;4&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How is rogue activity handled&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If rogue behaviour is causing issues these will get raised and discussed at retrospectives. Peer pressure is usually sufficient to encourage the rogue to work in a more productive way, particularly if the ill effects can be demonstrated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-02-08T22:22:39.290" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14186" CreationDate="2015-02-09T00:33:43.050" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wow - your cup certainly runneth over with ALL of the usual challenges that software (or any other type of) project teams face - ever increasing backlog, unreasonable customer demands (and poor support for their own deliverables) and a management/ sales team that is unable to say No to the customer.  I'm not sure how senior is the delivery team's manager - but clearly they are not able to make an impact so far trying to say No to the management either!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The interesting thing you have said is you are doing things &quot;Kanban-style&quot;.  I'm personally a big believer of Kanban.  I'm co-founder at a company where we use Kanban for all our product development as well as for our customer-implementation projects - so your situation is very familiar.  We started using Kanban about 3 years ago - and since then, we have rarely faced the situation you are in.  We do the 3 basic things Kanban talks of - we visualize our work (so everyone, including our own management - and our customers - can see all of the work being done), we have WIP limits that we try and follow stringently (tho' we do have the occasional WIP limit violations) - and we manage flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the last 3 years, we have been able to demonstrate what our teams' throughput is, we have historical data of what our team can deliver in a certain amount of time, and we have analysis of all the bottlenecks in the overall workflow.  All of this has enabled us to completely change the way we manage our product development and run our projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We are no longer concerned about estimation and delivering to those estimates.  (BTW - we also have a 3 week release cycle, tho' when needed or possible, we make that 2 weeks or 4 weeks).  The key thing is that both management and customer know that they WILL get a release every 3 weeks - and they know that if something does get missed in a release, it will typically be definitely delivered in the next one.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The internal and the customer discussion has changed from resource utilization/ planned vs. actual monitoring to prioritization of work to make sure that the teams are working on THE MOST important features, enhancements, defects that they need to be working on.  The customers love the fact they don't have to spell out everything and &quot;freeze specs&quot; up front - and that they can reprioritize requirements if needed, till the 'last responsible minute'.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It has made it easy for the 4 key stakeholders - the team, the team manager, senior management and customer - to have a transparent and rational discussions on what the team can deliver and what needs to be done in the next 2-3 release cycles.  Moreover, it has made it possible for them to review what bottlenecks (blockers) hold up work the most (including customer-side delays) - and what needs to be done to resolve them so that the team itself can focus on delivering value.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether your Kanban system has historical data or not, there are a few things that you must do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The team and your own senior management must have an open discussion on how to resolve the gridlock you are in - and find a way to move forward.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your team and the customer need to have a similar discussion on what is possible and what is not - and get agreement on that.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your senior management and the customer might need a separate discussion to ensure that all stakeholders are on the same page.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of these are easy discussions to have, especially given that you may have already tried it.  The ONLY way to change that would for your team leadership to say NO to what the team cannot do - and force a change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a Kanban system with some good historical data would be invaluable to facilitate these discussions.  If you don't have the data yet, start collecting it. That may also mean changing your method from 'Kanban-style' to 'Kanban'!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2015-02-09T00:33:43.050" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14189" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14191" CreationDate="2015-02-07T14:16:37.920" Score="4" ViewCount="2186" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm struggling to find the best way to use scrum and user stories on the following case:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To explain the situation let's imagine we are developping Microsoft-Access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In microsoft access you can design an application and then you can run the application. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Designing the application consist of defining the data model, the different ui views to access it (forms, tables...). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Running the application allows to browse and create data using the specified views.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in ms-access the end users could be splitted in 2 roles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;app designer: the users that design the application elements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;app user: the users that connect to an application and uses it to browse and create data.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say that ms-access product owner wants to add the support of card views in addition to existing table views and form views.&#xA;This feature could be materialized as 2 user stories:&#xA;* US1: As an app designer I want to be able to design card view for an application&#xA;* US2: As an app user I want to be able to browse data using the card view if one as been designed instead of using the table view &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problems I see with having 2 separate stories is that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;US2 depends on US1 to be achievable (this breaks the I of INVEST right ?).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;US1 without US2 does not bring any real business value. Releasing  the product with only US1 would provide the capability to design card views that are useless without US2.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problems I see with merging them together is that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The merged user story would be targeting 2 end user roles which is a bad practice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It would also make stories too large to be easily estimatable in most cases.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best approach to follow in such case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16238" OwnerDisplayName="Sebastien" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-02-10T21:07:27.640" LastActivityDate="2019-06-26T15:13:14.190" Title="Is it ok to define a user story that has no real business value without another story?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14190" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14194" CreationDate="2015-02-09T10:51:06.723" Score="0" ViewCount="9480" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have created a year long project's MPP.&#xA;Next I want to figure out planned hours for each resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am using Microsoft Project Standard 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I want is to specifically point out the total planned hours for the project as a breakup of resource's planned hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7681" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T19:56:55.543" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T19:56:55.543" Title="Finding out individual resource planned hours from MPP" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14189" CreationDate="2015-02-09T10:56:24.390" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best approach i to keep the stories separate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two stories are not really that dependent on each other that they violate the I from INVEST. US2 may appear to depend on US1, but in reality you don't need US1 to demonstrate US2.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;To demonstrate that users can use a &quot;card view&quot; to browse the database only requires that some form of card view is available. It is not required that this card view can be created &lt;em&gt;using the application&lt;/em&gt;, only that it somehow exists. Thus you can demonstrate US2 with one or two hard-coded card views and inform the stakeholders that there is another story underway to allow a user to create them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is quite common that a story on its own only brings a very marginal benefit to the product and that the real benefit comes from a combination of stories. This is most visible when developing a new product, but also happens when extending an existing product.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If you were to combine stories until they provide enough business value on their own, you might just as well go back to waterfall development, as the story would cover the entire product development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also shouldn't be fooled by the &quot;delivery&quot; you make at the end of a sprint. You deliver a &lt;em&gt;potentially&lt;/em&gt; shippable product. This doesn't mean that it &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; be shipped to customers, but only this: If the Product Owner finds that the product has sufficient business value to actually ship, then he can ship it without additional work from the development team being needed.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;A product with only one of two related stories (where both stories are needed to add the real value) most likely won't be shipped in that form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2015-02-09T10:56:24.390" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14193" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-09T11:05:26.903" Score="3" ViewCount="521" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to include plan dates, estimated dates and actual dates in my MS project plan.The plan date should never change for a task, Whatever changes that will happen should be only done to estimated dates. Actual dates will be finished after the task is completed. How can I change the estimated dates value without affecting plan dates or how can I change the values of Actual dates (Start date and End date) without changing the values of Plan dates(Start and End Date) and Estimated dates (Start date and End Date) in MS project 2010?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16240" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-01-15T14:24:00.763" LastActivityDate="2019-01-15T14:24:00.763" Title="How can I change the estimated dates value in MS Project 2010 without affecting plan dates?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14190" CreationDate="2015-02-09T11:27:05.543" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you need to be looking at the &quot;Resource Usage&quot; view which gives, for each resource, a breakdown of the tasks allocated to them and the hours they will spend on each task both at a summary (total) level and also broken down by day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look on the Task menu on the left-hand side. Do you see the 'Gantt Chart' button with a dropdown? Click on the dropdown and select 'Resource Usage'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-02-09T11:27:05.543" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14186" CreationDate="2015-02-09T12:21:03.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can split the Kanban system into two separate systems. The system upstream from the user step, and the system downstream of the user step. The user step will not need any WIP limit. When reporting the statistics, you say something like &quot;lead time from commitment until ready for UAT is 7 days and lead time from after UAT till go-live is 3 days&quot;. If you want to report the total lead time you can do that as well, and it may highlight the &quot;issue&quot; to the customer. However for general process improvement and planning purposes you should consider it 2 separate Kanban systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the customer is ready and willing to be part of the Kanban system (which should not be forced), and they are prepared to limit WIP, and use pull etc, then you can join it back to a single Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="763" LastActivityDate="2015-02-09T12:21:03.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14193" CreationDate="2015-02-09T13:41:09.863" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once you have established your schedule and you are satisfied with everything, you need to create a schedule baseline.  The dates in the start and finish columns will populate the baseline start and finish and these will not change unless you re-baseline.  The actual start and finish column should reflect reality.  The start and finish columns should reflect either your latest revised estimates for future work or the schedule results based on your logic and the actual performance you load.  Once you add an actual start and finish, then those dates will also be reflected in the start and finish columns.  If you want to re-plan and have those dates saved for whatever reason, you can strike a baseline 1 and baseline 2 and so on.  The tool allows for multiple baselines.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-02-09T13:41:09.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14189" CreationDate="2015-02-09T16:11:19.903" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short Answer - You don't need two stories.  User stories are always written from the perspective of the end user.  Associate different technical tasks to this story that cover tasks on the DB, UI, or business logic layers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For additional guidance on breaking out user stories and how to approach them, see &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/14098/how-to-make-user-stories-independent-in-multi-discipline-teams/14117#14117&quot;&gt;How to make user stories independent in multi-discipline teams&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for format/grammar/typos I am on mobile and will clean this up later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16148" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2015-02-09T16:11:19.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14183" CreationDate="2015-02-09T16:35:45.453" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What if the majority are wrong?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is okay if this happens!  The idea is to 'fail fast,' adapt, update your plan, and move on, trying something else.  The 'fail fast' concept is just another way to apply the Scientific Method to your work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only addressing first question for now I am on mobile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16148" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-02-10T15:57:58.727" LastActivityDate="2015-02-10T15:57:58.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14175" CreationDate="2015-02-09T18:31:49.500" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found that this can be accomplished using MDX(Multidimensional eXpressions) via the Excel PivotChartTools - Analyze tab.  Under the Calculations section of the ribbon there is an OLAP Tools drop arrow.  You can create calculated measures using MDX to accumulate your Baseline Cost fields and add them as measure to the pivot table and chart.  The expression I used for Baseline1 Cost was &quot;SUM({NULL:[time]},[baseline1 cost])&quot;.  I created a measure for each baseline 0 through 10.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears that OLAP cubes are not editable via the PowerPivot tools as I was first trying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16224" LastActivityDate="2015-02-09T18:31:49.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14189" CreationDate="2015-02-09T18:52:48.953" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Split stories into small vertical slices&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Waterfall approach is to slice the application into horizontal (functional or architectural) layers. In Agile/Scrum we try to deliver small slices of end-user value by vertical slices across different architecture layers. &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.adobe.com/agile/2013/09/27/splitting-stories-into-small-vertical-slices/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;See the example here showing vertical slices across three architecture layers&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Client application&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Server&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Database&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum advocates doing all functional work needed to deliver end-user value within the same story. For example, you may have design of the user interface, front-end coding, back-end database design, back-end coding and testing all to be done as part of one story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agileforall.com/2009/10/patterns-for-splitting-user-stories/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;You can read this article for different ways of slicing a large user story into smaller vertical slices.&lt;/a&gt; For your example, you can probably use Pattern #8. You can write one story that allows the user to view the data. You can write other stories for creating, editing and deleting data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-02-09T20:50:03.407" LastActivityDate="2015-02-09T20:50:03.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14189" CreationDate="2015-02-09T20:50:47.577" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a little unclear on your question. If you are writing this user story for a team building an application in Microsoft Access, then US 1 doesn't exist, as it's the work that is done by the team to complete US 2. In this case, the deliverable is that the user can see  the data in the new view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you are suggesting that you are writing user stories for the team creating Microsoft Access and you want to have the functionality to 1) design a card view in the IDE and 2) have the card view render a certain way to users of that application, then you have a much more elaborate situation. In this case, you do, in fact, have two user stories that are independent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a pretty common misinterpretation between something being potentially shippable and if you chose to release it. If you were to do US1 first, you might think that it has no value if users can't see the rendered version, but maybe you have a big developer conference next week and you're handing out a developer preview version of the software. Being able to show the design of the card view during a code session could be unbelievably valuable. Or, to look at it the other way, US2 seems like it needs US1 to be any use, but what if you can import projects from a previous version. Now US2 allows people to import a project that uses card view from an old version and view it properly, even if they can't yet change the design. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, as you said, you may choose to wait and release them both at the same time, but that's a business call. No reason those aren't valuable by themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-02-09T20:50:47.577" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14190" CreationDate="2015-02-10T22:44:02.583" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understand correctly, you want to show hours per resource per summary task?  Marv is spot on with the recommendation to look at the Resource Usage view.  You can also group the view on Task Summary Name to summarize the work (or cost) per task summary name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try creating the following group in the Resource Usage view.  The key is to set the Task Summary name to an Assignment field type.  You'll need to check the &quot;Group assignments, not resources&quot; check box to be able to select the Assignment field type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bHZsJ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-02-10T22:44:02.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14186" CreationDate="2015-02-11T05:06:38.263" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Defining the Problem&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The client is requesting backlog work to be started when resource is available. After 3 releases we now sit on a huge mountain of work that we deem ready for client approval.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your client is violating basic work-in-progress (WIP) limits by requesting work they are unprepared to review or accept. Whether or not this is deliberate, the real failure lies with your senior management since they are failing to manage the client's expectations or actively work to resolve the process issues your organization is facing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below are three simple rules for managing the client/vendor process, and ensuring that you aren't left holding the bag for pervasive process issues that are clearly owned jointly by the client and by your senior management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Three Simple Rules for Preserving Your Sanity&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rule 1: The client doesn't get to dictate your internal processes. This should be made clear by the client/vendor relationship, your contract, and the collaboration process you hammer out jointly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rule 2: The client is responsible for timely performance of their responsibilities, which include providing feedback and user acceptance testing within agreed-upon time-frames.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rule 3: If your client will not hold up their end of the cooperative process, or if your management team does not have the leadership skills to either incorporate client responsibilities into the contract or to address process problems with the client, then you should definitely start looking for a job where you will be more successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you choose to ignore the rules, then (statistically speaking) you will join the 68% of IT projects that routinely fail. If you don't enjoy being a failure, then you can either assist your client and your management in reforming the process, or you can get out before the project implodes. It's your career, so the choice is entirely yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-02-11T05:35:47.467" LastActivityDate="2015-02-11T05:35:47.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14164" CreationDate="2015-02-11T06:21:33.167" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Defining Your Problem&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am working with a technical client and he has mentioned that he wants to change the raw code into a class based code and remove deprecated code....we are doing only changes in those file but code is interrelated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have three core problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A client relations problem&lt;/strong&gt;. Your client is requesting changes without articulating a value proposition. Your client is asking you to make technical changes to the way code is written, but has not articulated a business need or value proposition for doing so. Nothing in project management is free, so there is certainly a cost to making these changes, and the customer should acknowledge that&amp;mdash;especially in light of the engineering and communications problems immediately below.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An engineering problem&lt;/strong&gt;. You appear to have tightly-coupled code, and cannot make changes to one part of your code base without changing other portions of the code base as well. This represents technical debt, and must be paid for by the project (and therefore the customer) whenever changes are made.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A communications problem&lt;/strong&gt;. Your team has not done an adequate job of educating your customer about the state of your code base (e.g. tightly coupled, and perhaps inadequately unit-tested), the impact of requested changes throughout the code case, and the potential costs of making changes to working code.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Potential Solutions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All your solutions boil down to improving communications with the client. Your client doesn't have to understand database interactions at a technical level, but the client &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; need to understand how requested changes will impact other areas of the code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to do demonstrate complexity is through a Mikado Graph (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.manning.com/ellnestam/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Mikado Method&lt;/a&gt;). Alternatively, you can use RSpec unit tests in documentation format to show areas of the code that will be impacted by proposed changes. Regardless of how you do it, it is incumbent on the project manager to clearly articulate the costs associated with a change request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Change requests should be welcomed, but the scope of the request should always be clearly understood and made a visible cost to the project. If your code base or process lacks maturity, it may be difficult to accurately scope a change or to estimate the costs of that change. If that's your case, then articulating the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cone of uncertainty&lt;/a&gt; surrounding your estimate of the change request is the very least you owe your customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If changes are routinely bigger than expected by either the customer or the team, your job is to identify the technical debt that is creating inefficiencies. It is then up to the customer or Product Owner to determine whether paying down that technical debt should be a priority, or whether the project will simply accept the ongoing debt as a cost of doing business, and accept the additional costs and risks associated with continuing with the status quo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-02-11T06:21:33.167" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14207" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14215" CreationDate="2015-02-11T11:58:10.970" Score="3" ViewCount="4805" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was asked an interesting question to which I do not have a strict answer. I would only have suggestions, thus I'd like to ask you the same question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you believe regular scrum meetings should be handled when it comes to time? Say you have 2-week long sprints, then in theory: &#xA;Planning - 4 hours max&#xA;Review - 2 hours max&#xA;Retro - 1,5 hours max&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the sequence for me is clear -&gt; Sprint Planning -&gt; Sprint Review -&gt; Sprint Retrospective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question is -&gt; should this all happen in one day (of course given the fact that it may be shorter - planning 1 hour, review 1 hour, retro 1,5 hour)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefits from such distribution in my opinion are that by having all these meetings in one day we have rest of the time in sprint for working on user stories, project discussions, backlog refining activities etc - regular work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However - spending whole day on meetings may cause them to be ineffective and the team to be less active and Scrum ideas may be lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Splitting them into two days again makes two days a bit less productive when it comes to regular work, however team should be able to benefit more from higher activity during meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My idea is there is no strict answer and one should keep in mind context of the team, PO, project etc and adapt it to fit best what the team needs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are your opinions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3914" LastActivityDate="2016-08-30T15:25:23.827" Title="Should Scrum meetings be held in one day or two days?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14207" CreationDate="2015-02-11T12:20:36.380" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question is -&amp;gt; should this all happen in one day (of course given the fact that it may be shorter - planning 1 hour, review 1 hour, retro 1,5 hour)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The typical cadence of a the Scrum ceremony is to host Sprint Planning and then at the mid-point of the timebox run a Backlog Refinement ceremony.  The Sprint Review occurs at the end of the timebox as that is when the work the team committed to delivering is due.  Finally a Sprint retrospective takes place to discuss improvements in the working environment and practices &lt;em&gt;prior&lt;/em&gt; to the next Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Traditionally for a two-week Sprint it would be&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprint Planning&lt;/strong&gt; | 4 hours | First day of the Sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Backlog Refinement&lt;/strong&gt; | 2 Hours | Mid-Sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprint Review&lt;/strong&gt; | 2 hours | Last Day of the Sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprint Retrospective&lt;/strong&gt; | 1 hour | Last Day of the Sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know some teams have experimented with Mon-Fri type Sprints, Wed-Wed Sprints but I have not come across a working practice which puts Sprint Review, Retrospective and then straight into Planning on the same day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I feel that any benefits that arise from cramming all ceremonies into a single day would be eradicated by the severe drop in morale and concentration which would come from such a technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My firm answer is that Scrum ceremonies should occur across two days at the least but ideally a third day would incorporate backlog refinement.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;My process as Scrum Master&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that Sprint Planning is a fairly relaxed introduction to the new week and we plan on Mondays.  I always ensure that I arrive with snacks and drinks for the team (cheese, doughnuts, gourmet coffee etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We start Sprint Planning approximately 1 hour after the working day begins which gives the team time to review emails after the weekend and collate all of their commitments and holidays and constraints before arriving at the planning session.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We actually run a three hour Sprint Planning session but that is an adaptation we found because of our workflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally it finishes around 12.15 at which point we break for lunch.  In that break I place each of the committed cards back on the Board and the team return from lunch ready to start work by picking up their first cards around 1pm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our &lt;strong&gt;Sprint Planning Agenda&lt;/strong&gt; is as follows (feel free to steal)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 mins       [SM]        Open&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;5 mins       [PO]        Planning Vision and Roadmap&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;10 mins      [Gov Mgr]   Development and Architecture Status&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;5 mins       [BP]        Sprint Goal and Theme&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;5 mins       [SM]        Velocity Review&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;5 mins       [SM]        Sprint Timebox considerations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;15 mins      [All]       Team Capacity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;10 mins      [All]       Issues / Concerns&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;10 mins      [PO]        Review Definition of Done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 hours      [PO &amp;amp; Team] Product Backlog Items for consideration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;15 mins      [Dev Team]  User Story Owners&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;15 mins      [Dev Team]  Assumptions / Dependencies for User Stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;5 mins       [All]       Agreement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;15 mins      [SM]        Parked Items&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;5 mins       [SM]        Action Items&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 mins       [SM]        Closure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Sprint retrosepctives we use a round robin of ideas from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plans-for-retrospectives.com/?id=82-75-37-24-23&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Retromat&lt;/a&gt; - a retrospective generator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2015-02-11T13:46:15.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14161" CreationDate="2015-02-11T14:46:03.040" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Managing the potential delays in advance through communication are very important. However, there should be one or more contractual requirements laid in advance to mitigate any delays on the client's end. For example, one of these requirements could give your team the right to move forward if the deadline is not met by the client. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The requirement(s) you establish should be in order to mitigate the opportunity cost for your team in the event a deadline is not met by the client. These should be reviewed with the client and agreed upon prior to the project start so that there are no surprises in the event these rules have to be utilized. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7485" LastActivityDate="2015-02-11T14:46:03.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14161" CreationDate="2015-02-11T16:59:26.873" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simple answer to &quot;What does the PM do when the milestone passes&quot; is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Re-schedule the project plan to take the delays into account then report on milestone changes back to the project sponsors and stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is assumed that the PM would have been raising a risk to the project schedule in the risk log and talking to all relevant people in the run up to the critical deadline. I don't agree these are communication issues, this is a schedule risk based on external delivery deadlines. Deadlines like these should be shouted from the rooftops by the PM and risks and visibility reviewed and managed on a daily basis. Too late is too late, don't let it get that far!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-02-11T16:59:26.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14207" CreationDate="2015-02-11T18:32:26.480" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you said, there isn't necessarily a &quot;right&quot; answer. However, in teams I worked with, I split it into two days, but it's the afternoon of the first day and the morning of the second. The most success I've had so far has been&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Day 1: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Retrospective&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprint Review&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--End of Day--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Day 2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--Start of Day--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprint Planning&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I like having the retrospective before sprint planning because I often find that the team decides to do things in the next sprint that need to be accounted for in planning. The order of day 1 can go either way. Retro before Review risks missing things from the review in the retro, which the other way risks the review items overriding important lessons from throughout the sprint. So, I'll swap those around depending on the team. Having the planning first thing on day 2 means people come in fresh and the other meetings are still clearly in memory, but aren't taxing their ability to focus on planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-02-11T18:32:26.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14214" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14221" CreationDate="2015-02-11T21:15:09.423" Score="4" ViewCount="37053" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the definition of a risk is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anything that might affect a project achieving its goals&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then what is the definition of an opportunity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16124" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-02-12T19:38:42.947" LastActivityDate="2019-12-29T22:08:02.240" Title="Risk and Opportunity definitions" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;risk&gt;" AnswerCount="12" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14207" CreationDate="2015-02-11T22:20:45.997" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simplest answer is to ask the team. Go with what they feel most comfortable with. If it doesn't work out, adapt and shift the meetings around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have worked with some teams that prefer to have all the meetings in one day. They see that as a 'hands-off' day and like to get it out of the way rather than having meetings spread out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other teams don't like to spend all day in meetings and find that planning is less effective at the end of a busy day of meetings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-02-11T22:20:45.997" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14216" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-11T22:21:10.817" Score="1" ViewCount="240" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a requirement MS Project was probably not intended for, but maybe there is a tricky way to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a lot of &quot;resources&quot; that are really software licenses.  For example, if our license to use BigSoft 2.2 expires on 15 June, then all the projects using BigSoft 2.2 will grind to a halt the next day, 16 June.  Our Contracts department does not always renew licenses on time.  Similar resource behavior exists for things like server farms being turned off for good, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that each one of the 70 or 80 ongoing tasks uses these resources, but the resources are never overcommitted, since they are, for all practical purposes, &quot;Machine infinite&quot;.  The only thing that kills us is when the resource literally goes bye-bye for, say, a month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I COULD just state that each task uses, for example, 1/1,000 of the resource, but Project doesn't allow percentages that small.  I COULD create a resource group with a pile of pseudo resources with similar names to avoid this, but that has the evil smell of a contrived work-around.  Before I just go hog-wild into the world of workarounds, gray tape, and stitched-together solutions, I thought I would throw the problem out to the Community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16263" LastEditorUserId="6840" LastEditDate="2015-02-12T13:37:49.550" LastActivityDate="2015-02-16T17:56:45.737" Title="Using MS Project to represent software license expiration as a resource that stops on a certain date" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;resources&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14217" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-12T00:41:30.813" Score="1" ViewCount="213" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm planning a project where I want my resources to dedicate one day week each to project work.  I've created a calendar for each resource which blocks out their day, so there are Tuesday only, Thursday only, and Friday only calendars.  There's one resource assigned to each calendar at 100%; resource Rob is also assigned to the Friday only calendar, but at only 50%.  The project is set to auto-schedule new tasks and to treat tasks as Fixed Work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I want to see is that the first available resource uses all his available hours, so if a task were set to 12 hours of work, the first resource (say the Tuesday one) would do 7 hours of work on it, then the Thursday resource would pick up the remaining 5, and the Friday resources would never actually be utilized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two problems I'm having, illustrated by this screenshot:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JvbFK.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;screenshot&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Referring to task BRV, why are Bill and Marty never assigned during the second week?  Ideally, they'd work on the task on Monday and Tuesday, leaving only a few hours on left to be done on March 13.  Why is Project skipping over Bill and Marty's available days on the 2nd Tuesday and Thursday?  Also, for the few hours that should be left on March 13, is there a way to tell Project &quot;always assign Dylan to 100% of  his available time before assigning anything to Rob&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Referring to the CDR task, why are Bill and Marty not assigned a full 7 hours each, but Dylan is assigned to work a full 8 after them?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6856" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T19:57:11.957" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T19:57:11.957" Title="Resource time not allocating correctly in Project 2013" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14218" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-12T01:08:00.530" Score="0" ViewCount="63" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new to working with project diagrams such as Use Cases, Activity Diagrams, etc.  I was wondering where one might start in determining the use cases out of a business case:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;There shall be a means for users to share content and access others’ content.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;to be honest, this sounds like a single use case in itself.  I think it's possible to expand on this statement though, I just don't really know how to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice would be great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16264" LastActivityDate="2015-02-13T06:29:02.473" Title="Determining Use Cases from Statement" Tags="&lt;business-case&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14218" CreationDate="2015-02-12T05:16:13.293" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use cases are usually very specific, and are described from the perspective of the user, in active rather than passive voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different use cases for the same business case are often different examples/flavors/variants of the same general type of activity. Or, they might be different pieces or sub-activities of the same larger activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that enough help to get you started?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T05:16:13.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14159" CreationDate="2015-02-12T13:05:49.017" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One possible solution would be to take the releases out of the iteration hierarchy and track the releases as tags on the backlog items. Then set up your iteration queries so that the tags appear as a column. This will allow you to see everything in a given iteration at once and see which items within the iteration are going into each of the releases. You can also make queries based on the tags with the iteration as a column, so that you can see which items are needed for the release, and which iteration they are scheduled for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2194" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T13:05:49.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14214" CreationDate="2015-02-12T13:26:44.260" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In project terms an opportunity is something (tangible or an &quot;effect&quot;) identified within the project deliverables that could unlock or otherwise facilitate a positive or beneficial effect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such things are sought and documented within the Business Case to counterbalance and justify the cost. Opportunities are the same things though are largely uncovered or noticed during the evolution of the project rather than by-design at the beginning or business case time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-02-12T13:32:34.927" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T13:32:34.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14216" CreationDate="2015-02-12T13:42:41.620" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can set the availability of a resource to end using the Resource Information form.  If the resource is assigned outside of the available date, the resource is shown as overallocated.  Assuming you are using Project 2010 or 2013, the task will also show the overallocation indicator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also increase the max units of the software resource to cover the overallocation that may be caused by assigning the resource to 70 or 80 tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ubbLX.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T13:42:41.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14218" CreationDate="2015-02-12T14:19:38.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use cases are a mechanism to describe how a user (technically anyoune outside the system) interact with the system you are making to achieve a certain goal.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Use cases typically contain a sequence of steps, where each step describes a singular action by the user, an action taken by the system or a response from the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A classical example of a use case is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Withdraw money&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;System: ATM&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Actor: Bankcard holder&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sequence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User presents bankcard to ATM&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ATM verifies that it can process cards from this bank&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ATM prompts user for PIN&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User provides PIN&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ATM verifies the PIN&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User provides desired amount&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ATM dispenses money&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your one-sentence business case, I see two use cases lurking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User shares content with others&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User accesses shared content from others&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, there might be additional use cases for uploading content without sharing, sharing previously uploaded content, un-sharing content, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T14:19:38.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14225" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-12T14:44:21.213" Score="2" ViewCount="310" Body="&lt;p&gt;The issue report template has fields to be filled after the change has been made, but there doesn't seem to be anything like that for the exception report, except for lessons learnt, so is the exception report only filled out once, and that's it, it's done and dusted forever, or is it ever updated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16219" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-03-30T11:32:16.157" LastActivityDate="2016-04-29T11:57:30.177" Title="Does the exception report ever change, say after the project board has review it" Tags="&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14214" CreationDate="2015-02-12T16:21:33.667" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMI defines risk as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Risk is an uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, has an impact on at least one project objective. (PMBOK, p275)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, by strict definition, opportunity is risk. This seems counter-intuitive, but you can think of it like this: you don't know if the opportunity will happen, so the risk is that it may or may not happen or that you could miss capitalizing on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-12-29T20:23:05.343" LastActivityDate="2019-12-29T20:23:05.343" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14227" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14239" CreationDate="2015-02-12T20:54:45.390" Score="3" ViewCount="714" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was told by my project lead today, that he had received a certificate in project management and that he had written a project proposal according to some given rules but he wasn't really able to specify which rules in particular he followed. It seems to be called a project charter. But is this really a standard?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He suggested that a project couldn't be called a project, unless it was actually specified/defined like in the document that he handed over to me. It seemed to follow some template indeed, and the overall structure seemed nice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But anyway, my questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Does certificate actually exist in the field of project management. If yes what are they?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Is there any standards out there (maybe defined by IEEE) that would define what a project is (how it should be defined, etc.?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Where could I learn about project definition and management. I am not interested in some sort of books written by people who feel they've been successful in running a project and want to share their recipes with others. I can do this on my own. I am more looking for &quot;objective&quot;, more formal, standardised approaches to the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16270" LastEditorUserId="147" LastEditDate="2015-02-14T00:47:44.580" LastActivityDate="2019-07-17T18:56:56.717" Title="Are there (IEEE) standards for project management" Tags="&lt;project-charter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="611" CreationDate="2015-02-13T00:34:32.783" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently had the same problem. What I found was the problem did not lie with the one team member. Everyone played a role. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The higher ups didn't clearly communicate roles and responsibilities. It was not made clear who was in charge of what. This lack of communication caused rifts that made both myself as the project manager and the team mate, who is creative director, feel as if the other was stepping into their territory or not respecting their say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sales manager wasn't watching his team and their capabilities. He was promising clients timelines and start dates to projects that overwhelmed the team and created a bottleneck. Work flow was completely disrupted and a huge weight was placed on the team member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team mate didn't communicate. He felt that took up precious time and was desperately trying to push through. If he had, he may have found he had help and could have gotten the projects out on time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I took too long to address the problem. I feared I would upset my teammate and they would become less responsive. Although I had touched on the problem, I wasn't firm. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I took the time to call out these problems. I was firm. I didn't call out anyone by name and I addressed my own faults. What I found was everyone had some sort of issue that was bothering them, my calling out all of it made everyone feel validated. We became more open and honest at our work. Deadlines aren't always hit, but I know about it ahead of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16229" LastActivityDate="2015-02-13T00:34:32.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14229" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14231" CreationDate="2015-02-13T00:36:54.630" Score="6" ViewCount="405" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently a developer at a small software development firm, and we are starting to adopt Agile (specifically, Scrum) philosophies into our culture and project management style. We have only a few developers, so it's important that billable work and efficiency are optimized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From personal experience, our developers always have more work than our designers, who, empirically, have 60% less work on average per project. If a single user story is estimated based on a unified effort (story point contribution) I see a few issues arising:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The designer will always have smaller contributions, thus will estimate lower.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The developers and testers will have substantially higher estimations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As far as I can tell, this results in a sprint commencing with a significant imbalance of work, tilting to the developers. This will not be apparent due to a unified estimate.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Instead, is it better to estimate on a per-person level, and stop when the developers have a full sprint. Sure, the designers will still finish early, but at least it's known by their &lt;em&gt;own personalized&lt;/em&gt; velocity.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Strict Scrum may say that the designer should work on adding extra value in alternative ways (refinement, code debt in the CSS, etc.) but given we are small, we need to make sure each hour we put in adds &lt;strong&gt;significant&lt;/strong&gt;, just in time value out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: This might result in a phenomena of continuously slicing stories into equivalent areas - up to a point - but I don't think that's the point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9214" LastEditorUserId="9214" LastEditDate="2015-02-13T05:14:52.150" LastActivityDate="2015-02-13T06:40:46.590" Title="Scrum uneven distribution of work hidden in a unified effort" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14218" CreationDate="2015-02-13T06:29:02.473" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bart gives an example of a classic use case and the break down of the business shows how you can start digging into what it really means. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of key tenets of agile is to satisfy the customer, to do this you need to understand the customer. Classic Product Management requirements are often don't discuss the customer or user at all (The product MUST support concurrent downloads of data from multiple clients). In the example given her at least we have a user mentioned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of trying to parse the business case (or PRD requirement) its often better to step back and start with a more basic question &quot;What is the end goal? When the user is done, what do they get?&quot; At this point a judicious use of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;5 Whys&quot;&lt;/a&gt; can help to make sure the end goal is really understood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you know what the end is, you've got a start at an acceptance criteria. Now you need to figure out what needs to be done to get there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A timeline exercise is excellent here, as it is really good at finding missing items. You start at a state of zero and start walking through what the user does to get to the state of done. For example, you're building a tropical resort and you want to offer scuba diving. It will of course help to understand the why and customer's done, but even if your stakeholder just says &quot;because everyone else has it,&quot; the timeline can help. You start the timeline with the user in their hotel room and you walk through the entire experience until they are back in their hotel room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only will this catch pretty much everything you need for the story, you'll probably pick up a lot of dependencies. For example, the docks where the scuba boats are is three miles from the hotel. You'll need a shuttle service, this is a whole other Epic and becomes a dependency to this story. Create an Epic story dependency, set that to the side and move on with your timeline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I guess in a round about way, my answer to converting business cases to user stories is &quot;don't&quot;. Instead use them as a conversation starter to create user stories for the real user need. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-02-13T06:29:02.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14229" CreationDate="2015-02-13T06:40:46.590" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;trying to wrap my head around this question, so forgive me if I go off base. I'm going to tackle this assuming your billing as a team. I'm going to also assume a designer is a UI person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team has a velocity, not the individuals. So your sprint planning needs to be focused on what the entire team can manage in the sprint. If your developers are your limitation, then the sprint is planned to that limitation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you try and schedule work to each functional area, you can quickly get out of sync and causing yourself more problems. This happens often when enterprises try and go agile while keeping QA as a separate sprint or even later in the same dev sprint. Unless a QA team has full automation they can rarely keep up with a high performing development team. So the dev team gets farther and farther ahead of QA and that means longer time passes from when a bug is created and when it is identified. The later you identify the harder it is to fix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So going back to your example, if your designers can get all the work they need to do done in half the time the engineers do, then you've got too many designers or not enough engineers for the planning. Several solutions to this, including: &#xA;- Cross Training: Designers could learn testing or coding work. A strong agile team has an ability to do more than one role.&#xA;- Share your designers. Say you have two engineering projects, have the designers working on both. This isn't ideal, as it pulls focus, but often happens with shared resources like Data Base, Localization and such. &#xA;- Hire more engineers: Get enough engineers to keep up with the designers, ship more product faster. &#xA;- Reduce designer headcount: One of those elephants in the room no one wants to talk about. Doesn't make it less valid, just less desirable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-02-13T06:40:46.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14207" CreationDate="2015-02-13T06:56:57.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll agree that there isn't a right answer and it really is up to the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said how you run the meetings makes a major impact on things. This goes to basic meeting facilitation and isn't agile specific. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Publish an agenda ahead of time: On average, half your team hates to be surprised. They want to go into a meeting well prepared. This includes providing an update on the current backlog in the email or calendar invite, even if its easy to pull from your tool of choice. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Post the agenda during the meeting. An agenda shown on the first slide of a .ppt deck ( a bigger crime in waterfall) is useless as soon as you change slides. Post the agenda clearly for everyone to see. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make sure there is a clock in the room, big and easy to read. Yes, everyone has a cell phone. That requires more effort and draws more focus (from everyone) than a quick glance at a wall clock. Also means everyone is on exactly the same time. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do a time based agenda. Venture's agenda is excellent. However put it in clock times, so &quot;Meeting Open: 10:00, Planning and Vision: 10:05, Dev an Arch status: 10:10.&quot; By putting the time the agenda item starts it makes it much easier to track to your agenda. If it's 10:15 and you still haven't started Dev and Arch Status, you know you need to shave 5 minutes of Dev and Arch or agree with the team to shave it elsewhere. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Plan and schedule breaks: Science and years of experience have shown us the human mind can't stay focused for more than about 90 minutes in a stretch. After this, even the most engaging topic will start to lose focus. Plan your breaks into the agenda and then enforce  them. Engineers are notorious for the &quot;let's keep going, we're almost done&quot; syndrome. They may get done faster, the right issues might not have come up because brains were too foggy. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Limit the technology: A good running agile team knows this already. If everyone has their laptop open and active, it will pull energy away. Most successful teams I know will do all their planning with old fashioned wall and post its and then transfer it to their electronic tool of choice. I'd even support a phone bowl, where everyone puts their phone during planning. They can have them at breaks. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, not agile, just good meeting facilitation that can make an agile ceremony even more effective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-02-13T06:56:57.373" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14233" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-13T11:55:23.403" Score="3" ViewCount="31033" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my MPP setup, I have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a resource, R1, available for my project for 50%, and;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a resource, R2, available for 100%.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I marked them in the &quot;resource sheet&quot; as &quot;Max. Units&quot; of 50% and 100% for R1 and R2 respectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I create a task in &quot;Gantt chat view&quot; and assign to R1 a task with a duration of 4 hours, it turns the &quot;Work&quot; field as 2 Hrs.&#xA;When the same task duration is assigned to resource R2, it does not impact the &quot;Work&quot; field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am unable to understand the reason why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am now thinking that all of my project planning may actually be showing me wrong numbers in the total hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My understanding is:&#xA;If a task is of 1 day duration; assigned to a resource with only 50% availability, it should actually change the &quot;Work&quot; field to 2 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have attached an edited screen shot to understand the problem better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MUfQC.png&quot; alt=&quot;Duration Vs. Work&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7681" LastEditorUserId="15972" LastEditDate="2015-02-21T15:42:28.457" LastActivityDate="2016-12-21T19:51:44.943" Title="Relationship between Duration and Work fields in MPP" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14233" CreationDate="2015-02-13T12:13:48.450" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If R1, who can only dedicate 50% of their time to any task, does a piece of work that requires 2 hours of effort, then it will actually take them 4 hours to do it- It will take them twice as long because they can only work on it for 50% of the time. Therefore if the duration of a task is pre-set at 4 hours then the actual work (effort) to be completed by R1 can only be be 2 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If R2 can dedicate all their time (100%) to a task and that task has a pre-set duration of 4 hours, then the work (effort) that R2 will do must also be 4 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MS-Project works from the basis that tasks have an absolute amount of effort required to complete them which is wholly independent of the amount and type of resources allocated to the task. The more resources (people) allocated to do a task the smaller the expected duration as the same amount of work will be split up and worked on in parallel by a greater number of people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you start by entering the Work and &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; assign a resource of 50% then the Duration will double. If you start by entering Duration then the work will halve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-02-13T12:13:48.450" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14235" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-13T15:41:14.747" Score="0" ViewCount="627" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to force a re-calculation of a the &quot;Work&quot; field after updating % allocation of resources in the resource sheet or in the resource names column?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am using MSP 2013 standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7681" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T19:57:25.603" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T19:57:25.603" Title="Force recalculation of Work field" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14235" CreationDate="2015-02-13T15:58:59.823" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For tasks designated as Fixed Units, once there is a value for Work and a value for Duration, MS-Project cannot tell whether you want to keep work the same and adjust duration, or keep duration the same and adjust work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could try designating the tasks as either Fixed Work or Fixed Duration, depending on your local needs...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-02-13T15:58:59.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14235" CreationDate="2015-02-13T20:34:25.643" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm guessing you mean to re-assign resources at a different assignment units after you change the resource's max units?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, not automatically.  However, you can quickly replace resources with the same resources at a different assignment value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the Project summary task is visible, turn it off by clearing the check from the &quot;Project Summary Task&quot; option on the Format Ribbon.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select all tasks in the file by selecting the Task Name column heading.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select Assign Resources on the Resource Ribbon and select the resource you need to change in the list.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click Replace.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select the same resource and &lt;strong&gt;Manually&lt;/strong&gt; enter the new assignment units.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click OK in the Replace Resources dialog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Repeat as needed with other resources.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-02-13T20:34:25.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14233" CreationDate="2015-02-13T20:43:23.533" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pardon me for bumping in.  You are dealing with two different ideas.  Duration and work.  Duration is the value you enter in the duration field when you create the task.  It is the answer to the question &quot;how long is this going to take?&quot;.  When you assign resources Project, unless told differently by you, calculates the work using the following formula:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Duration * assignment units = Work&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4h * 50% = 2 hours of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can always enter the work value when you assign the resource. (split your screen to show the task form in the lower pane).  If you tell project how much work, Project will recalculate the duration based upon the following formula:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Work/assignment units = duration&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-02-13T20:43:23.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14227" CreationDate="2015-02-14T00:56:58.030" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several certificate bodies for traditional project management as well as bodies covering new project methodologies such as Agile and Lean. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As CodeGnome has mentioned, the two best know certifications are the PMP and PRINCE2. After this, Six Sigma has a big sway is highly structured companies, typically hardware/&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMP is a standard created by the Project Management Institute while it started in the US it is an accepted standard in 104 countries now. The PMBoK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) is the PMP guidebook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PRINCE2 (an acronym for PRojects IN Controlled Environments) is a de facto process-based method for effective project management. Used extensively by the UK Government, PRINCE2 is also widely recognised and used in the private sector, both in the UK and internationally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Six Sigma is a disciplined, data-driven approach and methodology for eliminating defects (driving toward six standard deviations between the mean and the nearest specification limit) in any process – from manufacturing to transactional and from product to service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now all of this said, with the exception of some parts of Six Sigma, there is no &quot;one right way&quot;. For example the PMI PMBoK is called a body of knowledge and specifically does not claim to be a methodology. It's a framework of tools that a company or program team use to create their methodology. There are dozens of ways to manage chartering, requirements gathering and reporting. The good PM certification programs don't try and prescribe, they try and guide. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Agile/ Lean Space the leading certifications are CSM, CSPO, CSP (a progression) and PMI-ACP. Again, these guide, not dictate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-02-14T00:56:58.030" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14240" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-14T09:15:13.210" Score="13" ViewCount="15974" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was used to morning Daily scrum meetings (after 30/60 mins of work), but currently we are conducting meetings after 6 hours of work. I think this approach has the advantage of focusing on the problems the team members have encountered when they answer the &quot;Are there any impediments in your way?&quot; question. I believe that this is the most important of the three questions that the team members answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best part of the day to have the Daily Scrum meetings, in the morning or afternoon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16277" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-02-14T17:00:20.237" LastActivityDate="2015-09-10T22:17:44.287" Title="Should Daily Scrum meetings be held in the morning or the afternoon?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14240" CreationDate="2015-02-14T10:08:12.790" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most important goal of the daily scrum is not to identify problems, but to create a plan for the next 24 hours (until the next daily scrum). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter when exactly you do the daily scrum though. I prefer it in the early morning if all team members tend to arrive around the same time. If team members come in at different times I generally suggest teams to pick their favorite slot. Many teams do a daily just before or just after lunch. Which is a natural break in your 'vibe' anyway. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a team member encounters a problem during the day, it's best if they work together to solve it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The daily scrum may identify possible issues in the further future, that may impact your teams ability to complete the sprint goal, those are the ones the 3 questions focus on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7393" LastActivityDate="2015-02-14T10:08:12.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14240" CreationDate="2015-02-14T11:20:52.303" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, a morning meeting is better, because&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it doesn't cut the working day into two halves (people mostly complain about meetings because it cuts their work into pieces and they find it hard to start again)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;during the meeting we usually talk about what is going to happen after the meeting and when it is in the afternoon it looses it points. Moreover, the team is not necessarily together anymore (people leave early, continue from home, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if the team members are not in the office in the morning or you have more than one sites with time difference, you have no other choice than keep the meeting at a time that is suitable for everybody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-02-14T11:20:52.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14240" CreationDate="2015-02-14T16:53:36.907" Score="16" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the best part of the day to have the Daily Scrum meetings, in the morning or afternoon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There cannot be a single, canonical answer to this question that will be true for all teams and all projects. However, there are certainly some common practices&amp;mdash;but keep in mind that &quot;common&quot; doesn't necessarily mean &quot;best.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clarify the trade-offs involved in selecting an optimal time for your daily stand-up, I will provide some concrete examples of how the Daily Scrum meeting should be used. Once your entire team shares a foundational understanding of what the scrum is &lt;em&gt;for&lt;/em&gt; and how to leverage its format to best advantage, it is much easier to make the necessary fine-tuning adjustments to find out what works best for your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Naturally, I have some pragmatic advice about that, too. In the general case, starting your daily stand-up 30 minutes after the start of your team's &quot;core hours&quot; will serve many teams well. While not universally true, it is a reasonable proxy principle to use as a starting point until you can empirically define the optimal meeting time for &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; team, in &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; organization, and in &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; field of endeavor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Understanding the Purpose of the Daily Stand-Up&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of the three questions asked during the Daily Scrum is is equally important for the intra-team coordination required of a successful Scrum Team. It is a mistake to make any one of the questions as more important than the others. As @jessehouwing &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/14241/4271&quot;&gt;correctly points out&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The most important goal of the daily scrum is not to identify problems, but to create a plan for the next 24 hours (until the next daily scrum).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put it another way, the goal of the daily stand-up is to allow the team to coordinate its activities. The &quot;three questions&quot; provide a framework for team members to do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Identify completed work that ready to be pulled into the next column of the team's pull-based work-flow.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What did you do yesterday?&lt;/em&gt; should elicit a work item from the person currently handling the widget-embiggening story. This person is communicating what parts of the work are done, and ready to be pulled into the QA column by the person on the team who is best able to handle the Selenium or Capybara testing that is part of the story's Definition of Done.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Identify queue capacity, and coordinate the hand-off.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What are you doing today?&lt;/em&gt; should elicit a team member's expectation of what work he is ready to pull so that two people don't try to grab the same story. This question should also elicit task or story dependencies, and can make &lt;em&gt;implicit&lt;/em&gt; expectations &lt;em&gt;explicit&lt;/em&gt;. For example, when Team Member Bravo says &quot;Today I plan to embiggen the Foo Cascade,&quot; that person is communicating that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What was on Bravo's plate yesterday is done, and has available capacity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bravo is committing to work on embiggening the cascade today unless the self-organizing team identifies something else that takes priority.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The work that Team Member Alpha said was on Alpha's plate yesterday is now needed by Team Member Bravo, and Alpha should speak up if the Foo Cascade isn't ready for Bravo to embiggen it yet.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If Alpha and Bravo need to coordinate the hand-off in more detail, they identify the need and plan to take the additional coordination off-line. For example, Alpha might say: &quot;The cascade is ready for you, Bravo, but let's get together after the scrum so that I can explain how to insert Tab A into Slot B before the embiggening can begin.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bravo is letting the team know that, if all goes well today, the person who will pick up the Foo Cascade tomorrow for testing (we'll assume this is Team Member Charlie) can plan his work accordingly, since there is now an explicit expectation of when the user story will be ready for the next step in its journey.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Identify any new tasks or stories that may require changes in the team's Sprint Backlog or require additional coordination or support from other team members.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Do you have any roadblocks?&lt;/em&gt; should elicit a brief list of things that are standing in the way of a clean hand-off between team members. For example, Team Member Charlie might be unable to test the Foo Cascade because the Quux Capacitor is leaking. Charlie brings this up as a roadblock so that the team can discuss it briefly to determine what resources they have to address the problem (if any), who will write the task down in the Sprint Backlog if that hasn't already been done, and who should take interim ownership of the unblocking task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Continuing this example, we just learned that Team Member Bravo has cleared his plate, and there's no point in Bravo working on embiggening the Foo Cascade until the Quux Capacitor leak has been fixed since Charlie can't pull the completed work while this roadblock is in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sort of cooperative problem-solving is sometimes called &lt;em&gt;swarming&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;stopping the line&lt;/em&gt;, and is the Scrum way to allow the team to maintain flow and cadence throughout the Sprint. It also leverages process slack and collective ownership to dynamically allocate resources to user stories in a way that command-and-control management generally cannot reproduce or coordinate as efficiently.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Some Practical Advice&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there can't be a canonical answer to the question of when meetings should be held, there are certainly some pragmatic considerations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In a self-organizing team, a common practice is to have &quot;core hours&quot; when all team members are available to each other. For example, a team may have core hours between 10:00am and 2:00pm, but people may come in earlier, work later, or have an entirely performance-based schedule outside of those core hours. Scheduling the daily stand-up near the &lt;em&gt;start&lt;/em&gt; of core hours is often the best way to ensure that there's plenty of time for intra-team coordination following the stand-up.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Holding the scrum too early may result is lower productivity from those who aren't morning people, and doesn't give folks enough time to review the day's work or prepare coherent data for the scrum. Make sure people have at least enough time for a cup of coffee and a chance to check their email, CI build status, or other metrics before expecting a scrum to yield meaningful results.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Holding the scrum too late in the day doesn't leave enough slack in the process to handle unforeseen events, and doesn't provide the team the &lt;em&gt;ad hoc&lt;/em&gt; post-scrum meetings they may need to coordinate between themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my own experience as a Scrum Master, holding the 15-minute daily stand-up 30 minutes after the start of core hours (e.g. &lt;strong&gt;holding the scrum from 10:30am-10:45am&lt;/strong&gt; when core hours are 10:00am-2:00pm) is empirically the best strategy that I have found. However, other strategies are also valid, so your mileage may certainly vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2015-02-14T17:08:49.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14244" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-02-14T17:03:55.767" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Daily Scrum definition from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v1/Scrum-Guide-US.pdf#zoom=100&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Daily Scrum is a 15-minute time-boxed event for the Development&#xA;  Team to synchronize activities and create a plan for the next 24&#xA;  hours. This is done by inspecting the work since the last Daily Scrum&#xA;  and forecasting the work that could be done before the next one. The&#xA;  Daily Scrum is held at the same time and place each day to reduce&#xA;  complexity. During the meeting, the Development Team members explain:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What did I do yesterday that helped the Development Team meet the Sprint Goal?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What will I do today to help the Development Team meet the Sprint Goal?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Do I see any impediment that prevents me or the Development Team from meeting the Sprint Goal?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Links&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-02T19:43:50.093" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T19:43:50.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14245" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-02-14T17:03:55.767" Score="0" Body="This tag is for questions about the practice or implementation of the Daily Scrum meeting within the Scrum framework. This meeting is also commonly known as the &quot;daily stand-up.&quot;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-02-14T17:03:55.767" LastActivityDate="2015-02-14T17:03:55.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14246" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-15T01:18:29.940" Score="1" ViewCount="1311" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not new to Scrum neither I am new to Microsoft Project nor TFS.&#xA;In the past On-Premises I was able to use Microsoft Project with team foundation server, but without SCRUM, it was just waterfall, in TFS we had connected the tasks, and the developers submitted their timesheets and it was easy to track the real time on the tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I am not using TFS anymore but Visual Studio Online with the SCRUM template, I know SCRUM well and we can do project management easily with VSO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the question comes here, as we are a Software Development Company, the task board and pbi board its an internal tool, for the stakeholders they usually want to see the TASKS/Iterations and the percent done, they also want to see if the tasks are taken more time than the initial estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can we do that with Microsoft Project and at the same time use VSO with the scrum template?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16286" LastActivityDate="2016-08-04T21:20:08.223" Title="How to use Scrum with TFS and also MIcrosoft Project" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14240" CreationDate="2015-02-15T21:03:17.813" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, all interruptions to the mental &quot;flow&quot; of highly concentrated knowledge workers are counter productive and so the timing, duration and structure of the daily need careful consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having tried a few variants I prefer to hold the daily 30 mins after everyone is in the office.  The reasons are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There's enough time for the majority of the team to &quot;warm up&quot; with a coffee, some small admin tasks like emails, and to get their heads back into yesterday's work.  However it's before they've gotten themselves into the mental zones necessary for quality work to be achieved.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It allows people to form a plan for the day and to articulate this in front of the rest of the team.  Verbalizing builds belief and as with any team sport a &quot;huddle&quot; timed at the start of play builds motivation and momentum. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It allows sufficient time before the close of business for the scrum master to plan and execute any impediment-blitzing activities which might be necessary and it also allows the team enough time to schedule pair programming sessions and other coordination / knowledge sharing meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without wanting to get too deep about this, in general I think human beings are innately programmed to follow daily rhythms of behavior, starting afresh in the morning and closing down in the evening.  They also operate better if they feel like they have a direction or a plan from the get-go and so an early daily would be my recommendation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16252" LastActivityDate="2015-02-15T21:03:17.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14252" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-16T06:16:45.867" Score="0" ViewCount="66" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a product manager, a project manager, a UI team lead and a contract UI designer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently the designer is being paid from the product manager budget and all communication and design issues are under product manager supervision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the output of the design goes to the R &amp;amp; D - UI team for development.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this the proper process for working with a designer? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7194" LastEditorUserId="15972" LastEditDate="2015-02-18T13:14:28.240" LastActivityDate="2015-02-18T13:14:28.240" Title="Who should be in charge of a UI design contracting?" Tags="&lt;user-experience-design&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14258" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14259" CreationDate="2015-02-16T15:24:25.737" Score="1" ViewCount="7601" Body="&lt;p&gt;i am tasked to take over a project that has recently taken off the ground. However, there has been no project plan and we need to create one now. Due to circumstances, I can only fix the next milestone in time and need to arrange tasks around that milestone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is fine for future tasks, but current tasks don't align so that they culminate into the milestone, even if they are assigned as predecessors to the milestone. If I assign the the previous tasks to the milestone as predecessors, the milestone is moved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WDrjK.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I arrange all the tasks around the milestone?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16299" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2015-02-16T15:40:05.967" Title="How to arrange tasks around a fixed milestone?" Tags="&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;milestones&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14258" CreationDate="2015-02-16T15:40:05.967" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem looks to be that you are scheduling the very first task from &quot;today&quot;... If you link them nose-to-tail the entire project will schedule from &quot;today&quot; and the milestone &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; move to accommodate that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you set the start date of the first task sufficiently far in the past that there is enough time to fit all the first tasks in before the milestone then all will be well. This might mean you have to set the Project Start Date in the past too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have done all that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fix the start of the milestone by making it a &quot;Must start on...&quot; or &quot;Start no later than...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make the milestone a dependant of the last task in the first section (i.e. make the final previous task a predecessor of the milestone).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make all the prior tasks &quot;Finish as late as possible&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-02-16T15:40:05.967" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14246" CreationDate="2015-02-16T16:15:28.933" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Get your stakeholders to monitor Scrum metrics&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...the stakeholders they usually want to see the TASKS/Iterations and the&#xA;  percent done, they also want to see if the tasks are taken more time&#xA;  than the initial estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The very reason why we switched from Waterfall to Scrum is because &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.applitude.se/2011/02/plan-driven-versus-agile-predictive-versus-adaptive/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;software development is not a predictive process&lt;/a&gt;. &#xA;Developers run into unforeseen problems and Product Owners want to be able to make mid-course corrections. Scrum uses an adaptive process to handle such chages. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the work turns out to be different than the Development Team&#xA;  expected, they collaborate with the Product Owner to negotiate the&#xA;  scope of Sprint Backlog within the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As new work is required, the Development Team adds it to the Sprint&#xA;  Backlog. As work is performed or completed, the estimated remaining&#xA;  work is updated. When elements of the plan are deemed unnecessary,&#xA;  they are removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the stakeholders should not be hung up on following the plan. Remember &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Agile Manifesto values &quot;Responding to change over following a plan&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Senior leaders of the development organization should be monitoring team velocity and help to improve that, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remove organizational impediments that are preventing the dev team from increasing velocity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Train dev team on technologies that are identified as knowledge gaps for the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coach and mentor team members who may be slowing the team down with poor quality code requiring heavy review and rewrite.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product Management stakeholders should be focusing on the release plan and roadmap and looking for ways to deploy code to actual users early so that valuable feedback can be received sooner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-02-16T16:15:28.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14233" CreationDate="2015-02-16T16:18:44.393" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The major factor here is the type of the task and effort driven or not.  You can make a task fixed duration, fixed work, or fixed units. I will ignore fixed units for this explanation.  If a task is fixed duration and effort driven, then no matter how many people you assign to it, the duration won't change.  For a fixed duration task however, if it is not effort driven, adding resources increases the amount of work required for the task without changing the duration.   If you add resources for a fixed duration task, the utilization rate will decrease for the resources.  A fixed work task is the opposite.  Adding resources to the task will decrease the duration by spreading the work over the available resources. An example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task A requires 40 hours of work to complete and is effort driven with fixed work.  If I assign Brian to do task A, it will take him 5 days at 100% utilization.  If I want it done sooner, I can add Clark to the task.  With Brian and Clark working together, it will only take 2.5 days (20 hours).  Brian and Clark will both have 100% utilization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task B takes 5 days to complete and is a fixed duration and effort driven.  If I assign David to the task with 100% utilization, it will be complete in 5 days and he will do 40 hours of work.  If I then add Ethan to help on the task, it will still take 5 days.  Now David only has to do 20 hours of work and Ethan does the other 20 hours.  So both of their utilization rates are now 50%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task C takes 5 days to complete and is fixed duration but not effort driven.  If I assign Fred to the task with 100% utilization, it will be complete in 5 days and he will do 40 hours of work.  If I then add Greg to help on the task, it will still take 5 days but the work will increase to 80 hours.  Both Fred and Greg will still have 100% utilization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A fixed work task is always effort driven so there cannot be a case where there is fixed work but not effort driven.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can change these settings by double clicking on a task and going to the &quot;Advanced&quot; tab.  Here you can set the Task Type (fixed units, fixed duration, or fixed work) and effort driven or not.  Hopefully this helps you understand how the scheduling engine works a little better.  Good Luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;** When a task is fixed duration and effort driven, and you add a resource (as in Task A) the resource utilization rate will not appear as a percentage in the resource column next to their name.  It will show both of them as a regular resource with 100% utilization but they will only be working 20 hours each, so if you assign them to a second concurrent task with the same type, duration and work, there will not be an overallocation because they can work up to 40 hours.  You can see how many hours of work a resource has by going to the resource sheet and viewing the &quot;Regular Work&quot; column.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16300" LastEditorUserId="16300" LastEditDate="2015-02-16T16:38:48.757" LastActivityDate="2015-02-16T16:38:48.757" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14262" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14267" CreationDate="2015-02-16T16:27:20.937" Score="1" ViewCount="156" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I understand during the sprint planning meeting the team choose the backlog items that will be included in the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How formal is the sprint planning and task assignments? Once the sprint starts is normal to use PMBOK artifacts such as a project charter and a WBS to guide the sprint or the development team decide what to do on the go?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;P.D.&#xA;I only have a basic knowledge of scrum. I would like to apologize in advance if I am  constructing this question wrong!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16301" LastEditorUserId="16301" LastEditDate="2015-02-16T18:32:40.307" LastActivityDate="2015-02-17T11:56:30.950" Title="How formal is the sprint planning?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;pmbok&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14214" CreationDate="2015-02-16T17:21:02.017" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;A risk is a potential occurrence (positive or negative).  An opportunity is a possible action that can be taken.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Opportunity requires that one take action; risk is something that action can be taken to make more or less likely to occur but is ultimately outside of your direct control.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16300" LastActivityDate="2015-02-16T17:21:02.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14216" CreationDate="2015-02-16T17:56:45.737" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to manage a large number of data vendors and software licenses so I had this exact same question.  The solution I used, assuming you use a resource pool, is to make a &quot;License Management&quot; project with each license as a material resource.  In this project, I made tasks such as &quot;Renew License&quot; and &quot;Get Update&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then in each project that uses a license or data source, you add the material resource to the project summary task.  This allows you to see which projects are using each resource, who is responsible for renewing the license, how much the material cost is (flat fee and per use), and when each license needs to be renewed or update needs to be downloaded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16300" LastActivityDate="2015-02-16T17:56:45.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14265" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14266" CreationDate="2015-02-16T18:18:49.007" Score="0" ViewCount="4116" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am attempting to use MS Project Professional 2013 to send out automated outlook e-mails the week before a task is due among other automated e-mail tasks. Is this possible with the desktop program or will I need something like MS Project Server or the MS Project web app to achieve such a task? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16303" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T19:57:42.880" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T19:57:42.880" Title="MS Project Professional 2013 Email Notifications" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;project-server&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14265" CreationDate="2015-02-16T20:47:15.793" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can set up these functions using VBA but the problem you will run into is that the file has to be open for it to check the conditions and run the code to send an email.  Sharepoint would actually be the right service for setting up those types of automated tasks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you might consider doing is assigning tasks to each member of your team via outlook.  If you don't mind everyone seeing all of the tasks, you can create a group calendar in Outlook and put all of your project tasks in it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16300" LastEditorUserId="16300" LastEditDate="2015-02-16T20:52:55.120" LastActivityDate="2015-02-16T20:52:55.120" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14262" CreationDate="2015-02-16T23:33:10.057" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sprint planning is a meeting held between the Product Owner and the team doing the work. The Product Owner is the one that prioritises the backlog and also briefs the team on the items at the top of the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team then estimates the backlog items and because it knows its typical sprint capacity (i.e. its velocity) it decides how far down the backlog it can go. For example, it might have a velocity of 20 points and so would select the items prioritised by the Product Owner down to the point where they had roughly 20 points allocated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum doesn't really prescribe much beyond that point up until the end of the sprint and the sprint review. Its up to the team and the Product Owner to agree on how they will work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With most teams the process would be as follows. The team would work on the items allocated to the sprint, roughly following the prioritisation used by the Product Owner. They may vary the order a bit from the Product Owner's priorities for technical reasons. All along there would be constant communication between the team and the Product Owner. The team would ask frequent questions, seeking clarification on the stories allocated to the sprint. They will often also demonstrate progress to the Product Owner to get their feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reporting is not usually done in a formal way as Scrum is set up to be highly transparent. The main forms of reporting are the task board, which acts as an information radiator, and the daily stand-ups that non-team members can attend (but not interrupt) and get a feel for what is going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that agile encourages communication and interaction over process. As there is much interaction between the team and the Product Owner there is rarely any need for other reporting tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no obligation on the team to complete the work allocated to the sprint. Instead, they work their way through the items as best they can and striving to achieve an agreed definition of 'done' for each item. If there are stories incomplete at the end of the sprint they do not count towards the measurement of the team's velocity. That way the actual rate of progress is used to drive the team's capacity planning. The intention being to achieve a sustainable pace that maintains quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-02-16T23:33:10.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14262" CreationDate="2015-02-17T11:56:30.950" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sprint Planning is a formal ceremony where the team commits to the work that they would be able to accomplish during the sprint. It is where the stories prioritized by the PO are analyzed and broken into smaller technical tasks by the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you use PMBOK artifacts to guide the sprint? Technically speaking, yes you can because scrum doesn't prescribe how a team handles its sprint. But, since scrum is meant to be transparent, the information is supposed to come automatically from the sprint board, sprint burndown chart and the daily standups. so, you shouldn't need to improvise to get more data. Moreover, scrum is meant to convert the teams into self-organizing. So, guiding them from outside is usually not required. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6172" LastActivityDate="2015-02-17T11:56:30.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14270" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14273" CreationDate="2015-02-17T12:41:07.193" Score="7" ViewCount="5664" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are working on a project that will be completed over several months therefore will take several sprints. Our product owner has pushed us into planning several sprints in one go. We have only given rough estimates for items in future sprints (we are only on sprint 1). However it still means we have a set list of items in each future sprint. When questioned by the scrummaster the product owner replied that he had read somewhere this was the way to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the main reason for doing this was to give an overall release date to the customer but there are obviously lots of problems. For example what happens with adding bug fixes etc being fed into the backlog?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16258" LastActivityDate="2017-09-06T14:59:17.050" Title="Plan several sprints at once" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14252" CreationDate="2015-02-17T13:18:48.020" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having seen a number of contract meetings in the works, whomever has the most expertise in the area. You shouldn't care if someone's feelings get hurt because its &quot;technically their job description.&quot; The person who is most knowledgeable should always be the one to negotiate the contract. Not only will this person have a better idea of how to explain things to the other parties, but they will be better prepared to see any obstacles that may arise. If all employees are truly equal in qualification, then go with the least busy, most senior person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16308" LastActivityDate="2015-02-17T13:18:48.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14161" CreationDate="2015-02-17T13:26:43.347" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simplest solution would be to move the deadline for support materials ahead by a week or two. If the client notices, just explain (much more politely than what I'm saying) that deadlines are deadlines and if they aren't willing to show up to the field on time, they shouldn't be playing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As stated above, you also need your safety net in place. Make it very clear in the contract that THEY are responsible for time lost due to lack of follow through on their part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have someone who has a good rapport with someone from their office, maybe have them send a polite reminder a few days ahead of time. My personal experience with reminding people is some like it and some find it patronizing, but most people are understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for what to do when their materials are late? Well, the PM should have a contingency plan to fall back on. Generally, stuff that is related to the project, but has no time constraint or dependencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16308" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-03-11T12:31:33.137" LastActivityDate="2015-03-11T12:31:33.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14270" CreationDate="2015-02-17T13:47:50.053" Score="11" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner must be educated on how release planning works in an iterative development model. &lt;strong&gt;Fixed-scope Sprint Planning is emphatically &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; how release planning works within the Scrum framework.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, release planning is based on estimating the number of time-boxes that are estimated to provide sufficient time to deliver the features being estimated &lt;em&gt;at the time of estimation&lt;/em&gt;, with the understanding that estimation accuracy at the beginning of a project have a low confidence interval. An estimate is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a commitment, and the both the content of the time-boxes and the accuracy of the estimates will vary over the life of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB: The term &quot;release planning&quot; has actually been removed from recent versions of the official &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;. The SAFe framework still includes it, and attempts to treat it as a complex, multi-day &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/release-planning/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;milestone-planning event&lt;/a&gt;. There are are certainly other ways to address release planning, but fixed-content Sprints are still not it; generally, you will need to identify value-based milestones rather than a fixed feature set to do effective release planning in Scrum, and your mileage with the technique may vary considerably.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How to Do Release Planning in Scrum&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However it still means we have a set list of items in each future sprint. When questioned by the scrummaster the product owner replied that he had read somewhere this was the way to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is canonically &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the way to do this. The correct procedure is to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do a one-pass estimate of all stories, themes, and epics in the Product Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimate the number of Sprints required to complete the Product Backlog by applying the velocity (or estimated velocity with fudge factor) to the the entirety of the Product Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plan releases based on this initial estimate, while understanding that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cone of uncertainty&lt;/a&gt; is large, and that the content of any sprint other than the upcoming Sprint is not guaranteed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is that the Scrum process requires replanning the contents of the upcoming Sprint each iteration at the beginning of Sprint Planning. That is what gives Scrum its agility: the ability to re-prioritize and re-scale the team's available capacity every iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, a Sprint is just a container that is filled to &lt;em&gt;currently-available capacity&lt;/em&gt; from the list of &lt;em&gt;current priorities&lt;/em&gt;. The Product Backlog reflects ongoing changes to priorities, so the contents of future Sprints are not only likely to change, they are actually &lt;em&gt;expected&lt;/em&gt; to change as the product and the team's knowledge and processes continuously evolve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real problem here is that the Product Owner appears to want to treat Scrum as another type of up-front waterfall planning process. However, in Scrum, nothing beyond the current Sprint is a commitment; it is simply an estimate based on the knowledge available to the team at the time the estimate is made. This paradigm must be clearly communicated to everyone on the Scrum Team, &lt;em&gt;especially&lt;/em&gt; the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Release planning with Scrum generally involves setting target dates based on a fixed number of iterations. The Product Owner must dynamically adjust scope each iteration with an eye towards maximizing the value delivered during each Sprint and each planned release. Since Scrum is a time-boxing framework where scope is expected to be the flexible parameter, release dates are generally the (relatively) fixed quantity, while the scope of each release (e.g. what features are actually included in each planned release) is usually the variable quantity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is mitigated by the fact that each iteration should result in a product that is in a potentially-shippable state. That doesn't mean it is guaranteed to be feature-complete; in the software world, it simply means the code compiles, and any features that are currently included meet the current Definition of Done. All else is malleable, and meant to be iteratively improved Sprint after Sprint until it is &quot;good enough&quot; for the project to be declared a success and formally closed out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-02-17T13:47:50.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14270" CreationDate="2015-02-17T14:03:50.893" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer: planning future sprints in advance is a bad idea. And I once read that the moon landings were faked; that doesn't make it true though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now for the longer answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, one of the primary drivers behind agile development was a recognition that the old way of doing things - estimating everything in advance and setting a release date based on that - just doesn't work in many cases. Estimates are guesses and so will be wrong a times (often, a lot of the time). People tend to under-estimate and it's difficult (impossible, often) to accurately estimate unknows. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By repeatedly iterating over the plan, estimate, work phases, agile methods allow the estimates to be more accurate. This of course introduces a problem for many customers and managers: they aren't given a release date as everything is not estimated in advance. It doesn't matter that such release dates are always missed, they still find comfort in having a date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One solution to this is time boxing. A release date is set, but no firm commitment is given to what will be released at that time. Another is to involve the customer is the sprint process; so they have a sense of progress, without a promised end date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going back to why the Product Owner thinks he read that everything should be planned in advance. The likely thing he's read about is the initial story planning phase. Here, all stories are captured and estimated. They are estimated in arbitrary points though, not in days or hours. This gives the team a sense of the relative sizes of stories and is a useful indication of what stories require the most work, contain the biggest risks etc. This helps the Product Owner prioritise stories (eg, tackle the highest risk stories first). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprint planning meetings are then about putting hour estimates against one of more stories (or tasks, if the stories are decomposed). But only for that sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14835" LastActivityDate="2015-02-17T14:03:50.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="55" CreationDate="2015-02-17T15:22:30.830" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that a PM does not need to be &quot;technical&quot; &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt;. However, a key factor is how many times a PM has delivered the same project.  Like some others on this thread I believe the PM does not need to be technical and should trust in their tech team.  However, if the PM is at all competent, they will gain &lt;em&gt;experience&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;best practices&lt;/em&gt; around the process and the best practices for &lt;em&gt;executing&lt;/em&gt; a technical project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for instance, when standing up a new Active Directory infrastructure, I would not expect a PM to understand the nuts and bolts of how to design and execute a new AD Infrastructure. However, I would expect that PM - if this is not their first project - to have best practices gathered around what a typical timeline for a project like this should look, what general questions are needed during discovery and how long that will take. Other technical dependencies (such as a working network or clean and rationalized user data) that need to be in place prior to standing up the AD infrastructure so they can help provide that air cover that is so important for keeping a team moving forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why it is critical for organizations to develop resource &quot;pipelines&quot; for PMs as much as any other discipline.  You need to give younger PMs the opportunity to shadow or otherwise experience these projects and learn the ropes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16014" LastActivityDate="2015-02-17T15:22:30.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14277" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-16T13:14:11.573" Score="3" ViewCount="3370" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have worked in organisations that used either one of the following approaches during a retrospective meeting to gather feedback and reflect on how the agile team is doing and to explore ways to improve: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First approach:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;“Start”, “stop” or &quot;Continue&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using this approach each team member is asked to identify specific&#xA;  things that the team should:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Start doing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Stop doing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Continue doing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second approach:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What went well and not so well?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using this approach team feedback focuses only in these two areas and team feedback is captured as follows: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1-  Capture feedback in excel sheet &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2-  Team Vote&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3-  Tackle highest voted items &quot;in what didn't go so well&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4-  Decide on actions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which approach to use:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the “&lt;strong&gt;Start”, “stop” and “Continue” approach&lt;/strong&gt;, the retrospectives meeting seem to take longer time but does provide substantially more feedback. However, documenting the outcome is a bit problematic because the list of items (particularly the “start”) keeps growing! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using &lt;strong&gt;&quot;What went well and not so well&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; approach the outcome of the retrospective meeting seems to be more focused but less rich.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that a combination of these two approaches is perhaps possible by starting the retrospective with:  What went we’ll and not so well! Followed by “Start”, “stop” and “Continue”. I haven’t tried it before. So I have a couple of questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Has anyone used a combined approach and how successful was this?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. What are best practices when it comes to documenting retrospective meetings with both these approaches and with a combined approach?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16282" OwnerDisplayName="Okavango" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-02-17T20:26:14.823" LastActivityDate="2015-02-18T16:24:23.697" Title="How to best conduct and document agile retrospective meetings?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14277" CreationDate="2015-02-17T19:17:51.730" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I practice retrospective meetings with my groups that develop either hardware or software or full systems. I tend to prefer the &quot;what was good&quot; - &quot;what was bad&quot; approach. The reason is that it motivates people to identify positive actions too and focus on what we experienced instead of dreaming of ideal but non-existing world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main thing I added is a second dimension to motivate wider thinking by listing categories on which I expect an input (this is not exhaustive, but used as stimulator). I typically include categories like &quot;design methodology&quot;, &quot;tools&quot;, &quot;suppliers&quot;, &quot;support from management&quot;, &quot;schedule&quot;, &quot;team work&quot;, &quot;initial specs&quot;, &quot;change management&quot;, &quot;risk management&quot; ... and if the team works on full systems and include managers, I will directly take the knowledge areas as defined in pmBOK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The documentation of the meeting is firstly an excel spreadsheet (for detailed tracking of ideas) and then, after rework with the full team or with only a part of it, a Word document listing important lessons learned, sorted in categories, with an action list where each action is backed with a ticket in the quality system to make sure that there will be a real action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16135" LastEditorUserId="16135" LastEditDate="2015-02-17T20:53:33.020" LastActivityDate="2015-02-17T20:53:33.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8664" CreationDate="2015-02-17T19:44:54.947" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Testers should take part in story sizing and complement the development team. A discripancy between sizes is natural in few cases (Dev saying 3 and QA saying 5) a 2 and 13 hardly occurs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16313" LastActivityDate="2015-02-17T19:44:54.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14280" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14281" CreationDate="2015-02-17T20:05:03.037" Score="2" ViewCount="5943" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reading the PMBOK I noticed that they almost never use the term Sub Project. Using the PMBOK terminology is a project phase the same as a sub project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16301" LastActivityDate="2019-07-13T13:49:57.317" Title="Difference between Project Phase and Sub Project (PMBOK)" Tags="&lt;pmbok&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14280" CreationDate="2015-02-17T21:00:17.380" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In pmBOK, a subproject is a smaller portion of the overall project created when a project is subdivided into more manageable components or pieces (ref: pmBOK v5, p 564).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A project phase may be a subproject if you decide to divide your project in subprojects to reduce its complexity during execution or to share it between several project managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16135" LastActivityDate="2015-02-17T21:00:17.380" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14280" CreationDate="2015-02-17T21:27:02.157" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;All phases are sub projects but not all sub projects are phases.  Phases suggest a linear progression, sub projects that are sequenced in a finish-start relationship, generally speaking.  But other types of work that can be labeled a sub project may not fit that sequenced approach.  And I think it that difference when you would use the term phase versus sub project despite they share characteristics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-02-17T21:27:02.157" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14277" CreationDate="2015-02-17T22:49:37.133" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start, stop, continue strikes me as jumping straight to the resolution of the problem without first discussing what the problem is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use the what-went-well/went-badly approach. The whole team gets to contribute in the first part of the meeting, writing on post-its. This is to make sure that the more introverted members of the team do not get influenced by what the stronger characters say before they have generated their feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We quickly run through all the feedback and then we group the feedback post-its if any of them share a common theme. Usually 1 or 2 topics will really stand out and will be mentioned my several members of the team. Next we decide as a group which item we want to do something about in the next sprint. To me this is where the start/stop/continue bit comes in, but it is focused around one potential improvement rather than across all the feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the meeting I will write-up the post-its on a wiki page and distribute it widely. I see the main value of this is that it demonstrates to the wider organisation that the team is focused on self-improvement. It also acts as an escalation for issues that are covered in the retrospective that are outside of the control of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-02-17T22:49:37.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2731" CreationDate="2015-02-18T01:47:22.537" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In MS PRoject 2013 it is inbuilt feature. Check this out - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techno-pm.com/2015/02/highlight-track-tasks-msproject.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.techno-pm.com/2015/02/highlight-track-tasks-msproject.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16321" LastEditorUserId="16321" LastEditDate="2015-02-22T11:41:59.590" LastActivityDate="2015-02-22T11:41:59.590" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14277" CreationDate="2015-02-18T10:26:40.840" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;With my team, I typically follow the following approach with three rounds and it works well for us:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Round 1 - What went well and what could have gone better individually&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This focuses on each person's individual tasks and the wins/misses with respect to their work alone. It facilitates some introspection with every person involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Round 2 - What went well and what could have gone better as a team&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This allows each person to comment on the wins and misses for the team as a whole (or other individual members). This allows broader shortcomings to surface while at the same time allows team members to be appreciated by others for the work they did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Round three - How do we work on what didn't go so well&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a broader discussion with the floor open. Here, we take the misses identified in the first two rounds and discuss them. This includes both the individual misses as well as the team misses. It lets every issue identified be scrutinised by the entire team to arrive at a possible solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16324" LastActivityDate="2015-02-18T10:26:40.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14277" CreationDate="2015-02-18T15:29:03.133" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Retrospective is a key ceremony and, IMO, it is critical to approach the process in the right way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use the traditional format of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set the Scene&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gather Data&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Generate Insight&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decide Action&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Close Down&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All told there are somewhere in the region of &lt;strong&gt;80-100 potential activities that can be used across each of the five stages&lt;/strong&gt; although some activities have become commonplace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;My Process&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This a completely subjective approach may can be used to inform your own retrospectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Context&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A full Scrum Team in a Business Intelligence environment working within a corporation using waterfall for most projects.  Team consists of Scrum Master, Line Manager/Architecture Expert, Product Owner, Deputy Product Owner, Developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the Scrum Master I have banned management from the Retrospectives in order to give the team privacy and assurance they can speak without retribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I aggregate and anonymise all data before presenting a transparent actions report following the meeting.  All developers are protected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Set the Scene&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each participant is provided with an A4 sheet for making notes and also asking 4 questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Question 1 is for the start of the Retrospective.&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Do you consider yourself an Explorer | Shopper | Vacationer | Prisoner&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;gt; Tick One&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I then pose a verbal question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why do we do Retrospectives &amp;gt; Pick one individual and ask them to reiterate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do you want from this Retro &amp;gt; Pick one individual and ask them to reiterate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally with a question to the team I use the technique &lt;strong&gt;Pose, Pause, Pounce&lt;/strong&gt; and nominate someone to answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gather Data&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this aspect I have a round-robin of activities but the most effective has been listing the Agile Principles and asking the team to note on post-its examples of where they get it right / wrong or where we focus on the items on the right more than the items on the left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are over 40 different ways to gather data regarding the previous Sprint or timebox.  As a Scrum Master you should maintain a list of your preferred options and the latest thinking on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Break for coffee&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generate Insight&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A considerable number of ways to generate insight (40+) also exist however the traditional methods include the 5 Why's which is extremely popular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Decide Action&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Traditionally the Stop, Start, Continue method has dominated the Retrospective ceremony however you can also use a Low Hanging Fruit tree with &amp;quot;fruit&amp;quot; being replaced with actions which are ranked according to speed and impact.  You can use dot voting, roman voting and other consensus building methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Close Down&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point I like to get feedback on my facilitation skills so I ask the team to refer back to their A4 page and answer the remaining three questions anonymously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I Was Heard &amp;gt; 1 being absolutely not and 10 being very much so&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This Was Useful &amp;gt; 1 - 10&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Things will get done &amp;gt; 1 - 10&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition you can ask the team to volunteer for actions in order to drive through the change and own the team's improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My final action is to turn the entire thing into an Infographic and post publicly for all to see whilst checking the status of the action items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have included some of the examples I use below&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vwUdM.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Retrospective Infographic from last week&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2015-02-18T16:24:23.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3581" CreationDate="2015-02-18T16:26:20.273" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Inset a column called &quot;Date1&quot;. Then right click on the column and select &quot;Custom Fields&quot;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Once the Custom Fields window pops up, locate &quot;Custom Attributes&quot; and click the &quot;Formula...&quot; button.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the Formula window opens, use the insert field drop-down to select the &quot;Start&quot; field in the &quot;Date&quot; section.  [Start] will populate the box.  Then type in &quot;+ 1&quot; after it. Click ok until you are back to your task sheet.  The &quot;Date1&quot; column should now show the date 1 day after the start date.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do the same for the finish date.  Then you can right click and rename the columns as you see fit.  Hopefully this is what you were looking for.  If not, let me know and I will try to correct it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16300" LastActivityDate="2015-02-18T16:26:20.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14294" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14297" CreationDate="2015-02-18T19:59:46.350" Score="3" ViewCount="884" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my organization, we do not assign story points to bugs. Some members of my team argue that bugs should slow our Sprint velocity, in order to create an incentive to avoid technical debt and to produce high-quality code. Others, however, argue that some bugs cannot be avoided, and should be reflected in the velocity of a Sprint and in planning meetings. In the collective experience of StackExchange, what is the best practice around assigning story point values to bugs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16314" LastActivityDate="2015-02-19T00:54:30.537" Title="Assigning Story Points to issues that aren't stories" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14214" CreationDate="2015-02-18T21:42:36.120" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Opportunity is not risk.  They are totally separate and different - the good news is that PM frameworks are likely to start to back-out of this habit - see the foot of this blog post on exactly this question and the note on PMBoK notes in 2013 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmis-consulting.com/why-opportunity-in-projects-should-never-be-called-risk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Why Opportunities on projects should never be called risk&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16079" LastActivityDate="2015-02-18T21:42:36.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14294" CreationDate="2015-02-18T21:56:55.117" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Yes, you should estimate points for bug fixing work&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a variety of &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/195571/is-it-possible-to-reach-absolute-zero-bug-state-for-large-scale-software&quot;&gt;reasons for bugs to be found in code&lt;/a&gt;, many beyond the control of the developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/should-story-points-be-assigned-to-a-bug-fixing-story&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;detailed write-up from Mike Cohn giving the reasons why bug fixing work should also be estimated and factored into velocity calculation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is an exception to the above rule. Do not assign points for bugs found by testers within the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my projects, if the developer worked on a feature and testers found problems, the developer is required to fix them as part of the original estimate. This is to encourage quality coding and avoid slapdash work. We not only do not assign points, we also encouraged the developers and testers to work together and avoid even writing bug tickets for bugs found and fixed within the Sprint. If an intractable bug could not be fixed and had to be carried to the backlog, then we wrote a bug ticket for that. It will be estimated and prioritized as part of the backlog refinement work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:31:53.287" LastActivityDate="2015-02-18T21:56:55.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14294" CreationDate="2015-02-18T22:57:30.660" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Velocity has one use in Scrum, that is to give the team a means of estimating their capacity for future sprints. It is not a measure of work done, nor should it ever be used as an indicator of the performance of a team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine a situation where the team is using the velocity as a part of release planning to estimate what can be achieved by a given release date. They would do the calculation based on the stories in the backlog, which represent business value. If the team's calculated velocity includes story points allocated to bug fixing or tasks that do not represent added business value then it is like comparing apples and oranges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is noticable that a lot of agile tools recognise this. For example, JIRA Agile only has the story point field on stories and not on other issue types.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, consider a team that decides to allocate story points to bugs they fix in sprints. That team typically manages 20 points worth of stories in a sprint and around 5 points of bug fixing. They record their velocity as 25 story points per sprint. The Product Owner asks for a release planning session as they plan to do a release in a sprints time. They look at the backlog to work out roughly how much work they are likely to complete for the release. Can they assume they will complete around 25 points off the backlog? No they can't, because chances are they will also be fixing bugs as well. So it is likely they will only complete 20 points off the backlog before the release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would worry me if some members of the team thought it was necessary to reflect bugs in the velocity. That might indicate that they see the velocity as a measure of the performance of the team rather than purely as a means of estimating future sprint capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2015-02-19T00:54:30.537" LastActivityDate="2015-02-19T00:54:30.537" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14301" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-19T09:52:26.030" Score="0" ViewCount="136" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking to create an effective lessons learned log or template to capture feedback from successful and non-successful projects.  What is the industry-standard for capturing project lessons?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am agnostic on the tool or file format and looking to focus on the content of a lessons learned log.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Context&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The projects we work on are generally small but varied IT related projects lasting around 1-3 weeks and I'm looking to capture lessons learned quickly and simply, but with enough information to ensure it's easy to pull out items relevant to a specific type of project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grateful for any advice on the best way to achieve this!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16334" LastEditorUserId="10462" LastEditDate="2015-02-20T18:08:08.877" LastActivityDate="2015-02-20T18:08:08.877" Title="What should be the primary considerations when logging lessons learned for a Project?" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11301" CreationDate="2015-02-19T10:09:34.080" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remember that one of the Kanban principles is &lt;strong&gt;&quot;start where you are&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;. So, a good way to determine the initial WIP limits is to just count how many tickets currently &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; in the column, or how many you typically &lt;em&gt;would expect&lt;/em&gt; with your current process. Then react to what happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then remember that the two main functions of WIP limits are to &lt;strong&gt;create flow&lt;/strong&gt;, and to &lt;strong&gt;create kaizen events&lt;/strong&gt;. That is, if you never break your WIP limits, or if they never force you to discuss how to work differently to make them work, the limits are probably too high. If they constantly force you to shuffle your work around - thereby reducing flow - without leading to any process improvement, they might be too low (or you might need to get better at improving your process).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16335" LastActivityDate="2015-02-19T10:09:34.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12375" CreationDate="2015-02-19T12:46:38.067" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A PRINCE2 Foundation Exam Trainer demo account can be asked for here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://elearning.pm4all.be/Apps/En/Home/About/ContactUs.aspx?Category=3&amp;amp;Type=3&amp;amp;From=Blog&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://elearning.pm4all.be/Apps/En/Home/About/ContactUs.aspx?Category=3&amp;amp;Type=3&amp;amp;From=Blog&lt;/a&gt;. You can use the dropdown list to select what you want: a 1 month demo account with 25 questions or a 1 day demo with all questions available. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16336" LastActivityDate="2015-02-19T12:46:38.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11858" CreationDate="2015-02-19T17:15:52.760" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe their are still deliverables that need to be managed. PMO can determine what tools should be adopted with the help of the Scrum Team, I believe a backlog template can be created for stanardization, and to have a location that shares updated information on methodology and for individual to get introduced to what Agile and Scrum really is. Maybe even create check lists to determine when to use Waterfall methodology and when to use Agile and what type of other methodologies are under Agile Methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there are many things that a PMO can be used for in a Scrum environment but I think it may not have many employees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16340" LastActivityDate="2015-02-19T17:15:52.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14301" CreationDate="2015-02-19T21:44:16.933" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is what I am doing. My projects have very variable size and can be software or hardware.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Identify topics for discussion (team work, schedule, technical issues, tools ...) to make sure that your team addresses various dimensions of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Record all ideas (positive and negative lessons) the way they are presented by the team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Rework all information with a smaller group and identify a limited number of actions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make sure the actions will be done (maybe you have a quality system where you can record these, or you have another mean to make sure these do not get forgotten).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a presentation point of view, this can all fit on a Word document, with the list of actions at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16135" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2015-02-20T11:08:42.147" LastActivityDate="2015-02-20T11:08:42.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14306" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-19T21:57:30.500" Score="0" ViewCount="98" Body="&lt;p&gt;A project manager's demands can be varying and unpredictable at times. Could somebody offer feedback on how to make a reduced schedule (like 30 hours) workable and successful ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16342" LastActivityDate="2015-02-19T23:27:18.327" Title="Is it feasible for a project manager to work reduced schedule for a a few months?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;schedule&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-02-22T07:42:27.967" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14306" CreationDate="2015-02-19T23:27:18.327" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many project managers can handle multiple projects, so by implication, they are working a reduced schedule on each project. It is therefore both practical and effective to do this. But there are areas that need careful handling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure the role is clearly defined. Manage the project, but don't get dragged into the fine detail. Concentrate on the things that really make a difference - planning, governance, reporting, finances, and such like.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manage your diary. Ensure that the project team knows when you are available, and when you are not. Arrange your day so that you have time to do what you have to, and be ruthless about declining meetings that you don't need to attend.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Demand that your team provide the level of reports that you need, in the format that you need them. Instil this discipline from day 1, and refuse to compromise.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn to delegate - but only those things that don't put the project at risk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team may not like having a part-time PM, and your managers may also be concerned about this. However, if you can establish the rules, demonstrate success in the early days, and keep up with the paperwork, you will have achieved what you desire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And always remember that a committed PM working part time is likely to be better than a full-time PM who stares out of the window all day long without adding any real value or drive to the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2015-02-19T23:27:18.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13966" CreationDate="2015-02-20T10:34:12.883" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, as the linked article states, in the first phase &quot;defense mechanisms have to be bypassed&quot;, which to me seems to suggest overcoming resistance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I actually prefer the model described by William Bridges in &quot;Managing Transitions&quot;. It has three phases that sound quite similar, but have a much more compassionate focus on helping people deal with their emotions regarding a change, rather than &quot;dismantling a mindset&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16335" LastActivityDate="2015-02-20T10:34:12.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14309" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14310" CreationDate="2015-02-20T21:09:17.863" Score="0" ViewCount="6376" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can there be any crossover between themes and the epics/stories inside them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, i think 'Frontend' would make a good theme for a website project.  However some stories within this theme might belong to other themes i.e.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Frontend (theme)&#xA;    - Homepage (epic)&#xA;        - Carousel (story)&#xA;            - Backend development to load carousel images (task)&#xA;            - Layout and styling of carousel (task)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously the backend task stands out as being in the wrong place.  However, having the frontend theme would mean that the backend task needs to go into another hierarchy, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Backend (theme)&#xA;    - Homepage (epic)&#xA;        - Carousel (story)&#xA;            - Backend development to load carousel images (task)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Frontend (theme)&#xA;    - Homepage (epic)&#xA;        - Carousel (story)&#xA;            - Layout and styling of carousel (task)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Messy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would this normally be structured?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is homepage the the theme or still an epic but no theme?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5784" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T18:00:10.447" Title="Example epics and themes for website project" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;epics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14309" CreationDate="2015-02-20T21:58:14.043" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Start from the business goals you want to accomplish&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story, epic and theme are not precise terms that are defined in a standard. If you search &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;, you won't find any reference to these terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/stories-epics-and-themes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mike Cohn's blog in response to similar questions - Story, epic and theme are merely terms we use to help simplify some discussions Scrum teams have.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More importantly, you seem to be starting with an internal techie view of the project. You should start with what your site is intended to accomplish. As an example, let us say you have the following business goals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get visitors to sign up for your email Newsletter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get visitors to fill out a lead generation form to download a white paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get visitors to share your web site content on social media.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of these can be written as an epic. Then each epic can be decomposed into stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Themes, typically, are not part of this hierarchy. Let us say you apply some tags for your stories for convenience of discussing them together. You can think of a theme as all stories that have a common tag. For example, 'security' can be thought of as a theme. Then you can say something like, &quot;Security is important, but I don't want to spend more than 20% of my project budget on security.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-02-20T21:58:14.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8054" CreationDate="2015-02-21T01:41:57.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Frankly speaking 40+ projects will be a lot as MS Project will struggle to load all of them at once and then do any operation on master project plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Off course it all depends on the size of the projects. I have done dashboard reporting for around 6 - 8 projects and have struggled with standalone MS Project as it sometime crashes for no apparent reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MS Project has some reports which can be customized to use to have a look at - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techno-pm.com/2015/01/portfolio-reporting-msproject.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.techno-pm.com/2015/01/portfolio-reporting-msproject.html&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16321" LastActivityDate="2015-02-21T01:41:57.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14312" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-21T04:08:01.850" Score="12" ViewCount="476" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need some guidance on this project management situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a software team with 4 developers, 1 QA analyst, and 2 part time student interns. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have several projects where the owner has over-promised on delivery milestones that cannot be moved. I have 5 large projects currently ongoing, with one project requiring 3 staff. I am juggling this while also being hit with micro-projects like 4 hour copy updates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a challenge but with the sharepoint project web app and TFS I am getting though it, but I just can't figure out how to deal with support tickets that well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We currently have 2 large projects that we have shipped and we are getting 3-4 hour support tickets every couple days. I can plan for a developer to complete a 16 hours of work over 2 days, but then suddenly they are taken away for a critical bug for 4-8 hours. This happens quite often and is causing just about everything to be late. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering what process you would recommend to plan for these interrupting and unplanned support tasks while still trying to hit planned milestones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16044" LastActivityDate="2015-02-25T22:27:45.797" Title="How do you work around a production team that is distracted by support tickets and micro projects?" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14312" CreationDate="2015-02-21T10:24:11.347" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a classic management problem; trying to use a single body of resource to handle both time-based planning-driven work and ad-hoc unpredictable event-driven service requests. Unenlightened management love to get the fixed-plan project teams to &quot;just do a little bit of support&quot; as if time can be summoned magically out of nowhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have personally had to manage this kind of problem twice in my career and in the end I deduced that there is only one possible way of doing it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;have to&lt;/em&gt; ring-fence resource to handle support requests, leaving you light on project resources and then re-plan accordingly. In other words extend the project delivery timescales to take a reduced resource pool into effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That still doesn't quite solve the problem because, by their very nature, support requests are ad hoc, therefore you could still swamp the ring-fenced resource. When this happens you have no choice but to cover the support, to the detriment of the project. But the risk of this happening should be estimated and entered into the project risk log. Then when it happens make the project risk into an issue that affects the project schedule. This way you are calmly handling the situation instead of painting yourselves into a fire-fighting corner every time a new unforeseen support-style request comes in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The battle is always getting management to agree to taking resource from project teams and ring-fencing it against support issues, however if you begin tracking time spent on development vs. time spent on support across the team you will have numbers to point to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-02-21T10:24:11.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14312" CreationDate="2015-02-21T14:33:48.650" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have an answer beyond the very simple - you must either &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;De-scope the projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Limit the support&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Extend project timelines&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increase resource&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I said the answer is simple, getting management buy-in or understanding is considerably more difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you have indicated that none of them are available I would suggest you only have one option left; protect yourself and your team with data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would record every aspect and make sure it is presented as a data-driven proposal.  Management find it very difficult to argue with raw data when presented correctly.  You must protect the reputation of yourself and your team; it is one of the only currencies a successful PM has to trade.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ensure your risk log is updated daily and signed-off or validated at the highest level.  If you have one escalate to the Programme or Portfolio Board.  Ensure that all minutes of meetings have recorded your objections, constraints and advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Propose the changes you need to ensure successful delivery then present the management team with a range of limited options.  Explain that the status-quo will result in project delivery coming under severe risk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not accept a poisoned chalice of a project simply because it was foisted upon you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, good luck.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2015-02-21T14:33:48.650" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14312" CreationDate="2015-02-21T14:55:44.473" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems inherently silly to have a fixed number of resources, fixed deadlines, unpredictable or fluctuating demand on ad hoc support, and fixed project scope with an expectation of high quality.  We all know it does not really work this way.  We can fix a couple of the variables, but the rest will move as result...and management knows this.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also know that when they give on one of those variables, such as slipping the deadline out in order to provide relief on development, then that increase in time will be all used up with imminent complaints that the team needs even more time.  They can add more resources, increasing costs, but the complaints of needing even more will start soon enough.  Parkinson's Law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like both Marv's and Venture's ideas.  But I also think you need to reframe this problem as a management challenge in that what they are looking for is a can do attitude, best efforts, creative out-of-the box thinking, and let your results hit where they come in, e.g., you will be late on some projects, you will miss a few SLAs from time to time, you may miss a quality spec every now and again.  But as a good PM you will escalate these risks and issues early and often, keeping everyone aware of normally occurring obstacles we face everyday.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-02-21T14:55:44.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14159" CreationDate="2015-02-21T15:35:21.033" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer:&lt;/em&gt; I do not use TFS in my project, but I believe my project faces the same conceptual issue as yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problem we faced:&lt;/strong&gt; Work needs to be planned (and built) but only at a later stage is decided when it needs to be released (if on a shorter or farther release).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Approach used:&lt;/strong&gt; All build and plan is done regardless of release. Once a task becomes priority, team starts working on it (based on team's capacity, of course). We use Subversion for code versioning and all work is initially built on Trunk. Once the code is stable enough, is decided whether this change needs to be promoted (i.e. manually merged) into future branch / farther release or the branch for the near release is re-created from Trunk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problems / drawbacks:&lt;/strong&gt; Once a build is started, or you roll everything back or you'll be carry on code eventually that's not supposed to be switched on. For this, we use some kind of 'switches' in our code to set a feature on or off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2015-02-21T15:35:21.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14320" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-21T21:40:25.400" Score="8" ViewCount="2103" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always have trouble deciding who the actor should be and therefore how user stories should be written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a site owner I would like to display a carousel of products on the homepage so that I can promote many products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;vs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user I would like to see a carousel of products on the homepage so that I can easily see products to buy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always have this trouble - which is correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5784" LastEditorUserId="188" LastEditDate="2015-02-22T22:35:03.000" LastActivityDate="2015-02-22T22:35:03.000" Title="User stories - difficult to decide actor" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14320" CreationDate="2015-02-21T21:48:54.750" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The author oft a story should be the customer. If your paying customer is not the user, I recommend to focus in the most important stakeholder - the one with the most influence in the buy-decision regarding your product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have several important stakeholder introducing different user stories (leading to different functions) you should have all of them in your backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2015-02-21T21:48:54.750" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14320" CreationDate="2015-02-21T22:37:54.060" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found the question interesting because it's not one I'd thought of before; but your example is particularly interesting to me, because&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;As a user, I would like a way to turn off the stupid carousel, so that my web page stops flashing at me!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually think that the actor in a story should be the person who is trying to interact with the software; but this example really does seem to contain a feature that is primarily for the benefit of the site owner, rather than for the user. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The actor can be different for different stories; maybe the way to answer the question is &quot;who benefits most from the story feature?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2015-02-21T22:37:54.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14320" CreationDate="2015-02-22T04:16:50.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may want to assign roles to the various types of users that may have use cases.  These could include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customer,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Administrator,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Support/help desk user,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Super User&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Application&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The actor(s) should be the roles that require the functionality being specified.  In some cases, certain actors may have different capabilities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2015-02-22T04:16:50.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14320" CreationDate="2015-02-22T21:35:48.077" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tl;Dr; The reason to include an actor in the story is to provide context on who it is benefiting. In this case, the site owner derives little, if any value from the story, so you'd go with the site viewer.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the reason this example is particularly confusing is that the story dictates implementation. A user story should describe the need being served rather than the way to implement it. In this example, we've already decided we want a carousel and we've completely lost the need being served. This is actually a pretty common problem with graphic design elements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make this a little more clear who benefits, we have to back up a bit. The carousel idea is usually used to draw attention to new offers, so a basic story would look something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a customer, I'd like to be presented with new offers in a highly&#xA;  visible place on the home page so that I don't miss out on new deals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this story, it's clear that I'm trying to serve the customer by placing important and timely information in a highly visible area. But, there is no reason to create a carousel (or anything more than a basic banner). For that we have to look at the need it's filling. In most cases, it's so you can show a number of different deals without taking up too much screen space, so we have a second story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a marketing coordinator, I want to be able to display up to five&#xA;  deals on the homepage without using too much screen space so that I&#xA;  can run multiple specials simultaneously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still don't have a carousel, but the developers and designers will work together to  find the best approach, which may be a carousel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: There are a lot of angles to this. Maybe a carousel has been used many times and it's more work to do it as two stories, so you combine it back into one. I broke it out this way to specifically look at the question of who the story is for. If you combined it back into one story, I would still have the customer as the actor because the primary value is to entice the customer with new deals. The ability for marketing to create those deals is only a response. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-02-22T21:35:48.077" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14320" CreationDate="2015-02-22T22:28:34.790" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to think of the actor as giving context to the story, such that it helps the team develop it correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my answer would be which ever of the versions of the story gives the most useful information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example, do you want the team focusing on producing a carousel of products that makes the site owner happy? Or is it more important the the carousel of products is useful to the user? I suspect it is a mixture of the two, but that the effect on the end user is more important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-02-22T22:28:34.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14327" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14333" CreationDate="2015-02-23T10:23:55.440" Score="4" ViewCount="2210" Body="&lt;p&gt;How a typical Software development company keep records of client requirements? For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A) One day client asked us to add a tracking code to his website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B) Another day same client asked us to add a different code but same vendor code in a separate page. This code will not work without above tracking code A).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After few months same client asked us to update the tracking code of point A). In this situation if developers take action to update point A) then point B) will cause the issue and nobody aware about it, until it causes some issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given this example, can you tell me how a large organization handling this kind of situations? Are they waiting for errors to show-up in the page?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16364" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-05-15T12:43:22.507" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T12:43:22.507" Title="How to record client requirements?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;customer&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14327" CreationDate="2015-02-23T10:45:19.793" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way to capture requirements is to put it in a document (word/pdf) with as much details as you can. Mention the stated requirements, if necessary provide wireframe diagram and also state your assumptions in the requirements. And take a written sign off from the user/customer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually such requirement documents should be shared on a common portal(sharepoint, jira) where your IT team and the users would have access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sharing and signoff mechanism will ensure that the customer has agreed to the requirement and you can charge extra money for any change to the requirements&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6209" LastActivityDate="2015-02-23T10:45:19.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14329" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14367" CreationDate="2015-02-23T12:58:39.960" Score="1" ViewCount="746" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;As a player, I want to buy weapons from merchants, so that I can progress further&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other parts of the story could have acceptance criteria such as &quot;&lt;em&gt;There is a gun merchant in town&lt;/em&gt;&quot; and &quot;&lt;em&gt;The gun merchant can buy and sell weapons&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. But the problem is with writing down acceptance criteria for the prices of the weapons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the acceptance criteria could be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Find right values for weapon costs&quot; &lt;em&gt;OR&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Weapon costs are decided&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first one seems way too vague to use. But the second one makes the story result seem final. Without going on a spike &quot;&lt;em&gt;To find values for weapon costs&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, how could the acceptance criteria for the weapon costs be defined for a story like this? When the story includes acceptance criteria that is likely to change and is not absolute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastActivityDate="2015-02-26T18:32:56.007" Title="How to write measurable acceptance criteria to stories without a measurable goal?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;definition-of-done&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14327" CreationDate="2015-02-23T13:02:04.273" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Best case is you have documented all of the business capabilities the client wants in the contract. This has several advantages for both parties:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vendor (you) has clear idea of what customer wants and can allocate appropriate resources to deliver it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customer has some level of predictability around costs and delivery time-frame.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Both parties have a shared understanding of what end-points, milestones, etc are.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the business capabilities documented in the contract you can then work through development of requirements documents per ViSu, but you need to have the contract in place first to help protect against scope creep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2015-02-23T13:02:04.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14329" CreationDate="2015-02-23T13:25:23.867" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might consider separating out the implementation from the defining of business rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the team would write code that satisfies &quot;As a player, I want to buy weapons from merchants, so that I can progress further&quot;. They write the code in such a way that the price of weapons is configurable and possibly even provide an interface for a non-technical person to set the price when needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then your acceptance criteria becomes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The price of weapons is configurable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The configuration is accessible to the business user that determines weapon prices&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-02-23T13:25:23.867" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14327" CreationDate="2015-02-23T13:45:56.563" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you need is formal change control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You start by capturing the requirement on a Change Request. This should detail everything the client wants to change. If the change is significant it may also require the use of a separate Requirements Specification, but that would still be referenced in the Change Request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once it has been submitted to the vendor, the vendor needs to assess the cost and impact of making the change. Typically the Change Request would do the rounds into several connected departments/teams, such as Development, Testing, Hardware/Infrastructure, MI etc. Each team is able to assess the impact on their area of making the change- Developers need to code the change, testers need to write test scripts and execute system and integration testing, MI needs to figure out if the change affects a data warehouse feed and subsequent reports and estimate the time to change the feeds and reports and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When every team has assessed the impact (the developers would pick up the regression issues) and the costs in terms of effort to deploy, the costs and impact would be discussed with the client in a Change Board. If the client accepts the costs and impacts then the change is allowed to be scheduled into a release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you operate an Agile development process then I am not certain this applies, but it is certainly how we do things in a controlled waterfall environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-02-23T13:45:56.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14327" CreationDate="2015-02-23T16:24:49.967" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Agile provides 3 opportunities to catch this error prior to production&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The dependency should have been captured in the acceptance criteria&lt;/strong&gt;: When story B is written, it should have been linked back to story A. And an acceptance criteria should have been written to capture that.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Unit test should break&lt;/strong&gt;: While not all Agile teams may be writing unit tests, Agile tries to improve engineering practices. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_programming&quot;&gt;Test Driven Development (TDD) is a key practice of Extreme Programming.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Agile dev teams are actively engaged in understanding why a story is needed&lt;/strong&gt;: I am not sure whether this is typical. However, some of the Waterfall dev teams that I have seen are more focused on executing what the client asks for. The approach seems to be that if the client wants it and willing to pay for it, they can have it. On the other hand, Agile dev teams work hand-in-hand with the Product Owner in writing user stories and acceptance criteria to reach commonly agreed business goals. So, they tend to challenge what a Product Owner wants if it doesn't make sense.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, Agile has frequent retrospectives. Even if some of these types of errors crept into production, they should be surfaced in a retrospective and opportunities are available to come up with practical process improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-02-23T16:24:49.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14335" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-23T20:48:09.633" Score="7" ViewCount="16473" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I setup this hierarchy in Jira?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Epic&#xA; |&#xA; +--Feature&#xA;      |&#xA;      +--User Story&#xA;            |&#xA;            +--Task&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm having trouble linking a User Story and a Feature to a Epic&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16370" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-02-24T10:49:57.217" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T18:30:15.347" Title="Epic Feature User Story Tasks Hierarchy in Jira" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14327" CreationDate="2015-02-24T01:45:18.570" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use a form named modification request form to track Customer's change request. Each request is assigned a unique number, area of change etc.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Customer fills change request in the modification request form. We evaluate change request, prepare an understanding document, and pass back to user for confirmation. On user confirmation we initiate the change process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We store these modification request and understanding document in an in house developed system and add unique modification request number to the code for easy future reference by the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15992" LastActivityDate="2015-02-24T01:45:18.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14312" CreationDate="2015-02-24T02:31:50.077" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Similar to above you could try a couple of things -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First , set a set % available for the resource time. For example if you have access to timesheets then you should try and come up with historical data and use that as basis for resource allocation for new projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you find out the resources spend 30% on average on other tasks then the resource availability of all the resources should be 70%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, make it clear in the project initiation or business case or any document you use to initiate a project that the resources are not FULL TIME. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16321" LastEditorUserId="16321" LastEditDate="2015-02-25T22:27:45.797" LastActivityDate="2015-02-25T22:27:45.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14335" CreationDate="2015-02-24T08:49:45.890" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In JIRA, there's only really support for two levels of issue hierarchy--task and subtask. An Epic is unique and behaves more like an attribute of another issue. Kind of like how versions are just attributes that help with structuring the work in your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In textbook scrum, the only hierarchy is stories and the subtasks that get them done (there's no such thing as a 'Feature', so to speak). When a story is too big to fit into a single sprint, it's split into smaller stories, and the original 'big story' becomes an Epic and is used like a label to indicate the smaller stories have a common origin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it's not unusual to step outside of textbook scrum, and a lot of people use Epic like another dimension of Components or requirement categories. It's just that, as far as how JIRA is designed, other approaches have to be shoehorned into this textbook model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend evaluating &lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.almworks.jira.structure&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Structure&lt;/a&gt;, an add-on that lets you define custom issue hierarchies. It's one of those add-ons where you keep finding more ways it can help you work, too. Oh, but it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; JIRA Server-only, so if you're on Cloud edition...I can't think of any other way to help you. :(&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16138" LastActivityDate="2015-02-24T08:49:45.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14312" CreationDate="2015-02-24T21:32:28.183" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;I was wondering what process you would recommend to plan for these interrupting and unplanned support tasks while still trying to hit planned milestones.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As above posters have pointed out, there is no process that will give you extra time.  But if you are looking for a lean process that is well tuned to your particular work environment, Kanban may be a good fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban will not help you hit your planned milestones more or less than any other process, but it has the following benefits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Minimal documentation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work chunks are usually small; broken down into 4 hour to 1 day increments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allows just in time changes (ready work can be re prioritized at any time)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Forces rapid/formalized team communication on changing work priorities through Kanban board&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contains a mechanism (WIP rules) to manage context switching and the efficiency loss associated with it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Limits multi-tasking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, adopting Kanban requires a lot of team discipline as well as commitment to transparent communication.  Kanban fails quickly if team members do not communicate the status of their work or feel they have ownership over certain types of work or domain knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-02-24T21:32:28.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14341" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14344" CreationDate="2015-02-24T22:45:55.883" Score="13" ViewCount="665" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a web development team leader. One of the team members turns in code that is almost always bloated and inefficient, even though it technically works (although, from time to time it doesn't). I don't want to micromanage, but almost all of the work could be done in a much better way, and I'm concerned about future updates and other people working in his code having a hard time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16381" LastActivityDate="2015-03-02T21:14:44.640" Title="How picky should I get with a team member's quality of work?" Tags="&lt;quality&gt;&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14341" CreationDate="2015-02-24T23:27:05.250" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Implement a code review process on your project if you haven't already.  You may even consider halting check-ins until a code review if complete to combat this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have already instituted code reviews, then this is a place to provide constructive criticism on how the code could be improved.  Attack the code, not the coder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leave room in your project for refactoring.  Make sure not only you, but the entire team understands the value of refactoring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-02-24T23:27:05.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14341" CreationDate="2015-02-25T01:53:16.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a touchy issue and may cause conflict between you and the coder, so keep cool head. Code can be written in multiple ways to achieve an objective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the code is not written in a way you expected, but is clear and workable, then accept the code. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the code is inefficient or has bug, then it must be pointed out CONSTRUCTIVELY to the coder for revision. Talk to the coder and convince him to avoid the technical debt. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15992" LastActivityDate="2015-02-25T01:53:16.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14341" CreationDate="2015-02-25T03:31:57.040" Score="15" Body="&lt;h2&gt;When Engineering Problems Become Project Management Problems&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of the team members turns in code that is almost always bloated and inefficient, even though it technically works (although, from time to time it doesn't).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is only peripherally a project management issue. It is actually an engineering issue, but it bleeds into project management because your project process clearly has not made training, code reviews, retrospectives, or any type of continuous improvement process a priority or allocated any resources for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the engineering level, these types of issues can be addressed through pair programming, test-driven development, continuous integration, pull-requests, and code reviews. It is up to each project team to determine what works best for them; that is outside the scope of project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; in scope is the fact that process improvement only comes from two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communications.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resources (e.g. time and money).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your project must commit to improved communications and apply sufficient resources to the problem if you actually wish to see measurable improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Communication Through Feedback Processes&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have not already instituted a code quality feedback process within your project, you need to do so. Without an effective mechanism for constructive feedback, any improvements (if any) will be &lt;em&gt;ad hoc&lt;/em&gt; and unlikely to be part of the team culture. If code quality is important, then you have to make it an important part of the development process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The specific details of the communication and feedback process are less important than the fact that the project has one. For example, Extreme Programming uses pair programming, while Scrum relies heavily on the Sprint Retrospective. Whatever your process, it should clearly define a mechanism for reviewing the team's internal development process, and provide a path for continuous improvement that is well-understood by the entire team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Apply Necessary Resources&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for resources, quality improvement requires both time and resources. Resources can mean many things, but often mean:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allocations of budget for training and process improvement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Man-hours allocated to process improvement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project overhead allocated to a continuous improvement process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Budget allocated for administrative or technical quality controls.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, none of these resources will help unless the &quot;tone at the top&quot; encourages continuous improvement, and supports such improvement as more than an unfunded mandate. In addition, your project management process must make the &lt;em&gt;cost&lt;/em&gt; of not doing these things visible as a form of technical debt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Identify Sources of Technical Debt&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If what you say about this programmer is true--we'll assume, &lt;em&gt;a priori&lt;/em&gt;, that it is so--this is still more likely indicative of a &lt;em&gt;process problem&lt;/em&gt; rather than an issue with a single individual. Specifically, if you have a programmer whose work results in slow, buggy, or broken code, or whose work is a drag on the team's productivity, you must be prepared to identify the &lt;em&gt;process problem&lt;/em&gt; in play. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A company culture that fails to support continuous improvement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A company culture that rewards looking busy over delivering value or quality.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A management team that fails to take responsibility for remedial training.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A failure in the team's hiring or retention practices.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A team culture that promotes individual contribution over collective code ownership.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A team culture that fails to promote communication and knowledge sharing within the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no shortcuts here. It may be tempting to blame the engineer in question, and while this person is certainly a potential &lt;em&gt;part&lt;/em&gt; of any quality problems you may be having, any actual &lt;em&gt;blame&lt;/em&gt; rests with failures of organizational process and management (not team member) accountability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to fix the real underlying process problems, and not just the symptoms. Otherwise, even if you toss this particular engineer overboard, there are no guarantees that his replacement will be any better, or that your process will not continue to accrue additional technical debt as the project continues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A project with clear-cut process issues is extremely likely to have additional, less-obvious process problems, too. Without the proper project controls to continuously inspect and adapt, the project more likely to fail. Treat this obvious engineering problem as smoke, and look for the smoldering fire underneath before your project goes up in flames.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-02-25T03:31:57.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14345" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-25T10:09:34.787" Score="27" ViewCount="2291" Body="&lt;p&gt;A number of stakeholders do not quite understand the necessity of dealing with technical debt preferring new features on top of not very maintainable code. Development is sometimes seen as kids who just want to play the coolest toys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone suggest anything which will make the job of  'selling' the necessity of dealing with technical debt as a main priority?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any youtube videos, articles, books recommendations and links on success stories would be very appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16159" LastActivityDate="2015-06-01T23:50:51.713" Title="Any tips on how to 'sell' the necessity of dealing with technical debt to nontechnical stakeholders?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;technical-leader&gt;&lt;sales&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14345" CreationDate="2015-02-25T12:18:28.743" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might tackle it by highlighting increases in development costs caused by technical debt. That is a problem we are facing right now, too. Business is requesting more and more features they need when my team really wants to remove technical debt. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We underlined that with less technical debt new features can be shipped way faster- and faster means cheaper. And cheaper, with possibly increased quality, always goes a long way with non-technical folks :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a bit like pausing chopping wood in order to sharpen your axe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16388" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-02-25T12:47:54.577" LastActivityDate="2015-02-25T12:47:54.577" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14345" CreationDate="2015-02-25T12:23:17.813" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;By analogy, you are asking people to replace a car that works perfectly well because you know that at some point in time the cost to maintain the existing car won't be worth the effort. You need to provide them with thoughtful estimates of when that point in time will be. In other words, the only way to convince them is to come up with a clear, justifiable business case. If you can't document what the benefits are in dollar terms you are just swimming against the current. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest I haven't seen many people in IT shops willing to commit to cutting their systems maintenance budget by $X per year if given $Y to upgrade their systems. Most either position it as a cost of doing business or make the argument that risk of catastrophe is being reduced. This may all be true, but isn't a convincing argument because it smells (like you say) of boys wanting toys. From a PM's perspective it also seems to me like a good way of getting away with not thinking through the benefits side of the equation, which I find annoying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2015-02-25T12:23:17.813" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14348" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-25T16:23:10.023" Score="6" ViewCount="782" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you visit one of the daily scrums whilst being in a role &lt;em&gt;above&lt;/em&gt; those scrums, do you usually participate as a beholder or, do you also speak like all scrum team members: What did you do yesterday and what are you going to do today?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, why and how do you describe the things which are not yet to be broadcasted to the whole team (for example, preparation of reorganisation, issues with stakeholders and anything else that everyone does not need to know [yet])?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16159" LastEditorUserId="15972" LastEditDate="2015-03-09T16:14:58.883" LastActivityDate="2015-03-09T16:14:58.883" Title="Visiting daily scrums - dos and don'ts" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14349" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-25T16:34:11.503" Score="0" ViewCount="262" Body="&lt;p&gt;Imagine you inherited a large team of developers and found out that interviewing in the past had certain slacks and some members of the team lack certain skills. It is certainly wrong idea to re-interview everyone as this will cause a lot of unnecessary distress but you need to know straight away who is good at writing code and who needs some training or should not have been hired. And you cannot afford time learning this just by looking at individual performance as it will be affected by technical debt. What would you do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16159" LastEditorUserId="16159" LastEditDate="2015-02-25T16:41:02.320" LastActivityDate="2021-04-16T13:05:36.747" Title="Dealing with inherited development team" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;skills&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;performance&gt;&lt;knowledge-management&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14345" CreationDate="2015-02-25T16:41:39.427" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Take a more proactive approach to dealing with technical debt&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one of my previous projects, we had a major part of a site run on annual data put together by the business. Unfortunatley, the database had been architected in such a way that each year's data will go into a separate database. When it came time to launch the current year's data, it needed a lot of grunt work by the dev team as well as extensive testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our dev team did an estimate of how much effort it will take to make changes to the architecture and the code base. Then, we also estimated the saving in time each year as a result of the change. We then sat with the business team and got approval for the one-time effort to pay down this technical debt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like this more proactive approach advocated by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ontechnicaldebt.com/blog/steve-mcconnell-on-categorizing-managing-technical-debt/&quot;&gt;Steve McConnell: How to Categorize &amp;amp; Communicate Technical Debt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even at the time of taking the technical debt, the dev team should estimate the effort to do the work the right way as well as the short-cut. If the business picks the shortcut, create a bug ticket for the technical debt right away and put it in the backlog. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When the debt ages more than 6 months, it is elevated to severity 1 and should be removed as soon as possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also try his other suggestion - when the velocity starts to drop, see if it is because of too much debt.  Then devote an iteration to reduce technical debt with the expectation of the velocity to increase. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-02-25T16:41:39.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14348" CreationDate="2015-02-25T17:13:15.093" Score="10" Body="&lt;h2&gt;You can attend and listen in the Daily Scrum but not speak&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-daily&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide - The Scrum Master enforces the rule that only Development Team members participate in the Daily Scrum.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/daily-scrum&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;From Mike Cohn's blog on the Daily Scrum Meeting&lt;/a&gt; - ...many teams enforce a rule in which only those who are committed are allowed to talk during the daily scrum meeting.&#xA;All team members are required to attend scrum meetings. Since both the ScrumMaster and product owner are committed team members, they are expected to attend and participate. Anyone else (for example, a departmental VP, a salesperson or a developer from another project) is allowed to attend, but is there only to listen. This makes scrum meetings an excellent way for a Scrum team to disseminate information -- if you're interested in hearing where things are at, attend that day's meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of the Daily Scrum meeting is for the team to share with their team mates progress of work and planning for that day. And it is tightly time boxed. So, the entire focus should be on the Sprint backlog and on the people who are doing the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One departmental supervisor (who manages 4 Scrum teams and other staff) I know holds a fortnightly all hands to share plans, admin matters and so on. You might want to consider something along those lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-02-26T12:36:36.960" LastActivityDate="2015-02-26T12:36:36.960" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9" CreationDate="2015-02-25T22:35:32.983" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whenever we talk about risks we should also consider issues. Risks and Issues go hand-in-hand. Different organisations approach risks and issues management differently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried to put together something &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techno-pm.com/2014/12/project-management-risks-and-issues.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How to Manage Risks and Issues&lt;/a&gt;. There is a template at the end which you can download.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16321" LastActivityDate="2015-02-25T22:35:32.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12814" CreationDate="2015-02-25T22:47:43.080" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have had similar situations and have been able to work around them with MS Project. You can use resource specific calendars to set their work times and availability. There is a an option to add work weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please see the below article if you need a more detailed step-by-step explanation - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techno-pm.com/2015/02/manage-resource-time-microsoft-project.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.techno-pm.com/2015/02/manage-resource-time-microsoft-project.html&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks,&#xA;Swapnil&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16321" LastActivityDate="2015-02-25T22:47:43.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14349" CreationDate="2015-02-25T23:35:33.423" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very broad question and right on the verge of being off-topic as both too broad and an opinion poll. Having said that, I've been in this position and it is daunting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only advice I would give you is this- Do. Nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The worst thing you can do as a new manager of an incumbent team is wade in on an obvious witch hunt making snap decisions and hasty judgements about people's skills and competencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take some time. No-one's gonna die. Just leave things to run for a while. Listen and watch. See what's going on and how things are done. Talk to people about what they feel needs to be done and where they think the team is strong and weak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a while a picture should begin to form about where the strengths and weaknesses lie both with the team as a whole and with individuals. Then you can form a plan to mitigate these issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-02-25T23:35:33.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14349" CreationDate="2015-02-25T23:51:04.793" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Marv. Listen, diagnose and eventually carefully medicate with a treatment plan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been in this situation and build up a skills matrix which was split into available skills and required skills (based on current and expected future projects). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We then gradually built a training and peer mentoring plan. For skills we were entirely lacking, we focussed on these skills for new hires. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd be very reluctant to go for a personal improvement plan on someone who I did not interview, but there are certain tactics that you can use to encourage the relevant person to leave. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one change I'd be keen on implementing very quickly though is a QA process for new hires, such as have them write code, ensure breadth and depth of knowledge as well as their ability to mentor and push other team members. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5031" LastActivityDate="2015-02-25T23:51:04.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14357" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-26T09:13:32.580" Score="3" ViewCount="155" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the DSDM Atern lifecycle, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dsdm.org/content/6-lifecycle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.  In the foundation phase it states one of the objectives is to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To start designing the solution architecture and identifying the physical or infrastructural elements of the solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, what exactly does this mean?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it mean driving into a lot of detail on certain stories if we don't know enough to estimate under 100 points to the point where we may product a prototype to pass the foundation check point?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1855" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-07-28T20:40:53.937" LastActivityDate="2015-09-27T13:28:06.277" Title="How much detail should the solution design have in Foundations in DSDM?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;dsdm&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14345" CreationDate="2015-02-26T10:29:27.900" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you're looking for is an analogy that will help them understand the problem in simple everyday terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I highly recommend the video I link to below, which shows a mechanic, adding features to a car in a completely unorganized way to such an extent that for example, adding a GPS will cause the car not to be able to make right turns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5reSgbrVrM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5reSgbrVrM&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16409" LastActivityDate="2015-02-26T10:29:27.900" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14359" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-26T10:51:14.027" Score="1" ViewCount="2294" Body="&lt;p&gt;With one scrum team velocity against itself over time it is easy - just number of points per sprint. But how to measure performance of several scrum teams against each other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16159" LastActivityDate="2015-03-16T18:08:51.683" Title="How to measure performance of several scrum teams against each other?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;performance&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14360" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-26T10:59:18.090" Score="-4" ViewCount="166" Body="&lt;p&gt;It must be a tough question but I still hope to get some insight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16159" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-02-26T12:14:47.277" LastActivityDate="2015-02-27T23:31:05.430" Title="How to measure the amount of existing technical debt, to track the progress?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;performance&gt;&lt;technical-leader&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-02-27T20:30:06.893" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14349" CreationDate="2015-02-26T13:12:27.097" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am taking a different perspective from Marv and dash here.  I would initially challenge your assessment of your team.  First, your statement that the interview process had issues suggests a lack of understanding in predictive validity of the selection process.  Second, it seems you may not understand the concept of of the performance distribution.  This article--&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbersin/2014/02/19/the-myth-of-the-bell-curve-look-for-the-hyper-performers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Forbes&lt;/a&gt;--has a nice discussion on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The take-away here is that, with the normal issues we have in the selection process and the distribution curve, it is not likely you would build a better team if you went through the process of firing and hiring all over again.  Looking at individual performers with a hope that you might be able to replace that person with someone better will, statistically speaking, result in pretty much little to no gains.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not to suggest you should not have individual performance goals, put in a good training / mentoring program, or even skim the bottom performers and replace, but your focus needs to be on team performance as a whole, which not only includes the individuals doing the work but also well defined, efficient processes and procedures; documentation of policies and rules; and tools with which they do work--the entire capability.  Focusing only on perceived individual performers while ignoring likely other capability inhibitors will result in pretty much nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-02-26T13:12:27.097" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14360" CreationDate="2015-02-26T13:29:23.177" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tough to answer this question directly, but I can think of a few ways of getting at it - I'd probably want to see multiple metrics used in combination to create some kind of &quot;score&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Aging analysis of classes / methods (when was the last time this method was changed?) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bugs per feature area, or if you're looking for more technical analysis bugs per function point / class / method - I'd caution here that some people might be tempted to use this as a developer performance metric, so tread lightly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cyclomatic complexity or function point analysis &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Code coverage / unit test density&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Qualitative code coverage / &quot;WTFness&quot; measure - a mix of engineers familiar with the code and those who are not will yield great insight into things like readability, logical flow, etc - more subjective sure, but so is tech debt :) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;hope that helps! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11612" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2015-02-27T23:31:05.430" LastActivityDate="2015-02-27T23:31:05.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14348" CreationDate="2015-02-26T13:33:30.757" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a sr mgr and manager of the scrum masters I encourage a separation between the Standup (chickens and pigs, team talks everyone else observes) and the &quot;after&quot; conversation time, when I might share my updates or answer questions. Keeping the standup by the team, for the team, I think sends the right message - you are responsible figuring out how to achieve your goals, and for surfacing impediments. With Scrum Masters supporting, it gets to be a pretty easy habit for even the most caffeinated non-team members to hold their fire for 5 - 10 min, then jump in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11612" LastActivityDate="2015-02-26T13:33:30.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14359" CreationDate="2015-02-26T13:39:39.310" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Need clarification - what performance are you attempting to measure, and for what purposes? For example, are you attempting to benchmark quality, or business value delivered, or adaptability to changing requirements, or cross-training, or...? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most important would be what are the primary benefits you hope to benchmarking teams against each other - team performance is a multi-variate problem in so many dimensions that it can be difficult to get to a useful set of metrics which can be used effectively. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11612" LastActivityDate="2015-02-26T13:39:39.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14359" CreationDate="2015-02-26T17:02:17.780" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum teams are unique and shouldn't be compared to one another in terms of productivity using things like velocity or story point sizing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where you may gain some benefit from comparing scrum teams is in their Agile-Scrum adoption/maturity and practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does one team always meet it's commitments and the other does not?  Why?  Can team 2 use something that team 1 does, to help team 2 meet commitments?  Maybe.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always remember when you compare Agile-scrum teams, that what works for 1 team doesn't necessarily work for team 2.  Don't fall into the trap of blindly implementing processes or policies across teams without understanding the underlying problem you are trying to solve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Respect scrum ceremonies and basic building blocks like story definition and estimation.  The rest is up to the team to self-organize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-02-26T17:02:17.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14329" CreationDate="2015-02-26T17:28:09.020" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Improve Stories to Make Features Testable&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The stories as you've posted them violate the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_%28mnemonic%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;INVEST criteria&lt;/a&gt;. In particular, your stories lack testability. If you had testable stories you'd have self-evident, testable acceptance criteria for each story. Consider the following example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a level 4 character&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I need to be able to do 48 hit points of damage per second&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I can successfully fight the 4th level boss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You now have a meaningful feature to work towards. This feature suggests two obvious tests, and a lot of inferable tests. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can test the level 4 character stats against a defined target (whatever is required to deliver 48 damage per second) to see if your character-progression curve is balanced.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can test whether the level 4 character has been able to amass enough money to buy weapons that can do at least 48 hit points of damage per second.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can test whether the money/cost system for weapons is sufficiently balanced.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can test whether the 4th level boss is statistically beatable by a 4th level character outfitted with appropriate weapons.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare this to your story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a player,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want to buy weapons from merchants,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I can progress further[.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vague stories with vague goals and unmeasurable success criteria lead to all sorts of problems, including simple definitional problems like &quot;What does 'progress further' actually mean within the project?&quot; Most of these problems go away with properly-written stories because you then have measurable goals, but you will still have plenty of work to do in properly defining the implementation details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-02-26T18:32:56.007" LastActivityDate="2015-02-26T18:32:56.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14368" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-26T21:34:49.843" Score="1" ViewCount="73" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an software development project where we are planning to release every three weeks, I have a client who has been delaying the UAT for a release candidate by about 4 weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Senior management don't see the need to push them, but this is causing us issues. In order for the team not to get to a grinding halt we have started work on some future features, but these are after some minor change requests to the initial work conflicting and will take substantial time to integrate back into the next release. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The client relationship is difficult to say the best. How would you communicate the difficulties to the client. Requesting for funding is not an option. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5031" LastActivityDate="2015-02-26T23:17:18.610" Title="Trigger Criteria to Change a Release Candidate" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;reviews&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14368" CreationDate="2015-02-26T22:05:03.280" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kaizenworld.com/kaizen/jidoka.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jidoka&lt;/a&gt; as a Process Control&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Kanban, which heavily relies on the cooperation of all parties to adhere to the defined queues and work-in-progress limits, the correct thing to do when there is an error in the flow is to &quot;stop the line.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does a couple of useful things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It ensures that errors do not propagate downstream.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It ensures that production/process errors are made visible throughout the organization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It prevents work-in-progress (WIP) limits from being violated, as incomplete work in the UAT queue should count against the agreed-upon global WIP limit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It prevents cascading errors caused by working on future iterations when the current iteration is incomplete.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It makes the &lt;em&gt;cost&lt;/em&gt; of the process error explicit, as the line can't continue until the process problem is resolved or the process is re-engineered.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't a communications problem; it's a process problem. You need to treat it as such, and apply appropriate &lt;em&gt;process controls&lt;/em&gt; to both radiate the information and to correct the deviation from plan. In this case, &quot;stopping the line&quot; is the correct process control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-02-26T22:05:03.280" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14368" CreationDate="2015-02-26T23:17:18.610" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I differ from the opinion of @CodeGnome.  Processes and plans cannot be one-sided - they need to be agreed on by all parties to the project or any system.  In your case, the client is clearly not in agreement with you - for reasons that you have not spelt our or perhaps you are unaware of.  Neither is your senior management willing to work with you to solve your problem.  Why is that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You cannot have a &quot;plan to release every 3 weeks&quot; when the customer is delaying the UAT by 4.  It would appear the client is not participating in prioritizing work for the next release, nor in reconciling change requests with original scope of the project (altho' your sentence &quot;but these are after some minor change requests to the initial work conflicting&quot; is not very clear.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, you have to either find someone who has the respect and/ or authority to conduct this discussion or take it upon yourself - it might very well be you since you are leading the team - to have an open and sincere discussion about the challenges you and your team are facing, and by that token, so is the customer and so also the management.  After all, there is a financial cost of delay which the customer is incurring! By all means, also be prepared to offer solutions - such as getting your team to pitch in to write UAT cases (there must be a reason why they are delaying UAT!) or anything else that helps resolve things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You all need to get to the root cause(s) of the situation, work out a process that everyone agrees to, and the objectives - both functional and financial - of the project. Only then can you see success moving forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my (far too many) years of experience, I have gone thru many such experiences (difficult customers, reluctant management) - and what has ultimately worked is for sane men and women to get together, get some perspective and resolve things.  Unfortunately, almost always, it takes far too long - and the people who suffer the most is the team working on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps - and you are able to have that conversation with the customer. Once you have agreement on the process, by all means, 'stop the line' the next time this situation develops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2015-02-26T23:17:18.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14372" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-27T00:08:11.253" Score="2" ViewCount="2470" Body="&lt;p&gt;First post and new to MS Project, so please bear with me if I forget some minor details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is this: &#xA;Is it possible to setup an indicator column in MS Project that displays a multi-tiered overdue/coming-due indicator?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a task is overdue, we see a red indicator&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a task is 2 weeks from due date, orange&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a task is due this week, yellow indicator&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a task is over 2 weeks out and incomplete, a green indicator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a task is completed regardless of due date, we will see a blue indicator(or smiley face).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found several formulas and macros that do something similar or a portion of this, but none that are able to dissect the dates with such accuracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anyone is capable of providing some insight on this it would be greatly appreciated. Please do not hesitate to let me know if you need any additional information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16421" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T19:59:50.253" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T19:59:50.253" Title="Microsoft Project 2013: Adding due date and coming-due indicators" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14373" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14378" CreationDate="2015-02-27T04:16:52.490" Score="2" ViewCount="343" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whenever a manager ask us to perform a task, we often ask &quot;when do you need this by?&quot;&#xA;Some managers try to be smart and often say: &quot;yesterday&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be the best comeback response?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16424" LastActivityDate="2015-02-27T23:52:42.867" Title="Best reply to project manager's failed humour" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2015-03-02T05:15:02.600" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14373" CreationDate="2015-02-27T05:09:08.083" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Its no use to start a battle of words with your manager. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your manager says &quot;Yesterday&quot;, then you can tell your manager your estimated delivery time on spot or later on email. If eatimate does not suit him, ask him to prioritise your tasks on hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15992" LastActivityDate="2015-02-27T05:09:08.083" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14373" CreationDate="2015-02-27T12:30:02.820" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This does not require a comeback response.  He is obviously not being literal and perhaps he is invoking a bit of humor on something that is extremely urgent, a common method to help cope with stressful situations.  Clearly, the message is the task is of highest priority, meaning you must demote everything else on your to do list down a notch.  If he provides you with a deadline date, then he is giving you permission to reset your priorities as YOU see fit, meaning you may do something else before this new task.  Yesterday means, do nothing else but this until it is finished and delivered.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We speak using metaphors all the time.  There is no need to try to 'come back' with a smart statement.  Interpret the metaphor and get to work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-02-27T12:30:02.820" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14373" CreationDate="2015-02-27T13:11:59.347" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yesterday is impossible, if you mean as soon as possible, this&#xA;  realistically will be done around date xyz.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its unclear if this task needs the highest priority:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If its a joke than it isn't high priority&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it really needs to be already done, then its the highest priority and you might need to drop other tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best action is to ask again what the priority is, just to be sure its a joke or not and to find out what the real priority is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2015-02-27T23:52:42.867" LastActivityDate="2015-02-27T23:52:42.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14373" CreationDate="2015-02-27T13:49:54.767" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If he is a friendly boss I would answer: &quot;can you borrow me your time machine?&quot; and then laugh!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When somebody makes humour he loves to get humour back, you will earn some points. Also, always laugh when you make humour. A lot of times people don't understand humour and this leads to misunderstandings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he is not friendly, simply answer &quot;i'll be faster than light!&quot; (which actually means to go back in time)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16430" LastActivityDate="2015-02-27T13:49:54.767" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14379" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-27T13:56:21.873" Score="0" ViewCount="151" Body="&lt;p&gt;Running a large (100+) development team is quite different to 10 or even 40 people, manual control stops working. What are the books on how to do it the most effectively?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16159" LastActivityDate="2016-05-06T15:41:29.280" Title="Any books of running large (100+) development teams?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2015-03-02T05:15:14.080" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14379" CreationDate="2015-02-27T14:03:26.390" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Spotify is running a 250+ man team and has some videos and a 13 pages paper, find links at: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.crisp.se/2012/11/14/henrikkniberg/scaling-agile-at-spotify&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.crisp.se/2012/11/14/henrikkniberg/scaling-agile-at-spotify&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of Scaling Agile frameworks which have books:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;LeSS: Large-Scale Scrum, &lt;a href=&quot;http://less.works/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://less.works/&lt;/a&gt; (My favorite, documented broadly both online and in this book: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0321985710&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Large-Scale-Scrum-More-Craig-Larman/dp/0321985710&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SAFe: Scaled Agile Framework, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/books/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/books/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nexus: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Resources/The-Nexus-Guide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.scrum.org/Resources/The-Nexus-Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also checkout the Agile Scaling Knowledge Matrix, which also contains other frameworks for scaling software development: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilescaling.org/ask-matrix.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.agilescaling.org/ask-matrix.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2016-05-06T15:41:29.280" LastActivityDate="2016-05-06T15:41:29.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14360" CreationDate="2015-02-27T16:10:53.763" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Start by not piling on more technical debt&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Write clean code everyday&lt;/strong&gt;: Whatever code you write or touch you should plan on refactoring and leaving it in good shape. This refactoring should be built into your story point estimate. No one is asking you for an estimate to write sloppy code.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scruminc.com/getting-to-done/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;As Jeff Sutherland says, &quot;Technical Debt needs to be stopped in its tracks. The discipline of having clean code every day is essential as is completing all testing within the Sprint.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Plan on completing all testing within the sprint&lt;/strong&gt;: How else can you say that you have created a shippable increment at the end of each sprint? I agree with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/reduce-manual-test-technical-debt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mike Cohn's characterization of over-reliance on manual testing as technical debt.&lt;/a&gt; In one of my previous projects, we relied entirely on manual testing for a period of time. We needed a &quot;hardening week&quot; every second sprint to get a stable release out. Even then, we uncovered some defects and performance issues only in production.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Intentional technical debt&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ontechnicaldebt.com/blog/steve-mcconnell-on-categorizing-managing-technical-debt/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;When you do take on technical debt, do so deliberately.&lt;/a&gt; Create a ticket for the technical debt right away and put it in the backlog. When people max out debt on their credit cards to start a business, they do so with the expectation that the returns from the business will help pay off the exorbitant interest charges and the principal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Unintentional technical debt - architecture and design&lt;/strong&gt;: Whenever your dev team grumble about poor architecture or design, ask them what they will do to improve it - and create a ticket. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Unintentional technical debt - code quality&lt;/strong&gt;: @Jon Odo covered some of this in his response. &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/135993/how-can-i-quantify-the-amount-of-technical-debt-that-exists-in-a-project&quot;&gt;Also see this excellent response by @Thomas Owens on Programmers SE.&lt;/a&gt; Use these techniques to identify problem areas and write tickets.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Invest a little time&lt;/strong&gt;: When you have some breathing time (after a major release?), do time-boxed research stories of the most promising tickets to assess the level of effort and expected benefits. If the benefits are strong and the effort is worth it, then you can lobby with the Product Owner and stake holders to get it priority.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:31:53.287" LastActivityDate="2015-02-27T17:19:18.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14382" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-28T17:56:21.583" Score="-1" ViewCount="289" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hybrid, Scrum and XP an agile methodologies. My Question is what is the different between them and what is better or the greatest methodology?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanx ... :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16435" LastActivityDate="2015-03-02T08:45:57.440" Title="Hybrid Software Development Methodology" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;extreme-programming&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-03-02T08:46:28.963" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14382" CreationDate="2015-02-28T23:37:34.767" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many ways Scrum and XP are complementary. Scrum is focused on the project/product management side while XP has a lot of focus on the engineering practices (like test driven development, continuous integration, refactoring, pair programming etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an argument that good engineering practices are necessary for the success of Scrum. This is particularly true when the team is releasing frequently. As XP offers a lot of useful engineering practices you can see how mixing the two frameworks can be an effective approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-03-02T08:45:57.440" LastActivityDate="2015-03-02T08:45:57.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14382" CreationDate="2015-02-28T23:48:18.317" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid I can't give a comprehensive answer to that question on a forum like this, but I'll try to give the general idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, between Scrum and XP. Scrum provides a framework for projects with a focus primarily on team collaboration and delivery of value on an ongoing, incremental basis. It's pretty light-weight a provides a couple of roles and a set of events that should occur each &quot;Sprint&quot;, it 2 - 4 week iteration. I don't want to go into too much more detail because you can read all about it in the official scrum guide here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scrumguides.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a very light-weight framework, Scrum leaves a lot of the day-to-day details up to the team. XP, on the other hand, provides a set of best practices for the day-to-day including user stories for defining what work should be done in the backlog. It also delves into test-driven development, paired programming, and other development practices. Some of these have been all but officially adopted in scrum (I've never met a scrum team that didn't use user stories for example) while others are hit-or-miss (paired programming is far less common).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This link has a pretty good overview of XP practices: &lt;a href=&quot;http://xprogramming.com/what-is-extreme-programming/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://xprogramming.com/what-is-extreme-programming/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The phrase &quot;hybrid&quot; is a little confusing because it can mean many things. Scrum/XP or Scrum/Kanban can be hybrid, but people also use it to mix things like Kanban and Waterfall or other completely non-agile approaches. In agile approaches like Scrum, XP, and Kanban, hybrid approaches can work well, but you need to be careful that you don't end up mixing them in a way that causes more problems. The Agile/Waterfall hybrids are less successful for two reasons: first, many of the practices are directly opposed to each other, so finding complimentary aspects of the two can be difficult. Second, most waterfall/agile hybrids are done out of a fear of committing to Agile, leaving the team doing neither Agile or Waterfall well and causing more grief for themselves than if they just went with one of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-02-28T23:48:18.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14349" CreationDate="2015-03-01T01:19:30.107" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see you've posted a number of questions in the past few days, so I'm going to make some assumptions that they're related - I hope that's accurate. It sounds like you have a number of Agile teams (Scrum in particular) that you've inherited and perhaps there's the general impression that they are under-performing. I can definitely sympathize with your situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also sounds like you're left to identify exactly how well or poorly things are going and then make a change in the teams for the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience would tell me that relying on simple metrics or storming in with the teams, re-interviewing, or other disruptive (and frankly combative) approaches will cause you more trouble, like you mentioned in your post. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation would be to very publicly double-down on your Agile and Scrum values. Openness, self-organization, delivering value, and technical excellence are all things a team can rally behind and it puts you and the teams in the same corner. Maybe there are some bad habits either on teams or in the organization that can be challenged by looking at how they embody (or don't) those values. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will also give you some insight into the team. When you get up and say &quot;who's going to be committed to this with me?&quot; you're going to get some people who are and some who aren't. Of the ones who aren't, some just need convincing. They need to see you stick to those values when it's hard and that will inspire them to do the same. Some of them might not be good programmers, by the way, but personally, I'll take a junior programmer who's committed to improvement over a senior developer who is complacent any day. Finally, you may have a few people who just aren't interested in being part of a continuously improving, high-performing team - you can address that with them as you think is appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no good easy answer, unless you plan to scrap the whole team and start over - and even that is only easy, not so much on the good. Establishing a good culture and relationship with the teams is definitely the most important first step though. You won't be able to do much else until that happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-03-01T01:19:30.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14382" CreationDate="2015-03-01T02:11:59.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no process which is applicable to all different kind of projects. For example scrum will not work &lt;strong&gt;support projects&lt;/strong&gt; where we support calls get logged every hour. This is because we cant establish a sprint goal for such a kind of project.&#xA;Also scrum may be applicable for projects which are involved in work related to innovation for the same reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11563" LastActivityDate="2015-03-01T02:11:59.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14075" CreationDate="2015-03-01T15:56:14.400" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have used the freeware &quot;trace&quot; vba macro to perform this task. Available at: &lt;a href=&quot;http://masamiki.com/docs/trace-task-dependencies.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://masamiki.com/docs/trace-task-dependencies.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16436" LastActivityDate="2015-03-01T15:56:14.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14349" CreationDate="2015-03-02T03:14:07.200" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a complement to the other opinions and experiences shared here, I would say that &quot;interviewing&quot; people might be a good idea, but not, in my mind, with the objective of sorting bad apples from good ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First a word of caution, any sort of interviewing may be very well received by some, but very badly by others. Without any relationship to you, your objectives or even how professionally you may have brought it up. It brings up fears or other strange reactions for some, people have irrational emotions (that's normal) and that needs to be taken into account before embarking on this path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, and even though I have had mixed results from this technique, I believe &quot;interviewing&quot; with the objective to get to know your team, to get to know each one's strengths, is a laudable goal and can achieve some great results. Do not use it as a stick, it will hurt you and your credibility with the team. In fact even using it with the purest goals it may still come back and bite you hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is all a matter of perception, so make sure, if you are going to do it, that you have your manager's backing on the principle, goals and manner. Also make sure to manage the message perfectly before you start, so the process is transparent and the benefits clearly stated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="179" LastActivityDate="2015-03-02T03:14:07.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14327" CreationDate="2015-03-02T03:21:13.227" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Change control won't help if you don't have solid documentation to start with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest looking up business requirements documents (BRD) and systems requirements specifications (SRS) for reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, client requirements should be documented and tracked. Any change request or update should translate into changing the original documents to match the new requirements and make sure all the impacts have been analysed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="179" LastActivityDate="2015-03-02T03:21:13.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14390" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-02T09:03:17.833" Score="3" ViewCount="219" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a developer for a non-IT company whose main service is marketing. There's not much technical people when I came on board, just one who is the project manager and all of their IT projects (websites and iOS/Android apps) were being outsourced. I came in as an iOS developer 5 months back at the time of this writing. And I inherited a project that was handled by at least 5 different developers before in a year and as a result, the project that was handed to me was expectedly messy. Different strategy, naming conventions, etc. from all of the developers. The project isn't that bad though as it has a number of active users in its target countries, thanks to the fact that it is managed by a marketing company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, this marketing company that I work for is planning to build another app, that is much the same than the one with have right now. It's a great idea to expand and earn profit but their idea is to reuse the existing app and change the images, contents and customize it for the next client. The project being messy as it is of course would be a problem to developers like me, also to mention that I am still fixing some bugs that could've been avoided by the previous devs but I have no idea why they didn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question or opinion I need to hear is, how would I convince the company to reuse but recode the new project. They are thinking like copy pasting the whole project and changing a few images here and there to make it work for a new client. Time is always tight for a profit oriented company and its kinda hard to convince them to start the app all over.&#xA;What would be the best approach to make the existing project a reference rather than a framework or a skeleton of the new project. Take the best from it and recreate the not so good ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know some may say that If I have this kind of attitude of making things standard or proper, then this isn't the right company for me. But I personally want to be a part of this company long term and shift them to the right direction because they have so much potential. Again, they arent too technical and can be a bit hasty due to being profit minded, always concerned about the time, the client's wants and resources. If I was the manager perhaps I wouldn't be asking this question but I am just the developer, though I have a lot of respect from our manager, I just dont think this works for both of us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16248" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-03-02T12:38:44.610" LastActivityDate="2015-03-02T19:37:55.487" Title="Recode or Recycle?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;business-case&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14390" CreationDate="2015-03-02T12:09:39.960" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to make a case for a project is using a cost benefit analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work out how much something will cost the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work out how much benefit (usually in financial terms) the company will receive, over what timescale, through doing the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wrap the costs and benefits into a proper business case that provides context and high-level analysis for the decision makers. Don't forget to illustrate more than one option and definitely include &quot;Do nothing&quot; as one of those options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully your business case will define in cold hard cash terms why the company should do what you propose. But be prepared for such an analysis to conclude that a ground-up rewrite will cost a significant amount of money and will not deliver significant additional revenue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you take nothing else from this answer take &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; by the legendary Joel Spolsky on rewriting products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-03-02T12:27:37.847" LastActivityDate="2015-03-02T12:27:37.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14372" CreationDate="2015-03-02T16:52:57.197" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thanks for the response. I will try to provide as much information as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this particular project we are using &quot;Due Dates&quot; as the date listed in the &quot;Finish Date&quot; column , anything that is not 100% complete as of the &quot;Finish Date&quot; column is classified as overdue. The additional indicators will help serve as progress indicators as we reach the impeding deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am still new to MS Project and have a lot to learn. If you need more detailed information please don't hesitate to ask, though it may take me sometime to locate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16448" LastActivityDate="2015-03-02T16:52:57.197" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14390" CreationDate="2015-03-02T19:37:55.487" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Refactor instead&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@Marv Mills gave good advice on what not to do - complete rewriting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what I suggest you can do - refactoring. You said you are already working on bug fixes. Whenever you touch any piece of code for fixing a bug, refactor only that part of the code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you said you have to customize the app for the next client. Again whenever you touch any piece of code for customizing, refactor only that part of the code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://martinfowler.com/books/refactoring.html&quot;&gt;Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler with Kent Beck et al.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What Is Refactoring? Refactoring is the process of changing a software&#xA;  system in such a way that it does not alter the external behavior of&#xA;  the code yet improves its internal structure. It is a disciplined way&#xA;  to clean up code that minimizes the chances of introducing bugs. In&#xA;  essence when you refactor you are improving the design of the code&#xA;  after it has been written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, before you refactor, start by writing unit tests for that piece of code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you want to refactor, the essential precondition is having solid&#xA;  [unit] tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-03-02T19:37:55.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14341" CreationDate="2015-03-02T21:14:44.640" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the code is written verbose but understandable, it can help maintenance later on. If it's spaghetti code, then there may need to be some coaching done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get a code review done by an architect if you have the availability, and see if everyone can make this more of a learning experience than anything else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if this is like a Junior dev doing the work, or an inexperienced dev, code reviews can only help the process more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16320" LastActivityDate="2015-03-02T21:14:44.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14372" CreationDate="2015-03-03T04:09:19.393" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have a couple of options here : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use traffic light indicators with MS Project which will allow to use highlight tasks. You can have your own formula to do whatever highlighting you want. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use the default built-in filters and highlight. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have put together something similar. It may not match your exact requirement but may help you to get started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techno-pm.com/2015/02/highlight-track-tasks-msproject.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.techno-pm.com/2015/02/highlight-track-tasks-msproject.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techno-pm.com/2014/12/project-management-using-traffic-light.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.techno-pm.com/2014/12/project-management-using-traffic-light.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16321" LastActivityDate="2015-03-03T04:09:19.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14396" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-03T13:19:45.640" Score="0" ViewCount="466" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to get a report that shows the tasks due this week and next. I haven't been able to figure a way to do it. How can I run a report showing just the next 2 weeks tasks and their status?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16453" LastActivityDate="2015-03-03T15:11:01.133" Title="Bi-weekly Task Reporting" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14396" CreationDate="2015-03-03T15:11:01.133" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Exact details depend on the version of project you're using.  I'm using project 2010&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the view menu, choose filter, then &quot;new filter&quot; - enter in the window you want to see  and filter the project to just those dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2015-03-03T15:11:01.133" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12467" CreationDate="2015-03-03T20:29:21.993" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;PERT Analysis was discontinued as of MS Project 2010.  You can add this functionality back into MS Project; it is not a trivial task though.  A detailed, step-by-step explanation of how to do this can be found here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.technet.com/b/projectified/archive/2009/11/24/3296207.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blogs.technet.com/b/projectified/archive/2009/11/24/3296207.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16300" LastActivityDate="2015-03-03T20:29:21.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14399" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-04T01:35:16.593" Score="15" ViewCount="4091" Body="&lt;p&gt;My company is an ISV and occasionally, prospective customers (especially in life sciences) insist on sending in auditors to check over our software development processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are starting to implement Scrum/Agile and my CEO is very concerned about how such an auditor would react to this. His concern (which I share to some extent) is that an auditor would expect to see a signed-off specification document against which the software is developed and then tested, and they wouldn't be happy with an incremental approach which doesn't really deliver a full specification at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any experience in this respect? Is it usually necessary to fudge the issue slightly by &quot;signing off&quot; a user story, or producing a retrospective specification document etc.? My only defense to the CEO so far is that agile is almost universal in software development, so they are bound to accept it as valid, but I don't know whether this is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen some discussion about ISO 9000 and the general consensus seems to be that agile is not incompatible with that, but I don't think that's really the same question because my sole motivation is to be sure we can satisfy an auditor. FWIW We are not ISO 9000 certified and have no intention of doing so, and auditors have not had a problem with this in the past. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16459" LastActivityDate="2016-12-08T17:57:37.620" Title="Satisfying an external auditor when using Agile" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14400" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-04T01:35:57.877" Score="0" ViewCount="135" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work on my own doing Rails development. I'm interested to know how others plan their projects when there is no client involved. When building a site that you've thought up yourself, how do you manage your ideas, your software's potential features, and plans for implementation? I've just been taking notes in Evernote and keeping a project journal, but my notes are pretty disorganized, and I'd like to hear of some other workflows. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16460" LastActivityDate="2015-03-04T14:04:28.287" Title="Planning solo projects when you are the client" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14399" CreationDate="2015-03-04T02:50:00.607" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I've read previously an ISO9001 auditor is likely going to do the following things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inquire as to what your engineers are doing&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Ask them how they've established that this is actually what they should be doing&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Ask to see the project documentation which should match&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile has plenty of documentation, so this should be easy.  Although it's not the same documentation as a Waterfall environment, it will be there. You should have your processes documented on a wiki or in project documentation available to the grunts, but they should easily digestable (simple/lightweight). That should be enough for an auditor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16461" LastActivityDate="2015-03-04T02:50:00.607" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14399" CreationDate="2015-03-04T04:50:42.117" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven’t had experience with external auditors but gained plenty of experience dealing with internal Business Owners that fund projects, who - 1. have little experience with Agile methodologies and practices (which is alright because all of us were new to it at some point), 2. were uncomfortable adopting new  practices (which makes it tough for the dev teams who intend to be Agile). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First thing I would do if I were you, is know the audience (auditors/customer in this case). I would try to gain more insight into the customer’s history if possible. Given that Agile practices in software development have been around for quite some time, chances are the customer is already used to it. If I got to know that they are used to it, I would show off the practices that we already follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case I couldn’t gain such insight, or if I got to know that they never practiced agile, I can directly use the learnings from one of my old projects... There we had to do two things:&#xA;1. We had to prepare a roadmap from the Backlog by adding timelines against each line item, just so that they feel comfortable looking at what they see (because that’s what they were used to). And we highlighted the confidence level on meeting those dates (example: “70% confidence that we will meet this date”). &#xA;2. Added granular requirements to each of the stories (even though we knew that those will most likely change) - again to make them feel comfortable &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, our execution continued being Agile. Presentation was modified a little bit (though not wrongly modified at all) so that the audience understood it in the traditional language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16434" LastEditorUserId="16434" LastEditDate="2015-03-04T04:59:35.147" LastActivityDate="2015-03-04T04:59:35.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14399" CreationDate="2015-03-04T07:33:53.750" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The solution to your question is in &quot;change management&quot;. What is important for the auditor is not that what you decide when you start a long project is valid at the end of the project, but that all changes are linked to decisions taken by the right people and that these are documented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you will have to document your global plan (not always very Agile, but necessary to run the company anyhow), and then document your decision meetings (Scrum meetings are very good because these include the customer (or its representative) and the doers). You will also have to document your acceptance criteria (test suites ...) and document that your product are released according to your acceptance criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you keep this documentation up to date and you really include the product owner in the scrum meeting (he is representing the customer), then this part of your quality system should be fine with the auditor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16135" LastActivityDate="2015-03-04T07:33:53.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14399" CreationDate="2015-03-04T09:48:07.210" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile development methods are not &quot;don't specify up-front; don't document&quot; methods. That's called chaos. When approaching an agile development project, you start by capturing the requirements as a set of user stories, which are added to the backlog. That backlog, along with a documented acceptance criteria, forms the specification. If you need a physical signature, print them off, sign them and stamp them as the master copy. That may be over the top for many auditors though: they should be happy with those stories being help in an issue/ticket system that requires password access, in a document management system, marked as approved etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During each sprint, stories are taken from the backlog, potentially decomposed into tasks, and worked on. Again, you need to record (on paper or in a password-protected system) each of those actions (eg, formally record somewhere that a task is done, even if that's just closing the task in eg Jira). That way you build up an audit trail of both any changes to the specification and the work done against it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, document what you do as a set of procedures and ensure all staff are aware of those procedures. One word of warning: always document what you do, never document what you'd like to do, for that road leads to endless audit problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One final thought: the easiest path to ensuring your auditor is happy is to discuss your plans with them at their next visit. Have your processes documented, shown them to the auditor and explain how it will all work. If they aren't happy, they can then guide you in what else you need to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14835" LastEditorUserId="14835" LastEditDate="2015-03-05T18:03:47.733" LastActivityDate="2015-03-05T18:03:47.733" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14400" CreationDate="2015-03-04T14:04:28.287" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start small, and don't try to overcomplicate the process. Try using a tool like &lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt; and organize your tasks with a simple &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Kanban_board&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt; style workflow. Setup some simple lists like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blocked&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Client Review&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16420" LastActivityDate="2015-03-04T14:04:28.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14409" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-04T14:45:07.853" Score="0" ViewCount="219" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just started utilizing an approach that I refer to as the 3 in 3 email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is nothing groundbreaking but simply an email issued every Monday and Wednesday asking 3 questions regarding the next 3 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do you need from the Planning Manager in the next 3 days?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What blocks do you have that the Planning Manager can help with?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What facilitation can the Planning Manager support you with in the next 3 days?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This email is delivered to a team of 18, both laterally and vertically throughout the organisation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to improve it and do the questions feel useful within a project or delivery environment?  It does not replace &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face-to-face_interaction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;face to face communications&lt;/a&gt; but is used to bridge the gap the between &lt;strong&gt;Daily Stand Up&lt;/strong&gt; and the &lt;strong&gt;Weekly Progress Update&lt;/strong&gt; which are standard delivery ceremonies.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2015-03-07T23:43:09.100" Title="How can I improve the following email template?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;email&gt;&lt;facilitation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14399" CreationDate="2015-03-04T17:11:41.843" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Check whether your prospective customers are in a regulated environment&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I successfully managed a very stringent audit of this type, though for a different vertical. We handled very sensitive financial data and we had to prove to the auditor that we had the necessary safeguards in place. As @Marv Mills said the auditors focused on making sure that we were following our stated process. However, we were not Agile then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a good article - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/compliant-agile-medical-device/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Being agile while still being compliant&#xA;A practical approach for medical device manufacturers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Many organizations believe that they must use a waterfall approach in&#xA;  regulated environments,&quot; they say. &quot;We show how this is not the case.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I would say that the first thing for you to do is to find out whehter your prospective customers are in a regulated environment. If the answer is yes, find out if the regulations are prescriptive or descriptive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the prescriptive approach, the regulations define what must be done&#xA;  and, in many cases, how it is to be done. In the descriptive approach,&#xA;  the regulations define what must be achieved and largely leave the&#xA;  question of how to achieve it to the regulated organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they are in a descriptive regulated environment take the following steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Map regulated activities into your agile development process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Insert &quot;hardening&quot; sprints at certain points during development as&#xA;  synchronization points to ensure that the software meets all&#xA;  regulatory requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-03-04T17:11:41.843" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4251" CreationDate="2015-03-04T18:35:37.050" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;During a meeting, it occurred to me to use the value of the Euro coins and bank notes greater or equal than 1,00 €:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;5&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;10&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;20&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;50&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;100&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;200&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;500&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A colleague replied to me this was great because it is a scale that everyone already knows and people don't need to invent a new artificial scale, and even better do not need to have the scale always in their front. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16472" LastEditorUserId="16472" LastEditDate="2015-03-06T14:29:21.427" LastActivityDate="2015-03-06T14:29:21.427" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14345" CreationDate="2015-03-04T22:09:27.647" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ward Cunningham originally came up with the metaphor of technical debt to “sell” the notion that the costs of refactoring code “up front” significantly outweigh the costs of having to spend time “down the line” building additional features on a code base with restricted extensibility.  He used the metaphor of “debt” at the time because the people he was trying to convince were finance guys and he wanted to connect with them in a language they could understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need to “sell” the same fundamental idea but the metaphor of technical debt is not doing the job, presumably it is because the people you’re trying to convince are not finance guys.  In this case it’s worth searching for a new metaphor which your target group can easily relate to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here’s an a simple idea of how to create a different metaphor:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A young guy, let’s call him Mike, gets his first paid job and decides it’s time to move out of his parents house and into his first flat.  To start with Mike takes a spacious but simple room where he can sleep and keep his stuff but where he needs to use a shared bathroom with other tenants in the block.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After his first pay raise, Mike decides it would be nice to have a bit more convenience by having his own washbasin instead of using the one down the corridor.  He calls up somebody to help him implement this and although they advise him that it’s best practice to build an enclosed bathroom where the washbasin can be installed, he decides for the less expensive option of installing it next to his bed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time moves on and Mike gets a promotion at work at which point he starts to think “This convenience and privacy thing is great! I think I’ll get a shower in here as well!”  So he calls up the washbasin guy and starts to discuss options.  Now the washbasin guy again provides some lower cost and higher cost alternatives but this time is quite insistent that the higher cost option of building a standalone bathroom is the right thing to do because it will give Mike the option of installing a WC and bathtub in the future.  Mike thinks long and hard about this - as well as the cost of building the bathroom, there’s also the cost of moving his washbasin in there as well.  And he’s not even sure if he’s actually going to want a WC or bathtub anyway.  After thinking it over for a couple of days Mike decides to take the washbasin guy’s advice and get a standalone bathroom built in.  “There’s some extra cost in doing it now” he reasons “but it will be worth it in the future as I’m pretty sure now I’m going to need a WC or bathtub and I want to avoid the cost of having to relocate both my washbasin and shower from the living room.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This story has a happy ending.  The alternative (less happy ending) sees Mike opt to install his new shower next to his TV and later he’s forced to shift both washbasin and shower to his bathroom anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this metaphor the washbasin guy (i.e. the development team) is recommending the creation of a standalone bathroom as well as the relocation of existing amenities (i.e. a refactoring of the existing set up) to prepare for the installation of a WC or bathtub (i.e. development of future features).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It’s quite a domestic example, but hopefully it helps you think of others more applicable to your domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16252" LastActivityDate="2015-03-04T22:09:27.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14418" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-05T15:34:37.980" Score="0" ViewCount="302" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using MSoft Project 2013. Wanting to schedule entire project based upon a 5 hr work day. I have performed the following steps to do this however it does not seem to be working:&#xA;In MS Project; file\schedule\changed 'hours per day' to 5, changed hours per week to 25. When I then schedule a task for 8 hours, start and finish dates should be 2 day span however it only displays a 1 day span.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16484" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T20:00:35.663" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T20:00:35.663" Title="Schedule entire project based on a 5 hr work day" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;&lt;schedule&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14348" CreationDate="2015-03-05T16:04:32.837" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our organization relies heavily on GA asset development (we create simulations), so we include them in the daily scrums. Some are technically inclined (i.e. understand code) while others are not. Nonetheless, the GA work needs to integrate with the code so there are dependencies, technical constraints, etc. that need to be communicated and vetted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not uncommon for other non-technical talent to be included in the daily scrums, such as content developers and QA. My rule of thumb is that if an individual has a card in play on the scrum board, they're included in the daily scrums.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16486" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-03-05T19:03:38.357" LastActivityDate="2015-03-05T19:03:38.357" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14420" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14428" CreationDate="2015-03-05T16:46:29.617" Score="0" ViewCount="600" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a hypothetical scenario:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was assigned to manage a software development project. I already have an approved project charter, stakeholder registry, requirements documentation and a WBS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had a meeting with my development team in order to brainstorm a solution based on the information we gathered so far. During the meeting somebody had a brilliant idea about how to fulfill several difficult requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question : Is there a PMBOK &lt;strong&gt;standard document&lt;/strong&gt; for this decisions? The WBS dictionary? Scope document? The Project Management Plan? Or somewhere else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found at least one similar question about this topic but it provided only suggestions like meeting minutiae and not a PMBOK’s specific answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16301" LastActivityDate="2015-03-07T23:31:58.130" Title="Standard document to record decisions? (PMBOK)" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;pmbok&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14418" CreationDate="2015-03-05T16:53:01.853" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The hours per day setting is used to translate durations expressed in 'Days' into 'Number of Hours'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need to do is alter the Working Time in the Calendar. You can either do this in the Project Calendar (i.e. the base calendar) so that every resource calendar that is derived from it inherits the same working day. Or you can do it on a resource-by-resource basis so that only individual resources inherit that working day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How you achieve this depends on which version of MS-Project you are using since, until MS-P 2010 it was done one way (complicated and counter-intuitive) and since 2010 it was done a different way that is only marginally less complicated and a little bit more intuitive!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But whichever way you do it, do it right at the start, before adding tasks and resources. Applying it retrospectively will work, but it will really screw with your task durations and you will probably need to re-visit each task and reset their values. If you already have actuals that will only make it worse, sorry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are using the older versions of MS-Project, I have provided some detailed instructions about how to set up working times for projects and resources in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/practical-project-management-and-tracking-using-microsoft-project.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, including a step by step guide. But I have nothing for doing the equivalent in 2010 at the moment. If you are using the later versions, look at Change Working Time, and then edit the 'Default' row (which defines the default working times) to match your actual working times. It works in a similar way for individual resources as well, you just need to pick a specific resource's calendar by accessing it through the resource sheet...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-03-05T16:53:01.853" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14399" CreationDate="2015-03-05T18:22:12.607" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I commented on David Arno's answer,  but worth one of my own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner controls your backlog priority. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As part of story creation you create the acceptance criteria (usually in the form of questions) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is reviewed by the product owner (or the business sign off proxy), this is your spec,  and it should be agreed before the story is worked on).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to document your sign off (or change the workflow in your tracking tool to record it). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile doesn't mean we abandon everything,  we do &quot;just enough&quot;,  so the criteria is our spec. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3336" LastActivityDate="2015-03-05T18:22:12.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14418" CreationDate="2015-03-05T19:41:57.170" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An alternative to consider:  if what you want to express is that even though your resources work 8 hours per day - they can only generate 5 hours of work per day on tasks in the project, consider lowering the resource's maximum units to 62.5%.  (It will show as 63% in the Resource Sheet).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This allows you to still keep a &quot;day&quot; at 8 hours and a week at 40.  No need to change the project calendar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you assign the resource to a &quot;day&quot; task - the amount of work calculated is 5 hours in the 8 hour task duration.  If you enter 8 hours of work, the task duration is calculated to 1.6 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-03-05T19:41:57.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14424" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-05T22:16:06.997" Score="6" ViewCount="783" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that Scrum team is between 3 and 9. But it's quite often that the initial bootstrap project team is of two developers. What specific set of practices would you recommend for them to follow in order to be focused and efficient?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should they plan Sprints at all? Should they conduct daily standups etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13500" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T04:33:10.997" Title="What are the minimum viable Agile practices for a startup team of 2 people?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;practices&gt;&lt;startup&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14424" CreationDate="2015-03-05T23:03:56.923" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Could use a little more information about the team. Do you have a product owner? A designer? Any other contributors that you wouldn't consider &quot;developers&quot;? Or is it just your dynamic duo against the world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At your size, scrum is too much structure, I think. If it really is just the two of you, just work in the same room, if possible. If you can't, keep a shared digital collab space, whether it's for sketching, file sharing, or whatever (set up an online OneNote book, a Trello board, and/or a HipChat/Slack team space sort of thing--whatever works for you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that two of the biggest benefits of scrum are visibility and communication. As long as you're aware of what each other is doing and constantly on the same page, you can avoid the strictness of scrum until you've grown a bit. And even then, you might not need it. Scrum is great, but it's not the end-all-be-all of agility. Pay attention to how your team works and what kind of improvements you want to make. If sprints aren't helpful, don't be afraid to do pure, pull-based Kanban. Agility is about constantly improving, and scrum is just one of the experiments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16138" LastActivityDate="2015-03-05T23:03:56.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14424" CreationDate="2015-03-06T01:38:16.037" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;You can use the Nokia Test as a starting point&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jeffsutherland.com/nokiatest.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Nokia Test (also known as the ScrumButt Test) was developed by Bas Vodde of Nokia and tuned by Jeff Sutherland, the co-creator of Scrum.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Work in fixed iterations (say 2 weeks):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can establish a velocity that is valuable for release planning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Helps to avoid the death march at shipping time by maintaining a steady pace.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Whoever is testing it, should do it within the iteration: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stories should be 100% complete to avoid any crisis at shipping time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Write Scrum style user stories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Opportunity for close interaction with stakeholders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allows you to respond to change.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Designate a Product Owner, even if part-time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All requests for change in priority flows through one person.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gets stories 'ready' with acceptance criteria before iteration starts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Owns the release roadmap with dates based on actual velocity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Maintain a product backlog&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Makes visible that lower priority stories may not get done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clearly specified and prioritized by return on investment (ROI).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are 4 more items in the Nokia Test. However, you can go as far as your team finds it practical to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-03-06T15:48:49.767" LastActivityDate="2015-03-06T15:48:49.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14424" CreationDate="2015-03-06T08:58:37.157" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most viable agile practice is &lt;code&gt;fast feedback&lt;/code&gt;. That's why short iterations are preferred. The next one, directly connected with the planing, is customer collaboration. You have to meet with the customer every 2 weeks, discuss the things you are going to do, then run 2 week sprint avoiding any interruptions, then demonstrate what you have done and ask for feedback. Repeat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The daily standup may be quite informal when there are just 2 people, but I would suggest that you still have fixed time for this meeting, as on this meeting everyone (the customer for example) is invited as well. The most important part however is to keep track on the progress and impediments, as well as of the focus on the sprint goal, as during the sprint most likely you will have to decide what to drop and in what to invest more time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2340" LastEditorUserId="2340" LastEditDate="2015-03-08T17:05:57.680" LastActivityDate="2015-03-08T17:05:57.680" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14420" CreationDate="2015-03-06T14:09:44.340" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would argue that if scope/budget/benefits/schedule aren't materially impacted you don't need to document outside of deliverables like requirements documentation. What is material depends on your project, corporate culture, contingency reserves, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that the brilliant idea will save substantial time/$$/etc, the closest PMBOK comes to is a change request document. See pp87-88 in v4. Once the decision to change is approved you would move forward with updating other project docs (e.g. schedule, financials, WBS, etc) as appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also caution about &quot;standardization&quot;. There are best practices to follow for sure, but if you try a one-size-fits-all approach to governing your projects you will likely end up being a mediocre PM at best. Better is to think through with your business sponsors what is needed, what is not, etc so that there is a level of oversight that makes sense for the business value being delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2015-03-06T14:09:44.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14420" CreationDate="2015-03-06T14:20:11.390" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Critical decision that are made typically come from conflict.  It is a great idea to capture them so that, if the conflict arises again, you can access the decision quickly.  Not only that, but we suffer from memory loss.  And, most of these decisions would be made during a formal meeting of some type so they would typically be captured in the meeting minutes.  The problem with that is you cannot find them quickly when needed.  So a register of some type, whether you use a spreadsheet or a more sophisticated database, is a good idea.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Decisions like these will typically grow legs and end up as a deliverable change, a CR that may alter the project and its baselines, update to the business case, or whatever.  But the source of those changes is good to have, so this is another argument to keep a log.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't care if this is in the PMBOK.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-03-06T14:20:11.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14424" CreationDate="2015-03-06T15:25:50.420" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;The most viable agile feedback is fast feedback&quot; is something contestable specially when working on a agile framework. Agile may really get confusing and lead to scope creep with short iterations, agile scoped, and no scope (with a fast feedback mechanisms changing priority structure of development). Agile does not mean no scope or no schedule or no plan. It just means we develop products with agiled scope. While scrum is good and agile is fad; but only until it does not lead to scope creep and changing priorities due to constant feedbacks or any other that changes direction/duration/quality of development of product. Not sure why I would not use scrum for 2 or more when needed; and just restrict to 3-9 or... @Ashok - Nokiatest is good start point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16496" LastEditorUserId="16496" LastEditDate="2015-03-06T15:37:28.710" LastActivityDate="2015-03-06T15:37:28.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14432" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-06T18:20:31.180" Score="1" ViewCount="385" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’m using Project 2010, and can’t seem to get Project to do what I want to see.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a primary task path, call it tasks A, B, C, D.  I have another secondary task path, call it tasks 1, 2, 3, 4.  Task 4 is a predecessor for task D; however, I do NOT want task 4 to drive the start date of task D.  I can manually schedule the secondary task 4 so that it ends at the start date of task D, but then should the start date of task D change due to its primary automatically scheduled task path (A, B, C, D), I would have to manually change task 4 to match the new start date of task D.  (This would be acceptable if there were just one or two dependencies like this, but I have more like 50).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to say it is that I want to automatically plan the secondary task path BACKWARDS from an event in the primary task path. (I don’t care if the start of the secondary task path is driven backwards to a date before the current date or project start date. In fact, that’s one of the things I want to see).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, I am looking for a BACKWARDS flowing critical path from a specific event.  Is there any way to do this?  (I have played with the constraints, but without much success).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16121" LastEditorUserId="15972" LastEditDate="2015-03-19T21:25:28.267" LastActivityDate="2015-03-20T01:44:14.460" Title="Backwards critical path for secondary task path?" Tags="&lt;dependencies&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14432" CreationDate="2015-03-06T20:25:20.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use a Start-Finish constraint on task 4 with task D.  If task D is pushed out because task C is slipping, then the start date of task 4 should also slip.  I do not think that starting task 4 late will push out task C with this type of constraint.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-03-06T20:25:20.223" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14424" CreationDate="2015-03-06T21:33:08.800" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be Agile, don't necessarily try and do scrum at this point since it may be overkill for such a small team.  Consider borrowing these ideas from Scrum or Kanban:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DO CONSIDER:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Visualizing all work on a storyboard or Kanban board&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Writing Agile stories using INVEST principles&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Writing Acceptance Criteria&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Having the 2 developers agree and commit to a definition of done&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Define at least the following steps in your work visualization: defined, developing, testing, staged, production&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Having a daily scrum or stand-up to build communication discipline&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Having retrospective-like checkpoints often and ad-hoc, allow the team to define what to change and how long to commit to the change&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Planing and reviewing work increments often and ad-hoc&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Empowering the team to try new things and if they fail, fail rapidly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DON'T&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask the team to follow any framework without them understanding the value of all parts that compose the framework.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Implement formalized processes without the team buying in first or understanding what problem they are trying to solve with the formalized process.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Take it personally when the team wants to rapidly change parts of their process.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-03-06T21:33:08.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14409" CreationDate="2015-03-06T21:51:31.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The three questions are all really very similar. It may be more effective to just ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;What roadblocks have you run into today&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16420" LastActivityDate="2015-03-06T21:51:31.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14436" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-07T03:36:26.507" Score="1" ViewCount="242" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to remember my Project Management class from college many years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been part of several IT projects where multiple entities are involved.  For these projects (or &lt;em&gt;cutovers&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;planned downtimes&lt;/em&gt;) I will create a checklist using Google spreadsheet or Excel.  The activities in the checklist typically start in the very early morning hours (typically 1:00am, depending on the customers time zone).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been re-familiarizing myself with MS Project and it's alternatives (ProjectLibre, etc).  I am copying the information from my checklist into MS Project but I'm trouble specifying days and times that are outside the regular business day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a work around?  Is MS Project the correct tools, or should I stick with spreadsheets?  &lt;em&gt;Am I using a hammer when I should be using a screwdriver?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16500" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-01-15T14:26:05.753" LastActivityDate="2019-01-15T14:26:05.753" Title="Software to track projects measured in hours and minutes" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14436" CreationDate="2015-03-07T06:03:57.720" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have to adjust your calendar. Google &quot;how to set working days in MS Project&quot;. This should lead you to the interface you need for this function. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-03-07T06:03:57.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10750" CreationDate="2015-03-07T06:34:33.563" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a project management perspective, Budget, scope and time work hand in hand. Fixed time and fixed scope call for a somehow fixed budget. we would all like this situation. In this case you have fixed the project duration on the delivery of the unknown. My advice is that work with the client in defining the scope to a granular level and agree on what can be done in the given space of time and budget. If more is required to be accomplish with within the set time frame, then adjust the budget to cater for compressing or fast tracking the project. Don't forget to charge the client for the additional risk associated with fast tracking or compressing the project and also consider that additional resources will cost you more and could cause noise than help. I'm currently working on a project where we have over 10 subcontractors, 9 vaguely undefined work streams and my company is tasked with project managing all those streams. I'm tasked with pricing the work effort required in managing  these work streams and fixed price. How does one price the unknown to a number without under-pricing or inflating the price? A realistic budget will entail working with the client in defining the scope to a point where it can be accurately estimated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16501" LastActivityDate="2015-03-07T06:34:33.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14439" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-07T09:02:23.570" Score="12" ViewCount="581" Body="&lt;p&gt;A fellow CSM approached me yesterday with a problem.  They have been running Scrum for 6 months quite successfully and Management are happy however the development team have requested the CSM to take on a Project Manager role and instill waterfall practices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the team are self-organising and they are deciding to organise &lt;em&gt;away&lt;/em&gt; from Scrum he was at a loss as to how to proceed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They articulated a number of concerns and regardless of the CSM explaining the benefits of Scrum they are committed to return to Gantt Charts, Project Management meetings and detailed documentation as well as time-sheeting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2019-06-19T17:07:58.780" Title="A team have requested in a retrospective they want more waterfall and a Project Manager; how to proceed?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14439" CreationDate="2015-03-07T10:34:43.957" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One option would be to make the move back to waterfall an experiment. Agree to make the change but say that you will measure how successful it is and compare it to the results the team was getting using the agile approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-03-07T10:34:43.957" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14439" CreationDate="2015-03-07T23:09:29.863" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well first thing is to remember that a retrospective, like a user story, is an invitation to a conversation. I wasn't there, so I can only take a guess as the meeting. It sounds like the retrospective may have ended up more focused on solution and not what the actual problem  is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scrum master (CSM is a certification, not a role) should start with some powerful questions. &quot;What is the benefit to a Gantt chart?&quot;, &quot;How would you see the a week under waterfall?&quot;, &quot;What does time-sheeting get you?&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he has access to another scrum master or, better yet, a coach having that person come in might help. The problem could be the scrum master (we don't like to think it is us, but it happens) and by getting an outside person to ask the questions, you might get better answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking off the coach hat for a second and moving to mentor, my gut is saying there is an outside factor at play here. Working with software developers for 20+ years I've never met one that said &quot;Please sir, can I have my time sheet back. Oh and can we do 100 page functional spec documents that no one reads?&quot; I'd look to the management layer to see if some outside pressure is being put on them. It is not unheard of to have a functional manager threaten their people's reviews if they don't do things their way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-03-07T23:09:29.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14420" CreationDate="2015-03-07T23:31:58.130" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;So @Marv Mills provided the best real world answer. Decision logs have a long history of use in project management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, artificer has indicated this is related to the PMBOK and I would assume study for the PMI. As a recovering PMP I can attest that the real world and PMI answers do not always agree. We call them PMIisms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking over my PDF of the PMBOK, which as a caveat is at least one version old, I think you want to be looking at the Monitor and Control Project Work phase. Here's a few of the summary bullets for this section. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maintaining an accurate, timely information base concerning the project's product(s) and their associated documentation through project completion. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Monitoring implementation of approved changes when and as they occur. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't the answer. It should give you a more targeted place to find the answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-03-07T23:31:58.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14409" CreationDate="2015-03-07T23:43:09.100" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To the questions- Having been a project manager for longer than I care to really think about, I can say that more than half the time the answer to &quot;what can I (the project manager) help you with&quot; the answer was &quot;nothing&quot;. The structure of the question focuses it on the project planner, not the problem. The engineer might not even think about his argument with IT about getting lab domain that isn't on the corporate network or how the project planner (manager) can help help them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on the person. Make it all about them. Make the question more open ended. &quot;What is blocking you from completely your work this week?&quot;, &quot;What resources do you need?&quot; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the method of asking the questions: Email is a highly imperfect medium. Essentially what you're sending out is a survey. Responses to surveys generally run in the 10% range (and marketers are thrilled if they get this) and those surveys are usually just checking boxes on a screen. Even SurveyMonkey would be better and is still not the best solution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why the daily standup works so much better. 15 minutes, and everyone gets a chance to talk in real time. Here's a hint, it doesn't have to be daily. Do make it less than 15 minutes and it could be more than one meeting. If six people are in New York, get on a phone with them at 10:00am, meet with the guys near you at 9:00am. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a team of 18, it is not out of scope to be able to touch base with each person twice a week one on one. When I ran the PMO at Hitachi I met with everyone in the core team multiple times a week. I knew about problems before they ever became problems and was able to head them off proactively. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-03-07T23:43:09.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14439" CreationDate="2015-03-08T07:53:19.033" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hard problem; I've seen that as well in the past. Analyze deeply what it is they're trying to improve in the whole. Then ask them hard questions, trying to get to the deeper problems before jumping to solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;why you'd need Project Management meetings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how the Scrum Meetings are not supporting that&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How creating a Gantt chart differs from creating a plan during the sprint planning meeting. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are their planning meetings currently effective?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who it would be helpful to if they did hour tracking?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might find that the developers do not want to be accountable for the plan and the product and prefer to do as told, which is hard to break through. In that case, read into the dysfunctions of a team, before teams can be held accountable, they need trust, conflict, commitment before accountability. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tablegroup.com/books/dysfunctions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Five Dysfunctions of a Team&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; is a great book (and there are a lot of presentations available on this subject - e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/search/slideshow?searchfrom=header&amp;amp;q=5%20dysfunctions%20of%20a%20team&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a selection from SlideShare&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mQdip.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final thought I have is that there is a (perceived) pressure to deliver. That the backlog only gets larger as they deliver new stuff and that the team needs motivation that they're doing their best and are delivering the right things. It can be very demotivational (and kill commitment) if you're constantly being told you need to be more productive, deliver more, faster and cheaper. It kills the drive to improve and it generally takes away the time that's needed to put these improvements in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Slow down to go faster&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7393" LastEditorUserId="35563" LastEditDate="2019-06-19T17:07:58.780" LastActivityDate="2019-06-19T17:07:58.780" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14436" CreationDate="2015-03-08T13:57:26.820" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have a couple of options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the built-in 24 hours calendar as the Project calendar.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create calendars that represent the working time for your resources relative to your time.  For example, you are located on the east coast of the US but have resources from the UK.  Create a base calendar that starts 4 or 5 hours earlier.  If your resource start at 8:00 am EDT, the UK resources would start at 4:00 am GMT.  When you create the resource(s) set their base calendar to the correct base calendar.  When you assign the task to the resource, the time will adjust automatically.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your question about using Project versus Excel spreadsheets.  Up to you, obviously.  Project does have a learning curve, but once tackled, the tools will perform the calculations and adjustments you have to perform manually in Excel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-03-08T13:57:26.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14446" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-08T16:55:41.860" Score="2" ViewCount="221" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the unenviable position of creating a team that will be distributed for a minimum of 3 months and up to a year. The team includes 4 now, but may increase to up to 7 before we manage to relocate together. We will be working on a single project over time rather than several projects on a contract basis. The work is largely mobile and web development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have been using Asana for basic assignments and note taking, but that doesn't cover the actual work collaboration side. Can you recommend resources to facilitate effective collaboration for a consistently remote team? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd be happy to update with any further details if my question is too broad. I've checked some of the other threads, and they seem largely about resources directed towards workflow and management for teams that have the opportunity to physically work together, but I could be wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16504" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-03-09T16:10:47.160" LastActivityDate="2015-03-09T16:10:47.160" Title="Setting Up Infrastructure for Managing a Distributed team" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;distributed-team&gt;&lt;resources&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14439" CreationDate="2015-03-08T17:10:04.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The team here, wants to go back to the waterfall model, that they have been working since long. A change (Here Scrum implementation) is difficult to inculcate within. &#xA;A better solution here would be to coach the team, learn the difficulties they are currently facing and how switching back to the Waterfall model these problems could be removed. Plan a retrospective meeting with the team and take notes of the following points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What the team should Continue doing?&#xA;What the team should Start doing?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;What the team should Stop doing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to get solution to the problems the team has collectively come up in this meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above all try to energies the team with the core values of Scrum &quot;FORCE&quot;, build this in the team. And help them out to strengthen as a team:&#xA;F - Focus&#xA;O - Openness&#xA;R - Respect&#xA;C - Courage&#xA;E - Extreme Commitment &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13556" LastActivityDate="2015-03-08T17:10:04.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14142" CreationDate="2015-03-08T17:37:34.493" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Are you sure you want this integrated in TFS?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your team is agile and is using the Scrum or MSF Agile template, it's not tracking the data required to create the reports your manager would like to see. And if your team is doing agile properly, then it probably doesn't want to track this data in this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other ways of tracking project completion information through the agile tools. It requires proper use of the Iteration paths to separate out work in batches or the use of the Feature work item (and possibly a higher level portfolio backlog).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not possible to add additional information to user accounts in TFS itself, so hourly rates, working hours and other contractual information can't be saved without massive customization. I would strongly recommend against that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Is this possible out of the box?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may get pretty far when using the MSF CMMI template and &lt;a href=&quot;https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg455680.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TFS to a Microsoft Project Server&lt;/a&gt; integration. MS Project &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/ms-project&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;ms-project&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;ms-project&lt;/a&gt; offers a lot of features towards planning and budgeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/briankel/team-foundation-server-2012-and-project-server-2013-integration-virtual-machine-and-hands-on-labs-demo-scripts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;somewhat older virtual machine (based on TFS 2012) that shows the capabilities. It is accompanied by a number of Hands-on labs&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Is it possible using an existing 3rd party solution?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think so. At least not for all features you are after. There are time tracking solutions out there that can solve part of your problems, but if you're using the Project Server integration, you get its Time card features, which would make any 3rd party solution kind of useless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 3rd party tools you might want to look at are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ssw.com.au/ssw/timepronet/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SSW Time Pro&lt;/a&gt; which offers TFS and Dynamics CRM integration and billing information. It doesn't offer any budgeting though.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://imaginet.com/imaginettimesheet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Imaginet Timesheet&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tfs-timetracker.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TFS Time Tracker&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.teamexpand.com/product/tx-chrono&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Team Expand Chrono TFS Timesheet&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Can I roll my own?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see existing 3rd party tools offer some of the features you're after. Everything is possible, as TFS offers a REST API and a TFS Client Object Model. You can extend the TFS Work Item process template with additional fields and checks. you can probably get pretty far, depending on how much you want to invest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest against this though, unless you want to build a product you can sell. The investment will be hardly worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some thins will be impossible to do without some form of external data storage, such as storing data about clients and developers' rates and budgets, easily linking Team projects or Areas or Iterations to clients etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plus, you never know what will happen when TFS 2015 comes along and what Microsoft has planned for the next versions after that. Microsoft has been investing in the Agile Planning tools a lot lately and I assume that the way planning and reporting will work will change drastically for the better for agile processes. These generally have a different view on Timekeeping and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/articles/kelly-beyond-projects&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Budgetting&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/articles/kelly-beyond-projects&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Projects&lt;/a&gt;. There are a lot of agile practitioners that are moving away from most forms of &lt;a href=&quot;http://xprogramming.com/articles/the-noestimates-movement/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;estimation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7393" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2021-02-24T22:08:34.130" LastActivityDate="2021-02-24T22:08:34.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14452" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14454" CreationDate="2015-03-09T06:23:49.477" Score="1" ViewCount="1089" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the company I work we use scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, We do not track items work remaining, but instead we use &quot;due dates&quot; mode per item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is,&#xA;Is it possible to create a burn down chart according to due dates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my previous experience in scrum, I had used burn-down chart after updating items work remaining on a daily basis, and I can't seem to think of a way to implement it while in due dates mode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any guidance would be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16507" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-07-08T13:01:56.440" LastActivityDate="2019-07-08T13:01:56.440" Title="Burndown chart which is based on due dates instead of work remaining?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;burndown-chart&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="55" CreationDate="2015-03-09T07:24:21.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me, the Project Manager should be technically good in terms of applications. If otherwise, the team can easily make him/her stupid in terms of estimation &amp;amp; many. It is not the only factor but one of the major factors to be a good Project Manager. What happens in business, if the guy running in, doesn't have much technical knowledge of the same, resulting in failure in the course of action or application. &#xA;Be Technical Be Safe!!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16508" LastActivityDate="2015-03-09T07:24:21.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14452" CreationDate="2015-03-09T09:09:30.400" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming due dates are per-item, then no, there's no math that would translate that into a sum of known quantities that could be burned down to zero over the course of a sprint. You could burn down items remaining, and any item that misses its due date doesn't burn down, but this is hard on the team and dangerous to the project. Once an item misses its due date, the team will have no motivation to continue working on it and will &lt;strong&gt;move to other tasks they can still get credit for completing on time&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could perhaps hijack the estimated time vs actual time burn-down model, where estimated time is the number of days from the start of the sprint until that due date. This keeps the tracked value on the item 'alive' and prevents the deprioritization above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a little concerned, though, that you're breaking a fundamental principle of scrum: the only due date is the end of the sprint. The team takes on a stack of work at the start of a sprint and promises to have it completed by the end. If due dates are a problem, assign work to sprints that end &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; those dates. Use one-week sprints if work is coming in so rapidly that you need to make sure it gets into a sprint early enough. If even that isn't rapid enough, then maybe scrum isn't for you, and you should stop doing it. Jamming scrum into that kind of environment leads to failure all too easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps look into pure pull-based kanban, and put the nearest-due date items at the top of the pile. The trick is to get into a position where due dates aren't at the front of your mind. If you're always racing to meet them, something is wrong, and charts won't fix it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, I'd recommend getting your management together to talk about the state of scrum at your company. Either they aren't really doing scrum and think they are, or the team you're on has a broken implementation and needs to be corrected by others at the company who know better. Hopefully it's just the latter, because if it's the former, hoo boy. Nothing spells doomed quite like a company that thinks it can pick and choose the parts of scrum it likes and leave out the rest. Remember: frankenscrum and waterscrum aren't real. They're just myths agile coaches made up to calm managers down while they subvert them from the ground up. You aren't supposed to actually &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16138" LastActivityDate="2015-03-09T09:09:30.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14439" CreationDate="2015-03-09T13:08:14.580" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;&quot;Self-organizing&quot; does not mean uncontrolled&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Given the team are self-organising and they are deciding to organise&#xA;  away from Scrum...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe your development team is grossly exceeding their bounds on the pretext of &quot;Self-organizing&quot;. To cite a small example, the stakeholders now have to wait for, say, nine months to see the first demo of the project, instead of every two weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a few quotes from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/presentations/leading-a-self-organizing-team&quot;&gt;Mike Cohn's presentation on Leading a Self-Organizing Team&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It does not mean letting people do whatever they want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Management sets the] boundary within which self-organization occurs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;https://hbr.org/1986/01/the-new-new-product-development-game/ar/1&quot;&gt;original 1986 article by Takeuchi and Nonaka that introduced the term &quot;Scrum&quot;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although project teams are largely on their own, they are not&#xA;  uncontrolled. Management establishes enough checkpoints to prevent&#xA;  instability, ambiguity, and tension from turning into chaos. At the&#xA;  same time, management avoids the kind of rigid control that impairs&#xA;  creativity and spontaneity. Instead, the emphasis is on&#xA;  “self-control,” “control through peer pressure,” and “control by&#xA;  love,” which collectively we call “subtle control.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is not clear why the ScrumMaster, let these concerns pile up instead of addressing them as they arose:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They articulated a number of concerns...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were the ScrumMaster, instead of being on the defensive, I will try to drill down into these concerns and make a serious effort to understand the root causes and look for solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-03-09T13:13:34.200" LastActivityDate="2015-03-09T13:13:34.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14446" CreationDate="2015-03-09T16:08:32.880" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Getting started with a distributed software development team&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Welcome to PMSE! You said your team will be doing web and mobile development. Even though your question is very broad, I am taking a shot at an answer. If you have follow-on questions, please feel free to post them here as new questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pick a development process - here is the super-short version:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Waterfall: Document the full requirements upfront and wait for the development team to deliver the completed product at the end of the cycle in one go.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agile: Incremental delivery every two weeks (typically) with opportunity to tweak the requirements based on progress and feedback. The leading agile process is Scrum. I recommend that you go with Scrum.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Get familiar with the basics of the selected process.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Assign roles: Assign roles as to who is going to do what. If you choose Scrum, you need to designate a Product Owner and a Scrum Master. For a small team, these can be part-time roles.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Choose a tool: For a distributed team, you need a web-based Scrum tool that can keep all team members on the same page.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For a distributed team, communication is key: Communication is most effective (hot) face-to-face. However, for a distributed team you can try and keep the communication channels as warm as possible with text chat, video conferencing and other such means. See some previous threads here for more insight:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/11862/are-you-more-efficient-leading-you-project-virtually-or-in-person/&quot;&gt;Are you more efficient leading your project virtually or in person?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/12343/how-do-i-manage-oversee-multiple-agile-teams-around-the-world/&quot;&gt;How do I manage/oversee multiple agile teams around the world?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2015-03-09T16:08:32.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="55" CreationDate="2015-03-10T13:39:50.520" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The project manager should have a good understanding of the technologies involved in the project.  Not that they can code, but understand how the pieces fit together from a high level. Leadership and communication are more important qualities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the process, there may be procedures built in that help verify task estimates.  For example, agile’s &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Planning_poker&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;planning poker&lt;/a&gt; help a team of developers come to a consensus on a task estimate.  Additionally, any developers with high or low estimates can make their case to the group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a developer identifies a roadblock, sitting down and interviewing them is the best way to resolve the issue.  Ask questions to make sure you have an understanding of what the issue is and the constraints.  Brainstorm solutions to the problem with them and clarify the next steps in the plan of action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16420" LastActivityDate="2015-03-10T13:39:50.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14460" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-11T20:32:25.887" Score="1" ViewCount="255" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, let me make it clear that I am a software developer and that I am writing this ISO help with my desire to agile-ize my project management and get a buy-in for changing some general &lt;code&gt;requirements documentation&lt;/code&gt; technique that my team follows.  Please do not confuse it with seeking people management advice, I am aware that is off topic on this forum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will try to make it simple and clear.  When I was hired into my contract position a few months ago, I was told the team was following &lt;code&gt;Agile&lt;/code&gt; but not all the way and that they were open to making further advancement towards it.  Once started, I realized that the instilled workflow habits and procedures are still very much &lt;code&gt;waterfall&lt;/code&gt; and that very comprehensive requirements documents are written sometimes several months before any development begins.  By &quot;comprehensive&quot;, I mean that, while a requirement does cover a coherent and interrelated functional unit, it is by no means atomic and that it can be further broken down into a hierarchy of individually atomic albeit interdependent units of work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My hope was that each atomic, meaning not possible to further slice it into smaller chunks, unit of progress should have its own &lt;code&gt;sprint/iteration&lt;/code&gt; and its own requirements document.  From the development perspective, a clear advantage of this is that I don't have to grasp a wider requirements document, which leaves more focus on the direct task at hand, resulting in better quality work.  It is like being handed two different tasks for installing a door and painting a room when the two can conveniently be split into two tasks:  you first install the door, then you paint the room.  In our current setup, it is a single requirements document, which makes it difficult to grasp or even find the specifics of the concrete task at hand in a document that encompasses other tasks as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am asking this question to confirm that my idea does conform to the official Agile doctrine and that I am not misunderstanding.  &lt;strong&gt;Should Agile requirements always be as minimal as possible or are there benefits to bundling multiple interdependent work tasks together into a comprehensive document?&lt;/strong&gt;  From the perspective of my cognitive styles and preferences, having the project management side of the team &lt;code&gt;break down the work into individual atomic tasks&lt;/code&gt; would enable me to have to do less project management myself and actually focus more attention on coding rather than structuring increments towards the final objective.  Another advantage is that it would be much easier to give LOE and completion estimates on a more narrowly scoped task than a whole project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agile-pm.pbworks.com/w/page/1526552/Agile%20WBS&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Where is the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) in Agile?&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1063/how-do-you-convince-a-client-to-use-agile-methods&quot;&gt;How do you convince a client to use Agile Methods?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5322" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T12:51:10.003" Title="Comprehensive single requirement docs vs. multiple atomic ones" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;scope&gt;&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14460" CreationDate="2015-03-11T23:41:58.627" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you might be describing the differences between a Product Backlog and a Sprint Backlog and perhaps a Release Backlog in the middle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product Backlog-&lt;/strong&gt; Everything desired in the product. This can be a finite list (a PRD) or a living list that is constantly being added to and re-prioritized. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Release Backlog-&lt;/strong&gt; This is not in the base scrum guidelines, however remember that scrum is a framework which can be customized. A common modification, particularly on large projects, is to break the project into &quot;Releases&quot;. If the product is such that it can't be &quot;shippable&quot; every sprint (legacy code, deep integration to other systems, and so on). The &quot;release&quot; is then an interim milestone where the product would be potentially shippable. Releases will often have a core theme like &quot;create core infrastructure&quot;. The Release Backlog is all the stories desired for a given release. Engineers would still decide in what order and how to build them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprint Backlog&lt;/strong&gt;- This is what the developers decide to build in a given sprint. They pull from the top of the backlog, but might not always pull the top item based on grouping like stories, technical dependency, etc. This should be done with the product owner (manager). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So based on your question, if you set up releases, you could then create Release Backlogs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure this is going to solve your problem though. From what you've described, it sounds like your requirements process is pretty far from agile. This pretty much neutralizes any benefits engineering has from operating in a sprint/iteration model. The best agile dev team in the world can't hit peak performance or deliver great value if they are getting garbage requirements or rigid requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-03-11T23:41:58.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14460" CreationDate="2015-03-12T00:04:12.773" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing in the agile approach that specifies the size of requirements. Scrum, which is an agile framework, does specify that the amount of work planned for a sprint should be completable within the sprint. That would imply a maximum size of a requirement such that it does not exceed a sprint (typically 1-4 weeks).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice though, there has been a lot of discussion in the agile community around an appropriate size for requirements when working in an agile way. Remember that one of the fundamentals of agile is the ability to respond to change. If you want to be able to respond to change, having comprehensive, coarse-grained requirements documentation becomes a hinderance rather than an advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A popular approach to sizing requirements is the &lt;strong&gt;INVEST mnemonic&lt;/strong&gt;. This stands for &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Independant, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Negotiable, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Valuable, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimable, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scalable, and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testable. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 'Scalable' refers to making the requirements small enough to be estimated with some certainty. A lot of agile teams take this to mean a typical size of a few person-days of effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read more about the INVEST mnemonic &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_%28mnemonic%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A further consideration is the agile principle of delivering working software frequently. This would suggest that smaller is better, as it would allow for more frequent delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-05-12T12:51:10.003" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T12:51:10.003" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14463" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14468" CreationDate="2015-03-12T02:31:46.910" Score="0" ViewCount="235" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PMBOK uses the term 'Supporting Experts' in the list of project team roles, defined as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Supporting experts perform activities required to develop or execute the PM plan. ... such as contracting, financial management, logistics, legal, safety, engineering, test, or quality control ... may be assigned to work full time or may just participate on the team when their particular skills are required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't tend to want to get caught up in definitions or wordsmithing, but 'stakeholder' and 'project staff' or even 'user' are just very clear, broadly used terms that help keep a conversation nice and pithy and keep everyone on the same page with the same vocabulary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I find I lack a term for someone on the ground floor that gets brought in occasionally for interviews, to bounce questions off of, or clarify some nuance. As in &quot;John who works in that department and knows the product in and out, but isn't formally on the team, but he is our go-to when making sure we understand something about the customer/product/market.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Oracle' works behind closed doors, but I want something I can put into an email. &quot;Person familiar with the production&quot; is too hard to say in conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is 'supporting expert' appropriate for the role/work I've described? Or is there perhaps a better term?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16524" LastActivityDate="2015-03-13T05:16:11.010" Title="Appropriate use of 'Supporting Experts' as descriptor for people 'familiar with subject matter'" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14460" CreationDate="2015-03-12T15:57:31.317" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Agile requirements process is a conversation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me try to answer your question in the context of Scrum, which is the most popular Agile process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, you should have user stories in the form of small, vertical slices of functionality, describing a small increment in value to the user. However, reading your question, it looks like the following clarifications on the agile user story process will help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;User stories, as initially written by the Product Owner, are not written contracts or requirements the software must fulfill. Prior to the Sprint Planning, the Product Owner and the development team will meet to refine the prioritized stories in the backlog. You need some flexibility so that you can adjust how much of the story gets implemented.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gbcacm.org/sites/www.gbcacm.org/files/slides/4A%20-%20User%20Stories%20Done%20Right.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;User Stories Done Right: Requirements. See the slide titled 'Negotiable'.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner should work with the development team to refine the stories and add acceptance criteria, what &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/clarifying-the-relationship-between-definition-of-done-and-conditions-of-sa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mike Cohn calls conditions of satisfaction&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;However, it is entirely upto the development team to figure out how to implement the user story and break it up into smaller technical tasks. See a good example in this article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.softwareandi.com/2011/11/how-to-break-user-story-into-tasks.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How to Break a User Story into Tasks&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-03-12T15:57:31.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14466" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14591" CreationDate="2015-03-12T22:06:28.917" Score="3" ViewCount="723" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the following requirements for my agile project management tool...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To plan work for version 2 of my product while simultaneously planning work for the next hot fix release.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Each sprint will contain a selection of stories destined for release_2 and a selection for release_hot_fix.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I will be able to forecast completion dates, based on velocity, for both release_2, and release_hot_fix.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I will be able to ensure capacity for each sprint, for developers working on both releases.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this possible with Microsoft TFS? if so, how would I configure it please?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16124" LastActivityDate="2015-04-04T04:00:09.527" Title="Manage parallel work efforts in Microsoft TFS" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14463" CreationDate="2015-03-13T04:05:17.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Domain expert&quot; is the phrase usually used in my circles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2015-03-13T04:05:17.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14463" CreationDate="2015-03-13T05:16:11.010" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Subject Matter Expert (SME) is the term I hear and use most commonly. Vicki's &lt;strong&gt;Domain Expert&lt;/strong&gt; I also here, usually a Domain Expert is a bit more focused than an SME.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Architects&lt;/strong&gt; are for very specific engineering functions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Extended Core Team&lt;/strong&gt; is a more general term that refers to any of the organizations that are not part of the day to day development of the project but need to stay informed and may have specialized roles. For example, Release Engineering is not needed until closer to launch however having them in reviews before hand means they can provide input and raise things they need before it's too late. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-03-13T05:16:11.010" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14469" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-13T16:28:02.493" Score="0" ViewCount="1110" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm new to Agile projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you manage the cost of bug fixing? Does the customer pays for that effort or the software factory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16540" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-03-13T16:42:18.593" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T06:58:36.973" Title="Who bears the cost of bug fixing in an Agile project?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;budget&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14469" CreationDate="2015-03-13T16:49:46.497" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's really no different than in waterfall projects. When you hand it to the customer and say it's done, there's the implied statement that you've tested it and it is high quality. So, any bugs would be a flaw in development that the development team would own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's like if you had someone replace the brakes on your car and they made a mistake. You paid for it to be done right and they would be responsible for correcting the mistake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two big caveats to this would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) If you have something in your contract with the customer that specifies otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) If the &quot;bug&quot; is actually a change in scope. Like with waterfall projects, this is a grey area. Is it really a new feature or did you misunderstand what the customer needed? Is the development work small enough that the benefit of customer satisfaction outweighs the cost of the work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-03-13T16:49:46.497" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14469" CreationDate="2015-03-13T19:03:17.170" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile development teams own the cost of bug fixing.  You generally don't get money from a customer for selling them bugs.  In Agile, the focus on bugs should be empowering teams to pro-actively understand stories and done criteria to minimize the the likelihood of defects.  When defects are discovered, Agile teams learn and respond to why the arose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The $$$ negotiation between the team and the customer should allow enough compensation for the team to deliver a valuable, quality product.  But quality to the customer should be sold as pro-active investments/practices including things like manual/automated testing, code reviews, TDD, refactoring, iterative delivery, CI, CD, and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimating stories to take bug fixing into account is re-active.  What problem are you really trying to solve?  Work with your teams to get them to understand the story and own quality delivery of it so that the risk of bugs is mitigated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there will always be bugs and the framework you use to deliver the software (Scrum, Kanban, Waterfall, XP, etc) will never lead to a 100% defect free product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to how to manage the cost...Work with the customer to determine the impact of the defects before fixing.  Some defects are not worth fixing.  Those that must be fixed result in reduced project scope.  Be transparent with the customer to tell them when things are off track because existing features are not the quality they will expect.  The customer will ultimately tell you what compromise to make.  The main benefit Agile frameworks can provide in this arena is to reduce the feedback loop time and help minimize the $$$ interest rate on deferring defect fixes to the end of a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-03-13T19:03:17.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14476" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-15T22:48:18.973" Score="-2" ViewCount="3179" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am preparing my first cost estimate for a project as a freelance software developer, and I am wondering if there are templates or examples available to help me get started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that a spreadsheet with the tasks, time required, and pricing is the bulk of the report, but I need to submit a full report. Is there a report or template available that includes the typical language and layout for a software development cost estimate? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far, we are at a 0.5 release, and I am providing an estimate to bring the product to a 1.0 release. I plan to detail all steps in between, such as 0.6, 0.7, up to 1.0. It is a community project for a non-profit, so there will be volunteers and possibly paid consultants contributing to the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have already been working on the project for ~3 months, and I need to provide a cost estimate to bring it to completion. The budget is ~$15,000 over 6 months for myself and paid consultants, and a ~$5,000 equivalent volunteer contribution at $50/hr (basically the estimate includes 100 hrs of volunteer time). I will be building a CMS and other features for an existing web application that I have been working on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16555" LastActivityDate="2015-03-16T12:16:41.113" Title="Cost estimate template or examples for software development" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-03-19T09:50:03.497" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="623" CreationDate="2015-03-16T04:04:49.067" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;PRINCE2 and Agile are two different formalities. PRINCE2 is from OGC UK, which is a structured methodology for project management. For Agile, where the word express a discipline, implemented via, Scrum Methodology, XP etc is rather towards software development. You can use Scrum or Agile practices within the &quot;Manage Product Delivery&quot; process in PRINCE2. PRINCE2 should be your overall methodology to manage the project, but with in different phases you can use Agile or even traditional waterfall. PRINCE2 is for Project Management, Agile is for Team Management in this context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6362" LastActivityDate="2015-03-16T04:04:49.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14469" CreationDate="2015-03-16T12:08:52.557" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If there are defects (or i.e. bugs) are there in your software development team or i.e. the software factory needs to handle it internally. Its their cost. These bugs can be of different scales from minor to critical showstoppers. Ideally, the effort should be borne by the software house, working additional hours during the sprint to correct them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you are smart enough, scrum master can off load some effort from bug fixing to next sprint, so the client pays for the effort on fixing them. Possible for minor and medium rated bugs but not for critical bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6362" LastActivityDate="2015-03-16T12:08:52.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14476" CreationDate="2015-03-16T12:16:41.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess you need to do the planning of your remaining work from the beginning. There are templates, but if you can use a tool like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Project&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MS project&lt;/a&gt; you can quickly come up with the cost estimation. First you need to break your balance project work into manageable work packages. And then check the individual tasks involved and who is going to execute them and at what rates. (i.e. hourly rates). For time estimates, you can use techniques like 3 point estimate to be accurate on your estimate, but since this is a not a complex project you can use your own expert judgement to come up with time estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6362" LastActivityDate="2015-03-16T12:16:41.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14485" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-16T16:01:53.027" Score="13" ViewCount="656" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being a PM while executing many project, it's vital to retain project specific knowledge to be used in future projects as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the techniques that could be used to assist this kind of situation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6362" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-03-17T15:26:49.770" LastActivityDate="2015-03-26T07:20:01.540" Title="How to implement knowledge management within project teams?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14424" CreationDate="2015-03-16T17:44:51.810" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The only agile practices I always recommend are creating a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/JimHighsmithonProductVisi.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;product vision&lt;/a&gt; and regular &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mitchlacey.com/intro-to-agile/scrum/sprint-review&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;demos&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt; If you can't agree on what the product is supposed to be, then you can't build it or make technical decisions. If you aren't using demos to get feedback, then you can't tell if you're making progress. &lt;strong&gt;The choice of where to go next depends on your situation&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you are working for a client and need to make on time delivery commitments, then &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum#tab-235&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt; is a good place to start.&lt;/strong&gt; Create a product backlog and prioritize it with your customer, estimate the product backlog with your partner (stop estimating when you've identified enough work to fill two weeks), and run your first iteration (two weeks) to see how well you estimated. End the iteration with a customer demo and get feedback (if you're not getting feedback you're not practicing Scrum). Iterate again over the next top priority deliverables. Daily Scrum meetings are optional for super small teams, but speak daily and keep any roadblocks in the open so helping each other solve challenges becomes routine. Once you've worked out how to set expectations with your client, then see if any XP practices will help improve your velocity and quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you're working for yourselves, then starting with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_programming_practices&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Extreme Programming (XP) practices&lt;/a&gt; is a smart way to go.&lt;/strong&gt; Begin with configuration management (for example Git + GitHub or GitLab). Add automated testing to decrease the time you're manually testing and increase time available for new development and optimization. Once this foundation is in place, introduce Scrum and then continue to add technical practices that you think will add additional value to your workflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Remember, Scrum and XP are just templates, yet neither is part of the original &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, so don't let the details bog you down. Scrum is about improving your ability to reliably make delivery commitments and XP is about improving quality and working smarter to have more time for making your product. Pick the methods that work for your team and invent new ones!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2305" LastEditorUserId="2305" LastEditDate="2015-03-17T04:33:10.997" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T04:33:10.997" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14359" CreationDate="2015-03-16T17:55:09.323" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Comparing Scrum team performance is easy: measure each team's ability to meet delivery commitments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of Scrum is to enable teams to estimate reliably and communicate effectively about development roadblocks so that they can make reliable delivery commitments to each other and customers. The best Scrum team will have the best commitment delivery rating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bad Scrum team is one that is unpredictable across iterations (sprints) and can't be relied on to deliver promised software features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good Scrum team delivers what it promises, when it promises so that customer and funding decisions can be made with confidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2305" LastEditorUserId="2305" LastEditDate="2015-03-16T18:08:51.683" LastActivityDate="2015-03-16T18:08:51.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14485" CreationDate="2015-03-16T20:53:43.010" Score="4" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Internal Wikis&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best tool that I have run across for knowledge management in &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; organization is Atlassian's Confluence product. It's an easy-to-understand and easy-to-edit wiki that makes it extremely simple to document decisions, meeting notes, releases, file lists, and shared links. You can create specific spaces for each of the projects in your portfolio and create a company internal space to share knowledge company-wide. It also allows for a blog in each space to keep your employees up-to-date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barring this, I would search for another internal wiki program that you can use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also helps a great deal to put someone, or a member of each project team, in charge of ensuring that the appropriate information is cross-pollinated in the company. Specific domain knowledge for a project can remain in that project's space, but information that would be useful company-wide should be posted to a more general area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16314" LastActivityDate="2015-03-16T20:53:43.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14485" CreationDate="2015-03-17T01:48:28.307" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Enterprise chat/social tools such as HipChat &amp;amp; Yammer can be really effective, especially for distributed teams. Wikis are also great: Confluence, as @JDRoger suggested, and SharePoint are the go-to solutions. The initial investment and rapid learning curve make Confluence a really good choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for processes, agile practices (e.g. scrum) can work really well for communicating day--to-day knowledge. If you're looking to capture knowledge more permanently/broadly, you like to consider post-implementation reviews and publishing project docs on an internally accessible intranet/wiki. For encouraging knowledge sharing amongst your staff, you could explore internal staff secondments and using cross-functional  project teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16562" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T01:48:28.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14469" CreationDate="2015-03-17T06:58:36.973" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &quot;normal&quot; case (Team developed something, but a bug was found), the team owns the cost of the bug. They already &quot;earned&quot; the story points for a story that was not entirely done as expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case of a legacy application the team obviously cannot be held responsible for bugs that happened before the even had their hands on the code. The team shouldn't have to own the costs of those bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16564" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T06:58:36.973" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8144" CreationDate="2015-03-17T11:11:23.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is possible to achieve this by using relative time periods as offsets from a start point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/project/share-a-schedule-without-revealing-actual-dates&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a link to an MSDN blog which shows how to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2021-03-17T13:02:50.753" LastActivityDate="2021-03-17T13:02:50.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5628" CreationDate="2015-03-18T02:14:56.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The above solutions of printing to PDF result in a different appearance of the chart, and loss of some color information you may have put into the network map.  The only way I have found to preserve those color and line thickness and etc aspects which are shown on the edit screen, is to screen capture portions of the diagram and then re-assemble them as graphic regions on another format such as a spreadsheet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the Windows snipping tool (screen capture tool), you could for example capture a diagram which takes up 4x your physical screen available:&#xA;1. scroll to upper left of your diagram.  Snip the screen contents and paste into an Excel sheet.&#xA;2. scroll to upper right of your diagram.  Snip the screen contents, paste into the Excel sheet to the right of snip #1.&#xA;3. bottom left, snip, paste.&#xA;4. bottom right, snip, paste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That seems to be as good as it gets until MS would develop a print layout option that would exactly match the on screen editing view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16579" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T02:14:56.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14309" CreationDate="2015-03-18T18:00:10.447" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you are mixing the &lt;strong&gt;What&lt;/strong&gt; with the &lt;strong&gt;How&lt;/strong&gt; (solution)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Backend (theme) - this is going into solution &#xA;    - Homepage (epic) - this is a requirement&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Website - Theme&#xA;Homepage - Epic/Feature&#xA;Carousel - Epic/Feature (large Story) - to be broken down into further smaller stories&#xA;Adminpage - Epic/Feature (large Story) - to be broken down into further smaller stories&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Backend and front end development would form part of your stories and tasks as they are part of the end delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this makes sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16595" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T18:00:10.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6560" CreationDate="2015-03-19T05:35:58.187" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Software development process is a team work and measuring individuals productivity through some objective goals might work against the Team bonding/dynamics. I suggest if you want to rewards individuals make it a annual activity based on contributions to the project which made significant difference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;100 check ins with useless code is not something you want to reward, but 1 check in which improved the performance of the software should be awarded. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We had exercise to measure individuals productivity and then give pay hikes using this productivity number and it was counterproductive for us. People stopped cooperating with each other as helping others would push their productivity higher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6209" LastActivityDate="2015-03-19T05:35:58.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="611" CreationDate="2015-03-19T20:20:38.083" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First thing I would suggest is that you make sure all dealings with him/her are professional, friendly and cheerful. Put yourself into this mind-set before all interactions. And make it sincere (!?). (Yes I know this is completely insincere!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be clear with them why it is important to the rest of the project team to have agreed, achievable targets (so that other people's work can be planned with some confidence - i.e. it is a courtesy to other people) and why striving to achieve those targets is also important. (Avoids other people having to go out of their way, or do extra work, or do re-work, or re-plan at short notice, or... or... or...). The idea being that there is a better understanding of the context for closely monitoring his/her success in setting and meeting those targets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the person understands their interconnectedness with others - and that those inter-dependencies have real effects on others, hopefully they will realise that hitting deadlines is something that team members do for OTHER PEOPLE. (Not for the faceless project/organisation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The person will either get on board with the team - or they will effectively be disengaging themselves from the team. If the latter - they are likely to depart the team of their own accord eventually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'll recommend again - that the positive, cheerful approach is always the best line. Especially if you are a contractor. I can't tell you how many times I have been polite and cheery to people that I think are lazy or annoyingly disengaged - and some time later (weeks/months/years) had to ask them a favour, or needed their help when in a pinch. It is an investment with a massive ROI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14945" LastActivityDate="2015-03-19T20:20:38.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14432" CreationDate="2015-03-20T01:44:14.460" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you might want a FF relationship with task D always finishing after task 4. But can start whenever task C finishes. For 8 tasks of a notional 3 day duration you would have...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/e4q4d.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;extra&quot; 2 day duration for task D combined with the &quot;+2days&quot; on the FF relationship reflects how much of task D cannot be done until task 4 completes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry if I misunderstood your need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14945" LastActivityDate="2015-03-20T01:44:14.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="611" CreationDate="2015-03-22T15:04:19.320" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is one aspect of this question that I haven't found in any answer. Person is saying that delay is due to other tasks. As already stated in other answer there has to be clear expectations, however it could be a bit risky in some areas. For example person is being asked for a help, because of some specific knowledge that nobody else has in the team. If he/she would start reject such request because it's simply something 'forbidden' to him/her it could harm whole team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore I would go with short period of micro-management, when person should always ask manager for approval to work on anything other than regular planned user story or task. This will help manager better understand what are other tasks and also guide person what is important for overall team success and what could be ignored or politely rejected. Again this period should be quite short not to become personal, annoying and simply contra-productive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1726" LastActivityDate="2015-03-22T15:04:19.320" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2015-03-22T15:04:19.320" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14485" CreationDate="2015-03-22T22:40:32.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I strongly support the usage of tools like Atlassian's Confluence (+1, JD!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's really important to have the knowledge documented anywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Happens that, Confluence provides you &lt;em&gt;information&lt;/em&gt;, and what we want to keep and spread is &lt;em&gt;knowledge&lt;/em&gt;. In this sense, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ITIL's Knowledge Management&lt;/a&gt; area gives us some good hints on how to make sure we're storing and using our team's knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my project, we have the information in Confluence. From time to time, people from different areas / components present what they have to the others, in order to 'link information up', creating the knowledge everyone needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, is healthy to have people moving around projects, but it's easier said than done. In this case, an approach that values people willing to work at different projects is also important - as long as this movement is also beneficial for these projects, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2015-03-22T22:40:32.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14511" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14514" CreationDate="2015-03-23T09:49:09.370" Score="5" ViewCount="473" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it a sensible approach to have multiple levels of epics to structure the requirements of an Agile project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Epic &quot;As a User I want to browse information on a website&quot;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Epic &quot;... I want to browse topic A&quot;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User-Story &quot;... I want to see Diagrams on topic A&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Epic &quot;... I want to browse topic B&quot;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User-Story &quot;... I want to see Photos on topic B&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it better to have a 'flat' requirements hierarchy? i.e. only 2 levels of hierarchy, epic -&gt; user story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5198" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-03-23T15:38:23.263" LastActivityDate="2015-03-25T00:56:52.067" Title="Do multiple levels of epics make sense?" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14511" CreationDate="2015-03-23T10:53:07.853" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There exists an additional, often-used, term that can help you here: themes. Themes are collections of stories with a common theme (thus the name).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you could organise your epics thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Epic &quot;As a User I want to browse information on a website&quot;&#xA;    Theme&quot;... I want to browse topic A&quot;&#xA;        User-Story &quot;... I want to see Diagrams on topic A&quot;&#xA;    Theme &quot;... I want to browse topic B&quot;&#xA;        User-Story &quot;... I want to see Photos on topic B&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information, there is a nice article on the subject at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/stories-epics-and-themes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/stories-epics-and-themes&lt;/a&gt;, that succinctly describes a fairly industry-standard way of using epics, themes and stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14835" LastActivityDate="2015-03-23T10:53:07.853" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14511" CreationDate="2015-03-23T19:49:15.450" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen multiple levels of Epics used often. I think what David was suggesting is Theme might be useful to prevent confusion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many ways, until you have a task that can be done in an 8 hour day, you have an epic. All an Epic is, is a recognition that you already know that this story is so big it will need to be carved up. User stories can and do get carved into sub-stories and all tasks are is really just another breaking of a story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to pick different names for them, or perhaps do a numbering code so the third story of the first sub-epic of the second epic would be numbers 2.1.3. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-03-23T19:49:15.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14511" CreationDate="2015-03-24T00:13:13.070" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd slightly rephrase the question as: &lt;em&gt;what's the benefit on having Epics of Epics?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a sound answer that makes perfect sense in your head and you see real value on using it, I wouldn't have much problems about going for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Happens that, the idea to keep a single hierarchy is to avoid making it overly complex. What's the criteria to consider something an Epic? And an Epic of Epics? Are you going to open a door to Epic of Epics of Epics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You must stick to &lt;em&gt;what's best for your project&lt;/em&gt;, and in most of the cases, the simpler the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally would &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; go for Epics of Epics. There are other ways to gather requirements together (depending on the tool you're using, of course), like Epic Themes. But in my project, we forced ourselves to not have an Epic of Epics explicitly to make sure that the breakdown level we have is clear enough and would make simpler to any new joiner to understand how things work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another temptation to use Epic of Epics is to track project performance, but doing so is from my point of view wrong, since you'd be mixing up concepts (capacity management and task tracking).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2015-03-24T00:13:13.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14511" CreationDate="2015-03-24T15:29:33.923" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me multiple levels of User Story (or Epic) makes perfect sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use an analogy of rocks.  A really big boulder and a tiny pebble are both still a rock. In the same way, an Epic or Theme is still just a User Story.  Using the INVEST principles, a user story should be scalable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A user story can start as vague as &quot;I want a new finance system&quot; at a very high level, which is valid but obviously too big to fit into a sprint.  This may take lots of steps of breaking down before it is a deliverable user story.  How you group, prioritise and deliver these is totally up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I get frustrated by the agile buzzwords of 'Epics' and 'Themes' as they are all just sliced and diced user stories, do it however works for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also seen a lot of time wasted in organisations arguing over whether something is a user story, and epic, or a theme.  Write it down, add it to the pile, and consider it a 'thing to do' that needs some more information.  If it's too big for the team, they will quickly identify that and when it is nearing the top of the backlog it is time to split it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6825" LastActivityDate="2015-03-24T15:29:33.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12832" CreationDate="2015-03-24T18:36:45.870" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can associate completed tasks with a release version, if you pivot your definition for a completed task in Asana. My team will set up headers, such as &quot;Staging&quot; or &quot;Production&quot; and move completed tasks underneath those headers, Kanban style. You could also add release version headers, as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once your team members move a task underneath the release header, I'd recommend they un-assign themselves and un-date the task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The recently added &quot;Project Overview&quot; feature in Asana will be less accurate due to this change of not checking off tasks; however, in my team's experience, this feature is currently difficult to access for many project stakeholders and does not get much use anyways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7485" LastActivityDate="2015-03-24T18:36:45.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11051" CreationDate="2015-03-24T19:09:40.923" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some underlying misunderstandings in your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;why does Scrum assign Scrum Masters (who don't have any programming knowledge) the role of getting developers to quickly achieve 'Definition of Done' before the end of sprint?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above is not a scrum master's role.  The scrum master works with the team to get them to establish and adhere to a definition of done.  The team estimates work and should communicate an estimate and commitment that allows them to achieve their done criteria.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scrum master facilitates the negotiation between the team and the PO/PM to ensure the team commits to a reasonable amount of work where they can achieve their definition of done.  This is most commonly done during planning with the use of story point estimates and team velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no &quot;quickly&quot; in achieving done criteria.  In fact, a good scrum master should advocate for the team to decrease iteration commitments if they are constantly pressured by management to over-commit and &quot;quickly&quot; meet their done criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scrum master is a servant leader role focused on maturing delivery teams, not software projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that, if you, as a developer think they are only serving the management/customer timelines and not looking out for the ability of the team to write quality code, it might be time to look for a new scrum master or have an R&amp;amp;R discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-03-24T19:09:40.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11051" CreationDate="2015-03-25T00:43:51.630" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why aren't &quot;clean&quot; and &quot;maintainable&quot; part of your Definition of Done? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The relevant metric could be something like &quot;code has been reviewed for maintainability &amp;amp; any issues raised by the review (that don't expand functional scope) have been addressed.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2015-03-25T00:43:51.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14511" CreationDate="2015-03-25T00:56:52.067" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;An Epic of Epics isn't really necessary or value added. The various levels of detail in Agile planning correspond to specific planning horizons. The hierarchy of planning artifacts is less about decomposition and traceability (common concerns in waterfall specifications) and more about minimizing planning effort and avoiding planning rework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/introduction.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; by Don Wells, which introduces the Planning/Feedback loops concept illustrated in the image below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ybdru.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Planning/Feedback loops credit: Don Wells / Wikicommons&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Epics&lt;/strong&gt; exist to capture logically grouped information that is too large for an iteration. &lt;strong&gt;Stories&lt;/strong&gt; exist to capture product capability that can be created within a single iteration or sprint. &lt;strong&gt;Tasks&lt;/strong&gt; exist to capture day-to-day responsibilities. Detail is deferred until it is likely to be used so that plans can change and adapt to customer needs without lots of rework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2305" LastActivityDate="2015-03-25T00:56:52.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14520" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14560" CreationDate="2015-03-25T02:40:51.030" Score="1" ViewCount="4912" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a way to calculate the workload of resources using Microsoft Project. The workload needs to be calculated based on the urgency and complexity of the tasks assigned to the resource. I've managed to create custom &lt;em&gt;Task&lt;/em&gt; Fields named &lt;strong&gt;Urgency&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Complexity&lt;/strong&gt;. I've also managed to create a custom &lt;em&gt;Resource&lt;/em&gt; Fields named &lt;strong&gt;Workload&lt;/strong&gt;. However, I couldn't find a way to use the value of Urgency and Complexity to calculate the value of Workload. Anyone here knows how I can solve this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16643" LastActivityDate="2015-03-31T07:31:23.423" Title="How to use Custom Task Field value in Custom Resource Field Formula?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14485" CreationDate="2015-03-26T07:20:01.540" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Effective knowledge management is based on 3 key factors (this is not a prioritized list):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tools&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Tools&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are various knowledge management tools out there. Some good ones were mentioned in others' answers here. Personally, I have very good experience with Confluence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Important criteria you'd like to consider when choosing such a tool is how easy it is to create rich content in, and even more importantly, how easy it is to find and retrieve content. You'd like to have some control on the structure but still provide freedom for people to arrange their content in their domain. Ideally, you'd like the tool to be integrated with other tools you're using. In a software development project, you'd like integration with issue tracking and build system tools, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Process&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a tricky one. You can make a great tool available to the teams, but if you don't define a process for creating and arranging content, soon enough you'll get a chaotic mess. OTOH, too much of a process would make people think twice before creating content and they'll procrastinate on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'd like to create high level guidelines and still leave room for people to define their own structure. You should create high level &quot;spaces&quot; in the tool and leave the inner-space structure for the owning team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;People&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This one is key. You need to create ownership on different domains of the knowledge. Usually, you'd like to locate one person per domain (could be per team) that are very good at knowledge sharing. It should come naturally to them and they should really love it. Make them responsible for the knowledge management of their domain. It doesn't mean they are responsible for creating the content, but rather they should be responsible for grooming their domain's space and helping others in doing it the right way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing this one right would enable the knowledge base to be maintained in a usable state for long periods of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="44" LastActivityDate="2015-03-26T07:20:01.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14523" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-26T11:51:57.760" Score="1" ViewCount="1452" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assume, I have following task structure:&#xA;&lt;code&gt;Project&#xA;  Stage 1&#xA;    Task1&#xA;    Task2&#xA;  Stage2&#xA;    Task3&#xA;    Task4&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&#xA;I have resouces Res1 and Res2 assigned to tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need to know how much each resorce costs within every stage (not task). I can get view with this data on most detailed level, but I need to group it on other level.&#xA;So, I want to get:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Project&#xA; Stage1&#xA;   Res1 cost1&#xA;   Res2 cost2&#xA; Stage2&#xA;   Res1 cost3&#xA;   Res2 cost4&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7193" LastActivityDate="2015-03-27T13:33:09.160" Title="How to get resource usage report within tasks at specific level&amp;" Tags="&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;resources&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14524" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14526" CreationDate="2015-03-26T12:03:17.867" Score="13" ViewCount="40383" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scope is divided into two categories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Product scope, which is the features and functions that characterize a product, service, or result, and;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Project scope, which is all the work needed to deliver a product, service, or result as defined in product scope. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Requirements specifies the capabilities, features or attributes of the project’s deliverables.  Stakeholder needs, wants and wishes are analyzed to derive the requirements.  Requirements are prioritized to determine which requirements will be included and excluded from the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could someone please help me understand the difference between requirements and scope?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be correct to say that scope is more of a macro-level concept and that requirements is more of micro-level concept?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16478" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-02-10T08:13:23.257" LastActivityDate="2019-02-10T09:15:42.520" Title="What is the difference between requirement and scope?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;scope&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14524" CreationDate="2015-03-26T12:20:25.653" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Requirements are what is wanted or needed.  Scope is what will be done or performed.  I would not put one over the other because they are both leveled.  For example, you can have a set of requirements that dictate product scope, then a lower level set of requirements that will dictate scope features of that product scope, and then even a lower set of requirements that will dictate the activities scope to develop the scope features that will become the product scope.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:  Requirement:  I require movement from point A to B.  Scope: Train, Car, or bike.  If car, I require comfortable seating for four and ability to carry a bunch of stuff.  Scope:  SUV, truck with full cab, wagon.  If SUV, I require....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This continues until you have a set of requirements that will dictate several projects with project scope of both deliverable and activities.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-03-26T12:20:25.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14524" CreationDate="2015-03-26T12:46:46.213" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I respectfully disagree with @DavidEspina. I don't think his answer is fundamentally wrong, but it doesn't match my answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During project initiation (or in some contract work, prior to project initiation) you determine the scope of work.  This is the box inside which all requirements must fit.  The project sponsor and project management team must strongly own the scope of work.  Scope change is generally a bad thing and should be avoided. &lt;em&gt;Update&lt;/em&gt;  Scope is a project level agreement between sponsoring stakeholders.  Changes to scope generally mean changes to cost, resources, quality and many other assumptions about the project.  Changes to scope will &lt;em&gt;usually&lt;/em&gt; mean that at least one of the stakeholders will need to reconsider involvement in the project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example: a few years ago, the Smithsonian museum was taken to court because the scope of work of the contract was to maintain museum artifacts and executives were using the facility and staff to repair personal vehicles. The latter work is clearly out of scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Requirements are generally outlined during project initiation, and refined during project design.  Requirements are generally more granular than scope. Requirements should be owned and maintained by the project team including technical staff.  It is normal for requirements to change (although the change must be strongly controlled &amp;amp; approved by appropriate stakeholders). &lt;em&gt;Update&lt;/em&gt; Requirements are defined &lt;em&gt;within&lt;/em&gt; the scope of work, and usually involve much more technical coordination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example: If the scope of work is to maintain museum artifacts then the requirements might address things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All artifacts will be cleaned monthly using best professional standards&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Environmentally sensitive artifacts will be stored in a safe environment and weekly environmental monitoring will provide assurance that the environment has the right temperature/humdity/etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any artifact removed from display will be tracked in asset management in accordance with procedure X.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me add a counterexample to address Mr. Espina's question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are the shop steward at the Smithsonian, you should have a copy of the scope of work.  if a manager approaches you and says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We've just acquired a new, historically significant C-130; I'd like you to bring it in and perform the initial cleaning and maintenance to permit us to put this on display.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the logical answer is, &quot;Sounds interesting - we will need to take it through the change control board/artifact accessession committee to make sure that we have the right priority and authorization to spend hours and supplies.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the manager comes to you and says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My boss's personal Cessna has some engine trouble; you have the tools here in the shop and you've done similar work on museum artifacts. Would you mind coming in on the weekend and performing the maintenance?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The correct answer is, &quot;I'm sorry, that is outside the scope of my work.&quot;&#xA;(Roughly, that's one of the things that happened in the court case)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To craft a somewhat strained analogy, the scope of work is like the constitution. A good constitution is broad principles, strongly endorsed and rarely changing.  Requirements are more like laws; they are more flexible and can change as society changes or technology changes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-03-26T13:02:41.670" LastActivityDate="2015-03-26T13:02:41.670" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14524" CreationDate="2015-03-26T14:39:59.290" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Product Specifications vs. Project Scope&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One assumes that you're not looking for dictionary definitions. We have Merriam-Webster and Wikipedia for that. For practical differences, I would suggest the following perspective:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Requirements&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Requirements are the things your project needs built, and specifications are the instructions for what the things you want to build should look like when they're done. For example, a widget is specified as weighing 16 tons and having 27 sides, each covered in priceless unicorn hide with a winged fairy trapped in amber affixed to the apex of the widget. Now &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; is a detailed specification!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scope&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Scope defines the boundaries of a project. For example, you will be building a unicorn-hide widget for sale to the powerful mythical-monster lobby, and therefore building widgets out of beaver pelts is out of scope, as is building products that appeal to PETA.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scope is what will fit within your project. Requirements and specifications are about what to build, and how to build them. There is certainly intersection and interaction between the two axes, but they are fundamentally different things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-03-26T14:39:59.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14528" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14580" CreationDate="2015-03-26T15:32:01.050" Score="2" ViewCount="136" Body="&lt;p&gt;The image below has a series of projects (letters) tracked in terms of value vs risk. Each project is shown as a pair of nested boxes, with the inner box broken into four quadrants. I have never encountered this and would like to know if anyone has seen/used this or something similar as part of their best practices. If YES then additional questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What does the outer box represent?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do the four quadrants of the inner box represent?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the proper terminology/nomenclature for this kind of representation?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT - The graph comes from a gov't of Canada slideshow on benefits realization. The complete presentation is accessible online at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/emf-cag/outcome-resultat/benefits-avantages/page01-eng.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/emf-cag/outcome-resultat/benefits-avantages/page01-eng.asp&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT # 2 - Edited title and content of question to clarify that I would be happy knowing whether or not this is a typical way of displaying information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xh8pT.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastEditorUserId="1251" LastEditDate="2015-03-27T11:58:02.103" LastActivityDate="2015-04-03T08:21:02.567" Title="Is this a standard/typical/best practice way to display information on a business value - risk diagram?" Tags="&lt;risk&gt;&lt;business-case&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14524" CreationDate="2015-03-26T23:31:27.590" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I humbly suggest that for all practical purposes, it doesn't matter. They are often used interchangeably but with little precision. Different people will use the terms differently. It is risky to assume a definitive meaning without validating with the person using the term - or at least validate with the 'context'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14945" LastActivityDate="2015-03-26T23:31:27.590" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14523" CreationDate="2015-03-26T23:41:03.923" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't believe that there is an elegant solution. My best (not very good) suggestion is that you duplicate the resources (e.g. &quot;R1S1&quot;, &quot;R1S2&quot;, &quot;R2S1&quot;, &quot;R2S2&quot;).&#xA;Then group the resources on a custom resource column (called &quot;Stage&quot;) in your resource usage view.&#xA;Clumsy. Especially if you have a lot of resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14945" LastActivityDate="2015-03-26T23:41:03.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14531" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-27T07:35:17.373" Score="2" ViewCount="2816" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a long running task, that is beeing handled by one developer. Another developer will be able to help out on that task, but only from some time point in the future on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any way to set this in ms project without splitting up the task into smaller tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16299" LastActivityDate="2015-03-31T15:31:28.427" Title="Assign a resource to a task a some time point in the future" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16" CreationDate="2015-03-27T08:35:04.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Gannt chart is one of the useful tools in managing projects. As said by Kieran Andrews it helps to sort out many aspects in project management. Actually its the main tool we use in showing the time plan to the client with the tasks associated and their estimates to show the start of the project and the end of the project, where the client is more keen to know when it will be completed. If you take a look at MS Project you can check how a Gannt chart can be created. I would say one of the main plus useful tools to manage the schedule of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6362" LastActivityDate="2015-03-27T08:35:04.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14533" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14567" CreationDate="2015-03-27T08:39:37.483" Score="2" ViewCount="476" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PMBOK 5th edition has 24 processes for the Planning Process Group.&#xA;For the Knowledge Area of &quot;Project Scope Management,&quot; we have the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plan Scope Management Process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collect Requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define Scope&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create WBS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Validate Scope&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Control Scope&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the online tutorial that I've read, it seems that &quot;Plan Scope Management Process&quot; contains the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collect Requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define Scope&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create WBS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Validate Scope&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Control Scope&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, is it reasonable to view &quot;Plan Scope Management Process&quot; as the process containing the previous items as sub-processes? This seems clearer because &quot;Plan Scope Management Process&quot; appears dependent on these other things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16478" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-03-27T16:29:11.227" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T15:24:21.567" Title="Does the &quot;Plan Scope Management Process&quot; contain many sub-processes?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;pmbok&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14531" CreationDate="2015-03-27T13:20:49.027" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can edit a resource's start (and finish) dates in the Task Usage view.  Assign the resource and then change the work and start date for the resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-03-27T13:20:49.027" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14520" CreationDate="2015-03-27T13:24:48.207" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sorry you are mixing fields and short of creating some code to do the math, you cannot use task and resource fields to calculate assignment fields (pairing of tasks and resources).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may have luck posting to the Microsoft Forum for programming - but you need to have some skills in code development.  The folks there will guide you - but it's unlikely they will write the entire code for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See: &lt;a href=&quot;https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/projectserver/en-US/home?forum=project2010custprog&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/projectserver/en-US/home?forum=project2010custprog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you post there, please explicitly state what version of Project (2013, 2010, 2007) you are using.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-03-27T13:24:48.207" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16" CreationDate="2015-03-27T13:31:57.880" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Gantt charts are best suited to projects when the work is predictable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't found them particularly useful for software development. One good use would be for a project that involves on-boarding a new client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16420" LastActivityDate="2015-03-27T13:31:57.880" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14523" CreationDate="2015-03-27T13:33:09.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You'll need to create a custom group for the Task Usage view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Group by&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;Field Name: Project&#xA;Field Type: Task&#xA;Order: Ascending&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;They by&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;Field Name: Outline Number&#xA;Field Type: Task&#xA;Order: Ascending&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Then by&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;Field Name: Resource Names&#xA;Field Type: Assignment&#xA;Order: Ascending&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note&lt;/strong&gt;: you'll have to check the box &quot;Group assignments not tasks&quot; to be able to group by Resource Names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Add the Cost field and that should give you what you need.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-03-27T13:33:09.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14533" CreationDate="2015-03-27T15:07:38.220" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;The Planning &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; the Activity&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're misreading the objective. For &quot;Plan Scope Management Process,&quot; the sole output of the activity is a plan, not all of the other things that a scope management process might eventually manage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should read this item as: &lt;em&gt;Create a &lt;strong&gt;plan&lt;/strong&gt; to implement and/or manage a &quot;Scope Management Process.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; All of the other activities you mention are activities or outputs from other processes, and are therefore not subordinate activities even if they are &lt;em&gt;addressed&lt;/em&gt; in your plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-03-27T15:07:38.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14520" CreationDate="2015-03-27T21:01:38.707" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;MS Project has the ability to level according to task priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Double click on a task to pull up the Task Information dialogue. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the &quot;General&quot; tab, look for &quot;Priority.&quot; The default setting is 500. Change this to reflect the relative priority of the task. It sounds like you'll need to devise a way for priority to encompass&#xA;both urgency and complexity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go to the Resource tab in the ribbon.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click on &quot;Leveling Options.&quot; Leveling Options is listed towards the right above &quot;Clear Leveling&quot; and &quot;Next Overallocation.&quot; This&#xA;opens the Resource Leveling settings dialogue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the lower portion of the dialogue there is a &quot;Resolving Overallactions&quot; section. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set the &quot;leveling order&quot; to &quot;priority, standard.&quot; The default is standard. Priority, standard will level tasks based on priority&#xA;first, then according to the standard process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2015-03-27T21:01:38.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14540" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-29T07:23:04.237" Score="6" ViewCount="1040" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have MS Project server 2013 integrated with SharePoint 2013. I have created PWA site and in task page I want to add milestone as we do in MS Project professional 2013 but I don't see any options, any help will be appreciated&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16682" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-15T09:15:34.243" LastActivityDate="2019-01-15T09:15:34.243" Title="How to add milestone in MS Project server 2013?" Tags="&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14541" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14585" CreationDate="2015-03-29T07:48:44.960" Score="0" ViewCount="258" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have MS Project server 2013 and I have created one PWA and now I want to create a recurring task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone tell me how can I create recurring task in a MS Project server 2013 web app?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16682" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-15T12:44:31.473" LastActivityDate="2018-11-15T12:44:31.473" Title="How to add recurring task in MS Project server 2013?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;&lt;recurring-tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14542" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14544" CreationDate="2015-03-29T08:26:47.890" Score="4" ViewCount="566" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a college student who wants to take part in an IT competition, which will take place in a few weeks. We have a project that will be done in a limited time. My team has three people but some of them are still new to programming (at least they have studied algorithms).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Consider these factors :&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They said they want to learn, but you can't make sure they truly&#xA;are. How can I motivate them ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We work under pressure of a deadline&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I want to help them become more independent&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I want them to learn in most effective way&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do I lead them, assist them, allocate tasks and finish the project on time?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16683" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-03-30T11:28:55.200" LastActivityDate="2015-03-30T11:28:55.200" Title="How to lead new or inexperienced developers in my project?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;project-leader&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14542" CreationDate="2015-03-29T12:11:15.707" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define the tasks that you can delegate for the newbies f.e. for the upcoming work week.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set up a meeting with them and let them choose the tasks and estimate the task by hours or days independently. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check if they manage to do their work on time. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Delegate them bigger/smaller tasks depending on the outcome. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16684" LastActivityDate="2015-03-29T12:11:15.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14542" CreationDate="2015-03-29T14:00:36.940" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you considered paired programming? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In areas completely foreign to them, the other developer could be the &quot;driver&quot;, allowing them to get some good insight into this project. It'll also keep them from spinning their wheels a long periods of time when taking on challenging pieces of code (to your point about deadlines). Interestingly, I've found it also makes people more independent, due to added confidence from that safety net of another set of eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one word of caution would be that any changes to the team (even if it was an experienced developer) almost always has a brief negative impact on team throughput because it forces the team back through Tuckman's model. If you've got a few months to your deadline, you should be able to absorb that and gain the benefits of the extra team member and it should help you meet your deadline. If you're talking about a few weeks, it may be best to let the team be for now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-03-29T14:00:36.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14548" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14556" CreationDate="2015-03-30T12:32:07.950" Score="0" ViewCount="682" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm using Project 2013; client requested this tool for activities tracking and management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually the project have one developer assigned that work 6h per day and can have assigned two kind of work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maintenance (with a monthly hour limit set to 120h)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Development (with an day rate, pay per performance)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that the client sent me a file with two resources set, one for the Maintenance and on for Development.&#xA;This lead to a problem when I set concatenate activities:&#xA;I've one physical developer available, but project sees two resources, and can occour that one day I have 6h for maintenance and 6h for evolutive assigned to the same physical developer when concatenating tasks (that usually will be splitted between days if longer than 6h).&#xA;That's right from Project's perspective as one resource is one developer, but in my case the two resources lead to a single person that can work 6h per day, not 12h.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This Project file setting of 2 resources with 1 developer was done because the client would like to monitor the time spent for the two different kind of work, but from what I've understood with Project, that's not the best way to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you suggest a setting that can monitor one resource with 2 different kind of work with 2 different rates (1 hour rate and 1 hour limit per month)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Actually I've studied a bit the behaviour and use of custom fields, and I've found the way to have a custom field shown in both &quot;GANTT chart&quot; view and in &quot;Resource usage&quot; view (I've set one task custom field and one project custom field with the same text values) with the values set to &quot;WDM (web development maintenance)&quot; or &quot;WDE (web development evolutive)&quot;.&#xA;Then, following another question here in pm.stackexchange, I've created a macro that when fired, fills the &quot;Resource usage&quot; custom &quot;Task type&quot; column, with the same values that I set on the &quot;GANTT chart&quot; view &quot;Task type column.&#xA;What I miss is the hours sum of the tasks assigned as WDM and the sum of the tasks assigned as WDE.&#xA;Into &quot;Resource sheet&quot; I can see the total amount of work, but would be nice to set another couple of custom fields into this view that show the sum of WDM and the sum of WDE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Screenhsots&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YvZbH.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JNyzZ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SgcqV.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/he7E2.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Solved with JulieS tips:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/17Lpm.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16673" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T20:01:22.993" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T20:01:22.993" Title="MS-Project - How to set 1 resource with 2 kind of work and monitor time/rate for each" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14551" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-30T15:38:37.237" Score="2" ViewCount="1426" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am setting up a project in 2010; I have tasks, subtasks, predecessors but no resources assigned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a task dependency that should start April 3 based on the predecessor finishing April 2.  There is a separate tasks' subtask that has the main task as a predecessor.  The dependency is finish to start, which means when the predecessor task finishes, the new task can start.  The predecessor task is scheduled to finish July 14; the dependent task keeps auto scheduling to July 13!  I cannot figure out what the problem is, and it is driving me nuts!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16694" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-02T15:23:53.880" LastActivityDate="2018-11-02T15:23:53.880" Title="Auto schedule problem with MS Project 2010" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14552" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14554" CreationDate="2015-03-30T15:56:00.890" Score="6" ViewCount="288" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're a small team of 4 developers who manage one large website and a group of minisites/mobile apps. We've used JIRA/Agile and Scrum, as best we can, to manage the workflow for the last few months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However we're struggling to manage a backlog which consists of;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Small tasks (move a button, change a word)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Large tasks (a new section of features)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Non-related tasks (build a new minisite)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now our main project has versions (and we're talking about milestones), and the mini projects rely on versioned subsystems from other projects. We're finding it very difficult to have a sane meeting with a disorganised backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do we manage small tasks and big ideas in the same list?&lt;/strong&gt; How should project boards, epics, stories and sub-tasks relate to milestones, versions, large features and small tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an inexperienced ScrumMaster I feel like I'm letting the side down. The requests coming into the team are sane, the developers are skilled, but I'm having trouble bridging the two!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16696" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-03-30T20:11:10.330" LastActivityDate="2015-03-31T04:46:01.850" Title="Managing small + large tasks on a big website with Scrum" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;epics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14551" CreationDate="2015-03-30T16:21:38.257" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you have a must finish on constraint on the succeeding subtask and is that subtask fixed duration?  If so, that would cause the subtask to start a day early to protect the must finish on constraint, which produces a negative slack between the two related tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-03-30T16:21:38.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14552" CreationDate="2015-03-30T20:09:13.113" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do we manage small tasks and big ideas in the same list? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Jira Agile you can create epics to represent large stories. When you decompose this epic you can write several stories with the same epic as the parent. For smaller tasks, you can create sub-tasks under a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...manage one large website and a group of minisites/mobile apps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the above situation, I will create 3 projects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Website&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Minisites&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mobile&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because you have a single team to do all these projects, you need a single Board. &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AGILE/How+do+I+get+a+board+to+point+to+multiple+projects&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;In JIRA/Agile when you create a Scrum Board, it can contain one or more projects.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How should project boards, epics, stories and sub-tasks relate to&#xA;  milestones, versions, large features and small tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fields such as the following are available in Jira:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Affects Version/s&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Component/s&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fix Version/s&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can hide/show the fields, as needed, in the Field Configurations screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you create the stories/bugs, you can assign the Fix Version, for example. However, only add those fields that you are committed to maintain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you are doing backlog refinement or Sprint Planning you will find that &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AGILE/Configuring+Quick+Filters&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Quick Filters are very useful to look at the subset of issues related to one topic.&lt;/a&gt; You can set up Quick Filters by Project, Version, Component and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VoAgK.png&quot; alt=&quot;Jira Agile Quick Filters&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-03-30T20:09:13.113" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14551" CreationDate="2015-03-30T23:13:10.507" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You lost me on the April then July dates - are they the same tasks?  Check for Actual start dates on the tasks - display the Tracking table.  No lead on the F to S link?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-03-30T23:13:10.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14548" CreationDate="2015-03-30T23:26:47.127" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can get part of the solution through grouping.  Now that you have copied the Task data to the assignment rows, in the Resource usage view group by Resources and then by the custom field &quot;Task Type&quot;.  You'll need to group on assignments to get able to get the Task Type field to work correctly. That should give you work per assignment type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You cannot set a limit of the number of hours.  I would also suggest replacing the resources on the second set of tasks - so they all use the same resource.  You can then check for resource overallocations so the resource is not scheduled for 12 hours in a single day.  I also assume the maintenance tasks are lower priority, so if you are going to resolve the overallocations by leveling, set the maintenance tasks to lower priority and then level by Priority, Standard order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as different rates - you can create different cost rate tables for the resource and using the Resource Usage view - change to the different rate.  Add the Cost Rate Table field to the view to make things easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-03-30T23:26:47.127" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14552" CreationDate="2015-03-31T04:46:01.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;+1 on Ashok's advice to decompose the Large Web tasks into smaller tasks. Using the Epic feature will work well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This still does not address the &quot;what do we build/do&quot;. Something that doesn't get covered in the standard Scrum training is pretty much how to get to a &quot;well-ordered backlog&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While we are getting good at doing story point estimating for the &quot;cost&quot; to build a feature, we forget we should also be assigning value to the features. This is something the Product Owner needs to do. They assign value to each task based on some pre-determined system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have Value and Cost, then you can make an intelligent decision about what gets done first. The high Value, low Cost items will be the things that get done first (provided they have no dependencies). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-03-31T04:46:01.850" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14520" CreationDate="2015-03-31T07:31:23.423" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I finally solved my problem. Many thanks to @JulieS for pointing me to the Microsoft Project forum. One particular user in that forum is very helpful. Here's the thread that I created to ask this question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/projectserver/en-US/daf95bf0-6ac0-4700-9f3b-0c7b45dfc80c/how-to-use-custom-task-field-value-in-custom-resource-field-formula?forum=project2010custprog&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How to use Custom Task Field value in Custom Resource Field Formula?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, it turns out that you can't mix task fields, resource fields, and assignment fields in Microsoft Project. At least, not normally. To be able to do that, the only possible way is to use VBA. Here's a run down of the things I'm doing to solve my problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, I added two new &lt;em&gt;task fields&lt;/em&gt; named &lt;strong&gt;Urgency&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Complexity&lt;/strong&gt;. The value of Urgency is set to use lookup tables with 3 values: &quot;1 - Normal&quot;, &quot;2 - Medium&quot;, &quot;3 - Important&quot;. I also set the value of Complexity to use lookup tables with 3 values: &quot;1 - Low&quot;, &quot;2 - Medium&quot;, &quot;3 - High&quot;. The numbers in the front of each value is used for calculating the workload.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that both task fields are defined, I simply add this VBA code:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Sub Calculate_Workload()&#xA;&#xA;Dim Reso As Resource&#xA;Dim Job As Task&#xA;Dim Task_As As Assignment&#xA;Dim Reso_As As Assignment&#xA;&#xA;'Reset Workload to 0 (zero)&#xA;For Each Reso In ActiveProject.Resources&#xA;    Reso.Number1 = 0&#xA;Next Reso&#xA;&#xA;'Calculate Workload&#xA;For Each Job In ActiveProject.Tasks&#xA;    If Not Job Is Nothing Then&#xA;        For Each Task_As In Job.Assignments&#xA;            Dim Task_Urgency As Integer&#xA;            Dim Task_Complexity As Integer&#xA;            Dim Task_Workload As Integer&#xA;            Task_Urgency = Left(Job.Text3, 1) 'Urgency&#xA;            Task_Complexity = Left(Job.Text4, 1) 'Complexity&#xA;            Task_Workload = ((Task_Urgency - 1) * 3) + Task_Complexity&#xA;            Task_As.Number1 = Task_Workload&#xA;            Set Reso = ActiveProject.Resources(Task_As.ResourceID)&#xA;            For Each Reso_As In Reso.Assignments&#xA;                If Reso_As.TaskID = Job.ID Then&#xA;                    Reso_As.Number1 = Task_As.Number1&#xA;                    Reso.Number1 = Reso.Number1 + Reso_As.Number1&#xA;                End If 'TaskID&#xA;            Next Reso_As&#xA;        Next Task_As&#xA;    End If 'Nothing&#xA;Next Job&#xA;&#xA;End Sub&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The code above basically does these steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reset the workload for each resource (Reso.Number1).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Retrieve the value of Urgency (Text3) and Complexity (Text4), i.e. the number in front of the value, for each task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Calculate the workload for each task based on the value of Urgency and Complexity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set the value of Workload (Number1) for task assignment (Task_As.Number1) and resource assignment (Reso_As.Number1) so that it can be shown in the Task Usage or Resource Usage view.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sum all resource assignment workload to calculate the total amount of workload for each resource (Reso.Number1).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, every time there's a change to Urgency or Complexity, I simply run the VBA code and voila! I can now use the Resource Usage view to see the amount of workload for each assignment and the total amount of workload for each resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's it. Hope this is useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16643" LastActivityDate="2015-03-31T07:31:23.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14561" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14575" CreationDate="2015-03-31T07:44:58.240" Score="3" ViewCount="2522" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm using MS Project 2010 with a custom view that is showing baseline start/finish as well as start/finish fields of the tasks. I have modified the Gantt chart on the right hand side by cutting all rows in the &quot;bar styles&quot; list and inserting just bars for baseline tasks, baseline summary tasks and baseline milestones - this is showed correctly in my view.&#xA;The problem now is that when I want to print this view, it prints the start/finish dates of the tasks as well as dependency lines - not the baseline tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I fix this? I want to print just the baseline bars without dependencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16707" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T19:51:22.783" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T19:51:22.783" Title="MS Project - How to print the right Gantt diagram from custom view?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14562" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14574" CreationDate="2015-03-31T11:17:23.530" Score="2" ViewCount="4590" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an automatically planned activity that has to take place the upcoming weekend. How can I configure an activity in that way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you very much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16710" LastActivityDate="2015-04-15T18:47:00.140" Title="Microsoft Project: activity for weekends" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14562" CreationDate="2015-03-31T11:34:24.230" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;By default in the project calendar the weekends are not working days. So to schedule a task to occur partially or fully over a weekend you need to apply a resource to the task that has the weekend as working days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are not using applied resources then you do have the option of making the weekends working time in the project calendar, but then that will apply for all tasks, and Project will schedule them over the weekend(s) which may not be what you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I commonly have to schedule weekend deployments of key IT systems. I set up special weekend resources that &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; work over weekends and allocate them to the weekend deployment tasks. These are then only scheduled to take place over weekend working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-03-31T11:34:24.230" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14524" CreationDate="2015-03-31T12:35:26.700" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;i think that the difference is quite simple:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;requirements are list of things customer expects about the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;scope is a subset of requirements that will actually be implemented by the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;scope (defined by project scope statement) should contain list of 'in' requirements - which will be shipped, and list of 'out' requirements, which, although known, are excluded from the current project (because of conflicts, constraints, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16711" LastActivityDate="2015-03-31T12:35:26.700" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14551" CreationDate="2015-03-31T12:38:21.167" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you need it to and nothing else works, and it's only this one subtask causing the issue set the predecessor to the task as  (TaskID)FS+1d and that will add a lag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ie. if the row is 14 then 13FS+1d&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not ideal but it will give you what you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastActivityDate="2015-03-31T12:38:21.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14531" CreationDate="2015-03-31T12:44:43.833" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the developer isn't on the project then JulieS's answer would work, but I've had this a number of times where &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Resource 1 is working on task A and will finish in a week&#xA;Resource 2 is working on task B and will finish in 3 weeks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want resource 1 to help resource 2 to bring in Task B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way I've found to do it is split the task as below (assume 5 days / week)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task B Pt1 = 5 days&#xA;Task B Pt2 = 10 days&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not ideal but I think it's the only way to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastActivityDate="2015-03-31T12:44:43.833" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14533" CreationDate="2015-03-31T13:28:33.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Plan Scope Management Process (as part of the process group) is mostly concerned about how scope will be managed during the project: after discovering requirements, how it will be decided if they are part of scope or not; how to determine their priority / complexity; and later, how to handle scope changes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMI suggests to consider those topics in advance, so the scope / requirement management plans must be outlined before starting requirements analysis, scope definition, etc. Of course, it will be refined during planning processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16711" LastActivityDate="2015-03-31T13:28:33.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6100" CreationDate="2015-03-31T13:51:06.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my organisation this is seperated by the permanent organisational roles which belong to Team Leads, team leads are responsible for ongoing management of the BAU tasks assigned to their team and any personal or professional growth management as well as any disciplinery or HR type engagement. It is a permanent role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project lead on the other hand is a transient role with responsibilities only within the temporary endeavour (project) they are responisble for.  Line management etc remains with the owning Team lead rather than transferrign to the project lead.  The technical expectations are the same as those of a team lead managing his BAU projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16713" LastActivityDate="2015-03-31T13:51:06.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14531" CreationDate="2015-03-31T13:56:26.697" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;So let's say you have Task A (5 days duration) and Task B (30 days duration).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task A is being worked on by Resource Gold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task B is allocated to Resource Silver who is working on it full time, and also to Resource Gold, but you only want Resource Gold to help on Task B when they have finished all their work on Task A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allocate Resource Gold to Task A full time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allocate Resource Silver &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; Resource Gold to Task B &lt;strong&gt;full time&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now make Task A higher priority than Task B (remember task priorities have 999 as highest priority and 1 as lowest priority)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Level the resources using the &quot;Priority, Standard&quot; levelling scheme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MS-Project will try to complete the highest priority task first, so it will leave Resource Gold doing Task A 100% of their time even though they are also allocated to Task B. Resource Silver will also work on Task B 100% of their time. As soon as the higher priority task has been completed the resources are released to be scheduled on other tasks and Resource Gold will join Resource Silver on completing Task B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Although I tested that the approach above causes Gold to concentrate on Task A and only start on Task B when they become free, I did not check that the allocation of Gold and Silver on Task B are automatically balanced to minimise the duration. I have now checked and they are not, therefore this is not a good answer. The best I achieved was by making Task B &quot;Fixed Work&quot; to ensure that the overall number of hours remains constant no matter who is allocated, but MS-Project did not automatically balance the units from Gold and Silver to minimise the duration of Task B. Therefore there is an outstanding question as to whether MS-Project can be forced to do this. Note, I &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; allow &quot;adjustment of individual allocation on a task&quot;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-03-31T15:31:28.427" LastActivityDate="2015-03-31T15:31:28.427" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8955" CreationDate="2015-03-31T23:48:51.210" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Guide is explicit that this is allowed: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner and Scrum Master roles are not included in this count unless they are also executing the work of the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16719" LastActivityDate="2015-03-31T23:48:51.210" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="703" CreationDate="2015-04-02T11:28:29.607" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;simply apologize for your behavior, and if needed, provide explanation about your problems. you might think that you can split your private and professional life, but you can't. you are the very same person at your workplace than at home (and i stress the word 'person', not 'human resource') - you supposed to have feelings, moods etc., and the others must respect them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the extent of their respect, of course, is the extent of your respect towards them. if you was really rude to them, don't expect hugs after simply saying 'sorry', but after you make the first step, healing can begin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and, of course, it's best if the relationship is not broken at the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16711" LastActivityDate="2015-04-02T11:28:29.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14562" CreationDate="2015-04-02T12:25:09.220" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is to use a &lt;strong&gt;Task&lt;/strong&gt; calendar that restricts working time to weekends.  Assign the task calendar to the &quot;weekend only&quot; task and select the option &quot;Scheduling Ignores Resource Calendars&quot;.  By that method you do not have to modify resource calendars nor create extra &quot;spare&quot; resources. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-04-02T12:25:09.220" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14561" CreationDate="2015-04-02T12:36:16.390" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have deleted all the bars with the exception of the Baseline Bars, you should not be seeing dependency lines nor start and finish dates.  When you attempt to print, have you removed the modifications you made?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I follow your steps, I don't see anything except the baseline bars.  My suggestion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make your modified view a new view.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Open the modified view.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click the Gantt Chart drop down on the View Ribbon and select &quot;Save&#xA;View&quot;.  Give it a new name.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it appear correctly?&#xA;Does it print correctly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Re-set the Gantt chart view to default&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Re-apply the Gantt chart view&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click the Gantt Chart drop down on the View Ribbon and select &quot;Reset to default&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you want to print - switch to your view and print.  When done printing, switch back to the Gantt chart view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-04-02T12:36:16.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14576" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-02T15:22:32.923" Score="2" ViewCount="1427" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even if we make many small stories, we still end up splitting stories at the end of every Sprint because we cannot have Development under-utilized while QA is testing, and we cannot have QA being idle waiting for coding changes to test. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there are always at least three stories (we have three developers) and two QA tests (two testers) unfinished at the end of the sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do others handle this issue? How do you keep your team continually working at top efficiency without splitting stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16736" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-04-02T15:33:32.010" LastActivityDate="2015-04-05T03:18:07.807" Title="Splitting stories to keep Development and QA at 100% utilization at all times" Tags="&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14576" CreationDate="2015-04-02T16:58:13.837" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Focus on maximizing throughput not utilization&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are writing smaller stories that is good. Larger stories are difficult to estimate and are at higher risk of being incomplete at the end of the sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have three suggestions for you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Encourage testing and development to be done in parallel&lt;/strong&gt;: The practice of completing development and throwing it over the wall for testing is a mini waterfall. Ask the developers and testers to collaborate throughout the development cycle. See the following links for additional explanation about how this can be accomplished:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2179295&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Agile is a big proponent of short feedback loops inside a Sprint, and a team with tight collaboration between software developers and QA analysts can test elements of a feature before it is completed.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/127522/how-to-fit-testing-in-scrum-sprints-and-how-to-write-user-stories-in-scrum&quot;&gt;&quot;In my current project, since a fully-tested story is part of our definition of done, we have embedded testers in the teams. During the first few days of a sprint, while developers start working on the first user stories, the testers will prepare test scenarios and set up some test data. As soon as the dev for one of the user stories is finished, they'll test it.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/articles/experience-qa-scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;“How can testing professionals engage effectively during a sprint before anything has been built?” This article focuses on explaining how the QA role performs agile testing...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Encourage team members to be cross-functional&lt;/strong&gt;: While team members will be strong in one area, once the Sprint starts they should pitch-in with whatever work is required to complete each story. When we tried this, people struggled initially but eventually were able to do more of it. And enjoyed doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Focus on maximizing throughput&lt;/strong&gt;: The goal of Scrum is to deliver maximum value to the stakeholders, not keep all resources fully busy with make work. It is a faulty assumption that if you keep all resources busy you will somehow get maximum throughput. As someone pointed out the extreme case, if you utilize the roads to the maximum (filled with vehicles) the throughput goes down to zero (gridlock)! If the team finishes all the stories in the sprint before the sprint ends, let them enjoy the break. They will be more motivated to complete all of the work within the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:31:53.287" LastActivityDate="2015-04-05T03:18:07.807" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="351" CreationDate="2015-04-02T19:10:16.370" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just a very brief response from me as previous input has pretty covered all grounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found that it can be very useful to schedule some self-analysis exercises one a month or so to zone in on any weaknesses you may have; be it in contract knowledge, technical knowledge or communicative skills. This will then allow you to spend some &lt;strong&gt;Personal&lt;/strong&gt; time researching and improving. I myself have managed to spot many flaws in my processes doing this and have subsequently added priceless attributes for my capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regards&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;S&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16739" LastActivityDate="2015-04-02T19:10:16.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14540" CreationDate="2015-04-03T08:09:10.587" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a classic permission issue. You probably have been granted as &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Team member&lt;/strong&gt; only, therefore your actions are limited to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add a task to your task status &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assigning a task to another resource&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Print a view&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create, view, and link project issues and risks &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Approve or reject task updates &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get e-mail alerts or reminders when tasks change&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are the one creating / removing tasks and milestones, you should be granted a &lt;strong&gt;Project Manager&lt;/strong&gt; role&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16743" LastActivityDate="2015-04-03T08:09:10.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14528" CreationDate="2015-04-03T08:21:02.567" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the proper terminology/nomenclature for this kind of representation?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is a very good combination of a &quot;financial risk vs financial&#xA;return&quot; graphic with PPM (Project Portfolio Management) report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no formal convention for the shapes nor this is a formal&#xA;best practice, however you are able to have a very good management summary&#xA;for portfolio steering.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do the four quadrants of the inner box represent?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Since they have traffic light colours, they probably mean KPIs for areas such: Cost, Risk, Scope and Time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What does the outer box represent?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In classical risk vs return they mean the investment amount (in $). Since this graphic is very financial oriented, I would bet total budget. (Although it is not 100% sure)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16743" LastActivityDate="2015-04-03T08:21:02.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10580" CreationDate="2015-04-03T08:36:57.883" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do I calculate the cost per employee for the company since, there&#xA;   are some similarities in the nature of work they do? Like for&#xA;   example, supporting Exchange, Level 3 support, etc...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your focus shouldn't be your employees costs, but your services costs. First get a list of all services the IT department delivers. Then you should calculate the specific costs for the services and spread your overhead and general costs across your service portfolio.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16743" LastActivityDate="2015-04-03T08:36:57.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14357" CreationDate="2015-04-03T08:45:34.920" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a classic &quot;technical&quot; requirements gathering phase. In easier words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Together with a team, take a look at the functional requirements and list all necessary resources you will need to fulfil them&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now take a look at your existing infrastructure and figure out how to integrate the previously listed solution components into it. Look for synergies and watch out for constraints (During the solution phase, people tend to fly high and forget existing architecture, regulations and so on)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16743" LastActivityDate="2015-04-03T08:45:34.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="351" CreationDate="2015-04-03T09:12:00.870" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;I was told efficiency is an important attribute and im not sure if this is correct.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Effectiveness&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;efficiency&lt;/strong&gt; is exactly what project management is about. In other words, achieving all objectives as fast and as cheap as possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Project management is, in fact,  shorthand for project, program and &#xA;  portfolio management. And more  companies are clearly seeing the &#xA;  payoff from investing time, money  and resources to build&#xA;  organizational  project management expertise: lower  costs, greater&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;efficiencies&lt;/strong&gt;, improved  customer and stakeholder  satisfaction, and&#xA;  greater competitive  advantages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/Business-Solutions/~/media/PDF/Business-Solutions/Value%20of%20Project%20Management_FINAL.ashx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Management Institute&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;What makes a great planner?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10-things/10-best-practices-for-successful-project-management/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; you will find a very good article with &quot;must have&quot; capabilities for a great planner.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16743" LastActivityDate="2015-04-03T09:12:00.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14541" CreationDate="2015-04-03T09:52:04.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a classic permission issue. You probably have been granted as &quot;Team member only, therefore your actions are limited to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Add a task to your task status&#xA;Assigning a task to another resource&#xA;Print a view&#xA;Create, view, and link project issues and risks&#xA;Approve or reject task updates&#xA;Get e-mail alerts or reminders when tasks change&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are the one creating / removing tasks and milestones, you should be granted a Project Manager role&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16743" LastActivityDate="2015-04-03T09:52:04.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="351" CreationDate="2015-04-03T11:46:10.987" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consultation, communication and humility.  No matter how good you are, you don't know the work as well as the people who do it. Listen to the people who do the work, discuss the estimate with them and plan based on their estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm aware of one PMO (I won't name them for reasons that will soon be obvious) that plans in isolation. The planners sit in metaphorical ivory towers and create plans.  Because they don't consult with those who are responsible for the work they omit things from the plan like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Availability of safety equipment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Verify that the work area is clean and safe before beginning the project and after completing (this is a bit more important than it sounds for the projects in question.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Movement of equipment into and out of the production space&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shipping parts and equipment from storage to the production space.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one case that comes to mind they estimate hours for a task that actually required multiple weeks/worst case months. Obviously these plans bear no relationship to reality.  The planners have no credibility and the staff have to build their own shadow plans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other error is to assume that listening is simple or fast.  I fall  into this trap often - assuming that I'll just wander over to the technical folk and ask them for a quick PERT estimate.  If I do that, they'll stare at me blankly. I need to spend some time with them talking about what the work involves and what could go wrong, what might go right.  After 20 minutes of active listening, I might be ready to say, &quot;So I'm hearing that in the best case this will take a week, but if step X doesn't work, or part Y isn't as advertised, then the calendar duration could expand to 9 weeks, of which only 2 weeks will be actual work. Does that sound right? What's your best guess? If I bet you $50 that you could do it in less than 4 weeks, would you take the bet?&quot;   I have to remember that they aren't paid to do estimation, and that if I want good estimates, I need to interview/listen/etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2015-04-03T11:46:10.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14587" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14588" CreationDate="2015-04-03T18:13:57.327" Score="5" ViewCount="437" Body="&lt;p&gt;If my Scrum team is always completing 100% of their committed items, is that a good thing? Given the amount of variability in software development, this would seem to indicate something is fishy to me, but the prevailing philosophy seems to be that something is if they aren't always completing 100% of committed scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think that not completing 100% of committed scope every sprint is ok, what % of the time would you expect them to be wrong, and how far off would you expect them to be before you thought there was a problem that needed to be directly addressed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastActivityDate="2015-04-04T17:37:31.500" Title="Scrum team committments" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14587" CreationDate="2015-04-03T19:13:13.527" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal of Scrum is really to build trust through reliable and sustainable delivery of potentially-shippable increments of value. If your process is already doing that, don't break it. If it's &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; doing that, then some continuous improvement and inspect-and-adapt is certainly in order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Utilization: Less Important Than Trust and Reliable/Sustainable Cadence&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, the goal isn't 100% utilization but sustainable pacing and reasonable accuracy, part of which is ensuring the team doesn't mis-estimate its work or routinely commit to work that it can't complete within a single iteration. So, regularly completing 100% of committed scope is &lt;em&gt;great&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you're really asking is something else. The hidden question seems to be: &quot;If my team is always delivering 100% of agreed-upon scope, does that mean they aren't busy enough?&quot; In other words, you're asking whether they have excess slack in the process, and if they should be committing to more work each iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is good fodder for a retrospective. If the team is completing all committed work halfway through the iteration, then they probably are mis-estimating or not accepting enough story points into the Sprint. However, if they are routinely completing all work that they commit to, have enough slack to ensure that they can handle variances and roadblocks, and aren't &quot;sprinting&quot; so hard that they burn out, then pouring on more work isn't necessarily constructive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How to Inspect-and-Adapt Your Current Scrum Implementation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of asking whether your team is under-utilized, a better set of questions might include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the team's delivery cadence adequate for the business' needs?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What's driving the business' desire for a faster delivery cadence? (Hint: perhaps there's a trust issue or hidden process issue that needs to be addressed.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the business wants a faster delivery cadence, are they willing to accept the risk that some Sprints may deliver less than 100% of accepted work?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the team able to &lt;em&gt;sustain&lt;/em&gt; an increased cadence without sacrificing quality, scope, or the Definition of Done?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember to start with an analysis of the major premise. In this case, that means asking why meeting 100% of commitments isn't seen as a good thing. There may be legitimate reasons why this isn't good enough, but make sure you (and the team) understand what those reasons are so that &lt;em&gt;the team as a whole&lt;/em&gt; can address the underlying organizational and process issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team is meeting the business' current needs, and the team is happy and productive, then I wouldn't recommend messing with success. On the other hand, if the process isn't meeting organizational objectives, or if there are trust issues between the team and the larger organization, then that's definitely a discussion that needs to be had.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-04-04T17:37:31.500" LastActivityDate="2015-04-04T17:37:31.500" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14587" CreationDate="2015-04-03T21:13:27.433" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;100% completion of committed user stories is ok but as said by CodeGnome a good point for the next retrospective. Maybe your team is too defensive and could achieve even more during one sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why are 100% OK? What you want is a team that understands the stories (from the product owners point of view) and estimates their complexity in story points. After some sprints, the burn down should become stable and the &quot;usual&quot; points per sprint should be known. This is a great thing, when the product owner prioritises the Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also OK, if not all committed points could be achieved (always). The team should find the root source for the issue in the retrospective to get back to ~100%.&#xA;I'm not able to say how large the deviation is allowed to be - but go for &quot;small&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's the teams intrinsic intension to not be lazy. If the team is not familiar with the scrum understanding of the team, the Scrum Master should transport the idea and work on a positive atmosphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-04-04T07:30:16.403" LastActivityDate="2015-04-04T07:30:16.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14587" CreationDate="2015-04-04T00:23:12.503" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends; after completing the original sprint backlog, do they always pull more, and get unexpected work done?  This creates a characteristic sawtooth pattern at the end of the burndown chart that is the signature of teams that go the extra mile. After completing all work in sprints, do they pull more work in the next sprint, to take advantage of their capacity? Teams that regularly do this are on their way to ever-higher performance. If however, their velocity is flat, and their burndown ends on or before the end of the sprint, that would explain the fishy smell. Teams doing that usually feel pressure from those in authority to always complete their sprint work. They are responding by being very careful not to challenge themselves, so are not innovating, learning, or improving as much as they could. I'm not sure how much variability is &quot;expected&quot;, but certainly some.  Similarly, &quot;too much&quot; may not be easily specifiable in a general way, so be sure to pay attention to feedback from the PO, customers &amp;amp; stakeholders, who will be affected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16751" LastActivityDate="2015-04-04T00:23:12.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14466" CreationDate="2015-04-04T04:00:09.527" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically you'd use one of three methods in TFS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option 1: Area paths&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use area paths to match up to your major versions. Create a &quot;V2&quot; area path (and the requisite sub-paths) to segregate the work items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option 2: Iteration paths&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you aren't using the iteration paths for Scrum sprints, you can also use iteration paths for this purpose. Similar to area paths, you can create iteration paths to segregate the work. In this case, iteration paths also come with start and end dates for planning purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option 3: Tags&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also use tags to track which work item belongs to which version. Simply tag a work item with &quot;V2&quot; or whatever, and you can then filter by tags.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More importantly than the method that you use to segregate your work, you need to consider the principle of the &quot;single backlog&quot;. If your team always understands what the next highest priority thing to work on is, you'll pretty much be almost all the way home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastActivityDate="2015-04-04T04:00:09.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14576" CreationDate="2015-04-04T05:33:52.037" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the question to be asking is &quot;Is QA testing the right things?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The developer completes a small story, this is a bit of code that likely contributes to a larger feature. If your QA is testing this, then I would guess there isn't a lot of automation or continuous integration happening. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a continuous integration development environment, then if the Dev checks code in and it has a bug, you'll probably know as soon as the build fails. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have automated regression testing, then once the Dev checks in his code, those tests run and will let you know if the new code broke any of the old stuff. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a QA expert, so while I know this isn't what QA should be doing, I'm not the best person to say what they should. I've learned from really good Agile QA folks and I would suggest going to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stickyminds.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Stickyminds.com&lt;/a&gt; or look up Lisa Crispin, who has literally written the book on agile testing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get QA to stop testing what can be automated and utilization will not be the issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-04-04T05:33:52.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14587" CreationDate="2015-04-04T08:39:55.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The development team has two main responsibilities. The first is to deliver business value at a level of engineering quality that is appropriate to the organisation. The second is to look for areas it can improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of these responsibilities require the team spends time thinking about what they do. They may need to research new technologies, talk about their design/architecture and continually inspect their approach. If a team is packing work in so that they are frequently working flat-out until the end of the sprint then they will have little time for introspection and improvement. In other words, some slack time is a good thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course there is a balance to be achieved. A professional Scrum team will strive to find the right balance between delivery and self-improvement. Continually adjusting their approach based on circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-04-04T08:39:55.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14595" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14596" CreationDate="2015-04-04T18:38:02.263" Score="-1" ViewCount="600" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are currently using activeCollab for our agile software development team. We are thinking of switching over to Scrum. Is it worthwhile to do so? I think the team may find it a bit difficult to use Scrum. And is it possible to implement the Scrum process using activeCollab? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16758" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-04-05T00:25:16.743" LastActivityDate="2015-04-05T00:25:16.743" Title="Can we implement Scrum with activeCollab?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2015-04-05T20:09:41.127" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14595" CreationDate="2015-04-04T19:19:53.197" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We are currently using active collab for our agile software development team. We are thinking of switching over to scrum. Is it worthwhile to do so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try it, and find out for yourself. You are asking a subjective question here. Only your own organisation, through trial and error, can provide the definitive answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I think the team may find it a bit difficult to use scrum&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you need to factor training and resistance to change into any trials of scrum within your organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And is it possible to implement Scrum process using active collab?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A cursory google of &quot;active collab agile&quot; would suggest it may be possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14835" LastEditorUserId="16344" LastEditDate="2015-04-04T19:46:10.077" LastActivityDate="2015-04-04T19:46:10.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10705" CreationDate="2015-04-05T18:26:52.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If one more story can not be started 2-3 days prior to the sprint end, it is too large. &#xA;Smaller stories can be started later and will reduce your productivity issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4481" LastActivityDate="2015-04-05T18:26:52.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14598" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-05T21:16:08.410" Score="3" ViewCount="370" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the projects I am managing is the creation of a large website for a very sensitive client. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am in a position where it's crunch time and I am being asked to promise on delivery dates for sections of the site. While we are delivering sections for review I am receiving back lists of issues to resolve. These are a mix of copy errors and new copy. The new copy is mostly small but it is quickly building up, and each change requires extensive testing to ensure the site works well in mobile/tablet/desktop layouts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What process can I implement to show the customer that their copy changes have an impact that needs to move the delivery date? Keeping in mind that I don't want to offend the client since some of these are small changes, it's just the volume of changes that is causing the issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each time they submit something like &quot;add this section to the site with this sentence&quot; should I be having them go through a formal process? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16044" LastActivityDate="2017-04-19T21:55:56.600" Title="How can I manage a rapidly changing copy deck with a fixed deadline?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;scope&gt;&lt;scope-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14598" CreationDate="2015-04-05T22:32:10.507" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A simple burn down chart might do the trick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We'll side step estimating and the value of it right now, that's a longer term thing that will help in the long run. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead we'll go with fixed time as it sounds like you have a really solid grasp of the work you have to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 1: Determine the number of workable hours remaining in your project. This is your Capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 2: Determine the total amount of work to be done. This is three sub-tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2A- New Copy: For this, use hours as best as you can manage. The key is to well understand the &quot;New Copy&quot; effort. For example say you know that roughly 500 words of new copy takes an hour to implement, divide all the new copy by 500 and that's the number of hours for New Copy. &#xA;Now divide the amount of done work by the new copy work. This gives you a percentage of change. This can be used to project how many hours of new copy you can expect to come from the undone work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2B- Estimate your upcoming copy edits. Look at the work you have already done, determine how much copy you have put in and how much copy edit has been asked for. This is a percentage of change. Apply that to your undone work. Then figure out how long it takes to fix X amount of copy. For example 1000 words per hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2C- Determine how much time is left for new functionality/ pages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 3: Add up all of Step 2 and determine how many hours of work there is right now. Then add in the projected work for copy edits and new copy. This is your projected work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do a simple graph with the vertical axis showing two values, total work to do and total work to be done. The horizontal is a date line. Now chart your progress based on the number of working hours per day. Say you can do six hours of work a day, each day the to do is reduced by six hours. Project this line out and see if you will be done on the due date. Do the same for project work to be done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 4: I'm going to assume you're already not going to make your date, much less be able to take new copy. Put all the remaining new development, current copy edit, current new copy into a single list. If you can meet with the client face to face use 3x5 cards if not use a spreadsheet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 5: Show the customer the burn down. Show them how the date won't be made (or won't be made if new work is added). Ask them what they want to do. When they say &quot;What should we do?&quot; pull out the list of work to be done and have them prioritize it in rank order (nothing can be equal).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feel free to ping me direct if you have more questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="147" LastEditDate="2015-04-08T23:58:07.137" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T23:58:07.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14598" CreationDate="2015-04-06T10:08:30.620" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If timelines and budget is fixed, just start pushing things back. Ask them for high priority items which need to go in given time and budget. For everything else client needs to pay more.&#xA;Also bring in review process so that the bugs in your interim deliveries are minimum&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6209" LastActivityDate="2015-04-06T10:08:30.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14598" CreationDate="2015-04-06T10:52:28.493" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Each time they submit something like &quot;add this section to the site with this sentence&quot; should I be having them go through a formal process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. Absolutely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every change should be subjected to a change control process. The change control process should include analysis of the change for impact on scope (sounds like the aggregate &quot;new copy&quot; is a scope change), and for impact on cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I'd probably generate a &quot;cost of change&quot; model - changing a single letter on the website requires the following tests, {list of tests}, and the minimum cost is X.  Ignoring tests will diminish the quality of your website and may result in a significant increase in maintenance costs or the termination of our contract.   On the other hand, if you can bundle your new copy into predictable groups, we can work together to manage the costs.   Changing a single letter results in X hours of work; changing 1000 letters really only results in X*1.01 hours of work.  It is in our mutual interests to group and schedule the changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-04-06T17:00:48.360" LastActivityDate="2015-04-06T17:00:48.360" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14605" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14608" CreationDate="2015-04-06T13:01:33.023" Score="1" ViewCount="134" Body="&lt;p&gt;From Scrum Guide:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Development Teams are structured and empowered by the &lt;strong&gt;organization&lt;/strong&gt; to organize and manage their own work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not a native English speaker and can not understand if by &lt;strong&gt;organization&lt;/strong&gt; they mean &lt;strong&gt;company&lt;/strong&gt;? If yes - then I don't get it. Why a company, not people themselves is responsible for selecting which people will go to which team? I thought Scrum is all about self-organization. Just tell people about a Product and they will organize themselves into teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16769" LastActivityDate="2015-04-06T14:13:07.523" Title="Who is responsible for structuring teams in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14606" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-06T13:47:54.483" Score="0" ViewCount="1119" Body="&lt;p&gt;When leading a project, what are some suggestions for documenting all tasks required?  Who should be involved with the PM to come up with the list?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12224" LastActivityDate="2015-04-07T08:48:52.363" Title="How to document all tasks required in a project?" Tags="&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14606" CreationDate="2015-04-06T13:58:13.440" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Initial project documentation should be hierarchical in nature&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, start with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/the-product-vision-board/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Vision&lt;/a&gt; statement - this is a 10,000 foot view description and this statement declares the purpose of the project, who it serves, and &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; it is important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The PM should be working with the client/Product Owner to define this&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you already have a team in place, they should be included in these top level vision discussions regarding the purpose of the project and potential ways that it could be implemented. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Define the users and their roles within the application&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understand your users upfront, and map out the features they would need to use your application.  Do this with the Product Owner and as many experts from your team as possible.  Create &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilebok.org/index.php?title=Personas&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;persona's&lt;/a&gt; if it makes sense to do so - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Create user stories that map out the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilebok.org/index.php?title=Minimally_Marketable_Feature_(MMF)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;'minimally-marketable-feature'&lt;/a&gt; set&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;of your application, e.g., the core features and functionality necessary for the application to serve its users and function in production. This is known as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agileproductdesign.com/presentations/user_story_mapping/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;'Story Mapping'&lt;/a&gt;.  Have the team estimate these features which will give your client an idea on time, e.g., 3-6 months, 6-9, 9-12 etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Include as many experts from your team as possible&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nothing worth doing is worth doing alone, include as much expertise as you can during all stages of the project -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16148" LastEditorUserId="16148" LastEditDate="2015-04-06T20:00:42.617" LastActivityDate="2015-04-06T20:00:42.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14605" CreationDate="2015-04-06T14:13:07.523" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe you just misread what is stated in that quote: Development teams are structured and empowered by the organization to manage their own work, e.g., the company 'structures' or 'puts in place' a team that is empowered to self-organize and structure &lt;em&gt;itself&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16148" LastActivityDate="2015-04-06T14:13:07.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14606" CreationDate="2015-04-06T16:59:45.840" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The name for this document is the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). The WBS (and the WBS dictionary) document all the work that is required for the project. There are ample resources to help you develop a high quality WBS. I'm not associated with the firm, but my favorite guidance is from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.senseiprojectsolutions.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sensei Project Solutions&lt;/a&gt;; if you write to them and ask, they have a set of filters for Microsoft Project and associated guidance that will significantly improve the quality of the WBS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Project Team should develop the WBS - I have some &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/14586/4367&quot;&gt;fairly strong opinions&lt;/a&gt; about that. The people doing the work are best able to plan the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2015-04-06T16:59:45.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14606" CreationDate="2015-04-06T20:05:03.493" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Jon's answer covers a lot of what's necessary in an Agile environment. I'd like to add that if you're using a tool like JIRA or similar, you can use sub-tasks to specifically describe what's involved in each user story and assign them. Many different software suites offer similar functionality, and it makes it easy to track tasks and who should be completing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an Agile environment, a self-managing and cross-functional team should determine who among them will be completing each piece of the work. It's also important to consider pairing and swarming on tasks, which can make your team far more effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16314" LastActivityDate="2015-04-06T20:05:03.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14606" CreationDate="2015-04-07T08:48:52.363" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tasks are just a sub product of the scope management area. You actually have to start documenting your high level scope in a project charter and get it signed by the sponsor. Than later you create (together with subject matter experts) a WBS (Work breakdown structure). You start with a single box, which is the project name and then you progressively divide it either by solution phases, solution elements or whatever logic you and your team agree to. Tasks are then the last items in your WBS and they must be clearly described and have a time frame of min 8 a max 80 hours duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Small advice: Don't mix up duration with effort. Duration is how long it takes to be completed whereas effort is the man power involved in doing the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;WBS Chart Pro&lt;/strong&gt; is a good tool to document it. It has also integration to MS Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16743" LastActivityDate="2015-04-07T08:48:52.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14612" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-07T14:57:46.967" Score="3" ViewCount="6095" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a project with a number of similar tasks all with slightly different durations.  The tasks are also broken down into sub-tasks (all the sub-tasks are the same for each main task, again only with slightly different durations).  I have set up all the relationships Finish-to-Start - each task starts after the other finishes (ASAP).  I have also set up the calendar to work 8am to 6pm in this case.  All tasks are currently autoscheduled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main tasks are all between 2 and 3 hours in duration.  I would like to set up the project so that main task will not start unless it can also be completed within the same shift (i.e. all the subtasks must be finished within one shift and not straddle the night into the next day).  Currently it is possible for a sub-task to be started at, say, 5pm on one day and finished at, say, 9am the next day.  I can't have this in the type of project I am working on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of the constraints seem to be quite right for what I need, and deadlines are not exactly what I'm looking for either as I'd rather this be an automatic scheduling option rather than a check or other dependancy.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this possible in Microsoft Project?  Any advice appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16777" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-02T12:24:13.753" LastActivityDate="2018-11-02T12:24:13.753" Title="Microsoft Project Task to Start and Finish on the Same Day?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14613" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14615" CreationDate="2015-04-07T15:13:43.520" Score="19" ViewCount="17668" Body="&lt;p&gt;What does &lt;strong&gt;Architectural Spike&lt;/strong&gt; mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know, that this is investigation activity for unknown and unestimated tasks. But I want know more details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When we should do it: during Sprint or between them?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who should do it: whole Development Team or just a part of it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How serious should be a problem to decide make a Spike, instead solve this problem inside current tasks?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much time Team should spend for Spike?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How we should determine time in previous question, if problem is not &quot;estimatable&quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What Team should do, if they don't investigate problem in reserved time?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-12-30T09:01:23.023" LastActivityDate="2019-12-30T09:01:23.023" Title="What does &quot;Architectural Spike&quot; mean?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;extreme-programming&gt;&lt;spike&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14613" CreationDate="2015-04-07T16:47:45.397" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;An architectural spike is a fixed time/variable scope PBI which is added if the team feels that more investigation is needed in order to maximize velocity (or to get better estimates).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practically, the spike consists in a series of investigations centered around finding solutions to one or more problems. It's not about writing code. The deliverable at the end is generally &quot;knowledge&quot; (as a document, a presentation or whatnot).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is generally like another sprint and does not require the whole team from the point of view of Scrum. It should always take less than a Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no specific bound in terms of &quot;seriousness&quot;. A team can always suggest a spike, but they need to convince the Product Owner to actually prioritize it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally, when teams don't feel confident to estimate, they are probably pressured. It is very rare that a story can't be estimated. Maybe the story is simply too big. Stories that take a year are very different from stories that take a day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, if you can't estimate it, simply guess, or use the current average size. Work on it, a better estimate will come later if necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6300" LastActivityDate="2015-04-07T16:47:45.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14613" CreationDate="2015-04-07T17:17:12.403" Score="14" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Use spike to reduce the risk of a story or increase the reliability of an estimate&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spike is a term that comes from the Extreme Programming (XP) practice. The goal is reducing the risk of a technical problem or increase the reliability of a user story's estimate. The duration and objective(s) of a spike should be agreed between the Product Owner (PO) and development team before the start. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When we should do it: during Sprint or between them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the Sprint. The development team can propose it. It is a story to be prioritized and scheduled by the PO like any other story.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Who should do it: whole Development Team or just a part of it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One or, possibly, two developers should be enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How serious should be a problem to decide make a Spike, instead solve&#xA;  this problem inside current tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, if the risk is high or the estimate is very high based on worst case scenario, I have found a spike helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How much time Team should spend for Spike?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have typically time-boxed it at 4 hours. Could go up to 8 hours in rare cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How we should determine time in previous question, if problem is not&#xA;  &quot;estimatable&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just timebox it and either build a prototype/proof-of-concept or make a recommendation based on the findings during that time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What Team should do, if they don't investigate problem in reserved&#xA;  time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you may not have a full solution, you now know more about it than earlier. Re-estimate the story based on this new knowledge and move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-04-07T17:17:12.403" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3791" CreationDate="2015-04-08T00:51:44.957" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;here are some suggestions to getting use to framework and methodology:&#xA;( I have been thinking about the same thing these days too)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;by observation, determine the state of being the person, company, country likes, its doesnt have to make sense usually what we see are not &quot;truth&quot; just someone's manifest of their own version of life ( like undercover bother said ) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;decide if you like it, if you can accept it&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if you cant just leave, life is too short to struggle &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if you can than start thinking how to make that phenomenon happen, &#xA;chances are  you will find a lot of already developed ways and makes sense, and just go along with it &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the ideal might not be as you think  but as long as you can accept, than you are at a good place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16783" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-04-08T11:14:51.930" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T11:14:51.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5107" CreationDate="2015-04-08T05:28:08.293" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it will count. To think any one educational experience will make a company go bankrupt is an uneducated statement. I have worked with a PhD who could not manage team communications as well as my students in a project management curriculum. I know great PMPs who can't manage technology well but are great with construction including the #1 JW Marriott in the world when built. I am a PMP and do fine myself, bring on development projects, construction projects, and more! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16785" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T05:28:08.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14618" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14623" CreationDate="2015-04-08T14:32:06.187" Score="1" ViewCount="612" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have some doubts about development team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When is it formed? Each sprint? Because in each sprint I may have different requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's necessary to keep all members on development team, if only need it for testing phase (e.g.: last week on sprint)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A member can be allocated on different development teams, &quot;at the same time&quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Appreciate your help =)&#xA;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16712" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T18:22:47.453" Title="Scrum development team doubts" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14618" CreationDate="2015-04-08T15:26:43.640" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately your questions are so broad that it is apparent you have not read the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumprimer.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum Primer&lt;/a&gt; or other materials to help yourself.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To fully answer your question would be to completely educate you in Scrum including the ceremonies, artifacts and the values. That is before talking about Test Driven Development and other &lt;em&gt;bolt-on&lt;/em&gt; improvements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not voted to close your question, I suggest you do some reading and come back to edit your question to clarify anything that is still confusing you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Development Team exists for the entireity of the Project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Sprint should have different requirements, that is the aim of the Product Backlog allowing a section of requirements to be understood and completed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are your doubts about the professional ability of the team?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no &quot;Testing&quot; Sprint.  Testing is inherent to every Sprint delivering shippable code. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have a Product Owner?  Are you the the PO?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have a ScrumMaster?  Are you the SM?  Is your SM certified?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If no SM, who is coaching your team in Agile ways of work?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could go on quizzing you but that is not constructive for either of us.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T15:26:43.640" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14620" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-04-08T15:39:00.973" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The process of experimentally obtaining one or more quantity values that can reasonably be attributed&#xA;to a quantity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the International Vocabulary of Metrology – Basic and General Concepts and Associated Terms (VIM 3rd edition) JCGM 200:2012 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bipm.org/en/publications/guides/vim.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bipm.org/en/publications/guides/vim.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTE 1 Measurement does not apply to nominal properties.&#xA;NOTE 2 Measurement implies comparison of quantities or counting of entities.&#xA;NOTE 3 Measurement presupposes a description of the quantity commensurate with the intended use of a measurement result, a measurement procedure, and a calibrated measuring system operating according to the specified measurement procedure, including the measurement conditions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://pm.stackexchange.com/edit-tag-wiki/15&quot;&gt;metrics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8524" LastEditorUserId="8524" LastEditDate="2015-04-09T21:36:08.637" LastActivityDate="2015-04-09T21:36:08.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14621" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-04-08T15:39:00.973" Score="0" Body="The process of experimentally obtaining one or more quantity values that can reasonably be attributed&#xD;&#xA;to a quantity." OwnerUserId="8524" LastEditorUserId="8524" LastEditDate="2015-04-08T15:52:03.867" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T15:52:03.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14612" CreationDate="2015-04-08T16:28:22.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can live with just the summary tasks, you can achieve what you are looking for with &quot;buffer tasks&quot; and two new base calendars.  Before each of the main tasks, add a task with a one minute duration. Link that one minute &quot;buffer&quot; task to the main task. Add the buffer tasks before every main task (copy and paste works well).  You cannot use milestones for buffers as milestones have zero duration and therefore will not obey a task calendar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then create two new base calendars.  The first (2 hour) make the working time only 7:59 am to 3:59 pm every working day.  The second (1.5 hours) make the working time 7:59 am to 3:29 pm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assign the 2 hour calendar to the buffer task before a main task whose duration is 2 hours.  Because the calendar restricts working time to end by 4:00 pm the two hour task should be able to happen before 6:00 pm.  If the task schedule pushes the buffer to after 4:00 pm - it will simply move to the beginning of the next working day.  Assign the 1.5 hour calendar to the buffer tasks preceding any 1.5 hour main task.  To make assigning the task calendars easier, add the Task Calendar column to the table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Link your tasks and all should be better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T16:28:22.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14618" CreationDate="2015-04-08T17:04:58.850" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Organizing a team for Scrum development&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When is it formed? Each sprint? Because in each sprint I may have&#xA;  different requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the key principles of Scrum is that you form a team that has all the skills needed to convert a product backlog item (PBI) into potentially shippable code. The team members are cross-functional and self-organize to accomplish whatever is needed to be done to deliver a finished product. It takes time for team members to build trust and gel as a team. So, you should plan to keep a team relatively stable for longer periods of time. This is the way to get high performing teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's necessary to keep all members on development team, if only need&#xA;  it for testing phase (e.g.: last week on sprint)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Software development (or any knowledge work for that matter) is highly productive if handled by a skilled team that is highly motivated and allowed to focus on accomplishing one large business goal at a time. Such a team can often come up with better, faster and easier ways to solve the business problem. If you micromanage and think of it as tasks to be assigned to any free resource, you will get low productivity and an unhappy team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A member can be allocated on different development teams, &quot;at the same&#xA;  time&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Software development (or any knowledge work for that matter) is best accomplished by people who focus on one thing at a time without any distractions. Even within one team, Scrum Masters try to keep team members from working on too many stories at a time. So, the answer to your above question is, no you should not plan to have team members assigned to different teams &quot;at the same time&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, sometimes I have compromised on this for practical reasons. We had a database developer who had specialized knowledge and skills about the back-end. I had him assigned to help more than one team at a time. However, I had other team members shadow and learn the ropes so that we don't have to continue this practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T17:04:58.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14618" CreationDate="2015-04-08T18:22:47.453" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hopefully this helps drawing from my own experience being on scrum teams in different roles such as a Scrum master, a test engineer, and briefly as a product manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your Questions, My Feedback:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When is it formed?&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;After the product or project requirements are developed and the Product Owner has an idea of the user stories to present to the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Each sprint? Because in each sprint I may have different requirements.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Requirements&gt;Acceptance Criteria&gt; User Stories. Break it in to chunks sprints are incremental. Research &quot;well written acceptance criteria&quot; and &quot;well written user stories&quot; it may help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's necessary to keep all members on development team, if only need it for testing phase (e.g.: last week on sprint)?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Scrum is best for full software development life cycle. If you are running sprints and trying to do scrum just with the testing it's not going to work the best for you. Look into Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A member can be allocated on different development teams, &quot;at the same time&quot;?&lt;/strong&gt; This is not ideal, but that is what capacity planning is for. Get estimates of what amount or percentage of time will be spent on the sprint at hand. Plan your hours around that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this was helpful, have a good one!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16791" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T18:22:47.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14049" CreationDate="2015-04-08T19:07:21.413" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hate to jump in on a older thread, but this question (and an answer or two) seem to indicate a shallow understanding of what a WIP Limit is and is used for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The WIP Limit policy is poorly named if you are doing anything more than a shallow kanban system implementation. We used the term WIP Limit (the actual name) originally because we were so overburdened that we needed language (specific words) about a policy that reduced overburdening. In that situation WIP Limit may be considered an appropriate name/label for the policy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deeper kanban implementations stop thinking of reducing overburdening (which is a significant and positive side effect) and prefer to think of economically optimizing flow. The term Optimal WIP starts becoming a more appropriate name for the policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people think that WIP policies are only intended to stop push, which they do, but they are also a signal to the producer to pull. If you are cronically under your WIP policy number, you should lower it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the original question, the optimal WIP matches the arrival rate of work into a queue with the departure rate. You may need to step back and look at the overall system and not individual phases in your workflow to see this appropriately. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also be experiencing emotional resistance to a policy that would be beneficial if properly observed. I'd start with asking the team members why they aren't able to follow a policy that is intended to promote good behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also add that WIP policies are not laws. They are guidance to what a team thinks is good behaviour. Exceeding them is fine as long as the decision to make an exception is informed and actually an exception and not the norm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check out my blog post for a more complete introduction to this idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agileramblings.com/2013/01/13/what-should-my-wip-limit-be-super-easy-method-to-find-out/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;What Should My WIP Limit Be&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1535" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T19:07:21.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14627" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14628" CreationDate="2015-04-09T15:46:46.423" Score="6" ViewCount="845" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know, we need to separate this task to several subtasks. But what we should do, if further division of this task have no sense? What if all of resulting subtasks will have no business value until all of them will be done and integrated together?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe it seems that this is a little artificial situation, but sometimes it could happen (especially, if you have short sprints).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example from my practice: we have User Story to allow user make payment from our system. As a part of this story we have task to integrated 3'th party payment service to our project. So, all subtasks of this task are absolutely technical and have no buisness value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I see only three ways to solve this problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Separate business valuable task to several technical tasks.&lt;/strong&gt; But in this case we will not make something useful in first sprint and we will not have anything to show in review.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make all sprints bigger.&lt;/strong&gt; Maybe our sprints too short and it will be better make it bigger. In this case we will reduce feedback speed, but situation like I described below can never happen again.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make current sprint bigger.&lt;/strong&gt; As I know, this is not scrum-way solution. Scrum like constancy (make Daily Scrum in same place and same time, fixed limited time-boxes and so on). Plus, it will be hard reconcile new rewiev day with stakeholders. If you have another teams, that work on same project, problems with this solution will be much bigger.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which solution is better? Or, maybe, somebody know better way to solve this problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-04-09T15:54:39.037" LastActivityDate="2015-04-10T19:30:57.537" Title="What we should do with tasks which estimated time bigger than sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14627" CreationDate="2015-04-09T16:55:57.857" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Look for ways to deliver limited business value initially&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...even if it is not something that you can actually use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking your example, if you are going to accept Visa, MasterCard and PayPal, you can first implement PayPal (or whichever is easiest to implement) and then have separate stories to add Visa and Mastercard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are going to accept recurring payments (say, a monthly subscription), you can first implement single payments and then add the recurring payments in another sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some tips for splitting larger user stories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agileforall.com/2009/10/patterns-for-splitting-user-stories/&quot;&gt;Patterns for Splitting User Stories&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.christiaanverwijs.nl/post/2013/05/17/8-useful-strategies-for-splitting-large-user-stories-%28and-a-cheatsheet%29.aspx&quot;&gt;8 useful strategies for splitting large user stories (and a cheatsheet)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Make current sprint bigger&quot; is not a good option. In addition to the problems you listed, you cannot establish a decent team velocity if you keep changing the sprint duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Make all sprints bigger&quot; is a possible option, if you keep running into this kind of problem often, after making all efforts to split larger stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-04-09T16:55:57.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14629" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14632" CreationDate="2015-04-09T17:29:10.213" Score="4" ViewCount="643" Body="&lt;p&gt;A question about Sprint planning. Let's assume, that Team velocity are 20 Story Point (SP). The most prior Stories in Product Backlog are A (12 SP), B (5 SP) and C (4 SP).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easy to see, that if we will take all three tasks (21 SP), most likely we will not finish task C. But if we take only A and B (17 SP) we will finish sprint early.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two possible solution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;take all three task in current Sprint and hope that we will finish it all&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;or plan to take only A and B tasks, and after we will finish them, take task C during Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems, that these two solutions are similar. But, in my opinion, there is a difference. It is motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First solution: it will motivate Team to hurry up. But demotivate, if team will not doing all planned work. By my experience, second case happen more often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second solution: I saw, that work usually takes all planned time. And it's not related, how exactly time we allocate to this work. So, if we will plan only two tasks in Sprint, we likely will do this two tasks whole Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What Scrum say about this? Which way we should use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-04-21T07:21:42.990" LastActivityDate="2015-04-21T07:21:42.990" Title="What we should do, if after planning we still have some free time in Sprint (i.e. unused forecasted capacity) and no tasks that will fit in it" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14629" CreationDate="2015-04-09T17:40:05.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that A task with 12 story points could probably be broken up into 2 smaller tasks, so that you have A, B, C and D, which might lend itself to a different prioritization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16790" LastActivityDate="2015-04-09T17:40:05.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="36" CreationDate="2015-04-09T18:35:56.603" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been a project manager in various capacities for most of my professional career. I do not believe that PMP is essential for a successful career in project management. As a hiring manager, PMP does not impress me. Many of the PMP's I have worked with have not been strong project managers and always tried to bring too much framework into a project that did not require it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a hiring manager, again, I care more about demonstrated ability and experience than I do letters. I have also interviewed for jobs where PMP was listed as a requirement and it never came up; recruiters tell me that it is an easy filter for employers to rule out otherwise unqualified candidates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I have worked with colleagues I greatly respect, who looked on PMP certification as another tool in their professional arsenal. Or, they needed it to branch into another vertical (government, medical, etc.) In that case, then it was essential. So it largely depends on your personal goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would personally recommend getting real world experience and then evaluating whether or not you wish to pursue certification after a few years, once you have a sense of what direction you want to take from a professional perspective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16790" LastActivityDate="2015-04-09T18:35:56.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14629" CreationDate="2015-04-09T19:26:13.170" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Focus on accomplishing the Sprint goal&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is not just about completing stories. It is about delivering business value. So, you should start by discussing and agreeing on the Sprint goal. And then, the development team can have further discussion and negotiation with the Product Owner. For example, the development team can propose dropping some bells and whistles from one story or modifying another story - all in the interest of reaching that Sprint goal. But the Product Owner makes the final call.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, the velocity, story points and prioritization is a good starting point for sizing. But, remember that velocity cannot be a precise number. It can only be a range - some thing like 20 to 25. However, your question is still valid. Do we squeeze more than what the team can deliver or plan it safely?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What Scrum say about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum wants the team to create a potentially shippable increment of the product ready at the end of the Sprint. So, at the end of the Sprint after seeing the Sprint Review, the Product Owner should have the option of saying, &quot;All right ship it (or deploy it)!&quot; So, the development team should keep that in mind and commit accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also try what @CarynRose suggested and try to split the stories into smaller pieces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One option I have explored: If the team has made good progress in the first two stories, I add the third story mid-sprint. However, I always ask, &quot;Are you sure you can add it now and completely finish it and be ready to ship?&quot; If there is any hesitation, I won't add it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option: At the time of Sprint Planning, if there is bandwidth, you can schedule a time boxed research story to reduce risk in a backlog item (in consultation with the Product Owner, of course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-04-09T19:26:13.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="36" CreationDate="2015-04-10T02:07:48.683" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMP is good. But you need to satisfy their examination criteria to sit for the exam. But I would suggest you try out PRINCE2 as well. It has the real methodology in managing a project. PMP and PMBOK is the bible for project management with all the concepts, but you can't apply for all the projects you come though. PMP mainly tells you what you need to do in an ideal project. But PRINCE2 will give you a full understanding of how you need to manage a project, and the stages. As a newly starting PM both is required, on what to do and how to do. So doing PRINCE 2 and PMP both would give you more insights in to project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6362" LastActivityDate="2015-04-10T02:07:48.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14629" CreationDate="2015-04-10T07:08:28.597" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ideally break down the larger story. But there are productive ways to use left-over time in a sprint. How about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spend time adding more automated regression test coverage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spend time tackling technical debt&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do spikes on complicated stories planned for the next sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get the team together to discuss coding standards, design and architecture&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-04-10T07:08:28.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14627" CreationDate="2015-04-10T08:14:21.547" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;sometimes it happens, you'll have features that cannot be delivered entirely during one sprint. you should consider splitting it into subtasks, which will not deliver business value themselves, but they can be demonstrated and verified after each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;considering your payment system example, we can have three sprints for delivering final results: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;develop mock gateway and functions providing default payment scenarios with mock&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;develop advanced payment scenarios using the mock (refunds, etc.) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;develop real gateway and test integrated scenarios.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the order of sprints can be changed to bring forward the most risky part, but still, the whole functionality will only bring business value if those scenarios are covered to some extent. but after each sprint, you'll have something to demo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16711" LastActivityDate="2015-04-10T08:14:21.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14638" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-10T12:20:48.873" Score="-1" ViewCount="665" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am planning on setting up TFS 2013 and using TFS 2013 for managing a number of projects, using the Portfolio Management features. I wanted to get a general opinion if this is a good idea - or is it quite tedious to set up and manage portfolios through TFS 2013 as compared to other PM tools available&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In TFS 2013, I notice that the team is generally required to add in their estimates in terms of hours - original, completed and remaining. Hence, I wanted to confirm that there a way we can track the percentage of task completion within those hours (completed hours) for any tasks, and also in general for the entire project/iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are there any reports currently available in TFS 2013 that displays the percentage of completion across different projects?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16802" LastEditorUserId="21039" LastEditDate="2016-07-15T09:34:05.030" LastActivityDate="2018-02-05T22:14:27.783" Title="Using TFS 2013 for Portfolio Management" Tags="&lt;tfs&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14639" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-10T12:48:24.797" Score="1" ViewCount="318" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is determining if a project is going to executed in a sequential phase-to-phase manner or as a overlapping phase (fast-tracking) manner done in Project Management plan( and/or one of it's subsidiary plans)  or is it determined during one of the processes in the Project Time Management Knowledge area?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;List of processes in the Project Time Management Knowledge area&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1)  Activity Definition process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2)   Activity Sequencing process&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3)   Activity Resource Estimating process&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4)   Activity Duration Estimating process&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5)   Schedule Development process&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16478" LastActivityDate="2015-04-13T11:39:21.643" Title="When do you determine whether project will use sequential phase-to-phase manner or as a overlapping phase manner for project management?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;pmp&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14627" CreationDate="2015-04-10T19:30:57.537" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, let's address the practical matter: if you are in a planning and you have a story that is the highest priority but you don't see how to break it down and retain business value, it's better to break it up technically and move forward than to a) spin your wheels on that story or b) make disruptive changes to the structure like changing sprint length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there is a common misunderstanding in Scrum that for a story to be valuable and shippable, it's must be a complete, production-ready feature. To use your payment example, the way most 3rd party payment systems work, there's some work that goes into hooking it up and a lot of work that goes into handling different possible scenarios that could come up. The payment functionality definitely isn't done until it's fully integrated, but there is still value in the pieces. If you take it to the point that a credit card, entered properly with enough funds available works and everything else is treated as a general error, there is definitely business value there and it is shippable. Granted, the circumstances where you'd release this to production are few and far between, but you could if it was warranted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tough thing with these stories is that it does require a some time and collaboration to work through. If you'd like a technique to try, you can take a look at my &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agile42.com/en/blog/2015/04/08/techniques-breaking-down-technically-complex-user-stories/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt; on this topic. What it really boils down to though is that you need to collaborate with the team helping to show the pieces of the process of implementing the story and then the PO weighing in on where they see value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-04-10T19:30:57.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14645" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14671" CreationDate="2015-04-11T08:14:41.110" Score="4" ViewCount="128" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to re-evaluate time for remaining tasks based on the actual time and estimated time of completed tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example if a small project had 4 tasks and each task was estimated at 2 days. Lets say 2 tasks were completed at 4 days each, the reminding tasks should be projected to be completed in 4 days, therefore re scaling all the remaining tasks and getting a new project time line, with each reminding task being projected to 4 days as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone know of such a auto estimation and projection algorithms ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="981" LastEditorUserId="981" LastEditDate="2015-04-12T03:00:15.800" LastActivityDate="2015-04-15T04:25:29.277" Title="Underlying algorithms to restimate the remaining tasks based on previous estimated and actual time realised for completion?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14645" CreationDate="2015-04-12T11:53:05.780" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both Earned Value and Earned Schedule methods will provide the formulas that will compute different estimate at completion values based on what you input as actuals.  There are an infinite number of calculations you can make to give you a nice distribution of EAC values.  Those calculations coupled with an expert re-estimation of remaining work should give you a credible result.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-04-12T11:53:05.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14649" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14656" CreationDate="2015-04-13T05:39:54.363" Score="2" ViewCount="1936" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a project with over 800 tasks and each task can take anywhere between 10 mins-3 hrs. I am assigning people (team of 10) to do tasks but each person can only be assigned for a maximum of 6 hours per week then they'll get paid an overtime rate. Each person can work remotely, collaborate, and is available on any day at any time (timezone diff).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I go about setting up MSP to calculate and recognize overtime after a person has worked their 6 hour maximum in a week?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been searching online (stackex, ms articles, etc.) and haven't been able to find a solid solution. I'm beginning to think it might require manual calculations by the task, but I'm hoping it doesn't come down to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help would be much appreciated, thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16822" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T18:54:25.933" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T18:54:25.933" Title="MS Project 2013 - How to schedule a 6 hr work week maximum" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;&lt;resources&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14650" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-13T09:01:01.850" Score="2" ViewCount="489" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was hired by a start-up company as a manager to run their operations and their offshore office. There are different teams under me including internet marketing, accounting, IT, etc. My background is IT, and this is the first time I have managed that many teams with different backgrounds. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I'm not an expert in marketing or accounts, I was not assigning any tasks; instead, I was giving them targets and projects with high-level details. The team didn't meet my targets; they gave excuses and raised issues. I sense that the team is not being honest, and that I have to do something else to make them do work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do in this situation so that the teams work on auto-pilot, and I can measure their performance? Keep in mind that I cannot set the KPI of something I'm not an expert in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16809" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-04-13T14:58:44.060" LastActivityDate="2015-04-13T15:12:21.127" Title="How can I measure the performance of different teams in different departments?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;&lt;multi-team&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14650" CreationDate="2015-04-13T09:51:27.360" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;you could have done nothing to avoid this. after this one, however, you should be more closely involved in their job, so you must understand their problems. you should participate in their daily activities in the following phase, so you can see whether they were right or not about their excuses and issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;besides this, you'll need to work on unifying processes through all the departments to get comparable KPIs in the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16711" LastActivityDate="2015-04-13T09:51:27.360" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14650" CreationDate="2015-04-13T11:02:17.310" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can't compare efforts between marketing and accounting; accounting is non-competitive.  I suspect it is an error to try to compare efforts which are dissimilar.  The problem set before you is difficult and potentially wicked. On the other hand the only option you can rule out is to do nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect that if I were in your shoes, I'd ask the teams to select and predict their own KPI, and measure them on whether they are in control/able to hit the target they are aiming at.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask each department what their goal is, and what their confidence interval is;  that is the target, and you can meet regularly to track progress towards that goal.  &lt;strong&gt;update&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;OP subsequently explained that this is a startup, so I need to modify.&lt;/em&gt; Normally the manager has access to the last several years worth of reports, and can calculate the maximum, minimum and median for whatever target they set.  The team should be able to explain why their target is different from the median.  Since this is a startup, that information isn't available.  In many cases reference data is available. Sometimes it is low quality data, but that just affects the confidence intervals.  If we were running a mature shop, I would expect the KPI to have a confidence interval of 10%; if we're running a startup, then I might expect a 50% confidence interval.  Although I didn't state it earlier, the KPI should be relatively easy to calculate based on available data. You should be able to meet periodically (daily/weekly/monthly as appropriate) and review the current state of the KPI and compare it to the anticipated state. In many cases you should be able to adapt the assumptions &amp;amp; formulas from Earned Value Management.  The staff will tell you that their KPI is a special snowflake that has a unique projected value curve. (they should tell you this; if the EVM curve is linear, then they're overpaid).  That is fantastic news - that is the opportunity for you to learn their task/business/activity at an appropriate level of detail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they can't tell you what their metric is, if they don't have a KPI, then that is a tremendous opportunity; your management will be grateful for any evidence that they're doing work, and you have the opportunity to train them to actually manage their work.  That is a problem that is hard, but clear, measurable, relevant and high reward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-04-13T12:29:27.577" LastActivityDate="2015-04-13T12:29:27.577" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14639" CreationDate="2015-04-13T11:14:12.710" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;according to PMBOK, it is done in the 'develop project management plan' in the planning / integration management part. methodology for running the project should be taken into consideration before planning for other activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16711" LastActivityDate="2015-04-13T11:14:12.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14649" CreationDate="2015-04-13T11:33:31.423" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;MS-Project is a scheduling and planning tool and is not well suited to time-tracking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, you can set up resource calendars so that each resource is only available for 6 hours per week and Project will plan the tasks around that availability. This will give you your basic plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will also need to reset Levelling to &quot;Look for over-allocations: Weekly&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, if Resource A also completes Task Alpha on a particular day over and above their 6 hour allocation then simply assign that task to Resource A, set it to &quot;Must start on&quot; the day it was done, then mark it as complete. This will force an over-allocation against Resource A, but more importantly the &quot;Resource Usage&quot; view will show the total hours spent by that resource on that day. It will not calculate overtime hours for you, it will only show the total hours spent including the 6 they were meant to work- so you will have to subtract 6 hours from any day showing over-allocated to determine the overtime spent on that day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are potential issues with this approach in that you want to give people a pool of 6 hours per week, but Project will want to set an availability per day. So someone could exceed their daily allocation but still not exceed 6 hours per week. Without actually trying it myself I am not sure how this would pan out, you will need to experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even if you get it working I predict you will very quickly tire of doing this for such fine-grained tasks and it will become a maintenance drudge. This is because Project was not designed for time tracking. You would be better off investing in a time-tracking tool that integrates with Project, so that personnel can declare their time spent on tasks. Unfortunately I am not able to recommend such a tool, you will need to do some online research (and note that requests for toolset recommendations are off-topic for this site, but will be on-topic for the Software Recommendation SE site)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-04-13T13:22:25.203" LastActivityDate="2015-04-13T13:22:25.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14639" CreationDate="2015-04-13T11:39:21.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fast tracking is a risk response.  It is a costly mitigation designed to recover unfavorable schedule and finish variances.  Therefore, the determination of fast tracking would occur in the Project Risk Management Knowledge Area within the Planning Process Group.  Many of the other Planning Process Group processes would be invoked to carry out this intervention, but it initially begins with risk management.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-04-13T11:39:21.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14649" CreationDate="2015-04-13T13:24:14.120" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a slightly different approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To capture the 6 hours per week maximum, set each resource's maximum units (Resource Sheet) to 15%.  Assuming you have the resources' calendars set to 40 hours per week, this will set the resource to 1.2 hours per day or a total of 6 hours per week.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As Marv suggests, keep the &quot;look for&quot; in Leveling to Week by Week.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'd set your task type to Fixed work.  In that manner if you need to decrease a task duration, Project will increase the resource's assignment units to force the same amount of work into less duration.  If a resource becomes overallocated, you can then determine what you need to do to resolve the overallocation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project will not automatically assign overtime (nor an overtime rate).  However, assigning overtime will decrease task duration.  Discover which resource is driving the end date by looking at the Schedule format applied to the Task Form.  Switch to the Work format and start applying overtime to the &quot;driving&quot; resources to drop duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-04-13T13:24:14.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4507" CreationDate="2015-04-13T13:30:53.303" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on what it is you are looking for, i see two solutions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to have some simple progress reports accessible to anyone interested, it probably would be easiest to make them yourself, with something like an excel spreadsheet. Pick out the key points you want to represent, collect the data every week and update your spreadsheet.  This way, you will have put in more work yourself, but will not have to implement any tools or solutions to change up your process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to go, would be to implement some sort of a project management tool that creates reports automatically from the data enterred. This would require some major changes within the organization though and i would only recommend it if you want to have that sort of a tool anyways. Getting it just for reports, without realizing other capabilities it has, would be a huge waste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do decide to go with a tool, make sure to get one that fits your company the best. My team has been using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eylean.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Eylean Board&lt;/a&gt;, because of the flexibility and ease of use it offers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10336" LastActivityDate="2015-04-13T13:30:53.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3680" CreationDate="2015-04-13T13:36:42.683" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest to take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eylean.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Eylean Board&lt;/a&gt;. It has most of the capabilities and for those that it does not, it offers alternative ones. The reports offered are comprehensive and live, which keeps you to keep track of the team at any time. I am sure you could get exactly what you are looking for out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10336" LastActivityDate="2015-04-13T13:36:42.683" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2015-04-13T13:36:42.683" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14650" CreationDate="2015-04-13T15:12:21.127" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I completely support Mark C. Wallace on his suggestions. Once you have the goals set though, you can't just let them go on &quot;auto-pilot&quot;. If you set a goal for the next quarter, and then you don't check in with your teams until the end of the quarter, odds are those goals are going to be missed. It's just basic human nature and why, despite it being field that often is not liked, project management exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not to say you need to hire a project manager, or be a project manager. You just need to be an engaged manager. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I fully recommend the Manager-Tools.com Basics Podcast series. It's about 20 podcasts, though the key for you right now is the podcasts on One-on-Ones. In a nutshell, have a half hour one on one with each of your directs every week. Reschedule instead of cancel if at all possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The format is a bit counterintuitive, trust me though, it works. The first 20 minutes is just for the direct. Let them talk about whatever they want, even what fluffy did this weekend. The last ten is for you. Here you can ask general questions that can help you to keep a high level track of their deliverables. Instead of going for the &quot;what's the status on KPI #1&quot; try a more leading/helping question, &quot;Need anything from me for KPI #1?&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the 30 second basics. I recommend listening to the Manager Tools basics series. Listen to those and then decide if you want to learn more. They have ten years of free and valuable podcasts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-04-13T15:12:21.127" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14660" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-14T01:44:39.663" Score="1" ViewCount="722" Body="&lt;p&gt;When estimating activity durations, you get a duration plus/minus a sigma (standard deviation) for each activity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Afterwards, when you want to determine the critical path, what figure should you use for the duration of each activity?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, how should you include the plus/minus of the standard deviation in the activity duration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16826" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-05-17T20:57:00.287" LastActivityDate="2015-05-17T20:57:00.287" Title="How to calculate Critical Path including Std Dev for each activity estimate?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14660" CreationDate="2015-04-14T10:57:19.787" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are a couple of misconceptions in this question - at least from the way I learned the topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, estimating the duration of activities is not done with an duration +/- sigma. Sigma would only have meaning if the estimate were computed as an average of multiple independent estimates. While this may be feasible in some situations, I'm skeptical that it is used very often.  I believe the more common duration estimate is to use a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_evaluation_and_review_technique&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PERT&lt;/a&gt; methodology. PERT involves a most likely estimate, an optimistic estimate and a worst case estimate.  The most likely estimate is multiplied by 4, then the worst case and best case are added and the resulting sum is divided by 6 to get the estimate of record.  That estimate (O+P+(4ML))/6 is used as the estimated duration of each activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second misconception is that &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_path_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;critical path&lt;/a&gt; cannot be calculated for each activity estimate; critical path is an emergent property of the project schedule, not a property of any individual activity. The critical path is the set of activities that determine the minimum length of the project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having dispensed with those two issues, I &lt;em&gt;believe&lt;/em&gt; what you're looking for is a way of modelling the critical path that incorporates the uncertainty of duration estimates.  The standard method to model &amp;amp; understand the uncertainty of a set of semi-independent activities is the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_path_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Monte Carlo&lt;/a&gt; method. Monte Carlo is not for the faint of heart, and the full value of the Monte Carlo method relies on an understanding of the distribution of the estimates and some other math underpinnings.  I haven't reviewed it, but a colleague recommended  &lt;a href=&quot;http://jeremykun.com/2015/04/06/markov-chain-monte-carlo-without-all-the-bullshit/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt; as a simple yet effective discussion of Monte Carlo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My apologies if I've made flawed assumptions about the nature of your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2015-04-14T10:57:19.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14663" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-14T14:26:56.227" Score="1" ViewCount="388" Body="&lt;p&gt;A manager in our company (not really familiar with RACI) insists on having task &quot;Work estimation&quot; in the RACI. I am not really sure but IMHO it does not belong here as it is included in the activities..but I cannot justify. &#xA;Should be there or not..and if not, how can I explain? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16842" LastActivityDate="2015-04-14T20:43:07.060" Title="Should RACI matrix contain &quot;Work estimation&quot; activity?" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;responsibility&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14664" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-14T14:28:12.867" Score="4" ViewCount="2248" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently plan a quite complex project in MS Project. At the moment I cannot plan everything out in detail, but I think that in my head I have a good understanding of how long a task will last and how much manpower will need to go into it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I would like to shift my resources back and forth to see how everything works out. For this I would like to have an overview about how loaded my resources are, but also see whether a task is understaffed. Since not all resources are on board yet, this is especially important for me to understand which qualifications I still need to hire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MS Project only allows for fixed duration OR fixed work. Now whenever I shift a resource, I either change the amount of work or the duration of the task, depending what is fixed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a possibility to fix both at the same time? Or some other feature/method in MS Project that gives me the information that I need?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16841" LastActivityDate="2019-05-14T16:07:07.030" Title="Planning in MS Project: fixed work AND fixed duration" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14663" CreationDate="2015-04-14T14:30:24.163" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The RACI matrix itself is not the point.  The need to have &quot;work estimation&quot; in the matrix is inherent in a major stakeholder requiring the information the RACI matrix provides.  In other words, the manager wants to know, or assign, key resources that must be involved in estimating work, either as an R, A, C, or I.  Therefore, implicit in the manager's want, it needs to be in there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-04-14T14:30:24.163" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14664" CreationDate="2015-04-14T14:37:43.203" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know the answer to this but I don't think you can fix both.  There is a very easy work around, however, which is to copy and paste the work planning values in a text column.  And as you manipulate your resources, which will alter your work values, you can quickly copy and paste from the text column back to the work column, which will then re-calculate resources utilization, keeping the duration the same as desired and the work values as you want.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-04-14T14:37:43.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14663" CreationDate="2015-04-14T17:06:24.367" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not entirely sure what &quot;work estimation is&quot;, but I've never included it in any RACI I've created. @DavidEspina has interpreted the term differently than I would have, and &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; you accept his interpretation of this term, then his answer is probably correct.  On the other hand, &lt;strong&gt;if I&lt;/strong&gt; were to interpret the term, I would assume that &quot;work estimation&quot; was &quot;estimated duration&quot;, then I would strongly advise against this, and work with the manager to establish that the project planning will include both the RACI and the estimated duration, but these will not occur in the same product (except in the case that the Project Management Plan will reference all project documentation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;RACI should emphasize cooperation between the stakeholders - who is Responsible Accountable, Consulted and Informed about &lt;em&gt;decisions&lt;/em&gt; and work products.  RACI is an aid to governance, not part of the project planning process. The PMBOK is largely silent on governance; different organizations will handle it differently. In my experience you need an initial governance process in the project charter/project initiation documentation, and frequently the RACI is at least outlined during this process group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimated Duration is essential to project planning. Estimated duration is developed &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the Work Breakdown Structure and WBS Dictionary.  (Many Project Initiation Documents do provide a high level estimate of the work, but that is usually a Rough Order of Magnitude estimate accurate to +/- 80%.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trying to incorporate estimated duration in the RACI would require that the RACI be completed at the same time as the WBS &amp;amp; Project Schedule; deferring governance to the project planning stage will seriously damage the project and may result in project failure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps more seriously, estimated duration can change (should change) as the project progresses. You'll have better information to refine your estimates. Change management for the schedule is difficult; I don't want to do change management on the RACI. The RACI should change very rarely (like most project initiation documents).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the manager merely wants to label who is responsible for estimating the work, then you have a different problem. The project team is always responsible for estimating the work. If the manager wants to assign that responsibility to any entity other than the project team, then I would highly recommend seeking a new position because that project is doomed to failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2015-04-14T17:06:24.367" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14664" CreationDate="2015-04-14T19:37:53.290" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your request is mathematically impossible because of how work, units, and duration are related. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;work = unit * duration&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a good description of how these variables are inter-related and how changing one influences the other see my question on &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/10380/360&quot;&gt;Simple examples of the difference between fixed-work, fixed-unit, and fixed-duration tasks in MS Project&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you change the units (i.e. resources) either the duration or work &lt;strong&gt;has&lt;/strong&gt; to change. Specifying fixed-work or fixed-duration is saying which should be held constant (and thus which should change).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="360" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2015-04-14T19:37:53.290" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14663" CreationDate="2015-04-14T20:43:07.060" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The primary purpose of a RACI matrix is to clarify who does what. If there is any opportunity for misunderstanding or misinterpretation, then get it clarified in the matrix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of this may come down to the level of granularity in the matrix: too high a level and you won't be able to say with certainty where certain responsibilities lie. Too low a level, and you run the risk of having to cover every single eventuality in detail. I work in IT, and I would not consider including something like &quot;Build Unix server&quot; as a separate task from &quot;Build Windows Server&quot;. Even although both of these are different, and done by different teams, I would keep this as &quot;Build server&quot; and state the responsibility as being the &quot;technical specialist&quot;. But I would separate out &quot;build server&quot; from &quot;specify server&quot;, and also from &quot;configure storage&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relating this to your question, I would expect that, depending on your place of work, estimating work could be done by a project manager, an estimator, a designer, a team leader, or a technical specialist. If there is any lack of clarity - and it seems that there might be - then don't worry about convention. Put it into the matrix, and remove the doubt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2015-04-14T20:43:07.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14670" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-15T01:11:58.050" Score="0" ViewCount="132" Body="&lt;p&gt;After you determine the activity durations, you have a range associated to the it (duration +/- sigma).  If you now want to determine the critical path in the network diagram what figure should you use for each activity: duration or duration + sigma? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16826" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-05-15T02:34:34.760" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T02:34:34.760" Title="time management" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;&lt;critical-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14645" CreationDate="2015-04-15T04:25:29.277" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Earned Value Management (EVM) techniques specify a number of formulas to calculate a project's Estimate At Complete (EAC) based on the estimates and actuals for completed tasks. Essentially they use past performance as a predictor of future performance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Section 2.2 of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dcma.mil/policy/200-1/PAM-200-1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Defense Contract Management Agency (DMCA) EVMS Program Analysis Pamphlet&lt;/a&gt;  documents these approaches:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OTfRh.png&quot; alt=&quot;IEAC&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These equations are known as IEAC (I = independent) because the typical EAC number is provided by program management as an estimate of future work based on the original budget and NOT corrected for past performance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The link has a good description of the formulas and how all the inputs are calculated. None of it is too complicated, but it’s the subject of a whole course and definitely beyond the scope of a single answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="360" LastActivityDate="2015-04-15T04:25:29.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3680" CreationDate="2015-04-15T06:46:17.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.comindware.com/project/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Project Management Software&quot;&gt;Comindware&lt;/a&gt; Project is an innovative Project Management tool that simplifies planning for project managers and facilitates execution for team members. It provides project teams with a real-time view on project priorities and delivery dates, calculates the actual resource workload and availability as well as automatically tracks task completion progress.I would suggest you this tool to manage your tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16848" LastActivityDate="2015-04-15T06:46:17.887" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2015-04-15T06:46:17.887" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14418" CreationDate="2015-04-15T07:45:23.403" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should level your project hour by hour if you are working in hourly tasks.&#xA;This will make the tasks follow each other without gaps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7883" LastActivityDate="2015-04-15T07:45:23.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14670" CreationDate="2015-04-15T09:23:27.767" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;if the distribution of duration values is symmetrical (+- sigma), then the expected value will be the actual estimate without this variance, so you can use it simply for critical path estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;if distribution is assymmetric (for example a three-point estimation), you can use the E = (a+4m+b)/6 formula to get most probable duration value, and use this to determine critical path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or, you can always use monte-carlo analysis if you have access to simulation software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16711" LastActivityDate="2015-04-15T09:23:27.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14676" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14677" CreationDate="2015-04-15T09:29:06.430" Score="1" ViewCount="4231" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently working on a schedule where we have several options. Due to the fact there are several of them, and it's not decided which we are going to be asked to perform, I want to be able to show the durations only to the client and not the actual start and finish, is this possible? See below for an example. Our planner says this isn't possible, but I can't see why we can't just leave the date fields empty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zffvI.png&quot; alt=&quot;Table with duration of each event, without start and end&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16853" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-01-14T14:09:29.900" LastActivityDate="2019-11-25T09:14:59.547" Title="MS Project - Duration without a start and finish date" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14676" CreationDate="2015-04-15T09:52:44.037" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes this is entirely possible and the easiest way to use it is using a View.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First go to the Task Sheet view, then simply &quot;hide&quot; the columns you don't want to appear in the view (right click on the column heading and select Hide)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you are happy with the report save the View using a name meaningful to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply run and distribute copies of that view and you will have all the information you need and none of the start/finish dates or other columns you don't wish to appear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Another solution you may wish to examine would be to continue using the Gantt Chart, but use relative period numbering for the timescale labels (i.e. Month 1, Week 2 etc.) As long as you hide the explicit Date columns you will be able to show all options on the Gantt next to each other within implying &quot;real&quot; dates. To do this just double-click on the timescale at the top of the chart and edit the &quot;Timescale&quot; drop down for each of the Tiers to achieve whatever effect you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-04-15T14:19:02.917" LastActivityDate="2015-04-15T14:19:02.917" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14638" CreationDate="2015-04-15T11:03:32.053" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my -limited- experience, setting up a project in TFS isn't terrible and definitely worth the time, it does have one too many options for my current needs but that's always relative. &#xA;For the reports perhaps &lt;a href=&quot;https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd433251.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this is what you are looking for&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16855" LastActivityDate="2015-04-15T11:03:32.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14670" CreationDate="2015-04-15T11:03:33.137" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Estimates are probabilistic.  The deterministic planning value you choose within that estimate range represents the degree of risk you wish to assume.  You can create rules like using a PERT formula, or nothing less than the 60th or 70th percentile of the range, or Mean plus Sigma, or whatever else.  But that limits your risk analysis and mitigation techniques.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:  it takes you between 30 minutes to one and half hours to drive to the airport.  Most times it takes about 50 minutes.  If you are picking up your boss whom you do not like, you may choose to be very optimistic in your travel time, like 45 minutes, leaving quite a probability that he will be waiting for you at the curb.  If you are picking up a valued customer, you may choose to be more pessimistic and leave a good hour to hour and fifteen minutes ahead so that there is more of a chance you will be waiting at the curb.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No formula can do that risk analysis for you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-04-15T11:03:33.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14562" CreationDate="2015-04-15T18:47:00.140" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can also set the task to &quot;edays&quot; instead of days, that will get the task to span the weekend days. However, when you apply the resources, you will get an allocation error in your indicator column. You can select to ignore the error. That might work well if you just had one item that was like that. Otherwise the calendar alterations as mentioned might work best. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16858" LastActivityDate="2015-04-15T18:47:00.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11235" CreationDate="2015-04-15T18:55:05.083" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just starting in the field, you should probably look at the CAPM first. I have had several students who have taken the CAPM, and it shows that they are capable of understanding the basics of PMI's PMBOK, passing a test, and will understand some of what is going on if they are working along side a PMP. Some entry jobs expect that you will get your PMP in the next X years, so you might not have the experience, but you can show you know the material. I second the idea of contacting your local chapter, as they often have bootcamps and such at a reduced rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I teach project management courses (undergraduate and MBA level) for the College of Business at the University of Missouri. I have recently started to use some of my materials from my university classes--and other creative commons or public domain materials--to put together a series of online courses for people to learn more about project management. I call it Open Source Project Management Training (since people can also create their own lessons).  Here is the site: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectmanagement.ninja/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.projectmanagement.ninja/&lt;/a&gt; .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the lessons are pretty basic right now, but I intend to keep refining and expanding them. Probably the best lessons right now are on project networks  and MSProject 2013 (adding more each week). Registration is free and I send out monthly updates about the content that has been added, etc. to those who sign up for the mailing list. All the original materials are available for download as well (direct from my dropbox account see the FAQ). I am using some of these lessons to &amp;quot;flip&amp;quot; my MBA project management class so that students work through the basics via this site and we have more time in class for working on exercises. Hoping that other instructors will be able to do so as well, and will contribute to the content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take care and Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16858" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T02:49:54.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10387" CreationDate="2015-04-15T19:43:50.610" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently trying something very different for one of my project management classes that I teach at the University of Missouri. It is a short eight-week class, so there is not a lot of time. However the students are all MBAs, a lot with some work experience. So they are ready to move at a pretty fast pace.  This semester  the students are developing draft management plans for a project at the simulation center ( part of the med school).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, two weeks ago the class studied stakeholder management.  In class, we analyze the stakeholders in a case (HMS pinafore) so that the students had some simulated experience.  We are using the same case throughout the course;  it allows the student to see the project from several different angles, and become very familiar with the one case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then last week one team of students developed a list of stakeholders, a communications plan, as well as an influence/authority matrix for the simulation center project.  They presented this plan to the class and the simulation center, in order to get feedback and perfect it.  They then submitted the plan this past Tuesday. That team is also responsible for updating the plan is additional stakeholders are identified during the rest the course.  The group of students were able to identify some stakeholders that might have large influence over the project, that had not been clearly identified previously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not perfect, but I think this approach is giving students a lot more insight into what a project manager has to deal with (even a few difficult stakeholders here and there perhaps).  I will know more at the end of the semester and would be happy to share my results/syllabus/resources with anyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also say, that if you're looking to teach about agile, there are several excellent resources on the web for simulating an agile project using Legos. I've done this in previous semesters and it has been a very valuable experience for students to understand how important planning and understanding customer requirements can be, regardless of the type of methodology that you're using for your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16858" LastActivityDate="2015-04-15T19:43:50.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14684" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14689" CreationDate="2015-04-16T09:46:39.357" Score="3" ViewCount="1444" Body="&lt;p&gt;Background &amp;amp; assumptions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the team has 4 developers + team lead&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some of them participated in retrospective meeting before, some didn't&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the team would like to start doing retrospectives and asked me to do it one-time so that they can continue&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'll be gone forever when the meeting is over&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;team lead would like to carry out next meetings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please don't assume any process framework the team is following. I've used the word &lt;strong&gt;retrospective&lt;/strong&gt; to indicate that the purpose of this meeting is to improve the development process and collaboration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be the best usage of their 60 minutes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-04-16T10:11:19.647" LastActivityDate="2015-04-20T20:53:40.067" Title="What is a good plan for a retrospective to show its purpose?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14684" CreationDate="2015-04-16T11:59:58.493" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think, at the simplest form, it could be splitted into the following parts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduction about why it's good to have retrospectives, what are expected from members of the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collecting topics that cause problem in team's work (brainstorming, priorization, documenting them)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deciding upon what should be done to resolve / mitigate top n impediments, assign responsibles and deadline, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the first meeting, first topic could be replaced by a short status about the action items decided in the previous meetings. So it can be simply another kind of assignment that should be carried out by the team member - the difference from the regular ones is first that it operates on process level, instead of deliverables level, and second, there should be less pressure about those items (in best case most of the work items will be handled by the team lead / PM / scrum master).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16711" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T11:59:58.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14684" CreationDate="2015-04-16T12:28:25.877" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Introduce Concept, Collect Data, Analyze Information, Decide on Actions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start by reminding the team why you are holding the meeting; your goal is to discuss your production process and improve the method by which your team builds your product. Also be sure to let the team know that the meeting is held under the assumption that everyone did the best job they could with the information that they had at the time--this isn't a blame session, or a time to vent your spleen. You are looking back over what happened with the benefit of hindsight, so it's important to ensure that no one treats this as a meeting to place blame or to get defensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that preface, move into collecting data. One of the easiest ways, since you won't be working with the team in the future, is to have everyone put a few items in a list of what went well and a list of what they feel they could improve on in the future. Make sure everyone contributes--it's the best way to ensure buy-in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take the points that your team has put on the board and move through them one by one. As the facilitator, it's your job to ask questions to get the team to think deeply about the root causes of problems as well as the things that led to items that went well. I generally record this information in meeting notes, but sometimes there are discussions that don't need to be recorded (e.g., one member of the team being uncomfortable with another. If this is the case, it's worth bringing up as a data point of your own and having an open conversation about it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the team should decide on actions to take. Many teams take the approach of Start-Stop-Continue-More Of-Less Of. Each team member contributes one action to each of these categories, again on the whiteboard, and then the team takes a vote. I have team members each &quot;Adopt&quot; an action--while all team members are responsible for the actions that they choose, that one in particular should push the team to achieve the improvements that they've discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I've covered the basics here--happy to answer any questions or discuss other ideas!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16314" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T12:28:25.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14687" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-16T13:40:38.023" Score="4" ViewCount="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am monitoring the progression of a mine shaft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have 2 goals each month:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Goal 1: Progress 247 feet per month&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Goal 2: Spend roughly $133k per month. However, spend is not solely driven by the depth achieved&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, I’d like to monitor the &quot;work complete %&quot; (i.e. the mine depth). But if I only achieve 74% of depth target that month, I don’t want it to calculate 74% of the money for that month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be the best or easiest way to enter these monthly tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also need the dates to shift accordingly, if the 247 feet per month target is not achieved in the previous month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16867" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-04-16T14:42:03.977" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T14:42:03.977" Title="Separation of cost from percentage complete?" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14687" CreationDate="2015-04-16T13:49:56.983" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three types of progress:  physical % complete, work % complete, and duration % complete.  Physical measurement is against the product itself and quantifies what you have completed as compared to the total product.  Work measurement is how many hours have been exhausted compared to total number of hours predicted.  And the duration measurement is number of work days exhausted compared to the total number of work days predicted.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you are looking for a physical % complete, not work % complete.  If you need your dates to shift based on performance, you need to also assess your duration % complete.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T13:49:56.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14684" CreationDate="2015-04-16T14:30:56.697" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Try the Start/Stop/Continue method for retrospectives&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many ways of doing retrospectives. But I have found the Start/Stop/Continue method very effective in surfacing the right issues and allowing a constructive discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ToniJ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://leadingwithquestions.com/latest-news/what-do-you-need-to-start-stop-continue/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This exercise is a great way to pause, be mindful, reflect, and take action.  We use the Start/Stop/Continue method to discuss processes, values and behaviors at work. I initially thought that it was corny but have learned to embrace it for its simplicity and results...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T14:30:56.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11548" CreationDate="2015-04-16T16:55:30.580" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had this problem as well. One big thing we did is put in a hard WIP limit for the devs. This forced the to finish stories earlier in the sprint before they moved on to another one. This then means QA can start testing earlier in the sprint to avoid a giant bottleneck towards the end of the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16870" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T16:55:30.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14691" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-16T17:02:57.527" Score="2" ViewCount="876" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a perception in our company that Jira and other web tools have replaced the need for having scrum board and sticky notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our release planning happens with lot of impromptu big-huddles and small-huddles. I do not see a way to replace physical scrum-wall and sticky notes with web tools to facilitate dynamic group discussions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have sticky notes been eliminated in release planning?&lt;/strong&gt; I could see for daily stand-ups, but not for release planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16869" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2015-05-18T04:40:54.117" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T04:40:54.117" Title="Do people use sticky notes for release planning still?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;release-plan&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14692" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14699" CreationDate="2015-04-16T17:27:09.770" Score="4" ViewCount="2871" Body="&lt;p&gt;Developer Team always has internal tasks (such as environment improvements, process improvements and so on). Sometimes they can be related with current project, sometimes not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no problem, if these tasks are related with current project (for example, make Continuous Integration process for current project). Product Owner will have no objections for adding these tasks to Project Backlog and can set priority for all of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what should we do, if these tasks are common and not related with current project (For example, we want to establish code conventions and use automatic code style checker in our process). Even if we will persuade Product Owner to add this task to Product Backlog, I am sure, he will set priority for this task as small as possible. And it has sense for him, because accomplishment of this task will not give huge benefit for current project. But in other side, it will give quality increase for Developer Team in current and all other projects (PO, of course, absolutely don't care about other projects).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in general, I think it's not a good idea to add to &lt;strong&gt;Product&lt;/strong&gt; Backlog tasks that does not related directly to the &lt;strong&gt;product&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if we will not inform Product Owner about these things and not add them to Product Backlog, but doing them during Scrum, then Scrum well lose his transparency (one of three Scrum pillars, as Scrum Guide said).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what should we do with this kind of tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T09:53:49.147" Title="Should we put internal team tasks into Product Backlog?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14692" CreationDate="2015-04-16T17:48:22.450" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PO needs to be aware of these, and I would help facilitate a discussion between the devs and the POs so that he knows the pain and short/long term impact of not doing these. Trying to do things under the radar is a great way to have angry customers (including the PO) and the team should always strive to be transparent about issues they are having.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for whether or not it should go into the backlog I would ask the team what they want to do. It's probably going to go 1 of 2 ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put them in the backlog and treat them like a normal story. Task it out, have the team demo it to show the value it's bringing to the team and the business.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep them out of the backlog but plan for reduced capacity since the team is going to be working on it. This keeps the backlog clear of non-project work, but your velocity is probably going to take a hit since the team is not getting story point credit for work they are doing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16870" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T17:48:22.450" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14694" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14696" CreationDate="2015-04-16T18:08:13.630" Score="3" ViewCount="385" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum has strict limitations of events in time. It is hard to stay in the events time-boxes that Scrum Guide prescribes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What Scrum Master should do to avoid situation when Scrum Team didn't reach a goal of event in time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am interesting about four Scrum events (Daily Scrum, Sprint Planning, Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective) and Product Backlog refinement activity (which have no time-box, but have limit of Team capacity).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-04-17T23:22:37.923" LastActivityDate="2015-09-05T01:34:40.657" Title="What Scrum Master should do to prevent out of time constraints (time-boxes) of events?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14691" CreationDate="2015-04-16T18:23:11.603" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Ask your team what works for them&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your entire team is in one location, physical wall boards with sticky notes foster team spirit and collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agilescout.com/physical-wall-boards-are-king-for-agile-keep-it-simple/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Our board is more than a tracking device – we stand next to it and have conversations, like the office water cooler. We write on cards and wave them around and move them. It’s a wonderful communication device.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see in the above link, fans of wall boards seem to have come up with different ways to work with remote teams too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work with highly distributed teams. Some of my teams are offshore and even my local teams have liberal telework policies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I find that the biggest advantage of using a tool is that it enables commenting, reporting and archiving. These are so much harder to do with wall boards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of all the above, you are asking the wrong question to the wrong people. You should be asking your teams to weigh in on what works for them and choose whatever works for them. This is what Agile/Scrum is all about - adaptive not prescriptive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T18:23:11.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14694" CreationDate="2015-04-16T18:24:42.733" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before I get into the answers you should know that to me it sounds like the real root cause here is you don't have a good scrum master. Your scrum master should be able to handle most of these issues - and it sounds like they are not stepping up and coaching the team on how to improve their process. That said - here are my responses to each of your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The ScrumMaster needs to help keeps each members update short and concise. If a conversation starts happening between the devs just say 'lets discuss after stand' or 'park it', then write it on a post-it and stick it on the wall. If members consistently get into too much detail bring it up in retro and make it a goal for next sprint to time each stand (maybe limit time per person) to help drive them to be concise.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For a month long sprint a full day should be plenty of time (I do 2 week sprints and planning takes a little under 2 hours). The key thing to making planning go faster is to have grooming meeting during the actual sprint for the NEXT sprint. This gets stories into shape, questions answered, and sets up the next planning meeting to go much faster.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not sure if you are doing this already, but you might want to separate the demo from the sprint review/other activities. Again, time box it, set a time limit for each item, and when discussions start to erupt just say 'lets talk offline' or something.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need to have a retro goal before you go into retro meeting. Pick a theme or topic, and try to focus discussion around that instead of trying to tackle everything at once. Come out of the meeting with tangible action items that are assigned to team members with a due date.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is a totally normal problem to have. It sounds like your backlog is a little rough, so plan on reduced capacity for a bit while your team grooms that backlog. This will totally pay off in the end and will help address point #2.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16870" LastEditorUserId="16870" LastEditDate="2015-04-16T18:30:30.020" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T18:30:30.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14694" CreationDate="2015-04-17T07:06:29.633" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jagg provides some good guidance on mechanics of improvement. Let me see if I can address a little of what to do now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- You didn't fail, you found ways that didn't work. Find the Thomas Edison quote &quot;I didn't fail 1000 times, I found a 1000 ways it didn't work&quot; in a nice format online. Print it and post it in the team area. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2- Don't kick yourself. This isn't easy to do. Right now you're in what we call the &quot;Shu&quot; phase. You know what the Scrum rules are and you're trying to hold to them. This is good, keep trying. Just don't kick yourself if you fail. See #3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3- Start asking &quot;What can we do to get better?&quot; Instead of &quot;we failed&quot; move forward to &quot;now what&quot;. Go back to Jagg's post for adivce here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4- Shorten the Sprint. It seems highly counter intuitive, it works. Shorter sprints means there is less to do. Think of it this way, you have 30 stories in your month long backlog, that's 30 opportunities for your grooming or planning to go down the rabbit hole. If you're sprints are two weeks, you only have 15 stories. Your odds of a rabbit hole just dropped in half. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5- Good agenda planning. One of the big curses of any meeting is the lack of good agenda planning. A Daily Standup even has an agenda. That agenda is &quot;Team Member 1, three questions. Team Member 2, three questions.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Daily Standup, you can even go as far as divde 15 minutes by the number of team members and set a timer. Timer goes off, you move on. Remember, Standup is quick, any discussions go to the &quot;follow up&quot; pile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For longer meetings, the secret sauce for agendas is to do your agenda by clock time, not minutes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do: &#xA;1:00 - Start&#xA;1:03 - Agenda review&#xA;1:05 - Agenda Item one&#xA;1:30 - Agenda Item two&#xA;1:50 - Action Item review&#xA;2:00 - Close&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't: &#xA;5 minutes - Agenda&#xA;25 minutes - Agenda Item one&#xA;etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, set a timer if you need to. If you have 4 hours labeled as &quot;Sprint Planning&quot; you won't ever get everything done. Figure out what needs to be done and how much time it needs. Create the agenda, send out the agenda before the meeting, post the agenda on a white board or easel paper where everyone can see it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-04-17T07:06:29.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14691" CreationDate="2015-04-17T07:14:01.153" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sticky Note planning will be with us as long as people get up during a meeting and start to draw on white boards without thinking. As long as people wave their hands in meetings. As long as they walk up to the projector screen and point at the slides. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This goes to the same reason hand written notes are the number one recommendation for note taking. Our brains store data in two fundamental ways as Date or Numbers and as Pictures. Pictures have a higher data recall for brain science reasons I don't pretend to understand. When we write, we store our writing as pictures. When we type, we store are data. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tests have proven that when you type notes on a computer, your recall for the exact notes typed is only a little less than that of the hand written notes. However people who hand write their notes can recall much more of the event than those who typed it in. They have the contextual information that the typed data lacks. Context is king in when doing planning for a project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I think this is a big part of why all the leading advice still recommends that you get as many people as you can together at the start of your release and do a planning session. This is all old school stickies and walls, where people are writing by hand and thus they are storing the entire context of the meeting in their brains, not just the typed words. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-04-17T07:14:01.153" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14692" CreationDate="2015-04-17T13:21:55.957" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Short Summary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a complex topic, but the short answer is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team-defined &lt;em&gt;tasks&lt;/em&gt; necessary to implement stories belong on the Sprint Backlog, not the Product Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only the Product Owner may actually add items to the Product Backlog, although the team should certainly be free to submit stories to the PO for consideration and possible inclusion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Product Owner &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; prioritize non-feature stories that are still essential to team operations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Great Product Owners always have a few &quot;evergreen&quot; stories that can be added (and re-added) to the Product Backlog when the situation warrants.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Housekeeping, Tech Debt, Operations, and Process Stories&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Backlog is a way for the Product Owner to make the cost of doing business &lt;em&gt;visible&lt;/em&gt; to the organization. That means that some team-process stories must be placed on to the Product Backlog and properly prioritized in order for Scrum to function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the following examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a new developer&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I need to configure my development environment&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I can work productively on Product Backlog items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a Development Team&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  we need a Continuous Integration server installed and configured&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that we can be sure that each Sprint delivers a potentially-shippable increment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These stories belong on the Product Backlog. In fact, the first story should be added once to the top of the backlog for &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; new developer that joins the project since it's something that needs to happen, requires resource allocation from the project budget, and consumes team capacity until the new developer has a functional working environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though these types of stories don't add value to the &lt;em&gt;product&lt;/em&gt;, they add value to the &lt;em&gt;project&lt;/em&gt;. In addition, CodeGnome's Law of Transparency says &quot;No invisible work, ever!&quot; That means that these types of process stories &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be visible because they represent work that has to be performed and will create drag on the project until they're properly implemented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some things, like installing a new IDE, might simply be considered process overhead. Drawing the distinction between process overhead that should be solely on the Sprint Backlog, and stories that affect the Sprint Goal and the capacity of the Sprint itself, requires each team to develop some practical definitions and filtering criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There really isn't a &quot;one size fits all&quot; answer, but the distinction between overhead and capacity-consuming work certainly must be hammered out by the team. Once the distinction is made, then the proper process for each type of work should be followed consistently and with as much rigor as the team can manage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-04-17T13:42:59.503" LastActivityDate="2015-04-17T13:42:59.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14700" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14709" CreationDate="2015-04-17T13:45:29.567" Score="2" ViewCount="163" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a support project that starts on 9th Feb and ends on 30th Sep. Work has to be done every day except holidays and weekends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have three resources: Alice, Bob and Eve. Alice is working on the project by default.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However if Alice is on vacation Bob works on the project, and if Alice and Bob are unavailable (vacation, other projects etc.), Eve jumps in and works on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I reflect this automatically, using priorities, resource pools or other features of MS Project 2013?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16882" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-04-18T12:24:48.940" LastActivityDate="2015-04-19T21:46:39.670" Title="MS Project - Resource assignment priorities" Tags="&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14700" CreationDate="2015-04-17T14:38:08.620" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if the tool has something to solve this problem, but I would approach this manually anyway.  Vacations are generally known so you have the opportunity to load a vacation into the schedule with reasonable accuracy.  For other absences that you cannot know in advance, you can load a multiple across the period of performance to handle the expected value of that risk.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you can load Alice into the schedule using a percentage of full-time to accommodate unknown absences, such as 38 hours a week versus 40, across the period of performance.  You can load Bob and Eve across the PoP using one or two hours each.  Obviously, when they are not using any hours when not needed, you will be accruing variances against their names; however, when used, they will exhaust those variances.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-04-17T14:38:08.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14692" CreationDate="2015-04-17T20:19:46.123" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the task for the developer is re-occuring like:  &quot;Fill you your timesheet so you get paid,&quot; thats overhead and doesn't go into a iteration backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the task or story provides a discrete, tangible value, whether functional or non-functional, it goes into the product backlog and eventually the iteration backlog once prioritized and committed to by the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work with your product owner to get them to understand the value of non-functional tasks as they almost always impact either quality of the product or ability of the team to deliver a given volume of functional items in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually when I hear dev's on my teams describe a backlog as non-functional I interpret that we are working with a &quot;non-well-explained-enough to the PO for them to understand the value&quot; backlog that requires some communication work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-04-17T20:19:46.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14704" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14705" CreationDate="2015-04-17T23:24:26.920" Score="3" ViewCount="1978" Body="&lt;p&gt;What should the Scrum Master do if the time-box of event has &lt;strong&gt;already expired&lt;/strong&gt;, but the goal not reached yet?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the quote that made me think about this question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what do we do when the time-boxed sprint planning meeting is nearing the end and there is no sign of a sprint goal or sprint backlog? Do we just cut it short??? Or do we extend it for an hour? Or do we end the meeting and continue the next day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This happens over and over, especially for new teams. So what do you do? I don’t know. But what do we do? Oh, um, well, usually I brutally cut the meeting short. End it. Let the sprint suffer. More specifically, I tell the team and product owner “so, this meeting ends in 10 minutes. We don’t have much of a sprint plan really. Should we make do with what we have, or should we schedule another 4-hour sprint planning meeting tomorrow from 8 am?”. You can guess what they will answer... :o)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’ve tried letting the meeting drag on. That usually doesn’t accomplish anything, because people are tired. If they haven’t produced a decent sprint plan in 2 – 8 hours (or however long your time-box is), they probably won’t manage it given another hour. The next option is actually quite OK, to schedule a new meeting next day. Except that people usually are impatient and want to get going with the sprint, and not spend another bunch of hours planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I cut it short. And yes, the sprint suffers. The upside, however, is that the team has learned a very valuable lesson, and the next sprint planning meeting will be much more efficient. In addition, people will be less resistant when you propose a meeting length that they previously would have thought was too long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum and XP from the Trenches. How we do Scrum. By Henrik Kniberg.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality, I think, there are only two possible solutions: To add some time to event or just interrupt it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are my ideas and what I did in my practice (my solutions may be wrong, that's why I asked this question):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Daily Scrum. In really, I never had problems with time-box limit of Daily Scrum. But I have no objections to interrupt this event after 15 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sprint Planning. All that Henrik Kniberg wrote makes sense. But in my practice, I always just add some additional time. This problem happened very rare in my practice (but nevertheless has happened). It happened at the beginning of projects when Product Backlog is not yet well-refined. Much more often we spend much less time than Scrum Guide prescribes (which may be not good either, but that is another question).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sprint Review. This problem happens with me during Sprint Review more often than during Sprint Planning. Interrupt it and make new session on next day? No, thanks. It will be a painful to gather all stakeholders on unusual day. Don't make new session at all? It may harm next Sprint. So, I always added some additional time, if time-box is not enough. If it is not right decision, please correct me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sprint Retrospective. As in a case of Daily Scrum, I have no objections to interrupting this event if time-box is expired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About Product Backlog refinement: In reality, I never calculated exactly what percentage of capacity it took. But I think there is nothing terrible about it being more than 10 percent, especially toward the beginning of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T07:19:02.270" Title="What should Scrum Master do if Scrum Team hasn't reached an event goal after time-box expires?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14704" CreationDate="2015-04-18T06:21:20.433" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The purpose of the time boxing in Scrum is to act as an alarm for the Scrum Team. When the time boxes are regularly being exceeded then there is a problem that needs to be addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master this is what I would do in this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the Daily Scrum I would not interrupt the meeting at 15 minutes. Instead, I would look to interrupt individual team members who are talking for too long on topics that are outside the scope of the Daily Scrum. A rule I generally use is that if a technical conversation in the Daily Scrum goes beyond 40-60 seconds I would suggest it is taken offline and outside of the Daily Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With Sprint planning a long meeting is a strong indication that not enough backlog refinement is being done. Scrum suggests 10 percent of the time in a sprint is spent preparing for the next sprint, but this is just a suggestion. For some teams it will be less, other teams it will be more. Really the time spent on backlog refinement should increase until there is no longer any benefit being gained by increasing if further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another important point about Sprint Planning Meetings is that it is not necessary to plan everything in the sprint in exact detail. The Scrum Team should decide on what is going in the sprint and then spend a time-boxed amount of time discussing how they will deliver this work. The most important thing is to have enough understanding after the planning meeting for the team to start the sprint. It is not necessary to plan in detail the entire sprint because there is plenty of opportunity for the team to meet again to discuss this detail during the sprint itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for the Scrum Master to interrupt the Sprint Planning is perfectly natural. I often say to the team: &quot;We have enough planning done to get started. Lets start the sprint and meet up again after a few days if we need to to discuss what has not been covered in this meeting&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint Review is all about getting feedback from the stakeholders. Feedback from the Product Owner should have been gotten during the sprint itself, so by the Sprint Review the Product Owner should have few if any questions to ask. Feedback from the stakeholders by definition is open-ended. Therefore it is important the Scrum Master and Product Owner educate the stakeholders that they only have a finite amount of time to provide feedback during the Sprint Review meeting. That again is a situation where the Scrum Master could step in and interrupt. Perhaps suggesting that the Product Owner and stakeholders meet up again later if there is any further discussion to be had on requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprint Retrospectives can easily exceed the time box. The Scrum Master needs to use the structure of the meeting to avoid this. For example, I will often run a Sprint Retrospective like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First 10 minutes - team members write their feedback on post-it notes.&#xA;Next 15 minutes - the Scrum Master reads through the notes with the team and attempts to identify one (or possibly two) areas in which to focus on.&#xA;Final 30 minutes - discuss a possible improvement and agree to bring it in to the next sprint. If the improvement is highly complex I might suggest that it is put on the backlog as a task. That can then get sized and formally brought in to a sprint when it is appropriate. It would not be necessary to solve all the problems completely. Just to establish what was going to be worked on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-04-18T06:21:20.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14638" CreationDate="2015-04-19T00:42:24.457" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a well rounded tool, but It depends on your context if it is a good tool for you.&#xA;It is well integrated to microsoft tools like visual studio, it supports scrum. It supports continuous delivery. If you use other tool or your team prefer opensource tools, maybe it is not a good option. But is just an opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16892" LastActivityDate="2015-04-19T00:42:24.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14684" CreationDate="2015-04-19T03:18:57.683" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with much of what it said here.   One way or another, the point of the retrospective is to find ways to improve the development process.   Any number of methods described by others on this question can be used to identify action items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the most important thing is to ensure that there is action taken based on the discussions.   I've worked with many teams where a whole list of things are highlighted as part of the &quot;start/stop/continue&quot; method, however, nothing is actually done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've dealt with this in the past by requiring the team to select one item from any of their lists and actually do it as part of the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16893" LastActivityDate="2015-04-19T03:18:57.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14700" CreationDate="2015-04-19T21:46:39.670" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid neither priorities (used only when leveling overallocated resources), resource pools, nor any feature in Project is going to handle this for you automatically.&#xA;If you know when Alice is going to be on vacation, enter it in her calendar.  If she is already assigned to tasks, filter the task list looking for the date range of her vacation and replace her with Bob.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-04-19T21:46:39.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14710" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-20T09:05:28.610" Score="2" ViewCount="5198" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking to apply conditional formatting specifically on task status field. Meaning, when the task is on schedule or complete, the task bar turns green. If the task is late, the bar turns red etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have the status custom field added already, I am just looking to add color to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried adding formulas to the custom field but all in vain. I am new to MS Project 2010 and enjoying it. But this issue is taking too long for me to crack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16903" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-14T09:41:03.133" LastActivityDate="2019-09-20T14:13:26.303" Title="Applying conditional formatting on task status!" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14712" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14717" CreationDate="2015-04-20T14:14:37.930" Score="10" ViewCount="2368" Body="&lt;p&gt;If we had a semi-crummy sprint with low velocity and little to show for it and don't want to inundate ourselves with scrum-related overhead, fully cognizant that something not-right happened, with only half the team on location what simple tricks can a scrummaster play to enliven a retrospective, keep it useful and not bore the team into submission or give them yet another reason to hate scrum.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I timebox the retrospective to about 20 minutes, get an action item and not have the team feel like scrum is failing them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&#xA;P.S. I'm not the scrummaster. I just am a scrummaster who has been appointed to run Sprint Retrospective meetings. If I were scrummaster, I would have made the 2 week sprint a 3 week sprint because I knew half the team was going to be out of the office half the time. &lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16260" LastEditorUserId="16260" LastEditDate="2015-04-20T18:44:24.333" LastActivityDate="2019-03-25T22:04:00.843" Title="Planning a quick retrospective" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14712" CreationDate="2015-04-20T17:58:56.603" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a little unclear as to what your actual question is here. My advice though would be to have a clear goal/focus for the retro - probably something around accounting for capacity when half the team is out. Action items might be something like get everyones schedule prior to next planning so we can ensure our commitments are actually doable and they are not setting themselves up for failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16870" LastActivityDate="2015-04-20T17:58:56.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14712" CreationDate="2015-04-20T18:58:19.487" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A large part of the context is missing so I'd stick to your &quot;requirements&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain why you're timeboxing &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Focus on the actions to take, they should be very precise (long-term plans are not a 20 minutes job), actionable, and there should be a clear way of measuring whether the goal has been accomplished or not&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let the team come up with a list of action (maybe one per person) and let them explain why is important. The others should listen but not criticize it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let people vote the best action to take and, if needed, refine the action.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you do this I'd take a look at the interactions, especially if the exercise fails, the way you phrased your question gave me the impression that you're navigating in troubled waters, so maybe there are bigger problems that can't be addressed by the retrospective or solved by quick tricks or exercises.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said here you can find plenty of exercises that you can use to animate your retrospective: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.funretrospectives.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.funretrospectives.com/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also advise you to have a look at the &quot;Safety Check&quot; exercise as explained by Liz Keogh here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lizkeogh.com/2012/12/05/how-to-run-safety-checks/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://lizkeogh.com/2012/12/05/how-to-run-safety-checks/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16362" LastActivityDate="2015-04-20T18:58:19.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14684" CreationDate="2015-04-20T20:53:40.067" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;as you may know also, there is no right or wrong answer as every team is different and most importantly, as you said, the purpose of the retrospective is to improve upon team's performance &lt;strong&gt;gradually&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been with team with few version, and i am sharing the one that I personally like more because it is easy to understand/follow and good fit for team where all team members are not much familiar with this concept. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;there are three parts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;GLAD:&lt;/strong&gt; Let the team call out all events from sprint they feel good about&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SAD:&lt;/strong&gt; Let the team call out all events from sprint they do not feel good about&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Action:&lt;/strong&gt; Let the each team member vote for 2 things from SAD list, and then pick top 2 items with the highest vote as Action Item. &#xA;But most important here is Let the Team decide how they want to proceed with those action item. they have to propose the actually actionable steps to accomplish those two things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not forget to followup on Action items from last retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7125" LastActivityDate="2015-04-20T20:53:40.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14712" CreationDate="2015-04-20T21:22:04.090" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you said the team was out of office for half of the sprint and there is little to show at the end of sprint so that means at least the team did good job in including the stories that can be completed in actual sprint( which is one week). &lt;strong&gt;So give them +1 for that.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NOW&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do not need to change the usual way how the team has been doing retrospective in this specific case. instead this is a perfect example where actually team members can investigate their efficiency as a team and call out the inappropriate sprint/capacity planing, use of resources, getting away from purpose of sprint ... and many more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;if team members are not able to recognize anything wrong with this sprint then you as a scrum master(as a retrospective only scrum master) start asking few questions in retrospect to guide them why we are doing retrospect and what kind of question they should as themselves in retrospect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With my limited knowledge to team/product/env I can just give example of the questions team should be focusing on, but you will have to refine them as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:1&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&quot;What does the team think about this capacity planning? knowing that the team will be away for half time, could we have done better job in capacity planning ?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 2:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&quot;What does the team thinks about stories they picked in this sprint? Have we done good job in sprint planning knowing that end of the sprint we should be demoing something which is adding some business value to our product.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7125" LastActivityDate="2015-04-20T21:22:04.090" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14712" CreationDate="2015-04-20T21:46:09.797" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have such strict time limitation for retrospective, then &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agilecoffee.com/leancoffee/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;lean coffee format&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;  is that you need (by my opinion, of course):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1) Select a theme (optional) &lt;strong&gt;[note: possible improvements for current process, for example]&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) Everyone writes their name on a sticky and keeps it in front of them. (Again, it’s optional, but name cards are very appreciated if not everyone knows eachother.) &lt;strong&gt;[note: no need for your team, of course]&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3) Each person writes topics onto notecards (one topic per card). No limit to the number of topics per participant. (Pro-tip: keep the words per card to a minimum for readability.) &lt;strong&gt;[note: In your case each person should write a one possible improvement for current process.]&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4) Set up a personal kanban board using three sticky notes, one for each column: To Do, Doing, Done (or To Discuss, Discussing, Discussed) from left to right. (Pro-tip: add a fourth column (“Actions”) to collect action items as they come up.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;5) Spend a few minutes (2-5) introducing each topic. Every author should share a sentence or two describing the idea they wrote on a given card. This adds a bit more detail and insight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;6) Vote. Each participant is given two votes (or three, depending on the size of your group). Simple dot-voting is quick and effective. Note that you may cast all your votes on one topic or spread them across multiple cards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;7) Prioritize the cards based on the voting results. Rank the more popular topics higher in the backlog (the “To Do” column).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;8) Now that you have a democratic agenda, move the top item into the middle (“Doing”) column.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;9) Set the timer (typically on a smartphone) for five minutes — or whatever length the group determines is reasonable. (Maybe eight is a better length; it depends on your group size &amp;amp; preferences.) This is the initial timebox for discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;10) When the time limit is reached, hold a simple roman vote (thumbs up, sideways or thumbs down) to see if there’s interest in continuing the discussion. If so, set the timer for a shorter duration (eg. three minutes) and continue discussing. You can repeat this step as many times as necessary until the group loses interest in the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;11) When the topic runs out of gas, move its card to the right (“Done”) column. Bring the next highest card over from “To Do” into “Doing” and repeat the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;12) Optionally, at the end of the session, go around and elicit key take-aways and/or action items from the group. This is usually important if you’re using the meeting to drive decisions or create work. Taking a photo of the board or any artifacts (mind maps, etc.) is also handy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, even in this short format 20 minutes is not enough to take coordinated decision how to improve working process in your team and make a plan how to implement these improves. But in any case you will detect a most popular suggestion for process improvements (by common opinion) and you will have time to discuss some of them. It is better than nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-04-21T13:13:37.000" LastActivityDate="2015-04-21T13:13:37.000" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14719" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14724" CreationDate="2015-04-21T06:42:19.850" Score="2" ViewCount="12943" Body="&lt;p&gt;Microsoft Project 2013: A summary task shows a wrong total of DURATION HOURS: The sum should be 31 hours, but it shows only 25 hours. However, the sum of WORK HOURS is correct. Also, the calculation of costs is correct. So, somewhere, 6 hours just in the duration are missing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The summary task has NO resources assigned.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The summary task has NO predecessor assigned.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All tasks below the summary task have the same resource, all at 100% capacity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the tasks below, work and duration are all equal, which is correct.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what could be wrong ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16911" LastEditorDisplayName="user16911" LastEditDate="2015-04-21T07:21:55.110" LastActivityDate="2015-04-21T11:36:42.590" Title="Summary task shows wrong total duration" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14629" CreationDate="2015-04-21T06:52:28.220" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the most common problem faced in project planning. And the solution lies in the nature of the problem. In your case if other team depends on either of A B or C that would be high priority and a MUST to complete in this sprint. &#xA;Similarly if there are no dependency to any of the storypoint and you can ship a working product without it. It's ideal to push that story point to next sprint and cover as part of the product backlog items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16894" LastActivityDate="2015-04-21T06:52:28.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14721" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14740" CreationDate="2015-04-21T06:56:21.500" Score="2" ViewCount="203" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did some research in DSDM and Agile Projects and got stuck in this scenario. I'm new to this so please help me out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose, in an organisation there are following posts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Managing Director&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Finance Manager&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Analysts&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) &lt;strong&gt;Administrator&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Admin has been with company since its formation and has in-depth knowledge of all aspects of company's business. He handles record keeping and client relations and wants efficient system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) Programmers   etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, they hire a software development consultancy for upgrading their current system which uses static webpage, excel for storing data etc. The consultancy has facilitated workshops and will carry out Agile Development project. The posts i listed above wants to be involved in the project where they will have a new role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now my question is, will administrator be best suited to the role of Workshop Facilitator? I don't think so because workshop facilitator should be from outside the organisation to ensure neutrality right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, &lt;strong&gt;which role will be best suited for administrator?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Business sponsor? &#xA;I don't think administrator can make financial decisions and must be for a high position right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Business Visionary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Project manager?&#xA;Anyone with proper skills and knowledge in organisation can play this role right? Could it be admin?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Technical coordinator&#xA;I doubt if Administrator is skilled in technical field? or is he?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) Business Ambassador&#xA;Administrator deals with client. Could he play this role?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;6)Business Analyst?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;7)Business Advisor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;8)Atern Coach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, which role would be most suitable for Administrator?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16910" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T12:12:10.390" Title="Which role among these are suitable for &quot;Administrator&quot; in Agile Software Development Projects?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;dsdm&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14722" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14741" CreationDate="2015-04-21T09:54:37.950" Score="0" ViewCount="2219" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently planning a project in MS Project. After allocating all resources and other cost to the tasks I need to present the annual budget of the project (split into manpower and direct cost).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I show the project cost per resource per (fiscal) year?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16841" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T12:55:08.813" Title="MS Project: Show annual project cost" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14723" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14725" CreationDate="2015-04-21T11:12:54.993" Score="4" ViewCount="345" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question opposite to &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/14694/what-scrum-master-should-do-to-prevent-out-of-time-constraints-time-boxes-of-e&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/14704/what-scrum-master-should-do-if-scrum-team-still-didnt-reach-a-goal-of-event-but&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sometime Scrum events may took much less time than Scrum Guide prescribes. Is it a signal, that we did something wrong?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As usual, there is my thoughts on this topic for some clarification:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Daily Scrum. I think this is ok, if that event take less then 15 minutes. It's depend on team size. Smaller team - less time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sprint Planning. As I said in &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/14704/what-scrum-master-should-do-if-scrum-team-still-didnt-reach-a-goal-of-event-but&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; question, in the beginning of projects (when Product Backlog is not yet refined well) this event took much more time for our team. But then (especially toward the end of projects) we spend much less time for planning, than Scrum Guide prescribes. Should it be a problem for us?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sprint Review. My team never spent less time for that event, than Scrum Guide prescribe. But if it will happen, what it can signal about?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sprint Retrospective. The same as Sprint Review. We always have what discuss with my team. But if it will happen, what it can signal about?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About Product Backlog refinement. The same as Sprint Planning. It took more than 10 percent of team capacity (I guess. I never calculated it exactly) in the beginning of projects and less in the ending. Is this ok?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2018-10-12T17:25:28.240" Title="Is it bad, if events took much less time than Scrum Guide prescribes?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14719" CreationDate="2015-04-21T11:36:42.590" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If each task has the same resource at 100% and the durations of the subtasks all equal the work, then the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; possible explanation for a shorter summary duration is that one or more of the subtasks overlap, which would yield a resource over-allocation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use the Resource Usage view to check this as it will be obvious which tasks are causing the over-allocation and resolve by moving tasks/levelling resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-04-21T11:36:42.590" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14723" CreationDate="2015-04-21T13:13:44.960" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is important is not really how long these events take, but if you get the desired results from them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the Daily Scrum could take only five minutes because everyone is just giving a task board update and largely ignoring each other, which would of course be bad. On the other hand, it could take 5 minutes because everyone talks throughout the day anyway and so they just need to align their efforts a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless the times are really extreme, it's hard to infer anything from the time that isn't easier to get off some other indicator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as the trend you are seeing in Sprint Planning and Backlog refinement, this is normal to a certain degree. If the difference between the beginning and end is substantial, it may be showing some other difficulties. For example, if you are reforming your teams around each new project (or switching around product owners) they may be going back through &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuckman%27s_stages_of_group_development&quot;&gt;Tuckman's stages&lt;/a&gt; each time, causing them to be less effective at the beginning of the project. Again, other metrics would uncover these sorts of problems much better than time would.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-04-21T13:13:44.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14726" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-04-21T15:37:27.367" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;code&gt;ms-project-2010&lt;/code&gt; tag is for questions about how to use MS Project version 2010 to manage or track a project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also: &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/ms-project&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;ms-project&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;ms-project&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-02T19:48:06.600" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T19:48:06.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14727" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-04-21T15:37:27.367" Score="0" Body="This tag is for all questions that involve Microsoft Project version 2010." OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-04-21T20:22:24.077" LastActivityDate="2015-04-21T20:22:24.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14728" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-04-21T15:38:26.400" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;code&gt;ms-project2013&lt;/code&gt; tag is for questions about how to use MS Project 2013 to manage or track a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also: &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/ms-project&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;ms-project&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;ms-project&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-02T19:51:41.000" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T19:51:41.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14729" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-04-21T15:38:26.400" Score="0" Body="This tag is for all questions that involve Microsoft Project version 2013." OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-04-22T10:52:40.923" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T10:52:40.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14704" CreationDate="2015-04-21T16:53:46.107" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;What Scrum-Master should do if this problem (time-box is expired, but goal not reached yet) already happened?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make the team feel the pain so they become aware that there really is a problem. Awareness is always the first step. People have thicker skin than you'd like or know. But...you know your team best, so you judge which action will create the pain and most quickly bring about the desire for the team to resolve that pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do they respond the most (feel the pain) when you schedule something the next day? Then don't shy away; schedule a follow-up the next day and keep them there until the job is done or until they are on the brink of becoming un-productive or demoraled. Afterwards ask them if they enjoyed it and what ideas they have to avoid the situation in the future. You don't need to wait for a retrospective to discuss changes. You're empowering the team to solve their problem while it is still fresh in their minds. Then hold them to their proposed solutions. Rinse &amp;amp; repeat as necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, when you follow the Scrum framework for the sake of following Scrum, you cease to be Agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-04-21T16:53:46.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14712" CreationDate="2015-04-22T00:20:09.843" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wow, that's a tough one. Given how things went investing an hour to do an in depth analysis what has happened and come up up with the vital few actions would be my first suggestion, but I understand the risk of the team hating Scrum even more so that won't work in this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A possible, short exercise would be to do &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.benlinders.com/2014/getting-feedback-with-the-perfection-game/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the perfection game&lt;/a&gt;. It's a short and focused exercise, where team members compliment each other on good stuff and suggest further improvement. Although it can be challenging to do this one when team mood is down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possible exercise is to do a start-stop-continue retrospective (a smaller version of the starfish exercise from our book &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.benlinders.com/getting-value-out-of-agile-retrospectives/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives&lt;/a&gt;). You only focus on 3 instead of 5 things, which makes it shorter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that facilitating such a short intensive retrospective puts a high demand on the facilitator to keep the team focused and have everybody involved. It's doable, but not easy. Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16919" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-04-22T11:32:34.513" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T11:32:34.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14733" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-22T03:40:13.883" Score="3" ViewCount="1049" Body="&lt;p&gt;What should the proper title of this position be, at a tech company that focuses on developing software?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Role Requirements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manage several Business Systems' Web, Database and Cloud Projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Previous Software or Web-Based PM Experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Previous Agile Development Experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Previous SDLC Experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cross-Functional Communication (Technical/Dev. Teams and Operations)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Experience with Technical Software&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The PM does not write code in this position.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Others have told me that this is a traditional &lt;em&gt;&quot;Software Development Project Manager&quot;&lt;/em&gt; role. If this role is specifically managing software development projects for business systems, how would you write the title?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16924" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-04-22T12:55:58.617" LastActivityDate="2015-04-25T20:04:42.893" Title="What should the title of this PM position be?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14733" CreationDate="2015-04-22T06:56:26.243" Score="2" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;IT Project Manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agile Project Manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Software Project Manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Software Delivery Manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;IT Programme Manager (if all projects aligned to the same vision)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The job title is largely semantics.  The key drivers for the applicant will be responsibilities, key performance indicators and the compensation package.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could always A/B test the job titles and see which CV's come back from different recruiters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give Recruitment company A the job description under the heading IT Project Manager and Recruitment Company B the job description under the heading Agile Delivery Manager.  Then compare and contrast the return rates and quality of the CV's.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T06:56:26.243" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14723" CreationDate="2015-04-22T07:50:48.187" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;as long as the outcome does not suffer from shortage of time, it's totally normal to have shorter events. 'timeboxing' means that if the allocated time runs out, you must halt the event and go with partial results, it has nothing to say for finishing earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you should check the results carefully though. if team thinks that there's inherent value in finishing earlier (they might see themselves as being 'more efficient' for example), they may abandon quality or thoroughness in favor of speed. in this case the Scrum Master must lead them back to the correct behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16711" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T07:50:48.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14733" CreationDate="2015-04-22T08:59:40.140" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is always a tricky one as it sits nervously overlapping on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical (Dev) Team Leader&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Software Development Manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such you are likely to see it listed in all such ways around the market (it always grinds my gears when I see Tech Team Lead responsibilities marked up as a PM role).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there was no multi-project management component I would say it aligns to the Development Manager role. However as soon as actual project management becomes involved, and especially as there are no code-cutting responsibilities, it is a pure Project Management role. However I would expect some matrix-management with the technical teams having access to, and probably line management responsibilities covered by, an actual Software Development Manager as they will be the domain experts in the technology, not the PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But for the job spec above, I tend to lean towards 'Technical Project Manager' in order to differentiate from a PM that handles business and/or process change, since PM of projects containing significant software development and delivery carries several key skillset and knowledge requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I class myself as a Technical Project Manager and regularly turn down opportunities for Project Management contracts (or are not considered) that are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; software related. Another specialisation I see regularly is 'Infrastructure Project Manager' where hardware and infrastructure deliveries form a significant part of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T08:59:40.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14692" CreationDate="2015-04-22T09:53:49.147" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Could we really refine the question as how do we report effective working time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I absolutely agree with Code Gnomes -&quot;No invisible work ever&quot; but in the situation where you have an ongoing drain on resource time, potentially outside of the project for example&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Devs have a weekly round table. It lasts 1/2 day every week  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Seniors   on the project have managerial responsibilities to direct reports&#xA;taking them out 1 day a week.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not believe these should be on the backlog, but you should report on the effective working time of the resource being less than full time. I know in TFS you can show this, and if you keep a traditional project plan you obviously can but I don't know about any other tools out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T09:53:49.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14733" CreationDate="2015-04-22T12:00:27.153" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a good question that points to something that can make it more difficult for teams to succeed. I think the reason the title for this position is unclear is because the list of Requirements is a mixture of responsibilities and qualifications that contains less detail than is necessary to fully define the role. The result is that the prospective employee, recruiter, and even future team members will not fully understand how this person integrates to the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience is that teams work best when roles are clearly defined, and the job description should say what this person must actually do if the software development projects are to succeed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following identifies whether each Requirement in the list seems to be a responsibility or qualification, along with some additional notes on what might help clarify the position:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Responsibility: Manage several Business Systems' Web, Database and Cloud Projects&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manage them how? Manage the schedule, resources, and budget which leans more towards being a Project Manager or the daily operation of the developers which leans more towards being a Technical Lead? I suggest listing the specific responsibilities encompassed by the term &quot;manage.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Qualification: Previous Software or Web-Based PM Experience&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is the clearest requirement if you are looking for someone to apply the same skills with the same responsibility that they had in this prior position. If this is true than I believe you are looking for a Project Manager.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Qualification: Previous Agile Development Experience&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this experience as a developer, PM, or some other role? Does it matter? If it does not matter then the qualification is important but does not tell us how to define the new role.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Qualification: Previous SDLC Experience&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As above with the Agile Development Experience.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Responsibility: Cross-Functional Communication (Technical/Dev. Teams and Operations)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is an important aspect of the role, but it could apply to a BA, Technical Lead, Project Manager, etc. What is the scope of this person's interaction? Relaying requirements, providing status reporting, negotiating features included in a particular release? The answer to these questions define the role and the appropriate title for the position.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Qualification: Experience with Technical Software&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You may want to be more specific about what you mean by Technical Software. Is it important to you that the experience be in &quot;the above roles,&quot; then you might want to say that as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5593" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T12:00:27.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14721" CreationDate="2015-04-22T12:12:10.390" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to align with DSDM, then the Administrator would best fit the Business Ambassador role. In fact, the Administrator sounds perfect for the role, if personal capabilities of the Administrator also align with the responsibilities outlined in DSDM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the project methodology applied, I believe it would be a mistake to not view the Administrator as a key source of accurate information about what the system actually has to do, what is required for an acceptable user experience, and how to place the system in context for the business users. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5593" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T12:12:10.390" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14722" CreationDate="2015-04-22T12:55:08.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Display the Resource Usage view.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add costs to the right side (Right click in the timescaled portion&#xA;and select Cost from the shortcutmenu).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Zoom the view out to yearly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T12:55:08.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14710" CreationDate="2015-04-22T13:17:38.360" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no conditional formatting in Project, but you can achieve what you need through custom flag fields and some bar style formatting.  In the Status field there are four possible results: Complete, On Schedule, Late, or Future.  What color bars do you want to show for each status?  I'll walk you through the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T13:17:38.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14743" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14745" CreationDate="2015-04-22T16:06:23.573" Score="2" ViewCount="460" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on some statement of a book (the 7 habits of highly effective people), a friend told me that every win-win negotiation implies that the outcome is fair for both parts, and that fairness was a basic pillar for win-win negotiations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I argued that win-win situations imply maximizing the outcome for both parts, but don't necessarily need to be fair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could anyone give me an explanation or an example to clarify that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;[Edit]&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About people asking what's the definition of fair, I would say: &lt;em&gt;Agreeing with what is thought to be right or acceptable&lt;/em&gt;. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fair&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11653" LastEditorUserId="11653" LastEditDate="2015-04-22T22:06:03.327" LastActivityDate="2015-04-24T04:54:42.827" Title="Are win-win situations/negotiations always fair?" Tags="&lt;negotiation&gt;&lt;theory&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2015-05-14T01:40:16.647" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14744" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14746" CreationDate="2015-04-22T16:29:57.277" Score="1" ViewCount="183" Body="&lt;p&gt;If we size our stories along the Fibonacci scale (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13) should we expect that we could complete approximately four 2-point stories in the same time as an 8-point? or thirteen 1-point stories in the same time as a 13-point story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16929" LastEditorUserId="16405" LastEditDate="2015-04-22T20:51:28.430" LastActivityDate="2015-04-23T15:11:26.287" Title="Should story points be strictly relative?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-04-24T21:43:36.407" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14743" CreationDate="2015-04-22T16:50:07.227" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fair is in the perception of the beholder.  Win-win negotiations assume that mutual goals have been exploited to the degree possible, mutually benefiting both parties, and the relatively fair concessions were made by both parties on those goals that are not mutual.  And, finally, it assumes the deal was better than your alternative, your BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement).  If these conditions were met, the deal is objectively fair no matter the walk away perception of any one of the parties.  That said, the walk away should be consistent with the actual fairness of the deal but that would depend on the negotiator's personality and disposition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T16:50:07.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14744" CreationDate="2015-04-22T17:42:43.847" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Story points are designed to compare baskets of varying sized stories&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...should we expect that we could approximately four 2-point stories&#xA;  completed in the same time as an 8-point? or thirteen 1-point stories&#xA;  in the same time as a 13-point story etc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, but don't stretch it to the extremes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use that equivalence at the sprint velocity level. That is what is the very purpose of story points. You are trying to make a rough assessment of how much you can schedule into each sprint with a reasonable chance of completion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, two cautions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/dont-equate-story-points-to-hours&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;But that does not mean you should say something like, “One story point = eight hours.”&lt;/a&gt; Two developers can start by estimating a given user story as one point even though their skill level may be very different.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/why-i-dont-use-story-points-for-sprint-planning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Don't use story points for Sprint Planning.&lt;/a&gt; During sprint planning break-up product backlog items into tasks and estimate each in hours. This will give you a better handle on how much the team can committ.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-04-22T17:54:36.573" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T17:54:36.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14743" CreationDate="2015-04-22T17:49:04.427" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;By my opinion you are talking about the same. What is a fairness? For me situation when both part will get maximum of outcome from negotiation is rather fair. The problem is that this is just my opinion :-) Let me explain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's imagine abstract negotiations involving two people (Mr. A and Mr.B). Following completion of negotiations, each party will receive abstract valuable points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's assume, that there are 3 possible finals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1) Mr. A: 5, Mr.B:5&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2) Mr. A:10, Mr.B:4&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3) Mr. A:3 or Mr.B:8.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, let look at these possible finals in the context of &quot;fairness&quot;. What of whese finals we can call &quot;fair&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mr. A may think that result of first final is not fair, because in second final he will get five times more, than Mr. B will lose. Mr. B may think the same (but he will compare result with third final).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, obviously, Mr. A and Mr. B will will not call &quot;fairness&quot; third and second finals, respectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outside observer may think that second result is most &quot;fair&quot;, because in that case total outcome is biggest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who of them are right? I don't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, let look at these possible finals in the context of &quot;maximum outcome for both part&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easy. Only first result satisfy this constraint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, problems of win-win negotiations is that assumed that all people have the same objective definition of fairness. I am a subjectivist and I think that fairness has no objective definition at all. On the other hand &quot;Maximum outcome for both part&quot; have no this problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-04-22T18:05:38.683" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T18:05:38.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14743" CreationDate="2015-04-22T20:53:17.220" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding negotiations, fairness is usually not attached to the negotiation result but to the negotiation process:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Were all information accessible by all parties?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Were unfair manipulation techniques involved?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having this, not all win-win situations have to be considered as fair by the negotiations parties. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, win-win could be considered as loose-loose because all parties have to agree on a compromise dropping their (at least parts of) goals (I'm not absolutely sure but I think I got this from Rita's PMP Prep)...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-04-24T04:54:42.827" LastActivityDate="2015-04-24T04:54:42.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14744" CreationDate="2015-04-23T01:58:29.823" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe story points overcomplicate the planning process. They are an unnecessary abstraction. IMHO; if you can, stick with hours&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13519" LastActivityDate="2015-04-23T01:58:29.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14744" CreationDate="2015-04-23T02:15:30.793" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very confusing topic about story points. The purpose of story points to to have a rough understanding of relative size of stories. To get an idea of how this works, try replacing the numerical values with t-shirt sizes. You could still break stories into small, medium, large, xl, and so on to understand how big one is relative to another, but no amount of small t-shirts result in a large t-shirt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also important to understand that we use story size estimates to describe effort, not time. This can also be confusing because there is often a correlation between the two, but it's not solid, so you can fall into a pretty big trap if you assume the two are directly linked. Mike Cohn has an interesting blog post about this that compares it to running. The effort is the distance run and if I run a 5k in 25 minutes, next week it'll probably still take me around 25 minutes, but I can't assume that a 10k will take me 50 minutes or that the same 5k will take someone else the same 25 minutes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your safest bet is to not apply math principles (2*4=8) to story points. If you see patterns emerge over time, it's usually safe to leverage them, as long as you know that they aren't solid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-04-23T02:15:30.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14751" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-23T06:52:14.767" Score="1" ViewCount="1838" Body="&lt;p&gt;Microsoft Project 2013: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any default fields which show Time &amp;amp; Date when a task was FIRST CREATED, and when it was LAST EDITED ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to filter for tasks which lately have been added or updated into the whole project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16911" LastActivityDate="2015-04-24T14:50:21.177" Title="Timestamp fields for &lt;initial creation&gt; and &lt;last update&gt; of a task" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14752" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-23T07:44:19.613" Score="1" ViewCount="3322" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am getting to grips with MS Project 2013. But I wonder if it is usable for Agile software development? So far it seems to be quite useful for setting up an initial plan, for creating offers, calculating costs and for calculating delivery dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what happens when the project is actually in progress? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Waterfall model is long outdated. Software today is being developed in cycles. You are planning these cycles and achieving milestones but while these are developed you are collecting Bug and feature requests from the users and you need to adapt to sudden changes, unexpected events and software failures etc. So new tasks will constantly arise during the project, existing tasks will change and actual work time will be different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can MS-Project be usefully used for constantly adapting to modifications of a &quot;live&quot; project? Can it be used for project management, as well as tracking activity and collecting bug and feature requests?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16911" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-04-23T11:27:31.857" LastActivityDate="2017-06-11T14:59:07.583" Title="Microsoft Project for Agile software development?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14752" CreationDate="2015-04-23T08:17:28.323" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used it for Scrum projects, but it is not too comfortable. You can use it to forecast delivered functionality at a later point of time, but you need a lot of manual work for that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you should translate complexity estimations to duration estimations based on current velocity, and update them when velocity changes or stories are reestimated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you must update the predecessor relations frequently, as the backlog changes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if you choose to use higher level tasks for iterations, tasks representing stories must be moved between them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, however, there's big value of using a mature planning / tracking software (for example, MS Project). You should consider using it on a higher level - you can track against delivery cycle, probably on an epic level; you can include additional workstreams that are not covered by Scrum (going live, migration support, training, etc.); you can track programs consisting multiple projects to see if they are still on track for a final delivery...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16711" LastEditorUserId="16711" LastEditDate="2015-04-23T08:22:46.183" LastActivityDate="2015-04-23T08:22:46.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14754" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14761" CreationDate="2015-04-23T08:57:22.627" Score="1" ViewCount="1614" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am helping a colleague &quot;debug&quot; an MS-Project project plan today, where there seem to be unexplained over-allocations. They have chosen quite a complex method for restricting allocations and I don't quite understand what I am seeing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The units that are allocated to a task, for any particular resource, seem to be governed by settings in three places:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Resource Availability in the resource calendar&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Resource Max Units in the resource sheet&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The max units allocation on the task&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't understand the relationship between these settings and so I cannot determine what this colleague is actually forcing Project to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Monday is a fully working day, with a default of 8 hours for Resource A. If I then set their availability via the calendar to 50% I assume that they can only spend 4 hours on the project on that day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I then set their Max Units on the Resource Sheet to 50%, does that mean they will only spend 2 hours per day (i.e. 50% of their availability, 50% of 4 hours)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I then allocate them to a task at 50% does that provide them with 2 hours availability on the task (i.e. 50% matches their max units from the Resource Sheet and so is allowed) or does it provide 1 hour, being 50% of the availability I have inherited from the Resource Sheet/Calendar combination?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the past I always have 100% resource availability within time blocks they are on the project, and restrict their availability to tasks within the Resource Allocation. I have no experience of this, apparently 3-layer, description of a Resource's task-hours allocation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is driving me nuts! What is the relationship between these settings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-04-23T14:16:45.300" Title="Resource Availability, Max Units - Relationship between settings" Tags="&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14754" CreationDate="2015-04-23T10:28:18.867" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to try and reach an understanding I have performed various tests in model situations and I have discovered the situation is usually straightforward, but is counter-intuitive in one example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The max units on the Resource Sheet matches the availability as defined by the calendar. If you change the calendar then the Resource Sheet changes and vice versa. If you say a resource is only 50% available then their max units on the resource sheet is also 50%. For an 8 hour day you could apply them at 50% and get 4 hours work. If you apply them at 100% then you are breaking the max units &quot;rule&quot; and you get an over-allocation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there is no &quot;relationship&quot; between these settings, they are all a reflection of the same underlying measure- How much of a project-day can that Resource be applied without over-allocating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However there is a problem, and this is at the root of my colleague's problem with his Project. In the resource calendar you can set different blocks of time at different availability of units. Suppose in Week 1 a resource was available 100% and in Week 2 they had 50% availability. If you allocate them 100% to a task that is scheduled in Week 1 then no problem. If that task then moves to Week 2 as a result of scheduling slippage, the resource allocation will remain at 100% and therefore cause an over-allocation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-04-23T11:21:47.650" LastActivityDate="2015-04-23T11:21:47.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14757" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14763" CreationDate="2015-04-23T11:37:28.280" Score="6" ViewCount="1011" Body="&lt;p&gt;If technical skills of developer are very rare and specific and this developer hasn't full-time employment on one product, can he work with other product inside other Developer Team at the same time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If &quot;yes&quot;, whether he should attend on all Scrum events of both teams? What if his services are needed only for part of time of second project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-04-23T11:53:27.707" LastActivityDate="2015-04-23T15:26:19.327" Title="Can one developer be included to several Development Teams at the same time?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14757" CreationDate="2015-04-23T13:03:34.190" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've worked in several situations where resources were split in a matrix formation between projects, and I have to say, it's not ideal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developers need to be in &quot;The zone&quot; to be at their best. If you split them among parallel projects, you're asking them to switch contexts continuously. It usually takes about 10-15 minutes to get into &quot;the zone&quot;, so if a developer is on 4 projects at a time, he's lost an hour a day just getting into context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;that's not including potential output quality issues. The more projects a assigned to the same resource, the more potential for mistakes and bad form you introduce. Imagine a developer who absentmindedly codes in project 2 with remnants of something he picked up on project 1. Or maybe he's distracted because he didn't really get into the zone yet, but he's being rushed by a pushy product owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, we tried to limit the number of contexts because it also meant the devs didn't spend much of their time is as many scrum ceremonies. More meetings = less dev time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16927" LastActivityDate="2015-04-23T13:03:34.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14757" CreationDate="2015-04-23T13:06:16.083" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If his skills are rare, but needed by your company, then they need sharing. So in the short-term, have him pair with people from both teams, to ensure those skills become less rare. Over time, the issue of splitting a resource across multiple products will go away and he can work on just one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14835" LastActivityDate="2015-04-23T13:06:16.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14752" CreationDate="2015-04-23T13:59:14.427" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For an overview of using Project 2013 in scrum and agile see:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.office.com/2013/12/10/december-17-webcast-available-on-demand-scrum-and-agile-planning-with-microsoft-project-2013/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blogs.office.com/2013/12/10/december-17-webcast-available-on-demand-scrum-and-agile-planning-with-microsoft-project-2013/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-04-23T13:59:14.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14754" CreationDate="2015-04-23T14:16:45.300" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you edit a resource's availablility - you are changing his/her max units over time.  It will match the value in the max units field for the applicable time frame.  For example: From April 1 to April 24, the resource's max units are 100%.  After April 24, their max should only be 50%.  If I Look at the resource sheet anytime between April 1 and April 24 - I will see 100%.  But, if I open the project on April 25 and look at the resource sheet, I will see 50%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't agree with your statement &quot;The max units on the Resource Sheet matches the availability as defined by the calendar&quot;.  I can change a resource's calendar to only allow work from 08:00 am to 12:00 pm - 4 hours per day.  If I set the resource's max units to 50%, I am saying the resource can produce 30 minutes of effort for every one hour of working time set in his/her calendar.  So 50% of 4 hours will be 2 hours per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By default, Project will assign a resource at his/her max units as long as: 1) max units are not above 100%.  In that case the resource will still be assigned at 100%. 2) You have contoured the resource's max units over time using Resource Availability in the Resource Information dialog and the assignment spans over a change.  In that case, the resource will be assign at his/her max units at the start of the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your scenario, let's say your task suddenly increases in duration.  Instead of neatly fitting into week one, it starts in week one and extends into week two.  The resource will be overallocated because of a 100% assignment for the entire task - but his/her availability drops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not recommend getting so fine grained as changing a resources max units every week.  You (and your client) will spend their entire time managing a Project file - not managing the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-04-23T14:16:45.300" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14744" CreationDate="2015-04-23T15:11:26.287" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, I use both story points and hours. I also work hard to &lt;strong&gt;decouple&lt;/strong&gt; any kind of comparison between the two. They are two different measures which give two different views into the level of commitment as well as health of the sprint when in progress. (Note: I'm assuming scrum here.) To this end, I move away from using any kind of points-to-hours conversion/comparison chart as soon as possible. Although it is helpful to sometimes start with just such a chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time estimates are familiar to delivery team members and are somewhat easy to quantify - everyone makes estimates for how long something is going to take in many aspects of their lives, not just work assignments. If used in concert with evidence based scheduling, the release cycle can reveal valuable insight into the estimation skills of the team and individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I frame story points as a measure of all the other &quot;stuff&quot; about estimating a work effort: complexity, card dependencies, client dependencies, technical challenge, problem definition, etc. - basically, that immeasurable intuitive feel a team member has based on experience in the industry, with the company, and with the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to the Fibonacci scale, I've found it much more useful to have 3-5 points reflect something around an 8-hour-ish effort. When efforts start showing 8, 13, and 21 points, it becomes much more apparent to the individual and the team that a story may need to be broken into smaller tasks. That's the value using something like the Fibonacci scale. It helps shake out planning fallacy bias if used properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16486" LastActivityDate="2015-04-23T15:11:26.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14757" CreationDate="2015-04-23T15:26:19.327" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;If skills are very rare assign another person to shadow&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If technical skills of developer are very rare and specific and this&#xA;  developer hasn't full-time employment on one product, can he work with&#xA;  other product inside other Developer Team at the same time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @FrancisPeixoto pointed out, team members are most productive if they focus on one thing at a time without any distractions. Even within one team, as a Scrum Master I try to keep team members from working on too many stories at a time. In other words I set a Work In Progress (WIP) limit and keep a close watch on it. So, the answer to your above question is, no you should not plan to have team members assigned to different teams &quot;at the same time&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, sometimes I have compromised on this for practical reasons. We had a database developer who had specialized knowledge and skills. I had him assigned to help more than one team at a time. However, as @DavidArno pointed out I had other team members shadow and learn the ropes so that we don't have to continue this practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If &quot;yes&quot;, whether he should attend on all Scrum events of both teams?&#xA;  What if his services are needed only for part of time of second&#xA;  project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you ask them to attend all Scrum events for both teams, you will be wasting their time and they will get furstrated. In my case, I made that person a full-fledged member in one team. In the other team, I used to coordinate offline and bring them in only to the extent they are needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-04-23T15:26:19.327" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14764" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-23T16:49:37.637" Score="3" ViewCount="231" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a question about this article &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.rallydev.com/community/coaching/role-pi-objectives&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Role of PI Objectives&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, where the author stated near the end of the article: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As I captured these thoughts I was reminded of a key difference&#xA;  between release trains, and it strongly impacts the degree of value&#xA;  placed on the &quot;focus on outcomes,&quot; above. I tend to see release trains&#xA;  fall to one of two extremes: Either they drive the vast majority of&#xA;  their work, 85-95%, through portfolio epics, and reduce the autonomy&#xA;  of the trains; or they drive the vast majority of their work as&#xA;  features, and reserve epics for the 5-10% of work that truly cuts&#xA;  across trains. While I don’t view either of these approaches as&#xA;  fundamentally wrong, I do believe that we will see that a majority of&#xA;  companies solving the big &quot;system of systems&quot; engineering problems,&#xA;  encouraging a strongly epic-driven approach, will find that SAFe for&#xA;  Lean Software Engineering will be a more effective approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I understanding correctly that if I had to choose between:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) organizing trains that are strongly epic-driven&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) organizing trains that are strongly feature-driven &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you would recommend (b)?    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In recent conversations on how to best organize trains, one proposal has been more along the lines of (a) - where we would form trains by looking at our epics and assigning epics to a train, and then organize teams in each train in a manner where we form cross-functional teams to support individual epics (or form teams that could support multiple epics.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any feedback anyone can provide would be greatly appreciated! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16939" LastEditorUserId="15972" LastEditDate="2015-05-08T08:43:55.937" LastActivityDate="2016-06-24T11:57:57.083" Title="Objectives and release train philosophy" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;safe&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14765" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-23T17:34:49.500" Score="3" ViewCount="1911" Body="&lt;p&gt;So our product owner is in a position where she feels encumbered by the decomposition of a large user story: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product owner presents a story&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Engineers determine that it is too big for a single story&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Engineers convert it to an epic (or theme) and then write additional user stories (as developers) that we need to complete the epic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than have the PO write the developer [sub]stories, we write them for ourselves with the understanding that when all of &lt;em&gt;our&lt;/em&gt; stories are complete, we will deliver the epic and the acceptance/confirmation will be done on criteria originally written by the PO (the original story that we converted to an epic)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PO's Story (&lt;em&gt;as a admin, I want to blabbity-blah, so that I can blabbity blah&lt;/em&gt;) (total 21 points)&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dev Story 1 (8 points)&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dev Story, Task 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dev Story, Task 2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dev Story 2 (13 points)&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dev Story, Task 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dev Story, Task 2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is easier for the PO to manage. She just writes up the story, so she can remain high level with her eye on the bigger picture instead of wasting hours writing additional stories that she has no interest in nor does she understand. The devs are happy because we can break everything up into logical workloads and point them, then task those out to provide a WBS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the engineering manager is a bit uneasy because he wants each of the dev stories to be tested against some sort of acceptance critieria int the same way the Epic Story will be accepted/tested; as milestones/checkpoints so to speak. We are recommending something more low level in these instances: for instance unit test suites that show everything is passing, and/or QA running SOAPUI tests against new webservices, or other test tools -- but mainly unit test suites for things that don't yet have a front end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in short, we're recommending that dev stories are accepted by QA through the results of different kinds of tests. We'll try to keep QA involved with the requirements so they can ask questions during the process and ensure that engineers are keeping the original acceptance criteria in sight. Then we'll have the PO and QA do acceptance on the original story once the Epic is delivered and that will be done against the critieria written on the original story which we converted to an Epic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is: do you see anything intrinsically wrong with this? How do you approach the testing of epic, etc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16940" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-04-23T19:38:52.367" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T15:31:52.977" Title="Who tests what criteria for epics?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;testing&gt;&lt;epics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14752" CreationDate="2015-04-23T17:50:57.337" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Team Explorer allows Excel and MS Project to interact with a TFS server.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181675.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181675.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've used it in the past to generate visual aids for reporting purposes. The plugin allows the user to input entries in a TFS task board, create links, and output a &quot;gantt&quot; from a project or sprint perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16927" LastActivityDate="2015-04-23T17:50:57.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14765" CreationDate="2015-04-23T19:26:14.063" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Make an effort to write independent smaller stories&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...additional stories that she has no interest in nor does she&#xA;  understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't write stories that the PO doesn't understand. If it is for developers' convenience, it is not a story. It is just a technical task. Put in more effort in writing smaller stories that the PO does understand. &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/14627/what-we-should-do-with-tasks-which-estimated-time-bigger-than-sprint/14628&quot;&gt;See previous discussion in PMSE here how to split larger stories.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, it is not that the Product Owner toils alone to write stories and acceptance criteria. In backlog refinement meetings, the development team should collaborate with the Product Owner to split the stories and write acceptance criteria. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...unit test suites for things that don't yet have a front end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unit tests are for developer productivity. They can reduce the amount of regression testing to be done by the QA team. However, they are no substitutes for QA and PO doing acceptance tests from the end-user point of view. &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/using-vertical-slicing-and-estimation-to-make-business-decisions-at-adobe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stories should be vertical slices (with a front-end and a matching back-end).&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DizgA.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So my question is: do you see anything intrinsically wrong with this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. Your team seems to be burdened by waterfall thinking. This is not unusual for teams trying to transition from waterfall to agile. Try to get some help (using online resources or a mentor) with slicing stories vertically. Your Engineering Manager seems to have the right instincts. That is a huge positive!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do you approach the testing of epic, etc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't. The team should put in the effort to write independent smaller stories that the PO can understand and test. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2015-04-23T19:26:14.063" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5681" CreationDate="2015-04-24T00:14:19.650" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The issue here isn't really whether the PO attends the retrospective or not, I think. Where it starts to become problematic, is that this PO also has a role as manager of the team. Scrum, being based on empirical process control theory, depends on transparency, inspection and adaptation. The Sprint Review is then for the inspection and adaptation of the product and the retrospective is for the inspection and adaptation of the work methods. Taking that idea behind the retrospective, I would say that the PO is not required (but still welcome) in the retrospective, unless the work method of the team is such that it brings harm to the product. In that case, I can understand that the product owner wants to be present in the meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think what is more likely to be the case here, is that the culture of this company doesn't allow this team to be self-organising. (An interesting question perhaps is why the PO is also manager of the team while the scrum guide is very clear about the self organisation of the team.) The result is then that management in this company is afraid to let this team go and handle the retrospective by themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the previous scrum master was quite authoritative (even calling him project manager), it seems possible to me that this previous scrum master has caused some frustration in the team, which has led to some big arguments, possibly even turning a retrospective of a while ago into a big shouting match. I wonder what the reason was that the previous scrum master is no longer a part of this team. Did he choose to leave after upsetting the team, did he find the company couldn't change it's culture or was he taken out of the team by management? Sorry for perhaps adding more questions than answers, but I guess there are many people who face a situation not unlike the one described here, so I thought I'd add my insights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16944" LastActivityDate="2015-04-24T00:14:19.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14751" CreationDate="2015-04-24T14:50:21.177" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a 'Created' field, but no updated field.  You can compare two saved copies of a file using the Compare Projects command - Report tab.  The Compare projects allows you to compare two copies (Save As) of the same file and will generate a third project file to show added tasks, deleted tasks, and changes in task or resource data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-04-24T14:50:21.177" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14772" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14773" CreationDate="2015-04-24T15:43:15.720" Score="8" ViewCount="11909" Body="&lt;p&gt;God bless, I never had a lot of deal with maintenance. But I am curious, &lt;strong&gt;is it possible to customize Scrum for maintenance?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If yes, how to guarantee SLA (if developers have a fixed Sprints), for example? Or what Product owner should do? Gather bug reports or something else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastActivityDate="2016-11-29T16:05:25.523" Title="Scrum on maintenance. Is it possible?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;maintenance&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14772" CreationDate="2015-04-24T16:21:09.310" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would have a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://intland.com/blog/agile/scrum-kanban-scrumban/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrumban&lt;/a&gt;, it combines best of both worlds &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28software_development%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban gives you a more just-in-time way of planning where you can tackle issues that are incoming as soon as possible. Combining this with the Scrum roles and meetings leads to something that feels very good for maintenance teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product owners should develop the long-term vision and the short-term priority list, just like normal. But instead of set fixed date planning meetings. Do just-in-time planning sessions with the Product owner and make a top-list of items, repeat this when-ever the short-term backlog is nearly dried up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is one good question, when to release? Release when ever the work you need to release is finished or release everything that is finished on a set date. Focus on getting stuff really done and make sure you have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branching_%28revision_control%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;branch&lt;/a&gt; that is always in a releasable state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also read the free e-book: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.crisp.se/file-uploads/Kanban-vs-Scrum.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.crisp.se/file-uploads/Kanban-vs-Scrum.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe also check &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/12611/how-do-handle-adhoc-work-during-a-sprint-from-pressing-customers&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, where possible ways of handling adhoc work during a sprint are explained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2015-04-24T16:49:35.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14772" CreationDate="2015-04-24T17:36:48.820" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it may be possible to use Scrum, queue-based frameworks are generally a better fit for support processes. Queues should be designed around &lt;em&gt;response times&lt;/em&gt; rather than &lt;em&gt;solution lead times&lt;/em&gt; for best results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Capacity and work-in-progress (WIP) limits should also be clearly articulated. You should also have a clear plan of how to handle situations where capacity or WIP limits are insufficient to meet your defined Service Leval Agreements (SLAs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Agility and Fixed Guarantees&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can certainly adopt agile practices for maintenance, but SLA guarantees &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt; are (by definition) not iterative and not agile. Agile frameworks are about improving estimates and continuous process improvement; they are not designed to guarantee fixed lead times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, while Scrum is a project management framework, an agile framework like Scrum or Kanban can certainly be used for support with a large number of caveats. Scrum in particular is largely focused on estimating capacity based on time-boxed iterations, which isn't particularly conducive to dealing with high-priority issues that arise mid-Sprint. Handling support while a product is being developed is certainly part of Scrum, but I wouldn't recommend it for a support-only process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Queues and WIP Limits&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban is somewhat of a better fit for support processes, insofar as it's queue-based. As maintenance issues are found, they are enqueued. With Kanban, you have the flexibility to design queues that map to your service level agreements, but again with some caveats. In particular, Kanban is optimized for queues with predictable variability in story size. Support and maintenance tickets would therefore need to be aggressively managed and decomposed into bite-sized pieces in order to maintain flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my personal experience, an SLA should guarantee &lt;em&gt;response time&lt;/em&gt; rather than promising a fixed time-box for results. With Kanban, that could be accomplished by adding a few queues such as &quot;Triage&quot; and &quot;Respond to Customer&quot;, and ejecting or pausing work-in-progress (WIP) items from other queues when your high-speed queues are full.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Managing Expectations When Capacity is Exceeded&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's important to understand that there's no free lunch. Regardless of your methodology, your team needs to have sufficient capacity to manage the maximum WIP you are expected to handle within your SLA. If you exceed those WIP limits, then you must have a defined process for managing your WIP limits. This may be via transparent communications with your internal or external customer, or (in some environments) may be handled as business risk with attendant costs such as customer refunds. No matter how you handle it, or what your planned capacity is, it is always possible to exceed your queue size or WIP limits, so you must decide ahead of time how to handle that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-04-24T17:36:48.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14772" CreationDate="2015-04-24T18:23:39.827" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Kanban is suitable for software maintenance work&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is not suitable for software maintenance. Kanban is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban was developed at Toyota in Japan to improve the auto assembly line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;David Anderson literally wrote the book on the use of Kanban in Information Technology (IT).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From David Anderson Interview:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agile.dzone.com/articles/where-kanban-works-well-david&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The most commonly cited instance where Kanban is extremely successful is software maintenance.  Anderson says this involves fixing production bugs and doing small incremental improvements.  Kanban works well with software maintenance because such work isn't a natural fit for projects and one to four week sprints.  Anderson says, &quot;It makes more sense just to take the requests, work on them, and when they're ready, find some way of deploying them to production.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban has only a few principles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Visualize the workflow: You cannot improve what you cannot see. Knowledge work needs a way to visually show the status of each task. Kanban boards are one way to display this progress.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Limit Work In Progress (WIP): Minimizing WIP improves throughput.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Measure the lead time: Cumulative flow charts are very useful for this purpose. And look for ways to make continuous improvements in small increments.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/snalest/maintenance-fun-using-kanban&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here is a good slideshow outlining not only how Kanban can be applied for software maintenance work, but also how to make it fun!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-04-25T11:34:50.090" LastActivityDate="2015-04-25T11:34:50.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14765" CreationDate="2015-04-25T11:37:00.957" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Who tests what criteria for epics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epics and themes aren't generally testable, so the answer is really &quot;no one.&quot; Instead, the entire Scrum Team must decompose these too-large items during Backlog Refinement or Sprint Planning until they are stories that contain testable criteria that can be measured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The entire Scrum Team, which explicitly includes the Product Owner, must collaborate on defining actionable user stories that are &lt;em&gt;testable&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;demonstrable&lt;/em&gt;. Your current process does not encourage sufficient collaboration to make this happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, your current process causes the team to miss out on opportunities to collaborate with the Product Owner to negotiate implementation details that add value, reduce project costs, or lead to increased sustainability. While the Product Owner shouldn't have to care about code-level details, understanding the trade-offs involved in different implementations can help the whole team to ensure that the right thing is built, and that opportunities to build a potentially-shippable increment are increased through open discussions about Minimum Viable Features and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_aren%27t_gonna_need_it&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;YAGNI&lt;/a&gt; principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epics and themes should never, ever make it off the Product Backlog and into the Sprint Backlog. Doing so is a very strong &quot;project smell&quot; that indicates a fundamental problem with the implementation of the team's Scrum process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Tasks vs. Dependent Stories&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Stories&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories and tasks are two different things. A user story has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_story#Format&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;format&lt;/a&gt; that's expected to act as a placeholder that defines a feature, a point of view representing the beneficiary of the feature, and a context. Variations of the Connextra format is what people think of most often:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a [role or &quot;value consumer&quot;],&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want [feature or functionality]&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that [benefit within some context].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story is a conversational placeholder to enable collaboration, and isn't intended as a full-fledged specification. Stories are generally estimated in story points (e.g. modified Fibonacci sequence, tee-shirt sizes, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories generally live on the Product Backlog, because while they adhere to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_%28mnemonic%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST mnemonic&lt;/a&gt; they represent value to the project and potentially-shippable features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Tasks&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, a &lt;em&gt;task&lt;/em&gt; is a checklist item that helps them team track their progress towards story completion. A story should have tasks, but a story should (as a rule of thumb) not have dependent stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tasks often live on the Sprint Backlog, rather than the Product Backlog, because they are really implementation details or technical milestones rather than stories that should strictly adhere to the INVEST critiera. Nevertheless, they should be small and testable, so there is certainly a bit of overlap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tasks can be story-pointed, but are often estimated in ideal hours rather than levels of effort. For example, a story like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a banking customer&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want to be able to use any ATM without fees&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I have ready access to my money at any location.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;should be broken down into discrete, measurable tasks during Sprint Planning. The tasks for this story, whether they are on the back of a story card, items on the Sprint Backlog, rows on a spreadsheet, or contained on their own index cards, might look like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;#9745; Add a database column to track ATM network membership. (2 hours)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;#9745; Add a database column to track fees associated with foreign-network ATM withdrawals. (16 hours)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;#9744; Add model callbacks to reimburse customers for ATM fees attributable to withdrawals at foreign ATMs. (8 hours)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tasks can be added, deleted, or modified by the team throughout the Sprint as things are learned, or as dependencies or implementation details are discovered. The Sprint Backlog belongs to the Development Team, not the Product Owner, so the contents of the team's backlog reflects the work that the Development Team needs to do to implement the user story from the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Collaboration&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the Product Backlog belongs to the Product Owner, and the Sprint Backlog belongs to the team, it is nevertheless useful to ensure that both artifacts are visible to everyone in the organization in order to foster collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Product Owner who can't see the level of effort or hours involved in story-related tasks has insufficient visibility into the real costs of a given story, and the team loses out on valuable opportunities to collaborate on implementation details that are &lt;em&gt;negotiable&lt;/em&gt;. For example, during a Sprint it may turn out that the Product Owner doesn't all fees for all banks covered; the 80/20 rule means that perhaps the team can concentrate on hard-coding values for three local banks that generate the most complaints, rather than having to engineer a more flexible solution that would apply to all banks everywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Unit/Feature Testing and Sprint Review Demonstrations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epics aren't testable or (generally) demonstrable. Neither are themes. That makes them unsuitable for Sprints; they should only be used for long-range planning, and decomposed as needed during Backlog Refinement or Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All stories that adhere to the INVEST criteria are inherently testable. In my personal experience, stories should &lt;em&gt;generally&lt;/em&gt; be driven by feature or integration tests, and tasks should be driven by unit tests. There are certainly all kinds of caveats and exceptions to this rule of thumb, but following this advice helps in many ways, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feature tests (such as automated browser testing) show the feature from a user-visible point of view, and may even stand in for user acceptance testing in many situations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feature tests build trust with stakeholders, and often demonstrate that the Right Thing&amp;trade; was built.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unit tests are for the Development Team, and help drive design and prevent regressions. They are generally uninteresting as Sprint Review demonstrations, but are the most important items from a sustainable development point of view.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This style splitting TDD and ATDD along the lines of features vs. tasks helps maintain the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.velocitypartners.net/blog/2014/01/28/agile-testing-the-agile-test-automation-pyramid/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;testing pyramid&lt;/a&gt;, with a few slow high-level tests supported by a base layer of blazingly-fast unit tests. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lJc45.png&quot; alt=&quot;Test Pyramid from Velocity Partners&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As always, there will be exceptions and caveats, but as rules of thumb I have found the foregoing to be reasonably solid practices. YMMV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-04-25T11:37:00.957" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14733" CreationDate="2015-04-25T12:06:28.240" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I'm tempted to close this question as an opinion poll, I think it can be retconned to properly focus on the roles and responsibilities of a project management position. This also leads to a very simple answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Titles are a communications tool, but have little intrinsic meaning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What you're asking for is a &lt;em&gt;Technical Project Manager&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Role &quot;Requirements&quot; Aren't Responsibilities&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your fundamental issue is that you have failed to clearly identify the scope of the role, the responsibilities of the role, and the deliverables for the role. A job title should never focus on qualifications, it should be a form of shorthand to describe what the role is supposed to &lt;em&gt;accomplish&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your laundry list of requirements, you have actually listed only two actual responsibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manage several Business Systems' Web, Database and Cloud Projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cross-Functional Communication (Technical/Dev. Teams and Operations)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are tasking this person with managing a series of technical projects, and making them responsible for inter-team communications. Because you'd like this person to be technically-literate in addition to performing the responsibilities listed above, &lt;em&gt;Technical Project Manager&lt;/em&gt; would seem to be a reasonable shorthand description that would clearly communicate the scope of the role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Consult Your Management Team and Your HR Department&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spooning around titles in a vacuum is generally a bad idea. If your company has historically called the role outlined above &quot;The Powerless Junior Assistant in Charge of Pointless Updates,&quot; then that's what you should call it, too. The title needs to convey scope within a company-centric way, so don't wander off the reservation when inventing new titles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, it seems like you're really trying to write a job description or a help-wanted ad, rather than simply identify the correct title for the job. If such is the case, you need to involved the appropriate professionals at your organization to help you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write a clearer job description, with a better focus on roles and responsibilities rather than on skills or job history.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify the appropriate company &lt;em&gt;as used by your company internally.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify an appropriate job title that would attract the type of candidate you need.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While writing job descriptions, want ads, and the recruiting process itself are all outside the scope of acceptable topics on PMSE, the understanding of how to engage the correct company resources to initiate or staff a project is certainly within bounds. In my experience, when you focus on a job's core responsibilities, the job title will largely write itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-04-25T12:06:28.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14733" CreationDate="2015-04-25T19:51:22.377" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some organizations use &quot;agile&quot; without understanding the concepts or practices. If your organization has adopted agile or scrum, by all means state so unambiguously, preferably in the job title.  If not, don't use the buzzword hoping that hiring agile team members will miraculously convert your organization.  Agile PMs and scrum masters are wary lot and will be annoyed unless you convincingly communicate your organization's commitment to change. Some will jump at the challenge but expect to be compensated for the additional pain; they will be making transformational changes in your organizational culture that goes well beyond the software shop. If you aren't agile/scrum, have seasoned agile managers/scrum masters do the resume screening and interviewing. Look out for wannabes who see this as a way into agile/scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The requirement for &quot;Cross-Functional Communication (Technical/Dev. Teams and Operations)&quot; might imply to some that you may be looking for &quot;devops&quot; experience. Like agile and scrum, devops is a hot buzzword which should be used with care in a recruitment. Devops is also a transformational change in your organizational culture that is often the logical outgrowth of a successful agile development organization. Be prepared to be able to answer questions about whether this PM is to implement devops solutions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8524" LastEditorUserId="8524" LastEditDate="2015-04-25T20:04:42.893" LastActivityDate="2015-04-25T20:04:42.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14779" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-25T20:43:01.770" Score="9" ViewCount="2947" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our team we are working with system integration testing only. This means that we don't have any development tasks, just testing tasks and tasks related to preparing our heavy systems for test. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are looking into if Kanban is a good process for us, we think so. But we often have chains of tasks, for instance revert system X to previous version, then upgrade to current version, then backup the system, then perform some test. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can such chains of tasks be handled in Kanban, and how if so? Is there a way to indicate the relations of those items in the Kanban board?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16955" LastActivityDate="2015-04-30T17:17:06.673" Title="How are items with dependencies to other items handled in Kanban?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14780" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-26T10:00:01.793" Score="0" ViewCount="1119" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been working in a PMO since July of 2013. I estimate that I have roughly 3520 hours of project hours from working there. I got this estimate by counting 22 months between then and now and multiplied by 160 hours a month to get 3520 hours. At this pace, I estimate I would have 4500 hours in about 28 months. Do my projects need to span at least 36 months before I can take the test even though I would have the 4500 hours?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was in college I was a member of a business organization. We would report to a national headquarters. Each school year, we would have specific goals for things like recruiting new members and planning different types of events (professional development, community service, fundraising, etc.). We maintained a budget with somewhat defined and controlled record keeping. Each school year, we would report progress and results to headquarters and accumulate &quot;points&quot; depending on things like how many events we planned and executed and how many new members we recruited. Would I be able to consider these as &quot;project hours&quot; or am I only allowed to count paid work experience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16959" LastActivityDate="2015-04-26T18:38:22.860" Title="Question about documenting project hours on PMP application" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2015-04-27T14:10:51.130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14780" CreationDate="2015-04-26T18:38:22.860" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Document project hours is about documenting the numbers of ours working professional on leading or directing a project, see the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/certification/~/media/pdf/certifications/pdc_pmphandbook.ashx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMP Handbook&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, professional is not equal to getting paid. E.g. if you work for a charity organisation and manage projects voluntarily in a professional way, this counts also. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important point is that you are able to assign your experience to one of the five process groups:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Initiating&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Execution&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Monitoring &amp;amp; Controlling&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Closing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to check, if your experience during your college time fits in this. If it is reasoned by education, it won't count to be professional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your current 3520 hours: It is hard to believe that you had no times of sickness of holiday for the last 22 month. The important fact is, that you have to be able to name people (usually your customer, who could be your manager also) which may have to confirm the claimed hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2015-04-26T18:38:22.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14787" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-27T15:56:59.400" Score="0" ViewCount="5963" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am using MS Project for the first time, and I am developing a Gantt chart. I have multiple parallel tasks with different length, and only 1 employee works on these tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jIcQX.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the working time is shared between the tasks, each of these takes take longer than their defined single-time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I added the employee as &quot;resource&quot;. But when I click &quot;Match resources&quot; (I don't know how it is called in the English version of MS Project, German &quot;Ressourcen abgleichen&quot;), the tasks are shown in a sequential order in the time line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not what I want, because it looks like the employee would need to finish task A before starting Task B. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Development of feature X from April 1 till April 3.&quot; Testing of feature X&quot;  from April 3 till April 5. This us nit good because it looks like no testing is done during development at all, which is not true. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Better: &quot;Development&quot;  from April 1 till April 5 and &quot;Testing&quot;  from April 1 till April 5. However, these 2 tasks should still have their single-time of 3 days in the task overview list. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16969" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-02T13:14:51.460" LastActivityDate="2018-11-02T13:14:51.460" Title="MS Project: Multiple tasks for one employee" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14787" CreationDate="2015-04-27T17:47:00.413" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your tasks should be loaded as fixed units.  Go to Resource Usage and spread the hours per task against the one resource manually.  Don't let the tool level the tasks for your as it will split and sequence the tasks.  Instead, spread the hours across the duration of each task they way you think it should appear.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T17:47:00.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14787" CreationDate="2015-04-27T18:35:34.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Within the tasks resource widget (double click on the task) you can set the % the resource is available for the task. Set it e.g. To 75% for development and 25% for testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But keep in mind that project deals with the task duration and not with the effort. If you estimated the duration with 100 h and reduce the resource to 75%, you have to increase the duration to 125 h. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9gJcr.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Picture &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9gJcr.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; includes automatic resource matching / &quot;abgleichen&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-04-28T11:18:36.520" LastActivityDate="2015-04-28T11:18:36.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14791" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-28T03:41:37.163" Score="1" ViewCount="95" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our organization we occasionally have stories that involve a very large number of repeated process. The process itself is very simple and straightforward and usually we give 2~3 points.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the story is all about repeating this process 50 times, do I just estimate the effort point of the whole story to be something like 100 or 150 and then break it down to smaller numbers, and complete these in a duration of several sprints? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTE: There isn't any way to expedite the process or create automated script to shorten the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16976" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-04-28T08:49:30.883" LastActivityDate="2015-04-28T11:08:27.650" Title="How to estimate effort when the story involves a large number of repeat processes?" Tags="&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14791" CreationDate="2015-04-28T04:35:15.540" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;user story&lt;/strong&gt; should be able to be &lt;strong&gt;completed in one sprint&lt;/strong&gt;. So you should break it down if necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take care that you are able to divide stories in tasks that last at least a few days. Otherwise you will not be able to track progress during the dailys.&#xA;In addition reporting progress and &quot;keep the cards moving&quot; on the board is good for motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;estimation of the story points&lt;/strong&gt; should still be based on the effort (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/12182/aligning-story-points-value&quot;&gt;Aligning story points&amp;#39; value&lt;/a&gt;). If you have a high effort to achieve a user story, it should get &quot;a lot of&quot; points.&#xA;Based on this information, it is the job of the product owner to prioritize the story with respect to the customer value.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2015-04-28T11:08:27.650" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14793" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14800" CreationDate="2015-04-28T14:15:10.547" Score="5" ViewCount="2198" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're a company manufacturing moulds and other tools that our customers then use in their machines.&#xA;I was given a set of requirements for building a web application, which someone thinks that our customers would want to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing requirements engineering / BA work / stakeholder analysis, I wanted to stand back and first identify the business problem that the proposed application should solve. The thing is: Nobody can tell me. No customer survey was conducted, sales are unaware of problems the proposed web application could potentially solve, marketing hasn't identified a need either, the PM only sketches functional requirements instead of identifying the underlying issue (if there's any).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have come to the conclusion that creating a web application for our customers is nothing more than an idea of one or more (probably high-level) stakeholder(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that the top managers would be available for a meeting where I could potentially inquire about the problem, but:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Wouldn't that potentially annoy those who initially proposed the development of such an application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16978" LastEditorUserId="27722" LastEditDate="2018-08-31T13:52:56.793" LastActivityDate="2018-08-31T13:52:56.793" Title="How to deal with unclear requirements?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;&lt;business-analyst&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14779" CreationDate="2015-04-28T16:03:25.683" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are various ways of chaining tasks in Kanban. Assuming you are using a whiteboard and sticky notes, then two popular ways are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Annotate each task with the names of tasks on which it is dependent and that depend on it. When picking a task, first you check that those upon which it is dependent are already done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stack the tasks; literally stick dependent tasks one on top of the other, in the order in which they are to be tackled (top one being the first to be worked on).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are using a software Kanban board, then it becomes a case of investigating its features to see if it supports anything like the above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14835" LastActivityDate="2015-04-28T16:03:25.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14795" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-28T18:08:46.783" Score="1" ViewCount="69" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are starting out on detailing project deviations, and have found a combination of a JIRA ticket to show its progress/stage/state (Todo/Scoping/UX/etc), and Confluence Page to detail the requirements/deviations/etc (User Story, Requirements, UX, screenshots, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find the separation of the two concerning, as the ticket is really just a marker with no details in, and the wiki page contains has no state/progress, as well as detailing changes of a product in a wiki as that gets out of date quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q: Can I create a field, that is editable like the comments field is, but named &quot;Requirements&quot; or the like?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2240" LastActivityDate="2015-04-28T18:19:30.787" Title="Within JIRA, how can I detail project deviations with a wiki style field after creation" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14795" CreationDate="2015-04-28T18:19:30.787" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure I fully understand your question but I will begin the discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you mainly asking if it is possible to create a custom field? That is a feature of Jira, more info here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Adding+a+Custom+Field&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Adding+a+Custom+Field&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, yes, you could have a custom field that resembles the Comments section but call it Requirements, and use Attachments for your screenshots, etc. Your bug/task/etc pages would be pretty long though depending on how detailed your requirements are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, you could connect Confluence pages and Jira tasks. More info is here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.atlassian.com/2012/02/link-jira-issues-to-confluence-pages-automatically/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blogs.atlassian.com/2012/02/link-jira-issues-to-confluence-pages-automatically/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16917" LastActivityDate="2015-04-28T18:19:30.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14793" CreationDate="2015-04-28T18:32:49.620" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Calling the top-management sounds pretty much like ignoring someone in the hierachy. If the PM is able to come up with functional requirements he has at least some business problems or market chances in mind - even if the PM is not able to formulate them, e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The customer would like to use a fancy tool in oder to &quot;feel&quot; cool.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The company has to create a high-tech image (by using web technology).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Someone might try to sell fridges to the south pole (why not?) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do the following in order to identify the business need:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take care that you identified all of the internal stakeholder.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify the internal source of the idea&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check &quot;knowledge elicitation&quot; techniques, e.g. create Ishikawa diagrams with several stakeholders &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make your sponsor proud of you by fulfilling you task (identify requirements?) but highlight the identified risk of missing customer demands&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2015-04-28T18:32:49.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14752" CreationDate="2015-04-28T21:36:18.860" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm Scrum master in a company and I started to use Microsoft Project for manage the project backlog. It's very difficult use this software because Project is not prepared to arrange a project with an agile methodology. Now, I use a simple blackboard with posits. I save all histories in a Excell. &#xA;In the other hand you can use a specifically software like &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilefant.com/open-source/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;AgileFant&lt;/a&gt; it's free and have a community version &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16983" LastActivityDate="2015-04-28T21:36:18.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5681" CreationDate="2015-04-29T01:32:18.413" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a few others have stated, the PO most likely has a reason for wanting to be present. I'd suggest having a one on one with him and talk about why he wants to be present, find a good way to express your concerns (without being accusatory), and see what he thinks. Most of the time, you could come to some common ground that can work. Perhaps it's him talking about how he wants the team to grow and develop - that can set the stage for a retro. Also, you most likely know this, it will take several retros for a team to really get it. You'll need to keep the PO engaged. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will need buy in for the team to self organize and improve how they operate. With the PO there or not there, you'll still need his support in order for this to happen so your best bet truly is to work together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, I think you'd fulfill the spirit of agile development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16985" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T01:32:18.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14793" CreationDate="2015-04-29T03:09:24.000" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;So if I understand right, your company thinks you should build an application for your customer. The customer hasn't requested it and you have no validation that the problem being solved even exists? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How you proceed is really going to depend on where you fit in the overall organization. I'm going to assume you're a program/ project manager (given what this subject of this StackExchange is). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also assuming there is no portfolio level structure in your company. This would be the best way to deal with this. That's not going to solve this problem though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the requirements are coming from a product manager who is your peer or roughly equivalent to you: proceed with planning, so you can figure out the level of resources that would be needed. Then use the same guidance as below, for if the requirements come from someone senior. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the requirements are coming from someone in a senior position (two or more levels above you): You need to practice the Pothole School of Project Management. In a nutshell, you need to find someone with the authority and interest to brief. For example, if an engineering VP came up with the requirements, try and bring this to the attention of the sales VP. The sales guy doesn't want to waste resources on something the customer doesn't want and also doesn't want to upset the customer by losing focus or delivering something they don't want. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for this is as a project manager (program manager, scrum master, etc), you have no direct authority. You need to work with influence. If you try and tackle it directly, good odds you will be the one run over by the bus. The project management function is rarely seeing as having &quot;expertise&quot; so when an issue comes up, they are already at a disadvantage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as Tobias said, don't engage the customer. Even if you have direct relationships, you would be discussing internal company information and that's going to impact your credibility with the customer and your company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck, would love to hear how it goes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T03:09:24.000" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14802" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-29T06:33:47.723" Score="4" ViewCount="723" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a project manager with three years of experience working as a PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a client here who has a pretty good relationship with our company. He sent us a  web-project from one of his referrals which includes only 4 or 5 lines of high level specification. But he hasn't sent any kind of detailed requirements so that I can study his business needs and generate a questionnaire accordingly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Senior officials told me to carry on further with making a Homepage since he is a valuable client. I don't have a direct contact or anything, I'm stuck and feeling the pressure of the senior authority. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any solutions or answers to this situation ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16988" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-04-29T08:34:13.300" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T12:53:50.897" Title="How do I deal with a potentially difficult client on a web project?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14802" CreationDate="2015-04-29T06:43:16.847" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're really stuck I'd move the responsibility towards your managers: validate the home page with them, write down whatever requirement is necessary and make it approved by one of your senior. If it's really that simple they won't have any problem to share the responsibility of validating this with you ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16362" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T06:43:16.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14802" CreationDate="2015-04-29T08:14:50.677" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;With respect to @mamoo answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For sure, the best is to clarify the requirements. Due to the fact that you don't have access to the customer, the internal stakeholder should be your first choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, it might be difficult to find a timeslot for some stakeholder (e.g. management) to participate in a workshop or in other technical work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to get a decision by the relevant stakeholder (e.g. project sponsor), how to continue with the project. This might be achieved in a short and maybe informal meeting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;State your problem&lt;/strong&gt;. Formulate it as a risk: The Web page might not satisfy the customer due to... &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide a probability for the risk&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide a qualitative risk impact &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; one or two examples, e.g. &quot;The customer might think we are not able to build a sophisticated web page&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Provide a solution&lt;/strong&gt;, resp. mitigation for the risk: You could get into direct discussion with the customer, therefore you need the contact details.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having this, the relevant stakeholder can take a decision, e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Engage the customer directly in order to identify the requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accept the risk and try to figure our the requirements &quot;somehow&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-04-29T10:39:39.407" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T10:39:39.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14802" CreationDate="2015-04-29T11:15:00.927" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have contradicting information in your problem statement.  You first indicate that the client offered very high level requirements with the understanding that your firm would learn his business and solicit additional requirements.  Then you indicate your bosses are asking you to skip that work and proceed to develop the product.  It sounds like your client wants to collaboratively breakdown the requirements but your bosses don't.  So your bosses are difficult, not your client, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the effort to build this product without soliciting other requirements is being paid for by the client, then producing the product without working with the client to decompose the specs would be a huge mistake, a huge risk for your firm.  As others have said, raise that risk.  It doesn't mean they have to or will listen, but you need to put it on record.  Then, do as they say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the effort is not paid by the client and the firm just wants to put something together to start conversations and maybe show off your firm's capabilities, then proceed.  Perhaps interview some of your colleagues who may know some more detailed information about your client will help you breakdown those specs yourself with some degree of accuracy.  After all, you indicate the client is well known to your firm.  Since the client did not pay for it, then it becomes a starting point for the future requirements sessions.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T11:15:00.927" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14802" CreationDate="2015-04-29T12:53:50.897" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Create an interactive wireframe/prototype with minimal effort&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As @mamoo pointed out, try to validate the requirements with the internal project sponsor.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As @david-espina and others pointed out, make your seniors aware of the risk involved in building something without much of a clue what the client wants.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are tools available (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.axure.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Axure&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://pencil.evolus.vn/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Evolus Pencil - open source&lt;/a&gt;) that can build a quick interactive wireframe/prototype without any coding. You can zip it and email it to your project sponsor. This is very visual and your project sponsor can look at it and click through to see navigations, popups... They can  also forward it on to the client for doing the same. Unlike a long requirement document review, this is a painless way to get feedback from senior management and clients.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way you can get quick validation of your approach instead of investing a lot of resources and time into building something your client may not want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T12:53:50.897" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14808" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14811" CreationDate="2015-04-29T14:30:29.150" Score="9" ViewCount="1705" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, I like Agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, as well known, &quot;there is no silver bullet&quot;. Obviously, if agile methodologies still not &quot;rule the world&quot;, agile approach have some shortcomings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are disadvantages of agile methods?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In what kind of projects better not to use agile approach?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastActivityDate="2015-04-30T11:12:40.773" Title="Disadvantages of agile approach" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="6" ClosedDate="2015-05-06T01:35:26.207" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10088" CreationDate="2015-04-29T16:38:01.513" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sure there is.  Temporarily apply a deadline date to the Project Complete milestone.  Choose a date that is drastically far behind (maybe a year behind) the milestone's current finish date.  This forces project to calculate a huge negative total float...let's say -250 days total float.  Then sort your project by total float.  (be sure to un-check the &quot;keep outline structure&quot; box in the sort pop-up window) Everything that is -250 total float (in this example) is your critical path.  Since you sorted by total float, the secondary path would simple be the next chronological set of tasks which have just a bit more total float.  Perhaps your secondary path would be -245 total float.  All tasks showing -245 total float are the project's Secondary Critical Path (they have 5 more days of total float than the primary critical path has...using the sample/example numbers provided in this theoretical discussion.  The Tertiary Critical path would simple be the next chronological set of tasks which have just a bit more total float.  Perhaps your tertiary path would be -242 total float.  All tasks showing -242 total float are the project's Tertiary Critical Path (they have 3 more days of total float than the Secondary critical path has...and 8 more days of total float than the Primary Critical path has.  Use a code field of your choosing to tag all the primary critical path tasks with &quot;1&quot;, Secondary tasks with &quot;2&quot;, and Tertiary tasks with &quot;3&quot;.  Remove the temporary deadline date you applied (as described above).  Create a filter the show your &quot;1&quot;, &quot;2&quot;, and &quot;3&quot; tasks.  Either group or sort by the values, and the start/finish dates.  There you go...you've identified your project's Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Critical Paths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16997" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T16:38:01.513" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14808" CreationDate="2015-04-29T17:25:03.717" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an odd question, but let's see if I can give you a good answer. First, in the comments you said that you're thinking about the agile manifesto itself, not a framework like Scrum. The agile manifesto contains 4 value statements and 12 principles. It would be difficult to answer the question &quot;On what kinds of projects would having a ton of documentation and no working product be a preferable outcome?&quot; or similarly &quot;On what kinds of projects would sticking to a plan with the clear understanding that the plan is wrong be preferable to modifying the plan?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are cases where the agile manifesto may be too difficult to follow all at once in an organization. For example, one of the principles states &quot;Agile processes promote sustainable development.  The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.&quot; If you have a whole development organization used to huge swings of downtime and crunchtime, they probably don't know how to set a sustainable pace and this principle becomes more of a goal to work toward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the best answer I can think of to your question is that I can't think of any project type that wouldn't work with these values and principles, but there are organizations and engagements that don't have an existing culture that will support them and cultural change takes a lot more time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T17:25:03.717" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14808" CreationDate="2015-04-29T19:22:11.920" Score="15" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Predictive planning vs adaptive planning&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile methodologies and frameworks are better suited where technology is fast moving and requirements either cannot be stated fully upfront or tend to change often. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let us take the example of a B2C (business to consumer) software project that has a graphical user interface (GUI). You will build many gates for validating usability or user experience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wireframe testing prior to the development of a functioning website.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Alpha testing when a website is barely functional and populated with just enough data for participants to complete the essential tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Beta testing when a website is fairly stable and approaching full function.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A/B Testing post launch.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At every one of these stages, you look at the feedback and make changes to your design so that the final outcome is easy and appealing to the users and, most importantly, accomplishes the business goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To take another example, in one of my previous projects, we had integrated with a vendor product for media storage that was a key feature of our web site. Half way through the project, we found that the vendor support was so bad and the cost was so high we decided and built the capability ourselves and eliminated the need for the vendor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the reasons why among software developers you hear such extreme statements like, &quot;Most GanttCharts are lies from the get-go. Most GanttCharts' lies get bigger as time goes on.&quot; &#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0Ckrq.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at the Stacey Complexity Matrix above, Software Development, New Product Development and Applied R&amp;amp;D Projects all belong in the complicated or complex category. Use an adaptive planning methodology, such as Agile, for these. Frequent inspection and adaptation is key here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are disadvantages of agile methods?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cannot track dependencies as precisely as in a Gantt Chart (try creating FS, FF, SS and SF dependencies in an Agile tool).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cannot monitor cost and schedule variances very well (goal oriented product roadmaps will work to some extent).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not well suited for functional specialization (prefers cross-functional resources).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In what kind of projects better not to use agile approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, Construction and Engineering projects benefit from clearly contracted requirements and well established technology. The type of changes that we see in software requirements is neither expected nor is easy to accomplish in construction. Predictive planning works better for these. That is why very large construction projects are run successfully with the help of good upfront planning Gantt Chart and exception reporting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-04-30T11:12:40.773" LastActivityDate="2015-04-30T11:12:40.773" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14808" CreationDate="2015-04-29T21:04:52.517" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile methodologies is not just about methodologies, is a lot about culture.&#xA;And, as it is related to culture, a very long time is needed to run it in the best way you can. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can think the agile methods as a framework and adapt this to your reality and not just as a process or method. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To know the pillars of agile methodologies:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://agilemanifesto.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, reading the agile manifest we will can ask:&#xA;When it doesn't work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When following a plan is more important to respond to change (civil construction, some factories);&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Contract negotiation is more important than customer collaboration;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Comprehensive documentation is more important than a working product;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Processes and tools is more important than individuals and interactions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is important to mention that the agile manifesto doesn't say the documentation, contract negotiation and tools/process aren't important. It say that theres other things that you need to look first if you want to become more agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally is because of that is so hard to run agile in a big company, for example, theres a lot of cultural change needed for run this type of framework. So, if you can't ensure in any way you will follow the agile manifesto values in your company, maybe you can't run agile methods. But, if you really want to run agile, you will need to be a culture change agent first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5304" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T21:04:52.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10719" CreationDate="2015-04-30T11:12:37.083" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have used Copy&gt; Copy Picture option and then pasted it in Word Pad. This way the entire project is copied and pasted. To see the details one has to only zoom in and scroll without going from page to page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17015" LastActivityDate="2015-04-30T11:12:37.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10719" CreationDate="2015-04-30T13:21:00.813" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Other possible solution would be to upload your MS Project file to google drive. Once there, try to open it and a popup will display asking you to use a couple of free tools:&#xA;1. Gantter for google drive&#xA;2. Project viewer for google drive&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, I guess you can share the file with your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rMXVu.png&quot; alt=&quot;Take a look at my screen&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option would be to use Office 365 online. In that way, you can share the file and make the othe people work on it even if they are not logged. You just have to make it public in onedrive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16986" LastEditorUserId="16986" LastEditDate="2015-04-30T14:22:56.380" LastActivityDate="2015-04-30T14:22:56.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14816" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14818" CreationDate="2015-04-30T14:20:52.787" Score="1" ViewCount="230" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I replace a calendar in the Global.MPT file, will this calendar update all the other projects that are using it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose I make the following steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Copy a calendar to Global.MPT file.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a new project file and start using the calendar I just copied in  point 1.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then, in another project, I made changes to the calendar. So I replace the one that was in the Global.MPT file (point 1).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will the calendar get updated on all projects that are using it, for example the file mentioned in the point 2?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16986" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-04-30T15:53:59.877" LastActivityDate="2015-04-30T17:11:37.310" Title="Global calendars in MS-Project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10719" CreationDate="2015-04-30T14:29:26.833" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I make use of the timeline. I've found it's a great visual report for sponsors and snr mgmt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastActivityDate="2015-04-30T14:29:26.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14816" CreationDate="2015-04-30T17:11:37.310" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.  You need to copy the modified calendar from global.mpt to replace the calendar in each project file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-04-30T17:11:37.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14779" CreationDate="2015-04-30T17:17:06.673" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use the concept of a &quot;To-do&quot; list behind each card on the Kanban board.  Each item in the &quot;to-do&quot; list represents a step in the execution of the card.  Each to-do can be linked to a specific Board column to make it easier for team members to understand what is the expected work to be done in each column.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to get even more organized, you could have different color cards for different work-types - and have a templatized to-do list for each card-type.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The board swim-lane organization really depends on your business and how many products/ apps you are working with. It may be by product or by customer or by class of service, which is critical when you are committing to specific SLAs for different customers. So, my personal preference is not to organize the Kanban board by tasks/ task-types.  If you are collecting lane-wise metrics, much better to organize lanes by 'business-relevant' factors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2015-04-30T17:17:06.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14820" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14822" CreationDate="2015-05-01T12:43:26.973" Score="0" ViewCount="118" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently working as in a Techno-functional role where I need to manage content on the product pages. The development of a page is a 4-week process and entails a lot of coordination with the stakeholders. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a professional who wants to progress on this career, I'd like to know what'd be the certification path to move towards a Product Management role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas on certifications to pursue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17024" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2015-05-02T11:22:20.940" LastActivityDate="2015-05-02T11:22:20.940" Title="Right certification path for a professional more focused on requirements and deliverables rather than timelines?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14820" CreationDate="2015-05-01T13:26:44.697" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Prince2:&lt;/strong&gt; This is for people looking to manage the project from very high level. Keeping in view that your current role is not such, I would not suggest you to go for it. PRINCE2 is nice methodology but I have found it fit for top management mainly or someone who does not deal with the details of the project and is more into seeing if the project is going fine or not - all from macro level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PMP:&lt;/strong&gt; My favorite (please note that I am yet not certified). In my opinion PMP certified professionals are more sought after compared to other certifications. PMP takes care of complete lifecycle of a project. If you are looking into eCommerce product manager, I think this would be best suited for you. I myself is managing an IT company where we deal with several ecommerce projects and my personal experience says that PMP certified professionals have a much better idea about project lifecycle. It has helped us keeping the projects running with least number of issues and we have been able to manage a retention rate of between 85-90% in last 5 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CSM:&lt;/strong&gt; If you want to get more involved in the day today activities of the work, go for this one. Your eCommerce Product Manager profile would need CSM or PMP is very much defined by what is the size of your company (I know many people will say that how in this world did the company size come into picture, but please read on). In case your company is a start-up you are supposed to perform several roles at the same time. Since you are in techno-functional role I think CSM will be really great fit. It would keep you rooted to the ground with you getting your hands dirty with detailed level involvement in modules n system. If you are in a comparitively bigger organization where roles are defined and one person does not have to do every damn thing, I think PMP better suites you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My progression will be:&#xA;Techno-Functional -&gt; CSM -&gt; PMP -&gt; Prince2 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So get certified for everything but at different times. I am not saying that you are not better-off with only one of these certifications, but the natural progression which I see has been listed above. Rest is completely your call. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13776" LastActivityDate="2015-05-01T13:26:44.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14820" CreationDate="2015-05-01T15:29:38.157" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;You may want to consider the Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Prince2, PMP, CSM - the right certification for an ecommerce&#xA;  professional?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of the above. You may want to consider the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/certifications/practitioners/cspo-certification&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...a lot of coordination with the stakeholders. I want to move in the&#xA;  direction of ecommerce Product Management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the relevant extract from the above link:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CSPOs are typically the individuals who are closest to the &quot;business side&quot; of the project. They are charged by the organization to &quot;get the product out&quot; and are expected to do the best possible job of satisfying all the stakeholders. CSPOs maintain the product backlog and ensure that everyone knows the priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-05-01T15:29:38.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4378" CreationDate="2015-05-02T05:52:05.850" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hi Im a Project Manager in a medium sized company. To deal with this situation you have to follow :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Take a note on his behaviour and gather your team members and take their views as well. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Management would be thinking you are all working pretty good and expects you all to be a team player. So above mentioned point will work for you all.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is a need for Project-Manager in your office. Ask your management if they can provide.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If he is really a discouragement towards you and your team, try taking notes of what has discouraged you from him. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S : The behaviour won't change unless he doesn't respects the opportunity given to him by company.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16988" LastActivityDate="2015-05-02T05:52:05.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14825" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14851" CreationDate="2015-05-02T08:29:45.737" Score="1" ViewCount="1821" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I hope this is not personalized question, as the type of experiences I mention below might be part of anybody's profile. Hence, I hope my question will be helpful for others as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are three parts of my job history that I need to know if they fit into PMP experience or not, as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teaching undergraduate classes (2 years): This was part time job, but I was involved in planning the curriculum, preparing the materials, lecturing and grading.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Master thesis project  (three semesters full time), I worked on a software project, that I prepared the proposal for, obtained fund, carried out the tasks and delivered the results.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Support position (1 year full time) : This is daily tasks of an ongoing support project, I was involved in executing these tasks, and delivering the results - I assume it entirely falls into execution phase.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These parts of my job history are my concerned, I have other parts where I led software projects in corporate environment. However, without these parts (or at least part of them) I would not be able to meet the minimum requirements for PMP (i.e., 36 months, and 4500 hours).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As my PM experience is in fact scattered over few countries, and it is little hard for me to be in touch with relevant people; I need to know first if my experience warrants me to apply for PMP, before I initiate connections with my former supervisors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13766" LastEditorUserId="13766" LastEditDate="2015-05-06T02:44:32.413" LastActivityDate="2015-05-06T13:54:09.613" Title="Teaching and Support experience for PMP" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14826" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14834" CreationDate="2015-05-02T15:55:24.147" Score="1" ViewCount="986" Body="&lt;p&gt;How authority should be distributed between functional management and project management? If clear definition of it is not exist, what steps should project manager do to have a higher priority among employees than heads of structural units?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be more detailed: who should assign tasks to employees and (what is more important) who should prioritize tasks? If this is undefined or if this is responsibility of functional management, what should project manager do to make tasks (that related to his project) more prior?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17020" LastEditorUserId="17020" LastEditDate="2015-05-03T22:44:15.190" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T08:24:47.027" Title="Authority distribution at double subordination in matrix organization" Tags="&lt;organizational-structure&gt;&lt;authority&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14827" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14830" CreationDate="2015-05-02T16:00:31.073" Score="0" ViewCount="278" Body="&lt;p&gt;Where should employees be located in matrix organization: co-located with project manager or with head of their department?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17020" LastActivityDate="2015-05-03T07:13:49.603" Title="Where should employees be located in matrix organization?" Tags="&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14828" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14829" CreationDate="2015-05-02T16:31:22.530" Score="6" ViewCount="13900" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are differences between these positions in matrix organization structure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no &quot;Project Expeditor&quot; in &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/9123/definition-and-distinctions-between-project-x-program-x-portfolio-x-product-mana&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; and it is not related with matrix organization structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17020" LastEditorUserId="17020" LastEditDate="2015-05-03T22:59:25.517" LastActivityDate="2016-05-05T15:12:25.667" Title="What are differences between Project Manager, Project Expeditor and Project Coordinator?" Tags="&lt;roles&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14828" CreationDate="2015-05-02T20:15:36.137" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the PMBoK Guide (Fifth edition) it is written following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Matrix organizations can be classified as weak, balanced, or strong&#xA;  depending on the relative level of power and influence between&#xA;  functional and project managers. Weak matrix organizations maintain&#xA;  many of the characteristics of a functional organization, and the &lt;em&gt;role&#xA;  of the project manager is more of a coordinator or expediter&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;project expediter&lt;/strong&gt; works as staff assistant and communications&#xA;  coordinator. The expediter cannot personally make or enforce&#xA;  decisions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project coordinators&lt;/strong&gt; have power to make some decisions,&#xA;  have some authority, and report to a higher-level manager. Strong&#xA;  matrix organizations have many of the characteristics of the&#xA;  projectized organization, and have full-time project managers with&#xA;  considerable authority and full-time project administrative staff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While the balanced matrix organization recognizes the need for a&#xA;  project manager, it does not provide the project manager with the full&#xA;  authority over the project and project funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.e-wbs.com/sample-page/basics-white-belt-training/what-is-project-management/project-managers-vs-project-coordinators-vs-project-expediter/&quot;&gt;Tobias's link&lt;/a&gt; also has a good explanation of these terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2015-05-02T20:28:31.557" LastActivityDate="2015-05-02T20:28:31.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14827" CreationDate="2015-05-03T07:13:49.603" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you talk about matrix organisations, you have to differ between the different kind of matrix organisations (see answer to &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/14828/what-are-differences-between-project-manager-project-expeditor-and-project-coor&quot;&gt;What are differences between Project Manager, Project Expeditor and Project Coordinator?&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the motivations of strong matrix organisations is to concentrate domain specific knowledge, e.g. functional safety or how to create software architectures. Therefore it is necessary to share the specialists among different projects, otherwise they won't be able to keep their knowledge due to the fact that is is demanded during the project for a specific / short time only. If the specialist are located in a project independent department:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Their knowledge could be provided to several projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They could share knowledge among specialist of the same domain which are also located in their department&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Further education could be organised in a common way&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Similar organisational aspects (payment, working hours, etc.) are &#xA;concentrated &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If the demand for highly specialised employees is very high, they should be organised around their functional manager,&lt;/strong&gt; e.g. when their influence on project success is very high and their temporal assignment is short. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But be aware of the fact that you need a &quot;critical mass&quot; of projects demanding the special capability. Otherwise you might run better using subcontractors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2015-05-03T07:13:49.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14826" CreationDate="2015-05-03T11:24:42.050" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to this question comes down to the &quot;types of power&quot; or &quot;bases of power&quot;. You will find lots of references on the internet, e.g. on Wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_and_Raven&amp;#39;s_bases_of_power&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;. Here are some base information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is &lt;strong&gt;formal power&lt;/strong&gt;, given by the company organisation, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coercive&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reward&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Legitimate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question, &lt;strong&gt;personal power is the relevant one&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Expert: &lt;em&gt;Expert power is based on what one knows, experience, and special skills or talents.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_and_Raven&amp;#39;s_bases_of_power&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia: French and Raven's bases of power&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Referent: &lt;em&gt;Referent power refers to the ability of a leader to influence a follower because of the follower's loyalty, respect, friendship, admiration, affection, or a desire to gain approval.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referent_power&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia: Referent power&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, the project manager can bind the team effectively only by personal power via loyalty, respect, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the &lt;strong&gt;second part&lt;/strong&gt; of the question&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;who should assign tasks to employees and (what is more important) who should prioritize tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Employees should be assigned to a project in a clear communicated and reliable way based on the project plan and not on a day to day basis. There might be a possibility that a task will not be done due to the fact, that the employees functional manager decides to down-prioritize a task. Than it is the PMs job to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Notice this circumstance as soon as possible by analysing work performance data (e.g. by speaking to the project members)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Raise a risk describing risk probability and impact - and communicate the risk&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get in contact with the functional member and discuss the priorities and possible solutions. It will help if the function manager is kept in the loop for reporting project progress, e.g. if the employees are on the critical path. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inform the functional manager about next steps, e.g. communicate the raising risk to upper management, search for alternative team members to replace the current member at risk. The goal is not to threaten the functional manager but to find a solution for the common problem: Personnel shortage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-05-04T09:27:02.413" LastActivityDate="2015-05-04T09:27:02.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14826" CreationDate="2015-05-03T12:32:57.953" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tobias's answer is a good one from the standpoint of a PM trying to establish authority over a matrixed organization, which by its very nature is weak.  I do not agree, however, with his summary statement: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In summary, the project manager can bind the team effectively only by&#xA;  personal power via loyalty, respect, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I disagree with this statement not because it is incorrect but because an organization cannot solely rely on this to make the matrixed organization work.  Developing the concept of personal power is extremely variable and an organization will most likely have PMs that are, at best, mediocre from this standpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, an organization needs to define the degree the degree of authority in a very formal way, documented, and agreed upon by the organization itself.  In my limited experience, I find organizations do this poorly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Documented Memorandum of Understanding that both the PM and the functional manager agree to and sign will establish worker expectations, time tables, degrees of utilization, what to do when there is a work crisis, how to resolve conflicts, how the employee is rewarded, how poor performance is handled, etc.  It takes time to establish these constructs such that non compliance is easily identified and remedied.  Doing this will establish the level of authority for both managers in a much better way and which neither can easily bypass.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT BASED ON ADDITIONAL DETAIL:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under a matrixed organization, an employee is tasked to both the functional and project managers in a pre-defined (if planned well) amount of time.  This is what I meant by &quot;degrees of utilization&quot; with an established MOU.  For example, an employee could be defined under the functional manager 75% and under the PM 25%.  It could be defined also by the days of the week: M to W under the functional manager; Th and F under the PM.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, assigning tasks and priorities are not in conflict based on the agreed upon share.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not defined, then your matrixed organization is broken.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2015-05-04T12:28:20.137" LastActivityDate="2015-05-04T12:28:20.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14826" CreationDate="2015-05-04T13:04:20.333" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interesting diversity of opinions here. If the employees are matrixed, then all assignments and priorities will come from the functional lead. People respond to the individuals who write their performance appraisal.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this situation, the project manager &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; accept the constraint that she or he does not determine the employee's priorities.  Therefore the project manager must work through the project sponsor and stakeholders to affect the functional managers perception of the priority of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most significant tool the project manager has is the project schedule. The PM has to go to the sponsor (and stakeholders) and say, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The project was projected to complete on day X based on the assumption that I would have Y hours of work from the staff.  Functional managers have given Z hours, where Z is less than Y, and as a consequence, I now project that the project will be done on day X+W.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BEFORE&lt;/strong&gt; going to the sponsor, the intelligent project manager will go to the functional managers and show them the above paragraph and ask if there is a way to change the priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The functional managers are responsible for setting the priorities based on their management's understanding of the priorities. The employees are working as directed, and the direction is based on management's understanding of priorities. If you want to change the time allocation of the employees, you need to change management's understanding of the priorities.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="12235" LastEditDate="2015-05-05T08:24:47.027" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T08:24:47.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14835" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-04T14:00:22.350" Score="2" ViewCount="370" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a little confused about how MS Project 2007 is calculating % Complete in the following instance....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, CM Front Office (Level 1) is showing 99% Complete, even though there are numerous tasks that have yet to be started, and showing 0%. There are actually even more incomplete tasks that are not captured in this screenshot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand the formula for % Complete = Actual Duration / Duration. I forgot to show the Duration columns, but I don't think Actual Duration is calculating correctly...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance for reading and helping me out!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YEwn7.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Percentage Complete Mystery&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17037" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-15T09:15:03.777" LastActivityDate="2019-01-15T09:15:03.777" Title="% Complete confusion in MS Project 2007" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14835" CreationDate="2015-05-04T15:17:52.503" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming that your question is something like: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Why does MS Project behave like this, if my formula is correct?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is my answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of your tasks have duration 0 (= milestones). Those are not taken into account (resp. with 0). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far I could see, there is just one task with an &quot;real&quot; duration and this one is completed. The (new) question is: Why is the overall % not at 100% :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-05-07T03:14:29.623" LastActivityDate="2015-05-07T03:14:29.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14835" CreationDate="2015-05-04T21:10:01.550" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;@Tobias &amp;amp; Haotian,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A summary task is not 100% complete until all of its subtasks (even milestones) are 100% complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the milestones are widely spread (as your example) the span between the milestones is not counted as duration.  Although task 140 spans from end of February to early July unless there are additional tasks with duration &gt; 0, the % complete will always be 99% complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although your formula is accurate for subtasks - summary task % complete is not as straight forward.  See:&lt;a href=&quot;https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/101495&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/101495&lt;/a&gt; for a detailed discussion, but in brief it is a &quot;weighted&quot; percent complete based upon the duration of the subtasks.   Although the article references much older releases of Project, I believe the same concepts hold for current releases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastEditorUserId="6840" LastEditDate="2015-05-05T19:51:38.343" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T19:51:38.343" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14838" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14843" CreationDate="2015-05-05T06:22:53.337" Score="4" ViewCount="671" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In DAD (Disciplined Agile Delivery), who is responsible when for moving work items from the release backlog to the iteration/sprint backlog?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say that this is done by the scrum master during the iteration/sprint planning meeting. Is that right or should this be done by the overall project manager beforehand so that the iteration/sprint planning meeting is &quot;just&quot; used to reach a consensus about the iteration/sprint plan?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16188" LastEditorUserId="15972" LastEditDate="2015-05-08T08:43:08.670" LastActivityDate="2020-06-12T10:00:14.170" Title="Who plans the items for an iteration/sprint?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;&lt;release-plan&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14839" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14841" CreationDate="2015-05-05T07:04:34.637" Score="16" ViewCount="12206" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the sprint can we remove (move to the upcoming sprint) the planned stories (mid sprint), if we are 100% sure we can’t complete them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example given:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Suppose we planned to 5 stories to be completed in an sprint. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Midway the sprint we are sure one story can't be completed because of dependencies (or other reason). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now can we remove this story so that, we have only 4 stories in the current sprint (and a cleaner burndown)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think we can’t do that, but have doubt. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is that if we remove the user stories (which can’t be completed), we would have cleaner burndown chart. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the right way to approach this problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17044" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-04-20T09:46:27.347" LastActivityDate="2019-05-02T12:36:16.697" Title="Should I remove a User Story from a Sprint in progress if I know we can't complete it?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;scope&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14839" CreationDate="2015-05-05T08:11:07.923" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;i think that if it's &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; project, then &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; can decide whether it is allowed or not. you should consider the impact of this decision:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;will it hurt team's focus if they can choose the easy way of abandoning a story instead of fighting for it, or it will reduce the pressure on them?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what are the consequences if it will become normal to reduce commitments? how can you avoid it becoming normal?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how will it impact forecasts and status tracking? it will reduce velocity for sure, but is there any commitment that is based on the current velocity and it should be reevaluated?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;feel free whatever you consider useful for your project, but think about the impact of the change. sometimes it is worthy to change processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(btw, if the question is about whether Scrum enables this approach or not, the answer is no - you should strive for delivering everything you committed for - within the limits of sustainability and quality - and if it is not done done for the demo, you should add the remaining work to the product backlog, and eventually to the next sprint's backlog; you should also check whether the sprint has failed)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16711" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T08:11:07.923" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14839" CreationDate="2015-05-05T08:15:23.983" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the Scrum Guide:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the Sprint:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No changes are made that would endanger the Sprint Goal;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quality goals do not decrease; and,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scope may be clarified and re-negotiated between the Product Owner and Development Team as more is learned.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The changes you mention fall into the last category, unless they endanger reaching the sprint goal. If the last story you're proposing to drop is the least important, chances are lower that it endangers the sprint goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this happens frequently, spend a retrospective or two to find out how you could prevent this. Are you taking on too much work at the start of the sprint to begin with? Is the team in need of training?  Was there too much stuff unclear when the work started? (be careful to not start doing full waterfall analysis though!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your burndown will now reflect the new situation and should now show that you're  again on track for timely delivery of the new scope. Remember that the Burndown is a practice the team can use to see if they're still on track to deliver what they forecasted. If they do a new forecast (i.e. renegotiate scope), then the burndown will reflect the new status. If the Burn down is used for other purposes than the team's  internal progress tracking, then the sudden drop may need to be explained. As Scrum trainers, we generally caution against sharing the burndown as an official report at the end of the sprint. That's not its purpose and can lead to people making incorrect assumptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention a Sprint Review Report. This is not an official scrum artefact, so I can't tell an official story about how it should be influenced. It sounds like a report from the Product owner to the stakeholders. If the Product owner previously communicated the forecast by the team, then it may explain that certain features were not delivered. But during the Sprint Review meeting you'd indeed show that all you've delivered is green (Done according to the DoD). What will also be visible is that your velocity will be lower than usual, which may trigger some questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum master should ensure that the development team looks at the underlying cause that caused this change to happen. The natural point in time to do so is at the Retrospective. Be wary that the team simply reduces its forecast or creates a long list they may call a &amp;quot;definition of ready&amp;quot;. It's better when the team tries to apply automation to reduce overhead of testing and deployment and when the team has more frequent communications about the real intent of the PBI so that they better understand it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7393" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-05-02T12:36:16.697" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14842" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15575" CreationDate="2015-05-05T11:37:11.763" Score="2" ViewCount="8330" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use Project server 2013 and I created a Project web app site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I created an enterprise project and entered the team data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I am able to assign tasks to resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I want is that the team member is notified by email if when I assign a task to that team member. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XsyTl.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the screen shot you can see that I have assigned tasks to users.&#xA; You can see &lt;strong&gt;Liza Naeem&lt;/strong&gt; which is an active directory user and has an email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I notify Liza Naeem by email using a Project automatism that this task was assigned to him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16682" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-05-08T08:22:33.220" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T13:42:40.743" Title="How to send email notification when assigning task to resources in project server 2013 web app?" Tags="&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;&lt;project-server&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14838" CreationDate="2015-05-05T11:48:36.730" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is responsobility of Product Owner and Development Team.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product Owner:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In article Roles in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pmi.org/disciplined-agile/people/roles-on-dad-teams&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Disciplined Agile Delivery&lt;/a&gt; is written following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product Owner&lt;/strong&gt;.  In a system with hundreds or thousands of requirements&#xA;  it is often difficult to get answers to questions regarding the&#xA;  requirements.  The product owner is the one individual on the team who&#xA;  speaks as the “one voice of the customer”.  He or she represents the&#xA;  needs and desires of the stakeholder community to the agile delivery&#xA;  team.  As such, he or she clarifies any details regarding the solution&#xA;  and is also &lt;strong&gt;responsible for maintaining a prioritized list of work&#xA;  items&lt;/strong&gt; that the team will implement to deliver the solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key word is &quot;prioritized&quot;. Team should take in iteration/Sprint only most prior items. And all decision about prioritization is Product Owner's responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But priority based not only by business value. In &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; is written follow:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Product Owner&lt;/strong&gt; is responsible for &lt;strong&gt;maximizing the value&lt;/strong&gt; of the&#xA;  product and the &lt;strong&gt;work of the Development Team&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: there are two stories with highest priority, A and B. Forecasted capacity for next sprint is enough only for one of them. Story A have 0.9 abstract business value point, Story B have 1.0 abstract business value point. But there is a dependency between A and B stories, and if Team will implement A first, time for B implementation will reduce twice. In that case Product Owner can make A more prior than B, to maximizing the value work of the Development Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That one of the reasons, why Product Owner should present on iteration/Sprint planning: datailed of story implementation may affect his decisions about prioritization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Development Team:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the other side, forecast of next Iteration/Sprint capability is Development Team's responsibility. It mean that Product Owner can't force Development Team take more tasks than they decide to take themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Iteration/Sprint Planning is always compromise between what Product Owner wants and what Development Team really may do in this time period.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is another quote (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/minibooks/scrum-xp-from-the-trenches&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum and XP from the Trenches&lt;/a&gt;) that sums up all that is written above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The reason why the whole team and the product owner have to be at the&#xA;  sprint planning meeting is because each story contains three variables&#xA;  that are highly dependent on each other: Scope, Estimate, Importance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scope and importance are set by the product owner. Estimate is set by&#xA;  the team. During a sprint planning meeting, these three variables are&#xA;  finetuned continuously through face-to-face dialog between the team&#xA;  and the product owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2020-06-12T10:00:14.170" LastActivityDate="2020-06-12T10:00:14.170" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14839" CreationDate="2015-05-05T13:29:57.060" Score="14" Body="&lt;h2&gt;The Sprint backlog is a forecast, not a commitment&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the 2011 revision of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber made an important change. They changed the word &quot;commitment&quot; to &quot;forecast&quot; in regard to the Sprint backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/About/All-Articles/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/95/Commitment-vs-Forecast-A-subtle-but-important-change-to-Scrum&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The term commitment has two bad consequences&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The stakeholders expect to have every single item delivered at the end of the Sprint, at any price. And, what is even worse, they begin making plans, assumptions and decisions based on this not yet confirmed fact.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The development team focuses on delivering every single item of functionality which was promised at the beginning of the Sprint at any price... even at the expense of software quality or the real business value being delivered.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now can we remove this story so that, we have only 4 stories in the&#xA;  current sprint (and a cleaner burndown)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you forecast at the time of Sprint Planning is the baseline. You do want to show that one story is not completed. If you manipulate the baseline you will be sweeping the problems under the carpet and the team will miss an opportunity to learn from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the right way to approach this problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Again quoting from the Scrum Guide, &quot;If the Development Team determines it has too much or too little work, it may renegotiate the selected Product Backlog items with the Product Owner.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You said that midway through the sprint you decided one story can't be done. This is a better situation than discovering this at the end of the sprint. Start talking to the Product Owner. If one story is blocked, perhaps there is another story you can include in this sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And discuss this at the time of the retrospective to see how to avoid this in future:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you discovered that one story is blocked, may be you want to do the advance work to avoid such blocking, in future.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you took on too much work, may be your stories are too large or poorly estimated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you discovered more scope than when you estimated, perhaps the team should spend more time in backlog refinement meetings to get the stories ready with clear acceptance criteria.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="7393" LastEditDate="2017-09-15T12:01:48.077" LastActivityDate="2017-09-15T12:01:48.077" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14838" CreationDate="2015-05-05T13:48:01.640" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Logically, it should be done by the scrum-master. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I would prefer involving the whole team and at times seek input from the product owner/project stake-holder to add/finalize items for the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16903" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T13:48:01.640" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14765" CreationDate="2015-05-05T15:31:52.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Shorter answer than the other Epics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes there are problems with this approach. While it works as long as everyone is happy, The risk is lost of detail in the requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your overall solution has become so complicated that 'simple' (as considered by PO) changes are considered 'epics' by the engineers, the PO will not understand the impact of changes and/or delays and the engineers may not implement with the PO 'really wants'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think its a legitimate challenge to agile methodologies to ask how to handle these bigger multi-layered systems, where for whatever reason small changes to what the user sees can entail large changes 'behind the scenes' in service layers/databases etc. The thin slice approach of delivering discreet functionality can in fact push you into this position, where instead of a requirement for a generic flexible interface for a lower tier you can end up with a multitude of inflexible mini interfaces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would you counter this problem by writing a meta requirement/story for your lower tiers to get that flexibility back in and support 'simple' changes to user functionality without requiring change to base functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your lower tiers may even need splitting off into their own product with their own PO&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T15:31:52.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14825" CreationDate="2015-05-06T11:40:46.713" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple of points to remember:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The PMP designation is really targeted at people who have been in-role as a PM for a reasonable period of time. CAPM and PRINCE2 are more targeted at people getting into the field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PMI requires your experience to be in &quot;leading and directing projects&quot;, so just being on a project or being gainfully employed won't count.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With these in mind, to me your work in a support position would not count and your work teaching undergrad classes is iffy at best. Your Masters project seems to have the most alignment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2015-05-06T11:40:46.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14825" CreationDate="2015-05-06T13:54:09.613" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;ONLY PMI can answer this question; any advice you get here isn't worth a hill of beans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect however that the answer is strongly influenced by how well you document the project management activities involved in these work experiences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Teaching undergraduate classes (2 years): This was part time job, but I was involved in planning the curriculum, preparing the materials, lecturing and grading.&lt;/em&gt;  Lecturing is probably closer to operations than to project management.   Grading &lt;strong&gt;could&lt;/strong&gt; be an activity that demonstrates your experience in quality assessment.  Planning and preparing the curriculum includes the key word &quot;Planning&quot; and probably can be documented to show your experience in project management. The answer depends on how you participated. If you scheduled the work, documented the scope, designed or performed quality audits, these are all PM activities.  The process of decomposing terminal objectives into enabling objectives and then into lesson plans is  a very strong analogue to building a WBS; if you did that during curriculum design, I believe you can document that as PM experience. .  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Master thesis project (three semesters full time), I worked on a software project, that I prepared the proposal for, obtained fund, carried out the tasks and delivered the results.&lt;/em&gt; This almost certainly counts; you'll need to break down the hours you spent and map them out to the PM process areas. A software project is a novel and discrete deliverable; activities to support production of that deliverable are almost by definition project management activities. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Support position (1 year full time) : This is daily tasks of an ongoing support project, I was involved in executing these tasks, and delivering the results - I assume it entirely falls into execution phase.&lt;/em&gt;  The phrases &quot;daily tasks&quot; and &quot;ongoing support&quot; indicate that this is probably an operations activity outside the scope of project management.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said all that, I think you're looking at the problem in a sub-optimal way.  I suggest you get one of the spreadsheets available (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectation.com/pmp-hours-spreadsheet/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;) and look at the process areas, then think back through your experience to identify times when you carried out that process area. Even when you're working in an operational position, there are duties that you'll carry out as though they were a project. (every task is a project), and if you can identify those activities, you can document those as time spent &lt;em&gt;doing&lt;/em&gt; project management.  Part of my documentation (that passed an audit) was work I did on system assessments. Very repetitive, no discrete outcome; not a project.  I was able to show however that in order to be successful, I had spent considerable hours on stakeholder management, scheduling, scope definition and management, etc.  I treated the tasks as projects that supported my operations and PMI agreed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2015-05-06T13:54:09.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14835" CreationDate="2015-05-07T03:21:49.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;JulieS has the best answer for &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; Project calculates the % complete for summary tasks, but if you're Gantt chart shows progress based on % complete the results are likely misleading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My Gantt charts show summary task progress based on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-au/article/Summary-Progress-task-field-31a0cb15-f1b3-443d-96e2-da206f62449b&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Summary Progress&lt;/a&gt; field. This field accounts for &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; subtasks are scheduled. If none of the subtasks are behind the summary roll-up will also show that things are on-track. &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zovoB.png&quot; alt=&quot;How to set up Summary Progress&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="360" LastActivityDate="2015-05-07T03:21:49.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14853" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14854" CreationDate="2015-05-07T06:57:43.427" Score="1" ViewCount="171" Body="&lt;p&gt;My own background: I'm a BA novice and my company knows even less about it.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Person A is in middle management and had a project idea. I was given the&#xA;task to analyze the subject and recommend how to proceed further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Person A described a solution, but in the end I managed to elicit requirements and the underlying business problems from person A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To verify my findings, I conducted interviews with other managers in similar positions. All of them denied the existence of the business problems set forth by person A. Further, all of them told me that the solution proposed by person A would not solve the business problems if they existed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Question&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How (and where) do I express these findings in written?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16978" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2015-05-07T11:19:32.667" Title="BA: What to do if business problems don't seem to exist" Tags="&lt;business-analyst&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14853" CreationDate="2015-05-07T08:56:05.730" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have captured and documented the business problems outlined by the client and their requirements for a proposed solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next step, assuming it looks viable, would be a business case restating the problem, the potential solution(s) with their costs and the potential benefits of delivering the chosen solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is no basis for proceeding any further if no-one believes there is a problem to solve. In my opinion you, as Business Analyst, do not have to go any further at all- The proposal has been &quot;thrown out&quot; at the pre-business case stage. Any further time you spend would be a waste of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really feel, for completeness, that you must document &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; then file the document in the &quot;Closed Projects&quot; area together with the emails from the other business leaders illustrating the decision that there is no problem to fix. If there are no emails then I would hope there would be meeting minutes or &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; documenting the discussion and decision. If not, and it was all verbal, then personally I would go no further with it. It should not be down to you to remember, interpret and document their verbal discussions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have to submit an overall findings document to senior management then I would add an appendix to the problem statement and requirements document and within that appendix summarise each interview you did: 1. Date &amp;amp; time of interview, 2. who was present, 3. summarised viewpoint capturing the thought that there is no business problem. This can (and probably should) be as simple as stating &quot;[The interviewed person] could not agree that that stated business problem exists&quot;. Stick to bare facts and leave out any emotion. Then submit the overall document for review at a senior level with a recommendation that further more detailed analysis would be required to understand whether there is, or is not, an actual problem given that the relevant personnel do not believe there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a problem. I would only proceed with the more detailed analysis if authorised to do so by senior management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-05-07T11:19:32.667" LastActivityDate="2015-05-07T11:19:32.667" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14853" CreationDate="2015-05-07T09:49:54.833" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your data gathering is insufficient to arrive at any conclusions.  If you only interviewed the original middle manager, and then other managers, you have missed many other data sources.  You need to interview other employees; higher level managers; conduct focus groups and surveys; observe the work in progress; review company documents suchs as various metrics results, end of year financial statements; survey competitors and industry predictions; and likely other things I cannot think of right now.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are highly political and controlling cultures out there.  Not uncommon for one person to be willing to talk about the elephant while others ignore/deny its existence.  If you think you're a BA, then you need to the A...really do the A in a credible, formal, rigorous, defensible, and repeatable way.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-05-07T09:49:54.833" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14857" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-07T15:52:30.223" Score="1" ViewCount="894" Body="&lt;p&gt;I created a custom cost field (in Project 2013) called, &quot;Labor Contract Amt&quot; and would like to use the Cash Flow chart to compare &quot;Cost&quot; to &quot;Labor Contract Amt&quot; across any selected period of time. As custom fields are not available in the Time portion of this Project report, I am trying to export to Excel using the Cashflow Visual Report. When the field picker appears, I select the custom cost field &quot;Labor Contract Amt&quot;, however the field does not appear in available fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please advise on how to accomplish what I need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17074" LastEditorUserId="15972" LastEditDate="2015-05-18T11:09:32.440" LastActivityDate="2018-04-03T02:17:10.533" Title="Project 2013 custom cost field, project time-phased" Tags="&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14858" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-07T17:03:39.110" Score="4" ViewCount="1391" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a programmer at a small company who's used to receiving projects by someone saying in a meeting: &quot;make an e-commerce website,&quot; and then I'll just take it upon myself to do it. The only requirements I receive are the ones I ask for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're expanding, and I've been tasked with leading the development/management of a  large web application. We will be utilizing a new in-house team of several programmers, as well as an outsourcing company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In order to allow a new programmer to develop a component for this application, what should I provide to them?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm really struggling with right now are determining the types of resources to provide, the level of separation that should exist between them, and how granular the details should be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say this project is an e-commerce website that will consist of a storefront, a shopping cart, and user registration, and I want a programmer to work on the user registration. I would greatly appreciate if someone can list out, very exactly, what should be provided, as, despite my best Googling, all I can find is high-level &quot;fluff&quot; about this. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I include diagrams (UML?), and if so, which ones, and what should&#xA;they be conveying?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I prepare written documentation (like a spec sheet?), and if so, what types of details should be included?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I provide things like functional/non-functional requirements, business requirements, etc.?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17075" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T21:59:49.380" Title="How to transition from programmer to project manager?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;technical-leader&gt;&lt;outsourcing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14859" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-07T17:51:12.297" Score="4" ViewCount="1493" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do the following  QA, Business Analyst, Developer and lead or architect fit in a scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17077" LastEditorUserId="7393" LastEditDate="2015-05-08T08:43:28.770" LastActivityDate="2015-05-08T18:56:09.520" Title="How do the following QA, Business Analyst, Developer and lead or architect fit in scrum" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;roles&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14859" CreationDate="2015-05-07T18:16:38.883" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;People with these invaluable skills to any IT project work together in a team of equals to deliver working software every sprint. They continuously improve not only themselves but also the collective knowledge and skills of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How exactly they work together is up to the team members to decide. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are not &lt;strong&gt;roles&lt;/strong&gt; but &lt;strong&gt;skills&lt;/strong&gt;. So any person in the team can fulfill the role when it is needed (and he has the required skills) and every person should fulfill the skill if they are the only one available to do the work (even if they do not possess the best skills for the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Achieving this in your teams is usually not easy, but if a team can achieve this way or thinking and working, they will be able to deliver work with much more flexibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7393" LastActivityDate="2015-05-07T18:16:38.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14861" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14867" CreationDate="2015-05-08T07:28:04.343" Score="5" ViewCount="137" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with most reasonable sized organizations, the current organization has an operational team and a project team which drive varying degree of initiatives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike any other organization i have worked for, there is very little understanding of the deliverables each team is responsible for which has a bearing on the next initiative. For example there is a constant battle between the teams regarding ownership of documentation. When a project is initiated, there is very little by the way of understanding the current state. The project is told to bring all documentation concerning the said initiative up to scratch. This happens seldom since the project team does not see it as its responsibility to update operational documentation which  should provide sufficient information about the current state. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sit between these teams and am attempting to bridge the gap however am unsure how best to do so since there is much in the way of historical contention. Being the new kid on the block, i would like to bridge this gap. Attempting for the teams to share a common goal hasn't succeeded nor being open about specific issues and concerns. This often leads to finger pointing further deepening the already sour relationships. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a specific methodology i can adopt and adapt as i imagine the situation being a common theme in a number of organizations around the globe?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To help answer the question raised by Tobias&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Role: The role i play is that of an Enterprise Architect. The key challenge i have is that there is no consistency in standards, information and knowledge is tacit and people are unwilling to share information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The teams include project managers, business analysts, server &amp;amp; administration, networks &amp;amp; help desk. All other roles are supported by vendors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17081" LastEditorUserId="17081" LastEditDate="2015-05-08T19:41:56.153" LastActivityDate="2015-05-08T20:09:03.900" Title="How does one bridge the gap in producing deliverables between operations and projects?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;&lt;responsibility&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12832" CreationDate="2015-05-08T09:47:12.427" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way I've found to do this, given we migrated from JIRA to Asana, is to have a project for every release.  We also maintain two projects, one for new features/enhancements and another for bugs.  When planning a release we create the project with the release version and the product people and engineer leads then pick the tasks (stories) and move them into the release project.  Each task then is broken down with subtasks for the engineers to figure out how to implement.  The completed task will maintain the project it was created/completed in.  At the end of the release we archive the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional note, I also have the following release project created in advance for mid-release realignment to see if tasks aren't going to make it and need to spill over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17083" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-05-08T10:39:56.683" LastActivityDate="2015-05-08T10:39:56.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14859" CreationDate="2015-05-08T13:10:57.073" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;QA, BA, Developer and Architect are all functions needed to create a product increment&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do the following QA, Business Analyst, Developer and lead or&#xA;  architect fit in a scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;QA, Business Analyst, Developer and Architect all fit very well! However, they should be willing and able to cross-train in other areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum recognizes no titles for Development Team members other than&#xA;Developer, regardless of the work being performed by the person;&#xA;there are no exceptions to this rule; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum recognizes no sub-teams&#xA;in the Development Team, regardless of particular domains that need&#xA;to be addressed like testing or business analysis; there are no&#xA;exceptions to this rule.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, implementing this is not easy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While hiring you want to look for people with T-shaped skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-shaped_skills&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The vertical bar on the T represents the depth of related skills and expertise in a single field, whereas the horizontal bar is the ability to collaborate across disciplines with experts in other areas and to apply knowledge in areas of expertise other than one's own.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you already have people with functional specialization, it can be a very slow process to train them to be cross-functional. In one of my projects, we started out with Developers, Designers and QA. Initially we got the designers to do some testing when they had some bandwidth. The developers helped out with writing automated test scripts. Then we got the QA to do simple development work, such as making config changes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-05-08T13:10:57.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14859" CreationDate="2015-05-08T15:41:41.287" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The jedi master who instructed me called QA, Business Analyst and Dev the Three Amigos.  Apparently he's found that to be a sweet spot for scrum teams.  Having worked on two all-dev teams, I'd tend to agree with him.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's incredibly annoying to finish coding and have your work sit in &quot;ready for testing&quot; until the sprint review, so that's why it's great to have QA on the team.  It's even worse when the story's don't even make it to work in progress, that's why it's good to have Business Analysts there, so you don't get the.  Well, we didn't really need it, but we put it in the sprint anyway, but no one is going to work on it syndrome.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that Leads are just fancy Devs and Architects are either fancy analysts or, hopefully not, extra fancy Devs.  So they pretty much fit in the same way, just with extra clout.  They may anchor your team, so bewares. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16260" LastActivityDate="2015-05-08T15:41:41.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14861" CreationDate="2015-05-08T16:58:02.550" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Welcome to StackExchange- Project Management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not an uncommon issue in large enterprises. Clear ownership of deliverables can be a challenge. Given you're new, you probably are in a good position to do something about it, if you tread carefully. I would recommend a two phase approach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 1-&lt;/strong&gt; Conduct Stakeholder Interviews: I have used this method for several years now to great effect. My new employer uses a variation in all their consulting engagements, to equally high effect. At a high level (I should really write a blog on this):&#xA;- Identify all your key stakeholders and customers. This can easily be over 20. If you hit 50, start looking for the key people in these groups. &#xA;- Request 30 minutes of their time. Do this person by person, do not send out a mass email. The request should include the PPT slide and questions from below. &#xA;- Create a 1 slide (just 1!) PowerPoint. The slide should have your orgs mission/vision (make it up if you have to but let your boss review it), an outline of your 90 day plan and a line with &quot;Why am I here&quot;. &#xA;- The 90 day plan should be some rif on &quot;Listen&quot;, &quot;Meet stakeholders and customers&quot;, &quot;Document critical impediments&quot;, &quot;Target Low hanging fruit&quot;, &quot;Communicate&quot; &#xA;- Your interview questions: The secret to this method is you always ask everyone the exact same questions. I use the same six all the time. The first five are based off Manager-Tools.com Internal Customer Interviews podcast (great resource even for project managers). I'll put the questions at the bottom of the post. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The interviews work in two very powerful ways. The first is they build trust and relationships. Almost nothing is more powerful than asking people what they need and want. The second is by asking the same questions to everyone, you can create quantitative data out of the qualitative interviews. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 2&lt;/strong&gt; - Create a Responsibility Matrix&#xA;You're almost certainly going to come out of the interviews with data around responsibility confusion (hint, you may want to craft a specific question to discover this like &quot;Do you feel your roles and responsibilities are understood by the organization). Use this data and then work with your manager and the leadership of these two groups to identify this. Suggest putting together a Responsibility Matrix. I prefer the full RASCI over the RACI. &#xA;Make a spreadsheet. Create columns for &quot;Responsible, Accountable, Supportive, Consulted, Informed.&quot; Google RASCI for more on this. The two key ones are Responsible and Accountable. The person responsible does the work, in traditional development the person accountable is often higher up that person's food chain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're probably going to end up with holes in the matrix and places where there is conflict in who does what. From here, schedule meetings and work it out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have any questions, feel free to contact me direct. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My Six Questions: &#xA;1‐ What do you and your organization need and expect from my org?&#xA;2‐ What metrics do/will you use to assess us?&#xA;3‐ How have we done relative to your needs, in the past?&#xA;4‐ What's your perception of our org in general, that perhaps the numbers don't show?&#xA;5‐ What feedback and/or guidance do you have for me/my role/my team?&#xA;6- What are your biggest pain points? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-05-08T16:58:02.550" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14859" CreationDate="2015-05-08T18:56:09.520" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Product Owner Team&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something we're starting to see in enterprise level agile transformations is the concept of the product owner team. The logic is that the product owner needs a lot of data and input into the process of creating a backlog. By forming a team around the PO (so that effectively the PO becomes the bridge between the PO Team and Delivery Team) then they have all the support they need to ensure a well crafted and ordered backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Architects, Business Analysts, Customer Support, and even sales and marketing can be part of this Product Owner Team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The BA as the PO or the TPM as the PO&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing I've seen is leveraging of Business Analysts to be the Product Owner. Traditional Product Management is still very geared towards outward facing and pure business drivers. Getting them to have the time to be a Product Owner can be a huge challenge. A good BA can fill the role of the Product Owner, being the bridge to the business. This also works in organizations with Product Managers and Technical Product Manager, where the TPM fills the role of the PO and the PM is able to focus out on the business. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-05-08T18:56:09.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14861" CreationDate="2015-05-08T20:09:03.900" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, notice that your company is (probable) successful, otherwise you wouldn't have chosen it for your new job. I'm not saying that everything is perfect but be careful being the new one telling the old ones how to do the job. My first point is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Raise open questions.&lt;/strong&gt; How are you doing...? What is the motivation behind...? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe there is a bigger picture that causes the problems you figured out but brings a much bigger benefit somewhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fore sure, you should work on improving processes and team work. The person in charge regarding the problems within the project is the PM. Check the project plan, esp. the risk and communications management part. I assume that every project member is asked to raise risks by communicating them to the PM. &lt;strong&gt;Assist the PM&lt;/strong&gt; by doing so. Say that you identified a risk within your field of responsibility and bring it down to schedule and budget. Provide a risk probability also.&#xA;It should be the PMs motivation to come to the root cause of the risk, if he/she shares your view on the risk. If not, ask for explaination, you are the new one and willing to learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way having a good WBS and a &lt;em&gt;working&lt;/em&gt; project management in place, those problems shouldn't exist (or be at least not such a big issue).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your PM is not able or willing to work on the risk - or if he/she blames the organization processes, &lt;strong&gt;move on to the process improvement guys&lt;/strong&gt;. Since you work for a larger company there will be someone (usually within QA) responsible for process improvement. The approach is quite similar to the one of approaching the PM - switch from &lt;em&gt;risks&lt;/em&gt; to &lt;em&gt;chances&lt;/em&gt; in your formulation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2015-05-08T20:09:03.900" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14858" CreationDate="2015-05-08T21:11:57.227" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As they say in the Washington Post's &lt;b&gt;Worst Week in Washington&lt;/b&gt; column, &quot;Congrats - or something...&quot; Set aside the UML, you have more pressing concerns. As is so often the case, your multi-part question can be decomposed into individual questions, many of which have already been addressed on SE. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/350/project-charter-diagrams&quot;&gt;Project Charter&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stakeholder analysis and management. &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1399/how-do-you-manage-conflicting-stakeholder-demands&quot;&gt;How do you manage conflicting stakeholder demands?&lt;/a&gt; Do you manage the team? Do you manage the contractors? See &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/11736/working-with-a-single-point-of-contact/11738#11738&quot;&gt;Working with a “single point of contact”&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/12024/project-manager-writing-project-specification/12033#12033&quot;&gt;Project Manager - Writing Project Specification&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/4933/how-to-structure-a-project-plan&quot;&gt;Project Plan&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/12712/wbs-work-breakdown-structure-vs-srs-software-requirements-specification-docum&quot;&gt;Work Breakdown Structure&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry I ran out of time, but this should get you started - perhaps to the exit to look for that programming job you just left. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addenda:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Warning: Don't mistake a MS Project document for a Project Plan.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectmanagement.com/Templates/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.projectmanagement.com/Templates/&lt;/a&gt;. For example, there is a Software Development Project Plan: &quot;Here is everything you need for a software development project, from planning through close-out.&quot; Theis document requires $249 membership but the list of topics may help you evaluate free offerings on the internet. The plan includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Launch&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acquire Resources&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requirement Definition&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Detailed Design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;System Configuration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acquire and Install System&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Application Development&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Data Migration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;System Documentation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Training&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Production Implementation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CLOSE-DOWN&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Less detailed is the JPACE Project Plan: &quot;Timing is everything, even in project management. The key to a successful project is to use JPACE--that is, to Justify, Plan, Activate, Control and End it the right way. This Microsoft Project plan will help you do just that.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8524" LastEditorUserId="8524" LastEditDate="2015-05-11T21:59:49.380" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T21:59:49.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14869" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14876" CreationDate="2015-05-09T03:19:16.397" Score="3" ViewCount="1067" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking at the lifecycle of a project, is there a industry standard (not specific to only project management) or a set of best practices of the artifacts that should be created as part of a project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking at this from the perspective of key stakeholders e.g. business analysts, architects, project managers, operations, support, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, from an architectural perspective, this could include conceptual design, high level designs, detailed designs as well as technical designs such as infrastructure, networks, software and the like. These would move through the stages of inception, feasibility, build, deploy and support.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am hoping to create a checklist of sorts. Since the organization i work is still in the infancy stages from a maturity perspective (although it is an entity that has been around 20 years), there isn't either the skill, the ownership or incentive, i am taking to take this on myself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for my role, i sit across the enterprise architecture practice and am looking at ways to elevate core practices that drive standards and improved practices &amp;amp; processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To add to Tobias' question, this is for the purposes of the transportation vertical&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17081" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-05-18T01:15:55.323" LastActivityDate="2018-09-15T20:25:06.697" Title="What artifacts should be created during the lifecycle of a project?" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;enterprise&gt;&lt;frameworks&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14870" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14875" CreationDate="2015-05-09T07:34:15.337" Score="0" ViewCount="317" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've set a time objective for my project. 10 days, for example.&#xA;The project took 15 days to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to report the performance regarding the time of the project, as a %. My question is: how do I calculate it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: me and my collegues have a dispute betwen 2 options:&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;a. 10/15 &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;b. 100%+((10-15)/10)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17089" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T09:18:10.820" Title="Time taken for a project versus time objective" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;kpi&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14870" CreationDate="2015-05-09T08:42:35.373" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actual time - planned time = variance at completion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The OP's option (a) is the SPIt in Earned Schedule.  In this example, it results in 0.6667, which is this project's performance index, a valuable metric for future planning.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2015-05-09T11:53:21.330" LastActivityDate="2015-05-09T11:53:21.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12071" CreationDate="2015-05-09T08:50:49.740" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would use Microsoft Project or Oracle Primavera. I think if you build some of your projects using these programs the management of future ones will be a lot easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17090" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-05-11T07:55:15.717" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T07:55:15.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14870" CreationDate="2015-05-09T09:16:36.073" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends how you want to report on it. I suggest that each of the following are equally valid, and it is down to how you want to report it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a percentage over-run: (Actual time - Planned time) * 100 / Planned time, so you suffered a (15 - 10) * 100 / 10 = 50% over-run. I would use this for reporting externally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a time comparison: Actual time * 100 / Planned time, so you took 15 * 100 / 10 = 150% of the planned duration. I would use this as a learning point for future project estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a comparative development rate: Planned time * 100 / Actual time, so you achieved 10 * 100 / 15 = 66.67% of planned performance. I would use this as an internal measure of performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2015-05-09T09:16:36.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14870" CreationDate="2015-05-09T10:13:40.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have a look at &lt;em&gt;Earned Value Management&lt;/em&gt; (EVM). There you compare your currently Earned Value (EV) (usually the cost that were planned to complete a specific task) with the actual cost (AC) for the task or the cost planned (PV for planned value) to be achieved to a specific point in time. Having those three numbers, you get performance indices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cost Performance Index CPI: EV / AC&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Schedule Performance Index SPI: EV / PV&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your 15/10 formula provides the same message like the SPI. Due to the wide distribution of EVM, I recommend the 15/10 or SPI representation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, when you look for EVM, you'll discover that you get a lot more nice statistic values out of the 3 types of cost...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-05-09T11:37:37.893" LastActivityDate="2015-05-09T11:37:37.893" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14870" CreationDate="2015-05-09T10:30:18.727" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_overrun#Describing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki have good example&lt;/a&gt; about project overrun (it is about cost overrun, but in our case it doesn't matter). The text below I took from this article and adapted for your question's example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Time overrun can be described in multiple ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;As a percentage of the total time expenditure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;As a total percentage including and above the planned time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;As a percentage of the time overruns to planned time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, for your example these values will be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The time overruns constituted 33% of the total time:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;((ActualTime - PlannedTime)/ActualTime) * 100%&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The time for your project increased to 150%:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(ActualTime/PlannedTime) * 100%&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The time overruns exceeded the planned time by 50%:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;((ActualTime - PlannedTime)/PlannedTime) * 100%&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The final example is the most commonly used as it specifically&#xA;  describes the time overruns exclusively whereas the other two describe&#xA;  the overrun as an aspect of the total expense. In any case care should&#xA;  be taken to accurately describe what is meant by the chosen percentage&#xA;  so as to avoid ambiguity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-05-09T10:37:48.307" LastActivityDate="2015-05-09T10:37:48.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14869" CreationDate="2015-05-09T11:33:09.493" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know nothing from transportation vertical industry, but regarding something industry independent and applicable for HW, SW, and embedded systems, the &lt;strong&gt;V-Model&lt;/strong&gt; could be something to start with: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-Model&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-Model&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a link to the complete description in English: &lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.heise.de/pub/ix/ix_listings/projektmanagement/vmodell/V-Modell-XT-Gesamt-Englisch-V1.3.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.heise.de/pub/ix/ix_listings/projektmanagement/vmodell/V-Modell-XT-Gesamt-Englisch-V1.3.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be aware that as more general you are searching, as more general will be the described processes or artifacts. If you continue to focus, you'll find more concrete answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. Regarding software development, you'll find really nice templates when you look for MIL-STD 498 (which is outdated).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2018-09-15T20:25:06.697" LastActivityDate="2018-09-15T20:25:06.697" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14877" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-10T07:33:00.183" Score="1" ViewCount="985" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose I have three tasks, each task requires one resource (one engineer), if I have 3 separated resources, say A, B, C, how can I auto assign these resource to my tasks depending on availability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I know, one way I can manually assign A to task 1, B to task 2, C to task 3. But I have many tasks and many resources, I can't do it manually, is there any way this can be done automatically?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One workaround is I create one consolidate resource by set its unit to 300%, indicating 3 engineers, then assign it to all tasks. But in this way I can't track which resource is assign to which task exactly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any better idea? Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17098" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-01-14T14:09:27.090" LastActivityDate="2019-01-14T14:09:27.090" Title="How auto share resource for multiple tasks in MS Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14858" CreationDate="2015-05-10T11:36:09.483" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do mini scrum, write lists of tasks on post its and stick em on a board. tell developers to do tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you yourself know, developers are used to lack of requirements. Once the site starts coming together, you'll soon get people saying 'make it more blue!' etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2015-05-10T11:36:09.483" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14858" CreationDate="2015-05-10T12:24:17.950" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with WaltHouser, you should definitely install a complete project management. This is where you should go for mid term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I guess you don't have the time to get all the required knowledge. This is what you should provide short term:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;System / Sub System Specification&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;System / Subsystem Design Document&lt;/strong&gt; (at least the interface part)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll find on wikipedia nice &lt;strong&gt;templates&lt;/strong&gt; for the both documents, search for MIL-STD 498. The standard is outdated, nevertheless the templates are very supportive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to write &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; requirements. Support yourself and your colleagues by writing a &lt;strong&gt;Requirements Management Plan&lt;/strong&gt; to define:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requirements shall be atomic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Usage of &lt;em&gt;must, shall, should, can&lt;/em&gt; as special words&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Usage of a scheme for similar categories of requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote it on the SSDD part: Focus on the &lt;strong&gt;interfaces&lt;/strong&gt;, esp. those connecting different developer teams. Go for them as much into detail as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project management part of the job might be covered by &lt;em&gt;intuitive behavior&lt;/em&gt; or good sense. Fore sure, training will help a lot. For the beginning, don't stop sharing information and listen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2015-05-10T12:24:17.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14880" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-10T22:27:42.630" Score="4" ViewCount="439" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our scrum team, team members tend to add extra points in estimation when there is a &quot;learning&quot; part involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a simple silly example. Let's say all the people in a team are experts in C# but with less knowledge of C++. They have a task to implement feature X in C# and they estimate it to 5 points. If they would be asked to implement the exact same thing in C++ estimation would be let's say 8, because they added some points to figure out how to do it in C++.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our team it happens sometimes that for each task a couple of people didn't work in that area of code (as we ore owners of more than 1 project) so they always add a couple of extra points for learning or for context-switching (if they didn't work in that area for a longer period) when estimating. Is this correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you add learning in your estimations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17099" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-07-08T10:07:23.890" LastActivityDate="2019-07-08T10:07:23.890" Title="Adding estimation points for learning / context switching" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14882" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14886" CreationDate="2015-05-11T01:49:09.847" Score="13" ViewCount="57210" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a question about communication channels that is talking about person-month but I don't understand what is a person-month. Does it mean this many persons? or this many months?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the full context:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on statistical data in a company, communication path between two&#xA;  persons consumes 5% of each person’s time (during a 8-hour work day).&#xA;  For a project that &lt;strong&gt;requires 12 persons-months&lt;/strong&gt; of development time, how&#xA;  many people will be needed to finish the project in four-months if (a)&#xA;  the democratic team structure is used and (b) the chief-programmer&#xA;  team structure is used. If the team consists of four persons, what is&#xA;  the difference in the completion time for a team using the democratic&#xA;  structure and a team using the chief-programmer structure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16918" LastActivityDate="2018-06-07T09:18:42.513" Title="What does person-month mean in development time?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;communication-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14691" CreationDate="2015-05-11T04:39:04.563" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes they do!  And people still use notebooks and pens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many reasons and there has been a bunch of research done, for example there are some here - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/23/reading-writing-on-paper-better-for-brain-concentration&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/23/reading-writing-on-paper-better-for-brain-concentration&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But for me it is the limitless ways of organising items and the minimal effort required to make changes, add or delete items that make it my first choice.  It is great to shuffle bits of paper around into different groupings to compare them in different ways.  Such as group them based on size and get a feeling for whether estimates of the same are actually the same size.  And by function to get a feeling for completeness of solution. And by business value to get a feeling for where to draw the scope line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, having a computer screen in a workshop seems to suck peoples attention towards the screen and away from each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is hard to achieve if you're not in the same room though...  I wrote my first post in a series &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wallsync.net/blog/physical-cards-are-better-1/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17102" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T04:39:04.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8711" CreationDate="2015-05-11T05:16:31.343" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've used both, and have found that for a co-located team a physical board is the most effective.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you start having the team or the stakeholders spread out or working remotely though you have to have some techniques for keeping everyone up to date and in sync.   This usually involves having a combination of the 2 and a process of keeping the data in sync.   There are tools that can help you keep a physical and virtual wall in sync.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the advantages of a physical wall, just can't be replicated in an electronic system.  There is something about the tactile nature of physical cards that aids collaboration - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wallsync.net/blog/physical-cards-are-better-1/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.wallsync.net/blog/physical-cards-are-better-1/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17102" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T05:16:31.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14880" CreationDate="2015-05-11T06:33:04.450" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, we do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You estimate the effort of a story. If you break down to story to different tasks, you'll have for the C++ story &lt;em&gt;learning&lt;/em&gt; as additional task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, the product owner assigns the same customer value to the C++ and C# story. During the sprint planning, the team should prioritise the C# story due to the same value but less effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T06:33:04.450" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14882" CreationDate="2015-05-11T07:32:31.767" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Person-month&lt;/strong&gt; is politically correct synonym for &lt;strong&gt;Man-month&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's mean amount of work performed by the average worker in one month.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;project requires 12 persons-months of development time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;all team members do only pure development activity (i.e. they are telepaths and they don't need to spend time for communication with each other). &lt;em&gt;[note: this is not your case. In your case developers spend some time (5%) for communication.]&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;than:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;4 developers will spend 3 months for 12 persons-months project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ProjectScopeInPersonsMonths / NumberOfDevelopers = NumberOfRequiredMonthsForProject&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;4 months required for 3 developers to finish 12 persons-months project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ProjectScopeInPersonsMonths / NumberOfMonths = NumberOfRequiredDevelopersForProject&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. This is a wiki &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-hour&quot;&gt;article about this term&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-05-13T14:04:56.290" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T14:04:56.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14880" CreationDate="2015-05-11T08:45:00.607" Score="3" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Story Point is used for high level planning. When we estimate User Story in Story Points we talk about &lt;strong&gt;productivity of whole team&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Points stories is not for exact measurement, story point is for &lt;strong&gt;relative measurement&lt;/strong&gt;. While we using Story Points, we can talk that this Story is bigger or harder than another Story, but we can't be sure how much exact time we will implement it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: You have 2 User Stories. Them Scopes are approximately equal to each other. But one of them should be implemented on C# and another on C++. Your team have two C++ developers and only one C# developer. So, of course User Story with C# implementation will be more harder for your team and, obviously, it should be estimated with more Story Points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-05-11T09:03:31.460" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T09:03:31.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14880" CreationDate="2015-05-11T08:52:49.857" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;i think that adding points for context-switching is not a good way of estimating. i mean, the task itself will not be more complex by this. as far as i see, this is a very typical case of padding the estimation - intentionally giving larger values to reduce stress or time pressure later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the problem of this approach is that estimates will be falsified, and the measurements will be less precise. a better way would be not adding complexity for task switching, but have a lower velocity measured, and maybe the cost of context switching can be added to impediments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(as for the learning, i agree with the previous comments - if you need to learn something new in order to produce results, it makes the task more complex)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16711" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T08:52:49.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14870" CreationDate="2015-05-11T09:18:10.820" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most answers here talk of &quot;overruns&quot;. This presupposes that your estimate was somehow the &quot;right&quot; figure and that the failure occurred in not completing within this estimated time and thus the time taken was somehow &quot;wrong&quot;. This is a destructive way of looking at things. What really went wrong was that the a poor estimate was made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The correct estimate would have been 15 days. The actual estimate was 10 days, so the estimate was only 10/15 = 66.67% accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14835" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T09:18:10.820" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14880" CreationDate="2015-05-11T10:17:51.447" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You will always get different estimates from different people for a variety of reasons. You just need a simple way of reducing it down to a single number for planning purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found just taking the average to be a good method of achieving this. Your high and low estimates will give you an idea of the uncertainty of the estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trying to dig down and split the estimate into sub tasks of 'learning' or 'context switching' can be counter productive and usually just increases the estimate and the uncertianty&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T10:17:51.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14894" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-11T12:27:36.907" Score="3" ViewCount="1587" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wonder if anyone has experience and can help with some advise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a programmer with 15 years of experience, and I feel it is unfair what is happening to me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was silly enough to sign a contract for an e-commerce project with a budget of 1500 GBP to be completed in two months. I just wanted to see if freelancing is worth a while. Now I deeply regret it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was paid 500&amp;nbsp;GBP in advance.&#xA;Then another 500&amp;nbsp;GBP after a month as client was happy with the progress.&#xA;Then because of the client constant changes with the project I missed the two month deadline even if I was working full time on it.&#xA;The Project is about 80% finished. The client refused to pay the remaining 500&amp;nbsp;GBP and have raised his demands that I have to complete the project or give all the money back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To cut the story short, the client is now threatening taking this to a UK county court or small claims court unless &#xA;1. I pay the whole 1000&amp;nbsp;GBP money back or &#xA;2. he will pay additional 200&amp;nbsp;GBP, and I will complete the project in another month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of those options are attractive to me. I did all my best with the project, but I can't predict how long it will take to complete with the client changing his mind every time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would I be able to avoid going to court or losing it if I send all the project source and binary code up to second payment (one month of work)&#xA;or even all the code I have developed for the two months so he cannot claim he has nothing in return for his money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was trying to get him to agree to this option and terminate the project so he could continue with another developer. He agreed to sign first then changed his mind. I am thinking to send project anyway without signing if that helps to avoid court defeat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am the second developer who has problems with his project. He says he had his money back with the first one, and he feels pretty strong he will beat me as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have experience with the legal matters though, so I don't know how strong his case is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17105" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2015-05-14T13:31:02.203" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T13:31:02.203" Title="Failed to finish project in time, now threatened with UK court" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;deadline&gt;&lt;contracts&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="18" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-05-14T01:40:53.143" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14895" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-11T12:46:06.557" Score="2" ViewCount="568" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm new to Jira and cannot find any help, Google or otherwise, on simply making a Dashboard component which &lt;strong&gt;lists all Users and their most recent Work Log entry&lt;/strong&gt;. Any thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17106" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-05-11T13:42:41.407" LastActivityDate="2015-06-10T12:45:55.843" Title="Atlassian Jira Dashboard - List Of Users' Most Recent Work Log Record" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;work-in-progress&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14894" CreationDate="2015-05-11T12:48:34.293" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your first course of action should be to secure some legal counsel and get their opinion. Asking a message board for legal advice is only marginally better than doing the same for medical advice... at least in your case you only stand to lose money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, unfortunately this kind of thing is not uncommon. Customers change their minds all the time, and when it comes back to bite them will blame the project team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to deal with this kind of situation is proactively, in other words in your original contract have an statement of work and then deliver according to that. If the client wants to change the SOW that is fine, but it would be your right to amend the schedule, or the budget, or both. Remember that any changes must be documented... avoiding these kinds of misunderstandings is what rigorous change management procedures are there for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, the strength of your position depends on the strength of your documentation. Again we are back to the strength of your change management processes. If you just said &quot;OK&quot; to every change without flagging impacts to schedule, budget, quality, etc etc you are more likely to be on the hook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do continue to work on this project I suggest you insist on having a full, complete, signed statement of work outlining exactly what you need to do, when it needs to be done, etc. Just don't sign on for anything that you can't do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T12:48:34.293" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14894" CreationDate="2015-05-11T13:30:35.287" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have trust in your documentation, do not fold. If you have a clear statement of work with exacting specifications and you deliver to those requirements then he doesn't have a case and is trying to scare you. Changing requirements in a project requires a statement of work addendum, really you should have made him aware of this at the start and should have started billing him as soon as he tried to change things. An important rule for the future is if it's not in the functional requirements document then it's a billable enhancement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get legal advice and if your documentation is solid then stay strong and don't fold. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13721" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-05-11T14:32:05.737" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T14:32:05.737" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14895" CreationDate="2015-05-11T14:32:29.593" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would take a look at the Jira &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tempoplugin.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tempo plugin&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, it will solve all your time tracking and recording issues. We also combined it with &lt;a href=&quot;https://worklogassistant.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the worklog assistant&lt;/a&gt;, since not everyone likes to book hours, this will simplify it a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;List of recent work-items per project: &lt;a href=&quot;https://tempoplugin.jira.com/wiki/display/TEMPO/List+View&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://tempoplugin.jira.com/wiki/display/TEMPO/List+View&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team time-sheets: &lt;a href=&quot;https://tempoplugin.jira.com/wiki/display/TEMPO/Team+Timesheet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://tempoplugin.jira.com/wiki/display/TEMPO/Team+Timesheet&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would expect you can also add these list and views to your Jira Dashboards, although I never tried.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T14:32:29.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14880" CreationDate="2015-05-11T16:17:51.103" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Story points are a relative measure of complexity.  They add up to create a velocity that can be used to determine the AVERAGE workload a team can take in an iteration.  If a story requires additional learning by the team, it is more complex and can be estimated higher.  Story points are a team measure, not an individual measure.  Don't fall into the trap of taking the lowest estimate and then assigning the work to the person that estimated it low.  Try and build a team that follows a pull model instead of a push model so that team members gain experience across all domains in the project and are empowered to decide what to work on.  Short-term this may hurt &quot;productivity&quot; but long term will create a team with broad domain knowledge, higher productivity, and less risk of hitting major technical barriers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have 1 developer that needs learning and 1 that doesn't you will get two individual estimates that need to be combined to form the team estimate.  In this case, I recommend you go with the higher estimate since the worse case scenario with the higher estimate is that the work gets completed sooner by the experienced developer and something else can be pulled into the iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whereas if you go with the lower estimate and the un-experienced developer ends up doing the story your team just over-committed and you set un-realistic expectations for your customer that iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T16:17:51.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14900" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-11T16:43:53.607" Score="3" ViewCount="134" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do I create an Epic Burn-down chart in Visual Studio 2012? Can I do it in Urban Turtle?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am new to managing software projects with Microsoft Visual Studio 2012. I've been using Jira Agile for the last two years and can easily create a burndown chart for each epic in Jira. I'm trying to replicate the same thing in Visual Studio 2012 and TFS. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17111" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-05-12T21:06:33.240" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T11:57:27.537" Title="How do I get Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 to display a burndown of individual epics?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;burndown-chart&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14895" CreationDate="2015-05-11T17:25:55.983" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;You can use the Jira Activity Stream gadget&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, Jira has a built-in gadget to do this. It is the Activity Stream gadget:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vbKIP.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can add this gadget to your Dashboard and select all the projects that you want to track. I find this gadget very convenient to track all Jira and Confluence activities as a stream in the dashboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, please note that I am using it for Scrum. You will have to try this for Kanban to see whether it meets your needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T17:25:55.983" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14903" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14916" CreationDate="2015-05-11T19:02:13.787" Score="1" ViewCount="576" Body="&lt;p&gt;MS Project seems to take a task and calculate &lt;em&gt;per day work&lt;/em&gt; by dividing &lt;em&gt;total work&lt;/em&gt; by &lt;em&gt;duration&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the schedule I am working on, each resource is available for 10 hours per day, but MS Project doesn't take advantage of this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to level my schedule based on the 10 available hours per day rather than simply spreading my tasks out beyond the predetermined finish date. I can do this manually by moving work around in the Resource Usage tab, but I was wondering if there is a simpler way to do this. Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dV2tv.png&quot; alt=&quot;Hopefully a useful visual&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Also, this is my first time using Project Management Exchange, so if my etiquette is not up to par please feel free to direct me to any guidelines that would improve my question.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17113" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-05-12T12:50:58.510" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T12:50:58.510" Title="MS Project Overallocation" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;resources&gt;&lt;schedule&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14903" CreationDate="2015-05-11T19:09:12.060" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can update the resource table to show greater than 100% utilization.  In this case, you would load 125%.  This will allow greater than 8 working hours per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T19:09:12.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14894" CreationDate="2015-05-11T20:23:57.563" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was in the small claims court last month and I can tell you the Judge expects compensation for work completed.  So the other party is not in a position to claim it all back.  As for contracts, my judge formed his own opinion, even in the face of UK legislation on the table.  So a knocked up contract isn't going to be watertight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17114" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T20:23:57.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14907" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14914" CreationDate="2015-05-11T22:40:56.820" Score="4" ViewCount="1125" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;democratic&lt;/strong&gt; model if there are n people in a team the formula to calculate the number of communication channels is &lt;code&gt;n*(n-1)/2&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there is also another model called &lt;strong&gt;Chief-Programmer model&lt;/strong&gt; and the formula to calculate the number of communication channels is a little different, I searched in Google and all I found was this: &lt;a href=&quot;http://marlenejordan.tripod.com/Teams_Tools2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://marlenejordan.tripod.com/Teams_Tools2.html&lt;/a&gt;  but it doesn't have the formula either. My guess is if there are n people we take out the one person as chief programmer and then apply the same formula ?  But I am not sure. Does anyone know this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16918" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T13:49:56.190" Title="Number of communication channels in Chief-Programmer model" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;communication-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14907" CreationDate="2015-05-11T23:04:01.757" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The number of communication channels in the Chief-Programmer model is theoretically n-1 because it assumes that everyone communicates with the central chief-programmer role and he delegates work out and that no communication needs to happen between the other roles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That model does not address real-life complexities and assumes that the chief programmer is a go-between for every conversation which may not be practical. If the chief programmer cannot directly control all communication effectively, it will revert right back to the democratic model and have n*(n-1)/2 communication channels again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T23:04:01.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14909" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-12T02:23:21.750" Score="1" ViewCount="3542" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new to manufacturing process. Can someone help me to determine the sample size required to perform Manufacturing Process Validation? I know nothing about six sigma, so simple answers are highly appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe what I need now is a formula, a description of parameters involved in that formula which I can easily relate to my requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17119" LastEditorUserId="17119" LastEditDate="2015-05-12T14:11:21.527" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T18:27:56.697" Title="Manufacturing Process Validation - Sample size calculation" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;6-sigma&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14910" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-12T02:52:58.670" Score="0" ViewCount="78" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a drawing activity diagram when it says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Activity A Follows Activity B&lt;/code&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;does it mean &lt;code&gt;A-&amp;gt;B&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;B-&amp;gt;A&lt;/code&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am confused with this lingo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16918" LastEditorUserId="15972" LastEditDate="2015-05-17T20:58:50.850" LastActivityDate="2015-05-17T20:58:50.850" Title="Vocabulary used in drawing activity diagrams" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14880" CreationDate="2015-05-12T05:07:08.647" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The short answer is no, skill differences between developers are accounted for using velocity and should not impact story point estimation.&lt;/strong&gt; It is easy to confuse the Scrum concepts of points and velocity since people are often trained to estimate in units of time (e.g. &quot;I'll be done by Thursday&quot;). In Scrum, estimates are made using units of size (e.g. &quot;The race is 100 meters&quot;). Team velocity is measured by observing how many points a team is able to repeatedly complete during a sprint (e.g. &quot;The athlete runs 5 meters per second&quot;). As velocity improves with skill or process changes, delivery dates are calculated (e.g. &quot;It will likely take 100/5 = 20 seconds to finish the race&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Estimating Points&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Try using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_poker&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;planning poker&lt;/a&gt; method for estimating stories.&lt;/strong&gt; This will resolve the issue you're running into where two team members call the task a &quot;3&quot; while another team member calls the task an &quot;8&quot;. What you want is consensus across all team members. You'll notice three key steps in the planning poker procedure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team members with the lowest and highest estimates each explain their reasoning to the rest of the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After hearing the rationale for the high and low estimates, team members vote again.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This process is repeated until all team members reach a consensus.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Estimating Velocity&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use velocity to account for the different skill levels of the members on your team.&lt;/strong&gt; Remember, the story point value is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; an estimate of time, but rather an estimate of &lt;em&gt;distance&lt;/em&gt;. It is okay, and expected, that different members of your team will be able to sprint that distance at different speeds. To estimate velocity, maintain a running average of points completed in each sprint. Use the team's velocity value to decide how many stories can be completed in a single sprint. This capacity limit will account for the fact that different team members write code at different speeds (e.g. that some need to learn more than others, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2305" LastEditorUserId="2305" LastEditDate="2015-05-12T05:25:50.967" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T05:25:50.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14910" CreationDate="2015-05-12T06:20:11.303" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Due to your post in PMSE, I assume you are taking about network diagrams (vs. SW-engineering activity diagrams)? For network diagrams, it's like in normal language usage: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A follows B, so &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A is the successor of B, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;B is the predecessor of A:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;B -&gt; A&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependency_%28project_management%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependency_%28project_management%29&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T06:20:11.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14880" CreationDate="2015-05-12T07:26:44.220" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some historical data should already give you an idea of whether this +2 points is somehow accurate or not. Did you already measure this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In these cases I usually advise the team to split the learning activity from the production one. Learning will be done in one sprint, estimates and production in the next one.&#xA;Unless you're talking about trivial stuff, adding a buffer is unlikely to give you any accuracy on whether it is actually going to be 20% or 30% or 50% more, and indeed C++ and C# are two very different languages... if they don't know how to do this stuff in C++ it might be as easy as C# or way more complex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16362" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T07:26:44.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14907" CreationDate="2015-05-12T07:39:17.157" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pankaj Jalote in the book &quot;An Integrated Approach to Software Engineering&quot; describes three types of team structures:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ego-less team (aka democratic team).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chief-programmer team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Controlled decentralized team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ego-less team&lt;/strong&gt; have no leader. All decisions in it are making through discussion and with consensus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every member of democratic team have communication interfaces with all other team members, i.e. every team member have &lt;strong&gt;n-1&lt;/strong&gt; communication interface, where n is team size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there are &lt;strong&gt;n(n-1)/2&lt;/strong&gt; total amount of communication path in the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/smL1j.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chief-programmer team&lt;/strong&gt;, obviously, have a leader (named chief programmer). He make all decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All communication go through him. There is no direct communication between other team members. In this case chief programmer have &lt;strong&gt;n-1&lt;/strong&gt; communication interface and other team-members have only &lt;strong&gt;1&lt;/strong&gt; communication interface (with chief programmer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there are &lt;strong&gt;n-1&lt;/strong&gt; total amount of communication path in this structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Bc5za.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last &lt;strong&gt;Controlled decentralized team&lt;/strong&gt; is combination of Ego-less team and Chief-programmer team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is description of this structure form &quot;An Integrated Approach to Software Engineering&quot; (1st edition):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It [Controlled decentralized team] consists of a project leader who&#xA;  has a group of senior programmers under him, while under each senior&#xA;  programmer is a group of junior programmers. The group of a senior&#xA;  programmer and his junior programmers behave like a ego-less team, but&#xA;  communication among different groups occurs only through the senior&#xA;  programmers of the groups. The senior programmers also communicate&#xA;  with the project leader. &lt;strong&gt;Such a team has fewer communication paths&#xA;  than a democratic team, but has more paths than a chief programmer team.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For symmetrical structure like on the picture below (all sub teams have equal number of junior programmers) number of communication interfaces are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For Project Leader: &lt;strong&gt;x&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For each of Senior Progremmers: &lt;strong&gt;x + y&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For each of Junior Programmers: &lt;strong&gt;y&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there are &lt;strong&gt;x*(1+(x+y)+y*y)/2&lt;/strong&gt; total amount of communication path in this structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;where:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;x - number of Senior Progremmers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;y - number of Junior Programmers in one team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eVIiD.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-05-12T13:49:56.190" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T13:49:56.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14915" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-12T07:46:02.680" Score="3" ViewCount="152" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for outsourcing software company and has been tasked to develop a program for cooperation with one of our customer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point we have different projects with the customer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On our understanding the customer’s projects structure looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;-&amp;gt; Portfolio&#xA;&#xA;                -&amp;gt; SubProtfolio 1&#xA;&#xA;                                -&amp;gt; SubPortfolio 1.1&#xA;&#xA;                                                -&amp;gt; Program 1.1.1&#xA;&#xA;                                                                &amp;gt;Project 1…N&#xA;&#xA;                                                -&amp;gt; Program 1.1.2&#xA;&#xA;                                                                &amp;gt;Project 1…N&#xA;&#xA;                                                -&amp;gt; Project 1.1.1&#xA;&#xA;                                -&amp;gt; SubPortfolio 1.2&#xA;&#xA;                                -&amp;gt; Program 1.1&#xA;&#xA;                                -&amp;gt; Project 1.1&#xA;&#xA;-&amp;gt; Program 1&#xA;&#xA;-&amp;gt; Program 2&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that historically I was in charge of management SubPortfolio 1 just a Project Manager of separate projects, since from the customer side we have one person who was a sponsor and product manager. It was good to have one person managing many projects since knowledge of relation between different projects provides better/faster decision making process.   Now the cooperation is slightly growing (however the same single sponsor). We added two more PMs, but we still work on the project basis, leaving portfolio/program level without proper attention. My management (not without reason) see the following potential problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The cooperation is not very scalable since I still keep a lot of knowledge across SubPortfolio 1&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are no active sales/development within SubPortfolio 1, since all PMs are bothered with their projects objectives&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some sub-programs may not get proper attention from our team&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Teams and PMs may not be aware of each other influence &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are/could be different standards of quality for different projects for the same customer&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand: PMs are complaining about absence of common knowledge base and historical information about cooperation with the customer&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Account managers need the delivery unit of company provide a high quality and be ready to the ongoing changes on customer side&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Support. We also are supporting some projects we implemented for the customer, and this is not streamlined enough. Support may influence other active development activities. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So now I’m tasked to implement a program for SubPortfolio 1 to mitigate the risks outlined above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at the PMI Program Management Standard, I see that program is intended to bring some benefits to the organization and includes projects and program activities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that creating a program would be great if we had projects for one product for example, so that we program could bring some benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the more I think about this I, start seeing it as a portfolio management. However how I can manage customer’s portfolio. I don’t have authority to prioritize, shuffle projects, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is how such cases are handled in your organizations or were handled in your practice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17120" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T22:38:19.613" Title="Program/portfolio management for the customer" Tags="&lt;program-management&gt;&lt;portfolio-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-10-28T09:36:48.510" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14903" CreationDate="2015-05-12T08:05:15.613" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If each resource is available to work 10 hours per day then set up a resource calendar with the 10 hours working times on it. Then apply that resource calendar to each resource as required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally you can modify the project settings in Change Working Time, to define a working day as 10 hours so that Project calculates the correct amount of work (in hours) when you define a duration in days. Note though that it is not enough to &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; do this, you must also have allowed the resources to have 10 hours per day, as above, to ensure that each resource is loaded to ten hours and not the default 8.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T08:05:15.613" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14918" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14919" CreationDate="2015-05-12T12:35:22.800" Score="1" ViewCount="2431" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lets say you are going on a geological survey up on a mountain in the rural areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;( Page 576, Head First PMP 3rd Edition, Jennifer Greene, PMP  &amp;amp;  Andrew Stellman, PMP )&#xA;Expected Monetary Value (EMV)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Risk:   High Winds&#xA;Probability:  35%&#xA;Impact:  cost $48 to replace equipment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Risk:  Mudslide&#xA;Probability:  5%&#xA;Impact:  lose $750 in damage costs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Risk:  Wind generator is usable&#xA;Probability:  15%&#xA;Impact:  save $800 in battery costs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Risk:  Truck rental Unavailable&#xA;Probability:  10%&#xA;Impact:   cost $350 last-minute rental&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calculating EMV for each Risk&#xA;High Winds:  35%  x -$48 = -$16.80&#xA;Mudslide:   5%  x -$750 = -$37.50&#xA;Wind Generator:  15%  x $800 = $120&#xA;Truck Rental:  10% x -$350  = -$35&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EMV  =  -$16.80  +  (-$37.50) + $120 + (-$35) = -$30.70&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am confused about the business significance of multiplying the percentage probability by the cost impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To elaborate,  what does the probability of the risk event occurring have to do with the cost of the impact, and vice versa?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;what is the business purpose of product value calculated by multiplying the probability of an risk event  by the cost of the impact?&#xA;( Page 576, Head First PMP 3rd Edition, Jennifer Greene, PMP  &amp;amp;  Andrew Stellman, PMP )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16478" LastEditorUserId="16478" LastEditDate="2015-05-12T12:50:04.537" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T17:42:46.953" Title="(Calculation EMV) What is the business purpose of product value calculated by multiplying the probability of an event by the cost of the impact?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;pmbok&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14918" CreationDate="2015-05-12T14:11:49.737" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Expected Monetary Value (EMV)&lt;/em&gt; is an important part of risk management, usually used in large and complex projects to perform quantitative risks analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Probability&lt;/em&gt; is the measurement of the likelihood of the occurrence of any event.&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Impact&lt;/em&gt; is the amount that you will have to spend if any identified risk occurs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the PMBOK Guide 5th edition, “&lt;em&gt;Expected monetary value analysis is a statistical concept that calculates the average outcomes when the future includes the scenarios that may or may not happen.&lt;/em&gt;”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EMV is&lt;/strong&gt; therefore &lt;strong&gt;a statistical technique in risk management that is used to convert the risk into a number, which in turn assists the project manager calculate the contingency reserve, and helps compare a risk with other risks.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EMV = Probability * Impact&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you usually have multiple risks (like in your example), you will calculate the EMV of those risks separately and add them all. As you have noted &lt;em&gt;you calculate the EMV of all risks, regardless of whether they are positive risks or negative risks&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Once you calculate the EMV of the project, you will be able to calculate the contingency reserve.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;From you example you could be tempted to say that you need $348 (that is to say, $48+$750-$800+$350) to manage all risks. Anyway, you would do a big mistake by doing so.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;The probability is used in the calculation to take into account the fact that not all risks are going to happen.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;So, in your example you only need to add $30.70 to your budget to cover all identified risks.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17124" LastEditorUserId="17124" LastEditDate="2015-05-12T14:47:00.860" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T14:47:00.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4540" CreationDate="2015-05-12T14:57:46.603" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a database of freely available project proposals from Engineering School at Dartmouth: &lt;a href=&quot;http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/cook/sample/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/cook/sample/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you might take a look at project proposal toolkit with different samples and templates: &lt;a href=&quot;http://project-proposal.casual.pm/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://project-proposal.casual.pm/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17127" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T14:57:46.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14921" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-12T17:19:19.563" Score="1" ViewCount="644" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is my situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I work with two SCRUM teams, iOS and Android&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Each of the SCRUM team has its own Product and Sprint backlogs&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We have shared Sprint Plannings, Reviews and Retrospectives (both teams attend) so that the products can stay aligned and that a given team can benefit from the knowledge of another team in tackling a specific problem as well as in story point estimation &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Because the roadmap and features of both iOS and Android are pretty similar, both products are sharing the same backend engineers as resources. As a result, we create backend subtasks for given user stories in sprints and backend engineers attend Sprint Planning as part of the cross-functional team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what is the best practice here for integration of the necessary backend work? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you include this backend work in your user story estimates for one of the teams (i.e. iOS team), knowing that once the backend work will then also be done for the other client team which might be lagging behind? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you include backend work in your velocity estimates? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And should backend have its own backlog, separate of the mobile teams,  or only be considered the owner of backend subtasks in each of the mobile teams' sprints?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17129" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T20:44:25.010" Title="Shared backend resources for two mobile SCRUM teams, iOS and Android" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14921" CreationDate="2015-05-12T17:32:12.140" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's hard to say without being there seeing your teams operate, but it sounds like you have a small team of engineers who are completely focused on back-end services. In other words, it sounds like you effectively have three teams that all share the same meetings, not two. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there may be some advantages is letting the teams have their own meetings, I'd say if it's working for you, great for now. As far as if you have a separate backlog, I'd ask if that is really what is happening now and do you gain any value by adding the stories into another backlog or are you just trying to force the stories in to fit an expected format? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, I want to point out that this is a starting point and like any agile teams, you should always be looking to improve both your teams and your structure. It sounds like you've got some strongly silo'd skills and having a more T-based skillset where people have their specialties but are comfortable in each others skills too could help you out. If that backend team gets too swamped and someone who is an Android or iOS engineer can step in and carry some work if needed, that's a very valuable option to have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T17:32:12.140" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14918" CreationDate="2015-05-12T17:42:46.953" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The business purpose behind using weighted values is to normalize the data you have for many alternatives that have varying degrees of risk and impact.  It equalizes a set of alternatives with objective values that will help the business decision maker cut through biases and make more reliable and accurate decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to note that, while you can use EMV to help arrive at contingency and reserve values, you need critical mass to adequately insure yourself.  If the volume of risks are low, such as in this example, you will not be covered adequately by the stats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T17:42:46.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14924" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-12T18:58:23.960" Score="0" ViewCount="111" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is my situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I work with two SCRUM teams, iOS and Android&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Each of the SCRUM team has its own Product and Sprint backlogs&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We have shared Sprint Plannings, Reviews and Retrospectives (both teams attend) so that the products can stay aligned and that a given team can benefit from the knowledge of another team in tackling a specific problem as well as in story point estimation&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the roadmap and features of both iOS and Android are pretty similar, both products are sharing the same backend engineers as resources. As a result, we create backend subtasks for given user stories in sprints and backend engineers attend Sprint Planning as part of the cross-functional team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By backend work I mean &lt;em&gt;server side&lt;/em&gt; work. We're talking about mobile apps here, so anything related to user management for instance. i.e. let's assume a user wants to delete his profile but he can't yet. A user profile deletion CTA would need to be available on the client, but it would need to work with HTTP requests to the server. So here, as part of the same user story (&quot;as a user, I want to be able to delete my profile), we would have both client and server work together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you include this backend work in your user story estimates for one of the teams (i.e. iOS team), knowing that once the backend work will then also be done for the other client team which might be lagging behind? How do you include backend work in your velocity estimates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17129" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-10-21T22:30:18.997" LastActivityDate="2019-10-21T22:30:18.997" Title="Mobile apps: integrate backend work in velocity?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;velocity&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14925" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14927" CreationDate="2015-05-12T19:08:54.230" Score="2" ViewCount="492" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working as Scrum Master and there is a team member who has made a few mistakes. He reports to another manager. I want to talk to him personally without his manager being present. Is that okay administratively and (more importantly) ethically?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17131" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-05-12T21:08:50.483" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T07:53:38.737" Title="Can a Scrum Master give feedback to a team member reporting to another manager?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14926" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-12T19:09:24.803" Score="6" ViewCount="1474" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is my situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I work with two SCRUM teams, iOS and Android&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Each of the SCRUM team has its own Product and Sprint backlogs&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We have shared Sprint Plannings, Reviews and Retrospectives (both teams attend) so that the products can stay aligned and that a given team can benefit from the knowledge of another team in tackling a specific problem as well as in story point estimation&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the roadmap and features of both iOS and Android are pretty similar, both products are sharing the same backend engineers as resources. As a result, we create backend subtasks for given user stories in sprints and backend engineers attend Sprint Planning as part of the cross-functional team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By backend work I mean &lt;em&gt;server side&lt;/em&gt; work. We're talking about mobile apps here, so anything related to user management for instance. i.e. let's assume a user wants to delete his profile but he can't yet. A user profile deletion CTA would need to be available on the client, but it would need to work with HTTP requests to the server. So here, as part of the same user story (&quot;as a user, I want to be able to delete my profile), we would have both client and server work together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These backend engineers are mostly a resource for the mobile products, as we are a mobile-focused startup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should backend have its own backlog, separate of the mobile teams, or only be considered the owner of backend subtasks in each of the mobile teams' sprints?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17129" LastActivityDate="2015-05-21T09:51:04.570" Title="Mobile apps: should shared backend resources between iOS and Android have their own backlog and be considered as a separate team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14925" CreationDate="2015-05-12T19:35:17.603" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sure it's ok - and it's your job to keep the team working and remove impediments. This includes the team member who &lt;em&gt;made a few mistakes&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to the fact that you asked the question, I assume you don't have a perfectly open and failure tolerant culture in your company or team (who has?). Because of that I will try to give you some hints on how to prepare the talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you schedule the talk, think about &lt;strong&gt;what you appreciate on your collegue&lt;/strong&gt; and what he/she adds to the team.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should enable you to &lt;strong&gt;not be focused on the mistakes&lt;/strong&gt; but to be supportive and open minded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you schedule the talk, think about how to put your collegue in a &lt;strong&gt;comfortable surrounding / mood&lt;/strong&gt;, e.g. by extending a common coffe break.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, during the talk speak honestly about your observations. Make clear statements about what you assume and what you observed. Within negotiation theory there is the expression: &lt;strong&gt;Be hard on the deal, soft on the people&lt;/strong&gt;. This counts here in quite a similar way also. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal should be similar to a retrospective / &lt;strong&gt;lessons learned&lt;/strong&gt; session:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the root cause of the mistake?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to avoid the (specific) mistake in future? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to avoid similar mistakes by others?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-05-13T07:53:38.737" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T07:53:38.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14925" CreationDate="2015-05-12T21:44:43.887" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course, it should be ok. If you have doubts about conversation, it means that something wrong with your working process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am concerned about two things in your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why do you have additional manager in your process? Scrum prescribe only two managers role: Scrum-Master and Project Owner. Scrum Team should have only one Scrum-Master and Product Owner. Your responsibility as Scrum-Master to prevent intervention of another persons to working process. You should have enough authority (formal or non-formal) in your company to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why developer should report to you? Scrum-Master not a boss of a team. He can't command developers. He is coach and helper of team (his responsibility are facilitating Scrum events, removing impediments and so on). But team should be self-organized and take all decision by themself. If team asked you to gather reports for more transparency (or you advised to team to do it, and team agree with it), and then one of team member didn't report you, you should not have any doubts to ask this person why he did not complied with the decision the team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T21:44:43.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14926" CreationDate="2015-05-12T22:01:00.527" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with most things agile the answer is &quot;it depends&quot;. I'm going to tackle this at two levels, Product and Sprint Backlogs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Sprint Backlog:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Server Team has other work:&lt;/strong&gt; If the server team has work unrelated to the needs of the two app teams, then absolutely it should have it's own sprint backlog. It has its own work to be done and the App work is just part of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Server Team only supports the Apps&lt;/strong&gt; In this unlikely event, then my advice would be to move server team members into the App teams. At this point you are creating a &quot;cake slice&quot; where the team has everyone needed to release working, tested software. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Product Backlog:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;A product backlog is the total list of everything you want to build for your product. Typically a iOS or Android App is not your product, it is a method of delivery. For example, Evernote (just picking them as a popular product most of us know) has iOS, Android, PC, Mac and Web based apps. They all offer essentially the same functionality (within the limits of the software). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have one product and multiple delivery vehicles, then the recommendation is to have a single product backlog. You use the acceptance tests of the product backlog to drive what teams are engaged. For example, say Evernote wants to be able to print notes. They don't want to deal with cloud printing so the acceptance tests just list PC, Mac and Web. Creating a new note though, has acceptance tests for all their delivery methods. These also can be structured as &quot;features&quot; or &quot;epics&quot;, higher level user stories which get decomposed to the team level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product Backlog items can then be decomposed into team specific user stories. So the iOS and Android team will both have a User Story for creating a new note which feeds up to the Product Backlog item of &quot;create a new task&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And back to the server team, you also then drive server team user stories from the same backlog item. So printing to the cloud would require server work, so when Evernote started that, they'd add the acceptance tests to support that and these would be decomposed to the server team as user stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By keeping your product backlog aligned, you end up with less product drift (some computer apps are totally different between a Mac and a PC) and also tend to reduce load on the support teams since they will know they have to support more than one group. I'd feel sorry for the Evernote server team if they were asked to support iOS and then six months later Android and they built the cloud print to be hard coded to iOS, double the work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T22:01:00.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14925" CreationDate="2015-05-12T22:04:54.370" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tobias has a great answer for standard agile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As DB pointed out though, it sounds like you're possibly running in a non-standard model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are a people manager (you write job reviews, hire/fire) then that supersedes your role as a scrum master. You need to talk to your HR to find out the policies at that point for a manager talking to another persons reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the record, people managers being scrum masters of people that report to them is generally not advised. It creates all sorts of issues, like the one above. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T22:04:54.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14924" CreationDate="2015-05-12T22:08:29.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You will want to review my answer to you on &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/14926/mobile-apps-should-shared-backend-resources-between-ios-and-android-have-their&quot;&gt;assigning work&lt;/a&gt; as it covers most of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the teams are separate, then work is tracked separate. It's a dependency to one team. It does not impact that teams velocity or estimates. Instead they need to plan when they do their work based on when the server team is ready.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you merge your server work into the App teams, then it's all the same estimates and velocity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T22:08:29.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14915" CreationDate="2015-05-13T07:12:46.607" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the risks demand a common project infrastructure like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Common lessons learned database&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Regular PM meetings to share news and information&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Common quality guidelines&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those aspects could be provided by some kind of PMO. But most of what you wrote makes me feel, you need something to connect the different projects by means of project management and not of strategy alignment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Because of that, I think a program management would fit best for you.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will be able to simplify the PMs life by providing project connecting infrastructure, common goals, guidelines, reportings, and templates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you already said, you don't have the possibility to effectively influence the portfolio (management) of your customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; company offers specific portfolios. And aligning those by a portfolio management to &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; company's strategy might be something &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; company could benefit from. Defining the goals for a program to improve the success of several projects within one of &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; portfolios could be something to start with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking forward to some critical comments on this interesting topic...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="17880" LastEditDate="2015-07-22T21:10:17.467" LastActivityDate="2015-07-22T21:10:17.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14882" CreationDate="2015-05-13T14:02:21.363" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not to be pedantic, but the correct way to write the term would be person-month, or man-month. The distinction is that person/month implies units of people per month. This is inaccurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A person-month is a unit of work that's calculated by multiplying the number of persons by the number of months they work. So a team with three developers working on a task for two months has expended 6 person-months of labor. A person-month is equivalent to hours of labor (160 hours is a common value), but work is often expressed in person-month units because it’s easier to get a feel for how many people might be needed to finish a body of work in a fixed time, or conversely how long it might take a fixed group of people to finish a task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the term man-month been broadly criticized when used as a predictive metric, most famously by &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/1IxHjM7&quot;&gt;The Mythical Man-Month&lt;/a&gt;, which makes a strong argument that man-months are not fungible in this naïve manner. That said, it’s still a useful unit of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In calculus terms, a person month is calculated by taking the integral of staffing as a function of time between two dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="360" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T14:02:21.363" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14934" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-13T16:19:51.287" Score="1" ViewCount="177" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are currently trying to start a project with three different OS's, iOS, Android, and Server components.  The argument has been on how should we create the stories, should there be a story for each OS and point each story, or should we create one story for all three OS's and point that one story.  Note: It's the same feature across the three different OS's, and there are different devs working on each OS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17142" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T18:32:47.130" Title="Agile Project Management with iOS, Android, and Server Components" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14934" CreationDate="2015-05-13T17:30:43.160" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should write the &lt;strong&gt;same user stories and acceptance tests for all the three Operating Systems&lt;/strong&gt;. By the way, since you have three platforms and three different groups of developers working on each of them, you will have &lt;strong&gt;different effort estimations (story points) for the same story for each OS&lt;/strong&gt;. For this reason, I suggest you to keep track of the progress using &lt;strong&gt;three different task boards&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17124" LastEditorUserId="17124" LastEditDate="2015-05-13T18:32:47.130" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T18:32:47.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14926" CreationDate="2015-05-13T17:40:34.250" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that backend developers can be separated into third team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, somebody may say that teams will lose their cross-functionality. But if we will look to this situation from other point of view, than we will see that backend team are implement independent product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that case your both client teams will be stakeholders to product of backend team. Of course, backend team should have Product Owner, which will be separate backend requirements from clients User Stories and make Product Backlog (for backend service) based on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interaction between teams will be within Review Meetings of backend team (client teams, as stakeholders, will be give feedback of backend problems, API usability and so on).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disadvantage of this approach, that I described below, is that backend team should be in a step (i.e. Sprint) forward of client teams. This means, that Product Owners of client teams should plan two Spring ahead to allow Product Owner of backend team gather information about next Sprint. This make process a little bit less flexible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, can be some problems with cost distribution for backend works between clients teams. But, if all three teams work for one customer (or in your case, for one project) it doesn't matter for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T17:40:34.250" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14937" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-13T18:42:35.910" Score="2" ViewCount="3808" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the start of the Sprint right after the Sprint Planning, we can already draw a burndown chart with an ideal line. It's a straight declining line starting at the top left with the total amount of story points in the Sprint backlog. Let's say a 100 points. It goes down to 0 at the end of the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the team went faster than anticipated, the actual line drops below the ideal line. Let's say the team decides to add more work. That means more may actually become done in the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that case should the starting height of the ideal line be corrected for the added work? So it was at 100 points. Should it now start at let's say 105?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17138" LastEditorUserId="17138" LastEditDate="2015-06-16T16:58:56.043" LastActivityDate="2015-06-16T16:58:56.043" Title="Should the ideal line in a burndown chart be changed when story scope changes during the Sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;burndown-chart&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14938" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-13T19:27:18.277" Score="-2" ViewCount="195" Body="&lt;p&gt;we have observed in our company that employees are prone to take multiple breaks during a typical 8 hours working day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We wish to deploy a system which will keep a count of how many minutes an employee is using his terminal? If an employee is using the terminal, he will be shown online and while he is away for more than 2 minutes, he will be shown as offline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At any point of time, the software will be able to calculate the number of hours an employees worked in the terminal. And the data will be available for both the employee and management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We understand that using the terminal does not necessarily means productive work but its a part of a series of tasks towards improving employee productivity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you suggest any appropriate software to measure the total amount of time an employee spent in front of his terminal in a day? The software will ideally log out when there is no activity in the terminal for 2 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17146" LastEditorUserId="17146" LastEditDate="2015-05-13T19:41:22.910" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T19:39:22.023" Title="How many minutes an employee worked?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2015-05-14T20:02:40.127" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14937" CreationDate="2015-05-13T20:04:31.423" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will rather use a Burn up Chart using points to Measure progress with two metrics:Work accepted and Project scope&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ohgpt.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17150" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T20:04:31.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14937" CreationDate="2015-05-13T20:07:57.903" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Never Rebase the Starting Values of a Burn-Down Chart&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Burn-down measures &lt;em&gt;work remaining&lt;/em&gt; in the iteration. For example, if you start a Sprint containing 100 points, complete 50 points worth of work in the first two weeks, and then add 60 points of new work in the third week, you don't rebase the starting value. Instead, you show a &lt;em&gt;rise&lt;/em&gt; in the amount of work remaining for the iteration. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/e79JA.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you didn't &lt;em&gt;start&lt;/em&gt; the iteration with 160 points, rebasing the graph would misinform the viewer as to what really happened, e.g. that a significant chunk of new work was added mid-sprint. In the example above, the 60 points that were added in week three of a four-week Sprint clearly communicates when the new work was added, how much was added, and also shows that the amount of work completed in week four exceeded all the work done in the first three weeks of the Sprint put together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time, capacity, and efficiency information would be lost if you rebase your starting value, since it would no longer show work remaining over time, but instead would be pretending that the work was enqueued from the beginning. This is misleading, and will prevent process issues from being properly identified and accurately communicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you may find that you need to adjust the &lt;em&gt;scale&lt;/em&gt; of your graph to accommodate work-remaining that is higher than your starting value. In this case, the graph now goes from 0-120 instead of 0-100 in order to accommodate the burst to 110 story-points remaining in Week 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Danger, Will Robinson!&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that unless stories were wildly mis-estimated, this type of successful swing in the burn-down (e.g. when work-remaining goes up dramatically, but the team still completes all work) is unlikely to happen in the real world. While you may frequently see small jumps where work-remaining increases rather than decreases due to new information uncovered during the Sprint or additional story-related tasks that must be added to the Sprint Backlog to meet the Definition of Done, large &lt;em&gt;increases&lt;/em&gt; to the work remaining without a related change in team capacity or efficiency is a project smell that your burn-down chart has uncovered for you, and which the team must carefully inspect for process problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use irregularities in the burn-down to identify problems with estimation, capacity planning, or scope-creep by tracking work remaining without retconning the baseline. Doing anything else simply papers over a process problem that should be made visible for the team to address during a Sprint Retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-05-13T21:48:42.163" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T21:48:42.163" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14937" CreationDate="2015-05-13T20:10:15.033" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Development Team has completed all the stories that were planned for a particular Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, the team usually decides to speak with the Product Owner to select other stories from the Product Backlog (possibly related to the current Sprint Goal) that can fit within the remaining Sprint time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to underline that, if the Development Team is not able to complete the selected additional stories, the Sprint will not be compromised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to add that, &lt;em&gt;if the team finishes early and works on additional tasks in several sprints, this is a sign that the team is, for some reasons, under committing&lt;/em&gt; (when this happens, it is usually because the stories are overestimated).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The burn-down chart should always reflect the work of the team during the sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When a team is over delivering I prefer to keep the burn-down chart as it is, showing that the team has arrived to 0 (that is to say, completed all the stories in the Sprint Backlog) before the ending of the Sprint.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I would avoid to modify the burn-down chart as you proposed. In my opinion, management can misinterpret such a chart (&quot;Was the team committed to complete 100 or 105 story points?&quot;). To keep track of the additional stories I usually add another chart to the Scrum board: a burn-up chart (the curve goes up, instead of down) that I use to track how much work the team has completed in the Sprint&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17124" LastEditorUserId="17124" LastEditDate="2015-05-13T20:32:38.820" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T20:32:38.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14938" CreationDate="2015-05-13T20:47:01.190" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My recommendation is to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Think about &lt;em&gt;Theory X&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Theory Y&lt;/em&gt;, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define the term &lt;em&gt;productivity&lt;/em&gt; for yourself &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Re-think about introducing such a system&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to find the necessary SW using Google or some HR pages. I think you'll have much better chances finding something appropriate than on a PM page.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did you know that there is SW out there that simulates mouse movement...?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-05-14T19:39:22.023" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T19:39:22.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14943" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14953" CreationDate="2015-05-14T07:02:28.197" Score="4" ViewCount="2830" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it is hard to close a task. There might come a new information which demands an update of the task. The task remains a long time &lt;em&gt;almost&lt;/em&gt; finished. New Versions and baselines allows us to close a milestone but allows thoughts like &lt;em&gt;I fix this in the next release&lt;/em&gt;. I'm talking about the tasks staying at 90% in MS Project for much longer time than reaching those 90%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, PM processes and tools usually demand a point in time when you say &lt;em&gt;I'm done!&lt;/em&gt;, e.g. Scrum or EVM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fore sure, I know some theory: Tasks should be defined e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SMART&lt;/a&gt;, SCUM demands &lt;em&gt;Definition of Done&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But how to handle this in real life&lt;/strong&gt;, incl. documentation and team commitment, taking the usual shortages in time and budget into account?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-05-14T12:05:51.443" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T21:26:38.310" Title="Definition of Done or How to really finish tasks?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;&lt;evm&gt;&lt;definition-of-done&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14938" CreationDate="2015-05-14T07:31:48.077" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please try to reconsider your strategy for increasing productivity, measuring time spent in front of the computer will increase exactly that - time spent in front of computer. However studies has proven that it is really harmful from health perspective (in Hungary labor law mandates that everybody must take a 10 minutes break each hour that must not be spent in front of a workstation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of computer-related activities, where time spent in front of computer is not directly related to performance. It may be better to track productivity by measuring results during a given period, and manage this KPI to increase. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16711" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-05-14T12:34:22.217" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T12:34:22.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14943" CreationDate="2015-05-14T08:12:17.807" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;For us, &quot;it depends&quot;. We try to take into account of whether this is, for want of a better description, &quot;scope creep&quot; and how much extra time it adds to the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're using Scrum in 2 week iterations and if a request comes through that we think we can finish in this sprint &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; jeopardising our commitment we accept it. Sometimes we'll say &quot;that makes this 5 an 8&quot;, but most times don't bother.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it does impact our commitment, we talk through with the stakeholders on its importance and in most cases put it to the top of the backlog ready for next sprint. We explain to them the impact of replanning now and rejigging. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On those incredibly rare occassions it is a &quot;we must have this, forget the other stuff&quot;, we will cancel the sprint and re-plan. This is very rare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that once stakeholders realise there's going to be a shipable piece of software every iteration, the urgency turns out to be less severe than orginially stated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This works for my current team, but may not work in your situation. Try it and review in the next retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10424" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-05-14T10:29:56.567" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T10:29:56.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14938" CreationDate="2015-05-14T08:18:12.417" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;People need multiple breaks a day! Research shows that the brain cannot focus for hours straight. &lt;a href=&quot;http://pomodorotechnique.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The pomodoro technique&lt;/a&gt; even suggest that 25 minutes is the most optimal duration of focus. Employee's will be more productive when they have breaks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do have a look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.rescuetime.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;RescueTime&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; which offers a tool to record computer, website and application usage and gives insights for both the user and the employer, but its main focus is on having a good life work balance. When you return at your computer you can also record time for meetings and phone-calls. It should give a total view of what you did on a day. It has both a free personal version and enterprise version with everything you except from tools like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T08:18:12.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14947" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14951" CreationDate="2015-05-14T08:22:29.363" Score="6" ViewCount="482" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; the following is written to describe the Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The selected Product Backlog items deliver one coherent function,&#xA;  which can be the Sprint Goal. The Sprint Goal can be any other&#xA;  coherence that causes the Development Team to work together rather&#xA;  than on separate initiatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems that something else then the coherent function provided by &quot;Done&quot; selected Product Backlog items, can by a Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't get that. What does it mean that a Sprint Goal can be any other coherence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17138" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T10:46:07.543" Title="What does it mean that a Sprint Goal can be any other coherence?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14947" CreationDate="2015-05-14T08:47:49.507" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In terms of Agile Development, each product backlog item should represent one coherent function that would be delivered/developed on it's own and deployed to production. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Backlog items those selected for the Sprint may not be related in any way and The Sprint Goal would be developing each backlog-item separately. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it's good to have a long term plan and knowing that each separate item is a brick for a larger-scale plan. Thus, developers would develop together each piece in a harmony to reach that larger-scale plan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those further plans would be the other coherence that you're asking for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17157" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T08:47:49.507" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14943" CreationDate="2015-05-14T09:58:38.460" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a task meets the acceptance criteria, that means it's done. No other options. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In real life, if a developed task meets the acceptance criteria but needs some more attention or some updates that means task is not defined well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may need to discuss this in retrospective meetings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible challenges are as follows: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Product ownership is ambiguous. If you don't have a dedicated Product Owner and tasks are defined by various parties like marketing, account management etc, therefore task definitions won't be clear and coherent. Therefore, you'll end up with &lt;em&gt;done but uncompleted&lt;/em&gt; tasks. You'll need PO to consider all aspects of a feature. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Existing Product-Owner may have difficulties in defining coherent tasks. Possible causes are inadequate product know-how, lack of information about the domain, lack of communication with related departments or users/clients or un-ability to make decisions on her own. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to discuss these issues in a well-attended meeting with all affected parties. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;——&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other you'll need a short-term solution also: If acceptance criteria is okay but the feature is not, mark as done but do not release it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask product owner(s) to create a new story to complement/complete the previous one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Never update a task if acceptance criteria is well done. It's simply breaking the sprint. So why so-scrum? :)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17157" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T09:58:38.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14947" CreationDate="2015-05-14T10:46:07.543" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually a Sprint Goal is a short (one- or two-sentence) description of the &lt;em&gt;objectives of the sprint&lt;/em&gt;, the &lt;em&gt;higher purpose (vision) of why it is worthwhile undertaking the sprint&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please, note that a team might reach the Sprint Goal even if they can’t finish all stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A Sprint Goal is usually the delivery of a feature (“&lt;em&gt;one coherent function&lt;/em&gt;”). Anyway, The Scrum Guide underlines that the Sprint Goal can be “&lt;em&gt;any other coherence&lt;/em&gt;” that allows the Development Team to stay focused and “&lt;em&gt;work together rather than on separate initiatives.&lt;/em&gt;”&#xA;For example the team and the Product Owner can agree to use the sprint to address a risk (&lt;em&gt;Does the architecture provide the desired performance?&lt;/em&gt;) instead of creating a product increment.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17124" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T10:46:07.543" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14952" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14966" CreationDate="2015-05-14T13:38:38.660" Score="2" ViewCount="97" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the agency I work at, I notice that to finish a task, I end up perusing several sources to get the assets I need. (The initial ticket in Jira, Gmail, Drive, etc)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel as though everything I need (or, if I'm delegating a task, everything the person who's assigned needs) should be at least linked in their work task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I encourage people to put all required information directly in the initial ticket?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8297" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2015-05-18T01:15:33.543" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T01:15:33.543" Title="Best Approach to Get People to Put all Require Information in a single ticket?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14943" CreationDate="2015-05-14T14:55:43.293" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You mention Definition of Done, and in Agile, the acceptance criteria and other user story content defines if work meets the user's needs, but often allows for shoddy workmanship. We all know we can cut corners to make things work in real-world environments. It's important to understand this has little, if anything, to do with the quality of the developer doing the work. I've seen so many great developers pressured into cutting corners in order to meet business pressures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Definition of Done is really about giving technical people leverage against business demands. The DoD allows you to establish technical standards (95% unit test coverage, automated acceptance tests, code review, applied OOD principles, etc). When you have a weak DoD often times work will get marked &quot;done&quot; and then you're off to the next thing, so you never get to go back to it until the problems are so significant that you have to go back and spend time refactoring or testing or debugging &quot;off the books&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in summary, Acceptance Criteria verify that the application does what you need it to and a strong Definition of Done tells you that the work is complete, reliable, and maintainable. You need both of these to know that you can safely move on to the next thing without your project filling up with pools of technical debt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T14:55:43.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14943" CreationDate="2015-05-14T16:11:08.707" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wonder if the issue is not so much closing off a task as poor estimation of how much work remains. It is pretty common in my experience to have progress stall at 90-95% complete.... mainly because of poor estimation both of what work needs done and poor estimation of resource availability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A better practice for tracking progress is to define something as either complete (100% done) or not complete (0% done). For example, if you have some task that has five sub-tasks and only one of those five sub-tasks is complete then the task is 20% done. This should give you a less biased assessment of progress to date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T16:11:08.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14943" CreationDate="2015-05-14T17:26:22.717" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few thoughts on the question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality, I don't see the problem here. Frequent changes are absolutely normal for Agile. Even more, this is a part of Agile. You can't make part of product &quot;at all&quot;. There is always a chance that there will be new requirements for this part. Second principle of agile is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile&#xA;  processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you already implement some feature, but Product Owner want to change or improve it, I don't see any problem for closing this task and adding new PBI to Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, of course, Product Owner can't make global changes in functional requirements during Sprint. As SPDuFeu said, he can only cancel current Sprint, if he decide that current work of Developer Team is absolutely useless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are worry about release plan...well, release plan is just a fiction in Agile. It is impossible to follow release plan if you have frequently changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you said about &quot;shortages in time and budget&quot;. I don't think, that Agile is good for fixed-price contracts. But in case you have budget/time limitation, you should avoid any changes in project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two words about my experience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's a shame, but in the time when we worked with Scrum, we had no well defined DoD. Our main rule was: if all test cases passed, that means implemented feature is satisfy functional requirement. Approval from team's testers was enough for us. If after feature implementation our Product Owner  wanted to change it, then (as I written before) he just add new item to Product Backlog. We improved some features several sprints after their implementation. It was no problem for us.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Documentation. We tried to minimize it. The reason was that it's a pain to keep documentation up to date when requirements are change often. And of course &quot;working software over comprehensive documentation&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Team commitment, constraints of budget and time. I had one fix-price project (in truth two). Yes, we had strict limitations during these projects. But customer couldn't change already agreed SRS (in truth, he could, but it was additional pain and money for him and more time for us). And, obvious, our development process in that moment was not Scrum, but it had some of Scrum characteristics.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-05-14T22:13:51.590" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T22:13:51.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14956" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14959" CreationDate="2015-05-14T21:32:45.923" Score="3" ViewCount="9649" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a large schedule, but in the &lt;code&gt;Network Diagram&lt;/code&gt; view, I want to be able to filter to only show the tasks that are linked to the specific task I'm focused on. &#xA;The filtered tasks are not necessarily on the critical path. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would also be useful in the &lt;code&gt;Gantt Chart&lt;/code&gt; view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;: I clarified that I want to filter my project to only show the &lt;em&gt;entire&lt;/em&gt; string of predecessor and successors that go through an arbitrary task. Not just its immediate predecessors and successors, which is easily accomplished with the &lt;code&gt;Relationship Diagram&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;Task Entry&lt;/code&gt; view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;code&gt;Task Path&lt;/code&gt; command is not useful because I don't want the related tasks highlighted, I want the non-related tasks hidden. The entire point is that I want to be able to suppress the information that's not interesting so I can fit more of the logic going through a particular activity on the screen (or printed page) at once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="360" LastEditorUserId="360" LastEditDate="2015-05-15T22:29:46.283" LastActivityDate="2018-03-29T14:36:06.733" Title="Can I filter to only related tasks in MS Project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14956" CreationDate="2015-05-15T04:29:37.670" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you seen this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-nz/article/Filter-tasks-or-resources-8abff3cf-52c1-42b5-b37c-66ec043acde1#__toc268525543&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://support.office.com/en-nz/article/Filter-tasks-or-resources-8abff3cf-52c1-42b5-b37c-66ec043acde1#__toc268525543&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look's quite straight forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T04:29:37.670" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14921" CreationDate="2015-05-15T08:29:47.167" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since it's the same product and you iterate same feature set in a given time-box; why use different scrum boards? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not about maintaining your codebase, it's about managing your product with your team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say you're about to implement a new feature: &quot;User Profile Update&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All parties (iOS, Android, Backend) will work together on this functionality. You should groom together to refine feature details to make sure everything is all right. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can create an &quot;Epic&quot; for a major feature and create stories within this Epic. Thus it will be easy to track major features and (sub-)stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll need to create different stories for different type of development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a given to-be-developed-feature, it may be too easy to create mobile application part and too complex to build backend logic. This means different complexity points to track down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also this is important for creating similar experiences on both platforms your products work on.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the sprint, it's the one feature you're deploying and it's the one feature you're marketing about: &quot;Yay! We have user update feature now!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please do not forget, Agile Development is all about iterating features not codes. If you're unable to release your development, it never existed at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;——&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, if the total number of these people more than 9 people, you should consider implementing &quot;scrum-of-scrums&quot;/distributed-scrum practices.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17157" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T08:29:47.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14956" CreationDate="2015-05-15T13:45:39.670" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are using Project 2013, the Task Path command in the Gantt Chart Tools Format ribbon will do exactly as you ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are not using Project 2013, you can display predecessors and successors to a selected task by showing the Relationship Diagram in the lower pane of a split screen or you can show predecessors and successors in the Task Form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See azlav.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/task-paths-in-project-2013 for a method of filtering those tasks identified by the Task Path command.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastEditorUserId="6840" LastEditDate="2015-05-18T14:42:26.837" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T14:42:26.837" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14857" CreationDate="2015-05-15T13:51:47.383" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Answered at: &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2013_release-project/project-2013-custom-cost-field-not-visible-in-time/03904dd1-8dea-4ddd-a6d4-7797a071cce8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project 2013 - Custom cost field not visible in Time Report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm afraid custom fields are not timephased so they will not appear in&#xA;  any of the Visual Reports.  Project does not know how to spread the&#xA;  custom cost data.  The best I can recommend is to export the data&#xA;  (Cost and the Custom Cost fields) to Excel and manually spread the&#xA;  data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have further questions, please keep the conversation going on the Answers site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastEditorUserId="15972" LastEditDate="2015-05-18T11:09:18.097" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T11:09:18.097" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14877" CreationDate="2015-05-15T13:55:30.413" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can filter the resource list looking for resources with X hours of availability during the task duration using the Assign Resources form.  It is not &quot;automatic&quot; as Project doesn't know which resource is most appropriate.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not assign 300% of the engineers to a task if only one is needed, you will see your work inflated as well as creating overallocations.  If you want to use max units &gt; 100%, that's fine - but make sure you don't assign all the units to tasks needing fewer resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T13:55:30.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14909" CreationDate="2015-05-15T17:12:39.557" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Due to the fact that nobody answered until now, I'll do my best by providing you the first google entry:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isixsigma.com/tools-templates/sampling-data/how-determine-sample-size-determining-sample-size/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.isixsigma.com/tools-templates/sampling-data/how-determine-sample-size-determining-sample-size/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The page provides formula and explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T17:12:39.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14921" CreationDate="2015-05-15T20:44:25.010" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why are you trying to incorporate backend work into your teams' velocity estimate?  Is there a deeper problem you are trying to solve?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally your stories are a vertical slice of functionality (regardless of how many code bases).  So you would have 1 user story for iOS and one for Android that incorporate both front-end and backend tasks.  Each story is story pointed to reflect the complexity of the entire vertical slice.  In this model your front-end and back-end resources would have to agree on a story point estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could see the above being problematic in your scenario as your back-enders are split across 2 teams.  Shared dev resources across scrum teams is generally not recommended as it makes dependency management harder, promotes context switching, and complicates estimation practices.  Ideally you would have a dedicated back-ender as part of each team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider what works best for your teams.  While Scrum proscribes vertical slices, the greater value in being Agile is to force continuous or iterative planning, estimation, and discussion about upcoming work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may make more sense to create stand-alone backend stories in both teams' projects so that front-enders have story-level visibility into when backend work is nearing completion.  This approach is generally a no-no in scrum since you may be creating interdependent stories within an iteration, but if it helps your teams' stay on track and pro-actively communicate about their workflows/internal dependencies it may be worth considering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T20:44:25.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14943" CreationDate="2015-05-15T21:26:38.310" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll speak from the Agile-Scrum perspective.  First I need to break down your question into two different problem areas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Definition of Done is an operating agreement on your team.  Many teams do not task out their definition of done because it is redundant and not unique to any given user story.  A definition of done defines the engineering practices and guidelines used to ensure the functional product is of high quality.  When a team estimates a story they should consider the complexity of building a quality solution that incorporates their definition of done.  Teams that don't meet their done criteria usually are not good at estimating accurately to leave enough space to build quality into the product.  Definition of done usually touches on non-functional areas including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unit Testing practices&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Automated Testing practices&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manual Testing practices&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Performance/SLA requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Security requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Monitoring requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Documentation standards&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Finishing tasks doesn't always mean your team has met its definition of done.  Don't fall into the trap of seeing a story with all completed tasks and thinking it is done or acceptable. Tasking is both a thought process and a documentation exercise.  Highly disciplined teams continuously go through both parts of the tasking processes, most however document tasks up front and then let the actual thought process get out of sync with what was initially documented.  &quot;Working software over documentation.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, done criteria are often subjective.  For instance, ask a developer what &quot;good&quot; unit test coverage is and if 100% is reasonable for all stories.  Or what makes a good automated test?  What if it breaks during the next iteration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how do you handle this in real life.  There is no silver bullet, but in Scrum you talk to your team every day about their stories to understand if the team is on track.  Teams demo a functional story at the iteration end AND you ask to see things like code coverage, automated test pass rate, and documentation.  You regularly talk to your team (during retro or ad-hoc) to understand if they understand the done criteria, see value in them, and if they feel they have enough time to build a quality product.  Based on their continuous feedback you identify problem areas like estimation practices, technical gaps, etc and come up with plans to fill those gaps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mentioned taking time and budget into account.  All done criteria are negotiable AND have an implied cost/benefit.  Strong done criteria promote a sustainable product and negate certain risks throughout the life-cycle of your product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Knowing what the product life-cycle will look like and which risks you cannot afford to take will help you understand where it is appropriate to adjust your done criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T21:26:38.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14877" CreationDate="2015-05-16T04:44:01.773" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would create a single resource, e.g. &lt;code&gt;Engineer&lt;/code&gt;, and assign it at 100% to each task. Then in the Resource Usage page, right click on the &lt;code&gt;Engineer&lt;/code&gt; resource and change the availability to 300%. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then when you level the project it will let all three tasks occur concurrently because you've told Project that each task requires one engineer but that you have three engineers available. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't let you know in Project which engineer is assigned to each task, but this could be captured elsewhere, like in a note.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="360" LastActivityDate="2015-05-16T04:44:01.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14952" CreationDate="2015-05-16T06:56:51.627" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your gut feeling is pointing you in the right direction, toward the practice of &lt;strong&gt;full kitting&lt;/strong&gt; tasks before those tasks are initiated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, full kitting means that all of the inputs requires to complete a task are collected into a set before that task is initiated. Inputs can include information (manuals, instructions, data), physical materials, tools that will be used to do the work, and the availability of needed resources and people. I'm having difficulty finding a quality, online reference to link to. Kitting is a concept used in both &lt;em&gt;Theory of Constraints&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Lean&lt;/em&gt; methodologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some tools for kitting in software projects include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Public source code repositories like GitHub or GitLab&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wikis for documentation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User stories with acceptance criteria&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wireframe user interface mockups&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Links to deployed web services&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of the above can be associated with a Jira task as it moves through your team's workflow, either as an attachment or linked resource. This approach will likely work with other software too if your team chooses a different took than Jira. Some software, for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://kanbanery.com&quot;&gt;Kanbanery&lt;/a&gt;, will allow a task to be marked as &quot;ready to pull&quot; meaning that all elements of the kit have been collected and the task is ready for a team member to begin working on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2305" LastEditorUserId="2305" LastEditDate="2015-05-16T07:02:22.030" LastActivityDate="2015-05-16T07:02:22.030" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14952" CreationDate="2015-05-16T20:38:58.887" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I totally agree that it helps a lot, to bring all necessary information together. Nothing annoys more than going through some tree structure searching for an information several times a day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I learned is, that &lt;strong&gt;using systems that provide URLs simplifies this issue a lot&lt;/strong&gt; (e.g. web links):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;URLs can be processed by a lot of tools&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The URL target application can be independent from the application the link is presented&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Opening the URL is a simple click&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most modern system engineering tools provide URLs / links to call specific information (Jira, Confluence Wiki, Doors, git, ...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What ever tool you are using to provide task descriptions, it will be most likely able to deal with links (e.g. web browser MS Word). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2015-05-16T20:38:58.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14968" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15109" CreationDate="2015-05-17T07:28:58.880" Score="3" ViewCount="405" Body="&lt;p&gt;Earned Value Management (EMV) sounds like a great and objective method for reporting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Precondition for applying EVM is that tasks or results are well defined and well distributed during the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I'm wondering if it is possible to apply EVM to projects with a high probability of change&lt;/strong&gt;, e.g. R&amp;amp;T projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within R&amp;amp;T projects unforeseen iteration may appear or a former closed task has to be reopened due to new findings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those aspects are usually not understood as risk, due to the fact that everybody expects them to appear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding R&amp;amp;T vs. R&amp;amp;D:&#xA;For sure, EVM is successfully applied on lots of development projects. From my point of view, EVM is a tool to visualise results or effects caused by the &lt;em&gt;usual&lt;/em&gt; uncertainty of projects &lt;strong&gt;managed by waterfall model&lt;/strong&gt; (e.g. delays, changes in estimate at completion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_readiness_level&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TRL&lt;/a&gt;, R&amp;amp;D is situated somewhere between 4 and 8 (my impression). In compare to that, R&amp;amp;T is situated somewhere between 1 and 6 (again my impression).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, I state that the level of uncertainty decreases with higher TRL: Ones estimates get more robust regarding project planning aspects (e.g. time, schedule, tasks) as higher the TRL is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those are quite general statement and for sure not always correct or applicable. Nevertheless they reflect (at least my) general observations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Having this, to which level of uncertainty is EMV applicable or: Can EVM deliver a benefit to projects being subject of regular change?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-05-31T21:47:30.607" LastActivityDate="2015-06-04T18:32:40.723" Title="EVM in Research and Technology" Tags="&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;progress-report&gt;&lt;evm&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14969" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-17T08:52:18.123" Score="0" ViewCount="580" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've initiated into a PM role where there is a requirement to view project health of around 30-40 projects. This includes handling resource allocation requests. Can anyone please advise on using of an excel sheet template, if this is the right approach and maybe a sample sheet. Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17190" LastActivityDate="2015-05-19T18:20:48.247" Title="Multiple project tracking" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;job-allocation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14968" CreationDate="2015-05-17T09:44:52.700" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;EVM is designed to signal schedule and budget variances and treats both early and late finishes as undesirable. That makes EVM a poor fit for research projects since tasks cannot be finished or started early without signaling a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a project of known scope and with activities of well understood value, earned value management can be an effective source of signals for a management team. For example, a manufactured good can accrue value as it is refined from raw material to a finished good along a predefined manufacturing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is a better fit for research, since it seeks to maximize value given available resources. Early finishes are desirable in Scrum since they allow a team to add additional work scope. By monitoring a research team's velocity it is possible to forecast what backlog items can be completed under the available budget and schedule. If necessary, the backlog can be reprioritized to increase the chances of the research team completing the highest value research objectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2305" LastEditorUserId="2305" LastEditDate="2015-05-17T22:29:14.680" LastActivityDate="2015-05-17T22:29:14.680" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14971" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14974" CreationDate="2015-05-17T11:06:49.990" Score="2" ViewCount="3637" Body="&lt;p&gt;My 4 man team directly handle most technical tickets, with a &lt;strong&gt;SLA from 8 hours to 24 office hours&lt;/strong&gt;, means that during a sprint we must add these tickets in top of our current sprint backlog. We have &lt;strong&gt;one dedicated person&lt;/strong&gt; which handle commercial tickets and easy problems, however he cannot handle specific questions/problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These tickets greatly affects our velocity and &lt;strong&gt;demoralize&lt;/strong&gt; team members that &lt;strong&gt;cannot measure their effort&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most tickets aren't bugs, they are just problems related to the product, for example recently we wasted 3 day debugging a client issue, to later find out that was a broken RAM module.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I keep the team motivated and measure the actual velocity without breaking the SLA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17151" LastEditorUserId="17151" LastEditDate="2015-05-17T15:50:37.263" LastActivityDate="2015-05-20T14:34:58.817" Title="Which strategies I can use to handle tickets during a scrum sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14968" CreationDate="2015-05-17T13:30:20.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A research project is by definition innovative and, for this reason, uncertain. Especially at the beginning, researchers might have only a rough idea of the hypothesis that they want to validate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Novelty, complexity and uncertainty make the use of an Agile approach a good choice in the Research &amp;amp; Technology context.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is the possibility to use &lt;strong&gt;an Agile implementation of the Earned Value Management principle, known as AgileEVM (that adopts values defined in Scrum)&lt;/strong&gt;. I have never tested the validity of using EVM on my Scrum projects, but it can be worth reading this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.solutionsiq.com/docs/earned-value-analysis-in-scrum-projects-wp.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt; to know more about it. Here it is the &lt;em&gt;Abstract&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum is an Agile Project Management Framework. This framework&#xA;  specifically focuses on maximizing Return on Investment (ROI). Scrum,&#xA;  however, does not define how to manage and track costs to evaluate&#xA;  actual ROI against the vision. A reasonable cost measurement that&#xA;  integrates with Scrum would help provide an additional feedback loop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We adapted Earned Value Management (EVM), using values defined in&#xA;  Scrum. The result is called AgileEVM (Agile Earned Value Management)&#xA;  and is a simplified set of earned value calculations. From the values&#xA;  in Scrum, we derived a release date estimate using mean velocity and&#xA;  from this equation, generated an equivalent equation using traditional&#xA;  EVM techniques, thus establishing the validity of using EVM with the&#xA;  Scrum framework. Finally, we used this technique on two projects to&#xA;  further test our hypothesis. This investigation also helped us&#xA;  determine the utility of AgileEVM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An extract from the &lt;em&gt;Conclusions&lt;/em&gt; paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For the ScrumMaster, it is clear that metrics that are familiar go a&#xA;  long way to ease the discomfort that new, unfamiliar methodologies can&#xA;  induce. The analysis that AgileEVM provides, along with the burndown&#xA;  method, helps to substantiate intuition and provides executives with&#xA;  quantitative data in a consistent manner. The cost analysis, with its&#xA;  forecast Estimate at Complete and Estimate to Complete are valuable to&#xA;  Agile stakeholders calculating estimated ROI. Agile stakeholders who&#xA;  are responsible for making budget decisions find this information&#xA;  extremely valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our recommendation is that AgileEVM be used in conjunction with the&#xA;  Burndown chart and team velocity as supporting data. One important&#xA;  caveat is that change is expected on Agile projects and so the&#xA;  AgileEVM metrics are derived from what is true at each Sprint&#xA;  boundary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Providing the team and Agile stakeholders with useful and&#xA;  understandable data is vital to the &quot;rudder&quot; with which the Scrum team&#xA;  steers toward better processes and continuous improvement. By&#xA;  providing the burndown and AgileEVM metrics together, the team is&#xA;  better equipped to succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17124" LastEditorUserId="17124" LastEditDate="2015-05-17T14:03:40.420" LastActivityDate="2015-05-17T14:03:40.420" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14971" CreationDate="2015-05-17T22:55:54.090" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the velocity of your team is impacted by tickets, then it is important to reflect that impact in your sprint planning. There are at least two ways to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Option one:&lt;/strong&gt; If it isn't possible to assign story points to tickets, then allow your velocity to drop. Don't think of a reduced velocity as a bad thing. The purpose of velocity is to help a team understand how much work to commit to within a period of time. A low velocity team that meets its commitments is preferable to a high velocity team that is highly unreliable in its commitments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Option two:&lt;/strong&gt; If it is possible to assign story points to tickets, then count ticket completions toward the team's velocity. Pay attention to the percentage of the team's velocity that is contributed by closing tickets. When planning for a sprint (a new period of work), reserve an appropriate amount of capacity for tickets that the team expects to encounter during the sprint. For example, if velocity is 100 and tickets contribute 40, then only commit to 60 points of non-ticket work. During the sprint, if the team completes non-ticket work and doesn't receive the expected amount of ticket work, then the team can pull additional non-ticket stories into the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option two is the preferable approach. Remember that the purpose of velocity is to help teams, when planning a sprint, to avoid committing to more work than can be completed during a sprint. Once commitments have been met, it is always okay for a team to pull additional work into a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @Depressive_Bore mentioned, the answers about &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/14772/scrum-on-maintenance-is-it-possible&quot;&gt;software maintenance&lt;/a&gt; will likely be helpful to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2305" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2015-05-17T22:55:54.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14971" CreationDate="2015-05-17T22:56:31.877" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Budget time for such production bug triage work&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not very unusual. Most software development teams have to be prepared to fix production bugs on priority, if any are reported. It is also quite normal that &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.chromium.org/getting-involved/bug-triage&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;bug reports need to be triaged first&lt;/a&gt; even though some of them may turn out to be not bugs at all. However, your team seems to have more of them with tighter SLAs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what I will do in your situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the time of Sprint Planning keep aside bandwidth for such bug triage work. You can take a look at the % of time spent on such work in the past few weeks/months and base it on that. If there is a lot of such work, look into whether one of the 4 man team needs to be dedicated for this work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also, keep some stories fully ready and planned but not in the Sprint backlog but on top of the backlog. One of these can be pulled in if it appears mid sprint that it will be possible to take it on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When the bug ticket comes in, estimate it just like the other stories. This way you will have a record of how much work has been accomplished during the sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is that dedicated person using a Kanban board for handling the commercial tickets and easy problems? If not, consider using one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-05-17T22:56:31.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14971" CreationDate="2015-05-18T06:16:22.523" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As said above this is a general scenario. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within our 4 person team, we have a dedicated team member for handling the production bugs. His velocity will be zero for that sprint (we will track the no. of tickets which were closed by him/her). This role is carried out in round robin fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The remaining team members will be taken as the velocity for that sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17193" LastEditorUserId="44" LastEditDate="2015-05-19T06:19:25.883" LastActivityDate="2015-05-19T06:19:25.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14971" CreationDate="2015-05-18T11:29:15.643" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you can find interesting reading the following article:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2012/may/applying-agile-in-a-mixed-feature-development-and&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Applying Agile in a Mixed-Feature Development and SLA-Bound Bug-Fixing Team&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that &lt;strong&gt;having a dedicated team member that deals with tickets is a good solution&lt;/strong&gt; to the SLA problem. By doing so, &lt;strong&gt;the other three team members can keep the sprints uninterrupted&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most developers do not like working solely on support issues. &lt;strong&gt;In order to avoid that the morale of the &quot;support developer&quot; could suffer, you have correctly chosen to use the round-robin principle.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;It is wise to do so for another reason as well. &lt;strong&gt;Without rotation in this task, many bugs will be handled only by the same &quot;support developer&quot;, and the remaining developers could start to pay less attention to code quality.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;support developer&quot; could &lt;strong&gt;use Kanban to solve support tickets and create new releases faster, without having to wait for the end of a sprint&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have written that sometimes the &quot;support developer&quot; is not able to handle specific questions/problems alone. &lt;strong&gt;Another solution can be to allocate time for the tickets in advance. To know more about how you can set aside some percentage of your velocity as an interrupt buffer, you can give a look at the Scrum pattern known as “&lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com/a/scrumplop.org/published-patterns/product-organization-pattern-language/illegitimus-non-interruptus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Illegitimus Non Interruptus&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;”.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17124" LastEditorUserId="17124" LastEditDate="2015-05-18T11:35:04.590" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T11:35:04.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14979" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-18T13:32:30.957" Score="1" ViewCount="834" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am scheduling a series of 30 small training sessions (2,5d each), and I wish that each training would not be Split by weekends or holidays. All tasks are to be performed by the same person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If training is scheduled to begin on a Friday, for instance, and to continue on Monday and Tuesday, I'd like to have it postponed to Monday. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to automatically doing it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2462" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-15T13:45:44.563" LastActivityDate="2018-11-15T13:45:44.563" Title="In MS Project 2010, how to avoid a task of being split by non working time?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14979" CreationDate="2015-05-18T14:40:55.627" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple of assumptions and feel free to adjust to your specific scenario. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the sessions are 2.5 days each, they cannot start after 1:00 pm on Wed.  Create a calendar with working time Monday through Wednesday at 1:00 pm.  Make Wednesday after 1:00 pm all day Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nonworking.  Make sure the calendar also has the standard holidays that you've included in the regular project calendar.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create a 1 minute predecessor to the training sessions and assign the custom calendar to that task.  If the 1 minute predecessor falls outside the working time allowed for the sessions, it will be rescheduled to the next working day (Monday).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T14:40:55.627" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14981" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-18T18:47:43.920" Score="0" ViewCount="1478" Body="&lt;p&gt;When is it more appropriate to use a constraint vs lag time and vice versa? There are some situations in which it is not completely clear to me which one should I use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17198" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-05-19T02:50:15.127" LastActivityDate="2015-05-19T13:42:05.287" Title="Constraints vs Lag time" Tags="&lt;constraints&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14969" CreationDate="2015-05-18T20:22:57.637" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;At one of my previous companies I replaced a 100+ slide PowerPoint deck with a simple excel spreadsheet. This was for a division that shipped close to a million units a quarter across a number of product lines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was highly successful. We had one tab for new projects, one tab for sustaining projects and one for field issues. My format included columns for key aspects of the projects (Software, Hardware, Packaging, etc.) so a specific area could be flagged without the whole program being flagged. Major milestone dates were then listed, which could then be flagged with a color, based on status. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At one point we were tracking over thirty different projects with this spreadsheet. The ease of use, updating and easy to digest information made it very popular. Vice presidents would print it out and put it on their wall every week when it was updated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the template, this is highly context sensitive. I started out with little more than the project name and the top four milestones. I then started using it with teams and stakeholders and over the next few weeks tweaked it based on feedback. I didn't put in everyone's feedback. Instead I focused on requests made multiple times and that were not one offs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to wrap up, yes it's useful and start with a very simple template, grow it from there though direct use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T20:22:57.637" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14981" CreationDate="2015-05-19T02:49:10.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Constraints&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Assumption:&lt;/strong&gt; you're asking about Microsoft Project and not using the term &quot;constraint&quot; in a more generic way. If that assumption is correct then &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/74978&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Microsoft's support article&lt;/a&gt; defines the various constraints available in Project. Constraints introduce rules that limit when MS Project will allow tasks to begin or end. In some situations, constraints can increase the accuracy with which a project task network models a real-world process. For example, a &lt;em&gt;start no earlier than&lt;/em&gt; constraint can be used to model the beginning of a phase of work that's earliest possible start date is restricted in real life by a law or regulation. For convenience, here are the provided constraints as of 5/18/2015:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As late as possible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As soon as possible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finish no earlier than&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finish no later than&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Must finish on&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Must start on&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start no earlier than&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start no later than&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Microsoft Project is most useful when a project analyst uses the tool in &lt;em&gt;automatic scheduling mode&lt;/em&gt;. This mode uses available task information like dependencies, and resources to calculate and forecast when tasks will be in work and completed. &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-ie/article/How-scheduling-works-in-Project-5d4f5981-4e9f-4e8e-a699-2ef2a419252f&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Microsoft explains how Project calculates automatic scheduling&lt;/a&gt;. Task constraints can mess up automatic scheduling (more on that later).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, when constructing activity networks I try to &lt;strong&gt;limit my use of constraints to zero duration milestones with fixed completion dates&lt;/strong&gt;, or the &quot;must finish on&quot; constraint. It can be convenient to collect all such milestones in a top-level task group. In order for zero day milestones to be useful, they must be linked to predecessor tasks that have a duration. With this structure in place, as task durations are updated Project will be able to recalculate the activity network and signal the project analyst which milestones are forecasting early, on time, and late finishes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a more concrete example, consider the following &quot;Sandwich Project&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sandwich&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cut sandwich in half&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Serve Paul half&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Serve Bob half&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Eat (Paul)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Eat (Bob)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bus tables&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following are the task relationships for this project:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 [fs] 2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 [fs] 3&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 [fs] 4&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 [fs] 5&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;4 [fs] 6&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;5 [fs] 7&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;6 [fs] 7&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's introduce three milestones with constrained dates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Made [must finish on 1/1/2016]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Eaten [must finish on 1/2/2016]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cleaned up [must finish on 1/3/2016]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These milestones can be set to a duration of 0d and can be linked to the appropriate predecessors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 [fs] Made&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;5 [fs] Eaten&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;6 [fs] Eaten&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;7 [fs] Cleaned up&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With task dependencies established, as the durations and progress of the tasks and the overall project start date are adjusted the milestone completion dates will be shown to be early, on time, or late. Ideally, the only fixed date that will need to be manually entered (other than the zero day milestones) will be the project start date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stakeholdermap.com/ms-project/msproject-constraints-part2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;nice post explaining common issues that arise when constraints are applied&lt;/a&gt;. Note, the post references Project 2007 and may be outdated. I agree with the post's author that it's generally a good idea to avoid setting manual constraints. MS Project is most powerful when automatic scheduling is calculating and signaling project performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lag&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lag provide a way to insert delays between tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...successor tasks that can start before their predecessor tasks are finished, and other successor tasks that cannot be started until after a delay that follows the conclusion of their predecessor tasks (&lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-ca/article/Set-lead-or-lag-time-float-between-tasks-e7fd630b-8fd5-4023-9cc2-7054878370a6?ui=en-US&amp;amp;rs=en-CA&amp;amp;ad=CA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Microsoft Support Doc&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lag can be useful as a way for a project analyst to model durations that don't consume project resources or that are outside the control of the project team. Using the &quot;Sandwich Project&quot; example again, if Paul and Bob are customers in a restaurant then they aren't part of the restaurant staff and may not be under the authority of the project manager and it can be useful to model the &quot;Eat&quot; tasks as a 90 minute delay between the &quot;Serve&quot; tasks and &quot;Bus tables&quot; task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lags can be useful to model situations like mandatory review periods in government processes where a government office will review a form submitted by a contractor in 5 business days. Lags can also be useful to model physical constraints like the drying time for paint or the curing time for a chemical adhesive. Leads allow tasks to start before a predecessor finishes. I don't recommend using Leads. Usually, I find a Lead signals insufficient breakdown of the task network by a project analyst and recommend breaking work into smaller pieces that can be correctly modeled using finish-to-start relationships. However, a Lead may be useful as a simplification in project plans requiring less precision. &lt;a href=&quot;http://m.dummies.com/how-to/content/lag-and-lead-time-in-project-2013-tasks.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; offers further examples and discussion of lead and lag time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2305" LastEditorUserId="2305" LastEditDate="2015-05-19T13:42:05.287" LastActivityDate="2015-05-19T13:42:05.287" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14985" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14986" CreationDate="2015-05-19T11:40:04.833" Score="3" ViewCount="279" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that I have some misunderstandings from scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimates of some tasks are not measurable. For example researching about something or talking about company road map and etc. I can't estimate how many story points needed to complete these tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I define backlog items for this kind of jobs and put them into a sprint? Then how can I estimate them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or I have to do them outside of scrum process? For example between 2 sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17204" LastActivityDate="2017-11-13T16:00:26.427" Title="Non-measurable works should be done in scrum process?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14985" CreationDate="2015-05-19T12:10:27.570" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You specifically mentioned two things, so I'm going to focus on those in this answer. However, you can probably generalize for a wide variety of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For tasks such as researching or learning something, many people use a spike (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://agiledictionary.com/209/spike/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://agileatlas.org/articles/item/spikes-in-scrum-the-exception-not-the-rule&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/spikes/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;). It's not part of Scrum, but it's a good fit. You should be able to estimate this type of work somehow, although it may be hard without prior experiences. In the end, it's no different than any other story, except that the completion of a spike yields an increase in knowledge and maybe some kind of deliverable that isn't a shippable software product. You place it on the backlog appropriately and do it before you need to deliver the functionality using whatever information you learned during the spike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're estimating in story points, estimating a spike should be fairly easy. It's typically easier to learn a new library than a new framework, a new framework than a new programming language, a new language than a new paradigm. If you have domain experience already, it is likely going to be easier than if you don't have domain experience. If you have to learn multiple new things, it's going to be harder. You should be able to scale up the points for a spike appropriately. It's easier if you're using a Fibonacci sequence or t-shirt sizing for estimation, as opposed to hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also some other tasks that you mention, like discussing roadmaps and other meetings. These items should live outside of Scrum. They will influence your project planning and development activities, though, and do need to be considered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, anything outside the project will reduce the capacity of your team, so you will have a lower velocity that you must consider when planning. If you know that the team will have more outside activities (meetings, vacations) in one sprint than a previous sprint, you can plan for a reduced velocity up-front by planning a smaller deliverable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, if your company roadmap includes things like new technology development, technology acquisition, or any kind of transformation, you may want to plan spikes as appropriate to see how various projects can support this roadmap. You may also need to account for people supporting activities on the company roadmap, both technical and non-technical, which will take them away from projects and reduce project velocity. Of course, depending on your funding structure, you may need customer buy-in and support to add stories and tasks related to internal changes to project plans, which you may or may not get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2017-11-13T16:00:26.427" LastActivityDate="2017-11-13T16:00:26.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14985" CreationDate="2015-05-19T13:46:22.907" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Backlog is an ordered list of everything that might be&#xA;  needed in the product and is the single source of requirements for any&#xA;  changes to be made to the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, a typical &lt;strong&gt;Scrum backlog&lt;/strong&gt; comprises the following different types of items:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Features&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bugs&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Technical work&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Knowledge acquisition&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find more information about what this means in practice &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/product-backlog&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;Research something&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, if related to, for example, software architecture or a framework you want to use, will fall in the category &lt;em&gt;Knowledge acquisition&lt;/em&gt;. Therefore, it should appear in the backlog with its estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will hear some people using the term &lt;strong&gt;Spike&lt;/strong&gt;. Spikes are an invention of Extreme Programming (XP): to learn more about it, look &lt;a href=&quot;http://agileatlas.org/articles/item/spikes-in-scrum-the-exception-not-the-rule&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other side, &quot;&lt;em&gt;talking about company road map&lt;/em&gt;&quot; is an activity that does not belong to the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, meetings, time spent reading emails, etc. don't appear in the backlog, but are taken into account when estimating velocity. I think that this &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/8819/how-to-estimate-accurate-velocity-when-team-members-are-on-leave&quot;&gt;previous question&lt;/a&gt; can help you to understand this concept and which activities will influence your team velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17124" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2015-05-19T19:43:00.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14969" CreationDate="2015-05-19T18:20:48.247" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some other ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For each project,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;number of open risk items (registered into the risks database), maybe a computed number from risk system (risk probability * risk cost / project total cost, etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;number of critical issues (or an history-chart of the number of issues, to see the trends) (issues should be non-trivial ones, that is worth taking action on a decided level (your level, your higher level, or your lower level)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;number of manhours budgeted and used (if it's more than budgeted, there might be need for re-baselining the resources or taking a better look at the issues, or updating the schedule)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;number of releases of the project team (percentage, or XXX/YYY style) until the upcoming milestone (release can be anything, documents, technical drawings, software units, etc, depending on the scale of the project).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coloring should be GREEN or RED, and not YELLOW, according to Takashi Tanaka (see his youtube conferences to understand why Yellow is discouraged).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16715" LastActivityDate="2015-05-19T18:20:48.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14989" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14991" CreationDate="2015-05-19T21:20:51.347" Score="4" ViewCount="269" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may be a weird question and please bear with me, I am completely new into this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a list of 20 requirements (use cases) which I received from my client. With him, I prioritized this list of requirements (1 highest 3 lowest). I wrote for every requirement a use case scenario (rather than user story). I also have a use case diagram and some technical designs (class diagram, database diagram).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, my plan is to separate this list of 20 requirements into 5 sprints. Each sprint lasts one week. During every meeting with my client, I can show the product with 4 new use cases implemented. If one of them isn't finished, I move it to the next sprint and my client can request a change during this meeting. During this change, the specific use case diagram and classdiagram/database diagram may be changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this considered to be Agile? (Even though he gave me the full 20 requirements from the start of the project)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17211" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-05-20T01:51:28.183" LastActivityDate="2015-05-22T07:27:48.640" Title="Is this approach 'agile'? Separating use-cases into sprints/iterations" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14989" CreationDate="2015-05-19T22:59:31.123" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's hard to say something is or is not Agile. It's a little easier to say something is or is not Scrum (this isn't, but I don't think you should get too hung up on that). It's often more beneficial to ask &quot;How Agile is this?&quot; There are a lot of great things you've got in there including prioritizing a backlog, rapid feedback loops, continual validation with the customer, and the ability to roll with changes. There are a few things that I think most Agile professionals have come to accept as key parts of Agile that you might want to consider moving toward in the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Separating What and How: User Stories are not a required part of many Agile practices. That said, almost everyone has moved to user stories because it describes the &quot;What&quot; to build, or the user need that has to be addressed, without dictating &quot;How&quot; to build it. Leaving the architecture and design in the team does a few key things. First, it leaves the door open to different solutions. A classic problem in waterfall approaches is that you establish the solution at the beginning of the project, where you've had no chance to validate your assumptions yet and, if it doesn't turn out to be the right solution, you have no good opportunity to change that. While you may be very technical, you aren't the one directly learning if the approach is working and have to rely on the people writing the program to give you feedback for you to update those diagrams. Second, the team isn't invested in the solution because it's your solution. If something doesn't really work in the design or some other factor means another design would be better, they still succeed by building your design, not by solving the problem the best way. If they determine the how, they own it and have a personal motivation to see it done right. If the team is not particularly experienced, consulting with a more experienced developer may be beneficial, but the solution should still be theirs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) While your schedule isn't set in stone, you are making assumptions about how long things will take and I don't see anything here about previous work from the team that suggests that the number of requirements per sprint is based off of anything other than what was asked for. I'm reading between the lines a bit here, but it feels like there may end up being some hidden pressure to &quot;follow the plan&quot; once things start going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that said, you'll probably get a lot of great benefit from the steps you're taking and there's always something else a team can do to improve or become more Agile, so don't be down on if what you're doing &quot;is Agile.&quot; Just know that a key part of Agile is committing to continuous improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-05-19T22:59:31.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14989" CreationDate="2015-05-20T02:51:43.783" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In extension to Daniel's answer: I guess an important aspect regarding to &lt;em&gt;how agile are we&lt;/em&gt; is the view on the result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You wrote, &quot;the customer may change the use cases between the sprints&quot;. For sure, the customer will do this based on the results you achieved up to this point. This is also possible in waterfall projects, e.g. via change request. So it is not an absolute indicator for being agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But would you or customer accept that not all requirements might be realised? May be due to larger effort for the realisation of previous requirements or because it turns out that the realised requirements are &lt;em&gt;enough&lt;/em&gt; to launch the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, this is an important part of the agile mindset from the view of the customer / contractor relationship. If this is not the case, you have to guarantee that all requirements are met and by this you might end up in classical PM and agile development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-05-22T07:27:48.640" LastActivityDate="2015-05-22T07:27:48.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14993" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-20T12:54:01.103" Score="1" ViewCount="1691" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to know how many tasks are 100% complete in my project.  How do I get a current total of the number of tasks that are 100% complete from my %Complete column?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17216" LastActivityDate="2015-05-20T16:57:59.247" Title="Task count for completed tasks" Tags="&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14971" CreationDate="2015-05-20T14:34:58.817" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Automated Testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you note, most of these problems are not bugs and most of the time working on them is probably, 'figuring stuff out' rather than changing code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although it might seem like a time/resource management issue, actually your problem is in treating customer support as a series of technical tasks to be added to your sprint. Techies don't tend to make the best customer support guys!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to avoid this you need a quick and efficient test to decide whether the problem requires a code change in order to fix it and if so, what the requirements of that change should be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally an automated test suite will determine if the product is functioning as designed and can be run before and after each release. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, you can also build up a set of manual tests by writing down steps and expected behavior and common fixes each time a bug is reported. Once you have a large set of these they can be handed off to a less technical customer support team to run through before escalating the problem&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2015-05-20T14:34:58.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14993" CreationDate="2015-05-20T16:57:59.247" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Add a spare number field (Number1 for example) and customize the field with the following formula:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;IIf([% complete]=100,1,0)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Custom fields dialog under &quot;&lt;em&gt;Calculation for task and group summary rows&lt;/em&gt;&quot; select &quot;&lt;em&gt;Sum&lt;/em&gt;&quot; in the Rollup drop down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Turn on the Project Summary task to see a total count of complete tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-05-20T16:57:59.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14989" CreationDate="2015-05-20T18:27:23.727" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before answering your question, I want to make two comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am absolutely sure, that doesn't matter, can be your process called &quot;agile&quot; or not. The main goal of your development process to give to you and your customer maximum profit with minimum effort.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If development process has iterations, this mean only that you use Iterative Development Model. Development process based on Iterative Development Model may be not agile, but agile process should use iterative development model.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And now answer to your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Looks like that your process adheres agile approach. But there are too many details, that you didn't describe.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In more details:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile postulates two main values:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Flexibility in relationship with customer:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and&#xA;  continuous delivery of valuable software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have early and continuous delivery? Yes, you have iterations in your development process, but do you have realisable product after each one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile&#xA;  processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok, you said, that customer can change unfinished features, but can he change requirements to functionality, that you are already implemented?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a&#xA;  couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok. You have an one week iterations. This principle passed =)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the&#xA;  project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok. You have consultation with customer after each iterations. It is not &quot;daily&quot;, of course, but by my opinion, it's enough. Passed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Flexibility within development process:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You didn't describe this aspect at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-05-20T18:35:25.243" LastActivityDate="2015-05-20T18:35:25.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14240" CreationDate="2015-05-21T09:21:51.627" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the Morning. First thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; important thing to do in the daily scrum, is to say what task you are working on that day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This gives immediacy and allows no equivocation, ie. &quot;I know I said yesterday that today I would do X. But I forgot/slept on it/changed my mind&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also deals with the problem of people not turning up. ie. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yesterday &lt;strong&gt;Alex&lt;/strong&gt; said he would do task X, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;but he was ill and we waited all day before having this meeting &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;where we assign X to &lt;strong&gt;Bob&lt;/strong&gt; to do tomorrow. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If &lt;strong&gt;Alex&lt;/strong&gt; turns up tomorrow, he will do no work that day except attend the daily scrum.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2015-05-21T09:21:51.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14926" CreationDate="2015-05-21T09:51:04.570" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, Although it is common to see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, I would argue that splitting your team across android/ios is probably also not a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's my reasoning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have one product, the App. User stories should be written from a user's perspective, not a technical one. ie you would have :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;As a User, I want Feature X, so that I can achieve goal Y&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;not&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;As a Programmer working on platform Z, I require the API to expose&#xA;  Feature X, so that I can implement feature X on platform Z&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scrum team can break down the Feature X into tasks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;add sprocs to the DB&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;update the DAL&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;update the service&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;expose the API&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;update ios app&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;update android app&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;update windows app&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;update website&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;when all are complete then the user story is delivered&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have Three teams, the API team will end up with two potentially conflicting feature requests from the ios and android team to implement an API they designed independently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This leads to :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;delay, as your app teams wait for api team resource to be allocated, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;bad coding as your api team duplicate functionality for specific platforms &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and general communication problems as multiple teams attempt to solve the same problem individually&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2015-05-21T09:51:04.570" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15000" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15001" CreationDate="2015-05-21T09:53:43.010" Score="30" ViewCount="43157" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several terms which we use to describe requirements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Theme&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Epic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feature&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User Story&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the formal definitions of these terms and what are the differences between them (except volume of described requirements)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are some other terms to describe requirements, please, tell me about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-02-06T14:09:58.600" LastActivityDate="2018-12-11T15:55:03.417" Title="What are the definitions and differences between: Theme, Epic, Feature, User Story and Task?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15000" CreationDate="2015-05-21T11:57:15.800" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;Each organization and author has a different definition for these terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/stories-epics-and-themes&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt;, Mike Cohn provides his definition of User Stories, Epics and Themes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;user story&lt;/strong&gt; is simply something a user wants. User stories are more&#xA;  than just text written on an index card but for our purposes here,&#xA;  just think of user story as a bit of text saying something like,&#xA;  &quot;Paginate the monthly sales report&quot; or, &quot;Change tax calculations on&#xA;  invoices.&quot; Many teams have learned the benefits of writing user&#xA;  stories in the form of: &quot;As a &amp;lt;type of user&amp;gt; I &amp;lt;want/can/am able&#xA;  to/need to/etc.&amp;gt; so that &amp;lt;some reason&amp;gt;.&quot; But it is not necessary that&#xA;  a user story be written that way. Check out the advantages of that&#xA;  user story format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Scrum &lt;strong&gt;epic&lt;/strong&gt; is a large user story. There's no magic threshold at&#xA;  which we call a particular story an epic. It just means &quot;big user&#xA;  story.&quot; I like to think of this in relation to movies. If I tell you a&#xA;  particular movie was an &quot;action-adventure movie&quot; that tells you&#xA;  something about the movie. There's probably some car chases, probably&#xA;  some shooting, and so on. It tells you this even though there is no&#xA;  universal definition that we've agreed to follow, and that an&#xA;  action-adventure movie must contain at least three car chases, at&#xA;  least 45 bullets must be shot, and ….&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, &quot;epic&quot; is just a label we apply to a large story. Calling a story&#xA;  an epic can sometimes convey additional meaning. Suppose you ask me if&#xA;  I had time yesterday to write the user stories about the monthly&#xA;  reporting part of the system. &quot;Yes,&quot; I reply, &quot;but they are mostly&#xA;  epics.&quot; That tells you that while I did write them, I didn't get the&#xA;  chance to break most of them down into stories that are probably small&#xA;  enough to implement directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Finally, &quot;&lt;strong&gt;theme&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; is a collection of user stories. We could put a&#xA;  rubber band around that group of stories I wrote about monthly&#xA;  reporting and we'd call that a &quot;theme.&quot; Sometimes it's helpful to&#xA;  think about a group of stories so we have a term for that. Sticking&#xA;  with the movie analogy above, in my DVD rack I have filed the James&#xA;  Bond movies together. They are a theme or grouping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the sprint, &lt;strong&gt;tasks&lt;/strong&gt; are defined for each user story, so that the development team can have a clear sense of how it will accomplish its work. Tasks are simply more granular versions of the work entailed to complete a user story. A task is a technical piece of work necessary to get a story done. Developers split a story in technical tasks to get a realistic estimate of the time it will take to complete a story. It is important to note that user stories are usually estimated using story points, whereas tasks are estimated with hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;feature&lt;/strong&gt; is a distinct element of functionality which can provide capabilities to the business. It generally takes many iterations to deliver a feature. A user story is a part of the feature. By splitting a feature in smaller stories, the user can give early feedback to the developers to issues quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The relationship between epics and features is the most controversial in the agile community. In my opinion, an epic is a broader concept and an epic can be broken down into different features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17124" LastEditorUserId="7721" LastEditDate="2017-04-18T21:22:55.427" LastActivityDate="2017-04-18T21:22:55.427" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3353" CreationDate="2015-05-21T12:05:28.537" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 2010 go to Format / Layout, then increase the 'Bar Height' figure &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17228" LastActivityDate="2015-05-21T12:05:28.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15003" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-22T01:50:21.183" Score="0" ViewCount="366" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently been suprised by a lack of freely available UML diagrams or my inability to find them online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though a company's implementation of a model may vary, one might hope that models for common businesses would be available online, just as open source software allows one to piece together different stacks rather than reinventing wheels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ie, &lt;a href=&quot;http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Restaurant-UML-SEQ.gif&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this very basic example&lt;/a&gt; of a restaurant's ordering flow is shown on Wikipedia. Where could I find others for say a car wash, vending machine or word processing software?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4772" LastEditorUserId="4772" LastEditDate="2015-05-22T19:34:46.833" LastActivityDate="2015-05-24T12:32:34.850" Title="Why are UML diagrams not as freely available as open source libraries?" Tags="&lt;design&gt;&lt;process-engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-05-27T01:01:06.627" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15003" CreationDate="2015-05-22T01:57:33.777" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;May have answered my own question here. By searching for the following phrase, one may find relevant UML diagrams, but then will need to verify the licensing model applied to the images:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'uml example vending machine'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4772" LastActivityDate="2015-05-22T01:57:33.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15003" CreationDate="2015-05-22T16:06:02.073" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that the reason why you find such models hard to find is because they aren't being produced. With the growing popularity of functional programming, test driven development and agile, iterative development techniques, the days of trying to design an entire system via UML diagrams has long gone. Some people might still use UML as a way of creating secondary documentation of the design (the code, plus unit tests, being recognised as the primary design document these days), but they would be generated from the code, not vice versa. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14835" LastActivityDate="2015-05-22T16:06:02.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15006" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15007" CreationDate="2015-05-23T04:03:35.170" Score="1" ViewCount="151" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a Web Design and Development project for my Final. I have missed Alpha and Beta milestones due to a critical server error that was beyond my knowledge or understanding. I had to get in touch with a qualified professional to help me rectify this error which took approximately a week and a half to address.  I should note, at this time, I sat down with my instructor multiple times, and he could not understand the issue, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My instructors have been giving me a hard time about it, so I am trying to be as professional as possible, considering it had nothing to do with my code (which was fine).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What kind of paperwork is processed if this were to happen with a development firm? What is generally said at the meeting? How should I best address this? I have absolutely zero training in project management. I am simply working on my own project for a Final, yet I need to know how  to handle myself as a project lead professionally in order to get my point across.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would desperately like a piece of paperwork that documents the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17241" LastActivityDate="2015-05-23T05:53:27.510" Title="What is the correct way to handle delays caused by technical issues?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15006" CreationDate="2015-05-23T05:53:27.510" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In traditional project management this would be covered by Monitoring and Controlling Phase of the project. This would most likely come out as part of a standard status report and be raised into the risk register as a blocking issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is early and accurate reporting. When the issue comes up, it gets reported to the project manager for the normal status. Because it impacts the delivery of the project, and there is no known resolution when it first come up, the program would be reported as red. The risk register would reflect the blocking Issue. An Issue being a risk that has been realized and is occurring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In agile, this would have been raised as an impediment in a daily standup. Because it is beyond the developers control to address, the scrum master would have the responsibility to own it and work to a resolution. Normally this is by the scrum master escalating the issue to the appropriate organization. The impact would be reflected in the burn down chart, where the stories completed would not be what was originally committed. During the Sprint Demo this can be raised and explained to the stakeholders at the demo. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;End of the day, there is no &quot;smoking gun&quot; document to use. My guess is your instructor is trying to get you to think about how you went about reporting and monitoring your issue. In today's work place a good software developer is part project manager, able to take ownership and action for issues. Did you report this as a blocker as soon as you knew? Did you provide regular updates on the resolution? Did you escalate with a clear request for action? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend sitting down with your instructor and simply asking him where he thinks you could have improved on what you did. This will serve two things. First is it will let you know if he is aware of all that happened. Second, it shows you want to learn from your mistake (even if it really wasn't yours) and that goes a long way with pretty much ever teacher I've ever know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-05-23T05:53:27.510" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15008" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15320" CreationDate="2015-05-23T08:18:12.340" Score="2" ViewCount="603" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've googled a lot about that but couldn't find appropriate solution so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have almost default Jira Agile board with last columns: &lt;code&gt;In Progress&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;Verify&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;Closed&lt;/code&gt;. Workflow is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developer move task to &lt;code&gt;verify&lt;/code&gt; after he finish implementation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;QA (or other developer) verify task and move it to &lt;code&gt;closed&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is we cannot easily track if story was picked up for verification by anyone. Jira board shows only developer as assigned person and that doesn't change after moving to verify column (imho should not be changed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ideal solution for me is to have &lt;em&gt;second assignment&lt;/em&gt; column with next logic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;App columns except Verify shows icon of &lt;em&gt;assign1&lt;/em&gt; (that is usually developer) for its tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Verify column shows icon of &lt;em&gt;assign2&lt;/em&gt; (that is usually QA or another developer) for its tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know any elegant way how to achieve that or somewhat at least similar with Jira Agile board?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17242" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-05-23T16:32:10.163" LastActivityDate="2015-11-27T10:13:14.853" Title="Assign verification person on Jira Board" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15003" CreationDate="2015-05-23T14:28:46.497" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This actually is a very good question. I've found that visual representations of system processes can really help people who don't write code understand system designs. Yet, I've also found people are hesitant to maintain and reuse such documentation. Here I present an incomplete list of reasons why reuse and sharing my be true in the hopes that someone on this site sees the list and creates some new tools that solve these problems!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;People don't know how to read UML&lt;/strong&gt; and that limits adoption because the diagrams can't stand on their own without a UML literate person around to explain them. The simpler sequence diagrams seem to be more intuitive to people and I've found them useful. Class diagrams are initially intuitive, but not once the various line decorators are introduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UML diagrams are protected as intellectual property&lt;/strong&gt;. As @Leon noticed, few diagrams are open source. Software engineers are way ahead of other disciplines when it comes to sharing code as open source. It will take time for other engineering disciplines to catch up. Electrical and Mechanical engineering are beginning to produce significant open source design libraries, but I'm not seeing similar contributions in disciplines like genetic, chemical, aerospace, or mechanical engineering. Most of the knowledge there is still locked inside text books or documents held private by companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UML is not produced&lt;/strong&gt;. As @David Arno mentioned, software engineers aren't making as much UML. This likely has to do with two factors, in addition to those mentioned above. First, many developers prefer to work in text for speed and customizability. Second, much UML work was related to Java development when Java was the primary enterprise and government language, but many other languages have grown in popularity and methods for generating code have evolved since.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Code generation hasn't caught on&lt;/strong&gt;. The promise of code generation from UML is the approaches greatest advantage over textual programming. I've yet to see a large project where code generation from UML was implemented. Many times people begin with code generation, but then tweak or modify the output code and suddenly choose to maintain the text instead of maintaining both diagrams and text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Software costs&lt;/strong&gt;. Enterprise grade software that produces UML makes Photoshop look cheap. Licensing costs make sharing UML inside a company expensive, let alone sharing between companies. There are free UML tools on Linux, but these are typically limited to diagramming and don't implement the advanced code analysis and generation features of extremely expensive software like IBM Rhapshody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No GitHub for UML&lt;/strong&gt; or other diagrams exists. People must share images and since images aren't reusable the value of shared static diagrams is relatively low. Compare this to shared code, which can be both modified or run without having to retype every line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Page centric diagrams&lt;/strong&gt;. Finally, UML and other diagramming languages are from a time when people diagramed on paper. People don't want pages on computer screens, they want continuous and easy to navigate models. CAD and maps have made this transition relatively well (Google Maps has a very different interaction paradigm than a Thomas Guide map book). UML, PowerPoint, and Visio have just never left the page behind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2305" LastActivityDate="2015-05-23T14:28:46.497" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14240" CreationDate="2015-05-23T14:48:59.993" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The convention is in the morning, but the answer is it depends on the needs of your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In choosing a time for the daily scrum, consider the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;time zones&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;lifestyle and professional needs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;customer needs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pace of work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What time zones are team members in?&lt;/strong&gt; If your team is geographically distributed, then choose a time that respects the working hours of as many team members as possible. If someone has to attend scrum at 3am, then consider alternating every few sprints to share the inconvenience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What fits team member lifestyles?&lt;/strong&gt; Some people like to start their day later than others. I often like to work through midnight, so can't stand a 7am daily scrum because then I'm getting to work untested and unproductive. Similarly, some people have kids and need to leave the office to pick them up after school. So your team's needs will vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where is the team's customer and what are that customer's communication needs?&lt;/strong&gt; This question applies more to the scheduling of product demonstrations, but if the team's customer or manager will attend a scrum then it is important to consider what times of day will work for that stakeholder. This is more important if the customer is using feedback from daily scrum to understand and communicate how a vendor is performing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What pace is the team working at?&lt;/strong&gt; If the team rarely completes a task between scrums or is a part time effort for most team members, then it can be frustrating for team members to meet every day. Consider adjusting the frequency of scrums to fit the realities of the team. Augment in person meetings with other forms of communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2305" LastActivityDate="2015-05-23T14:48:59.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15008" CreationDate="2015-05-23T16:29:34.040" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Create a separate sub-task in the story for QA verification&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You said that you do not want the assigned person to be changed when the story is moved to &lt;code&gt;Verify&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that case, you have only one other option. You can create a separate sub-task in the story for QA verification and assign that to the QA (or other devloper). As soon as the developer task is moved to &lt;code&gt;Verify&lt;/code&gt;, the person assigned to verify it can move their task to &lt;code&gt;In Progress&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that doesn't work for you, you can look at a few other options suggested by Jira here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/How+do+I+assign+issues+to+multiple+users&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;JIRA is designed so that issues must be assigned to a single individual to prevent tasks from being overlooked...However, if you want to configure JIRA to allow issues to be assigned to multiple users there are a few option for doing so...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-05-23T16:29:34.040" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15003" CreationDate="2015-05-24T04:03:20.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the surface, it sounds like you are looking for freely available UML diagrams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are plenty available online. If you search for &quot;UML tutorial&quot;, you will find many tutorials, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tutorialspoint.com/uml/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkC7HKtiZC0&amp;amp;list=PLGLfVvz_LVvQ5G-LdJ8RLqe-ndo7QITYc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this playlist on YouTube&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although you asked for free, I would also like to point out an abundance of books - I usually recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0321193687&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UML Distilled&lt;/a&gt;, but there is also &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0596007957&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UML 2.0 in a Nutshell&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B0028N4WII&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Learning UML 2.0&lt;/a&gt; - you may be able to find these or other books at your local library if you don't want to purchase them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, training and example material exists, and depending on your location, may be available online or book form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it also sounds like you may be looking for a complete set of UML diagrams for a system. I'm not sure that you will have any luck finding this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Martin Fowler writes about &lt;a href=&quot;http://martinfowler.com/bliki/UmlMode.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UML Modes&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://martinfowler.com/bliki/UmlAsSketch.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UML as Sketches&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://martinfowler.com/bliki/UmlAsNotes.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UML as Notes&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://martinfowler.com/bliki/UmlAsBlueprint.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UML as Blueprints&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://martinfowler.com/bliki/UmlAsProgrammingLanguage.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UML as a Programming Language&lt;/a&gt;. A complete and highly detailed set of UML models would only be produced by someone using UML as Blueprints or UML as a Programming Language. In my experiences, most people use UML as notes or sketches to communicate with other people&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilemodeling.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Modeling techniques&lt;/a&gt;. Although UML is one method, they do have some practices that would likely lead to projects not releasing UML models, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemodeling.com/artifacts/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;using multiple models&lt;/a&gt; where the models could be an &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemodeling.com/artifacts/acceptanceTests.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;acceptance test&lt;/a&gt;, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemodeling.com/artifacts/userStory.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;user story&lt;/a&gt;, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemodeling.com/artifacts/technicalRequirement.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;shall&quot; statement requirement&lt;/a&gt;, or a &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemodeling.com/artifacts/freeForm.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;free-form diagram that doesn't use any standardized modeling notation&lt;/a&gt;. The practice of &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemodeling.com/essays/documentLate.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;documenting late&lt;/a&gt; would mean that design documents (if produced) would be produced at the end of a project to provide information to the maintenance team or next development team, rather than the models being produced before the code to guide development. Finally, there is an emphasis on a &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemodeling.com/essays/singleSourceInformation.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;single source of information&lt;/a&gt;, so if a model doesn't add value, it would be discarded to avoid having to maintain it, and the source code (plus the comments and build scripts and READMEs) would likely be that single source of information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the standpoint of commercial software, it's not good for a company to be releasing their design material. UML is a tool used to capture the design of a software system graphically. A lot of (proprietary) information goes into that design, and without a large time commit to sanitize (probably to the point of rendering them useless) the models, they would not be suitable for public consumption. Given sufficient details about the internal workings of a software product, you not only face the business threats from competitors being able to understand how your software implements certain functions to allow them to implement those same functions or improved functions, but it can also give those looking to exploit your software insight into possible holes or vulnerabilities. There's no gain to releasing models for outside use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the standpoint of open-source software, the true design of the software is captured in the code. If you need help understanding the code and want a model, you can use reverse engineering tools (or use other techniques, like running the code through a debugger). Keeping released UML models in sync with the code would be time consuming for the project team, especially if they are using UML as notes or sketches and aren't using a tool capable of reverse engineering to generate them, and would only keep them away from continuing to implement the software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that the short answer is that if you are looking for an open source repository of UML models, you aren't going to find it. I think you need to focus on what you are trying to accomplish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're trying to learn UML, there are plenty of resources out there. You likely won't find a tutorial that uses one single system, but that's because a system that would require the use of all, or even most, of the available UML diagrams to properly document would be extremely complex. It doesn't make sense to have to learn a complex system (and the domain that it's in) at the same time as a modeling language, so make smaller problems to learn the modeling language and choose appropriate problems for different facets of the language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're trying to find projects that have UML models, you probably won't find those. However, there are reverse engineering tools. Many of the good ones are commercial products. You can find some tools that can reverse engineer a limited subset of UML from code for specific languages, though. When trying to understand these systems, most people will use the software, sketch out their own diagrams and models (UML or otherwise), write test code or test cases, and use a debugger to walk through the code (see Programmers Stack Exchange &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/146471/understanding-already-existing-complex-code-base&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/135311/what-is-the-most-effective-way-to-add-functionality-to-unfamiliar-structurally&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6395/how-do-you-dive-into-large-code-bases&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:31:53.287" LastActivityDate="2015-05-24T12:32:34.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15008" CreationDate="2015-05-24T08:25:31.710" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple of possible options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a] Add a status of 'Ready for test'. When transitioned to this status the issue would be made unassigned by a post function. Issues in this status would represent work awaiting verification, but not yet assigned. When a QA picks up the issue they would transition it to 'Verify' which would automatically assign it to them using a post function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b] Create a 'Lead QA' role and use a post function to make it the assignee for any issues transitioned in to Verifty. The Lead QA can then either work on the issue or make sure it gets picked up by somebody in the QA role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second approach is less in the spirit of Scrum, but I have seen it used successfully before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-05-24T08:25:31.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15016" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15023" CreationDate="2015-05-25T03:12:30.860" Score="0" ViewCount="174" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm here again asking about software documentation. I read a lot about it but it is a bit harder to put in practice, first because of the lack of examples and second because most small companies just don't care at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I have a set of requirements for functionalities for a iteration of a software that I and a friend is doing. see bellow:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The system shall enable users to login through a UI* where he enters a username* and password*.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The system shall display an error message on a particular area of ​​the UI* If the user* enters a combination of wrong username and password.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The system shall redirect the user to a welcome UI* after successfully logged in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The system shall allow each user to have an access level, forming a hierarchy where only users of higher levels can perform an action* on users* from lower levels.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The system shall associate users* that have special permissions* for a custom group*.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The system shall associate each user* with a group*.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The system shall retain the permissions* per user if the user belongs to the custom group*. Otherwise the permissions* should be inherited from the group.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The system shall enable password reset only generating an automatic password and sending to the user's* email.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The system must store the following user information, login, group, password, name, email, mobile phone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The system should allow users to change their information.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The system should enable administration of permissions* actions*, groups* and users* through a UI* where user's can add, delete, create and edit entries (eg. Add groups, delete users).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So should I challenge these requirements more? How can I test/challenge it effectively?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, how can I go from this set of requirements to use cases (assuming they are good enough) to Use case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know I need to start finding the actors. But the only actor I see is the 'user' and he will performing CRUD operations on users, actions, groups and permissions. But how should I detail these use cases, 'Manage users' for example? Or should I go for a deeper detail level? Like 'add user' 'create group', etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;glossary&#xA;*user: is the person who will use the system to manage it based on his privileges.&#xA;*UI: user interface.&#xA;*username: a set of characters with max length of 50 with alpha numeric chars.&#xA;*password: a set of characters with max length of 50 with alpha numeric chars, must be encrypted.&#xA;*group: a list of named groups that each user must be associated with.&#xA;*actions: a list of actions a user can do on the system that must be associated with permissions.&#xA;*permission: a list associating users and groups to a specific action.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you guys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17249" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T15:55:29.580" Title="Going from requirements to use cases and how to know if my document is good enough" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15017" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-25T04:11:39.257" Score="-1" ViewCount="245" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will be retiring from the military in the year 2020.  I have been a military pilot most of my entire career, and due to extensive TDY's and family sacrifice, I will not be pursuing a pilot job in civilian life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a BA and MBA, from public, state universities.  I also hold a Top Secret Clearance and Speak Spanish/English both fluently (if it matters).  I have no problem traveling one week out of each month to off-site customer locations but the days of two, three weeks, and even months, on the road just will not work for my family anymore.  I would like to pursue an high-growth career industry that is challenging and rewarding.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some questions if someone can assist:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can my background and skills be &quot;transferred over&quot; into the PMP realm ? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What does career growth look like in the year 2020.  I understand that is five years away but I want to get started now with educating myself about the profession.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also, what is &quot;starting salary&quot; and what kind of salary can be expected say at Year-3 as a PMP.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are most PMP's independent consultants or do they work as salaried employees at a company/organization ?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there any particular sector or industry that PMP work is more common at than others ?   Aka more common in healthcare and less common in legal field ?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for your time and information !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bill&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17251" LastActivityDate="2015-07-27T04:20:08.023" Title="Retiring from Military in 2020 - PMP ? Career Growth?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-07-29T13:46:24.557" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15020" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15027" CreationDate="2015-05-25T09:27:42.633" Score="3" ViewCount="121" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to edit my Jira Workflow to more efficiently track the Developer who developed the ticket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right Now, when the Ticket moved to 'Testing' Status, it gets Assigned to the QA on the team. And from there when it moves to 'For Verification' it gets assigned to the PM. When the PM Verifies the ticket, and closes it, it remains assigned to him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wanted the ticket to be assigned back to the person who developed this ticket. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to do this, I have created a custom field called Developer, and to this field, I want to assign the name of the user who moved the ticket from 'Ready for Dev' to 'In Progress'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I Have Jira automatically set the &quot;Developer&quot; field to whomever moves the ticket to &quot;In Progress&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2996" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T03:44:03.080" Title="How to get User who moved Ticket?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15017" CreationDate="2015-05-25T10:36:24.807" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;(1) As a PMP you will be managing different aspects of project development, starting with people. So I would say your skills do transfer to PMP. Discipline is also very important. But this is just common knowledge. These skills apply to everything in life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) Career growth? Just google around for some statistics. Nowadays you can find all sort of stuff on the internet with a good google search. Google is a very powerful tool. I would try &quot;PMP growth predictions&quot; or &quot;the future of PMP&quot; or &quot;PMP in 2020&quot; or ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) You can search for salaries at glassdoor.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(4) &amp;amp; (5) Yup, google has all the answers. Just need to practice searching for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I apologize if this is not the answer you expected, but I hope it can point you the right way to finding it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17256" LastActivityDate="2015-05-25T10:36:24.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15017" CreationDate="2015-05-25T11:37:43.750" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a ton of skills that transfer but I think the most valuable asset you have are the years experience of service. Consulting firms that do public sector work, especially DOD and military, hire guys like you all the time. You need to settle around DC to reduce chance of travel. In today's dollars, you could likely expect $100k to maybe as high as $180k, depending on the firm and the type of work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are aviation specialty firms around DC that deal with the FAA, airspace issues, human factor issues, cutting edge navigation technology, etc. Boutique firms typically pay more but travel increases and the threat of getting cut loose after hitting the bench is higher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PMP is a nice to have but hiring managers will be way more interested in your ability to navigate the DOD and which high ranking people are in your rolodex to whom you can start selling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for your service. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-05-25T11:37:43.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15016" CreationDate="2015-05-25T16:33:23.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the challenges you may have is that you approach writing requirements and writing use cases somewhat differently, so it can be hard to simply take one and go to the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, on the requirements, my feeling is that you've taken them far enough short of providing more technical details like table diagrams and things. Since those seems solid, I won't dig into them too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On use cases or user stories, to find the actors, you want to look at who wants to do what. The user wants to be authenticated, change his password, etc. Even the security things you've got in there should be driven by the user's desire to keep their account secure. If there are backend user management features, who does those? Maybe it's a CSR or account manager and that's probably the actor in your use case. If you can't find an actor, you want to ask yourself if this is something someone really wants or if it's something people are just used to seeing. Understanding who wants it and why is important because....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing use cases and requirements usually get you different lists. I prefer use cases or user stories (there are some formatting differences, but their goal is the same) because it's easier to get the right stuff in, especially in iterative development. For example, if you take a use-case perspective on logging in, you find that the user doesn't actually want to log in. He wants you to only show his info to him. That means you need some sort of authentication token. Your cases look more like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a user, I would like my information to be shown only if the session is authenticated as me so other people can't see my data.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a user, I'd like to be able to authenticate my session so the system know's it's me.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two interesting things about this. First, it is apparent that I actually don't need to do the authentication process first. If I'm only releasing to a very small group or internally for the time, it might not be worth all of the time to create a big login interface if I have a simpler way of creating an authenticated session for now - the rest can come later. Secondly, by building my application in this order using SOLID principles, I leave my authentication open to any kind of login I decide on later. This means I can do a custom login, SSO, kerberos tickets, or whatever. It gives me a lot of options down the line if I understand what the user needs are instead of trying to base my use cases off of requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a tough topic, so I hope this helps. Done right, good use cases can lead to amazing applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-05-25T16:33:23.470" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15024" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-25T18:48:49.970" Score="2" ViewCount="1126" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have started using TFS 2012 as part of moving to Scrum methodology. One challenge that we are facing is that though I can set up the capacity per day of each team member, I have no clear idea as to which employee will be free(after completing the assigned task) so that I can tag him to the next sprint. I believe this has something to do with MS Project syncing to TFS 2012. Please shed some light on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically I want to look at each team member's work end date with respect to the current sprint. Is it possible in TFS 2012? If not, what is the alternative?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17261" LastEditorUserId="7393" LastEditDate="2015-05-26T04:39:58.240" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T04:39:58.240" Title="How to track team's time utilization using tfs" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15024" CreationDate="2015-05-25T19:55:01.263" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your request doesn't really make sense from a purist perspective. In Scrum teams a member doesn't get individual task assignments and team members don't individually move from one sprint to another. In Scrum a team works as a collaborative group, together working on the goal that was set for the sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To achieve the goal during a sprint the whole team collaboratively creates a plan. This may involve backlog items and tasks. This is what TFS allows you to model. Individuals or even multiple developers then volunteer to do a task (some of the plan may have already selected ideal team members for the task, but that doesn't mean that person is solely responsible for it). This is also how TFS is used by scrum teams when using the Scrum process template.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such the functionality you're asking for does not exist when using the Scrum template. When using the CMMI process template (optionally linked to Project Server) you can do these type of assignments. You can then also plan overall &quot;releases&quot; and you don't have to use &quot;sprints&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So what you want is not possible.&lt;/strong&gt; It's not possible because that's not how Scrum intends it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are your alternatives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can ignore the way it's meant to be used and open the task board, filter by team member and see if there is any remaining work associated to that team member. There is no way to &quot;move the team member&quot; to a new sprint, but you could move additional work into the &lt;strong&gt;current&lt;/strong&gt; sprint. Normally the Scrum team would see that it has additional time available during the Daily scrum and then work with the product owner to see what other PBI's they may be able to pick up in that sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Convert to CMMI, though I don't recommend it when you're planning to implement Scrum as it's intended. It's not an easy conversion and I suspect that most developers won't like it, but tools like &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/jstangroome/WitMorph&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WitMorph&lt;/a&gt; can be used to move your scrum template to the CMMI template to enable full project server integration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hack the scrum template to support MsProject. I really don't recommend this, as it makes proper scrum adoption a lot harder.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much better solutions would be to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn about TFS and Scrum online:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pluralsight.com/courses/managing-work-team-foundation-server2012&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pluralsight has a course TFS&lt;/a&gt; as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pluralsight.com/tag/scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;well as Scrum&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;as does this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/training-courses/applying-alm-w-visual-studio-2012-jump-start&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Microsoft Virtual Academy course on TFS&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This great book by &lt;a href=&quot;http://smile.amazon.com/Professional-Development-Microsoft-Developer-Reference/dp/073565798X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1432584254&amp;amp;sr=8-1&amp;amp;keywords=professional%20scrum%20development%20with%20microsoft%20visual%20studio%202012&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Richard Hundhausen: Professional Scrum Development&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take an in-person &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Courses/Professional-Scrum-Developer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum.org PSD.NET class&lt;/a&gt; to better understand how to use TFS in the context of Scrum. Learning both the tools (Visual Studio and TFS) and the framework (Scrum) to build your team on. You can already test your knowledge using the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Assessments/Open-Assessments&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum.org Open Assessment for Scrum in general and Development Practices&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally recommend to experience the usage of the tools first-hand and in-person. But then again, I'm a scrum trainer myself and have had a lot of people in my classes who left with a firm grasp of how to apply the tools the way they're intended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7393" LastEditorUserId="7393" LastEditDate="2015-05-25T20:02:45.810" LastActivityDate="2015-05-25T20:02:45.810" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15026" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-25T22:34:12.827" Score="1" ViewCount="542" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll just start with an example. We have a repeating task &quot;Release library&quot; which in the beggining we agreed on an estimate of 2 points: it seemed to be twice as hard as our 1 point baseline. &#xA;As we have this task more and more often in our sprints, it got easier for us to do it, all the steps are known so now we tend to estimate the exact same task as a 1 point task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this ok from scrum perspective? From my understanding, complexity-wise the task says the same thing and it should remain 2 points forever, just that now it's more simple for everybody, similiar to a 1 point task (which makes sense). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should be done in similar cases?&#xA;I see only 2 solutions which both feel wrong:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Estimate points remain the same, even though the task seems less complex than it used to be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decrease estimate points, but then you might see a decrease in team velocity. (of course if this happens more often).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please consider the example just an example, imagine something similar to any other stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17099" LastEditorUserId="17099" LastEditDate="2015-05-25T22:42:44.107" LastActivityDate="2015-05-28T20:54:39.727" Title="Should the complexity estimate of a task change in scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15020" CreationDate="2015-05-26T03:25:40.267" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is possible with a combination of two Post functions on the 'Started Development' transition which moves from the 'Ready For Dev' to the 'In Progress' status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First you assign the Ticket to the current user (i.e. user who moved the ticket)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then copy the value from the 'Assignee' field to the 'Developer' Field&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We need to make sure the order of these two operations is correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once this was done, I added a similar post function to assign the Ticket back to the developer, by copying the value from the Developer field, to the Assignee field on Verification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2996" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T03:25:40.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14240" CreationDate="2015-05-26T04:53:16.790" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our team usually do daily meeting at 13.00. This is the time that team agree and every team member can attend the meeting with no problem. In meeting, we plan for next 24 hours what we are going to finish. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choosing daily meeting in morning or afternoon, I think it depends on your team agreement and availability. Some teams prefers in morning, others in afternoon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17263" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T04:53:16.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15026" CreationDate="2015-05-26T07:18:39.913" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea of velocity is to allow a team to roughly predict what the capacity is for the next sprint. It has no other purpose than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer to your question is to do whatever best helps you predict your team's sprint capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter if the rolling average of velocity goes up or if it goes down. It is not a measure of performance or of team capacity. It is a simply an aid to planning that lets you put a reasonable amount of work in to sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the example you have given, I would suggest that if you leave the size at 2 points then you may end up under-estimating how much work to put in a sprint if it contains this type of story. It would be better to make the adjustment to 1 point so that your velocity correctly reflects what the team is likely to achieve in a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T07:18:39.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="531" CreationDate="2015-05-26T09:22:18.413" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the context of Manager to Subordinate - I have found that they are used by either the lazy (I can't actually be bothered to go and physically follow up on the email that I have just send by physically talking to the recipient) or insecure, or new/inexperienced manager (Is my subordinate actually working and/or reading my instructions?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the receiving end of the read receipts, it can easily tend to make people feel persecuted if used regularly. This sense of persecution can easily grew into resentment and spill over into &quot;let's go and talk to HR&quot; related issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say never use them for the people that you manage immediately, &lt;em&gt;especially&lt;/em&gt; if they are in the same office as you. It will only serve to put their backs up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15972" LastEditorUserId="15972" LastEditDate="2015-05-26T09:29:31.850" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T09:29:31.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15031" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-26T10:22:11.297" Score="2" ViewCount="2552" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a software development team, working on an independent product, made up of 20 people of varying roles, located in India. One of our goals is to treat this product team as a separate entity, separate from the rest of the company, and utilizing scrum as a development methodology:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;development&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;content writing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;support&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;possibly mobile&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Traditionally, we've followed an internal model of development that loosely follows some agile practices and some waterfall practices.  After reading Jeff Sutherland's book, How to do Twice the Work in Half the Time, we've started looking into ways to introduce scrum to this team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team currently has a manager who mostly does customer outreach and planning. We think he is a candidate to be a product owner as much of what he does today is to put feature requests on the to do list for implementation, based on customer feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team also has a development manager, and we realize transitioning this role is one of our challenges. Self-organization may be a problem if the team cannot view this person as another team member. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what we've read, we've concluded we would possibly need to break the team of 20 into two teams of 10.  To counter the management problem, we considered rotating the role of scrum masters to different people on the teams every 6 months or so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also think each team should contain all of the people to complete a feature independently, so each team should have its own testers, content writers, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have considered trying scrum with just one group to start and leaving the other to their own devices, but we're not sure what the best way to start is that will help us be most successful.  What adjustments to this plan should we make or what should we do different to implement scrum in a way that will be successful for our team and demographics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2015-05-26T10:27:17.270" LastActivityDate="2020-10-04T06:23:50.790" Title="How to organize a software development team so 20 people are on two scrum teams?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;process-improvement&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15031" CreationDate="2015-05-26T13:28:58.863" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Your Scrum transition plan looks good&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are my suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get some training&lt;/strong&gt;: Any team transitioning to Scrum will struggle with getting stories ready, estimating, release roadmap and so on. So, send some of your key people for training. And ask them to come back and train the rest of the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Create feature teams&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/the-benefits-of-feature-teams&quot;&gt;Not component teams (such as a back-end team and a front-end team).&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Plan to keep the teams stable&lt;/strong&gt;: Teams take time to gel together and become productive. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Making the customer outreach Manager the Product Owner is a good plan&lt;/strong&gt;: He/she can be the PO for both teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You need a strong Scrum Master&lt;/strong&gt;: For a team transitioning to Scrum you need a strong Scrum Master to establish the process. One possibility you can consider is making the development manager the Scrum Master for both teams. He/she may be good with removing impediments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use planning poker for estimation&lt;/strong&gt;: You may find it a bit slow. But it gives better estimations and team commitment. Also, it gets the team in self-organizing mode.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hardening week&lt;/strong&gt;: In my experience teams transitioning to Scrum struggle to get a 'potentially shippable increment' ready by the end of the iteration if they are doing manual testing. Try to introduce automation where possible. In the interim, one way to mitigate this is to have a 'Hardening week' every second or third iteration. The entire team focuses on testing, fixing bugs and getting the release ready.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-05-26T15:07:19.090" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T15:07:19.090" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15031" CreationDate="2015-05-26T14:26:46.290" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was challenged with a similar issue, I found that I could implement pieces of SAFe (scaled agile framework) that suited my program to solve most of them. This helped enable me to have all the critical pieces of management to foster team development and collaboration. (the &quot;big picture&quot; seems confusing at first, but click through the Program and Team Layers, and I'm sure you will find some good insights. &lt;a href=&quot;http://scaledagileframework.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://scaledagileframework.com/&lt;/a&gt; )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Breaking up the team into several smaller teams is a great start. Be sure you setup the means for them to collaborate just as if they were delivering a common asset. Certain meetings and touchpoints that are required (Grooming, Demos, Daily Standups, Scrum of Scrums, etc), most of this is par for the course regarding SCRUM. What SAFe does is scale this to help collaboration across &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; SCRUM teams. SAFe's framework identifies a Program layer that drives feature identification and program vision (the product owner candidate you spoke of can lead this effort). This Program layer role is labeled as a Product Manager, and works closely with Product Owners on the Scrum teams, thus providing governance over the features being developed. Having the two be separate allows the Program Layer to concentrate on the future and provide current guidance to in-flight work through the Product Owners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking to involve your customers in the internal demos you have will also support transparency and encourage the fast feedback you praise. Since SCRUM and SAFe promote completion of working pieces of software each Sprint, Demo-ing this helps display to each team what has been done and you get instant feedback from your customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the development manager, I found that having this person be an arbiter for technological decisions the teams can't agree upon and helping the Product Manager at the Program Level define features was a great benefit. There is also a concept of a System level team that integrates the individual team's work and provides a program level demo at the end of each Program Increment. This may be a place for that person to still be looked up to, and participate highly in development of the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rotating your Scrum Master can be tricky, as you force people to perform the role. I would suggest one of two things: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do this on a volunteer basis and ensure this person gets the required training to be a SM. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have the teams determine who is best suited to be the SM by organizing themselves over the course of the first sprint or so. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second option is the best as you will find natural leaders and Scrum Masters who have the ability to &quot;wrangle&quot; the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17210" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2015-05-26T15:21:16.580" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T15:21:16.580" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15026" CreationDate="2015-05-26T14:48:50.287" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile and Scrum make a big deal about constant vigilance to always improve as a team. Why should your estimates not follow suit in this manner? I would suggest to redefine the estimate of those stories that the team believes is a more accurate reflection of the complexity/work that it now takes, versus what it once was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found that keeping a set of reference stories that the team fully understands is best in helping to estimate future stories. Constantly refining what those reference stories were every couple of sprints was able to better the teams ability to estimate. This helped with future planning and ensuring that the new work's estimate was not inflated. Complexity of tasks shifts due to the team getting more used to one another, having gained better intimate knowledge of the code and becoming more experienced overall.  It seems that you are seeing that your team is getting quicker at completing what once used to be a harder task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The velocity in your Sprints will average out over time. Velocity is not an end all measure to an amount of work, but a tool that helps better estimate a work load the team can confidently complete in the Sprint timebox.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17210" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T14:48:50.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15016" CreationDate="2015-05-26T15:55:29.580" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The estimation phase is a good way to test whether your use cases are good enough. In that phase estimators (it is best if there are more than one) will put a rough estimate to the user story or requirement. Two things determine if you need to add detail or further break up requirements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the estimators cannot estimate because there are too many unknowns then you will need to add more detail.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the estimators come up with a huge estimate then that means the requirement is too broad and needs to be split apart into components.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User stories are a good way to format requirements so that they tell what needs to be created and why.  This will solve your use case question and will make it so you don't have to tiie use cases back to specific requirements because they will be one and the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The format for a user story is:&#xA;As a {role}, &#xA;I want {task to perform}&#xA;so that I can {achieve some goal/benefit/value}&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User stories also help with prioritization because they implicitly explain the goal and the value to the user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote a blog article about this phase of early design that explains about setting goals, requirements and constraints before getting into the creative part of design. I use unconventional design figures to help explain the process.&#xA;&quot;Design like Einstein and Michelangelo&quot;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://medium.com/@dave.b.kaplan/design-like-einstein-and-michelangelo-fadf2c86e3f7&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://medium.com/@dave.b.kaplan/design-like-einstein-and-michelangelo-fadf2c86e3f7&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17269" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T15:55:29.580" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15038" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15073" CreationDate="2015-05-28T08:13:58.953" Score="1" ViewCount="1032" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wish to know how to insert a new assignment in the Resource Usage view or Task Usage view in MS Project. In my project, we have ad hoc tasks frequently cropping up and resources have to spend time working on those. Hence, when entering project status I want to be able to add the new tasks in the resource/task usage view itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an &quot;Insert Assignment&quot; option in the context menu but it is grayed out. I want to understand in what cases it is active. Are there any settings for it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17266" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-05-29T14:04:39.890" LastActivityDate="2015-06-06T22:58:36.463" Title="How to insert a new assignment in the Resource Usage view or Task Usage view in MS Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4571" CreationDate="2015-05-28T08:47:18.470" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://15five.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;15Five&lt;/a&gt; is a product that does pretty much exactly what you are looking to accomplish. It allows you to set up a set of questions which will be asked to a team of people every week. It sends reminders to keep engagement high and provides reporting tools to collectively review past answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will not need to manage the process of asking questions and collecting answers manually. All the answers are available in one place in an easy-to-use interface.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: Why am I so excited about 15Five? I've helped build it and continue to make it better. It does sound like a perfect fit for the needs that were outlined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17293" LastActivityDate="2015-05-28T08:47:18.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15041" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15043" CreationDate="2015-05-28T14:16:59.633" Score="0" ViewCount="125" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's the thing. &#xA;Most of my life it was all about Jira. Unfortunately right now I'm working as a agile coach (kinda) in an interactive agency that in terms of project management is still in Stone Age. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that Jira might be a little bit too problematic in this situation, especially at this stage - early introduction to scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have similar experience and know best soft to use in this case (or maybe assure me that Jira can work), that would be really appreciated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17299" LastActivityDate="2015-05-28T19:18:39.513" Title="Project tracker with easiest learning curve" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-05-29T18:50:48.433" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="566" CreationDate="2015-05-28T16:08:50.310" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your manager changing your hour estimates is a problem.  Doubling your estimates is not the right solution.  Why is the manager reducing your estimates?  Why are you giving a higher estimate?  Does the manager understand the reasoning behind your estimate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can make a valid argument for why you estimate 3 days instead of 2 and the manager chooses to ignore your argument you may consider escalating to his manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your manager should understand that scheduling a team or individual at 100% capacity based on an estimate is very risky for both the project schedule and how the resource perceives their work life balance.  At 100% you will almost always end up having a good chunk of your cycles fall outside of your normal work hours.  Don't estimate as a checklist activity, estimate for the sake of understanding the work, increasing your domain knowledge, and in the future getting better at estimating so that the risk of surprises are smaller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know the personality of your manager but you could try some of the following as a way to bridge the gap:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Have him/her understand that you are un-happy with your work-life balance and that you are consistently putting in more than hours initially negotiated when you took the job.  You are feeling de-moralized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Have him/her understand that running a team over-capacity long-term increases the risk of losing resources&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Have him/her understand that scheduling over 100% capacity creates a risk to project schedule if there is any slippage&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Discuss moving to a different project not run by the PM&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Identify if this practice affects just you or everyone on the team.  Bring it up during a team retrospective if you are in a Scrum framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Don't feel pressured.  If you estimate 3 days and that is the honest amount of time it ends up taking to do the work WHILE working regular hours and having a good work-life balance, then take the 3 days.  Let the manager see that artificially adjusting task estimates to meet a schedule does not motivate you or the team and only puts the project at risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-05-28T16:08:50.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15041" CreationDate="2015-05-28T16:22:52.787" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your team is all in the same location, then start with a physical board. There is some pretty hard science out now that physical boards are better when you can take advantage of co-location. &#xA;I recently wrote a blog going into more detail on why &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leadingagile.com/2015/05/why-physical-task-boards-still-matter/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;physical task boards still matter&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have to have an online tool, start with something dirt simple like Trello.com. New toy syndrome often has us jumping for all the bells and whistles. Instead follow the same principles of agile/ lean and go with the absolute minimum functionality to start. See what works and what you really need before going to the bells and whistles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-05-28T16:22:52.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15044" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-28T16:27:12.090" Score="1" ViewCount="108" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for an agile consulting practice. We now have over twenty coaches and about half again that number of other key contributors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're wanting to create an agile framework to support the creation of common content (job aids, workshops, tracking tools, etc). We want to have some ownership of a document, while allowing it to be updated. At the same time, we want to get away from where we are now, with multiple versions of all our common materials as each coach customizes it for themselves with no feedback loop to the original material. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have experience with an knowledge creation process (not a tool) that fits into an agile collaboration environment? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="147" LastEditDate="2015-05-29T15:31:59.270" LastActivityDate="2015-06-26T08:37:17.613" Title="Agile &quot;Open Source&quot; Content Creation framework" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;&lt;open-source&gt;&lt;content-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15045" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15054" CreationDate="2015-05-28T18:18:22.390" Score="0" ViewCount="876" Body="&lt;p&gt;I and some of my friends want to start a web development project.  We all know basic HTML, CSS, javascript, php and a database(mysql) separately but we dont know how to work in a professional way. Is there any link or tutorial, which can help me to build a proper team with perfect workflow of web developing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17304" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-05-29T07:48:04.157" LastActivityDate="2015-06-01T13:35:57.617" Title="How can I divide a web development project among a team?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15041" CreationDate="2015-05-28T19:18:39.513" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a similar problem on my last project, where people doesn´t know nothing about project management and nothing about scrum and even nothing about planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started only with some parts of scrum and it´s working very fine. I used:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First meetings with stakeholders to define needs and priorities (this happens almost every 2 weeks);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Meetings with development team to define the tasks that will need to&#xA;do (this happens every time that we finish last sprint);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planning poker to establish efforts (happens together with the sprint meetings);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kanban board to distribute the tasks;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Very quickly daily review of tasks that are ongoing;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used it as a simple way, not too much information on they´re heads, so, people get involved quickly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now they can see what is going on and who is working and who is not;&#xA;They are also collaborating as a team on the meetings;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, our kanban board is scheduled by date limit (1 week) so we delivery changes, at least, every 1 week. They are happy because project seems to go on and not stucked on some phase that no one knows where.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think people here are almost ready to grow up to some next level of management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17306" LastActivityDate="2015-05-28T19:18:39.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15026" CreationDate="2015-05-28T19:50:54.793" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe, a good aproach to conduce this situation is to always review the requirements and the efforts of the tasks before sprint starts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Complexity is not always the same and it can affected at any moment depending of many factors (there is a very big study about this: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complexity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complexity&lt;/a&gt;). One factor is the one that you said &quot;&lt;em&gt;As we have this task more and more often in our sprints, it got easier...&lt;/em&gt;&quot; (experience). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A tool that I use on our team to stabilish a point of complexity is the planning poker. It helps a lot, and believe, sometimes we play it twice (in different times) and we get different points of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17306" LastActivityDate="2015-05-28T19:50:54.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15026" CreationDate="2015-05-28T20:54:39.727" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you decrease the estimate to 1 point, why does your velocity go down?  Aren't you bringing in another 1 point of something else to match your predicted velocity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you keep it the same at 2 points, but find the team is finishing earlier,  then aren't you finding that you can poach another 1 point of task work and that your velocity is increasing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no right/wrong way to modify the estimate, your velocity will naturally adjust based on which option you choose to show that over time the task is simpler or that the team can handle more complexity.  Just make sure you keep your estimation practice consistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choose the option that the team can relate to the best AND ensures that the team's velocity and estimation practices remain in control of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-05-28T20:54:39.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15049" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15057" CreationDate="2015-05-28T23:50:20.507" Score="3" ViewCount="198" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a year long &lt;code&gt;Data Analysis&lt;/code&gt; project for a moderately sized client, the aim of which is to analyse transactional data and identify for the client its customer profiles, transaction patterns, and assist the business management in making factual business decisions. It has &gt; 1M customers though how many are &lt;em&gt;active&lt;/em&gt;, we don't know since we don't have access to their database.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tools we requested were &lt;code&gt;SQL Server&lt;/code&gt; for data storage/extraction, and &lt;code&gt;R&lt;/code&gt; for analyses.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;However, the client has come back with &lt;code&gt;Access&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;Excel&lt;/code&gt; as the &lt;strong&gt;only&lt;/strong&gt; tools they are willing to provide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; If you were to persuade the IT team that the proposed tools are insufficient for what we have been asked to do, how would you go about doing so?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following is how I am outlining my arguments:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Briefly explain the Data Analysis project deliverables - what amount of data we &lt;strong&gt;hope&lt;/strong&gt; to analyse (we don't know how much space it will take), what sort of data, what will be the outcome, how much will be ad-hoc analyses, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain how Access will not suit this - primarily due to size limitation for database of 2GB&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain how Excel would slow down significantly if &gt; million rows are added to it for simple manipulation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Although I am planning as per the above, but I feel the IT team may refer me to ways of dealing with Access size limitations, and prevent us from solving this issue reasonably...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17309" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-05-29T10:52:15.560" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T04:20:03.473" Title="Determining suitability of tools vs. requirements" Tags="&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15045" CreationDate="2015-05-29T03:16:31.773" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you've got a great cross-function team there, so my best advice is to not divide yourselves. I notice your question is tagged as &quot;Agile&quot;, so I'll assume you're ok taking that approach. If you create a prioritized backlog of work to be done, work from the top and just pull stories in. Whenever you can, team up with each other to move stories to Done before grabbing another story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is a pretty nice framework with work in, but that's your call if you want to do that. If you want to get a better feel for scrum, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ScrumAlliance&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum.org&lt;/a&gt; both have good info and I'm personally a big fan of this book as an introduction: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/073561993X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Project Management with Scrum by Ken Schwaber&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as improving your workflow, I'd look at Kanban. It's a way of managing and improving process, so you can use it alone or in addition to other processes and frameworks like Scrum. &lt;a href=&quot;http://leankit.com/kanban/what-is-kanban/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Leankit's blog&lt;/a&gt; on Kanban is one of the better introductions to it out there. &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0984521402&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;David Anderson's book&lt;/a&gt; is probably the de facto starting point, but maybe others could offer some other good books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that's helpful. I tried to give a concise answer to a very open question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: You may also want to take a look at the accepted answer on &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/3305/what-is-kanban&quot;&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt;, which has a link to a mini-book introducing scrum and Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2015-05-29T03:16:31.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15045" CreationDate="2015-05-29T08:50:48.183" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with everything that Daniel said with one exception: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't go for SCRUM, Kanban, XP or some other philosophy right off the bat. &#xA;My advice for you - check books like &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1934356581&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Samurai&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This provides everything that touches on the subject without making you go through 400 pages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, when you know what makes one different from another, you can decide whether to go for SCRUM, Kanban, or a little more complex XP. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17299" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-05-29T11:02:22.343" LastActivityDate="2015-05-29T11:02:22.343" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15049" CreationDate="2015-05-29T10:01:35.247" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe Access and Excel is enough, why not build a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;minimal viable product&lt;/a&gt; with these tools first. Just make sure you structure it (with a good data-access layer for example) so that you can swap to another data-source in a later stage, might Access not scale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An Agile coach once told me a story about a development team that really thought they needed a Oracle database setup, because of a vision of thousands of users and complex data-structures. The product ended up being used by 3 users, but still they had to pay large sums of licensing fees to Oracle to use the product. While Excel/Access with some macros would have been enough...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe costs is the reason for pushing for Access. SQL-server needs a server and SQL licenses, which are not so cheap. Maybe you can suggest to use alternative SQL servers like MySQL on Linux to prevent costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="167" LastEditDate="2015-06-04T21:21:11.783" LastActivityDate="2015-06-04T21:21:11.783" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15049" CreationDate="2015-05-29T10:44:41.833" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is only one way to &quot;persuade&quot; some party that they tools they are providing are insufficient for your needs. That is- you need to demonstrate the ways that the tools do not allow you to fulfil the requirements of the project. &#xA;If they counter by showing you ways that allow the tools to meet your needs then clearly the tools &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; sufficient for your needs, just not your &lt;em&gt;wants&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have alluded to the fact that the data already exists in a database, you just don't have access. This job appears to be about data analysis so at first sight it is not clear to me (or presumably to them) why you would want to install &lt;em&gt;another&lt;/em&gt; database system. If you can extract the data to Excel you can do a large amount of analysis there, but you don't necessarily need to extract the entire database to Excel in order to do this. If you have access to the current database system then just extract what you need for each strand of analysis (or have someone do it for you if you don't have access).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only once you have exhausted these paths will you &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; that the tools are not up to the job, and you will have hard proof of your needs. At the moment it is guesswork.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="167" LastEditDate="2015-06-05T04:20:03.473" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T04:20:03.473" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15045" CreationDate="2015-05-29T11:57:44.407" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some things to think about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Identify who your stakeholders are. These are the people who will be using the product you are working on. Once you know who they are, decide how you will show them new functionality and how frequently this will happen. A lot will depend on how quickly you expect the team to turn out new functionality. Perhaps you could consider showcasing your progress every two weeks? Or perhaps once per week? Regular showcasing is important as it is a good way to receive feedback from your stakeholders. Will you showcase from your production environment? Will you use a separate website to show work in progress?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Identify a Product Owner. The Product Owner will be the person who decides on priorities, i.e. what you will work on next. The Product Owner will also serve to turn incoming requests for work in to a clearly prioritised backlog of tasks. Ideally the Product Owner is just one person. They could be a member of your development team or possibly somebody from the sales/marketing side of your business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, start to think about your 'definition of done'. This is what you consider to be a complete piece of work. This might include developed, tested, documented and released to a production environment. The definition of done will determine the quality targets for your team. For example, you could say that for each new piece of functionality you add, you will write an automated Selenium regression test. Regression testing is important in web site development as the more functionality you add, the more risk there is that you will break something that is already released.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, think about how you want to do planning. Most teams will look to plan weekly or fortnightly. Some teams will plan more frequently, especially if they are following a Kanban style agile framework. Regular planning is important as it will allow you to respond to change, such as adjusting to the feedback you get from showcasing your progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, think about how you will handle improving the way you work. A regular 'retrospective' can be useful. This is where you look at how things have been going recently and then think of ways to improve. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-05-29T11:57:44.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8809" CreationDate="2015-05-29T12:16:37.407" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know this thread is a little old now, but as a developer at Pivotal, I don't completely agree with any of the existing answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The philosophy behind not estimating bugs isn't that bux fixing doesn't deliver business value, it's that introducing a defect into the app and then fixing it does not represent net forward momentum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, let's imagine that two teams are implementing the same feature set on iOS and Android. The iOS team has bug/chore estimation turned off, whereas the Android team has it turned on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The iOS and Android teams both estimate the same story at 2 points. They both finish the story in the same amount of time, but in the next iteration, it turns out the two teams have introduced bugs with their implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The iOS team has only introduced one bug. They fix it in an hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Android team has introduced three bugs, and assigns them one point each. It takes them a day and a half to fix them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The iOS team is moving faster than the Android team, but Android's velocity is now higher. This throws off the planning of future iterations, making it appear as if the Android team is moving more quickly towards a viable release, when in fact they may be introducing bugs into their implementation at a faster rate than the iOS team, and therefore accomplishing their goals more slowly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, however, there are defects which were not introduced by your team. Maybe it's a legacy codebase, and the defect is as old as the hills. In this case, it doesn't make sense for this story to drag down your velocity, and you should probably log it in Tracker as a new Feature, rather than a Bug.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it's ultimately up to you how you want to do story estimation. I've worked with a few teams who had bug/chore estimation turned on, although I personally prefer to have it turned off. Tracker won't judge you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17315" LastEditorUserId="17315" LastEditDate="2015-05-30T00:46:15.133" LastActivityDate="2015-05-30T00:46:15.133" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15038" CreationDate="2015-05-29T14:03:18.630" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 'Resource Usage' view in MS-Project is a representation of the Tasks joined to the allocated Resources. In order for an item to appear in the Resource Usage view you must already have a task (add one in the Gantt view or the Task Sheet view) to which one or more Resources are allocated. Create a Resource in the Resource Sheet view and allocate it to a Task (many ways of doing this, but for a quick way use the 'Assign Resources' tool, Alt-F10). The usage of that resource will appear on the Resource Usage view showing the hours the resource is spending against their allocated tasks on a periodic (usually daily) basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Task Usage view shows how tasks are scheduled over time on a periodic basis (usually daily). By adding a Task on the Task Sheet it will be allocated in time (by you if Manual Scheduling, or by MS-Project if Automatic Scheduling) and it will then appear on the Task Usage view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MS-Project is not a time tracking system and is therefore not designed to capture working time against ad hoc (i.e. unplanned) tasks. In order to record Actual time against a task, the task must first exist in the project plan. Whilst these can be added at any time, it is not possible to add them by default by adding an entry on the Resource Usage view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;If this answer effectively answers your question please mark it as the accepted answer by clicking the tick/check mark next to this answer. Thanks.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-05-29T14:03:18.630" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15049" CreationDate="2015-05-29T17:06:00.337" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Senior management may say &quot;yes&quot; or &quot;no&quot; to additional project costs, depending on how well you justify those costs and their value to the project. However, the stakeholders and sponsors, not the project team, owns the budget, quality, and schedule risk associated with tool-chain issues once they are made aware of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Tool-Chain Justifications and Decision-Making&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All tooling and process questions ultimately resolve to an assessment of labor and capital costs as they relate to return-on-investment for a project. Specifically, you should:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify the cost differentials in terms of time and/or labor between the current and desired tool-chains.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quantify the costs of purchasing, installing, and supporting a new tool-chain.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Justify the recommended tool-chain based on concrete deliverables or schedule targets.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, any process can be performed with pencil and paper. It just may not be feasible to achieve the desired scope, schedule, or cost targets for the project with a given tool-chain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; responsibility as the project manager to either build tool-chain costs into your project plan, or to justify additional costs as the need for them is uncovered by the project. However, the business decision of whether or not the costs are justified is a &lt;em&gt;strategic&lt;/em&gt; decision that rests with the stakeholders (especially the financial sponsors), and making those strategic decisions and any associated trade-offs based on project constraints is &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-05-29T17:06:00.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15049" CreationDate="2015-05-30T03:30:05.120" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a perfect world, the answer is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perform a requirements analysis &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write down your assumptions &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discuss the pro and cons with your Stakeholder&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others advised before, try to go this way. But be aware that it &lt;strong&gt;ignores the human afraid of change&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Expand the list above by a &lt;strong&gt;risk and chances analysis&lt;/strong&gt;, e.g. SWOT. This should help to bring a new view to the discussion by addressing the &lt;em&gt;need for change&lt;/em&gt; topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the result, &lt;strong&gt;document the assumptions that brought the decision&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-05-30T07:19:06.897" LastActivityDate="2015-05-30T07:19:06.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15031" CreationDate="2015-05-30T16:12:52.163" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having 10 people on a scrum team is a stretch.  The recommended size is on the order of 4-7.  Remember that scrum is about communication, and communication scales as the square of the team size.  On a team of size 10 the communication costs will be very high, with some people over talking, others tuning out, and others being ignored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest breaking the 20 developers into 3-5 teams, based on how close their work is.  If you must have two teams of 10 (where did that requirement come from?) then I would suggest using a very modified scrum process, reducing the number of daily stand-ups, and having sub teams plan their own work together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17312" LastEditorUserId="17312" LastEditDate="2015-05-31T15:39:10.167" LastActivityDate="2015-05-31T15:39:10.167" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15063" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-31T04:31:05.687" Score="2" ViewCount="374" Body="&lt;p&gt;We run a niche web development agency and we are struggling with scaling and I was hoping someone could point me in the direction of resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We build custom WordPress websites for clients with a 100% remote development team. Our biggest problems are (a) getting back to the clients on time and (b) we have a 6-week long waiting list of clients who want to work with us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We want to be able to manage more projects at the same time, but without compromising the quality. that defines our reputation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have too much work for our remote team, but not enough work to hire a handful of full time people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice would be much appreciated!&#xA;Thanks in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17325" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T21:58:23.090" Title="Advice for Scaling a Web Development Agency" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;process-scaling&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15063" CreationDate="2015-05-31T07:56:30.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scaling a company is not easy. I think you can't give an answer that fits every situation and every kind of company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking from the outside, I would think in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identifing the problems you need to solve.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Changing your production process to reach the solutions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest some initial reading on both subjects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Getting Real. The smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful web application&quot; to get some insight on several problems that a small company should face and &quot;Remote. Office not required&quot; to let you know if you're missing something on how to manage your remote developmente team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Agile Project Management with Scrum&quot; and/or &quot;Agile Software Development with Scrum&quot; to start thinking if your company could benefit from a more structured (yet light) production process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17321" LastEditorUserId="17321" LastEditDate="2015-05-31T08:13:20.000" LastActivityDate="2015-05-31T08:13:20.000" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15063" CreationDate="2015-05-31T16:30:19.453" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first place I would start is with a value stream analysis (or going old school PMP, a critical path analysis). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start at the beginning of your process and start mapping out each high level task, Determine what the inputs (dependencies) and outputs are for each step. Record the cycle time for each step (how long does it take to perform). Once you've got this mapped out it gets a lot easier to see where your process is taking a lot of time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A visual view (white board, post its on a wall, etc) works the best as it engages your brain differently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Three thoughts, based on what you've mentioned:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hire a consultant to help you with your process reengineering. It is so very easy to get lost in the trees and not see the forest when you work inside a company. Bringing in someone even for a day or two can often be exactly what you need to to get a viewpoint that will break you through to your next level. Think of it in the Bill Gates Dollar metaphor. How much time will you spend working on it that you are not working on building value for your client backlog? Is it worth your time to pick up the process improvement dollar on the street? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Kanban may work better than Scrum for your work. Trying to plan sprints around the work is going to be a lot of overhead with remote teams. Also, most of the work you're doing is probably &quot;repetitive&quot; in that each client wants much the same thing. Kanban works well for this. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Limit Work in Process. How many things are being done at a time? Where possible break down the work into smaller chunks and swarm the work. Instead of ten sites at one time, with one developer each, swarm on two sites with five each. Requires more coordination, yes. Even with a remote team it can be done. Published a 300+ page, 20 author, 10 additional staff book with an all remote team using email and chat only this way. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-05-31T16:30:19.453" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10271" CreationDate="2015-05-31T17:26:06.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As the Scrum Master, I told the developer to stop working on anything not prioritized by the Product Owner regardless whether own time or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an awful approach, and smacks of a lack of managing acumen.  It's possible that he should not be working on it, but it's also possible that he should.  Instead of dictating how to move forward, you need to open a dialog that integrates developer feedback into the sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't do this, the better developers will leave.  As the developers who remain become more and more skilled they too will leave, and you'll be left with high turnover, training overhead, and mediocre developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17312" LastActivityDate="2015-05-31T17:26:06.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15069" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15072" CreationDate="2015-06-01T07:10:29.600" Score="12" ViewCount="44663" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lets say team works 5 days, and there are 3 developers in team, and they are working 8 hours per day. So actually it is easy to calculate : 5*3*8= 120 hours of work for per week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there is something missing : there is no time for testing and code review process at the last day of sprint. Because it takes some time to test sprint items and friday night (last day of sprint) works cannot be send to done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for agile prenciples, how should i calculate sprint capacity? should i estimate it for 4 days ? if so, what should developer do in last day ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17335" LastActivityDate="2019-05-18T04:08:28.597" Title="how to calculate sprint capacity?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-capacity&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15069" CreationDate="2015-06-01T07:25:42.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, you have to calculate your team velocity - in others words how much they can do in one sprint (including concept, development, test and meetings). Then you will be able to know how much time you need to save for things other than coding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words - no you don't have to cut your development phase to 4 days, you simply have to realize that testing will be done on first, second and ... day, so add hour or so to task based on it's complexity. &#xA;That will let you complete sprint without saving time for one big testing at the end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17299" LastActivityDate="2015-06-01T07:25:42.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15069" CreationDate="2015-06-01T10:08:21.583" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a contradiction here, you don't use hours in terms of velocity.  When you are estimating stories they should be done in terms of story points.  These are typically Fibonacci numbers and stories should be sized to take into account effort to do, testing time, testing complexity, risks, unknowns etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you could have a story where development may only take a few hours, acceptance criteria is clear, tests are straight forward.  You'd probably say that was a 3 point story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also have a story that ideally would take the same time to code, but the requirements/acceptance criteria is more hazy, to setup tests may take the tester several hours of prep, the story is touching something where you know there is a lot of technical debt (or has poor test coverage), so although ideally it'll take the same time, there are a number of risks, so you may decide to make this an 8 or even a 13.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now based on this you can look at what the team did last sprint and  estimate your capacity based on that.  So if the team did 100 points and it is the same team, and the technical risk hasn't changed (say by working on some unknown area of the code), you would plan based on that figure, not hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This covers all your missed areas and leaves contingency for ceremonies and problems as you'll gain and lose over the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3336" LastActivityDate="2015-06-01T10:08:21.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15069" CreationDate="2015-06-01T11:01:47.820" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a common agile practice to reason in terms of &lt;strong&gt;story points&lt;/strong&gt; instead of hours. You can learn more about why we do so &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/the-main-benefit-of-story-points&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;velocity&lt;/strong&gt; concept, instead, is well explained in this blog &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2014/february/velocity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;post&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to complicate things, so &lt;strong&gt;I will answer to your question speaking in terms of hours&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's imagine that you are on the first iteration with a brand new team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such a case, &lt;strong&gt;you can assume that the team will be &quot;&lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt;&quot; working for about 70% of their available time&lt;/strong&gt;. You are considering the fact that the remaining 30% will be taken up by other tasks not related with development (paperwork, e-mails, phone calls, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is wise to start with a conservative estimate. The idea is to adjust your estimation in the next iteration and use it to determine how many hours of work can go in the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Let's give a look at your example&lt;/strong&gt; (a team with 3 developers, working 5 days per week, at 8 hours a day):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;(number of developers)&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;* 5&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;(days)&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;* 8&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;(available working hours per day)&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;* 0.7&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;(initial estimation)&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;= 84&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;(&quot;real&quot; working hours that your team can handle in one week)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on your question, I think that it could be good for you to search more information about the concept of &lt;strong&gt;Definition of Done (DoD)&lt;/strong&gt; as well. You can start from &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2008/september/what-is-definition-of-done-(dod)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I understand that in your organization testing is separate from development. This is not the best agile approach, but it is (sigh!) common.&lt;/strong&gt; You can find some interesting information in this &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/127522/how-to-fit-testing-in-scrum-sprints-and-how-to-write-user-stories-in-scrum&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt; to the question &quot;&lt;em&gt;How to fit testing in Scrum sprints and how to write user stories in Scrum&lt;/em&gt;&quot; on Programmers Stack Exchange. Give a look also at this blog &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2013/june/testers-working-in-an-agile-team&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;post&lt;/a&gt; about testers working in an agile team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is complicated to tell you what is best for your team and organization based only on the information provided.&lt;/strong&gt; My understanding is that you are working with one-week sprints. You wrote that, according to your experience, it is better to leave the last day for testers to do their job. In this case, if I were you, &lt;strong&gt;I would probably continue to consider 5 working days. The team needs to speak with the Product Owner and organize the Sprint Backlog to have user stories that fit into 4 working days to be done (so that they can be sent to the testers team in the same iteration) plus another story (or more) that can be done in the last day (to be sent to testers in the next iteration)&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17124" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:31:53.287" LastActivityDate="2015-06-01T18:29:30.070" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15038" CreationDate="2015-06-01T13:08:47.583" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Insert Assignment choice in the shortcut menu &lt;strong&gt;does&lt;/strong&gt; work if you have an assignment selected.  However, it is not active in Project 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming you are using Project 2010, in the Task Usage view, click on an assignment (represented by the resource name), right click and choose Insert Assignment.  A blank assignment row is added, type the resource name to add to the task and press enter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Resource Usage view, click on an assignment (represented by the task name), right click and choose Insert Assignment.  Type the name of an existing task, or, if you type the name of a task that does not exist, Project will prompt you to create the task.  However, inserting tasks from the Resource Usage view would not be on my recommended list.  You cannot link the tasks, not set a duration for the task from the Resource Usage view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you need to add new tasks - and you are in the Task Usage view - just add the new task - do not choose Insert Assignment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-06-01T13:08:47.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15045" CreationDate="2015-06-01T13:35:57.617" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My quick and direct answer is: Start with Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put everyone on the meetings, make a product backlog and start to put tasks on some physical board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some links that can help you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.everydaykanban.com/what-is-kanban/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.everydaykanban.com/what-is-kanban/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://leankit.com/kanban/what-is-kanban/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://leankit.com/kanban/what-is-kanban/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not all, it's just to start. Following all the suggests from the other members will put you on the right way, but you asked for some link or tutorial, so, it's there. ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17306" LastActivityDate="2015-06-01T13:35:57.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15075" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15082" CreationDate="2015-06-01T19:32:57.090" Score="1" ViewCount="117" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) Can anyone recommend a resource that correlates Agile terms (Epic, Feature, User Story) with the web development process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) I understand the concept of waterfall development, but what is it called if things are done in parallel (that aren't co-dependent) -&gt; &quot;While Jim works on the mockup, Mary is going to gather content, and Charlie is going to setup the test server). Would those tasks be Agile because they are done in parallel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17325" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T13:58:12.120" Title="Agile for Web Development" Tags="&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15076" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15092" CreationDate="2015-06-01T21:35:39.677" Score="3" ViewCount="219" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the description of one vacancy I read following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...responsible for Internet and Mobile channels development, project&#xA;  management, customer experience development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does &lt;strong&gt;customer experience development&lt;/strong&gt; mean? I know what is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_experience&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;customer experience&lt;/a&gt;, but I have a very vague idea of what from itself represents &lt;em&gt;customer experience development activity [during project management, of course]&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-10-03T19:29:36.357" LastActivityDate="2015-10-03T19:29:36.357" Title="What does &quot;customer experience development&quot; mean?" Tags="&lt;customer&gt;&lt;customer-experience&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14345" CreationDate="2015-06-01T23:50:51.713" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The non-technical stakeholders only need to know how much work is needed to add the new feature.  Like unit tests, refactoring should be included in the estimate for adding the new feature.  It's part of the development process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can group features together that all benefit from the refactoring then the extra work can be spread over the group and isn't allocated to any single item. This is usually more palatable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the rub: Many a time the stakeholders have asked me why a change will take longer than the last time we made a similar change.  Good - the stakeholders aren't stupid and they are paying attention! My answer is, &quot;We've outgrown the original design. Based on the number of past changes related to this new feature we need to implement a new design. This will allow us to add this new feature and support it in production.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16242" LastActivityDate="2015-06-01T23:50:51.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15075" CreationDate="2015-06-02T06:12:57.050" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ad 2)&#xA;It's still pretty much Waterfall. You're more or less on Implementation/Development stage and doing couple of things at the same time doesn't make much of a difference. &#xA;Difference between Agile and Waterfall approach lays in planning, work schedules and client/team involvement rather than doing your tasks in this or that order. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17299" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T06:12:57.050" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15080" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15337" CreationDate="2015-06-02T08:19:45.923" Score="1" ViewCount="190" Body="&lt;p&gt;Delegation Poker is a Management 3.0 workout practice that differentiates delegation on seven levels. This works fine for two interested parties: the manager and the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But how can it be made to work for three or more parties?&lt;/strong&gt; For example, Scrum has three main roles: Product Owner, Scrum Master and development team. More if you also count the project sponsor and/or the end-user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For reference, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://management30.com/product/delegation-poker/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;seven levels of delegation&lt;/a&gt; according to M3.0 are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Tell: You as the manager make the decision.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Sell: You make the decision but you try to persuade others to buy into it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Consult: You get input from team before still making decision.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Agree: You make a decision together as a team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Advise: Your team makes the decision, but you try to influence it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Inquire: Your team makes the decision and then tells you about it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Delegate: You offer no influence and let team work it out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17347" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2015-06-02T09:25:32.943" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T17:52:55.417" Title="Delegation Poker with more than two interested parties" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;responsibility&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15081" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-02T10:06:51.480" Score="0" ViewCount="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am to write a doctoral dissertation but struggling with achieving results in time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What project management can teach me on doing a project on my own? What should I read?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My area is computer science if that matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17349" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T15:34:29.423" Title="Managing your dissertation" Tags="&lt;self-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15075" CreationDate="2015-06-02T13:58:12.120" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1)&lt;/strong&gt; Features, Epics, and User Stories are all different sizes of the same thing. For example, in a web application, one feature may be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;As a user, I'd like to manage my profile.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that feature, and one Epic may be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;As a user, I'd like to be able to change my personal information so that I can keep it up-to-date.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And inside that epic, there are a number of user stories and one might be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;As a user, I'd like to be able to enter my ZIP code and have the city and state auto-populated so that I can enter my information faster.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the best resources I can recommend for really getting a handle on user stories (and their larger cousins) is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q5-cVeNjCE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt; by Mike Cohn. It's a bit long, but time well-spent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2)&lt;/strong&gt; What you're describing is simply working in parallel (I don't know of any other term for it). Agile development is really more about collaborating between team members and the customers and working in shorter iterations to deliver frequently and validate your work. There's obviously a lot more to it. You can start with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt;, though that doesn't really explain how it's done. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt; actually has one of the best overviews of agile development I've found online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T13:58:12.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15083" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15085" CreationDate="2015-06-02T15:21:55.727" Score="8" ViewCount="1715" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, I believe I have a good understanding of User Story Hierarchy (Epic &gt; Story &gt; Task), but I've had a quick search around and I wasn't able to find a definitive answer to this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you theoretically have an Epic within an Epic. For example, you have a relatively complex feature that could be worthy of its own epic, but in turn forms part of a larger piece of functionality. If so, how would you go about visualising this? If not, I presume I should attempt to re-think the stories involved and how they can be seperated out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8220" LastActivityDate="2015-06-03T07:37:04.997" Title="An Epic within an Epic" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15081" CreationDate="2015-06-02T15:34:29.423" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The very simplest self project management is to decompose your work into the smallest possible chunks. The preferred would be nothing more than four hours of work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&#xA;- Research Moore's Law&#xA;- Create Outline&#xA;- Draft Introduction&#xA;- Etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next you rank order these from most important, to least. Pay attention to dependencies, if A needs X to be done first, then X goes higher in the backlog. I suggest Trello.com as a very simple tool to use for managing your task list and work in process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to doing the work, schedule your day something like this (This assumes you are writing in a normal work day setting. Adjust to fit your time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;8:30 - Email, social media&#xA;9:00 - Module Work&#xA;10:00 - Break (get up from desk and move around)&#xA;10:15 - Module Work&#xA;11:15 - Break and Email&#xA;11:45 - Lunch&#xA;12:30 - Module Work&#xA;1:30 - Break&#xA;1:45 - Module Work&#xA;Continue cycle until 5. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key here is don't work for more than sixty minutes without a break. Your brain can't handle much more than 90 minutes of focused time. Also, it gives your brain something to look forward to (10 more minutes and I can check Facebook). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Set yourself timer though, especially on your breaks. It is easy to get lost in the land of the internet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T15:34:29.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15083" CreationDate="2015-06-02T15:39:06.510" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely! An Epic is just something too big to be done in a single iteration. As you refine it more (it gets closer to the top of the backlog), you may find it is really several epics. At this point you can nest them or break them out into their own Epics and get rid of the original Epic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More recently we've actually seen the introduction of more informal layers to help prevent confusion. Initiative and Feature are used by a lot of large enterprise companies to do this. An Initiative is above an Epic. It's at the fuzzy strategic level of &quot;we want to offer a completely new service to our existing customers.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Features are placed between Epics and User Stories. Typically 3-4 features make up an Epic. The Feature is then decomposed into the User Story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;End of the day, the only firm thing you need to do is to document your &quot;story hierarchy&quot; and clearly communicate it. Print it out and put it next to your task board or pin it up at people's desks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T15:39:06.510" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15083" CreationDate="2015-06-02T22:36:50.580" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can definitely have an epic within an epic.  Call it whatever you will, just make sure that all stakeholders in the project have a clear understanding of whatever hierarchy &amp;amp; definitions you choose to use and what each item is intended to do on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I'm a fan of keeping things as simple as possible and whenever I can, advocate for a two level hierarchy.  Epic&gt;Story aka Intangible&gt;Tangible&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epic is anything that is too big to be story point estimated; it extends beyond the tactical time-frame of an iteration and the immediate consideration of the delivery team.  A story is something a team can commit to delivering to the customer by the end of the iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, your main metric (velocity) is based around the story.  By keeping the hierarchy as flat as possible and keeping your buckets simple you also reduce the risk of stakeholders trying to use things like tasks, features, epics, milestones, themes, etc to drive a delivery schedule (try to control the cone of uncertainty), measure individual productivity, derive story point to hour conversions, and a handful of other waterfallish-agile things that organizations with lots of management levels love to engage in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T22:36:50.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15088" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-03T01:21:03.170" Score="5" ViewCount="350" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a new team of about a dozen developers in our not-very-IT company tasked with reshoring/onshoring/insourcing (bringing into the company what a vendor has developed for us) a large (10M+ LOC?) legacy system. With pretty much zero documentation the approach we are taking is just to work on bug fixes as a way to learn more about the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our management wants to keep track of our progress so they are counting the number of bug report tickets we've closed, which does not seem to be helping. Rather than addressing the highest risk vulnerabilities, the developers are focusing on finding the simplest bugs to fix while avoiding any in-depth troubleshooting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What could be a better metric for us? There is an opinion that story points are more about new features and they do not really work well for defects, especially since we cannot really know the complexity of these in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe we need not a new metric but a new approach altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17357" LastEditorUserId="8524" LastEditDate="2015-06-12T17:50:38.227" LastActivityDate="2016-08-04T23:33:16.950" Title="metrics for bug fixing / learning legacy system" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15088" CreationDate="2015-06-03T01:51:47.253" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's get the bad news out of the way first: you can't measure percentage completion of an unknown quantity, so on some level, they're going to have to let go of that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So let's start with what they want to know. Right now you're measuring bug closures. If you're trying to shore up the legacy system internally, that might be a great metric. If learning how different features work, picking features in priority order (maybe by frequency of use if you've got those numbers somewhere) and giving story point values to the effort required to gain an understanding of that feature. The goal is to have a metric that accurately reflects what you want to get out of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the important part: what to do with that metric. Create some timebox. If you already use sprints or something like that, you can stick with that. At the end of each timebox, management can look at what was done/learned and decide if it makes sense to spend another timebox working on it. Indicators that you should stop should depend on the numbers you use, but you'd probably start to see some big change in the measurement. If you're using bugs, you might see a large drop over an iteration or two as you've gotten through most of them and what's left is substantially harder to find (not that you wouldn't fix these bugs, just that it shows you've gotten to explore most of the application). If you're using pointed features to learn, you'll probably hit a point where everything left is a massive level of effort because it's some obscure function. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should give management some insight in how the team is progressing with the project. It should also take some of the pressure off of developers because you're looking at trends, not measuring raw numbers, so they will hopefully not have the pressure to close a lot of small stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-06-03T01:51:47.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15090" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15093" CreationDate="2015-06-03T05:38:38.197" Score="3" ViewCount="258" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have mostly worked on projects which followed Waterfall model and we had in place lot of checklists and audits during the SDLC which ensured that we were able to meet the quality goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I work at an organization where majority of the projects are using either Scrum or Kanban. Lot of times requirements/stories are given by the users/client directly. There is very little prioritization that we do with the client. The project size varies from 2 developers to 20 developers. The estimates given by the developers for their stories sometimes miss out the unit testing, code review/rework effort. I have educated them and now they have started estimating it correctly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What all processes can I introduce so that the quality parameters like defect injection rate, code review effectiveness, software design effectiveness can be in control? I think lot of the developers confuse Agile/iterative model with short cut development. So educating them is first thing that I am doing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will like to ask the experts here if there are any thumb rules which I can use or if there are any best practices which I can implement so that all projects follow similar process, projects follow more predictable path, the number of stories delivered is higher and quality parameters can be achieved.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6209" LastActivityDate="2015-06-03T10:12:50.377" Title="Quality processes for Agile Scrum projects" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15083" CreationDate="2015-06-03T07:37:04.997" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the Scrum Guide, Scrum itself does not define what the product backlog contains (it's just some description of the work that needs to be done). Using names like &quot;epics&quot;, &quot;features&quot; etc. is pretty common, however you could actually call them whatever you want - the main goal is that is that this serves you well. So &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;, you can definitely have an epic in an epic. You could even have an epic in an epic in an epic if you wanted to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7636" LastActivityDate="2015-06-03T07:37:04.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15076" CreationDate="2015-06-03T08:20:18.680" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's like continuous quality improvement. It is about &lt;strong&gt;continuous improvement of the customer experience&lt;/strong&gt;. Or the person is responsible to manage / develop / improve/ increase the customer experience, e.g. over the project lifecycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2015-06-03T08:20:18.680" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15090" CreationDate="2015-06-03T10:12:50.377" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that in the agile methods, you're probably going to want a different set of quality metrics to track against.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an agile project, especially with regards to the design and code and test activities, it's highly iterative and there may not be a clear separation of these activities, so phase-based metrics (measuring effectiveness of design and code reviews, for example) become hard. In addition, since testing typically happens concurrently and continuously, I don't think you'll get typical defect arrival curves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you'll want to keep &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; in mind when developing new metrics to track quality. Specifically, the Agile Manifesto favors &quot;individuals and interactions&quot; and &quot;customer collaboration&quot;. You'll also want to keep in mind &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Principles Behind the Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt;, especially the first one: &quot;our highest priority is to satisfy he customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your first metric should be one of customer satisfaction. A good starting measurement would be defects reported by customers and end users. If you're tracking reported severity or priority, this could be part of that measurement. You can also track the number of iterations to resolve defects (likely based on priority and/or severity). This type of metric relates to defect turnaround time (time between reporting and verification) or defect response time (verified defects being resolved by the development team). You could even build up goals around these data points to improving your quality activities to the point of 0 &quot;significant&quot; (based on your definition of &quot;significant&quot;) issues reported by customers in releases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good agile metric for customer satisfaction would possibly be the number or percentage of user stories that were accepted at the end of the sprint. Ideally, you should finish every planned story and every finished story would be accepted. That's not always the case, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you're also using Kanban, tracking a severity distribution (something that ranges from cosmetic defects to blocking issues) and priority distribution (something that ranges from low to high) along with the swimlane that the work item is in may yield interesting data. For example, once a developer says that a story or task is done with development, there should be no blocking or high priority issues found in it. Tracking that a large number of items are making it into acceptance testing with defects over a certain severity or priority could trigger actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A little closer to the development team, a good metric may be automated test coverage. The agile methods tend to favor continuous integration, and automated unit, integration, system, and regression tests are well supported in this type of environment. Tracking coverage, especially in new code, may be useful. Of course, &lt;a href=&quot;http://martinfowler.com/bliki/TestCoverage.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;test coverage is not a quality metric&lt;/a&gt; (see also: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.exampler.com/testing-com/writings/coverage.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How to Misuse Code Coverage&lt;/a&gt;) since it doesn't say how good your tests are, but you can use it with other defect reports found during test or post-release activities to know how good you are. You can use it as a quick check to ensure that some tests are being written for new code, though, and that as issues are found, tests are being written for inclusion into test suites to prove the issue and then that the issue has been resolved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a requirements perspective, the stories brought into the sprint should be relatively well understood and what you will be working on. Although Agile recognizes the fact that requirements can and do change and you should embrace change, you usually don't want major changes to the stories that are part of the current iteration. You should probably want to measure the volatility of stories that you've brought into the sprint - once they go through the grooming process and are accepted by the team, track the number of changes to some aspect of the story (including stories being added or removed). The addition or removal of a story is visible on a burn-down or burn-up chart, but changes to a story may not be reflected there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside on requirements, I am concerned when you say that your users and client directly provide requirements and stories and there is very little prioritization done with the client. If you don't have an on-site user or client to act as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(software_development)#Product_owner&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Product Owner&lt;/a&gt;, there should be a person on your team that can act in this capacity and has a solid understanding of the needs and desires of the users and client. The Product Owner should be responsible for prioritizing stories and providing clear acceptance criteria. Having prioritized stories and clear acceptance criteria will be visible in measures such as requirements volatility and defects discovered following a release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although it does add overhead, if you're working on a contract that requires time tracking already, consider tracking time against certain tasks. It depends on how you break down your work into tasks, but if you have to track hours worked, you can track cost of quality. Things to look for are how much time you're spending writing and executing tests (manual and automated), peer reviews of designs or code, and time reworking designs or code because of failed tests. Of course, be careful that this doesn't add a lot of overhead - it may not be suitable for projects that don't require time tracking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a process quality perspective, examine how good your estimates are. It's a little harder with story points on a per-story basis, but you can track your overall velocity across sprints. After a few iterations, you should be able to consistently tell how many story points you can complete in a single sprint and then hit that number (maybe with some minor variations). Your burn-down charts and velocity tracking can be looked at over time to make sure you're properly scoping and executing your work items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do have one last word of caution. I would recommend embracing &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_software_development#Lean_principles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Lean Software Development principles&lt;/a&gt;. Make sure that any measurements and metrics that you are collecting are actually adding value to the customer, the team, or the organization. When your metrics or indicators show a problem, empower the team to make decisions on how to go forward and make corrective actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2015-06-03T10:12:50.377" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15094" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-03T12:20:46.233" Score="3" ViewCount="1151" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Jira, can I form a query to give me all tickets I touched yesterday&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can easily form a query to give me all tickets that were updated yesterday and that I touched at some point&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but I would like to limit that 'at some point' to yesterday :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17361" LastActivityDate="2015-07-03T17:50:14.500" Title="In Jira, can I form a query to give me all tickets I touched yesterday" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15094" CreationDate="2015-06-03T14:03:27.377" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This should &lt;em&gt;hopefully&lt;/em&gt; return all issues viewed on a specific day:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;lastViewed = &quot;YYYY/MM/DD&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For reference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Advanced+Searching+-+Fields+Reference#AdvancedSearching-FieldsReference-LastViewed&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Advanced+Searching+-+Fields+Reference#AdvancedSearching-FieldsReference-LastViewed&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8220" LastActivityDate="2015-06-03T14:03:27.377" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15096" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-03T16:36:13.203" Score="3" ViewCount="508" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're finally looking into utilizing scrum for one of or products, and we're trying to figure out what to do with all of the people on the team. We have the following people:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customer Support&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Content Writers (nontechnical website copywriters)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Designer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adwords Marketer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We know we'll have developers, testers, and a designer on the scrum team. We know the product manager will move into a product owner role, and we know someone from the team will be a scrum master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, where do support, content writers, and marketers fall in on the team?  These are all people who are dedicated to this product and are currently part of the team in its pre-scrum configuration.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can these folks be part of the scrum team? Why or why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T12:45:21.393" Title="Can a website content writer, support, and marketer be a part of a scrum team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15096" CreationDate="2015-06-03T17:40:41.277" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with all things agile, &quot;it depends.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Scrum Team has two often conflicting goals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A vertical slice of the organization that can independently release working, tested software. This often requires a broad set of skills.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cross-functional &quot;no roles&quot; team. Scrum team individuals are also espoused to be able to do more than just &quot;their job&quot;. Anyone can take a story, anyone can test, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So with that dichotomy in existence, it first matters what your organizations priority is on the above. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my experience here is what I would do: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Customer Support:&lt;/strong&gt; If you're a big enough company to have customer support interacting with development like this, then you're probably big enough to have a product owner team (POT). Where the Scrum Team owns delivery of the prioritized backlog, the POT owns creation of the backlog. The Scrum Team ships product, the POT ships a backlog. Putting customer support on the Product Owner Team gives them a voice in the design up front. Having been in this role before, I was able to help head off customer issues by providing field experience. I wrote on this a while back &lt;a href=&quot;http://thegorillacoach.com/garbage-in-gorilla-out-know-what-before-do/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;on my blog&lt;/a&gt; and have a whole talk around creating well formed backlogs and product owner teams&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Content Writers:&lt;/strong&gt; I'm assuming this is different from documentation writers. If the product can't ship without the work of the Content Writer, then they need to be on the Scrum Team, even if they can't do any other work (coding, testing). This is because &quot;Done&quot; requires them. &#xA;The alternate is to make them part of the Extend Scrum Team. This is the concept of contributors that are not required every Sprint. A Database person may only be needed every few sprints, so they sit in the extended team and often are a resource to more than one team. If the Content Writer isn't needed every sprint, try this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Marketers&lt;/strong&gt;: Product Owner Team. Same concept as Customer Support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-06-03T17:40:41.277" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15094" CreationDate="2015-06-03T17:49:47.803" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not possible (at this time) to query all types of activity on a ticket by a particular user, but if you're willing to settle for status changes, you could use something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;status changed BY username AFTER -1d&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can replace username with currentuser() if you want this to be a query anyone can use without modification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also broaden it with ORs and repeat the same logic with other fields, such as assignee, fixVersion, and so on. That would at least get you a query for all tickets where most standard fields had been changed by your username in the last day (-1d). For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;status changed BY currentuser() AFTER -1d OR fixVersion changed BY currentuser() AFTER -1d OR assignee changed BY currentuser() AFTER -1d&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on. Querying comment activity by username is (I'm 99% sure) impossible at this time, but there are open tickets in Atlassian's system for exactly this kind of searching, so we may get it some day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16138" LastActivityDate="2015-06-03T17:49:47.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15099" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15102" CreationDate="2015-06-03T18:20:39.497" Score="8" ViewCount="1152" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have met more than one time a situation where &lt;strong&gt;everyone wants to talk, but no one wants to listen&lt;/strong&gt;. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Our team discusses where to go in our next team building trip. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Our team discusses a strategy for our next football match, and suddenly it  becomes a mess because everyone wants to present their point while the others are talking.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Our team talk about silly small things, like how the report should be written and stuff... It's like almost always about the simple stuff that this situation occurs the most.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, &lt;strong&gt;the work dispute will get resolved when an &quot;imperative voice&quot; from the boss/senior member is raised&lt;/strong&gt; and forces everyone onto a solution. But, if that voice isn't credible enough (like in the case of the football match), it won't help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can you, as a project manager/leader, resolve this kind of situation? I mean, in the team there are some senior members whose ideas are often respected. And the junior team members seem to think they don't have a voice, so they find every opportunity to raise their voices. That often results in a mess, with unhappy team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like if we could create an environment where every team member has his chance to speak and the team chooses what they think is the best solution. Is it that hard?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-06-04T08:32:49.817" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T10:48:01.580" Title="Everyone wants to talk, but no one listens" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15088" CreationDate="2015-06-03T19:10:08.737" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing test procedures for the functional description of the system, and writing scenario tests may be a better approach to investigate. But, this requires knowing (or assuming) what the functions of the software ARE. However, if they assigned 10 people for a job, and if they are buying such a large code (10M LOC is as complex as an Airplane software), this investment should be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then running these test procedures, and overseeing the progress of completion of these test procedures may be helpful for the management to forecast the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Random scenarios, or other prioritization orders would help approach the conclusion quicker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16715" LastActivityDate="2015-06-03T19:10:08.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1497" CreationDate="2015-06-03T20:57:09.690" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;While many companies typically choose to overlook, or operate without, any functional difference between project manager and project leader, in reality there is a great difference between the two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The easiest clue? Salary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;project lead&lt;/strong&gt; by definition is the responsible party for the entire project, and gets compensated accordingly. A &lt;strong&gt;project manager&lt;/strong&gt; is usually responsible for aspects of the project, especially those requiring day to day task allocation and supervision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the difference in salary can be as difficult to decipher as the difference in the titles, a project manager typically tops out around 125k in the US, and a leader about 175K. If you have the option to choose your title, I know 50,000 reasons to choose leader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17364" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-06-05T04:19:05.767" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T04:19:05.767" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15099" CreationDate="2015-06-03T21:02:36.587" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Help the team to move from &lt;em&gt;storming&lt;/em&gt; to &lt;em&gt;norming&lt;/em&gt;, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuckman%27s_stages_of_group_development&quot;&gt;stages of group development&lt;/a&gt;. You can achieve this by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Present your &lt;strong&gt;observations&lt;/strong&gt; to the team. Take care that you talk about observations and not interpretation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Highlight the &lt;strong&gt;advantages&lt;/strong&gt; you could achieve if you change your behaviour, e.g. get better results by taking more ideas into account, speed up meetings, improve the atmosphere. Do not focus on your current disadvantages.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Together with your team, &lt;strong&gt;define rules&lt;/strong&gt; for meetings and discussions, e.g. you use a moderator &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use a &lt;strong&gt;moderator&lt;/strong&gt;, this should be a respected member of the team who is able to keep the discussion goal in focus&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use &lt;strong&gt;creativity techniques&lt;/strong&gt; that allow all to participate, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.getrealaboutbusiness.com/silent-brainstorming/&quot;&gt;silent brainstorming&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM should guide this team building process. But keep in mind that it's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_management&quot;&gt;change process&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;strong&gt;if you get the team to accept the need for change&lt;/strong&gt;, you have good chances to succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2015-06-03T21:02:36.587" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15103" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15105" CreationDate="2015-06-03T21:24:13.840" Score="5" ViewCount="355" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is more convenient for me to describe requirements in technical terms. So is it possible not to use the users stories in Scrum? Will it be Agile still?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17365" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2015-06-06T07:42:42.943" LastActivityDate="2020-12-23T13:58:36.503" Title="May I not use the users stories in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15103" CreationDate="2015-06-03T21:33:04.380" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having a user story is kinda central to forming a scrum team.  Technically I would say you are not &quot;doing scrum.&quot; It may still be Agile if it works for your team and your customer however...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The decision on whether or not to use user stories should not be based on convenience to you, it should be based on what the team needs to succeed and what needs to be done so that the customer gets a quality product increment at the end of the iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team can think out of the box enough (and understand the business value of the work item you document) to solution and build something for a customer in an iteration without a formal user story...then go for it.  If you are writing implementation details for your team and they feel like &quot;code monkeys&quot; then you are defeating the purpose of using Scrum and empowering team to deliver incremental value to a customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-06-03T21:33:04.380" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15103" CreationDate="2015-06-03T21:33:24.373" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course you may! Scrum doesn't prescribe what concrete representation of requirements you should use. There is no such term as &quot;user story&quot; in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v1/Scrum-Guide-US.pdf#zoom=100&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; at all. Scrum Guide operate &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Product Backlog Item&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum Guide imposes three constraints to well defined (or &quot;refined&quot; in Scrum terminology) PBI:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It should be clear to all Scrum Team members.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It should be well detailed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It should be possible to implement this PBI within one Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, theoretically PBI can be any kind of requirement representation.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Main reason, why User Story is used: it is more customer oriented&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you are Product Owner and you have no communication problem with Stakeholders, you may feel free to operate with such kind of requirements representation as you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, quote from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumprimer.org/scrumprimer20.pdf&quot;&gt;Scrum Primer&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Product Backlog items are articulated in any way that is clear and&#xA;  sustainable. Contrary to popular misunderstanding, the Product Backlog&#xA;  does not contain “user stories”; it simply contains items. Those items&#xA;  can be expressed as user stories, use cases, or any other requirements&#xA;  approach that the group finds useful. But whatever the approach, most&#xA;  items should focus on delivering value to customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if it is okay for your stakeholders, there is no problem even if you will operate &quot;SRS style&quot; requirements (like &quot;system shall...&quot; phrases).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-06-03T22:28:08.197" LastActivityDate="2015-06-03T22:28:08.197" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15099" CreationDate="2015-06-03T23:13:06.103" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good project manager is a good facilitator. Someone who can guide healthy conversations and help the team get to, remember and follow through on their commitments and decisions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking a people focus I'd advise two key areas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1- Who does what, by when:&lt;/strong&gt; At the very basic, that's all project management is, tracking who is doing what and when it should be done. We often get wrapped up in the big ticket items of a release (new database, new UI, new web store) that we don't track the smaller things. As Tobias referenced, your team is probably still in the Storming phase. This is a time when you need to be tracking even the little things. So keep a simple action item and decision log. During any meeting, just jot down a capital A-  for any action and a D- for anything decided. Dump this into a simple spreadsheet and share it through the preferred method. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2- Understand how your team wants to be communicated to:&lt;/strong&gt; Peter Drucker's communication principles have been paraphrased as &quot;Communication is what the listener does.&quot; If someone isn't being communicated to in the way they understand, then often they won't get it and even worse, they'll clam up and not communicate back. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found the DISC profile system incredibly simple and effective in helping me get a team communicating better. In a hyper nutshell DISC has four main quadrants: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;D&quot;-&lt;/strong&gt; Direct and to the point. No problem interrupting or being interrupted. Hates long stories or any explanation that starts with &quot;Well...&quot; &#xA;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;I&quot;-&lt;/strong&gt; The influencer. Like Tom Sawyer, he'll get the job done most likely by getting everyone else involved. Highly distractable and can talk about pretty much nothing for hours. &#xA;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;S&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; - The team mom. They want nothing more than everyone to get along and the work to get done. They won't confront and will rarely speak up in a large group. &#xA;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;C&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; - The data person. There is no such thing as too much data and why explain something in ten words when a ten page email will do. Doesn't like to be surprised and will take their time to formulate an answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of these is good or bad and the best teams have a healthy mix of all these types (and hybrid types like High D/I or High D/C). The important thing to note though is that the &quot;D&quot; and &quot;I&quot; people do not have a problem speaking up and can be very &quot;forceful&quot; in meetings. Two &quot;D&quot;s can seem like they are fighting when they are just communicating in their element. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understanding your team, you can then work with them. In those large meetings, temper the &quot;D&quot; and &quot;I&quot;s a bit by asking for the &quot;C&quot; and &quot;S&quot; to contribute. If you know some major discussions are going to be happening, give the &quot;C&quot; and &quot;S&quot; a heads up so they have time to research or work out their thoughts. For the &quot;D&quot; keep things short and simple. You take the time to read the &quot;C&quot;'s 12 page report and summarize it in the meeting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learning how your team communicates and then setting up an environment where everyone gets heard, will solve a lot of the &quot;Storming&quot; issues your team is having. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-06-03T23:13:06.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15107" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15110" CreationDate="2015-06-04T12:39:51.510" Score="4" ViewCount="8099" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the PMBOK 5th Edition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2 of the Perform Quality Assurance Tools &amp;amp; Techniques are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Quality Audit&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Process Analysis &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(  Pgs 438-439,  Head First PMP 3rd Edition, Jennifer Greene, PMP &amp;amp; Andrew Stellman, PMP )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Quality Audits are reviews of your project by your company.  They figure out whether or not you are following the company's process.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Process Analysis is when you look at your process to find out how to make it better.  You use your Process Improvement plan to do this one.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(  Pgs 438-439,  Head First PMP 3rd Edition, Jennifer Greene, PMP &amp;amp; Andrew Stellman, PMP )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(   Pgs 408-409  , PMP Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide, Kim Heldman, PMP )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The purpose of a quality audit.....to identify ineffective and inefficient activities or processes used on the project.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Process Analysis looks at process improvement from an organizational and technical perspective......&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;.....process analysis follows the steps in the process improvement plan and examines the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Problems experienced while conducting the project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Constraints experienced while conducting the work of the project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Inefficient and Ineffective activities identified during process operation&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(   Pgs 408-409  , PMP Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide, Kim Heldman, PMP )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that both PMP study guides don't say the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could someone please provide definitions for Quality Audit and Process Analysis, and explain the difference between the said two terms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16478" LastActivityDate="2015-06-04T21:34:03.313" Title="( PMBOK 5th Edition ) What is difference between Quality Audit and Process Analysis?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;quality&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;&lt;pmbok&gt;&lt;process-improvement&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2833" CreationDate="2015-06-04T13:42:34.200" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Very late reply from my side but it might help other people who see this question. I did a 3 day course with Firebrand. It was foundation and practitioner combined. The classes were very intense ~12 hours a day so there also was an evening program where we needed to study. By the way: during those 3 days we slept in the same building as were the training was. So basically you were full time studying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We started with 16 people. After the 2nd day 14/16 were foundation certified.&#xA;At the 3rd day the 2/16 did a 2nd attempt for the foundation exam and 14/16 did an attempt to pass the practitioner exam. Only 2/14 passed the exam and for one of them it already was his 2nd a try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed they guarentee you pass; if not you can do the 2nd exam attempt for free. (the exam is free but they do charge other costs). I was very lucky to passed both exams for the first time. (but i just barely made it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17370" LastActivityDate="2015-06-04T13:42:34.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14968" CreationDate="2015-06-04T18:32:40.723" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me this comment seems to answer my question best:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/14968/evm-in-research-and-technology#comment19709_14968&quot;&gt;EVM in Research and Technology&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll keep this answer as accepted until the comment is converted to an answer...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2015-06-04T18:32:40.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15107" CreationDate="2015-06-04T21:34:03.313" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quality Audit is basically seeing if you are following the defined process. A Process Analysis is examining what you do and identifying aspects that could be improved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an extreme example, in a Quality Audit you might have a process that says &quot;Every employee should sleep for 10 minutes per hour&quot; and the Audit would have to confirm it was being followed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Process Analysis may find that sleeping for 10 minutes every hour was not an efficient way to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8091" LastActivityDate="2015-06-04T21:34:03.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15099" CreationDate="2015-06-05T10:48:01.580" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the two answers provided by Joel and Tobias are very good.  I want in my answer to focus in on just your title of the problem: &quot;Everyone wants to talk but no one listens.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can almost hear in that statement, &quot;I am talking but no one is listening to me.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a look at the culture of your organization, and its history.  You may be coping with a culture that does not embrace contribution, does not have the vehicles in place where employee opinions are heard, and/or rarely deploys creative ideas from its employees.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may have a more systemic issue to resolve culturally and that requires a ton of dedication to change and a lot of time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T10:48:01.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15096" CreationDate="2015-06-05T12:45:21.393" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that you should probably not put all these people in the same team. Although it would be an interesting experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to have to imagine your product and team setup a bit, but usually I have found you get:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Developers&lt;/strong&gt; - you want them to implement features for your product&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the backbone of your scrum team because you have introduced scrum to either stop them doing whatever they think is good today, or to cut down on a overly long waterfall process&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Testers&lt;/strong&gt; - you want these guys to be your acceptance test for the features&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can put testers in a scrum team and many people do. But I find it moves them away from the 'acceptance of feature' role and into a test automation role. This puts pressure on the PO to write detailed specs rather than relying on test to pick up problems and raise them as bugs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Designers&lt;/strong&gt; - you want these guys to sell you their cool designs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can put these guys in the team, 'Design page X' is a nicely scrum-able task&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product Manager&lt;/strong&gt; - you want this guy to think up how to improve the product&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should put them on the team as the product owner&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Support&lt;/strong&gt; - you want these guys to keep customers happy&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't put these guys on the scrum team. I don't think you can tell customers to wait for their help request to go in the backlog and be prioritized, and if you did you would need a team to do it nicely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Content writers&lt;/strong&gt; - you want to update the content on your website&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't put them on the scrum team. one of the features of your product should be 'Content management interface' once this is complete the content writers should be able to use it to do their stuff regardless of the scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T12:45:21.393" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15115" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15119" CreationDate="2015-06-05T19:04:48.397" Score="1" ViewCount="122" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently a business student in university. Looking for assistance in finding or developing a framework for a successful automotive design season next year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overview of the team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;We design, build, and race an open wheeled, single seat racecar.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;We have requirements gathering, design, build, and test phases that are iterative.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;We have 10-15 system team leaders for various aspects of the car (powertrain, drivetrain, electrical,chassis, etc.).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just a bit of background. I joined this automotive design team last year, and noticed that the team was bogged down with myriad process-related issues. They had unrealistic deadlines, unproductive meetings,  communication issues, slow and inefficient design updates, overall chaos, etc, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel that this issue largely stems from a lack of a framework or way of approaching vehicle design...especially since no one has extensive experience in the industry or a serious interest in applying classroom knowledge to this project (as the sole business student, I feel responsible for this aspect of the team and I would love to apply some project management tools to this). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a second year business student, I am aware of the major methodologies applied to software development like Agile and Scrum. Is there anything specific to engineering design? &lt;strong&gt;Where should we start in trying to improve the team for next season?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17386" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-06-06T00:59:12.233" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T19:40:17.380" Title="Where should we start in trying to improve our automative design team for next season?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15115" CreationDate="2015-06-05T20:29:59.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an outsider, I've learnt some management methodologies FROM the automotive industry, that have been adopted by the software development industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An option could be to give a look at these two books related to automotive management:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_That_Changed_the_World_%28book%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The machine that changed the world&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Toyota_Way&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Toyota Way&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They deal with the mass production, but from the lean production point of view, so maybe they can address some of the issues you're rising (e.g. unrealistic deadlines, communication problems). They also treat the design and building of a prototype (like the Prius).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17321" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T20:29:59.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15115" CreationDate="2015-06-06T06:58:49.857" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Considering the fact that you have some knowledge of Agile and Scrum, it could be interesting for you to read about &lt;strong&gt;eXtreme Manufacturing&lt;/strong&gt;. You can start from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scruminc.com/extreme-manufacturing/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;eXtreme Manufacturing borrows the basic Agile principles from Scrum.&#xA;  First and foremost, it leverages small, cross-functional Teams, which&#xA;  have a Product Owner and Scrum Master. XM is structured around Sprints&#xA;  to help develop functionality in vertical slices that build overtime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Like Scrum, XM makes development transparent through tools like a&#xA;  Scrum board and a product backlog. It also borrows the concept of&#xA;  tracking process improvements by using Velocity. And, most&#xA;  importantly, it relies on the Lean concept of continuous improvement&#xA;  by employing Sprint Retrospectives and the Happiness Metric.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum provides the basic structure for XM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Joe Justice and his Wikispeed team have shown that it is possible, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2012/05/10/wikispeed-how-a-100-mpg-car-was-developed-in-3-months/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;in only three months&lt;/a&gt;, to build a functional 100 mpg car prototype:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acceleration (0-60 mph): &amp;lt; 5 seconds&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Weight: 1,404 pounds&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Top Speed: 149 mph&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Joe Justice called this approach eXtreme Manufacturing to pay tribute to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_programming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;eXtreme Programming (XP)&lt;/a&gt; as developed by Kent Beck in the late 90’s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You can try to improve the team for next season by combining:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum Organization&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;(Roles and Responsibilities, Sprints/Iterative Design, Make Work Visible, Measure Velocity, Continuous Improvement/Lean)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Object-Oriented Architecture&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;(Modular Components, Contract-First Design, Design Patterns, Re-use and Inheritance)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;eXtreme Programming Engineering Principles&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;(User Stories, Pairing and Swarming, Test Driven Development)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Think about this list as just a set of tools. Learn more about these concepts. After that, you will be able to choose which can be useful and adapt eXtreme Manufacturing to your particular situation.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17124" LastEditorUserId="17124" LastEditDate="2015-06-06T14:43:34.633" LastActivityDate="2015-06-06T14:43:34.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15118" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-06T13:22:41.873" Score="1" ViewCount="2061" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the PMBOK 5th Edition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using following books for reference:&#xA;- Head First PMP 3rd Edition, Jennifer Greene, PMP &amp;amp; Andrew Stellman, PMP&#xA;- PMP Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide, Kim Heldman, PMP&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am trying to understand the definitions of the following terms, and I'm also trying to understand the differences between each of the following terms, and how they relate to each other, and whether or not they overlap:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Work Performance Data&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Work Performance Information&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Work Performance Reports&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could someone please correct me if I'm wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work Performance Data seems to be raw data that we directly get from &quot;Direct and Manage Project Work Process&quot; like the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;% of work complete&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;status of deliverables&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;technical performance measurement&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;actual start and finish date of activities ( schedule progress to date )&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;number of change requests&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;number of defects&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;cost incurred to date&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it correct to state that the Work Performance Data is raw data that basically tells us about work completed on the project to date?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work Performance Information seems to go a step further, and yields the following data:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;forecasts for completion dates associated with activities&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;forecasts for budget ( cost )&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it correct to state that the Work Performance Information is forecast data that is based on raw data like Work Performance Data?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work Performance Reports goes a step further by going to the giving more complex data like statistical data based on Work Performance Data and Work Performance Information, and Work Performance Reports could include status, reports, memos, updates, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Earned Value Calculations&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Variance Analysis&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the above definitions, and explanation of differences between terms correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16478" LastActivityDate="2017-06-15T13:00:29.290" Title="What are defintions of Work Performance Data, Work Performance Information &amp; Work Performance Reports, and their differences?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;performance&gt;&lt;pmbok&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15115" CreationDate="2015-06-06T16:38:48.723" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Your Problem, Restated&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I joined this automotive design team last year, and noticed that the team was bogged down with myriad process-related issues. They had unrealistic deadlines, unproductive meetings, communication issues, slow and inefficient design updates, overall chaos, etc, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you pare away the non-essentials of your question, at the core is what you already know: your group lacks the formalized processes that will allow it to function as a &lt;em&gt;team&lt;/em&gt;. Estimation, meeting facilitation, communications planning, and cycle times are all things that are central to the practice of the project management profession.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The application of project management principles, formal frameworks, and process controls are how you &lt;em&gt;implement&lt;/em&gt; project management practices within your organization. The details of what you implement are less important than that you implement &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt;; otherwise, as you yourself state, the results tend towards the chaotic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Choose a Framework; Apply Controls&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which framework you choose matters, but it matters less than the &lt;em&gt;application&lt;/em&gt; of formal controls and processes to your project. There are certainly &lt;em&gt;classes&lt;/em&gt; of framework that are more geared towards manufacturing (e.g. Lean or Six Sigma), or towards iterative engineering (e.g. Scrum), but they all share a few things in common:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need to formalize your mechanism for estimating and scheduling. Even if it's wrong, you need a starting point.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need a formal project plan for how to &lt;em&gt;run&lt;/em&gt; the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need a formal communications plan for how the team will &lt;em&gt;communicate&lt;/em&gt; internally and externally about the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need a formal charter that invests &lt;em&gt;someone&lt;/em&gt; (presumably the project manager) with the the responsibility and authority to address process issues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need someone with the respect of the team (and in some cases the delegated authority) to facilitate meetings effectively.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of the things listed are tied to a given framework. They may be implemented differently across frameworks, but they are all essential aspects of any well-run project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-06-06T17:45:19.140" LastActivityDate="2015-06-06T17:45:19.140" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15118" CreationDate="2015-06-06T19:51:56.990" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I neither know nor care how the PMBoK defines these definitions but I would define them as follows:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Data:  Raw.&#xA;Information:  Raw data synthesized and interpreted such that findings are identified, conclusions drawn, questions answered, and alternatives and recommendations are developed.&#xA;Reporting:  Information displayed at the appropriate level, depth, breadth for others to consume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-06-06T19:51:56.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15038" CreationDate="2015-06-06T22:58:36.463" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pradosh, Pls also see this discussion: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mpug.com/forums/topic/advances-options-automatically-add-new-resource-and-task-2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mpug.com/forums/topic/advances-options-automatically-add-new-resource-and-task-2/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13318" LastActivityDate="2015-06-06T22:58:36.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15122" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15134" CreationDate="2015-06-08T06:59:05.173" Score="6" ViewCount="231" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I've read and learned about scrum from my recent reading, as well as years reading the great questions and answers on this site, a scrum team is a team of equals, where there's no hierarchy, and knowledge is shared vigorously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it still possible that some members of the team may have specific access to a set of resources which others do not?  For instance, a database expert on the team may have the ability to run SQL queries against the live, production database, but one might not want everyone on the team to be able to do this who isn't trained in SQL. Is this a correct way of thinking, or would we give unrestricted access to all on the team and warn them not to break stuff?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about simpler things, like the team's Slack instant messaging system?  It's arguably much harder to break Slack (or Sqwiggle, gitter.im, or any other instant messaging system).  Would it be expected that everyone be an admin to this system, or would a specific individual serve as the admin?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am concerned about things like this because they could inadvertently preserve some of the pre-scrum hierarchy that exists prior to moving to the scrum framework. What is the best way to approach these things on a new scrum team which was previously non-scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2015-06-08T21:31:39.127" Title="How to handle access to resources on a Scrum team which was previously a hierarchical team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15123" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-08T07:11:44.867" Score="1" ViewCount="178" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a product similar to Photoshop and we have a lot of trouble in the testing period. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;we started to use Agile Framework, in middle of project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have to use human manual testing to test visual effects (e.g. the opacity feature of background image)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unit testing is not sufficient and is not applicable for the visual side (front end) of the application. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;now we are using selenium for UI testing, but  it is not enough, because testers have to check screenshots which tooken by selenium. And there are more than 500 screenshoots for every release test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;we tried manuel tests but we missed a lot of cases (ex :  if z-index value of button greater than other elements, background opacity of button does not working). So i had a question &quot;how do they test Photoshop's features in Adobe ?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I test a very complicated user interface?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17335" LastEditorUserId="17335" LastEditDate="2015-06-09T13:55:34.240" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T13:55:34.240" Title="How should I create a process for front end testing?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;quality&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15122" CreationDate="2015-06-08T07:32:13.253" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nothing in Scrum says that everyone must be equal. A Scrum team must at least have all skills and permissions required to deliver a done increment of software every sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as long as there are team members with the right permissions, that should be enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, a scrum team should be mindful of its &quot;Truck-factor&quot; and ensure that skills and knowledge are spread across the team. So if you only have one person with the skills and permissions to change production databases, it' highly recommended that he pairs up with another developer to spread that knowledge and over time hand out a couple of copies of the keys to the castle so to speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To prevent the old hierarchy to resurface, talk about the ambitions for the team and have them come up with ways to spread the skills, knowledge and permissions. Retrospectives are a good starting point, but it may be that your team may need to get a few directive pointers (aka constraints) that tell them that certain things are no longer desired behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7393" LastActivityDate="2015-06-08T07:32:13.253" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15126" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15128" CreationDate="2015-06-08T08:24:37.553" Score="1" ViewCount="130" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile is getting more popular by the minute and as i understand it is all due to expanding the practice into new areas and business fields. I am interested in knowing what other fields, outside of software development, is agile being used in and how does it benefit them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10336" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T06:48:48.160" Title="What are alternative agile applications?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-06-08T22:14:23.750" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15126" CreationDate="2015-06-08T08:41:35.283" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a real appetite from the Scrum Alliance and various stakeholders to push Scrum into new industries including Construction (Scrum-C).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find one such example here &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2015/may/scrum-in-construction-(1)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2015/may/scrum-in-construction-(1)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Agile Coffee podcast touches upon this issue every few episodes and is a worthy listen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2015-06-08T08:41:35.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15126" CreationDate="2015-06-08T08:49:11.987" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience, I have found that agile can be easily adapted to most of the traditional business fields, such as &lt;strong&gt;finance and marketing&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example I came about most recently is a &lt;strong&gt;kanban application within an accounting firm&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prior to kanban being introduced, the firm was doing okay, but it lacked structure and capabilities to distribute the work and track resources effectively. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Applying the practice solved that by visualizing the work on the kanban board. All the team members immediately saw the full scope and structure of work to be completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also allowed the team to move away from the traditional model where one accountant is responsible for certain clients and to distribute their resources more evenly to be the most productive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, by tracking the work in such way they were able to say exactly how much time was needed for each client and make more accurate future estimations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17381" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-06-09T06:48:48.160" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T06:48:48.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15130" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15131" CreationDate="2015-06-08T14:20:14.610" Score="9" ViewCount="6103" Body="&lt;h2&gt;General&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize the size of a product backlog will vary with each project.  But assuming a project that is large enough to require a significant length time, is there any research or statistics on diminishing returns in terms of refining stories and epics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Zsolt's answer: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/6715/2730&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/6715/2730&lt;/a&gt; It mentioned that the last 2/3 of the backlog is going to change in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to be inline with the idea of Agile and Scrum. I'm wondering if there's a point where it is better to consolidate those stories into just epics, until such time as they may be in near future sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is a good size for a backlog, relative to the teams velocity?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does it make sense to consolidate existing stories into epics, if they aren't to be worked on for a significant period of time? (Assuming that the epic will hold the same knowledge of the original stories)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Specific&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question stems from our specific case. We have nearly 400 stories, and complete an average of 5 per sprint, in 2 week sprints. This is mostly because the initial push into scrum was to get every possible story into the backlog, rather than to form epics and divide as true needs were discovered through iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It obviously affects our ability to manage the upcoming stories, creating duplicates, wading through hundreds of possibly irrelevant or just wrong stories in the process. We are unable to update stories as new knowledge is gained, causing us to spend more time second guessing meaning and purpose of stories rather than iterating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We do suffer from a lack of prioritization. However, I'm thinking the sheer number of stories is causing our product owner and stakeholders to not want to invest the time into prioritizing. It feels very chicken and egg.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm hoping to find some information I can use to suggest consolidating large numbers of stories into epics, to be broken down later, when the actual need for the epics is in the near future (4-8 sprints).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2730" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2015-06-08T21:33:56.360" Title="What is a good total size for a Product Backlog?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15130" CreationDate="2015-06-08T14:46:54.577" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no real standard on product backlog. There are too many variables to what is essentially the company's strategy plan. The one common bit of guidance out there is more to do with pruning a backlog. It is &quot;if an item has been on the backlog more than X (usually a year or two years) then remove it. If it was really important, it will be added back.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With 400 individual user stories, you have roughly two years of backlog. However, from what you're saying, it sounds like your &quot;ready backlog&quot; is not very deep. Ready being it can be picked up by the development team and run with. Here there is a commonly accepted standard that the top of your product backlog should have 2-3 sprints worth of stories that meet the definition of &quot;ready&quot;, where the development team can pick them up and run with them. I might work on this discipline first, if possible by just focusing backlog grooming on the top 20% of the backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To try and tame your product backlog I would suggest two solutions, one proactive, one reactive. I would recommend doing them in the following order. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Affinity Mapping (reactive):&lt;/strong&gt; Basically a fancy name for &quot;put them in Epics&quot;. The exercise is important though. You'll want a facilitator (scrum master, unbiased project manager, etc.) Print out those 400 user stories on physical paper. Get a big open wall and tape all the user stories up on the wall on one side (even another wall). Then, as a group, start pulling stories and putting them on the wall. The goal is to start grouping them. There isn't a preset list of categories though, the categories will grow out of how people group them. s these categories grow, create post-its to label these categories. You may find some stories fit in different groups (if this happens you can dupe the story or put the two groups close together so the story straddles them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you're done, you'll have some natural ordering and grouping of the stories. These are your Epics. By doing this, you don't end up with arbitrary assignments, you end up with categories that make sense to every one. You will also get some idea of dependencies as a result. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Prune the Product Tree (proactive):&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://conteneo.co/&quot;&gt;Conteneo.co&lt;/a&gt; offers collaboration exercises that companies can use for pretty much anything from strategic planning to retrospectives. Most have online and offline versions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prune the Product Tree is an exercise to map out release horizons and what is important in those horizons. Short version (Go to Conteneo's site for a proper instruction) is you have a big wall map that looks roughly like the outline of a tree. For the body of the tree lay out several concentric rings (a bullseye) and assign these time horizons (next quarter, six months, next year, etc.). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take your categories from the last exercise and place them on &quot;apples&quot; (can be just post-it notes). Also create ten to twenty blank &quot;apples&quot;. All the apples get put on the wall next to the tree. The exercise is then the act of putting the apples on the tree where they make sense on the time horizon. The blank apples allow the creation of new concepts and themes. Roots are also important, they represent required infrastructure or outside dependencies. You may end up placing apples here to track these dependencies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-06-08T14:46:54.577" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15123" CreationDate="2015-06-08T19:59:56.687" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Marv mentions in his comments, this is a very broad question, but I will try to float a few ideas that might be helpful (given the breadth of the question, I'm certain they will not be comprehensive).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First and foremost, test as you go. Do not wait until a test period if you can in any way help it. This is really true of almost any project. The test period gets crunched and not enough time is there for testing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Challenge your developers and testers to identify lower-level tests to validate a lot of your diverse functionality - especially at the integration test level. For example, if I want to be able to lighten or darken a region, I should be able to create a number of automated test cases to validate that the right calculations are done and changes made to the color of the pixels. I could use something like Fitnesse to create a large set of tests that thoroughly test this functionality below the UI layer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this work has to be validated on the UI too, but if you've verified that all the calculations work under the hood, you just need to test that the data makes its way into the UI properly, requiring far fewer tests. Again, challenge your team to find automated ways to test this. For example, a team I worked with recently used image matching to make sure that given a certain starting image and putting in certain parameters, you would get the expected resulting image. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sort of work does take time, but it also adds a lot of stability. If you put in time throughout the project to invest in these automated regression tests, a substantial amount of what you now test manually will run in a weekend in an automated test and your manual testing can focus on the extremely complex and dynamic scenarios with plenty of time to spend on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-06-08T19:59:56.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15123" CreationDate="2015-06-08T21:18:39.817" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As noted above, test as you go:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you using an Agile framework that promotes iterative testing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's your current testing process?  Delivery process?  Do your processes promote testing as soon as the code is checked in?  Before?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you invest in test automation to cover common scenarios?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you looked at what must, should, and could be tested to determine which tests are most valuable in terms of business value?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you release an experimental or alpha version of your product to your user base frequently?  If you are resource constrained its sometimes possible to get &quot;free&quot; testing from the community of end users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you answer &quot;No&quot; to any of the above, you have plenty of opportunities to improve your testing capability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-06-08T21:18:39.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15122" CreationDate="2015-06-08T21:31:39.127" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Cross-Functional Teams, Trust, and Risk Management&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are really a number of issues buried in your question. Let me try to address them sequentially, although the order isn't actually important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An agile team must be cross-functional, but that doesn't mean that everyone one the team has the same skill set or level of access. As long as the &lt;em&gt;team&lt;/em&gt; has all the required skills and passcodes, that's sufficient for an agile framework.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agile teams are built on trust. If the message is &quot;we don't trust Bob with the root password,&quot; then there's a fundamental problem with your team's composition or development process. However, if the issue is a separation of duties concern (as it is in some environments, regardless of framework) then it's perfectly fine to let teams self-organize around the fact that some access is on a need-to-know basis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agile teams are responsible for self-organization and self-managing. If there's a risk that someone on the team could blow away a critical service by accident, then the team should have backups, roll-back plans, disaster recovery plans, and other contingencies in place before asking anyone to do something dangerous regardless of their level of skill. This is also a great opportunity for cross-functional training!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been on agile teams where everyone had the root password, and anyone could push to production. However, all the systems were Puppetized, and our infrastructure was fully version controlled. Risk was therefore minimal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also been on teams where the team had full access to development, but none into QA or Production. That was fine, too, since our functional responsibility stopped at those boundaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While segregation of duties is not the DevOps ideal, it isn't actually counter to any of the agile principles when properly implemented. If segregation of duties is necessary, simply lay out the requirements and let your team organize itself around the implementation details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-06-08T21:31:39.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15130" CreationDate="2015-06-08T21:33:56.360" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using the just in time principle, assuming you use stories purely as tangible work items that the team consumes, and that you do not use your product backlog to reflect your product roadmap...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The minimum &quot;good&quot; sized backlog ensures that your team never runs out of work at any time during the lifecycle of the iteration.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your team has a velocity of X that usually varies up to Y story points, try and keep a groomed backlog that always has at least X+Y story points in it.  Everything beyond X+Y story points can be represented as higher level epic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By staying at the epic level after your throughout is met in stories, you reduce waste that occurs when grooming stories that are likely to change by the time they are pulled into an iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a team with a velocity of 70, that has been known to deliver up to 100 during an iteration should have a groomed backlog with minimum of 100 pts of stories in it that can be pulled at any time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the ~100 pts, additional stories can be groomed as needed from epics in your backlog just in time as stories are pulled into an iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-06-08T21:33:56.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15138" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15142" CreationDate="2015-06-09T11:00:06.233" Score="3" ViewCount="671" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was asked this specific question a few days ago by a senior manager.   He had received a presentation on the Agile principles and some of the methodologies which lead the market (XP, DSDM, Scrum). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although impressed he wanted some more information on how the Principles lead to a greater chance of a high performing team.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We had a coffee and chatted about it but I wanted to ask the question to the PM Community to crowdsource a more authoritative response which might include presentations or white papers I had overlooked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer - I will take full credit ;-) haha however that aside I do think it is a valuable question as I struggled to apply the principles to a real life scenario other than the startup community. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T15:45:54.343" Title="How does the Agile mindset contribute to a High Performing Team?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15139" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-09T11:55:38.240" Score="2" ViewCount="623" Body="&lt;p&gt;After years of experience in software development, I've not yet come up with a best practice for documenting business &amp;amp; technical decisions and requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, I want to know why we made the decision to implement a module in a way and why we changed it afterwards. This documentation could be used by new comers to the project and also other member of the team to recap the reason behind the decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand I want to know what business decisions we have made and have a record of the changes with details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far I have used typical tools like MS word, excel, having pictures etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I feel there has to be a pattern or practice for medium and large scale projects which could be more maintainable and usable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17418" LastEditorUserId="17418" LastEditDate="2015-06-09T12:02:45.793" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T20:26:27.737" Title="Documenting business &amp; technical decisions, changes, updates and so on" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15140" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-09T13:13:16.207" Score="1" ViewCount="103" Body="&lt;p&gt;This project--developing web-based modules--is currently in its testing phase.  On a daily basis, the team captures testing results and progress using a cumulative flow diagram. The testing phase is only beginning and is scheduled to go out until mid-August.  Based on the data exhibited here, what are your interpretation and findings on the health of this phase so far?  What risks does this chart exhibit? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bdWTD.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2015-06-09T13:18:30.540" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T14:26:25.417" Title="Cumulative Flow" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15140" CreationDate="2015-06-09T13:54:36.257" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally I don't like cumulative charts for defects etc., I guess my brain does not process them easily. I prefer to see defects raised/closed per day etc. so you can see the curve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, this appears to be a &quot;normal&quot; curve for defects being raised over time, with the closure rate tracking the open rate quite closely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would worry me, if this were my project, would be the missing information (on a separate table/graph) that shows test case progression over time and for that one I do love cumulative actuals against cumulative planned. The worry being: Is the raise rate tailing off because of slower than planned progress through the testing? It is impossible to forecast (or to be more accurate &quot;guess&quot;), from numbers like the above, what the eventual level of defects found will be or whether the current open/close rate is likely to meet the acceptance criteria at close of testing, because we can't see how much testing has been done and how much remains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would personally also like to see the numbers for &quot;blocked&quot; test cases as this can store up real schedule problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T13:54:36.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15138" CreationDate="2015-06-09T14:12:29.157" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile, and in particular Scrum, is about creating a self-managed and self-organized team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if in a context different than software development (self-managing teams in a telecommunications company), &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eresearchcollaboratory.com/Team%20effectiveness%20experiment.doc&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt; shows that &lt;strong&gt;self-managing teams are more effective than comparable traditionally managed groups that perform the same type of work&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some months ago I read an MSc in Computer Science &lt;strong&gt;thesis&lt;/strong&gt; that can be very useful for your purpose: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:566359/FULLTEXT01.pdf&quot;&gt;An Investigation of Team Effectiveness in Agile Software Development&lt;/a&gt; by Lars Martin Riiser Haraldsen. Its main objective is to investigate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How does the Scrum methodology facilitate team effectiveness and what are the advantages and disadvantages?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author defines &lt;strong&gt;team effectiveness&lt;/strong&gt; as a:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;[...] measure of a team working together in such a way that the core goals are accomplished within a certain time frame and the team members are satisfied.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The model adopted is based on this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/matnat/ifi/INF5181/h14/artikler-teamarbeid/salas_etal_2005_is_there_a_big_five_in_teamwork---copy.pdf&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt; written by Salas, Sims, and Burke. According to these authors, the core components of teamwork include: &lt;strong&gt;team leadership&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;mutual performance monitoring&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;backup behavior&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;adaptability&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;team orientation&lt;/strong&gt;. All of these areas are needed to achieve good team effectiveness, but their implementation can be different from project to project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you to give a look at &lt;strong&gt;Chapter 5&lt;/strong&gt; to see the author's findings in detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will see, for example, that a shared mental model and a common understand of what is needed to be done in the next sprint facilitates teamwork.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is highlighted that burn-down charts are more than a way to monitor the work progress. They show the work effort of the team together and make developers feel they contribute to the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Daily scrum meetings, sprint planning, review, and retrospective are all elements that can facilitate mutual performance monitoring and team orientation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Effective backup behavior can be ensured by practicing pair programming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;strong&gt;Chapter 6&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Overall, I have found that Scrum facilitates teamwork and will in most areas increase team effectiveness. [...] the studies also show that when using agile development, such as Scrum, and follow the guidelines correctly, teams are satisfied and productivity improves.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this &lt;a href=&quot;http://scottambler.com/comparing-software-development-paradigms.html&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt; by Scott Ambler you can find a comparison among software development paradigms (it is the result of the &lt;strong&gt;IT Project Success Survey&lt;/strong&gt;, run in November and December of 2013).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some findings include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agile and Lean strategies are more effective than traditional strategies on average.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ad-hoc project teams (no defined process) and traditional project&#xA;teams have lower success rates than agile/iterative project teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no common definition of software development success (in&#xA;terms of time/schedule, ROI, stakeholder value, and quality).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only 8% of respondents indicated that their definition of success&#xA;included all three of delivering according to schedule, within&#xA;budget, and to the specification.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17124" LastEditorUserId="17124" LastEditDate="2015-06-09T15:35:28.530" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T15:35:28.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15140" CreationDate="2015-06-09T14:26:25.417" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;All right, don't have all the information, so making some assumptions here... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal of Cumulative Flow is consistency. Consistent cycle time from when a task is started to when it is finished is the goal. You measure cycle time horizontally from left to right. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the start of your grid you had a cycle time of a couple of days (a task started on 5/28 was closed by 5/31. But by 6/2 your cycle time has grown to at least eight days before the cycle goes off the grid, and by a back of the napkin progression I'd say it's a good two weeks (draw a straight line from the left edge of proposed on 6/1 and see that it does not intersect closed). So from when a bug is proposed to when it is closed is growing. Troubling is the largest growth is in resolved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When resolved cycle time is growing, in a traditional development, that usually tells me that the development fixes don't work the first time. QA finds a bug, reports it, dev fixes it, fix doesn't work, goes back to dev, tested again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a classic trap in traditional development. The longer you go from when a bug was introduced, not found but when the developer introduces it, the harder it is to get it fixed. The developer has already moved on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So short answer of what I see. Developers will still be fixing a huge mass of bugs when they are supposed to be &quot;done&quot; and probably already working on the next release. Continue this cycle for three or four development cycles (typically years in large companies) and you will end up missing an entire release because you have to spend the time to fix all the technical debt. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T14:26:25.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15138" CreationDate="2015-06-09T15:10:04.827" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you haven't read Dan Pink's Drive, then I suggest watching his YouTube video real quick. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This boils down to Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic motivation and engagement. Following the principles of Agile in your design and development have been linked to improving engagement of the work force (which on average hovers around 30% of your employees). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another book I'd recommend is Management 3.0 by Jurgen Appello. Goes into a lot more brain sciences around creating happy and engaged teams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T15:10:04.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15138" CreationDate="2015-06-09T15:45:54.343" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although multiple items from &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; could lead to more high performance teams, I think this one is the most important:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At regular intervals, the team reflects on how  to become more&#xA;  effective, then tunes and adjusts  its behavior accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Continuous improvement is one of the ways to understand what works and what doesn't for the team. Finding a good &lt;a href=&quot;http://plans-for-retrospectives.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;retrospective format&lt;/a&gt; (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-retro&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrums retrospective event&lt;/a&gt;) should lead to process, communication and technical improvements. When the team is implementing small improvements each iteration, this should eventually lead to a high performance team. Motivated, technically strong and with a minimal process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find my personal preferred retrospective format &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vanreijmersdal.nl/589/continuous-improvement-with-retrospectives/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T15:45:54.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15139" CreationDate="2015-06-09T17:00:09.753" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Tracking Specifications and Strategic/Architectural Decisions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I want to know why we made the decision to implement a module in a way and why we changed it afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be driven at several levels. I will address the project management and engineering levels, but for a deeper dive into how to track these things as an engineering process you should ask on &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Programmers Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Project Management Artifacts&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a project management standpoint, this is one or more of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traceability_matrix&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;requirements traceability matrix&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;meeting minutes related to the specifications and decisions, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a change log of some sort.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may even be a combination of all three in some cases. Versioning specifications may or may not actually be valuable, except perhaps in waterfall environments where everything requires a change request. In an iterative development model, scope and specifications are &lt;em&gt;expected&lt;/em&gt; to change over time, so there is typically little to no value in looking at historical versions of requirements or strategic decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Engineering-Level Artifacts&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From an engineering standpoint, team decisions about code or architecture belong in engineering artifacts such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use-case diagrams or narratives.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Comments in source code.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;README files.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team wikis or other information-sharing tools.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Completed user stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acceptance-testing artifacts like Cucumber scenarios.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you keep these things in a document repository or under source control, you can compare historical versions if you ever find that needful. This is rarely of value in iterative models, but your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:31:53.287" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T17:00:09.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15139" CreationDate="2015-06-09T19:36:41.103" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many of the design or project management decisions are the result of &quot;trade-off analyses&quot;, and trade-offs are a method for validating requirements and/or designs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A sound Systems Engineering approach to projects would yield these Validation artifacts daily, as time progresses. Without having to remember what the reason was. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Configuration Control processes also allow and ask for documenting the changes (and their effects).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SE practices are occasionally bypassed, to gain time and to get outputs faster. This makes tracking past solutions more difficult and the projects become more &quot;people-oriented&quot;, where the existence and availability of talented and experienced designers/developers affect the project vitally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Issue management systems also allow collection of tremendous amount of lessons as design matures. However, at the first stage of employing Issue Management, the problems are fixed without much lessons about the picture. But as project evolves, management may start to search for deeper solutions rather than daily solutions. But this depends a lot on personalities and openness to criticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16715" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T19:36:41.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15115" CreationDate="2015-06-09T19:40:17.380" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Systems Engineering is the discipline that arranges efforts so that the outcome of the project (end product, end-system, service) meets the expectations of the customer and the shareholders of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the particular case of automobile development, a similar approach can be defined, but Systems Engineering discipline is not easily grasped from books and requires some experience to be effective and efficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concurrent Engineering is another methodology, used in the automotive and other industries. CE and SE are not mutually exclusive with each other. One is related to design definition (process) and CE is related to inter-team data communication (between design teams, and manufacturing, and marketing, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concurrent Engineering helps teams (companies) arrive at the final product faster, and relies on IT infrastructure and well functioning teams (that use the infrastructure).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for project management side of it, any tool can be used, but a web-based tool would be most suitable for a university team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above, I've mentioned some methodologies that you are probably already familiar with. However, unfortunately team improvement/development and motivation, does not have a simple solution. It's quite a matter of common commitment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16715" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T19:40:17.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15139" CreationDate="2015-06-09T20:26:27.737" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most SE frameworks differ between &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; (requirements) and &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; (design). Fore sure, all design decisions should be linked to a requirement. If new findings come up, e.g. during implementation, should find their way back to the design document or even the requirements documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Up to a design decision (left or right turn) you usually have some kind of documentation, e.g. meeting minutes, photos from a white board. If you reference those data within the design document, gold plating is avoided while it is still possible to understand design decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even it feels uncomfortable, having a documentation from &lt;em&gt;what to implement&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;how to implement&lt;/em&gt; reflecting the implementation, incl. decisions and reasoning, is essential for lessons learned, analogous estimation, and so future project success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T20:26:27.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12896" CreationDate="2015-06-10T01:01:00.943" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sprint contracts, such as you describe, should not be used, as it defeats the purpose of Scrum/Agile. Instead, do the work up front to ensure the project can be run properly. To do so, the following (at minimum) should happen&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ensure the client is properly educated in Scrum before the project starts. Ideally, this begins to happen in the pre-sales/sales process.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Spell out delivery methodology ground rules in the project charter. Ensure that the client knows that, by signing the project charter, they give their blessing for the project to be carried out according to the charter. Changes to the charter should require somewhat formal process. The charter change process, and potential risks of any charter changes, should also be spelled out in the original charter. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17429" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2015-06-10T08:39:18.870" LastActivityDate="2015-06-10T08:39:18.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14895" CreationDate="2015-06-10T06:24:20.440" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jira Activity stream has also a table view, which looks similar to what you requested:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4GWs3.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get that, Add Gadget to your Jira Dashboard and then use toolbar (seen on my screenshot) within the &quot;Activity Stream&quot; to switch to table view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17432" LastEditorUserId="17432" LastEditDate="2015-06-10T12:45:55.843" LastActivityDate="2015-06-10T12:45:55.843" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15153" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-11T06:24:26.840" Score="1" ViewCount="114" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have kept the correct start and end date but the duration is getting wrongly calculated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The start date is 11-June-2015 and end date is 16th -Sept -2015 . They are appearing fine in MPP. But the duration is showing as 291 days which is clearly more than the difference between the start and end dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The durations at task level is appearing fine but the overall project level duration appears to be wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3ktmI.png&quot; alt=&quot;Mismatch&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17443" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-06-11T11:43:31.483" LastActivityDate="2015-06-11T20:59:54.290" Title="MS Project 2007 Start End Date Mismatch" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2007&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15154" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15159" CreationDate="2015-06-11T08:10:29.977" Score="0" ViewCount="84" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have many old tickets with open status on &lt;strong&gt;Maniphest&lt;/strong&gt; which are completely useless now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I change the status of all of them to 'resolved' without changing one by one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16050" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2018-08-14T09:14:56.830" LastActivityDate="2018-08-14T09:14:56.830" Title="Batch ticket modification on Phabricator" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15155" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-11T10:28:01.360" Score="2" ViewCount="84" Body="&lt;p&gt;we're working with a popular website platform vendor, which is a great platform for building websites, and they have a vibrant community of third party vendors who integrate with their platform.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this vendor apparently does not have a checklist, acceptance criteria, that a plugin must contain in order to be accepted into their marketplace. As such, the team has worked on this for several months, with the plugin getting rejected and a new &quot;checklist&quot; being produced by the vendor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The vendor refuses to produce a definitive, final checklist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since we're implementing Scrum in our organization, and for many of us it is our first time actually using it, I'm trying to understand more about how to handle items of great uncertainty.  If we commit to &quot;Integration with website vendor X's marketplace&quot;, and we continue to fail to deliver this in our two week sprint due to forces outside our control, how should management and the team look at this?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does it mean the team didn't complete what it committed to? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wouldn't this be considered a &quot;failure&quot; to deliver what was promised? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this item cannot be estimated for a 2 week sprint, how would the team deal with this?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should the team just keep recycling this back to the product backlog and selecting it again for another sprint, knowing that the velocity for this particular item won't be counted until it is done?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do you do in cases of such extreme uncertainty due to a third party vendor's inability to clarify requirements?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2015-06-11T15:42:44.487" LastActivityDate="2015-06-11T15:42:44.487" Title="How do we deal with a website vendor plugin Integration when we're using Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15155" CreationDate="2015-06-11T12:56:24.013" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Scrum is the right process for dealing with such uncertainty&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine how you will deal with this if you were using waterfall. Any Gantt Chart you draw up will be obsolete before you create it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it is a business decision how much additional effort you want to put into this. But, if you do decide to pursue it, here is how you should approach it using the Scrum process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since this item cannot be estimated for a 2 week sprint, how would the&#xA;  team deal with this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't try to estimate the entire release in one big lump. Looks like you do have a checklist. Try to estimate each item in the checklist as a story. Schedule the stories that can be accomplished in a 2 week sprint, based on other priorities.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should the team just keep recycling this back to the product backlog&#xA;  and selecting it again for another sprint, knowing that the velocity&#xA;  for this particular item won't be counted until it is done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I won't recycle anything. I will work on the stories based on the checklist I have. I will submit the plugin when the checklist is completed. If I get a new checklist from the vendor, it is new work that has been discovered which will become new stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What do you do in cases of such extreme uncertainty due to a third&#xA;  party vendor's inability to clarify requirements?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said earlier, how much effort you want to invest into this is a business decision. No process can make such external factors go away. However, when faced with such extreme uncertainty, Scrum's motto of transparency, inspection and adaptation will be most suitable to handle it as well as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-06-11T12:56:24.013" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15158" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15164" CreationDate="2015-06-11T15:52:12.073" Score="0" ViewCount="1468" Body="&lt;p&gt;When working with a large plan spread over several screenfuls, it is difficult to see the place occupied by a given task in the task hierarchy. Is there any quick way to see the &quot;outline path&quot; that saves having to scroll up looking for the corresponding summary tasks? I like how MS Project automatically retains and displays the summary tasks when filtering by the task name. I guess if there was a &quot;filter by current task&quot; option, that would work for my need (however stupid it sounds).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17453" LastActivityDate="2015-06-11T21:05:04.443" Title="How to quickly see parent tasks in MS Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15154" CreationDate="2015-06-11T17:38:40.457" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a batch edit feature.  You can access it on any search.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go to the Maniphest application&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the advanced search (or a saved search) to get the old tasks that you want to remove&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select all the tasks that you want to remove by pressing the shift button and clicking them one by one (there is a &quot;Select All&quot; button as well)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click &quot;Batch Edit Selected&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the bottom, select the &quot;Change Status&quot; action and select the desired new status.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click &quot;Update Tasks&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WARNING: There is no &quot;Undo&quot; button.  Once this is done, the only way to undo it is to try to repeat this process and change the status back or go one by one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3979" LastActivityDate="2015-06-11T17:38:40.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15153" CreationDate="2015-06-11T20:59:54.290" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;June 11 2015 to September 16 2015 is 70 working days in duration (excluding Saturday and Sunday).  It appears that you have a Task Calendar assign to the top roll up task - Task 1.  Double click on the task to show the Task Information dialog.  Click the Advanced tab and set the calendar to None.  It will use the calendar set in Project Information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to roll up the entire project, use the Project Summary task.  Tools, Options, View (I think - it's been a while since I used Project 2007).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-06-11T20:59:54.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15158" CreationDate="2015-06-11T21:05:04.443" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;See the &lt;strong&gt;Summary Name&lt;/strong&gt; macro from Jack Dahlgren (www.masamiki.com/project/macros.htm).  It copies the Summary task name into Text12.  You can then add Text12 to a task view for quick reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-06-11T21:05:04.443" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15165" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-11T21:50:09.123" Score="6" ViewCount="8807" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project management theorists discuss the importance of the RAID log (Risks, Assumptions, Issues, Dependencies). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found in software development there is commonly the Issues log (which is actually the requirements log), and none of the other logs are present nor ever mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do project managers use RAID Logs? If so why and how do you use them? Are they as critical as theory would indicate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How could RAID logs be improved?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17461" LastEditorUserId="27307" LastEditDate="2017-02-15T19:21:42.353" LastActivityDate="2017-02-15T19:21:42.353" Title="Do project managers use RAID Logs?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;pmbok&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15166" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-12T06:11:49.737" Score="3" ViewCount="6911" Body="&lt;p&gt;So here's the scenario:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We've been developing this application for almost a year now. The application is already on production and we have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 Developers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 QA guys&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 Team Lead (me)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have worked through several workflows, some have worked better than the others, my simplest approach has been to do rolling releases as it involves less work from the developers and since we don't have a release manager (and I have to to a lot of other chores besides merging) the resources are scarce, that being said, my (horrible) workflow lately has been:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 branches: &lt;code&gt;development&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;master&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All branches are made from &lt;code&gt;master&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;development&lt;/code&gt; branch is &lt;em&gt;free-for-all&lt;/em&gt;; everyone gets to merge there without pull requests whatsoever, for integration purposes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When &lt;strong&gt;Developer A&lt;/strong&gt; feels his feature is ready he makes a pull request against &lt;code&gt;master&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Developer A&lt;/strong&gt; then assigns the PR to &lt;strong&gt;Developer B&lt;/strong&gt; for code review&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If code review goes well, &lt;strong&gt;Developer B&lt;/strong&gt; assigns the PR to &lt;strong&gt;QA guy&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;QA guy&lt;/strong&gt; tests and if everything goes well, it goes to &lt;code&gt;master&lt;/code&gt;, PR gets merged&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customer goes to a staging server that is deployed when anything gets merged into &lt;code&gt;master&lt;/code&gt; and if every feature tested is ok then we are free to &lt;em&gt;(manually)&lt;/em&gt; deploy to production, these deployments are made manually&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can guess the problem with this approach is that if the customer does not accept a feature (hence, there is a blocker) once it has been merged to &lt;code&gt;master&lt;/code&gt; it means that we cannot ship to production anything, even if there were a bunch of other features which worked well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lately, our CTO has requested me to use gitflow and while I found it good and organized I can't seem to fit it in our development process. Here's what the customer wants:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a &lt;code&gt;development&lt;/code&gt; environment that could be broken but shows progress on currently working features&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a &lt;code&gt;staging&lt;/code&gt; or QA environment where feature-ready code is to be tested by both QA and the customer itself&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have the ability to ship &lt;em&gt;&quot;features not environments&quot;&lt;/em&gt; (quoting my CTO)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'm kinda lost on this, where and how should the testing happens? Cannot be done on &lt;code&gt;development&lt;/code&gt; since it'll have unfinished features, probably broken code, we could do it on a QA environment or staging but then again, if they want to be able to cherry-pick features to deploy to production, and QA already has, say 3 features, how would you do that? More importantly, where does QA / Testing happens?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As said before, the CTO recommends gitflow, yet they want testing happening and release of isolated features instead of scheduled releases (where you do code freeze) I don't seem to get it, I have &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18371741/git-branching-strategy-integated-with-testing-qa-process?lq=1&quot;&gt;read&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25238846/how-should-git-flow-work-with-qa-testing-both-a-release-and-a-new-feature&quot;&gt;several&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20349827/reconciling-git-flow-and-qa&quot;&gt;posts&lt;/a&gt; on SO but maybe I'm missing something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where does qa/testing happens in gitflow?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it possible to do feature-push instead of release-pushes to PROD?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17410" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T11:33:46.223" LastActivityDate="2015-06-12T19:57:50.900" Title="What is a good git workflow that involves QA/Testing?" Tags="&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-06-15T23:27:46.503" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15165" CreationDate="2015-06-12T08:10:00.690" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion any Project Manager that does not actively use Risks and Issues logs is not worthy of the name. Active management of risk, particularly, is the biggest part of what a project manager is and does, again, in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had never used Assumptions and Dependencies logs until I started working at my prior employer where I encountered them for the first time and used them on a series of projects. My conclusion after that, I'm afraid, was that they provided no real benefits though that could easily be my naiveté with their usage (for which I received no training). Sadly I got the impression they only existed to provide the 'A' and 'D' for the natty word RAID!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of Risk logs, I tend to take a very pragmatic view of what should be in them... In PRINCE 2 we learnt that you should categorise and record your risk mitigation actions (Transfer, Reduce, Accept etc.) and other such things. I have never ever seen a use for that information other than to bulk out the methodology and make it seem more scientific. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I need to know is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the Risk and the Consequence&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Its status - Open or Closed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the likelihood of it happening&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the severity of the impact if it happens&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sometimes its proximity in time, but not always&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When it was raised and by whom&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who currently &quot;owns&quot; it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What the current status of the mitigating action is, so I keep a log of comments showing how it evolves over time (just more info in a spreadsheet cell)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I leave it there- any more is extraneous detail to me. If it doesn't help me resolve the risk I am not interested in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-06-12T11:46:28.927" LastActivityDate="2015-06-12T11:46:28.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15168" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-12T09:40:11.690" Score="2" ViewCount="2250" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was planning to sit for PMP by the end of this year (November/December). I've through some books, prepared my experience documentation, obtained initial approval from supervisors, and set plans to get membership, and (if audit goes well), sit for the exam within 6 months. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, few weeks ago, I noticed a new announcement by PMI stating the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/Certification/Project-Management-Professional-PMP.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PMP is changing in 2015&lt;/a&gt;. When you read more, you find that the changes are not finalized yet (will be in 3 days form now), and that the last exam date for the current version is 1st November. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not expect I will be sitting for the exam before this date. Hence, most likely, I should start preparing for the new version. But at the same time, I do not know when to start that, because I'm not sure if the materials for the new version will be available soon or not. For example, I decided to prepare using PMBOK and another book called &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1449364918&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Head first PMP&lt;/a&gt;. But the current versions of each up to now cover the current PMP version and not the coming one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the above information, my questions is, how wise is preparing for PMP this year? Will I suffer any serious changes (lack of material, examples ... etc), or it is not really that be significant? PMI changes PMP every couple of years. Have any one experienced any of these changes and their effects? What is the advice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UGSaY.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13766" LastEditorUserId="13766" LastEditDate="2015-06-17T01:21:49.320" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T01:21:49.320" Title="How wise is sitting for PMP exam in changing year?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15165" CreationDate="2015-06-12T11:20:44.507" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely keep logs and absolutely bring them to the surface and work them on a strict cadence.  Especially risks.  Without the logs, people will happily ignore them.  There is a resistance in raising and working risks, I think because of the mantra that optimistic and can do people are more successful.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never maintained assumptions and dependencies logs because these are a source of risks.  If an assumption is made, there is a risk that follows that and, keeping two logs, you would end up having the same exact event being tracked on two logs.  Same for dependencies.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Issue and Risk logs have a very similar connection that is often missed.  When you have an issue, you have downstream threats.  When you log the issue, people tend to forget about the assessment of those downstream threats.  And if you do the risk assessment, you could find yourself working the same business event in two logs.  This is inefficient and opens the door to miscommunication.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:  I have found in facilitating risk working sessions that we end up in this ongoing argument as to whether an identified event is either a risk or issue.  It comes down to how an individual was framing the event, either tactically or strategically.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a patient presents to his doctor with high blood pressure and cholesterol, over weight, family history of heart disease, and sedentary life style.  All of these are issues based on the normal definition of an issue.  However, all of these are also risk factors for the risk of heart attack.  The heart attack is not certain nor its severity.  If this was a project, would you log the BP, cholesterol, obesity, family hx, lack of exercise in the issue log or the heart attack in the risk log...or both?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tactically, you would treat the issues; strategically, you would mitigate the heart attack as well as plan for after the heart attack by way of contingency planning.  Treating the issues and mitigating the heart attack are likely the exact same actions but, the way we approach it in projects, we have a tendency to over simplify this and attempt to treat these things separately, causing disagreement and argument and inefficiencies.  We tend to lose sight of the bigger picture, I have found.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think trying to separate risks and issues is a mistake and maybe we should approach this more as exceptional events.  Sometimes we are tactical, sometimes strategic, sometimes both.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2015-06-12T12:22:54.750" LastActivityDate="2015-06-12T12:22:54.750" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10991" CreationDate="2015-06-12T12:34:44.963" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use the Kanban boards attached to each backlog for a continuous flow process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj838789.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj838789.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One minor issue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In VSO (I haven't tested on latest on-premises TFS), these boards work with Story / Feature / Epic items (Agile process) and Feature / Backlog Items (Scrum process). It means that the Task boards, showing individual Tasks per Story swimlane, still sits within Iterations / Sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17467" LastActivityDate="2015-06-12T12:34:44.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10271" CreationDate="2015-06-12T14:27:47.380" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an awkward situation. I really liked the &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/10281/4271&quot;&gt;TL;DR answer&lt;/a&gt;, and agree completely with everything under the benefits - supporting passions, personal growth, individual investment, and product quality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The risks to the team could be easily mitigated by having a team meeting to discuss the desire of this team member. That way, everyone on the team has a chance to voice either support or concern over this. If the decision is to go for it, the team as a whole accepts the risks. If it's no go, that decision is handed down by the team, not by you, possibly avoiding more focused resentment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, if the task has been removed from any active sprints and pushed to the bottom of the backlog, what about removing it from the backlog, or resizing it to 0, so as not to affect velocity? It could set a bad precedent, but it could be a way to pull the story in without impacting velocity and sustainability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17468" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-07-20T16:03:35.647" LastActivityDate="2018-07-20T16:03:35.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15168" CreationDate="2015-06-12T17:32:41.250" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMI regularly updates the PMP test based on the changes to the PMBOK which are driven by how business and the art of project management is changing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you delay or take the test before November really comes down to your readiness. If you've already started to study, then there is no reason to delay. Material for the new test will come out in a couple more months and you'd have less time to study with the new materials. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're confident with your ability to pass then test, then take it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can tell you that when they did their big update in I think 2010, the general agreement was to try and get in to take the test before the change. That was a fairly significant change in how the test was run, so the incentive was high. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-06-12T17:32:41.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15166" CreationDate="2015-06-12T18:19:38.810" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that you can use the Gitflow as described &lt;a href=&quot;http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/&lt;/a&gt; and satisfy the need to “cherry-pick features to deploy”. Here is how your workflow could look like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the master and development branches, you need to create separate branch for each feature you may potentially release independently.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To make sure that each feature is kept separate until it is accepted by customer to be released, you need to only merge the feature branches back into the development and master branches after successful QA and customer acceptance.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that a drawback of this approach is that each of your feature branches would exist separately and would not be merged together potentially for a long period of time.  This would make the merge process difficult as a lot of changes would accumulate over time and potentially create a lot of conflicts to resolve. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also any features and bug fixes, released after the current feature branch had been created, would need to be merged into the current feature branch before it can be released, which could create extra work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you need to make sure to keep the time between the start of a new feature branch and the release, or cancellation, of the feature branch as short as possible and limit the number of features that you will be working on at any one time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Where does qa/testing happens in gitflow?” Testing should be done throughout development rather than all at the end. Since you need to complete the QA and customer acceptance testing before deciding whether the feature would be released, you need to do this step on the release branch before it is merged into master and development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ramming decision is whether to merge in all released features into the current feature branch before QA and customer acceptance or only after the feature is accepted. The answer to this will depend on whether the customer is ok with verifying the feature without merging in all released changes and how much work is involved. I would probably opt in for merging in released changes into all working feature branches as soon as possible, to keep these branches as close to master as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17285" LastActivityDate="2015-06-12T18:19:38.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15166" CreationDate="2015-06-12T19:57:50.900" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you explored using feature toggles instead of relying on branching?  With feature toggles in your code you can turn on/off specific features and actually ship features to production that are turned off because they are defective while shipping other features the customer has deemed OK to turn on.  You only ship one code-base and eliminate the need for feature-based branches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With toggles you can turn on/off a feature in production and bypass the rest of your pipeline as well...this is great for customers' who's release plans don't always align with what the delivery team can put out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several frameworks available but also challenges with this approach:&#xA;-If you use automated testing you need to be able to toggle on/off certain tests depending on features that are on/off&#xA;-Figuring out where to insert a toggle isn't always straight forward.&#xA;-Inserting toggles and learning how to use a framework take time and increase development complexity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-06-12T19:57:50.900" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15069" CreationDate="2015-06-12T21:10:29.217" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Determine your scrum team's total working hours for the sprint, then subtract 1-2 hours per person to absorb the unknown (slack) and the remaining hours are your team's capacity (how many hours of work they can complete in a sprint). Here's an article that I wrote that should help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bit.ly/1L3AkZm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://bit.ly/1L3AkZm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17472" LastActivityDate="2015-06-12T21:10:29.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15177" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-12T23:52:22.510" Score="1" ViewCount="2677" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a software developer. I'm looking to expand my skillset and pick up some management knowledge and experience; I'd like to try being a dev lead for a few projects, but I also want to have the option of moving into the project management career path if I so choose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd planned on taking the CAPM, as it's a subset of the PMP test. I figured that this would further my goal. However, the market I'm in (the profession, as well as my local job market) seems to value SCRUM certification over PMI, as many software firms use agile methodologies these days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking about updating my plan. My question is this: does the CAPM contribute to the PMP certification in any way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that the CAPM and the PMP both pull from the PMBOK. I understand that the CAPM is a subset of the PMP. My plan was to get the CAPM and attempt to use it to break into a role where I could gain experience to get the CAPM. However, since all I need is three years of management experience....can't I just read the PMBOK, get the requisite experience with a SCRUM certification, and then take the PMP?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any benefits of taking the CAPM before the PMP instead of pursuing another certification path besides knowledge found in the PMBOK?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17471" LastActivityDate="2015-06-14T05:35:26.143" Title="Benefits of getting CAPM before PMP" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;capm&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15069" CreationDate="2015-06-13T00:15:27.760" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to hear more about the project itself. Are there external vs. internal clients, how are the project constraints prioritized (note: quality should never be compromised), is there one product or multiple products in play, what are those products, what does the software implementation process look like, etc. But, given what we have, here are some things to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Estimates should always come from the team (ie the people doing the work).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In order to provide accurate estimates, teams must be able to focus on the work. If they are getting sidetracked by support requests, unnecessary meetings, etc., it is difficult to get an accurate team velocity and therefore provide meaningful estimates. Do what you can to ensure the team can focus. If you are not the scrum master, team up with this person to ensure the team is performing as well as possible. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you have external clients, it is a historical norm for them to want an hour-based estimate. Ideally, you would structure contracts &amp;amp; expectations in a way that did not rely on hours-based estimates. However, if you are in the middle of a project and need hourly estimates, it is ideal to let the client/business stakeholder know that the best estimates will come during sprint planning, and that estimates further out should be expected to change. Given all that, you could derive hourly estimates by executing sprint planning as follows: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. During backlog grooming, discuss &amp;amp; document the various tasks needed to complete (according to the def of done) a user story &amp;amp; have the team assign story point estimates to each story. Tasks should include devops/setup, development, code review. Update estimates as they come in and provide to clients/business stakeholders. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b. During sprint planning, have team confirm tasks &amp;amp; story point estimates for each user story in the sprint. Then, assign the owner of each story as the person doing the dev. The story owner will also be responsible for managing the story's code review process. If possible, assign all tasks, for each sprint story, to an individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c. Have each developer go through each task assigned to them and assign an hourly estimate. This can be during, or outside of, a sprint planning meeting. At the beginning of a project, it may be helpful to review the hourly estimates as a group, perhaps in a follow-up sprint planning meeting (ie sp meeting 2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;d. As the project progresses, assuming everyone is following Scrum rules, you should be able to clarify team velocity, and then correlate an &quot;hour-of-work per story point&quot; estimate for your business stakeholders, allowing you to perform hour-based capacity planning. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you have a little extra development capacity at the end of a sprint, you could look to have the developer w/ extra capacity do some of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. do some pair programming with one of the other developers. this could reduce bugs/speed the code review process, as well as provide an opportunity for peer mentoring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b. document any development-specific items that can be re-used on future projects, or could be used to help troubleshoot software issues in the future. another possibility would be documenting &amp;amp; sharing any lessons learned that could be shared with developers on other teams&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c. volunteer!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;d. mentor other developers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e. look for opportunities to streamline devops processes&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17429" LastActivityDate="2015-06-13T00:15:27.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15165" CreationDate="2015-06-13T08:57:50.763" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use Risk and Issue logs and review them on a strict, regular basis. They are essential tools both for myself as a PM, and for the wider stakeholder community within the project. Why do I say that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For myself, they give me focus to ensure that I address whatever could derail the project, and they make me think hard about the actions to mitigate the risks or deal with the issues, then they help me to track progress against these. So in that respect, the log is much more than just the statement of the risk or issue: it is a tool to capture the wider circumstances of the risk or issue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For the wider stakeholders, it gives confidence that the project is under control and that they can see what is being tracked and actioned, beyond just normal progress. It also - and this is crucial - allows me to engage with them to ask for their help where necessary, as they can often deal with the risks and issues and do whatever it takes to mitigate the risks or address the issues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not found many circumstances where I have used Assumption or Dependency logs, except as a way of capturing my thoughts which are then turned into risks (if necessary) once I take time to analyse them (as mentioned by David Espina in his response to this question).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I define a risk as &quot;Something that might happen that will have an impact on the project&quot;, whereas an issue is &quot;Something that has happened that has impacted on the project&quot;. The key is a risk MAY have an impact, where an issue has ALREADY HAD an impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it helps to try to express risks in the form: &quot;There is a risk that (something might happen) because (something might go wrong), which may result in (a described impact on the project)&quot;. So, referring again to David Espina's answer, as long as the patient has not suffered a heart attack, I might say &quot;There is a risk that the patient might suffer a heart attack because he has raised blood pressure and high cholesterol which might result in serious long term health problems or even death&quot;. To mitigate that risk, take whatever steps are necessary to lower blood pressure/ reduce cholesterol, and document these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a similar format for issues, along the lines of &quot;There is an issue which is (whatever has gone wrong) as a result of (whatever has caused it) which has resulted in (an impact on the project)&quot;. So back to David's example, if the patient has actually suffered a heart attack:, &quot;There is an issue which is that the patient has suffered a heart attack as a result of high blood pressure and cholesterol which has resulted in the need for open heart surgery and long term medication&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would actually use these forms of wording in my risk or issue register, along with mitigating actions and an assessment of the impact or likely impact, and also (for risks) the likelihood of the risk happening. There is no need for a likelihood for an issue, as it has already happened so the likelihood would be 100%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastEditorUserId="301" LastEditDate="2015-06-13T14:41:31.147" LastActivityDate="2015-06-13T14:41:31.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15177" CreationDate="2015-06-13T11:22:32.483" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, many certificates are poor predictors of future performance.  Despite that, it is heavily used in some domains.  From a buyer's perspective, the certificate becomes a criterion that I have seen as &quot;required&quot; to &quot;desired&quot;, in an attempt to filter out lower performing practitioners and raise the likelihood of finding a good candidate.  From a seller's perspective, they want to be filtered in if the buyer is using it as a filter.  So you need to scan job boards looking for either the PMP or CAPM to see whether you will benefit from obtaining it in order to differentiate yourself from other candidates.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a hiring manager, I believe these types of certificates have near zero predictive validity.  However, as a seller of services, customers seem to respond to certificates so it becomes a criterion in order for me to sell.  No customer in my experience has ever asked for a CAPM.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this said, if I had two junior candidates where all else is equal, but one had a CAPM, that may tilt my decision, not because I think having that will make that person a better candidate but because maybe that says this person is a bit more hungry.  But, again, this is if all else is equal, which had never happened to me in all my years of hiring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Benefits&quot; is very subjective.  The answers provided here will likely be more of opinion, just like my answer above.  Your final decision is really going to be based on what you are seeing in your domain in your geographical area.  If you choose to get it, your cost is time to study, maybe a training class, and the cost of the test.  It won't make you less valuable in the market place so I think if you can afford those costs the question becomes: why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2015-06-13T11:27:48.350" LastActivityDate="2015-06-13T11:27:48.350" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15168" CreationDate="2015-06-13T12:01:45.410" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the opportunity cost. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words. Are you going to lose many opportunities because of the delay in getting the certification?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're expecting an internal promotion in 2015, and being a PMP will give you an advantage, you could risk and take the test.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're thinking on searching for another job in 2015, the PMP could give you an advantage to succeed in your quest.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you think you're going to be in the same job in December 2015, then you could simply wait and get the PMP in 2016, when the dust from the changes has settled.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both for cases 1 and 2: you could give a try to the current version. If you pass, all right. If you fail, your knowledge will still be with you for taking the test in 2016.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17321" LastActivityDate="2015-06-13T12:01:45.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15182" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-14T00:00:21.623" Score="5" ViewCount="233" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what combination of task dependency type and lead/lag duration to use for the following scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Item B is a large, complicated assembly that includes a subcomponent called Item A&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Development of Items A and B are tracked in separate tasks, have have durations of 2 and 9 months, respectively&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Item A needs to be delivered within 5 months of starting work on the Item B&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’m looking for a way to have Task A and B start simultaneously, but create a task dependency so I can see that Task A has three months of slack until it begins to affect the delivery of Task B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried making a FS dependency between Task A and Task B with a -5 emo lag, but that created a gap in Item B at the current date and moved the end date out 6 weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="360" LastEditorUserId="360" LastEditDate="2015-06-15T05:12:56.157" LastActivityDate="2015-06-16T18:43:02.917" Title="Correct task dependency if Item A is required within 5 months of starting Task B" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15182" CreationDate="2015-06-14T00:34:36.827" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understood your problem correctly, this is what I'd do:  I'd split Task A into A1 and A2.  A1 would have a planned duration value of x and A2 of y, where y represents the remaining duration that should finish within the five months of starting Task B.  I would split task B into B1 and B2.  When A1 finishes, both A2 and B1 starts.  Both A2 and B1 will have a FS with B2.  A2 and B1 should finish at the same time, i.e., they have the same planning duration, but if either slips then B2 start goes out.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I completely misunderstood, clarify and then I'll try again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-06-14T00:34:36.827" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15177" CreationDate="2015-06-14T05:18:44.670" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was in a similar position when I got my CAPM three years ago. In my case, which is probably not unique, the CAPM has served more as a resume filler than something that actually contributed to my performance at work. I didn't get a lead or manager role until over a year later, and even then (probably because we did more operations support than project work), it's not something that really helped me be a good lead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm very happy to have recently gotten a real PM job, and the interviewer seemed somewhat impressed at the CAPM on my resume, so in that sense it did help me. But a certification, especially an entry-level one like the CAPM, is no substitute for experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I think the more certs you have in different areas, the better. They show that you have at least a basic understanding of the concepts. The CAPM test isn't terribly difficult (I used Rita Mulcahey's book to prepare) or expensive, and there's certainly no reason not to pursue a Scrum cert at the same time or shortly thereafter. If you plan to make your career in agile, you should look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/Certification/New-PMI-Agile-Certification.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMI-ACP&lt;/a&gt; down the road.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in short, go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13325" LastEditorUserId="13325" LastEditDate="2015-06-14T05:35:26.143" LastActivityDate="2015-06-14T05:35:26.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15185" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-14T07:25:45.273" Score="2" ViewCount="100" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not unusual that one of the career paths available to an experienced technician is going into project management. But Peter's Principle warns us about the risks of doing it without proper preparation, since  succeeding in one position doesn't guarantee further success in the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found some Q&amp;amp;A about applying for a PM position (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/6669/how-to-handle-selection-process-for-new-project-manager-position-im-interested&quot;&gt;How to handle selection process for new project manager position I'm interested in?&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/10029/in-short-how-do-i-prove-my-project-coordinator-skills-in-the-hiring-process&quot;&gt;how do I prove my project coordinator skills in the hiring process?&lt;/a&gt;) and a very specific question about &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/14858/how-to-transition-from-programmer-to-project-manager&quot;&gt;the transition from programmer to PM&lt;/a&gt;, but they deal with the matter from the point of view of the employee, not of the company (or the person leading the hiring process).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the company prefers promoting Project Managers from the inside, instead of hiring them from the outside (for example because of a steep learning curve), the company has to, somehow, widen the path from technical to managerial tasks, in order to facilitate that some of the technicians could go this way, instead of walking further into their own technical career path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the keys the company needs to search for when hiring new (and good) technicians, so it can increase the chances of some of them becoming good PMs in the future?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17321" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T14:49:32.750" Title="How can you increase the chances of having good PM candidates from within the technical areas of the company?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;personal-skills&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15186" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-14T08:19:55.123" Score="-3" ViewCount="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;i have enrolled in Fudan university this fall. but there is a good opportunite for me to cooperate with my friend to start up my own company.  i am puzzled how to balance the energy and time between this two ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17478" LastActivityDate="2015-06-14T11:15:18.443" Title="how to balance the time between doing cousulting project for PHD advisor and doing my own company" Tags="&lt;startup&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-06-14T18:06:00.067" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15185" CreationDate="2015-06-14T11:10:49.533" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's the problem for organizations and predicting future job success:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the attributes and work behaviors consistent with a particular job role's success?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you observe or test for those attributes and work behaviors that produce both RELIABLE and VALID results, minimizing biases?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you pay for this?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a job role, if you try to do research on those attributes and work behaviors, you'll likely have ten different opinions on the matter from which you have to choose.  If you choose one, then you likely just introduced your own set of biases.  Then producing a test that reliably scores against those attributes while interpreting those results without bias becomes a huge challenge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you have to wash, rinse, and repeat for the next set of job roles.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After all this is finished, you may have created a predictive hiring tool that will have a validity of like 0.5, 0.6, and you have spent over five years of your HR budget getting to that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the best, most cost effective strategy is for an organization to truly understand and teach its hiring managers the phenomena that interferes with selection: various types of biases and halo / devil's horn effects.  Use panels to select to help reduce an individual's biases and establish a probation period.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am going to avoid listing out key attributes because I would likely just be exposing my biases and, even if I produced a great list, you would still have the issue of observing it, measuring it, interpreting what you think you are seeing, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-06-14T11:10:49.533" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2015-06-14T11:10:49.533" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15186" CreationDate="2015-06-14T11:15:18.443" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Easy.  Drop one.  You have two endeavors that should only compete with your home life and rest.  One of those, going to school, could be part-time, allowing for part-time work, but starting up a company is not part-time.  It requires 100% commitment, competing only with home and rest time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-06-14T11:15:18.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15185" CreationDate="2015-06-14T11:17:05.067" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wow, huge question!&#xA;Let's talk about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Capabilities: Personal skills and knowledge &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talent: How much effort is necessary to be good at something?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Potential: The end of development within a specific domain&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To identify the next good PM you need to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify the required capabilities within your company. I would prioritise leadership and communications like skills before knowledge of techniques&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find people with talent and more important potential regarding the identified capabilities. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it's often easy to see how talented people are it's usually quite difficult to estimate their potential. As far as I know this can only be done by watching them during phases of development&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I noticed as common approach is a mixture of &lt;strong&gt;training on the job&lt;/strong&gt; and trainings / programmes focusing on the &lt;strong&gt;development of personality&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let your good technicians gain some experiences on small and almost &lt;em&gt;safe&lt;/em&gt; projects. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put them in training programmes focusing on PM soft skills&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Support them in gathering technical PM knowledge, e.g. by paying certifications &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Watch their development during this period regarding their potential with respect to the required capabilities within your company&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2015-06-14T11:17:05.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15069" CreationDate="2015-06-15T07:12:47.330" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Waterfall / Agile methodologies are being confused here.  Testing should be completed after each user story is completed and not on a specific day of the week.  This sounds more like the Waterfall methodology.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are elements that are less important the product backlog should be groomed and prioritised by the end user.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sorry I would have posted this as a comment but I do not have enough reputation on this site yet.  I have quite a bit of experience and academic qualifications here and will only be too glad to help or offer ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17482" LastActivityDate="2015-06-15T07:12:47.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9834" CreationDate="2015-06-15T09:21:42.103" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is an example of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the scaled agile framework&lt;/a&gt; portfolio kanban board as implemented in &lt;a href=&quot;http://leankit.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Leankit&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WUYlW.png&quot; alt=&quot;SAFee Portfolio Kanban&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6335" LastActivityDate="2015-06-15T09:21:42.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15168" CreationDate="2015-06-15T11:55:10.143" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Due to circumstances, I did not take the PMP test short after a change, although it was originally planned that way, , but only 6 months later. So I cannot say anything about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, one piece of advice I can say is about the &lt;strong&gt;training material&lt;/strong&gt;: have a good look at them before you buy, because I ordered a book that was 'adapted to the new exam', only to find out it wasn't. They only added an aditional chapter online that covered some of the changes. The book itself was not changed. It only had a sticker on it pretending it was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess in order to get rid of excess stock, publishers use tricks like that. Adding some content online to ensure they're legally ok.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So make sure the materials you use are indeed adapted to the new version of the test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2015-06-15T11:55:10.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10991" CreationDate="2015-06-15T13:31:51.487" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have said, kanban seems like a good fit based on your criteria. I would also &lt;em&gt;highly&lt;/em&gt; advise you to ignore tools and management software when first considering how to most effectively work. :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&#xA;I think that starting with a specific tool or tech places too much of a constraint on the initial view of the work, and will limit the potential approaches. It will also often (unfortunately) remain a constraint and the team will conform to it rather than vice versa. A classic example is management or stakeholders wanting to have a specific view of the work being done, such as a dashboard, and requiring all teams within the org to use a &quot;standardized&quot; project management tool that shows them this view. This tool's workflow and local team view/data will then be forced on the team and will constrain them, which can even influence their culture and view of themselves as an org (never mind the command-and-control/lack of trust issues it exhibits). By starting with no tool constraints, the team may come up with a great way to manage and view their work locally, and then translate it into another tool by syncing once a week, etc. so that both parties' needs are met. Hope this helps clarify. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastEditorUserId="17485" LastEditDate="2015-06-16T21:43:13.147" LastActivityDate="2015-06-16T21:43:13.147" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15195" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15196" CreationDate="2015-06-15T18:33:35.130" Score="15" ViewCount="811" Body="&lt;p&gt;Story Points (SP) is a good measurement, that allows estimating User Stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SP (&lt;em&gt;in my understanding, it's an important note&lt;/em&gt;) is convenient because it is relative and not related with time. All estimates are based on comparison with a common basis. &lt;strong&gt;But what if two stories have completely different bases?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For simplicity, let's look for an example that is not related to any specific area. Like digging a pit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's assume, that it will take 1 SP for digging a pit one-meter depth. Accordingly, we need 2 SP for making a pit two meters in depth. Very convenient. We don't care about our equipment. If we have a shovel then 1 SP will map to 1 man-day. If we have an excavator then 1 SP will map to 1 man-hour. But two meters pit anyway will take to us twice more time then one-meter pit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All is good with pit digging. But what if the next story is &quot;catching of an elephant&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Should we make estimation with another (elephant related) basis? In that case, we will have two kinds of Story Points, which will be absolutely different.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Or, if we know, that 1) catching of one elephant will take for us 1 man-day 2) we still use a shovel for digging, then we should estimate this &quot;elephant&quot; story to 1 SP? This suggestion sounds absolutely wrong to me. But I wrote it because in my practice people use this option in most cases.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Or, maybe, I just misunderstand the concept of Story Points?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="11970" LastEditDate="2018-12-11T15:53:15.130" LastActivityDate="2020-01-27T08:09:35.727" Title="How to use Story Points, if User Stories are completely different?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15195" CreationDate="2015-06-15T18:57:13.477" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can't be faulted for being confused. It is very common for organizations to try and directly match story points to a real-world measurement. This exactly defeats the purposed of using story points (and why I dislike Poker Planning for estimating). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Story Point in simple terms is a number that tells the team how hard the story is. Hard could be related to complexity, Unknowns and effort. It was never intended to replace a time-based estimate. Instead agile (Scrum, XP, etc.) recognizes that time based estimating is flawed and avoids it. For example, a classic time-based estimate flow would look like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An engineer thinks it will take him three days. So to be safe he says a week.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Engineer's boss worries that it might be more complex or that there will be dependency delays so they pad out to two weeks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Program Manager gets everyone's assessments and assuming engineers underestimate (hey, when was the last time a project shipped with all the original PRD items?) they add a 10% bugger to the schedule.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then, following standard project management best practice, the entire project gets assigned a 20% schedule buffer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then senior management knows that executive management won't understand a best case/ worst case schedule, they just add the 20% buffer and make that the official release date. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lastly, Parkinson's law kicks in and the work expands to fit the available time. &quot;Hey, we've got 12 whole months until we ship, we don't have to be code complete for nine months now!&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story Point estimates work best when they are relational. You're not trying to estimate how much time it will take. Instead, you're trying to figure out if Story A is more or less complex than Story B. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's look at your example above: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dig a 1m Hole: Well understood and no surprises. Team confidently gives calls it 3 points. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dig 2m Hole: Roughly double the work of a 1m hole. Still well understood and no surprises. 5 points.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Catch an Elephant: Wow, we don't have any experience in this and that's going to require a lot of specialized equipment. Definitely more effort that digging a 2m hole. There is also a lot of unknowns in it so the team goes for a 13. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Because catching an Elephant is so new, they may even create a research &quot;spike&quot; to send someone off to research how to catch an elephant.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-12-11T15:38:38.040" LastActivityDate="2018-12-11T15:38:38.040" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15165" CreationDate="2015-06-15T20:11:24.213" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have worked with both Scrum and agile methodologies, so it depends upon your approach to the development.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum this issues are really nailed on the head.  The Scrumaster has a scrum meeting with the team every day so the risks are looked at on a daily basis by asking each team member what they did yesterday, have they any blockers standing in their way or are there any issues and what will they do today.  If there are any major obstacles, the team member is helped out with the blocker and therefore it becomes a team effort and almost always all of the issues are resolved.  At the end of the sprint there is sprint review meetings to see how the team did well and where they could improve.  And then there is an actionable items list that forms the focus for the team throughout the scrum.  I really like this approach as it cuts down on documentation and there is a real team effort.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have used scrum in conjunction with a project plan.  First the customer charter is done if this is applicable.  Then the Qualitative Risk Assessment is Completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Xt3nd.png&quot; alt=&quot;Qualitative Risk Assessment&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the impact analysis is done.  The diagram below is an example of this analyis.  The probability that the risk will occur is multiplied by the impact should this happen.  The diagram below gives an example&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The qualitative analysis is used to look at the impact analysis and this is done by multiplying the likelihood of the probability of the problem occurring by the impact. I usually give scores out of 10 to the probability of the risk occuring and the impact with 10 being the highest.  This Keeps It Simple. The results form the rank of each risk and 1 becomes the highest risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HZ8Ir.png&quot; alt=&quot;Impact Analysis Example&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally a mitigation plan is considered for each risk.  The Risk, potential cause and response are considered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A contingency budget is then completed using the Expected Monetary Value or EMV.  The probability of the risk happening is predicted with a percentage of the likelihood of that risk happening.  The possible delay of the risk is then predicted and multiplied by the cost per day to give the cost impact.  the cost impact of each identified risk is then multiplied by the probability to give the estimated contingency budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have kept issue logs but only with live incidents and not with the development of software.  I use ITIL software in Waterfall management for the live issues and Spira for bug tracking.  These are really good open source software packages and avoid the need for spreadsheet hell.  In a shared services project I was involved in we used an issues log which was not really suitable to the needs of the project.  People were asked to update it and they never did.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion I favour scrum and agile methodologies, in conjunction with a good project plan and open source software to track the issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is any other information I can provide please let me know.  i love this stuff.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17482" LastActivityDate="2015-06-15T20:11:24.213" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15195" CreationDate="2015-06-15T21:55:03.237" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my academic learnings I was always told to agree the customer charter first for change management reasons in accordance with PMBOK.  Then look at the milestones and estimate these.  These will help you decide how many sprints you need.  Then you go an get the user stories.  These form the product backlog where user stories are groomed and the user prioritises them.   If these stories are outside the scope of the initial project charter then this is pointed out to the user and a compromise or agreement takes place.  Does this help. I think that you may be hinting at change management.  I apologise if I have misinterpreted the question.  This is just a high level view of my implementation of Agile Project management.  I believe that a good charter and plan are necessary first to see the successful completion of the software and a satisfied user.  If you want me to expand any more I will be happy to do so&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17482" LastActivityDate="2015-06-15T21:55:03.237" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15195" CreationDate="2015-06-16T04:36:15.740" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Joel saied, SPs are no real world mesaurement. They symbolize the necessary effort to complete a user story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because they are independent of a unit, they can be applied to everything that requires &lt;em&gt;effort&lt;/em&gt;. Because of this loose definition, it's often advised to use the Fibonacci number to mark higher effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It helps me to imagine &lt;strong&gt;bottles of sweat&lt;/strong&gt; created by the team necessary for story completion. Feel free to introduce a more convenient image :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2015-06-16T04:36:15.740" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15203" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15204" CreationDate="2015-06-16T10:02:16.800" Score="0" ViewCount="1919" Body="&lt;p&gt;Editing my question to be appropriate for this board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What ways of tracking the milestones/events of a project whose dates are changing very often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My initial thought was to have a timeline that allows the user to easily move the event whenever the date changes but maybe there are other ways to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not even sure how to tackle this better because we don't always have set in stone dates. We get a date today, a week later it changes and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am interesting in finding a project timeline software that has an interactive &amp;gt;visualization of the actual timeline. This means that if the date of a certain &amp;gt;event has moved, you can just click+hold it and slide it to the new date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need something that can be easily modified without having to enter/alter any &amp;gt;text. So, instead of going to a certain event and editing the actual date, you &amp;gt;can just move its marker further from the initial position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need this because the dates on my project change often and there are never &amp;gt;100% certain dates. This would allow us to move the marker to a 'proposed date' &amp;gt;and keep on doing this until we have certainty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An alternative would be a timeline software with which you can easily right &amp;gt;click and &amp;quot;enter a new event&amp;quot;. This way we could just delete and easily add a &amp;gt;new mark on the 'proposed date'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you guys know any (open source preferably, but not necessarily) project &amp;gt;timeline software that has this type of user interaction implemented?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17495" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2015-06-23T15:54:53.097" Title="How can I manage a project timeline when events and milestone dates change very often?" Tags="&lt;timeline&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15203" CreationDate="2015-06-16T13:29:26.480" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like the real problem is one of schedule and uncertainty; I actually envy you - if people are changing dates that often that means that they care about the schedule.  I don't know why your dates are fluid - the answer to that question may provide deep insight. I'll provide some answers based on my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use a couple of techniques to deal with similar problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_evaluation_and_review_technique&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PERT&lt;/a&gt; estimation - the simplest solution is simply to average the best and worst estimates, which will probably get you a fairly good estimate.  This is tremendously helpful if you want to do Monte Carlo analysis (the best and worst figure prominently). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Milestones.  &lt;em&gt;usually&lt;/em&gt; there are dates that are more certain than others.  In my environment, I can usually work with the developer to estimate design &amp;amp; development with some confidence (and I can use the next technique to improve that confidence).  In our world, the dates that are highly fluid are the governance dates - We know that we should not or can not move to the next stage until the customer signs off.  Those signoff dates are milestones with 0 duration, and all subsequent tasks depend on the completion of the milestone. I can report with confidence that every day that management delays approval, the end date of the project is moved back 1 day. All those milestones are on the critical path. When management asks me why the project is constantly delayed I can point to the milestone and say, &quot;because your boss hasn't signed the approval to move past this stage of the project; get me a signature and we'll get to work on the next step.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jeremykun.com/2015/04/06/markov-chain-monte-carlo-without-all-the-bullshit/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Monte Carlo Analysis&lt;/a&gt; Takes a few moments to set up the first estimate, and you do need a best case and a worst case and a notional shape of the probability distribution. This will allow you to make sophisticated confidence intervals with arbitrary precision.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Confidence intervals.  I think &lt;a href=&quot;http://herdingcats.typepad.com/my_weblog/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Glen Alleman&lt;/a&gt; introduced me to the concept that all (responsible) numbers are estimates.  He trained me to never say, &quot;This deliverable will complete on March 3, 2015.&quot; - instead I should say, &quot;Based on the information we have, there is an 80% probability that this deliverable will complete before March 5, 2015.&quot;  This isn't a popular or easy way to convey information, but it is accurate, and it has some neat knock on effects.  Confidence intervals permit you to have conversations like the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; increase the confidence to 90%, or 95% or 99%, but there is a cost to that information.  Raising that confidence will require us to measure the productivity of our developers; there will be a direct cost in the time, effort and technology to perform the study and an indirect cost in developer resentment.  How much is the extra confidence worth to you?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I &lt;em&gt;cannot&lt;/em&gt; increase the confidence by assigning more people; let's discuss the mythical man month.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; advance the delivery date and improve the confidence if you consent to raise the priority of the work product; right now my developers are split 60/40 between this project and another. If you shift the lead developer to 100% for 2 weeks then we can take 1 week off the estimate and raise the confidence. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of cases where none of the above techniques will work; in these cases there is no technique that will work because the problem is outside the schedule. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Schedule developed in an Ivory Tower - I'm familiar with one Project Management Organization where it is considered ideal for a professional project manager to develop the schedule in consultation with the business leaders and actively isolate the process from the workers.  Sometimes workers don't even know they're on the project and they never see the schedule until after they have already slipped.  No amount of project planning expertise will fix this.  Schedules &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; be developed by the project team and coordinated with the stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Gritty basement schedules - the opposite of the above.  I've worked on projects where the techs build the schedule without any participation from or review by the project stakeholders.  The resulting schedules are unrelated to business needs, and are irrelevant before they are printed. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is no project. PMI scheduling is based on the assumption that stakeholders endorse the schedule, and the project manager reports on the schedule.  If there is no cost to changing the date of a deliverable, then that date will be changed capriciously. The Project manager needs to be able to say, &quot;That change will delay the final project by X days, $Y dollars and risk Z consequences.&quot; If you can't do that, then there is no project, there is just a bunch of people doing work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is no sponsorship.  If the sponsor is unengaged, then it may not make a difference that a change will delay the project and increase the cost.  From what I hear in the literature, this is relatively common.  The PM needs to find a way to get the sponsor's attention  or the project is doomed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2015-06-16T13:29:26.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15182" CreationDate="2015-06-16T18:43:02.917" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understand the problem correctly, my solution would be to split task A into 2 components: Procurement and Delivery. Procurement would have a short duration - in the illustration below I have given it 1 day - while delivery would be 2 months, representing the time taken for the supplier to deliver the component. By creating a Start - Start relationship between Task B and Task A Procurement, you show the start dates being aligned. By then creating a Finish - Finish relationship with 4 months gap, you can force Task A Delivery to finish 4 months before Task B finishes. You could also show it another way, using a Start - Finish relationship between Task B and Task A Delivery... I have shown this on the example below as Task C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/j3k4p.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does that address the problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2015-06-16T18:43:02.917" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15206" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15219" CreationDate="2015-06-16T19:49:35.277" Score="3" ViewCount="812" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem: As an employee in a big organization, I frequently experience the uncertainties associated with a general lack of domain knowledge and understanding of the big picture and the wider company processes that are beyond an individual's assignment as a software developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question: Do companies generally speaking have the mindset that it is better spending time up-front training employees and providing them with a birds-eye view of the company processes and the required domain knowledge given the application domain the employee will be working on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on my experience with big companies, apparently it is a common accepted practice to just drop an employee in a &quot;sea of unknowns&quot; so that it is the employee itself who finds all answers as needed, no matter the level of stress and the lack of productivity that it entails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are we talking about here? Is this simply that when organizations are so large things get out of control and there is no other way of operation? Or are we talking about Need-to-Know basis? Or is it simply that from a cost perspective it is accepted that is just too expensive to train every employee that comes into an organization?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am of the school that spending time up front, providing domain knowledge, and giving employees birds-eye view of companies processes are worth the expenditure. I wanted to get opinions from other project managers that maybe have better insights than me. Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17500" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T11:10:47.190" Title="Employees, training, domain knowledge, and the big picture" Tags="&lt;training&gt;&lt;knowledge-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15207" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15216" CreationDate="2015-06-16T20:49:54.203" Score="3" ViewCount="541" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are using TFS2013 Update 4 with the latest scrum template. And we have been going back and forth on how to read the burndown chart on task board. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Especially regarding the last day of the sprint. This day is where our demo and retro are, and thus effectively we do not get any work done. But still the ideal trend is suggesting that we actually have full day of work to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the ideal trend is showing what the remaining work should be at the start of the day in the graph, then it make sense. Otherwise could someone please explain how to read it, or at least point me in the direction of some documentation about this graph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An acknowledgement would also be much appreciated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/iSJN8.png&quot; alt=&quot;most recent burndown&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17502" LastEditorUserId="17502" LastEditDate="2015-06-17T06:07:42.233" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T14:35:07.500" Title="Last day of a sprint in burndown chart in TFS2013" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;&lt;burndown-chart&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15206" CreationDate="2015-06-16T21:36:42.567" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it varies widely from company to company, but in general it seems the larger the company, the more silo'd groups become (it's the common way they deal with scale), and the less perceived benefit there is to domain expertise and process knowledge outside of their immediate work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think domain expertise is &lt;em&gt;critical&lt;/em&gt; regardless of company size or organization; it allows employees to make good local decisions due to context, which boosts autonomy, which boosts engagement, which is the foundation of great teams and orgs that hit high performance. I know Product Management is all the rage the last few years, but TBH, I think a good Product Manager should attempt to make themselves obsolete over time by dispersing their domain knowledge (similar to the goal of Scrum Masters) rather than keeping it local to themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2015-06-16T21:36:42.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15206" CreationDate="2015-06-16T21:44:44.847" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hear you.  I had a job in a large organisation before and it was unique.  It had a &lt;strong&gt;knowledge base with work instructions&lt;/strong&gt; and corresponding &lt;strong&gt;process maps&lt;/strong&gt; to allow an individual to do their best.  It meant consistency and accuracy in approach.  This was done on Sharepoint with visio and word.  There was &lt;strong&gt;version control&lt;/strong&gt; of all of the work instructions. They were only published when they were &lt;strong&gt;peer reviewed&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a lengthy process but it really pays off in terms of return on investment. It was great to see a nice knowledge management system in place.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast, I am now working in a very big organisation and left to my own initiative.  &lt;strong&gt;A great deal of the knowledge is tacit (in people's heads)&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One day I asked different team members as a manager about one subject. I noticed some did not want to part with the information they knew as it would mean they loose power. I noticed they all understood it differently.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really believe a proper knowledge manage system is in order here, along with training. Mistakes cost more in terms of reputational damage and inaccuracy of information in the long run.  This approach was taken in line with six sigma.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pearlson and Saunders have written extensively on knowledge management systems.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is Just my view from experiences and my learnings. Hope this helps.  If you need any further info I have tonnes of academic stuff that I can send your way.  :)  But this is it in a nutshell.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17482" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-06-17T05:50:24.193" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T05:50:24.193" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15212" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15213" CreationDate="2015-06-16T23:20:31.047" Score="5" ViewCount="3470" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing a fairly large project ( by my standards) and I have opted to take a agile approach to this; in that I will be doing the project in sprints. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no team, just me and my client, though some 3rd partys are involved in a small way. The development project ( a web shop ) arose from a large discovery project that I did for the client; and as such I have a lot of discovery information which is not necessarily organised as a development plan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need to get moving on this project and I don't want to plan the entire project from start to finish ( it may change mid stream anyway ) so what I did was to take the parts of the discovery that I need for the first iteration and  plan those out ( and am currently working on that first iteration). I then will do the same for further iterations until the project is complete. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is that doing it this way I will not have a critical path worked out because I am never planning the project as a whole, just each iteration. I know this may mean a delay in the project ( as I may be working on iteration 3 and end up at iteration 4 and find that there was something there that I should have started weeks ago eg get the client to add the products to the web shop or something ) but my question is that &lt;strong&gt;other than this&lt;/strong&gt; is there any disadvantage to doign it this way and is there any better way of doing it ( given that my goal is to avoid planning the project as a whole at the start ) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short I think I am having difficulty understanding how critical path works out for an agile project or do with have multiple critical paths ( ie one for each sprint ) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17505" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T08:59:29.290" Title="Critical Path in agile project" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;critical-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15212" CreationDate="2015-06-16T23:53:59.973" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, if I can recommend, call them interations. Sprint is a specific branded name for a Scrum iteration. Iteration is a more generic term used in agile and other lifecycles. You're doing your release in a series of short iterations and then reviewing the plan after each iteration. Working in short iterations (I would suggest two weeks) is a good idea. The client will like being able to see measurable progress and reviewing it with you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Critical Path is not as critical in agile planning, for the sheer dint that you're constantly reviewing the plan and adjusting as needed. In Big Development Up Front projects (waterfall) knowing your critical path is more important since you won't be adjusting the plan as often. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do have two &quot;critical paths&quot; in agile, the iteration path and the project path. Mike Cohn (respected agile coach and author) writes about this on his blog at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/the-critical-path-on-agile-projects&quot;&gt;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/the-critical-path-on-agile-projects&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: &#xA;- Don't worry about the iteration critical path. It will be obvious in a short iteration and will be reviewed as part of the daily check points (even as a one man team, you should hold an individual &quot;stand up&quot; each day to review your progress). &#xA;- For the project critical path he recommends the rolling wave planning. At each iteration planning spend a few minutes looking ahead to the next 3 sprints and see what dependencies or issues you can discover. Address them in planning and get them in the backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a solid dependency map or document will also help you. Make sure your client is aware of what you need from them, with solid dates for when it is needed. Report on this as part of your regular reporting to the client. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-06-16T23:53:59.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15207" CreationDate="2015-06-17T04:43:47.060" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure what value you would get from fixing/fretting about this. A burndown is of value to the Development Team during the Sprint, and none to anyone else or at another time. Once the sprint is over you now have empirical evidence on what was completed as you just did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really must have the graph align then you could mark the last day of the sprint as a team day off in the capacity plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However as all tasks should be done by tge end of the Sprint and the burndown at zero prior to the Sprint Review i don't see how that will affect the graph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T04:43:47.060" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15207" CreationDate="2015-06-17T07:29:13.880" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your diagram, this shows the ideal representation of what your blue line should be. The blue area is really another line (try to picture it without the shading) and this should show the actual remaining work as decreasing as you go through the sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be more specific “To enable the project team to monitor their progress against the release plan, they must maintain a release burndown chart after each sprint. The X‐axis of the release burndown chart shows the sprints; the Y‐axis shows the amount of work remaining at the start of each sprint” (Kirkham‐Jones, 2011).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I enclose a picture of a burndown chart with the same diagonal line.  This shows work hasn't been completed as per the estimation but any remaining work is just factored into the next sprint, so it's all good with scrum.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8bSmF.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.  I can provide some more info if you want.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17482" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2015-06-17T14:35:07.500" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T14:35:07.500" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15217" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-17T08:28:29.987" Score="2" ViewCount="219" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am certified scrum master but never practiced until tomorrow when I have been appointed as a ScrumMaster to a pilot initiative in the company to implement scrum in a team of non-software and non project but daily activity. I let you imagine all the politics around this decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The work will start on 1st of August, and the product owner has set up a meeting tomorrow to create the product backlog with me and another person, which will not be part of the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who should propose the structure of the product backlog tomorrow (me or the PO)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should we create directly user stories with the product owner?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have a one hour meeting, and in my understanding is that I need more than that? what is your suggestion on how to proceed?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know all the theory but I miss the very practical steps to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is more information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Department: product development (non IT products).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team: 7 people.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product owner: is the manager of the department (the 7 people in the team are his team).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ScrumMaster: I do not belong to the team nor to the department; I am working as staff function.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Beginning of the work: 1st of August (but as you see in the question the PO wants to create the product backlog with me tomorrow (45 days in advance).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Company: 100 years old, 25k employees, always used Waterfall methodology only 3-4 scrum initiatives ongoing in small IT projects (budget less than 500k €).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17509" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2015-06-17T16:16:34.517" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T16:16:34.517" Title="First time scrummaster - need to create product backlog and set up work" Tags="&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15212" CreationDate="2015-06-17T08:59:29.290" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try to plan a few iterations up front, so you can reduce delays that are caused by not finding out / addressing points in time. As a general rule, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You must see all the tasks that will be necessary after you finish your current iteration (so when working on i3, you have a backlog that fully covers i4). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You must have total understanding of tasks for the current iteration (so when working on i3, you must also detail i4 stories so all questions will be clear)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And of course, you must work on channeling in new requirements into the backlog as they surface&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on this, you can assume that even if there will be delays from an expected ideal course of project, they will either caused by gaining a better understading of a given topic, or by changing priorities (reordering of the backlog). Both of this are natural conclusions of having an iterative approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16711" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T08:59:29.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15206" CreationDate="2015-06-17T11:10:47.190" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the business standpoint, the organization needs to be able to measure some degree of efficacy in its training it provides to employees.  Training is very expensive and it needs to provide a return that exceeds that expense, both qualitatively and quantitatively.  And while training seems intuitively a smart thing to do, it is very hard to show meaningful changes in performance post training.  Companies rarely test (many have questions you have to answer but the scores don't seem to go anywhere) the employee after training and I have never seen anyone weeded out of employment because of failing a training class.  So correlating pre- and post-performance with training is near impossible.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, the types of tasks employees do range from tactical to strategic, with tactical being more prevalent at the lower rank employees and moving more strategic as one climbs the organization.  An employee at whatever rank in the organization needs to have the proper knowledge, skills, and abilities to execute the mission of his/her role.  At the lower ranks, where tactical tasks are more prevalent, having deep understanding of the domain, the industry, and the big picture may be a nice to have but may do nothing to move performance.  At the higher ranks, where one needs to be more strategic, this would come in to play, but it is also expected that this person would already have more knowledge of the domain, industry, and the bigger picture.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't come across to me as a need to know, secret thing.  It seems more like a smart business decision, spend where you have measurable return.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T11:10:47.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15217" CreationDate="2015-06-17T12:48:53.307" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Agile and Scrum are based on collaboration and teamwork&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is &quot;non project but daily activity&quot; Scrum is not a suitable process for that. You should consider using Kanban. However, looks like you all have decided to use Scrum. So, I will answer the rest of your questions based on Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Who should propose the structure of the product backlog tomorrow (me&#xA;  or the PO)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately you seem to be starting on the wrong foot. Agile and Scrum are based on collaboration and teamwork. You should approach this with an open mindset of putting your heads together to come up with the best solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should we create directly user stories with the Product owner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest that your first session should be to articulate the vision. The team must develop a shared understanding of where you are going (what product) and why you are going there (business benefits) before you jump into the details of how to get there (product backlog). Take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/the-product-vision-board/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Product Vision Board from Roman Pichler&lt;/a&gt; for an example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have a one hour meeting and in my understanding I need more than&#xA;  that? what is your suggestion on how to proceed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion for this question is the same as the one for your first question. Don't think in terms of what you need. Think in terms of what the work needs. If the work needs more time, at the end of the hour you all can agree to meet again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I do not belong to the team&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You now do. As soon as you were appointed as the Scrum Master of the team you have become a full-fledged member of the team. Get started with this mindset and you will be a more effective Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-06-17T12:56:54.687" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T12:56:54.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15223" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-17T15:10:57.453" Score="1" ViewCount="593" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my organization, we have tasks that are repeated in the same way for every project. I need to track the time the team or an individual has spent doing those tasks (i.e. the time between the moment the task was assigned and the moment it was completed), because we want to estimate how much time, on average, a project takes. This is important for us, because almost all of our projects have the same scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried Basecamp, Redbooth and a couple of other project management tools, but there doesn't seem to be a way for extracting this data. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that I am supposed to track cycle time instead of time in task, but these projects are always running simultaneously and some of them are paused for long periods, so we are unable to know the total time spent on a project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17515" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T15:45:18.820" Title="How to automatically track time spent on tasks" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15223" CreationDate="2015-06-17T15:45:18.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not the answer you want to hear I know. The odds of being successful with individual task time tracking is up there with cold fusion. It relies on the people doing the task to carefully track their time. Unless you're a law firm, then it's almost certainly not a discipline your team will have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer the specific question, I'm not familiar with any time tracking tool that will get you this kind of detail. The individual would have to start and stop their time based on actual hands on keyboard and that isn't scalable or reliable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might do to step back and ask yourself some foundation questions. &#xA;- What is driving the need to track project duration? &#xA;- How is tracking at the task and not total project time going to help you?&#xA;- What cause projects to be put on hold? Can hold time be tracked? &#xA;- Can projects be serialized, with teams swarming one project to completion before starting the next? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is more a conversation than a quick an easy answer. Feel free to ping me direct and I'm happy to help you through these questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T15:45:18.820" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15217" CreationDate="2015-06-17T15:55:48.527" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ashok has some really solid suggestions here. I want to riff off those a little to provide some context:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Kanban vs . Scrum:&lt;/strong&gt; If as you say, work is done daily, is it also &quot;shipped&quot; daily? For example, if you're project is fixing defects reported by customers, then they come in daily and get assigned daily and there is no release vehicle. Scrum will fail for this almost guaranteed. Kanban is the better choice. It doesn't have a time box sprint. Instead it has a backlog and Work In Progress limits (WIP). Work is taken from the top of the backlog and worked until done, then &quot;shipped&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can still be the Scrum Master and still call it &quot;Scrum&quot; to prevent management issues. Just set your iterations to one day and have your standup include pulling from the backlog. Part of your job is to both give the team guide rails and protect them from management so they can do their jobs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have to go with Scrum, then go for a one week iteration. You'll have less chance of failure from changing sprint commits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product Owner Planning Meeting:&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;As Ashok says, and you are concerned about, this is very early and it is not including the people doing the work. That's okay, work with it. A product owner needs to come up with their vision at some point. The product owner does own the backlog ultimately. They just have to ensure the team can execute on the backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work with them to try and get an Epic level flow of what they want to do. Then start early coaching that for the best success you should setup regular backlog grooming sessions with the team doing the work and (if you go with Scrum, not my recommendation) sprint planning at the start of an iteration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to focus on is the &quot;Why&quot; or &quot;So That&quot; part of the user stories. Try and steer your PO from making technology decisions &quot;will use Perl&quot; as that needs to be the development teams job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck and come on back with more questions, we're here to help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T15:55:48.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15226" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15230" CreationDate="2015-06-17T18:33:48.323" Score="2" ViewCount="78" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are working on replacing 5 million lines of cobol with Java.  Apparently this cannot be done without significant cost.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have estimated it will cost 70000 man hour days to convert it all to Java. However, resources for cobol are becoming scarce, and we are running into problems with maintenance and enhancements. Funds are also short. We have estimated the cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would we manage this project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17482" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2015-06-18T13:54:36.200" LastActivityDate="2015-06-18T13:54:36.200" Title="How would we manage a project that involves replacing Cobol with Java?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;frameworks&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15227" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-17T22:38:54.773" Score="5" ViewCount="173" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just read this article, &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20150905111659/https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2009/december/manager-2-0-the-role-of-the-manager-in-scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Manager 2.0: The Role of a Manager in Scrum&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a scrummaster, and as the teams go, my team is made of both developers and QE. QE has its own manager (I am also the development manager), which essentially means someone else can still assign work for QE in my team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They can still say what can or cannot be done and in which way. Which means it essentially causes disturbance. Is there a way out? One way I could think of was to have one manager responsible for entire team (Development and QE), but I don't know whether that was the right approach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I fix the problem where multiple managers are responsible for different scrum team components?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17131" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T22:56:17.913" LastActivityDate="2020-06-10T22:56:17.913" Title="Manager 2.0 and Scrum: How can I fix the problem where multiple managers are responsible for different scrum team components?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15227" CreationDate="2015-06-18T07:41:39.080" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;People working in teams that work with Scrum should only do work to accomplish their Sprint goals and not be assigned to other work on the side. The manager should consult the Scrum Master or get tasks on the Backlog of the Product Owner first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a Agile world managers should be facilitators who make sure his subordinates can work the best they can, skills, motivations, environment, etc... Its not his/her role to assign work, that is of his teams Product Owner during planning sessions for the next itteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a look at how line management works at Spotify, often the manager is in another team and it is per chapter/role: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.kevingoldsmith.com/2014/03/14/thoughts-on-emulating-spotifys-matrix-organization-in-other-companies/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.kevingoldsmith.com/2014/03/14/thoughts-on-emulating-spotifys-matrix-organization-in-other-companies/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2015-06-18T07:41:39.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15227" CreationDate="2015-06-18T08:03:45.943" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If i understand your description right, your scrum dev team consists of 2 parts: dev team, and qe team, and each has a manager, who is the ultimate decision maker for their respective teams, and who also has right to assign tasks to their team outside regular Scrum process (backlog, etc). Am i getting it right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the task assignment outside of Scrum, it should be avoided if possible. Talk with the QA manager and see if it's possible to follow the regular rules (new tasks should be added to the backlog, go through grooming, planning, and be accepted by the team at the right moment). &#xA;There may be the case when it is not possible (high priority tasks that need immediate attention). In this case, it is best to track them outside of Scrum, so team's velocity will be decreased because they need to do outside work. This situation, of course, is an impediment, but it can go to impediment log, and retrospectives can be used to find a way to solve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the other part, if the tasks are not evaluated by the team itself, but there are figures of authority who make decisions for their people, it is well against Scrum rules, but it happens most of the time. It reduces team commitment, and maybe precision of estimates too. In order to decrease those harmful effects, you can reinforce the following two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Managers are empowered to make commitments instead of their teams, but then, they are solely responsible for keeping them. So you can replace the democratic team model with a hierarchical one, but they get the whole package, not only the benefits :) However, please be aware that this stretches the methodology so much that it will not be regular Scrum any more.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You should help managers implement democratic team model at least on their subteam level (discuss decisions before making them, collect input from the team members, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16711" LastEditorUserId="16711" LastEditDate="2015-06-18T09:48:28.080" LastActivityDate="2015-06-18T09:48:28.080" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15226" CreationDate="2015-06-18T12:17:15.163" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can I ask if anyone has been in a company who has replaced over 5 million lines of cobol with Java and how was the project managed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I worked for an organization that looked at replacing legacy systems several years ago. The decision was taken to &quot;start again&quot;. The primary driver was to address shortcomings in systems that were developed in the 1970s and were not flexible enough to adapt to changes in the market place. It was treated as a series of standard IT projects, which unfortunately led to some gaps in terms of user engagement, coordination of projects, missed requirements, etc etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a lot of pressure to get something done &quot;now&quot;, which contributed a lot to the problems that were faced. Hindsight being 20/20, if you want to go down the path of refreshing your systems a better approach is to take the time to define exactly what the systems do (factoring in not only the original design but also however many years of minor enhancements you are dealing with), identifying the gaps between what they did and what you want them to do, and coming up with a comprehensive list of requirements for all components of the program before starting any development work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Apparently this cannot be done without significant cost. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That was pretty much our experience. But if you don't spend the $$ and time to do it right you will pay more in the long run from not only a systems re-work perspective but also from an employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction and reputation perspective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2015-06-18T12:17:15.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15231" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-18T14:59:50.513" Score="6" ViewCount="105" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been tasked to develop a metrics program specifically designed to look at how risky a release is from a code base volatility perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The director requesting this information is working from the assumption that more change to the overall code base later in the release cycle (percentage wise) increases risk.  It seems a reasonable assumption but I would like to numerically justify it before we start reporting it to the development teams on a regular basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My rough (very rough) plan at this point centers around a few data points.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Quality data:  Review production defects/incidents and tie them to release X (where possible)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Quality data 2:  Review pre-production, test cycle defects tied to release X&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Change/Quantity data:  Review code volatility numbers either at the file level or by # of changes per application.  I am having trouble locking down the best quantity measurement to use...lines of code seems to detailed and reviewing by change list seems too broad so I am thinking somewhere in-between. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does this plan create a system that can help evaluate risk at the release level?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there other measures I have not considered that should be included?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17527" LastEditorUserId="17527" LastEditDate="2015-06-18T15:51:49.050" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T11:58:05.937" Title="Method for assessing risk in a release" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9070" CreationDate="2015-06-18T15:28:39.677" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't seen a tool that provides you 'story point cycle time', however - I also use this type of calculation (due to varying user stories).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best I can suggest you at this point is to do a weight average of your user stories (according to their sizes) development time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will provide you average cycle time of story point. This is based on the assumption that story point is (more or less) a unified work unit.&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Here is the calculation:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;1.  For each ‘done’ user story: multiply it’s size in the number of days it took to develop it.&#xA;2.  Sum all the results of #1.&#xA;3.  Divide the result of #2 by the total story points of your ‘done’ user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&#xA;If you have the next 3 ‘done’ user stories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5 story points, it took the user story 10 calendar days to be developed.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;3 story points, it took the user story 6 calendar days to be developed.&#xA;2 story points, it took the user story 8 calendar days to be developed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cycle time is: (50+18+16)/(5+3+2) = 8.4 days.&#xA;Your cycle time per story point is 8.4 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17528" LastActivityDate="2015-06-18T15:28:39.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15234" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-18T17:24:08.980" Score="1" ViewCount="138" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do I allocate a resource (lets call him Joe) who has different availabilities based on the day.  Example he has a daily meeting 1 hour each day and a project review meeting that is 3 hours every Thursday.  Based on an 8 hour day he has 7/8 or 87% Monday thru Friday except on Thursday where he has 5/8 or 62% availability?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17532" LastActivityDate="2015-06-20T13:43:08.307" Title="Resource Allocation in MS Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15234" CreationDate="2015-06-18T17:29:31.943" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there value in tracking hours by the day?  Try using a week; determine utilization availability for the week and let it spread evenly across the days.  Whatever tiny variances you accrue should wash out when you look your actuals by the week.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  You are indicating in the example that Joe has some variability in availability by day.  87% M-F, 62% Th is the same as 83% a week.  Instead of trying to load a daily utilization rate that changes, average it out by the week...or even the month.  The math will still work when trying to calculate duration.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2015-06-18T17:44:37.780" LastActivityDate="2015-06-18T17:44:37.780" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15236" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15239" CreationDate="2015-06-18T19:21:35.287" Score="5" ViewCount="312" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a team and a PM. Unfortunately, the PM does not have very strong technical skills, therefore he has no basis for estimation of the &lt;strong&gt;time&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;costs&lt;/strong&gt; which are required for each part of project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this situation other personnel (e.g. Programmers' Team Lead) must provide the estimation. But, what will happen if these personnel provide an incorrect  estimation? For example, padding the estimates to reduce pressure on delivery timescales?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can PM do to find the right estimates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17522" LastEditorUserId="20495" LastEditDate="2015-09-14T11:03:39.047" LastActivityDate="2015-09-14T11:03:39.047" Title="How to prevent deliberate long estimation?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14638" CreationDate="2015-06-18T20:42:33.040" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) No, it is comparably tedious to set up. You need to be aware of which process template you are choosing, and the differences between them. Understanding this can save a lot of headaches in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) This depends on the process template you use. The Agile template includes tasks in hours for remaining work, completed work and original estimate fields, whilst the Scrum template has only remaining work. This will alter your reporting capabilities significantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) It depends on what you mean by &quot;Project&quot;. In TFS there exists a cascading heirarchy of containers: Team Project Collection (TPC) =&gt; Team Project =&gt; Team/Area Path. You need to really understand the relationships between these if you want to be able to report across multiple teams and projects. Primarily, you'll want to ensure that you store everything inside a single &quot;Team Project&quot; and use Teams and/or Area Paths to separate out your software projects into logical groupings. This will ensure the maximum amount of flexibility in reporting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3a) As far as out-of-the-box reports, there isn't a lot. There is however a complete cube that you can point SSRS, Excel, or even better Power BI at for your reporting needs. You can also create lightweight reports from work item queries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're setting up something complicated (more than 1 team across more than 1 project), I highly suggest doing some training before diving in. There are a lot of gotchya's to watch out for, and little things that can make your life easier in the future. TFS is highly customizable, which unfortunately means it can be a bit complex to set up initially in complex situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastActivityDate="2015-06-18T20:42:33.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15236" CreationDate="2015-06-18T21:16:33.413" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I learned in my project management classes and related experience that the most accurate way of getting estimates is to ask the people who will be doing the work to estimate the work.  They will know how long it will take them to do the work.  Remember estimates are just a rough indicator.  The critical path analysis is sometimes good here.  See &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_path_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_path_method&lt;/a&gt;.  In addition to this I have always kept the philosophy that it is better to overestimate than to underestimate (This means you deliver within budget, while allowing for things to go wrong).  Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17482" LastActivityDate="2015-06-18T21:16:33.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15236" CreationDate="2015-06-18T21:26:16.023" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, remember that an estimate is highly unlikely to be 100% correct, so do the best you can with the information that is available to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, break down the tasks as far as you reasonably can, and get figures for similar low level tasks from other projects that have been done in the past. Don't worry if they are not identical, as long as they are broadly similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, get a consensus. Don't just ask one person. Get a few people in a room and ask them for their best estimates. Debate, discuss, argue, and then choose a value that most people will accept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourth, ask questions. If it feels wrong, you either don't understand the problem, or someone else doesn't. Ask them to explain why they gave their estimate, and do this (nicely) in public, so that others can also provide their input and challenge the estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fifth, learn from what has gone before. Learn whose judgement you can trust, and whose you cannot. Learn from your mistakes, and also from your successes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sixth, Refine your estimates as the project goes on. You can change estimates. Just communicate the changes openly and honestly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2015-06-18T21:26:16.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15240" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-18T23:47:03.483" Score="10" ViewCount="2274" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is DevOps just the new &quot;cool&quot; term for Extreme Programming? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently speaking with a company about doing some coaching work for them. They have decided that to be successful they need to do &quot;DevOps&quot; and want to know what my DevOps experience is. One of the people was even pretty insistent it wasn't &quot;agile&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at the Venn diagram of DevOps, on Wikipedia it's the center of Dev, QA and IT. If you look at the principles of XP, you are doing testing up front and you're doing continuous integration with regular releases to the customer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I missing something? I'm just seeing a new term on concepts that are foundations of XP. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2018-10-02T21:12:31.057" Title="How is XP/ Continuous Integration different from DevOps?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;extreme-programming&gt;&lt;devops&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1847" CreationDate="2015-06-19T00:59:52.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see a lot of people answered your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are interested in Kanban, Scrum (or Scrumban) you should try them out and then you'll find out which of them is the best suit for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend Kanban, as it more about workflow than visualization, but it's just me. It all depends on what do you want to achieve with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you can read here about differences between &lt;a href=&quot;http://kanbantool.com/kanban-library/scrum-and-kanban/kanban-vs-scrum-how-to-make-the-most-of-both#.VYNoxPmqqko&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kanban&amp;amp;Scrum&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17536" LastActivityDate="2015-06-19T00:59:52.313" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2015-06-19T00:59:52.313" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2009" CreationDate="2015-06-19T01:21:49.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been using Kanban for project management for a couple of months and I find it really useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, I try to divide entire project into smaller pieces, steps or &quot;levels&quot;. Then I think of tasks which have to be done. Finally I assign those task to each level. I try to work only with tasks from the first level. If I have some ideas regarding different levels, I write them down and then use afterwards.&#xA;In this way I can focus on more important aspects of every step. It prevents me from jumping between ideas so I am not distracted by tasks I shouldn't or can't complete at this moment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope you'll find your perfect technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17536" LastActivityDate="2015-06-19T01:21:49.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15240" CreationDate="2015-06-19T02:29:50.373" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;XP and DevOps are different things. They don't contradict with each other, they can be used together, but they have different base concepts inside them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;XP&lt;/strong&gt;: many people wrongly thinks that XP is just a list of 12 practices. But in reality, XP is much more than these 12 practices. Extreme Programming is complex, consistent programming philosophy, with own values and principles, activities and roles. The main idea of XP: &quot;&lt;em&gt;Hey, dude, you should do current tasks as soon as possible and don't think about tomorrow. If you will do something wrong today, we can easily fix it (if needed) tomorrow , because we have constant cost of change during whole of project&lt;/em&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DevOps&lt;/strong&gt;: unlike XP, I have not many experience with DevOps. But in my understanding, the main idea of this methodology is: &quot;&lt;em&gt;Programmers and admins should not to be enemies. Coding and deployment should not to be separated activities. Instead, these activities should be closely integrated with each other&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, some means by which the goals are achieved in these two methodologies can be the same (CI, Test Automation and so on), but their ideologies are different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-06-19T06:43:46.687" LastActivityDate="2015-06-19T06:43:46.687" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15244" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-19T07:47:40.110" Score="13" ViewCount="1421" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a small company that produce commercial WordPress themes. Things are working well and I want to hire a freelance Front End Developer to help me. I never managed a remote person(the city I live in is too small, and I don't find local people).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for answers to questions like: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can you be sure they are working the hours they say?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How often should you talk to them?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17538" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2015-06-21T13:13:20.530" LastActivityDate="2021-01-19T19:15:15.797" Title="How to manage remote developers?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;remote-teams&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15236" CreationDate="2015-06-19T08:57:35.423" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the team members are constantly padding the estimation, it's either that they want to keep a comfortable pace of work, or they wish to cause harm to somebody above them in the hierarchy, or they are afraid of risks that will cause them a lot of pressure if happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's assume that they are not lazy or evil, so you can always ask them: 'i feel that this estimation is a bit too heavy, is there something you are afraid of? if so, can i help with it somehow?'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes they will simply explain it in details, but more often it is their way to prepare for unknown risks, and you can help with it most of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16711" LastActivityDate="2015-06-19T08:57:35.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15244" CreationDate="2015-06-19T10:21:55.897" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My experience of managing remote developers says that time reporting is necessary. Not for arguing over &quot;why it took so long&quot;, but rather for the sake of discipline. So I ask to fill in time spent on items in Jira (or, before Jira it was toggl). I believe 1 hour &quot;grid&quot; is OK.&#xA;At least 1 weekly Skype call (in the beginning probably daily). Be present at the project, clarify issues before they appear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, you can't be 100% sure if developers are working the hours they say (and this is probably not that important at all), but you can make the process quite transparent and see if overall the pace of development satisfies you or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17432" LastActivityDate="2015-06-19T10:21:55.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15244" CreationDate="2015-06-19T11:23:27.870" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Managing remote/near-shore/off-shore development teams can certainly be a daunting prospect, especially if you haven't worked with them before and have yet to build up any trust/rapport.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can you be sure they are working the hours they say?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This all boils down to the agreement you have with your development team. Are you paying them on an hourly basis, or are they working for a fixed fee?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Timesheets are a valuable resource for a PM, however, you seem to want to use them as a timecard to ensure they are working 8 hour days, rather than tracking the numbers of hours that have gone into a specific feature/project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are numerous time tracking solutions out there, but it's important to find one that works for you. This can be anything from a simple spreadsheet to a more interactive tool such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.getharvest.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Harvest&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.toggl.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Toggl&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://memory.ai/timely&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Timely&lt;/a&gt; depending on your requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How often should you speak to them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As often as needed. Depending on how you are running your team, you may carry out a 15-minute stand-up in the morning via Skype. If this is too much, you might fall back to a weekly Skype session that Maksim mentioned in his/her answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also want to look into nonintrusive instant messaging services such as Google Chat or &lt;a href=&quot;https://slack.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Slack&lt;/a&gt;, as these can be excellent for non-urgent questions/problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8220" LastEditorUserId="29463" LastEditDate="2021-01-19T15:57:42.930" LastActivityDate="2021-01-19T15:57:42.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15234" CreationDate="2015-06-19T12:15:29.583" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could set up a custom calendar for Joe which has a working day of 7 hours on each day apart from Thursdays, and 5 hours on Thursday. Then you apply that custom calendar to Joe but not to the other resources in the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In MS Project, you can select which calendar is to apply to each member of the team, and it would be normal to set the default to match the working pattern for the majority of people. I would advise against trying to create too many custom calendars, however, as it can become a major headache to manage these. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I suggest you consider carefully whether you really can be so accurate in your estimate that a 3 hour meeting will truly impact on the time taken to achieve a task that is scheduled for 80 hours. In my experience, this is unlikely. On top of that, it would be normal to plan on the basis of around 80% availability in any case, as no-one will work 100%of the time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2015-06-19T12:15:29.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15244" CreationDate="2015-06-19T12:47:21.767" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Managing remote developers: There is sound advice here already, with respect to JIRA and frequent calls to stay in touch. Having managed distant development for the last two years here are a few extra suggestions on top of JIRA and Skype phonecalls:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be ready for remote development to take longer. Establish good communication lines, encourage the developer to contact you for feedback. Resolve standing issues asap. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a draft of clear milestones and due dates (make sure to buffer your &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; due dates) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clarify expectations repeatedly to ensure understanding, define terms you routinely use.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test deliverables promptly and thoroughly. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Trust your instinct. Remote development is risky because you don't get to sense most of the clues you would notice if you were in the same place as the developer and were experiencing their frustrations first hand. By the time your remote developer articulates frustration, you have probably lost days already. Be on the lookout for signs of weariness, and disengagement. Follow hunches of the subtlest kind. They are your friends. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not ever let your developer immerse into &lt;em&gt;solving a problem&lt;/em&gt; without setting a time limit which you are happy to lose. Time limit should allow for elaboration, but not for a wild goose chase. Problems get rarely solved. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not fall for sunk cost fallacy. Adjust requirements/expectations, or abort development if you see schedule sliding on a critical milestone. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Review code &amp;amp; documentation you receive. If you are not a programmer, have the first deliverables checked for quality by someone qualified you trust. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17542" LastActivityDate="2015-06-19T12:47:21.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15231" CreationDate="2015-06-19T13:29:10.923" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL;DR; The first two metrics aren't bad, but the first is hindsight and the second organized information you already know. The third might line up sometimes, but will almost certainly get you in trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The three important questions when trying to establish any metrics should be: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) What exactly does this metric tell me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) What actions can I take based on this metric?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) What behavior will this metric cause in my team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While your first metric may be difficult to do, it's a great metric for looking back at your releases. Your second is also a good one, but it tells you what you already know - how many defects were found already in the changes. If you're interested in code risk, one thing that might be good is to see how many of those defects impact something that wasn't supposed to change. That could be an indicator of volatility problems in a release (though it's important to know that it's a red flag for it, not proof).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your third metric may be problematic in that to get the value you want out of it, you're going to need to commit a lot of time. While 100 changes to a code base could cause a lot of errors and volatility, it could also be 100 steps toward improving the code. What would make me nervous is a lot of commits with comments like &quot;fixed an omission from last build&quot;. However, that means reading through all of the commits to see what changes and if it looks good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, enough negative, what can you do to effectively judge code volatility and risky releases? It comes down to regression testing. The two metrics I'd use together to judge the risk of a release are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) how many changes were made to parts of the code that are not adequately covered by tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) how frequently do your regression tests fail during development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the first metric, each change to code not under test is a coin flip. You have no idea what will happen with it. On the second, if developers commonly check in code that fails regression tests and have to fix it after, they aren't focusing on quality in their development practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this means a lot of testing and if you don't have a good suite of regression tests, you'll need to build one up. Definitely start with critical functions and areas that have caused problems in the past. This sounds like a lot of work, but trying to gauge risk off of metrics that sometimes correlate to volatility problems is gambling at best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-06-19T13:29:10.923" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15236" CreationDate="2015-06-19T13:55:32.343" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest doing a root-cause analysis with everyone involved, to understand &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; developers feel pressure to &quot;pad&quot; or add other compensations in their estimates. It will require some really open dialogue, but in my experience, doing anything else (like changing the process directly or involving other estimator) will only address the symptoms, probably frustrate the team even more, and you'll end up in a similar situation in a few months. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example - &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.crisp.se/2009/09/29/henrikkniberg/1254176460000&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.crisp.se/2009/09/29/henrikkniberg/1254176460000&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as others have suggested, aim to have the developers themselves do their own estimates, as it will go a long way towards building trust across the board. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2015-06-19T13:55:32.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2009" CreationDate="2015-06-19T14:02:40.500" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've used it for managing my personal backlog/&quot;to do&quot; list and found it to be very beneficial, and would definitely recommend trying it for a couple weeks. Just like a project-focused kanban board, it immediately provided visibility on where things were getting stuck or slowed, how much time I was allocating to different areas or types of work, and helped me improve overall prioritization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also tried the pomodoro or time-boxing approach, and it didn't really work for me. It felt awkward to try and force various-sized work efforts into single-sized windows of focus, so instead I simply broke up my kanban &quot;epic to-do's&quot; into smaller stickies that were no longer than an hour, and then grouped them together (implying a break) or prioritized them among other stickies, just as you would with project epics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2015-06-19T14:02:40.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15254" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15276" CreationDate="2015-06-20T07:20:08.397" Score="3" ViewCount="228" Body="&lt;p&gt;Considering risk identification as an important part of project planning, and if working in an environment where projects are quite similar, having a checklist with a set of standard risks to be analyzed before opening every project could be a time-saving strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to check the reasons for a project to fail, proposed by &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.standishgroup.com/post/18&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the several versions of the CHAOS report&lt;/a&gt;, but this can be tricky, since the report itself has been challenged from several points of view (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.vu.nl/~x/the_rise_and_fall_of_the_chaos_report_figures.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The rise and fall of the chaos report figures&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, in spite of the fact that having a list of the recurring risks shared between all the project managers in the company could be a great tool, keeping it coherent and updated from project to project could turn into a controversial burden since each project manager could have its own way to manage and analyze risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if its possible and useful, what steps should I need to take for creating and maintaining a shared checklist for recurring risks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17321" LastEditorUserId="17321" LastEditDate="2015-06-22T20:44:31.207" LastActivityDate="2015-07-24T05:02:34.610" Title="How to set and mantain a risk checklist for a set of software development projects in a medium-sized company?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15254" CreationDate="2015-06-20T10:56:14.710" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scan post mortem documentation.  Scan past projects' risks and issues registers.  Conduct several focus groups with project managers and practitioners and brainstorm.  Review trade journals and industry reports.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think building and maintaining the checklist would be extremely easy.  What is difficult is getting people to use it for their upcoming projects.  Getting past risk resistance is unbelievably difficult--optimism biases; Lake Wobegon confidence in their team and themselves; political agendas; bad things happen to other people's projects, not mine.  Provide the checklist to an up and coming project team and you will get: whoever built this list was a naysayer and a no can do person.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-06-20T10:56:14.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15234" CreationDate="2015-06-20T13:43:08.307" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One possible approach could be that you set aside a fixed amount of time and call it Non-Project work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, monitor the time sheet to see how much time the person spends on a weekly basis. If it turns out that he spends around 30% of his time on average then you can consider that Joe is available for 70% of the work throughout. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, set the availability of that resources only to 70% (or whatever you feel is right) in your plans. It is possible that the time spent can be more or less but the effort should average out over a period of time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16321" LastActivityDate="2015-06-20T13:43:08.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15254" CreationDate="2015-06-20T13:58:51.653" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rather than focus on a checklist, begin by asking what process can be put in place to encourage a team to identify and plan for risk before a project begins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why focus on process first? Because you are correct in thinking that getting people to use such a risk checklist will be difficult. People are so flooded with information and data that it can often be ignored. Plus, who will maintain the risk database? Will there be liability if a risk is listed in the database, but not applied to a project that later fails? How easy will it be to search for applicable risks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two processes for risk planning that I recommend: pre-mortems and FMEA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pre-mortems&lt;/strong&gt; are a less formal process that I learned about through an episode of Freakonomics Radio. Fast forward to minute 20 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://t.co/UfRlFRIzlm&quot;&gt;this episode&lt;/a&gt; to hear pre-mortems explained. The general idea is that team members are asked to imagine the project has failed in a massive way. Then, they're asked to imagine causes of failure. I like this approach because it engages the whole team and because it is very focused on risks relevant to the specific project being discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;FMEA&lt;/strong&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failure_mode_and_effects_analysis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;failure modes and effects analysis&lt;/a&gt;, is a more formal and structured approach for risk planning. FMEA is typically conducted either for components of a product, or for steps in a service delivery or design process. For software, an FMEA might consider each feature the software is intended to perform. For each feature, likelihood of failure, cost of failure, and likelihood of failure detection are rated from 1-10. Ratings are used to assign each feature a risk score, for example 1 x 1 x 1 is 1, or a very low risk, and 10 x 10 x 10 is a 1000, a very high risk. Features are then prioritized by risk score so that the highest risk items can be identified and addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With either approach given above, it may be useful to have a risk checklist as you described in your question. The checklist may help people to generate a set of risks relevant to a project being planned. However, the real impact comes from putting a system in place that encourages teams to conduct pre-mortem or FMEA style analysis before work on a project begins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2305" LastActivityDate="2015-06-20T13:58:51.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9070" CreationDate="2015-06-20T14:19:20.623" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a chance you may be misusing Cumulative Flow Diagrams, since the point of the diagram is to identify process bottlenecks and estimate how long it will take to complete assignments. However, if there are huge differences between the effort required to complete various tasks, then I guess a different approach may be necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An easy way to accomplish a weighted Cumulative Flow Diagram is to count &quot;Story Points&quot; instead of &quot;Jobs&quot;. Assume a team has been asked to complete three jobs, A, B, and C. Rather than enter those jobs on the CFD, first convert each job to story points (e.g. A=8, B=13, C=20). Now, use those point values to construct a CFD that will show you the number of story points in each phase of your process and help you forecast how long it will take to complete your backlog of points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before doing this, take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://leadinganswers.typepad.com/leading_answers/2006/09/creating_and_in.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this post on creating and using cumulative flow diagrams&lt;/a&gt; to double check you are currently using the diagrams properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2305" LastActivityDate="2015-06-20T14:19:20.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15244" CreationDate="2015-06-21T06:49:28.947" Score="8" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can measure results. You can't measure hours in front of screen (and probably shouldn't). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need to agree on a goal and a deadline.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Given step 2., you need to talk each time the current goal is accomplished, so you can evaluate it, and agree on a new goal and a new deadline.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need a way (e.g. email) for the remote worker to let you know if the deadline won't be reached because of a particular problem. Then you decide if you need to have an extra talk to set a new deadline or to look for ways of increasing speed/productivity (e.g. proper training).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the profile of the remote worker:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For inexperienced people, start with daily goals (this helps to keep each goal simple and easy to agree on)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When someone has demonstrated performance over time, decrease the frequency of the communication (e.g. daily report of advance and weekly chats)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the same could be applicable to on-site workers (set clear goals, frequent report of advances/problems, evaluate performance based on resuls).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17321" LastActivityDate="2015-06-21T06:49:28.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15261" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15263" CreationDate="2015-06-21T10:01:15.783" Score="8" ViewCount="1056" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently work on a large scale software project in a large company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We follow an agile approach for development; however, due to the size of the the company there are several stakeholders that normally are not spoken about or simply assumed to be the developers in the Agile process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stakeholders example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Architecture: Defines enterprise architecture guidelines&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Development: Defines enterprise development guidelines&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Product Design: Defines enterprise branding and design guidelines&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;IT Security: defines enterprise IT security guidelines&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Operations: 24/7h operations support&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Customer Support: 24/7h client support&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Rollout: Rollout of the application per client ( client specific configurations )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I use User stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As IT security, I want to ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or Debt tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tech debt - Code needs to be refractored&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;ISO debt - Application must follow ISO1234&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Rollout debt - Configuration automation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Operations debt - Special tool to manage data cache&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pratical example:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As application management, I want to be able to invalidate the cache, so the application is cleared of corrupt data.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above doesn't really make sense to me as a business value user story.&#xA;It represents more a maintenance required feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there any common practice on how to integrate the requirements of these stakeholders in user stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to express the requirements from these stakeholders?&#xA;They are functional yet not business value adding requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17552" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2015-06-23T12:43:18.873" Title="Agile in enterprise: How to represent the requirements of non-business stakeholders?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15262" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-21T13:31:04.807" Score="7" ViewCount="546" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a bunch of techniques to do software &lt;em&gt;estimation&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Now given a piece of software, is there some methods/techniques to evaluate the &lt;strong&gt;cost of change&lt;/strong&gt; of an already implemented requirement ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16575" LastEditorUserId="16575" LastEditDate="2015-06-22T08:52:54.323" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T09:41:12.013" Title="Techniques to calculate the cost of change in software engineering" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15261" CreationDate="2015-06-21T20:16:53.607" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;User stories are about delivering business value to end users of the software. Generally user stories are the responsibility of the Product Owner and the business stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now how those user stories get delivered is down to the development team. They will typically have a defintion of done that covers what they regard as the important elements of delivery. That definition of done could well include ISO compliance, security, architecture and many other items on your lists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It isn't necessary nor desirable to seperate the technical and non-functional requirements from the business requirements. Better for the team to concentrate on satisfying business requirements but do the technical and non-functional parts as an inherent part of the way they work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, a team I am working with now have a business user story that requires them to modify some database code that hasn't been worked on in a while. As a part of the business story they are going to refactor some SQL. That means the business story will take a longer than if they had not done the refactoring. But the team's approach is to deliver software that meets their coding standards and agreed good practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a big fan of seperating out the technical from the business stories. It is more difficult for business users to evaluate progress as they don't always understand technical stories. It also runs the risk of technical tasks continually contending with business functionality. Better to simply define your team's definition of done while working on business focused stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-06-21T20:16:53.607" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15262" CreationDate="2015-06-22T09:41:12.013" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several quasi-scientific methods- Look up COCOMO and Function Point Analysis - However there are massive overheads, financially, procedurally, intellectually and practically in deploying these (or presumably) any other method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For all but the largest development projects it is likely that your best bet will be to work through the estimation process with the development team, as has been suggested in comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T09:41:12.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15236" CreationDate="2015-06-22T11:07:03.023" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a significant difference between an estimate and planning value and that difference is largely ignored.  An estimate, provided by the people who do the work and based on historical data if you are lucky to have it, is a probabilistic range of results.  A planning value, provided by the owners of the work, is a single value that lives somewhere in the estimated range, based on the degree of risk with which that project presents.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, this PM needs to collect estimates by way of a range of results.  Use best, worst, and most likely cases, following Iain's advice above.  The risk management process, the second step, will dictate what planning value the PM wishes to use to cost, schedule, and against which to measure performance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T11:07:03.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15236" CreationDate="2015-06-22T11:15:45.387" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;so many good answers here... I'll try to give my two cents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An estimation is incorrect by definition, that said it might happen that your team abnormally &quot;inflates&quot; their estimations, and there could be very different reasons for this, and more specifically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They previously missed a deadline and they've been blamed for that. Or their time is constantly checked and micromanaged (&lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/26848/how-to-deal-with-project-managers-who-micromanage&quot;&gt;here is a somehow &quot;illuminating&quot; example&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The thing they've been asked to implement is new to them, or has too many unknowns, or is too risky&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Their work depend on other people/systems/teams/whatever, whose behavior is somehow not entirely predictable. E.g. I have to connect to an external system and I assume that, by the time I start to develop, this system will be ready, available and its interface documented enough. Turns out my assumption is wrong and the overhead needed to make up for this situation falls on my estimate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your situation falls on case 1, do not blame it on your team, you'd better find the root cause and fix it as soon as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not trust too much estimates made on case 2, do not look for &quot;right estimates&quot; because the only right figure you will have is the one that tells you how much time it has taken, and this you'll only have at the end of the project.&#xA;In these cases there are approaches that can help the PM to better manage the intrinsic risk and be able to handle the unexpected. See for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.ugidotnet.org/luKa/archive/2015/03/22/how-to-assess-communicate-and-manage-uncertainty-and-risk-with.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to assess, communicate and manage uncertainty and risk with Agility?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line is: if you're in an unstable environment, do not trust estimates   made at the beginning (Iain9688 advise of continuously refining the estimates is actually one of the best and most underestimated) and do not assume you'll be able to make a detailed plan out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16362" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:31:53.287" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T11:22:02.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15269" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-22T16:02:08.607" Score="6" ViewCount="3040" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to limit the number of tasks displayed in one of our columns (the one which holds the &quot;solved&quot; tasks), without success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have changed the &quot;MAX&quot; column settings, but, it looks like it affect nothing. Still, all the tasks displayed in the column.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main intention if this is to remove the clutter of old tasks that still displayed in &quot;solved&quot; column. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you see in the example below, &lt;strong&gt;Passed QA&lt;/strong&gt; column displays 610 tasks even thou max set to 50.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/W60I5.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17562" LastEditorUserId="17562" LastEditDate="2015-06-22T16:07:43.647" LastActivityDate="2015-09-16T10:10:44.357" Title="Kanban in Jira - Limit number of tasks in column" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15273" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-22T20:41:26.157" Score="4" ViewCount="127" Body="&lt;p&gt;In software development, the concept of a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kata_%28programming%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;programming kata&lt;/a&gt; is being practiced by many developers (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://codingdojo.org/cgi-bin/index.pl?KataCatalogue&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;examples of programming kata&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://leanpub.com/codingdojohandbook&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;book on katas&lt;/a&gt;) to be exposed to new good practices and get used to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was about to ask if you could develop a similar routine for improving your project management skills, but it seems you can (e.g &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.red-gate.com/katas-arent-just-code/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article on katas for management and coaching skills&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, if they can be an effective way to gain and share good practices, what are the first steps you should do to organize/take part to such effective PM katas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17321" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T21:11:20.780" Title="What are the first steps (if any) to implement an effective kata for project management?" Tags="&lt;learning&gt;&lt;practices&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15273" CreationDate="2015-06-22T21:11:20.780" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This concept I believe also falls under the term &quot;Coaching Circles&quot; in the agile community. A way to review or even model practices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience it takes a fairly organizationally advanced company to put these practices in place. Where coding katas do have opinion, it's opinion about how to tackle a technical problem. Project management scenario work is much harder, both because it requires a company to recognize a need for improvement and because it is much harder to model out and &quot;test&quot; project concepts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found going outside the company works much better for this. Agile has coaching circles. For straight project management I haven't found a venue for direct practice. However you can usually find a project management networking group that has some focus on skill improvement and you can usually find scenarios being proposed by people facing them in their companies who are looking for ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T21:11:20.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2009" CreationDate="2015-06-22T23:41:32.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I made a very simple Kanban board for myself. The columns are &quot;New&quot;, &quot;Waiting on Me&quot;, &quot;Waiting on someone else&quot;, and &quot;Done&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's great for times when I finally have  chance to catch up with a teammate with limited/tricky availability - everything's right there ready to be discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The categories are broad. I have one row at the top for &quot;Red Hot&quot; tasks. The backlog never stays big for very long. I trash everything from &quot;Done&quot; about once a month, that works well for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tip - This is super handy when the software you use renders nicely on a mobile device.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17569" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T23:41:32.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15254" CreationDate="2015-06-23T05:59:56.170" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding your further &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/15254/how-to-set-and-mantain-a-risk-checklist-for-a-set-of-software-development-projec%23comment20003_15254&quot;&gt;details&lt;/a&gt;, it should be possible to settle such a checklist and keep it updated with little effort. If you can show the need for change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should be you first step. You need to identify &lt;em&gt;the need for change&lt;/em&gt; in order to &lt;em&gt;communicate the expected benefit&lt;/em&gt;. You should find some arguments why everybody should invest a (small) amount of time to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;install the list&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;keep the list updated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;apply the list&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition you arguments should include a point where the PMs life gets easier :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you could ask your PM colleagues to provide their experience to initiate the list. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Afterwards, QA should be you friend. They should see ways how to integrate the list in your existing processes (e.g. during lessons learned acquisition). There should be some kind of intrinsic motivation :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2015-06-23T05:59:56.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15244" CreationDate="2015-06-23T12:25:21.407" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Transparency is key.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been working with remote teams for the last few years, and I have had the most success when you have an easily visible measure of progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's essential to have small pieces of work that are clearly done / not done.  We use scrum and Jira, but the process and tools are less important that what they display.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By breaking things into tasks that are estimated at smaller than 1/2 a day,  you can see progress on a daily basis. It sounds like you are technical, so I would split up and estimate the tasks together with the developer, and make sure you've agreed on the estimates. Some tasks take a lot longer or shorter than anticipated, but that is a talking point for when you next catch up - there should be a reason as to why this was, whether it was technical, personal, or work-related distractions.  With the right tools in place you don't necessarily need to talk daily, as you can see progress from looking at the task board and know where you stand.  I'd suggest a daily call to start with that is only 5 minutes, but you will quickly work out what feels right for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6825" LastEditorUserId="6825" LastEditDate="2015-06-24T08:15:49.277" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T08:15:49.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15261" CreationDate="2015-06-23T12:43:18.873" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ongoing quality and technical criteria should be covered in the teams 'definition of done', rather than a separate piece of work.  This may improve with time, for example at first there may be limited security criteria, however 6 months later it might be decided that all work must meet standard PQR4567 before it is considered done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you separate architecture, refactoring and technical debt into technical stories, they will always be prioritised below a new feature.  &quot;Refactor the dinglebat&quot; will always be lower priority than &quot;Add a new doodlebot&quot; to a business owner, and will always be bumped down the backlog.  If it is something technical but totally new, it is valid to be prioritised by the business owner as a feature.  For example, initially deciding we want to be PQR4567 compliant is adding business value, so that makes a valid story.  Once it is completed, it is added into the definition of done to ensure the compliance remains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to &quot;Adding a new doodlebot&quot;, the team should have the freedom and transparency to explain that in order to complete this they need to refactor the dinglebat, so it will take this much time.  The business owner can't push back on how the team do things, but if this is totally unacceptable they could look at how else they could achieve the objective.  One of the key tenets of agile is not compromising on quality, otherwise you end up with a slowly degrading product and a pile of technical debt that becomes too big to tackle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6825" LastActivityDate="2015-06-23T12:43:18.873" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15280" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15284" CreationDate="2015-06-23T13:49:33.480" Score="1" ViewCount="193" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are in a group of 3 students in computer science, and we are making a website for our customer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, we make a design for the website, and it took us 2 weeks to finish it. We converted it into HTML and CSS for another 2 weeks. We did it this way because some of the group members are not familiar with the tools we are using so they spend time in learning new technologies from PSD to HTML/CSS. When we have the forms we start the coding part. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The motivation behind in creating such a story is to fulfill the needs of our customer for their website. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have 4 sprints:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1st sprint is design (2 weeks)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2nd sprint is html and css (2 weeks)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3rd sprint is database (1 week)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;4th sprint is coding (3 weeks) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I make a story pointing from the 1st sprint to 3rd sprint? I need to make a burndown chart for this, but I cannot figure out what to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17573" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2015-06-23T16:03:49.727" LastActivityDate="2015-06-23T18:49:29.283" Title="Making burndown chart with 4 sprint" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15280" CreationDate="2015-06-23T14:10:21.613" Score="-1" Body="&lt;h1&gt;You are not doing Scrum&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on your question, it doesn't sound like you are doing Scrum at all. In Scrum, the goal of a development team is to produce a potentially shippable product increment that can provide real value to end users.  If you're splitting up sprints into design, HTML/CSS, database, and coding, then you are not in fact doing Scrum but are actually doing waterfall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, your product backlog should contain user stories that represent problems users are having that can then be taken by the development team and turned into working software.  To do this, a single user story could be decomposed into all of the above tasks, database, design, HTML/CSS, coding, etc, but only for a single user story, or for a number of user stories that the team can commit to completing in a single sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clarify, in Scrum, all of these activities are done &lt;em&gt;every sprint&lt;/em&gt;, not split up into different sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Burndown charts&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your burndown chart, the chart itself should represent the amount of story points that are not completed yet in that sprint. This is based on the effort estimation the team does during the Backlog Refinement Meeting with the product owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A user story is not considered &quot;done&quot; until all of the tasks are completed that meets your acceptance criteria and definition of done. Again, this means design, coding, HTML/CSS, database, etc must all be completed in order for a user story to be marked as done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Learn more about Scrum&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moments ago, eight of us in our office just completed the Certified ScrumMaster training from the Scrum Alliance. Before starting Scrum, I recommend a lot of focus on learning what Scrum means. A good place to start is Jeff Sutherland's book &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19288230-scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice The Work in Half the Time&lt;/a&gt;, as well as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v1/scrum-guide-us.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;. If you're really serious, I highly recommend taking the Certified ScrumMaster course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2015-06-23T14:10:21.613" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15280" CreationDate="2015-06-23T15:59:06.240" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If all you are looking for is a burn down chart to measure progress I would suggest breaking each section into tasks, and not worrying about stories.  Each of these tasks can be estimated in hours, and you can burn down the hours of completed tasks.  This will allow you to track progress and fit in with your schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User Stories is a concept that doesn't really apply with how you have split your work - as they are end-to-end pieces of user functionality spanning all of your 4 sprints.  If you create user stories you will have not have completed any until the end with your current schedule, making them useless for tracking progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6825" LastActivityDate="2015-06-23T15:59:06.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15269" CreationDate="2015-06-23T16:04:17.320" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In JIRA Agile the column limits don't actually stop the columns from filling up because each column (in general) represents a workflow state (like In Progress or Done). The limits just alert you when there are too many issues in a certain state. This is important in Kanban, which emphasises limiting work in progress (the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/agile/kanban&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Atlassian intro to Kanban&lt;/a&gt; explains this in more detail).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like what you actually need is an additional status to be added to your workflow. For example, if you find the 'Passed QA' column is filling up with work that's actually been deployed, or moved to UAT then you could add a workflow step for that so that issues go from (e.g) Open &gt; In Progress &gt; Internal Testing &gt; Passed QA &gt; &lt;em&gt;Deployed to UAT&lt;/em&gt; &gt; &lt;em&gt;Deployed to production&lt;/em&gt;. You probably have Resolved and Closed as statuses already so you could possibly use those (if they aren't already used to mean something different) or place another status in between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to handle this (as Prashant alluded to) would be to add a label or component to the issues that you want to hide (like 'ready to deploy' or similar) and then adding a &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AGILE/Configuring+Quick+Filters&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;quick filter&lt;/a&gt;. A JQL query like 'labels not in ('ready to deploy') would remove those issues that didn't have that label.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'd concentrate on the workflow I think. It sounds like you may have identified a process problem, not a software usage problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2015-06-23T16:04:17.320" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15286" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15287" CreationDate="2015-06-23T16:50:04.320" Score="18" ViewCount="2952" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm really confused on how agile projects are budgeted for cost and effort before the project starts. Cause the user stories are never completely discussed and estimated as a practice in agile. So if we do a guess and arrive at a number of story points (by may by the product manager during the inception) which by definition will be far from accurate, how cine the budget is finalized based on that wild guess. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any insights would help...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17578" LastActivityDate="2017-10-19T05:35:41.100" Title="Budgeting in an agile project" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;budget&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15286" CreationDate="2015-06-23T18:46:35.213" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well the easy and probably not completely helpful answer is, agile requires a change in how the business plans. You fund teams, not projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not entirely helpful so let me try and bridge the gap. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The success of an agile project boils down to having a good backlog and dedicated teams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you don't spend time planning a backlog, then you'll never get an accurate estimate, and as a result you won't get a good budget. That is not to say you need to decompose the entire backlog down to its component tasks. You need to decompose enough to get the answer you need. The critical key is the acceptance criteria. You could have a massive epic of &quot;Provide spa services in the hotel&quot; and if you have acceptance criteria for it &quot;Massages, Facials, Mud Baths, Zen Waiting Room&quot; then you can estimate and hence budget.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A well formed and functioning team will be able to take a high level backlog and generate a reasonable estimate of the time to deliver. More importantly, a well formed team working with a good product owner (or product owner) team can prioritize the user stories. Why is this important? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When using Scrum the date is fixed. This allows you to budget for the effort. What then becomes fluid is the scope. Because you prioritized the backlog correctly, if something doesn't get built, it will be one of the least important items (and may well fall into the 60% of features that never get used or used only rarely). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this perfect? No. Then again, a Harvard Business Review study showed that one in six IT projects have a cost overrun of 200% or more. You won't be going over budget with an agile project. You may just not ship everything you planned to and when you dig in, may find that's entirely okay. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a good HBR article on budgeting in agile here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://hbr.org/2014/12/your-agile-project-needs-a-budget-not-an-estimate&quot;&gt;https://hbr.org/2014/12/your-agile-project-needs-a-budget-not-an-estimate&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-06-23T18:46:35.213" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15280" CreationDate="2015-06-23T18:49:29.283" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What will help you in the close future is not the application of a specific framework bus some basic aspects. Those aspects underly almost all frameworks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Know your requirements. It doesn't matter if you document them by &lt;em&gt;User Stories&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;atomic requirements&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make a &lt;em&gt;project plan / task list / backlog&lt;/em&gt;, how to realise those requirements (sounds like you have this already)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stay transparent within your teams regarding current tasks, finished tasks, and upcoming problems by introducing short talks on a regular base using your project plan / task list / backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to foresee upcoming problems by thinking about possible &lt;em&gt;risks&lt;/em&gt; within your team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without knowing too much about agile PM those steps will lead you to a classic &lt;strong&gt;waterfall&lt;/strong&gt; execution, maybe with some agile aspects, e.g. daylies. Regarding your (estimated) experience and your project due date, &lt;strong&gt;this won't be a bad choice&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, as usual when it comes to complex topics. All the aspects I highlighted here are a field of study for their own. If you find one interesting, just dig deeper googeling the buzz-words :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2015-06-23T18:49:29.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15286" CreationDate="2015-06-23T19:51:34.067" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way to think about it is using the classic &quot;accuracy vs. effort&quot; curve. Sure, you can spend significant time planning up front, but you quickly hit diminishing returns on accuracy and will most definitely waste time planning things that won't make it into the final product (placing yourself far along the curve). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you can take an agile mindset and plan just enough to get started, even if that means a budget range or flexible scope as Joel mentioned (being lower on the curve but accepting that it might go up or down by some %). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2015-06-23T19:51:34.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15286" CreationDate="2015-06-24T05:48:07.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my practice, agile projects are set up and budgeted the same way as the regular ones. We have business case / high-level scope, based on this we make a preliminary estimation for cost and schedule, check it against our past experiences (or past project metrics), and document it in the project charter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most agile methods do not cover the entire project lifecycle, so from high level (say, from top management level) projects that are agile are just the same as projects that are executed in a more traditional way. Of course, for expectation management reasons it is good to communicate the methodology (so they will understand and even anticipate scope changes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be one significant difference when estimating agile projects: it is usually a very bad setup if you only have time / budget for mandatory requirements, so either include some optional ones in the initial scope, or have a big (30-40% or even more) reserve for extra features that may come later. This way your team (product owner, etc) will be able to handle scope changes in a flexible way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16711" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T05:48:07.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15044" CreationDate="2015-06-24T09:47:31.110" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are looking for a way that all can participate on improvements of (e.g.) documents made by someone?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This demands transparency regarding the change in order to enable other to check if the change fits their needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will achieve this transparency using a &lt;strong&gt;version control system&lt;/strong&gt;. The version control system should enable everyone to keep their version but to integrate updates of others. This is quite similar to SW-version control so let's assume &lt;strong&gt;branching and merging&lt;/strong&gt; capabilities in the following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The corresponding change process should include an aspect that everyone &lt;strong&gt;document updates&lt;/strong&gt; at least with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reason / motivation of update&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Summary of update&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The process should also include some &lt;strong&gt;notification aspect&lt;/strong&gt; in order to inform all about a new update.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally the process should force some kind of &lt;strong&gt;master branch&lt;/strong&gt; to avoid the other branches to differ away from each other. The process should include a review of the master branch on a regular basis to integrate the &lt;em&gt;best-of&lt;/em&gt; developments in order to achieve a &lt;strong&gt;common baseline&lt;/strong&gt;. The other branches should be always based on the current master / baseline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Realisation might be tricky due to the required branching and merging capability. Assuming this process you could either &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;find a nice software that enables merging of your current kind of data or  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you consider switching to a data format that allows merging with a given tool&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both might not be easy...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-06-24T10:50:01.303" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T10:50:01.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15292" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-24T13:30:15.690" Score="-4" ViewCount="57" Body="&lt;p&gt;So first I'll explain my position. I am a member on the QA team but tasked with majority of the management of the Jira instance. We have launched our product on one platform, and will be starting to develop it shortly on two more platforms. I am primarily concerned with just the bugs on the database for this reason. Tasks etc., are used elsewhere and I only really change those upon request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has already been decided that we will be sticking with just the one project on Jira for this, for various reasons (some things out of my control etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We already have a &quot;platforms&quot; field, where we have a select box for each platform, and this has been used consistently for all bugs so far. I have all my filters, dashboards etc set up to include / filter out the platforms as I require, so all of that is ready to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main thing I am thinking about right now, is our bug creation process and our bug regression process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We regress our bugs at a semi-regular interval, and is often the fallback &quot;if you don't have anything else to do, hit that regression list!&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we will be having, is a process whereby when a bug is created, the creator marks the bug with the platform it was found in. This will be, for arguments sake, platform 1. This bug should show up somewhere that it now needs to be checked in platforms 2 and 3. It should be checked there and then not show up in the lists once checked (whether it effects them or not). We have multiple criteria for bugs entering our regression list at present... it depends partly on its priority, and whether it has been regressed in this build already or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a bug is regressed, a field is updated with the current date to show it was regressed today. I now need all bugs to be regressed on each platform each time. But if I dont make any changes, then it will show up in all 3 regression lists until it is regressed in one platform, then it will disappear from all lists. What I need is for it to only disappear from the platform field it was regressed in...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you go about tackling this? There are multiple ways but want to be pointed in the &quot;better&quot; direction. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Side Note: We are using ondemand instance, so can only use plugins which work here).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17586" LastEditorUserId="15972" LastEditDate="2015-08-24T18:32:38.400" LastActivityDate="2015-08-24T18:32:38.400" Title="Ideas needed on expanding Jira DB to include multiple target platforms" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4570" CreationDate="2015-06-24T14:43:30.633" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have simple format for you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Call Details:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Call for - Subject/Agenda one liner&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Call Medium - Skype/hangout&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Call Attendee -  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Call Date &amp;amp; Time - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 at 8:30 PM IST&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Call Duration - Approximately 50 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Call Summary:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;hr&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;hr&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Action Points:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who will do what&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Next meeting agenda (if any):&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17574" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T14:43:30.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15185" CreationDate="2015-06-24T14:49:32.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Focus from client perspective and business perspective while development.&#xA;This is key point, be a solution expert and not only developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17574" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T14:49:32.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15295" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-24T14:55:21.917" Score="3" ViewCount="414" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are following peer code review practice, where each dev has to review his peer's code before committing to master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a PM how I can monitor that those review comments on github are effective and making sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help appreciated&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in Advance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17574" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T08:14:15.153" Title="How to track Code Review Effectiveness of team members" Tags="&lt;reviews&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15295" CreationDate="2015-06-24T16:30:16.530" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to monitor the effectiveness of the comments, have you considered putting in a code review - review system? So the person being reviewed could rate the helpfulness of the feedback from 1-5 or something. This way, you could measure the effectiveness of the code reviews people are giving without having to make the determination on your own. The rating would be coming from the people who's code was reviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9104" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T16:30:16.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15295" CreationDate="2015-06-24T17:01:29.243" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer is: &lt;strong&gt;you should not to monitor review comments at all&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to trust to your team. It's help to avoid micromanagement (like monitoring review comments).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are Project Manager, you should think about business. If you are Functional Manager, you should think about development process. But only developers (including tech lead and architect) should care about technical details (Code Review exactly about technical details). Technical competence of your development team should be much higher then yours. In other case, your development team have extremely low technical skills.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In additional, I can describe how we make Code Review in our team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, all developers are involved in Code Review. We use Git. When somebody create Pull Request from his fork to origin, every developer of our team should review and approve it. Pull Request should be approved by (amount of developers - 2) developers before merge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach have two advantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Collective code ownership. Everybody knows what colleagues are doing. Everyone  have knowledge about whole code. If somebody made a mistake, part of responsibility for it should take other team members.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Collective mind can find much more weak places and poor decisions in code.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somebody might say that such approach would lead to eternal debates and conflicts. But I never had these problems in my practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can ask more technical details in &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;programmers.stackexchange.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:31:53.287" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T21:55:00.880" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15298" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15306" CreationDate="2015-06-24T18:17:53.143" Score="5" ViewCount="1838" Body="&lt;p&gt;How I should represent Security Requirements if I use User Stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should they be represented like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Agile_Software_Development:_Don&amp;#39;t_Forget_EVIL_User_Stories&quot;&gt;special &quot;evil&quot; stories&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should they be just &quot;invisible&quot; parts of user stories? I.e. if developer implements some User Story, he should already implement it with good security quality.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T13:04:17.493" Title="Security Requirements and User Stories" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15299" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15302" CreationDate="2015-06-24T18:28:21.260" Score="9" ViewCount="842" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have been asked by management to spend a very short period of time to &quot;size&quot; a software project - that is, to give them a very loose ballpark of time to implement the entire thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are three major components (backend, ios, android), each to be the responsibility of one developer with domain expertise. Each person has been given thirty minutes to come up with a number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have been given a one-page requirements document, have extrapolated some coarse user stories, and a coarse flow doc. We're developers, not project managers, and there is no Project Owner as our company is in pre-sales on this project and wants to give the prospective client a loose number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As developers we are uncomfortable with giving numbers on such a limited foundation. During development we generally do Scrum (stories, points, sprints, standups, velocity, etc), so once we're working on a project our estimates come easily and have some basis in reality. In this case though, there is no project yet and we're unsure of how best to proceed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should we handle this? And in future, how could our company do things better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17455" LastEditorUserId="17455" LastEditDate="2015-06-26T19:03:11.233" LastActivityDate="2015-07-02T17:47:01.543" Title="Sizing a potential project rapidly without formal estimation" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4570" CreationDate="2015-06-24T18:49:52.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My company actually ran a &lt;a href=&quot;http://attentiv.com/meeting-minutes-guide/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt; explaining how it's done. In summary, Organize your minutes by agenda item-&gt;discussion topic-&gt;action item (and who it's assigned to). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tips to keep in mind: &#xA;Don't write down everything! You'll just waste time and regret it later. Don't forget to send the minutes to people who couldn't make it, to ensure they're up to date. Finally, keep track of not just action items, but &lt;strong&gt;who&lt;/strong&gt; they're assigned to. Hope that helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17592" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T18:49:52.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9043" CreationDate="2015-06-24T18:54:22.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My company ran a &lt;a href=&quot;http://attentiv.com/america-meets-a-lot/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt; with a bunch of infographics showing how much America meets and how costly it can be (on average, $338 a meeting). If you can quantify meeting attendee's hourly wage, and add it all up for each hour the meeting is, then estimate the actual effectiveness of the meeting (or ineffectiveness), you can come up with some rough and scary numbers. But take a look at the blog post here to get an idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17592" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T18:54:22.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15299" CreationDate="2015-06-24T20:00:25.333" Score="11" Body="&lt;h2&gt;The art of giving a SWAG estimate&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have worked with many developers and development managers who are very reluctant to give an estimate with such limited information and limited time. They have been bitten too many times in the past. The main reason is even if the people asking for such an estimation understand the risks and give an assurance that it will be used carefully, when they pass those numbers on to others, they often tend to be misinterpreted as a fixed price delivery commitment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, management is not going to invest the time and effort to develop a more accurate estimate if there is not a potential business opportunity here. Even more importantly, the client won't invest the time to give you more detailed requirements if the order-of-magnitude cost is not within the range of the potential returns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you break this deadlock? If your company has to do business, you all have to find a way to break this deadlock.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no silver bullet. Here are some suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do your estimation as rigorously as you can with the available information.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When doing the estimation, call out any assumptions that you make explicitly in arriving at the estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use other projects that you have done to compare with this one. If this one feels larger than another project you did, revise the estimate upward accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make a provision for design and feature changes: Something like, &quot;As we learn more about the application, new requirements emerge. There will usually be some features trimmed or expanded. New features will be discovered and added.&quot; Add, say, 20% to the estimate to provide for such changes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Give the high-end of the range: Typically client's finance people will most likely use this to get budgetary approval. If you give a lower number, it will be very painful for everyone to go back to the Board and ask for more money. But, if you save some money later everyone will be happy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use rough terminology: Something like, &quot;With a team of 3 full-time developers, one full-time tester and half-time designer, Scrum Master and Product Owner shared with another team, we can deliver a minimum functional release in 2 quarters. Beyond that, the following 2 major features will take a quarter each.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make design and feature choice recommendations that, if accepted, will save money from the high estimates. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T20:00:25.333" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15299" CreationDate="2015-06-24T20:39:43.843" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remember its an estimate, not a commitment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend the following questions around the estimate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Why are you being given such limited information/time to provide the estimate?&#xA;-What is the estimate you are providing being used for?&#xA;-Who is accountable for the accuracy of the estimate?&#xA;-Who is responsible for the accuracy of the estimate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to the estimate itself.  Provide a confidence measure along with your estimate to communicate to the person using the estimate the risk involved in using a single number to make a decision.  It could go something like...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Well given that we have a 1 page document and 30 minutes to think this through, I estimate the time required to complete this work to be an average of 60 days plus or minus 30 days.  I reserve the right to revise my estimate if new information is made available or if existing information changes.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course its also fair to push back and not provide an estimate if legitimately you feel you have very low confidence in the estimate you provide.  After all, an estimate with 0 confidence is just a guess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T20:39:43.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15295" CreationDate="2015-06-25T08:14:15.153" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can track the stories which were reviewed by the person. And also track issues/bugs which were found in the stories. Now do the math and find out how many bugs (ratio) are found in the code reviewed by person X. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6209" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T08:14:15.153" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15305" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-25T08:35:17.143" Score="-1" ViewCount="95" Body="&lt;p&gt;As we have the ability to create a wiki, it would seem relevant to produce an authoritative list of project management maxims, adages and laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Brook&amp;#39;s Law&quot;&gt;Brook's Law&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Goodhart&amp;#39;s Law&quot;&gt;Goodhart's Law&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2019-04-18T13:00:40.353" Title="Which adages/laws have a direct relevance to the field of Project Management" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-07-06T06:13:16.623" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15298" CreationDate="2015-06-25T09:30:51.030" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Scrum (where User Stories also exist as part of Product Backlog), it is common to see Security, Availability, Speed of response and other non-functional requirements as part of definition of &quot;Done&quot;.&#xA;This kind of coincides with your notion: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I.e. if developer implements some User Story, he should already&#xA;  implement it with good security quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what Definition of &quot;Done&quot; means- all requirements from the list should be fulfilled in order for the User Story to be considered complete or done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More on &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#artifact-transparency-done&quot;&gt;Definition of &quot;Done&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumcrazy.com/Handling+Non+Functional+Requirements+in+User+Stories&quot;&gt;handling non-functional requirements aka NFRs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17432" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T09:30:51.030" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15305" CreationDate="2015-06-25T10:11:04.880" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My two favourites are &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Parkinson%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Parkinson's law&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Murphy%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Murphy's law&lt;/a&gt; (or the more cynical British version, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sod&amp;#39;s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sod's law&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Parkinson's law&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Work expands to fill available time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is such an important rule to understand when you're scheduling. The moment you say 'this is going to take a week', it suddenly takes a week because people think, 'well, I've got a week so I'll just add this thing' or 'well, I've got a week so I'll just kick back for a day or two'. It's quite closely related to the idea of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_plating_(software_engineering)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;gold plating&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Murphy's law&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, when you plan for risk this should always be your starting point. Not necessarily to think that things &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; go wrong but that even edge cases &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; happen in real life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A related adage might be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/d/donaldrums148142.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Donald Rumsfelds' famous quote&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you ignore the horrible English, it actually makes some sense - there are some unlikely risks you can predict (the known unknowns), and some that you can't (the unknown unknowns).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2019-04-18T13:00:40.353" LastActivityDate="2019-04-18T13:00:40.353" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15305" CreationDate="2015-06-25T11:58:59.873" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Amara's Law: We overestimate the benefits of technology in the short run and underestimate its benefits in the long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dilbert Principle: The most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage: management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dunning-Kruger: Unskilled workers suffer from illusory superiority.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finagle's Law:  What can go wrong will go wrong...at the worst possible time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hofstadter's Law:  It will always take longer than expected, even if you take Hofstadter's law into account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Muphrey's Law:  When you criticize someone's writing, the criticism will have a grammar or spelling flaw.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Occam's Razor:  With multiple alternative explanations, the simplest one is usually correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pareto's Principle:  80% of the consequences stem from 20% of the causes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Segal's Law:  A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two is never sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T11:58:59.873" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15298" CreationDate="2015-06-25T14:00:07.000" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can have a look at how Microsoft approaches this topic. They introduced an idea of Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) which is a software development process that can be used to build more secure software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One part of this process is activity called Threat Modelling; it's goal is to create a diagram that encapsulates your application interactions and includes both internal and external factors. It helps to identify spots in your application when security threats may occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On how to apply SDL and Threat Modelling you can read: &lt;a href=&quot;https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/hh855044.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/hh855044.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it answers your questions and will give you at least some overview how to tackle issues like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8767" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T14:00:07.000" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9043" CreationDate="2015-06-25T14:23:24.093" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a similar issue at a previous company, mostly in the form of separate weekly meetings for each department - art, design, dev, QA, etc. (this was a game development company). It was clearly causing what I refer to as &quot;thrash&quot; due to the context switching, preparing for/ramping down from meetings, and not being able to stay in flow. The worst part was the meetings were at different times and days, so true collaboration opportunities were very limited. On top of that we had ad-hoc meetings, 1-on-1's, and so on which fragmented everyone's time even more. The initial evidence was a lot of internal blockers brought up at standups, a lot of conversations around when team members could coordinate, and a general feeling that our teams weren't going very fast (our feeling, not management's :) ). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone in the org knew of hard data around the consequences of context switching, and we had even done group exercises to illustrate how multi-tasking causes problems, so most of the &quot;proof&quot; needed was simply showing that we were experiencing that thrash. I took a few snapshots of the teams' previous weeks' availability in Outlook, and pointed out to the department heads how rare our &quot;100% team-available&quot; time was throughout a typical sprint. We ended up working together to consolidate the recurring meetings to one day every two weeks. It was daunting to have that many meetings in a row, but we treated it as an experiment. We knew it would be difficult to gather hard data around the changes, but we did note that the teams' velocity increased without any apparent new negative effects. For anecdotal evidence, most team members said they liked it better, felt more productive, and in some cases, found themselves having to create their own break times throughout a day as a sort of &quot;ease-out proxy&quot; for not having meetings. The big-meeting day started out feeling heavy and strange, but eventually it just became more of a &quot;day of knowledge-sharing&quot; and people used any spare time that day catching up on small tasks that could be done in isolation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T14:23:24.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15311" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15313" CreationDate="2015-06-25T14:27:08.803" Score="2" ViewCount="66" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am using MS Project 2010 and trying to align four tasks correctly when importing into a master project. I created my template and the dates are correct, but when entering as a subproject into the master project the dates change. The scenario has task 1, task 2, task 3 and task 4. Task 4 needs to be manually scheduled and task 1, 2 and 3 need to be before task 4, but they need to be as late as possible. So I set 1, 2 and 3 to be as late as possible but I set them all as predecessors to task 4. When importing as a subproject, it moves 1,2 and 3 to the very end of the master project, after task 4. How can I fix this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17598" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T19:46:19.623" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T19:46:19.623" Title="Issue with task scheduling and ordering" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15312" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15318" CreationDate="2015-06-25T14:32:23.523" Score="6" ViewCount="10948" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read numerous Project Management SE questions on this subject, as well as done a fair share of Googling. I am aware that different incarnations of this question have been addressed before, but I have not found something that provides me a clear answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am the PM in a 20-person team, including some remote resources. We develop or maintain about 10 applications. About half the team works on most of the applications, which are stable and have no real product owner or roadmap except for production fixes or improvements that the team comes up with internally. The other half works on one or two applications that are highly impacted and require modification when the company comes out with a new product every few months. Those one or two applications also have production fixes and improvements that the team comes up with internally. (We're basically at liberty to modify them however we want, as long as the business continues to be supported.) I'm new to the team so I don't know yet how much those applications can be future-proofed to mitigate the sudden urgent modifications. There is some overlap between the two sub-teams but the applications are sufficiently different that resources are not completely interchangeable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team has been trying to adopt scrum for a few months prior to my arrival, but with practically no product owners, no cohesive long-term vision for the applications as a whole, and little interdependence among the breakfixes, I don't know if scrum is the right way to go. I've read about combining kanban with scrum but can't seem to wrap my head around it. Scrumban sounds nice but it is so much newer and less mature that I am hesitant to adopt it. What would be the best way to manage this team so the load is level across all resources, we work at a sustainable pace, and we have a somewhat-defined goal to guide our development efforts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13325" LastActivityDate="2016-03-17T06:55:14.527" Title="Applying agile in a mostly operations/support environment" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;process-improvement&gt;&lt;process-engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15311" CreationDate="2015-06-25T15:24:13.397" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;1,2, &amp;amp; 3 should be auto-scheduled. 4 Should be manual-scheduled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Drop all current predecessors for these. Then make 4 a predecessor of each of 1,2 &amp;amp; 3, using a S-F constraint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to set &quot;Finish as late as possible&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now when you manually reschedule 4, all the others will &quot;follow&quot; it and butt up against it to the left. It is common to think that &quot;predecessor&quot; means &quot;before&quot;, but for MS-Project scheduling it means &quot;timing relies on&quot;. Because you are saying that the timing of 1,2 &amp;amp; 3 relies on the timing of 4, 4 has to be the predecessor and you use the constraint type to indicate &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; they all rely on 4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T15:24:13.397" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15312" CreationDate="2015-06-25T15:41:50.580" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum is not Agile. :) It is one way to do agile, it doesn't fit all situations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on what you've described, a straight Kanban approach is going to work much better for you. When supporting a live service, when you need to make a change, it is often something that needs to be changed &quot;yesterday&quot;. Waiting for the next sprint to add it to the backlog is not going to cut it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why Kanban? &#xA;- Kanban does not have iterations. Work is controlled by work in progress or &quot;WIP&quot;.&#xA;- Kanban doesn't have a set planning meeting. You plan as it is needed. &#xA;- Kanban still has a rank ordered backlog.&#xA;- New items can be added to the backlog at any time and can be added to the to of the queue, thus allowing urgent issues to get priority. &#xA;- Work is controlled by the WIP. If you've got six developers, then your &quot;Doing&quot; column probably shouldn't have a WIP of more than 3. This controls your cycle time and ensures issues get worked quickly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some notes: &#xA;- It is still important to practice good user story creation, even on urgent items. Making sure you review acceptance tests in detail can make the difference between fixing a bug once and fixing it three times. &#xA;- Practicing good XP practices like TDD are going to help you a lot. It will shorten cycle times, reduce rework and improve quality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T15:41:50.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15312" CreationDate="2015-06-25T16:03:15.193" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few aspects in your situation that you need to consider before deciding on best process for in your situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You said that you do not have identified product owners, and long-term vision for the applications. You need to create a vision and plan for the application whether you use agile or waterfall method for managing the development – you should work with the stakeholders, especially the sponsor, to identify product owners and define the plan. In scrum, being an iterative process, you need to define in detail at least enough features for the team to work on during the next sprint. You should also have a number of features loosely defined for future sprints. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You indicated that you have a 20-person team.  An optimal size of a scrum development team is 3 to 9 persons.  If you choose to use scrum, you should consider create multiple scum teams that could work on separate applications, or separate features from the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The scrum development team should conduct testing of the completed features during the sprint and fix any defects before the iterations of the application is released at the end of the sprint.  But, for defects defected after the sprint iteration is released, you need to work with the product owner to determine whether the defect can be added to the current or future sprint, or whether the defect is critical enough to need an immediate resolution, which may often be the case.  For these urgent defects, you would need a different process, outside of the strict scrum process, to handle urgent defects.  Kanban may be a good fit for urgent bug fixes and for doing a triage on any defects detected after the iteration release. You may dedicating some resources to focus on these defects, but to ensure that these resources have broad understanding of your applications and since few people want to always work of fixing defects only, you should probably consider rotating the resources between development and defect fixing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The difference between Kanban and Scrum is that Kanban is a continuous-flow ‘pull’ process, which scrum is actually a hybrid between a ‘pull’ and a ‘push’ process.  A ‘pull’ process completely demand-driven and therefore a ‘pull’ process, as such Kanban, is a great for customer service requests where the turnaround time is paramount.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17285" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T16:03:15.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15299" CreationDate="2015-06-25T16:26:15.400" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, you are not doing estimation. You are doing &lt;strong&gt;guesstimation&lt;/strong&gt;. This is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guesstimate&quot;&gt;wiki article&lt;/a&gt; about this term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Guesstimate is defined as an estimate made without using adequate or&#xA;  complete information, or, more strongly, as an estimate arrived at by&#xA;  guesswork or conjecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words: obviously, guesstimation is something between guess and estimate. &lt;strong&gt;You have to rely more on intuition&lt;/strong&gt; when you are doing guesstimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Main point (as was said in other answers) to let the managers know, that it is guesstimation. It is not even estimation (as WBW said), &lt;strong&gt;It's more like forecast!&lt;/strong&gt; Like weather forecast. With the same accuracy ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T16:26:15.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15312" CreationDate="2015-06-25T16:54:32.883" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Kanban for maintenance and Scrum for development&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What would be the best way to manage this team so the load is level&#xA;  across all resources, we work at a sustainable pace, and we have a&#xA;  somewhat-defined goal to guide our development efforts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were you I will start with the following &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man_proposal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;straw man proposal&lt;/a&gt; and refine it from there:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;About half the team works on most of the applications, which are&#xA;  stable and have no real product owner or roadmap except for production&#xA;  fixes or improvements that the team comes up with internally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the team doing maintenance work  Kanban is a better fit. You may need the following states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To Do&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Progress&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Under Verification&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Awaiting Deployment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deployed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Verified in Prod&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you can consider 3 swim lanes as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;High Severity Production Bugs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other Bugs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Enhancements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The other half works on one or two applications that are highly&#xA;  impacted and require modification when the company comes out with a&#xA;  new product every few months. Those one or two applications also have&#xA;  production fixes and improvements that the team comes up with&#xA;  internally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the team doing mainly development work Scrum is likely to be a better fit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can designate one person as the Scrum Master and another person as the Product Owner. These need not be full time roles. This Scrum Master can also manage the Kanban Board, help set WIP limits, make tweaks based on the Cumulative Flow Chart and help resolve impediments for the other team as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the size of this Scrum team exceeds the Scrum Guide limit (see relevant extract below) consider splitting into two teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Having more than nine members requires too much coordination... The Product Owner and Scrum Master roles are not included in this count unless they are also executing the work of the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to keep the teams relatively stable because teams take time to gel and become productive. However, you can make occasional adjustments based on projected workload.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T16:54:32.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15312" CreationDate="2015-06-25T17:43:11.177" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on past experiences, I would agree with the other posts above and recommend starting with a flow-based approach like a kanban board for the ongoing support apps, and maybe look at Scrum for the ones in heavier ongoing/feature development. I would also recommend starting with a board that matches your actual step by step flow and not an idealized flow, even if it looks really wonky - it will be a key part of the transparency you gain from kanban. I also think that transparency will immediately give you and the team discussion points for how to better organize into sub-teams, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I don't agree that you need a designated Product Owner, particularly for the ongoing support stuff, and especially if the team is already showing product ownership. Over the last few years I've come to realize/support distributed product ownership as a very healthy thing; similar to a good Scrum Master aiming to make themselves obsolete by showing a team how to fully embrace and thrive with kaizen, a good (single) PO should aim to make themselves obsolete through radiation incredibly strong vision and providing ongoing alignment tools that everyone can adopt and move forward with.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, it is much harder to do on a vision-is-everything product vs. something in maintenance, but it should still be a long-term goal. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T17:43:11.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15319" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-25T19:13:53.537" Score="3" ViewCount="1596" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand formal Agile-Scrum tasking as the practice of documenting tasks and estimating task hours for each story or product backlog item a team commits to in an iteration.  A task defines part of the &quot;how&quot; the story will get done.  Usually I see teams task out their stories during or soon after an iteration planning session.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you still following Scrum if a team doesn't formally task out and track task progression in an iteration?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've worked with several, what I consider, mature teams that don't task at all and work solely at the story &amp;amp; story point estimation level in managing their commitments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the benefits of not formally tasking?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the risks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2018-10-06T14:39:41.897" Title="Is formal tasking required on a Scrum Team" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15008" CreationDate="2015-06-25T19:49:27.950" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I eventually added a custom field &lt;strong&gt;Verifying By&lt;/strong&gt; that is of type &quot;User Picker&quot;. I also added an additional column called &lt;strong&gt;Verifying&lt;/strong&gt; that contains tasks that are done and picked by someone for verification. So this column was placed between &quot;Done&quot; and &quot;Closed&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also added two post-functions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Done -&gt; Verifying By&lt;/em&gt; - sets &lt;strong&gt;Verifying By&lt;/strong&gt; to the value of the current user (one who is making the transition)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Verifying By -&gt; Done | Blocked&lt;/em&gt; - clears &lt;strong&gt;Verifying By&lt;/strong&gt; field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final step was to show this &lt;strong&gt;Verifying By&lt;/strong&gt; field for issues on the Board - that was made in Board settings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These all together solve the initial goals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to check if the task is picked for verification&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;who picked the task for verification&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17242" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2015-11-27T10:13:14.853" LastActivityDate="2015-11-27T10:13:14.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15321" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15322" CreationDate="2015-06-25T21:28:34.140" Score="5" ViewCount="12782" Body="&lt;p&gt;When dividing 100 people into scrum teams, who should take responsibility for putting individual people into teams, should it be Scrum Master, Product Owner, or should people be allowed to emerge teams on their own?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17602" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-07-01T13:35:34.327" LastActivityDate="2015-07-02T12:22:05.273" Title="Who should be responsible for dividing Scrum teams?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-of-scrums&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15321" CreationDate="2015-06-25T22:52:41.123" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;So many answers to this. It is going to depend on your organization. Someplace like Zappos or Valve is totally self-organized and even self-directed. That said, lets go with your average software development company as your &quot;average&quot; answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you still have two answers, &quot;now&quot; and &quot;future&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a 100 developers you're talking a large organization. Even if you run very lean on staffing, you probably have over 200 people in the company total. Keep 150 in mind for now as that's important. After 150 you go beyond the human mind's &quot;tribe&quot; limit. If your company is over 150 then not everyone can remain connected. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focusing on the 100 developers, you're talking about 11 to 15 scrum teams. Not 10. That's important as team size is based on real size. After eight it becomes increasingly harder to manage communication and collaboration. There is a reason phone numbers in the US are seven base digits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Now&quot;-&lt;/strong&gt; Scrum Masters, Product Owners and the team should all absolutely have input into the process. However, in your average software organization, management will need to have the final decision. At this point in an agile transformation you're still sorting out a lot and dealing with legacy models. You also need to address the product needs. If all the UI guys self-organize into a team, they won't have skills they need to form a good team (not to mention the lack of QA). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start by understanding what you need to do. You may have some specific requirements, like an API, that drive make-up of certain teams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then understand the people. It can be very helpful to have everyone in the organization take some kind of communication profile. Personally I recommend DISC. You don't want to staff a team with all one communication type, it will fail, regardless of the communication type. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, understand what's working now. You likely have people that work well together already. Try and leverage that to shorten the team forming cycle (forming, storming, norming, performing). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Future&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; - The first step to a future model is to make it so teams have a mechanism to request and be granted that someone be moved from their team. The team is going to be measured as a team. If they have someone that doesn't fit or isn't doing their share of the work, the team needs to know they can ask for that person to be moved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later down the road you can move to a more flexible model, that allows teams to propose new formations. That though is it's own level of transformation and beyond what I believe you want right now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T22:52:41.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15319" CreationDate="2015-06-25T23:07:42.010" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some would argue you are following Scrum even more if you don't use Tasks. What's happened is over time we've had a merging of terms and through that a duplication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coincidentally enough, Mike Cohn &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/you-dont-need-a-complicated-story-hierarchy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wrote on this&lt;/a&gt; just yesterday (June 23, 2015). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum guide talks about &quot;tasks&quot;. &quot;User Stories&quot; came from Extreme Programming. As the first two agile frameworks they have begun to merge and share terms over time. A task and a user story should be the same thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I think has happened, is a fairly classic split between those generating the requirements and those building the requirements. Product Owners would define the user story. These stories were often poorly translated product requirements. As a result they lacked detail and were often high level. During planning, the developers would then break down stories into tasks (or developer tasks) to break out all the work that needed to be done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should be happening though, is better user story creation. If a developer needs to break a story down into tasks, then the story probably hasn't been decomposed enough. Product Owner and development need to work together on backlog grooming. User stories should be fully &quot;ready&quot; before development commits to them in a sprint (we are in fact starting to see the term &quot;definition of ready&quot; to note this). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task Hours is again another invention of organizations moving from traditional to agile. It can be useful early in an agile transformation, as it helps to create that bridge in metrics and reporting. However it can be a crutch and lead to estimates falling back into traditional models which didn't work so well. This has lead to relativistic estimating (comparing one story to another, instead of estimating a single story). There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00SS794IQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;$0.99 book on Amazon&lt;/a&gt; that discusses this method. I give a brief outline of the exercise on my blog in &lt;a href=&quot;http://thegorillaisnamedhogarth.blogspot.com/2012/02/how-much-for-that-gorilla-in-window.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;How much for that gorilla in the window&quot;.&lt;/a&gt;`&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion:&lt;/strong&gt; Decompose your user stories down to something that can be done in 2 days (for a two week sprint). Assign clear acceptance criteria so developers know how to get to done (needed for &quot;ready&quot;). Use Relativistic Estimating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ditch the tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T23:07:42.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15324" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15325" CreationDate="2015-06-26T01:16:44.543" Score="2" ViewCount="172" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a project manager with a Prince2, Agile Scrum background working for a company which almost solely utilises Prince2 for managing its projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are about a 1/4 of the way through a 8 month project and the Team Managers (Work Package Owners) are consistently not providing checkpoint reports for their work packages. When they do provide them days late, they almost always ask for additional time to complete the work and provide either no or very poor justification for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The boss of the Team Managers while supportive (towards me) does not have any impact on this problem. It has been going on for months and years under previous projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides from going and working elsewhere do you have any suggestions for dealing with this? I am interested in both the people side and also the project management mechanisms/processes/tools side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;EDIT&lt;/em&gt; The reason why they don't provide the reports would vary depending on who you were to ask. The Team Managers are busy (we all are) but being busy doesn't mean you stop doing your job and in the event you could not complete it in time, you would let the PM know. I believe they don't provide or delay the reports because (1) they are not actually managing the work assigned and its hard to report on as a result and (2) that the weekly checkpoint report provides a audit trail of sorts of the frequent delays which doesn't reflect well (see point 1)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17135" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-06-26T11:29:39.383" LastActivityDate="2016-02-09T22:24:29.013" Title="No / Late Checkpoint reports" Tags="&lt;prince2&gt;&lt;work-environment&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15324" CreationDate="2015-06-26T08:13:18.270" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds to me like this specific issue is probably the tip of the iceberg. Although the company has clearly publically invested in deployment of a formal PM methodology, it sounds like there is no real appetite for the structure and control it provides, either &quot;at the coalface&quot; or with the management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply put, if there is no appetite for enforcing a simple and useful procedure like regular Checkpoint Reports within the management, then you will not be able to achieve it yourself no matter how much you plead, argue or logically debate. If it has always been done this way &quot;for years&quot; then that is the way it is done at the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would take a paradigm shift within the company management and culture in order to effect such a change. Having said that, it is possible to deploy small incremental change by stealth in such an environment but it takes a &lt;em&gt;long&lt;/em&gt; time. You have to start with the tiniest of change, that appears to benefit someone in some way. If you can make someone's life easier with a small procedural change then they will likely adopt it (why wouldn't you opt for an easier life?) and you can build on that over time, covertly, until you entrench new ways of working. The problem you currently face is that completion of Checkpoint Reports &lt;em&gt;does not&lt;/em&gt; make their life easier, it actually makes it harder for no benefit or gain on their part. Since no-one has ever, and no-one will ever force them to comply, they won't do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; real appetite within management for more control and structure (which is often brought about by a need to be more accurate with job estimation, delivery dates, quality issues and rework costs etc.) then the new direction &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; come from the top.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly Project Management is probably just seen as an annoyance within the structure that pesters the workers and doesn't deliver value to the management (otherwise they would enforce better practises).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If management see the benefits of structured PM (and perhaps it will take you to show them these benefits) then work with them to determine what, from the methodology, is mandatory for your organisation, what would be nice to have in your organisation and what is irrelevant to your org. Don't try and deploy every part of Prince 2 just to be Prince 2 compliant, that will waste a lot of time and money&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If management has no interest in this then determine if you are in for the long haul and work out where you need to get to procedurally and lots of little steps in between, then deploy them slowly, embedding each one properly before you move on to the next one. You probably will not want to be transparent about this plan- no-one wants to feel like they are being manipulated by stealth!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If neither of the above are likely to work for you, then you just have to work out whether you can live with the current systems or leave&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is intensely unsatisfying, and a miserable existence to boot, for a process and detail driven Project Manager to have to manage an unstructured and uninterested chaotic process. I know, I've been there. No good ever comes of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-06-26T08:13:18.270" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15044" CreationDate="2015-06-26T08:37:17.613" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A separate platform can be made on technologies like Ruby on Rails or WordPress (CMS). It'll allow you to build a customized platform; your Coaches can manage each &amp;amp; every functionality by themselves. A web platform build on RoR will be much more responsive and interactive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17606" LastActivityDate="2015-06-26T08:37:17.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15324" CreationDate="2015-06-26T10:48:21.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suspect not providing checkpoint reports is one of many symptoms that you are experiencing.  It appears your organization has a very low to non existent PM capability maturity.  Also, it sounds like your eight-month project is not a material project for your company.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The good news, you can only go up from here.  Notwithstanding trying to make your current project successful, I would devote a lot of time pitching the benefits of increased PM maturity to the most senior folks of your company.  For them, it could come down to a lack of understanding how good it could be, in terms of decreased costs, meeting deadlines, improving revenues, with even one step higher in maturity.  Build the sponsorship; that has to be the first step.  Once you have that, which includes a level of authority for you (which translates to &quot;get on board or get out of the way&quot;), you can develop your plan to build maturity over time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Re-frame in your mind this as an opportunity.  You get the biggest chunks of value moving from zero maturity up the first two or three steps.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-06-26T10:48:21.127" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15328" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-26T12:05:01.727" Score="1" ViewCount="107" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to estimate for a project, with each resource work for some hours and i have total hours for project. How can derive the exact completion date ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eg.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Resource 1 - 25 tasks - 240 hrs&lt;br/&gt; &#xA;Resource 2 - 20 tasks - 210 hrs&lt;br/&gt; &#xA;Resource 3 - 15 tasks - 280 hrs&lt;br/&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So each day requires 8 hours working, and excluding weekends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can i derive the date of completion of the project with this data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NOTE:&lt;/strong&gt; I don't know the sequence of the task, i.e, predecessor or successor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17610" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-06-26T12:53:23.910" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T18:58:46.407" Title="How to estimate a project without understanding the network path?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15328" CreationDate="2015-06-26T12:56:53.557" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure how you can know the duration of a work package without knowing what the predecessors for the work package are. I suspect that you need to back up and restart planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First identify the work packages/deliverables.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Then when you know the work packages, determine the dependencies. A must come before B.  B and E must come before F, but C&amp;amp;D can come after F.  Probably easiest to work backwards - Z is the final product; I can't produce Z without W and X. X requires B,C, F, &amp;amp; Q.  W requires B, D, G, M and P.  and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, and only then, consider the duration and work hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Update&lt;/em&gt;: @DavidEspina points out that for most projects you &lt;strong&gt;can&lt;/strong&gt; estimate the project duration without knowledge of path.  You can use reference estimates of other projects.  In that case the information you supply about resource hours is not relevant to the estimation process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fundamentally though if you don't know the sequence of the activities, then you do not know which activities can take place in parallel. I suppose you could estimate that the true project completion date is somewhere between the longest work package (if all work packages were performed in parallel with no dependencies &amp;amp; no resource conflicts) and the sum of the duration of all work packages (if all packages are linear and have only one precedent and one successor).  But the question leaves me with the impression that you don't even have the work packages defined, just some resource hours to tasks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Re-reading the question for the third time, it might be possible to build an estimate based on the most constrained resource - Resource 1 is required for 25 tasks.  Let's assume that resource 1 is 80% dedicated to our project (20% overhead).  That probably puts a lower bound on the project completion date - it is probable that most (or all) of Resource 1's work will occur on the critical path. That gives you &lt;em&gt;an&lt;/em&gt; estimate of project completion date.  It is likely that there are &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; tasks where Resource 1 does not work, but without knowledge of work packages, I can't tell if these tasks would occur on the critical path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-06-26T16:00:36.717" LastActivityDate="2015-06-26T16:00:36.717" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15324" CreationDate="2015-06-26T13:22:34.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Get a bunch of open-minded people involved in the problem (or those invested in solving it) into a room, grab a whiteboard, and keep asking why - map out the symptoms, root causes and &quot;vicious cycles&quot; as nodes/links until you feel you've found the true origins, then ask yourselves if they can be fixed or not. i.e. root cause analysis (&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.crisp.se/2009/09/29/henrikkniberg/1254176460000&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.crisp.se/2009/09/29/henrikkniberg/1254176460000&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many times it will lead to things like &quot;because management doesn't trust anyone below them&quot;, &quot;because most employees don't care about what we make&quot;, or &quot;because it creates job security for Bob&quot;, so be forewarned. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2015-06-26T13:22:34.127" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15328" CreationDate="2015-06-26T16:18:50.873" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The absolute minimum duration for the project is 280 hours = 7 weeks at 40 hours per week, assuming that the three resources all work in parallel with no gaps between tasks for any of them, tasks can't overlap, and that they can't pick up each others' work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The maximum time could be as much as 730 hours (the sum of 240 + 210 + 280 hours) = 18.25 weeks, and even that is subject to the following assumptions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The three resources can only work on their own tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no parallel working&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tasks run on without gaps between them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each resource can only work on one task at a time &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would expect that each of the above models is flawed, but without knowing a great deal more about the project, it is not possible to give a definitive answer to your question, which is about finding the exact completion date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to declare a target date, then you may wish to choose any date between these limits, set a range of possible dates on either side of it to recognise the level of uncertainty in the plan, and qualify it with as many assumptions as you can come up with. You should validate these assumptions, which will allow you to refine the target completion date and reduce the level of uncertainty in the estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is an argument that states that the only true date is the one that you see in the rear view mirror after the project has been completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastEditorUserId="301" LastEditDate="2015-06-27T18:58:46.407" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T18:58:46.407" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15332" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-26T19:15:12.327" Score="2" ViewCount="757" Body="&lt;p&gt;Entering an Actual Start that is earlier than the Scheduled Start, say by 1 hour, is adding the 1 hour to the duration field instead of decrementing the finish date by 1 hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17614" LastActivityDate="2019-03-11T13:02:08.063" Title="Actual Start Date Field Behavior" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15333" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15335" CreationDate="2015-06-27T02:37:09.227" Score="1" ViewCount="221" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am running a Prince2/Waterfall project that is currently about 1/4 of the way through a 8 month timeline. I have been having trouble with Work Package owners not providing me with Checkpoint reports/completing the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an extension of my question here, which can provide some additional background &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/15324/no-late-checkpoint-reports&quot;&gt;No / Late Checkpoint reports&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without these Checkpoint reports I don't know the up to date status of the whole project and that in turn means i cannot properly manage the project/report to the Project Board etc. How would you suggest I call out/manage this? I am interested in the more technical project management side of things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have included some options lower down in this post and to help you understand them better i will describe the high level project structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;High Level Project Structure&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Board:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sponsor = Client, Snr Supplier = My company, Snr Users (2) = My company.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is where a sanitised view of the project is presented/discussed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It may seem odd that that Snr Users are also from my company and not the client but thats how it is. In actual fact the Snr Users are the Work Package owners. Not the most ideal situation, but its a fact at this stage and will not change.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Steering Committee:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Made up of the Project Board minus the client (Sponsor) plus a Senior PM.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is a internal group, somewhat hidden from the client.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is where the PM can disclose the true state of the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I report to both the Board and the Steering Committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Here are some options I can see:&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Report to the Project Board (as a significant issue) that the Senior Supplier is not delivering and let the Project Board, especially the Project Sponsor put the pressure on the Senior Supplier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thoughts on this approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I work for the Senior Supplier, and they will not appreciate this (I would be disciplined or fired i expect)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I should represent and support the company i work for (assuming no ethical lines are crossed)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would potentially solve my problem as there would now be a consequence for not providing Checkpoint's/completing work, so the Work Package owners would (hopefully) lift their game.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Put the project into exception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thoughts on this approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm not sure that this the best/appropriate approach to call it out using project management techniques?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I could only report this to the Steering committee (see option1) and I am not expecting anything to come of it (Low company project management maturity and interest in it).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't see how I can put the project into exception only for one group.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Report as an issue to Steering Committee, record Steering Committee's decision in minutes/decision log (continue to do this throughout project)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thoughts on this approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm not sure that this the best/appropriate approach to call it out using project management techniques?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It provides an audit trail to protect myself to some extent&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It puts me in the potentially difficult situation of concealing the true status of the project to the Project Board (Client).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is kind of the same as option 5 except to call out/report to the Steering Committee and document the path of what has gone on (I can inform the powers that be, but if they choose to continually ignore then thats their choice).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is the option that is closest aligned to what I am currently doing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do nothing, let things continue as is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thoughts on this approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I may go insane ;-)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't think its the professional thing to do. I'm being paid to manage the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project will be delivered overtime, overbudget and likely with quality issues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project may fail (by various definitions) and I may be the one held accountable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;So...&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think of these options? Do you have any other suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I am asking this from two main angles:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I want to manage the project in a diligent and professional way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I want to protect myself, I have experienced similar situations where the PM was left out to dry when things have turned visibly &amp;quot;bad&amp;quot; for the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm sure I will face this again and am keen to have some ways of dealing with it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17135" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2015-07-18T03:52:28.113" Title="No Checkpoint Reports" Tags="&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;prince2&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;&lt;progress-report&gt;&lt;work-environment&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15333" CreationDate="2015-06-27T03:49:43.077" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My understanding of the PMs job is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PM is responsible for the success of the project. The PM is responsible to provide necessary information to the management in order to allow &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; decisions. If something out of the control or capacity of the PM hinders the PM doing or achieving this, the PM has to escalate this information also. PM is responsible to protect the project team (in the sense of not allowing unfair treatment).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, gathering information about the project status is within the PMs capabilities (functional and personal).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within your last question, you received good answers what to do to get the requested reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be success with your project &lt;strong&gt;you don't need the reports but the corresponding data&lt;/strong&gt;. Due to the fact that this data seems to be really critical, invest time and effort to gather it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here comes the PM techniques:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A main part of the PMs job is usually walking around and talking to people in order got get an appropriate view on the project insides. So here are some possibilities to do this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set up short stand up meetings (daylies, weeklies)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Visit your WP managers and get the info direct. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Schedule 1:1 meetings (15min) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But&lt;/strong&gt;: Do this with the following mindset:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They don't know their benefit in providing you the required data (you can take decisions simplifying their work life)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They don't know the impact of the required data on the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They are afraid being harmed, &lt;em&gt;as you are&lt;/em&gt;. Start working on this cultural aspect by showing them that and how you care.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be supportive&lt;/strong&gt;, e.g. by asking them what you can do to get the data.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T03:49:43.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15333" CreationDate="2015-06-27T03:56:39.410" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the strictly technical point of view:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rise a risk. In this case the risk might be &lt;em&gt;project failure due to insufficient control&lt;/em&gt;. The cause of the risk is &lt;em&gt;missing or late reports&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perform a qualitative risk analysis (high probability, high impact)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perform a quantitative risk analysis (will cost xy)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Don't forget to include team members / experts during the risk investigation&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify risk mitigations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Monitor and work on the risks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Report major risks to the steering board and ask them how to deal with those (accept, take actions, ...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-07-18T03:52:28.113" LastActivityDate="2015-07-18T03:52:28.113" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15328" CreationDate="2015-06-27T04:12:42.043" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can't derive the date of completion in a perfect way. But you can do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Best case duration: 280h assuming full parallelization and not potting additional resources on the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Worst case duration: 730h assuming no floating time + an amount for drawbacks or risks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is your idea or feeling on the real project duration? Guess if you don't have former data, experience, or experts. That's you most likely duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apply &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-point_estimation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;three point estimation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, due to the really uncertain assumptions, the &lt;strong&gt;estimation&lt;/strong&gt; is quite vague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-06-27T06:21:53.630" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T06:21:53.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15080" CreationDate="2015-06-27T17:52:55.417" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just for completeness. This seems to be a helpful answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check this blog post, where one writes about his experiences incl. introducing more roles: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ontheagilepath.net/2013/09/delegation-poker-and-delegation-board.html?m=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ontheagilepath.net/2013/09/delegation-poker-and-delegation-board.html?m=1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T17:52:55.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15338" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-27T22:23:37.613" Score="2" ViewCount="3024" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once all user stories are written down for functional requirements, we still need to define some other requirements as &lt;strong&gt;communication with a remote server&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;navigation&lt;/strong&gt;. This whole process could be defined as &lt;code&gt;As an user I want my information to be available in all of my devices&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;As an user I want an intuitive navigation so that I dont have to read a manual&lt;/code&gt;. But the work to be done is extensive enough to be captured in a single user story, which leads me to think that there is a structure for requirements like the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a communication interface to interact with server's API&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define a ui navigation structure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question would be if how do you write down specifications that are not necessary user expectation of the system? Is there any kind of &quot;Architectura user stories&quot; or similar?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17593" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T12:55:08.740" Title="User Stories structure for architectural requirenments" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15338" CreationDate="2015-06-28T16:19:17.017" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As an user I want an intuitive navigation so that I don't have to read a manual&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is not a good user story because it is difficult to define what that would look like. You would never want an unintuitive navigation so there doesn't seem to be any point in calling out an intuitive one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likely in this you need to drill down to the specific features that the Product Owner thinks the user desires. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As an user I want my information to be available in all of my devices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to be a valid user story, but you've already said it's too large. Therefore, you should break it down. Without knowing the product you're developing, I think you have to look at the types of information and the devices you support. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The minimum set of features you need to support is smaller than you think. You should spend some effort thinking how to incrementally deliver the feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you describe as, &quot;Architectural Stories&quot; do not seem to fit with the typical way people define stories. They're problematic because they are, non-negotiable and depended on by other stories. The product owner cannot say the don't want them. See &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;INVEST criteria&lt;/a&gt; for more information on what defines a good user story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6608" LastActivityDate="2015-06-28T16:19:17.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1397" CreationDate="2015-06-28T20:44:50.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, Possible but very difficult if your teams do not have any overlap in office hours in their time-zone.&#xA;We are working with UK from Canada, so there are some overlap hours where we can have team meetings together.&#xA;If the teams are dispersed in different non-overlap time-zones, then definitely, there may be some &quot;waste&quot; or &quot;bottleneck&quot; in the communications.&#xA;If is still possible but with some sacrifices on the team, some one will need to join the call in their evening time while the team in other geo are at work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most effective communication is face to face communication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17630" LastActivityDate="2015-06-28T20:44:50.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3679" CreationDate="2015-06-28T20:50:53.003" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If there are good tracking and reporting infra-structures as well as ability to conduct web-conferences/video conferencing . There should be overlap of working hours or else you as PM will need to work out-side of your work hours when conduct meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We used Rational Team Concert which is really good to track stories, task, problem reports , create dashboards and assign tasks, doing queries and provide reporting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17630" LastActivityDate="2015-06-28T20:50:53.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15338" CreationDate="2015-06-29T15:39:48.263" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two answers to this, but let's start with the one that seems most applicable to the examples you've given:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Definition of Done&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Definition of Done is a checklist maintained by the team that can be applied to every user story. Often times, this includes things like unit test coverage, regression testing and code reviews. However, sometimes this is a good place to include architectural constraints. For example, you could have a checkbox in your Definition of Done that reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Any UI element renders properly in Firefox, Chrome, IE, as well as Apple and Android default mobile browsers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Navigation elements have had hallway usability testing to ensure they are intuitive&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Emergent Architectural Requirements&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've broken down your user stories well, architectural requirements will emerge. For example, if I had a story like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user, I would like to be able to view my points earned this month so that I can see my progress toward the next reward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you could break that down into &quot;As a desktop user&quot; and &quot;As a mobile user&quot;. This is the ideal approach because it gives you more choice and encourages more creative solutions. It's easier for the Product Owner to prioritize which features on which devices offer the most value. It also is more likely to result in solutions that are truly optimized for their device, not just copied. The downside is you have to be vigilant about making sure your stories are always broken down well and no one simply forgets and that if your technical practices aren't strong, you can box yourself into a lot of rework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't forget that both options are available to you. Some might work better in your DoD while others will work better emerging out of user stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-06-29T15:39:48.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15345" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-29T19:36:30.387" Score="1" ViewCount="4083" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may not be a normal request, but I am looking for a way to enter a duration in hours, then have manually entered scheduled start/finish dates, and &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; have either changed in Microsoft Project 2013.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While we do estimate the amount of hours our projects will take, we may only work on a project for an hour or so a week, so our &quot;timeline&quot; will be many months, depending on the task.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if we have a task that is estimated to take 120 hours, but the scheduled start date is 7/1/2015, the finish date may not be until 7/1/2016.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17639" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-06-30T04:57:40.540" LastActivityDate="2018-07-10T07:52:03.867" Title="Disabling &quot;Duration&quot; Calculations" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15345" CreationDate="2015-06-29T21:56:43.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe the solution is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Show the &quot;work&quot; column on the Gantt screen&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set the &quot;Task Type&quot; (in Task Information / Advanced) to &quot;Fixed Work&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you can set the work to 120 hours - or whatever figure is relevant, and specify the start and end dates that you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2015-06-29T21:56:43.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15345" CreationDate="2015-06-30T07:49:14.550" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Surely the answer is to use Manual Scheduling, which you can set on a task-by-task basis. If a task is manually scheduled you set the start and end dates manually and they are never altered by Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T07:49:14.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15345" CreationDate="2015-06-30T11:50:13.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not manually enter dates into the schedule.  I would still allow for the dates to schedule based on your network logic.  Since your duration goes out for an extended period in time, I would make the schedule fixed duration.  Load your duration planning values, such as 200 days, load your resources, then load your work planning values.  Your resources' utilization will reduce to a very low percentage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This, however, gives the appearance that your resources are performing work on those tasks every business day at a rate of minutes a day when, in fact, a they may not touch the work for several weeks.  When you are reporting to this kind of baseline, it will appear that work should progress evenly across time but actual work will jump in steps.  This could be awkward to explain and analyze.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/M8c9e.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, you can split the tasks across time.  In other words, your planning values might be 200 hours of work and 30 days of duration but 200 days in calendar time.  So you would manually split the 30 days of duration x number of times across the 200 days.  This might mean you would load work days every Monday and Tuesday, then split the work so it does not start up again until the next Monday, and so on.  That would require a ton of assumptions, however, and would take quite some effort to get these tasks scheduled, especially if you have a complex, large schedule with many work packages and resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5dff7.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T11:50:13.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15338" CreationDate="2015-06-30T12:55:08.740" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two ways to do that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can break stories into tasks, sub-tasks&#xA;Or&#xA;You can add acceptance criteria to this story, where acceptance criteria is nothing but all the scenarios which developer has to cover during unit testing, so that all feature and task automatically gets completed under single user story&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17574" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T12:55:08.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15321" CreationDate="2015-06-30T12:59:46.390" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is how you can do&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Current Scrum master has to break the team with the help of Product owner and based on the modules/features.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;So you will get feature wise team and then scrum master can delegate his responsibility to eligible member of each team and that member will act as scrum master for that particular team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17574" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T12:59:46.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15298" CreationDate="2015-06-30T13:04:17.493" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's very good question, from my past experience we used to add this as a use cases for story or acceptance criteria of that particular story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way you can ask developer, to unit test your functionality on the basis of usecases/acceptance criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this will help you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17574" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T13:04:17.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15244" CreationDate="2015-06-30T13:25:28.187" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Its more with Trust Factor. &#xA;For first couple of weeks you just need to monitor them and try to judge there skills and efforts by asking right questions and see how they are approaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you can delegate delivery responsibility to one of the good member from that remote team who will keep eye on deliverables and then you only have to monitor that particular member by giving proper direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't do micromanaging no developer likes this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this will help you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17574" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T13:25:28.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15353" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-30T19:29:55.643" Score="3" ViewCount="1063" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently studying for the PMP exam and I am wondering if I could use below as experience for the PMP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2008-2012: &#xA;Title: Manager (Position located in Taiwan)&#xA;I managed 2 staff members and organize students to send them to UK to do their masters. Every year, my staff and I handled around 50 students. Below is how the experience relates to PMP:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Initiate:Consult the students to understand what they are looking for, what courses they want to study, their budget, their goals&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plan: Plan the schedule, preparing and writing application documents, applying school, English TOEFL test, university offer dates and accept, accommodation application, visa application, all other documents needed, etc.List out the dates on when to prepare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Execution: Work with staff, students, universities to work with the plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Monitor: Monitor if everything is according to plan, if not, what needs to be changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Closing: After everything is done and students received their offer and accepted, sit down with students to consult if everything is what they planned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your experience, do you think PMP will accept this experience? I have other experiences, but would need to use this to fulfill my 4500 hours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Peter&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17648" LastActivityDate="2015-07-24T11:48:49.483" Title="PMP Experience Verification" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;user-experience-design&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15354" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-01T07:34:47.057" Score="3" ViewCount="742" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use Kanban since a couple of months and have some difficulties to implent it 100%. Nowadays, we use it more as a todo list than a real Project Management System. You will find below some of my biggest questions on which I could find an answer by myself :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How should we create a Kanban card ? We don't have the typical &quot;As a User, I want _____&quot; but we do wireframes, mockups, HTML/CSS Integration, etc. This is why I thought to create my cards only with the title &quot;Home page&quot; so that it can go through the all Kanban board. Then there is the problem that the card can be an XL (1, 2 or 3 days)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am also a bit afraid as PM to give up my calendar. How can I be 100% Kanban (I mean flexibel) and have clear deadlines from my client ? For Example : &quot;we want wireframes on the 10th August and mockups on the 10th of September. We thought about sessions like 2 days per week is for client meetings, the rest is only production.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also as an agency (12 people), we have a lot of projects at the same time and we are not focussed on 1. Should we do small teams of think more about ressources than person ? Me as PM should maybe not say &quot;Michael will do the design of this website&quot; but &quot;One of the designer or together should do it, they have 40 hours, that's it&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for your help !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Greetings from Europe !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17651" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T18:52:46.613" Title="Kanban for web agency" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15355" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15408" CreationDate="2015-07-01T09:18:29.740" Score="4" ViewCount="13872" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently I am a Software Project Manager in a Software Company with 25 developers. Currently we are using Redmine as our PM tool. Our projects are typically from 2 to 5-6 people and we have about 20 projects. We use mostly the &lt;strong&gt;Agile&lt;/strong&gt;/&lt;strong&gt;SCRUM&lt;/strong&gt; methodologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to ask if it would be worth to switch to GitLab (just because one of the developers want to) instead of using the established project management system Redmine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my experience as PM, Redmine is a Project Management tool and GitLab is used only for code storage and bug tracking (for smaller projects!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could PMs with experience share their opinion?&#xA;I would like to have an answer with which I can defend the point either GitLab would be better or worse than Redmine&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;P.S:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;I know some of you might consider this question &quot;opinion-based&quot; but I really think there is some core functional differences between both software which might help us neutraly compare them.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11918" LastActivityDate="2017-05-28T21:15:32.280" Title="Redmine or GitLab: Which is more suitable for serious Project Management" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;management&gt;&lt;redmine&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="5" ClosedDate="2017-05-30T10:36:59.147" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15321" CreationDate="2015-07-01T11:17:22.577" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I encountered the same question, while taking the Scrum.org PSM exam. The short answer is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You provide the people with the vision - what should the teams be composed for? What are the projects they will to work on? What are the delivery expectations etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let the people divide into the teams on their own.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13500" LastActivityDate="2015-07-01T11:17:22.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15357" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-01T14:43:31.760" Score="0" ViewCount="578" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can I add code to a macro in MSP2010 so that it will not run after a specified date?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The code I have tried is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Dim expire As Date&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;expire = 1 / 8 / 2015&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;If activeproject.currentdate.value &amp;gt; expire Then&#xA;    MsgBox (&quot;This macro is no longer accessible, please contact your PMO&quot;)&#xA;    Exit Sub&#xA;End If&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;'actual macro&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;End Sub&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The intention is to protect my work once I have left an organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17654" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T19:46:35.977" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T19:46:35.977" Title="MS Project VBA coding to include expiration date" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15354" CreationDate="2015-07-01T16:27:42.453" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Welcome to the community!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Vadim mentioned in his comment, your question is a little complex, so I'm going to try and break it down into bitesize chunks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We use it more as a todo list than a real project management system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off, strictly speaking, Kanban is not a project management system or methodology. Kanban is a framework, or a set of principles and techniques, that a team or individual works by. Whilst Kanban is often associated with Agile development, it is perfectly acceptable to adopt a Kanban approach in a traditional waterfall environment as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How should we create a Kanban card? We don't have the typical &quot;As a User, I want _____&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you've described at the end is a 'User Story'. User Stories are incredibly common in all areas of web development, and represent features and requirements. A typical User Story consists of three parts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a [type of user], I want to [a goal] so that [reasoning].&lt;br&gt;&#xA;As a user, I can indicate folders not to backup so that my backup drive isn't filled up with things I don't need saved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mike Cohn (Mountain Goat Software) has written some great information about User Stories as a whole, so I'd advise heading over &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/user-stories&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;there&lt;/a&gt; and having a read through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can I be 100% Kanban (I mean flexible) and have clear deadlines for my client ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This all depends on what deadlines have been agreed with your client, and how your team approaches the project. Kanban is flexible due to the fact that there are no fixed phase durations, and your team should never be undertaking on more than X many tasks at a time. &lt;a href=&quot;http://leankit.com/blog/2014/03/limiting-work-in-progress/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This is known as 'Work in Progress' limits.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a PM I shouldn't say &quot;Michael will do the design of this website&quot;. Instead, it should be &quot;One of the design team should undertake this, they have 40 hours&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest moving this into a separate question, as we're straying away from Kanban and into resource/traffic management. I assure that very few agencies focus on one project at a time, we are all playing the juggling game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm hoping this will give you a bit of background information so you can come back and post some specific questions that will gather more answers from the wider community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest researching the following areas first:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;User Stories. If you are practicing wire framing, then your team understands the importance of UX. In my opinion, User Stories are the backbone of UX, and it can be incredibly difficult to understand requirements without them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Kanban as a whole. Atlassian have a great introduction &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/agile/kanban&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8220" LastActivityDate="2015-07-01T16:27:42.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15359" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15362" CreationDate="2015-07-01T17:18:56.560" Score="12" ViewCount="1296" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Question&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it valid and possible to cope fixed unmovable deadlines into Scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess it is just confusing to me because I thought one of the core principles of Project Management is to help identify realistic estimates of a completion date based on limited information.  Is there a branch of Project Management, specifically Agile or Scrum Project Management that concerns the opposite, starting at the completion date and working backwards to figure creative ways to fit everything in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Context&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am trying to understand the methodology and strategy of project management in my current company.  It is a large financial institution and there are hundreds of projects ongoing at any given time.  There is a large Program Management office that is collecting status information on many different ongoing work threads for communication of status up to executive level.  The Project Managers maintain project plans and coordinate project status information from project resources to the Program Managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The odd thing I can't figure out is that when a project is in conception, there is no real technical effort to determine estimates of effort or time on the project milestones.  At this phase it seems to be completely unimportant, because every project deadline are set by IT executives or by the LOB, sight unseen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After we are told what the date will be we are then told to do formal estimation of &lt;strong&gt;effort&lt;/strong&gt; (story points) rather than time because the organization has an executive mandate to be Agile and Scrum.  The weird thing is that after we identify all of the Epics and T-Shirt size everything, the Project Manager is still required to figure out how to fit all of this into the pre-determined deadline.  To do this we split and do a detailed story point estimation of a single Epic, usually a Small size, then the total story points of that are used comparatively to figure out total assumed story points.  From there the Project Manager determines velocity and proves whether all of the project milestones are achievable by the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concept of Minimum Viable Product is non existant.  The PM has to show how many people are needed for this deadline to be possible and if it is too expensive then the project might be cancelled before it even starts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing is that for the past several years nearly every project could be considered a failure because they almost never hit these deadlines regardless.  What I don't understand is that despite failure after failure, nothing substantial seems to change.  It certainly doesn't seem that being late on the project really matters in the long run.  When the project runs late then status meetings increase and general anxiety seems to increase, but just about everybody keeps working ahead as they typically do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other people who have been at the company for a long time have told me that their are actually two dates.  The formal deadline that goes on paper, and the date that executives actually anticipate when the project will be done in reality.  When I asked why not just make the deadline reality, they almost universally agree that executive leadership feels that when projects run late on paper then people &amp;quot;work harder&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see this working for a number of reasons.  Veterans at the company don't feel the pressure because they believe there is an attempt to manipulate them into working harder.  Newer people get demoralized and stop trying.  Everybody spends more time in status meetings with anxious program managers rather than focusing on project work, and finally the nature of the work is more knowledge based and managing external dependencies than hard core work with rows of people furiously typing at keyboards until 2am.  Most everybody works a solid 40 and goes home regardless of pressure because often staying late wont get real roadblocks done any sooner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7106" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2015-08-21T15:29:22.243" Title="Scrum Project Management Methodology strategy for working towards a fixed deadline" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;program-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15345" CreationDate="2015-07-01T18:15:28.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are confusing Duration and Work.  Duration drives the start and finish dates of the task.  Work is how much effort will be expended during the duration.  You have a task duration of 263 days (counting Monday through Friday but omitting any exceptions) and work of 120 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are going to assign resources to the tasks - then I suggest using Fixed Duration tasks.  Set the duration to 263 days then assign your resources and enter the 120 hours of work.  Project will calculate the assignment units based upon Work/Duration.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't intend to assign resources, you can certainly enter the work estimate in the Work field and a change in work will not change duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even with manually scheduled tasks, a change in duration will change the finish date of a task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastEditorUserId="6840" LastEditDate="2015-07-09T13:56:41.493" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T13:56:41.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15359" CreationDate="2015-07-01T18:39:46.343" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile does support to concept of fixed deadlines. You prioritise your backlog and get as far down the list as you can by the time the deadline has been reached.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you can't do is fix both the time and the scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can, in theory, vary resources and keep time and scope fixed. However that ignores the difficulty of ramping up resources. As Brooks' law famously states: &quot;adding manpower to a late software project makes it later&quot;. So, to fix time and scope and just vary resources you would need to be able to predict well in advance any potential delays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also argue that time and scope can be fixed if you throw a huge amount of resource at the project. But even that can fail, as output can potentially decrease as the number of people on the project increases and communication becomes a problem (the n+1 problem).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of setting deadlines to make people 'work harder' has been largely disproved in information based industries. The problem is that there are many different ways of solving any coding problem and the quickest solutions are frequently the worst in terms of quality and future expansibility. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps your best approach in this organisation would be to propose they run a small trial project following agile principles rather than their current approach. Agree on some metrics that will measure the success of the project before it starts. Sometimes it just takes a demonstration of success to win them around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-07-01T18:39:46.343" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15359" CreationDate="2015-07-01T20:58:43.070" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Agile/Scrum process can be used for projects with fixed unmovable deadlines&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it valid and possible to cope fixed unmovable deadlines into Scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. We did a project related to the Olympics using Scrum. Naturally, the deadline is fixed unmovable. There is nothing wrong with this. We were able to adjust scope so that we fit in what could be accomplished to launch in time for the opening ceremony. In your case, your project managers also seem to have flexibility in getting resources to match. You can see &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/presentations/planning-for-contract-agile-projects&quot;&gt;Mike Cohn's presentation about applying Agile to &quot;fixed-date, fixed-scope, and fixed-everything projects&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;we are then told to do formal estimation of effort (story points)&#xA;  rather than time because the organization has an executive mandate to&#xA;  be Agile and Scrum&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing the estimation in story points is the right approach. If you need a good reference, read Jeff Sutherland's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scruminc.com/story-points-why-are-they-better-than/&quot;&gt;Story Points: Why are they better than hours?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;we split and do a detailed story point estimation of a single Epic,&#xA;  usually a Small size, then the total story points of that are used&#xA;  comparatively to figure out total assumed story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not unusual at that stage in the project. As the project progresses everyone (development team and Product Owner) will learn more about the project. And the Product Owner can make adjustments to the priority accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The PM has to show how many people are needed for this deadline to be&#xA;  possible and if it is too expensive then the project might be&#xA;  cancelled before it even starts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the right business approach. If the Return on Investment (ROI) is not there, why do the project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From there the Project Manager determines velocity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Project Manager is assessing velocity empirically (based on actual velocity achieved by the team in 3 sprints or more) then that is OK. Otherwise, it could be way off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, you got digressed into much speculation, without covering essential information that can help us understand your process better:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How and who determines scope? Do you have a Product Owner who does that? or do you work with a requirements document?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does your Product Owner share with the development team the vision of the product and the business goals to be accomplished?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you demo working code at the end of each sprint to the stakeholders? And get feedback?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the development team remain relatively stable? Or do you form a team for each project and then disband?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-07-01T20:58:43.070" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15359" CreationDate="2015-07-01T21:32:22.670" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adding to this, I &lt;em&gt;highly&lt;/em&gt; recommend tracking amounts and sources of &quot;emergent work&quot; (whatever was not in the initial backlog vs. velocity calculation) as you go, and continually factoring this into your planning, or predicted scope. By this I mean points for &quot;unknown unknowns&quot; or new backlog items that come up every sprint, points for feedback, points for pivots due to user testing, points for standard &quot;oops that was bigger than we thought&quot;. In my experience, this is by far the biggest single area that is overlooked and puts teams in a bad position with management when it comes time to hit their original scope estimation. Many agilists will say if you measure velocity with these things happening, it will simply &quot;come out in the wash&quot;, but that isn't actionable (for instance addressing excessive or increasing feedback or pivoting) and it doesn't provide enough transparency overall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2015-07-01T21:32:22.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15364" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15365" CreationDate="2015-07-02T07:27:43.137" Score="4" ViewCount="492" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm quite new to the whole project management thing. I'm studying Project Libre right now. It seems pretty decent so far. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found &lt;a href=&quot;https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/32549074/Blog%20articles/Milestonesblock.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this tutorial&lt;/a&gt; on creating and using a milestone block. This way of working definitely makes sense to me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the link above the author refers to &quot;Driving Milestones&quot;. From reading the document it appears to me as if that means milestones where things start rather than finish. Is that the case?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Does this mean I should have milestones like &quot;Start v0.5&quot; instead of milestones like &quot;v0.5 Complete&quot;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="201" LastActivityDate="2015-07-02T07:54:02.963" Title="What is a &quot;Driving Milestone&quot;?" Tags="&lt;gantt&gt;&lt;milestones&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15364" CreationDate="2015-07-02T07:54:02.963" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although I am not familiar with Project Libre, my reading of that article is that the author refers to &quot;Driving Milestones&quot; to mean externally imposed milestones- the things that drive the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I don't see any practical difference between what he calls &quot;Driving Milestones&quot; and &quot;Buoys&quot;, where Buoys are the &quot;marker&quot; milestones that surface from the project. When I construct a plan I freely mix the two, attaching to the start or end of tasks as I need them, with wording to match, e.g. &quot;Start of Testing&quot;, &quot;Development Completes&quot; and of course the main one &quot;Go-Live!&quot;... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I put them in a milestone block at the top and sometimes I leave them inline in the project. It depends what my needs are: If I am showing the plan to senior management I roll everything up to summary tasks and so need to expose the milestones at the top. If it is just for my consumption I leave them inline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-07-02T07:54:02.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15321" CreationDate="2015-07-02T11:41:06.287" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2013/2013-april/how-to-form-teams-in-large-scale-scrum-a-story-of&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;good article (by Craig Larman and Ahmad Fahmy)&lt;/a&gt; which describe this problem in real-life situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According this article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Teams should be self-designed (It means &lt;strong&gt;people should be allowed to emerge teams on their own&lt;/strong&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This process should have facilitator&lt;/strong&gt;, who will help people to organize themselves in well balanced cross-functional teams.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Craig Larman took as a basis following approach (which was used by another manager in China):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Instead of deciding on the new teams, the Chinese department manager,&#xA;  Lv Yi (along with Bas Vodde, a Scrum expert who worked in the group),&#xA;  invited everyone into a large room, explained the goal of new Scrum&#xA;  teams, and simply asked the group members to decide among themselves.&#xA;  The group agreed it needed four hours for this, and Lv Yi said, &quot;I'll&#xA;  come back in four hours, and if some people have not decided by then,&#xA;  I will decide.&quot; Four hours later and after much talk and activity, the&#xA;  group had self-designed their new teams. Then volunteer ScrumMasters&#xA;  were brought to the center of the room, and the teams picked the&#xA;  ScrumMasters that they wanted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then he improved this approach and facilitated it (for making self-designed teams more balanced and cross-functional).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read all other details of this dividing process in the article above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-07-02T12:22:05.273" LastActivityDate="2015-07-02T12:22:05.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15367" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-02T13:18:48.053" Score="4" ViewCount="140" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a problem with allocation of licenses. The work to be done requires a software license that must be shared between my project and several others. This means that I only have that resource for a few hours a day. If I assign the license resource type as work it shows up in the project labor hours even though its not labor. That causes a problem for me to track the project cost in labor hours (there is no material cost). The only other choices for resource type are material or cost. Neither of those allow me to specify a max constraint. I suppose that I can list this resource as labor with 0 cost per hour and then do my cost tracking in dollars instead but that is not the way I report it so I'll need to translate back to hours. Is there another way? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17665" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T11:18:55.317" Title="How do I allocate licence time as a limited resource in MS project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resources&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15299" CreationDate="2015-07-02T17:47:01.543" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The software sizing purpose is usually to provide the data in cost benefit analysis process so that decision making teams (i.e. customers) can make a choices.  It is better to know what the offers are from other competitors so that the team could provide the winning proposal.  The estimation should be more like a phase approach as development team know more about the customers.  Sample is as following:  Usually the time frame could in line with each quarter pending on the deliver cycle of the team….&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Phase I - Prototype:&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;List or functionality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Required resources&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Target timeframe for UAT&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Phase II – Pre-Launch&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;List of functionalities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Size of BETA users&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Target timeframe&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Phase III – Grand –Opening&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;List of functionalities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Size of users&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Target timeframe&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Phase N – Revision&lt;/em&gt;&#xA; - List of functionalities&#xA; - Size of users&#xA; - Target timeframe&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(pending on if developers are allocated to multiple tasks such as QA testing or production support, at least 20 % extra time should add on top of developer's actual estimation)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17451" LastActivityDate="2015-07-02T17:47:01.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15369" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15370" CreationDate="2015-07-02T18:19:38.477" Score="8" ViewCount="2004" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our company is trying to adopt a more rigorous Agile methodology (including Sprints and Scrums and all that fun stuff. We even got a JIRA subscription!), and we've run into a couple issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest one (to me, anyway, as I am frequently affected) is that we do not know how to deal with Sprint stories that are partially dependent on an external third party. Consider the following (simplistic, vague, and abstract) story: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story: Brand Web Page for Acme Inc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subtasks (Story Points):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Modify Javascript for custom behavior (0.5)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create custom build paths for Acme-branded Client (1)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Retrieve logo images and color replacements from Acme (??????)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add Acme images and colors to build process (0.5) (dependent on/blocked by #3)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here's my question. If we're planning the Sprint:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do I estimate a task that isn't mine to complete (e.g. #3 above)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do I estimate tasks that &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; mine to complete, but are dependent on tasks that &lt;em&gt;aren't&lt;/em&gt; mine (e.g. #4 above)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What should we do when external tasks blow their estimates (e.g. #3 above was only supposed to take them 2 days, but ends up taking them a week)? What are our options?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17668" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-07-02T20:04:31.607" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T20:33:41.533" Title="Agile Best Practice for External Blocking Issue" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15369" CreationDate="2015-07-03T02:29:56.273" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Don't create subtasks in your sprint for work done by external third party&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do I estimate a task that isn't mine to complete (e.g. #3 above)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the work is being done by someone outside the team, it should not be in your sprint. The team can't take credit (velocity) for work done outside the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do I estimate tasks that are mine to complete, but are dependent&#xA;  on tasks that aren't mine (e.g. #4 above)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the Scrum Master, I push the Product Owner to schedule only stories for which all external dependencies have been delivered at the time of Sprint Planning. However, there are exceptions. Some stories get scheduled with the commitment from the external source (client/vendor/others) that it will be made available in time to complete the sprint. It is the Scrum Master's job to follow this up and get it. Your role as the developer is to plan your work and report in the Scrum standup well in advance that you need the external deliverable by a given day in order to complete your work. If it is not received, then escalate it by reporting it as an impediment to accomplishing the sprint goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What should we do when external tasks blow their estimates (e.g. #3&#xA;  above was only supposed to take them 2 days, but ends up taking them a&#xA;  week)? What are our options?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How long it takes them is not your concern at all. But, when it is delivered is. Discuss it in the retrospective and brainstorm ways to avoid external dependencies from disrupting your sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you should estimate story points only for the stories, not the subtasks. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/why-i-dont-use-story-points-for-sprint-planning&quot;&gt;You should estimate subtasks in hours to help team planning.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-07-03T02:29:56.273" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15371" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15374" CreationDate="2015-07-03T07:20:42.557" Score="3" ViewCount="121" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;We have got the situation when our FP project is running over the time without visible end date. &#xA;The initial agreed scope is accomplished so we would like to release the team.&#xA;However the customer provides small changes requests which require every team member participation , however they are not fully loaded.  Such partial load influences on financial metrics of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Customer does not want to pay monthly fee for 100% reserved team. It's good for them since they have timely service and pay for change requests only. It's not beneficial for us to keep people partly loaded where we can not plan their workload beforehand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you resolve such cases ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17675" LastActivityDate="2015-07-03T22:54:22.710" Title="How to finish FP project when change requests are not finishing" Tags="&lt;contracts&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15369" CreationDate="2015-07-03T07:26:48.057" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some possible approaches (in order of preference):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bring the external third party into the team. This works particularly well if the third part has people who are dedicated to your work. Include them in stand-ups and other Scrum ceremonies. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Only bring stories into the sprint that have the external dependencies already resolved. In other words they are 'ready' for the team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bring stories with external dependencies into the sprint, but only start working on them once the external dependency has been resolved and have alternative stories ready as replacements. This is not ideal, but can be made to work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only with the first approach would the team estimate on the work done by the third party (as the work is now wholly within the development team).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that there are only three roles in Scrum: The Product Owner, the Scrum Master and the Development Team. This is what the Scrum Guide says about the Development Team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cross-functional teams have all competencies needed to accomplish the&#xA;  work without depending on others not part of the team&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why the first option is preferred as it is closer to the desired Scrum way of working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2015-07-06T20:33:41.533" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T20:33:41.533" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15371" CreationDate="2015-07-03T08:18:52.413" Score="0" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make a T&amp;amp;M contract with them and ask customer to pay for the effort spend on the CR/Bug fix. This way you will be paid for effort put in and also utilize the team members on other projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cross train the team members such that you can release some of the members. The cross trained members will be able to do other peoples work. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6209" LastActivityDate="2015-07-03T08:18:52.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15371" CreationDate="2015-07-03T11:57:18.527" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are a party to the contract.  This means you have to protect your party's interests in the agreement, which you are NOT doing now.  You say your customer does not want to pay for a fully loaded team but wants the benefits of a fully loaded team.  All customers would want that.  You answer needs to be: pound sand (not literally).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your price for a small change request is the greater of the actual effort required or the cost of the resource that you are unable to sell elsewhere.  The net result would be a fully loaded team for that change request.  Here's an example:  if a team had to travel for two whole days round trip in order to do work that takes only four hours, do you believe the customer would only pay for the four hours?  No way.  They would be on the hook to pay for the four hours plus the 16 for travel.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are concerned you will lose the business to an alternative, if there's an alternative willing to lose money, let them.  No contract is worth it if you are not meeting your interests in the agreement.  There are other clients out there; go get them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your FP formula is: Your costs + Your margin + risk = fixed price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your costs include unused utilization of your resources.  It is part of the cost burden.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT to answer question in comment:  You indicated your original scope at your original FP is finished so there is nothing more to do with that.  Whatever CRs you have already agreed to at whatever price you indicated is a commitment you cannot back out of.  You need to complete that scope and invoice for that price and live with the reduce profit or loss you experience.  For future CRs not yet agreed to, here is your chance to price it building in the extra cost and margin for non-allocated hours for which your resources are not fully loaded.  It does not matter if it is T&amp;amp;M or FP or CP.  What matters is you load your total costs in your price build up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this will show an increase in price for your customer, you need to have a sit down and explain the deal.  Since you are a party to the contract, you have the right to explain your position in the deal.  If your customer balks, then let him compete it.  Every other seller will build the price the same way.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2015-07-03T22:54:22.710" LastActivityDate="2015-07-03T22:54:22.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15375" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15376" CreationDate="2015-07-04T00:41:36.243" Score="2" ViewCount="129" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK, so we're developing a project management software (of sorts, way wider scope) where we basically divide everything into 3 levels, organizations, projects and roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there has been some complaining that we're using the word 'project' too loosely, i.e. involving cases that do not really have any goals/endpoints. Also, it would make a lot of sense for us to separate the static project type from normal projects. Having a good label for it would also help design work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few cases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Organization X is developing software Y for some client Z. Person A contributes in the developer role, person B as a designer and person C as a manager. This activity can clearly be called a project and the product is a piece of software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Client Z outsources some static, repetitive sales work to organization X. Person A contributes as a salesman, person B handles management and person C the bureaucracy work. The product can be seen as a service, and the activity is ???&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far the top candidates are &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A) Job&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with this is that all of the roles are technically jobs and it would seem unnatural to have a role inside a job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B) Service&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems wrong as service seems to be to 2) what software is to 1). What we need is what X is to 2) where project is to 1).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, we're drawing blanks, probably partly due to not being native English speakers. It's a silly issue, but something we still need to solve well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bonus points for the term not being overly technical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17681" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-07-04T09:29:51.070" LastActivityDate="2015-07-04T09:29:51.070" Title="What would you call a 'static' project, i.e. one without goals" Tags="&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15375" CreationDate="2015-07-04T02:33:40.597" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ongoing work of fixed type is generally called &quot;Operations&quot;. Hence why in traditional PMI a project has a hand off to operations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When an amusement park is built, it's a project. When it is done, it is handed over to an operations team to run it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-07-04T02:33:40.597" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15375" CreationDate="2015-07-04T07:58:57.730" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you are describing is BAU (Business As Usual). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the Prince2 guidelines; Projects can be easily recognised as possessing 5 characteristics; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Change&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Projects are a way to introduce change.&#xA;Example: A new sales website will change how clients will purchase items &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Temporary&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There should always be a definite start and end to a project, and it should stop once the required products are created. Ongoing maintenance of a product occurs after the project and is not considered part of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cross-Functional&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A project involves people from different business departments and seniority that work together for the duration of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Unique&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every project is unique, as there is always something different in each project. Example: Building a 4th house may be different in the following ways: the location is different, there’s a slight difference in the design, there are different owners, and owners want to change some fittings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Uncertainty&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As parts of the project are unique, this brings uncertainty, as you are not 100% sure how this is going to work out. Using the above example, the owners might keep changing their mind, some of their chosen house fittings may not arrive in time, temperatures may fall to below zero, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2015-07-04T07:58:57.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15378" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-04T08:20:23.860" Score="3" ViewCount="640" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm confusing with the System Development Life Cycle Methodology with other Methodologies like Extreme Programming, Rapid Application Development, Rational United Process, Waterfall, V-Shaped, Spiral, Agile, SCRUM and so on. The phases/stages they have are quite similar like the System Development Life Cycle Methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are they related to each other? Are they consider the same as System Development Life Cycle Methodology?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any other Methodology that is not related to System Development Life Cycle Methodology? (for example, Lean Methodology)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17685" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2015-07-06T20:27:28.963" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T20:27:28.963" Title="What's the relationship between SLDC and methodologies like XP, RAD, Scrum, etc.?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;&lt;sdlc&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15378" CreationDate="2015-07-04T10:50:05.477" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) isn't methodology. It is...life cycle :-)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each system (product) goes through several phases during it life. This always happens and is not dependent on methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These phases could be mixed in different ways (Waterfall vs Iterative and Incremental approach). But all of them are present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some methodology may or may not describe how to do some of these phases. &lt;em&gt;For example: Scrum doesn't describe how to do the initial phase, and says little about integration and testing. Almost nothing is prescribed in Kandan.&lt;/em&gt; But it doesn't mean, that there are not any of these phases in the concrete implementation of Scrum or Kanban. It means that in concrete processes these phases may be implemented in any way you wish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some development processes, phases may degenerate, such that you may think that there are no such phases at all. &lt;em&gt;For example, let's imagine some software development process where there were no planning meetings, no planning documentation and so on. You might think that this process had no planning.&lt;/em&gt; But planning is present in this process. When a developer starts to implement requirements, he can't do all of them at one time, so he will plan what he will do first, then he will do second etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the answer is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Methodology may not prescribe what activities should happen during SDLC phases.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;But product (system) will go through all SDLC phases anyway.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-07-05T08:38:04.410" LastActivityDate="2015-07-05T08:38:04.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15380" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-05T09:07:16.117" Score="7" ViewCount="1233" Body="&lt;p&gt;Situations where the members of the project team have tasks which are not directly related to their job positions happens quite often (especially in cross-functional teams).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to my experience, this will always decrease the morale of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two examples from my practice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1)&lt;/strong&gt; On one project my team had a lot of translation work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my company we have a special translation department, but the quality of its translations are very poor, they don't have knowladge of the subject area and if we give a translation to them, we will have an external dependency that we can not control well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's why the development team does all translation work. Of course, no developer wants to do this and it is a great demotivation factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2)&lt;/strong&gt; Another example. Unfortunately, my company eliminated the tester from my team. Developers can test well, but dont want to (and it's logical, if they wanted to test, they would go to work as testers, not as programmers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, how can we decrease this kind of demotivation?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the answer that we should hire a technical writer or tester on our team is very easy, but in the real world it not always possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, a little bit of explanation about what kind of solution I want: for example, if a new project should be done in a well known or even legacy technologies, some companies make special days for developers, when they can work on their own project with any technologies they want. My company has no resourse for such days. But in any new project we try to implement the minor part with new technology. This decreases the dissatisfaction from monotonous work with boring well known technologies very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking for some kind of non-trivial solution to the question that I described above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-07-05T10:18:28.373" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T19:08:42.327" Title="How shall we deal with demotivation from non-core activities?" Tags="&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15380" CreationDate="2015-07-05T10:51:00.407" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are creating a cause and effect between a lowering morale and motivation with doing certain tasks.  My first reaction is you are creating a cause and effect that does not exist. Every job in the world has tasks no one likes, or tasks with which one might feel less competent, or tasks that causes some anxiety or worry.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They may not like it but it does not reduce overall morale.  Maybe for a few, some of whom will be selected out, but not for an entire organization of practitioners.  If you are truly experiencing a loss in motivation and morale across your organization of programmers, I would look for other drivers.  You have something else going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Review some current thinking on morale and motivation.  I personally like the paradigm of Autonomy, Purpose, and Mastery.  It goes a little deeper than incentives and rewards.  But whatever theory resonates with you, use it to identify other drivers that are going on in your organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-07-05T10:51:00.407" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15380" CreationDate="2015-07-05T15:25:46.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whoa, I think I worked for your company recently?! Just kidding! :p&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A big problem in our team was time management. The person responsible for the schedule ignored all time estimations, made up new ones and those obviously failed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are in such a situation and then get additional boring tasks, this drops morale a lot. In our team three of the developers left more or less simultanously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure the developers have enough time for both their normal work and the extra stuff, make sure they can split the boring stuff in batches, for example on 10 days doing 10% of the translations instead of doing them all on the last day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure they know about the extra work ahead of time so they can plan it in. Often you 1-2 hours left in the evening and don't want to start anything important, but doing some of the testing then seems good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use an issue tracker (for example gitlab) to define everything that needs to be translated/tested, they can then go and pick something out they like, this assumes there is enough time for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which languages are they translating to? Are they familiar with them or just learned them a little at school? You could also hire an external translator, just show them what your program does and they will get it done. And probably better, faster and cheaper than paying a developer to do the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same applies for testing, there are people who really like to break and hack things and they are more efficient than letting the developers repeat their mistakes from development while testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17689" LastActivityDate="2015-07-05T15:25:46.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15383" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15384" CreationDate="2015-07-05T16:55:15.440" Score="2" ViewCount="197" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a manager in a company, I found that some people within my team performs better when they are trusted with a task and when I manage them and the tasks I give them, like if I was a client. I debrief them, tell them what I want, give them deadlines, etc. then their mission is to come back to me with a project proposal, a breakdown of the deadline, deliveries, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if this type of management has a name? If the benefit of managing projects that way has been studied? Also if this has somehow been formalized by anybody (for example how do we organize follow up meetings with the team in charge of project, deliveries, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16270" LastActivityDate="2015-07-05T17:02:54.533" Title="Managing Internal projects as if the manager was a client. Does this method have a name?" Tags="&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;clients&gt;&lt;management&gt;&lt;customer-service&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15383" CreationDate="2015-07-05T17:02:54.533" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There isn't a project management term for this that I'm aware of. This is generally referred to as a Delegation Management Style. It's considered a very good management technique and the sign of a skilled people manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very much like assigning a project as a client would and creates an environment for employees to excel and learn. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-07-05T17:02:54.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15380" CreationDate="2015-07-05T17:32:53.943" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Get the team committed to the business goals&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the long run, you should get the team committed to the business goals so much that they voluntarily step up to do what it takes to accomplish them without worrying too much about what their job position is. In the short run, here are some things you can try:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Challenge the development team to automate part of the work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. Translation: Google and Bing have translation APIs. These machine translations won't give you the finished translated text. However, it will give you 40 to 60 % depending on language pair and topic. You can ask the developers to create simple tools to get the initial translation done so that the manual work is reduced. Once the tool is developed, you can possibly give it to your translation department to speed up their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b. Testing: Developers can write scripts to automate part of the testing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Develop business justification why you need to hire a tester: In my experience here are the additional costs to developer testing. See if you can build a business case for hiring a tester by collecting this data:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. Testers will have the time and motivation to create and maintain good test plans and cases. Developer testing is likely to be poorly organized and documented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b. Developers generally cost more than testers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c. If developer testing is not as good, there will be much higher cost to fix the bugs in production.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pair up a developer with the translation department: If the developer can provide subject matter expertise, I am sure it will improve the quality of the final translation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-07-05T17:32:53.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15380" CreationDate="2015-07-05T18:22:08.257" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I totally understand your question and am struggling with it also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I figured out working &lt;em&gt;sometimes&lt;/em&gt; is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Highlight the tasks importance by &lt;strong&gt;explaining the tasks importance&lt;/strong&gt; including the consequences is the task is not done with best effort. Saying that someone else would be better in doing this is not an argument because no one else will do it. For whatever reason.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Show empathy&lt;/strong&gt; for the dislike for the task. E.g. by identifying the &lt;em&gt;common enemy&lt;/em&gt; but take care to not to start a revolution...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way you asked for a a &lt;em&gt;non trivial solution&lt;/em&gt;. Unfortunately, the real solution is a trivial one and I'm sure you know it: &lt;strong&gt;Respect the rules for delegation&lt;/strong&gt;. There are many websites out there describing how to delegate. I have roundabout 5 rules in my mind where dummies.com comes closes too after a short search: &lt;a href=&quot;http://m.dummies.com/how-to/content/delegating-effectively.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://m.dummies.com/how-to/content/delegating-effectively.html&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;I often disrespect those due to a lack of time (just a bad excuse) because you actually have to think about the points to find good answers but if you really struggle with those problems it might be worth...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-07-05T18:57:25.370" LastActivityDate="2015-07-05T18:57:25.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15387" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-05T19:55:46.357" Score="2" ViewCount="592" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an attempt to keep abreast of all prerequisites for my bachelor degree, as well as the grades and GPA, I have decided to put all the data in an MS Project file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are certain modules which consist of 3 practical elements, each must be passed in order to be granted entrance to the exam. Some practicals also count toward the final grade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certain modules serve as prerequisites for others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also like to break up each module into individual study sessions by topic i.e. Physics 101: 1D, 2D, Electrical Circuit etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also: I am not studying linearly as most do, but as I am working, I try to fit the modules around my work schedule and am having trouble keeping on top of things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is MS Project a realistic method for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now I have organised into the following hierarchies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Basic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Main&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thesis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With each divided into their relevant semesters&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basic&#xA;-Semester 1&#xA;-Semester 2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Main&#xA;-Semester 3&#xA;-Semester 4 etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Semester 2&#xA; - Mathematics 2&#xA; - - practical&#xA; - - - exam&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Etc.. along with an overview of the topics to be learned for every subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of these don't have deadlines, they just need to be done, whereas others, such as homework and practicals, have deadlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I reconcile all this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17535" LastEditorUserId="17535" LastEditDate="2015-07-05T21:29:45.877" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T05:19:35.367" Title="How to use MS Project to plan Bachelor degree modules" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;personal-skills&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15387" CreationDate="2015-07-05T20:24:30.620" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;MS Project (or similar tools) is good for to schedule management related PM activities,e.g.: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;highlight and visualise relationships (prerequisites etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;track delays and identify the consequences&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having (at least) those two capabilities it might help you to track and prioritise your activities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't imagine what to do with grades within MS Project beside just noting them. If you would like to do some statistical work with your grades, you should consider a tool like MS Excel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-07-06T05:19:35.367" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T05:19:35.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15380" CreationDate="2015-07-06T01:19:58.900" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a developer and yeah, I do get frustrated sometimes from fringe-work and so do my colleagues. But doing fringe-work is rewarded very much during our monthly reviews/awards. My firm understands that it is hard work and shows its appreciation. So the work could be demotivating but the reward for the work is what keeps folks motivated :) .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17695" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T01:19:58.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15391" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15392" CreationDate="2015-07-06T07:42:08.210" Score="3" ViewCount="11294" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to plan some activities backwards from a fixed deadline. I used SF dependencies for that, but there's a slight problem. Let's say I have the following simple plan:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1 Milestone&#xA;2 Activity A    2 hours    1SF&#xA;3 Activity B    9 hours    1SF&#xA;4 Activity C    1 hour     2SF;3SF&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I expect Activity C to start before BOTH Activity A and B (i.e., 9 hours before Milestone), but it starts before Activity A, only 2 hours before Milestone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to force MS Project to respect both constraints?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17698" LastEditorUserId="17698" LastEditDate="2016-07-19T13:11:03.587" LastActivityDate="2016-07-19T13:11:03.587" Title="Planning backwards in MS Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;dependencies&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15391" CreationDate="2015-07-06T11:07:04.050" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use standard FS relations for predecessors, and set task constraint type 'As late as possible':&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1 milestone - prerequisites: 2,3&#xA;2 Activity A - 4&#xA;3 Activity B - 4&#xA;4 Activity C&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should set 'as late as possible' constraint on tasks 2-4, and set task 1 to the required fixed date ('start no earlier than' constraint).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16711" LastEditorUserId="16711" LastEditDate="2015-07-06T11:54:11.853" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T11:54:11.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15380" CreationDate="2015-07-06T13:37:21.737" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I might be jumping to conclusions, but from what you write it's not the tasks that demotivate people, but you and/or your company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two examples from my own experience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We started a new project and the offices we had to use had no blinds for the windows (south facing; summer time). Also we had just barely enough outlets for the computers, but none for some of the secondary monitors, let alone phones and similar stuff. We as a team decided to get some    multi-outlet power strips and some aluminum foil which we pasted on the windows. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Net effect: Motivation boost, because we solved two problem all on our own, although a highly qualified software developer did what any intern could have done. What did the company/management do for that? Stayed out of the way, accepted the odd ball solution and accepted the trip to the shop as working time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Short before noon the Vice President of a company strolls from office to office asking everybody to join for lunch. Nobody clarifies who is going to pay. VP has some tasty and expensive steak, while an intern nibbles on some salad, wondering if he is invited or has to pay himself. The check arrives and the VP proclaims: Lets split evenly! So basically the intern pays part of the lunch of the boss. Effect on moral: I'm sure it is obvious. Was the 'task' of eating lunch together the problem? No the way it was communicated and 'rewarded' is.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to your situation: You (meaning you and your company) remove the tester from the team basically stating: &quot;Testing is not important and/or trivial to do, so we don't need someone dedicated to do it.&quot; And then you tell the developers to do it. It's hard to be more demotivating than that without actually trying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can you do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Anybody in your company who has the title &quot;Manager&quot; and is surprised by the effect should be fired immediately. They don't know the very basics about what their job is about.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Get the testers back into the project ASAP.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the meantime apologize for the huge thoughtless mistake and ask the team what you together can do to cover up for the missing tester. If that means that you personally do the testing, go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation with the translators is similar. Them not performing their job (and as it appears nothing happening to change that) basically means: It's Ok to mess up your jobs, our janitors -- sorry developers -- will clean up the mess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can you do? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Anybody in your company who has the title &quot;Manager&quot; and is surprised by the effect should be fired immediately. They don't know the very basics about what their job is about.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Come up with a plan to get the translators to a level, where they can perform their job. Possibly by having a retrospective with developers and translators together. Note that this is not about putting blame on the translators. Somebody tasked them with a job they were not capable of doing. That sounds like another management mistake.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the meantime apologize for the huge thoughtless mistake and ask the team what you together can do to cover up for the inadequate translators. If that means that you personally do the translating, go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17708" LastEditorUserId="17708" LastEditDate="2015-07-06T19:08:42.327" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T19:08:42.327" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15396" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15399" CreationDate="2015-07-06T22:17:47.523" Score="17" ViewCount="2563" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I've moved into a new company and I am leading a team without any agile etc.&#xA;I came from an agile environment and pair with great tools such as Jira with their cool feature such as Kanban board and also the Scrum. I'm thinking to implement Scrum so that the team has a great working culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently the new company where I'm working is using a software application called bitrix24 which doesn't have support for Agile methodology. My question is how to propose a change to the upper management, to purchase new software to accommodate the agile methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best approach to the upper management to purchase a new software? How to get buy-in?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17631" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-07-07T10:04:48.350" LastActivityDate="2015-08-27T09:42:17.050" Title="How to convince upper management of the need for agile software?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1079" CreationDate="2015-07-06T22:57:47.497" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Prince2 practitioner might view Scrum as being &lt;strong&gt;contained neatly within the delivery level&lt;/strong&gt;. A Scrum practitioner, on the other hand, might see Scrum &lt;strong&gt;extending into multiple aspects&lt;/strong&gt; of the management and executive levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, Prince2 can use parts of Scrum, but Scrum, as a complete package, may not be able to comfortably co-exist within Prince2. Scrum practitioners will tell you that it's either Scrum, or not Scrum, but &lt;strong&gt;not &quot;partly-Scrum&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17710" LastEditorUserId="17710" LastEditDate="2015-07-09T22:07:13.190" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T22:07:13.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15396" CreationDate="2015-07-06T23:08:09.967" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Prepare a PowerPoint presentation factually demonstrating the benefits of adopting this approach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Show the pros and cons of current state and desired state, also be clear on the roadmap to implement it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people reject improvement changes just because it was not well presented (and consequentially not bought in).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you talk business, you talk efficiency, cost savings, increased productivity. This is like giving lollies to kids... Who doesn't want one???&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17711" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T23:08:09.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15396" CreationDate="2015-07-06T23:32:55.207" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;To tweak the Field of Dreams quote &quot;Do it and the tools will come.&quot; Tools are not the solution, they are tools to aid the solution. You need the solution first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start running agile with a physical task board or if you absolutely need a tool, use something free like Trello. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is to show success using an agile framework (I'll assume Scrum) and show how using it gets better predictability, better quality, better visibility (nothing says visibility like a 3'x5' burn down chart on the wall to the bathrooms. While you're doing this, take a little hit to translate reporting to the legacy system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've got a track record of success, then you can point out how the successful development practices require translation to a legacy PLM software product and how it would save time and create more accurate reporting if you moved to a tool that supported the way you work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asking for Jire (or Rally or VersionOne) before starting agile is like asking for a Porsche before you learn to drive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I realize I was pretty general. Start with one small team or project and do a simple agile conversion. Nothing fancy, nothing extreme, just a simple scrum implementation. Show it works small scale, but make sure the pilot isn't going to be unscalable. Doing a pilot with advanced TDD and Continuous Integration won't scale easily to the whole company. KISS Pilot will be your best approach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="147" LastEditDate="2015-07-07T01:20:24.430" LastActivityDate="2015-07-07T01:20:24.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15396" CreationDate="2015-07-07T00:49:32.450" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Obtaining buy-in&lt;/strong&gt; (for Scrum specifically, or Agile in general) will be a prerequisite to approaching management to purchase new software. After obtaining buy-in, &lt;strong&gt;convincing management&lt;/strong&gt; to purchase supporting software will be greatly facilitated. Without obtaining buy-in, purchasing software will be a &quot;no go&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are convinced that the methods from your previous environment can be successfully applied in your new environment, then make a case for that with your new upper management. Express your case in terms of concrete examples of success in your previous environment, and show why you believe that success is transferable to the new environment. (e.g. what is similar between the two)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17710" LastEditorUserId="17710" LastEditDate="2015-07-09T22:10:38.613" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T22:10:38.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15396" CreationDate="2015-07-07T09:23:38.697" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had the same problem. And do you know how I solved it? I bought all needed software for own money. Of course, it's not the best solution, but for me it was much more easily, than to get all required approvements and permissions. 30$ is not a huge sum of money for comfortable work (with Jira, Jira Agile and Stash). It's not an advertisement ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry, if I'll echo Joel, but: &lt;strong&gt;tools are not those things, that you need to worry about.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take a look at Agile Manifesto:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Individuals and interactions over processes and tools&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By my opinion, you will have much more problems with interactions inside your company, than with tools. It's hard to be agile if your company is not agile. You can try to become a driver of changes in your company, but It is very hard challenge and topic for another question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-07-07T09:32:10.713" LastActivityDate="2015-07-07T09:32:10.713" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15402" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15412" CreationDate="2015-07-07T09:31:43.263" Score="3" ViewCount="1598" Body="&lt;p&gt;There would be some challenges, including a small Scrum team with a relatively larger proportion of &quot;external consultants&quot;. Would the benefits of using Scrum on a PhD research project outweigh the challenges, or is there a better agile method?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17710" LastEditorUserId="17710" LastEditDate="2015-07-09T08:15:19.353" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T15:16:31.833" Title="Can Scrum be effectively applied to a PhD research project?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15403" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15404" CreationDate="2015-07-07T12:10:16.043" Score="5" ViewCount="297" Body="&lt;p&gt;I lead the software development team at a mid-sized company. We follow an agile methodology with 3-week sprints, and use TFS for tracking all of our work. After considerable trial and error, I've been able to create a system that allows my team to stay on top of their work, while also producing live progress reports for upper management. For context, the progress reports update automatically every 30 minutes, and they also are saved as PDFs to a shared folder every day at 7am. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem I keep running into, however, is that my CEO and VP are in the habit of printing out the progress reports, then referring to the hard copy rather than the live reports. I've been in update meetings where our CEO has pulled out a month-old report, covered in handwritten notes and questions that were now obsolete. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I help upper management stay engaged with quickly moving projects? I don't think I'll be able to change their habit of printing hard copies, so is there a better way of communicating our progress and activity to them? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17419" LastActivityDate="2015-07-07T16:01:09.380" Title="Helping leadership keep up with quickly moving projects" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15403" CreationDate="2015-07-07T13:03:10.177" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you could add the current date/time prominently to the screen or page with some text along the lines of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Valid as-at dd/mm/yy hh:mm&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way its validity will be stored on any printed hard-copies along with the relevant data. It won't stop the seniors printing hard copies for meetings, making notes and then referring to that same page in the next meeting because that is how many busy senior people ensure they keep on top of moving subjects (they forget about it between meetings and just refer to their notes to remind themselves of what was important to them &lt;em&gt;on that day&lt;/em&gt;). However it will give an easy at-a-glance way of determining how old the data is and perhaps you can get into the habit of prefacing any answer you give with &quot;Well, I see that data is no longer relevant as it is x days/weeks/months old and you really need to see the latest...&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even better if you also go into the meetings with &lt;em&gt;new&lt;/em&gt; hardcopy printouts and hand them out before talking- the execs will almost certainly pour all over them before asking questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, some people prefer to work from hard copy printouts, and you need to find ways to work with that but minimise the effect by providing newer data in a format &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; like to work with :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-07-07T13:03:10.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15403" CreationDate="2015-07-07T14:01:38.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Marv that these documents need to be dated; however, what is often missing is an expiration date.  In aviation, the tools pilots use to navigate or plan or perform maneuvers such as approaches have a valid from and to date.  This tells the pilot that, for example, the chart in his/her possession is valid or not and, in many cases, legal to use.  We have adopted checklists from this industry; we should adopt a simple expiration date, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-07-07T14:01:38.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15396" CreationDate="2015-07-07T14:09:56.113" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first question you need to answer is &quot;what's wrong with Bitrix24?&quot;. If the answer isn't &quot;it total pants&quot; then you need to rethink your entire approach, as it seems it is &quot;I want the same tools and development environment I had at the last place&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've moved, time to understand and use the tooling the new place has - sometimes its better than what you had before. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bitrix seems to be a recently developed collaboration project management platform, so it should be ok to run agile with it, even if it doesn't have explicit support for Scrum (which is probably a good thing as it means you'll have to go back to basics to implement Agile the way it as meant to be done).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="330" LastActivityDate="2015-07-07T14:09:56.113" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15403" CreationDate="2015-07-07T14:28:03.337" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Throwing raw numbers at the leadership is inviting trouble&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what should be in the report to the senior leadership:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Release Plan&lt;/strong&gt;: When are the next few releases planned? What key business goals will be accomplished in those releases?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Velocity&lt;/strong&gt;: Is the team velocity showing an upward trend? Also, you should educate the leadership that velocity cannot be compared across teams.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Quality&lt;/strong&gt;: Are the number and severity of bugs found in production per release showing a downward trend?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project completion&lt;/strong&gt;: Based on current estimation of the backlog and the actual velocity, when do you expect to complete the project?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Organizational impediments&lt;/strong&gt;: What organizational impediments are constantly coming in the way of the team achieving higher velocity and faster releases? How can the leadership help overcome these impediments?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Feedback from stakeholders&lt;/strong&gt;: Highlights of the feedback from the stakeholders from the sprint demos/reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't believe they can benefit from any reports that are more frequent than one per sprint covering the above aspects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You, as the leader of the team, would be monitoring the burn-down chart, the WIP limit, open impediments, broken builds, extent of test automation and so on on a daily basis or even more frequently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are follow-on questions from the leadership, after seeing the above report, you should provide more details. But just throwing some raw numbers at them, without the context, is inviting trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-07-07T14:28:03.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15355" CreationDate="2015-07-07T14:38:01.427" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;It will mostly depend of the scope of what you call project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this include mostly code, milestones, and issue tracking, then Gitlab can fit your need.&#xA;You may complete Gitlab with third party tools that integrate with it's API like &lt;a href=&quot;https://taiga.io/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Taiga&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand if you need more flexibily, customizable reports, cross-project issue/milestones sharing, you'd prefer Redmine.&#xA;Redmine is not code centric, and tend to be used for strong or complex worflow around development, including validations team and business analyst seemlessly … While keeping things simple for your developpers team with plugins like &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/backlogs/redmine_backlogs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Redmine Backlogs&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually (at Synbioz) we are using both Gitlab and Redmine.&#xA;Gitlab for code reviews and MR and Redmine for project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason is that we need Redmine reports and fine-grained workflow to involve our customers in project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17725" LastEditorUserId="28679" LastEditDate="2017-05-28T21:15:32.280" LastActivityDate="2017-05-28T21:15:32.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15403" CreationDate="2015-07-07T16:01:09.380" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Either setup automated report delivery each week, or get them a custom dashboard. For execs, you have to find the right balance of information and ease of use. Is it easy for them to access the live reports? Are you giving them custom views or expecting them to sort through everything to find what matters to them?  Make it easy for them to have the right info at the right time, and at least they'll have more up-to-date printouts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I'd worry more about are the questions they've got scribbled on their printouts. You may need to revisit your communication plan, and make sure that they are not hoarding questions that will come back and haunt you later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17727" LastActivityDate="2015-07-07T16:01:09.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15396" CreationDate="2015-07-07T16:01:15.557" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why do you want to change? Which problem are you aiming to solve? And why &amp;amp; how will Scrum improve the situation? You should be able to answer all these first. As is, it reads a lot like blind faith in powers you don't understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you can answer those questions, you can knock at your manager's door and talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But: Accept the possibility that Scrum and Kanban will not make the process better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10348" LastActivityDate="2015-07-07T16:01:15.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15411" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-07T17:50:36.870" Score="2" ViewCount="136" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know there are multiple training classes for PMP but I am looking for classes that have the certification included in the training. Or if not, a voucher for the PMP certification. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17729" LastActivityDate="2017-07-10T05:38:13.170" Title="Are there any Project Mangement Training classes that include the PMP certification?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;certification&gt;&lt;training&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2017-07-10T13:44:36.223" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15402" CreationDate="2015-07-07T17:51:10.947" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, though Kanban may be a better option for your circumstance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm reminded of a great quote by Dr. Kevin Thompson, the cPrime Agile Pratice lead. He began his career in math and moved into traditional (waterfall) project management on big multi-year, multi-million programs and then, as he says, &quot;one day I got on the wrong bus&quot; and has been a major proponent of agile ever since. When asked if he would use Scrum to build a nuclear power plant, his reply was &quot;No, but I'd use agile principles through out the project.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, Scrum will likely not work well because it requires certain (and a minimum number of) roles, and is focused on a set delivery cadence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Kanban&lt;/strong&gt; applies lean manufacturing principles to any work product. Focus is on flow and work in progress. Instead of planning work to be done in a &quot;Sprint&quot; you just maintain a well ordered backlog of work and take whatever is at the top and work that. You keep a Work In Progress Limit on your work, so you don't have too many irons in the fire and you look at the flow of your process all the time. For example maybe your review cycle with your professor keeps getting bogged down. Look at each step to see why and maybe find your professor auto files email from you so you know you need to tell him in person that you sent him a review copy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is my typical workflow: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pending: Work that needs to be prioritized and planned.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To Do: Prioritized list with enough details to start work right away.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doing: What is the work I'm working on now.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Waiting: Not actively doing, while waiting on someone or something. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To Verify: I may have this to have someone check the work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Done: Time to celebrate. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="17710" LastEditDate="2015-07-09T15:16:31.833" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T15:16:31.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15411" CreationDate="2015-07-07T17:57:43.313" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, there are no classes that you come away with a PMP certification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PMP test is a proctored test under full observation conditions. You register for the test with a licensed test facility. You show up on the day of your test and sign in. You then put everything but your clothes into a locker. They will give you some loose paper and a writing implement. You can get water from a cooler there, they generally don't even allow water bottles in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are then taken into a locked test room (usually about classroom size with individual single person mini-cubes). The computer is locked down to just the test software. A calculator program is included or they hand you a physical calculator. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The test is timed and starts when you start. One pro tip is that they provide a 15 minute tutorial on how to use the computer and test software. Use this time to regurgitate all the formulas, process flows and such you memorized onto a sheet of paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The test ends when the timer ends or you indicate you are done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take your time! When you're done, take a break. Go out, go to the bathroom, get a drink. Then come back and review every single answer. Then hit &quot;done&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will then sit for what feels like an eternity while the computer crunches your test. It will then spit out a pass / fail and how you did in each of the major test areas. You won't ever get to find out which questions you got wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a reason the PMP remains a highly respected certification. It is not easy to get. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-07-07T17:57:43.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15411" CreationDate="2015-07-07T20:52:49.947" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The certification classes just give you the prerequisite 35 pdus ( if they are REP ), rest of the exam fee you have to pay it yourself&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17721" LastEditorUserId="17721" LastEditDate="2015-07-07T21:01:49.373" LastActivityDate="2015-07-07T21:01:49.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15415" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-07T22:46:54.337" Score="4" ViewCount="506" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say you have a team of 4.  1 junior, 2 mid-level and 1 senior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The senior engineer can get the story completed quickly (say 1 point).  For the junior, the work is more complicated; he/she doesn't know the platform as well and the expectation is that it will take 3 points for him/her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mid-level people can complete the story in 2 points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team average is 2 points for the same story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you assign story points based on the assignee or based on team average?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17731" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-02-26T19:53:59.397" LastActivityDate="2019-02-26T19:53:59.397" Title="Should story points be estimated according to team or assignee's abilities?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15415" CreationDate="2015-07-08T01:21:44.990" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Story points should be independent of the particular individual assigned to that story. Story points are &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; meant to be equated directly to implementation time. (In fact, some Scrum teams use non-numerical story size for this reason.) Therefore, the points should not change depending on who is assigned. Rather, you might say something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Senior Engineer is capable of undertaking 30 story points during a sprint; Junior Engineer is capable of undertaking 10 story points in the same sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although one concept of Scrum might be that all team members are capable of doing the work on the backlog, it doesn't mean that they are all &quot;equally&quot; capable. By extension, it doesn't mean that all team members should undertake the same number of story points during a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17710" LastEditorUserId="17710" LastEditDate="2015-07-10T10:59:12.627" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T10:59:12.627" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15415" CreationDate="2015-07-08T05:32:22.040" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The base of story point does not depend on the ability of the individual to carry out the task. Ability will reflect in the velocity with which an experience or a junior engineer will execute the story points. A senior can execute more story points where as juinor engineer will execute less.&#xA;In any story point estimation it is important that the team agree to unit of work which they can define as story point and do their estimation in relation to that. If there are conflicts the approach that we usually take is to discuss and agree on certain story point based on the discussion that is carried out with pros and cons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12193" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T05:32:22.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15418" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-08T10:36:25.607" Score="7" ViewCount="2326" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum states that the team should commit to delivering the stories in the sprint backlog. It is implied that once they have reached this limit, no more items are added to sprint backlog.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should the sprint backlog be openly prioritized using &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoSCoW_method&quot;&gt;MoSCoW method&lt;/a&gt;?  So that the product owner's expectations for X% of the spring backlog tasks were as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;0-60% - Must have stories &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;61-80% - Should have stories &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;81%-100% - Could have stories &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;100%-120% - Stretch tasks (for team to do if they move exceptionally fast)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I can see, this approach benefits from:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Automatically building feature contingency into sprint estimates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Giving team option of over achieving through stretch tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this approach complicates the concept of teams committing to delivering the whole sprint backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any input on the advantages &amp;amp; disadvantages of this approach to sprint planning?  Or experience implementing something similar?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17738" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2015-07-08T11:15:46.297" LastActivityDate="2016-09-23T14:49:12.073" Title="Should sprint backlog have MoSCoW prioritization applied?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15419" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-08T10:45:46.753" Score="4" ViewCount="477" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are currently facing this problem in a scrum team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine you a have a user story with a front-end part which calls a webservice to get some data. Imagine that your scrum team do back-end,front-end and testing but the webservice part is done by another team in another country and you can't expect this WS to be delivered in the current sprint so the US can't be finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is how do you reflect this in the process, some ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Split the US with Front Part + WS part. And try to put forward&#xA;the WS in an early sprint. (Acceptance Criteria of the whole US&#xA;should be defined at the time de WS story begins). Do you set Story&#xA;points to this WS techical story?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not Split, start in the sprint N and end the user story in N+1&#xA;or N+2... How do you plan capacity of sprint with this kind of stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any other approach?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Important note, we can not abuse of using the other team, so we can not split the ws by a light version and then a more elaborated version. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16331" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T19:08:45.223" Title="How to deal with non agile teams" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15419" CreationDate="2015-07-08T11:08:15.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd think user story would need to have as little dependencies as possible, so i would go for option 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're able to mock/stub the dependent parts you are able to finish quite much in the first part already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7658" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T11:08:15.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15418" CreationDate="2015-07-08T12:35:52.273" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Features/capabilities/deliverables/tasks should have been prioritized (in the product backlog) using MoSCoW during requirements gathering prior to starting your first sprint, and as required during subsequent product backlog refinement meetings. During such refinement meetings, you may want to revisit this prioritization, but that is more asking the question &quot;Is item X still a must have?&quot; rather than having some arbitrary percentage being must-haves, should-haves, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you should see is a decreasing number of must-have stories in both your product and sprint backlogs as you move through the project. Once you get to the point that you have zero must-haves left in the queue you should be asking the business owner if he considers the project complete at the end of every sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastEditorUserId="17710" LastEditDate="2015-07-09T12:04:16.560" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T12:04:16.560" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15423" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-08T17:14:16.017" Score="4" ViewCount="292" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to start my career as Scrum master and all I need is your valuable suggestions like how to start and what need to keep in the mind while learning. I worked on development side for three months and came to know about scrum etc.., Which is the best scrum org for certification? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance:)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17744" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-07-08T18:25:18.293" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T23:42:09.283" Title="Best approach to become a scrum master?" Tags="&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2015-07-09T02:29:09.603" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15423" CreationDate="2015-07-08T17:53:06.907" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are going to find every information you need under the following link:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/certifications&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.scrumalliance.org/certifications&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That organisation offers two-day long courses where you learn the basics of Scrum, and provides a one year long certificate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some more link:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/9702/which-scrum-certification-provider-is-most-widely-recognized-or-accepted&quot;&gt;Which Scrum certification provider is most widely recognized or accepted?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2730/is-certified-scrum-master-valuable&quot;&gt;Is Certified Scrum Master valuable?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T17:53:06.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15419" CreationDate="2015-07-08T19:24:33.703" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A common approach is to have a user story represent the delivery of business value. In the situation where you do the front/back-end development but don't yet have the web service complete you cannot claim to have delivered business value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also the question of your definition of done. Say you complete your work and a sprint later the web service is delivered. You test your code with the web service and find bugs. You can only really say the work is 'done' once the bugs have been fixed. That would suggest you were not 'done' when your part was completed, only when the integration with the web service was complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reason for this approach is that you want to reflect the teams true output of business value. Say your team was moving more quickly than the team producing the web services. You would race ahead and appear to be generating lots of value. But the reality is that business value is only available once the web service work is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This produces an interesting dilema. Is the capacity of the team how much work they can do, or is it how much work they can get to a state of 'done'?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would argue that you would be better off using approach #2 and only award the team story points for stories that have been integrated with the web service. That way you reflect the true velocity of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T19:24:33.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="677" CreationDate="2015-07-08T21:06:40.867" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To take a page from Notch, creator of MineCraft:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've got a few plans and visions, but my only true design decision is to keep it fun and accessible. There's no design doc, but there are two lists; one for bugs, and one for features I want to add but think I might forget.[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-discussion/discussion/116353-minecraft-facts-big-list-of-what-notch-has&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His approach implies that, like others have said, both represent items of software that need to be delivered.  That said, combining the lists like like jmort253 has suggested would help prioritizing the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17745" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T21:06:40.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15423" CreationDate="2015-07-08T23:30:22.940" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will try to answer to your question, but my answer will be based only by my own experience. Other users might came to Scrum Master by another ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Previous experience&lt;/strong&gt; First of all, by my strong opinion, three months of software development experience is not enough. Despite the fact that Scrum Master is manager position, it required understanding of specific of software development. It is impossible to understand all the nuances of development during 3 months. As Scrum Master you will facilitate a team and remove impedances. It is impossible to do, if you not understand software development very well. &lt;strong&gt;You should know developers needs.&lt;/strong&gt; Only by working as developer you could get this experience. (This is only my opinion).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fundamental Theoretical Knowledge&lt;/strong&gt; As I said in comment, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v1/Scrum-Guide-US.pdf#zoom=100&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; is the Bible of Scrum.&lt;/strong&gt; You should know and understand it well. My recommendations: read it several times on your native language and then read it several times on English. Your can find all version of The Scrum Guide on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;its site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Theoretical Knowledge&lt;/strong&gt; But The Scrum Guide is not enough to implement Scrum in real life. Scrum is adaptive methodology. It's mean, that &lt;strong&gt;Scrum didn't prescribe how to do everything&lt;/strong&gt;. There are a lot of sites and books where you can find this &quot;missed&quot; knowledge. Here you can find a lists of books for all Scrum roles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Courses/Professional-Scrum-Master/PSM-Subject-Areas&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Suggested Reading for Scrum Master Role&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Courses/Professional-Scrum-Product-Owner/PSPO-Subject-Areas&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Suggested Reading for Product Owner Role&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Courses/Professional-Scrum-Developer/PSD-Subject-Areas&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Suggested Reading for Developer Role&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you can find a lot of interesting articles on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum.org&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Alliance&lt;/a&gt; portals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But remember, all things (that you will read on these books) may or may not work in your case. It depends on you, your team, your company, business conditions and many other things. Only in Scrum Guide you can find &quot;absolute truth&quot; :-) All other books just give you advices, that may not work in your case. [&lt;em&gt;Phrase about &quot;absolute truth&quot; sounds like sermon in the sect :-)&lt;/em&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Practice&lt;/strong&gt; And of course, &lt;strong&gt;practice is the best teacher&lt;/strong&gt;. Scrum theory is very easy, but to implement it in real life is very difficult challenge. Scrum is empirical process, so practice is everything in Scrum. Do not be afraid to experiment. &lt;strong&gt;Trial and error method is Scrum way of solving problems&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Community&lt;/strong&gt; You will not find all answers (on questions that you will meet in your practice) in books. So, you should took active part in community life (like &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;PMSE&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Community&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum.org Community&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Alliance Community&lt;/a&gt;, Real life meetings and so on). &lt;strong&gt;Don't be affraid to ask questions&lt;/strong&gt;. There are no stupid questions at all.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Training&lt;/strong&gt; By my opinion, it will be better if you will go to training, when you already will have enough practice in Scrum. In that case, you can not only receive basic knowledge about Scrum, but also ask your coach about real questions from your practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two most famous Scrum training providers: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Courses&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum.org&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/courses-events/course&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Allience&lt;/a&gt;. I passed Scrum.org training. But it's a matter of taste.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Certification&lt;/strong&gt; When you will have enough knowledge and experience, you can try to pass one of Scrum certification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same as with training, there are two main certification provider: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Assessments&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum.org&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/certifications&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Allience&lt;/a&gt;. I passed PSM I from Scrum.org, but you can choose another one. Take a look to the question with comparison of these two certification: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/9702/which-scrum-certification-provider-is-most-widely-recognized-or-accepted&quot;&gt;Which Scrum certification provider is most widely recognized or accepted?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During passing PSM I, most big problem for me was &quot;language barrier&quot;. As you can see, my english is rather poor. So, it was hard to translate questions fast. I passed PSM I only from second attempt, because during my first attempt time ended faster, than I answered all the questions. But the questions themselves were not very difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. Point of view to this question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;from Scrum.org: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Assessments/Ways-to-learn-about-Scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ways to learn about Scrum&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;from Scrum Allience: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/why-scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Learn About Scrum&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T23:42:09.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15428" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-09T04:52:54.163" Score="3" ViewCount="305" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, I apologize for such a minor question. I am not sure if this is a suitable platform for this. I am responsible for submitting quarterly reports for a project. I am doing this since last year. I had submitted fourth quarterly report few months back. Its time of the year when I have to submit another report. I am unsure about what should I name this report as. Is this fifth quarterly report? Or is this first quarterly report for the second year of the project. Could you please guide me on this ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17748" LastActivityDate="2015-07-18T06:57:17.730" Title="What is the quarterly report called after fourth quarter?" Tags="&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;progress-report&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15428" CreationDate="2015-07-09T06:42:30.980" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;A Year Always Has Four Quarters&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A year only has four quarters, whether it's a calendar year, a fiscal year, or whatever. The fourth quarter of last year might be called &quot;2014-Q4&quot;, so the following quarter would be &quot;2015-Q1&quot;. The actual naming convention of your documents might differ, but the quarter after the fourth quarter of a year is always the first quarter of a new year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should check within your company for the right way to name your documents, and how to specify the year and quarter to align with company standards. I can't imagine a valid use case for identifying quarters without associating them with a year, except maybe to say something like &quot;project X will take 20 quarters to complete&quot;, but stranger things have happened. Your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T06:42:30.980" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="677" CreationDate="2015-07-09T12:38:32.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;With our team, we treat them as a hybrid item. The way we do Scrum, stories always get points, and tasks never do. Bugs don't get a story point value assigned by the team. HOWEVER, when we go to commit our Sprint backlogs, we need a way to estimate bugs, right? For purposes of planning and velocity, we ballpark every single bug at a 2-point story--while some are much larger and some much smaller, we find that this works out well for estimation purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16314" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T12:38:32.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15431" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-09T17:03:59.710" Score="10" ViewCount="792" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our two Scrum development teams are located in India. Our shared product owner is permanently relocating to the US, and we're just about to finish our first sprint.  Him and the team suggested delaying the next sprint by a week while he's in transit. The loss of rhythm to the team concerns me, as well as violating one of the core rules of scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not a part of the scrum teams, but I am a Certified ScrumMaster and have learned a lot from this site over the years, so I am acting as an agile coach within the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I was going to suggest they do another sprint anyway but just focus on technical debt and pretend they're doing a sprint where they've committed to zero story points. I know delaying a sprint is not recommended in scrum, as per the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v1/scrum-guide-us.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;, but committing to less so the team can resolve technical debt is something that's recommended in some material I've read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The product owner prefers the team &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; work on any product backlog items until he can groom the backlog further. We had planned to conduct a product backlog refinement meeting, but realised that the PO's workload was too high this time around. So is there any danger in committing to zero story points but running the sprint as if it were a real sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-01-09T09:54:30.740" LastActivityDate="2019-01-09T09:54:30.740" Title="Is it okay to have a sprint where the team commits to zero story points?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15431" CreationDate="2015-07-09T18:47:27.033" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience, taking a week off and working on other things isn't usually too big of a problem.  A lot of times that's when the developers get their own time to work on whatever pet project they have.  Other times, it's around the Thanksgiving Holiday or the Christmas/New Years Holiday, so a large part of the team is out anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is your normal sprint length?  If it's a week, then working a week sprint seems reasonable.  If you normally have longer sprints, and want to run this one for a week, I might caution against that.  Like you mentioned, there is a rhythm to a sprint.  If you take a week off from sprinting, it's like you hit pause, then play again when you're back on.  Changing the sprint length is more like changing what you're playing, or at least changing the temp of what you're playing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if you have week sprints, and there is technical debt to be worked on, that sounds like a good option.  I would ask why you wouldn't follow the standard process though?  What I mean by that is, write up the technical debt in terms of value for the development team (which of course has value to the end customer too, even if they can't see it as easily).  If you treat the technical debt like stories, that will help to ensure the team is following all of their standard practices, and hopefully end up with quality results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17762" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T18:47:27.033" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15431" CreationDate="2015-07-09T18:58:27.230" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Yes, I recommend another sprint&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am surprised that your Product Owner didn't want to do another sprint. Generally Product Owners tend to push the development teams to get releases out sooner rather than later. They are always up against external drivers such as launching at some trade event or beating a competitor to the market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, your gut feeling is in the right direction. Yes, you should do another sprint for the following reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To avoid the loss of rhythm, as you rightly mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;More importantly, by skipping a sprint you are sending the wrong message to the team about the importance of this project, deadlines and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sprint can be a mixture of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Resolving technical debt.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Doing research work on priority stories that are likely to be scheduled in the coming sprints. This will give an opportunity for the development team to do the discovery or actually build a proof-of-concept so that they are in a better position to size the stories and minimize risk when they are actually scheduled.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there is no need to make it zero points. If some work is being done it takes effort and that has story points associated with it. So, go ahead and put story points. On the research stories some people prefer to put a time box instead of story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T18:58:27.230" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="677" CreationDate="2015-07-09T19:00:53.627" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;So there's some ambiguity of terms here that I think we need to address first.  Let's all make sure we agree what a &quot;bug&quot; is.  I would consider a bug to be a problem in the software relative to what the product owner would like the software to do, that was not introduced during the current sprint.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that definition of a bug, I think it somewhat clarifies how the bug should be treated.  The software is behaving in a way the PO does not like, so while in one sense they may be putting in a bug fix request, in another sense, they are simply putting in a feature request.  From that perspective, it seems pretty clear that bugs should be treated as stories and work as such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now from the trenches.  In my experience, what we would more classically refer to as bugs (badly behaving software), have had higher variability in their actual size vs. estimated size than a 'standard' story.  I don't think that's a compelling enough reason for bug fixes to NOT be treated as stories, but it is something that I've noticed.  One technique I've used to overcome this is having the development team spend a few minutes before estimating to look into the bug.  I encourage a lightweight review of the problem, and I think it has helped with the accuracy of the estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17762" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T19:00:53.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15419" CreationDate="2015-07-09T19:08:45.223" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing to consider would be to have your team mock up the WS endpoint that the other team will be creating.  It may be out of their scope of influence, however if they are able to get that up and running it should provide additional testing value in the future.  Creating the mock service -- a real stand-alone, or being able to mock using say a feature toggle -- will allow for their system to be stable and testable even when the other system is down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for selling this to the company/PO, you can use the additional cost incurred by creating the mock service to drive home the point that planning across teams is important, and that the other team is inducing the cost.  Alternatively, you could sell the merits that I mention above (especially if you get buy-in from your team), and possibly use the technique elsewhere to reduce cross-team dependencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17762" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T19:08:45.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15436" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15445" CreationDate="2015-07-09T22:36:07.077" Score="9" ViewCount="164" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see the value in being &lt;strong&gt;proactive&lt;/strong&gt;, rather than waiting for budget or time constraints to catch up on the project. On the other hand, I don't think every project should be a &lt;strong&gt;race to arrive under-budget and under-time&lt;/strong&gt;, at the expense of a proportion of &quot;Should Haves&quot; and &quot;Could Haves&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of Scrum's primary objectives is to produce high quality increments of deliverable product. It is not, primarily, focussed on delivering products under-time and under-budget. (although it can do so) I think that asking the Product Owner if the project is finished, at each sprint after the &quot;Must Haves&quot; are completed, potentially shifts the focus to delivering a &lt;strong&gt;minimum acceptable set of features&lt;/strong&gt;, rather than using the time and resources available to deliver the &lt;strong&gt;maximum quality of product possible&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe the Scrum Master should keep a watchful eye on the constraints, while not necessarily striving to end the project as early as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17710" LastActivityDate="2015-07-11T09:34:16.423" Title="When all &quot;Must Have&quot; (re: MoSCoW) stories have been completed, should the Scrum Master ask the Product Owner if the project is over after each sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15436" CreationDate="2015-07-10T01:27:40.940" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very interesting question.  For me, I think it depends on the business, and the PO.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the business is not doing well and time to market is paramount over budget, get to production!  Deploy it and keep iterating as value is still being achieved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the business is doing ok, I think gauging the PO is important.  Do they have a good understand of their user base?  Were the must haves &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; bare bones? Or are the must haves actually good enough?  I get the sentiment of not wanting to end the project too early, and I think there are a number of nuances to consider when making the decision.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17762" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T01:27:40.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15436" CreationDate="2015-07-10T05:45:56.463" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A goal of scrum is having something ready after each sprint. Following this, releases or deployments a possible in short cycles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, the company might release the product to satisfy market demands and start to earn money while product development or improvement still continues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This depends on the product strategy a lot fore sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, talking about software, this is an approach applied quite often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talking about projects including hardware, it's about the product owner to identify the budget-to-function optimum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But scrum comes from software projects, so in my opinion applying scrum on other kind of projects might need some adaption or interpretation :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-07-11T06:57:50.197" LastActivityDate="2015-07-11T06:57:50.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15436" CreationDate="2015-07-10T06:09:15.077" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically Scrum is used for product development and not for project work. With product development you have a prioritised product backlog that is continually being added to and refined. There is no 'end of project' as such. It is an ongoing piece of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have worked with some Scrum teams that are involved with several different products. In these situations there needs to be a prioritisation of the work for the various products. The team might spend 3 sprints working on the priority features of Product A, then switch to 2 sprints working on the priority features of Product B. Prioritisation at this level is strategic rather than the more usual tactical level prioritisation that takes place with a single product owner and single product.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T06:09:15.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15443" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15444" CreationDate="2015-07-10T10:41:01.763" Score="11" ViewCount="872" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been asked to facilitate a retrospective but I was specifically told not to lead the retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the difference between leading a retrospective and facilitating a retrospective and does anyone have any tips or article links?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T12:11:25.493" Title="What is the difference between facilitating a retrospective and leading one?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;&lt;facilitation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15443" CreationDate="2015-07-10T12:11:25.493" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Facilitating a meeting is very different than leading a meeting.  One focuses on leading the content of the meeting while the other focuses on the structure of the meeting...the facilitator being the latter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The facilitator manages the meeting plan, ensuring the flow the agenda, the objectives of each agenda item are being met, time, participation, conflict resolution, stopping off topic conversations, etc.  Facilitator also ensures the meeting room is set up properly, materials are present, scribes are present, food is there, etc.  During the meeting, the facilitator will read the room, ensuring participation from everyone, reading body language and intervening when necessary.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a great question because I think most think the leader is also the facilitator.  You cannot focus on structure when you are also focusing on meeting content...or at least you cannot do it well.  It is very wise to separate the roles, especially for hard, complex meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T12:11:25.493" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15436" CreationDate="2015-07-10T15:17:11.320" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a really cool question! First, to answer it directly, there's always the implicit question at the end of the sprint &quot;Is this project finished?&quot; Or, to flip the question on its head a bit &quot;Will spending the money to develop the next set of features create a reasonable return on investment?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you reach that point is really the product owner's decision. It might be right after the must-haves are complete or somewhere through should-haves, or even later. There are lots of ways to evaluate if features are worth developing. I'm personally a big fan of Lean Canvas. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agile42.com/en/blog/2013/04/11/lean-project-canvas/&quot;&gt;This blog&lt;/a&gt; covers a great approach that adapts Lean Canvas for exactly this purpose. As for if the scrum master should be the one asking, he certainly can, but he's basically asking the PO &quot;Are you doing your job?&quot; so the question should only come when it's really appropriate or needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if you haven't already, definitely take a look at Lean Startup. Getting your product out in front of customers early and often will help create visibility on when it's right to keep developing and when it's write to either wrap it up or pivot on your product's directly.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T15:17:11.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15446" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15447" CreationDate="2015-07-10T15:23:27.880" Score="14" ViewCount="4482" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never facilitated a retrospective before and I have been asked to facilitate one on Tuesday. I have ordered a book which is arriving tomorrow and I have been checking out various websites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am thinking of keeping things simple so that I don't stress out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone please suggest a simple, yet effective technique which I could use and how roughly it should play out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastEditorUserId="147" LastEditDate="2015-07-10T16:36:44.290" LastActivityDate="2018-02-15T11:16:41.573" Title="How do I facilitate a first time Agile retrospective?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;&lt;facilitation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15446" CreationDate="2015-07-10T16:35:21.477" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Awesome for you. The retrospective can be one of the most fun and informative &quot;ceremonies&quot; of agile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So once you get the book, Diana is going to recommended never falling into a rut and tailoring your retros based on what is the needed to be focused on, or to take the team into a new direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you first get started though, simple is very good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Retrospective Circle - Brain Storm&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a white board draw a huge circle (3-4 feet across) and segment it into three sections. Label the sections &quot;Less of&quot;, &quot;Same As&quot;, &quot;More of&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give everyone a stack of postits and sharpies (Don't use ball point pens, too hard to read). Have them start filling them out and putting them up on the wall. (Advanced tip- If you have a lot of team members who tend to be quiet and not talk a lot in meetings, give them a heads up you'll be doing this and give them postits ahead of time so they can generate content before the meeting). EDIT- Highly recommended you have a couple of starter post-its. If no one looks like they are moving to put stuff on the board, put yours up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Affinity map the postits. If four people all post about the build server, group the postits together. Do this as people are putting content up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dot Voting&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When done, give everyone 3-5 stickers. Explain Dot Voting to them. Make sure they know they can vote more than once for something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the voting is done, look for the two to three things with the most dots, no matter the category. If any of these are outside the teams control, capture these to the side and grab another item that the team can control. You want 2-3 items the team can control. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make a plan with the team right there and then. Who, Does What, By When. Set dates, assign owners. Don't leave the meeting until a plan is in place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Making it Stick - Action Planning&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now comes the hard part. If you want people to keep doing retrospectives, they need to see value out of it. If they come to retros and nothing ever happens, they will start to question why. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure those items the team picked get planned and acted on. Putting them on big pieces of paper and posting them next to the task board, so they are seen during every stand up is a great way to keep it fresh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Timebox:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can completely keep this inside of an hour. My personal mantra is you can do anything you did in 60 minutes in 45-50 minutes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Meeting Start and Agenda: 5 minutes &#xA;Start 5 minutes after even if people are late, Agenda is posted on wall so late people know what it is. Agenda is time boxing the three phases &quot;Brain Storm&quot;, &quot;Dot Voting&quot;, &quot;Action Planning&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Brain Storm: 15 minutes&#xA;Take two minutes tops to explain the circle. Once you've explained the rules, set a timer for 10 minutes.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Dot Voting: 5 minutes&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Action Planning: 20 minutes&#xA;Unless the top vote items are really low hanging fruit (You institute a late jar for the Stand Up), the goal here is not to come up with a final plan. Instead it is to schedule the meetings and next steps for each item chosen. Final plans should be within the next week. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Total time: 45 minutes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For more retrospective resources you can also check out:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tastycupcakes.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;tastycupcakes.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://innovationgames.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;innovationgames.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2018-02-15T11:16:41.573" LastActivityDate="2018-02-15T11:16:41.573" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15436" CreationDate="2015-07-11T09:34:16.423" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The product should always be deliverable at the end of a sprint. So they can ask, 'Shall we deploy this version?' But the prioritization of tasks into categories is only a concern for the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 'real life' there's always going to be a deadline and a set of features without which the product wont be worth taking to market. The 'Must' tasks should help the PO see whether the team is on track to deliver that minimum spec before the deadline and prevent the injection of non-'Must' tasks jeopardizing that goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my view you are right and there can be a tendency in scrum to want to 'finish' projects rather than be enthusiastic about new work. I think this can be combated by have version 1, version 2 etc of the project and by allowing technical debt/rewrite tasks at the start of new versions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2015-07-11T09:34:16.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15431" CreationDate="2015-07-11T10:44:20.770" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is also important to make sure the Product Owner understands that he also has commitments to the team. If he wants the team to commit to delivering planned features by the end of the sprint, he also need to commit to feeding the team with high quality input of the sprint - his requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think the team could decide by themselves, depending on how much trust they have and how good the relationship is with the Product Owner, whether they want to go ahead and start a new sprint with technical research or whatever they want to do to use up the time, or just relax and enjoy life for one week. But anyway the next time they do retrospective meeting with the Product Owner, they need to have a serious discussion with the Product Owner how to make sure the team gets enough input even when the Product Owner in travelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17778" LastActivityDate="2015-07-11T10:44:20.770" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15431" CreationDate="2015-07-12T04:26:14.323" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So I was going to suggest they do another sprint anyway but just focus on technical debt…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are talking about focusing on technical debt, it sounds like &lt;strong&gt;anticipating what the priorities will become&lt;/strong&gt; in the product backlog. You might be right, or you might be wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may sound purist, but I would suggest selecting items from the top of the product backlog &lt;strong&gt;as it exists&lt;/strong&gt;. Because product backlog refinement has been omitted during the lead up to that sprint, I expect the sprint planning meeting would be more challenging and time consuming, but that is just a natural consequence of how things have gone. It is &quot;water under the bridge&quot;, so to speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Allow yourself to have a longer-than-usual sprint planning meeting, where you spend ample time sufficiently breaking down the top items. Be conservative in how many of the top product backlog items you put into the sprint backlog. Do what Scrum guides. The worst likely to happen is that the PO decides he would have re-prioritized the chosen items lower. At least you will have worked on what had been identified as the priority, as best as you could tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So is there any danger in committing to zero story points but running the sprint as if it were a real sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe the danger is that you undertake work on technical debt that you assume will become necessary, and then find out that it was not necessary, or not in the way that you do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17710" LastEditorUserId="17710" LastEditDate="2015-07-12T08:30:10.960" LastActivityDate="2015-07-12T08:30:10.960" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15452" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-12T06:35:53.453" Score="2" ViewCount="542" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, there are some projects where using Gantt can be useful, but there are others where a Gantt becomes only a burden. What features of projects should I consider (beyond the basis of my own experience) to determine when Gantt diagrams are not useful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have considered the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/16/when-are-gantt-diagrams-useful&quot;&gt;When are Gantt diagrams useful?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/75/are-gantt-diagrams-compatible-with-agile-methods&quot;&gt;Are Gantt diagrams compatible with Agile methods?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17321" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T20:45:49.077" Title="When are Gantt diagrams NOT useful?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15446" CreationDate="2015-07-12T07:27:58.087" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Joels answer is great and I'll apply it also. For sure, I up voted it. My answer is to provide a second and more generalised alternative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a general methodology for such &amp;quot;problems&amp;quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collect&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Structure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grade / rank / assess (it's &lt;em&gt;bewerten&lt;/em&gt; in German)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How you realise the single steps depends a lot of the participating people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Collect&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal is to identify &lt;em&gt;all relevant topics&lt;/em&gt; without missing something of importance. The method to succeed depends on the personalities the team is made of. So, if not done before: &lt;strong&gt;Identify your team&lt;/strong&gt; (w.r.t. the characters). There are multiple models and stereotypes. I like the &lt;em&gt;Insights&lt;/em&gt; model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The techniques you could apply are e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;brain storming&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;silent brain storming&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;structured group interviews where you prepared categories to talk about&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;image drawing (don't know the right name) where you start on the left side of the paper and ask for image analogies for specific topics (work environment, team spirit). The idea is that the initial (e.g.) &amp;quot;high mountain* of problem complexity evolves to a &amp;quot;picnic site* over some retrospectives (or a &lt;em&gt;death valley&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask the team to build a diary of the last sprint, including all kind of stuff (e.g. Jim's birthday, the black out, when Steven broke Jenkis) afterwards ask about what went bad, what went good&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Structure&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal is to erase duplicates in order to focus for the next step. Depending on your way of noting, just put similar things together. Depending on the available time do this during or after the collection phase. Always ask the team if it's right what you're doing. You don't have to ask out loud. If you know the team, use body language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Assess&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Figure out what's important to the team. Again there are multiple voting techniques and again it's the team build up driving to choice the &amp;quot;correct&amp;quot; one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The collection phase is critical. The two other phases will be successful often by just asking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To succeed in the collection phase you have to find the &amp;quot;right&amp;quot;  technique for the team depending on the included characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't be afraid to experiment after you found a technique working for your team. This will bring new points of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2015-07-12T07:35:08.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15452" CreationDate="2015-07-12T10:17:30.700" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One factor, on which the likely utility of Gantt could be predicted, is the length of time over which work is planned. The longer the period of time over which work is planned ahead, the more useful a Gantt diagram is likely to be. (Of course, one doesn't usually assess something based on a single factor, so this might seem simplistic.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider, for example, a two-week Scrum sprint. While you do maintain a prioritized product backlog (all of which will take a longer time), you only plan the actual work one sprint at a time. To me Gantt diagrams would not seem as useful with Scrum as with waterfall. (This is not an absolute, but rather a relative, thing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17710" LastEditorUserId="17710" LastEditDate="2015-07-12T10:44:38.340" LastActivityDate="2015-07-12T10:44:38.340" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15455" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-12T10:30:53.240" Score="5" ViewCount="443" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If the forecast of the team doesn't come true, how can I understand the reason for this?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Poor estimation during The Planning Meeting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduced productivity (for various reasons) during the entire Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unforeseen circumstances during the Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only a subjective expert estimation can be applicable to this situation &lt;em&gt;(in other words, talk with the developers, and ask why their forecast didn't come true)&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or maybe some metrics, practice or tips exist for helping to detect  the reason for this problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-07-13T16:06:34.373" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T16:06:34.373" Title="Failed forecast: poor estimation or bad productivity?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;progress-monitor&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15455" CreationDate="2015-07-12T13:25:27.953" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;3rd reason why a forecast may not come true - the inherent uncertainty&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You rightly used the word &quot;forecast&quot;! Prior to 2011 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-planning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; had the word &quot;commitment&quot;. That caused two problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The development teams were under pressure to deliver on the &quot;commitment&quot; at all costs. Often this cost would be a drop in quality.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner and the stake holders would make downstream planning, such as product launches and client commitments based on the hard &quot;Commitment&quot; by the development team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In spite of the best efforts by the development team to estimate carefully and their best efforts to deliver on the commitment the work may not be completed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one of my previous projects we were building a secure application for online banking. We had selected an open source SSL toolkit for the encryption. We ran into a problem. Even though our lead developer was highy skilled and made every effort to make this functionality work or find a work around we could not do so. We identified that it was a bug in the open source software. Eventually our lead developer fixed the bug in the open source toolkit and contributed the bug fix back to that project. It was gratefully accepted. But, our project did take a hit on the time line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read more about the background to the change in the Scrum Guide from &quot;commitment&quot; to &quot;forecast&quot; here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/About/All-Articles/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/95/Commitment-vs-Forecast-A-subtle-but-important-change-to-Scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Commitment vs Forecast: A subtle but important change to Scrum&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/p2UBt.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is possible in your team there is a pattern of poor estimation or reduced productivity, beyond this inherent uncertainty. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Only a subjective expert estimation can be applicable to this&#xA;  situation (in other words, talk with the developers, and ask why their&#xA;  forecast didn't come true)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your comment above seems to indicate a command-and control style of approach where someone from outside the team (expert) would monitor and control the team. The Scrum approach is for the team to identify the issue in the sprint retrospective and come up with ways to overcome it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-07-12T13:25:27.953" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15457" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15464" CreationDate="2015-07-12T14:42:19.060" Score="3" ViewCount="1067" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to find an example of the failure of design by committee, i.e. where everyone's suggestion has equal weight, and the end result is a complete mess that doesn't really satisfy the original requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The example could be from absolutely any field, as long as it is accessible to a general audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17787" LastEditorUserId="17710" LastEditDate="2015-07-13T08:10:12.823" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T16:09:06.837" Title="Examples of design by committee?" Tags="&lt;stakeholders&gt;&lt;design&gt;&lt;analysis&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15458" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-12T18:54:38.493" Score="3" ViewCount="82" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have multiple projects to handle. And I make some personalized fields for one of those project under MS Project 2013. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to export my configuration and use it in another file. is this possible ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;for example : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in &lt;strong&gt;FILE1.mpp&lt;/strong&gt; I made a personalized field called &lt;strong&gt;NumberOfTasks&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I want to import that to &lt;strong&gt;FILE2.mpp&lt;/strong&gt; without having to go through the same steps that I have done to make the &lt;strong&gt;NumberOfTasks&lt;/strong&gt; formula ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17770" LastActivityDate="2016-01-10T03:16:54.803" Title="How to export a configuration of MS Project 2013 so that I can import it in another file ?" Tags="&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15457" CreationDate="2015-07-12T19:29:58.917" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a design problem that has a real solution space, the local optimum is still an optimum. That means, the result should not be a total mess (ignoring the fact that the committee can mess it up). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if the problem at hand requires novel approaches and taking risks, the committee solution could become a handicapped one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally, the trade-off analyses catch the problems and make them apparent to everyone's understanding. And then it's the project manager's (or the chief designer's) job to take the low risk and high-gain solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16715" LastActivityDate="2015-07-12T19:29:58.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15455" CreationDate="2015-07-12T21:38:31.340" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, reasons for the described mismatch are not limited to the two. I can imagine two additional and am pretty sure that a group brain storming will identify some more:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;bad estimation or if said more general: wrong estimation caused e.g. by uncertainty&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;lazy team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;bad working conditions, e.g. caused by organisation (e.g. multiple interruptions) or technical (e.g. server down times)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;personal belongings, e.g. sickness or problems at home&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I agree with you regarding the search for the root cause: The simplest way to figure out what went wrong is &lt;strong&gt;to ask the team&lt;/strong&gt;, e.g. during the retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to do this or the team is uncertain, statistics might help you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Theory Y&lt;/a&gt;, there must be circumstances hindering the team in delivering optimal work performance. Have a look on &lt;strong&gt;work performance data&lt;/strong&gt;, e.g. time booked on the project. This will help to figure out if the real sprint length matched the expected length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might check the working conditions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did a new construction site started in front of the window?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was it extraordinary hot?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was there a fire alarm / black out / &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Swan_(2007_book)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;black swan&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But finally, you should perform a &lt;strong&gt;root cause analysis&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sit down with the team and ask what assumptions were made and which were wrong. You might use an &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishikawa_diagram&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ishikawa diagram&lt;/a&gt; to figure out the root cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2015-07-12T21:38:31.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15457" CreationDate="2015-07-12T22:06:49.460" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am trying to find an example of the failure of design by committee...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Design by committee&lt;/strong&gt; is not actually a serious method. It is &lt;strong&gt;sarcasm&lt;/strong&gt;. Typically, that phrase is used to describe a design process that is extremely inefficient and is leading to feature-bloat. It is inefficient because it takes longer than necessary to make decisions. It leads to feature-bloat, because bad decisions are often made by people simply agreeing to accept each others' ideas, regardless of merit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17710" LastActivityDate="2015-07-12T22:06:49.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15455" CreationDate="2015-07-12T23:51:19.933" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The OP does not really describe the context of what was wrong with the estimate or forecasts.  By estimate, is the OP talking about a planning value or a probabilistic range.  If the former, were the actuals within the probabilistic range and, if so, what was the degree of variance.  If the latter, were the actuals way off the charts?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are thousands of variables at play when actuals come in.  Some are aleatory, random in nature and part of the process; while others are epistemic, specific drivers that cause actuals to come in high or low.  Doing post mortems are excellent to try to discover what caused your variances; however, I would also argue that spending a ton of time trying to understand your variances when your actuals were well withing the normal range of probabilistic results is likely a huge waste of time.  For example, if my estimate to complete this project was between eight months to a year, I targeted nine and half months but my actuals came in at a 11, who really cares what the drivers were that cause me to be late 1.5 months?  What value would that provide me when estimate the next project?  Eleven is comfortably in my range from eight to 12, my estimate.  I do the project again, I could come in at 9.2; again I could come in at 10; again I could come in at 11.9.  Understanding the drivers would be interesting but there are too many variables at play for that to make a difference.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important for the OP to put in context what he means by &quot;wrong.&quot;  Because simply missing your targets does not mean wrong.  It just means you missed it this time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-07-12T23:51:19.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15457" CreationDate="2015-07-13T06:13:56.227" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Despite the fact that I agree with David that design by committee is sarcasm [and a real phenomenon, I agree with Michael Hogan too :-)], question is about examples (not about &quot;design by committee&quot; term).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://sixrevisions.com/project-management/how-to-navigate-design-by-committee/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a list of projects designed by committee in the &quot;Case Studies&quot; part:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://designobserver.com/feature/design-by-committee/4077&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Design by Committee: The U.N. Headquarters&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/003600.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Perils of &quot;Designed by Committee&quot; as a Pejorative&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://designhttp://www.w3.org/People/Bos/DesignGuide/committee.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Design by Committee: W3C&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.greatseal.com/committees/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Designing the Great Seal of the United States&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://sourcemaking.com/antipatterns/design-by-committee&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SQL and CORBA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hueniverse.com/2012/07/26/oauth-2-0-and-the-road-to-hell/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OAuth 2.0 and the Road to Hell&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/12/diggs-biggest-problem-are-its-users-and-their-constant-opinions-on-things/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Digg's Biggest Problem Is Its Users And Their Constant Opinions On Things&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gerarddirect.com/2013/03/10/uss-f-35-and-f-22-americas-costly-boondoggles-the-victims-of-arrogance-and-appeasement/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;F-35&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, Fred Brooks wrote about some examples in his The Mythical Man-Month:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software&#xA;  systems have been designed by committees and built by multipart&#xA;  projects, those software systems that have excited passionate fans are&#xA;  those that are the products of one or a few designing minds, great&#xA;  designers. Consider Unix, APL, Pascal, Modula, the Smalltalk&#xA;  interface, even Fortran; and contrast with Cobol, PL/I, Algol,&#xA;  MVS/370, and MS-DOS&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At last, example from &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_by_committee&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Design by committee&lt;/a&gt;&quot; wiki page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An example of a technical decision said to be a typical result of&#xA;  design by committee is the Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) cell size&#xA;  of 53 bytes. The choice of 53 bytes was political rather than&#xA;  technical. When the CCITT was standardizing ATM, parties from the&#xA;  United States wanted a 64-byte payload. Parties from Europe wanted&#xA;  32-byte payloads. Most of the European parties eventually came around&#xA;  to the arguments made by the Americans, but France and a few others&#xA;  held out for a shorter cell length of 32 bytes. A 53-byte size (48&#xA;  bytes plus 5 byte header) was the compromise chosen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-07-13T16:09:06.837" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T16:09:06.837" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15457" CreationDate="2015-07-13T06:29:24.410" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Design-by-committee is a real phenomenon, especially in government projects where a committee of elected representatives establish and control budget decisions.&lt;/strong&gt; University of Southern California course &lt;a href=&quot;http://viterbi.usc.edu/sae/courses/sae-550.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SAE 550&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;Systems Architecting and the Political Process&quot;, is a survey of engineering efforts that have been heavily influenced by design-by-committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The course covers a number of case studies from the aerospace industry. For each case study, the initial goals are described, an optimal engineering solution may be described, and the impact of politics on engineering decision-making are explored. The course presents a set of design heuristics that engineers can use to accommodate the realities of design-by-committee in the political process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be worth your time to contact the course instructor to request one or two case studies. The Space Shuttle case study includes fascinating discussion looking at how conflicting Air Force and NASA requirements for the size of mission payloads impacted the Shuttle's cargo bay. Various other factors are considered to explain how the Shuttle went from a reusable, high-frequency launch platform to a low-frequency launch platform.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2305" LastEditorUserId="2305" LastEditDate="2015-07-13T06:39:05.283" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T06:39:05.283" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15452" CreationDate="2015-07-13T07:05:38.653" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider the &lt;strong&gt;project phase&lt;/strong&gt; prior to choosing a Gantt chart as a primary project management tool. &lt;strong&gt;Gantt Charts are of limited value during project planning.&lt;/strong&gt; Gantt Charts are intended to be used as status reports and communication tools (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gantt_chart&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this Wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt; and click through to reference item six, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.archive.org/details/ganttchartworkin00claruoft&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Gantt chart, a working tool of management&lt;/a&gt;&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When planning a project, it is appropriate to use either an activity-on-arrow or activity-on-node &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_network&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;network diagram&lt;/a&gt; in conjunction with a set of resource availability plans. Since Microsoft Project defaults to the Gantt chart view, many people make the mistake of using that view for project planning. Microsoft Project also makes an activity-on-node view available and that view is useful for planning. The network diagram should be used in conjunction with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techrepublic.com/article/define-resources-with-microsoft-project/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;resource information sheets&lt;/a&gt; for each of the project's critical resources in order to stagger work based on both logical sequence and resource availability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2305" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T07:05:38.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15467" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-13T08:37:44.687" Score="9" ViewCount="8229" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently, I am drafting a SRS ( Software Requirement Specification ) doc for an agile project, and the samples are the ones used in a waterfall project. I did google a lot but couldn't find any right one. I have been part of an agile project before as a developer and also understand the working mechanism but never made the document before. Especially, areas like the scope which varies in terms of sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is if some body can share any sample SRS for Agile projects? What kind of details need to be presented from agile project perspective in the scope and milestone section?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: Although the SRS is not mandatory but we have a fixed price project that needs to have a fixed timeline on the basis of the effort application. Hence need to document the requirements that need to be worked out along with the possible timelines. Apart from all this, the project needs to be executed from an Agile approach as discussed with the management hence it will most probably be a subsequent transition to a complete agile approach from the approach that we are executing currently. Having said that under current circumstances should I go for an SRS doc or something custom&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17721" LastEditorUserId="17721" LastEditDate="2015-07-13T11:09:06.683" LastActivityDate="2019-10-23T22:27:06.420" Title="SRS for an Agile project" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;specification&gt;&lt;initiation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15467" CreationDate="2015-07-13T10:30:40.777" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many agile projects don't produce a software requirements specification in the sense of a document that lists a bunch of &quot;shall&quot; statements along with some assumptions and dependencies, like what is described in &lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/mostRecentIssue.jsp?punumber=6146377&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ISO/IEC/IEEE 29148&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.everyspec.com/DATA-ITEM-DESC-DIDs/DI-IPSC/DI-IPSC-81433A_3709/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DI-IPSC-81433A&lt;/a&gt;. That doesn't mean such a document can't be produced, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often, agile projects will capture 'requirements' in the form of use cases, user stories, scenarios, or other user-centric forms. The requirements will also tend to be broken down into those being worked on in the current iteration and those that still need to be worked on - in Scrum, that's the sprint backlog and the product backlog. The only requirements that are well analyzed, validated, and estimated are those being worked on in the current iteration. The rest could change - requirements could be added, removed, or changed at any point in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an essay, Scott Ambler does talk about &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemodeling.com/essays/agileRequirements.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;requirements modeling in an agile environment&lt;/a&gt;. Karl Wiegers and Joy Beatty also discuss requirements engineering in agile in their book &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0735679665&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Software Requirements (3rd Edition)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think one of Scott Ambler's &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemodeling.com/practices.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Practices of Agile Modeling&lt;/a&gt; is appropriate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemodeling.com/practices.htm#ApplyTheRightArtifacts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Apply The Right Artifact(s)&lt;/a&gt;. Each artifact has its own specific applications. For example, a UML activity diagram is useful for describing a business process, whereas the static structure of your database is better represented by a physical data or persistence model. Very often a diagram is a better choice than source code -- If a picture is worth a thousand words then a model is often worth 1024 lines of code when applied in the right circumstances (a term borrowed from Karl Wieger's Software Requirements) because you can often explore design alternatives more effectively by drawing a couple diagrams on whiteboards with your peers than you can by sitting down and developing code samples. The implication is that you need to know the strengths and weaknesses of each type of artifact so you know when and when not to use them. Note that this can be very difficult because you have Multiple Models available to you, in fact the Agile Models Distilled page lists over 35 types of models and it is by no means definitive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you need to produce an SRS?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If yes, you're going to need to keep the document as a living document. Traditional plan-based SRS documents and formats are going to need tailoring. If you had to do this, I'd recommend keeping a running list of what requirements were allocated to what sprint and not necessarily focus on the backlog. This document becomes a description of what the software is capable of at the completion of each iteration rather than a set of requirements to go build.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you only need to produce some requirements artifact, perhaps for compliance purposes, see if you can produce a different artifact instead of an SRS. For example, if you needed to have an audit trail for requirements changes, keeping meeting minutes of your backlog grooming sessions and requirements change requests (for adding, removing, or reordering the backlog) along with tracking what requirements go into what iterations may be sufficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't really need an SRS, do look at other artifacts used to capture and communicate requirements that better fit into agile methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2019-10-23T22:27:06.420" LastActivityDate="2019-10-23T22:27:06.420" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15467" CreationDate="2015-07-13T11:23:34.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have a prototype, a vision document, Personas and some PBI depending on your project I dont think you need SRS. for more complex or enterprise applications you may want to add a UML doc but I think creating a SRS doc is a lengthy process and just an additional layer of complexity that can be avoided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16022" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T11:23:34.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15254" CreationDate="2015-07-13T11:50:49.343" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure of the best way to enforce compliance in your situation. However, you can find a large list of software development project risks in the appendix of this online manual - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectbalm.com/rr-userguide/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Risk Register User Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a more comprehensive list than you will find in the CHAOS report (which only listed 10 risks, from memory), so you may find it helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17766" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T11:50:49.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15231" CreationDate="2015-07-13T11:58:05.937" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My workplace currently does something similar, and assigns a Red/Orange/Green rating to each software release. It's based solely on the number and severity of outstanding bugs - since we have a large user base, we get quite a few bug reports. The formula is something like this - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1+ high severity defects = Red (high risk release)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3+ medium severity defects = Orange (medium risk release)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise it is rated Green (low risk release)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use JIRA to track defects, so it's a pretty easy job to run the numbers. If you ARE using JIRA, you may want to check out this fairly cool &lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.projectbalm.riskregister.riskregister-jira&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Risk Management&lt;/a&gt; plugin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17766" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T11:58:05.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14000" CreationDate="2015-07-13T12:05:15.533" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following definition and explanation of a risk is from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectbalm.com/rr-userguide/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Risk Register User Guide&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is a risk?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Before looking at risk management, we need to understand what a risk actually is. The PMBOK gives a good definition - “an uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, has a positive or negative effect on one or more project objectives such as scope, schedule, cost, or quality.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When describing risks, we usually want to know the cause, the affected area, and the consequences. Let’s look at the example risk given in the PMBOK - “due to the forecast of high winds in our area, there is a risk that the roof of the barn will blow off causing our cattle feed to be ruined and loss of our livestock”. Here we see the cause (high winds), the affected area (barn roof), and the consequences (loss of livestock).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Let’s look at another example, this one perhaps more familiar. “Due to ongoing support demands, there is a risk that the Senior Programmer will be shifted from the project, causing a delay in the schedule”. Here we see the cause (ongoing support), the affected area (the Senior Programmer) and the consequences (a delay in the schedule).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17766" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T12:05:15.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15455" CreationDate="2015-07-13T12:09:42.563" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum takes an empirical approach to estimation. It was realised that the process of asking teams to estimate and then relying on those estimates is fraught with problems. It is much more effective to allocate some work to a sprint, measure what gets done and then make predictions for future sprints based on those measurements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The forecast of the team should be based on past performance. As long as they are consistently sizing stories then the past performance should help to predict what they are capable of in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, say the team takes 30 story points in to a sprint, but only manages to complete 25. In the next sprint they may well reduce the number of story points they bring in to 25. The intention is to use a rolling average of the &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; achieved results to determine future performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your team is not getting all the work they committed to done in a sprint the answer is simple. Reduce the amount of work you commit to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even this approach does not guarantee successful comittment with every sprint. Development work has inherent unpredictability, particularly when a team is working closely with business users to ensure that the product meets their requirements. A Scrum team that allocates 20 points to a sprint and only achieves 16 would not regard this result as a disaster. They would discuss in the retrospective the reasons why not all the targetted work was completed and see if there are any ways to improve. And the velocity would be reduced to take in to account what has happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T12:09:42.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15452" CreationDate="2015-07-13T12:19:07.030" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What Gantt charts do well is they highlight dependencies. This is particularly useful when there are many parties involved in a development and there is a lot of intergration work to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What they do badly is adapt to continuous change. The agile approach is to do a bit of work, get feedback and then adapt. A Gantt chart would need to be continually updated to keep up with this approach, which would be a challenge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also the problem of how Gantt charts are interpreted. It can be tempting to view a Gantt chart as a prediction of the course of events on a project. This can lead to people making assumptions based on the chart and also treating milestones as deadlines rather than target dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T12:19:07.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15452" CreationDate="2015-07-13T13:08:13.323" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;...when the consumers of the report or graphic find it not useful....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not mean to be trite but we tend to forget that a report or table or graph is for the benefit of the consumers of that data, not the benefit of the producers of that data.  Instead of trying to understand when to use Gantt chart, or any other type of tool, by way of type of project or method or industry, we should understand based on what the consumers of this report need to understand and make decisions.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T13:08:13.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15477" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15478" CreationDate="2015-07-13T16:21:10.613" Score="6" ViewCount="633" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;em&gt;Boehm’s Software Engineering Economics&lt;/em&gt;, during the project initiation, estimates can be off by as much as 400%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in order to make the sale, account managers are expected to make on-the-spot estimates of the project duration. The result is that we end up with a number of unrealistic schedules which we are contractually obliged to stick to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The schedules tends to be underestimated, since there is a feeling here that if we quote too high, the project or the tender will simply be snapped up by another company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What strategies exist to mitigate that uncertainty? Are there standard contracts that sell an initial requirements extraction phase to better understand the requirements before making a long term estimate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16338" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T18:35:00.290" Title="How can we mitigate uncertainty about project estimation in the initial phase?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15477" CreationDate="2015-07-13T17:29:20.783" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way I've been coaching business leaders on is to separate schedule from scope. If you try and completely hit the plan for both you will A- Fail almost for certain, B- Spend a lot of wasted time trying to estimate. This has been true even back to the old traditional project models. The PMP test teaches us about &quot;Order of Magnitude&quot; estimating for a reason. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I coach the following- Pick the Release Date, &quot;Really&quot; rank order the backlog, Estimate the Backlog, Commit to the top 25% of the backlog, revise at 25%, 50% and 75% of the release schedule. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1- Pick A Release Date:&lt;/strong&gt; Decide when you need to ship. For most companies predictability of release date is more important than content of release. Knowing they can count on a release going out on X date with high quality (quality is assumed, but does need to be planned), then they are going to be a lot happier and more tolerant of not knowing &quot;exactly&quot; what they will get. Scrum is great for hitting a release date. You know when to ship, you know how many sprints you have and you can plan your scope to that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2- Really order the backlog:&lt;/strong&gt; No really, we mean it. You need to stop doing anything with Priority. You can't have five P0s. That's like saying &quot;we have one surgeon and all five of these people have to be operated on first.&quot; In trauma medicine we have the concept of triage. If doctors and their staff can make the very hard call on which patient to operate on first, we can make the hard call on if Feature A has more or less business value than Feature B. The key thing here is to estimate on business value AND the level of effort to build. If a story A costs 3 points to build and story B costs 8 points, engineering is probably going to build the 3 point story. If, however, Story A is worth 1 point and Story B is worth 13 points, then Story B probably should get worked first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Commit to the top 25%&lt;/strong&gt; This is not a hard number, go with what works. The concept here is that once you have a backlog you can probably have a certain confidence in being able to absolutely deliver a certain amount of the backlog. Don't ever do this as a stretch goal and never more than 50% of the backlog. What you're doing is saying &quot;No matter what, we will ship this, you can take it to the bank.&quot; So be cautious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Revise at 25%, 50% and 75%&lt;/strong&gt; Then comes the order of magnitude estimating with agile. As you move through the release, you will get a better idea of your velocity and ability to deliver. At these milestones you update what you can commit to deliver based on the reality of what has already been delivered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in a year long program, at the start of the program sales knows 25% of the features and can be selling those right then. Three months before ship, you know for certain everything that will be in the release and groups like customer support and professional services can do final training. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't try to commit to schedule and scope at the start of a release. It will be fiction and everyone will know it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T17:29:20.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15477" CreationDate="2015-07-13T19:42:34.773" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are usually fixed price and cost related contracts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a given and accepted uncertainty about a project, the customer might accept (or the vendor neglect) a cost related contract. Using this kind of contracts, the customer pays for the real costs independent of the results. Additions to increase motivation are possible also, see e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost-plus_contract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cost plus contract&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project risk is on the customer site using cost related contracts. Because of that, a customer will use such a contract (in general) only for special projects, e.g. research projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mixed contract types are possible also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T19:42:34.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15477" CreationDate="2015-07-13T20:16:44.243" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would attempt to mitigate at the relationship level if at all possible. I've had some success with getting a client to be more directly involved in steering the project at a high level, combined with a shared backlog/transparency and agreeing that scope must be flexible in order to make truly high-value product. This is in a fixed-cost, firm (not fixed) date environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In these cases, we regularly review the state of the product with the client and then groom the backlog together; things like client feedback, user testing/feedback, and new ideas are prioritized, the backlog is re-chunked into key dates or checkpoints based on our current best-known velocity, and everyone agrees on the changes. A key component is a very streamlined and easy-to-manipulate backlog, preferably in a real-time or shared view. Passing backlogs back and forth tends to promote an adversarial or negotiation approach rather than true partnership. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In almost all cases, after these checkpoints and adjustments, everyone seems to be of the opionion that we're much better off than if we had followed a fixed-date/fixed-scope approach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T20:16:44.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15458" CreationDate="2015-07-13T21:42:41.587" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can copy custom formulas using the Organizer.  Open both files and use File &gt; Info and click Organizer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T21:42:41.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15477" CreationDate="2015-07-13T22:12:37.067" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What strategies exist to mitigate that uncertainty?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Before the Estimate&lt;/strong&gt;: Provide more training, support, and better process to your account managers. Reduce the expectation of &quot;on the spot&quot; estimating that you mentioned. Figure out exactly how much time they actually have to produce estimates, and &lt;strong&gt;make sure that they take advantage of all the time and resources that are available to them&lt;/strong&gt;, rather than succumbing to the pressure.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;After the Estimate&lt;/strong&gt;: Use a &quot;time and materials&quot; contract, where possible. In that case, the risk will be mitigated by &lt;strong&gt;shifting the consequences&lt;/strong&gt;. The consequences of having underestimated on a time and materials contract are embarrassment, rather than financial. (for the provider)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;During the Project&lt;/strong&gt;: Manage the stakeholders effectively, advising them, for example, when your prediction of the actual effort to deliver changes. Make sure they know, in advance, what the impact on them will be. (e.g. difficulty for the client, embarrassment and/or cost to the provider)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are there standard contracts that sell an initial requirements extraction phase to better understand the requirements before making a long term estimate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, and no&lt;/strong&gt;. It depends on what you mean by &quot;standard&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, some customers and providers may have such options that they consider standard &lt;strong&gt;within their company&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, I don't believe you will find an &lt;strong&gt;industry standard&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(I should add that, when you're talking about a large government client, or other client who is dominant in their industry, their &lt;strong&gt;internal&lt;/strong&gt; standards may effectively be a lot like an &lt;strong&gt;industry&lt;/strong&gt; standard.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17710" LastEditorUserId="17710" LastEditDate="2015-07-13T22:19:31.250" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T22:19:31.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15477" CreationDate="2015-07-14T00:57:17.960" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Estimating a project and pricing a project are two separate and distinct processes.  In IT, at least based on what I have observed, we conflate the two.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your stated problem is the latter process, in that there is pressure to quote the project--in both price and time--as low as possible due to fear of losing the opportunity.  However, you are trying to solve it by doing something...magical on the estimating side.  You can mitigate all you want but you will ALWAYS have variability in results because work is ALWAYS probabilistic.  And no matter how well you mitigate, pray, hope, wish, do magic, you cannot cure the fear of losing a bid and, thus, essentially giving your services away during the pricing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not happen in, say, construction.  Construction firms do not give away services like IT firms do.  The cure is NOT to try to figure out to somehow fit an estimate into an unrealistic price.  The cure is to figure out how we in IT can start to behave like other industries and understand that it is okay to let some other firm win the business and lose their shirts on the deal.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T00:57:17.960" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15484" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-14T06:57:24.337" Score="3" ViewCount="268" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can we measure the progress of a task in Kanban?&#xA;Also will there be an estimate for a task or is it simply saying that focus on the task and finish it rather than sticking to the deadline ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17802" LastActivityDate="2015-07-31T22:37:33.613" Title="tracking and progress in a Kanban" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12410" CreationDate="2015-07-14T07:31:17.587" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was told MOS is Method of Statement.  Not sure if it is a universal term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12203" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T07:31:17.587" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15484" CreationDate="2015-07-14T11:13:41.037" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, I would always include an estimate against any Kanban task, as this helps you limit the number of tasks that are undertaken at any one time (&lt;a href=&quot;http://leankit.com/blog/2014/03/limiting-work-in-progress/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Work in Progress Limit&lt;/a&gt;). You can also calculate your team's velocity, which can be immensely helpful in future planning scenarios.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding task tracking, there are a number of different ways that you could do this. The most common way would be for your team to add time/percentage against the task until it has been completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wanted a more top-level overview of tasks, you could consider adding additional columns to your Kanban board. An example of this in the Web Development industry could be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blocked | Backlog | In Development | Testing | Pull Request | Complete&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This provides you with a more visual way of tracking tasks, which is key to a successful Kanban approach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8220" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T11:13:41.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15484" CreationDate="2015-07-14T13:23:53.887" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If we're talking about Kanban in its strictest sense - the measure is the lead and cycle time of tasks as they get through the flow. Look up CFD, or Cumulative Flow Diagram, for more info on this. There is no need for estimates - you just pick up the next task in the queue - so it really doesn't matter whether the task is Large, Medium or Small - you work on the next most important task - and if that takes many many days (equivalent to a &quot;Large&quot;), then that will impact the cycle time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17686" LastEditorUserId="15972" LastEditDate="2015-07-31T22:37:33.613" LastActivityDate="2015-07-31T22:37:33.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15488" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-14T13:28:29.677" Score="7" ViewCount="3234" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the early stages of developing a new project and I'm trying to pick up and apply agile techniques. In particular I'm trying to set up a Kanban approach with the development of this project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my last project I familiarised myself with Atlassian Confluence and it was a pretty immense help, so I've purchased a license for Jira and Jira Agile to go along with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last week I held a meeting with some other members of our company who are the de facto customers of this project since it will be used internally. I discussed all the requirements they had and turned them into a set of user stories. Here are a couple of examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a developer*, I want to be able to create a test procedure which gives me control and monitoring of the motors in the test rig.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As an operator, I want to be able to see the reports of tests that I run.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These user stories have been recorded in a Product Requirements page in Confluence and transferred over to a Kanban board in Jira. My board currently looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Z1YkY.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is that these user stories are providing high-level descriptions for the core goals of the project. As soon as I start doing any work, I'll have automatically made progress in all of them and so I'd have to move all of them into &quot;In Progress&quot;. And none of these user stories would be marked as done until I'm nearly complete with the project during which time they would all get marked as done in pretty quick succession.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be a lot more intuitive to me if each card on the board represented a small, simple &lt;em&gt;task&lt;/em&gt; that was along the lines of &quot;Implement this small piece of functionality&quot; or &quot;Investigate if this approach is feasible&quot; - something I can assign to myself or someone else and expect it to get done within a few hours or days. How does an approach like that fit in with the idea of using user stories on a Kanban approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I could do is create a series of sub-tasks for each story. The problem with this approach for me is that a lot of these tasks would be shared as a common requirement between most if not all of the user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In brief, I've created a set of user stories and not sure what to do next. Have I made a mistake in creating these user stories or am I just not seeing the next step?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*by &quot;developer&quot; I meant &quot;test sequence developer&quot; i.e. one type of customer of the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17807" LastEditorUserId="17807" LastEditDate="2015-07-16T14:31:03.003" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T14:31:03.003" Title="How do I get started with Kanban? I have a backlog full of user stories" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15489" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15490" CreationDate="2015-07-14T13:53:02.743" Score="1" ViewCount="93" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to filter only the tasks that have a duration fixed and know. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a lot of tasks with an estimated duration, I want to filter the others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this possible under MS Project 2013 ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17770" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T14:46:14.853" Title="How to filter the tasks that have a non-estimated duration?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15489" CreationDate="2015-07-14T14:46:14.853" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume you mean you only want to show non-estimated tasks:-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create a new filter and filter on the &quot;Estimated&quot; field, where it has a value of &quot;No&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you require the opposite, and want to &lt;em&gt;hide&lt;/em&gt; non-estimated tasks there is a pre-built filter called &quot;Estimated&quot; that causes only estimated tasks to be displayed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T14:46:14.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15491" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15534" CreationDate="2015-07-14T15:46:59.933" Score="1" ViewCount="1668" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently made the move to Project 2013 Standard (15.0.4727.1001) and seem to be having problems using even simple filters I've created within custom reports.  For example, I wanted to create a simple &quot;show all tasks which are past their finish date&quot; report.  Starting simple, I created a filter with one criterion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&quot;&amp;lt;%Complete&amp;gt; &amp;lt;is not equal to&amp;gt; &amp;lt;100%&amp;gt;&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report returns only a handful of tasks (mostly summary tasks, if that's any clue) - but many fewer than meet this criterion. This occurs regardless of the Outline Level I select. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems so straight-forward I must be missing something - or is this functionality just that weak?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; It appears that some of the predefined filters aren't being respected, either. For example, my report only shows one task with the &quot;In Progress&quot; filter applied and only a handful when the &quot;Incomplete Tasks&quot; filter is applied - both clearly wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17809" LastEditorUserId="17809" LastEditDate="2015-07-14T20:14:59.197" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T17:49:52.467" Title="Microsoft Project 2013 Custom Report Not Respecting Task Filter" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15488" CreationDate="2015-07-14T18:34:22.010" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Creation of a backlog and user stories was definitely a good first step but...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your user stories should not be interdependent. As you describe above, you feel as if you would have to move all stories to in progress, if you started any specific one.  This indicates that you have epics or stories that are not vertical slices of business value.  I'd recommend looking at what you have and trying to re-write it in such a fashion that each story is independent, relatively small, and delivers a piece of value to your customers when completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find yourself writing a story that starts with &quot;As a developer...&quot; stop and think about what value that provides to the customer.  Try and write all your stories with a customer actor in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban is a lot harder to follow than Scrum.  Consider why you have chosen Kanban.  Many teams use Kanban when they are unable to get a full iterations worth of backlogs defined because requirements change so rapidly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also wanted to add some thoughts on the actual Kanban board.  A key concept of Kanban is visualizing your workflow.  Your current board looks out of the box.  Many Kanban teams will customize their Kanban flow to be more granular.  For instance a team that has defined QA and Dev roles along with a UAT environment may have a flow that looks like Future&gt;Defined&gt;Developing&gt;Testing&gt;UAT&gt;Production.  Think and discuss with your team what their workflow looks like and make the board match it.  In the long-run this will position you to focus on key Kanban concepts like cycle and or lead time as well as WIP limits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastEditorUserId="13568" LastEditDate="2015-07-14T18:51:00.077" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T18:51:00.077" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15477" CreationDate="2015-07-14T18:35:00.290" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most effective way I've found is to have someone from the delivery organization be responsible for writing much (if not all) of the proposal - and at the very least be in a position to have to &quot;bless&quot; the proposal, with the real option to veto a proposal which is unachievable.  I never got the chance to implement my other solution (to have sales bonuses held until the end of each project, tied to engagement profitability and estimate accuracy) - would be interested to hear of organizations that have made such a tactic work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17809" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T18:35:00.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15452" CreationDate="2015-07-14T20:38:35.290" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Gantt charts don't work well if there is not a commitment (and the commensurate time to meet that commitment) to maintain it - often daily. However, that's not the fault of the technique - that's a resourcing/bandwidth issue.  But if there's not a commitment to build a good plan and continually refine it, there's no sense it wasting any amount of time building a half-baked one that will quickly become useless for decision making.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking from an IT perspective, what they do very well is provide an excellent management and communication tool for large, long-running projects - esp. those with significant non-development-related aspects that have &quot;real world&quot; implications.  While software development may be undertaken in an agile manner, things like hardware purchases, marketing campaigns, installation/deployment resource contracting, compliance deadlines, and the like often cannot. And a Gantt chart provides a way to effectively understand how those interact with one another and the ramifications when something is falling behind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17809" LastEditorUserId="17809" LastEditDate="2015-07-14T20:45:49.077" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T20:45:49.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15500" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15501" CreationDate="2015-07-15T01:17:48.610" Score="3" ViewCount="775" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose I have a task that is being stopped for a while and then it continues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to show that like recurrent tasks , is this possible with manual tasks ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17770" LastActivityDate="2015-07-15T02:47:44.917" Title="Can I have a double task on the same line in MS Project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15500" CreationDate="2015-07-15T02:47:44.917" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. You can split the tasks.  However, depending on why it stops and starts, might be better to create a separate task on another line.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-07-15T02:47:44.917" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15488" CreationDate="2015-07-15T11:22:22.630" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;you could  create subtasks for each of those user stories you have, as you suggested. Personally, I'd take it a level up. Change the user stories you have to EPICS - and then create what would have been subtasks, as stories associated to the epic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes you may have similar tasks/stories which are duplicated; but perhaps the acceptance criteria may be different, depending on the story? By elevating these up a level so that you utilise EPIC as the container for all your stories; your story can be more fine-grained; plus you have the added advantage of using sub-tasks. Aim to have a story only be the equivalent of 2-3 days (max) worth of work (if it's bigger, split it into smaller stories); and aim to have tasks be 0.5 day to 1.5 days worth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can colour code your story cards to reflect which EPIC in belongs to in JIRA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck - there's lots there with JIRA - with numerous plug-in. Over time you can get more fanciful - but for starters, just track the stories/task - ensure you have WIP set; and monitor the flow of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17686" LastActivityDate="2015-07-15T11:22:22.630" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15505" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-15T13:31:49.090" Score="10" ViewCount="2816" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Team setup:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are primarily an IT development team of .Net+Java developers who work respectively on components based on these technology stacks only.&#xA;About few weeks back our team has been asked to follow agile scrum as an organizational initiative. As part of this my team has started having daily scrum standup calls. We also have planning meetings and retrospective now.&#xA;We do not have dedicated scrum master and product owner in the team however we do have a ‘traditional manager’. We also do not have Kanban board to regularly update the task status. Our team has one confluence page where all tasks are listed. Mostly(for last planning meeting 16 out of 18) tasks are one liner and do not have subtasks even if they are as long as estimated for 5-10 days effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problem(In my view, many team members do not agree to this):&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What happens in absence of a Product owner is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When we go to planning meetings we first start give priority to the tasks as a team based on those one liner task descriptions which in some cases are explained (but not documented) by member who has worked on similar tasks earlier. For some other tasks, we say we are still waiting for requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As there is no prior analysis of tasks we waste too much time in priority discussion and estimations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As these meetings are run by ‘manager’ we still plan everything based on task-people mapping rather than a general estimate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever I raise above points in meetings, based on my previous experience of agile scrum methodology, I am opposed by almost all team members saying “we will improve in long term, we have just started”.  &lt;strong&gt;My question is: Is it ok not to have a Product Owner and being dependent on each individual to volunteer to fill details of task(create user stories) on runtime during planning meeting even if it results unclear requirements even after of planning meeting?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17605" LastEditorUserId="17605" LastEditDate="2015-08-13T08:51:38.770" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T08:51:38.770" Title="Is dedicated product owner mandatory for a agile scrum team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15506" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15507" CreationDate="2015-07-15T14:25:39.687" Score="0" ViewCount="416" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am unable to draw a &lt;strong&gt;chart&lt;/strong&gt; in report using MS Project 2013, that have in X-axis (Grouped by) and in the other part Y-axis a &lt;strong&gt;customized field&lt;/strong&gt; ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find customized fields here : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Dv5h4.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17770" LastActivityDate="2015-07-15T14:38:58.727" Title="How to draw a graph with X-axis group by and Y-axis a Customized field using MS Project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15506" CreationDate="2015-07-15T14:29:59.257" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found it it was in &lt;code&gt;Number &amp;gt; Custom &amp;gt; Number 1 ..&lt;/code&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17770" LastEditorDisplayName="user17770" LastEditDate="2015-07-15T14:38:58.727" LastActivityDate="2015-07-15T14:38:58.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15505" CreationDate="2015-07-15T14:32:08.603" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first immediate thought is 'how well will the team improve' if you don't have retrospectives? now to answer your question - no it's not ok not to have a product owner - scrum framework is fairly lightweight - but one thing it states is that you have a scrum master; a product owner and the team. Yes a member of a team can be scrum master; but you really should have a product owner who can:&#xA;* understand the needs of the business&#xA;* be the sole arbitrator of the priority of the tasks&#xA;* be the voice and source of requirements and be able to answer any questions relating to it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sounds like the team as a whole is trying to fulfil this role - and the lengthy discussions on priority are due to the fact that there is no sole arbitrator and some are left as 'waiting for requirements'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the saying goes 'scrum' is easy to understand - but hard to get right&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you're on the right track, asking the questions you ask - but what your team is doing - should not be called 'scrum' &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;if it's of comfort - a lot of teams start off like this - doing a little bit from scrum and slowly get more scrum-like. Usually because there isn't enough buy-in from management. Sounds like you've got the buy-in from management - but a facilitator would go a long way in starting you off in the right direction&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17686" LastActivityDate="2015-07-15T14:32:08.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15505" CreationDate="2015-07-15T16:18:04.053" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer to your question is: No, it is not OK to not have a product owner in Scrum. I'm sure there's a team out there that has done it with some success (there's always the exception to the rule) but it's a critical part of the whole Scrum Team. Scrum is meant to be one framework that you can use to be more Agile. If you look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; and the associated &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot;&gt;12 principles&lt;/a&gt;, the product owner is how Scrum addresses many of them. For example, much (not all) of the Customer Collaboration is accomplished through the Product Owner. Also, the 4th Principle is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Business people and developers must work  together daily throughout&#xA;  the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see the business involved at all in your question. There are, of course, other ways to be Agile beyond Scrum and, if you were really determined, I'm sure you could account or a lack of Product Owner (though it would probably be more difficult than simply having a PO). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing you probably have to consider though, as a member of the team, is that if your organization gave you the directive to use Agile and Scrum, but didn't make Product Owner or Scrum Master roles, they may not actually have much interest in doing it. I fully encourage your team to strive to be as Agile as you can inside of the context of your team, but if the organization doesn't really have the desire to be Agile, don't frustrate yourself with it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-07-15T16:18:04.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15510" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15511" CreationDate="2015-07-15T16:21:11.727" Score="1" ViewCount="2835" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I split a task, where can I find the dates related to the cut ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start date;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;End and start of the first cut;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start of the second cut;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;End of the second part of the task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17770" LastEditorDisplayName="user17770" LastEditDate="2015-07-16T09:43:59.397" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T14:20:45.737" Title="When I split a task, where can I find the dates related to the cut?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15510" CreationDate="2015-07-15T17:37:12.083" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hover over the section with the mouse and the section start and end dates will be shown onscreen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-07-15T17:37:12.083" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15353" CreationDate="2015-07-15T19:07:36.180" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a commenter said, only PMI can answer this. &lt;em&gt;However&lt;/em&gt;, having earned been through the PMP process (and having been audited on my experience by PMI) I would say that sounds good. There are lots of types of 'projects' out there: Even a lot of functional managers do bits of PM work here and there. The most important thing I can say is &lt;strong&gt;be honest, and expect to get audited.&lt;/strong&gt; If you feel like this was legitimately project-type work, you're probably right. Were you following processes from the PMBOK or other industry standards? If so, then it &lt;em&gt;certainly&lt;/em&gt; qualifies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anecdotally, I had a fair bit of this type of experience on my application. The audit process verified that I did what I said what I had for the most part, and required a letter from my manager or something along those lines. I would focus on being prepared for the test and assume your application will go through. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17818" LastActivityDate="2015-07-15T19:07:36.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15505" CreationDate="2015-07-15T20:30:47.337" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Three bloody roles, Scrum has, and only three. If you can’t get that right, don’t call it Scrum, OK?&quot;  - Ron Jeffries (one of the original agile manifesto signatories).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner role is critical to the success of Scrum. They are responsible for providing a business focused and consistent view of the requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2015-07-16T08:01:36.253" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T08:01:36.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15505" CreationDate="2015-07-16T01:59:20.073" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Nokia test is a good metric to use for beginning Scrum teams&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it ok not to have a Product Owner and being dependent on each&#xA;  individual to volunteer to fill details of task(create user stories)&#xA;  on runtime during planning meeting even if it results unclear&#xA;  requirements even after of planning meeting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a look at Question 4 in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://jeffsutherland.com/nokiatest.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nokia test&lt;/a&gt;. As you can see, You do need a Product Owner. In addition to working with the team to write user stories and acceptance criteria, the PO is also needed to fill out the backlog, prioritize the stories and create a release roadmap. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use this Nokia test which also includes Jeff Sutherland's scoring system to objectively measure where you are as a minimally compliant Scrum team. At the end of a sprint you can set up a Sprint Retrospective meeting and do the following exercise:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As suggested in slide 2 let each person on the team take a sheet of paper and score the questions on a scale of 1-10. Then you can tabulate the scores to see where your team stands. For the 9 questions, the maximum score possible is 90. Jeff says that many in his CSM classes start out with a score of 40. You can use these scores to agree on what incremental improvements you can make in the next sprint to move the score up. And review your progress in the next Sprint Retrospective and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T01:59:20.073" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15505" CreationDate="2015-07-16T05:49:11.457" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is absolutely mandatory to have when using Scrum. Your organisation may not understand the benefits from the beginning, but you need to fight for it every sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is a part of the Scrum Team (not to get mixed up between this and the Development Team which is part of the Scrum Team as well). The PO brings insight to what the product is trying to achieve thus increasing the value of the product. They works with the business side of the company (if not actually &lt;em&gt;in&lt;/em&gt; the business side) to gain knowledge on how to improve the success of the product. They will be the front line to set the business justification as to &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; certain features are developed. These may include such elements as UX, information architecture, text (wording) content, and how customers are using your product to their specific needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, the are the entrepreneur of your product. They set the vision of the product without having to worry about how they are technically implemented. They shouldn't have to worry about the technical constraints but at the same time must work with the Development Team on how to come up with the best solution to the given situation. For example if there is going to be a crucial marketing event or community gathering, and there is an opportunity that is too valuable to miss. They don't need to know what protocols that your components are using, and what the server environments are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point you made about your company just starting out in using Scrum is important. In my personal experience, transitioning into Scrum is not easy. It takes a lot of studying and arguing (and studying how to argue). It may not be perfect in the beginning, you must improve with each sprint. Maximise on using the Sprint Retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things to you might want to highlight:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quality of delivery (delivered stories vs. accepted stories)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Effectiveness of planning (planned stories vs. delivered stories)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team's velocity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6844" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T05:49:11.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15516" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15523" CreationDate="2015-07-16T05:54:05.677" Score="27" ViewCount="6412" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a new scrum master for a team that is using story point estimation and hours. We do story points first during grooming and then hours during planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always thought of story points as being primarily for the project manager, and hours being for the engineers (this was simply the way we had been doing things). A coworker and fellow engineer asked why we are using both. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I read articles such as: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/dont-equate-story-points-to-hours&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Don’t Equate Story Points to Hours&lt;/a&gt;, which explains why you shouldn't use story points to hours even though they are related&#xA;Or &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/11675/is-there-any-published-research-about-story-points-vs-time-estimation&quot;&gt;Is there any published research about story points vs time estimation?&lt;/a&gt; which explain that story points are more accurate for estimation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I fail to see much written about using both of them. We estimate stories by story points which gives us a broad sense, and then we drill down how long each task will be and use the story points and hours to give ourselves an estimate. I'm beginning to wonder however if my coworker is on to something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is using Story Points and hours a thing? Is there any advice for or against it? I recognize it probably takes an additional 2 hours to do both (multiplied by every member of the team) and it costs a lot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why use both? Anyone have any experiences with this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17822" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-12-12T11:16:41.513" LastActivityDate="2018-12-12T11:16:41.513" Title="Why use both story points and hours?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15517" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-16T08:14:07.963" Score="1" ViewCount="3255" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are my default calendar options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Default start time: 8am&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Default end time: 5pm&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hours per day: 8&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hours per week: 40&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have two resources. Resource 1 has the standard calendar (8 hours / day) as base calendar, and Resource 2 has Calendar 1 as base calendar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calendar 1 has 9 hours/day. Working times: Mon - Fri 8am - 12pm, 1pm-6pm&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I created two tasks. Resource 1 is assigned to Task 1, and Resource 2 is assigned to Task 2. I then entered the start and finish times for both tasks (13/7/15 - 16/7/15 for both tasks).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I went to the Resource Usage page, Resource 1 is working 8h for all the four days of the task. Resource 2 is working 9h for the first three days, and 8h for the last day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why is Resource 2 only working 8 hours on the last day?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why is it not 9 hours for each day that he is working and what can I&#xA;do so that he is automatically working 9 hours for every day?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When I manually change the last day so that he is working 9 hours,&#xA;why does it turn red?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This happens whenever I assign a resource that does not have the Standard Calendar as the base calendar. The last day will have a different number of hours. What can I do to fix this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17825" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-09-06T11:10:54.523" LastActivityDate="2018-09-01T17:01:42.427" Title="How do I manage resources with non-standard hours in MS-project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15516" CreationDate="2015-07-16T10:37:00.180" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Story points and time-based estimates can be used in a complimentary way in Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story points are primarily about determining the capacity of the sprint. So you look at your team's velocity and use that as a rough prediction of the capacity for future sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, once you have loaded in stories to your story point capacity it is sometimes also useful to then do a time-based estimate. The reasons for this are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The time based estimating can draw out more information about the tasks. The actual practice of time-based estimating can be valuable, even if the time-based estimates are then ignored.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time based estimating can help the team to spot when there is an over/under commitment to one particular discipline. For example, you may realize that there is too much back-end development and not enough front-end development to match the capabilities of your team. Of course, if you have multi-discipline teams this is less of an issue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sometimes the time based estimating can call in to question the capacity based on story points. I have seen teams put 40 points in a sprint, then do detailed planning and time based estimating and as a result realize that 40 points were too much.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, doing both time based and story point estimating increases the time and effort the team spends on estimating. It is for the team to decide if the extra effort is worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="11970" LastEditDate="2018-12-11T19:11:45.570" LastActivityDate="2018-12-11T19:11:45.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15517" CreationDate="2015-07-16T10:37:07.457" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have tested this and seen the effect. It is most bizarre. If it calculated as expected you should see 5h on the last day, not 8h. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My guess is that MSP &quot;guesses&quot; that you are expecting 32h of work to be done, allocates the max time to R2 for the first three days, &quot;knows&quot; that it won't need a whole day on the last day, but doesn't know by how much, so sets it to the smaller of a) the available resource hours and b) the default project hours per day. If you tell MSP you want 4d (or 32h) in the task and then allocate the resource you will see 9h,9h,9h,5h for R2/T2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversely, if you are expecting T2 to be 36 hours of work because you are assigning someone who can do 36 hours in 4 days, then define that task to be 36h up front. It will initially show as taking between 4 and 5 days to complete, but when you allocate R2 who can do nine hours per day you will see that it reduces the duration to four days and checking the Resource Usage for that task you will see 9h,9h,9h,9h&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T10:37:07.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15516" CreationDate="2015-07-16T11:18:19.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You estimate the story using story points during the first part of the sprint planning meeting - this gives you a quick way to determine how many stories the team can take into the sprint in fairly quick time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of teams do that and that's it. But if you do the second part - and break the story up into tasks - you use hours for the tasks. The sprint burndown - then is based on the total hours of all the tasks in the sprint. The burndown can and does go up - as the estimate to complete can be go up as you understand the task better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary then - You use points for the Story - and then Hours for the tasks within the  story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17686" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T11:18:19.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15521" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-16T12:04:10.727" Score="-2" ViewCount="112" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been nominated for developing a project management tool for my organization where all project related information, check list and related information to be stored (as of now, no concrete requirements are listed). With reference to that, how shall I start listing requirements? Basic requirements I've listed are, project information (where scope, objective, title and other related information to be saved), checklist mapping with the entitled project, Task, reports, etc... What are the other requirements which could be part of this project? What approach do I need to follow? Any reference or open source PM tools?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17827" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T12:14:23.197" Title="How to start developing project management tool?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-07-18T05:15:36.517" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15521" CreationDate="2015-07-16T12:14:23.197" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Requirements flow from desired business capabilities. So first step is to engage your stakeholders/internal customers to figure out what business capabilities they want. For example, is this a tool for PMs to manage schedule and budget better? Or is it intended to support timely reporting to senior management? Is monitoring risk a big thing or a little thing? What about long term benefits realization? And is there an off-the-shelf solution that can deliver the business capabilities that I need?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also need to consider what requirements exist outside of mere systems, in other words what processes does the tool support and how do the tool and processes relate to your organization. Remember that this is just a tool, if you don't have an effective way to use it or if it isn't aligned with your organization the tool could be worse than useless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T12:14:23.197" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15516" CreationDate="2015-07-16T13:24:42.003" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Story Points Estimation and Hours Estimation have different purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;We use Story Points during Product Backlog Refinement.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story Points are good for high-level planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When we make an estimation in Story Points we talk about &lt;strong&gt;the productivity of the whole team&lt;/strong&gt;. During high-level planning, only the productivity of the whole team is what matters.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Story Points Estimation is &lt;strong&gt;a relative measurement&lt;/strong&gt;. It's very convenient for high-level planning. If the team increases its productivity (by using CI, for example), then the team will just forecast more SP in the next Sprint. In the case of hours estimation, the team should re-estimate (and reduce needed hours) the whole Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;We use Hours during Sprint Planning.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hours are good for low-level planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When we make an estimation in hours we talk about &lt;strong&gt;the productivity of concrete Developers&lt;/strong&gt;. It's impossible to use SP for planning tasks of specific Developers, because (as I said before) SP are for relative measuring. One developer can implement 1 SP in 1 hour, another can implement it in 2 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hours Estimation is &lt;strong&gt;absolute measurement&lt;/strong&gt;. It's very convenient for low-level planning. You always have 160 working hours in a month, and the productivity of the team cannot greatly increase or decrease during this short period.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, that's why we estimate the Product Backlog Items in Story Points and Tasks (on which we decompose BPIs) in hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="11970" LastEditDate="2018-12-11T15:54:17.857" LastActivityDate="2018-12-11T15:54:17.857" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15516" CreationDate="2015-07-16T13:29:11.347" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Story points are too fuzzy for tactical Sprint Planning&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is using Story Points and hours a thing? Is there any advice for or&#xA;  against it? Why use both? Anyone have any experiences with this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let us say your team's average velocity (over the last 3 or more sprints) is 30 story points. Let us say it has fluctuated between 27 and 32. For the next sprint do you, as a team, forecast 30 points (the average), 27 points (conservative) or 32 points (optimistic)? There is not an objective way you can determine that. You have to factor in all the break-out tasks and team members' vacations, holidays and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case during Sprint Planning you are doing more detailed planning by drilling down into how you are going to implement the story by identifying the individual tasks. Estimating hours should not be too much extra effort. It helps you to put your Sprint forecast of stories on a much firmer footing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I fail to see much written about using both of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mike Cohn's analogy of a basketball team is probably easier to grasp:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/why-i-dont-use-story-points-for-sprint-planning&quot;&gt;Suppose a basketball team is in the middle of their season. They've scored an average of 98 points per game through the 41 games thus far. It would be appropriate for them to say “We will probably average 98 points per game the rest of the season.” But they should not say before any one game, “Our average is 98 therefore we will score 98 tonight.” This is why I say velocity is a useful long-term predictor but is not a useful short-term predictor.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also read his more recent article on this same topic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/spotlight/mike-cohn/september-2014/why-sprints-should-be-planned-with-hours-not-point&quot;&gt;Why Sprints Should Be Planned with Hours, Not Points&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both articles have good comment threads with more clarifications from Mike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T13:29:11.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15517" CreationDate="2015-07-16T13:49:23.210" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm guess as you manually entered the dates you are working with manually scheduled tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tasks start at 8:00 am and end at 5:00 pm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of manually scheduled tasks Project is paying attention to the working hours per day and calculating how many hours of work each resource can fit.  So for Task 1 and the 8 hour per day resource, they are scheduled for a total of 32 hours (4*8) for the 4 days in duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Task 2, the task still starts at 8:00 in the morning and on days 1 through 3 the resource works 9 hours per day (27 hours).  On day 4 the task ends at 5:00 pm so there are only 8 hours that day for a total amount of work of 35 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use Autoscheduled tasks, you will see 32 hours for Resource 1 spread between 8:00 am on July 13 and 5:00 pm on July 17.  For Resource 2, the same 32 hours of work is calculated by Project - but because that resource works 9 hours per day - the task ends at 2:00 pm on July 17.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No need to create a new Calendar (Calendar 1) - just change the resource's calendar for Resource 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Marv notes, enter the work estimate and let project schedule the task based upon the work and the resource's calendar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Manually scheduled tasks work somewhat like Fixed Duration. If I have a manually scheduled task starting July 13 at 8:00 am and Finishing on July 17 at 5:00 pm with a 9 hour per day resource assigned (total of 35 hours of work). On day 1 I record 10 hours of actual work - the remaining work is still 24 hours but the task still ends at 5:00 pm on July 17.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastEditorUserId="6840" LastEditDate="2015-07-18T17:28:49.737" LastActivityDate="2015-07-18T17:28:49.737" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15510" CreationDate="2015-07-16T14:20:45.737" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the company has accomplished work (actual work) the progress should be tracked. If you then need to stop the work and reschedule - I would not create a split using the split task command. Record the Actual Work (or Actual duration) - then use the &quot;Reschedule uncompleted work&quot; command in Update Project. If you do that, you will see the date the work halted in the &quot;Stop&quot; field and the date the work is scheduled to begin again in the &quot;Resume&quot; field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference between Duration and Actual duration is that &quot;actuals&quot; are used in tracking.  The process &lt;em&gt;should be&lt;/em&gt; as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create the schedule:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set the working calendar and options &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add tasks entering estimated duration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a logical relationship (predecessors, successors)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create resources&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assign resources to tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the schedule is agreed upon - save a baseline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once work starts, you need to start tracking the progress on the project.  By entering % complete - Project will calculate actual duration and will also calculate remaining duration.  (Take a look at the tracking table).  If there is more time needed - adjust the remaining duration and the % complete will be recalculated.  Or - better yet - enter actual duration and remaining to calculate % complete from the beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you use the &quot;Reschedule&quot; command - remaining duration (and work) is rescheduled to resume on the new start date.  It also splits the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T14:20:45.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15516" CreationDate="2015-07-16T15:33:20.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally I would avoid using hours as its impossible to estimate how long a task is going to take accurately. I think story points are the best way to estimate stories and I don't think you need to estimate tasks the team should do whatever it takes to complete the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16022" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T15:33:20.693" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15292" CreationDate="2015-07-16T15:38:06.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why don't you create an agile board to do this you could have the following columns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;New Bug -&gt; tested on other platforms -&gt; In Development  -&gt; In QA  -&gt; Fixed/Done&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16022" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T15:38:06.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15516" CreationDate="2015-07-16T16:16:00.113" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Story points are used as a relative complexity measure and over time establish a team velocity - an average amount of work a stable scrum team can commit to during a fixed iteration.  IMO story point estimation is a cornerstone scrum practice that helps empower the team to manage and own their iteration commitments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hour estimates are used to drive discussion around individual tasks needed to complete a story.  Do you need tasks?  It depends on the maturity of the team.  Immature teams can benefit from hour estimates when they do not have great domain expertise and are unable to do relative complexity estimation with story points.  Most mature teams I work with will stop hour estimating because it takes a lot of time and in the long run its harder to do accurate hour estimation vs story point estimation and velocity based planning.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Side note: I've seen all too often immature teams that rely solely on hour estimates opening themselves up to micromanagement by traditional PM's who think a team that has X hours of capacity and Y hours of task estimates will complete all their work in an iteration when X = Y.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So do you do story points, hours, or both?  It depends on the team.  Ask your team members if they see value in any of the estimation practices so that you understand what works, what doesn't, and in which direction(s) your team can improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T16:16:00.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15530" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15531" CreationDate="2015-07-15T08:45:01.987" Score="3" ViewCount="845" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having worked in Scrum for the past 5 years, a client of mine demands a formal certification. I certainly do not want to spend money for 2 day training of something I know quite well but I thought there is no other way. However, I found out that organization like GAQM offer SCM (though their trademark differs and reads &quot;certified scrum master&quot;, with the space between the last two words) offers just the exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How valid and acknowledged would that be, does anyone have experience with certification outside the ScrumAlliance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31435" OwnerDisplayName="user970696" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T17:00:53.273" Title="Scrum master certification from other authorities than Scrum Alliance?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15530" CreationDate="2015-07-15T08:56:52.110" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I'm a Professional Scrum Trainer with Scrum.org.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two well-recognized certification bodies for Scrum in the industry, Scrum Alliance and Scrum.org. These have been around for a long time, their certificates are backed by a strong community, brand and they both descend directly from Ken Schwaber and/or Jeff Sutherland, who are the authors of the Framework and the Scrum Guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Scrum.org&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum.org offers you the ability to take its Scrum Master assessments without having to participate in a training. They have two:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Assessments/Professional-Scrum-Master-Assessments/PSM-I-Assessment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Professional Scrum Master 1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Assessments/Professional-Scrum-Master-Assessments/PSM-II-Assessment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Professional Scrum Master 2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Scrum Alliance&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CSM assessment from Scrum Alliance can, as far as I can tell, only be taken after attending a course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Others&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the last year or so a number of additional &quot;certification organisations&quot; have sprung up. ScrumStudy is one of them, but their &quot;Scrum Body Of Knowledge&quot; book has been heavily debated in the broader community, as it approaches scrum far more as a Project Management Framework with all kinds of processes and practices, than an empirical Framework. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With Agile being hot and a lot of money to be made in online-training and certification, a number of parties have stepped into this market. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've personally read through the materials, even attended some of the courses online and my personal conclusion is that if it's real Empirical scrum you want, then these organisations don't really hit the mark. To me these &quot;other&quot; certificates are not of sufficient value that I'd associate myself with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal opinion is that if I've never heard of a certification body, or if their material, commercial practices (like very similar naming conventions) or anything else looks suspicions, I'd have trouble &quot;trusting&quot; any certificate I'd receive from them :).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7393" OwnerDisplayName="jessehouwing" LastActivityDate="2015-07-15T09:02:20.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15532" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-16T17:01:05.540" Score="5" ViewCount="930" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/622/useful-charts-for-a-kanban-system&quot;&gt;Useful charts for a Kanban system&lt;/a&gt; shows how to read a Kanban cumulative flow chart.  I am wondering what patterns stand out on a Scrum cumulative flow burnup?  I've seen two patterns frequently: the hockey stick and the bottleneck.  What other problem behavior can show up in a flow burnup, and what can be done to correct it?  Also, what intermediate states may be fruitfully charted other than In Development and In Testing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aA2l2.png&quot; alt=&quot;Hockey Stick Burnup&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This example uses mock data; see &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/718/how-can-we-avoid-finishing-all-stories-on-the-last-day-of-a-sprint/722#722&quot;&gt;How can we avoid finishing all stories on the last day of a sprint?&lt;/a&gt; for a real-life example and some great discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WkNmN.png&quot; alt=&quot;Scrum Cumulative Flow Burnup showing testing bottleneck&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/12901/best-strategies-for-dealing-with-integration-testing-bottlenecks&quot;&gt;Best strategies for dealing with integration testing bottlenecks?&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/7904/how-to-better-balance-resources-in-a-cross-functional-agile-team/7906#7906&quot;&gt;How to better balance resources in a cross-functional agile team?&lt;/a&gt; for some discussion relative to bottlenecks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2015-07-17T23:49:02.913" Title="What problems can be diagnosed from a Scrum Cumulative Flow Burnup?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;burndown-chart&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15516" CreationDate="2015-07-16T17:45:30.043" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two reasons I've seen groups use both story points and hours:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Someone just can't let go. Usually that someone is a PM or manager and they can't quite bring themselves to give up the specificity of hours, regardless of how accurate they may or may not be. This is, of course, not a good reason to do it, in fact it's a very bad one, but better to call a spade a spade than lie to yourself about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) I've seen teams estimate stories with points and then estimate tasks in hours as a sort of check against their previous estimate. Doing this can actually trigger conversations about what goes into fulfilling a story that the team might not be having otherwise, especially if they've been doing hours estimation for years. For example, one team member might say &quot;that'll take me 2 hours to complete&quot; and another says &quot;is that with or without the time it will take you to provision the new server it goes on?&quot; and the first person responds &quot;Wait, we need a new server for this?!&quot; and so on. Good conversation and it's adding value. That said, I'd have a goal to get away from those hours estimates as soon as the team is comfortable having those discussions without the hours for two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) You still have all the same problem with hours you always have. Humans are still terrible at estimating time, managers will still try to do strange estimate-to-actual evaluations, and everyone will have a natural inclination to hold the team to fulfilling their hours instead of delivering value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Adding estimates like this anchors tasks. It creates an aversion to modifying the tasks, removing them, or adding new tasks. In my experience, tasks should be a tool for the team to organize their work in whatever way helps them most and should not be a measuring stick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T17:45:30.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15491" CreationDate="2015-07-16T17:49:52.467" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;After some continued experimentation, I determined that the degree to which tasks are rolled-up in the Gantt Chart view determines which tasks are &quot;visible&quot; within reports.  To solve my problem, I simply expanded all of the subtasks in the plan and the reports then populated correctly. While this seems like a strange way for Microsoft to have designed reporting, this is apparently the PAD behavior.  I've searched for a reference stating such but cannot find one - if anyone does, please post it as a comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17809" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T17:49:52.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15532" CreationDate="2015-07-16T18:14:38.750" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 'hockey stick' is a very common problem. I call it the 'cliff edge' when using a burndown chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other states that you might consider including in the chart will depend on the way you do your development. Some states I have seen used are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Owner Review&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;UAT&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blocked&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T18:14:38.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15532" CreationDate="2015-07-16T19:07:56.980" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am wondering what patterns stand out on a Scrum cumulative flow burnup?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Too much work in progress in development,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;slow testing (automate?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a very long lead time, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a not changing backlog, which is strange. A backlog should change after a while because the team and the product manager learns more about the product.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This graph may help you read your CFDs (&lt;a href=&quot;http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2011/02/xp-with-kanban-instead-of-scrum/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ebDym.png&quot; alt=&quot;CFD&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What other problem behavior can show up in a flow burnup, and what can be done to correct it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Limit the work in progress in development. Testing might be a bottleneck, so try not to overload testing. Either limit work in development, or increase testing (hire, convert etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also, what intermediate states may be fruitfully charted other than In Development and In Testing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that enough for a starter CFD, because you see all your problems. As an additional metric, I recommend to check &lt;a href=&quot;http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2013/07/lead-time/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;lead time&lt;/a&gt; (how much time does it takes to get something from the first keystroke to production).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T19:07:56.980" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15537" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-17T06:28:52.900" Score="4" ViewCount="106" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the main issues of my kind of projects seems to be the participation. Since these projects run beside the people's daily business some people only spend so much time in the project. This makes release dates often unrealistic even though it is a business critical project. Even C-levels often cannot provide enough support or mass to help going forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What methods and tricks can you share?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17832" LastActivityDate="2015-07-17T11:01:37.080" Title="Enhance Participation" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;politics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15537" CreationDate="2015-07-17T08:25:57.853" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several soft techniques for trying to beef up participation that I am sure others will elaborate upon. I am going to restrict my answer to how you should handle it if you are unable to get traction with your participating resources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Resources that need to participate in a project to make it work are almost like external resources (e.g. raw materials), if not enough of them are provided, then the project cannot deliver to its objectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This situation should be managed in the same way as external resources running out or not being available, i.e. through your &lt;em&gt;active&lt;/em&gt; risks and issues management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you know this is a problem in your organisation then raise it as a risk in your risk log right at the start, and ensure you are sharing and reviewing your risks with your Project Board/Steering Group/Sponsor/Manager/Whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plan your project knowing about the scarcity of these resources and include contingency time for delays caused by lack of participation and cite the risks you have raised as the cause of the contingency planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As participation dwindles, increase the profile and likelihood of the associated risks and continue to actively manage and review those risks with the appropriate authorities. Seek assistance from your authority to help mitigate the risks by (with any luck) applying pressure from above- use your Project Board to help you solve the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If participation dries up, close the risk (or change it) and definitely raise a big fat issue on your issue log. Immediately notify your Project Board (or other authority) of the issue and its effects, i.e. to go into contingency mode and commence re-planning based on lack of the resource- If you no longer have the raw material your delivery date must start to move to the right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do all this publically (whilst obviously observing political sensitivities), openly, factually and without emotion playing a part. All that happened is that a resource over which you have no control failed to materialise, you are not responsible for that, you are only responsible for reporting its effects and trying to mitigate it with other project actions, such as seeking alternatives and re-planning delivery dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Risk management is your friend. Use it. All the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-07-17T08:25:57.853" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8664" CreationDate="2015-07-17T09:54:52.560" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;the problem is that testers and developers do not have the same reference story in mind. Complexity estimate means to sort user stories into drawers, were all stories of the same drawer have the same size.&#xA;And it is important that testers as well as Developers know the size of this drawers! This can be accomplished by a flexible Story Map, which can be grouped by Story Points. In this way the drawer becomes transparent and visible for all team members as they can draw the right poker card without uncertainty!&#xA;compare also a Blog, which deals with &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160123213434/https://bauer-information-technology.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Calibration of your Agile Estimates&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17625" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-22T13:10:03.210" LastActivityDate="2020-06-22T13:10:03.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15541" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15544" CreationDate="2015-07-17T10:00:56.297" Score="7" ViewCount="488" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the pros and cons of adding external software developers to an existing developer team for a small project? What are the pros and cons?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pros:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Development should in theory be faster overall than the existing team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As good devs are hard to find for employment, it is an option to get developer power fast&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe good constructive input from the external devs, as they are new to the product&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Expensive&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not sure who will be responsible for the code of the external devs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;External devs need to learn about the existing code. Someone needs to constantly check what they´re producing, so they don´t build their own parallel product in the existing product&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Much more need for code review, talking, meeting, refining product concepts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So all in all, I think it could work for bigger, new parts of the product. For something small that takes an existing dev 2-4 days, it will be not worth it to school the external devs how to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are your pros and cons? Do you have some real life experience with this kind of 'hybrid teams'? Please share!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17836" LastEditorUserId="17836" LastEditDate="2015-07-17T19:57:30.577" LastActivityDate="2015-07-17T19:57:30.577" Title="Temporarily adding external freelance developers to an existing developer team (aka. Hybrid Team). Pros and Cons?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;external-project-members&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15537" CreationDate="2015-07-17T11:01:37.080" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Organizations prioritize based on importance to mission up against available resources.  If you are finding your company is standing down on your project, all the way from leadership to its workers, then what you have is an indication--a very strong indication--where your project stands.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, you have an obligation as a PM to do the best you can despite the lack of sponsorship you are apparently receiving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Commitments, contracts, Memorandums of Understanding, whatever you want to call it.  Get them signed before your project is scheduled to start.  Get them signed at all levels, e.g., your sponsor signs, committing x number of resources from y and z organizations; the leaders of y and z organizations sign them committing x number of their resources and by name; and then each person named in x and y resources signs them committing to whatever percentage in the week to do the project work.  This signing to a contract has a tendency to cause people to stick to what they agreed to.  It is a common intervention parents use with troubled adolescents and it has been shown to work to a good degree.  I cannot quote the studies behind it at this time but if you look up studies associated with cognitive dissonance within social psychology you may find something to support this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also try to have some type of financial reward tied to their salaries and wages, but I think that has only limited benefits.  Money is not as strong a motivator as it intuitively seems to be.  But, if you could get the money approved it may help a little.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as I wrote in the first paragraph, you are getting a huge clue on where your project stands in the organization.  It will not bubble up to the top until it becomes mission critical, which may be late in the game.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-07-17T11:01:37.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6672" CreationDate="2015-07-17T11:17:40.217" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In case you need to see how it works in Microsoft Project 2013, check this article : &lt;a href=&quot;https://ojiryx.wordpress.com/2015/07/17/how-to-highlight-the-current-date-line-in-gantt-chart-in-microsoft-project-2013/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How to highlight the Current date line in Gantt chart in Microsoft Project 2013 ?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17770" LastEditorDisplayName="user17770" LastEditDate="2015-07-26T11:14:43.757" LastActivityDate="2015-07-26T11:14:43.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15541" CreationDate="2015-07-17T13:12:37.783" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;The biggest problem is Brooks' Law&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You did not say why you are trying to add freelance developers to the small project temporarily. If your project is late and you are hoping to crash the time line, remember &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%E2%80%99_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Brooks' Law, &quot;adding manpower to a late software project makes it later&quot;.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It takes some &quot;ramp up&quot; time for the resources added to the project to become productive.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reduces the contribution of the in-house team because of the need to train the new person as well as to review the code and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Communication overheads may not be such an issue for you because you said it is a small project. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to Brooks' Law, in your case the bigger factor is the potential frustration to your in-house team. They have to do a lot of hand holding to get the freelancer started. This is during the time they are under time pressure in a late project. After they have come and gone, the in-house team has to deal with the fallout of any issues arising from their code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my recommendation is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't add a freelancer temporarily.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you must add a freelancer: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. consult with the in-house developers first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b. Let them participate in selecting the freelancer and establishing the ground rules. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c. Let them review and accept all code from the freelancer with the explicit understanding that they will take ownership of that code when the freelancer leaves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;d. Ask your tester to test the freelancer work more thoroughly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-07-17T14:54:20.403" LastActivityDate="2015-07-17T14:54:20.403" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15545" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15546" CreationDate="2015-07-17T15:38:38.567" Score="11" ViewCount="5243" Body="&lt;p&gt;While doing scrum when it is time to do poker planning - during Story Time or during Sprint Planning? If it is during Story Time, then the only thing to do in Sprint Planning is to select stories for Sprint Backlog and write down tasks for each user story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17834" LastActivityDate="2015-07-17T23:21:10.293" Title="When it is time to do poker planning - during Story Time or during Sprint Planning" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;planning-poker&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15545" CreationDate="2015-07-17T17:41:54.857" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess, by &amp;quot;Story Time&amp;quot; you mean &amp;quot;Product Backlog Refinement&amp;quot; activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;By my opinion, it will better to make estimation two times: during Story Time and during Sprint Planning. It is ok, because levels of these estimates are different&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;During Product Backlog Refinement/Story Time&lt;/strong&gt; your Team makes estimation for high-level planning (such as Release Planning and prioritization of Product Backlog Items). Despite the fact, that &lt;strong&gt;accuracy of this estimation is low&lt;/strong&gt;, Product Owner should know these rough estimates (for planning Release and making prioritization of Product Backlog).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;During Sprint Planning&lt;/strong&gt;, after decomposition of Product Backlog Items (which your Team selected for current Sprint) to tasks, Team should make estimation of these tasks. It is necessary for low-level planning. First of all, &lt;strong&gt;accuracy of this estimation is much more higher&lt;/strong&gt; [that accuracy of Story Time estimation]. Only with high accuracy estimation your Team may make well detailed plan of Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reason for estimation during Sprint Planning: results of these two kinds of estimation usually don't match. It's mean, that Team may take more PBI for current Sprint (or reduce already selected) after Sprint Planning estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, take a look at this question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/15516/why-use-both-story-points-and-hours&quot;&gt;Why use both story points and hours?&lt;/a&gt;. There are several answers, that explain why it is good practice to make estimate two times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2015-07-17T17:57:18.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15545" CreationDate="2015-07-17T18:22:12.800" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I gave Sergey's answer a vote, solid ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think Sergey's answer works well at smaller scale, in an Enterprise class program or multi-scrum team program you might have a little more success if you bring in Release Planning as a formal activity and do the majority of your work in the Backlog Refinement (Story Time) meeting. Here's why-  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it would go, Release Planning - Backlog Refinement - Sprint Planning&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Release Planning:&lt;/strong&gt; This is where you are working at the high level. Stories may still be in &quot;Epic&quot; level detail and you are just trying to ensure you are not planning more than say 150% to 200% of what could realistically fit in a Release (with 2 week sprints, 3 months releases are rather common). At this stage you are doing more what we call &quot;T-Shirt Sizing&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Backlog Refinement&lt;/strong&gt; (Note, turns out &quot;Grooming&quot; has overtly personal connotations in some languages so I try not to use it) This is where the real work is done. The goal of Backlog Refinement is to ensure that Sprint Planning can focus on just the details of a specific sprint. In the BR meetings you would be doing three things. 1- Decompose &quot;Epics&quot; to stories, 2- Refine Stories to &quot;Definition of Ready&quot;, 3- Estimate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- Decompose: You need to take your higher level, less detail stories and decompose them down. An Epic is almost always many user stories. This is a classic story splitting exercise and I recommend starting a new question if you want tips on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2- Refine Stories: I've taken to use the term &quot;Definition of Ready&quot; for this. Where &quot;Definition of Done&quot; defines if a story meets the technical and business goals of a story, &quot;Ready&quot; indicates that the story has all the data a development team needs to execute on the story. There should be a clear and written definition of this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3- Estimate: I recommend that in the Backlog Refinement you are doing final estimation of the &quot;Ready&quot; User Stories. The reason for this is the Product Owner needs to know what the Cost / Level of Effort is, so that they can compare this to the Business Value (POs should be estimating value just like Devs estimate Effort, that's a whole other topic though). The PO then can rank order the backlog based on a balance of Value vs. Cost. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wait until Sprint Planning, then you're probably only working based on Cost and not Value. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprint Planning&lt;/strong&gt;: Sprint Planning then becomes the final fail safe and the detail planning session for the sprint. The stories are all &quot;Ready&quot; so there should be minimal discussion of What and Why the story is being built and focus would be on &quot;How&quot; it will be built. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your stories are decomposed far enough, then you don't even need to create tasks. If you are not to that evolution of team yet, then doing quick estimating on tasks can be helpful to make sure the team is capable of completely the work they commit to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Advanced Team Tip: Don't over estimate.&lt;/strong&gt; - It is better to be a little under on your commit then over. Because you have a well groomed backlog, with &quot;Ready&quot; and estimated stories, then if you complete all your committed stories you can just reach to the top of the backlog. Of course the key here is that you've done all the work in the Backlog Refinement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="147" LastEditDate="2015-07-17T23:21:10.293" LastActivityDate="2015-07-17T23:21:10.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15541" CreationDate="2015-07-17T19:53:15.783" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on your team, if they are able to delegate tasks it can be a help to have additional manpower, otherwise the maintenance of the freelancers will eat up a lot of resources and the total benefit might be even negative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talk to the developers which tasks they could give away with little effort, so the just explain it quickly, let the freelancer work and maybe answer some questions. Then make an estimate how long it takes to finish those tasks alone and with the freelancer and then decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And just because someone calls himself freelancer doesn't mean he is really an expert, so you add the risk of introducing problems your own people would not create.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you invest the money in your people too? Get them eduction in some new technology that makes them more efficient, for example when developing for Apple, they could learn Swift instead of ObjectiveC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17841" LastActivityDate="2015-07-17T19:53:15.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15549" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15555" CreationDate="2015-07-17T21:28:02.103" Score="2" ViewCount="133" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Case:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My company deals with creative tasks, which by default are difficult to automate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;graphic design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;video editing / post-production&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;audio composition &amp;amp; sound effects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other side, for about 8 hours/day we have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;7 computers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;that essentially produce nothing during the night time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many macro &lt;strong&gt;scripts&lt;/strong&gt; that can automate certain processes, so that the computers can be used during the night time. A few examples include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://vimeo.com/129468680#at=4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Creating videos with infographics from Excel spreadsheets (video)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcZp2h5WXdA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Applying actions to multiple photos using Photoshop Action Scripts  (graphic design)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Batch processing (audio)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also certain operations within the creative tasks that could be evaded by using &lt;strong&gt;templates&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Questions:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you manage to automate repetitive tasks within your organization/processes?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What would be your strategic approach to creating value by using both human  and CPU resources?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Steering the business into the usage of human creative tasks or automating as much processes are possible, depending on the computing power? Would you prefer working with people or machines?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;Please, use the case just as a reference point to answering these questions about repetition and change management in the context of Project Management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17845" LastEditorUserId="17845" LastEditDate="2015-07-18T06:28:34.403" LastActivityDate="2015-07-18T09:21:57.263" Title="Automating processes within your organization?" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;process-engineering&gt;&lt;business-improvement&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15532" CreationDate="2015-07-17T23:49:02.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sprint has a very common trap, that leads directly two both of these chart types. The trap is lack of Work in Progress limits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Day 1 of a two week Sprint and there are five developers on the team. Each developer picks up 1 story, so WIP is 5 on day one. Say it takes an average of 5 days to complete the work on a user story. This means on day six of the 10 day sprint 5 stories complete and go to testing. QA, which is only two people, is slammed with a bunch of work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To add to this, most likely the developers are not doing Test or Behavior Driven Development and as soon as they finish their first story they go grab another one. So even if QA finishes testing, two things usually happen. 1- They find bugs that have to go back to the Devs and 2- There are more stories to be tested which come in on the last day of the sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By implementing WIP limits (and I also recommend aggressive story slicing, to make stories as small as possible) you force developers to work on fewer stories (story swarming). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a two week sprint, you want a total cycle time of 2-3 days from start to &quot;done&quot;. WIP limits, smaller stories, up front testing (TDD, BDD) will help you do this and will tackle both of those scary Cumulative Flow Diagrams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-07-17T23:49:02.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14214" CreationDate="2015-07-18T01:07:34.610" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectbalm.com/rr-userguide/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;User Guide&lt;/a&gt; for a risk management tool provides the following definition -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is a risk?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before looking at risk management, we need to understand what a risk actually is. The PMBOK gives a good - “an uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, has a positive or negative effect on one or more project objectives such as scope, schedule, cost, or quality.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When describing risks, we usually want to the cause, the affected area, and the consequences. Let’s look at an example risk given in the PMBOK - “due to the forecast of high winds in our area, there is a risk that the roof of the barn will blow off causing our cattle feed to be ruined and loss of our livestock”. Here we see the cause (high winds), the affected area (barn roof), and the consequences (loss of livestock).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let’s look at another example, this one perhaps more familiar. “Due to ongoing support demands, there is a risk that the Senior Programmer will be shifted from the project, causing a delay in the schedule”. Here we see the risk cause (ongoing support), the affected area (the Senior Programmer) and the consequences (a delay in the schedule).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lots more information in the guide itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17766" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2015-07-18T01:07:34.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12604" CreationDate="2015-07-18T01:12:18.107" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This all comes down to &lt;em&gt;risk treatment&lt;/em&gt;. The following explanation of risk treatment is from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectbalm.com/rr-userguide/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Risk Register User Guide&lt;/a&gt; -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Risk Treatment&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For each risk, you need to devise a treatment strategy. The options are –&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Accept&lt;/strong&gt; - Do nothing about the risk, and accept the possible consequences&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Avoid&lt;/strong&gt; - Don’t perform the activity that is causing the risk. For example, if a feature in a software development project looks like it might cause delays, you could choose to not develop that feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mitigate&lt;/strong&gt; - Devise a plan to reduce either the probability or the impact of the risk. For example, you could add extra resources to the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Transfer&lt;/strong&gt; - Make another party responsible for the risk. For example, you could outsource the activity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your treatment strategy will depend upon the severity of the risk. When you choose to avoid, mitigate or transfer a risk, you will need to provide details of how this will be accomplished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For each risk, you should also define a contingency plan. This is a pre-defined set of actions that will be undertaken if the risk is triggered. An example contingency plan would be, “Schedule an immediate meeting of the Project Steering Group to resolve the problem.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The user guide also gives an extended example of how to treat a risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17766" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2015-07-18T01:12:18.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11400" CreationDate="2015-07-18T01:14:36.763" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Risks and assumptions are quite different. I like the following definition of a risk from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectbalm.com/rr-userguide/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Risk Register User Guide&lt;/a&gt; -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is a risk?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before looking at risk management, we need to understand what a risk actually is. The PMBOK gives a good - “an uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, has a positive or negative effect on one or more project objectives such as scope, schedule, cost, or quality.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When describing risks, we usually want to the cause, the affected area, and the consequences. Let’s look at an example risk given in the PMBOK - “due to the forecast of high winds in our area, there is a risk that the roof of the barn will blow off causing our cattle feed to be ruined and loss of our livestock”. Here we see the cause (high winds), the affected area (barn roof), and the consequences (loss of livestock).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let’s look at another example, this one perhaps more familiar. “Due to ongoing support demands, there is a risk that the Senior Programmer will be shifted from the project, causing a delay in the schedule”. Here we see the risk cause (ongoing support), the affected area (the Senior Programmer) and the consequences (a delay in the schedule).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17766" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2015-07-18T01:14:36.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9982" CreationDate="2015-07-18T01:17:36.727" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your second question - you would apply risk management techniques. There is a lot of material on the internet regarding the entire process. There is a good worked-through example of risk management on a software project in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectbalm.com/rr-userguide/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Risk Register User Guide&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17766" LastActivityDate="2015-07-18T01:17:36.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15549" CreationDate="2015-07-18T04:16:33.733" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's a huge question, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pros and cons of automation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;human machine interaction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;change management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess just the last one is related to project management ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Automation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Automation is effective if it helps to level human workload to an appropriate level. There are many examples of bad effects by over-automate tasks, esp. in aerospace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within your field, over automation might lead to a lack of knowledge or results get to similar (it always looks like...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But automation is great if you can replace dull and equally returning process steps, demand lot's of calculation or high accuracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Search for: automation pro contra, automation workload, bad automation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Human machine interaction&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Automation works great if it's supervised somehow by humans. So don't forget to include corresponding possibilities. It would be annoying is people return in the morning, computer are not available, and nobody knows if the programming has crashed or if it will finish in 5 sec.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Search for: Human / man in the loop, out of the loop&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Change management&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I love to work with computer as long as they assist me and simplify my live. Showing this to the employees will satisfy one of the the first actions in change management: Identify / communicate the need for change in order to get acceptance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Highlight the reason why to increase automation. Don't forget that automation &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; demands adaption of the existing peoples capabilities and therefore is a change on the peoples behaviour also. Address this aspect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally don't forget to communicate the whole roadmap:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We need to...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Because of that we have to change aspects 1, 2, 3, ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We are currently on aspect 2. To fulfil this we need to...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You'll notice that we are done with aspect 2 / the whole roadmap when...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, iterations might be necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Search for: Change Management&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-07-18T09:21:57.263" LastActivityDate="2015-07-18T09:21:57.263" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15556" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-18T06:34:01.470" Score="4" ViewCount="431" Body="&lt;p&gt;Current status:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;30 open projects competing for a fixed pool of R&amp;amp;D resources and workers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stakeholders from within the company spread among different areas of the company (Production, Tech Support, Sales, ...) but working on-site.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A timely-reviewed road-map with the date in which each project starts (and the estimated time to completion).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Possibility that some of the workforce or the resources of a project could be needed to solve a recently raised critical issue (e.g. problems in a client's plant).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each Project Manager deals with several projects at the same time. PMs meet weekly to share status update.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each Team deals with only one project at the same time, but some help from any individual member could be needed to solve an issue that prevents progress in some other project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think having a system so everyone could visualize any time how ongoing projects are sorted based on priority for the company could:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Help the PM and the team in making easier day to day decisions on how to prioritize.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Help manage stakeholders expectations about what amount of progress can they expect, depending on the &quot;current ranking&quot; of their project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't count on each individual reviewing a software tool on her own, and I am looking for something easy to update and understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do I need to implement so I can help this visualization of relative priorities between projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17321" LastEditorUserId="17321" LastEditDate="2015-07-18T07:36:42.600" LastActivityDate="2015-07-19T05:19:13.210" Title="How to visualize changing priorities between different projects so each group of stakeholders could see the relative importance of &quot;their&quot; own?" Tags="&lt;prioritization&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15428" CreationDate="2015-07-18T06:57:17.730" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not taking into account the different formats for each option I think we can discuss just this two:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;YYYY-Qx (with x in 1 .. 4)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Z - Qx (where x can be bigger than 4)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my research each organization use any of them. E.g:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/cooperation/economiccrime/MoneyLaundering/Projects/MOLI%20RU-2/MOLIRU2_5th_Q_Rep_Jan-March08.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;The fifth quarter period to end March 2008 was primarily concerned [...]&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ntia.doc.gov/files/ntia/publications/az_q5_ppr_ending_9-30-14_approved_11-7-14.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;There were no new staff hires planned during the fifth quarter&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ct.gov/deep/lib/deep/stimulus/dera_5thquarterlyreport_july2010.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Fifth Quarterly Report on Connecticut’s 2009 [...]&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rbc.com/investorrelations/pdf/q32014_report.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Q3 2014 compared to Q3 2013&quot;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding to the question, I think the best option will be keep coherence with your previous reports. Since at date (July) you've send four reports and need to send the fifth I assume you used:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project X - Q1 (sent on July '14)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project X - Q2 (sent on October '14)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project X - Q3 (sent on January '15)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project X - Q4 (sent on April '15)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in this case the best option could be Project X - Q5, since your Q's doesn't relate to a calendar year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17321" LastActivityDate="2015-07-18T06:57:17.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15556" CreationDate="2015-07-19T05:19:13.210" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would strongly suggest the KISS approach to start. Don't start with a tool, instead start with the data you need to track. A simple Excel spreadsheet can do everything you need. Once you are tracking and reporting what you need, then you can see how to automate it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Real World Example:&lt;/strong&gt; In one of my prior companies, I was brought in to start a PMO for a small division of a massive company. The division was using PowerPoint to track status, badly. A 100 slide, 20MB deck that took probably 40 man hours (including 4-6 from a VP) per week to compile. &#xA;One of my first tasks was to interview all the key stakeholders and find out what mattered to them. I then took this data and created a simple, two tab Excel spreadsheet. It had just the bare bones data, but it tracked every project we had running (which would grow to around 30 a quarter). Over time I tweaked the spreadsheet to meet the needs of the team and stakeholders. It grew to be a four tab spreadsheet. &#xA;It was very easy to update. I had a weekly program team meeting with all the project leads and we reviewed the status. I updated most stuff in real time. After the meeting I'd make final updates and then print out copies for the top stakeholders as well as hang it outside my cube and email it out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We never ended up automating because it was simple enough to do in very little time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many times, online lifecycle tools can make things more complicated than needs be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-07-19T05:19:13.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15559" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-19T06:28:13.163" Score="2" ViewCount="4390" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know you aren't allowed to claim hours for overlapping dates when you work full time because there are only 40 hours in a week. I wonder though how to document my situation. I usually have one big project and one small project going on at the same time. I spend 60% of my time on the big project and 40% on the small one, like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project A: 1/1/15 to 3/30/15, 60% of my time. Total possible hours =&#xA;503 * 60% = 302 qualifying hours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project B: 2/1/15 to 2/28/15, 40% of my time. Total possible hours =&#xA;154 * 40% = 62 qualifying hours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project C: 3/1/15 to 3/30/15, 40% of my time. Total possible hours =&#xA;166 * 40% = 66 qualifying hours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, should I report 503 hours for Project A and none for the others? 302 + 62 + 66 for all three projects? Or only 302 for A and none for B and C? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17852" LastEditorUserId="15972" LastEditDate="2015-07-31T17:39:16.493" LastActivityDate="2015-07-31T17:39:16.493" Title="Counting PMP experience part time on multiple projects" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15560" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15568" CreationDate="2015-07-19T08:58:21.183" Score="5" ViewCount="395" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have always heard this word in a negative context. But I don't understand why? I don't see anything bad in deviating from the Scrum. Why not, if it works? Well used ScrumBan is ScrumBut too. Or even if this deviation is not very good, but dictated by unavoidable external factors (such as company policy, or the terms of a contract already signed), why not take benefits from other aspects of Scrum that can be implemented?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe there is not any negotive connotation for this term and the word acquired a negative color only inside my quite wide, but still the local community (In the Russian language translation of ScrumBut &quot;СкрамНо&quot; sounds very similar to the Russian translation of the English &quot;s-word&quot;. But on the other hand sametimes I have seen ScrumBut with an additional &quot;t&quot; on the end, which reinforces the negative connotation too).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, I have two questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does this term have any negative connotation?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If it has, why? If it is (yet) impossible to follow all the prescription of Scrum, maybe it would be better to use ScrumBut and have part of Scrum benefits, rather than none?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. If this is the correct definition of ScrumBut (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/ScrumBut&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ScrumButs and Modifying Scrum&lt;/a&gt;) then I didn't see anything wrong with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-07-19T09:29:30.510" LastActivityDate="2015-07-20T16:08:30.830" Title="ScrumBut. Does this term have any negative connotations?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15559" CreationDate="2015-07-19T11:34:33.193" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot speak for PMI but I would advise to report what is factually correct and that, if audited, you can substantiate your claim.  Rules get interpreted and applied differently by different people so it becomes a bit of a gamble as to whether or not someone at PMI will challenge you.  You, however, have the greatest chance of prevailing the challenge if what you report actually happened.  Stick to the truth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-07-19T11:34:33.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15560" CreationDate="2015-07-19T12:02:13.467" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes i think there is a negative connotation to &quot;scrum but&quot; - it's used almost like a confession - we &quot;kind of&quot; do scrum but we don't actually have fixed sprint end dates. There is a negative connotation there. Other examples are along the same lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But - if it's a new / not quite mature team - then yes i agree with you - it's better to be doing 'scrum but' instead of 'nothing'. In the spirit of continuous improvement - we get started in whatever fashion - review/inspect what we're doing - and look to improve upon that - then 'scrum but' could be viewed not so much as negative connotation - but a step in the right direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17686" LastActivityDate="2015-07-19T12:02:13.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15563" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-19T16:33:54.520" Score="1" ViewCount="302" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can someone try to explain me the tasks of a PM in a software project? Especially during the stages of development, test and release. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can't figure out what benefit they bring to the team during those stages&#xA;I know they plan, monitor, delegate, analyse risks, costs, time etc. but what is the PM doing during the stages I mentioned above? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17855" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-07-20T15:01:08.767" LastActivityDate="2015-07-20T16:44:39.393" Title="Tasks of a PM in a Software project?" Tags="&lt;roles&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15563" CreationDate="2015-07-19T19:33:37.123" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are multiple project management frameworks out there and all define tasks and activities for the mentioned stages. So there can not be a right answer on your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll reference the PMI framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a look on this page &lt;a href=&quot;https://heatherchristian.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/pmbok-5e-knowledge-process-table.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMBOK process table&lt;/a&gt; to get an idea of all the tasks related to the PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During all project phases or stages, almost all tasks are required. E.g. depending on the process, the PM needs to re-schedule, re-estimate, identify new team members, develop team members, conduct procurements, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the activities might fall within the &lt;em&gt;Monitoring and Controlling Process Group&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general terms the PM enables the team to work without disturbances, foresees upcoming problems (by applying risk management), adapts the project path by updating the planning, and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If everything works smooth, the PM is the person walking around, talking to people, writing &quot;stupid&quot; reports, and looking on &quot;a planning no-one cares about&quot;. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't forget, the PM is the one / single person responsible for the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2015-07-19T19:33:37.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15560" CreationDate="2015-07-20T01:21:33.317" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Doing Scrum not &quot;by the book&quot; is not in an of itself bad. The best scrum teams have progressed well beyond the &quot;book&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ScrumBut is used to describe unhealthy implementations of Scrum. Yes, Scrum can be wildly varied and still be very successful. Scrum can also be wildly varied and a horrible failure. My first experience with agile was something that would now be called ScrumBut and was a farce of the principles of agile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, ScrumBut is when an organization is using the terms without actually implementing the practices. Daily Standups that are 45 minute long status reports to the project manager. A product backlog that is just the PRD requirements put into a user story format while still being prescriptive (the button will go right here). Sprints that are three months long, followed by a QA &quot;sprint&quot; of a month. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-07-20T01:21:33.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15560" CreationDate="2015-07-20T06:58:05.973" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree the word scrubbut comes with negative connotation and is used where ever the team using scrum feels they should be doing certain activity but then they are not doing so and gives a reason for deviating from the actual process defined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering that being agile is all about continuous improvement I feel it is better to have scrumbut and build from there on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Found some interesting example on below scrum.org and hence sharing here &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/ScrumBut&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.scrum.org/ScrumBut&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12193" LastActivityDate="2015-07-20T06:58:05.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15563" CreationDate="2015-07-20T11:59:20.427" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You answered your own question: &lt;em&gt;&quot;. . . they plan, monitor, delegate, analyse risks, costs, time etc.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to PMBOK, the PM is also in charge of killing the project when it is non-viable (reality often falls short of that goal).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you answered your own question, I have to infer that you don't understand the &lt;strong&gt;value&lt;/strong&gt; such activities bring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The entire project is a risk taken by someone (the sponsor) who has put up money and resources and expects software in return.  That person (the sponsor) has a right to know:&#xA;* When the software will be delivered? What is the schedule? If Coders were bots who delivered a fixed number of  error free lines of code every day, this would be simple.  In reality, code is uneven; some is trivial, some is challenging. The original estimate is just an estimate. The PM should be constantly revising the delivery date/schedule so that the sponsor knows what is coming. This is a continuous cycle of planning, monitoring, and replanning so that the PM can always tell the sponsor when the project will be done (usually as a confidence interval, &quot;there is an 80% chance we'll be done by July 20th, and a 99% chance we'll be done by August 15th&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What will it cost?  This is less common on software development, but I've recently hit a situation where we're going to have to spend an extra million because a purchase didn't go through on time.  (and that doesn't count the time that the team will spend idle waiting for the software to come in).  Cost management matters to the sponsor, but it also matters to the team. Apart from the obvious (if the sponsor doesn't like your cost management, he or she can just fire the team and invest elsewhere), cost management can affect whether you've got useful work to do; because I failed to track the purchase, the team will sit idle for several months, unable to work on the project.  My failure will affect their quality of work. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Risks - Done properly risk management is a huge service to both the team and management.  A friend of mine in a software development project recently ran into a problem that the development environment was generating different results than the production environment &lt;em&gt;with the same code&lt;/em&gt;.  That problem had to be located and resolved or the whole project could have been dissolved.  The PM should be applying risk/issue management to scope out the implications and generating a variety of scenarios.  Do we scrap one of the environments and rebuild?  Do we pull in an external audit team and try to find the difference? Do we just hang on and pray that someone on the development team will find the solution?  Risk management  should also include &quot;The code you just wrote on package X could probably also address the requirement on Project Y; do you mind if their lead tech comes over and takes a look? If it works, you'll be responsible for accelerating their schedule by 3 weeks, and you'll gain a lot of reputation.&quot;  That's opportunity management. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You didn't mention it, but probably the most important job of the PM is to manage &lt;em&gt;scope&lt;/em&gt; - to ensure that the customer doesn't enlarge your task to the point where it is no longer possible. To make sure that small change requests don't add up to a huge, unsolveable problem.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM's primary task is to prevent you from being asked to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;uact=8&amp;amp;ved=0CCAQyCkwAGoVChMI_aP95ZPqxgIVFy6ICh1ZTw0L&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DBKorP55Aqvg&amp;amp;ei=MSWtVb3HAZfcoATZnrVY&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNGEAWOBUSt47bW0enB9A0IXMhInhQ&amp;amp;sig2=5rOFQXmxsHNJ1eDJ2VdEnA&amp;amp;bvm=bv.98197061,d.aWw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;draw seven perpendicular red lines&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said all that, I think the most important answer is the one given by @Tobias, &quot;The PM enables the team to work without disturbance.&quot; Tobias' answer is really quite excellent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-07-20T16:44:39.393" LastActivityDate="2015-07-20T16:44:39.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15560" CreationDate="2015-07-20T16:08:30.830" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, &lt;em&gt;ScrumBut&lt;/em&gt; does have some negative connotation, showing that one is not good enough to implement a full Scrum. On the other hand, most of the Scrum implementations are actually &lt;em&gt;ScrumButs&lt;/em&gt; (yes, there will be comments arguing but that's just a few from thousands of thousands implementations), but people fear to call it that way because of &lt;em&gt;scrum bullying&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum works only if one implements all its features, but &lt;em&gt;ScrumBut&lt;/em&gt; is a good start, if you don't call it that way. &lt;em&gt;&quot;We are introducing Scrum&quot;&lt;/em&gt; means exactly the same, others will help you, and you'll feel better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-07-20T16:08:30.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15569" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15694" CreationDate="2015-07-20T16:36:39.367" Score="3" ViewCount="524" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm having a complete brain fart trying to figure this out. Let's say I have 600 man-days left of work to complete, and this is located in cell E3. I want to calculate the target date for completion based on a given team size. Currently I'm doing this with &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;=WORKDAY(TODAY(), E3/6.5) &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but this only works for a fixed team-size of 6.5. However, I know that for the next 30 days of this project, I'm going to have a team size of 10. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a formula I can use that will give me the target date while factoring in the staffing change?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17864" LastEditorUserId="15972" LastEditDate="2016-09-14T07:23:02.407" LastActivityDate="2016-09-14T07:23:02.407" Title="What formula should I use to calculate a target date in google docs, based on total man-days, if the size of team will change during development?" Tags="&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15569" CreationDate="2015-07-20T17:13:59.087" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there a formula I can use that will give me the target date while&#xA;  factoring in the staffing change?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is how you can modify the formula:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If 30 is the number of business days: =WORKDAY(TODAY(), ((30/10 +(E3-30))/6.5))&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If 30 is the number of calendar days:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use this formula in another cell (say D19) to calculate the number of business days in the 30 calendar days: =NETWORKDAYS(TODAY(),TODAY() + 30)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then your formula for the target date will be: =WORKDAY(TODAY(), ((D19/10 +(E3-D19))/6.5))&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-07-20T19:46:10.590" LastActivityDate="2015-07-20T19:46:10.590" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15571" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15572" CreationDate="2015-07-20T21:11:34.283" Score="7" ViewCount="1210" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should developers have direct communication with stakeholders during Product Backlog Items implementation for their clarification. Or should all communication go through Product Owner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the Scrum Guide we can read the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the one hand the Product Owner should:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is the sole person responsible for managing the&#xA;  Product Backlog. Product Backlog management includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Clearly expressing Product Backlog items;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But on the other hand:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner may do the above work, or have the Development Team&#xA;  do it. However, the Product Owner remains accountable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, theoretically the Development Team may communicate with stakeholders for the clarification of the PBI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But is this a good practice? I always think, that the Product Owner is the single entry point for all requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see 4 options in this situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Developers may clarify PBIs with stakeholders during implementation. But in that case we have a risk, that the stakeholders view on this PBI may be different than the Product Owner's view (for example, the stakeholder may want to make the scope bigger or thay may have a different view on the aPBI even among themselves). The Product Owner may lose control of the PBIs scope.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Developers may clarify PBI's only with the Product Owner. This is the way I always work. But in one case I know of, the Product Owner physically doesn't  have time enough to do all this work. What shall we do in this case?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask the developers to take more initiative and to resolve all issues at their sole discretion.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Force to define PBI very well before taking it in Sprint, and after it is taken, forbid the developers to ask any question about it (it's not a joke, it's the real situation. I read about it in &lt;a href=&quot;http://habrahabr.ru/post/262713/&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;. Unfortunately, it's only in Russian, so just believe me, that described situation is the real case).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, how shall developers clarify PBI during its implementation?&lt;/strong&gt; Maybe exist better solution, than described above?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Important note:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;I'm talking about PBIs, that are already in Sprint, and that need additional clarification during work.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastActivityDate="2015-07-20T22:02:08.910" Title="How shall developers clarify PBI during its implementation?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scope&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15571" CreationDate="2015-07-20T21:21:28.483" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Excellent question: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer the question directly, yes, the developers can and should talk with the customer when possible. As you've pointed out though, the logistics of this can be difficult. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something that is rising in use, that directly addresses this, is the Product Owner Team (also known as the agile business team and the agile customer team). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product Owner Team:&lt;/strong&gt; This is a direct recognition that a product owner is often not able to be the &quot;single owner&quot;. Whether for lack of knowledge or because there are too many cooks in the kitchen (in large enterprise companies the PO rarely gets final decision). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A POT builds a team around the PO which has as its product the Backlog. The POT's job is to make sure the backlog is well ordered, well defined and meets the definition of &quot;ready&quot; or a story that is able to be picked up and run with by the development team without further work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The POT is made up of the PO, a technical &quot;architect&quot;, a QA representative, and potentially customer support, operations, or even the customer. The technical architect role can either be a senior person with technical and business knowledge (more common in larger companies), actual representatives from the development team or both. This allows a story to be fully explored before you ever get to the Sprint Planning meeting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The POT is the way I recommend engaging the customer on Product Backlog Items. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-07-20T21:21:28.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15571" CreationDate="2015-07-20T22:02:08.910" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master I encourage team members to talk with the stakeholders. But I suggest they either do it in the presence of the Product Owner or brief the Product Owner as soon as possible after the conversation has finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner sees the big picture. What sounds like a perfectly reasonable request to a developer might actually be a bad idea in the context of conversations had with other stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not a critisism of developers. They simply do not have the time to continually bounce ideas off of stakeholders and build an understanding of the market for the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner role is full time and is very demanding. The developers should look to support the Product Owner at every opportunity, but never bypass them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-07-20T22:02:08.910" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15367" CreationDate="2015-07-21T08:10:52.460" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no standard way to keep track availability of cost type asset (License).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is to create a resource type with cost $ 0,00 (which will do not generate any cost to your actuals) and an associate calendar to it (to set the max constraint). Finally you will have to filter out the labour hours for that resource in your report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16743" LastActivityDate="2015-07-21T08:10:52.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14842" CreationDate="2015-07-21T08:49:14.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;After searching on the internet and Microsoft site&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I solved my problem&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- Go to SharePoint Central administration page click on under general application settings&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;click on PWA settings Manage, once the page is opened under operational policies &#xA;click on alerts and reminders&#xA;set your SMTP mail server and email address it will work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16682" LastActivityDate="2015-07-21T08:49:14.430" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5517" CreationDate="2015-07-21T08:58:22.143" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know my answer is even later... but I'll add it here in case somebody else arrives at this thread from a search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a few other things that people in this situation might want to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What stage of the group development are they in (Bruce Tuckman), Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing? Quite possibly they could be in the 'storming' stage where team members are finding their position in the team, were they lay in the perceived pecking order. Even though there won't be a real pecking order and all members should be equal, there will be a bit of jostling for positions and to appear to be the most knowledgeable. There are ways of dealing with this and it's always worth listening to concerns. The storming is important, get through that and you're well on your way to full performing!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned in a comment, this team has long dailies, extensive brain storming, lots of pair programming which makes me wonder if this scrum master has it right. Are they using tools for the sake of using them and not because they're effective. Possibly this team members has noticed that and isn't happy with how the team is performing because of it. Remember, job satisfaction is often more important that salary, especially where developers are concerned. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's sad that people have jumped immediately on planning this team member's exit just because he doesn't agree with everybody else. Has anybody thought that he might be the only one who is right. I had guy like this once and rather than tossing him out the window, I kept hold of him and used him as a check-and-balance, knowing he was going to questions my every move and run to the boss really kept me on top of my game and, much to his annoyance, made me perform even better as his manager!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could go on, but I'll stop here... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17873" LastActivityDate="2015-07-21T08:58:22.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15446" CreationDate="2015-07-21T14:18:54.117" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plans-for-retrospectives.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can plan a retrospective in a very cool way - building it from 5 blocks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is many ideas depending on what you want to achieve at a given meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It helped me many times when I had a lack of creativity :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2955" LastActivityDate="2015-07-21T14:18:54.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15578" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-21T16:49:36.187" Score="3" ViewCount="1681" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am having a bit of an issue getting the kind of report that I want from MS Project 2010. To get some background on my project, I am creating a master scheduled using multiple templates. The templates are in their own project files, so they are subprojects of the master project. What I want to create is a report that shows which subprojects a resource in involved in. Basically I want to be able to give employees their schedule for a year. Is there a way to get such a report? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17598" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-02T12:25:29.003" LastActivityDate="2018-11-02T12:25:29.003" Title="Displaying a resource's tasks across multiple subprojects" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15578" CreationDate="2015-07-21T20:22:53.070" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This you can easily achieve using MS Excel, as Excel provides a good compatibility with Microsoft Project, so you can copy/paste all contents from Excel to MPP and vice versa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Follow these steps:-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Add an extra column to all your sub-projects MPP and write the Project Name in that column, it should be same within that project and also unique for each sub-project MPP&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Copy/paste all your sub-projects to an Excel sheet, place them one beneath the other (i.e. adding more rows), such that same columns are aligned. So while 'Resource' column of Sub-project A, should continue with the same column of  Sub-project B&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once all sub-projects are merged into a spreadsheet, apply a Pivot table to get which resource is allocated to which all projects over the specified period of time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17870" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-07-23T16:02:01.387" LastActivityDate="2015-07-23T16:02:01.387" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15578" CreationDate="2015-07-21T20:42:48.217" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you using a resource pool?  If so, open the resource pool, add the Project column to show Resources, their assignments and which projects the assignments come from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would use the Project field in the Resource Usage view with a group on Name (resource field) and then Project (assignment field). Collapse the group to second level and there's your report. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastEditorUserId="6840" LastEditDate="2015-07-29T13:32:50.143" LastActivityDate="2015-07-29T13:32:50.143" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15581" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-22T07:35:50.327" Score="0" ViewCount="224" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a &lt;em&gt;report&lt;/em&gt; on MS Project 2013. In this report there is &lt;strong&gt;chart&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The chart is based :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;NumberOftasks&lt;/em&gt; (Y-axis) which is a custom field of type number.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Localization&lt;/em&gt; (X-axis) which is done by &lt;em&gt;Grouping&lt;/em&gt; the tasks by localization (it is a custom text field). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The awkward situation is that I have a custom field  of type text, called &lt;strong&gt;typeOftask&lt;/strong&gt; which take two values : either A or B. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to draw &lt;em&gt;clustered column&lt;/em&gt; chart that take in consideration the &lt;em&gt;typeOfTask&lt;/em&gt; so that the column is divided into two values : the number of tasks of type A and the number of tasks of type B. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something like this : &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7v310.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7v310.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please, how to do that in MS Project 2013 ? I know it is possible ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17770" LastEditorDisplayName="user17770" LastEditDate="2015-07-22T13:45:22.880" LastActivityDate="2015-07-22T13:45:22.880" Title="How to draw stacked column chart with custom text fields?" Tags="&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15582" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15583" CreationDate="2015-07-22T13:25:12.563" Score="14" ViewCount="5749" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL;DR; As the title reads: &lt;strong&gt;do you base your burndown chart on stories completed, or on tasks completed?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Some background on why I'm asking this:&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;I currently work in a software development team of 4 developers, doing sprints that last 2 weeks. In those two weeks we generally get around 50 to 70 storypoints worth of stories to 'Done'. We regularly have stories that make up 50% or more of those points, say 25 to 40 points. Measuring stories versus tasks leads to the following situations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stories:&lt;/strong&gt; The large stories will be 'doing'/'checked out'/'in progress' for a long time. The burndown will flatline, then when the story gets finished it plummets due to the large number of story points burned. This gives a jagged chart, making it look like suddenly a lot has been done. Also, the flatlining chart doesn't boost the &quot;we're getting stuff done!&quot; morale. Lastly, external stakeholders / other teams may frown at the burndown stalling (minor point, I could care less as long as we deliver in the end).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tasks:&lt;/strong&gt; Burning down tasks within stories will give a better impression of the work being done. It will give a smoother line and probably boost morale. My main objective is: &lt;em&gt;it's not displaying actual work done&lt;/em&gt;. Work is by default only usable when the full story is 'DONE'. It's great that we've completed a task for the story, but even that last tiny unfinished other task can block the story from being finished and making the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;My gut feeling leans towards burning down stories&lt;/em&gt;, mostly due to the fact that tasks can paint a misleadingly happy picture that won't come true at the end of the sprint. I'd rather be skeptic and pleasantly surprised when it turns out for the better. What does your team do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17421" LastEditorUserId="17421" LastEditDate="2015-07-22T14:18:11.767" LastActivityDate="2019-10-08T03:30:17.743" Title="Should a burndown chart be based on stories or tasks completed?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;burndown-chart&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15582" CreationDate="2015-07-22T13:37:13.663" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to make the burndown chart useful to the Product Owner (or the customer or the user or another stakeholder), then burning down based on stories is going to be the better option. Since a story is supposed to represent something that is useful and meaningful to the stakeholder, so knowing how many have been completed with respect to your definition of done to-date in the sprint is useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it seems to me like your stories are too large. If your stories range from 25 to 40 points and you complete 50 to 70 story points in a sprint, that means your sprints consist of 2-4 stories. You should look at ways of grouping stories into epics or themes (which may span multiple sprints) and have smaller stories that show that you've implemented specific (but still useful and meaningful) pieces of functionality and completed it per your definition of done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2015-07-22T13:37:13.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15582" CreationDate="2015-07-22T13:44:35.610" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on previous experience with lots of different approaches, I would agree with your last paragraph - showing anything except true value delivered (tracking tasks, hours, points etc.) often leads to sprints where a lot of items are almost done and very little value is created. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also look into ways to break the items up into smaller items (not tasks) so that you are &lt;em&gt;still delivering value&lt;/em&gt; but don't &quot;flatline&quot; as much. For example, some of my teams will have an item with a new UI or user-facing component along with implementation, and they will break it up along the lines of &quot;paper mockup and user testing/feedback&quot; and &quot;implement results after user testing&quot;, because the team knows that user testing provides value (knowledge). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2015-07-22T13:44:35.610" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15585" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-22T19:43:08.790" Score="4" ViewCount="1820" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have been struggling with scrum for quite some time and I actually think one of the major problems is that each story takes multiple disciplines to complete (Design, IOS, Android, Backend).  We have all of these people within one team but when creating a story we estimate the story points across the whole story.  But then when you calculate how much work the team can do you add up all the time everyone has.  But in reality you might have 5 stories each with 20 points work.  The team could have 100 points of time in the sprint.  But that work could be 2 design, 2 IOS, 2 Android and 14 backend points.  Which means you can't get through anywhere near as many stories as planned because you are limited by the roles of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you have to bring in stories that can't be completed because the backend person doesn't have time, but everyone else does.  So we start to create stories like &quot;Design the interface for blah&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone got a good way to do this?  Also is there a good way in the backlog to be able to record work for the different roles on each story as top level points doesn't help with planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17890" LastActivityDate="2015-07-25T20:10:43.757" Title="How can you estimate workload for scrum when you have 4 disciplines in one team" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15585" CreationDate="2015-07-22T21:05:06.747" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think the issue is with estimating, but with how cross-functional your teams are. Combining multiple disciplines is just not the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Scrum recognizes no titles for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-dev&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Development Team members&lt;/a&gt; other than&#xA;  Developer, regardless of the work being performed by the person; there&#xA;  are no exceptions to this rule;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Individual Development Team members may have specialized skills and&#xA;  areas of focus, but accountability belongs to the Development Team as&#xA;  a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Henrik Kniberg &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.crisp.se/2009/02/27/henrikkniberg/1235769840000&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;defines&lt;/a&gt; cross-functional team this way: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cross-functional just means that the team as a whole has all skills&#xA;  needed to build the product, and that each team member is willing to&#xA;  do more than just their own thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Designing just the interface will also not help as you are not delivering &quot;working software&quot;, since I guess the interface is useless without the back-end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seems there is a bottleneck in back-end development knowledge, either get more back-end developers in the team or get the iOS and Android developers to also gain knowledge of developing back-end services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about what happens when the back-end developer &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Gets hit by a bus&quot;(-factor)&lt;/a&gt;. Now the team will never deliver anything anymore ever, until you find a new back-end developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find a way to &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.crisp.se/2009/02/27/henrikkniberg/1235769840000&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;train&lt;/a&gt; the other development team members to be able to deliver fully functional features even without the most experienced back-end team member. This guru should be the goto-guy, not the do all the work on your own guy (or girl ;-).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also when you describe your team like consisting of &quot;different roles&quot;, the first thing that comes to mind is you might be creating a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2012/january/a-sprint-is-not-a-mini-waterfall&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;mini waterfall&quot;&lt;/a&gt; workflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2015-07-22T21:18:25.677" LastActivityDate="2015-07-22T21:18:25.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15585" CreationDate="2015-07-22T21:07:37.417" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had to deal with this same issue in game development for years (art, design, dev), and my current best approach is to simply get a separate estimate for each non-overlapping discipline. This introduces challenges in leveling the capacity across a sprint (it becomes more puzzle-like), but it uncovers &quot;largely lopsided&quot; items and increases your ability to capacity plan long-term, spot skill set shortages, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, it looks like your team makeup may not be quite as disparate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2015-07-22T21:07:37.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9780" CreationDate="2015-07-23T07:39:52.743" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmocertified.com/members/pmoc/ecommerce/00000001/Project-Management-Office-PMO-Certification-PMOC.html+PracticalSolutions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pmocertified.com/members/pmoc/ecommerce/00000001/Project-Management-Office-PMO-Certification-PMOC.html+PracticalSolutions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had found the above. Please see if this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17899" LastActivityDate="2015-07-23T07:39:52.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15589" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15592" CreationDate="2015-07-23T08:48:48.113" Score="5" ViewCount="669" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for information about how the team size impacts project velocity. Let's assume that I have a small project estimated at 300 hours for single worker. What impact does team size have on estimation? Is there any publications/book describing this relationship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 person team - 300 h&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 person team - 300 h + n%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 person team - 300 h + m%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During my work, I've noticed that project velocity depends on team size. I want to know the scale factor in order to better estimate projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17900" LastEditorUserId="32641" LastEditDate="2018-07-01T12:06:28.723" LastActivityDate="2018-07-01T12:06:28.723" Title="Team productivity vs team size" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;team-size&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15585" CreationDate="2015-07-23T09:17:41.390" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reading your question, I'm going to make two assumptions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Growing real multi-discipline skills in your team isn't an option. I.e. back-end engineers doing design is usually bad for everyone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Expanding your team is not an option. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have some good team discussions about it. In true scrum fashion: &lt;em&gt;how does the team think this issue would be best solved?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Motivate the team and product owner to &lt;em&gt;split the user stories&lt;/em&gt;. Explain how this will clarify dependencies on expertise and eventually getting more stories done, delivering value.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Think ahead during sprint planning. If the stories have been split, and it's obvious that they all require one specific team member / expertise, take action. &lt;em&gt;The whole team should agree that the sprint backlog is workable for all&lt;/em&gt;. If that's not the case, make the product owner and team shift stories in the sprint until they do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Find common grounds or easily learned skills for team collaboration&lt;/em&gt;. For instance: the back-end developer might not be able to photoshop a design, but with some guidance will be able to create wireframes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if every sprint has enough stories for two backend dev's, and it's always that same backend expertise domain overflowing with work, hiring another backend dev might make sense. Especially when it helps you deliver, add value, grow your business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17421" LastEditorUserId="17421" LastEditDate="2015-07-23T10:42:56.397" LastActivityDate="2015-07-23T10:42:56.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15589" CreationDate="2015-07-23T09:54:19.617" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe, there are no formulas for calculating &quot;scale factor&quot;. There are too many factors, that may affect this parameter. Such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can work be done in parallel?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Complexity of whole project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communication ability of team members.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Organization of your working process (take a look at this question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/14907/number-of-communication-channels-in-chief-programmer-model/14914#14914&quot;&gt;Number of communication channels in Chief-Programmer model&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I think, you could estimate this parameter only in empirical way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2015-07-23T10:19:08.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15589" CreationDate="2015-07-23T11:19:50.320" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are the workers of same skill? &#xA;Do they use same tools?&#xA;Can they work in tandem?&#xA;Is the work allocated to them of similar complexity?&#xA;Is the work environment same for all workers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If answer to the above questions is yes, then you can say that velocity is directly proportionate to the team size. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If answer is no then its almost impossible to find out scale factor..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing with estimates is that it cannot be exact, exact estimate is oxymoron.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can mention in the estimates you give that for a given task of 300 person hrs if we have 2 workers with similar skills we can complete it in 150 calendar hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimates should always be accompanied with assumptions (in this case similarly skilled workers)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6209" LastActivityDate="2015-07-23T11:19:50.320" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15593" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15608" CreationDate="2015-07-23T13:29:06.110" Score="0" ViewCount="503" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not as simple as it seems to be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have multiple &lt;em&gt;tasks&lt;/em&gt;. That I group following a &lt;em&gt;Custom field&lt;/em&gt; (text), called &lt;em&gt;TypeC&lt;/em&gt;. The custom field can have &lt;em&gt;Custom attributes&lt;/em&gt; that are already defined like &lt;code&gt;{P,Ar,D,B}&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I saved my custom &lt;em&gt;group by&lt;/em&gt; in the drop menu so I can use it and reuse it. But I don't get the order of the &lt;em&gt;Custom attributes&lt;/em&gt; -&gt; &lt;code&gt;P&lt;/code&gt; then &lt;code&gt;Ar&lt;/code&gt; then &lt;code&gt;D&lt;/code&gt; then &lt;code&gt;B&lt;/code&gt;. I rather get an alphabetical order -&gt; &lt;code&gt;Ar&lt;/code&gt; then &lt;code&gt;B&lt;/code&gt; then &lt;code&gt;D&lt;/code&gt; then &lt;code&gt;P&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to custom sort that in &lt;code&gt;Microsoft Project 2013&lt;/code&gt; ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17770" LastActivityDate="2015-07-24T13:00:19.030" Title="Is it possible to sort tasks by the order of a Custom attributes of a Custom Field?" Tags="&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15505" CreationDate="2015-07-23T14:12:56.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on your description, it definitely sounds like having a dedicated PO would bring a lot of alignment and effectiveness to the team and value they deliver, but (stepping outside of &quot;pure scrum&quot; and into &quot;agile&quot;) I would also disagree that a PO is &lt;em&gt;mandatory&lt;/em&gt;; plenty of startups and small/scrappy teams use scrum but don't have a PO. Instead, they focus on deeply understanding value for their users, establishing a strong and cohesive vision, aligning on that vision, and general consensus on priorities, which is what a PO basically brings to the table. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2015-07-23T14:12:56.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15589" CreationDate="2015-07-23T15:20:48.703" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly, as a technical lead of many teams, I will say if anyone had a formula for determining velocity, I would deem it ignorant at best, and out-right harmful at worst.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity is descriptive, not prescriptive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is our jobs as leaders to use the data that is flowing in to forecast the future, but by no means could anyone say for an absolute certainty what the impact of building out a team is because of the infinite number of variables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that being said, I have had to do this to communicate estimated timeframes for executives. I make sure to put in disclaimers, but I use a high level 18 points for seniors, 12 for intermediate and 8 for juniors as my base-line expectations for a normal web-based CRUD app. Every new person impacts the tech lead, so I take off of their time first. Probably, depending on the organizational design of the team...maybe 10% per junior, and 5% for intermediate or senior. As for the rest of the team, it is too hard to say, so I'd probably just have it impact the tech lead to start off with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17906" LastActivityDate="2015-07-23T15:20:48.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15596" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15633" CreationDate="2015-07-23T19:18:26.443" Score="8" ViewCount="13208" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some cases, I'd like to let a teammate watch an issue, and be informed of whatever is going on about that issue, even though the issue is not assigned to him/her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to add a person to watch an exising issue, without assigning the task to him/her?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16715" LastActivityDate="2016-12-12T12:58:45.523" Title="Can you add a person to watch a JIRA issue?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15589" CreationDate="2015-07-23T19:51:08.630" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read a book about 10 years ago that discusses this beautifully by Fred Brooks. The Mythical Man Month: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His constant argument is adding people increases the time to deliver.  I believe he settled on a team of about 7 - from memory he is considering large scale projects, each person tends to have defined functions, these aren't all developers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think Google settled on 3 for things too (I guess that's when staff ideas get promoted into a lab).  Certainly, a team of two or three is far more cohesive and effective with the result!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17908" LastActivityDate="2015-07-23T19:51:08.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12656" CreationDate="2015-07-24T04:12:58.557" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The charter project scope is general enough for sponsors to agree upon; the  the PMP project scope is detailed enough for the PM to meet expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;RATIONALE: The charter is a treaty. You get the sponsors to nail down commitment, budget, resources, and target (scope). They decide under what terms they consider project done, what conditions to cancel, and what strategic phase gates to consider. Work out a draft critical path. They sign it. This covers the PM's back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PMP is a technical extension of the charter. It ties down all the other pieces such as integrated schedule, RACI, risk/issue tracking approach, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The charter scope gets written first; when sponsors are committed, then start the PMP and progressive elaboration/requirements. You may want to look up the BABOK 2.0 - the PMBOK only goes so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SOURCE: Personal experience as project manager/supervisor with government software projects ranging from $2.5m up and the need to protect my PM's from project scope issues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17913" LastActivityDate="2015-07-24T04:12:58.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15254" CreationDate="2015-07-24T05:02:34.610" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One idea to create and maintain a shared checklist for recurring risks is to perform a general “lessons learned” on the last several projects (good and bad ones/yours and several others).  Use the ISHIKAWA / Fishbone diagram model. Identify the recurring issues that caused problems. Also, try to identify what “works” (a reverse ISHIKAWA). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may consider a great source from Carnegie Mellon/SEI “Taxonomy Based Risk Identification” (google the term) which is old (1993), but has about 150 essential questions to determine risks for software projects. It works today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to consider “The Four Horseman of IT Project Doom” based on a study from 120 project managers (google the term and it comes up as a PDF). &#xA;Tie this into a checklist.  If you can, run the checklist on projects and have the sponsor sign off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SOURCE: Used the ISHIKAWA on seven or eight IT systems (trying to rebuild after we were breached) project failures in a small IT shop and it was accurate (we had to buffer/sanitize before giving to senior management as a lot of issues were sourced from that level). We used the SEI taxonomy with a small PM shop on a small $2.8m project and it worked well; contractor used a spreadsheet to track questions and weight them – color coded risk as green/yellow/red. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17914" LastActivityDate="2015-07-24T05:02:34.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15602" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15604" CreationDate="2015-07-24T10:38:56.103" Score="0" ViewCount="68" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have  a list of datasets which are required to deliver a large project.  The project is comprised of various products. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each product has a requirement for one or more of the datasets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am want to create an automatic critical path showing which products should go in the most logical order.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have created a matrix in excel but it is does not generate the work path.  How would I automate such a process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL: DR&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;- 15 Data Products&#xA;require&#xA; - 20 datasets&#xA; - Each product only requires a few of the datasets&#xA; - Some datasets are prequisites for another&#xA; - Calculate the logical order of work&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks all&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2015-07-24T11:40:11.627" Title="Automatic Dependency Generator" Tags="&lt;waterfall&gt;&lt;dependencies&gt;&lt;critical-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15602" CreationDate="2015-07-24T11:40:11.627" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could use a scheduling program. List out your data products with subordinate datasets. For each dataset assign an arbitrary duration and appropriate predecessors/pre-requisites, the system should spit out start/end dates that will give you the logical order of work. Example below was done in MS Project, but pretty much any scheduler will be able to accommodate the same logic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1m7kM.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1m7kM.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2015-07-24T11:40:11.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15353" CreationDate="2015-07-24T11:48:49.483" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;like others said, you should just be honest and you should have a contact person, whom could acknowledge your information if being audited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like others said, you should be prepared for audit anyway, so there is nothing to fear anymore than. For this case you may have a look here, what could be of use for you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Audit Kit:&#xA;☛  &lt;a href=&quot;http://wren.cf/6o&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://wren.cf/6o&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regards,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Markus&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: My application was audited and this helped me a lot ... &#xA;Please don't hesitate to contact me, fi there where any further questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17918" LastActivityDate="2015-07-24T11:48:49.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15411" CreationDate="2015-07-24T11:53:18.900" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;because i am using it by myself for PMP preparation, i recommend you the “PMP PrepCast by Cornelius Fichtner”. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a fully prerecorded (nearly 140 video and audio lessons!), self-paced online training course which also provides you the 35 contact hour certificate, which you will need for your PMP Application. &#xA;You may have a look here: ☛  &lt;a href=&quot;http://wren.cf/2t&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://wren.cf/2t&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;To get a glimpse of what you could await, there is a free version available also:  Free Prep Cast - &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wren.cf/2u&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://wren.cf/2u&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your Benefits!:&#xA;Here is what you will gain from using The PM PrepCast in your PMP Exam preparation:&#xA;★ Increase your chance of passing the PMP® Exam!. You will receive real-world examples to help you truly understand the PMP® exam concepts. Simple memorization won’t get you there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;★ Study anywhere and reduce your study time because you can maximize your day by listening anywhere your tablet or smart phone goes. For instance you can listen when you drive to work, when you are outside riding your bike, or watch a lesson over lunch, as you are sitting on the bus or when you are waiting in line at the post office. It’s the anytime study miracle! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;★ You hear everyday English and not the very difficult to understand language from A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) - Fifth Edition, Project Management Institute, Inc., 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;★ You hear 10 lessons on Applied PMP® Concepts, based on student and expert feedback. These interviews with experts translate the concepts into everyday project management situations that you can relate to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;★ You hear from a number of recent PMP® exam takers: Learn their best practices on how to apply, study and pass the exam the first time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;★ It's simple to get through – You’ll find that the 47 processes and 10 knowledge areas from the PMBOK® Guide are not as difficult as they may seem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;★ You will understand Earned Value Techniques and be able to answer questions about them confidently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;★ You learn the concept, tools &amp;amp; techniques that are not covered in the PMBOK® Guide but required for the exam without having to read dozens of other books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;★ You maximize your efforts with our valuable PMP® Exam Study Tips.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;★ It's mobile! Carry The PM PrepCast with you as your &quot;Personal PMP® Trainer&quot; whenever you want to study, wherever you go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;★ Your studies will be more enjoyable and go smoother &amp;amp; faster, but most of all... they will be easier! It's guaranteed!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please don't hesitate to contact me, if you have any further questions or if I may assist you anyway.&#xA;Best of luck! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regards,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Markus&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*) I am an affiliate partner of prepcast.com; some of the provided links may be affiliate links. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17918" LastActivityDate="2015-07-24T11:53:18.900" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15596" CreationDate="2015-07-24T12:12:07.270" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have added people as a watcher on particular tickets that I thought they would be interested in. You will have to add a 3rd Party plug in to do this - works fine. Check out - &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRAKB/Add+watchers+in+the+Issue+creation+screen&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRAKB/Add+watchers+in+the+Issue+creation+screen&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17686" LastActivityDate="2015-07-24T12:12:07.270" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15593" CreationDate="2015-07-24T13:00:19.030" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You'll need to number the attributes with numbers to get them to sort in a non-alphabetic manner.  So 1-P, 2-Ar, 3-D, 4-B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-07-24T13:00:19.030" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15269" CreationDate="2015-07-24T14:28:52.483" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you select &quot;Release&quot; that will clear the board. So you can select &quot;Release&quot; say every month and name it for eg. &quot;Feb 2015&quot; etc and batch what's been done monthly. Or you can select &quot;release&quot; everytime a release is done, or some other significant event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17686" LastActivityDate="2015-07-24T14:28:52.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15244" CreationDate="2015-07-25T06:25:06.260" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most important (and often overlooked), in my own experience, is &lt;em&gt;getting to know&lt;/em&gt; the person you're working with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've worked on many long and complex projects with developers in other countries/time-zones, many of whom speak other languages natively. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every one of these people needed to be treated a little differently for optimal productivity. I guess that ultimately, that's the 'art' to project management. Knowing &lt;em&gt;how much&lt;/em&gt; to push on certain things, with certain people, at certain times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The key, as always, is good, clear communication.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Expect there to be noise in the transmission, and simplify until the message cannot be misunderstood. What is obvious to you WILL NOT be obvious to them (especially if they are not native English speakers). &lt;em&gt;This is where the problems arise 100% of the time...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly: &lt;strong&gt;Always&lt;/strong&gt; question your assumptions and the clarity in the instructions you give. Make sure your messages and instructions CANNOT possibly be misunderstood. Then, simplify it more (or make what you want and need even more explicit). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best advice, as a bullet list:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't be overbearing, give your devs time work through issues&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set VERY clear and easily understandable milestones &#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And give yourself some buffer, especially at first&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I.e. -- with someone new, I will tell them that something is due a day or two before it really is. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;But do this within reason. Ultimately, you are responsible for WHEN and HOW things are delivered. And rushing anything will more often create more problems than it fixes. So, as is often the case in management of any sort, it's all about &lt;em&gt;balance&lt;/em&gt;. Understanding this balance and using it effectively is what makes a manager great.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Break tasks up as much as possible, and give the most precise and concise instructions on each&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The more time you spend outlining EXACTLY what you are expecting (and WHEN it's due, and HOW it will be made), the less you will be surprised with what is delivered&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The difficult part of this is leaving &lt;em&gt;enough room&lt;/em&gt; for your dev to solve the problem in the best way possible, &lt;strong&gt;creatively&lt;/strong&gt; - they're deep into a problem that for you is sometimes just an abstract note in a long list of such idealized features. By the very nature of this circumstance, your dev will often have a better solution than was originally envisioned. (And they &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; will if they're really good.) &lt;strong&gt;Encourage&lt;/strong&gt; them to share it when they have an 'a-ha' moment. And have the courage to sell the new idea up the chain. Especially if it'll save you all time, and money. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure you know what progress is made each day, and on WHAT specifically&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;But remember that, when it comes to 'checking in', &lt;strong&gt;less is more&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I always think: Whenever the dev is talking to me, they're &lt;em&gt;not working on the project.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I've had lots of success with letting developers manage the task lists themselves. There are lots of tools and methodologies and software systems for this. And ultimately you need to find co-workers you can trust to keep working effectively WITHOUT constant supervision. &#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It doesn't matter how you do it, but make sure that you are always able to get a snapshot of what is being worked on WHEN, and what the status of EACH individual item is. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you can get status of every item (or the important ones) without interrupting your developer's workflow, it's in everyone's best interest.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In this regard, As SpoonerNZ said, transparency is key. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I like to setup the system and tasks, and deadlines, then let the devs figure out the best order in which to complete, however is most natural/conducive to getting the work done most efficiently. &#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't want to check on them constantly any more than they want me IMing or Skyping them all the time. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Eventually they learn that I'll bother them less when they actively engage and keep the tracking and notes on each item up to date. When they don't, I have to  message them via whatever tool we're using and add notes so I can keep myself and everyone else up to date. And if I have to keep messaging someone nonstop to make sure they're working -- usually that means it won't work long term. &lt;strong&gt;There needs to be mutual trust.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting long now, so I'll end here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But good luck, and remember:  Every time you manage a new person there's going to be some trial and error. Like &lt;strong&gt;any&lt;/strong&gt; relationship, it's all about understanding each other and figuring out the best way to work TOGETHER. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17925" LastEditorUserId="17925" LastEditDate="2015-07-25T06:57:12.533" LastActivityDate="2015-07-25T06:57:12.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15585" CreationDate="2015-07-25T13:24:04.600" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can I ask is somebody planning the estimates or are the developers / testers / etc asked to do their own estimates.  The only way you can get accurate estimates is to ask the people who are doing the work to estimate the work as a team.  I have used planning poker - have you tried that.  Have a look at the link below.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/planning-poker&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/planning-poker&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is better to estimate using agile methods or a recognised project planning methodology.  Stick with the methodology and you can't go wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17482" LastActivityDate="2015-07-25T13:24:04.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15612" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15613" CreationDate="2015-07-25T14:00:30.463" Score="10" ViewCount="603" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been hired as a new ScrumMaster for &lt;strong&gt;two existing teams&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like a fast start guide to use as a plan of attack for how I should start. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am literally going to be dropped into the teams and I want to know what process I should follow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do first what should I focus on how should I work with the team and POs etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; I have many years of Scrum and Agile experience as a developer and more recently as a Scrum Master however I would like to inspect and adapt by taking on new ideas from you fine folk &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastEditorUserId="4364" LastEditDate="2015-07-26T18:23:05.120" LastActivityDate="2015-07-26T18:23:05.120" Title="Fast start guide for ScrumMaster" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;lean&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15612" CreationDate="2015-07-25T14:37:34.103" Score="9" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you do diligence and figure out as much as possible about the project, the people, the customer, and the stakeholders on your own.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to each team member face to face about the things above, do not tell them anything besides your background. Let them tell you as much as possible on their own.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mark the common thing you learned from your discover process and the discussions. There is a high chance that this information is solid and you can work on it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Figure out as much as possible about the next delivery.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start socializing with the team, other teams, stakeholders etc. mingle, build up a network, which will be useful when you are about to change something; supporters, helpers etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start working with the team and do not change anything; you'll have to learn how they work and they have to get used to you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you see something is not going well and you know how to change it, use the solid information to make that change.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change only one thing at the time, and let it sink, evaluate the result, discuss the results with the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change another thing, and start from 4.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-07-25T14:37:34.103" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15614" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15618" CreationDate="2015-07-25T19:13:57.657" Score="9" ViewCount="568" Body="&lt;p&gt;I started working in my current job as an Android developer right after graduation (1.5 months ago), my first task was to build a complaint application which includes the following features:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Registration using mobile number &amp;amp; SMS verification.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sending complaints and storing complaint ticket for later use.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tracking complaint status (querying the server for ticket status).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Service to for polling the server periodically and generating notification if the complaint's status has been changed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I completed the task in around 3-4 weeks and was able to deliver the beta version of the app. I believe some of the code is &quot;weak&quot; mainly because of the pressure about deadlines, but nothing that causes serious performance issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I'm asked to start on a new project and after being asked for an estimation (which I provided after reading articles about development time estimation) but I still don't have a good grasp on how to estimate the time needed for development, I'm now faced with unrealistic expectations &amp;amp; deadlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I give more accurate estimates when I'm given the requirements of an app (android specifically) so that I'm able to explain why such time is needed, and how can I deal with unrealistic deadlines &amp;amp; expectations set by the manager or the team leader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17928" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2015-07-27T13:08:06.660" LastActivityDate="2015-07-27T13:08:06.660" Title="Time estimation and deadlines" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;deadline&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15585" CreationDate="2015-07-25T19:39:55.107" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tackle this by doing the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Break the user stories out into value delivered and by discipline.&lt;/strong&gt; This lets you still hit the mark of the user story delivering a value and breaking out the estimations in a way that will let you do effective sprint planning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Group user stories as features.&lt;/strong&gt; When breaking out the user stories by discipline relate them back together as a feature, which is what you will ultimately deliver. This lets your stakeholders see the big picture of what you are working towards.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tackle infrastructure/design work in an advanced sprint.&lt;/strong&gt; If you are finding that you have a bottle neck being caused by the same part of the team (i.e. design or infrastructure work) then explore bringing that work in a sprint early. This will let you chain your work and ensure that you do not have folks twiddling their thumbs. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sprint 1: Designers are designing &quot;Feature B&quot;. Developers are working on &quot;Feature A&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sprint 2: Designers are designing &quot;Feature C&quot;. Developers are working on &quot;Feature B&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17929" LastActivityDate="2015-07-25T19:39:55.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15585" CreationDate="2015-07-25T19:46:34.093" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;20 points work... could be 2 design, 2 IOS, 2 Android and 14 backend points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are three ways to resolve this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Option one: Allow more &quot;user&quot; types.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Different types of users have different needs (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/advantages-of-the-as-a-user-i-want-user-story-template&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;As a, I need, So that&lt;/a&gt;). A user doesn't need to always be a human end-user. Not all features are exposed to the human end-user. So the client and the server can be actors in user stories. A peripheral, like a stylus, headset, or robot that interacts with your app might also be a user. The client developer (iOS or Android) may be treated as a user in a user story such as, &quot;As a client developer, I need an API for data storage so that I can add user data to the database&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Option two: cross training.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Scrum encourages team members to self-assign tasks that they aren't the best at, but that they have capacity to help with (see: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumexpert.com/knowledge/t-shaped-skills-and-swarming-make-for-flexible-scrum-and-agile-teams/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;T Shaped People and Swarming&quot;&gt;T-Shaped People&lt;/a&gt;). It is better for the UX designer to make slow progress on an update to the client UI code (or to do some quality assurance work or write some product documentation) on a user story that has already been started by the team than it is for the UX designer to begin designing a new UX spec for a new user story that is lower priority and hasn't been started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Option three: try Kanban.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Maybe, for your team, a Kanban approach is a better fit than Scrum. Kanban progresses user stories through a workflow, chosen by your team to fit your organization. Perhaps in your organization you'd want five workflow states: (1) To do, (2) UX design, (3) Client, (4) Backend, (5) Done. If you pick this approach, consider what states a user story should move through and what sequence handoffs of primary responsibility should occur in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note: the objective of either Scrum or Kanban is increasing the team's ability to make reliable customer delivery commitments and responsiveness to changing customer needs or feedback.&lt;/strong&gt; The objective is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; to keep all team members 100% busy 100% of the time. So if your UX and client people are only busy two days a week and backend person is working seven days a week, then you don't need to change your estimating you need to hire (or cross train) another backend developer. Or you may need to choose an alternative technical approach, like moving to a PaaS or making better use of an open source library, or eliminating a feature that users really don't use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2305" LastEditorUserId="2305" LastEditDate="2015-07-25T20:10:43.757" LastActivityDate="2015-07-25T20:10:43.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15582" CreationDate="2015-07-25T19:59:48.403" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer depends on who your audience is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If it is for the feature crew (i.e. product owner / developers):&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main purpose of the burn down chart is to show how the team is trending towards completion of the individual work scoped for the sprint. It also helps the team understand how they are doing with estimations (stories and tasks) and should be viewed on the &lt;strong&gt;task level&lt;/strong&gt;. The team should be looking at this several times a week, if not daily. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some key things to watch out for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Burning Up:&lt;/strong&gt; This  means that the tasks are being created too far into the sprint. A symptom of this is either not enough time is allocated at the start to create tasks or the individuals are not properly planning out their work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Trending Down Slowly:&lt;/strong&gt; This can be a false positive if the team isn't updating their stuff on a daily basis. If that is the case, show the chart every single day during standup as a reminder. The true positive reason for this is that too much work is being put into the sprint for the team to tackle. If this is the case, focus more on estimation during planning. Learning to accurately estimate is an iterative process that the entire team needs to work together on. (Planning poker and buddies for tasking is a good way to help with this.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If it is for the stakeholders:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Burn down charts at the task level can still be very useful for them. However, the view they will most likely be interested in is the user stories titles (as those should frame the customer, value and impact) and their current state. A burn down chart of the user stories is less informative for the stakeholder persona. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'd rather be skeptic and pleasantly surprised when it turns out for the better. What does your team do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the product owner / scrum master your job is to help the team learn how to be more accurate. Use these tools along with others (retrospectives, for example) to help the team become &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I currently work in a software development team of 4 developers, doing sprints that last 2 weeks. In those two weeks we generally get around 50 to 70 storypoints worth of stories to 'Done'. We regularly have stories that make up 50% or more of those points, say 25 to 40 points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does sound like your user stories are too large. My advice is to take a look at the logical breakdown of the story and ensure that it is focused on delivering the right amount of value. Stories can be bucketed under Features or Epics which span multiple sprints. There are a lot of free resources on this, but I did enjoy this book: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1491904909&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/User-Story-Mapping-Discover-Product/dp/1491904909&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17929" LastEditorUserId="17929" LastEditDate="2015-07-28T01:08:19.260" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T01:08:19.260" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15614" CreationDate="2015-07-26T18:03:02.350" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The short answer&lt;/strong&gt; is never give a fixed time estimate, always give a range. And then clearly document this in emails or the project plan (writing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long Answer:&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;Fifty some off years of software development has proven fairly conclusively that estimating an entire project, before any work is done, has a success rate of around 20% or less (based on 80% of IT projects failing per industry surveys). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, it sounds like you're working for a company that still hasn't figured this reality out. When a company is unwilling to face reality, there is often nothing you can do. It's a matter of perception and trying to change perception is like trying to change the tides. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I recommend is clearly documenting your current estimates and caveats. Make it clear your estimate is an estimate based on available data and without continuing the work, you can't get more detail. In traditional project management this is called &quot;Order of Magnitude Estimating&quot;. Where at the start of the project an estimate was considered about 20% accurate. As you moved through the project the estimate would get more and more accurate. Think of it like a funnel that gets narrower the closer to release. So for a two year project, the initial release date is a range of a half year (2H 2018). Six months into the project the estimate moves to a quarter range (3Q 2018). A year into the project you get to a month (Oct 2018) and 18 months into the project you get to a week (3rd week of Oct, 2018). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to document what you know, what your estimate is based on and clearly state it is an estimate and try and assign some kind of variance to it. Part of this is to not give a fixed estimate, instead give a range estimate. You say &quot;I think this could take between 4 and 8 weeks to complete. In two weeks, after coding starts, I can probably narrow that down to a week range.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This moves you into the concept of estimating in agile. You start with a lot of unknowns and you figure out what you can do based on what you have done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Alternate- Date Fixed, Feature Flux&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Something that Scrum is greatly tailored to is setting a fixed date for release and keeping scope in flux. So instead of saying &quot;I'll be done in 4 to 8 weeks&quot;, you say &quot;I'll commit to shipping on March 17th. Right now I can commit to 4 of the twelve features on the list. In two weeks I'll be able to refine the scope and let you know the final scope I can commit to.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-07-26T18:03:02.350" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15612" CreationDate="2015-07-26T18:20:48.193" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Zsolt gave a really great checklist for tackling any new project. I'd even point traditional project managers at this. I'm going to try and provide some additional Scrum focused detail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Brand New Team, Brand New Scrum Master:&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;If everything is brand new, you're going to want to set up your ceremonies and cadence right away. At this stage most agile experts advise a slightly more hands on approach (You're in the Shu phase of the Shu Ha Ri or Beginner, Journeyman, Master of learning). The team needs a lot more direction and guidance at this stage. Self-organizing comes once patterns are established. So you want to set up those patterns for the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get your backlog: Before the development team can even start, they need a backlog. Work with the product owner and the team to develop a backlog of at least two sprints worth of work. This means the stories are completely ready for development to start working on them without any more guidance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Set a Sprint Length: Two weeks is the absolute longest. Many leading Scrum experts advise one week sprints when starting out. If the team says &quot;we can't build anything in a week&quot; you say &quot;well we'd rather see we can build four nothings in a month in a couple of weeks than in a couple of months.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Set your Sprint Start Day: Don't run your sprints from Monday to Friday, it breaks so many good work practices it's not funny. You should never have important meetings before noon on a Monday and you should always avoid major work completion on a Friday afternoon. I personally recommend a Tuesday to Tuesday or Wednesday to Wednesday sprint length. Also don't put your sprint planning and sprint review/retrospectives on the same day, too many meetings in one day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Set up the Daily Standup: Find the earliest time in the day when everyone can meet. If your last developer doesn't get in until 10:00am, start the standup at 10:00am. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprint Planning, Review, Retrospective: Set these up as reoccurring meetings. Since it will likely take you a couple of weeks to get your starting backlog, you can set all these up to start roughly three weeks in so you don't have meeting conflicts with one off meetings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Information Radiators: Even if you have online project tools, set up a Task Board and a Burn Down chart. Make them very visible and where you will hold you Daily Standup (even better if the other Sprint meetings can also be held here). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Existing Team and Sprints, new Scrum Master&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Easy, don't do a thing. As Zsolt says in #6 above don't change anything. Spend at least two sprints observing and asking questions. Then you start making suggestions. It is much harder to drop into a team doing &quot;bad Scrum&quot; and help them than it is to start with a fresh team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-07-26T18:20:48.193" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15620" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15622" CreationDate="2015-07-26T20:01:39.403" Score="9" ViewCount="4422" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am struggling to truly grasp what lead time means on a Kanban project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read about it in several books but I still can't get my head around it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone explain it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastActivityDate="2021-03-30T19:05:57.710" Title="What is lead time?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15614" CreationDate="2015-07-26T20:32:54.253" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;While Joel's answer is good, the reality we face in this business is we have to make commitments, we have to price our proposal with a price, not a range of possible prices.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimates should always be a range; however, you must also provide a target, something within that range.  And then on top of this, the business may dictate another target...a target that represents price to win, which is very likely to be way lower than what you want as a target.  In some cases, even outside your range.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to help keep this target in a realistic range is with history.  You need to capture your project results and store it so that you can reference what has happened in the past and build that into your thinking.  Use industry information if you can get it.  Second best is to include as many real experts...real...to help estimate the work.  And finally, build a ton of contingency reserves over many of your projects so that you can fund those targets that were set too low.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-07-26T20:32:54.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15620" CreationDate="2015-07-26T21:15:56.200" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_time&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wiki&lt;/a&gt; has the common definition of this term:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A lead time is the latency between the initiation and execution of a&#xA;  process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your working area is software development, then the definition from &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AGILE/Lead+Time&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;JIRA golossary&lt;/a&gt; may be more understandable for you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lead time is the time taken from when an issue is logged until work is&#xA;  completed on that issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words (example for software area): A lead time is the time between a moment when you have registered an issue and the moment when you have delivered the new version of the software with the issue resolved (new version is deployed/new patch is released/etc):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  Issue                                                          Issue &#xA;requested =================================================&amp;gt;&amp;gt;&amp;gt; delivered&#xA;&#xA;   |                    Activity                       Activity    |&#xA;   |---------------|---------------|---------------|---------------|---------------|&#xA;   |    List of         List of          List of        List of    |   List of     &#xA;   |    created         issues         implemented     delivering  |  delivered    &#xA;   |    issues           under           issues         issues     |   issues      &#xA;   |                 implementation                                |               &#xA;   |                                                               |               &#xA;   |                                                               |               &#xA;   |                                                               |               &#xA;   |&amp;lt;--------------------------Lead Time--------------------------&amp;gt;|&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://leanandkanban.wordpress.com/2009/04/18/lead-time-vs-cycle-time/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Do not confuse&lt;/a&gt; this term with the similar &quot;Cycle Time&quot; term:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lead time clock starts when the request is made and ends at delivery.&#xA;  Cycle time clock starts when work begins on the request and ends when&#xA;  the item is ready for delivery.  Cycle time is a more mechanical measure of process capability. Lead time is what the customer sees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  Issue                                                          Issue &#xA;requested ================================================&amp;gt;&amp;gt;&amp;gt;&amp;gt; delivered&#xA;&#xA;   |                    Activity                       Activity    |&#xA;   |---------------|---------------|---------------|---------------|---------------|&#xA;   |    List of    |    List of    |     List of        List of    |    List of    &#xA;   |    created    |    issues     |   implemented     delivering  |   delivered   &#xA;   |    issues     |     under     |     issues         issues     |    issues     &#xA;   |               | implementation|                               |               &#xA;   |               |               |                               |               &#xA;   |               |&amp;lt;-Cicle  time-&amp;gt;|                               |&#xA;   |                                                               |&#xA;   |&amp;lt;--------------------------Lead Time--------------------------&amp;gt;|&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, take a look to this article: &lt;a href=&quot;https://stefanroock.wordpress.com/2010/03/02/kanban-definition-of-lead-time-and-cycle-time/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban: Definition of Lead Time and Cycle Time.&lt;/a&gt; It's about the same concerns, but with nice pictures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yet another article with same content (in case if you don't like JIRA's swimlanes and ASCII graphics): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whatissixsigma.net/cycle-time/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cycle Time [and Lead Time]&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you still have a problem with understanding the term &quot;Lead Time&quot;, please leave a comment, I will try to clarify it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-03T21:43:03.567" LastActivityDate="2015-08-03T21:43:03.567" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15620" CreationDate="2015-07-26T23:22:33.713" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to David Anderson &lt;strong&gt;the lead time starts when a work item enters the Kanban System, and ends when it reaches the first infinite queue&lt;/strong&gt;. In other words, it starts when one makes a commitment to deliver the work item, and ends when it is ready to be delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In software development, the commitment is when the team and PO/PM agrees on working on a work item, and delivery is when the work item is ready for deployment or delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter if the team starts working on it immediately or not, because the lead time is measured from the &lt;em&gt;requester&lt;/em&gt; point of view. So, if the team has other things to do, and starts to work on the work item after 3 days, and needs 2 days to finish, the lead time will be 5 days. If the PO/PM takes the work item only after 4 days, the lead time won't be 9 days, because the clocked stopped ticking when it reached the delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-07-26T23:22:33.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15017" CreationDate="2015-07-27T04:20:08.023" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I left the military a long time ago with much fewer credentials and I have found that certifications are a good bridge or maybe a &quot;mil-spec to civie&quot; translation aid. However, the BA and MBA already cover a lot of ground in that regard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Item #1: the BA and MBA have direct translation to the PMP qualification list by reducing the number of &quot;project hours&quot; you need to prove. Describing your past project work, documenting the history, and finding current contact information for your old bosses might be challenging. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Item #2: Career growth is harder to predict but it has been quite steady over the years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Item #5: Architecture, infrastructure development, and construction industries have always had and will continue to have a high demand for project managers. The large budgets and enormous consequences of failure make hiring project managers a &quot;no brainer.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the recent move towards Agile, I'm finding that software companies seem to be de-emphasizing and downgrading the role of project manager. It varies a lot, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2015-07-27T04:20:08.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15625" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15631" CreationDate="2015-07-27T05:32:54.450" Score="2" ViewCount="858" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, team assigns story points to tasks during planning poker. When explaining the meaning of points, the scrum master says it is effort. So if it is time consuming task but can be done easily or it is a complex task but can be done fast they all can have the same points. So the intention is to forget about the time units and play with effort units. But in my opinion it is not fair. Why? Let me say how many concepts connected with points play as time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;After several sprints team already know how many points it can complete during one sprint. Sprint duration is fixed - say two weeks. Hence if you find your velocity say 200 points per 2 weeks then you know that the team speed is 20 points per day. Which generally means that one task which has 20 points should be done, ideally, in one day. Hence 20 points means one day. And one day, is, surprisingly, time unit not effort. If you asses by effort then you might finish it in 2 hours and you will be ahead of your sprint which is not good (wrong estimation).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Burn down charts connect points to time as well. So as in the previous case, we again can think about points as time. Otherwise, we will get ahead or behind of the sprint schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Team very soon identifies with time units, probably because of 2 previous reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So why we say points are based on effort and are not connected directly to time if, indeed, they are meaning time? What is a problem to say X points is Y time for team A and Z time for team B?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17834" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2015-07-27T09:40:28.370" LastActivityDate="2015-07-27T17:58:25.320" Title="Story Points mean effort but not time?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15626" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-27T07:35:01.437" Score="5" ViewCount="282" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our team is distributed across two cities in EST and one city in PST. We heavily use Hangouts, Google Docs and other collaboration tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most advice and techniques for conducting retrospectives are geared towards teams that are physically in the same room (I.e. Putting sticky notes up on a board).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some techniques for conducting retrospectives for teams that cannot all be in the same room?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17943" LastActivityDate="2018-08-16T13:31:58.547" Title="What are effective techniques for conducting retrospectives for a geographically-distributed team?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;&lt;remote-teams&gt;&lt;facilitation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15625" CreationDate="2015-07-27T07:50:09.670" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best analogy for points is &lt;strong&gt;distance&lt;/strong&gt;. Think of points like a distance between two cities. Even though everyone agrees on the distance, different cars/drivers will complete the drive in different amounts of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar to distance, points are supposed to be absolute. So an expert developer and a beginner both agree that a story is 20 points, yet the expert may be able to complete those points in one day and the beginner in two days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A team's velocity is the total points completed in an iteration. It is appropriate to use velocity (either of a developer or of the aggregate team) to convert points into an estimated completion time (points/velocity=time). It is inappropriate to think of points as a direct measure of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/the-main-benefit-of-story-points&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mike Cohn's article on the value of story points&lt;/a&gt; for a longer and possibly clearer explanation of the concepts I've summarized here. Mike Cohn is a founding member of the Scrum Alliance and one of the top authors on Agile. His book, Agile Estimating and Planning, is another great resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2305" LastEditorUserId="2305" LastEditDate="2015-07-27T10:21:30.990" LastActivityDate="2015-07-27T10:21:30.990" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15626" CreationDate="2015-07-27T08:14:02.803" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;We recently had two retrospectives where parties joined from two continents. It wasn't that different than having the whole team in one room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is where you store the &lt;em&gt;information&lt;/em&gt;. It is common that teams write a shared documentation during the retrospective and that kills the dynamics of the event. &lt;strong&gt;Select one site and do the writing and drawing part there&lt;/strong&gt;. The cameras we have now can nicely transfer what is going on, and both parties can see the whiteboards or whatever you have. Of course, the others won't be able to write or draw, but they can explain what they want. If you use a laptop camera that is even better, because you can walk that around the room in case you have multiple whiteboards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create photos and distribute them after the meeting, or write a memo afterwards (not during the event). Some other small things that can improve the experience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No phones and no laptops besides the camera; based on my experience people use electronic devices more heavily during a video conference and that is not good for the dynamics of the meeting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Detailed agenda in advance, what people should prepare, etc; conference calls still start with setting up the equipment, waiting for others, and therefore the meetings are actually shorter. The data gathering part is the longest part, but can be done alone. Do it before the session.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can work in groups as well (we did). Have one dedicated person who connects the other sides by explaining them what is on the board and what is happening right now, and who will write or draw what the others would like to share.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-07-27T08:14:02.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15625" CreationDate="2015-07-27T10:22:35.740" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So why we say points are based on effort and are not connected directly &#xA;  to time if, indeed, they are meaning time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because Scrum does not really works with time. The smallest delivery package is an iteration backlog - fixed time -, therefore it does not matter how much time a team needs to deliver a point. What matters, is that the team delivers its commitment: the iteration backlog. The team's speed - that has the time component - is based on the iterations. Different philosophy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is a problem to say X points is Y time for team A and Z time for team B?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the points are not comparable and not even for the same team. If a team learns, after several weeks the same task will get less points, although Scrum Masters advise do not use less points. They argue that the task is still complex/complicated so it worth the same as before. Nevertheless, points are relative to a certain state of a team, therefore not good for any comparison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you can make it absolute by checking how much of their commitment the teams delivered, but this is a different topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-07-27T10:22:35.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15625" CreationDate="2015-07-27T10:38:23.667" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;All about using points instead of units of time is to measure the complexity of the task and not its duration.&#xA;Naturally people are used to think in hours/days and while measuring tasks in these units they make some assumptions that are often wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mature development team thinks in terms of how this task is complicated. Do I need additional resources to finish it. Can anything prevent me.&#xA;The greater the complexity, the more points you have. If the scale of the task is large, it tends team to re-think it and divide it into smaller tasks (not necessarily shorter).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often the task valued at 40 points will be done faster than the task valued at 8 points, for example if you had to wait for something else to finish it.&#xA;This does not change the fact that the first task was much more complicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For you, it's important that the whole team has a certain velocity and is able to burn a certain number of points in a given time. Then you know how many points team can potentially burn per sprint.&#xA;And every member of the team must be  convinced of the complexity of the task (not its duration).&#xA;Then this whole mechanism works as it should.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your attitude is a common problem in the transition ftom hours to points. If you don't change your approach and do not check how it works, no one on this forum won't convince you that this is good.&#xA;Most developers have a big resistance to change thinking about the tasks, but after a while working with points, they say that it is much more natural and they refuse to come back to units of time .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2955" LastActivityDate="2015-07-27T10:38:23.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15625" CreationDate="2015-07-27T16:54:25.253" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Story points are designed to deal with the inherent uncertainty&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you toss a coin you will get heads 50% of the time. If you toss the coin a large number of times the actual % will tend to get closer and closer to 50%. However, you cannot tell whether the next toss will bring heads or tails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the same way, team velocity tends to average out to a certain number over a period of time. But there is no way to tell what precise number of points a team can accomplish in the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By using hours instead of story points you are sending the message that you can tell whether the next toss will bring a head or a tail (how many hours of work you can accomplish).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are 3 more reasons why you don't want to use hours:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Human beings are better at relative estimation than at absolute estimation. &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/11675/is-there-any-published-research-about-story-points-vs-time-estimation&quot;&gt;You can see references to research on this in a prior thread here.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/the-main-benefit-of-story-points&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Story points avoid endless arguments among individuals who perform at different rates.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Physical measurements such as hours have emotional baggage attached with them. For example, I have seen some managers do an analysis of estimated hours vs actual hours and use that result to make up their mind how well a team is doing and how individuals within the team are doing. Story points are designed to avoid such misinterpretation of estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2015-07-27T17:58:25.320" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9588" CreationDate="2015-07-27T16:59:33.707" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Technical Project Manager is meant to look at every detail of the project and guide the developers through the process of proper planning so as to ensure maximum resource efficiency and avoid any hiccups that may arise because of technical difficulties. The developer must provide a proper timeline estimate of the completion of the project and must have proper reasoning for it. This is where the Technical Project Manager comes in to question the developer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17949" LastEditorDisplayName="user16244" LastEditDate="2018-04-02T10:07:04.893" LastActivityDate="2018-04-02T10:07:04.893" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15596" CreationDate="2015-07-27T17:14:56.120" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it possible to add a person to watch an exising issue, without assigning the task to him/her?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Absolutely, this is documented within &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Watching+and+Voting+on+an+Issue&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Watching and Voting on an Issue&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you have the correct &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Watching+and+Voting+on+an+Issue#WatchingandVotingonanIssue-permissions&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;permissions&lt;/a&gt; (see below), you can also&#xA;  view the voter and watcher lists for an issue and, &lt;strong&gt;you can manage the&#xA;  watcher list — that is, add other people to the watcher list&lt;/strong&gt;. This is&#xA;  useful if you need to draw someone's attention to a particular issue. &lt;em&gt;[emphasis mine]&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The relevant &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Watching+and+Voting+on+an+Issue#WatchingandVotingonanIssue-permissions&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;permission&lt;/a&gt; is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Manage Watcher List&lt;/strong&gt; — permits a user to view/edit the watcher list.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can manage the list by clicking on the watcher count icon:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gUe6Qm.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gUe6Qm.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="177" LastActivityDate="2015-07-27T17:14:56.120" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15634" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-28T02:50:54.240" Score="2" ViewCount="194" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a Project task Finish to Finish relationship scenario, assume there are only 2 tasks in a project. Task B should not be Finished until Task A is finished. Task A takes 2 days and assume it is starting on 5-Jan (also project start date) (for simplicity all 7 days are working days). Task B takes 4 days complete. When i add the dependency of F-F, should the date for Project Start date to be changed to 3-Jan to make Task A and B to end on Same date i.e 6-Jan or should the Project start date to still remain as 5-Jan push the end date of Task B as 8-Jan ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17953" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-07-28T15:01:50.887" LastActivityDate="2021-04-20T21:09:45.320" Title="Project start date calculation in a Finish to Finish dependency scenario" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15635" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15636" CreationDate="2015-07-28T09:16:30.510" Score="0" ViewCount="981" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I set a Auto scheduled task to &lt;em&gt;Start&lt;/em&gt; date : &lt;strong&gt;07/05/2015&lt;/strong&gt; , and &lt;em&gt;Duration&lt;/em&gt; to &lt;strong&gt;12 month&lt;/strong&gt;. I get a &lt;em&gt;Finish&lt;/em&gt; date of &lt;strong&gt;07/06/2016&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a problem ! The finish day is supposed to be : &lt;strong&gt;07/05/2015&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I checked the &lt;strong&gt;MyUserCalendar&lt;/strong&gt; , it is set to &lt;strong&gt;All days are working days&lt;/strong&gt; even weekends. And in &lt;code&gt;File &amp;gt; Options &amp;gt; Schedule &amp;gt; Days per month&lt;/code&gt; set to &lt;strong&gt;30&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know where is the problem ? any idea ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;PS: I am using Microsoft Project 2013.&lt;/sub&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17770" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T10:17:06.580" Title="Why the Auto-scheduled Finish date is Wrong in this case , using MS Project 2013 ?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15635" CreationDate="2015-07-28T10:17:06.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually if you explicitly set days per month to 30, then by adding 12 months you would have &quot;June 29, 2016&quot; as the finish date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By adding 365 days to that task you will get &quot;July 4, 2016&quot; and not &quot;July 5, 2016&quot; as you expect since 2016 is a &lt;strong&gt;leap year&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The deviation to your date might be the amount of hours per day or even the time the activity starts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16743" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T10:17:06.580" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15626" CreationDate="2015-07-28T10:34:09.897" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the retrospective facilitators gathering earlier this year we discussed possible exercises for remote or distributed retrospectives. We conclude that, with the help with some basic collaboration tools, almost all retrospective exercises can be used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I described one specific exercise in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.benlinders.com/2014/retrospectives-in-remote-teams/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;doing remote retrospectives&lt;/a&gt;. This exercise uses a Google doc with questions to collect team input. The retrospective itself can be done using a video connection with Skype or Hangouts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some sample questions for such a remote retrospective are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do you like about our team and the way that we work together?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What can we do to improve collaboration, communication and co-working in the team? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you feel about the tools that we are&#xA;using? Do the tools support collaboration sufficiently?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What have you learned working in this dispersed team? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If there is one thing that you could change, what would it be?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a retrospective toolbox which provides exercises, using the selection button &quot;remote&quot; you can filter out the ones that can be done with distributed teams. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.benlinders.com/exercises/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;retrospective exercises&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this help you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ben Linders&#xA;Co author &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.benlinders.com/getting-value-out-of-agile-retrospectives/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16919" LastEditorUserId="16919" LastEditDate="2018-02-21T23:43:05.320" LastActivityDate="2018-02-21T23:43:05.320" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15634" CreationDate="2015-07-28T10:35:24.503" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The finish-to-finish relationship says that you cannot finish B unless A is done. As an example, &lt;strong&gt;you cannot deliver a cake which is still not ready&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, B will overlap A (Starting after A and finishing later than A).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose you start your project on January 1st and every single day is a normal working day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A finishes on January 3rd and B (consequently your project) finishes on January 5th.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edited&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source 1: &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/project/back-to-basics-understanding-task-dependencies&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MSDN Project Management - Back to basic. Understanding relationship&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source 2: PMP Exam Prep, Eighth Edition - Rita Mulcahy (Pag. 202)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16743" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditorDisplayName="user16743" LastEditDate="2021-04-20T21:09:45.320" LastActivityDate="2021-04-20T21:09:45.320" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15639" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15642" CreationDate="2015-07-28T11:13:54.600" Score="1" ViewCount="118" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to compute the real finish date, I mean :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If &lt;strong&gt;Start&lt;/strong&gt; date is &lt;strong&gt;01/01/2015&lt;/strong&gt;. and the &lt;strong&gt;Duration&lt;/strong&gt; is &lt;strong&gt;7 days&lt;/strong&gt; , the real &lt;strong&gt;finish date&lt;/strong&gt; is supposed to be &lt;strong&gt;07/01/2015&lt;/strong&gt; (or at least 08/01/2015).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please how to do that under Microsoft Project 2013 ?? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I use a formula in custom field ? for instance : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt; DateAdd(&quot;m&quot;;[NumberOfDuration];[Start])&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17770" LastEditorDisplayName="user17770" LastEditDate="2015-07-28T13:07:01.387" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T14:03:54.840" Title="How to compute the real finish date?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15639" CreationDate="2015-07-28T12:10:29.033" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm guessing the problem you have is that duration defaults to work days (assumes 5 work days per week) and you are concerned about calendar days. There are a couple of ways around this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't use days&lt;/strong&gt;. Use weeks or months (so type in &quot;1 week&quot; under duration). This is my preferred option.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Change default duration unit to calendar days&lt;/strong&gt;. You should be able to this this as follows:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go to the Tools menu, select Options and then select the Calendar tab&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reset the default number of days per month to 30 or 31.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously the second option isn't perfect 100% of the time, but if your time-frames for your tasks is typically less than one week it should be good enough for estimation purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T12:10:29.033" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15639" CreationDate="2015-07-28T12:59:14.933" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use elapsed days for durations that do not depend on working time. Enter the duration as &quot;7ed&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using elapsed durations bypasses all calendars (project, task, resource) and task type when calculating the finish date. They are typically used when the task duration is based on something physical (eg curing time) or something contractual (eg x needs to happen 30 days before/after some event). The latter is usually seen in lag durations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make a duration elapsed, put the letter e before the duration unit. This works for all units but is mostly used with days. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples: &quot;7ed&quot;, &quot;5 edays&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastEditorUserId="13635" LastEditDate="2015-07-28T14:03:54.840" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T14:03:54.840" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15634" CreationDate="2015-07-28T13:18:57.173" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Both are possible - it depends on the nature of Task B&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;should the date for Project Start date to be changed to 3-Jan to make&#xA;  Task A and B to end on Same date i.e 6-Jan&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases you can start Task B earlier. For example, let us say Task A is 'Add wiring' and Task B is 'Inspect electrical'. You can start Task B earlier by studying the wiring diagram and preparing an inspection checklist. In this case, if you coordinate very tightly, you may be able to finish Task B very close to the time Task A finishes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;or should the Project start date to still remain as 5-Jan push the end&#xA;  date of Task B as 8-Jan ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases Task B can only be started after Task A starts. For example, let us say Task A is 'Hang drywall' and Task B is 'Paint drywall'. In this case you cannot start Task B before Task A starts. Here you won't have any choice but to push the end date out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T13:18:57.173" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15644" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15690" CreationDate="2015-07-28T13:36:06.960" Score="0" ViewCount="1412" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have created an excel file that outputs a really nice report for me after taking the input of Task name, resources, start date and finish date. The excel file is quite complicated and isn't something that can be replicated multiple times, however I only need to produce this report once a year. What is the best way for me to get this data from project into the existing excel file. Is it simply copying and pasting or does it require a script? Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17598" LastActivityDate="2015-07-31T19:16:04.537" Title="Best way to get data from MS Project to Excel" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15644" CreationDate="2015-07-28T14:45:20.270" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can create a flat file of your MSP DATA with Files &gt; Save as &gt; Save as file &gt; Ok &gt; then choose Excel type file &gt; Save &gt; Next &gt; Next&gt; New mapping and Next &gt; choose task and Next &gt; then add the collums you want and finish &gt; save your mapping&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You now have all data in a file that you can use for your dashboard&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17454" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T14:45:20.270" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15647" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15685" CreationDate="2015-07-28T14:53:06.147" Score="2" ViewCount="653" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to export timescale data like work to an excel file from MSProject&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are looking to make a custom dashboard in excel but all timescale are not available to export.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like VBA can do it but how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17454" LastActivityDate="2015-07-31T00:45:00.470" Title="Export timescale data from MSproject to Excel" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15648" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-07-28T17:17:18.863" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Roadmaps refers to technology roadmap which is a layout plan that matches short-term and long-term goals with specific technology solutions to help meet those goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17650" LastEditorUserId="17650" LastEditDate="2015-08-03T15:51:14.340" LastActivityDate="2015-08-03T15:51:14.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15649" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-07-28T17:17:18.863" Score="0" Body="Roadmaps refers to technology roadmap" OwnerUserId="17650" LastEditorUserId="17650" LastEditDate="2015-08-03T15:51:21.113" LastActivityDate="2015-08-03T15:51:21.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15650" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-07-28T17:19:16.253" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Process improvement is the focus of improving business processes aligning to people and products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17650" LastEditorUserId="17650" LastEditDate="2015-07-28T19:17:57.870" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T19:17:57.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15651" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-07-28T17:19:16.253" Score="0" Body="Process improvement is the focus of improving business processes" OwnerUserId="17650" LastEditorUserId="17650" LastEditDate="2015-07-29T20:43:51.243" LastActivityDate="2015-07-29T20:43:51.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15652" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-07-28T17:22:26.453" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lean is a systematic method for the elimination of waste (&quot;Muda&quot;) within a manufacturing system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2015-07-28T18:51:32.347" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T18:51:32.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15653" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-07-28T17:22:26.453" Score="0" Body="Lean is a systematic method for the elimination of waste (&quot;Muda&quot;) within a manufacturing system." OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2015-07-28T18:47:37.770" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T18:47:37.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15654" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-07-28T17:25:00.430" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Resources are people, places, or things that can be allocated to complete a project. &lt;strong&gt;Do not&lt;/strong&gt; use this tag for resource &lt;em&gt;recommendations&lt;/em&gt;; these are off-topic as per the &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&quot;&gt;help center&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17650" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2018-06-10T11:41:26.390" LastActivityDate="2018-06-10T11:41:26.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15655" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-07-28T17:25:00.430" Score="0" Body="Resources are people, places, or things that can be allocated. DO NOT use this tag for resource recommendations; these are off-topic." OwnerUserId="17650" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2018-06-10T14:05:18.900" LastActivityDate="2018-06-10T14:05:18.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15656" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-07-28T17:27:43.950" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Budget is an estimate of income and expenditure planned for a project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17650" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2015-07-28T18:46:41.210" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T18:46:41.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15657" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-07-28T17:27:43.950" Score="0" Body="An estimate of income and expenditure planned for a project." OwnerUserId="17650" LastEditorUserId="17650" LastEditDate="2015-07-29T20:43:57.807" LastActivityDate="2015-07-29T20:43:57.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15658" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-07-28T17:29:13.400" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A product owner is typically a project's key stakeholder. Part of the product owner responsibilities is to have a vision of what he or she wishes to build, and convey that vision to the scrum team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17650" LastEditorUserId="17650" LastEditDate="2015-07-28T19:17:40.530" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T19:17:40.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15659" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-07-28T17:29:13.400" Score="0" Body="The product owner represents the stakeholders and is the voice of the customer. He or she is accountable for ensuring that the team delivers value to the business." OwnerUserId="17650" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2015-07-28T18:52:27.053" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T18:52:27.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15660" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-07-28T17:35:58.343" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asana is a collaborative task management system, that enable teamwork without email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Links&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asana_(software)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki atricle about Asana&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://asana.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Asana Home Site&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-02T19:43:41.100" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T19:43:41.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15661" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-07-28T17:35:58.343" Score="0" Body="Asana is a cloud based project management tool." OwnerUserId="17650" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2015-07-28T18:53:03.553" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T18:53:03.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15662" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-07-28T18:26:58.490" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Software development method that stresses communication, collaboration, integration, automation, and measurement of cooperation between software developers and other information-technology (IT) professionals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-07-28T19:17:37.953" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T19:17:37.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15663" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-07-28T18:26:58.490" Score="0" Body="DevOps (development and operations) is a software development method that emphasizes communication and integration between Development and IT Operation." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2015-07-28T18:50:20.910" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T18:50:20.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15559" CreationDate="2015-07-28T19:17:47.373" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're referring to the hours that you must have 'Led or Directed Projects' then it says you can use all of the hours from overlapping projects, but they will not recognize more than 40 hours/week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Number of Hours that You Led or Directed Project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Consider all of the projects that you have worked on and identify how&#xA;  many hours you spent leading and directing the project. For this&#xA;  section of the application, if you worked on multiple projects at one&#xA;  time, all the hours count toward the total.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a separate metric, months of project experience, where you &lt;em&gt;cannot&lt;/em&gt; include overlapping projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Number of Months of Project Management Experience&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For each month in which you worked on multiple, overlapping projects,&#xA;  you can only count the time spent on ONE of those projects toward&#xA;  fulfilling your eligibility requirements. Using this example below,&#xA;  the time spent working on Project 1 from January–April would count as&#xA;  four months toward the eligibility requirement, while the time spent&#xA;  working on Project 2 during May–June would count as two months toward&#xA;  the eligibility requirement. However, you cannot count the time&#xA;  working on both projects during February–April twice. Therefore,&#xA;  Project 1 and Project 2 equal six months (January–June) of project&#xA;  management experience toward your eligibility requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/~/media/PDF/Certifications/handbooks/project-management-professional-handbook-pmp.ashx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMP Handbook&lt;/a&gt;, page 8.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in your case, I would submit the hours for all three projects as you've listed them for the hours requirement, but you'll only be able to claim 3 months of project experience for this same time period. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17818" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T19:17:47.373" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15582" CreationDate="2015-07-28T19:29:55.923" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why not base the burndown chart on both?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uDhsZ.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uDhsZ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has the benefits to show you some insights about what's happening concerning your &lt;strong&gt;tasks&lt;/strong&gt; (so it clearly shows the actual &lt;em&gt;effort&lt;/em&gt;) without putting it out of the context of the &lt;strong&gt;stories&lt;/strong&gt; (as it puts the &lt;em&gt;value&lt;/em&gt; on top of it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most interesting point seems to be that it shows the &lt;strong&gt;relationship between effort and value&lt;/strong&gt;: for instance, on this chart the first two stories show a rapid beginning and then some pain towards the end. Even a plateau in the effort can be found in the second story. On the other hand, the third story shows some pain in the beginning but then it shows a rapid completion in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Matter to discuss for the end-of-sprint meeting. How can we improve this? What does that mean? On the long run, do stories which begin rapidly tend to be painful in the end? etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7972" LastEditorUserId="7972" LastEditDate="2015-08-07T17:46:38.597" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T17:46:38.597" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15634" CreationDate="2015-07-28T19:56:50.087" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The latter.  The project start date is considered a constraint, right?  It is a chosen date to have resources on site to begin work and spending money.  You cannot arbitrarily start earlier.  Therefore, if you have a FF relationship, you need to let schedule push the finish date such that the relationship can be honored.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good example of this is if you have a management LOE task that has a FF relationship with a discrete task.  Management can go no where until the discrete task is finished.  Therefore, the discrete task will cause the finish the management LOE task to continue until it finishes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T19:56:50.087" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15626" CreationDate="2015-07-28T20:16:08.707" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Zsolt mentioned, also our team experience showed that is better to actually write the information only on one site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We backed that up with the use of specific collaboration tools like &lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt; boards or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ideaboardz.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ideaboardz&lt;/a&gt; that allow voting of specific cards and then shared the results as a PDF in a wiki for reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14923" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T20:16:08.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15668" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-29T13:17:27.693" Score="10" ViewCount="3693" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a bit of a broader question, but I hope this is the right place to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I need to provide a bit of backstory regarding my goals.&#xA;We tried several different PM solutions (Wrike - interface was somewhat lacking, Redbooth - good UI but not really good for managing software). Jira seems like the next best choice - so we can keep track of releases and different types of software that produced (integrations with Github etc. seem particularly useful).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a comprehensive guide that would explain how to use Jira - both conceptually (most important) and practically. I found some courses on Jira but they all mix intro heavily with Agile, which would be too much to consume (introducing both Agile and new PM suite at once). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7656" LastActivityDate="2018-08-19T18:26:48.203" Title="Best intro to Jira?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ClosedDate="2018-08-21T04:31:52.937" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15668" CreationDate="2015-07-29T14:11:59.213" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Brother,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I went through similar situation. Did a lot of research on Jira deployments, read blogs, and more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to know the tool I found was involved part of my agile team. I used the free period (30 days) and thoroughly tested the tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even I had great impressions of it. We want to deploy Jira soon!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Helped?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17969" LastActivityDate="2015-07-29T14:11:59.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15670" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15678" CreationDate="2015-07-29T15:08:55.513" Score="6" ViewCount="1553" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is specific to new product development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am part of a medium size organization.  In our organization, our executive team sets the product strategy.  Once the product strategy is set, a product manager is assigned to work with a cross-functional, cross-departmental team.  Together, the PM and these department managers or assistant managers become the &quot;product team.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've advocated that the product teams should be treated like a board of directors or an advisory committee.  The product manager should drive what needs to be driven with the individual that it's relevant to.  So, each department is like a spoke, the PM is like the hub, and the product team is like the outside of the wheel where everything is shared for clarity.  In the weekly or every two week product team meetings, a typical meeting would look like, &quot;I'm working with John in Sales to develop a sales strategy.  This is what we're looking at now; we continue to refine.  Do you have any feedback?  This week I'm going to work with Bob in legal and Susan in accounting to make sure our agreements are buttoned up.  Could you recommend the best way to accomplish this?  Am I doing the right thing?  Do you think there needs to be any course correction?  etc&quot;  I realize that those are a bunch of &quot;i&quot; sentences.  Ultimately, I believe the product manager should maintain control of the timeline and maintain responsibility for the success of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The opposing camp's view would treat the product team like a committee where all major decision making is done by consensus (while minor decisions are left to the departmental representative):&#xA;&quot;What have we all done this week?&quot;  John from Sales would say, &quot;I've worked on a sales strategy, but I forgot to print it out...&quot;  Bob in legal would have actually done his work.  Susan in accounting would say, &quot;I'm not sure I understand.&quot;  Tom in operations would say, &quot;Have we thought about how we are going to provide customer support once we've launched this product?&quot;  To which the account managers say, &quot;You know, you're right?  Why don't we wait on [doing anything that we can actually do now] and talk about that more.  Let's set that as the agenda item for next week.&quot;   The power dynamics would have sidelined the PM's ability to say, &quot;No, we need to focus on this now.  While the support issue is important, it's not important right now.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also understand that if you are going to work in a committee like this, the &quot;forming&quot; stage of the team is important to define how to deal with situations like that and agreeing on how you're going to approach your work, a timeline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions for the community are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who is involved in the new product development process in your organizations?  Are product teams typical, or is it normally in the hands of the product department to work one on one with each of the departments (to be the hub of the spoke)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have product teams, how does the decision making dynamic play out?  What are the relative roles of each of the people involved?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have any advice for the situation I laid out above?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17970" LastEditorUserId="17970" LastEditDate="2015-07-29T15:58:45.967" LastActivityDate="2015-07-29T20:42:01.873" Title="The role of a product team in new product development" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15668" CreationDate="2015-07-29T15:18:47.513" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your team is small and you're not using Agile yet, have you considered just using Github's issues?  You can set up &quot;issues&quot; as to do items, label the items, and then categorize the items into milestones.  So, for a while, we were setting up milestones for weekly releases.  We'd put issues inside of those milestones, and those issues would be either labeled as bugs to be fixed or enhancements to be made and would be assigned an owner/software engineer to actually handle the issue.  Once the issue was ready to go through testing, the software eng would mark it with a new label, &quot;test&quot;.  Once the QA person tested it and passed it, they would close the issue.  If they didn't pass it, they'd put a bug on it.  When your engineers are committing to Git, they can mark the issue as well with #id.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your team is big, then this won't work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17970" LastActivityDate="2015-07-29T15:18:47.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15672" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-29T15:47:01.280" Score="5" ViewCount="1538" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently, I'm trying to create some custom fields, but I don't want to repeat them in all the tasks, I want to use the option of custom fields by project but the option is disabled. I want to know how to enable it and use it inside my project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The highlighted option is disabled. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mJiFz.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mJiFz.png&quot; alt=&quot;Custom Fields dialog - Project radio button disabled&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17971" LastEditorUserId="15972" LastEditDate="2015-07-31T17:39:33.087" LastActivityDate="2015-08-18T03:19:22.740" Title="How to create custom fields at project level in MS Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15668" CreationDate="2015-07-29T18:29:11.023" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have been using &lt;strong&gt;JIRA&lt;/strong&gt; at Organization level i.e. all the projects which are being developed or maintained by my Organization use &lt;strong&gt;JIRA&lt;/strong&gt; (90% of them, only a few projects are excluded where the client has provided &lt;strong&gt;TFS&lt;/strong&gt; or some other tool for project management. Those projects are not using &lt;strong&gt;JIRA&lt;/strong&gt;, else it would be a double effort).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been personally using it in the last couple of years (since my organization bought the license).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is a very good tool, if you are considering it for Project Management perspective. You can create Tasks, New Features, CRs, Bugs and Defects in JIRA and track them all to closure. It is not a good tool for Test case management, although it provides the same but compared to other tools it needs some improvement in that area (which our project have faced) but then we didn't use it more for Test case management.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Good feature which I like about JIRA is the Dashboard which it provides i.e. you can built up a custom dashboard of your own choice and then share it with the whole team. In this way the complete team will have access to the same Dashboard and anyone can see, how many issues and tasks are pending with which person. We use this Dashboard in our Daily Status meetings to see the health of the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It supports &lt;strong&gt;Agile&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;Kanban&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;Waterfall&lt;/strong&gt; models of SDLC. With the installation of few plugins the kind of tracking provided by JIRA for Agile and Kanban is very good looking and easy to use.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One of its plugins known as '&lt;strong&gt;Tempo&lt;/strong&gt;' is very helpful, if you want to maintain the timesheets over this tracker. Using this plugin every team member can fill his/her own timesheet with x numbers of hours/minutes spent in A, B, C tasks with different activities. This sounds a little bit confusing but is very helpful when one needs to generate cost reports (especially for higher management) i.e. How much time was spent in Coding, Rework, Testing over a Sprint cycle or over a month?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;JIRA Administrator can customize JIRA for even field level permissions, so that if your JIRA is client shared &lt;em&gt;(which is possible and has been implemented in some project where the client doesn't have its own tracker)&lt;/em&gt; then your not-allowed fields will not be shown to the client or other users.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Workflows and fields can be customized to any level and hierarchical issues can be created e.g. one can create a user story and then divide the same into tasks and create a parent child hierarchy so that all the sub-tasks are grouped under one user story. You will see its benefit when you have to provide the status of a User Story, then if child tasks are grouped then you don't need to track each and every story individually i.e. saving of the effort.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;JIRA has its own wiki and some features where you can use it as a information sharing center, where multiple users across different projects of the organization can share their knowledge and comment on tasks and issues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One more big advantage is that many automation tools provide integration with JIRA like Test Studio, Selenium, Test Complete etc. so that you can create your failed test cases or bugs directly over the JIRA tracker without manual effort.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Performance wise too this tool is good, as we are using it for more than 150 projects and still faced very minor to zero performance issues with JIRA &lt;em&gt;(except the case when you download the reports for all projects which our company does once in a quarter)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;JIRA task IDs can be integrated with TFS so that during code Check-In, one has to specify the Task or Bug ID for which he/she is committing the code. Which later on helps a lot in traceability.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using JIRA as a project management tool is very easy and good experience for me (I have used some other tools like TFS, HPQC, Team pulse).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than the mentioned plugins a lot are available in market for integration with JIRA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17870" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2015-11-27T17:45:19.617" LastActivityDate="2015-11-27T17:45:19.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15674" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15677" CreationDate="2015-07-29T16:16:20.933" Score="11" ViewCount="907" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a very large library project in-progress involving French linguistics - (it will be) multi-faceted to work with the many aspects of language, including algorithmic inflections/conjugations, generative grammar definition, phrase generation, syntax analysis, lexicon interfaces, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've had a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of ideas for the aspects of the project that I want to implement, and I have a pretty big whiteboard. I'm running out of room though; it's looking quite cluttered, and I'm having a hard time finding the things that I need to find that I am working on &lt;em&gt;right now&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a million-and-one things that I need to do and keep track of, which will take me years to fully implement, and a whiteboard just isn't cutting it anymore. I'm trying to keep track of what I want to do, as well as a lot of the &lt;em&gt;implementation ideas&lt;/em&gt; that I have for particular features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure this is something project managers do all the time, but I'm not one, so the question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How can one efficiently keep track of all of the goals and implementation ideas for a large project?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS - I've been using &lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt; to keep track of what I'm implementing &lt;em&gt;at the moment&lt;/em&gt;, but it doesn't help with the overall project goals. I'm not asking for a tool, but I'm sure that project managers use one, so I wouldn't be opposed to that being a comment or answer if a good tool exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;: To clarify based on Joel's comment, I'm trying to keep track o the project's requirements and implementation (2); any tools that could aid in doing so would be helpful. The team size is currently 1, but could expand to 2-3 in a year or two as I ask for help from my peers at the university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17973" OwnerDisplayName="Chris Cirefice" LastEditorUserId="17973" LastEditDate="2015-08-02T20:01:36.080" LastActivityDate="2015-08-05T06:41:01.777" Title="How to keep track of all the goals of a large project?" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;goals&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15674" CreationDate="2015-07-29T18:26:40.777" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The root problem of your question is dealing with complexity. It might help to see how a other domains (beside PM) try to handle complexity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do (we) programmers deal with complexity in the systems we analyse?  We use tools (or maybe these are strategies). Be aware that there might be two sides to deal with complexity, what is shown in my bullet list. It might be worth to google for some of those techniques or principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;generalisation and specialisation;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;information hiding, encapsulation;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;aggregation, composition;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;separation of concerns;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;modularisation;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;levels of detail.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On an abstract level it's always about &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Highlight the goals speciality in order to define a clear scope&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Summarising associated goals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="High Performance Mark" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-08-05T06:41:01.777" LastActivityDate="2015-08-05T06:41:01.777" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15674" CreationDate="2015-07-29T18:45:14.697" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend to apply a Scrum project approach here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should define your minimum viable product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You create a larger backlog which contains all project ideas (or user stories).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You organise then sprints where you pick the backlog items on which you want to work on next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trying to track all the goals at the same time will not work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to define the goals in a low detail level first and then introduce more detailed ideas on the fly. So that all details are specified right before implementation during the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can then have a tactical level where you define and organise the details for a sprint. And the strategic level where you organise &quot;the bigger picture&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17972" OwnerDisplayName="Matthias" LastActivityDate="2015-07-29T18:45:14.697" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15674" CreationDate="2015-07-29T20:38:08.390" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mathias' answer is solid. I personally would not go to a full Scrum for this, based on it being a single person project and work in progress is the more critical thing going on here. So I'd stick with a straight Kanban workflow with careful watch on your WIP limits for active work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially you need to tier your backlog. Like a funnel you get deeper and deeper detail as you get closer to the actual work done. Here is what I tend to use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Epic&lt;/strong&gt;- At this level you have a backlog of the general high level things that need to get done. For example, if we were building the next Tesla car, an Epic item might be &quot;New Dashboard&quot;. You don't need more detail than this. If you do know items in the Dashboard that need to be done, list them as acceptance tests to the &quot;New Dashboard&quot; Epic. So you might have &quot;Glovebox&quot; and &quot;Driver's Multi-Function Display&quot; listed as an acceptance test in the Epic for &quot;New Dashboard&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Feature&lt;/strong&gt;- An Epic will decompose into usually 4-6 Features. These are still &quot;projects&quot; in an of themselves, though you are getting into more detail and understanding. Using the Tesla example, we'd now be looking at the &quot;Driver's MFD&quot;. We start having more detail of what is going to happen and the acceptance tests should be more extensive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;User Story&lt;/strong&gt;- This is the actual work product. A small enough piece of work it can be done in a few days time (2-3 being optimal). Continuing the example above, &quot;Low Tire Pressure Warning Light&quot; could be a User Story from the &quot;Driver's MFD&quot; Feature. At this stage you have a fully detailed story that meets the Definition of &quot;Ready&quot;, i.e. it is ready to be worked on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tasks&lt;/strong&gt;- While I try to avoid tasks, by instead decomposing User Stories down small enough, tasks can still have some use. If you have a three day User Story, breaking up the work into tasks can help you to better manage your blocks of time. I don't estimate tasks though. I stop estimating at User Stories. Tasks is just a way to break up your work day into manageable chunks. I tend to list tasks just as Acceptance Tests of the user story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is three separate backlogs with increasing degrees of detail. By keeping them in their own backlogs, you can not lose the big picture while focusing on the detail work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tools Tip:&lt;/strong&gt; I've been using Trello for years. I use the Checklist feature for tracking &quot;acceptance tests&quot; or sub-tasks. That keeps the Epic and Feature backlogs from getting cluttered. If you're using a physical board, invest in some large size post it notes and write your Epics and Features on these. Then you can use the back of the notes to write down acceptance tests or sub-tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-07-29T20:38:08.390" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15670" CreationDate="2015-07-29T20:42:01.873" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Agile Development we are seeing the term &quot;Product Owner Team&quot; (POT) becoming more and more common. The POT is very much like your first scenario, where the Product Owner is the central hub consulting with the POT to create a product backlog. The POT ends up being much like a Scrum Team, only their output is a well ordered Backlog that the Scrum Team can execute on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A POT will typically have at least the following: &#xA;PO&#xA;Architect&#xA;QA &quot;Architect&quot; &#xA;Voice of the Customer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also recommend Operations and Customer Support as their views are invaluable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-07-29T20:42:01.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15674" CreationDate="2015-07-30T13:32:13.280" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would highly recommend considering a product/story map (Google &quot;story mapping&quot; for starting points); physical if you have the space, digital if not. I've tried all sorts of backlogs and work views for different-sized projects over the years, and found that &quot;flat&quot; formats that don't actually represent the product just don't provide enough context and &quot;wholeness&quot;. When planning things out, it's far easier to spot missing features or hidden work in a map than in a giant list of stuff. You can also pair it with an iteration or kanban board as others have recommended, where the map is the big view and kanban is the immediate view. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can cover most of the common functions of a flat backlog by visually marking it up - risky items, incomplete cards or features to return to, dependencies, external components, iterations, contingencies, etc. I've even mapped out key UX moments (or &quot;product pillars&quot;) to specific cards so that it's clear where the user will hit them in each path or feature area. The main drawbacks I've found with physical vs. digital maps are not being able to search across it quickly, and it can be painful to get total remaining work (since you have to manually count), but that can be mitigated by staying on top of it regularly, and grouping things up into chunks/sprints/kanban card velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastEditorUserId="17485" LastEditDate="2015-07-30T15:12:50.347" LastActivityDate="2015-07-30T15:12:50.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15682" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15689" CreationDate="2015-07-30T15:59:53.910" Score="3" ViewCount="144" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any suggestions for managing upwards. Books, articles, blogs or papers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been told in a couple of performance reviews that I need to learn to manage upwards (in respect to superiors and stakeholders) and have improved transparency in terms of the project and also myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I typically work on agile software development projects as a scrum master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastActivityDate="2015-07-31T17:13:59.533" Title="Project Managing Upwards" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-08-05T06:23:42.557" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15683" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-30T16:27:04.407" Score="6" ViewCount="233" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently we do like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;we estimate backlog in hours&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;on sprint planning we fill backlog by assign tasks to persons as each one has different technology background and we need to know how much of the stuff could be taken in (we also have a buffer time on 30% of working hours). Actually we have 2 of each, but for &lt;em&gt;historical&lt;/em&gt; reasons we still assign at sprint start.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The question:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;if the team would go for story points, how would you choose what to put on backlog, as even for a velocity X you still have to take into account available resources for each technology&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17986" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T09:01:25.567" Title="Story point on team with separate technologies" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15683" CreationDate="2015-07-30T18:10:53.540" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's better don't use Story Points during Sprint Planning.&lt;/strong&gt; Story Points are about productivity of whole team (not individuals).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By my opinion, you should do exactly the opposite: use Story Points during estimation of Product Backlog Items and use hours during Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please, take a look at this article: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/why-i-dont-use-story-points-for-sprint-planning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why I Don’t Use Story Points for Sprint Planning&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; by Mike Cohn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I apologize for overquoting, but following text exactly answer the question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Velocity will bounce around from sprint to sprint. That's why I want&#xA;  teams to plan their sprints by looking at the product backlog,&#xA;  selecting the one most important thing they could do, breaking that&#xA;  product backlog item / user story into tasks and estimating the tasks,&#xA;  asking themselves if they can commit to delivering the product backlog&#xA;  item, and then repeating until they are full. No discussion of story&#xA;  points. No discussion of velocity. It's just about commitment and we&#xA;  decide how much we can commit to by breaking product backlog items&#xA;  into tasks and estimating each. This is called commitment-driven&#xA;  sprint planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When a team finishes planning a sprint in this way it is indeed likely&#xA;  that the number of story points they have unknowingly committed to&#xA;  should be close to their long-term average but it will vary some. It&#xA;  will also be true that a team will commit to approximately the same&#xA;  number of hours from one sprint to the next. I use the term capacity&#xA;  to refer to this number of hours because velocity is reserved for&#xA;  referring to measuring the amount of work planned or completed as&#xA;  given in the units used to estimate the product backlog (which I&#xA;  recommend be done using story points).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, use hours during the Sprint Planning as you did it before (including taking account of technical knowledge each of team members), but change estimation units for Product Backlog Items from Hours to Story Points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you may have a look to these questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/15516/why-use-both-story-points-and-hours&quot;&gt;Why use both story points and hours?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/15545/when-it-is-time-to-do-poker-planning-during-story-time-or-during-sprint-planni?lq=1&quot;&gt;When it is time to do poker planning - during Story Time or during Sprint Planning&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;to learn more about benefits of double estimation and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2765/why-use-story-points-instead-of-hours-for-estimating&quot;&gt;Why use story points instead of hours for estimating?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;to learn more about benefits of Story Points as long-term measure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2015-07-31T10:15:00.860" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15647" CreationDate="2015-07-31T00:45:00.470" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The visual reports automatically exports the OLAP timescaled cube data to Excel and creates a pivot table.  What specifically about the visual reports isn't suiting your needs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-07-31T00:45:00.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15668" CreationDate="2015-07-31T11:24:25.430" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have a look at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://university.atlassian.com/2.0/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Atlassian University&lt;/a&gt;. They have pretty good training materials for all their products including Jira without the Agile plugins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Self-Paced Training for Jira are free since September 2014:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://university.atlassian.com/uac/2.0/courses/end-user/jira/v60&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://university.atlassian.com/uac/2.0/courses/end-user/jira/v60&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also offer online training with an instructor up to groups of 12 people: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/purchase/training?classId=710417114&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.atlassian.com/purchase/training?classId=710417114&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2015-07-31T11:24:25.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15674" CreationDate="2015-07-31T12:28:05.633" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to offer an old school answer - you need a work breakdown structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Define the end product - what will &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt; look like? This is 100% of the work.  Aside: I would advise you to do this even if you adopt the other answers. Your comment, &lt;em&gt;I've had a lot of ideas for the aspects of the project that I want to implement&lt;/em&gt; makes me suspicious that the problem is not that you need to keep track of a plethora of goals, but that you haven't scoped the project.  Success comes not from implementing all the cool ideas you have, but from rigorously scoping the project to something that is clear, distinct, bounded and &lt;strong&gt;achievable&lt;/strong&gt;. You may find that by stripping the idea down to the minimum viable product, you've also reduced the number of things you need to keep track of to a manageable number. If an idea is cool, but outside the scope of the minimally viable product, write it down and add it to the backlog of things you'd like to do later. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Break the product/end state down into smaller packages.  Each package should begin with a verb and be testably complete.  The combination of all the packages at any level should add up to 100% of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Break down each package into smaller packages. Work recursively until a package is 40 hours or less.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sequence the packages - which packages rely on other packages? Which have to be done first or last.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take a look at how much time you have. If you have 40 packages each of which will take you 40 hours to complete, you need to admit that this project won't be done for 1.5 to two years.  If that deadline is too far out, you need to go back to step 1 and move more cool ideas from the production queue to the backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2015-07-31T12:28:05.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15682" CreationDate="2015-07-31T14:33:31.737" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend  the podcast series from Manager-Tools.com. They have been providing free management and career podcasts now for ten years and have won several notable awards and recognition. Start with the Manager Tools Basic series. It's focused at managers, but still very relevant to your role as Scrum Master is an influence based position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The top level items: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1) You can't: There is no such thing as managing up. You don't control your boss or your management. Instead it's more about transparency (ooh agile), communication (agile again) and influence. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;2) Know your audience: The podcasts on DISC are priceless. They will help you to better tailor your communication to the communication style of each person. When you are communicating up you have to communicate the way they will here. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;3) Pre Wire: A huge thing in &quot;managing up&quot; is making sure you engage before major meetings or decisions. Meetings should not be where things are decided, they should be where they are ratified. If the VP is seeing the plan for the first time in a big public meeting, that's bad. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;4) Over Communicate: There is an art to this of course. That being said, if you aren't constantly feeling like you are WAY over communicating, then you are probably not communicating enough for senior management. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no simple answer here and the techniques often seem &quot;duh&quot; and brain dead. Good management is boring and repetitive and it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-07-31T17:13:59.533" LastActivityDate="2015-07-31T17:13:59.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15644" CreationDate="2015-07-31T19:16:04.537" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found that the best way to get what I wanted was to use VBA so I wrote a basic script.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17598" LastActivityDate="2015-07-31T19:16:04.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15691" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-01T01:22:01.343" Score="5" ViewCount="244" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a company gets outsourced by a non-software company, the main issue comes when requirement acquisition is going on. For example, client company will look up to an Advertising company for a mobile app creation. Advertising company outsource the development on a software company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Needless to say, Advertising company doesn't know a proper way to manage software lifecycle (as requirements, client feedback, etc), and the results are unsatisfied clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an standard procedure to successfully manage projects when you're working with an intermediary, that isn't just &quot;Well just do whatever the intermediary tells you to&quot;, but actually gets you to solve the intermediary's client problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With your answer consider how do you manage communication with the client (do you tell him you work for the intermediary company, or you're partners), acceptance criterias, client feedback, any other concept you can think of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17593" LastActivityDate="2015-08-03T18:30:39.660" Title="How to manage Software projects with an intermediary?" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15691" CreationDate="2015-08-01T17:38:24.570" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your situation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your client has identified a business case that they believe is worth spending money on:  Creation of a mobile app.  The client has engaged with the Advertising company who has probably promised the moon.  Then, the Advertising company sub contracted the software development project to your software development firm.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The problem&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless your client has tasked strong business leaders to handle this project, there's a good chance that the client doesn't understand what they want, much less articulated that to the Advertising company.  If you &quot;just do what the Advertising company says&quot;, you may get your paycheck for this project, but you could also be setting yourself up for failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This situation is one of the areas with Agile software development can be very effective.  Here is how I would approach it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 1&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go to your point of contact at the Advertising company and explain to them, &quot;The better we help the client understand what they want, the more happy they will be with the product we deliver. To make sure that we are delivering the right product, our software developers (or a representative from our software developers) need to engage directly with the client.  Both your company and mine will have a more satisfied customer if we can approach this project using Agile software development principles.  The first step towards that is to establish a product owner team that consists of you (the Advertising company), the relevant decision makers from the client, and my software development team.  The product owner team should plan for a long first meeting to initially establish and prioritize the backlog, then we should have (1, 2, or 3) week sprints to present what we've developed and continue to refine the backlog.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 2&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have your first product owners team meeting, you have to quickly educate the team on why it is important they spend time doing this and what that team's purpose is:  create and prioritize the backlog.  In other words, you want the product owners team to dream up every feature that they could possibly want.  The team can think in term of &quot;epics&quot; or big ideas.  Then, get the product owner team to prioritize their epics.  Once the client has identified a number of epics AND prioritized them, then let your software team can start to dissect the epics that were ranked the highest.  Don't let your technical team get into details - or &quot;how we are going to accomplish this&quot; - too soon.  In the beginning, while you are still creating your backlog, keep it high level.  Once your backlog is made, then you can start to get down into the weeds - but only for the highest rank epics that you are going to tackle in the next sprint or two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tips and References&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, a tip from my experience, as you begin the project, focus on UI first.  Non-coders can't visualize what it will look like.  It's better to show them a non-functioning UI than no UI at all.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you are contracting for a company, implementing Agile using SCRUM tactics has been the most effective for me (versus Kanban or waterfall).  I love making people go through this series just so they can get the basics.  Then we tweak it from there... &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumtrainingseries.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://scrumtrainingseries.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17970" LastEditorUserId="17970" LastEditDate="2015-08-01T19:11:09.107" LastActivityDate="2015-08-01T19:11:09.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15569" CreationDate="2015-08-01T19:35:06.710" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ended up figuring out that it was =WORKDAY(TODAY(), (330/10 +(E3-330)/7.5)) that gives me the answer that I want. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17864" LastActivityDate="2015-08-01T19:35:06.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15695" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-08-02T08:47:18.113" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki definition:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Content management is a set of processes and technologies that&#xA;  supports the collection, managing, and publishing of information in&#xA;  any form or medium. When stored and accessed via computers, this&#xA;  information may be more specifically referred to as digital content,&#xA;  or simply as content. Digital content may take the form of text (such&#xA;  as electronic documents), multimedia files (such as audio or video&#xA;  files), or any other file type that follows a content lifecycle&#xA;  requiring management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Links&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki article about Content management&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2015-08-02T19:49:46.770" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T19:49:46.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15696" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-08-02T08:47:18.113" Score="0" Body="Content management is a set of processes and technologies that supports the collection, managing, and publishing of information in any form or medium." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-02T19:43:33.623" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T19:43:33.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15697" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-08-02T08:49:43.500" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PivotalTracker is a task tracker (task management system) for agile software development from Pivotal Software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Links&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pivotaltracker.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PivotalTracker Home Site&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="30105" LastEditDate="2017-10-11T21:37:10.660" LastActivityDate="2017-10-11T21:37:10.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15698" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-08-02T08:49:43.500" Score="0" Body="PivotalTracker is a task tracker for agile software development from Pivotal Software." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="30105" LastEditDate="2017-10-11T21:37:01.370" LastActivityDate="2017-10-11T21:37:01.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15699" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-08-02T09:03:51.313" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;code&gt;ms-project-2007&lt;/code&gt; tag is for questions about how to use MS Project version 2007 to manage or track a project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also: &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/ms-project&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;ms-project&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;ms-project&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2015-08-02T19:43:21.143" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T19:43:21.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15700" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-08-02T09:03:51.313" Score="0" Body="This tag is for all questions that involve Microsoft Project version 2007." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-02T19:48:26.413" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T19:48:26.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15701" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-08-02T09:18:49.117" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startup_company&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki definition:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A startup company or startup is an entrepreneurship or a new business&#xA;  in the form of a company, a partnership or temporary organization&#xA;  designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. These&#xA;  companies, generally newly created, are innovation in a process of&#xA;  development and research for target markets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Links&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startup_company&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki atricle about startups&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-02T19:46:56.840" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T19:46:56.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15702" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-08-02T09:18:49.117" Score="0" Body="For questions related with management within startup company." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-02T19:48:43.827" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T19:48:43.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15703" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-08-02T09:21:38.190" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trac is an enhanced wiki and issue tracking system for software development projects. Trac uses a minimalistic approach to web-based software project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Links&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://trac.edgewall.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trac Home Site&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-02T19:47:59.703" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T19:47:59.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15704" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-08-02T09:21:38.190" Score="0" Body="Trac is an enhanced wiki and issue tracking system for software development projects.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Excerpt from Wikipedia:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Trac is an open source, Web-based project management and bug tracking system. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The program is  inspired by CVSTrac, and was originally named svntrac due to its ability &#xD;&#xA;&gt; to interface with Subversion. It is developed and maintained by Edgewall Software." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2015-08-02T19:46:43.590" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T19:46:43.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14533" CreationDate="2015-08-02T15:24:21.567" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Scope Management Plan, you determine (in high level) how you as project manager and your key team members, develop how scope will be defined, manage (so &quot;the scope&quot; can be execute) and control the scope (in term of scope change happened in the project life cycle). After that for detailing all of the high-level that you have determined, you can use collect requirements, define scope, create WBS, validate scope and control scope  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18013" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T15:24:21.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15691" CreationDate="2015-08-03T08:58:10.550" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a very common situation and a very tough challenge. An agency works very differently from a software company, and many, many projects fail with the model end-client -&gt; creative agency -&gt; software company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have worked for a number of years with agencies trying to solve this exact problem, and while I certainly haven't found a silver bullet, I can share some of what I've learned: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lifecycle model&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;probably&lt;/em&gt; do not want to use an agile model with agency projects: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Usually, the project scope is small enough to be better managed using a standard, sequential lifecycle model.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agency clients overwhelmingly prefer fixed-price projects, which is hard to provide with an agile life cycle.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agile projects require a lot of end-client involvement which you are unlikely to get from agency end-clients. The agency might also want to completely hide the fact that they use subcontractors, meaning you can't facilitate the agile process. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you can use agile &lt;em&gt;development practices&lt;/em&gt;, but the typical SCRUM lifecycle model should be avoided in most of these cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Communication with end-client&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Together with the agency, decide early on if the software company will deal directly with the end-client or through the agency's project- or account manager. Usually it will be the latter. In many cases the end-client won't even know you exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Specification&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are a software company, don't take on projects without a thorough specification. The agency will be used to very short &quot;briefs&quot;, which are too simplistic to base a software project on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You'll need to educate the agency PM on what is needed in the spec.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be prepared that the spec will take longer than usual to produce.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are the vendor and the agency is your client - it is your responsibility that the spec is of sufficient quality. Work with your client to produce a good spec. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get the agency to get an approval on the specification from the end-client.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Estimations&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agencies and agency end-clients commonly have little understanding of estimates. This is one of the hardest points to communicate. An agency will think it entirely reasonable that a graphic production estimated at 8 hours ends up to take 16 hours. But if a development effort of 200 hours end up taking 400 hours, they'll not be understanding at all, even though it's the same percentage overshoot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually give a 20 minutes presentation, where I show stuff like the &quot;cone of uncertainty&quot;, discuss the yearly Standish Chaos reports or otherwise try to explain that estimation in general is wildly inaccurate, hopefully in examples they can relate to. You should also only deliver estimates with clear indications of the uncertainty and risks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Day-to-day management&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allocate more time in the project plan than usual, to project management. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to the clients on the phone as often as you can.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be prepared to explain concepts like deployment, environments etc. Be very clear about what a test environment is! (I once had an agency allocating data-entry personnel to work on the test environment without my knowledge. The test database got wiped weekly.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary: Be prepared to educate the client and take some hard discussions, when you hit subjects like estimations. In general, it's a hard model but the good news it that projects can usually be delivered successfully if the software company does a bit more intensive project management than usual. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8592" LastEditorUserId="8592" LastEditDate="2015-08-03T18:30:39.660" LastActivityDate="2015-08-03T18:30:39.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15707" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15753" CreationDate="2015-08-03T09:39:42.087" Score="21" ViewCount="4128" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I have a story that's been estimated at 10 story points and we don't manage to complete it in a sprint how do you handle estimates for the sprint in which it's next included (assuming it gets selected for development)? Assuming 80% of development was completed on the story should it be re-estimated at (for argument's sake) 2 story points? Or should the original estimate remain and all 10 story points be burned down when it's finally completed? The former approach seems wrong because a 'big' task now looks like it's small. The latter seems wrong because it surely mis-represents actual velocity in a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I write a new story for the remaining work then that also seems like a mis-representation because the original 80% of the work is unaccounted for unless I re-estimate it at 0 points and include it along with the new story for the remaining work and resolve it at the same time as the new 2 story point story is completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Footnote&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those who are interested in the background to this question it's born out of JIRA's default agile board behaviour, which is to return incomplete stories to the top of the backlog. In general we've been re-writing them and/or splitting them into new stories before putting a new estimate against them but I was never sure if this was really the &amp;quot;correct&amp;quot; way of doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-02-06T17:08:20.273" Title="In scrum should incomplete stories be re-estimated or does the original estimate get burned down when it's finally completed?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15707" CreationDate="2015-08-03T11:21:48.207" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v1/scrum-guide-us.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;scrum guide&lt;/a&gt; is silent on this, which leaves people to draw their own interpretations and use different approaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We move the complete story to the backlog and then to the next sprint (invariably, since the feature priorities don't change that frequently). Yes, it projects a wrong velocity for that sprint but then Velocity is supposed to be used for the rate of delivery in a release. It doesn't mean much when you see it standalone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6172" LastActivityDate="2015-08-03T11:21:48.207" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15707" CreationDate="2015-08-03T11:26:01.610" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Below is &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/128143/4&quot;&gt;my answer&lt;/a&gt; to &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/128142/4&quot;&gt;the question What to do with estimation of incomplete story?&lt;/a&gt; on Software Engineering Stack Exchange. Although the question is worded slightly differently, it is asking essentially the same things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Firstly, what happens with those user stories? Do you just carry them over into the next sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends. If no other story has a higher priority, then, yes, they are moved into the next sprint. If other stories have a higher priority, then they might be moved back into the product backlog if there is not enough room in the sprint to accomodate them. This all happens in the sprint planning, based on the priorities assigned to each story by your Product Owner. Since one of the purposes of agile methods like Scrum is to maximize the delivered value while reducing the time, it all comes down to how much value is added by finishing those stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of what happens, you still need to strive for a potentially shippable product at the end of the sprint. This might mean rolling back to ensure that the end-of-sprint product passes all tests and the completed features are fully usable by the user without any significant problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If so, should they be re-estimated? In my view the work remaining on these user stories can be minimal or a lot? If not, why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not reestimate because, in Scrum, you estimate a story when you accept it, begin work, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrummethodology.com/scrum-acceptance-criteria/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;don't have a concept of partially complete&lt;/a&gt;. A story is either 100% complete, tested, and accepted (done) or it's not done. If there's no concept of partially complete, there's no way for you to determine how much work is remaining on the story. It appears that &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.collab.net/agile/2008/07/10/should-scrum-teams-re-estimate-stories-that-cant-be-completed-during-the-sprint/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;I'm not alone in this thought&lt;/a&gt;, either. You estimated the work that you thought you can do, so leave this data point in and make it a point to discuss why the estimate was off in your sprint postmortem and try to avoid making that mistake for future sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2017-11-13T20:22:58.307" LastActivityDate="2017-11-13T20:22:58.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15710" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-03T11:32:41.770" Score="4" ViewCount="142" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background Info&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the past year or so we have been scaling in team size and I am responsible together with our CTO for recruiting candidates of all types of technical background (Frontend, backend, operations, QA). I have not that much experience myself in doing the interviews (up till now I interviewed 20+ candidates).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have some headhunters or recruitment offices help us with supplying candidates. I drill during the interviews into the soft skills, Cognitive ability and so on. The CTO drills deeper for the technical evaluation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My focus point&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I must say we do a quite well job in evaluating the candidates their technical skills. But technical skills is just, let's say 50-60% that makes a candidate a good candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other part is the soft skills and Cognitive ability like :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can the candidate learn new stuff easily ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the candidate stick to what (s)he knows or tries to find for new solutions or technologies?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can the candidate explain himself in clear language?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the candidate structured or messy?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How pro active is the candidate?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How well is a team member a team player?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much can the candidate think outside the box ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How well can a candidate see the big picture ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How active does the canidate see issues and tries to fix them (technically, about development process, ...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Etc ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do understand it is impossible to have always a straight forward answer to all of these questions, and its a science itself to profile a candidate. I presume there is no utopia like that. So I am not asking for the impossible, but, at least the advice or experience of you guys. I have heard often, recruiting and interviewing is a skills that you improve by exercise, which is fine, but help is always useful. But rest assure, I understand this is no exact science ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My Question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you try to profile these soft skills and Cognitive abilities from technical candidates in an software development environment that you need to recruit for your team? Do you have any particular strategies or approaches that have been proven useful for yourself ? Please do share if you have any good question or approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been reading for example &quot;How google works&quot;, it has a nice chapter on recruiting, but there isn't much other material that I found up till now. Most sources help the person on the other side of the table, the interviewee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note to the community&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this question is too open for a Q&amp;amp;A like this or not specific enough for Project Management space please let me know and I'll withdraw the this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13768" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T08:11:08.510" Title="How to check for soft skills during recruitement?" Tags="&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;qualifications&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15707" CreationDate="2015-08-03T11:51:43.380" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Velocity measures the team's ability to get work 'done' in a sprint. It doesn't measure the team's ability to get work in progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My preferred approach would be to re-estimate the story, taking in to account the work that had been completed so far. I would treat this as a new story that should be prioritised alongside all the other items in the product backlog. In your example the 10 point story would become a 2 point story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first this may appear to mis-represent the true velocity. But I believe it is an effective measurement of the team's ability to get work 'done'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that the most important reason for measuring velocity is to allow the team to target a realistic amount of work in future sprints. It is not and has never been about measuring the performance of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-08-03T11:51:43.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15712" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15782" CreationDate="2015-08-03T14:05:54.730" Score="0" ViewCount="310" Body="&lt;p&gt;I once remember seeing someone dividing all the features of a new product into swim lanes with a column for each functional area of the product and horizontal lanes to represent each development release, with the top horizontal lane being reserved for the unscheduled feature backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team would then move features down from the unscheduled backlog into the cells below to roughly indicate which release each feature is likely to go into.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this technique have a name and can anyone point me in the direction of any links explaining it further?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18020" LastActivityDate="2015-08-05T19:57:04.783" Title="How to use 'swim lanes' to assign future feature implementations into releases?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3332" CreationDate="2015-08-03T14:55:23.907" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When we have a new team member join the team, we always play a quick game at the beginning of a team call. Our team is virtual so we use a virtual environment (like instant meeting, Web Ex, Go To Meeting, etc.) for all of our team meetings. The team member who is in charge of planning the meeting will put together a series of &quot;getting to know your team&quot; facts and the new team member has to guess which team member the fact belongs to. We display pictures of 3 team members on a slide. The entire team gets to help the new hire by typing their own guesses in the chat window. It's a great way for our virtual team to get to know more about each other and it's a good way for the new hire to learn more about us. It's a lot of fun and usually generates a lot of laughs! We usually only have about 3-4 facts and display different team members each time a new fact is shared. No more than 5 minutes is spend on this. Everyone seems to enjoy it! Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18021" LastActivityDate="2015-08-03T14:55:23.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3119" CreationDate="2015-08-03T14:57:31.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have some projects using &lt;a href=&quot;http://getbadg.es&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GetBadges&lt;/a&gt; for more than a year (disclaimer: I'm co-founder of GetBadges). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick is to moderate your game accordingly and introduce some twist over time. If you base your gamification on human interactions and behaviours instead of 'game mechanics' like leaderboards and points it will be fresh for much longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also common for some 'players' to drop after the initial enthusiasm, but the ones that remain will get a big boost to productivity over a long time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1860" LastActivityDate="2015-08-03T14:57:31.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15683" CreationDate="2015-08-03T15:12:05.097" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Story Points help in release planning. Not much use if we assign them during sprint planning. You may reassess the story points during backlog refinement or sprint planning but to do so for the first time in sprint planning might not help much. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The metaphor of 2 runners would help understand the concept behind story points. Both of them cover the morning jog (10 KM each) but one of them finishes in 20 minutes while the other finishes in 15. If you were to ask them how long would it take, the answers would be different but if you ask the distance, they would agree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6172" LastActivityDate="2015-08-03T15:12:05.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15717" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15736" CreationDate="2015-08-03T16:07:18.953" Score="6" ViewCount="2056" Body="&lt;p&gt;Team works together for couple of months. They are somewhere between norming and performing phase. All team members are enthusiastic about their work and the product they work on.&#xA;One of team members says that he doesn't benefit from retrospectives. He has been on many of them (between 30-50) in different teams and came up to a conclusion, that he prefers to do developer's related work instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time he is collaborative - helps others, respects team norms, actively participates in other meetings, etc. He is a good engineer as well. Team wouldn't like to loose him; in other words a solution with laying him off the team is not acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastActivityDate="2015-08-05T16:59:12.077" Title="How to manage a situation when one team member doesn't want to participate in retrospectives?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;team&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15718" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-08-03T21:56:01.090" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This tag is for questions about project/product manager internships or all kinds of interaction with persons who are intern project or product management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-06T14:01:27.797" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T14:01:27.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15719" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-08-03T21:56:01.090" Score="0" Body="For questions about project/product manager internships." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-04T12:04:42.800" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T12:04:42.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15720" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-08-03T21:58:03.513" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some methodologies prescribe specific engineering practices (for example, Extreme Programming prescribes Pair Programming, Continuous Integration, etc). This tag is not about their implementation (for those types of questions use &lt;a href=&quot;http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Software Engineering Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt; instead), but rather about the project management view of these practices (cost of their implementation, their benefits, their advantage and disadvantage, their affect to team productivity or whole project and others).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2018-11-01T14:16:51.980" LastActivityDate="2018-11-01T14:16:51.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15721" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-08-03T21:58:03.513" Score="0" Body="For questions about engineering practices such as clean code, continuous delivery, continuous integration, etc." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2015-08-04T09:18:31.433" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T09:18:31.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15722" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-08-03T21:59:06.570" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When working on a project there always exists a complex structure of relationships between people who are involved in the project. This tag describes questions related to coordination between the various people and roles within the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-06T14:01:44.840" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T14:01:44.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15723" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-08-03T21:59:06.570" Score="0" Body="For questions about coordination between participants within a project." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-06T14:02:05.043" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T14:02:05.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15724" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-08-03T22:01:00.380" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of important theoretical questions, the level of abstraction of which is too high for their direct use in practice. This tag is used for these kinds of fundamental theoretical questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-06T14:01:56.100" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T14:01:56.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15725" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-08-03T22:01:00.380" Score="0" Body="For questions that related to the fundamental theoretical problems of project management." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-06T14:02:02.510" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T14:02:02.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15726" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-08-03T22:06:45.257" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This tag is for asking the definitions or for clarifications of project management related terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;See also&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/terminology&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;terminology&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;terminology&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-06T14:02:11.563" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T14:02:11.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15727" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-08-03T22:06:45.257" Score="0" Body="For questions about the definitions of project management related terms." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-06T14:01:32.533" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T14:01:32.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15728" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-08-03T22:07:48.903" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This tag is for questions related to project management terminology. Like asking about the differences between similar terms, clarifying definition of terms, understanding rules of usage etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;See also&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/definition&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;definition&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;definition&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-06T14:01:16.507" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T14:01:16.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15729" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-08-03T22:07:48.903" Score="0" Body="For questions about project management related terminology." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-06T14:02:15.373" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T14:02:15.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15730" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-04T04:46:18.187" Score="1" ViewCount="368" Body="&lt;p&gt;I created a JIRA user with email ID of a distribution list (DL). I created a new filter from this user's login and did a 'personal subscription' expecting reports to be sent to the DL periodically. But this is not working - the DL is not receiving any email. Has anyone tried this and got it working?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: I understand that one possible way is to create a JIRA group including the DL and then subscribe that group to the filter. I am facing access issues in this and hence looking for other ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18027" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T14:48:33.613" Title="Is it possible to create a JIRA user with DL email and subscribe to filters?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15731" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15737" CreationDate="2015-08-04T05:17:32.447" Score="14" ViewCount="9204" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, is a Scrum Master position higher than a Product Owner, in terms of organizational hierarchy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At work, traditional organizational charts are a must; how are Scrum Masters and Product Owners placed? Do they assume an equal level? Or should one be reporting to another?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18015" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-12-11T15:54:03.377" LastActivityDate="2018-12-11T15:54:03.377" Title="In Scrum, is a Scrum Master position higher than a Product Owner?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15731" CreationDate="2015-08-04T05:35:54.977" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum says nothing about hierachy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thr Scrum Master position is not a higher position than the PO or the DevTeam position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is to not think in hierachy levels! Think about a team of peoply wanting to deliver high quality products! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no reporting inside thr Scrum Team. It's just not needed to report, because of the high transparency everywhere! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18028" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T05:35:54.977" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="631" CreationDate="2015-08-04T06:05:05.607" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the biggest criteria in finding a team member is Commitment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People have various personalities that is impossible if not, unnecessary to control each.&#xA;Instead, try to find team members with diverse skill set, yet suitable to your project needs.&#xA;Yet each member must be committed to their goals that you empower them to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18015" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T06:05:05.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9429" CreationDate="2015-08-04T06:07:57.357" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Communication is an essential part of completing almost every task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But think of your WBS more along the lines of dividing responsibility and collecting costs. Don't make it too detailed unless you want to track costs in such detail. You will want to assign responsibility and budget for design, build and test of Subsystem A, and function A.1. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everybody is responsible for some amount of communication. [Ha, ha, even if you keep geeky developers behind closed doors and shove flat food underneath, they will have questions.] &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Documents are a major, important method of communicating requirements, designs and test results. The documents for Subsystem A are part of the overall cost of creating it, and I think they belong underneath it in the WBS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18029" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T06:07:57.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15731" CreationDate="2015-08-04T08:47:22.583" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on the usual company organisational charts, they are not in the same division. Usually Product Owners come from the product side, and Scrum Masters from the line organisation or development. Therefore, there can be cases that they are on the same level (e.g. junior PO - regular SM) or different levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Informally, Product Owners are higher in the food chain, because of the responsibility and accountability they have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T08:47:22.583" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15717" CreationDate="2015-08-04T08:50:32.020" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The usual practice is to ask they to join the meeting, they don't have to do anything besides occasionally listening to the discussions - they can even sit in the corner. If they would like to jump in into a discussion, that agreement changes, and they have to participate until the end of the session. That is something you have to agree on face to face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T08:50:32.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15731" CreationDate="2015-08-04T09:00:11.653" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's impossible to answer your question because &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Scrum Master&quot; and &quot;Product Owner&quot; are roles, not job titles.&lt;/strong&gt; Their job positions may be different and depend on the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a Product Owner could be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A business analyst at your company.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A person from the customer side (i.e. outside your company).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or even the СЕО of your company (it's not rare if the company is small).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As another example, the Scrum Master could be a:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developer. In my opinion, this is not the best choice, but it happens quite often.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;External Scrum coach (i.e. outside your company).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manager of your company. For example, the head of the development department.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But on the other hand, the roles &quot;Scrum Master&quot; and &quot;Product Owner&quot; have absolutely different fields of responsibility and cannot affect each other. &quot;Scrum Master&quot; is more about process/operational management, and is responsible for the development process of the product. &quot;Product Owner&quot; is more about product/project management, responsible for the business side of the product. And, of course, neither Scrum Master nor Product Owner can command Development Team members or each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;In the case of a CEO as Product Owner: he can fire the Scrum Master, but he will do it as CEO, not as a Product Owner.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, the roles &quot;Scrum Master&quot; and &quot;Product Owner&quot; are on the same hierarchical level. But persons who play these roles could have job positions on different levels.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;About Reporting&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reporting inside the Scrum Team is unnecessary. Scrum provides good transparency of the whole process, and participating in prescribed Scrum Events covers all reporting needs. The Product Owner could report outside Scrum Team, but the description of it goes beyond Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-12-11T08:00:39.507" LastActivityDate="2018-12-11T08:00:39.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15683" CreationDate="2015-08-04T09:01:25.567" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We commit to work based on the last iteration, commitment and capacity for the next one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, we check the last iteration(s). If in the last iteration, we committed to 20 points and we delivered only 15, our &lt;em&gt;success rate&lt;/em&gt; is 75%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, during the planning, we check our capacity - how many of us will be in the office and will be able to work on the features - and collect user stories based on that. For example, if one person can do one point a day, and only two of us will work during the iteration - which is 5 days -, we'll have a capacity for 10 points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, we take work for 7 days: 75% of the 10 points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, the capacity can be based on knowledge. For example, if your &lt;em&gt;technology A&lt;/em&gt; expert can work only provide 30% during the sprint, calculate how much would it be in point based on the last iterations and commit only the possible amount of user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T09:01:25.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15717" CreationDate="2015-08-04T09:22:25.313" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;[Modified] As mentioned below, I misread the reactions assuming that not having actions done was the main reason for not attending. Below answer may thus be off topic, but I left it here as I feel that it might still be useful for the readers of this thread.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the team member has a point if he feels that the actions coming out of a retrospective are not acted upon; that's a serious problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has this been investigated, are the root causes known? That would be the first thing that I would do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If actions are insufficiently done then you have to stop the line and address that. Reasons that I see for not having actions done are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actions are too vague, people don't know what to do.&#xA;Actions aren't visible, people tend to forget them while doing daily activities.&#xA;It is unclear why the action should be done, missing the problem that it should solve.&#xA;There's insufficient culture for continuous improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these can be solved, but you need to know why there's insufficient follow up to address it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16919" LastEditorUserId="16919" LastEditDate="2015-08-04T13:43:04.180" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T13:43:04.180" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15710" CreationDate="2015-08-04T09:33:35.020" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, it depends on your business needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend keeping your current interview criteria set and initiate an unconventional interview format, and have the candidates solve a real-world problem, check how would they do about it, check those criteria in the checklist if they fit your standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18015" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T09:33:35.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15710" CreationDate="2015-08-04T09:41:49.883" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your local laws allow, invite the candidate over for a day or two, work together on something, and you will learn if you can work with the candidate or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personal notes: I don't particularly like this approach, but the HR echo system was not able to figure out the ultimate solution to this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, it puts the candidate into an unpleasant situation. They have to take vacation days for a job that they may not get. Second, they might violate their active agreement if it states that they cannot have other jobs than the current. On the other hand, it lowers the risk you take when you hire somebody you have never met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T09:41:49.883" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15717" CreationDate="2015-08-04T13:07:34.960" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like it would be a good time to have a 'Retrospective of Retrospectives'. Start with a reminder of the purpose of having a retrospective and what the team is trying to get out of them.  Review how the team has had retrospectives in the past, what went well, what can be improved etc.  It may be the format of the meetings that is the problem, and others might have similar feelings if given a better chance to express them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only time I have seen a similar situation is where the retrospectives were always raising the same organisational problems, and as a team we were unable to improve the situation.  If this is the case, unfortunately I can't help - I left the organisation!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6825" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T13:07:34.960" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15744" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-04T13:12:43.283" Score="8" ViewCount="4204" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm the &lt;strong&gt;scrum master&lt;/strong&gt; in my company (200+ people, several departments) and recently the &lt;strong&gt;head of product&lt;/strong&gt; became &lt;strong&gt;my line manager&lt;/strong&gt;. While this came rather surprising for me and &lt;strong&gt;feels kind of wrong&lt;/strong&gt;, since he's pushing his own agenda into the process quite heavily, I also have &lt;strong&gt;no clear idea as to what department a scrum master is supposed to belong to&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a recent discussion with our (new) head of HR, I realized that a lot of my goals and methods (at least with regards to people and team development) are 100% overlap with HR's, so I guess being 'lined' into HR might make sense. It would also make for a nice separation of concerns in my mind, as HR does not have any direct agendas when it comes to product work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Background: I was initially hired as a software dev and only recently took on the new roll, so for the higher-ups it made sense to not structure me into dev anymore and I don't disagree with that.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7155" LastActivityDate="2017-04-13T18:28:22.757" Title="What department does a scrum master ideally belong to?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15731" CreationDate="2015-08-04T13:37:28.410" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Agile Methodology, is a Scrum Master position higher than a Product Owner, in terms of organizational hierarchy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum framework requires &lt;em&gt;active collaboration&lt;/em&gt; between Scrum roles, and between the business (or customer) and the Scrum team. Hierarchical relationships &lt;em&gt;within&lt;/em&gt; the Scrum team are antithetical to effective implementation of the Scrum framework, but Scrum itself is agnostic about organizational roles and relationships that exist outside of the framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within the team, each role has responsibilities that are dictated by the framework. This is not intended to be hierarchical, but rather serves as a clear separation of duties to ensure smooth functioning of the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Think Responsibilities, Not Authority&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within the Scrum framework, each &lt;em&gt;role&lt;/em&gt; has a scope of responsibility that must be respected by the other roles, but the roles themselves aren't hierarchical. Instead, the roles &lt;em&gt;collaborate&lt;/em&gt; in the implementation of the Scrum process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the Product Owner is the final arbiter of the contents and priorities of Product Backlog items. While other members of the organization or Scrum team may provide input, this responsibility ultimately rests solely with the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, the Scrum Master is the final arbiter of the Scrum process. As the process referee, the Scrum Master has the final responsibility to ensure that the team's processes are communicated clearly, that essential Scrum ceremonies are held properly, and that Scrum artifacts like the Product Backlog and Sprint Backlog are properly implemented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When people talk about a Scrum team being cross-functional, this doesn't mean just technical skills; it also means that the team must contain all the necessary leadership skills necessary to deliver a working product. This requires active cooperation among the roles (think &quot;zone defense&quot;) rather than a formal reporting relationship or command-and-control management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Money Equals Power&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a purely pragmatic standpoint, the Product Owner manages the allocation of project resources through the Product Backlog. As a result, the Product Owner is often &lt;em&gt;organizationally&lt;/em&gt; higher on the food chain than other team members because he or she is tasked with controlling the budget and held responsible for product delivery. However, this is a &lt;em&gt;political&lt;/em&gt; side-effect, rather than a tenet of Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within the Scrum framework, the Product Owner is a partner with specific responsibilities, and is not senior to anyone else within the Scrum team. The Product Owner may &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; infringe on the Scrum Master or Developer roles and responsibilities within the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From outside the Scrum team, control of resource allocation may lead to the impression that the Scrum team reports to the Product Owner. This is not true, and it is the Scrum Master's job to educate the team and the organization about how Scrum actually works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum cannot work without active cooperation between all three Scrum roles. The roles should be considered peers in order to adhere to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot;&gt;principles behind the Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T13:37:28.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15744" CreationDate="2015-08-04T14:01:05.307" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seeing as your question asks 'ideally' I would say 'Product Development', along  with the rest of the development team and product owner.  Realistically, this isn't a department that exists in most organisations and would probably only work on a smaller scale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is very much dependent on the organisational structure, but I think a Scrum Master should sit under the 'Technology' or 'IT'&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;strong&gt;umbrella&lt;/strong&gt;, rather than HR. Depending on the size and structure of the company, this could be under a head of development (if that is all there is) or a Head of Process, if there is also a Head of Dev and Head of Test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not quite sure what 'product' represents in your organisation, but if people have a good understanding of agile and product development means making a good product, rather than cramming more features; it could be the right place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where do the developers sit - in 'Product'?   A scrum master is an inherently technical role and developers (and their managers, one would presume) are the people you will be working with.  A lot of the challenges I have faced as a Scrum Master would be fairly meaningless if I tried to discuss them with a manager in HR, while a technical manager (in my case the CTO, in my last role in a larger organisation  Head of Development) has a fairly good understanding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interaction with HR is important from a people/relationship point of view, but you could argue the same with any 'Manager' role - it doesn't mean managers should belong in HR.  As an aside, I am not saying a scrum master is a manager, but does face similar challenges around people, motivation etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you say &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;as HR does not have any direct agendas when it comes to product work&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Scrum Master does have an agenda when it comes to product work - you want the team to be effective, not just 'happy'.  As I am sure you know, productive doesn't just mean more features, so the agenda is different from that of a more sales oriented Product Manager, but still aligns with Product Development - this is very different from the objectives of HR.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6825" LastEditorUserId="6825" LastEditDate="2015-08-05T12:21:50.907" LastActivityDate="2015-08-05T12:21:50.907" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15717" CreationDate="2015-08-04T14:20:03.213" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;You Can't Make Changes Without Embracing Change&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have boxed yourself in. The very fact that you're asking this question is in indication that there is friction between this developer and the team's chosen process, although you haven't actually defined the nature of the problem this is creating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're also looking to resolve this friction without requiring that the developer adapt to a team-oriented process, and are therefore willing to break the process rather than acknowledge that this team member may not fit within it. You simply cannot maintain the status quo and resolve this friction simultaneously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have essentially made the Scrum framework optional for this developer, but are trying to have your cake and eat it too. If you are going to allow each individual on the team to pick and choose the parts of the framework they like and are willing to follow, then you are not just inviting &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/scrumbut&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum-Buts&lt;/a&gt; but essentially abandoning the rigor (and most likely the benefits) of your Scrum implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's okay to say that a given framework doesn't work for your team and your organization; there are certainly other frameworks to choose from. However, you must have &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; project management framework with rigorously-enforced controls in place if you don't want to invite anarchy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Prima Donnas Aren't Agile&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have someone who isn't fitting into your team-oriented process. That leaves you with the following options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Re-evaluating the format and effectiveness of your retrospectives, and then tweak the ceremony until it's providing value to everyone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Providing education, incentives, and consequences to ensure that all team members participate effectively in this &lt;em&gt;mandatory&lt;/em&gt; Scrum ceremony.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ditching the Scrum process if you aren't planning to follow it anyway.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is about teamwork. Lone wolves, even if they are technical rock-stars, are toxic to agile processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Retrospectives are &lt;em&gt;Required&lt;/em&gt; by the Scrum Framework&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of team members says that he doesn't benefit from retrospectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This team member is missing the point. Whether or not &lt;em&gt;he&lt;/em&gt; benefits from the retrospective is irrelevant; the real issue is whether or not the &lt;em&gt;team&lt;/em&gt; benefits from the retrospectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, the Sprint Retrospective is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-retro&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;formally-defined Scrum ceremony&lt;/a&gt; that is essential to the inspect-and-adapt process. That means that you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; hold retrospectives if you're adhering to the formal Scrum framework. Failing to hold effective Sprint Retrospectives reduces the effectiveness of the framework, and is counter to core agile principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you must carefully consider whether you are willing to have your process hijacked by someone who is unwilling to be a fully-functioning member of the team &lt;em&gt;within a &lt;strong&gt;team-oriented&lt;/strong&gt; agile framework like Scrum.&lt;/em&gt; If you allow this team member to dictate process to the rest of the team, or to unilaterally pick and choose the elements of the Scrum framework that he wishes to follow, then this is neither agile nor Scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the Scrum Master, if you abdicate your responsibility to referee the Scrum process in order to placate an individual, you have failed to do your job. Instead, you should ensure that the retrospectives provide value to the team, and that the team functions &lt;em&gt;as a team&lt;/em&gt; at all times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T14:20:03.213" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15744" CreationDate="2015-08-04T14:26:29.040" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most of the cases Scrum Masters are replacement for Team Leads, which belong to the &lt;em&gt;line&lt;/em&gt; organisation. When developers are promoted to leads they join the &lt;em&gt;line&lt;/em&gt; organisation, if they are promoted to product managers, they join project or product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore Scrum Masters - in most of the cases - are members of the &lt;em&gt;line&lt;/em&gt; organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T14:26:29.040" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15744" CreationDate="2015-08-04T14:43:11.513" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although, that right answer to question '&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Forums/aft/1312&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Master is a &quot;management&quot; position&lt;/a&gt;' is 'true' [because he manages the Scrum process], his job title may not be &quot;manager&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v1/Scrum-Guide-US.pdf#zoom=100&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; Scrum Master should:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;remove impediments to the Development Team’s progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;lead the organization in its Scrum adoption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum Master must have enough authority in organization for these activities.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Formal authority, that you get according with job title. &lt;strong&gt;Which department can provide position with such requirements, depends only from your organization.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It cannot be software development department in all cases. In organizations, main business of which is not related with software (banks, for example), software development department cannot be driver of changes and cannot provide ideal position for Scrum Master. HR? I don't know, I've never seen HR with enough power to change organization for Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also (obviously) this position should not have a lot external responsibilities (which are not related with Scrum-Mastering). Otherwise you will have no time to do Scrum-Master job.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Informal authority. In this case &lt;strong&gt;job title [and department] doesn't matter at all.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine extreme case, when your company invite Ken Schwaber (and Jeff Sutherland) to be Scrum-Master. He doesn't need any formal powers, because he has great informal authority.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-04T16:27:47.107" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T16:27:47.107" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15730" CreationDate="2015-08-04T14:48:33.613" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;what you tried should work. I've been able to set this up previously. For all intents and purpose, Jira does not distinguish between users with a normal email id, or with a DL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you tried your report with a user with normal email? does that work? Alternatively does the distribution list email work for other instance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My guess is that the filter and the settings to send email periodically hasn't been set up correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17686" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T14:48:33.613" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15751" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-04T15:09:34.917" Score="2" ViewCount="111" Body="&lt;p&gt;How would you recommend to schedule a task such as create and maintain  project plan which applies regular weekly updates for the duration of the project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18039" LastActivityDate="2015-08-09T16:10:39.360" Title="Scheduling a task for the duration of the project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15744" CreationDate="2015-08-04T15:35:58.820" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Barring a &quot;process&quot; organization then SpoonerNZ's reply is the one I would also go with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the same challenge project/ program management has faced for years. TO be able to be effective at your job, a scrum master needs to be able to talk truth to power, problems and roadblocks. They need to be able to look at the entire picture and see how it all fits or doesn't fit. This is not unlike how project mangers need to operate (I've been a project manager, scrum master and agile coach). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a program/project office that reports to the top of engineering (CTO, VP, etc.) is generally the best place overall. You are still part of the org that is &quot;doing&quot; and separated enough from the day to day politics that can impede good scrum master or project work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T15:35:58.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15707" CreationDate="2015-08-04T15:39:25.067" Score="13" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity is simply a proxy for measuring team capacity over time, and shouldn't be used for historical time accounting. Always estimate based on the &lt;em&gt;current&lt;/em&gt; level-of-effort and complexity, and this will naturally result in incomplete stories being reflected in velocity as &lt;strong&gt;drags on capacity.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Stories Shouldn't Carry History&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't treat stories as historical artifacts. Incomplete user stories from past iterations should &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; carry history. Instead, they should be decomposed, edited, and refined as if they were new work, and this new work estimated without regard to historical estimates or past progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many reasons for doing this. One of the main reasons is to ensure that you are tracking &lt;em&gt;team capacity to complete new objectives&lt;/em&gt;, not volume of work previously done, through your velocity metrics. Velocity is simply not the right tool for historical time-accounting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Discard Historical Data in Estimates&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each Sprint is an ephemeral time-box. When you plan a Sprint, historical progress is irrelevant. What you are really attempting to answer with your estimate is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on what we know and where we are &lt;em&gt;today&lt;/em&gt;, how much effort is required to deliver this feature &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Changes to level-of-effort or complexity happen a lot in Scrum as the cone of uncertainty narrows or as new efficiencies are discovered. In addition, the iterative nature of agile development means the &lt;em&gt;context&lt;/em&gt; of a user story can change over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you might have had a story about delivering a GUI widget that was estimated at 8 points several sprints ago. However, when the story is re-estimated, it turns out that the team now knows about a third-party plugin that can simply be dropped into the code to provide the feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The effort to merge this plugin into your current code base is estimated at 2 points. That is the level of effort required to implement the feature &lt;em&gt;today&lt;/em&gt;; the fact that the team is throwing away 16,000 lines of code (whether that code is good, bad, or ugly) from six months ago is irrelevant to measuring the story's ability to fit into the &lt;em&gt;current&lt;/em&gt; time-box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T15:39:25.067" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15751" CreationDate="2015-08-04T15:46:41.653" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a concept of BAU or CDB. That is &quot;Business as Usual&quot; or &quot;Cost of Doing Business&quot;. In official PMI speak, it is called &quot;Monitoring and Controlling&quot;. These are tasks and activities that need to be done and yet have nothing to do with the actual project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, we have staff meetings every week, we don't task these out in a project. It's part of an overhead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creating a project status report falls into this category. It is part of the normal day to day function of the job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are running an agile project, all these &quot;Cost of Doing Business&quot; items are just things you need to take into account when determining how much capacity you have to work. If the project status will take you four hours a week, your capacity is four hours less (Pro Tip- Capacity is NOT 40 hours. Average team capacity is about 20-24 hours a week). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're in a traditional project I recommend having a separate &quot;project&quot; which is your &quot;Project Management Project&quot;. In here track all the things you have to do every week as part of your &quot;day job.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T15:46:41.653" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15744" CreationDate="2015-08-04T16:33:28.730" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly, any part of the org that values transparency and honesty, will shield you from politics/pressure and agendas, and understands what an SM is there to do - question, challenge, and grow the teams. I'd prefer that over something that &quot;made sense&quot; contextually, i.e. closer to product, or HR, or whatever. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T16:33:28.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15757" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15758" CreationDate="2015-08-04T17:51:47.130" Score="0" ViewCount="944" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this case, my team has 3 members and each member has own task. So I decide I have 3 user stories and places them in one sprint.&#xA;I was very confuse about sprint and user story. Whether I put multi user stories in one sprint or with  1 user stories I will perform in many sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18045" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T18:31:10.657" Title="In Agile, can I put multi user stories in one sprint?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15757" CreationDate="2015-08-04T18:13:20.393" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's normal for a sprint to have multiple user stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should not have a user story which is too big to be completed in one sprint. In that case it should be broken down to multiple, smaller user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;On a side note:&lt;/strong&gt; You write &quot;I decide I have 3 user stories and place them in one sprint&quot;. The user stories in a sprint aren't decided by the scrum master or project manager. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather, it's agreed on a &quot;sprint planning meeting&quot; attended by the team and the product owner. The product owner will prioritize user stories and developers will estimate. Finally, developers will commit to a scope of stories that they believe can be completed in one sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you as PM or SM are writing user stories and deciding sprint scope, you are pretty far from a typical agile lifecycle. Your project won't be benefiting from some of the core advantages of agile, namely the collaboration effort between team and product owner, and self-directed / committed teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8592" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T18:13:20.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15751" CreationDate="2015-08-04T18:24:57.273" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Maintaining project plan&quot; and similar tasks shouldn't be in the project plan. It can be included in the project estimation or as part of resource planning though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8592" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T18:24:57.273" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15757" CreationDate="2015-08-04T18:25:29.573" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are talking about scrum or just in general an agile approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess from the expression &quot;sprint&quot; one quickly assumes you're talking about scrum and in this context, as Morten K states, it wouldn't be you alone who decides what goes into the current sprint. And yes, there typically would be multiple user stories, only 1 story (or parts of 1) wouldn't fit into what the &quot;agile manifesto&quot; describes. Typically, with each sprint you extend your product with more features/functionality according to the priorities of the customer (product owner). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;i guess if you as a PM are just going with a agile PM method in general (not specifically scrum), you can still be in charge of what's part of which iteration, how big your iterations are and how your overall project/product is structured into increments. But even then, you'd ideally go by priorities of customer and you try to eliminate the biggest risks in the first iterations. By splitting the whole projects into iterations/increments you allow the customers to see results much earlier in the project and allow the customer to get involved. The longer your iterations, the more you risk to go into the wrong direction and your customers won't be able to intervene until it's too late.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe have a look at the agile manifesto, it can give you some helpful pointers into the right direction: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18046" LastEditorUserId="18046" LastEditDate="2015-08-04T18:31:10.657" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T18:31:10.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15763" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-04T19:37:56.580" Score="3" ViewCount="160" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a person that wants me to build for him a web application and also design the database required. However, his idea quite complex and I got to the point where I no longer work without something well defined. I've learned in school about Project Management and I would be okay with trying to implement the whole thing using good practices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know what would be the best method of setting up the necessary documents required for the planning stage. Should I go for something simple as using Documents for the whole planning process or should I look for PM tools? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: forgot to say that most communication with the person is done via Skype or phone calls!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18049" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-08-05T15:23:10.287" LastActivityDate="2015-08-05T15:23:10.287" Title="Best methods for IT Project Management" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15763" CreationDate="2015-08-04T19:55:59.943" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't use any software right now. It will only constrain you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A large wall &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Several packs of 5x7 Post It Notes (Staples or Office&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Depot) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Several packs of regular Post It Notes &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A roll of blue painters tape &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A butt load of Sharpies and colored markers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;**Planning Process- Agile Product Planning Outline&#xA;I've shared a detailed white paper I wrote on this process on DropBox here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.dropbox.com/s/lqdax8ad3flozv6/Agile_Product_Planning_Outline_Proposal_TheGorillaCoach.pdf?dl=0&quot;&gt;https://www.dropbox.com/s/lqdax8ad3flozv6/Agile_Product_Planning_Outline_Proposal_TheGorillaCoach.pdf?dl=0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 1&lt;/strong&gt; Define the product: You need to agree on what is being built. Just because you all agree you are building a car doesn't mean your customer isn't thinking Porche while you're thinking Pickup truck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 2&lt;/strong&gt; Horizontal/ Vertical Story Mapping: You first map out your users. Then you do a horizontal timeline of a user's flow. Then each horizontal item gets a vertical timeline of that item. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 3&lt;/strong&gt; Create User Stories: You then work to make user stories from that vertical break down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 4&lt;/strong&gt; Decompose the Stories: From the user stories you kick over to design. Here you break down the user stories into the technical work to be done. This is often called &quot;Tasks&quot; in agile planning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 5&lt;/strong&gt; Value your User Stories: The secret sauce. If all work is done by how much time it takes, we'll end up with a product full of easy things with no value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 6&lt;/strong&gt; Estimate Effort: This is your classic engineering estimate of effort to build a certain thing. I recommend Team Estimation Game personally, though there are dozens of ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 7&lt;/strong&gt; Order the Requirements: With Value and Cost, you can order your requirements based on a trade off of time vs. value&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 8&lt;/strong&gt; Build it and they will come: Now you just execute on building. You can use any method you want (I of course recommend agile).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T19:55:59.943" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15766" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15769" CreationDate="2015-08-04T20:08:18.333" Score="1" ViewCount="5547" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been struggling with a Microsoft Project (2013 Standard) formula assigned to a number user-defined field to calculate the difference between tasks' current Finishes and a baseline Finish I've previously set. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Switch(&#xA;[Finish]=&quot;&quot;,0,&#xA;[Baseline1 Finish]=&quot;&quot;,0,&#xA;[Finish]=projdatevalue('NA'),0,&#xA;[Baseline1 Finish]=projdatevalue('NA'),0,&#xA;[Finish]-[Baseline1 Finish]&amp;lt;=0,0,&#xA;[Finish]-[Baseline1 Finish]&amp;gt;0,[Finish]-[Baseline1 Finish]&#xA;)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On tasks for which [Baseline1 Finish] is &quot;NA&quot; I consistently get a #ERROR, even though I should have trapped for it between lines 3 &amp;amp; 5 above. I've tried everything I can think of, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using an equivalent IIF formula&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using different user-defined date fields (e.g., [Baseline2 Finish])&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Removing different elements of the formula one at a time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Checking against a &quot;high&quot; date value (e.g., 2^30, since this is how I understand Project actually renders &quot;NA&quot; behind the scenes) instead of using ProjDateValue (c.f. &lt;a href=&quot;http://masamiki.com/project/customfieldFAQ.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://masamiki.com/project/customfieldFAQ.htm&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But no seeming change in behavior.  &lt;strong&gt;Is there a defect in Project when using ProjDateValue in a formula against one of the user-defined date fields?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17809" LastEditorUserId="17809" LastEditDate="2015-08-06T15:46:02.897" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T00:49:19.173" Title="#ERROR in User-Defined Field Formula Even After Testing Against ProjDateValue('NA')" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15767" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15781" CreationDate="2015-08-04T20:15:00.423" Score="0" ViewCount="126" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been greatly interested in becoming a Project Manager as a career path for some time. I have the current Pmbok Guide and am trying to work through several online classes. At my current employment there in no project management structure used (It is off site at the corporate level). I however specifically work on various tasks, which all qualify by definition of &quot;Projects&quot; as outlined in the Pmbok Guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is how can I bring in the practices of &quot;Project Management&quot; in to my work, considering there is no current frame work. I am hoping I can do this so I can increase the amount of tasks I can bring to completion and gain some practical knowledge to carry forward as I prepare to earn a PMP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18048" LastActivityDate="2015-08-05T19:47:31.747" Title="Learning Project Management" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;learning&gt;&lt;pmi&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10387" CreationDate="2015-08-04T20:35:01.223" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use a designing and building a deck project. It is fairly simple. But simple enough to cover in a 14 week course and complex enough that your WBS, network diagrams and time and cost estimates need some research and thought.  I have them watch the videos &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeDvNXAJ7vY&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeDvNXAJ7vY&lt;/a&gt; parts 1 through 6.  These videos really help them create a WBS and network diagram. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18052" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T20:35:01.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15766" CreationDate="2015-08-04T21:00:23.743" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are a few things to note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Instead of checking the task Finish field for N/A or 0, use the &lt;code&gt;IsDate&lt;/code&gt; function.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;While N/A values for date fields are internally stored as very large integers (2^32) you only need to test against something greater than Project's maximum date (which appears to be #12/31/2099# for Project 2013; #12/31/2049# for earlier versions). Testing against a large integer (e.g. 2^30) might lead to an overflow error.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the &lt;code&gt;ProjDateDiff&lt;/code&gt; function to calculate the difference between two dates. If you don't supply the third parameter (calendar) the project calender is used (which is almost always what you want).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use a Duration field to hold the results of this formula.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;strong&gt;updated&lt;/strong&gt; formula should work for you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;IIf([Baseline1 Finish]&amp;gt;75000 Or Not IsDate([Finish]),0,ProjDateDiff([Finish],[Baseline1 Finish]))&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If desired, you can modify it to force negative deltas to be zero (as you had in your original formula).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastEditorUserId="13635" LastEditDate="2015-08-04T21:51:21.780" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T21:51:21.780" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15771" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-05T02:44:46.210" Score="0" ViewCount="3125" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am using Microsoft Project 2013. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to visualize in the &lt;em&gt;Timeline&lt;/em&gt; the percentage of completed task, for example 33%...   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6stxJ.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6stxJ.png&quot; alt=&quot;timeline&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this possible ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17770" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditorDisplayName="user17770" LastEditDate="2019-01-14T13:27:31.550" LastActivityDate="2021-02-02T19:04:45.437" Title="Is it possible to show the percentage of completed task in the Timeline in MS Project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;timeline&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15763" CreationDate="2015-08-05T04:16:54.603" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think you need PM tools for this. It sounds more like you are just losing overview of the scope of the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To prevent scope from getting out of control, you should be fine by writing a &quot;requirements specification&quot; for the software. You can find lots of guides for writing such online. It's really just a description of the desired functionality, as detailed as you can make it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Naturally, the customer should be very involved in the process, but you don't have to be physically in the same room. Skype talks and screensharing will be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to keep the spec as non-technical as possible. The client, as a non-technical person, should be able to understand it and ultimately approve it. Tech details like database model shouldn't go into the spec. You can keep this in a separate &quot;technical specification&quot; / &quot;developers documentation&quot; if you wish.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UI mockups (&quot;wireframes&quot;) of all the pages / screens in the app, is a great thing to have in your specification. For simple wireframing, you can use Balsamiq (&lt;a href=&quot;https://balsamiq.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://balsamiq.com/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a good spec, you'll both get a much better understanding of the project scope. If you are giving a fixed price offer for the project, it's also an important document to use for negotiation when the client inevitable will want various changes / new additions. And if it's a small one or two man project, it's fine to manage the project entirely around this document. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just be sure to keep it updated and version controlled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8592" LastActivityDate="2015-08-05T04:16:54.603" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15773" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-05T04:41:55.607" Score="0" ViewCount="1237" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have setup MS Project 2013 server, and created project web apps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I created enterprise projects&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I set none working days in MS Project Enterprise web app site or the&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;enterprise project of web app site in MS Project server 2013&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16682" LastActivityDate="2016-04-13T07:59:31.477" Title="How to set none working days in MS Project server 2013 project web app page" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;&lt;project-server&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15774" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-05T05:55:17.007" Score="1" ViewCount="476" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have MS Project Server 2013 and created Project Web App site&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have created multiple Administrative Time items now I want to &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;delete Administrative Time items but there is no option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16682" LastActivityDate="2015-08-17T02:55:33.027" Title="How to delete Project server 2013 web app Administrative Time items" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;&lt;project-server&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15744" CreationDate="2015-08-05T08:45:36.043" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A successful product needs leadership along 4 dimensions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Business - (product strategy, roadmap, marketing, sales)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;UX&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tech&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Delivery&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The corresponding roles are Product Manager (owner), UX lead, Tech lead and Delivery lead (this last one is closest to Scrum Master). One could argue that none of the last three should report to the product manager but rather to a VP of UX, Dev &amp;amp; Project Mgmt. respectively. However, this often degenerates to a unworkable matrix org.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is okay to have the Product Manager as line manager as long as there are other mechanisms in place (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/agile-it-organization/9780133903690/ch06.html#ch06lev2sec6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;decision records&lt;/a&gt;) that discourage the Product Manager from disregarding input from the other leads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Full Disclosure: I am the author of the work referenced in the link.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2247" LastActivityDate="2015-08-05T08:45:36.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15777" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15785" CreationDate="2015-08-05T14:14:59.547" Score="65" ViewCount="22188" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was put in charge of implementing Scrum in my Development Team. Unfortunately, the company I work with has a rather stale structure that does not go well with this framework. The team works on a project that several other teams use/depend on. Besides our own goals we have unexpected feature, integration, support or bugfix requests. Some of them can be filed in the Backlog and wait for their turn, but some absolutely have to be handled ASAP, or &quot;in real time&quot; as one of our clients put it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation is far from ideal and I as the Scrum Master do not have the power to protect the Team from this kind of work. I am trying to make the best that I can from the situation we found ourselves in and get as much out of Scrum as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first question is: how to handle these kinds of requests within the Scrum framework?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not a fan of having a separate &quot;request bucket&quot; User Story - it either covers up the amount of work that was done or artificially increases the velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does manipulating the Sprint Backlog in such a broad scope make any sense? Sometimes we would have to move more than a half of our current Sprint Backlog back into Product Backlog to make room for all the on-demand requests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps my initial question should be replaced with - is there a way to handle this kind of situation within the Scrum framework?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is no way to do it in a reasonable manner - are there any other Agile frameworks that could be of help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18063" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T21:04:12.017" Title="How to deal with unavoidable on-demand tasks in Scrum? Or should we even try?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="35" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15717" CreationDate="2015-08-05T16:59:12.077" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What format are you using for your retrospectives? In my experience, changing up the format can improve participation rates. If you are just using a 'wheel of change' with the expectation that team members will speak openly in front of their peers, try switching it up a bit. Create histograms for focus areas and ask team members to place stickies on how well they (personally) view performance in that focus area. Alternatively, try the &quot;Once Upon a Retrospective&quot; approach as outlined in StickyMinds.com. Above all, make sure you document all proposed changes and assign action items to team members, then follow up before or at the beginning of the next retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18065" LastActivityDate="2015-08-05T16:59:12.077" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15777" CreationDate="2015-08-05T17:02:45.020" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;If these kinds of interruptions are truly unavoidable, my advice is to have the team plan and allow time for them. During the sprint planning meeting, each team member should calculate their capacity (in hours) for the new sprint. If you know or can calculate the amount of time that the team spends on other work, then subtract that from the capacity. Or, instead of planning to 100% capacity, try planning to a lower capacity (can be different for each team member based on how often they get pulled into other work) knowing that if interruptions don't come the team can always pull in additional user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18065" LastActivityDate="2015-08-05T17:02:45.020" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15777" CreationDate="2015-08-05T18:56:47.783" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Get the other teams to do Rolling Lookahead Planning&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some type of work such as production bugs cannot be planned for and can only be handled the way @JillSanderson suggested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you also seem to have other urgent work coming your way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The team works on a project that several other teams use/depend on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This type of work can be planned for. Just that your team is not in the loop until late in the cycle. Your Product Owner (PO) should continually work with the other teams to identify any work that they plan to send your way. In due course he/she should strive to convince the other teams to do &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/articles/rolling-lookahead-planning&quot;&gt;Rolling Lookahead Planning&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once the current iteration has been planned, the team remains in the iteration planning meeting and plans two more iterations... &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the second and third iterations are planned at the user story or product backlog item level rather than with tasks... &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The chief purpose of rolling lookahead planning is the coordination of work to be done by multiple teams. As new iterations roll into the planning horizon, teams look ahead to the functionality likely to be developed in those iterations. In doing so, teams on a large project are likely to find dependencies upon one another. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-08-05T18:56:47.783" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15767" CreationDate="2015-08-05T19:47:31.747" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you've already identified a way to identify your work as 'projects'. Once you've done that, it should be easy to work PM techniques and tools into your work, although you might have to do it on your own time. You can find a bunch of templates at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectmanagement.com/Templates/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ProjectManagement.com&lt;/a&gt; for the main documents. Don't get caught up in them too much though: use what you need, and no more. the PMBOK lays out a ton of best practices and useful techniques, but most projects don't use all of them, and many smaller projects hardly use any. Take what you get use out of and leave the rest for later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a quick example: You're tasked with buying a new router, configuring it, and hooking it up. Build a quick project plan that includes a scope document, a schedule, and a WBS. Measure as you go and compare that to the plan you created. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the best things you could do is find a contact in your company who is at this off-site location and ask them to help you learn more about project management. A good way to do this can be to explain your intent to learn and offer to &quot;help&quot;, that is, ask them if there are any tasks that you could do for them. People tend to respond warmly when you ask them to help you learn something that they are interested in and experienced at. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, you should consider the CAPM. It could be useful for an entry level PM position to show you're interested in learning. A PMP is specifically for experienced PMs and you will have a tough time passing the exam, not to mention meeting the criteria, if you haven't managed projects before.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17818" LastActivityDate="2015-08-05T19:47:31.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15712" CreationDate="2015-08-05T19:57:04.783" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's called &lt;a href=&quot;http://guide.agilealliance.org/guide/storymap.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Story Mapping&lt;/a&gt;. There are a whole bunch of different ways to do it, sometimes the top items are unscheduled, sometimes they are just a bunch of core concepts for the product that aren't directly related to specific tasks... Like anything else, you should customize it to your specific needs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17818" LastActivityDate="2015-08-05T19:57:04.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15783" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-05T20:07:23.183" Score="11" ViewCount="3394" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a website that I need to build and want to properly create story maps. I am just learning how to do this so I would love a bit of help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My setup:&#xA;Users: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;admins&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;customers&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;personal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;business&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;type1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;type2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;type3&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;type3 subtype1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;type3 subtype2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;type4&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My app needs the users to be able to: Register, Log In, Display Profile, Search, Create Posts, Manage business (admins) and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been advised to create the story map starting with the users. But I cannot seem to understand how to start. What about starting with the &quot;processes&quot; like my first example?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I would also be interested in understanding if I should have one or multiple or story maps in a project? Does it makes sense to split them into different story maps? Like registration, search, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what I tried so far:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2CjUQ.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2CjUQ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;or&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/IgKiP.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/IgKiP.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18049" LastEditorUserId="18049" LastEditDate="2015-08-06T16:02:37.227" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T19:48:40.887" Title="How to properly create story maps? (user stories)" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15777" CreationDate="2015-08-05T22:11:17.443" Score="94" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently experienced exactly the same situation you are describing. While I'm not the Scrum Master for my team, I was the only person on the team who had used any Scrum methods previously. To solve the issue of things coming up and derailing the Sprint plan, we adopted a method we call 'The Batman' which, after some tweaking, has really worked for us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every week, one developer is 'The Batman'. They do not complete any Sprint tasks, but are instead made available to do 'whatever work comes up', all of those bug fixes, sudden requests, and &quot;things that must be done now please&quot;. While the person who is Batman changes every week, there is always a 'Batman' available for general requests. Our small team rotates through a list, such that each developer spends one week as The Batman, and then two weeks focused on Sprint tasks. We identify the Batman by literally placing a Batman figurine on the desk of the individual filling the role. This makes it very easy for co-workers to correctly identify who is available to help them. Any person may approach the Batman and describe their problem or request. The Batman then makes a decision to either a) identify the task as something non-urgent and place it in the backlog or b) add it to their list and work on it at their next opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the (unlikely) event that no such requests exist, The Batman can grab from the backlog for small tasks, or attend to code cleaning/documentation/other things that tend to get neglected. Any tasks the Batman performs still results in a tickets being created in our ticket system, and is 'pulled into Sprint' so that we can track the work, however we assign all 'Batman' tickets a zero story point value. This is because we do not count Batman tasks in our Sprint estimations. We use JIRA for our ticketing system, and while our 'Scope Change' chart shows disappointingly high values, ultimately it does not negatively affect our estimation or sprint planning. By putting a label on 'BatTasks', and assigning them zero story points, it makes it easy to determine what was from the original sprint and what was pulled in by the Batman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our Sprints last for two weeks, so in the event that the Batman is a particularly prolific developer, we do not harm the Sprint by making them inaccessible for the entire Sprint. We also found that a solid week of bouncing around handling random quick requests is about as much as we can handle at a time before returning to the comfort and structure of Sprint work. It is also critical that when a Batman's time is up, they must cease work on their Batman tasks and hand over a full description of any incomplete tasks. This goes the same way for a Sprint worker transitioning to Batman - they need to be able to quickly hand off any tasks they were working on. Critical to this is having good documentation on your work as you work, and I think that as a team our in-task documentation skills and ability to hand off tasks quickly to another developer is improving. This is a great skill also for someone who is going on vacation, becomes unexpectedly ill, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another advantage we found is that &lt;em&gt;co-workers are now interrupting only one individual, and not side-tracking any developers who are focused on Sprint tasks.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also tried some unsuccessful variants of this approach. We tried having one 'Batman' one day a week (it was not enough) and tried having the entire development team act as 'Batman' one day a week (also not enough). Due to the frequency of requests that came through, we found that always having a 'Batman' on call worked well for our team. What is important is that we gave each attempt a try, and continued to tweak the process to our needs before giving up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An idea we have considered was also assigning a 'Robin', who would work on Sprint tasks, but if necessary, could be called upon by Batman to help out if the load got to be too great. We have not tried this approach yet, but I like the idea of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One interesting side affect of this approach is that the Batman ends up getting exposed to many different aspects of our system. As a team, it has greatly increased everyones general knowledge about the code base, and is helping us all become better acquainted with areas of our code that we did not necessarily have exposure to before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18068" LastEditorUserId="18068" LastEditDate="2015-08-05T23:46:23.447" LastActivityDate="2015-08-05T23:46:23.447" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15777" CreationDate="2015-08-05T23:25:55.357" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Retrospect, retrospect, and retrospect some more.  While the problem you describe exists to varying degrees on most scrum teams, don't settle with a band-aid solution.  First understand, quantify, and make transparent the impact to your scrum team.  Sometimes its better to do this without applying a pain killer...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creating slack, whether via velocity or capacity based planning is not a true solution, just a reaction/painkiller to lessen a problem that may initially seem too external to address.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a scrum master you should feel empowered to tackle deep and/or long-term organizational problems outside of the immediate team(s) you serve.  Why do so many ad-hoc requests come in?  Is there a pattern, organizational structure(s), or certain people that agitate the issue?  Use the retrospectives with your team combined with your time spent navigating and understanding the organization to get at the real root causes of why the problem arises.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ashok provides one solution for the deeper problem - which sounds like a lack of higher level planning and coordination between teams.  How you solve that problem will depend on your organizational structure and the root causes you identify.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-08-05T23:25:55.357" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15707" CreationDate="2015-08-05T23:38:02.660" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you really want to get at is why it wasn't done and why the team committed to doing something that they couldn't deliver (especially if you frequently have this problem).  Estimation is a tool to empower a team to own and understand their commitments, using it for planning purposes is an afterthought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity is an average amount of work that can be completed in an iteration, so whether you split a 10 into an 8 and a 2, or carry the whole thing over, the long term average velocity of the team doesn't change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now some team members feel punished if they don't get some &quot;credit&quot; for the work they did.  Story points do not equal credit or productivity to a team member or any external stakeholder.  If there are external or internal misconceptions about what story points or velocity represent or are used for that is a separate problem to address.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer your question of whether to split, carryover, or re-estimate...Go for the practice that makes your team feel empowered to fix the real underlying problem of why the story wasn't done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-08-05T23:38:02.660" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14909" CreationDate="2015-08-06T07:16:42.500" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If by validate a process you mean show that it is able to meet tolerances consistently then you need to look at the process capability which can be done using the Cpk formula from the following site:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_capability_index&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Process Capability&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This tells you the frequency that your process will produce a part that is in tolerance.  You will need to determine a threshold for this value.&#xA;Some Cpk values with corresponding defective parts per million are:&#xA;1.0 Cpk = 2700ppm&#xA;1.33 Cpk = 63ppm&#xA;1.67 Cpk = 1ppm&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A sample size of 30 is generally accepted as sufficient for this analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18074" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T07:16:42.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15710" CreationDate="2015-08-06T08:11:08.510" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;These questions are very diverse and may take multiple methods.  Some questions you could ask them outright.  You could also ask them how they would manage a hypothetical situation or ask them to explain a past experience in which they had to ______.  Have a team member sit in on the interview to assess if they are a good match for the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, have atleast three people interview them to get a good analysis of how they associate with different people.  This also gives insight from multiple sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18074" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T08:11:08.510" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15789" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-06T08:49:36.047" Score="0" ViewCount="1749" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an ongoing software development project nearing completition. My question is how I can estimate the necessary budget to run the software once it's finished (run), develop it further, for example due to technological progress (growth) and implementing new functions (innovation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a common split between those aspects that I can apply to my recurring costs? Or on which factors in my business/the software could a budget split be based? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18076" LastEditorUserId="18076" LastEditDate="2015-08-06T09:00:56.010" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T11:59:46.687" Title="How do I estimate costs for running a finished software project?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15771" CreationDate="2015-08-06T09:19:53.937" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can't add the percentage of completed task to the timeline boxes. Other  option would be to manually color the tasks based of some criteria (not started, started, finished).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nmDAg.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nmDAg.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Timeline a,b,c&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18059" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T09:49:14.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15777" CreationDate="2015-08-06T10:11:57.777" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like the Batman story.  I'd just add that you should be strict about what constitutes a genuine emergency.  It might be urgent for the user, but if it  was forseeable they should have brought it up through the normal request process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're lax with this they,ll soon cotton on and use it as a way to fast-track &quot;nice to haves&quot; through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Real example.  One Monday morning I got a call from an overseas office asking me to change their correspondence address.  I told them to raise a ticket and asked when this was taking effect so I could deploy it into production at the right time.  The answer: &quot;Oh, now.  We already moved&quot;.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18078" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T10:11:57.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15792" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-06T11:50:01.353" Score="-2" ViewCount="145" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a a way to allocate my budgets among different employees. I need&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an overview of all resources on a timeline. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;allocate budget parts to different workers, e.g. project A has a budget of 2 full-time employees: employee 1 is financed 100 %, employee 2 and 3 50 % each. The other 50 % for 2 and 3 come from a different project. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All of this must be dynamic, e.g. after 6 months I change plans, define the actual state at this time and allocate the employees to different budgets.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18081" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-08-07T14:47:06.400" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T14:47:06.400" Title="How to allocate budget among employees?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-08-07T21:53:25.853" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15789" CreationDate="2015-08-06T14:57:34.087" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It varies on the kind of project.&#xA;In my experience you can account for recurring costs like hosting, but that's all of it. I usually charge for a maintenance package that includes a set amount if development days.&#xA;If you know in advsnce what kind of features you will likely add to the project, you can as well estimate them or account for a percentage of the development already done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18091" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T14:57:34.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15777" CreationDate="2015-08-06T15:06:39.617" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is short and sweet, but in my experience of the Scrum framework:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only the scrum team can decide to plan late work into the sprint.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only the Product Owner can agree for committed work to be dropped from the sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The deliberate consequence of this is that the team can (will?) allow late work in if the product owner agrees to drop some work in exchange to make room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All well and good when the work is all owned by the same PO, as he/she just has to decide what their priority is.  In the event that work is owned by two different POs, then those POs need to decide between themselves what the priority is and the result of that discussion decides if an exchange goes ahead or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, one of the principles of agile is to welcome late changes in requirements.  That's not necessarily quite the situation you're describing, but I think accepting late changes in priority fits the spirit of agile just as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TLDR: yes people can come to you with late high priority work, but the business &lt;strong&gt;has&lt;/strong&gt; to accept that in order for it to be taken on something else &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; be dropped.  If your business is particularly prone to this then once POs have had their sprints disrupted or their late requirements rejected a few times they will by necessity get better at managing their backlog!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Full disclosure: I'm a highly partisan and bloody minded coder. :-) )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18089" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T15:06:39.617" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15796" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15797" CreationDate="2015-08-06T16:02:19.773" Score="5" ViewCount="404" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to have a project with varying Sprint cycle?&#xA;Example: in a product implementation project initial few sprints could be a month long because of multiple dependencies and lack of clarity but as we move forward the cycle becomes say 2 weeks long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What all changes in the system (Like Target Process) a PM/Scrum Master has to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7681" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T17:18:30.487" Title="Varying Sprint cycle in a project" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15796" CreationDate="2015-08-06T16:16:27.563" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few reasons for using a consistent size of sprint:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team gets in to a rythm with a fixed sprint duration. They know when the Scrum ceremonies will take place and can easily allow for them when planning holidays, working from home and other absences.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;With a fixed sprint size it is easier to engage busy stakeholders. For example, you can book them in to a sprint review many weeks or even months in advance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team will also get used to the appropriate length of planning and backlog refinement meetings. If the sprint duration is changing then they will need to make allowances for more/less planning in the sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that changing the sprint length is fine as long as you do it just once and anticipate a slight period of re-adjustment from the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A better solution might be to stick with a 2 week sprint throughout and try and resolve the dependency and clarity issues. Remember that one of the reasons we have shorter sprints is that the regular sprint reviews can help to draw out requirements and increase clarity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T16:16:27.563" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15796" CreationDate="2015-08-06T16:32:10.840" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally you want to establish a cadence and keep the sprint duration the same but, there a lots of good reasons to change sprint duration after the project has started.  Some common reasons are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Sprints that are too long become a planning nightmare&#xA;-Sprints that are too long don't deliver features in a timely manner for customer feedback&#xA;-Sprints that are too short don't align with story work complexity&#xA;-Sprints that are too short don't allow enough room for improving product quality and sustainability (tech-debt, refactoring, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Changing sprint duration may seem scary at first but if you consider all the stakeholders in the equation you will identify what processes and people are impacted with a change.  Common impacts include activities around release planning, documentation, and customer-feature communication as well as your planning/review/retro.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally moving to a shorter release will tighten the feedback loop on your scrum team and force continuous planning behaviors that often are neglected when sprints become too long because teams/pm's believe adding more time to a sprint duration will address the uncertainty factor in delivering within a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T16:32:10.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15799" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-06T16:46:25.897" Score="2" ViewCount="730" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on FP table here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.qsm.com/resources/function-point-languages-table&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.qsm.com/resources/function-point-languages-table&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are average FP value for 3 different languages&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Java --&gt; 53&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;J2EE --&gt; 46&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;.Net --&gt; 57&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I understand the FP estimation uses these values to calculate the effort size.&#xA;Example: My FP estimation provides a size of 10, so the effort size will be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Java --&gt; 530&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;J2EE --&gt; 460&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;.Net --&gt; 570&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering this should I choose J2EE as the language of choice because it has the lowest effort value size?&#xA;Does a lower FP average value mean lesser effort required? If so why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7681" LastEditorUserId="7681" LastEditDate="2015-08-07T09:07:06.360" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T18:59:13.347" Title="Function Point value, which is better" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15777" CreationDate="2015-08-06T16:46:26.887" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although, almost all the ways to solve your problem were already described, I have decided to write my answer to add a little bit of organization and references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Henrik Kniberg in his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/minibooks/scrum-xp-from-the-trenches-2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Scrum and XP from the Trenches&quot;&lt;/a&gt; book describes four typical actions for solving your problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h1&gt;“Too many external disturbances”&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Typical actions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;ask the team to reduce their focus factor next sprint, so that they have a more realistic plan.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;ask the team to record disturbances better next sprint. Who disturbed, how long it took. Will make it easier to solve the problem later.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;ask the team to try to funnel all disturbances to the scrum master or product owner.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;ask the team to designate one person as “goalkeeper”, all disturbances are routed to him, so that the rest of the team can focus. Could be the Scrum master or a rotating position.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take a look at these options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask the team to reduce their focus factor next sprint, so that they have a more realistic plan.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's the same as @JillSanderson &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/15779/8417&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt;. But, in my opinion, it's better to use focus-factor instead of reducing capacity. It gives absolutely the same effect (reduced velocity), but it's more logical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Focus factor is an estimate of how focused the team is.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; More unexpected &quot;external&quot; tasks means less focus factor. So, you should consider the focus factor in the Sprint Forecast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach has one limitation. &lt;strong&gt;The focus factor (amount of &quot;external&quot; tasks) should be approximately the same&lt;/strong&gt;. Otherwise, the forecast of the number tasks in Sprint becomes meaningless.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask the team to record disturbances better next sprint. Who disturbed, how long it took. Will make it easier to solve the problem later.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's almost the same as @WBW &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/15785/8417&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt;. Gather all needed information during Sprints, analyze it during retrospectives, find root of problems and try to eliminate it. Maybe you should increase quality of code with special engineering practices (or improve testing) to not spend such a lot of time on bug fixing. Or, maybe you should delegate some work to another team. Or improve planning for reducing the amount of unexpected features from the customer. Or something else. It is hard to give concrete advice, because it depends on many factors. It's your job as Team Lead to find and fix these problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main limitation of this approach is that &lt;strong&gt;eliminating the roots of some problems is not always possible.&lt;/strong&gt; It's all good in theory, but in the real world we often don't have enough power to fix all things.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask the team to try to funnel all disturbances to the scrum master or product owner.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, it's true, that the Product Owner and (especially) the Scrum Master should be a &quot;shield&quot; for the Development Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The limitation of this approach is obvious. As I have been told before, the Scrum Master may not have enough authority to protect the Development Team well from unexpected on-demand tasks. On the other hand, requirements from business always is much more important for the Product Owner than the Scrum rules.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask the team to designate one person as “goalkeeper”, all disturbances are routed to him, so that the rest of the team can focus. Could be the Scrum master or a rotating position.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/15784/8417&quot;&gt;&quot;The Batman&quot; answer&lt;/a&gt;, provided by @Aurora.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good solution with two limitations. &lt;strong&gt;1) The Amount of unavoidable tasks should be not to big for &quot;Batman&quot;. 2) The Developer Team should have more than 3 members, otherwise the сapacity (in percentage) will decrease greatly.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, the presence of extraneous tasks in Sprint contradicts Scrum. It will be &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/ScrumBut&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ScrumBut&lt;/a&gt; (not pure Scrum).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you may look at the other methodologies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_programming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Extreme programming&lt;/a&gt;. According to this methodology, the customer may change tasks during iteration without any limitation (honestly, there is one limitation: in case the customer wants to add a new task to the current iteration, he should remove a task (or tasks) with the same volume).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick is that the cost of changes have a fixed cost in Extreme programming. This methodology prescribes a lot of techniques about how to ensure this. One time I tried to implement this methodology, but it was too extreme for us :-)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_(development)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt;. This methodology has no iterations at all. When your WIP (Work In Progress) has a free space, you can take another task immediately. If you have no need in iterations, this methodology may be best the choice for you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T21:04:12.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15783" CreationDate="2015-08-06T17:04:06.677" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Identify all the users that enter the system.&#xA;1a) Identify which users are the most important.&#xA;2) Do a happy path process map for how each user will flow through the system.&#xA;3) Based on the process map identify the features the system needs to support.&#xA;4) Look across all your process maps and see if there is a critical feature or features that will need to be implemented to support other features.&#xA;5) Take features identified in step 4 and do a simple story map that decomposes the feature (epic) into stories.&#xA;6) Stop when you have enough features decomposed that will keep you busy implementing for the next 2-6 weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you get to step 3 and start thinking that, holy crap that is a lot of process maps, thats OK, just do the first 2-3 process maps to represent your most valuable customers/flows.  Then derive your highest priority features/epics off of those maps.  Then decompose from there.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is to only generate partial story maps that describe the highest priority stories you want to implement short-term.  You will go nuts trying to create an all encompassing story map if the system is feature rich.  I'd encourage you to avoid trying to story map out the entire project since you will find that many of the features and stories will change over time as your requirements become clearer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T17:04:06.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15796" CreationDate="2015-08-06T17:18:30.487" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another option you might benefit from is the concept of a 4-week Sprint 0 that precedes the normal 2 - 3 week sprints. Sprint 0 is a great time for the project team to make basic architectural decisions that will impact the rest of the project and help ensure that future sprints are productive. The team basically puts the skeleton of the project in place. It's a great time also to clarify any fuzzy areas in the requirements/user stories. More great info at:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2013/september/what-is-sprint-zero&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2013/september/what-is-sprint-zero&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, remember that the backlog should include &lt;strong&gt;technical&lt;/strong&gt; stories, not just functional stories. This is something that took awhile for a few of my early teams to figure out. Once you get a hold of the Product Backlog, review it with the technical team and Product Owner and discuss technical options and stories that are needed to accommodate investigations and decision-making. Doing this makes the work visible and the team can plan for it within a sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18065" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T17:18:30.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15803" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15807" CreationDate="2015-08-06T17:57:11.880" Score="12" ViewCount="2751" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is related to &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/6714/sizing-an-entire-backlog-using-story-points&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; but I couldn't find this part answered there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am part of a large project whose entire product backlog has been sized in story-points. The estimate is roughly based on effort and assumes a certain amount of effort per SP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My goal initially was to establish average velocity (in SP) per sprint of the team and then use this as a forecasting metric against the rest of the backlog (assuming that is also sized in SP).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the entire product backlog is not fully groomed there are several items that are not fully defined. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to use the above method to arrive at an accurate plan/ forecast ? What potential pitfalls could this run into ? What other methods, if any, can be used to forecast completion date for the entire product backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="135" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T13:04:37.583" Title="Is it possible to forecast when a scrum team will complete the product backlog?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15803" CreationDate="2015-08-06T18:57:06.340" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, that's exactly what you should do. I'd recommend using at least 2 sprints, and preferably 3, to determine an average velocity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also important to frame it in terms of probability: If you're velocity is 5, and there are 20 points, then you'll probably be done after 4 sprints. Unless, scope changes, something unforseen comes up, a risk materializes, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'd do is, for the items that aren't fully defined do the best you can. Provide a range of forecast (i.e. say 4-6 iterations). This gives you some room for scope changes or whatever might come up, while giving your stakeholders an estimate of completion. Reinforce the ideas that they can change the completion date in either direction based on changing requirements or scope if they feel the need. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need something that's more of a science, you can have a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://4squareviews.com/2012/09/24/time-management-formulas-relating-to-pert-analysis/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PERT formulae&lt;/a&gt;. This can give you a statistical idea of when the project will be done, and how likely that estimate is. It's useful when your executives demand more specifics than &quot;4-6 sprints&quot; but also allows you to keep reminding them that it's a probability, not a given. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17818" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T18:57:06.340" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15803" CreationDate="2015-08-06T19:17:22.587" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can estimate a completion date, date range, completion sprint, etc by dividing the current backlog size (in SP) by the teams current velocity but...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Definitely remind anyone looking at your forecast that it is an estimate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quickly check out how variable your velocity is.  What is the team's last 3 iteration velocity?  Current iteration?  Total project duration?  A highly variable velocity should prompt you to lower your confidence in any long-term forecasting results.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;List all your assumptions and the method you used to derive the forecast before presenting your number(s).  Make sure your audience understands the impact of the assumptions you had to make.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be honest about your confidence in providing the forecast&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try and provide a date range rather than a specific date with best, middle, and worst case numbers.  You can go all kinds of fancy with Monte Carlo simulations and tools like Crystall Ball if you want.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use your scenarios as a chance to escalate risks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;DON'T make any long-term timing commitments based on your forecast numbers.  The forecast should be used primarily as a tool to discuss and highlight risks/deficiencies that should be addressed to meet the customer's high level needs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastEditorUserId="13568" LastEditDate="2015-08-06T19:23:21.060" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T19:23:21.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15803" CreationDate="2015-08-06T20:21:51.017" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can get 2-3 sprints of velocity, as DrewJordan recommends, this is hands down the best way. That being said, reality often finds us facing management who asks &quot;When can you be done&quot;, before work has even started. If this happens, there is a method I learned from Agile Learning Labs that works well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Caveat-&lt;/strong&gt; To do this, you must do a full estimation of the backlog. If you are trying to estimate an entire year's worth of backlog, this won't be accurate. Nothing can estimate a year plus product well. It is still better than current models.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 1:&lt;/strong&gt; Pick a reasonable release time frame. If you're doing agile, then you should be looking to release every three months at the most. If not, you lose a lot of the value of agile and will also find it hard to do agile when there is no real feedback coming in. This will also directly address the challenge of the Caveat listed above. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 2:&lt;/strong&gt; Estimate the backlog. As mentioned in the Caveat, this needs to happen to be able to forecast a release date. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 3:&lt;/strong&gt; Plan a theoretical first Sprint. Now this is not management assigns stories to a Sprint. This is honest to goodness team self-organized planning. Take the first story from the backlog and the team asks themselves, &quot;Do we think we can get this done in the sprint (they are two weeks long, right? :) ). Then repeat this. Keep doing this until the team doesn't feel even close to comfortable that they can complete a story. This is KEY. If even one person thinks it can't be done, then stop and don't add the story. It is better to under estimate than over at this stage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 4:&lt;/strong&gt; Projection. Add up the story points of the sprint planning. Now divide the total story points in a release (remember, your goal is no more than about three months). At this point you have how many sprints it will take to complete the work. If that's more than three months of work, the release is probably too big and you should look at what is really needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 5&lt;/strong&gt; Reinforce this is a FORECAST. When you give the time estimate give it as &quot;We have a 60% confidence in this schedule.&quot; Then follow this up with &quot;After our first Sprint that should go up to 70% and after our second sprint 80%. By our third sprint we should have 90% confidence on either what our final ship date will be or what we will have done if the ship date must be fixed to a certain calendar point.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll never have more than 90% confidence, don't try. Mother nature and Murphy love to mess with anyone who says &quot;I have 100% confidence&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T20:21:51.017" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15744" CreationDate="2015-08-06T20:39:18.690" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having been on numerous Agile teams, mostly Scrum, I have heard this question quite a few times.  It seems like it has to do with trying to avoid conflicts of interest for one reason or another.  It is difficult to pick just one answer because Scrum Master has an official definition and a lot of actual usage definitions which change the intended alignment of the position:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If Scrum Master really means &quot;Team Lead&quot; or &quot;Project Lead&quot; or &quot;Architect&quot; or some kind of management position that directs what the team does then it should fit that part of your organization that manages day to day work.  Something like that under the IT umbrella would be common.  (Yes, I called Architects managers and I'm sticking to that.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it means something like &quot;Agile Coach&quot; or &quot;Usually Absent non-developing team member of some generic kind who usually runs the Agile meetings&quot; it &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; make sense under HR or I think someone else said &quot;Process&quot; or &quot;Methodology&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it means something like the Scrum definition (which is kinda like the worlds most helpful secretary - &lt;em&gt;don't tell anyone its a secret&lt;/em&gt;) then I would say they fit where the secretaries (er... admins?) do in your organization.  Frankly, this is the &lt;strong&gt;best&lt;/strong&gt; kind of Scrum Master to have in my opinion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it means something like &quot;Agile Enforcer&quot; or &quot;Guardian of Our Agile Commandments&quot; (and it &lt;strong&gt;often&lt;/strong&gt; does) then it probably is never going to fit anywhere and something else needs fixing before you will benefit by figuring out where to put this position in the org chart.  You could &lt;em&gt;try&lt;/em&gt; putting them in with the security concerns in you organization.  That would be most likely to align with this definition of Scrum Master.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they have one or more &quot;other responsibilities&quot; like they are also the PM, PO, Team Lead or even a developer then I would just use that &quot;other title&quot; to place them in the organization because that is most often what they will really be doing most of the time in my experience.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter what, I think it makes sense to pick appropriate leadership for the Scrum Masters for lots of reasons.  I'm not sure that keeping them entirely neutral is helpful unless you want them to be a mediator of some kind.  It would be ideal in my opinion to decide what the position means to your organization and then put it with like concerns, whatever they are.  Day-to-day, the org chart should matter less than whether they become full team members and share a sense of camaraderie and accomplishment with their team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18102" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T20:39:18.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12611" CreationDate="2015-08-06T21:17:10.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Things can change within a Sprint if there is a good reason for them to change.  Agile is all about value delivery.  If you prevent meaningful change within a Sprint for the sake of strictly following Scrum guidelines you are no longer being Agile in your implementation of Scrum and you are reducing the value a customer gets from your services because of blindly following a process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scrum guideline to prevent story/priority/defect commitment changes within the sprint is there to protect the team from the majority of changes which are unnecessary changes introduced from knee-jerk reactions, the loudest person in the room syndrome, and poor iteration planning practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a high priority defect (P0 or P1) arises within an iteration it is completely acceptable to defer story work if the fix is more valuable to the customer than the deferred work.  You should always communicate the impact of deferring committed work to address a new priority.  You have the PO on the scrum team throughout the iteration cycle to help the team continuously adapt to changing priorities as well as communicate to external stakeholders when changes occur.  Many teams establish SLA's on around their defects to automatically dictate the time frame in which a certain type of defect should be resolved regardless of where in the iteration the team is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T21:17:10.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15812" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15813" CreationDate="2015-08-07T07:51:19.560" Score="7" ViewCount="335" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a project manager, I am interested in the effort (estimated and actual).&#xA;While Sprint based estimation is story point based, how can I translate them to effort so that I can track and report them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time and again I hear that we should refrain from associating hours to story point; but as a PM I need to track my effort as hours. Am I missing something here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought it would be good to explain why I needed this.&#xA;This is from two perspectives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Billing (Client billing needs to be done in hours)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Productivity improvements comparison and organizational base lining.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7681" LastEditorUserId="7681" LastEditDate="2015-08-10T14:31:27.630" LastActivityDate="2015-08-10T14:31:27.630" Title="Sprint story point from PM perspective" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15812" CreationDate="2015-08-07T08:39:59.267" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Time based estimating and story point estimating are different concepts. There are two big differences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;With story point estimating the team is guessing at the relative size of tasks. For example, Story A is twice as big as Story B. The aim is for the team to do this relative sizing in a consistent way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Story point estimating is a metrics based approach. The idea is to do some work and then measure how long it took to complete. Then use that measurement to predict the time it will take to do future work that is of a similar &lt;em&gt;size&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a business requirement to track effort in time units (for example, if you need to bill a customer for hours worked) then this should be done by logging the time it takes to complete tasks. This would be &lt;em&gt;completely seperate&lt;/em&gt; from the story point estimating process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that this kind of logging of time is an overhead and so will reduce the output of the team. The team may well resist logging time unless they can see a good justification for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you also want to track &lt;em&gt;estimated&lt;/em&gt; effort in time units then the team would need to do two rounds of estimating. First they would do the story point estimating (for Scrum) and then they would need to do time based estimating (to meet the project management requirement). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once again this would be introducing an overhead that would reduce the output of the team. And once again this cost would need to be justified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T08:39:59.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15803" CreationDate="2015-08-07T08:49:37.373" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is worth remembering that Scrum is an agile framework and agile is all about responding to change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is fine and often useful to use the team's velocity to forecast when a backlog will be completed. But keep in mind that during the development process you will be expecting and &lt;em&gt;welcoming&lt;/em&gt; change. At the end of every sprint you do a sprint review where you elicit feedback from your Product Owner and stakeholders. The team should hope that this feedback will help bring the product development closer to what the stakeholders and users really want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The upshot of this iterative process is that long-term forecasts are highly unlikely to remain the same. It may even be necessary to revise the long-term forecasts after &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T08:49:37.373" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15803" CreationDate="2015-08-07T11:43:51.847" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can plot your teams velocity against the backlog and get optimistic and pessimistic release dates.&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Xv4UU.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Xv4UU.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The wavy black line is your team's burn-up line - it fluctuates because velocity often fluctuates.  The green line is an estimate of their best burn-up/velocity and red is an estimate of their worst burn-up/velocity.  Where they intersect the fixed scope line provides an estimation of the release date.  A &lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/502ILHjX9EE?list=PLkRdYotqIEr5WdXVcjQfrLV4YpHyy10Bw&amp;amp;t=745&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;video explaining this is here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18100" LastEditorUserId="18100" LastEditDate="2015-08-07T12:09:10.817" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T12:09:10.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15799" CreationDate="2015-08-07T11:56:32.720" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a complete Function Point expert, but it seems like you're trying to choose a technology based on the size. You've estimated that your software is going to be 10 function points. The table you linked to provides conversions between function points and logical source lines of code. Both are size that is then used to estimate the effort required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure how you want to go from function points to effort. There are different equations for doing that. Since you can convert from function points to SLOC, there are also tools and equations for estimating effort based on SLOC. I've used &lt;a href=&quot;http://csse.usc.edu/tools/COCOMOII.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;COCOMO II&lt;/a&gt; before, which allows for inputs in both SLOC and FP. There are others, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The models that I'm familiar with require more inputs than just the size of the software under construction. Consider the level of understanding of the domain, the amount of documentation that is required, the cohesion of the team, the capability and knowledge of the individuals in each role, the experience on the platform and language (and with the existing codebase, if one exists), the familiarity with the tools and work environment, and colocation (or lack thereof) of the development team. Inputs such as these are used along with the size to actually produce your estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You shouldn't choose a language based on the effort. Choose a language that appropriately solves the problems at hand that allows you to affect factors that go into the final effort estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T11:56:32.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15792" CreationDate="2015-08-07T13:49:48.920" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe you are basically looking for resource-management: You want to check if your resources (=employees) are fully occupied, or if you can still assign them to a few other projects. However, this is usually expressed using percent-busy values instead of budgets. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.project-open.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;www.project-open.com&lt;/a&gt; is an open-source PM tool with resource management, so it might work for you (disclaimer: I'm part of the team...). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6266" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T13:49:48.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15812" CreationDate="2015-08-07T16:26:10.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You cannot directly translate a story point into an hour effort equivalent.  At best a story point is a continuous distribution that represent a range of time values during which a story could be completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To say something like 2 story points = 3 days of effort is incorrect.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However it could be true that a 2 SP story has an average completion time of 3 days with a min of 1 day and max of 5 days using a 95% confidence interval.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whoever is asking for effort values to be derived from story point or velocity values is still thinking in waterfall terms.  If you absolutely need to provide effort values, a common method is to decompose stories into tasks and have the team members track their estimated and actual hours against individual tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you go this route, however, you will find that many team members may complain that it is an administrative burden.  You will also encounter padding behaviors.  Finally, if you work with certain types of waterfall managers, you will expose the team to micromanagement - something that is generally an absolute no-no on agile scrum teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T16:26:10.800" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15799" CreationDate="2015-08-07T18:30:59.797" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The gearing factor which is shown in the table, is just the amount of source line codes in a language that, in average, correspond to one function point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These projects are from QSM's data, and will vary much from organization to organization and even team to team. QSM note this on the page as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if the data was 100% correct and applicable in all environments, it still doesn't show you which language has the lowest effort. It really only &lt;em&gt;indicates&lt;/em&gt; how verbose the syntax is for each language. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example PowerBuilder takes in average only 26 lines, whereas J2EE is 46 and C# is 54. This would indicate Powerbuilder to be much more efficient. In reality, Powerbuilder is a 4gl language which indeed is very efficient, but only for a pretty narrow type of application (CRUD desktop client/server apps). Writing a modern web-app in Powerbuilder however, would take orders of magnitude more effort than writing it in C#.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this table is certainly nothing that should factor into a choice of technology. A much better factor in choosing tech, is as simple as whatever your team is more experienced in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8592" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T18:30:59.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15822" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-08T06:10:48.333" Score="1" ViewCount="872" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ideally, I'd like to use an Excel spreadsheet to generate the following for me from columns of &quot;User Story&quot;, &quot;Start&quot;, and &quot;End&quot;.  Even if it didn't take it from the spreadsheet and I had to enter all the epics in manually, it would be better than manually creating all those dang boxes and moving them around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/f9DWC.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/f9DWC.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the diagram above, the columns titles indicate the bi-weekly sprint.  &quot;1507-2&quot; just means 2nd half of July 2015, it's a shorthand used forever to communicate our entire company, to avoid ambiguity of saying &quot;Sprint 17&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm looking for is essentially a Gantt chart, but just a friendly version. How can I generate this type of chart from Excel? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18130" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-08-08T20:28:19.030" LastActivityDate="2015-11-17T14:47:16.653" Title="How can I create a visual timeline of User Stories / Epics from an Excel spreadsheet?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;&lt;release-plan&gt;&lt;epics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15823" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-08T11:22:12.300" Score="4" ViewCount="592" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do we create test packs for the final UAT. We create user stories and associated acceptance criteria which either can pass or fail. This can be done with test team but for business users what would be the format of the test package?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18137" LastActivityDate="2015-09-26T14:25:02.490" Title="What are the best practices to create UAT pack in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15823" CreationDate="2015-08-08T12:40:51.213" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You want to give guidance to the UAT testers, but not restict them too much. Real users may try things that the developers and testers don't try, so can reveal unexpected bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest something like the following as a UAT pack:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A list of the new functionality in the release&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A list of any known issues&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A test script that takes them through the new functionality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But don't forget to encourage the users to look beyond the test script and try things for themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to note is that Scrum does not encourage a 'final UAT'. The preferred approach would be to UAT within each sprint. This can be a challenge to organise, but is worth it as the team's definition of done can include releasable code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-08-08T12:40:51.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15827" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-09T02:25:06.047" Score="14" ViewCount="850" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm starting a software development consultancy -- coders for hire. I'd be the main developer and would hire others to delegate certain tasks to. The catch: I want that my clients should never see who my other workers are, so that they can't start researching their qualifications and decide they're under-qualified, try to poach them if they think they're amazing, or other nasty stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question: are there any best practices or tips for how to set up my internal systems and workflow to have such &quot;shadow developers&quot; that the client never knows the identity of?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the problem areas I have surrounding this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When the client gives me github access to their projects, should I request the access on a new github username for each client and then share the password to that user with all my employees? This has some major downsides I'd rather avoid: I can't review the code my workers commit before it's ever seen by my client, and I don't know which worker committed which commit. Is there another way?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My clients all have their own project management tools. Similarly to the github issue, I can end up looking bad if my worker has free access to collaborate with the client's other devs posing as me, and does/says something embarrassing. Or if two employees use my one account to ask the same question at the same time in different words. The nightmare scenarios can become legendary. On the other hand, maintaining a second project management system internally for my employees and copy+pasting the tickets from the clients' systems into it doesn't sound like a maintainable solution either. Any advice?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bonus question: What is a firm yet reasonable way I can explain to my workers why they need to do everything in their power to remain anonymous?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel my Google-fu is above average, but I've searched and searched and it seems I'm the only one on Earth who ever wanted to do this. If there's someone here who's walked this road, please enlighten me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;--- EDIT ---&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Joel points out below, the lack of transparency I'm looking to build into my team seems wrong, so I'll add some background info about my consultancy to clarify why I actually can't have things any other way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll be looking to find those rare exceptional programmers that don't look so good on their resume. The 16 year old who could outcode a Google engineer but doesn't realize it and works for his uncle building websites. The retired sales guy who used to code before the market crash and now is &quot;too old&quot; for Silicon Valley. You get the picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, the lack of transparency about who's doing the work is a key competitive advantage of my particular business. Giving it up in the name of the ideals of agile development means finding a new business model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19145" LastEditorUserId="19145" LastEditDate="2015-08-09T17:52:31.370" LastActivityDate="2016-10-11T22:09:53.003" Title="How do I organize a team of “shadow&quot; software developers (think ghostwriters)?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;process-engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15827" CreationDate="2015-08-09T15:36:32.093" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simplest answer to this will likely be the answer you least like. &lt;strong&gt;Don't...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the last fifteen or so years we have seen an ever increasing level of transparency in the work place. This crosses all industries, all job levels and all work styles. Agile hasn't gained the traction it has because it is the best methods of development ever. Agile has been successful in no small part because it supports the growing desire for transparency, honestly and collaboration in the work place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are looking to do is create what I used to call the &quot;KGB Development Team&quot;. You give them a set of requirements and they go away for six months telling you &quot;Don't worry, we tell you what you really want when we deliver.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Workers Not Qualified&lt;/strong&gt;- Your client cares about working software. That's their number one measure of success. Show them success and you could have chimpanzees working for you. If you're still trying to win your first client, you'll probably have to work a bit harder the first time out. If you adopt an iterative development model that allows you to show your client working, tested software within the first 2-4 weeks, then you will prove yourself that way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're open with your client, they will almost always be more tolerant. If you won't even tell them the names of your developers, then some of your clients are going to be running for the door because they won't trust their product to people who could have questionable backgrounds. Any client with any kind of government customers won't even touch you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Workers Poached by Clients&lt;/strong&gt; First off, If you create a good working environment, where your employees feel a part of the team, then you reduce the chance of them leaving. If you try and hide their names, all it does is create something for both the client and your employee to over come. If you've have a contract with Google and your employee has always wanted to work for Google, then their is nothing you can do to stop him from hooking up with Google. And in the reverse, there is no way to keep your client from finding out who your people are if they are determined. Short of the most radical black hat hackers, there is no anonymity on the net. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It comes right back to transparency and trust. You need to trust your clients and employees to be professional. If a client is always poaching your best coders, then they know it will effect their reputation not just with you. It will impact their ability to work with any outside contractors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion- Transparency and Trust are the best ways to have a &quot;Shadow Dev&quot; team&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Don't try and create a shadow dev team. You won't have your clients trust. You won't motivate your coders and it will create a layer of work for you that is not worth the outcome. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, tackle the problems you have head on. &#xA;- Quality work&#xA;- Recommendations for past clients&#xA;- No poaching clause in your contract &#xA;- Make your coders want to work for you more&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-08-09T15:36:32.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15751" CreationDate="2015-08-09T16:10:39.360" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could use a hammock task and assign yourself to a low assignment unit (&amp;lt;5%).&#xA;See: &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/141733&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/141733&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The link references Project 2003 - but the same applies to later versions of project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-08-09T16:10:39.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15827" CreationDate="2015-08-10T03:01:06.260" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Joel spoke well. As someone with this same issue, however, here's how I approach the dilemma:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Relationships, not abilities, matter.&lt;/strong&gt; I only hire excellent people, engineering or otherwise. So my goal with employees, most of whom are contracting through me, is to have an excellent working relationship with them. If they want to leave, that's too bad for me, but hopefully the incentives of working in a high-class firm with excellent projects, near-perfect organization, and good pay will make them want to stay. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More, not less transparency, is what matters.&lt;/strong&gt; Your issue is you want to keep control of your team. That's, respectfully, childish. People will make their decisions and if you can't respect that, then you won't be able to keep them. If someone tries to hire them away, they'll be likely to go. In my business everyone has the same level of transparency: I don't necessarily share everything, but I share everything within reason. Employees talk to clients if and when necessary, and they can make the decision on when that is. If someone tries to hire them away, I tell them outright that they can choose to do as they like. Sometimes they go and sometimes they don't. But I've never had a negative experience because of it. No matter what, if I can trust my people and vice versa, the relationship remains intact and valuable. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Types of employees don't matter (except legally).&lt;/strong&gt; If you're employing a 16 year old and aren't legally allowed to give him 40 hours of work a week, I get it. Good people are hard to come by, and laws that may be considered antiquated are tough to reconcile. But consider the risk to your business if found out. It's almost never worth it. But more importantly, if you're both up front about the situation and agree on what to do, you should be fine. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work with all types, local and remote, native English speakers and people in far-off countries, 60+ and even someone who's 15 years old. There's one commonality: they're all people. Treat them as such and you'll be fine. But bare in mind the legal ramifications of all cases. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trust is hard to come by, and harder to earn. I start out every meeting with a singular line: &quot;my aim is to help you succeed, and to do that we are completely transparent. If that doesn't work for you, let's stop right here, no questions asked.&quot; That goes for prospective contractors and clients alike. I say it over and over and I mean it more every time. It actually kills me when a new client or contractor has to be dumped because they can't remain open. I'm about to dump a customer now after a last warning. I don't have the time or patience to deal with poor customers who can't remain consistent and clear because they refuse to share. I don't have the interest in working with people who hide, lie, or otherwise fabricate the work they do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Life is too short for BS. So do it right, make something you're proud of, and move on to the next thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14947" LastActivityDate="2015-08-10T03:01:06.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15827" CreationDate="2015-08-10T13:17:07.213" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you're arguing for a situation where (at least some of) your employees will benefit from the anonymity, I can only think of one option:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Code Names&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create a culture of 'ninja squads' or some similar metaphor on being super-talented.  All your devs are remote, so they won't cut though it F2F.  You can instill each, individually, with the way that the codename / persona gives them an air of mystery, control against prejudice &amp;amp; perception, and other 'bad-assery' of whichever sort appeals to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll have to walk a thin line between really &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ham_it_up&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;hamming it up&lt;/a&gt;, and maintaining professionalism — both internally and externally.  Since your team will be referred to this way regularly, and possibly in common speech, you'll want to coach them on the choice (if they choose something that goes too far).  You may want to pay a graphic designer to 'consult' with each new team member and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are still many treacherous challenges down this road, but at least you'll have a good style of handling and other difficult set of forces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see a way to avoid it being a gimmick, and that will just undermine your companies credibility. Biz relations are about trust – and you're talking about breaking that by-design. So I think they best route is to use pseudonyms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm speaking some some experience, here.  I've contracted consultancy shops that tried to hide how many different developers were doing work.  It was apparent.   When deliverables came into question, I had zero trust that anything reliable was going to be done or said.  Every deliverable after that was just a crap-shoot until it was sent and validated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4718" LastEditorUserId="4718" LastEditDate="2015-08-10T16:07:54.723" LastActivityDate="2015-08-10T16:07:54.723" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15827" CreationDate="2015-08-10T13:36:03.383" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The contract type is another factor to consider. A &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-price_contract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;firm-fixed price&lt;/a&gt; (FFP) contract can provide you the opacity which is your stated desire. The specification is set in the statement of work or statement of objectives. The product is evaluated for acceptance against the specification. To cut against opacity, the buyer can require &quot;key person&quot; clause requiring ou to identify a specified number of personnel, their qualifications, and their duties on the contract. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In theory FFP puts the risk on the offeror and allows the offeror to create the deliverable how-so-ever the offeror decides is best (aka least cost). FFP tends to create more strict lines of demarcation between offeror and the buyer which will complicate the role of the product owner working in the scrum process. The is not the recommended contract type for software development as it presumes a defined deliverable which is rarely the case for applications and is the antithesis of the agile approach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost-plus_contract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cost plus&lt;/a&gt; (CP) has more of a scope of work than a specification. Profit and overhead are part of the fixed fee. Because the costs can be variable,  the buyer gets to review the inputs and process whereby the deliverable is created. This allows offeror and buyer to share risk. A variant of CP is cost plus fixed fee, cost plus award fee (where awards are made for identified factors like early delivery or technical excellence). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_and_materials&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;time and materials&lt;/a&gt; (T&amp;amp;M) contract has the most general scope of work and greatest flexibility (and greatest risk) for the buyer. Labor rates and material rates are negotiated at contract award. This has the least risk for the offeror and hence the buyer typically demands greater invisibility into the offeror's process, practices, personnel, and other inputs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So from the perspective of contract risk, T&amp;amp;M gives you (the developer) the most attractive contract type and is the most congenial contract type for agile and scrum processes. However, FFP gives you complete control of your labor and processes so that you can hire whomever you want, from the contract perspective. Note that there can be limitations on your hiring practices; a contract may prohibit use of discriminatory practices, prison labor, or foreign labor. Socio-economic requirements and limitations are common in government contracts.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8524" LastEditorUserId="8524" LastEditDate="2015-08-10T13:50:03.217" LastActivityDate="2015-08-10T13:50:03.217" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15827" CreationDate="2015-08-10T15:01:56.310" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am assuming that this is not a question of integrity but more of logistics. As a PM, I assume you also have a code of conduct that you're declare in your B2B communique. Having set that aside, I have done this using roles instead of programmer names and addresses. E.g.: &quot;Lead Developer&quot;, &quot;J2EE developer&quot; &quot;WET4 engineer&quot; etc. This allows me to change programmer should I no longer have a contract with Jimmy. My clients have never asked who the developer is or where he/she exists on the planet. Ultimately, the buck stops here with me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19157" LastActivityDate="2015-08-10T15:01:56.310" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15835" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-10T16:35:19.937" Score="0" ViewCount="823" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to use custom fields to manage a project, but the main task is not showing values for the calculated fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm working on MS Project and decided to create some Custom Fields. I've created the following tasks: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xA;TaskName         StartDate   EndDate   CalculatedStartDate    CalculatedEndDate&#xA; + Main Task     10/8/15      14/8/15 &#xA;   - SubTask1    10/8/15      12/8/15    10/8/15               12/8/15&#xA;   - SubTask2    13/8/15      14/8/15    13/8/15               14/8/15&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;CalculatedStartDate&lt;/em&gt; and the &lt;em&gt;CalculatedEndDate&lt;/em&gt;, are not showing values for the Main Task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The calculated fields are formulas. All the formulas I'm using are CustomField=[MS ProjectField] &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Example (Comienzo refers to StartDate. The MS Project Version I'm using is Spanish): &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8CG8U.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8CG8U.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17971" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-08-11T14:39:27.127" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T14:39:27.127" Title="Custom Fields with empty Values on MS Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15835" CreationDate="2015-08-10T16:35:19.937" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;After writing this question, I realized that I was missing a click on &quot;Cálculo de las filas de asignación&gt;&gt;Usar Fórmula&quot; on the image at the right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, the error was gone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17971" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-08-11T12:09:17.040" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T12:09:17.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15837" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-10T16:44:40.790" Score="1" ViewCount="610" Body="&lt;p&gt;Got a few questions on RAID (Risks, Assumptions, Issues, Dependencies) and RISK registers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In what phase of the project does a PM create a RAID log?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am assuming it is during the planning phase. is it correct?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does a RAID log a way of RISK management?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is Risk Register different than RAID?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7681" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T12:03:16.780" Title="When does a PM create a RAID log" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15837" CreationDate="2015-08-10T18:40:19.033" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before the project is even chosen.  After all, the contents are part of the project business case.  Without it, your case is not credible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-08-10T18:40:19.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="156" CreationDate="2015-08-11T06:20:07.827" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience if the roles are properly defined with in the project team there shouldn't be any conflicts. PM role serves a different aspect compared to a technical lead who manages the technical aspects of the project. And the higher management should understand how to position these roles for effective operation of a PMO. Refer how project teams are organized in PRINCE2 methodology. In some organizations both Project Manager and a Technical Project Manager role played by a single person, where technocracy dominates. There is no place for a PM in those companies. And the question is asked in a way, that there is a practical problem exists which is some thing bound with the culture of the organization. Probably the PMs are not considered as a team with unique skill set to drive the project to a success. This situation is most common in software development kind of environment, where in System integration, ERP implementation and other kind of projects, PM plays a significant role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6362" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T06:20:07.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15837" CreationDate="2015-08-11T06:31:34.207" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with David Espina. Before the project is on-boarded this should be initiated. If it's an internal project or an external project, RAIDs should be evaluated for relevant financial impacts on your project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately whether it's time or quality of the deliverables, they will have a negative financial impact if you don't evaluate them before accepting the project. Once a project is started, the risk and issue registers become live documents and will be updated alongside the current status of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some risks identified will becomes issues and some will not. More effort should be given to Risks and Issues before and at the planning stage of the project, continuous effort should be made to maintain them in an live/active manner throughout the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6362" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-08-11T12:03:16.780" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T12:03:16.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15843" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-11T09:21:12.413" Score="13" ViewCount="3144" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm the Project Manager for a large application that customers use to collect data on whether their businesses meet certain medical and financial standards. They generally answer a survey explaining how their surgery meets/doesn't meet the standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The application has a tool to analyse this information, so that owners of a group of surgeries can see overall how the surgeries equipment are doing . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The owners of the groups are asking for the data to be exportable to Excel or word. I've posed this to our development team, and they don't believe that exporting huge excel or word sheets of data is worthwhile. There arguments are based on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The data could be huge to export&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no way for them to do anything useful with that many pages&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How would this work for users who use the iphone/android app of the tool&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm in between a rock an a hard place with them and I'm not sure how best to convince them that this is what we need to do (short of putting my foot down and demanding it!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19163" LastEditorUserId="19163" LastEditDate="2015-08-12T20:48:13.943" LastActivityDate="2015-08-17T21:50:39.410" Title="Should you export data to Excel and Word?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15843" CreationDate="2015-08-11T10:24:20.673" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a principle, whether having an Excel is &quot;worth&quot; (business-wise) or not isn't up to the development team to decide. They have to be able to tell whether it's feasible, and objectively tell what are the pros and cons (i.e. it won't work when you have more than 1.000.000 rows of data), they can also advise the client on whether this really solves their problem or not (and if not, constructively be able to propose another valid solution), but they can't refuse to implement a feature just because they think it's worthless. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said maybe the problem has not been analysed enough, and the dev team and the client are clearly not on the same page yet; so personally I'd put them together so that they can better understand the problem and collaborate to find the best solution. The client might not have fully expressed his real need, and the development team can maybe come up with a different idea...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16362" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T10:24:20.673" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15843" CreationDate="2015-08-11T11:56:57.740" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Exporting to Excel is a solution, not a requirement.  You need to go back to the owners and get them to detail their functional requirements for the data.  Once done, then hand it over to the developers and let them propose a solution.  It may end up being Excel because, as you wrote, it's already there, or it might be another solution that meets the requirements.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to bang each solution up against their benefits, costs, risks, and other penalties.  The fact that Excel is already there and they know how to use it is certainly a benefit, but the owners might not know of or are under estimating the impacts of some of the penalties they will have using Excel and end up in the long term unhappy.  In contrast, building a new solution will cost money and take time and they will have to learn it--costs and penalties--but it may cure of the impacts of Excel and, in the long run make them happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of this you know yet; this has to be analyzed and a case built for each solution.  But everything starts with getting proper requirements from the owners.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T11:56:57.740" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15849" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15861" CreationDate="2015-08-11T14:52:10.867" Score="3" ViewCount="241" Body="&lt;p&gt;An issue has come up lately as we break down stories.. The scenario is as follows: During product increment planning we outline X amount of stories for the PI. This is recorded in Jira with story points associated to each story. As we go into sprint planning we often find the the original stories may be to broad, or may not not fill a business requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So two question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Granted its a tooling problem, but is it the norm to link the new stories back to the original?&#xA;If the original story had say 20 story points and the sub story has 10, would you reduce 10 from the original story to avoid double counting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19173" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T20:19:45.753" Title="Story breakdown and parent story points" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15849" CreationDate="2015-08-11T15:23:37.967" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are on a Scrum team, there is only one type of story...which is an actionable, value-delivering story.  There should not be a hierarchy that involves story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may have an epic or feature or some other form of higher level, less defined concept, that links stories, but these generally will not be estimated using story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is it the norm to link stories back to the original...I'd say no.  Since the original story sounds like it is not actionable it should be re-written or split up into real user stories that follow INVEST principles.  Once the original story is split, remove the original SP estimates and only have the team estimate the actionable stories.  Convert the original into an Epic if need be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may still retain the higher level entity for other purposes like portfolio planning/roadmapping, or if your customer is referencing the higher level entity as one of their business requirements.  I hate saying these things as they move away from basic Scrum, but many organizations used mixed scrum/waterfall practices at the program/portfolio level to fill their medium and long-term planning needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T15:23:37.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15843" CreationDate="2015-08-11T16:19:25.427" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a very small office and have to for-fill a lot of the Scrum roles myself, so I have to balance the sides and arguments in my head for such decisions, this one was a simple decision for me, even though the Backend guy was unable to do the task (I do my own now).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I created xml spreadsheets for Excel based on what is actually displayed in an Actionscript DataTable  (one huge string put in a notepad saved as .xml), besides a CSV copy of Flash Datatables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The creation of Excel spreadsheets at the back end is trivial I can not conceive of a scenario that makes arguing over doing it are worth the time rather than  just doing the request.  Even turning the 1 datatable into a  3 sheet excel with parameters dates and disclaimers was not particularly difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work very closely with clients but I am never 100% sure what all of their end requirements are, giving them excel outputs means they can do the 80% of all the possible uses and interpretations of the data for 20% of the effort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing was not to get the excel in the software but to get the real problem out of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19175" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T16:19:25.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15843" CreationDate="2015-08-11T16:21:45.013" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would change my mindset from &quot;How can I convince them?&quot; to &quot;Do the user really want to Export to Excel?&quot; and &quot;What solution would be make my client happier while making money?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk with the stakeholders. They might think of Excel as a familiar way to describe the functionality. (A solution, not the requirement). But they might prefer Excel anyway (A direct requirement). In this case:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look for alternatives. For example, CSV files can be opened by Excel and are easier to compare. They are usables on Linux and Mac and it should be easier to develop.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make clear to the customer that you will make whatever solution he wants. At this point you are not worried about working more hours. You are worried about developing a solution that might not work for them. Afterwards you might talk about costs if it is an issue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure that the client understands the problems. For example, you could create two dummy Excel files and tell them. &quot;How would you compare them?&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check if the data is &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-nz/article/Excel-specifications-and-limits-1672b34d-7043-467e-8e27-269d656771c3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;too big for Excel&lt;/a&gt; and some conservative performance metrics (It might take one hour to export to Excel in a nightly batch proceess)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask &quot;What do you plan to do with this Excels?&quot;. A backup? You should be able to backup the database. A report? Could you generate the report automatically?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once the customer takes a decision send the minute to have a written proof that they accepted the consecuences. Make sure to keep the email easy to find.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain to the development team that this is a direct requirement from the customer. Not from yourself and your efforts to look for a better solution. Thanks them for their input. Even if the customer was inflexible you will be better off having explained the potencial issues beforehand.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19176" LastEditorUserId="19176" LastEditDate="2015-08-11T16:32:16.777" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T16:32:16.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15854" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15860" CreationDate="2015-08-11T19:23:28.643" Score="10" ViewCount="720" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a client to whom we have explained the whole Agile process, where he pays for each sprint (as billing cycles), and he agreed to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are a new company and we don't really have a legal advisor. That being said, we are charging 50% of the billing cycle at the start, and 50% at the end; and the customer made the first payment &lt;em&gt;before signing the contract&lt;/em&gt;. (The project has about 4 billing cycles so far).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today we sent the contract for the first cycle, but the customer asked us to &lt;strong&gt;send a contract for the whole project&lt;/strong&gt;. Since we are doing Agile development, we charge per cycle, meaning that each cycle's price might change depending on requirements, therefore &lt;em&gt;there is no such thing as a &quot;total price&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, but only &lt;strong&gt;estimations&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do we [re]explain this to the customer? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PS:&lt;/strong&gt; Yes, clearly we were not clear enough when explaining this the first time, so we want to re-explain it without sounding like we never told this about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering the fact that he knows he payed just for the first cycle, how do we explain that others cycles are just an estimate? (The document describing each cycle had a disclosure that says: &lt;em&gt;&quot;Changes in requirement might cause price changes&quot;&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17593" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T20:29:15.290" Title="Customer asks for a contract with the price for the whole project, but we are Agile" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15855" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-11T19:40:20.250" Score="0" ViewCount="1214" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've created a simple custom report in Microsoft Project 2013 with a task table that I'd like to sort on Duration1, which happens to be calculated from a formula (as described in &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/15766/error-in-user-defined-field-formula-even-after-testing-against-projdatevaluen&quot;&gt;#ERROR in User-Defined Field Formula Even After Testing Against ProjDateValue(&amp;#39;NA&amp;#39;)&lt;/a&gt;). Going from &quot;No Sort&quot; to sorting on this field does change the order of the tasks in the table, but they don't seem to be in any particular order - and most certainly not in ascending order. Changing the sort order to descending on this field again re-orders the tasks - but not in correct descending order. I've found other references to similar problems (c.f. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mpug.com/forums/topic/project-2013-sorting-by-date-duration-etc-not-working-in-custom-report/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.mpug.com/forums/topic/project-2013-sorting-by-date-duration-etc-not-working-in-custom-report/&lt;/a&gt;) but without any solution.  &lt;strong&gt;Am I missing something or is this just a Project 2013 defect?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report happens to use a custom task filter, but taking that off doesn't seem to make a difference in correctly sorting.  Same is true when changing the outline level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17809" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2018-08-28T17:46:17.563" Title="Sort Not Working in Microsoft Project Custom Report" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15854" CreationDate="2015-08-11T19:42:32.410" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are party to the agreement.  You can simply say no, that supplying a firm price on uncertain requirements and specs is simply not in your best interest.  Or, and this is a huge or, you have to load it with a ton of contingency that would likely quadruple his price or worse, in order for you to assume the risk of uncertain requirements and specs...which is not in his best interest.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But keep in my your customer's perspective.  Since they are not constantly competing each sprint, they would perceive losing leverage in obtaining a fair and competitive price.  They're already in bed with you and invested in you.  This means you can start inflating your price on a whim and they have little leverage to hold it down except to fire you completely, which may be more expensive for them and therefore, not really a viable option.  This is about trust, which your customer may have just indicated a lack of....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T19:42:32.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15854" CreationDate="2015-08-11T19:47:24.063" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In case you already defined the Minimum Viable Product with your client, you could define prices based rather on market prices for the desired user stories (not hour estimations). Then your customer would pay for some stories more than he would than if it was based on an &quot;hour price&quot; and for some less. By doing so you have coupled your interests as a vendor the interests of your customer which should be do goal: The most important and valuable get implemented first. This is some interesting approach I read originally in the book &quot;Wie schätzt man in agilen Projekten: - oder wieso Scrum-Projekte [...] By Boris Gloger&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your customer should consider that he has a lot more flexibility than in traditional projects in regards of &quot;change for free&quot;. He can just replace backlog items with others that become more important on the fly, if the other items have the same &quot;size&quot;. I read estimations that are talking about 6 sprints before you have something real to show. You can probably consider building a bit larger clusters with a fixed price than just one sprint. I think if you offer full transparency to your customer he can act more like an investor/stakeholder here than a &quot;traditional customer&quot;. This would require a lot of trust into the product owner on your side. Maybe you can have a smooth transition into the Scrum process meaning that you are taking a bit more risk on your side until the customer has built the trust it needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17972" LastEditorUserId="17972" LastEditDate="2015-08-11T19:56:36.563" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T19:56:36.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15854" CreationDate="2015-08-11T20:03:15.953" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have a consistent scrum team and sprint lengths (both of which you should if you're operating in the Scrum model), you should have a consistent sprint cost. If you have other skills that are needed sometimes (like a DBA or UI designer) you will need to work that into the cost somehow, but I'd advise incorporating those skills into the team in the long term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a small project, you might have a good idea of the scope of the whole thing, but a lot of times you may be looking at a product increment or release that's a few months out that you've created the backlog for and the team has at least reviewed the stories. From that, you can do a burn-up chart to see around how many sprints it may take to get through that scope. It sounds like you may have already done this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say the burn-up chart shows that you'll meet the expected scope in 6 - 8 sprints. You could now bill for 8 sprints as long as the customer understands that during your sprint reviews with them, there may be changes in the backlog to match the understanding of the project gained as it progresses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's important to also make sure your customer understands that their big protection is that you create potentially shippable product every sprint, so at any time, they can decide enough scope is done to meet their needs and they can call it a wrap. That way even if the backlog changes, and some stories get pushed out in favor of newly discovered important stories, they can still be done at the 8 sprint mark and they'll have working software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T20:03:15.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15854" CreationDate="2015-08-11T20:15:40.707" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Bill them the same amount for each cycle&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since we are doing Agile development... each cycle's price might&#xA;  change depending on requirements&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should not. You want to keep a dedicated team of cross-functional resources who are working on this client's project. It is neither  productive for you nor cost effective for the client to bring in new people for one sprint, spend time on gaining the domain knowledge and go away for the next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will also keep the billing simple and predictable for the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should do your high-level planning on what this dedicated team can accomplish in each sprint. In backlog refinement and sprint planning you should explain the trade offs to the customer if many bells and whistles get added on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T20:15:40.707" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15849" CreationDate="2015-08-11T20:19:45.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;By deciding that you need to break out stories from the original, you'd gained a better understanding of the story and you should no longer assume your estimate of the first story was accurate. In the specific case you give, I would re-estimate the original story now that you've broken it apart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To take this a step further, it's important to know that what you did is very natural and the rest of the team will probably think the same. To get around this, often times instead of breaking out effort from a story, we break up the story into new stories. Then, you ask the product owner if the set of new stories will deliver what they were looking for in the original story. This allows the team to have good conversations about the effort and story points for each story without holding a bias toward their previous assumptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original story may be deleted or kept around for reference depending on what works best for you, but would never be worked. (it would be treated like any other epic)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T20:19:45.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15854" CreationDate="2015-08-11T20:29:15.290" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A contract and a bill do not need to be the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen Agile contracts that are pretty much a brief summation of how the scrum team will iteratively deliver work and how the client will iteratively provide input.  These contracts do no list a fixed price or expiration date, they are at will and focus on the client contracting the supplier as long as the service provided is valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The amount to be paid during each payment schedule is negotiable but like Daniel points out, a fixed Scrum team with fixed iteration length should have a fairly predictable operational cost.  Other easily predicted costs include things like hardware/infrastructure and licenses.  Exceptions can be handled in the contract via a time &amp;amp; materials type of agreement.  You may want to put a % limiter on allowable T&amp;amp;M costs if the client is uncomfortable with the prospect of being in any type of T&amp;amp;M agreement.  The important thing in the Agile contract is that you are up front about how and when bills are calculated.  The initial contract doesn't need to specify the total billable amount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now...a lot of clients have a fixed budget and want to understand how long they can burn budget.  For this, a scrum team with a fixed iteration/velocity can provide the client with roughly how long they can burn.  The important connection to establish with the client, however, is that &quot;On X budget, we estimate to be able to deliver valuable features for Y-Z days, weeks, months, etc.  More importantly, help us understand what features are most important now, and throughout our engagement, so that we always can deliver optimal value.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T20:29:15.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4513" CreationDate="2015-08-11T23:09:16.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a well-known Ken Schwaber quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum doesn't solve your problems; Scrum exposes your problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He's exactly right. You still have to find and fix the problems that are keeping you from delivering high quality software more quickly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been in this business for three decades, and have managed teams for almost two decades, on and off. I've gone in and fixed a couple dozen companies in the past six years, using a combination of Scrum and Kanban. Lean/Agile approaches to software development work very well, if you understand the underlying philosophy. If you don't, if you just proceed with a 'cargo cult' rote form of Scrum (or another Lean/Agile approach), you will not get the results you're looking for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a specific criticism, then let's look at the most common failure mode for Lean/Agile? When an organization (and specifically its leadership) is unwilling to acknowledge and fix the problems that this approach exposes. In fact, this is the only failure mode... and it is a universal failure mode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19189" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-12T05:21:03.223" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T05:21:03.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15864" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15869" CreationDate="2015-08-12T00:12:00.847" Score="3" ViewCount="72" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Company background:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are a company that consists of five developers, a sales department an HR and a communication department. (this question will only focus on the development department).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have build our system (and is still building) using Angular which means that the system is Web based. Right now we &quot;pretend&quot; to use scrum however there are a lot of steps that i as Head of the department is still unsure how to tackle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The issue&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now our development plan for the year has been set. This consists of alot of smaller projects that has to be done from Q3 of 2015 and until end of 2016. As of now each Developer is tasked with one assignment and two developers at a time would rarely work on the same project (which I see as a problem). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Im finding it hard to divide each project into groups and thereby allowing two or more of my developers to work on the same project without overlapping. It seems to me that web development is more or less a straight line of steps  that has to be done until the project is complete and goes into the testing phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel that this kinda negates my idea of a Scrum team which in my mind should be a team working on the same projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is how do you guys work on a single web development project that is being split into many different tasks? Should I continue handing out assignments to each individual developer or is a collaboration on the smaller projects necessary to encourage a sense of team spirit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19190" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-12T05:35:28.153" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T08:04:14.480" Title="Applying management to project in continuesly development" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15843" CreationDate="2015-08-12T03:26:13.200" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Thinking as a technical person&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;If the information is being stored in a database of some description its typically not too difficult to grant read only access to the tables that the users want to see and then have them import the data directly from excel bypassing the application front-end (developers don't have to do anything) either using excels data import functions or using customised VBA scripts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Thinking as a manager&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Talk to your Business Analyst to add the requirement in a meaningful form or alternatively ask the Product Owner / Project Sponsor / boss like person to prioritise the work. It does sound like you are in a 'solution mind frame', which is not the job of a PM. Just because people love excel doesn't mean that they actually need an export to excel feature, sometimes this can lead to security risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19192" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T03:26:13.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="343" CreationDate="2015-08-12T04:49:58.477" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Critical Chain was invented to handle the ever-present issue of buffering tasks in a schedule with dependent tasks, and how early finishes could never be taken advantage of while late finishes slipped all dependent tasks. It 'works' by cutting all task durations in half, ensuring that most tasks won't finish early. The time removed is then added to a 'chain buffer' as the last dependent task in the chain. In order to track progress on the schedule, all tasks that are completed on or ahead of time are marked as late, but all tasks that finish late are marked as completed and the extra time (time in addition to that allocated for the task) is 'eaten' in the chain buffer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal of Critical Chain was to ensure that no task had to wait because someone finished early. It only works when you have a lot of resources that can constantly switch from task to task. We get the same thing in Scrum by NOT assigning component tasks of backlog items to team members, instead having team members grab the highest-priority task that has not been started and that they can do once they finish their current task. This allows us to utilize a pull system as found in Lean/TPS, and ensures that 'ready' tasks are started as soon as an appropriate resource is available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, you don't need, or want, Critical Chain inside a properly-implemented Scrum process... it is a solution to a non-existent problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19189" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T04:49:58.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4513" CreationDate="2015-08-12T07:29:59.773" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's a very good question indeed, and no: Scrum is not that great, if you take it as a bullet-proof, cheap, one-size-fits-all way to let your team/company magically solve their problems... it is great if you know when, why and how to use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said there are several critiques out there that might be interesting for you. Some of them are not inherently related to Scrum, but nevertheless question some knowledge that in the Scrum world is taken for granted or &amp;quot;trusted&amp;quot; more as a dogma than as a verified experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good book on this is &lt;a href=&quot;https://leanpub.com/leprechauns&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Leprechauns of Software Engineering&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you can also have a look at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE6lbPLEAzc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This video by M. Fowler and N. Ford &amp;quot;Explaining Agile&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20150206025047/http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2014/09/why-scrum-should-basically-just-die-in.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why Scrum Should Basically Just Die In A Fire&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.toolshed.com/2015/05/the-failure-of-agile.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Failure of Agile&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agileconsulting.blogspot.be/2010/02/it-time-for-scrum-to-evolve.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;It's time for Scrum to evolve&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16362" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-06T06:25:25.553" LastActivityDate="2020-07-06T06:25:25.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15868" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-12T08:00:46.093" Score="6" ViewCount="1542" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am using Microsoft Project Standard 2013 and would like to know how I can add a split task to my gantt diagram. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This task shell visualize dates where no changes to our infrastructure are allowed. Therefor this task has more than one beginning and ending. E.g: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task 1: 1th of June to 31th of August&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task 2: 1th of July to 31th of August&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Frozen Zone: 1th of August to 4th August &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; 29th of August to 31th of August&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope you understand what I am trying to achieve. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19196" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-08-12T08:03:24.883" LastActivityDate="2016-04-18T16:10:58.977" Title="How to add special, non-continuous dates to one task?" Tags="&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15864" CreationDate="2015-08-12T08:04:14.480" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see different things here and there are no details of what things you're developing and for who so take the feedback with a pinch of salt of course ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all there's no such thing as Scrum for a single developer, the whole idea of Scrum is centered around the concept of a self-organizing, multi-disciplinary development team, that is tasked with a general goal and then develop iteratively, deciding who does what in an autonomous and dynamic way.&#xA;That said I think you should first focus on the problems and how to solve them, for maybe Scrum is not the answer and being &quot;compliant&quot; to Scrum might not help you at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It seems to me that web development is more or less a straight line of steps that has to be done until the project is complete and goes into the testing phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, that is true only in a very stable environment, that is an environment in which:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're able to capture requirements in a detailed way&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requirements do not change&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each stage of development produce a fully completed, not-subject-to-change-whatsoever deliverable that can be handed to the next phase&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People do not change&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Goals do not change&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You don't need intermediate feedback&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not in that situation (and if you're doing web-development I'd bet you're not), acting like you're not exposed to such problems can be dangerous.&#xA;To be more specific to your question, the Scrum way works pretty much like this (and I'm really simplifying here for the sake of conciseness, I invite you to have a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Guide&lt;/a&gt; to know more):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A product/project backlog is defined&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A team is appointed (the team should have all the expertise required to develop the product/project)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team is mainly/totally focused on the project/product (e.g. no such thing as &lt;em&gt;Dev1 working from Mon to Tue, Dev2 working from Wed to Thu, tester working on Fridays&lt;/em&gt;, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A sprint backlog is decided and prioritized, the backlog is composed by actionable items&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team splits the backlog into tasks and decides autonomously who's going to work on what, given the priorities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order for this to work there are also some rules and principles that apply, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work is to be done strictly by priority, i.e. there's no such thing as &quot;everything is priority here&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Backlog does not change within the sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Development is more &lt;a href=&quot;http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?IterativeVsIncremental&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;iterative than incremental&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your situation does not allow for this to be put in place, or you see no benefit in doing this, do not even try to apply Scrum, chances are you're looking for somethinge else. Luckily the Agile spectrum of methods and practices offers you way more than Scrum... :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16362" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T08:04:14.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15843" CreationDate="2015-08-12T09:40:20.680" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could simply put your foot down, and give the customer what they want, but so long as the developers don't get why the feature is useful, they're unlikely to implement it in a useful way. They'll give you a pointless Excel export, which won't be used, and they'll get to say &quot;see, I told you so&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the best thing to do is to bridge the gap between the users and the developers. Take a few developers, preferably the ones closest to the front-end, and the ones that are most 'people friendly', and have them &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://designingwithpeople.rca.ac.uk/methods/observation-shadowing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;shadow&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; the users for a day. Let the users show them what they want to achieve and why it's useful to them. At worst, you'll make sure that the feature actually does what the users want (rather than what they say they want) and at best, the users and developers will reach a more creative solution that really solves the problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After all, it's not the user's job to design the software, and it's not the developer's job to choose the requirements. They have to work together to create something of value. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, if you really want to get it right, get the users and the developers to wireframe some mockups together. Test these mockups on other users to make sure they understand and then discuss them with the team before implementing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, this is the sort of stuff that your interaction designer/ux manager should do. It's understandable if you don't have one of those, but I recommend working towards having one. Take this as an exercise. Send three developers to interact with the users. Pick the one that the users responded to the best, and who seemd to like the exercise the most, and start giving him/her more design-like responsibilities. Not design as in photoshopping what the buttons should look like, but design as in collecting user stories, mocking up and usertesting potential features, and working with the other developers to figure out the implementation details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19201" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T09:40:20.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15871" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-12T10:20:15.817" Score="6" ViewCount="1804" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use Scrum and we make software products for other companies (I guess it's called B2B).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, first subquestion: Who should be satisfied by the Development Team: the Product Owner or the Stakeholders? I believe both. But I think, that the main goal of the Development Team is to make the Product Owner happy as the single entry point of requirements and the &quot;aggregator&quot; of all other Stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this is the root of my question: all thought of the Product Owner will be subjective. Different Product Owners means different psychotypes. One of them may be generous with praise and be glad for any positive changes in the product. Others may always be dissatisfied. And if the Development Team produces a great increment he will only be a little less dissatisfied, than usual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As Scrum Master I want to assess the level of customer satisfaction after each increment and search for a way to increase it. But how can we make an objective assessment of customer satisfaction&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is asking the Product Owner's opinion enough?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Or, maybe it's a good idea to suggest that the Product Owner get formal feedback (like surveys) from other stakeholders?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Or maybe there are more formal methods for measuring such an abstract entity as customer satisfaction?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finally, maybe it's better to not use this subjective measurement at all?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-17T17:16:43.807" LastActivityDate="2015-08-17T17:16:43.807" Title="How to measure customer satisfaction in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;customer&gt;&lt;customer-satisfaction&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15872" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15874" CreationDate="2015-08-12T12:56:49.060" Score="0" ViewCount="94" Body="&lt;p&gt;I´m doing a feasibility study for a proposed Workforce Management tool to see it is worthy invest on that. This tool can integrate several areas or our organization, so i want to make a survey to identify the needs of the areas related to the functionalities of this application. The goal is to determine the possible savings if the organization decides to adopt that solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas of the kind of question can I use on this survey?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The departments are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recruiting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planning/MIS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Payroll Adminstration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Training and Quality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18099" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T14:04:34.497" Title="Survey for Feasibility Study (WFM Tool)" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4513" CreationDate="2015-08-12T13:42:47.917" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many well-articulated arguments against Scrum and some other answers have pointed those out, so I'll leave that part of the question be. As for Agile, I think the big thing you have to consider is that Agile is made up of value statements, which are inherently very difficult to argue over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take the first value as an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that we value people and their conversations and collaboration with other people. When we use processes and tools, we try to make sure that the ones we select or build improve people's ability to work together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you either agree with that or you don't. You can't really argue that forcing people to use a tool that causes them to have trouble communicating with their colleagues is better than one that streamlines communication. If your job simply requires a warm body that follows a set process and you haven't automated that function yet, then sure, Agile isn't for you, but we all know that - there's no reason to debate the point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, of course, anything can become dated. There was quite a bit of conversation a little while back about updating the 12 Agile Principles because some of it just doesn't make sense anymore. For example, referring to delivering software every couple of weeks to a couple of months as delivering quickly is very dated. Many companies deliver production software multiple times per day and people delivering every few months are well behind the curve. But that points us to the other reason you don't see many debates: Proponents of Agile are a lot faster at pointing out flaws and pushing to fix them than opponents are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile has changed a lot in the past 15 years and as long as it continues to, many of the arguments against it are left in the dust as people practicing it find the weak points and keep improving them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T13:42:47.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15872" CreationDate="2015-08-12T14:04:34.497" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't usually start with a proposed product and then see where and how it can be used. You usually start with the needs of the various business areas and then investigate which tools fit those needs (and budgets).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The questions on any survey you intend to send must be related to potential benefits the tool brings and how they relate to the business areas. In essence, you are asking &quot;This tool can do [this thing], what areas of your part of the business could benefit from [this thing]?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have a map of possible benefits (and disbenefits of deploying the tool- not all impacts will be positive) you then need to drill into each and understand in more detail what benefits or problems &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, since I have no idea what it means to &quot;integrate several areas of our organisation&quot; nor what a workforce management tool actually does, and since no-one here will have any context for what your organisation does and how such a tool could benefit your specified departments, provision of any more specific responses will be off-topic as &quot;Opinion-based&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T14:04:34.497" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15875" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-12T15:28:57.153" Score="5" ViewCount="1923" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have employed two Business analysts and I'm not sure how they relate to my role as a PM. Does anyone know how their role should relate to me as the manager of the project as a whole?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19163" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-08-13T08:35:16.530" LastActivityDate="2015-09-15T12:58:47.470" Title="How does a Business Analyst fit in with a Product Manager?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;business-analyst&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15875" CreationDate="2015-08-12T17:06:00.920" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Business Analysts will understand the customers needs and deliver a fully comprehension of the business requirements for the project and how these requirements can be met. The PM must coordinate the whole process of the project, making sure that all the stakeholders will receive the information needed for their work, that the scope will be followed, that the schedule and budget will be not surpassed and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, BAs will feed the project manager with the requirements and solution to be delivered, and the PM will ensure that everything will run as planned during the project execution until it is finished. You manage the project, they manage the business needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.batimes.com/articles/the-project-manager-vs.-the-business-analyst.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;. It offers some explanation about the difference between these roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it can help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18099" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T17:06:00.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15877" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-12T20:15:47.123" Score="5" ViewCount="927" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, let me state that while this is a subjective question, I think it is appropriate, because I'm asking for information beyond just &quot;please dump titles at me&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm teaching an intro software engineering/OOAD course for junior/senior computer science majors. I've taught it before, but the last time I taught was before Scrum eclipsed XP in terms of use and support. So I can't reuse the &lt;em&gt;XP Explained&lt;/em&gt; book from before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm unable to find an appropriate Scrum book that gently introduces the principles of Scrum, along with supporting practice concepts (like examples). What I would love is something close to &lt;em&gt;XP Explained&lt;/em&gt; but for Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't get me wrong, there are great Scrum books and resources, but each has issues. The online &lt;em&gt;Scrum Primer&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/em&gt; are great overviews (and I will be using one), but have nothing about the concepts in practice. Sims and Johnson's &lt;em&gt;Scrum: a Breathtakingly Brief and Agile Introduction&lt;/em&gt; is just a fleshed-out version of the Primer &amp;amp; Guide. Sutherland's &lt;em&gt;Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time&lt;/em&gt; is chock full of motivation, but doesn't connect to practice. Rubin's &lt;em&gt;Essential Scrum&lt;/em&gt; is too detailed and will overwhelm them (it's written for an experienced professional developer), and Cohn's &lt;em&gt;Succeeding With Scrum&lt;/em&gt; is a really good balance of concept, motivation, and practice, but it's written around the transition from a legacy process (which these students know nothing about) to Scrum and it contains too much information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm looking for is a resource that ideally is short (~250pp) to keep it readable (this won't be the only book for the class) and explains Scrum practices/concepts with supporting examples or other material making the information concrete so that they can see how the ideas are put into practice. If the book is affordable, that's a nice bonus for my students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a suggestion(s), please help me understand how the book qualifies as readable and shows ideas-&gt;practice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One sort-of subquestion: if you think this question would be better answered elsewhere, such as on a the academia or programmer community, so I can delete it from here and post it there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19213" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T10:10:14.873" Title="Is there an appropriate intro Scrum book?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;books&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-08-24T09:58:31.540" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15875" CreationDate="2015-08-12T22:16:07.917" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really depends on how your organization is structured.  Malkav describes what I would consider the typical interaction between project manager and BA in a more waterfall oriented organization.  BA's are also supports to product managers in that they often flesh out higher level requirements and help the implementing team bridge the gap between business and technical knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BA's in a more Agile organization will not feed the &lt;em&gt;project manager&lt;/em&gt; or Product Manager requirements.  They may assist the Product Owner or Product Manager or replace the Product Owner in feeding the &lt;em&gt;team&lt;/em&gt; business requirements in the form of user stories.  The BA will also assist with prioritization, researching customer behaviors, and identifying people and process impacts that go along with a technology-based project.  The interaction between the BA and the project or product manager then may change in that the PM serves the BA (like any other team member) to ensure the BA has access to all the right resources while ensuring all stakeholders in the project have sufficient visibility and feedback opportunities to ensure the BA adds value to the team and optimizes the business value delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-08-12T22:16:07.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15877" CreationDate="2015-08-13T06:11:21.183" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a laundry list of books that a Scrum Master can read - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dkrimmer.de/2014/12/15/top-agile-books-for-scrum-masters/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Top Agile Books for Scrum Masters&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, it totally depends on what you want and consider as Readable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6172" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T06:11:21.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15871" CreationDate="2015-08-13T14:29:33.810" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Role boundaries and swim lanes apply not only tasks and areas of decision making but also lines of accountability.  And there's a difference between accountability and responsibility.  In my view, the product owner is the sole owner of accountability to the end-user stakeholder.  It is not shared, IMHO.  The developers do own some responsibility to the stakeholder, but that ends at building an elegant solution with minimal defects against the stakeholders' requirements.  Ultimate happiness rests with the product owner.  Similarly, the developer is accountable for the satisfaction of the product owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one indicator or measurement tool is 100% valid.  Every measurement tool we have in every industry suffers from validity issues or measurement error.  This is true when you are trying to measure something extremely tangible and even worse when measuring something very abstract, such as happiness and satisfaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are so many variables that go to customer satisfaction, including a ton that has nothing to do with the transaction, that you have to mitigate as you interpret satisfaction results.  Therefore, you need to NOT rely on one method of satisfaction measurement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, surveys are important.  But building the surveys with proper types of questions, and then interpreting those surveys to draw the most accurate conclusions, require expertise, time, and money.  But you cannot move forward without them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also use other markers to infer--the process of inference is subjective of and in itself and subject to biased results--customer satisfaction.  For example, buying behavior.  In your case, this would show itself by product owner acceptance of a delivery, stakeholder acceptance of delivery, decreasing defect findings during testing, decreasing defect findings during production, requests for more business, referrals to other departments, increasing revenue, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A customer chronically complains but continues to buy.  This would suggest to me that they are overall happy and satisfied with product but have other drivers, including those things intrinsically with the customer like personality make-up, that drive the complaints.  There's risk with this interpretation, which is why you do not rely on one method of measurement or even one interpreter.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T14:29:33.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15882" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-13T15:32:50.197" Score="4" ViewCount="2859" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to set up a column that displays calendar days so that the project team can see the overall duration in addition to the working days.   When I use the DateDiff(&quot;d&quot;,[Start],[Finish]) formula it works, however any task line or space in he schedule shows #ERROR,  Is there a formula that can be used to eliminate this error message?  Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19221" LastActivityDate="2017-10-23T07:07:32.143" Title="Calendar Day Column" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15883" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15943" CreationDate="2015-08-13T17:11:27.847" Score="1" ViewCount="85" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on whom you speak with, people have different views depending on the structure of the organization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first of these views is that when the business has an idea, it engages with the PMO to draft a business case, engage with the appropriate stakeholders, etc. This is generally seen from a cost perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second of these is that when the business has an idea, it engages with the Enterprise Architecture Office to assess the current state, establish the future state, identify the gaps and then engage with the PMO. This is generally seen from a capability perspective and then cost i.e.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am however unclear on the benefits and disadvantages of each and when each model is appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17081" LastActivityDate="2015-08-19T12:11:39.480" Title="What is the relationship and flow between an Enterprise Architecture Practice and the practice of a PMO?" Tags="&lt;pmo&gt;&lt;enterprise&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15884" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15885" CreationDate="2015-08-13T18:37:06.383" Score="5" ViewCount="186" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am the ScrumMaster for a Scrum team and we are struggling to formulate a definition of done which really means something, is impactful and followed through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main issue, the developers say, is that the tasks on the scrum board are always so so varied. Some of UI tasks, some are very technical SQL query tweaks, others are writing unit tests for legacy code etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We want to put the DoD up during planning sessions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T20:34:28.000" Title="Definition of done for development teams with massively varied tasks" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15884" CreationDate="2015-08-13T20:34:28.000" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like they are getting too deep into the technical weeds here. Definition of Done is a checklist, not a functional specification. Also, a DoD does not have to be a &quot;All or Nothing&quot;. It is perfectly acceptable to have conditional statements (If story is UI related, then X). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example of a DoD pulled from a team I work with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Story design document reviewed and approved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acceptance criteria has been met.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Code pushed and merged to the appropriate release branch&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unit test written, executed and passed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Code review has been performed and approved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build on Jenkins run successfully.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No blocker violations, no critical violations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Automation test cases were written and reviewed by team(dev/QA)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All functional automation tests have green lights.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, pretty broad definitions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps one area where confusion may rise is in the case of Acceptance Criteria. Acceptance Criteria is one of the line items in the DoD, however it is itself a whole set of &quot;tests&quot;. It is all the things that the product owner cares about from a functionality point of view. Acceptance Criteria is unique to each user story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T20:34:28.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15886" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15890" CreationDate="2015-08-14T05:01:10.253" Score="4" ViewCount="1455" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming there is an IT operational risk such as the lack of backups during a delivery of a solution would it be considered a project risk and if so how would you classify the risks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17081" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-08-14T11:21:08.917" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T11:48:11.747" Title="Is an operational risk considered a project risk?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;risk&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15871" CreationDate="2015-08-14T09:55:03.417" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think if your goal is to measure customer satisfaction, then it is irrelevant what your product owner thinks. It would make no sense to ask the product owner about customer satisfaction, in case he is the one responsible to make the customer happy. Why? Because in case he does not talk about such things with his customer, he just has assumptions about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the most valuable contribution would be to talk to the customer from time to time (informal, without additional work for the customer or product owner to fill out forms or other paper work). You just need to ensure that your Product Owner accepts this and he should also be the one introducing you to the customer and tell the customer about the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think a satisfaction level measured in points or something, is not useful. In case you want to improve his satisfaction you need to understand what he &quot;says&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also satisfaction is not very &quot;objective&quot; but rather &quot;subjective&quot;. I am sure, it will feel wrong for the customer, if his satisfaction level will &quot;get measured,&quot; in case something like that is really possible. So I would rather take the approach of talking often to him (a few days after each increment?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17972" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T09:55:03.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15886" CreationDate="2015-08-14T10:01:37.003" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my view the way to think about this is that the risks on the Project's Risk Log pertain to risk to the goals of the project. In other words, things that could happen that prevent you from delivering the project on time, cost and quality and particularly against the acceptance criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in your case (depending on what your project actually is!) a lack of operational backups would not be a project risk. Actually &quot;lack of backups&quot; is not a risk at all, it is a description of a situation and should be phrased &quot;Because of the lack of operational backups there is a risk that [some effect or consequence]&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said all of that, part of a software delivery project is usually to assure post-live support and operational handover. If the lack of operational backups could compromise that side of the delivery then it could be a project risk...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T10:01:37.003" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15882" CreationDate="2015-08-14T11:15:00.843" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know about 2010, but in 2013 it generally works well unless you have a task row that does not yet have valid start and end dates, in which case you get #ERROR.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that case, I set the custom field type to &quot;Text&quot; and used the following formula:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;IIf(isdate([Start]) And isdate([Finish]),datediff(&quot;d&quot;,[Start],[Finish]),&quot;&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you absolutely must have the field type as numeric then using:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;IIf(isdate([Start]) And isdate([Finish]),datediff(&quot;d&quot;,[Start],[Finish]),0)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...will avoid the display of #ERROR but does mean that all task rows have a numeric value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T11:15:00.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15886" CreationDate="2015-08-14T11:29:21.377" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does this have the ability to affect the successful completion of your project? if so, it is a risk.  I'm not sure that dividing risks into &quot;operational&quot; and &quot;project&quot; helps me to close the project successfully.  A risk is any unknown that could affect the schedule, cost, quality, or scope of my project.  The lack of backups isn't a risk per se. Absence of backups means that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Given that there are no backups IF an event occurs that degrades or destroys any of my data, THEN I could lose a predictable amount of time/effort/resources remediating the outage. In some cases this could result in the complete failure of my project. The probability of an outage is easily quantified, the amount of time spent in remediation is relatively easy to predict. The cost of doing backups is predictable and relatively small.  Therefore, my mitigation plan is to impose backups.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Given that my IT staff is ignoring simple best practices in backup, IF they are ignoring other best practices THEN my ability to exert control of my project is significantly diminished.  Mitigation plans should include analysis of why the IT staff is ignoring backups and what other procedures are flawed, and what impact this might have.  This is an example of a risk where risk analysis significantly reduces the risk.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never been a fan of classifying risks.  Risk management isn't a goal, it is a tool to help close the project successfully. Strip out anything that doesn't help to close the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-08-14T11:40:53.240" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T11:40:53.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15886" CreationDate="2015-08-14T11:48:11.747" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both Marv and Mark have great answers to this, but I want to add something on the classification of risks.  I agree with Mark that risk management is not the end but the means to an end and keeping it simple and straight forward are two great rules; however, classification of risks, and other more formal risk documentation rules, may not help your current project but are great inputs into FUTURE projects and lessons learned and maybe even become projects themselves.  So depending on the size and complexity of your current project and plans for future projects, creating more formal risk management policies, which is a cost, may serve the organization well in the long run.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would classify this risk maybe as &quot;operational&quot;, &quot;process&quot;, or &quot;policy&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T11:48:11.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15892" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15955" CreationDate="2015-08-14T13:04:59.383" Score="2" ViewCount="519" Body="&lt;p&gt;I´m doing a feasibility study to check the benefits of an investment in a certain tool. My table shows the savings and the costs in the project over 4 years. So, I´m trying to understand how to apply the Present Value and Net Present Value. I know the formulas, but i don´t know how to apply it in a real situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Calculate the discount rates in every year of every item or;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only in the Cash Flow Line or;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only in the Total Savings and Total Costs line?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The table would be something like this. I applied the discount rate in the Cash Flow line (Savings-Costs). I´m considering the discount rate a given rate used by my company for this project:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lKmck.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lKmck.png&quot; alt=&quot;Cash Flow Table&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, about the NPV, should I use the Cash Flow without the discount rate applied?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18099" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-08-20T12:31:37.657" LastActivityDate="2015-08-20T16:01:23.140" Title="How to calculate Present Value and Net Present Value?" Tags="&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15877" CreationDate="2015-08-14T13:27:31.410" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently found a website that explains scrum features briefly and comprehensive: &lt;a href=&quot;http://stephenwalther.com/archive/2012/08/17/scrum-in-5-minutes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://stephenwalther.com/archive/2012/08/17/scrum-in-5-minutes&lt;/a&gt;. Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19228" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T13:27:31.410" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15877" CreationDate="2015-08-14T14:30:02.053" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the first book I read on Scrum and it's still the one I recommend: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/073561993X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Project Management with Scrum (Developer Best Practices)&lt;/a&gt; by Ken Schwaber.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, any recommendation is subjective, but I liked this one because it spent just as much time talking about why you do things as it does how you do them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like any other skill, the book is just the start. You'll run into a lot of questions when you actually start doing it - and that's the most important thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-15T10:08:26.017" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T10:08:26.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15897" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15918" CreationDate="2015-08-14T18:21:36.010" Score="0" ViewCount="643" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a project where I have tasks that are a fixed duration (example: 2 days), and I have specialized resources scheduled to work on these tasks along with &quot;non-specialized&quot; resources. These specialized resources have an additional &quot;non-working&quot; day over and above the &quot;Standard&quot; calendar (I've added that additional &quot;non-working&quot; day onto their resource &quot;calendar&quot;). Basically, these guys don't work weekends or Mondays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that when I enter the tasks, their respective duration, and then assign resources, Project keeps scheduling the task for Mondays if I have a regular &quot;non-specialized&quot; resource assigned too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I need is for Project to avoid Mondays on ANY task where the &quot;specialized&quot; resources are scheduled - period. The duration needs to stay constant, the resources need to stay constant. I just need to schedule the task to avoid Mondays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19233" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-08-17T17:03:28.997" LastActivityDate="2015-08-17T17:03:28.997" Title="Honor non-working schedule" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15898" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-14T19:48:21.810" Score="0" ViewCount="409" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm unable to scroll quickly in my project file and need to select all tasks and copy so I can paste in an Excel file.  Is there a quicker way or key strokes to select all and copy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19234" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T20:02:46.160" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T20:02:46.160" Title="Unable to scroll (MS Project Professional 2013)" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15900" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15905" CreationDate="2015-08-14T20:47:39.433" Score="1" ViewCount="813" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our team consists of 4 full-time developers and occasional outside help. The developers maintain several different applications and do not all share the same skill set. I understand that scrum teams should be cross-functional, but in this case they all do the same general kind of work on the same general family of applications. There is some coupling between the applications, but not enough to make the developers interchangeable or consider the applications as &quot;tiers&quot; for the purpose of vertical slicing. The developers are essentially one- or two-man teams who know &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; about one another's work, but not enough to do it themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can the team agree on a common baseline or point of reference for estimating story points, when a one-point story on application A might not necessarily be half as big as a two-point story on application B? Should these developers even be considered a single scrum team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13325" LastActivityDate="2015-08-16T10:32:39.007" Title="How to estimate story points if team members work on different applications" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15898" CreationDate="2015-08-14T22:04:38.910" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Inside your project file, put your cursor in one of the lines within the spreadsheet-like project sheet. Press Ctrl-Home (should bring you to the first line), then Ctrl-Shift-End to select all lines towards the bottom of the file. From there, you can copy/Ctrl-C and paste into Excel or other destinations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19235" LastEditorUserId="19235" LastEditDate="2015-08-21T15:49:30.643" LastActivityDate="2015-08-21T15:49:30.643" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15902" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15917" CreationDate="2015-08-15T06:12:21.350" Score="5" ViewCount="338" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a design document e.g. software, IT infrastructure, etc details risks, how are these generally addressed as part of the project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do these risks also reside with the project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, i have a design document that notes (one of several), that disaster recovery is not in scope. From an operational and business perspective, this introduces a level of risk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17081" LastActivityDate="2015-08-17T07:39:18.953" Title="If risks have been identified in a design document, how are these addressed?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;risk&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15903" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15911" CreationDate="2015-08-15T06:13:54.367" Score="3" ViewCount="255" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most documents there is a section on assumptions e.g. We assume that the network is well within the realms of supporting this solution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At what point does it become a risk?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where does the risk lie e.g. project, operations, business, all?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17081" LastActivityDate="2015-08-15T11:22:11.323" Title="At what point do assumptions become risk?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;risk&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15904" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15912" CreationDate="2015-08-15T06:15:31.830" Score="3" ViewCount="195" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a project has forsaken to undertake a cycle of eliciting and documenting requirements, what level of risk does it introduce, how is this addressed and whom does it sit with?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17081" LastActivityDate="2015-08-15T11:24:39.080" Title="Is the lack of requirements such as functional and non-functional a risk?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;risk&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15900" CreationDate="2015-08-15T06:40:11.873" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ideally as you said, you'd want the team to all be cross functional, all capable of working on any story and can swarm together when stories are blocked. In reality though, team members with different skill sets do exist, more frequently than you would expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this instance, you want to agree what a '1' is for application A, requires similar effort as a similar story for application B. Same with a '2', and a '3' etc. At the end of the sprint, compare the stories completed, and ask the team, for this story for application 'A', we've estimated this as a '2'. And we've estimated this as a '2' for application B. Do you guys agree it's of a similar size? And so on, you can then save these stories for future reference as to what a '1' is for application A and another one for application B, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if the team work on specific areas/application, i would still be encouraging the team as a whole to estimate each story. The others should still have an understanding of what's being worked on, and may even be able to provide input/suggestion for application b, from their own experiences with application a.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17686" LastActivityDate="2015-08-15T06:40:11.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15877" CreationDate="2015-08-15T06:42:53.423" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From your description on the type of book you're after -where it's lightweight, practical as opposed to theoretical, and full of good tips and advice, i'd recommend: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0321822366&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum Shortcuts without Cutting Corners: Agile Tactics, Tools, &amp;amp; Tips&lt;/a&gt; by Ilan Goldstein.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17686" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-15T10:10:14.873" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T10:10:14.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15875" CreationDate="2015-08-15T06:48:03.640" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is your role of Product Manager - taking in the role of Product Owner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming you are the PO, perhaps you can spend majority of your time, talking with the stakeholders, and understanding their needs etc. You can then specify the priority and the epics (and perhaps the high level stories). The BA (or agile BA) can then look after the details for the stories, and be the point of contact for the dev team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;tl;dr - PO can be more stakeholder facing, and work with epics; BA can be more dev team facing, and take the epics and work on stories&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17686" LastActivityDate="2015-08-15T06:48:03.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15908" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15923" CreationDate="2015-08-15T06:57:43.350" Score="2" ViewCount="140" Body="&lt;p&gt;Corporate governance is defined as &lt;code&gt;mechanisms, processes and relations by which corporations are controlled and directed&lt;/code&gt; by &lt;code&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/code&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What role does it play when starting a Project Management Office?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What role does it play in the project management style?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17081" LastActivityDate="2015-08-17T12:25:03.043" Title="What role does corporate governance play with the practice of a Project Management Office?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15903" CreationDate="2015-08-15T11:00:59.333" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;All assumptions should be validated at the appropriate point of the project. If they are shown to be valid assumptions (ie. correct) then that is fine. If they are invalid then they become either risks or blockers and may require change control to manage the impact on scope/cost/timeline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19239" LastActivityDate="2015-08-15T11:00:59.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15903" CreationDate="2015-08-15T11:22:11.323" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;We create assumptions because we don't have the answer to a question.  If we don't have an answer to a question, that means we have uncertainty.  If that uncertainty is tied to an objective, it is then a risk.  This mean, the moment you create an assumption, you have a risk, and it remains a risk until either you find the assumption was correct or you mitigated the risk to the point where you can accept it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where it lies is dependent up on the assumption.  That would be part of your risk assessment.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-08-15T11:22:11.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15904" CreationDate="2015-08-15T11:24:39.080" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds like it would be a HUGE risk.  Because it is huge, I would escalate it at the highest levels of the organization and it needs to be addressed by the project sponsor and project manager.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-08-15T11:24:39.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15914" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15915" CreationDate="2015-08-15T15:36:46.897" Score="6" ViewCount="557" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are currently using Kanban to manage customizations and extensions within our application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our application is an enterprise application which is highly configurable, however, configure the tool right is quite complicate.&#xA;The development of our tool have been taken place during several years (about 15), and the code is quite complex.&#xA;Furthermore, the requirements and specifications from the customers are highly volatiles. They often change substantially before the end of the project. Therefore, we need a flexible (agile) process to adequate these changes into the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our current Kanban board counts with the following status/columns:&#xA;* Specifying&#xA;* Specify-Approving&#xA;* Rejected&#xA;* Ready for dev/conf&#xA;* on progress (dev/conf)&#xA;* Testing&#xA;* UAT&#xA;* Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my perspective, our current problem with our implementation of Kanban is that we are not including essential information which should be required stage after stage before being moved from one to other column. E.g Software Specification, Acceptance Criteria, Testing Plan, Release Notes...&#xA;I see that including these items might increase the complexity of the Kanban process, and this makes me question if Kanban is the right solution that we need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I feel that our Kanban implementation is not giving use the flexibility that we want. The requirements often change before completion of the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is kanban the right solution for project similar to ours?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can I modify our Kanban process to be more efficient?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What alternatives are for Kanban for this kind of projects?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19240" LastActivityDate="2015-08-16T01:37:50.173" Title="What alternatives can I find to Kanban for enterprise applications" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;enterprise&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15914" CreationDate="2015-08-16T01:37:50.173" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kanban absolutely sounds like the right solution for you. I'm just not sure what you describe that you are doing is Kanban in the common definition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a task board, with work phases does not make it Kanban. One thing I hear you saying is that requirements can change from when you start to when you finish. This is telling me that your cycle time, from start to finish is long. This usually means your &quot;Stories&quot; are too large. This often means your stories are not well defined and decomposed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are working a software project, then a single &quot;story&quot; should generally not have a cycle time of more than a week. If you move beyond a week, then you're probably dealing with a lot of complexity and the chances of not getting it all done right and on time greatly increase. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;Story&quot; is pretty critical. I would recommend Jeff Pattons User Story Mapping book as a key resource. You need to get your user stories down to small, valuable pieces of work product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a fairly high level answer as I'm making several assumptions about what is going on based on your description. Find a way to reduce your cycle time and I think you'll see everything else improve. Best way to reduce cycle time is the break up your stories into smaller chunks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-08-16T01:37:50.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15900" CreationDate="2015-08-16T10:32:39.007" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason for doing story point estimates is to help the team work out its velocity and from that its capacity for future sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your situation there are a number of factors working against the value of using story points. Firstly you mention that the team has occasional outside help. This outside help will impact on the team's capacity and velocity calculations. Secondly, it sounds like the work being brought in to the team is developer specific (or specific to pairs of developers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ideal solution would be to make the team more cross functional. If that is not possible then you may be better off thinking of the team as a number of work streams and estimating on them separately. For example, you could say the team has a capacity of 10 story points for application X and 15 story points for application Y.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps it would be worth considering having developers pair in an attempt to knowledge share? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-08-16T10:32:39.007" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15902" CreationDate="2015-08-16T19:05:02.757" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the design document you refer to is the design document for a project delivery, and in that design document risks are raised, then those would be drawn into the risk log for the project and managed in the same way as risks raised in any part of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However you appear to have made an assumption that the design document ruling DR out of scope for the solution design is an operational or business risk. That does not automatically follow from the information you have provided. A definition of scope defines what is within the scope &lt;em&gt;of the project&lt;/em&gt; (and also out of scope of the project). In this case, stating DR is out of scope of the Design Document merely says that the design document does not cover any elements of DR (and by extension the project itself does not deal with any aspects of DR). That is only a project risk &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; a goal or objective of the project is to deliver DR (or perhaps it is an infrastructure refresh and the refreshed infrastructure needs to introduce DR or continue to maintain a DR component).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not it is an operational risk or business risk is irrelevant if it is not in scope of the project you are referencing. Only you know whether that is the case or not. You seem to be expecting a hard and fast ruleset about what is or isn't considered a project risk- you will not find that ruleset anywhere because projects cover a vast (probably infinite) range of activities and deliveries. What is a risk in one project will be out of scope in another project and, as answered in another of your questions, a project risk is one that could impact on your project goals (and objectives).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: When posting further questions it might be useful if you preface the question with a (very) short description of the actual project. This will help people to advise you on what is and isn't part of your project risk profile. Just saying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-08-17T07:39:18.953" LastActivityDate="2015-08-17T07:39:18.953" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15897" CreationDate="2015-08-16T19:24:15.807" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem is that MS-Project looks at the resources working on the task and schedules those that can work on the Monday to do their work on the task on their working days. Those that cannot work on the Monday will not be scheduled to work on that day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no facility in MS-Project to &lt;em&gt;automatically&lt;/em&gt; skip assigning project resources on a certain day if any task resource cannot work that day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will have to manually fix this, either by manually fixing the task start date, or by creating a third resource type (Non specialised resources that do not work on Mondays) which are only assigned to tasks that are also assigned a specialised resource- that way MS-Project will not have any resources to schedule that work Mondays and so will not schedule the task to start on that day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possibly a simpler way would be to set up a specific Task Calendar that excludes Monday from working time, then apply that Task Calendar to any task that utilises both types of resource- then it can never be scheduled for Monday. However you have to remember to do it, and then remember to remove it if the specialised resources are removed from the task. A little bit fiddly, but probably ok depending on how many such tasks you have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-08-16T19:24:15.807" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15774" CreationDate="2015-08-17T02:55:33.027" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg982965(v=office.14).aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Administrative Time (Project Server 2010 settings)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You can only delete categories that are not yet saved. For example,&#xA;  let's say that you have created several new categories on the&#xA;  Administrative Time page, but have not yet clicked Save on that page.&#xA;  You can delete any of the new categories that you created while on&#xA;  that page. Once you click Save on the Administrative Time page, the&#xA;  categories that you added can no longer be deleted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same information in &lt;a href=&quot;https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn217892.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Server 2013 Administrator's Guide&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19248" LastActivityDate="2015-08-17T02:55:33.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15773" CreationDate="2015-08-17T03:02:48.910" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to create an enterprise calendar in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Settings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PWA Settings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Enterprise Data&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Enterprise Calendars&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;New Calendar&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn217892.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Project Server 2013 Administrator's Guide&lt;/a&gt; (page 50)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enterprise calendars capture the predefined working hours, holidays,&#xA;and other schedule details within an organization. They are used to&#xA;standardize the working time for all of an organization’s projects. In&#xA;Project Web App, you can view a list of existing calendars, select a&#xA;calendar to edit, or begin the process of creating a new calendar.&#xA;However, to create or modify a calendar, you must have Project&#xA;Professional 2013 installed on the computer that you are using to&#xA;access Project Web App.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A best practice is to modify the Standard&#xA;calendar as the main calendar for your organization. The Standard&#xA;calendar is the default base calendar in Project Server. By modifying&#xA;the Standard calendar to include your organizations holidays and&#xA;hours, you save having to select a different calendar each time you&#xA;create a project or resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19248" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2015-08-17T03:02:48.910" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15922" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15927" CreationDate="2015-08-17T10:26:36.123" Score="4" ViewCount="156" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a ScrumMaster for a development team. We have an impediment which will be resolved by an engineer on a different team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any tips or techniques for speeding this along. Should I just ask this engineer how things are going? They know we are waiting on them, so should I keep reminding them they are holding us up. Should I talk to their line manager. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically I want to know how pushy I should be as a Scrum Master in order to get the impediment removed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastActivityDate="2015-08-17T21:44:47.233" Title="Resolving impediments caused by other teams" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;dependencies&gt;&lt;impediment&gt;&lt;blocker&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15908" CreationDate="2015-08-17T12:25:03.043" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;None whatsoever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Except for the fact that the PMO, like &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt; company departments, must operate within the rules, practises and processes defined within Corporate Governance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exception would be if the project is actually delivering or working on the corporate governance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-08-17T12:25:03.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15924" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15925" CreationDate="2015-08-17T12:42:13.940" Score="2" ViewCount="366" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm having trouble to schedule a task that has two date constraints:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It must happen 5 days after a precedessor task;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It must happen on Mondays.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried creating and using an specific calendar, that only has Mondays as work days, but it didn't work out when I inserted the 5 days of latency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm using MS Project 2003.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks a lot!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19253" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T18:56:28.663" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T18:56:28.663" Title="Task with specific predecessor and weekday - Project 2003" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;constraints&gt;&lt;ms-project-2003&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15924" CreationDate="2015-08-17T12:56:22.813" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the basis it should slip to the following Monday-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Add a milestone that depends on the predecessor with a lag of five days and add that milestone as a predecessor to your Monday task.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then we have the issue of only starting on Monday in MS-Project 2003. I cannot recall, but I don't think 2003 had task calendars. If that is true you will need to create a resource calendar with only Monday as a working day, then create a small task (say 1 minute) and allocate to that task a resource that uses the only-Monday calendar. That forces your short task to start only on Monday. Then add that short task as a predecessor to your task, ensuring the resources assigned to that task work normal hours.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Point 1. will give you a minimum 5 day lag and point 2 will ensure the task has to start on a Monday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-08-17T13:38:54.183" LastActivityDate="2015-08-17T13:38:54.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15922" CreationDate="2015-08-17T21:44:47.233" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;So following good agile practices, I would recommend that you ask the Product Owner for the other team where your item is on their backlog. Request an estimate for when they think it will be committed to a sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your dependent on a waterfall team then I would make the request to the project manager and functional manager for that team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either instance you need to clearly communicate when you need the functionality by. Let the team know if you don't have functionality by X date, your program would go to blocker state (Red on a standard stoplight dashboard). Then I recommend you also set up additional milestones for when your program will go to yellow based on risk the dependency won't be delivered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last related note. I generally don't recommend a scrum team start work on any story that has a dependency. If the dependency doesn't get filled, then that's wasted development work. It also impacts the teams ability to be &quot;done&quot; with that user story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-08-17T21:44:47.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15843" CreationDate="2015-08-17T21:50:39.410" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Exporting large data sets to Excel can be very powerful and make your application that much more valuable to many more users.  Excel has such a rich feature set that to try to duplicate it would be a waste of your developers' industry knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Users can filter, sort, chart, and pivot in Excel in nearly any way they choose.  Are you able to define every possible workflow the users need and add that to your app?  What about the user that wants to do some data spelunking and try some non-obvious pivots?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for huge data sets the question is how huge?  Exporting to a database for Business Analytics may be a better choice if the data set is large enough to choke Excel.  More data gives me a larger sample size and confidence, so I don't see this as a negative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for mobile users, I don't know that I'm doing any heavy analysis on my iPhone.  If I can get reports on my phone bring it on. Don't let this stop you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I agree 100% with Grimm the Opiner, &quot;the scrum team doesn't get to decide what is or isn't a user requirement&quot;.  This is clearly up to the product owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16242" LastActivityDate="2015-08-17T21:50:39.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15672" CreationDate="2015-08-18T03:19:22.740" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms447495(v=office.12).aspx#pj12_EnterpriseCF_LocalAndEnterprise&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MSDN: Local and Enterprise Custom Fields&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Local Custom Fields&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You can assign &lt;strong&gt;local custom fields to resources and tasks, but not&#xA;  to projects&lt;/strong&gt;. In practice, if you use interim plans you should not&#xA;  use the task Start1-10 or Finish1-10 custom fields because Project&#xA;  uses those fields to store dates for interim baseline plans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Enterprise Custom Fields&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Enterprise custom fields can be assigned to &lt;strong&gt;projects&lt;/strong&gt;, resources,&#xA;  and tasks in Project Server. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19248" LastActivityDate="2015-08-18T03:19:22.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15930" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15931" CreationDate="2015-08-18T08:50:57.820" Score="1" ViewCount="791" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a project with extensive workflows set up, and the the tickets are moving smoothly through the entire workflow. But here is a strange behavior that I'm seeing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever I move a Ticket from &quot;In progress&quot; status to the &quot;Needs Review&quot; Status, the sprint Report says that it has been moved out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly on the Burndown chart it shows that this Ticket has been burned with the status:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Open issue moved out of board (into an unmapped status)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have made sure that the &quot;Needs Review&quot; status has been mapped to the &quot;In Progress&quot; category. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I solve this, and get the correct burndown?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2996" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2015-08-18T13:14:53.673" LastActivityDate="2015-09-14T12:38:33.070" Title="Why does my JIRA report say: &quot;Open issue moved out of board (into an unmapped status)&quot;?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15930" CreationDate="2015-08-18T08:50:57.820" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to understand that any report on a  JIRA board, is at the end of the day, a report on the board as it is configured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will find that this particular status is not present on any column in the Kanban board, which is why you are getting this message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you properly map this status to a column, the error will go away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2996" LastActivityDate="2015-08-18T08:50:57.820" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15932" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15937" CreationDate="2015-08-18T10:04:38.220" Score="6" ViewCount="210" Body="&lt;p&gt;How to deal with early projects states where serious deadline agreements cannot be made yet?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We are in an early stage of the project with new people.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The team is small and everything is new (technology and people): In short. A lot of dynamic factors.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We are still in the phase were we find out how much we can do in a single sprint&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A lot of important things are not yet defined in the Backlog (just exist as some vague marketing statements)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time some Stakeholders already want to set deadlines or milestones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I would need these two things to seriously agree on something:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having some more experience in how fast the team performs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Backlog with every feature that the Stakeholder wants to define the date or deadline for. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Seriously agree on something would mean for me that between expectation and reality are not factors like two times longer or higher.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is how such situations can be handled or should be communicated to Stakeholders (from a Product Owner perspective).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Update&lt;/em&gt; Regarding Comment of Jeff:&#xA;It is very interesting to have these two kinds of aspects: Date-driven and scope-driven. I guess a combination would be best. I mean a date-driven goal would mean, that you make the release at the given date no matter what happens, right? (We are still in the learning process of Scrum methodologies. So I guess hints in the direction of Roadmaps and Scrum help us in general.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17972" LastEditorUserId="17972" LastEditDate="2015-08-28T11:18:06.983" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T11:18:06.983" Title="Project Deadlines in an Early State (Scrum Project)" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15933" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-18T10:12:05.907" Score="7" ViewCount="1006" Body="&lt;p&gt;This has been asked several times already but none of the answers fully convince me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are an R&amp;amp;D team doing some support from time to time. Most of the support work can be included in capacity of the team so that the Focus Factor can be set accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have one &quot;batman&quot; that is on support every week and his/her capacity is lowered so that he/she can focus on customer support. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But sometimes &quot;batman&quot; he needs a help from other team member, who is a domain expert and needs to fix some particular issue. If the issue is small then there is no problem but what if the amount of work is substantial?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should we create a new sprint task and estimate it and remove some&#xA;other task from the sprint backlog which has a similar size? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should the story points for completing this task be counted as those of the stories that were taken during the planning meeting? In fact we had to remove some item we committed to deliver it so the amount of work done was lower than expected.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe we should we track the time spent on those instead and try to not remove anything from sprint backlog? In this case we don't have to estimate (which might be incorrect especially for harder bugs), just count time that was&#xA;spent on fixing particular task. The drawback is that using this&#xA;approach the velocity will be lower and if this is very unusual&#xA;situation only some sprints will be affected.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is more, even if I could accept estimating the support bug and counting its size together with other tasks taken into the sprint during planning (after all this is the product improvement), I am not convinced we should do the same with non-development tasks (broken build system that developer needs to fix, access to bug tracker was broken and some developer needs to take a look). In this case should we track bugs and non-development separately and differently?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's clear for me that repeating issues tracking is much easier but &lt;strong&gt;I am particularly interested in the ones that are not happening that often&lt;/strong&gt; and have a significant impact on the time the development team can spend on delivering sprint tasks. We had an issue with a system build that took 2 man weeks to solve and it has happened only once; then a big part of the sprint tasks were not delivered in that sprint. How to track such a issues so that our velocity measure will be correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19262" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-08-18T12:16:12.257" LastActivityDate="2015-08-27T10:51:28.043" Title="How to track impediments in SCRUM?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;process-improvement&gt;&lt;impediment&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15934" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-18T10:23:17.793" Score="5" ViewCount="250" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's assume that part of the story (worth say 8 points) was done in the sprint 1. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, after implementing part of it we are discovering that in fact it is much bigger than originally estimated. Credit for completing the story was not given in sprint 1 (story was not completed) and it was moved back to product backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now, should we re-estimate it during the planning for sprint 2? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should the estimate contain ONLY remaining part of the story (part&#xA;was already done in sprint 1) or the total size of the story (then implemented part should be reflected in team capacity so that more stories will be taken to the next sprint)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we use the later approach what with other stories which are there in the product backlog and were estimated based on the story which was re-estimated (aka the size of this next story was similar to the one that was re-estimated and that's why next story has some particular size). Should we change estimates of all such a stories as well? This seem to be quite a big overhead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we use the first one then we know straight from the beginning that our velocity current sprint (sprint 2) will be much lower than usual as the story is having inaccurate estimate (and we already know it during the planning).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should be the best approach here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To clarify what I mean by re-estimating.&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;I don't want to move only part of the work which was not done to the next sprint, but in fact we've figured out that our original estimate was wrong. Should we so to say change the estimate to 21 instead of 8 and agree that half was done in sprint 1 and we will have to spent time needed to develop remaining 10-11 story points in the next sprint (sprint 2)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19262" LastEditorUserId="19262" LastEditDate="2015-08-18T12:16:20.073" LastActivityDate="2015-11-19T09:07:23.743" Title="reestimating story size after moving back to product backlog" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15933" CreationDate="2015-08-18T13:08:44.203" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The drawback is that using this approach the velocity will be lower and if this is very unusual situation only some sprints will be affected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to track such a issues so that our velocity measure will be correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you didn't complete any of the work you committed to in the sprint because of this issue then your velocity &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; correct even if it's zero. That said, if you realised early on that the bug was going to take 2 weeks to complete it might have been sensible to simply close the current sprint, resolve the bug and then started another sprint once this was done (not necessarily including the same issues - you'd need to re-plan the sprint because priorities might have changed). You shouldn't see lower velocity as a 'drawback' but as an indicator of some other problem you encountered along the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's quite a lot of debate about how production support (i.e. ongoing work like 'non-development tasks' and bug fixes) fits in to Scrum. Personally I split it out into a separate activity and assign (as you do) one person to that role (changing them each sprint). We assume a base level productivity drop for that person and chalk it off our expected capacity for each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My system is based in part on Charle's Bradley's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumcrazy.com/One+way+to+handle+Bugs+and+Production+Support+in+Scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;scrum bug handling flowchart&lt;/a&gt; and Geoff Watts' explanation of the various &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2008/march/production-support-and-scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;approaches to production support in scrum&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am particularly interested in the ones that are not happening that often and have a significant impact on the time the development team can spend on delivering sprint tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On this point, it rather depends how often this happens. If 'not often' means once every 6 months or once every year then I'd be tempted to say that you don't really need to worry about tracking time against these in any great detail - your average velocity will simply drop over the 6-12 month period and you'll get a feel for how much you're actually getting through long-term. If, however, this kind of issues means that you're consistently failing to meet sprint commitments each sprint or, say, every other sprint then that's a more serious problem that probably won't be properly addressed by closer time tracking of the bugs. What you really have there is an issue with how much time you are putting aside for production support &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; a problem with technical debt &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; a problem with code quality...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need to comply with a reporting requirement within your business then, yes, track the time you spend on bugs/production support and report it in man hour or man days. But I think that needs to be reported in the context of the impact on other activities (product/feature development in particular) in order for to actually &lt;em&gt;mean&lt;/em&gt; anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2015-08-27T10:51:28.043" LastActivityDate="2015-08-27T10:51:28.043" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15932" CreationDate="2015-08-18T17:02:13.673" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Use this opportunity to firm up the vague marketing statements&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the stakeholders are interested in firming up the schedule, it is a good thing. Use this opportunity to create the first draft of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/goal-oriented-agile-product-roadmap/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Goal Oriented roadmap&lt;/a&gt; in consultation with the stakeholders. This will cover the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How often you plan to release and what will be the main goal of each release. The example in the link shows quarterly releases. But, you can do monthly releases, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once you have identified the goals, list the high-level features necessary to reach the goals.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Next define the metrics, the measurements or key performance indicators (KPIs) that help determine if the goal has been met, and if the release was successful. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By preparing the above roadmap with heavy involvement from the stakeholders you get their buy-in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Set the expectation with the stakeholders that you will work with the development team to firm up the first release and the next two will be subject to a 25% revision. Releases beyond the third one are tentative. Explain to them that the team and technology are new.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work with the development team to estimate the high-level features by breaking some of them into granular stories and estimating those in detail. The metrics/KPIs that you wrote in the roadmap should help you write better acceptance criteria for the stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-08-27T12:18:23.727" LastActivityDate="2015-08-27T12:18:23.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15938" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-18T18:29:40.210" Score="3" ViewCount="59" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can one change the datetime an item was added to a sprint?&#xA;Right now the scope change is recorded when it is done, but i would like to pretend an item was in the sprint all along.&#xA;Does this functionality exist anywhere?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19269" LastActivityDate="2015-10-11T18:55:11.307" Title="Can one change the datetime an item was added to a sprint?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15934" CreationDate="2015-08-19T05:20:29.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;if the programmed part of the story has customer value and can be released you could give your team the estimated story points and create a new story for the missing part. Then it is also not necessary to plan it for the next sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the programmed part is not releasable there is no point for the team and the story keeps its original estimation. The team gets the complete package of points when the customer value is delivered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19274" LastActivityDate="2015-08-19T05:20:29.120" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15940" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15941" CreationDate="2015-08-19T06:12:37.633" Score="10" ViewCount="1033" Body="&lt;p&gt;With User Story Mapping, If we start our sprint with the MVP, by definition the stories will be musts. In a fixed time-scale without shoulds and coulds, then how can we hit our targets if estimated velocity were to slip?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually in scrum, a feature delivered in a sprint would be a mix of musts, shoulds and coulds, allowing leeway for the PM to de scope some stories to keep on time-line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19267" LastActivityDate="2015-08-19T07:28:28.190" Title="User Story Mapping and Sprint Prioritization" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15940" CreationDate="2015-08-19T06:55:58.490" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would look on a Story Map as on probability distribution. If the team decreases velocity in one sprint, it still have the room to increase it in the next one and deliver MVP in total, meeting the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6YCbP.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6YCbP.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastActivityDate="2015-08-19T06:55:58.490" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15940" CreationDate="2015-08-19T07:28:28.190" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;So first thing is to &quot;pretend&quot; it's MoSCoW, so when you plan, work on 60% velocity (this is before you've given a commitment to the fixed end date), better to over deliver than just meet the requirement.  Once you are going, if you can't descope, you need to do the effort/quality thing.  Look at your team and plan early to get extra resource (you ideally need people from inside so little/no ramp up, or screen carefully when bringing in), plus you need to think early about extra hours and if they help (a few here and there is better than a death march in the last month).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also you need to pare work down to the bone.  Agile is about YAGNI etc, but I mean everything, preemptive design, refactoring, test coverage etc.  The MVP is a MINIMUM, so do only what you need.  raise stories if something will need to be revisited later, just make sure you agree with the PO to spend a percentage time once the MVP is out and making money to clean up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if that's unpalatable, you need to remember something has to slip, and you are sacrificing quality in a controlled way you can fix later, better than team cutting corners on the fly to meet the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3336" LastActivityDate="2015-08-19T07:28:28.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15883" CreationDate="2015-08-19T12:11:39.480" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is it you aim to gain from an answer? What is your role in which any understanding of this matter is relevant?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether an individual or an organization follows either perspective (or even yet another) of the ones you described is most likely dependent on one of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Individual interests&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&quot;Business&quot; usually leads the charge when there is a business stakeholder who has a strong interest in moving an initiative forward and/or wants to have as much control over the outcome as possible).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even Enterprise Architects can have their own agenda in that they identify new needs from an architectural perspective as a result of some initiative, that are entirely irrelevant for the stakeholder of that initiative. In that case, the original request triggers needs that the budget owner has no stake in themselves, thus requiring EA to make their own requests and trigger new initiatives themselves. These needs usually are related to improving Enterprise Architecture on a structural level, not necessarily related to immediate business benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Organizational culture/practices&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Requesting requirements via PMO and having that type of entity coordinate any process of shaping a solution seems like something one would only do if this has been prescribed/dictated by organization policies and (most) everyone acepts those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HTH.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19279" LastActivityDate="2015-08-19T12:11:39.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15822" CreationDate="2015-08-19T12:24:28.737" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've built this a number of times in Excel. The easiest way I found to do this was to give each tasks (in your case: epic) a start and end date. (each task/epic in one row)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, create columns for each day in the time span you want to cover. You can narrow them down to single character width. Give these columns a header row with all the dates (insert actual date values).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In every cell of the matrix formed by the rows with your tasks/epics and the columns with all the dates, you need to implement the same formula, checking&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;whether the date of the current column is greater than or equal to the rows start date&#xA;whether the date of the current formula is smaller than or equal to the rows end date&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the above hold true, give the cell a value of 1, otherwise 0.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can now, as a last step, apply conditional formatting to the entire matrix, coloring a cell if it has a value of 1 and setting text/background color to white if it has a value of 0.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Voilà, you have your GANTT chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to add checks for empty values and weekdays/weekends and other exceptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The formula may look something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;=IF(OR(WEEKDAY([column date])=7;WEEKDAY([column date])=1);2;IF(ISBLANK([start date]);&quot;&quot;IF(AND([start date]&amp;lt;=[column date];[end date]&amp;gt;=[column date]);1;0)))&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything in brackets (e.g., [column date]) are just placeholders for the actual cell references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to only display your sprint names at the top of the &quot;chart&quot;, you'll have to do some extra work, but that can probably be done by&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;defining the start and end date per sprint sperately&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;adding an extra row above the one with the column dates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;doing a lookup for each column for the name of the spring for the given date&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;only showing the name when the same name is not contained yet in the cell to the left&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;apply some formatting to make it all pretty&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way, sprint names will only show to the left of a &quot;stretch&quot; - but at least it would be somewhat automated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that with this approach, one task/epic is always only ever in one dedicated row, so you will not be able to have the type of representation that you show in your sample, where you stack each sprint's lane dynamically. The above will create a waterfall (at least of you sort your records based on their start/end dates) and a lot of emtpy space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anything else can only be done in Excel with VBA IMHO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're doing rather complex stuff or want to use this tool over a long period of time, you might want to reconsider doing this in Excel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19279" LastEditorUserId="19279" LastEditDate="2015-08-19T12:31:11.110" LastActivityDate="2015-08-19T12:31:11.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15945" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15946" CreationDate="2015-08-19T21:59:20.377" Score="5" ViewCount="75" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any sources out there on a guidelines how to implement a new feature for web or mobile app from start to finish? I'm looking for how the idea is presented to the team and how the managers, designers, and developers should work together. Specifically in smaller teams, say around 5. Something along the lines of when to involve specific members of the team to understand the problem or new feature required, brainstorming, initial designs and potential solutions, and implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19284" LastActivityDate="2015-08-20T06:54:28.683" Title="Guidelines on feature development" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15945" CreationDate="2015-08-20T06:54:28.683" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like CodeGnome said have a look at Scrum. Having worked in multiple different teams using Scrum I can totally say this is a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just finished &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scruminc.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jeff Sutherlands&lt;/a&gt; latest book &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scruminc.com/new-scrum-the-book/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum The Art of Doing Twice The Work In Half the Time&lt;/a&gt; and I think its a nice read. Giving good practical insights why Scrum works and how to sell it :).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also have a look at the Scrum getting started guide at: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scrumguides.org/&lt;/a&gt; , but maybe even better try to attend a course and get some handson experience: &lt;a href=&quot;http://courses.scrum.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://courses.scrum.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read this free eBook over how Scrum could be implemented in a real world example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/minibooks/scrum-xp-from-the-trenches-2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.infoq.com/minibooks/scrum-xp-from-the-trenches-2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2015-08-20T06:54:28.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15938" CreationDate="2015-08-20T07:02:42.003" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's possible to change the date or time on a scrum board, however you will need admin permissions on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AGILE/Editing+or+Reordering+a+Sprint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; with more detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19290" LastActivityDate="2015-08-20T07:02:42.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15948" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15949" CreationDate="2015-08-20T07:32:34.497" Score="5" ViewCount="6374" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first I heard of the term &lt;em&gt;marathon&lt;/em&gt; was in a conversation with an executive. Having attempted to search for the differences between a sprint and a marathon online, it has yielded no comprehensive result. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How is a marathon different to that of a sprint?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is marathon even a term in Agile methodologies?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When does a sprint become a marathon?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can a marathon become a sprint at any point?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How are marathons executed, e.g. timelines?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17081" LastEditorUserId="15972" LastEditDate="2015-08-22T13:58:30.933" LastActivityDate="2017-10-25T14:22:58.717" Title="What is the difference between a marathon and a sprint?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15948" CreationDate="2015-08-20T08:20:32.880" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is more an analogy to running than the use of actual PM terminology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The classic use of the &quot;this is a marathon, not a sprint&quot; saying generally is when one wants to emphasize:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a team needs to set and maintain a long-term focus (goal setting, managing progress, developing mechanisms and tools to react to changes along the way)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;individual commitments need to be made for the long run (years instead of just weeks/months)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the complexity of an undertaking is higher (more factors coming into play, more changes to be expected throughout the course of a project)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast, a sprint is usually defined &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;for a clearly defined scope&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;with a very solid to unmistakable understanding of deliverables&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;for a fixed and usually (comparatively) short time window&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;with clearly defined and assigned resources&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19279" LastActivityDate="2015-08-20T08:20:32.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15892" CreationDate="2015-08-20T12:07:57.030" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that all you need is a NPV (which is the PV of both costs and savings combined) by applying your discount rates to the cashflow value of each period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19279" LastActivityDate="2015-08-20T12:07:57.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15948" CreationDate="2015-08-20T15:45:03.367" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;How is a marathon different to that of a sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Codejak gives an excellent answer.  +1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is marathon even a term in Agile methodologies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nope&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When does a sprint become a marathon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It doesn't.  Sprint has a very well defined structure and purpose in Scrum.  Scrum teams that don't understand why they are Scrum teams should stick with the rigid definitions until they develop enough self discipline and awareness to start mixing the Agile spectrum&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can a marathon become a sprint at any point?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nope, but parts of a marathon can be delivered within Sprints.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How are marathons executed e.g. timelines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask your exec since they most likely have a unique understanding of what a marathon is and haven't communicated it to the impacted teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-08-20T15:45:03.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15892" CreationDate="2015-08-20T16:01:23.140" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Net&quot; = &quot;Total&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NPV = sum of all cash flows discounted to the present value.  So in your example, assuming the project provides benefits all the way through year 4, you would sum all values in the Present Value row to derive the NPV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your NPV over 5 years should be: 32,874.04&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this isn't a homework question ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-08-20T16:01:23.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15359" CreationDate="2015-08-21T15:29:22.243" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are not alone. Many companies call themselves agile but only few really are. What sounds weird is that your company requires universal story points that apply to everybody. Story points are a relevant metric useful when a team has some history and knows their velocity. Otherwise story points are just random numbers.&#xA;I worked for company similar to yours and I tried to educate them about SCRUM. After couple of months of frustration I gave up and quit. Sometimes corporate or &quot;we have always done so&quot; mindset is unchangeable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19305" LastActivityDate="2015-08-21T15:29:22.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5141" CreationDate="2015-08-21T20:09:30.273" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An alternative path is doing your own thing - or signing on to work for a startup. This means you don't really follow the credentialed path &amp;amp; can highlight your actual work, as well being able to solve exciting new challenges. This isn't for everyone - and if you're trying to climb the corporate ladder then certifications go a long, long way as well as networking. But this might be of interest to you if you're considering the alternative - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://medium.com/@cigardubey/how-daniel-became-a-cto-without-going-to-school-86c143f32555&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://medium.com/@cigardubey/how-daniel-became-a-cto-without-going-to-school-86c143f32555&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19309" LastActivityDate="2015-08-21T20:09:30.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15948" CreationDate="2015-08-22T09:37:13.950" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, you can think of a marathon as a collection of sprints which share a theme from a section of your backlog. You could also think of marathons as quarters of a year. Q1, Q2... etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, imagine you have a product &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;vision&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Build a family house&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then on your roadmap you have the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;themes&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (or marathons) which deliver your vision:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build a family house&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Get off the ground&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Build Garage&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Build Kitchen&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then your first &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;sprint&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; might look like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build a family house&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get off the ground&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Aquire some land&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Design footprint&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Apply for planning permission&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source builders&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build Garage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build Kitchen&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How are marathons executed e.g. timelines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As WBW said, they are still executed using sprints, so the marathon timeline is usually simply a multiple of your sprint length, and its completion or success is defined by the goals of the marathon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our example above you can think of the themes as marathons. The &quot;Build Garage&quot; marathon goals would be something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I  have a structure I can fit a car inside&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The car is protected from the weather&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you would plan your sprints around achieving these goals and the estimated marathon length is however many sprints its estimated to complete these goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19312" LastActivityDate="2015-08-22T09:37:13.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15855" CreationDate="2015-08-22T21:55:11.897" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot reproduce the error.  In Duration1 I have the following formula based upon your earlier post:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;IIf([Baseline1 Finish]=ProjDateVAlue(&quot;NA&quot;)Or Not&#xA;  IsDate([Finish]),0,IIf(ProjDateDiff([Baseline1&#xA;  Finish],[Finish])&amp;lt;0,0,ProjDateDiff([Baseline1 Finish],[Finish])))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see any negative values turned to zero and any positive values calculated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I create the report adding a table showing Task name, Start, Finish, % Complete, and Duration1.  I sort on duration1 and all works as expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please make sure you are up to date on all updates: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.technet.com/b/projectsupport/p/msp13.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blogs.technet.com/b/projectsupport/p/msp13.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-08-22T21:55:11.897" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15964" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15986" CreationDate="2015-08-23T08:50:56.183" Score="11" ViewCount="1908" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've come to believe that, like the daily scrum, the 3 questions are a sign of team capability immaturity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm about to decree to all my teams that we will be doing away with the three questions daily scrum format i.e.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What did I do yesterday&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what do I plan to do today&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what is blocking me from proceeding&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is simplistic and easy to follow but it's not really the team speaking with one voice. It can also quickly degrade into a status session and doesn't bring real clarity to the progress of the sprint backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From now on I'll be getting the SMs to walk the board and get the group to discuss the WIP and which stories are upcoming. This is also allied to the fact that from now on the team will as much as possible, be only working on one story at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any value in keeping the three questions once teams are settled and working towards an XP capability?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19267" LastActivityDate="2018-12-11T15:53:58.260" Title="Daily Stand up Three Question Format a sign of team immaturity?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15965" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-08-23T11:11:29.320" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every project has a lot of obstacles that interfere with reaching the goal. “Impediment” is a synonym term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example from within Scrum Framework. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Scrum Master should:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Removing &lt;strong&gt;impediments&lt;/strong&gt; to the Development Team’s progress&quot;;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One of the three questions during Daily Scrum is:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Do I see any &lt;strong&gt;impediment&lt;/strong&gt; that prevents me or the Development Team from&#xA;  meeting the Sprint Goal?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2015-08-30T14:32:53.643" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T14:32:53.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15966" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-08-23T11:11:29.320" Score="0" Body="For questions about impediments that hinder the progress of the project or interfere with working on product implementation." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-31T13:32:16.623" LastActivityDate="2015-08-31T13:32:16.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15967" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-08-23T11:20:32.210" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_conduct&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki&lt;/a&gt; definition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A code of conduct is a set of rules outlining the social norms and&#xA;  rules and responsibilities of, or proper practices for, an individual,&#xA;  party or organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definition provided by the International Federation of Accountants:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Principles, values, standards, or rules of behaviour that guide the&#xA;  decisions, procedures and systems of an organization in a way that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;(a) contributes to the welfare of its key stakeholders, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;(b) respects the rights of all constituents affected by its operations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;See also&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/ethics&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;ethics&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;ethics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-30T14:33:07.473" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T14:33:07.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15968" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-08-23T11:20:32.210" Score="0" Body="For questions about the code-of-conduct within the project between all its participants." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-30T14:34:52.480" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T14:34:52.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15969" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-08-23T11:23:07.753" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In project management, ethical problems sometimes occur during decision making. Or other participants of the project may perform any act contrary to good morals. This tag is for questions about how to react and solve these kinds of problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;See also&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/code-of-conduct&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;code-of-conduct&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;code-of-conduct&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-24T01:14:14.277" LastActivityDate="2015-08-24T01:14:14.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15970" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-08-23T11:23:07.753" Score="0" Body="For questions about the ethical aspects of project management." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-24T01:14:19.760" LastActivityDate="2015-08-24T01:14:19.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15971" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-08-23T11:25:39.487" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This tag is for questions like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the ideal authority distribution between roles within the project?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to influence the situation with a lack of formal authority?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-09-09T11:54:24.623" LastActivityDate="2015-09-09T11:54:24.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15972" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-08-23T11:25:39.487" Score="0" Body="For questions about the authority of project’s participants." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-30T14:31:47.387" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T14:31:47.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15973" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-08-23T11:31:36.207" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsourcing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki&lt;/a&gt; definition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Outsourcing involves the contracting out of a business process to&#xA;  another party.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;What is this tag about&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This tag is for questions about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The advantage and disadvantage of outsourcing. When is it better to give some process to outsourcing?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to maximize the benefit and reduce negative aspects of outsourcing?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how to manage the outsourcing processes?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-30T14:33:09.817" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T14:33:09.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15974" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-08-23T11:31:36.207" Score="0" Body="For questions about outsourcing within the project." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-30T14:34:44.420" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T14:34:44.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15877" CreationDate="2015-08-23T11:52:15.633" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An excellent reference. You can even find development room size recommandation !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/minibooks/do-better-scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Do Better Scrum from InfoQ&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Available in &lt;code&gt;PDF&lt;/code&gt; &lt;code&gt;ePub&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;MOBI&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16575" LastEditorUserId="16575" LastEditDate="2015-08-23T16:06:44.143" LastActivityDate="2015-08-23T16:06:44.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15976" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-08-23T12:20:06.413" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_satisfaction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki&lt;/a&gt; definition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Customer satisfaction is a measure of how products and services&#xA;  supplied by a company meet or surpass customer expectation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definition according to &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0137058292&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Marketing Metrics: The Definitive Guide to Measuring Marketing Performance&lt;/a&gt;&quot; book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The number of customers, or percentage of total customers, whose&#xA;  reported experience with a firm, its products, or its services&#xA;  (ratings) exceeds specified satisfaction goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-24T01:14:28.580" LastActivityDate="2015-08-24T01:14:28.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15977" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-08-23T12:20:06.413" Score="0" Body="For questions about customer satisfaction (a measure of how products and services supplied by a company meet or surpass customer expectation)." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-30T14:34:55.637" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T14:34:55.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15978" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-08-23T12:33:26.493" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burn_down_chart&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki&lt;/a&gt; definition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A burn down chart is a graphical representation of work left to do&#xA;  versus time. The outstanding work (or &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/backlog&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;backlog&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;backlog&lt;/a&gt;) is often on the&#xA;  vertical axis, with time along the horizontal. That is, it is a run&#xA;  chart of outstanding work. It is useful for predicting when all of the&#xA;  work will be completed. It is often used in &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/agile&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;agile&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;agile&lt;/a&gt; software&#xA;  development methodologies such as &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/scrum&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;scrum&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;scrum&lt;/a&gt;. However, burn down&#xA;  charts can be applied to any project containing measurable progress&#xA;  over time. Outstanding work can be represented in terms of either time&#xA;  or &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/story-points&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;story-points&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;story-points&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Links&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilenutshell.com/burndown&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Burndown Charts by &quot;Agile In a Nutshall&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://idiacomputing.com/pub/BetterSoftware-BurnCharts.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Feel The Burn, Getting the Most out of Burn Charts&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-30T14:31:58.500" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T14:31:58.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15979" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-08-23T12:33:26.493" Score="0" Body="For questions about burndown-chart (a graphical representation of work left to do versus time)." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-30T14:33:15.923" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T14:33:15.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15980" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-08-23T12:49:43.897" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Project_Server&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki&lt;/a&gt; definition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Microsoft Office Project Server is a project management server&#xA;  solution made by Microsoft. It uses Microsoft SharePoint as its&#xA;  foundation, and supports interface from either Microsoft Project&#xA;  (note: &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/ms-project&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;ms-project&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;ms-project&lt;/a&gt;) as a client application or by web browser&#xA;  connecting to its Project Web App (PWA) component.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Links&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Project_Server&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki article about Project Server&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc303399.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Server 2013 on Microsoft TechNet&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;See also&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/ms-project&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;ms-project&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;ms-project&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-30T14:35:03.460" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T14:35:03.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15981" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-08-23T12:49:43.897" Score="0" Body="For all questions that involve Microsoft Project Server." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-30T14:34:41.370" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T14:34:41.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15982" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-08-23T13:39:41.313" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0131697390&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Operations Management: Processes and Value Chains&lt;/a&gt;&quot; book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A cross-functional team is a group of people with different functional&#xA;  expertise working toward a common goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be cross-functional is one of requirements for the Development Team in &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/scrum&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;scrum&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;scrum&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Links&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-functional_team&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki article&lt;/a&gt; about cross-functional teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-30T14:33:18.473" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T14:33:18.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15983" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-08-23T13:39:41.313" Score="0" Body="For questions about cross-functional teams." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-30T14:32:01.440" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T14:32:01.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15984" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15988" CreationDate="2015-08-23T18:03:52.343" Score="5" ViewCount="147" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been formalising our IT method. Pretty much a &lt;strong&gt;scrumban&lt;/strong&gt; approach but I still need to document where each artefact and ceremony should be produced or occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basics are &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;proposal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;feasibility&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;kick off&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;requirements gathering&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sprints&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;delivery&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;project retrospective&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the Business Analysts has proposed a &lt;strong&gt;project mandate&lt;/strong&gt; document for the proposal phase. This to me seems too onerous for a proposal, especially the section entitled &lt;strong&gt;Quality Expectations&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;vis&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Quality Expectations&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Define the Customer’s Quality Expectations with reference to the relative importance of time, cost and quality of the product so that future decisions may based on what factor is paramount to the project's success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I missing something, but to ask the &lt;strong&gt;Product Owner&lt;/strong&gt; what their quality expectations are given that my whole philosophy is not to compromise on quality unless part of a managed technical debt process whereby payback will happen as a matter of course, seems like a ridiculous proposition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the question is ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it acceptable to ask a Product Owner &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What level of quality are you expecting from this solution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19267" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-23T20:34:52.647" LastActivityDate="2015-08-24T09:04:12.553" Title="Is there any place for the Prince 2 Mandate Document 'Quality Expectations' in an agile development?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;quality&gt;&lt;prince2&gt;&lt;project-proposal&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15964" CreationDate="2015-08-23T18:09:04.273" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Briefly:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, Daily Scrum with Three Questions is not a sign of team immaturity.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, Daily Scrum with Three Questions is valuable, even if you with your team want to switch to Extreme Programming.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Verbosely:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;No, Daily Scrum with Three Questions is not a sign of team immaturity.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality, I don't understand, why Daily Scrum with Three Questions should be a sign of team immaturity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are three questions as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v1/Scrum-Guide-US.pdf#zoom=100&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; described them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What did I do yesterday that helped the Development Team meet the Sprint Goal?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What will I do today to help the Development Team meet the Sprint Goal?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Do I see any impediment that prevents me or the Development Team from meeting the Sprint Goal?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you know, Scrum holds at three pillars: transparency, inspection, and adaptation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, the first two questions provide team's transparency. Everybody knows, what do all other team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, Daily Scrum provides the capability to inspect Sprint Progress and adapt Sprint Backlog with the daily plan (the daily plan is not Scrum term, but Scrum Team always has it, doesn't matter explicitly or implicitly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, answers of first two questions are more than enough for Sprint Progress tracking. If you have a problem with this, reasons in that are not on Daily Scrum format. Maybe your team doesn't decompose User Stories to enough small tasks and it's hard to say how much work is really done. Or, maybe exists another reason. Your Scrum Master should detect and remove it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course, Daily Scrum is not Daily Status Reporting Meeting. It's for Team synchronization, not for team members reports to managers. If your Daily Scrum has trend to &quot;quickly degrade into a status session&quot;, it's not a problem of Daily Scrum, but it's the problem of your Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/daily-scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mike Cohn said about another purpose of first and second questions&lt;/a&gt;: it's team members commitment to each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By focusing on what each person accomplished yesterday and will&#xA;  accomplish today, the team gains an excellent understanding of what&#xA;  work has been done and what work remains. The daily scrum meeting is&#xA;  not a status update meeting in which a boss is collecting information&#xA;  about who is behind schedule. Rather, it is a meeting in which team&#xA;  members make commitments to each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If a programmer stands up and says, &quot;Today, I will finish the data&#xA;  storage module,&quot; everyone knows that in tomorrow's meeting, he will&#xA;  say whether or not he finished. This has the wonderful effect of&#xA;  helping a team realize the significance of these commitments, and that&#xA;  their commitments are to one another, not to some far-off customer or&#xA;  salesman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somebody (like the author of &lt;a href=&quot;http://martinfowler.com/articles/itsNotJustStandingUp.html#WhatDoWeTalkAbout&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;) may say that &quot;a focus on personal commitment&quot; is not very good, but I don't see any reason for this statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the last one (the third) question. It encourages team members to collaborate and not be locked alone with their problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summarizing:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Daily Scrum as it described in Scrum Guide (with three questions):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Help to track Sprint Progress.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Synchronize team's work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adapt daily plan and Sprint Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increased collaboration within the team (by a commitment to each other and sharing problems).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, exists other formats of Daily Meetings (like &lt;a href=&quot;http://martinfowler.com/articles/itsNotJustStandingUp.html#WhatDoWeTalkAbout&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Improvement Board&lt;/a&gt;), but Scrum Guide prescribes Three Questions format. Otherwise, it is not Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For reasons that I described above, I don't see any disadvantages (including that you wrote in your question) in Three Questions format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Yes, Daily Scrum with Three Questions is valuable, even if you with your team want to switch to Extreme Programming.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum and XP are not opposed to each other in this issue. Even more, Kent Back in his &quot;Extreme Programming Explained&quot; [1999] book had proposed this format earlier, than Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland did it in their &quot;Agile Software Development with Scrum&quot; [2001] book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quote about the daily stand-up meeting (without deep explanation) from &quot;Extreme Programming Explained&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You may have a daily stand-up meeting so everybody knows what&#xA;  everybody else is working on.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And more details from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules/standupmeeting.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ExtremeProgramming.org&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During a stand-up meeting developers report at least three things;&#xA;  what was accomplished yesterday, what will be attempted today, and&#xA;  what problems are causing delays. The daily stand up meeting is not&#xA;  another meeting to waste people's time. It will replace many other&#xA;  meetings giving a net saving several times its own length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="11970" LastEditDate="2018-12-11T15:40:38.260" LastActivityDate="2018-12-11T15:40:38.260" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15964" CreationDate="2015-08-24T06:41:36.077" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to give a slightly different answer to Sergey because I don't think this is a simple question with one right answer, but I'd like to also note that I up-voted his answer because I agree with him too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal of the daily scrum is for the team to reset with each other on where things stand currently and what the immediate plan is over the next day. If they are accomplishing this, they should be able to tell you what was completed yesterday, what the focus is on completing today, and if anyone has any impediments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you take a new team and you tell them &quot;you have 15 minutes to synch up&quot; many teams will not accomplish this. That's where the three questions come in - they provide guidance. There are many variations on these questions that people have suggested. In fact, the most recent Scrum Guide actually modifies these to put more focus on driving toward the sprint goal. However, if your team is treating the daily scrum as a status meeting, simply removing the questions will not solve your problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-08-24T06:41:36.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15964" CreationDate="2015-08-24T07:40:31.923" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not clear to me what you mean when you talk about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the team speaking with one voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and why the format:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;doesn't bring real clarity to the progress of the sprint backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I've seen the regression to a status meeting as a recurrent anti-pattern, especially during the first phases of a transition to agility, or in environments where old management practices are still hard to die.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if you see that teams are mature enough, you can get away with the format, as long as the focus and goal stay. The Scrum Guide says that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the meeting, the Development Team members &lt;em&gt;explain&lt;/em&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What did I do yesterday that helped the Development Team meet the Sprint Goal? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What will I do today to help the Development Team meet the Sprint Goal? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Do I see any impediment that prevents me or the Development Team from meeting the Sprint Goal?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't necessarily mean they have to follow the exact same format &lt;em&gt;no-matter-what&lt;/em&gt; or mechanically answer the three questions in the order. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a format is a good way to get started and get the team on the same page and keep the focus, especially when they're new to Scrum, but it can quickly regress to a &quot;status meeting&quot; if the Team doesn't put some intelligence in the exercise. More mature teams (at least in my experience) don't need to be reminded of the goal, nor of the questions and the daily scrum just &quot;flows&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16362" LastActivityDate="2015-08-24T07:40:31.923" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15984" CreationDate="2015-08-24T09:04:12.553" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Define Quality Through an Agile &quot;Definition of Done&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What level of quality are you expecting from this solution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While tempting, asking the question in this way is not useful because it doesn't lead to actionable or testable criteria. In addition, scope (and therefore to some extent quality) is &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; adjustable theory-of-constraint dimension in most agile implementations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, you should use the agile &quot;Definition of Done&quot; (DoD) to define quality criteria using quantifiable metrics. For example, the quality expectations of your project might include (but are certainly not limited to) things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The product increment has been peer-reviewed within the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The product increment has passed acceptance testing by an end user or UAT resource.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Physical products such as cogs and widgets have been validated as being within technical/mechanical tolerances.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Code or systems have been validated against regulatory compliance requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The product increment has been documented appropriately (e.g. code is commented, or widget specifications and assembly instructions have been added to the product manual).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as the quality criteria in your Definition of Done are measurable, you can adjust the &lt;em&gt;thoroughness&lt;/em&gt; of the criteria to increase or reduce the project's quality objectives. However, keep in mind that quality impacts other project constraints such as budget and schedule, so you will need to balance quality objectives against other project requirements (such as a fixed shipping date) to find the level of &lt;em&gt;acceptable&lt;/em&gt; quality needed for successful project delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-08-24T09:04:12.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15964" CreationDate="2015-08-24T09:50:13.683" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the team started with 3Qs on Daily Standup and they continue this practice unchanged for months ever since, it would qualify to me for checking how the team inspects and adapts their process. It might be a symptom of immaturity (aka forming stage).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be oversimplification to create a &quot;3Qs unchanged =&gt; team is immature&quot; correlation, yet that's something worth checking. The next thing I would check in such case would be success ratio for sprints delivery. If they answer 3Qs and still deliver there might be more important things to improve :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastActivityDate="2015-08-24T09:50:13.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15964" CreationDate="2015-08-24T15:48:10.203" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bravo to Sergey and Daniel for excellent answers. I think they provide very good scope on the value of the three questions and that nothing is written in stone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to tackle your question from a slightly different way. I want to highlight some potentially dangerous ground. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm about to decree to all my teams &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure your intentions are the best and this may just be poor word choice. As others who read this may not know that, I feel it is important to point out the dangers of this statement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on your post it sounds like you are an engineering leader of some kind. Leadership should not be telling an team how to run their internal meetings. Agile is about creating empowered teams and trusting them to get the job done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team is not getting the job done, then you can ask powerful questions to try and encourage them towards performance. Questions like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do you think is causing these stories to not be completed?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does everyone have the information they need to complete their work. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And so on... &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dictating to an agile team is a road back to command and control management and removing empowerment from the team. Unless the team is completely broken, don't meddle direct, work with your scrum masters and set goals for the teams to meet. Give them the trust to do it or to report their problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-08-24T15:48:10.203" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15991" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15992" CreationDate="2015-08-24T18:48:58.243" Score="11" ViewCount="1366" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently having a debate with some of my business analysts as to whether the testers and developers from the scrum team assigned to a project should be involved in the requirements gathering meeting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My viewpoint is that it is crucial that a developer is on hand to offer advice from a technical viewpoint and the tester is there to facilitate the development of acceptance criteria. Also, the team get to meet and build a relationship with the stakeholders and get to see hear the requirements discussion at first hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in summary, would you leave any of the following out of a user story session?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum Master&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Owner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tester&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think they all should be there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19267" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T09:58:17.043" Title="Which scrum actors should attend a requirements gathering session" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15991" CreationDate="2015-08-24T19:18:07.243" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Never... :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By leaving the scrum team out of the conversation, you are just moving back into the pitfalls of waterfall requirements. When features are written in a vacuum, then you either end up with a feature that rarely meets the product managers or many back and forth documents as PM and Eng &quot;negotiate&quot; the feature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're also missing out on an incredible wealth of expertise if you leave out the people doing the work. If they understand the entire picture, they will often be able to provide a better solution to give the customer value. If you tell the developer, &quot;put this button here so they can print&quot; the developer will do just that. If you tell the developer &quot;I want the user to be able to capture the results of this output&quot; then they might point out that the majority of the user base is mobile and uses something like Evernote or Pocket and perhaps that is more important to support these solutions than printing which only works for 5% of the user base. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Enterprise Requirements Planning:&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;When you start scaling beyond a handful of teams, it can be very hard to include everyone in the requirements building exercises. A hundred teams is close to a hundred people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point we don't remove all these people, we just scale it not unlike a scrum of scrums. We call this the Product Owner Team. A POT has representatives from all the key areas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Owner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Voice of the Customer: (may be the PO, may be someone in Biz or Sales)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Architect: (Needs a strong technical and business sense)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;QA Architect: (a senior QA person who has expertise in total development cycle)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developer Rep: (someone who could do the actual coding for this area of the product)&#xA;Customer Service: These people have an incredible sense of how the customer uses the product. Use them. &#xA;Operations: You need to deploy this product. Knowing in advance how that will happen and challenges can lead to better architecture up front. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-08-24T19:18:07.243" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15991" CreationDate="2015-08-24T20:09:35.003" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I'm hearing that the real problems are that during the requirements gathering meeting you want:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;good AC developed and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you want technical guidance to balance the feasibility of the business requirement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is the goal of the requirements gathering meeting then...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of these can certainly be achieved by including a technical and/or testing representative.  However, there is no yes/no answer if this is the correct decision for your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've worked with a multitude of BA's that are savy enough to understand technical implications and write good AC.  I've also worked with BA's that care purely about capturing what the customer wants and often provide bridge-to-knowwhere requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd consider your problem via cost benefit:  Is it more effective/efficient to include a tester and a developer or are there other ways that achieve the same results that are less wasteful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the timeframe of the project and the maturity goals of the team in your decision as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-08-24T20:09:35.003" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15948" CreationDate="2015-08-25T10:52:52.523" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others already pointed out, a 'marathon' is not an official scrum term or artifact. For those looking for something 'larger than a story' or 'bridging multiple sprints', you can use an 'Epic'. Quoting from &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrummethodology.com/scrum-epics/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrummethodology.com&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What happens when a story includes too many unknowns to tell just how big it is? Or what if the story’s requirements are known, but its effort is too huge to complete in a single sprint? We call these stories “epics.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17421" LastActivityDate="2015-08-25T10:52:52.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15964" CreationDate="2015-08-25T18:01:29.250" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The cross-functional teams I have overseen have always had problems with the traditional &quot;What I did yesterday, what I will do today, any blockers?&quot; method.  Mostly because in a cross-functional team, if individuals are talking about their daily tasks, nobody understands what they are doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, I took the method outlined in Section 3.2 of this great document (A great read): &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scruminc.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Hyper-Productive-Metircs.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.scruminc.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Hyper-Productive-Metircs.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proposal has the team focus on the burndown and sprint backlog as a whole.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We shift the focus of the meeting from the individuals to the Sprint&#xA;  Backlog. Starting with the highest priority Sprint Backlog Item (SBI)&#xA;  that is not yet completed in each Daily Stand-Up, the entire Team&#xA;  discusses their collective contribution toward completing that SBI.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proposed questions to the team's answer are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What did WE achieve yesterday on Priority&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What was OUR contribution on Priority 1 worth in Story Points?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is OUR plan for completing Priority 1 today?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What, if anything, is blocking us or has the potential to slow us down today?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll be frank, we are just starting out on this path.  We are looking forward to seeing teams work together to complete their sprint commitments.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19331" LastEditorUserId="11970" LastEditDate="2018-12-11T15:53:58.260" LastActivityDate="2018-12-11T15:53:58.260" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15997" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15998" CreationDate="2015-08-26T06:21:04.597" Score="2" ViewCount="69" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the current environment, there appears to be a subjective difference of opinions of the types of documentation and the level of detail required. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, at what point is a document a design document, an as-built, technical specification and operational guide?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the project hands over to the operational team, there is conflict in what they think they expect to see and what is delivered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although attempts have been made to clarify what these documents should look like, there is very little by the way of experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally these issues arise when there is an incident and documents are seen as lacking in detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17081" LastActivityDate="2015-08-26T09:14:46.487" Title="Differences in perspectives for various types of documentation" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15997" CreationDate="2015-08-26T09:14:46.487" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main concern shouldn't be 'how do we name this', but 'what information do we need to get our product or organisation to where we want it to be'.  Your question to me seems to revolve around this sentence: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;there is conflict in what they think they expect to see and what is delivered.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can indeed be a big problem, especially when work is done across multiple (sub)projects, teams and disciplines. The obvious answer is: &lt;em&gt;define beforehand what the document goal is, what information it needs to supply&lt;/em&gt;. What do stakeholders need from this document, what actions and decisions should the document enable the stakeholder to make?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your project workflow should include a system for ensuring the products (which includes documentation) being delivering fit purpose and add maximum value to your overall product or company goal. Scrum for instance applies a user story, acceptance criteria and a definition of done to product increments delivered. This also applies to documentation. User stories and acceptance criteria can be described in a lot of ways, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team x (stakeholder) who are building product x, need to be able to determine from the document, what government ruling applies to the product.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team y (stakeholder) who are building product z, need to be able to determine from the document, what type of battery is optimal for supplying product z with the power it needs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's impossible to give a name to something that will ensure the document fit's the stakeholders purposes. Invest in making sure the document suits everyone's needs. Once that's taken care of, pick a name that fits the information contained in the document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17421" LastActivityDate="2015-08-26T09:14:46.487" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16000" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16002" CreationDate="2015-08-26T11:26:34.163" Score="4" ViewCount="257" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Kanban development team has a WIP limit of 4 on their in-dev column.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the team members is part-time i.e. not 100% and they are working on a story and therefore holding up 1 spot in the WIP dev column. The team member has many other responsibilities so is not 100% focused on this story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should we remove the team member and create a kanban board specifically for them to manage all their tasks or what is a good solution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastActivityDate="2015-08-29T09:09:55.907" Title="How to handle a part-time kanban team member" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;dependencies&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16000" CreationDate="2015-08-26T12:32:34.677" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Having a part time team member is probably a bad idea.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When something needs doing that can't be done in the slice of their time you've been allocated, that is waste. When you have to train and familiarize them to the level of a full time member and then can't get full time work out them, that is waste. When they have to catch up after missing a couple of days: waste. &lt;em&gt;Et cetera&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Leave the board as it is.&lt;/strong&gt; Part of the reason you have a board is to help you identify process improvement. You're uncomfortable because your board is working correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17705" LastEditorUserId="17705" LastEditDate="2015-08-26T14:29:55.860" LastActivityDate="2015-08-26T14:29:55.860" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16003" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-26T13:06:28.130" Score="5" ViewCount="263" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a project manager in an extremely bureaucratic, waterfall-oriented organization, but have the opportunity to pilot an agile approach with a new project I'm spinning up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have experience with scrum and kanban, but intend to take a comprehensive look at the major agile methodologies and determine the best fit for the project and organization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there a good model or tool to help determine the appropriate agile methodology for the situation?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the absence of a good model, what do you believe are the key criteria for choosing a specific agile methodology? And if you want to really want to go overboard, what weight (as a percentage of total) would you apply to your criteria?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20100413204237/http://wysockiepm.com/about/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Robert Wysocki's book&lt;/a&gt; suggests some broad approaches based on whether or not the project goal is clear, requirements are complete, schedule is tight and whether scope changes are expected. But there may be other resources out there worth reviewing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16748" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-10T22:56:13.797" LastActivityDate="2020-06-11T10:40:31.777" Title="Is there a good model for choosing an agile approach?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16004" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16014" CreationDate="2015-08-26T13:17:03.430" Score="0" ViewCount="81" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any tips or advice of how to integrate a new junior QA Engineer into a established, highly technical dev team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastActivityDate="2015-08-27T10:15:07.633" Title="How to integrate a new QA Engineer in a established dev team" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16003" CreationDate="2015-08-26T14:43:41.713" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know much about how to select methodologies (I always used Scrum as a base, and tailored it to the specific needs of the project and organization), but please be aware that agile is more like a mindset than a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you'd like to introduce agile methodology in a new organization, the key points are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team members must be empowered and held responsible for the output (there's no need to sign-off from higher authorities in most of the cases - for example, PO must be able to change scope without involving sponsor)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dedication is required from the whole organization in order to enable even a single team to be agile (an example, we couldn't start our first sprint because security department didn't authorized team members to get keys for the dev room for 2 weeks)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is not a marathon, it is a sprint - you'll need to continuously put energy in, there will be no slower periods (no time for your other responsibilities - if you're 100% on the project, no other work will fit into your schedule)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Embrace change - expect that agreements made yesterday will be revisited and possible undone tomorrow, make no fuss about it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be flexible about the outcome - what you have in your mind is possibly not what you're going to get after a few changes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And, most important: trust the other team members - you should not play enterprise politics or power games, you're rowing in the same boat&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're lucky enough to get those points accepted (and supported by your organization), concrete methodology is actually quite irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16711" LastActivityDate="2015-08-26T14:43:41.713" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16003" CreationDate="2015-08-26T16:51:17.597" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If, as you say your organisation is &lt;strong&gt;extremely&lt;/strong&gt; bureaucratic and waterfall-oriented, I'd not &quot;waste&quot; too much time thinking about what to do and instead start doing something:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find a problem to solve&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Figure out how to solve it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apply your solution&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inspect and adapt&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, &lt;a href=&quot;http://pragdave.me/blog/2014/03/04/time-to-kill-agile/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;as Dave Thomas suggests&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here is how to do something in an agile fashion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What to do&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Find out where you are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Take a small step towards your goal &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Adjust your understanding based on what you learned &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Repeat &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to do it&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When faced with two or more alternatives that deliver roughly the same&#xA;  value, take the path that makes future change easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do this together with your team, let the methodology grow hand in hand with people engagement, especially if you want results that last. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and good luck ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16362" LastActivityDate="2015-08-26T16:51:17.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16007" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16016" CreationDate="2015-08-26T19:59:02.763" Score="0" ViewCount="406" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a project with a slew of tasks.  Let's say for the sake of example I have 5 tasks and these 5 tasks will take 5 calendar days to execute.  But, due to the nature of the task, a resource can only work 2 hours a day on the task due to the nature of the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to create a task in project such that is has a duration, but does not fully impact the resource over that duration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19339" LastActivityDate="2015-08-27T19:27:25.313" Title="How to track tasks in project and differentiate between duration and percentage of a resources day" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16008" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-26T23:03:14.063" Score="4" ViewCount="409" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our search for a zero-email SE/BIM solution, we’re struggling to strip communication ‘terms’ to their essence. In PM-jargon, we tend to use many terms, such as; Decision - Action - Task - Note - Question - Change request - Change order - Issue - Remark - Comment - Approval - Assumption - Item - …&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the minimum set of 'terms' to manage all types of communication? It's about more than just semantics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine you want to set up a database application to totally replace the need for e-mail, for all communication needs in a project. It has to be role-based, traceable and water-tight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what do we use e-mail for in projects? To inform, to question, to give a task, to implement a decision, to flag an issue, to request or order a change, to give feedback, to .... etc. etc. How could we reduce this to a minimal set of 'types of communication' - for the lack of a better expression - so that we can build a database-based e-mail replacement? With the obvious benefit that all communication is always explicit, structured, related, logged, traceable, ... instead of my Inbox, which is a Black Hole? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a &lt;strong&gt;Note&lt;/strong&gt; (or Remark or Comment) is a message (a piece of information), from a Sender (a person/role or a 'meeting') to a Receiver (one or more person(s)/role(s) or a meeting). It does not require a response. So the only data fields required are: Message (= the note) - Sender - Receiver.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a &lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt; (or Request for Information or Issue??) is a message from a Sender to a Receiver (same definitions as above). It DOES require a response, by a certain time. So the required data fields now are: Message (= the question) - Sender - Receiver - Due date. The Answer will be linked to this Question, so that it is traceable.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a &lt;strong&gt;Decision&lt;/strong&gt; is a message (a piece of information), from a Sender to a Receiver (same definitions as above). It does not require a response as such, but it should lead to the mutation of a Requirement (Delete, Change or Create). If not, it is just a Note. So the required data fields now are: Message (= the decision) - Sender - Receiver - Requirement(s) affected. The Decision will remain linked to the affected Decision, so that it is traceable.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;and so on ... &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question now is: how many 'terms' are required to cater for all types of 'information exchanges' in a role-based PM-system, if the objective is to make the use of e-mail obsolete? And what is the smallest set, to keep this as simple as possible? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does some kind of 'information exchange model' (i.e communication model) exist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19340" LastEditorUserId="19340" LastEditDate="2015-08-27T05:13:56.303" LastActivityDate="2016-06-04T00:16:34.567" Title="PM communication model" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;&lt;communication-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16003" CreationDate="2015-08-27T08:26:47.597" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not really an answer so to speak, but I'd suggest you watch this very interesting talk by Yuval Yeret : &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/fr/presentations/ways-to-kickstart-agile-kanban-way&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Good and bad ways to kickstart agile the Kanban way&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. He presents how to drive Agile adoption using Kanban, considering every small change as options, and gives some good advise on change management, the Kanban way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition you can also read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/interviews/lkfr14-yeret-kanban-agile&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;an interview of Yuval Yeret by Ben Linders&lt;/a&gt; on the same topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(sources : infoq.com)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4071" LastActivityDate="2015-08-27T08:26:47.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4344" CreationDate="2015-08-27T09:15:26.197" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our company the Agile methodology has been applied since 2004. Luckily, its necessity was realized and it was introduced by the founder of the company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.targetprocess.com/articles/agile-culture-breeds-agile-project-management-software/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;In this interview&lt;/a&gt; he says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I read &lt;em&gt;“Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams” by Timothy Lister&#xA;  and Tom DeMarco&lt;/em&gt; which seemed to me a world of difference from all the&#xA;  other books I had read about product management. The book reinforced&#xA;  my understanding of major principles for collaboration and effective&#xA;  project management: trust people’s ability to make decisions, respect&#xA;  and empower team members instead of enforcing centralized planning,&#xA;  hierarchies and resource management.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to read or recommend this book to the managers whom you need to convince that the Agile methodology would radically increase productivity as a reward for the lost illusion of control they might have now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Nathan Wilson, Gartner, put it: &lt;strong&gt;“Give up the illusion of control to find control.”&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19343" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-27T15:22:21.847" LastActivityDate="2015-08-27T15:22:21.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16000" CreationDate="2015-08-27T09:23:45.327" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/16002/19363&quot;&gt;Nathan&lt;/a&gt;. A part time team member being responsible for a &lt;strong&gt;WIP&lt;/strong&gt; item is a bad idea. However, if the part time team member can make a contribution without being disruptive &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%E2%80%99_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;see Brooke's Law&lt;/a&gt; then I would suggest that he/she could pair on one of the WIP items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our &lt;strong&gt;scrumban&lt;/strong&gt; developments, we try and minimise &lt;strong&gt;WIP&lt;/strong&gt; by making every effort to have the whole team work on only one story at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19267" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2015-08-29T09:09:55.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15396" CreationDate="2015-08-27T09:42:17.050" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that individuals and interactions should prevail over processes and tools and that it is better to start with a simple offline Scrum board. I do wish you all the success in this challenging task and hope you will succeed in introducing the Agile methodology in your team and company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, when it comes to the selection of an Agile tool you might also want to look at alternatives to Jira: Jira is surely more well-known just because it had existed long before Agile arose and by that time had a large network of users. But a number of Agile development tools have been developed specifically for the Agile methodology. They are less known (in comparison to Jira) but they do support the Agile methodology better. I represent one of such companies and we frequently hear from our customers that Targetprocess (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.targetprocess.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.targetprocess.com&lt;/a&gt;) better reflects the Agile methodology, is more customizable and has a better UI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19343" LastActivityDate="2015-08-27T09:42:17.050" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15948" CreationDate="2015-08-27T09:48:20.320" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might find this article very useful: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.targetprocess.com/articles/speed-in-software-development/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.targetprocess.com/articles/speed-in-software-development/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article defines both sprints and marathons as well as provides advice and numerous examples how to increase the speed in software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author of the article has been applying the Agile methodology and experimenting with different Scrum, Kanban &amp;amp; XP practices since 2004.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19343" LastActivityDate="2015-08-27T09:48:20.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16004" CreationDate="2015-08-27T10:15:07.633" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have him be instructed by the enior QA engineer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make him read all the documentation you got.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have the devs take some time to explain features to him. That way he should learn to understand their general intentions and practices. Start with the most esential/most frequently tested (types) of features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Allow him to spend time with the devs: set up lunches, joint breaks, after work events, ... They should get to know and understand one another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Include him in all dev-related communication (chat rooms, mailing/notification lists, accounts in all kinds of tools).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure to give him independent QA assignments (i.e., the kind that he himself is solely responsible for) as early on as possible. He should become self-sutained ASAP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have him write test cases and update documentation of features he tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just off the top of my head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19279" LastActivityDate="2015-08-27T10:15:07.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16008" CreationDate="2015-08-27T10:32:19.347" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand your objectives as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your organization (or some part of it) are trying to get rid of&#xA;e-mail as primary means of communication.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are trying to replace it with some other tool. It sounds like&#xA;you're aiming to develop a solution of your own.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are trying to go about this by building a theoretical model of&#xA;project-related communication.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming this is correct, here are my thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has been attempted and partially solved by a whole bunch of people. How about having a look at various collaboration and workplace communication tools to see what they have decided to implement in terms of objects and workflows. This could be a place to start: &lt;a href=&quot;http://alternativeto.net/software/jira/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://alternativeto.net/software/jira/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know your organization and what the stakes for this endeavor are, but your approach sounds a bit too theoretical. I doubt that it will be efficient and that you will arrive at a final understanding that everyone can subscribe to that is not very complex. I.e., you will have&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;very high costs for developing a solution&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to make some compromises&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without knowledge about your organization, people will only be able to give you inspiring, but not necessarily to the point answers. If you are trying to develop a solution for your organization, it would be tailored to your needs, and should thus be derived from the processes that your organization currently employs (and ideally the ones you foresee being employed in the future). So either these requirements can only be understod by people in the organization. Or you will receive input on rather generic concepts, which then in all likelihood will already be available in some OTS solution (i.e., a common denominator of PM tooling, if you will).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your best approach might be to use a solution that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;already exists and can be bought/subscribed to&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is rather flexible in its setup (you can model custom workflows in JIRA, for example)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;can be extended as needed by your organization with custom development&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19279" LastActivityDate="2015-08-27T10:32:19.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16007" CreationDate="2015-08-27T19:27:25.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, I'm afraid not.  Tasks by themselves know nothing about how much work a resource or resources will perform.  However, you can assign resource such that they don't work &quot;fulltime&quot; on the task.  A couple of options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create the 5 day duration task and temporarily set it as Fixed&#xA;Duration. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the Task Form to assign the resource and enter 10 hours&#xA;of work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project will calculate the Peak units necessary to spread the 10 hours of work evenly across the 5 day duration.&#xA;I would then, personally, return the task to either Fixed Units, or Fixed work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-08-27T19:27:25.313" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16017" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-28T07:07:45.657" Score="1" ViewCount="1516" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently work at a large IT consulting firm as an &lt;strong&gt;agile project manager&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;I am PMI-PMP, ACP certified and have &lt;strong&gt;3-4 yrs of scrum/xp experience&lt;/strong&gt; of which &lt;strong&gt;2 years as a scrum master&lt;/strong&gt;. I am contemplating a job offer for the role of &lt;strong&gt;Iteration manager / Scrum Master&lt;/strong&gt; with a large e-commerce retailer. The big plus for me is to get ecommerce experience exp in large scalable systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scrum master/IM role (Typically and in this case) does not have stakeholder management responsibilities, staffing, people management, risk management and P&amp;amp;L responsibilities - all of these I currently do in my role and I know is high demand for PM jobs. I do not want to make a career out of scrum-mastering or becoming an agile coach. My aspiration is to grow to program manager or business development roles and consider this opportunity to gain some e-Com experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do recruiters &amp;amp; hiring managers view this transition from PM to SM - will this transition hurt me if I want to shift back to Proj / program mgmt roles after gaining e-commerce experience ?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does the actual job title matter (Project Manager vs Scrum Master) when looking for new jobs in the PM space ? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I am trying to ascertain if taking up the Iteration manager for the benefits it offers (e-commerce experience) will hurt my chances of progressing along the project/program manager track (which I am currently on)&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feedback will be much appreciated from Recruiters/Hiring Managers/Fellow PMs/Scrum Masters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19352" LastEditorUserId="19352" LastEditDate="2015-08-28T13:54:13.697" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T18:44:57.480" Title="Going from project manager to scrum master (career progression)" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;program-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-09-11T12:05:44.573" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16017" CreationDate="2015-08-28T09:18:03.263" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a scrum master working for a company building e-commerce applications for midsized clients (~20-200 employee range). I've previously worked at a large e-commerce retailer in telecom. From my perspective:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A scrum master role will give you experience in scrum, which might be good for your CV. It does require insight in how development teams work. You're expected to facilitate the scrum team, which can be difficult at first. Scrum mastering really centers around helping the development team and product owner applying scrum. Getting work done, estimates, prioritizing, is all done by the development team conferring with the product owner. The scrum master handles scrum and not much else. Read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the scrum guide&lt;/a&gt; (if you haven't already) to get a good feel of how all this works. In short: scrum mastering and what most people consider 'classic' project management are two entirely different beasts. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Scrum does not have a formal project manager role. As said, a project manager and scrum master do &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; different things. Therefore, the title will matter. Of course, you can always boast having experience in both fields. &#xA;From what you're saying about your goals and aspirations, I think you should  look at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/product-owner&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;product owner&lt;/a&gt; role. It sounds like you're more into big picture product development and maximizing team value to the stakeholders, which suits the product owner role far better.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for e-commerce experience, I don't think that should be a dealbreaker in any but the most specific jobhunting cases. If you're already in IT, most jobs in the project management area shouldn't be unreachable due to lack of e-commerce experience. It's simply a business model or retail channel. Teams still work the same in most regards, business goals are everywhere, time is still time, stakeholders have their needs, et cetera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17421" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T09:18:03.263" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16017" CreationDate="2015-08-28T09:31:22.813" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;1.How do recruiters &amp;amp; hiring managers view this transition from PM to SM - will this transition hurt me if I want to shift back to Proj / program mgmt roles after gaining e-commerce experience ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hello there I am a Scrum master from UK and I believe that most roles in the current market looking for project managers seek digital/eCommerce experience.&#xA;Personally I dont think so this transition will hurt you as I feel that it will be considered as an Addon on top of your project manager experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you apply for very small percentage of specific project managers roles which only require planning and implementation part of project, you might not get through as those small number of roles are specifically build for project managers profiles not for facilitators profiles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the actual job title matter (Project Manager vs Scrum Master) when looking for new jobs in the PM space ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes it does as I mentioned above scrum master is considered as a facilitator where as project manager is always considered as a guardian of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19353" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T09:31:22.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16020" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-28T11:13:02.807" Score="10" ViewCount="1025" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Dean Leffingwell's Scaled Agile Framework there exists the concept of a &lt;strong&gt;hardening iteration&lt;/strong&gt; E.G. after three sprints of two weeks duration, we have a &lt;strong&gt;hardening sprint&lt;/strong&gt; of one week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this short sprint we can pay back some of the &lt;strong&gt;technical debt&lt;/strong&gt; accrued over the previous sprints, ensure more rigorous integration testing is carried out and the set up, tear down procedures are quality reviewed.&#xA;Time can also be factored in for any training requirements that were uncovered over the prior three sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Admittedly, if we have a mature &lt;strong&gt;DOD&lt;/strong&gt; on the delivery of a sprint work item there should be a decent level of quality but sticking to the principle that we deliver only what is required to satisfy the criteria of each story will eventually lead to known duplication in the code base. Good developers will naturally want to improve their code base so having a &lt;strong&gt;hardening sprint&lt;/strong&gt; will ensure they can concentrate on moving WIP in the main sprints but the address any wider re-factorings periodically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently attended a conference where Rachel Davies of Unruly Software explained that their XP developers have every Friday as &lt;strong&gt;Golden Time&lt;/strong&gt; where they are free to re-factor the codebase and learn new technology. That works out at one day in 5 as opposed to the one day in seven by having 3*2 week sprints plus a hardening sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe this is a good approach to paying the technical debt in a managed fashion. Technical debt will become more expensive to repay the longer the project continues in the same fashion as a story becomes more costly to change once we have delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know the idea of a hardening sprint is anathema to agile purists but I think it works well in our pragmatic scrumban approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the issue is similar to that around the validity of having a Sprint Zero which ruffles a few feathers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, Question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is a &lt;strong&gt;Hardening Sprint&lt;/strong&gt; a good idea, if not why and how would one address the concerns outlined above?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19267" LastEditorUserId="1021" LastEditDate="2015-09-04T18:04:00.160" LastActivityDate="2015-11-22T22:04:05.373" Title="Hardening Sprint - Manna from Heaven or a Witches Brew?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;extreme-programming&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16021" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16049" CreationDate="2015-08-28T11:40:15.110" Score="11" ViewCount="5768" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you best define a sprint goal, when the sprint's stories range across a wide number of different products?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Background: our scrum team's sprint contains stories that belong to a number of our company products and or clients. We build online stores for clients and build reusable internal products for implementation over multiple clients. We also maintain internal development tools. In a sprint we could have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Story: Extend the company's reusable shipping module to handle carrier tracking codes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Story: Build a widget for client x that shows the newest products.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Story: Write a functional design for client y's new ERP product importer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Story: Add code format checking to our internal continuous integration server.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On average we have around 10 stories per sprint. Sprint goals currently are either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Very broad and non-specific to encompass all stories, which makes it useless as a guideline during the sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Very long, pretty much having each story included, which doesn't make it a concise goal to work towards.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first this wasn't really a problem for our team. We'd just pick a general goal and judge progress / decisions during the sprint based on a stories acceptance criteria and definition of done. The scrum guide describes several situations in which it advises to use the sprint goal to judge whether the team is moving in the right direction. As the team's getting better at scrum the need for a valuable sprint goal is becoming more apparent to us. We're getting more in the habit of checking 'what's our overall goal', and a good sprint goal would definitely help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17421" LastActivityDate="2017-04-20T15:03:21.443" Title="Setting a sprint goal when the sprint contains multiple products' stories" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;goals&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16021" CreationDate="2015-08-28T12:35:31.483" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming that different parts of the team will each work on only some of the projects, how about simply defining numerous sub-goals and assigning them individually to those parts of he overall team. The sprint goal would then be to have each part of the team reach their own goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option would be to break down your setup so that a sprint cannot become that diverse. But if you have so many different topics in any one sprint, I don't see how you can boil it down to a two-liner that still reflects all the diversity and complexity to anyone who wants to be able to check their progress against it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19279" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T12:35:31.483" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16017" CreationDate="2015-08-28T12:39:14.807" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not in as formal an environment as you are and haven't been for some time. But what that has taught me is that you should not be concerned about titles, job descriptions, career paths that some people might prefere to see (and others then won't).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing I would suggest you should be concerned about are the results you can produce and then talk about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would give preference to a candidate who argues with results and his own contributions towards them over one that solely refers to being in a position for a time period X anytime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19279" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T12:39:14.807" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16021" CreationDate="2015-08-28T12:45:31.283" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't bother finding the right goal from the stories you picked. It's a symptom, not a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It works the other way around: the sprint goal is not an end itself, it's a story picking tool. &lt;strong&gt;The sprint goal informs story selection.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is this a helpful thing? Here's some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/effective-sprint-goals/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reading material&lt;/a&gt;. TLDR: If you have a clear sprint goal, it's probably also clear what value you're delivering. If everyone knows what value you're delivering, you're more likely to end up working on the right stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you aren't doing this. It sounds like your work is fairly unconnected, and the focus is on filling the sprint rather than on any specific goal (this is actually very common). Don't paper over this, the sprint goal is working perfectly, in that it has alerted you to something in your process that can be improved. Write something down, like &lt;em&gt;&quot;there doesn't seem to be a sprint goal&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;talk about it during your retrospective&lt;/strong&gt; (with your PO especially). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17705" LastEditorUserId="17705" LastEditDate="2017-04-20T15:03:21.443" LastActivityDate="2017-04-20T15:03:21.443" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14357" CreationDate="2015-08-28T12:51:12.160" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience at &lt;strong&gt;AXA&lt;/strong&gt; all projects would first have to pass &lt;strong&gt;Foundations&lt;/strong&gt; before they could proceed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A working party would perform a high level breakdown of the proposed solution to allow a better estimated project scoping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hardware, software and resourcing requirements would also be ascertained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Initial estimation on time scales determined from the newly estimated scope of the project and predicted available resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project would be assessed on how it would fit in with others already scheduled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, the predicted rate of return &lt;strong&gt;ROI&lt;/strong&gt; and justification would be the main driver in deciding whether the project had passed Foundations before a start date could be put down in ink.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in answer to your question, No, stories are not broken down into ever decreasing level of detail at this stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19267" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T12:51:12.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15783" CreationDate="2015-08-28T13:02:36.897" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no real need to start with &lt;strong&gt;User Roles&lt;/strong&gt; although once you start adding your high level features, you will find that more features with different needs will develop by using &lt;strong&gt;Roles&lt;/strong&gt;. This can be taken further by &#xA;describing the Role further with a &lt;strong&gt;Persona&lt;/strong&gt; description e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Casual Site Visitor - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Visits once a month to check balance of credits only&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not technically savvy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;only accesses features available on landing page&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;often requires easy password reminders&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would personally have one story map per project otherwise you will have a problem determining priority of features BETWEEN maps but that might depend on just how big your wall is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best resource so far on User Story Mapping would be Jeff Paton's book:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/User-Story-Mapping-Discover-Product/dp/1491904909&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;User Story Mapping:  Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19267" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T13:02:36.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16020" CreationDate="2015-08-28T13:09:04.627" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Hardening Sprint should only be for stabilizing the system and getting it ready for release&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my previous job we ran a one week hardening sprint prior to deploying the content of 2 or 3 two-week sprints to a production web site. At that time we were doing manual regression testing. There was not enough regression testing done within the sprint to be sure it is shippable. So, during the hardening sprint all we did was regression testing. If any bugs are found, we will fix them and verify them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eventually we hired a team member with test automation skills, built a regression test suite. We also used some of these tests to run load and stress testing. Then we did away with the hardening sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/correct-use-of-a-release-sprint&quot;&gt;Mike Cohn advocates the same thing, &quot;The release sprint is not a dumping ground for sloppy work; rather it is a place where some hardening of the system can occur.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are doing code refactoring during the hardening sprint, I would say that is a red flag or to use your own term a &quot;witches brew&quot;! You are creating more chances for regression issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you may need a hardening sprint when you are on training wheels. Once your engineering practices improve to assure a shippable increment in each sprint, you can drop it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T13:09:04.627" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16029" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-28T14:31:56.727" Score="4" ViewCount="203" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm tasked with realizing a project that was created by a visionary stakeholder. This individual needs to play a role in making the project happen day-to-day. But as we work towards deadlines, this person feels comfortable envisioning different versions of the future, rather than looking at a task list and picking things off one-by-one to accomplish. Deadlines get missed, and we're going to slip into the red zone if the behavior doesn't change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried organizing work into Agile-like sprints, because there's a software development aspect to the project. But the visionary found this to be too pressure-filled and stressful and abandoned that methodology unilaterally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What project management methods would tend to keep a visionary person on task? Would short daily status meetings tend to help? &quot;What did you work on? What will you work on? What's the priority?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.anticlue.net/archives/001030.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; seems relevant. It discusses specific change resistance tactics and ways to handle them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Crossing the change river is hard. Some cowboys who are true entrepreneurs will not be able to cross, others will. Our job as leaders is to help them try, and find the best seat on the bus for them, even if sometimes it is another bus.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19358" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-08-30T14:41:58.587" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T20:03:29.460" Title="What project management methods will keep a visionary person on task?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;personal-skills&gt;&lt;vision&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16020" CreationDate="2015-08-28T15:00:01.820" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether it's good or bad idea depends on how you manage risks connected with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I have experienced the risks are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;refactoring effort is often hard to estimate and leads to planning problems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it's  hard to define acceptance criteria for the refactor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there is a lure to deliver half-ass stories (rather than half-done) at the end of the sprint with belief that &quot;we can fix it later&quot;. That is especially true for &lt;strong&gt;Golden Time&lt;/strong&gt; that happens right after the sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing to bare in mind is that someone have to manage backlog items related to refactoring. More items in the backlog means more time spent on debating whether this refactor is more important than the other one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T15:00:01.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16031" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-28T17:15:55.260" Score="3" ViewCount="813" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a worker assigned. He can only work half days (3.5 hours here).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After leveling for over-allocations, project wants him to work 1.75 hours on 2 tasks instead of 3.5 hours on one until completion and then 3.5 on the other until it's complete. He's a software developer, and not someone who should be multitasking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know I can force it to schedule one at a time if I add fake dependencies, but I was wondering if there was a better way to get project to stop assigning work in a multitasking fashion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm using MS Project 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19361" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-08-29T09:01:13.150" LastActivityDate="2016-02-26T19:38:43.260" Title="Disallow multitasking in MS Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16020" CreationDate="2015-08-28T18:39:23.387" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A hardening sprint is a tool.  If you use the tool correctly it is a good idea.  If you use the tool without knowing the problem you are trying to solve it may or may not be a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's a vague answer so in practice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a team that isn't ready to continuously build quality into their product (i.e. they have accrued a ton of tech debt or the business is not allowing enough slack to prioritize tech debt, learning, and CI into the regular iterations) then a hardening sprint is a good tool to address the tangible issue that product quality is suffering or the delivery team is not given enough time to learn and improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd argue it is ideal to shoot for teams that deliver high quality and have time for CI in every iteration (if you're in a Scrum world) or continuously (if you're in a Kanban world).  I'd say hardening sprints are an intermediary solution to getting to a sustainable development model.  They are also great for bringing light to quality problems since having a hardening sprint for a few weeks can be a costly pill for management and the team to swallow when they have 1-4 weeks of 0 business value delivered.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The downside of the hardening sprint is that hardening sprint activities are usually more efficient and/or effective to address right when the problem occurs.  There is a ramp-up cost associated with hardening iterations that is lower if quality/CI are built into each iteration or work item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastEditorUserId="13568" LastEditDate="2015-08-28T18:46:47.903" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T18:46:47.903" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16017" CreationDate="2015-08-28T18:44:57.480" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on the career goals you've described, this doesn't sound like the right opportunity. To me, the move from PM to Scrum Master would look like a demotion at worst, and a desire to shift from a management to a technical role at best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason it looks like a demotion, from a project management career perspective, is that the responsibilities appear to be shrinking. Additionally, while most Agile trainers I've met agree that Scrum Master is a critical role, some take the position that Scrum Master isn't a full time job and that at a scrum meeting for expert-level Agile teams any team member should be able to take the Scrum Master role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A safer transition would be to a Product Owner role, or a lateral move to a Project Manager. As a Product Owner, you could justify the move as a growth opportunity that affords you additional experience working in a customer-facing role. Unlike the Scrum Master, who is largely a facilitator inside the technical team, the Product Owner is a full time role working with customer representatives to define, negotiate, and prioritize product features and success criteria. The Product Owner is not expected to participate in development activities, except as an advocate for the needs and priorities of the customer. Those skills will be invaluable as a project manager or program manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master is a facilitator and reporter of team decisions. Some organizations may make the mistake of treating the Scrum Master as the person responsible for estimates and planning, but those organizations are missing the point of Agile. All team members estimate. All team members plan the sprint. All team members contribute improvement ideas at retrospectives. All team members swarm to overcome roadblocks identified at the daily standup. The Scrum Master is just someone who steps up, like a team captain, to keep people motivated and hold them accountable to following Agile ceremonies and practices that the team has adopted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2305" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T18:44:57.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16037" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16048" CreationDate="2015-08-29T06:58:05.060" Score="2" ViewCount="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are currently 160+ projects in flight. Based on business priorities, needs and wants, these are being group as current and future with a view to further segment these by timelines such as 3, 6, 9, 12 months. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These also need to be presented with current capabilities, future requirements and gaps. This is primarily from a technology, people and process perspective. The intention is to present to the wider management team so that they have an appreciation of the investment required to deliver the projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the capabilities will be able to deliver current and future initiatives however there will others that have gaps and require further investment. As these are developed and become available they form part of the existing foundation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in the first 3 months there are projects A,B,C,D supported by technology, people and process 1,2,3,4,5 however 4,5 will only be available in the next cycle e.g. 6 months which presents a gap which will impact the immediate deliverables. These may be constraints or show stoppers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does one present this visually?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17081" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T14:36:13.427" Title="How does one present current and future projects with gaps with overlapping timelines?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16038" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16047" CreationDate="2015-08-29T07:18:10.310" Score="0" ViewCount="213" Body="&lt;p&gt;When working on projects, there are often Project Managers who have transitioned from technical roles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For better or worse, these project managers often take the lead in defining the technical deliverables often at the risk of alienating the technical teams, missing dependencies, constraints, etc that define technical achievements, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes a project manager comes along who has had basic exposure to technical solutions and attempts to define technical milestones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than then tell them that it isn't their place to define these (since it can result is unintended results e.g. conflicts, challenging egos, etc), what would be an appropriate approach or sets of approaches?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17081" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-08-29T20:28:22.870" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T15:23:56.767" Title="How to prevent well intended project managers from getting too involved in the details?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;roles&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16021" CreationDate="2015-08-29T10:46:26.597" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may want to consider changing the way you bring work in to sprints. Is it possible to prioritise the work so that the team focuses on one product at a time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This brings a number of benefits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A clear sprint goal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A single Product Owner to deal with on each sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Less task switching overhead for the team (switching between products costs time)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this may not be practical in your organisation. But it is worth considering as it does come with productivity gains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-08-29T10:46:26.597" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16040" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-29T16:41:20.590" Score="6" ViewCount="4328" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a Waterfall project, are you allowed to make even small changes, such as the design style of the user login form, when the project went passed the design phrase?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19369" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T15:54:13.083" Title="Are you allowed to make even small changes in a Waterfall project?" Tags="&lt;waterfall&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16038" CreationDate="2015-08-29T20:40:14.087" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apply the same techniques, the PM should has applied:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you said (as far as I interpreted it), you don't want to upset someone or raise a conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A nice way is to lead a conversation by asking questions (I didn't find a &lt;em&gt;nice&lt;/em&gt; reference):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What were your assumptions by putting that date?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did you know that this team hasn't applied that technology before?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you manage to ask in an interested way, your PM will not get upset. In addition the PM should notice the lack of knowledge and put up an expert group in future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just for the completeness of the answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sometimes it's better to fight a conflict than to carry something around a long time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are your projects finally successful (w.r.t. budget and follow up contracts)? Maybe it's the (ugly) way to push the developers or to win a contract - than you should argue in a different way (more commercial success). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-08-30T14:26:38.853" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T14:26:38.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16038" CreationDate="2015-08-30T06:14:28.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, first it's important to remember that a PM who has dabbled may actually have useful advice or opinions and may not be expressing them in the proper way. It's in the best interest of all parties involved to navigate through the egos in order to ensure that the best possible solution is being created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, my advice is to work with the PM to tackle what the actual customer requirements are. A good way to do this is to simply ask probing questions around:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What the detailed requirements are.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What the customer feedback has been.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As they start to give implementation solutions politely remind them that you'd like to focus on the raw requirements and not how you'd solve it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17929" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T06:14:28.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16040" CreationDate="2015-08-30T06:17:03.880" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer:&lt;/strong&gt; Yes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long answer:&lt;/strong&gt; In Waterfall a change request should be submitted and agreed upon by the PM/Stakeholders. Make sure to evaluate and if needed, re-baseline the timeline for the changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17929" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T06:17:03.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16040" CreationDate="2015-08-30T07:58:45.527" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Waterfall is not a methodology, it's a model. So, there are no strict restrictions and prescriptions like in well defined methodologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Restrictions are more related with contract (not development model). If you have Fixed Price (or even Firm Fixed Price) contract (it is common practice in &quot;waterfall&quot; projects), it will be very hard to provide additional work in project without making additional contracts. All changes (even minor) have a cost. It's impossible to change scope without changing cost. In Fix Price contact types costs, scope and time are fixed and spelled out in the terms of contracts. During waterfall projects, contracts are signed after &quot;Requirements&quot; or &quot;Analyse&quot; phases. After that moment to make a change of project scope will be painful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However exists other contract types, that allow to request and to implement scope changes more easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, answer is: &lt;strong&gt;it's depends on contracts that you have (not on development model that you use). Provide scope changes is not a problem even if you already nailed down architecture and all changes are very expensive. If your contract allow to your customer to request changes and he is ready pay for them, why not?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T07:58:45.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15991" CreationDate="2015-08-30T09:58:17.043" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My point of view is a little bit different, that have been sound here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, &lt;strong&gt;I strongly believe, that it depends.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We do this as follows: Product Owner has conversation with Stakeholders and gathers business requirements from them (he represents these requirements as User Stories). Then he goes to Development Team and discusses with them these requirements. Development Team gives rough estimation and asks some clarifying questions (if it has them) about requirements. Then Product Owner brings these questions and rough estimate to Stakeholders...and so on. This is continuous and iterative process. It is my understanding of Product Backlog Refinement (Scrum term). Only well refined Product Backlog Item can be taken in Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe it is better not to use Product Owner as proxy and let Development Team to contact with Stakeholders directly (I asked similar question &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/15571/how-shall-developers-clarify-pbi-during-its-implementation&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;)? Maybe, but not always.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my last project we tried to implement this case. We sent one developer as technical consultant with Product Owner to meetings with customer. But we stopped to do it after two or three mouth (I don't counted exactly). Reason for this is that it was enough 15 minutes to him to discuss all technical questions, and rest 2 hours he was boring and cannot provide any help with business details. Well, it's logical, he is excellent programmer, not business-analyst. Also, he couldn't provide estimation, because estimation is responsibility of whole Development Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes, members of Development Team participates in Refinement (including clarification) of Product Backlog Items (requirements), but not directly (through Product Owner). And of course, they are not that guys, who generate requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thing this situation happened because we have specific area of development (we develop or customise software system for needs of other companies, and our team and projects of our team are not too big: 12 members in Scrum Team - this is maximum of projects where I participate as Scrum Master). If you developing Enterprise solution, than Joel's approach may be better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So... As I have said in the beginning, &lt;strong&gt;there is no right answer for this question, because it depends on many factors.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T09:58:17.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16040" CreationDate="2015-08-30T11:43:25.540" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question implies changes without approvals since you used the word &quot;small&quot;.  In other words, this is a little tiny change that has an immaterial effect on costs and schedule that is easily mitigated so why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Changes that are approved are always allowed on any type of project no matter the methodology used, no matter the industry, no matter the size.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Changes that are not approved are never allowed on any type of project no matter the methodology used, no matter the industry, no matter the size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you start letting small changes go through without proper approvals, then you end up with a lot of small changes going through without proper approvals that equal one massive change without proper approvals.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T11:43:25.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16038" CreationDate="2015-08-30T11:53:40.567" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are certainly people who cannot help jumping out of their swim lanes and getting involved where they should not be.  When that happens, you hit that head on and let them know they are interfering and jeopardizing success.  The PM, however, has license to jump out of the PM swim lane and you cannot tell him/her to leave you alone.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming you do not have a chronic, micro-manager type manager, your PM is jumping out of the PM swim lane because of you and your team.  It's not the PM and the solution is not to figure out how to handle the PM.  It's you and your team and the solution is to figure out what your team is doing or not doing that is causing the PM to interfere.  There is a lack of trust, a lack of performance, growing risks, complaints, something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have that micro-manager type PM, then be happy that projects have an end date, at which point you can find another project and another PM.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T11:53:40.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16037" CreationDate="2015-08-30T14:36:13.427" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having multiple projects following a common goal sounds like a programme. You could search for visualisations of a &lt;em&gt;programme roadmap&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But despite of project, programme or portfolio, the methodologies are often comparable:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about a work packages, constraints, dependencies, and a critical path in a &quot;usual&quot; project: Regarding a programme roadmap you could use the same drawing techniques like you apply in a projects, e.g. arrows for dependencies or colour for the critical chain of projects putting a risk on the overall benefits delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T14:36:13.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16021" CreationDate="2015-08-30T14:57:15.553" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your question well, it's important to first address why teams have sprint goals. The purpose of the sprint goal is to focus effort on outcome (the new or improved capability being developed) over output (stories getting done). The product owner should have a sprint goal in mind when they go into sprint planning (which of course may be adjusted during planning). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to address your question specifically, there are a few things to keep in mind that are perfectly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sometimes the product owner wants to focus on a few smaller capabilities instead of one big one. This will usually result in a few smaller goals and that's not a problem. I would disagree to some other responses about different parts of the team being assigned different goals. The whole team is still responsible for all goals and they should decide internally how to do the work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not every story needs to be covered by the sprint goal. This is incredibly common even when the team has one concise goal but has a little more capacity so they bring in the next story in the backlog. They don't need to expand the goal or make another goal to account for it (though they can if it feels helpful).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your stories are focused on output instead of outcome, grouping them together and creating goals will be much harder. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T14:57:15.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16031" CreationDate="2015-08-30T17:28:37.897" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The resource leveling command will not change assignment units on tasks. So the only way for a resource to be working 1.75 hours on two tasks simultaneously would be if the resource is not assigned at his/her max units to all tasks.  If you want the resource to 'single task' their way through work - never assign at below max units and then use the resource leveling command to spread the tasks out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example - in the picture below, the resource's max units are 50%.  No links between tasks.  After resource leveling:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lCvMc.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lCvMc.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the picture below, the resource's max units are 50% but s/he is assigned at below max on several tasks.  When leveling Project allows the 'multi-tasking' to occur because during the times of task overlap, the resource is not assigned to his/her max.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YE9Ch.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YE9Ch.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T17:28:37.897" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16029" CreationDate="2015-08-30T19:26:11.490" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may have a difficult conversation to have with the stakeholder. To be perfectly blunt, work with no pressure or stress is called a hobby. I don't recommend you lead with that. What might help is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile (and it sounds like Scrum would be particularly helpful) focuses on getting work complete through small increments. You start with a foundation idea and build on it. Each piece is complete and shippable. Because each part is completely done and ready to go, you have absolute freedom about what piece you want to do next. This lets you make significant changes in direction down to the very last moment before the deadline. That approach he dismissed is what will give him the freedom he wants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing from Scrum that will probably help you is a product owner. The product owner has final say on what does and doesn't get worked. Your stakeholder might be the source of the ideas, but having the product owner control the backlog of work will put someone in the middle to ask questions like &quot;what does this actually get us?&quot;, &quot;why is it needed?&quot;, and &quot;can this afford to wait?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How you implement agile is a much broader issue than we can'y really handle here, but if you get your stakeholder on board with it being the avenue for the freedom he's looking for while still meeting deadlines, that's probably a fantastic first step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastEditorUserId="7944" LastEditDate="2015-08-30T19:31:23.983" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T19:31:23.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16029" CreationDate="2015-08-30T20:03:29.460" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mark Wallace is correct that this is primarily a people issue not a technology or Scrum-technique issue. Fortunately there are some people-techniques that work to resolve certain sorts of people issues. Your issue here is resolvable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Daniel's answer touches (brilliantly) on the phenomenon here: that different personalities can have wildly different work styles and those styles are enduring and in many cases unchangeable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will not find a Scrum technique that will make a person change any of the unchangeable aspects of individual work style. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are specific techniques for harnessing the strengths of your visionary stakeholder while still getting useful work out of them each day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FIRST -&#xA;Be realistic about what work they can and should do. Do not make any work assignment based on what you feel they OUGHT to be able to do, only assign tasks that they have shown they ARE able to do, or almost do (so they can stretch, grow and do).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NEXT -&#xA;Assess how this visionary gets his juice. Does it primarily involve them talking? Do they seem to need an audience? Schedule a daily brief talk with them where you act as audience. Harvest their good ideas. Keep this brief by using a timer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NEXT -&#xA;Give the visionary the additional payoff of placing their continual stream of ideas into a visual Parking Lot. Sharing an idea that others ignore is a downer; sharing an idea and seeing it parked somewhere feels validating -- and frees the mind for the next thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NEXT -&#xA;Many visionaries hate to eliminate or rank ideas. Make him do it anyway. &quot;We can only work on one thing at a time. Our priority from the customer is X. Which new idea is actually more important than X or should come prior to it? Why? What will we then choose to NOT do, in order to do this new thing?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ALSO - &#xA;Hold this conversation near your visual tracking tool or Scrum board. Help the visionary see the current reality. Ask, &quot;What can you personally accomplish today to move us forward?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;REMIND the visionary that doing the 2nd, 3rd, Nth awesome new idea they've spawned, is dependent on getting the 1st one done SUCCESSFULLY. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look for clues, hints, and tells from the visionary's past and present, that show you how to get the best work from him. Does he need someone to pair-program with or talk things out with? Does he respond well to distant deadlines but collapse under the pressure of a shorter one? Do calendar reminders work? Gold stars? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;REMEMBER that the visionary is an idea generator. Give him little problems to solve that are in his sweet spot, where the answer is not obvious. Think of him as an idea-hose, and point that hose at an area that requires a flow of ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also set the visionary to work on diagnosing himself. Ask him to reflect on where and when he's been most productive. What was the work? What were the deadlines? What was the context and content? Aim his idea-hose at his own performance. (He's probably secretly just as irritated by his inability to sit down and crank out work as you are.) Keep the tone positive, relaxed, curious, accepting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This topic is at the heart of an e-book I'm writing that's inspired by Drucker's &quot;On Managing Oneself&quot; -- excellent reading, available I believe at HBR.org and of course fine bookstores, libraries, and Amazon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19373" LastActivityDate="2015-08-30T20:03:29.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16054" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16056" CreationDate="2015-08-30T20:20:01.193" Score="5" ViewCount="1657" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Situation:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Company is about 50 people. Total number of developers is about 15, split into three teams. Team 1 has five developers working hard building a new system. The deadline is yesterday, which means there's no specific dealine set, but the sooner we finish, the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have no scrum master or project manager. I'm the most experienced developer on the team and seen by the CEO as the lead of the team, I preside the weekly meeting with the CEO and other stakeholders etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;T is a new teammember since three weeks. He talks with the CEO about something he really likes to do the new system, however it's not something that's currently on the task list. The CEO is enthousiastic and asks how long it will take for T to do it. T says it will take about half a day to day. &quot;Great&quot; answers the CEO. &quot;Come and show it to me tomorrow&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tomorrow comes and the task is not finished. So T wants to continue with the task the next day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My feelings:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like T intentionally made a low estimate of the task, to make the CEO say yes to the task. However T now has no time for the other planned tasks, and his new task is taking an unknown amount of time. I feel this is a problem for the planning, and it should be solved by T.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My answer:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm really torn about the way to act:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I can ignore the situation. T will do his best and probably finish the task soon. Making estimates is difficult, maybe even more so when asked directly by the CEO.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I can ignore the situation, as I'm not the manager or official leader.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I ask T how he's gonna solve the situation. Accepting a deadline and then not delivering is not something that can be ignored. Of cource one can always miss an estimate, but when one's going to miss a deadline it must be anounced before the deadline is over.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Since I'm not the official leader, but the CEO is seeing me that way, I need to make a mark. So I have to talk with T, saying he has to let me know about the situation so we can find a solution together.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wow, great answers! I have upvoted them all (not publicly visible unfortunately).&#xA;I was a bit afraid I was taking my percieved role too seriously, but you guys gave me the feedback so I know I'm on the right track.&#xA;I already talked to the CEO about the scope creep and will continue to do so on any occasion.&#xA;Again thank you very much!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16900" LastEditorUserId="16900" LastEditDate="2015-08-31T12:18:45.213" LastActivityDate="2019-07-18T05:48:45.137" Title="Developer doesn't make deadline" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;leadership&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16054" CreationDate="2015-08-31T06:23:32.177" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you are not the official leader, the best you can do is to talk to the project manager or scrum master. Talk about the importance of the project, and suggest to timebox the off track project; maximum one day more, and then the team needs to move on. Moreover, the team can check this project after delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The new person may start this project, because he or she does not have the domain know-how yet, and would like to prove that he or she will be good for the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-07-14T08:10:01.133" LastActivityDate="2019-07-14T08:10:01.133" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16054" CreationDate="2015-08-31T08:53:01.480" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are perceived as the team leader, so in the absence of anyone with that formal title, you have to take on that role. You already meet regularly with the CEO as though you have that formal role, so, by default, you lead the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you talk to the new team member, find out whether it is realistic that he can develop the new capability in a realistic timescale, and then discuss the options with the CEO, explaining your findings. If it is reasonable to complete the development within a short timebox, then the CEO may agree to the work continuing. If your advice is that it is unlikely to be completed, you should recommend a course of action, such as stopping the development, or deferring it to a later phase, or even allocating time to it, if the feature is sufficiently important. What you can't do, given your de-facto role, is ignore the situation - otherwise you are not fulfilling your role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking a step back from this, I worry that one developer has been able to take the project off track in this way. Once again, as you are the team lead in all apart from name, you should be controlling the development activity, and ensuring that any proposed scope changes are impact-assessed before being approved. If you don't impose your authority now, then you are going to have anarchy within the team, with other developers (and especially this new one) going to the CEO whenever they think of something new to add into the scope, and the project will never deliver because there is always something new and shiny to build. Perhaps you need to complete the agreed scope, then have a further release where new ideas can be added?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-07-15T09:43:09.297" LastActivityDate="2019-07-15T09:43:09.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16054" CreationDate="2015-08-31T11:53:34.163" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short term you can give T enough rope to hang himself. You preside over the weekly meetings, so hold him accountable for the work that he &lt;em&gt;isn't&lt;/em&gt; doing when this affects the project schedule/cost/scope/risk/etc. If his going off on a tangent doesn't cause a problem then no harm and no foul, but if it causes delay don't try to be a &quot;nice guy&quot; by covering up for him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Longer-term, your project has a couple of major challenges:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No formal leadership.&lt;/strong&gt; Without this there will be little in the way of authority, responsibility or accountability for success. You don't need a scrum master or a project manager, you need someone in your leadership structure to own this project who will make decisions like the one T went to the CEO for.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No formal deadlines.&lt;/strong&gt; You need a date that the system has to be ready by.  And &quot;as soon as possible&quot; is a Bull-Sh*t answer, you need a clear date that is reasonable, feasible and achievable given your scope.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally you will be able to address these core issues to prevent T (or someone else) going rogue and adding scope or cost or whatever with no control. This will take some effort but will save you problems long-run, because at some point if your team doesn't have discipline someone somewhere is going to cause the project to fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2015-08-31T11:53:34.163" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16054" CreationDate="2015-08-31T12:07:26.577" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Leaders of teams are not only because they were officially designated as said leader of a team.  They lead because they assume the role and once assumed they are the de facto project manager and are responsible and accountable for the project in the exact same way as if they were officially designated.  You cannot lead the team, be looked at as the leader of the team, but then shirk off the responsibilities and accountability therein.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you made a fatal error: you allowed T and the CEO to creep your scope.  And now you're dealing with the effects of scope creep.  Nothing more, nothing less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The good news is, scope creep happens to the best of us.  And recovery is available to you.  You need to sit down with the CEO and outline what you have observed, that T and the CEO introduced an out of control change that jeopardizes the entire project as a whole.  Though the change might be a super idea, introducing it needs to be &quot;in control&quot;, that it is analyzed by the broader team, impacts identified and understood, schedule and costs adjusted accordingly, things reprioritized, estimates and planning values agreed upon holistically by the broader team, and then have the work scheduled.  You need to &quot;teach&quot; your CEO about scope creep and scope control and how important these things are and to have your CEO commit to this moving forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After this, you need to have a meeting with the rest of the team, maybe with T alone, too, and set proper expectations about this kind of thing and never do it again.  If you feel like you don't have this authority and the team won't follow you, then you are not the leader of the team.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-08-31T12:07:26.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16059" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-31T14:04:25.923" Score="4" ViewCount="103" Body="&lt;p&gt;Within a project, we develop an application.&#xA;The project is set up as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The overall application is divided into four different &quot;level&quot;. We completed one of those levels in four month.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We use scrum with a one week sprints-duration incl. estimation of complexity. But we miss often our sprint goal and shift tasks to the next week. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project team consists of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One consultant and PM&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Three developers: Two are developing the back-end and one is developing the front-end part of the application &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One remote developer for front-end tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is also a subcontractor company for some tasks. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our plan for the close future is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finish two other &quot;levels&quot; within one month (we working on one of these &quot;level&quot; for two months aleready). The focus shifted from back-end to front-end work (where we have just one developer, incuding one remote developer)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We are aware that the schedule is quite tight &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be the best way to deal with this situation, taking the team constellation and the scheduling into account?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am thinking of switching to Kanban for the entire project, like &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/12565/reduce-scope-or-kill-the-project&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13378" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2015-09-02T17:08:18.760" Title="Avoid to kill project without reducing scope" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scope&gt;&lt;team&gt;&lt;distributed-team&gt;&lt;schedule&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16060" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-31T14:14:30.800" Score="2" ViewCount="902" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Adding creativity techniques to Scrum product planning&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm evaluating some creativity techniques to produce ideas/solve problems, whether they could have a benefit in Scrum or not. Specifically, I'm looking at the process where the Product Owner and Customer collaborate on software requirements at the beginning and the Sprint Review at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: Are there any techniques related to the requirement sessions or Sprint Reviews which can help produce ideas? Are ideas important for these sessions? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19380" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-10-11T00:16:33.640" LastActivityDate="2015-10-11T00:16:33.640" Title="Are there any brainstorming techniques related to requirement gathering sessions or Sprint Reviews that can help produce ideas?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;&lt;customer&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16061" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-08-31T16:47:27.680" Score="5" ViewCount="2575" Body="&lt;p&gt;With varying teams delivering varying pieces of an overall solution it has become increasingly difficult to recognize when a given version of an application must be delivered with another application and different version that fits in to the overall solution. This same scenario surfaces where one application of the overall solution could be delivered prior to the other application but not the other way around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A hypothetical example could be that there are 4 applications that make up an end to end solution of which serves varying user bases. What I'm struggling with is a way to track inter/intra dependencies across the applications in a simple and digestive manner that doesn't require a wealth of brainpower throughout the day to day tasks across the teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've attempted to use tooling (SpiraTeam) as well as looked at a simplistic matrix within Excel however those have yet to solution the problem. I've also thought about making use of the version numbers themselves to quickly identify impact however that became cumbersome and not maintainable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for perhaps a one-off solution and or previous experience that does not require an entire process/paradigm shift to make this happen. Does anyone have any experience in effectively tracking inter-dependent applications and more importantly the release cycles of the inter-dependent applications within the Enterprise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To further elaborate, the dependencies are at varying layers within the applications. An example would be the front end of a given application, which talks to the applications back end which talks to yet another application via services. In this example the deliveries must go in parallel yet are operating independently on separate application versions. These undoubtedly spawn due to feature level deliveries however our current paradigm of versioning does not explicitly capture the feature within the version number itself making that connection more difficult. The plan is that it would be manipulated by the entire team which is in due part to the varying interdependence and each owner respectively being closest to that knowledge and interdependence. The end result is then a quick visual to identify that a given application can precede another version or maybe they have to go in parallel, etc... I have explored a simple matrix within Excel however it felt cumbersome since the version definition, versioning maintenance, etc.. happen within another tool. The problem with the tool is that it does not allow inter-connectivity across projects (applications) which would alleviate this issue at the point where I feel it should be solved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19383" LastEditorUserId="19383" LastEditDate="2015-09-01T17:12:59.980" LastActivityDate="2015-11-08T15:27:11.563" Title="How can I collectively track application inter-dependencies?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16062" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16069" CreationDate="2015-08-31T21:08:31.417" Score="9" ViewCount="339" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a scrum master for a team that includes an engineer who is a perfectionist. He has trouble letting issues become done, even after we've focused as a team on ensuring that acceptance criteria capture what we'd like the story to encompass. In the work itself, he constantly prefers a not-so-Agile method of constructing a monolithic feature and pushing it out once he thinks every obscure corner case has been addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He's open to conversation, which I've tried to have about this. But he's a very logical person and is difficult to convince without gold plated reasoning. What are effective ways of dealing with this kind of person within the context of Scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19384" LastActivityDate="2015-09-03T07:59:35.307" Title="Perfectionists in scrum" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16060" CreationDate="2015-08-31T22:04:28.853" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before You choose some technique You should define criteria: do You need go wider or deeper? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably the best strategy is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;at the beginning is to go deeper (focus) to gain best understanding what really are Customer needs, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;later, at the end - go wider to show the full possible spectrum of possible sullutions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For doing that You need understand specifics of different [thinking techniques]. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMHO You should apply accordingly to steps mentioned above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Morphological analysis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[TRIZ][3] techniques combination: &lt;a href=&quot;http://asq.org/learn-about-quality/idea-creation-tools/overview/tutorial-nine-windows.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;System Operator aka 9 windows&lt;/a&gt; &amp;amp; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.triz-journal.com/using-ideal-final-result-define-problem-solved/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ideal Final Result (IFR)&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;p.s. unfortunately can't provide more links&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19377" LastActivityDate="2015-08-31T22:04:28.853" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16062" CreationDate="2015-08-31T23:10:19.787" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without getting to sit down and talk to this person directly, I can't be exactly sure, but it sounds like there are two things that may be happening here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) It's possible that the work is in fact much larger than the rest of the team realizes and that's why you're running into these problems. There are two actions that can help with this. First, ask him to bring up the concerns during backlog refinement and planning so the team can address it. Second, ask him to lead breaking the story down smaller to build pieces to a high level of quality but allow it to still fit in the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) It might be a trust issue. Many people look to monolithic architectures and large upfront design efforts because they feel like if they don't do everything exactly &quot;right&quot; up front, they will be forced into making sub-par systems that they aren't happy with. In truth, the developer has much more control over this than they think, but if the trust problem is there, you still have to address it. Picking small cases where the PO can ask for a little faith that he'll keep the other stories in and then following through on that promise can help build trust. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could be either of these things or both. That'll be really on you to determine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-08-31T23:10:19.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11387" CreationDate="2015-09-01T07:33:05.347" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually if you click on each task, in tab &quot;Advanced&quot;, set &quot;Task Type&quot; as &quot;fixed Duration&quot;, it will make things much easier. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so when you structure your project plan, you can decide on duration of each task, then the Work (effective hours required for each task), then put in resource. that way, the resource effort in % will be automatically adjusted, without having either Duration or Work changed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;hope this helps. I've tried it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19390" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T07:33:05.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16062" CreationDate="2015-09-01T10:02:42.073" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In these situations I like to discuss with the developer the value they add by their work. The question is, will they add more value by addressing edge cases for a given feature or by developing the core elements of another high prioirty feature?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this discussion cuts both ways. If the developer has sound logic for why the edge cases deliver value then I would conceed the point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T10:02:42.073" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16067" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16077" CreationDate="2015-09-01T11:43:49.317" Score="9" ViewCount="1197" Body="&lt;p&gt;Breaking user stories into &lt;strong&gt;tasks&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;estimating&lt;/strong&gt; their development time in &lt;strong&gt;hours&lt;/strong&gt; is pretty widely accepted. However, we have subsequent test activities that need to be carried out before the task and ergo the story can be deemed done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should the initial estimate for the development of the task &lt;strong&gt;INCLUDE&lt;/strong&gt; man hours estimated to take the story to completion or should we have additional hourly estimates on the test tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19267" LastActivityDate="2015-09-08T20:32:09.587" Title="Should we allocate separate hourly estimates for test tasks in addition to the development tasks" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;testing&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16067" CreationDate="2015-09-01T12:27:17.893" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short: &lt;em&gt;whatever works best for the team, the development process and getting stuff done.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Drilling down from the story level:&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;The story should deliver a fully workable product. If that includes testing in your Definition of Done or Acceptance criteria, testing is part of the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can break stories down into tasks, if this helps development (everyone agrees in detail what tasks are part of finishing the story). Testing could be a separate task. You could also include testing in every task. You could even create a separate testing task, linked to each development task. Whatever helps the team getting the product done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal opinion is that estimating hours for separate testing tasks, belonging to a development task, is too much in most cases. It's a lot of overhead, which would be better spent doing actual work. The complexity of the story and it's testing should be reflected in it's number of story points. Estimating very specific hours for testing tasks should not affect the overall complexity or time needed. Your situation may needs this or maybe not. It's impossible to say, not knowing what your team and process looks like. I do think it unlikely to have many benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17421" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T12:27:17.893" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16062" CreationDate="2015-09-01T12:49:54.920" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does this pose any problems? If the work is getting done in time, the quality is good and the team experience no issues due to his working methods, maybe it's not really a problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming it is problematic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Retrospectives. Address the problems it's causing during the retrospective. Let the team discuss the issues and propose solutions. To me this is by far the first and best thing to do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Split stories. As Daniel already pointed out, make stories smaller so there's less room for scope creep. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team effort. Try to stimulate teamwork on stories. Working together on stories makes the team discuss what needs to be built, and focus more on the definition of done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pair programming. Expanding on teamwork: introduce pair programming so the engineer won't be stuck on his own 'island'. Let him learn from other engineers who apply a different focus when working. Maybe there's also someone who can learn from his attention to detail?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum workshop. Maybe it's good to take a few steps back and have a day of scrum 'refreshment' course. Why are we practicing scrum again? Why do we want to get stuff done? What are the benefits to all this again?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Extreme programming: Try to get his interest in Extreme Programming to get the agile mindset going. XP has a somewhat more technical stance on agile development. It's more focused on actual development practices (test driven development, pair programming, etc.). As an engineer with attention to detail, perhaps he will like a more techy approach?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case: don't force or lay down the law. If there are problems, the team should discuss them during retro. They should also decide as a team how to address these issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17421" LastEditorUserId="17421" LastEditDate="2015-09-01T13:10:49.657" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T13:10:49.657" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16040" CreationDate="2015-09-01T13:08:24.587" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As pointed out by others, &quot;Waterfall&quot; is not a prescriptive set of rules it is a (high-level) model of the flow of requirements from the stakeholders initial requirements through to the delivery of those requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I once read somewhere that on average around 30% of a set of requirements changes between the initial concept and the final delivery. Though I find it hard to believe that is measurable, let alone possible to be averaged over many projects, it is fact well known to anyone in software delivery projects that change is a fact. Change happens. All the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any software delivery lifecycle (SDLC) that does not somehow incorporate changing requirements is bound to fail. Waterfall as a model, does lean more towards capturing and fixing requirements before development commences, that is true. But just like any other description of an SDLC, it must handle change. Since Waterfall is not a method, there are no &quot;rules&quot; about how that change is to be managed and conversely therefore no &quot;punishment&quot; for not following the rules. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is one of the many broad reasons why so many software projects fail- the SDLC team fails to implement a suitable process for managing change. At one end of the scale, there is no management and everyone is free to incorporate whatever changes are handed down and at the other is rigorous and tightly controlled Change Management of every single changing requirement, no matter how small. An experienced Project Manager in a waterfall model organisation will incorporate contingency timing into their planning to allow for the changes that will surely come- those that don't quickly find their costs and schedules going off the rails. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in my experience, many organisations recognise that at some point there is a trade off between the cost of deploying a change and the cost of performing the change management. I.e. if you are really rigorous it can cost more to formally manage and control the change than the cost of the change itself. So a lot of organisations develop a (commonly) unspoken threshold wherein the project manager may allow a small change through without change management and small aesthetic changes in screen layout design may fall into that scope. For marginal cases, the art is in knowing when you should invoke formal change management and when you are safe not to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I contend, along with most other PMs I have ever known, that you can &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; succeed in software project delivery without deploying formal change management for anything but the most trivial of cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-09-01T15:54:13.083" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T15:54:13.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16067" CreationDate="2015-09-01T17:26:42.827" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the team.  Some teams have dedicated testers where it makes sense to have separate testing tasks since it can force devs and testers to explore the testing requirements.  Other teams use XP practices or have dev/QA's where the majority of testing happens in line with the development activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tasking is a tool to help the team explore the story in terms of tactical implementation.  Assigning man-hours is on the lower end of the value scale of using tasking and is usually not a good reason to use tasking as it is a costly (in terms of time) activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T17:26:42.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16072" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16079" CreationDate="2015-09-01T17:35:27.777" Score="3" ViewCount="150" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've successfully implemented Scrumban. I implement the daily scrum meeting and retrospective. I love how easy the Kanban board is that it helps for the whole team to know where are we now at the moment and also to know how far are we before hitting the milestone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is something that keep me wondering, if I have ticket that came from a column called &quot;Backlog&quot; and put it under column &quot;Doing&quot;, once my team already done working on this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do they move the ticket straight away from &quot;Doing&quot; to &quot;Done&quot;? Or, we as a team will do it during the daily stand up meeting? Then, from there we will move all the tickets?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17631" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-01-07T14:15:42.867" LastActivityDate="2019-01-07T14:15:42.867" Title="Where to put those cards that are finished during the day in Scrumban?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;scrumban&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16061" CreationDate="2015-09-01T18:47:29.373" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like your dependencies are basically modules or layers within a single application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Truth be told, I'm not a big fan of &quot;heavier&quot; digital tools, but I think that if you're looking for something that will natively tie change sets to versioning to dependencies and team members or projects, you will need to look into something like modded JIRA or MSProject/TFS as the others have suggested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I have found success with simply focusing on extremely high visibility over specific tool functionality - it's very hard &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to coordinate well when each group's backlog/sprint chunking, progress, current risks and dependency items are cards up on a big wall in the team(s) area. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T18:47:29.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16072" CreationDate="2015-09-01T19:14:57.420" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend marking the story in &quot;doing&quot; as ready to pull, assuming moving the card to done signifies that parts of the story meet the team definition of done or acceptance criteria.  Many Kanban teams will have a pull column or sub-column to indicate work that is done but has not been pulled to the next active state.  This can create a buffer and also provide some additional granularity on when bottlenecks occur between active states.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The person or people that pull the story into done are then validating the card is &quot;done done&quot; versus the person/people that delivered the card saying it is done.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This forces a feedback loop between the people delivering the work and those consuming it to ensure everyone is on the same page.  If the producers are the consumers it may be beneficial to pull cards in front of the entire team during standup to ensure the team is aligned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T19:14:57.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16072" CreationDate="2015-09-01T19:30:58.410" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would let the team do whatever is convenient for them, then challenge and ask them about it during retrospective. Retrospective is the perfect place to help the team evaluate their current practices and possible improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds to me like the real issue here is &quot;why are we working on and finishing issues that aren't in our Doing column?&quot; Kanban and Scrum both only work if their boards/cards/issues/whatever are accurate and visible. As scrum masters, our power comes from shedding light on situations. If the team is skirting that light, then you can't help them adhere to the rules in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19384" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T19:30:58.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16072" CreationDate="2015-09-02T08:17:31.087" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the previous replies have stated, the story shouldn't move from &lt;strong&gt;doing&lt;/strong&gt; to &lt;strong&gt;done&lt;/strong&gt; until you are happy that it has satisfied your won &lt;strong&gt;DOD&lt;/strong&gt; i.e. definition of done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example of that, here is our current DOD from one of our projects. You can make your own and add as little or as much as you want but it will help to have an agreed definition so that everyone on the project knows what state the code is expected to be before release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User story kick off meeting held&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test fixture authored&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Code developed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Builds without errors against latest version of workspace&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unit tests written and passing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Peer reviewed or produced with pair programming&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Demonstrated to tester at developers desk to confirm test fixture&#xA;honoured&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Code checked in and unit tests run against current version in source&#xA;control  on build server&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deployed to UAT test environment and passed system tests&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Passed UAT and signed off as meeting requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any build/deployment/configuration changes implemented/documented/&#xA;communicated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Relevant documentation/diagrams produced and/or updated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remaining hours for task set to zero and task closed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19267" LastActivityDate="2015-09-02T08:17:31.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16067" CreationDate="2015-09-02T11:29:17.917" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you have dedicated testers it can appear to make sense to have a seperate testing task for them. But when you think about it, testing is really a team activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a tester may need to speak to a BA or Product Owner to understand more about what they are testing. They may also need to speak with the developers to understand the new functionality. And of course they may raise bugs that need to be fixed by the developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel it is better to estimate tasks as a whole, including all that is needed to take them to 'done'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-09-02T11:29:17.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16067" CreationDate="2015-09-02T12:10:06.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it depends on who the intended audience is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the audience is the customer I don't think they would care much that it takes you X hours to develop and Y hours to test, only how long it takes to get the product to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the audience is your internal project team, it can be a big help to separate the estimates for development and testing. If for no other reason it gives you data to be able to refine your estimates for subsequent sprints, allowing you to more easily identify where things are breaking down when (not if) you find your estimates are inaccurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2015-09-02T12:10:06.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16072" CreationDate="2015-09-02T14:04:52.847" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of Scrum teams have a &quot;ready to discuss&quot; column between &quot;Doing&quot; and &quot;Done&quot;. They put finished cards into this column, discuss them during the daily meeting, and when the discussion is over, they move them to done. I believe this kind of column can help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to introduce a new column, increase the size of the &quot;Doing&quot; and put the ongoing work items to the left side of the column, and put the finished items to the right side. You can read more about it &lt;a href=&quot;http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2010/10/internal-done-columns/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-09-02T14:04:52.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16062" CreationDate="2015-09-02T14:46:48.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;TLDR: small stories, promote good architecture and OO principles, extra attention to defining and scoping stories, good test and CI practices to promote confidence and minimise business impacts from mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a little to hard to drill down into how big a chunk of code this guy insists on delivering, if he really insists on committing big features in one go then he would only deliver anything every several sprints - obviously this is not agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, &quot;every obscure corner case has been addressed&quot; could describe good defensive coding to avoid bugs.  If this one guy takes longer than anyone else to deliver a story just because he is writing robust code, that suggests that the reason everyone else gets it done quicker is because they are not!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, aim for smaller stories to encourage smaller delivery chunks - in a typical web stack feature you could go as granular (or more!) as a story each for&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Database &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Domain &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Service&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Front end&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that a poor or poorly enforced architecture and poor adherence to code quality and OO principles in a code base can make it harder to deliver in chunks as the far reaches of the codebase become excessively coupled - what's yours like?  The worse the code is the harder you need to try to keep stories small, and the more investigation &quot;spikes&quot; you may need to correctly define and scope those stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possibility is a lack of confidence in committing code leading to hesitation and paranoia.  Having good unit test coverage, automated testing, a decent CI setup, and a rapid and thorough regression cycle all help developers feel more confident to commit code as mistakes are less likely and less catastrophic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18089" LastEditorUserId="18089" LastEditDate="2015-09-03T07:59:35.307" LastActivityDate="2015-09-03T07:59:35.307" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16059" CreationDate="2015-09-02T15:02:17.543" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you ask if Kanban is going to help you deliver, it won't. Actually, none of the methods will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;project management triangle&lt;/a&gt;. If the time which says that you cannot have all the angles - scope, schedule, and cost - fixed. If your scope and schedule are fixed, the only thing is left for you is to hire more people that increases cost, increases communication, which risks the schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I understood correctly, you did one layer in 4 months and plan to do another two in one month. It is very unlikely that you'll be successful, so if I were you I'd started to communicate a scope reduction and find a way to iteratively roll out the not delivered layers. Since you are a small team, has no external dependencies Scrum can help you to focus and deliver. I don't see a reason why you should change the development method, you have a different problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-09-02T15:02:17.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16082" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16084" CreationDate="2015-09-02T15:55:02.653" Score="5" ViewCount="1251" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not a question regarding the quality of the SLoC metric.  I accept it as a limited, inaccurate, or even poor metric.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I am looking for data that indicates what reasonable rates for software development given SLoC.  Of particular interest are rates for different government agencies, but any insights will help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Clarification&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have already developed a software application and it is ready to ship.  The price was previously set by contract and is not in dispute.  However, the accounting team is looking for a numeric reason to give their stamp of approval.  These people do not account for skill or knowledge required, learning curve, generated code, efficiency or anything else.  They have already been presented with valid metrics that show the &quot;cost savings.&quot; We saved them 80%.  But now we are required to justify the remaining 20%.  They have been given other cost estimates, but that is not sufficient.  So, I am trying to appease the bureaucracy with something to which it might relate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19404" LastEditorUserId="19404" LastEditDate="2015-09-02T17:46:28.480" LastActivityDate="2015-09-08T20:27:34.910" Title="What are Acceptable SLoC Rates?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;fixed-price&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16059" CreationDate="2015-09-02T17:08:18.760" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agree with @Zsolt, and would add that you are better off determining the amount and sources of schedule increase from the first chunk of 4-month work, and then applying that to future projections. This could be as simple as &quot;we underestimated by 50%, therefore we will probably underestimate future work by 50%&quot; all the way to &quot;of the 50%: 10% was due to unknowns/emerging work, 25% was due to stakeholder feedback, and 15% was due to a risky feature not going as planned&quot;. The second approach is obviously much more actionable, since you can apply it a bit more effectively - discussing how to mitigate feedback through early alignment or simply prioritizing it better, evaluating remaining risky features a bit more thoroughly, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2015-09-02T17:08:18.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16082" CreationDate="2015-09-02T18:06:55.510" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00BSZT7QO&quot;&gt;Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art&lt;/a&gt;, Steve McConnell presents a table that is adapted and extended from &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0135676940&quot;&gt;Measures for Excellence: Reliable Software On Time, Within Budget&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0818675322&quot;&gt;Industrial Strength Software&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0932633552&quot;&gt;Five Core Metrics: The Intelligence Behind Successful Software Management&lt;/a&gt; for line of code per staff-month for different kinds of software. This table presents the low, high, and nominal values for different types of projects and total overall size (in lines of code, ranging from 10,000-LOC to 250,000-LOC).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below, I summarize this table with the range of the highest high productivity rate, lowest low productivity rate, and range of nominal rates in parenthesis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avionics: 20-1,000 (40-200)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business Systems: 100-18,000 (500-3,000)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Command and Control: 40-3,000 (80-500)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Embedded Systems: 20-2,000 (80-500)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Internet Systems (public): 100-10,000 (200-1,500)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Internet Systems (internal): 200-18,000 (600-4,000)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Microcode: 20-800 (30-200)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Process Control: 80-5,000 (200-1,000)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Real-Time: 20-1,500 (40-200)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scientific Systems / Engineering Research: 80-7,500 (200-1,000)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shrink Wrap / Packaged Software: 70-5,000 (200-1,000)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Systems Software / Drivers: 40-5,000 (200-1,000)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Telecommunications: 40-3,000 (90-600)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As always, it should be noted that your organization's internal data will be more useful, as it accounts for your methods and procedures. Data gathered from wide surveys tends to be more noisy since it includes a wide variation in engineering skill, process, tools, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this doesn't account for other source of variation. For example, programming language and environment do matter. Reuse of existing components matter. Experience matters. General complexity and variability matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2015-09-02T18:06:55.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16085" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16093" CreationDate="2015-09-02T18:11:15.513" Score="11" ViewCount="1271" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a new Scrum Master for an established Team. The Product Owner (PO) gets along very well with the Team, almost like buddies, and is an ex-developer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PO has started taking over my job of facilitating the Daily Scrum meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because I am quite new, I tend to be less vocal than I guess I should be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas what I should do? Should I talk to the PO or what should I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-07-31T13:25:06.813" LastActivityDate="2019-07-31T13:25:06.813" Title="What to do when PO is taking over Daily Scrums" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16085" CreationDate="2015-09-02T18:17:59.810" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the Scrum Guide, the Daily Scrum is a meeting for the Development Team. It also says that it is the duty of the Scrum Master to teach the team about effective ways to hold a Daily Scrum, including teaching (and enforcing) the idea that any attendees from outside the Development Team do not disrupt the meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find out if the Development Team considers this an impediment. Also make sure that the purpose of the Daily Scrum is being fulfilled. If the Daily Scrum is ineffective, find solutions to make it effective again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, the Daily Scrum is for the Development Team. Make sure that it meets their needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2017-11-13T20:35:58.410" LastActivityDate="2017-11-13T20:35:58.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16087" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16095" CreationDate="2015-09-02T21:46:04.293" Score="11" ViewCount="1299" Body="&lt;p&gt;After reading &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/8621/in-an-agile-consultancy-is-the-client-the-product-owner&quot;&gt;In an agile consultancy, is the Client the Product Owner??&lt;/a&gt;, I still can't tell apart if the &lt;strong&gt;Product Owner&lt;/strong&gt; is in fact an &lt;strong&gt;Stakeholder&lt;/strong&gt;, or if it is someone from the software company who assumes that role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Points mentioned in said post included:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The primary role of a product owner is to represent the needs and desires of the stakeholder community to an agile delivery team&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yeah, we are perfectly clear on &lt;em&gt;what (s)he does&lt;/em&gt; but not on &lt;em&gt;where does (s)he comes from&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the &lt;strong&gt;Product Owner&lt;/strong&gt; comes from the software company or from the customer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the particular case it can come from both parties, in the scenario where a customer has no idea about &lt;em&gt;agile planning&lt;/em&gt; is it safe to assume the &lt;strong&gt;Product Owner&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; come from the software company?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17593" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2015-10-06T17:16:59.243" Title="Is the Product Owner the Customer?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16087" CreationDate="2015-09-02T22:24:17.683" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The product owner is not the customer. While there might be some specific cases where it can work, that would usually be very problematic. Most notably, the role of the product owner is incredibly demanding and most customer would not dedicate that kind of time. The product owner will usually come from inside of the organization (or as you put it, software company). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a great explination of how the product owner interacts with the team and stakeholders (including customers), I'd take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=502ILHjX9EE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Henrik Kniburg's video on youtube about product owners&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-09-02T22:24:17.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16087" CreationDate="2015-09-02T23:50:39.793" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It totally depends on the nature of the project whether it's a business to business or business to consumer project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-In business to business, of course the product owner shouldn't be the customer as he should be the connection channel that translates language of the customer to be understood by the technical team. He is responsible for gathering the customer vision and requirements to be sorted out in the form of user stories. and help to set the priorities of these requirements with the customer, then have them planned with the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-In business to consumer projects, we can consider PO to be the customer, but it's highly recommended to have someone from the business side in the organization to represent the customer to allow the PO to act as is in the business to business projects&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7996" LastActivityDate="2015-09-02T23:50:39.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16085" CreationDate="2015-09-02T23:55:45.010" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would advise to contact your team and discuss with them the need to have the PO attending the daily meeting, it's totally the team decision to have him in the meeting or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your job as Scrum Coach (whether the PO is there or not) is to eliminate any side conversations in the daily meetings except of the following&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What did you do since the last meeting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did you have problems? if yes just highlight them in front of the team, and if someone really has a solution, they shouldn't discuss the solution at the moment of the meeting, but they should do this offline later on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are you planning to do until the next meeting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anything else except of these questions should be abandon from the discussion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7996" LastActivityDate="2015-09-02T23:55:45.010" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16091" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16099" CreationDate="2015-09-03T00:17:11.080" Score="6" ViewCount="1677" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working in a company that mainly perform mobile apps with their backend systems.&#xA;My question is, what's the best practice to handle the same projects over multiple platforms (iOS and Android) and keep them synced together using Agile approach? Should I use a separate project to each one, or handle them in the same project with having duplicate User Stories for each platform? Or do we have another solution for that approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7996" LastActivityDate="2015-09-04T17:16:03.583" Title="Handle the same project over multiple platforms in Agile" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16072" CreationDate="2015-09-03T01:44:12.383" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the true spirit of Kanban applied to Scrum, I'd say you should - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start with what you do now (or what you did before applying Kanban/ Scrumban)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Visualize your work/ workflow&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manage the flow of work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improve gradually, as opportunities for improvement present themselves.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What makes sense for the team and for the stakeholders for whom the team is working should help you decide how the work should be managed on the Kanban board. For example, do stakeholders look at the board during the day and wonder &quot;Is my work done?&quot;? If so, perhaps it makes sense for the team member to move the ticket to Done as soon as they ARE done with it.  During the standup the next morning, the team member can simply provide an update on it - or whatever else they need to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, does the team-members or the stakeholders wait for the outcome of the standup to get their updates? If so, (continue with the practice and) update the card status during the standup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is getting an accurate measure of your cycle time important? If so, perhaps best to move the ticket to the Done column the moment it is done instead of letting it wait overnight in the Doing column. Depending on the nature of your work, tickets might move to a &quot;Customer Acceptance&quot; column or a staging/ demo column where the customer/ product owner can be given a demo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometime back, I'd written a blog post on a related topic - &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bit.ly/1qGbtTP&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Does your Kanban Board reflect the process you actually have?&lt;/a&gt;&quot; You might find it interesting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, it just really depends on your processes and what you are trying to measure and improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2015-09-03T01:44:12.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16085" CreationDate="2015-09-03T05:39:09.767" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Neither PO nor Scrum Master is responsible, but &lt;strong&gt;the team is supposed to conduct daily standups&lt;/strong&gt;. As a Scrum Master its your job to facilitate the team and make sure that process is being followed. Coach them to make the standups effective as opposed to having just mechanical updates during the daily ritual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master ensures that the Development Team has the meeting, but the Development Team is responsible for conducting the Daily Scrum. The Scrum Master teaches the Development Team to keep the Daily Scrum within the 15-minute time-box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot;&gt;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Daily scrum is an important information radiator for the team. They have made a commitment to deliver agreed upon tasks during a time-boxed duration. &lt;strong&gt;Daily standup meetings help the team in tracking its progress with reference to their commitment&lt;/strong&gt;. These meeting may or may not provide much value to other stakeholders and PO, which is why presence of PO is not mandatory in Scrum daily standups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The daily scrum meeting is not a status update meeting in which a boss is collecting information about who is behind schedule. Rather, it is a meeting in which team members make commitments to each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/daily-scrum&quot;&gt;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/daily-scrum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, the PO may be getting involved because just to fill the void left by the team. &lt;strong&gt;Instead of talking to the PO, talk to the team first. Make them aware that its their job and why is it important. They should be running these meetings&lt;/strong&gt;, so just in case if both PO and Scrum Master are not present on a particular day, the standup should be equally effective and efficient without them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Daily Scrum is intended to disrupt old habits of working separately. Members should remain vigilant for signs of the old approach. For example, looking only at the ScrumMaster when speaking is one symptom that the team hasn’t learned to operate as a self-organizing entity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumreferencecard.com/scrum-reference-card/&quot;&gt;http://scrumreferencecard.com/scrum-reference-card/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2015-09-04T05:09:32.900" LastActivityDate="2015-09-04T05:09:32.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16094" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-03T13:14:14.427" Score="4" ViewCount="733" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an mpp file the owner has set a certain calendar and therefore that calendar setting is shown for every single task in the Indicators column. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to exclude some indicators from being shown there? Maybe in the registry?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question applies to Project 2003 but also to Project 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19412" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T18:55:40.867" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T18:55:40.867" Title="How can I suppress task type indicators for &quot;The task has a calendar applied to it.&quot;" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;&lt;ms-project-2003&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16087" CreationDate="2015-09-03T14:07:57.303" Score="12" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does the Product Owner comes from the software company or from the customer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does not matter as long as that person is good in the following aspects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Availability&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communication&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vision&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, PO needs to have a vision of what is to be built and why. For this, PO should have good communication with sponsors/stakeholder and should also be able to convey that vision to the Scrum team. As &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/16087/is-the-product-owner-the-customer/16095#comment20924_16095&quot;&gt;Jeff Lindsey mentioned as a comment below&lt;/a&gt;, PO should validate customer value and reception of the product being built, ideally with hard data. PO should radiate the vision in ways that empower and create autonomy/ownership in the development team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PO has to be available to answer questions coming from the team (ensuring almost 100% availability). A business sponsor, who occasionally comes in contact with the Scrum team, cannot act as a good PO. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The product owner could be someone from marketing, product management, or engineering teams having good understanding of the system being developed and solid domain knowledge. Having knowledge of &lt;em&gt;agile planning&lt;/em&gt; is not a key factor for becoming a PO. The Scrum Master should coach the PO regarding the process and guide the PO about his/her responsibilities and boundaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumalliance.org/profiles/26-roman-pichler&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Roman Pichler&lt;/a&gt; has to say on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumalliance.org/articles/44-being-an-effective-product-owner&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Alliance&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have found three things particularly helpful for product owners: a thorough understanding of the customer needs, an active stakeholder management, and a basic knowledge of how software is developed and deployed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2015-10-06T13:34:09.567" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16091" CreationDate="2015-09-03T18:32:45.970" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot depends on how the Product Owner sees the development for the two platforms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do they view the development of a feature for iOS and the same feature for Android as two seperate pieces of work that can be prioritised alongside other backlog items? For example, the search feature is a high priority on iOS, but a low priority on Android.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or do they believe that a feature is only complete once it is available on both the iOS and Android platforms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that if every feature must be complete on both platforms it would make more sense to have a single backlog item per feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-09-03T18:32:45.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16087" CreationDate="2015-09-03T20:20:23.723" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PO act on behave of the customer! So, I would say (s)he 'is' the customer. But not any/just a customer; the PO is also the &lt;em&gt;owner&lt;/em&gt; of the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good PO is involved and knows &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; of the product to build... So more a super-user as a manager (boss)&#xA;Think about the &quot;functional manager&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a trick to find out somebody is a good PO. Ask yourself: does it hurt him (personal, later) when he set priorities wrongly?&#xA;When &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;, search again&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore project-team members (tso, he supplier) are often &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; perfect. When the project is done, he is gone&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19415" LastActivityDate="2015-09-03T20:20:23.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16085" CreationDate="2015-09-03T20:56:49.100" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To build on other answers, I would say that the only concerns should be if:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Standup is longer than 15 minutes. There are plenty of actual reasons for why there's a timebox, but the end result is that it's a rule of scrum which you need to help your team uphold.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The PO is dominating the conversation. The PO should barely be contributing other than to answer the team's questions. As others have pointed out, daily standup is for the team to evaluate where they are in their sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team is treating standup as a status update to the PO. This one is not as much of a concern as the other two. This is a pitfall even for scrum masters. Again, standup is for the team. If each person is talking &lt;em&gt;to&lt;/em&gt; a single person -- Product Owner, Scrum Master, Technical Lead, doesn't matter -- then that could be indicative of a culture problem within the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, if the team is working, then it's all working. Working is good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19384" LastActivityDate="2015-09-03T20:56:49.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16091" CreationDate="2015-09-03T22:56:58.643" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do not necessarily have the same &quot;project&quot; across multiple platforms. You must identify whether you are producing different (but similar) products that form multiple projects, or a single product with multiple front-ends that can be treated as a cohesive project within a single team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum projects are generally based around a &quot;one team, one product&quot; approach. While there may be edge cases with other frameworks, it is a good rule of thumb to follow with any agile practice unless you have a really solid reason to deviate from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Define Your Projects Based on Product Context&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a Scrum perspective, each team should be dedicated to developing a single product from a unified product backlog. This leads to two primary use cases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A single back-end product with multiple front-ends (e.g. Android and iOS), in which case a fully cross-functional team might be able to work from a single product backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Two separate products (e.g. an Android product and an iOS product) which each have a dedicated project team and separate product backlogs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first case, you have one project. In the second, you have &lt;em&gt;two&lt;/em&gt; projects that can be tied together with some form of Scrum-at-scale such as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://guide.agilealliance.org/guide/scrumofscrums.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum of Scrums&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://scaledagileframework.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SAFe&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Similar Features Aren't Inherently Unified Products&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that just because you have similar features in two separate product lines, that doesn't mean you have (or should have) a unified project. For example, you might have a common feature such as &quot;user logins&quot; in both products, but the products themselves are still different, and the implementation details of each feature are unlikely to be identical across products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, you must carefully decide whether you truly have one project or two, as defined in the section above. Similarity of features, or the existence of common user stories, is never sufficient &lt;em&gt;by itself&lt;/em&gt; to merge separate products into a single project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-09-04T17:16:03.583" LastActivityDate="2015-09-04T17:16:03.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16067" CreationDate="2015-09-04T02:03:52.247" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless your Definition of Done excludes testing as one of the criteria, you must include testing in your &lt;em&gt;overall&lt;/em&gt; estimates for the Product Backlog Item. Whether you treat testing as an implicit task or an explicit task is not prescribed by the framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Estimates Should Include All Aspects of the &quot;Definition of Done&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should the initial estimate for the development of the task INCLUDE man hours estimated to take the story to completion or should we have additional hourly estimates on the test tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, the deliverable for each Sprint is a potentially-shippable increment that achieves the Sprint Goal and meets the &quot;Definition of Done.&quot; Your estimates for each Product Backlog Item (or user story, if you use that format) should always include everything required to meet &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; elements of the Definition of Done, including testing, documentation, validation, and anything else the team has agreed is required to ensure an increment is truly complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, elements of the Definition of Done are understood to be implicit aspects of each Product Backlog Item (PBI), and are simply rolled into the PBI's overall estimate rather than broken out as individual tasks for each item or user story. However, if you break out testing for each item as explicit tasks on your Sprint Backlog, then you should certainly estimate those tasks the same way as any other task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This really amounts to an accounting issue. Ensuring that testing is accounted for in your overall estimate of the level of effort to complete a Product Backlog Item is a more agile estimation technique than the false sense of accuracy one gets from assigning exact hours to proposed testing tasks&amp;mdash;especially since there's often a lot of ping-pong between testing and development in agile techniques like Test-Driven Development&amp;mdash;but there's nothing wrong with estimating testing tasks explicitly as long as you are doing so &lt;em&gt;consistently&lt;/em&gt; across all your Product Backlog Items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason most shops don't do this is that if you're going to account for testing separately from development, then you should also have tasks and estimates for all the &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; elements of the Definition of Done as well. This generally leads to more process overhead, a false sense of precision, and is rarely more accurate than the aggregated estimate for a Product Backlog Item that implicitly incorporates the full Definition of Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-09-04T02:03:52.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16101" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16130" CreationDate="2015-09-04T17:46:03.787" Score="-1" ViewCount="715" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the Harvard Business Review's Guide to Making Every Meeting Matter, one contributor describes a unique process for their daily standup:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;To keep impromptu meetings short, I instituted Dance&#xA;Meetings. By playing some funk [music] at low levels through&#xA;my computer speakers, I’d encourage my colleagues&#xA;to dance. We’d dance for the duration of the song as&#xA;we discussed their projects, challenges, personal troubles,&#xA;and so on.&#xA;The benefits were immediately clear:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;• Meetings were kept to about five minutes—&#xA;maximum, 10, for an extended James Brown&#xA;tune.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;• Self-conscious people were intimidated and&#xA;didn’t drop in as often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;• The dancing immediately put us in a good&#xA;mood—so much so that even people with major&#xA;complaints always left my office with a smile.&#xA;• It was a lovely, surreal bonding moment that&#xA;boosted morale within my team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn’t the sort of extreme method that will work&#xA;in every office, of course, but it sure worked at my&#xA;casual-yet-hectic workplace. And it certainly made for&#xA;quick and effective meetings.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our company currently facilitates a number of software development Scrum teams, which have been effective for a number of years (well past the forming / storming / norming stages). We're planning on expanding these teams in the near future, but we think it's a natural time for some team evolution. Does this sound like a feasible route to explore, or will it simply put our employees too far out of their comfort zones?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20424" LastEditorUserId="20424" LastEditDate="2015-09-08T12:11:14.557" LastActivityDate="2015-09-08T12:11:14.557" Title="Daily developer &quot;dance scrum&quot; meeting" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-09-09T11:28:23.897" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14694" CreationDate="2015-09-05T01:34:40.657" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As your team continues to try to observe the limit of the time box they will learn how to do it. If you are trying to play the role of their problem solver, and you are the scrum master, that is not your role. Your role is to point out that they didn't observe the box, and to facilitate discussion about why and what can they do differently next time to make it work. That way they, not you, will own the problem. And they will learn how to think about their problems in ways that they don't yet know even though you do. If you're a former (or current) engineer, you'll have to learn to restrain your desire to fix things. As a scrum master you are now a coach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20426" LastActivityDate="2015-09-05T01:34:40.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16103" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-05T17:32:45.630" Score="2" ViewCount="1965" Body="&lt;p&gt;ISTR that it is estimated that there are over 1 million project managers with the PRINCE2 certification, but can someone point me to an accurate reference for this and/or any other certifications such as PMP?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&#xA;Peter&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20432" LastActivityDate="2018-05-09T10:38:51.843" Title="How many certified project managers in the world?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;certification&gt;&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16104" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16105" CreationDate="2015-09-05T19:59:26.423" Score="0" ViewCount="145" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently in order to expand our products, we have had to bring in external contractors, especially those working remotely. Some of the tasks involve porting an existing application on one platform to another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to effectively port some of these applications, sharing existing code with the contractor is inevitable. Yet, this is the most risk taking things of all. How do you share code / your livelihood, with a contractor and ensure it's not misused or recreated in another project? All I know, they could cancel the contract after a few weeks and go on and develop their own app using the stolen code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize vetting and interviewing trust worthy candidates is the first step, but after having done that, what steps can be taken to ensure your code is safe from being reproduced illegally?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20435" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T13:08:59.363" Title="How do you ensure your code does not get stolen when working with a remote contractor?" Tags="&lt;contracts&gt;&lt;subcontractor&gt;&lt;ethics&gt;&lt;code-of-conduct&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2015-09-06T22:41:08.520" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16104" CreationDate="2015-09-05T20:21:13.840" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As usual, you can just increase the effort one has to invest to steal from you. There is never 100% security. Your employees might copy and sell your code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, there are multiple possibilities but they could be divided in &lt;em&gt;legal&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;technical/physical&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;strategic&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Legal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put a clear IPR and usage right statement in the contract&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put the IPR statement in the code&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Request certifications&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technical / physical&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide object code instead of source code&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide interface descriptions instead of code&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide the office and / or development tools like restricted computers, e.g. no USB, no internet despite Stack Exchange :)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Strategic&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implement a &lt;strong&gt;supplier development strategy&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Offer long term relationships to downgrade the quick-win &quot;business case&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-09-06T13:08:59.363" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T13:08:59.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16106" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-09-06T10:28:16.997" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://badgeville.com/wiki/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gamification Wiki&lt;/a&gt;&quot; definition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gamification is the concept of applying game mechanics and game design&#xA;  techniques to engage and motivate people to achieve their goals.&#xA;  Gamification taps into the basic desires and needs of the users&#xA;  impulses which revolve around the idea of Status and Achievement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good example of gamification is &lt;a href=&quot;http://pm.stackexchange.com/help/badges&quot;&gt;badge system&lt;/a&gt; on the StackExchange network.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Links&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki article aboout Gamification&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://badgeville.com/wiki/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gamification Wiki supported by badgeville.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-09-06T22:42:23.597" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T22:42:23.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16107" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-09-06T10:28:16.997" Score="0" Body="For questions about how to gamificate (add game design elements) for making  project activities more enjoyable and motivating." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-09-06T22:42:30.463" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T22:42:30.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16108" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-09-06T10:31:58.500" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitation_(business)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki Definition&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Facilitation is the process of designing and running a successful&#xA;  meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term &quot;facilitation&quot; is widly used in Scrum: For examples, the Scrum Master should be the facilitator of all Scrum events (if needed or requested).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Links&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitation_(business)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-09-06T22:42:08.203" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T22:42:08.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16109" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-09-06T10:31:58.500" Score="0" Body="For questions about how to ensure the designing and running of successful meetings and workshops." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-09-06T22:42:20.130" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T22:42:20.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16110" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-09-06T10:48:11.377" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During project management, there are a lot of conflicts of interest, as there are many interested parties. To search for compromise and consensus we must have of a dialogue, which is called negotiation. The art of negotiation is a difficult and complex area which describes in entire discipline (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negotiation_theory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;negotiation theory&lt;/a&gt;), which includes decision analysis, behavioral decision making, game theory, and negotiation analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This tag is used to mark questions which are related with project management, which in any way affected the negotiation process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Links&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negotiation_theory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wiki article about negotiation theory&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2018-10-09T13:16:08.730" LastActivityDate="2018-10-09T13:16:08.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16111" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-09-06T10:48:11.377" Score="0" Body="For questions about all practical aspects of negotiations within project management." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-09-06T22:42:03.157" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T22:42:03.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16112" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-09-06T10:59:12.900" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the development of any product mistakes are made. Some of them are found in the testing process (see &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/testing&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;testing&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;testing&lt;/a&gt;), part are found during exploitation, part are never found. Defects have different degrees of severity and importance. Some of them have to be corrected immediately, regardless of wasted resources, while others can be ignored (see &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/quality-management&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;quality-management&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;quality-management&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This tag is designed for all matters related to the management of the process of defects fixes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;See also&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/testing&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;testing&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;testing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/quality-management&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;quality-management&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;quality-management&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/quality&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;quality&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;quality&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-09-06T22:42:57.700" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T22:42:57.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16113" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-09-06T10:59:12.900" Score="0" Body="For questions about the process of fixing defects in the product." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-09-06T22:41:23.193" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T22:41:23.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16114" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-09-06T11:07:27.883" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definition by American Society for Quality:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A combination of quantitative and qualitative perspectives for which&#xA;  each person has his or her own definition; examples of which include,&#xA;  &quot;Meeting the requirements and expectations in service or product that&#xA;  were committed to&quot; and &quot;Pursuit of optimal solutions contributing to&#xA;  confirmed successes, fulfilling accountabilities&quot;. In technical usage,&#xA;  quality can have two meanings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;A product or service free of deficiencies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definition by ISO 9000:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfills&#xA;  requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definition by Six Sigma:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Number of defects per million opportunities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Links&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_(business)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki article about quality&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;See also&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/testing&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;testing&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;testing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/quality-management&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;quality-management&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;quality-management&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/defect-fixing&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;defect-fixing&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;defect-fixing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-09-06T22:41:56.023" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T22:41:56.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16115" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-09-06T11:07:27.883" Score="0" Body="For questions about the project's quality, the product's quality and the process' quality, how to manage, measure and provide it." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-09-06T22:43:00.837" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T22:43:00.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16116" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-09-06T11:18:25.800" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definition from PMBoK (5th Edition):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fixed-price contract type involves setting a fixed total price for a&#xA;  defined product, service, or result to be provided. Fixed-price&#xA;  contracts may also incorporate financial incentives for achieving or&#xA;  exceeding selected project objectives, such as schedule delivery&#xA;  dates, cost and technical performance, or anything that can be&#xA;  quantified and subsequently measured. Sellers under fixed-price&#xA;  contracts are legally obligated to complete such contracts, with&#xA;  possible financial damages if they do not. Under the fixed-price&#xA;  arrangement, buyers need to precisely specify the product or services&#xA;  being procured. Changes in scope may be accommodated, but generally&#xA;  with an increase in contract price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Links&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-price_contract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki article about fixed-price contract&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;See also&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/contracts&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;contracts&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;contracts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-09-06T22:42:00.263" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T22:42:00.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16117" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-09-06T11:18:25.800" Score="0" Body="For questions about managing projects, that have fixed-price contracts within." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-09-06T22:42:49.037" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T22:42:49.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16118" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-09-06T11:19:39.103" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the project is a unique activity, its estimation (or the estimation of its components) over time and the cost is quite a difficult task. This tag is for questions about the practices of assessment of their possible accuracy and other aspects of estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-09-06T22:41:53.227" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T22:41:53.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16119" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-09-06T11:19:39.103" Score="0" Body="For questions about the estimation of the project's parameters, such as time or cost." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-09-06T22:42:26.540" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T22:42:26.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16120" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-09-06T11:22:27.250" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enterprise Project Management has a number of features related with the large scale of the project, as well as, respectively, with large resouses and the time duration. This tag is used to refer to questions of project management, where the problems associated with large scale come to the fore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;See also&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/small-projects&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;small-projects&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;small-projects&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-09-06T22:42:52.637" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T22:42:52.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16121" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-09-06T11:22:27.250" Score="0" Body="For questions about management of enterprise level projects." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-09-06T22:43:04.207" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T22:43:04.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16122" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-09-06T11:24:51.317" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Management of small projects have a number of features related to small scale, such as, respectively, with low cost and short time duration. This tag is used to refer to questions of project management, where the problems are associated with low financial capability in deploing of project management environment, the need of high precision estimation and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;See also&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/enterprise&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;enterprise&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;enterprise&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-09-06T22:42:45.437" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T22:42:45.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16123" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-09-06T11:24:51.317" Score="0" Body="For questions about management of small projects." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-09-06T22:42:41.843" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T22:42:41.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16124" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-09-06T11:30:04.220" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Testing is one of the core activity in the software development process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Testing has two main goals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;demonstrate to developers and customers, that the developed system satisfy of requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;find defects in the developed system.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By manage testing activity it is possible to manage some quality aspests of the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avoid asking technical questions about testing in this site. Aks it on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://sqa.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Software Quality Assurance &amp;amp; Testing Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt; instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Links&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wiki articele about testing&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sqa.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Software Quality Assurance &amp;amp; Testing Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;See also&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/quality&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;quality&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;quality&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/quality-management&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;quality-management&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;quality-management&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/defect-fixing&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;defect-fixing&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;defect-fixing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-09-06T22:43:07.887" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T22:43:07.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16125" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-09-06T11:30:04.220" Score="0" Body="For questions about testing activity within a project. Please, avoid asking questions about the technical aspects of testing. Use Software Quality Assurance &amp; Testing Stack Exchange (sqa.stackexchange.com) for these types of question instead." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-01-08T19:49:55.713" LastActivityDate="2019-01-08T19:49:55.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16103" CreationDate="2015-09-06T19:39:19.553" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMI publishes &quot;PMI Today&quot;, which displays the number of Active certification holders.  As of August 2015 there are 655,576 PMPs, and 28,826 CAPMs. Another up-and-coming certification is the Agile Certified practitioner PMI-ACP which has 8,870.  The other 5 certification streams have less than 4k.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All told a little under 700k.  Keep in mind that some people may hold multiple certifications, and there are other organizations who do PM certs too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20438" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T19:39:19.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16008" CreationDate="2015-09-06T22:17:15.667" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll try to answer your question, but I'm not sure it's really possible to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say there are 5 discrete messages one can send to another. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feature - Something that is expected to be delivered.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decision - Something that needs to be (?) or has been (!) decided.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Question - Generic, may also be used as a prefix, to specify a type of question. (e.g ?feature or ?Decision)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Issue - Problem, risk or bug&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The other ones*&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Within 30 seconds of posting this, somebody will say &quot;what about x?&quot; and they'll be right. In order to make a small list, you need to make gross generalizations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point a BA, or PM would ask, what &lt;strong&gt;really&lt;/strong&gt; is the issue you are trying to solve?  It sounds like email just isn't working for you and you want to create something better.  Then we'd look and see how much it'd cost, and what the benefits would be to the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the first things I'd ask my tech team is, &quot;Are there any tools out there already that can be had for less than it'd take to build it?&quot; Maybe, maybe not, but it's always worth looking. (Also, is this product going to be a part of your core business? See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000007.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Joel's take&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this particular case there are lots of different tools that can be used to solve this problem, although not quite the way you mention. Maybe &lt;a href=&quot;https://slack.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;slack&lt;/a&gt; would do the trick, or perhaps asana.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20438" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T22:17:15.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16008" CreationDate="2015-09-06T22:45:38.090" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several communication models. However, the surest way to create a no-email environment and understand it's impact is to cut-off email for project communications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T22:45:38.090" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15357" CreationDate="2015-09-06T23:01:11.310" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to make an assumption that you don't have an agreement with the other party to have access to your IP. Generally anything developed by you on their time is theirs, but maybe these are macros you built yourself on your own time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write a plugin. Your killswitch code will work, and it would be harder for them to just go in and comment it back out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Keep your code in project file on a shared drive, and access it from the other file by using:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Application.Run &quot;path/to/file.mpp!secret_code&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Negotiate a royalty free runtime license for a couple bucks, (or even free) and use them as a reference for your next contract.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Breaking people's stuff isn't going to win you any friends, and depending on your jurisdiction this type of logic bomb may actually be illegal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20438" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T23:01:11.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16101" CreationDate="2015-09-07T03:35:10.867" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've not seen this in action. What I do know is this sounds like a team evolution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a team is still in the forming, storming or even norming phase, comfort is still being established. At this point you are working on team cohesion and team trust. Having spent a lot of time in theatre I can tell you it takes a lot of trust for a good acting troupe to work well together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So something like introducing dancing, which may be well outside the comfort zone of your average software engineer, is something you probably want to hold off doing until you've hit the performing stage and are looking for the next evolution of team dynamics. Get to trust first, then start experimenting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-09-07T03:35:10.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16132" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16140" CreationDate="2015-09-07T10:15:03.637" Score="15" ViewCount="2279" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a ScrumMaster for Scrum team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team didn't show up for the standup this morning. I went and spoke to the team and they said they don't want to have stand-ups because the product owner (PO) is on leave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any suggestions on how to handle this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastEditorUserId="360" LastEditDate="2015-09-09T02:36:01.857" LastActivityDate="2015-09-09T02:36:01.857" Title="Scrum team doesn't want to have standups" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16132" CreationDate="2015-09-07T11:00:39.230" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;They seem to treat the daily standup as a reporting meeting for your PO. This is not what the daily standup is supposed to be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a scrum master it's your job to clarify that the daily standup is &lt;em&gt;for the team&lt;/em&gt; and the PO is &lt;em&gt;a tolerated visitor&lt;/em&gt; at the meeting. His absence changes nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also your job to make sure that it actually &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; that way. It's easy to let the daily standup drift into a short PO report meeting. If that happend, it's your job to turn the tide and bring the meetings back on track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2015-09-07T11:00:39.230" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16135" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-07T11:18:30.203" Score="4" ViewCount="1023" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a software development company. We develop with Fixed Price contracts, thus there's a lot of BDUF (Big design up front). During the initial/planning phase, we create very big monolithic technical scope documents in MSWord and get approval/signature from the customer on it. Then, during development, we refer to these documents: e.g.: &quot;as per page XX&quot;,or &quot;as per section XX&quot;, in our work in JIRA tickets. Change requests cause a new version of the specification to be re-created from the MSWord and the modified section or appendix at the end is re-signed. Our customers always need to sign something, they prefer it this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if you can help with the following please:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a way to type the scope in a more granular manner directly in JIRA (e.g.: one functionality per JIRA) and automatically generate a big document to be &quot;signed&quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would it be possible somehow to track modifications in the JIRA after the signed version was done?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would you use a different tool to type these specifications? E.g.: a tool that somehow integrates into JIRA and you have the scope in there already in a granular manner?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would force the writers to write the scope in more concise and self-contained manners (and all the scope would be in JIRA facilitating communication). Please note that typing the scope in MSWord and then moving it into JIRA is also an option, but a lot of re-work (~100 pages of it), thus I am looking for a solution where I need to write this only once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help is appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5432" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-09-07T13:19:21.723" LastActivityDate="2015-12-23T01:18:00.600" Title="How does one manage scope in JIRA?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;scope-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16136" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16141" CreationDate="2015-09-07T13:01:34.157" Score="5" ViewCount="2471" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an agile board with column called &quot;To Do&quot; - see random example below. In this column I have now 2 tickets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/u2bhp.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/u2bhp.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to create my own issue filter (&quot;Favourite filter&quot;) with equivalent results as in mentioned column.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that in column &quot;To Do&quot; are always issues with status &lt;code&gt;open&lt;/code&gt;, but in project we have more &lt;code&gt;open&lt;/code&gt; issues not only 2. We are in running sprint, so maybe this is also something I need to care about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried to search, but I have no idea what field to use. Is not &lt;code&gt;status&lt;/code&gt;, is not &lt;code&gt;type&lt;/code&gt; of issue....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the query for filtering this agile board &quot;label/name&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20439" LastEditorUserId="20439" LastEditDate="2015-09-09T10:24:54.177" LastActivityDate="2015-09-10T18:14:34.427" Title="How can I create custom issue filter equivalent to agile board column?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16132" CreationDate="2015-09-07T13:46:01.187" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our team we have daily standups always without PO. Is place for developers coordination, not for reporting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read quite nice article about standups mistakes:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2014/july/7-mistakes-during-the-daily-stand-up-meeting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;7 Mistakes During the Daily Stand-up Meeting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20439" LastActivityDate="2015-09-07T13:46:01.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15431" CreationDate="2015-09-07T15:18:03.033" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When working as part of large teams (or when you have multiple teams on one code base) this can be known as a &lt;strong&gt;hardening sprint&lt;/strong&gt;.  Although you aren't driving down the outstanding points of the mvp per se, you are making things better overall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can undertake a number of tasks to improve things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;refactoring&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reducing technical debt&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;improving test/code coverage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;revisiting design decisions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;updating wikis/designs etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;refining CI/CD&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would estimate these and work on a similar number of points to a normal sprint (assuming you've been logging these issues as stories).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3336" LastActivityDate="2015-09-07T15:18:03.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16101" CreationDate="2015-09-07T15:47:07.150" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In truth, I never even heard about this technique of Daily Scrum before. Despite this, I think that it is very infantile practice (it's my personal opinion). I strongly believe, that in case if I will suggest implement this practice on retrospective, most censorial answer from my team will be something like &quot;&lt;em&gt;OMG, are you serious?&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. Almost all members of my team don't like game elements within development process (yes, we are boring guys), such as the lego-retrospective and others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But! My team is my team. Your team is your team. There is no silver bullet. All teams are unique. If this technique isn't applicable to my team, it doesn't mean that this practice will be bad for your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But! Be careful with implementation of this practice. All of your team members should have specific psychotype for this technique. Even if there is one member of the team, which will have discomfort during dancing, I think will be better to not use this practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastActivityDate="2015-09-07T15:47:07.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16132" CreationDate="2015-09-07T17:18:22.107" Score="9" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The main problem is that your &quot;Daily Scrum&quot; degraded to &quot;Daily Status Reporting Meeting&quot;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I believe, that reason of this problem is that your team doesn't understand purpose and goals of Daily Scrum.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;And, of course, if we will dig deeply, main reason will be that you (as Scrum Master) didn't explaine well purpose and goals of Daily Scrum to your team.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a little bit different opinions about goals of Daily Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/15964/daily-stand-up-three-question-format-a-sign-of-team-immaturity/15985#15985&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;this answer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; I suggested (based on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/daily-scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mike Cohn's article&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; and own practice) following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Help to track Sprint Progress.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Synchronize team's work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Adapt daily plan and Sprint Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Increace colabration within team (by commitment to each other and sharing problems).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Author [Jason Yip] of &lt;a href=&quot;http://martinfowler.com/articles/itsNotJustStandingUp.html#TheGoalsOfTheDailyStand-upAreGifts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;this article&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; suggest similar, but a little bit different goals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;To help start the day well&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;To support improvement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;To reinforce focus on the right things&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;To reinforce the sense of team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;To communicate what is going on&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a mnemonic device, think of &lt;strong&gt;GIFTS&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;G&lt;/strong&gt;ood &lt;strong&gt;S&lt;/strong&gt;tart, &lt;strong&gt;I&lt;/strong&gt;mprovement, &lt;strong&gt;F&lt;/strong&gt;ocus, &lt;strong&gt;T&lt;/strong&gt;eam, &lt;strong&gt;S&lt;/strong&gt;tatus&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finaly, quote from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v1/Scrum-Guide-US.pdf#zoom=100&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (there is no list of goals, but I highlighted them):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Daily Scrum is a 15-minute time-boxed event for the Development&#xA;  Team to &lt;strong&gt;synchronize activities and create a plan for the next 24&#xA;  hours.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Development Team uses the Daily Scrum &lt;strong&gt;to inspect progress toward&#xA;  the Sprint Goal and to inspect how progress is trending toward&#xA;  completing the work in the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/strong&gt; The Daily Scrum optimizes&#xA;  the probability that the Development Team will meet the Sprint Goal.&#xA;  Every day, the Development Team should understand how it intends to&#xA;  work together as a selforganizing team to accomplish the Sprint Goal&#xA;  and create the anticipated Increment by the end of the Sprint. The&#xA;  Development Team or team members often meet immediately after the&#xA;  Daily Scrum for detailed discussions, or to adapt, or replan, the rest&#xA;  of the Sprint’s work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Daily Scrums improve communications, eliminate other meetings,&#xA;  identify impediments to development for removal, highlight and promote&#xA;  quick decision-making, and improve the Development Team’s level of&#xA;  knowledge. This is a key inspect and adapt meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In any case, there are no any goals of Daily Scrum, that are directly related with Product Owner.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Daily Scrum is event for Developer Team, it serve to reach Developers Team's goals and only attendance of Developer Team is required on this meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to explain it to your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2015-09-07T17:23:38.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16136" CreationDate="2015-09-07T19:44:40.110" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It all depends on the query that the board itself depends on. You can identify it by going to the board and selecting the &quot;Board&quot; drop down in the top right, then click &quot;Configure&quot;. From there, select &quot;General&quot; configurations on the far left. The second field from the bottom is your Filter Query that determines what is shown on the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next you have to figure out what statuses are associated with the column that you want. On the far left on the same board configurations page, you select &quot;Columns&quot;. It's on this page that you can see all the statuses that are in the &quot;To Do&quot; column.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last thing is to put them together and restrict it to issues in an open sprint. You take the filter query and add &lt;code&gt;AND Status in (&amp;lt;status1&amp;gt;, &amp;lt;status2&amp;gt;) AND Sprint in OpenSprints()&lt;/code&gt; for each status that you found in the column. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19384" LastEditorUserId="19384" LastEditDate="2015-09-10T18:14:34.427" LastActivityDate="2015-09-10T18:14:34.427" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16142" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16145" CreationDate="2015-09-08T09:03:34.380" Score="2" ViewCount="4062" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is a good method for taking and organizing notes &lt;em&gt;about projects&lt;/em&gt;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every day I struggle with problems with multiple projects and it's difficult to make my notes clean and to keep them organized. I have to answer the phone every five minutes so I have to write notes on the conversations somewhere. At the end of the working day my notebook is full of text and chaos and it's very tiring to clean everything up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was trying something like the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornell_Notes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cornell Notes Taking System&lt;/a&gt;, but it wasn't very practical for me. Is there a better system or approach for tracking project information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6716" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-09-08T16:11:36.327" LastActivityDate="2015-09-08T17:49:15.637" Title="What is a good method for taking and organizing notes about projects?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;artifacts&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16094" CreationDate="2015-09-08T15:15:41.677" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a suggestion - if it is the same task calendar. - set that calendar as the project calendar and remove the Task Calendars. (Easy method is to add the Task Calendar field to the table view, set the first to &quot;None&quot; and fill down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, turn off the Project Summary tasks (you may also need to turn off the summary task) - select all tasks and click the Information button.  On the Advanced tab, select &quot;none&quot; under calendar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-09-08T15:15:41.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16142" CreationDate="2015-09-08T16:50:47.843" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best thing I ever did for my note taking/organization (other than learn to type) was learn OneNote.  I'm not going to sell you on it, there are probably plenty of other tools that do the job equally well or better.  The important thing was to &lt;strong&gt;stop using paper/notepads and use an organized, searchable and archivable app&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the tool I was able to quickly take notes while on the phone and then email the notes out to all participants after the call for comments or corrections.  I know there are some tools that can do this in real time during the call, use the tool that works best for your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real value is when you need to confirm something weeks later, scrambling through notepads, even well organized ones with great penmanship, can take precious time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20438" LastActivityDate="2015-09-08T16:50:47.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16142" CreationDate="2015-09-08T17:14:40.693" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notes are just placeholders for more complex thoughts, and are only intrinsically useful when they are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;organized;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;searchable;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;self-contained, self-explanatory, or transcribed; and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;readable at a later date.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need is a &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; for organizing short-term, project-related information into a long-term storage format that carries context and supports information retrieval. Your tool chain (whether it's paper-and-pencil or something more complex) must support your process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Think Process, Not Tools&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, as you are already aware, part of your problem is not having a methodology or process rather than a lack of tools. There are many schools of thought on how to take notes, and an exhaustive list would be out of scope for a Q&amp;amp;A site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your choice of Cornell Notes seems more suitable for studying than for information tracking, but that doesn't mean it can't work for you. However, a few other options include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Minds maps&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Free-form notes in a central location, e.g. a composition book, with meta-data like names or dates at the top. I often use this technique myself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time-stamped entries in a log file. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/260563&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;you can use Windows Notepad to create time-stamped log entries&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Notebook-style applications like &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Tomboy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tomboy&lt;/a&gt;, the OS X built-in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.apple.com/osx/apps/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Notes app&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://evernote.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;EverNote&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://onenote.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MS OneNote&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://keep.google.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google Keep&lt;/a&gt;, and so on. The list is quite long; picking one is a matter of subjective preference, and software recommendations are out of scope for most of Stack Exchange except for &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Software Recommendations Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Think Retrieval, Not Format&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it's nice to have a standardized format for your notes such as standardized headers, time-stamps, or categories, the real issue you're facing is that you don't have a sensible organizational system or a data retrieval system. Your information-tracking process needs both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I find that electronic notes that support free-form searches make information retrieval a snap. In addition, any system that supports free-form reorganization into categories or into some sort of prioritization order (i.e. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_card&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;index cards&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt; cards, Tomboy notes) is often very useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ways you want organize and retrieve your notes should drive your choice of note-taking tools and methodologies. It should never be the other way around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Transcribe Promptly&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notes are generally intended as short-lived shorthand. Whether you use &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alysion.org/handy/althandwriting.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;shorthand&lt;/a&gt;, software with with custom keyword expansions or autocomplete (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Using_abbreviations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;vim abbreviations&lt;/a&gt;), computer-based shorthand systems like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freewebs.com/cassyjanek/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;KeyScript&lt;/a&gt;, or any other kind of note, the secret to making the information useful &lt;em&gt;later&lt;/em&gt; is to use your notes as a placeholder and transcribe the information into long form as soon as practical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As one example, you might use &lt;a href=&quot;http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Markdown&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://pandoc.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pandoc&lt;/a&gt; as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Jot some free-form notes into a Markdown document using a new header (e.g. &lt;code&gt;#&lt;/code&gt;) for each note. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h1&gt;Arch. Disc. w/Bill&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Embiggen widget stamper: throughput.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At least daily, go back into your Markdown document and flesh out your placeholder notes into detailed, structured text so that it will make sense later on, especially if you forget the specific context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h1&gt;Architecture Discussion with Bill Bailey (2015-10-01)&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The current stamper only produces 1.5 widgets per hour.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Make the widget stamper big enough to product 15k widgets per second.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Profit!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use Pandoc (or other similar Markdown rendering tool) to convert the Markdown into an HTML/Word/PDF document, and send the long-form notes around for validation within the team or for storage as a project artifact.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;magic&quot; here isn't the use of a specific tool, it's in ensuring that your shorthand notes are converted to readable documents (including sufficient context so that they're understandable in the future!) while you still remember what you really meant when you jotted down:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;@bill re: story #16&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;on the back of a napkin, sticky note, or index card.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:50:06.707" LastActivityDate="2015-09-08T17:49:15.637" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16132" CreationDate="2015-09-08T18:52:42.117" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should talk to your team and clarify that the stand-ups are not for reporting to the PO. Its main purpose is to work as a team and keep everyone updated of all the proceedings that happened the day before. It is a way to bring out to notice impediments faced by any member of the team. It is important to emphasis on the fact that Daily Stand-up is a commitment and communications meeting and NOT a status report meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are able to communicate the importance of Stand-ups to the team well, they will surely not miss it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, do take special care of the duration of your stand-ups. Nobody is particularly very fond of long meetings. A Stand-up meeting should last maximum for 10 minutes. If any blocker requires further discussion, the relevant parties should do so after the stand-up meeting. Other should be allowed to leave. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You, as a Scrum Master, have a very important role in explaining everyone the concepts of Agile and Scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20451" LastActivityDate="2015-09-08T18:52:42.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16136" CreationDate="2015-09-08T18:55:38.180" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can do it with a JQL that selects the project, then selects the active sprint and finally selects the status of &quot;To Do&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;project = &quot;my project&quot; and sprint in openSprints() and status = &quot;To Do&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-09-08T18:55:38.180" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16082" CreationDate="2015-09-08T20:27:34.910" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As quick answer: &quot;Roughly 1 screen, per team-member, pro day&quot; of tested (debugged) code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, about 24 lines in the 70/80's. And up to 50 lines nowadays. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it is very depending on how development is organized! E.g introducing lean/agile/scrum (correctly) may improve those numbers by 30%. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19415" LastActivityDate="2015-09-08T20:27:34.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16067" CreationDate="2015-09-08T20:32:09.587" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum views the entire team to work together on a single user story until it is &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt;. To me, definition of done includes testing and ensuring that acceptance criteria is met. The entire team is responsible in getting the user story done and hence is liable to spend time on the user story. Therefore, testing effort should be estimated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in Scrum there is no role as &quot;tester&quot; or &quot;developer&quot;. All fall under the category of team members. Since a team member (read tester here) will be working on a user story, her/his efforts should be estimated and recorded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20451" LastActivityDate="2015-09-08T20:32:09.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16061" CreationDate="2015-09-09T12:33:18.480" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an architecture/configuration management problem, not a PM one.  Obviously there is a PM impact, so you need to address it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On projects I've worked on I've found the following helps a lot:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Baseline your working code. (What versions of the 4 applications are known to play nice together?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lock down the interfaces/shared resources between the applications. Not a code freeze, but make sure that any changes are carefully vetted by all teams not just the two that interface, because... &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Brainstorm your edge cases. I've had a problem where an xml message created in java was being sent to a C socket program, the empty nodes got populated with nulls, and the C program would truncate the message.  In this case both teams thought they knew what to expect/provide, but missed an edge case that was dependant on the Java/DB interface. Java asked for something, the DB didn't have it so provided a null. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you get a new version of one of the applications, do a complete regression test with it and the other applications. Do a limited release with it, if possible, and then update your baselines to include the new app version.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20438" LastActivityDate="2015-09-09T12:33:18.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16061" CreationDate="2015-09-09T13:28:28.497" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of the other answers provide some good suggestions from a project management standpoint. However, in my experience, projects dependency management should be only supplemental. Most of the heavy lifting in this area should be at the technical level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because this is the PM board, I don't want to get into too many details, but you could take this back to the team and if they're unsure how to accomplish it, there are other great stackexchange boards for programming that could give extensive information on these topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two areas in particular that will make the biggest impact are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Code Repository: Effective use of a code repository, especially with a good suite of unit tests, can create builds where you know all of the pieces are working properly together without taking too much time away from the team's development cycles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Object-oriented Principles: I try not to be dogmatic about this, but staying in the spirit of object-oriented programming (I like to point people to &lt;a href=&quot;http://butunclebob.com/ArticleS.UncleBob.PrinciplesOfOod&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SOLID principles&lt;/a&gt; as a start) goes a long way to decouple parts of the application and allow the application to grow without asking the PM to control every small step forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, some teams don't really like having a project manager tell them to improve technical practices, so you may have to approach that delicately. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-09-09T13:28:28.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16060" CreationDate="2015-09-09T20:25:33.347" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Determining what product should be built, and what features the product should have, is the responsibility of stakeholders identified in a project's charter. It is never the responsibility of the Product Owner as defined by the Scrum framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Generating Business Ideas Isn't Product Owner's Responsibility&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are there any techniques related to the requirement sessions or Reviews which can help produce ideas? Are ideas important for these sessions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding about the roles of the Product Owner and the stakeholders in Scrum. The Product Owner is not there to help stakeholders come up with business ideas; the PO role is there to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Elicit product requirements from the stakeholders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build consensus among stakeholders about the value proposition and priorities of product features.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work with stakeholders to formalize an ordinal list of features to create a sequential Product Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of these things amount to brainstorming about potential product features. That is the responsibility of the stakeholders and executive sponsors of the Project Charter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Scrum Guide Isn't Prescriptive About Soliciting Stakeholder Input&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Guide is not prescriptive about how the Product Owner should interact with stakeholders, but it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; clear about limiting responsibility for the Product Backlog to the Product Owner. Formally, the Product Owner role is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v1/Scrum-Guide-US.pdf#page=5&amp;amp;zoom=auto,87,720&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;defined within the framework&lt;/a&gt; as the sole arbiter of the Product Backlog and the &lt;em&gt;sole representative&lt;/em&gt; of any stakeholders in the project. The guide says, in part:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is one person, not a committee. The Product Owner may represent the desires of a committee in the Product Backlog, but those wanting to change a Product Backlog item’s priority mustaddress the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Ways to Build Product Consensus&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While &quot;generating ideas for the product&quot; isn't the responsibility of the Product Owner or Scrum Master, there are certainly techniques for building consensus around features and assigning priorities. Many of them can be found as &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;free tools provided by Mountain Goat Software&lt;/a&gt;. They include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/relative-weighting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Relative Weighting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/theme-screening&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Theme Screening&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/theme-scoring&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Theme Scoring&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/project-success&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Success Sliders&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you aren't limited to these techniques. Once the stakeholders know what they want the project to build or deliver, there are many business analysis techniques you can use to elicit good specifications, user stories, or feature definitions. Since the framework isn't prescriptive about how these details are gathered from the stakeholders, the Product Owner is free to use any of them, or to invent new ones as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-09-09T20:25:33.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15431" CreationDate="2015-09-10T17:20:50.057" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your specific case, it would be best to treat the week as a drag on productivity. This won't actually affect team velocity if you don't jigger with sprint lengths; what it will do is act as a visible cost in your project's release planning by reducing the number of full-length sprints remaining in your current schedule. This is a Good Thing&amp;trade; because it reflects the project's reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Red Herring&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it okay to have a sprint where the team commits to zero story points?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, but your real question is something different. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Make the Cost Visible&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The product owner prefers the team not work on any product backlog items until he can groom the backlog further. We had planned to conduct a product backlog refinement meeting, but realised that the PO's workload was too high this time around. So is there any danger in committing to zero story points but running the sprint as if it were a real sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While cadence is important to agile methodologies, the importance of transparency is often overlooked. The real issue here is that delaying work while the Product Owner is unavailable is a real cost to the project, and as such &lt;em&gt;should be made visible&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind, I would tell the developers to use this week as work-related free time. Let them update their workstations, read a book on a new programming language they're interested in, or otherwise get paid to do something useful to them (and their future productivity) without formalizing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important not to make this a week of busy-work. Not only is that antithetical to the self-organizing principles of agile, it is simply not good for team morale. Busy-work also creates the illusion that the team is working on product value when in fact this time (while potentially useful to the developers) is explicitly a drag on the project as a whole. This central truth needs to be firmly maintained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Technical Debt&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On any project, there are non-product tasks that need attention. CI servers need updates, SCM servers need patches, and so forth. To the extent that these things affect the team, this is a good time to work on them, but the problem is that it becomes &quot;invisible work&quot; because it's not prioritized on the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, the overhead involved in creating a one-week sprint rather than simply waiting until the PO is back in the saddle for the standard sprint length is probably not worth it. I believe it's better to capture this lost productivity as drag on the team's velocity, and simply plan better in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Product Owners also generally keep a few &quot;evergreen&quot; stories and technical-debt stories on the backlog for just such occasions. Then, when nothing else is pressing, these stories can be legitimately worked on without being unaccounted for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Why Team-Directed Sprints Aren't Kosher&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the problem with a sprint designed and run by the team without the participation of the PO are legion. Consider some of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unless the PO has refined the backlog and is available for Sprint Planning, the chances of the team working on the correct Product Backlog Items or producing a useful increment are vastly reduced.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The PO has a pivotal role to play in defining the Sprint Goal for each sprint. That's hard to do without his participation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The PO doesn't have to wait for the team to finish its artificial sprint. When he returns, he can unilaterally declare an Early Termination and a return to Sprint Planning, so any illusion of maintaining cadence is just that: an illusion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best thing to do is to turn your developers loose informally for the week. Let them work on whatever interests them, or on their professional development. While it may not advance the project directly, it will contribute to developer happiness and improve the overall effectiveness of the team in the long term, all without compromising the integrity of the Scrum process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-09-10T17:20:50.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16156" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16203" CreationDate="2015-09-10T22:02:18.917" Score="3" ViewCount="123" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a one man band business owner, having run my web development business for 11+ years, 8 of which I used no project management tactics at all - other than code like hell and persistence. I also used contractors and employees for 8 years, but have sized back to myself over the past 3 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've adopted risk management techniques - Project Survival Questionnaire as well as switched from fixed price to time and materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently I have 5 projects between 2 and 12 months behind schedule and I have identified that I need to complete them before accepting new clients.  There is a 6 month old project which is for a client of 10 years that will sooner or later become impatient. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All my projects have scope creep, this was by design, as I endeavoured to service clients for as long as possible. However, now I want to move to a more structured approach, where I regularly review client relationships and terminate them if they are not aligned with my strategy. I want this process to be transparent to the client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for advice to get my timeline issues under control: How to temporarily stop scope creep, so the projects can be brought under control and completed. Naturally I would like to work on oldest first, but there are other constraints - cashflow from existing project stalls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="747" LastEditorUserId="747" LastEditDate="2015-09-11T20:03:06.210" LastActivityDate="2015-09-15T12:09:26.900" Title="Timeline management for one man band getting into outsourcing" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16158" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16160" CreationDate="2015-09-11T13:37:53.130" Score="4" ViewCount="456" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the best practice in terms of moving stories/tasks through the workflow. Should stories be allowed to move back in the workflow e.g. In Deployment to In Development; In Development to To Do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current employer does not support this however at my previous employer it was acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastActivityDate="2015-09-12T09:07:33.893" Title="In a Kanban or Scrum workflow should tasks/stories move back?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16159" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16171" CreationDate="2015-09-11T14:56:26.307" Score="0" ViewCount="96" Body="&lt;p&gt;On this particular project, the performance of the testing team is being tracked against the number of scenarios tested compared to the plan.  Using Earned Schedule analysis, the resulting values are calculated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Earned Schedule (ES) = August 15&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Actual Time (AT) = September 10   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Independent EAC (IEACt) = November 6&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planned Time at Completion (TAC) = October 2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Schedule Performance Indicator (SPIt) = 0.84&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To Complete SPI (using planned    EAC) = 2.28&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the graph (series 4 is the actual performance):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/t1Gd0.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/t1Gd0.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A TCSPI, like TCPI using Earned Value, greater than 1.10 is considered to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.earnedschedule.com/Docs/The%20TCPI%20Indicator%20-%20P&amp;amp;P.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;not credible&lt;/a&gt;, i.e., impossible.  Since our TCSPI is 2.28, recovery should be considered not possible and other alternatives should be considered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was presented to the team (not in a manner using a ton of ES technical babble but in a way for most others to understand), suggesting that recovery was unlikely (did not use the word impossible) and that other alternatives needed to be analyzed.  The testing team, developers, and other support personnel rejected this notion wholesale, indicating that recovery is not only possible but that they will recover, and dismissing the presented analysis as &quot;textbook.&quot;  The alternative, more optimistic points of view had no basis behind it; it was just they thought was more true.  Others who were listening to this debate tended to lean towards the more optimistic opinions and the general consensus was to continue on and no other mitigating or contingency alternatives were explored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do we spend time learning the mechanics of various way to analyze data but then reject it in practice?  I have observed this chronically across many different types of projects and customers and teams.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is not a &quot;right&quot; answer to my question so I know this violates the rules a bit, but I think a right answer sort of lives in the collective responses from all of you, those who live this every day.  I would like to hear your critical thoughts and opinions on this subject.  Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2015-09-11T15:02:31.443" LastActivityDate="2015-09-12T19:37:31.167" Title="Earned Schedule Values" Tags="&lt;analysis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16158" CreationDate="2015-09-11T17:13:54.043" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely. Kanban is not a straight jacket limiting you to only one way of doing things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban is a visual representation of the actual workflow. In hardware it can be pretty obvious as you're moving around a physical object. If a car fails quality inspection, it doesn't sit in the quality bay waiting for an engineer to come to it. It gets sent back to where the work needs to happen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If QA finds a bunch of issues with a completed piece of software, they send it back to development. If it stays in QA, it limits QA's work in progress limits. Only QA isn't working on it anymore. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And moving something even as far back as To Do is a recognition that you can't work on it right now. Maybe a dependency popped up and you have to wait a month for that to be complete. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I do recommend a &quot;Waiting&quot; column on your task flow. If you are waiting for an outside dependency, which is within a reasonable time, then toss it in waiting. It shows it is being worked on, but not actively. Things in waiting would not count again the WIP limit for &quot;Doing&quot;. I still put a WIP on &quot;Waiting&quot; if you exceed that WIP, then you start raising risks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-09-11T17:13:54.043" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16003" CreationDate="2015-09-11T17:21:16.113" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest you keep it simple and follow these steps :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;put together a team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;create a product backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;estimate your backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;kick of a sprint or iteration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then inspect, adapt and repeat!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16022" LastActivityDate="2015-09-11T17:21:16.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15938" CreationDate="2015-09-11T17:23:57.610" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: No :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;sorry but if we look at the understanding of a sprint its fine to add and remove items but what you are doing is manipulating the stats probably to improve your burndown?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would advise against this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck in your endeavors :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16022" LastActivityDate="2015-09-11T17:23:57.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11016" CreationDate="2015-09-11T17:27:20.320" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would use epics they can be broken down on the jira agile board and you can also use themes and features&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16022" LastActivityDate="2015-09-11T17:27:20.320" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12143" CreationDate="2015-09-11T17:28:09.060" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;File&gt;Options&#xA;Display option&#xA;Click &quot;Entry bar&quot; check box&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20481" LastActivityDate="2015-09-11T17:28:09.060" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16165" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16169" CreationDate="2015-09-11T19:47:18.867" Score="15" ViewCount="593" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a one man band delivering smallish web development projects, I found that nearly all regression issues that clients find in the final development phase of the project could be found with unit tests beforehand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unit tests for me somewhat act as a method to ensure the specification is complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the demands of timelines and project management, how do I make unit tests a priority? They almost never feature in my budgeting, and if they do they often get thrown out because of scope creep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="747" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-09-11T23:26:48.323" LastActivityDate="2015-09-29T07:53:42.547" Title="How can I make unit testing a priority?" Tags="&lt;testing&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16167" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16178" CreationDate="2015-09-11T20:00:29.297" Score="0" ViewCount="65" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically, my projects involve a challenging technical problem. In my latest project this is a set of offline &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Create,_read,_update_and_delete&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CRUD&lt;/a&gt; screens, which was scope creep of 50% of the total project estimate. I reviewed options, which were basically AngularJS and some offline library or building my own offline CRUD system. I opted for the latter, because I build my own CRUD system in the past and had negative experiences with technical limitations of fairly new libraries. My gut feeling is I was wrong.&#xA;I'd like to reduce the amount of high risk work in current projects. Three options come to mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use new technology in a hobby project only&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find clients to pay for research work, maybe on a lower rate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do research work on open source projects I interact with&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone used any of these three methods? What was your experience with it and which method would you recommend?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="747" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-09-14T18:01:50.923" LastActivityDate="2015-09-14T18:01:50.923" Title="How can I reduce the amount of technical high risk work in projects?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2015-09-14T14:35:24.723" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16168" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16182" CreationDate="2015-09-11T20:37:43.290" Score="7" ViewCount="107" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're working on a project that has a considerable amount of task insertion risk (by which I mean either a) the insertion of new tasks into the WBS or b) the rearrangement of technical dependencies in the project network). Despite our best efforts on the WBS phase, we still find ourselves constantly revising the WBS/project network as we learn more about the domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience is with scheduling tools (e.g. PERT, Monte Carlo) that focus on task duration risk. I'm finding myself very poorly equipped to deal with constant changes to the WBS/project network themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there more appropriate tools for me to use for scheduling/control in the presence of high task insertion risk? If so, what are they? I've taken a look at Critical Chain / Buffer Management but am not sure if this is the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20484" LastEditorUserId="20484" LastEditDate="2015-09-11T20:54:12.850" LastActivityDate="2015-09-13T22:20:21.560" Title="How to deal with scheduling/control when task insertion (vs task duration) is primary risk" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16165" CreationDate="2015-09-11T21:33:28.043" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try to quantify (read: put a hard $ amount to) the increased time/expenses that build up over the lifecycle of the project - regression testing, bug-fixing, new feature risk and increased time to integrate, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: and of course share this with the clients. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2015-09-11T21:33:28.043" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16165" CreationDate="2015-09-11T23:35:54.663" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make unit testing part of your core development methodology, and ensure that test coverage is part of your &quot;Definition of Done.&quot; Also, ensure your estimates include the overhead to develop and refactor your unit tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How to &quot;Bake In&quot; Unit Testing&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can I make unit testing a priority?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unit tests can function as both design tools and quality controls. As such, they should be included in your project's &quot;Definition of Done&quot; for each feature or potentially-shippable increment. By baking the unit testing into each &lt;em&gt;increment&lt;/em&gt; of your work, you ensure that you aren't stuck doing a lot of post-facto testing at the end of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prioritization can be handled by making explicit tasks or milestones for the delivery of unit tests. However, this isn't really a very agile approach to the problem. Instead, you would be better off padding your estimates to provide time and budget that can be allocated to the ongoing development and refactoring of unit tests throughout each project's lifecycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-09-11T23:35:54.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16159" CreationDate="2015-09-12T01:06:14.407" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe it's because the people who learn the methods are not those who have to realise the consequences. Due to work share / specialisation this is usually not possible. But why does the non domain experts do not trust the domain expert?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because within the field of PM even the non domain PM expert might be successful. And therefore, lots of people have strong believes regarding what's right or wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally just because you learned a technique does not mean you trust a technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me the important but may be additional question behind yours is: &lt;strong&gt;How to deal with this circumstances?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question is independent of Earned Schedule Analysis. What you describe is the resistant to change and lack of trust in expert knowledge (presented by PM methods)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project team is doing everyday work and might be satisfied with. They might not see any problems from their perspective so, there is no &lt;strong&gt;need for change&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Applying tools or processes, someone (you) is able to forecast the future in a better way than others and is able to predict upcoming problems earlier than the others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What you need to do is to convince the team regarding the need for change.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume, you want the teams expert knowledge to find a solution for the update planning problem? Otherwise / if you already have a planning solution you &quot;just&quot; have to deal with your &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_and_Raven&amp;#39;s_bases_of_power&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;power&lt;/a&gt; in order to make them follow your plan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But using the expert knowledge to come up with a solution for the re-planning problem is more difficult:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What you need to do in addition is to convince the team regarding the correctness of your prediction.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you could do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make the belief that you are true by applying expert &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_and_Raven&amp;#39;s_bases_of_power&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;power&lt;/a&gt; - looks like this didn't work for you&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to explain the methodology - you already tried without success&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Show the validity of your applied methodology by presenting positive and negative examples&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Extrapolate the close future to a point, the team will realise the need for change on theirselves. Use visual language to make them imagine the situation evolving&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let the situation escalate in order to prove you prediction. Maybe the project looses now but future ones might win due to the increased experience of the stakeholder. Don't forget to document your warning, e.g. by risk management.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hire an external resource to educate the team regarding Earned Schedule Analysis. Consultants are trusted persons often...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apply other forms of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_and_Raven&amp;#39;s_bases_of_power&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;power&lt;/a&gt;, e.g. legitimate power taking into account a missing team buy in&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fore sure, the strategy to try depends on the team and your standing within the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way: Are you convinced regarding the prediction and need for change? The stakeholder will notice of so - and if not...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-09-12T09:32:03.140" LastActivityDate="2015-09-12T09:32:03.140" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16172" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-12T02:20:34.070" Score="5" ViewCount="5242" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm developing an application that helps students to find the career that best fits their skill and personality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the first time that I do a survey like this, so I'm confused about who are the stakeholders of this project ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the students and their family are the internal stakeholders and directly use this application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Universities, colleges and vocational schools are the external stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20486" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-09-12T08:59:02.283" LastActivityDate="2015-09-16T11:22:14.780" Title="Who are the stakeholders in this project?" Tags="&lt;stakeholders&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16172" CreationDate="2015-09-12T06:46:00.983" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stakeholders are anyone who has a stake, role, share, etc. in the project. I am not sure the schools are stakeholders at all because based on the limited description of the application, you are targeting students, not schools. If you plan to partner with schools to help market or get proprietary university data, then they can become a stakeholder; however, if you are just targeting people who just happen to be students of a school, the school itself is largely irrelevant in the context of stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for internal vs. external, I am not sure this applies. In my experience, internal vs. external pertains to stakeholders within your company or team (internal) vs. outside your company or team (external).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps and good luck with your app!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20429" LastActivityDate="2015-09-12T06:46:00.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16158" CreationDate="2015-09-12T09:07:33.893" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Moving stories/tasks back is an important part of the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We want our workflows to reflect reality as much as possible. This is useful as it highlights any issues that the team needs to address.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, if the team is seeing deployments failing and stories moving regularly back to development then they should discuss this at their retrospectives and try and better understand what is going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-09-12T09:07:33.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16176" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-12T17:20:42.173" Score="2" ViewCount="88" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short version: I want to do a research project, but for the life of me I cannot think of an original problem to solve that isn't already being solved. (also for the record, if I am in the wrong discussion website, please point me towards the proper one in which to voice my question)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This semester at my High School I will be taking a class titled Problems and Solutions in which I will have a semester to identify and research a problem in a field that interests me, solve the problem via experimentation and the scientific method, and then present my findings.  I began by scouring news, fields, other's research in an attempt to isolate a problem that I could solve.  Finding, or rather coming up with, a problem has proved difficult for me, although I (tentatively) narrowed my fields of interest down to the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Better solar power,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Wireless solar power transmission from altitude,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Communication network for autonomous vehicles,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Aeroelasticity?,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Solar Sail Elasticity?,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Desalination? Of groundwater (Solar?),&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Quantum Tunneling? (not really realistic research for a 10th grader, just a cool topic),&#xA;        and EEg Prosthetics                                                          &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are not in anyway what I plan to limit myself if a better project presents itself, just specifics that I came up with.  I was wondering if you could give me advice for finding a problem to solve in these (or any fields, I'm interested in a lot), link some examples, or even point me towards some research that I could build upon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I forgot to mention that in the 'fields of interest' that I have narrowed down to I have read quite a bit about the research being done concerning each one, such as research on Eeg Prosthetic algorithms or Google's work in the neural networks of self driving cars. I thought that being knowledgable on the subjects would allow me to find a problem but I only found what already has been solved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really appreciate your help&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20490" LastActivityDate="2015-09-13T13:32:31.943" Title="I need help finding a problem to research and solve for HS research project" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2015-09-14T05:32:12.213" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16159" CreationDate="2015-09-12T19:37:31.167" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are two main misunderstandings in situations like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;1. The past won't happen again&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking back at delays on a project, we tend to think of them as &quot;one-offs&quot; that won't happen again, and the future will be smoother.  Part of this is that past obstacles are explainable in hindsight: &quot;oh, we were delayed because we forgot to send weekly reports to so-and-so, but we've fixed that problem now.&quot;  On the other hand, upcoming obstacles are not yet explainable, and harder to conceive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The truth is that obstacles have popped up, and they will continue to pop up, probably at a similar rate as they have in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;2. Less pain to procrastinate&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also have a tendency to delay fixing a known problem, hoping that before facing it becomes inevitable, it will somehow go away.  Maybe we'll be able to rally our efforts and catch-up if we're behind, or maybe we'll get lucky and we'll have less problems, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of this is that we discount the size of future pains compared to current pains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Recommended actions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Explain that delays are just as likely to come up in the future as they have in the past, and we should plan on that.  Help them understand that—unless something changes—they're much more likely to finish the project according to the forecast modelled on the current situation than on the forecast made when the project started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put the severity of the schedule slip in perspective.  What does the slip mean for the involved parties?  What's at stake?  This could help people feel like having a meeting to discuss some options is worth their time and energy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(On some projects, perhaps such a slip wouldn't really matter at all, and so the time and energy would be a waste.  It's a project-specific decision to make.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be worthwhile for a PM to address these concerns one-on-one with key individuals before going to the group.  Getting some people on board first can help reduce the bandwagon-effect that you saw as people entered the ongoing debate and took the already-popular side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20491" LastActivityDate="2015-09-12T19:37:31.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16167" CreationDate="2015-09-13T03:03:13.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of your three options, I like the open source project the best as it gives you a specific problem to solve, it will probably be peer reviewed, and gives you OSD credibility.  That said...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this boils down to &quot;How do I limit risk to a project when there is new/unknown tech involved?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Determine if new technology is really required.  There is &lt;em&gt;usually&lt;/em&gt; less risk with tried &amp;amp; true.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If new tech needs to be used, budget time for a prototype at the start of the project.  This will show you if this is feasible early on, and also give you some experience with the tech and give a better idea of how easy it is to develop with.  This will help validate the other estimates later in the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check and see if your country provides R&amp;amp;D tax credits.  For example in Canada the &lt;a href=&quot;http://sbinfocanada.about.com/od/taxdeductions/a/identifySREDgf.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scientific Research &amp;amp; Experimental Development&lt;/a&gt; tax credit can be over 40% of your valid R&amp;amp;D expenses!  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20438" LastActivityDate="2015-09-13T03:03:13.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16179" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-13T05:36:14.887" Score="0" ViewCount="3622" Body="&lt;p&gt;I sort of get these two mix up, please can anyone help to clarify this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20494" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-09-13T10:46:03.180" LastActivityDate="2015-09-13T10:46:03.180" Title="What is the difference between Requirements Traceability Matrix (RTM) and Requirement Specification Document?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;specification&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16179" CreationDate="2015-09-13T10:00:32.310" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The RTM Requirement Traceability Matrix shows how requirements of different level connect to each other, e.g. how a top level customer requirement evolve via several abstraction levels to a specific low level requirement, e.g. &lt;em&gt;a green button&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Requirements Specification Document contains the requirements, e.g. &lt;em&gt;The power button shall be green.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll find nice templates if you search for MIL STD 498 on Wikipedia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example to bring all together:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Top level requirement within an requirement specification document:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SSS0_1001: The system shall respect ISO xyz&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subsystem requirement within an other requirement specification document:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SSS1_1024: The power-on button shall be green.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;RTM:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A matrix with level &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; requirements as columns, level &lt;em&gt;n+1&lt;/em&gt; requirements as rows and &quot;x&quot; in the cells indicating which level &lt;em&gt;n+1&lt;/em&gt; requirements realises which level &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure, if you do a image search for requirements traceability matrix, you'll find lots examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-09-13T10:43:35.827" LastActivityDate="2015-09-13T10:43:35.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16176" CreationDate="2015-09-13T13:32:31.943" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Find a topic that is locally relevant&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is one suggestion for narrowing down your area of focus. Find a topic that is locally relevant. How to determine whether a topic is locally relevant? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To take an example, let us say you want to come up with an improved Prosthetic device. Find, at a minimum, three people in your local area who will benefit from that improvement. This way you will be solving a real problem instead of a theoretical problem. You can bounce your ideas off of them and get valuable feedback to set clear goals for your project. For example, they can tell you what options are currently available and what are their limitations. And what is the top most improvement that will make their life easier. And what is a cost they can afford.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly for Solar Power or Desalination find three local firms or individuals who will benefit from that work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it works for some people in your local area, it is bound to be of wider interest. Once you have a solution, you can see how to extend it to a wider audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-09-13T13:32:31.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16168" CreationDate="2015-09-13T22:20:21.560" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is why I prefer a product oriented WBS.  Except when the deliverable is a service, the WBS should be based on the product itself, broken down to its components, and then underneath add activities and tasks.  Where you load resources is up to you but I typically load them at the lowest level product WBS.  Below this, I could not care less what changes are made below because it does not affect the cost or schedule baseline.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you add or take away tasks, it doesn't matter with this set up.  If you planned on four coats of paint but ended needing eight, add them.  Your &quot;painted wall&quot; does not change so the WBS does not change.  This does not constitute a re-baseline but will likely cause a variance.  PM is about managing variances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you take things out of sequence than your original plan, than simply add actuals to your schedule to show what has happened.  Example, if a task had a FS relationship with its predecessor, but the relationship was soft, i.e., it could start earlier, and you did start earlier, simply plug in the early date and break the dependency.  Do not re-baseline but let the schedule produce the variances it will produce against the baseline.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you are chasing perfect.  A perfect schedule means either 1) you are extremely extremely lucky, like 1,000,000,000:1 lucky, or 2) you're cooking the books.  And two is most likely.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a huge change that does really constitute a re-baseline, then handle this through your change control process.  Re-do the schedule and punch a new baseline and proceed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-09-13T22:20:21.560" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16183" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-14T12:04:53.590" Score="5" ViewCount="744" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have worked as a freelancer and have experienced this problem several times in various places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scenario:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In a digital agency, there is a coding development team with a coding development lead.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The agency creates code based projects for external clients.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is a project/accounts manager who acts as an intermediary between the coders and the external client.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following problem scenario occurs (chronological order):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project/accounts manager isn't a developer. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chinese whispers effect happens and requirements get lost/confused. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The client wants to speak directly with the developers. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The developers end up becoming project managers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;What would be a good solution for preventing this and for projects to be managed efficiently?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems difficult to find good technical project managers with development experience and who understand development flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20502" LastEditorUserId="20502" LastEditDate="2015-09-26T13:58:06.630" LastActivityDate="2016-12-10T03:44:36.640" Title="Are Project Managers redundant in a digital agency?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15930" CreationDate="2015-09-14T12:38:33.070" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;when on your board do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click Board &gt; Configure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;on the left side column click &quot;Columns&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;where you have unmapped statuses you can map these to the correct columns this will fix your issues&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&#xA;Ash&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16022" LastActivityDate="2015-09-14T12:38:33.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16183" CreationDate="2015-09-14T13:41:28.393" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, you still haven't defined a problem. Clients want to talk to developers - what's wrong with that?  What effect does that have on the scope/schedule/cost of the project? On any other project metric?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there a communications plan?  Communications between developers and client should be covered by the communications plan, which should also contain provisions to make sure that the right stakeholders have an opportunity to participate in or be aware of the discussions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there a requirements management plan?  If the requirements are unclear, then it seems there is an opportunity to improve requirements capture &amp;amp; management.  If the requirements were managed, then perhaps the problem would be diminished?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there change control?  Although you haven't said, I infer that the problem is that when the clients have the opportunity to dialogue with the developers, &quot;clarification&quot; of the requirements results in changes to scope/schedule/cost/quality that impact the contract.  This wouldn't happen if the requirements were under change management. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the extent that I understand the problem, it seems that the PM is failing in at least one section of his/her job.  The solution seems to be to coach/train/augment the PM to enable successful performance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside: I would also recommend taking a careful look at the position description to make sure that the company requires those skills, and at the recruitment process to ensure that you are interviewing for those skills.   If intervention with the incumbent project manager fails, you want to make sure that you don't repeat the issue. (but I think that is outside the scope of PM:SE)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2015-09-14T13:41:28.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16183" CreationDate="2015-09-14T13:41:51.873" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer:&lt;/strong&gt; I have never worked in a digital agency and I am aware that the role of Project Manager in Digital Agencies can be somewhat different to that commonly accepted in other I.T. operations whether in-house or software development suppliers. Furthermore I am not clear on the exact differences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite my disclaimer above, and taking the question and roles at face-value, I think there are a number of problems with the assumptions made here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. The Project/Accounts Manager isn't a developer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what? These are very different roles with very different responsibilities. In my experience developers often think that the role of Project Manager is akin in some way to Team Lead, or Development Lead. Undoubtedly in some organisations that is the case in practise, but I assume it isn't here as you have already stated you have Dev Leads. &#xA;So this is a statement of fact rather than an actual problem. It can lead to significant project problems if the PM needs a technical appreciation in order to complete their PM work or if the development team use the PM's lack of technical experience against them by, say, over or under-estimating workload when the PM doesn't have the necessary skills to review and challenge estimates. But it is not, in itself, a problem. It would be worth thinking about why this is a problem &lt;em&gt;to you&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;to the project&lt;/em&gt; as that will uncover issues that can be addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Chinese whispers effect happens and requirements get lost/confused&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a process problem. You don't have robust enough change management, requirements gathering and logging processes in place to ensure that requirements don't &quot;get lost&quot;. The PM should recognise that, even if the organisation doesn't, and deploy something locally to the project. However the fact that you (and presumably by extension) the rest of the dev team knows this is a problem and &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; haven't deployed a solution speaks of other unwritten issues here. It is &lt;em&gt;everyone's&lt;/em&gt; responsibility to ensure the requirements are managed properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. The client wants to speak directly with the developers.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no inherent reason why this is a problem. It &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be a problem if the developers are not able to communicate effectively with the client(s) and this is often the case in the wider I.T. world. Note, I (hope I) am not stereotyping here-  developers are goal oriented detail-people in the main, and often clients wish to talk at a more conceptual level with other agendas that developers do not perceive. Conversely clients often cannot discern the true meaning and consequence behind developers' technical questions. There are always exceptions on both sides and I have seen it work well, but it doesn't always. If there is a real need for clients and developers to communicate then it should be facilitated and managed by the PM. I don't mean they have to be the postman in-between the dialogue or present at every meeting, but they should manage when and how it happens and provide oversight to ensure the outcomes from the communications are mutually beneficial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4. The developers end up becoming project managers.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do they though? Or do they become what developers &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; are project managers? Do the developers start actively managing the employers' and the clients' risks? Do they begin negotiating resource levels, contracts and expectations? Do they rearrange the project plan to take into account new dependencies and ensure regular clear communications goes out against the communications plan? etc. etc. etc. If they really &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt; start being project managers then clearly you have an ineffective project manager. Or perhaps you have a PM that is inexperienced and doesn't communicate properly, or doesn't work &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; the development team to understand what is happening to the project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary/TL:DR&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that all these &quot;problems&quot; are actually symptoms. None of them on their own is an actual problem (except for point 2. which is a group failure as far as I can see). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what is the net result of these symptoms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the project get delivered late?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the project go over budget?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the deliverable quality poor?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the client unsatisfied?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you have described is, possibly, a dysfunctional team maybe with an inexperienced or just downright rubbish PM, but maybe not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start by defining what the actual material issues are, not what you or the developers or the PM thinks are local working practise issues. It sounds like some resentment has built up- try and see past that to the actual problems. Then when you know what is actually wrong you can begin, as a company, a team and an individual to think about what needs to change to correct the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-09-14T15:06:30.143" LastActivityDate="2015-09-14T15:06:30.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16165" CreationDate="2015-09-14T14:33:57.973" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't add them as an extra and don't allow them to be negotiated away. Make them part of your budget and schedule and make it clear that this is how you develop. If you would normally say 'task x will take 2 days plus 1 day of testing' then it gives someone the opportunity to say 'well, do it in 2 and don't worry about the testing'. If you say 'task x will take 3 days' then it's harder to negotiate on that front.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As both the project manager and the developer in this situation you are in a challenging situation but with your PM hat on you need to communicate the methodology you will follow &lt;em&gt;before the project starts&lt;/em&gt;. That way clients can't be surprised when you tell them that something will take longer because of the testing you need to complete. Explain why it's important to test, what the cost of not doing tests will be (i.e. them paying you to fix bugs) and what the risks of introducing bugs into production systems are. It won't stop people from wanting to cut corners and you may even agree to cut those corners at times. That's a decision for you and your client to make together and &lt;em&gt;as a PM&lt;/em&gt; it's your job to communicate the impact on the project (and the eventual project outputs) of such decsions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2015-09-29T07:53:42.547" LastActivityDate="2015-09-29T07:53:42.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16183" CreationDate="2015-09-14T15:27:11.013" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What the OP is exhibiting is a bias, and is using the symptoms of his organization of what appears to be team immaturity, process immaturity, and maybe cultural issues as evidence to support prejudicial thinking.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every role has a set of knowledge, skill, and ability requirements, and every person who occupies a role comes with different degrees of strengths and weaknesses meeting those knowledge, skill, and ability requirements.  Some of us do better than others managing those weaknesses in terms of identifying gap closing mitigators but most of us who are not eventually selected out of the role find a way to perform to some level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A PM who is missing a technical area in knowledge and skill but who has outstanding strengths in the 100 or so other knowledge and skill requirements can certainly succeed in the role if he finds decent gap closing mitigators for what he does not know while exploiting his strengths in all of those other requirements.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Selection validity is so hard to nail down because there is no such thing as a one size fits all.  The needs of any given project at any given time could require a non technical PM who has outstanding soft skills for customer service / salesability at one point and then shift to where a very strong technical PM would be better.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-09-14T15:27:11.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16189" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-14T18:07:05.993" Score="1" ViewCount="1269" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a Kanban board going, but the backlog is large enough to be unmanageable. I'd like to have a pair of queues before the backlog, &quot;untriaged&quot; and &quot;triaged&quot;, where the bulk of the long-range roadmap tasks will sit, instead of cluttering up the daily-use version of the kanban board. Having these two extra priority queues will also keep a clear distinction between tasks that the team can freely adopt (stuff in the backlog) and stuff they can't (triaged/untriaged.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I looked at filtering the kanban based upon priority, which would remove untriaged tasks, but it wouldn't allow me a space where I can roughly sort these tasks by priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd welcome any answers that accomplish the basic requirement, though I don't want to have extra columns on the Kanban board. Jira wastes too much screen space as it is (I would love to jettison it in favor of Pivotal).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20482" LastActivityDate="2015-09-14T18:28:48.567" Title="How do I set up a Jira Kanban board to have queues before the backlog?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16189" CreationDate="2015-09-14T18:28:48.567" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see three possible solutions, presented here in my own recommended order of viability:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Create swimlanes based off of a criteria.&lt;/strong&gt; Go to Board -&gt; Configure -&gt; Swimlanes -&gt; Select &quot;Queries&quot; in the dropdown. Then you can create swimlanes based on priority or whatever jquery that you can think up. This way you can also reorder swimlanes such that untriaged are at the bottom, out of the way unless you want to go look at them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Create a seperate board for triaging.&lt;/strong&gt; You could create an entirely separate triage board. By making the new board only have untriaged and the old one only have the triaged, you can keep everything clean and easy to see what is currently being worked on. Downside of this is now you have two places you have to look for issues.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Convert to a scrum board.&lt;/strong&gt; You'll have at least one backlog (you can create other sprints that act as pseudo-backlogs) that you just pull the top X items into an always-running sprint. This method is not elegant and uses the tool in a questionable way. But it will get the job done.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19384" LastActivityDate="2015-09-14T18:28:48.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16172" CreationDate="2015-09-14T19:30:21.033" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An approach to stakeholder analysis that has worked for me is to determine both who can impact the project positively or negatively during it's execution, and who can be impacted by the project's products once completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have identified your stakeholders you can figure out to what degree you need to engage them before/during/after your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the ones that you have listed, off the top of my head you could also consider the following as potential stakeholders:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Career counsellors (Maybe they use the tool to help do their job? Or are they being supplanted by it?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your development and management teams (Assuming you have these)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Professional/trades societies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Government agencies (Providing you with underlying data to support your algorithm?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2015-09-14T19:30:21.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16192" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16195" CreationDate="2015-09-14T20:11:32.313" Score="5" ViewCount="259" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to find a way to propose a project for our company, and I've never done that before, within a year of work, but have lots of plans/projects in mind to do things automatically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, I would go beyond the norms of the company (whenever I have free time or at home, I would create an app). Creating a simple application that would take about two weeks to program. However, I see myself losing traction and motivation because of lack of support to finish the project, thus losing motivation to present them. (It is hard to get it done).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been thinking that in order to have the correct motivation, the company I'm working for should support the project first, then create the application after approval.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the back of my head, I would also think that the users would just end up not using the app, although I think it could be easier to use the application for efficient communication, but even for just small reasons (like another reason for the user to memorize a username and password to login), it can end to the lack of participation in using the app, leaving the project unsuccessful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have learned project management in school, but have not really seen anybody perform the task successfully from point A to point B. Is there any effective steps that I can follow from successful project managers out there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What tools do I need to consider in each step for effectivity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20506" LastEditorUserId="20506" LastEditDate="2015-09-14T20:16:51.900" LastActivityDate="2015-09-15T17:55:56.807" Title="How to Introduce A Small Project And Finish It Successfully" Tags="&lt;small-projects&gt;&lt;project-proposal&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16193" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-09-14T22:04:40.877" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Initiation is one of the phases of the project life-cycle.&#xA;Different methodologies have different definitions of this phase, prescribes different activities and processes within this phase and put this phase in a different place within the life-cycle (for example, usually the initiation phase is first, but in PRINCE2 it is number two in the phases sequence).&#xA;But common place in all methodologies is that during this phase the project team should determine the vision of the project and understand its scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basic activities within the initiation phase are&#xA;(quote from &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management#Initiating&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wiki article&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;analyzing the business needs/requirements in measurable goals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;reviewing of the current operations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;financial analysis of the costs and benefits including a budget&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;stakeholder analysis, including users, and support personnel for the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;project charter including costs, tasks, deliverables, and schedules&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Links&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management#Initiating&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki article&lt;/a&gt; about initiation phase&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-09-20T11:57:04.330" LastActivityDate="2015-09-20T11:57:04.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16194" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-09-14T22:04:40.877" Score="0" Body="For questions about all aspects of the initiation phase of projects." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-09-20T11:57:08.803" LastActivityDate="2015-09-20T11:57:08.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16192" CreationDate="2015-09-14T22:25:39.450" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;First thing, you need a business case.  The project must either solve an existing problem, or be something that can create revenue. &quot;This will be really cool!&quot; is not generally considered a business case, but if you work at a place where it is, all the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also need to get a sponsor. Someone in the company that can see the value that this application can have, and is willing to spend some time and money to help you make it happen.  Even if you do all the development for free, there is a cost of rolling out a system and supporting it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of that, you are correct to believe that you should have the support first, then build it.  That said, company cultures vary and some may really appreciate the initiative of you going above and beyond.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will also need to have a way to determine if the project was successful. Getting code into prod doesn't mean a thing if the app doesn't fix the issue from the business case. Maybe you want 50% of the users using the app within 3 weeks of cut, and 80% by 5 weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create milestones.  These are things that you expect to happen by specific dates (e.g. Design signed off by Sept 12, Code complete by Oct 19, User acceptance signoff Nov 3, etc.) Milestones help keep you on track and help with motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will need to work with someone to get the app into production, and figure out who will be supporting the app once it's there.  It's a common thing in small shops for the developer to end up being support, and this turns into trouble because it's an additional task on top of your workload. Larger shops will have an AM team who may take it on after a reasonable warranty period, and they get a proper knowledge transfer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting users to use a new system can be tricky. How resistant to change are the users? How much training will be required?  Does it make their jobs any easier? Having good communication with the stakeholders can smooth this road considerably. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20438" LastActivityDate="2015-09-14T22:25:39.450" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16196" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-14T22:29:21.167" Score="2" ViewCount="2839" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to import CSV file with the following structure to MS Project 2013 as Tasks (type of data you want to import in the Import Wizard).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Outline_Level;Name;Actual_Work&#xA;1;Project name;&#xA;2;Task 1;10&#xA;2;Task 2;20&#xA;2;Task 3;30&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Projects and tasks are imported just fine (outline works as well), but I can't import &lt;strong&gt;Actual work&lt;/strong&gt;. Since I haven't had experience with MS Project before I don't know what I'm doing wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I add new column (since it's not displayed by default) &lt;strong&gt;Actual work&lt;/strong&gt; it just shows 0 hrs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've done some research and it seems that there's some kind of VBA involved. I would appriciate any help you may provide to get me to import &lt;strong&gt;Actual work&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20508" LastActivityDate="2021-05-06T07:42:37.200" Title="How to import Actual Work to MS Project 2013 from CSV" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16172" CreationDate="2015-09-14T22:45:27.210" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are a stakeholder because you have a stake in the success of the survey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whoever is funding the development of the survey is a stakeholder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your students are stakeholders since they will participate and make decisions based on the outcome of the survey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are working with others to create, distribute, or collect survey data they are stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the student's parents use directly make decisions off of the survey they are stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone else who uses the survey to make decisions (potential employers or those employers or industries wanting to be represented in the survey) are stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-09-14T22:45:27.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3782" CreationDate="2015-09-15T04:37:08.920" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;@Jeach,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please check the requirement from the PMI website again, my understanding is that you don't actually have to have the PM title to get eligibility. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you've done the PM type of work, for example produce WBS/ workplan... define risk management plan, etc etc, and you don't have to be involved in all 5 process groups in the same project. You could have been involved in the planning phase of project A, but Executing phase of the project B... as long as they all add up to 5 process group, you should be able to submit your application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I encourage you to recall what was your deliverables/ inputs/ output and map those to the 5 process groups and apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20513" LastActivityDate="2015-09-15T04:37:08.920" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16054" CreationDate="2015-09-15T08:06:22.640" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the absence of formal authority here, you will need to tread carefully. You may be inferring how the CEO sees your role and it may not actually be how he sees it. Also, if you have a formal manager who although not a senior developer is still your boss, I'd be wary assuming formal authority you don't have. I do agree with others that it's in your best interest to demonstrate leadership but you need to do this informally e.g. by simply removing the obstacles and making things happen. My gut instinct is to work with your colleague and treat him as an equal unless you are formally above him. Even if you are senior developer and he is junior developer, if both of you report to the same manager, you are not his boss and he won't appreciate you acting as if you were. Try and understand what's blocking him, offer to help him, remind him of the dangers of over-promising and under-delivering. I am assuming that you do want to help him and are thinking in terms of the team and don't simply want to take his scalp. It may be that you end up having to do the work yourself but make sure this is known, without rubbing his nose in it. After all, even if he is actually underperforming, if you are not his boss it is not your place to sanction him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4552" LastActivityDate="2015-09-15T08:06:22.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15875" CreationDate="2015-09-15T08:58:12.633" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to this will likely depend on your organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At my last company, BAs were the product owner for the team and wrote stories, conducted research and made all prioritisation calls on the features their team were working on at the time.  Product Managers were more probably more like a programme manager, setting the priority of the overall roadmap for multiple teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my current org, it's closer to how AgileSteve describes things with Product Managers tending towards a more strategic, outward facing view and BAs looking more inside the team, making sure acceptance criteria cover all cases. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With uncertainty in your org about where the role boundaries lie, you have two risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Both the PM and the BA think they should be doing a task and you&#xA;duplicate effort.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Both the PM and the BA think the other person is&#xA;doing a task and it gets forgotten.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I'd advise getting both groups together for a contracting session.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Identify tasks/responsibilities that as a group you think belongs to one role or other and which activities could justifiably belong to both roles.  Whether you decide up front who does the activities that could sit in either role or whether you decide to let that happen organically for different teams isn't too important at this point, the main thing is making sure everyone knows what the grey area activities are so they communicate sufficiently about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1185" LastActivityDate="2015-09-15T08:58:12.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16156" CreationDate="2015-09-15T12:09:05.777" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to transform the idea of &quot;scope creep&quot; into &quot;change request&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a real CR process will allow you to have a better relationship with your clients, because it allows them to have reasonable expectations of the cost and time implications of the additional work.  CRs are usually completed after the original project scope has been delivered, but there can be exceptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the CR is functionality they need right now, you can negotiate the postponement/cutting of other functionality in the project to avoid creep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have a better idea of what needs to be done when, you can better organize your work to ensure you start/keep hitting milestones.  If you keep hitting your milestones, you may find your cashflow issues go away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20438" LastActivityDate="2015-09-15T12:09:05.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16156" CreationDate="2015-09-15T12:09:26.900" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you haven't already, you need to document all of the requirements that each of your customers has. Establish a firm fixed cost for the work and let the customer know that costs will increase for any change in scope. Further, establish with the customer what his acceptance criteria are. These things combined will (a) put a clear boundary around what is in and out of scope, (b) will act as a disincentive to changing scope in the future, and (c) gives you clear a clear definition of what the &quot;end&quot; of the project looks like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this is as much a change/expectation management issue as it is a project management one. Your clients are used to being able to change scope as they wish, and it will be a bit of a pill for them to swallow if you change the rules on them mid-stream. You need to convince them that this approach is in their best interests as well as your own. That means you may need to do something like commit to a specific delivery date with penalties if you are late.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long term, given your 11 years experience in the business, hopefully you have a feel for the amount of scope creep that exists. That should translate into how much time and effort you &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; expect a project to take, allowing you to better manage your workload.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2015-09-15T12:09:26.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16204" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-15T12:38:49.703" Score="0" ViewCount="1905" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a number of summary tasks that I want to allocate a fixed amount of time to while still allowing them to be auto scheduled based on other dependencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently there are two modes:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;1) If I set the summary task to auto scheduled, it will expand and contract to it's sub tasks.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2) If I set it to manually scheduled it will stay to a set duration but it won't move with it's dependencies as they expand and contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Both of these modes make sense to me but I would like a hybrid where I can define a fixed duration but then allow it to move with it's dependencies. Is this possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More Background&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;One use case is I know how long a phase is but I want to be able to enter individual tasks without worrying about them perfectly aligning to the phase duration. Similar to scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently I add a general task at the top of the list that sets it to the duration but this seems like a hack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6429" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T21:54:51.817" Title="In MS Project can a summary task be a fixed duration and auto scheduled?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15875" CreationDate="2015-09-15T12:58:47.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the organization I am part the PM is the manager of the scope and the schedule. The BA is the keeper of the business requirements and watches over the testing team to ensure understanding of the documented requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I, as the PM, ensure that all original scope goals are met on time. I treat my BAs as the leader of the requirements team and my interest is that it gets completed on time and that the final product is presentable to the customer for UAT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20520" LastActivityDate="2015-09-15T12:58:47.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16204" CreationDate="2015-09-15T13:02:06.950" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The duration of a summary task will expand and contract according to the duration of its subordinate tasks. If they grow or shrink then so will the summary task. A summary task is not a task in itself, it is just a &quot;rolled up&quot; timeline of all its subordinate tasks so fixing its duration has no practical meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is the underlying tasks that you need to make fixed duration- that will freeze the duration of both them and the summary task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is irrespective of manual or automatic scheduling which only describes when tasks will start according to dependencies and other factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-09-15T13:02:06.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16087" CreationDate="2015-09-15T14:07:42.960" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lot's of great answers and opinions already. As you're already pretty clear on the role of the PO, the bottom line in my view is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does the Product Owner comes from the software company or from the customer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an ideal world, the product owner would be someone from the customer. This ensures a direct dialogue with the customer, which makes them fully invested in the team and project. This is supported by one of the cornerstones of &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Agile manifesto&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;em&gt;Customer collaboration over contract negotiation&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, most situations are far from ideal, which brings us to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the particular case it can come from both parties, in the scenario&#xA;  where a customer has no idea about agile planning is it safe to assume&#xA;  the Product Owner will come from the software company?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not safe to assume, but likely to happen in real life situations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll need to educate your customer on agile planning so they understand the project process. If you have one main contact at your customer, you can set him up for a role as product owner. If the budget's there, train your client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a customer PO is not an option, which often happens, you'll end up having an intermediary PO on your side. This PO will represent the customer / stakeholders during the project. You will need to explicitly tell the client that someone on your side is calling the shots on their behalf.&#xA;The risk in this, is not working directly with the client during the project. They won't get invested as much in the project as they would working directly with the team. It will be harder to manage customer expectations, as they're not directly involved with the team. It may end up as a waterfall project front with scrum under the hood. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17421" LastActivityDate="2015-09-15T14:07:42.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16165" CreationDate="2015-09-15T15:26:50.303" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't ask, don't tell ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess you're not giving estimates on how much time you spend thinking, and how much writing code, the same principle should apply to unit testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As soon as your Unit Testing activity becomes a line in the budget it becomes negotiable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I never report unit testing as a separate activity (and in principle most of the time you actually don't know in advance exactly how time will be split between writing production code and testing code). Most of my clients don't even know I write unit tests regularly. Unit testing, as well as any other testing you judge necessary to your development activity, is part of your development activity and as such should be counted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16362" LastActivityDate="2015-09-15T15:26:50.303" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16209" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-15T15:34:07.560" Score="4" ViewCount="1138" Body="&lt;p&gt;Facing a kanban board workflow issue and don't think we've quite nailed a solution yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're building an app backed by a middleware tier serving up JSON content. Nothing new about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Issue we have is maintaining a solid workflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment we have the following (of relevance) columns:&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Ready 4 Dev | In Dev | Ready 4 Test | In Test&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We ALSO have horizontal swimlanes for &lt;strong&gt;iOS | Android | Server&lt;/strong&gt; cutting across each of those columns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We ALSO have colour coded tickets (red = bug, purple = server etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, in a sequential world, we'd have columns for f/e and b/e, but needless to say, work can happen on components in parallel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several ideas we've had:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use ONE ticket/card/story that sits in an &quot;in flight&quot; lane while it's composite tasks flow across. It's only completed once all tasks have completed&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A STORE is broken down into TWO (or maybe more) tickets (basically tasks) abut we remove the horizontal component (b/e and f/e) swimlanes&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EXAMPLE:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feature: T&amp;amp;Cs (as part of an MVP)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ticket 1: Format and style HTML docs&#xA;Ticket 2: Upload HTML docs to server and provide addresses&#xA;Ticket 3: Implement WebKit calls to HTML files&#xA;Ticket 4: Middleware service to communicate between client and DB (to record when and what version T&amp;amp;Cs were agreed to on registration)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there are many related tickets floating above that each need different people or teams working on them to complete a somewhat trivial feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20522" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2015-09-17T07:31:34.913" LastActivityDate="2016-02-14T09:52:43.363" Title="Accommodating back-end and front-end tasks in Kanban" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16165" CreationDate="2015-09-15T17:30:05.367" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Plan to do so and hold yourself accountable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every deliverable is backed by one or more unit tests.  The WBS/WBS Dictionary lists the acceptance test for every deliverable or WBS item.  These decompose down to unit tests.  Requirements decompose to unit tests. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2015-09-15T17:30:05.367" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16192" CreationDate="2015-09-15T17:55:56.807" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I stumbled upon a role doing this kind of work rather naturally; except mine was VBA for excel spreadsheets.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;You are correct that first you will need others to buy in to your apps.  The problem is that the people using the apps really need to define the problem it is remedying.  If the users define the problem then they will be gung-ho in supporting you.  I have tried to push apps on people and have found no success in this tactic.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This started for me when I started making macros to speed up my own work.  Then some people asked questions and I'd consult my macro.  Then I got questions like &quot;What is that?&quot;, &quot;How'd you do that?&quot;  This exposed them to my skill and rather slowly people started asking for stuff.  At this point you can start suggesting ideas for apps.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;As far as managing the project, this depends on how long it may take to develop.  If it is a short project (2-3weeks) I'd use some agile technique with a kanban board.  If it's longer then I'd make a Gantt chart.  Key for both methods is to break the project into smaller steps and give yourself twice as long to complete each task than you think it will take.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just be sure to keep your boss informed and included in any work you do for other coworkers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18074" LastActivityDate="2015-09-15T17:55:56.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16209" CreationDate="2015-09-16T06:52:24.573" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You didn't really give any details about the actual issue you are facing. Is it something like Android or iOS cards building up because they have to be done after the JSON bit? Or vice versa?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If my suspicion is correct, just have one card for the feature, and have a dev JSON column to the left (or right) of DEV Mobile. Something like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is actually better I think to not force the order here though, but I am not sure what problems you are facing doing it in parallel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Point 1 sounds confusing, tracking both stories and tasks on the same board. I have seen it used, but I think it is too complicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you could have two boards. One higher level stories, and smaller ones featuring tasks for the teams to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Point 2 could be something, but once again, I would have to know more about the problem. I would really try and use story cards rather than task cards on the kanban board though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please give some more details about the problem, and maybe we can help better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="763" LastActivityDate="2015-09-16T06:52:24.573" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15269" CreationDate="2015-09-16T10:10:44.357" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;We faced the same problem with a 'Closed' column (about 100 tickets per week) but didn't want to hide the tickets as it is important for us to see at least the tickets closed the last few days. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We achieved this by adding  (resolution is empty or resolutiondate &gt;= -2d) to the board filter. Maybe you can reduce the clutter of your column with that kind of filter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20533" LastActivityDate="2015-09-16T10:10:44.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16165" CreationDate="2015-09-16T11:10:52.780" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unit testing should be part of &quot;definition of done&quot;. It sould not be something to be added as an extra work or some feature that would make life easier in the future it will be hard for them to understand the sw engineering concepts also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7883" LastActivityDate="2015-09-16T11:10:52.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16172" CreationDate="2015-09-16T11:22:14.780" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whoever's idea/decision/input has a weight on the outcome of the project, they are a stakeholder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7883" LastActivityDate="2015-09-16T11:22:14.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16219" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16220" CreationDate="2015-09-16T13:05:42.423" Score="-4" ViewCount="168" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently developing some project management software and I just wanted to ask few things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it necessary to restrict other members from creating/editing/deleting tasks even if they're not the one who created it?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the task assigned to other person, can the people complete the said task?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm new here and I hope I could get some of your advice which would help me complete this project. Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please help, I'll wait for your answers..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20536" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2015-09-17T07:38:36.260" LastActivityDate="2015-09-17T07:38:36.260" Title="Is there a need for project restrictions?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2015-09-24T23:24:59.630" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16219" CreationDate="2015-09-16T13:46:39.003" Score="-1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it necessary to restrict other members from&#xA;  creating/editing/deleting tasks even if they're not the one who&#xA;  created it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, it is absolutely necessary and required&lt;/strong&gt; to implement such restrictions and permissions in the Project Management System. Generally, these things should be controlled via Role that has been assigned to the different members using that system e.g. only Project Manager or Team Lead should be allowed to Delete tasks and other issues from the system, this way he/she will know which data is being cleared from the system and why it is being cleared, else everyone will start deleting records.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In similar way creating tasks should also be permission based, else all team members will start creating his/her own tasks in his/her own way (without any guidelines and syntax being followed, Believe me I have faced this issue personally in my project where at the end of the day every Developer and QA has created task for logging his/her own effort and title of any of those tasks doesn't make sense).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum Master&lt;/strong&gt; (Team Lead) should create the tasks for Developers and QAs and other team members for the User Stories to be delivered in the planned sprint. In this case even if he makes a mistake and that mistake will be same in all created tasks then the reviewer will know that he needs to update X with Y+2 (just example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coming to edit part, it should again be permission based, if any team member assigned some tasks found some issues with the created tasks, then he should go back to creator and then ask him to update the same, else it will again lead to a mess in the management system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See, the whole idea is Management system is used for managing small or big projects, tasks of the users, Bugs, Defects, Effort etc. &lt;strong&gt;If management system is not designed in an intelligent way to manage itself than it will not be helpful in managing the projects.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the task assigned to other person, can the people complete the said&#xA;  task?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, ofcourse. Ideally the assigned person should complete the task but if the other person has knowledge and time to do so, he should complete the task (which generally happens), &lt;strong&gt;But only the assigned person should be allowed to change the status of the task to Complete or Closed.&lt;/strong&gt; In this way everyone and especially the management will know who has actually done that particular task. So for this you management system will have to follow the process of re-assign that task to actual person working on it and then, he will change its status to complete. So when report is pulled from the system, each task has its actual performer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17870" LastActivityDate="2015-09-16T13:46:39.003" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16219" CreationDate="2015-09-16T14:47:24.290" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with most PM questions, it's very contextual - the requirement of permissions largely depends on your team's self-discipline, level of process ownership and dev culture; simply mandating them as a PM or other &quot;process owner&quot; role often implies that the team cannot be trusted to manage their own process and needs to be heavily constrained externally. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talk to your teams - do they need or want permissions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2015-09-16T14:47:24.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16222" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-17T00:18:23.907" Score="4" ViewCount="1641" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a 7 days calendar and added 30 days lag to a milestone, however MS Project 2010 does not count these 30 days correctly.  I have checked the &lt;strong&gt;Change Working Time&lt;/strong&gt; and it is set for 8 hours per day.  There are no exceptions listed and I have auto calculate as &lt;strong&gt;ON&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am at my wits end trying to work out why it isn't working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to submit a document 30 calendar days after an event and it is coming up short in the schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20541" LastEditorUserId="17870" LastEditDate="2015-09-19T12:52:59.970" LastActivityDate="2015-09-24T16:18:15.670" Title="7 Day calendar not calculating correctly in MS Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16226" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-17T08:44:04.430" Score="0" ViewCount="470" Body="&lt;p&gt;My client requested me to send them a quote for man/day pricing. Their needs and flows are clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I am planning to do is describing the modules and relations. Then I will put all these outputs in a definitive diagram (beside the quote document).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What kind of document do you suggest me to prepare? A work flow diagram or a basic flowchart or another document? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I organized, analysed client needs. What is the best method for presenting analysis information back to the client?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11797" LastEditorUserId="11797" LastEditDate="2015-09-17T12:19:22.230" LastActivityDate="2015-09-30T22:25:12.447" Title="First business analysis document for quote" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;business-analyst&gt;&lt;analysis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16227" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16232" CreationDate="2015-09-17T10:43:32.587" Score="13" ViewCount="544" Body="&lt;p&gt;My Kanban development team is very good about sticking to the 15 minute daily standup rule and not discussing technical details and not giving updates but co-ordinating activities for the day etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, after the standup they tend to use a further 15 minutes to review code, discuss technical issues etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this okay or should they be going back to their desks and using another time of the day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally think its healthy but I am on the fence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastActivityDate="2016-01-07T06:01:07.367" Title="Kanban team engages in technical discussions after daily standup" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16227" CreationDate="2015-09-17T11:00:17.263" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't worry about it if it works for them let them carry on :). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you start to notice that it's affecting their productivity i.e. increasing Work in progress etc etc then maybe bring it up in a retrospective or another meeting that's not a stand up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16022" LastActivityDate="2015-09-17T11:00:17.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16231" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-17T11:17:28.030" Score="0" ViewCount="95" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently developing a &lt;strong&gt;project management software&lt;/strong&gt; for my thesis project and I have researched some of the established project management tools for reference of this said project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I just don't know why do other project management tools like &lt;a href=&quot;http://basecamp.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Basecamp&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://producteev.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Producteev&lt;/a&gt; don't have restrictions in their project, in terms of creating tasks, deleting tasks and assigning tasks that anyone could create task edit task and delete tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need some advice, hope you guys can help. Thank you so much in advance! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20536" LastActivityDate="2015-09-17T11:32:20.447" Title="Why does project management tool don't have restrictions in their projects?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-09-22T07:33:21.080" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16227" CreationDate="2015-09-17T11:25:13.507" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your team has opted a good way for the Technical discussions. Following few points should be kept in mind during the discussion and should be monitored:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discussion is not repetitive &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All the necessary team members are involved in respective discussion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Members should come out with a conclusion after the discussion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is not the case with the members during the discussion. It should be handled individually with the team members as well as in the retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13556" LastEditorUserId="13556" LastEditDate="2016-01-07T06:01:07.367" LastActivityDate="2016-01-07T06:01:07.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16231" CreationDate="2015-09-17T11:32:20.447" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer - because everyone on the project are professionals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long answer - Some times tools need restrictions, either for security, or to protect users from themselves.  Restrictions have a cost though, you need to have defined user groups with different permissions, you need rules as to who has access to what, and so on.  The problem with this is that this causes unnecessary complexity for projects where it isn't needed. I'm not saying it's never needed, but it often isn't. This is why you see the openness of those tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't an agile question per se, but I'm going to beat on that drum for a bit.  The first 'rule' in the agile manifesto is &lt;strong&gt;individuals and interactions over process and tools&lt;/strong&gt;.  Allowing everyone access to everything allows everyone to see the big picture.  Also, you won't need the additional overhead of a &quot;tool admin&quot;, and if the PM/admin gets hit by a proverbial bus, other team members can still use the tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20438" LastActivityDate="2015-09-17T11:32:20.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16222" CreationDate="2015-09-17T12:36:58.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd check the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Change Working time - what are your work times? The default is 8-12, 1-5.  Have you changed that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the 7Days calendar set as the Project calendar (Project Information)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you get the correct value if you set the lag as 30ed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-09-17T12:36:58.463" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16222" CreationDate="2015-09-17T13:18:31.233" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The calendar of the &lt;em&gt;successor&lt;/em&gt; task is used when calculating lag time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't change the working time or other project-level settings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either put the appropriate task calendar on the successor task or use elapsed days for your lag (e.g. 30ed). In your case the latter is simpler. However the former is the only way to do it if you needed something different such as the lag calculated against a 6-days-a-week calendar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastActivityDate="2015-09-17T13:18:31.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16196" CreationDate="2015-09-17T13:22:16.207" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project doesn't know what measure you are using for the actual work.  Try the import with 10h in the actual work field.  Also, generally the project name is in line zero - or the Project Summary Task.  If you name the CSV the project name and then turn on the Project Summary task, I think you'll have a correct outline.  That means that tasks 1, 2, and 3 would be outline level 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-09-17T13:22:16.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16165" CreationDate="2015-09-17T14:24:56.370" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;could you not approach a project in a BDD 'behaviour driven development' fashion &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior-driven_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior-driven_development&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you can use php spec &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phpspec.net/en/latest/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.phpspec.net/en/latest/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To create a specification class for your feature. create php unit tests for that feature then actually develop that feature to the spec?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then estimate each feature including time needed for the BDD/TDD parts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8561" LastActivityDate="2015-09-17T14:24:56.370" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16238" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-17T21:44:46.563" Score="4" ViewCount="307" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the process of comparing scrum teams to kanban teams and I wanted to answer the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What scrum processes/tools promote continuous improvement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What kanban processes/tools promote continuous improvement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a fundamentally different approach in how scrum and kanban achieve continuous improvement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-09-22T18:00:10.813" Title="What mechanisms promote continuous improvement on Agile teams?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16239" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16249" CreationDate="2015-09-17T21:50:43.983" Score="5" ViewCount="1778" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that scrumban is just a form of Kanban with additional tools like the cadence, planning, retrospective, and daily standup thrown in.  Why is scrumban turning into another branded methodology?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't seem to me that scrumban is taking anything away from the Kanban philosophy, its just a hybrid of scrum and kanban tools.  What does scrumban do to differentiate itself from these other 2 models both in practice and theory?  Perhaps another way to phase the question; how is scrumban different from any other Scrumbut approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-01-07T14:15:23.033" LastActivityDate="2019-01-07T14:15:23.033" Title="What are some differences between Scrumban and Kanban?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;scrumban&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16241" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-18T08:42:35.100" Score="1" ViewCount="90" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently developing project management software for my thesis project. What I want to know is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the project is unsuccessful, what could possibly happen with that particular project? Should it be deleted?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the project meets the deadline and is presented to a client, and the client is not satisfied with the outcome, what should happen to that particular project? Should it be re-opened again?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This questions is specifically about projects created with project management software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20536" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-09-19T20:31:45.800" LastActivityDate="2015-09-19T20:31:45.800" Title="In project management software, what should happen if the project is unsuccessful?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-09-24T23:24:16.897" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16239" CreationDate="2015-09-18T10:43:15.037" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrumbut is not a methodology  it's a term used when people pretend to be doing scrum or are unable to implement it properly due to organisational issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also think of Scrum but as a way of working whilst you are transitioning to Scrum&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any way don't get too bogged down with the methodologies concentrate on the agile principles and create something that works in your organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16022" LastActivityDate="2015-09-18T10:43:15.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16241" CreationDate="2015-09-18T11:31:12.157" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the project was unsuccessful what would possibly happen with that particular project? Should it be deleted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would argue against automatic deletion. Maintaining project records for some period of time may be dictated for regulatory reasons (e.g. if you are in pharma or financial industries), corporate record retention policies, and as a general best practice so that you can consult past projects when planning. Give the end user the option for archiving or otherwise saving the project files instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the project meets the deadline and was presented to a client and the client was not satisfied of the outcome. What will happen to that particular project? Should it be re-opened again?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly if your client wasn't happy with your project products then your project wasn't successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;RANT MODE ON&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A pet peeve of mine is the mania for schedule and budget being the primary measures of success for projects. In some instances this is appropriate that they contribute to your definition of success, but I would argue that &lt;em&gt;delivery of business value for money spent&lt;/em&gt; is the key metric. This will also allow you to consider things like product quality, effectiveness of project visioning and requirements gathering, impacts on business risks, etc etc etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The challenge is that it takes time and effort post-project to assess business value, whereas adherence to schedule and budget are tantalizingly easy to collect, appear to be objective, and coincide with project end... all of which make it easy to figure out who gets what bonus on their next performance review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;RANT MODE OFF&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2015-09-18T11:31:12.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15934" CreationDate="2015-09-18T11:57:25.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;After starting to work on a story, you should not revisit the estimate that you gave off for a story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimates are always based on incomplete information are almost always inaccurate. In the long run, this doesn't matter, because estimates tend to be either too low or too high, but rarely (especially in story-point estimations) consistently skewed to one side.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This means that the error in the estimation on one story &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; get cancelled out by the error on the estimation of a different story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you start to re-estimate the work that you didn't finish in a sprint, why not re-estimate the work that you &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; finish? Perhaps it wasn't the wrongly estimated story that got carried over, but a different story that couldn't be completed because there was no time left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you can do with stories that get carried over from a previous sprint is to make an assessment of the amount of work left open in the story, so that you can pick up enough new work to keep the team occupied for the whole new sprint.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This assessment should be done when planning the incomplete story in a new sprint, but the new &quot;estimate&quot; given there must &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; be used for planning purposes and not be made visible or public in any way. When completing the story, the team will just receive the original estimated points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not you do the 'remaining effort assessment' on incomplete stories, there will be an effect of not having completed a story on the velocity that you reach in a sprint. This should not be a problem, because the velocity of a single sprint doesn't really give you any information. Most of the information can be derived from the trend in the velocity when looking over a larger period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2015-09-18T11:57:25.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16239" CreationDate="2015-09-18T13:47:48.050" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrumban is a slang term, not an codified process, so it's hard to say exactly what it is. However, I can say that I see a lot of success in Scrum teams that adopt some of the principles and practices of Kanban. Some of those that help Scrum teams include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Visualize Your Process:&lt;/strong&gt; Many Scrum team task boards simply read Ready-Doing-Done. This rarely reflects the complexity of how many organizations develop their product. Creating a more accurate representation of how work is done will allow you to see bottlenecks and areas for improvement easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Implement WIP Limits:&lt;/strong&gt; Many studies show that there is an optimal number of items that can be in progress at a time. Trying to have the whole team work on one thing can lead to everyone stepping on each other's toes, but having too many things in progress means nothing gets quite done until the end of the sprint. WIP limits help the team find and enforce that balance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Measure and Monitor Flow:&lt;/strong&gt; I see more and more Scrum coaches suggesting you measure cycle time. I don't think this is as important in Scrum as it is in Kanban, but it can tell the team a lot about what's happening in their work. Lead time can also be really interesting for the product owner in thinking about how they are managing their backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;'Agreeing to Pursue Incremental Change' and 'Leadership at All Levels':&lt;/strong&gt; These are two of the core principles in Kanban and are very compatible with Scrum. Scrum has a ceremony for self-reflection and continuous improvement, but it's pretty open-ended about how you do that. Kanban can provide some guidance here - especially for new teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure there are others I'm not thinking of at the moment. If I remember any, I'll edit the post and add them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-09-18T13:47:48.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16226" CreationDate="2015-09-18T19:06:20.477" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that you should prepare a RFP (Request For Proposal) for the same including sections (but not limited to):-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Description: Write few lines about the project to start with, as introduction is required for every document&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Scope of work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Timelines and Milestones: Mention here milestone of deliveries that are planned before the product go live. It would be better to represent it in a kind of Gantt Chart, which displays the Milestones and date of delivery&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Budget: Mention here the quotation for the prices in a table format, don't use complex mathematics here and keep the table simple and readable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Evaluation Factors: How you reached the mentioned budget, like mention here the resources that will be involved and their pricing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Point of Contact&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Exceptions and Risks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the scope of work section, mention the workflow diagram with blocks (not too fancy, it should look formal and professional). Client always like charts and block diagrams, as they are self explanatory, easy to understand and looks good. Don't write too much in this document, explain as many things with pictures and diagrams as you can. Use the &lt;strong&gt;SmartArt&lt;/strong&gt; feature of Excel or Word or other tool &lt;em&gt;(for Integration and Relational description of modules)&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17870" LastActivityDate="2015-09-18T19:06:20.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16247" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16264" CreationDate="2015-09-18T20:25:06.640" Score="9" ViewCount="522" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're doing &lt;em&gt;Agile&lt;/em&gt; development, and even though we are not going as strict as &lt;em&gt;Scrum&lt;/em&gt;, we'd like to keep the &lt;strong&gt;sprint planning meeting&lt;/strong&gt; so that the customer is able to prioritize on business values for each iteration and possibly some feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, having a &lt;strong&gt;product owner&lt;/strong&gt; as the customer's proxy isn't really an option because the team is not big enough to separate roles like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first glance I thought about talking the customer into assigning someone from his company on his behalf who'd act as his proxy,  with enough power/permissions to make decitions and prioritize business values,  so that we can go with the sprint planning meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The customer's company isn't that big, I'd estimate a maximum of 15 - 20 employees. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a better way to handle this, maybe a different perspective? How should I approach the customer and talk him into a solution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17593" LastActivityDate="2015-09-21T15:51:30.297" Title="Customer seems to be too busy to do regular meetings" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16239" CreationDate="2015-09-19T04:25:58.000" Score="6" Body="&lt;h3&gt;What Scrumban Really Is&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fundamentally, Scrumban is a management framework that emerges when teams employ Scrum as their chosen way of working and use the Kanban Method as a lens through which to view, understand and continuously improve how they work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrumban is distinct from Scrum in the way it emphasizes certain principles and practices that are substantially different from Scrum's traditional foundation. Among these are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;recognizing the important role of organizational management (self-organization remains an objective, but within the context of specific boundaries)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;allowing for specialized teams and functions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;applying explicit policies around ways of working&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;applying the laws of flow and queuing theory&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;deliberate economic prioritization&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrumban is distinct from the Kanban Method in that it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;prescribes an underlying software development process framework (Scrum) as its core&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is organized around teams&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;recognizes the value of time-boxed iterations when appropriate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;formalizes continuous improvement techniques within specific ceremonies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps most importantly, the principles and practices embedded within Scrumban are not unique to the software development process. They can be easily applied in many different contexts, providing a common language and shared experience across interrelated business functions. This, in turn, enhances the kind of organizational alignment that is an essential characteristic of success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;A Framework for [R]Evolution&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When Corey Ladas introduced the world to Scrumban in his seminal book, Scrumban: Essays on Kanban Systems for Lean Software Development (Modus Cooperandi Press, 2009), he boldly defined it as a transition method for moving software development teams from Scrum to a “more evolved” software development framework. In actual practice, however, Scrumban has itself evolved to become a family of principles and practices that create complementary capabilities unique from both Scrum and the Kanban Method. These capabilities have led to three distinct manifestations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&amp;gt; As a framework that helps teams and organizations effectively adopt Scrum as a development methodology.As a framework that helps teams and organizations overcome a variety of common challenges scaling Scrum across the Enterprise.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a framework that helps teams and organizations develop their own set of Scrum-based processes and practices that work best for them -- not to accommodate inadequacies and dysfunctions Scrum exposed, but to resolve them in a manner that was most effective for their unique environment.&#xA;I believe these different manifestations have arisen because teams and organizations are acutely aware of all the great things an underlying Scrum methodology brings to the table. These include capabilities like:&#xA;* fostering a team-based focus to facilitate the alignment of purpose and vision&#xA;* enhancing performance and the adoption of change through cadence and rhythm&#xA;* helping to enforce a focus on shorter term planning as compared to more traditional methods&#xA;* emphasizing customer participation and the delivery of value from customer’s perspective&#xA;* enforcing a focus on smaller sizes of work&#xA;* enabling collaboration&#xA;* promoting shared ownership and cross functional capabilities&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, too many of these teams and organizations face challenges in effectively adopting Scrum for which the framework lends little guidance. These include challenges like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;effectively managing around the variability and unpredictability inherent in the nature of our work (especially, in many contexts, around its arrival)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;deliberately addressing longer term considerations such as architecture&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;overcoming psychological barriers to change and implementation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;achieving uniformity in the effectiveness of the Product Owner role and how to scale the function performed by this role across larger enterprises&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;relating market risk to Sprint Commitments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;eliminating traditional reliance on deterministic planning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;minimizing reliance on top down/vertical buy-in with affirmations of servant leadership&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2431512&amp;amp;WT.mc_id=Author_Reddy_Scrumban&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2431512&amp;amp;WT.mc_id=Author_Reddy_Scrumban&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20575" LastActivityDate="2015-09-19T04:25:58.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16250" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16251" CreationDate="2015-09-19T07:02:31.620" Score="3" ViewCount="632" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to ask regarding our situation. I just joined a startup company and they are starting to do scrum (although I would say it was a poor implementation of scrum with no assigned Scrum Master nor Product Owner). There is a new project being developed  (UI and database) and it relies on a big component (let's name it as Component X - the hardware abstraction layer and low-level hardware access) which was developed a long time ago. Component X was very big, heavily multi-threaded however, it doesnt have any unit tests (I'm quite surprised that nobody knows how to do unit tests in this company) and it does rely only on system unit tests performed by the testers/QA and there are some issues that weren't addressed ever since but the engineers who developed it are still addressing the bugs once it was caught by the testers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, we started Sprint 1 and we are re-using the old Component X, the testers are just putting the crashes into our Agile Jira log and now, the Agile Jira log looks like a bug tracking with more items being put by the testers rather than the Sprint Backlog items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's good that Scrum was able to expose this as early as Sprint 1, but how do we address this kind of scenario? Should the testers log the bugs once they are found (our boss, directly told us to log the issues once they were found so that it could be backtracked easily through history search) ? I am thinking of using a dedicated bug tracker e.g. BugZilla so that our tester will never clutter the Backlog items on our Agile Jira. Although if we have a separate bug tracker, there may be instances that the feature is Done on the Agile Jira, while there is an issue logged on the separate bug tracker which could bring confusion to the developers and testers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8980" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T11:27:14.763" Title="Agile Jira is being bombarded by issues from QA and testers. Need help and suggestions" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16250" CreationDate="2015-09-19T13:19:27.720" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two kinds of bugs found during a sprint:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bugs resulting from current, on-going development work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bugs found during the sprint but from work that was done previously&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The usual Scrum practice is to prioritise bugs found that were caused by on-going development work. These bugs will be added to the Sprint Backlog as they are blocking stories from being 'done'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bugs that existed before the sprint started, but that were discovered during the sprint (e.g. bugs found on Component X) should be added to the Product Backlog and not to the Sprint Backlog. Usually the Product Owner would then evaluate these bugs on the Product Backlog and decide how they should be prioritised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should keep your sprint backlog relatively clear. The Product Backlog will be large, but that should not be an issue as a team mainly needs to focus on the items at the top of the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be a situation where a legacy bug stops the team developing a user story that they planned for a sprint. In this case the team and the Product Owner should discuss the bug and decide if it is realistic to fix it in the current sprint. They may instead decide to move the user story out of the sprint so that it can be re-estimated now that there is a better understanding of what is involved in doing the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-09-19T13:19:27.720" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16247" CreationDate="2015-09-19T13:34:06.870" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest highlighting to the customer that the more they are involved, the quicker and the more effective the development will be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the Scrum Team needs to be quite flexible to accomodate the Product Owner (or customer in your case). I have worked with teams that will do the sprint planning meeting with the customer on the phone. This isn't ideal, but it can have less impact on the customer's time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also advise getting the sprint planning meetings in your customer's calendar as early as possible. I often have the sprint planning meetings booked several months in to the future, just to ensure they can work their calendar around those time slots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-09-19T13:34:06.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16247" CreationDate="2015-09-20T00:08:54.727" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Backlog grooming doesn't have to take place in discrete meetings. There is nothing keeping you from doing continuous (re-)prioritization with the customer. If the customer doesn't seem to have time for many formal meetings with your team, you can ask if a quick call or email, or even an IM session, every few days would work better. That isn't strictly scrum, but you mentioned that you're not following the letter of the law anyway. You can continue to use your variant of scrum internally, but adapt to the customer's workflow if that's what will deliver more value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternately, see if the customer feels they are being involved in decisions that are too low-level. Would they be fine with a longer sprint length and a heavier meeting at the end? If the customer doesn't make time for you, they probably don't see the value in doing so. Find out what would make the meetings more valuable to them and adjust as appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13325" LastActivityDate="2015-09-20T00:08:54.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16239" CreationDate="2015-09-20T04:57:18.630" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd put it slightly differently.  Scrumban is the (by now) fairly well-established term being used by many experienced/ respected thought leaders in the Lean/ Agile industry for work done by teams when they apply Kanban principles to their Scrum-based software development work. The basic premise of Kanban is to help teams improve, whatever be their method of software development planning and delivery. Teams may choose to continue to call it Scrum or may switch to Kanban or Scrumban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides the article Ajay Reddy pointed to, here are some good references to Scrumban - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most well-known and respected one - &quot;Scrumban - Essays on Kanban for Lean Software Development&quot; by Corey Ladas (&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0578002140&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Scrumban-Systems-Software-Development-Cooperandi/dp/0578002140&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another good article is by Yuval Yeret - &quot;So, what is Scrumban?&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://yuvalyeret.com/2012/04/28/so-what-is-scrumban/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://yuvalyeret.com/2012/04/28/so-what-is-scrumban/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of articles with our own take - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;What is Scrumban?&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.swiftkanban.com/kanban/what-is-scrumban/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.swiftkanban.com/kanban/what-is-scrumban/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, here is a blog post I wrote when I asked pretty much the same question at a Lean Coffee session at the LKNA 2012 conference - &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.digite.com/scrum-kanban-scrumban-or-kanban-lessons-at-lean-coffee/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.digite.com/scrum-kanban-scrumban-or-kanban-lessons-at-lean-coffee/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2015-09-20T04:57:18.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4707" CreationDate="2015-09-20T05:45:57.803" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Project Manager is the know it all man/woman on a power trip telling you what to do and you hate them because of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master is a sage like Mr Miyagi who teaches the hero of the story how to win.  We all love Mr Miyagi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People can't love and hate you at the same time, so you can't be both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now for a serious answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are willing to accept the definition of &quot;Project Manager&quot; as someone who applies knowledge, skill and techniques to meet project requirements, a Scrum Master IS a PM. &quot;Facilitation&quot; and &quot;authority over process&quot; is management so that requirements are met.  If you want to narrow the definition you are at odds with &quot;industry&quot; (I got the definition from the PMI).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is an Agile process framework.  People forget that an Agile project is limited by time and cost.  Rather than up front Scope, agile projects do what time and cost allow. You just prioritize scope (backlog) according to business value and pray that enough satisfaction is achieved for it to be considered &quot;successful&quot;.  Agile has come about about because some projects (software projects) have a lot of uncertainty and it's been identified that the best way to manage uncertainty is to remove it quickly.  You may assume that a &quot;Project Manager&quot; never works in this kind of environment and you would be wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, a person with PM as their job title may just be a Scrum Master for a non Agile project.  They don't make any decisions.  They facilitate a process.  They are their to &quot;remove impediments&quot;.  They don't define or do any of the actual work.  The only authority they have is over project management process.   Sometimes they may do more, just as a Scrum Master may have to step outside his role and do more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One key difference between a PM and Scrum Master is that a PM will tune the process to the project. The Scrum framework seems to be a &quot;colour by numbers&quot; project management framework for small software teams and colouring outside the lines is considered &quot;bad&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20585" LastEditorUserId="20585" LastEditDate="2015-09-27T02:41:47.267" LastActivityDate="2015-09-27T02:41:47.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16238" CreationDate="2015-09-20T15:37:21.697" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on your team all you really need is a white board and some sticky notes and people who are willing to collaborate and talk on a daily basis :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't get bogged down in the terminology all you really need is to inspect what you did was it good or bad and adapt to continue with the good and remove the bad good luck on your journey :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say try Scrum if it works great if not try Kanban! the main thing is to get started let your team know its acceptable to fail as long as you learn something :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16022" LastActivityDate="2015-09-20T15:37:21.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16238" CreationDate="2015-09-20T21:10:48.123" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, there is no fundamental difference. Both have at their roots the concept of continuous review. As we've progressed along the agile history path, the two have shared back and forth techniques so that the two share much. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Demos: At regular intervals you should be demonstrating completed work to your stakeholders (founder and even your VC backers). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Retrospectives: At regular intervals you need to review how work is getting done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Value Chain or Flow Analysis: Trace a path through your process to see where bottlenecks are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-09-20T21:10:48.123" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16260" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-21T06:51:40.377" Score="5" ViewCount="113" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a theory and/or study backed way to measure/track and forecast research activities? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As it seems clear that R&amp;amp;D must be treated differently than production work for example, I could not find a reasonable metrics to track and forecast research activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do find work on the &lt;strong&gt;necessity&lt;/strong&gt; of tracking and forecasting research (e.g.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783790827613&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Industrial Research Performance Management&lt;/a&gt;), but I do not find any description on &lt;strong&gt;how&lt;/strong&gt; to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for my question is that research seems to be to unpredictable and non-linear in order to be measured in the same way as e.g. the production of a car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So let's set up a case.&#xA;Say a company has 30,000,000$ of research budget per year and the budget-owner wants to see where attention (and possibly improvement of the research process) is needed. The complete budget is divided in smaller projects. Which tools/metrics/processes are available to aid the budget-owner to see where projects are performing in a way that improvement (return on invest, speed or resource loading) is possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16890" LastEditorUserId="16890" LastEditDate="2015-09-21T23:27:21.710" LastActivityDate="2015-09-21T23:27:21.710" Title="Meaningful metric to track and forecast research" Tags="&lt;kpi&gt;&lt;theory&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16260" CreationDate="2015-09-21T14:15:04.323" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The reason for my question is that research seems to be to unpredictable and non-linear in order to be measured in the same way as e.g. the production of a car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is the whole basis of R&amp;amp;D. Ultimately your ability to forecast progress on a project is inversely proportional to how &quot;researchy&quot; it is. In other words, if you are early in your discovery effort there are too many unknowns to adequately predict progress. In contrast, once you get to the point where progress can be predicted you aren't really doing research &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what can you do in terms of metrics/methodology? I think basically you have to define what success and failure look like up-front and track appropriate metrics to assess whether a project should be killed. In pharma it is simple as success/failure is typically defined as showing statistical significance in each of a series of studies/trials. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your industry it may be more complex. Your best bet is to look at your organization's past projects. Categorize them as successes or as failures, and figure out what metrics made each a success/failure. You should then be able to plot an ongoing project somewhere in the spectrum of success/failure based on those metrics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2015-09-21T14:15:04.323" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16247" CreationDate="2015-09-21T15:43:31.267" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please try to educate the Customer on his role on the overall health of the project. It would be his vision that the team would work. If he is continuously able to provide team with clear ideas and features to work. It would reduce the development time for the team and he could have a quick prototype available for him to share with the Stakeholders and the End Users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, with every Sprint end, make sure you have a Demo conducted for the items team completed during the respective iteration for him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would boost his confidence in the team and he would like to be more involved with the team. This would help you to have: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prioritized backlog items &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clear requirements, and option to reach him if their are doubts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner would have more confidence with the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13556" LastActivityDate="2015-09-21T15:43:31.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16247" CreationDate="2015-09-21T15:51:30.297" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Customer seems to be too busy to do regular meetings often translates into 1 of 2 things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Customer not understanding value of meeting or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Customer has more valuable things to do&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case 1 education is required with the customer.  The customer may not understand the value they provide to the rest of the participants in the meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case 2, look at the meeting itself.  Are the right people there?  Is the length ok?  Are there activities happening that are not relevant to the customer that could be streamlined or cut out?  If the value is low to the customer this may require education with other meeting participants to ensure they are creating a meeting where the customer can get value.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-09-21T15:51:30.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16238" CreationDate="2015-09-21T21:50:29.683" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I view continuous improvement as being outside of any flavor of agile, or methodology in general. It's more a mix of org-level values, and local visibility and culture. Some typical things I've used:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Retros at the team level and org level (less frequent, bigger patterns)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improvement roadmaps, created by the team for each aspect they want to improve, i.e. &quot;What is our realistic end-goal for domain expertise, and where are we now by comparison?&quot; then simply visualize middle steps and review/follow as you progress.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Metrics that matter - cycle times, bug counts, amount of rework from each review, response time of the product, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;That sucked/that was awesome&quot; boards where team members can put up stickies for any reason throughout an iteration (also good fodder for retros!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key point as others have touched on here is high visibility - out of sight, out of mind, even with things that are highly valued; people just get too busy to keep it in mind. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastEditorUserId="4490" LastEditDate="2015-09-22T18:00:10.813" LastActivityDate="2015-09-22T18:00:10.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16227" CreationDate="2015-09-21T22:01:12.287" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is absolutely the right thing to do!  The &quot;meeting after the meeting&quot; is often the most creative and productive collaboration your team will have in a day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team is already interrupted from their normal work, so no-one feels interrupted.  And no-one likes to interrupt a team member that is &quot;in the zone&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The interested parties can stay for the discussion and the rest can leave.  No-one should feel obligated to stay for the meeting after the meeting.  If the the topic wanders, as these often do, participants should feel free to drift back to their normal work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There can be some downsides to watch out for!  If team members use this as an opportunity to subvert the full team's agreements but individuals are too shy or fearful to say so in a larger audience you can have real problems.  Although, if that's the case, then you already have problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16242" LastActivityDate="2015-09-21T22:01:12.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16271" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16273" CreationDate="2015-09-22T11:10:53.780" Score="8" ViewCount="4581" Body="&lt;p&gt;This has already been asked (&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/1358&quot;&gt;How can a team working on research based items work in an Agile project?&lt;/a&gt;), but the thread is from 2011, so I thought I'd poke for an update.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of a good process for managing &lt;strong&gt;research&lt;/strong&gt; projects or a whole research organization (as in scientific research rather than R&amp;amp;D) through Agile methodology? Does anyone know examples of institutes doing this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was able to find &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.umd.edu/projects/PL/score/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SCORE&lt;/a&gt; (Scrum for Research) but it's mainly for teaching faculty and research students. In a more recent piece &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/articles/agile-academic-research&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Research&lt;/a&gt; the authors conclude that &quot;no “academic agile process” has yet been laid out&quot;. They do take the subject a bit further, developing &quot;the principles of agile research&quot; based on their software development counterparts. I've made a preliminary search for scientific papers on agile research, but with no results worth mentioning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, there seems to be a surprising lack of documents describing the use of Agile in research. Why? It's not a novel idea - has it ultimately proven to be a bad idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20616" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2016-12-25T13:23:44.573" Title="Why do Agile practice not exist in scientific research projects and organizations?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15783" CreationDate="2015-09-22T13:38:30.993" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see that you´re using storiesonboard.com (I use it too!) to create your user story map. In this tool, you must create the high levels first, and goes down to the low levels, where you have the details (or, best saying, the stories) of each functionality. Usually, a user story map starts with the user stories itself, and then you organize in high levels to get a better picture of your application. From this, you´ll be able to prioritize the funcionalities for the first release. In the storiesonboard.com, I believe you cannot work in that way, since the system requires you to begin with the high level cards, but it´s fine if you don´t get lost. Storiesonboard.com can be a great tool if your work with remote teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can have cards with the business goals intended to achieve with the app to let you remember what is really important and configure the releases accordingly. You can have cards for type of users of the app too, to know the public you will dealing with and define what stories will be handled first. And, most important of all, is not &lt;em&gt;writing&lt;/em&gt; the user stories, but &lt;em&gt;understand how it should be use, and reach a state of shared understanding between you and your customer&lt;/em&gt; (and others people in the project). So, unless you´re creating a map for yourself, envolve and engage others stakeholders in the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a look at this &lt;a href=&quot;http://cdn.oreillystatic.com/oreilly/booksamplers/9781491904909_sampler.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;. It´s the sample of the book linked in the answer provided by @ElBauldo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18099" LastActivityDate="2015-09-22T13:38:30.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16271" CreationDate="2015-09-22T16:32:56.307" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the reason you've not found much written is that when you get down to the cores of agile, the difference in projects is not all that pronounced. What you want from a project is what really drives the type of implementation, not what you are creating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Predictable Schedule, Flexible Scope- Use Scrum&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Volatile scope, short delivery windows- Use Kanban&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fixed Scope, Flexible Schedule- Use Kanban or Scrum&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;End product completely unknown- Use XP or Lean Startup&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on past advice I've given on school projects and some research stuff, I suggest trying a Kanban workflow. You have a good idea what you need to do at the start. However, as you move through the research project, findings will likely change your direction or scope. Working in a Kanban flow allows easy change of the backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you truly don't know what your research results will bring and you are trying to develop something marketable, then the Lean Startup Build, Measure, Learn cycle may be helpful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully that was enough detail without turning this into an in depth dissertation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-09-22T16:32:56.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16274" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-23T05:31:33.923" Score="1" ViewCount="814" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work as a Senior Network engineer in Telecomm industry in Sydney for 5 years. I am been involved with few of the projects but not into the role of a PM or PC. &#xA;How can I get started into Project management field from my technical field ?&#xA;I have done Prince 2 and have my MBA with me. Advice please. &#xA;Thanks in advance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20623" LastActivityDate="2015-09-23T10:09:37.790" Title="Transitioning into Project Management from Network engineer" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;prince2&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-09-24T23:22:36.957" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15783" CreationDate="2015-09-23T07:55:09.970" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I found to work for us is to identify/discuss personas first, take a note of them outside the map and start the map with the processes like in your first example.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Identifying personas helps thinking about tasks these people do, so you can easier map the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Bruno mentioned, you can't start with the second level in StoriesOnBoard. To overcome this I just create one card on the first level and put all the second level cards under that. Later when I can group the second level cards, I create the groups on the first level and move the second level cards under them.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If it's important to see which persona does a given task (and it's not obvious), we write it in it's title: &quot;Admin: Manage user accounts&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20624" LastActivityDate="2015-09-23T07:55:09.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16276" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-23T09:35:21.727" Score="1" ViewCount="67" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a remote project manager for company XYZ. For most of our past projects, we have no issues with managing the client's feedback; as always technology (emails, video calls etc.) plays a big part in bridging the geographical distance when it comes to communication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However some less IT-savvy clients almost always insist to have face-to-face meet-ups for project review. The in-house account manager will then have to go down but most of the time he/she does not possess the technical knowledge to handle some of the client's requests. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that in a conventional organisation structure this is where the PM will go down with the AM for such meetings. But for my case how can my company handle such a problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20625" LastActivityDate="2015-09-23T10:32:17.260" Title="Difficulties meeting client face-to-face" Tags="&lt;remote-teams&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16274" CreationDate="2015-09-23T10:09:37.790" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My background is similar, so I'll tell you my lessons learned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To get started, let people know you are interested in the PM role, and that you would like to work as a project admin or coordinator to get some experience. These are roles where you get to see a lot of the management activities but for the most part you don't have a lot of responsibility for the project giving you a chance to learn techniques, something that will pay immediate dividends.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get a mentor. Someone that can go to with questions, and to learn from their mistakes instead of needing to make your own.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are going to make mistakes anyway. Don't beat yourself up. I had a period where I thought that being a PM was just not for me because it did not come to me as easily as my previous role. My mentor reminded me that I had a lot more experience in the previous role, therefore not a fair comparison.  It does get better!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are a reader, I recommend &lt;em&gt;The Project Management Advisor&lt;/em&gt; by Lonnie Pacelli. It is a book of lessons learned, early warning signs that something bad is happening and how to fix it proactively. It's a book I wish I had read years ago.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep notes of your project hours so you can get the PMP certification, even if you aren't planning/ready to write the exam. For the submission you will need to have records of each project you worked on, with contact info and the number of hours you worked in each domain. It's a lot easier to create this data while you are doing it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Join a PM networking group. Like the mentor, this is an arena where you can ask questions. Also, depending on your personality, you may be a bit introverted or shy. Networking is great practice area.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20438" LastActivityDate="2015-09-23T10:09:37.790" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16276" CreationDate="2015-09-23T10:32:17.260" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the keys to a successful meeting is having the right people in the room. That seems obvious but it's amazing how often it doesn't happen and you find yourself saying 'that's a question for Jane from the dev team' etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before the client meetings take place determine an agenda that covers everything that both parties are likely to need to discuss - a PM should definitely feed in to this because you will have questions too no doubt. From this agenda you can work out who needs to be present to cover off all of the points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally all the relevant parties that you have identified will then be present for the face-to-face meeting. If they can't be (you don't say &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; remote you are) then the representative from your organisation should bring the appropriate equipment to dial the right people in to the call. Even the most &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;luddite&lt;/a&gt; operation should be able to handle this - at worst you can be on speakerphone on a mobile. If it's a long meeting then the representative might only need to call certain people for particular agenda items. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If getting this kind of thing set up is proving difficult then you need to communicate the value (to both teams) of up-front planning and having the right people in the right places. The alternative is duplicated meetings, wasted travel time, project delays etc etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2015-09-23T10:32:17.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16279" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-23T13:28:27.937" Score="3" ViewCount="322" Body="&lt;p&gt;I create MS Project schedules for the government and recently moved to a new position on a staff where I am being asked to develop and control schedules for tasks that are rather vague, i.e. create a schedule that will tell us how long it will take to develop a regulation and how to resource load it. My previous schedule development experience was in creation or fielding of tangible items: heavy equipment, weapons, software/hardware systems, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I proceed, other than relying on the SMEs to estimate previous durations or work hours for similar documents?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20626" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-09-25T20:43:16.483" LastActivityDate="2015-09-26T10:52:13.950" Title="How to estimate without relying on SMEs to estimate based on similar projects?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16279" CreationDate="2015-09-23T16:07:59.163" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you have access to other similar deliverables? In some cases the names of contributors are listed. From that and a bit of digging you may be able to roughly determine the size and skillsets required for the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even with SME input developing something like regulations is going to be difficult at the best of times because it generally involves getting a committee to agree on something. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeboxing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Timeboxing&lt;/a&gt; discussion is going to be very important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Worst case scenario is you could make up some numbers and milestones for your first prototype/draft/chapter. A small piece of work that is still a deliverable. You won't be anywhere close unless you are really lucky, but it will give you some experience to know for the next go-round though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bit of advice I could provide is that if the estimates are too big, the work/creep will fill the extra, see &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson&amp;#39;s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Parkinson's law&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20438" LastActivityDate="2015-09-23T16:07:59.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16281" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-24T09:08:29.703" Score="0" ViewCount="540" Body="&lt;p&gt;Independent from project type (agile/non-agile) and independent from the depth and size of projects and tasks,  I need to keep tracking multiple tasks of multiple projects.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Currently I use a status-list of multiple projects. So each item is a project. Under each project-item I put a task. This is only for status-tracking. Not for organisation, planning etc. Here is an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Level 1:  &#xA;- Building a house  &#xA;- Organize next vacation  &#xA;&#xA;Level 2:  &#xA;- Building a house  &#xA;-- Plan the costs  &#xA;&#xA;Level 3:&#xA;- Building a house  &#xA;-- Plan the costs  &#xA;--- Status 24.09.2015; &#xA;Message: Could not estimate my available money  &#xA;Status: Critical  &#xA;Due Date: 08.12.2015  {code}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the problem with that is, when people are using this kind of status report, it easily leads to losing the focus on the due-date. So on the next entry it might be the same task (&quot;plan the cost&quot;) with a new due date. Because they are allowed to change the due date. Well that is OK, but when changing the due date I want to ensure people are aware that they delay the task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is my request:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;What process do you use/recommend to make people aware that they delay the task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice: I would like to avoid e-mail-communication. I would be glad to see suggestions like &quot;new/approved&quot; status-management methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: As suggested by an answer (below), in this case it is not an option to do the reporting in the work-tools or pm tools (like jira, ms project etc.). The reporting needs to be written/stored at the same place for all project-types.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20635" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-01-22T15:23:25.123" LastActivityDate="2021-02-06T15:01:00.107" Title="Task status tracking" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7937" CreationDate="2015-09-24T10:17:26.690" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Release happens at two levels - to the internal stakeholder; to the external customer. As far as the scrum team is concerned, it is Done once it is code, designed, tested, deployed in Pre-Prod or Prod, bugs fixed and user acceptance is received. This is called Minimally Marketable Feature. The customer may choose his own time to deploy in  live server. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20637" LastEditorUserId="4901" LastEditDate="2015-09-24T18:56:42.270" LastActivityDate="2015-09-24T18:56:42.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16281" CreationDate="2015-09-24T11:59:37.373" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Minimize paperwork&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because they are allowed to change the due date. Well that is OK, but&#xA;  when changing the due date I want to ensure people are aware that they&#xA;  delay the task... What tool/process do you use/recommend to make&#xA;  people aware that they delay the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The notion of a due date and a change in the due date are built into most project management tools. All you have to do is to establish a baseline initially. Once you do that, the tool will show assigned resource, scheduled and actual delay. &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Review-the-progress-of-your-schedule-0d24c633-f572-44b9-8fdb-56e1f5095237&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;In this link you can see, for example, how to do that in MS Project.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Independent from project type (agile/non-agile) and independent from&#xA;  the depth and size of projects and tasks, I need to keep tracking&#xA;  multiple tasks of multiple projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you cannot do that with agile projects. Agile projects do not have the notion of a timeline committed in advance for a task nor the notion of an assigned resource. If they are, they wouldn't be agile. These are characteristics of predictive processes. Agile is an adaptive process. For example, in Scrum, stories remain in the backlog and can be moved up or down (re-prioritized) until they are scheduled into a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, what you are attempting to do appears to be adding avoidable paperwork burden on the resources. You presumably have other tools to track your agile projects and non-agile projects. I strongly recommend against making resources fill out and watch additional tools and processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-09-24T12:35:12.813" LastActivityDate="2015-09-24T12:35:12.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10541" CreationDate="2015-09-24T16:06:12.747" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum do not define testing time frame or scope for a feature or a PBI. It is the Scope of the newly implemented feature that helps in identifying the Scope of testing. Say a new feature is to be implemented for an application. The feature should have a &quot;Definition of Done&quot; and the Product Owner should define this. It would in turn help the team to analyse the feature and develop it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the experience of the team, the scope of testing could be defined. The parameters that should be considered for it could be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;End User environment, this includes network Speed, OS used and the machine configuration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Complexity of the implemented feature for DEV&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The business value of the feature and its criticality.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lines of code written for the feature would also help. The more the lines the more it would be vulnerable to errors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13556" LastActivityDate="2015-09-24T16:06:12.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16222" CreationDate="2015-09-24T16:18:15.670" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You want a task 30 calender days after a milestone.&#xA;Then you should put FS+30ed (or FS+1eM) to predecessor of that task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is completely something other than working days or calendar.&#xA;&quot;ed&quot; is &lt;em&gt;elapsed days&lt;/em&gt; meaning there is no work for it just time to pass.&#xA;A good example would be &quot;you have to wait for 2 days for a wall to dry before doing anyting else to it&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7883" LastActivityDate="2015-09-24T16:18:15.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9983" CreationDate="2015-09-24T16:27:57.267" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;if you work in auto mode you should use edays. Put 1FS+1ed as predecessor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7883" LastActivityDate="2015-09-24T16:27:57.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2782" CreationDate="2015-09-24T16:31:36.480" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend using Atlassian Jira for these kind of things. You will have control over both charged amout and the work calendar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7883" LastActivityDate="2015-09-24T16:31:36.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8107" CreationDate="2015-09-24T17:21:01.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try &quot;Project Review&quot;, or, &quot;Debriefing&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Debriefing is a process of &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;receiving an explanation, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;receiving information and situation-based reminders of context, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;reporting of measures of performance, and/or &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;opportunities to further investigate the results of a study, investigation, or assessment of performance after participation in an&#xA;  immersive activity is complete. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Debriefings are most effective when conducted interactively between&#xA;  the participants of the immersive activity and the assessment or&#xA;  observation personnel. Self-facilitated After Action Reviews (AAR) or&#xA;  debriefings are common in small unit and crew activities, and in a&#xA;  training context are shown to improve Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities&#xA;  (KSAs) significantly when conducted formally using pre-defined&#xA;  measures of performance derived from front-end analysis. Debriefing&#xA;  organization can be based on linear or non-linear (or a combination of&#xA;  both) organization of makers used for recall. Typically the structure&#xA;  will use: Temporal, Spatial, Objective, and/or Performance derived&#xA;  markers to bring focus to a specific activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20647" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2015-10-06T08:48:15.840" LastActivityDate="2015-10-06T08:48:15.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16292" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-24T21:36:28.123" Score="0" ViewCount="616" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a project in MS Project 2013 that has many over allocated tasks.  I do not have enough resources to finish the project by the due date.  I need to figure out how many people to hire.  Can Project choose from group of resources/people who has the available time tor the task?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20651" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-08T22:27:26.297" LastActivityDate="2018-11-08T22:27:26.297" Title="So lost with Resources in MS Project 2013" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16292" CreationDate="2015-09-25T13:47:12.987" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are interested in &lt;strong&gt;resource leveling&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Distribute-project-work-evenly-level-resource-assignments-9077102e-6db0-4d49-a9ce-94f018e7b4e2#bm4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Instructions below are for MS Project 2007&lt;/a&gt;. I caution you to carefully review any output, not all staff have the same levels of expertise, efficiency, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also when it comes to staffing up decisions, factor in time and effort to train new people. I've been in situations where an organization has hired to support a project but by the time the new team members were up to speed the project was essentially over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Distribute the project work by leveling&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the Tools menu, click Level Resources.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Under Leveling calculations, click Automatic or Manual. Manual leveling (the default) occurs only when you click Level Now. Automatic leveling occurs instantaneously whenever you change a task or resource. Use automatic leveling if you want to reschedule tasks whenever resources are assigned more work than they have the capacity to complete.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you choose automatic leveling, clear the Clear leveling values before leveling check box. When this check box is cleared, Project levels only new and unleveled assignments. This check box is selected by default, but when leveling automatically, leaving it selected can significantly slow down your work in the schedule because all tasks are leveled. In the Look for overallocations on a box, click a time period, or basis, for the sensitivity with which leveling will recognize overallocations. Day by Day is the default. This setting establishes the point at which you want leveling to intervene: when you have an overallocation within just one minute, one day, one week, or one month.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Under Leveling range for, select to level the entire project or to level only those tasks falling within a specific time range.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the Leveling order box, select the leveling order that you want:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- Select ID Only to level tasks in ascending order of their ID numbers before considering any other criteria.&#xA;-- Select Standard to first examine predecessor dependencies, slack, dates, priorities, and constraints to discover whether and how tasks should be leveled. (This is the default setting.)&#xA;-- Select Priority, Standard to check task priorities first and only then examine the standard criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To prevent the finish date of your project from being delayed,&#xA;select the Level only within available slack check box.&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Note&lt;/em&gt;   If you select this check box, you may get error messages indicating that Project can't level the entire schedule. Project may not level the schedule because there is seldom enough slack in a schedule to reschedule assignments without running out of slack time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To allow leveling to adjust when a resource works on a task&#xA;independently of other resources that are working on the same task,&#xA;select the Leveling can adjust individual assignments on a task&#xA;check box.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you want leveling to interrupt tasks by creating splits in the&#xA;remaining work on tasks or resource assignments, select the Leveling&#xA;can create splits in remaining work check box. If a resource is&#xA;assigned to tasks concurrently beyond what the resource's schedule&#xA;can handle, then a task that has remaining work can be split and&#xA;worked on when the resource's schedule will allow it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To include proposed resources, select the Level tasks with the proposed booking type check box.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you want to clear the previous leveling results before leveling again, then click Clear Leveling.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are leveling manually, then click Level Now. If you are leveling automatically, click OK. The Level Now dialog box appears if a resource view that has selected resources was showing when you opened the Resource Leveling dialog box. Click Selected resources if you want to level only the selected resources. Otherwise, click Entire pool.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note&lt;/em&gt; &#xA;-- To clear leveling immediately before doing any other action, click Undo Level. If you don't undo the leveling, you can also click Clear Leveling to clear the previous leveling results.&#xA;-- If you level tasks in projects that are scheduled from a finish date, then negative delay values are applied from the end of the task or assignment, causing the task or resource assignment's finish date to occur earlier.&#xA;-- To see the changes made to tasks by leveling, on the View menu, click More Views, click Leveling Gantt, and then click Apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-09-25T21:13:07.710" LastActivityDate="2015-09-25T21:13:07.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16292" CreationDate="2015-09-25T15:32:32.923" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short, no.  Project cannot and will not assign resources automatically.  As I noted &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.msofficeforums.com/project/28000-leveling-resources-help.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; you can use the Assign resources dialog to view resources who are available.  You can also use the Resource Usage view to quickly scan who is available during a specific period of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The details above are how to level resources, but resource leveling will NEVER re-assign resources nor change assignment units to resolve an overallocation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-09-25T15:32:32.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16279" CreationDate="2015-09-25T17:11:33.060" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I manage projects for the government; (and am also Mark in Virginia, oddly enough), but I don't find this to be a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How long does it take to develop a regulation.  Depends entirely on the scope of the regulation - law will take longer than policy which will take longer than guidance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But fundamentally the steps are the same as developing code (which tech wonk was it who quipped that code is law for the internet?)  You have to define the scope/objectives, identify the constraints, identify the stakeholders, refine the scope &amp;amp; constraints based on stakeholder input.  That's the plan.  Then you design the policy, develop text based on the design and then coordinate and test.   You should have SME's for each of those stages, just like when writing code.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've had success in devising the plan and then informing the stakeholders that of the plan and then driving consensus within the plan.  We left a lot of potential topics on the floor because we didn't believe we could reach consensus within the time limits we'd set.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2015-09-25T17:11:33.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16279" CreationDate="2015-09-25T20:33:04.730" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be extremely aware of the underlying assumptions implicit in your estimation process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only the people who will actually perform the work are qualified to estimate how long it will take them to perform a given task within the context of your project..&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You should be developing your estimates with the active cooperation of the people who will actually be producing the work increment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Beware of False Equivalencies&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Any suggestions on how to proceed other than relying on the SMEs to estimate previous durations/workhours for similar documents?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the central tenets of effective estimation is that &lt;strong&gt;only the people who will actually perform the work are qualified to estimate how long it will take &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt; to perform a given task.&lt;/strong&gt; Rather than looking at other projects, or asking subject-matter experts who may not be directly involved in the project, &lt;strong&gt;you should be developing your estimates with the active cooperation of the people who will actually be producing the work increment.&lt;/strong&gt; By trying to bypass task-performers for the estimation, you run the risk of applying invalid estimates to your schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By applying estimates of tasks performed by &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; people, you are making several implicit assumptions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You cannot trust the estimates of the task performers on your project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The work done by someone else is equivalent to the work to be done within your project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The skills and resources within your project team are equivalent to the &quot;prior art&quot; project you are using as your baseline.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The context in which the work will be done is functionally equivalent between projects and organizations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of it this way: if Alice could perform a task in one day, but Bob will take three days, it really doesn't &lt;em&gt;matter&lt;/em&gt; that it takes Alice 66% less time to perform the task because she isn't on your project team&amp;mdash;Bob is, and accurate scheduling is about estimating based on Bob's capabilities to get the work done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basing work-effort on something other than the skills and resources actually at hand is really setting a management target rather than developing a valid estimate. It may simply not be a valid estimate for &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; team, and assuming that it is will likely lead to a post-mortem blame-game rather than a finished set of deliverables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your mileage may vary. That's the point. :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-09-25T20:40:02.903" LastActivityDate="2015-09-25T20:40:02.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16299" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16309" CreationDate="2015-09-26T06:39:28.010" Score="2" ViewCount="176" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just been put in charge of a brand new team of a developer and designer, the first of each for our company. I've never had this role before, but I do have some design, development, and management experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This company has a been selling its product for over a year now. The development was outsourced and as such, the development process is a new concept to this company. In addition, the design that did exist in the company prior was only graphically focused as opposed to user focused. There is a long list of outstanding bugs and technical debt on the backlog and there is no real design or researched foundation for the product that exists today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a limited amount of time to turn this product into something usable by the clients we have been trying to sell to. What should be the first thing I tackle? How do I handle this role while still trying to figure out this role. How do I facilitate a brand new team in working together? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20553" LastActivityDate="2015-09-27T19:04:39.323" Title="New to Project Management with a new team on a short deadline" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16279" CreationDate="2015-09-26T10:52:13.950" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have a &quot;soft&quot; product that could take anywhere from a few days to years to create, you are new to this work, and you do not want to rely on SMEs.  This is very simple to schedule because neither accuracy or precision of either the estimate or planning value is possible.  All you need is one line--create regulation--and load everyone's name in that package and then create the duration to equal whatever arbitrary deadline you were given.  There's no way to track against it so don't bother trying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seriously, you need SMEs who will be part of the regulation developing process.  And even then, your estimate range will be huge so the accuracy of your planning value will be rather low anyway.  If you are used to tangible products that are built over and over again on multiple projects, where your forecasts have a high degree of reliability and validity, you will have culture shock with a more soft product such as this.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-09-26T10:52:13.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15823" CreationDate="2015-09-26T14:25:02.490" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the acceptance criteria, I recommend adding &quot;how-to-demo&quot; descriptions to associated User Stories.&#xA;The Product Owner should know how to delight the business people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20668" LastActivityDate="2015-09-26T14:25:02.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7937" CreationDate="2015-09-26T17:54:27.623" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The frequency of releases in a Sprint is not defined by definition and this could vary on need basis of the Project to the scope definition of a release by the Product Owner. Though majority of the teams prefer to do the release in the end of the iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another import aspect of a release is the &lt;strong&gt;Velocity&lt;/strong&gt; of the team. This term is not talked about in any of the answers. &lt;strong&gt;Velocity&lt;/strong&gt; is the average of the total number of Story points Story points completed by the Scrum team. The same is calculated based on the following points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In every Sprint planning meeting, Scrum team picks stories. These stories are given Story points based on their complexity. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the demo meetings the Story points of the &quot;Completed Stories&quot; is added to get a number.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is done with every Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Over a period of few Sprints the average of this total is calculated. This is called Velocity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The role of Product Owner includes, keeping a well prioritized and defined &lt;strong&gt;Backlog&lt;/strong&gt;. This high priority Stories of the Backlog should also have Story Points. Based on the Some of Story Points the Product Owner wants to completed and included on a release and the Velocity of the team the number of Sprints needed to make a release could be calculated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Number of Sprint needed for a release = Total Number of Story Points to be Completed / Velocity of the team&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would be helpful to get a release date. Thus, a Product Owner gets an option to change the release date or the Scope of the release based on the Velocity of the team. This could result in a release after 5 Sprints of more than 5 releases in the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13556" LastActivityDate="2015-09-26T17:54:27.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16305" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-27T09:31:49.683" Score="1" ViewCount="123" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new as a project manager. I was told that I have to write a project charter for a new project that I will have to manage. Are there any templates explaining what has to be in that charter?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand it as some kind of contract, but a contract between who? How can I precisely define the scope of the projects? The deadlines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20673" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-09-27T12:03:44.177" LastActivityDate="2015-09-27T12:03:44.177" Title="How can I find project charter resources?" Tags="&lt;project-charter&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16305" CreationDate="2015-09-27T12:01:20.533" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Finding Information and Templates for Project Charters&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia does a good job of explaining the purpose of a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_charter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;project charter&lt;/a&gt;. It even includes a link to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hitdocs.com/project-charter-template-docx/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sample template&lt;/a&gt;, although any given template may or may not suit a particular project's needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A template is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a substitute for understanding how to charter a project. However, searching the web for some variation of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;project charter template,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PRINCE2 project charter, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PMBOK project charter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;will turn up lots of resources on the subject, including a wide variety of templates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-09-27T12:01:20.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16299" CreationDate="2015-09-27T12:20:00.557" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is no silver bullet.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project management processes, controls, and practices are subjects which take up entire books. Re-engineering your business processes in short order is not a reasonable expectation, and setting more appropriate expectations for your organization is probably the very first thing you should tackle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The role of a project manager is to provide structure, including formal processes and controls, to the projects in their portfolio. Therefore, once you have reasonable expectations in place, the second thing you should tackle is the lack of structured processes and practices within your organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-09-27T12:20:00.557" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16299" CreationDate="2015-09-27T19:04:39.323" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing to do is to get a prioritised backlog of work for the team. That way you ensure they are focusing on the most import work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prioritisation is usually based on two factors: the value of the work item and how long it will take to do. For example, a high value work item that is quick to do is an easy win and so would be high priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If possible, talk with the users/clients to work out the value of the bug fixes. Talk to the team about the technical debt and try and evaluate it. For example, if they can clear a bit of technical debt that will speed up future development, it could potentially be high value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have the backlog sorted the next focus would be on the effectiveness of the team. The best way to tackle this is to get the team together frequently to talk about what is going well and what is going badly. A lot of improvements may come from the team themselves. Other things may be outside of the team's control (e.g. maybe they don't have a server to test their work on). The items outside of their control could be something you might try to help them with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-09-27T19:04:39.323" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16311" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-28T13:35:00.430" Score="4" ViewCount="288" Body="&lt;p&gt;How should our team handle agile development when the development is pretty much steered by the final product designs, which were done in advance? In other words, how can we break down requirements into small INVEST user stories when the only artifacts you have are the FINAL (gold plated) designs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example - the designer designs a telephone with many buttons/features (call waiting, call block, etc). The business (for obvious reasons) wants to delivery value, quickly. So, my understanding suggests we might:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;first build a phone with no buttons that can RECEIVE calls, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;then build in some buttons purely for dialling, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;then build in a &quot;hang up&quot; button &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;then build a loudspeaker&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, we have no designs for the phone with X buttons at Stage 2. It seems like potentially more work/headache for a developer to build something that we know will need to be done (from a front-end point of view).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Solutions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;produce wireframes to support the incremental building of features (rather than JUST the end product designs)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;let the dev run with it - barebones, no design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope I've explained this sufficiently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20522" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-09-29T05:54:03.400" LastActivityDate="2015-09-29T05:54:03.400" Title="How can user stories meet INVEST criteria in design-led development?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16311" CreationDate="2015-09-28T17:22:17.837" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The challenge of reducing a project's full monty to an Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is one of the larger hurdles in moving from Waterfall to Agile project, or starting any project in Agile. In particular when Product Owners create all sorts of interdependencies between various features, arguing that they need to all be delivered in Phase 1. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would argue that the key step to manage is carving out a MVP from the overall project. In your telephone example I would go even further and say that RECEIVE CALLS is almost nice-to-have. The MVP IMHO could be a telephone that can handle an ACTIVE CALL, without specifying DIAL NUMBER or RECEIVE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/11WXh.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/11WXh.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A suggested recipe:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scope out features&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a process mindmap&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Carve out an MVP, as in the graph above&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Follow Lean UX principles using low-fidelity artefacts (mock-ups, wireframes) until your certainty of the key features improves.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get stakeholder input, review, refine, reprioritise.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the PO has trouble prioritising, you can consider moving from a feature list to a behavioural inventory of Jobs That Need to Get Done. Prioritise jobs by a value dimension (amount of time needed, associated cost, manual steps involved) and then it often becomes more apparent as to what needs to be done in which order and which sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As your process is Designer-led, he/she needs to be 1-2 weeks ahead of the Scrum team implementing the backlog in order to get User Stories into the backlog for refinement, sizing/estimation and then prioritisation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20641" LastActivityDate="2015-09-28T17:22:17.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16311" CreationDate="2015-09-28T19:41:11.857" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Supplementing the MVP approach, one exercise to help identify and avoid rework that can be hiding among the must-/want-to-/nice-to-haves is to map out the UX and identify potential knock-on effects (preferably as a team). I tend to do this by representing features as individual columns, each with vertical bands of &quot;done-ness&quot; (lowest band might be wireframe, mid might be prototype, top might be release-quality). I start with highest priority columns on the far left side, headed right as priority drops. As you reach each feature column, you can discuss how vertical (done) to take it before it becomes too expensive because of the effect on other features nearby. In your example, if you were to develop each column or feature to completion (&quot;gold&quot;), &lt;em&gt;one at a time&lt;/em&gt;, then each new feature would probably push the others back down to the wireframe band, and require building each one back up towards a release state. Sounds expensive! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2015-09-28T19:41:11.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16311" CreationDate="2015-09-29T05:47:45.933" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal of story decompostion isn't &lt;em&gt;reducto ad absurdum&lt;/em&gt;. The goal is to chunk up work into increments that can be done within a defined time-box. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By limiting the cone of uncertainty on the larger project and focusing on short-term deliverables, the business increases predictability at the potential cost of additional work as designs and implementations are refined (or even redefined) over time. Agile frameworks optimize for tight feedback loops and predictable cadence, rather than to avoid the possibilities of rework or redesign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Think Functions, Not Widgets&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's unclear from your post whether you're really building a phone as your deliverable, or if you're just using it as an example. If the latter, it might help to rethink how you view your intermediate deliverables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example, you assume that a phone is all about the user interface, e.g. the buttons. But what if you think about &lt;em&gt;functions&lt;/em&gt; instead? For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You might build a phone without a case, with just a breadboard and an exposed speaker/mic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You build a functioning keypad.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You refactor until you can wire the keypad into the phone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You build a functioning ringer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You refactor until the the ringer can be incorporated into the prototype.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You design a case.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You refactor the prototype to fit into the case.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Right-Sizing the Granularity of Increments&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think in terms of &lt;em&gt;potentially-shippable increments&lt;/em&gt;. The point isn't to reduce the user stories to the point of absurdity; the goal is to build &lt;em&gt;increments&lt;/em&gt; of your product in chunks that make sense for your project, and to let the self-organizing team figure out the &lt;em&gt;tasks&lt;/em&gt; needed to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using your example, having one user story per key on the keypad would be ridiculous. If the team thinks &quot;build a keypad prototype&quot; is sufficiently granular to deliver within a single iteration, do that!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, perhaps you work at a company that builds modern office-class SIP phones. In that case, a less granular story like &quot;build a protoype phone to fit this artist's rendering of a new case&quot; might be something that can be done within a single iteration using readily-available parts and know-how. In that event, there's no benefit to decomposing the story any further; just stand back and let your experienced, cross-functional team get it done!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-09-29T05:47:45.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16315" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16319" CreationDate="2015-09-29T09:54:56.030" Score="19" ViewCount="14475" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a lot of discussion about what should and what should not be allowed in daily stand ups. Some people say it should not include status updates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the definition of a status update?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum seems to say that you should do a status update e.g.: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What you did yesterday, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What you will do today and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any Impediments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is Kanban the same or different?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastEditorUserId="17870" LastEditDate="2015-09-30T15:26:04.330" LastActivityDate="2020-08-05T08:06:39.867" Title="Are daily stand ups the same for Kanban and Scrum teams?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16315" CreationDate="2015-09-29T11:00:03.797" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe it's the same in Kanban Daily Stand-up is an agile term used by many agile methodologies such as Scrum and Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16022" LastActivityDate="2015-09-29T11:00:03.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16315" CreationDate="2015-09-29T11:04:15.067" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found an answer to my question in a Kanban book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Kanban has caused standups to evolve into a discussion focussed on the kanban board, looking at blockers first, then impediments and then the rest of the cards on the wall instead of going to each person and getting their update&quot; - Kanban by David Anderson &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastEditorUserId="4364" LastEditDate="2015-09-29T14:57:51.770" LastActivityDate="2015-09-29T14:57:51.770" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16315" CreationDate="2015-09-29T11:15:28.630" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Scrum and Kanban stand-up are focused for the same goal. Speed up the progress of the team and remove any dependency within or outside the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Kanban the focus is more towards completing first, then to start first. If a task is worked by the team, they talk towards completing it and team discuss the same with the similar questions as Scrum. The main focus is to have minimum number of items in &quot;Work in Progress&quot; as soon as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13556" LastActivityDate="2015-09-29T11:15:28.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16315" CreationDate="2015-09-29T11:30:42.150" Score="12" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, a time-boxed daily stand-up with a structured format is mandated by the framework. If you don't have a daily stand-up, you aren't following the core Scrum methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban is less prescriptive, and doesn't actually mandate the daily stand-up as a formal ceremony. However, Kanban teams often borrow the practice from Scrum for the same reason that Scrum teams implement Kanban-style boards: because it's an effective agile practice that promotes a continuous inspect-and-adapt feedback loop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Status Pulls vs. Stand-Ups&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a big difference between a status pull and a daily stand-up. A status pull is when members of the team take turns reporting into a central authority (e.g. a line or project manager), while a daily stand-up is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/6657/4271&quot;&gt;commitment and coordination meeting&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;between&lt;/em&gt; the members of a team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile frameworks actively encourage other forms of status tracking and communication about the state of the project, and visible artifacts like the Sprint Backlog or kanban story board greatly reduce the need for formal status pulls. When there is information that can't be gleaned directly from framework artifacts, agile practitioners generally try to gather the necessary information through dialogue and conversations with team members rather than through formal reporting in a group setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Status pulls as a form of formal reporting are strongly discouraged in agile methodologies. I would go so far as to say that formal status pulls are inherently a &quot;project smell&quot; that indicates that there is a fundamental process problem with the agile implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Stand-Ups Defined&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-daily&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;defines a stand-up&lt;/a&gt; in a very specific way. The Scrum Guide says, in part:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Daily Scrum is a 15-minute time-boxed event for the Development Team to synchronize activities and create a plan for the next 24 hours. This is done by inspecting the work since the last Daily Scrum and forecasting the work that could be done before the next one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all agile framework mandate a daily stand-up. Kanban does not, but many Kanban teams still implement stand-ups as a way to foster collaboration and continuous improvement, and as a clearinghouse for issues that might impact flow or cadence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the framework or methodology, a stand-up is intended to provide a mini-planning meeting for the current day's work. The &quot;three questions&quot; typical of a daily stand-up in Scrum or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules/standupmeeting.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Extreme Programming&lt;/a&gt; are just a formula to assist teams in coordinating the day's work by helping everyone quickly identify items that are ready to be handed off, intra-team dependencies, and obstacles to progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any discussion items that don't fit within the time-box or the format of the meeting should be noted and addressed by team members outside of the stand-up. For example, Bob might say that he's unable to embiggen his widget because he's waiting on Alice to ensmallen her doohickey. Alice might respond that she's going to finish the doohickey today and will coordinate with Bob after the meeting, or she might tell him that they need to have a post-standup palaver to discuss the matter further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2015-09-29T11:30:42.150" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16227" CreationDate="2015-09-29T12:17:29.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Don't Stifle Active Collaboration&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 15-minute rule only applies to the formal ceremony of the daily stand-up. It is not intended to limit communication within the team; in fact, the underlying goal of the stand-up is to identify areas of planning or collaboration that need more attention!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team is adhering to the time-box of the formal meeting, and self-organizing to coordinate with one another afterwards, then the process is working exactly as it should. Furthermore, I would interpret the team's urge to collaborate as a sign that your team is committed, engaged, and largely self-directing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Don't Interfere with Organically-Evolved Processes&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More generically, a Scrum Master should be extremely careful not to dictate practices outside the formal ceremonies. The Scrum Master is there to coach the team on how to leverage the formal ceremonies such as the daily stand-up, but has no authority (and no reasonable incentive) to structure intra-team communications outside of those ceremonies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, a related question asked about the &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/8333/4271&quot;&gt;downsides of &quot;chit-chat&quot;&lt;/a&gt; on a project. In addition to the answers already posted there, I would add that it is not the Scrum Master's job to manage team efficiency. That doesn't mean you can't address inefficiencies as a Sprint Retrospective or bring it up as a blocker in a stand-up, but attempting to over-structure individual interactions is a common command-and-control smell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an extremely slippery slope. In my professional experience, &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; authoritarian interference with organic communications within the team damages &lt;em&gt;esprit de corps&lt;/em&gt;, and can even lead to a sort of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;learned helplessness&lt;/a&gt; that is much more damaging to the team's productivity than the &quot;wastefulness&quot; the interference was meant to control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2015-09-29T12:17:29.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16321" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-29T14:41:20.723" Score="1" ViewCount="107" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently looking for a not-so-complicated PM tool. I haven't done PM very deep so far, and my overall idea about PM and the representation in PM tools is about this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some employees who have time to work. There are projects which have to be realized. Projects consist of tasks, which are handled by employees, by spending their work on the tasks. Tasks can be split into sub tasks, can be prioritized and dependencies can be set between tasks. Nothing uncommon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What i expect from a PM tool is that i enter all these information into the tool, and the tool organizes the tasks in a way that the employees are assigned to tasks, and that the tasks are ordered according to their priorities, dependencies and availability of employees. (Ok, assigning employees to tasks is of course done by me.) So that a task starts no earlier than when employees for this task are available and dependencies are met. And when the last task is finished, the project is finished, so the tool tells me how long the project takes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been looking around for those tools for quite a while now (several hours searching on the web), but either no tool offers this functionality or it is not visible from the tool description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder, do i maybe have the wrong picture of a PM tool, and i should get a different view on PM in common, or do the tools exist and i have simply missed these features?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, GanttProject is basically what i'm thinking of, but the tasks still have to be moved by hand, if an employee is working on two overlapping tasks. And it has a bug (since 2008) that when an employee is on vacation, he is still working on the tasks. This simply makes the tool unusable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the basic question is: Does automatic task organization not work well in practice and does not exist therefore, or do i have missed it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The background: We are a small software development team with just a few people, so a complex PM suite for large companies (i'm thinking of Jira) would be somehow too much..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20695" LastActivityDate="2015-09-30T10:11:52.250" Title="Concepts of PM tools" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-10-11T13:00:00.373" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16322" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16330" CreationDate="2015-09-29T15:08:00.800" Score="3" ViewCount="1628" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any official definition of high level requirements? I've searched google for a while but its still confusing me a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a list of (Candidate) High Level Requirements.&#xA;And, I want to classify them as appropriate and inappropriate High Level Requirements. How can I do that? What criteria should I be checking against?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20698" LastEditorUserId="16715" LastEditDate="2015-09-30T16:07:23.880" LastActivityDate="2018-05-04T05:58:12.370" Title="How to find out the appropriate High Level Requirements?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16323" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16329" CreationDate="2015-09-29T17:37:13.133" Score="2" ViewCount="1165" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read a reference to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dsdm.org/content/10-moscow-prioritisation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MoSCoW prioritization&lt;/a&gt;. I'm confused about what the requirements are for each level:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Must Have&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should Have&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Could Have&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Won’t Have (this time)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do we need all four levels of prioritization?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20698" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-09-30T10:53:15.940" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T08:15:33.340" Title="How should we apply MoSCoW prioritization to our project requirements?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;definition&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16315" CreationDate="2015-09-29T18:46:35.967" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The daily standup is required in the Scrum framework.  It is often used by Kanban teams as well, but not part of formal Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal of the standup is the same whether used by Kanban or Scrum teams.  There are a few common formats for the standup including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The 3 Questions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 3 Questions is often a very popular format for newly forming standups where team members are just learning the basics of communicating their work items, learning to trust, and be transparent about what they are doing. The Scrum Guide uses the following &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-daily&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;examples&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What did I do yesterday that helped the Development Team meet the Sprint Goal?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What will I do today to help the Development Team meet the Sprint Goal?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Do I see any impediment that prevents me or the Development Team from meeting the Sprint Goal?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Walking the Board&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Walking the board is a great tool for getting individuals comfortable with interacting with the board, exhibiting that they understand the entire workflow process, starting to question other team members' work statuses, and building some leadership skills.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Blockers First&lt;/strong&gt; (perhaps &quot;Only Blockers&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blockers First is a good tool for getting teams into the problem solving/taking action mindset and focusing on continuous flow during the standup.  I've observed a number of mature Kanban teams that choose this as their primary standup format because they only need to focus on blocked items and trust the Kanban board silently communicates all other work items.  This requires a high degree of trust, transparency, and discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These formats do emphasize different problem areas the team may encounter and can be good tools for getting teams to focus on specific challenges they are encountering.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-09-29T20:51:00.973" LastActivityDate="2015-09-29T20:51:00.973" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16321" CreationDate="2015-09-30T10:11:52.250" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;IF you are serious about this I would say Excel or Google Sheets etc etc is probably hands down the best starting solution for any simple or small project it can also be scaled easily :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16022" LastActivityDate="2015-09-30T10:11:52.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15783" CreationDate="2015-09-30T10:40:47.213" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend to start high level with all the identified users and then drill down to stories for all the processes specific to each user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case you start with processes there might be certain scenarios where one process could work differently for different types of users.&#xA;For e.g. a basic Registration process could be different for an Admin user and an external customer. In this case it makes difficult to prepare a clear story map for all the scenarios.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a sample that might help you to get started&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/q3qop.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/q3qop.png&quot; alt=&quot;Sample Story Map&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20705" LastActivityDate="2015-09-30T10:40:47.213" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16323" CreationDate="2015-09-30T10:48:13.940" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoSCoW_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The MoSCoW method&lt;/a&gt; provides a framework for prioritizing based on bucket-sorting of features. It's meant to be flexible, so you have to customize it for your project. You can tweak the definitions and criteria for each level as needed, and may or may not need to make a distinction between &lt;em&gt;Should Have&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Could Have&lt;/em&gt; features. However, you most certainly need to maintain a distinction between &lt;em&gt;Must Have&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Won't Have&lt;/em&gt;, and whatever features are to some extent optional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Prioritization and Scope&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dsdm.org/content/10-moscow-prioritisation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;page you linked to&lt;/a&gt; in your original question contains sample definitions and filtering criteria for each level. I won't rehash their perfectly serviceable explanation, but perhaps it will be more clear if you think of it as a scoping exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Must Have&lt;/strong&gt; features are part of the minimum viable product, and must remain within scope.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Won't Have (This Time)&lt;/strong&gt;  features are explicitly out of scope for the current project, but might be revisited in future projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should Have / Could Have&lt;/strong&gt; features are in scope, but can be modified or descoped during the project lifecycle because they aren't essential for the minimum viable product.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Definitions and Filtering Criteria for Each Level&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The page you linked to in your original question contains sample definitions for each of the levels. In addition, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dsdm.org/content/10-moscow-prioritisation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;section 10.3 contains guidance&lt;/a&gt; on how to define each level &lt;em&gt;for your specific project&lt;/em&gt;, and how to determine categorization. It says, in part:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Prior to requirements capture, the definitions of Must Have, Should Have, Could Have and Won’t Have need to be agreed with the business. Some examples are described above. However, the Must Have definition is not negotiable. Any requirement defined as a Must Have will have a critical impact on the success of the project. The Project Manager or Business Analyst should challenge requirements if they are not obvious Must Haves; it is up to the Business Visionary or their empowered Business Ambassador to prove a requirement is a Must Have. If he/she cannot, it is a Should Have at best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put it another way, each project must:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Go through the exercise of defining each level as it applies to the current project.&lt;/strong&gt; Definitions can vary between organizations, and even between projects within a single organization unless the organization has created an internal standard.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have stakeholders justify each categorization, especially the Must Have category, based on &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; business drivers.&lt;/strong&gt; This will vary based on the goals of the project, and should be assessed within the context of the project's charter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-09-30T10:48:13.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16322" CreationDate="2015-09-30T13:08:44.400" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, &lt;em&gt;appropriate and inappropriate&lt;/em&gt; are subjective categories, and as such, they won't help you start a conversation about the requirements. I would go with &lt;strong&gt;does this requirement&lt;/strong&gt; - I'd ditch the high level as well - &lt;strong&gt;help my customers achieve their goals?&lt;/strong&gt; If the answer is yes, you have a requirement, if no, you don't have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the requirement is to have a button for cancel on a web page. If you ask &quot;how this button helps our customers to cancel our subscription?&quot;, you may conclude after a series of user interviews and A/B tests that they don't need a button, they are fine with a link. The first requirement was &lt;em&gt;inappropriate&lt;/em&gt; using your terms, and the second was &lt;em&gt;appropriate&lt;/em&gt;, and you figured out what to develop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-09-30T13:08:44.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16323" CreationDate="2015-09-30T13:16:19.623" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe you need all of them for having a conversation. First, you categorize all requirements, and then review the result and see what can be moved down on the list. After a couple of iterations, you'll have a pyramid of requirements: must on the top, won't have in the bottom. You'll use your resources on the top, and bring the rest to the next discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that the categorization can be done in short and long terms. For example, something now may fall into &lt;em&gt;could have&lt;/em&gt; now - an AWS infrastructure instead of a rack solution -, but may become &lt;em&gt;must have&lt;/em&gt; shortly - increase in the customer base, need scalability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-09-30T13:16:19.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16332" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-09-30T19:47:07.403" Score="2" ViewCount="87" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to determine a weighted average for the actual time spent on historical tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say for example each project has a task A. And task A varies in time spent depending on certain project variables. I want to calculate and accurate average and use this to compare the task performance for each project. However, I don't want the average skewed by extreme data points such as one project taking 10 times too long for what ever reason. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20709" LastActivityDate="2015-11-18T15:59:16.140" Title="Determining the best task average" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16332" CreationDate="2015-09-30T20:27:42.760" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have to understand the shape of the distribution for that task, which means you need a reasonable number of observations, i.e., historical data, so that the shape will develop.  Then, graph it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-09-30T20:27:42.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16332" CreationDate="2015-09-30T20:30:03.257" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure in what context you are using this task average or using weighting but here is a starting point:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First you need to determine if you data set is normally distributed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a good resource:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://statsthewayilikeit.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/tests-for-normality.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://statsthewayilikeit.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/tests-for-normality.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming your data set is normally distributed, the 3 most common &quot;averages&quot; will be your mean, median, or mode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not sure what these are, here's a resource:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.purplemath.com/modules/meanmode.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.purplemath.com/modules/meanmode.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyways, a data set that is normally distributed with very little skew will have a mean, median, and mode that are pretty close.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To identify/remove outliers, you may want to look at a histogram of your data or look at min/max values. the range, and 90 or 95% confidence intervals.  Another way is to do random sampling of the entire population. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly choose which &quot;average&quot; is most appropriate for your data set.  Median and mode averages are more resistant to outliers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you determine your dataset is not normally distributed, its a good time to start searching the web about non-normal stats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-09-30T20:30:03.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16332" CreationDate="2015-09-30T21:54:19.080" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's been a while since my last statistical classes, but I believe what you're looking for is to find out the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Standard Deviation&lt;/a&gt; of your data. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It'll be pretty much the same as suggested by David, in a less graphical view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Knowing your Standard Deviation, you'll be able to know what's the skewed data you have to discard on your calculation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2015-09-30T21:54:19.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16226" CreationDate="2015-09-30T22:25:12.447" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I organized, analysed client needs. What is the best method for&#xA;  presenting analysis information back to the client?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the comments on the question, this information is going to be used to present a RFP to the client, as mentioned by Dhiman (+1!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key factor here as far as I can see, is to understand &lt;strong&gt;who&lt;/strong&gt; is going to read this and &lt;strong&gt;how&lt;/strong&gt; this analysis is going to be used. By the way, it seems you're already doing actual work, but the contract isn't firmed yet, which is a risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, assuming the analysis is going to be used in a proposal, you could use any common format out there (like UML, mentioned by CG), but is vital to ensure that the &lt;em&gt;client knows how to read it&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind, before using any format, I'd suggest to agree the format with the client before structure it. If the client understands UML, go for it. If client prefers good old PowerPoints, no problems. If prototypes are a possibility, even better. As long as you both know &lt;em&gt;how the final product will look like&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2015-09-30T22:25:12.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16323" CreationDate="2015-10-01T00:07:35.883" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm preparing for the AEC and CSM, and it would probably help if you see this from a broader Agile perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Domain One of Agile Practices is Value-Driven Delivery. The &quot;Practices for Value-Drive Delivery&quot; include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assessing Value&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planning Value&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Delivering Value&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and so on...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Planning Value involves &quot;Customer-valued Prioritization&quot; with the intent to get the highest value products or features to the customer first. MoSCoW is just one of many options available to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As someone already explained, it's putting your requirement in buckets, or the way the book likes to say &quot;Affinity Groupings&quot; based on exactly those characteristics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Must Have&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should Have&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Could Have&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would like to Have (but not this time).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's simply up to you after that!!!  Other customer-value prioritization schemes you could use include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simple schemes (&quot;priority 1&quot;, &quot;priority 2&quot;, etc.);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Monopoly money (project budget represented with play money and customers allocate some portion of that fixed amount to the features they want most);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;100-point method (Dean Leffingwell and Don Widrig);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kano anlysis (Noriaki Kano's method for grouping into Exciters, Satisfiers, Dissatisfiers, and Indifferent).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So again, it's up to you how you execute it and you have more than just MoSCoW to choose from. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20711" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-10-01T08:15:33.340" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T08:15:33.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1151" CreationDate="2015-10-01T00:57:42.130" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Culture and paradigm shifts are necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Development Teams need to self-organize, break out of their roles, and work together.  Coders must assist with testing and documentation.  Testers must work with coders to improve code coverage early in the Sprint.  Communication is key.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Management needs to trust and empower their Development Teams.  Constantly asking for status updates is disruptive.  Micromanaging individuals defeats the possible productivity gains. Jeff Sutherland, co-creator of Scrum, considers the failure to remove organizational impediments the main obstacle in large organizations.  I would personally root cause that reason to ignorance of the framework at all levels, especially executive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; must be honored.  Violations, however minor, reduce the effectiveness of and therefore trust in the framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-01-25T16:57:06.943" LastActivityDate="2018-01-25T16:57:06.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16339" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16344" CreationDate="2015-10-01T02:21:36.587" Score="14" ViewCount="3895" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example, task like filter the bug's report from customer to create a new backlog to be discuss later on Kanban board which should be done everyday. Should I create the new card everyday like &quot;customer support &amp;amp; information xx/xx/xx&quot; or it shouldn't on the board at all since it's like a task not user story. But if I do that, I will not be able to know if someone is currently working on that task and done it yet for today or not. Or maybe it's one card that created only once and can move backward when it's a new day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12230" LastActivityDate="2020-01-30T10:32:04.337" Title="In kanban, what should we do about routine work in each day?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16340" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16343" CreationDate="2015-10-01T06:08:21.853" Score="1" ViewCount="1225" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to report risks and fill  out the field &quot;mitigation&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does risk mitigation normally mean: reducing the likelyhood/probability or the impact?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20715" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T13:42:53.640" Title="What is risk mitigation?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16339" CreationDate="2015-10-01T07:58:31.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest 2 approaches that might help&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) &lt;strong&gt;Sequester Approach&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here the tasks are listed separately in a sequestered box on a separate &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.personalkanban.com/pk/designpatterns/the-sequestering-approach-and-personal-kanban/#sthash.pzEiyvWu.dpbs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;personal Kanban&lt;/a&gt; whiteboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a new personal board space&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The structural representation of the board resembles a table&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Rows&lt;/em&gt; - a new row for each recurrent task&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Columns&lt;/em&gt; - task name, repetition frequency, last done, next due and current status (whether done or not done)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The personal board also accounts separately for WIP count and could help you visualize the occupancy in recurrent tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) &lt;strong&gt;A custom approach while using any tool to manage your cards&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;em&gt;though this might be repetitive process in itself!&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a recurrent task and add a &lt;strong&gt;tag&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;color identification&lt;/strong&gt; to distinguish between normal and recurring tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assign a due date for the task&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Follow this cycle on board&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Move recurrent cards to &quot;&lt;em&gt;ToDo&lt;/em&gt;&quot; column along with all non-recurrent tasks. This will help you to manage your WIP efficiently&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you are actually working on the task, move it to &quot;&lt;em&gt;InProgress&lt;/em&gt;&quot; column&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once done with task, move the recurrent card back to backlog with the next due date assigned&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Repeat the same cycle every time while planning your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20705" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T07:58:31.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16339" CreationDate="2015-10-01T09:46:36.847" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not track these on the Kanban system, because they are not items of customer value, that travel through the value stream. They are more like meetings or coffee or toilet breaks, or ordering office supplies, or upgrading the software on your computer and stuff like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are not things that are part of the value stream that delivers customer value and do not belong on the Kanban board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="763" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T09:46:36.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16340" CreationDate="2015-10-01T10:24:28.247" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In risk mitigation you look through your project looking for risks, their probability and their impact. After that create scenarios what you'll do in case the risk happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you are doing construction in East Asia. The risk is the monsoon season starts earlier (it will definitely start, but the risk is that it starts earlier than you expect) and you'll do A and B in order to keep the project going and keep your employees safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example for IT. There is a risk that users are going to cancel their subscriptions to your service if you change a certain feature. As a mitigation, before launch you'll do an A/B test to see the if the risk is real, moreover you make it possible to turn the feature back on in case the number of users decreases more than you expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll put all these into the document and ask other experts for review and insight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T10:24:28.247" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16339" CreationDate="2015-10-01T10:27:56.500" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd create a card for these with a &lt;em&gt;week N&lt;/em&gt; tag. In Kanban it is important that all the work you do is visible, but it does not require you to over administer the project. If you have a work item (card) that shows that there is this work going on, and you track it weekly, I believe you are going to be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this work is not visible, you can wrongly assume that your capability is X, but in real life it is way below X.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T10:27:56.500" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16332" CreationDate="2015-10-01T10:35:11.450" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on my experience, average is not the best way to go, because of the extremes, you mentioned in your question. I'd rather go with David's response and Troy Magennis' work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/FocusedObjective/lkce-cycle-time-analytics-and-forecasting-troy-magennis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.slideshare.net/FocusedObjective/lkce-cycle-time-analytics-and-forecasting-troy-magennis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Draw a distribution diagram with your historical data (see slide 15) and pick the time with is at the 85% of the graph. This point will give a &lt;em&gt;most likely&lt;/em&gt; probably of finishing a task. Here is a short tutorial on how to do this for smaller and less complex project(s):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2013/02/when-will-it-be-done/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2013/02/when-will-it-be-done/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T10:35:11.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16250" CreationDate="2015-10-01T11:27:14.763" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd let the testers continue to log the bugs, but have them logged to the backlog where the bug seems to be a pre existing issue. By default I think these should go to the bottom of the backlog (that's how Jira worked last time I used it). Whoever is acting as the PO can then process these periodically and prioritise them into the relevant place on the backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest against having a separate place to log these issues. What happens if one is in the wrong place and needs to be moved? (manual work to do so) or when you want to put them on the plan? Also, it feels like this may be 'hiding' them in an 'out of view out of mind' kind of a way. If there are critical quality issues with your product you need to know about them. Possibly having them weighing down Jira as a good way to do that, fixing that by hiding them from Jira is not going to benefit the business in the long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you said, it's good Scrum has helped you identify this issue early on. Hopefully you can course correct now and get those bugs fixed before building more on top of shaky foundations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20707" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T11:27:14.763" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16340" CreationDate="2015-10-01T11:36:17.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using strict definitions, mitigation is what you do proactively to reduce either or both the probability and/or impact of a threat.  After you perform the mitigation, you may end up with zero probability the threat will occur or have some residual risk remaining that is acceptable.  A contingency plan is what you have in place after the threat occurs or when a certain trigger point occurs.  So this is reactive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is where it becomes complex.  We have a tendency to treat threats as discrete when in fact a threat is typically in a chain of threats.  In other words, when on threat occurs, it becomes a risk factor of other threats to occur.  Therefore, your contingency, or reactive plan, for the first threat is really a mitigation plan for the next set of threats.  For example, when you start your car, you assume and accept some level of risk of a spontaneous tire failure.  You mitigate this by rotating your tires at a set frequency, maintaining proper pressure, inspecting, etc.  However, you still have some residual threat.  If that threat occurs, you have a spare tire as your contingency plan.  However, you now have other threats such as changing your tire next to the highway with the threat of getting hit, being stranded at night in the winter on a lonely, deserted road.  And this continues on.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would recommend not getting bogged down with strict definitions.  Risk management is about resilience.  It is about looking at the entire chain of linked events and breaking the chain where you can or being able to continue if you can't break it by breaking another link down the line.  Call it mitigation, contingency, recovery, plan B, avoidance, whatever.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EXCEPT, if you're studying for the PMP.  Then learn the strict definitions.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T11:36:17.060" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16340" CreationDate="2015-10-01T13:42:53.640" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately a lot of the time the concepts of &quot;risk mitigation&quot; and &quot;risk response&quot; are conflated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several categories of risk response, of which mitigation is one. Specifically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Risk Avoidance.&lt;/strong&gt; This is a response where you are reducing probability and/or impact to nil, usually by changing some aspect of the project like scope. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Risk Transfer.&lt;/strong&gt; Here you are handing responsibility for the risk to a third party. For example, if there is a liability risk you could transfer that risk by purchasing appropriate insurance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Risk Acceptance.&lt;/strong&gt; This is basically a non-response, you have identified a risk but either you can't do anything about it or the impact of the risk is so minor that it isn't worth the effort to address it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Risk Mitigation.&lt;/strong&gt; This response implies that you are reducing probability and/or impact of a risk, but the final probability/impact remain non-zero. These could be proactive approaches (e.g. we mitigate the risk that FDA won't approve our drug by seeking regular feedback from them on our licensure plan), or reactive (e.g. having a fallback plan in place in case the risk is realized).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Risk Sharing.&lt;/strong&gt; Here you are sharing the risk with a third party, for example a sub-contractor. Note that in this case you are also likely going to have to share some benefits.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T13:42:53.640" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16349" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16350" CreationDate="2015-10-01T14:44:51.713" Score="6" ViewCount="174" Body="&lt;p&gt;We recently hired a senior developer however he has issues communicating. There is a bit of a language barrier but even when spoken to in his own language he is difficult to communicate with. I am never sure if he has understood what he has been told or asked and he does not answer questions in details but need to be asked for details. Any recommendations? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16640" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T21:17:13.803" Title="New developer has trouble communicating" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16349" CreationDate="2015-10-01T16:06:56.350" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing here is, &lt;strong&gt;Do you want to keep that developer or not?&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think this is only the communication problem than it can be worked upon (considering he is willing to contribute too to this exercise). But, if you think there are other issues too like &lt;strong&gt;Attitude issue, not willing to improve and learn, he is not technically that much sound as expected from his role and position&lt;/strong&gt;, then you should start looking for other developer, because if he don't want to improve and learn then you may not be able to do anything and all your efforts will go in vain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, coming back to the point considering he is technically sound, &lt;strong&gt;willing to improve and Communication is the only problem&lt;/strong&gt;. Then this can be sorted out &lt;em&gt;(with a little babysitting and micro management)&lt;/em&gt;. Sometimes, as a part of team management we need to groom the team member and make him comfortable with the Team, Working culture, Processes and day-to-day activities. Possibly he is quite an introvert and has a lot of hesitation (which is normally not expected from people of his role and experience, but exceptions are always there).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First tell him what he has to do&lt;/strong&gt; i.e. about his tasks and then have reverse KT from him at that moment itself (start with his own language if other are comfortable too). Ask him to tell what he has been told to do. Brain storm him. The whole idea is to make him speak and feel comfortable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then, ask him to drop a mail as soon as he reaches his seat after the discussion, so that you too can re-verify what he is going to do. Sometimes, people are not good at Oral communication but they are fine with written one (as they don't have to face the person and this make them less hesitate)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have informal talks with him&lt;/strong&gt; (this is what I use to do with new members). I take them to tea/coffee breaks where I spent 10-15 mins. with him/her along with other members and have informal talks like about his last company, his earlier role etc. and then adding some humor to the content. This all makes them feel good and increases their comfortable level (but no talks about the work in initial phase)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Organize some semi-formal sessions or team meetings like new technology sessions, after release meetings, one-to-one issue discussion for carrier path etc. Monthly review is the thing we use to have for discussing the work and future scope and any issue (personal or official) being faced by the team member. It happens that sometimes they are not able to perform because of some other problem but you might be able to advise him.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gradually, you will see improvement in both his communication and his work, but don't expect anything in 1 day/week. &lt;strong&gt;But if you are really running out of time (as per your release schedule), see other issues too with him and don't have any time to put in this exercise then opt for the other option.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17870" LastEditorUserId="17870" LastEditDate="2015-10-01T16:12:06.407" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T16:12:06.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16351" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-01T16:08:33.727" Score="1" ViewCount="321" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently working on my PMP certification, I was wondering what must be the&#xA;right characteristics that will define a real project manager, i will define this characteristics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leadership, command authority.&#xA;Quick sifting abilities.&#xA;re-evaluate project priorities frequently.&#xA;Keep excellent communication with stakeholders.&#xA;Excellent expertise in project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this is not an easy question to answer, but i´d like to know more about the experts!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20710" LastEditorUserId="20710" LastEditDate="2015-10-02T14:16:55.053" LastActivityDate="2015-10-02T14:16:55.053" Title="Characteristics of a real project manager" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;technical-leader&gt;&lt;leadership&gt;&lt;project-leader&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-10-03T15:13:41.303" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16352" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16355" CreationDate="2015-10-01T16:59:38.207" Score="4" ViewCount="501" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a program advisory I need to schedule 5 projects in the next year but one of them will be agile (the first in our business).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of the projects that are waterfall are easy to schedule: &#xA;Authorisation/architecture/development/tests/delivery&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I schedule a 2 years project from a high level management perspective, using the Agile methodology?  What are the main phases of agile development?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17454" LastEditorUserId="17454" LastEditDate="2015-10-01T17:23:02.210" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T20:00:55.700" Title="How to prepare a schedule from Waterfall to Agile in software developement" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;&lt;transition&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16352" CreationDate="2015-10-01T18:33:29.383" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Schedule the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and business goal milestones&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Identify the minimum viable product (MVP) that you can roll out to the end users (or a subset of end users) that makes business sense. Working with the team you can get a forecast (not a commitment) of when this can be accomplished. Let us say that this will take 6 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind though that your team doesn't have any experience with agile development. So, you will have to forecast this very conservatively. My recommendation is that you should form a team and run at least 3 sprints before you can get a reasonable idea of velocity that can be used for forecasting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From there &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/goal-oriented-agile-product-roadmap/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;identify the business goal milestones that you want to accomplish&lt;/a&gt; until you reach your 1.0 release of the software. This can be a quarterly goal, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These business goals are what you schedule from a high level management perspective, not functional phases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind though that you will learn things about the product from stakeholders viewing the working code at the end of each sprint as well as from end user feedback after you roll out the MVP. Also the development team will learn more about the technology the more they work on it. And based on all this feedback be prepared to revise your business goals. When you reach the end of those two years the 1.0 release may look very different from how you visualize it today. But it is guaranteed to be a much better fit for the purpose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T18:33:29.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16352" CreationDate="2015-10-01T20:00:55.700" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't is the simple answer.  There are no phases.  There is already an assumption that the project is two years.  This is incorrect, you should only recognize that you have 2 years of budget to fund a project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile scrum teams schedule 5 things: standups, plannings, reviews, retrospectives, and iterations.  You could schedule a scrum team with 2 week iterations to have about 50 iterations over 2 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Realistically, the project schedule is unknown to you.  Fund the team that will work on the project.  Assuming it is a scrum team, the product owner, working directly with the customer, is responsible for generating the product backlog and prioritizing it.  This will result in an initial product roadmap that identifies in which order business valuable features will be iteratively delivered to the customer.  The initial roadmap will not tell you the duration of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned in another post, fund the team's operation for around 3 iterations to establish an initial velocity.  Using the team velocity it is possible to start generating a very rough forecast of the project duration assuming the backlog is fully built out and all items are roughly estimated.  In this instance, if the forecast is +/- 6 months of the 2 years of budget thats pretty healthy.  If not, this is your first hint that its time to start doing some expectation management or risk mitigation.  This is when Agile stakeholders also learn that Agile project &quot;schedules&quot; are living documents that should change frequently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this is the project &quot;schedule.&quot;  It should now communicate the order and rough timing in which the team thinks it can deliver value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This Agile &quot;schedule&quot; is not a commitment.  It is a forecast and the customer/stakeholders should understand the assumptions and variability in the forecast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concept of a Waterfall project schedule is gone, since it is unrealistic to think that a 2 year plan will materialize as planned two years down the road.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Iterative delivery, smaller feedback loops, and building customer trust replace the project schedule on truly Agile teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;But wait!  My two years is based on a fixed scope/budget agreement with the customer!&quot;  Its time to recognize the risk that the rest of your organization is still operating in a waterfall mindset and the friction between the two methodologies will probably produce mediocre results.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Agile methodologies like scrum to provide maximum benefit, they need to be adopted throughout the org, not just at the delivery team level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T20:00:55.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16357" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-01T20:39:26.357" Score="4" ViewCount="84" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to setup a manual testing hierarch in Jira that can be used iteratively?&#xA;For example, the following would be a hierarchy checklist:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Testing&#xA;Windows, iOS&#xA;Windows Desktop, Windows Web, iOS Desktop, iOS Safari&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then once checklist is complete, be able to clone the entire hierarch and start again on a new iteration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20729" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2015-10-02T09:55:50.843" LastActivityDate="2015-10-03T15:27:51.537" Title="Is there a way to setup a manual testing hierarchy in Jira that can be used iteratively?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16349" CreationDate="2015-10-01T21:17:13.803" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Communication is a two way street.  Recognize that the problem may not just be on his end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have 2 legitimate concerns that need to be addressed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) You are not sure if he is understanding what you are trying to convey &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) You are having trouble understanding what he is trying to convey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Communication issues are rarely resolved overnight.  Informal coaching is usually the way to go.  It's important you understand the individual's communication style and personality.  Myers Briggs or Green/Yellow/Blue/Red personality assessments can often be a good starting point, but recognize each person is unique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work out your communication issues 1:1 with him first.  Be transparent and avoid statements that project or accuse behaviors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I am having trouble understanding what you are trying to communicate&quot; is better than, &quot; You are not communicating with me.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If making a long term investment in improving communication isn't worth the return, its time to cut the developer and do a better job screening candidates in the future to ensure they bring the right soft skills/style to the team as well as technical skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T21:17:13.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12668" CreationDate="2015-10-02T06:37:51.737" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is another option, it is more of a time tracking option on top: &lt;a href=&quot;http://cronforce.com/blog/cronforce-releases-jira-time-tracking-add-on/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://cronforce.com/blog/cronforce-releases-jira-time-tracking-add-on/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20733" LastActivityDate="2015-10-02T06:37:51.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16361" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16382" CreationDate="2015-10-02T08:34:37.977" Score="19" ViewCount="10727" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you are using the Scrum framework, a Sprint cycle involves development and QA. At the end of the Sprint the tasks worked upon and tested are showcased and released.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, for a team of 3 to 4 developers there would be 1 QA resource. What are the developers expected to do when QA is happening? Since the number of developers is much higher than the number of QA testers, bug fixes get done very quick and developers are left with nothing to do towards the end of the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is expected of the developers during this QA testing while following Scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14864" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-10-04T09:51:12.857" LastActivityDate="2020-08-16T02:25:20.047" Title="What are developers expected to do during testing in the latter half of each Sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16362" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16387" CreationDate="2015-10-02T09:16:16.577" Score="0" ViewCount="11739" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can we do the effort estimation for Production support projects?&#xA;Need to decide count of resources in L1,L2 and L3?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have 2 projects -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1)Apps with few months of Ticket details &#xA;2)Apps with No Ticket Details &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Approach I am planning to take : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1)Case 1:I have ticket details and i have taken weightages related to technical ,application complexity etc. and productivity factor i.e. no of tickets per month that can be solved by L1,L2,L2,%distribution of L1,L2,L3, Average Tickets for L1,L2andL3 and based on that decided on the L1,L2,L3 count &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2)Case 2:I have taken the application size i.e. LOC, converted it to Function Point and based on productivity factor decided number of resources, then decided on the some % distribution to L1,L2 and L3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20735" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2017-09-08T21:23:14.273" LastActivityDate="2017-09-08T21:23:14.273" Title="Effort Estimation in Production Support Projects" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2017-09-08T21:25:10.410" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16361" CreationDate="2015-10-02T09:49:07.227" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a bit unusual setup you have there, but what developers can do is to start preparing for the next sprint, sort out technical challenges with the new user stories, or do refactoring on the existing code base.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second option, the &quot;Scrum Book&quot; would suggest that the developers shall do testing as well (cross functional team idiom), of course one developer cannot test what he/she implemented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third option, you may want to think about having two sprints parallel but shifted. One for QA, and one for development. The QA would start half cycle later than the development. With this setup you'll have developers and QA working without being idle for a long time. Just make sure that you have capacity in each sprint for bug fixes, otherwise the quality of the code will decrease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourth option, you may hire another QA to speed up testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-10-02T09:49:07.227" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16357" CreationDate="2015-10-02T10:01:42.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on the below sites, there is no good way to setup hierarchy in Jira. There are plugins, but it seems they have been stopped or abandoned. Of course there is &lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.almworks.jira.structure&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Structure&lt;/a&gt;, but that's not free and may not be the thing you are looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/14335/epic-feature-user-story-tasks-hierarchy-in-jira&quot;&gt;Epic Feature User Story Tasks Hierarchy in Jira&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/323310/how-do-i-create-epic-story-task-hierarchy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/323310/how-do-i-create-epic-story-task-hierarchy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/29386/want-to-create-a-multi-level-hierarchy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/29386/want-to-create-a-multi-level-hierarchy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/agile/jira-agile-user-s-guide/working-with-epics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://confluence.atlassian.com/agile/jira-agile-user-s-guide/working-with-epics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2015-10-02T10:01:42.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16351" CreationDate="2015-10-02T10:20:14.943" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not an easy question to answer. The answer varies from company to company, from culture to culture. So collected some existing qualities that I can resonate with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found this list on &lt;a href=&quot;http://99u.com/articles/6946/top-10-characteristics-of-great-project-managers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;u99&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Command authority naturally&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Possess quick sifting abilities, knowing what to note and what to ignore&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set, observe, and re-evaluate project priorities frequently&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask good questions and listen to stakeholders&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not use information as a weapon or a means of control&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adhere to predictable communication schedules&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Possess domain expertise in project management as applied to a particular field&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Exercise independent and fair consensus-building skills when conflict arises&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cultivate and rely on extensive informal networks inside and outside the firm to solve problems that arise&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look forward to going to work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is another &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140626180040-23030512-10-qualities-of-an-effective-project-manager&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;list from linkedin&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Good communicator&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Effective leadership skills&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Good decision maker&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set clear vision&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sound technical knowledge&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Good at team-building&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thrive under pressure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Good negotiation skills&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Empathetic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Enthusiastic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would add that &lt;strong&gt;they improve themselves, and want their team members do the same without being asked&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-10-02T10:20:14.943" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16351" CreationDate="2015-10-02T11:37:42.227" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a tough one to answer.  I think a lot of discussion on this topic one might find out there is not much more than hyperbole.  There have been some studies on leadership, where some traits were identified such as a high degree of motivation and drive, tolerance of high stress, competitiveness, impatience, tendency to be vision oriented, and other so called type A attributes.  A lot of these studies are correlation based, not necessarily cause and effect.  But management is different than leadership and project management is different than management.  PM touches everything and everybody, starting like at age six.  Every profession, job, and trade, even those that attract type B attributes, have to perform projects and those people certainly perform projects ranging from outstanding to poorly, just like those people who are more type A.  So I would guess that even less of a correlation would be found with characteristics of a good PM than what was found on those studies on leadership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While anecdotal, I have never noticed any consistent correlation between what I have thought was good PMing and a personality trait or characteristic.  I've observed contrasting strengths and weaknesses, where some hard charging type As were fantastic in some PM tasks while miserable in others and vice versa with type Bs.  I do, however, think there is a selection bias and halo effect, where certain attributes are selected despite performance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in my most humble opinion I don't think there is an answer for this question as of now.  I do not think there is a substantiated set of characteristics that would reliably predict PM success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-10-02T11:37:42.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16361" CreationDate="2015-10-02T11:50:44.710" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you are not really practising scrum but 'timeboxed waterfall'. With this approach each sprint is it's own mini waterfall project, with dev up front and testing at the end. As you have identified this results in wasted time as testers have little to do at the start of the sprint and devs have little to do at the end of the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead the team should be working to ensure everyone is as fully employed as possible (&lt;em&gt;note, not 100% utilised&lt;/em&gt; see comments below). During the daily standups and at sprint planning your team should try to work out how they can deliver something to the testers immediately, and then iterate on that during the sprint so the testers can be testing the functionality in parts as it is delivered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A common part of the standup might be for a tester to say they have nothing to work on later that day. Perhaps a dev then offers to fix a couple bugs they know then can close that morning rather than starting something bigger. That then fills a gap for the tester while another dev is finishing off a piece of work for them to start testing on tomorrow. No one is busting a gut, but you've got a higher throughput of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20707" LastEditorUserId="20707" LastEditDate="2015-10-05T13:19:30.140" LastActivityDate="2015-10-05T13:19:30.140" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16361" CreationDate="2015-10-02T15:13:51.697" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Typically for a team of 3 to 4 developers, there would be 1 QA resource&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's your problem there. There are three roles in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v1/scrum-guide-us.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt;, Product Owner, Scrum Master and Development Team Member. Your Development team is meant to be a multifunctional team working towards the same goals. It's fine to have people with different skills (in QA, in development), but if you have team members who only can do very specific things (such as testers who can only manual test) that is a problem you need to fix. Test automation is a useful common ground between Devs and Testers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17705" LastActivityDate="2015-10-02T15:13:51.697" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16361" CreationDate="2015-10-02T16:37:22.490" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;They could be doing a number of things.  What they should be doing depends on your organization's Scrum/XP maturity but here are some common items:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;QA work - yes devs can QA, whether thats writing new automated tests, upping existing test coverage or reducing test complexity, doing manual testing, or performance/load testing, devs can and should QA.  &lt;strong&gt;The entire team owns the quality of the product.&lt;/strong&gt;  Especially disciplined devs will use TDD, so that most of the testing is done before the story goes to QA.  Scrum teams with 0 QA resources are quite common.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tech Debt/Refactoring/Defect Fixing&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Spikes for bigger functional stories coming in the next sprint&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Learning new skills both soft and technical.  End of a sprint is a great time (like any other) for continuous improvement to occur.  Have a dev that thinks it's not his job to test.  Pair him up with a QA resource during the second half of the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Grooming the backlog/working with PO to elicit technical considerations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Learning to write and groom stories/tasks that are small so that not all testing occurs in the second half of the iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Improving tooling or processes around continuous integration.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take-away, if your dev's are idle during the second half of your iteration while QA does testing, you've got some opportunities to reap the benefits of true scrum/XP practices instead of living the mini-waterfall scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-10-04T16:49:47.490" LastActivityDate="2015-10-04T16:49:47.490" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16372" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16376" CreationDate="2015-10-02T16:57:33.730" Score="31" ViewCount="29163" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've run into a constant issue. When a project starts, the client typically has a list of functionalities to be built in to the application. As a team we would like to follow Scrum. But the next thing the client asks is for a go-live date. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The client has his own deadlines to go to the market. So it's valid that he needs to know a date so that he can tell the rest of the business when the application arrives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the team can't plan out more than one sprint at a time, there is typically no visibility on the end date. The client says, &quot;I've already told you exactly what functionality I need. Tell me when you can build this app.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you deal with a situation like this in agile or Scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14864" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-10-03T15:10:30.143" LastActivityDate="2018-08-04T13:11:32.873" Title="How do you schedule delivery dates in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;release-plan&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="24" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16372" CreationDate="2015-10-02T17:21:51.773" Score="10" Body="&lt;h3&gt;You have historical data about your team&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only tool you have in Scrum to help this situation is your velocity. I believe you know your velocity - how many story points you do in a sprint -, check the product backlog and do planning on each user story. Using these two, you'll have an estimation on a possible delivery date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;delivery in weeks = ((number of point in backlog) * (number of weeks of a sprint)) &#xA;   / velocity&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is highly inaccurate, but based on what you have that's all you can do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a product owner (PO), he/she should negotiate the deliveries with the customer based on your progress and delivered user stories. The PO should figure out which user stories are must for your customer to start his business. It is a subset of the whole product backlog, and therefore the formula above should provide a better estimate, because the uncertainty is lower than for the whole backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternative one, you can check your historical data and see how long did it take to deliver a similar app, check the risks you see and provide an estimation using this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;time to deliver the previous app + &#xA;   sum(additional length of each risk when they happen)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternative two, you can try the way Kanban handles these situations: &lt;a href=&quot;http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2013/02/when-will-it-be-done/&quot;&gt;http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2013/02/when-will-it-be-done/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;You do not have historical data about your team&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case you don't know the velocity and has no historical data, you can try to talk to your customer and figure out which are the most crucial features. Sit down with your team and estimate the project in the old fashioned way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the mean time, you can try to &lt;strong&gt;show the benefits of continuous delivery to your customer&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;Frequent talking and continuous delivery is the key to Agile&lt;/strong&gt;, I recommend to start with them + the initial estimate. If you customer understands them and the benefits - frequent deliveries are very helpful when one schedules upstream projects -, it is going to be a win-win.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2015-10-02T17:31:55.373" LastActivityDate="2015-10-02T17:31:55.373" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16372" CreationDate="2015-10-02T17:39:05.720" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea of Scrum is for a team to focus on delivering what a customer wants. To do this we do some work, demonstrate it, listen to feedback and then adapt. This approach recognises that it is hard for a customer to get their requirements spot on up front. It is much easier to build a successful product when you have constant feedback and adaptation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a client wants to fix the scope and the end date of the project then they will not get the full benefit of the Scrum approach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest talking to your clients and selling them on the idea that the Scrum approach gives them the chance to shape the product to what they want. There will be some uncertainty about the end date, but this is offset against the value of getting the product right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course there will be some situations where the client has a hard deadline. In those situations we work down the prioritised backlog of requirements as far as we can in the time allowed. If the client introduces new requirements as the project proceeds it may reduce how far down the list you get. In effect what is delivered and when it is delivered will be driven as much by the customer as by the delivery team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-10-02T17:39:05.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16372" CreationDate="2015-10-03T15:06:08.000" Score="30" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile release planning is based on &lt;em&gt;fixed-length, normed-capacity cycles&lt;/em&gt; that operate on dynamically-planned and dynamically-scoped features. In Scrum, fixed-date release planning &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be handled by controlling scope to meet the deadlines, as you cannot have both fixed-date and fixed-scope deadlines simultaneously. This is rarely a practical problem, but can be a political one in non-agile shops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How to Perform Agile Release Planning&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile release planning is based on iterations. In order to do calendar- or time-based release planning in Scrum:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The entire Product Backlog is given a rough estimate, usually at the level of epics rather than detailed user stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A fixed Sprint length is determined. 2-4 weeks are common values; this length should not change during the lifecycle of the project without recalculating Sprint capacity and adjusting release schedules.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A velocity is calculated based on the team's past performance, or on an &quot;educated guess&quot; if no past performance is yet available.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A fudge factor for the cone of uncertainty is applied. This is commonly 0.6 for new teams or for projects with large cones of uncertainty during initial project planning, but fudge factors are inherently variable and can be adjusted to fit currently-available knowledge about the problem domain, the team, and available resources.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A planning velocity is calculated, e.g. &lt;code&gt;estimated velocity * fudge factor&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Number of iterations for a release are calculated using the following variables and formula:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;e&lt;/em&gt; = aggregate estimate of all Product Backlog Items&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;v&lt;/em&gt; = planning velocity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;i&lt;/em&gt; = estimated iterations for release, rounded up to nearest whole number    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;code&gt;e / v = i&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;i&lt;/em&gt; value can be turned back into a calendar or time estimate by multiplying interations by the length of the Sprints in weeks or months, e.g. &lt;code&gt;i * 2&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A Worked Example&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say you have a total backlog of 200 story points, and plan to use a two-week Sprint length. Your team's historical velocity is 20, but this is a brand-new project with a large cone of uncertainty, so your fudge factor is the standard 0.6 multiplier; as a result, your planning velocity is 12 story points per Sprint after applying the fudge factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, your release plan for all of the Product Backlog Items would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;200 / 12 = 17 Sprints&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You then turn this into a calendar or time estimate with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;17 * 2 = 34 weeks&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on this information, your project schedule will state that it will take approximately 34 weeks to ship all the features currently in the Product Backlog. This is an &lt;em&gt;estimate&lt;/em&gt; based on the information currently available, and should be treated as a planning value rather than an ironclad guarantee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Adjust Scope During Inspect-and-Adapt Inflection Points&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the project progresses, the cone of uncertainty narrows and the team can make more accurate estimates about the amount of remaining work on the Product Backlog. In addition, a properly-functioning Scrum team will become more accurate about measuring its velocity as the project continues, so the release-schedule calculations should be redone from time to time to &quot;true up&quot; the schedule based on more accurate data as it becomes available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, the Product Owner may add or remove scope (in the form of Product Backlog Items) throughout the project. This will expand or reduce the scope of the project, and will obviously impact the estimated schedule. Changing project scope should generally trigger a recalculation of the release date when that happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, Scrum strives to provide a potentially-shippable product at the end of each and every Sprint. While it may not be feature-complete in the sense that it contains 100% of all backlog items, the product should be a stable and releasable state during Sprint Review so that the organization can choose to ship earlier if sufficient value is present in the product to justify shipping in its current state. This &quot;cashing out&quot; of earned value to ship a minimum viable product that is deemed &quot;good enough&quot; can provide &lt;em&gt;the business&lt;/em&gt; (not just the Scrum team) with a significant agile advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-10-03T15:06:08.000" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16357" CreationDate="2015-10-03T15:27:51.537" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Don't Write Separate Stories/Tickets Just for Testing&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, if you're using Jira (or any ticketing system) to drive task-level details, then you aren't really doing agile user stories. Instead, your routine testing tasks should be part of your &quot;Definition of Done&quot; for testing, and you may not even need testing-specific stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In pull-based work queues, testers should pull a user story into the testing stream whenever it's been marked &lt;em&gt;ready&lt;/em&gt; by the developers. Standard tests and implicit elements of the Definition of Done are then performed, and any checklists or documentation that needs to be attached to the ticket can be added as a file attachment or linked in the ticket's notes section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I strongly discourage teams from having separate testing stories because they are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; separate features. Rather, testing is an intrinsic part of ensuring that a feature is &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt;, and any feature that is tested or that fails testing is &lt;em&gt;not-done&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-10-03T15:27:51.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16372" CreationDate="2015-10-03T16:41:18.933" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Zsolt has some good starters, I'm giving him a vote up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum works very well for fixed release dates so long as you recognized a simple reality. That being with Scrum you can have one of two truths. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- You either get all the work in the backlog done. You just don't know when.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2- You release on a specific date with the work you've managed to complete by that date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your client (or internal boss) gives you a fixed date then you have to ship on, then you use techniques like what Zsolt talks about and estimate how much work you can do. At the start of development my general guideline is you don't commit to more than 50% of what you think you can do. This is because Hofstadter's law stats you will always underestimate the work to do, even when you take the law into account. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, the joy of Scrum is as you move through the project, you will be able to use your velocity to refine your prediction of what you will deliver. By the time you are 2/3 of the way through development, you will have a rock solid idea of what will be shipped.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means you need to make sure the backlog is well ordered. Deliver the most important stuff first then the minor stuff. So if you don't ship everything, it's you are not missing the MVP stuff. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your client says &quot;But it all must ship&quot;, you have a different problem. Scrum won't fix that, you need to take agile up the value chain. I recommend Innovation Games Prune the Product Tree and Buy a Feature if faced with this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: One thing I noticed in your post is you mentioned &quot;Since the team can't plan out more than one sprint at a time&quot;. This is a flag for me. Teams should be working outside the normal sprint with their product owner to groom the backlog and plan future work. By the time you get to a sprint, you should already have a good idea of what you will be doing in the sprint. I've got one team that just worked with their Product Owner and have a working plan (it will change) for the next eight sprints (4 months). A separate topic from this one, just something I wanted to bring to your thinking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-10-03T16:41:18.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16379" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-10-03T19:38:39.123" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Description&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_experience&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki's&lt;/a&gt; definition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Customer experience (CX) is the product of an interaction between an&#xA;  organization and a customer over the duration of their relationship.&#xA;  This interaction includes a customer's attraction, awareness,&#xA;  discovery, cultivation, advocacy and purchase and use of a service. It&#xA;  is measured by the individual's experience during all points of&#xA;  contact against the individual's expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not confuse this term with user experience (UX).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Links&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_experience&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Article about customer experience from Wiki&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-10-04T02:51:00.317" LastActivityDate="2015-10-04T02:51:00.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16380" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-10-03T19:38:39.123" Score="0" Body="For questions about customer experience (i.e. about the product of an interaction between an organization and a customer over the duration of their relationship)." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-10-04T02:50:56.447" LastActivityDate="2015-10-04T02:50:56.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16361" CreationDate="2015-10-04T09:44:15.400" Score="28" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question embeds some false assumptions about the linear nature of testing within an agile process. A mature agile team with cross-functional skill sets treats development and testing as intertwined activities rather than as sequential ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should strive to integrate development and testing so that they are not fundamentally separate work streams. Failing that, you must formally accept the risks and process deficits associated with the currently implemented workflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;QA Must be Embedded, Not a Separate Process Track&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Typically for a team of 3 to 4 developers, there would be 1 QA resource. What are the developers expected to do when QA is happening. Since the number of developers is much more than the QA, bug fixes get done very quick and developers are left with nothing to do towards the end of the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are not doing Scrum, you are doing waterfall. Activities should be cross-functional, and leverage a multifaceted team approach to all tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As one example, testers and developers should be working in lockstep throughout a Sprint. Testers should be involved early and often, helping the developers design testable features by working on test criteria &lt;em&gt;from the beginning&lt;/em&gt; before a single line of code is written, and helping to ensure that tests are written first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The QA folks should be running continuous integration every single day, so that there's a tight (and ideally immediate) feedback loop between development and testing. By working &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; the developers, rather than being treated as a separate follow-on activity, QA becomes an intrinsic part of the design and development cycles rather than an externality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Developers and QA Should Partner for Testing&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are the developers expected to do when QA is happening. Since the number of developers is much more than the QA, bug fixes get done very quick and developers are left with nothing to do towards the end of the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just as testers are expected to be involved with the developers from day one, developers are expected to work with QA during testing tasks. Rather than tossing code over the wall to testers, developers and testers should work together on the testing process so that bugs are fixed as they are discovered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine a pair-programming scenario where a tester and a developer work together on a test suite. Instead of a developer dumping a wall of code on the tester and then waiting for results, the two might work &lt;em&gt;together&lt;/em&gt; on tests and refactorings. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;QA: The X widget failed the embiggening test.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;DEV: Oops. Okay, I'll refactor the embiggener class while you test the end-user insult generator.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;QA: Will do. Oh, look, the insult generator passed!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;DEV: Great! While you were working on that, I widened the embiggener. Try it again.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;QA: It's embiggening properly now. Let's move on to the next set of specs together!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;When All Else Fails, Shine a Light on Dysfunctional Process&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If for some reason your team can't or won't cooperatively swarm over test-related activities, then the process must make that cost &lt;em&gt;visible&lt;/em&gt; to the team. If developers and QA insist on playing volleyball with tasks by tossing things back and forth over a net instead of integrating to perform the work together, then you simply make that (potentially dysfunctional) process fully visible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do testers &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; have nothing to do during the first phase of a Sprint? No, but if that's your process then you acknowledge that having testers idling on the team for half a Sprint is one of the costs of doing business. Likewise, if developers really have nothing at all to contribute to the testing process in the latter half of a Sprint, then you explicitly acknowledge that your developers are getting paid to hang out on Facebook for 50% of the time, and can accept that as a cost of doing business within your chosen process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Healthy teams treat all members as cross-functional resources, with value to add during each step of the process. Even if you choose not to fully integrate testing as a first-class activity within your Sprints, testers and developers can take turns assisting each other on current tasks. For example, during development a tester can work collaboratively to design test fixtures while the developer is writing the feature; then during testing, the developer might run code coverage analysis or work on converting test results into documentation while the tester runs the tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team can't or won't work cooperatively in this way, then the organization can simply accept the fact that some roles within the team will be idle at certain points in the process. While not ideal, it might be politically necessary to simply acknowledge that 50% of your roles will be idle at any given time, and that this is an acceptable cost of doing business within your current development process. While I personally consider this a sub-optimal option, it is still better than falling prey to the &lt;em&gt;100% utilization fallacy&lt;/em&gt; that tries to keep everyone looking busy even when doing so is wasteful and generates no value...and sometimes may even actively &lt;em&gt;reduce&lt;/em&gt; productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-10-04T09:44:15.400" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16383" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-04T10:59:04.563" Score="4" ViewCount="131" Body="&lt;p&gt;We need to create some solution with a new technology, in which no member of my team has any experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The higher management demends the tentative dates of the working solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a week of investigation, my team still can't give even a rough estimation of time.  We made the list of possible problems, but all of them demands their own investigation. Furthermore, according my experience, I am sure, that we have only half of the future problems (in a best case) in this list. During implementation we will meet a lot of issues, that we can't predict today because of our current poor knowledge of the used technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, I understand that the final date like “when it's done” is unacceptable for the higher management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, &lt;strong&gt;how should we estimate such non-estimability projects?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that this question sounds a little bit stupid, but I'm sure, that all of us have this kind of problem (especially in the Software Development area).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe we should:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try to guess the time (make a guesstimation) and multiply it by two (just in case). Than pray that we can finish in this period.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask for more time for the investigation. But, of course, the higher management will not like this. And the whole time of  the investigation will be unknown also.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't take this project at all, defer because we do not have enough knowledge in the demanded technology (not the best choice for image of our department).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Other variants?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastActivityDate="2015-10-05T09:34:28.970" Title="Estimation of non-estimability project" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16383" CreationDate="2015-10-04T14:02:56.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;So it sounds like you are not having an issue with HOW to estimate this but that you have little confidence in the result of the estimate.  In fact, since you do not have reliable and valid inputs into the estimating process, it is very unlikely you will have reliable and valid outputs from the estimating process.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that arriving at a credible estimate is not possible so trying is futile and a waste of resources.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you have a ton of uncertainty in your estimate, and therefore the planning values you choose to publish and work towards, you need to escalate this high degree of uncertainty as part of your risk process.  You need to report this high degree of risk at each and every opportunity you have to your leadership and not care how they feel about it.  Your job is not to make the feel happy but to report as truthfully, accurately, and transparently as possible.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So go through the motions--break the work down as far as possible, use your SMEs/workers to guesstimate their best-, worst-, and most likely case, choose your most pessimistic planning values within the estimate that you can get away with--and then report as loudly as you can that the business has significant degree of risk, in both directions, and that you will track progress as you move a long and will report variances against your planning values on a set, strict basis.  Recommend additional values for contingency, both money and time, in the event your planning values prove too optimistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Management will not like this, but here again it's not your job to make them happy.  If they choose to abandon this work because of the uncertainty, that is likely a great business decision.  If they choose to continue, then they will be prepared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2015-10-04T14:09:53.823" LastActivityDate="2015-10-04T14:09:53.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16362" CreationDate="2015-10-05T06:23:53.503" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have a look at&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.davidconsultinggroup.com/media/1083856/sizing-application-maintenance-and-support-activities-20.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.davidconsultinggroup.com/media/1083856/sizing-application-maintenance-and-support-activities-20.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;And&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://docslide.us/documents/production-support-estimation-whitepaper.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://docslide.us/documents/production-support-estimation-whitepaper.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These papers give some idea on calculation of total effort, then calculate FTE ..And then based on some %, you can distribute between L1,L2 and L3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20757" LastActivityDate="2015-10-05T06:23:53.503" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16388" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16389" CreationDate="2015-10-05T06:45:46.090" Score="6" ViewCount="618" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are about to start a new project that is expected to be over about 8 weeks of 2 week sprints.  We are attempting to implement this in an agile manner and so we have recently had a sprint planning meeting.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During this meeting we identified the stories to be implemented in the first sprint.  Towards the end of the meeting I asked our project manager who is also acting as the primary tester if we could have the acceptance criteria written before the sprint starts (for the first sprints work).  She gave me a strange look and said &quot;&lt;em&gt;na, that's not going to happen&lt;/em&gt;&quot;.  Apparently she is too busy and won't be able to do this in time.  They may be available towards the end of the sprint if we are lucky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In agile, how important is it to have the acceptance criteria spec'd before the sprint starts.  Should I push back and suggest the sprint is delayed until these are available, or just go with it and accept they will be done when they are done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8841" LastActivityDate="2015-10-06T16:49:21.790" Title="Test manager too busy to get acceptance criteria written before sprint starts" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16388" CreationDate="2015-10-05T07:44:54.980" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not mandatory to have the specs before start, but it helps a lot clarify the details and sort out misunderstandings. Actually, the point of BDD - this is what you are doing - is to start the conversation between the &quot;customer&quot; and the development team(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case the PM has no time to do it, &lt;strong&gt;you can do it on your own and ask for a weekly review session&lt;/strong&gt; preferably before the sprint planning. During these sessions you can clarify all the points you have to have a successful and accepted delivery. Remember, &lt;strong&gt;the point is to have the conversation not writing the actual tests&lt;/strong&gt;, because anybody can write acceptance criteria, but only the &quot;customer&quot; has an idea what she wants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe after a couple of sessions she will start to feel how good these conversations are and how much extra work you save for the organisation with a quick session. Of course, you'll need to prepare for these sessions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2015-10-05T07:50:53.880" LastActivityDate="2015-10-05T07:50:53.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16383" CreationDate="2015-10-05T09:34:28.970" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with David...Also, In such cases, we give likely estimates BUT we REQUEST for the OPTION of revisiting estimates after the design&amp;amp;Proof Of Concept Phase. At that time, we are in a better position to provide the correct estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20757" LastActivityDate="2015-10-05T09:34:28.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16391" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16395" CreationDate="2015-10-05T11:42:52.593" Score="0" ViewCount="318" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am first time making an Agile Plan&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following are the sprints I have planned&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;*Sprint 1 … 3(2 week Sprints)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprint Planning meetings,&#xA;Picking up prioritized stories,&#xA;Breakup of stories into tasks,&#xA;Story Coding and unit test case preparation and unit testing,&#xA;Integration Test Case creation ,&#xA;System Test cases creation ,&#xA;Sprint Testing, Integration Testing,System Testing of this Sprint stories and last sprint stories,&#xA;Backlog grooming for next sprint,&#xA;Remaining time for Sprint Bug fixes for this sprint(2nd week),&#xA;As many bug fixes as possible, pending to be fixed in last sprint&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;*Sprint 4&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All sprints Integration and System Testing On QA,&#xA;Bug Fixes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;*Sprint 5&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UAT Deployment,&#xA;UAT,&#xA;Bug Fixing,&#xA;Production Deployment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please have a look and share your thoughts.&#xA;Also Team will have developers+testers Developers will be writing Junit testcases and continuous Integration will be used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After one release 2 more resources will be added who will be working on production release bugs. The release will be deployed with next release only unless there is a showstopper bug.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also please guide to me how much of Automated testing can be achieved with agile projects as its constantly adding features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20735" LastActivityDate="2015-10-11T05:36:40.143" Title="Agile Project Plan" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16392" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20731" CreationDate="2015-10-05T12:39:15.187" Score="4" ViewCount="6279" Body="&lt;p&gt;In MS Project (current version), I have the following task setup and can't find a solution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bZ35p.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bZ35p.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short translation for columns:&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Vorgangsname = Taskname&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Arbeit = Work&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Dauer = Duration&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Anfang = Beginning&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Ende = End&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not visible in the screenshot: Both tasks have the fixed day 2015-10-05 (Monday) and the resource-availability is 50% (global setting).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: How can both tasks begin on the same day without a resource-conflict? My suggestion is, to change the percentage of the resource-availability per task, but I don't know where to find that setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20635" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2020-07-26T04:21:34.417" Title="How can two tasks begin on the same day without a resource-conflict?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16391" CreationDate="2015-10-05T13:28:29.167" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Plan to complete all work, including UAT, within the sprint&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are taking a big risk if you plan to do all UAT (User Acceptance Testing) for the previous 4 sprints in the 5th sprint. If the users find major issues at the last moment, either your release will get delayed or you will end up taking short cuts in quality, resulting in production bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your goal should be to create a shippable increment at the end of each sprint. In order to accomplish that, you should plan to complete all of the work including UAT within each sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep Work In progress (WIP) down. Start working on two or three stories, take them to completion (including development and all testing) and then take up the next two or three stories. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/should-a-team-swarm-on-to-one-backlog-item-at-a-time&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;For details see this blog post from Mike Kohn.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Developers will be writing Junit testcases and continuous Integration&#xA;  will be used&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your team seems to have good engineering practices. So, try to take up fewer stories, if necessary, in each sprint and complete all testing including UAT so that all stories are in ready to deploy condition at the end of the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avoid pushing problems from one sprint into later sprints, such as these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;System Testing of... last sprint stories&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As many bug fixes as possible, pending to be fixed in last sprint&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If absolutely necessary, you can consider a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/correct-use-of-a-release-sprint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Release Sprint (also known as a Hardening Sprint) as outlined by Mike Cohn.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-10-05T19:46:20.287" LastActivityDate="2015-10-05T19:46:20.287" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16388" CreationDate="2015-10-05T13:33:59.067" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having the acceptance criteria defined before the sprint isn't necessarily a fixed requirement, but it would be common for it to make up part of the teams &quot;definition of ready&quot; for any work going into the sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where you cannot get agreement on something like this and it seems the other party is unable and unwilling to give you what you want there is one good option. Wait for it to come up in a retrospective. One of the benefits of an agile approach is you are continually trying to improve. Right now you think that this is an important thing to get in place before the sprint. Your PM disagrees. So, start sprinting and at you retrospective review what worked and what didn't. If the acceptance criteria don't come up then there are obviously better things to be spending your time fixing. If they do, the PM should then see the impact of not having them in place ahead of the sprint and should want to fix it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also sounds like you might not have a DoR (definition of ready) yet, do you have a DoD (definition of done)? If not, having a session to define that with the PM may be an opportunity to bring up the DoR. I doubt it given the flat refusal to give you what you need and their time pressure but possibly if they get input to the DoD maybe they will feel more open to agreeing to have the acceptance criteria in the DoR. Maybe that is a session to run once this comes up in a retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20707" LastActivityDate="2015-10-05T13:33:59.067" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16391" CreationDate="2015-10-05T17:08:04.440" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not a Agile project plan.  You have scheduled the normal waterfall activities into various sprints.  The whole point of Agile-scrum delivery is to supply a shippable increment at the end of each iteration.  This includes testing and UAT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each iteration's work items should have a Definition of Done that commonly includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Automated testing (integration, unit, performance, etc)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Manual testing (exploratory, acceptance, edge case, UAT, etc)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Code reviews&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Architectural and/or design patterns adhered&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Known bugs fixed&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Product demoed to customer or product owner&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should have a production deployment at the end of each iteration.  If the customer does not support this, your code should be shipped to a staging/stabilization environment that mirrors production at the end of each iteration.  The increment should be fully tested before going to stage and stage can be used for UAT activities if the customer wishes to participate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-10-05T17:08:04.440" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15789" CreationDate="2015-10-05T18:33:50.523" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no silver bullet, and no universal formula. You must &lt;em&gt;estimate&lt;/em&gt; based on documented assumptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Document Your Assumptions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All estimates are based on assumptions. Therefore, the usual methodology is to project your current costs and your documented assumptions out into a post-delivery phase. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your current defect rate is 12%, which costs your project 15 man-hours per week. You might assume that this rate will continue unchanged, or you might assume it will be higher or lower based on some project-specific information.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your server operating costs in development are $250/month for one server, and you might assume that you will have five servers in production based on your capacity-planning estimates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your current project has a $2 million budget. You might assume that minor features can be added for half that, or that version 2.0 will cost double.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your labor cost to manage the development version is $5,000/month in staffing, plus another $2,000/month in licensing costs. You might assume that this cost will scale better than linear, and choose to estimate $10,000/month for an enterprise-wide support cost.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Estimates Aren't Guarantees&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The specific details of how you arrive at your estimation don't really matter. It's the methodology that counts. The point is that you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Document your assumptions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide a quantifiable estimate based on your assumptions and some plug-in values.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You provide high-end and low-end estimates, or a single estimate with a confidence interval.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You make it clear that these are &lt;em&gt;estimates&lt;/em&gt; based on the documented assumptions, not money-back guarantees.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your assumptions and your plug-in values will certainly vary greatly based on any number of factors. That is why they're called &lt;em&gt;estimates, projections, or forecasts&lt;/em&gt; rather than infallible predictions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-10-05T18:33:50.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16397" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16463" CreationDate="2015-10-05T20:52:32.057" Score="2" ViewCount="81" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to omit some tasks from being used in the calculation of a resources allocation percent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've looked at this a number of different ways but in short, I want to have a couple of tasks running in parallel that are assigned to one resource. However, I know that for this set of tasks, I want to calculate the resources allocation for only one task. To do this I'd like to remove the task from the resource allocation calculation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know I can do percentages but when the number of tasks goes up and down I don't want to have to change them as that task number changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Is it possible to enter a task, the expected duration, assign one or more resources and on a one by one basis omit them from the resource allocation calculation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6429" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2015-10-09T09:53:14.783" LastActivityDate="2015-10-12T14:29:22.733" Title="Omit tasks from team planner" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16398" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16402" CreationDate="2015-10-06T01:27:45.073" Score="1" ViewCount="89" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a Computer Science student at a university and I've got a problem figuring out where to start with a semester-long project. I have experience in Java, C, and some web development but nothing with databases. I've tried finding help through Google but it's been difficult to find anything relevant to my situation. So here it goes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been assigned a project to develop a system for employees of a fictitious hotel to manage reservations for rooms. The system must implement a database for managing employee information as well as reservation and customer information.  It must also implement a GUI to manage reservations and generate reports about reservations for the also fictitious hotel managers. I'm working with a team of three other people. Their backgrounds include SQL Server, Visual Studio, C++, Java, and web development on a small scale. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our idea so far has been to develop a web interface to submit forms to add information into the database, pull information out of the database, and collect information about the statuses of reservations to generate these reports. I've set up a Windows Server 2012 R2 on my desktop at home so that all my team members can work on the project remotely. I haven't had much luck in getting it completely operational yet (I've installed SQL Server and TFS but it just seems a little too much for such a small team). The more I try to work on this the more I feel like I'm moving in the wrong direction, making things more complicated, and confusing myself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm in need of a push in the right direction and some recommendations on how to go about this development process. I've just never dealt with a project like this and it's way out of the scope of this course (it's basically Software Development 1) but the professor wants the course to be 'more hands on'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help would be greatly appreciated and if I've left out any crucial information please let me know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20771" LastActivityDate="2015-10-06T18:01:28.373" Title="How should I go about a small team web app development for university course?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;&lt;education&gt;&lt;learning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16399" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-06T06:35:40.440" Score="4" ViewCount="3728" Body="&lt;p&gt;My company recently introduced time sheet logging for each individual in the development team. To be honest, it is quite time consuming. Each member needs to log what they have done each day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They mentioned that the purpose of this is to provided a history of a project plan for later reference, but sometimes they will say &quot;Let's check what you have done recently.&quot; It feels like we are not being trusted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17282" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-10-06T16:42:37.857" LastActivityDate="2015-10-08T20:22:11.747" Title="What is the purpose of logging work on daily time sheets?" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;timekeeping&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16399" CreationDate="2015-10-06T11:14:27.443" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would venture to say that those who think they're not being trusted likely have something to hide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Collecting data on a daily basis is important in both measuring performance against your cost and schedule baselines as well as inputs into future projects that are similar.  It is done daily in order to increase accuracy and precision because, if done weekly, then most likely the data is a best guess, which makes the data useless.  Workers should capture as accurately and precisely as possible the hours worked against a particular work package.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We all capture our time, from laborers who clock in to professionals who log hours to bill their clients.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is absolutely necessary to manage projects and business.  If this offends you, take a long hard look at what you might be hiding from your boss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-10-06T11:14:27.443" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16399" CreationDate="2015-10-06T11:35:31.090" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I second David's thoughts on this one. I had to do time logging for 8 years - first down to half an hour then to an hour - and the only time when it was &quot;painful&quot; when I helped somebody else on a matter I had nothing to do with, therefore I was unable to log any hours there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the project's perspective it has some benefits, because the team/PM will know how much effort has been put into the project, and see whether they are still on the budget or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be also a helpful data for leads to see who are involved in many things and help to reduce the pain context switching causes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team mates argued a lot that it took them too much time fill out, and when we actually measured it was about 10 minutes on a Friday to do for the whole week. The second argument was about trust as you've already mentioned. I have met only one PM that used the time sheets for figuring out what the people were doing - instead of going there and see by herself -, others tried to fix problems. There weren't that interested in the details either. Engineers spent a lot of time on filling the sheets out very precisely, which they were never asked to do. The PM was interested in the rough numbers just to see where the project is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-10-06T11:35:31.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16398" CreationDate="2015-10-06T11:54:02.437" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest not to overcomplicate your project and have fun. If you professor want to have a &quot;hands on experience&quot; he should terminate the semester earlier, change the requirements randomly, and change the projects members :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can experience with how the startup community works, though. Start setting up the web server, do ugly pages with limited functionality (almost like a wireframe), do not bother much with Computer Science things as highly optimized algorithms, and do not bother with technology (you'll need the last when you want to scale your product). &lt;strong&gt;Do something that works&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check if it works for others too not just your teams (we call it user test). If it works and your test subjects like it, you can make it pretty and working (add user experience). Now you can add the next ugly thing, and do the testing again. &lt;strong&gt;This is called iterative development&lt;/strong&gt;. In real life a small but working portion of functionality is more appreciated than a lot of features that do not work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;check your feature list and pick the one you cannot continue without,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you do the feature quickly (e.g. login),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;check if it works (test),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make it pretty (but do not over do it, max one day - called refactoring),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;go to step 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case you face technical difficulties, and you are not making progress in a couple of days, just cut corners. &lt;strong&gt;The point is to get to step 3 as fast as you can so that you can validate your work&lt;/strong&gt;. You can sort out difficulties later in step 4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, with approach you'll know where you are with your project. Let's assume you have 12 things to do, and you one with this style in a week. You know that about 12 weeks you are going to be done. Ok, this is not really true, but at least you get a sense of progress and a bit of forecasting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2015-10-06T18:01:28.373" LastActivityDate="2015-10-06T18:01:28.373" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16399" CreationDate="2015-10-06T13:08:18.023" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have worked in organizations that track time to 15 minute increments and those that don't track time at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a PM perspective I greatly prefer the former, because it is next to impossible to objectively estimate future effort if you don't have history of actual time spent. In my current organization we have to go through all sorts of contortions to figure out how many projects can be implemented, how these are to be prioritized, etc etc. It would be much easier to start a conversation on project prioritization if we could go to our leadership and say &quot;We have XX warm bodies, in our experience we can successfully execute YY projects with that level of staff&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2015-10-06T13:08:18.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8107" CreationDate="2015-10-06T13:29:09.893" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;would be good or not to keep such expression only for failed projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like others my perspective is that the phrase you use is fairly unimportant as long as everyone understands what it means within your organisation. That said, while I don't think 'post-mortem' really holds connotations of death in a business context I do think it is generally used to mean the process of finding out what went wrong (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/post-mortem&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cambridge dictionary definition&lt;/a&gt;) and will, therefore, lead people to focus on the negatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could argue convincingly that the phrase should only be used in cases of project failure but I would recommend following the same naming conventions and processes for &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of your post-project reviews. Every project (successful or otherwise) will have positive and negative elements, all of which should be covered in your review. If you call it a post-mortem only in cases of project failure you risk focusing excessively on the negative and even of creating complacency around projects that don't get a post-mortem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4490" LastActivityDate="2015-10-06T13:29:09.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16399" CreationDate="2015-10-06T13:35:13.383" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like others here, I had to track my time to the 1/4 hour level for years as a consultant.  I hated it at first but learned to embrace the effort because of the information it provides down the road.  Don't neglect the comments!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20747" LastActivityDate="2015-10-06T13:35:13.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16399" CreationDate="2015-10-06T15:29:21.083" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As as developer I have to say I agree that this can be a pain in the arse. It's fine if you are assigned to a single project, or the chunks are large, say a day on this a day on that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem occurs when you have to work on multiple random things in a single day and they just don't fit into the nice ordered time keeping system that's been set-up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say for example I'm on a BAU team, implementing features from a scrum board. I have my task for the day and I can assign time to it no prob. so I'm working away and manager Bob comes up to ask me about a possible bug a user has reported. Its probably nothing but can I investigate? Then developer Jim wants to ask me about some code I programmed last week, Sales Jane ask, can I goto a meeting to discuss the interface for new customer Z? HR Sam can't upload his spreadsheet to internal tool Y, can I run off a quick report on something from the database? etc etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;But!&quot; you say, we are doing scrum/kanban/agile of the week! you should say &quot;No!&quot; to all these things and and the Scrum master to intervene writing up tasks and prioritising them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately the practical effect of this is forces developers to choose between being 'scrum police', working overtime, having hours which don't add up on the system or 'rounding up' those hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally business tend to rely on this &quot;Shadow IT&quot; pushing devs into being 'unit of work style, only do tasks on the board' machines puts a huge pressure on project managers and BAs to correctly spec those tasks, leading to a waterfall style approach. exactly the opposite of what the business wanted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2015-10-06T15:29:21.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16388" CreationDate="2015-10-06T15:44:05.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are &lt;strong&gt;Supposed&lt;/strong&gt; to have the acceptance criteria or even the tests written before a task even goes on the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However we all know this never happens. You can either write them yourself and email for confirmation (although this is somewhat passive aggressive) Or just go ahead and code what you think is required and accept that there will be bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend the second approach. Lets face it, working out the acceptance criteria is usually the hardest part of writing a system. If no-one else can work them out, then they aren't going to blame you for taking a best guess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2015-10-06T15:44:05.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16399" CreationDate="2015-10-06T16:31:09.653" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, logging is a symptom of a non-agile development process that proxies for a project manager's active engagement and situational awareness. It is also often a sign that the project is measuring the wrong thing, since &quot;time consumed&quot; is rarely a valid measure or predictor of results. When not used solely for contractual billing purposes, it is most often improperly-used as an accountability or root-cause analysis tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Results-based tracking is generally more effective. For example, in Scrum a story is either &quot;done&quot; or &quot;not done&quot; at the end of a Sprint. How much time was spent doing what task inside the Sprint is largely irrelevant, although blockers and queuing issues are certainly valid topics for a Sprint Retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Fallacy of Detailed Time Accounting&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tracking time is useful for billing purposes, and ostensibly for future estimates. In reality, though, time sheets are either a work of fiction or needless overhead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In manufacturing, it can certainly be worthwhile to document that it takes &lt;em&gt;x&lt;/em&gt; minutes to produce &lt;em&gt;y&lt;/em&gt; widgets on an assembly line. However, in knowledge work like programming, work rarely breaks down neatly into measurable increments. In addition, programming in particular is often about &lt;em&gt;thinking&lt;/em&gt; about the right problem to solve, so overly-granular record keeping that isn't a complete work of fiction might look like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spent 47 minutes thinking about how to optimize the frobnitz.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spent 52 minutes writing a spec for an experimental wibble widget.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spent 12 minutes coding a new quux object.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spent 17 minutes deleting a bunch of code objects, documentation, and references that should be torn out in favor of the quux object.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spent 21 minutes waiting for continuous integration to run.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spent 3 minutes every quarter hour summarizing the work, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.fastcompany.com/944128/worker-interrupted-cost-task-switching&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;23 minutes and 15 seconds&lt;/a&gt; getting back on track after interrupting my work to log my time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the log is kept meticulously and honestly, at the end of the day the time simply won't add up to 8 hours due to task switching, overhead, and (of course) the time spent time-tracking at a granular level. That makes the log less useful than managers might like to think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sensible time-keeping tends to be less granular. A sane log entry might say: &quot;I spent 6 hours today working on the &lt;em&gt;foo&lt;/em&gt; project, and 2 hours in meetings, time-keeping, and other project overhead.&quot; However, this type of high-level logging is often imperfect due to cognitive bias, errors of omission, social filtering, and other factors that make it largely useless as a valid measurement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Results-Based Project Management&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile frameworks like Scrum implicitly support a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROWE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;results-only work environment&lt;/a&gt;. While ROWE itself is a buzzword and marketing term, the concept of measuring results (e.g. &lt;em&gt;Was a target met or not?&lt;/em&gt;) is generally more useful than measuring minutes-per-task. Again, sectors like manufacturing that need to measure throughput may actually need timing data, but rarely do they need timing data of the sort collected by the time sheets you're describing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focusing on whether tasks are &quot;done&quot; or &quot;not done&quot; is a significant culture shift in many organizations. It requires trust between upper management and the development team, and a commitment by the team to be transparent about estimates, impediments, and missed targets. Without that trust, and without that culture shift, most organizations simply fall back on useless metrics like time accounting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your organization isn't willing to make that cultural shift, and if you find granular logging disruptive or burdensome, then you can try to evangelize a more agile approach. More likely, though, it's simply time to brush up your resume and look for an organization that is less steeped in failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-10-08T20:22:11.747" LastActivityDate="2015-10-08T20:22:11.747" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16388" CreationDate="2015-10-06T16:49:21.790" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In GENERAL, Agile is fundamentally about principles, not rules or roles.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important principle is delivering what the customer requires, when the customer needs it ... acceptance criteria are kind of a big deal.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The work has to be reassigned or delegated without blaming the overwhelmed resource.  When Lead or Project Manager is overwhelmed, she has become the Critical Chain (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_chain_project_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ToC PM book&lt;/a&gt;, ) that has to be optimized.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Practical&lt;/strong&gt; Agile is often about suggesting &quot;outside the box&quot; ways to relieve or distribute the burden on the Critical Chain.  Gently step up and quietly lead -- do not allow a hero, even a project manager, to take on too many roles and duties and sabotage the whole team's effort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2015-10-06T16:49:21.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16087" CreationDate="2015-10-06T17:16:59.243" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The customer is the one who pays ... if the company is developing a product that will sold to different customers, then the Product Owner is the representative of OR the proxy for the paying customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Follow the money!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not allow other stakeholder take priority over paying customers.  Sometimes &lt;em&gt;squeaking wheels need to be starved of grease.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2015-10-06T17:16:59.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16411" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16430" CreationDate="2015-10-06T17:17:09.270" Score="2" ViewCount="162" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for a good book on project organisation:  I was told that the project consists of (a) a project team, with a project manager, an IT coordinator and a business coordinator and (b) A project steering committee with a project sponsor, the project manager and a project owner.  These are all roles, but how do we know who is the project sponsor ? Who is the project owner, are they the same ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there books on these topics ? Guidelines ? Best practises ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@CodeGnome: if the answers can be given without referring to a book then it would be great: who is the project sponsor? The finance department? Who is the project owner? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@CodeGnome: I am head of a department that wants to build a database. The database will be fed by data collected from monthly surveys organised by my department. The answers will be loaded in that database. &#xA;The database will be used by at least four other departments. I assume the me, head of the department that will keep the database, I am owner. But who is the sponsor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20673" LastEditorUserId="22766" LastEditDate="2016-05-20T19:59:59.700" LastActivityDate="2016-05-20T19:59:59.700" Title="Who is the sponsor?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;project-sponsor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8107" CreationDate="2015-10-06T19:59:06.087" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.  Post mortem applies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The SUCCESS was an artifact of the &lt;em&gt;life&lt;/em&gt; of PM process, but after the work's complete, that process is over ... you &lt;em&gt;killed it&lt;/em&gt; to bring home a success ... in the same fashion that a hog is killed for great bacon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2015-10-06T19:59:06.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14909" CreationDate="2015-10-06T21:36:26.417" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A sample size of 30 is usually sufficient if variation is VERY small, i.e. Cpk &gt;&gt; 2.00 ...but simple cookbook answers [from fora like these] are dangerous, especially for safety-critical component in things like automotive, aerospace, gas appliances or other things where failure can result in multiple deaths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sample size is a matter of JUDGEMENT ... that means you have to use ALL of your available knowledge and experience, data on process variability and other information on different costs, risks and schedule impacts.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, consider what is the expected cost or likelihood of making an error of accepting a process when the process might not be capable, especially when Cpk is less than 1.5 and close to 1.33 (i.e. 1.33 is rejection territory and there is no reason to get more samples from a bad process).  Between 1.33 and 2.00 Cpk, you may want to increase sample to lower the risks [and possible large costs] of accepting an incapable process.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, look at the throughput on your measurement system, eg CMM(s) and personnel.  A large sample of 200 pcs might be justifiable for a buy off of an expensive tooling and inexpensive parts, but if you require 200 pieces for multiple part numbers across the board, you can quite easily cripple a new product launch with inspection for the sake of statistically powerful conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2015-10-07T16:08:37.623" LastActivityDate="2015-10-07T16:08:37.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16411" CreationDate="2015-10-07T03:16:41.307" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PMI Body of Knowledge (PMBoK) is the US Standard for project management and organization. It also has the benefit of being the basis for the Project Management Professional certification. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a quick starting point, I'd suggest going to Wikipedia and looking up &quot;Project Management&quot; and &quot;Program Management&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="17870" LastEditDate="2015-10-08T20:12:30.003" LastActivityDate="2015-10-08T20:12:30.003" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16416" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16418" CreationDate="2015-10-07T16:07:39.407" Score="3" ViewCount="245" Body="&lt;p&gt;The company I'm working is passing through some hard times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people of my team got fired because of cost issues, but the ones that are still with me has to keep working, because our goals didn't change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dismissal process happened one week ago, and everyone are still in bad mood, because of the fear to get fired and mainly because of the persons that were fired - we have worked together for years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When would be (or was) the right moment, and how would be the right way to motivate the ones that are still with me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tough question, I know...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19413" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2015-10-08T07:25:15.367" LastActivityDate="2015-10-08T07:25:15.367" Title="How to keep my team motivated during hard times?" Tags="&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;team&gt;&lt;leadership&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16008" CreationDate="2015-10-07T16:36:16.590" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For variety of reasons, including communication ... build your project workflow around Git or some DECENTRALIZED version control system.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You must anticipate that people will work in different locations, in airports, at their homes, in parks or coffee shops and occasionally at their desks.  If you don't make version control repositories decentralized, the version control system will not get used and people will adapt a amazing variety of sneakernet and ad hoc file storage and backup alternatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would strongly urge that anyone [who is serious about communication] take a hard look at Github-centric workflow ... because of the full &lt;a href=&quot;https://help.github.com/categories/graphs-and-contributions/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Github codegraph&lt;/a&gt; and all of the ways of inherently communicating progress to all participants by visually tracking commits, pulls, issues, comments, etc ... AND, maybe even more importantly, so that you can dispense with meetings [where no real communication ever happens anyway] and use repository centric chat, eg Gitter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An added bonus for everyone enduring the pain of learning Git and moving to a Git-based workflow  model is that your skills working inside this mental framework will be transferable and will work across organizations.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Git is open source and and that is EXTREMELY important because it explains why &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/2015/03/github-conquered-google-microsoft-everyone-else/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Git and it variants have won the battle in the important realm of version control&lt;/a&gt;.  Anyone who uses version control will be using a dialect of Git for the next 25 years or longer ... a Git-based PM [communication] workflow is going to trump all other proprietary approaches.  If there is a better idea, it will come from an extension or fork of Git.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastEditorUserId="62" LastEditDate="2015-10-07T17:40:44.297" LastActivityDate="2015-10-07T17:40:44.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16416" CreationDate="2015-10-07T16:57:21.123" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;change management&lt;/a&gt; issue. Unfortunately, successful management of change - particularly negative change like what your organization is going through - has to start well in advance of the change. If this hasn't been done then you are looking at picking up the pieces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you can't pick up the pieces by yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is getting several levels of management support in order to re-motivate your team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At a CEO/senior management level there should be clear communication of why the change was necessary, why the choices made were the best ones, and what can be expected downstream. Ideally this communication is two-way, for example as a &quot;town hall&quot;, so that the masses have a chance to ask questions and get reasonable, cogent responses from the execs. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At a middle-management level there needs to be similar type of communication dealing with more granular details... why were some people/units/projects let go,  how your department leaders are going to make the best of a bad situation. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the lowest level of management there needs to be discussion around how the remaining work is going to be redistributed, what expectations are at an individual level, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond communication, there may be a need for re-training, updating HR practices, corporate re-organizations, etc etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this (a) builds an awareness of why the change was necessary, (b) gives your team a chance to accept the change and (c) understand how to deal with it. You &lt;em&gt;desperately&lt;/em&gt; need your remaining team to buy into the idea that the change was necessary, that there was benefit for them, and that they are safe. If your organization can't support you in doing this you will (based on my own experience at an organization that wrote the book on how to really screw up change management) see high attrition of your best people as they go to greener pastures on their own volition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2015-10-07T16:57:21.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16392" CreationDate="2015-10-07T17:05:30.757" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can change the allocation of resources in units.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To do so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the windows menu open the second vue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select your tasks then on the bottom of the screen you see your resources, (click right and select &quot;resources work&quot; if you do not see the unit section).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change the unit of your resources (like 50% on each task).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17454" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2016-06-21T15:19:11.610" LastActivityDate="2016-06-21T15:19:11.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14189" CreationDate="2015-10-07T17:15:44.793" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2014/march/stories-versus-themes-versus-epics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; suggests that two such stories should be grouped together into an Epic, where the Epic collectively has business value, but its constituent stories don't. Ideally you strive for each story to have business value, but when a story is too big and it can't be split without making individual stories which have little or no business value by themselves, you can make it an Epic and split it into stories. That's one perspective and I don't necessarily agree with it, but it may be pragmatically necessary in some cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5705" LastActivityDate="2015-10-07T17:15:44.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16416" CreationDate="2015-10-07T18:01:02.920" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When things are hard, it is especially necessary to drive out fear by substituting leadership.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, work at developing a larger, broader perspective.  Stay away from the unnecessarily conservative doomsayers who collect in the small mental caves that they construct. Look at the distant horizon and you will probably realize that &quot;hard times&quot; are just globally-competitive times.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Networking [outside the organization] is more important in globally-competitive times than ever ... and it important that the organization understands why it cannot depend upon fearful, demoralized, myopic, CAPTIVE employees without any situational awareness of what is happening elsewhere.  Situational awareness by all employees not just top managers is critical in globally competitive times. If your organization does not understand this reality you must leave your organization and allow it to starve and die.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is far better for the resources inside dinosaur organizations to be deployed van to try to prop them up and change them.  That is always true but it is particularly true in HARD globally-competitive times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="62" LastActivityDate="2015-10-07T18:01:02.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16423" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21311" CreationDate="2015-10-07T21:14:05.063" Score="5" ViewCount="1042" Body="&lt;p&gt;I manage three different projects with TaskJuggler. These project share some of the resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I follow these &lt;a href=&quot;https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/taskjuggler-users/qYSJoOND3aw&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;suggestions&lt;/a&gt; and created three different .tjp files.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm fine for my individual reports, but I don't know how to combine the exports to be able to create global reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it the recommended solution for this problem. And if yes how can I combine the exports?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20773" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-10-09T00:54:31.353" LastActivityDate="2017-03-23T08:52:21.330" Title="In TaskJuggler, how to manage multiple projects running in parallel" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16416" CreationDate="2015-10-07T22:39:53.013" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a bit counterintuitive, but &lt;strong&gt;in situation like this feeling safe - just a little bit - is very important&lt;/strong&gt;. It will motivate people. Of course, nobody feels safe - not even you -, but you as a leader can do something about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be positive, but not overly positive&lt;/strong&gt;. A negative leader cannot provide a safe environment, and an overly positive leader is not credible - people are not stupid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Share your information&lt;/strong&gt;. When a company lets people go, there are way more questions than answers, and since information is not available people tend to fabricate answers, which are not about how the company will get up and be even better than before. They fabricate the worst things. You can manage the situation by sharing information, but let the people fill in the blanks by themselves. They'll feel safer if they are allowed to think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have an open door&lt;/strong&gt;, in case they need help with the filling in. Moreover, you should start &quot;smooth&quot; casual conversations. Let them talk, and have a sense about what they feel. Create a &quot;talking is safe&quot; environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do not start with new rules&lt;/strong&gt;. It is common in life that when something happens new rules arises usually for damage control. One of the most common is &quot;do not gossip, come talk to me first&quot;. This never works. Let people talk. If you have shared enough information, there won't be much to talk about. If your open door policy really works, there won't be much gossiping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Keep trying, but do not be pushy&lt;/strong&gt;. There will be hard conversations and long pauses. Do not push things, come back to a sensitive topic a bit later, or the next day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do not give up&lt;/strong&gt;. Finally, you should not give up. If you do, it does not matter what you say or how you say it, people will know and it is over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-10-07T22:39:53.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16425" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16439" CreationDate="2015-10-07T22:45:09.960" Score="-2" ViewCount="70" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the company where I work, I need to fill out a timesheet specifying how I spent my working hours for each project. I need to put the amount of time spent, and also a comment about how I spent that time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the beginning I was describing my activities in detail. This was very unproductive and hard to identify where I spent my time. To fix that, I started replacing my comments with tags like data processing, reporting, etc. Now I need to create a tag for the time I spend changing emails about minor details like issues, resource allocation, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should this tag be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20791" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-10-09T00:52:21.340" LastActivityDate="2015-10-09T00:52:21.340" Title="How should I classifying my daily project activities into tags?" Tags="&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;timekeeping&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16425" CreationDate="2015-10-08T04:47:43.130" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Find a new company... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To directly answer your question, if there is not guidelines in place already then just make it up. Document in in a &quot;legend&quot; and create codes that are easy for you to understand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the company has not provided you with any kind of standard for how to log this time, then there is a good chance they are just grasping at an illusion of control. Don't let the act of tracking time take so much effort you are not being productive doing other work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And going back to my opening comment, this is a classic danger sign of poor management. You may want to warm up your network, update your resume and see what's out there. Companies that track work at this level, for non-hourly employees are vanishingly small, typically infective and often not very far from being out of business. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-10-08T04:47:43.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14839" CreationDate="2015-10-08T08:01:33.267" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You should not remove the stories&lt;/strong&gt; to have a cleaner burn down, as this may hide the underlying problem. When it stay on the wall and has not been finished at the end of the sprint, it is a starting point for discussion on improvement. This is meant by transparency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A better aproach would be to &lt;strong&gt;colaborate whith the product owner&lt;/strong&gt; on reaching the sprint goal, &lt;em&gt;as soon as you detect the problem&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The product owner then can help in either &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reducing the amount of work for each user stories, but in a way the sprint&#xA;goal stays intact or &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;prioritizing the stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The product owner (and only the product owner) could also decide to&#xA;stop the whole sprint, if he sees no value by proceeding it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20794" LastEditorUserId="20794" LastEditDate="2015-10-08T13:16:19.453" LastActivityDate="2015-10-08T13:16:19.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16425" CreationDate="2015-10-08T09:09:36.387" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can call for a meeting with your colleagues and manager where you discuss the common practices - how to others do it - and the purpose of the time sheet. Maybe the reason why you have to fill it up differs from the reason you have in your mind. This is something your manager/boss can/should clarify. The usual technique in these situations is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to find a common understanding on the why and how, establish best practice, and follow it. If that does not work,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you ask for a direct guideline from management on how to do it, and you follow that guideline. In case there is no guideline&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you tell that you'll fill it out the best you can with just enough effort. In case they don't like it, you refer them to step 2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-10-08T09:09:36.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16411" CreationDate="2015-10-08T11:33:08.407" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The project sponsor:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Authorizes charging men/money/minutes/material to the project; if you don't have a sponsor, then you should not be working on the project.  Who made the decision to work on this project?  That person is a good candidate to be project sponsor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clears political obstacles.  If your database runs into a conflict with another project or operation (e.g. if you and another team both need access to the same programmer, or both need time with the network team to deconflict ports), who would solve that problem? Who would broker an agreement among the parties?  That person is a candidate to be the sponsor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Champions the project.  If your team wants to give up on the project (confronted by unusual political or technical problems), who would care?  Who would call and ask &quot;What is the status of the database?&quot;  That person is a candidate to be the sponsor. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the very few details you provide, I suspect that you are the project sponsor.  You want this change to happen, you control the necessary resources and you have the standing to negotiate with other departments.  You're also the owner; that's not uncommon for internal projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OP asked a few more questions - neither of the project management methodologies that I'm trained in use the term &quot;steering committee&quot;; if the term doesn't help you to close the project successfully, then I would abandon the term.  It sounds like most of the resources for this project are under your supervisory control.  There is a lot of project management guidance that is designed on the assumption that the PM is not part of the supervisory chain and has no supervisory influence over the people working on the project.  Since that assumption doesn't hold true for you, you're going to find that many things are simpler than a strict reading of the Project Management Body of Knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, much of my project management experience is in stakeholder management. In your very brief description of the project, you mention four departments in addition to your own that will use the database.  I would advise you to include representatives of those departments in your stakeholders and make sure that the project aligns with their plans &amp;amp; objectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-10-09T11:23:40.380" LastActivityDate="2015-10-09T11:23:40.380" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16431" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-08T15:28:25.427" Score="0" ViewCount="146" Body="&lt;p&gt;For my project management class we have been proposed with a case and have been asked to come up with a proposed solution. I am not quite sure how to approach this, or what the best solution might be. Any help would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*** You are migrating the Accounts Payable Department to a new software product that the company has purchased.  As the Project Manager, you will need to lead the installation, testing and implementation of this new software.  Assume your infrastructure is in place (servers, network, security, and database)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the execution phase (Testing), the team has informed you that the current database version of Oracle is not compatible with your new software.  The DB manager informed you it will take 2 months to upgrade.  You only have 3 months left before your scheduled to Go Live and you have 10 weeks of work.  What will you do?  How will you communicate this to the team?  How will you communicate this to management?  What are options that your team can suggest?***&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20797" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-10-08T16:04:47.570" LastActivityDate="2015-11-07T18:53:39.710" Title="How to communicate technical obstacles?" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;business-case&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14839" CreationDate="2015-10-08T16:30:47.433" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, absolutely you can remove it but will the following understanding:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team understands and agrees why it is necessary to remove it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The product owner has been consulted in removing the user story&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The team and product owner have had a chance to renegotiate the sprint with an attempt to replace the work item with something that is valuable and actionable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All impacted stakeholders have been consulted and/or informed of the change.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-The team takes this as a learning opportunity to make better sprint estimates/commitments in future iterations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FYI removing the story just to have a cleaner burn-down is not a good reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-10-08T16:30:47.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14189" CreationDate="2015-10-08T17:28:57.540" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;US2 is dependent on US1 but it does not break the I in INVEST as long as you do not attempt to develop both US1 and US2 during the same iteration.  The I in invest is meant to protect against dependencies within the iteration that would prevent the team from making iteration commitments.  There are very few user stories that are truly independent, and trying to force stories to be truly independent would lead to a lot of epic level work items that wouldn't fit into small iterations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;US1 does arguably bring value to the developer of the card.  It does not bring any value to the consumer of the card (US2).  I'd say splitting between US1 and US2 is a valid approach to deliver incremental value to the customer, since the customer should recognize value in the developer being able to define the card as the first step towards allowing the user to consume the card.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-10-08T17:28:57.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16431" CreationDate="2015-10-08T18:26:51.017" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It isn't clear to me whether or not there is an issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you need the DB upgraded before other work can complete you have a net ~6 week overage in your schedule (~12 weeks remaining minus 10 weeks of work minus 8 weeks to upgrade the DB gives minus 6 weeks).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the DB upgrade can be done concurrently with and independent of the other work you have no issue with schedule, though you've probably increased project risk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless, there is missing information around management priorities. How firmly wedded are they to the go-live date compared to budget, scope, risk, benefits, etc etc? For example, more work needs to be done which will boost your costs. Is there still sufficient business value to make continuing worthwhile?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2015-10-08T18:26:51.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16435" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16437" CreationDate="2015-10-08T20:37:05.063" Score="3" ViewCount="855" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a team contributing to my project, call it Team A. Team A is responsible for 200 tasks out of my yearlong, 800-task project. Each of these tasks requires one week to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't care who (out of a team of 4 people) performs each task. So, I've created a resource &quot;Team A&quot;, with availability 400%, and assigned each of the 200 tasks to the resource &quot;Team A&quot;. Now when I level the project plan, MS Project automatically assigns Team A to no more than 4 of these tasks per week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has worked great so far, but suddenly one team member, Bob, can only work half-time. So, this team member requires 2 weeks to complete the same task. I don't see how to account for Bob without adding Bob as an individual resource and assigning Bob specific tasks by hand (which would be a pain).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to somehow tell MS Project, for each of these 200 tasks, &quot;I have two resources, Team A and Bob. Please assign one of Team A or Bob to this task. Team A takes 1 week to complete the task, and Bob takes 2 weeks&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20798" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2015-10-09T09:46:21.007" LastActivityDate="2015-10-09T09:46:21.007" Title="Assign exactly one of two resources to a task in project plan" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resources&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15332" CreationDate="2015-10-08T22:31:36.433" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Update-work-on-a-project-9b5d4dfa-b4c2-4e37-bce3-c9b59f196f78&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;One office help entry&lt;/a&gt; states that &quot;Entering an actual start or finish date for a task changes the corresponding scheduled or planned date for that task.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps by setting the actual start, you've changed the scheduled/planned start, but the scheduled/planned end stays the same, resulting in a longer duration (I would expect this behavior if the task is manually scheduled). Since you've entered it manually, Project may just think you're trying to edit the start only, and calculates the duration to match.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An alternative might be to change the scheduled/planned start to the actual date, and instead compare to baseline to show how the schedule has improved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20800" LastActivityDate="2015-10-08T22:31:36.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16435" CreationDate="2015-10-08T22:56:07.957" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understand correctly you now have 350% of the team not 400%.  I would drop the max units to 350% starting when Bob goes part time.  Project will then resource level and spread so there are only a max of 3.5 of the team assigned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-10-08T22:56:07.957" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16397" CreationDate="2015-10-08T22:59:47.970" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid not.  You could swap resources with a resource that you set a large number of max units to avoid overallocation.  But the peak units are calculated based upon assignments to all tasks - you cannot omit some.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-10-08T22:59:47.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16425" CreationDate="2015-10-09T00:47:18.433" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's usually best for a team to agree on a standardized glossary and a well-defined level of granularity for tracking and estimating, rather than defining these things on an individual basis. However, if you must go it alone, then generalizing activities into broad categories can be a useful technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Use Broad (But Meaningful) Categories When Possible&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[N]ow I need to create a tag for the time I spent changing emails about minor details like issues, resource allocation and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what you mean by &quot;changing&quot; emails, but in general I would lump this type of activity under one or more of the following categories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project communications, because &lt;em&gt;email&lt;/em&gt; is a form of communication.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project planning, because &lt;em&gt;issues&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;resources&lt;/em&gt; affect plans and schedules.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Issue tracking, because it sounds as if your team is using &lt;em&gt;email as an issue tracker&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(NB: Whether or not this is a good idea is totally beside the point.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Build Team Consensus Around Categories and Granularity&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it doesn't really matter what strangers on the Internet think. This is a case where there isn't an objectively correct answer. Instead, you should work with your team (and specifically with your managers) to determine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How they would like to see activities categorized.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agreed-upon definitions that are standardized for your project are always more useful than ad-hoc labels. Standard categories improve communications and make the data more useful to management and for building accurate estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What level of granularity they need in time tracking.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As discussed in &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/16408/4271&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; and in other questions, answers, and comments on this site, reporting should be done at a level that is &lt;em&gt;useful&lt;/em&gt;. It may turn out that your time-tracking categories can be much more high-level than you assume...or possibly not. Either way, you won't know unless you ask.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2015-10-09T00:47:18.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16440" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16441" CreationDate="2015-10-09T04:25:13.603" Score="5" ViewCount="433" Body="&lt;p&gt;The organization currently has ad-hoc processes regarding the resourcing of people. This becomes a challenge especially if there are the same people across multiple projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There isn't a resource function nor a program management office, not that I would expect the latter being responsible for overall resourcing of people especially if this includes operational staff, vendors, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence the question, is the Project Manager responsible for resourcing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should this work ideally i.e. the ideal scenario?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17081" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2015-10-09T09:49:27.667" LastActivityDate="2015-12-19T17:36:31.777" Title="Who is responsible for people resourcing in a project?" Tags="&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;resources&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16440" CreationDate="2015-10-09T08:19:30.853" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the PM knows what it takes to deliver the project, they have the best sense of what resources they need.  So, in a typical scenario, the project managers &lt;em&gt;ask&lt;/em&gt; for resourcing based on their own project needs, insulated from the organizations resources and other needs.  This is typically referred to as the &lt;strong&gt;resourcing plan&lt;/strong&gt;, and is aspirational.  Then, someone from the organization (either an overall resource manager, or HR or director, or anyone else who is looking across multiple projects) combines all these requirements into one combined resourcing plan and then suggests people on different projects by looking either inside the organization or outside.  They may shuffle people around, open new positions for internal/external recruiters to fill, etc.  The team members allocated on the project become the &lt;strong&gt;project team&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project Managers continue to evaluate staffing gaps between people they ASKED for (the project's resource plan) and the people they GOT (the project team).  This gap is basically the project's &lt;strong&gt;staffing gap&lt;/strong&gt;.  In some cases gaps may be in terms of quantity (asked for 4 translators, got 2.5), or in some cases in terms of quality (asked for 4 senior lawyers, but got 2 lawyers and 2 interns).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mathematically: staffing gap = resource plan - project team.  Following snapshot can help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1fem7.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1fem7.png&quot; alt=&quot;Example staffing gap&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Resource Managers continue to minimize the gaps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case there is no one specifically tasked with being a resource manager, that role can sometimes be done by senior management, or a project portfolio manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7019" LastEditorUserId="7019" LastEditDate="2015-12-19T17:36:31.777" LastActivityDate="2015-12-19T17:36:31.777" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16435" CreationDate="2015-10-09T08:35:43.463" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An easy (and perhaps a bit silly) practical solution would be to create 26 one week tasks for every alternate week called &quot;Bob's Other Job&quot; and assign them all to Bob.  Then, MS Project would recognize that Bob is booked on those weeks, and not assign Bob on those weeks.  MS Project would still think that Bob is going to finish your task in 1 week, but you will know that that will actually go into the following week also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7019" LastActivityDate="2015-10-09T08:35:43.463" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16440" CreationDate="2015-10-09T12:52:31.990" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The project manager is responsible for delivering the project&lt;/strong&gt; and therefore making sure that the necessary amount of man power (with proper knowledge) is working - will work - on the project. Ideally, the PM should not start the project until the previous statement is ready, but that is rarely true unless the project requires rare expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, PMs talk to the line organisation, which manages the man power in an organisation, and set the project plans according to the information they receive from the line about the availability of man power. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Sam is the only one who knows technology A, and will be available in two months. The PM sets the project schedule so that they won't touch those parts that is related to technology A until Sam is available. Line will assign Sam to the project in two months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are cases when PM can decide about man power and can hire consultants, employees with temporary or permanent contract in case line cannot provide (the new hires should fit into the project's budget).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I saw a setup that is similar to yours. In Budapest actors work for several theaters the same time, so directors sit down before each season and create a schedule based on their own list of plays for the year. You can try the same; &lt;strong&gt;have the PMs to have a weekly or monthly discussion where they agree who is working on what and of course when&lt;/strong&gt;. Ad-hoc work has a negative affect on morale and motivation so if your organisation want to have a motivated work force you'll have to do something soon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-10-09T12:52:31.990" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16444" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16448" CreationDate="2015-10-10T01:15:19.520" Score="1" ViewCount="560" Body="&lt;p&gt;The project managers in the current environment want to be included in forms of communication e.g. emails, meetings, etc and this seems both autocratic, archaic, dictatorial, etc. Most other environments i have been party to, project managers want to be included in conversations that result in a decision as opposed to all conversations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the general practice and why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17081" LastActivityDate="2015-10-11T17:19:27.627" Title="Does a Project Manager need to be included in all forms of communication?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;communication-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16444" CreationDate="2015-10-10T01:18:48.797" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The general practice is to keep the PM in the loop of any major decisions with the contextual information leading to that decision. The reason is that it is in order to best identify any changes to risk or scope. The pm can only ascertain this if he/she has the full story of what is going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20809" LastActivityDate="2015-10-10T01:18:48.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16444" CreationDate="2015-10-10T07:40:58.100" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe the intention of the Project Managers to be in all communications across the project is to be aware of all the discussions, progress, and decisions within the team. This from one perspective is important if the team is in the state of forming and is building. The manager may not wish to loose the track of any discussions in this case. He intends to keep the &lt;strong&gt;team motivated in the right direction&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in case, the team is following a Scrum model and is completely in a good shape. This may not be a good practice, doing this will lead to micro management. This is not good for the health and motivation of the team. It may lead to feeling of distrust in the team members. May be due to the manager in CC to all communications the team members may &lt;strong&gt;not speak with their hearts and say what the Manger would like to hear&lt;/strong&gt;. Thus, many new ideas may not even be talked about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, in case the manager handles the emails in a better way and only intervene if asked for or is really needed then there is no harm in doing this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13556" LastActivityDate="2015-10-10T07:40:58.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16444" CreationDate="2015-10-10T08:53:49.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is difficult to get the balance right, however overall I don't believe the PM should expect to see every communication. It is vital that any decisions, emerging risks or issues, completed actions, or anything that needs escalation are communicated. However, different people will interpret these in different ways so it is important to give guidance and either ask for more or less, depending on how individuals communicate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people like to tell you everything, on the basis that &quot;you can't blame me because I told you what I was planning to do&quot; - but they don't appreciate that their 20 emails per day are a small proportion of the total that you receive. Others will tell you very little as &quot;you are so busy that I didn't want to bother you with trivia&quot;, despite their actions or decisions being non-trivial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I try to draw the line about being copied into deep technical discussions between technical people, and ask to be removed from the distribution list until they have something that fits my communication criteria. Having said that, I would rather get too much information than not enough, as it is a small overhead to scan an email and delete it when compared to having to step in and resolve something that has blown up out of all proportion, and that could have been nipped in the bud 3 days earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, coming back to the original question, I suggest that there is no single best practice model, and the PM should set out clear criteria for communications - and be prepared to have to coach the team to comply with his or her expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2015-10-10T08:53:49.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16451" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16454" CreationDate="2015-10-11T05:51:14.193" Score="8" ViewCount="2070" Body="&lt;p&gt;The client internally feels that this is about 500 developer days worth of work and there could potentially be 4 developers (or pairs of developers) that work in parallel. We need to go back to them with a proposal work in agile. Later on if new work comes up it will be taken up accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the point is how to plan for this in agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I take &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 day as 1 story point ,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 Sprint = 2 weeks.,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Velocity = 16 story points (4 people * 4 days),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 release = 3 sprints,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And calculate accordingly??&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have total of story points. I just have total developer days and now I have to estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20735" LastEditorUserId="20735" LastEditDate="2015-10-11T09:40:53.470" LastActivityDate="2015-10-13T10:53:53.977" Title="Estimation given in days and need to plan in Agile" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16452" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16472" CreationDate="2015-10-11T07:08:24.123" Score="10" ViewCount="1293" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have generally used manual testing in my projects. In the proposal plan, I am going to introduce automated testing this time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Few things I am going to add:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unit Testing using Junit Test cases&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Continuous Integration using Hudson or Cruise Control&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/6748/should-small-teams-use-continuous-integration/6752#6752&quot;&gt;StackExchangeLinkIReferred&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Integration and System Testing, how much automation I can do? My project is a web project. JSP-&gt;Spring-&gt;Hibernate-&gt;Oracle&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems there are some tools like FitNesse which are useful for agile purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As per my understanding, for screen capture, we should not be using automation as screen often changes but other areas can be fully automated even if there are additions in each sprint by tools like FitNesse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you please share your suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20735" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2015-11-20T10:53:41.090" Title="How much automated test coverage should I aim for in an agile project?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16452" CreationDate="2015-10-11T07:26:40.880" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should aim for as much automation as possible. Automated tests finish faster than manual tests, and therefore you can significantly reduce idle time; when you are waiting for test results. Of course, it matters what kind of tests you automate and how much you write of the kinds; we call this approach the &lt;strong&gt;test pyramid&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/10HEq.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/10HEq.png&quot; alt=&quot;test pyramid&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The width of a layer tells you the amount of [automated] tests you ought to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should put your GUI related tests to the top and it is worth the effort. Screen capture and comparison is very useful, until you don't write more than 10 tests for them (2 for each browser). Automate this one, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile projects also use manual testing for finding more test cases; we call it &lt;strong&gt;exploratory testing&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You handle the system as a black box, and you different scenarios manually until you find a new test case. When you have found it, you write a test case on the proper layer in the test pyramid. Not all tests should be on the GUI level despite the fact that you found it there. For example, you don't need a GUI test for a specific error case if you can test reproduce and test it on the unit test level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should forget about FitNesse. &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://cucumber.io/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cucumber&lt;/a&gt; is a way better alternative&lt;/strong&gt;. I wrote a &lt;a href=&quot;http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2012/09/cucumber-jvm-web-with-spring-mvc/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;nice tutorial&lt;/a&gt; about it a while back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For about cruise control, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2015-10-11T08:18:41.367" LastActivityDate="2015-10-11T08:18:41.367" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16451" CreationDate="2015-10-11T10:32:45.957" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take your 4 developers, give them the backlog, let them do a high level estimate for each story (or epic) by complexity (using story points if you like, but NOT days).&#xA;Then take a possible sprint backlog and see how many stories could possibly fit into a sprint. Repeat this for at least 3/5 times with different backlogs. This should give you a rough idea of a possible velocity per sprint. &#xA;Now take the number of Story points for the whole backlog and divide it by the velocity and see whenever 500 m/d fits it or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind that this is a high level exercise (and works only with a fairly defined backlog), do not expect to come up with a precise estimate, nor a detailed plan that fits 500 man/days of capacity. Do not expect to be able to translate story points into man/days, this will soon become a mess for you and for the client. &#xA;For such an important effort you'd better concentrate on an effective risk-management strategy instead of wasting time doing endless estimations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16362" LastActivityDate="2015-10-11T10:32:45.957" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16451" CreationDate="2015-10-11T10:38:38.240" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Story points are an estimate of the relative size of a user story. They take in to account things like risk, complexity and dependencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea in using story points is that we do some work within a timebox (i.e. a sprint) and then measure how much we got done. Then we use that measurement to guide our future estimate of sprint capacity. It is very different approach to time based estimating, which is based on guessing how long things will take to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the Scrum approach is based on doing a sprint, getting some feedback and then adapting the requirements if necessary. It is not a fixed scope by definiton, instead it is a variable scope that aims to deliver what the customer really needs rather than what they initially believe they need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion would be to ignore the 500 day estimate for now. Instead, get the team that is going to do the work to do story point estimates. Then, complete 2-3 sprints and see how many story points you get done. That then determines the teams velocity. Knowing the velocity and the remaining amount of work you can then get a feel for when you might be done. But keep in mind that as you do the work you will be adjusting the requirements in accordance with feedback from the client. As such, the estimated end-date will need to be continually adjusted as the team's velocity changes and as the scope changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly you are going to have to discuss this with the client, so that they understand the agile approach and buy in to this way of doing the planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-10-11T10:38:38.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16452" CreationDate="2015-10-11T14:46:42.893" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Building automated tests is going to take time and effort. But it will also save time and effort in manual testing and may reduce the need for rework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick is to find the right balance for your team. There are two approaches you might want to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first approach is to analyse your past bugs and try and target your automated tests at the components and functionality that fails the most often. This approach can provide the maximum benefit for the smallest investment of time and effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another approach is to work with the stakeholders to determine which functionality is most important in the product. Add your automated coverage starting fom the most important feature and working your way down the list. I have worked with some teams where they submit the list of automated tests to the Product Owner for approval. The Product Owners may then say something like &quot;that's great, the functionality you are covering is all the important features of the applications. Problems elsewhere we can live with if necessary&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One piece of advice for web based automated testing is to make your tests as independent as possible from the page layout. For example you can use IDs to identify the elements on the page and these IDs can remain constant even if the layout changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FitNesse is a good tool as it allows for a lot of exploratory testing by testers or non-technical stakeholders. The idea with FitNesse is to separate the testing code from the test scenarios. As an example, say your team was working on a calculator application. The developer would write some code for adding together two numbers. They would also write a FitNesse 'test fixture' which passed numbers to the adding code and returned the answer. FitNesse then provides an interface for the tester (or even business users) to pass data to the test. So the tester might pass 2 + 2 and expect an answer of 4. One benefit of this approach is that the testers can focus on test scenarios and not worry about how to write the automated tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cucumber is a tool that is used to do Behaviour Driven Development (BDD). With Cucumber you tie your requirements closely to your tests. Cucumber allows the team to write the requirements using business friendly language. Then Cucumber provides the hooks between these requirements and testing code. Using the calculator example again, you could write a scenario in Cucumber like &quot;given I have two numbers (5, 7) when I add those numbers together then I will get a sum of 12&quot;. Cucumber would then link this scenario to an empty code method. It would be up to the developers/testers to write the code that made the test work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see how these kinds of testing tools give you a neat way to integrate automated tests in to your work. But take note they don't actually include the test automation itself. I would suggest you try them out and see which ones your team finds to be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2015-10-12T17:51:41.337" LastActivityDate="2015-10-12T17:51:41.337" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16444" CreationDate="2015-10-11T17:10:30.730" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Project Manager should be over seeing every kind of project related communication, group or individual, everything CC's to that manager.&#xA;It doe not follow that all such things will be parsed, but that they are are available, to be referenced as needed. PM might find it useful to attend/monitor meetings, passively, allowing the process to evolve unhindered by oversight. as Mr Anurudh Singh above states people may&#xA;&quot;not speak with their hearts and ( instead) say what the Manger would like to hear.&quot; It is important therefore, never to dissuade honest communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When we rely on software exclusively, even in a software project (mine are all Real World, not software) we lose the nuances of human interactivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20822" LastActivityDate="2015-10-11T17:10:30.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16444" CreationDate="2015-10-11T17:19:27.627" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do they &lt;strong&gt;need&lt;/strong&gt; to be included? No. But they might have valid, non-dictatorial reasons for wanting to. Being included in the nitty gritty details of daily work can help the PM understand the project's domain better, which could be useful depending on how hands-on the PM is expected to be. Learning people's names and roles could be another reason. It's also a way (not necessarily a good way) to stay up to date on what's happening without asking for a status report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they want to be included in everything, don't push back. Nothing breeds suspicion and ill will like asking a (project) manager why they want to know about something that they have every right to know. If they start trying to micromanage or asking too many questions that take time away from your actually doing the work, then respectfully explain how that affects the work, ask what they are looking for (you may need to ask in a few different ways or read between the lines), and see if there is some other way of getting them that information, such as project dashboards or domain-specific training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13325" LastActivityDate="2015-10-11T17:19:27.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16459" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16460" CreationDate="2015-10-12T10:01:48.790" Score="7" ViewCount="2649" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example, we have two epics, 'User Management' and 'SSO API', which are broken down appropriately. A user story for lost password functionality is created, but the story is relevant to both epics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can this single user story about passwords be associated with multiple epics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8220" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-10-12T19:43:57.407" LastActivityDate="2015-10-12T19:43:57.407" Title="Can a single user story be associated with multiple epics?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;dependencies&gt;&lt;epics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16459" CreationDate="2015-10-12T10:45:47.507" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You cannot have an SSO API without underlying user management, that's a dependency, you need to do user management first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your story belongs to user management and should be done in that epic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Implementing the API so it supports the functionality may be another story alltogether in the SSO epic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt; a user story should not be associated with more than one epic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2015-10-12T10:45:47.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16459" CreationDate="2015-10-12T13:21:56.287" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The connection between an epic and user stories is one-to-many, therefore one user story can belong to only one epic. You can have the user story in the first epic and make the second epic dependent on this user story - it cannot be continued or finished until the user story in question is finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-10-12T13:21:56.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16397" CreationDate="2015-10-12T14:29:22.733" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found something that was between a solution and a hack but it works for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This works well in the scenario below but is not guaranteed for other scenarios. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary Task&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- [Time Block]: 10D&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Sub Task 1: 5D&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Sub Task 2: 5D&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Sub Task 3: 5D&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Sub Task 4: 5D  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm comfortable with saying the summary task will take 10 days but I'm not comfortable with allocating time on a sub task basis. So I:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Assign the resource to the Time Block task at 100%&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Assign the same resource to the sub tasks at 0%&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Ensure that the task type is &quot;Fixed Duration&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6429" LastActivityDate="2015-10-12T14:29:22.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16464" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-12T18:17:23.157" Score="1" ViewCount="80" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been learning the PRINCE2 methodology which advocates a product-orientated approach to managing projects. This seems sensible to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in hindsight, looking back at projects I've been involved with, I've realised that some of these have only defined the product in suitable detail towards the end of the project. So for the first 75% of the project, the only thing known about the product is that it will be a publication of some kind. It is only then in the last 25% of the project where this gets defined in detail (for example, the publication will be 2 documents accompanied by 5 wall-sized posters).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems risky to me: since expectations are not being laid out until right towards the end of the product. If someone interpreted the publication to be a video, rather than documents, then we have an issue. On the other hand, I appreciate that not defining the product towards later in the project could be allowing more time for innovation and creativity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should a project always provide a view on the detailed specification of a product right from the beginning and manage changes to this specification using a change management process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or does it simply need to work out the right point in the process where detailed specifications are needed? If so, how do you understand where this point in the process is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20833" LastActivityDate="2016-01-11T06:28:11.583" Title="Should projects always be product-orientated from the start?" Tags="&lt;product&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16459" CreationDate="2015-10-12T19:38:02.343" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This dependency-based planning is a common feature of project management in general, and isn't limited just to agile methodologies. However, it seems very applicable to the agile planning issue you have outlined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Think Dependencies, Not Composition or Inclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An epic can have a dependency on another epic or story, so in reality your dependency diagram might look more like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;          +------------------+&#xA;          |                  |&#xA;          |   Common Story   |&#xA;          |                  |&#xA;          +--+------------+--+&#xA;             ^            ^&#xA;             |            |&#xA;+------------+-----+   +--+---------------+&#xA;|                  |   |                  |&#xA;|      Epic 1      |   |      Epic 2      |&#xA;|                  |   |                  |&#xA;+------------------+   +------------------+&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, rather than trying to put the same story in more than one place, or trying to decompose your epics in a way that feels artificial, you can simply make the common story or epic a prerequisite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-10-12T19:38:02.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16464" CreationDate="2015-10-12T22:05:57.463" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well the answer of course, depends... :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are running a true Prince2 program (which falls in the purview of Traditional or Waterfall project management), then yes you should have the product fully defined before work begins. Note though that work does not begin at the start of the project. I don't know Prince2 in full detail, however it is very similar to PMI's PMBoK recommended process flow. In a traditional project you charter and define a project before any work is done. For some projects this can take a significant portion of the total project time. For example, compare how long it took to commission and plan the Freedom Tower in New York City. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are running an agile or lean project, then the answer can be summed up in the phrase &quot;Just in Time&quot;. You do just enough planning to meet the needs of the current work or phase of the project. You don't define everything in complete detail because you recognize it will almost certainly change before you are done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-10-12T22:05:57.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16464" CreationDate="2015-10-12T22:44:31.170" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer is no.  In my own experience, this is the myth of requirements.  I've never found a business or project team that can clearly articulate what they want at the beginning of a project.  This gets worse if they've never done the kind of project that you're undertaking.  Agile or a full-blown requirements package are just two different ways of managing this volatility.  Both have pros and cons.  It's more important to have a clear outcome (e.g., a 15-30 page printed book to teach 5th graders about the solar system) and manage expectations about when you'll have a better idea of what you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use progressive elaboration until clear idea of what you want is tied to product development.  You can create customer personas, write out use cases, create prototypes, etc. until you have a better idea of what you're looking for.  For example, if you produce a 30 page book with generic text (e.g., lorem ipsum), you might find that it's too much for a 5th grader to digest.  Or you might realize that you'll be struggling for context.  In PMBOK terms you should know what you want at the end of planning.  You should be able to write it down.  On a 12 month project, this could 9 of the 12 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as how you know when that is in a project, it's before you spend serious money.  In the book example you could easily create prototypes with a printer and publishing software.  Use generic pictures with watermarks and draft text.  Print it out and get a god feel for it.  Once you have a prototype you could reasonably put into the market, you're done.  And that is your product description.  Then the rest of the project is creating actual copy, buying the right photos, drafting a professional layout, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20838" LastActivityDate="2015-10-12T22:44:31.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16464" CreationDate="2015-10-13T03:53:47.270" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a general MBA answer on how a company manage project : one project is part of a wider strategy of development of a company. A company must be profitable to pay the fix and variable expenses every single month : salaries, electricity, heating system, etc. Some project are in the phase of growth, others in the phase of stability, others in the phase of decline. Some projects bring more money than others depending how advanced they are in their life time. Focusing on a product means you focus on the development of the product, not on the financing, the marketing and the distribution. You build a product that will satisfy the needs of the customer and meet the standards of your company. The strategies of development of a company and the tactics that will be employed vary with the environment in witch the company evolves : high competition, low competition, monopoly, etc. The manager of high level decides the strategy and push a product more than another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20839" LastActivityDate="2015-10-13T03:53:47.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16464" CreationDate="2015-10-13T04:21:08.540" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should a project always provide a view on the detailed specification of a product right from the beginning and manage changes to this specification using a change management process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depends on your organisations risk and change management approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project management often involves giving &lt;em&gt;perceived&lt;/em&gt; certainty to people by creating plans and specifications that indicate how you believe the future will occur based on &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt;. Of course, things change, and then we have the choice of how we manage that change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some organisations will accept constant change as a part of life and will embrace it with methodologies such as the various flavours of Agile, or will use light and adaptable CM processes for PRINCE2 run projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Others will view all change as an imposition and put in place rigid change control procedures to make change feel like a punishment for not correctly predicting the future (can you tell I'm not a fan?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Or does it simply need to work out the right point in the process where detailed specifications are needed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would be ideal, and the 'right time' will change from project to project depending on the level of risk and uncertainty and the appetite for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If so, how do you understand where this point in the process is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you know enough about the problem/solution to deliver value and (crucially) when the appetite is there within the business to accept the risk/uncertainty you're working with. The second one is the harder one to judge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20840" LastActivityDate="2015-10-13T04:21:08.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16451" CreationDate="2015-10-13T10:37:34.703" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Constraints&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've been constrained to 500 days, essentially you already have your estimate. Your client has time-boxed your activity. Time-boxing is a common (and Agile way) to set a budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if we take the 500 man days as our budget, then assume we'll have 4 developers (equating to 125 working days - assuming no absence), so we've fixed two vertices of the cost-time-quality project management triangle:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/y0w5v.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/y0w5v.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Project Management Triangle&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tutorialspoint.com/management_concepts/project_management_triangle.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.tutorialspoint.com/management_concepts/project_management_triangle.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, &lt;strong&gt;we're left with scope as the only variable for our product&lt;/strong&gt; - this is where estimation comes in. We need to ensure that what you'll be able to deliver within those constraints will satisfy your client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To do that, &lt;strong&gt;you'll need to be able to break the requirements down into high-level stories that you can then categorise (by priority)&lt;/strong&gt; into critical (MVP), core and optional features of your scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scope&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll first need to estimate each of the critical stories that will form your minimum viable product. You can start with story-points or other relative sizing activities initially, but you'll eventually have to form an estimate in days of effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The temptation is usually to apply a conversion factor from your relative sizing to days of effort (e.g. 3 story points equals 1 day). Don't do this! Instead, use the relative sizing to discuss and refine your work estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Negotiation&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have your high-level estimates for your MVP, you'll be able to assess whether the time-box will realistically give your team the opportunity to deliver the client's vision. If the MVP estimate came out at say, 200 days (effort), repeat the exercise for the remainder of the core and optional features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the estimate for your MVP, core or optional features pushes the estimate beyond the time-box, you'll need to start negotiating with your client. If it's just the MVP alone that's big enough to break the time-box, you'll either need your client to agree to a smaller scope or increase their budget (which may involve questioning the feasibility of the project)...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's either the core or (more) optional features that don't fit into the time-box, the client will need to prioritise them - in the full knowledge that if work completes faster or slower than the estimates, they'll get more or less of these features - but they'll get the ones most important to them first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, you may be able to demonstrate that if they allowed more time / resources / teams, you'd be able to deliver more of what they want:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/D2hOE.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/D2hOE.png&quot; alt=&quot;MVP-oriented feature teams&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://agile-setchu.org/setchu-guide/agile-feature-teams/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://agile-setchu.org/setchu-guide/agile-feature-teams/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Delivery&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To gain more confidence in your estimates, your client may agree to a few &quot;pilot&quot; iterations (Sprints) - or they may just agree to let your team start the product in its entirety. This is where velocity tracking comes in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After each iteration, you'll know how many story-points have been delivered. From there, you'll be able to begin tracking and forecasting your burn-down rate. Remember that burn-down is non-linear, so &lt;strong&gt;don't treat the estimates your team gave as deadlines&lt;/strong&gt;, but do monitor the velocity trend. You can use this information to provide clear visibility to your client as to whether your efforts are on track (and manage their expectations or react to any deviation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20761" LastEditorUserId="20761" LastEditDate="2015-10-13T10:53:53.977" LastActivityDate="2015-10-13T10:53:53.977" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16452" CreationDate="2015-10-13T10:38:13.367" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should definitely not try to write &quot;as much automation as possible&quot; or fall into the common trap of thinking that 100% automation is best and should be aimed for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing automated tests takes time, running them takes time and maintaining them takes time. If only 40% of our tests are useful, you wasted time writing to remaining 60%. You also need to wait for the other 60% to finish executing to get the results of the useful 40%, and have to spend time maintaining them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what should you test through automation? Here are some things to consider&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Core functionality of your app.&lt;/strong&gt; If your app is a website monitoring tool then this would probably be any alerts which need to fire if a site has problems. If these go wrong your app isn't serving it's core purpose so having automated regression tests to run on every code change makes sense. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The basics (often called a smoke test).&lt;/strong&gt; Ie using selenium to click all the links to navigate through a web app and make sure the server responds with a 200 for each. Note, I don't mean checking the content of the pages, just that you can navigate the app and it's not obviously broken. These tests ensure any manual testers aren't having their time (and morale) wasted with obviously broken builds.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Anything fragile which is likely to break.&lt;/strong&gt; This is hard to define for new code, but if you're working on some legacy code which you know to be bug prone then building tests around any changes you make is a good way to build towards being able to refactor more safely. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Things the developers wanted to automate because it was easy to do.&lt;/strong&gt; Sometimes it makes sense to add tests while you're building something, that shouldn't be discouraged.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest tests are structured along the above lines, in that way when one fails people know why it was created. If it is the test that is wrong and not the code under test they should understand why it's important to fix the test rather than delete it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can obviously adapt the above as you learn more and make decisions as to what code is worth writing tests for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other thoughts&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do consider UI testing, but as others have mentioned try to remove dependency on the structure of the UI where possible. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get set up with Jenkins (or similar) asap and start having all tests run on commit&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to keep the test run time in Jenkins low. This has two important effects. Firstly, developers are more likely to get notified of a failure before they've got too far into the next piece of code. Secondly, changes from two or more developers are less likely to be part of the same build so it's more obvious who is responsible for fixing them. Splitting tests up into groups to run in parallel seems to be the simplest way to achieve this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; I wrote up some thoughts on this here &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.getcorrello.com/2015/11/20/how-much-automated-testing-is-enough-automated-testing/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.getcorrello.com/2015/11/20/how-much-automated-testing-is-enough-automated-testing/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20707" LastEditorUserId="20707" LastEditDate="2015-11-20T10:53:41.090" LastActivityDate="2015-11-20T10:53:41.090" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16451" CreationDate="2015-10-13T10:48:27.037" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think forget the 500 days and the story points for now and focus on what you can show to your client. It sounds like you have a high level picture of what they want delivered? And you agree it's probably in the region of 500 developer days work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, break down the high level vision into some smaller releasable increments. Ideally into chunks which you can deliver to the client and they can actually start using. Possibly you use this as the main talking point for discussions with them, which parts of the project would be most useful if delivered first and would they then start using them? Make it clear this is the benefit of working with an agile approach, and that it will allow them to course correct and re-prioritise  if they discover things should be changed during the development rather than when the whole project is delivered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will then need to break down those larger chunks of work (Epics) into your user stories for the team to estimate using story points. Once you have had a few sprints you should hopefully know at least a rough idea of your velocity and can start equating the story points on the project plan to delivery dates. At that point you can check the match between your 500 days estimate and the reality but not before. Getting the client to understand this may be tricky but is critical if you don't want to have to lie to them and give firm time estimates for work which is yet to be estimated by the team. Maybe they will accept your finger in the air estimates and understand they are only estimates and not guarantees?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20707" LastActivityDate="2015-10-13T10:48:27.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16475" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16478" CreationDate="2015-10-13T12:02:46.617" Score="-2" ViewCount="363" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/16391/agile-project-plan&quot;&gt;previous question&lt;/a&gt;, plan of release was discussed - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 sprints, two weeks long each&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;staging deployment and UAT in each sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;optional hardening the sprint and at its end production deployment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;release completion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I further break down a sprint, it would look like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sprint planning: 0.5 days&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;development effort (by developer): 5 days, in parallel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;integration or manual test of this sprint (by testers): 5 days&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;integration or system testing : 2.5 days&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;user acceptance tests : 2 days&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sprint retrospective&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;separate team for automated testing for previous sprints that is&#xA;decided to be automated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I proceed like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20735" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T05:38:58.347" Title="Is my sprint break down good enough to start with?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16477" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16482" CreationDate="2015-10-13T13:14:13.553" Score="6" ViewCount="778" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an Agile environment, where there are multiple Scrum teams, I'm told that each team can nominate an &quot;ambassador&quot; to represent them in the &quot;Scrum of Scrums&quot; stand-up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What happens when there is conflict (priorities, dependencies, technical standards etc.) between 2 or more teams? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do the multiple teams maintain a co-ordinated direction when different team members may attend the SoS each time? Is there an overall product owner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20761" LastActivityDate="2016-08-10T10:54:42.693" Title="What are the responsibilities in a Scrum of Scrums?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;responsibility&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16475" CreationDate="2015-10-13T13:35:09.313" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Mini-waterfalls aren't Scrum&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are implementing is a mini-waterfalls approach where you have multiple small waterfall development efforts. If that is how you want to run your team then I'm not going to tell you it's wrong. But, this is not Scrum. If you want to run a Scrum process you should be looking to deliver completed enhancements throughout each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also need to let the team organise themselves within the sprint to get them working together, most of the time, to achieve the work in the sprint. Hopefully this means people are working together and collaborating on stories most of the time, as opposed to testers waiting until late in the sprint to do their work, or developers twiddling their thumbs for the last couple of days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Comparison of mini-waterfall vs. Scrum&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This section will try to answer some of the follow-on questions from the comments sections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a mini waterfall the first few days may be spent by the devs working out how they are going to build something (design) and ultimately building that thing. They may work together or separately on their enhancements. During this time the testers are likely writing the test cases for the work the developers are doing. Once the development work is done, the testers can start testing it. Hopefully there is enough time left for them to do all the testing they want and development didn't overrun. Developers can now spend their time fixing previously logged bugs, which the testers can then confirm are fixed. As bugs come in from the testers on the new enhancements the developers fix those. Again, hopefully the testers don't find so many issues there isn't time to fix them during the sprint. If something is found to be seriously broken and needs to be rewritten (maybe the original design misunderstood the problem) you need to squeeze in another dev-test cycle in the time remaining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a Scrum approach, on day one you still do some planning of how work will be done. This should include devs and testers. Testers can highlight things they would look to test for to make sure developers consider those things in their plans. This can also allow the testers to identify small chunks which the developers can deliver to them early for testing. Any test cases needing to be written should be included in the plan for that story. After this is complete the team gets together to work out what pieces of work they will all pick up first. This is repeated each day in the 'daily scrum' meeting. The team will usually not work as individuals on their own enhancements, where possible two or more developers will split up an enhancement to work on in parallel. If all the developers suggested they were about to start work on things which would take them 3 days before there was anything worth testing, the testers should speak up that they need something to do. Possibly some of the quicker bugs to fix need a lot of testing, let's get those fixed first to keep the testers busy while we work on something bigger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully this allows a more efficient use of the teams time. I think the situations where the test cases take exactly as long to write as the code are rare. By splitting the work up and allowing the team to decide on a daily basis what they work on they can optimise the use of their time and work together to achieve the sprint goal. The benefits of working like this are many, too many to go into here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20707" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-10-14T08:19:31.777" LastActivityDate="2015-10-14T08:19:31.777" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16477" CreationDate="2015-10-13T13:36:24.853" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know what the accepted approach is but I've always implemented this by having the SM from each team attend the Scrum of Scrums. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20707" LastActivityDate="2015-10-13T13:36:24.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16480" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16481" CreationDate="2015-10-13T13:54:56.917" Score="3" ViewCount="210" Body="&lt;p&gt;In MS Project after setting a baseline, how do you show that a task is now estimated to take less time than originally thought?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example the original estimated duration was 10 days, this was set as the baseline, but we now know that the task will only take 5 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20845" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2015-10-14T06:08:42.440" LastActivityDate="2015-10-14T06:08:42.440" Title="Tracking schedule after setting baseline" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16480" CreationDate="2015-10-13T14:40:59.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First use the Insert Column function to show &quot;Baseline Finish&quot; and &quot;Baseline Duration&quot; in your schedule. Then manipulate the value in the &quot;Duration&quot; column to show that the task will only take 5 days. You can now compare &quot;Finish&quot; with &quot;Baseline Finish&quot; to see the net effect on your schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2015-10-13T14:40:59.217" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16477" CreationDate="2015-10-13T15:46:28.987" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Scrum of Scrums should happen after the daily Scrums because otherwise it would be hard to answer the three questions there. In case there is an important decision, the ambassador shall go back to the team, and explain in 3-5 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anybody from the team shall be able to represent the team in the SoS because they pay attention during their Scrum. Usually, teams send the Scrum Master to these meetings, but this is just customary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a good thing if the POs can join the SoS because that is a good start to solve problems, but at least the overall PO should be present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-10-13T15:46:28.987" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16483" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-13T15:46:58.090" Score="3" ViewCount="1688" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suspect that the problems on Scrum teams in my current organization supersede this one aspect, but wanted to focus the question more specifically to how Scrum can be done better than it is currently being done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are a new organization to Agile/Scrum and have many challenges.  We are horizontally stratified to the point of sheer lunacy where nearly every aspect of software and technology has been provided through some external enterprise platform team that monopolizes an incredibly specific aspect of an overall software system (Eg. ESB team, Reporting team, DBA team, Scheduled Tasks Team, Business Events Notification, etc...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our project is a hub of sorts with an absurd number of external interfaces spiderwebbing into and out of our software that we are trying to deliver.  We have many many many layers of abstraction from business and operations, to operation business analysts, to Product Owner, to business systems analysts that define detailed functional requirements in the form of user stories and acceptance criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This project has a big budget so they formed off two scrum teams but to my extremely vocal objections the decision by the scrum master was to horizontally segregate the two scrum teams such that one scrum team deliver on user stories for stakeholders while the other scrum team delivers on more technical and interface stories in a digestable form for the other scrum team.  My unheeded objections were that a user story should be a full vertical slice otherwise we harm our ability to be cross functional.  The argument against mine is that even the simplest most atomized slice of business value could not be delivered in a two week sprint because of the obscene amount of external dependencies any one story calls for.  Instead the second team works ahead of the user story team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is all failing miserably in practice, but despite all of this the bigger problem still is that our backlog grooming and sprint planning sessions take 8+ hours to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our scrum master insists that we cannot end the meeting until enough stories are ready for the next sprint, no matter what.  Most of the stories just aren't ready in terms of requirements I feel to where the user story is clear and the acceptance criteria makes sense.  I am constantly trying to stifle extended deep dive technical discussions that technical folks in the room insist on talking to death about but usually I just give up after a while and let them talk through whatever anxieties they have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Originally I tried taking a hard stance in the meetings and calling the story Not Ready and moving back to Backlog, however I was being lectured from the frustrated Product Owner that we are failing to bring anything useful at all into the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next I tried to call for a return to Sprint Zero because we just aren't ready to work on anything yet.  It is clear the Scrum Team needs more guidance on requirements and high level design, and being as I am responsible for system architecture, I agree that we are moving too fast for me to give the level of design detail that the technical folks feel they need to work on a story.  I try to make up for this by being completely available for questions or concerns during the sprint but it doesn't ease the anxiety that the team feels about the impending public humiliation that comes when they are in standup and have to admit that they don't know what to do and that their story is at risk yet again.  My call for Sprint Zero is unheeded by the Scrum Master who insists that we are not going to meet our strict regulatory deadlines of minimum scope if we &quot;waste time&quot; in Sprint Zero.  It is a completely immutable position that he refuses to step down from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So our Backlog grooming and Sprint planning has devolved into 8+ hr sessions where we essentially try our best to piece together requirements and design details for each story, and where discussions can go in excess of 45 minutes on each story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This whole experience has me wondering if Scrum just doesn't scale to large projects in practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What else can I do as a technical architect to help pull the project out of this vicious death spiral it found itself in?  How can I help the team get to a point where we can groom, slice and size a story in less than 10 minutes? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7106" LastActivityDate="2015-10-14T18:37:24.440" Title="Ineffective Backlog Grooming and Sprint Planning" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16475" CreationDate="2015-10-13T17:22:18.967" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looks good to me. You can do a retrospective on this process after a couple weeks, and see where you can improve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-10-13T17:22:18.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16483" CreationDate="2015-10-13T17:46:23.933" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may need a new Scrum Master, because your supervises the team not mentors and challenges. You can also try to move him from supervision to mentorship. That would be a great help to your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a technical architect you take the technical mentoring role and improve your team to be better at software development. You can do it officially by asking for time from SM, or unofficially by going around, see who needs help, and help: pair programming, small discussions around technology and architecture, and give brown bag talks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The planning meetings are usually long because&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;team members are on different technological levels&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;team members are on different domain know how levels&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;team members know less about anything&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a technical architect you can reduce the first by education. If there are no more technical discussions on the planning meeting, the can focus on the domain, and with time, they'll finish earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, there is no snake oil for &quot;groom, slice and size a story in less than 10 minutes&quot;. It takes time, a lot of mentoring effort, management support, patients, and team that stays the same. Assuming these are present and based on my experience, you may see a reduction in planning meeting time after 5-6 sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-10-13T17:46:23.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16486" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16689" CreationDate="2015-10-13T18:58:42.350" Score="1" ViewCount="488" Body="&lt;p&gt;In MS project, when I updated the &quot;actual finish&quot; dates of some tasks, the formatting of Gantt chart bars on some of the following/dependent tasks automatically changed to be thicker/taller than they were. Why did this happen / what do the thicker/taller bars represent? Can I reset the formatting to the original? &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FGbPV.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FGbPV.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20845" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2015-10-14T06:06:49.053" LastActivityDate="2016-02-08T22:41:04.267" Title="Gantt chart bar style changes on its own" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16483" CreationDate="2015-10-14T00:16:20.930" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our scrum master insists that we cannot end the meeting until enough stories are ready for the next sprint, no matter what. Most of the stories just aren't ready in terms of requirements&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your scrum master isn't doing their job and this may be a discussion that you need to have with them (tactfully and in private) to see whether they're willing to change their approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprint Planning sessions must be time-boxed to prevent exactly this from happening. No one should be more pedantic about time-boxing these meetings than the scrum master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically all documentation on Scrum will back you up here (for example : &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-planning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-planning&lt;/a&gt; )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sprint Planning is time-boxed to a maximum of eight hours for a one-month Sprint. For shorter Sprints, the event is usually shorter. The Scrum Master ensures that the event takes place and that attendants understand its purpose. The Scrum Master teaches the Scrum Team to keep it within the time-box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sessions are going so long because they're allowed to go that long. Time-box the session and the team will soon learn to be more productive / less detailed due to necessity. This is why time-boxing works - it makes time a non-negotiable so other things have to be negotiated (eg depth of discussion, definition of ready, general grooming process).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20840" LastActivityDate="2015-10-14T00:16:20.930" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16477" CreationDate="2015-10-14T00:22:04.900" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What happens when there is conflict (priorities, dependencies, technical standards etc.) between 2 or more teams?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's what a SoS meeting is for - not necessarily to resolve the conflicts, but to identify them and coordinate and facilitate the resolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do the multiple teams maintain a co-ordinated direction when different team members may attend the SoS each time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically it's the same person each time, usually the scrum master from each team. Sending the same person tends to work better as the SoS group learn how to work well together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there an overall product owner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depends if there is an overarching product/portfolio. SoS can be used as a way of scaling agile, in which case there will often be a Portfolio Owner/Manager (who is responsible for multiple Products). But in other instances SoS is just used as a way to coordinate multiple loosely coupled products (and in that instance they may each have their own PO but no Portfolio Owner).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20840" LastActivityDate="2015-10-14T00:22:04.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16475" CreationDate="2015-10-14T00:32:29.003" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably not. It would appear that you're doing some kind of weird &quot;Scrummerfall&quot; with command-and-control assignments and time-based release planning. This isn't Scrum, it isn't agile, and the comments lead one to believe that agile may simply be the wrong methodology for your team because the team and its leadership currently lack the experience or coaching required to implement successful agile iterations &lt;em&gt;right now&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An agile framework might be a viable choice in the future as the team learns more about agility, but trying to bolt agility onto your current project is unlikely to be a successful project-delivery strategy. Your mileage may of course vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Effective Scrum and Agile Practices&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each agile iteration is a &quot;project in miniature.&quot; Each sprint should pull in just enough stories to fill its projected team capacity. The team should then take collective ownership of the stories during the sprint, do just enough planning to address the current Sprint Goal, and work cooperatively to complete each story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there are exceptions (generally based on team composition and skill set), agile stories should typically be worked on cooperatively by the entire team, &lt;strong&gt;not serialized within the sprint and certainly &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; serialized over multiple sprints.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While Scrum doesn't mandate this, in effective agile implementations your testers and programmers should be working &lt;em&gt;interactively&lt;/em&gt; throughout the sprint to implement test-driven design and continuous integration. Planning &quot;testing sprints&quot; is usually a project smell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Agile Release Planning&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, assigning timeframes and tasks is a command-and-control approach that isn't agile. Agile release planning requires a very different approach estimated in &lt;em&gt;iterations&lt;/em&gt;. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/16376/4271&quot;&gt;this related answer&lt;/a&gt; for an in-depth treatment of agile release planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2015-10-14T00:32:29.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16490" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-14T12:49:44.680" Score="-1" ViewCount="98" Body="&lt;p&gt;A group of youngsters (age average of 20 years) would like to establish an organisation that makes projects into reality. The question would be: What kind of structure would be the best to manage this organisation of about 32 people with different talents and specialties varying from Tech to Management?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like examples of professional organizations that are project oriented and handles a lot of projects at the same time. I'd like our organization to be able to adapt to changes in the social scene in addition to changes in our economic state. I would also like to know a way to get us heavy sponsors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to know everything there is to build a project team and how to maintain it including the tasks of every member of the team, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20856" LastEditorDisplayName="user16244" LastEditDate="2017-07-13T10:00:14.577" LastActivityDate="2017-07-13T10:00:14.577" Title="How to create an organised association that is project oriented?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16475" CreationDate="2015-10-14T14:49:04.310" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here’s how traditional test phases typically fit in with an agile testing approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unit testing is still completed by developers as usual, but ideally&#xA;there’s a much stronger emphasis on automated testing at the&#xA;code/unit level.In eXtreme Programming (XP), there is also a strong&#xA;emphasis on test driven development, which is the practice of writing&#xA;tests before writing code. This can start simply with tests (or&#xA;‘confirmations’) being identified when a ‘user story‘ is written, and&#xA;can go as far as actually writing automated unit tests before writing&#xA;any code.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;System testing and integration testing are rolled together. As there&#xA;is at least a daily build, and ideally continuous integration,&#xA;features can be tested as they are developed, in an integrated&#xA;environment. As per waterfall, this stage of testing is ideally&#xA;carried out by professional testers, as we all know developers can’t&#xA;test for toffee! Importantly, though, each feature is tested as it’s&#xA;developed, not at the end of the Sprint or iteration, and certainly&#xA;not at the end of the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Towards the end of each sprint, when all features for the iteration&#xA;have been completed (i.e. developed and tested in an integrated&#xA;environment), there needs to be time for a short regression test&#xA;before releasing the software. Regression testing should be short&#xA;because automated, test driven development, with features tested&#xA;continuously in an integrated environment, should not result in many&#xA;surprises. Hopefully it should be more like a ‘road test’.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reference&lt;/strong&gt; : &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allaboutagile.com/agile-testing-versus-waterfall-test-phases/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.allaboutagile.com/agile-testing-versus-waterfall-test-phases/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/d94Et.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/d94Et.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Story Task Breakdown&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;Reference : &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/rallysoftware/how-to-fit-testing-in-the-iteration-2009-09-11in-the-iteration-2009-09-11&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.slideshare.net/rallysoftware/how-to-fit-testing-in-the-iteration-2009-09-11in-the-iteration-2009-09-11&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;I suggest you to go through the slides in the mentioned link. Its a good presentation and will give you good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20757" LastEditorUserId="20757" LastEditDate="2015-10-15T05:38:58.347" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T05:38:58.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16483" CreationDate="2015-10-14T18:37:24.440" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It looks like you've done a lot of thinking about the problems and potential sources, but have you considered rounding everyone up and doing a root-cause analysis? Given your info, I would guess that even the initial step of framing the current problems will generate a lot of interesting conversation and expose alignment issues around what it means to be agile, whether you are truly following Scrum tenets, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2015-10-14T18:37:24.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16494" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-14T21:07:17.810" Score="6" ViewCount="1166" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm facing a challenging situation with one of my clients. We completed the project as planned in 4 months and now the next step is the project deployment at his site. The problem is his site is not ready for the deployment process for lack of equipments, and it's been 3 months like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what action I should be taking now, obviously there is the last installment 30% pending on final deployment, also the contract is not covering delays from the client like in the scenario we are currently having, so there is nothing formally I can refer to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can be aggressive and tell him that we are not responsible for the delays and give a grace period to pay the last installment, but he is a big client and we have a good relation with him with potential project so don't want to be too aggressive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think would be the best action to take?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1265" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2015-10-15T09:51:14.070" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T18:23:19.370" Title="Delays in getting project sign off" Tags="&lt;clients&gt;&lt;contracts&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16494" CreationDate="2015-10-15T04:40:05.847" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a similar instance when we were facing delays- &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We have clarified client about our organization internal structure. In our organization, resources are taken out from one project and given to another project if billing is not done. We cannot keep hold of resources indefinitely. So resource billing is to be done for the waiting time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Resource work/utilization is judged by the Resource Manager of the organization. &#xA;&lt;br/&gt; &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;If the resources are taken out, the key resources may not be available at the deployment time. You can arrange other resources but they will not have required&#xA;project knowledge to handle any issues that can come up during deployment time.  &lt;br/&gt; &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;So we need to speedup.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In case their site is not ready because of lack of equipment, if you have any contact with any vendor or your organization provide such services .Can you offer fresh contract for that and then do that?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20735" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2015-10-15T09:53:31.180" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T09:53:31.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16497" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-15T05:02:25.110" Score="2" ViewCount="230" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm new to this stack section. I have 2 questions which might be too broad, which in case it can be modified by any of you. My questions are,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) How does emotional intelligence of project managers help to drive a project towards success? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Does conflict resolution in project management have anything to do with emotional intelligence of Project Managers? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please inform me if this question goes against the stack rules so that I can either modify it or remove it accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17511" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T23:04:58.300" Title="Emotional Intelligence vs Conflict Resolution" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;conflicts&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16498" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16499" CreationDate="2015-10-15T06:27:30.800" Score="5" ViewCount="498" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a major replacement/upgrade project in flight. The project touches on a number of existing systems that are not being upgraded some of which have business as usual issues e.g. lack of support, unauthorized installations, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is unknown what impact this may have on the delivery of the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should the issues with the existing systems not being upgraded be captured as either as risks or issues?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If no, why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If yes, why?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17081" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-10-15T12:55:14.257" LastActivityDate="2018-11-21T07:27:22.997" Title="Is a &quot;business as usual&quot; issue a project issue?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16498" CreationDate="2015-10-15T10:25:26.363" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say it is a risk because of the possible lack of maintenance and support. For example, lack of support has a high risk on delivery because you have to figure out the solution with small or non existing domain know-how.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T10:25:26.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16494" CreationDate="2015-10-15T10:33:59.073" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have a good relationship, you may agree with your customer to pay some portion of the work now - about 70% - to cover you expenses. In the mean time, you save and plane with some resources to be able to do the installment in 3 months. During negotiations I would always put emphasis on the good relationship, keeping it, and on being ready on time. I won't say much about them being late.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case you have inventory costs, you can either ask your customer to pay for it, since you did your part, or you can pay for it by yourself. The second may strengthen your good relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, you need a bit different contract for the next assignment which covers cases like this (you can also do so risk mitigation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T10:33:59.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16498" CreationDate="2015-10-15T12:19:09.763" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This confusion about whether something is an issue or risk is a HUGE waste of time.  It comes down to how one structured the event in one's mind.  Are you focusing on the current problem being experienced or are you focused on the future?  Are you being tactical or are you being strategic?  Are you trying to cure the high blood pressure, the obesity, the high cholesterol, or are you trying to mitigate the heart attack and early death?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can clearly see, issues and the risks are linked.  So where you log it and how you communicate it and how you work it all depends on where your focus is.  If you are the leader, your focus is likely downstream, in the future, where strategy lives.  Risk.  If your a worker, your focus is likely here and now, getting to the end of the week, completing a task or sets of tasks.  Issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But at the end of the day, where it is logged doesn't matter.  What matters is you are mitigating the heart attack by curing the BP, obesity, cholesterol, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T12:19:09.763" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16497" CreationDate="2015-10-15T13:32:17.807" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think EI is important for everyone in a collaborative organization, especially so for any leadership roles. How much impact it has depends on the org culture and context - hierarchy (or lack thereof), individual autonomy, team makeup, etc. That being said, in a general sense, PMs that &quot;lead&quot; teams and have solid EI will be able to leverage it to improve the project team's cohesion/alignment, culture, morale, etc. Conflict resolution often depends on EI, because it allows the arbitrator to understand the root causes of the conflict and work towards a resolution that address those causes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TBH, you can search online and find a &lt;em&gt;tremendous&lt;/em&gt; amount of hard data and studies around this, so I would start there instead of here. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T13:32:17.807" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16497" CreationDate="2015-10-15T14:01:39.090" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;EI and conflict management goes hand in hand. &#xA;EI will be useful in all areas -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Negotiations with client during inconvenient situations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Motivation to resources who may not be happy with&#xA;their role/responsibilities or senior management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conflict between team members&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your team member may not be happy with you as well, you dont have to&#xA;take it personally and dont go against his career path. Understand&#xA;the professional reasons behind that and communicate/explain or&#xA;correct things.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your communication with senior management regarding approval of more&#xA;budget/resource requirement while project cost does not allow that&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project not on track and you are pressurized, you need to explain it&#xA;to various stakeholders&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to me, EI is an important quality of a manager for handling project activities. I have seen popular managers having this quality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20735" LastEditorUserId="20735" LastEditDate="2015-10-15T14:32:13.523" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T14:32:13.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16504" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-15T15:14:17.817" Score="0" ViewCount="130" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently project managing several projects, they are all one day long however I am struggling to set up project planning for them given that the projects are delivered in a single day. In that day, the requirements often do change in an adhoc way. In addition to this, there are multiple one day projects to project manage. I currently use Trello to project manage. If I use one Trello board it could lead to confusion, since the backlog items will be mixed up with different projects. If I create a new Trello board for each client/project, I feel that it will be excessive since the projects are typically one day long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to structure the project planning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2015-10-16T15:24:07.067" Title="Best way to use agile for 1 day projects" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16490" CreationDate="2015-10-15T17:56:01.383" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rather than trying to determine up front what the organisational structure and roles will be will be, why not allow them to self-organise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create multi-discipline teams. Research has shown that a good team size is in the range 3-9 people. Bigger than that and communication can become a problem. Maybe 4-5 teams would be a good number for your organisation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have the teams organised, create a clear backlog of work for each team. This is best done by working closely with your customers/users. Or possibly by creating a 'Product Owner' type role that is responsible for collating requirements and determining their priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the teams can set to work on the backlog. Suggest to them that they meet regularly (say once per week or once per fortnight) to discuss how things are going. Then allow them to adjust their process, organisation and roles to reflect what they have learned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get the teams to talk together regularly so they can share their experience and their approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's it. Inspect and adapt. If the teams decide they want to use a formal framework like Scrum or Prince 2 then they can bring it in. But let the process be pulled in to the teams by their needs rather than starting with a process and having the teams forced to adapt to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T17:56:01.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16498" CreationDate="2015-10-15T18:03:58.103" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I strongly support David's approach: the whole discussion isn't worth your time. It's something that everyone - specially, stakeholders - must be aware of. I'm just not 100% sure if it's possible to have an item as a risk for some and an issue for others - my gut feeling says that if something is a risk... it's a risk for everyone, top to bottom. But this vision is highly dependent on your environment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, entering into the formalism of using &lt;em&gt;risk&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;issue&lt;/em&gt;, I'd say that I'd consider a risk something &lt;em&gt;I'm not sure would happen or impact the project&lt;/em&gt;. After all, an &lt;em&gt;issue&lt;/em&gt; is a &lt;em&gt;materialized risk&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you have the answer on your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;It is &lt;strong&gt;unknown&lt;/strong&gt; what impact this &lt;strong&gt;may have&lt;/strong&gt; on the delivery of the&#xA;  project.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, as it stands, &lt;strong&gt;it's a risk&lt;/strong&gt;. Once there's a confirmation of impact, it becomes an issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T18:03:58.103" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16494" CreationDate="2015-10-15T18:23:19.370" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't need to be aggressive, you need to be realist. Your contract wasn't prepared for the current situation, so you guys need to sit together and review the situation. As Dimple mentioned (+1!) you should make sure your client understands how your company work and that there are impacts if there's no contract review / agreement for the end of the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having that said, as a service provider you should offer options (decisions are always up to the clients... we just provide alternatives):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The client pays to keep people 'idle' until their infrastructure is available&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The client doesn't pay and you'll resume support with the people you have available at the time the service is resumed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd use the grace period as a time the client will have to assess what's the best option. Is important to let the client know &lt;em&gt;at the moment this review is done&lt;/em&gt; what's the option you'll follow in case no agreement is done when grace period is overdue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hi dear client, we have a situation &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, we can go &lt;em&gt;1&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;2&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can offer you a grace period to decide how to approach until &lt;em&gt;Y&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we can't have an agreement, then we'll understand you decided to go &lt;em&gt;1&lt;/em&gt; and you'll receive a bill to pay for people (or you have decided to go &lt;em&gt;2&lt;/em&gt; and understand the support won't be as smooth as it could, since there's no guarantee the same people will be available). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is important to ensure &lt;em&gt;you present what's the approach you see as fit after the grace period&lt;/em&gt;, otherwise they'll keep rolling things until their environment is ready. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T18:23:19.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16497" CreationDate="2015-10-15T23:04:58.300" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;EI impacts all aspects of interpersonal interaction - the lower your interpersonal skills the harder you'll find it to work successfully in and with a team. Conversely, better EI/interpersonal skills means you'll find yourself more successful at navigating all facets of teamwork (working in a team, managing a team etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addressing your questions directly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1) How does emotional intelligence of project managers help to drive a project towards success?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Better interpersonal skills means more effective people management and engagement. Effective people management and engagement are key to productive project teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) Does conflict resolution in project management have anything to do with emotional intelligence of Project Managers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. Higher EI = more effective interpersonal skills. Conflict resolution relies heavily on effective interpersonal skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20840" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T23:04:58.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16504" CreationDate="2015-10-16T11:50:09.067" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have your heart set on using Trello, I'd recommend either using a separate board per project, or using &lt;a href=&quot;http://help.trello.com/article/797-adding-labels-to-cards&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Labels&lt;/a&gt; so you can quickly filter the board on a project-by-project basis. I've created an example board that demonstrates this &lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/b/EGmDMrQs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your team are co-located, have you considered devoting a wall/whiteboard to a Kanban board? You could then use swim lanes to separate projects from one another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But remember, Agile is a &lt;em&gt;mindset&lt;/em&gt;, not a planning technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8220" LastActivityDate="2015-10-16T11:50:09.067" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16490" CreationDate="2015-10-16T15:22:31.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, there is the project's perspective. You as an organisation shall sit down and &lt;strong&gt;check each project and figure out what kind of expertise the project requires and on which level&lt;/strong&gt;. Have smaller groups, and each group should to a list for each project. When they are finished, they should compare their lists and come up with a common settings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you know what you need, it is time to see what you have. Ask people to put their names next to a project based on their knowledge and interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You or the CEO/CTO should know the priority of the projects, and with the lists above it should be visible if you are able to start working on them or not. In case you don't have enough expertise to start, you can check the interest. Or, in case you have more people, you as an organisation can start arguing on how to distribute yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a project is ready, you can start this procedure again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another approach would be - which I like better - is to have cross functional teams. Such a team should have a knowledge to handle any kinds of project within your domain. You can form this team with the &quot;who would like to work with whom&quot; approach. Of course the cross functionality trumps personal preferences when the team lacks a certain quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I favour the second option because the team can stay together and there will less time spent on &quot;forming and storming&quot;, and this kind of team learns faster than a changing one. The first option does not care much about people and their preferences, therefore it is kind of a short term or emergency solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-10-16T15:22:31.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16504" CreationDate="2015-10-16T15:24:07.067" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have really one day-long projects, handle each project as a work item (or a card), and move it on your board phase to phase (phase: todo, development, testing, deploy etc.). With this approach you can see if they are really one day long, and see how many projects you have in a phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-10-16T15:24:07.067" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16513" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16532" CreationDate="2015-10-17T03:43:11.663" Score="0" ViewCount="721" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to establish a work breakdown structure in Microsoft Project for the building out of a new application life cycle infrastructure for a software project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to perform a set of x-number of tasks in each environment (e.g development, staging, production etc.) How do I accurately represent a separate instance of the tasklist for each environment, concisely and accurately in a WBS? Repeating such a list for each environment seems redundant; establishing a task-list template seems logical, but not like anything I've seem in my research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20892" LastActivityDate="2015-10-19T17:33:54.653" Title="How do I represent multiple instances of a task-list in a WBS?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16209" CreationDate="2015-10-17T08:06:40.813" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For visualisation purposes you can create a new lane on the top called &quot;features&quot; where you put your high level cards. When you are ready with the underlying cards, you move them to done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-10-17T08:06:40.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6362" CreationDate="2015-10-17T11:45:03.227" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;anybody who thinks you can do big projects based on two week estimates to meet the ultimate promised delivery date is pretty much clueless.  I don't know where these so called software engineers work but they must never have bugs in their code that are hard to find or hardware that the software runs on is not working right. These kind of set back  happen all the time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overtime is only good for permanent employees if they work it for free.  Then the management is all for it especially in times like i mention above. Otherwise, if you go home at 40 they are ticked off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for contract employees, money is a morale boster for them.  Tell a contractor he has to work over for 40 for free and just take the hinges off your door. For that matter, don't give your employees any pay raises once and see what happens...just keep the hinges off the door.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile is strawman's argument against Spiral development.  Agile proponents just bash Spiral development and therefore it's better.  Or they put a  pie chart that shows there's a higher %age of successful projects that used Agile compared to spiral/waterfall.  It's like leftism. You just bash the other side or the other way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Companies that use Agile are treating their employees like children. Whoever heard of holding up a card (at the count of 3) to estimate a task for which you have no  clue what has to be done?  You may as well throw some sh*t on the wall and whatever sticks that's your estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A morale killer is making your employees go to a daily scrum and &quot;go around the room&quot; and tell  everyone what you did and what your blockers are. I  go to those daily,  when i leave them i have no clue what anyone is working on. I don't listen. I have my own work to stay focused on. When the day comes to integrate code with them i usually send them an email and ask  for a get together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could go on and on. This IS empirical evidence on how much Agile sucks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20893" LastActivityDate="2015-10-17T11:45:03.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9309" CreationDate="2015-10-17T13:24:02.550" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure why B is the right answer, but I can tell how A, C, and D are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option A talks about decomposition of WBS, which has nothing to do with a traceability matrix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option C and D, if you read between the lines, talks about &quot;how that requirement was verified in a later deliverable&quot; and &quot;verify that the change was properly implemented.&quot; Now, a traceability matrix does NOT focus on verification or implementation of requirement or change. It simply helps us track the change with respect to the various parameters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, A, C, and D are clearly discarded, so, the correct answer should be B. Although, I, personally, do not appreciate B as the best answer for such question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20894" LastActivityDate="2015-10-17T13:24:02.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16513" CreationDate="2015-10-17T19:18:46.790" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would not mind the redundancy, as the same task for the different environments have separate status. Though they seem identical from a starting point - things develop. The tasks would also be executed at different points in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok, a reuse of the same wbs for tracking 3-4 different environments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the set of environments is hierarchical, you could mark the task 25% complete after the first, 50% after the second, and so forth.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20896" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2015-10-18T11:01:20.607" LastActivityDate="2015-10-18T11:01:20.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16518" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16519" CreationDate="2015-10-18T07:35:32.650" Score="5" ViewCount="296" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Model 1:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team 1: Dev Team for handling feature stories and bugs of same&#xA;sprint/release&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team 2: Maintenance Team for handling bugs of previous releases&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team members exchanged between Dev and Maintenance team every release so that morale of Maintenance team doesnot go down&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pro : All features are delivered as per plan, Team is not disturbed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Con : Team may have to work fix bugs on the features they have not&#xA;worked on.May take more time to fix issue and originator of the issue&#xA;will not get to know what mistake he has done and can do the same&#xA;mistake again, code merging is required&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably, this risk can be mitigated if in sprint retrospective or&#xA;release retrospective - dev and support team handshake occurs.&#xA;Require Knowledge transfer of application from dev team to&#xA;maintenance team in every release end&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Model 2:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team : Same Team for handling features and bugs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/8098/handling-bugs-in-the-scrum-process&quot;&gt;StackExchangeLink&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Decide , these many bugs team will fix every release - lets say 10 bugs&#xA;So team velocity is lets say 20 story point per sprint (excluding bugs which will be mentioned separately in status report)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pro : All fixes will be carried out by those who were responsible for&#xA;that so they will realize their mistake&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Con : Not sure how much time each bug will take , sometimes it takes&#xA;few hours and sometimes a day so its going to seriously hamper&#xA;feature story plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please share your views.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20735" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T08:25:19.093" Title="which model is preferable for handling bugs?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16518" CreationDate="2015-10-18T09:41:54.037" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Model 2&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With Model one you may achieve &lt;em&gt;&quot;All features are delivered as per plan, Team is not disturbed&quot;&lt;/em&gt; but the features are not actually complete because there are bugs still to be closed. This can lead to extremely dysfunctional behaviour where delivery of a feature is more important than whether it actually works, is secure and if the code is of decent quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have each team responsible for maintaining their own work. Task them with completing work pulled into each sprint to the &quot;definition of done&quot;. Where work was not properly completed in a previous sprint and takes effort to fix in a future sprint you are getting a more accurate impression of your actual velocity by 'losing' time fixing the issues later. The time lost later should really have been spent in the original sprint on that task rather than on starting another one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20707" LastActivityDate="2015-10-18T09:41:54.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16518" CreationDate="2015-10-18T10:34:31.167" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some disadvantages of Model 1:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By creating two teams you immediately introduce imbalance. Maybe one week there is a lot of project work to do, but the next week the focus needs to be on fixing production bugs. With the two teams concept you are likely to have one team overworked and one team under-worked.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One of the big benefits of Scrum is to have a consistent team. This allows us to predict the capacity of the team. If you change the team members frequently it will be difficult to predict capacity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can end up with a false impression of progress. The development team appears to be moving along quickly, but there is a backlog of production bugs building up. All appears well, but the reality is very different.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It does not encourage pride in the quality of the development. If another team has to fix the production problems the development team is insulated from the mistakes they make.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Model 2 would be my preference. You rightly point out that predicting the time to fix bugs is difficult. That is one of the reasons teams often focus on prevention rather than fixing issues after they have happened. Examples of this approach include the use of TDD, continuous integration and automated regression testing. Spend time up-front promoting quality so that the rate of bugs is reduced and then forward progress becomes more predictable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-10-18T10:34:31.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16521" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16531" CreationDate="2015-10-18T14:48:20.273" Score="8" ViewCount="1032" Body="&lt;p&gt;For Fixed Bid projects , the approach in our company is :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The estimation is done for every user story in story points, and team&#xA;has to convert those story points into hours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once we find out the hours estimate, then we can arrive at the cost&#xA;of the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hence, one approach is to run a sample sprint of one week, selecting&#xA;a few features from the product backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the team completes 50 story points in 250 hours, then each story&#xA;point costs 250/50 = 5 hours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;So if we estimate, overall, 1,000 story points, then the estimate of&#xA;hours will be 5 x 1,000 = 5,000 hours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team has to decide on the DoD (definition of done) before coming&#xA;to this estimation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If we're billing $X for each man-hour, then the cost will be 5,000 x&#xA;$X.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apart from this, other cost model is TnM(Resource based cost) which&#xA;should be generally used but not always accepted by client.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any other cost Model used by your company. Please guide?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20900" LastActivityDate="2015-10-23T14:06:48.900" Title="Cost Estimates for agile projects" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16490" CreationDate="2015-10-18T15:40:50.567" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll try to show briefly my approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;learn about team members (both: (hard &amp;amp; soft) skills; and team roles (Belbin's approach) ) - make internal 360 assesment and draw matrix&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;learn and agree about tools &amp;amp; techniques (PMOBK, SCRUM,  etc..)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;learn and agree about procedures (especially decision making and motivation)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;fill (at least) project roaster and risk estimats for every project   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make dashboard for all projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make idea board&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;every 3 months make follow up to improve Your teams processes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19377" LastActivityDate="2015-10-18T15:40:50.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16518" CreationDate="2015-10-18T19:18:49.507" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;I recommend the same Team for handling features and bugs&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Team members exchanged between Dev and Maintenance team every release&#xA;  so that morale of Maintenance team does not go down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to keep the teams relatively stable, even if they switch from one project to another. This is because teams take time to gel together. Also, you can better predict velocity this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;excluding bugs which will be mentioned separately in status report&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All work that the team will do in each sprint should be accounted for. So, estimate the bugs also with story points. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/should-story-points-be-assigned-to-a-bug-fixing-story&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Should Story Points Be Assigned to a Bug Fixing Story?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I get the impression (possibly incorrect) that your teams send too many bugs into production. If this is the case, you might want to review your current engineering practices and see how to tighten it up. You can ask the team in the next retrospective and implement the top suggestions on priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-10-18T19:18:49.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16518" CreationDate="2015-10-18T23:11:54.023" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use a hybrid of both methods. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to our specific application we actually have new developers run bug support to help train and get use to the system.  As they grow they take on projects and handle bugs in the same fashion you discuss in Model 2.  Important customer support bugs get dedicated support from our new developers.  If the issue is big enough it goes into the features queue and the team works on it.  If the issue is an avoidable mistake or what we call a bug kickback (bug created by push or bug fix) then it's escalated to the member that creates it and we hold them to their schedule still.  We do see some push on the schedule but this usually is accepted by our business as important bugs that affect enough customers get their attention, developers are trained, and features don't take priority when the system is &quot;failing.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8899" LastActivityDate="2015-10-18T23:11:54.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16526" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-19T05:57:26.000" Score="1" ViewCount="199" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was always wondering how people can manage 30-50 people projects.&#xA;Working for software company, you can have 1-2 small projects, 7-8 people each. This can be managed using Agile. &#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Now what if the scope if so big that you really need so many people. &#xA;How do PMs approach that ?&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Do they create project management team, PM - responsible for the whole project and project coordinators who are responsible for smaller deliverables ?&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Or PM and technical team leads ? (Is this ok, according to PMO strategy)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't believe it's possible to manage 30-50 people directly. One-to-one meetings will fill all your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could you please describe your experience ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7644" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T01:10:45.183" Title="PM for team of 30-50 people" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16526" CreationDate="2015-10-19T11:44:58.183" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the military there is a leadership concept called &quot;Delegate and Disappear&quot;. The key thing is that you provide your direct reports with sufficient guidance to understand what they need to do, how it fits into the overall plan, who their hand offs are, etc. and then get out of their way so that they can lead their own teams in getting it done. This has several advantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It limits the number of team members you have to chase after&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It empowers your team to achieve your objective &lt;em&gt;their way&lt;/em&gt; within the boundaries of your plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It allows you to focus on key issues rather than minutiae&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this whole approach is alien to a lot of managers, which makes sense because &lt;em&gt;managing&lt;/em&gt; a team is different from &lt;em&gt;leading&lt;/em&gt; one. The main challenge managers seem to have is that it requires you to trust your subordinates. But this should be easy if the manager has done their job and given the team adequate guidance and training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2015-10-19T11:44:58.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16513" CreationDate="2015-10-19T13:24:07.697" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the past when I've been confronted with similar issues I've had to accept that if the work is truly for different instances of the task set I needed to represent them redundantly. If it was the same task for the same environment, then using a Recurring Task in MS Project worked, but for different environments (and possibly different resources) you will need to bite the bullet. Establishing a schedule does not have the use of a sub-routine as an option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aide to inserting redundant tasking I would create the template and then just copy/paste it into the schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7689" LastActivityDate="2015-10-19T13:24:07.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16529" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16534" CreationDate="2015-10-19T15:08:37.780" Score="6" ViewCount="691" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been asked to join a new a team which is struggling with agile adoption within a large programme utilising fairly methodical Scrum.  The aim of the product is to create a surface layer over the current legacy customer information systems (There are 4) which ties all of them together into one common interface and (eventually) replace the systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the last few weeks we have embedded some of the key values, the necessary ceremonies and artefacts and begun to display real team cohesion and cross-skilling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the team is really failing in one key area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They originally ordered their product vision as a full end to end process (no problem) then they boxed the various systems and sub-systems that a customer service representative must use to support a customer.   They listed out the functionality that the customer service reps need (File Access, Information Update, Work Queues, Note Taking and 40+ others) and simply labelled these as epics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then they put the user journey on paper, dropped the epics onto the diagram like lego blocks over the user journey and start working through them.   First part of the user journey, first epic, deliver that.  Review.  Next epic, deliver that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A user needs the ability to see a list of customers.  Therefore we will recreate the pending customers as a queue of work.  That is an Epic and will take a Sprint.  That is our Sprint Goal.  We did that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A user needs to take notes.  Therefore we will create note-taking functionality and call that an Epic.  That will take a Sprint.  That is our Sprint Goal.  We did that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Repeat for 40+ epics...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understandably the stakeholders, well versed in Agile and Lean Product have intervened to say the team have not thin sliced the service.  They have simply created a series of building blocks which are delivered in a spiral iteration...block after block and once all the blocks are in place the service will work end to end.   Without the delivery of all blocks then the business cannot use the value...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A senior stakeholder asked the team just to demonstrate a message saying &amp;quot;Customer Name_EXAMPLE&amp;quot; could make it all the way through the system before adding in additional functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The solution designer and the business analyst are struggling to understand thin slicing and have started resisting the change despite the Scrum Master and Product Owner being in agreement.  They want each bit of the system laid like a paving slab before the next part is started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What strategies and examples exist to coach individuals into effective thin slicing of business value?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:  If any clarity is required then I can edit but really looking for genuine guidance on this issue appears multi-faceted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T15:11:49.463" Title="Team members struggling to thin slice business value - how to help?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;value&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16332" CreationDate="2015-10-19T15:22:22.107" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way I learned to do this is to use a &quot;three-point&quot; method that takes optimistic, pessimistic, and most likely historic values and provides an estimate and standard deviation. It turns out that Wikipedia has a straightforward &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-point_estimation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;write-up on the method&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is also the method recommended in the 5th Edition PMI PMBOK (Section 6.5.2.4, Pg. 170).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7689" LastActivityDate="2015-10-19T15:22:22.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16521" CreationDate="2015-10-19T16:39:49.950" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;What you described is the opposite of agile&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you follow this approach, you will be doing the exact opposite of at least two of the four &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilemanifesto.org/&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; values:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Customer collaboration over contract negotiation&lt;/strong&gt;: You and your customer will be bound tightly by the the contract scope. During the project if your customer thinks of a change that can accomplish the project goals much better, you will put them through the painful change control process of waterfall.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Responding to change over following a plan&lt;/strong&gt;: You will be forced to follow the plan because of contract terms. Also, your management will be watching the actual hours like a hawk and beating up the development team if they deviate by a few hours on one story from the estimated hours.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead I recommend the following approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask your customer to list their business goals. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/articles/writing-contracts-for-agile-development&quot;&gt;Collaborate with the customer to write up the epics, stories and also the acceptance criteria to accomplish the above business goals.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do your estimation in story points not hours.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One week is not enough to assess team velocity. You need at least 3 sprints. Keep stable teams and you can use velocity from previous sprints for this.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Calculate how many sprints it will take based on the story point estimation and conservative velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Estimate the dollars per sprint based on the team size and draw up the contract to accomplish the business goals in fixed number of sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At the end of each sprint, demo the working code to the customer and seek feedback. This will give an opportunity for the customer (and the development team) to make changes, if needed, to better accomplish the business goals.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also, work with the customer to define a minimal product, that makes business sense, and roll it out to end-users (or a subset of end-users) early on. Once deployed, get feedback from end-users and revise stories accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this model, you are collaborating with the customer and responding to change in an agile way. You work more as a partner of your customer and helping to accomplish their business goals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-10-19T16:39:49.950" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16513" CreationDate="2015-10-19T17:33:54.653" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer depends on how important the tasks are; the goal of the WBS is that it contains the work, the whole work and nothing but the work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the tasks are short, repetitive and clearly understood, it may be sufficient to roll them up to a milestone e.g. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Certify that development environment is ready&quot;, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Certify that the staging environment is ready&quot;, &#xA;*&amp;amp; &quot;Certify that production is ready&quot;....&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or something like that. In such a situation, I would assign the responsibility for that milestone to a single individual who is personally accountable for any delay if the task is late.  I'd probably also include the definition of &quot;ready&quot; in the WBSD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if the repetitive tasks are necessary for delivery of the project, if their omission would impede the project then it makes sense to track them.   &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.senseiprojectsolutions.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sensei project management&lt;/a&gt; has a quality standard for project WBS; they suggest that you enter your task names so that every task is unique, no matter how the WBS is filtered.  I concur with them; you should repeat tasks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;Complete Development Task A&#xA;&lt;br&gt;Complete Development Task B&#xA;&lt;br&gt;. &#xA;&lt;br&gt;.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;. &#xA;&lt;br&gt;Complete Staging Task A&#xA;&lt;br&gt;Complete Staging Task B&#xA;&lt;br&gt;.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;.&#xA;Complete Production Task A&#xA;&lt;br&gt;.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer; I'm not affiliated with Sensei Project Solutions, I just know good work when I see it.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2015-10-19T17:33:54.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16529" CreationDate="2015-10-19T18:15:16.193" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hope you can coach them by presenting the problem in a different light, so they can come to the solution themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One idea. Can you present the problem to them as very high level user stories, or perhaps personas? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ie&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a customer service representative I need to do X, Y and Z to do my job&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As an admistrator I need to do A, B and C to do my job.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And so on...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Show them this, and say that until one of these is complete we can't really release anything to the clients. But, once one of these use cases is solved we can ask clients to move people matching that persona onto the new software. Hopefully this will allow them to map their epics to match these larger groupings and start working towards that. Possibly this may even allow them to pull some of the work out of the epics where it was part of one before but not really required for the larger groupings you've outlined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may well be a long gap before the first users can get in but hopefully the team will better understand where the key milestones are and management can get a better picture of when things will get done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20707" LastActivityDate="2015-10-19T18:15:16.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16529" CreationDate="2015-10-19T18:30:17.610" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do have a few questions... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the work is rather straightforward and the way the UI is created and the integrations are solved are standardized, then a process framework optimized for complex work, may just add overhead. If the work is standardized it may just not be required to break down into smaller bits to learn along the way. The development team may be able to optimize by delivering complete funcionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few questions...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the team delivers an epic, is it what the stakeholders were expecting? Was it delivered fully (according to the Definition of Done)? And was true to their forecast? Was the whole solution valuable? If you answered yes to these questions, then maybe they don't need to break the functionality down any further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few nuances which may help with the discussion to break down further. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was there any functionality in other parts which were not built in the sprint, which were more valuable than some of the parts that were implemented? In that case the Product Owner should clearly point that out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a Minimum Viable Product which the end-users can already use which is composed of a set of features from these larger building blocks? If so, that may be a logical way to split the epics and then reorder the backlog accordingly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're trying to break down these stories into smaller parts, just to break them down, I can understand the reluctance of the development team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If breaking down the stories into smaller parts will lead to the development of usable MVPs, the ability to validate which features are truly needed or ways to gain early feedback from users, then make sure that the development team understands what you're trying to achieve by breaking down further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I generally direct people to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agileforall.com/splitting-user-stories/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Story Splitting Patterns&lt;/a&gt; laid out in this blog post, it uses a list of possible ways to split larger stories into smaller ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KqPj5.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KqPj5.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It breaks down the work using a more &quot;standardized&quot; approach, which may resonate with your team. Have the product owner and stakeholders clearly vocalize which parts would be the most valuable for them if they could be broken out and delivered earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7393" LastActivityDate="2015-10-19T18:30:17.610" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16521" CreationDate="2015-10-19T18:52:23.800" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you can safely skip the story-points-to-hours step and achieve a more accurate result.&#xA;You calculate a cost per-sprint given your team (which by the way also gives you a cost per-person) and guess a reasonable velocity per-sprint. Then you divide the number of SP in total for your backlog for the guessed velocity.&#xA;You don't actually need to have a cost per-hour, for it can be a misleading figure: people are not interchangeable cogs, adding X% more man/hours doesn't increase your throughput by X%, and the total effort for large/complex project is more than the mere sum of each person's particular task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16362" LastActivityDate="2015-10-19T18:52:23.800" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16526" CreationDate="2015-10-19T20:22:06.927" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A typical approach (and one that I've used) is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://guide.agilealliance.org/guide/scrumofscrums.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum of Scrums&lt;/a&gt; along with highly-visibly artifacts for dependencies, risks, etc. owned by individuals on each team. There are also more formal frameworks around scaling agile, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SAFe&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2015-10-19T20:22:06.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16526" CreationDate="2015-10-20T01:10:45.183" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two major methods of scaling Agile, being:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum of scrums&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum of scrums is much less structured (and complex) in it's approach than SAFe and is essentially adding that next layer to your Agile process (combining and coordinating at a level above the Scrum teams).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SAFe takes this complexity and structure a few steps further and defines things like Release Trains and Portfolio views which will allow you to fully integrate Agile practices into a large enterprise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the size and complexity of the products and requirements you're dealing with there's no &quot;right&quot; answer as to which is better, it's a &quot;horses for courses&quot; approach. If you only need a small amount of scale, Scrum of Scrums should work very well. If you are looking to scale much larger (hundreds or even thousands of people) then the Scaled Agile Framework has provided the blueprint for this to work successfully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've used both (in different scenarios and levels of scale) and they're both valid, but SoS is definitely much &quot;lighter touch&quot; and simpler to implement at the smaller scale (SAFe may have too much overhead unless you're really planning on scaling large).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20840" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T01:10:45.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16521" CreationDate="2015-10-20T08:08:31.410" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Converting story points to time is misleading, because the better you are getting with the project, the faster you deliver the same amount of points. For example, user story 'A' may be 5 points in the beginning, which you deliver 2 weeks, but after several sprints you are better and can deliver a similar story in 1 week. Although you delivered it faster, the story is still 5 points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You can use velocity - which comes from story points - to figure out how many sprints you may use&lt;/strong&gt;. If you have 80 points in your backlog, and your mean velocity is about 7, a sprint takes 2 weeks, you'll be finished in 12 sprints, which is 24 weeks. Make it 26 and you seems to be ok.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Story points are for figuring out issues and the commitment for a sprint.&lt;/strong&gt; If you bill your customer, never use story points, because it may change, it is team specific, and your customer won't understand it. Use weeks, which you can get from velocity (again a term that has nothing to do with the customer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T08:08:31.410" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15934" CreationDate="2015-10-20T08:14:20.993" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, &lt;strong&gt;you can re-estimate the user story, since it was not delivered&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, &lt;strong&gt;you can break down that user story into valuable and working pieces&lt;/strong&gt;. You estimate the pieces and deliver them. This approach is a bit better in the long term, because your team will learn how to break down work to smaller pieces, which is faster to deliver and therefore the feedback comes faster as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T08:14:20.993" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16518" CreationDate="2015-10-20T08:25:19.093" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have a look at this &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/14971/which-strategies-i-can-use-to-handle-tickets-during-a-scrum-sprint&quot;&gt;stackexchange&lt;/a&gt; link&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could have added this in comments but I dont have enough points to do that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20757" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T08:25:19.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16541" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-20T11:00:31.417" Score="0" ViewCount="2822" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example: new housing scheme, constructing 10 houses on separate plots. Brickwork can begin 5 days after the 20-day tasks of scaffolding being erected. However, brickwork can't finish until 5 days after scaffolding has finished being erected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I link the start &amp;amp; finish of the brickwork to the start and finish dates of the scaffolding being put up? MSProject says I can't give one task 2 links to the same predecessor task.....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All help gratefully received..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20910" LastActivityDate="2015-11-19T16:15:22.150" Title="How can I make task start date and finish date dependent upon the start &amp; finish dates of one predecessor?" Tags="&lt;dependencies&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16529" CreationDate="2015-10-20T15:11:49.463" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Other answers about splitting stories are good, but I think there's a separate problem here. As I mentioned in the comments, the BA and designer jobs are traditionally defined by their ability to design complex systems. It may be a very large jump for them to not take this approach. (It certainly was for me when I transitioned to Agile)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps instead of asking them to break down the stories, the rest of the team should take on that task and then have them ask the BA and designer specific questions or only allow those members to ask guiding questions. For example, if a particular approach will prevent integration into a certain system later, they can ask &quot;How will that affect integration into system X&quot; rather than say &quot;You have to do it like this so that it integrates with system X&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't to devalue their input, but rather to break the existing paradigm where the BA and designer come up with the plan and the team follows it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do need those other answers about splitting stories though. Changing the team model alone or splitting stories alone will probably not work. Both together should get you over that hump though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T15:11:49.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16541" CreationDate="2015-10-20T15:26:31.913" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would have 3 tasks.&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;1 Scafolding&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;2 Scafolding Complete (Milestone) linked to TID:1 &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;3 Brickwork 1SS+20d, 2FF+5 days&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That will give you what you want. As you say in project you can only have 1 link to the same predecessor task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T15:26:31.913" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16544" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-20T16:14:57.000" Score="0" ViewCount="214" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on documenting a situation where an activity (call it 'a') which is not itself on the project critical path has a direct impact on an activity (call it 'b') which is on the project critical path. That is, any delay in 'a' results in a delay in 'b' or failure to complete 'a' results in the failure to complete 'b'. What is the most correct way to describe activity 'a'? Is it a secondary critical path or something along those lines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for any thoughts!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20912" LastActivityDate="2016-01-05T20:01:26.443" Title="Items which feed critical path activities" Tags="&lt;dependencies&gt;&lt;critical-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16545" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-20T19:35:56.893" Score="3" ViewCount="4151" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have some customized fields that I've created. I really need to find a way to use them while I'm creating customized reports in MS project, but I just see the built-in fields when I want to create the reports. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help is greatly appreciated!&#xA;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20913" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-10-31T13:20:57.833" LastActivityDate="2019-08-27T15:03:20.663" Title="Is there a way to use your customized fields in reports created in MS project 2013?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15868" CreationDate="2015-10-20T20:21:19.283" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just add a task first, and then split it later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, follow as here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Split-a-task-20c8581b-6266-45e3-af54-cc7c3b10deca&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Split-a-task-20c8581b-6266-45e3-af54-cc7c3b10deca&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The special frozen zone that you describe is very close to the example used therein.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As another option, you can also simply reschedule the remainder of the task as described here:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brighthubpm.com/software-reviews-tips/4973-project-2007-rescheduling-tasks-and-incomplete-work/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.brighthubpm.com/software-reviews-tips/4973-project-2007-rescheduling-tasks-and-incomplete-work/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7019" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T20:21:19.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16547" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-21T02:30:14.127" Score="5" ViewCount="903" Body="&lt;p&gt;Later this week I'm attending a hackathon for an open source project I use a lot, and I am hoping to lead a small team on a feature that people seem excited about. I have plenty of experience on agile teams, but this will be a fairly broad group of devs. How do I help lead a hastily assembled team toward a shared vision?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20915" LastActivityDate="2015-10-21T07:35:13.110" Title="How to lead a project team during a hackathon?" Tags="&lt;leadership&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16547" CreationDate="2015-10-21T07:35:13.110" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having coached several hackathon teams I can share this learnings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make clear your willing to lead, and be prepared to sell yourself and your idea to the others, people come there with the same level of expectation you have (can I contribute to this? Will I learn something? Will it be a good experience to work with X or Y? ...), they will choose you as a leader for a reason, and it has to be a good one ;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be open to the unexpected, that's the point of a Hackathon. Getting off the beaten track is both expected and welcome. You might find people who have a better idea, or that could be better leaders, and that's fine&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work on the engagement more than on the process. Whatever agile flavor can be good, but only if it's functional to the team and the goal, and people feel comfortable with. Do not force people to do something in a particular way (they won't follow you anyway if they're not convinced)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16362" LastActivityDate="2015-10-21T07:35:13.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16549" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16552" CreationDate="2015-10-21T09:14:24.663" Score="0" ViewCount="1885" Body="&lt;p&gt;We know that long term planning(Release planning) should be in story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But for sprint planning, it should be commitment based.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Breaking the product backlog item / user story into tasks and estimating the tasks, team asking themselves if they can commit to delivering the product backlog item, and then repeating until they are full?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a three week sprint, how big should be each story for a person?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also,I have seen that some teams do away with this task based planning and have stories that are just 2 day long? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I standardize this for my team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So before a sprint, I break my stories to such short stories that they fit this standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please, let me know your viewpoints about this. And what is the general practice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20900" LastActivityDate="2015-10-21T14:26:09.667" Title="How big should be each story for a person in 3 week sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16549" CreationDate="2015-10-21T09:36:39.927" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sprint planning should be in story points as well. The process is the same as for the long term planning. &lt;strong&gt;You check your velocity and capacity&lt;/strong&gt; (how many of the team members will be there, because of holidays etc.) and come up with a number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are planning for sprint 2, you check your velocity in sprint 1 - for example 10 points - and put 10 points worth of user stories into your iteration backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are planning for sprint 3, you check your velocity trend from sprint 1 to 2 and find the amount you can commit to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you you are planning for sprint 1, you add as much as you see fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Try not to see how many points a person can do&lt;/strong&gt;, because scrum is about teams not persons. For example a junior can do less than a senior, however is people helping each other they won't be able to deliver as much as &quot;on paper&quot;. &lt;strong&gt;Work and calculate with teams&lt;/strong&gt;, because it makes more sense (and it is easier).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-10-21T09:36:39.927" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16549" CreationDate="2015-10-21T12:31:47.520" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, your entire set of planning assumptions is non-agile. You need to revisit how you're planning your iterations, and how your team plans to estimate the work it thinks can be completed for the current iteration. A more detailed analysis follows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Detailed Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We know that long term planning(Release planning) should be in story points. [sic]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. Agile release planning is done in &lt;em&gt;iterations&lt;/em&gt;. Therefore, a Scrum project plan will estimate an approximate range of iterations needed to reach the minimum viable product or complete the initial Product Backlog. This is only an estimate, as the backlog contents will change over time, and length and accuracy of estimates will also change along with the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cone of Uncertainty&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But for sprint planning, it should be commitment based.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, no. Sprint Planning is &lt;em&gt;capacity-based&lt;/em&gt;. The only point of tracking (or creating an initial guesstimate of) the team's average velocity is to find the team's sustainable capacity for work over time. While the team must be sure never to over-commit to work in a Sprint just because the velocity range or average says that there should be available capacity, it is the team's responsibility to plan for the current iteration by taking team composition, availability, and other factors &lt;em&gt;that affect the present Sprint&lt;/em&gt; into consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Saying that Sprints are &quot;commitment-based&quot; is likely to be used as an emotional bludgeon to get teams to commit to &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; work than they should, because of course team members should be &quot;committed.&quot; However, that's a misuse; in the real world, team capacity should generally be reduced but rarely inflated during planning. If the team has under-committed, then additional work can be peeled off the Product Backlog as needed, but trimming scope is almost always politically fraught and often puts the Sprint Goal at risk. So, don't do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Capacity &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be a relatively-objective metric. On the other hand, commitment (much like patriotism) can't be measured unless you're asking people to &quot;make the ultimate sacrifice,&quot; which is sort of antithetical to the entire premise of agile sustainability. Never commit to a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_march_(project_management)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;death-march&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For a three week sprint, how big should be each story for a person?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This deserves a whole book filled with &quot;no.&quot; Stories are never sized for, or accepted by, an individual. All stories are estimated based on the full, coordinated resources of a cross-functional team working &lt;em&gt;together&lt;/em&gt; to complete each story. The stories are accepted or rejected based on whether:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They are essential to the current Sprint Goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They will fit within the estimated capacity available for the current Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A single Product Backlog Item can be anywhere from 0 story points up to the maximum available for the entire Sprint. However, a good story that meets the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;INVEST criteria&lt;/a&gt; is generally composed of Sprint Backlog tasks of around 0.5 days to 2.0 days in length. Remember that the smaller the task or story, the more accurate the estimate usually is, so a dozen 5-point stories (when accurately estimated) are generally more reliable than a single 60-point story. However, your team maturity and estimation accuracy may certainly vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-10-21T12:31:47.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16549" CreationDate="2015-10-21T14:26:09.667" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;User stories are not per team member&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multiple team members should work on the same user story at the same time. This is not a requirement but a recommendation. The essence of the rugby terminology, &lt;em&gt;scrum&lt;/em&gt;, where the team goes towards the goal line as a unit. The concept is called &lt;em&gt;swarming&lt;/em&gt;. Everyone focuses on one (or fewer) tasks at a given moment, completes it, and tackle the next piece of work (repeat). Benefits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It keeps_in progress_ items fewer. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It allows completion of sprint backlog items spread throughout the sprint, instead of everything being completed close to sprint end. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keeps qa/testing load evenly distributed across sprint duration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whole team gets the code knowledge and may provide technical suggestions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team should pick a story and break it down into technical tasks. Only one person should work on one technical task because the responsibility is clear in this case which helps during daily scrum meetings. Ideally one technical task should be small enough so it gets completed during a day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Size of user stories&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum does not define any recommended size of a user story. However a story should be sized such that it can be completed during one sprint. &quot;Completion&quot; means that it covers your &quot;Definition of Done&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story should be clearly understood and have explicit &lt;em&gt;acceptance criteria&lt;/em&gt;, which is be verified during the same sprint. Normally it is harder to iron out a big story and spell out all the acceptance criteria, so a story should be small  where it can be estimated well enough and tested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story should also be big enough so it delivers a concrete business value to the stake holders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer is &lt;em&gt;neither too small nor too big&lt;/em&gt;. With practice and experience you get better in writing and splitting user stories. Its more of an art than science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2015-10-21T14:26:09.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2272" CreationDate="2015-10-21T14:27:08.620" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest you to take varied courses and develop your knowledge base. Read a lot of articles. If your school has an account for Harvard Business Review, read articles there. They are classic articles and very informative. Having different and new perspective always helps. Practices from industries other than software can be tailored according to your needs to benefit your team and company. There is no single correct way to manage a project. It is always dependent on the team and its goals. You may still want to take courses like project management, product management and programming languages. Having basic knowledge gives you a foundation but no company hires on the basis of the courses that you took in school. They need more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, which is more important than any coursework, work in different teams. Work in small teams and big. Work with diverse people. Work with people with different background, race, color, gender, origin, country. For any kind of management, the biggest challenge is not the processes but the people. If you know how to manage people, you can sure as death, learn to manage a project. There are some great books and articles out in the market which can teach you people management. However, experience is the best teacher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also learn from other people's experiences. Talk to people who are in this profession and learn from them. You can also do case studies on successful leaders like Eugene Kranz and Coach K. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope you have a wonderful and successful career!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20451" LastActivityDate="2015-10-21T14:27:08.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16555" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-21T14:32:15.143" Score="0" ViewCount="459" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our process our developers run &lt;strong&gt;Unit Tests&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Integration Tests&lt;/strong&gt; before they check in their code for it to be built and deployed to &lt;strong&gt;UAT&lt;/strong&gt; where the testers and product owners can perform their &lt;strong&gt;test fixtures&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;acceptance tests&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the unit tests and integration tests have successfully completed, the developer where possible will demonstrate to the tester the working functionality to ensure that the acceptance criteria is satisfied before checking the code in. This test is performed on the development environments by the developer. This begs the question &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do we refer to a non automated test run on the development environment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like the sound of &lt;strong&gt;Development acceptance testing&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other suggestions could be &lt;strong&gt;Pre Check in Review&lt;/strong&gt; or perhaps &lt;strong&gt;Development Sanity Checking&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a more standard moniker for this activity doing the rounds in the agile community that I haven't heard of as yet?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19267" LastActivityDate="2015-11-21T13:15:26.203" Title="Alternative name for Developer Acceptance Testing" Tags="&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;testing&gt;&lt;definition-of-done&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16555" CreationDate="2015-10-22T00:01:51.400" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have a look on this &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_testing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; page to check if your process is providing the appropriate test coverage according to SDLC and correlate whatever you call your test coverage with how the industry calls it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, you can call it whatever you want, as long as it provides the appropriate test coverage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The developer doesn't need to convince anyone that his code works. Test cases should be written based on requirements, and the executed against the code RELEASED for testing. Defects captured during tests are fed back to development to be fixed and then retested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DEV&gt;SYSTEM TEST&gt;SYSTEM INTEGRATION TESTS&gt;UAT&gt;DEPLOYMENT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20923" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2015-10-22T05:06:18.987" LastActivityDate="2015-10-22T05:06:18.987" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16544" CreationDate="2015-10-22T00:51:58.523" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As it sounds, activity A is not on the critical path (there is free slack in between) and it may be the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_path_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Near critical path&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, so, basically you're talking about the &lt;strong&gt;RISK&lt;/strong&gt; related to task A. There are risks that can make task A slip to the point that it becomes critical and impact the whole project duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You cannot do much more than:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Incorporating some contingency/buffer in task A to accomodate the risk&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Manage your risks properly, by defining a mitigation plan to avoid the eventuate on of risks that may delay the task and subsequently the tasks on critical path (incorporate mitigation tasks in your schedule)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If there are no other dependencies on task A, consolidate it with task B and manage it as a single effort&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no recipe in Project Management, different PMs would apply different techniques to make it work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20923" LastEditorUserId="20923" LastEditDate="2015-10-22T00:57:27.033" LastActivityDate="2015-10-22T00:57:27.033" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12439" CreationDate="2015-10-22T01:06:40.060" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Create a custom field to flag which tasks you want to share, filter by the flag, hide the flag column and print it in PDF &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20923" LastActivityDate="2015-10-22T01:06:40.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16559" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-22T08:19:40.467" Score="1" ViewCount="1413" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a software development team of 10 members. There are tow persons we want them to manage the team and projects cooperatively, since they have complementary skills and working times. I searched but didn't find any good article about pair managing a team. Is there any good practice or research about how to do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20925" LastActivityDate="2016-07-02T12:09:31.253" Title="Is there any good method for managing a team by means of 2 managers?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16559" CreationDate="2015-10-22T11:38:38.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Probably the best practice is not to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having two managers is inviting confusion/disaster. You can count on at least some of your team to play the Mommy/Daddy game... asking one &quot;parent&quot; for a decision and then going to the other if the decision doesn't suit them. If your managers aren't completely harmonized in their thinking you will see confusion and frustration leading to added cost and wasted time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2015-10-22T11:38:38.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16561" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-22T15:14:38.303" Score="0" ViewCount="343" Body="&lt;p&gt;During Contract time, we are given requirement details and we dont have stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we have to go for fixed bid contract, do we create stories at time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I doubt - as no one has time at contract stage to create stories and decide on story points?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how do you approach for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you create epics and give story point to it and plan based on that?&#xA;But I believe epics can not be broken into stories that are equivalent size.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/13965/agile-release-planning-why-do-i-need-stories-instead-of-themes-epics&quot;&gt;StackLink&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you just estimate development effort in a waterfall way? And build a cost&#xA;around it and sign contract?&#xA;In the plan you mention Agile plan will be given after stories are created and velocity known.&#xA;But i dont think this can really work out always?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/16451/estimation-given-in-days-and-need-to-plan-in-agile&quot;&gt;StackLink&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there some other way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20929" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2018-02-27T19:24:41.270" LastActivityDate="2018-02-27T19:35:57.257" Title="How to plan for fixed bid during contract time?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;contracts&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16562" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17578" CreationDate="2015-10-22T15:41:34.773" Score="4" ViewCount="266" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to faciliate a retrospective for a bunch of product owners. I have a couple of ideas of how to run it but I would really like to get some input and ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each product owner who is attending currently works with a different development team but they also work together when it comes to prioritising and developing work before it gets divided up between the development teams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T12:43:26.720" Title="How to faciliate a retrospective for a group of Product Owners" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16559" CreationDate="2015-10-22T15:42:06.703" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You didn't find a good article because it simply doesn't work! It would be a complete mess! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did you try drawing an org chart to represent this team? If you did, you would notice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ambiguous Reporting lines&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People would have duplicate reporting lines, which would cause confusion and duplication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Accountability issues&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When SHTF who's responsible? Basically a blame game will start as soon as problems appears. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Communication issues&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who gave that direction? People will start doing what one manager requested until be overruled by the other one. The team will feel confused and frustrated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Leadership styles conflicts&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conflicts may arise due to one being more rigid or relaxed than the other, and again causing confusion and frustration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that a team is like a pack of wolves, they are going to follow just one leader, the stronger one, and the other will fade away. Not a rewarding experience for managers and team until a single leader is defined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In cases like this, 0.5 + 0.5 will never be 1, regardless of how complementary the skills are, you're never gonna get the result of 1 manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It works this way in the nature, in the military and in the corporations, but if you make this work, you're gonna have the opportunity to write the article you're looking for ;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Peace!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20923" LastActivityDate="2015-10-22T15:42:06.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16561" CreationDate="2015-10-22T17:23:23.750" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Tl;dr;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do relative sizing on features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;To Elaborate:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you’re looking at a fixed-bid contract, you’re saying “It will take me no more than this much money to do deliver the full scope.”&#xA;This is problematic in Agile because we recognize that most software projects do not understand their scope until very late in the project. This isn’t the result of Agile – most waterfall projects don’t understand their scope either; the difference is that Agile doesn’t pretend to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Feature Sizes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When we look at the overall size of a project, we still want to use relative sizing. You may have a baseline feature from past projects (you always have to start with something you’ve really done) and that may be a medium. Then you can look at features on new projects and ask “Is that about the same size, a little larger, a lot smaller?” Your development group will have a velocity at this level just like it does at the sprint level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your team has an average sprint velocity of around 30 story points and you have 3 8-point stories and 4 5-point stories, they’ll probably complete those in 2 sprints. The feature sizes work the same way. Medium features (if you’re doing relative sizing properly) will cost around the same with a certain margin of error. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why Not Just Add Story Points?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you detail out all of the stories and estimate them all, you assume that the scope is fixed and you thoroughly understand that. As soon as you assume that, you’re taking on incredible risk to yourself and your client and defeating many of the core principles of agile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By looking at feature size and applying relative estimation there, you’re leaving plenty of room for uncertainty and modifications to the details. &#xA;How Can You Start?&#xA;Look at your past work. Apart from using a past feature as a baseline, you can also retroactively do some relative estimation to give you a base of data to work with. There’s a big pitfall here though: you know how long it took – you’ll naturally want to use reality to influence your estimates. You can try to consciously avoid this or maybe have people do the relative estimation who didn’t work on the feature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be Warned&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just like the way messing with team composition throws story point velocity off and story points aren’t comparable between groups, if you constantly change up your development group’s structure or split people on projects, this approach will fall apart and you will not be able to see trends in feature cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-10-22T17:23:23.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16565" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-22T18:16:38.123" Score="10" ViewCount="2564" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team has recently changed from Scrum to a Kanban like setup. We switched because our plans in Scrums were always spoiled by external initiatives. Now we do day to day planning instead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We pull items from a large backlog, have a WIP limit set on in progress items etc, but sometimes new &quot;emergency&quot; work appears. How should we handle this in Kanban? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16955" LastActivityDate="2015-10-23T16:41:44.810" Title="How to handle unplanned work in Kanban?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16565" CreationDate="2015-10-22T18:44:22.763" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most common approach I've seen is to create an emergency swim lane at the bottom of the board. This swim lane is not subject to the same WIP limits and takes priority over the other work. This way we keep the work visible. However, when you track metrics like lead time and cycle time, consider these items separately. That way you'll see the impact that the volume of emergency work has on the lead time and cycle time or planned work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TgEyH.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TgEyH.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastEditorUserId="7944" LastEditDate="2015-10-22T18:52:54.650" LastActivityDate="2015-10-22T18:52:54.650" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16565" CreationDate="2015-10-23T06:50:14.963" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having an emergency lane with the WIP limit one is a good approach as Daniel mentioned, or &lt;strong&gt;you can introduce different classes for your work items&lt;/strong&gt;, and prioritize your work in your columns accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your cause the class will be the severity, and the unplanned card enters with the highest severity, therefore will the first in each column (in Kanban you can always prioritize your internal columns). When somebody is ready to pull, they will pull the important unplanned card, which is on the top.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the emergency level of the said work item increases, the team can decide to stop the work, and pull the item. In cases like this you can break the WIP limit. &lt;strong&gt;It is recommended to talk about why it was necessary, and how come nobody saw this work coming in the spirit of continuous improvement.&lt;/strong&gt; We used this approach in a project and the number of unplanned cards went from 6/week to 2/week. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2014/03/risk-kanban-board/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; which goes into more details on the prioritization I mentioned before.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the &quot;emergency&quot; work means just unplanned work, create only two categories planned and unplanned, and measure each week their ratio, and like in the other case, discuss how come that nobody saw the unplanned work coming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-10-23T06:50:14.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16562" CreationDate="2015-10-23T10:36:40.020" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The challenge here is to find a topic that keeps all the parties interesting, therefore I'd focus on product owner best practices and common pitfalls and avoid everything that is related to specific team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the data gathering phase you can ask for X number of best practices they use, let them share with the group, group them into categories, vote on the categories, and discuss the top 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-10-23T10:36:40.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16521" CreationDate="2015-10-23T14:06:48.900" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some companies, fixed bidding is completely separated from agile project management. As you rightly mentioned, at the moment of bidding it might be unknown who will be on the team, thus whatever is going during fixed bidding is far from being called &quot;agile&quot;. Once the contract is won, you can manage the project using Scrum, total hours being the guideline (outer restraint), but never introduced inside the process. Once you start introducing hours and other fixed bid restriction into agile at whatever stage- it is doomed I am afraid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17432" LastActivityDate="2015-10-23T14:06:48.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16562" CreationDate="2015-10-23T15:10:45.857" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;An exercise that might be useful to do with product owners is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.benlinders.com/2015/how-futurespectives-help-teams-to-reach-their-goals/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;futurespective&lt;/a&gt; as this exercises starts from a common goals and looks for ways to reach it. It think it appeals to product owners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16919" LastActivityDate="2015-10-23T15:10:45.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16565" CreationDate="2015-10-23T16:25:45.247" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One simple approach is to enforce a limit on WIP items.  An emergency item that comes in, forces a planned item to go back out.  It stays out until the emergency item remains in progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We follow this internally and initially it used to be hard to have that rigor but now we have built that constraint into board itself, so it forces you to move an item out to create an &quot;empty slot&quot; where you can bring in an emergency item.  Theoretically this also limits # of emergency items we could be tackling it at any time, but practically we have not approached that limit, so it works fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7019" LastActivityDate="2015-10-23T16:25:45.247" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16565" CreationDate="2015-10-23T16:41:44.810" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like the above posters mention, classes in combination with an emergency or express swim lane are the most common solutions.  You're looking for several important behaviors from the team that go beyond the basic Kanban board tools however:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the team have discipline in understanding when or when not to use the emergency lane vs sticking to their WIP limit?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do they class appropriately?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do they have a service level agreement on their classes of work?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the team have an agreement to always move work forwards or backwards (to clear a lane) when necessary?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they move work backwards what do they communicate to the stakeholders of the work that was moved backwards?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they move work forwards before starting interrupting work, what is the communication to the stakeholder introducing the interrupting work?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-10-23T16:41:44.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16573" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-23T17:01:03.580" Score="0" ViewCount="100" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to start a charity project that makes use of the human capital we have here in Morocco. The targeted population of the project is orphans of the same city and i'm having thoughts about making it national in three to 4 years time.&#xA;The project Idea is to help orphans get proper education and support from the students who are evidently teacher material ! It's like a cram school that goes to orphanages to help the orphans, not the orphans going to cram school.&#xA;And of course, it's a charity . So they won't pay for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know how to study the reliability of the project in addition to its possibility of being applied in reality?  What are some methods to judge the viability of a project prior to pitching to stakeholders?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20856" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-10-26T10:37:08.610" LastActivityDate="2015-10-26T10:37:08.610" Title="How to start a charity project making use of college students as cram school teachers for orphans in lower levels of education?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16574" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-23T18:49:57.460" Score="3" ViewCount="1040" Body="&lt;p&gt;How could I calculate cumulative hours worked on all tasks from project start date to current date (status) to get a comparison between projected hours worked (baseline) and actual hours worked (tracking)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20934" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-10-26T16:33:40.790" LastActivityDate="2015-11-02T13:38:51.627" Title="How can I perform a comparison between baseline and actual hours worked?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16575" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16597" CreationDate="2015-10-24T07:10:31.963" Score="1" ViewCount="60" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new to project management. I work for a social media website with over a million users. As an initial project, I have been asked to research and design a new feature and best way to increase user base for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing is I am unable to decide if I should make a website with a new domain for that feature, or should I make something within the original domain itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefit of creating a new website is that I get complete control and can do a lot of experiments. That's good for my learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But at the same time, the purpose of this new feature is also to increase our existing user base in website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think is the best way to go about it? Any suggestions/recommended readings will be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks a lot in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20944" LastEditorUserId="20944" LastEditDate="2015-10-24T07:36:07.677" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T06:03:30.213" Title="New website or a feature in the current website" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;user-experience-design&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-10-28T09:37:05.443" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16575" CreationDate="2015-10-24T09:14:46.473" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you start a new domain, there is a huge risk that you'll take traffic from the old one. Therefore, I'm not sure if it is the right move.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can however have controlled experiment in existing services (or web pages) with A/B testing. If you have that user base your company should have something that allows teams experimenting with new features. If you don't, have a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://martinfowler.com/bliki/FeatureToggle.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;feature switches&lt;/a&gt;, because it is a good start for things you would like to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-10-24T09:14:46.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16577" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16580" CreationDate="2015-10-24T11:38:37.720" Score="0" ViewCount="211" Body="&lt;p&gt;How to execute sprint effectively?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If my story is developed , tested i.e. unit + acceptance +&#xA;regression, all the bugs are resolved i.e. even low bugs then only&#xA;developer take on another story? Or we can submit in UAT with open&#xA;low bugs?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When is the best time to write automated test cases - I understand that&#xA;unit testing automated test cases is written in parallel but when should&#xA;functional or regression test cases be written. I am asking&#xA;this question so that I hire my team resources accordingly. I believe&#xA;when system will be somewhat ready after 2-3 releases then i will hire&#xA;automated testers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a practice of creating Technical Stories against Business&#xA;Stories?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20900" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-10-31T01:59:04.950" LastActivityDate="2015-10-31T01:59:04.950" Title="how to execute sprint effectively?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16578" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16579" CreationDate="2015-10-24T14:02:45.123" Score="8" ViewCount="3734" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is our first Agile project and we plan our Sprint 0 to consist of :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Release Content Planning : Defining EPICs/MMFs Product Backlog&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Product Backlog Grooming : Breakup of EPICs into stories (as much as&#xA;possible at that point of time)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;High Level Design and Environment Setup&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Develop 1 or 2 critical stories to have basic framework in place&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please let me know if we need to have anything else and what do you suggest about the duration of sprint 0&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20900" LastActivityDate="2020-03-30T12:55:51.040" Title="what should be part of Sprint 0?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16578" CreationDate="2015-10-24T14:34:10.600" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sprint 0 is not a part of the official &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;. It has arisen as an unnoficial approach to kickstarting Scrum in some organisations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that is needed to start Scrum is a development team, a Scrum Master, a Product Owner and a backlog that covers at least 1 sprints worth of work. So some might regard 'sprint 0' as the formation of the team and the refinement of a backlog that covers at least one sprints worth of stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this rapid starting approach the team would need to do things like environment setup and design/architecture within the first sprint. The development team will often then make it clear to the Product Owner that not a lot of business value will be delivered in the first sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The alternative is to have a longer sprint 0 that packs in a lot of setup and preparation work. The danger with this approach is that it can be a bit waterfall. With the sprint 0 replacing the project inception/design phases of waterfall projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a big fan of sprint 0, but I have seen them used a lot. To answer your original question some things that crop up in sprint 0 are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Setting up build/continuous integration/source control&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deciding on a testing approach&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Configuring release automation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Setting up electronic task tracking tools (like JIRA/TFS/etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agreeing on high level architecture&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agreeing the team's definition of done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-10-24T14:34:10.600" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16577" CreationDate="2015-10-24T14:58:26.950" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's a lot of questions! Answers in sequence below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The decision on when to submit for UAT should be made as a result of conversation between the team and the Product Owner. There may be times when the Product Owner decides that bugs are not important and do not need to be fixed. The final decision on when to go to UAT will always be made by the Product Owner. Note that we try and do UAT as much as possible within the sprints, so frequent, small UAT is preferred over waiting and then lumping lots of stories in to UAT together.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The value from automated tests is that they reduce the need for manual testing and help to discover bugs very soon after the code is written. For this reason, automated tests should be written as early as possible. A lot of teams will write the automated tests at the same time as they do the development work. Some teams even write the automated tests &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; they do the development work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Scrum we try to make every story business focused and delivering some business value. If there is technical work required, we often cover this in sub-tasks that relate to a business story. The reason for this is that we want to measure progress in terms of delivered business value. It also helps the Product Owner as they understand the value of each and every story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As much as possible we try to write stories that are independent of each other. If a story does impact on previous stories then all the work will be covered by the new story and the estimate will be for the entire impact. Note that velocity is just a measure of what the capacity a team has for getting work done in a sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Scrum we try to focus on finishing work rather than starting new work. The intention is to get a true measure of progress. If lots of new work is started, but not finished, it is difficult to measure how much time is remaining. The team should be keeping the number of stories in progress to a minimum and trying to get stories finished before starting on new stories. Backlog refinement is important and as a rough guide most Scrum teams spend 10% or more of the time in a sprint preparing for the next sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-10-24T14:58:26.950" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16581" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-25T22:47:19.407" Score="4" ViewCount="136" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a project is already started and the team is using a Kanban Board, who can add more cards to the Backlog? Are there some specific rules? Is it the manager, any of the team members, or are such decision taken after a meeting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20954" LastActivityDate="2015-10-26T21:16:02.563" Title="Who can add more cards to the Kanban Backlog" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16581" CreationDate="2015-10-25T23:19:42.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are there some specific rules?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there should be some specific rules. As to what they are, it is up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience a Product Owner is the ideal candidate for adding cards to the board backlog (as they should have the skills to ensure they're appropriately articulated and that it's a fit for their product).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can it's better to have a single point of contact for adding cards to ensure uniformity of content and so you don't get cards where you have to ask &quot;Who added this? What does it mean?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the process is typically that anyone can request a card to be added, but the process involves working with a specific person to put the card together and get it on the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it should be able to happen at any time, not just after particular meetings. You can't control when problems/opportunities occur, so you should try not to artificially restrict their flow to getting prioritised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20840" LastActivityDate="2015-10-25T23:19:42.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16573" CreationDate="2015-10-25T23:29:57.737" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll stay away from the specifics (as I don't know the first thing about charities in Morocco) but will try to steer with some of the basics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;i want to know how to study the reliability of the project in addition to its possibility of being applyied in reality ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is called a Feasibility Study. You'll be able to find lots of research specifically on how to structure feasibility studies in the NFP sector. An example: &lt;a href=&quot;https://charityvillage.com/Content.aspx?topic=campaign_feasibility_studies_taking_the_time_to_find_out_whether_the_time_is_right#.Vi1k-H4rKM8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://charityvillage.com/Content.aspx?topic=campaign_feasibility_studies_taking_the_time_to_find_out_whether_the_time_is_right#.Vi1k-H4rKM8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;i want to know how to convince college students to volunteer for the project ? and how to get them commited to it ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should be researched and covered as part of your feasibility study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If I would put together a workplan of the entire project ? how do i do that ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your first step would be a Strategic Plan, you want something high level before you even attempt to get into the details for something on this scale that requires significant upfront investment. An example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.otsmanagement.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Strategic-Planning-for-NFP-10-Step-Guide.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.otsmanagement.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Strategic-Planning-for-NFP-10-Step-Guide.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to get sponsors to help with the project ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sponsors generally won't be interested in &quot;an idea&quot;. Lots of people have ideas. A Feasibility Study and a Strategic Plan would be great first steps to be able to pitch to some potential sponsors and get them involved. It shows that this is more than just &quot;an idea&quot; and something that has passed the rigors of some serious thinking and research (and has been found to be feasible).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20840" LastActivityDate="2015-10-25T23:29:57.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16581" CreationDate="2015-10-26T00:42:03.383" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kanban on its own does not make a recommendation.  It is, after all, a process or method to improve your existing process. It encourages you to start with what you have currently, visualize it and make improvements where possible/ necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, here are some initial questions to answer - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is your current process in which new work is identified, categorized, prioritized, scheduled and actually taken up for working on?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who is currently doing each of those activities? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there different types of work items (user stories vs. bugs vs. customer-reported defects, for example)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That should be your starting point to be visualized either in a separate &quot;upstream&quot; Kanban board - or in upstream columns of the Dev board - or even in a separate swim lane.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once that analysis is clear, you might define policies on who prioritizes the different kinds of work, at what frequency - and within certain WIP limits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our case, for example - we have the following processes in place:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We manage our roadmap in a separate 'upstream' Kanban board. This is the place where key product themes are identified and prioritized - and new stories and enhancements against those themes are identified, prioritized and scheduled for specific releases.  We do a monthly roadmap review and a weekly replenishment meetings to manage this board.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have a Dev Kanban board where work flows in from the Roadmap board based on each Replenishment meeting (and a WIP limit of 15 for the Ready column of the Dev board).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the Dev board, we also directly log in internal defects (found by our own team) and customer defects (reported by our customers).  These are typically prioritized over user stories and enhancements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Our policies for recording new work items and taking them up for execution are - &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) User Stories/ Enhancements: Anyone can suggest/ Product Management (Owner) prioritizes and schedules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) Internal Defects: Anyone can report/ log, Product Management/ Engg Lead evaluate and prioritize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c) Customer Defects: Customer/ Sales/ Support report and log, typically with Criticality, Engg lead pulls/ assigns on priority over other work if needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have daily standup meetings where any clarifications on priority are discussed or specific work identified for execution if needed. The standup is attended by the full Product Management and Dev team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2015-10-26T00:42:03.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16581" CreationDate="2015-10-26T08:18:02.203" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking anybody can add cards to the board, because the first practice suggests to &lt;strong&gt;visualise the workflow&lt;/strong&gt;. On the other hand, the fourth practise suggests that the team should have &lt;strong&gt;explicit policies&lt;/strong&gt; which should specifically state how new work can enter the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Combining these two, teams tend to add new work to the &lt;em&gt;Incoming&lt;/em&gt; column and decide together with the PO or PM in which order they let the work enter the system. Additionally, if the card represents something that needs to be done in order to finish something else, they mark it as &lt;em&gt;unplanned&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-10-26T08:18:02.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14900" CreationDate="2015-10-26T09:20:47.957" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no per-epic burndown in TFS 2012 out-of-the-box. Something can be cobbled up relatively easy through the Warehouse if you have it available on your instance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://incyclesoftware.com/2014/08/scaling-agile-and-safe-metrics-with-tfs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Report from InCycle&lt;/a&gt;, which can serve as a basis for your request. I've had to debug and fix some parts of it while at the last client where we used it. It's not perfect, but it will get you started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Urban Turtle provides a progress bar on Epics on their version of the portfolio backlog, but as far as I can tell there is no per-epic-burndown built into that product either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7393" LastActivityDate="2015-10-26T09:20:47.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16587" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16588" CreationDate="2015-10-26T10:37:51.857" Score="0" ViewCount="6545" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to show the delays that are caused by moving the end of a task.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Let's say I have a task that is planned like that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task 1 - Start: 26.10.2015 End: 20.11.2015&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the following changes occur:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On 27.10.2015 the end-date will be moved to 22.11.2015. And then another time on the 28.10.2015 the end-date will be moved to 26.11.2015.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to use a column in project that tells: The original end-date moved by 6 days and it changed two times. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that possible? What columns do I have to use for tha?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20635" LastActivityDate="2015-10-26T12:51:22.130" Title="MS Project: Make task delays visible" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16587" CreationDate="2015-10-26T11:52:30.120" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not only is it possible but that's what the tool should be doing.  The finish column is what will show the date change as that column is dynamic.  But that assumes you did not hard code the finish date, i.e., put in a must finish on constraint.  Your packages should be constraint free as much as possible such that the start and finish dates will constantly move to the left and to the right.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if a predecessor is finishing late, then the start of the successor will start late accordingly and will show in the start column.  You can also open a start variance and finish variance columns to see the number of days your schedule is shifting from baseline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT based on comment:  Formal changes to the schedule occur on a predetermined frequency.  In some cases this is weekly and in other cases it is monthly.  This depends on the length of the project and how sensitive we need to be on tracking variances.  There are ad hoc changes, too, but I attempt to minimize those.  Therefore, tracking the changes becomes a product of passing time, e.g., we are 17 weeks into a 42 week project; therefore, the schedule was updated at least 17 times (assuming a weekly update).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now when I say formal changes, I am not talking about a change that requires a re-baseline to the schedule.  Changes here are only those where progress and actual dates or costs are loaded.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Changes that require a re-baseline are formally done through change control.  The outcome of this process is formally documented with all the approvals, impacts, risk assessments, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2015-10-26T12:51:22.130" LastActivityDate="2015-10-26T12:51:22.130" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16589" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-26T16:34:59.907" Score="-1" ViewCount="154" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a PhD in anthropology and have been working as an ersatz PM for a R&amp;amp;D company for a few years now. I'm no R&amp;amp;D whizz, mind you, just a talented and organized people person. However, I lack any certificate. Just experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the company is currently merging with a bigger one, I want to be sure to make my profile as attractive as possible to recruiters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After noticing a few vacancies for PMs that require min. PRINCE2, it occurs to me that getting a certificate may do me good, a way to demonstrate that I've got the chops to manage projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this an accurate understanding or am I being naive? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20960" LastEditorUserId="20960" LastEditDate="2015-10-26T16:46:42.870" LastActivityDate="2015-10-26T17:20:07.850" Title="Is it useful to acquire prince2 certification to improve my PM profile?" Tags="&lt;certification&gt;&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16589" CreationDate="2015-10-26T16:59:35.710" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a highly opinion based question, but here is my view on certificates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nowadays, online presence, experience, and references trumps certificates in information technology. Recruiters and sorcerers look for candidates with good background. Same of the HR persons I know say that certificate can be bought - actually that's the point of one - therefore it does not matter a bit in their domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other side, I understand that in building, manufacturing, and prodution PMP is useful and sometimes mandatory to fulfill a position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both domain requires experience, or you can start as a junior PM, or assistant. None of these requires certificate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe one will not stand out and therefore won't be recognized because of one's certificates. &lt;strong&gt;You should use the time and money you plan to invest into PRINCE2 and build your own brand.&lt;/strong&gt; If you aim for IT, organize meetups, be active in communities, do useful projects in your organization, etc. If you aim for production, check if the position you want or you want others to recognize you for, requires a PMP and do that one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-10-26T16:59:35.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16574" CreationDate="2015-10-26T17:10:39.667" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Update the status date to the appropriate date.  Open up the &quot;Work Variance&quot; column.  Read the value at whatever level of the schedule you are analyzing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This assumes you loaded planning values for work and you load actual hours in against each work package.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-10-26T17:10:39.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16589" CreationDate="2015-10-26T17:20:07.850" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer to your question lives in your analysis of who is advertising for work and what they are asking for, reasons you are being given why you either did not get a chance to interview or why you were eventually rejected.  Whether or not there is any performance validity to the PRINCE2 or PMP or any other certificate, hiring managers do use these certificates as discriminators much of the time.  So if you are not getting interviewed or are being rejected, then maybe having this certificate might get you passed initial filters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-10-26T17:20:07.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16581" CreationDate="2015-10-26T21:16:02.563" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it is a Kanban team then technically any stakeholder can add cards after the stakeholders have negotiated the class or priority of the card.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is a team using a Kanban board then it depends on the team.  If it is a Scrum team, then the PO should generally be adding the cards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing is that whoever adds the card:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has defined the purpose of the work (commonly via user story and/or acceptance criteria)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has communicated their intention to add the work with other stakeholders (customers, PO, PM, sponsor, etc) in the project to ensure the work is appropriately timed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has reviewed the proposed work with those who will be doing the work to ensure the work is understood and sized&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your team should have a defined process for who/how cards are added to a Kanban board if they do not explicitly operate as a Kanban Team and many Kanban Teams will still explicitly identify their process since Kanban teams often serve large groups of stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-10-26T21:16:02.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16594" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-27T02:00:09.077" Score="2" ViewCount="26544" Body="&lt;p&gt;Im interested in becoming a Scrum Master but I don't have any experience working in a true Scrum/Agile environment. I work in the tech industry managing clients and web production for an email platform company, so it's different than typical development. Would getting my Scrum Certification be enough to find a job? I'm trying to figure out the best way to go about this. Any advice would be great!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20965" LastActivityDate="2020-02-11T11:40:33.050" Title="Is it possible to be a Scrum Master without any experience?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;career&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16594" CreationDate="2015-10-27T03:47:50.697" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would getting my Scrum Certification be enough to find a job?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certification will certainly help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I'm looking to hire I look for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Practical, demonstrable and relevant experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Relevant education / certification&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you have some non-scrum-master expertise you may try looking for a SM job in the industry you have experience in so you can use your experience as leverage (eg &quot;Whilst I'm new to the Scrum Master role, I have my certification and a wealth of experience in this domain so I have all the tools I need to be a success&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone starts somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20840" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T03:47:50.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16596" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-27T05:53:08.650" Score="-3" ViewCount="897" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for a theoretical formula which can evaluate the performance of an employee. I have figured out these measurable factors on which the performance can be calculated. Can anyone tell me a feasible formula for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deadlines missed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requests completed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Number of bugs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Amount of appreciation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Number of customers assisted&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Behavioral Quotient factor (or any other measurable factors)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are basically 4 categories, or basically the percentage for each category in which the value of the formula should lie:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;worst (25%),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;average (50%),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;good (75%),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;outstanding (100%).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking forward to the magic formula!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20966" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-10-27T16:38:28.087" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T16:54:12.073" Title="How can I calculate performance evaluation criteria for a software team?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;performance&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16575" CreationDate="2015-10-27T06:03:30.213" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless you have a really good business case for rolling out a separate website that will benefit your employer (it sounds like currently your only reason is for your personal learning), then I would suggest making it a feature in the existing website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The existing website has all its plumbing already taken care of, whereas if you were to roll out a new website, you'd waste a lot of time on that (which, if I understand your role correctly, isn't going to benefit your project management experience all that much).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I wouldn't underestimate the learning experience inherent in building a new feature in an existing website with over a million users - you get to focus on the feature without having to worry about plumbing, and all those users will give you instant feedback (assuming you know how to analyse their usage effectively). That's golden. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4523" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T06:03:30.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16596" CreationDate="2015-10-27T11:49:54.713" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your developers need to use ability, judgement, intellegence and nuiance to do their job well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same is expected of you when doing your job. There is no formula and reductionist metrics are a sign of 'management smell'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to both get better at your job (the how is complex) and also defer judgement of what is good work to the team, rather than to a spreadsheet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17705" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T11:49:54.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16594" CreationDate="2015-10-27T14:22:49.877" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can be a Scrum Master, but without any experience in Agile, you will not be effective. The training itself is two days, and does not cover most of the extreme cases you'll meet day to day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you would like to be a good Scrum Master, be part of a team that actually is agile, and learn form its Scrum Master&lt;/strong&gt;. If you would like to land a good job, do the two-day long course and get the certificate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T14:22:49.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16601" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16607" CreationDate="2015-10-27T15:04:59.803" Score="3" ViewCount="1403" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are 7/8 person in the development team. I would like to convince my boss to use agile technics(SCRUM). He told me to present a bit of documentation, in order to evaluate it. He has an economy background but he is very open to &quot;new tecnologies&quot; and to experience. I can not present a big amount of documentation otherwise he will never read it. Can anyone suggest something?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17799" LastActivityDate="2015-10-28T13:15:31.510" Title="How to convince my boss to use SCRUM" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16602" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-27T15:08:30.677" Score="0" ViewCount="143" Body="&lt;p&gt;After few years of working on this complicated project, and with only few months left, i realized that my programmer been feeding me BS all along, that the system is not near ready, with quick fixes piling up, and a programmer that had me in a corner where the code is full of deprecated, duplicated, unused code, and that he is the only one that gets it, how to deal with such a situation ? if i fire him with 5 months to go, it will take that much time for someone new to understand the code? if i let him be, then that sends the wrong message to other team members !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16880" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T23:38:11.973" Title="How to replace a programmer when he is the only one that understands the system?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16602" CreationDate="2015-10-27T15:49:03.790" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After few years of working on this complicated project, and with only few months left&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well that's the first mistake, you've been working for YEARS on a project and haven't seen anything?  Methodologies such as Agile exist to avoid things like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, if you know it's a state, and you can't trust your developer, you need to relay this to your sponsor/customer that there is an issue NOW.  Now go through the features you are doing, and prioritise them.  Don't keep your dev, he is either useless/malicious/got a hidden agenda, you can't trust what he'll do going forward, and realistically you're no worse off without him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get another dev/contractor/company in to assess the code, in order of the priority.  Get a timeboxed estimate of what each feature will take to fix/build/complete (when I say timeboxed I mean get your dev to spend a pre-agreed block of time evaluating, not until it's all looked at, keep it high level).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the hard part, look at each feature against priority and cost and decide if this is fixable or junk.  Be ruthless, remember the sunk cost fallacy, it may be the best solution is to just stop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find there is something to save, get them working on the features in priority, with regular reviews (so either sprints or deliveries depending on your process of choice), you need to build just enough to satisfy requirements/mvp and get the thing shipping.  Re-evaluate each delivery to decide if this is still viable.  DO NOT get the devs to refactor, the code base is a mess, and if you get to V2, you'll probably start again.  Only allow them to refactor/redo if there is no way to use (or the code is just too bad/non-performant etc), you are going to throw it away so save the design for the next version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3336" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T15:49:03.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16601" CreationDate="2015-10-27T16:12:13.427" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can pitch success stories, and this collection might be a good start: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/success-stories&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.scrumalliance.org/success-stories&lt;/a&gt;, or you can ask for a month to do it, and show him/her the benefits from your own experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T16:12:13.427" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16602" CreationDate="2015-10-27T16:51:10.570" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Couple of suggestions :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to replace that person and refactor the code.Client also need to know, if required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you cannot do that rightaway. &#xA;Two ways :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Get new person rightaway and ask him to partner him in his module.&#xA;When he becomes comfortable in the module, replace original person.&#xA;This new person should know that original person is supposed to be&#xA;replaced and original person should not be aware. This approach is taken&#xA;when you have so much dependency and you know that this person will not&#xA;give KT.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Second, get new person - Ask original person to give KT to this&lt;br&gt;&#xA;person. Prepare KT plan and follow that. Escalate to higher&#xA;management or involve HR if this person does not give KT properly&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See which plan suits you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20900" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T16:51:10.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16596" CreationDate="2015-10-27T16:54:12.073" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are probably looking for a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weighted_arithmetic_mean&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;weighted average&lt;/a&gt;, but you need to do a lot of work to determine how important each component of your scoring system really is. Your current metrics do not appear to contain enough context or sufficiently-defined management goals to be useful without additional work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with any set of metrics is that you have to carefully define your context and provide meaningful goals. When you have imprecise metrics, you run the risk of measuring the wrong things or incentivizing the wrong behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, you want to measure &quot;number of customers assisted.&quot; What if the value is 1?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is that because the person was unhelpful?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it because you had very few customers that needed help? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are you trying to prioritize customer assistance over new features?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are you measuring this dimension against the rest of the team (i.e. who handled the most of the 27 tickets this period) or against some management target (e.g. Joe should handle 1/5 of all customer calls)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many other contextual and analytical issues beyond these, but the preceding at least gives a good flavor for the sorts of questions you and the management team should be asking yourselves. There isn't a &quot;one size fits all&quot; formula because metrics require constant tuning and interpretation to be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T16:54:12.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16601" CreationDate="2015-10-27T20:19:24.047" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Articulate how Scrum will improve the one thing most important to your boss&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to @zsolt's success stories, find out which one of the following is most important to your boss. It is easier to say they want all of them, but one of these may be more important than others based on your organization's current situation and their role in the organization. Try to articulate how Scrum  will improve that specific item of interest to your boss:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Improve customer satisfaction: If your customer is frustrated with the painful change control process, this may be of interest. Also, they get to see a working product much sooner.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Minimize risk: By deploying a minimal application early and adding  features to it every sprint or every few sprints, you get faster feedback and minimize risk of the project needing major rework.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Improve team morale and retention: Scrum improves team morale by channeling all prioritization through one person (the Product Owner), by encouraging self-organization (as against command-and-control) and by providing opportunities for team members to learn new skills (cross-functional).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Increase productivity: By reducing context switching, by removing impediments, by improving teamwork and by keeping team size manageable.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Improve quality of output: While Scrum does not require any specific engineering practices (such as TDD or continuous integration) by requiring a shippable increment at the end of each sprint it pushes you to adopt good engineering practices. Also, by making the team agree on a definition of done and by continuous improvements through retrospectives it improves the quality of output.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T20:19:24.047" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16608" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-27T22:43:52.520" Score="0" ViewCount="699" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am practicing exam nowadays to get PMP exam using famous exam simulator but i found question i cannot determine how they draw the diagram table below : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6HMFg.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6HMFg.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;amp; they draw it like the following :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nZiUE.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nZiUE.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;my question is how the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;End&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; have 2 duration &amp;amp; how i can calculate critical path??&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16093" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T14:31:43.567" Title="Network Diagram Duration Problem in time management" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16602" CreationDate="2015-10-27T23:38:11.973" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have discovered a risk.  First, don't get emotional about it.  The risk doesn't care that you've been eating BS or who is to blame.  Neither does the customer.  If you're having trouble remaining neutral, discuss your problem with someone that understands your organization, the context of the problem, and that can be neutral.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have 3 basic paths:&#xA;- Accept&#xA;- Mitigate (via various options)&#xA;- Wait &amp;amp; Track&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your goal is to make a risk-neutral decision, i.e. find a feasible solution that accounts for the risk and optimizes return for your customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about the impacts (costs) and likeliness of failure (probability) associated of accepting the risk as it stands, mitigating it via various methods like OP's suggest, or just deferring action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also need to root cause this risk.  Why did this go on for so long?  How can you avoid this issue on future projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T23:38:11.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16601" CreationDate="2015-10-28T13:06:42.260" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask your boss if he is willing to read a book about the subject. I think this is the best way to get most of the needed information and a better understanding of the concepts then some slides and summaries will give. I believe any manager should continuously read books about their respective industries processes and tooling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The newest book of Jeff Sutherland &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scruminc.com/new-scrum-the-book/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Scrum The Art of Doing Twice The Work In Half the Time&quot;&lt;/a&gt; reads like a novel and anyone should be able to finish it in a couple of evenings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your boss is more skeptical, maybe the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://sanderhoogendoorn.com/blog/index.php/this-is-agile/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;This is Agile&quot;&lt;/a&gt; of Sander Hoogendoorn might be a nice alternative. Sander writes about his Agile experiences and it does not focus on a single framework like Scrum. His years of experience are a nice and complete read from general Agile concepts to implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pushing Agile bottoms up is a start, but for it to work I think you also need to push top-down. The whole organization needs to understand why you want to be Agile and should support this, else it will be a hard ride.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2015-10-28T13:15:31.510" LastActivityDate="2015-10-28T13:15:31.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16612" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-28T14:16:58.557" Score="5" ViewCount="464" Body="&lt;p&gt;When is the best time to write automated test cases? I understand that automated test cases are written in parallel or else by Test Driven Development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when should automated functional or regression test cases be written?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am asking this question so that I may hire my automation team resources accordingly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume that when the system will be somewhat ready after 2-3 releases, then I will hire automation testers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20900" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-06-19T19:17:31.187" LastActivityDate="2019-06-19T19:17:31.187" Title="When is the best time to create automated test cases?" Tags="&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16613" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-28T14:24:47.863" Score="4" ViewCount="133" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since I am new to agile and as I understand in agile development + testing + bugfixing etc are done in parallel so I would like to understand : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If my story is developed , tested, all the bugs are resolved i.e.&#xA;even low bugs then only developer start the coding of another story? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once all bugs are fixed then only we can submit in UAT or we can&#xA;submit with open low bugs?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question is broken from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/16577/how-to-execute-sprint-effectively&quot;&gt;original question&lt;/a&gt; as asked by Mark Phillips and CodeGnome&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20900" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2015-10-29T18:19:27.213" Title="When Should developer start another story?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16614" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16618" CreationDate="2015-10-28T14:32:21.147" Score="5" ViewCount="108" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should we write technical stories against business stories where technical stories will have class diagrams or sequence diagrams, or where technical items will be broken down into design tasks extracted from business stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is broken out from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/16577/how-to-execute-sprint-effectively&quot;&gt;original question&lt;/a&gt; as asked by Mark Phillips and CodeGnome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20900" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2015-10-28T15:33:29.810" Title="Should we write technical stories against business stories where technical stories will have diagrams?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16615" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-28T14:40:44.683" Score="-4" ViewCount="503" Body="&lt;p&gt;How to manage timelines in sprint effectively?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;New stories may be affecting previous story design/code - you have&#xA;certain velocity and that is for new work but your previous work also&#xA;gets impacted&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;So very less time is there for new stories as lot of time is spent in&#xA;other activities : Backlog grooming for next sprint(I agree PO/BA do&#xA;that but dev people also send their queries), bug fixes of this&#xA;sprint , bug fixes of previous production deployed releases,&#xA;refactoring the existing stories which is impacted with new stories -&#xA;as you are creating new story - the design also change in&#xA;database/class here/there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions on how to manage sprint timelines effectively?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question is broken from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/16577/how-to-execute-sprint-effectively&quot;&gt;original question&lt;/a&gt; as asked by Mark Phillips and CodeGnome&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20900" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T07:08:22.307" Title="How to manage timelines in sprint effectively?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16613" CreationDate="2015-10-28T14:49:08.343" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A new Scrum Team member can start on a new user story if the previously started user stories are in the done column (team needs to define definion of done) or cannot assist in any other user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-10-28T14:49:08.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16614" CreationDate="2015-10-28T15:11:04.083" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can write them, there is nothing against it, however these documentations tend to take a lot of time write, and after one or two weeks they are obsolete, even though architects claim that they are going to be useful later. This is rarely true, maybe in health care services where technical documentation is mandatory per FDA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd rather do technical discussions and one pagers than class diagrams. They fit better into the agile mindset: they involve the whole team - collaboration -, team discusses decisions together, and they are effective and efficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-10-28T15:11:04.083" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16612" CreationDate="2015-10-28T15:28:07.657" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;An Agile team should have automation testing knowledge from the start, the team should be cross-functional. Personally I think a test in each layer of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://martinfowler.com/bliki/TestPyramid.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;test pyramid&lt;/a&gt; should be defined in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2008/september/what-is-definition-of-done-(dod)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;definition of done&lt;/a&gt; for each story (feature) that is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creating UI tests as an after thought will result in harder testable software. During development it is easy and cheap to change the UI a bit to make it testable from the start. Don't have testers struggle months after the development is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you write a couple of UI tests each iteration. This will make it easier to write end-2-end test for new functionality and defects in a later stage, certainly for defects that are hard to test in unit-tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also your automation testers will not have the domain knowledge to write good tests, because they will join the project later and did not grow with the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep a good balance between UI and Unit-tests, UI tests are harder to maintain and with a constant changing UI it might even get frustrating to update them. Make sure UI tests are written as maintainable as possible, have the team use patterns like &lt;a href=&quot;https://code.google.com/p/selenium/wiki/PageObjects&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PageObjects&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Less topic about not seperating testing: &lt;a href=&quot;http://less.works/less/technical-excellence/thinking-about-testing.html#ThinkingAboutTesting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://less.works/less/technical-excellence/thinking-about-testing.html#ThinkingAboutTesting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2016-11-19T09:52:30.457" LastActivityDate="2016-11-19T09:52:30.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16614" CreationDate="2015-10-28T15:30:13.543" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should we write technical stories against business stories where technical stories will have class diagrams or sequence diagrams, or where technical items will be broken down into design tasks extracted from business stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. A user story is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a requirements document. A story should follow &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;INVEST criteria&lt;/a&gt;, but can be many things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It can be a description of a feature.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It can be a vertical slice of demonstrable functionality.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It can be a placeholder for discussions with stakeholders about what needs to be implemented, or what a successful story implementation might look like.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It can be a placeholder for technical discussions about how to implement a feature.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the user story provides context and guidelines for &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; should be implemented, but the specific details of &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; to implement a feature is left to the development team. As a result, detailed technical requirements should not be embedded in the story itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, the right place to decompose a story into implementation-level details is in the second half of Sprint Planning when converting stories to tasks on the Sprint Backlog. Not all teams do this, but if you're going to do it at all, this is generally where it should be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-10-28T15:30:13.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3219" CreationDate="2015-10-28T15:33:24.187" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Magic Whiteboard have some new Magic Cling Notes  - with are stronger than a paper based note and don't curl up or fall off &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.magicwhiteboard.co.uk/category/magic-sticky-notes/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.magicwhiteboard.co.uk/category/magic-sticky-notes/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20989" LastActivityDate="2015-10-28T15:33:24.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16613" CreationDate="2015-10-28T16:21:37.900" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;This is easier to understand if you contrast Scrum with Waterfall&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the waterfall process, tickets are assigned to individual developers by name. At any given point in time, at a minimum, each developer will be working on one ticket. The developer will typically complete the development, unit test it, check it in and move on to the next ticket. At some pre-determined interval, a build will be taken and thrown over the wall to the testing team. Sometimes each developer may be working on more than one ticket, either because one ticket is blocked or because, in the developer's opinion, it is more convenient to work on related tickets together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, the Sprint backlog is owned by the entire team. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;They are self-organizing. No one (not even the Scrum Master) tells the Development Team how to turn Product Backlog into Increments of potentially releasable functionality.&lt;/a&gt; However, here is the key. Let us say there are 9 stories in the Sprint backlog and midway through the Sprint the team determines that they cannot complete all of the stories. &lt;strong&gt;It is better to leave one story totally untouched than to have 3 stories half complete.&lt;/strong&gt; Given this goal how would you take up stories? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/should-a-team-swarm-on-to-one-backlog-item-at-a-time&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;You will keep WIP (Work In Progress) low. However, it won't be very effective for a team of, say, seven people to work on one story at a time. They will be tripping on each other. In practice you might find that working on a maximum of 3 or 4 stories at a time may be effective.&lt;/a&gt; You can give any team member the guideline outlined by @zsolt:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When you are done with what you are working on, make every effort to see whether you can assist with any story already in progress.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start on the next priority new story only if you cannot do above.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-10-28T22:46:31.003" LastActivityDate="2015-10-28T22:46:31.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16623" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-28T20:17:39.167" Score="5" ViewCount="608" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently our team uses JIRA to manage our agile projects. JIRA works alright but has two major limitations for us. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our goal is to have a backlog of stories/cards, and be able to organize them on multiple public and private boards. For instance, we would have a &quot;Features&quot; board that public users could watch to see when features are being worked on, and when they are done. We would also have  Public Roadmap, and a private roadmap. The goal is to be more transparent with our customers, and to better organize tasks that could exist on multiple boards simultaniously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In JIRA:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From what I can tell, it is impossible to share stories between multiple boards (We need this)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We can't make a public facing board (To share roadmap and features with our clients).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we started to look at Trello like tools, including Trello, KanTree, and PinTask. However, each of them had a feature we needed that the others didn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Trello and KanTree, you can have public boards, but you can't easily share a card on more than one board. KanTree has a great feature where a card can have it's own board (like an epic). In PinTask you can share cards through &quot;mirroring&quot; but other than that it doesn't have the other features we need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And to top it all off, Trello like tools are not great for managing a backlog just because the UI is so simplified it makes it hard to parse long lists of stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, where does this all bring us? Well, we feel to best manage our process, as well as provide our customers the most up to date information on our product development process we need a tool that supports the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ability to manage a backlog of stories that is not tied to a Scrum Board.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The ability to have stories exist on multiple boards (Go through multiple workflows)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The ability for us to allow some boards to be public, so customers can track progress on valuable features&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nice to have: Good support for sub-tasks on stories or the ability to organize this nicely as an epic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have spent a few weeks now trying to find the best way to do this with no luck. I am hoping more people with experience with a variety of tools can offer some advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20992" LastActivityDate="2015-10-29T08:25:29.677" Title="Best way to manage public/private boards which can share stories?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16623" CreationDate="2015-10-28T21:54:30.633" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;JIRA is perfectly capable of sharing stories across multiple boards. It is also able to restrict access to one board while making another board public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create two JIRA projects one for the private stories and one for the public ones. Now create a board that points at the public stories project and make this board accessible to the public (which you can do with project permissions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next create your internal board. This will use a JQL query that selects all stories from both the private and public projects. Ensure that your private stories project is permission restricted so that the public can't see it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team will use the internal board as it will show both public and private stories. They can mix up both types in the same sprint if they want to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-10-28T21:54:30.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8377" CreationDate="2015-10-29T08:24:35.890" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is that the Business Analyst MUST get the specs right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, he/she needs to write the specs so they do exactly what the customer wants and then...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Customer is responsible for signing these of. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if the specs are vague or inaccurate, and even if they are signed off, the Customer is always right. A cliche I know but true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As they're paying the bill, they can make mistakes but your BAs can't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20996" LastActivityDate="2015-10-29T08:24:35.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16623" CreationDate="2015-10-29T08:25:29.677" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always found it best to manage the connection between the two backlogs manually. You have a board (or something else) showing high level features which you make public, and you maintain something else for your internal team. This way your internal team can use whatever is best for them, and they are not tied to something which makes publishing things possible. It also keeps any 'colourful' language in the internal tool without people having to think about what they are writing :).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The public facing versions can then be tweaked to best suit that audience. For example, using more of their language rather than how you might discuss things internally and possibly linking to high def prototypes rather than mockups and spec documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully you aren't tracking things publicly at such a low level of detail that the manual overhead is too much. We tried to set up something automatic at my previous company but ultimately decided to split the functions and get the best tool/process for each use case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are interested in using Trello for this there are some useful resources listed here &lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/b/VliA4Xzm/scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://trello.com/b/VliA4Xzm/scrum&lt;/a&gt; (disclosure - I maintain that board). Re the issue of it not being good for managing a product backlog. I'd suggest splitting your backlog into multiple lists for upcoming releases. You will still probably have a general 'backlog' list but the bits people are most commonly interested in are the upcoming planned releases. Perhaps this way you could use Trello externally and something else internally?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20707" LastActivityDate="2015-10-29T08:25:29.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16627" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-29T11:49:06.297" Score="5" ViewCount="524" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a scrum project it is desirable to know what is your definition of done and what is your actual undone work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Potentially Shippable = Definition of Done + Undone Work&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://less.works/less/framework/definition-of-done.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://less.works/less/framework/definition-of-done.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A way to deal with this is to have a DoD with different levels, DoD for US, Sprint and Release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, when you don't have the resources or the automation knowledge necessary to do a full regression tests per story/feature you should decide to do this once per sprint or even once before the release (even knowing this is risky).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, how do you track in PBL this DoD tasks. A possibility:&#xA;To have a simplified DoD to burndown stories even knowing they are not fully done. Then, To have another PBL from which the stories transition from Done to Done Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related to this, is there a way to map this flow in Jira Agile?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16331" LastEditorUserId="16331" LastEditDate="2015-10-29T17:08:24.747" LastActivityDate="2015-11-04T06:44:28.083" Title="Keep track of DoD per sprint and per release" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;definition-of-done&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16628" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-29T12:33:38.600" Score="0" ViewCount="1823" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am having a hard time finding information on this, as most people looking at this cert are not developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have an opportunity to get the cert for free with paid classroom time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What, if any, is the value of this certification for a developer with no immediate plans to move in to project management?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21000" LastActivityDate="2015-12-30T14:55:21.493" Title="Value of an ITIL certification for a developer" Tags="&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16627" CreationDate="2015-10-29T13:06:37.087" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Definition of Done (DoD) is for user stories&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a scrum project it is desirable to have a DoD with different levels&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. In Scrum, Definition of Done (DoD) is for user stories only and it remains same for all user stories. When all stories of the sprint backlog cover the DoD then you have completed your sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;OK to have a 'less than ideal' DoD&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An ideal DoD would contain everything that the team needs to perform in order to build a potentially shippable product every sprint. However based on the context, situation, and team's skills a subset can be chosen as initial DoD. Simplify your DoD to items which you can ensure for all user stories and stick to it. This would mean that at some point you'll have to work on the left out portion of the ideal DoD (this is mentioned as &lt;em&gt;Undone Work&lt;/em&gt; in the article mentioned by OP). With the passage of time, you may add more items to your DoD list making it more closer to the ideal DoD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tracking &lt;em&gt;Undone Work&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some teams make use of a &lt;em&gt;Hardening Sprint or Release Sprint&lt;/em&gt;. Schedule a hardening sprint before doing a release, here you can have your &lt;em&gt;Undone Work&lt;/em&gt; (tasks left out from the ideal DoD) which can now be tracked as a regular sprint backlog.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure that a release sprint is not used to bucket all the remaining bugs and other stuff which should have been handled during regular sprints. In the words of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/correct-use-of-a-release-sprint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mike Cohn&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The release sprint is not a dumping ground for sloppy work; rather it is a place where some hardening of the system can occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Frequency of release sprints&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As per &lt;a href=&quot;http://scalingsoftwareagilityblog.com/scaled-agile-framework-hardening-iteration/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scaled Agile Framework&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Agile Teams can place hardening sprints anywhere, if and when, they are needed. So long as you are not “doing the stuff you should have done earlier,” and you are continually lightening the stuff in the  “should be doing earlier” pile, then you are increasingly agile and on the right track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: your idea of maintaining different DoD levels has been mentioned here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/multiple-levels-of-done&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/multiple-levels-of-done&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2015-11-04T06:44:28.083" LastActivityDate="2015-11-04T06:44:28.083" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16631" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16665" CreationDate="2015-10-29T14:46:14.407" Score="-2" ViewCount="707" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a free onedrive account (via Hotmail account) that I use for word, excel type of documents. I now have a need to create a Microsoft project document (with gantt chart) but when I click on New menu item, there is no option to create a Microsoft project file. Below are the only options I get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cPDZZ.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cPDZZ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could there be anyway of using Microsoft project from my free onedrive account?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21001" LastActivityDate="2015-11-02T13:40:59.430" Title="Using ms-project from onedrive" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16613" CreationDate="2015-10-29T18:19:27.213" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since I am new to agile and as I understand in agile development +&#xA;  testing + bugfixing etc are done in parallel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, Agile does not specify HOW you do things.  You are talking about specific Agile practices like Scrum, Kanban, or XP at this point.  If you use XP you will do a lot of testing, dev, and bug-prevention in parallel.  Scrum and Kanban don't really contribute much in this domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If my story is developed , tested, all the bugs are resolved i.e. even&#xA;  low bugs then only developer start the coding of another story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a good goal to shoot for, but not always possible.  Low bugs are sometimes not worth fixing relative to starting higher priority new story work.  Other times you will have a manual QA that detects the defect after you thought your work was done.  Work with your PO to make the call of whether its OK to ship a feature with a low bug in order to deliver the next item, or if fixing the low item is more valuable to the customer in the given timeframe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once all bugs are fixed then only we can submit in UAT or we can&#xA;  submit with open low bugs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends, work with your product owner (PO) or the customer to see what is desired.  Most important is that you openly communicate the presence of low defects in the product so that they can be appropriately prioritized in the backlog of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a side note, UAT is not a requirement of Agile software development.  I'd argue UAT is actually a relic of waterfall style development.  Practices from XP including TDD and pair programming, along with other concepts like ATDD, BDD, continuous integration, test automation, can all help to eliminate the need for a formal UAT period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-10-29T18:19:27.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16633" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-29T19:14:05.443" Score="1" ViewCount="1779" Body="&lt;p&gt;Along the same lines as &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/871/is-the-pmp-or-other-project-management-certification-worth-while-to-have&quot;&gt;this question on PM certification&lt;/a&gt;, I'm trying to work out the value of &lt;em&gt;change&lt;/em&gt; management certification. Note that here I'm talking about managing and gaining acceptance for organizational changes and not how to control changes to a project plan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a firm believer that the premise that effective organizational change management helps realize the benefits of a project or program, so see value in training in this space. Where things are less clear for me is whether or not certification is a useful thing to promote on a resume. Even if there isn't much demand today (and looking at job boards tends to make me think there isn't), there is nothing wrong with being an early adopter of something that is on an upward trajectory. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main standards that I'm aware of include &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prosci.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Prosci&lt;/a&gt;, which apparently has 20k+ certified practitioners, and a new certification program that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acmpglobal.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Association of Change Management Professionals&lt;/a&gt; is planning to release next year. My main qualm with ACMP is that their membership is orders of magnitude smaller than that of PMI so I'm not sure how credible they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is: Is Change Management certification valuable to have either based on demand today or potential demand in the foreseeable future? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2015-12-30T15:54:57.807" Title="Is change management certification valuable?" Tags="&lt;certification&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2016-01-03T15:05:44.227" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16634" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-29T20:07:37.257" Score="1" ViewCount="183" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work with an organization that hires professionals with temporary contracts that last for the length of the particular projects they are working on. At the moment, these contracts are usually just a fixed rate per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This situation creates an incentive for these contractors to sabotage the schedule of their projects, so that the project takes longer to complete, and thereby lengthen their contracts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does appear that this behavior is going on. They are various techniques being used. A common one appears to be raising an &quot;issue&quot; or a &quot;concern&quot; which is actually bogus, or &quot;making a mountain out of a molehill&quot;, but which nevertheless causes wasted time as this concern is addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is difficult for managers to know at the outset that an issue raised was not even worth investigation, and it could be the case that someone honestly raised a concern that turned out to not be a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although it is difficult to know for sure in any single instance that a contractor is sabotaging, it is clear from overall statistics that the practice goes on. (e.g. it happens more when the economy is down and contractors won't find another job).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is this: Are there any internal controls that can be adopted to help deal with this behavior? Is anyone aware of any incentive schemes/contract terms that could replace the fixed rate per day that have worked in dealing with this problem elsewhere?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21005" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-11-05T17:28:38.497" LastActivityDate="2015-11-06T11:03:35.507" Title="How can we prevent project professionals from sabotaging the project schedule?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;&lt;performance&gt;&lt;project-governance&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16634" CreationDate="2015-10-30T00:56:29.760" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question is essentially: &quot;How do I keep my Time &amp;amp; Materials Contractors honest?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main point to make is, unless you have a level of expertise in the subject area you're not going to know. It's akin to going to a mechanic when you know nothing about cars - how do you know if they're &quot;pulling the wool over your eyes&quot; or being honest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Simplest answer&lt;/em&gt;: Avoid Time and Materials Contracts as much as possible. They encourage this behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; need to enter into them, you have to ensure there is an incentive for the Contractor to stay honest (eg making sure to flag potential for repeat work if they're efficient, effective and highly visible with you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, make sure that you're not afraid to ask &quot;Why?&quot; when an issue is raised and don't back down until you understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contractor: &quot;This is much harder than I expected. It's going to take a few days longer.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You: &quot;Can you help me understand why?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contractor: &quot;Well, I was originally told this was all stored in one table, and now I find it's in 10.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You: &quot;So what are the extra steps you have to take now?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep drilling down until you understand &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; these tasks are being pushed out. And continue to flag &quot;repeat business&quot; if they are efficient. Also look for some good faith on their part - if they want the repeat business they will usually try &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to extend tasks, and if small problems crop up they will tend to stay back a little bit here and there &quot;off the clock&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, try to make this a partnership. Make sure you set incentives for honesty and efficiency (the easiest being repeat business) and keep flagging this. To keep this in check always keep asking &quot;Why?&quot; when times are extended until you understand. It may be annoying for them, but it's your responsibility to understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20840" LastActivityDate="2015-10-30T00:56:29.760" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16628" CreationDate="2015-10-30T01:03:26.337" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Methodology certifications are &quot;icing on the cake&quot; for hiring. They definitely come second to experience, but better than nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a look at some local job ads for positions you may want to go into and see if they mention it as a desirable or a requirement. If not, I wouldn't worry about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a million and one IT certifications and very few of them equate to anything more than a day or two in a casual classroom. That's precisely the weight that is given to them - a few days worth of effort. It's better than nothing, but not by that much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20840" LastActivityDate="2015-10-30T01:03:26.337" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16633" CreationDate="2015-10-30T01:10:08.483" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is Change Management certification valuable to have&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depends on your definition of value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I can rephrase: &quot;Will CM certification help me get a job or help me earn more?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably not. Experience is many orders of magnitude more valuable than a methodology certification. Being an early adopter is all well and good, but what's the value in it? Certification only has value &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt; - being certified for X number of years holds no weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were you I'd wait to see whether Job Ads started to pick this up as a requirement or a desirable. Then it may hold value to you - and then it may be worth getting at that time. As of now I'd say it'll just be expensive bragging rights (and usually access to some &quot;exclusive&quot; forums and a few PDFs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20840" LastActivityDate="2015-10-30T01:10:08.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16634" CreationDate="2015-10-30T08:46:49.647" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This problem will go away if you change your contract from fixed rate per day to fixed bid. Tell them the scope of the project they are supposed to deliver.For example : If its waterfall-After Requirement study - this much amount will be paid to them, after design - this much amount is paid to them.  It will in their favor to complete it on time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Its Agile(fixed bid not recommended) - But you can say After every release - you can pay money.The money is on hold till things are delivered so its in their interest to complete on time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from Fixed bid , there  are other models also like &quot;outcome based&quot; for example check the count of correct ticket resolution, you will pay this much amount.For each ticket - you have decided an amount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cannot change contract type then you need to understand each and every point which they are raising and understand if its correct or not like mwan is saying.I dont think there is any other way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20900" LastEditorUserId="20900" LastEditDate="2015-10-30T08:58:35.797" LastActivityDate="2015-10-30T08:58:35.797" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14041" CreationDate="2015-10-30T11:37:35.993" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the past we had to switch to shorter sprints mainly because we were having bad estimations and deviations from the plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When we reduced the duration and thus the scope the estimations improved and deviations were smaller (I guess that as you see the delivery date closer you are more conservative when estimating).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway I agree with others, if you plan to change the duration:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do it to solve issues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get people on board first and plan the change latter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21013" LastActivityDate="2015-10-30T11:37:35.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16641" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16651" CreationDate="2015-10-30T13:21:23.100" Score="2" ViewCount="71" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should I allow the freelancer to clone my entire repository to work on my code?&#xA;Is this safe?  I don't feel like giving a complete stranger access to my entire code base.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, how do I use the tool &lt;strong&gt;Git&lt;/strong&gt; in project management to facilitate development with out having my entire web app completely open?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21014" LastEditorUserId="21014" LastEditDate="2015-10-31T16:00:20.037" LastActivityDate="2015-10-31T16:00:20.037" Title="What is a good workflow for hiring freelancers?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14041" CreationDate="2015-10-30T16:53:31.067" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master's role is to encourage the Development Team and the Product Owner to work together to resolve issues cooperatively, rather than trying to solve the problem through authoritarian decree. Don't turn a real problem (e.g. poor feedback loops) into a &lt;a href=&quot;https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/66378/185951&quot;&gt;X/Y problem&lt;/a&gt; by assuming that the &lt;em&gt;cause&lt;/em&gt; is your Sprint length. This is a logical fallacy, most likely a variant of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;post hoc ergo propter hoc&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real root cause of your poor feedback loops is the lack of routine or continuous engagement by the Product Owner, which is a &lt;em&gt;requirement&lt;/em&gt; of a functional Scrum implementation. Addressing that, and working around it effectively, should be the focus of your team's problem-solving efforts. Changes to the Sprint length is only one possible solution, and may not even be the best one. YMMV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Your Problem Statement&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;PO is in a distributed location and ina different time zone...How do I convince my team who is working in three week long sprint to work on two week long sprint? The idea for me is to get quicker feedback from Product Owner. [sic]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Your Problems, Identified&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have articulated the following set of problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lack of day-to-day engagement from the Product Owner. This is a Scrum no-no.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lack of timely feedback on product increments, which is apparently only received during Sprint Review.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A team that doesn't see a benefit &lt;em&gt;to the team&lt;/em&gt; in having shorter iterations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Your Possible Solutions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to address the problems that you have, you need to drop the idea of &quot;convincing&quot; the team to do something that they don't feel is in their best interests. This is not agile; it's a holdover from old-fashioned command-and-control project management. Instead, you should consider addressing the identified issues in a Sprint Retrospective and eliciting solutions from the entire team, &lt;em&gt;including&lt;/em&gt; the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pragmatic solutions may include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Smaller Sprint Backlog tasks that follow the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST mnemonic&lt;/a&gt;. This offers the Product Owner more inspect-and-adapt points within each iteration.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories may need to be decomposed further, and Sprint Backlog tasks shortened to fit into a more measurable 0.5-2.0 day inspection cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ensuring that the Product Owner is available during defined core hours.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The use of Skype, telephone, email, or anything else that allows two-way communication between the Development Team and the Product Owner would allow the PO to answer questions and negotiate implementation details with the team. This is possible even when the PO is unable to sit with the team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Provide opportunities for the Product Owner to provide feedback on increments early and often.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As one example, perhaps the PO could inspect tasks or stories as part of the Definition of Done within the Sprint, rather than only at the end during Sprint Reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Identify the reasons that the Development Team doesn't feel shorter iterations are a benefit &lt;em&gt;for them&lt;/em&gt;, and address those things together.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some common examples may include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stories that aren't small enough to fit into a shorter iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A Definition of Done that includes tasks that would make a shorter iteration impractical.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resource constraints that would make shorter iterations unsustainable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Higher framework overhead due to required Scrum ceremonies taking up a larger percentage of available time. &lt;em&gt;(NB: There's a &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8520/4271&quot;&gt;related post&lt;/a&gt; that discusses this overhead in detail. The takeaway is that shorter iterations provide tighter feedback loops, but at the cost of higher process overhead.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The role of Scrum Master is to act as a framework referee and process coach, and to offer advice to the team based on his or her prior experience, &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to prescribe implementations details beyond the framework-mandated ceremonies. Make sure you encourage the Development Team and the Product Owner to work together to resolve the issue, rather than trying to solve the problem yourself through authoritarian decree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2015-10-30T17:03:59.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16643" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-10-30T16:59:08.947" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeboxing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In time management, timeboxing allocates a fixed time period, called a time box, to each planned activity. Several project management approaches use timeboxing. It is also used for individual use to address personal tasks in a smaller time frame. It often involves having deliverables and deadlines, which will improve the productivity of the user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-10-30T16:59:08.947" LastActivityDate="2015-10-30T16:59:08.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16644" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-10-30T16:59:08.947" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for questions about how to define a time box, or how to use one effectively, within agile frameworks such as Scrum." OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-10-30T16:59:08.947" LastActivityDate="2015-10-30T16:59:08.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15783" CreationDate="2015-10-30T17:46:47.840" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User story mapping is about describing a narrative and creating structure for &lt;em&gt;conversations&lt;/em&gt;, not for defining a pile of requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;User Mapping in Detail&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User story mapping is not directly about building a Product Backlog. It is about building a &lt;em&gt;narrative&lt;/em&gt; for your product to encourage discussions about what to build, and what the minimum viable product really looks like. Specifically, you should approach user story mapping as an exercise in describing the flow of user experience rather than getting bogged down in implementation details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider this excerpt:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stories aren’t a written form of requirements; telling stories through collaboration with words and pictures is a mechanism that builds shared understanding.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stories aren’t the requirements; they’re discussions about solving problems for our organization, our customers, and our users that lead to agreements on what to build.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;— Jeff Patton. User Story Mapping (Kindle Locations 477-480). O’Reilly Media, Inc..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;A Worked Example&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of focusing on features, your story map really out to strive to tell a story about the &lt;em&gt;experience&lt;/em&gt; of using the product. For example, you might decide to tell Jane's story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jane wants to buy an M1 Abrams tank from our web site.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jane finds the tank in the catalog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jane adds the tank to her cart.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jane tries to check out in one of two ways:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jane checks out without registering.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jane checks out with optional registration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jane creates buzz for the company when she goes on a road-rage rampage in her new tank.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Profit!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've told Jane's story in the large, you have refining conversations about what's needed to make each piece of that story a functional slice of product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Advice on the Emergent Mapping&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't try to build your map &lt;em&gt;up&lt;/em&gt; from user stories. Instead, define your narrative and build your feature list &lt;em&gt;down&lt;/em&gt; from the narrative. This is admittedly somewhat of an art, as the story map is really an emergent property of the exercise rather than a formulaic construct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may find yourself shuffling stories, epics, and themes a great deal in the beginning. You might also find yourself redefining your narrative several times as a result of the conversations that story mapping is &lt;em&gt;intended&lt;/em&gt; to trigger. That's all to be expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, the goal is to tell a &lt;em&gt;story&lt;/em&gt; about the product. The user stories themselves will emerge as a by-product of the storytelling process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2015-10-30T17:46:47.840" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16627" CreationDate="2015-10-30T19:23:01.230" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The definition of done is used to determine which stories are completed within a sprint. If a story meets all the items on the definition of done then it is completed and counts towards velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a story that does not meet the definition of done it doesn't contribute to the teams velocity. If, for example, the team fails to get any story to the definition of done then their effective velocity would be zero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team should define a definition of done that is both effective &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; realistic. Creating a definition of done that cannot be achieved is pointless. It would never allow you to measure your velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do we do this? We want to have a reliable measurement of progress. The Scrum framework says that the best way to measure progress is to measure items that are 'done'. If you have items that are partially done then it is very unclear what progress is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, imagine a story that the team completes, but doesn't do any regression testing on. The team gets to the last sprint and does a full regression test. They discover that in doing the story they broke lots of other functionality and it will takes days to fix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why teams invest in automated regression tests. They know it is a large investement of time and resources. But they value the fact that they can be confident they have a potentially releasable increment at the end of each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-10-30T19:23:01.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11360" CreationDate="2015-10-30T20:13:48.840" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For maturity level 2, AFAIK, an organization would have to not only have policies in place but ensure that processes are planned and executed according to the policies applicable.  The resources for the project(s) have to be allocated and utilized.  Stakeholders have to be involved in decision making.  The processes must also be monitored, controlled, reviewed and evaluated and repeated continually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20697" LastActivityDate="2015-10-30T20:13:48.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16615" CreationDate="2015-10-31T01:53:01.877" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Improve your engineering practices&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Backlog grooming for next sprint (I agree PO/BA do that but dev people&#xA;  also send their queries)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the Scrum Guide, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;This is an ongoing process in which the Product Owner and the Development Team collaborate on the details of Product Backlog items... Refinement usually consumes no more than 10% of the capacity of the Development Team.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am finding that putting in effort to get stories ready saves a lot of time and effort downstream. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;bug fixes of this sprint&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not clear about your question here. I hope you are not saying that buggy code can be written faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;bug fixes of previous production deployed releases&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to improve your engineering practices. When we were doing mostly manual testing we were struggling to complete the work within the sprint. But slowly we automated performance testing and introduced continuous integration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;refactoring the existing stories which is impacted with new stories&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are doing refactoring, you should have a suite of unit tests written for that part of the code. This will help you to do the refactoring with confidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, there is no magic remedy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-10-31T01:53:01.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16649" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-31T04:48:54.510" Score="0" ViewCount="3664" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a fresh graduate with Bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering. I am currently working as Jr. Mechanical Engineer in an MEP project. I always wanted to do courses in management, but I am confused whether I should go for MBA or PMP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21018" LastActivityDate="2015-11-03T18:01:49.823" Title="MBA or PMP for an engineering graduate?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-11-06T17:43:49.247" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16649" CreationDate="2015-10-31T11:12:53.757" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;These two are not the same things and you should not be doing an either / or comparison.  In fact, you should not compare the two in terms of which would provide a greater return.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The questions you should be asking yourself is should I get a graduate degree and, if so, in what and when?  Then create your plan and go execute.  The next question is am I seeing the PMP being requested in various job roles I would like to have and, if so, when will have enough PM experience to go sit for that test?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-10-31T11:12:53.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16641" CreationDate="2015-10-31T15:43:22.923" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want the freelancer to work on your codebase, you either make him sign a NDA, or provide access to the repositories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, you can specify and API that a freelancer should implement, and you'll use it through the API.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, the freelancer (or anybody) can do a better work if he can see the whole picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-10-31T15:43:22.923" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16653" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-10-31T21:32:37.763" Score="3" ViewCount="67" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, I'm helping an agile software consulting company to create a workflow between themselves and their customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal is to provide the customer with an Agile way of approving features (stories) before they are developed, and then accepting them (or not) when they are delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The consultants are already using User Stories within their internal system (TFS), but those are much more granular than would be appropriate for surfacing to the customer.  In fact, while the customer should be able to approve and reject feature level items, they should not be able to directly view or edit stories that are assigned to the developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone had any experience with trying to manage this separate of concerns using just Team Foundation Server / Visual Studio Online?  How did you configure it?  I'm considering a separate area and team for the customers, or perhaps a separate Team Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5751" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T07:18:32.267" Title="Consulting and separating internal and external tickets" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;&lt;portfolio-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16649" CreationDate="2015-11-01T02:44:10.033" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not discouraging you from doing either one, but staying put for a few years while you learn what real-life engineering work is like would not be a bad idea. You won't have enough experience for the PMP for at least two years anyway (assuming you are given management tasks from the start), and getting an MBA is a significant time and financial commitment that you should make when you have a fairly clear idea of where you want to take your career in the future. I know I sure didn't when I was a recent grad (computer science). You'll probably figure that out after a few years on the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if you really want to get started on one of them now, I suggest the PMP. It will provide you with broad knowledge and (as long as you apply the knowledge, and actively seek out or volunteer for management opportunities) skills without locking you into a particular career path. Investing the required time and money in a graduate degree makes it more difficult to say, &quot;I don't really enjoy this; I'll try being something else&quot; after you obtain it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13325" LastActivityDate="2015-11-01T02:44:10.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16655" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-01T04:02:36.793" Score="0" ViewCount="116" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm new here and I am confused about something. Sorry if the question doesn't fit and not suitable here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the application like foursquare and yelp which focuses entirely on feedback of the user around the world instead of user in specific organization, who is their main stakeholder? What software methodologies would they use if their main stakeholder is the user instead of top management in an organization?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21024" LastActivityDate="2015-11-12T09:12:41.840" Title="Who is the stakeholder of an user-driven application and what software methodology is suitable for it?" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16656" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-01T09:08:40.800" Score="4" ViewCount="3564" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the difference between: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;TDD (Test Driven Development); &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;BDD (Behavior Driven Development), and; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ATDD (Acceptance Test Driven Development)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In which layer(s) do they lie? And what are the associated tools?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jA0zk.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jA0zk.png&quot; alt=&quot;Unit Testing Quadrant&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As I understand TDD : Unit Testing layer : junit, jasmine&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;BDD : &lt;a href=&quot;https://cucumber.io/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cucumber tool&lt;/a&gt; : Which layer? It should be &lt;em&gt;Integration&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;BDD : Cucumber tool + Selenium tool : Which layer? It should be &lt;em&gt;E2E&lt;/em&gt; (End To End)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ATDD : ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20900" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-04-02T12:30:25.110" LastActivityDate="2018-04-02T12:30:25.110" Title="What is the difference between TDD, BDD and ATDD and related tools?" Tags="&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16656" CreationDate="2015-11-01T09:22:55.307" Score="2" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;TDD (Test Driven Development): when we write the test case first and implementation later. It is more than writing JUnit test cases, it is a software development method: first I write &quot;what&quot; I want, second &quot;how&quot; I want it. It also has a refactoring step to improve code quality.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;BDD (Behaviour Driven Development): when the PO/PM sits down with the customer and write meaningful sentences about how the whole system should work, usually in &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber/wiki/Gherkin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;gherkin&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;ATDD (Acceptance Test Driven Development): when we write the acceptance tests first. It is more technical than BDD, but covers more than a JUnit test case.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;ADD (Asshole Driven Development): Any team where the biggest jerk makes all the big decisions is asshole driven development. &lt;a href=&quot;http://scottberkun.com/2007/asshole-driven-development/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;More by Scott Berkun&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, TDD is a way of writing software, a method. The term is usually means to write unit tests first and ATDD to write acceptance tests first. BDD is a different method, where the customer draws up what she wants in steps, however the steps can be implemented and run in a TDD fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2011/12/bdd-demonstration/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;tutorial&lt;/a&gt; shows how BDD can be connected with TDD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-11-01T09:22:55.307" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16659" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16661" CreationDate="2015-11-01T13:54:24.993" Score="0" ViewCount="412" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working with a lot of teams and there are different phases of testing.  We have devised a standardized process for accessibility testing across many different teams. This process is to be done for all new software applications, upgrades or enhancements. The problem is deciding how to estimate accessibility testing and incorporating it into a standard accessibility testing process for team leaders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17482" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-11-01T20:48:44.890" LastActivityDate="2015-11-01T20:48:44.890" Title="How should we estimate accessibility testing for a waterfall project?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;testing&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16656" CreationDate="2015-11-01T14:27:40.710" Score="4" Body="&lt;h3&gt;TDD&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Test driven development is a particular approach to writing code where the tests are written at the same time as the code and involves constant refactoring. Because of its association with XP, TDD is historically associated with the unit test level. However, it is possible to apply it at other levels of testing (such as functional E2E level testing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TDD tools are traditionally unit testing and mocking tools such as JUnit and JMock.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;BDD&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Behaviour Driven Development can be seen as an extension of TDD. The key enhancement with BDD is the introduction of a domain specific language that is very accesible to business users. BDD will typically be more at the functional test level as that is natural outcome of working with a business focused language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most commonly used BDD tool by far is Cucumber. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;ATDD&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With acceptance test driven development the focus is verifying work is done by passing acceptance tests. As it is dealing with acceptance tests it will usually be at the functional test level. ATDD is close in concept to BDD, but with a stronger focus on the testing aspect as validation. It would be perfectly possible to do BDD in a way that was compliant with ATDD or to do ATDD in a way that was compliant with BDD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ATDD tools would include Cucumber and Fitnesse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-11-01T14:27:40.710" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16659" CreationDate="2015-11-01T20:46:00.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The problem is deciding how to estimate accessibility testing and incorporate it into this standard accessibility testing process for team leaders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Accessibility testing is just testing. From a project management point of view, it's just another task, milestone, or gating activity that must be performed to complete a unit of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You estimate accessibility testing the same way you estimate the rest of your work packages: you use historical norms, or you ask subject-matter experts and/or assigned task-performers to provide an educated guess about how long they expect each task to take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this type of testing is new to your project, then your estimates are likely to be less accurate than you might like. If that's the case, you simply apply a fudge factor that represents your project's level of uncertainty about the tasks, and then re-estimate or adjust your schedule as the team's experience grows and your estimation practices improve. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-11-01T20:46:00.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16655" CreationDate="2015-11-02T12:36:46.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The stakeholder(s) are those who are affected by the success or failure of the application. Users are stakeholders; if the application succeeds, then it will add value to their lives (and vice versa; if it adds value to their lives, it will likely succeed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are other stakeholders.  The project team are stakeholders. The investors are stakeholders.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The user is unlikely to be the main stakeholder, because the user doesn't generally influence development until after the application is fielded.  My mind can't quite wrap around the question of the stakeholders choosing the software methodologies.  Reminds me of the &quot;Camel is a horse designed by committee&quot; quote. I think the norm would be that the software development team would choose the software methodology (constrained by what the company can license, and similar external factors).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2015-11-02T12:36:46.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16574" CreationDate="2015-11-02T13:38:51.627" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming you have a baseline:  Make sure the Project summary task is displayed, go to the Task Usage view and add the Cumulative Work and Baseline Cumulative Work field to the timescaled portion of the view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-11-02T13:38:51.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16631" CreationDate="2015-11-02T13:40:59.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No sorry.  The choices in the &quot;new&quot; are driven by the online versions of Word, Excel, PPT, and OneNote.  Do you have project pro for office 365 added to your Office 365 subscription?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-11-02T13:40:59.430" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16666" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-03T00:42:32.943" Score="-5" ViewCount="124" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an &#xA;Activity i has a SF relationship with 3 days of lag with activity j. i starts on Tuesday morning and is 2 days long. j is 4 days long. When will j begin? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you calculate the dates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21046" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-11-06T15:45:08.407" LastActivityDate="2015-11-06T15:45:08.407" Title="Network analysis question" Tags="&lt;dependencies&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2018-09-14T03:52:46.610" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16666" CreationDate="2015-11-03T06:25:19.703" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't. &lt;code&gt;j&lt;/code&gt; starts when &lt;code&gt;i&lt;/code&gt; is &lt;strong&gt;done&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;code&gt;j&lt;/code&gt; was prioritized to be next. Planning to start &lt;code&gt;j&lt;/code&gt; on a certain day would require another method, SCRUM does not do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2015-11-03T06:25:19.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16669" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-03T15:39:57.807" Score="6" ViewCount="2373" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am having trouble differentiating user stories and acceptance criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example on I saw elsewhere state -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;User Story:&#xA;As a user of the library catalogue, I want advanced search options on the front page so that I can quickly and easily refine my search&#xA;&#xA;Acceptance criteria:&#xA;- I can limit the search by format/type.&#xA;- I can delineate the search by date range.&#xA;- I can limit the search to publisher information such as title, author, subject, place, publisher and call number.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I don't quite understand is how/why the items are acceptance criteria as opposed to a user story in their own right e.g. for last acceptance criteria, a user story could be: As a user of the library catalogue, I can limit the search to publisher information such as title, author, subject, place, publisher and call number&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21053" LastActivityDate="2015-11-04T06:25:41.723" Title="Difference between user story and acceptance criteria" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16669" CreationDate="2015-11-03T17:09:49.653" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Yes, you can write that as a user story&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What I don't quite understand is how/why the items are acceptance&#xA;  criteria as opposed to a user story in their own right&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the specific example you gave, I would say, yes you can write that as a user story. In fact, you may find that you can further break it down into even smaller stories. I personally prefer more granular stories, to the extent possible. So, the real question is where do you draw the line?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to get an answer to &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; question you should check &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot;&gt;the INVEST mnemonic created by Bill Wake&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You stop breaking it down further if it becomes a mere technical task without delivering value to the end user or is not testable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scruminc.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Hyper-Productive-Metircs.pdf&quot;&gt;Jeff Sutherland modified Bill Wake's mnemonic slightly: &quot;I&quot; as Immediately Actionable and &quot;S&quot; as Sized to fit (Max of ~50% of velocity).&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-11-03T17:09:49.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16669" CreationDate="2015-11-03T17:10:13.713" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The user story text provides the context and/or the headline of the functionality the team should deliver. The acceptance tests give guidance about the details of said headline and how the customer will accept them. The two of them together provide the whole deliverable. They can be in the same sentence, however it is easier to process information: context and criteria separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-11-03T17:10:13.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16649" CreationDate="2015-11-03T18:01:49.823" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;TL;DR;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pursue an MBA if you want to become an &lt;em&gt;executive&lt;/em&gt;. This involves responsibility for business decisions, finance and the leadership &amp;amp; management of people.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pursue a PMP if you want to become a &lt;em&gt;project manager&lt;/em&gt;. This involves responsibility for data gathering, analysis of risks, time-lines and resources and communication of the above.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Longer Version:&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the others have said, this is a bit of an unfair comparison. The goal of each of these educational paths are separate and distinct - and it might be more helpful to take a look at your overall career goals as you evaluate whether either of these (or other) types of education will be supportive of your path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;What is an MBA?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An MBA is a business-focused master's degree, which is designed to teach you how to manage people, processes and products. In general, a good program will teach you about the drivers behind business decisions, how to evaluate them, how to interact effectively with teams and manage people, and a variety of other topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What it is designed to do is make you a functional &lt;em&gt;executive&lt;/em&gt;, capable of critical thinking and equipped with a tool-belt of thought processes and techniques to use in making decisions and actioning them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;What is a PMP Certification?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A PMP is a Certificate which is highly focused on a specific technical task: project management. The focus of study is about analyzing, manipulating and tabulating data in order to effectively evaluate the status of a project and affect its outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike an MBA, which provides &lt;em&gt;generalist&lt;/em&gt; knowledge, the PMP focuses on the &lt;em&gt;specialist&lt;/em&gt; knowledge needed for this specific role. It is designed to give you the tools and resources to be an effective &lt;em&gt;project manager&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Theoretically, how do these roles interact?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to what education you should pursue should really be based in what your career goals are - so here are some thoughts to keep in mind, which I've found useful in my career planning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An executive is a &lt;em&gt;generalist&lt;/em&gt; who's job is to &lt;em&gt;make decisions and generate value&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. Because you are &lt;em&gt;responsible for the results&lt;/em&gt;, your career advancement is generally tied to how well you are able to make wise, well-informed decisions - and choose between opportunities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A project manager is a &lt;em&gt;specialist&lt;/em&gt; who's job is to &lt;em&gt;evaluate &amp;amp; report on risk&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. Because you are &lt;em&gt;responsible for analysis &amp;amp; communication&lt;/em&gt;, your career advancement is generally tied to &lt;em&gt;your ability to predict issues, suggest mitigations and keep everyone informed.&lt;/em&gt; In short - you are often a primary contributor to how &lt;em&gt;informed&lt;/em&gt; your executive's decisions are - though it is the &lt;em&gt;executive&lt;/em&gt; who is responsible for decision-making and overall results.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Caveat:&lt;/strong&gt; In many companies, these two roles wind up somewhat conflated, with executives performing analysis or PM's being held responsible for outcomes. Keep this in mind when deciding whether you might want to pursue one or both courses of education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21056" LastActivityDate="2015-11-03T18:01:49.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16656" CreationDate="2015-11-03T23:07:08.230" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no direct relationship between the two categories of things you have mentioned. You could very easily write an end-to-end test while doing TDD for example. Typically TDD is in the unit level, ATDD and BDD are in the integration layer, and BDD alone lives in the E2E layer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this is not a hard and fast rule. As pointed out in other responses, TDD, ATDD, and BDD are methods of creating tests, whereas the triangle you presented is a representation of the areas of code under test. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastActivityDate="2015-11-03T23:07:08.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16669" CreationDate="2015-11-04T06:25:41.723" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thanks for putting up the question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User Story gives the dev team the overall pictures. They can further break down the user story to smaller task to make it more digestible for other dev members to consume. There may be technical stories like for example : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Indexing database to retrieve search results&quot; which may be a story that is decomposed from the user story that the dev team needs to do but is not shown in the acceptance criteria. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The acceptance criteria ( i think this refers to Definition of done) more or less define the test cases that need to pass for the story to be completed. These test cases for my team in specific are what we use to define our test cases. If any of these test cases fail then we say that the task is not done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21048" LastActivityDate="2015-11-04T06:25:41.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16675" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-04T11:24:39.467" Score="0" ViewCount="486" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm pursuing my PMP certification, and while I have many years of PM experience, I have only just started my 35 contact hours of training for the PMP. At the beginning of that course, the instructor mentioned that if I join PMI that PMP practice exams are available as part of my membership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It occurred to me that I could take a PMP practice exam as a &quot;pre-assessment,&quot; which would help me to know what areas I need the most study. However, I'm not sure if there are disadvantages to this approach, e.g., that PMI only provides a single practice exam, one I would like to &quot;save&quot; for when I'm done studying so I can judge my ability to proceed to the real exam (if I had already taken it, I couldn't re-take and make use of the results, since I'd have seen the answers on my prior exam attempt).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21063" LastActivityDate="2016-08-06T11:48:43.420" Title="What are the pros &amp; cons of taking a PMP practice exam as a &quot;pre-assessment?&quot;" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16675" CreationDate="2015-11-04T21:20:11.210" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are lots of places that offer free PMP practice questions (eg &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oliverlehmann.com/sample-questions-pmp-self-tests.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.oliverlehmann.com/sample-questions-pmp-self-tests.html&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practise exams are only really useful if you feel you're ready to sit the real exam - they'll show you whether you're ready or not. Get closer to the time when you can take the exam before using a paid practice exam. In the meantime, study and save your money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMI are notoriously good at selling the benefits of giving them money. Remember, that's what they're doing...selling something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20840" LastActivityDate="2015-11-04T21:20:11.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16677" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16688" CreationDate="2015-11-04T22:04:21.207" Score="1" ViewCount="395" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are best practices/strategies for dealing with a team member that repeatedly ignores emails/phone calls and will not commit to new estimated completion dates on specific tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20845" LastEditorUserId="20845" LastEditDate="2015-11-05T16:59:37.587" LastActivityDate="2015-11-05T16:59:37.587" Title="How to handle being ignored by team member/resource" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;communication-management&gt;&lt;resources&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16677" CreationDate="2015-11-05T07:02:51.167" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You will need to talk to their line manager. They are not doing a good job and it's not the project managers job to make sure the people are capable of basic tasks like reading and acknowledging email. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2015-11-05T07:02:51.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15789" CreationDate="2015-11-05T07:13:21.830" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are few costs with any software project. It comes down to resources. What resources are required for this project to be completed? Different types of resources can include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talent (Time)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hosting Costs (These can be variable. You'll need a technical person to help you predict.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Support Tools - Private repositories, api services, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A ballpark estimate should consider these different potential costs. You should also consider which resources already exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good team should make good estimates as to time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an important formula to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Total Cost = (time * wages) + variable costs + fixed costs&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully this helps. Let me know if you have questions so I can expand on the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21071" LastActivityDate="2015-11-05T07:13:21.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16677" CreationDate="2015-11-05T07:41:00.037" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on your role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can fire them, that's probably a fair option for someone who isn't performing their duties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A candid 1-on-1 can often solve problems like this, if handled correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21071" LastActivityDate="2015-11-05T07:41:00.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16681" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-05T08:55:18.847" Score="0" ViewCount="160" Body="&lt;p&gt;Forgive me if this doesn't belong here, but I thought this more appropriate for PM than for Programmers or SO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use risk assessments where I work as part of the software development life-cycle. A matrix of impact (sometimes referred to as severity) versus likelihood is used to establish absolute risk. One of the levels of impact (or severity) is &quot;None&quot; which I take to mean 'if this happened there would be absolutely no impact'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have I missed something? I've asked colleagues but no one seems to be able to come up with a meaningful answer. What is the point of defining a &lt;strong&gt;risk&lt;/strong&gt; which has no impact? Surely that is not a &quot;risk&quot; that is just 'something which can happen' and has no business on a risk assessment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21073" LastActivityDate="2015-11-05T13:19:54.847" Title="What is the point of a risk with no impact?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;risk&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15766" CreationDate="2015-11-05T10:47:23.610" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;@JimMSDN -- This is an old thread but I would like to add for the future readers: it works differently in formulas. So in MS Project 2010 and later, the Finish field can be blank. And the Baseline Finish can be blank as well. There is a new field Baseline Estimated Finish. But you must first decide whether you want formula to work for both manually scheduled and automatically scheduled tasks. Please see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.msptips.com/Formulas/_Working%20with%20Manually%20Scheduled%20Tasks.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Working with Manually Scheduled Tasks&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.msptips.com/Formulas/_Errors%20in%20Formulas.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Errors in Formulas&lt;/a&gt;. Regards -- Ismet&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13318" LastEditorUserId="13318" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T00:49:19.173" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T00:49:19.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16681" CreationDate="2015-11-05T12:40:43.147" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion you're right. If a future event has no influence on project (or, if it has 0 probability of happening), it should not be considered as risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, having &quot;None&quot; in your risk log can show exactly this - the item was evaluated, its impact is considered negligible, so you should not care about it any more. It can be beneficial to keep them registered to show that it was already considered - so it will not surface later as a new risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16711" LastActivityDate="2015-11-05T12:40:43.147" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16684" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16696" CreationDate="2015-11-05T12:43:41.700" Score="0" ViewCount="62" Body="&lt;p&gt;Which frameworks can be used with PMBoK? Which frameworks are related with PMBoK?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21074" LastActivityDate="2015-11-05T22:47:10.593" Title="Which frameworks can be used with PMBoK?" Tags="&lt;pmbok&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16681" CreationDate="2015-11-05T12:58:02.813" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One place where a zero impact/probability risk can be useful to document is when you are talking about the impact/probability &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; you have implemented your risk response plan. At my workplace it is common practice to document impact/probability of risks with and without the response plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, assume you have a risk of moderate probability but your team finds a clever way to avoid that risk altogether. That reduces probability to zero. But you could still keep that risk on your register in case an issue comes up that prevents you from continuing to avoid that risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2015-11-05T12:58:02.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16681" CreationDate="2015-11-05T13:19:54.847" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are using a 5x5 matrix, which is a two dimensional view of risks, then &quot;none&quot; should not be an option.  If you are assessing risks this way, then a zero impact is not a threat.  It's nothing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are using more quantitative techniques, where you may capture a probabilistic distribution of possible results, a zero impact--or a negligible impact--could be captured.  For example, if you are assessing the risk of a schedule variance, you may establish a probabilistic triangular distribution ranging from a favorable variance of, say, three weeks, to an unfavorable variance of 10 weeks.  Within this range, no impact, i.e., deliver on time, is a possibility.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-11-05T13:19:54.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16677" CreationDate="2015-11-05T13:23:13.573" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remove and replace.  On a machine, if a cog is not doing its job, you would remove it and replace with a new one.  A human resource is no different.  This is NOT to suggest we treat people like cogs, but when you are looking at a performance capability, all resources that enable that capability--including humans--must perform to expectations.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-11-05T13:23:13.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16677" CreationDate="2015-11-05T13:49:34.780" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I encounter this type of resistance I first email them (cc their supervisor) and ask to set up a face to face meeting. If this is not feasible, I change the email to address both employee and supervisor and schedule a phone conversation so the three of us can work out the issue(s) preventing completion of the tasks. It goes without saying that in all thing of this nature keeping emotion out of it is critical. You can feel frustrated, but do not display this frustration to employee or supervisor. Stay professional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3090" LastActivityDate="2015-11-05T13:49:34.780" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16486" CreationDate="2015-11-05T14:41:57.373" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't believe the bar changed it has merely shifted to the right and is showing more of the original bar.  If you compare the &quot;unexpectedly changed&quot; bar to the bar above it - I believe you'll see they are the same.  When you shifted the schedule, it is no longer partially hidden by the baseline bar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-11-05T14:41:57.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16690" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-05T17:01:07.157" Score="2" ViewCount="1910" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to get my head around &quot;Story points&quot; using the Scrum methodology. As a starting point, I have been following the following article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrummethodology.com/scrum-effort-estimation-and-story-points/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://scrummethodology.com/scrum-effort-estimation-and-story-points/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With my team we are using the t-shirt sizes (S, M, L, and too big) approach. Using this approach, how do we quantify the time for each user story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is doing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;S = 1/2 a day (maximum)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;M = a day (maximum)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;L = 2 days (maximum)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a good approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-10-21T22:34:46.663" LastActivityDate="2019-10-21T22:34:46.663" Title="How do you measure time units in sprint velocity?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;velocity&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16634" CreationDate="2015-11-05T17:24:44.443" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are there any internal controls that can be adopted to help deal with this behaviour?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Repeat after me: &lt;strong&gt;There is no silver bullet.&lt;/strong&gt; However, most of the problems you're describing are actually a failure of corporate governance rather than a project management issue. Your senior management &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; become more involved in assessing and managing project risk, or no amount of self-administered project controls will solve the real underlying problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No amount of project controls or arbitrary incentives can solve the problem of a disengaged management team, or the lack of a corporate governance structure. These are issues the company's &lt;em&gt;management team&lt;/em&gt;, not the project managers or Project Management Office (PMO), must take on board as part of their executive strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Senior Management &lt;em&gt;Always&lt;/em&gt; Owns the Program&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real problem here isn't the incentives or controls. The failure is in the lack of adequate corporate governance for the project. Specifically, you are delegating &lt;em&gt;ownership&lt;/em&gt; of the schedule and risk assessment to the project managers, which is incorrect on its face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Management Owns the Schedule&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The role of a project manager is to function as a subject-matter expert in designing a schedule and implementing schedule controls, but it is the responsibility of &lt;em&gt;senior management&lt;/em&gt; to approve the schedule, approve the controls, and set management targets for schedule. In other words, while the project manager generally builds the schedule, senior management must vet the plan for suitability for the business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Management Owns Risk Assessment/Mitigation&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, when the plan deviates from the schedule, the project manager's job is to raise the visibility of the risks to senior management and to identify any mitigating controls or activities. However, it is once again &lt;em&gt;senior management's responsibility&lt;/em&gt; to evaluate the risks to the project and to make strategic decisions about whether to modify the project plan to mitigate the risk, or whether to simply accept the risk and move forward with the existing plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, the project manager is doing his or her job simply by logging the issue and communicating about it. Deciding whether or not to control the risk is a &lt;em&gt;management&lt;/em&gt; decision, and this requires active participation by the organization's governance process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Governance&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many governance frameworks. Depending on the nature of your projects and your organization's market segment, you may want to look at some of the following as a starting point:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITIL&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ITIL&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBIT&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;COBIT&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Information_Services_Library&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BiSL&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are certainly many other governance frameworks. The one you choose is less important than the fact that you have one, as a failure to govern projects or service delivery properly is generally a recipe for disaster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-11-05T17:24:44.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16690" CreationDate="2015-11-05T17:48:08.097" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Story Points Are Never Time Estimates&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is doing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;S = 1/2 a day (maximum)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;M = a day (maximum)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;L = 2 days (maximum)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a good approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Absolutely not. Story points measure &lt;em&gt;complexity&lt;/em&gt; and the &lt;em&gt;level of effort&lt;/em&gt; required to complete a feature, including the team's Definition of Done. It is not, and should never be, directly mapped to units of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Story Points Measure Complexity/Effort; &lt;em&gt;Tasks&lt;/em&gt; Measure Time&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the second half of Sprint Planning, user stories from the Product Backlog &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be decomposed into tasks for the Sprint Backlog. The common rule of thumb is that Sprint Backlog tasks should be approximately 0.5 - 2.0 days in length so that it is easy to determine if a task is &quot;done&quot; or &quot;not done&quot; during the daily standups, but the user story itself is never mapped onto a unit of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity is a metric for determining capacity for the current sprint. So, while it is reasonable to ask whether a given story can fit within the time box of a single sprint, this is really a &lt;em&gt;capacity&lt;/em&gt; question rather than a time conversion. Note that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scruminc.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Hyper-Productive-Metircs.pdf&quot;&gt;some experts suggest&lt;/a&gt; that a single story should never exceed 50% of the available capacity for a time box, but the Scrum framework itself allows a single story to take up to 100% of planned capacity. Your mileage may vary in this regard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-11-05T17:48:08.097" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16634" CreationDate="2015-11-05T18:18:14.343" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the best solutions is to build in incentives and penalties tied to the schedule.  You can have a T&amp;amp;M, Cost plus, or fixed price and still have a part of their fee at risk.  If they finish early, provide a bonus.  If late, some type of penalty.  If you are working at a daily fixed rate, you are providing an incentive for the work to continue.  Whether they are doing this maliciously or not, you can bet the work will continue.  Simply remove the incentive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-11-05T18:18:14.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16634" CreationDate="2015-11-05T22:27:24.483" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you looked into agile contracts in general as a model for this? There's a decent amount of info out there, but the basic idea is that an initial test of delivery is done before a full commitment is made (the same way a Scrum Master might gather a few sprints' initial velocity data before trying to chunk out a backlog into more sprints), and once committed to, overages that result in financial risk are shared between parties (reduction in compensation in this case). There are even variants with a sliding scale that shift the risk over time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, one very important thing to note in everyone's advice is that &quot;you get what you measure&quot; - hopefully you are already focusing on quality, compliance, good architecture/TDD etc. and not just time vs. scope. Because once there is direct pressure via time, people are prone to optimize around it at the expense of those other areas. :(&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2015-11-05T22:27:24.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16690" CreationDate="2015-11-05T22:37:15.517" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As CodeGnome says, you don't want to quantify time, you want to abstract the effort and then use it as &quot;velocity&quot; - measure several sprints' points completed, then use it for planning purposes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Relative sizing&lt;/strong&gt; among the values is also important, such that something with a point value of 3 is about 3x the size of a 1, or 1/3 the size of a 9. Without relative sizing, your iteration velocity will vary widely depending on whether you do a lot of small stuff or only a few big things. Try going through the backlog and looking for stories that feel like they are &quot;in the middle&quot; size-wise, or of average size, and use that as your middle value (such as 5 on a scale of 1 to 13). Then simply bucket the other stories as bigger or smaller, and in a final pass, how &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; bigger or smaller. After a few estimation sessions it becomes much easier due to familiarity and an ever-growing list of completed and sized stories that you can use as reference (&quot;triangulation&quot; if you will). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2015-11-05T22:37:15.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16684" CreationDate="2015-11-05T22:47:10.593" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMBoK &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; the framework - it's akin (but different) to PRINCE2 or Agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMBoK is, obviously, much more Project Manager focused than the other frameworks. You can use pieces of the PMBoK framework with pieces of the PRINCE2 framework and/or pieces of the Agile frameworks. You don't have to be &quot;all in&quot; for any of them. Most PMs will subscribe to one core framework but use pieces from many more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20840" LastActivityDate="2015-11-05T22:47:10.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16697" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16701" CreationDate="2015-11-06T10:21:55.357" Score="1" ViewCount="239" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hi I work for a small digital agency where we do a lot of ux work and therefore a lot of planning and research. The culture and approach to development projects we have moved to in recent years makes use of a lot of agile 'aspects' albeit it's not perfect. Our approach is rooted in being flexible and adaptive to changing project scopes. But as far as scoping and costing for projects there is something I cant get my head around. Typically projects are quoted for upfront on a fixed price basis, based on what we estimate it will involve but in my experience the true scope and requirements/features of a project don't truly come to light until after we do the user research and personas and establish goals, which inform the scope of the project, the type of user stories which will added to the backlog and therefore the cost. But obviously there is a lot of work involved up to this point which needs to be paid for also. With this in mind, is there a better way to quote for a project, eg what order should all of this be done in to make it more accurate? Does it ultimately still have to come down to estimating something upfront that you can't truly know until later on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind, during a project there are the inevitable changes to scope as it develops, some minor and some that grow legs. With an agile approach, using sprints and a backlog of stories etc, it makes it easier to identify where scope changes are happening but I am curious how others deal with this in terms of identifying things that are going to cost more and letting the client know the cost will be higher. For example is there an alternative to upfront fixed costing, like having an open ended costing approach? (one that clients will actually go for). After all this is the point of agile, that the scope can grow but we can adapt, both from a development point of view but also so we are not doing a lot of free work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21081" LastActivityDate="2015-11-06T14:17:56.040" Title="How do you cost for an agile ux project?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;user-experience-design&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16634" CreationDate="2015-11-06T11:03:35.507" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look into the model of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.teamed.io/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;teamed.io&lt;/a&gt;, Those are one of the best models I have come across in managing (remote) contractors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The site gives a lot of materials on their philosophy and methodology, which I think would be a nice recommendation for this scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer : This may not be a direct answer, but a way to reach it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20916" LastActivityDate="2015-11-06T11:03:35.507" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16699" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-06T12:06:07.563" Score="3" ViewCount="2225" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd love to hear from more experienced agilists the considerations to use on or another method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you live in a country (like mine) with so many holidays, do you set the sprint size based on continued calendar days (i.e: always start on Thursdays of each week for sprints with week duration) or do you consider available workdays? (in this example, if you have a holiday on Friday, the Sprint will finish on next Thursday and the following sprint will start on Friday shifting weekday setup)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you tried booth? Why? Why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21082" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T21:57:48.897" Title="Do you use fixed sprint length based on continued calendar days or workdays?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16697" CreationDate="2015-11-06T14:17:56.040" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your approach will depend in large part on the most important factor in the project: time/budget or scope. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a hard deadline or set budget for the project? Then you can use a fixed cost approach, but the scope of the project will be limited by the deadline or budget. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or is it more important that a set of &quot;must have&quot; features be implemented? Then an hourly or weekly cost may be better. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, you will need a degree of flexibility. In the case of a time/budget-limited project, you will need to determine which features are &quot;must have&quot; and which ones are only &quot;nice to have.&quot; With a scope-focused project, it's good to set aside a fixed overage budget - e.g. 10% - for unexpected delays or changes to the scope. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17419" LastActivityDate="2015-11-06T14:17:56.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16702" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16703" CreationDate="2015-11-06T14:26:32.440" Score="3" ViewCount="189" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're about to shift to a Kanban process, but (as one would expect) there is way too much WIP already underway in the organization.  If our day one Kanban board reflects the current state, it could take weeks for us to work all the WIP down to the appropriate limits, and I'm concerned that will undermine the impact on the team of the new process (because it will feel just like the current process).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We could sift through the WIP and pull a bunch of it back to the backlog.  That feels like the right approach, but much of it is in QA, which will require it to skip over development when it comes back onto the board.  In addition to being confusing, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I thought about a blended approach, where I'd create a (temporary) mid-process backlog before QA and pull the excess QA WIP there (with excess development WIP going back to the main backlog).  Doesn't completely solve the problem, but would keep the bulk of the new process looking clean.  Of course, this should also be accompanied by a cease in new development work, as it would just be adding to this mid-process backlog.  I suppose no new development should be started until that backlog is cleared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there other best practices and/or just better ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21086" LastActivityDate="2015-11-06T21:53:27.120" Title="What do I do with the excess WIP when starting a conversion to Kanban?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16702" CreationDate="2015-11-06T16:59:03.177" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that it is good that you have a big pile of work in QA. What you are seeing now is a bottleneck which was found by the Kanban method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To have a long term effect you need to change your process that enables shorter cycle times QA. &lt;strong&gt;The point is to change how you work, let the method show how the change look like&lt;/strong&gt;, and not the other way around: changing the board and hope that the change will last.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a start you can see if you have enough people in QA, or if anybody can help out the QA, and see what you as an organisation can do to improve QA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stopping the development may help if developers can do quality work in QA. Otherwise, there is not much sense to stop it. You delivered software before, what you have now is an indication of a problem. Stopping the work will solve the problem temporarily, but when you start again, the pile will show up again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum up: it is great that you have started to use Kanban. To have ha long term effect keep using as it is, but change the process - the way you work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-11-06T16:59:03.177" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16699" CreationDate="2015-11-06T18:50:32.507" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would try and pick the sprint start/end day to be the ones least likely to be affected by holidays. The teams I work with have tended to start on a Thursday and finish a sprint on a Wednesday. That avoids Monday/Friday which are the days most often hit by holidays (and team members working from home).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, I would stick with a calendar-based sprint. The reason for this is it allows the team to drop in to a natural cadence. It also helps when booking regular meetings with the Product Owner and stakeholders. For example, we tell the stakeholders to keep Wednesday afternoon free every fortnight for the showcase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At every sprint planning meeting the first question I ask is what holidays are planned. This discussion includes both public and personal holidays. We almost always have some holiday to take in to account and we reflect this in the sprint capacity we plan for. For example, if the team has a velocity of 30 story points but there is a public holiday in the sprint we might only bring 27 story points in to the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="5003" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T21:57:48.897" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T21:57:48.897" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16702" CreationDate="2015-11-06T20:28:25.067" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Dev Done or Ready for QA mid-process buffer column sounds like the right thing to do.  Depending on the size of your QA team, even now, right in the middle of your move to Kanban, it might be helpful to do this so the Dev/ QA team or the PO might prioritize which of the items should be QA'ed first and completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @Zsolt suggests, the key thing is to have a discussion to ensure that you have policies and WIP limits in place, not necessarily from day 1, that even out the WIP in the near future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with your Kanban implementation!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2015-11-06T20:28:25.067" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16702" CreationDate="2015-11-06T21:44:36.623" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you transition to Kanban, try and set the WIP limits on the lower end of what the team normally does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If QA has 36 items in progress, but you observe that generally they have between 25 and 40 items in progress, start the WIP for that column off around 30.  Work with them to get from 36 to 30, not 36 to 5.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Setting WIPs that are unrealistically low are one of the best ways to kill a transition to a Kanban workflow.  People will perceive the process as painful and unrealistic.  Ask the team what they think a reasonable starting WIP is after they understand how it is a tool that can help them stay focused and get real work done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its OK if the team is over their WIP at the start.  The first goal is to make all work transparent and have conversations of WHY the team is over their WIP in any specific column.  WIP is a tool to expose bottlenecks and focus people on the process/workflow of the entire team, not just their individual work product.  Measuring cycle time, its variance, change and similar throughput metrics are the quantitative ways to drive this conversation forward and numerically validate that things are changing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastEditorUserId="13568" LastEditDate="2015-11-06T21:53:27.120" LastActivityDate="2015-11-06T21:53:27.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16699" CreationDate="2015-11-06T23:26:58.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always try and establish a fixed cadence where the iteration starts and ends on the same days of the week (tuesday/wednesday or my favorites).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually a mid week end date is preferable over a monday or friday.  People are generally more focused mid week and it also can combat the &quot;i'll work over the weekend (and potentially clock overtime) excuse related to not getting work done.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are holidays that interfere with the midweek day you know you can either move backwards or forwards by a day or 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team should get proficient at adjusting their iteration commitments/forecast during planning based on variations in schedule.  Is the ideal sprint duration 10 days, but this time its only 7 days due to holidays; the team should account for that in their iteration planning by shaving off a few story points or scheduling in work that is smaller in size and can still be completed by the end of the iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-11-06T23:26:58.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16708" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16740" CreationDate="2015-11-07T08:28:14.023" Score="5" ViewCount="187" Body="&lt;p&gt;With a certain project, I reconcile on a weekly basis to determine its performance, i.e. if estimates are being adhered to or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Issue:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; Every week, the team faces a new issue that wasn't accounted for (risk planning) and the issue obviously hits the project's bottom line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Example:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; Assume a project of 100 hours that needs to be completed in 4 weeks (so, for simplicity's sake, 25 hours per week).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Challenge:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; As outlined below:-&#xA;During week 1, 25 hours spent, but issue XYZ has surfaced and cost 10 hours.&#xA;During week 2, 25 hours spent, but issue ABC has surfaced and cost 12 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So current status at 2 weeks is 50 hours, but 22 hours additional due to issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm being told that it's great that these issues are being logged in detail, but it doesn't instill any confidence in my PM ability if new issues are going to surface every week that affect the budget. So the issue is that the mitigation strategy is more reactive than proactive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Question:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; Given that there are 2 more weeks, what is the best way to handle new issues that may (or will) pop up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8276" LastActivityDate="2016-02-28T10:28:54.670" Title="Project constantly running into problems, so how does a PM manage the consistent budget impacts?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;communication-management&gt;&lt;budget&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16708" CreationDate="2015-11-07T18:07:02.613" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two key expectations from a PM are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assess, track and report Risk&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manage Stakeholder's expectations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are doing all the risk management, and it seems the second part could be improved. So, you could take some actions, such as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider and &lt;strong&gt;cost, on your original plan, the risk of going 50% beyond schedule&lt;/strong&gt;. With this, you'll be agreeing upfront the expected deadline &lt;em&gt;period&lt;/em&gt; - not a concrete date, but a date range you're likely to complete your project at. If Stakeholders have a hard time accepting it, you can bring up your historical data (which is stored, as you mentioned) and use it to justify your approach&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Highlight that the &lt;strong&gt;role of PM is to communicate risks and issues and react to them&lt;/strong&gt;. After all, PMs (still) cannot use a crystal ball to predict to the cent the total costs of any project. The uncertainty on your costs is highly likely to be bound to the uncertainty on requirements you might be receiving.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As part of the thorough analysis you do on the found defects, do one &lt;strong&gt;assessment on the key-factors that are causing such issues&lt;/strong&gt;, in order to address them before the project even start. Are most of these issues due to unclear requirements? Infrastructure? Lack of knowledge or resources? Having this information, you have evidences to discuss with stakeholders the need to reduce the risk you'll be reporting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2015-11-07T18:07:02.613" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16699" CreationDate="2015-11-07T18:32:58.223" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your organization or team, what would be simpler and yet consistent? The answer for this question will be your answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You must keep some rules in mind, though:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have only two variables here: &lt;strong&gt;start/end dates&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;capacity&lt;/strong&gt;. Keeping one fixed will vary the other. People likes stability, so keeping something fixed (like &quot;every iteration starting on Tuesday, and in case of Holiday, the next business day&quot;) gives more comfort to people (after all, capacity is what dictates the amount of work to be delivered at each iteration, which is expected to vary either way).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You must always &lt;strong&gt;consider the actual capacity&lt;/strong&gt; you have for each iteration. As capacity, I mean the amount of actual man/days you'll have for each iteration. Your planning must be based on the man/days you have. For some, here's where Story Points comes to play. &lt;strong&gt;Tip:&lt;/strong&gt; Have your team Holiday's calendar at hand during your iteration planning session. I do it everytime.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have your rationale&lt;/strong&gt; to set your rules (whichever they are) &lt;strong&gt;in a place anyone could check&lt;/strong&gt;. It helps new joiners to get up to speed on how you work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Keep it simple&lt;/strong&gt;. In the long run, there isn't much of a benefit of having a start date on Monday in comparison to a Wednesday. At least, I haven't seen any formal study stating so (and if there's one, please let us know!). I believe that's part of the reason you raised your question (to have some sort of feedback stating what's the best days to start / end an iteration) but I don't believe you'll have a canonical answer for this. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2015-11-07T18:32:58.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16711" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16714" CreationDate="2015-11-07T22:13:12.023" Score="6" ViewCount="604" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scenario:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Developer estimates between 70 to 100 hours for a task. Due to the urgency of the task and the developer's unavailability, a far less experienced developer is assigned to the project. The new developer takes 200 hours to complete the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;From a risk and stakeholder management perspective, what should have the PM done to mitigate and communicate the issue to senior management when realizing the initial estimate was going to get blown out of the water?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Given that the original developer's estimate was more or less on track, should the excess 100 hours be applied to the project? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A. Or should those 100 hours be eaten up by the management team (company &quot;investment&quot;), which would mean the project's budget sheet would 100 hours only and on track? Is this misleading and not telling the true story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B. Or should the full 200 hours be reflected on the project's budget sheet and let the issue logs tell the story? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have seen in smaller agencies where if a developer goes over his initial estimate, he &quot;pays&quot; for it. This would happen if the issue is due to the developer's fault (example: misunderstood a portion of the requirements and not seeking clarification). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such a scenario, the developer is told &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to clock his time to the project and should spend the additional time needed to get the task done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar to 2A, is this not misleading? Rather, shouldn't it be documented in the Issue Log and Lessons Learned to prevent a future repeat of the error?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8276" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-11-16T17:18:02.697" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T17:18:02.697" Title="Who pays when actuals exceed pessimistic estimates?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;&lt;budget&gt;&lt;responsibility&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16061" CreationDate="2015-11-08T15:27:11.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think techniques, not tools. Tool recommendations are always off-topic on PMSE. However, there are several &lt;em&gt;techniques&lt;/em&gt; that may be of value from a project management perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, you have two main approaches:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Decomposition.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A traceability matrix or dependency graph can be useful in decomposing tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Verticality.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When features are too tightly intertwined to decompose into linear dependencies, then you must treat them as vertical slices of work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Potential Techniques&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some potential techniques that may provide project or scheduling breakdowns of sufficient granularity:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requirements_traceability&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;traceability matrix&lt;/a&gt;, which is useful for tying complex requirements together.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Develop a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.methodsandtools.com/archive/mikado.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mikado diagram&lt;/a&gt;, which is essentially a directed acyclic graph of dependencies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Follow a &quot;vertically-sliced feature&quot; approach, in which a full-stack feature is described in terms of functionality but the implementation is left to the discretion of the cross-functional team that is building it. (NB: This is the approach used by most agile development teams.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are certainly other approaches as well, but the techniques still ultimately fall into either the decomposition or verticality categories. If you are unable to make headway in either category, then it might be useful to take a step back and rethink &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; your project is so tightly coupled. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overly-coupled requirements are a common project problem, but the root cause is often a design or planning failure rather than an unsolvable technical problem. However, your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-11-08T15:27:11.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16711" CreationDate="2015-11-08T17:09:12.217" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Management Owns Cost-Overruns&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Developer estimates between 70 to 100 hours for a task. Due to the urgency of the task and the developer's unavailability, a far less experienced developer is assigned to the project. The new developer takes 200 hours to complete the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the agency's responsibility 100% of the time. Whether the estimate was wrong, the agency substituted task performers (thereby invalidating the original estimate), or even if the estimate was on target but deadlines were missed due to unforeseen complications, the &lt;em&gt;responsibility&lt;/em&gt; for deliverables is always, without fail, the responsibility of the agency's management team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Who Covers Cost Overruns&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, who covers the &lt;em&gt;cost&lt;/em&gt; of the overrun is a contractual issue. If the agency contracted with the client for fixed-bid deliverables, then the agency covers the cost. If the agency contracted with the client on a time and materials basis, then the client pays the additional costs. More complicated contracts have more complicated answers, but it still boils down to contract-based cost-shifting or cost-sharing in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Trying to Cost-Shift to Employees&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the United States, you can't legally require an hourly employee to work for free. The rules are more complicated for exempt employees, but expecting employees of any type to eat the costs on behalf of a &lt;em&gt;management&lt;/em&gt; decision is unreasonable and unlikely to result in long-term success for the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Future Mitigations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In future, always ensure that estimates are provided by the actual task performers assigned to the work. It doesn't matter how easy or hard Developer X thinks a job will be; what matters is how much time Developer Y (who is actually doing the work) needs to complete it properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, anytime you have a change in your resources, assumptions, or scheduling baseline, you should immediately raise the issue to senior management. At a minimum, the schedule should be re-estimated based on new information and current resource allocations, and management may choose to take other actions as well. These actions might include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adding resources to the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adjusting project scope.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Renegotiating the contract with the customer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accepting the project risk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Transferring the project risk (e.g. buying a performance bond or outsourcing the project).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Potential solutions are limited only by the capabilities and the imagination of the leadership team. However, strategic decisions can't be made without accurate information, and ensuring that accurate information about the state of the project (including both planned and unexpected changes) is shared with senior management is an essential function of a good project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-11-08T17:09:12.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16715" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-08T18:35:29.110" Score="11" ViewCount="2024" Body="&lt;p&gt;The team has&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ten developers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;one development manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;one tech lead&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;one project manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;over eight projects going on at once&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;everything is top priority&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every day there is a hour long call called scrum that goes over every single item in the sprint and provide updates. Even though there is a team, the projects discussed are not related to each other, but their own unique application, they do interact with each other but at a very very small scale. Management requires for the whole team to stay and listen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, there is another hour long call three times a week, where other projects are discussed, providing updates on each item. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you advise appropriate alternatives to make sure sprint items do not fall to the wayside?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even with these long meetings, there is a real lack of transparency to the overall long-term vision of the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, how would you advise making sure the team understands the different projects going on that they are mandated to support?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What calls would you make? What decisions would you take?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21062" LastEditorUserId="21062" LastEditDate="2015-11-08T21:11:18.127" LastActivityDate="2018-03-08T13:19:09.090" Title="1 Hour to 2.5 Long Scrums Every Day - Is this Crazy?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16715" CreationDate="2015-11-08T21:24:49.053" Score="16" Body="&lt;h2&gt;None of what you described is Scrum&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Scrum doesn't have the roles you described. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You don't seem to have the two essential roles for Scrum - the Product Owner and the Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum everything cannot be top priority. The Product Owner creates an ordered list. The Development Team works on them in that order.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum there are no status meetings. The Daily Scrum is a 15-minute time-boxed event for the Development Team to coordinate their work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not clear why you tagged it Scrum. Please refer to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot;&gt;the Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What calls would you make? What decisions would you take?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you wish to practice Scrum, you can start by sending a few people for Scrum training. Your team is too large to be a single Scrum team. You can split it into two Scrum teams. You can designate the Scrum Master and the Product Owner for the teams. The same Scrum Master and/or Product Owner can be shared by the teams, if needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep the teams relatively stable. You can split the projects between the teams. However, you will get better productivity and team morale if each team focuses on one project per sprint. You can make an exception if there are critical production bugs on other projects that cannot wait.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's not Scrum... how would you best improve this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would take two immediate steps to improve this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Split the team into two and assign half the projects to each team&lt;/strong&gt;: Regardless of other factors, communication is a problem in teams that are too big. At a minimum you will save the need for everyone to stay and listen to all project meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Find a way to prioritize projects&lt;/strong&gt;: If management says &quot;everything is top priority&quot; they are in effect saying nothing is priority. When you designate one of the projects &quot;top priority&quot; what you are saying is &quot;assign resources to this project first and if any resources are left assign them to other projects&quot;. If &quot;everything is top priority&quot; then all projects will be starved of resources. In reality, more resources will be wasted in context switching. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T18:25:14.713" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T18:25:14.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16715" CreationDate="2015-11-08T22:08:12.633" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you are describing is a long way away from being Scrum. However, the Scrum framework does offer you some guidance that could help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum we limit team sizes to a maximum of 9. This is done because there is a lot of research that shows communication in a team larger than 9 becomes too much of an overhead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum also limits the daily Scrum stand-ups to a maximum of 15 minutes. The reason the team stands up for the meeting is that it encourages focused and effective conversation. It is worth noting that the daily Scrum is about synchronization within the team and is not about reporting progress. When you think about it having the whole team together in a meeting costs a lot of lost working time. So it is important that the daily Scrum is efficient and covers topics that effect the whole team. When a topic is raised that does not concern everyone it should be taken outside of the daily Scrum and discussed by only those that it effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum also emphasises the importance of prioritisation. Research has shown that the more tasks being done by an individual in parallel, the less efficient they are. Good prioritisation will allow team members to work in a focused and efficient way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How would you advise appropriate alternatives to make sure sprint items do not fall to the wayside?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is where the Product Owner role comes in. The development team works on the top priority tasks and only needs to focus on these items. While they are doing this the Product Owner looks at the big picture and works with the team to continually refine the backlog of work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-11-08T22:08:12.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16715" CreationDate="2015-11-08T23:22:25.570" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have pointed out, this is not Scrum in any way shape or form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to rectify it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The easiest way I've found to cut down on unnecessary meetings such as these is to quantify their cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take the average daily cost of the team (be conservative, it'll still work out expensive). Work out their hourly rate, multiply that by the hours per week these meetings take, multiply that by the amount of people in the meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use the resulting BIG NUMBER to take back and say that these meetings are costing $X per week, $XX per month, $XXX per year in direct cost, not to mention the cost in lost productivity of doing other things. Use that as justification for cutting down the length, frequency and attendance size of the meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Quantifying the actual cost (not even including lost productivity) of regular meetings usually scares people into finding a better way.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20840" LastActivityDate="2015-11-08T23:22:25.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16653" CreationDate="2015-11-09T07:18:32.267" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you lack transparency and trust with the customer. If each Story represents value for the customer then the customer should approve, view, and order those things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, you can achieve this in TFS. If you create the following Area Paths:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Internal&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--Team 1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--Team 2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-External&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can secure work items within Internal to be internal folks only. Then create an &quot;external&quot; Team for your customers that views the work in the External area path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Turn off iterations for that team, and move all of the Features to the External Area Path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now teams see all, and can see parent features of their PBI, but customers can't see child PBI of their features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This gets complicated if you want, as you should, customers to interact with Test Cases as well. I would recommend that you address the trust issues that have lead to this requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T07:18:32.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16715" CreationDate="2015-11-09T08:13:07.830" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you are describing meetings and not scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum should be at the start of the day, full team present and standing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under 10 minutes with a recap of things completed/updates, and a commit for the current days tasks; done by each person on the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think maybe planning meetings and story review meetings are your 1 hour meetings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17600" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T08:13:07.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16715" CreationDate="2015-11-09T12:25:45.020" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the Scrum vs. non Scrum dilemma it's a second-stage problem, you should tackle the most important things first, which IMHO are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Everything is top priority, which also means that nothing is, which also means that you don't have any priority (or more likely your priorities are the result of antagonist factors/interests, which makes things difficult to manage). That's the first thing you should address, if you don't have an idea on where you should invest it will be very hard to find out also &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You got 8 projects for 10 people + 3 managers. I don't know how you ended up in such a configuration, but maybe you (as a company I mean) can explore other ways of managing your development system. I could be wrong here but maybe 1h * 5d * 13people = 65 hours/week invested in coordination for such a small team are a bit too much...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to fix these things you need to have a shared understanding of what are the problems you're facing (i.e. the manager feels like he/she needs to have a complete daily status because otherwise he/she will not have a clear idea of what's going on... if that's the case you have to work on finding a solution to this problem) and how this affect each-other's work, and people to be engaged in fixing this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16362" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T12:25:45.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16711" CreationDate="2015-11-09T14:12:37.127" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a difference between an estimate and planning value.  An estimate is a probabilistic range and should include variables such as less qualified resources doing the work plus about 1,000 other aleatory and epistemic variables.  Therefore, the proper estimate should have been 70 to 200+ hours.  In this range, you need to chose the planning value, say 120 hours, against which you are going to measure your performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actual hours should always be tracked as accurately as possible because this feeds future estimates.  If you cause your workers to stop recording hours so that it appears everything is on track, you lose valuable information.  Plus your reporting is simply not honest and transparent.  In the US in the federal space, it is illegal to do anything else but track work hours accurately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many things a PM could do to mitigate variances but every mitigation action you deploy has its own secondary set of risks and penalties.  You add resources to recover the schedule, you will pay for it in costs.  If you try to remove resources to recover costs you will pay for it in your schedule and / or quality.  No mitigation action comes free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who pays for it depends on how the work is contracted.  In a seller-buyer relationship, if the contract is firm fixed price, the seller of services will pay for the overrun.  If the contract is T&amp;amp;M or cost plus, then the buyer needs to pay for it.  And if they received the proper estimate of a possibility of 200+ hours, then the buyer would have had contingency reserves to pay for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you truly understand your probabilistic range in the work you do, and you choose competitive, realistic planning values--say at the P60 of the range--then this absolutely means you will underrun and overrun your work from time to time, e.g., 60% to 40% respectively as the P60 suggests.  There is no shame in overrunning your work.  There is shame in not having early indicators to show the overrun trend, not communicating early and often about the possibility of overrunning, and not doing the planning required to have the degree of contingency reserves necessary to pay for an overrun.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T14:12:37.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16715" CreationDate="2015-11-09T15:49:41.523" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've used the following document &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Fourteen Observations &#xA;of Good Scrum Practice&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; with success hope you will do also:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lookforwardconsulting.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/ScrumObservations.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://lookforwardconsulting.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/ScrumObservations.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary A scrum team typically consists of around seven people who work together in short time boxed activity called sprints, with plenty of time for review and reflection built in. The mantras of scrum is “inspect and adapt,” and scrum teams are characterized by an intense focus on continuous improvement—of their process, but also of the product.&#xA;The main roles in scrum are &#xA;Product Owner: Own and drive the product and maximize the return on investment, &#xA;The Scrum master: act as a coach and guide the team to a higher of efficiency, self-organization.&#xA;The development Team :a highly collaborative and self-organized team doing the actual work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Observation-1: Sprint is owned by the development team and SM should make sure to protect the team during the sprint from management interference that can negatively impact the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Observation-2:  a common definition of done which is a result of negotiation between all the actors in Scrum team members, but the development has the final say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Observation-3:The product backlog is owned and ranked by the Product Owner. Other team member can suggest features to add but is the PO who has the final say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oberservation-4:The Team is responsible for their own commitments and should only make commitments they truly feel they are going to fulfill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Observation-5:The PO can set the priorities for the Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Observation-6: The Scrum Master has no authority over the activity of the team.The SM is the one who has the expert knowledge on the scrum framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Observation-7:Sprint planning is about what PBI the team will build and how they team is going to build it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Observation-8:Sprint backlog, owned and maintained by the development team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Observation-9: The daily scrum meeting is a timeboxed meeting to a max 15 minutes where the development team take the opportunity to sync their activities and answer the three question: What did you do ysetrday, what will you do today and any road blocks that other team members can resolve. The SM will facilitate the meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Observation-10: the sprint review, it is the time for team to shine and present the sprint increment to the PO. Only demoble increment maybe demonstrated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Observation-11: The retrospective is the time for the team to reflect on how they can improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Observation-12: stakeholders have no direct authority on the team and the SM should shield the team if the interaction with stakeholders is deemed a distraction&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Observation-13: if the PO decide to terminate a sprint, they should organize a termination meeting with team to tell the team what is behind the cancellation and the team should come up with key leanings items to be communicated to the stakeholders&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please check the pdf file for more insights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16934" LastEditorUserId="16934" LastEditDate="2015-12-07T16:02:06.017" LastActivityDate="2015-12-07T16:02:06.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16715" CreationDate="2015-11-09T17:31:33.880" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1 Hour to 2.5 Long Scrums Every Day - Is this Crazy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not just crazy, it's wrong. This is exactly the sort of situation that Scrum is meant to prevent. If you're having a 1-hour (not to mention a 2.5) daily meeting, you're doing it wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Management requires for the whole team to stay and listen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first step in solving a problem is to acknowledge the problem. Talk it over with a manager -- one on one is probably best here so that you can talk freely and they don't have to respond in front of the whole team. If you point out the cost of these long meetings (between 65 and 160 man-hours per week) and the potential for improving productivity and morale, you'll probably get plenty of agreement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What decisions would you take?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Splitting up the group into two teams and learning to do actual Scrum instead of the current Scrum-in-name-only, as others have suggested, are two good suggestions, but they're big steps that management may not be eager to make. Good Scrum training can be expensive, and it may also be hard to justify if managers have told clients or other stakeholders that you already practice Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the primary goal here is to spend more time working and less time in meetings, you might start by reducing the time allowed for the daily meeting. The meeting should be laser-focussed on conveying just the information that has changed since the last meeting and what everyone should expect by the next meeting. Stop going through every ticket in the sprint and instead give each developer 1 minute to give their status:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What did they finish?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do they expect to finish by the next daily meeting?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What, if anything, is preventing them from getting something done?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there's detailed information about specific tickets that needs to be conveyed, that should be done in written comments attached to the ticket itself -- it doesn't need to be read out loud or rehashed during the daily meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another goal should be to do each sprint a little better than the last. To foster that, Scrum includes a &quot;sprint retrospective&quot; meeting. This is an opportunity for anyone on the team to suggest improvements to the process, but it's not a free-for-all for venting frustrations. The meeting should have an agenda that anyone on the team can contribute to -- a wiki page works well for this -- and the person running the meeting (not a manager) should stick to the agenda and keep things moving. After an explanation of each proposed change, let the team vote on whether to try it or not, and make a note for the next retrospective meeting to discuss whether the change helped and should be continued.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all cases, extended discussion or argument should be tabled and addressed outside the meeting, with results reported back to the team via e-mail, chat, or however the team routinely communicates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21113" LastEditorUserId="21113" LastEditDate="2016-02-29T13:09:23.300" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T13:09:23.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9909" CreationDate="2015-11-09T17:31:57.937" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an excellent post published &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sitepoint.com/managers-make-terrible-scrum-masters/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sitepoint.com/managers-make-terrible-scrum-masters/&lt;/a&gt;. I encourage to read it all.&#xA;Here are some quotes from there to bring the point:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is a basic conflict of interest between the duties of a manager&#xA;  and a scrum master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A manager sits at the top of the pyramid in a team’s hierarchy, while&#xA;  an agile approach is all about fostering a networked environment of&#xA;  open communication, in which team members rely on each other rather&#xA;  than on the top-down rules of the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The hierarchical nature of management helps to position a team inside&#xA;  a larger organization, but it operates best if it is kept separate&#xA;  from the networked process of agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Building and curating the team is the primary duty of the manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21114" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T11:12:18.927" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T11:12:18.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16729" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16737" CreationDate="2015-11-10T08:05:26.730" Score="4" ViewCount="521" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you work in a startup environment (less than 20 people), you will see yourself working not only on project manager's tasks, but also on business analyst's, sale's, etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gradually, your company grows and it allows you to hire more people to support your team. Now it's the time you keep your core responsibilities and tasks and delegate the rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should you keep? What should you delegate as soon as possible? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDITED: In general, we do not have &quot;right&quot; answer for management questions like this. But I'm seeking answers either in 2 ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Answers that describe the approaches to the problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Answers that tell about real story/experience and the result.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21101" LastEditorUserId="21101" LastEditDate="2015-11-12T02:44:46.217" LastActivityDate="2015-11-12T02:44:46.217" Title="What are the tasks that project manager should NOT do, but delegate instead?" Tags="&lt;roles&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-11-22T12:14:02.487" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16731" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-10T17:44:58.973" Score="1" ViewCount="2040" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently managing a software product. I am using scrum/agile. The problem that I am having is that I am unable to create an accurate burn chart, because the backlog keeps on being updated with new items. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a typical scenario that tends to happen is when a item is begun, and during the sprint it is discovered that the item is underestimated leading to the item being split into more backlog items leading to my burn chart to be inaccurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I handle situations such as this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2015-11-18T17:42:29.277" Title="How do I create an accurate burndown chart when my backlog keeps on being updated with new items during sprints?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;burndown-chart&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16731" CreationDate="2015-11-10T20:07:56.073" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;With more items being added/split and re-estimated with more knowledge seems like your burndown is becoming more accurate rather than not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Issue you are facing is that it looks like it is not burning down but rather up. This is ok as long as the overall trend is down and you are confident that you can complete your work by sprint end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are not confident (the current line is way above the ideal), then the burndown is working where it is telling you that you will not reach sprint completion. Knowing this sooner can give you the opportunity to descope items, talk to the team and react accordingly. Without a chart this would be discovered too late.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The purpose of a burndown chart is not to burndown perfectly, but to tell you daily that you can meet your sprint completion.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20653" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T20:07:56.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16731" CreationDate="2015-11-10T21:33:39.787" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is fine when your burndown chart goes up, because it highlights a problem, that you have to address, during a retrospective meeting.&lt;/strong&gt; Your team should get better at planning, and until you have spikes in your burndown, you'll know that your efforts of fixings this, weren't good enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what I would do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;draw the spike into the burndown&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;let the team be surprised about it and do not let them to change how they work - if they think it is important to break down a work item, so be it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the next retrospective would be about planning, and spikes in burndown&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;keep doing 1-3 until you reach a state that satisfies you&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...because &lt;strong&gt;predictability is an important quality in Scrum&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2015-11-11T08:01:30.227" LastActivityDate="2015-11-11T08:01:30.227" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16731" CreationDate="2015-11-10T21:43:28.557" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;You can take steps to minimize unpredictability&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In software development you are always working on things that are to some extent new, even if it is not an entirely pioneering effort. Even if your team has successfully completed similar projects, this time you may have to work with a newer version of the operating system, different frameworks and tools or integration with a different third-party component. So, there is always an element of discovery - unlike say in the construction industry - which gives rise to some unpredictability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the reason why &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; was &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/About/All-Articles/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/95/Commitment-vs-Forecast-A-subtle-but-important-change-to-Scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;revised in 2011 to change the word &quot;Commitment&quot; to &quot;Forecast&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, while you cannot eliminate unpredictability fully you can take steps to minimize it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Backlog refinement&lt;/strong&gt;: The Product Owner and the Development Team should collaborate on refining the Product Backlog items. The team can spend upto 4 hours per week (not more than 10% of the capacity) in doing this. Use this time to understand the business goal and write-up the user story and acceptance criteria well. Also, split the stories into more manageable and better understood smaller ones.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprint Planning&lt;/strong&gt;: In addition to the above prep work, the team can get additional clarifications on the user story and acceptance criteria during the Sprint Planning. In my experience putting more effort on &quot;story ready&quot; helps a lot in minimizing the uncertainty.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Time-boxed Research story (spike)&lt;/strong&gt;: If the work is substantially new and different from what the team has done before, schedule a time-boxed Research story (also known as a spike). I have always used 4-hour time boxes. The development team can use this time to build a prototype or a proof-of-concept so that you are able to estimate better and when you schedule the main story your risk is much lower.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T21:43:28.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16729" CreationDate="2015-11-10T23:21:29.677" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You want to be the most efficient and effective person you can be, but you wear multiple hats. You know you need to give some up...how you decide which hats to give up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) Classify your Skills&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write a list of the skills/roles you perform eg:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business Analyst&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Programmer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;QA Analyst&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business Administrator&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Account Manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) Quantify your time allocation per skill&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much of your time that goes to each skill can help you identify which are time-eaters, which may be the hardest to &quot;hand over&quot; to someone else, or which are simply tasks you do on the side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3) Rank your Skill/Effectiveness for each&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give yourself a ranking from 1 -&gt; n that shows which skills you're best/most trained/experienced in and which you simply fill because no one else is there to do the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4) Review your Job Matrix and see what is best to drop&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll end up with something like the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3LvMM.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3LvMM.png&quot; alt=&quot;skills matrix&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally you'd want to drop the skills your the least skilled in to a quantity that frees up enough % of your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the example above if I drop QA / Programmer / Account Manager work I free up 35% of my time dropping my 3 worst skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no &quot;right&quot; answer here - it's very subjective on the person and the organisation. But this method gives you an objective way of approaching the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20840" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T23:21:29.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16738" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16747" CreationDate="2015-11-11T07:40:35.780" Score="7" ViewCount="522" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm testing out Kanban on my research team and I think we're okay for now. We've visualized our workflow and set limits to the tasks. I'm using Kanban in Action for reference. I've set an initial WIP limit of 8 tasks for now (2 per member of my team). There are times when it works and times when it doesn't. My question is, how often and when do I change the limit? Can I do it in the middle or the week? or is it preferable to do it during retrospectives? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6585" LastActivityDate="2015-11-12T14:46:49.227" Title="How often and when should you change WIP limits?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16739" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16742" CreationDate="2015-11-11T10:45:49.147" Score="82" ViewCount="150244" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am slightly confused between the three.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my understanding:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Epic - Create a web site (T shirt size) (L)&#xA;Story - Create the Home page (1 point)&#xA;Task - Create a button on the home page that is red (1 hour)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this and the weighting correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-04-15T07:58:20.470" LastActivityDate="2019-04-15T07:58:20.470" Title="What is the weighting difference between Epic/Story/Task" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;epics&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="62" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16708" CreationDate="2015-11-11T13:25:24.280" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to read between lines a bit here, but I think the issue that management has is not explicitly that the mitigation strategy is too reactive- mitigation, almost by definition, &lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt; to be reactive. I think the issue is that the way you are handling the project is demonstrating that &lt;em&gt;you don't really know what the budget or timescale should be&lt;/em&gt; and that is what they mean by not instilling confidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are in this position because of optimistic planning- you all agreed to proceed against a plan that assumed everything would go well. In fact this is a behaviour you are continuing to demonstrate (&quot;Given there are two more weeks&quot; - how do you &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; there are only two more weeks, when your experience shows that issue after issue arises and derails the project?). I am going to generalise heavily now- from my experience you get one shot at going back to the pot for more budget when nothing else has changed. You seem to be going back every week after things change &lt;em&gt;even though you seem to know that something is going to change&lt;/em&gt; and that is what is unsettling management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key lesson is to plan with budget and schedule contingency- you won't know what will arise that negatively impacts your project, but you can be pretty sure that something will! So allow for it... Sometimes this is a battle with the project sponsor (&quot;why are you charging me more when you don't even know what will fill that time? Let's cut it out of the budget and address it if/when it arises&quot;) and you have to fight that battle using your experience and past history of project outcomes. Hopefully you will be successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However in your specific situation, and to address your specific question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually you don't have too many options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the project really is timeboxed and you actually only have two more weeks left no matter what happens, then if issues arise you will have to deliver with a lower quality than expected. So raise that risk now, quantify it and get it &quot;out there&quot; and being discussed by the stakeholders. You will undoubtedly take more noise for &quot;allowing&quot; the project to get into that situation, but you are going to get the noise anyway so you might as well take the early hit and do the right thing as you then stand a chance of recovering the situation to some extent&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the project is not timeboxed, and timescale and budget will overrun in order to meet the quality objectives then you all need to recognise that you have all been working to an optimistic plan and all work together to come up with a realistic plan. One that &lt;strong&gt;definitely&lt;/strong&gt; includes everyone's risks and issues of future problems based on their experience and yours, plus some additional contingency to cover things you just aren't able to foresee. You will undoubtedly end up with a plan and budget that is &quot;too long&quot; according to management and you will take more noise on that subject. However if you do it correctly and management buys into it, then hopefully it will be your last bite of the cherry in terms of budget and you can start to issue meaningful and accurate progress reports against a realistic plan.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, make sure you have a Lessons-Learned exercise afterwards, with all the stakeholders, and look at how and why you came to be in that position. Some of it might be your lack of experience of project planning, leading to a plan that is too optimistic- but you are not alone and it takes a whole group to buy into that plan. People around you are also guilty of &lt;em&gt;letting&lt;/em&gt; you plan optimistically and just putting their heads in the sand and accepting your estimated delivery timescale. You need to work through the problems as a team and as a project culture. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-11-11T13:25:24.280" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16708" CreationDate="2015-11-11T15:52:36.847" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no way of knowing whether your planning value of four weeks and 100 hours is optimistic, pessimistic, or just right only from an example of a single performance.  What is 100% certain is you WILL have variability from whatever planning value you choose, both favorably and unfavorably, if you were to do that project over and over again.  It's exactly like your commute to the airport.  Sometimes you'll get there in minimum time, sometimes it'll take you forever, but most times it's somewhere in the middle.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer your question, the best way to handle issues as they pop up during your remaining time is head on, the best you can.  Predict the impact at the end of the project and request access to the contingency resources that you and the project sponsor certainly planned at the beginning of this endeavor.  At the end capture lessons learned and use them for your next planning session.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no other magic bullet.  This is typical project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-11-11T15:52:36.847" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16739" CreationDate="2015-11-11T17:13:01.950" Score="92" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Scrum here is the rough breakdown:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Epic&lt;/strong&gt; - something so big it probably won't fit into a sprint, is not clearly understood in terms of customer requirements and should be broken down into stories. T-shirt sizing is a common way to size epics. Another way is to say we think it could take X to Y iterations to do this work. Epics are usually defined during initial product roadmapping and decomposed into stories in the product backlog as more is learned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Story&lt;/strong&gt; - something actionable and small enough to fit in a sprint. These are story pointed and defined using INVEST criteria. Stories should deliver a vertical slice of functionality to the customer that is valuable and complete by the end of an iteration. Stories are usually created throughout product development, more so leading up to iteration planning and also during higher level product roadmapping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tasks&lt;/strong&gt; - decomposed parts of a story that get into HOW the story will be completed. Tasks can be hour estimated if desired. Tasks are usually defined by the people doing the work (developers, QA, etc), whereas stories and epics are generally created by the customer or the product owner representing the customer. Tasks are created within the bounds of an iteration because they are short-lived. There is very little value is tasking out stories that won't be worked on in the upcoming iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-12-18T14:01:23.147" LastActivityDate="2018-12-18T14:01:23.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16739" CreationDate="2015-11-11T18:24:20.920" Score="50" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Epic&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An epic is like a super-story. When a story is too big to fit comfortably in a sprint and/or contains a lot of unknowns then it is usually better suited to be an epic. Epics are fine on the product backlog, but as they approach the top of the backlog they are typically decomposed down in to several stories. We don't bring epics in to sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Story&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story is a functional requirement that provides some business value. It also has to be small enough to comfortably fit within a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories are written in a language that is easily understood by the Product Owner and business users. That way they can understand the progress that has been achieved by completing the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The format of a story is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a [role] I want [something] so that [value]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Task&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a development team works on a story they often find it easier to break it down in to tasks. The tasks no longer need to be understandable by business users and so can be highly technical. The process of breaking a story down in to tasks also helps the development team better understand what needs to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to remember that tasks are focused on the development team and stories are focused towards the Product Owner and business users. When a development team completes a task it helps them to understand how they are progressing in a sprint. But it is the completion of stories that is important to the Product Owner as they understand what the story means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Example&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Product Owner puts an epic on the backlog that says: &quot;Simple website for the HR department&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As it approaches the top of the backlog they break it down in to stories that include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As an employee I want to see the latest news from HR so that I am informed of what is going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As an employee I want to know the contact names of all the people in HR so that I know who to phone/email when I have a question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As an employee I want to have access to HR policy documents so that I can be sure I am following policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner talks the team through these stories and describes how they see this information being displayed on the home page of the site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team takes the first story and breaks it down in to tasks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Create a basic home page layout&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Make a CSS that follows the company style guide&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Make the news story list update from a file that can be edited by the HR team&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2015-11-13T18:25:31.413" LastActivityDate="2015-11-13T18:25:31.413" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16731" CreationDate="2015-11-11T18:51:56.343" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;How to Use Burn-Down Charts Correctly&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem that I am having is that I am unable to create an accurate burn chart, because the backlog keeps on being updated with new items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a typical scenario that tends to happen is when a item is begun, and during the sprint it is discovered that the item is underestimated leading to the item being split into more backlog items leading to my burn chart to be inaccurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have several misconceptions here about the purpose and content of a burn-down chart. I will try to clarify them for you, and to provide some guidance on how to properly manage and interpret a burn-down chart within the Scrum framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Changes to your burn-down chart make it &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; accurate, not less.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are incorrectly assuming that a burn-down chart that isn't trending down is somehow inaccurate when in fact it is &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;accurately&lt;/strong&gt; describing a change in scope and work remaining.&lt;/em&gt; This is simply information, and is inherently neither good nor bad. The team (including the Product Owner) should use this information to determine whether the work remaining can still fit within the current sprint, or whether this represents a threat to the Sprint Goal that should be addressed by cutting scope, removing stories, or calling for an Early Termination and a return to Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A Sprint shouldn't generally include &lt;em&gt;new&lt;/em&gt; user stories.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once a Sprint has started, a story can be refined and tasks added to the Sprint Backlog. However, as a rule of thumb the team should not be adding whole new &lt;em&gt;user stories&lt;/em&gt; to the Sprint Backlog, except when all other work has been completed early and the Sprint Goal has been met. This is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; what you're talking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Splitting large stories, or uncovering prerequisite stories, is certainly something that happens in real-life Scrum implementations. However, mature Scrum teams know that these stories should be carefully reviewed by the whole team, including the Product Owner, to ensure that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The newly-discovered work is relevant to the current Sprint Goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The additional work or changes in scope do not threaten the current Sprint Goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team has the capacity to incorporate the additional work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The additional work actually belongs in the current sprint, and not on the Product Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Burn-down data is schedule/planning/status information, not a management target.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a burn-down chart trends upwards during a sprint, this is information for the team. When the burn-down chart makes it clear that the work remaining in the current sprint exceeds the time or capacity remaining, then it is a call to action. These actions may include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identifying the estimation problems as an issue for the next retrospective.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Triggering a discussion with the Product Owner about the scope and objectives of the current sprint to determine the best way to meet the Sprint Goal with the time/capacity remaining.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the Sprint Goal can no longer be met for any reason, the Product Owner should call for an Early Termination of the sprint. The team should do a retrospective to discuss the problems encountered, and then replan a new sprint armed with better information.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Treating the burn-down chart as sacrosanct, or as a management target that must be met at all costs, is entirely missing the point of the artifact. It's a communications and planning tool that is meant to provide transparency into the process, rather than a stick to beat the team with. Always treat the burn-down chart as &lt;em&gt;information&lt;/em&gt;, rather than as a scheduling tool (e.g. a Gantt chart), and you will find it much more useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Burn-down charts should have the appropriate granularity.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A burn-down chart is not required by the Scrum framework; it's simply an agile practice that is very common. As a result, you are free to adjust the granularity of your chart, or to use multiple charts, to suit your needs. For example, you may find that tracking the burn-down of &lt;em&gt;stories&lt;/em&gt; (rather than tasks) gives you less day-to-day variance while still providing an accurate picture of the team's overall progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, you may choose to track both stories and tasks on the same chart. For example, a single chart that has a green line for stories and a red line for tasks might be useful in communicating where the scope creep is, and may even help the team determine where scope needs to be trimmed if the Sprint Goal is at risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth noting that the &lt;em&gt;volume&lt;/em&gt; of stories or tasks in a burn-down is not necessarily a scheduling issue. If you're tracking tasks, and the burn-down shows a rising number of tasks on the Sprint Backlog, it's still only a problem if the work remaining exceeds the time box of the sprint. In many cases, the &lt;em&gt;number&lt;/em&gt; of work items increases, but the additional granularity allows the team to complete each item faster, resulting in no net change to the overall sprint or the point at which work-remaining will reach zero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2015-11-11T18:51:56.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16738" CreationDate="2015-11-11T21:59:56.747" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You shouldn't be changing it mid-week or mid-sprint, and it shouldn't be a constant thing that you change - you're aiming to find the right WIP limit and then stick with it. There will be tension around the limit, that's the idea of having restrictive processes in the first place - to enforce practice that leads to good flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A retro would be a good time to discuss and justify the change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;eg: Is the current limit being too restrictive of flow? Is the current limit allowing for too many things to happen and lots of things are ending a sprint incomplete?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are times when it works and times when it doesn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be worth explaining this more. What do you mean by this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20840" LastActivityDate="2015-11-11T21:59:56.747" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16738" CreationDate="2015-11-11T22:37:37.603" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;2 per person is a good place to start.  Generally you will start a team somewhere between 1-3 items per person on the team as a rough guidance.  It's better to actually observe the team and set the limits at the lower end of what they naturally do.  I can't stress how setting WIP limits too low on a transitioning team is a great way to fail a kanban transformation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for when to change the WIP limits there are 2 common scenarios:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team exceeds their WIP limit, DO NOT have the knee jerk response of changing the limit.  Exceeding WIP 1-2 times a week during the first few months of transition is completely healthy and expected.  Its also a great opportunity.  The whole point of a WIP limit is to drive discussion of what can be improved in the process so that the team doesn't keep hitting its WIP limit.  That said, a team that is daily hitting their WIP limit and can't seem to make any process changes to address it, your limit may be too low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, when you notice the team is stable (for a few weeks to months) and consistently staying at or below their current WIP limit, its a good time to start having discussions about tightening the belt and lowering the limit further.  Again this should lead to discussions about how to eliminate waste in the current workflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban by David Anderson is a great resource that gets much deeper into the weeds on this topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS if you're doing Kanban in a sprint context its not really Kanban (there are no iterations or sprints in pure Kanban).  You're probably doing something more akin to Scrumban.  Nothing wrong this as long as you understand why you are mixing and matching tools from the different frameworks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastEditorUserId="13568" LastEditDate="2015-11-11T23:02:37.473" LastActivityDate="2015-11-11T23:02:37.473" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16738" CreationDate="2015-11-11T22:38:11.157" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no need to change WIP limit to match the actual capacity. You can monitor its changes and bring that information to a retrospective meeting and see what is going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is fine to have lower WIP than the limit; it means that you have more resources available than needed. When the same column exceeds the WIP means that there are cases when the available resources cannot handle the input; either the work items arrives too fast - previous phase is faster - or leave too slow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Record - camera or screen shot - a couple of cases when the current number of work items exceeds the limit, and examine the scenarios during the retrospective meeting. With this approach you'll learn something about your own process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case the work is very often above the limit, then increase the limit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-11-11T22:38:11.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16655" CreationDate="2015-11-12T09:12:41.840" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most likely, 4sq team includes a product owner, who is a proxy between user group and dev team. PO works with getting and structuring feedback, and together with analysts / or with co-working POs he elaborates on suggestions and structures the requirements. Then puts those requirements into backlog in the order that they are to be fulfilled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be pretty easy to form sprints out of the tickets ranked according to their value inside the backlog. So it most likely is a basic scrum flow they use :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21145" LastActivityDate="2015-11-12T09:12:41.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16738" CreationDate="2015-11-12T14:46:49.227" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is ok to change these limits anytime, but people should definitly agree. It seems to make most sense to do it when most people are standing in front of the board having some sort of meeting or discussion like a daily standup, but middle of week or retrospective are fine too. My golden rule is a WIP limit that never gets hit should be lowered, and one that gets hit all the time should be raised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are supposed to hit the WIP limit! If you hit the WIP limit it means it is working!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="763" LastActivityDate="2015-11-12T14:46:49.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14877" CreationDate="2015-11-12T15:36:35.720" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had a similar situation where I have a team running multiple small items of unrelated work.&lt;br/&gt;In the end used a KanBan for low level tracking rather than a project plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a KanBan I could track the work and staff through the phases then for overall reporting have a Project plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastActivityDate="2015-11-12T15:36:35.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16752" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16756" CreationDate="2015-11-12T18:25:34.900" Score="1" ViewCount="83" Body="&lt;p&gt;In other words, in my &quot;MS Project-like tool&quot;, I have teams with the people that I've already hired, and unassigned people mark as in the &quot;bench&quot; team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a placeholder team name to put the future hires of this quarter, to plan possible project assignments for them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm confused about what would be the best name for this (it's not &quot;bench&quot; because I don't want to mix them with the already hired people with no current project assignment).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I'm using float.com, and I'm using the &quot;department&quot; for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20895" LastActivityDate="2015-11-13T17:59:55.650" Title="In resource allocation, how do you call the group of people that will be hired in the future?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;resources&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16754" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-13T12:24:08.863" Score="2" ViewCount="1072" Body="&lt;p&gt;So a user story describes what the user wants to achieve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use trello, here is how I would do it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epic - Create a home page&#xA;Story (Trello Card) - 'As a user I want to see sliding images on the top of the page'&#xA;Tasks (A checklist) - list of technical tasks needed to achieve that story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get images&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Integrate JQuery plugin which is a carousel &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Import images into the carousel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now what if the problem at this stage is if the development team has not got the skills to do that story. Before they can do it, they need to learn HTML/JQuery/CSS???&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently to handle this, I would create a Trello card.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Learning phase&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Checklist:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn HTML&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn CSS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn JQUERY&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is NOT a user story, but I put this into the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you handle this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2015-11-18T17:20:12.270" Title="Creating 'User Stories' when a developer needs to learn how to use the tech to complete it (Scrum)" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16754" CreationDate="2015-11-13T15:38:20.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, I would like to refer you to mike Cohen blog about user stories : &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/user-stories&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/user-stories&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A user story should follow : As a , I want  so that  and also add acceptance criteria if needed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The developers will as a team create all related tasks to implement the user story, among the tasks for example: Learn how to use jQuery slider...so on &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16934" LastActivityDate="2015-11-13T15:38:20.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16752" CreationDate="2015-11-13T17:59:55.650" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The term usually used is &quot;Candidate Pool&quot; / &quot;Succession pool&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This usually includes candidates that you are planning to at least keep in mind in case you'll need to expand your workforce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21145" LastActivityDate="2015-11-13T17:59:55.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16739" CreationDate="2015-11-13T20:21:59.347" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your comment you ask about planning and how it is related to epics, user stories, and tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @WBW pointed out, an epic is something very high level, probably several sprints long. For example, a payment module for your web application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A user story is more concrete, fits into a sprint, is connected to other sprints, if they are under the same epic. A user story can also stand alone. For example, paypal integration for the previously mentioned payment module.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A task is very concrete, can be done in 1-2 days, and always belongs to a user story. For example, adding the paypal button to your web page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually a planning meeting has two parts: sprint commitment, and task break down. In the sprint commitment part, you pick the next epic and select the remaining most important user stories and prepare the sprint back log. If you don't work with epics, you just select the user stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the next section you break down the user stories into tasks. During the sprint you pick the tasks, not the user stories. A user story is finished when all the tasks that are connected to it is finished. In case you forgot something during the planning, you can add unplanned tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-11-13T20:21:59.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16754" CreationDate="2015-11-13T22:05:59.230" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally, speaking of course you can have learning tasks, and you should have them, but putting them into Scrum context is tricky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A user story comes from the PO, and the result is a a deliverable. A learning task does not have these properties; a PO is not interested in learning tasks, they are hard to time box, and the deliverable in this context is highly opinionated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are &quot;technical user stories&quot; which usually take 1-2 days, and POs are fine with them. Html, css, and jquery is not something one learns in days. This reminds me an unspoken rule of project management: do not start a project if you don't have the resources. I'm afraid, you don't have the resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation is to put the project or whatever you have on hold for a week, and tell the developers that they have this time to get familiar with the technology stack during the week. The point is to get familiar with, and be able to start working on user stories. Some people call this &quot;Sprint 0&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-11-13T22:05:59.230" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16759" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16765" CreationDate="2015-11-14T10:08:19.963" Score="0" ViewCount="64" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been asked as an IT consultant to help an insurance company to upgrade their legacy Information management system to more reliable and user friendly one which has to last for the next 7 years. I work for a consultation firm that has been asked to evaluate the project, review financial costs and set a plan to the management team. &#xA;As a consultant, what documentations do need to do for the project? and also what tasks do I need to start with ? I have done a briefed document reviewing the company's legacy system and how it works based on my first meeting with the people involved! &#xA;I am new on this business and any help would be much appreciated.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26325" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T01:32:01.033" Title="IT Consultant engagement in a project" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-11-22T12:12:40.597" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16763" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-15T21:35:38.943" Score="1" ViewCount="28646" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to load resources into tasks in MS Project 2013 Standard. The tasks have specific durations for when they should start and end. For each task, I would like to assign multiple resources and have them work a fixed number of hours distributed evenly across every day they are assigned to the task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, say I have a task named &quot;Task 1&quot; that has a duration of 11 working days in the standard calendar. I have one individual has an estimated 24 hours of work to do on this task, a second individual that has an estimated 32 hours of work, and a third individual that has an estimated 15 hours of work. I would like each resource to allocate their hours evenly across the 11 working days. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that the task should be set to &quot;fixed duration&quot;, but my problem occurs after I load the resources to the task. If I say individual 1 needs to work 24 hours, it will assign them to work for 3 days, as their working calendar has them work for 8 hours a day. If I change the work duration for the resource on the &quot;Assignment Information&quot; display to 11 days, MS Project recalculates work to be 88 hours for the resource (11 days x 8 hours/day). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I try to reconfigure the utilization of the resource to match the amount I want the resource to work, MS Project later changes the assignment hours when I later go to adjust other resources utilization, work hours, duration, etc. How do I fix this information so MS Project doesn't keep recalculating work for my resources when I adjust other assignments within a task? I think the root of my problem is that I don't know how to set different utilization targets for several resources at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for the help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21171" LastActivityDate="2017-10-30T09:52:59.200" Title="How to assign multiple resources to a in MS Project and making them work different hours over the same duration" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16764" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-16T00:24:05.073" Score="0" ViewCount="3295" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wonder if there is a function in MS Project to print the Gantt chart view for each resource, i.e., when issuing the schedule to everyone I print to PDF:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Complete Schedule&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Summaries only&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each Resources personal Gantt view&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With around 10 resources it is quite momentous having to PDF them all when changes are made. Also since I need to do it each week... Maybe a UI script is needed here to take control... but they are rather tedious and need constant updating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21174" LastEditorUserId="15972" LastEditDate="2015-11-18T10:43:48.903" LastActivityDate="2021-04-22T07:13:11.207" Title="Print a MS Project Gantt chart for each resource" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16759" CreationDate="2015-11-16T01:32:01.033" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Methodology aside, as a consultant you have a few things you need to address that you pointed out yourself (because you've been specifically asked for them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work for a consultation firm that has been asked to evaluate the project, review financial costs and set a plan to the management team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To break that down, you've been asked to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Evaluate the Project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming this means Evaluate their Existing Solution, because there is no project as yet. This is typically done in documents such as a &lt;strong&gt;Business Case&lt;/strong&gt; document and/or a &lt;strong&gt;Problem Statement&lt;/strong&gt; document. The purpose of both of these is to establish exactly &lt;em&gt;what is wrong&lt;/em&gt; to ensure you're all on the same page as to what needs to be solved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Review Financial Costs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To review something I'm assuming you already have some costs there? Either way, this is getting into the &lt;strong&gt;High Level Project Plan&lt;/strong&gt; territory (or specifically a portion of it which is called a &lt;strong&gt;High Level Cost Estimate&lt;/strong&gt;). After you've defined and agreed &lt;em&gt;what is wrong&lt;/em&gt; you'll need to come up with &lt;em&gt;how you can solve what is wrong&lt;/em&gt;. This is typically at a High Level and done to give a ball-park indication of just how big the problem is and how long/much it may cost to fix it. The key here is not to go into details, you want just enough detail for the client to objectively decide whether this is worthwhile or not. A High Level Project Plan and High Level Costing is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; a quote, it is pre-quote, it's simply and indication of size and complexity of the problem and possible solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Set a Plan to the Mgmt Team&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is where you'd complete your &lt;strong&gt;High Level Project Plan&lt;/strong&gt;. It will define (again, at a high level) the problem statement, business case, possible high level solutions with a recommended solution, and for that recommended solution you'd have a Project Plan that would indicate a potential timeframe and phases that would give the client an indication on Who, What, When, Where, Why and How of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you'd be at a stage where the Client can make an objective decision as to whether to proceed with your proposed solutions. They'll know (and will have all agreed to) &lt;strong&gt;what is wrong&lt;/strong&gt;, they will have an indication of &lt;strong&gt;how to solve it&lt;/strong&gt; and will also have an indication of &lt;strong&gt;how much it will cost and how long it will take&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This Project Planning Document can then form part of your contract/agreement with the Client going forward as it gives you both a common understanding of all elements of the problem, the solution and the path in between the two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20840" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T01:32:01.033" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16764" CreationDate="2015-11-16T02:53:51.790" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;just filter by resource and voila!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20923" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T02:53:51.790" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5183" CreationDate="2015-11-16T09:55:53.097" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Write bugs in the past tense, e.g. this window did not appear if you used this parameter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bug occurred in the past but is now fixed whereas...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write enhancements bugs in the current tense, e.g. this window now appears if you use this parameter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As these are now available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, as regards wording be as specific as possible but don't reduce the word count it if means excluding critical information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20996" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T09:55:53.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16769" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-16T12:54:43.673" Score="0" ViewCount="276" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the tangents or points of contact between PRINCE2 and ITIL?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. can I say &quot;A PRINCE2:Product Description IS A(N) ITIL:Service Design Package&quot;? Or can I state that with some qualifications?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it too complex to put in these terms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking for a couple of contact points, or a Web link to a white paper ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Background: I am PRINCE2 Practitioner certified and currently reading up to go for ITIL Foundation as well, but I am not yet familiar with the practicalities of ITIL at a design level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any kind of starting points here would be helpful as I need to write some of these descriptions of how a service should behave in an ITIL-controlled environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21183" LastActivityDate="2016-01-28T06:41:51.843" Title="How does PRINCE2 map to ITIL? Specifically Product Descriptions vs. Service Design Packages" Tags="&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16763" CreationDate="2015-11-16T13:13:37.183" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;MS-Project works from a task-centric model, rather than a resource-centric model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is to say, MS-Project works from the position that tasks require an intrinsic amount of work to complete, against which you allocate resources thereby subdividing the work amongst the resources. The converse model, as used by Project Managers Workbench (last time I used it), is that you have a bunch of resources who can do work, which you combine as required, with the work for the task being derived as the total of your resource allocations. They have subtly different consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To model your task in MS-Project you need to start with how much work there is in the task. You have specified there are 71 hours. So start with a task that has a fixed-duration of 11 days, and 71 hours in the 'Work' column.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then apply the resources to the task using the 'Assign Resource's window, and in the Unit column for each resource, put in the amount of hours they will work on the project using the format '24h' to mean 24 hours. It will automatically be converted to a percentage of the overall work by MS-Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will see, by looking at the Resource Usage, that each Resource's workload has been evenly spread over the entire duration for the task as required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as far as I am aware a more generic solution does not exist because MS-Project doesn't work that way- You don't start with a bunch of resources spending known amounts of hours and work up to a task that is the sum total of the resource spend- MS-Project works the other way around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-11-16T14:42:54.117" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T14:42:54.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16772" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-17T00:06:07.857" Score="0" ViewCount="170" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a project and the 'Early Start' column reads exactly the same as the actual 'start' column (following team assignment and task scheduling) for some fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that the early start should in fact be the earliest I could possibly start it given constant 100% work rate on all tasks? Possibly my terminology is wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have extensive links but non on (or referencing) summary tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can any one offer an explanation or workaround?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21169" LastEditorUserId="15972" LastEditDate="2015-11-18T10:42:52.943" LastActivityDate="2015-11-18T10:42:52.943" Title="'Early Start' equals actual start date" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16772" CreationDate="2015-11-17T00:35:25.457" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Early Start will always be the same as Actual Start once the task has started. Put another way, once you tell MS Project that a task has started it will use that date and no longer calculate start dates. Works the same way for finishes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastActivityDate="2015-11-17T00:35:25.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16776" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16777" CreationDate="2015-11-17T09:16:19.113" Score="2" ViewCount="159" Body="&lt;p&gt;I noticed that many Request for Proposals (RFP) include a section called &quot;Proposal Evaluation Criteria&quot;. Why is that? Because it will show the proposers how your evaluate him/her which make him focus of the hight points and get the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21193" LastActivityDate="2015-11-17T11:10:42.440" Title="Proposal Evaluation Criteria in RFPs" Tags="&lt;project-proposal&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16776" CreationDate="2015-11-17T11:10:42.440" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Including the evaluation criteria allows the respondents to better understand the priorities of the RFP requester so they produce an RFP that is as tightly aligned to what the requester needs as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't confer any unfair advantages on a recipient of the request because &lt;em&gt;all recipients receive the same information&lt;/em&gt; and so all Proposals will be as attuned to the evaluation criteria as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the (fictitious and somewhat over-simplified) situation where a recipient believes the RFP requester will make their decision primarily on a cost basis. The respondent will strive to deliver a proposal with the lowest possible absolute cost, in order to attempt to secure the business. In doing this they may choose cheaper materials, procedures or methods. If, in fact, the RFP requester will primarily make their decision on the skill and experience level of the personnel working on the deliverable then our erstwhile proposer may rule themselves out of consideration on the basis they choose to concentrate on reducing cost rather than enhancing personnel &quot;quality&quot;, whereas they might easily have been able to provide top quality personnel if they had realised that was more important than cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-11-17T11:10:42.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12594" CreationDate="2015-11-17T12:01:54.577" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/F1fjh.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/F1fjh.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;here is the answer to your question. hope you find it helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21196" LastActivityDate="2015-11-17T12:01:54.577" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16779" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16780" CreationDate="2015-11-17T23:07:36.853" Score="1" ViewCount="197" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm exploring using TFS for Portfolio Management, and it seems generally suggested to lump all teams, features, etc. into a single project to provide executives an enterprise-wide view of the work going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in moving to a single project, we would lose some flexibility with source control. We would like to be able to wall off developers, and ensure they only work on certain applications (for instance, we might have external developers that only have permission to work on a specific application).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any guidance on how organizations are using TFS for both Portfolio Management and Source Control simultaneously?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21202" LastActivityDate="2021-01-02T02:19:49.750" Title="TFS: Projects, Portfolio Management, and Source Code" Tags="&lt;tfs&gt;&lt;portfolio-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16779" CreationDate="2015-11-18T11:35:40.767" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure what you lose in a &lt;a href=&quot;https://nkdagility.com/blog/one-team-project/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;single Team Project&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are either using TFVC which allows you to secure at the folder level, and remove inheritance for greater control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you are using Git which is secured at the Repository level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way you can control which groups of users have access to which code. You can have view only access for some code, and write access for other, or no access at all within the same Team Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/willy-peter_schaub/many-git-repositories-but-one-team-project-to-rule-them-all&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Many Git Repositories, but one Team Project to rule them all&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2021-01-02T02:19:49.750" LastActivityDate="2021-01-02T02:19:49.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16754" CreationDate="2015-11-18T17:20:12.270" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's a good question and I'd say it is less about Trello and more about how you are splitting your stories and showing them on the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several ways to use a board and to represent work there. So for my answer I'll use assume (based on the text of your question) you don't want to change the format:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A card represents something that is pottentially delivering value and it is written using the format &quot;As a ...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inside the card there is a list of tasks showing needed for the complition of the work related&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also assuming that you don't have the time to freeze the project, making the learning phase part of your everyday work, my suggestion would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Break your stories in very tiny pieces so people can learn and exercise new knowledge on real solutions;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to avoid long lists inside the cards. If this is happening, it means your stories are too big;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;List inside the card your learning tasks (like &quot;Learn HTML&quot;) but break it in small subjects (like &quot;Learn about tables in HTML&quot;) and timebox it somehow. Give people a number of hours or days for the &quot;reading/watching videos/spiking&quot; part, but stick to the plan of delivering a small amount of work;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you can change how you are writting your cards, I'd suggest that you use your board in a way that you can have different card types. Some of them would be stories, some would be something like a &quot;learning card&quot;. That would give your team and your stakeholders more visibility on what's happening. But please, don't forget to timebox this kind of card and to always try to keep it small. &quot;Learn JQUERY&quot; can take a lot of time and you probably don't need an expert to start delivering software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21213" LastActivityDate="2015-11-18T17:20:12.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16731" CreationDate="2015-11-18T17:42:29.277" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A burndown charts works fine on a well defined Scrum iteration: there aren't new things being added. Unfortunately, this is very hard to happen (as you point out on your question).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is: give up on using it. You can choose one of these two other tools, instead:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Burnup Chart. Probably what you need, for now. Easy to spot what's being accomplished and also the scope change. A good comparison between burnups and burndowns can be seen &lt;a href=&quot;http://brodzinski.com/2012/10/burn-up-better-burn-down.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CFD (Cumulative Flow Diagrams). A more sophisticated tool to show you how your work is progressing. A brief explanation about it can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.caroli.org/cumulative-flow-diagram/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21213" LastActivityDate="2015-11-18T17:42:29.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16739" CreationDate="2015-11-18T20:37:11.313" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general there are no rules but what you make. Your Product Owner would define what this means to them, then document and share it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look as some of the scaling frameworks available there is a generally accepted hierarchy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;Task&lt;/strong&gt; is about the &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; and noone other than the team should be concerned with them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;Story&lt;/strong&gt; is a &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; that can fit in a single sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;Feature&lt;/strong&gt; is a &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; that can't fit in a sprint but can fit in a release&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An &lt;strong&gt;Epic&lt;/strong&gt; is a &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; that transcends releases&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;Theme&lt;/strong&gt; is a &lt;em&gt;cross-cutting concern&lt;/em&gt; that does not fit into a hierarchy of &lt;em&gt;whats&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the Scrum Team gets to desire what all of this means there needs to be agreement between the Scrum Team and the Stakeholders so that everyone understands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastActivityDate="2015-11-18T20:37:11.313" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16690" CreationDate="2015-11-18T21:04:33.403" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Imposing an arbitery maximum is not going to work as there is such a large standard deviation between estimations at each point/tshirt size. That SD is the very reason that we use &lt;em&gt;relative effort estimation&lt;/em&gt; instead of making up a number of hours that will be wrong anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now if you are working with third parties, or contractor's then you need to think in sprints. If you have a &lt;em&gt;fixed length sprint&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;fixed number of people&lt;/em&gt; then you have a fixed cost for you Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing that then varies is the &lt;em&gt;velocity&lt;/em&gt;, or the amount of delivered functionality, in each Sprint, or done &lt;em&gt;increment&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess you might know your budget going in, and you can decide the budget by the sprint cost and see how many sprints that you can fund. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You set the team to delivering at a sustainable pace and each sprint you have working software. You can stop at any time, and you can ship once you are happy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are unhappy with the velocity then you need to deal with that. You could add more teams, make the team bigger, or stop development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastActivityDate="2015-11-18T21:04:33.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16786" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-19T00:42:24.783" Score="6" ViewCount="247" Body="&lt;p&gt;After a team is established and has been stable for a while, what sorts of day-to-day routine work should the scrum master be doing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3924" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2015-11-19T06:04:32.653" LastActivityDate="2016-01-15T11:59:53.543" Title="Scrum Master duties at steady state?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;responsibility&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16786" CreationDate="2015-11-19T06:03:05.547" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Routine remains the same&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum Master's routine remains the same even after the team gets well adjusted to Scrum. It is possible that Scrum Master may have to spend less time on individual duties but the overall responsibilities &amp;amp; expectations remain same. Some of which are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify and remove impediments in team's progress&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Help and foster continuous improvement through retrospectives and learning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure that Scrum events are being conducted&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coach the team in self-organization and cross-functionality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Supporting and evangelizing the rules&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fixing problems which are not considered a problem&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Encourage openness and transparency&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Facilitate team building activities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be a servant leader&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum Master having development tasks&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum does not stop SM to work on development tasks just like a regular team member. If time is available after performing all the required SM duties, dev tasks can be taken up by a Scrum Master. As per &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/scrummaster-full-time-or-not&quot;&gt;Mike Cohn&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A dedicated ScrumMaster is great, but it is not economically justifiable in all cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2015-11-19T06:03:05.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16739" CreationDate="2015-11-19T10:48:47.680" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epic - Is simply a story, but is considered so large that it needs to be broken down into multiple stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story - Is essentially a requirement that is in a low enough detail that it can be estimated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task - Developers, testers may break the story down further into tasks to allow them to estimate, develop and test it. (If a story has a lot of tasks, it could be worth classing it as an epic and breaking it down into multiple stories.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21221" LastActivityDate="2015-11-19T10:48:47.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16792" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-19T17:44:40.647" Score="0" ViewCount="706" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for a presentation that would list the benefits / Value-Add of a Project Manager for a single project and Program Management for multiple related projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a &quot;WOW we really need this...&quot; type of response from my customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any presentation available or link to such material would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mario Cournoyer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21228" LastActivityDate="2015-11-19T23:21:43.803" Title="How do I sell Project and Program Management to my customers" Tags="&lt;program-management&gt;&lt;customer-satisfaction&gt;&lt;value&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-11-22T12:14:30.450" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16786" CreationDate="2015-11-19T19:54:45.477" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that above all of the &quot;traditional duties&quot;, the SM (or any agile coaching role) should always be trying to make themselves obsolete, i.e. transferring their lenses, mentality and approaches of self-improvement to the team, instead of always trying to facilitate the improvement cycle. It's the &quot;teach them how to fish&quot; adage. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2015-11-19T19:54:45.477" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16794" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16796" CreationDate="2015-11-19T21:00:09.580" Score="3" ViewCount="519" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say my company has a project, and there's enough work that 10-12 developers are needed, minimum. We want to break up the Scrum team into two separate ones, but this is our first time doing that at this company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What kinds of things should we consider before trying to do this? Are there any particularly good online resources or books to consult? Mostly everything I've found just suggests Scrum of Scrums and stops there - SoS is clearly required, but what else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most information on &quot;scaling scrum&quot; or doing &quot;large scale scrum&quot; are too big for us - we just want two to three small teams, maybe with a scrum master each, and we'll have to have just the one product owner for the whole project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19375" LastActivityDate="2015-12-02T00:33:49.600" Title="What possible issues should we think about when going from one to two scrum teams working on a single project?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16794" CreationDate="2015-11-19T21:53:39.570" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on previous experiences, some things to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How will the backlog correlate to teams? Does it make more sense to have them in one backlog (and perhaps flag items as favorable for one team), or two backlogs? Does it make sense to have them &quot;own&quot; feature sets or do you want to improve knowledge sharing and robustness by mixing it up, or even requiring crossovers? How can you maximize visibility of the backlog to help mitigate the impact of Scrum of Scrums?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will sprints coincide or be offset, and will they be the same length? (and it may vary depending on needs to create/review/plan). There are pros and cons to each approach, and the impact can vary for teams vs. stakeholders vs. PO, etc. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How should they sit in order to benefit from team focus as well as cross-communication or &quot;conversation spill&quot;, or maybe roles/frequent cross-team dependencies?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should you alter standup formats or composition? Does it make sense to have them all together, or separate? If the latter, should certain people attend the others, again to help mitigate the impact of Scrum of Scrums?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do both teams even need to do Scrum? Does it make more sense for one team to do kanban or another approach? I've had a few situations where one team was feature-focused and one team was content-focused so two approaches made sense. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2015-11-19T21:53:39.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16794" CreationDate="2015-11-19T21:59:09.537" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;With just two scrum teams, a true scrum-of-scrums may not even be needed. If your teams are co-located, they could do their daily scrum back to back and have a team member from the other team present to relay any important information. This becomes impractical after say 3 or 4 teams, which is when a SoS is a better solution (though scrum.org has started to recommend a concept called Nexus Daily Scrum, which is before, not after the normal daily scrums).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest problem when going to two teams is that both teams still should produce only 1 integrated increment to the product they're building. This requires coordination between the teams and possibly collective effort to ensure that you end up with a releasable increment. Your development practices will also need to be adjusted to support this. With multiple teams it becomes even more important to focus on finishing what you started before picking up new work (a concept called Work in Process Limits from the Lean world applies in these cases).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your product owner job will likely be a full-time role. One product owner for both teams is the recommendation from almost all agile practitioners. With two teams you will not yet need to delegate the role of the product owner as long as this person is available most of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another issue that will most certainly pop-up is cross team dependencies. You'll want to minimize these by the way work is ordered. If teams are heavily dependent on eachother it's far harder to operate as separate teams and you'll need a lot more cross team communication than when both teams can work mostly independent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A common pattern is to have a single Sprint Review for the product if the teams are working on one product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another common pattern is to split the Sprint Retrospective into two parts, one focusing on how the teams work together, the other focusing on how each team works as a group. For the second part the teams each go into their own area or a private meeting room to ensure the trust level is maximized when talking about possible conflicts, ways to optimize and roadblocks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On Refinement it helps to have a mix of both teams present. If you have been doing refinement with the whole team present, this may become too hard (too many people) and too expensive to invite everyone. It is important that outcomes and important choices are fed back into the teams so that everyone understands the reasoning behind the choices made. By having both teams participate together you ensure that any team potentially can pick up the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is some good literature available on this topic and there is a lot of guidance to be found in the larger scaling frameworks. Just remember, since you're scaling small, a lot of these large practices will be overkill. After the team has split itself up, see where you can improve and look at the resources available to you in these larger scaling models to look for common patterns. Try them, see if they work for you. If they don't go back to the basics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scaling frameworks to investigate for common patterns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Resources/The-Nexus-Guide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum.org Nexus&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://less.works/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Less&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SAFe&lt;/a&gt; - I'd stay away from this for now, it's focused on so much larger organisations that you're likely to pickup bad habits, instead of good practices.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors of Less have written two books on agile scaling, they provide loads of experiments they've seen working in certain situations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/1T21NyN&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scaling Lean &amp;amp; Agile development&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/1T21Pql&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Practices for Scaling Lean &amp;amp; Agile Development&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7393" LastActivityDate="2015-11-19T21:59:09.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16792" CreationDate="2015-11-19T23:21:43.803" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Very, very subjective. To sell anything to anyone you need to understand the context in which it will help them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What pain points are they having? Those are the things you want to target with your pitch. Much easier to sell water once you know the client is thirsty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, PMI have a good whitepaper that outlines some of the points you could pitch and it comes with some helpful statistics: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pmi.org/Business-Solutions/~/media/PDF/Business-Solutions/Value%20of%20Project%20Management_FINAL.ashx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.pmi.org/Business-Solutions/~/media/PDF/Business-Solutions/Value%20of%20Project%20Management_FINAL.ashx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some quotes from the paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Good project management discipline stopped us from spending money on projects that fail,” says Ron Kasabian, general manager at global IT giant Intel, Folsom, California, USA. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ninety percent of global senior executives ranked project management methods as either critical or somewhat important to their ability to deliver successful projects and remain competitive, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit survey. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lots of other quotes in there depending on how you wanted to focus your pitch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most will contain some variation of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduce risk&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increase project success rate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decrease project cost&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increase velocity / productivity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improve quality / satisfaction / uptake of outputs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That should give you a good start!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20840" LastActivityDate="2015-11-19T23:21:43.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16798" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-20T10:02:58.047" Score="0" ViewCount="164" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is a Spike?&#xA;Does it have story/task within the same?&#xA;How to estimate Spike&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Need to understand when can we add the same in a sprint and how much time it can maximum be of ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21238" LastActivityDate="2015-11-20T20:12:31.180" Title="All about Spike" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-11-22T12:13:37.010" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16801" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-20T12:02:24.993" Score="2" ViewCount="125" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am monitoring a schedule right now for a project that is about 57% complete (duration).  Looking at it at two different perspectives--Earned Schedule and Critical Path--I am finding results that differ quite substantially.  I know no predictive model is 100% valid and no two models will produce the exact same results but I was surprised by the degree of difference.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The schedule is a simple water fall, duration-based schedule that was constructed reasonably well, in that it is a constraint free schedule with no orphaned work packages and most of those work packages are decomposed where no duration is greater than two reporting periods.  The way progress has developed, the remaining work packages are all on the critical path and the schedule is showing a five day unfavorable finish variance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/D13IA.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/D13IA.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using Earned Schedule, the project is showing over 10 business days late, close to 12, and using the estimate at completion formula the project is likely to be over a month late.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ePNol.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ePNol.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work is probabilistic so I know that the five days late (CP) or the over a month late (ES) are two points within a range of likely results but I am surprised at the size of the variance between two predictions.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone seen this type of a discrepancy between two models before?  Could this simply be due to the sensitivity of the models and, if so, which model do you believe is more valid / accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for the help!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-12-03T13:28:43.010" Title="Earned Schedule results versus Critical Path and Finish Variance results" Tags="&lt;schedule-risk&gt;&lt;critical-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15868" CreationDate="2015-11-20T14:24:41.267" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't tried this yet, but it seems to me that you could add a resource to the mix  - call it &quot;Authorization&quot; - During 6/11/ to 8/31 &quot;Authorization is 100% occupied on the task &quot;Configuration freeze&quot; and unable to work on the task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That should prevent any work from occurring on that task during that period.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, I believe that project permits you to identify custom calendars - you should be able to create a custom calendar listing the freeze periods as non-working holidays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2015-11-20T14:24:41.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16803" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-20T16:36:22.363" Score="2" ViewCount="194" Body="&lt;p&gt;My work consists of a number of nearly identical projects and I'm wondering if I can create some kind of template in Microsoft Project. Hopefully this isn't too stupid a question as I've only ever really opened Project a few times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of the projects is a fixed number of sequential tasks leading to a final synchronisation, but for each there are a few key differences:&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The number of initial threads that join at the end&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The start and deadline dates&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The people doing each of the individual tasks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to create a template that I could set the number of threads, have it create a little gantt chart view, and then I could start work on assigning tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note, does Project integrate with Outlook and have a list of people/send them things to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21243" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-01-15T09:16:09.037" LastActivityDate="2019-01-15T09:16:09.037" Title="Creating a Template in MS Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16798" CreationDate="2015-11-20T17:59:51.080" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a team finds that they cannot estimate on a story because too much is unknown about it, they often decide to have a spike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A spike is a time-boxed investigation that has one purpose, to understand enough about a story to enable it to be estimated. The time-box is important, as the team is not attempting to complete the story. They are simply doing some investigation (prototyping, background reading, etc.) so that they understand the story better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the spike is complete the team can then bring the story in to a future sprint and will be confident they can estimate on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-11-20T17:59:51.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16805" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16821" CreationDate="2015-11-20T18:37:09.993" Score="4" ViewCount="246" Body="&lt;p&gt;In software development, technology is changing super fast. Therefore, learning new skills and testing new tools are indispensable&#xA;. If the schedule is tight, developers will not have enough time to learn, then it will affect our company in the long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is: should we allow developers to spend time at work &lt;strong&gt;every day&lt;/strong&gt; to learn or test new tools? How many hours should be enough?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21150" LastEditorUserId="21150" LastEditDate="2015-11-20T19:01:09.573" LastActivityDate="2015-11-30T19:41:39.980" Title="Ratio of learning time and working time at work in software development" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;learning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16798" CreationDate="2015-11-20T20:12:31.180" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules/spike.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;extremeprogramming.org&lt;/a&gt; a spike is a proof of concept: &quot;Create spike solutions to figure out answers to tough technical or design problems&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You create a spike when you are uncertain on how to continue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-11-20T20:12:31.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16805" CreationDate="2015-11-20T23:21:36.737" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, you shouldn't allow it.  You should set an expectation and reinforce a culture where the continuous improvement (CI) is the norm.  There is no magic hour split, but if people are spending 100% of their time trying to become more efficient at what they do (aka just doing short-term work) they will become less effective at their jobs over the long-term.  Individuals and the company will not evolve without a strong CI mindset.  If thats 80/20 or 60/40 or whatever, it depends a lot on the person, their experience level, and the day to day tradoffs of learning for the future or focusing today's effort on meeting short-term goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are trying to measure hours worked vs hours spent learning thats a separate problem.  These activities often go hand and hand, and this form of measurement is often viewed as a form of appraisal that promotes negative behaviors from individual employees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stop measuring and start trying to build a culture where CI is the norm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastEditorUserId="12242" LastEditDate="2015-11-30T19:41:39.980" LastActivityDate="2015-11-30T19:41:39.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16809" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16812" CreationDate="2015-11-21T13:08:01.673" Score="3" ViewCount="293" Body="&lt;p&gt;I learned in class that the cost management on a project could be graphed as an S-Curve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Low in the beginning but then very high and stays high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have an idea why the graph stays high even when within the closure/release of the project when the resources graph drops at the same phase?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20890" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2015-11-24T06:03:39.833" LastActivityDate="2015-11-24T06:03:39.833" Title="S-Curve in Cost Management" Tags="&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16555" CreationDate="2015-11-21T13:15:26.203" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with the others in that it sounds like you want to document formal and prescribed processes, which should be avoided in agile IMO. One key thing though, is that you mention it's going to UAT and going to the tester, but hopefully they've been testing all along and this is really about acceptance. If your organization requires that level of documentation, I'd recommend:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Ready for Acceptance&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; - the story is ready for acceptance by the responsible party, typically the Product Owner. In some cases, the developer or QA representative will walk through it with the Product Owner if this was not done throughout the iteration/sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21249" LastActivityDate="2015-11-21T13:15:26.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16805" CreationDate="2015-11-21T13:31:42.587" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As usual, the answer is: it &lt;strong&gt;entirely&lt;/strong&gt; depends on the context. &#xA;Learning is not an on/off process, nor you can ensure proper learning in all conditions by allowing people to have, let's say, 1h a day of &quot;learning time&quot;. This might be beneficial for some people under some contexts and completely useless for other people in a different context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Topics are different, learning curves are different and, last but not least, people are different. I might be wrong here, but looks like the underlying problem is more related to the &quot;tight schedule&quot; which stifle any kind of proper learning process, and I'd rather address this problem than the learning issue if that's the situation. You'd better cure the disease rather than the symptom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16362" LastActivityDate="2015-11-21T13:31:42.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16809" CreationDate="2015-11-21T13:32:22.027" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The S curve is cumulative.  At the end of the project, when resources begin to drop, you expect to see the slope of the curve at the top to decrease as compared to the middle of the project when resources are high.  But you will never see the curve go down because it is cumulative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-11-21T13:32:22.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16562" CreationDate="2015-11-21T13:37:21.393" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it all depends on the desired outcomes and the expected temperature of the session. Here are a few recommendations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do it differently than how you do a retro with a full team. Anything&#xA;can be retro'd, but standard retros with teams are different than&#xA;what this sounds like.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find out how they feel about the overall output (quality and quantity), based on their experience. Do not attack with your own,&#xA;listening is key. Based on the results, dig in to understand their&#xA;experience and expectations. Set specific follow-ups to work towards&#xA;shared expectations and understandings. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find out how they feel about the amount of time spent on planning vs throughout the iteration/sprint. If there was a lot of time spent&#xA;with the team throughout, this is typically a sign of insufficient&#xA;planning. If that's the case, was it due to a lack of diligence or&#xA;potentially (dare I say) a lack of preparation going into it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21249" LastActivityDate="2015-11-21T13:37:21.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16815" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-23T08:11:47.337" Score="5" ViewCount="216" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, I know, that there is no such entity as Sprint 0 in Scrum. Also, I know, that architecture should not be nailed down during the first Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well,  all these principles work fine for us. We start from the prototype in the first Sprint, then gather feedback and in the second or third Sprint we understand the general customer's requirement well and the architecture becomes stable. But all projects were small (max duration is a little bigger then a year with 12 involved persons).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what should I do with architecture in a large (enterprise level) projects, in which several teams are participating? I believe, that they can't start work together without preliminary coordination. For that coordination a basic architecture should be done first. And for a basic architecture we need to do general requirement gathering and a rough analysis of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First of all, Scrum didn't provide any special events for these activities (like Sprint 0).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Second, the flow, that I described below looks like a waterfall, not agile.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What we shall do with a complex projects, which demands that we gather general requirements and create an architecture before its implementation? Are there any best practices for this? How do we solve this problem within Scrum?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastActivityDate="2015-11-24T16:18:55.873" Title="When should the architecture of an enterprise level project be created in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;enterprise&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16815" CreationDate="2015-11-23T14:06:31.110" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One suggestion: Create a scrum team, give the output you require to them as their product to create. Run sprints in the usual manner until you have what you need. At that point the team can continue working on the core shared infrastructure used by other teams, or could be disbanded and (ideally) the members moved onto various other teams which will use the shared architecture. If the latter, I'd suggest the original team still meet every few weeks to share knowledge on how the architecture is evolving for each of their teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20707" LastActivityDate="2015-11-23T14:06:31.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16815" CreationDate="2015-11-23T14:09:37.240" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;thank you for this hard question. My answer is two-fold. First about your belief (&quot;I believe, that they can't start work together without preliminary coordination.&quot;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember principle 11 behind the agile manifesto. Those amazingly senior guys who had worked on huge projects for large enterprises agreeing on:&#xA;&quot;The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.&quot; Architectures EMERGE. I know it's not a simple thing to believe in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe the best link with detailed information on how to actually do it:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://less.works/less/technical-excellence/architecture-design.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://less.works/less/technical-excellence/architecture-design.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some important things from there:&#xA;Don’t let architects hand off to ‘coders’.&#xA;Very early, develop a walking skeleton with tracer code.&#xA;Do customer-centric features with major architectural impact first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21264" LastActivityDate="2015-11-23T14:09:37.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16818" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16820" CreationDate="2015-11-23T22:30:42.043" Score="6" ViewCount="527" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for a small company (22 people), whereby the development team works on both new features (40%) and support/maintenance tasks (60%). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have several account/project managers who prioritise the clients tickets within Jira using a Kanban board, and we have daily stand-ups to discuss the tasks at hand, the progress, and any blockers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main frustration for everyone is the lack of visibility when allocating work out to a developer, and this leads to issues with some developers frequently being in high-demand. This often results in individuals getting pulled from one project to another, because PM A and PM B both have deadlines to reach, yet PM A and PM B are not really aware of each others priorities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly we're not in a position to split the team into 2 teams specialising on development and support; and with 20+ customer accounts to develop/support/maintain it would seem unrealistic to plan a developers schedule too far in advance. This is mainly due to the level of complexity and urgency of the tickets we get through, which can take a developer out for a considerable amount of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We've discussed internally about creating a high-level schedule for project work, and the resource needed, but we're stuck on how to progress this further because of the maintenance/support work, which makes up such a huge part of our business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We've seen some tremendous benefits having introduced a PM methodology like Kanban, and we've seen some huge improvements in customer satisfaction and our overall cycle time. But I think we now need a clearer way of defining our schedule and giving the team visibility on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advise on how you think we might tackle this would be gratefully received.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21268" LastActivityDate="2015-11-25T03:06:36.113" Title="How to manage a schedule across multiple PMs when using a single team for both development &amp; support?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16818" CreationDate="2015-11-23T23:25:59.263" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The main frustration for everyone is the lack of visibility when allocating work out to a developer, and this leads to issues with some developers frequently being in high-demand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is this happening? Kanban is typically used with &quot;pull work&quot; methodology, so work shouldn't be &quot;allocated&quot; to a specific developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have visibility of the work (thanks to Kanban and Jira). You have visibility of the resources (central pool of Devs). It sounds like you have the pieces of the puzzle there, just no adherence to process to make it work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How are you currently enforcing your ratios (40/60 split)? How is it &lt;em&gt;meant&lt;/em&gt; to work (even if it isn't)? This process is vital if you want it to actually work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is the Kanban board not providing visibility for PM A and B of their competing priorities and where they sit on the priority list? It should be doing that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edits Below in relation to questions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You mention that we shouldn't allocate work to individuals, but in our scenario each developer has a different strength / level of expertise or simply has a deeper understanding of a customers setup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you're creating bottlenecks. Wouldn't there be overall efficiency to be gained (even if it were in trade for some short term pain) to getting developers cross-skilled? If Dev A has always worked for Customer X...what happens when Dev A is sick? Or leaves the company?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is some reason why your devs can't cross-skill then Kanban as a method can still work as each person pulls the highest priority item that they can work on with their skillset. Although it sounds like the underlying problem in this instance is the lack of team cross-skill and over-dependence on individuals. That isn't a good base to work from going forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But if you have say 5 projects or more (along side your support work), which all have different PMs, which at some point in the development all need developer A, then how do you plan that within a Kanban board, so you're not all needing him at the same time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't. Basically what you're saying is &quot;I have one lane on my highway. How can I get 5 cars to drive on that 1 lane at the exact same time?&quot;. No matter what methodology you use, you can't. The underlying problem is a capacity problem (the 1 lane). And the capacity problem seems to be caused because you're allocating individuals instead of resources. A developer should be a developer. Yes they'll have areas of expertise, but they should be cross-functional enough to cover more than one niche or one customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you split teams it isn't going to address the problem. PMs should have no say as to what resource they get from the pool, they get whoever is available and has the skills to work on their job at the time that it's the highest priority. That is efficient. The way you've currently got it is very inefficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20840" LastEditorUserId="20840" LastEditDate="2015-11-24T22:10:31.450" LastActivityDate="2015-11-24T22:10:31.450" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16818" CreationDate="2015-11-24T01:05:24.693" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should clearly define time slots within a week where the required resources should be 100% dedicated to your project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like, John works Wednesday's and Friday's afternoons, Mary works Monday's, Wednesday's and Friday's full time, and so on. Incorporate the resource availability in your schedule in order to have an accurate depiction of task durations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing this way, your projects may take longer, but if John or Mary need to be moved to do something more urgent, your schedule may not suffer because you will have the opportunity to exchange the dedicated days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based in your schedule, comunicate these resources availability to the broader audience (other PMs and SDMs) and have regular Resource Planning meetings with all the PMs/SDMs so that the overall resource allocation can be known, shaped and agreed by all without bringing unforeseen impacts to anyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you guys should have or nominate someone who can make a decision on the conflicting priorities (in cases where people cannot reach an agreement) and take the ownership on its decision impacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a very common problem even in bigger companies that perform under the utilisation model, and the key is to have a strong Resource Plan communicated and agreed by everyone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20923" LastActivityDate="2015-11-24T01:05:24.693" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16805" CreationDate="2015-11-24T07:08:57.553" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a project manager, you want your team not only finishes within tight deadlines, but also develop. This is in fact a reasonable need that managers in general should think about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first advice is, like others have already comment: Don’t separate time to learn from time to work. Reason: Developers will see the “time to learn” as “time to do anything they want”, and that’s a waste of time. The best way is to create a learning &amp;amp; developing culture where everyone keep in mind that they must work and develop at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to do it? There is no definitive answer for this, but I will share you real story of my company where I work as a PM. My company is 2 years old with less than 20 developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We don’t separate time to learn and time to work, but we encourage ones who learn and improve. We have a storage of “library” where developers can create and share their utility functions, slides, snippet of code, etc… all in one centralized place. They can register to be speaker at company’s restrospective meeting (We work in Agile/Scrum). So after the normal retrospective sections, we have 15-30 mins to discuss what our developers have learnt and will apply in their next tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do we encourage developers to do so? Simple, by incentive. During my time as a PM, I find out that it is very hard to create KPIs and assess developers’ performance. In our company, we use “learning attitude &amp;amp; result” as the most important KPI to assess our developers when thinking about bonuses and promotion. So in our retro meeting, the developers present new knowledge, and we rate their contribution from 1-&gt;5. The ones who contribute the most, and the ones whose contribution receives most rating, will surely have big bonus and promotion. So, in summary, instead of give them fixed time to learn, I ask them to show me their result of learning, and reward them for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no definite right and wrong about this method of assessment, but so far we are happy using our method. And we haven’t regretted it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21101" LastActivityDate="2015-11-24T07:08:57.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16815" CreationDate="2015-11-24T08:23:52.137" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should consider impact of change here. If it is small (it can be reduced), Scrum is a good option. However, it can possibly be better if you nail down a few things in advance - interfaces and data exchange format between systems (developed by parallel teams), general requirements for scalability, maintainability (standard format of log files used by enterprise, mandatory authentication and auditing formats, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When refining those requirements, you should consider schedule of the entire program (connected projects), not only yours, because if you don't do so, it can cause significant delay and rework in other projects, that depend on your input. In this case a more waterfall-like approach is needed, and somehow, Scrum rules will be crossed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You may choose the approach where an architecture team agrees upon those decisions in front. In this case, there will be decisions made outside of the Scrum process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You may choose to introduce design tasks into a product backlog and dedicate a sprint or two for creating them as the first activity of the project, in this case those sprints will not produce a potentially shippable product increment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You may choose to do a regular sprint and grow those architectural decisions. If other projects can wait until those work items are stable, this could be fine approach, they can take your result and build upon them. However, if they need the results earlier, at some point, product management will raise an issue in your project for causing a lot of rework / delay in other delivery streams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can accept the statement that the best architectures are grown instead of designed (although I don't see such great examples of it in building bridges or making cars - and even in software industry, solutions tend to be more &quot;beautiful&quot; if they are designed in a coherent way, which is easier if the overall architecture is decided at the beginning). However, at enterprise scale, architectural perfection (or pm methodology purity) is usually not the most important success criteria of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16711" LastActivityDate="2015-11-24T08:23:52.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16815" CreationDate="2015-11-24T09:23:08.290" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is simple: architecture should be defined BEFORE build, regardless if it is scrum, waterfall, etc. doesn't really matter if you define just a portion of architecture to support only the first sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simple fact of life: Architecture comes BEFORE build. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In future sprints you can scrap/adjust/enhance/redefine/whatever the bare minimum architecture defined, but it doesn't change the order of what comes first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20923" LastActivityDate="2015-11-24T09:23:08.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16818" CreationDate="2015-11-24T11:54:32.037" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From some of your other responses it's clear your 'team' is really a group of individuals with their own specialities. So, for example if the team doesn't complete some work it is unlikely it was in more than one developers power to have made it happen. Hence, they are a group of individuals, not a cohesive team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best thing you could do long term is to make it so work could be shared between developers. There will likely always be areas of the code base and certain specialities individuals will have but if you can minimise this for routine work you will go some way to solving your issues. The other benefit of this is that you are at less risk of losing serious amounts of knowledge if a single developer leaves for some reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short term... I'd suggest multiple backlog lists or labels (not sure best way to model this in Jira) so you can have one for each developer and one for general work anyone can do. This should make it clearer what is on an individuals plate so the PMs can be more aware of likely timescales when trying to schedule something. This is certainly not ideal, but it's something you can implement quickly while you move towards the above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20707" LastActivityDate="2015-11-24T11:54:32.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16818" CreationDate="2015-11-24T12:47:28.300" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Couple of observations (which I admit are shots in the dark because I don't have the insight into your project that you do).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Your PM's are failing.  PM's are judged according to whether projects close successfully. By not communicating with one another and deconflicting resource demands, the PMs are both failing their responsibility to their team, and to their sponsors.  The PMs' must coordinate with one another to ensure mutual success. (not TTK Droid seems to have said this with more tact than I have.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Maintenance/support isn't a project; it is possible that it is a portfolio of tiny projects, but unless there is a discrete and unique outcome, it isn't a project.  I'm not saying this to split hairs, but to acknowledge that whatever &quot;project management&quot; is being done by that PM needs to be adapted.  The PM in charge of maintenance is in an orange jumpsuit job - s/he cannot succeed, because the needs of maintenance/support are infinite.   There is no way that this PM can negotiate in good faith with the development PM, because the support PM's need for infinite resources cannot be compared with the development PM's need for finite resources.  I think that Kanban can be your salvation here, but it will require effort to plan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) I'm not in software development, but as I understand it, some companies have solved this by establishing a proportion of support.  e.g. &quot;We will devote 70% of our time to development and 30% to support&quot;.  Then the two PM's can negotiate  for individual staff time based on that proportion.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Both PM's are (in my not so humble opinion) obliged to communicate the problem to the respective sponsors, and propose a framework for an answer that will satisfy all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck - sounds like a problem with no good solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2015-11-24T12:47:28.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16815" CreationDate="2015-11-24T16:18:55.873" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;How much work should you do up front? Well, as much as you need and no more of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I find works well on large teams is to just get started. You should get enough backlog ready for the teams to start their first Sprint. Bare in mind that they will not deliver a lot as the basic infrastructure and understanding is not in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hardest part will be dealing with dependencies between teams, and that includes architectural issues. I would create an Integration Team that can help coach and mentor the individual teams in DevOps, Architecture, Contracts, and other dependant issues that crop up. Kind of like a Scrum Master, but for the Product instead of the Process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Resources/The-Nexus-Guide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.scrum.org/Resources/The-Nexus-Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the Integration Team should try to avoid doing the work, and may be part time representatives of the Development Teams, you need someone that is accountable and responsible for delivering the Done increment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This group will help coordinate the types of emergent architectural decisions that need to be made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastActivityDate="2015-11-24T16:18:55.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16827" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16828" CreationDate="2015-11-24T20:18:17.760" Score="4" ViewCount="50191" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the definitions and relationship between Goal, Objective, Scope, and Deliverables? Upon searching, I'm seeing conflicting and overlapping definitions of these terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21285" LastActivityDate="2019-08-20T13:04:26.507" Title="Goal vs. Objective vs. Scope vs. Deliverable" Tags="&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16827" CreationDate="2015-11-24T22:32:00.313" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Goal&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Objective&lt;/strong&gt; are very similar. As a rule, goals are a bit broader and describe the direction you're attempting to move in, while objectives are more specific and are often measurable. That said, definitions may vary and I would try to agree on a definition in your team, department, or company so that everyone is on the same page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scope&lt;/strong&gt; is the body of work necessary to accomplish something. You'll often hear people refer to something as in scope or out of scope. This is meant to say that some task or deliverable is or is not in the agreed-upon work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Deliverables&lt;/strong&gt; are the tangible things created from the work. Traditional project management often uses this in a very concrete way. A particular piece of documentation, source code, and a compiled executable are all deliverables. In the past decade or so, however, I more commonly hear it refer to capabilities in an application. For example, if I added the ability to change a user's password into my application this week, I may call that new capability a deliverable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-11-25T12:36:59.767" LastActivityDate="2015-11-25T12:36:59.767" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16818" CreationDate="2015-11-25T03:06:36.113" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have not mentioned if you are an ISV working on one or more products which you also support in terms of defects and enhancement requests from customers.  But assuming you are, you are in a very similar position to what we do. Our team is also similar sized - in fact smaller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are a product company (and we build and sell a Kanban product - so we put that to good use in our development environment).  We have the exact same challenges that you have mentioned.  Sales and Support wants us to prioritize customer-reported defects (very justifiably so) and also customer-requested feature enhancements.  Product Management wants to build out the roadmap, specially new features that will help us differentiate ourselves in the market.  Engineering itself wants to make performance/ security related enhancements as well as work on technical debt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have solved these issues by using the following processes and rules for ourselves - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We have kept the Dev team together (not split them by Dev and Maintenance/ Support - the latter always get disheartened if left to do only support).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We have a Kanban board with horizontal swim lanes for each product - and each lane has an input (Ready) queue with a well defined and &lt;strong&gt;respected&lt;/strong&gt; WIP Limit. The only team that has its own lane is the Documentation team.  We do have some level of specialization between client-side and server-side programming, but by and large we try as much as possible to rotate team members between different product modules/ technologies.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8zB5I.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8zB5I.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We have a weekly Replenishment meeting that is held between Sales/ Support, Engg and Product Management and we jointly decide what items will make it to the Ready queue next. This is respected by everyone and is managed on a daily basis between the Product Manager and the Engg Lead. The one IMPORTANT thing we have also decided is that between Prod Mgt, Sales/ Support and Engineering, there is a reasonable fixed allocation of new items - roughly about 60:25:15.  So at any time, both the Ready queue and the main WIP columns should exhibit this ratio.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We have a daily standup that resolves any conflicts as also deals with any expedited items (usually production defects ONLY) - and we limit the expedited items to 1 in progress at any time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the last 4 years, we have reworked our board design 3 times to make sure we have a process that works for us. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I'd say the key things for you to tackle are - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Define a prioritization/ replenishment process that everyone agrees to and respects.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make sure the Backlog and the Replenished items are fully visible. If needed, define a special Backlog lane on the board itself (though, I'm not sure JIRA supports multiple Swim Lanes)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If needed, define personal WIP limits for each team member so no one is overburdened.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Establish a meeting cadence for Replenishment meetings (weekly?) and Retrospectives (monthly? release-end?) which allows all stakeholders to particiate in critical processes that ensure smooth flow of work for the entire team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Over a period of time, figure out cross-training of your team members to make it possible for them to handle multiple modules/ work-types.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Review and reorganize your Kanban board to reflect the real process your team is following/ needs to follow.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HTH!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2015-11-25T03:06:36.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9127" CreationDate="2015-11-25T15:08:37.703" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;That depends entirely on the organization.Main difference between Project Coordinator and Project Manager is the scale of responsibility. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently I’ve found this toolkit &lt;a href=&quot;http://project-brief.casual.pm/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://project-brief.casual.pm/&lt;/a&gt; Might be in use for you or anyone who is looking information about Project Manager/Coordinator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21294" LastActivityDate="2015-11-25T15:08:37.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16803" CreationDate="2015-11-25T20:49:38.040" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can save any MS Project file and call it a &quot;template&quot; for future work.  You'll also want to build a checklist of steps to take when using such a template, for example, (in MS Project 2013)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;File-&gt;Info-&gt;Project Information-&gt;Set start date&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;File-&gt;Resource-&gt;Resource Sheet-&gt; Add and remove resources as required&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In GANTT chart view, change the name of task  ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other per project customizations as needed. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is indeed a lot of common content between these plans, you could save yourself some time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2015-11-25T20:49:38.040" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16834" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-26T11:04:20.817" Score="3" ViewCount="271" Body="&lt;p&gt;My product has two types of users: producers (i.e., admin panel users) and consumers (end users).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consumers are able to interact with an app and producers are able to process consumers' requests from the admin panel. Let's examine a simple process, say ordering something:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WWeku.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems fine if I describe consumer story only, but I need to map &lt;strong&gt;producer's stories&lt;/strong&gt; too. &lt;strong&gt;Where should I add them?&lt;/strong&gt; I see two ways to solve the issue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Add them to the same map with a different color (there would actually be multiple cards instead of one for the producer):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2vYzL.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't seem like a good idea to me, because I'm &quot;mixing&quot; two user types. I haven't seen any examples that do it like this (which disturbs me).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make a completely different map for the admin panel, where only producer stories will be described. This is not an ideal solution too, because it would seem like a completely different product, detached from the consumer's app.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a better approach for this situation? I want to visualize the whole process, yet not clutter it up. Maybe there's a way to add another layer to the map to divide user stories or something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21305" LastActivityDate="2015-11-27T19:01:46.973" Title="User story mapping - producer/consumer process" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="77" CreationDate="2015-11-26T14:46:56.233" Score="0" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Leadership&lt;/strong&gt;, command authority. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Quick sifting abilities&lt;/strong&gt;. re-evaluate project priorities frequently. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Keep excellent communication with stakeholders&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Empathy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Excellent expertise in project management.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20710" LastEditorUserId="20710" LastEditDate="2015-11-26T15:27:19.703" LastActivityDate="2015-11-26T15:27:19.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16834" CreationDate="2015-11-26T19:59:23.603" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no problem having multiple types of users along the same axis in the map. That's why the usual story structure is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;As A ...&#xA;I Want To ...&#xA;So That I Can ...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your &lt;code&gt;As A&lt;/code&gt; portion changes depending on the intended audience (Producers or Consumers). It's quite rare that you'd only have one user on the horizontal, the only reason the examples would show that is because they'd be &quot;keeping it simple&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could have swim lanes or different colours if you feel like it helps you in some way, but the traditional story format uses the &lt;code&gt;As A ...&lt;/code&gt; specifically to cater for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20840" LastActivityDate="2015-11-26T19:59:23.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16839" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-26T22:52:27.463" Score="3" ViewCount="58" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to watch an entire Jira repo (Mesos) and can't seem to find a way to get email notification a la Github for each update. Closest I got was here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/BSERV-4203&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/BSERV-4203&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this possible if I'm not a project admin?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21311" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T21:09:05.347" Title="Watching an Entire Repo in Jira" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16841" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-27T14:32:59.477" Score="1" ViewCount="104" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you ever worked with a stakeholder who revelled in being known as the busiest man in the office? Everything is an elevator pitch? They've seen it all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How best to pitch the benefit of going agile over waterfall in less than 200 words?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19267" LastActivityDate="2015-11-28T19:03:47.987" Title="Selling agile to stakeHolders hostile to change" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;clients&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16834" CreationDate="2015-11-27T19:01:46.973" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can do whatever you like in a User Story Map, that's one of the reasons it's a very successful process! Depending on the project, I've taken a few different tactics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On one project we created a top level &quot;blue&quot; card for &quot;Check Day - Clients&quot; and a top level card for &quot;Check Day - Staff&quot; since the story of how they do their work on check day was so different that we found it easier to think about them as totally separate units.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On another project of mine, we found that we only had 1-2 &quot;yellow&quot; cards that were fundamentally different, so we just used a different color to separate them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a third project, we focused on creating sections of the user map based on user role (like my first solution) and then after we had fleshed out key parts and identified gaps in our knowledge, we merged the maps into one super big one using &quot;release&quot; slices in Stories on Board to identify how we'd tackle the actually build. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20915" LastActivityDate="2015-11-27T19:01:46.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16844" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-27T19:38:27.050" Score="0" ViewCount="60" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several back-end developers and front-end developers want to become full stacks by taking other tasks other than their specialties. For example, back-end developer wants to take some front-end tasks. As a team lead, I did let them do it in last sprint. They are kind of like the way switching roles, but the overall development speed becomes slower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a better way to manage this situations that keep my developers happy and keep productivity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21319" LastActivityDate="2015-11-30T10:03:35.517" Title="How to properly rotate developer roles?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16841" CreationDate="2015-11-28T09:32:39.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to quote the book &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scruminc.com/new-scrum-the-book/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum The Art of Doing Twice The Work In Half the Time&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Venture capital firms like OpenView Venture Partners in Boston, where&#xA;  I’m an adviser, say that Scrum offers too big a competitive advantage&#xA;  not to use it. These are not warm and fuzzy people; these are&#xA;  gimlet-eyed money men, and they simply say, “&lt;strong&gt;The results are&#xA;  indisputable. Companies have two choices: change or die.&lt;/strong&gt;”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mayor thing here is that if a competitor really starts working Agile (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_programming_practices&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;+XP practises&lt;/a&gt;) and builds disrupting technology or reimplement your product. They will keeps improving it in a very fast steady pace and not slow down until they have overtaken you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2015-11-28T09:32:39.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16846" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-28T18:20:11.363" Score="2" ViewCount="1480" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to add a task to my WBS/Gantt Chart in MS Project, but not number it as it is a task (Kickoff meeting) that I want to fall under the heading: Project Administration. I need this to be a general task that is not part of the Project WBS I have created but somehow still show up on it as a general item. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21327" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-08T22:28:58.620" LastActivityDate="2018-11-08T22:28:58.620" Title="Adding unnumbered task in MS Project 2013" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16841" CreationDate="2015-11-28T19:03:47.987" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would turn your question around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the problem your stakeholder is trying to solve? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it shortening time to delivery? Is it the ability rapidly adapt to change? Is it the efficiency of the delivery teams?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The agile approach is an answer to a question (or questions). It is not an end in itself. Work out what the stakeholders want and then evaluate if agile helps them get it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-11-28T19:03:47.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16848" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-29T12:17:38.403" Score="3" ViewCount="1099" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;12 principles&lt;/a&gt; behind &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Agile manifesto&lt;/a&gt;. One is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is&#xA;  essential&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is exactly meant by this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6362" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2015-12-03T12:50:16.377" LastActivityDate="2015-12-09T00:08:27.873" Title="Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential - What does this mean?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16628" CreationDate="2015-11-29T12:21:58.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;ITIL is into IT Services Management. Since you are a developer it will not make much difference. But ITIL and those concepts better to be aware of them since you an IT professional. Might help in your career one day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6362" LastActivityDate="2015-11-29T12:21:58.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16594" CreationDate="2015-11-29T12:28:04.050" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Traditional Project Management and being a Agile coach playing a Scrum Master role are at two different ends. If you don't know any thing on Agile Practices first I would like to suggest you to take PMI-ACP and Scrum Alliance SCM certifications. May be you can join a company with agile culture and shadow how the scrum master takes the daily stand up meetings and learn the theories first. You need to think agile and adopt your self to the discipline to become an successful scrum master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6362" LastActivityDate="2015-11-29T12:28:04.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16848" CreationDate="2015-11-29T17:17:56.050" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It means agile teams do the work that needs to be done to get the desired result. And not more. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_aren%27t_gonna_need_it&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;YAGNI&lt;/a&gt; is one possible take on it. Do not do more than necessary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eliminating waste is a core component of agile practices and a feature built that was not needed in the end is waste that can be eliminated. Through proper strategical planning and proper tactical execution with whatever practices your product uses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2015-11-29T17:17:56.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16846" CreationDate="2015-11-29T20:56:20.630" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid the WBS or Outline numbers will automatically number the task.  You can use a spare text field (text1) to set up your own WBS codes and simply skip adding one to the task in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2015-11-29T20:56:20.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16763" CreationDate="2015-11-29T21:30:12.930" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;An approach that works for me.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create the 11 day duration task and, as you noted, set it as Fixed Duration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Split the screen (right click in the Gantt chart area and choose Show Split) to show the Task Form.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the Task Form, click under Resources and select Resource 1, in the Work field enter 24.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click underneath Resource 1 and select Resource 2 from the list.  In the work field enter 32 hours.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Repeat for resource 3 entering the work.  Click OK in the Task form to assign the 3 resources each with his/her amount of work.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you view the Task Usage view you will see Resource 1 scheduled for 2.18 hours of work per day for each of the 11 days.  Resource 2 is scheduled for 2.92 hours of work per day and Resource 3 is scheduled for 1.37 hours of work per day.  If you add the Peak field to the table side (left) of the view, you'll see Project has calculated 27%, 36%, and 17% assignment units for each of the resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastEditorUserId="30284" LastEditDate="2017-10-30T09:52:59.200" LastActivityDate="2017-10-30T09:52:59.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16844" CreationDate="2015-11-30T02:53:20.113" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there a better way to manage this situations that keep my developers happy and keep productivity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's good to establish a certain amount of points up-front that will go into &quot;individual progression&quot; time - that way you're limiting the amount of investment you're making each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the other key - calling it out as an investment, because it is. The more cross-skilled your team is, the more coverage you have (to cover leave, or resignation) and the greater ability you have to swarm on bottlenecks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But like all investments, there's an initial cost to the payoff. The cost is velocity/productivity. Sacrifice some productivity now to get benefits later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like most things moderation is key. If you invest too many points in developer development then you'll kill your velocity. Too little and you're not progressing your team. Find the balance that works for you, pitch it to all your business stakeholders as an &quot;investment&quot;, and make sure that you set a clear limit (may be as simple as one developer per sprint is allowed outside their comfort zone). Once it's in place make sure you measure overall velocity and ensure that it is increasing in the longer term, because it should be (more cross skilled developers should lead to greater productivity).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20840" LastActivityDate="2015-11-30T02:53:20.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16844" CreationDate="2015-11-30T10:03:35.517" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good way to share knowledge is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_programming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pair programming&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a team I would watch &lt;a href=&quot;https://vimeo.com/7814261&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Niclas Nilsson &amp;amp; Hans Brattberg - The Pair Programming Show&quot;&lt;/a&gt; (The audio is not so good, but they explain pair programming and its pitfalls as the best)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2015-11-30T10:03:35.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16856" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-30T14:16:15.347" Score="0" ViewCount="130" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to collapse tasks in my &quot;DONE&quot; swimlane, as this aggregates a lot of items and quickly forces every project to be very long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This causes me to lose overview over other swimlanes, containing less items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to set a theme for each swimlane, so that tasks in the &lt;code&gt;DONE&lt;/code&gt; swimlane only show their title and number?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21337" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T11:20:39.617" Title="Can I collapse tasks in a specific swimlane?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16857" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-11-30T15:19:27.107" Score="5" ViewCount="5656" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team follows test driven development, and sometimes extreme programming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the latter, they would often complete a user story without testing, and then write the tests afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if I have a Trello card and the Trello card is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Write tests for the API&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is not a user story i.e. &quot;As a user, I want , so that....&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but never the less the story related to that is completed (the functionality), where this was not done at the time due to time constraints. Currently I just write a Trello card like that, and put it in the sprint which contains a lot of user stories. Is this the correct approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2016-07-05T01:49:18.043" Title="How do I write user stories for Testing tasks?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16858" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16866" CreationDate="2015-11-30T15:42:25.697" Score="1" ViewCount="182" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to improve the Agile process by which a team works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They currently have a Kanban board but they aren't necessarily using it effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have 2 types of tasks:&#xA;1) New project work - some could be development, some could be researching a new tool etc&#xA;2) Issues which arise - bugs and issues which arise out of the blue which they need to sort out immediately&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately the nature of the two types of work make it difficult to follow a prioritised backlog, enforce WIP limits etc. Does anyone have any ideas how to improve this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So issues are always higher priority than project work, so teams always have to 'pause' project work to handle issues which are unrelated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team can be thought of as second line support and R&amp;amp;D of new work often unrelated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-12-01T13:17:15.447" LastActivityDate="2015-12-01T13:17:15.447" Title="What is a good process to use for project work and issues?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16859" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16865" CreationDate="2015-11-30T16:38:19.000" Score="1" ViewCount="133" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to introduce my Scrum team to Kanban and I am not sure how best to approach it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any good ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastActivityDate="2015-12-01T11:08:21.543" Title="Retrospective to introduce Kanban" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16860" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16861" CreationDate="2015-11-30T17:29:45.997" Score="9" ViewCount="9108" Body="&lt;p&gt;What's the reasoning behind the 8/80h rule? Why a work package must not be less than 8h and not be bigger than 80h of work? This is just a given number easy to remember or there is some more detailed argument for these numbers? I haven't found any explanation for the numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18099" LastActivityDate="2020-01-21T19:44:09.993" Title="What's the logic behind 8/80 rule" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;&lt;schedule&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16860" CreationDate="2015-11-30T17:51:30.760" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you assume an employee puts in 8h days, this rule would mean that a task takes no longer than two man-weeks and no less than one man-day. This ensures that the task is large enough to be meaningful, but not so long as to have no visibility into what is happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, a task that takes 4h may not be worth doing--it could be wrapped up with something larger. A task that takes longer than 2 weeks may be too long and complex, and should be broken up into smaller tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16314" LastActivityDate="2015-11-30T17:51:30.760" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16857" CreationDate="2015-11-30T17:55:04.740" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing automated tests should still be part of each user story, as part of your definition of done for each user story. A user story should not be called complete without appropriate tests written for it--it doesn't matter which order you complete the work in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to expand on this a little more/clarify: don't call things done until they're done. If &quot;Done&quot; means you have automated tests, the task isn't done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16314" LastEditorUserId="16314" LastEditDate="2015-11-30T18:26:58.473" LastActivityDate="2015-11-30T18:26:58.473" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16863" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16864" CreationDate="2015-11-30T22:57:55.120" Score="1" ViewCount="367" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a Microsoft Project 2013 schedule where I would like to have an overall task that takes 100hrs from 3 resources. ResourceA and ResourceB will be fully loaded for 90% of that time. ResourceC is there for support and I only expect him to be used for 10% of effort spread, but used for the full duration of the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;|--------------TASK---------------|  100 hr, 5.6d;&#xA;|-------TASK Implementation-------|  90 hr, 5.6; ResourceA[100%], ResourceB[100%]&#xA;|-------TASK Support/Review-------|  10 hr, 5.6d; ResourceC[???%]&#xA;&#xA;| Task Name           | Work    | duration | Resource Name        |&#xA;| TASK                | 100 hrs | 5.6d     |                      |&#xA;| TASK Implementation | 90 hrs  | 5.6d     | ResourceA, ResourceB |&#xA;| TASK Suuport/Review | 10 hrs  | 6.6d     | ResouceC [???%]      |  &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creating the task for ResourceA and ResourceB is straightforward. But, how do I create a task for ResourceC where it is fixed to the start and stop of the other task and the loading of ResourceC is variable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21346" LastActivityDate="2015-12-01T10:30:08.537" Title="Creating an MS Project task with fixed duration and work, but variable resource loading" Tags="&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16863" CreationDate="2015-12-01T10:30:08.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Create the support task in Manual Scheduling mode&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Without doing anything else, assign your support resource to the task at 10% loading. If you don't do this before the next step then it won't work&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Go to the start date of the &quot;primary&quot; task, Ctrl-C to copy it, then go to the Start Date for the support task. Right click-&gt;Paste Special-&gt;Paste Link. This will link the start date of the support task to the start date of the &quot;primary&quot; task. Repeat for the End Dates&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will now find that if the start and end dates of the &quot;primary&quot; task move, the Support task will track them and it will keep the resource loaded at 10% no matter what the actual duration of the Support Task. Show the Work column to prove to yourself that this is true by modifying the start/end date of the &quot;primary&quot; task and observing the Support Task change and the workload of the Support Resource to change to match workload equal to 10% of the primary duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-12-01T10:30:08.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16859" CreationDate="2015-12-01T11:08:21.543" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The three guiding questions for a retrospective are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;What went right in this iteration?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;What went wrong in this iteration?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;What can we do to improve?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answers to these questions will drive changes to how the team operates. If you tried something new (perhaps even unplanned) and it caused you to be successful, then the first question will identify those things and you can try to incorporate them into your process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the last two questions are more important if you're interested in changing the process and want to evaluate a new process or tool. If Kanban can provide a solution to a problem or somehow improve the process, it can be brought up at the retrospective. But process change for the sake of process change isn't appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself two questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why do you want to introduce Kanban to your team?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What problems are you solving or what do you hope to improve by changing the process?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can present Kanban as a method to prevent problems or improve how your team works, bring it up at the retrospective. Otherwise, don't shoehorn a process change in for the sake of change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2015-12-01T11:08:21.543" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16858" CreationDate="2015-12-01T12:36:17.870" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To paraphrase the question, you have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a project team that does BAU work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the need to do BAU work takes priority over project work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;this makes it difficult to stay on track in an Agile project environment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best approach is to divide your team, one focused on projects and the other on BAU. This minimizes time wasted in the switching of effort. But assuming that your workplace is like most others this isn't feasible due to a lack of qualified staff, the binge/purge nature of the type of BAU you have described, etc etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what you need to do is accept reality, estimate how much BAU work your team typically does during a sprint, and factor that into your WIP limits. This will help to ensure that your team has a manageable project workload and that expectations in terms of your ability to deliver projects are adequately managed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2015-12-01T12:36:17.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16848" CreationDate="2015-12-02T00:04:33.120" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It means, do not plan in big way. Your code/Framework/Architecture should be simple and just enough for the requirement, not more than needed. Do not assume future &amp;amp; plan complex framework or architecture at the beginning.They should evolve by time only if it is needed. Another meaning for this principle is  - KISS (keep it simple &amp;amp; short).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21360" LastEditorUserId="21360" LastEditDate="2015-12-09T00:08:27.873" LastActivityDate="2015-12-09T00:08:27.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16794" CreationDate="2015-12-02T00:33:49.600" Score="0" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Take care of your Product/Sprint Backlogs: Since you have only one project work split between two teams, ensure your product backlog is refined properly and split in to two sprint backlogs with no dependency(or minimum dependency).&#xA;(If there is any dependencies between these two sprint backlogs ensure that it is commented in relevant stories. Just remind the teams during sprint planning about the dependencies. Ensure that developers who ever working on these dependent stories of two sprint backlogs should communicate with each other. They can attend both the daily standups if needed.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start two sprint planning meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have two daily scrum calls.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have two  sprint review and retrospective calls.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No need to go for LeSS or SAFe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21360" LastActivityDate="2015-12-02T00:33:49.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16869" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16870" CreationDate="2015-12-02T07:16:34.550" Score="0" ViewCount="412" Body="&lt;p&gt;The definition of &lt;code&gt;underlying infrastructure&lt;/code&gt; in the context of the question relates to the fabric that supports the services rendered for a given collection of systems such as example cabling, power, cooling, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently it isn't clear if the project is responsible for defining these or simply subscribes to existing capabilities. For example, if a given system is deployed that requires a certain amount of power, does the project simply communicate this or does it need to expand on existing requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scope of the project thus far has been to deliver the system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17081" LastActivityDate="2015-12-02T08:56:19.487" Title="How does a project manage defining the requirements needed for underlying infrastructure?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;infrastructure&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16869" CreationDate="2015-12-02T08:56:19.487" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether the project delivers this, or whether it is an agency external to the project that feeds in to the project, is entirely down to the scope definition and practises at the company- there is no law that says what a project may or may not deliver, even for identical projects or deliverables in different organisations&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look to your project brief and your scope definitions. Determine whether Solution and/or Technical architects are present in the organisation, determine the process used in the past to define and manage the infrastructure deliveries and then figure out if you need those resources in the project team and encapsulate all the findings and arrangements in the Project Initiation Document, including Roles &amp;amp; Responsibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-12-02T08:56:19.487" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16871" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-02T14:28:06.583" Score="5" ViewCount="824" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are currently developing an in house solution. The trouble that we are having is that the main stake holder is cultivating the idea as he goes along, leading to endless change requests. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently managing the project in an agile scrum way, and I have tried to lessen the change requests by agreeing on the deliverable for the first version. Previously this wasn't the case, and although that has helped, the problem that we are having is that the stake holder often agrees to the feature to be developed one way, only later on (when he realises that there is a better way to do it) to tell the team that he wants it y way instead. This has left my dev team extremely frustrated since it often leads to lost development time and rewriting old code to behave differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to prevent this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T17:41:14.867" Title="Custom software development, dealing with change requests?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16848" CreationDate="2015-12-02T14:58:22.863" Score="10" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Simplicity is essential&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keeping your work/tasks simple and uncomplicated is essential as it increases your agility. How can you do it? &lt;em&gt;By maximizing the amount of work not done&lt;/em&gt;. Or by rephrasing the same as &lt;em&gt;by minimizing the amount of work to be done&lt;/em&gt;. Now this is more of an art than science. There is no set formula which you can apply equally to various projects/situations. You have to strike a perfect balance between what to do and what to be left undone. This comes with experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Tendency of future proofing&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, the term &amp;quot;future-proof&amp;quot; refers to the ability of something to continue to be of value into the distant future; that the item does not become obsolete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_proof&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_proof&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In software projects there is a general tendency of future proofing and gold plating. Though both terms carry a different definition, however both incur cost and time which may provide zero or low value to the end user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.standishgroup.com/files/Exceeding%20Value_Layout4.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Standish Group research&lt;/a&gt;, 80% of features and functions in a custom developed application have low or no value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Id8xv.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Id8xv.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Business users would like to add all the features that they can think of while developers would like to design a generic and scalable framework that is supposed to handle feature additions in the future as well. All of this may result in a system where most of the features provide no or low value, however time and cost would have been spent already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Should I keep using a mediocre design&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one is stopping you from building a generic and scalable framework but build it when it is required. A complex design having an abstract base class system laden with polymorphism can be developed to handle all the required features of a software application but what if the stakeholders run out of money half way through the project? What are they left with, a good but complex design and a some working/valuable features. The time and effort spent in making the complex design could have been used to implement an optimal design but more valuable features. This is exactly what is meant to &lt;em&gt;work not done&lt;/em&gt;. You design a framework to the required point and not build for the future. Do think about the future but not implement for it because you'll need it further down the road. But the stakeholders may choose a different path down the road and your effort gets wasted. Thus do it simple now and improve as required. This is where the other &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;agile principle&lt;/a&gt; comes in handy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good design does not mean complex design. Similarly you continuous give attention to technical excellence, so keeping it simple does not give you a license to write poor quality code or create an unstable software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Learning from other industries&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concept of simplicity came in from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_manufacturing&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lean Manufacturing&lt;/a&gt; introduced by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Production_System&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Toyota Production System&lt;/a&gt;. Lean says that you should eliminate waste from your current process. In the manufacturing industry, waste includes things like having a big stock of raw materials, too much inventory of finished goods, unnecessary movement of people or products, and defective products. In &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_software_development&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lean software development&lt;/a&gt;, a waste would be unnecessary code and functionality, delay in the software development process, unclear requirements, avoidable process repetition, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.codinghorror.com/kiss-and-yagni/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;KISS and YAGNI&lt;/a&gt; are similar concepts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2015-12-02T14:58:22.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16871" CreationDate="2015-12-02T15:38:01.770" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way that I've found to deal with this is to make your customer/stakeholder/Product Owner understand the cost of change. Agile, and Scrum in particular, are designed to be flexible and respond to user needs. In a lot of cases, especially when you have a PO without a clear vision of their product, this can lead to a lot of iteration and change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Iteration in and of itself is not a bad thing, and in some cases should be encouraged. What is important is to make it clear to your stakeholder that it will cost in time/money/hours, especially when we are making major changes to the system early on. Here are a few key actions you could try:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain the concept of velocity and show your PO how his changes are affecting your velocity towards completing all of the items in your backlog. &quot;We got 30 points done last Sprint, 12 of them were changes to previously-existing functionality. If it's what you need, great--but we should consider to think about things like this.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Groom thoroughly and with the goal of getting a &quot;version one&quot; out. As you groom through items in your backlog, remember to ask your Product Owner to prioritize them. &quot;Is this really needed in v1, or is this more of a phase 2 item?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remember YAGNI--You aren't gonna need it. Getting a version 1 out will really help your PO prioritize and help clarify the vision of the product, especially once you start getting user feedback. Suggest to your PO that you complete whatever remains that is the absolute minimum marketable feature set, then put out a release and see what users say.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16314" LastActivityDate="2015-12-02T15:38:01.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16871" CreationDate="2015-12-02T16:21:32.910" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a common frustration especially on newer agile teams. There are two sides of it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Backlog management. The idea of the backlog is that it is changeable, but because everything is listed in a single-column priority, the impact of any changes is immediately clear. If your stakeholders are coming back with changes over and over, you can accommodate them, but it pushes other work further down the backlog, either pushing out the delivery or pushing features out of the release. It sounds like you're acting as product owner - remember that as product owner it's also your responsibility to say no to stakeholders when making more changes is not the right thing to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Be comfortable with rework. Sometimes the only way for a stakeholder to understand what they want is to put something in front of them and see if they like it. In agile we acknowledge that it isn't possible to have the perfect design and plan up front. Otherwise we'd do waterfall. It should be made clear to the team that their initial work was not wasted. It was very valuable in helping stakeholders understand their needs better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-12-02T16:21:32.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16871" CreationDate="2015-12-02T17:10:25.050" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agree with JDRoger in that showing the cost can help, but you should also consider how to &lt;strong&gt;mitigate the need to iterate in code&lt;/strong&gt;, or at least the cost of it. From your example, it sounds like the main pain point is validation after something has been built (either subjectively via the stakeholder or objectively via results). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's some &quot;low-hanging fruit&quot; I would suggest investigating to start that mitigation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensuring the vision and validation strategy is solid: what are the pillars of the user experience (i.e. &quot;users should feel X&quot;), what features or UX will directly support them, and how will you &lt;em&gt;actually prove&lt;/em&gt; that they have been achieved? This can also include comparisons to competitors. This goes a long way towards reducing subjectivity as well. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identifying personas: who are the &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; users, what are their needs or goals, and which features matter to them? How will they fit into the validation strategy?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Boosting alignment and clarity: look into story mapping, also good for ferreting out iteration-likely areas or complexity/risks if you involved the dev team. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paper prototyping, motion mock-ups, hacked prototypes + user testing: what can be created and validated faster and cheaper than waiting for production-ready software?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tracking iteration vs. thrash: simply tracking the %s and sources of emerging work can open up healthy discussions around how to reduce them, live with them, or optimize them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2015-12-02T17:10:25.050" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16876" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16879" CreationDate="2015-12-02T19:49:53.827" Score="3" ViewCount="240" Body="&lt;p&gt;More specifically, should I consider getting the CAPM while completing graduate studies, or just wait out until I have more experience and can get the PMP?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21371" LastActivityDate="2016-02-01T21:01:39.450" Title="How important are PMI certifications in the beginning of a PM career?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;pmi&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16871" CreationDate="2015-12-02T20:23:43.833" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile-scrum is a fairly rigid set or practices and patterns that work well together.  I hear red flags when you say you are &quot;managing the project in an Agile-Scrum way.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should avoid cherry picking Scrum practices, especially on newly forming scrum teams or with organizations that have little Agile experience.  Scrum works best as a complete system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sounds kind of tangential, but the root cause of your problems (if my assumptions are correct) could stem from the issue that you do not have formal product owner, scrum master, and team R&amp;amp;R defined on your Scrum team.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum teams serve many stakeholders, but they are represented by 1 product owner.  This product owner sets the priority of WHEN/WHAT to do and is responsible for answering the WHY question.  The PO may also makes some decisions on WHAT UI implementations look like because the PO is often closest to the user.  (UX and Agile is a whole different topic with its nuances, however).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PO works with stakeholders to negotiate priorities and manage expectations.  Stakeholders don't provide designs or implementation details and the PO and Scrum master work to coach technically capable stakeholders out of these behaviors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team determines the HOW and WHO does it of everything else.  Stakeholder or PO doesn't like HOW a feature was implemented in the code; too bad.  The team owns the quality and implementation of the features, and is accountable for delivering to standards they explicitly share with PO and any interested stakeholders.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's how Agile teams stay empowered and bought into the work they do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scrum master is the servant leader on the team.  They don't ever define the HOW, WHAT, WHY, WHEN, or WHO of the actual work items, but they coach the team on improving their delivery processes, product quality, and eventually help the team understand how all the scrum practices work together.  The SM also facilities ceremonies like the stand-up, planning, review and retrospective.  SM's have no authority to tell anyone on the team to do anything, but generally have worked in a developer, QA, or PO/PM capacity previously.  They are sounding blocks and facilitators for the team to continuously improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-12-02T20:23:43.833" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16878" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-02T20:24:30.443" Score="-2" ViewCount="982" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Our team is in the process of planning legacy ERP replacing project. Unfortunately it is quite custom, so the decision was taken to develop own one. &#xA;&#xA;Legacy system has a lot of inbound integrations (point of sales, backoffice) and outbound (finances, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&#xA;While we do understand how to  develop the system, it's quite hard to plan and estimate implementation, integration and deployment phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;for example:&#xA;It's very risky to plan go live just over weekend, since it's 24/7 business. Probably we need to have legacy and new systems working in parallel. If so, which one would inbound clients (e.g. mobile apps) connect ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Does anyone have such kind of experience ? What approach should be used here ? I would be grateful for WBS example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7644" LastActivityDate="2020-03-19T14:33:48.550" Title="Planning legacy ERP system replace. WBS?" Tags="&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2016-01-13T03:15:35.570" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16876" CreationDate="2015-12-02T22:37:40.683" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PMP seems to be the standard certification. I've been asked about the PMP in interviews in several different countries (as far away as Singapore). I have my Scrum Master Certification and work mainly in Scrum projects, but even still, the PMP is valued much higher than that generally speaking.  If you look at the requirements for the PMP, experience pretty much trumps everything (with the assumption that you have a Bachelors since you are in graduate studies). There are other requirements, but the critical path in the myriad of checklist items is experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While every employer is going to be different, and having a certificate less than PMP under your belt is not going to hurt you, if it's one or the other, experience and the PMP are the most sought after.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21210" LastActivityDate="2015-12-02T22:37:40.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16871" CreationDate="2015-12-03T00:45:25.610" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;From Agile Manifesto - &quot;Responding to change&quot; over sticking to a plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a good practice to respond to a change so that your product/project evolve in right direction. It will lead to client's satisfaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are some precautions you can take.&#xA;1. Please start writing the requirements in the form of Stories (As a user&amp;lt;&gt;.. etc) and also with Acceptancy criteria/Conditions of satisfaction.(Given, When , Then)&#xA;2. Acceptance criteria is a must, it will help developers/testers to get clear idea about what satisfies the customer. Your main stakeholder who is changing requirements every time, should provide this. Or Involve him also during backlog refinement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the sprint is over (stories passed definition of done), if your main stake holder is asking for a change, please provide a new estimation and start the work. Do not allow any change in requirements during sprint is in progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21360" LastActivityDate="2015-12-03T00:45:25.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16881" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16885" CreationDate="2015-12-03T12:02:04.300" Score="6" ViewCount="8408" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, let me apologize if I make some writing mistakes since english is not my native language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm currently working at a UX company as a front-end dev and I'm having some problems trying to understand agile development properly. Let me give you some context about our work environment before making my question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My actual company was focused mainly on UX consulting, creating the information architecture, designing the applications and creating the views in a very old-fashioned way (creating static pages with lots of contextual CSS and jQuery, instead of creating modular systems that allows you to create such pages). Then the &quot;views&quot; would be given to the client and a third-party company would integrate that code with the client's back-end. Currently what I've got as a developer is a design of the different views (full pages) and their different states and I have to code them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lately they've got some clients that wanted their projects/UIs be created with Angular so they hire me to modernize their workflow, since I have experience creating Angularjs applications in a more component based philosophy. The problem is that I've never worked in a scrum/agile environment and we are thinking about implementing it so I struggle with some concepts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What could be a user story in my case?&lt;/strong&gt; I mean, I'm detached from the product design process. What I've got is some &lt;em&gt;.psd&lt;/em&gt; files that needs to be transformed in to a web application, so I'm not sure how I should define user stories for the development team. Creating a component could be a task, but I cannot map User Stories to an isolated process of coding a UI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, I'm just starting out with agile development and I'm sure many flaws can be spotted on my thought process, so I hope you could understand what I'm trying to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user21377" LastEditorDisplayName="user21377" LastEditDate="2015-12-03T12:07:22.333" LastActivityDate="2019-08-08T16:16:47.790" Title="How to write user stories for our UI development process?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10326" CreationDate="2015-12-03T13:12:49.143" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I second the idea that it is impossible to use Asana for this purpose.  It's simply orthogonal - like saying, how can I use email as a calendar.  You just can't.  just as you can use email as a communications tool, you can use asana to track subtasks, but as far as project planning, you will have to go outside of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21379" LastActivityDate="2015-12-03T13:12:49.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16801" CreationDate="2015-12-03T13:28:43.010" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, I've found more complex models to be more difficult to &quot;get right&quot;. Unless you are willing to spend the time to customize a complex model, the fact that more variables are being used or manipulated the greater the opportunity for one or more of your underlying assumptions to be inaccurate. For this reason I tend to work with critical path estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another approach could be to pool the different models using a weighted average like PERT, assuming that the mid-point estimate is the most likely case. This is imperfect but at least it helps to mitigate the effects of the model(s) that are &quot;wrong&quot;. Based on the data given that would give you a final variance a bit shy of 20 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more rigorous approach is to evaluate your models based on what was known for each reporting period starting at project start. Figure out what each model would predict and compare to actual variance to date, and go with the one that seems to have the greatest predictive power. You may also be able to identify particular project events that have caused particular models to be less predictive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2015-12-03T13:28:43.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16884" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16899" CreationDate="2015-12-03T14:18:00.063" Score="0" ViewCount="305" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does the effort calculated in person months using &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COCOMO&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;COCOMO model&lt;/a&gt; include the effort for requirements analysis also? Or is it just calculating the effort required for the design, code and testing only? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21380" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-12-03T17:15:36.320" LastActivityDate="2015-12-04T15:50:47.993" Title="Effort estimation" Tags="&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16881" CreationDate="2015-12-03T15:14:38.537" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You ask a pretty large question, so forgive me if my answer is a little too broad. It sounds like you're starting with the .psd's and then your development team will be acting as an agile team from there to delivery. This may not be ideal, but I'll save that for the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given your circumstance, I want to first clarify that while agile promotes measuring progress in working end-to-end software, this may be confusing for your group. It sounds like your end-to-end is all in HTML, CSS, and jQuery/Angular. If you then hand it off to some other company to do web services or something, I wouldn't try to incorporate that into your idea of Done. Your end-to-end means the functionality of the page and the JS works properly and you can prove it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the stories construction, the key is to focus on value delivery, not artifact creation. For example, artifact creation would say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user, I'd like a login page so I can log in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and it would have acceptance criteria like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I can log in. I have a forgot password link ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focusing on the capability would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a registered user who forgot his password, I'd like to be able to&#xA;  provide my email and have my password reminder sent to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is that instead of your work focusing on recreating the .psd, you are trying to create functionality using the .psd as your guide to how it should look. Incidentally, you will have recreated the .psd by the time you're done, so don't worry about losing something there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How it could be better:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;You can run into some snags with your designers still working with the approach of mocking up a psd and handing it off. You are probably already aware that Photoshop and browsers render graphics differently and incredible amounts of time can be lost trying to match them. In addition, if a piece of functionality flows through many screens, the designers may have completed only half of the screens you need to deliver the functionality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen teams really struggle with this dynamic before and have much more success moving to a system where there is a standard stylesheet for web components and using rapid prototyping for layout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-12-03T15:14:38.537" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16886" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16891" CreationDate="2015-12-03T20:42:40.977" Score="1" ViewCount="408" Body="&lt;p&gt;So we have a disagreement between our customer and the development team, these are some facts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We are a software development company (I have a team of 3 devs and 1 QA)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Our customer is a startup, that is growing fast, and already making some money&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We haven't successfully adapted to a workflow, yet&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When we began the CTO choose pivotal tracker as our scrum board software, which works fine, however they are constantly adding labels to &lt;em&gt;prioritize&lt;/em&gt; the items which I think doesn't make sense under the SCRUM approach where you have a sorting or order in the backlog (and in the current, per pivotal's feature) where, if you need certain story to be addressed or worked on then you need to make sure that is estimated, well defined and you just move it in the backlog to the top, developers then pick up these stories on a &lt;em&gt;LIFO&lt;/em&gt; basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My motivation to tell the customer that they should not prioritize stories is simple: it is useless. These priorities change all the time, sometimes on every sprint, so the only sane way to keep up would be for them to be re-prioritizing all other stories, not only the new ones which they want to be worked on first, maybe some of the older stories that last week were priority 1 are now priority 2, or even less, plus the constant and ever-changing requirements make this harder, so why bother?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On my opinion this goes against the idea of the backlog and planning of the sprint, but I'm still a rookie on SCRUM so I'm wondering &lt;strong&gt;is this kind of prioritization a common practice in the real world?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17410" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-12-03T23:26:23.857" LastActivityDate="2015-12-07T17:55:28.570" Title="Can user stories be prioritized using labels applied by the customer?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16886" CreationDate="2015-12-03T21:36:26.603" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Scrum it is the Product Owners responsibility to keep the Product Back log Prioritised and up to date.  Some teams who have adopted Scrum have a Product Backlog Grooming (or refinement) session which might be once per sprint where the Scrum Master, Product Owner and some of the team (OR ALL) will get together to Estimate (put story points against stories in the backlog) - add new Stories and prioritise.  Keeping the Product Backlog clean / sane / up to date is work, and is needed to be done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to remember that one of the key aspects of Agile and Scrum is to be able to adapt to change, there might be new requirements that come in that need to be added to the Product Backlog and there needs to be time set aside to be able to organise the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a look at this - &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/why-scrum/scrum-guide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.scrumalliance.org/why-scrum/scrum-guide&lt;/a&gt; it gives a good overview of Scrum - especially &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the product and the work of the Development Team. How this is done may vary widely across organizations, Scrum Teams, and individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is the sole person responsible for managing the Product Backlog. Product Backlog management includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Clearly expressing Product Backlog items;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Ordering the items in the Product Backlog to best achieve goals and missions;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Optimizing the value of the work the Development Team performs;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Ensuring that the Product Backlog is visible, transparent, and clear to all, and shows what the Scrum Team will work on next; and,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Ensuring the Development Team understands items in the Product Backlog to the level needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21385" LastEditorUserId="12235" LastEditDate="2015-12-07T17:55:28.570" LastActivityDate="2015-12-07T17:55:28.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16888" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16889" CreationDate="2015-12-03T22:10:46.343" Score="5" ViewCount="4122" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the pros and cons of using Daily Stand-ups? Positive sides of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-daily&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Daily Scrum&lt;/a&gt; I see, but I can't find negatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21386" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2020-09-30T17:50:21.307" LastActivityDate="2020-09-30T17:50:21.307" Title="What are the pros and cons of using Daily Standups?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16888" CreationDate="2015-12-03T22:22:14.030" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many articles on out there on the benefits of standups. This one is as good as any I suppose:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://spin.atomicobject.com/2009/07/07/10-reasons-we-have-daily-stand-up-meetings/&quot;&gt;http://spin.atomicobject.com/2009/07/07/10-reasons-we-have-daily-stand-up-meetings/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll find different answers in different articles but they all boil down to this: keeping your team in sync with each other allows you to address your work more effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cons are harder to find because there really aren't any disadvantages to good tactical planning. If you search for &quot;challenges&quot; you'll find a little bit. This article addresses some of the more common challenges:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sitepoint.com/scrum-standup-slowing-down/&quot;&gt;http://www.sitepoint.com/scrum-standup-slowing-down/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're wondering if you should have stand ups, the answer is simple. You should. Do they right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other point I'd make is that I've heard of cons that actually are the standup shedding light on other problems. If you have someone on so many teams that the total time for all of their standups is cutting too much into their day, the problem is not the standups - they're spread too thin or they don't belong in the standup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-12-03T22:22:14.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16890" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16892" CreationDate="2015-12-03T23:13:58.053" Score="0" ViewCount="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking at a slightly different take on project management - rather than having a set project performed over a particular timeline, I am looking at individual investigative cases as being their own projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research misconduct accusations are where someone, usually a researcher, is accused of having done something wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When an accusation is received by the office, it follows a stepwise process of investigation, which is a process we have mapped out. It could almost be viewed as a type of flowchart with a lot of branches, and information recorded at each step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the last few years, this process has been done in a fairly ad hoc manner by people, however we would like to introduce a more systematic process so that we can record what steps have been taken, see what the next steps are, and create metrics based around this. We need to be able to attach files specifically for each step (e.g. memos, evidence, emails).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have looked at a few types of project management software, but they all focus on linear processes, rather than branching processes, and also on specific due dates for each step to finish, which is something that we don't want (each cases' timeline is different).&#xA;I have also looked at some case management systems, mostly for law, but these seem to lack the more process-centric side which is what we are really after, they seem to be more about having a list of cases and then a bit where you can record case notes for each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have suggestions as to options we can explore to create this system?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21389" LastActivityDate="2015-12-04T03:50:16.013" Title="Case-style project management software" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-12-09T10:23:08.837" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16886" CreationDate="2015-12-03T23:24:03.623" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your underlying question appears to be whether the customer, rather than the Product Owner, should be allowed to prioritize the Product Backlog. You are also questioning whether label-based sorting is useful in any way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, only the Product Owner (PO) may prioritize the Product Backlog, although s/he is expected to do so with the support and input of stakeholders that the PO represents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bucket-sorting or labeling can be a useful technique, but is not a substitute for a strictly-ordered Product Backlog. If labeling stories helps your stakeholders group stories or provides useful input for Backlog Refinement there is no reason not to do so, but labels are not a valid substitute for ordered Product Backlog Items (PBIs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How to Properly Manage a Product Backlog&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, the Product Owner is a singular person. It must not be a group, a Borg collective, or anything other than one person fulfilling the responsibilities of the role. Like Highlander, &quot;there can be only one!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also in Scrum, the Product Backlog is &lt;em&gt;strictly ordinal&lt;/em&gt;. While using labels to sort stories into buckets or categories might be a useful feature to assist during Backlog Refinement, the Product Backlog &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be sorted into an ordered list. There can never be two items marked #1 (or number #999 for that matter) in Scrum; the Product Owner &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; ensure that priorities are clearly defined and strictly sequential, even if means flipping a coin to decide between two important features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only the Product Owner may add, remove, or re-order items on the Product Backlog. While others (such as your customer) might suggest or recommend items or priorities, only the PO can actually place them into the backlog or adjust their priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a final word of caution, while the Product Backlog can be modified at any time by the Product Owner, these changes &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; affect work-in-progress for the current sprint. These changes are &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; for future sprints. If there is work that truly takes precedence over the work already accepted into the Sprint Backlog, then the Product Owner must call for an Early Termination of the current sprint and a return to Sprint Planning. This ensures that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No one &quot;moves the cheese&quot; during the current sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it's truly necessary to move the cheese, then this becomes a visible cost to the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stakeholders are given the tools they need to change direction when necessary, but are also clearly provided with appropriate inflection points for doing so without incurring additional project overhead.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The formal ceremonies involved in Early Termination and a return to Sprint Planning reduce unnecessary change while still providing a viable framework within Scrum for managing exceptional circumstances.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-12-06T17:48:44.357" LastActivityDate="2015-12-06T17:48:44.357" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16890" CreationDate="2015-12-04T03:50:16.013" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you're referring to is more suited to a Workflow Management System. These are usually referred to as &lt;strong&gt;Workflow Management Tools&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;Business Process Management Tools&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick example (not by any means recommending this product, just an example): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.processmaker.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.processmaker.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project Management tools are great for managing projects, but not much else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20840" LastActivityDate="2015-12-04T03:50:16.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16893" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-04T06:51:22.843" Score="3" ViewCount="4402" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do Scrum/Agile teams use metrics to estimate testing efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21391" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2015-12-04T15:55:34.400" LastActivityDate="2015-12-04T15:55:34.400" Title="What are some Agile Testing Estimation Techniques?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16893" CreationDate="2015-12-04T08:04:54.907" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend using &quot;Development Poker&quot; (Planning Poker) for testing efforts - it's effective, and there is no real reason why you can't use relative sizing to estimate testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But generally, I've always found it better to have testing as part of the whole estimation of a User Story.  When it comes down to taking the user story off the prioritised product backlog and into the sprint backlog that's where you can start breaking down the story into tasks and get a better idea of actual time estimates for the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When implementing Scrum the emphasis is on the team, so as a team testing is an integral part and not something bolted on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21385" LastEditorUserId="21385" LastEditDate="2015-12-04T08:25:52.570" LastActivityDate="2015-12-04T08:25:52.570" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16893" CreationDate="2015-12-04T08:34:47.143" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile teams are cross-functional teams. They estimate the work from design to delivery often on a story based level. This includes the testing work, since testing should be part of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://guide.agilealliance.org/guide/definition-of-done.html&quot;&gt;definition of done&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I as a tester part of an Agile team always sit in with the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_poker&quot;&gt;planning poker&lt;/a&gt; sessions and estimate just with the team, keeping in mind the complexity and size of the testing efforts needed to complete the story to done. If I know the area we are working on lacks a lot of automated test coverage I will give the story a higher estimate then the programmers in our team, often we average out the points in these cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would use story points to estimate the relative size of the complexity of the task at hand. Read more about &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumorakel.de/blog/index.php?/archives/48-Estimating-relative-sizes-e.g.-story-points.html&quot;&gt;estimating with relative sizes in this blog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you can use &lt;a href=&quot;http://guide.agilealliance.org/guide/velocity.html&quot;&gt;the velocity metric&lt;/a&gt; for the whole team effort, including testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would give the testers in your teams the following book to read: &lt;a href=&quot;http://agiletester.ca/&quot;&gt;http://agiletester.ca/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2015-12-04T12:03:14.063" LastActivityDate="2015-12-04T12:03:14.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16896" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-04T13:29:21.587" Score="4" ViewCount="359" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I am managing a team of people, all working on different tech projects, I am now being given a hard time with the development team for one project because I do not know their project as in depth technically as them. One member is now starting to undermine my authority, despite being aware that I am managing several projects at once (and not writing low level code) and have brought a lot of technical value in terms of the overall direction of the project he working on organising and as a software architect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do other project managers deal with this - I find with developer in particular, they have a habit to undermine if you do not know the technicalities as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2015-12-06T04:14:02.473" Title="Managing egos of developers" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;negotiation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16896" CreationDate="2015-12-04T15:27:02.770" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My only advice is to read the book written by Kenneth W Thomas &quot;Intrinsic Motivation at Work: What Really Drives Employee Engagement&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are the driver and the team look at you to focus their effort on something the business and the customer need. You have to trust your team and give them full ownership on how they will implement the solution and let them know that they own the solution and its outcome. You are here to serve them if they need any external or internal help or resources and guide them when needed. Empower your team is the key for successful projects.You will be happy and your team too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16934" LastActivityDate="2015-12-04T15:27:02.770" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16884" CreationDate="2015-12-04T15:50:47.993" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;COCOMO focuses on what is required to actually build it, not the up-front requirements work. Now, you'll notice that there are varying levels of requirements and constraints and it produces a smaller and smaller estimate as the requirements get more specific, so there may be something to infer there, but the model doesn't attempt to provide that answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-12-04T15:50:47.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16886" CreationDate="2015-12-04T16:34:17.233" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm surprised no one has mentioned this yet, but you might also want to consider kanban, which tends to work well when priorities change so often that it becomes prohibitive for regular sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2015-12-04T16:34:17.233" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16896" CreationDate="2015-12-05T09:45:32.860" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a difficult and challenging situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation would be to try and earn the respect of the team members. Do things that they regard as providing value, such as removing blockers and issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing here is to be &lt;em&gt;seen&lt;/em&gt; by them to be doing good. So you will need to focus carefully on how you explain your actions, what tasks you take on and just as importantly, which tasks you don't take on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even with this approach you may not win over all the team members. But it has been my experience that if the majority of a team see value in a Scrum Master then they will apply peer pressure to the team members that don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not an easy process and it is different to the traditional Project Management approach where teams are often just told what to do. It requires patience and a lot of perseverance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-12-05T09:45:32.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16888" CreationDate="2015-12-05T09:54:19.493" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a huge fan of daily stand-ups, but there are some disadvantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team members can sometimes wait until the stand-up to communicate important information rather than telling the team immediately.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The stand-up can be seen as a replacement for in-sprint planning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The timing of stand-ups can be an area of dispute. This is particularly true if your team has a mixture of early and late starters.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stand-ups can cause disruption in badly arranged open-plan offices.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2015-12-05T09:54:19.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16903" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-05T17:14:10.003" Score="1" ViewCount="1170" Body="&lt;p&gt;I struggle with some interpretations of the model. Some visualizations says that no projects live in the middle of the triangle. But I wonder why? It would mean that the project is of moderate quality, will be deliver in moderate time and with moderate costs. It would not be efficient as we could possibly do better with focusing on two but why is that considered utopia?&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gLbLV.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gLbLV.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, some say it is about sides, some say it is about vertices. I get that - the closer to the vertex, the better for given constraint. It does not really work with sides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think they are probably two views as in some, quality is the area of the triangle. But as shown in the figure here, the point represents the combinations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21407" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-12-07T09:56:44.070" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T22:45:39.533" Title="Iron Triangle / quality triangle - why the middle is said to be non-existant?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;constraints&gt;&lt;theory&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16904" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-05T17:24:49.847" Score="0" ViewCount="93" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm having a hard time distinguishing the purposes between:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feature List&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product roadmap&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Release schedule&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my mobile app concept, I'm using trello and evernote to manage my ideas/tasks. I started shipping releases and the UI is getting more complex, etc. When I tried onboarding a friend to help with development, he was completely lost as to what was planning, work to do, bug priority, etc. I feel like I'm making this way harder than it needs to be, so I probably just missed a core PM concept somewhere. Any resources would be great! Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21408" LastActivityDate="2015-12-07T16:05:08.943" Title="How do I efficiently go from concept to product?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16896" CreationDate="2015-12-06T04:14:02.473" Score="0" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your team needs a Scrum Master who can define roles and responsibilities, and coach them in Scrum and make them work for you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Since you are the product owner , some of your responsibilities should be 1)Active participation in Backlog refinement. 2)Prioritizing the stories 3)Giving sprint goals to team. (im not mentioning all your responsibilities.).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ensure you are the owner of product backlog. Make it clear to every one.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once the sprint starts let the team pickup the stories from sprint backlog. You dont assign any work them. Let them discuss and assign the stories to themselves.(Your Scrum Master should facilitate this.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Discuss all issues openly with team during sprint retrospective and come up with action items. (Your Scrum Master should facilitate this.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Show empathy for team. Listen their problems and solve them. (You and Your Scrum master should facilitate this.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Btw - It looks you do not have Scrum master, which is causing all the troubles to you. If you have one, seems he/she is not working. Or, if your company do not budget for scrum master, be ready to do the Scrum master role also.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21360" LastActivityDate="2015-12-06T04:14:02.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8711" CreationDate="2015-12-06T09:15:45.730" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think a hybrid solution worked well for both projects that I was the team lead of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a look at some professionally deigned physical scrum boards at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.Scrumboards.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.Scrumboards.com&lt;/a&gt; I think that could be used with Rallydev quite well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21413" LastActivityDate="2015-12-06T09:15:45.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16544" CreationDate="2015-12-06T19:47:16.300" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Few thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Activity A is part of the project plan, it can be also on the critical path. Please refer your network diagram and also check what is the dependency between Activity A &amp;amp; B. Is it SF, FF..? Based on that you can decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Activity A' work is carried by a third party, then it can be added to your dependency log as well as risk log. Then action plan/mitigation plan should be planned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21360" LastActivityDate="2015-12-06T19:47:16.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16903" CreationDate="2015-12-06T21:39:00.457" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some visualizations says that no projects live in the middle of the triangle. But I wonder why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Projects can live in the middle of the triangle, but typically there is going to be one (or two) drivers that are stronger than the other/s which is why the question tends to be posed &quot;Which are more important in this instance?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The theory is if you're creating a product that is &quot;in the middle&quot; then you're probably going to get beaten by other products in all areas. You'll be beaten on price by the low cost option, beaten on quality by the high quality option, and beaten to the market by the short TTL option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason that the push is to focus on two is more about &lt;strong&gt;identifying the one you're not focusing on&lt;/strong&gt;, and therefore you're identifying your area of sacrifice. When your project is under the squeeze and you have to make a sacrifice, which will it be, &lt;strong&gt;Cost, Quality or Time&lt;/strong&gt;? &lt;em&gt;There is always at least one area that needs to slide to accommodate for the others.&lt;/em&gt; Identifying that is the major purpose behind this triangle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20840" LastActivityDate="2015-12-06T21:39:00.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16904" CreationDate="2015-12-06T21:57:02.320" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;he was completely lost as to what was planning, work to do, bug priority, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is your key. What you've done makes sense to you, because most of it is probably in your head (you know what you want to work on next, you know what the &quot;end state&quot; looks like).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you grow your team you're going to need to standardise some of these methods to get them out of your head and into a process. A few things you're going to want to do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product Vision&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put some statements together that indicate what you're trying to accomplish at a large scale. What is your product aiming to do? What problems will it solve?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Feature List&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More specific than the Vision - what are the individual components of your Product? Eg for an online store features could be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A shopping cart to add products&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A storefront to view products&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The ability to sign up and login&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Automatic weekly emails to customers etc...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These features may translate well into cards on your Trello board (depending on the granularity of your cards/features)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This list will give your friend an understanding of the &quot;pieces&quot; of your puzzle that create your Product Vision when assembled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Prioritisation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your Trello board can be helpful for this. Make sure it is prioritised - cards of the highest priority at the top, the lowest at the bottom. This way your friend will know what to work on next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Release Schedule&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're going to want to let your friend know (and plan for) when the next release will be. Which features are you aiming to put into which release? Is the release on a fixed date or is it dependent on when the features are finished? This is what will keep you and your friend aiming towards that short term goal together, knowing when the next big &quot;milestone&quot; is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that releases have overhead - to release you've got to be sure your code is well tested, that you haven't broken previous features, so knowing when the next release is helps you both plan your efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tools&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you're suffering from lack of process. Trello and Evernote are very free-flowing tools, they're very flexible. They will let you do what you want. That can be good, but when working with others it can become hard unless you're very good at defining and sticking to process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to look at a Project Management tool with a bit more structure to it than Trello, maybe something like Rally (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.rallydev.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.rallydev.com/&lt;/a&gt;). There's added overhead to a tool like that, so again it may be worth trying to define your processes and seeing whether you can be disciplined enough to make them work in the tools you've got so far. Discipline is key!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So to recap, here's what should be on your TODO list:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a Product Vision&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a Feature List&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure you have a Prioritisation Process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set a Release Schedule and work out a Release Plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find the right tools to help you manage the processes above&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you get these in front of your friend I think you'll find the shared vision/goals/plans/priorities make it much easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20840" LastActivityDate="2015-12-06T21:57:02.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16903" CreationDate="2015-12-07T09:50:18.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't recognise that interpretation of the model and it doesn't seem to make sense to me. For example if you start at the &quot;Low Cost&quot; corner and move to the right you are saying, effectively, &quot;it will cost more and more as you move to the right but you will deliver it quicker and quicker&quot;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point of the triangle, in my view, is to highlight the relationship between three critical &quot;levers&quot;; Time, Cost and Quality. Where your project &quot;sits&quot; within the triangle (yes, including in the middle), demonstrates the appetite of the project board, or the sponsor, or the company etc. to assign relative importance to the levers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if your project is right against the Cost corner, then it is saying that sticking to budget is the absolute most important lever. The relationship of the corners of the triangle means that if you absolutely prioritise one of the corners over the others you must, by definition, deprioritise the other corners. In practise, if you must stick to the budget against all the odds, you cannot also enforce rigid compliance with timescale or quality metrics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you absolutely must stick to a timescale, then you cannot restrict the budget or the quality and if you prioritise Quality as paramount then you cannot restrict the budget or the timescale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the real world, projects exist within environments that comprise a mixture of priorities of these three levers- rarely is one of them at 100% (meaning the others must be zero) so the dot representing that project would live somewhere within the boundary of the triangle. This is entirely normal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you ascribe other meanings to the corners then the meanings will change, but I believe what I have described is the classic Project Management meaning of the triangle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-12-07T09:50:18.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16903" CreationDate="2015-12-07T13:17:15.353" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe I agree with the others, but I'll put it a little differently.  The Iron Triangle is about &lt;strong&gt;your&lt;/strong&gt; project.  The only way for a project to be &quot;in the middle&quot; would be if you decided to do a half effort job. (Note that if you decide that working only 40 hours a week is a prudent choice to maintain a better work life balance, that is not a half effort job; that is recognizing a constraint).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Iron Triangle is about constraints - you can't go outside the triangle because to do so would be to violate a constraint. If you increase the speed then you're going to have to either decrease quality or increase cost.  It is not a tool to compare two projects (there are far superior tools for that).  It would make no sense to compare my cost/quality/speed to someone elses - they have a different set of constraints.  Perhaps I have the best team in the world, but they have a nearly infinite team of nearly negligible skill; the net result is that both of us can produce at the same rate, but we'll have different implication for quality. Or perhaps they have the finances of a state actor, while I have only my own wallet but a genius idea.  Comparison is not useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only lesson from the iron triangle is the obvious lesson; it isn't a subtle tool, nor is it intended to be a precise tool. It is a metaphor; like most metaphors, once you understand the concept that the metaphor is pointing at, discard the metaphor and work with the concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2015-12-07T13:17:15.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16904" CreationDate="2015-12-07T16:05:08.943" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would highly recommend looking in &lt;strong&gt;story mapping&lt;/strong&gt;. It's a very simple, clean way to create a reference for the overall view of a software product, goals, releases, risks, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2015-12-07T16:05:08.943" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16903" CreationDate="2015-12-07T16:13:04.370" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are more variations of the triangle. This one shows possible combinations of these three constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This view helps with prioritization and stakeholder perceptions of individual constraints, as shown in the picture below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/txstu.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/txstu.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this example all participants agreed that quality was more&#xA;  important than cost for this process........ but there was&#xA;  disagreement about whether quality was more important than time.&#xA;  Following discussion the group finally agreed that time was more&#xA;  important the quality, and time and quality were more important than&#xA;  cost. This agreement then allows the process to be organised and run&#xA;  to those priorities with common understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the following picture provides a better understanding and maybe clarifies what @Marv Mills thought did not make sense but actually it is perfectly logical to me: the further you go from the &quot;Cost&quot; corner, the more you are willing to spend in exchange for faster delivery. You can either have a cheap product after a long time or you can have it fast but it will be expensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pqWsL.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pqWsL.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21422" LastEditorUserId="21422" LastEditDate="2015-12-07T16:40:09.153" LastActivityDate="2015-12-07T16:40:09.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16917" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-07T18:54:57.733" Score="0" ViewCount="232" Body="&lt;p&gt;What would be the best group of metrics to use to measure PMO value in services organization? What do you use in your org,if any? By this I am talking about more of the soft metrics like repeat customers, showing how a defined process helped the sale of a service, etc.?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16014" LastActivityDate="2015-12-09T13:06:41.580" Title="PMO Value Add Metrics" Tags="&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;pmo&gt;&lt;sales&gt;&lt;value&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16917" CreationDate="2015-12-07T19:41:06.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first metric is at least 10 times more important than any of the others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does it fulfill the company's strategic mission?  If the company doesn't know why it created a PMO, then the PMO should be shut down.  Someone else will quote the precise number but if I recall correctly 90% of PMO's fail in 3 years, largely because they serve no strategic objective.  *Update: This observation is informed by Mark Perry of BOT International. His &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.botinternational.com/thepmopodcast.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;podcasts&lt;/a&gt; emphasize this point. I regret not attributing it to him; took me a bit of digging to find the right citation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Rate of project closure.  What % of projects are closed successfully by the PMO (Close can include &quot;killed off before it becomes a zombie project&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;% of effort devoted to project deliverables vs effort devoted to project documentation. (In theory those who work &lt;strong&gt;with&lt;/strong&gt; the PMO will spend more time on the project deliverable and less time on paper churning.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quality of project documentation - is the project documentation consistent across projects? does it meet quality standards? (difficult to measure in a non-PMO environment. Perhaps use the number of revisions as a proxy).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Total value of successful projects delivered that align with enterprise strategic goals. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://kbondale.wordpress.com/2015/12/07/portfolio-metrics-need-to-advance-beyond-on-time-and-on-budget/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Portfolio metrics&lt;/a&gt; - randomly this was published the same week the question was asked; I felt compelled to include it for reference.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-12-09T13:06:41.580" LastActivityDate="2015-12-09T13:06:41.580" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16919" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-07T19:47:51.997" Score="1" ViewCount="439" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the methodology named DSDM or DSDM Atern?&#xA;A colleague and I are writing reports on agile methodologies and there is a lot of conflicting information available as the latest specification we could find makes no reference of Atern but the DSDM consortium's website still says DSDM Atern on it. Any sources are welcomed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21424" LastActivityDate="2015-12-07T20:42:15.083" Title="DSDM Atern or DSDM?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;dsdm&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16919" CreationDate="2015-12-07T20:42:15.083" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_systems_development_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DSDM entry&lt;/a&gt; in wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2014, DSDM dropped the branding 'Atern' and reverted to its&#xA;  original name in the latest version of the method in the 'DSDM Agile&#xA;  Project Framework' positioned as &quot;an ideal wrapper for more limited&#xA;  Agile frameworks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8091" LastActivityDate="2015-12-07T20:42:15.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16878" CreationDate="2015-12-08T07:31:39.470" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Implementation of a custom ERP is a complex procedure. One should have experience to do it right. As I understand, you are a member of the development team and there is a customer enterprise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is correct, you will need:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a roll-out engineer in the camp of development who knows how to&#xA;extract information from an expert and teach the staff to use the&#xA;system; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a roll-out team with special privileges on the customer’s&#xA;side. The role of this team will be vital. They will be those people&#xA;who work 24/7 being responsible for the result of the implementation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are writing a series of articles about development and rolling out ERP systems, so you may find some useful tips here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://anadea.info/blog/erp-and-business-management-software-introduction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://anadea.info/blog/erp-and-business-management-software-introduction&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answering your question, you are right that most likely they will have to use two systems simultaneously until all workflows are fully transitioned to the new software. This is absolutely normal (albeit the staff doesn’t like it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regards&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21421" LastEditorUserId="21421" LastEditDate="2020-03-19T14:33:48.550" LastActivityDate="2020-03-19T14:33:48.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16888" CreationDate="2015-12-08T21:55:33.993" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When the team is spread out (like ours is over 3 continents), daily standups are not as effective.  If everyone is in one location, it is a quick 15 minute huddle at the beginning of the day, but if people are spread out, it is not going to be in the &quot;beginning of the day&quot; for many of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7019" LastActivityDate="2015-12-08T21:55:33.993" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16925" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16928" CreationDate="2015-12-08T22:01:23.063" Score="5" ViewCount="3885" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand that I can use this constraint in MS Project, but really, what is a good use case for this?  When does this constraint make sense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7019" LastEditorUserId="7019" LastEditDate="2015-12-08T23:01:18.607" LastActivityDate="2016-11-28T15:00:51.743" Title="What is the purpose of the &quot;as late as possible&quot; constraint in MS Project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;constraints&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16926" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16927" CreationDate="2015-12-08T23:24:05.323" Score="4" ViewCount="990" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is is right if a team member moans about a 'bad performance' of another &lt;em&gt;team  member&lt;/em&gt; in retrospective? In my understanding, teams will always look at the team performance, never on a single members performance in scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the described case, a team member came back after 3 weeks of holidays and said that the 'performance' of a certain project, which is supported by just one other team member, would have been unexpectedly low. No request why this might have been the case, no constructive criticism. The scrum master didn't intervene. IMHO this is against the 'rules' of scrum  - for good reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13697" LastActivityDate="2015-12-22T19:40:05.100" Title="Is is right if a team member moans about a 'bad performance' in retrospective?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16926" CreationDate="2015-12-09T04:40:58.867" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is is right if a team member moans about a 'bad performance' of another team member in retrospective?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, that's not okay. Most SM's will explicitly call out the rules up front which will include &quot;No personal attacks. Attack issues, not people.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the person was bringing the issue up that a particular project is under-staffed and thus can't keep up with business/backlog demand, that is a valid issue and something worth discussing. But if it is a play at a particular person &quot;Oh, that project is slow because Bob is working on it&quot; then that's not okay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speak to your SM out of session and raise it with them to get their thoughts. Taking aim at a persons performance in a public setting like that could be considered workplace bullying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20840" LastActivityDate="2015-12-09T04:40:58.867" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16925" CreationDate="2015-12-09T04:46:54.127" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A use case might be procurement of a service/software that is a pay-as-you-go service that won't be used until a certain release point. You want to wait as long as possible before procurement to ensure you're not wasting money up front.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of other use cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20840" LastActivityDate="2015-12-09T04:46:54.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16925" CreationDate="2015-12-09T09:20:32.127" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This constraint makes sense when you have a task with any of the following characteristics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It can take place at any point in time, up to a point, but there is a future event/date/task by which it &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are higher priority tasks which you would prefer take place before said task, but which are not literal predecessors of the task&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is an external reason why it makes sense to leave the task as late as possible (such as that outlined by mwan)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, I commonly use it for all pre-deployment preparation tasks. The actual deployment date/weekend/milestone/task happens at a time driven by the bulk of the project plan, but the tasks to prepare the environment, complete the service transition documentation etc. can happen at any time prior to the deployment; but clearly you want them &lt;em&gt;just before&lt;/em&gt; deployment. There is no point preparing the service transition documentation at the beginning of the project, you want it right at the end just before actual deployment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the backloaded tasks becomes a pre-requisite for the deployment milestone/task using As Late As Possible, which means they butt up against the deployment tasks and don't get scheduled earlier in the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-12-09T15:40:06.337" LastActivityDate="2015-12-09T15:40:06.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16888" CreationDate="2015-12-09T12:20:34.910" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Limiting my answer to only practical issues in project management, a daily stand up consumes time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;tl;dr&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that the goal of the stand up is to improve communication, you've got to be very confident that this is the best way to improve communication, and very sure that you're not communicating the wrong message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Long Version&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time is one of the key resources on the iron triangle - every hour you spend in a daily stand up has an impact on cost and quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My team is an even dozen.  If I gave each of them 5 minutes, the total length of the meeting is an hour - that is 12 hours a week that I'm investing in communication rather than in the production of goods and services valuable to our customer.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During that hour, the person speaking and I are fully engaged.  Roughly two thirds of the rest of the team is disengaged and playing games on their phones.  That isn't just money I'm pouring down the drain, it is a very clear message to my time that I value their work less than I value participation in a group grope. That is a message I'm reluctant to send.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Investing 12 hours of work is significant. I won't do that unless I can guarantee that it is the best way to use that 12 hours. The obvious alternative is that I meet with each of the team members for 10-15 minutes (15x2x12) which is only 6 hours, during which nobody is idle; everyone in the meeting is focused on the meeting.  For my team the superior alternative is to have one representative from each of the functions meet to discuss cross functional issues. For my team that is 3 people for 15 minutes - probably 45 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tl;dr is that communication is ultimately my job and my responsibility and I believe I can do it more effectively and more efficiently than a stand up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside: And 5 minutes isn't realistic; my experience is that in any group of 10 people, there is at least 1 person who cannot say &quot;hello&quot; within 5 minutes, and at least one other person who has a complex problem that the team cannot resist solving in the meeting - the average is probably closer to 10 minutes than 5.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second Aside: the true impact is probably even greater - most of my team works on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;maker time&lt;/em&gt; not &lt;em&gt;manager time&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - a 1 hour interruption in their day will destroy between 90 minutes and 4 hours of productivity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third aside: Problems are like crack cocaine - It take tremendous discipline to avoid solving problems at the table.  If even one of the 12 people raises a real problem, then I can predict with some confidence that at least 2 of the others will try to solve that problem.  That will result in a discussion where we rehash all the simple solutions that we've tried and discarded, and then redefine the problem for the people who aren't involved in it.  Everyone has good intentions and wants to be helpful, but is more interested in solving the problem than stewarding time.  So I've got a new challenge -  I have to shut down discussion of a problem without looking like I don't care about the problem or that I don't value the good intentions of the team.  And while I'm doing that I'm still communicating to the disengaged team members that I care more about their presence than their work product and I'm still communicating to my sponsor and stakeholders that I care more about standup than I do about the closure of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2015-12-09T12:20:34.910" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16932" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-09T17:34:32.927" Score="0" ViewCount="463" Body="&lt;p&gt;I inherited a 1265 line project that I believe was created in Project 2007 several years ago (~2013). It is now in Project 2010 and has had several different people working on it, along with periods of complete neglect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seems to be some funky things going on, for instance if I select the Critical Tasks check box in the Gantt Chart format tab I get an error stating &quot;The argument value is not valid. Verify that the value is spelled correctly, and that it is of the type that this argument expects.&quot; I have also found that a lot of the tasks have a leading and trailing space when I go to edit the task name. I think this may be an artifact from copy and paste or maybe converting from Proj2007. Another thing is that after meeting with stakeholders and updating durations and predecessors, Finish dates will appear to be inline with the project teams expectations. I save and check in to SharePoint, when I re-open, the Finish dates have changed. A lot of Resources are overallocated since Project is only being used to manage tasks and durations. And when Project asks if I want to assign more resources or reschedule, I tell it no and leave the resources overallocated. Might Project be changing durations, start/finish dates in the back ground?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, with that my primary question is do you think it will be easier to fix the problems or start over with a fresh Project 2010 schedule. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21441" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-12-09T19:03:20.620" LastActivityDate="2018-11-20T14:07:38.137" Title="Inherited Project Fix or Start Over" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16933" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-09T18:40:53.830" Score="0" ViewCount="148" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm new to project management and I have till now followed the standard textbook principles in building a particular product. I'm now at a situation wherein, I need to perform the capacity planning for this particular product. The product will be an external facing product (public) and expected to raise a good demand. We plan to launch in a phased manner in different markets. I'm clueless on how to plan the capacity for the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that in terms of capacity planning, we need to look at cpu, memory, storage and network connections. But, how to estimate the demand for the product and how to concretize the same. Any leads on this will be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21429" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-12-09T19:02:43.370" LastActivityDate="2015-12-13T17:17:24.780" Title="How to estimate and plan product capacity?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16932" CreationDate="2015-12-09T20:21:17.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had similar issues in a past project. After some testing i came to the conclusion that it was caused by using different MS-Project version for the same project file. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can try testing this by making a simple project file. Send it to other team members who use a different MS version for some editing. If the project is all fucked up when you open it again: Problem found!&#xA;Note that you will have to make screenshots or pdf exports for comparison, because the project might seem consistent on each computer yet be totally different (other task names, other dates, etc...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our workaround was to only have a few people with the same version edit the project file. External actors were given PDF or JPEG exports. (This prevent them from wanting to edit and accidentaly send back corrupted files.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's likely you have to start a fresh project to clear the corruption. Stick to strict editing rules or it will be corrupted again pretty soon.&#xA;(also: NO copy/paste from the old to the new project, create all again manually). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the topic of MS-project automatically changing duration, dates, and various things.&#xA;It can happen on purpose. MS-Project may automatically adjust tasks based upon the constraints you gave it (start date, finish date, duration...). It can make some extremely complex dependencies in the long run. You notice that when changing one thing will cause many tasks to adjust. &#xA;(Please note that your symptoms are consistent with a case of project-file-edited-with-multiple-version-gone-wrong, not a case of vicious-constraint-hidden-somewhere.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally don't use the resource allocation in MS project either. Can't comment about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this can help you. Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21444" LastActivityDate="2015-12-09T20:21:17.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16926" CreationDate="2015-12-09T22:52:20.500" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When team member start complaining or personally attacking other team members, the retrospective facilitator should intervene. This kind of behavior will damage the culture of the retrospective meeting, which is not acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feedback in retrospectives can be personal, but it has to be constructive and should be given in a blameless and respectful way. In the example above this was clearly not the case, again that is something that the meeting facilitator should address immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suggest to find out why the Scrum master did not intervene. Is the Scrum master unaware of the damage that was done? Inexperienced or unsure what to do? Coaching and mentoring might be a suitable solution to ensure that the Scrum master is capable to deal with situations like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16919" LastActivityDate="2015-12-09T22:52:20.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16933" CreationDate="2015-12-10T00:09:41.717" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Capacity planning can mean two things - in Project Management it can refer to the work capacity that your team can handle, but elsewhere in IT it can refer to the load or capacity that your system can handle. It's easy to confuse the two. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are looking at the capacity your system can handle, then this is a question for your technical experts as stated by another poster. They should be able to provide estimations or maybe specific figures depending on the nature of the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, your job as the PM is to focus on the phased rollout of the product and set a schedule according to both the needs of the market and the recommendations of your tech experts. Learning to partner with your developers or other resources will be key in your long term success as a project manager. Best of luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21433" LastActivityDate="2015-12-10T00:09:41.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12192" CreationDate="2015-12-10T12:21:38.310" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;While this is a very complete answer from Mahesh, it looks to me as if the approaches are really a re-work of waterfall. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Kanban, we should reduce WIP (work in progress) as much as possible. In the diagrams proposed, there is a huge amount of WIP - and this indicates one of two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The resources available are SUBSTANTIAL - and it is possible to work on all those items simultaneously, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is far too much WIP, and the process, therefore, isn't Kanban. (In Kanban, we only &quot;pull&quot; work that we have capacity to work on, and work on that exclusively until it is complete).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be very interested in Mahesh's views on this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21455" LastActivityDate="2015-12-10T12:21:38.310" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16939" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-10T19:42:47.820" Score="-1" ViewCount="702" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Cw3G9.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Cw3G9.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As shown in the picture below, my task is to calculate direct and indirect costs using this table at first. Further I have to do the calculation according to Direct costing, Standard costing and ABC methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have done the first part of the calculation (in red), however I realized that I have an array of problems with indirect costs as it is not written anywhere how to do the task properly according only to the data in the first part of the table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently I asked this on Economic SE and was advised to post this issue here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would really appreciate some sort of help regarding indirect costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21461" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-02-10T16:12:28.520" LastActivityDate="2016-10-07T20:23:23.547" Title="Indirect cost calculation" Tags="&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12192" CreationDate="2015-12-10T22:54:35.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kanban is a great tool for making your workflow explicit.  This will help you expose bottlenecks, eliminate waste and eventually change/optimize your workflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually organizations implement Kanban when 1 or more of the following are true or suspected of being a problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are too many pieces of work happening in parallel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The org needs to take several specialists and get them to own a work product or process as a team, not as a bunch of individuals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are many competing work products&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Priorities frequently change&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you create your Kanban board the goal is to have the board reflect as closely as possible what your group does.  Its beneficial to actually have the group of people that will use the Kanban board build it.  This can help them take ownership as well as understand their processes.  They should also agree on, set, and understand how WIP limits work and the basics of a pull system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-12-10T22:54:35.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16941" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-11T19:37:41.187" Score="1" ViewCount="151" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm currently working on a product (external facing) and we are on the verge of launch of the product. I want to gear myself up with facing the worst situations since this is the first external product I'm about to launch&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let us assume that I launched the product and I get an email from the management that something is wrong with the product launched in production. What is the best way to handle situations like this ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21429" LastActivityDate="2016-02-28T10:12:55.220" Title="Product launch failure" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-03-06T23:34:13.103" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16941" CreationDate="2015-12-11T19:56:38.283" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on how serious the issue is, what's the management like and other factors as well. Anyways I recommend that you do a soft launch before the real one. To be able to get a sense of what might go wrong and what would the management feedback be like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if the product is a website or a mobile app get a group of like a 100 person to use it before declaring to the whole world it exists. And I don't mean tester. I mean a group of your intended target audience &quot;normal users&quot;. Then give the soft launch a week or something, I think after that you'd have a better idea on what may go wrong and prepare a mitigation plan to avoid it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3263" LastActivityDate="2015-12-11T19:56:38.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16941" CreationDate="2015-12-11T20:16:51.377" Score="2" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Risk management&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were in your shoes, I'd conduct a pre-emptive postmortem.  Sit the team down and start with the assumption that you have just received the email from management.  Ask the team to come up with the most likely reasons why. Then work forward to do traditional risk analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Communications Plan&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also carefully examine communications policies for web site breach notification.  There is ample evidence that the way a company communicates a breach (both internally and externally) significantly affects how serious the breach is, and how quickly it is resolved.  I didn't find a real simple example, but if do some research comparing how (for example) Target handled their breach with how LastPass handled their security incidents, you'll come up with good guidance.  In your situation, I'd also carefully consult the postmortem analysis of the Obamacare websites.  There should be enough data and lessons learned to fill up a Yottabyte disk drive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;IF&lt;/em&gt; the site encounters turbulence on launch:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who is measuring what and when?    Response time?  Database time?  Transaction time?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who coordinates response?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who communicates to external stakeholders?  Who issues the press release? When? To what press?  You probably want only one person to speak to media.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who communicates internally?  You probably only want one person to speak to management.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who is in the incident management cell?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How is the incident management cell notified?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where do the incident management people report?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How often does the incident management cell report?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does the incident management cell escalate?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who has the authority to do what?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;who can pull the plug and shut down the external product? Under what conditions?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Proper Planning Prevents Pathetically Poor Performance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2015-12-11T20:16:51.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16941" CreationDate="2015-12-11T20:49:03.910" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You'll first want to gather some information to provide your development team or qa team depending on how your company is functionally structured. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the expected vs actual result?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the reproduction steps? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Details about their environment? (browser version, ios, android?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who are the impacted clients or parties (lets you know approximate severity and who to go to for UAT when you have a fix done)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you have that information&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide the above information to your QA/Dev team to verify that this is a valid defect and something is not behaving as designed or expected.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get an estimate on time to fix from the development team and figure out a sensible release timeframe&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coordinate UAT with the user who reported the issue or whomever their support rep is once the fix is out in a test environment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Follow up with the initial reporter once the fix is live in production&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My original answer was not specifically in the context of project management. Apologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21470" LastEditorUserId="21470" LastEditDate="2015-12-11T21:01:49.410" LastActivityDate="2015-12-11T21:01:49.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16941" CreationDate="2015-12-11T23:14:28.890" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your action would depend on the nature and severity of product failure.  If the product is still fit for use but have identified defects, then the team you have in place for post-product defect resolution simply needs capture the defect, prioritize with all the others, and then go fix.  If the product is not fit for use, recall it and begin your analysis and resolution activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully, you have prepared for and budgeted for post-production issues, including a complete recall...which is likely very unlikely and extreme.  Don't over think this.  This is typical stuff for all kinds of products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-12-11T23:14:28.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16946" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-11T23:17:36.507" Score="1" ViewCount="867" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a medium-sized, geographically-dispersed development team using Jira for task management and GIT as our repository.  Our developers are generally focused on one primary development project at a time, but their time can often be divided between that project and other, smaller things (sometimes development-oriented and sometimes not).   For all development-related work (primary project and otherwise) we track tasks in Jira, but for non-development work we don’t.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our problem is that we want to track development time against tasks and projects, ideally to their Jira tickets, but we have been unsuccessful more than once at getting this off the ground using Jira’s built-in time tracking.  The problems we have run into are that time-tracking against Jira tasks is manual, so without frequent reminders the developers forget or ignore tracking often enough to make the tracking records useless.  We tend to get off to a good start, but once it seems like everyone is in the groove and the reminders diminish, the time tracking starts to fall off too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our goal is to find a solution that allows us to track development time against tasks without the need for a lot of manual action by the developers, and ideally that is not too big-brothery.  We want a good work environment, but we also want to have time-spent data.  If there is anyone who has been able to successfully find a solution to this problem, we would love to hear about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several reasons for wanting to do this, but all revolve around the idea of ensuring our engineers are unblocked and working effectively. An engineer could be getting interruptions from other projects, so their output on their main project is suffering. How do we identify that across several teams of engineers? Is someone's lower than expected productivity because they are not getting sufficient instructions, or because they are getting interruptions, or because they are misunderstanding their tasks? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An early diagnostic of any of these problems would be seeing that an engineer is completing 8 hour tasks in 16 hours on average - or that they are booking 20 hours of project time per week instead of 40 (or whatever are the appropriate numbers for the engineer or the project, of course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, no, we're not trying to count keystrokes, or lines of code produced, etc. We're trying to help our engineers be as high-performance as they want to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, we don't use timesheets now - that's one solution that we've tried in the past but we know from experience the frustrations and limitations of that approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21473" LastEditorUserId="21473" LastEditDate="2015-12-14T22:31:47.903" LastActivityDate="2018-06-01T20:36:15.767" Title="How to track development activity time against tasks" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;timekeeping&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16939" CreationDate="2015-12-12T12:32:34.367" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One simple mechanism that could work is that after all the indirect costs are calculated, allocate those costs (either as a % overhead, or absolute overhead) on all resource costs in that product/project, product/project group, location, department or company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the simplest configuration, if you take the total column on the far right (the second last, not Overall), and sum them up, and then divide the sum by all your resource costs involved with Product 1, 2 and 3.  That becomes the overhead on those resource costs.  At this point, you have accounted for all overhead costs, at the overall organization level, but you have not done it very specifically for each product.  But you can then take this idea, and if the &quot;total&quot; column on right can be product/group/department specific, then you can do that analysis a bit more specifically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7019" LastActivityDate="2015-12-12T12:32:34.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16948" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-12T19:24:36.247" Score="13" ViewCount="10726" Body="&lt;p&gt;I keep reading that during Product Backlog Grooming the development team meets with the PM and the Product Owner and as a team prioritizes the features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it ultimately the Product Owner who decides the priority (what needs to be worked on and released first)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where does the Business Analyst come into this? I thought it was the BA's job to build relationships with the business stakeholders, learn the vision, learn the needs of the customers and work with the business to determine priority and requirements?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone please clarify, thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21062" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-10-31T13:20:24.150" LastActivityDate="2019-04-06T18:17:13.260" Title="Who truly prioritizes the product backlog? The Product Owner or Team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16948" CreationDate="2015-12-12T20:49:27.953" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Business Analyst works with the Product Owner and provides him with valuable insights on the value and importance of the user stories, but the PO is still the person who sets the priority of the backlog. The same applies to the the Team's involvement. Team members provide usable information on the technical level to the PO and the PO should be able understand this information and use it when prioritizing the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-12-12T20:49:27.953" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16950" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-13T06:19:31.743" Score="1" ViewCount="104" Body="&lt;p&gt;This might be an intuitive question but it seems that not much people knows it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I repeat information from last report's executive summary or should I only write what happened the week before the report?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say that there is a piece of information that is valid from last week's report, should I keep it or it is assumed that it has been read in the last report?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21193" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T05:17:58.670" Title="Executive Summary Repetition" Tags="&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;progress-report&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16950" CreationDate="2015-12-13T10:39:43.457" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, there is no common rule for this and it depends on the recipient but my best-practice is to keep the information and put a &quot;Last weeks info still valid:&quot; or similar above. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fore sure, newest / most relevant info should be on top, obsolete one should be deleted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need to point out historic evolution, describe it rather than print the whole history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2015-12-13T10:39:43.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16950" CreationDate="2015-12-13T12:31:47.163" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best person to answer this question is the person or people who are receiving the report. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'd take a look at your methodology for generating this report. It sounds like you are generating this report weekly. Does it really need an executive summary? I frequently write reports that cover the previous month and they are typically one page of text that describe what happened in the previous month, plus a few charts showing data from this month or trends over time that come up to an extra two or three sheets of paper (4-6 pages). Reports that are so short probably don't need an executive summary as it's easy enough to read the report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend working with the people who receive this report to figure out how to improve it to best meet their needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2015-12-13T15:01:25.633" LastActivityDate="2015-12-13T15:01:25.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16950" CreationDate="2015-12-13T15:45:39.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is customary to include a &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Context&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; paragraph/slide, and if you maintain a clean Project Status Dashboard, then it is also usually possible to show the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;differential/trend&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; in such a dashboard, such as &lt;em&gt;[Green, December 7th, 2015 -&gt; Green, December 14th, 2015]&lt;/em&gt;.  We usually start executive meetings with just taking a snapshot from our project status dashboard because we know that the client executive usually doesn't login to access it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The person receiving the report can then ask for more when that part is being walked through.  Usually, it is just a function of how many other projects/programs they are handling and when the last meeting was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7019" LastEditorUserId="7019" LastEditDate="2015-12-14T21:21:34.420" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T21:21:34.420" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2015-12-13T15:45:39.887" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16950" CreationDate="2015-12-13T16:22:59.953" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have two standard things I use to make status reports more effective; Trending and Graying Out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Trending&lt;/strong&gt;: Even on a simple dashboard the use of trending can help create context. Two most common ways I do this is a trending arrow and historical data. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Trending Arrow: Instead of a simple color box for status, I also provide a color arrow that points 45 degrees up, flat or 45 degrees down to show if this item is trending good (green), flat (green) or poor (red or yellow).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Historical Data: Showing trend over a few weeks can help executives to know if the data is good or not. Showing the results of a single development cycle tells you nothing really. Showing a trend line of bugs, work completed, etc. shows if things really are on track or not. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Graying Out&lt;/strong&gt;: Sometimes data is still relevant, even though it is not new. The down side is this can make it so new information is hard to pull out. People see last week's data and assume no change, missing the new data. First off, always put new data at the top. Then any data that was in the previous report change the font to a gray that can still be read, while being different enough from the black. I'll often use a dark blue for new text and gray for old to create even stronger contrast. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have any visual examples handy, sorry. All the ones I have contain proprietary data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="147" LastEditDate="2015-12-16T05:17:58.670" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T05:17:58.670" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16948" CreationDate="2015-12-13T16:46:15.363" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is, Yes, No, It Depends, in true agile fashion. :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I've been lucky or unlucky as the case may be and have never worked in a company with the Business Analyst role. So I can't comment on Zsolt's answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I do know is that in the agile community we are seeing more and more the concept of the &lt;strong&gt;Product Owner Team&lt;/strong&gt;. And the concept of what I call &lt;strong&gt;Pyramid Planning&lt;/strong&gt; is still very valid in agile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pyramid Planning:&lt;/strong&gt; The idea of several stages of planning with greater levels of detail. The large scale agile model, SAFe, uses this extensively. At the highest level prioritization is done by a business/ strategic team. At my present company (AOL) we us this regularly. As you get closer to the actual development work, the people involved in specific planning change. VPs and Execs decide the four big things that will be done this year, the team will decide just what gets done for the iteration next month. Which brings us to the idea of...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product Owner Team:&lt;/strong&gt; Having been a product manager, in a past life, I can say without a doubt that few, if any, product managers get to make all the decisions themselves. They are usually little more that the cowboy desperately trying to hold onto the bucking horse and guide it in the right direction. &lt;strong&gt;The Product Owner Team (POT)&lt;/strong&gt; recognizes this and formalizes it. The POT is made up of the key individuals who can provide the PO with all the data to make an informed decision. A POT will often have, in addition to the PO, an architect, representative of the development team, Ops/IT, customer support and BAs if the company has them. As a team they will review User Stories and prioritize them based on the entire picture, not just a limited business view that often happens if a Product Manager tries to work in a vacuum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it is important to note that you need to always engage with the team to get at least a high level estimate for the level of effort. You, the product owner, may think teleporting cars is the most important feature ever. And you may be right, only the dev team will tell you that no matter how valuable it is, it will take a 100 times longer than making a new self-driving car. You always need to factor time into your prioritization and only the team can give you a realistic estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-12-13T16:46:15.363" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16941" CreationDate="2015-12-13T17:04:07.813" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mark gives a great answer for how to prepare, spot on for planning ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen this kind of great planning fall down though, by poor execution after launch. When launching a new product I like to use the classic &lt;strong&gt;Tiger Team&lt;/strong&gt; concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Tiger Team is formed of the people Mark calls out in his post. You want representatives from the people who can fix the product, test the product, support the product and make decisions about the product. A good facilitator is also key. A project manager who doesn't even have knowledge of the product can serve in this role. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Tiger Team meets at the very minimum on a weekly basis. This can go up to as often as hourly depending on how critical response time is (on one company wide launch we had a 24 hour War Room set up for the first three days). The key here is right out of the agile playbook of &quot;inspect and adapt often.&quot; You can't just have everyone identified and a communication plan in place. You need to get the key players meeting, talking, and making decisions in as close to real time as possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-12-13T17:04:07.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16948" CreationDate="2015-12-13T17:14:02.237" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The direct answer is that the Product Owner prioritizes the backlog. It is, of course a little more nuanced than that. In an ideal world, the PO would just sort the backlog items by effort and value to create their priority - and that's usually what happens at first. However, the team is going to provide a lot of input about how the order selected affects their ability to deliver product increments. For example, the team may say that putting one item in ahead of another allows they to deliver them with less overall effort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The business analyst is in an interesting position. You'll notice there is no BA role in scrum. The traditional role of BA extends into both the PO role when it comes to engaging stakeholders and identifying work that needs to be done but it also extends into the team role when it comes into digging into technical details, database and screen design, and other implementation specifics. The pure scrum approach would say you need to choose to be either the PO or a team member and then follow that role, but with many teams starting off, that isn't possible or practical for a number of reasons. If you're continuing to fill a BA position that extends into both of the roles, I would make two suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Know which hat you're wearing at any time and wear only one. For example, if you're trying to get some user stories ready for backlog refinement, you're wearing your PO hat, so be careful not to get into implementation details. First, you will have real trouble keeping the backlog ahead of the team and second, you take the solution out of the team's hands, reducing their ownership of the work and sense of responsibility. Similarly, if you're working on designing or building the software, keep your team hat on. Switching back to PO unintentionally sends a message to the team that your thoughts trump theirs and again, you lose their ownership (the obvious exception being if the team asks you a PO question).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Traditionally the BA on projects is expected to take the analysis and design much further along than Scrum requires. The whole team should own designing and creating the implementation of the user story. In many cases, you may be the person to do it, but the team as a whole should own it and if you don't have time, other team members should step in. The development team should never push that on you and say they can't work on something because you haven't finished design details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-12-13T17:14:02.237" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16933" CreationDate="2015-12-13T17:17:24.780" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An important part of Capacity Planning is expectation setting up front. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether it be team or system, estimating capacity will always be wrong. It's literally a law, Hofstadter's law states &quot;It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the very first thing you need to ensure you do, is to over communicate that the estimates for capacity are estimates. It's a sad trap we've fallen into these days, to take estimates as commitments and not as what they are, educated guesses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is not to say it's just doom and gloom. There is a way to make it all work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even in my current role at AOL, where we are a full agile shop, I still call on my old PMI project management learning around &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Order of Magnitude&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;. The concept here is your initial estimates are likely to be no more than 50% accurate. So you don't just rely on the one estimate, you build on it with real data. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the initial estimate, you plan contingencies based on that. Then you work with real data. For example, when building a product, the initial estimate will be 50% accurate (note: it will never be sooner. It's a 50% chance of hitting this date instead of a later date). Then you take checkpoints into the project and see how much work is really being done. One quarter of the way into the planned project time you see how much work has been done and then project out a release date with probably 60% accuracy. You keep doing regular checkpoints to see where you're going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For capacity planning for a system, the first thing you can do is setup a virtual environment to test loads. This will get you an idea if the estimates were even close. Then you setup contingency plans to bring in more capacity as you ramp up your service. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why agile development cycles tend to work so much better. When you're checking in on your progress daily, you will see when things are going pear shaped a lot faster and be able to respond. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-12-13T17:17:24.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16946" CreationDate="2015-12-13T17:23:24.297" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can combine the &quot;Automated Log Work for JIRA&quot; with the &quot;Smart Commit&quot; features. So a minor manual work will be needed from the team, which is moving the task from open to in progress and when done commit the code and refer it to the Jira ticket. Jira will calculate the time the task took to finish automatically. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can then calculate the non-technical tasks time roughly, by subtracting the development time from the planned working hours for each developer. So if a developer is supposed to work for 60 hours all over the project -give or take- and the development tasks took 40 hours then he worked 20 hours on the non-technical part. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That been said I'd really recommend that you track all the tasks even if it's meetings to be able to assess how time is spent and how to optimize your process to boost your team's spirit and productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3263" LastActivityDate="2015-12-13T17:23:24.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16960" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-13T23:06:55.337" Score="4" ViewCount="663" Body="&lt;p&gt;In requirements gathering I've learnt to outline the objectives for the project as well as identify stakeholders and the stakeholder needs (along with the users needs, which is off-topic for this question). &lt;strong&gt;Are project objectives and stakeholder needs one and the same thing?&lt;/strong&gt; For example, for a website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Responsive design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attract new recruits&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Easy to maintain content&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can gather feedback from users&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21483" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2015-12-14T10:22:45.080" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T12:58:34.663" Title="Project Objectives vs Stakeholder Needs" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;&lt;goals&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16960" CreationDate="2015-12-13T23:58:21.530" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Objectives&lt;/strong&gt; are typically &lt;em&gt;higher level&lt;/em&gt; than individual Stakeholder Requirements. They usually &lt;em&gt;come first&lt;/em&gt;, created up-front in the Project Initiation phase before you've delved in to individual Stakeholder Requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stakeholder Requirements&lt;/strong&gt; are lower level and more specific that Project Objectives. They'll carefully define the needs of the various stakeholders. Remember that these can include &lt;em&gt;Functional&lt;/em&gt; (eg gather feedback from users) and &lt;em&gt;Nonfunctional&lt;/em&gt; (eg responsive design) requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll find throughout the progression of a Project that many &quot;outputs&quot; are re-workings of previous &quot;outputs&quot; at either a lower level of detail, or with more clarity and certainty than before. This is because as a Project progresses you are continually gathering more information that help define the details of the project itself. You start broad (vision / objectives) and end specific (requirements / solutions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20840" LastActivityDate="2015-12-13T23:58:21.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16960" CreationDate="2015-12-14T11:52:54.530" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In simple words, stakeholder requirements are generally part of the project objectives and considered part of stakeholder management. There may be many other requirements or objectives of the project as well. In some cases, requirements may not necessarily be an objective but may just be a part/input/ecosystem of a project wbs or plan. That should answer the 4 points you mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16496" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T11:52:54.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16960" CreationDate="2015-12-14T12:58:34.663" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There should be no &quot;versus&quot; when you think about the relationship between these two constructs.  Stakeholder wants and needs drive the reason for a project's existence.  Both have varying degrees of abstraction--from the high level to the low level--and a requirement should be linked to a stakeholder want or need and vice versa.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T12:58:34.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16871" CreationDate="2015-12-14T15:25:11.500" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the main reasons scrum exists is because it was observed that change is inevitable, and it should be embraced rather than feared. The first thing you need to do is to accept that a stakeholder with changing priorities is a common thing. It isn't something that needs to be fixed &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt;. Rather, change needs to be embraced, recognized, and prioritized appropriately. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest using a physical scrum board for a while to drive the point home. There should be a place for enough backlog items for the current sprint, as well as the top items that will likely make it into the next sprint. It also helps to have room for all of the other backlog items so that the stakeholder can see the growing pile of stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever a change comes in, write it on a card and then get the stakeholder to agree to either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;abort the current sprint if the new item is if higher priority, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;remove some item from the top of the backlog to make room for the new item.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those really are the only two options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think having a physical board with actual cards makes the disruption more tangible since they have to physically change something about the current plan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3189" LastEditorUserId="3189" LastEditDate="2015-12-14T15:31:25.167" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T15:31:25.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16871" CreationDate="2015-12-14T16:57:44.290" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Job Security.  Rejoice, you are in a contract that will never end and you'll be able to bill till the end of time.  Your children and your children's children will be able to process the same change requests over and over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick is to make sure that the customer knows this.  Every change request should be documented in terms of the effect on the milestone delivery date and the ultimate delivery date. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We're happy to make that change - the rework will delay this milestone by 2 weeks and the project completion by somewhere between 3 and four weeks. Total cost impact is an additional 80 hours of work for 2.5 developers, so let's call that 300 hours @ a burdened rate of $80/hour.  On the back end that's looking like 1500 hours.  As always, a pleasure doing business with you.  Of course if you decide that the status quo is good enough and you don't need this change, we can return to the original schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clarification based on OP's question - we're paid to accomplish the scope.  If the customer changes the scope through an official change management process, then I believe we're held accountable for the new scope. Part of our job is to ensure that the change management process takes into account the impact of the change on cost, schedule, quality, security, requirements, suitability for business, etc.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-12-14T17:41:14.867" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T17:41:14.867" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16966" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16967" CreationDate="2015-12-14T17:38:13.630" Score="3" ViewCount="627" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work on a team that consists of several different groups - researchers, analysts, database analysts, and developer (me).  We load data for our project several times a year, following a consistent (and long) process that involves many handoffs from one group to the next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We currently use JIRA to track our process development - i.e., improvements, bugs, change requests, etc. - though we don't really use an Agile methodology (since I'm the only developer, I would say we use a 'nothing' methodology, but Waterfall is probably closer than anything).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We would like to begin using JIRA to track our progress through the process itself.  So for example, we might have the following steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pull data from database (DB Analyst)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create initial data product (Developer)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Run analysis (Analyst) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check data product (Researcher)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check analysis (Researcher)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Package analysis results for deliver (Developer)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Upload analysis results to database (DB Analyst)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These happen more or less sequentially, one leading to the next, and typically need the same steps every time period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current plan is to create a single task, effectively a Story (though I don't think it's properly a Story, if I understand Stories properly).  Then, create Subtasks to that Story/Task for each of the above tasks.  I'm not sure if the tasks should start out assigned to their eventual do-ers, or if they should start out assigned to the project owner (we don't really have a PM, but that would be the PM in an ideal setup) and get assigned out when they're ready to be worked.  I'm also considering setting them up where each subtask is a &quot;blocker&quot; to the next subtask, though it doesn't look like that's necessarily a good idea based on the UI; it still shows as Open, though at least it has links in the related section to the blocker/blocks tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a 'best practice' way to do this?  Is this not really doable in JIRA?  It does sound like Kanban might be closer to what we're doing here, but honestly I don't think I could get a major shift like that accomplished in a meaningful way.  Is this something I'd need to get a JIRA add-on to make more doable?  (I think we use mostly stock Jira, with some custom templates but not a whole lot.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21493" LastActivityDate="2016-01-26T00:47:42.357" Title="How to use JIRA to track progress over a process with multiple handoffs" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16966" CreationDate="2015-12-14T20:36:29.540" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Assign the task in advance and make them watchers on the previous task&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My current plan is to create a single Story. Then, create Subtasks to&#xA;  that Story for each of the above tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the best approach under the circumstances. If you were following Agile/Scrum you should chop up the large story into smaller stories that can be completed in a sprint. But, in your case that is not a requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if the tasks should start out assigned to their eventual&#xA;  do-ers, or if they should start out assigned to the project owner and&#xA;  get assigned out when they're ready to be worked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will assign them in advance, so that they can plan their time and be ready when it gets to them. In addition, I will make them a watcher on the task just ahead of them. For example, I will make the Analyst a watcher on the &quot;Create initial data product&quot; Developer task. This way they will get notification when the previous task status changes to &quot;In Progress&quot;, &quot;In Verification&quot;... etc. Also they will be notified about comments in the previous task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm also considering setting them up where each subtask is a &quot;blocker&quot;&#xA;  to the next subtask, it still shows as Open, though at least it has&#xA;  links in the related section to the blocker/blocks tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can add a link and select the previous task and make it &quot;is blocked by&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T20:36:29.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16968" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16970" CreationDate="2015-12-14T22:25:17.487" Score="1" ViewCount="429" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wonder how you seek to increase engagement in project teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm with the challenge of finding ways, methodologies and principles that open up characteristics as pro-activity, leadership and teamwork, project team members, in order to increase the engagement of all employees and participants in the PMO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ps: The peculiarities of this challenge is that within the PMO the same team plans collaboratively the university extension projects and perform the same, sequential or parallel. The project team is basically made up of undergraduate students, volunteers and teachers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21498" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T14:53:58.313" Title="How to increase the project team engagement?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16903" CreationDate="2015-12-14T22:45:39.533" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This was talked about while I was at university. Rather than the areas within the triangle relating to whether or not it is more spend, or more time, or better quality (as if on a sliding scale, akin to the examples provided previously), it is sustainability that exists in the middle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's used as a reminder for you and your stakeholders to consider how sustainable your method and solution is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the method, it could be understanding if it is sustainable for your business/client to continue spending at the rate they are? Using the current rate of work are we able to maintain the quality of the solution? Etc.....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the solution, will this be fit for purpose in a years time? Will we make a good ROI? Does this meet/exceed all known legal requirements? Etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By doing this, you can help work towards making sure that your project has been properly understood and validated by the business and the solution that is being created has a full lifecycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other schools of thought where the triangle should be scrapped for a shape with more points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However it is used, the iron triangle is a handy tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21500" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T22:45:39.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16968" CreationDate="2015-12-15T04:36:16.437" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience one of the best ways to kick start engagement is through the use of retrospectives. Not the post mortem, power point slide it to death, of old. Agile style retrospectives, that are focused and follow up afterwards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, as an agile coach at AOL, one of the first things I needed to address was low engagement in the teams I worked with. The teams I work with had come from a purchased startup and they were in the classic post executive package malaise. I needed to get them out of this slump and engaging with myself and management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used a simple retrospective technique called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.innovationgames.com/speed-boat/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Speed Boat&lt;/a&gt;. Running this with each team, in a single hour I was able to not only get a good understanding of what the key issues were, I also went from a room full of passive listeners to an active conversation that continued. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One critical key is the follow up. You can't just do retrospectives and expect things to get better. You have to help the team follow up on their improvements and also follow up on your actions that come out of these. Retrospectives with no follow up quickly lose their effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T04:36:16.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16971" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16972" CreationDate="2015-12-15T17:11:54.330" Score="2" ViewCount="136" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally I see a Responsibility Assignment Matrix (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_assignment_matrix#RASCI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;RASCI&lt;/a&gt;) being developed at the start of a project. However, in the current environment, a RASCI is only being developed as part of handover to the operational team. This seems counter-intuitive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The RASCI being developed is intended to highlight the support model going forward. From my perspective, a RASCI encompasses all aspects of the project including handover. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When should the RASCI be developed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17081" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-12-16T07:40:54.870" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T07:40:54.870" Title="When does one develop a RASCI?" Tags="&lt;roles&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;responsibility&gt;&lt;artifacts&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16971" CreationDate="2015-12-15T23:55:40.413" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The RASCI being developed is intended to highlight the support model going forward. From my perspective a RASCI encompasses all aspects of the project including handover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can do both, or neither. RASCI is just a tool to get agreement and understanding on who is responsible for what and at what level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's useful to have as part of your project (lots of deliverables, lots of stakeholders, lots of &quot;opinions&quot; etc) then by all means use it for the entire project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's useful only in certain phases of the project (eg handover and/or operations) then use it only in those phases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither is fundamentally right or wrong, RASCI is just a tool that becomes part of your kit. I find it very useful in larger teams or complicated (or overly bureaucratic) organisational environments to use over the entire project process, but for smaller projects / closer knit teams / collaborative organisational cultures I sometimes find it overkill and use it only for certain phases, and sometimes not at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20840" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T23:55:40.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16950" CreationDate="2015-12-16T00:31:17.363" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In project management, the report is a deliverable that is given to your client. so it depends on his needs, and  as i know , the weekly reportmust be short ,precise and clear,and we put just the events of the previous week .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21509" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T00:31:17.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16925" CreationDate="2015-12-16T01:04:46.383" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A simpler reason is if you are dealing with something that has a short expiration window, such as fresh shrimp or ice without freezer space.  You would want the delivery to come &quot;Just-in-time&quot; or as late as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20626" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T01:04:46.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16975" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16987" CreationDate="2015-12-16T09:46:00.250" Score="3" ViewCount="208" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been practicing Agile and leading a new team for a while in a new organization.&#xA;Everything works perfectly fine. Task got pulled by the team. Process that is set by the team has been followed by the team without any problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Challenge i faced recently was, new task &#xA;required to be done by different department normally their manager will issued a ticket to me before my team.&#xA;but now it seems everyone is assigning to my team mate although keeping me in loop but it doesn't make any sense.&#xA;Where they communicate straight to my team mate. It seems like the process has been broken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a little confuse , how can i re-align the team with a proper process and also across other department? Should i talk to the boss about the process once I've apply and follow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17631" LastEditorUserId="17631" LastEditDate="2015-12-16T09:53:27.587" LastActivityDate="2015-12-26T03:46:12.990" Title="Kanban / Agile Goes Haywire" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16975" CreationDate="2015-12-16T12:18:52.020" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There could be a few answers here, so I'll try to hit each:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, does work have to go through you for your process to work? Especially with newer teams, having all work flow into the process through a team lead or manager can be helpful to make sure people aren't being distracted and the prioritization process isn't being side-stepped. As the team and the organization gets used to how they work together, that person's role may become less of a gate keeper. That can be uncomfortable at first, but ask if there is any pain being caused - is the team member getting distracted or are people slipping their request ahead of others that should be first?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, you said that people are assigning work to a teammate. This does seems problematic. Work should go to the team and then the appropriate person should take it. Again, the details are important. If they're placing an item in the queue and your team mate says &quot;Oh, I'm about to be done with this task and it looks like you're next, let's chat.&quot; then that's pretty ok. If they're short-circuiting the process, you're right to raise the concern and your teammate should also be directing them to the proper process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which brings us to the final part: is it clear to people outside of the team how work gets brought to your team and prioritized. In the past, I've worked in teams where we thought this was clear - you entered a ticket, it went in a queue, we worked top-down. Turned out almost no one knew that. They just thought they entered a ticket and we'd get back to them when we got back to them. Ask the people going directly to your teammate why they are. There may just be a small visibility problem that'll clear everything up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T12:18:52.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16856" CreationDate="2015-12-16T13:33:13.197" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use quick filters to make the boards easier to navigate when there are a lot of issues. You could try creating a quick filter that hides the tasks in done status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read additional information in these articles: &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/agile/jira-agile-user-s-guide/configuring-a-board/configuring-quick-filters&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Configuring Quick Filters&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.atlassian.com/2013/01/jql-the-most-flexible-way-to-search-jira-14/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;JQL: The most flexible way to search JIRA&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21491" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-17T11:20:39.617" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T11:20:39.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16978" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16989" CreationDate="2015-12-16T14:51:01.883" Score="5" ViewCount="1059" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my friends, who is a project manager of an external product, is facing an interesting dilemma. He asked me a question and I thought I will post it to a wider audience...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their current project depends on an internal resource and two different groups are asking for the same resource/capacity. Only one can get the resources so how best to handle this situation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21429" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-12-16T15:03:46.773" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T08:37:11.717" Title="Resource conflict handling" Tags="&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;resources&gt;&lt;conflicts&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16968" CreationDate="2015-12-16T14:53:58.313" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;On an individual project you can try to increase engagement through:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Having your executives tell the team why their work matters.&lt;/strong&gt; The foundation for having a motivated team is to ensure they understand the business value of their effort, how the organization will benefit, how they themselves will benefit, how they will make a difference.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Praise the team and individuals when they do well.&lt;/strong&gt; Talk about successes. Do this in person. Do this often. Do this publicly. This doesn't have to be fancy... just stop by a person's desk, find out what they are doing, figure out something positive about their effort and let them know. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Focus on recovering from problems rather than the problem itself.&lt;/strong&gt; When something bad happens make sure there is no finger pointing or moaning. Focus on talking about solutions instead. If this deals with a particular individual keep it private. This will help motivate the team by demonstrating that if there is a screw-up they won't be dragged over the coals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is to do these things consistently throughout the lifecycle of a project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T14:53:58.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16978" CreationDate="2015-12-16T15:29:18.030" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both projects should have business cases tied to them. It should be relatively straight-forward for an appropriate authority to use these together with knowledge of your organization's priorities and decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example. Project A should deliver $100 benefit. Project B should deliver $50 benefit. Resource goes to Project A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example. Project A should deliver $100 benefit. Project B should deliver $50 benefit, but is a higher priority in your organization. Resource goes to Project B. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T15:29:18.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16981" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-16T15:58:50.040" Score="7" ViewCount="217" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of our best PMs is a non-technical PM. She used to be a BA, not a developer, and is extremely detail oriented, has excellent communications, is Scrum certified, etc. We are placing her on one of our highest valued Fortune 50, but the customer has raised an objection that since she is not technical she will not be able to fill her &quot;slack time&quot; with development time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality, we just don't think there will be any slack, and in fact a technical PM is a bit worrisome for us as it is a large project and we want to make sure that the PM takes care of &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the team members. Communication with the customer takes 3+ hours a day with all the emails, and meetings by itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I handle objections about potential PM idleness stemming from a lack of technical ability?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7019" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-12-17T16:13:23.440" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T16:33:50.950" Title="How can I handle objections about the percent of utilization of a non-technical PM?" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16978" CreationDate="2015-12-16T17:50:50.027" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When this happens, this is either a non-issue or the tip of a broader issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If both projects want Bob, but they don't need Bob and could use Jason instead but he's not quite as good, it's a non-issue. Maybe Bob goes to the harder project and Jason reaches out to Bob if he has questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, this becomes much more complicated if there is no Jason. If you have one person in your organization with a skill needed by two projects and no one else can do that thing at all, you have extreme knowledge and skill siloing in your teams and it's going to have these impacts on projects and you're forced into a bad situation where either one project is out of luck or you're splitting Bob's time, which has a long list of negative side-effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's the second case, you probably can't fix it this second, but I would definitely look to start knowledge-sharing and bringing someone else up to speed as soon as possible. Maybe any work Bob does he's pairing with someone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see this a lot with skills like a DBA or UI designer. A lot of times organizations assume they're in the second situation when really they're in the first. Often times, developers can handle UI just fine if there's a working style guide, as an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T17:50:50.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16981" CreationDate="2015-12-17T01:02:42.353" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been very successful as a program manager and now agile coach, in Silicon Valley, for over fifteen years based on a completely non-technical background. I've faced this argument many times in the earlier stages of my program management career. My technical skills are at a basic advanced computer user and I've never coded. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When faced with these arguments I provide three reasons why I am well qualified. Two of those are fairly universal to any non-technical PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1- Perspective:&lt;/strong&gt; As a non-technical person I am able to avoid falling down the rat hole. Because I don't have a technical background, I remain focused on the project itself and ensuring the project is a success. Whether we use one SQL query or another is not something I need to worry about. If we are getting enough work done to meet our schedule is something I need to worry about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2- Force Multiplier:&lt;/strong&gt; This one is best done through a short example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Say you have a team of five engineers and you want to improve productivity. If you hire a sixth engineer, in theory you will improve productivity by 20%. However, the law of diminishing returns and also the principles of team dynamics tell us that we'll probably only get 10% more productivity. &#xA;If, however, you hire someone to focus solely on the program and helping the team and this person helps each member of the team get 5% more productive, than that one person has improved productivity by 25%. That's more than the best case of hiring one more engineer.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3- Broad Experience&lt;/strong&gt; This one is more specific to me. In my career I've worked from computer games to enterprise virtualization to hard drives. I've also worked in support, QA, product management, business development, project/program management and agile coaching. The broad experience allows me to work well with almost any team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-12-17T08:37:42.667" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T08:37:42.667" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3606" CreationDate="2015-12-17T01:36:38.723" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a nutshell, 5 steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Risk identification&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Run a risk identification meeting with relevant people that can cover all aspects of the project (i.e. Technical, business, compliance, etc). Record all risks in a register.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Qualitative analysis&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For each risk identified, you need to define the likelihood and impact (High, Medium, Low) and determine the ranking of each risk (likelihood x impact)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Risk response planning&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For these risks assessed as high ranking, you need to document how you are going to respond to it, like, accept , transfer or mitigate the risk. If you're going to mitigate the risk, you need to define the actions/tasks/activities that need to be performed to reduce the impact/likelihood or even eliminate the risk. If you are in the project planning phase, make sure you consider these activities in your schedule, if not, add them to your actions register and refer to the originating risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4. Quantitative analysis&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the response planning and known impact, you can calculate how much time (and money) will be required to allocate as contingency in the case of the risk eventuation. This is what is called risk based contingency&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;5. Risk tracking/monitoring&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a weekly basis you walk through the risk register and confirm your qualitative analysis based on the execution of the risk response planning and more clarity about the project execution. You can update the impact/likelihood to reflect current reality and go back to steps 3 and 4. You should also enquire the team and stakeholders in a regular basis if they foresee any new risks, so that you're constantly preparing to properly react to risks. Keep in mind that a risk that eventuates is not a risk anymore but an issue and should be managed as such, risk closed in the register, issue raised in the register referring to the closed risk, and actions recorded in the register to bring the issue to closure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is much more, different ways, different levels of rigour based on project size and criticality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key message is that risks need to be managed and only recorded. This is a key project management discipline that directly impacts the success of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Throughout my project management career I had the opportunity to take over several troubled projects and a pattern across all of them was poor risk management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TTKDroid&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20923" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T01:36:38.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16985" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16990" CreationDate="2015-12-17T04:28:17.817" Score="2" ViewCount="981" Body="&lt;p&gt;Under &lt;em&gt;PMBOK&lt;/em&gt; methodology, how would you explain the difference between a 'project charter' and a 'project scope' to a stakeholder unfamiliar with the PM process? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16524" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T13:22:21.230" Title="In what ways does a project charter differ from a project scope?" Tags="&lt;scope&gt;&lt;pmbok&gt;&lt;project-charter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16981" CreationDate="2015-12-17T05:04:29.507" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I also face sometimes questions concerning the sense or non-sense of PM. I usually argue as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having a technical problem it's obvious to introduce a specialised and experienced person. But this requirement should not count for the one personnel responsible for the overall project success incl. budget and time management? So we might agree that &lt;strong&gt;you require personnel, being specialise in PM&lt;/strong&gt;. Providing some kind of respected PM education on this point helps in the following.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;PMIs &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Management_Body_of_Knowledge#Contents&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMBOK defines several PM processes&lt;/a&gt; that should be at least known by the PM (from PMIs point of view), defined within project groups: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project initialisation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project planning, incl. keeping the plan updated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project execution, incl. stakeholder management and necessary team development&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project monitoring and control, incl. change control and parts of the risk management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project closure, incl. finishing a project phase, e.g. milestone&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Giving this or a similar overview about the PMs job to be done usually helps to &lt;strong&gt;prove the estimated PM effort regarding the project&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As for some of the best design solutions, if you say afterwards: It's obvious, that this is the best solution, maybe the engineering team just did a great job. So there is a big chance that if a non PM says: The project runs so smooth, we could drop the PM effort, maybe the PM just makes a great job :)&#xA;The PMs job is to keep the keep the customer satisfied and the teams productivity on a high level. &lt;strong&gt;If the PM is really successful, the project looks like a perpetuum mobile&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Call out a dedicated technical responsible&lt;/strong&gt; / chief engineer / responsible system architect observing the project from a technical point of view and assisting the PM in communication with the customer on the technical details.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way to argue should bring the discussion away from the person and towards the estimation of the PM effort. Sometime you will just not agree on this estimate. So my last &lt;em&gt;not-so-nice-but-I-have-to-get-a-meeting-and-need-to-end-the-discussion-point&lt;/em&gt; is sometimes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;5&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having an experienced PM, this person will not be working for 100% on the project because the experience is requested by other projects too. This fills remaining slacks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T05:04:29.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16975" CreationDate="2015-12-17T07:40:18.700" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[E]veryone is assigning to my team mate although keeping me in loop but it doesn't make any sense. Where they communicate straight to my team mate. It seems like the process has been broken. (sic)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All forms of agility require that work flows through defined channels. Your post is tagged &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/kanban&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;kanban&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;kanban&lt;/a&gt; so all new work should enter an agreed-upon input queue. Whether this queue is a ticketing system, a Product Backlog, or other artifact is unimportant. What &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; important is that there are formal agreements in place between the team and the organization about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How work enters the system.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How work is prioritized, and by whom.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How work will flow through the system.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What work-in-progress (WIP) limits apply to the system.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While agile methodologies encourage customer collaboration, they expressly do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; allow assigning tasks to team members outside the agreed-upon process flow. This sounds like a great teachable moment for you to provide education to both your team members and your stakeholders about how the process works, and to remind them that they all agreed to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the process is being bypassed because it's not working, then a retrospective or &lt;em&gt;kaizen&lt;/em&gt; meeting may be in order. In all likelihood, though, it's simply a lack of rigor in following the system, rather than a failure of the system itself. Your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2015-12-26T03:46:12.990" LastActivityDate="2015-12-26T03:46:12.990" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16948" CreationDate="2015-12-17T08:06:50.367" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some really excellent answers here!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we're Talking Product Owners, so I'm going to assume Scrum, I'd like add a link - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; by the scrum alliance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;The Product Owner is the sole person responsible for managing the     &#xA;Product Backlog. Product Backlog management includes:&#xA;&#xA;- Clearly expressing Product Backlog items;&#xA;- Ordering the items in the Product Backlog to best achieve goals and missions;&#xA;- Optimizing the value of the work the Development Team performs;&#xA;- Ensuring that the Product Backlog is visible, transparent, and &#xA;clear to all, and shows what the Scrum Team will work on next; &#xA;- Ensuring the Development Team understands items in the Product&#xA;Backlog to the level needed.&#xA;&#xA;The Product Owner may do the above work, or have the Development Team do it. &#xA;However, the Product Owner remains accountable.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As this indicates the Product Owner CAN get the Development Team to do this work.  But the Product Owner is Accountable - this is the important factor - accountability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21385" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T08:06:50.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16978" CreationDate="2015-12-17T08:37:11.717" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a common issue where the PM needs a scarce resource, and there is insufficient capacity to allow all demands on that resource to be met. Ultimately, someone in the organisation has to make a judgement call. There are several options including the following - and there may be others:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allocate the resource to one or other project;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Split the resource's time between the projects;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Augment the resource with a suitably skilled resource from elsewhere, either internally or externally;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Re-sequence some of the tasks within the project to use the scarce resource at a different time, thereby removing the conflict.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of these may not be practical: for example it may not be possible to re-plan if the tasks to be done by the scarce resource are on the critical path, but some of these - or some combination of these - may work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, if the PMs of the competing projects cannot reach a consensus on how to deal with the issue, they need to escalate to a higher authority, presenting their case and all of the facts, including the impact (cost / time / quality) of  the various options, and let that higher authority decide how to allocate the resource. If handled properly and professionally, this should not be confrontational. It is simply a case of allowing the right person to make a business decision that everyone else agrees to accept, with no recriminations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One final point is that if the specific risk of such a resource conflict can be foreseen in advance, this should be raised in the project's risk register, and escalated early to allow the decision to be taken early. I don't mean a generic risk such as &quot;there is a risk that resources won't be available&quot; - that is not detailed enough to allow action to be taken to offset the risk. Rather, raise a risk such as &quot;there is a risk that resource X will be unavailable due to being allocated to another project&quot; - which should be sufficient to allow steps to be taken to mitigate the risk before it materialises.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T08:37:11.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16985" CreationDate="2015-12-17T12:38:27.913" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project scope is a conceptual thing describing the boundaries of your project, covering what the project encompasses and (maybe more importantly) what it does not encompass. From PMBOK 4:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Scope&lt;/strong&gt;. The work that must be performed to deliver a product, service, or result with the specified features and functions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project charters are baselined documents used to capture the agreed-upon objective, scope, benefits, costs, milestones, governance, quality standards, etc etc etc of your project. From PMBOK 4:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Charter&lt;/strong&gt; [Output/input]. A document issued by the project initiator or sponsor that formally authorizes the existence of a project, and provides the project manager with the authority to apply organizational resources to project activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T12:38:27.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16985" CreationDate="2015-12-17T13:13:58.780" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would explain that studies have shown two major clusters of reasons why projects fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bad scope - people don't understand the boundaries of the work that needs to be done. Either they fail to do all the work needed to ensure that the project is ready for the customer, or they spend time and effort on things that are nice to have.  Nailing down project scope is essential to ensure that the project involves the work, all the work and nothing but the work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bad sponsorship - projects succeed because the organization backs them, and the fail because the project team failed to ensure that they had all the support they needed.  It does no good to develop a brilliant web site only to discover that the webserver cannot take any more traffic.  There is a core team involved in the project, but they can be successful only if their work aligns with the organizations' interest and if the organization is interested in their success.  That is the job of the project charter.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally the project charter incorporates a high level statement of the scope, but the scope is intended to set boundaries of work and the charter is intended to ensure that the organization backs the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I could, I'd illustrate that with some examples of projects that failed because of scope and of sponsorship - examples that are relevant to the individual. (examples from my environment wouldn't be meaningful to anyone outside my environment).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2015-12-17T13:22:21.230" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T13:22:21.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16981" CreationDate="2015-12-17T13:24:26.190" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking for a general argument would not be the best approach.  This is a long term debate and, depending on how you grew up in the field, you would favor one or the other schools of thought.  There is no winning this debate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, identify the specific argument for this particular PM for this particular project in this particular environment at this particular time.  There are simply some cases where a technical PM would be more appropriate and other times a non technical PM would be more appropriate.  That's because all projects are different with different sets of stakeholders and different environmental aspects and risks.  This means that the requirements of knowledge, skill, and abilities of a PM would differ in order to meet the demands of that project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So acknowledge the fact that some projects would be better served with more weight on technical knowledge.  But make a case for why her strengths, her areas of knowledge and skill, would benefit this particular project now.  What are the constraints being faced, who are the stakeholders, what are the legal ramifications at play, who needs to get sold something, etc., and then show how her knowledge, skills, and abilities are predicted to be better while also showing how you will mitigate her technological knowledge deficit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT to answer Comment:  Here is a real example:  I was asked to take over a very technical project--multiple different types of modalities--from a technical PM because the customer was not happy.  It turned out the customer was not a technical person and had a ton of issues communicating with the technical PM.  In addition, there were other stakeholders with competing agendas where a lot of &quot;sales&quot; needed to occur.  This is not to say another technical PM could NOT have turned this project around but in this case I had the skills more conducive to this situation than any other technical PM available to us at that time.  Indeed, I had a ton of issues understand all the technical stuff going on and had to find mitigating workarounds in order to make this work but most of my time was dealing with the customer in more a business / sales / &quot;therapist&quot; than the actual content of the work.  Once that was calmed down, I had less to do and turned the project back over to someone with more technical skills.  Worked out great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2015-12-17T13:46:55.963" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T13:46:55.963" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16981" CreationDate="2015-12-17T16:33:50.950" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL; DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You and the customer have &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; fallen prey to the &quot;100% utilization fallacy.&quot; This puts the project at risk. Build more slack into your project management process, not less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[T]he customer has raised an objection that since she is not technical she will not be able to fill her &quot;slack time&quot; with development time...In reality, we just don't think there will be any slack, and in fact a technical PM is a bit worrisome for us as it is a large project and we want to make sure that the PM takes care of all the team members. Communication with the customer takes 3+ hours a day with all the emails, and meetings by itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both you and the customer are making the same error. 100% utilization of &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; resource is undesirable. It is a &quot;project smell&quot; that causes bottlenecks, reduces flow, and prevents the project from dealing with even a normal distribution of schedule perturbations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Expecting more than six hours a day of &quot;real work&quot; is not pragmatic. If your project's communications overhead is already projected at 50% of a project manager's capacity, you're essentially saying you expect that person to actually &lt;em&gt;manage&lt;/em&gt; the project in three hours per day or less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is 15 hours a week of gathering status, reporting, schedule adjustments, preparing project management artifacts, and other routine tasks adequate? Probably not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if it is, is there sufficient &lt;em&gt;slack&lt;/em&gt; in that time allocation to handle unforeseen events, resolve problems, or handle anything that is not strictly routine? Again, this seems unlikely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to build more slack into your resource allocations and scheduling, not less. Anything else is setting the project up for failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T16:33:50.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16948" CreationDate="2015-12-17T17:25:29.023" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on the process, chosen for that project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In real Scrum, the Product Owner is the one that prioritizes the product backlog. However, it is the Development Team that decides how many of the prioritized stories it can fit in the upcoming Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually that would happen in the first session of the Sprint Planning, when the PO presents his choice of stories for the Sprint. The development team then estimates and re-negotiates if necessary the order and amount of the stories they agree to work on in that same Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it is the PO that prioritizes, but it is the development team that has the final saying what goes in the sprint backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;A common scenario&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;1. Sprint Planning - Session 1&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PO &amp;amp; Development Team meet and discuss. PO presents the order of all the stories in the product backlog, he wants to see in the upcoming Sprint. Development team&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;agrees &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;re-negotiate the order/number of stories &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;refuse to include one or more stories in the Sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;2. Sprint Planning - Session 2&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PO &amp;amp; Dev.Team have agreed on the number and order of stories that will be worked on during the sprint (they have defined the Sprint Backlog). The Dev.Team decides how to work on each story. At that point they no longer need the PO at the meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8894" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T17:25:29.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16948" CreationDate="2015-12-17T17:59:37.783" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;On a traditional scrum team, the Product Owner is accountable for ensuring the backlog is prioritized.  There is no BA role on a pure scrum team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team is accountable for ensuring everyone understands and agrees that the priorities are correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team and the PO together are responsible for prioritizing the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality, there are BA's.  What's important is that the whole team agrees and understands who is accountable (makes sure it gets done) for making sure the backlog gets prioritized vs who is responsible (does it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are teams where the BA is accountable and in combination with the rest of the team responsible.  There are teams where the BA is only responsible and the PO is still held accountable.  It depends on your organization and what works best for your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want to avoid situations where 1 person is responsible, since prioritization is a complex problem that benefits from having numerous eyes/brains on ensuring optimal priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T17:59:37.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16997" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17030" CreationDate="2015-12-18T09:57:44.987" Score="0" ViewCount="249" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying out Scrum in a project. Usually it is recommended (in Scrum guides) to keep two week sprints for every release. My client is asking to keep sprints to one week and release every Friday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes members of the team are not able to complete assigned tasks due to technical challenges or perhaps they are on leave. In this case the sprint does not get completed and we miss timelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you handle escalations in these scenarios and how can the sprints be better managed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21538" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2015-12-18T13:49:37.740" LastActivityDate="2021-04-10T00:12:19.183" Title="Managing sprints in a better way" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16998" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-18T11:53:07.283" Score="5" ViewCount="779" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to set my mind on the PMI rails, but absolutely can't get the order in which a project manager asked to prepare a project charter prior to steps in the planning process group like collecting requirements, defining a scope and estimating costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that in a project charter it is only necessary to give a high-level outline of a project, not going too deep into details. But reality and past experience say that once I will write somewhere a budget $10000 and delivery time 1 month, they will stay as that, even though, a calculator feature, defined in the project charter, in a scope statement will appear as a calculator with artificial intelligence that explains why 2+2 is 4, - interactively, with illustrations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where am I going wrong? Should I really start defining a project from the project charter rather than planning stage?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21539" LastActivityDate="2016-11-19T08:36:39.873" Title="How can I write a project charter prior to collecting requirements, defining scope, estimating and so on?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;pmi&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16997" CreationDate="2015-12-18T12:49:53.447" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The duration of a sprint &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-sprint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;can be chosen from one week up to one month&lt;/a&gt;, and depends on a series of factors.&#xA;If the client is asking to deliver more often you should try to understand what kind of value are you giving by doing this, and if your team is ready to handle this scenario. If not, and there's a good rationale behind the 1 week time-box, you should work towards it by reducing the obstacles that prevent your team from delivering every week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I might be wrong here, but it looks like something is not right in the way you manage your process.&#xA;First of all, developers are not assigned any task in Scrum (&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/elee/push-vs-pull-in-scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;pull vs push&lt;/a&gt;). There's a team that take into account a story and works toward its completion. Any pre-arranged leave should be taken into account when the sprint is planned, and as for the unforeseen leaves, they will not be &amp;quot;fixed&amp;quot; by reducing or increasing your sprint length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a story/task is not completed within a sprint &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-sprint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the sprint does not fail&lt;/a&gt; (unless the PO cancels it), you will just deliver a part of what you've committed to. Not being able to complete 100% of what the team has committed to is something to be expected (and managed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16362" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2021-04-09T09:09:20.980" LastActivityDate="2021-04-09T09:09:20.980" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16997" CreationDate="2015-12-18T13:48:35.117" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Running a 2 weeks sprint does not guarantee that you'll be able to complete your sprint backlog when compared to a 1 week sprint. Longer sprint would mean a more tasks, so if you hit a technical challenge in a longer sprint it may affect deliverables anyways. Similarly, a team member taking one day off in a 1-week sprint would have a similar impact in a 2 week sprint, if your team member gets sick for a couple of days. Hitting an unforseen technical challenge or having an incomplete story during a sprint is ok as long as you discuss it in your retrospective to inspect and adapt your approach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible advantages of shorter sprint:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Forces the team to split user stories into smaller chunks. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Better planning due to smaller backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quick feedback from product owner / stakeholders&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You inspect and adapt more frequently&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Impediments get highlighted early&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leaves no time for procrastination and also minimal effects of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Parkinson's law&lt;/a&gt;, which says &lt;em&gt;work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What to do when you have imcomplete stories? &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/8567/in-our-agile-scrum-team-should-we-move-or-split-incomplete-stories&quot;&gt;You may decide to split the finished and incomplete portions of the stories&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T13:48:35.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17001" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-18T16:02:00.370" Score="2" ViewCount="577" Body="&lt;p&gt;Long story short, for one of the projects I am managing, I am managing an in house team of developers. I am a former developer now PM, and made the move because I disliked commercial programming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of performance as a PM, I have been getting a lot of praises from upper management, because I deliver software projects in a timely manner. My in house team however are backbiting about me, and I have found out from upper management, they are upset that I am not more hands on. To my face they can be patronising, and are acting as though they can do my job better than I can. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My day to day job consists of sprint planning, user stories, coaching, being involved in software architecture, reports, sprint retrospectives, user acceptance testing, managing resources/ stakeholder expectations etc etc When it comes to the day to day running of the projects, I believe in giving my team ownership, and supporting/guiding them where I can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to handle this situation, it is starting to get me pretty down. I feel like a bit of a punch bag now that I am in management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2018-12-19T14:15:02.577" Title="Not coding as an IT Project Manager. Developers backbiting" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;relationships&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17001" CreationDate="2015-12-18T16:39:36.210" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This not an easy situation to resolve amicably. It sounds like the team either don't realise that you have been given a new, non-development role, or don't understand the purpose of the role sufficiently. A PM should not be getting involved in development: that much you have stated. It sounds like the team want you to be a technical lead, which is a very different role from that of the PM. If you have a senior person on the team who could take on the role of technical lead or lead developer, you should consider making that role formal and directing the team members to him or her when they have technical queries. By doing so, you are demonstrating that you are outside the development team, and that your role is different from theirs. That then raises a new issue, which is that you could lose their support, which could prevent you and the team from achieving the project's goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm concerned about the comment that someone has been bitching with other members of the dev team &lt;strong&gt;and to your boss&lt;/strong&gt;, without being told by your boss that your role is something other than a developer. The boss should be fully supportive of your role, and fully aware that it isn't a development job - so if the boss isn't backing you up, he or she is part of the problem. Try a heart-to-heart discussion with the boss, and check that you are both on the same page in terms of your role. If you are, you have support - so ask for it to be demonstrated. If not, then you need to align the expectations, otherwise you will never solve the problem as you will be &quot;got at&quot; from above and below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One possible avenue to consider might be to ask the team what they see as the PM's role, as opposed to a technical lead's role, and offer them your view of the PM's role. Build on any commonality, and explain the purpose of any aspects of the role that they don't understand. Show them that these tasks need to be done, so if you are not doing them, then the responsibility will fall to the developers. That might just scare them, as in my experience, developers don't like to also be administrators, governance specialists, or progress reporters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several other questions that cover broadly similar themes, so it might be useful to review these answers too:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/55/how-technical-should-a-project-manager-be?s=2|0.7505&quot;&gt;How technical should a Project Manager be?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/12459/splitting-pm-responsibility-between-technical-lead-and-non-technical-pm-on-an-ag?s=5|0.7116&quot;&gt;Splitting PM responsibility between technical lead and non-technical PM on an agile project?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/156/do-technical-leaders-compete-with-project-managers?s=6|0.7105&quot;&gt;Do technical leaders compete with project managers?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/9588/role-of-a-technical-project-manager?s=9|0.6937&quot;&gt;Role of a technical project manager?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/11876/advice-for-a-non-technical-newbie-scrum-master?s=16|0.5954&quot;&gt;Advice for a Non-Technical Newbie Scrum Master&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/6308/how-much-technical-experience-is-required-to-be-a-software-project-manager?s=27|0.4730&quot;&gt;How much technical experience is required to be a software project manager?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are others, but these may help give you a flavour of how other people see the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T16:39:36.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17001" CreationDate="2015-12-18T16:56:26.337" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll give the same answer I gave in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/16981/how-can-i-handle-objections-about-the-percent-of-utilization-of-a-non-technical&quot;&gt;&quot;Non-Technical PM&quot;&lt;/a&gt; question. It applies equally here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your specific case, you need to educate senior management so you have their support. And then you need to give the team more visibility into what you do day to day. Make it clear that they would have to share this work if you were to do coding work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3&#xA;down vote&#xA;I've been very successful as a program manager and now agile coach, in Silicon Valley, for over fifteen years based on a completely non-technical background. I've faced this argument many times in the earlier stages of my program management career. My technical skills are at a basic advanced computer user and I've never coded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When faced with these arguments I provide three reasons why I am well qualified. Two of those are fairly universal to any non-technical PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- Perspective: As a non-technical person I am able to avoid falling down the rat hole. Because I don't have a technical background, I remain focused on the project itself and ensuring the project is a success. Whether we use one SQL query or another is not something I need to worry about. If we are getting enough work done to meet our schedule is something I need to worry about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2- Force Multiplier: This one is best done through a short example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Say you have a team of five engineers and you want to improve productivity. If you hire a sixth engineer, in theory you will improve productivity by 20%. However, the law of diminishing returns and also the principles of team dynamics tell us that we'll probably only get 10% more productivity. If, however, you hire someone to focus solely on the program and helping the team and this person helps each member of the team get 5% more productive, than that one person has improved productivity by 25%. That's more than the best case of hiring one more engineer.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3- Broad Experience This one is more specific to me. In my career I've worked from computer games to enterprise virtualization to hard drives. I've also worked in support, QA, product management, business development, project/program management and agile coaching. The broad experience allows me to work well with almost any team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T16:56:26.337" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14335" CreationDate="2015-12-18T18:30:15.347" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The closest you can get to this, as far as I know, is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Epic&#xA; |&#xA; +--Story&#xA;      |&#xA;      +--Sub-Task&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To accomplish this, define your Epics and give them each an &quot;Epic Name&quot;. Then define your Stories, and within each one select the appropriate Epic within &quot;Epic Link&quot;. From each Story, as needed, create any Sub-Tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give an example, if I were defining all this for, say, the workflow module of an application, I might end up with something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Epic: Workflow&#xA; |&#xA; +--Story: Draft a Request&#xA;      |&#xA;      +--Sub-Task: Node configuration&#xA;      +--Sub-Task: Database work&#xA;      +--Sub-Task: Business layer coding&#xA;      +--Sub-Task: Define expiration rules&#xA; |&#xA; +--Story: Submit a Request&#xA;      |&#xA;      +--Sub-Task: Node configuration&#xA;      +--Sub-Task: Database work&#xA;      +--Sub-Task: Business layer coding&#xA;      +--Sub-Task: Configure alerting&#xA;      +--Sub-Task: Define approvals&#xA;      +--Sub-Task: Define expiration rules&#xA; |&#xA; +--Story: Approve a Request&#xA;      |&#xA;      +--Sub-Task: Node configuration&#xA;      +--Sub-Task: Database work&#xA;      +--Sub-Task: Business layer coding&#xA;      +--Sub-Task: Configure alerting&#xA;      +--Sub-Task: Define approvals&#xA;      +--Sub-Task: Define expiration rules&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will allow you to drill down from Epic to Story to Sub-Task on a ticket-by-ticket basis, but you'll still need to do some fiddling with filters to and/or Agile boards for reporting, depending on how you want to see things. Jira does a good job at abstracting a lot of this, but it's not geared toward your exact approach, and trying to get it to visualize things the way &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; want rather than the way &lt;em&gt;it&lt;/em&gt; wants is often an exercise in futility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12208" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T18:30:15.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17005" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17010" CreationDate="2015-12-19T03:52:07.040" Score="4" ViewCount="128" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider the following scenario, which is straight out of a PMP exam prep book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The project manager of a large software implementation project just&#xA;  finished a project status meeting. In the meeting, he learned that a&#xA;  crucial piece of the software his team was creating is faulty. The&#xA;  news will cause the project to be late by at least one month and will&#xA;  likely cost additional fees for the developers' time. What is the next&#xA;  step the project manager should take?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Fire the project team member responsible for the mistake.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Create a change request for the immediate correction to the software.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Complete a root-cause analysis to determine why the problem occurred.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Present the news to management and the customer with a solution to resolve the problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first instinct is that the &quot;next step&quot; should be #3, preform a root-cause analysis. However, the exam prep book states the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Number 4 is correct. The project manager needs to share the news with&#xA;  management and the customers with a solution to fix the problem. The&#xA;  project manager should never go to management with a problem without a&#xA;  solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Number 3 is incorrect. Root-cause analysis can be helpful, but it&#xA;  should be completed after informing both management and the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm having trouble understanding their line of reasoning, and my question is two-fold:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In a real-world life environment (not the PMP exam), would it really be appropriate to come up with a solution before doing root-cause analysis? And if so, how are you supposed to determine a solution, if you haven't even figured out the root-cause of the problem?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even on the PMP exam, is what the book is presenting accurate? How can the PMP exam authors consider you able to present a solution if you haven't done a root-cause analysis?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21063" LastActivityDate="2015-12-19T13:51:42.633" Title="Faulty piece of software discovered, next steps for a Project Manager to take" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;defect-fixing&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17006" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17008" CreationDate="2015-12-19T07:32:54.397" Score="3" ViewCount="85" Body="&lt;p&gt;The digital function of the organization is attempting to adopt the agile methodology and this is causing an issue with the perceived increased in costs when due diligence is performed on the initial estimates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the vendor pitched the platform at (let's pick an arbitrary figure), $100. When the technology team was engaged to evaluate its implementation, it was discovered that the deployment would entail hardware, installation, integration support, maintenance, security, etc costs have now blown the initial estimates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has resulted management questioning the role the technology team plays since each time a project engages the team, costs increase significantly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is clearly a lack of understanding the requirements and generally most of the vendors don't include or account for the additional requirements since it sits outside their remit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The technology team has invested significant time and effort is describing the increased costs however from a managerial perspective, the issue lies with the operational efficiencies of the team and not the lack of practices in capturing the requirements, understanding scope, the additional costs, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to bridge this gap?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17081" LastEditorUserId="17081" LastEditDate="2015-12-19T07:43:44.893" LastActivityDate="2015-12-19T08:23:51.240" Title="Agile and increased costs" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17005" CreationDate="2015-12-19T08:01:50.413" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems that an initial problem evaluation took place already. Otherwise one could not say something about the dealy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to the fact that a crutial part of the software is affected, the stakeholder will probably have a high interest in the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fore sure, you habe to assure that a similar problem will not occur anymore (at least reduce the likelihood).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, reasonable steps are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Notice the problem (done)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Evaluate the impact (qualitativ, done)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If obvious, identify a problem solving strategy (done)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Depending on the identified impact: Inform stakeholders. &quot;We habe a problem and try to figure out cause and solution. First analysis came up with... delay, ...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Analyse &amp;amp; work on the problem, incl. CR, root cause analysis, work arounds&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep stakeholders updated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-12-19T12:00:39.043" LastActivityDate="2015-12-19T12:00:39.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17006" CreationDate="2015-12-19T08:23:51.240" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile approaches this from two perspectives: building trust between the team and management, and collaboration between the team and the vendor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would bring the management to the team area for a while when they work with the new platform so that the management has a first hand experience on the problems the team is facing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all the projects where I was working with a vendor we asked (and got) a representative from their side who helped with the integration. This approach helped the team to understand more the product and collaborate more efficient with the vendor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, even with an expert on board it took more time than it was promised. This should be something that may turn the management's perspective. Based on my experience this is an eye opener, because the management learns from a &quot;trusted&quot; (it trusts the vendor more than the team) party about reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somehow you should find a way to show the difference between a presentation or a html page and actual integration to the management. Or, and it can also happen, you can pitch a project in which you change your existing system so that it would be easier to insert new third party technologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-12-19T08:23:51.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17005" CreationDate="2015-12-19T11:42:59.580" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The root-cause analysis is not the only problem solving method, and the solution process may include root-cause analysis or other methods. So, a solution idea can be found using any method. That's why accepting the problem and starting to solve the problem, and coming with a solution idea to the stakeholders is the accepted answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Root-cause analysis is utilized in order to find direct and indirect (obvious and not so obvious) causes for the fault-error. Many times, you find an underlying problem to be fixed which is not related to the technical problem directly. For example a person working under pressure for a too long time, a personal problem that inhibits two teams agree on the validity of an assumption (that fails in the end), a personnel change that causes the next guy to misinterpret a specification or requirement. Root cause analysis may show non-product related matters like these. And these matters need to be solved, however the project schedule is more interested in solving the technical software problem, not the organizational ones. Therefore, the project manager must &lt;strong&gt;first&lt;/strong&gt; get the technical solution process going, and in parallel or right after getting the teams to the job, he &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; start an investigation via a root cause analysis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16715" LastActivityDate="2015-12-19T11:42:59.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17005" CreationDate="2015-12-19T12:01:47.747" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a PMP test question.  The answers are not always logical nor based in reality.  With this question, #3 and #4 are likely happening simultaneously.  In fact, a solution may not be present without the RCA being completed; however, the solution provided to management may include an RCA being conducted and completed.  So what PMI is looking for here is early communication to the people who need to be informed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you need to remember it's PMI's view of the world.  Even the statement that a PM should never go to management without a solution is bogus.  Because the alternative to that is to keep things hidden while you are hunting for a solution and that itself could create a disaster.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-12-19T12:01:47.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16998" CreationDate="2015-12-19T12:12:17.627" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before you start planning, someone has an idea demanding a project to realise it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To have a general understanding about this idea and the major constraints you (or someone else) create the project charter. From my point of view: Doing this, the planning process is started also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that PMI references huge companies and huge projects. Maybe the planning person can not talk to the idea generator all the time. So it might be a good idea to write down the major aspects to be able to look them up from time to time during the planning process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2015-12-19T12:12:17.627" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17001" CreationDate="2015-12-19T13:11:07.063" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My day to day job consists of sprint planning, user stories, coaching, being involved in &lt;strong&gt;software architecture&lt;/strong&gt;, reports, sprint retrospectives, user acceptance testing, managing resources/ stakeholder expectations etc etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wait a second. Why are you doing software architecture? You are managing the project. Your &lt;em&gt;technical&lt;/em&gt; people should decide on the architecture of the software they build.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you aren't involved into the day-to-day technical work, you should refrain from making technical decisions for the people who are. Because they cannot be good decisions for the simple fact that you don't have a good base for those decisions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think your developers complain that you don't code. I think they complain because you are involved in decisions for which you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; code. So don't be involved in those decisions. It's no longer your job, you are a project manager now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your people are probably right complaining. Stick to &lt;em&gt;managing the project&lt;/em&gt;. That is your job. They aren't complaining about &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; so you seem to do a good job. If you need someone to make technical decisions, find someone. You said you have a lead developer, I would expect the lead developer to handle the technical parts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastEditorUserId="7559" LastEditDate="2015-12-19T13:19:32.543" LastActivityDate="2015-12-19T13:19:32.543" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17005" CreationDate="2015-12-19T13:51:42.633" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a real-world life environment (not the PMP exam), would it really be appropriate to come up with a solution before doing root-cause analysis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. Because the customer is interested in a solution, while &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; are interested in a root cause analysis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And if so, how are you supposed to determine a solution, if you haven't even figured out the root-cause of the problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The solution is pretty direct. Lets say you have an architectural problem with your software and feature 09 of 12 cannot be built that way. To repair the structural deficits and implement feature 09 your developers estimate 2 months of unplanned work. &lt;em&gt;That&lt;/em&gt; is your solution. The two months of unplanned work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The root cause, &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; there was an architectural problem with the software, has little to do with the solution. Maybe there weren't enough reviews. Or the requirements changed. Or the architect was not as good as you thought. But finding out &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; it came to the problem is in &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; best interest, so it does not happen again. The customer, waiting for feature 09, could really do without this. The customer only needs the solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even on the PMP exam, is what the book is presenting accurate? How can the PMP exam authors consider you able to present a solution if you haven't done a root-cause analysis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Absolutely. The solution is not based on the root cause analysis. Think of a broken tool. The obvious solution is to buy a new one. It does not matter how it broke. Now for the tool owner, to not buy a new one daily, a root cause analysis is important. But the solution to buy a new tool stays the same, no matter what the root cause was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2015-12-19T13:51:42.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17014" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17015" CreationDate="2015-12-19T14:37:50.753" Score="12" ViewCount="293" Body="&lt;p&gt;My client believes that he just has to copy the data over into the new database using some kind of migration tool and change the app's database configuration file. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I am sure there are &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; parts of the app that would still continue to work, I would that bet that there would be a significant number of SQL errors thrown by the new database.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried to explain this but he insists that &quot;SQL databases all the work same way&quot;. Unfortunately, we don't have time to prove this by setting up the new database and migrating the data over. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the client intends to do it &lt;em&gt;himself&lt;/em&gt;, so I don't see why we should spend any developer time on it. All he is asking for is advice and support when he attempts it himself. How do I tell him tactfully that he will most likely fail?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21549" LastActivityDate="2015-12-22T23:18:45.277" Title="How do you explain to a client that migrating an existing application's database to different one (e.g. from MySQL to MSSQL) is not a trivial task?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;clients&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17014" CreationDate="2015-12-19T15:20:49.570" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Directly and honestly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, I think, this is a sales and negotiation question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I understood, you would like to support your customer and maybe earn some money. You would like to do both by predicting the future and you are (for whatever reason, time in your situation) not able to &lt;em&gt;prove&lt;/em&gt; your prediction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the worst case outcome?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything goes smoothly and your customer doesn't believe in your experience any more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or: Your customer has a lot of problems and claims you didn't warn him enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find a way to deal with both:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, offer to perform a partial move of the DB to see how it works and let your future involvement depend on the result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Offer a time based contract instead of a fixed price one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important point:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take his beliefs seriously&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain yours&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide a scaleable solution to move with minimum effort from the scenario predicted by him to the scenario predicted by you&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, it could help to point out the risks, including consequences, if your prediction comes true while your customer continues his way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-12-21T09:48:46.347" LastActivityDate="2015-12-21T09:48:46.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17001" CreationDate="2015-12-19T23:00:14.473" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not in position to answer this definitely, but I think that you need right balance of power and loosen the difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure you appreciate them and let them know that you take good things about them to higher-ups.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make the right impression. Developers might recognize their job as core and your work on spring backlog as supplementary bureacracy. Because their job is the core indeed, though yours is also important. I think you should less capitalize the effort on your supplementary tasks and be more like another developer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assume some task that you can do and make sure it is also a development. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Know your role's limits as per scrum guide. Do not demonstrate your authority just because. Reserve it for case when it can not be resolved in some inversigative manner.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain reasons behind your decisions. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not put common sense questions to vote and do not start debate these. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Know your limits. If you are not coding, you are missing out the details. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not make favourites. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Involve people in the decisions. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain that you are here for serving the project and that is your only purpose, not gaining power or playing with people's lives.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Even if you are not coding, dive into their code and play with software yourself and make it as you would be the only tester in the world between them and production release&lt;/strong&gt;. Show great dedication and great knowledge of code. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I think you will be respected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21552" LastActivityDate="2015-12-19T23:00:14.473" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16997" CreationDate="2015-12-20T11:38:50.547" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Sprint is a container for planning and not necessarily for delivery. Sounds like you need to read the Scrum Guide ()&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nkdagility.com/the-sprint-is-a-container-for-planning-and-not-necessarily-for-delivery/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://nkdagility.com/the-sprint-is-a-container-for-planning-and-not-necessarily-for-delivery/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is a management technique for complex work and only specifies that you should release no less than every 30 days. If you want to release every few hours, but plan monthly you can. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your sprint duration should be governed by your effective planning horizon and that planning horizon, in practice, governs your maximum release frequency. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be happy with a team that plans a two week sprint, and releases to production every week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://scrumguides.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastActivityDate="2015-12-20T11:38:50.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17014" CreationDate="2015-12-20T13:03:59.650" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask them to run this simple prototype:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Copy the existing production DB (in MySQL) to a new test DB (in MS SQL)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a test version of the application (in Java)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Connect the test version of the application to the test DB&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At that point, either the client will figure out that many pages are broken, or you will figure out that the way they have their application, it is mostly or entirely DB agnostic (a possibility, even if one with lower probability).  Either way you guys will converge on the next steps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7019" LastEditorUserId="7019" LastEditDate="2015-12-22T23:18:45.277" LastActivityDate="2015-12-22T23:18:45.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17014" CreationDate="2015-12-21T12:11:13.477" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We had a similar situation (idea to migrate Oracle to Postgre though). A meeting with a seasoned and reputable DBA and client helped a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17432" LastActivityDate="2015-12-21T12:11:13.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17021" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-21T14:32:57.973" Score="3" ViewCount="139" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to set resource availability by task (not project) during a specific time period in MS Project 2013 ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example there is a resource allocated to Task 1 that starts in Dec 2015 and ends Jan 2017. The same resource will also work on Task 2 that starts Dec 2016 and ends Jan 2018. During the overlap period of Dec 2016 - Jan 2017 the resource is available to the project a 100%, however the availability for each task is only 50%. &#xA;During the period where there is no overlap the resource is available a 100% to the respective task&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to define this type of resource availability to a task using a date range? I am aware of the alternative of manually applying contouring at a Day by Day level during that time frame however that will be very tedious if there are multiple resources with the same scenario. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21564" LastActivityDate="2018-07-10T17:31:43.803" Title="MS Project 2013 - Resource Overallocations during specific time period with 100% Availability" Tags="&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17022" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17024" CreationDate="2015-12-21T15:33:02.993" Score="4" ViewCount="77" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am scheduling a construction project that has tasks that rely on external factors to determine a start date. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The specific example is that the project must cross a river, but the construction on said river crossing can not start until a period of low flow. This period can happen in large window of time during the schedule of the overall project and crews working in other areas will remain unaffected. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I show this relationship without picking an arbitrary date and maintain schedule logic? My client is requesting that all tasks (besides notice to proceed and final completion) have a predecessor and successor and be constrained by dates other than those they provide. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21382" LastActivityDate="2015-12-22T12:43:09.550" Title="Task with start not based on actual dates" Tags="&lt;schedule&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17022" CreationDate="2015-12-21T15:41:10.513" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You cannot do this without picking an arbitrary date. All tasks and milestones in MS-Project have start and end dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would introduce one level of abstraction though- I would add a milestone with a title of &quot;Ready to commence construction&quot; and give it a &quot;Start no earlier than&quot; constraint. Then pick your date sufficiently far in the future and at least based on some research of average flow levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then make it a predecessor of the rest of the related construction tasks, in their usual sequence of events. Then when/if the date changes you just move one milestone and everything else is recalculated automatically by MS-Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2015-12-21T15:41:10.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17022" CreationDate="2015-12-21T15:45:15.507" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use a driving milestone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start the schedule on an arbitrary date - the date when the river is most likely to have minimum flow.  Then include a milestone &quot;Low flow achieved&quot; on the same date.  Subsequent tasks depend on this milestone.  If the river is at low flow, then the milestone is met and the next task starts.  If the river is still high, then that milestone moves forward until the river drops below the threshold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This allows you to meet the client's quality standard, and it clearly documents any delay caused by external conditions (e.g. river height).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also make sure that the Work Breakdown Structure Dictionary identifies &lt;strong&gt;who&lt;/strong&gt; is responsible for interpreting that milestone.  Is it you? Is it the client? The National Weather Service?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2015-12-21T18:41:08.127" LastActivityDate="2015-12-21T18:41:08.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17026" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17029" CreationDate="2015-12-22T02:29:31.027" Score="1" ViewCount="506" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new to project management and I have been reading about sprints whenever Scrum/Agile is mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone explain to me what a Sprint is, or at least suggest a good reference on how to understand and execute one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21567" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2015-12-22T10:02:08.510" LastActivityDate="2016-01-05T21:14:34.980" Title="What does Sprint mean when it comes to Agile/Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17026" CreationDate="2015-12-22T09:54:59.610" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Sprint is the workflow cycle of Scrum. Scrum is the most popular of the many different Agile frameworks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum workflow as described on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(software_development)#Workflow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A sprint (or iteration) is the basic unit of development in scrum. The&#xA;  sprint is a timeboxed effort; that is, it is restricted to a specific&#xA;  duration. The duration is fixed in advance for each sprint and is&#xA;  normally between one week and one month, with two weeks being the most&#xA;  common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Each sprint starts with a sprint planning event that aims to define a&#xA;  sprint backlog, identify the work for the sprint, and make an&#xA;  estimated commitment for the sprint goal. Each sprint ends with a&#xA;  sprint review and sprint retrospective, that reviews progress to&#xA;  show to stakeholders and identify lessons and improvements for the&#xA;  next sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum emphasizes working product at the end of the sprint that is&#xA;  really done. In the case of software, this likely includes that the&#xA;  software has been integrated, fully tested, end-user documented, and&#xA;  is potentially shippable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a practical guide to understanding Scrum and its Sprint cycle read the free eBook &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/minibooks/scrum-xp-from-the-trenches-2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Scrum and XP from the trenches&quot;&lt;/a&gt; or do one of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/certifications/practitioners/certified-scrummaster-csm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum Master courses&lt;/a&gt; to get you started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2015-12-22T09:54:59.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17022" CreationDate="2015-12-22T12:43:09.550" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Predecessor-successor logic in a project is based on the fact that most tasks flow in a logical order, either because work demands it--you cannot hang drywall until you have finished building the frame--you have resource constraints--you have only one front loader so task A needs to finish before you can move the resource to do task B--or you simply choose the sequence.  So in the schedule, we establish relationships between the tasks so the schedule dates will move consistent with progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this rule, as with most rules, is not effective 100% of the time.  The dependency in this case is time; the start of the effort is not primarily driven by its predecessors.  So having a task predecessor may not be logical and, therefore, deviation from this general rule would be okay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do suspect that the start of this task has some task dependencies but you can create a date constraint in this case because it is logically date constrained.  Since high and low flow of a river can be very accurately predicted--it is based on the month and the relative location of the moon and sun--you can establish a start date of this task based on the most likely date of low flow.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the schedule, I would certainly load predecessors to those logical tasks that come before the construction to cross the river but I would hard code a start date of mm/dd/yyyy based on the most likely low flow date and use a no-earlier-than constraint.  Therefore, the predecessor tasks will push out the construction start freely if your project is slipping but the construction start cannot start earlier than your predicted date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite our ability to predict high and low tides quite accurately, there is always some variance.  This is where risk management comes to play.  If you chose, as an example, a start date of March 5, 2016, for this construction, you can have a documented opportunity that an early start between February 25 and March 4 is possible.  You can exploit this opportunity by having your construction resources at the ready say starting February 28 in the event this opportunity comes true.  Of course, of some of the predecessor tasks slips, then your opportunity disappears.  Nevertheless, you were ready for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-12-22T12:43:09.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17026" CreationDate="2015-12-22T18:33:18.160" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; is the definitive source for this and any question regarding the Scrum framework. It's only 16 pages as a PDF and is your best source for building a primary understanding of Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the Scrum Guide, the Sprint is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...a time-box of one month or less during which a “Done”, useable, and potentially releasable product Increment is created&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a Scrum team is at a beginner's level in their Scrum practice, I typically recommend a schedule like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/AIXq0.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/AIXq0.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Sprint for a beginner Scrum Team&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This assumes a 2-week sprint and a repeating backlog refinement meeting on Fridays following the Daily Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's important to note that, except for the Daily Scrum's timebox of 15 min, all the other event lengths are discretionary and fall within the Scrum Guides requirement for each. Backlog refinement is not an &quot;event&quot; in the Scrum guide, just a very helpful and wise practice that shouldn't consume more than 10% of the Development's capacity for a Sprint. Refinement is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the act of adding detail, estimates, and order to items in the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is typically things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Analysis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decomposition&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discussion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimation of effort&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Release planning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, the bulk of the Development team's time is still just the work of developing software. A trainer friend of mine is fond of saying, &quot;Scrum doesn't care what you do the other 7:45 minutes of the day.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another key part of that Sprint definition is the phrase &quot;potentially releasable.&quot; This means the work completed in the Sprint is &lt;strong&gt;fit for its purpose&lt;/strong&gt; and is ready to be given to the customer with &lt;strong&gt;no further work needed.&lt;/strong&gt;  In this way, each Sprint may be thought of as it's own project and is key to an organization building agility into it's software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does that help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21576" LastActivityDate="2015-12-22T18:33:18.160" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16997" CreationDate="2015-12-22T19:23:54.777" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As has been recommended, invest some time reading the official &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; (there are not multiple).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum does &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;NOT&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; require or even recommend releasing the software at any particular interval. It only mandates that work made &quot;Done&quot; within the Sprint timebox should be &quot;potentially releasable&quot; should the Product Owner decide to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Sprint is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a time-box of one month or less during which a “Done”, useable, and potentially releasable product Increment is created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The choice of Sprint length should &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; be a business decision and &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; a technical one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To better manage your Sprints, allow the Development Team to plan its own work and build its own forecasts.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Development Teams are structured and empowered by the organization to organize and manage their own work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole development team should plan (read: not just a PM or a &quot;lead&quot; developer) the work it will undertake in a Sprint and must plan for conditions such as developer vacation, technical dependencies, etc. Doing this will increase the likelihood of realistic forecasts, better planning, and more trust with clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did that help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21576" LastActivityDate="2015-12-22T19:23:54.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16926" CreationDate="2015-12-22T19:40:05.100" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Scrum guide says very little about individual &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-dev&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Development team&lt;/a&gt; member characteristics. One thing it does say is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Development Team consists of &lt;em&gt;professionals&lt;/em&gt; who do the work of delivering a potentially releasable Increment of “Done” product at the end of each Sprint. Only members of the Development Team create the Increment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This implies that Developers behave &lt;em&gt;professionally&lt;/em&gt; and that the whole team is responsible for creating the Increment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When Developers screw up, they need to know they will be supported by the team rather than ostracized. A Development team must be coached by a Scrum Master to improve the way its Developers interact. It sounds like the Scrum Master would serve the team well to institute the following practice within the Sprint Retrospective:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.retrospectives.com/pages/retroPrimeDirective.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Retrospective Prime Directive&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21576" LastActivityDate="2015-12-22T19:40:05.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16135" CreationDate="2015-12-22T22:09:05.967" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds that you are looking for a Requirement Management Tool like &lt;em&gt;Doors&lt;/em&gt;. This would be an off-topic question and you might find better answers in Software Recommendation StackExchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, you are asking a project related question: How to deal with scope and scope changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general mechanism regarding scope and scope related changes are &lt;strong&gt;Baselines&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Change Requests&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Baselines freeze a specific set of e.g. requirements e.g. at the contract phase. Changes during development can be tracked using Change Requests. You usually pull a new Baseline at a milestone, e.g. PDR or CDR. During Change Control Board meetings you decide how to deal with the different CRs and if you should involve the customer somehow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use any tooling for this purpose but you might find it helpful being assisted in pulling baselines and tracking changes. Jira might be nice to track progress while plain text exports (xml, csv) as Baselines combined with git might be a tool satisfying this needs. Requirements are often build in a hierarchical manner. I think Jira offers 3 hierarchy level (e.g. Epic, Story, Task). I don't think this is enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are multiple tools specialized on requirements management. They usually support everything described above. Just google a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2015-12-22T22:09:05.967" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17021" CreationDate="2015-12-22T23:41:57.650" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Conceptually, this is automatic in MSP.  You don't need to do anything special - just configure it as you have described, and it should work exactly as you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HOWEVER, the real issue is that your tasks are too long running (14 months??).  Typically, you want to define your tasks in days (such as 5 days, or a week), and even if you set a task to be 22 days or so (about 1 person month), your project leveling will work fine.  MSP will recognize that the person is only going to work on one of those two December tasks at 100%, or both at 50%, and your overall timespan will be correct.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techrepublic.com/article/microsoft-project-tutorial-duration-and-task-types/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This article on TechRepublic&lt;/a&gt; is always a good refresher for everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a nutshell, your option basically is to define the tasks more granularly.  You will realize other unrelated advantages from doing that also.  You can also use the recurring tasks functionality in MSP, as described &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Create-single-and-recurring-tasks-7e6cb4f9-add4-4951-b1dc-347f081e5c0c#bm3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7019" LastActivityDate="2015-12-22T23:41:57.650" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16135" CreationDate="2015-12-23T01:18:00.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The basics of how to organize a project like this in Jira are well documented on well, &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/agile/jira-agile-user-s-guide/jira-agile-tutorials/tutorial-planning-and-estimating-work-for-an-agile-team&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jira's Confluence site&lt;/a&gt;, and granularity issues are directly addressed in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/agile/delivery-vehicles/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Atlassian's Delivery Vehicle's page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A very brief distilled answer is that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a User Story to document the tiniest unit of releasable feature (something that the customer can review, test and validate)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Group user stories into Epics (Related small units of features)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Optionally, if it makes sense to you, you can group Epics into &quot;Features&quot; or higher level units that make sense for your project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, you will have to define whether each &quot;signoff&quot; event that happens with your customer is at the level of a user story, epic, or something else.  That determination may be made on the basis of how informal or expensive a &quot;signoff&quot; is - more expensive and formal the signoff process is, the higher grouping you would want to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7019" LastActivityDate="2015-12-23T01:18:00.600" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15783" CreationDate="2015-12-23T19:01:53.170" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you've done pretty well for just starting out. You've identified the user activities and done a brief job of decomposing those activities into tasks of varying sizes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As has been mentioned, Jeff Patton's &lt;a href=&quot;http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920033851.do&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;User Story Mapping&lt;/a&gt; is the definitive source to read. It's short, laid our well, and very easy to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main two things this map lacks that you should consider adding are user types and slice outcomes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;User Type&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;who would use the app? What do they get out of it? How would they use it? What's in it for them? Come up with categories that describe each user type e.g. Band Fan, Venue Manager, Performer, Band Promoter. I haven't found a good way to accomplish this work in SoB yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Outcome&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;This is the impact the chunk of work is expected to have. Once released, how this change things? For whom? You can name the slices in SoB for outcomes. For example, your first slice outcome from your example could be &quot;Buy our Shiny Product Online.&quot; This solves a concrete problem and makes a good candidate for a slice. Remember to work hard with Developers to craft slices that are as thin as possible e.g. buy product without creating account as &quot;guest&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did that help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21576" LastActivityDate="2015-12-23T19:01:53.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8070" CreationDate="2015-12-24T01:09:36.450" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;More information is needed to determine if granularity is about right.  I'll suggest some criteria that can be applied:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are there any external dependencies internal to any of the tasks?  If so, obviously, the task needs to be split to allow the dependency to be tracked.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there significant adverse risk associated with any of the tasks?  If so, can the task be split to allow the risk to be evident or not, and can the earlier portion of the task, or both portions be scheduled earlier to allow for better risk management?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Drawing a bit from agile, is there a result that could be independently verified as complete (even though the evaluation might not take place)?  For example, untested code is difficult to verify without testing.  So, untested code is output, but it is not outcome.  It is possible to write several thousand lines of code which have so many bugs that the code will need to be discarded and rewritten.  Only tested code can be said to be complete.  Output without outcome is valueless.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21586" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-27T11:40:06.037" LastActivityDate="2015-12-27T11:40:06.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17038" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17086" CreationDate="2015-12-24T01:50:45.447" Score="10" ViewCount="587" Body="&lt;p&gt;What metrics can influence or help with such an estimation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am mostly interested in applying such metrics on GitHub projects, using their issues history. Based on how fast they solved their previous issues, or other GitHub data, what metrics can I compute to help me with this estimation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I'm not interested in any automatic effort estimation methods. Only metrics that can, potentially, help with that. I will use those metrics to come up with my own automatic effort estimation methods, but that is beyond the scope of this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have any suggestions for a GitHub-specific metric using their search+filters or their API, that is also great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The metrics should be simple. By simple, I mean that they should return some numeric values, where higher (or lower) means a more (or less) active project, relative to whatever baseline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What I'm actually needing this for&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am working on a machine learning project that is supposed to estimate effort in hours based on metrics. For this, I am interested in using one for activity. I want something that is easy to compute using github data and that I can reference somehow. I want to focus on easy computation rather than quality, in hopes that other metrics and data I will use will fill in the quality part. I'm also happy to use one of the metrics I came up with, as long as there is some reference that they have been, at one point, used in either research or practice, with at least some degree of success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21587" LastEditorUserId="21587" LastEditDate="2016-01-04T15:59:14.567" LastActivityDate="2016-01-19T16:36:08.683" Title="Relevant metrics for issue closure estimation" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17038" CreationDate="2015-12-24T12:16:34.007" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the comments indicate, you create a metric to answer a question.  If I just look at the title of your post, &quot;Simplistic PM metrics for how ACTIVE [emphasis mine] a project is,&quot; the two metrics that pop out to measure activity are hours exhausted and money exhausted.  If you are comparing projects against each other, then you need to compare hours or money exhausted compared to both to budget of the project and available hours in a given period to work.  That should give you an idea of how active a project is compared to how active it could have been and how active it is against other projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this means nothing if this is not the question you're really trying to answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-12-24T12:16:34.007" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17040" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-24T17:41:59.530" Score="1" ViewCount="94" Body="&lt;p&gt;As i understand it, governance is the strategic task of defining an organization's goals, direction, limitations and accountability which sounds similar to a strategy however people seem to refer to them differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a difference between a project's governance and its strategy or are they one and same thing and it's simply semantics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17081" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-12-26T19:24:12.730" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T18:04:12.730" Title="How is a project's governance different to its strategy?" Tags="&lt;definition&gt;&lt;strategy&gt;&lt;project-governance&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17041" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17050" CreationDate="2015-12-24T21:06:43.797" Score="4" ViewCount="134" Body="&lt;p&gt;When defining the strategy of a given project based on it's mission to deliver well-defined goals to meet the organization's vision, how do you employ the philosophy of agility as well as it's quality attributes such as speed, value, etc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a well-trodden path of how to's?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are good examples&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way of asking the question possibly would be is how does one use Agile to define a strategy of a given project? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17081" LastActivityDate="2016-01-12T18:59:18.030" Title="How do you employ agility in defining the strategy of a project?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;strategy&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17041" CreationDate="2015-12-24T21:42:17.670" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simply put: if the project strategy is to take an evolutionary approach, then you are agile.  If you can show some initial features in a couple of weeks time, then go from there, then you are agile.  If the project &quot;customer&quot; - whether they are internal or external - want to see a big upfront design effort, then it is usually not agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To employ agility in defining the project strategy, use an agile framework (like Scrum) for project's methodology, and also, set the review/stakeholder progress checkpoints to be iteratively defined.  That means, that almost by definition, you won't be able to tell your sponsors today what they will be reviewing, 1, 2, 3, .. 6 months from today.  You can tell them what they &lt;em&gt;likely&lt;/em&gt; will be reviewing 1, 2, 3, ..., 6 months from today, but also tell them that all subsequent points are up for discussion and that the customer will be able to change directions after the first and after each checkpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7019" LastEditorUserId="7019" LastEditDate="2015-12-25T20:13:34.997" LastActivityDate="2015-12-25T20:13:34.997" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17040" CreationDate="2015-12-25T14:23:39.973" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really love Wikipedia for definitions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governance&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary: Governance includes everything to rule the project while strategy describes the way to achieve the project's goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having this, the project's governance should support or even follow a strategy in order to achieve the project's goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A project's strategy might be to apply a waterfall method and (e.g. due to a bad contract situation) to perform a strict claim and change management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The organisation, represented by management and / or PMO might support this strategy by providing  rules and infrastructure to set up a management board and a change board to support the PM. PM, the boards, PMO, management, financial controlling, etc. realise / perform the projects government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2016-01-04T12:48:54.460" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T12:48:54.460" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17001" CreationDate="2015-12-25T22:39:39.870" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you are half in and half out of the techincal side of things. I would advise removing yourself from all technical descisions, discussions, architecture, 'trying to make things easy' etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concentrate on the timeline, budget and customer acceptance. Set challenges rather than specifiying solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;re the bitchy dev. They need to be told to act professionaly and try to make the workplace a nice place to be for everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2015-12-25T22:39:39.870" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17046" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17047" CreationDate="2015-12-26T10:49:57.380" Score="6" ViewCount="343" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background.&lt;/strong&gt; There is a web platform as a product. There are few teams contributing to it. Usually a team works on a feature, delivers the feature and maintains it. There are millions of end users and the adoption of  features takes weeks. During this period new users share their feedback. Let’s say there are about 3 features on average being actively supported. This setup generates dozens of tiny improvements gathered throughout the time. Very often, when team is already focused on a new feature, end-users feedback is still being provided. DT (Development Team) works in Scrum. Jira Agile is used as a PjM tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The issue.&lt;/strong&gt; Product Owner selects most valuable pieces of feedback and turns it into the PBIs. As a result, there are lots of small PBIs (between 10 to 40). That in turn makes the Backlog hard to maintain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problem statement.&lt;/strong&gt; What’s the good way to keep the backlog maintainable for PO and useful for the DT?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastEditorUserId="1021" LastEditDate="2015-12-27T09:13:35.240" LastActivityDate="2015-12-27T15:58:41.053" Title="What is the best way to handle small items in a backlog?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;&lt;maintenance&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17046" CreationDate="2015-12-26T13:17:20.703" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The backlog consists of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/articles/39-glossary-of-scrum-terms#1130&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PBIs&lt;/a&gt; like Epics and User Stories. I really like using User Stories. That's why I'll stick on the term in the following. But be aware that other representations might be more useable sometimes (as @Daniel pointed out in his comment).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few User Stories can be finished in a sprint. User Stories are broke up in tasks during sprint planning to be traced during a sprint. A task should be moved each day on the task board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The feedbacks seems not to fit into this rough definition of User Story. They seem to be closer to a task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend to collect several of the feedbacks in one story or epic. Best would be to expand an existing story - which is not part of the current sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, this assignment is a job to be done and if this is too much work for the PO, the PO needs assistance to get it done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2015-12-27T15:58:41.053" LastActivityDate="2015-12-27T15:58:41.053" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17046" CreationDate="2015-12-26T18:44:03.590" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two main options here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give the PO help&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give the PO better tooling&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#artifacts-productbacklog&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Product Backlog&lt;/a&gt; is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;an ordered list of everything that might be needed in the product and is the single source of requirements for any changes to be made to the product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a product of significant complexity, the backlog will grow to be non-trivially large. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; puts it this way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a product is used and gains value, and the marketplace provides feedback, the Product Backlog becomes a larger and more exhaustive list. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @Tob mentioned, this might be a good time for your Product Owner to enlist some help. This help can be creating Product Backlog items (user stories, bugs, features, etc), refining PBI's, talking to stakeholders, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner may do the above work, or have the Development Team do it. However, the Product Owner remains accountable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is best for these helpers to be on the Dev team to reduce the communication overhead of workers outsidethe Dev team doing the work. Business analysts for example could work as Developers on the Dev team; they would occasionally help refine the backlog, design UI, write/execute tests, and occasionally code if need be. Alternatively, you might have stakeholders help the PO by adding to and refining the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, look into other tools to help manage your backlog. I've had good experience with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pivotaltracker.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pivotal tracker&lt;/a&gt; and the new &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.visualstudio.com/products/visual-studio-team-services-vs&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Visual Studio Team Services&lt;/a&gt; is quite good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With improved tools however, be cautious not to sacrifice agility. Remember the agile manifesto encourages us to value individuals and interactions over processes and tools. Always seek to solve problems with highly motivated people if at all possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21576" LastActivityDate="2015-12-26T18:44:03.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5326" CreationDate="2015-12-27T02:28:42.910" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the team is interested in analyzing it's performance, then by all means do not stand in their way. If they are faithful to retrospect, they will decide if it is a valuable practice and will choose to amplify or dampen the practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this metric is being asked of them, beware. This is a management anti-pattern I've observed on a number of occasions. It expects a level of precision out of the team's forecast that is tantalizing but rarely possible. At best, the guidance by such metric will be hit and miss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all things, the Development team should be taught and encouraged to self-organize. The most reliable method of learning in a complex environment is empiricism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't put much stock in Sprint strength calculations. I find there is little R.O.I. on the time I and others have spend calculating it. It is far better to simply ask the team what work from the Product Backlog it expects it can get to &quot;Done&quot; in a particular Sprint given the circumstances particular to that Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21576" LastActivityDate="2015-12-27T02:28:42.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17041" CreationDate="2015-12-27T16:14:48.277" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because Agile is a set of values and principles, there is not a set &quot;Agile&quot; way to approach strategy. If you're looking for a pure step-by-step, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SAFe&lt;/a&gt; talks a lot about strategy or, if you don't want the whole framework, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agile42.com/en/blog/2013/04/11/lean-project-canvas/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; has some good stuff around using lean canvas for portfolio management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, those are just other people trying to address strategy in a way that fits with the Agile values and principles. We can also just look at the Agile Manifesto and let that guide us. For example, let's look at the values:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Too often, strategy discussions focus on a few people making decisions with charts and matrixes in a vacuum. This is appealing because it's fast, efficient, definitive, and it isn't hindered by the complexity of different users wanting different things. It's easy to decide what the right path is, &quot;prove&quot; it on paper, then tell the rest of the company. Somewhere, on paper, Microsoft's Zune was a sure thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We don't want to try to guess how users will behave. Agile approaches to strategy rather look at how the real users behave and adjust the strategy to match that. Eric Reis' &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0307887898&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lean Startup&lt;/a&gt; shows one way that organizations can guide their strategy based on how its customers and stakeholders actually behave rather than on a set of tools and processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Working Software (Product) over Comprehensive Documentation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some companies spend incredible amounts of time designing their enterprise architecture. The problem is, you can't test design. Big up-front strategy efforts are based on a lot of untested assumptions. It's important to find ways to put pressure on your strategy as quickly as possible in order to identify where the weak points are and correct them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Customer Collaboration over Contract Negotiation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may seem strange, but it makes perfect sense when you get to the underlying goal. When you write software, the customer's understanding of their needs evolves. The same thing happens with strategy. Your market will evolve as you show them what is possible. If you have a good strategy, you will actually turn your market into a moving target, which is good because you are driving the movement and your competitors are trying to follow. Make sure your strategy process is built to be able to move right along with it. There's a great book called &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Blue Ocean Strategy&lt;/a&gt; that talks a lot about this concept. It doesn't frame the idea around Agile, but if you read it from that mindset you'll find a lot of parallels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Responding to Change over Following a Plan&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This one doesn't need much explanation. Planning is critical, but most plans are worthless. It's no different with strategy than it is with anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could, of course, go through the principles in the same way. The goal of the Agile manifesto is to refocus on what's important and those things apply just as well at the strategy level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps. I wish there was an easy 1-2-3 answer. It would make my job a lot easier. There is good stuff out there though and a lot of information to dive into.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2016-01-12T18:59:18.030" LastActivityDate="2016-01-12T18:59:18.030" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17051" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-27T20:22:13.877" Score="8" ViewCount="1143" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had an interview with one company. They use Scrum, but don’t like rough estimates during Release Planning. So, they asked me, how to make Release Planning more accurate (they don’t want more than 30 percent of deviations from the plan).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggested they do following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Gather requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Filter requirements and create scope.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Decompose scope to &quot;nouns&quot; (deliverable items). &lt;em&gt;- i.e. WBS structure&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Decompose &quot;nouns&quot; to &quot;verbs&quot; (work needs to be done to implement &quot;nouns&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Estimate &quot;verbs&quot; considering risks.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find &quot;verbs&quot; dependencies and put them in a timeline. &lt;em&gt;- i.e. GANT diagram&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Calculate release date.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, it is more complicated than initial story mapping, and looks more like “heavy waterfall” style, than “agile” style. As I understand Agile philosophy, accuracy of estimation of final release date is not high priority, because &quot;responding to change over following a plan&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going back to the planning list: in Scrum we implicitly did 1-3 steps during initial Release Planning and steps 4-6 during each Sprint Planning. I suggested to do all these steps during Release Planning explicitly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite the fact that this was the first (and only) way I figured to improve the accuracy of a release plan, I don’t really like it because (in my opinion) this kind of planning does not conform to the ideology of Agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand, that accurate estimates demand more effort and don’t believe in “miracle” high quality estimation without effort. But maybe you can suggest to me other ways (or some tips) on &lt;strong&gt;how to make Release Planning more accurate&lt;/strong&gt; without having complicated heavy waterfall-style planning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2015-12-28T15:14:18.450" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T13:38:26.413" Title="How to make Release Planning more accurate?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;release-plan&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17052" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17056" CreationDate="2015-12-27T22:31:47.020" Score="3" ViewCount="98" Body="&lt;p&gt;In one of projects, the customer is trying to include the vendor selection as part of the fixed cost project.  While the scope of the fixed cost project clearly says to work with &quot;an external system that provides xyz functionality&quot;, nowhere does it say that the project includes finding the said external system/vendor.  [To be fair, it doesn't explicitly exclude it either.]  In fact the scope document defines the draft API that would exist with this external system, and also states that the actual API may differ to some extent, and we are comfortable with that variability.  But the process of finding this vendor/system is a subproject that is just as significant as the entire project itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions on how typically this is worded and the scope can be refined/adjusted now?  More than the cost of extra hours, we are concerned about the extra calendar time that it will take and will entirely push this project into red for us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7019" LastEditorUserId="7019" LastEditDate="2015-12-28T05:13:09.393" LastActivityDate="2015-12-28T12:33:31.660" Title="Vendor selection being squeezed in as project's scope - how to best respond?" Tags="&lt;scope&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17051" CreationDate="2015-12-27T23:55:16.857" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not surprisingly, I hear that question a lot. The basic problem with the question is that Agile disagrees with the fundamental idea of a fixed-scope/fixed-timeline project. In the question you were asked, there is the assumption that the end date of a set scope is knowable and the problem is that we are bad at knowing it (estimating). That's not really true. The end date of a given scope is not a knowable point in time. Rather, it's a shifting point in time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Improving team capabilities, understanding of user needs, and more sophisticated understanding of the implementation as the project progresses actually moves that date around. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a look a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=502ILHjX9EE&quot;&gt;this Henrik Kniberg video&lt;/a&gt; from 11:25 -&gt; 14:45 (the whole video is great, but this part is more relevant to this question). It does a great job talking about forecasting and you can use this with the results from Release Planning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see that I can make your project end date whenever you want if the deadline is what's really important or we can extend the date to whenever the scope is done if that's what's important, but setting both is just a guess and a gamble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2015-12-27T23:55:16.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17052" CreationDate="2015-12-28T10:53:32.183" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are right to be concerned about this. Vendor selection can be a significant drain on time and resources, so you need to either ensure that this is excluded from the scope, or that sufficient time is allowed to let the selection process run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would start by stating a number of assumptions within your documentation, including the assumption that the external vendor selection will be done outside the scope of the project, and that the external vendor selection will have been completed before your part of the project commences. Then state a dependency that the external vendor selection process has completed as a precursor to you starting those project tasks where this is relevant. Also state a condition in your document that says that any delay or cost caused by the selection process being incomplete will be a variation in the project, chargeable to your customer. Then get the customer to either sign off these assumptions / dependencies / variations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they won't then you have the opportunity to re-open negotiations to clarify the scope, and to sort out responsibilities for these elements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2015-12-28T10:53:32.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17055" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-28T11:24:22.643" Score="0" ViewCount="552" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm managing a project in my company, and we have &lt;strong&gt;many tasks&lt;/strong&gt; that should be &lt;strong&gt;assigned to many employees&lt;/strong&gt; and then be &lt;strong&gt;tracked&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use telephone communication, e-mails and even face to face communications, but we fail to efficiently communicate or even track progress in each task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I decided to download some software that makes us able to communicate, share files and folders, list tasks, assign tasks to people and track progress in these tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BUT the company &lt;em&gt;doesn't allow us to share files over the internet&lt;/em&gt;, so we are searching for a &lt;strong&gt;LAN-network project management software&lt;/strong&gt;, is there such a thing? free or paid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21616" LastEditorUserId="15972" LastEditDate="2016-01-03T06:00:12.830" LastActivityDate="2016-01-03T06:00:12.830" Title="Managing project in LAN network" Tags="&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-01-03T11:59:58.180" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17052" CreationDate="2015-12-28T12:33:31.660" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am reading into this that the scope of the project and the firm fixed price are already negotiated and sealed. I can see why your customer thinks that vendor selection is part of the price because it is a logical predecessor to working with an external system. Since my hindsight vision is perfect, this should have been part of your price or excluded out specifically. Lessons learned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contractually speaking and trying to keep your customer a customer, you have very little leverage. Hat in hand, try to get your customer back to the table and be honest about your oversight and that you need more money to get this work done. Hopefully, your customer is reasonable and will respond favorably. Else, you will need to tap into your reserves that you built in the price and get the with done. You need to accept the fact that this project might not be profitable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2015-12-28T12:33:31.660" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17040" CreationDate="2015-12-28T13:22:53.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Governance is a verb. Governance is how you make decisions, how you govern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Strategy is what you want to do; strategy is the future you're hoping to get and the path you need to get there. Strategy is frequently encapsulated in strategic plans, tactical plans, vision statements, and even in project charters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A contrived example; every company has a strategy for hiring. Some companies won't hire until they have &gt; 100% FTE work (meaning that there is no &quot;bench&quot; and everyone is constantly slightly overworked). Other companies will hire based on potential (meaning that sometimes they are paying someone who is not billable - &quot;bench&quot;).  Some companies will hire &quot;on spec&quot; before the contract is awarded, some companies hire junior people on the assumption that they'll grow into the position; other companies hire only perfectly qualified people.  Those are all hiring strategies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that is different from how they make decisions.  If a company's strategy is to hire only  when the work exceeds the staff by more than 1 FTE &lt;strong&gt;someone&lt;/strong&gt; has to make that decision. Someone has to measure the current work, the current staffing level and decide that the difference is greater than an FTE.  Some companies make that decision autocratically - the hiring manager decides.  Other companies have  senior leadership  team that decides. Some companies delegate the decision down to the hiring manager, others require consultation or approval from various stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Governance is how you make decisions, who is involved, whether the decision is consultative, advisory or autocratic, whether the decision is transparent or not, etc.   Governance frequently involves a RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) chart.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Strategy defines the future you want, and the path you take to get there.  Governance defines how you make decisions along the path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-01-04T18:04:12.730" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T18:04:12.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17051" CreationDate="2015-12-28T15:38:30.193" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Completely agree with what @Daniel said and could add a little bit more: if the environment (such as unplanned distractions, approximate man hours available, ..) is constant then with time the team will realize their &lt;code&gt;sprint velocity&lt;/code&gt; that could only &lt;strong&gt;help&lt;/strong&gt; estimating how quickly a story can be delivered. This is not a contract but just an estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the estimates we are talking are maximum of days of up to a sprint period, not months as can be seen in waterfall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you add &lt;code&gt;continuous delivery&lt;/code&gt; to Agile, you don't even need (or better - there is no point) creating estimates as stories fluidly come and go from the backlog with almost &lt;code&gt;minimal lead time&lt;/code&gt;. With continuous delivery you can have multiple releases every day. This however works with software based products and might not directly apply to any other kind of products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21619" LastActivityDate="2015-12-28T15:38:30.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17055" CreationDate="2015-12-28T18:00:37.897" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am sure there are tools that can be used, however I would suggest that before you try to obtain something, you think about how you would want to use such a tool. If you are the PM, do you need other people to be updating a tool? or would you prefer to communicate with them directly then you update the tool yourself? (I am not saying one is right and one is wrong - although I would personally be reluctant to let other people record progress on my project... that's my job, and while I am reasonably trusting, I want to validate anything that goes into my records!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what I am saying is this. Before looking for a tool, first think about your use cases for it, then decide whether you still need such a tool, and if you do, what features / capabilities you require. I appreciate that this does not answer your question, however it may encourage you to look at the requirement from a different perspective and thereby remove the need for what you are asking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastEditorUserId="301" LastEditDate="2015-12-28T18:09:48.600" LastActivityDate="2015-12-28T18:09:48.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17055" CreationDate="2015-12-28T18:07:39.953" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Use that same software but restrict it to your company intranet&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use whatever software that you were planning to download and use over the public internet. However, restrict its access to your company intranet. That should meet the security needs of your company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intranet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia entry on Intranet&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Increasingly, intranets are being used to deliver tools, e.g.&#xA;  collaboration (to facilitate working in groups and teleconferencing)&#xA;  or sophisticated corporate directories, sales and customer&#xA;  relationship management tools, project management etc., to advance&#xA;  productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2015-12-28T18:07:39.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17051" CreationDate="2015-12-28T20:25:48.280" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sergey, the steps you describe will make your release planning more precise, but not improve the accuracy.  Don't fall into the trap of thinking that having a detailed, explicit process during release planning will improve accuracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a trap that we are biased to fall into because, as humans, we seek to create a sense of control where there is none.  The only way to make release planning more accurate is to do the planning closer to the release date.  In fact, if you do the planning on the day of the release, you will have very high accuracy ;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like Daniel does a great job of explaining, Agile disagrees with the concept of fixed time/fixed scope and respects the fact that we just can't estimate with a high degree of accuracy at the beginning of a project.  You should ask your management what is so special about the 30% deviation mark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best you can do during Agile release planning is to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure you have the right people in the room&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plan often in smaller, focused bursts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accept that the plan will change&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be explicit about any assumptions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2017-06-28T13:38:26.413" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T13:38:26.413" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14540" CreationDate="2015-12-29T18:37:02.513" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just set the task to 0 duration.  If your permissions allow this operation, that will change it to a milestone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7019" LastActivityDate="2015-12-29T18:37:02.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17064" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-12-29T17:17:17.740" Score="4" ViewCount="273" Body="&lt;p&gt;Has anyone figured a good method for facilitating an asynchronous (not the same time/place) remote design sprint? The typical design sprint happens synchronously (same time/place), and is done in-person with different stakeholders. I am trying to figure a good way to make this happen remotely using a tool like &lt;a href=&quot;http://mural.ly&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mural&lt;/a&gt;. The reason I ask about doing this asynchronously and remotely, is because many of the stakeholders are not at the same location, and our schedules are not flexible enough to block off an entire week for a design sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was thinking of creating a Mural board with an initial set of questions to be answered individually by stakeholders (session time-boxed to 2 days), and let the stakeholders come in at various points in time within those two days to contribute. This will continue for a couple weeks, with each session marking the five stages of the design sprint (Unpack, sketch, decide, prototype, test). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="thomasyung" LastActivityDate="2015-12-30T15:44:51.077" Title="How do I facilitate an asynchronous remote design sprint?" Tags="&lt;design&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16628" CreationDate="2015-12-30T14:55:21.493" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer: The certification is valuable&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your employer is paying for it, it may be a possibility that they compete or bid on work/contracts that require professionals with the ITIL certification.  If this is the case, this could open doors for you in the future in technical leadership roles.  Although you mentioned that you are not currently interested in management, the ITIL cert will give you additional insight into how those processes interact between IT services and the business. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16148" LastActivityDate="2015-12-30T14:55:21.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17064" CreationDate="2015-12-30T15:44:51.077" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think it is possible, because it takes a lot of cycles and therefore a lot of time to come to an agreement. Imagine that you have a complicated issue and you are emailing with support which is overseas. It is easier to call them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest to agree something on the team level, create several proposals, select team members who can stay late or join via Skype and discuss the sprint content with the stakeholders with this smaller group. This group should be able to answer all the questions of the stakeholders and be able to make a decision if have to, so select wisely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-12-30T15:44:51.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16633" CreationDate="2015-12-30T15:54:57.807" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nope. Change management is too broad topic, and change managers have almost no respect nowadays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on my observations certifications works only if they are for a very specific and rare field or requires a very specific and rare skill set. For example, cisco telecommunication systems, AIX operator, or Oracle database specialist. Unfortunately for you, change management does fall into this category. It can mean coaching, mentoring, &quot;new age&quot; management etc, and none of these are specific or rare. There are a lot these on the market and the &lt;strong&gt;differentiation factor is the references and experience.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are looking for something that sticks out and makes you different from other change managers, collect proper references from companies that matter, and from organisations that changed on the highest level possible , minimum a department with medium size (&gt; 150 people).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2015-12-30T15:54:57.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17051" CreationDate="2015-12-30T22:11:00.700" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like your interviewers were defining a &quot;release plan&quot; as a fixed scope and fixed date scenario. One simple way to improve the accuracy of those plans by at least 30%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Simple Answer&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Slash quality standards as needed to meet the deadline&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seriously though, this sounds like a trick question for a shop running Scrum. Fixed date and scope projects are all but doomed to failure for projects of any appreciable complexity (see Stacey Matrix below for illustration of 'complexity').&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ognmb.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ognmb.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might be able to make a case that predictive processes or methodologies can be overlayed onto more simple or even complicated projects; however, most software development is definitely in the complex range. For further reference, check out the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7oz366X0-8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cynefin Framework&lt;/a&gt; for good definitions of simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Here's how you might have answered that question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, I would break up the fixed date and scope dysfunction; we would either release on a particular date but flex on the scope of what we released or release when a particular scope of work was completed. Additionally, the development crew would be charged with developing high quality, low technical debt software so future releases would not be slowed or made increasingly unpredictable by poor, technical decisions and corner cutting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum is founded on empirical process control theory, or empiricism. Empiricism asserts that knowledge comes from experience and making decisions based on what is known. Scrum employs an iterative, incremental approach to optimize predictability and control risk. Three pillars uphold every implementation of empirical process control: transparency, inspection, and adaptation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To ensure the reliability of release plans improves by 30%, I would insist development teams remain as unchanged as possible over the course of the release. This increases stability in the system, and will potentially increase productivity greatly when compared to teams that re-form often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, I would work with the team to form forecasts based on their observed progress towards the release scope (or date) after 2-3 sprints of the new release cycle. This 2-3 sprint period ensures there is some meaningful and &lt;em&gt;empirical data&lt;/em&gt; used to form the forecast. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last, I would maintain meaningful visualizations of the teams' progress, taking into account their collective &quot;cone of uncertainty&quot; range to provide up-to-date estimates to stakeholders as new data emerges. I'd use basic math like that in Mike Cohn's &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/velocity-range-calculator&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Velocity Range Calculator&lt;/a&gt;&quot; to accurately estimate what scope would be complete given a date or at which date a given scope would be complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21576" LastEditorUserId="21576" LastEditDate="2015-12-31T01:12:21.090" LastActivityDate="2015-12-31T01:12:21.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17069" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17070" CreationDate="2015-12-31T01:18:35.123" Score="4" ViewCount="2398" Body="&lt;p&gt;'Crash the project' is a term is used frequently in PMP materials. What does it mean exactly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is it related to 'compressing the schedule', if at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16524" LastActivityDate="2016-01-19T14:03:58.120" Title="What does it mean to 'crash a project'?" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;&lt;pmbok&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17069" CreationDate="2015-12-31T13:05:50.120" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Crashing is simply the concept of throwing more resources--be it money, tools and machinery, humans, etc--at a work package in an attempt to decrease its overall duration.  The general idea is, if you planned 10 days with one person to do a task, then applying a second person will decrease the duration to five days.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue is, this does not work that cleanly in real life.  There are a ton of environmental and random variables at play that affect performance, as well as the resource elasticity of the task, where crashing may have no effect at all or actually make things worse.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, moving boxes from point A to B would have a ton of resource elasticity.  Throwing more box movers at the task should certainly decrease the overall duration.  However, the site and situation of both point A and point B may decrease the efficacy of crashing as you may clog the path between point A and B with more box movers and then slow things up.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A task with zero resource elasticity is like driving from Point A to B.  Throwing another driving in the car will do nothing to get to B faster.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These concepts can easily be applied to more complex projects such as construction and IT.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  Gestation is a common example of how crashing does not work, but it is also not an accurate example.  While we always consider pregnancy as nine months, gestation is probabilistic ranging from as few as 22 or 23 weeks to 46 weeks.  So one could crash a pregnancy duration by introducing a prostaglandin to induce labor.  A resource is not just human but is any and all resources, including this medicine.  Therefore, a pregnancy does have some resource elasticity albeit with a high degree of costs and risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2016-01-01T17:07:20.303" LastActivityDate="2016-01-01T17:07:20.303" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17051" CreationDate="2016-01-01T14:04:11.160" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will avoid going into the comparison with a fixed date release plan and just throw some suggestions &lt;strong&gt;how to improve the estimates&lt;/strong&gt; of the user stories and related tasks (once you know how much they take and the team velocity is pretty straightforward to see which scope can be achieved in a given release).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Split the bigger stories&lt;/strong&gt;; smaller stories/tasks are easier to estimate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you can &lt;strong&gt;use story points&lt;/strong&gt; instead of time units (man-hours, man-days,&#xA;...),  i.e unit-less numbers and if you &lt;strong&gt;make them relative&lt;/strong&gt; it will be&#xA;easier: you can compare similar stories (that is, a two-point story&#xA;should expect to take twice as long as a one-point story) - people&#xA;are more comfortable making relative estimates than they are making&#xA;absolute estimates. &lt;br&gt;&#xA;you could start by finding out which one is the smallest story, one that can be done by one person in about a day or half day, and you estimate this as a 1. Then proceed with all other stories in a relative way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;​ Even more sophisticated is to &lt;strong&gt;use numbers derived from the Fibonacci series&lt;/strong&gt;: 1,2,3,5,8,13,21, … (each number is the sum of the previous two). This special series has the advantage that &lt;strong&gt;the numbers increase exponentially&lt;/strong&gt; and this enforces the concept that bigger is a task more complex will be to be implemented and should be split.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;You can even come out with your own (simplified) series, like 1,2,3,5,10,20,40,100. ​ The lower range (until 10) is designed to help teams to estimate small things they understand well with greater precision.&#xA;​ However, the upper range has increasing numbers, reflecting greater uncertainty.&#xA;​ If the estimates reach this range, it means that the story is too big for an iteration, it represents substantial risk and needs to be split.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;​ Usually who volunteers for the task gets to estimate it. This assumes that the volunteer knows what is talking about but very often you get a biased result, that can be quite off at the end.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;​Rather than place all of the burden and responsibility for an estimate on the shoulders of an individual &lt;strong&gt;estimates are owned by teams.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;​The accepted approach for doing this is to use 3 point estimates and to &lt;strong&gt;converge these as a team&lt;/strong&gt;. Techniques such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wideband_delphi&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wide Band Delphi&lt;/a&gt; provide techniques for combining multiple estimates with associated imprecision.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;​A bit more sophisticated would be to ask everyone in the team and make an average. There could be variations on this like removing from the average the highest and the lowest&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another possibility would be the so-called &lt;strong&gt;planning poker&lt;/strong&gt;: for each task, everyone in the team decides on an estimation value and then all together present their value. The lowest and the highest gets to explain why they think so and then the process is repeated until the members converge on a common value. &lt;br&gt;&#xA;The big advantage from this process is that the value comes as if it was from the whole team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Keep an historical set of completed items&lt;/strong&gt; for the review&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dedicate part of the &lt;strong&gt;retrospective focus&lt;/strong&gt; to the difference between the release targets and estimations and understand where it is coming from.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Focus the estimation effort on the area in which there is the clearest need for it (such as where the difference between expected and outcome was bigger or areas particularly uncertain).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Plan spikes&lt;/strong&gt; (dedicated research iterations) for areas of uncertainty&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In any release plenty can go wrong to invalidate the estimate. This variability is magnified in the large scale (more or bigger team, longer cycles). Estimators can model stochastic (probabilistic) systems, such as development work by &lt;strong&gt;using Monte Carlo simulations&lt;/strong&gt;. With such a model for release duration, you can include the impact of many elements of variability or risk, including scope change, attrition and long sickness. It is especially useful in very large and long-duration development and in fixed-price, fixed-duration projects.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Tom DeMarco created an excel file for the Monte Carlo simulation called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.systemsguild.com/riskology/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Riskology&lt;/a&gt; that is freely accessible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But beware of the discussion: too much precision can harm.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;​Spending too much time &lt;strong&gt;does not generally increase the accuracy&lt;/strong&gt; of the estimates (and it bores the team!).&#xA;​ Spending too much time estimating is truly a form of waste.&#xA;​ At the end, teams must be careful to time-box their estimating and not attempt to turn this heuristic into a pseudoscience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14922" LastActivityDate="2016-01-01T14:04:11.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11876" CreationDate="2016-01-04T11:07:00.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It does not cause as long as the team you are working with takes it in a positive note. But, most times the technical teams expect Scrum master to have technical knowledge. As a new bee if you don't have it, it does not cause you to be a problem. As the time pass by, you can capture knowledge on technology and development of your project/Product that would help you understand what tech teams are talking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are not getting upto speed, then teams would look at you as a problem.&#xA;Because, managing a technical team for long without understanding their problems, or what they are actually doing would not work longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just, start with '0' and capture knowledge as you go.&#xA;This should work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Initially, they may look at your organizing skills and PM skills.&#xA;If they are impressed, for sure any positive team member would extend support for you to learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6251" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T11:07:00.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15789" CreationDate="2016-01-04T11:18:04.390" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I get in your question, you are working on Live Operations or Product evolution project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means, you will identify the technology development and plan for the update of your s/w. Or, you'll find new features based on usage analytics and study and update the feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a macro level, this is considered to be Program management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Program management is about running several projects in parallel/cascade to achieve smaller objectives, and integrating them to the main product to achieve a per-defined success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the updates to the main product are considered to be projects, there should not be any separate method to do costing of such features. It should follow your previous method, ideally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6251" LastEditorUserId="6251" LastEditDate="2016-01-04T11:59:46.687" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T11:59:46.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17051" CreationDate="2016-01-04T12:30:09.193" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Making release planning more accurate means considering following cautions:&#xA;But, you can not avoid considering 15-20% cushion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Understand resources and their efficiency levels [This is possible only if you are working with team for long time]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Keeping a tab on iterations and Quality control.[This is possible if stake holder communication and discipline is maintained.]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Keeping an eye on upcoming technology [You never know what can make your life difficult or easier]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reviews and Development keeping them hand in hand. [Keeping optimal QA turn around and review cycles]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Close watch on competitor moves [Assessing continuously competitor developments will keep you ahead in product vision. I know some products which went to white boards after competitor released awesome content.]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make a scope-able split of features. And, prioritize the most important ones on TOP. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6251" LastEditorUserId="6251" LastEditDate="2016-01-04T12:35:57.230" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T12:35:57.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17080" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17082" CreationDate="2016-01-04T16:09:21.187" Score="-1" ViewCount="96" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on my very first Project and act kind of the Producer / Manager or however it's called. The Project is an Videogame we're working on. It's an easy and dead Genre we're trying to revive. Because the Genre is relatively simple, we know we could make it with just the 3 or us. Even tho we plan to get an Artist on board as soon as the time comes. But that's not important to the main problem here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some more information until we get to the Problem:&#xA;The &quot;Special Environment&quot; is, that the Project is an Non-Professional (who could have seen that one coming ^^), and at the moment Non-Payed Project. All members of the Project will be paid as soon as it is making profit. So no-one knows if he will be paid at all, cause who knows if it will ever sell. The Project should take about 12-16 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main problem is that I feel like my author doesn't seem too interested into the whole thing. At least not as much as I am. We are old friends and that might be an reason for that problem. She said she'd help out and work with me, but maybe I'm better off finding someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also we just started and she didn't even had time to show up in the first briefing, so I had to talk to her afterwards, that was some days later. Now I really want to start the project, and for that I need to discuss anything important she should know with her. but she seems not to find time at the moment. That makes me wonder if I should find someone else, who's a bit more interested in that thing than her, or if it's nonsense, since the Special Environment won't get me anyone to work with me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also I have a question to everyone, to you have any tips for me how to manage my Team in such an environment and how much of an &quot;boss&quot; I should give? Because I really don't want to look like an tyrant, trying to force people working on the project. At the end, they might never get paid for it anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much do you think can I ask of them, without being way too harsh?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21683" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-01-04T17:53:09.553" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T17:53:09.553" Title="Suggestions to motivate Team Members in an &quot;Special Environment&quot;?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17081" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17083" CreationDate="2016-01-04T16:12:06.203" Score="14" ViewCount="1233" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am part of a small company that has 6 developers and 2 support members. this team has been participating in &quot;Agile&quot; development practices for the past 3 years. The Agile/Scrum method has never been truly adopted. They would simply just use a Backlog to look at everything the team was doing, and use Sprint meetings to update what they been working on for the past day, and what they are working on right now. After not seeing any yield from this methodology I was brought in as Scrum Master to improve the teams cooperation and effectiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far I have the team now assigning effort to items and measuring approximate work. However, the team seems to still be stuck in their methods of this is my work and I only let you know progress updates. There is a serious lack of team work when approaching backlog items and tasks. Everything that team approaches has a monolithic approach. The idea that this backlog item will only be approached by one developer until it is done. I want to transform this culture that has been so pervasive in this team. What is the best way as the Scrum Master to get this team to work together as developers? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sorry if I was not clear enough. If you need any more details I will be happy to give you more information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21682" LastEditorUserId="501" LastEditDate="2016-01-06T10:26:50.083" LastActivityDate="2016-01-06T10:26:50.083" Title="Developers in Scrum Team: ineffective and not functional" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17080" CreationDate="2016-01-04T16:30:54.150" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Effectively what you're asking is how to manage a volunteer project. Sure, there's the possibility of pay-off at the end, but really right now everyone is volunteering their time. There's a fair amount of reading out there online and in books on the topic if you'd like to dig into the topic more, but the short answer is that you need to share what your needs are on the project and then ask the team what they feel comfortable contributing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you need X amount of writing work done and the author only feels comfortable doing half that much work, then your team needs to talk about how to address that constraint. Maybe someone else on the team isn't as good of a writer, but is good enough for certain tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, focus on the outcomes, not the tasks. If you need to accomplish a certain thing, the team may find a solution that addresses the problem within the time constraints of the everyone on the team that may be different than the traditional solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a deep, complex topic, but these two points should get you started in the right direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T16:30:54.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17081" CreationDate="2016-01-04T16:42:40.140" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a great question and a common problem in adopting agile. Most often I see two factors as the major contributors to this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, people may feel that they have to stay busy. There's the idea that if everyone divides an conquers, they can work more efficiently and get more done. This isn't completely untrue. If multiple developers work on a single story, they'll probably divide up the work going into it and work in parallel on it. If this is the pervasive attitude, you can try uncovering how the same approach can get individual stories done faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, there may not be a priority on delivering capabilities. In many teams, the PO brings a goal to the sprint that requires a focus on certain backlog items. This is often a constraint on the team because the work each member feels comfortable with will likely not match the work that needs to get done. If you hear statements like &quot;I don't have anything to work on in the sprint&quot; that's usually a flag that this isn't occurring in the team. This is a nice problem to have because encouraging the PO to bring in those goals feels more like an improvement than correcting a problem and you can see the change very fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T16:42:40.140" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17081" CreationDate="2016-01-04T17:43:03.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're in a transformation that needs to be supported by both execs and the team.  Bottom-up transformations usually fail.  Some ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) You need management support to set a clear expectation that Agile teams are the chosen path.  Your management should understand and radiate the concept of an Agile team.  If that's not there, find another job or take off your SM hat, and put on your Agile coaching hat with the execs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Get higher ups to interact with the team and start asking how they are continuously improving.  What did they agree to do during the retrospective to improve; your team needs to understand that managers care about and want to see the team set CI goals&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Get someone fired on the team.  You may have a group of individuals with 1 or 2 bad eggs that are bringing everyone down.  Getting them off or out is often one of the best ways to create the fundamentals for a Agile team to actually form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Coach all the team members in 1 on ones.  Get specific topics and get support from management to help reinforce those topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) Have a team reset where the team creates a new charter, working agreement, and definition of done.  Don't assume that all team members are bought into their current operating agreements since on many transforming teams waterfall/non-empowered processes and practices are often carried over and the team members don't understand they can challenge those practices on an Agile team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T17:43:03.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17081" CreationDate="2016-01-04T22:39:00.360" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often, it takes examples for people to &quot;get it&quot;. Agile doesn't really lend itself to teaching by PowerPoint. To understand agile, you need to do it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The good news is there are many exercises, some very simple, to demonstrate concepts like Teamwork, Batch Size, Work in Progress limits and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leansimulations.org/2010/11/penny-game.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Batch Flow or The Penny Game&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/strong&gt; This exercise is perfect for showing how working in smaller chunks (and reporting more often) will lead to getting more done. You can do this almost anywhere and if you don't have coins, teabags work as a good substitute. &#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Multi-Tasking Myth:&lt;/strong&gt; This is a super simple exercise that is equally effective with teams and managers. All you need is a pencil and a paper. Dive the paper into three columns labled &quot;ABC&quot;, &quot;1,2,3&quot; and &quot;Roman Numerals&quot;. In the first round the players write down the letter A, the number 1, numeral I and then start on B, 2, II and so on through to letter J, number 10 and numeral X. So they are going horizontally across the page. Run the stopwatch until at least 3/4 of the players are done. Note this down. &#xA;In the second round players can go vertically, so they do all the letters, then the numbers and then the numerals. Again use the stop watch. However look over someone's shoulder and as soon as they finish the letters, hit the lap timer. At the end of round two, compare the total elapsed time to round one. Then ask when in round one was any value delivered (answer- almost the very end when the J was written down). Then point at the lap time for the letters in round 2 and show how value was delivered much faster. &#xA;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumology.com/from-the-archives-the-ball-point-game/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Ball-Point Game:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; This game is excellent for teaching a team how to self-organize and work together&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xp.be/xpgame.html/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum Simulation:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; This is a very involved exercise that shouldn't be done until you've got them a little more on the hook. It lets you setup a full simulation of the entire scrum process and the best way to show hands on how to do a scrum iteration. The link takes you to the original XP Simulation. Scrum Simulation is based off that, just can't find any good links that don't rely on XP simulation to get you started. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm in the process of creating print and go exercises for most of those listed above as part of developing an end to end agile workshop. When I'm done, I'll update here with the link to download the exercises. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T22:39:00.360" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17038" CreationDate="2016-01-05T08:44:28.487" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote an &lt;a href=&quot;http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2013/02/when-will-it-be-done/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; about this a while back. The gist is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;collect lead time for a couple of weeks back. Do not use too old data because it is obsolete; the team learnt, got better etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;create a histogram where the x-axis has the lead times, the y-axis the number of occurrences&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;check the number at the 85% of the x-axis and that is a relatively good estimate. The number comes from David J. Anderson, based on statistics and empirical studies&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is to get a number that is more likely to happen based on the previous work of the team. If one takes a lower number than 85% the chance of being late increases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2016-01-05T08:44:28.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17087" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-05T12:41:39.173" Score="8" ViewCount="658" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been reading a lot on Scrum to evaluate its use in our company.  I've done a few trials runs with it where the teams were exploring different aspects of it to get some real world feel.  I'm not sure though that Scrum is our best option.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize this question likely overlaps strongly with others, and I'm looking into those as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the characteristics of my company:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Small teams of 1-5 people&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many projects (almost as many as employees in the company)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Virtually no one works full time on any given project due to scope &amp;amp; funding of projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Projects require diverse skill sets, so people tend to hop around&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A few team members are remote&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some projects are process-oriented while others are research &amp;amp; development with no clear path forward for how to complete the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Regulated environment requiring time tracking down to quarter hour&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given these features, it seems that having each project managed with Scrum won't work well since there's a lot of multi-tasking and flux between skill sets needed on one project versus another at any given time.  Kanban might work better since we'd just focus on work-in-progress, but I'd be concerned about needing to properly maintain a &quot;global view&quot; of all tasking as well as making sure that timelines are still hit for each project.  I can see applying a waterfall-like approach to the more straightforward, process-oriented tasks, but that's obviously not going to work for the R&amp;amp;D projects.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not necessarily looking for a one-size-fits-all PM scheme, but I would like some general top-level guidelines for corporate level management and lower-level guidelines for the PMs on the ground, doing the individual management work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of tools, we use Jira for task assignment and management, but all projects are not managed with the same level of Jira integration.  Many people still rely on MS Project, Excel, and/or notepad.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an additional note, any time I've tried to discuss PM approaches with team members, they are highly skeptical and cynical about adopting some &quot;process&quot;.  I am typically hiding it from them that we're even trying something out.  For example, many eyes roll when I utter the words &quot;Sprint&quot; and &quot;Retrospective&quot;.  That's a little outside of this question, but it's still a factor in the success of any approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21694" LastActivityDate="2016-01-12T07:24:18.660" Title="Project management methodologies for multiple projects, small teams, diverse skills, partially remote team" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17088" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-05T13:03:09.533" Score="-2" ViewCount="581" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need a guidance on an important situation in my life. I dont have anyone to ask and I find this is the only suitable place to ask this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm into QA management for 4 years and project management field now for 4 years. I'm finding it is not up-gradable to any further and I'm getting stagnated in my current Industry [Mobile Gaming]. And, PM has very less scope of work compared to other industries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm into non-technical position, but I manage technical and non-technical staff. I'm not into coding or programming at any point in my career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMP certification is something I know that adds value to my profile. But, will that value help me to land into S/w IT jobs ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need insights on this. I'm stuck in my career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6251" LastActivityDate="2016-01-05T13:24:01.787" Title="PMP certification for a non-technical project Manager" Tags="&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-01-08T01:32:03.170" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17088" CreationDate="2016-01-05T13:24:01.787" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The IT industry seems to value the PMP over other industries so you may be finding hiring managers using the PMP as a differentiator.  But you are the only person that can answer that based on what you are seeing in your geographical area.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I would not advise you to expect miracles from the PMP certification, i.e., you will not have people knocking down your door now that you have it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The IT industry needs both technical and non technical people to run successful projects; however, there is a huge bias towards technical people.  This is the halo / horn effect.  Technical people have the halo; non technical have the horns.  In reality, both populations have inherent weaknesses each needs to overcome but the weaknesses technical people generally have are under valued and assumed to be easily mitigated.  And vice versa for the non technical folks.  But non technically people have successfully delivered a technical project and technical people have successfully hosed a technical project.  But the biases will remain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what you are fighting and the PMP, if it helps, will only help a tiny bit.  So you need to find other ways to fight this bias.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-01-05T13:24:01.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17090" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17094" CreationDate="2016-01-05T19:45:36.133" Score="3" ViewCount="268" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm about to start a new development project that our company would like to run in an agile manner.  At this stage I am the only developer but it is expected 1-2 more will join in future sprints.  Given that we have been doing a lot of story elaboration discussions in preparation for our first sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As part of the elaboration we have estimated the tasks using story points so that the PM could give a quote to the customer.  Part of the discussion required putting an hour against points so it could be converted to a cost.   From this, our PM has determined how many points are to go into the sprint given how many hours we have as a development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have suggested to the PM that in order to meet each sprint as best as possible the development team aims to complete the last story at least 1/2 a day (or full day?) ahead of schedule to give the testing team time to test and then subsequent bugs fixed (as required).  That is because we have included testing in our &lt;strong&gt;definition of done&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, he did want that as he didn't want developers sitting around doing &quot;&lt;strong&gt;nothing&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; so to speak.  I thought that was unlikely as there will always be &quot;&lt;em&gt;bug fixes&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, &quot;&lt;em&gt;refactoring&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, &quot;&lt;em&gt;code review&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, &quot;&lt;em&gt;design discussions&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, &quot;&lt;em&gt;other work&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, &quot;&lt;em&gt;spring planning&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, &quot;&lt;em&gt;Sprint retrospectives&lt;/em&gt;&quot; etc that could all fill in the day if required. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this an acceptable request?  How do other development teams ensure they meet a definition of done that includes &quot;&lt;em&gt;in house testing complete&lt;/em&gt;&quot; within a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8841" LastEditorUserId="8841" LastEditDate="2016-01-05T21:18:16.263" LastActivityDate="2016-01-06T18:14:52.180" Title="Aiming to finish development of sprint a bit early to give testers time" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;definition-of-done&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17090" CreationDate="2016-01-05T20:32:24.213" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can you &quot;[aim] to complete all the tasks ... ahead of schedule&quot;? Don't you have tasks to test the software? Did you mean &quot;aim to complete all of the development tasks&quot;? If the latter, that's probably correct -- you should indeed plan to finish all development early so that there's time for testing, and fixing bugs found during testing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have testing tasks, &lt;em&gt;add them&lt;/em&gt;. Scrum is about being honest about the effort required to finish a piece of functionality. Testing takes time. So does documentation, maybe even training and communication if other teams are depending on work that you're doing. In your definition of done, &quot;done&quot; needs to truly mean &quot;done&quot;. The sprint planning must allow time for writing code &lt;em&gt;and testing the code&lt;/em&gt;. If you don't plan for it, it will happen anyway (or you'll deliver untested code). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line is, the team as a whole is responsible for delivering functional, &lt;em&gt;tested&lt;/em&gt; code. As you suggest, if the developers are done a day or two early and there are still testing tasks to be accomplished, they should be helping finish the testing tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing to think about is that scrum isn't about optimizing the work of each individual, it's about optimizing and planning / predicting the work of the team as a whole. If some team member goes idle, there's nothing inherently wrong with that as long as the work gets done according to the plan. Better to have someone with nothing to do than to miss the sprint target.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do other development teams ensure they meet a definition of done that includes &quot;in house testing complete&quot; within a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is surprisingly simple: make sure you have sufficient testing tasks spelled out in the sprint planning, and make sure everyone on the team is involved in finishing all of the tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3189" LastEditorUserId="3189" LastEditDate="2016-01-05T21:32:40.803" LastActivityDate="2016-01-05T21:32:40.803" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17026" CreationDate="2016-01-05T21:14:34.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the simplest terms possible, a sprint is a period of time. Typically, sprints last somewhere between one and four weeks with two being a very popular duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During that period of time, a team has a predefined amount of work (&quot;stories&quot;) to do, based on their own estimation of what they think they can finish. At the end of that time the team will look at what they set out to accomplish and what they actually accomplished, and use that information to do better in the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3189" LastActivityDate="2016-01-05T21:14:34.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16997" CreationDate="2016-01-05T21:20:21.017" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the comments it was asked:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are the team members involved in sprint planning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your reply was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;@G.H No team members are not involved during sprint planning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the root of the problem right there. The team needs to be involved in defining how much work they can do in a sprint. No one else can answer that question more accurately than the team itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole point of SCRUM is that the team decides, the team works, and then the team examines what they've done. During this examination, they can use the information that they've learned to do a better job planning the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do you handle escalations in these scenarios and how can the sprints be better managed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In SCRUM, you don't &lt;em&gt;escalate&lt;/em&gt;, you &lt;em&gt;learn&lt;/em&gt;. You adjust how you plan so that you can better predict how much work the team can accomplish. If somebody else is deciding how much work you can do in a sprint, you'll never solve this problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3189" LastActivityDate="2016-01-05T21:20:21.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17090" CreationDate="2016-01-05T23:46:52.680" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Answers&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 1:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;&quot;Is [finishing early to allow for testing] an acceptable request?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Answer 1:&lt;/strong&gt; It is completely reasonable because in Scrum, the Development Team is &lt;strong&gt;self-organizing&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No one (not even the Scrum Master) tells the Development Team how to turn Product Backlog into Increments of potentially releasable functionality - &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means, you choose the way you work. Period. If you think finishing 1/2 day ahead is an improvement, then you should do it. This is the Development Team practicing self-organization by solving its problems itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 2:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;How do other development teams ensure they meet a definition of done that includes &quot;in house testing complete&quot; within a sprint?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Answer 2:&lt;/strong&gt; They decompose work into small-enough chunks and ensure they are cross-functional:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...with all of the skills as a team necessary to create a product Increment - &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cross-functional means, the team should posses all the people, skills, tools, etc it needs to make work &quot;Done&quot; within a Sprint. In your example, this would mean testing skills, tools, and maybe QA people are needed on your Development Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As they get better, they shorten and amplify feedback loops in their development processes and strengthen their cross-functionality by learning new skills from each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Bigger Fish to Fry&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are bigger problems than needing to complete testing work within the Sprint. In no particular order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You've got a Project Manager, not a Product Owner&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;This person is quoting to a customer in hours, mapping those hours to story points and planning Sprints for the Development Team. God help you if this translates to a fixed scope, fixed timeline situation. The Development Team and/or the Product Increment may not survive that sort of ordeal. This is a formula for cutting quality to meet a deadline or death-marching to a date everyone knows can't be hit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Development Team is not Cross-Functional&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;If someone outside the Development Team has a big red button that can make work un-&quot;Done&quot;, the entire planning aspect built into Scrum becomes unreliable and seriously un-empirical; the Scrum Team can't know how much work it can get &quot;Done&quot; per Sprint and can therefore not create forecasts, form Sprint Goals, plan releases, etc. This is a serious problem, and a fundamental divergence from the lean manufacturing theory that spawned Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Absent/Weak Scrum Master?&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;I haven't inferred whether you have no Scrum Master or a Scrum Master who is weak or just very green. I say this as a Scrum Master who started out as green as green could be and who struggles daily to act with needed courage. If this SM exists, she/he should be fighting tooth and nail against these practices, removing what are massive impediments to the Development Team's progress, and shielding the team for metric weaponization and micro-management. Moreover, the Development team needs to expand to include as many other developers (QA are developers in Scrum) as are needed for the Development team to create increments of &quot;Done&quot; work in a single Sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is at a minimum. There are several improvements (s)he need to actively coach into being by serving the Product Owner, Development Team, and the Organization as a whole. For more on this, check out the &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-sm&quot;&gt;Scrum Master's duties&lt;/a&gt; section of the Scrum Guide&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;I Know That Feel Bro&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This stuff is hard, and it takes courage. I tell you these things not to make you feel attacked for trying but rather to encourage you; you stand to be terribly discouraged when you make nominal improvements to a Definition of &quot;Done&quot; but are being forced by to work to deadlines that deny you the craftsmanship of creating quality product that solves real problems for real people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been there (and am there still in some ways) and want to encourage you by revealing that are likely root causes to the dysfunctions you initially brought to this exchange. I hope you find this answer is helpful on both fronts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21576" LastActivityDate="2016-01-05T23:46:52.680" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17095" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-06T03:27:35.100" Score="0" ViewCount="2749" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Prince2 Project Product template lists Quality Expectations separately to Acceptance Criteria. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the difference is between these two items? They seem like the same type of requirement to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21701" LastEditorUserId="1251" LastEditDate="2016-01-06T12:40:25.200" LastActivityDate="2016-05-23T21:49:45.213" Title="In Prince2 what is the difference between Quality Expectations and Acceptance Criteria?" Tags="&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17095" CreationDate="2016-01-06T12:39:24.400" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Acceptance criteria defines when a project product is &quot;done&quot; while quality criteria (they don't use the term &quot;Quality Expectations&quot; in the glossary or index of the text) defines how you measure quality of a completed product and what specification has to be met. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the PRINCE2 text (2009 edition):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Acceptance Criteria&lt;/strong&gt; A prioritized list of criteria that the project product must meet before the customer will accept it, i.e. measurable definitions of the attributes required fro the set of products to be acceptable to key stakeholders&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Quality Criteria&lt;/strong&gt; A description of the quality specification that the product must meet, and the quality measurements that will be applied by those inspecting the finished product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2016-01-06T12:39:24.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17090" CreationDate="2016-01-06T18:14:52.180" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should ask your company why they want to run the project in an Agile manner, because like the above posters explain there is nothing Agile about the testing or project management practices described in your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get clarification on what an Agile manner means to your PM, the customer, and other stakeholders driving the project before you get committed to working on the project, or buckle up for potential death marches, sh*ty quality code, and pissed off customers that don't want to do business again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile projects should be sold on the capability of a team to deliver what is most valuable to the customer and change what is delivered as the team and customer learn more.  Selling fixed scope/budget is not Agile.  Agile is not just about how the development team operates.  The whole organization needs to be Agile to support agile teams and projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I can tell, your PM is running a waterfall project using some Scrum terminology.  That's very confusing, and its better to be explicit (for both you and the customer) about the tools and processes you will use to deliver a project rather than pretending to do something under specific methodology without understanding what it means or really doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Story points on tasks is not Agile-Scrum&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Converting story points to hours is not Agile-Scrum&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Quoting on fixed scope for a fixed budget is not Agile&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Having dev and test teams be separated defeats the concept of a cross-functional team and is generally avoided in Agile organizations&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Where's your scrum master in all of this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Its ok to have free time on Agile teams, its when continuous improvement happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-A PM that is trying to keep an Agile team at 100% capacity doesn't belong on an Agile team.  The team sets the forecast and is empowered to balance customer work with continuous improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2016-01-06T18:14:52.180" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17087" CreationDate="2016-01-06T22:28:31.283" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Kanban may work best in your environment. And with some people being remote, you're almost forced to use an online Kanban board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll try to address the two issues you raise one by one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Global View&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can maintain a Global View of the multiple projects by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having all projects on the same board, and indicate with a color what project the task belongs to.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having a separate project level board, indicating what stage a project in its generality is in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I'd go for the second option. It depends on the number of concurrent projects to decide what would better, and give you a good overview - without getting lost in extensive management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Timelines&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban focuses more on the flow than on rigid timelines. That being said, you can still use Kanban in an environment where timelines are important. For example, a simple board would contain three columns: To Do, Doing, and Done. By assign some kind of value (effort, actual hours/days/weeks etc.) to each task, and determining the overall timeline of the project, you can create a simple burndown graph by adding up the total value in each column.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most online Kanban software has either a built-in burndown chart, or has an addition available to accomplish this. We're currently using &lt;a href=&quot;http://trello.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt; with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plusfortrello.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Plus For Trello&lt;/a&gt;, and it gives us an idea of the amount of effort remaining in a particular project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've used Jira with Greenhopper in the past, and liked it very much. It has a more rigid structure though than what your team seems comfortable with. I would suggest looking at Trello, and set up some simple board to track tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also be interested in how UserVoice uses Kanban boards to track tasks. Unfortunately I can't post more than 2 links in this post, so I'll try and post it in a comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck managing all your different projects!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21709" LastActivityDate="2016-01-06T22:28:31.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2384" CreationDate="2016-01-07T08:40:59.063" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, it seems like MS Project 2007 doesn't allow for that. I tried to configure &quot;Resource availability&quot; on &quot;Resource sheet&quot; (February 20%, in March 40%, in April 60%, etc.); however, when I create the task, enter &quot;Work&quot; parameter and assign it to a person &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vienphauthuat.com/dia-chi-nang-mui-dang-tin-cay.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;dia chi nang mui dang tin cay&lt;/a&gt; with variable &quot;Resource availability&quot; configured, it seems like it is not taken into account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21710" LastActivityDate="2016-01-07T08:40:59.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17107" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-07T16:17:32.893" Score="0" ViewCount="129" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my project, I have dozens of summary tasks which are comprised of sub-tasks of different durations. e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SummaryTask_1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Phase 1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SubTask1a --&gt; d1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SubTask1b --&gt; d2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Phase 2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SubTask2a --&gt; d3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SubTask2b --&gt; d4&#xA;Phase 3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SubTask3a --&gt; d5&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SubTask3b --&gt; d6&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Req #1: All tasks are sequential, i.e. Subtask1a has to finish for Subtask1b to start. Subtask1b has to finish for Subtask2a to start. Subtask2a has to finish for Subtask2b to start. Subtask2b has to finish for Subtask3a to start. etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Req #2: All my summary tasks should have the same start date for their Phase 2. This means that depending the duration of phase 1, some summary tasks should start sooner than others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Req #3: I can control only when phase 2 starts. The start date of phase 2, defines when phase 1 and 3 also need to start. So basically I need to have all my SubTasks-2a to start on specific date X. Alternatively I could have all my Subtasks-1b to finish on specific date X. I do not mind which approach to take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PROBLEM I face: During the project, I will be asked to change the phase 2 (SubTask2a) start date many times, so I need my planning to be flexible and for phase 1 and 3 to adapt automatically to the changes without any alterations in their durations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if I move SubTask2a by 5 days in the future, then I would like all tasks of phase 1 and 3 to also be shifted respectively 5 days in the future. Similarly if I move the start date of SubTask2a 5 days in the past then phase 1 and 3 should also move respectively 5 days in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am struggling to find how the dependencies should be defined. I have tried many things but nothing really does the job. I would like to NOT use a &quot;Must Start or Finish On&quot; constraint because I want to be able to change the date X many times and I would like not to have to manually update hundreds of tasks. Also I do not wish to use any lags as my tasks durations are precise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I attach an image my_gantt chart problem illustrating my exact problem. With the dependencies I have currently set up, I am trying to synchronise all my phases 2 with an external millestone date. If I move the millestone &quot;PICK UP DATE&quot; in the future or in the past, then phase 2 and 3 are shifted correctly. However phase 1 does not move at all! How can I fix this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me know please if you have advice on how to handle the dependencies for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you Nantia&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21718" LastEditorUserId="6840" LastEditDate="2016-02-01T15:42:33.830" LastActivityDate="2016-12-27T21:22:22.603" Title="Microsoft Project - Problem synchronizing summary tasks around a milestone" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;dependencies&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17107" CreationDate="2016-01-07T16:39:55.957" Score="1" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set up a driving milestone called &quot;Phase 2 Start&quot; and make it Must Start On [the date you want Phase 2 to start]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make that milestone a predecessor of all the Phase 2's in your plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make all your Phase 1s a predecessor of that milestone using SF (start to finish)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Within each Phase 1, make the first task (e.g. SubTask1a --&gt; d1) As Late As Possible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you can move the Phase 2 start date as much as you want and everything else will move with it, with the Phase 1 tasks always backloaded, but never exceeding the Phase 2 start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2016-01-07T16:39:55.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17109" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17110" CreationDate="2016-01-07T20:49:30.077" Score="2" ViewCount="374" Body="&lt;p&gt;My question is rather simple: what is your opinion about running backlog grooming session as introduction to sprint planning meeting and estimate PBIs which are clear to the team. From one side it can save time and allow sprint planning to be more effective but from another point of view grooming for me shall be used to clarify the backlog (split user stories, change priorities, etc.) and make team familiar with upcoming PBIs. Please share your thoughts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17891" LastActivityDate="2016-01-08T16:59:51.663" Title="PBI estimation during grooming session" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17109" CreationDate="2016-01-07T21:40:40.783" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no &quot;right&quot; way to conduct your backlog refinement meetings. In fact, you can change it up to get what you need at the time out of it. My goal in backlog refinement is to set the team up to have a successful Sprint Planning. This may involve story splitting, priority discussions, or simple Q&amp;amp;A's. However, I often find that until the team tries to go through the exercise of trying to estimate stories, a lot of important questions may remain hidden.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I want to avoid is the situation where we get to Sprint planning, we know what is the best work to do, then we find out that we're missing critical information, so we have to push it off until the next sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to address this problem is to use a Definition of Ready. Like the Definition of Done, this acts like a checklist for PBI's, only instead of validating that the PBI is complete, if validates that it is ready to be pulled into a sprint. Use backlog grooming sessions to refine your PBI's until they meet your Definition of Ready. Your team can experiment with having estimation in the DoR or not. If you are finding that stories meet the definition of ready but can't be pulled into the Sprint (or cause problems when they are) then you might need a stricter DoR which may include estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2016-01-07T21:40:40.783" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17111" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17126" CreationDate="2016-01-07T22:03:25.400" Score="4" ViewCount="506" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am part of a company that is just establishing our process methodology for using the SAFe version of Agile, and leveraging the TFS 2015 Agile process template.  Our team has several questions regarding the proper usage of the artifacts.  Primarily our teams consist of BAs, QAs, and Devs.  The questions we are currently dealing with are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) User Story&#xA;- Who creates the user story?&#xA;- Should the assignment of the user story change through the life of the user story?  (ie: BA creates the user story, then assigns it to the developer, who then assigns it to the tester...) Or should the user story always stay assigned to the creator and tasks get created underneath it that are then assigned to people to work on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Tracking what is in a &quot;release&quot;&#xA;- Our teams have been using an additional field created on the User Story to track a &quot;Status&quot;, which contains things like &quot;Deploy to &quot;, &quot;Deployed to &quot;, &quot;Deploy to &quot;... etc.  This is to help inform the testers of what user stories are available to be tested.  We currently do not have a firm grasp on how to properly track this information.  Some are arguing that this added field should not exist on the user story at all, while other are adamant that this Status field is more valuable than the native State field of the user story.  The bottom line is, what is best practice for determining what is available to be tested in what environment?  Perhaps we are doing Agile wrong and are not even close to hitting the mark here, so some advice and guidance in this regard would be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would appreciate if you could share your own experiences of what has/hasn't worked and/or point me to additional resources that help with the practical application of the TFS artifacts as they are used to track work along with code, testing and deployments.  Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8572" LastActivityDate="2016-01-12T06:31:39.793" Title="How to use TFS 2015 Agile template artifacts in practice?" Tags="&lt;tfs&gt;&lt;safe&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9127" CreationDate="2016-01-08T12:42:33.067" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that, rather than being about the job title, it's all about the skills you display, use day-to-day etc etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of PM roles are very heavy on coordination, some focus on leadership etc..it all varies by organisation and industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that a project coordinator is not yet a PM (not ultimately responsible for delivery), but it's on the path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to take that step up, a mentor is always good to help you stay on the path/avoid common pitfalls etc, but take a look at PM job adverts and identify the skills gap. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Job titles don't always matter that much (a PM can also be a delivery lead, delivery manager etc)..so don't worry about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3246" LastActivityDate="2016-01-08T12:42:33.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17109" CreationDate="2016-01-08T16:59:51.663" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A product backlog grooming session can serve several different purposes that like you pointed out generally serve to improve the quality of the items in the Product Backlog. It can also be used to do release planning or generate new stories.&#xA;In my experience estimating stories during the product backlog grooming session generally has the following advantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Product Backlog usually contains both Stories and Epics. These together can form themes. This is following the notation of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/stories-epics-and-themes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mike Cohn&lt;/a&gt;. In Sprint Planning you would never estimate Epics or whole themes however this is essential for release planning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discussing estimates helps with discovering uncertainties.&#xA;Especially the widely used method of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/planning-poker&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;planning poker&lt;/a&gt; where&#xA;everybody reveals their estimate at the same time makes it very&#xA;apparent if there are differences in understanding of the scope or&#xA;effort of a user story. These discussions help to improve the user&#xA;story (e.g. by changing the wording or breaking it down) or by&#xA;revealing dependencies (with other stories or even other teams).&#xA;Furthermore these issues are discovered earlier. If they are&#xA;discovered during the sprint planning meeting this could mean that a&#xA;story cannot be planned for the current sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The sprint planning meeting gets shorter. The focus of the meeting&#xA;shifts more from the individual stories to possible dependencies and&#xA;optimal order of implementation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The quality of the estimates increases. Estimating can be very&#xA;exhausting and therefore I made the experience that it’s better to&#xA;have many short grooming sessions instead of one very long sprint&#xA;planning. This can (and did in the case of my current team) lead to a more stable velocity and less failed commitments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16052" LastActivityDate="2016-01-08T16:59:51.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4425" CreationDate="2016-01-09T02:56:33.923" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Self evaluations are bullshit.  They do not make the staff feel &quot;included&quot; or &quot;empowered.&quot;  You know what I did.  Tell me what YOU did or did not like about it.  In my position, the first stupid question is &quot;name your successes.&quot;  Well, I'm a legal assistant.  I do the same job every year.  There's not much room to innovate.  You answer calls, do the work, etc.  Where I am better at this than the average bear is I can figure out answers to my own questions using information available to me, I can critically analyze issues, I stay late to get important things done.  This shit isn't &quot;successes.&quot;  It's my work ethic, and YOU know I did it because you were there watching it be done.  Self-evaluations are a giant waste of time from touch-feely corporate bullhockey land.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21737" LastActivityDate="2016-01-09T02:56:33.923" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17111" CreationDate="2016-01-11T09:38:15.970" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, anybody can create a user story, but only one person or group of persons can prioritize the list of user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not familiar with SAFe but it is not that far from other Agile Frameworks, where the Product Owner or Project Manager creates the user stories. When the list is available, the tech leads, the team, the data folks, and the testers review it and change the content accordingly and suggest a possible place in the list. When they done with a subset, the responsible persons order the list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is good to have a status on the user stories. It helps the team and external testers to know which user stories are ready to be used or tested. However, if we are talking about your internal testers, then you won't need it. They must be part of the daily and weekly routine and therefore should know the status of the user stories. A &quot;definition of done&quot; checklist or document may be useful to you which helps to determine the status of a user story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2016-01-11T09:38:15.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17117" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-11T10:22:28.863" Score="0" ViewCount="66" Body="&lt;p&gt;Last summer I finished a PBA in Software Development.&#xA;and got hired into a Company with a small IT department.&#xA;(8 Guys.. 4 developers)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We make inhouse solutions, from services to websites or small applications.&#xA;These four developers are working kinda rogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would usually happen is a guy from the legal department wants a small app that can do something, like sort our legal documents.&#xA;So he grabs a developer. they talk about it, and the developer does it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then we have experienced some issues like these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1: A boss somewhere determinds we don't need the program anyway&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2: It takes a lot longer to make, or is more complicated&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3: The developer and the user don't agree on the result&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my boss asked me to create a standard way for us to project initiate, to avoid these Things. (I've been taught Prince2 and SCRUM)&#xA;But here is the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I make them fill out project initiation documents, with full buisness case and risk analysis etc. they simple won't do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I need a compressed version, and that is why I'm here&#xA;I'm here to ask, for creating smaller sites and applications, what is the core data you need before starting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was thinking something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1: Owner: WHO is responsible and WHO decides outside IT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2: Buisiness Case Description: Why are we making it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3: timetable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4: Cost&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5: Requirements and/or user stories (created with owner) &amp;lt;-- So many times we haven't had matching specs with the user&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What else? .. if this exceeds two documents, its not gonna get done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21749" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2016-01-11T12:50:33.043" Title="Short initiation for lazy colleagues" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;prince2&gt;&lt;initiation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17117" CreationDate="2016-01-11T12:50:33.043" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Add in a &quot;Business Value&quot; line... you have costs and need to balance this off against benefits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also retitle:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Cost&quot; to read &quot;Cost/Effort to Develop&quot; to make sure that developer time is captured. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Business Case Description&quot; to read &quot;Business Need&quot;. Where I work if someone sees the former they can get their knickers in a knot when all you want to know is the &quot;why&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also make the form a bit less onerous by turning items 1, 3 and 4 and any line on Business Value into checklists that give broad buckets (e.g. &amp;lt;20 hours effort, 20-40 hours effort, &gt;40 hours effort).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But ultimately you are only going to get acceptance if there are consequences for non-use. Hopefully you'll have upper management support for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2016-01-11T12:50:33.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17119" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17120" CreationDate="2016-01-11T13:48:19.060" Score="1" ViewCount="2128" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my colleagues says that few e-commerce companies follow a single day agile sprint cycle, as at times they have to be competitive in terms of feature releases and launch new sales campaign, etc. He adds that there is an R&amp;amp;D team in such companies, which sets the daily development target and that target gets QA/release on daily basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I understand is doing a daily sprint might be too difficult, as in the same time there needs to be regression/build/sanity testing and a sprint cycle should be long enough so, that developers also have time to re-fix the bugs reported in the sprint. And in general companies follow a sprint cycle of 2-3 weeks and companies which have good amount of automation for QA and Continuous Integration tools practice do follow a single week of sprint cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please advice if a sprint cycle can be as long as 1-3 days?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21751" LastEditorUserId="21751" LastEditDate="2016-01-11T15:28:24.903" LastActivityDate="2016-01-11T16:03:06.223" Title="Can a sprint cycle take 1-3 days?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17119" CreationDate="2016-01-11T14:04:03.673" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it's OK to have iterations that are shorter than a couple of weeks. Some companies do this - according to this &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/case-continuous-delivery&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ThoughtWorks blog post&lt;/a&gt;, Amazon has the capability to push to production more frequently than every minute, Facebook releases to production twice a day, and Google may update some of their services twice a week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_software_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;leaned out your process&lt;/a&gt;, you could (in theory) achieve a continuous flow of work. At the start of the project you have a backlog of new features, defects, and enhancement requests that is constantly being prioritized by a product owner-type role. As soon as an engineer has the work capacity, work items are pulled off and go through the development cycle. As soon as a change has been properly vetted, it can go live. Depending on the size and complexity of the work item being implemented along with the project's activities, it could go through the process in less than a day. At this extreme case, though, you don't have iterations anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2016-01-11T14:04:03.673" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17119" CreationDate="2016-01-11T16:03:06.223" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, the automation does not necessarily has a correlation to the length of a sprint. It more likely that some teams can plan further ahead than others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with the very short sprint is the overhead of Scrum practices such as planning, retrospective, and demo. These meetings are important but takes time. A 3-day long sprint as about 25% waste. That's hard to sell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next problem is the demo. short sprints means more demos. Can you demo every time something that's worth the time of the stakeholders? Are the stakeholders always available?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third problem is the retrospective. Is it possible to implement an improvement in such a short time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a team is able to pull of a short sprint, it may be a good idea to start experimenting with frameworks that support continuous work over iterative, such as Kanban or Lean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So rather have short sprints, start working continuously, but that will require changes in your organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2016-01-11T16:03:06.223" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17122" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17124" CreationDate="2016-01-11T16:07:27.330" Score="7" ViewCount="421" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team's core job (we're not in the software business) is to install hardware at sites which typically takes around a month start to finish and typically involves around 5 or so distinct stages (site review, planning, assembly, installation, documentation). In addition to that we also do maintenance and various other smaller tasks and one-off projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're introducing Kanban and my initial idea was to have a core job lane and split it into five columns as above. Using t-shirt size estimates we would end up with fairly large (XL) tasks among many smaller ones. The other option of course, is to go with simple ToDo, Doing, Done columns and add a &quot;site review&quot;, &quot;planning&quot;, etc. as individual tasks for each job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an advantage of choosing one over the other? Also, if we divide our jobs (I guess we could call them &quot;stories&quot;) into smaller tasks, how do people practically represent stories and link them to tasks on their (physical) Kanban board?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21753" LastActivityDate="2016-01-11T20:44:39.863" Title="Divide &quot;stories&quot; into tasks or columns?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17123" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17135" CreationDate="2016-01-11T20:36:10.720" Score="0" ViewCount="141" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in an organization where we are moving towards &lt;a href=&quot;http://less.works/less/structure/feature_teams.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;feature teams&lt;/a&gt;. &#xA;We have four squads and seven chapters such as web development, api development, back-office development... Prior to this we had a single team, where developments were assigned to component experts (account management, payment, front end...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When presented to the team, the most frequent objection was: &quot;I am now limited to a single chapter (e.g web development) when I rather work on the full stack (web, api, back-office)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you think people should focus on a single technical item (front end, backend service, ...) or broaden their skills ? How do you handle this in your teams ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21756" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-01-12T12:13:07.177" LastActivityDate="2016-01-12T22:21:34.133" Title="Feature team - Chapter size" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17122" CreationDate="2016-01-11T20:44:39.863" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Kanban it is better to have the stages as column names than todo, doing, etc., because it really maps what you are doing (it is called &lt;a href=&quot;http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2014/05/visualize-information-in-value-stream-mapping/&quot;&gt;value stream mapping&lt;/a&gt;). It is hard to improve on a &lt;em&gt;ongoing&lt;/em&gt; column, however you can learn a lot about &lt;em&gt;assembly&lt;/em&gt; and improve that state. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another argument behalf of the stage names: which provides you more information: having 5 items in &lt;em&gt;ongoing&lt;/em&gt; or 2 in &lt;em&gt;assembly&lt;/em&gt;, 2 in &lt;em&gt;installation&lt;/em&gt;, and 1 in &lt;em&gt;documentation&lt;/em&gt;? Which setup tells you which item is behind, and which is going to be released soon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the moment, I won't divide anything, just let your Kanban system run for a couple of weeks. This gives you the opportunity to see how the system represents your workflow and where it needs change. &lt;strong&gt;The point of Kanban is to map your real workflow and not the other way around&lt;/strong&gt; - I know you didn't asked this. Put down all the ideas and problems you have and have a retrospective after a couple of weeks and fine-tune your Kanban system. If it is a small thing, do not wait, improve on the spot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2016-01-11T20:44:39.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17125" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17127" CreationDate="2016-01-12T03:59:09.607" Score="1" ViewCount="1403" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our scrum master stated that there cannot be more than one tasks in progress when there is only one developer, is it required for an ideal sprint, if yes, then why so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21751" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T10:01:24.260" Title="In a one developer scrum team, can there be multiple tasks in progress" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17111" CreationDate="2016-01-12T06:31:39.793" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;User Stories&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone can create user stories but only the Product Owner can prioritise them. It's also everyone's job to hel refine them to action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Tracking what's in a release&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A single status field on a User Story for environment is not really condusive to understanding either the state of the work item, or it's location in the flow. Ultimately your coders and testers should be communicating regularly on the same team, thus eliminating the need for tools to give you this information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However this information is built into TFS. When a build is sucessfull then it's number is written into all the Work Items that are associated, and every parent of those items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, on a bug, the Tester should be testing and associating test results and data with the build that is under test. When they create a bug Microsoft Test Manager automatically fills out the &amp;quot;Found in&amp;quot; feels with the build number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This allows the coders go easily identify if the bug still exists or if this is an old report. The bug may have been fixed already, or this may be a regression. Or it may be just an old build deployed to QA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the coders have fixed the bug they checkin (push) that change and associate it with the bug, they can choose &amp;quot;associate&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;resolves&amp;quot;. Now when the CI, or Nightly (you choose) build kicks off it knows that the bug is included in the build and uses the build number to write onto the bug in the &amp;quot;Integrated In&amp;quot; field. Just to make sure the build system also walks the chain of parents and also writes to the &amp;quot;Integrated in&amp;quot; field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you can easily query the system for any work items where the &amp;quot;Integrated In&amp;quot; field is less than or equil to the current build number and see all work, partial and complete, that is included in that build.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you then progres to using the Release Management system as well it will pull on that data and allow you to know which builds, or versions of your software have been deployed to which environments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you can easily get get:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For a build exactly what work items are available for test&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For an environment exactly what build of each component is deployed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Exactly which test cases (really each test point) has been run against which build.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are all productivity enhancements that still require team discipline:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coders need to focus and associate commits/checkins with the correct work items and choose &amp;quot;associate&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;resolve&amp;quot; appropriately&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testers need to select the correct build that they are executing their tests against&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have any additional questions then I am happy to discuss...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2016-01-12T06:31:39.793" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17125" CreationDate="2016-01-12T06:33:02.380" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There should be only one active task &lt;em&gt;per person&lt;/em&gt; because &lt;strong&gt;Focus&lt;/strong&gt; is a core agile and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/why-scrum/core-scrum-values-roles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SCRUM value&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Focus&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because we focus on only a few things at a time, we work well together and produce excellent work. We deliver valuable items sooner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having only a single person on your team is strange, because you cannot be a team of one. Your team size should be 3-7 people if possible. But if you are a single person on your team, yes, you should have only one active task at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2016-01-12T06:33:02.380" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17051" CreationDate="2016-01-12T07:09:16.680" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you are in a low trust environment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are in a low trust environment you need to do as much planning as required to get started. Once you start, and deliver, you will begin to create trust and erode the need for such detailed planning up front. Your answer is the only viable one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is so typical of large organisations at the beginning of an agile transformation, or a stalled one, that there is a whole section on it in the Professional Scrum Training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is ideology, the ideal scrum environment, and then there is the reality of your organisational dysfunction. As this organisation looks to need serious work and effort to keep them moving towards agility you should ask yourself if that is effort you are willing to contribute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I for one love a challenge...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastActivityDate="2016-01-12T07:09:16.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17087" CreationDate="2016-01-12T07:24:18.660" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ultimately your current working environment and constraints is not conducive with software development at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would focus on trying to solve the list of dysfunctions that you described rather than trying to engineer a solution around it. You will have exactly the same problems with Kanban and Scrum. Both take dedication, focus, and attention to detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tackle small teams with many projects by looking to group like projects or consolidate projects into frameworks tt support many projects. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Focus on one thing at once. If you have many this in flight for one team you will only create the illusion of more work underway. This will get nothing done and keep you in the perpetual loop. Get the business to prioritise projects. Maybe you can call projects Epics, but only work on one project at once. Finish it, then move &#xA;onto the next. Read The Phoenix Project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create dedicated collocated teams, and another team of remote individuals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Untill there is a clear path don't start the project. It is the job of the business to give you a clear path and funding to do a project, make them own that responsibility and stop taking it from them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are no regulations involved here, just business processes. Time per project broken into capex vs opex meets any need I have ever encountered.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Happy to discuss further...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastActivityDate="2016-01-12T07:24:18.660" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17130" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17131" CreationDate="2016-01-12T14:25:58.057" Score="2" ViewCount="199" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are starting a new project that spans multiple teams (squads). I don't really know how to handle this situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you create a new team for this project ? Do you split user stories on both existing teams ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not think the first approach is the right one, but I worry about adding dependencies between teams with the second approach. Is there a better alternative ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21756" LastEditorUserId="10490" LastEditDate="2016-01-19T15:02:29.107" LastActivityDate="2016-01-19T15:02:29.107" Title="Feature Teams - Project with multiple teams" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17130" CreationDate="2016-01-12T16:02:01.187" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The correct way to handle it is to have a common product backlog as both teams are working in the same product. Also both teams should have the same definition of done or at least close enough to make sure it's compatible. In order to adapt your DoD to this new scenario, you will need to change to &quot;done, working and integrated&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There will always be dependencies between teams no mater how you manage it. So a good way to manage it is by making one of the teams responsible for the dependencies management. This doesn't mean that the other team do not care, it just means that one of them will be actively looking for issues and solutions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For sprint planning, a good practice may be to have a first common sprint planning where the PO share the vision of the sprint and defines goals for all the teams. Once done, each team may go for a separated sprint planning where they do the normal story pointing and estimation of work to be done in the print. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the daily standup, the integration team may change a bit the 3 questions to answer to include information about what happened with integration yesterday and the day to come. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the sprint review, all teams may be together showing the work done, working and integrated. On the other hand, the sprint retrospective may be done within each separate team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21767" LastActivityDate="2016-01-12T16:02:01.187" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5342" CreationDate="2016-01-12T16:25:34.883" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would add one more indicator: time estimated vs time needed to accomplish a task. Having this data shows &quot;reliability&quot; of programmers and vastly improves planning. After couple of months you will probably see some patterns regarding people or type of tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19305" LastActivityDate="2016-01-12T16:25:34.883" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12788" CreationDate="2016-01-12T19:04:49.880" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;OR... Go to the project tab and click on &quot;Move Project.&quot; Put in a new start date and everything should adjust accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21770" LastActivityDate="2016-01-12T19:04:49.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17134" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17220" CreationDate="2016-01-12T20:42:36.173" Score="0" ViewCount="1270" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am making a simple class diagram for the project management techniques using the &lt;strong&gt;Scrum&lt;/strong&gt; methodology, where projects are made of releases and releases are made of different sprints. All I want to know is, is this Class diagram is correct for this management techinique. If not then what I am missing please help me out to figure out this Class diagram.&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yLJ0Y.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yLJ0Y.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21755" LastEditorUserId="21755" LastEditDate="2016-01-23T05:39:11.503" LastActivityDate="2016-01-23T05:39:11.503" Title="UML Class Diagram for the sprints" Tags="&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17123" CreationDate="2016-01-12T22:21:34.133" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The broader the range of skills each team member has, the easier it is to maintain a consistent team output.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for this is that if you have a lot of specialisation it becomes difficult to allocate work to the team that exactly matches the team's capability. For example, say you have a team with 2 web, 2 api and 2 back-office specialists. Will the work that the team needs to do always keep these three disciplines equally busy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an argument that technical specialists do a better job, but this advantage if ofset by some specialists being overworked while others are underworked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-01-12T22:21:34.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3414" CreationDate="2016-01-13T06:36:16.573" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Night shift will finish when Day shift starts.&#xA;B will finish when A starts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21773" LastActivityDate="2016-01-13T06:36:16.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17125" CreationDate="2016-01-13T10:41:47.427" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had been in this situation (I'm the only one developer in the scrum team). Realistically, there are times that you will be at the end of road/running out of ideas and solutions. Instead of wasting time being unproductive, sometimes it is best to leave the work you are doing for the moment and do some easier or other tasks. Sometimes, the lightbulb on your head will just appear while doing other things. I think the scrum master should give some flexibility and don't need be too rigid. As long as the team are committed  and doesn't go out of the agreed deliverables of the current sprint, I think it should be ok. Although the developer should be have self discipline since frequent task switching can be unproductive as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8980" LastEditorDisplayName="user16244" LastEditDate="2017-06-05T10:01:24.260" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T10:01:24.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17138" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-13T11:09:41.783" Score="1" ViewCount="1195" Body="&lt;p&gt;A single user is mapped to a multiple teams in an organization which is handling multiple projects simultaneously. Can a scrum master assign the tasks to the user who is in multiple teams and multiple projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21779" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-01-13T13:21:07.787" LastActivityDate="2016-01-18T19:10:33.780" Title="Can a single resource be in multiple teams for multiple projects?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3611" CreationDate="2016-01-13T11:47:11.260" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pair programming has aided my team in maintaining their velocity even during iterations where a developer/developers were ill for some of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plus, it helps with fighting knowledge silos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would keep the task on the board and the policies you have for ready for development should state that developer holidays have been considered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21780" LastActivityDate="2016-01-13T11:47:11.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="389" CreationDate="2016-01-13T12:15:41.477" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum methodology requires a change in mindset from traditional methods. The central focus has moved from scope in Waterfall methods to achieving maximum business value in Scrum. While in Waterfall, cost and schedule are altered to ensure the desired scope is achieved, in Scrum, quality and constraints can be altered to achieve the main objective of attaining maximum business value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Waterfall model is suitable for ordered and predictable projects in which all the requirements are clearly defined and can be estimated accurately, and in most industries, such projects are dwindling. Changing requirements from customers have led to an increased pressure on businesses to adapt and change their delivery methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more please visit: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumstudy.com/blog/advantages-of-using-scrum-listed-down-by-scrumstudy-2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scrumstudy.com/blog/advantages-of-using-scrum-listed-down-by-scrumstudy-2/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21781" LastActivityDate="2016-01-13T12:15:41.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17141" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17155" CreationDate="2016-01-13T15:29:16.453" Score="4" ViewCount="110" Body="&lt;p&gt;Where I work, there are two teams of developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team A use Kanban and consider quality non-negotiable. They are responsible for developing the client-facing website, part of which contains an important video/media player as an embedded widget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team B use Scrum and consider quality a lot less than team A. Team B are responsible for creating the aforementioned video/media player.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the time, both teams work separate from each other on their projects. Occasionally, team A will integrate a new version of the video/media player, which leads to huge delays dues to bugs in the player (almost always due to no a non-quallity-driven approach). Because team A use Kanban, and therefore have WIP limits, the whack-a-mole bug fixing that takes place on team B blocks their releases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, are there any known ways that team A could attempt to prevent this in future releases where they know they will hit the same issues?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21780" LastActivityDate="2016-01-14T02:24:40.900" Title="Secondary team block primary team due to lack of quality-driven development and WIP limits" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;quality&gt;&lt;work-in-progress&gt;&lt;blocker&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17141" CreationDate="2016-01-13T17:23:40.683" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Option 1. Team B can try to predict the quality of the new releases based on previous releases. I assume Team A does not improve a lot since it happened on several occasions, so knowing number of bugs of previous releases and the time Team B need to fix them, Team A can commit to later release dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option 2. Team B escalates and if their release is late because of Team A, they go to management and suggests Team A to improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option 3. Team B goes to Team A demos, try things out there and if the product is buggy they don't accept the sprint, hence Team A has to fix the bugs before releasing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option 4. Team B delegates developers to Team A to help them to be more quality oriented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option 5. Team B could take nightly releases from Team A and do pre-checks on the upcoming versions and give early feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option 6. Use other player (I know this very unlikely but still an option).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2016-01-13T17:23:40.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17143" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-13T17:24:10.723" Score="5" ViewCount="4094" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a User Story that contains a bunch of tasks, similar to this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;User Story: &lt;strong&gt;Fix any broken JavaScript in CMS&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task: Find and fix broken JavaScript in content&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task: Find and fix broken JavaScript in code base&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task: Find and fix broken JavaScript in static files&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task: Find and fix broken JavaScript in library&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task: Find and fix broken JavaScript in catalog files&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I have a bunch of tasks to go through some code and files and fix some JavaScript. Let's say that all of the above tasks cannot be completed by me in a 2 week sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I split this up into multiple stories? The tasks can be completed in any order and are not dependent on each other at all. So there is no logical way to sub-group them. Would I just do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;User Story: &lt;strong&gt;Fix any broken JavaScript in CMS (part 1)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;User Story: &lt;strong&gt;Fix any broken JavaScript in CMS (part 2)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That seems like a poor way to manage this. What is a better approach to this kind of problem where tasks can't be grouped any better but you still need to split the story up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21787" LastActivityDate="2016-01-15T17:41:04.200" Title="How to split a User Story that spans multiple sprints?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17143" CreationDate="2016-01-13T17:28:13.913" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Instead of 'any' I would use an exact number, or the best would be to do an investigation in sprint 1, create issues for each problem you have found, and do the specific problems in the upcoming sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem with the current setup is that it not specific at all. Probably they'll mean different things to two different people in your organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2016-01-13T17:28:13.913" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17145" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-13T17:29:31.777" Score="9" ViewCount="1888" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say you have a bug on your website. Your developer needs to fix some CSS or something. He estimates it will take him one minute to fix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to manage these kinds of tasks? Do you create a User Story for it and create a task for it? The task is so tiny and minuscule that it's actually more work to create stories and tasks for it than to actually do it. This seems very inefficient, even though it's important to track and manage development of small fixes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you best deal with small, one-off tasks that don't take long to accomplish?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21787" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-01-13T23:08:02.660" LastActivityDate="2017-07-30T07:01:37.640" Title="How to manage very small, easy tasks in Agile?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17145" CreationDate="2016-01-13T18:21:43.813" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most teams I've worked with create a card and give them a size of 0, mostly for reference/logging purposes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2016-01-13T18:21:43.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17138" CreationDate="2016-01-13T18:40:39.107" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of issues with this approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multi-tasking reduces efficiency. Every time they have to context switch between projects they will lose effectiveness.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum is based on the idea of a known team capacity which is used to calculate the velocity. If team members change or are doing work for other teams then the velocity can no longer be accurately determined.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The person effectively becomes an external resource that needs to be coordinated. This will reduce the effectiveness of the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many of the Scrum ceromonies are intended to be for full-time team members only. For example, the daily stand-up and retrospective are usually for full-time team members that are &lt;em&gt;committed&lt;/em&gt; to the work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The dual-team role forces there to be prioritisation between two independant backlogs. e.g. is it a priority for them to work on Story X for Team A or Story Y for Team B?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-01-13T18:40:39.107" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17141" CreationDate="2016-01-13T18:48:38.823" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is one of the reasons why ideally agile teams contain all the people necessary to deliver a product. When you have functional rather than feature teams you immediately create dependencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ideal solution would be to create one or more cross-functional teams that deal with end-to-end feature requests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An alternative solution would be for Team A and Team B to work together more closely. Hopefully some of the quality philosophy would rub off on Team B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final option, which is not really in the spirit of agile, would be for Team A to do acceptance testing of a media player release. If the media player component was not of sufficient quality then they would reject the release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-01-13T18:48:38.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17145" CreationDate="2016-01-13T20:09:39.293" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stuff like that should be in the working agreement of the team.  There is no right answer on how to handle the situation but there are pros/cons of creating the story/defect and/or underlying task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pros:&#xA;Creates visibility for the rest of the team&#xA;Leaves an artifact that the work was done&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cons:&#xA;Administrative overhead associated with creating/managing the artifact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general rule of thumb:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The less mature the team is, the better it is to get them to create artifacts for all the work they do, whether its 5 minutes or 5 days.  This helps create discipline and drive transparency as the team forms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more mature the team is the more acceptable it becomes to let pieces of work that are only a few minutes go under the radar.  The team may have a working agreement that any work less than X minutes doesn't &lt;strong&gt;require&lt;/strong&gt; a card.  Mature teams should have the ability to communicate and retrospect on these items (if they start occurring frequently enough to warrant concern) without needing an artifact to reference in every instane.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it really depends on the problems you are trying to solve with having the work explicitly tracked or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2016-01-13T20:09:39.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17145" CreationDate="2016-01-13T21:45:59.710" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would create a card for it during the stand-up meeting and estimate it with the team. If its really 1 minute and it won't disturb the focus of the iteration do it, but don't disturb developers for it while they are working on something else. This also makes 'extra' work visible, this could be used later during the retrospective when Sprint goals are not met, certainly when its a lot of small changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a lot of similar trivial changes I would group them into a somewhat larger one for the next iteration. Question yourself do we really need it now? Because what might look like a small change, can be somewhat bigger when the developer actually starts on it. Make sure its time-boxed and postponed if it does take longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that small changes could have enormous impact on other disciplines in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SDLC&lt;/a&gt;. Simple example could be that a lot of automated tests need updating, or translations need to be applied. Read more about impact of small 5 minute code changes at Microsoft: &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ericlippert/2003/10/28/how-many-microsoft-employees-does-it-take-to-change-a-lightbulb/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ericlippert/2003/10/28/how-many-microsoft-employees-does-it-take-to-change-a-lightbulb/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2016-01-14T08:26:29.020" LastActivityDate="2016-01-14T08:26:29.020" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17145" CreationDate="2016-01-13T23:05:10.840" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even when the change is apparently minor, it can have ramifications. The &quot;one-minute fix&quot; to some CSS class might impact the user interface (UI) on some other page the developer isn't thinking about, or might break important regression tests. This is the very definition of cowboy coding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More importantly, bypassing the agreed-upon workflow is a recipe for lost productivity, allowing invisible work acting as a drag on the project and reducing overall product quality. &quot;Just this once&quot; creates technical debt, but a &lt;em&gt;culture&lt;/em&gt; of &quot;just this once&quot; will eventually break your process. Don't allow that to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;No Invisible Work, Ever&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lets say you have a bug on your website. Your developer needs to fix some CSS or something. He estimates it will take him 1 minute to fix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your developer is wrong. It may or may not be as easy to fix as he thinks&amp;mdash;developers have been known to underestimate tasks, especially if they aren't thinking about how &quot;minor&quot; changes might impact other things in the system&amp;mdash;but any task carries real-world overhead such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Task-switching overhead. Science tells us that interruptions often require &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.fastcompany.com/944128/worker-interrupted-cost-task-switching&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds&lt;/a&gt; for the task-performer to recover flow.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Process overhead such as refactoring, unit testing, integration testing, and regression testing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Other process overhead related to your Definition of Done, including (but not limited to):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;peer review&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;continuous integration (CI)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;user-acceptance testing (UAT)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Work-tracking overhead, which is essential to ensuring that there is no invisible work, &lt;em&gt;ever&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps most importantly, unplanned work should never be added to the current Sprint. Some teams handle this by reserving capacity for unplanned work or by having a generic &quot;minor bugs&quot; story, but the best practice is to ensure that all non-critical bugs are prioritized by the Product Owner in a future Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tiny stories might be assigned story-point sizes of 0 or 1/2, or they might be lumped together with other minor bugs. I'm a fan of lumping rather than zero-point stories, for the simple reason that no work is ever really &quot;free&quot; and the cost of a dozen zero-point stories is most definitely &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; zero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use the lumping technique, your next Sprint might include &quot;fix outstanding CSS bugs logged in Jira&quot; as a Product Backlog Item (PBI) sized according to the number and complexity of the bugs and the related overhead of &lt;em&gt;testing&lt;/em&gt; them. Unless cowboy coding is a project goal, even &quot;minor&quot; changes should go through the same development/testing pipeline as any other change to maintain product quality and avoid technical debt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-01-13T23:05:10.840" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17143" CreationDate="2016-01-13T23:28:56.330" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Use INVEST for Story Definition and Sizing&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are struggling with decomposing your work because your stories don't follow the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST mnemonic&lt;/a&gt;. In particular, the tasks you've listed aren't &lt;em&gt;testable.&lt;/em&gt; How could you possibly tell if you've successfully completed &quot;[f]ind and fix broken JavaScript in catalog files&quot;, or estimate the amount of work involved?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like test-driven development in general, the best user stories should describe &lt;em&gt;behavior&lt;/em&gt;. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I expect the JavaScript on the catalog page to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickrolling&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;rickroll&lt;/a&gt; me&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I can be annoyed and less productive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now it's clear what the developer needs to work on, and (more importantly) how to validate that work. You have described &lt;em&gt;testable behavior&lt;/em&gt; rather than hand-waved the scope, the expected behavior, and the testable success criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Lumping Related Items&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories should be granular, but not ridiculously so. If you have a lot of related fixes, you can &lt;em&gt;lump&lt;/em&gt; them. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a web developer,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want to fix the &lt;em&gt;rickroll.js&lt;/em&gt; logic on all 27 views&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I can irritate all customers regardless of entry page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, this defines testable behavior, has a clear and measurable scope, and provides enough context to enable the team to estimate the work involved. Whether you should have individual stories or lump them together will vary based on team capacity and story size, but at least now you have options!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-01-13T23:28:56.330" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17141" CreationDate="2016-01-14T02:24:40.900" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The fact that Team A uses Kanban and Team B uses Scrum is probably incidental to the situation.  Fundamentally, the two teams have a different attitude towards quality of their work and its impact on their customers.  Besides impacting Team A's performance, they may also be impacting their external customers, which management may not even be aware of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The long term solution is to show Team B the impact of their shoddiness.  Perhaps the Support organization can show some analysis of support tickets for the company and see if there is indeed impact to customers for Team B's work.  Perhaps there is market release data for products that both teams work on to show that Team A's products are getting to market more often, thus positively impacting company revenues.  There certainly needs to be some management intervention based on this evidence to motivate Team B to improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in the short run, some other steps might also work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to do so would of course be for Team A to have a frank conversation with Team B to explain their situation and see if there is anything they can do to help get the video player release on time.  If they can somehow get that message across, that would help Team A.  They could even enlist an external coach/ trainer to help them with this task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, given Team B's past performance, Team A can forecast when realistically they will actually get a bug-free version of the player, and incorporate that in their own release plans.  So, specific tasks and features that integrate with the player can be done earlier in the release cycle, so that integration efforts can begin and all bugs reported by Team A can be fixed by the Team B. Perhaps a couple of cycles of this testing can be pre-planned and incorporated in Team A's release plan.  Separately, all other features of Team A's release can continue (the ones that don't depend on the player integration) and finish in parallel to the testing, debugging and the final release of the video-player and its integration to Team A's product. This way, they can continue to make releases as per their plan while incorporating the rework of Team B in their plan. The picture below hopefully helps illustrate my point :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UJDxz.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UJDxz.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If needed, the two teams might have to do multiple iterations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Easier said than done, of course!  Clearly, Team B has issues relating to team management, team dynamics, individual motivation, etc. that makes them continue to function the way they do.  Unless these are addressed, including perhaps rebuilding the team with some fresh blood and ideas, this will continue to drain company resources, revenue and profits - as also overall employee morale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HTH. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2016-01-14T02:24:40.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17145" CreationDate="2016-01-14T09:08:04.193" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Create a Ticket for it, gives visibility to the rest of the team and it also means it can go into the backlog - there is no guarantee that the developer who estimated it only taking a minute will fix that issue there and then - so there needs to be some record of it - otherwise it might get forgotten again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it might then be a case of a team member picking up several of the tiny tickets at once &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21385" LastActivityDate="2016-01-14T09:08:04.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17158" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-14T13:31:14.360" Score="1" ViewCount="71" Body="&lt;p&gt;In risk management within projects, probability is used as a way to understand how likely risks are to happen in the future. This is obviously a well-established area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Presumably there is nothing limiting us from applying the concept of probability to issues [risks that have materialised] that could have happened in the past (where uncertainty exists in whether the issue did or did not occur).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an related example, I may believe that our organisation has been subject to a cyber attack within the last week. However, we haven't observed this attack happening directly and so we have to build up a picture of whether or not it happened based on information we uncover. It seems appropriate to me that I can take and apply the concept of probability and therefore assess issues in the same way I assess risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this logic seems permissible? Is this how people think about issues within their risk management?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20833" LastActivityDate="2016-02-28T10:00:45.530" Title="Using probability to assess issues" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;risk&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17158" CreationDate="2016-01-14T14:18:36.320" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Probability does not change whether an event is in your awareness or not.  For example, approximately 1 in 8 women will develop invasive breast cancer.  This translates to over 200,000 new cases each year or almost 4,000 cases a week.  This probability is consistent week after week, including this past week, despite the fact I know of no one in my small world impacted with this diagnoses in the past week.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things in the past are certain.  Either something happened or it did not happen.  However, if you are studying the past at a macro, population level, then the known probability exists in terms of locating observations of what did happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2016-01-14T15:03:37.950" LastActivityDate="2016-01-14T15:03:37.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17125" CreationDate="2016-01-15T04:48:07.977" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My scrum team (small game development group) checks out tasks in 3 hour chunks because our core productive hours rest in 3 hour chunks. If your scrum tasks have been prioritized, you should have some idea of the sequence of your upcoming tasks. Tasks estimated over 3 hours need to be broken down into sub-tasks if possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21814" LastActivityDate="2016-01-15T04:48:07.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16786" CreationDate="2016-01-15T09:38:36.797" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master has three major servant leadership topics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Serving the Development Team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Serving the Product Owner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Serving the Organisation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a new Scrum team a Scrum Master usually starts doing the first two things: Teaching the PO how to be a PO, helping the Dev Team through the team building phases, making it perform. &#xA;After a while the role changes more to that of an organisational coch in the third part. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lookout what the SM could do following that first thing are various SM checklists:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrummasterchecklist.org/pdf/ScrumMaster_Checklist_12_unbranded.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scrummasterchecklist.org/pdf/ScrumMaster_Checklist_12_unbranded.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21816" LastActivityDate="2016-01-15T09:38:36.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17162" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17165" CreationDate="2016-01-15T09:51:22.640" Score="3" ViewCount="122" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hello I am familiar with Waterfall model&#xA;I am new to Agile development.... &#xA;I am trying build a mobile application which makes http calls to server &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is my way of building application &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Database design&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2) Server side api development&lt;br&gt;&#xA;3) Mobile app development &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the agile approach for this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note:The whole system built by only one developer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21818" LastActivityDate="2016-01-15T15:07:46.663" Title="Agile development for mobile development with Backend server for an Indie developer" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17162" CreationDate="2016-01-15T11:31:33.207" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd probably suggest you start by creating some user Stories to gather requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for example you'd use the following format &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;strong&gt;A type of user&lt;/strong&gt;, I want &lt;strong&gt;some goal&lt;/strong&gt; so that &lt;strong&gt;some reason&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/user-stories&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;User Stories Explained at by Mike Cohn&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've outlined your user stories you can start to prioritise these  - these  could then form your &quot;Product Backlog&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'd then take each story and break them down to individual doable tasks - so this might be : Implement Table Schema, etc etc (I don't know enough about your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21385" LastEditorUserId="21385" LastEditDate="2016-01-15T15:07:46.663" LastActivityDate="2016-01-15T15:07:46.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16786" CreationDate="2016-01-15T11:59:53.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Scrum master should work towards making him/her self obsolete in the scrum team. The team should be able to work as a self organizing team. Scrum master can work in another team, where there is chaos to be sorted &quot;or&quot; work with other Scrum master in the organization to inspect, review and refine agile processes at org level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21716" LastActivityDate="2016-01-15T11:59:53.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17162" CreationDate="2016-01-15T12:35:25.843" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Agile way is more the other way around:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Single feature/screen/part in mobile app (Should create user value, can you make it smaller?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Question what serverside API is minimally needed to implement this part of the app&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Question what minimal database structure is needed for this part of the API&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This comes from the Agile XP practice &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_aren%27t_gonna_need_it&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;YAGNI&lt;/a&gt; (You aren't gonna need it).&#xA;Work on things you need now and not what you think you might need. This increases learning you get from earlier finished parts. Also you should work on implementing complete features that give user value. Users might start using the product already when just 10% of the features are implemented (for example), because it already leads to actual usage value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you give the working app to your clients regularly as one of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile principles&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Deliver working software frequently, from a  couple of weeks to a&#xA;  couple of months, with a  preference to the shorter timescale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then requirements &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; change and you might not need all the database structures you envisioned at the start for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My favorite Agile principle:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is&#xA;  essential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2016-01-15T14:10:53.627" LastActivityDate="2016-01-15T14:10:53.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17166" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-15T16:07:00.207" Score="2" ViewCount="120" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm tasting specification by example in my project e-Travel. It's a simple project about travel expenses reimbursement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. The flow is simple：&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Employee does business travel by assignment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When he returns, the employee posts a claim for the expenses paid and subsidies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then the accountant verifies the claim, and calculates the expenses and subsidies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finally, the cashier pays to the employee by the signed claim from chief.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. We get out two business goals and draw two impact maps:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Employee gets expenses in 5 days.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/K7hNu.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/K7hNu.png&quot; alt=&quot;Employee gets expenses in 5 days.&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No fraudulence or mistake happens.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/f1R7F.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/f1R7F.png&quot; alt=&quot;No fraudulence or mistake happens.&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Now, I'm not sure the deliverable for the cashier.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that the printing check or preparing fields by details of claim should also speed up the payment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, should I repeat them in the first map or create a link? Otherwise, the duplicate is not necessary? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know the question is so naive. But as a newbie, I need more guidance. Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21766" LastActivityDate="2016-01-29T21:34:11.333" Title="How to deal with the similar deliverable in my impact map?" Tags="&lt;specification&gt;&lt;deliverables&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17143" CreationDate="2016-01-15T17:41:04.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally my approach would be to do tackle the technical debt based on the functionality of the application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, fix broken JavaScript (all categories) on the registration pages. Then test it (including regression testing) and then move on to the next functional area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will probably find that the first few functional areas involve the most work and then as you progress on a lot of the underlying JavaScript will have been fixed by earlier stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-01-15T17:41:04.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17130" CreationDate="2016-01-16T00:00:45.307" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sound like you need the scrum of scrums here.  Each team works on clusters of user stories.  More information about this can be found at:  &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/team&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/team&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than scaling large teams, Scrum projects scale through having teams of teams. The concept is explained very well in the link.  It formed the basis of my understanding as a scrum-master and this technique works really well.  The concept may seem complex and daunting, but once you see it in action and come to terms with it you will definitely realise the benefits of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17482" LastActivityDate="2016-01-16T00:00:45.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17169" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17174" CreationDate="2016-01-16T13:52:20.580" Score="1" ViewCount="1586" Body="&lt;p&gt;My development team is not fully isolated from maintenance. We use Scrum with 1 week sprints. The backlog for a given week is composed of development and maintenance (bug fixing) tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of our clients are entitled to prioritized support. We do have a separate support team but our development team contains experts in certain areas. Our boss sometimes asks us to change the scope of a given sprint to accomodate prioritized support tasks. In general the scope changes are minimal and the team understands why this has to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things get a bit trickier when a client is doing UATs and is very close to going live. Sometimes we're asked to prioritize a support task &quot;immediately&quot;, obviously causing waste and frustration in the DEV team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my point of view, when facing the situation above, I'd rather fallback to 1day sprints until the client goes live and we can resume our regular 1 week sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would avoid wasting time on an extensive weekly Planning Meeting that has a high chance of not reflecting the real scope of tasks predicted for the upcoming week. I'd have daily plannings combined with stand-up meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you guys advise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21836" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-07-08T10:07:14.593" LastActivityDate="2019-07-08T10:07:14.593" Title="1 day sprint ever makes sense?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17170" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-16T13:57:29.110" Score="0" ViewCount="123" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there an alternative to the Gantt diagram, which differs in the following way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From top to bottom employees are listed, not tasks. The task is presented as a rectangle on an employee's 'timeline'.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The task can be assigned to a single person only, not multiple 'resources'.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could look like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3vu2i.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3vu2i.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why (I guess) a tool based on the diagram can be useful. I'm working with several contractors and I'd like to make notes about what every person is doing right now and share this information with all who is interested. It would be ideal if I could also create a task card with its left border showing creation date and its right border showing the supposed completion date then the current date and finally the date when the task is actually closed/done. When only undone tasks are visible ('Show completed tasks' is off), I would control that all contractors are busy (have a task) and no task is prolonged too much. When the completed tasks are shown, I would be able to see what a person has done for the project, how much time every his/her task took, what is the typical time window between tasks and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When Gantt or Kanban is used, the focus is on &lt;strong&gt;tasks&lt;/strong&gt;. My focus is on &lt;strong&gt;people&lt;/strong&gt;. I want them to have at least a task (if not, I would investigate what's wrong with their input) and do the tasks as soon as they can (if the task is too wide on the diagram and still not closed I would investigate what's wrong with the task or maybe with the doer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE 2&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is about the name of the diagram. Say, Kanban, modern Kanban, UML sequence and so on. It's not about software recommendation. Management techniques and tips like using calendar applications (a software program class, not a specific application) are also welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regards,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21835" LastEditorUserId="21835" LastEditDate="2016-01-18T08:54:47.433" LastActivityDate="2016-01-18T08:54:47.433" Title="Gantt diagram alternative: cards instead of tasks, one guy per task" Tags="&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ClosedDate="2016-01-18T00:31:36.757" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17171" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-16T19:16:08.100" Score="1" ViewCount="2344" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a ScrumMaster for a new team, who have added a load of user stories to their backlog and now they are breaking them down into sub tasks and giving those sub tasks estimates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They've then put these into their Sprint Backlog, but noticed that the sub-tasks estimate is just added onto the User Story estimate. So for example: If the Story is estimated for 1w and they make some sub tasks for 2 days estimate the user story will appear as 1w and 2 days. Anyway for the sub task estimate to form part of the Story estimate? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21088" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2016-01-26T15:42:54.110" LastActivityDate="2016-02-26T10:38:53.710" Title="How can I set JIRA to not add the sub task estimate to its parent User Story?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17172" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-17T00:11:16.437" Score="0" ViewCount="484" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a software developer working on an Action Item Register Application.  Based on research I found a process flow chart that helped clarify a way of processing action items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to ask if it is possible to apply a flow as shown below to shorter term projects that require less time to complete action items.   If the action item cycle time is relatively short will this type of process be effective generally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can a process that is similar to the flow below be applicable to teams that require cycle of creating action items to closing items to be short in terms of a week or several days?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Image courtesy of:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://help.newforma.com/Video/Nuggets/Newforma%20Project%20Center%20-%20Action%20Items%20Process%20Flow.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;help.newforma.com/Video/Nuggets/Newforma Project Center - Action Items Process Flow.png&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QVnmC.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QVnmC.png&quot; alt=&quot;Process Flow Chart&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21772" LastActivityDate="2016-01-17T00:19:52.040" Title="Action Item Register - Can a formal method of tracking action items be successfully applied to teams using more adhoc / agile methods?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17172" CreationDate="2016-01-17T00:19:52.040" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Google up on Kanban task boards. You'll find that they are very similar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile backlogs and their task boards are essentially an action item register. It's not the tool that makes agile work so well, it's the team and the collaboration of the the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-01-17T00:19:52.040" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17169" CreationDate="2016-01-17T11:44:49.963" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think 1 day sprints are your solution. You have support requests that are of greater importance to the client coming in mid sprint. Sometimes your team has to drop everything and release a patch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are two approaches I would suggest. These approaches make different assumptions about the size and consistent nature of the support work, and can be combined as appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1 : Treat support as a background task.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not everything needs to be be put on the board and estimated, there are many tasks like continuous improvement, exploratory testing etc that form a background of work that needs to be done. Count support as this. The velocity of your team will reduce in accordance with the amount of support work you do, and you can plan new work on the basis of that lower velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This strategy is best if support is fairly consistent. It also has to be clear to stakeholders that velocity is planning tool, not a performance metric, and it's reduction here is not a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2: Drop work off the Sprint to fit in support tasks/ deliver a 'best effort' sprint in the case of an emergency&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's perfectly acceptable for the PO and Dev Team to trade work in the current sprint for more important things if business priorities change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However appreciate that you won't want to take time to estimate 'emergencies' just to make a decision of what to drop. An alternative is effectively dropping the entire sprint, and then after the emergency is resolved, figure out what 'best effort' to finish as many of the sprint items as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any option that involves dropping work off the sprint, incidentally, is much easier if you minimise work in progress. It is also worth making sure during sprint planning that you always do have stories of roughly emergency size that can be individually dropped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17705" LastActivityDate="2016-01-17T11:44:49.963" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17169" CreationDate="2016-01-17T13:50:52.657" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me first answer your main question, &quot;Do one day sprints make sense&quot;. In general: no. The need for a one day sprint are often a sign of things out of control. I've seen agile coaches practice one day sprints in operations environments and in crisis teams, but never for software development teams who also need to deliver features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum applies Focus to ensure that the value delivered in a sprint can be maximized. Interruptions and massive scope changes, as well as loads of defects and incidents cause the Focus to be lost and will drastically lower productivity, the ability to estimate and to create a short term plan that helps you achieve your sprint goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often the notion of one day sprints are caused by problems in previous sprints, Product Backlog Items declared done, receiving massive feedback from clients when shown weeks later. That's a sign of the customer not being involved often and early. It's also often a sign of an absent product owner or a proxy product owner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be that the nature of the work is just too unpredictable, in Operations environments or customer support departments, you often see that the flow of incoming work is constant, yet the ability to predict the work coming in is absent. In these cases Kanban or another flow optimization technique may be better suited than Scrum. It's not valuable to spend half a day planning, knowing it's for naught. You will loose some of the benefits of continuous learning, cadence and predictability which Scrum offers, and will need to ensure you either keep doing some of the Scrum events or do something else instead for your Sprint review an Retrospective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like the nature of your work should not be the above. You can cater for some incoming additional work using a &lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com/a/scrumplop.org/published-patterns/product-organization-pattern-language/illegitimus-non-interruptus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;small buffer or some up-front discussion with the product owner&lt;/a&gt; about which PBI's carry more value than others, so you know how to deprioritize some work over other. A strong product owner can also help in these cases, weighing which issues are truly worth interrupting the team for and which ones need to be pushed back to the client. Each incident gives them a short burst of value, but it tends to lower the long term value due to the fact that you're unable to deliver new items in a sustainable way&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also sounds like your Support team could be a better buffer for the Development team. Would it be possible to rotate some Devteam members through the support team for a couple of weeks/months, pair-programming with the support team? That would allow the support team to pick up more knowledge of the products you're building. That way they can solve more issues themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also sounds like the customer isn't always happy with the work delivered, or has new insights based on what they see, can they be involved earlier and more often than you're doing now?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may need shortish sprints, say one week, due to the fact that part of your work is unpredictable, but with a strong product owner and the ability to deliver new work mid-sprint (by not waiting for acceptance at the end of the sprint), you will be able to either postpone some of the work to the start of the next sprint, or to keep a buffer to deliver the highest priority work this sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just a final note: Your team is the owner of the Sprint Backlog and is allowed to ignore or refuse requests to change the sprint backlog. They're required to when the Sprint Goal is jeopardized. Only when the current sprint goal is no longer valid or valuable, is the Product Owner allowed to cancel a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7393" LastActivityDate="2016-01-17T13:50:52.657" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17170" CreationDate="2016-01-17T15:38:08.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would consider using a shared calendaring application for this kind of tracking.  The level of detail you have is similar to the kind of detail I use to track vacations.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create each assignment as a multiple day all day event.  The title could be something like &quot;John: Task 1&quot;.  You can add details in the notes section. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively you can create a calendar per person and show them in a single view. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2016-01-17T15:38:08.537" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17178" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-18T12:41:24.407" Score="2" ViewCount="1916" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like any project, things happen. How can I plan for contingencies in a Scrum-based project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current practice is to have 10% contingency for the whole project, e.g. for a 10 sprint project, we will add 1 sprint at the end. If the team delivers, we use it for the &quot;cool down&quot; period, e.g. training etc. Otherwise, it will be used for catch-up work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21852" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-01-19T01:29:49.093" LastActivityDate="2016-01-19T01:29:49.093" Title="How can I plan for contingencies in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17169" CreationDate="2016-01-18T15:38:57.967" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why using sprints for support anyway?&#xA;Use kanban board instead, with priorities in rows, that will do the trick.&#xA;You will always have ready for development row prioritized by customer. Developers should just take any top prio task.&#xA;If you are using some CI and DevOps automation you can release everytime you have a task or group of tasks done, even every day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my solution here is SCRUM for development, Kanban for maintenance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also used one day sprints for one man project but this is exception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21857" LastActivityDate="2016-01-18T15:38:57.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17178" CreationDate="2016-01-18T16:29:27.853" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is that the project plan is more emergent than that - allow me to elaborate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In scrum I have a constantly evolving backlog. I work with the team to identify what work will be done in a sprint and we take that work to completion, but during that time, the product backlog could be changing with items being added, removed, or reprioritized. Also, at the end of the sprint, hopefully I'm getting feedback about the work I completed that also affects the backlog. While it's hypothetically possible that my backlog would never change from start to finish, it would be a big red flag for me that the team is sticking to their plan over adapting to customer needs as we go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the team should complete each backlog item entirely in the sprint and you have the ability to include feedback and learnings from sprint to sprint in the product backlog, the contingency time is built into the process rather than needing to be allotted at the end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reading into your question a bit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In traditional waterfall project management, we have a fairly set scope and at least an expected completion time, which I think is the mindset you're coming from when you say &quot;for a 10-sprint project&quot;. Normally you would build in buffer to account for unknowns, or as you put it, contingency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum takes a different approach. I have backlog items or, at a higher level, features that I would like my application to do. I may think the project will take 10 sprints, but if after the 3rd sprint I'm averaging 3 completed per sprint and I had 50 total, I already know my expectation is way off (in 10 sprints I'd have about 30 done, give or take) and I take action immediately. That action could be many things - canceling the project, changing expectations, starting up another team, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, my plan comes together and evolves as I learn rather than leaving room for it at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hardening Sprints&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, another common circumstance with real-life application of Scrum is that teams often can't get backlog items complete in a sprint. Maybe it's a problem in the team they haven't worked out or maybe it's an organizational constraint like all software changes have to go through a month-long review and deployment process. Ideally in Scrum (or any Agile approach I can think of) this shouldn't be a problem, but it is. Large organizations are slower to change than small teams. A common work-around is something called hardening sprints. This is some time you take every few sprints to shore up all of the loose ends. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to fight against these pretty hard, but they work ok if you understand what their use is. They're a lot like crutches. You wouldn't give someone with a broken leg a crutch and say &quot;You're better now.&quot; They get you through a tough time, but if your end-goal is not to eliminate the need for them, you've got a rough life ahead of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2016-01-18T16:29:27.853" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17138" CreationDate="2016-01-18T19:10:33.780" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We had a god-like developer working for multiple projects. He was a silver bullet for any issue. True savior in desperate situations. The solution here was to create custom filter in Jira for him to manage his workload as different projects used different flows and schemes. PM's managed issues priority collaboratively, with COO as an arbiter, using numeric prios from Jira Agile which are unique. He did not participated on Scrum meetings at all. Developer always worked on a top prio issues. His primary role was a firefighting (blockers issues on prod) and last resort(If we needed booster to close all issues from sprint backlog). We did not track his personal velocity as teams had different story points scale. All story points for issue's solved were added to a team velocity. That's how we keeped velocity more steady and mitigated unknown risks.&#xA;    One more thing about him is that despite his far superior hourly rate the average cost of a story point delivered by him was significantly lower compared to a teams he supported. So there were no negative impact on budget. I hope this war story was useful for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21857" LastActivityDate="2016-01-18T19:10:33.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17178" CreationDate="2016-01-19T01:19:43.620" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Like any project, things happen. I am looking for feedback on how to plan for the contingency in a scrum based project. [sic]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an X/Y problem. In Scrum, you have estimates rather than guarantees, especially at the release-planning level. While you can always apply a fudge factor to any project management methodology, there is no cure for treating an estimate like a money-back guarantee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum handles project uncertainty by using an iterative development model, and by re-planning the project at the start of each new Sprint to take advantage of the most recent information about the project's needs, the capacity of the team, and the level of effort required to perform the current work increment. Contingency planning is thus reduced to an exercise in managing scope and quality, rather than trying to guesstimate the right fudge factor upfront.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;You Can't Do Fixed-Scheduled &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; Fixed-Scope in Scrum&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My current practice is to have 10% contingency for the whole project, e.g. for a 10 sprint project, we will add 1 sprint at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have an extremely mature Scrum team with a stable velocity range, this may work with smaller projects where the scope of the work is exceptionally well-defined. Generally, though, this is a &quot;project smell&quot; that indicates that Sprints are being misused as milestones rather than as time boxes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Sprint is an ephemeral time box with an estimated capacity that varies from iteration to iteration, but generally fits within a normative range over time. However, treating Sprints like fixed-scope, fixed-deadline milestones creates all the project overhead of Scrum with none of the benefits, and is unlikely to succeed in any but the simplest projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Understanding Constraint Sliders&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the standard project management constraints of scope, schedule, and budget, Scrum project planning generally involves making scope the flexible constraint. In other words, the iterative development paradigm generally says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Given a fixed delivery date of ten weeks from now,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  And given the budget for ten weeks of &lt;em&gt;sustainable&lt;/em&gt; agile development&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  When the developers are given a Product Backlog that exceeds their available capacity&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Then the scope of Product Backlog Items will be reduced until they fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, using other methodologies like Kanban you could make &lt;em&gt;schedule&lt;/em&gt; the flexible constraint and simply estimate your delivery date (and your budget) as a slope function of the size of your Product Backlog, your average cycle time, and your mean throughput. In other words, you estimate &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; the project will be done based on how long it takes you to do the work, rather than estimating how much work can fit into your release schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Iterative Development&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum and other agile methodologies are based on the idea that you can't accurately estimate level of effort more than one or two iterations in advance. In Scrum, release planning is generally based on a rough first-pass estimate of all Product Backlog Items. This estimate must be done by the development team, of course, not the management team!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner then works &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; the team to select the Product Backlog Items that might be expected to fit within the time box defined by the release schedule (e.g. 10 iterations), adjusting priorities and scope on the fly if needed. Then each Sprint, the Product Owner and the team meet during Sprint Planning to re-plan the current increment. This gives the Product Owner the chance to re-scope and re-prioritize the Product Backlog in order to get the most value out of the current Sprint and the product-release time box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Not Doing Scrum? Do Something Else!&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are doing a lot of up-front planning with fixed specifications and a fixed schedule&amp;mdash;plus probably a fixed budget, too&amp;mdash;then you aren't doing iterative development. That's okay; 32% of non-agile projects still succeed!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to be a Scrum shop, you have to accept the tenets of the framework. If you can't do that, then you can save yourself a lot of long-term pain by not trying to &quot;be agile.&quot; Just say you have a 10-week project with a 10% allowable variance, track your progress against your project's tolerances, and keep management informed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Twiddling your &quot;allowable variance&quot; won't make you agile. However, a sufficient buffer &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; provide some cushion when unplanned work or unexpected complexity throw your carefully-scheduled project out of tolerance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-01-19T01:27:42.017" LastActivityDate="2016-01-19T01:27:42.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17183" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17186" CreationDate="2016-01-19T07:51:18.307" Score="0" ViewCount="305" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have tasks T1, T2,...TN. Each task has subtasks S11,S12,...,SNM. Each subtask takes some amount of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For version V1 I have t1 months, for version V2 I have t2 months,...&#xA;For simplicity I assume that all subtasks can be done simultaneusly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I represent these task in a way similar to the picture below?&#xA;This would enable to see which subtasks need to be in V1 (here it would be S11, S21, S41 and S42. S12 and S31 might make it into V1 but probably only into V2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the tasks and subtasks have real names and a change in the duration of a subtask should be easy (at best, just editing a number).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can this be done with Ms Project? Is there a better way than Excel as done for the picture?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JWVeo.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JWVeo.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21868" LastActivityDate="2016-02-03T15:45:00.587" Title="How to represent tasks with subtasks over versions?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17069" CreationDate="2016-01-19T09:27:44.237" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are 2 strategies for compressing project schedules; crashing and fast tracking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Crashing refers to adding more resources to critical activities in order to reduce the duration and save time while fast tracking is an attempt to make activities that would have occurred in sequence (one after the other) to occur in parallel (happen at the same time with little or no delay between them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although these strategies can be applied to projects, there are several things that should be considered. One key factor is that not all activities can be shortened using these measures and other strategies or a combination of strategies should be put in place to address such situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21869" LastEditorUserId="21869" LastEditDate="2016-01-19T14:03:58.120" LastActivityDate="2016-01-19T14:03:58.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16998" CreationDate="2016-01-19T09:34:37.673" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project charter is high level and it should be addressed like that. The challenge is when you give definitive estimate at this stage then your client may tend to hold you to that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A better approach would be to give a rough order estimate which is something like; based on the initial project description, it will take 6 months - 50% +100%. This means that after enough planning has been done, it may take just about 2.5 months (-50%) to complete this project or it can go up to 10 months (+100%).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we are dealing with high level details, your estimates (time, cost, resources etc) would be high level also. More information will be gained during planning and execution then your estimates can be reviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Michael Effanga &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21869" LastActivityDate="2016-01-19T09:34:37.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17183" CreationDate="2016-01-19T13:37:13.103" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can do this in Project using nested sub-tasks. IMO this gives a more clear and intuitive view of what needs to be completed in order to finish any given version of your product. This is important because in my experience you have to dumb-down how you depict schedules in order to ensure clear understanding. Beyond that, it is more straightforward to include info about inter-relationships between tasks, factor in delay days, account for staffing limitations, etc etc in Project rather than Excel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ShuwW.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ShuwW.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2016-01-19T13:37:13.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17187" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-19T14:06:38.590" Score="2" ViewCount="1183" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the things to consider before project initiation. I believe a lot goes on before the charter can be produced and PMBOk 5 is a bit silent on that point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21869" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T12:40:44.357" Title="Things to consider before Project Initiation" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;pmbok&gt;&lt;initiation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17187" CreationDate="2016-01-19T15:02:47.473" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to conduct Feasibility study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Operational feasibility&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Economic feasibility&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical feasibility&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Human factors feasibility&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Legal/Political feasibility&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually it is conducted by customer or consultant before hiring PM and Team.&#xA;After studies there might be decision to not start a project at all.&#xA;If customer gives a green light this study shall be a primary source of data for project charter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21857" LastActivityDate="2016-01-19T15:02:47.473" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17038" CreationDate="2016-01-19T16:36:08.683" Score="0" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collect data like this: &lt;a href=&quot;https://wakatime.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://wakatime.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Compare tasks by title and description for similarity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create prognosis based on task description and title similarity and time collected.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Constantly improve base using machine learning and genetic algorithms.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sounds crazy, but i like your idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21857" LastActivityDate="2016-01-19T16:36:08.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17190" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17193" CreationDate="2016-01-19T16:46:25.030" Score="0" ViewCount="482" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to use personal kanban  boards for daily stand-ups and to plan one working day if I work in scrum team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ki4TQ.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ki4TQ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Kanban board&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21874" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-01-19T16:47:05.643" LastActivityDate="2016-01-19T23:03:06.137" Title="Using personal kanban board for daily standups in scrum process" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17190" CreationDate="2016-01-19T17:25:14.313" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is possible, but does not make too much sense. If there is a scrum team, &lt;strong&gt;the daily meeting should be about the team's scrum board and burn down chart&lt;/strong&gt;. There is no need for other artifacts for the whole team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have these, have them first, let them be around for several sprints, and discuss the results during the retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case the team is not mature enough, the scrum master should jump in, and coach the team so that they are able to use the scrum artifacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2016-01-19T17:25:14.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17190" CreationDate="2016-01-19T17:41:05.800" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Short Answer&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are not diverging from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot;&gt;Scrum framework&lt;/a&gt; by keeping a Kanban board for work you have chosen i.e. Scrum don't care :). That said, work closely with your team to examine the impact of this new practice so that it is clear if it is helping or hurting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Long(er) Answer&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are free to do this i.e. you would not be infringing any of the rules of Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider however that teamwork is the heart of how effective Development Teams self-organize. Practicing Scrum well and developing software with agility hinges on shortening and amplifying feedback loops of which the Daily Scrum is one. Consider this paragraph from the Scrum guide regarding the Daily Scrum:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Development Team uses the Daily Scrum to inspect progress toward the Sprint Goal and to inspect how progress is trending toward completing the work in the Sprint Backlog. The Daily Scrum optimizes the probability that the Development Team will meet the Sprint Goal. Every day, the Development Team should understand how it intends to work together as a self-organizing team to accomplish the Sprint Goal and create the anticipated Increment by the end of the Sprint. The Development Team or team members often meet immediately after the Daily Scrum for detailed discussions, or to adapt, or replan, the rest of the Sprint’s work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding in a layer of abstraction in the form of a personal Kanban board would seem to me to be a &lt;em&gt;pulling away&lt;/em&gt; from teamwork or a symptom indicating the team is slave to a tool that makes managing work painful for the individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said this, I would not dissuade you from trying something new that you think might help. Kanban boards, burn-downs, user stories, &lt;em&gt;et al&lt;/em&gt; are not Scrum but rather complementary techniques many people use. Along with Scrum in general, these practices should meet regular and appropriate scrutiny as Development Teams do the hard work of improving the way they develop software within Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21576" LastActivityDate="2016-01-19T17:41:05.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17171" CreationDate="2016-01-19T19:43:49.567" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMHO, you should create a custom field that is only tracked against sub-tasks to track &quot;hours remaining&quot; specifically. Be careful about going overboard and tracking vs actuals as that can lead to some seriously weaponized metrics. In general, this sort of data is a gold mine for micro-managers; be very careful not to give such managers ammunition to harass an otherwise healthy team :).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can refer to this guide:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA052/Adding+a+Custom+Field&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA052/Adding+a+Custom+Field&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest you create the field as a float, but try not to get hung up estimating tasks too granularly :).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You likely have to reindex, but you can do that in the background to keep from interfering with others' work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond adding the custom field, I would suggest configuring your Agile board card format to show the hours remaining. You'll have to go few a couple hoops to make sure the new field is available in the &lt;em&gt;custom fields&lt;/em&gt; group, but Jira prompts you through that process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of this, you'll have enabled the developers to break a user story into sub-tasks and put hour estimates on those sub-tasks without affecting the story level estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last, you may be working in a domain that is well suited for temporal estimates. Plenty of very simple, repetitive work lends itself to being easily and precisely estimated in this way; however, if your project is like the majority out their, it's not so simple. Consider reading up and choosing relative estimation techniques to ensure you're getting enough accuracy in your estimates without incurring the overhead and error of forming precise estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21576" LastEditorUserId="21576" LastEditDate="2016-01-19T19:50:43.713" LastActivityDate="2016-01-19T19:50:43.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17190" CreationDate="2016-01-19T23:03:06.137" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use personal kanban in my work life so I can manage the tasks I have to do. I am the dev manager so dont have many tasks directly related to the sprint. I use trello for this which I do recommend&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21883" LastActivityDate="2016-01-19T23:03:06.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17199" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17202" CreationDate="2016-01-20T11:10:00.850" Score="0" ViewCount="598" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is clear that in Sprint Planning the Product Owner has to be present. However, since the Development Team is responsible for current sprint work, does the PO need to attend Replanning? Although the Sprint Goal will be likely altered, only the Dev Team knows how much work they can take and therefore will modify the sprint based on their knowledge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21692" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T15:46:51.437" Title="Who should attend Sprint Replanning?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17187" CreationDate="2016-01-20T12:40:44.357" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, quite a bit goes on. Unfortunately, I think a lot of project managers are assigned to projects after pre-project work is done, so are stuck doing piece-work without necessarily having a broader business context... which can lead to bad decision-making down stream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should read up on the PRINCE2 standard, they have broken this out into the &quot;Starting Up a Project&quot; phase. Documentation produced and work done during that phase includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Mandate&lt;/strong&gt; coming from outside the project which commisions the work and acts as the starting point for all that follows.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Appointment of a PM and project executive&lt;/strong&gt; which establishes who represents the interests of the business stakeholders and has overall (executive) and day-to-day (PM) authority over the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Review of previous lessons&lt;/strong&gt; to avoid repeating mistakes of the past and ensure reproduction of things that worked&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ID and appoint project management team&lt;/strong&gt; to support the executive and PM as you start up the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Prepare an outline business case&lt;/strong&gt; to establish the business value of the project vs expected costs. This will be refined after the project is initiated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Select approach and assemble the Project Brief&lt;/strong&gt; to define what the project will produce, how this will be done, which stakeholders need to be considered, what constraints/assumptions you are working under, etc...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Develop an Initiation Plan&lt;/strong&gt; so that you have a path towards developing a full-on project plan once your project is approved&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Approval to Proceed with Initiation&lt;/strong&gt; from the project board/steering committee&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T12:40:44.357" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17201" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17204" CreationDate="2016-01-20T12:44:29.927" Score="4" ViewCount="843" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say I have 4 tickets in Done state in the Kanban board. I plan to release them together after a detailed QA which would take me about 2 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I have this one ticket which is a hotfix and it needs to be released right away. If I hit the release button, I can not choose which tickets go into that release since all 5 tickets will get selected. How do I make sure that single ticket goes out of the Done column in the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13778" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T13:45:48.320" Title="How can I accomodate hotfixes in the KanBan board in JIRA" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17199" CreationDate="2016-01-20T12:56:05.093" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[S]ince the Development Team is responsible for current sprint work, does the PO need to attend Replanning? [sic]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, the Product Owner needs to be present at all scoping and planning sessions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adjusting scope within a Sprint is possible, but only with the full participation of the Product Owner. Changes to the Sprint Goal should trigger an Early Termination of the current Sprint and a return to Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How to Change Scope and Sprint Goals in Scrum&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no such ceremony as &quot;Sprint Replanning.&quot; It sounds like you've created a special ceremony for cutting scope from the current Sprint, but Scrum already supports this process within the standard framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cutting scope within a Sprint is certainly possible, but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Product Owner &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be involved.&lt;/strong&gt; No changes in planned scope can be made without the involvement of the Product Owner.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Changes to the Sprint Goal may only be made with the full agreement of the Product Owner.&lt;/strong&gt; The Sprint Goal represents a planned increment of value, so the Development Team can't change the Sprint Goal unilaterally.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A change in the Sprint Goal should trigger an Early Termination by the Product Owner and a return to Sprint Planning.&lt;/strong&gt; If the central goal of a Sprint is invalidated for some reason, it needs to be scrapped and re-planned by the &lt;em&gt;entire&lt;/em&gt; Scrum Team (including the Product Owner) after a brief Sprint Retrospective to identify what went wrong.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the Development Team may &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; cut scope or change goals without the active participation of the Product Owner. Doing so undermines the core responsibilities of the Product Owner role, and removes essential project controls from the framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-01-20T15:40:46.973" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T15:40:46.973" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17183" CreationDate="2016-01-20T13:30:07.173" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agreed with Doug B. In addition I would recommend you use a mnemonic or short phrase instead of T1, T2, etc. (Apologies in advance for the obviousness of this point, but I have learned to avoid making assumptions.) This will reduce the confusion that would arise when you re-sequence your tasks, e.g. having T2 start after T5. Use terms that are familiar to your task owners and team members. A &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_breakdown_structure&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;WBS&lt;/a&gt; dictionary is helpful for this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore the S subtasks should be named with the same mnemonic or phrase so that reader know exactly what task the subtask is associated with. Always seek to reduce the cognitive burden, particularly as the project's inherent complexity increases. Wikipedia has an example of such a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_breakdown_structure#Coding_scheme&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;coding scheme&lt;/a&gt; this at &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_breakdown_structure&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_breakdown_structure&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even the Excel table has limitations as a practical communications tool. Most WBS are shelfware because of their complexity and inflexibility as a tool for the team to use. How about using a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_board&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;kanban or scrum board&lt;/a&gt; instead? See &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/17330/how-do-you-keep-track-of-software-engineers-daily-activity&quot;&gt;How do you keep track of software engineers daily activity?&lt;/a&gt; for an example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hcq6U.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hcq6U.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8524" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2016-02-03T15:45:00.587" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17201" CreationDate="2016-01-20T13:45:48.320" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The JIRA Kanban board has a default filter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;fixVersion in unreleasedVersions() OR fixVersion is EMPTY&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find your filter under Board(Top right)-&gt;Configure-&gt;General-&gt;Kanban board sub-filter&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just set the fixVersion of that task to a released version number and it will be removed from the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is actually the same the release button does, it just sets the fixVersion for all tasks in done as a batch and then marks the version released.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T13:45:48.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17199" CreationDate="2016-01-20T15:46:51.437" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great question.  In my experience anytime you are adjusting either the sprint scope or the sprint goal the product owner needs to be involved.  I think of the Scrum team as the &quot;delivery team&quot; and the delivery team delivers whatever the product owner has determined to be the highest value work.  So as soon as you say adjusting the sprint goal, I think, &quot;okay, the product owner set the last sprint goal, we should let her know that we cannot achieve it and need to replan.&quot;  Also, even if the sprint goal is intact, and really you just have a decrease in capacity (a developer was poached, maybe) the product owner should get to determine which work item can drop off the sprint.  Make sense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20573" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T15:46:51.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17206" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17210" CreationDate="2016-01-20T16:02:47.720" Score="5" ViewCount="512" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a ScrumMaster for a software firm, and we have a project that is entering its 35th Sprint. While I appreciate the value of Retrospectives, it's becoming progressively more difficult to get good insights from our Retrospective events. We have shortened the meetings to avoid wasting a lot of time, and even the short meetings don't seem to get as much content (or quality content) as they used to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering what strategies the good people of PMX use to continue to get value out of Retrospectives, even for a very long-running project. Are there different formats that you use as a project goes on longer and longer? What insights should we be looking for later in a project? Do you stop doing Retros altogether?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for any insight!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16314" LastActivityDate="2016-01-21T16:00:01.047" Title="Making Retrospectives Effective in a Long-Running Project" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17207" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17208" CreationDate="2016-01-20T16:43:32.517" Score="2" ViewCount="1097" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not been here for a while but thought I would jump back with an interesting question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are optimistic and pessimistic chart lines on a burnup/down genuinely useful or just a project smell imported to an Agile chart?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2016-01-24T18:53:04.630" Title="Optimistic vs. Pessimistic Burndown Lines - just a Project smell?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;burndown-chart&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17207" CreationDate="2016-01-20T19:27:48.413" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;They are genuinely useful, but there are a few factors that can really skew them to be wary of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those not familiar, when we use a burn-up chart to track work toward some scope marker, like a release, on a project, we can take the average velocity and plot a line forecasting when the total amount of work complete will meet expected scope (when it'll be done).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can also plot lines assuming every future sprint is as good as our best sprint and one assuming every future sprint is as bad as our worst sprint. This gives us a window of when I'll reach an expected scope. I am very unlikely to be done by my optimistic date and very unlikely not to be done by my pessimistic date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/IlJvY.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/IlJvY.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some Things That Throw Them Off&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Predictability: If your team's velocity isn't fairly consistent, your window will be so wide that it'll be useless. Two things to help with this are to use the last few sprints and to throw out understood outliers (like sprints with a week out for Christmas). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multiple Projects: I've seen teams add stories done for work outside of the project into their burnup, but leave the scope line the same. For obvious reasons, it messes up your chart. Either increase your scope line when you add extra stuff in or don't include it in your burn-up line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Poor Definition of Done: If you don't have a strong Definition of Done, you don't know if you're really done or if you're piling up technical debt. If you leave a lot of testing, release, or other work until the end of the project, your forecasts will be meaningless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some Great Uses&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously being able to give the PO and stakeholders some idea of how the overall project is awesome, but there are some other things it's great for too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes/No/Maybe Scope questions: It's easy to plat a particular amount of work or particular feature on this chart and say that it will, will not, or might be done by a certain time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prioritization: Let's say something is lower on the backlog and I don't need it done right now, but I need it done before New Years. I can use these lines to know how far up the backlog it needs to be in order to be certain it's done in time without having to throw it to the front.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Optimistic / Pessimistic line shows behaviors (you might say this is just team/project smell): Different trends may mean different things. A large cone of uncertainly (difference between Opt and Pes lines) with the average near the middle suggests that the team has a fairly even number of highs and lows and probably carries a lot of work between sprints. If there's a large cone of uncertainty with the average closer to the Opt line, something is occasionally sabotaging or crashing sprints. Maybe business is changing it's mind mid-sprint or they're being plagued with environment problems. If the reverse is true (average is near Pes line) then the team is occasionally having amazing sprints. The team is probably capable of a lot more, but something slows them down most sprints. You should target those opportunities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastEditorUserId="7944" LastEditDate="2016-01-20T20:41:12.477" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T20:41:12.477" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17206" CreationDate="2016-01-20T19:48:07.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great Question! While retrospectives are a critical component of continuous improvement, they get become ineffective over time if the same approach is being used each time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This thread has a ton of different retrospective formats in the answers, so I won't rehash them: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1578/different-ways-of-running-retrospectives&quot;&gt;Different ways of running Retrospectives&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for when to change, you want some consistency so the team gets used to it, but if it starts becoming mundane, you need to switch it up. For a lot of teams that ends up being around 4 or 5 sprints, but see what works for you. There are also some formats that are easy to switch between. The plus/minus/delta, the boat retro, and the starfish retro are all similar in concept, so jumping between them is easy. Going from a starfish retro to a 4L's approach is a bigger mindset shift and should be done with more care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, as a Scrum Master, you may find situations that call for a certain technique. If the past few sprints have been really low energy in the team, doing a retro that asks what was exciting and what was frustrating get the team talking about those items in a way that &quot;What went well&quot; wouldn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T19:48:07.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17206" CreationDate="2016-01-20T20:09:32.867" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several things that you can do to spice up your retrospectives and keep getting value out of them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have somebody else facilitate the retrospective. E.g. a team members, Scrum master from another team, agile coach, etc. A fresh facilitators can lead to other kinds of discussions, insights and views, topics or improvement approaches.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change the setting for the retrospective. Go outside, hop over to a nearby meeting center or facility, visit a museum, have dinner together, anything that can help team members to get out of the daily routine and get refreshed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change the audience: Do a retrospective with stakeholders, customers, people from operations, or any other group of people that the team collaborates with. When the audience changes, the scope and perspective changes along; it becomes a project level retrospective, end to end retro, DevOps retro, Business - IT retro, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do a retrospectives on how you have been improving as a team. This includes reflecting on the way that you are doing retrospectives, and also on how the follow up with improvement actions is done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Celebrate successes. For a team that's been together for so long there must be things that are going great, so take time to explore them and learn more about things that go well. Find your team strengths.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And yes, change the retrospective exercise that you use (here's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.benlinders.com/exercises/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;toolbox with retrospective exercises&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't wait until people are getting bored in retrospectives. Change your exercise, setting, facilitator, etc frequently so that your people stay fresh and keep coming up with useful improvement actions. Keep your agile retrospectives valuable!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16919" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T20:09:32.867" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17206" CreationDate="2016-01-20T20:24:23.530" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/does-a-scrum-team-need-a-retrospective-every-sprint&quot;&gt;Mike Cohn blogged on this quite recently.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His comments included trying out different retrospective formats and having a Scrum Master from a different team run the retro.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mike does emphasise that even a Scrum team that has been together for 10 years gets benefits from retrospectives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T20:24:23.530" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16839" CreationDate="2016-01-20T21:09:05.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found when I was using JIRA on a regular basis that notifications were reliable but you actually have to turn them on in two places.  One is within the Space or Project you wanted to &quot;Watch&quot;, the other was within your profile settings. I needed to enable notifications at the profile level before any of my watched spaces would send me an email.  HTH.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20573" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T21:09:05.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17213" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17222" CreationDate="2016-01-20T21:29:57.323" Score="2" ViewCount="1501" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the time being, we have a large offshore development team that mostly takes instructions from the California team. It’s like having team members that can do 30 hours of work per day. I’m trying to schedule Sprint Review, Retrospective, and Planning. Because India is a half-day ahead of us, I feel compelled to narrow the gap between Review/Retrospective and Planning, so that offshore doesn’t have an unplanned day to start every sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, question: are there any hard-and-fasts you go by on the sequencing of these meetings? For instance, Sprint N+1 Planning the day before Sprint N Demo/Retro would fix my problem, but is probably a bad idea. And having Demo, Retro, and a Planning all on the same day is exhausting. But I have to compromise on something. Your recommendation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21895" LastActivityDate="2016-01-21T19:02:15.350" Title="Sprint Demo, Retrospective, and Planning sequence with offshore team" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14764" CreationDate="2016-01-20T23:04:22.870" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would lean toward trains that are feature driven for one simple reason:  Releasing any package to production, as long as it is not only customer facing but customer-impactful, is much more than an engineering effort.  It is an effort that spans disciplines and business units.  Sales needs to be able speak intelligently to the customers about it, support needs to be able to do the same, marketing may want to build collateral around it etc.  A customer can more easily understand and appreciate new (or simply improved) features than anything else, so you may as well organize your efforts internally to reflect that point of view.  It is one more step towards being customer focused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20573" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T23:04:22.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17213" CreationDate="2016-01-21T02:05:14.437" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to suggest that you need to have two separate scrum teams that work together but not try to timeshift one team. Splitting teams and the scrum events across timezones is a recipe for disaster. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each team should have their own events specific to their timezone, but you do need to make sure that you maintain lines of communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NhVgf.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NhVgf.png&quot; alt=&quot;Nexus - use scrum to scale scrum&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While Nexus works best for 3-9 Professional Scrum teams working together you might find some of the practices of use. Specifically the &quot;team-of-teams&quot; approach for maintaining the communication lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrum.org/nexus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://scrum.org/nexus&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both the Sprint Planning and Retrospective the teams have their events in their respective timezones, at a reasonable time. However representatives from each team meet before and maybe also after to synchronise...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nkdagility.com/big-scrum-all-you-need-and-not-enough/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://nkdagility.com/big-scrum-all-you-need-and-not-enough/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The post above has a video where I walk through the Nexus process that comes from Ken and Scrum.org.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2016-01-21T02:11:19.803" LastActivityDate="2016-01-21T02:11:19.803" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17206" CreationDate="2016-01-21T09:27:40.703" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, you should always keep doing retrospectives. It is one of the 12 core &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile principles&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At regular intervals, the team reflects on how  to become more&#xA;  effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is always something to improve or to try different to become more effective. I haven't seen the perfect team yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my teams had great success with &lt;a href=&quot;http://plans-for-retrospectives.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Retromat&lt;/a&gt; to spice up their retrospectives. Retromat generates a new fresh retrospective format for each time, give it a try :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2016-01-21T09:27:40.703" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17206" CreationDate="2016-01-21T16:00:01.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Process for the sake of process is a bad idea, and one of the big downfalls of scrum is that it is so process heavy. For this reason I think it is okay to occasionally not hold the retro, especially if the sprint went well.  You do not need to hold a special meeting to celebrate wins, as wins can be celebrated at any point in time.  I had a team that was on its 67th sprint and the team had terrific chemistry and was a very successful team.  I almost always held the retro, but occasionally during the stand up on the day of the retro I would do a Fist of Five on the success of the sprint and if the fists were unanimously Five I would offer that the retro be skipped. I like scrum.  Scrum is a fun way to develop software, but I loathe process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice to you is to try the Fist of Five method, look for unanimous Fives, and then make the offer to skip the retro.  Maybe not every single time, but occasionally is okay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20573" LastActivityDate="2016-01-21T16:00:01.047" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17134" CreationDate="2016-01-21T16:33:24.727" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is interesting and I would say that it is an excellent start!  I see this exercise that you are doing to be valuable and potentially an excellent way to describe scrum to developers.  Since you are talking about Sprints, I am guessing you are using scrum, if that assumption is wrong please let me know.  Here are some points that might help you improve the UML Diagram:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I like to think of Releases as a collection of features, not sprints.  With a release you can release one or more features, or even one or more bug fixes and no new features.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is difficult to make the assertion that Releases are composed of sprints because you could theoretically have a release mid sprint if you are releasing a critical bug fix.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Depending on the software you use, you can break the backlog up into objects as well.  In JIRA, the backlog is composed of Epics, which are composed of Work Items (that can be stories, spikes, bugs, etc).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In TFS, Epics are composed of Features, which are composed of Work Items (User Stories or Bugs) and Work Items are composed of Tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can also add objects to the Project object for your Team.  The Team Class would consist of a Product owner, a Scrum master, one or more developers/testers, perhaps a designer and a BA.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a fun looking and also useful project. Please share the final result with us when you are done!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20573" LastActivityDate="2016-01-21T16:33:24.727" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17134" CreationDate="2016-01-21T17:29:43.493" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I think this is a really cool exercise, I think it may be doomed to be perpetually inaccurate. Of course, I'm not an expert in UML, so I'll explain why and you can see if that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is one set of relationships around the work and another set of relationships around how the work gets done. These are loosely coupled through the backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the work to do, you would have a project, which is made of releases. After this the exact names change a lot depending on your tool but each release probably has some epics which are composed of user stories. The backlog is an abstraction for presenting the work-to-do set of objects to those doing the work. I'm going to set aside scaling frameworks for a moment and just talk about Scrum, so that &quot;do-the-work&quot; diagram would have a team, which has members including a Scrum Master, Product Owner, and a group called the development or delivery team which has members of its own which may or may not be developers (obviously if it's software, some almost certainly are). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The backlog really presents the whole of the work-to-do set of objects, but it's important to understand that it connects at the team level, not at the developer level. Scrum allows the team to determine its own internal strategy for completing the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said, I don't know if this is possible to represent in UML.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2016-01-21T17:29:43.493" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17213" CreationDate="2016-01-21T19:02:15.350" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are things you can do that usefully fill the gap while the offshore team waits for sprint planning to take place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some possibilities are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing automated regression tests&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doing code reviews and working on development standards&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Researching new technologies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Looking ahead in the backlog and prototyping/investigating up-coming work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefits of this work would be felt by both the onshore and offshore teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-01-21T19:02:15.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17223" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17225" CreationDate="2016-01-22T02:11:08.163" Score="1" ViewCount="180" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a situation where we will be doing a conversion over a weekend in order to minimize impact to the company. Additionally, this task should be delayed until 3 weeks after a predecessor task. What are some ways to handle both of these together?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have indicated that this task should use the 24 hour calendar&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have indicated that this task should ignore the resource calendar&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In doing so, I have had to indicate that the lag from the predecessor needs to be 2 months in order to get the date of the subsequent task pushed out 3 weeks. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to keep from having to use the 2 month lag? The date ends up right, but my OCD starts twitching for having to indicate 2 months for a 3 week spread.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21914" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T04:42:35.153" Title="Need task to ignore schedule" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11173" CreationDate="2016-01-22T02:59:58.917" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is certainly up to the team, but for transparency and to make change visible I would typically recommend reviewing action items at the start of your retrospective.  Teams need to be sure their time is being used appropriately.  By not being explicit and transparent on our progress on action items, this can be detrimental to the team.  This can cause the team to say, &quot;Retrospectives are a waste of time&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21915" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T02:59:58.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17223" CreationDate="2016-01-22T04:42:35.153" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The duration of the lag should be expressed in elapsed days. Change the lag to 21ed to get the task to start 21 &quot;calendar&quot; days after the predecessor, regardless of non-working time. The duration of the task itself could also be expressed in elapsed days if necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://epmainc.com/blog/elapsed-days-microsoft-project&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here's a quick primer on elapsed days.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastActivityDate="2016-01-22T04:42:35.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17226" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-24T10:21:54.913" Score="-2" ViewCount="2323" Body="&lt;p&gt;when I enter the start times and end times of tasks, software calculates duration of task in decimal form. I have checked calender setting and I think it is correct but I can't solve this problem.&#xA;I don't know what should I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21939" LastActivityDate="2016-01-29T18:59:48.830" Title="what is the reason of calculating duration in Microsoft Project in decimal form?" Tags="&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17227" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17235" CreationDate="2016-01-24T10:24:59.683" Score="14" ViewCount="1293" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just started a new job as a technical project manager. It's more or less my first experience, as I have just run teams of two students before, and now I am managing a project of 10 engineers, some of them are even more experienced than I in their field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I noticed that there is a huge problem with documenting their work, as the previous manager didn't think it is necessary. This costs us a lot of time and money if any member leaves the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is how can I push my team members to start documenting their work from an early stage, knowing that it is very close to technical software development?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21941" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2016-01-25T08:48:48.380" LastActivityDate="2018-11-19T10:51:03.667" Title="How to motivate my team members to start documenting their work" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17227" CreationDate="2016-01-24T13:24:16.180" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You've identified a risk, and a possible solution. &#xA;I'd refrain from considering your solution (more documentation) as &quot;the&quot; solution and ask them to apply it straight away. You're working with a team of experts, which will likely have a different point of view on the matter, so do not expect to be able to &quot;motivate&quot; them into doing what you want... engage them in a discussion about the problem and ask them to think about a solution, it's way more effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16362" LastActivityDate="2016-01-24T13:24:16.180" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17227" CreationDate="2016-01-24T18:47:20.107" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;@Mamoo is right. A new and junior project manager does not have the authority or influence to jump to a solution and ask the team to implement it. Even as a two decade project manager I wouldn't try to impose a solution on the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As PM you have to help them to find their own solution. To do this you first need to get them to identify the problem. Until the acknowledge that there is a problem, they won't even be willing to consider a solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Retrospectives are an excellent way to do this. By guiding the team through an examination of what is going on with the project, you help them to uncover the problems themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something as simple as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.innovationgames.com/speed-boat/&quot;&gt;Speedboat/ Sailboat&lt;/a&gt; game can do this. You can also go to &lt;a href=&quot;http://tastycupcakes.org&quot;&gt;TastyCupcakes.org&lt;/a&gt; and look for retrospective games. You want to focus on exercises that reveal problems. Even the simple &quot;What Went Well, Things To Look At&quot; two column brainstorm will get you farther than telling the team &quot;It's the documentation.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-01-24T18:47:20.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17207" CreationDate="2016-01-24T18:53:04.630" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/502ILHjX9EE?list=PLtJZU3p_QdjtGqBqx6svkwahm8akiTLEx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;great video&lt;/a&gt; that shows how to use variance in trend lines in an agile project. This video is a standard part of my two day Scrum Master training class because Henrik does such an amazing job of giving a total overview of scrum and by doing it from the PO perspective, helps to pull in the most skeptical of students (the product manager).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Optimistic/Pessimistic Burnchart conversation starts about 12:20. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-01-24T18:53:04.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17227" CreationDate="2016-01-24T20:02:37.730" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you mean Knowledge Management?  I am in the same position.  It is a nightmare trying to keep processes and knowledge up to date, so if the tacit knowledge leaves it is not the end of the world.  Somebody else can pick up and do that job, without a risk to the information systems, people and components necessary to carry out the work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use confluence.  It is an open source wiki.  People update this and is is accessible to everyone in the organisation.  Once someone adds an entry it is peer reviewed from a QA perspective.  I used sharepoint for this in a previous organisation.  Work instructions and Process maps were designed to work parallel to one another.  It is a must for organisations now and it is absolutely essential that this is managed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently did Lean Six Sigma for this.  I got a certificate from studying it through distance learning.  It helps you analyse your processes, reduce variation and take out the non-value stuff.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17482" LastActivityDate="2016-01-24T20:02:37.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17145" CreationDate="2016-01-24T20:23:46.217" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if this helps but I manage agile and waterfall projects in my organisation.  We deal with bugs separately.  So if a bug is detected, it is raised in Inflectra Spira by the tester.  It is not added back into the user story it is simply treated as a separate bug that needs to be fixed.  All developers have some contingency built in to fix bugs.  Bugs are part of the development and should not in my opinion be factored in as additional user stories in Scrum or Agile project management.  Otherwise the project will overrun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17482" LastActivityDate="2016-01-24T20:23:46.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17227" CreationDate="2016-01-25T05:53:19.763" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the best way to motivate people to start a work is involving them in decision making. If they participate in the process of decision making and they choose a solution, they will understand why that work should be done and as a result they will be more committed. &#xA;Documenting is boring unless you feel the essence of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4031" LastActivityDate="2016-01-25T05:53:19.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17234" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-25T07:23:18.957" Score="9" ViewCount="3863" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm part of a research team and we do different tasks. For example, we might research tasks(i.e. read literature, implement algorithms,etc) or development tasks (e.g. set up server, deploy website, etc) or administrative tasks (e.g. process procurement, payroll, get equipment quotations etc). My problem is that the different task types have different flows and having to accommodate them on one board makes the board confusing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would we be better off having the three different categories(research, development, administrative) in different boards? Team's composed of five people by the way (one admin staff, two researchers, one developer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: &#xA;Here are some sample flows&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Research&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Literature review &gt; Design &gt; Prototyping &gt; Presentation &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Development&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Analysis &gt; Design &gt; Dev &gt; Testing &gt; Deployment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Admin&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Preparation &gt; Signing &gt; Accounting &gt; Technical Review &gt; Procurement Office &gt; Bidding &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6585" LastEditorUserId="6585" LastEditDate="2016-01-25T11:55:56.343" LastActivityDate="2018-05-16T13:20:53.303" Title="Do we need different Kanban boards for different task categories? (i.e. admin, development, research)" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17227" CreationDate="2016-01-25T08:32:28.243" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Documentation is always the stepchild of development. Although you could simply order them to do it, there are a few points to take care of when you want to &lt;em&gt;motivate&lt;/em&gt; them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Demonstrate the problem&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have they ever &lt;em&gt;seen&lt;/em&gt; the problem? Right now it's an abstract problem. You think something &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; happen in the future. You will have better chances if you can provide a real example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you remember the problems we had when Steve left?.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Positive Thinking&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to give it a positive spin. If you ask people to document, because it gives benefits to those that stay if the person leaves, we can agree on the fact that that's the professional way. But on a personal level, nobody cares what happens to the company after they leave. So you should turn it into something that benefits &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt; while they are &lt;em&gt;still there&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We should document more so Steve can have his 3 weeks vacation without us having to call him every other day because we don't know how it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to put it in a light were it's in &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; best interest, not only the companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Make it easier to do the right thing&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grant them the time to do it. Nobody ever told me to &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; document. But every single project manager I had, always wanted me to finish in less time than it would have taken to do it properly. And the only thing you can skip without losing the customer is documentation. Don't expect people to do work they hate in their own unpaid (or even paid) overtime. You want it done? Plan for it and make it part of the project result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Lead by example&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; work properly documented? Who can take over if &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; get hit by a bus? You cannot expect people to be motivated to do something they dislike, when you don't do it yourself. And I'm not talking about a project plan. That's your product, like other peoples source code. I'm talking about what made you write exactly &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; project plan (or backlog). &lt;em&gt;Why&lt;/em&gt; did you do it? What tasks are still open? Anything that will help replacement-you to do a proper job when you hit the lottery and are off to Hawaii for the rest of your life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2016-01-25T09:54:46.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17234" CreationDate="2016-01-25T10:27:56.337" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you would like to see the whole flow keep the one board approach, but have a policy that certain tasks can skip certain phases. You may use swim lanes just to make it more clear and understandable. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/t7O07.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/t7O07.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Separate boards can work, but it is expensive, because it has a communication, synchronisation, and maintenance cost. Since you are one small team, stick with one board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2016-01-25T10:27:56.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17234" CreationDate="2016-01-25T10:34:04.233" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would stick to one board, but use swimlanes with different flows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example swimlanes where each swimlane has a different flow. (in &lt;a href=&quot;http://leankit.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LEANKit&lt;/a&gt;)&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WAPXS.png&quot; alt=&quot;Leankit&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2016-01-25T10:34:04.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17227" CreationDate="2016-01-25T15:33:11.990" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;NO! You can't force them, it's not their job. It is your job (or project manager's job).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a software developer, and if somebody told me to document the process of how the system works I wouldn't do it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Actually I have been asked many times and told them to shove it, resigned or had a massive fallout - Because I knew the proper way it should be done without cutting corners and costs)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is the job of the project manager, to deliver the specification to me, so I know how to do MY job, signed off by the big bosses. So that later it's not, why did you this and I thought you would do that. Bugger that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are experiencing is a very common problem, where somebody wrote some code to do something and it turned into a business, dogs arse forward (in reverse). The developer wrote code based on what the boss said and now the project is so big nobody knows nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The solutions is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Source Control (TFS or GitHub)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ticketing system. Jira, TFS tasking, Kanbanary, whatever.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Central drive with documents or online Wiki&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project manager creates documentation to accompany the ticket/task, and makes sure it is updated in the main specification document. (Usually Business Analyst does this.. but lack of BA responsibly falls on PM)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project manager manages it all, developers check in work and pick tickets or PM assigns tickets to dev if the devs are &quot;tools&quot; and can't be responsible and pick tickets themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21953" LastEditorDisplayName="user16244" LastEditDate="2018-11-19T10:51:03.667" LastActivityDate="2018-11-19T10:51:03.667" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17227" CreationDate="2016-01-25T15:58:39.323" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the sentiments in these answers I agree with.  If you have a SDE, or a team of SDE's it is best to keep them writing code and the less time they spend writing documentation, the better. Ny the time someone is writing code the documentation should (mostly) be in place.  That said, there are strategies that can be used to keep code properly commented (another form of documentation).  The strategy we use is a form of &quot;continuous quality&quot;.  We use a software solution called Sonar which analyzes code when it is checked in for many different things: naming conventions, repeated lines of code, comment volume, etc. If the comment volume is too low we take a look and make sure the code can be read and understood by a dev who did not write it.  If not, the commenting needs beefed up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If on the other hand, your team is not composed of SDE's, but rather the people designing the system (architects, DBA's, etc), then you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; need them producing good documentation, and once strategy to get them to do it is by enlisting one of the downstream consumers of said documentation to vet what has been written.  If the documentation is unclear or too sparse, you have an actionable item with a gatekeeper to boot.  Make sense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20573" LastActivityDate="2016-01-25T15:58:39.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17234" CreationDate="2016-01-25T16:00:56.607" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience it is best to keep the ration of boards to teams 1 to 1.  One board per team. It makes it easier to have planning and status meetings if you do not have to constantly shift between boards.  Also, if you use Jira, you can use quick filters to show specific categories of tasks if you need to focus on one particular type of task. HTH.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20573" LastEditorUserId="20573" LastEditDate="2016-01-25T16:14:56.473" LastActivityDate="2016-01-25T16:14:56.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16966" CreationDate="2016-01-25T16:13:25.240" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to handle flows like this in JIRA is to use a Kanban board with a separate column for each stage of the process.  Each column would have different responsible groups of people who might be responsible for that stage of the process, and for handing it off to the next person, or group of people who might perform a task.  The person, upon completing their piece of the process would drag the item into the next column at least, and if they already know who will be responsible for it in the next column they can assign the task to them, or not, depending on the team's working agreements.  You can also have the overall story assigned to a single person who is responsible for shepherding the story through the process and have the subtasks assigned to different contributors if you like.  But one big thing the Kanban board does for you is that it provides a terrific visual for work in progress.  You can sit down to a team meeting, all view the chanson board, and know within a few seconds if there is a bottleneck, because if there is one, one of the columns will be full of stories, and the one after it will have significantly fewer.  Make sense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20573" LastActivityDate="2016-01-25T16:13:25.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17234" CreationDate="2016-01-25T16:13:29.167" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, you should design a workflow that works for your team, only you and your team can know what works for you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your board should follow your workflow as closely as possible and, in my opinion, should be as simple as it can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best workflow is one that a) gets the job done. and b) avoids as much overhead as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest trying both for a week or two, as long as your team knows that there might be some changes and disruptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end, ask them team which they prefer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21954" LastActivityDate="2016-01-25T16:13:29.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17227" CreationDate="2016-01-25T16:14:49.783" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most cases, if not all, evidence of strong documentation is consistent with a high performing, mature organization and lack of documentation is consistent with an immature, low performing organization.  This is why various maturity models have a HUGE aspect of documentation to it.  Who gets to create the documents depends on who is the best role to document, which is usually who does the work.  It is simply part of the job and part of the job description.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every role out there has aspects to the job that no one likes and wishes could be pawned off to someone else...or a silly argument is made that it is not necessary.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your culture has supported a lack of documentation, then change the culture and that requires top level sponsorship.  Simply make it part of the job description and part of their evaluation.  Those who don't like will eventually be selected out and vice versa.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every job, including developers of code, has tasks that are undesirable.  Get over it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-01-25T16:14:49.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17234" CreationDate="2016-01-25T18:44:17.550" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really depends on why you are using Kanban - and what you are trying to improve.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, Kanban is applicable to all the work you have mentioned. But, each of them are quite different in nature from one another - and in business impact/ value. Research is typically long lead-time, dev is medium, admin could be quite short.  So for example, the lead or cycle time for dev tasks vs. research tasks vs. admin tasks will be quite different - and business-wise, very heterogenous.  When you do cycle-time analysis, it would make no sense to mix dev and admin tasks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NhXpU.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NhXpU.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are doing blocker-clustering (or blocking analysis as it is called in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.swiftkanban.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SwiftKanban&lt;/a&gt;), of why cards get blocked on your board, the reasons why work gets blocked in Dev work (customer dependency, unclear specs, unavailable test infrastructure) maybe quite different from work gets held up in Admin tasks (management approval, budget constraints, vendor dependency, etc.) - and doing blocker clustering for these two sets of tasks would not make sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MQAYf.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MQAYf.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, since it is a single team, it is definitely a good idea to use one board for the team.  But you should make sure that your board design (and the tool you might use to implement it) should enable you to analyze the work completely independently. The swim-lanes should be completely independent of each other (not have common columns) and you should easily be able to do lane-wise analysis.  Having a common board can also help you visualize and manage your team's Personal WIP limits (how much work is each team member handling at a time) more easily - since you want to discourage multi-tasking and overloading of people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, depending on the key motivations to use Kanban, your board organization and design will vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HTH!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2016-01-25T18:44:17.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17234" CreationDate="2016-01-26T00:23:32.730" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on the tool that you are using (not an ideal answer). I hate modifying my process around my tools, but if your tool doesn't do what you want it to, sometimes you have to make accommodations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ideal Situation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your Scrum/Kanban board can accommodate multiple workflows without having to share columns&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All teams exist on the same board to improve cross-team visibility&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tool Restricted Situation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each unique workflow has it's own board&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Workflow steps do not share columns, providing a clean and clear window into the workflow&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tools &amp;amp; Categories&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;JIRA&lt;/em&gt; - Tool Restricted Situation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;LeanKit&lt;/em&gt; - Ideal Situation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Rally&lt;/em&gt; - Tool Restricted Situation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish I had more experience with more tools. Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13331" LastActivityDate="2016-01-26T00:23:32.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16966" CreationDate="2016-01-26T00:47:42.357" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My current plan is to create a single task, effectively a Story (though I don't think it's properly a Story, if I understand Stories properly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Story != User Story&lt;/strong&gt;. You can use a Story issuetype, or create your own. Don't get caught up in these minor semantics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Then, create Subtasks to that Story/Task for each of the above tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ONLY do this if each of the steps also goes through a sub-workflow involving more than just performing said task OR if the tasks can be completed out of order. &lt;strong&gt;Example&lt;/strong&gt;: If each step such as &quot;Pull Data from Database&quot;, also requires a verification/QA step, then sub-tasks will be what you are looking for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are just looking for knowing if that person has done the task or not, have each of those tasks be a different step in your workflow. It will be less to manage and much easier to see the overall progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if the tasks should start out assigned to their eventual do-ers, or if they should start out assigned to the project owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pretty minor point. If you have subtasks, assign them out ahead of time so people are aware of what's coming their way. If you have 1 story that goes through steps, you don't have to worry about this as whoever pulls/pushes the story will have to worry about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this not really doable in JIRA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I understand you correctly, this is very much doable in JIRA. Scrum boards and kanban boards do not define your process. You can still do scrum and run sprints on a JIRA Kanban board; it's all in how you set it up (I do that btw).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13331" LastActivityDate="2016-01-26T00:47:42.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17145" CreationDate="2016-01-26T00:53:00.897" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is visibility required by other disciplines/individuals?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;If Yes&lt;/em&gt; - Create a ticket.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;If No&lt;/em&gt; - Just do it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Individuals and interactions over processes and tools&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep it simple. Don't over solve a problem. Don't process for the sake of process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13331" LastActivityDate="2016-01-26T00:53:00.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17249" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-26T00:58:30.090" Score="1" ViewCount="494" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SITUATION&lt;/strong&gt;: Understand which disciplines are more burdened than others on cross-discipline teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;POSSIBLE OPTION&lt;/strong&gt;: When estimating a story, provide a story point estimate for each of the different disciplines. This will then allow the disciplines to understand the amount of work they have specifically vs as a cross-function team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CAVEAT&lt;/strong&gt;: Don't use time estimates to solve this problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NOTE&lt;/strong&gt;: This idea scares me a bit, but I'm curious to see how other people have solved this problem. It's something I've recently been throwing around in the back of my head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EXAMPLE:&lt;/strong&gt; We have a cross-functional team consisting of (1) game designers (2) client engineers (3) server engineers (4) UI artists (5) VFX artists (6) audio artists (7) quality assurance testers. I need to better understand the distribution of work across those different disciplines during Roadmap Planning, prior to jumping into Sprint Planning. Are our game designers taking on a very large amount of work, while our client engineers are light on tasks? Blanketed story points only provide me a unified view of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13331" LastEditorUserId="13331" LastEditDate="2016-01-26T23:19:02.050" LastActivityDate="2016-01-26T23:19:02.050" Title="Does anyone estimate stories per discipline in a single story?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;cross-functional&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17252" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-26T10:03:51.777" Score="2" ViewCount="999" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have noticed that team velocity sometimes becomes &quot;negative&quot; near to the end of a sprint.&#xA;There's few trivial story's/bugs left but they took extraordinary effort to finish. Team seem's not to be exhausted. But this is always endangers and shifts delivery date.&#xA;What i have tried: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Micro-control - gives a little boost, but stress people, and against agile practices &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;DYI - works but only if you know how&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduce the sprint backlog capacity to have a cooldown period where team could set all the things right. - Not working&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduced a redline, something like internal dead line where all of storys should be closed with all non trivial bugs. - Not working&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shifted release to middle of a next sprint, and applied firefighting team who FINISH OFF tasks left. - Works but nobody want's to finish others job.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of the listed methods are 100% working or satisfactory from stakeholders/management point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas on nature of of things or suggestions on how to get rid of the issue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21857" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-10-21T22:34:20.103" LastActivityDate="2019-10-21T22:34:20.103" Title="Team velocity dramatically slows down to the end of a sprint" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;release-plan&gt;&lt;velocity&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17252" CreationDate="2016-01-26T10:12:49.850" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You gave quite a clear explanation of what happens, and of the actions you've taken to solve the problems, but we're kind of missing &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; this is happening, so it's difficult to give an answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have any insight on this? Have you tried to tackle the problem during the retrospective? What is your role in the process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;-- update based on this comment --&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;team understands that there is a problem. But thinks it's a natural order of things and don't knows the root cause and prefers to leave things as is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I might be wrong, and I 'm probably missing something (for example it's still not clear what your role is, I suppose you are the Scrum Master), but what I would do in this case is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Engage the team in a discussion around the problem, and if necessary bring some stakeholder in to bring their point of view. If the problem exists then it should be tackled, despite the fact that they may consider this important or not&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to put in place some actions to allow the team to deliver each story sequentially. This may lead to an even worse scenario in the short-term, but at least it allows you to have more insight of where the problem is, and take appropriate action&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case I'd work on communication to let all the people involved have a shared understanding of the situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16362" LastEditorUserId="16362" LastEditDate="2016-01-26T12:36:06.373" LastActivityDate="2016-01-26T12:36:06.373" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17249" CreationDate="2016-01-26T11:42:14.103" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most Agile thing is if it works for you, just do it! Also it seems you are not the only one, because the default &lt;a href=&quot;https://taiga.io/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Taiga Agile project management tooling&lt;/a&gt; lets you divide story-points per discipline. They have four disciplines by default: UX, Design, Front and Back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/18eNW.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/18eNW.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can always try it for a couple of iterations and see if it adds value. If not revert back to a single estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2016-01-26T15:47:00.007" LastActivityDate="2016-01-26T15:47:00.007" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17249" CreationDate="2016-01-26T14:56:35.513" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ideally a user story is a &lt;strong&gt;complete business value statement&lt;/strong&gt; and the estimate is the total estimate for all tasks &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;and testing&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; that are required to deliver the user story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are describing sails into component territory whereby you write up user stories dedicated purely to one component &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;As a Front End Dev I want make a Button because the Back End dev does not make buttons etc&lt;/em&gt;  (1 point)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am a Services developer and I will make an API which I throw over the fence to the front end display the data etc  (8 points)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This results in compartmentalizing roles and skills rather than making cross-functional user stories.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally the story would be &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a Customer Service Agent I want to access the last date that the Customer contacted the Company &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;^^ This story would require a slice of development including back-end, front-end and solutions architecture consideration.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The estimate should be the total estimate for all tasks/sub-tasks and successful testing. There should not be separate points allocated to &lt;em&gt;design&lt;/em&gt; because if the story is not designed then it cannot pass the Definition of Ready to be worked on.    A basic design/understanding/outline/wireframe should be ready for the Developers to provide estimates.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2016-01-26T14:56:35.513" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17252" CreationDate="2016-01-26T14:59:52.747" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're using the term velocity in an odd way. The velocity is the amount of effort that a team can put into developing stories per sprint. It's usually measured in story points. The average of the velocity serves for release planning or to guide during Sprint Planning how much work can be done in one sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds more like you're talking about some kind of Burndown Chart. Here it's important to distinguish if you're looking at a Task Burndown Chart or a Story Burndown Chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the &lt;em&gt;velocity becomes negative&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;slows down dramatically&lt;/em&gt; that probably means the Burndown Chart is going up rather then down. If that's the case that suggest two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You've initially underestimated the amount of work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are impediments which make it impossible to get the work done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16052" LastActivityDate="2016-01-26T14:59:52.747" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17257" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17259" CreationDate="2016-01-26T15:46:20.587" Score="0" ViewCount="782" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am using the standard calendar.  Have a resource available 100% of the time.  When I add the first task, a 1 hr task, when I look at the resource graph it shows at 100%,  I have it set for an 8 hour day, so I would have thought that the graph would show around 12%.  Am I misunderstanding the resource graph or is this a configuration issue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21974" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-08T22:28:48.357" LastActivityDate="2018-11-08T22:28:48.357" Title="MS Project 2013 resource graph" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8819" CreationDate="2016-01-26T15:48:40.550" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you are using the velocity term in the wrong way, lets return back to the basic.&#xA;The story point is a high level estimation of the effort needed to implement a story, used usually during release planning or pre-planning session. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity is the total story points implemented during past sprint and this will vary from one sprint to another. Story points and sprint velocity then give us a guideline about the estimate stories to be committed in the coming sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The task-hour estimation occur during sprint planning, it is a low-level estimation made to represent the actual effort in hours needed to accomplish all the requirements of a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16934" LastActivityDate="2016-01-26T15:48:40.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17257" CreationDate="2016-01-26T16:05:26.350" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understand what you are trying to accomplish - you have a task with a 1 day (8 hour duration).  During that 1 day, you'd like the resource to only work 1 hour?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First - show the Task Form in the lower pane (View Ribbon, Split View group, Details)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create the task and set the duration to 1 day, and then make sure the task is Fixed Duration. Use the Task form to select Fixed Duration and click OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the task form, select the resource and enter 1 hour of work.  Click OK to make the assignment.  The Assignment unit will show 100% - but if you show the Resource Usage view Or Task Usage View and add the Peak field - you'll see the peak is 13%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Resource Graph will also show 13%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2016-01-26T16:05:26.350" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17249" CreationDate="2016-01-26T19:24:01.163" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A common approach is to split sprint planning in to two parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first part of planning the team works with the Product Owner to allocate stories to the sprint. They estimate in story points as a team and base their capacity on the velocity calculated from previous sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second part of planning the delivery team breaks each story down in to tasks some of which may be discipline specific. The team may also do time based estimating on the tasks. Note that these estimates are not being used to work out the capacity of the sprint. Instead, they are used to highlight if any particular discipline is overloaded. Some teams also look to limit the size of tasks to say, 5 hours maximum each. Bigger tasks get broken down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the second part of planning is done the delivery team may ask the Product Owner to consider changing which stories are allocated to the sprint so that there is a good balance of work across the disciplines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth noting that the more successful teams have team members with what is called 'T' shaped profiles. That is they are very skilled in one discipline but are also willing to work in other disciplines. Teams like this are much more able to deal with the inevitable variation in workload for the various disciplines across sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-01-26T19:24:01.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17261" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-26T21:57:13.783" Score="2" ViewCount="107" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to create Gantt charts with ranged estimates (for reporting to non-technical execs) but don't want to use a web service (LiquidPlanner). How can I get Gantt charts with range estimates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21978" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-01-27T15:01:09.953" LastActivityDate="2016-02-26T16:37:02.887" Title="Gantt charts with ranged estimates?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8819" CreationDate="2016-01-26T23:30:50.433" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To your first question, there is no scientific way of doing this.  Here's a quick and dirty way.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fraction of people on the team this iteration x the team's velocity.  So if your team velocity is 10 and 1/3 of your team is out, 6 might be a fair forecast of what your velocity could be.  Having a range would be better so maybe 5-8 in the above scenario.  The value is in understanding the assumptions you used to adjust your velocity forecast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you do, velocity is a tool that helps team members discuss and understand the work they are doing.  So if team members are out and you're not sure how useful velocity is as a tool, just ask your remaining team members &quot;Does what we are committing/forecasting based on our adjusted velocity seem reasonable?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To your second question.  Don't bother.  Story points are distributions over time and shouldn't be used for capacity planning or reporting outside of the team.  If you want to get into time-based agile methodologies your closest proxy will be lean kanban using cycle-time and its variance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not seeing value in calculating the number of hours each team member has available for each iteration, stop doing it :).  Its very common for scrum teams to stop putting hour estimates on their tasks once they realize that velocity and consistent story point estimation practices are good enough for creating a forecast/commitment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2016-01-26T23:30:50.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17263" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17266" CreationDate="2016-01-27T01:10:08.920" Score="5" ViewCount="652" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have written user stories such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a small business owner&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want simple and easy instructions to follow for any recommendations to my website&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I understand what it is I need to do and what resources are required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I measure simple and easy instructions within the acceptance criteria so that I can prove that our solution works?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21980" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-01-27T17:58:10.547" LastActivityDate="2016-01-27T21:31:13.483" Title="How do I define acceptance criteria for subjective outcomes?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;acceptance-criteria&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17263" CreationDate="2016-01-27T01:36:12.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two approaches to subjective measurements in user stories that can work, depending on your circumstance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Don't Use Them: In some cases, you can work out more concrete measurements with the stakeholders to replace the subjective ones with. They can be specific, like replacing &quot;I want the page to load quickly&quot; with &quot;I want the page to load in 3 seconds&quot; or relative like &quot;I want to improve the algorithm to process batches 25% faster.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Focus on the the Conversation: Let's say you want an intuitive claims reporting process in your application. &quot;Intuitive&quot; is much harder to translate into concrete terms, so you might need to agree on some methods that the team will use like paper prototyping with a set of real users to find out which of a set of options is the best. This approach has the risk of dragging on for a long time, so you'd probably want to time-box it. Strictly speaking, this is more of a Spike than a user story, but it should help solve your problem none-the-less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2016-01-27T01:36:12.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17265" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17270" CreationDate="2016-01-27T09:50:03.290" Score="0" ViewCount="116" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to oversight several different scrum project. Which measurements for the health of a project do you regularly look at?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I appreciate your replies!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21783" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-01-27T12:41:56.053" LastActivityDate="2016-01-28T22:09:21.900" Title="Oversee and monitor several scrum projects" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;measurement&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17263" CreationDate="2016-01-27T09:50:17.327" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think subjective user stories are a recipe for scope creep.  If you want to focus on business owners requirements &amp;amp; make something that is measurable then I would fall back on a framework like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/digital-marketing-and-measurement-model/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Digital Marketing &amp;amp; Measurement Model&lt;/a&gt; for generating discrete KPIs that the business owner will understand &amp;amp; are achievable from your point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;eg:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Objective: Better documentation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Goal: Usable instructions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;KPI: Improve recommendation implementation &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Target: 90% of recommendations are implemented within one week &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Segment: Task backlog report&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the user story becomes: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;As a small business owner I want simple and easy instructions to follow so that I implement 90% of recommendations within one week&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="693" LastActivityDate="2016-01-27T09:50:17.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17267" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-27T09:58:56.667" Score="0" ViewCount="56" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to generate GANTT charts directly from a 'basic software development' software project in Jira - or can I do something from a 'project management' project that links to software development project(s)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="693" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T17:05:55.690" Title="GANTT Charts in Jira" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2016-02-07T21:22:31.797" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17268" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17271" CreationDate="2016-01-27T10:09:00.150" Score="2" ViewCount="452" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am SM/PM on an internal project.&#xA;Internal project &lt;strong&gt;X&lt;/strong&gt; is technically and architecturally complex and demands high skill developers to work on. It has huge backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the project considered to be low priority comparing to external projects, and serves as a temporary shelter for developers waiting for assignment to other projects. Team changes during a sprint is a common problem. Team size varies from 1 to 20 near every day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When i came to a project it was SCRUM based. Now we switched to Kanban board as sprint backlog and velocity becomes totally non-sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no possibility to change the company approach to &lt;strong&gt;X&lt;/strong&gt;, i have tried.&#xA;There can be no &quot;core team&quot; that remains constant except PO and me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problems encountered so far:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developer can leave a team any time dropping the story undone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each developer has his own understanding of how to do things depending on a skill set and level which leading to a mess.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is a huge technical debt because of constant switching.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nobody can predict release date.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can have 3 QA no Dev's or vise versa. Or FE only or BE only. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management understands problem, however demands fixed release dates. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no fresh stable version on demand.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Story points of yesterdays team are not story points of today's team. Well at least when comparing issues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dev can spend few weeks for getting into and than moved to another project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no good user documentation. You can check only comments on git, story's on Jira and wiki full of tech  staff. There is no resources to create good documentation for it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Action's taken so far:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fathers of a project making a code review of a critical components from time to time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developers documenting what's done, what's need to be done for each dropped issue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Story's atomized to a level where no business value added but at least it could be done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have automated where possible staging and local environment deploys.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice's on how to make it less deteriorating?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21857" LastActivityDate="2016-01-28T16:24:53.033" Title="Trying to be Agile with a floating team advice's" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17269" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17272" CreationDate="2016-01-27T10:47:38.670" Score="7" ViewCount="2122" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have two kinds of projects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Agile where estimates made with story points using planning poker &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.planitpoker.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.planitpoker.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Waterfall/Kanban where estimates made on hours/days divided to specialty. Like FE/BE/QA/DevOps/Designer/PM e.t.c.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that a few developers don't want to give any estimates using either method. Neither personal time estimates nor depersonalized relative story points. Sometimes there are even tantrums around estimating or they take sick leave on planning day. If I have several of devs they will wait until senior devs provide estimates on their own. QAs don't want to participate at all despite the fact they are developers too in all meanings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I have tried:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give them time to check stories and specs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let them investigate issue with hands-on code&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customer and PO always on planning meetings to answer all questions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each story has use cases, mock ups, scribbles, designs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Every story decomposed to minimum valuable size when Agile or not less than 4 hours not more than 8 hours when Waterfall&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no personal responsibility for estimates or penalty/blaming for underestimating&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What techniques exist to alleviate this problem? What more can I try?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21857" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2016-01-29T16:13:31.550" LastActivityDate="2017-07-03T14:46:30.383" Title="Developers don't like to estimate. What can I do to improve the process?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17265" CreationDate="2016-01-27T10:57:28.837" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum of Scrums:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/6230/how-to-make-scrum-of-scrums-meetings-more-productive&quot;&gt;How to make Scrum of Scrums meetings more productive?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Agile EVM:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also highly recommend to use Agile EVM if you have a budget too.&#xA;Theory: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.methodsandtools.com/archive/archive.php?id=61&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.methodsandtools.com/archive/archive.php?id=61&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Practices: &lt;a href=&quot;http://tempo.io/products/tempo-folio/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://tempo.io/products/tempo-folio/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scaled Agile:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21857" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2016-01-27T10:57:28.837" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17268" CreationDate="2016-01-27T11:59:17.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Management understands problem, however demands fixed release dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is fine as long you do not have a fixed scope. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some ideas to make your situation easier:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Split up stories in to small doable tasks that can be finished in one or two days&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_programming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pair programming&lt;/a&gt;: As people can leave the team at any time this form of knowledge sharing is very important. When one developers leaves the other can find a new pair to keep again two people in sync. Also this way developers can learn from each other. Let them watch the &lt;a href=&quot;https://vimeo.com/7814261&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pair Programming Show&lt;/a&gt; to become effective quickly :)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use a &lt;a href=&quot;http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;branching strategy&lt;/a&gt; in order to prevent unfinished work to be pushed to the release version. Make sure the main branch is always in a releasable state. Now other developers can pick up where others left, or start over.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to create an architectural standard. The kind that forces people to work in a similar way and that make components in-depended of each other so they are loosely coupled. This way developers will break code from others less often and can focus on a smaller understandable domain hopefully. Maybe have a look at a &lt;a href=&quot;http://martinfowler.com/articles/microservices.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Micro Services Architecture&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2016-01-27T12:51:44.477" LastActivityDate="2016-01-27T12:51:44.477" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17269" CreationDate="2016-01-27T13:08:11.307" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some times there is even tantrums around estimating or they are taking&#xA;  sick leaves on planing day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are grown-ups we are talking about? Maybe you should ask them directly what the issue with estimations are. I think maybe they don't want to be accountable for when they do not meet expectation, is this true? People cannot work harder then they can. This is also a good reason to use relative sizes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question yourself why and how you are going to use the estimations and communicate this honestly with the developers. I think the goal should be to get a forecast, but more important to get the discussion going to make tasks smaller, simpler and to create a common ground on what the tasks consists of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make estimations easier, maybe use a fixed relative scale that everyone can relate to. I have come across &quot;The abstract weight of smart use cases&quot; as used by Smart (described in the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://sanderhoogendoorn.com/blog/index.php/this-is-agile/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This is Agile&lt;/a&gt;) and used in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/rwolff/estimation-and-planning-with-smart-use-cases&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this slide-share&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Abstract weight of smart use cases&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1: Piece of cake&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2: Moderate&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3: Average&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4: Hard&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;5: Very difficult&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;8: Extreme, but known&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;10: Extreme and unknown&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think estimations on a scale like this is easier to grasp then relative story points. Still let everyone vote blinded and let them turn up the complexity at the same time, this to prevent them influencing each other. Then discuss if the estimates are not close together, else just average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2016-01-27T13:30:38.040" LastActivityDate="2016-01-27T13:30:38.040" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17269" CreationDate="2016-01-27T13:18:29.963" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This issue is not just limited to developers or agile or even in the IT industry.  This cuts across all industries and all types of roles.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Providing estimates is about trying to predict the future as accurately and precisely as we can and the inconvenient truth is we have no ability to predict the future with any real degree of accuracy or precision.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The human condition, however, expects 100% accuracy and precision and anything less is broken and unusable.  We expect definitive results and believe we actually have control over the future.  In fact, our world is hugely probabilistic, unreliable, unpredictable, and very random.  But that does not sell, customers don't buy that, and when you bring up statistics everyone's eyes glaze over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue is getting estimates is the culture in which those estimates are made.  It's the expectation of 100% accuracy and precision and the severe consequences we have when we don't achieve that, assuming the team failed versus just a random result within the normal distribution of possible results.  Collectively, we have successfully selected out estimating behavior from our behavior repertoire by rewarding the wrong things and punishing the right things.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to change this behavior, you need to change the cultural dynamic.  Good luck with that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-01-27T13:18:29.963" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17263" CreationDate="2016-01-27T14:54:41.910" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An Acceptance Criteria, identify clearly the purpose and the scope. In general I try to define what scenarios are in scope and what scenarios are not in scope. &lt;strong&gt;In this case and following customers feedback,  I will try listing some use cases to define some of the possible paths.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a rule an effective acceptance criteria is detailed / specific and unambiguous and we should not use subjective language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16934" LastActivityDate="2016-01-27T14:54:41.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9189" CreationDate="2016-01-27T15:02:08.913" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a popular plugin for this purpose called &lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/de.polscheit.jira.plugins.gantt/server/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gantt-Chart for Jira&lt;/a&gt;. It give you a Gantt view of your issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16934" LastEditorUserId="4718" LastEditDate="2016-02-07T21:27:35.580" LastActivityDate="2016-02-07T21:27:35.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17261" CreationDate="2016-01-27T15:48:47.983" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally will use Excel Gantt template provided by Vertex42 or any other templates available out there (use your best tool google it): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vertex42.com/ExcelTemplates/excel-gantt-chart.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;enter link description here&lt;/a&gt;, and will adjust the range estimates as the work progress or stalls and share it  with executive team using a file sharing provider (one single source of the truth) in order for them to get always the up-to-date version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16934" LastActivityDate="2016-01-27T15:48:47.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17263" CreationDate="2016-01-27T18:54:42.860" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Why Your &quot;Story&quot; Isn't Testable&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a small business owner&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want simple and easy instructions to follow for any recommendations to my website&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I understand what it is I need to do and what resources are required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have two problems here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is not a user story. This is an &lt;em&gt;epic&lt;/em&gt; which needs to be decomposed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This story doesn't follow the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot;&gt;INVEST criteria&lt;/a&gt;, which is why it lacks obvious acceptance critera. This is often okay (if not ideal) for epics, but you need to make sure the related user stories &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; testable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subsequent sections will discuss how to decompose your epic, write stories that follow the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot;&gt;INVEST mnemonic&lt;/a&gt;, and switch to an iterative test-driven documentation model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Agile Solutions for Making Documentation Stories Testable&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Decompose Your Epic&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing you need to do is to decompose your epic into discrete user stories. Consider the following example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Epic: &lt;em&gt;Website User Documentation&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a website owner&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want the owner's manual to contain a chapter on configuring the captcha settings&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so I can increase the number of user login attempts required to login.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a website owner&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want the owner's manual to contain a chapter on randomizing the landing page&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so I can make it difficult for users to bookmark my site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These stories, while silly, are largely actionable. Each story contains a concrete deliverable (i.e. a chapter in the owner's manual) on a specific topic with enough context to provide measurable goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Define Acceptance Testing&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, part of your Definition of Done should involve testing whether the information in your manual is being properly conveyed. That isn't part of the user story; instead, part of your Sprint Planning for this story is to add any necessary user acceptance tests to your Sprint Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the team may plan to have a real customer walk through the chapter on captcha settings, and see if it's understandable and complete. Or the team may choose to have a team member walk through the chapter, step by step, and follow &lt;em&gt;the directions in the manual&lt;/em&gt; as opposed to doing it any other way to see if it works as written. This will most definitely provide useful feedback about the usability of the instructions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Iterate, Iterate, and Iterate Again&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Iterative development is not about getting something perfect the first time around. Perhaps you deliver your chapter on randomized home pages, which was understandable and useful for the tester at that time, but you later have a new customer who struggles with step 15 of the same chapter. From an agile perspective, this is simply an opportunity to incrementally improve!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would write a new user story, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a website user,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want Step 15 of Chapter 23 to be rewritten for clarity&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I can follow the procedure for randomizing my home page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, the goal and scope are well-defined, but the acceptance tests are adjusted. You should be adding tests that include acceptance testing by your new customer (or a proxy), while regression-testing with your existing acceptance tests to ensure you aren't making things worse for your existing customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Follow &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot;&gt;INVEST Criteria&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each user story you write should be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Self-contained, without dependencies on other stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimable, so that the scope and the level of effort are understood by the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Small enough to plan, develop, and &lt;em&gt;test&lt;/em&gt; within a single sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testable, with defined metrics. Objective tests are best, but &quot;Ask Mikey if &lt;em&gt;he&lt;/em&gt; likes it!&quot; still meets the requirements of testability so long as the team has agreed on that as a useful way to decide if a story is &quot;done.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write your user stories in this way, you will find that the team will have a much easier time identifying both the &lt;em&gt;goal&lt;/em&gt; of the story and the success criteria for it. This then makes the implementation details (e.g. what to write for each section of the documentation) much more obvious to the developers and technical writers without having to concoct detailed specifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By working &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; the acceptance testers or end users within the sprint, both to define the acceptance criteria and to test them, you also ensure that you don't end up with the wrong thing at the end of the sprint. This shift to test-driven documentation can be challenging, but is really no different than test-driven code from a process point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-01-27T18:54:42.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16769" CreationDate="2016-01-27T19:24:35.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Prince two and ITIL are used in my organisation as well.  I have my foundation cert in ITIL from the BCS.  ITIL is a framework of best practices you can use and focuses on good service delivery.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, Prince II is a method of project management.  We use Prince II for projects and the ITIL service desk software for managing the higher level stuff such as live incidents, error investigation, SQL requests, Change Orders, Infrastructure analysis, application downtime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a nutshell prince II is about the project, ITIL is about the service.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17482" LastActivityDate="2016-01-27T19:24:35.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16769" CreationDate="2016-01-27T21:10:37.443" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMO to answer your question in details we should make a serious cross-check analysis of almost every cell of the PRINCE2 vs. ITIL processes matrix.&#xA;(Sorry, it's a tremendous effort. The result would be too extensive to fit it in the Answer format.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, ITIL gives to the Project Manager detailed explanation how to implement a service to limit operational risks and inefficiencies after go-live. Furthermore, ITIL provides to the Project Manager clear set of stakeholders responsible for IT Services that should be involved in the project to express important part of non-functional requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find a comprehensive framework that covers development as well as maintenance aspects in &lt;a href=&quot;https://cobitonline.isaca.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;COBIT 5&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21988" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2016-01-28T06:41:51.843" LastActivityDate="2016-01-28T06:41:51.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17269" CreationDate="2016-01-27T21:25:49.450" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found that developers are nervous about providing estimates (we have renamed them guesstimates) because they are afraid that they will be held to account if they underestimate / overestimate. This creates uncertainty, fear and apprehension. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found more recently that planning poker helps the team decide and I have got good estimates from this.  Have you tried this?  &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/planning-poker&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/planning-poker&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's like playing a game of cards and it can be fun.  I have also explained to the team why we need estimates (an that is all they are - estimates) and why it is better for them to overestimate rather than underestimate.  They need to be able to give an estimate that they are comfortable with. I agree with David Espina here.  Make estimation fun.  Change it for the better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17482" LastActivityDate="2016-01-27T21:25:49.450" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17263" CreationDate="2016-01-27T21:31:13.483" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use a &lt;strong&gt;Spike&lt;/strong&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A task aimed at answering a question or gathering information, rather than at producing shippable product. Sometimes a user story is generated that cannot be well estimated until the development team does some actual work to resolve a technical question or a design problem. The solution is to create a “spike,” which is some work whose purpose is to provide the answer or solution.&#xA;  - &lt;a href=&quot;http://agiledictionary.com/209/spike/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://agiledictionary.com/209/spike/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the spike is complete, you should now have enough definition to create your user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13331" LastActivityDate="2016-01-27T21:31:13.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11613" CreationDate="2016-01-27T21:55:20.077" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;from the scrum guide &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-po&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;scrum guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the&#xA;  product and the work of the Development Team. How this is done may&#xA;  vary widely across organizations, Scrum Teams, and individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is the sole person responsible for managing the&#xA;  Product Backlog. Product Backlog management includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Clearly expressing Product Backlog items; Ordering the items in the&#xA;  Product Backlog to best achieve goals and missions; Optimizing the&#xA;  value of the work the Development Team performs; Ensuring that the&#xA;  Product Backlog is visible, transparent, and clear to all, and shows&#xA;  what the Scrum Team will work on next; and, Ensuring the Development&#xA;  Team understands items in the Product Backlog to the level needed. The&#xA;  Product Owner may do the above work, or have the Development Team do&#xA;  it. However, the Product Owner remains accountable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is one person, not a committee. The Product Owner&#xA;  may represent the desires of a committee in the Product Backlog, but&#xA;  those wanting to change a Product Backlog item’s priority must address&#xA;  the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For the Product Owner to succeed, the entire organization must respect&#xA;  his or her decisions. The Product Owner’s decisions are visible in the&#xA;  content and ordering of the Product Backlog. No one is allowed to tell&#xA;  the Development Team to work from a different set of requirements, and&#xA;  the Development Team isn’t allowed to act on what anyone else says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16934" LastActivityDate="2016-01-27T21:55:20.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11876" CreationDate="2016-01-28T07:54:22.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMO, you should get alteast 3-4 years experience under the belt by working in varied roles such as Developer (backend or frontend), QA before diving into the role of Scrum master. &#xA;The experience gained by working as a team member will be invaluable and give justice to the role of SM.&#xA;Otherwise you would be applying bookish knowledge learnt from the 2 day SM workshop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21716" LastActivityDate="2016-01-28T07:54:22.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17269" CreationDate="2016-01-28T16:15:09.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everything you are doing already, that you have listed above, are excellent and while there are a few more things you can do, there isn't too much before you take it up the chain.  Somethings that are worth doing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Having Agile trainings.  Studies show that the better a team is versed in agile, the more they will embrace it and the better a team they become. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Partner with your lead developer in solving this problem.  Sometimes, when a scrum master cannot seem to get through to junior dev, the lead developer can. Working with your lead dev on developing a team culture that is open to estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, if neither of these things work you may need to address their behavior with their managers or with HR.  Personally, if I had a team member that threw a tantrum, I would not let it go.  Not only is it unprofessional, but it sets a bad example for the team and if you let him get away with it he will learn that it is an acceptable and effective way to get out of estimating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is a last resort though!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20573" LastEditorDisplayName="user16244" LastEditDate="2017-07-03T14:46:30.383" LastActivityDate="2017-07-03T14:46:30.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17268" CreationDate="2016-01-28T16:24:53.033" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was on a very similar team as the TPM and just your description evokes stressful memories. The company I worked for at the time cared so little about customer service and satisfaction that they would deprioritize all break-fix work for new development and considered my team as basically a pool of free developers.  I discovered however, that there was one thing I could do that would make the biggest impact on the problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Negotiate with the business to require the developers who are being poached to finish the User Story they are currently working on before they leave the team for whatever their new assignment is.  At least then you will have more ship-ability come release time and less work will have to be redone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.  You deserve better, btw.  Never forget that :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20573" LastActivityDate="2016-01-28T16:24:53.033" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17286" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-28T17:43:59.787" Score="1" ViewCount="4718" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have two tasks in Project: let's say task A's start is 1/30 and task B's start is 1/25 (end dates don't matter here).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need to create task C, which starts at the earliest possible time - in this case, 1/25. However, I need to have this be an active link, because if B gets delayed - say to 2/15, the new earliest possible date is 1/30.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing 2 SS dependencies gives me the latest of the two dates - is there a way to get the earliest instead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22002" LastActivityDate="2019-09-15T09:00:42.303" Title="In MS Project, how do I create a task to start with the earliest of two dependencies?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17287" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-01-28T20:01:10.290" Score="3" ViewCount="653" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the combination of the Product Owner and Scrum Master (or Kanban Lead) a better combination for leadership on a team? I am leaning toward POs being part of the leadership as well as the Scrum Master. I believe a great PO with great leadership skill can immensely lead the dev team in rough times. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't agree that only Scrum Master should be the Servant Leader on the team. I think the combination of Scrum Master and Product Owner works much better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20765" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-01-29T02:31:52.340" LastActivityDate="2016-01-29T16:03:24.727" Title="Can Product Owner + Scrum Master (Team/Kanban Lead) provide combined leadership for a team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17286" CreationDate="2016-01-28T20:01:18.660" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not elegant and maybe not the best solution, but make two identical successor tasks and link one to A and the other to B.  Load 1/2 the resources in each task to the BAC is right.  Then, when you start C, nullify the unstarted tasks and load up the resources on the started one.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-01-28T20:01:18.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16690" CreationDate="2016-01-28T20:15:33.943" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The relationship between points and hours is a distribution. One point&#xA;  equals a distribution with a mean of x and some standard deviation.&#xA;  The same is true, as well, for two-point stories, and so on. While&#xA;  there might be some overlap in elapsed time between 1 and 2 point&#xA;  stories (some one-point stories might turn out to be bigger than the&#xA;  team thought; some two-point stories end up being smaller), or between&#xA;  2 and 3-point stories, there will rarely be any overlap between a&#xA;  1-point story and, say, a 13-point story in terms of actual elapsed&#xA;  time. With all that being said, I caution you against formally&#xA;  relating points to hours. You run the risk of forgetting that each&#xA;  team’s mean time to completion will be as different as their idea of&#xA;  what constitutes a point. Points are, after all, a relative measure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;See more at: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/spotlight/mike-cohn/june-2014/how-many-hours-is-a-story-point-worth&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How Many Hours Is a Story Point Worth?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16934" LastActivityDate="2016-01-28T20:15:33.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17286" CreationDate="2016-01-28T20:32:28.103" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sorry Colleen - there is no automated way of doing this.  I'm guessing Task A and B have different predecessors that are driving the different start dates?  You could link C Finish to Start with both predecessors and then remove the link to the second, once the earlier of the two is complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2016-01-28T20:32:28.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17291" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17298" CreationDate="2016-01-28T20:46:52.633" Score="1" ViewCount="339" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a software development agency, We have a small team of 6 developers using  &lt;strong&gt;Scrum&lt;/strong&gt; software development framework, &lt;strong&gt;handling  small projects around 2 weeks more or less&lt;/strong&gt;, in a single  sprint (2 weeks) we usually handle 3 to 4 projects. How do you approach developers planning (Resource planning)putting in mind trying to optimize developers utilization to the maximum and minimizing waste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16934" LastActivityDate="2016-01-29T22:24:54.240" Title="Maximizing resource planing in a team handling multiple projects in a single sprint" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17265" CreationDate="2016-01-28T22:09:21.900" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum is all about adding business value and evolving an efficient delivery approach, so these are the things I would measure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stakeholder satisfaction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Owner satisfaction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Progress against the organisations agile goals (e.g. reducing time-to-market)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Effectiveness of the Scrum team's retrospectives and adaptions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-01-28T22:09:21.900" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17287" CreationDate="2016-01-28T22:15:52.977" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The team has no fixed leader. The team is a &lt;em&gt;group&lt;/em&gt; with no single leader. Self organized. Self motivated. Self sufficient. Self lead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team &lt;em&gt;needs&lt;/em&gt; a leader, it's not yet a team in a SCRUM sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, good leadership skills, good social skills and being an upbeat and positive person can be an asset in any SCRUM role. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2016-01-28T22:15:52.977" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17287" CreationDate="2016-01-28T22:42:24.973" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Maybe we should first understand What is Servant-Leadership?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In his works, Greenleaf discusses the need for a better approach to&#xA;  leadership, one that puts serving others—including employees,&#xA;  customers, and community—as the number one priority. Servantleadership&#xA;  emphasizes increased service to others, a holistic approach to work,&#xA;  promoting a sense of community, and the sharing of power in decision&#xA;  making.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Who is a servant-leader? Greenleaf said that the servant-leader is one&#xA;  who is a servant first. In The Servant as Leader he wrote, “It begins&#xA;  with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then&#xA;  conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. The difference&#xA;  manifests itself in the care taken by the servant—first to make sure&#xA;  that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best&#xA;  test is: Do those served grow as persons; do they, while being served,&#xA;  become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely&#xA;  themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least&#xA;  privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further&#xA;  deprived?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;from: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.greenleaf.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Servant leadership&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16934" LastActivityDate="2016-01-28T22:42:24.973" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17295" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17304" CreationDate="2016-01-28T23:41:35.703" Score="1" ViewCount="140" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like some feedback on how to best track customer requirements in TFS. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are at the start of a new project, and we have the requirements from the customer, in the form of 20-something long sentences describing what the system should accomplish. They are not as well structured as user stories but not the worst I've seen either. Our PL strongly wants to have them in TFS. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current solution is to have the customer requirements as epics, Our own  requirements derived from the customer req's as features, and the different modules/components we are going to produce as PBI's. Does this match any other practices out there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are using TFS 2015, standard scrum template (2015). We are using scrum, and being mediocre at it but improving. I am scrum master, I have experience as SM but just a little with TFS. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22005" LastActivityDate="2016-01-29T16:22:04.677" Title="TFS and customer requirements" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17287" CreationDate="2016-01-29T02:48:52.900" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are the victim of legacy command-and-control thinking. The roles you describe have &lt;em&gt;responsibilities&lt;/em&gt;, but they are not &quot;leaders&quot; of the team in the traditional sense either alone or in combination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Scrum Teams Have Roles, Not Leaders&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team&quot;&gt;official Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Team consists of a Product Owner, the Development Team, and a Scrum Master. Scrum Teams are self-organizing and cross-functional. Self-organizing teams choose how best to accomplish their work, rather than being directed by others outside the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A self-organizing team isn't directed by traditional leaders from outside &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; inside the team. Instead, each role on the team plays a vital part in delivering value to the customer. You can read the entire section of the Scrum Guide for a description of each role, but in short:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Scrum Master is a &lt;em&gt;process referee&lt;/em&gt; responsible for helping the team understand and make the most of the framework.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Product Owner is a &lt;em&gt;value referee&lt;/em&gt; responsible for communicating and prioritizing features.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-dev&quot;&gt;Development Teams&lt;/a&gt; are structured and empowered by the organization to organize and manage their own work.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you like sports metaphors, it's like zone defense: each member of the team has a region of responsibility, and must collaborate, trust, and rely on the rest of the team to be effective. No one is &quot;in charge&quot; of the team, although effective teams will certainly have team members who display leadership &lt;em&gt;qualities&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Structure your teams to be cross-functional, make sure they are empowered, and ensure that everyone understands their role within the team. Encourage collaboration and a sense of shared purpose, rather than fostering a culture of leaders and followers. That is the embodiment of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot;&gt;principles behind the Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-01-29T02:48:52.900" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17297" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17299" CreationDate="2016-01-29T09:58:06.433" Score="1" ViewCount="1782" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had assigned resources to tasks in Microsoft Project gantt chart and I would like to see them in hours per resource, not percentages. I know that I can see hours in Resource Usage chart, but maybe there is also some way to change its view in the gantt chart? Thank you for any help :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22006" LastEditorUserId="6840" LastEditDate="2016-02-01T15:39:18.420" LastActivityDate="2020-07-02T21:50:53.240" Title="Microsoft Project - view resources in hours not percentage" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;&lt;resources&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17291" CreationDate="2016-01-29T11:13:08.980" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are couple of things you can do here. I'm not completely sure that resource planning is something you need to solve. It would be better to adapt your process by making sprints shorter so that team works on single project at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another idea would be to split the team to make sure that they work on a single project at a time. Scrum by itself is designed to handle development of a single product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14880" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-01-29T22:24:54.240" LastActivityDate="2016-01-29T22:24:54.240" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17297" CreationDate="2016-01-29T11:52:30.017" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't believe there is a way to modify the Bar style for Tasks so that it shows the Resource work rather than their percentage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best I could get was splitting the screen horizontally and showing the Task Usage panel in the bottom window so that whenever I click on a task in the top window the resource assignments, including Work allocated, is shown in the bottom window.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2016-01-29T11:52:30.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17291" CreationDate="2016-01-29T12:06:19.157" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The cleanest way would be to have multiple product backlogs and to assign one team to one backlog. It is also possible (but not suggested) to have a team work on multiple product backlogs. If you really need to, you can merge the backlogs to one backlog to prioratize the stories between each other. If the projects are very small (as you said), then you might just merge them in sprint planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @CodeGnome commented: It should not be the aim - but works for us in real-life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21744" LastEditorUserId="21744" LastEditDate="2016-01-29T18:11:54.070" LastActivityDate="2016-01-29T18:11:54.070" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17287" CreationDate="2016-01-29T13:31:19.913" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, every individual on the Scrum Team, including the PO, SM, and Development Team members have some leadership/management responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Product Owner owns the Product Backlog. Priority, details about each item, product vision, etc. This person has overarching responsibility for making sure that the product has value. Their leadership is based on &lt;strong&gt;value.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The ScrumMaster is the servant leader of the team and is primarily responsible for ensuring that work is done efficiently and in line with Scrum. They are a leader in terms of Scrum concepts, ensuring that work is being completed efficiently, and making sure that the team is focused and hard at work. They are a servant in that they remove impediments and act as a buffer for the team. Their leadership is based on &lt;strong&gt;efficiency.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Development Team is a self-managing group. They make the best technical decisions they can to ensure that they are building the best product that represents the requirements of the Product Owner. It's their job to make sure that all PBIs that have been committed to a Sprint get done. They &quot;pull&quot; tasks, instead of having them assigned, and agree on how best to do work. Thus, their leadership is based on &lt;strong&gt;technical proficiency and product completion.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The beauty of Scrum is that leadership is distributed throughout all parts of the team, ensuring that every single person, ideally, has ownership of what is being built and can lead in the area in which they are most proficient. The PO, a business representative and Voice of the Customer, is allowed to lead the business decisions. The SM is a process-oriented individual and is allowed to lead the team in process and coach them through Scrum. The Dev Team is allowed to do what they do best and lead in the technology and completion department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this answers your question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16314" LastActivityDate="2016-01-29T13:31:19.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17291" CreationDate="2016-01-29T15:12:16.033" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, &lt;strong&gt;pleeease&lt;/strong&gt; stop saying &lt;em&gt;resources&lt;/em&gt;. It sounds like you're scheduling oil to be transported along a pipeline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum framework&lt;/a&gt;, then the answer is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Development Teams are structured and empowered by the organization to organize and manage their own work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Optimizing utilization is will push you to silo developer activites, queued development workflow and very non-agile, non-lean development practices. Now that you've created those problems by optimized utilization, you'll need to manage through command and control. These are all really bad things and will &lt;em&gt;directly result&lt;/em&gt; from try to optimize developer time rather than letting them organize themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Resist the urge to micro-manage the team. Make sure they are cross-functional and let them go. They'll succeed and fail. They'll retrospect and improve. This is the spirit of development that Scrum supports and encourages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21576" LastActivityDate="2016-01-29T15:12:16.033" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17287" CreationDate="2016-01-29T16:03:24.727" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I disagree with most of these answers.  Teams need leadership no matter what style of leadership it is.  It could be servant-leadership or something else, but there needs to be leadership.  And good teams have strong leadership.  If there is no one at the front of the table motivating, encouraging, and in general driving the team then the team will eventually stagnate.  It is human nature to look to a leader in any group effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So with that in mind, I would say that, YES, the PO and the SM can partner to lead a team, if they are both strong and have leadership qualities.  I was in this position in my last job.  Both myself and the &quot;Business Owner&quot; (as we called PO's there) had a very strong grasp of the business needs and the team's strengths and so we co-led that team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, a PO can have a very strong grasp of business needs and have a clear vision for his/her product and not have any leadership qualities whatsoever.  The same is true with SM's.  An SM can be the best process coach in the world and not be able to lead. Agile dogmatists can spout team-composition theory all they want, but the reality is that the leader of the team will emerge organically, and it will be the person who is best fit to lead that team, regardless of their scrum role and responsibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20573" LastActivityDate="2016-01-29T16:03:24.727" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17295" CreationDate="2016-01-29T16:22:04.677" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hm...  This is tough.  In my experience it is not useful to put customer requirements directly into TFS as work items of any sort, especially if they are in the form of &quot;20 long sentences&quot;.  What I would do is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Take those 20 sentences and have your designer build a wireframe mockup that completely covers the 20 sentences.  This will help you uncover gaps in what the customer is asking for, and give you an excellent visual/tool to go back to the customer for confirmation of what they need/want. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;However, before you take it back to the customer, validate it by having a technical review with your architect.  This will uncover technical snags that maybe no one ever thought of, and it might give you an indication if somethings are going to be a larger effort than you thought. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3.Once you have your architectural review, show it to your customer for confirmation.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;4&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now, work with your business analyst to write real user stories based on the work you have done up to this point.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once those stories are written and in TFS you, or the PL, needs to perform a critical analysis of their work and look for any customer requirements that may not have been accounted for.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20573" LastActivityDate="2016-01-29T16:22:04.677" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17269" CreationDate="2016-01-29T17:11:47.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off; when the team reaches the business targets; don't worry about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BUT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I read the comments about working for years with Agile methodology I suspect that you are only partially implementing it. Without sprint planning, you are not using Agile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would be a good one to tackle on the retrospectives; as the process clearly would benefit from it. When planning is continuously on the low side: that's also something you should handle in the retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21707" LastEditorUserId="21707" LastEditDate="2016-04-19T13:46:05.980" LastActivityDate="2016-04-19T13:46:05.980" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17226" CreationDate="2016-01-29T18:59:48.830" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Durations are tracked by MS Project to the minute level. Using decimals in durations allows detail in durations for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;tasks starting or ending at times other than the work day start and finish that you define as defaults&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;tasks that take fractional amounts of a day, say 2.5 hours, at resource usage of 100% &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, decimals allow easier aggregations of these for summarization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11761" LastActivityDate="2016-01-29T18:59:48.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17252" CreationDate="2016-01-29T20:31:38.270" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Terminology Housekeeping&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity should be understood as a measurement of &amp;quot;Done&amp;quot; software increment the Development Team produces. This is because it is &lt;em&gt;worlds&lt;/em&gt; more important to measure this than &amp;quot;velocity&amp;quot; of task, workflow step, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that we're talking &amp;quot;Done&amp;quot; i.e. Definition of &amp;quot;Done&amp;quot; in Scrum, let's talk about how to reduce the risk of stuff not getting &amp;quot;Done&amp;quot; at the end of the Sprint. In short:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Ruthlessly Decompose Large Bits of Stuff into Smaller Bits of Stuff&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum guide includes &lt;em&gt;effort&lt;/em&gt; in the four aspects of each Product Backlog item. The &lt;em&gt;size&lt;/em&gt; of work is related to this measure. I have noticed a correlation between risky and large bits of work. To reduce the likelihood of work not getting &amp;quot;Done,&amp;quot; constantly break down work at the top of the backlog into smaller and smaller bits. I very much like this article for good &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.agilistic.nl/8-useful-strategies-for-splitting-large-user-stories-and-a-cheatsheet/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;decomposition techniques&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Get Smaller Bits of Stuff &amp;quot;Done&amp;quot; Faster&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make Product Backlog Items small and valuable (also lookup the INVEST criteria for more help on creating PBI's).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus &lt;em&gt;maniacally&lt;/em&gt; on getting small items done quickly before moving on to new ones i.e. keep work units small and ruthlessly limit WIP until optimal WIP can be observed. Watch this video to better understand what optimal WIP looks like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W92wG-HW8gg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W92wG-HW8gg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What does this accomplish?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Risk for each increment of software is address and eliminated well before Sprint end. Therefore, the risk encountered at the end of the Sprint will be reduced, and Development Team forecasts will get more accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21576" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2016-02-17T13:40:37.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17166" CreationDate="2016-01-29T21:34:11.333" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There really doesn't need to be a separate goal for accuracy and fraud prevention since these should be handled by standard business policies and  procedures. This goal and the associated tasks can be combined in the main flow based on documentation of prior approvals, policy compliance, and employee's supporting documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I've specified the intermediate times as &quot;Day A-n&quot; and so on since the intermediate processing times aren't clear and will be governed by factors not discussed here.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Goal&lt;/strong&gt;: Employee travel reimbursement in 5 days&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Actors&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;employee&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;accountant&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;approving authority (supervisor/chief)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cashier/disbursements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Impacts &amp;amp; Deliverables&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;employee&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;generate claim by day A1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pass claim to accounting by day A2&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;deliverable&lt;/em&gt;: signed claim with supporting documentation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;accountant&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;validate claim against prior approval where required by day B1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;validate claim complies with policy by day B2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;approves by day B3&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pass claim to supervisor by day B4&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;deliverable&lt;/em&gt;: approved claim with attached documentation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;supervisor&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reviews claim for reasonableness by day C1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;approves by day C2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pass claim to cashier by C3&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;deliverable&lt;/em&gt;: check request&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cashier/disbursements&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;process payment by day D1&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;deliverables&lt;/em&gt;:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;accounting journal &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;check&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;copy to file with appropriate retention&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The impacts here are more in the form of &quot;What,&quot; though their timely execution has impact in the sense an impact map would show on the end to end latency. To achieve a 5 day end to end process, there would have to be business policies about how long each stage could take along with contingencies. For example, if the supervisor was out of the office for two days, that could seriously affect the end to end time, if there wasn't a contingency provision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each company is different, but it's more usual that the employee's claim and supporting documentation would go to the supervisor before the accountant. The ordering doesn't affect the &quot;Whats&quot; and &quot;Deliverables,&quot; though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11761" LastActivityDate="2016-01-29T21:34:11.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16608" CreationDate="2016-01-29T22:10:06.310" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Critical path follows the longest duration path, which is &lt;code&gt;Start-&amp;gt;Task 3-&amp;gt;Task 5-&amp;gt;End&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;End&lt;/code&gt; appears twice in the table since it follows each of Tasks 2 and 5, which are independent branches. &lt;code&gt;End&lt;/code&gt; appears only once in the graph, as the terminal state, as you would expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11761" LastEditorUserId="11761" LastEditDate="2016-01-30T14:19:24.490" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T14:19:24.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17269" CreationDate="2016-01-31T05:09:28.530" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you tried teaching them &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; to make estimates? I didn't see that in your list, and not everyone automatically &quot;gets&quot; how to do it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've encountered two main reasons for an unwillingness to make estimates: one was anxiety over being held to it, but the other was that they'd never done it before, so when I asked them &quot;how long do you think that will take?&quot; they answered honestly &quot;I have no idea.&quot; When I pressed them, they said &quot;Well I would just be guessing!&quot; (Which might translate, in planning poker, to picking a card at random.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we talked about how an estimate &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a guess, but it's an educated guess, and everybody understands that; and then I walked them roughly through the mental process I use to make estimates, and said of course they wouldn't be very good at it at first if they'd never done it before, but we would practice and they would get better at it. I also contextualized why estimates were important for us as a team to be able to do (building confidence in ourselves and trust with our stakeholders that we will be able to do what we say we will be able to do), and pointed out that learning to make estimates is also a good career development move. (If the folks who are resistant are deferring to &quot;senior devs&quot;, this may be a good argument for them.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the easiest way for people to start making estimates is in terms of ideal work days, ie, supposing that I could spend 100% of my time on this task without interruption, how long would it take me? Story points may be too abstract for people who are just learning this skill. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Re your QA people: I've also found that people are reluctant to participate in estimating tasks that they won't directly work on, eg people who work on one subsystem don't want to estimate work that is contained entirely within another subsystem. My solution has been to say &quot;well you've seen how long it takes the other subsystem folks to do tasks like that, so give it your best guess that way.&quot; They're still reluctant, but at least I've given them a rubric to follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point I don't think there's anything left for you to do in the team process. I would try one or more of the following (in no particular order):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;approach each reluctant dev individually in private, and ask from a position of curiosity, what is the issue they have with making estimates?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;approach the reluctant devs' line managers (assuming that's not you?), and give feedback that they apparently need training in how to make estimates. (IE, don't get into &quot;won't&quot; and tantrums; focus on &quot;don't seem to be able to do that task&quot;, therefore must need training)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;approach the line managers, and make sure your expectations of dev responsibilities is consistent with theirs, esp. around estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2016-01-31T05:09:28.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17252" CreationDate="2016-01-31T05:48:40.817" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There's few trivial story's/bugs left but they took extraordinary effort to finish. Team seem's not to be exhausted. But this is always endangers and shifts delivery date. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;team understands that there is a problem. But thinks it's a natural order of things and don't knows the root cause and prefers to leave things as is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is your team by any chance full of personality types who depend and/or thrive on the pressure of a deadline in order to get things done? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't sound like they agree that there is a problem. A &quot;problem&quot; is not really compatible with the &quot;natural order of things&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only process solutions I can think of have already been mentioned: internal deadline, strict WIP limit, sequential story delivery (my team calls these &quot;sub-sprints&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it sounds like what you really have is a problem of motivation, and that endangered &amp;amp; late deliveries are a problem for &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; but not for &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt;. So how can you make them care? Do they experience any negative consequences for late deliveries? Can you provide rewards for on-time or early deliveries? Can you point out (or have someone else point out?) the risk to the team's reputation among upper management if this is their pattern?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2016-01-31T05:48:40.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17313" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17324" CreationDate="2016-01-31T13:20:03.773" Score="2" ViewCount="209" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a developer on a small-ish team. 1 DBA, 2 Senior Devs, 2 Juniors, and 1 QA (sometimes, most of the time we do our own QA). No PM at the moment. We do mostly maintenance/upgrades to a large legacy system right now, but will likely split the team soon so a group of us can focus on new product development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're a relatively new team that's been together for about 6 iterations now (3 months of 2 week iterations). Although we're using two week iterations, we're not down right time boxing. If a task is in progress, it stays in progress as it was already deemed the highest priority item. The iteration is more of a way of building in a time to retrospect, course correct, groom the backlog, and measure our capacity. It's Kanban with some ceremony stolen from Scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, this all works fine for this maintenance project, but with the new product development, we're going to have to &lt;em&gt;really commit&lt;/em&gt; to getting the tasks done that we say we will. The problem is that the team is consistently overly optimistic during our planning session. We've never gotten all of our stories completed, regardless of the fact that we know exactly how much work we can do, on average. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're able to consistently complete 13 stories in an iteration, but the team keeps insisting on scheduling 15-18. Any advice on how I can get them to understand the importance of scheduling to our capacity and &lt;em&gt;committing&lt;/em&gt; to our stakeholders?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure someone will ask about story size/points. I don't quite trust scheduling to average points yet. The number of points completed in an iteration vary too wildly yet for scheduling purposes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastActivityDate="2016-02-01T11:40:49.847" Title="Team consistently over commits" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;schedule&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17313" CreationDate="2016-01-31T13:28:25.450" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-planning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum guide&lt;/a&gt; talks about a forecast instead of commitment. (They changed this from commitment in 2013.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, enough work is planned during Sprint Planning for the&#xA;  Development Team to &lt;strong&gt;forecast&lt;/strong&gt; what it believes it can do in the&#xA;  upcoming Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not so bad to not complete your teams full forecast. What is important is that the highest priority items did get completed. Thats why you need too prioritize your iteration backlog and stick to that order. Focus together on completing the tasks and prevent all tasks from being nearly done. The thing with software development is that things are done when they are done. Just don't try to over engineer and understand when good is good enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stack holders can be sure the top items will be finished each iteration. This should be good enough :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I like to plan a little bit extra, since this makes sure the team can continue on work even when they get stuck or if they overestimated the other tasks. Nothing wrong with working out requirements/acceptance criteria a little bit ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2016-01-31T13:28:25.450" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16876" CreationDate="2016-01-31T18:32:53.253" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMP Certification is not for beginner. It is for experienced project managers who are practicing project management and need an endorsement of their knowledge, skills and experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It befits in theYou can refer following article&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.askpmp.com/what-are-benefits-of-pmp-certification/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.askpmp.com/what-are-benefits-of-pmp-certification/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22029" LastActivityDate="2016-01-31T18:32:53.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17313" CreationDate="2016-01-31T21:07:32.280" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thank you for the interesting question. I wonder, what is the reason people might want to take too many items into the sprint/iteration. I can think of several reasons, may be it's one of these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;team members are afraid, they will have to wait on others =&gt; they rarely co-work around items&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;team members need to show activity to upper management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;team members don't know what to invest their time into, if they have slack time =&gt; not seeing potential for investing in technical debt/learning, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;team members aren't supposed to do the above&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they expect to improve velocity, but continuously fail in doing so.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe you have to dig a little deeper for the root cause here. Then you'll know what to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21264" LastActivityDate="2016-01-31T21:07:32.280" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17313" CreationDate="2016-01-31T22:36:34.737" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;here are few suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prepare some statistics for your team for the next retro, better visual. You had 6 iterations already, so I assume you have data to show. It should help to convince them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Suggest to take smaller amount of stories for the sprint (e.g. your historical 13 stories), but if they have time - they can take stories from the backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simply count the estimates for stories vs team available time (effective development time which is obviously not 8 hours per day). all that goes beyond of available time - waits in the backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22030" LastActivityDate="2016-01-31T22:36:34.737" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17318" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-01T05:05:35.180" Score="1" ViewCount="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a project director at a custom lighting company. There are 2 project managers and 2 project coordinators under me. I alone manage 15 clients equaling 2.5 million in earnings in 6 months. I manage the team and attend every meeting = 3 hours a day. The other PM's have between 45 and 20 clients each between 500,000 and 3,000,000 earnings. I feel like this is major overload but the owners think this is a walk in the park. Mind you these are all custom projects with constant changes.&#xA;Does this seem normal? I really want to know if my team is legitimately burnt out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22032" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T08:45:09.517" Title="Does this workload seem right?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17319" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17323" CreationDate="2016-02-01T07:05:07.207" Score="6" ViewCount="958" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a Scrum Team of a Product Owner and four developers (one of whom is Scrum Master), running one week sprints. As per &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-retro&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrumguides.org&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Sprint Retrospective is an opportunity for the &lt;strong&gt;Scrum Team&lt;/strong&gt; to inspect itself... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So that includes the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following the advice from &lt;em&gt;Agile Retrospectives&lt;/em&gt; by Derby/Larsen we're trying to focus our meeting on one specific topic. We have iterations of one week, so we usually cover only one topic each week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, at least half of &lt;strong&gt;our Retrospectives will be very tech-oriented&lt;/strong&gt;: talking about how to spread technical knowledge between us and other teams, improving automated testing, trying new tools, et cetera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our Product Owner is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; very technical at all, and will not be able to contribute all too much in this kind of Retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions on how to deal with this? Do we do &lt;em&gt;those&lt;/em&gt; Retrospectives with just the development team? Do we &quot;need&quot; to look for ways to include the Product Owner too?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5282" LastEditorUserId="5282" LastEditDate="2016-02-01T13:39:26.850" LastActivityDate="2016-02-02T06:35:32.160" Title="Should a Product Owner be present for all retrospectives?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17319" CreationDate="2016-02-01T07:43:32.327" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The retrospective goal is, among others to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Inspect how the last Sprint went with regards to people,&#xA;  relationships, process, and tools;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although you feel like most of the discussion will be around technical problems, that could not be necessarily the case. Not to mention that solving technical problems is a way to reach a business goal and add value, not an exercise in itself, so the PO can and should have a say on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16362" LastActivityDate="2016-02-01T07:43:32.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17319" CreationDate="2016-02-01T07:53:52.263" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Including product owner is always a good practice. Don't be afraid that he will not get it. After few retrospectives he should better understand tech story's arsing and overall complexity of a project. He is a part of a team too, and maybe he has a issues to share with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/the-product-owner-in-a-sprint-retropsective&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/the-product-owner-in-a-sprint-retropsective&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21857" LastActivityDate="2016-02-01T07:53:52.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17318" CreationDate="2016-02-01T08:01:29.257" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The actual workload is not reduced to a number of customers and a projects.&#xA;On my last job we had a PM's with one-two customer only because they were very hard to work with, and they were really burning alive. And some of the PM's had 15 projects with bigger overall budget, but customers were very adequate, projects simple and steady, and they don't seemed stressed at all.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21857" LastActivityDate="2016-02-01T08:01:29.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17319" CreationDate="2016-02-01T10:38:54.800" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ideally the Product Owner will be present and will find the retrospective both interesting and rewarding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if the Product Owner does not see their value in technical conversations then there are some things you can do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start the retrospective in the usual way but cover Product Owner related issues first, then allow the PO to leave and focus on technical issues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Run two retrospectives, one for business/requirements related issues and one for technical issues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Alternate between technical and non-technical retrospectives.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a big fan of the last two of these approaches. But I think the first one can be made to work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-02-01T10:38:54.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17313" CreationDate="2016-02-01T11:40:49.847" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know very much about agile and scrum and iterations and stories but coming from a more general point of view around estimation, statistics, and human factors, I am not sure you have enough data to assert that you even have an issue of optimistic planning.  You have only performed six iterations and you are only experiencing a three to five story variance.  This is very likely right in the sweet spot of the probabilistic distribution where your next six iterations you may experience a three to four favorable variance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at a fair coin toss as an example.  You have almost a 10% chance of throwing five consecutive heads in six throws despite a coin being 50/50.  Compare this with throwing 50 heads in 60 throws with a chance of 0.000006%.  With only six iterations, you might just be experiencing a string of bad luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Optimism biases certainly affect estimation and you need to be aware of this phenomena in planning.  You don't want to chase, however, statistical noise so you need to collect data, a lot of it, to determine you have a real issue versus something that is random.  And, finally, you have to battle the opposite phenomena which is that work tends to grow in available time--&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Parkinson's Law&lt;/a&gt;--where pessimistic planning becomes the norm and you become inefficient and costly.  Aggressive, optimistic planning can force the team to remain highly efficient and nimble despite the harsh fact that they may miss their targets.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you target $500 to do a job and you overrun your target by $100, is this more favorable then targeting $800 to do the same job and underrun by $100?  $600 versus $700.  Overrunning an aggressive target has its place but it does take a sophisticated customer to understand that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-02-01T11:40:49.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17319" CreationDate="2016-02-01T12:57:07.650" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lots of good points already made. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more to add: Sometimes the action item from a completely technical discussion will be adding an item to the backlog that is more technical. In order for the PO to be able to prioritise it against other items he needs to understand its value. So even a completely technical discussion is to a certain extent useful to him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21264" LastActivityDate="2016-02-01T12:57:07.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17319" CreationDate="2016-02-01T20:28:36.360" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From Roman Pichler blog: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/product-owner-sprint-retrospective/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Product Owner’s Guide to the Sprint Retrospective&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As the product owner, you are a member of the Scrum team, which also&#xA;  includes the development team and the ScrumMaster. While you are in&#xA;  charge of the product, you rely on the collaboration of the other&#xA;  Scrum team members to create a successful software product. If you&#xA;  don’t attend the retrospective as the product owner, you waste the&#xA;  opportunity to strengthen the relationship and to improve the&#xA;  collaboration with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But there is more to: Taking part in the sprint retrospective allows&#xA;  you to understand why the team requires some time in the next sprint&#xA;  to carry out improvements such as refactoring the build script, or&#xA;  investigating a new test tool; and maybe more importantly, it helps&#xA;  you improve your own work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Say that some of the user stories the team had worked on did not get&#xA;  finished in the sprint. At first sight this looks like the development&#xA;  team’s fault. But analysing the issue may well reveal that the size of&#xA;  the stories and the quality of the acceptance criteria contributed to&#xA;  the problem. As you are responsible for ensuring that the product&#xA;  backlog is ready, this finding affects your work: It shows you that&#xA;  you have to decompose the user stories further and it suggests that&#xA;  the development team’s involvement in getting the stories ready should&#xA;  be improved – otherwise you would have spotted the issue before the&#xA;  stories went into the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16934" LastActivityDate="2016-02-01T20:28:36.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16876" CreationDate="2016-02-01T20:50:11.447" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;With careful preparation the PMP is not an impossible certification to get but you need a considerable amount of project management work  experience in order to apply. &#xA;The CAPM does not require the project management work experience that the PMP does, and the test is not as difficult as as PMP one.&#xA;The CAPM shows the interviewers that you are dedicated to a career in project management  &lt;strong&gt;but CAPM is not as recognizable and does not have the same weight as the PMP&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;If you have the means to eventually get PMP certified then go for it, if you do not have the work experience needed you should wait until you do then go for your PMP better. Save you time and your money and have a higher probability to get your dream job  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16934" LastActivityDate="2016-02-01T20:50:11.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16876" CreationDate="2016-02-01T21:01:39.450" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really depends on what you intend to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you already know you can get a job without it, and you're not particularly sure about going into project management, or even project management the PMI way, I would walk away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you really want to make it in project management and nothing else, want to prove your motivation and want to learn about the PMBoK in the process (while also preparing for PMP a few years later), it isn't a bad idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that although CAPM is slowly becoming more and more recognized, you probably will have to explain what it is during an interview at this point, unlike PMP. And as you can imagine, the fact that it isn't a golden standard like PMP and that it doesn't require experience, means that it will always be considered a small bonus to your list of skills, not a gamechanger or mandatory requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in my opinion, there are still much better choices for entry-level certifications that I would pick over CAPM. Even if you prefer management, technical certs are great when you're a graduate (Cisco, Microsoft, Red Hat, etc.). Other general IT management certs such as Scrum.org or ITIL also have a good reputation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you already have these and you're really eager to dive into the PMBoK, go ahead!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22048" LastActivityDate="2016-02-01T21:01:39.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="872" CreationDate="2016-02-02T00:54:49.547" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a book that focuses on how to have these type of conversations called &lt;strong&gt;Crucial Conversations&lt;/strong&gt;. It breaks down the conversation you need to have in 3 steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Share Your Facts&lt;/strong&gt; - &lt;em&gt;What is she doing that's damaging to how the team operates/functions?&lt;/em&gt; Stick to specifics, details, and non-disputable points; not perception, but true facts. EXAMPLE: You've given instructions to the team without discussing with the leads. (Stay away from disputable phrases like &quot;half-baked idea&quot; and &quot;disconnected&quot;. Those can be debated. Don't open up that opportunity)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tell Your Story&lt;/strong&gt; - &lt;em&gt;What is your concern with her behavior?&lt;/em&gt; Focus on a single point so the conversation does split into multiple directions. EXAMPLE: When you give the team tasks without discussing them with the leads/myself, it is very difficult for me to stay on top what the team is actively working on, impacting my ability to deliver against our deadlines.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask For Other Paths&lt;/strong&gt; - &lt;em&gt;Ask her to share.&lt;/em&gt; Don't lead the question. Have it be an open ended question. EXAMPLE: Can you help me understand how I can better manage our goals and the changing priorities?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13331" LastActivityDate="2016-02-02T00:54:49.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17330" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17337" CreationDate="2016-02-02T05:30:48.177" Score="3" ViewCount="1041" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a new software development team in a manufacturing company. Currently, we are using agile methods for our software development. But since we are just a new team, there are times that we could not follow agile methods properly causing us to lose track of what other members are doing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to ask if there's a good practice on how you keep track of your developers activities every day? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because, my team lead is asking us to send emails everyday for our activities. I think that there's a better approach than that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice is greatly appreciated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28137" LastActivityDate="2016-02-02T12:19:01.013" Title="How do you keep track of software engineers daily activity?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17319" CreationDate="2016-02-02T06:35:32.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Preferably the Product Owner attends all retrospectives, this will help him/her to improve the way of working together with the team members. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Attending technical discussion can increase insight in the way that team develops their product and the effect of this on the quality of the product. For instance when the team has built up technical debt, they can discuss strategies together with the Product Owner to reduce the debt and to prevent degrading the quality further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16919" LastActivityDate="2016-02-02T06:35:32.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17333" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17334" CreationDate="2016-02-02T08:48:06.183" Score="3" ViewCount="225" Body="&lt;p&gt;After the first few retrospectives with a five-step structure and activities found at &lt;a href=&quot;http://plans-for-retrospectives.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Retromat&lt;/a&gt;, I got the feedback that there's too much &quot;playing&quot;, writing notes and post-its, rather than simply discussion.&#xA;I personally find these to be a welcome change from the day-to-day of development during the sprint, and potentially useful in identifying stuff you might not think of straight away, but shouldn't force the team of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So are there some recommendations on how to organise effective and useful retrospectives, but with less impact of &quot;card writing&quot; and such?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22055" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T07:05:24.757" Title="Retrospectives with fewer &quot;games&quot;" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17333" CreationDate="2016-02-02T09:24:57.063" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all it's a good sign that the team gave you feedback about it. It means they care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second. As a Scrum Master your job is to make sure things required in the Scrum Guide happen:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of the Sprint Retrospective is to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Inspect how the last Sprint went with regards to people, relationships, process, and tools;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Identify and order the major items that went well and potential improvements; and,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Create a plan for implementing improvements to the way the Scrum Team does its work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was that happening on first few retrospectives?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were you, I would make sure the team understands purpose of this meeting and ask what format they'd like to try in order to make those points fulfilled.&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Dedicate a retrospective to figure out the way your team wants to do it.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;As you said - you shouldn't force the team to use a specific format. Use your knowledge to guide the team and help them to come with one.&#xA;You've already showed possible variations so they have some idea around it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fun formats are a way to go time to time, in my opinion. The frequency needs to be suited for the team. After couple of raw discussions you'll sense that introducing some fun would be beneficial. Nevertheless, mind that people don't like changes too often. &lt;strong&gt;Once you pick a format for the meeting, stick to it and give it a try at least 3 times.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the first time with new format people learn how it works. They should have an opportunity to explore it further to make most of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the team tried various of plans you can ask them (preferably before the meeting) what kind of format they'd like to go with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to do 2-3 times Start-Stop-Continue activity on the retrospective and intersperse it with some new format. &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilecoffee.com/leancoffee/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lean Coffee&lt;/a&gt; is another, quite universal approach you can use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2016-02-03T18:54:10.043" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17335" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-02T09:43:29.797" Score="3" ViewCount="111" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working as a Business Coordinator in an IT company. I have completed Bachelors of Technology in Information Technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a chance for me to become a Project Manager?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If yes, then what is the way?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22056" LastEditorUserId="105" LastEditDate="2016-03-01T18:14:06.817" LastActivityDate="2017-04-10T12:20:53.070" Title="Can a Business Coordinator become a project manager" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;roles&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17330" CreationDate="2016-02-02T10:01:17.693" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make a physical board and visualize ALL the work, also extra work or private projects. Then if you want to know who is working on what attach an avatar to the card in progress. Now the team lead can walk to the board and check who is working on what. If you are distributed use something like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jira&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt; which also supports avatars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hcq6U.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hcq6U.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then with a board you can do a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/daily-scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;daily scrum&lt;/a&gt; to understand what developers worked on yesterday and which iteration goals they are going to achieve today. Also read the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2014/july/7-mistakes-during-the-daily-stand-up-meeting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;7 Mistakes during the daily scrum&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile teams do not have a team lead, maybe a servant leader. Agile promotes self organizing teams. This means the team is leading, not a person. Sending updates by e-mail sounds very command-and-control like, try to break this habbit as soon as possible if you are dreaming of becoming truely Agile. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.coachingagileteams.com/publications/books/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Coaching Agile Teams book&lt;/a&gt; has some great chapters about tradidional command-and-control PMs becoming Agile leaders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If for some reason you want to be anti-Agile and want to control everything, this is of course also possible. Combine something like Jira, let developers &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/jira/logging-work-on-an-issue-185729605.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;log their work&lt;/a&gt; in the system. Monitor with plugins like &lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/is.origo.jira.tempo-plugin/cloud/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tempo&lt;/a&gt;. I can tell you this is counter productive though, since &lt;em&gt;Absence of Trust&lt;/em&gt; is the major &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tablegroup.com/books/dysfunctions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;dysfunction for teams&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2016-02-02T12:19:01.013" LastActivityDate="2016-02-02T12:19:01.013" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1847" CreationDate="2016-02-02T10:46:31.263" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here you can read about the differences between Scrumban and Kanban: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/16239/what-are-some-differences-between-scrumban-and-kanban&quot;&gt;What are some differences between Scrumban and Kanban?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here's the book i'd recommend for anyone who is new to scrumban: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B010TQKZ5E&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrumban Evolution Software Development ebook&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22059" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2016-02-02T13:03:24.843" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2016-02-02T10:46:31.263" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17335" CreationDate="2016-02-02T12:52:33.533" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the matter of fact anyone could become a project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read some books and materials related to it. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pass some certification which is valuable in your region/company.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After you are ready inform your company that you want to become one. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduce some things that could be improved on project management in your company.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21857" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2016-02-03T09:43:12.570" LastActivityDate="2016-02-03T09:43:12.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16675" CreationDate="2016-02-02T16:18:08.007" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As per my understanding PMI provides no pre-assessment tests. However there are various sites in public domain that provide free practice tests. You can give one to assess where you stand as of today. Please generalize your results as one test may not give any specific feedback where you are week or strong. It is always advisable as already advised by mwan, to take test after preparation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22029" LastActivityDate="2016-02-02T16:18:08.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16998" CreationDate="2016-02-02T16:29:31.013" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project Charter is about what do you want to do and why? The main things in Project Charter are business case (why) and objectives (what). Other details are your initial idea about how to achieve objectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Until you know what you want to do and why, you cannot have your scope, planning etc. All projects start with an estimated time and budget even if you are not sure if you can achieve project objectives in that time and budget. Until you commit a date and cost to your customer, you customer may not give you the project to execute. This is how life is. Therefore risk management and stakeholder management are required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22029" LastActivityDate="2016-02-02T16:29:31.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11221" CreationDate="2016-02-02T16:42:34.217" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it does not matter if it is science, R&amp;amp;D or any other type of project. If you have an objective to achieve in a limited specific time, you are executing a project. Your should apply all project management principles and you should count your experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please refer following link&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.askpmp.com/how-can-i-fulfil-pmp-certification-experience-requirements/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.askpmp.com/how-can-i-fulfil-pmp-certification-experience-requirements/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check if you are doing activities listed on above link. Time contributed to all these tasks can be counted toward experience in project management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22029" LastActivityDate="2016-02-02T16:42:34.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17346" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17348" CreationDate="2016-02-03T02:19:41.203" Score="8" ViewCount="1668" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say the workflow is something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Todo -&gt; Development -&gt; Test -&gt; Release&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If some feature has done in development and moved to test, when tester found a bug, may be app crashing or similar things, what should I do to that card? Is it the right way to leave that card in there and developer need to stop his current development to fix it first? If so, does this mean that developer has to prioritize this test first (to let the flow be able to continue.) and developer must be interrupted all over the time to clear the bug in test? Is this really better than move the card that has bug back to todo phrase?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12230" LastActivityDate="2020-11-03T17:43:55.877" Title="In Kanban, What should I do if the card has a bug that need to be fixed in Test column?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17347" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-03T06:34:24.850" Score="-1" ViewCount="872" Body="&lt;p&gt;The intention is to determine raw estimates effort in man hours for the development of Android app, based on basic Screen UI/Wireframes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: Design team provided 10-screens. Based on the judgement of development team, and looking at the screen UI, we divided it into &lt;strong&gt;Simple, Medium complex and Complex Screens&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, since this is mobile app, which fetch its data using Web Service using JSON we also need to estimate the backend integration effort for the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any tools (web-based or any other form) available, using which the effort in man hours can be calculated for Android App development?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21918" LastActivityDate="2016-02-03T16:14:10.947" Title="Android App Development: Effort Estimation tools" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-02-07T21:26:12.013" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17346" CreationDate="2016-02-03T07:03:31.027" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's a great question and a topic of much debate in Kanban communities!  However, there are two aspects to this - one, what is your actual engineering practice when a defect is found during development (as opposed to production defects) and two, what is the way you want to model that on your Kanban board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A developer works on a feature - which may be modeled as a User Story or an Enhancement or a Change Request - and during its development lifecycle, issues or bugs may be found during various testing stages (unit, system, integration, etc.) as well as code reviews - and these issues may be captured/ reported as Defects or Bugs or Issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without getting into your specific processes, there are broadly two methods of modeling this on a Kanban board that teams use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first one is, depending on the stage where an Issue or a Bug is reported, the User Story is moved back to the earliest Working stage (Design In-Progress or Dev in-Progress, for example) and reworked on to fix the Issue or Bug.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/srSrF.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/srSrF.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second one is, where the User Story is 'blocked' wherever the issue or bug was reported and a new issue or a bug is created as card and taken up for work at the earliest stage it needs to be taken up in (including perhaps in a completely separate swim-lane with its own workflow for fixing such issues or bugs. In the picture below, cards with the red square represent blocked user stories - which are then linked to their associated defects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kIaUt.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kIaUt.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The process typically favored is the second option, since it has the following advantages -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It clearly highlights and visualizes the stories which are blocked due to defects being found in them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It specifically identifies and allows 'assignment' to 'failure-demand' - and enables analysis of this failure demand.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It allows you to model a different workflow/ process for issues/ defect resolution if you wish, in a separate swim lane, which further helps the analysis of cycle time (resolution time), throughput and other metrics which might help you make SLA commitments to your customers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your team is focused on implementing and following WIP limits, it puts pressure on developers to resolve and close open defects against their name since blocked items also occupy their WIP limit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do have to make sure that developers follow the process of linking (associating) stories to their defects/ issues (which a Kanban software would usually enable fairly easily) and also to unblock the user story when the defect is closed, so that the developer's WIP limit opens up for doing additional work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a very nice blog post written by Kanban thought-leader Dr. Masa Maeda on this topic you might also be interested in looking at -  &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.digite.com/blog/handle-tickets-sprint-planning/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;how to handle tickets during sprint planning&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastEditorUserId="8132" LastEditDate="2020-11-02T19:10:26.753" LastActivityDate="2020-11-02T19:10:26.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17347" CreationDate="2016-02-03T12:41:56.510" Score="3" Body="&lt;h1&gt;No&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask the person that will do the work, how much time s/he will need. If you are not happy with that, ask someone else, until you find what you are looking for. But you won't find a magic wand that you can wave to get a calculated amount of man-hours that an unknown person of unknown skill will need for an unknown amount of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That will not work for &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; business and software development is no exception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2016-02-03T14:44:50.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17350" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-03T13:30:18.737" Score="1" ViewCount="88" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently implementing an Android application and am struggling to do my class and sequence diagrams, predominately due to the fact that the specifications are too abstract and vague. I was thinking of doing the implementation phase and then to reverse-engineer my work to produce the planning documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, is this allowed and advisable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22078" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-02-03T23:10:14.253" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T12:45:30.850" Title="Can planning documents be retroactively produced to fit the product that's been built?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;&lt;specification&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17333" CreationDate="2016-02-03T15:51:55.930" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could try having an agenda in the meeting invite, something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Brainstorming - 10 min&lt;/strong&gt; : when team write down their ideas according to the format of the retrospective, i.e. identify things on Start/Stop/continue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Analyse and group - 10 mins&lt;/strong&gt; : a nominated team member or scrum master  scan and group similar topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Discussion - 20 mins&lt;/strong&gt; : Probably the important part during which the team discuss on the various suggestions and identify the key one to tackle in the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Voting - 10 mins&lt;/strong&gt; : Team votes the action items to take forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Review and close&lt;/strong&gt; - 10 mins : Review the action items from last retrospective and close the meeting with a clear plan on the items you  have selected to work on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Timings are just guidelines, could alter to meet your team size and needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could add some fun bits like team votes for the best player of the sprint, social outings/team lunch plans for next sprint and so on!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22080" LastEditorUserId="22080" LastEditDate="2016-02-04T07:05:24.757" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T07:05:24.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17347" CreationDate="2016-02-03T16:14:10.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The team of developers who actually will be doing the work should estimate on the screens. There is &lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt; tool to do this automatically. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developers will identify the backend/server side code to write for fetching the data,applying the business validation, etc.&#xA;To come up the estimates in man hours, the team need to know well the interfaces and services they need to tap into and the screens should be more or less complete in design. &#xA;You will need to add spikes for unknown and they stay as unknown until they are worked on by the team. The outcome of a spike could alter your estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do the same with QA to get an estimate on testing the application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22080" LastActivityDate="2016-02-03T16:14:10.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17350" CreationDate="2016-02-03T22:58:32.557" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Spikes and Prototypes are Okay; Retconning Project Plans Is Not&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was planning to go onto the implementation phase and then to reverse engineer my work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a project management point of view, this is not okay. Planning is hard, but &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; planning creates technical debt and problems for the project and the organization down the road.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Waterfall is about upfront planning. Agile is about just-in-time planning. Neither methodology allows for &quot;ready, fire, aim&quot; planning, which is what you're describing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From an engineering point of view, it is certainly allowable to do a project spike or create a prototype with minimal planning in order to validate an idea or create lessons-learned for creating a more permanent implementation. However, what you're describing here is more like retconning your planning documents to fit whatever you end up with, which is not a good project management &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; engineering practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-02-03T22:58:32.557" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17350" CreationDate="2016-02-04T12:45:30.850" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another good shooting analogy:  shoot, move target over bullet hole, bulls eye!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the real world, when you have a client to whom you are selling your product, this approach will undoubtedly cause a ton of increased expenses, time, and increased risk of client dissatisfaction.  The issue is, many poorly performed projects in the IT space are done in this manner, resulting in a very poor track record of project failures as reported by Gartner and many other sources.  If you are experiencing schedule or cost issues already, doing this approach will exacerbate the issues despite how it may contradict your intuition.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If things are ambiguous, get them specified.  Spend the time to drill down and document before building.  It will pay dividends in the end.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T12:45:30.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16675" CreationDate="2016-02-04T15:45:42.060" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I studied for PMP in 2014 and I haven't heard about pre-assessment questions they give. The only thing about questions, that if you are PMI member, you can access their library. I found there a book with ~500 sample questions. They were pretty simple comparing to another sources.&#xA;I recommend you to look for some online courses (I took my 35 PDU hours from such course), they usually provide you test run of full 4-hour assessment. Or you can buy test-run assessment as a separate piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several sources I used:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmstudy.com/enroll.asp#PMP&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pmstudy.com/enroll.asp#PMP&lt;/a&gt; - they have one free simulated test&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmcampus.com/400qupmsiex.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pmcampus.com/400qupmsiex.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.udemy.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.udemy.com&lt;/a&gt; there are a lot of materials, udemy has often provide discounts for majority of courses up to 90%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.simplilearn.com/project-management/pmp-certification-training&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.simplilearn.com/project-management/pmp-certification-training&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beware about questions that are outdated, there are tons of them over the Internet already. Look for the reference to recent PMBOK version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, one of my favorites books - &lt;a href=&quot;http://store.rmcproject.com/pmp-exam-prep-eighth-edition-updated?_ga=1.61581868.1843463337.1454600581&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt; Rita Mulcahy PMP Exam Prep&lt;/a&gt;, there are a number of sample questions after each chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22030" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T15:45:42.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9189" CreationDate="2016-02-04T17:05:55.690" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;depending on what JIRA you use (server and cloud) there are a number of plugins available: &lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/search?q=gannt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gannt plugins&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22030" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T17:05:55.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17361" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17362" CreationDate="2016-02-04T18:53:41.773" Score="8" ViewCount="1763" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are using Jira Agile and we have a board with columns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Ideas&#xA;Next Up&#xA;On Hold&#xA;In Progress&#xA;Done&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cards can be moved from left to right with the goal of moving the card to done. Right now when I move the card to done it basically places it at the bottom of the done column. I would like it to sort descending so the most recent &quot;done&quot; issue is placed at the top of this column.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a screen shot of what I want to sort:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KKDZh.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KKDZh.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When someone completes an issue they drag and drop to done, but the issue is it goes to the bottom of this column.  I want it to go to the top so we have a descending order.  I don't see a setup to change the sort order on one column, but if it is there and I don't see it please let me know!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22095" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2016-02-04T20:20:50.343" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T21:26:51.037" Title="Sort &quot;Done&quot; Jira Agile column" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17361" CreationDate="2016-02-04T20:17:23.203" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Each board has a filter, the filter contains the order. By default this is rank, because you pick lower ranked tasks later they get dropped at the bottom of the done column.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are looking to update your filter to something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;project = TST ORDER BY resolutiondate DESC, rank ASC&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way if the issue is finish it gets ordered on its resolution date, if its not yet finished it will be ordered by backlog ranking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can edit and find the filter under Board(top right)-&gt;Configure-&gt;General-&gt;Filter-&gt;Edit Filter Query&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually this makes perfect sense, I think I will update my own boards to use this aswell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2016-02-04T21:26:51.037" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T21:26:51.037" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17364" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-04T23:24:59.570" Score="2" ViewCount="108" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently working with an organization that is using the Jira &lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/is.origo.jira.tempo-plugin/cloud/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tempo Timesheets&lt;/a&gt; plugin to track developer time, but the way that Jira stories and tasks are being used fails to capture overhead accurately without a lot of manual tweaking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if the team has a user story with two tasks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Two people might collaborate on one of the tasks. If both people log work on the task, it doubles the time Jira thinks the task took.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One person might spend two 30-minute blocks working on a task, but two hours blocked.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The unblocking process (e.g. making calls, chasing resources, holding meetings) could theoretically be allocated towards the blocked task, but then the dashboard (especially the Agile view) looks really skewed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not allocating that time towards the blocked task hides details about lead time, and makes the level of effort look smaller than it was.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sometimes an activity could be charged against multiple tasks/subtasks, but entering it in both causes the roll-up values to be ridiculously large and ultimately misleading.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the other hand, splitting the time between separate activities that just happen to share a common dependency makes it look like task performers have spent half the time they really did to complete something.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, I'm not sure how to reconcile Jira as a epic/story or task/subtask tool (especially for collaborative user stories) with its organizational role as the &quot;source of truth&quot; for individual time sheets. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I personally think Jira is not the right tool for a truly Agile process, especially for projects that follow Scrum or XP, that's not my decision to make. I just need a better &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; for tracking work, billable hours, and cycle time within Jira.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What process changes can I make so that the time allocations to stories/tasks are meaningful at the executive level without &#xA;making it look like every calendar week consumes 300 man hours of each person's time? And how do I make Jira account for process overhead, so that time allocated to specific activities (which is often smaller than the actual elapsed time to reach the Definition of Done) doesn't ignore the real cost of completing the stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T17:30:55.623" Title="What process changes can I make to more accurately track both collaborative stories and individual time within Jira?" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;timekeeping&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17365" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-05T05:06:32.937" Score="1" ViewCount="152" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a number of tasks which have 3 subtasks each that MUST start and be completed exactly 2 weeks from each other. (each subtask is half day)&#xA;i.e. task1: (subtask1 @ day1, subtask2 @ day14, subtask3 @ day28)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that if I use lag, when I have many tasks (more than 200) and I level the resources, the subtasks2 of each task is pushed by the subtasks1 so they are scheduled more than 2 weeks from the linked subtask1)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could use constraint but I need the tasks to float so if I change the starting day or the priority of the main tasks everything will be rescheduled maintaining a fixed 2 weeks delay of each subtask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any idea on how to do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22099" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-01T12:18:25.157" LastActivityDate="2018-11-01T12:18:25.157" Title="lag must be exactly 2weeks" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17365" CreationDate="2016-02-05T09:45:57.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep your lag values and then:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Option 1: If it is resource levelling that is causing the subtasks to be moved around, then set up a &quot;special&quot; resource that is only used on those subtasks. This means there will never be resource overloading and so the subtasks are never moved by Levelling. Of course, this does lead to a potential overloading of the &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; resource because MS-Project will see them as different resources and will assign them on the same day as it will see no overloading&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Option 2: Use Priorities. Set a higher priority on the subtasks than any other task where there could be a resource clash. Given they &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; occur on your strict timing, set them to the highest possible priority (999) and ensure that the 'Levelling Order' is 'Priority, Standard'. This means MS-Project will attempt to preserve their timing above all others and so the other clashing tasks, at a lower priority, will be moved first. This option would be my personal preference as there are no real downsides&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2016-02-05T09:45:57.253" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17369" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17370" CreationDate="2016-02-05T10:23:47.440" Score="1" ViewCount="83" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been given a list of criteria to verify our requirements against (I found out they took it from an ISO standard) and there is one I have no clue what to do with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the software requirements related to safety, security, and criticality are correct as shown by suitably rigorous methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not even sure what is meant by that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is this about, how can I verify that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21422" LastActivityDate="2016-02-05T11:11:31.967" Title="What does it mean to &quot;verify SW requirements related to safety, security and critically are correct, as shown by rigorous methods&quot;?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17369" CreationDate="2016-02-05T10:35:55.480" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You verify the software requirements related to these criteria in the same way as you would verify the software requirements for &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; criteria; by replaying the documented software requirements back to the relevant personnel with responsibility for those items and working through any variations with them until you have arrived at an agreed set of requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for example, work with members of the Security team to look at the areas of the software requirements that overlap on the areas of responsibility of the Security team. This could be done by a meeting, a workshop, a teleconference or even by passing the software specifications to them remotely and asking them to review and sign off on the specification from a Security point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all cases ensure you have documented any changes required to the software specifications, once you have reached agreement with each party on their approved form, and ensure you have a paper trail containing an agreement from each party that you have accurately represented their needs in the requirement and their approval of the specification (this is the 'rigour' mentioned in your brief).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2016-02-05T11:11:31.967" LastActivityDate="2016-02-05T11:11:31.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17365" CreationDate="2016-02-05T11:07:32.150" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't use the schedule leveling function.  You don't need it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-02-05T11:07:32.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17269" CreationDate="2016-02-05T11:25:47.910" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interesting that the answers are about the team not either following the process or needing trained. There is a movement in Agile around #noestimates, as there is a feeling that even using story points is rooted in old school PM estimation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are using INVEST in your stories (Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small and Testable) think about what you put into the story, now the idea here is to build stories of a similar size. You can then use your metrics to calculate average time to complete, and use that rather than velocity (or task hours) in planning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at the work Alan Holub is doing. At the end of the day, it works out as accurate as trying to estimate, we'd and doesn't need a 10% commitment from the team.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3336" LastActivityDate="2016-02-05T11:25:47.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17373" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17376" CreationDate="2016-02-05T12:13:33.103" Score="9" ViewCount="10216" Body="&lt;p&gt;Current workflow in our company:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I create Given/When/Then scenarios or User stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developers estimate Scenarios/User stories in hours, by giving minimum and maximum amount of time for 1 scenario/feature&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Client approves/declines the budget&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I create a sprint backlog with the given estimate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that relative sizing works better than hours sizing and that's why I would like to move to story points.But how is it possible to give a budget estimation for the client, using story points? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to meet proper budget, but at the same time use story points for estimating the project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21640" LastActivityDate="2016-08-23T22:36:55.377" Title="How to estimate a project budget using story points?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;budget&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17373" CreationDate="2016-02-05T13:35:38.770" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will start by saying that doing Scrum in a consulting environment is a real challenge. With Scrum we are continually looking for feedback from the Product Owner and Stakeholders and adjust our backlog of work to reflect it. This makes it hard to give an up-front, fixed estimate. The aim of Scrum is to achieve the maximum business value by delivering what the customer needs. This is not always compatible with a fixed scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, it is possible to use story points to provide a project estimate. What you do is have the team do story point estimates on all the stories in scope for the project. Then you use the team's velocity to guess at how many sprints it will take to complete the project. Knowing the cost per sprint, you can then calculate the project cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please be aware that it is unlikely you will get an accurate project cost estimate for all but the shortest of projects. In development there are technical and requirement unknowns that generate estimation errors that increase the longer the project you are estimating on. We call this the 'cone of uncertainty', where our certainty of the accuracy of an estimate decreases with project duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Scrum team will often continually revise their estimate for a project. As each sprint is completed the team can recalculate their velocity and revise the backlog (and backlog estimates). With this approach their estimates get better over time, but this is of no use if you are forced to give an estimate before work has even started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-02-05T13:35:38.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17373" CreationDate="2016-02-05T16:25:10.063" Score="11" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For agile projects, a basic formula for estimating budget is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;(totalStoryPoints / velocity * teamHoursPerSprint) + nonLaborCosts = budgetEstimate&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results should be reported as an estimated range using statistical &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_interval&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;confidence intervals&lt;/a&gt; or a &quot;high, low, average&quot; method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Estimate Budget Using Iterations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;secret&quot; to estimating agile budgets is to estimate the number of iterations needed to clear the backlog or reach a release milestone. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimate your initial project backlog in story points.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sum all the story points; that's your numerator.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the mean of your historical or guesstimated velocity as your denominator.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Divide your story points by your velocity to get the number of sprints you expect will be needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multiply the number of sprints by 40 hours per week per team member to get your labor cost.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add capital costs, equipment costs, maintenance costs, training costs, or other items that might be charged against the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Report the final total as a &lt;em&gt;range&lt;/em&gt; with formal or informal &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_interval&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;confidence intervals&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This method gives a reasonable picture of the planned budget while still computing the Project Backlog in story points. This method doesn't rely on any awkward or misleading &lt;em&gt;points ↔ hours&lt;/em&gt; conversions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Basic Example Without Statistics&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assume you have 20 user stories in your backlog, and a Scrum Team of 6 people including the Scrum Master and Product Owner. Each story is estimated at 5 story points, and your historical average velocity is 10 story points per sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Total story points in Product Backlog.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;20 stories @ 5 points each = 100 story points&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimated iterations (a.k.a. &quot;sprints&quot;).&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;100 storyPoints / averageVelocity = 10 sprints&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Average labor cost per two-week iteration.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;labor cost per week for 6-person team: $3,200  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;labor cost per sprint for six-person team: $6,400  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;labor cost for project: $6,400 per sprint * 10 sprints = $64,000&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other non-labor costs (we'll call it $50k for this exercise).&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Servers and workstations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Software licenses.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Monthly service fees for the planned project duration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Et cetera.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimated project total.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;$104,000&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reported budget range, without rigorous math and using sensible fudge factors.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Reasonable low end (80%): &lt;code&gt;$104k * 0.80 = $83,200&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Actual computed budget&lt;/strong&gt; (100%): &lt;code&gt;$104k * 1.00 = $104,000&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Acceptable high end (120%): &lt;code&gt;$104k * 1.20 = $124,800&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your project plan, you report your computed budget as the &lt;em&gt;budget forecast&lt;/em&gt; (a.k.a. your planning value), the low end as your &quot;stretch goal&quot;, and your high end as the point beyond which management will consider the project out of tolerance. This gives a reasonable picture of the planned costs while still computing the Project Backlog and delivery schedule from story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-02-12T15:32:55.620" LastActivityDate="2016-02-12T15:32:55.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17171" CreationDate="2016-02-05T16:53:08.183" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short Answer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly define your approach for estimation with your team.  If all user stories will have sub-tasks, then estimate the sub-tasks only and it will roll up correctly to the user story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16148" LastActivityDate="2016-02-05T16:53:08.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17383" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17385" CreationDate="2016-02-07T04:29:27.240" Score="2" ViewCount="146" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two months ago, I joined a software development company. They have just assigned me my first big task that consist in overhauling all the front end of one of our Rails apps. The project is still in the design department, but I will start to work on it soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that management asked me the typical &quot;when you will finish&quot;. The truth is that I have no idea. Writing the HTML and CSS is not really complicated, but the controllers are a mess and I expect to discover lots of problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this two months I've seen quite a lot of peers sleeping under the desk - this is Japan - and this is something I am obviously not going to accept, so I want to make the risks clear before even starting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what I thought I will write once I get the definitive design:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Project: Redesign of X app.&#xA;&#xA;Scope of the project:&#xA;- Write all the templates of the new design using HAML language: X lines of&#xA;  code affected.&#xA;- Write all the new stylesheets using X framework: X lines of code &#xA;  affected.&#xA;- Refactor controllers and correct possible inconsistencies: X lines of &#xA;  code possibly affected.&#xA;&#xA;Description of tasks:&#xA;- Page 1:      x hours est.&#xA;- Page 2:      x hours est.&#xA;- Page 3:      x hours est.&#xA;- Component 1: x hours est. &#xA;...&#xA;&#xA;Total estimation of project duration: XXX hours.&#xA;&#xA;Risks:&#xA;- This is the first time that we replace all the front end of the&#xA;  application. All the estimations have been done without having a &#xA;  real example to compare, but when we added Page5 and Page6  in the &#xA;  Issue #xxxx, took x hours work. This is the metric I am using to predict&#xA;  the duration of the tasks.&#xA;- I have detected some issues in the controllers' code that will necessarily&#xA;  have to be addressed while performing this project. Other unknown issues&#xA;  are expected to arise.&#xA;&#xA;For this reason, I predict _high probability of deviations_ on the original&#xA;estimation that I think should be taken into account.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Appart from the awful grammar (feel free to edit), is there any other point that should be added to this document?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, this text just came out of my head, but I am sure that there are methodologies that are already being used in other companies. &lt;strong&gt;Is there an standard way to communicate estimations&lt;/strong&gt;? Or does this document has a name in Project Management? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: This question is cross-posted from Workplace because I didn't know the existence of this portal. Please, tell me if there's any problem with that.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22118" LastActivityDate="2016-02-08T13:58:26.953" Title="Present a document with estimations of duration of work and risks" Tags="&lt;deadline&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17383" CreationDate="2016-02-07T12:34:35.727" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most people to whom we provide our deadlines do not care how we arrived at them.  They want a date certain when you will deliver and that date becomes largely unmovable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those that you have estimating the work need to provide their work and duration estimates in a best, worst, and most likely values, so that you can understand the range of probabilistic results as you summarize these values to the project level.  Since you have so much uncertainty in the work, you need to use the planning values on the outside of that range, like P80 or P90.  Therefore, you will have a lot of contingency built in your promises.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also need to document very clearly the planning assumptions that went into the P80 or P90 planning value, such as the size and skill mix of the team you expect to have, the behavior of external dependencies, etc.  I don't think the risk that you have not done this before will resonate.  You need to break this risk down into smaller drivers that I think will sell more.  The ultimate outcome of identifying the risk to sell the need for a bit of contingency reserves, so that if even your fat planning value starts to fail, you have something to fall back on.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, it is very important you have a solid way of measuring progress so that you can report early and often any unfavorable variances to avoid surprises.  This is hard to do because no one really wants to express bad news and no one wants to hear them.  You have to get past that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-02-07T12:34:35.727" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17383" CreationDate="2016-02-07T12:39:24.190" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oh boy, there are a few red flags in your story (some of them you've already identified yourself). These are the big ones I see:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Management asked &quot;when will you finish&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's somewhat great: they &lt;em&gt;ask&lt;/em&gt; you. That's half the battle. However, if they're asking with that wording, they are asking for a &lt;em&gt;promise&lt;/em&gt;, which is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; different from an &lt;em&gt;estimate&lt;/em&gt;. Managers tend to do that, leading to some kind of &quot;negotiation&quot; with their own employees. Whenever you communicate with them, be clear and distinguish between &lt;em&gt;estimates&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;promises&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've seen [peers] sleeping under the desk [...] this is something I am obviously not going to accept&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, that's a sign of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_march_(project_management)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Death Marches&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54259.Death_March&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;recommended reading&lt;/a&gt;), and not sustainable. It's good that you realize this. Be strong on this one, for your own sake/health as well as the project. On a side note, ask yourself whether you want to be in this kind of environment at all...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Redesign of X app.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Uh oh! In my personal experience, nothing is as hard as re-doing an existing feature. Joel Spolsky wrote a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;quite worthwhile article&lt;/a&gt; on the subject a few years ago, basically saying you should &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; rewrite a product from scratch. A nuance not easily found in the article is that you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; start off a project to create something to &lt;em&gt;compete&lt;/em&gt; with the existing product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I mention this is becaues developers and their users/managers tend to ask when the rewrite-project is done, but include the impossible requirement &quot;And it has to do at least &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; I could do with the old version.&quot;. This'll make it impossible to give estimates, if not even impossible to finish the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, write about your project as a &lt;em&gt;new&lt;/em&gt; product that'll compete with the old one. Any feature for the new product has to be explicitly mentioned. Only that way can you estimate with some confidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there an standard way to communicate estimations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. There are many. Most currently popular ways come from &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile&lt;/a&gt; methodologies. I &lt;em&gt;highly&lt;/em&gt; recommend reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9267.Agile_Estimating_and_Planning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Estimating and Planning&lt;/a&gt;. Some of the key points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Estimates &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; be off&lt;/strong&gt;. You and your manager need to accept that. They will be off by &lt;em&gt;a lot&lt;/em&gt; early in the project, as much as a factor 0.25 - 4.00. This is known as the &lt;a href=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Cone_of_Uncertainty.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cone of Uncertainty&lt;/a&gt;. In other words, if you estimate it'll take you 15 weeks to complete the project, it might in reality be 60. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Iterate and re-estimate.&lt;/strong&gt; The best (perhaps even only) way to get better estimates is &lt;em&gt;do some of the work&lt;/em&gt; and then re-estimate. Doing the parts with many unknowns as early as possible will help reduce uncertainty in estimates. Re-estimate often (e.g. after every iteration) to include new information. Communicate these re-estimations a.s.a.p.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Estimate in relative feature-size (e.g. &quot;Story Points&quot;)&lt;/strong&gt; first. This is easier than estimating in &quot;man hours&quot; or even &quot;time left&quot;. Then do some work for a few iterations, and determine your &quot;Velocity&quot; (number of story points you can do in an iteration). If you have to you can combine your velocity with the number of story points left for a release to &lt;em&gt;estimate&lt;/em&gt; when you'll be done.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Know why long-term estimations are required&lt;/strong&gt; and include a margin of error accordingly. If the PR team needs to create a big campaign for a certain date, or if HR needs to schedule a company-wide training, there are external deadlines coupled to your estimates. Because your estimates &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; be off, you need to include a margin for error. However, if the estimates are neede to assess whether it's &quot;worth it&quot; a less precise estimate may be required.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Give &lt;em&gt;bounded&lt;/em&gt; estimations&lt;/strong&gt;, for example &quot;the project will take 100 - 250 hours&quot;. Use this to introduce the cone of uncertainty to your managers, and convince them to let you work a few iterations on the product, so you can give them more precise estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But wait: I haven't quite answered the question yet...!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The actual question you have is about a standard way to communicate estimations. You even include a format you'd currently go for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First up, a lot of my text above can be summarized as these directs points of interest in your current setup:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A high level / one-page project description is still great, though perhaps not for estimations and feature lists;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't talk about &quot;Redesign&quot;, instead focus on a &quot;New Product X&quot; (that coincidentally does a lot the original product does as well);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Setting a Scope seems like a very smart thing to do (though you may want to call it &quot;initial scope&quot;, as the business people can and should change their mind along the way, be it at a cost);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Description of tasks&quot; I'd replace with a high level overview of features, but whatever you do leave out the hours estimations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't include a total estimation &lt;em&gt;here&lt;/em&gt;, unless you directly refer to the other docs (see below);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &quot;Risks&quot; section is great. You can add the suggestion of doing that work asap, so you can asap change directions or cancel the project if needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't go on the defensive like you do in the last part, but instead (a) be clear in your docs that you &lt;em&gt;estimate&lt;/em&gt; and not &lt;em&gt;promise&lt;/em&gt;, and communicate &lt;em&gt;outside&lt;/em&gt; informally what you feel is the difference between the two.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, to finally answer the question, the standard way to communicate estimations I'd recommend:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Utilize &lt;strong&gt;Story Points&lt;/strong&gt; (or similar construct) and &lt;strong&gt;Velocity&lt;/strong&gt; to convey estimates;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a &lt;strong&gt;Product Backlog&lt;/strong&gt; for a high level prioritization of features;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a &lt;strong&gt;Sprint Backlog&lt;/strong&gt; for each iteration with the next few product backlog items to work on;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a &lt;strong&gt;Burndown Chart&lt;/strong&gt; to show progress and estimated time left;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most Agile methods (and &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt; in particular) have the above artifacts in one way or another, and I highly recommend using those for your purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, I recommend reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9267.Agile_Estimating_and_Planning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Estimating and Planning&lt;/a&gt; because it basically is a long answer to your question. It introduces all of the above artifacts quite clearly. Searching online for those tools will also help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5282" LastEditorUserId="5282" LastEditDate="2016-02-08T13:58:26.953" LastActivityDate="2016-02-08T13:58:26.953" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17386" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-07T15:28:09.753" Score="1" ViewCount="572" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following is from &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/agile/delivery-vehicles/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;JIRA&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;User stories are sketched out by the product owner, then the full&#xA;  product team collectively decide the more detailed requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These are the granular pieces of work that help define the&#xA;  implementation items for the story and the upcoming sprint. In the&#xA;  above example, there are a set of tasks required to make the account&#xA;  feature work: database changes, new server logic, as well as new user&#xA;  interface components. These tasks should be fleshed out during&#xA;  estimation of the user story and linked in the team's issue tracker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I thought User Stories were written out like &lt;strong&gt;As a &amp;lt;type of user&amp;gt;, I want &amp;lt;goal&amp;gt; so that I &amp;lt;receive benefit&amp;gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. I am a bit confused, where do I write the granularity (the lower-level individual tasks that are associated with developing the item listed in the User Story).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, do we not use acceptance criteria in JIRA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21062" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2016-02-09T06:39:34.923" LastActivityDate="2016-02-09T18:55:09.650" Title="Writing the Granularity of the Task - Where?" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17386" CreationDate="2016-02-07T17:41:44.707" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jira is just a tool, don't let it dictate your process. Instead, decide how you will do your work and then figure out how to make Jira work to your needs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Acceptance Criteria:&lt;/strong&gt; You should always use these. They are critical to an effective User Story. Without the AC you don't have a way to measure if the customer need is met. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tasks:&lt;/strong&gt; Jira taxonomy supports Tasks under User Stories. Remember that Tasks are not User Stories and don't need to follow the &quot;As a..&quot; format. Tasks are the development team breaking down the work to complete the User Story. For example, if you're baking a cake you could have a Dry Goods, Wet Goods, Baking, Serving. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-02-07T17:41:44.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17383" CreationDate="2016-02-07T18:15:27.773" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even before agile we had a concept called &quot;Order of Magnitude Estimating&quot;. It's a tool that has been pretty much forgotten, in large part because companies are so date driven, to meet quarterly stock reports or other regular &quot;status&quot; checks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@Jeroen provides some great mechanisms to get better estimates and I support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And at the same time you need to change communication to management. Try and bring them back to what an estimate really is, an educated guess. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Range:&lt;/strong&gt; So the very first thing is never give a single date. Instead give a realistic and pessimistic date. Never give an optimistic date (the one where everything goes right, because it never does).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Estimate and then Velocity:&lt;/strong&gt; When you do give the estimate range you say something along the lines of, &quot;Here is an initial estimate, based on what we know now. This estimate is at best 50% accurate to hit in this date window.&quot; Then you go on with &quot;To get a more accurate sense of when we will be done, we need to break the project up into small deliverables (Agile) and measure our actual progress. A quarter of the way into the expected project length I'll report a projected delivery date that is based on actual work completed. This will be 70-80% accurate. And halfway through the project we should have enough data to get a 90% or so read on our actual completion date. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is how we should be doing Scope driven projects. The reality of course is a bit harder. We've got forty or so years of people taking Estimates as Commitments and we need to start changing this back. It can be done, I've been doing it in the organizations I work for. It takes constant communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a link to a PowerPoint deck I use when educating teams and management on this challenge. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/jbancroftconnors/agile-schedule-vs-scope-workflow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scope vs. Schedule in Agile&lt;/a&gt;. Feel free to use this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-02-07T18:15:27.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17389" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-08T00:11:29.723" Score="2" ViewCount="923" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of asking, “What do you want?” or even “What do you want the system to do?” an approach based on usage and user goals asks, “What do you need to do with the product?” Your users might not be accustomed to a dialogue of this nature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I come to PM.StackExchange to ask this question, what questions do YOU ask your users and stakeholders to find out what they want and need?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21062" LastActivityDate="2016-02-09T19:01:14.127" Title="What Questions do you Ask the User to Elicit Requirements?" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17389" CreationDate="2016-02-08T01:15:06.267" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; on what the project actually is. Here are some examples of different scenarios:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say the client wants a website for their small business - instead of asking &quot;What features do you want on your site?&quot;, I'd ask something like &quot;What is your typical customer, and what are they looking for?&quot;. This lets you figure out what's really needed vs. what the client thinks they need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the situation of a photoshoot, &quot;What did you have in mind?&quot; will get broad answers, like &quot;Good looking models with our product&quot; or &quot;something to make our brand stand out.&quot; Not particularly helpful, so instead we'll focus again on the end user's needs, not the customer's ideas - &quot;Who will be seeing the pictures?&quot; &quot;Where will they be put and how will they be used?&quot; &quot;Are there brands that do the kind of things you're looking for?&quot; (for the last one, I typically only take the successful brands into account).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps give you an idea - instead of asking the client what they want, I try to understand the client's customers and cater to them. It's usually a very different project when put in that perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22121" LastActivityDate="2016-02-08T01:15:06.267" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17391" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17392" CreationDate="2016-02-08T12:03:19.243" Score="4" ViewCount="523" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found on several sources that people claim that there is Scrum 2.0 or even 3.0 like in here &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumcrazy.com/file/view/Scrum30_HiddenSecrets_AgileDenverMarch2014.pdf/499980506/Scrum30_HiddenSecrets_AgileDenverMarch2014.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scrumcrazy.com/file/view/Scrum30_HiddenSecrets_AgileDenverMarch2014.pdf/499980506/Scrum30_HiddenSecrets_AgileDenverMarch2014.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although it's not officially confirmed anywhere. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any Scrum 2.0 or 3.0? If so where can I find well defined and reliable guide for it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7819" LastActivityDate="2020-11-19T13:26:53.160" Title="Is Scrum updated to 2.0 or 3.0?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17391" CreationDate="2016-02-08T12:26:46.873" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been five revisions to the Scrum guide. The linked PDF is talking about the lessons learned, which eventually triggered these revisions. It is common that not all Scrum enthusiasts are aware that changes have been made, I meet them often, but it is just called Scrum and no need for 2.0 or 3.0.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the first publication of the Scrum Guide in 2010, and its&#xA;incremental updates in 2011, 2013, 2016, 2017 and 2020, Jeff and Ken established the&#xA;globally recognized body of knowledge of Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latest version of the Official Scrum guide can always be found at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.scrumguides.org/&lt;/a&gt; .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Revisions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The official &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/revisions.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;revisions page&lt;/a&gt; shows the changes overtime, here are other sources that describe the changes in more details:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2011: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumcrazy.com/The+2011+Scrum+Guide+-+A+Lot+of+Changes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.scrumcrazy.com/The+2011+Scrum+Guide+-+A+Lot+of+Changes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2013: &lt;a href=&quot;http://static1.squarespace.com/static/51e3f87ce4b0031a73dac256/t/51f7de63e4b0eda27e6ea4ef/1375198819807/Scrum+Guide+2013+%28Changes%29.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://static1.squarespace.com/static/51e3f87ce4b0031a73dac256/t/51f7de63e4b0eda27e6ea4ef/1375198819807/Scrum+Guide+2013+%28Changes%29.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2016: &lt;a href=&quot;https://blog.scrum.org/updates-scrum-guide-5-scrum-values-take-center-stage/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://blog.scrum.org/updates-scrum-guide-5-scrum-values-take-center-stage/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2020: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/scrum-guide-2020-and-2017-side-side-comparison&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/scrum-guide-2020-and-2017-side-side-comparison&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2020-11-19T13:26:53.160" LastActivityDate="2020-11-19T13:26:53.160" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17386" CreationDate="2016-02-08T17:10:22.660" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;User stories&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are requirements from user's perspective.&#xA;As team discuss the requirements, they will identify the various tasks that need to develop and deliver it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Story and Tasks&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may find it easier to break down a story into tasks/sub tasks to represent the UI, business logic, database tasks if you are following a layered architecture.&#xA;Or perhaps one or more stories/tasks for different components/service in a microservice architecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Jira, you could do it many ways. For example, (a) link tasks to the main story   (b) create a theme/epic and link all the stories to it to show the association and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technical stories need not be verbose, just enough documentation would suffice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Acceptance Criteria (AC)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AC is important especially if there different conditions to meet in a story/requirement,  as you will need to elaborate them in your AC field so that TDD, BDD and unit testing can benefit from it.&#xA;This way you make sure the system you develop satisfy all the requirements from the user/customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22080" LastActivityDate="2016-02-08T17:10:22.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17395" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-08T17:13:02.773" Score="4" ViewCount="1149" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two common reasons why stories or bugs get pulled into a sprint in Scrum (where I work):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Issue was triaged (usually critical/blocker field issues)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint was underestimated, and thus items from the backlog get pulled in to keep people busy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases, most items (especially bugs) do not have a story point estimate or time estimate. The first question is: Is it important to have story point estimates on these items &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; they are brought into an ongoing sprint? And if so, when and how should this estimation take place? We only have sprint planning every 2 weeks (our sprints are two weeks) and I'm assuming it's unproductive to schedule a sprint planning meeting for every bug we bring in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use JIRA + JIRA Agile as our tooling to track Scrum sprints. The only functional reason I can think of needing proper estimation for are the reports. Also I worry our velocity will be negatively impacted if we pull in items into the sprint without an estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13583" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-02-15T20:27:47.620" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T09:01:18.467" Title="Should stories be properly estimated before being pulled into an ongoing sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17395" CreationDate="2016-02-08T19:11:19.790" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are using Jira at AOL right now, so hopefully I can provide some Good Practice and practical advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off, let's separate this into two answers: &lt;strong&gt;New User Stories, Defects/Bugs&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Defects/Bugs added in a Sprint&lt;/strong&gt;: Don't Estimate- Reduce Capacity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So at AOL we face this issue a lot. We run a digital advertising system so it has a lot of customer escalation. We don't operate a maintenance team, so bugs end up with the feature development teams. Recognizing that interrupting a sprint is bad, we took a hard look at bugs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We made an agreement with the business that only show stopping bugs (Blockers) could interrupt a sprint. When a Blocker comes in, it gets immediate priority. It isn't estimated and isn't even part of the official backlog. It is side work that has to be done and impacts the team's capacity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All other bugs get assigned to the backlog. We run in two week sprints and have at least two teams per feature area so there is always a team starting a sprint every week. These bugs get groomed and estimated per normal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With Jira we maintain a separate &quot;Defect&quot; backlog (specifically issues found in production). This backlog is groomed by a triage team and then all feature teams have access to it. During sprint planning teams are instructed to take roughly 20% of their capacity if Technical Debt. First priority in Tech Debt is always current production defects. This usually translates to our teams working on 1-2 bugs a Sprint, in addition to their new feature work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;New User Stories pulled into a sprint&lt;/strong&gt; - ALWAYS ESTIMATE&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A healthy product backlog should have two to three sprints of &quot;Ready&quot; work. That is stories that meet the INVEST criteria for a User Story. If you don't have this, then that's a bigger issue to tackle, which will make your team much more effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have a well groomed backlog, then what you want to do is take the time to groom new stories. If you are halfway into the sprint and there is no work to be done, then have a one hour meeting and groom the very top of the backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is critical, not just because you want all stories estimated. Taking in a story that is not fully defined is a great way to waste effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Story could not be important anymore&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The story could be ill defined and a lot of time wasted on re-work to meet &quot;Done&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The story could be ill designed and lead to bugs in the system.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Poorly written user stories can take up to &lt;strong&gt;24x&lt;/strong&gt; longer to fix, than they took to write the first time (based on research by Jeff Sutherland). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond the above advice, the single biggest thing I would recommend is holding regular Backlog Refinement Meetings. The Dev Team and the Product Owner working together to ensure your stories meeting the INVEST criteria. A lot of teams are used to having a &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Definition of Done&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;. You also need a &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Definition of Ready&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;, what does the story have to have before development can be started. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-02-08T19:11:19.790" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14399" CreationDate="2016-02-08T20:58:25.183" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an IT auditor, i would expect that there be guidance (policies and procedures) for the process you are following, that you can describe the process you are following, and that you can prove you are following the process. Step 1 of the audit is to make sure that the documented process (policies and procedures) are sufficient to mitigate risk. If step 1 passes the audit, then i ask for proof that the process was followed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What i have seen with Agile is that there seems to be a false perception that documentation is a waste of time that hinders the creative flow of the agile process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22126" LastActivityDate="2016-02-08T20:58:25.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17297" CreationDate="2016-02-08T22:03:48.867" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can change the gantt to show  resources names and work complete in hours, but it will not break it down by hours per resource, just total hours completed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To do this: right click on the gantt &gt; bar styles.  Make sure that Task is highlighted.  Then click on the Text tab on the bottom.  Where it says &quot;Right&quot; type Resource Names, and where it says &quot;Left&quot; type Actual Work.  When you click OK, you then will see the gantt with resource names and work completed.  You can see an example here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://imgur.com/JMN7oCU&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.imgur.com/JMN7oCUl.png&quot; title=&quot;source: imgur.com&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully that can be an alternative to having hours worked per resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22128" LastActivityDate="2016-02-08T22:03:48.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16846" CreationDate="2016-02-08T22:26:03.723" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have generated a WBS in the WBS field of MS Project, all tasks/lines will be numbered.  If I need to get around this by not adding tasks to the overall project WBS, then I have a section at the top of my schedule where I put Program Milestones that are linked to my program schedule below.  This way I can add as many milestones as I need and will not change the overall structure of the agreed upon program schedule.  It seems to give me some flexibility.  Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://imgur.com/XOddx10&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.imgur.com/XOddx10l.png&quot; title=&quot;source: imgur.com&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22128" LastActivityDate="2016-02-08T22:26:03.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16486" CreationDate="2016-02-08T22:41:04.267" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;July is right, it seems to just be a shift of your bars showing the bottom bar completely.  If you would like to change that bar to be thinner and higher, you can right click on your gantt and click on bar styles.  Have Tasks highlighted and change the Shape section at the bottom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://imgur.com/wlAaqc2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.imgur.com/wlAaqc2l.png&quot; title=&quot;source: imgur.com&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22128" LastActivityDate="2016-02-08T22:41:04.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17401" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22018" CreationDate="2016-02-09T09:16:52.847" Score="2" ViewCount="3332" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am designing a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bpmn.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BPMN&lt;/a&gt; business process and figured out that I do not understand, how subprocesses with multiple end events are managed. I'd like to mention that I am talking not about compensation events, which lead from collapsed subprocess, but about &quot;normal&quot; end events. Let say I have the following setup:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/t36pv.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/t36pv.png&quot; alt=&quot;Main process and processes 1 and 2&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/U8HoG.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/U8HoG.png&quot; alt=&quot;Example subprocess&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I want here is that in case of default end-event was triggered Main process would continue to &quot;Do other stuff&quot; activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have studied BPMN standard and lots of online articles, but I could not find examples of collapsed subprocesses with multiple end events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be most grateful if somebody more experienced provided me with some info on whether this setup is correct or (in case not) how to do what I have described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21638" LastEditorUserId="21638" LastEditDate="2016-02-09T11:29:50.600" LastActivityDate="2017-12-15T22:02:56.510" Title="Collapsed sub-process with multiple end events (BPMN)" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;process-engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17395" CreationDate="2016-02-09T17:13:29.710" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If bugs and production issues occur frequently, then you could add some &lt;strong&gt;unplanned time&lt;/strong&gt; to your sprint as explained in Mike's blog &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/how-full-to-fill-a-sprint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/how-full-to-fill-a-sprint&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should estimate the new stories that are pulled in before starting work on it. This should be a quicker and shorter session than the normal sprint planning as you are only taking into account the new stories. When you are doing sprint planning, you could select &lt;strong&gt;a set of potential candidates&lt;/strong&gt; (stories in the backlog which are on top priority) to pull into if your team run out of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if that is a regular occurrence, then you should review your planning for you might be not considering the total capacity/velocity of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22080" LastActivityDate="2016-02-09T17:13:29.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17403" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-09T18:22:17.087" Score="5" ViewCount="252" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am the PM for a smallish-medium software development team at a large IT services company. One of the developers is knowledgeable and generally a nice guy, but has a tendency to ignore &quot;small&quot; requests I send by email. I say they are small requests because they aren't critical issues but they help keep me informed and keep the team running smoothly, like when I ask him to help another team member get a particular software version or provide information on our branching strategy. I have started keeping track of these small, ignored requests and they average out to about one per week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know sometimes he just spaces out, but I don't know if all of these are innocent &quot;Sorry, I just missed your email&quot; incidents because sometimes he won't respond even after I send a follow-up email, and I need to physically go to his desk and ask. I feel like he unilaterally decides which of my emails are worth responding to. On other occasions, he has also made decisions that were either not in his scope or should have at least been consulted with me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I handle this? &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.askamanager.org/2014/06/should-i-ask-if-im-going-to-be-fired-ive-been-too-pushy-at-work-and-more.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This website&lt;/a&gt; suggests confronting the team member, but as a PM I have no formal authority, he has already shown a (willful or not) lack of regard for what I ask him to do, and it feels like something I should be able to handle myself without escalating to our manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13325" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-02-09T21:56:39.357" LastActivityDate="2016-02-10T11:02:42.500" Title="Team member frequently disregards &quot;small&quot; requests" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17395" CreationDate="2016-02-09T18:50:20.660" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes you should estimate any stories that get pulled into a sprint, especially if you consistently estimate all stories during sprint planning.  The value of the estimate is primarily in the discussion around how the estimate is derived.  The estimation process helps the team discover risks, requirements, and makes implicit assumptions explicit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for defects, it depends on your process.  If you never estimate defects, then don't start estimating them.  If you estimate defects during sprint planning, then estimate defects when they get pulled in as well.  Consistent practice of estimation techniques (no matter if they are accurate or not) will make your velocity metric a useful tool for the team in their ability to plan sprints in the future where not as many items get pulled in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2016-02-09T18:50:20.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17386" CreationDate="2016-02-09T18:55:09.650" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;User stories and tasks are different things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The user story and acceptance criteria answer the who, what, why questions and describe the work in terms of business value to a specific user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tasks are implementation details that answer the how questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most tools like Jira, Rally, VersionOne have multiple ways of storing user stories, tasks, and acceptance criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may have a totally flat item in these tools with free-form text describing the different entities or the more common format of a &quot;Story&quot; entity that contains the the user story and AC details, and children &quot;Task&quot; entities that contain the implementation steps.  You may want to reference the Jira help utility to understand and see examples of how the different entities in Jira are intended to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2016-02-09T18:55:09.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17389" CreationDate="2016-02-09T19:01:14.127" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The user or customer isn't trying to do stuff for the sake of doing it.  They are trying to make decisions based off of the information they receive from whatever product you are developing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there is no silver bullet question to help elicit user requirements it is often helpful to make sure you understand what decisions or actions your audience is trying to take during or immediately after their interaction with the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The UX field is heavily focused on eliciting user requirements.  You may want to check out &quot;Lean UX&quot; as a resource to get ideas on how to elicit requirements.  Many of these techniques also apply to customer requirement gathering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2016-02-09T19:01:14.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17408" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-09T19:20:04.423" Score="-1" ViewCount="217" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a product suite comprising four products and an underlying data structure.  In the past, we've managed each product's work individually, from backlog to release (as, say, &quot;XYZ Product July Release&quot;) and incorporated all work into that project under a single project manager.  This is how we delivered minimum viable product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that minimum viable products are delivered, we are bringing solutions to the market that leverage capabilities across multiple products.  For example, we are releasing the &quot;Retail Market Solution,&quot; which may involve a change in the XYZ, ABC, and 123 products.  To promote consistency and interoperability, we're managing the solution as a single project that incorporates design and development for the solution as a whole across all products.  Because of this approach, there is a prioritization that happens one level above the individual product backlogs (usually through strategic planning).  So to that Retail Market Solution, we assign one project manager and that person works with the product managers and product owners to identify backlog items that support that solution...and from there, the project is born (and managed either in sprints or in a waterfall fashion, depending on size, project manager, and available staffing/organizational support).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is this:  in a model where you're managing product backlogs that capture things outside the solutions list that are small yet still high priority (think defects or incidents...or even very very small enhancements, like a field label change), how do you work those into the project management worklist?  If I have 7 project managers and each one is assigned a project that spans multiple products (ie, a solution), where do the smaller items fit into the cycle?  How do we keep them from falling through the cracks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks very much!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22140" LastActivityDate="2016-05-16T21:37:39.300" Title="Managing defects or incidents in a solution based project model" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;&lt;defect-fixing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17403" CreationDate="2016-02-09T21:54:07.933" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have one or more process problems involving communication and prioritization. You need additional information in order to inspect-and-adapt your team's process in a collaborative and sustainable way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Your Problems, Restated&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You make the following points in your original post:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I say they are small requests because they aren't critical issues but they help keep me informed and keep the team running smoothly[.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I feel like he unilaterally decides which of my emails are worth responding to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have started keeping track of these small, ignored requests and they average out to about one per week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are what I consider the key elements of your situation. I will examine each of them in detail below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis of the Problems Described&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Assessing Information You've Presented&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're asking a couple of things that are tightly-coupled. I have tried to tease them apart for analysis, but in the end they remain closely linked. However, by breaking them down, the specifics become addressable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You yourself make the statement that these aren't mission-critical issues that are being dropped on the floor. If &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; don't think the issues are important, why should the developer? If they &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; important, then you need to find a way to effectively communicate the level of real importance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You make a &quot;feeling statement&quot; about the ignored emails. Your feelings are largely irrelevant to pragmatic project management. Instead, you need to &lt;em&gt;ask&lt;/em&gt; the developer why these requests aren't priorities for him so that you're acting on information &lt;em&gt;from the developer&lt;/em&gt; rather than feelings which are subjective and unprovable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An average of one small &lt;em&gt;request&lt;/em&gt; (rather than a key deliverable) being missed or ignored per week is not a high volume. You are attaching a rather high level of importance to something which seems, from an outside perspective, to be a statistically small level of communications failures.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the whole, it appears that you are communicating low-priority information and expecting a high-priority response or acknowledgment. Your expectations aren't being met, and you are having a reaction to that. However, you have not clearly identified the process problem involved yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Extracting the Core Issues&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The central issues seem to be that you are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chasing information which is probably more important to you than you are effectively communicating to anyone else.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Concerned about a communications issue, but lack information about the developer's perspective or context.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, you are operating in an information vacuum. That is never constructive. There is clearly a disconnect in your communications process, as well as in the operating assumptions between you and the developer. You both need more (and better) information in order to resolve the process problems here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Possible Solutions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are any number of ways to approach this issue, but there are some key elements you definitely need to take on board. Specifically, consider adopting one or more of the following steps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the &quot;small requests&quot; aren't that important, or if they are being addressed most of the time, then you can simply treat it as a very minor problem when you have larger dragons to slay.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the &quot;small requests&quot; are &lt;strong&gt;actually important&lt;/strong&gt;, which would contradict how you've presented them here, then you need to ensure they are tracked by your project, visible to the team, and their priority clearly communicated to everyone involved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have a communications issue of any kind, you need to open a discussion about it. This doesn't have to be an adversarial confrontation, but you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; need to open a dialog so that neither you or the developer is operating in an information vacuum.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need to understand the developer's time constraints and priorities to see how they align with the project. Whether or not he is ignoring your messages, he is likely making prioritization decisions based on his available bandwidth and his understanding of &lt;em&gt;his&lt;/em&gt; immediate priorities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If email isn't working for you, stop relying on email as your communications mechanism. Sometimes face-to-face is the best way to communicate about something, especially if it's too important to get lost in the information stream.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acknowledge that lower-priority items are &lt;em&gt;lower priority&lt;/em&gt;. Not everything can be Job #1 at the same time, so lower priority tasks must give way to more urgent matters.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recognize that even &quot;small requests&quot; can be time consuming. They create task-switching overhead, and science tells us that it often takes almost half an hour to regain flow in addition to the time taken up by the task itself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hammer out a process everyone can agree on. If the process and the priorities are not explicit, then you are operating in a gray (and largely unmanageable) area.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, unless this developer hates you personally and with passion (which is not in evidence as presented here), then it is a &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; failure. As the project manager, identifying process problems and defining process controls is your job. Luckily, defining process controls and communication strategies isn't something you have to do on your own; you can collaborate &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; your team to identify a more effective process!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-02-09T21:54:07.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17403" CreationDate="2016-02-10T08:19:54.500" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a PM I understand it is for you to resolve this situation. It is good idea to confront the Team member, but before you do so also some bit of analysis is required interms of the reporting hierarchy if there is one. If it is matrix organization where the reporting of the person is with someone else then it will be good idea to include that person as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a streamlined process of tracking the requirement with priority and expected closure dates over a simple tracker or dashboard will definitely help as this will bring in more clarity for the individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12193" LastActivityDate="2016-02-10T08:19:54.500" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17403" CreationDate="2016-02-10T11:02:42.500" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A very thorough analysis is already given in CodeGnome's answer. Perhaps some bottom lines would be helpfull:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;E-mail is very a bad tool for most issue tracking. Use an issue tracker, backlog with post-it's, shared Excel sheet. Anything will beat e-mail. Make sure a central location has the issues visible to everyone, indicating priority from business perspective.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Low priority issues should be placed in the issue tracker and discussed with preferably the whole team, at a designated event. During this event, you can also indicate scope and priority.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the developer is determining scope, and you don't want that to happen, make sure scope is determined another way. Either you set it, discuss it with the team then set it, or a stakeholder perhaps? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The case you present gives an overall feeling that transparency, clarity and self-inspection could be improved. Have a dialogue with the team, determine expectations between all parties involved in the project. If something's not going smoothly, have a group discussion on how to make it better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17421" LastActivityDate="2016-02-10T11:02:42.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17413" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17414" CreationDate="2016-02-10T15:35:51.820" Score="8" ViewCount="831" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to create some short narratives that capture the &quot;who&quot;, &quot;what&quot;, and &quot;why not&quot; to show some of our stakeholders why we need a minor policy change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, imagine I'm designing a control panel for an evil overlord and I need to convince him that requiring a big red self destruct button on all main control panels is a bad idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;As a dying enemy, &#xA;I press big red self destruct buttons &#xA;so I can foil Live Corp's plans for world domination.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normal user stories specify how we want the system to behave. Here I am specifying how the system should not behave or how an undesirable system would behave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the term for such things?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(to be clear, I probably won't write them in the 3-clause format when presenting them to the stakeholders)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22152" LastActivityDate="2016-11-08T21:20:44.493" Title="What is the term for an anti-user-story?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17413" CreationDate="2016-02-10T15:59:21.623" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I love your scenario - very fun. I think I've heard Mike Cohn actually call them &quot;anti-user stories&quot; in a talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frankly though, I don't think it matters what you call them because they're a very short-term device. I wouldn't bother actually recording these anywhere because as soon as they're shared, they should result in real user stories that address the concern. For example, super-villain Dr. Terrible submits a user story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a super-villain, I would like my weapon to fire a death ray so that&#xA;  I can permanently vanquish my nemesis, Captain Mallet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and to show this is a bad idea, you write the anti-user story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a super-hero, I would love for my enemy's weapon to have a simple&#xA;  death ray function so I can take it an use it against him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is useful to show a major flaw, but only for a moment until we create a real user story to account for it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a super-villain, I would like my weapon to verify my identity&#xA;  before firing so Captain Mallet can't steal it and use it against me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In Real Life&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, if you prefer a real-world example, the anti-story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a hacker, I would like the account login process to use a simple&#xA;  authentication method so that I can more easily break into accounts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;would quickly be replaced with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a registered user, I would like my account protected with&#xA;  two-factor authentication to provide an appropriate level of security&#xA;  to my account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2016-02-10T15:59:21.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17417" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-10T23:58:06.743" Score="3" ViewCount="496" Body="&lt;p&gt;My company has implemented a new process of having the team be responsible for the Definition of Done inside of the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Sprint Review meeting the PO is shown the work for the first time and they go through each issue in front of the team and then make comments on the issue e.g. &quot;does it work as intended. if not, how? Defect created...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading lots about Scrum this doesn't seem to be the &quot;Scrum&quot; was to do things, in fact a lot of resources explicitly say that having the review meeting as an acceptance meeting is a bad thing and it should be about feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with this is when should the PO be seeing the work? When do we accept/reject a sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We currently don't have the PO testing in a sprint because of a few reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a PO is testing during a sprint then the ownership of making sure issues are understood isn't on the team, they could half understand and just implement something and then get an explanation from the PO after they've showed it to them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There's also less need for a team to test their own work because they've got the PO there to catch things.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The PO has a lot of things to do during the sprint e.g. Backlog grooming, meeting clients, if we add in testing during the sprint to this then there may be too much to do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again these are all assumptions we have made so any thoughts on these would be extremely helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22160" LastActivityDate="2016-02-15T21:55:28.977" Title="Accepting the sprint in the Review meeting? And some other Review questions" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;reviews&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17417" CreationDate="2016-02-11T00:47:12.310" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very common problem. The short, direct answer is that the Sprint Review should not be the first time that the PO sees the completed stories. The PO should review stories as soon as they are done in the sprint. This will free up the Sprint Review to focus on feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are three other points in your question that are worth addressing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) If the PO is &quot;testing&quot; the story, they may be taking on too much of the work.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the PO will certainly review and try out the new functionality, ownership of technical quality still belongs to the team. If acceptance criteria read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;User should be able to change their address&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I'd expect the PO to change the address, but not try special characters, negative cases, SQL injection, etc. The team should be confident that their work is completed and meets quality expectations when they ask the PO to sign off on it. This should hopefully make asking the PO to review stories in the sprint much more practical for your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) The PO should be engaged with the team throughout the sprint.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's ok for a team to mostly understand the ask of a user story and check in with the PO as they progress. In fact, it will almost certainly happen anyway. Sometimes you aren't sure what questions you need to ask until you start coding and run into a problem, so instead of trying to avoid this scenario, we should instead make sure that clearing up questions between the team and PO is easy and smooth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, your concern is not unfounded. It is possible to abuse this dynamic and the PO should call it out if he thinks that is happening, but a healthy amount of back-and-forth is expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3) Are your stakeholders joining you for the Sprint Review?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may just be the way you described it, but it sounds like your Sprint Review is really just between the development team and the PO. It should really be about the whole Scrum Team (PO, SM, and Dev Team) presenting the work to stakeholders and gathering feedback from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2016-02-11T00:47:12.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14524" CreationDate="2016-02-11T05:58:57.503" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Requirements&lt;/strong&gt; are the expectations which the &lt;strong&gt;product&lt;/strong&gt; need to fulfill.  Requirements are collected from the customer, stakeholders and Sponsor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There can be some requirements which are industry standards and needs to be met by the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scope&lt;/strong&gt; is determined by condensing the requirements, whatever is on the scope &lt;strong&gt;needs to be done&lt;/strong&gt;, in case any requests from the customer which are not in scope the Project Manager can turn down those requests or suggest a change in the scope, so scope is very important to determine clearly what needs to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22161" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2016-02-11T07:29:12.533" LastActivityDate="2016-02-11T07:29:12.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17420" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17421" CreationDate="2016-02-11T07:31:53.183" Score="3" ViewCount="645" Body="&lt;p&gt;We don't want the stories to show up in our team's board because they don't work on the stories but rather on the tasks. At the same time our POs (We have a main PO and his delegate) don't want to see the tasks being worked on but rather only the progress of the stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story/epic statuses and their workflow is different than the task/subtask statuses and their workflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried to create a separate board for the POs but it includes the tasks, too. Maybe I couldn't find the correct way to filter out the tasks from this second board but this method is not the ideal way we want to handle this problem. We would like to have a single board which could be filtered out based on the logged in user's role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could you please point me to a suitable solution for this problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8171" LastEditorUserId="8171" LastEditDate="2016-02-11T07:43:16.263" LastActivityDate="2016-02-11T12:43:42.743" Title="In JIRA, how can we have separate boards/views for the PO and the team in the same sprint?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;board&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17420" CreationDate="2016-02-11T09:02:25.597" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/agile/glossary/swimlane&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;swimlanes&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/agile/glossary/quick-filter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Quick Filters&lt;/a&gt; to separate those views for your POs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Using Quick Filters:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On your board page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go to Board-&gt;Configure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select &quot;Quick Filters&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add a new Quick Filter with Query &quot;Issuetype=Story&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On your board it will look like below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/r8bgO.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/r8bgO.png&quot; alt=&quot;config&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YaBT1.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YaBT1.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Using Swimlanes:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For swimlanes the query looks exactly the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go to Board-&gt;Configure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select &quot;Swimlanes&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add a new Swimlane with Query &quot;Issuetype=Story&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dg21e.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dg21e.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the board there will be a division between Stories and other items:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8eQ8p.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8eQ8p.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22030" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2016-02-11T12:43:42.743" LastActivityDate="2016-02-11T12:43:42.743" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17424" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-11T22:04:38.693" Score="2" ViewCount="1629" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can a developer become Scrum Master after taking &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Assessments/Professional-Scrum-Master-Assessments&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Professional Scrum Master&lt;/a&gt; certification?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a developer and lead with 9 years of experience. I am interested to shift my career to the Scrum Master role. We have a dedicated Scrum Master in our team and I understand Agile as its implemented in our team. However I do not have experience as Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22174" LastEditorUserId="22766" LastEditDate="2016-04-25T22:29:44.840" LastActivityDate="2016-08-20T00:09:19.183" Title="Can a developer become a Scrum Master?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17425" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-12T00:48:12.043" Score="1" ViewCount="316" Body="&lt;p&gt;Considering we're talking about Scrum, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When working on a backlog item and that new out-of-scope minor tasks arise what do you do with them?&lt;/strong&gt; (e.g.: ones we don't have time for right now such as minor refactoring or implementing tiny nice to haves)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I create orphan tasks to be later assigned to a backlog item with similar other tasks during the sprint planning meeting? Should I create a backlog item (requirement, or user story) with pretty much the same title as the task and assign the task to it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g.: Let's say I create a new task which is &quot;add a simple caption to a control&quot;. Should I promote it to a backlog items and in this case, what would be the task for that backlog item?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks everyone!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22175" LastEditorUserId="21576" LastEditDate="2016-02-17T16:11:31.627" LastActivityDate="2016-02-17T16:11:31.627" Title="How to handle arising tasks we want to address later in Scrum" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17425" CreationDate="2016-02-12T07:50:58.013" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If these out of scope tasks are related to code quality do not create new user story or tasks for them, just do them, because they are part of &quot;better quality&quot; aspect of scrum. If you start to write separate tasks or user stories for these, they will be the first to drop when the end of sprint is getting closer. Make a habit of doing these when you work on the tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nice to haves and others should go to the backlog as a user story (some call them developer or technical user story), and the PO shall decide whether to do them or not. If you have a good business case backing them, you have better chance to have them in your next sprint backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2016-02-12T07:50:58.013" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17424" CreationDate="2016-02-12T07:55:03.230" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes you can like anybody else. You look for a consultancy that does certification and get it. It is not cheap though, that's why companies send people to the course. It is a two day-long course, which is not much. If you want to be a good SM, start doing it and earn the experience. You can either shadow existing SMs, or convince your boss to let you be one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2016-02-12T07:55:03.230" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17425" CreationDate="2016-02-12T09:16:46.387" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We do include them immediately into the current sprint. Scrum doesn't force you to plan your every move at the beginning of the sprint. As you can see in this &lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/cUOoWxi_NB0?list=PLYAamX9qsMVaPwdi4qxlFCFFyWHFnt-rh&amp;amp;t=319&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Collabnet video&lt;/a&gt; this is allowed in Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check out this &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/11524/user-story-contains-a-design-task-that-generates-other-tasks&quot;&gt;PM discussion&lt;/a&gt; on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8171" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2016-02-12T09:16:46.387" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17417" CreationDate="2016-02-12T10:15:21.500" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In fact, there's no such concept of accepting/rejecting a Sprint in Scrum. A Sprint can, under specific circumstances, cancelled before it's over, but nobody can reject a sprint. &#xA;Also a sprint is pretty much always composed by work that is done and work that is not done, and this is not up to the judgement of a single person. That's why a DoD is there: to ensure that the vision about what is expected is clear and shared among the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The review is thus intended to take stock of the situation, inspect the work done, and see how this impact the work still to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-review&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the guide&lt;/a&gt; says about that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Sprint Review is held at the end of the Sprint to inspect the&#xA;  Increment and adapt the Product Backlog if needed. During the Sprint&#xA;  Review, the Scrum Team and stakeholders collaborate about what was&#xA;  done in the Sprint. Based on that and any changes to the Product&#xA;  Backlog during the Sprint, attendees collaborate on the next things&#xA;  that could be done to optimize value. &lt;strong&gt;This is an informal meeting&lt;/strong&gt;, not&#xA;  a status meeting, and &lt;strong&gt;the presentation of the Increment is intended to&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;elicit feedback and foster collaboration&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, and if needed, the PO should be able to see and test potential increment as soon as it is done, and in the most transparent way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16362" LastActivityDate="2016-02-12T10:15:21.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17430" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17432" CreationDate="2016-02-12T14:30:37.630" Score="7" ViewCount="3351" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team consists of 2 backend devs, 1 front end dev and designer.&#xA;Lets pretend we have next user story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user I want to sign-in/sign-out to use the system &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Designer says that it is equal to 2 story points. Back end devs believe, that this is a 1 point story, while front end dev thinks, that it equals to 3 points (due to animations,transitions etc.)&#xA;What amount of story points should be the outcome of this user story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I sum up the overall number of points for 1 user story? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I split the user story to  3 different stories? (backend, frontend, design)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I just lean to the maximum story point value?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21640" LastActivityDate="2020-04-08T19:04:54.407" Title="How to manage story points when several developers work on 1 story?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17424" CreationDate="2016-02-12T14:39:08.950" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of-course you can become a Scrum Master. You should try to become a Scrum Master after you completed the PSM certification. Becoming a good Scrum Master takes a lot of practice. Start as soon as you can, the sooner you start the better you will get. Ask to be the Scrum Master of your current team or maybe assist the current Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I would not hire a person as a dedicated Scrum Master which only has the certificate, unless he/she is very ambitious. Experience would be a great added plus, working in a Scrum team could count. Better if you actually acted as a Scrum Master in a team. A lot of Scrum Master have a dual role as developer or tester, see if you can combine your current role to get experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest to also read some books before or after the certification&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13663747-essential-scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Essential Scrum: A Practical Guide to the Most Popular Agile Process&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.coachingagileteams.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/minibooks/scrum-xp-from-the-trenches-2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum and XP from the Trenches&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;strong&gt;Free&lt;/strong&gt; e-book!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scruminc.com/new-scrum-the-book/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum The Art of Doing Twice The Work In Half the Time&lt;/a&gt; (Easy to read, written like a novel and gives a lot of background)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2016-02-12T17:24:23.163" LastActivityDate="2016-02-12T17:24:23.163" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17430" CreationDate="2016-02-12T15:02:07.107" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;When estimating user stories, everyone should be estimating the &lt;strong&gt;complete&lt;/strong&gt; effort it will take &lt;em&gt;the team&lt;/em&gt; to get the story to Done. So, the back-end dev should not just estimate the effort it will take him to do his part, but his estimate must also include the effort for the front-end, the design and all testing (and similar for the other team members).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The advantage of using story-points here is that the values are relative to previously estimated work and most people are able to estimate if something is less/more/a lot more work than a reference story, even if they do not have the competences to actually perform the work itself. This way, the front-end dev can take the work of the other disciplines into account when making his estimate for the complete effort to finish a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have everyone estimating the complete effort, it is still possible that different people come up with different estimates. The usual reasons for this are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The acceptance criteria for the story are not specific enough, causing some developers to see the story as broader than the others do,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some developers see risks or additional effort that some others overlooked&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sometimes work you are not familiar with looks deceptively simple or complex, and that gets taken into account in the estimate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are significant differences in the estimates, a discussion should be held among the team to find out where those differences came from and if everybody is on the same page.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;With your example, chances are that the back-end dev overlooked the amount of effort that is needed to get all the right animations (or thought that it would be easy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After everyone has had an opportunity to say what they considered in coming to their estimate, you can do a new round of estimations for that story. Most likely, the estimates will be much closer together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are just small differences between the estimates, then you can choose to just pick one of the values (for example, the average value or the value that most people are on).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastEditorUserId="12235" LastEditDate="2016-06-14T11:37:10.173" LastActivityDate="2016-06-14T11:37:10.173" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17430" CreationDate="2016-02-12T15:31:23.557" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;During the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_poker&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;planning poker&lt;/a&gt; sessions average out (rounded up) story point estimates which are close to each other. In your example this would be come 2 story points. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lets say you use the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_number&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fibonacci scale&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;0 1/2 1 2 3 5 8 13 20 40 100&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the estimations are more then 3 steps apart, say 1 and 5, then discuss and re-vote. When the estimations are less then 3 steps away, say 2,3,5, average them rounded up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason to average is because you don't want to spend to much discussion on things the team relatively agrees on. As the story points are used as a forecast its not to important they are exact. The fault margin will compensate on average on all estimations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got the averaging from the book &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scruminc.com/new-scrum-the-book/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time&lt;/a&gt;, where Jeff Sutherland suggested this. I think it makes total sence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2016-02-12T22:01:08.703" LastActivityDate="2016-02-12T22:01:08.703" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17425" CreationDate="2016-02-12T23:13:04.170" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what the minor tasks are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;If they are related to quality, technical debt or a part of your team's definition of done&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do them as a part of the original story. If you take this work outside of the original story then you hide the true rate of progress of the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a story appears to be done, but the reality is there is some technical debt that still needs to be completed. This can be misleading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;If they are improvements&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work out the value of the improvement (for example, the improvement will save 1 hour of effort per release in the future, or the improvement will make it easier to build upon the existing code).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a decent value to the improvement, add it as an item to your backlog. Backlog items don't all have to be user stories, there is nothing wrong with adding a &lt;em&gt;task&lt;/em&gt; to the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;If they are nice-to-have, but of little value&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider dropping them. There will always be more valuable things to work on, so there is no point cluttering up the backlog with things that generate no real value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-02-15T11:29:41.920" LastActivityDate="2016-02-15T11:29:41.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8547" CreationDate="2016-02-13T00:23:26.357" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently managing the projects separately but I have around 35 projects each with about 100 lines. When I open the master project file and level the resources it takes forever and most of the time project just crashes. I believe its because its pulling too much information from these sub project. Is there anyway I can just put them all into one project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I copy and paste the predecessors loose their relationship. For instance line 3 has a predecessor of line 1. When I copy lines 1-3 into the other project they become lines 55-57 but their predecessors say 1-3 linking them to the wrong lines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22190" LastActivityDate="2016-02-13T00:23:26.357" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17437" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-13T00:33:29.440" Score="2" ViewCount="16792" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently running a project to develop about 50 parts. Each part has about 100 actions from engineering to production to shipping. I created one standard project file for a standard part. Then I reviewed each part against the standard to make changes only to the non standard actions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I have 50 separate projects that pull from the same resource pool. When I insert them all into a master project, MS project crashes more than half the time. Most likely I do not have the processing power to have 50 projects linked together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I copy and paste each set of actions into one project, I have to manually change all the predecessors as the line numbers change but the predecessors don't. Is there a way to copy and paste tasks from one project file to the other without loosing the predecessors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22190" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2016-02-15T12:14:11.873" LastActivityDate="2016-02-26T19:32:47.663" Title="Is there a way to copy and paste tasks from one project file to the other without losing the predecessors?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17425" CreationDate="2016-02-13T15:38:07.770" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would start with the question &quot;Is this necessary to fulfill the intent of the backlog item?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some items are obviously a Yes. For example, if you discover that you need to add an option to a feature for the story to work properly, then obviously this needs to get wrapped in. However, there are less certain ones. For example, if in doing work you discover you really should do a refactor to move a method into a different class, this is a matter of technical quality and should also be included in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should never decide if something is part of a story or not based on how much time you have in a sprint. That leads to cutting corners and mounting technical debt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The easiest way to know that something is not part of the current backlog item is to describe how this new item builds on the existing functionality. For example, let's say I have a user story that I would like to be able to enter some record information for a website order. After looking at it, someone says &quot;Filling out that form is confusing. I wish we had mouseover tooltips on each field.&quot; That adds some new capability to the feature and should probably be its own backlog item. Now, if you have time in the sprint and the PO agrees, you can bring that item into this sprint, but it's still really its own thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There can be grey area here, but adding in small things that aren't expressly needed because they're quick or easy leads us to gold-plating, which has a while set of other problems associated with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2016-02-13T15:38:07.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17437" CreationDate="2016-02-13T19:39:25.483" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have the projects tied together through a resource pool, I would not recommend copying and pasting tasks.  You run the risk of duplicating assignments and corrupting both the pool file as well as the new master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does Project crash when you open the resource pool with the third option and consolidate all projects into a master?  How are you attempting to create the master?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your direct question about predecessors changing - collapse the summary task and copy the entire summary task.  When you paste - the relationships should stay as they were originally set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2016-02-13T19:39:25.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17441" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17453" CreationDate="2016-02-15T03:23:41.913" Score="26" ViewCount="20690" Body="&lt;p&gt;Would someone please shed some light on the differences between:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;LeSS: &lt;a href=&quot;http://less.works/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://less.works/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nexus: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Resources/The-Nexus-Guide&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.scrum.org/Resources/The-Nexus-Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SAFe: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Background: I do work in a company with about 50 developers, and multiple scrum teams. They do, however, work in different projects that are unrelated - thus no need to &quot;scale&quot; them as far as I understand (I might be wrong, thus asking this question). This question is an attempt to obtain a general comparison for a beginner between the main &quot;scaled scrum/agile&quot; frameworks/methods/standards listed above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions to drive the analysis are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why use one rather than the other?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does one covers more areas than the other?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the &quot;most popular&quot; framework as of today?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are their strengths or weaknesses?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Moreover, certification-wise, is any of these more &quot;recognised&quot; than the other?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5432" LastEditorUserId="5432" LastEditDate="2016-02-16T09:00:17.313" LastActivityDate="2017-07-08T11:35:26.507" Title="Scaled scrum/agile frameworks (SAFe vs. Nexus vs. LeSS) comparison" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;process-scaling&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17417" CreationDate="2016-02-15T19:11:40.520" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no such thing as &quot;accepting the Sprint&quot;. If you are Done with no further work required to ship to production then your code is committed and tested. Its in the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only purpose then of the sprint review is to provide feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PO should be working with the team during the sprint and be intimately familiar with what was Done and the choices that were made to get to Done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Refer to: &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://scrumguides.org&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastActivityDate="2016-02-15T19:11:40.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17441" CreationDate="2016-02-15T19:58:13.940" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You really have too many questions in this one to be able to give specific answers, but I'll give it a go anyway ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off, I'm a Professional Scrum Trainer with Scrum.org and I teach Scaled Professional Scrum - how to apply Nexus to scale your product development effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I think of any &quot;framework&quot; as a set of rules, practices, guidelines, principles, roles, ... that you should apply wisely. Some &quot;frameworks&quot; comes with a lot of material (SAFe) and other very little (Nexus). Is one better than the other? I think not. I think that different people and organizations have different needs, depending on what they already know, their culture, their software, their business models, their staff, skills available, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I very much prefer this view over any other comparison:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Given what we know, have and want - what do &lt;em&gt;we&lt;/em&gt; think will help &lt;em&gt;us&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some will need very little &lt;em&gt;guidance&lt;/em&gt;, some need all support wheels they can get. Some are happy &lt;em&gt;figuring out&lt;/em&gt; what will work for them (embracing inspect and adapt) and some don't want to think or figure out for themselves what will work for them in their context. Does this make any one framework universally better than the other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you provide more context, such as &quot;this is our setup, environment, product, ...&quot; people can make recommendations based on their experience as to what may guide you to increased (business) agility.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;But as for the general answer to a general question, I think this is at a level where you're asking &quot;what are some weaknesses comparing strawberries and fruit cocktail&quot;. One is nicely served with champagne and the other at a kids' party. Both are fine in their right context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22212" LastActivityDate="2016-02-15T19:58:13.940" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17417" CreationDate="2016-02-15T21:55:28.977" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acceptance testing is not part of the Sprint Review. It should be part of your Definition of Done, and integrated within the Sprint itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Clarifying the Product Owner &lt;em&gt;Role&lt;/em&gt; and the Sprint Review &lt;em&gt;Ceremony&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some other great answers here already, but I think there needs to be a tighter focus on how acceptance testing fits into the Scrum framework. To do so, it is worth noting a few key points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Product Owner (PO) never &quot;rejects&quot; a Sprint, or even user stories. The role of the Product Owner is to manage priorities on the Product Backlog, to help define the Sprint Goal, and to terminate the Sprint early if the Sprint Goal cannot be met.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stories are either &quot;done&quot; or &quot;not done,&quot; which is why the team must have a &quot;Definition of Done&quot; that is agreed upon by the entire team &lt;em&gt;including&lt;/em&gt; the PO.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Sprint Goal has either been met, or it has not.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The purpose of the Sprint Review is to &quot;inspect the increment&quot; of iterative development. The Product Owner can then adapt the Product Backlog based on what was done or not-done, and incoporate feedback from the stakeholders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What seems to be missing from your current process is inclusion of formal acceptance tests as part of your Definition of Done. Acceptance testing should be an integral part of the Sprint itself, rather than something done after the fact or by hijacking a Scrum ceremony with a completely different purpose like the Sprint Review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-02-15T21:55:28.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17446" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17448" CreationDate="2016-02-16T00:09:19.760" Score="2" ViewCount="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;On Slack I'm having conversations about different aspects of the project I'm working on with my colleagues (either private or room conversations). Sometimes I need to know everything that has been said about a particular aspect of the project though. But there's no way to do that because it's often all in the same room or the same private history. And keyword search can sometimes be ineffective to remember an entire conversation about a specific topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a project management platform/app that solves this problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22215" LastActivityDate="2016-02-17T06:36:02.323" Title="Is there a platform that facilitates the per-topic separation of conversations?" Tags="&lt;communication-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-02-25T14:50:33.773" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17395" CreationDate="2016-02-16T07:28:46.840" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming you'd like to be Scrum Guide compliant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it important to have story point estimates on these items before&#xA;  they are brought into an ongoing sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By definition each and every Product Backlog Item should be estimated. Therefore each and every Sprint Backlog Item should, as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] when and how should this estimation take place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimation can happen anytime throughout the Sprint. &lt;strong&gt;Scrum Guide only requires Sprint Planning as mandatory &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the next Sprint begins&lt;/strong&gt;. That's the last chance to estimate any new Product Backlog Items. It doesn't say you're not allowed to have additional planning sessions. &lt;strong&gt;Backlog Grooming or Refinement&lt;/strong&gt;, as it's called, is a very popular and recommended practice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] I'm assuming it's unproductive to schedule a sprint planning meeting for every bug we bring in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Correct. For bug handling in Scrum, take a look &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumcrazy.com/One+way+to+handle+Bugs+and+Production+Support+in+Scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastEditorUserId="1021" LastEditDate="2016-02-16T09:01:18.467" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T09:01:18.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17446" CreationDate="2016-02-16T08:08:27.170" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some tools that help to apply structure on a debate/conversation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.bcisiveonline.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;bCisive&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://debategraph.org/Stream.aspx?nid=61932&amp;amp;vt=bubble&amp;amp;dc=focus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Debategraph&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cartargrapher.appspot.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cartagrapher&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They probably don't solve your issue, however they could help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note I think it's the matter of discipline that could help most. Slack channels should do the job, but they don't for some reason. People share their ideas in the context of conversation, not necessarily in the context of a Slack channel. There is randomness and creativity. One need to apply reasoning to connect loose pieces of information. I'm actually glad computers don't do it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastEditorUserId="1021" LastEditDate="2016-02-17T06:36:02.323" LastActivityDate="2016-02-17T06:36:02.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17449" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17457" CreationDate="2016-02-16T09:42:55.670" Score="14" ViewCount="3724" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm experiencing persisting pain in the back, and it's medically proved that it's present and that it will never improve but only degrade. I can stand for 5-10 minutes before the pain starts to be unbearable. My whole team is totally aware of the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Needless to say then that a stand-up meeting that is longer than 5 minutes (which happens rather often) is like a suffering to me and soon turns into a torture. Yet when I'm looking for a chair, my team (both the PM and my colleagues) insists I keep standing up, and the social pressure makes it hard for me to sit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never read any book nor followed any scrum training so I don't know the first thing about it (I'm practicing it following the current, one would say). Therefore I'm asking you what does agile/scrum suggest in my case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22217" LastActivityDate="2016-03-15T11:27:52.730" Title="Alternatives to individual standing up in the &quot;stand-up meeting&quot;?" Tags="&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17449" CreationDate="2016-02-16T10:58:01.610" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your team mates know that you have this condition, and it is painful to you to stand, so leave the team. It is a basic human behaviour not to harm each other, and clearly they do and cause you pain. If you cannot leave the team take a chair and sit. They don't care about you, and you should care about yourself. You don't really have a team there anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The stand-up does not necessarily mean to stand up, it is more likely to get away from your computer and other people for 15 minutes and share your thoughts with your team. They can sit down as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should go and see a different doctor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2016-02-16T11:05:46.887" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T11:05:46.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17451" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17454" CreationDate="2016-02-16T11:19:33.720" Score="1" ViewCount="588" Body="&lt;p&gt;I define a fixed work task, work is 16 h. I assign a resource Bob to work 100% on this task. The task duration is automatically set to 2 days.&#xA;Since I figure out Bob won't have full time to spend on this task, I double click on the task to add Alice to the resources. I assign Alice to work 50% time on the task and change Bob from 100% to 50%.&#xA;When applying the change, duration automatically changes to 2,67 days. Why? Two persons are working on a 16 h fixed work task, each with 50%. Why is there 0,67 days more scheduled than needed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case in the same task now I delete all resources and click OK and then insert resources again, now for Bob and Alice I assign 50% availability at the beginning, the calculation is correct. 2 days needed for the task to complete. No other changes were made - just resources deleted and entered again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the problem is present and I check the Team planner, I can see that Bob and Alice do not work the whole task duration. Note - the project is fresh, no calendars are used, no special cases. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anyone can help me to understand, what's going on, I will be very grateful. I'm stuck with a large project where I'm unable to change resource availability and getting correct results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22221" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-05T11:26:05.533" LastActivityDate="2018-11-05T11:26:05.533" Title="MS project 2010 resource assigning problem - unexpected behavior" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;resources&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17449" CreationDate="2016-02-16T12:10:56.147" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason for a &quot;stand up&quot; is to differentiate it from your normal meeting situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To keep that non-normal atmosphere, you could get a bar stool and sit down on that during your stand-up. It will be sufficiently different from your normal sitting behavior to make a visible difference, but still be on eye level with the standing people. Hopefully it will be convenient enough for you to not experience any pain. Put it beneath your SCRUM board and you should be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8o1cs.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8o1cs.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;bar stool&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T12:10:56.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17441" CreationDate="2016-02-16T14:37:49.487" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile Scaling maintains a fairly comprehensive list of scaling frameworks. Their &quot;ASK Matrix&quot; provides some very general information and compares the frameworks on a number of different factors including intended scaling size, coverage levels at team, portfolio, and enterprise, and more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilescaling.org/ask-matrix.html&quot;&gt;http://www.agilescaling.org/ask-matrix.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T14:37:49.487" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17451" CreationDate="2016-02-16T15:52:58.830" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Split your screen to show the task form in the lower pane to understand what is happening with the work.  When you assigned Alice at 50% - she did not get assigned 50% of the work - she was assigned one third of the work or 5. hours of work.  Bob at that moment was still assigned at 100% so his work is 2/3 or 10.67 hours of work.  When you dropped him to 50% he still have 10.67 hours of work and duration increases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Better bet is to:&#xA;1) Remove Alice from the task.  Because the task is effort driven - the total amount of work will stay the same - 16 hours of work.  Bob's assignment units are still 50% so duration increases to 4 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Assign Alice at 50% - work will be evenly split - 8 hours each and 2 days duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I use the Task form for most of my assignments - it paints a much clearer picture of what is really going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T15:52:58.830" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17449" CreationDate="2016-02-16T16:13:09.337" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have worked in several Scrum teams over the years and have also having been Scrum Certified.&#xA;Scrum is designed to be a guide and not a hard, &quot;it must be done this way&quot; kind of process. Each team can work the process to a best fit for them. Some teams I've worked on would have &quot;sit downs&quot; instead of &quot;stand ups&quot;. This worked for that team and still accomplished the necessary tasks. The Scrum ceremonies are there to assist in the process of completing the work in an efficient manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all teams do stand-ups, not all teams use a physical board with sticky notes, not all teams do exactly as Scrum suggests. This is because it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a suggestion. I would suggest that you and your team discuss this issue with your back and ways to work around it. This is what the Retrospective ceremony is for. If standing up is a problem for you, then suggest a sit-down instead, for example. Or, maybe everyone is seated and stands up to give their status. The process is still being adhered to and also relieves your pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum, on any given team, is a work-in-progress. Most teams I've worked with started &quot;by the book&quot;. But, after a couple of sprints, the process was adjusted slightly to work better for the team. This is what happens during the Retrospective ceremony. By sprint 20 or so, the process became a well oiled machine, so to speak, for the team and it was not strictly &quot;by the book&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22223" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T16:13:09.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17449" CreationDate="2016-02-16T18:13:34.210" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not in any way a scrum expert, but the stand-up should be short and focussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore it should be distraction-free as far as possible, and you shouldn't need to move around during it. I would say, then, that the main thing from a methodology point of view is that rather than looking around for a chair once the pain becomes unbearable (distracting yourself most of all and to some extent others), you should sit right from the start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As nvoigt says, the best is to find the highest seat you can practically use, to match everyone else's eye-height. Sit on a desk perhaps, if that's sufficiently comfortable for you. Doesn't have to be exact, since it's well-established that people differing in height by well over a foot can nevertheless scrum together effectively ;-) This part of the methodology is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; resilient: provided everyone is in the same room, paying attention, and more or less facing each other, the meeting can go ahead fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Standing does help motivate people keep it short, but it's not the only way. So you also need to make sure you aren't &quot;abusing&quot; your sitting position to speak for longer than you should or to drag things into extended discussions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully once you've identified your seat this will become routine, and either you can arrive to the standup each day on time with your seat already sorted, or you can arrive very shortly before it and move your seat into place. If it helps your colleagues then you could stand while you yourself are speaking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your colleagues continue to &quot;insist you stand up&quot; once you've done these things to ensure the meeting continues smoothly, then methodology is irrelevant, they are committing a serious offence against you that HR may have to solve through tougher discipline against them. If you've been assessed as able to stand for at most 5-10 minutes, and the meeting is timeboxed to (say) 15 minutes, then that means you cannot stand for it and they should not ask you to. End of discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way this could also be your routine in general, for standups, ad hoc corridor conversations, giving presentations, and any other occasion where most of your colleagues would normally stand. Rather than fighting a constant battle of social pressure as to how long you can bear to stand and how much pain it is right for you to experience, &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; make a move to sit if it looks like it &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be more than 5 minutes. Use phrases like &quot;I'm sorry, I can't stand any longer&quot;, or &quot;Please come to my desk to continue the conversation: I need to sit now because of my back pain&quot;. Start to move as you say them, and remain friendly but don't accept contradiction. It's your medical condition, they don't get to decide what's worth you standing for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barely-relevant anecdote: I saw BB King in concert in 2004, and he opened by saying, &quot;I'm 79 years old and they say I can sit if I want to. Well, I want to&quot;. Not &quot;do you mind if I look for a seat now?&quot;, or &quot;I'm afraid in 5 minutes time I'm going to have to move to a chair&quot;, just &quot;I'm entitled to sit, and here I am sitting&quot;. Not that anybody at the gig would have begrudged him sitting no matter what he said, but it's much harder to socially pressure someone who's already done the thing you'd prefer them not to do! It's also harder to disagree with someone who appeals to some kind of authority: &quot;they say I can sit&quot;. In your case &quot;they&quot; are your doctor and whatever arrangements you've made with HR to accommodate you. &quot;They&quot; say you can and should sit, so no matter how much you'd &lt;em&gt;like&lt;/em&gt; to stand, you &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to sit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16402" LastEditorUserId="16402" LastEditDate="2016-02-16T18:52:06.733" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T18:52:06.733" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17449" CreationDate="2016-02-16T18:22:12.643" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hope some of these work for you and you start getting relief – and respect. I'll tell you my experience first and how I made the best of it, and then I have a game plan for you to do first thing tomorrow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR: Skip to the Last Section - Game Plan&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;My Very Similar Situation: 5-Minutes in Stand-Up Hell&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My last company was amazing, I joined a small startup of 12 always going for the newest proven agile process. So of course when I started (about 5 years ago), stand-ups were IN.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same thing as you – once I hit 5 minutes exactly, I cannot physically stand anymore. Those 5 minutes ruin my entire day, making any position, even seated at my desk (for the next 12 hours) unbearable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The actions I took to get through the stand-up (and improve my quality of life in general) were:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1.&lt;/strong&gt; Taking care of myself and &lt;strong&gt;getting proper back treatment:&lt;/strong&gt; I see an amazing group of doctors for physical therapy, pain management, injections, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2&lt;/strong&gt;. On my first day, &lt;strong&gt;I told my supervisor (and then all my colleagues) the facts:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just a heads-up for stand-up meetings so that I don't come off as&#xA;unprofessional or uninterested in our morning brainstorm and update&#xA;sessions: I have a back problem that prevents me from standing for&#xA;more than 5 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(People rarely think that's a real thing, so sometimes we both laugh and I say, &amp;quot;no, really though.&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do a, b, and c to manage my pain and stay healthy. In order to&#xA;maintain the progress I make, I won't be standing in stand-up&#xA;meetings, but I will DEFINITELY be a top participator. Just wanted you&#xA;to know why. Thanks for your understanding!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. In the meetings themselves&lt;/strong&gt;: I made it a point to do everything I could to be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Prepared and On-Time&lt;/em&gt;: Obviously everyone should be. But being in an outsider-type position already, this is key. Up-to-date on all current releases and major issues, and prepared with concise and pertinent updates to give.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Present and Respectful&lt;/em&gt;: Made sure to be an active listener and participator, whether or not I had had coffee yet.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Positive and Source to Pump up Team&lt;/em&gt;: Humor and sarcasm are my go-to defense mechanisms anyway, so I let those fly when appropriate, but mostly do my best to bring in positive energy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Physical Positive Energy Source&lt;/em&gt;: Along with that note, I always say up straight, right in the middle of things. It's very important not to be outside the circle, sitting 3 feet behind everyone. You can't be shy about loudly pulling a chair across the room. Plus, once you do it a few times and everyone understands, everyone joins in including you in one way or another. Switching up the location, offering me a stool, or saving me the window ledge. I'd also bounce on my yoga ball or balance on a desk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a team everyone worked to make the stand-ups more efficient and fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We were always tweaking them – constantly making process and content changes, often switched up the location. We also introduced a sort of &amp;quot;pass the totem&amp;quot; exercise with toys and awards around the office. (And yes, the awards were also toys).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;I know I was lucky to work for such a great start-up that kept its culture as it grew exponentially. It sounds like one of two things is happening with you.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your team is not so great, and you are not so lucky. &lt;strong&gt;Time to make a change.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You haven't been &lt;strong&gt;extremely direct, honest, and demanding&lt;/strong&gt; of the &lt;strong&gt;working conditions you NEED&lt;/strong&gt; to function.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there's a chance you maybe mumbled, or said &amp;quot;I have trouble standing for 10 or 20 minutes,&amp;quot; or (the most likely) &lt;strong&gt;you keep letting them tell you to stand,&lt;/strong&gt; then &lt;strong&gt;this is on you.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that sucks. Especially since you probably did none of those things, yet you are being treated this way. And it sucks more for women, and you need to speak twice as loud with not even a trace of what could be construed as &amp;quot;emotion&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;bossiness&amp;quot; or the ever-loved &amp;quot;bitchiness.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;So here's my game plan for you&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Avoid the daggers and social pressure and bullshit that occur when you hit your limit and desperately search for a chair&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;Get to stand-up 5 minutes early tomorrow. Find a chair and place it right in the normal area. Happily greet people as they roll in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have a one-on-one with your supervisor&lt;/strong&gt; telling him your version of what I said in my #2 above. You physically cannot stand, it's no reflection on how you feel about your team or your level of involvement. Tell him being pressured to stand doesn't just make you feel disrespected and less likely to get involved during the meeting, but the pain literally ruins your entire day and therefore &lt;strong&gt;productivity decreases for the whole work day&lt;/strong&gt;. Describe all the ways that you will bring a, b, c (akin to my #3 list) to every meeting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If after conversations with him and your other colleagues, you don't find yourself in a haven like I described, &lt;strong&gt;it's time to update that résumé&lt;/strong&gt;. (And possibly sue HR, although I have no knowledge on how that process would go).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck and I wish you as much pain relief as possible!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;P.S.: Do they not get that Agile and Scrum are all about constantly making changes to become more efficient – and NEVER sticking to hard and fast rules for the sake of &amp;quot;that's how it's always been&amp;quot;? A tad ironic that they really have a problem with body position for 5 minutes of all things.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile and Rigidity do not work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22225" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T22:01:06.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17449" CreationDate="2016-02-16T20:08:29.487" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Get yourself a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&amp;amp;field-keywords=seat%20cane&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cane seat&lt;/a&gt; to sit on during the meeting. If your associates continue to object, you can beat them with it.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lQmwA.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lQmwA.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Stand-up suppliment&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22228" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T20:08:29.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17408" CreationDate="2016-02-16T20:12:25.320" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A project manager is responsible for ALL of the items that need to be accomplished, regardless of their &quot;size&quot;. So there really isn't a &quot;minimum threshold of work&quot; before an issue should be tracked. The easy answer is to enter these small items in your issue tracking database.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming that your &quot;project management worklist&quot; is your issue tracking database. (This can be an Excel spreadsheet or a tool like Jira or DevTrack.) It would be easier on you if you have a single issue database for all products, especially when you have to manage/review the to-do lists of multiple product managers. It gets more complicated if each product manager has a separate issue database. (Even more complicated if one uses Excel, another uses Jira, and a third uses hand-written note cards.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, multiple issue databases or not, make sure each item is listed and has an assigned victim, er... responsible person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tracking all these details should make your team(s) and managers very aware that you are on top of everything. Plus, it almost always inspires others to create similar small issues to track that otherwise would never get listed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21791" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T20:12:25.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17460" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-16T22:57:59.723" Score="1" ViewCount="9600" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do I force one task to end at the same time as another task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have &quot;User Acceptance Testing&quot; ending on a specific date so I want the &quot;Bug Fixing&quot; task to end on that same date.  I.e. the Testing lasts 10 days and I want the Bug Fixing task to last the final 5 days of testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the testing task moves then I would want the bug fixing task to move along with it and still end on the same date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13730" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2016-02-17T09:31:14.863" LastActivityDate="2016-02-17T12:05:30.920" Title="How to force one task to end at the same time as another task in MS Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17460" CreationDate="2016-02-17T04:15:04.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are looking for an &lt;em&gt;end to end&lt;/em&gt; relationship (&lt;strong&gt;EE&lt;/strong&gt;) - at least if you translate the German expression to English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it might depend on the language of your MS Project verion, see @Marv Mills answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2016-02-17T12:05:30.920" LastActivityDate="2016-02-17T12:05:30.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="531" CreationDate="2016-02-17T07:49:29.323" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;why did outlook put the read receipt / delivery receipt in the program if it's not useful sometimes most of the worker who does not want to receive a read receipt /delivery receipt to their co-workers are the one who always want to do the work safe. I don't find it rude or anything if you ask for read / delivery receipt especially if you are coordinating an important matter.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22236" LastActivityDate="2016-02-17T07:49:29.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17460" CreationDate="2016-02-17T09:18:00.690" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make the Testing task a predecessor of the Bug Fixing task, and use the Finish-to-Finish (FF) predecessor type. When the end of the Testing task moves for any reason, the bug fixing task will track it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another nice little feature here is the use of lag- For example if you are bug fixing right up to the last moment of the last day of testing, then you will never be able to test the final fixes. So you &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; want bug fixing to end one day earlier than the end of Testing (for example), but still track movements in the Testing task: Just add a 1d lag to the above constraint and the lag will work in reverse as its a F-F relationship. Or conversely, to end the subordinate task one day later than the primary task use a negative lag (i.e. -1d), though of course that doesn't make sense for Testing/Bug fixing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2016-02-17T09:18:00.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17449" CreationDate="2016-02-17T10:03:31.357" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The point of a stand up meeting is to make sure that the meeting doesn't drag on - it's an intrinsically uncomfortable situation, so people won't settle in and chat around topics for an hour when 15 minutes will do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case there should obviously be an exception made, and others have already mentioned how ridiculous your colleagues are being, so I won't. However to get to the heart of the standup issue I'd say you should just make sure your contributions are fast and to the point. This fulfills the point of standup 100%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also - yeah, what is a PM doing at a standup!?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22237" LastActivityDate="2016-02-17T10:03:31.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17449" CreationDate="2016-02-17T12:19:37.767" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is what your Scrum Master is for. He should be removing impediments for the team members, and if one impediment to your efficiency is the pain caused by standing, then he should deal with that. As others have pointed out, Scrum is a guideline, not a rulebook. Modify it to suit your circumstances. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22240" LastActivityDate="2016-02-17T12:19:37.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17430" CreationDate="2016-02-17T14:01:20.660" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Short Answers&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I sum up the overall number of points for 1 user story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. Summing developer guesses will yield efforts that are much larger simply because more developer are guessing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I split the user story to 3 different stories? (backend, frontend, design)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably not. Rather, ensure that each piece of work represents a valuable increment of the software with clearly expressed business value, if at all possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I just lean to the maximum story point value?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes and no :). When there is a wide gap between developer guesses, encourage the devs to figure out why their guesses have diverge. With narrower gaps, tend toward the higher number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Sum Up&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, commit to consistency, rigorous inspection and adaptation in whatever techniques you adopt. This ensures that good practices will emerge and bad ones will fall by the wayside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21576" LastActivityDate="2016-02-17T14:01:20.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17468" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-18T11:26:31.540" Score="1" ViewCount="423" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am managing a project with several people using 3 machines. I need to track both how the people are allocated across my tasks, and how the machine is allocated. The thing is, the machine doesn't do any work against my tasks - it is just consumed by the people doing the work. That is, if the machine were available more, the total task duration wouldn't necessarily decrease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still have a need to project the utilization of each machine over time. How do I go about doing this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22189" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-02T13:14:42.413" LastActivityDate="2018-11-02T13:14:42.413" Title="How do I track resource utilization, but the resource doesn't do any work?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17469" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-18T11:32:19.753" Score="2" ViewCount="452" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to create a work-ahead dashboard for my team, for weekly planning meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have tasks that span several weeks, so a task may be needing work in the current week but not starting or ending in the current week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, I'd like a report per resource that lists what's on their plate for that week. It would also be nice if the report included status metrics such as % work to be completed, if the task is behind, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My project is setup such that the tasks are Fixed Work with hours per task. All the tasks have assigned resources at a certain %, and the resources are backed by calendars, etc. I don't have any cost information built in, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any insight is appreciated. Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22189" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-10-31T13:20:41.453" LastActivityDate="2018-10-31T13:20:41.453" Title="Report to Show Work During Current Week Only" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17252" CreationDate="2016-02-18T14:20:22.123" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I am reading &quot;near to the end of a sprint&quot; it means that your sprints are too long. You need to shorten your sprints. That's the main thing that you need to focus on. You have the answer within your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20765" LastActivityDate="2016-02-18T14:20:22.123" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2016-02-18T14:20:22.123" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17471" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-18T18:30:13.857" Score="2" ViewCount="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for a project of my client. along with my project there are multiple projects are going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Issue: Currently my client doesn't have much awareness of multiple projects which are going on / scheduled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Solution: My client requested us to check and improve the awareness of ongoing / scheduled projects. So that there will not be any impact from different projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your prompt answers will be helpful to me to prepare some procedural documents so that my client well aware of what's going on ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22265" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2016-02-19T09:19:25.243" LastActivityDate="2016-03-20T10:18:05.860" Title="Improvement on awareness of ongoing/scheduled multiple projects for our client" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;clients&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10326" CreationDate="2016-02-18T21:58:37.927" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I am reading in regards to your Agile and Lean environment, I would suggest using a light management and portfolio visualizer like Clearly.io or even a physical Kanban board with release train schedules as suggested by SAFe in addition to your current tools.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have mentioned, versionone and other tools do have long term roadmap features but overhead bloat in actual alignment practice and resource capacity planning may be too much if you are coordinating across multiple projects. Otherwise, there is always resource leveling with good old spreadsheets if you need to get down into budgeting, head count, cost centers, OpEx vs CapEx and all that fun stuff. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short Answer:   Clearly.io  or Physical Kanban Portfolio Board&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22266" LastActivityDate="2016-02-18T21:58:37.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14882" CreationDate="2016-02-19T02:27:53.230" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Person month is a measurement unit for effort in software engineering. 1 person month means effort put by a person in one month. But 100 person does not mean, work effort put by 100 person in one month or 1 person in 100 months. As requirement of staff varies time to time in the development so there is not constant no of people is there to work. It is calculated from the graph(calculate area under time axis) between no of people working and time(in month). You can find more detail in COCOMO model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22269" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2016-02-19T06:53:23.120" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T06:53:23.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17471" CreationDate="2016-02-19T06:28:40.460" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can simply make a short list of projects and a time estimations, combined with how this project fits in. The simplest will, probably, be a short summary of the projects, the time they still take up and/or the stage they're in. Keep in mind for this you don't have to list other clients names, these usually are seen as confidential unless specified otherwise in contracts and it could hurt your business to put these out into the public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example something like the following, it lists your time but it doesn't show what or from whom, just generically, you're still working on 1 project for an estimated 30 hours and you have 7 hours 'maintenance' every month:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;4 hours every month, photo editing&#xA;3 hours every month, updating website&#xA;~30 hours left, custom project, final stages&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What it sounds like is that your client is looking to get the 'guarantee' you won't be working on those or that they're really small or insignificant compared to what they're doing with you. They're looking to ensure you're the right company/guy to make sure their project hits the targets of (mostly) time in this case, since your attention won't be on other projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the type of project and relationship you can tackle this also in another way, where you sit down with the client, you look at what is requested and depending on the type of work you make a certain commitment: it will be done before X. If you want to be more agile, you can say: I will spend more than 30 hours a week on it (or if you have more people, you can say 60 hours etc). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your client is asking this for a reason, it's probably smart to get that reason out in the open.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5439" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T06:28:40.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17468" CreationDate="2016-02-19T12:38:40.567" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Define the machines (or each individual machine) as a discrete resource, the same way that you would with staff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The thing is, the machine doesn't do any work against my tasks - it is just consumed by the people doing the work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think that this is relevant. Assuming that any given machine cannot do two things at once, there is a finite about of time every day that the machine can be used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That is, if the machine were available more, the total task duration wouldn't necessarily decrease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This just means that the machines don't limit the pace of work that can be done, i.e. it is not on the &quot;critical path&quot; of resource usage. This could change, for example, if one of the three machines was reassigned to a different project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T12:38:40.567" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17468" CreationDate="2016-02-19T12:49:13.960" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the resource page, I would load the machine as I would a human and indicate its utilization at 100% if available full-time or less than that--x%--if only part-time.  When loading this resource in a work package, I would load it at the same duration as the package requires.  If the machine runs all the time during that duration period, than work = duration, e.g., duration = 2 weeks, than work = 80 hours.  If the machine only operates when a human is interacting with it, I would make work = the planning value of work for the human.  When loading actuals, I would simply keep it equal to the human actual hours.  The cost of the machine would then be captured correctly based on those actual hours.  However, if you have to pay for machine for the duration, then capturing the hours is irrelevant.  Just make that resource LOE and capture actuals the same as you would for all LOE packages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T12:49:13.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17477" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17482" CreationDate="2016-02-19T13:44:30.380" Score="4" ViewCount="2764" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am reading a book called Agile Retrospectives and the author suggests splitting retro's into 4 stages. Two of the stages seem so similar:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gathering Data and Gathering insights, seem the same as I cannot imagine some of these exercises would work if you did both a gathering data and generating insight exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the generating insight exercises require you too...gather data! Very confusing. Are people using both of these stages in retros?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does that make sense? Any thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; My confusion stems from my inability to link to a gathering data exercise with a gathering insight phase. That is my problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: I make the team brainstorm what went well, what did not go well in the data gathering stage, then do I simply set that aside and move onto a data insight exercise which also, in it self, requires the team to write a bunch of ideas down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastEditorUserId="4364" LastEditDate="2016-02-20T16:10:44.007" LastActivityDate="2017-11-27T15:55:46.317" Title="Retrospective: difference between gathering data and generating insights?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14956" CreationDate="2016-02-19T14:02:25.117" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try using one of the Trace Logic buttons in&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/projects/good-plus-fast-project-add-in/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://sourceforge.net/projects/good-plus-fast-project-add-in/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22275" LastEditorUserId="22275" LastEditDate="2017-01-25T01:53:18.667" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T01:53:18.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17469" CreationDate="2016-02-19T14:21:09.847" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try using this macro.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Public Sub ExcelSchedule()&#xA;'Creates a new table within the Task Sheet view (so it'll use the Task Sheet formatting), copies all data and pastes it into an Excel sheet.&#xA;'Within Excel, a table is created with slicers.&#xA;&#xA;    Dim i As Integer&#xA;&#xA;'Sniff Test&#xA;    'Is the Excel Library enabled?&#xA;    For i = 1 To ActiveProject.VBProject.references.Count&#xA;        If ActiveProject.VBProject.references.Item(i).Name = &quot;Excel&quot; Then&#xA;            GoTo LibraryFound 'found library, continue&#xA;        End If&#xA;    Next i&#xA;&#xA;    'The Excel library was not found&#xA;    MsgBox &quot;This macro requires the Excel Library to run.&quot; &amp; vbNewLine &amp; _&#xA;            &quot;Take a screenshot of these instructions and click OK.&quot; &amp; vbNewLine &amp; vbNewLine &amp; _&#xA;            &quot;In MS Project, press &quot;&quot;Alt + F11&quot;&quot; to open the VBA Editor.&quot; &amp; vbNewLine &amp; _&#xA;            &quot;Go to Tools &gt;&gt; References.&quot; &amp; vbNewLine &amp; _&#xA;            &quot;Place a checkmark next to &quot;&quot;Microsoft Excel 15.0 Object Library&quot;&quot;. Notice it is Excel and not Office.&quot; &amp; vbNewLine &amp; _&#xA;            &quot;Click OK and run the macro again.&quot; _&#xA;                , vbCritical, &quot;Oops! Missing Library&quot;&#xA;End&#xA;&#xA;LibraryFound:     'continue with macro&#xA;ExcelSchedule_exe&#xA;End Sub&#xA;&#xA;Private Sub ExcelSchedule_exe()&#xA;'Variables&#xA;    Dim projectName As String&#xA;    Dim xlRange As Excel.Range&#xA;    Dim instrNotes As String&#xA;&#xA;'Prepare&#xA;    On Error GoTo ErrorHandler&#xA;    UpdatesOFF&#xA;    SaveOriginalSettings&#xA;    WindowActivate TopPane:=True&#xA;    ViewApply Name:=&quot;Task Sheet&quot;&#xA;    GroupApply Name:=&quot;No Group&quot;&#xA;    FilterApply Name:=&quot;All Tasks&quot;&#xA;    OutlineShowAllTasks&#xA;&#xA;'Create Table in the Task Sheet View&#xA;    TableEditEx Name:=&quot;Excel Report - Good + Fast&quot;, TaskTable:=True, Create:=True, OverwriteExisting:=True, FieldName:=&quot;ID&quot;, Title:=&quot;&quot;, Width:=6, Align:=1, ShowInMenu:=False, LockFirstColumn:=True, DateFormat:=255, RowHeight:=1, AlignTitle:=0, HeaderTextWrap:=False, WrapText:=False&#xA;    TableEditEx Name:=&quot;Excel Report - Good + Fast&quot;, TaskTable:=True, NewFieldName:=&quot;ID&quot;, Title:=&quot;&quot;, Width:=7, Align:=0, LockFirstColumn:=True, DateFormat:=255, RowHeight:=1, AlignTitle:=0, WrapText:=False&#xA;    TableEditEx Name:=&quot;Excel Report - Good + Fast&quot;, TaskTable:=True, NewFieldName:=&quot;Predecessors&quot;, Title:=&quot;&quot;, Width:=7, Align:=0, LockFirstColumn:=True, DateFormat:=255, RowHeight:=1, AlignTitle:=0, WrapText:=False&#xA;    TableEditEx Name:=&quot;Excel Report - Good + Fast&quot;, TaskTable:=True, NewFieldName:=&quot;Successors&quot;, Title:=&quot;&quot;, Width:=7, Align:=0, LockFirstColumn:=True, DateFormat:=255, RowHeight:=1, AlignTitle:=0, WrapText:=False&#xA;    TableEditEx Name:=&quot;Excel Report - Good + Fast&quot;, TaskTable:=True, NewFieldName:=&quot;% Complete&quot;, Title:=&quot;&quot;, Width:=7, Align:=2, LockFirstColumn:=True, DateFormat:=255, RowHeight:=1, AlignTitle:=0, HeaderTextWrap:=False, WrapText:=False&#xA;    TableEditEx Name:=&quot;Excel Report - Good + Fast&quot;, TaskTable:=True, NewFieldName:=&quot;Name&quot;, Title:=&quot;&quot;, Width:=50, Align:=0, LockFirstColumn:=True, DateFormat:=255, RowHeight:=1, AlignTitle:=0, WrapText:=True&#xA;    TableEditEx Name:=&quot;Excel Report - Good + Fast&quot;, TaskTable:=True, NewFieldName:=&quot;Resource Names&quot;, Title:=&quot;&quot;, Width:=18, Align:=0, LockFirstColumn:=True, DateFormat:=255, RowHeight:=1, AlignTitle:=0, WrapText:=False&#xA;    TableEditEx Name:=&quot;Excel Report - Good + Fast&quot;, TaskTable:=True, NewFieldName:=&quot;Status&quot;, Title:=&quot;&quot;, Width:=14, Align:=0, LockFirstColumn:=True, DateFormat:=255, RowHeight:=1, AlignTitle:=0, HeaderTextWrap:=False, WrapText:=False&#xA;    TableEditEx Name:=&quot;Excel Report - Good + Fast&quot;, TaskTable:=True, NewFieldName:=&quot;Work&quot;, Title:=&quot;&quot;, Width:=13, Align:=2, LockFirstColumn:=True, DateFormat:=255, RowHeight:=1, AlignTitle:=0, WrapText:=False&#xA;    TableEditEx Name:=&quot;Excel Report - Good + Fast&quot;, TaskTable:=True, NewFieldName:=&quot;Duration&quot;, Title:=&quot;&quot;, Width:=10, Align:=2, LockFirstColumn:=True, DateFormat:=255, RowHeight:=1, AlignTitle:=0, WrapText:=False&#xA;    TableEditEx Name:=&quot;Excel Report - Good + Fast&quot;, TaskTable:=True, NewFieldName:=&quot;Remaining Work&quot;, Title:=&quot;&quot;, Width:=15, Align:=0, LockFirstColumn:=True, DateFormat:=255, RowHeight:=1, AlignTitle:=0, WrapText:=False&#xA;    TableEditEx Name:=&quot;Excel Report - Good + Fast&quot;, TaskTable:=True, NewFieldName:=&quot;Start&quot;, Title:=&quot;&quot;, Width:=15, Align:=2, LockFirstColumn:=True, DateFormat:=255, RowHeight:=1, AlignTitle:=0, WrapText:=False&#xA;    TableEditEx Name:=&quot;Excel Report - Good + Fast&quot;, TaskTable:=True, NewFieldName:=&quot;Finish&quot;, Title:=&quot;&quot;, Width:=15, Align:=0, LockFirstColumn:=True, DateFormat:=255, RowHeight:=1, AlignTitle:=0, WrapText:=False&#xA;    TableEditEx Name:=&quot;Excel Report - Good + Fast&quot;, TaskTable:=True, NewFieldName:=&quot;Deadline&quot;, Title:=&quot;&quot;, Width:=14, Align:=0, LockFirstColumn:=True, DateFormat:=255, RowHeight:=1, AlignTitle:=0, WrapText:=False&#xA;    TableEditEx Name:=&quot;Excel Report - Good + Fast&quot;, TaskTable:=True, NewFieldName:=&quot;Baseline Start&quot;, Title:=&quot;&quot;, Width:=16, Align:=2, LockFirstColumn:=True, DateFormat:=255, RowHeight:=1, AlignTitle:=0, WrapText:=False&#xA;    TableEditEx Name:=&quot;Excel Report - Good + Fast&quot;, TaskTable:=True, NewFieldName:=&quot;Baseline Finish&quot;, Title:=&quot;&quot;, Width:=16, Align:=0, LockFirstColumn:=True, DateFormat:=255, RowHeight:=1, AlignTitle:=0, WrapText:=False&#xA;    TableEditEx Name:=&quot;Excel Report - Good + Fast&quot;, TaskTable:=True, NewFieldName:=&quot;Actual Start&quot;, Title:=&quot;&quot;, Width:=14, Align:=2, LockFirstColumn:=True, DateFormat:=255, RowHeight:=1, AlignTitle:=0, WrapText:=False&#xA;    TableEditEx Name:=&quot;Excel Report - Good + Fast&quot;, TaskTable:=True, NewFieldName:=&quot;Actual Finish&quot;, Title:=&quot;&quot;, Width:=14, Align:=0, LockFirstColumn:=True, DateFormat:=255, RowHeight:=1, AlignTitle:=0, WrapText:=False&#xA;    TableEditEx Name:=&quot;Excel Report - Good + Fast&quot;, TaskTable:=True, NewFieldName:=&quot;Start Variance&quot;, Title:=&quot;&quot;, Width:=14, Align:=2, LockFirstColumn:=True, DateFormat:=255, RowHeight:=1, AlignTitle:=0, WrapText:=False&#xA;    TableEditEx Name:=&quot;Excel Report - Good + Fast&quot;, TaskTable:=True, NewFieldName:=&quot;Finish Variance&quot;, Title:=&quot;&quot;, Width:=14, Align:=0, LockFirstColumn:=True, DateFormat:=255, RowHeight:=1, AlignTitle:=0, WrapText:=False&#xA;    TableEditEx Name:=&quot;Excel Report - Good + Fast&quot;, TaskTable:=True, NewFieldName:=&quot;Outline Level&quot;, Title:=&quot;&quot;, Width:=14, Align:=0, LockFirstColumn:=True, DateFormat:=255, RowHeight:=1, AlignTitle:=0, WrapText:=False&#xA;    TableEditEx Name:=&quot;Excel Report - Good + Fast&quot;, TaskTable:=True, NewFieldName:=&quot;Summary&quot;, Title:=&quot;&quot;, Width:=11, Align:=0, LockFirstColumn:=True, DateFormat:=255, RowHeight:=1, AlignTitle:=0, HeaderTextWrap:=False, WrapText:=False&#xA;    TableEditEx Name:=&quot;Excel Report - Good + Fast&quot;, TaskTable:=True, NewFieldName:=&quot;Active&quot;, Title:=&quot;&quot;, Width:=11, Align:=0, LockFirstColumn:=True, DateFormat:=255, RowHeight:=1, AlignTitle:=0, WrapText:=False&#xA;    TableEditEx Name:=&quot;Excel Report - Good + Fast&quot;, TaskTable:=True, NewFieldName:=&quot;Milestone&quot;, Title:=&quot;&quot;, Width:=11, Align:=0, LockFirstColumn:=True, DateFormat:=255, RowHeight:=1, AlignTitle:=0, WrapText:=False&#xA;    TableEditEx Name:=&quot;Excel Report - Good + Fast&quot;, TaskTable:=True, NewFieldName:=&quot;Critical&quot;, Title:=&quot;&quot;, Width:=10, Align:=0, LockFirstColumn:=True, DateFormat:=255, RowHeight:=1, AlignTitle:=0, WrapText:=False&#xA;    TableEditEx Name:=&quot;Excel Report - Good + Fast&quot;, TaskTable:=True, NewFieldName:=&quot;Number10&quot;, Title:=&quot;&quot;, Width:=13, Align:=0, LockFirstColumn:=True, DateFormat:=255, RowHeight:=1, AlignTitle:=0, WrapText:=False&#xA;    TableEditEx Name:=&quot;Excel Report - Good + Fast&quot;, TaskTable:=True, NewFieldName:=&quot;Text10&quot;, Title:=&quot;&quot;, Width:=13, Align:=0, LockFirstColumn:=True, DateFormat:=255, RowHeight:=1, AlignTitle:=0, WrapText:=False&#xA;    TableEditEx Name:=&quot;Excel Report - Good + Fast&quot;, TaskTable:=True, NewFieldName:=&quot;Notes&quot;, Title:=&quot;&quot;, Width:=32, Align:=0, LockFirstColumn:=True, DateFormat:=255, RowHeight:=1, AlignTitle:=0, WrapText:=False, ShowAddNewColumn:=True&#xA;    TableApply Name:=&quot;Excel Report - Good + Fast&quot;&#xA;&#xA;'Create Remaining Work column without any letters&#xA;    CustomFieldSetFormula FieldID:=pjCustomTaskNumber10, Formula:=&quot;[Remaining Work]/60&quot;&#xA;    CustomFieldRename FieldID:=pjCustomTaskNumber10, NewName:=&quot;Remaining Work Hrs&quot;&#xA;    CustomFieldPropertiesEx FieldID:=pjCustomTaskNumber10, Attribute:=pjFieldAttributeFormula, SummaryCalc:=pjCalcNone, GraphicalIndicators:=False, AutomaticallyRolldownToAssn:=False&#xA;&#xA;'Create Start column in m/d/yy format&#xA;    CustomFieldSetFormula FieldID:=pjCustomTaskText10, Formula:=&quot;format([Start],&quot;&quot;m/dd/yyyy&quot;&quot;)&quot;&#xA;    CustomFieldRename FieldID:=pjCustomTaskText10, NewName:=&quot;Start Formatted&quot;&#xA;    CustomFieldPropertiesEx FieldID:=pjCustomTaskText10, Attribute:=pjFieldAttributeFormula, SummaryCalc:=pjCalcNone, GraphicalIndicators:=False, AutomaticallyRolldownToAssn:=False&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;'Copy Project Tasks&#xA;    SelectSheet&#xA;    EditCopy&#xA;&#xA;'--- EXCEL ---&#xA;    On Error Resume Next 'ignore errors from Excel&#xA;'Schedule Sheet&#xA;    'Prepare Excel File&#xA;        Set xlApp = New Excel.Application&#xA;        Set xlBook = xlApp.Workbooks.Add&#xA;&#xA;        xlBook.Sheets.Add&#xA;&#xA;        Set xlSheet = xlBook.Worksheets(1)&#xA;        Set xlSheet2 = xlBook.Worksheets(2)&#xA;&#xA;        xlSheet2.Name = &quot;Sheet3&quot;&#xA;        xlApp.Visible = False&#xA;&#xA;    'Paste Project Tasks into Excel&#xA;        xlSheet.Range(&quot;b1&quot;).Select&#xA;        xlSheet.Paste&#xA;        Set xlRange = xlSheet.UsedRange&#xA;&#xA;        xlRange.WrapText = False&#xA;        xlSheet.ListObjects.Add(xlSrcRange, xlRange, , xlYes).Name = &quot;Table1&quot;&#xA;&#xA;    'Insert icons&#xA;        'Insert column with formula&#xA;        xlSheet.Columns(&quot;h:h&quot;).Insert Shift:=xlToRight, CopyOrigin:=xlFormatFromLeftOrAbove&#xA;        xlSheet.Range(&quot;Table1[[#Headers],[Column1]]&quot;).Value = &quot; &quot;&#xA;        xlSheet.Range(&quot;h2&quot;).Value = _&#xA;            &quot;=IF([@Active]=&quot;&quot;No&quot;&quot;,1&quot; &amp; _&#xA;                &quot;,IF([@Status]=&quot;&quot;Complete&quot;&quot;,2&quot; &amp; _&#xA;                &quot;,IF([@Status]=&quot;&quot;Late&quot;&quot;,3&quot; &amp; _&#xA;                &quot;,IF(OR([@Status]=&quot;&quot;Future Task&quot;&quot;,[@Status]=&quot;&quot;On Schedule&quot;&quot;),4&quot; &amp; _&#xA;                &quot;))))&quot;&#xA;&#xA;        'Configure conditional formatting&#xA;        xlSheet.Range(&quot;Table1[[ ]]&quot;).Select&#xA;        xlApp.Selection.FormatConditions.AddIconSetCondition&#xA;        xlApp.Selection.FormatConditions(xlApp.Selection.FormatConditions.Count).SetFirstPriority&#xA;        With xlApp.Selection.FormatConditions(1)&#xA;            .ReverseOrder = False&#xA;            .ShowIconOnly = True&#xA;            .IconSet = xlBook.IconSets(xl4TrafficLights)&#xA;        End With&#xA;&#xA;        xlApp.Selection.FormatConditions(1).IconCriteria(1).Icon = xlIconGrayCircle&#xA;        With xlApp.Selection.FormatConditions(1).IconCriteria(2)&#xA;            .Type = xlConditionValueNumber&#xA;            .Value = 2&#xA;            .Operator = 7&#xA;            .Icon = xlIconGreenCheck&#xA;        End With&#xA;        With xlApp.Selection.FormatConditions(1).IconCriteria(3)&#xA;            .Type = xlConditionValueNumber&#xA;            .Value = 3&#xA;            .Operator = 7&#xA;            .Icon = xlIconRedFlag&#xA;        End With&#xA;        With xlApp.Selection.FormatConditions(1).IconCriteria(4)&#xA;            .Type = xlConditionValueNumber&#xA;            .Value = 4&#xA;            .Operator = 7&#xA;            .Icon = xlIconGreenCircle&#xA;        End With&#xA;&#xA;    'Format Sheet&#xA;        xlApp.ActiveWindow.DisplayGridlines = False&#xA;        xlSheet.Columns(&quot;H:AA&quot;).EntireColumn.AutoFit&#xA;        xlSheet.Columns(&quot;F:F&quot;).ColumnWidth = 55&#xA;        xlSheet.Columns(&quot;F:F&quot;).WrapText = True&#xA;        xlSheet.Columns(&quot;A:A&quot;).ColumnWidth = 27.22&#xA;&#xA;        xlSheet.Range(&quot;A1&quot;).Value = &quot;Filters&quot;&#xA;        xlSheet.Range(&quot;B2&quot;).Select&#xA;        xlApp.ActiveWindow.FreezePanes = True&#xA;&#xA;    'insert column for ID - Name&#xA;        xlSheet.Columns(&quot;AC:AC&quot;).Insert Shift:=xlToRight, CopyOrigin:=xlFormatFromLeftOrAbove&#xA;        xlSheet.Range(&quot;Table1[[#Headers],[Column1]]&quot;).Value = &quot;ID - Name&quot;&#xA;        xlSheet.Range(&quot;AC2&quot;).Value = &quot;=TRIM(CONCATENATE([@ID],&quot;&quot; - &quot;&quot;,[@Name],&quot;&quot; | &quot;&quot;,TEXT([% Complete],&quot;&quot;0%&quot;&quot;),&quot;&quot; Complete | Planned Finish: &quot;&quot;,[@Finish]))&quot;&#xA;&#xA;        xlSheet.Columns(&quot;AA:AC&quot;).Hidden = True&#xA;&#xA;        With xlSheet.Range(&quot;A1&quot;)&#xA;            .HorizontalAlignment = xlCenter&#xA;            .Range(&quot;A1&quot;).Style = &quot;Accent5&quot;&#xA;            .Font.Bold = True&#xA;        End With&#xA;&#xA;    'Insert Slicers&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches.Add2(xlSheet.ListObjects(&quot;Table1&quot;), &quot;Summary&quot;). _&#xA;            Slicers.Add xlSheet, , &quot;Summary&quot;, &quot;Summary&quot;, _&#xA;            15, 1, 75, 50&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches.Add2(xlSheet.ListObjects(&quot;Table1&quot;), &quot;Active&quot;). _&#xA;            Slicers.Add xlSheet, , &quot;Active&quot;, &quot;Active&quot;, _&#xA;            15, 76, 75, 50&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches.Add2(xlSheet.ListObjects(&quot;Table1&quot;), &quot;Milestone&quot; _&#xA;            ).Slicers.Add xlSheet, , &quot;Milestone&quot;, &quot;Milestone&quot;, _&#xA;            65, 1, 75, 50&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches.Add2(xlSheet.ListObjects(&quot;Table1&quot;), &quot;Critical&quot;) _&#xA;            .Slicers.Add xlSheet, , &quot;Critical&quot;, &quot;Critical&quot;, _&#xA;            65, 76, 75, 50&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches.Add2(xlSheet.ListObjects(&quot;Table1&quot;), &quot;Status&quot;). _&#xA;            Slicers.Add xlSheet, , &quot;Status&quot;, &quot;Status&quot;, _&#xA;            115, 1, 150, 70&#xA;&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches.Add2(xlSheet.ListObjects(&quot;Table1&quot;), _&#xA;            &quot;Outline Level&quot;).Slicers.Add xlSheet, , &quot;Outline Level&quot;, &quot;Outline Level&quot;, _&#xA;            185, 1, 150, 90&#xA;&#xA;    'insert instructions to filter by resource&#xA;         instrNotes = &quot;HOW TO FIND TASKS BY RESOURCE&quot; &amp; vbNewLine &amp; _&#xA;            &quot;1. Clear summary filter above to view subtasks.&quot; &amp; vbNewLine &amp; _&#xA;            &quot;2. Select dropdown menu from Resource Names column.&quot; &amp; vbNewLine &amp; _&#xA;            &quot;3. Type the name in the search field.&quot; &amp; vbNewLine &amp; _&#xA;            &quot;4. Click Ok.&quot; &amp; vbNewLine &amp; _&#xA;            &quot;5. Select dropdown menu from Resource Names column again.&quot; &amp; vbNewLine &amp; _&#xA;            &quot;6. Scroll to the bottom of list.&quot; &amp; vbNewLine &amp; _&#xA;            &quot;7. Select &quot;&quot;(blanks)&quot;&quot;.&quot; &amp; vbNewLine &amp; _&#xA;            &quot;8. Click OK.&quot; &amp; vbNewLine &amp; vbNewLine &amp; _&#xA;            &quot;- Now your subtasks and the summary tasks will appear in this schedule.&quot; &amp; vbNewLine &amp; _&#xA;            &quot;- You could also use the&quot; &amp; vbNewLine &amp; _&#xA;            &quot;&quot;&quot;Who Does What&quot;&quot; sheet.&quot;&#xA;&#xA;        xlSheet.Shapes.AddTextbox(msoTextOrientationHorizontal, _&#xA;            1, 276, 149, 205).Select&#xA;        xlApp.Selection.ShapeRange.ShapeStyle = msoShapeStylePreset34&#xA;        xlApp.Selection.ShapeRange.TextFrame2.TextRange.Font.Size = 9&#xA;        xlApp.Selection.Placement = xlFreeFloating&#xA;        xlApp.Selection.ShapeRange(1).TextFrame2.TextRange.Characters.Text = instrNotes&#xA;&#xA;        'Set Columns&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches(&quot;Slicer_Status&quot;).Slicers(&quot;Status&quot;).NumberOfColumns = 2&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches(&quot;Slicer_Critical&quot;).Slicers(&quot;Critical&quot;).NumberOfColumns = 2&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches(&quot;Slicer_Milestone&quot;).Slicers(&quot;Milestone&quot;).NumberOfColumns = 2&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches(&quot;Slicer_Active&quot;).Slicers(&quot;Active&quot;).NumberOfColumns = 2&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches(&quot;Slicer_Summary&quot;).Slicers(&quot;Summary&quot;).NumberOfColumns = 2&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches(&quot;Slicer_Outline_Level&quot;).Slicers(&quot;Outline Level&quot;).NumberOfColumns = 4&#xA;&#xA;        'Set to False&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches(&quot;Slicer_Active&quot;).SlicerItems(&quot;No&quot;).Selected = False&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches(&quot;Slicer_Summary&quot;).SlicerItems(&quot;No&quot;).Selected = False&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches(&quot;Slicer_Status&quot;).SlicerItems(&quot;Complete&quot;).Selected = False&#xA;&#xA;        'Sort to be Yes, No&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches(&quot;Slicer_Summary&quot;).SortItems = xlSlicerSortDescending&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches(&quot;Slicer_Active&quot;).SortItems = xlSlicerSortDescending&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches(&quot;Slicer_Milestone&quot;).SortItems = xlSlicerSortDescending&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches(&quot;Slicer_Critical&quot;).SortItems = xlSlicerSortDescending&#xA;&#xA;'WHO DOES WHAT sheet- EXCEL&#xA;    'Create PivotTable&#xA;        xlSheet.Range(&quot;b4&quot;).Select&#xA;        xlBook.PivotCaches.Create(SourceType:=xlDatabase, SourceData:= _&#xA;            &quot;Table1&quot;, Version:=xlPivotTableVersion15).CreatePivotTable TableDestination _&#xA;            :=&quot;Sheet3!R4C1&quot;, TableName:=&quot;PivotTable2&quot;, DefaultVersion:= _&#xA;            xlPivotTableVersion15&#xA;&#xA;        With xlSheet2.PivotTables(&quot;PivotTable2&quot;).PivotFields(&quot;Resource Names&quot;)&#xA;            .Orientation = xlPageField&#xA;            .Position = 1&#xA;        End With&#xA;        With xlSheet2.PivotTables(&quot;PivotTable2&quot;).PivotFields(&quot;Start Formatted&quot;)&#xA;            .Orientation = xlRowField&#xA;            .Position = 1&#xA;        End With&#xA;        With xlSheet2.PivotTables(&quot;PivotTable2&quot;).PivotFields(&quot;ID - Name&quot;)&#xA;            .Orientation = xlRowField&#xA;            .Position = 2&#xA;        End With&#xA;&#xA;        xlSheet2.PivotTables(&quot;PivotTable2&quot;).AddDataField xlSheet2.PivotTables( _&#xA;            &quot;PivotTable2&quot;).PivotFields(&quot;Remaining Work Hrs&quot;), &quot;Remaining Work Hrs &quot;, xlSum&#xA;        xlSheet2.PivotTables(&quot;PivotTable2&quot;).CompactLayoutRowHeader = _&#xA;            &quot;Task ID - Task Name&quot;&#xA;&#xA;        'Group PivotTable Dates and collapse to level 1&#xA;        xlSheet2.Activate&#xA;        xlSheet2.Range(&quot;A5&quot;).Select&#xA;        xlApp.Selection.Group Start:=True, End:=True, Periods:=Array(False, False, False, _&#xA;            True, True, False, False)&#xA;&#xA;        xlBook.ShowPivotTableFieldList = False&#xA;        xlSheet2.PivotTables(&quot;PivotTable2&quot;).HasAutoFormat = False&#xA;        xlSheet2.PivotTables(&quot;PivotTable2&quot;).PivotFields(&quot;Start&quot;).ShowDetail = False&#xA;&#xA;    'Create timeline&#xA;        xlSheet2.Rows(&quot;1:1&quot;).RowHeight = 120&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches.Add2(xlSheet2.PivotTables(&quot;PivotTable2&quot;), _&#xA;            &quot;Start Formatted&quot;, , xlTimeline).Slicers.Add xlSheet2, , &quot;Start 1&quot;, &quot;Years&quot;, _&#xA;            1, 1, 150, 108&#xA;&#xA;        xlSheet2.Shapes.Range(Array(&quot;Start 1&quot;)).Select&#xA;        xlSheet2.Shapes.Range(&quot;Start 1&quot;).Duplicate.Select&#xA;&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches(&quot;NativeTimeline_Start_Formatted&quot;).Slicers(&quot;Start 1&quot;). _&#xA;            TimelineViewState.Level = xlTimelineLevelYears&#xA;&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches(&quot;NativeTimeline_Start_Formatted&quot;).Slicers(&quot;Start 1&quot;). _&#xA;            TimelineViewState.Level = xlTimelineLevelYears 'this doesn't always work the first time&#xA;&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches(&quot;NativeTimeline_Start_Formatted&quot;).Slicers(&quot;Start 2&quot;).Caption _&#xA;            = &quot;Months&quot;&#xA;&#xA;        xlSheet2.Shapes(&quot;Start 2&quot;).IncrementLeft 141&#xA;        xlSheet2.Shapes(&quot;Start 2&quot;).IncrementTop -12&#xA;        xlSheet2.Shapes(&quot;Start 2&quot;).ScaleWidth 3, msoFalse, msoScaleFromTopLeft&#xA;&#xA;        'Scroll timelines to left&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches(&quot;NativeTimeline_Start_Formatted&quot;).TimelineState.SetFilterDateRange _&#xA;            Format(ActiveProject.ProjectStart, &quot;mm/dd/yyyy&quot;), _&#xA;            Format(DateAdd(&quot;m&quot;, 1, ActiveProject.ProjectStart), &quot;mm/dd/yyyy&quot;)&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches(&quot;NativeTimeline_Start_Formatted&quot;).ClearDateFilter&#xA;        xlSheet2.PivotTables(&quot;PivotTable2&quot;).PivotFields(&quot;Months&quot;).ShowDetail = False&#xA;        xlSheet2.Columns(&quot;A:A&quot;).ColumnWidth = 111.44&#xA;&#xA;    'Create slicers&#xA;        'Active&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches.Add2(xlSheet2.PivotTables(&quot;PivotTable2&quot;), _&#xA;            &quot;Active&quot;).Slicers.Add xlSheet2, , &quot;Active 1&quot;, &quot;Active&quot;, _&#xA;            1, 607, 75, 50&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches(&quot;Slicer_Active1&quot;).Slicers(&quot;Active 1&quot;).NumberOfColumns = 2&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches(&quot;Slicer_Active1&quot;).SlicerItems(&quot;No&quot;).Selected = False&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches(&quot;Slicer_Active1&quot;).SortItems = xlSlicerSortDescending&#xA;&#xA;        'Summary&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches.Add2(xlSheet2.PivotTables(&quot;PivotTable2&quot;), _&#xA;            &quot;Summary&quot;).Slicers.Add xlSheet2, , &quot;Summary 2&quot;, &quot;Summary&quot;, _&#xA;            1, 680, 75, 50&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches(&quot;Slicer_Summary1&quot;).Slicers(&quot;Summary 2&quot;).NumberOfColumns = 2&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches(&quot;Slicer_Summary1&quot;).SlicerItems(&quot;Yes&quot;).Selected = False&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches(&quot;Slicer_Summary1&quot;).SortItems = xlSlicerSortDescending&#xA;&#xA;        'Status&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches.Add2(xlSheet2.PivotTables(&quot;PivotTable2&quot;), _&#xA;            &quot;Status&quot;).Slicers.Add xlSheet2, , &quot;Status 1&quot;, &quot;Status&quot;, _&#xA;            1, 755, 300, 50&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches(&quot;Slicer_Status1&quot;).Slicers(&quot;Status 1&quot;).NumberOfColumns = 4&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches(&quot;Slicer_Status1&quot;).SlicerItems(&quot;Complete&quot;).Selected = False&#xA;&#xA;        'Resource Slicer&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches.Add2(xlSheet2.PivotTables(&quot;PivotTable2&quot;), _&#xA;            &quot;Resource Names&quot;).Slicers.Add xlSheet2, , &quot;Resource Names 1&quot;, &quot;Resource Names&quot;, _&#xA;            55, 712, 343, 325&#xA;        xlBook.SlicerCaches(&quot;Slicer_Resource_Names&quot;).Slicers(&quot;Resource Names 1&quot;).NumberOfColumns = 2&#xA;&#xA;    'Insert instructions to use filter&#xA;        With xlSheet2.Range(&quot;b2&quot;).Interior&#xA;            .ThemeColor = xlThemeColorAccent5&#xA;            .TintAndShade = 0&#xA;        End With&#xA;        xlSheet2.Range(&quot;b2&quot;).Font.ThemeColor = xlThemeColorDark1&#xA;&#xA;        xlSheet2.Shapes.AddTextbox(msoTextOrientationHorizontal, _&#xA;            607, 65, 100, 48).Select&#xA;        xlApp.Selection.ShapeRange(1).TextFrame2.TextRange.Characters.Text = _&#xA;            &quot;Select drop down below&quot; &amp; Chr(13) &amp; _&#xA;            &quot;Type a name to search for&quot; &amp; Chr(13) &amp; _&#xA;            &quot;&quot;&quot;Select Multiple Items&quot;&quot;&quot; &amp; Chr(13) &amp; _&#xA;            &quot;Click Ok&quot;&#xA;        With xlApp.Selection.ShapeRange.TextFrame2&#xA;            .TextRange.Font.Size = 8&#xA;            .VerticalAnchor = msoAnchorBottom&#xA;            .TextRange.ParagraphFormat.Alignment = msoAlignCenter&#xA;        End With&#xA;        xlApp.Selection.ShapeRange.ShapeStyle = msoShapeStylePreset34&#xA;&#xA;'Clean up Excel&#xA;    xlApp.ActiveWindow.DisplayGridlines = False&#xA;&#xA;    xlSheet2.Range(&quot;a1&quot;).Select&#xA;    xlSheet.Name = &quot;Schedule&quot;&#xA;    xlSheet2.Name = &quot;Who Does What When&quot;&#xA;&#xA;    xlSheet.Activate&#xA;    xlSheet.Range(&quot;a1&quot;).Select&#xA;&#xA;'Clean Up Project&#xA;    On Error GoTo ErrorHandler&#xA;    RestoreOriginalSettings&#xA;    UpdatesON&#xA;    DoEvents&#xA;&#xA;'Save As Dialog&#xA;    projectName = ActiveProject.Tasks.UniqueID(0).Name &amp; &quot; - &quot; &amp; _&#xA;        Format(Now(), &quot;yyyy-mm-dd_HHmm&quot;)&#xA;    xlApp.Visible = True&#xA;    xlApp.Dialogs(xlDialogSaveAs).Show projectName&#xA;&#xA;End&#xA;ErrorHandler:&#xA;HandlingErrors&#xA;End Sub&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22275" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T14:21:09.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17437" CreationDate="2016-02-19T15:00:15.560" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In the old project schedule,&lt;/strong&gt; go to the Task Sheet view. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select all rows and columns by clicking on the blank square above&#xA;the IDs and to the left of the first column header. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Press Ctrl + C to copy.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wait until the hour glasses goes away.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In the new project,&lt;/strong&gt; go to the Task Sheet view and select all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;4&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Press ctrl + v to paste.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just did this yesterday with my Project Online schedule loaded with enterprise resources. It worked correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22275" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T15:00:15.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17477" CreationDate="2016-02-19T16:21:37.090" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the idea behind the two separate parts (I've done something similar) is this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gathering Data: focussed on 'what happened' and should really be about &lt;strong&gt;facts&lt;/strong&gt; rather than any interpretation. Ie 'The builds we're broken too often' or 'Testing component X was delayed meaning we didn't have time to resolve the bugs before the end of the sprint'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Insights: focussed on interpretation of the data and what should/could be done in future to avoid the same situation (or encourage the same situation if it was a good thing:) ). Ie 'We need to  shorten the time the builds take so people get feedback sooner and can fix their crappy code!' etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea here is to avoid too much discussion and possibly hurt feelings when working out what happened. By timeboxing that part of the meeting you can then move onto discussion of what should be done. Otherwise too long can be spent on the first thing someone mentions, you end up down a rabbit hole and the meeting missed the opportunity to discuss something actually important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20707" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T16:21:37.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17477" CreationDate="2016-02-19T19:44:16.993" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The two stages require a different kind of thinking. They build on each other, together with the other stages, to come that actions that will help the team to improve effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Gather data&lt;/strong&gt; is about getting information about the problem, both facts and feelings. The team will be working towards creating a shared image of the current situation based on what they know now.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Generate insight&lt;/strong&gt; is about coming to solution on how to deal with the problems that gather data has revealed. You are looking for solutions. In that process you may need to dig deeper, hence get extra information/data. You might also see this as iterating between gather data and generate insight. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Main thing to be aware is to get a good enough understanding of what the real problems are before trying to come up with solutions. This increases the chance of coming up with effective actions that will help to solve the problem or prevent it from happening in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16919" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T19:44:16.993" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17483" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17486" CreationDate="2016-02-20T16:15:44.337" Score="2" ViewCount="2462" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team has certain issues which I have already determined, namely:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They are not pairing enough&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Their cycle time is very high&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They break timeboxed tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team is not splitting QA work equally, they assume the QA guy needs to do it all&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally the team is working quite slowly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I have a retrospective to bring this to the surface but not hurt any feelings i.e. the retrospective needs to address the high cycle time essentially and these issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastActivityDate="2016-02-22T12:40:49.783" Title="How to make a retrospective focus on certain issues which I have already identified" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17483" CreationDate="2016-02-20T16:40:54.407" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've experienced a similar problem at the company I work for and it typically falls by to trust among the team. Before you can really address the cycle time issues you need to rebuild the team unity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably the most successful retrospective we've had we started out like any others with a checkin question and reading the prime directive. We handed out stacks of 3x5 cards and sharpies to everyone and set a large bowl in the middle and told everyone to write anything and everything they feel about the team and their current work environment. After everyone was done writing our moderator read each one out loud and stuck it on a white board. By the time the bowl was empty we had entirely filled up a large whiteboard and he asked if anyone saw anything they wanted to talk about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was a long 4 hour meeting but when we got out of it every person felt much better about the team and within 2 iterations we were out performing every other team in the department and it was easier to guide future retrospectives to point out any issues because the team felt they could all talk freely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22289" LastActivityDate="2016-02-20T16:40:54.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17483" CreationDate="2016-02-20T20:58:57.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might be helpful to do an exercise in the retrospective to come to an good understanding why people are not pairing enough (BTW, what's &quot;enough&quot;) and insufficiently collaborating as a team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.benlinders.com/2013/which-questions-do-you-ask-in-retrospectives/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;questions&lt;/a&gt; for this, or a constellation exercise (described in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.benlinders.com/getting-value-out-of-agile-retrospectives/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;my book&lt;/a&gt;) or any other exercise to generate insight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on first building a shared image with the team of how they are doing now will help you to have a better case to take action. Chances are big that the team themselves decides on what to do more or less. This is where a starfish exercise can be valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@BenLinders&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16919" LastEditorUserId="12235" LastEditDate="2016-02-22T12:40:49.783" LastActivityDate="2016-02-22T12:40:49.783" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17483" CreationDate="2016-02-20T22:14:29.967" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong with &lt;strong&gt;giving a team a scope for the retrospective&lt;/strong&gt;, especially when these meetings does not provide too much for the team. You can set a theme like &quot;speed&quot; or &quot;number of delivered items&quot; and let the team discuss these topics. When the learn how to deal with narrowed scope you can provide them a bigger one. Based on my experience a team can have better retrospecives and improved processes in 2-3 months with this technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2016-02-20T22:14:29.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17483" CreationDate="2016-02-21T07:59:12.220" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It appears that your team has not got the right induction on the process and benefits of implementing the Agile methodology. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest you pause your engineering activities, formally run a project kickoff covering the process, roles and responsibilities, benefits from the product / project realisation. Later, revisit on your product backlog, and continue your journey. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note, the retrospective is always reactive that help in addressing the lessons learnt (costly mistakes). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22293" LastActivityDate="2016-02-21T07:59:12.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17483" CreationDate="2016-02-21T12:51:44.950" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read two questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to tell the team the observed aspects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to work on the observed aspects (in order to get them out of the way)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, investing now in team building and team development might increase efficiency and effectiveness enormously in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general recommendation for the first question comes from negotiation theory. I don't know the original English expression but it should be similar to: &lt;em&gt;Soft to the person, hard to the point&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would try something similar to the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, prepare yourself: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to find objective observations instead of vague feelings. Focus on general observations on the team instead of single team members.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make a list of things, the team is really good at - don't forget a retrospective can focus on positive aspects also in order to keep them living.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start to tell your observations and ask the team how they interpret them instead of telling them your interpretation also. Ask questions instead of giving solutions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify positive and negative topics to work on (Someone at PMSE said &lt;em&gt;more of..., less of...&lt;/em&gt;) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the team discussed your observations, leading to positive and negative topics make a break and afterwards work on the topics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prepare a list of influencing aspects - not jet causes or actions. Separate between &lt;em&gt;Team Internal&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Team External&lt;/em&gt;. Visualise everything somehow graphically on a flip chart or similar.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask the team to extend your list resp. discuss it. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start to search for causes by combining the positive / negative topics with the influencing aspects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify actions &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As usual, keep the team in motion by involving them using cards, flip charts, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2016-02-21T12:51:44.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17483" CreationDate="2016-02-21T21:42:56.177" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remember that the goal of an agile team is to be self organising. To achieve this they have to have the opportunity to identify their own faults and come up with their own solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be very tempting to step in and guide the retrospective. But this runs the risk of removing the responsibility from the team to fix their own problems, which can be counterproductive. There is nothing wrong with suggesting solutions, but you want the team to spot the problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master, when I identify problems I will typically try and find some way of highlighting them. For example, if the team is splitting stories across time-boxed sprints I would start to track this and make the results visible. Usually the team starts to address the problem once they recognise it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading through your list, it surprises me that none of these items have been mentioned in the retrospective. For example, has the tester not commented on the the way the QA work is being divided up? Has nobody mentioned that they are breaking tasks across the time box? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the format of retrospective you are using does not encourage team members to speak out? This is one of the reasons a common approach to retrospectives is to have the team members write their feedback independently at the start of the retrospective. Then the team as a whole discusses each item in turn. This ensures that everybody gets a voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-02-21T21:42:56.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17491" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17551" CreationDate="2016-02-22T15:12:30.120" Score="2" ViewCount="409" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to create a PERT chart to show the application of Agile to a certain workflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a node which diverges into 4 parallel edges/nodes, representing 4 tasks which are completed simultaneously. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results from all 4 simultaneous tasks are then used in the next step, so 4 edges converge from 4 nodes into 1 node, which represents the next task/milestone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, since there are 4 edges coverging to 1 node, it's unclear to me as to how to label it. There's only 1 task being done in that next step, but I have 4 edges and each edge is supposed to be labeled. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I write the same thing 4 times? or only label 1 of the 4 edges?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21892" LastActivityDate="2016-03-02T08:04:33.523" Title="How to label convergence of simultaneous tasks in PERT chart?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17492" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17495" CreationDate="2016-02-22T15:40:47.673" Score="2" ViewCount="360" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically in scrum environments the collection of tasks scheduled to go into a sprint in the sprint planning meeting should be considered fairly &quot;fixed&quot;.  That is, once the sprint starts, the work agreed to shouldn't change, otherwise you run the risk of having work not get finished in the sprint, you create distractions, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question though is what about times when a developer takes the initiative to (on his/her own spare time outside of work) solve a ticket that they feel passionate about.  Should that ticket be considered as part of the sprint, or should it be left out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Context for my question: I'm a developer and over the weekend was spending a bit of time looking at our backlog, and stumbled across a couple extremely small tickets.  Since they were trivial (combined the two tasks took less than a half hour) I just did them.  Now, should those tickets be considered part of the current sprint for reporting purposes, or should they be left out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6264" LastActivityDate="2016-02-22T19:00:09.607" Title="&quot;Extra&quot; Tasks Mid-sprint" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17493" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-22T16:40:07.913" Score="4" ViewCount="952" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm learning a lot about Agile, I'm working in a small web development company. The one big issue remains: &lt;strong&gt;Billing&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example when working in story points, We can calculate that the team has a velocity of 20 storypoints / week (iteration). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to calculate the project cost we could measure the hours per week and multiply by price so we would get&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;money = &amp;lt;hours/iteration&amp;gt; * &amp;lt;no. of iterations&amp;gt; * &amp;lt;people&amp;gt; * &amp;lt;hourly rate&amp;gt;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But since the general way of working is a website gets designed first by the designers, and then developed, it's not realistic that the whole team will be working on the site at all times. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I calculate the price using the above method our web projects come out as 5x the price they are now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have experience with this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22230" LastActivityDate="2016-02-22T21:34:22.123" Title="Using Story points for billing and the team size" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17494" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-22T18:21:21.113" Score="2" ViewCount="105" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking into using user stories for our next web project. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There will be a homepage with some information and the latest projects for the client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How could you turn this into one user story? And it has to be designed by a designer, then developed...But if this is only one card how can we track this on the board so we can tell if the designer currently designing it or if someone is developing it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22230" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-02-22T21:34:44.397" LastActivityDate="2016-02-22T21:34:44.397" Title="How can we track the status of very large, very broad user stories in our web development process?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;epics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17492" CreationDate="2016-02-22T19:00:09.607" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(...) collection of tasks scheduled to go into a sprint in the sprint planning meeting should be considered fairly &quot;fixed&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you refer to tasks as decomposed PBIs then this statement is incorrect. What should be &quot;fixed&quot; and unchanged is the Sprint Goal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PBIs selected for the Sprint should remain fairly unchanged. &quot;Fairly&quot;, because team might accomplish Sprint Goal without completing all selected PBIs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My question though is what about times when a developer takes the&#xA;  initiative to (on his/her own spare time outside of work) solve a&#xA;  ticket that they feel passionate about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume they are not part of the Sprint Backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should that ticket be&#xA;  considered as part of the sprint, or should it be left out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should be left out. &#xA;That would make hard to compare Sprints between each other (in terms of velocity, specifically). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally by adding them you'd add more complexity into Sprint Backlog (testing, merging, remembering). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastActivityDate="2016-02-22T19:00:09.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17496" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-22T20:06:59.110" Score="3" ViewCount="293" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're a small team (2 developers and 2 designers), experimenting with Agile. Tomorrow is our first big meeting with a new client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm wondering, How many people do you include in the Meeting? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If making user stories and discussing the design options is something the whole team is involved in, do you add everyone to the meeting as well? Or do you include them after the client meeting and explain the business requirements?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Curious about your ideas on this topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22230" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T12:36:40.697" Title="How many people during the initial meeting with the client?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17494" CreationDate="2016-02-22T21:18:58.967" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;User stories are written from the point of view of the end user. An example user story might be something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a website user I would like to see important information on the homepage so that I find this site useful&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The types of information you show could be further detailed in the acceptance criteria for the story. These acceptance criteria would come out of a discussion with your Product Owner or Stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The task board tracks exactly the kind of information you mention. For example, you could have the following columns on your task board:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Open&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Development&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Test&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each card will represent a story and the column it is in will indicate who is working on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-02-22T21:18:58.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17494" CreationDate="2016-02-22T21:26:29.887" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't manage or track epics like you have described in a meaningful way. In addition, user stories that lack context and a clearly-defined &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/10799/4271&quot;&gt;value consumer&lt;/a&gt; aren't generally useful for project management, or even as conversational placeholders for business communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There will be a homepage with some information and the latest projects for the client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't even an epic. In addition to not following &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST criteria&lt;/a&gt;, an epic this big doesn't even convey useful information about the themes and stories that might be packaged under it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How could you turn this into one user story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short answer is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can't.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even if you could, you shouldn't.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User stories should be much more granular than what you've described in your original post. When stories are small enough, and have clearly defined tasks associated with them, then it becomes possible to track the stories through your swimlanes or status columns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But if this is only one card how can we track this on the board so we can tell if the designer currently designing it or if someone is developing it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the stories are decomposed into tasks, then the story can get passed from function to function in a clearly-definend way. However, this is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; an agile approach. Rather than separating design from development, user stories should represent a vertical slice of value through both functions and the team members should work on them collectively and collaboratively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your kanban board will then reflect the &lt;em&gt;state&lt;/em&gt; of each story, or its location in your process pipeline, rather than who is working on what. While those types of details can be attached to user stories, doing so is often a &quot;project smell&quot; that the team is still following a waterfall-based, upfront-design process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Resources&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a lot of information out on the web and in books about how to create meaningful user stories, and how to manage and track them. Answers here cannot provide a canonical list of resources that a practitioner should know, but you can certainly start with some classics like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development&lt;/em&gt; by Mike Cohn.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Agile Estimating and Planning&lt;/em&gt; by Mike Cohn.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product&lt;/em&gt; by Jeff Patton.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business&lt;/em&gt; by David J. Anderson.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please don't expect answers on a Q&amp;amp;A site to substitute for baseline knowledge of user stories. Truly understanding user stories, how to apply them, and how to manage them within your project management process is a complex topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2016-02-22T21:26:29.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17493" CreationDate="2016-02-22T21:34:22.123" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A common practice in Scrum is to break stories down in to tasks. It is also not unusual for teams to do time-based estimates on these tasks (this is particularly true of teams that are relatively new to Scrum). They do this for the following reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thinking about the time required to do a task helps the team to understand more about what is involved in the work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Putting hours against tasks helps the team to not over commit any one discipline (for example, ensure the QA isn't going to be overloaded)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A lot of teams like to keep tasks to a small size, say less than 6 hours&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the time-based estimates are not being used to work out the capacity of the sprint. The capacity of the sprint is still being calculated using story points and velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now if you use this approach, you would be able to provide a price in a similar way to the way you were using previously. This price will not be exact, as it is likely some tasks will take more/less time than was estimated. But it will be a lot more accurate than your current approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An alternative would be to get the team members to log the time they spend on each client's project. This is going to be the most accurate way to measure the actual time spent and billing will be very accurate. The downside with this approach is that you introduce the overhead of recording time, which reduces the time the team will spend delivering value and may also irritate them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-02-22T21:34:22.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16271" CreationDate="2016-02-23T14:48:01.077" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was faced with the same question recently, and have to say, finding anything remotely directive in approach is very very hard.&#xA;The closest I found as far as some guidelines on what to look at and how to begin was in this short article: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://kanbantool.com/blog/agile-kanban-for-research-work&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Kanban for Research Work&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22316" LastEditorUserId="105" LastEditDate="2016-03-01T18:00:58.147" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T18:00:58.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17504" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-24T00:52:39.687" Score="3" ViewCount="874" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Here is the problem:&lt;/strong&gt; We have remote team members. Most of us are in Western Washington but a few are located in Texas and we lose participation from members of the team because we're doing everything on the computer either locally or via Skype for Business and screen sharing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience of being a scrum master the most effective means of garnering participation and investment in the process was in jobs where we would use printed stories, tape them up on the conference room wall in a roughly horizontal line parallel to the floor in backlog priority order. We would bring stories into the sprint by pulling them those stories off the wall and reaffixing them below the invisible line. That way we could visually see what was in the sprint at any given time by looking around the room. With this visual cue, the developers could process all of this information at their pace and possibly identify dependency issues or even identify missing stories. We'd count story points and compare with our velocity to see how we were doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then tasking through the application of sticky notes with rough outlines, an hour estimate, and who was going to be doing the task. Group members would looking at all of the stories would sometimes ask for clarification or talk through the the rough implementation and identify missing tasks or tasks that were under estimated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The actual question:&lt;/strong&gt; I am looking for an alternate UI that can mimic that &quot;pull down&quot; metaphor in an asynchronous manner that was multi-user friendly so that people who are remote can pull a story in or add tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We tried using a shared OneNote notebook which actually worked pretty well in a distributed working group. Each story was its own note page that could be moved between two boundary note pages: The In/Out of Sprint boundary and the Needs Story Development boundary for rejected stories and stories that needed to be sized. Exporting stories to OneNote was laborious and time consuming and importing those stories and tasks back into TFS was a pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since we're committed to using TFS as a company standard I'm looking for framework that works as a frontend to TFS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22324" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T18:55:16.953" Title="Engaging remote team members in sprint planning" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;&lt;remote-teams&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17505" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-24T02:45:27.807" Score="1" ViewCount="118" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a team with 1 week sprints. We have a feature that provides a status indicator for a long running job processing up to thousands of files.  There will be some development work to obtain the status of each file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The product owner wants a graphical spinner showing progress of each file as it is processed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The entire story was estimated to take almost all of one developer's time for the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people want the entire story to be one card and to eliminate the graphical spinner mid-sprint if it becomes too time-consuming to finish by the end of the week. Other people want two cards. One card covers the gathering of the status. The second card covers the graphical spinner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've always thought it made sense to keep cards as small as possible in order to avoid changing requirements mid-sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it appropriate to split this story into two cards or is it better to keep it as one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22326" LastActivityDate="2016-03-06T14:06:04.373" Title="Who decides minimum functionality for a story during planning?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;planning-poker&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17505" CreationDate="2016-02-24T07:41:56.453" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, one cannot just change things in the middle of a sprint, because one of the key pillar of scrum is the fixed length and content. One cannot just decide not do a part of a committed user story. Second, I feel a bit of uncertainty in your text about how much time implementing a spinner takes. Third, usually it is a better practice to do the visuals first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on these observations &lt;strong&gt;I'd rather check how your planning meeting goes than the number of tasks you create&lt;/strong&gt;. I'm not sure about your role, but the Scrum Master should recommend to put more focus on customer experience and estimations (based on previous sprints).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without the spinner your team loses an important UX feature and I believe it is better to create it first with a support of mocks so that the PO can check how it is going to look like - it is harder to get frontend accepted than backend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team doesn't know how much time a user story takes, it makes sense either cut it into understandable pieces or do an investigation or prototype before the planning meeting so that they have better options during planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you have multiple user stories, like &quot;show progress for processing one file&quot;, &quot;process one file&quot;, &quot;show progress for processing multiple files&quot;, and &quot;process multiple files&quot;. These are easy to demo, and at least two of them should fit into a sprint. &lt;strong&gt;I like small deliverable user stories than several tasks, because they provide speed not small tasks.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, work on your planning meeting; how you prepare, commit, and estimate for that week-long sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T07:41:56.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17509" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-24T08:10:52.930" Score="5" ViewCount="358" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have situation that our team is making quite a big system. Company has divided parts of system into several Product Owners. So we are working with various Product Owners depending which part of the system we are currently developing.&#xA;They are coming in and coming out, but each is using our Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that situation correct? Or Product Owner should be dedicated into the team and works more or less as a Proxy Product Owner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7819" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T18:08:20.997" Title="Should Product Owner be permament for team or can be changed from time to time?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17509" CreationDate="2016-02-24T08:31:36.327" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;A Product Backlog Must &lt;em&gt;Not&lt;/em&gt; Be Managed By Committee&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I understand your question correctly, then no. A Product Owner is &lt;em&gt;solely&lt;/em&gt; responsible for the contents and prioritization of the Product Backlog. Multiple POs working on the same backlog has the same effect as a backlog managed by committee. This is not acceptable within a formal Scrum framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, these other &quot;Product Owners&quot; should work through the &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; Product Owner who has been assigned sole ownership of the Product Backlog. These other folks are probably &lt;em&gt;stakeholders&lt;/em&gt;, not Product Owners, and should be treated as such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T08:31:36.327" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17496" CreationDate="2016-02-24T09:43:13.947" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My suggestion, in a meeting only 2 people should go. One from business side and one from technical side but who understands business as well. For the first meeting, you certainly aren't going to close all the requirements then n there. First get to understand the requirements from the client side and ask technically apt questions to understand what all will come under the scope of work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scope of work from Business side can be as simple as registering a user into the system, but it might add more work in case the client says that you need to take care of CSRF. Now this would mean that you will have to implement a token for every request and in case you open the same page in 2 panels then one will have to logout etc etc. So having a techie might help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you have already secured a meeting and I believe this is an advance level meeting and lots of discussions have already happened over phone or email, I believe you know how to sell stuff. If the previous statement is true, ignore reading rest - 2 people meeting is decent, taking all 4 for the first meeting might seem too desperate. Do not show this up to the client else you will lose all negotiation power. No matter how badly you want that project, just do not show it up.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the best for your meeting. Do let us know what happened and how many people did you take and how it help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13776" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T09:43:13.947" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17496" CreationDate="2016-02-24T12:36:40.697" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question will only lead to opinions.  That said, here's mine:  Never exceed the number of individuals the customer is bringing to the table and try to equal the number of individuals they are bringing.  Further, ensure you have equivalent &quot;rank&quot; in the room, too.  Is there science to back this up?  Have no idea.  This was told to me once as a good rule of thumb and I have done this ever since and it seems to work out okay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T12:36:40.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17505" CreationDate="2016-02-24T14:00:02.563" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The entire story was estimated to take almost all of one developer's time for the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means the story is too large to fit in a sprint. A story that takes the whole week to develop seems likely to require some significant testing. Development time plus testing is going to almost guarantee it does not get 'done' within the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have three options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Have more people work on the story&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it takes one developer a week to develop the story, would it take less time if two or more developers worked on it? Perhaps pairing would help to speed up delivery? Could automated tests be developed in parallel with the development to speed up testing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Split the story up&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum we typically avoid making changes mid-sprint as these can be disruptive and can also impact on the team's relationship with their stakeholders. It would be quite unusual to plan for a mid-sprint decision point, such as dropping the spinner as you mention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Splitting the story is a definite option but you still want each story to deliver some business value. It is possible that you cannot split the story up and produce two or more smaller stories that all deliver value. The team should discuss this in detail and keep an open mind about what the smallest story is that can deliver at least some value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the first story could be to show a crude measure of progress, such as an indication when half the files have been completed. Then, a second story adds in a better measure of progress and perhaps a third story adds in the visual indicator showing which file is being worked on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are able to split the stories up like this then you can bring the stories in to the sprint that you are confident of completing. But you can also have the other stories ready to go, sitting at the top of the backlog. If the work goes better than expected then you could potentially bring in one or more of the other stories. It is a better approach to start with what you are confident in completing and then add items in, rather than starting with what you are not confident in and then potentially dropping work from the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Accept that the story will take longer than a sprint&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the least favoured option. The problem with this approach is that it masks the true progress of the team. Scrum works well because at the end of each sprint there is a clear idea of what is 'done' and on what progress has been made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T14:00:02.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17514" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18023" CreationDate="2016-02-24T15:54:06.437" Score="9" ViewCount="8171" Body="&lt;p&gt;I introduced Scrum in our development teams some years ago. Since then our performance has increased a lot with a shorter time-to-market and increased quality. The CEO wants me to create a system to measure the individual performance of every developer. Our company is very results and performance oriented and my department resisted these kind of benchmarking for some years. This year we should introduce such a system so that we can start using it next year.&#xA;Have you got any ideas / experience with a system that could work? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22332" LastActivityDate="2016-04-20T12:44:21.477" Title="Any ideas about how to evaluate a developer's performance?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;evaluation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17514" CreationDate="2016-02-24T17:58:21.613" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;First Off:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't tie whatever you do to any form of compensation decisions.  As soon as you do this you will get 100% gaming of the exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Measuring individual performance is very difficult and probably more costly than the derived benefit. But if you must, I'd recommend some type of peer appraisal process (aka a 360) combined with having the developer evaluate their own performance and if/how they are continuously improving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to read the book &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com.my/books?id=o4-BACWBJWYC&amp;amp;redir_esc=y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Abolishing Performance Appraisals: Why They Backfire and what to Do Instead&quot;&lt;/a&gt; as a primer on alternatives and the pitfalls of appraisal.  Maybe your CEO should read it as well ;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really what you want is an organization where everyone is good at giving and receiving feedback.  Lots of healthy social connections leads to a better understanding of how we are doing, positive peer pressure, and will quickly weed out most people that aren't performing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastEditorUserId="23156" LastEditDate="2016-04-20T12:44:21.477" LastActivityDate="2016-04-20T12:44:21.477" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17514" CreationDate="2016-02-24T19:56:41.497" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I have seen tried:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Measuring story points achieved by a developer - As soon as this was introduced the developers stopped talking to each other and focused only on the story they were working on. Output of the team dropped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Peer review / 360 feedback - This was rapidly gamed. Team members talked privately and made deals. Often reviews were substantially better for friends of the reviewer than for people they did not get on with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team leader review - Once again, this was clearly biased by personal relationships. One top developer was given a bad review by his team leader because they did not go to the pub with the rest of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Performance measured against objectives - When the appraisal time approached some team members dropped high priority ongoing project work to focus on their objectives as they realised it was going to contribute to their pay review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of these the only approach I could see being made to work is the last one. The objectives would have to be carefully designed and reviewed regularly througout the year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively I would say that review at the team level is much easier to do and encourages the team to work together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T19:56:41.497" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17504" CreationDate="2016-02-24T20:54:08.820" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you tried using &lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt; for this? Although we don't have any &quot;permanent&quot; remote workers, we do have several members of the team who work away from the office for months at a time. We have the &quot;Product Backlog&quot; for each product, which the PO maintains and we (as a team) go through this during our sprint planning and pull stories into the &quot;Sprint backlog&quot; and estimate accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We started off with physical whiteboards and post-it notes, but taking a photo of the current state of the board became quite tedious as often the remote worker would pick up the same story as someone in the office resulting in duplication of effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I don't like JIRA, and so Trello works fine for us, with real-time updates (when someone has saved their changes on a card it will show up for everyone else). So we have separate lists for each of the columns we had on the whiteboard (sprint backlog, in progress, QA etc etc.). When someone picks up a card, they assign themselves to it and move it to the appropriate column (usually the first step is backlog-&gt;in development).&#xA;We then use the &lt;a href=&quot;https://trellotfsbridge.codeplex.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trello to TFS Bridge&lt;/a&gt; but I have used zapier in the past to help with syncing between the 2. You'll still need to work out capacity for each story and compare against your overall velocity - you don't say how you manage this currently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still believe that you need the communication between the teams, so still using Skype and screen sharing when you conduct your sprint planning session, but having Trello up at the same time should ensure your developers can proceed as if they were all co-located.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how you conduct the sprint planning in the office, but I tend to have it in a room separate to the office (less PCs, less distractions for developers) and put Trello up on the projector and then use Skype/Google Hangouts for including anyone who cannot physically attend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trello can get a bit more tricky if you work across more than one product (as my team do). We still need to smooth out this workflow but it tends to be one Trello board syncs to one TFS project. This may not be the case for your team, and it's still something I'm looking at improving in my own team but overall this is the workflow I find works best for us at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22336" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T20:54:08.820" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17509" CreationDate="2016-02-25T16:14:41.837" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two main reasons why a single Product Owner is preferable:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;One Voice&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A single Product Owner means the delivery team only has to worry about one person's opinions. They get to focus on delivery and do not get distracted by disputes on prioritisation and arguments over the detail of requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The Scrum Team&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Scrum Team consists of a delivery team, a Scrum Master and a Product Owner. When a Scrum Team works together for a while they get to know how each other works. They establish a rapport and often their productivity increases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said this, there are situations where a single, dedicated Product Owner is difficult to achieve. Usually this is when the product setup is such that one product does not keep the team busy all the time. Even in this situation it may be possible to negotiate with the business and get them to nominate a person who has responsiblity for all the areas the team is working in. This is still an orthodox Product Owner role, they just happen to look after more than one product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One team working with multiple Product Owners is possible, especially if the Product Owners are of the right personality types and have the right attitude. However, it is unlikely the Scrum team will ever be as effective with multiple Product Owners as it will be with just the one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T16:14:41.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17520" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17521" CreationDate="2016-02-25T22:10:25.950" Score="3" ViewCount="517" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are an agile development team working in a larger business. Many of the other teams (the customer support team in particular) are extremely reactive and often have urgent client issues which need developer assistance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a number of strategies for handling this including a rotating SWAT developer role and leaving a certain amount of contingency where each team member is under planned to account for the enevitible incoming queries and meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The result of this is that most members of the development team have a few User Story's each sprint as well as several Support Tickets they are managing. Interruptions are frequent and the team are finding it extremely difficult to commit to completing their assigned work. I feel this is putting our entire scrum structure at risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other members of the business are increasingly asking why we can't jump on tickets and why they must wait for the next Sprint Planning session to have them assigned (assuming the swat dev can't catch them). I feel for them, why should they have to wait up to two weeks before getting time from the most appropriate developer? On the other hand we owe it to the developer in question to protect them so they have a fighting chance to complete their sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can we explain to the business that we need the protection a scum structure gives us and can't commit our entire team to reactive support?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11768" LastActivityDate="2016-03-05T20:23:37.700" Title="How to justify sprints in a largely reactive business?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17520" CreationDate="2016-02-25T22:33:11.790" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Context switching is expensive, however Scrum may not be the correct framework for the situation you are describing.  You may want to consider transitioning to a Kanban framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban is more accepting of interruptions and is focused on getting a few things done continuously rather than batching work into boxes of time (iterations).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think you are heading down the correct path of educating stakeholders external to the team that they just can't change priorities on a dime since to do this you are stopping work on 1 thing (that a different stakeholder wants) and starting something new.  It sounds like your stakeholders should figure out how to negotiate between themselves before bombarding the team with requests that lead to context switching and ultimately getting things done slower than they could be because of the constant loss of focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T22:33:11.790" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17171" CreationDate="2016-02-26T10:38:53.710" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Its dangerous to estimate the story and subtasks separately. In my opinion the subtasks is estimated and becomes the total estimate of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your dev team will always come up with more subtasks once they understand the story better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22356" LastActivityDate="2016-02-26T10:38:53.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17525" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-26T16:38:01.703" Score="1" ViewCount="29314" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am running into a strange problem with project and was wondering if anyone has been able to solve this problem.  I don't want project to change any of my dates based on changing %complete OR have anything to do with the status date.  I simply want the task to remain scheduled &quot;as is&quot; with a fixed duration, irrelevant to resources or % complete, or the status date, and based solely on the predecessor constraints setting the start and completion dates.  Things I've tried: &quot;unchecked&quot; all the boxes in the advanced calculation section, and removed all the resources.  Used fixed duration and fixed units.  No matter, it continues to move my tasks around putting these strange little dots before or after the task on the Gantt chart whenever I edit the %complete.  The only thing that seems to &quot;fix&quot; the problem is putting in 0% complete and 0 days for the task duration and then adding the days back into the task duration.  It then puts the task back into the correct start and finish window and I can re enter the %complete.  Does anyone know how to fix this annoying problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22360" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-10-17T13:45:23.860" LastActivityDate="2018-08-21T21:08:33.710" Title="How to stop ms-project from changing task dates" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17437" CreationDate="2016-02-26T19:32:47.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have had a lot of problems in the past copying and pasting a block of tasks from one project into another.  It has randomly messed up lots of the dates in the new plan.  The only way I have been successful at this is copying all of the fields from the tasks I want except the date fields.  As long as your predecessors are exactly the same from one project to the other, you should not have any issues.  But I would recommend copying and pasting sections at a time and avoid copying and pasting any date fields–let MS project calculate the dates for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22360" LastActivityDate="2016-02-26T19:32:47.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17527" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17528" CreationDate="2016-02-26T22:16:42.613" Score="0" ViewCount="462" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually I read it about as a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_office&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;area or department&lt;/a&gt;, the Project Management Office. But, in my company, the newly created project management department is using the word to describe:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The schedule of activities (&lt;em&gt;&quot;hey, send me the PMO so I can follow the project, ok?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The function of project manager (&lt;em&gt;&quot;you're the PMO of this project, isn't?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The word itself means only Project Management Office, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18099" LastActivityDate="2016-09-02T13:16:38.267" Title="PMO is a department/area or a role?" Tags="&lt;pmo&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17527" CreationDate="2016-02-27T15:20:38.020" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Officially, yes, PMO strictly means a separate department, the Project Management Office. However, if you are just beginning to introduce project management, or if you have another role with the acronym PM, it is likely that the people you deal with will use PMO to mean &quot;representative of the Project Management Office&quot; until you train them to call you a Project Manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="397" LastActivityDate="2016-02-27T15:20:38.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17531" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17537" CreationDate="2016-02-28T09:38:20.153" Score="1" ViewCount="134" Body="&lt;p&gt;A CEO has agreed with his VP of R&amp;amp;D on a roadmap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His pet project was not included, so he clandestinely &lt;em&gt;forced&lt;/em&gt; some engineers to work on his pet project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since everybody is &lt;em&gt;afraid&lt;/em&gt; of standing up to the CEO, everybody goes along with it; an open secret.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As PjM, how does one go about scheduling those resources that are working (between 25% to 75% of them time) on this non-existent project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-02-28T12:45:27.127" Title="How to deal with clandestine projects" Tags="&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17158" CreationDate="2016-02-28T10:00:45.530" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When assigning probabilities to potential risks, you're playing a sophisticated guessing game. Guestimate is the word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having data of risks that actually affected previous projects is valuable and should help the guesstimating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you cannot say that since it happened in the past, therefore its probability is 100%. Au contraire, sometimes you may be tempted to apply the &lt;em&gt;lightning doesn't strike twice&lt;/em&gt; concept, and lower its probability of happening again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All historical data does is help the guesstimating somewhat, since you still have to guesstimate the other risks and decide how to rate this known-risk against the unknown ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-02-28T10:00:45.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16941" CreationDate="2016-02-28T10:12:55.220" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great answers, here's 2 another ideas, to add to the list:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;roll-back&lt;/strong&gt; plan. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before the launch, you should have all the members of the team agree on a roll-back plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That would include storing a precise snapshot of the existing system somewhere, as well as who is in charge for the roll back, who gets to make the decision and how to contact all relevant parties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also want to decide beforehand on criteria (besides for management disapproval) of when a roll-back would be warranted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A  &lt;strong&gt;staggered rollout&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can first roll it out to  a small percent of the users, that would enable management to decide if they like it without having to worry about a full roll-back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For web-based roll outs, you may want to put some system in place (cookies or a URL parameter) that would ensure that management will always see the new version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These concepts only work if you plan them in advance. They are not fire-fighting methods, post-facto.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-02-28T10:12:55.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16708" CreationDate="2016-02-28T10:28:54.670" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You say that every week a &lt;code&gt;new issue that wasn't accounted for (risk planning)&lt;/code&gt; comes up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think these 2 items, viz: (1) &lt;em&gt;a new issue that wasn't accounted for&lt;/em&gt; and  (2) &lt;em&gt;risk planning&lt;/em&gt; should be dealt with separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;New issue that wasn't accounted for&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sounds you need some form of change management. Those &lt;a href=&quot;http://expertpjm.blogspot.co.il/2011/07/quick-small-change.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Quick, Small changes&lt;/a&gt; are schedule-killers. The person asking for the changes should be identified in the weekly reporting, and made responsible for the costs involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the rest of the project, resist any change that management do not approve of, in writing. The approvals must include the effects on scheduling and costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you're referring to missing pieces without which the project cannot succeed. In that case, you need to quickly review your use-cases and make sure you're fully covered for the rest of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Risk planning&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a risk that was identified actually occurs, this should be noted as such. The initial project plan should have identified these, as well as their impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for the next 2 weeks, make sure that every weekly reconciliation (or project status report) includes known risks and their impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If you need help with Risk Assessment, I wrote an &lt;a href=&quot;http://expertpjm.blogspot.co.il/2011/07/introduction-to-risk-assessment.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Introduction to Risk Assessment&lt;/a&gt; many years ago.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-02-28T10:28:54.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17525" CreationDate="2016-02-28T10:56:39.547" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't currently have access to MS-Project, but I clearly recall there being an option to set the scheduling to MANUAL (or &quot;Do not recalculate automatically&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IIRC this option can be set globally and for each individual project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2010-project/dates-not-updating-automatically-in-ms-project/4b04914d-1fe4-4116-95ff-685d8be93406?auth=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;answers.microsoft.com&lt;/a&gt; says it can be found under &lt;code&gt;File &amp;gt; Options, Schedule - Calculation&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are probably other settings that affect your dates, like making tasks dependent on each other and sharing resources for tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-02-28T10:56:39.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17531" CreationDate="2016-02-28T12:45:27.127" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Allocate your resources according to their available time. If a given resource is working on something that &quot;not of your business&quot; just plan for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your project is already in flight and resources once committed full time are partially being pulled out of your project, you should raise a risk (if impact hasn't eventuated) or an issue (if impact has eventuated) and formally articulate it with your senior management (registers, status report, email). Your forecast should also reflect the schedule impacts of resources not being available as planned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By doing this, if your senior management doesn't take action they are accountable for the consequences, and you did your PM homework. No emotions, just PM techniques applied. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Open a change request to address the impacts to your plan and submit it to your senior management approval. In the change request details, clearly articulate the resource problems and ask your senior management to approve it. This way you will track to a realistic plan and deliver to your new baseline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stand in front of the CEO and you may loose your job. Do your PM homework and perhaps they will bring you to the &quot;inner circle&quot; ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20923" LastActivityDate="2016-02-28T12:45:27.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17538" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-28T19:38:54.790" Score="4" ViewCount="314" Body="&lt;p&gt;My experience as a developer has always been project milestones were agreed upon in advance and then each sprint is planned just before it starts. For the sake of detail, by planned,  I mean  agreeing what tasks /stories will be done in the sprint,  estimating them and assigning them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How common is it to plan all the sprints out at once before the kickoff of the project and rejig things as needed? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22378" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-03-03T17:23:45.170" LastActivityDate="2016-03-03T17:23:45.170" Title="Planning all sprints at once" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;initiation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17540" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17566" CreationDate="2016-02-28T21:35:56.027" Score="7" ViewCount="1258" Body="&lt;p&gt;One particular client has a very traditional, conservative approach to UAT and deployment. When the development team completes the items in the sprint, this is all packaged into a release, which must wind its way through a UAT/Staging environment, where it is fully tested for new functionality, then fully regression tested, then finally deployed to Production. The reason for this approach is that the Staging environment contains a copy of the production data, which is too sensitive for developers, and the company is accustomed to a waterfall-style approach. Note that this cannot be changed, so please do not suggest some kind of organizational overhaul. The UAT testers are also not part of the Scrum team. This also will not change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though unit testing, regression testing, and other forms of testing are incorporate into the sprint, and the product owner is very involved, there is no way around this lengthy UAT process at the end. Naturally, this results in many failures reported by UAT, and the items get rejected and sent back to development. The typical UAT cycle is about 1 week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for some good ideas for how to structure Scrum sprints in that type of climate/environment. Again, please do not suggest that the company change, because that is outside the scope of this discussion. This is more of a &quot;work in the real world with clients&quot; question. They love agile practices, backlog management, refinement, sprint planning, release planning, and all of the other Scrum goodies. We just need to tack this 1 week of UAT and rejection onto the end, and I'm looking for ways to accommodate this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Switching to a different methodology is also an option, if you have some suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22358" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-07-08T10:07:56.033" LastActivityDate="2019-07-08T10:07:56.033" Title="Client with conservative UAT policy" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17527" CreationDate="2016-02-28T21:41:28.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, the word itself means &quot;Project Management Office&quot; and it is a department not a job role. The PMO department can have staff with different roles other than a Project Manager. In larger organizations there can be people responsible for defining the corporate Project Management policies and procedures, documentation templates etc and not have any direct Project Management responsibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The role of PMO department can also vary from organization to organizations. In fact in organizations where PMO is serving as 'consultative' role, they may not be managing any project at all. Contrast it against PMO in organizations which have 'directive' role, who manage the projects themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also entirely possible to have more than one PMO in large organizations. One at the enterprise level and then at the divisional/departmental/functional level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps to clarify.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22379" LastActivityDate="2016-02-28T21:41:28.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17540" CreationDate="2016-02-28T22:47:06.587" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the record: when the Development Team is unable to deliver a potentially releasable increment at the end of the Sprint, that's a serious Scrum deviation. Let's put that issue on a side now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you could do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;involve as much of end-users into a Sprint as possible&lt;/strong&gt;. Don't limit yourself to physical presence. Think out of the box. Example: you can record video clips presenting new features, share them as soon as possible and ask users if that's what they expected&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;if UAT take 1 week to complete think about &lt;strong&gt;extending Sprint length by 1 week&lt;/strong&gt; and include them into Sprint. BUT don't wait with UAT do the last week of the sprint. Don't treat this as an opportunity for Dev Team to do even more new features, because it'll strike back with double force. Gains? Less Work in Progress and task switching. (I assume that currently Sprint is being often interrupted by those end-users' requests)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;coach Product Owner to represent the end-users' view at the highest possible level&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastEditorUserId="1021" LastEditDate="2016-02-29T13:39:31.520" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T13:39:31.520" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17335" CreationDate="2016-02-29T00:58:26.763" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Complementing Alexander's answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read some books and materials related to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Mythical Man Month&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Peopleware&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pass some certification which is valuable in your region/company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PMP&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PMI-ACP&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22382" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T00:58:26.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17540" CreationDate="2016-02-29T01:59:14.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is what I'd suggest. When UAT cycle completes, the result of it is added to the product back log. Before the next spring planning session the product owner grooms and (re)prioritizes the product back log. During the next spring planning session the dev team together with the product owner select which product backlog items are taken into the next spring. Some issues could be critical to the PO to fix, some could be left in the product backlog longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22385" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T01:59:14.200" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17540" CreationDate="2016-02-29T02:19:05.203" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the productivity of the team is being strongly hampered by work being rejected a week later due to a failed UAT, then it may help to account for this in story planning.  Try to restructure your stories to include this real world issue, such that if you fail UAT, you still can demonstrate valuable progress to the customer.  Assuming you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; succeed at the UAT from time to time, can you show your customer that the work is getting done, there just may be an extra round trip involved?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the customer is being affected by these delays, then you do need to address the issue of your team failing to make a product which meets the needs of the customer.  My next step would be to treat the UAT testers as customers.  You said they aren't part of the SCRUM team, but it may be possible for them to be customers.  No testing team likes failing software, maybe you can work with them to find ways to pick up the things they care about earlier in the process.  If they are a customer, involved in the process, they may get ideas from this.  They may say &quot;you know, that tool you used to ensure your software worked before we tested it... think we could use that?&quot;  Then you've provided value they never expected to gain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It all really depends on what the customer actually wants.  Perhaps the issue may be handled with version control.  Perhaps you have two tracks, one track adding new features, and the other track ensuring you can produce something that passes UAT using the previous set of features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21960" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T02:19:05.203" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17547" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-29T07:53:05.497" Score="2" ViewCount="1529" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found that some people use past tense when writing acceptance criteria in scrum user stories. I'm finding it confusing, but my coworker claims it's the only correct way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt; - It was not possible to add another product...&#xA; - The user was redirected to the...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which tense is correct when describing acceptance criteria in scrum stories?&#xA;past, present or future?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7819" LastEditorUserId="7819" LastEditDate="2016-02-29T09:10:36.277" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T13:22:13.630" Title="Which tense is correct when describing acceptance criteria in scrum stories?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;acceptance-criteria&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17538" CreationDate="2016-02-29T08:11:52.193" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've managed projects that used a separate wall with columns for each upcoming sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a sprint gets ready to launch, a quick analysis is made to see if the original plan still makes sense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T08:11:52.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17520" CreationDate="2016-02-29T08:40:48.000" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have much the same issue here in AOL Platforms. We have Feature Teams that work both on new features and also get dragged into fixing bugs. We did a number of things to fix this, the first starting with education. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1- Secrets of Multi-Tasking Exercise:&lt;/strong&gt; This is great as it can be done in five minutes with a piece of paper and a pen. I'll detail it at the bottom of this post. The outcome is people understand in real terms the cost of multi-tasking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2- Leverage Severity/ Priority:&lt;/strong&gt; In AOL Platforms we have Minor, Major, Critical and Blocker. Looking at our SLAs we knew that Blockers would always be sprint interrupters are they require follow the sun attention. However our Critical defects have an SLA of 10 days and because our functional areas all have at least four teams, there is always a team starting a sprint within a couple of days. So we determined that only Blockers could be sprint interrupts. Everything else had to be scheduled into a sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tracking Cycle Time:&lt;/strong&gt; We started tracking cycle time on the work done by the teams. From when something moved to &quot;In Progress&quot; to when it was marked as &quot;Done&quot;. By having this data, we could then look at teams whose cycle times spiked. Most often there was a direct correlation to interrupt work, showing that teams that were interrupted ended up going slower on all their work, including the interrupt work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;MULTI-TASKING EXERCISE&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Have everyone put their paper in landscape position. On the paper divide the paper vertically with a line 1/3 down the page. Then divide the page horizontally into three sections. You will end up with six boxes on the paper, three small squares and three long columns. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the small squares (column headers), write an &quot;A&quot;, a &quot;1&quot; and a &quot;I&quot; (the last being a Roman Numeral one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Round 1:&lt;/strong&gt; Explain that the exercise is to create three features, a letter feature, a number feature and a Roman numeral feature. A complete feature is ten characters (A-J, 1-10, I-X) Management is very keen to see work being done on all the features. So when they write down your characters you must start with the letter A, then move to the number 1 and then the Roman Numeral I. Only then can they start on the next row with the letter B. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask that when they are done, they raise their hands. Get a stop watch and say begin.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As soon as the first person puts their arm up, hit the lap timer. When the majority of the room has their arm up, stop the timer. Review the times. Generally you'll have a range between about 30 and 45 seconds. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then ask them, if each column is a feature, when did they see the first value. The answer should be something like &quot;a couple of seconds before the first person got done.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Round 2:&lt;/strong&gt; In this round tell them they are now to do each column completely before moving on, starting with the Letter column. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start the timer and pay attention. When you notice someone has finished the Letter column hit your lap timer.  When the majority of the room is done, stop the timer. Review the numbers. Generally you're first person will have finished between 15-20 seconds and everyone between 30-35 seconds. The first column done was less than 10 seconds. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I teach this I generally then ask the room, &quot;So the secret to multi-tasking is what?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone always answers with &quot;Don't do it&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T08:40:48.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17318" CreationDate="2016-02-29T08:45:09.517" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Project Director you should have the information to answer this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are your subordinates managing to get to each of their projects every week?&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If not, why not?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are your subordinates constantly busy with their projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or do they spend more than fair amounts of time at the water cooler?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are all projects being managed properly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If not, is it because of overload or because of mismanagement?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not the quantity of projects nor the budget. It's the amount of time each project needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T08:45:09.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17491" CreationDate="2016-02-29T08:49:17.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, &lt;code&gt;each edge is supposed to be labeled&lt;/code&gt; is not a rule carved in stone. Some use the merging node as the label.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, you could label each of the 4 edges as &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;integration&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; or something similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T08:49:17.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="339" CreationDate="2016-02-29T09:03:34.660" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's crucial that you become acquainted with the world of programming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen scheduling disasters happen because PM's couldn't tell the difference between compiling, coding and debugging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The worst case was when the PM believed the programmers that &lt;em&gt;rewriting the core&lt;/em&gt; would take &lt;em&gt;a few days&lt;/em&gt;. They assumed it was like changing the color scheme on the GUI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you understand what's involved to create something from code, then read the other answers about how to become a good PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A PM needs basic knowledge- and even elementary skills - in the field they PM, if they really want to do a good job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T09:03:34.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17553" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-29T09:18:03.583" Score="3" ViewCount="99" Body="&lt;p&gt;When creating a &lt;a href=&quot;http://expertpjm.blogspot.co.il/2011/07/introduction-to-risk-assessment.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Risk Analysis&lt;/a&gt; document, what qualifies as a reasonable risk? As a rule of thumb we expect 5 risks to be tracked. Is it reasonable to include risks such as &lt;em&gt;the building burning down&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;major storm knocks out power for 6 weeks&lt;/em&gt;? While the probability of these events is low, their severity is extremely high, making them seem like candidates for the risk log.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wouldn't it be more useful to expect the PM to come up with project-specific risks, as opposed to company- or country-wide risks? Does anybody have a good rule of thumb for deciding what is a reasonable risk to be included and tracked?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-03-03T00:29:54.477" LastActivityDate="2016-03-03T10:39:37.210" Title="What qualifies as a trackable risk?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;risk&gt;&lt;artifacts&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14225" CreationDate="2016-02-29T09:48:57.380" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectinabox.org.uk/article7.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PRINCE2 Plans - Levels, Types and Scope&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Exception Plans&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  An Exception Plan is required whenever part of the project is predicted to go outside its tolerances. People encountering the concept of Exception Plan for the first time sometimes think that it's a different type of plan from a Project or Stage Plan. In fact it's just a potential replacement for the plan that covers that part of the project that is in exception. So if a Stage is going to exceed its tolerances, your Exception Plan will replace the Stage Plan and be of the same design. It's intended to cover a different time period however: from &quot;now&quot; to the end of the original planning period. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Technically, you could simply replace the existing plan with the appropriate Exception Plan but don't forget that you need the approval of the Project Board to replace a Stage Plan and the approval of wider corporate management to replace a Project Plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems that the Exception Report needs to be updated (and escalated) whenever new data about slippage is discovered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T09:48:57.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17555" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-29T10:25:20.777" Score="1" ViewCount="91" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just been put in charge of a software development team, and don't want to stuff it up.&#xA;I'm interested to find out what are some of the things you valued most about the best managers you've worked for? And what are some of the things you hated the most about the worst managers you've worked for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22395" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2016-02-29T12:45:46.950" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T12:50:23.103" Title="I'm the new dev team boss - some advice please" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-03-02T10:45:31.853" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17556" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-29T10:41:15.693" Score="3" ViewCount="77" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to create tasks and indicate their dependencies. Lots of software does this but I would like it to &lt;em&gt;only allow a task to be marked as complete when all its dependencies are also marked as complete&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems a really basic need but MS Project doesn’t do it and neither does any other software, as far as I can tell. One partial solution in Project is to use headings and put subtasks within, but that constrains you to categorising work in one particular way. One task might be dependent on tasks from different categories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do others get round this limitation? Are there any pieces of software that can do it? (For my particular need right now, even a simple to-do list without resourcing and dates would be fine.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22396" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2016-03-09T09:49:47.213" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T11:02:08.073" Title="Disallow tasks to be marked as complete until dependencies also complete" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17557" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-29T10:47:03.750" Score="4" ViewCount="280" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Gojko Adzic book &quot;Specification by example&quot; we have to separate business and technical requirements. In our company we have tech req's in Given/When/Then format. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about business requirements? What should this type of requirements contain? What is the best way to manage and maintain it? As a project manager should I be responsible for delivering and maintaining both?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21640" LastActivityDate="2016-05-29T13:16:46.187" Title="How to manage business and technical requirements?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;scope&gt;&lt;scope-management&gt;&lt;business-analyst&gt;&lt;specification&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17557" CreationDate="2016-02-29T12:15:11.720" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isixsigma.com/implementation/project-selection-tracking/business-requirements-document-high-level-review/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Business Requirements Document: A High-level Review&lt;/a&gt; the author defines business requirements as &lt;em&gt;making reasonable estimates of how big a project is and how much it is going to cost.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He then explains what would be in the Business Requirements Document (BRD):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The most common objectives of the BRD are:&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;   - To gain agreement with stakeholders&lt;br/&gt;-  To provide a foundation to&#xA;     communicate to a technology service provider what  the solution needs&#xA;     to do to satisfy the customer’s and business’ needs&lt;br/&gt;-  To provide&#xA;     input into the next phase for this project&lt;br/&gt; - To describe what not how the customer/business needs will be met by the solution&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to answer your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What should this type of requirements contain? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isixsigma.com/implementation/project-selection-tracking/business-requirements-document-high-level-review/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;long article&lt;/a&gt; for all the details. It's almost like a legal document between your team and your customer describing the deliverables, their dates (delivery milestones) and their price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Included would be who decides something is fully delivered and who tests it and decides it's fully functional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the best way to manage and maintain it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same as usual: periodic review during the life of the project. However, changes have to go through a predefined Change Process - which should be documented in the original document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beware of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://expertpjm.blogspot.co.il/2011/07/quick-small-change.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Quick, Small change&lt;/a&gt; that kills projects, schedules, budgets and morale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best practice: Changes should all go into the next release, otherwise you're shooting at a moving target. Exceptions to this rule should be rare and border on &lt;em&gt;emergencies&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a project manager should I be responsible for delivering and maintaining both?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That would depend on your company's culture. Sometimes it's the Project Manager, other companies have a separate Product Manager to deal with the business side of projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, the Technical Requirements and the Business Requirements have to be a perfect match. And that is the responsibility of the Project Manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T12:15:11.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17555" CreationDate="2016-02-29T12:50:23.103" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give lots of credit where credit is due; a lot of code is under the hood and nobody really gets to see or use it directly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Become somewhat knowledgeable in the field&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give incentives (Employee of the month or outings or bonuses)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find out what people are doing and why&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remember that programming is brain-work; someone staring out the window or pacing around may be doing more work than the person bashing away at the keyboard&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get access to the &lt;em&gt;bug base&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;version control&lt;/em&gt; system so you can see work happening in real time, understand the throughput rate of the team and get a feel for the status&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read the specification documents and become an early user of the software so that you can make knowledgeable decisions about future feature request and reported bugs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't give advice on things you don't know much about&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't try to get people to work harder or longer hours&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't accuse people of not working on their project; rather find out what they were doing instead (usually helping other people with their coding issues)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Beware of refusing to purchase software/hardware that they request; unless you really understand why they don't need it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't argue about schedules and deadlines; it's not usually possible to code faster - unless you want poor quality code. (And if you don't understand that, then review to &lt;em&gt;Become somewhat knowledgeable in the field&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T12:50:23.103" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17553" CreationDate="2016-02-29T17:00:02.763" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Q: What qualifies as a trackable risk?&#xA;A: &lt;em&gt;Anything&lt;/em&gt; that &lt;em&gt;anybody&lt;/em&gt; thinks is a risk to the project goals (usually time, cost, scope and quality)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Project Manager I try really hard to persuade &lt;strong&gt;anyone&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;everyone&lt;/strong&gt; that has an interest in the project, to raise any risks they see fit. At the same time I encourage a culture of openness to risk and especially that &lt;strong&gt;no-one should judge or belittle a risk raised by anyone&lt;/strong&gt;. If someone can foresee a problem I want to know about it. Maybe we'll investigate the risk, find that it is not relevant, and close it down pretty quickly... Or maybe we'll find that someone just uncovered the most serious risk to my project- Never pre-judge!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a &quot;rule of thumb&quot; about how many risks should be managed is pointless in my opinion. If there are no risks then all that does is waste time forcing a PM to construct risks just to tick the risk management box, which in turn devalues active risk management for all concerned. And setting a notional limit means that people will stop looking for risks when they have &quot;enough&quot; risks on the books. The risk log should have &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the risks that anyone perceives on it and if the risk profile of the project is such that there are 20 open risks then so be it. Equally, if there is only one open risk against a project, but evidence of a solid risk management process, then again, so be it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what to do with enterprise-level risks? This is my own philosophy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If there is an identifiable risk, but there is nothing I can do to mitigate the risk on the project, then I log it and forget it. If there is literally nothing you can do about it, make sure you tell your project board that it exists, but don't waste time trying to do anything about it. The project board may find that there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; something that can be done about it and they will soon tell you&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If it is a true enterprise-level risk, but one of a class of risks that are common to all projects in all enterprises (i.e. the building might burn down), then use judgement. Everyone knows that all buildings may burn down and everyone knows that if that happens all projects are on-hold. The company should mitigate these kinds of risk at a company-level using Disaster Recovery. Re-stating such risks on a project risk log, particularly to pad it out, will make the PM look a little foolish. BUT, if the project is business-critical, and you find that Disaster Recovery will not handle the situation, then you have a real risk that you need to notify. Probably no-one will be able to mitigate it if it is a large-scale risk, but you need to show that you have thought about it and all members of the project board understand the risk, its likelihood and impact, and the fact that no-one can really avoid or mitigate the consequences if it hits&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't put sensitive risks on the open risk log. You might feel that there is a risk that a key person is about to leave, with disastrous consequences to your project. You need to raise this kind of thing directly and in person with key steering group members- no-one will thank you for making it an official open risk on the log (which is somewhat counter-intuitive but is where politics &#xA;overlaps with risk management)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't be afraid to &lt;strong&gt;close&lt;/strong&gt; risks where you have determined that the impact, likelihood or consequences are no longer relevant. There is &lt;em&gt;no value&lt;/em&gt; in keeping a risk log full of things that have been investigated and found to be not currently relevant. Close them. This allows the entire team to focus on what &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; relevant. You can always re-open or re-raise risks. Be active in your review and management of the current ever-changing risk profile of a project. Allowing the risk profile to go stale is, arguably, more dangerous than not having a risk log in the first place&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2016-03-03T10:39:37.210" LastActivityDate="2016-03-03T10:39:37.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17509" CreationDate="2016-02-29T18:08:20.997" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's correct that a product backlog shall be normally managed by one Product Owner and not by a committee - this ensures a proper vision and communication between the business side and the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are cases when &lt;strong&gt;one Product Owner is not enough&lt;/strong&gt;, as when you have a large project (you mentioned it is a big system) and need to scale the process. Not enough means that one Product Owner is &lt;strong&gt;not able anymore to grasp an overview of the entire product (or of the backlog) nor to properly interact with the team(s).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A first scaling possibility would be to split the work among more teams (an agile team is small, no more than 8-9 members, because of the communication and coordination overhead). The product backlog remains still only one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the teams will be too many (possibly after 7-10 teams) the Product Owner will not be able anymore to work with all the teams or properly detail every item in the backlog. At this point you will need to introduce more changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A possible second step would be identify in the backlog &lt;strong&gt;major requirement areas&lt;/strong&gt; and define the backlog with separate views, one for each area, and &lt;strong&gt;each one will have a dedicated Product Owner&lt;/strong&gt; and dedicated teams. These area-backlogs are not separate backlogs but only &lt;strong&gt;a different view&lt;/strong&gt; inside the one Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that these areas are organised around customer-centric requirements (really just a coherent fragment of the backlog) more than around product's architecture (like could be a split among different parts of the system) but could be temporary, can change over the lifetime of the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The area Product Owners (PO) may be in a Product Owners Team and actively collaborate to deliver the product (Product ROI, joint retrospective, …); for example, before any Iteration Planning the Product Owners Team should meet in a pre-planning meeting so that they can coordinate how the different Area-Backlogs priorities reflect themes at product-level, which PO will take care of common themes such as a common infrastructure, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is your case - &lt;strong&gt;big system with different areas and teams&lt;/strong&gt; - you can certainly have multiple Product Owners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have only one team but the Product Owner changes every couple of iterations according to the part of the system being developed, well, this is unusual. You need to ask why this is beneficial: if one team can handle all the parts why cannot one PO? &#xA;The first Agile principle is inspect and adapt: try and see if there are any benefits or drawbacks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14922" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T18:08:20.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17504" CreationDate="2016-02-29T18:55:16.953" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a number of customers that have remote team's. They find VSTeamServices very useful. It is built by teams that work in three timezones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You get 5 users for free and it can scale to what you need. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/explore/agiletools-vs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/explore/agiletools-vs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are very few team focused agile tools out there that are good. I like  Trello for individuals bit it lacks team support. And Jira is a car crash. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I  suggest that you give each tool a try and see what works for you and your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T18:55:16.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17553" CreationDate="2016-02-29T19:02:46.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;By &quot;qualify&quot;, I assume you mean captured in your risk log.  Although used this way, I don't think the log was ever intended to capture the universe of risks threatening a given project.  I think you focusing on five--although I would not have a rule of five--is a good way to focus the team on what matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general rule I use is to capture a risk in a formal way--risk log, documented risk assessments, mitigation plans, etc.--for those threats that 1) require formal communication/escalation to some stakeholder group; 2) require formal approvals for allocating resources to mitigate the threat(s) and/or create contingency reserves; 3) the threat is such you need/want to monitor mitigation progress; or 4) CYA when you cannot get anyone to listen.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Organic risks, such as weather, typically would not meet one of these criteria.  I define organic risks as naturally produced by the project or by nature, everyone knows them inherently, and mitigation is often &quot;built-in&quot; the project plans anyway.  I have, however, documented a few organic risks from time to time because of something rather unique about the organic threat.  For example, on one project, we had a ton of work to do over the holidays during the winter and most of the workers traveled in.  It seemed everyone was optimistically ignoring the possibility of no travel caused by weather and the fact the most people like to take vacation during the holidays.  Therefore, since everyone was on the happy path, I escalated this risk because it met my criterion #4.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T19:02:46.550" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17547" CreationDate="2016-02-29T19:19:16.527" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interesting question.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it really does not matter I  believe that linguistically it needs to be present tense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can never be past tense as it is describing something that has not been done yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It should not be possible to add the product...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The user should be redirected...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T19:19:16.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17540" CreationDate="2016-02-29T19:39:33.967" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reality of your situation is pretty common and has both things to do now, and stuff for the maybe distant future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do now&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on the output from the Development Team being potentially shippable. That is the new increment of software that they produce each sprint heads off to UAT and should always pass. (If it always passes then the business will see less of a value in UAT.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Create a Definition of Done that represents the quality level that gets you to potentially releasable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Empower your Development Team to refuse to accept backlog items that  don't have adequate acceptance criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This  will move you towards the values and principals of Scrum  without interfering with the wider organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The medium term&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have quality and consistency you can start to focus the UAT senario into more of a feedback session. Maybe you need to bypass the rest of the chain and get real users into your sprint review, but that is where you will start to accelerate. If you can not build stuff at all that is wrong, and build more of what the users need you will build more trust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Bring end users and stakeholders into your Sprint Review and adapt the backlog accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Invite UAT to  your sprint review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5)  Insert telemetry gathering tools into  your code, like Application Insights, to really understand your users behaviours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Long Goal&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you demonstrate ability as a Development Team to deliver working software that meets the needs of the business then  the UAT and staging processes will be increasingly seen as a waste. You will the. Have both your Customers/stakeholders in your corner fighting to give the Development Teams more control  and responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T19:39:33.967" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17540" CreationDate="2016-02-29T19:40:08.347" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't put lipstick on a pig and expect it to be the belle of the ball. When faced with a process impediment that can't be changed, such as the one you're describing, you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; make the process issues a visible cost to the project. As you have almost no control over the impediment and can do little to control for it, your key goal should be &lt;em&gt;transparency&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make your process visible and transparent to the team, your stakeholders, management, and the client. It is then up to &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt; to identify the value (or lack thereof) in external processes. Your internal process will clearly identify the value that's being added by the team, and the lead time and process overhead added by any externalities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is senior management's job to control for (or accept) process externalities. As long as everyone keeps that in mind, things will run much more smoothly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Externalize the UAT Feedback Loop&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Naturally, this results in many failures reported by UAT, and the items get rejected and sent back to development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a problem, but it is an &lt;em&gt;externality&lt;/em&gt;. You have an external process that is adding process overhead (and therefore costs) to your bottom line. The correct way to handle this is to make those costs &lt;em&gt;visible&lt;/em&gt; to the stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your specific case, I would remove UAT from the Definition of Done. Work is completed for the Sprint when it passes unit testing, continuous integration, peer review, or whatever else is in your Definition of Done. The work done is then presented as a &lt;em&gt;completed increment&lt;/em&gt; to the customer at the end of the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The customer can then spend your next Sprint performing as much or as little UAT as they like while you work on the next increment, and any problems they may uncover are slotted into the Product Backlog by the Product Owner as &lt;em&gt;new work&lt;/em&gt; for a future Sprint. This additional lead time will be a visible artifact of their chosen process, and visibility has great merit. This is really the right way to handle this situation, and fits the central tenets of the iterative development model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Extend Sprint for UAT with Visible Costs&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an alternative, you can simply extend your current Sprint length by two or more weeks to accomodate their UAT cycle. Part of your Definition of Done will be passing the mid-Sprint product to UAT, and then waiting for the results to come back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cost of idle developer time is imposed by the external process. Your job isn't to create busy work, or to perpetuate the &quot;100% utilization fallacy.&quot; The team can use that week to update the CI server, patch workstations, do in-service training, or just read a good book. The &lt;em&gt;point&lt;/em&gt; is that this UAT cycle has a development cost (whether in non-product work or in iterative work) that is part of the organizational framework. Just make that cost fully visible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main risk to this approach is that when UAT is completed, any changes or new work may not have been accounted for in the team's estimates. As a result, you may or may not have enough time to address the changes or rework within the Sprint. As a result, the visible cost to the project will be more failed Sprints (e.g. Sprints that don't meet the Sprint Goal), incomplete work which must then be returned to the Product Backlog, or Early Termination with a return to Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are acceptable outcomes in the sense that they ensure that the process remains transparent, and that the &lt;em&gt;cost to the project&lt;/em&gt; for these processes is visible to the team, the stakeholders, and the client. Just remember that transparency is the core goal, and that there should never be any invisible work, ever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-03-02T04:03:28.393" LastActivityDate="2016-03-02T04:03:28.393" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17567" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-02-29T20:05:53.843" Score="3" ViewCount="534" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have joined a late-phase software project and there is a great deal of disagreement between my management and the client about work items they are claiming to be outstanding. In short, our business requirements document (BRD) describes three reports that the software needs to produce, but the statement of work (SOW) simply says that the software will support &quot;reporting&quot;. Now the client is asking us to create six additional reports and says that it is covered because the SOW says that the software will be used to produce reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My PM training has taught me that the BRD definition of a subject will supersede a SOW definition as the purpose of the SOW is to be abstract and the BRD is concrete. However, management at my company are wavering and agreeing that they can see the client's point of view. I think this is gold plating, pure and simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Strictly speaking as a project manager, who is technically correct here? Can the SOW's abstractness be used to redefine BRD scope definition or is the BRD and software requirements specification (SRS) considered the definitive word on in/out of scope items?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22093" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-03-12T05:35:53.473" LastActivityDate="2016-03-12T16:35:19.710" Title="How should a project manager handle a request for contracted software to produce twice as many reports as specified in the project's requirements?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;scope&gt;&lt;scope-management&gt;&lt;contracts&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17538" CreationDate="2016-02-29T20:36:45.310" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's common, but it's not agile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, only the current sprint is planned in detail. That's really the whole purpose of doing a sprint -- do a small amount of work, learn from it, and then decide what to do next.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, the product owner should have an idea of what will go into the following sprint, and possibly the next couple of sprints after that -- if your team is good at estimation. However, it's quite normal at any time for one or more stories to be dropped and other stories added. Spending a lot of time in planning for work that may never get done is wasted time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3189" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T20:36:45.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17520" CreationDate="2016-02-29T20:42:51.720" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm willing to bet your developers take lunch breaks. They probably go home in the evening, too. They may play a pick-up game of ping pong in the afternoon, or go for a walk around the building. You are no doubt already accounting for this in your sprint planning, so just add another thing to take into account: support. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is all about transparency. If you know that on average, each developer spends 10% of their time on non-sprint tasks, include that in your planning for a sprint. When the team commits (or estimates) that they will finish &lt;em&gt;N&lt;/em&gt; stories or story points in a sprint, that estimation needs to be made knowing that the team's attention will be divided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the amount of support time is wildly inconsistent, account for the time the best you can. If you end up spending more time and you don't finish a sprint during  working hours, let the organization learn from that. Don't put in extra hours to finish a sprint just because you got side-tracked. If you spend less time in support, then you should have plenty of time to finish your work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3189" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T20:42:51.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15165" CreationDate="2016-02-29T20:48:48.070" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our project has been using a RAID which is a spreadsheet with one worksheet for each of the four items. Whilst I think a RAID is generally a good idea (and others have provided a critique of each part), I have encountered some major downsides with the spreadsheet:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The items aren’t linked in any way to the schedule. In many cases a RAID item arises due to something going wrong when people are trying to do a schedule task. I’d much prefer to use some software that tracks &lt;em&gt;tasks&lt;/em&gt; and their &lt;em&gt;issues&lt;/em&gt; are linked together.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Because each RAID category is on a separate worksheet, it’s difficult to link related items together. For example: a risk is logged, it later becomes an issue. Do you cut the original risk and paste into the issue sheet? Do you duplicate the information and write “refers to risk 123”?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Because it’s a spreadsheet, no automatic way to find duplicates (it would be nice to have something like stackexchange does when you’re creating a new question – suggest if similar ones already exist)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These problems are due to the way the RAID is created rather than the concept itself, but given business’ love of spreadsheets I suspect they apply to other people as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22396" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T20:48:48.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17538" CreationDate="2016-02-29T21:01:27.590" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Its not Agile or Scrum if you are planning all your sprints at the beginning of the project.  That's waterfall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to read about the &lt;strong&gt;5 Levels of Agile Planning&lt;/strong&gt; and use the 5 levels as an alternative to traditional waterfall planning if your business is interested in transitioning/capitalizing on the real benefits of Agile and Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, while Scrum planning can include milestones, these milestones shouldn't be tied to a fixed date.  Again, thats waterfall.  Milestones in Agile are usually customer value sets that make sense and goals where we try and forecast a rough delivery window.  The forecast is NOT a commitment to delivery a milestone on a specific day in the project and the forecasted date or date range can change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T21:01:27.590" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17547" CreationDate="2016-02-29T22:10:40.297" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Follow the conventions of your behavior-driven development (BDD) framework. There is no mandatory grammar from a project management standpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Scrum is Agnostic&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum doesn't prescribe a format for user stories. In fact, Scrum doesn't formally require the use of user stories or acceptance criteria at all. These types of artifacts are borrowed from methodologies like extreme programming, test-driven development, and the like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Follow Your BDD Framework Conventions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How you write your tests will depend on your acceptance testing framework. For example, Cucumber uses the Gherkin language, which has &lt;code&gt;given&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;when&lt;/code&gt;, and &lt;code&gt;then&lt;/code&gt; keywords. These keywords guide the grammar and syntax of your stories, features, and scenarios. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Given that I am using Cucumber,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  When I write a Cucumber acceptance test in Gherkin&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Then it will be written in the present- or future-perfect tense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T22:10:40.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17573" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17576" CreationDate="2016-02-29T22:40:00.010" Score="0" ViewCount="98" Body="&lt;p&gt;In MS Project... I have a project that will ultimately be released by a third party, who have their own, fixed release schedule. The releases happen every two weeks. How can I attach the end of the software development phase to the next available release date? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can Project automatically find the nearest release date (a milestone?) and attach the task to that one? Or do I have to do it by hand every time the timelines change?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm using MS Project 98 on Windows XP&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22403" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2016-03-01T10:13:42.217" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T12:34:07.830" Title="How to cope with milestones that can only occur every two weeks?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17567" CreationDate="2016-03-01T06:05:53.293" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the four values of agile is &quot;Customer Collaboration over Contract Negotiation.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing to ask is &quot;what is best for the customer?&quot;. Once you've done that, then you ask &quot;is it covered by the contract?&quot; and only then do you delve into the &quot;do we ask for more $&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically focusing on your issue the first question I'd ask is who was involved in the review and sign off of the BRD? Often I've found that the BRD only had one person from the customer and that person may not have really been the right person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the customer is important to your company, I would suggest sticking with the agile value an working with them to make them happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then on any future projects, make sure to get clear definitions of success and acceptance criteria up front. Also make sure the SOW is written in such a way as to reference final requirements are documented somewhere else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T06:05:53.293" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17538" CreationDate="2016-03-01T08:24:41.560" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could do a rough planning of future sprints, where the product owner prioritizes the backlog, and then when the next sprint comes up you do a proper sprint planning session since priorities and issues will have changed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22356" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2016-03-03T15:31:56.613" LastActivityDate="2016-03-03T15:31:56.613" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17573" CreationDate="2016-03-01T10:22:05.047" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In modern versions of MS-Project you could employ a Task Calendar to ensure that the Release milestone task was only ever scheduled on dates that are relevant. I cannot really remember the functionality present in MS-Project 98, but I don't think it included Task Calendars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An alternative way of achieving this would be to apply a special &quot;Release&quot; resource to the Release milestone and set the working time for the Release resource such that they are only working on dates that are relevant to the release. That way the milestone itself can only be scheduled by MS_Project for those dates. However it will be a fully manual (though not too onerous) task to set up the special release calendar for the Release resource such that only fortnightly dates are marked as 'Working Time'. Start by making the calendar &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; non-working time and then set the &quot;special&quot; days as Working Time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you can then make the release milestone a predecessor of all subsequent tasks safe in the knowledge the release date will always be scheduled to the next relevant period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T10:22:05.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17573" CreationDate="2016-03-01T12:34:07.830" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What value are you getting by using a project scheduling tool in this case?  It sounds like releases are temporally scheduled and work leading up to it, if not finished by the release date, will simply advance to the next release date.  This is operations and maintenance work, not project work.  Use a calendar tool.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T12:34:07.830" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16562" CreationDate="2016-03-01T12:43:26.720" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make them map their value stream. Worked very well. They identify issues, bottlenecks in their value stream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T12:43:26.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17579" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17581" CreationDate="2016-03-01T12:44:50.680" Score="4" ViewCount="291" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been tasked with being the scrum master for 3 development teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not something I would recommend doing but my boss has laid down the law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know or have any tips for how I should do this without letting things slip.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastActivityDate="2017-03-30T04:54:41.213" Title="Scrum Master for 3 Development Teams" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4425" CreationDate="2016-03-01T12:58:40.583" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have answered the question by yourself: &lt;em&gt;He's the longest serving employee at the unit. He never asks for help. He does his best to help everyone.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how do you expect him to get any real work done? He's the unit's &lt;strong&gt;Information Center.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's why he thinks he did not learn anything; he is the one teaching others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What projects did you like?&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 small projects!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reason: All the other projects he was The Consultant. You can't expect him to like projects he didn't finish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What goals did you accomplish?&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He has accomplished no goals!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, it's not clear what his goals were, but he probably never intended manning the unit's Information Center. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What did you learn?&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He did not learn anything!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He probably doesn't realize how much he learnt, since he feels he spent his time teaching. This could also mean that he's making it clear that he hasn't been sent to any courses, seminars, etc. recently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He failed to finish many of the larger projects he was on!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless it's some tiny projects, he's going to get distracted every time he tries to get work done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;How can this be handled without demoralizing the employee even more and without losing a valuable team member that everyone loves?&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First you need to figure out of he's really demoralized. Some people enjoy being in that role. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's where he wants to be, then ensure he isn't put on any large projects, as that won't be good for those project, nor for his morale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he doesn't like the role, then maybe enforce &lt;em&gt;quiet time&lt;/em&gt; for him, a few consecutive hours daily when nobody will disturb him so that he can get some real work done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask him if he wants to go to courses or seminars to keep up-to-date or learn new things. (First find out your budget for those.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See if he wants to be &lt;em&gt;promoted&lt;/em&gt; - or given a title - reflecting his role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T12:58:40.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17579" CreationDate="2016-03-01T13:10:15.557" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a situation like this &lt;strong&gt;the key is to be available for all the team members and be there at the important meetings&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Check the scrum meetings of the teams and make sure that they do not overlap and you have time between two meetings to prepare. If not, ask the teams to change their schedule so that you can be there&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have a trello or any board where you list the teams and track your thoughts and ideas&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make sure that you are available for the team members; have a regular &quot;open door&quot; event in your calendar&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try to sit with the teams at least once in a week, so that you'll have first handed experiences on how they work&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Check the scrum artifacts - board, charts, impediment and sprint backlogs - so that you are up to date and be able to help them in case they'll need it&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have a plan to &quot;grow&quot; the teams so that they can handle small items without you - actually this is the key to agile; teams can handle themselves (track this plan on your board)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have regular coffee or tea with the team members or the teams, so that you know the informal things as well, and they'll know that they can come to you with anything&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you need, and there is a demand, grow/mentor individuals as well&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finally, never be late and unprepared&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T13:10:15.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12369" CreationDate="2016-03-01T13:21:24.053" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wrong approach!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't predict software errors, the same way you can't predict car accidents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As programmers gain experience they learn from their previous mistakes, but make more sophisticated errors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Number of changes per file&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not a good indicator of anything. The changes could be from additions or bugs, typos or logic errors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is a file? Some files have multiple functions and lots of lines of code. others may have a single function, with even more lines of code, or maybe almost no code. Some others may be &lt;em&gt;header files&lt;/em&gt; that don't do anything, but are needed for compiling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If the above means nothing to you, then you need to get up to learn about it, as I wrote &lt;a href=&quot;http://expertpjm.blogspot.co.il/2011/08/why-technical-project-manager.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine deciding the value of a car based on how often it was washed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Developers who left per file&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no idea what you are trying to infer from this metric. Sounds like trying to predict the popularity of a fast-food joint based on how many quarters they gave as change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The rules&lt;/strong&gt; about bugs is to test from early stages of development, and to keep a 1:1 or 2:1 ratio of programmers to testers. Then you can safely assume the testing-debugging stage will take as long as the time originally estimated to write the code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The later you start testing and the fewer testers you have, then more bugs will live and start growing in the software and the debugging stage will take longer. Then you can double or triple the testing/debugging time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Because fixing code that was written recently (today) is easier than fixing code written a while ago (days, weeks or months). Code that's not fresh in a programmer's head needs to be re-read and understood.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Newer code is often based on older code, so if there's a mistake earlier on, it may waterfall all the way down and cause trouble everywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly: &lt;em&gt;Number of bugs&lt;/em&gt; is not a good indication of anything, unless you factor in their severity, importance and impact. Both a typo and intermittently crashing the system are important bugs. One will take a few minutes to fix, the other may take a real long time, as intermittent crashes are almost impossible to recreate and find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T13:21:24.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17547" CreationDate="2016-03-01T13:22:13.630" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My rule of thumb is to write it down the simplest way possible in order to avoid misunderstandings, unnecessary discussions about English grammar (bike shed), and trolling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore I'm using simple present and encourage others to do the same. Under very rare circumstances, I'm using simple past, when defining preconditions. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;The user goes to the main page, clicks on the login button. &#xA;He is on his home page and sees all the items he has in his inventory.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is like writing or telling a good story; one uses the most efficient (which is understanding in this case) way to present the content. I don't see myself telling a story to my friends using past perfect continuous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T13:22:13.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9801" CreationDate="2016-03-01T14:03:39.093" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What can I do to improve my team's motivation and provide a sense of achievement using Kanban?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way is to reserve the last column the kanban board for &lt;em&gt;tasks done&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let the completed tasks column fill up and then have a minor celebration when you clean it up. (Announce the &lt;em&gt;major achievement&lt;/em&gt; of finishing &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; tasks, make a big deal of clearing the column. Some cheering and a good punch line. And food, if that's in line with team practices.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be done every &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; tasks completed, or every few weeks, or even randomly whenever you need a break, or just feel like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doesn't really take time, but gives a feeling that you care about their accomplishments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another easy &lt;em&gt;win&lt;/em&gt;, is to visibly keep track of who was the biggest &lt;em&gt;mover &amp;amp; shaker&lt;/em&gt; this week. Should be defined in such a way that everybody has a fair chance at it. Or keep the formula secret and announce a winner weekly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T14:03:39.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17585" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-01T16:18:28.733" Score="1" ViewCount="314" Body="&lt;p&gt;To provide a background, we have created UI forms from Business Unit &lt;strong&gt;A&lt;/strong&gt; for the end users to fill. Once completed/filled the UI form flows through the defined workflow, where different users in different roles review this form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a previous release we created stories for the UI forms (from BU &lt;strong&gt;A&lt;/strong&gt;) and separate stories to define the workflow which has now been implemented. &#xA;We are in the next continuation release now and we are required to add new UI forms from Business Unit &lt;strong&gt;B&lt;/strong&gt;. But we need to use the same workflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do we need to write new stories or clone previous stories in this Release for our Development team to be able to re create the workflow for these new forms from BU &lt;strong&gt;B&lt;/strong&gt;? They have mentioned that we need to provide them a way to account for this work, even though it might be recreating what was originally already done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to provide requirements for items that might be needed to be recreated in future release, noting that there might be minor tweaks to what currently exists as we go along from one release to the next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22411" LastActivityDate="2016-03-05T19:32:47.547" Title="Recreation of user stories for common functionality/screens between Releases?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;business-analyst&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17586" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-01T16:22:58.883" Score="4" ViewCount="89" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps this is not the right forum to ask this question but this situation has popped up recently and as the project manager, I am responsible for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More than a year ago, we developed an app which uses a library that was created by a third party developer. From the marketplace that it was released, it looked like the library was free. In fact, even looking at it now, it does look free.. except for only one page which says the Enterprise edition is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt;. This library was downloaded 2 years ago so my developer cannot remember whether those terms were added recently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also not clear on that page what are the limits of the free edition which we are using now. At what point should we have upgraded to the Enterprise edition, I don't know. I cannot tell from the terms on that page. I have encountered other paid libraries that offer similar 'free' (or more accurately, trial) versions. After you reach the limits of free usage, those libraries show a message and no longer works. There is nothing like that for this library. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also looked at other libraries and it is pretty clear when a library is free and when it is not. In fact, it's also obvious when a library provides a trial version. However, for this library, the word 'Free' appears almost everywhere except for that one page. It seems almost deliberate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here we are more than a year in production with that library. Out of the blue, the developer contacts me and tells me I have to pay for the past usage. However, he tells me that if we sign up for a 2-year contract, out of goodwill the past charges will be dropped. Unfortunately the bill for that contract is a substantial amount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is surprising is when I asked him why is that for more than a year we weren't informed about this, he refuses to give me an answer. I am sure he wouldn't need a year to realise that we have exceeded the limits of the free edition of his library. Especially when he could tell me the precise usage of the library from the first month the app was launched, and that within that month we had already exceeded the limits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is best course of action to take? Our client is the actual user of this app and they will decide whether they will pay for this contract. I have a strong feeling they will rather do without the feature that the library provides than pay such a high fee. In that case, can the developer legally ask me to pay for the past usage?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21549" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T16:31:04.533" Title="What to do when a developer of a library you've used for a year claims that you owe them license fees?" Tags="&lt;conflicts&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2016-03-02T10:43:10.933" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17586" CreationDate="2016-03-01T16:31:04.533" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You do not indicate whether you have alternative libraries to use.  This is important because it affects your leverage to negotiate good terms for your customer.  If you have alternatives, then approach your existing library owner and negotiate the best terms you can while, concurrently, make those alternatives more real so you have the option of walking away.  Once you have a good agreement, either with the existing owner or a new one, then you can pass a good agreement over to your customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all cases, ignore a retroactive charge.  When that topic comes up, say in the scenario where you end up choosing an alternate, tell them to sue you for it.  If they offer a trial version, it is on them to &quot;stop&quot; the trial and then proactively charge you.  If they failed to do that, then they essentially are giving it away for free.  They will not likely prevail in a suit; they are not even likely to bring the suit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T16:31:04.533" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17588" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-01T19:29:56.170" Score="7" ViewCount="93" Body="&lt;p&gt;Developers and QA testers are treated as separate teams at our company, something we are trying to change by adopting scrum. The QA team is distributed globally and each local team has different hardware in order to test platform-specific tweaks we make to our applications. So if we implement a fix required for the application to run on platform X, and QA Team 1 has an X onsite, then they are assigned to validate that particular defect or user story. If we implement a fix for platform Y, that gets validated by QA Team 2. And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that we do not know ahead of time which platforms we will be developing for, and therefore cannot say ahead of time which QA teams we will need to partner with during a particular sprint. Incorporating all of QA into our scrum team every sprint would make the team huge, with the associated coordination challenges and overhead that brings. We are experimenting with a scrum of scrums that includes representatives from both the dev and QA teams, but that still maintains the current organizational boundaries rather than making us a truly cross-functional team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can this process be adapted to scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that kanban might be a better fit for this operational model, but that is unlikely to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13325" LastActivityDate="2016-03-02T10:40:50.153" Title="How to adopt scrum when you don't know who needs to be in your team each sprint" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17579" CreationDate="2016-03-01T20:54:34.710" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been Scrum Master to 3 teams at once and although challenging, it is possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing is to have the the sprints running out of phase with each other, so that you can attend all the Scrum ceremonies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will need the morning stand-ups to be at different times as well. It becomes increasingly important to stay within the stand-up timebox so that you don't miss the stand-up for another team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would strongly advise getting the meeting rooms for the three teams booked months in advance. This helps to avoid last minute panics to facilitate meetings and also helps the stakeholders and Product Owner to plan around the meeting times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the three teams are close together you can get away with one desk. Otherwise you will need to hot desk, moving frequently between the teams. This is important as you need to hear the day-to-day interaction between the teams to have a good idea of what is going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, empower the teams as much as possible. Get them to think of the Scrum Master as a &lt;em&gt;facilitator of problem solving&lt;/em&gt; rather than the person that actively does all of the actual problem solving. As an example, a problem comes up with one of the build environments. The Scrum Master sets up a meeting between a team member and a system administrator to resolve the issue. They track the problem to ensure it is resolved and hasn't been parked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="22447" LastEditDate="2016-03-03T11:04:43.767" LastActivityDate="2016-03-03T11:04:43.767" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17585" CreationDate="2016-03-01T21:07:28.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are thinking of user requirements in terms of tasks rather than user stories. An example of this is separating out the form creation from the workflow when really both are required to provide business value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A user story should be focused on something that provides business value. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a member of Business Unit 'A' I need to write a financial report, have it reviewed and then passed to the customer so that I can keep the customer informed about their finances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That story might then have some sub-tasks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task 1 - Create a UI form that captures the financial data&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task 2 - Build the workflow for a financial report&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you adopt this approach to writing user stories then you no longer have the issue of recreating the same user stories for different requirements. You may well have similar &lt;em&gt;tasks&lt;/em&gt; associated with these stories, but that should not be an issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T21:07:28.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17491" CreationDate="2016-03-01T23:38:21.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;With &quot;Activity on Arrow&quot;, there should only be one node from which the four arrows are spawned, and then only one further node at which all four arrows terminate.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Arrows do not need to be a single straight line.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each arrow represents an activity - so if there are four activities, you need only have four arrows.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It sounds like you were thinking of having four separate dummy nodes, one at the end of each actual activity, each of which would then have a dummy activity arrow leading to the actual node at the termination of the four parallel activities. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are unnecessary, as a) they're serving no logical purpose in the PERT network and b) the diagrammatic purpose they serve can be better carried out by having each of the non-dummy arrows made out of three straight lines: four lines that fan out from the first node; then four parallel lines; then four lines that converge on the second node.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would then label the four parallel sections of the arrows with the four activity descriptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22406" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2016-03-02T08:04:33.523" LastActivityDate="2016-03-02T08:04:33.523" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17588" CreationDate="2016-03-02T10:40:50.153" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum recommends that teams consist of people with every skillset necessary to create a working product increment or potentially releasable software at the end of every sprint.  This means that every scrum team should consist of backend developers, frontend developers, as well as testing engineers specializing in the different platforms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way you're operating today is by separating people based on their function rather than by the product they support. This creates walls between teams and leads to delays and impediments.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I feel works best, in my experience, is to put a testing engineer from team 1 and team 2 on your scrum team and have them work as a part of that team.  The QA manager then should become more of an agile manager whose responsibility is to help the testing engineers grow and improve in their careers but without getting caught up in the day to day details of what the team is working on in the product.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such people should still collaborate with other testing engineers and work with senior people, but they should also act as members of the scrum team, working on a single product just like the rest of the scrum team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make such changes will not be easy. You'll need to convince senior management, the manager of the testing teams, and your own team to agree to try this as an experiment to see if productivity improves.  If it doesn't, you can always go back to the old way of doing things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2016-03-02T10:40:50.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17593" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17596" CreationDate="2016-03-02T14:48:00.703" Score="14" ViewCount="2915" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should a Scrum team be tracking the daily commitments each team member makes during the Daily Scrum? We write them down in a kind of a mini task manager, and then we mark them as done during the work day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any benefit to this process? Or is it a drawback and an unnecessary burden?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22423" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-03-02T16:45:22.393" LastActivityDate="2019-05-21T07:51:59.433" Title="Should a Scrum team formally track daily commitments?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17593" CreationDate="2016-03-02T15:32:32.983" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the process point of view there is nothing wrong with it, because this is the closest thing you have for tracking. &lt;strong&gt;However, it may harm the team members on the personal level, and can easily lead to micro management&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They may feel an unnecessary pressure on themselves in order to keep the commitments, even if it is not possible to finish the task in a day. This may lead to burnout. Additionally, team members may pick only those tasks that are easy to do in a day and won't pick hard tasks so that they can keep their commitments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, the strict daily checking may lead to internal conflicts and failed sprints because of the unnecessary pressure and avoidance of failure. That's why we tend to have iterations or sprints as the shortest check period so that the team has space to deliver in its best way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel that your team is slow or does not keep promises, find the root cause; mentor them to be better at estimation, task breakdown, or even at retrospectives. A very strict daily reporting will show some results in the short term, but nothing good in the long term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2016-03-03T14:53:00.320" LastActivityDate="2016-03-03T14:53:00.320" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17593" CreationDate="2016-03-02T15:46:22.460" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Tracking the daily commitments each team member&lt;/code&gt; sounds like micro-management at its best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exception would be for a very short project, or for a tiger-team trying to solve an emergency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you track daily commitments, either the larger chunks are being ignored (woe to the project) or else they are being unnecessarily broken down into meaningless chunks to charm the project manager. The next step is either resentment from the team or them turning this into a joke. Either way you will lose control over the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-03-02T15:46:22.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17593" CreationDate="2016-03-02T16:43:06.983" Score="19" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Coordination/Collaboration, Not Formal Task-Tracking&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the Scrum Guide used to refer to the stand-up as a commitment meeting, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-daily&quot;&gt;it currently says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Daily Scrum is a 15-minute time-boxed event for the Development Team to synchronize activities and create a plan for the next 24 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of the daily Scrum is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to hold people accountable or to perform a status pull. Rather, it is intended to provide a forum for members of the Development Team to &lt;strong&gt;coordinate the current day's increment&lt;/strong&gt;. The notorious &quot;three questions&quot; are simply guidelines; the format of &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; the information is presented is not strictly prescribed by the framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When done properly, the stand-up helps the team to collaborate effectively. The information shared during the daily scrum informs one's teammates about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What work is ready to be pulled into another team member's queue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What resources are required from other team members to perform a task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Impediments that the team needs to swarm over or route around.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Formal Task-Level Tracking is a Project Smell&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the goals for the stand-up are &lt;strong&gt;coordination and collaboration&lt;/strong&gt;, it is expected that the team members will informally track the pieces of the day's increment that impact them. Turning daily task-tracking into a formal ceremony serves no purpose other than micromanagement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be clearly evident on a day-to-day basis whether user stories and tasks are progressing or blocked. If the volume of daily work-in-progress is such that detailed formal tracking becomes necessary, that is generally a &quot;project smell&quot; that indicates a process problem with the team's Scrum implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Common problems that can cause this smell include, but are not limited to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Treating the daily scrum as a status pull.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A team that has over-committed the volume of stories accepted into the Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A team that doesn't enforce sensible work-in-progress (WIP) limits.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A team that assigns tasks to individuals, rather than treating user stories as a collaborative process with collective ownership.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A process that values fine-grained task tracking over story-level &quot;done&quot; or &quot;not done&quot; status.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A process that is too task-focused, rather than focused on achieving a defined Sprint Goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There can certainly be other reasons as well. The important thing is to clearly identify &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; the team (or more likely the stakeholders) need or expect this level of tracking or status reporting. That's the real problem to be solved, and is most likely a communications or transparency problem within the current Scrum implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-03-02T17:30:04.987" LastActivityDate="2016-03-02T17:30:04.987" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17553" CreationDate="2016-03-03T00:25:24.000" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Model-Based Risk Assessments&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does anybody have a good rule of thumb for deciding what is a reasonable risk to be included and tracked?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your risks are driven by your threat model. The filter that you use to identify meaningful risks should be part of your project plan, and is often baked into your project assumptions. For example, it may be reasonable to assume that a software project is not placed at great risk by spontaneous human combustion, so you would probably leave that type of risk out of your threat model. On the other hand, staffing turn-over, schedule risk, or intellectual property issues might be germane to such a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Stakeholders and Senior Management Own the Risk&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The truly important thing is that your risk log is a project artifact that should contain whatever risks that the organization has thought about and agreed were relevant. The risk log should also clearly identify whether those risks will be accepted, transferred, or controlled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You aren't expected to plan for every eventuality; a project manager's role is to capture, document, and communicate risks identified by the project to its stakeholders. After that, the responsibility belongs to &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-03-03T00:25:24.000" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17600" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-03T07:31:58.687" Score="4" ViewCount="795" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a new development team and I want to use Story Points for high-level estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I have two problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My new team is not cross-functional (we are trying to solve this, but this is a slow process).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User Stories are very specific and demand detailed knowledge.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, during Product Backlog Refinement we assume, that in most cases concrete Story will be implemented by a concrete developer. Obviously, only this developer will estimate his Story (because only he has required knowledge).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But Story Point is measurable units for whole team, not for any single person within the team. If we will estimate Stories by a concrete developer, a Story Point of one developer will not be the same as a Story Point of another developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it a good idea to use Story Points in my situation?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If not, what measurable units are better to use? Old-fashion man-hours / ideal man-hours or something else?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastActivityDate="2018-06-20T13:44:21.767" Title="Best measurable units for non cross-functional team estimation" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17602" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-03T09:29:06.680" Score="3" ViewCount="2381" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Our daily stand up meeting&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most developers make notes about what they will talk about, simple text list with done and to-do section. Tickets they worked on are listed there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there a way to simplify this, drop the notes and use JIRA for daily standup meeting?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Requirements&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Developers want to see tasks they worked on grouped in done and to-do&#xA;  sections. This is a problem because a task assigned to a tester does&#xA;  not have a developer that worked on it as an assignee anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas or feedback how to use &lt;strong&gt;JIRA&lt;/strong&gt; for a daily standup meeting are super welcomed!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22445" LastEditorUserId="22445" LastEditDate="2016-03-03T10:34:08.137" LastActivityDate="2016-10-19T13:58:46.420" Title="Is there a way to use JIRA to back daily standup meeting?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17600" CreationDate="2016-03-03T10:40:44.420" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Story points are always a good idea, the challenge lies in finding a task that all the team members can understand which can then function as a 'reference point'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When estimating a story based on this reference task, the person who has the in-depth knowledge on the subject should explain to the best of their ability what factors are involved in the story-to-be-estimated so that the other team members can make a reasonable estimate of how complex it is when compared to the reference task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the beginning this will be difficult since the cross-domain knowledge is still limited but as the team continues working together you will notice that the estimates are rapidly increasing in accuracy. That is assuming you have a retrospective meeting in place after every sprint where the team takes some time to analyse what went well and what went wrong during the sprint, part of which will be comparing the initial estimates of stories to the actual time it took to complete them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22447" LastActivityDate="2016-03-03T10:40:44.420" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17602" CreationDate="2016-03-03T11:27:25.790" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends on your setup. In one of the teams I have been a part of we had the scrum board completely digital on Jira and it was the 'single source of truth'. We had a sufficiently sized screen to stand around where the digital scrum board could be displayed and still be readable. This was obviously not divided into separate people, but standing in front of the board and looking over all the tickets, the developers would remember what they did last time and could look at what items were still 'to do' and 'in progress' to pick out what they were going to do that day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without these facilities (having the scrum board only in Jira and having a way to display it so that everyone involved in the stand-up can easily see and read everything) I don't think this will succeed. If the main board is physical and there is a copy in Jira then people will often forget to update one or the other, potentially leading to problems. (Before the screen, we had two developers pick up the same task independently because one grabbed the physical ticket while the other took the digital one.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22447" LastActivityDate="2016-03-03T11:27:25.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17602" CreationDate="2016-03-03T12:35:35.583" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If developers can't remember the tasks they're working on, then this could be a symptom of two possible problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;1. There is too much WIP&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;that there is too much WIP (work in progress) occurring at any given time.  Agile methodologies like scrum encourage teams to focus on getting things to the done state as quickly as possible, and working on more than one thing at a time by definition means that you'll get one thing done a lot slower, since effort is expended across the different tasks instead of laser-focused on one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, there's also a psychological effect as well, which you can read more about in the article, &lt;a href=&quot;https://medium.com/life-tips/multitasking-is-killing-your-brain-79104e62e930#.9erip0si1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Multitasking is Killing Your Brain&lt;/a&gt;.  Additionally, there's a cost to context switching between tasks where it takes a person some time to recall exactly where they left off in the other task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This effect is similar to what Jeff Sutherland mentions in his book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://idratherbewriting.com/2015/10/27/fix-errors-fast-scrum-agile/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It took twenty-four times longer. If a bug was addressed on the day it was created, it would take an hour to fix; three weeks later, it would take twenty-four hours. It didn’t even matter if the bug was big or small, complicated or simple — it always took twenty-four times longer three weeks later. As you can imagine, every software developer in the company was soon required to test and fix their code on the same day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, the cost of context switching is harmful in many areas, and even &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000245.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Joel Spolsky identifies with this in his blog, Joel on Software&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;i&gt;It's easier to fix bugs the same day you wrote the code. It can be very hard and time-consuming to fix bugs a month later when you've forgotten exactly how the code works.&amp;quot; - Joel Spolsky, CEO/Founder of Stack Overflow&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you're not specifically mentioning bugs, the idea is similar in that switching tasks involves not only loss of productivity but forgetfulness as well, since there's a limit on the amount of information we can keep in short term memory at any given time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, Cronax's answer is solid. Make sure you have a big screen. That's what we do when we need the sprint backlog to be visible to multiple people, but the problem you're facing can't be solved by technology alone.  I strongly suggest taking a look at the amount of work people are doing and make sure they only have two &amp;quot;cards&amp;quot; to talk about in the daily standup:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The card which they worked on yesterday.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The card they will work on today.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;2. Tasks are broken down so they're &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; small&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're sure that multitasking isn't the problem, then consider that tasks may be too small. Ideally, since each task, according to scrum, should be something that can be completed in a day, consider re-examining how the team breaks down tasks. The problem could also be not that people are taking on too much work but perhaps that tasks are simply too small.  Larger tasks may be easier to remember than ones that are broken down so small that 8 can be done in a day.  One is always easier to remember than eight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2016-03-03T12:35:35.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17600" CreationDate="2016-03-03T20:40:37.577" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason for using story points is that it allows us to work out the capacity of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question you have to ask yourself is what is the best way for the team you describe to work out its capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you force boundaries between disciplines then really you have several capacities and not just one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, say the team consisted of 5 developers. 2 developers can only work on stories relating to the database. 1 developer can only work on the front end and 2 other developers can only work on the web services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this situation the team has a capacity for database work, a capacity for front end development and a capacity for web services. That is even before we start talking about testing. Is there just one tester who can work on each area? Do the developers do the testing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimating in Scrum works best when we assume the team members can work on any story. They may be better at working on some kinds of stories than on others, but they can still work on all types of stories. If a developer does not know how to do something, they can get training or pair with a developer who does know how to do it. That way knowledge is shared across the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend you adopt this approach to knowledge sharing and have every team member estimate on every story. You will find that developers estimate high on stories they are unfamiliar with and low on stories that they understand well. That is fine, just get the team to come to a concensus estimate that incorporates every team members input. The way velocity is calculated as a rolling average tends to compensate for this kind of thing over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team does not want to become cross-functional than you are better off estimating at the task level rather than at the story level. You may well find that estimating in ideal hours is more useful than story points in this approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-03-03T20:40:37.577" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17600" CreationDate="2016-03-03T21:12:48.797" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is probably not your situation, but this is an inherent problem with game development teams (my primary area of experience), because there is typically no overlap in skill sets, and never will be if the project is larger than a couple scrum teams. In these cases, I've used separate story point estimates in each department, but it comes with a few cons. One, it can increase silo mentality and culture (bad), and two, it makes planning clean sprints and releases much more puzzle-like. I often need to &quot;fill small gaps&quot; with feasible overlap like testing or shadowing to learn how the other departments work, or personal/stretch goals. One positive is that it quickly shows where parts of the release plan are lopsided and/or you may need expert capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said (and before you downvote me :) ), I would recommend Barnaby Golden's advice, with emphasis on a concrete and tangible plan to cross-train and pair up with the goal of shared, single-value estimates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2016-03-03T21:12:48.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17608" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-03T21:43:19.310" Score="5" ViewCount="889" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PMP and I have been assigned to a software development project and given the title of Project Manager. There is no technical project manager for this project and this is a balanced matrix organization where I have a portfolio manager above me and my team is assigned full-time to this project where I am acting as their functional manager (though technically my boss is their boss).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am doing typical PM stuff like managing scope items, reconciling work items with the BRD/SRS, submitting change requests, and ensuring that we're meeting deadlines. However, we're working in an agile fashion with two-week sprints and the team is trying to behave as &quot;scrum-like&quot; as possible. This means daily scrums, prioritized backlog, sprint planning meetings, etc. However, in scrum the role of project manager does not exist, and in some ways a PM role is antithetical to the idea of scrum as a lot of the PMI-isms are built around the concept of a waterfall model. We also do some very non-scrum things, like loosely assign backlog storied a few sprints ahead to &quot;know what's coming&quot; and give management a plan for the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can this arrangement be described? What happens when a PM is placed on a scrum team? Is this really just working in an agile manner since we're not adhering to the exact rules of scrum so we can't call it so? (like a sparkling wine made outside of Champagne, France)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22093" LastActivityDate="2016-03-16T00:11:50.757" Title="Help me reconcile my title of project manager with performing roles of a scrum master" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17579" CreationDate="2016-03-03T22:09:46.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;TBH, I would say the primary goal of an SM is to &lt;strong&gt;make yourself unnecessary by transferring your knowledge, perspectives and mentality to your teams&lt;/strong&gt;. If you can start to do this (with a steady, sustainable pace) you will free up more time to focus on things they can't do in the short term due to time constraints, external blockers or politics, lack of agile experience, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2016-03-03T22:09:46.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17610" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-03T22:39:33.440" Score="6" ViewCount="263" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often we hear people wanting estimates to be within 10% even if the dev team has not been hired yet and you have no idea about their productivity. This results in techniques such as fat and burn (add fat burn if you are under) being applied. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To truly get a 10% estimate on a piece of software work what needs to be in place? It does not need to be the entire project at 10% but how much pre-work is required to get there so at least the build can be within 10%. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is that if some one is asking for a 10% threshold on estimates of a development cycle we can talk about related overheads and risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22456" LastEditorUserId="22456" LastEditDate="2016-03-05T20:16:12.953" LastActivityDate="2016-03-05T20:16:12.953" Title="What needs to be in place to get a Software project estimate within 10%" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17610" CreationDate="2016-03-03T22:46:13.283" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The software project, already completed (and even then your historical data might be off by more than 10% depending on how you tracked it). Note: this is not a joke. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2016-03-03T22:46:13.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17612" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-04T04:22:18.127" Score="-1" ViewCount="1150" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have 4 tasks, and I have assigned 2 workers to each task. As these tasks will be done at the same time, and are correlated, I want to assign a supervisor to these 8 workers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, basically this supervisor will guide all the 8 workers in the same area. How do I enter such a supervisor in MS Project 2016 for these 4 tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22461" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-14T13:30:48.753" LastActivityDate="2019-01-14T13:30:48.753" Title="How can I set up a supervisor to multiple workers in multiple tasks in MS Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17610" CreationDate="2016-03-04T07:24:34.830" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jeff has nailed it exactly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/jbancroftconnors/agile-schedule-vs-scope-workflow&quot;&gt;short presentation&lt;/a&gt; on Slideshare that talks just about Scope vs Schedule and the accuracy of estimates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way to know when you will be done is to start the work and measure your velocity. Estimates are guesses, nothing more. You need velocity in order to get accuracy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-03-04T07:24:34.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17610" CreationDate="2016-03-04T12:04:31.920" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Terms are important here.  Estimates should always be a probabilistic range and your work should always--save for extraordinary, infrequent examples--fall within the range.  Planning values, or targets, are discreet values within this range.  I don't really know the value of trying to have a goal to be within plus or minus 10% of your planning values because, if your work results in falling anywhere between plus or minus 3 standard deviations in the estimate, you are dealing with largely random variables in most cases (at least you will not be able to reliably determine if your result was caused by random or special cause) and trying to achieve a smaller range such as the 10% you are trying to control random noise.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way to truly achieve such a tiny variance in work results, you would have to choose your planning values on the fat side of the curve, such as P80 or P90 or higher, and then slow your work velocity to hit it.  You will be out of business in no time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-03-04T12:04:31.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17615" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17618" CreationDate="2016-03-04T13:49:44.707" Score="2" ViewCount="848" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a team, we currently use a simple mathematical model for planning the size of future releases (in story points). I am looking to overhaul this at the moment so that it more accurately reflects what the team has achieved previously. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a problem that machine learning could be applied to, and if so, where would be a reasonably place to start?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22425" LastActivityDate="2016-03-04T14:42:05.573" Title="Can machine learning be used for capacity planning?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;team-capacity&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17616" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17617" CreationDate="2016-03-04T13:53:53.503" Score="0" ViewCount="66" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a scrum master of a team and I want to improve learning in between team. We are learning new things every day and I thought that roundtable programming would go a long way. Here is my idea:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We start working on a product\project something that is new&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We reserve a conference room with a good TV so that we can share our screen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Continue to work on individual tasks &lt;em&gt;in the same project&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Every time someone gets a query, they would ask team whether they have come across that&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If yes, the team member would explain why and what to do to get through that obstacle&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If not, we all debug\analyse and find the solution&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We would do this an hour a day at most. I did read about peer programming but that's only two people while working on new project everyone should be able to be on same page so I thought of this (cannot be anything new but I don't know).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does that sound like a good approach? Has anyone tried this? And if yes, what was the result?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance&#xA;-V.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17131" LastActivityDate="2016-03-05T20:55:53.617" Title="Agile, peer vs roundtable programming" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;extreme-programming&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17616" CreationDate="2016-03-04T14:04:59.263" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a decent amount of tinkering lately with &quot;mob programming&quot; which is similar (but some teams enforce one &quot;driver&quot; and everyone else assisting, sort of like extreme pairing). Google it. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2016-03-04T14:04:59.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17615" CreationDate="2016-03-04T14:42:05.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although, this tool would sell like crazy, it won't be able to handle exceptions and variability (I believe it won't be able to handle vacation period, which is not too complicated for humans). Moreover, some would take its output as something written into stone and not a forecast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are looking for something more scientific or semi-automatic you may want to checkout Troy Magennis' work. He concluded - based on various studies - that cycle times follow a &lt;a href=&quot;http://leankanban.com/blog/forecasting-Kanban-Troy-Magennis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;weibull distribution&lt;/a&gt;. He also has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://focusedobjective.com/single-feature-forecast-spreadsheet/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt; that can calculate the probable cycle times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2016-03-04T14:42:05.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17610" CreationDate="2016-03-04T15:02:59.117" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Software development has inherent uncertainty. The two biggest contributors to this are requirement changes and technical risk. There was a seminal paper by Fred Brooks on this in the 1980s called &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;No Silver Bullet&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to achieve an up-front estimate within 10% then you would need to eliminate much or all of this inherent uncertainty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, you could have a project that repeats the exact same technical approach as previous projects and with the same team members. You would also need to restrict any kind of requirement changes and not elicit feedback as this could also potentially result in change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question you have to ask yourself is would there be any value in a project that eliminates all uncertainty? Would this ever happen in the real world and would it deliver a product that people actually wanted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-03-04T15:02:59.117" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17608" CreationDate="2016-03-04T16:28:02.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you need to remember that a Scrum Master is a role, not necessarily a title. You could in theory be called the Project Master Manager Guy and still do the role of a scrum master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my previous position my title was IT Project Manager, but my daily role was scrum master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why so focused on the title and not the job?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22071" LastActivityDate="2016-03-04T16:28:02.593" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17608" CreationDate="2016-03-04T20:02:36.373" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have worked as a Project Manager, as a Scrum Master and as a Project Manager on what has loosely been described as Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you rightly mention, there are big differences between how you work as a Project Manager and as a Scrum Master. Probably the most important difference is that a Scrum master is not a manager, they are a servant leader. This is a fundamental and irreconcilable difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, it is possible to have the title of Project Manager, but assume the role of Scrum Master. The biggest challenge will not be with the team, but instead will be with your relationship with management and those outside of the team. There will come a time when management will ask for something that they rightly expect from a Project Manager but that a Scrum Master would never do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One possible approach is to assume the role of Scrum Master and spend some time coaching managers and those outside the team on how Scrum works. If you do this and you have an open-minded management then it is possible to run a successful Scrum team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-03-04T20:02:36.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17514" CreationDate="2016-03-05T19:11:33.153" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you look at the news from some of the largest software and  consulting companies you still see trend of not going individual appraisals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Individual appraisals kills self organisation and both the performance of your team and the quality of your code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would have a serious conversation with the CEO about what what his goals are. If he wants high quality software quickly then he needs to stop asking for individual appraisals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://federalnewsradio.com/commentary/2015/08/lets-kill-the-performance-appraisal-process/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://federalnewsradio.com/commentary/2015/08/lets-kill-the-performance-appraisal-process/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if he really does not understand how  people work and how detrimental appraisals are you could try:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumology.com/how-to-do-agile-performance-reviews/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://scrumology.com/how-to-do-agile-performance-reviews/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give all of the members of an Agile team the same performance goals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assign individual goals for individual development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure individual goals are aligned with team goals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Frequent 360 degree performance feedback is better than many alternatives.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Value highly the personal traits, characteristics, and behaviors of good team members.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above should always be considered a stop-gap to fixing the route of the problem...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastActivityDate="2016-03-05T19:11:33.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17585" CreationDate="2016-03-05T19:32:47.547" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you are having an engineering issue! Why  would you have to create the same workflow? That sounds like the original engineering work no longer meets the needs of the business. If the system was  engineered in a way that you can reuse components and forms then you would not need to do the same thing again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is the first time that this has  happened then I would focus on paying back your technical debt and making the stuff that  you have already created reusable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this constantly happens then I would  focus on creating professional teams that embody engineering excellence  and can build high quality software  that meets the businesses needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastActivityDate="2016-03-05T19:32:47.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17608" CreationDate="2016-03-05T19:47:18.390" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If we  focus on roles and not job titles, with PM also being a role  with activities, then  you realise that Scrum splits the  traditional team PM into the PO and the SM. The PO manages the Product while the SM manages the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no role of Project Manager where the team is concerned but the project  manager may work for the Product Owner and help them organise  customers and delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As soon as you put the Project Manager role with oversight of the Team then you are  going to kill the benefits that are the  value of Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are a PM who is trying to deliver with an Agile team you need to choose what you care about, process or product.  It  can't be both...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastActivityDate="2016-03-05T19:47:18.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17520" CreationDate="2016-03-05T20:23:37.700" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you have a Product Owner issue. The Development Team should  only work from the backlog and not leave buffer in the sprint beyond the variance of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a  production  issue arises that is a fix/fail (site down) then the Development Team obviously need to drop everything and go fix it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However if the issue is not an immediate threat and  customers can still  use the product then it is up to the Product Owner to determine if he/she is ok with loosing sprint  time to fix it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;( ultimately every time you rush a fix you reduce the quality of the product and introduce  more issues. Worse you reduce the value of the product which should be reflected on your organisations  balance sheet as an asset)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whichever is true these are not Story Pointed items and don't count to velocity. Every one of the  production issues are a quality issue and need to be treated as such. Route cause and eliminate for all time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, your Product Owner, as accountable and responsable for the Product, is the single point of ownership for this.  They are the gatekeeper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likely they  don't really understand the impact of reducing quality and of not meeting Done each sprint. This should be highlighted by the loss of velocity for  fixing production issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do this then I  guarantee you  will find 90% of your current tickets that  interferer with your team will become backlog items instead. They  will be priorities by the PO and accepted into the sprint like any other item at Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastActivityDate="2016-03-05T20:23:37.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17616" CreationDate="2016-03-05T20:55:53.617" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have a hypothesis, now you need to decide:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How will you measure success?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What will be your criteria for stopping the experiment?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What will you do if one or more team members does not like this approach?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trying new ways of working is a great idea, but it needs to be done in a way that you get the most benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you could set your measure of success to be a reduction in the time taken to solve problems. Then you could measure how long it takes you team before and after the new approach is tried. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you will say that if after 2 weeks no improvement is seen in the time to solve problems then you will stop the experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This time boxing and measurement is important as it helps to keep the team motivated while you try the new approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also want to try pair programming at some point. Use the same criteria for success and compare the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-03-05T20:55:53.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17612" CreationDate="2016-03-05T22:01:22.413" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One idea is to go to your Resource Sheet &gt;&gt; insert the Phonetics column &gt;&gt; type in the supervisor name for each resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go to the Task Sheet view &gt;&gt; insert the Resource Phonetics column. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, whenever the resource is assigned to the task, the supervisor(s) will show up in the Resource Phonetics column.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make it obvious what this column really is in the Task Sheet view, right click on Resource Phonetics &gt;&gt; Field Settings &gt;&gt; set the title to Resource Supervisors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this doesn't get you what you're looking for, tell me what your goal is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22275" LastActivityDate="2016-03-05T22:01:22.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12676" CreationDate="2016-03-05T22:04:38.367" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes this happens when you copy the entire row and the only resolution is to create a new task. When you copy the row, MS Project copies over a lot more than what meets the eye. For instance, it copies the task, the resources and the assignment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to copy tasks safely, you should copy it one column at a time. This will only take the data and not everything behind the scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22275" LastActivityDate="2016-03-05T22:04:38.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17630" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-06T02:29:28.630" Score="1" ViewCount="61" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a project that has many tasks, some of them needs others as requirements, others don't. All tasks have a duration that will not change. We have 5 &quot;workers&quot; that can work at only one task at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to find the best possible way to assign tasks to reduce total time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried OmniPlan but I'm not really a project manager and don't know how the software works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've managed to assign some tasks to a worker and &quot;&lt;strong&gt;level&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; them to see one before the other. But I have to manually assign a task to a worker and I have a lot of tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any software that can calculate that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Task 1 - 1d&#xA;Task 2 - 3d&#xA;Task 3 - 3d&#xA;Task 4 - 7d&#xA;Task 5 - 9d&#xA;Task 6 - 2d&#xA;Task 7 - 5d&#xA;Task 8 - 3d&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible Distribution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Worker 1: Task 5&#xA;Worker 2: Task 4, 6&#xA;Worker 3: Task 2, 3&#xA;Worker 4: Task 1, 7&#xA;Worker 5: Task 8&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22485" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2016-03-06T15:24:42.033" LastActivityDate="2016-04-08T14:53:44.447" Title="How can I find the best distribution of a set of tasks" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17631" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17645" CreationDate="2016-03-06T04:41:32.760" Score="1" ViewCount="909" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working in a medium sized company as a CTO, the business side in the company is sending an average of 5 proposals/day to be estimated in terms of working hours and cost for each proposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that phase I still don't know which team will be assigned to the project as signing the contract phase may by in average more than 5 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem I've been troubling since 1 year until now is the conflict between estimating the deadline signed with the customer and the deadline planned by the Product Owner and the team which may vary up to 2x sometimes which means loss in time, cost, trust with the clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, what is the best practice in estimating the projects while proposing the project to the clients considering that &lt;strong&gt;Cost&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Price&lt;/strong&gt; must be available in this phase as they are the factors that the clients are comparing the proposals with?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;We are following agile methodology in the company, so this needs to be considered as well&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7996" LastActivityDate="2016-03-07T06:32:52.183" Title="Estimating the project time and cost while preparing the proposal of a project" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;project-proposal&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17631" CreationDate="2016-03-06T10:18:15.453" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is inherent uncertainty in any software development project. The two main reasons for this are requirements change and technical risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This uncertainty makes it very difficult to estimate in advance and the longer the project, the more difficult it becomes. This is described by the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cone of uncertainty&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a number of options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take on the risk - if projects take longer than estimated then they may be unprofitable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add contingency - add contingency to your estimates (perhaps adding more contingency the longer/riskier the project)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Offer a variable scope - break the requirements down in to those that must happen, those that should happen and those that could happen; complete as much as possible in the available time/budget&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Negotiate a more flexible contract - work in a more collaborative way with your customers rather than having a fixed price contract&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The agile approach suggests that the last option is the best: &quot;Customer collaboration over contract negotiation&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One approach is to negotiate time and materials type contracts, where the customers pay as they go. There are also some &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_contracts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;agile contracts&lt;/a&gt; appearing that you may wish to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-03-06T10:18:15.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17631" CreationDate="2016-03-06T11:38:12.950" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The gap between sales and delivery exists everywhere and will never go away.  The sales side of your business needs to sell the work and, as typical with a lot of sales, will over promise.  Plus, they need to price the work competitively as price is a major driver in a customer's decision to buy.  The delivery side of your business wants to successfully deliver the project with the resources they need, the time they need, and with a good chuck of contingency for just in case, often resulting in under promising.  These two objectives between sales and delivery are contradictory.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to have the delivery side of your house to have the authority to &quot;nix&quot; the project if the sales side is over promising.  You need to have a governance process that strives for consensus before a proposal is delivered to the customer.  This process should / may help in chilling the over promising of the sales side while also chilling the costly over-allocating of the delivery side and help you arrive at a price and cost case that is closer to the middle.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, and even with a process like that in place, in my experience the sales side typically wins (you gotta sell to have work) and the delivery side is left holding the bag.  Good news for you is, you're not alone in this struggle.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-03-06T11:38:12.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17634" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17644" CreationDate="2016-03-06T13:08:25.650" Score="3" ViewCount="212" Body="&lt;p&gt;To what extent can a Project Manager be held responsible for projects remaining on schedule and on budget?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it make sense for Project Managers to be either promoted (or otherwise rewarded) for a project that came in early, or demoted or punished (or fired?) for projects that are late or run over budget?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not referring to Projects Managers who &lt;em&gt;goofed off&lt;/em&gt; and ignored their project. I'm also not referring  to cases where an entire team is rewarded or punished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How common is it for &lt;strong&gt;only&lt;/strong&gt; the Project Manager to be highlighted for the success/failure of the team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2016-03-07T09:43:30.380" LastActivityDate="2016-03-07T18:50:32.910" Title="Extent of Project Manager's responsibility" Tags="&lt;schedule&gt;&lt;reward&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17505" CreationDate="2016-03-06T14:06:04.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your Product Backlog is owned by the Product Owner. They are the last word on whatever is needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Development Team are free to a) pitch the idiocy of any idea to the PO, and b)  refuse to accept a backlog item if they  think that it is too big.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While  the PO might not physically work on the backlog items they are the only person accountable and responsable for the backlog and  everyone's understanding of said backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All your PBI's should represent usable functionality that can be Done by the end of the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastActivityDate="2016-03-06T14:06:04.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="55" CreationDate="2016-03-06T15:15:47.270" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I have seen projects completed successfully with non-technical PMs, I've also seen a lot of disasters. (That's one of the pushes I had to move from programming to PM.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One point I have not seen mentioned in the other answers, is the &lt;em&gt;Big Picture&lt;/em&gt; aspect of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While we hope we have people we can rely on to give us accurate information (or best-try guestimates), there are often areas that belong to the Big Picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One classic example is &lt;strong&gt;integration&lt;/strong&gt;. While each individual developer will give you his best guestimate, few, if any, will remember integration, or have any idea how important it is to scheduling. That's where the technical savvy of the PM is important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would a non-technical PM know if and when integration is needed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example would be the &lt;strong&gt;Use Cases&lt;/strong&gt;. How does a non-technical PM know how to write proper use cases, especially those that cover the corner cases, or extreme circumstances. Even if others write them how would the PM know if all bases are covered?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Some of this is a repeat of my blog post &lt;a href=&quot;http://expertpjm.blogspot.co.il/2011/08/why-technical-project-manager.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Why a technical Project Manager?&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-03-06T15:15:47.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17637" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17639" CreationDate="2016-03-06T17:23:31.853" Score="3" ViewCount="1995" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have worked in an organization where we implemented Scrum, but we dropped the roles &quot;junior&quot; and &quot;senior.&quot; Senior developers still regarded themselves as seniors (with all the attitude that comes with that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work as a Scrum Master now in a different organization, and I am thinking of implementing the same policy. But this organization has juniors, seniors, QA, and development managers. I am thinking of dropping all the titles and make everyone a developer, and having a lead developer on each team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a workable approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5522" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-03-06T18:57:58.527" LastActivityDate="2021-05-19T14:01:51.953" Title="Should there be junior and senior developers in a Scrum team, or should everyone be a developer?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17637" CreationDate="2016-03-06T17:40:49.413" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum only has three roles. Using other titles or roles within the team (including &quot;lead dev&quot;) is very much a Scrum anti-pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Scrum Has Exactly Three Roles&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you can have people of various skill levels and specializations on Scrum team, the Scrum framework &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;only has three roles&lt;/a&gt; within the team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Owner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum Master&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Development Team Member&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's it. You can't call it Scrum if you have roles like &quot;Junior Assistant Flunky in Charge of Bending Paperclips&quot; within your Scrum Team. It might be a useful skill that adds value to your project, but it's not a legitimate &lt;em&gt;role&lt;/em&gt; within Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-03-06T17:40:49.413" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17637" CreationDate="2016-03-06T21:00:49.687" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Scrum development team is self-organising and avoids the traditional hierarchical roles such as lead developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is for team members to lead by setting an example and by gaining the respect of the other members of the team. For example, in the case where you have a very experienced develeper on the team they may often take technical leadership with the full cooperation of the team due to the respect the team has for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The danger with having a lead developer &lt;em&gt;role&lt;/em&gt; is that it can disempower other members of the team. Say, for example, that 3 developers on the team want to use approach X, but that the lead deverloper wants to use approach Y. The lead developer's role lets them override the opinion of the other team members. Whereas in a Scrum team they would argue the case for approach Y with a good chance of winning the argument due to the respect the other team members have for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefit of this approach is that all team members feel like they have a buy-in to the decision making process. This helps all of the team to pull in the same direction and to work with enthusiasm for the chosen technical approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-03-06T21:00:49.687" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17469" CreationDate="2016-03-06T21:42:50.383" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could also create a custom filter with these parameters:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xA;        Status      does not equal                  Complete&#xA;And     Active      equals                          Yes&#xA;And     Finish      is less than or equal to        &quot;Start or Finish by:&quot;?&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question mark in the last parameter is for user prompting, which will bring up a calendar to choose from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is to use the Resource Usage view. You can see how many hours each person is working on each task for the hour/day/week/etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22275" LastActivityDate="2016-03-06T21:42:50.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17634" CreationDate="2016-03-06T21:59:40.517" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To what extent can a Project Manager be held responsible for projects remaining on schedule and on budget?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Junior PMs are assigned to projects with low complexity for a reason. If you were to assign me, an IT project manager, to build a new space station, it will fail. Someone can try holding me accountable for that, but you should have never assigned me to that project AND I should have never accepted it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the project manager is the &lt;strong&gt;only&lt;/strong&gt; one being held accountable for the project's success or failure, the PM may not have been communicating effectively through the proper channels (Project Status Reports, Project Change Requests, steering committees, etc.). The Project Status Report will highlight team accomplishments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see the PM as the glue holding the parts together or the oil keeping the machine running. Sometimes this can be mixed up and that's when the PM has to adjust. However, the PM is not the machine and our tasks are usually classified as level of effort. We can't be responsible for all the issues that arise, but we can be for our predetermined action plans and how we implement them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22275" LastEditorUserId="22275" LastEditDate="2016-03-07T18:50:32.910" LastActivityDate="2016-03-07T18:50:32.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17556" CreationDate="2016-03-07T01:55:55.310" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only way I can think of is with a manual process of checking the logical paths. Use these macros to display the paths:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Public Sub TraceMaster_Predecessor()&#xA;    Trace_Clean&#xA;    TraceMaster &quot;predecessor&quot;&#xA;    Trace_Display&#xA;End Sub&#xA;Public Sub TraceMaster_Successor()&#xA;    Trace_Clean&#xA;    TraceMaster &quot;successor&quot;&#xA;    Trace_Display&#xA;End Sub&#xA;Public Sub TraceMaster_Both()&#xA;    Trace_Clean&#xA;    TraceMaster &quot;predecessor&quot;&#xA;    TraceMaster &quot;successor&quot;&#xA;    Trace_Display&#xA;End Sub&#xA;Private Sub TraceMaster(logic As String)&#xA;'Traces the logic path&#xA;&#xA;    On Error GoTo EmergencyExit&#xA;    Dim task1 As Task&#xA;&#xA;    If logic = &quot;predecessor&quot; Then&#xA;        For Each task1 In ActiveSelection.Tasks&#xA;            TracePredecessors task1&#xA;        Next task1&#xA;    ElseIf logic = &quot;successor&quot; Then&#xA;        For Each task1 In ActiveSelection.Tasks&#xA;            TraceSuccessors task1&#xA;        Next task1&#xA;    End If&#xA;Exit Sub&#xA;EmergencyExit:&#xA;    HandlingErrors&#xA;End Sub&#xA;Private Sub TracePredecessors(task1 As Task)&#xA;    Dim task2 As Task&#xA;    task1.Flag5 = True&#xA;&#xA;    For Each task2 In task1.PredecessorTasks&#xA;        If task2.Flag5 = False Then&#xA;            TracePredecessors task2&#xA;        End If&#xA;    Next task2&#xA;End Sub&#xA;Private Sub TraceSuccessors(task1 As Task)&#xA;    Dim task2 As Task&#xA;    task1.Flag5 = True&#xA;&#xA;    For Each task2 In task1.SuccessorTasks&#xA;        If task2.Flag5 = False Then&#xA;            TraceSuccessors task2&#xA;        End If&#xA;    Next task2&#xA;End Sub&#xA;Private Sub Trace_Clean()&#xA;    Dim task1 As Task&#xA;    For Each task1 In ActiveProject.Tasks&#xA;        If task1.Flag5 = True Then task1.Flag5 = False&#xA;    Next task1&#xA;End Sub&#xA;Private Sub Trace_Display()&#xA;    FilterEdit Name:=&quot;Flag5 - GF&quot;, TaskFilter:=True, Create:=True, OverwriteExisting:=True, FieldName:=&quot;Flag5&quot;, test:=&quot;equals&quot;, Value:=&quot;Yes&quot;, ShowInMenu:=False, _&#xA;        ShowSummaryTasks:=True&#xA;    FilterApply Name:=&quot;Flag5 - GF&quot;&#xA;End Sub&#xA;Private Sub HandlingErrors()&#xA;    Select Case Err.Number&#xA;        Case 91&#xA;            MsgBox &quot;The first row you've selected is missing a task name.&quot;, vbCritical&#xA;        Case 424&#xA;            MsgBox &quot;The row you've selected may be missing a task name.&quot;, vbCritical&#xA;        Case 1100&#xA;            MsgBox &quot;This view and table combination doesn't have Outlines available. Try going to &quot; &amp; _&#xA;                        &quot;View &gt;&gt; Data Group: Outline. If Outline is grayed out, try clicking on the task name.&quot; &amp; _&#xA;                        vbNewLine &amp; vbNewLine &amp; &quot;This error usually happens when the timeline or details pane is selected.&quot;, _&#xA;                    vbCritical, &quot;Oops! Outline is Unavailable&quot;&#xA;        Case 1101&#xA;            MsgBox &quot;Try using this macro on the Task Sheet view.&quot; &amp; vbNewLine &amp; vbNewLine &amp; _&#xA;                &quot;Error#&quot; &amp; Str(Err.Number) &amp; &quot; - &quot; &amp; Err.Description, vbCritical, &quot;Invalid View&quot;&#xA;        Case Else&#xA;            MsgBox &quot;Error#&quot; &amp; Str(Err.Number) &amp; &quot; - &quot; &amp; Err.Description &amp; vbNewLine _&#xA;                    &amp; &quot;Line: &quot; &amp; Erl &amp; vbNewLine _&#xA;                    , vbCritical&#xA;    End Select&#xA;End Sub&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22275" LastActivityDate="2016-03-07T01:55:55.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17637" CreationDate="2016-03-07T06:05:17.543" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Barnaby hit this pretty solidly on the nail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can have grades of experience in your company, and in fact may not be able to get away from it given how HR often stratifies job titles. However, what you need to make clear to everyone is that it is the team that is measured on the collective success or failure of the team. There are no rockstars in the team, just teachers and students which can be interchangeable depending on the skill (Bob is an awesome C++ coder and teaches Sally. Sally is a goddess at Java Script and teaches Bob). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are a rock star coder, and your team is struggling to perform, you don't get a new team. Instead you get asked, &quot;what are you doing to help the team get better?&quot; I'll take a team of average coders who are really good together over a couple of individualistic rockstar coders pretty much any day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a newer HR assessment model that really supports this. Instead of an individual being reviewed on their personal success, the model is split 50/50 between team and individual development. The first 50% of your review is based on the success of the team. If the team score is 100%, you get 50 points. If the team scored a 50%, you get 25 points. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second half is based solely on individual development based on goals set by the employee and manager. Did you learn that new language you signed up for? Then you get a high development score. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is the individual isn't measured for work done, the team is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="147" LastEditDate="2016-03-07T06:37:50.817" LastActivityDate="2016-03-07T06:37:50.817" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17634" CreationDate="2016-03-07T06:09:24.767" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless Management invests full authority, at an HR management level, on a project manager, then they can not lay full blame on a project manager for the project's success or failure. (And we don't really want this model anyway, since it would be an old style command and control project, not a team driven project). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, great project managers take accountability and ownership for their projects. When I was a program manager (I'm now an agile coach) I always took personal accountability for my programs. My job was to do everything I could to help the team successfully deliver the project. If something went wrong, I was the first person to step forward and take blame. My belief was if I wasn't willing to be help personally accountable, then I wasn't serving the team properly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-03-07T06:09:24.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17631" CreationDate="2016-03-07T06:32:52.183" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems to be a common question theme lately. I recently answered similar questions in &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/17383/present-a-document-with-estimations-of-duration-of-work-and-risks/17388#17388&quot;&gt;this thread&lt;/a&gt; and in &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/17610/what-needs-to-be-in-place-to-get-a-software-project-estimate-within-10/17613#17613&quot;&gt;this thread&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are three main issues swirling around you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Estimations are just guesses:&lt;/strong&gt; In the 80' and 90's we somehow forgot the concept of &quot;&lt;code&gt;[Cone of Uncertainty][3]&lt;/code&gt;&quot; in estimating. When you first estimate a project, you are lucky if you are even 50% accurate. And if you are not, then it will always be later. You will almost never over estimate the work to be done thanks to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstadter%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hofstadter's Law&lt;/a&gt;, which basically says &quot;We always under estimate, even when we know we always do.&quot; &#xA;The only true way to know when (scope driven) or what (schedule driven) you will deliver for a project, is to start doing it and then use velocity to predict either when or what. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scope vs. Schedule:&lt;/strong&gt; I recommend my, short, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/jbancroftconnors/agile-schedule-vs-scope-workflow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;slideshare presentation&lt;/a&gt; on this. I have full speaker notes embedded to explain each slide. It's a great way to visually explain Scope vs. Schedule so customers and teams understand. &#xA;My personal recommendation, based on years of Agile development, is to always go with a Schedule Driven release with an MVP that is no more than 80% of what you think your Release Line is.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Release Lines vs. MVP Lines&lt;/strong&gt;: We're all familiar with the term of Minimum Viable (or valuable) Product. However I see a lot of variation in what people think the definition is. I usually go with this &quot;If we don't reach MVP, then we would throw away all the code and not release the product at all&quot; and &quot;MVP is what does the customer need for the product to be useful?&quot;. &#xA;I usually cite the original iPhone. It didn't do BlueTooth, it didn't cut and paste, it had no real apps to speak of. And yet it exactly met the customer need (A dirt simple phone, with idiot proof UI that would allow phone calls, emails and basic web surfing). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Release Line is a term we don't hear enough of and is what causes us to run into so many problems with MVP defined projects. We'll say &quot;these are the MVP features&quot; of the project and &quot;We must ship by August&quot;, however we rarely then look at what we think engineering can actually do. In the Schedule section of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/jbancroftconnors/agile-schedule-vs-scope-workflow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;my presentation&lt;/a&gt; I show the worst case scenario of the team delivering less than the MVP because the product owner defined the MVP as exactly what engineering thought they could deliver. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Never do that. Always under commit and over deliver. If you think you can ship 10 features (engineering estimate), in the schedule, don't commit to more than 6. This allows for two very real things. 1- You under estimated the amount of work to be done. 2- Your customer/ product owner changes their mind and adds new features during development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Finally, patience and Agile Value 3&lt;/strong&gt;: We are trying to turn around thirty years of bad project planning and expectations that an estimate is a commitment. We won't change it over night. &#xA;So always keep in mind Agile Value 3- Customer Collaboration over Contract Negotiation. Keep in constantly in communication with your customer and be totally truthful and transparent. If you think there is even a chance of delay, tell them right away. In the last seven years I've used this model. My customers (internal and external) love the total transparency and are a lot more tolerant of issues because I'm communicating as often as daily. When you can see the sausage being made, you are less concerned about eating the final product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2016-03-07T06:32:52.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17556" CreationDate="2016-03-07T09:14:45.807" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are working in an Agile environment then &lt;strong&gt;JIRA&lt;/strong&gt; offers this level of functionality through the use of user stories (&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Issues&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;) and &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Sub Tasks&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main story cannot be marked as complete until all dependent sub-tasks have also been marked as completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are Sprinting then the entire collection of tasks will be returned to the backlog until the individual sub-tasks are completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you require the sub-tasks to become stories in their own right then you can convert them into standalone, independent stories and which will remove the sub-task/dependency from the original story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not perfect but it's flexible and it works for most teams.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note:  Software reccomendations are off-topic for SE so don't take this answer as an endorsement of JIRA.  It's merely one way of solving your stated problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2016-03-07T09:14:45.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="261" CreationDate="2016-03-07T09:54:23.177" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Things that seem to have worked:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A party, or picknick, with &lt;em&gt;significant other&lt;/em&gt; also invited.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Luna Park - all expenses paid - for the entire team and their families. Include lunch.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure to include a short speech on the agenda, which names each team member and something special about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also make sure to cater for particular dietary needs. (Find out, don't guess.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Debit Card or Gift Card with a note that you want them to buy themselves a gift and not use it on groceries (hence, not cash).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't get it from somewhere specific, not everybody enjoys shopping at &quot;X&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I once worked at a place where each team member got a framed certificate after each successfully completed project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Gadgets can be great gifts, and aren't a big deal to carry on public transport. From the latest flashlights, memory/power sticks, pocketknives, and other &lt;em&gt;everybody wants one&lt;/em&gt; gadgets.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-03-07T09:54:23.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2811" CreationDate="2016-03-07T10:00:40.583" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;requirements are loosely defined&lt;/em&gt; project is a recipe for trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your job as PM should be to tighten the requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define milestones&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define what will be delivered by each milestone&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next milestone or 2 (or 3) must be concrete; the future ones can be more loosely defined, until they move up the pipeline, then the have to be clearly defined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not possible to create &lt;em&gt;something that is loosely defined&lt;/em&gt;. Define it and track it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-03-07T10:00:40.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8774" CreationDate="2016-03-07T10:13:08.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Been there, done that; developer to PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found that the biggest shift is: not getting involved in the implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your aim now is to keep the project on track. You don't own the pieces and you shouldn't really care who does what and how, as long as it's per schedule and per spec.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exception would be while you're participating in technical-design meetings in your areas of expertise. But even then, your main role there should be to move the meeting along and record the decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you have a clear list of what needs to be done and when and by whom, and that you understand each item. Check the entire list twice daily. It's the small things that everybody forgot about that throws projects off schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a PjM should never help with the implementation. My PjM mentor - an IBM-taught fellow - taught me the rule that &lt;em&gt;a PM never does anything&lt;/em&gt;. As tempting as it is to do small tasks instead of assigning and tracking them, you cannot afford to be distracted. You need to be focused on the task-list all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-03-07T10:13:08.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17634" CreationDate="2016-03-07T13:05:44.460" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like everything else in a project, &quot;it depends&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An organization should be assigning a leader (sponsor, champion, whatever you want to call it) who will be the single point of accountability for project success. That leader needs to have real authority, and needs to be seen as a rational and appropriate choice for the role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project manager is assigned to assist that leader in the day-to-day management of the project. Depending on the sponsor and the organizational culture, there will be more or less authority delegated to the PM. The PM therefore can have more or less accountability for project success, depending on how much authority was delegated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, PMs act as convenient scapegoats. As the saying goes, success has a thousand fathers but failure is an orphan... and given that the PM tends to be low on the totem pole it is more convenient to point fingers at them than at the real leaders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2016-03-07T13:05:44.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17652" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17653" CreationDate="2016-03-07T14:02:59.440" Score="1" ViewCount="58" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing research about the perception of quality. I have finished the philosophical part and moved to more practical questions and have some troubles understanding the following (quote from a book):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Quality is subject to constraints. However, cost may be wider than&#xA;  simple financial cost: it refers to any critical resource such as&#xA;  people, tools and time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the financial cost, it gives an example: more people buy cheaper cars than Rolls-Royce's because their assessment is constrained by cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, how then the assessment can be constrained by the other constraints they mention? (time, tools, people)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21422" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2016-03-07T15:52:07.580" LastActivityDate="2016-03-07T19:03:07.723" Title="How other than financial constraints affect quality?" Tags="&lt;quality&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;&lt;theory&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17652" CreationDate="2016-03-07T15:01:09.097" Score="5" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I don't have the &lt;em&gt;time&lt;/em&gt; to produce a Swiss precision watch, ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I don't have the &lt;em&gt;tools&lt;/em&gt; to produce a Swiss precision watch, ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I cannot attract the &lt;em&gt;people&lt;/em&gt; that can produce a Swiss precision watch,...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... I might end up offering sun dials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, my customer might not have the &lt;em&gt;time&lt;/em&gt; to actually figure out the difference between a sundial and a precision watch. Or s/he may prefer a stone instead of metal. Or his girlfriend likes the sundial better and all his friends own only sundial-compatible devices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I'm lucky and I will actually sell some.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2016-03-07T15:01:09.097" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17652" CreationDate="2016-03-07T19:03:07.723" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's consider building a highway. It could be the best highway design at the best cost, and the government has funding/resources to build it. However, you're not going to build the highway through a high-income neighborhood or in the middle of the ocean. In this case, the project is constrained by the stakeholders living in the high-income neighborhood who do not perceive quality the same way as the highway engineer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22275" LastActivityDate="2016-03-07T19:03:07.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17630" CreationDate="2016-03-07T20:55:43.677" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The very direct answer to your question is I don't know if anything does it without diving into the larger project management applications (and you mentioned that you didn't really want to dive into that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, past that, you could code up a script that does it in maybe an hour or do it by hand in this method:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Make 5 rows (one for each worker). &#xA;2) Start with the largest task and work down the list of workers until they all have a starting task. &#xA;3) Go to the worker who will have time available earliest and give him the next task on the list (again the list is ordered from longest to shortest)&#xA;4) Repeat 3 until you run out of tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can work dependencies in when you order your list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without dependencies, the tasks go like this (in this order):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;W1: Task 5 (9 days total time)&#xA;W2: Task 4 (7 days total time)&#xA;W3: Task 7, Task 1 (6 days total time)&#xA;W4: Task 2, Task 8 (6 days total time)&#xA;W5: Task 3, Task 6 (5 days total time)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Total time to completion is 9 days only because task 5 takes 9 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Warning:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, why isn't there a bunch of software out there that does this? Because except in rare cases, it's a terrible way to organize work. It is incredibly rare that tasks don't carry different value, that all tasks can be worked by only one person, and that who works it has no impact on time or quality. This works well for a textbook exercise, but very few real-life applications will work best this way&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2016-03-07T20:55:43.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17658" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17659" CreationDate="2016-03-08T06:37:39.987" Score="9" ViewCount="2595" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most obvious KPI for a development team that uses Scrum is the ability to hit sprint commitments. But is there any other efficient way for such a team to track KPIs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22423" LastActivityDate="2016-03-10T18:21:39.650" Title="How should a Scrum development team track KPIs (key performance indicators) besides sprint commitments?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;kpi&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17658" CreationDate="2016-03-08T08:27:02.303" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;So this is something I'm dealing with right now in AOL. The constant desire of business to measure seeps even into agile organizations. The key is to make sure you are measuring in a way that does not damage the fabric of agile for the sake of measuring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We must always be very careful and mindful of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law&quot;&gt;Goodhart's Law&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;em&gt;&quot;When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; Man's ability to game the system is pretty much boundless. Make the measure a target and we will find a way to hit it. Overall success needs to be measured by things they can't directly influence like customer NetPromoter scores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that being said, at the agile team level I still need to find some way to measure the teams (as an agile coach at AOL, I work with over 16 teams). The first thing I did was to setup management expectations of what our metrics are for. Instead of metrics being to set goals, metrics are lagging indicators that tell us a team may need help. Just because a team's velocity has dropped, does not mean they are doing something wrong. It could be outside influences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use Jeff Sutherland's three measures of &quot;escaped defect rate&quot;, &quot;cycle time&quot; and &quot;happiness index&quot;, plus one of my own &quot;Commit to Done&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Escaped Defect Rate:&lt;/strong&gt; In agile the ultimate measure of success is &quot;Working Software.&quot; So monitoring how many bugs escape into the wild, and making the team accountable for this, is one of the first measures of a team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cycle Time&lt;/strong&gt;: The faster you get from &quot;In Progress&quot; to &quot;Done&quot; the more work you can get done overall. I monitor team's cycle time and when it spikes, it tells me something is going on. Right now, with my current teams, it tells me the quality of the product backlog is poor leading to a lot of questions and churn during coding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Happiness Index&lt;/strong&gt;: Happy teams are more productive. Anonymous survey tools are one of the best ways to track this. This metric is more a measure against how the company is doing supporting the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Commit to Done:&lt;/strong&gt; Where cycle time is a measure of productivity. I find this to be one of the best ways to promote and measure predictability. If a team commits to 30 stories, and only delivers nine, then the product owner has only a 30% chance of getting something they care about. If a team instead commits to ten and delivers nine, then the product owner has a 90% chance of getting what they wanted. Better predictability leads to more trust and usually to management and product owners interrupting the team as much. When you can consistently deliver what you say you will, you get a lot of lee way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One caveat- You'll never get to 100% Commit to Done. Any team that does is gaming the system. 80% is probably the highest you'll ever see consistently. This is because as a team finishes work, they will reach into the backlog to pull in new work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="147" LastEditDate="2016-03-10T08:05:41.957" LastActivityDate="2016-03-10T08:05:41.957" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="86" CreationDate="2016-03-08T08:40:14.090" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to work at a company where post-mortems were fun, and we looked forward to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A clear list of &lt;em&gt;issues&lt;/em&gt; is prepared. This can be collected during the project or polled for (verbally or by email) after the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;List of issues is disseminated before the meeting.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No names are mentioned. Not in the list and not at any time during the post-mortem process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All &lt;em&gt;guilty&lt;/em&gt; parties, along with relevant managers are invited.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A nice cake - or other favorite food - used as the centerpiece of the round table, along with drinks and popcorn.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The joke was that a nicer cake meant that more things went wrong.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Issues are brought up one at a time, and typically the person responsible would fess-up and say: &quot;&lt;em&gt;it was my fault&lt;/em&gt;. It happened because of x, y and z&quot;. (Facts, causes, but no names.)&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Classically this causes other people to say: &quot; Actually it was my fault, because of a, b and c&quot;. (Facts, causes, but no names.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If nobody owns up then the PM can set a good example and &lt;em&gt;own&lt;/em&gt; it: &quot;I guess as PM I should have prevented this from happening. I wonder what caused it to happen&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A short discussion then ensues to figure out how to prevent it recurring.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At no point does one try to figure out whose fault it was.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not every item on the list needs to have a solution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After the meeting, the &lt;em&gt;lessons learned&lt;/em&gt; are disseminated as widely as needed.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's not always necessary to include the &lt;em&gt;thing that went wrong&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's never necessary to include people's names.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It sometimes makes sense to include the rationale.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes without saying that nobody gets &lt;em&gt;punished&lt;/em&gt; for any mistakes that are discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it's great to have &lt;em&gt;lessons learned&lt;/em&gt; that all teams can implement, and they become &lt;em&gt;corporate culture&lt;/em&gt;, typically the post-mortem generates a few items, with owners. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These Action Items should be tracked and followed up on, to ensure they are implemented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-03-08T08:40:14.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17661" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17668" CreationDate="2016-03-08T11:17:06.790" Score="3" ViewCount="1540" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a question about the Sprint review (demo) meeting from Scrum, which is held at the end of each sprint in combination with repositories and the git workflow.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that unfinished work from the sprint will be placed back on the product backlog. This is very easy with the codebase because the unfinished work is in a separate feature branch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question that I have is when the product owner declines a fully created user story which is already merged to the release branch. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, when a user management page is created, there can be user stories about &quot;viewing all users&quot; and &quot;create a new user&quot;. The &quot;create new user&quot; needs the overview because this is the only way to get there and be able to use it. So in development, the overview user story is developed and merged to the release branch, then the &quot;create new user&quot; user story is developed and also merged back to the release branch.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when the product owner declines the &quot;create new user&quot; user story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can we remove this functionality alone from the release branch? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22506" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2016-03-08T13:27:23.263" LastActivityDate="2016-03-08T17:41:16.863" Title="Agile Scrum Sprint Review (demo) and declined user stories" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;reviews&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17661" CreationDate="2016-03-08T12:57:11.720" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would be worth taking a step back and thinking about avoiding the problem in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sprint review should not be the first time the Product Owner sees the functionality built during the sprint. They should be exposed to the functionality at the earliest opportunity, this is often when it is &lt;em&gt;still under development&lt;/em&gt;. Typically the sprint review is more focused on stakeholders who are unable to spend the amount of time the Product Owner does with the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Product Owner is watching the stories getting built it is unlikely they will suddenly reject them at the sprint review. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also worth noting that one of the goals in creating user stories is to make them independent of each other. If the 'create new user' story is dependent on the 'viewing all users' story then you will always run the risk of this kind of issue happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a challenge to keep stories discrete, but it is possible. One way of doing this is to use something called a 'feature toggle', where the feature can be switched on and off independently of other features. In the example you give of the 'create new user' story being rejected, a feature toggle could be used to disable this feature until the Product Owner is happy with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if you are using a source control such as Git then there is a lot that can be done to roll back a particular feature commit without throwing away other code. You may want to consider having feature branches for each story that are regularly merged with your release branch. If this kind of issue occurs then you roll back any commits to the release branch related to the story and roll forward any other commits that occurred in the meantime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This kind of approach to source control is tricky though and it is preferable to avoid the problem in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-03-08T12:57:11.720" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17663" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-08T13:38:50.020" Score="1" ViewCount="52" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is one of the things that has happened to everybody at some point in their careers.  I inherited a project that has software and hardware components as well as documentation responsibilities that ultimately fall to me.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Since I'm more managing the project components than running the team, I can't really implement agile or anything else that I've heard of.  There is seemingly as much new information coming in as I am already trying to organize and lend some structure to, so I can't get ahead far enough to rein in anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22500" LastActivityDate="2016-03-08T15:15:12.067" Title="Is there an efficient methodology for organizing an inherited project?" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-03-10T10:36:08.717" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17664" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-08T14:04:51.100" Score="5" ViewCount="1863" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our company, we are moving some teams to scrum. Before scrum, it seems we don't have a lot of visibility into the productivity of the teams, and we don't necessarily have a way to measure the quality of the output the teams produce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the teams which have moved to scrum, senior management and the teams who have made the switch see the value. The development teams love the collective ownership and protection from disruptions, and the senior managers love being able to have a platform to have their feedback heard in the sprint review meetings. We have also had &quot;anecdotal evidence&quot; in the form of customers saying things like &quot;Wow! What happened to you all? Did you get funding or something?&quot; in response to the perceived faster development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, scrum feels faster. It feels nicer. But unfortunately many people still want to see hard data and don't like fuzzy warm feelings or evidence based on observation alone.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any way to measure productivity against an old system where you previously had little to no data?  How does one approach convincing other teams in the organization that there are benefits to using agile methodologies like scrum when there's no hard data?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2016-03-09T11:07:55.640" LastActivityDate="2016-03-09T15:23:12.453" Title="How does a scrum team measure its productivity against its productivity pre-scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17661" CreationDate="2016-03-08T14:05:57.697" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would be most helpful to know why the given feature is being rejected by the Product Owner so late in the process. &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/17662/30&quot;&gt;Barnaby Golden's answer&lt;/a&gt; is in the right direction, but I don't think it goes far enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is the person who prioritizes the epics, features, and stories in the Product Backlog. Now, there may be technical dependencies between  stories and the team must ensure that the Product Owner recognizes this. This happens at the Sprint Planning meeting when items are being pulled out of the Product Backlog and put into the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the &quot;view all users&quot; story is a high priority, but it has technical dependencies on a lower priority &quot;create user&quot; story, then it makes sense to implement the dependency first so that the desired story can be delivered. The Development Team should work with the Product Owner to ensure that these technical dependencies are understood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barnaby Golden's answer also discussed feature toggles, which is something that &lt;a href=&quot;http://martinfowler.com/articles/feature-toggles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Martin Fowler recently wrote a great deal about&lt;/a&gt;. But I don't think that they should be necessary if your process is collaborative. The Development Team and Product Owner should come to a consensus of the contents of the Sprint Backlog before the start of the Sprint. Then throughout the sprint, the Product Owner should be involved in ensuring that the work that is done is going to meet the needs of the Stakeholders. There should be no reason to need to remove or add the ability to toggle a feature at the end of the sprint. If a toggling a feature is necessary, that's something that should be discovered well before the Sprint Review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2016-03-08T15:23:31.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17663" CreationDate="2016-03-08T15:15:12.067" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's one approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify deliverables&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify workstreams to create deliverables&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify teams to involve in workstreams&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify tasks for teams&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please clarify what you mean by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;has software and hardware components as well as documentation responsibilities that ultimately fall to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22275" LastActivityDate="2016-03-08T15:15:12.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17286" CreationDate="2016-03-08T15:22:18.163" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Group A &amp;amp; B under a Summary task and then link C to the Summary with a Start-Start dependency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2016-03-08T20:29:52.030" LastActivityDate="2016-03-08T20:29:52.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17661" CreationDate="2016-03-08T17:41:16.863" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is a &lt;em&gt;collaborative&lt;/em&gt; process between the three defined roles (Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Development Team). You are experiencing problems with your Scrum implementation because your Product Owner is not collaborating throughout the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Team (including the Product Owner) collectively agree to a Sprint Goal for each Sprint, as well as a Definition of Done for stories or Product Backlog Items (PBIs) that will be done within the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work is &quot;done&quot; or &quot;not done&quot; according to these criteria. There is &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; framework provision for rejecting work that has met the agreed-upon criteria. However, there are opportunities to &lt;em&gt;iteratively&lt;/em&gt; improve the product, and to inspect-and-adapt the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Sprint Review&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint Review is the place to demonstrate whatever work was &lt;em&gt;completed&lt;/em&gt; during the current Sprint. It is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-review&quot;&gt;formal ceremony within the Scrum framework&lt;/a&gt;, and has a specific purpose:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Sprint Review is held at the end of the Sprint to inspect the Increment and adapt the Product Backlog if needed. During the Sprint Review, the Scrum Team and stakeholders collaborate about what was done in the Sprint. Based on that and any changes to the Product Backlog during the Sprint, attendees collaborate on the next things that could be done to optimize value. This is an informal meeting, not a status meeting, and the presentation of the Increment is intended to elicit feedback and foster collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint Review is not intended to be an increment-acceptance or status-report meeting. It's simply a way to collaborate on what should be done next within the project, and for stakeholders to participate in the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;iterative&lt;/strong&gt; design and implementation&lt;/em&gt; of the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Fixing Your Process&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner should be involved through the Sprint. He should be constantly available to the developers, part of the daily stand-up, and working closely with the Scrum Master to track burn-down, the Definition of Done, and other metrics that relate to the defined Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the work-in-progress will not achieve the defined Sprint Goal, the Product Owner may collaborate with the team to modify scope, or to call an Early Termination and a return to Sprint Planning. During the Sprint Retrospective, the Product Owner and the Development Team should also collaborate to improve the quality of user stories, add acceptance testing &lt;em&gt;into each Sprint&lt;/em&gt; as part of the Definition of Done, or make other process changes to reduce the likelihood of failed Sprints in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, work that is completed in accordance with the defined Sprint Goal and that meets the agreed-upon Definition of Done &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; complete&lt;/strong&gt; whether or not it's what the Product Owner or stakeholders originally envisioned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless an increment has not met the Sprint Goal or the Definition of Done, the work may &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; be rejected. However, the Sprint Review is the place to hammer out how to iteratively move towards what stakeholders &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; want now that they've seen how what they asked for has been implemented. After that, the Sprint Retrospective is the place to identify process or communications improvements that will help the Scrum Team and the organization collaborate better in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-03-08T17:41:16.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17664" CreationDate="2016-03-08T18:29:26.343" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may not surprise you that, absent of data from past projects, it's hard to show much comparison. You can use some relative estimation on past projects and take two of similar size or similar functionality and compare them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You specifically mention the fact that it feels faster and sometimes it is, but that can be harder to get exact numbers on. However, you probably have these numbers: compare value/revenue generation of a project in scrum that is using iterative releases with one that has one big release at the end. If you graph it, it probably looks something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7OO0R.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7OO0R.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't about Scrum exactly - more about iterative releases or end-of-project releases. It might provide some of that hard data you're looking for though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Past that, you can also baseline your data right as your team adopts Scrum and then show it improve over time and the team is able to continuously improve. Again, this is more of a promotion for the feedback loops you get in Scrum than Scrum itself, but that's probably ok.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2016-03-08T18:29:26.343" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17664" CreationDate="2016-03-08T19:08:06.457" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SHORT ANSWER&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Evaluate your previous processes delivery times and schedules (delivery cadence)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remember, the primary measure of success is working software - show your delivery cadence in Scrum and the difference between now and in the past. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional example:&#xA;I worked on a project once that had 8 tools developed for searching different types of inventory.  Each inventory type (50ish total), had its own set of requirements.  Under waterfall, my client had 8 tools delivered in roughly 8 years (in a legacy, cold fusion environment).  We developed a templating engine in java and built the new tools using Scrum as well as DevOps and built 45 tools in less than 6 months.  We used data access standardization techniques such as service-layer API's to be able to predict how data &lt;em&gt;would&lt;/em&gt; be stored in the future, which allowed us to essentially write small configuration files for each inventory type - the templating engine did the rest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16148" LastActivityDate="2016-03-08T19:08:06.457" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17664" CreationDate="2016-03-08T21:06:39.537" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I worked with one organisation that was in a similar position. They had starting adopting Scrum before measuring the effectiveness of the old way of working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They did find a few metrics to compare using historical data:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They looked at old project documents/emails and measured how long it was from the initial work request to something going in to production, then compared this with the equivalent times on Scrum-based projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They had some old business user surveys that asked questions like &quot;Are you satisfied with the time it takes to complete projects&quot;. Using very similar questions they surveyed the same people again and compared then with now.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They looked at historical numbers of production defects for projects and compared them with the numbers occurring on recent Scrum projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-03-08T21:06:39.537" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17664" CreationDate="2016-03-08T21:40:36.237" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Scrum productivity is measured in terms of actual delivery. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Scrum is used for Software Development, then software that is valuable to the end users is delivered after each Sprint. &#xA;An accurate forecast for Sprint Backlog, meeting a Sprint Goal and satisfied Product Owner is enough to measure Productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can apply objective Software Engineering Measurements, like Function Points, against the software that was developed using other approach and compare it to Function Points delivered in the same amount of time in Scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I doubt that this kind of approach would help you convincing Developers to use Scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastActivityDate="2016-03-08T21:40:36.237" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17664" CreationDate="2016-03-09T08:25:52.840" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really like Barnaby's answer, however I'm not sure if you can do the proper comparison that can convince skeptics and data nerds. The problem is with this particular setup that it is not possible to know why the later projects are doing better (or worse).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion two factors work here: the old way laid down good fundamentals so the new way just plays along with it and builds on it, or the new way actually managed to reform. I believe there is no way to prove the second factor, until one cannot falsify the first one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a common problem in sports. There are athletes who didn't win anything relevant in their career as young athlete, but when they join the adult competition they start winning. Coaches tend to say that the change did the trick, however in several cases the coaches who worked with them when they were younger laid down all the fundamentals (mostly physical) which was key to start winning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you really want to prove anything here, go back to the old way for a couple of sprints / iterations&lt;/strong&gt;. You have data from your scrum, and you can collect data from you old way of doing business, because now you know what you are looking for. Your case must be &lt;strong&gt;reversible&lt;/strong&gt;; if your test shows that the old way is worst than scrum, you have your results. However, if the results are not definitive, the only thing you can say is that the new way feels better, which is a good, but will never be enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2016-03-09T14:37:33.013" LastActivityDate="2016-03-09T14:37:33.013" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17676" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-09T09:42:25.183" Score="3" ViewCount="942" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently took a position as a Team Captain. I report to my Team Leader who then reports out of department to an operations manager who manages multiple departments with hundreds of people. I handle almost all of the same tasks as he does without a few minor tasks. However, when he is ill or on vacation I assume the role entirely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find the term &quot;team captain&quot; a bit childish. From what I've been seeing online, the two words are used interchangeably. I feel his position should be &quot;manager&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We decide everything together, and always consult each other, but I feel there is a large gap there between operations manager and team leader.  Team Captain reporting to a Team Leader I find confusing. If anything wouldn't the Team Captain be in charge? The Captain of the ship, while the Tr Lead (still being within the team and doing team duties, be the &quot;right hand man&quot;?  I need to make suggestions because I would like to use that title but also don't want to take away from his title or coworkers thinking I am lying or trying to over step. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are industry standard job titles that would fit the situation I have described?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22525" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-04-10T14:34:18.297" LastActivityDate="2016-07-09T15:39:24.393" Title="What would a better industry standard title be than &quot;Team Captain&quot; and &quot;Team Leader&quot;?" Tags="&lt;roles&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17677" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-09T10:26:32.720" Score="2" ViewCount="1851" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do large organizations, such as Amazon, Netflix or Spotify organize 24/7 support. These companies are known to have agile development models, which include &quot;You build it, you run it&quot;. That means, there is no operations department which takes care of the application / feature once it is available to the end user. The team itself does maintenance and support. I know about all the advantages of this method, but I see some problems in terms of execution: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agile teams are designed to be quite small, so there is just a limited number of people who can deal with an incident. These people are usually not available 24/7 as they are on vacation, sick or simply not reachable. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Theoretically, every developer needs access to production, meaning deployment, databases, filesystems etc. Are all these permissions just granted and it is only about trust?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who must be involved to do a fix, rollback etc.?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is incident management done in a large scale Scrum environment? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22526" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2016-03-09T16:55:54.457" LastActivityDate="2016-03-10T06:50:43.633" Title="How is incident management done in a large scale Scrum environment?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17664" CreationDate="2016-03-09T14:57:11.473" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In moving forward with this, keep in mind you usually &quot;get what you measure&quot;. Velocity and quality are good, but not at the expense of other areas - happiness, ownership, autonomy, domain expertise/T-shapeness, skill and knowledge decentralization, sustainability, and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience these often have a far larger impact to actual value delivered, are much harder to measure, and will not be represented in velocity or defect count data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2016-03-09T15:23:12.453" LastActivityDate="2016-03-09T15:23:12.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17679" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-09T15:45:53.373" Score="2" ViewCount="1599" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a lot of experience of waterfall-style deliveries (or more accurately, incremental waterfall since I don't know of anyone who still does actual rigid waterfall any more), but none whatsoever in Agile-style deliveries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am considering how risk management is currently done in a well-run software delivery project and trying to figure out how it would be done in an Agile-style project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read the Agile manifesto.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/5957/how-is-risk-management-in-agile-development-different-from-risk-management-in-wa&quot;&gt;this question and its answers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The barrier I keep coming up against is that the documentation and thinking around Agile-style deliveries focuses on the actual software build and delivery process, whereas more often that not the actual software build is just a part of an overall system/software delivery, which itself encompasses many moving parts to achieve a successful outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would typically identify and actively manage risks that are largely external to the software build process. As examples, by no means exhaustive, I might consider the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How ready are the users for devoting time to UAT? Can I achieve UAT without impacting materially on users' day jobs? How can I handle the push back?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the risks of not getting key technical resources (human or mechanical) by the time I need them? How can I mitigate that and/or provide contingencies?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the risks that the outbound data feed/integration that we are developing will not be acceptable within the downstream systems? Are the other teams, that are responsible for the downstream systems, ready for a new data feed? Can it be incorporated into their release cycles? Will their test environments be ready and sufficiently capable?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, as PM I consider many things that surround the software delivery that would not be handled within the actual software delivery team and it is as much a part of my responsibilities to manage these things to successful conclusion as it is to deliver successful software to the business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So who does this kind of thinking in an Agile shop for a specific Agile-delivery project? Do they wrap an Agile software delivery with more classical project management resource in order to achieve these and other non-development goals of an overall project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2016-03-17T18:21:27.617" Title="Who is responsible for risk management in Agile-style deliveries?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17677" CreationDate="2016-03-09T18:43:02.783" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/06/netflix-operations-part-i-going.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Netflix's blog&lt;/a&gt; they do, in fact, call up their teams at early hours of the morning if their code breaks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, that is not to say that all problems have to go to the coding teams. Some notable examples are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Problems solvable through normal application operations: I call up because it says my account is expired and it's not. This may be caused by a bug in the software, but a front-line support rep may be able to resolve it for me by manually reactivating my account and then the team looks into the bug when they come back in to work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Infrastructure with them (and many other large companies) is out sourced. If I recall correctly, Netflix uses AWS. Network or hardware problems are handled by their vendor. If it was in-house, they'd probably still have an operations team that at least handled hardware maintenance. It's worth noting though that many of these applications are designed to be incredibly resilient. A server going down (or even a handful of servers) is unlikely to have any visible impact on the end user. This is another area that Netflix has done amazing work with their &lt;a href=&quot;http://techblog.netflix.com/2011/07/netflix-simian-army.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Simian Army&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Team Code Ownership&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;It's also important to understand that silo'ing is your enemy here. In most of these organizations, a team owns a problem and you can get anyone on that team to help you with a critical issue. That helps with things like vacation or something just sleeping through their phone's ringer. If you haven't seen them, take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://labs.spotify.com/2014/03/27/spotify-engineering-culture-part-1/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Spotify's blog videos&lt;/a&gt; on how they structure their teams to support each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2016-03-09T18:43:02.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17679" CreationDate="2016-03-09T20:59:22.680" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;How ready are the users for devoting time to UAT? Can I achieve UAT without impacting materially on users' day jobs? How can I handle the push back?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the most important parts of an agile transformation is to get a fully commited buy-in from the business users. The concern over impact on their day jobs is often a big part of this. I have seen many solutions, such as back-filling and business users going on sabbaticals in to the Product Owner role. The key part is that this discussion is had &lt;em&gt;prior&lt;/em&gt; to starting with agile development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What are the risks of not getting key technical resources (human or mechanical) by the time I need them? How can I mitigate that and/or provide contingencies?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With Scrum and many other agile frameworks the idea is to have the delivery team contain all the people necessary to deliver the working software. The concern over the unvailability of key resources is clearly valid and agile attempts to deal with it up front by eliminating the cause of the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What are the risks that the outbound data feed/integration that we are developing will not be acceptable within the downstream systems? Are the other teams, that are responsible for the downstream systems, ready for a new data feed? Can it be incorporated into their release cycles? Will their test environments be ready and sufficiently capable?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically in agile development we work on user stories (i.e. requirements) that directly deliver business value, rather than working on technical tasks that &lt;em&gt;contribute&lt;/em&gt; to delivering business value. In other words, we aim to deliver end-to-end within the team and hence avoid as much as possible integration with systems developed outside of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is one of the reasons agile teams are product focused, rather than being technically focused. As an example of this, it would be unusual to have an agile team that looks at just one tier of a multi-tier architecture. Instead it would typically focus on all tiers and deliver a complete solution. Clearly their are challenges with this approach, particularly in large-scale product development. There has been a lot of work done (particularly recently) on the scaling of agile product teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there is nothing in the agile approach that says you will ignore risks. In Scrum Teams risk is often disucssed between the Product Owner, stakeholders and the delivery team. We do not typically track risks in a risk log because the focus is on discussion rather than documentation. But that does not mean risk is ignored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-03-09T20:59:22.680" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17683" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17685" CreationDate="2016-03-10T01:48:57.927" Score="3" ViewCount="126" Body="&lt;p&gt;We recently started using story points in our agile process, which is awesome. Because of this we are getting estimates for certain tasks and getting an idea of our velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However, I am curious whether story points can or should ever be used for measuring growth of the team?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for the classic example, let's say we have a group of developers who agree that an issue or project is worth 21 story points. For some of the developers it will take them 3 days while for the other developers it will take them 6 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At some point in time, while the complexity of issues remain the same, the productivity of the developers will naturally increase because of their familiarity with the codebase, etc. Is there an effective way of measuring growth in the team with story points? Or perhaps this is completely the wrong way of doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22537" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-03-10T09:54:13.597" LastActivityDate="2016-03-10T09:54:13.597" Title="Can you use story points to measure growth?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17683" CreationDate="2016-03-10T06:37:28.187" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Velocity measures the amount of effort the team can commit to, on average, in any given sprint. There can be many reasons for this. It could be that the team has grown in their technical skills. It could be that the team works better together because they've reached the last part of the Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing stage. It could be that organizational impediments have been resolved, clearing the way for the team to become more efficient.  It could also be that the team has removed team barriers to increased productivity through the frequent inspect and adapt process in the sprint retrospectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If velocity increases, then more value is theoretically being pushed live to users. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the exact circumstances which led to the increase in velocity, it seems some form of growth has occurred. You could use velocity to showcase that a team has &quot;grown&quot;, but it doesn't seem clear how you'd be able to tell exactly what &lt;em&gt;part&lt;/em&gt; of the team has grown. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, to try and understand exact details could create problems with self-organization and self-ownership, if the person trying to do the measuring is a manager or someone in a position of authority. It could cause the team to defer to the manager or think they're doing something wrong, or it could cause them to stop experimenting and keep doing whatever it was a manager or person of authority identified as the single reason for growth (even if it wasn't the sole reason).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, if the team discovers a manager or authority figure is focused on their velocity, they may try to game that metric.  Additionally, if we showcase velocity to senior managers, and those people in power then observe velocity drop for whatever reason, they may be more likely to interfere with the team than if they were never exposed to this metric in the first place. Some Certified Scrum Trainers, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumtrainingseries.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Michael James, creator of Scrum Training Series&lt;/a&gt;, suggests that velocity is instead best used for release forecasting, to show how many features might be released in a 3 to 6 month period or at some point in the future. This is less likely to create the same problems listed above, since a good product owner could create a release plan based on a range instead of exact measurements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2016-03-10T06:37:28.187" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17677" CreationDate="2016-03-10T06:50:43.633" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many organisations have a rotating on-call phone for someone  allotted to &quot;manage the issue to completion&quot;. You only need one person to have the phone, and if your normal customer support  need to escalate then they call that number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The individual on the end (likely a member of  your development team) is responsible only for managing the issue. So they triage and wake up who they need on the teams to get the issue resolved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully all your infrastructure if already in the cloud and you have automated release as well as production analytics and exception logging. Issues should be able to be resolved without server access. However you should create culture where you can trust them with server access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastActivityDate="2016-03-10T06:50:43.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17556" CreationDate="2016-03-10T09:33:12.513" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In ]project-open[ for example you could actually create a check-constraint or trigger in the database to enforce such a behavior. Disclaimer: I'm part of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.project-open.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;project-open&lt;/a&gt; team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6266" LastActivityDate="2016-03-10T09:33:12.513" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17689" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17690" CreationDate="2016-03-10T13:01:41.447" Score="5" ViewCount="5541" Body="&lt;p&gt;What do you do when management asks for a percentage complete on an Agile project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21640" LastActivityDate="2016-03-18T13:28:46.307" Title="How to measure percentage complete on an Agile project?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17689" CreationDate="2016-03-10T13:24:42.637" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea of percentage complete doesn't usually exist on an Agile project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For tasks, the work is usually viewed as &quot;done&quot; or &quot;not done&quot;.  The most granular I would get is &quot;not started&quot;, &quot;started&quot; or &quot;in progress&quot;, and &quot;done&quot;. As soon as a task is done, you earn credit for it on the given iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For projects, the purpose of iterations is to make progress visible to stakeholders. In theory, the project can be terminated after any iteration that delivers a product that satisfies the needs of the stakeholders and proceeding into another iteration would deliver less value than the iteration is worth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to determine what management is looking for when they ask for a percent complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they are asking for an estimated duration before the backlog is finished, you can estimate that if you have a stable velocity. Achieving a stable velocity usually takes several iterations, but if you can estimate (at least roughly) the size of items in the backlog, then you can determine how many iterations (approximately) it will take to complete all of the items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they want to know how much work has been done to-date, that can be presented in terms of completed tasks from the backlog or a ratio of completed tasks to items still in the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a problem with using the product backlog to provide information, however. The product backlog may change at any point in time, and adding or removing items would change your reporting. It would also require estimating the entire product backlog, instead of just the most important backlog items, which may not be accurate until the items are well understood and defined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The person responsible for the process (in Scrum, the Scrum Master; in Disciplined Agile Delivery, the Team Lead) should be working with external stakeholders to educate them on the process and to ensure they are getting the information that they need. There won't be a 1:1 mapping between the metrics for monitoring a plan-driven project and an agile project, but it's likely that one or more measurements or metrics can be provided to address an information need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2016-03-10T13:24:42.637" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17658" CreationDate="2016-03-10T18:21:39.650" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on EBMgt (Evidence Based Management Guide)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Current Value&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Revenue per Employee.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Gross Revenue / #employees&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product Cost Ratio.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;All expenses in the organization that develops, sustains, provides services, markets, sells, and administers the product or system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Employee Satisfaction.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Engaged employees that know how to maintain, sustain and enhance the software systems and products are one of the most significant assets of an organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Customer Satisfaction.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Sound management, solid software, and creative, fulfilled employees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time to Market&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Release Frequency&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;The time needed to satisfy the customer with new, competitive products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Release Stabilization&lt;/strong&gt;. The impact of poor development practices and underlying design and code base. Stabilization is a drag on competition that grows with time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cycle Time&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;The time (including stabilization) to satisfy a key set of customers or to respond to a market opportunity competitively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ability to innovate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Installed Version Index&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;The difficulty customers face installing a new release .The relatively low value of new releases, or even the # of customers that are evaluating alternatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Usage Index&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;Determines a product that is burdensome and difficult to use and excess software that must be sustained even though it is rarely used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Innovation Rate&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;Growth of technical debt caused by poorly designed and developed software. Budget is progressively consumed keeping the old software alive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Defects&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;Measures increasingly poor quality software, leading to greater resource and budget to maintain it and potential loss of customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastActivityDate="2016-03-10T18:21:39.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17692" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-10T21:53:59.163" Score="0" ViewCount="927" Body="&lt;p&gt;My organization uses Project Web App integrated with Sharepoint task lists to share project plans and delivery schedules.  Project Web App's Project Center has an aggregate timeline feature, which allows you to add tasks from individual PWA sites to a portfolio-wide timeline.  This timeline is a fairly standard Sharepoint web part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After editing the height of the timeline web part on the Project Center page (I wanted this to have a fixed px value...), I realized all of my previously added tasks and projects had disappeared from the timeline.  Now, after I attempt to re-add a task or project, nothing actually appears on the timeline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've since reverted my changes to the height and rechecked all of the web app properties, but to no avail.  I even tried creating a new Timeline web app-- no dice.  Microsoft Support has been of no help--- even escalating to a PWA/Project Online/Project Pro specialist has warranted no fixes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can I do to bring back my timeline's Add Task functionality?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22549" LastActivityDate="2020-11-24T17:15:05.850" Title="PWA's Project Center Timeline Not Adding Tasks or Projects After Editing Webpart" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;&lt;timeline&gt;&lt;project-server&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17676" CreationDate="2016-03-11T13:23:51.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is a industry standard for what you do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But using your ship analogy with a captain I'd say, just as you pointed out, your Team Leader is essentially the Team Captain. That would make you the &lt;strong&gt;First Mate&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;Team Mate&lt;/strong&gt;. He's the captain's &quot;right-hand-man&quot; and he also does everything the captain does if the captain isn't around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2833" LastActivityDate="2016-03-11T13:23:51.200" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10719" CreationDate="2016-03-11T20:52:52.983" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tried the approach from this answer and it worked really well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Copy &amp;gt; Copy Picture option in 2013 has worked wonders for our communication. You can copy for screen, print, full size, etc. and it will be stored as an image on the clipboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before discovering this, PDF was our way of distributing MS Project information to non-MS Project users and it didn't go nearly as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing I would add is how to get to this button. Click above the ribbon (IN MS Project 2013) where the &amp;quot;Quick access toolbar&amp;quot; is, choose customize and add copy picture from the options list. Once you try the copy picture a few times you'll get the hang of it. it's pretty straight forward and I will use a combination of filtering per resource in project then this copy picture trick instead of xlsx and pdf from now on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22560" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2016-03-12T11:18:59.600" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17567" CreationDate="2016-03-12T05:33:24.197" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this stage, the project manager's job is to provide a framework for the companies to address scope, and to estimate the budget and resources needed to deliver that scope. That's it! In situations like these, questions of fault (unless of course it's yours) are really outside a project manager's scope of responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than assign blame, or attempting to shift the burden to the customer, you should:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communicate effectively with your organization (and possibly the client) about the problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify one or more potential solutions to the problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recommend a solution to your senior management, who can then work it out with the client.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of these action items are discussed in more detail below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Communicate &lt;em&gt;Effectively&lt;/em&gt; About Problems&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acronyms can cause communication problems, but rarely solve them. Most of your post is a confusing mishmash of acronyms, and does a poor job of communicating about the real problem. So, let's fix that first. Your meaningful facts are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[T]he statement of work (SOW) simply says that the software will support &quot;reporting&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[O]ur business requirements document (BRD) describes three reports that the software needs to produce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[T]he client is asking us to create six additional reports and says that it is covered because the SOW says that the software will be used to produce reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, the statement of work that defines the scope is vague, the business requirements document may or may not have been written in collaboration with the client, and the client is asking that the project cover six reports instead of three.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analyze the Problem Accurately&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that we've identified the actual issues, let's see what that really means for your scope and your process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your company is clearly at fault for the vague scope in the SOW. Your contracting process should be fixed, but in the meantime it kicks responsibility for defining the scope of reporting down the road to some other document or process within the project. This may or may not be your business requirements document.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you say &quot;our&quot; business requirements document, it is terribly unclear who the BRD owner actually is. Were the requirements written by the customer, or solicited from them, and then incorporated into the project by the project leadership? Or did your project team create this document, and perhaps do an incomplete job of capturing the full set of requirements? This matters a lot, because in the first case the client defined a scope that they are now exceeding, while in the second case your organization used a vague SOW followed by an incomplete set of requirements to define the scope. If your project team failed to capture the requirements accurately, that would again be your company's fault.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The very existence of the question presupposes that the reporting product isn't easily extensible. If it were, this would be a minor issue that didn't involve a significant budget or cause concern for two separate management teams. So, there's either technical debt, a lack of a robust implementation, or there are complexities about this reporting requirement that were not captured well by the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is a question of both project scope (e.g. are the additional reports included in the agreed-upon work?) and liability (e.g. who is at fault for miscommunication, scope creep, or budget overruns). This is a question for senior management (and possibly the lawyers) on both sides to answer, rather than strictly a project management question. To the extent that the project manager should have either identified the vague SOW as a risk, or worked to ensure that the BRD was accurate and complete, there is certainly plenty of blame to go around. However, &lt;strong&gt;the real issue is &lt;em&gt;who pays for the additional project costs?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, the first three questions are about assigning blame, and don't really help outside of a courtroom if your contract dispute gets that far. What really matters is how you salvage the project, the customer relationship, and avoid vast cost overruns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Pool of Possible Solutions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, forget how you got where you are. Fix that another time. Focus instead on how to collaborate with the customer to find a satisfactory solution that meets:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the client's expectations for a working product, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your company's need to fund any additional work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In no particular order, your project will eventually do one or more of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cry &quot;mea culpa&quot; and do the remaining work at no extra charge.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the experience to improve the contracting, budgeting, estimation, and requirements-gathering processes in the future.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collect &lt;em&gt;new&lt;/em&gt; reporting requirements and add them to the project with an eye towards minimizing any additional costs while still delivering expected customer value.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collaborate with the customer to find an equitable solution.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collaborate with the customer to redefine the scope.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collaborate with the customer to renegotiate the budget.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sic the contracting principals on each other to hammer out a mutually (un)satisfactory solution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lawyer up, and go to court over who was right.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be some variations on a theme that I haven't covered, but in general those are your pool of options. Some are definitely more palatable than others, but it's really up to senior management to pick the set of options, not the project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Recommendations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I'd recommend the collaborative approach whenever possible. Your goal should be to deliver as much value as possible without eating excessive costs, while the client's goal should be to get working software that meets their needs without expecting free work or souring a relationship they may be counting on for long-term support of the software they're paying your company to write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a perfect world, this issue would never have arisen. Since it has, you want to explore the art of &lt;em&gt;compromise&lt;/em&gt; so that both parties can walk away content if not happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an agile shop, I'd just treat it as an iterative extension of the work already done. In a waterfall shop, I would:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Regather the requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get sign-off by the client &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; your development team on the new scope to ensure everyone is on the same page.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimate the effort and cost associated with the new scope.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let the executives of both companies earn &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; 400:1 pay by hammering out who's going to pay for the additional scope.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this stage, the project manager's job is to provide a framework for the companies to address scope, and to estimate the budget and resources needed to deliver that scope. That's it! In situations like these, questions of fault (unless of course it's yours) are really outside a project manager's scope of responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-03-12T05:33:24.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17567" CreationDate="2016-03-12T11:16:19.427" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The SOW is contractual.  The BRD is a work product.  The SOW will likely prevail if this ever ended up in dispute.  That said, the BRD is not without weight.  If the extra reports are onerous to build and will impact you from a cost perspective, then get the customer to the table and discuss more money.  A reasonable customer will negotiate.  An unreasonable customer will not.  But then lesson learned for your next gig to build more contingency for stuff like this, in your price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-03-12T11:16:19.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17701" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17705" CreationDate="2016-03-12T14:35:34.863" Score="17" ViewCount="4176" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some scrum masters are concerned with &quot;bumping up&quot; a team's velocity during a sprint, as if a higher velocity is better. But points are a relative measure of the work that a team needs to do for feature X; they are not high or low, they're just more or less than some other feature the team arbitrarily chose as a point of reference. What's important is that you know what your velocity is, however many points that is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If points are effort, you don't make a greater effort with time. You make the same effort, but it is more productive. So a story that was estimated at five points when the team first formed could eventually be estimated as three or two points as the team increases its skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that correct? I don't see a consensus on whether points measure complexity or effort, but either way it seems to me that as time passes, the perceived effort or complexity of a task will go down and you will be able to fit more of them in a sprint, thus keeping your velocity constant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13325" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-10-21T22:24:42.077" LastActivityDate="2019-10-21T22:24:42.077" Title="Should velocity increase with time?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;velocity&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17701" CreationDate="2016-03-12T15:34:01.313" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Story Points measure a combination of Complexity and Effort, which is what makes them hard for people to understand. Risk, uncertainty are likely also components that are part of the estimate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end velocity is a measure of what you have delivered in the past (few) sprint(s). It's an indicator of what you can expect to deliver next sprint when nothing changes much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We do see that Scrum teams improve over time however, they get better at what they do, they automate things that take up a lot of time each sprint, they increase their knowledge of the domain and they start to be able to re-use code elements from previous sprints to build on top of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such it's normal to see teams increase their velocity over time. Often that velocity reaches a ceiling, their maximum capability given the current circumstances, and won't be able to start climbing again without a major event. That event could be training, changes to the way of working, a new team member with a key skillset or a switch from one technology to another (or simply an upgrade from vold to vnew).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most teams pick a couple of reference stories. Some just pick their 1, 5 or 8. Other teams pick a 5 and a 20. it doesn't really matter what they pick. Given these reference points you compare the other stories to the original request. As such, the number of story points between two stories is often equal, even though the exact amount of effort has reduced drastically over time. This is why a team may be able to increase its velocity from 40 to 200 over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a team doesn't feel they have enough granularity in the lower reaches of their story points, they may opt to pick a new 5 and adjust all the other items on the backlog accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that increasing velocity is not something which we should try to encourage all the time, treating the velocity as a metric will not help the teams understanding of what they can actually do and usually leads to bad behavior when it comes to estimating. Instead, as a scrum master you should focus on removing waste and increasing value delivered per sprint. If the team has the same focus, their velocity will rise as a result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7393" LastEditorUserId="7393" LastEditDate="2016-03-12T16:08:21.943" LastActivityDate="2016-03-12T16:08:21.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17567" CreationDate="2016-03-12T16:35:19.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, &lt;strong&gt;the document that will prevail will be the one signed off by both parts&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the BRD was very clear about 3 reports &lt;em&gt;but the client wasn't aware of it&lt;/em&gt;, it's up to the project to absorb this mistake - and review ASAP the BRD for further gaps&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the &lt;em&gt;client was aware of the BRD and signed it off&lt;/em&gt;, it's a matter of replanning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If &lt;em&gt;there's no formal document signed off&lt;/em&gt;, then it's a matter of getting into an agreement on how to address it (plenty of alternatives extensively mentioned by CodeGnome) - signing off a document, as it seems that collaboration (like the one we expect in Agile environments) isn't strong in this environment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2016-03-12T16:35:19.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17701" CreationDate="2016-03-12T20:11:59.243" Score="21" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should velocity increase with time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The simplistic answer is that a project's velocity should only increase until the team has developed a stable, predictable cadence that can be maintained over time. There are a few caveats, of course, but it's a solid rule of thumb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Targeting an indefinite upward trend on velocity is a &quot;project smell&quot; that the velocity metric is being misused or misunderstood. Expecting such a trend is often a symptom of management's desire to press a &quot;go faster&quot; button without respecting the sustainable-capacity limits of a project or team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Velocity Measures/Forecasts Capacity&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity is a measure of a team's historical capacity, rather than a directly-correlated measure of the team's speed or productivity. It should be used primarily during Sprint Planning to forecast Sprint Backlog capacity for the upcoming Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A team's capacity can certainly change over time: capacity can go down during holiday periods or reorganizations, or go up as teams gain domain knowledge, leverage iterative improvements to their test-driven designs, or pay down technical debt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it's a fallacy to assume that capacity can or should have an upward trend. Even though the cone of uncertainty narrows later in a project, the cost of technical debt and refactorings generally increase, and these factors consume team capacity as well. In addition, it is not uncommon for the &lt;em&gt;complexity&lt;/em&gt; of user stories to increase over time as the low-hanging fruit is picked from the Product Backlog. Again, this added complexity will consume a commensurate amount of capacity from the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal of Scrum (and iterative agile development in general) is to have a sustainable and predictable development cadence. As such, it is generally better to aim for &lt;em&gt;consistent&lt;/em&gt; velocity over time rather than for &lt;em&gt;increasing&lt;/em&gt; velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-12-09T21:46:28.293" LastActivityDate="2016-12-09T21:46:28.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17701" CreationDate="2016-03-13T11:47:19.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Story points are a &lt;em&gt;relative&lt;/em&gt; measure of effort. Over time a team a team may get better at doing things. But that does not necessarily mean a 5 point story becomes a 3 point story. Here is an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story X involves writing a search feature on a web page and is estimated by the team as 5 points. Story Y is a setting to hide pictures on a web page and it is estimated by the team as 3 points because relative to Story X it is smaller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now say the team improves massively in the next year, so that they can do both Story X and Story Y in half the time they originally took. But note that the relative size of the two stories has not changed. For this reason the team might still estimate them as 5 points and 3 points respectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if the team improved their ability to do Story X but did not improve their ability to do Story Y then the relative sizes would change. They could, perhaps, both become 3 point stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A team can decide to reset their baseline for what a story point is. The downside with this is that they will lose some value of their velocity history as it will no longer be a good guide of what their capacity is for future sprints. &lt;em&gt;But there is nothing to stop a team doing this&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing to remember is that velocity is purely about measuring the capacity of future sprints. The numbers themselves are arbitrary, but the relative sizes of the numbers are important. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-03-13T11:47:19.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17707" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17708" CreationDate="2016-03-13T22:10:42.320" Score="3" ViewCount="1764" Body="&lt;p&gt;Title is self-explanatory. MS Project 2013 for reference. I'm not allowed to disclose many details of the project, but it's a small/medium scale IT project with a team of 6 people. I have everything setup on Project 2013 but I need to do a Change Request and couldn't find any option for that on MS Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, we have an activity there regarding the purchase of &quot;5x Blade Server model XYZ&quot;, but we just got the news that this model will soon get discontinued, so we need to push a CR on this activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22572" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-01-13T15:02:51.023" LastActivityDate="2019-01-13T15:02:51.023" Title="How can I do Change Request on Microsoft Project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17707" CreationDate="2016-03-14T03:55:07.363" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Microsoft Project is for project &lt;em&gt;planning&lt;/em&gt;. It is not a replacement for other documents and processes. There is no such thing as an &quot;MS Project Change Request.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Handling Change Requests&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;change request&lt;/em&gt; is generally a formal document requesting changes to the specifications of a deliverable. It is up to the project manager and the rest of the team to define how that impacts the scope of the project, the associated work packages, and the scheduled tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've defined what needs to change, you would then have to determine what elements of your project plan (as represented within MS Project) might need to change. For example, a change request that requires two additional weeks to embiggen a widget before you can start the &quot;frobbing the jimjam&quot; work package might require you to create a new task in MS Project, and then adjust the start/end dates for frobbing and all following tasks that depend on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-03-14T03:55:07.363" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17707" CreationDate="2016-03-14T08:53:24.123" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.project-open.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Open&lt;/a&gt; (I'm part of the team) handles change requests as a kind of tickets that belongs to a project and that will eventually change the project structure, once it is approved. The changes to the plan are usually performed directly by the PM. As an alternative, the PM can move the ticket to a project-specific ticket tracker and assign it to a project member for direct execution. This last option works well for small CRs, such as new features in software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Im MS-Project you could keep open CRs as tasks in a special &quot;project phase&quot; and assign them to yourself...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6266" LastActivityDate="2016-03-14T08:53:24.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="983" CreationDate="2016-03-14T09:09:04.420" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I've done is to prepare an outline of the minutes beforehand, based on the agenda.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I simply need to add in the Action Items (with owners) and Decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where possible, I project this Agenda onto the screen and everybody can see me edit it. This has various advantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The meeting doesn't progress while I'm typing, and I don't risk missing something.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once an item is typed up, it closes the discussion and it's clear it's time to move onto the next agenda item.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't get feedback after sending out the minutes that I missed something or misinterpreted it; everybody watches me creating it, and can point out edits in real time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the meeting I usually polish it up, before sending it out. (And make it politically correct, where needed.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-03-14T09:09:04.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17701" CreationDate="2016-03-14T09:16:35.017" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're right: Story points are essentially about effort.&#xA;By taking them as a measure of the &lt;em&gt;throughput&lt;/em&gt; of your team, and given a stable team and a stable environment, you should expect velocity to stabilize over time, not increase (although an increase could be an effect of such process).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Story points are not about the complexity of developing a feature; they are about the effort required to develop a feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/its-effort-not-complexity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/its-effort-not-complexity&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16362" LastActivityDate="2016-03-14T09:16:35.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1055" CreationDate="2016-03-14T09:18:40.513" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly you want to ensure that your information is correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you describe your actions as &lt;em&gt;having to intervene to ensure the correct management processes are being employed to ensure that the project stays on track&lt;/em&gt;, the project manager may be describing your actions as &lt;em&gt;being a pest who is trying to jeopardize the project&lt;/em&gt; or some other view in your actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your first task - since you care so much - is to make 100% sure that your view is correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At that point make a list of &lt;strong&gt;issues&lt;/strong&gt; and how you suggest to &lt;strong&gt;correct them&lt;/strong&gt;. Make sure you can &lt;strong&gt;prove every item&lt;/strong&gt; on the list (and possibly add the proof int the document).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you do with this list depends on company culture. Whether you first take it to the product manager or go over his head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, make it clear that it's &lt;strong&gt;not about the product manager&lt;/strong&gt;, but that you care &lt;strong&gt;about the project&lt;/strong&gt; - and as proof - you'd be happy to step back and have the existing PM implement the changes you suggest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-03-14T09:18:40.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17707" CreationDate="2016-03-14T12:06:34.097" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;And to follow on what CodeGnome wrote, once you determine what needs to change within your schedule, this may not qualify for a rebaseline.  In other words, you change your schedule but you are still measured against your original plan.  The impacts caused by a discontinued product are simply variances to time and cost as compared to your original plan.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-03-14T12:06:34.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9273" CreationDate="2016-03-14T15:53:24.973" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wanted to add one comment in response to Zsolt's advice to give the employee special privileges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I understand that the intent of giving someone with whom you feel you do not have a great relationship is to build that relationship, ultimately this would backfire. Special privileges should instead be granted to your top performers - this will be seen as a reward for the contributions they make to the team (which it is). If special privileges are granted to someone like the employee that has been described, that person will then feel as if they are &quot;special&quot; and that the &quot;rules don't apply to them&quot;. Your top performers will see that, and start to feel insecure about the efforts they contribute to the team. If this were to go on long enough, they might even start to look for other positions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, yes, respect is earned, however that does not mean that your employee should not be meeting the deadlines you have established. Be firm but gentle in your approach, find out why the deadline was missed, and reiterate your expectations when you set a deadline. I.e. &quot;this is the deadline I set, I expect it to be met, and if you think you are unable to do so, then you have a responsibility to come to me to discuss...&quot; This same concept should be applied with anything you ask of your employees. If you set an expectation, but don't follow through, it will undermine your authority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eventually, if this person cannot accept you in your position, she will leave or give you cause to offer her an opportunity to pursue employment with a different company, at which time you will be able to fill that position with someone of your choosing. (Hopefully it did not come to that, as it sounds like she had a lot of beneficial knowledge for your team!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22579" LastActivityDate="2016-03-14T15:53:24.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17689" CreationDate="2016-03-14T17:09:58.600" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Something a lot of the online agile do poorly is the Burn Down Chart. It's an essential part of communication to management and allows you to answer the age old question &quot;So, when will you be done?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First answer back is a question- Scope Driven or Schedule Driven. Now since Scope driven is very uncommon and even when it happens, almost always becomes schedule, we'll stick with schedule driven for this answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you have a release date, let's say six months from now. Engineering then makes a guess (we call it estimating, it's nothing more than a guess though) on how much work they can get done in the first sprint. This is then used to guess how much work can be done in the total release. For sake of this example we'll call that 500 points. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then we stop guessing and we start using velocity reports. Every sprint you subtract the story points delivered, from the projected release. This creates a trendline that can be used to very easily and visually see if you're going to deliver all the value by the release date. It also starts predicting this right away. No more projects being 90% complete and green right up until they are bright red and three months late. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your velocity falls off, then you get to decide if you cut scope or increase the schedule. In agile, the suggestion is to cut scope because you can always add more time later, but you can never get time back. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should really update my &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/jbancroftconnors/agile-schedule-vs-scope-workflow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scope vs. Schedule in Agile&lt;/a&gt; slideshare presentation to include Burn Down charts. For a good video on projecting down, I suggest Henrik Kniberg's &lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/502ILHjX9EE?list=PLtJZU3p_QdjtGqBqx6svkwahm8akiTLEx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Product Owner Video&lt;/a&gt;. The 'When will you be done' part starts about 11:50, though watching the rest of the video helps for context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-03-14T17:09:58.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17718" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-15T05:21:47.457" Score="0" ViewCount="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to manage client member of particular company, but don't know that do we keep team member and client member both entity separate OR both entity as a member list in common?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22584" LastEditorUserId="22766" LastEditDate="2016-04-25T11:11:18.747" LastActivityDate="2016-04-25T11:11:18.747" Title="Can client member be the part of team members at task board? how do we manage client entity in scrum?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;external-project-members&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17721" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-15T09:00:35.777" Score="30" ViewCount="7920" Body="&lt;p&gt;When scheduling, I tend to add a lot of reality into the guestimates I am provided with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always add in generous amounts of probable &lt;em&gt;sick days&lt;/em&gt; for manpower and extra time for integration and bug fixing. (All this based on decades of experience.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, my projects tend to deliver on schedule. But they never finish earlier than expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I'm wondering if the projects would deliver earlier if I didn't pad the schedule as much. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would everything move a little faster if the teams had the incentive to meet deadlines based on the data they provided, as opposed to the padded ones I provide?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or put another way: Does work expand to fill up available time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-04-09T18:44:32.850" Title="Do projects ever end early?" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="14" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17721" CreationDate="2016-03-15T10:36:00.573" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;While in most projects, the work &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; expand to fill up some or most of the 'extraneous' time, for many products things are simply done when they're done. In software development, when the product is feature-complete and all (sufficiently important) bugs have been dealt with, you're ready to release. The problem with software development is that there are a lot more variables and there is a lot more opportunity for external factors to affect the timeline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, if the padding on the estimate is done based on experience, that time is generally actually going to be needed unless there's nothing that goes wrong or takes longer than expected. That's why you've padded the estimate: in your experience, time X is usually needed in addition to the 'optimistic estimate' of completing the work in time Y.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;So what would happen if you don't pad the estimate?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most likely, the types of unexpected issues that you normally reserve extra time for will take place. Then the deadline approaches and, depending on how important it is to make that deadline, generally the quality of the product will suffer. In my personal experience, testing, bug-fixing and dealing with tech-debt are the first things to go if it looks like the deadline is in trouble. This view is supported by pretty much everyone I've ever come into contact with, but this may be a case of observer's bias or the like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a reason why 'picking two' from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle&quot;&gt;product management triangle&lt;/a&gt; is such a widely accepted concept. The basic premises: &#xA;To produce a product of sufficient quality, three factors are involved: Cost, Schedule and Scope. Altering any of the three 'pillars' will have an adverse effect on either one or both of the other two pillars, or will it affect the quality of the product. Therefore, to produce a product of sufficient quality, at most two of the three pillars can be fixed but at least one must remain flexible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This extends to the question at hand: by tightening the schedule you're increasing the stress that's placed on that pillar. This means that either it will affect one or both other pillars, or the overall product will be affected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22447" LastActivityDate="2016-03-15T10:36:00.573" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17449" CreationDate="2016-03-15T10:54:49.067" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For over a year I was one of 3 PMs at our daily scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I also can't stand for long periods of time, I would sit for parts of it; especially the few minutes before and after I had to get up and take the lead on my project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even while standing I would often lean against a wall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The entire idea of standing is to keep it short, not to cause pain. Don't use your comfortable chair (or whatever you decide to sit on, as per the other answers) to drag on the meeting. And &lt;strong&gt;make sure to stand when talking&lt;/strong&gt;, and if possible, when spoken to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anybody says anything to you, and they don't (want to) understand that you suffer from back pain, then send a short note to HR describing the problem, and CC the culprit and his supervisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note: What would the team do if somebody was wheelchair bound? Or was hobbling around on crutches? Would they also insist they stand the entire time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of &lt;em&gt;teamwork&lt;/em&gt; - &lt;em&gt;that issue that always seems to come up in every interview&lt;/em&gt; - is taking other people into consideration. I remember having to redo dozens of Post-It notes on the Kanban board because somebody was partially color blind and couldn't see what was written on certain colors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2016-03-15T11:27:52.730" LastActivityDate="2016-03-15T11:27:52.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17721" CreationDate="2016-03-15T11:12:30.710" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law&quot;&gt;Parkinson's Law&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_syndrome&quot;&gt;Student Syndrome&lt;/a&gt;.  These two concepts I believe truly impacts our work.  There's validity in &quot;challenging&quot; the team by constraining the planning values that the team thinks they need to do the job.  But it takes sophisticated analysis to understand that coming in late and over budget on an optimistic planning value could be indeed more favorable than coming in on time or even ahead of time on a pessimistic planning value.  The on time and on budget metric rules us as project managers and feels better for customers, despite whether they paid the price for that metric.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bragging being on time and on budget on all of your projects is an indicator that your projects are budgeted fat and happy, which to me, if true, is not a great achievement.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2016-03-15T16:18:34.363" LastActivityDate="2016-03-15T16:18:34.363" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17608" CreationDate="2016-03-15T11:27:28.080" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two thoughts - 1. if you haven't check out getting CSM trained (e.g. Scrum Alliance) as that will provide the theory behind the Scrum delivery method. 2. recognize that a PM in Scrum means you are a coach and guide, not a leader. The leader role is with the team. It is a challenge for a PM not to be a &lt;em&gt;PM&lt;/em&gt; - your role is to ensure the team have all the resources they need to get the sprint accomplished in the time. This includes access to SMEs as well as the technical stuff. It is also to ensure that the Scrum roles are clear to everyone - team and stakeholders. Product owner should be in the business. Scrum Master is with the team (could be you). &#xA;In practice, I also think you need to see whether an architect role exists - having the architecture 'emerge' makes some people in the business / IT management nervous. Also providing boundaries (business architecture and technology architecture) is no bad thing - keeps decision making focused.&#xA;Ideal - experiment! Try changing roles and see what improves. Ask the team what they need. Same for the product owner. &#xA;It just might be fun!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22591" LastActivityDate="2016-03-15T11:27:28.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17721" CreationDate="2016-03-15T11:42:25.450" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why do you think an artificial deadline will act as an incentive?  In my experience (and Dilbert's), the worker bees can sniff out a fake deadline in minutes, and pretty much ignore it unless there's a threat of layoffs.  On the other hand,  as is often done in major infrastructure contracts (USA),  if you provide a cost-bonus incentive for beating a deadline, you may find success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22592" LastActivityDate="2016-03-15T11:42:25.450" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17608" CreationDate="2016-03-15T11:50:37.757" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some other answers have mentioned this, but there's a difference between your title and role. Your title in the organization may be Project Manager, but you could have different roles on a scrum team. You can see elements of the Project Manager in both the Scrum Master and Product Owner roles. Since you also mention that you are the functional manager to the Development Team, you may be interested in &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/9909/should-a-scrum-master-also-perform-a-functional-manager-role&quot;&gt;this question that suggests that there are problems with that arrangement&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The specific tasks that you mention tend to map to Product Owner responsibilities. Managing scope items, reconciling work items with the BRD/SRS, and submitted change requests isn't that different than managing the product backlog by adding, removing, and prioritizing stories and working with the Development Team to make sure the stories. Meeting deadlines is also partly the role of the Product Owner, since part of the job of the Product Owner is to ensure that value is delivered to the user when it's needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't say how big your Development Team is. Scrum only has three roles - Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Development Team Member. It's not inconceivable that a senior member of the Development Team (preferably with some working knowledge of Scrum) can move into the Scrum Master role while still functioning as a member of the Development Team, leaving you to take on a full role of the Product Owner, which would align with your current responsibilities. If, for some reason, you are under-loaded after this adjustment, consider taking on some work in testing (primarily acceptance testing) or as a domain expert (assuming your team doesn't have domain experience already).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as your &quot;non-scrum&quot; things, I wouldn't be too concerned with those. Your specific example, of giving management an idea of what stories may be assigned to upcoming sprints may be a good idea. This can help them in a transition from plan-driven methodologies where every task has a firm date to more agile methods. The key here is to ensure that everyone realizes that everything is tentative outside of the current sprint - priorities can and do change, which is why there aren't excessive amounts of firm commitments too far into the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that Scrum is a framework. There are some purists out there, but you do need to keep in mind that you are transitioning from plan-driven methods to agile methods and it takes time to learn the new approach and fully roll it out - it's not just flipping a switch. You should also tailor the framework where appropriate, while considering the lessons learned from people who have made the transition before you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2016-03-15T11:50:37.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17721" CreationDate="2016-03-15T14:05:11.500" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on my experience as a developer for over 15 years, if there seems to be ample time in the planning to deliver, then it is quite common that developers lose focus a bit. They might be tempted to add a bit of gold-plating here and there and postpone the unpleasant tasks a bit more. This has the overall effect that (nearly) the full estimated time gets used up, even if the task could have been finished much earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One mechanism that seems effective in countering the slacking off of the developers is to reduce the &quot;available time&quot; for the various tasks.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;After making the estimations as usual and adding the overhead that experience has told you is needed, you take about 20% off from every task and you use that 20% for an &quot;emergency buffer&quot; that the project can eat into if certain tasks happen to be severely underestimated. This whole process also gets communicated to the developers, so they know that an overrun of a task doesn't immediately jeopardize the deadline, but it turns out that most tasks can actually be completed within the 80% time, because people instinctively try to stay under the scheduled time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 20% buffer appears to be around the figure where slacking off/gold-plating is significantly reduced, but high quality can also be maintained while working at a sustainable pace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2016-03-15T14:05:11.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17718" CreationDate="2016-03-15T14:26:16.523" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can the client be a member of the team? Sure! It's quite possible that the Product Owner role is taken up by someone from the client. If this is the case though, this person will have to physically be near the team for a decent part of the week and will need to take their role in the team seriously. If the customer simply wants to have oversight, what I have seen done in the past is to have them attend the daily stand-up in the capacity of observer, allowed to watch but not allowed to speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You generally don't want to have multiple people from the client all in the team, unless they are actively fulfilling different roles. If multiple people are concerned, then one should be the Product Owner and he/she should communicate with the other people on the client's side to ensure everyone's needs are being met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22447" LastActivityDate="2016-03-15T14:26:16.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17608" CreationDate="2016-03-15T14:40:15.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uDEQu.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uDEQu.png&quot; alt=&quot;Role Comparison&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Don't try to stick with names, roles and methods.&#xA;Pick up those that you and your team are fun to work with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21857" LastActivityDate="2016-03-15T14:40:15.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17721" CreationDate="2016-03-15T14:46:19.773" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have not read Steve McConnell's &lt;em&gt;Software Estimation&lt;/em&gt;, I highly recommend it. While there are a number of excellent insights on how to do better estimates, the most value to me was the demonstration of how hard it is. As is well known, developer estimates are typically &quot;best case&quot; scenarios. Unfortunately, life isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22598" LastActivityDate="2016-03-15T14:46:19.773" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17721" CreationDate="2016-03-15T15:02:09.280" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't pad the estimate, you'll be forced to manage risks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Padding the estimate is merely a coarse strategic reserve of time.  Not sure how you do the pad, but I understand it is common to inflate by some margin (e.g. 20%)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The alternative is to estimate each work package and explicitly discuss the worst, best, and probable case. Then sum those up for a projected delivery date, and use the worst &amp;amp; best cases to perform a monte carlo analysis and build a confidence estimate.  ( There is an 80% chance we will be done within 3 weeks of Date X).  As time goes by and you complete work packages, your confidence estimate will narrow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As risks arise and issues manifest, they'll influence your schedule, but you'll always be able to express the impact of any event in terms of the delivery date and the confidence estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2016-03-15T15:02:09.280" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17721" CreationDate="2016-03-15T15:20:31.720" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it a good idea to try and use &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson&amp;#39;s_law&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Parkinson's Law&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; to increase productivity. &lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;. (Disclaimer: I'm going to assume you're talking about software projects, not rock breaking or something)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read an &lt;a href=&quot;http://javatroopers.com/Peopleware.html#Chapter_5&quot;&gt;extract from the relevent chapter in the book Peopleware&lt;/a&gt; (actually, read the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peopleware&quot;&gt;whole book&lt;/a&gt;, it's great).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarise, you shoudn't treat your staff as if they were lazy disengaged 'Parkinsonian workers'. If you do, you will probably end up with demotated, disengaged workers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, the way you'd need to estimate work to motivate the Parkinsonian worker, is empirically ineffective compared to self-estimation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Productivity by Estimation Approach Effort:&#xA;&#xA;Estimate Prepared by    | Average Productivity | Number of Projects&#xA;Programmer alone        |8.0                   |19&#xA;Supervisor alone        |6.6                   |23&#xA;Programmer &amp;amp; Supervisor |7.8                   |16&#xA;Systems Analyst         |9.5                   |21&#xA;No estimate             |12.0                  |24 &#xA;&#xA;Bigger numbers being better.&#xA;So it turns out *&quot;Just wake me up when you're done.&quot;* works best.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is however, a problem of long projects that people can lose track of deadlines. Perhaps a more iterative approach like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt; would help here. Also the issue of &quot;padding&quot; goes away, as commitments are made by the team based on iteratively improving evidence of what has quantity of work has been completed before. This would also allow to realise the proven advantages of your team planning and estimating their own work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, an iterative (continuously releasable) approach offers the only real chance of &quot;finishing early&quot;. If you find out from your users that you have met their needs before finishing all the planned features (everything you thought we necessary at the start), you just stop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17705" LastEditorUserId="17705" LastEditDate="2016-03-15T15:46:19.757" LastActivityDate="2016-03-15T15:46:19.757" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17721" CreationDate="2016-03-15T20:59:37.570" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;YES, PROJECTS DO END EARLY when they avoid &quot;classic mistakes&quot;, do all the fundamentals of development, and also correctly apply &quot;best practices&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember reading Steve McConnell's &quot;Rapid Development&quot; and I remember reading in it about some project &quot;Orbit&quot; at IBM that FINISHED EARLY and with 1% of the defect count normally associated with a 500K line project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How did they do it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They had 12 levels of code inspections, and code inspections are notorious for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;finding bugs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;increasing learning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So indeed, some projects -- namely those that are managed exceedingly well by including numerous &quot;Best Practices&quot; like code inspections, while studiously avoiding &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stevemcconnell.com/rdenum.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Classic Mistakes of software development&lt;/a&gt;  -- do end ... early.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22609" LastEditorUserId="22609" LastEditDate="2016-04-08T15:54:29.807" LastActivityDate="2016-04-08T15:54:29.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17721" CreationDate="2016-03-15T21:27:53.227" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's define &quot;early&quot; as not using up contingency time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The degree to which an activity expands is largely a reflection of how well its process is defined. In my career I have played the roles of both software developer and project manager. As a software dev, I usually have a great deal of latitude as to how I do my job and the process I follow can range anywhere from economical to &quot;gold-plated&quot;, and with no other constraints, I'll go with gold-plated if I have time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a project manager, I work with my software developers to nail down their process. I don't want to blindly squeeze by setting deadlines, but instead experiment and innovate to find a process that delivers acceptible quality. Over time, you can refine the development process to make it more predictable - the team (both pm and devs) begin to understand where in that range of quality their work needs to be. With that predictability comes the ability to end without needing contingency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22610" LastActivityDate="2016-03-15T21:27:53.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17721" CreationDate="2016-03-15T21:41:00.947" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of two things is true: either you'd deliver on time even if the schedule was one day shorter, &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; you are always so accurate in your predictions that you set the schedule to be precisely the minimum needed and not a day less. Decide for yourself whether you think all your planning and your contingencies are really that accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often there's an intrinsic unpredictability in the amount of time the work will take (you mention sick leave for example: the smaller the team the less predictable this is, and that's even before you consider the actual work to be done). You allow &quot;enough&quot; contingency to have a very high confidence of delivering on time, and then even on projects with lower-than-average sick time, you still don't deliver early. This should tell you that some form of Parkinson's Law is in effect: no matter how good you are at estimating time you are not subconsciously predicting how much sick leave your staff will &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; take and adjusting your estimate elsewhere without realising it. Rather, the team is working to the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice if you set a shorter schedule then you and your team would &lt;em&gt;probably&lt;/em&gt; find a way to hit it. But eventually you'd also &lt;em&gt;probably&lt;/em&gt; see a slightly higher rate of missed deadlines, shipped defects, silly amounts of overtime and/or negotiations for reduced scope, because you're taking more risk by leaving less contingency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason projects rarely finish early is that there's rarely &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt; that could be done, at the moment of completion, either to improve the project or to increase your confidence in its correctness. So time budgeted is generally spent even at a point of somewhat diminishing returns, and the last-minute details usually aren't put on until close to the last minute. You can address this with a more rigorous definition of done, that doesn't allow people to do &quot;better than done&quot; just because there happens to be time available, and doesn't allow people to do &quot;worse than done&quot; just because there happens not to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, if you plan for people to put in a little bit of overtime at the end of the project, or to delay non-project tasks as the deadline approaches, then again your project will inherently show a certain amount of &quot;rubber-banding&quot;. If it's looking like you'll come in early you &lt;em&gt;won't&lt;/em&gt; ask for the overtime and you &lt;em&gt;won't&lt;/em&gt; put off that stack of filing until next week. This is why Parkinson's Law applies to some extent even in a well-functioning environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16402" LastEditorUserId="16402" LastEditDate="2016-03-15T22:01:57.440" LastActivityDate="2016-03-15T22:01:57.440" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17721" CreationDate="2016-03-16T10:46:59.797" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given no scope creep and in an ideal world, a project will end when all work on that project, foreseen and unexpected, has completed. Therefore a project will end early if the delivery timescales forecast by the Project Manager were greater than that actually needed. The trick is always, of course, knowing in advance how much time to allocate for all the tasks on a project and take into account unforeseen tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a practical impossibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All a PM can do is use experience and judgement to plan a delivery according to best or most-likely estimates and risks.&#xA;Personally I don’t pad resource estimates in my plan- I use the effort estimates given to me by the people who are best placed to estimate the work. That way you can learn from variances on a task by task basis. I do, however, include schedule contingency wherever I think there is likely to be material variance in forecast versus actual effort or timescales. In other words I add “buffer” durations into the overall plan, at judicious points, for absorbing additional work caused by estimate uncertainty. How much buffer to add, and at what points in the schedule, is part of the art of the PM planner and the more experience I get with more diverse deliveries the better I get at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other side of that coin is the budget contingency- if you extend work into “buffer” zone because things take longer, then you are going to use more effort, and burn more resource than forecast. There is no point allowing schedule contingency without also allowing budget contingency so I tend to make an allowance in the budget for additional workload into the schedule contingency zones, even though I don’t know at the beginning what the effort will be spent on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my version of “Fat and Happy” planning is to allow time in the schedule for unforeseen things to happen (they always do), or some tasks to overrun (there are always some), and allocate budget to cover these things (it’s always needed). Accordingly, the work in my plan always expands to fill the time I have allowed. As I have said, the art is in knowing how much contingency time to allow and at what points in the schedule. Not enough and you are into compressed timescales, pressure, stress, cutting scope or quality. Too much and you are over-charging your client for the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That’s in an ideal world with no scope creep. In the real world, with changing requirements and scope, you need to foresee the amount of change likely to arrive in the project and also plan for that, however you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; take a risk-based approach to that and add schedule and budget contingency accordingly to cover a certain level of change. Then if there is more change you manage accordingly- use more of your contingency or take it back to the Project Board for more budget or timescale as appropriate and as driven by the change process, not by any knee-jerk reactions or difficulties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2016-03-16T10:46:59.797" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17740" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-16T15:36:38.443" Score="6" ViewCount="2387" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do 1 week sprints with my scrum team, and every Monday I do a sprint planning where my team estimates by allocating story points to the cards, this then allows me to measure the progress of a sprint in a burndown chart. The trouble that I am having is that whilst one of the two developers is quite good, the other is struggling to complete the work to meet the sprint goal. It has been a couple of weeks now where we have missed the sprint goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to help him improve, but not sure how - I have already put him on a training schedule, which he completed but he is lacking a lot of commercial experience. What is the best way to deal with this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="20871" LastEditDate="2016-03-16T15:52:01.463" LastActivityDate="2016-05-08T19:22:20.083" Title="Development team are not meeting sprint deadlines" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17740" CreationDate="2016-03-16T15:46:59.313" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I do 1 week sprints with my scrum team, and every Monday I do a sprint planning where I allocate story points to the cards&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you should either read a book or take a course on SCRUM. What you are doing is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; SCRUM. Or in any way agile. You tell your people what to do and you tell them how long it will take them. Your are not a team. You are the boss and you have employees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to do SCRUM, have &lt;em&gt;your team&lt;/em&gt; estimate and plan. They are the guys that have to do it, &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; should tell &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; how long it will take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2016-03-16T15:46:59.313" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17740" CreationDate="2016-03-16T15:52:47.197" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;You shouldn't be allocating story points to cards.  The team should estimate the cards and agree on what to pull from the backlog based on their velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team is accountable for making their own forecasts and sprint plans.  You telling them what must get done in the next week is neither Agile nor Scrum.  You're also likely demotivating your team members and hurting their longer term productivity.  For yourself, you're fooling yourself that assigning people work will ensure it gets done according to schedule.  You're also blinding yourself to see in advance what is more likely to get done and what is not when you don't let the people that will actually do the work tell you what they think they can get done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A very common way to ramp people up is to have them pair with a more experienced developer.  So instead of Joe and Bob working on parallel stories or tasks, they spend the entire day working together in series.  One story or task at a time.  This is one form of XP pairing, you can read lots about it on the web.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will take a short-term productivity hit in return for a shortened ramp and longer-term effectiveness and/or efficiency gains.  Pairing also does wonders for your product quality, team communication, and continuous improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2016-03-16T15:52:47.197" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17707" CreationDate="2016-03-16T16:13:22.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Fraber indicated, typically I've seen CRs as their own &quot;Phase&quot; in the project plan.  As they arise, a task is added to that phase, resources assigned, scheduled out, etc.  This way they are clearly identified as outside the scope of the project, and should (as others have mentioned) have clear supporting documentation justifying the CR.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether the OP example meets that requirement is up for debate (between the PM and their stakeholders to decide,) especially if it's a planning issue (was the product availability during the project window confirmed/accounted for prior to the SOW completion? If not, then it's not really a change request (the stakeholder hasn't asked for a change and it's not outside the SOW to provide the item in question) but instead is just a variance of the initial task. If a client says &quot;We decided we'd rather have 2 servers with split roles instead of one larger one with all roles&quot; then it's a clearer example of a change request.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22632" LastActivityDate="2016-03-16T16:13:22.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17740" CreationDate="2016-03-16T16:39:07.557" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's try and step back from agile/not agile...scrum/not scrum perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Breaking this down simply, if they're getting work done but just not getting done as much as they thought they could, I think that's pretty normal. Estimating in a room with other people of all perceived skill levels causes us to try and overestimate to compensate for our inherent insecurities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team is getting things done, try and focus more on keeping the work interesting for everyone on the team and make sure everyone is having fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team has a clear vision of the project, then you could move to using the stories more as a tracking mechanism instead of &quot;commitments&quot;. This would give you the ability to track velocity and estimate project completion time, while not destroying moral of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From an economist perspective a worker could just commit to a single, easiest, lowest point story that's available each week to maximize the chances of them meeting the goal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way to counter this is really to try and keep people excited about what they're working on. Even if it's a mundane task, try and pay attention to what motivates each member of your team and even meet with them individually and ask them what would make them more excited about the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just my $0.02. I've been a software engineer for 12 years and I've spent a lot of time working with PMs to help them solve this exact problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8027" LastActivityDate="2016-03-16T16:39:07.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17745" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17746" CreationDate="2016-03-16T16:40:54.273" Score="2" ViewCount="1016" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a I understand, Agile is based on the team's velocity, which means that the project deadline is based on their velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problem 1&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you do if you are a project manager, and the sales team have made a sale based on delivering the project on y date? Meaning that you have very little control of when a project should be due?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you practice agile methodologies properly so that the project is done in increments based on your teams velocity whilst respecting the deadline the sales team have made? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problem 2&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile unlike waterfall is based on not having a listing of requirements set at the start of the project, but rather discovering what is required on a sprint by sprint bases. I get that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is what if the client requests a project roadmap for launch so that they get a high level overview of roughly how the project is going to progress? How do you visually do this if you do not know what is required?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2018-02-24T00:53:38.620" Title="Practising agile in deadline driven environments" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;deadline&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17745" CreationDate="2016-03-16T19:29:01.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only option you have is to use the transparency and &quot;working on the important features - scope&quot; aspect of agile. The deadline is set so the only thing you can do is to figure out what is really needed and what is the minimum for launch (sales will say everything, but that rarely the case).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Transparency will establish trust in the team and will so the organisation what is realistic to achieve in the given timeframe. Moreover, this can be useful later when you negotiate for new business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working on the scope is essential in each project, especially in agile ones (there is nothing else to do really, because time and resources are fixed, the only moving part should be the scope). In your sprints try to understand more about the business case and figure out what your team can deliver so that the customer reaches their goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There always be deadlines (agile is not about working without them), and your goal should be to figure out how to deliver real value when it is needed. That's a nice agile challenge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2016-03-16T19:29:01.373" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17745" CreationDate="2016-03-16T21:07:46.730" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile works well in a deadline driven environment as long as there is flexibility on scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With agile we typically work with a prioritised backlog of requirements. This ensures that as we work towards a deadline the most important features will be worked on first. The closer we get to the dealine, the less important the feature we will be working on. It is possible we won't complete all the desired work by the deadline, but we can be confident the work we don't complete will be of lower priority than the work we do deliver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also helps if we are doing regular releases as the project progresses. This helps the stakeholders (such as the sales people and the clients) to see concrete progress. That way expectations can be managed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your second point, Scrum uses an approach called 'release planning'. In your situation you would do this by putting requirements on your backlog that cover the functionality you expect to be needed for the release (or whatever milestone you are working towards). This may at first appear like the non-agile approach of having an up-front specification. But with agile we treat the backlog as a dynamic list, that gets updated frequently. This is one of the reasons why in Scrum we tend to work with user stories that often consist of just a simple sentence. We only add the detail to the stories when we are approaching the time when we will work on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, rather than having a rigid, detailed up-front specification, we have a far less detailed, dynamic list of requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can offer the client the project roadmap they request, using the backlog and the team's velocity to show the &lt;em&gt;potential&lt;/em&gt; points at which functionality will be complete. The important thing is that you need to explain to your client that this roadmap will not be set in stone. It will be continually reviewed as you progress, taking in to account feedback they provide and any requested changes. Think of it as a very &lt;em&gt;dynamic&lt;/em&gt; roadmap that is continually being improved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may appear that the client will not like this approach as it includes some uncertainty. But you may find that if you explain it carefully to your clients that they understand the benefits of this approach, such as flexibility in allowing them to make changes and seeing concrete progress in the form of interim releases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-03-16T21:07:46.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17748" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-16T23:03:25.097" Score="1" ViewCount="1091" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have two simultaneous tasks and the same resource assigned to them, which naturally produced an overallocation in MS Project 2010. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The leveling tools on the &lt;em&gt;Resource tab&lt;/em&gt;, for some reason, are not fixing the overallocation. Both tasks are manually scheduled and the Level Manually Scheduled Tasks option is checked under Leveling Options. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can fix the overallocation manually in the Team Planner or by splitting the longer task around the shorter one, or by changing the tasks to &lt;em&gt;Auto-Scheduled&lt;/em&gt;, but I thought Project would take care of the allocation for me using one of the Leveling tools on the &lt;em&gt;Resource tab&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22648" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-01T14:17:00.657" LastActivityDate="2018-11-01T14:17:00.657" Title="Leveling Doesn't Work on Overallocated Resources in Project 2010" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resources&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17721" CreationDate="2016-03-17T04:31:24.493" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A question is: How do your developers use the &quot;extra time&quot; ? Which corners would they cut, if this extra time was not there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, &quot;cutting corners&quot; often means poor test coverage, poor architectural quality, edge cases not properly covered, possibly security vulnerabilities. This was already mentioned as &quot;technical dept&quot; by @Cronax above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another problem is that developers have no time to learn, if they are constantly on a deadline. They will not have time to try new things, and instead stick to known, possibly outdated, solutions. This could be called &quot;experience dept&quot;, or &quot;edcucational dept&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there is a risk that developers might &quot;slack off&quot;, and do things that are nothing but a waste of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imo, a good idea is to allow the time for decent code quality and learning, but avoid feature creep. Architectural quality and simplicity should be present throughout the project development. But optional features, and anything which adds complexity and increases maintenance cost, should be added as late as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22654" LastActivityDate="2016-03-17T04:31:24.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17752" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-17T14:33:08.120" Score="5" ViewCount="3152" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I import &quot;tickets&quot; from JIRA to REDMINE. from a particular project on JIRA to a particular project in REDMINE&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22667" LastEditorUserId="22766" LastEditDate="2016-04-25T11:11:31.293" LastActivityDate="2017-08-06T15:46:40.907" Title="Can I import Jira tickets into redmine" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;redmine&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17752" CreationDate="2016-03-17T15:23:36.720" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In  Jira you can export to CSV: &lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/84144/how-to-export-issues-as-a-csv-file&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/84144/how-to-export-issues-as-a-csv-file&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a PHP based CVS importer for Redmine: &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/juanmf/RedmineIssueImporter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://github.com/juanmf/RedmineIssueImporter&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The process doesnt look very straigthforward, but I guess it should be possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also see this issue, which has some older other options for importing from a CSV: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.redmine.org/issues/7884&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.redmine.org/issues/7884&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2016-03-17T15:23:36.720" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17721" CreationDate="2016-03-17T16:59:00.803" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;People will under-promise and over-deliver, but PMs can coach them through providing accurate estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Padding the tasks leads to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_syndrome&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;student syndrome&quot;&gt;student syndrome&lt;/a&gt;. Instead, use a &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Use-schedule-buffers-to-manage-change-428268b7-51b2-4953-a44d-831ab0b9bb8b&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;buffer task&quot;&gt;buffer task&lt;/a&gt; at the end of the team's workstream and another one at the end of the deliverable critical paths (right before the milestone). You can base buffer hours on known risks and unknown risks (complexity * percentage of summary task with no risks or padding).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Decrease the team workstream buffers if the take longer than planned, keeping the summary task at equilibrium. Decrease the deliverable buffers to keep the milestones at the same date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Starting to use a buffer should trigger corrective action. Using up a buffer completely should trigger a change request. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22275" LastActivityDate="2016-03-17T16:59:00.803" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17679" CreationDate="2016-03-17T18:21:27.617" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience I have worked building software through the use of Agile Scrum teams within a larger system of systems. There have been two ways of looking at risk in this structure. From the &lt;em&gt;Program&lt;/em&gt; level of the system of systems the managing office used a more traditional method for risk management of identifying potential issues, their impacts, and their mitigations. It was always the responsibility of the higher management to watch over these risks as they bubbled up from lower down system projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the &lt;em&gt;Project&lt;/em&gt; (the Scrum Team) we addressed risk as a part of the continuous inspect-improve process that is at the core of Scrum. This entailed the Product Owner working with the Development Team to identify and discuss components or capabilities in the product backlog that might require a spike to get a better handle on the risks involved. Sometimes this was an investigation of a potential technology to see if it would solve a specific high risk problem or it might be to do a prototype within a sprint to test the technical impediments and gauge the complexity involved in creating the capability. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By continuing communications between the developers and Product Owner, and with the inclusion of research spikes we managed to handle product specific risks. It took interaction with the corporate management structure to deal with the non-product risks such as personnel retention, training, cross training, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this is mostly just an experiential response, but by executing Scrum we handled most of the things that do come up as risks that have turned into issues with the formal processes we adopted. So, things like scope creep and schedule impact were either embraced or mitigated without upper management needing to watch risks that far in the weeds. This left them free to worry about keeping good people through corporate policies and compensation, and recruiting new people should the unfortunate bus come along and remove a key asset.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7689" LastActivityDate="2016-03-17T18:21:27.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17740" CreationDate="2016-03-17T20:54:05.583" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are practicing Scrum, the problem isn't that one programmer is &quot;struggling to complete the work to meet the sprint goal.&quot; The problem is that the &lt;em&gt;team&lt;/em&gt; is struggling to meet the goal. The cause of that struggle may be a lagging team member, the problem belongs to the team, not the individual. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your first priority, then, should be to get the team to do a better job estimating what they can do based on the resources that they have. If the team knows that one team member is lagging behind, they need to account for that. If you've been accurately tracking your velocity you should be aware that your velocity is smaller than what you are using for planning purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find that the team is consistently missing their targets by 20%, simply take that into consideration when doing your planning. That can easily be accomplished by choosing to do one or two less points per sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the mean time, if during the retrospectives you find out that one team member isn't pulling their weight you can work on solving that problem as a separate effort. Perhaps have a senior dev pair with them, or perhaps you need to move them into a different role or give them more training. Regardless of the solution to that problem, you must separately address the problem of the team making bad estimations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3189" LastActivityDate="2016-03-17T20:54:05.583" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17689" CreationDate="2016-03-17T21:04:15.213" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's impossible to give a &quot;percent complete&quot; number, but you can give a ballpark estimate. The bigger the estimate, the less accurate it will be. For example, if you only have a weeks worth of work left, you're likely within +/- 10% of the truth. If you seem to have four months of work left  you could easily be off by 50%, 100%, or even more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, a very rough approximation is simple. Presumably you have a backlog, and that backlog is complete (ie: you have stories and/or epics that cover what you're trying to accomplish). Also, presumably these stories and epics have points associated with them. They won't all be accurate points, but they are a place to start. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The amount of work done, then, is the number of points completed divided by the total number of points estimated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing to remember with Agile, however, is that this number is not set in stone. You could be 50% done this week, and 40% next week even though you've finished stores in the mean time. It's important to remember that Agile isn't designed to give us accurate estimates, it merely serves to add more transparency, and to be prepared for change early rather than surprised by change late.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3189" LastActivityDate="2016-03-17T21:04:15.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="983" CreationDate="2016-03-17T21:09:14.320" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pick the last person to enter the room before the meeting starts. That solves two problems: you have someone to take notes, and everyone gets to the meeting early.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3189" LastActivityDate="2016-03-17T21:09:14.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17760" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17770" CreationDate="2016-03-17T22:33:19.330" Score="7" ViewCount="1248" Body="&lt;p&gt;My development team is very new to kanban. We have already seen the benefits of the simply visualizing our process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as of late I have noticed developers picking up multiple cards at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your experience, does this reduce efficiency?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are not at the stage to determine this by flow metrics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for your help&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22678" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T13:08:04.747" Title="Does multiple cards in progress by a single person reduce kanban efficiency" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17761" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17781" CreationDate="2016-03-18T01:54:52.993" Score="3" ViewCount="144" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will be transitioning from a developer role to a lead/project manager role soon, at a new job. I am not clear how Project Managers spend their day. I have asked this question to my friends and they said all the day goes in meetings and they are always busy. Do meetings really take a large amount of time for a PM?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to define, in general terms, how PMs allocate their time, over a working day, to key activities such as Meetings with development, Admin and Stakeholder Management? Can these be expressed as percentages of the working day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do Project Managers typically find themselves with little to do in a standard working day? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22679" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-03-18T13:35:03.970" LastActivityDate="2016-03-19T18:11:08.247" Title="Is it possible to prescribe PM time spent on key activities during a working day?" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17760" CreationDate="2016-03-18T07:45:40.373" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having too many open ends is one of the biggest issues you want to tackle by using methods like Kanban - the ideal you should be working towards is 1 team member - 1 story.&#xA;If you need some more flexibility, you can agree on a work in progress limit, means you limit the number of stories a single member can work on at the same time (3 is often chosen as a number, but can be more or less depending on your situation). If anybody exceeds this number, they will have to prioritize on the most important ones and put the others back to the backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22418" LastActivityDate="2016-03-18T07:45:40.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17760" CreationDate="2016-03-18T10:39:44.423" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really does depend on a lot of factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a developer who is working on three items at the same time that touch on completely different parts of the code base may find that they lose efficiency due to task switching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example might be a developer is working on an item which requires some slow, hands-off builds to take place. During the time the builds are taking place they will have little to do. In this situation you can imagine that working on at least two items would be more efficient. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why Kanban takes an experimental approach. We set the work in progress limit and then see what kind of flow rate we get. Then we tweak the limits until we maximise efficiency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation would be to start with a low work in progress limit, measure the flow and then slowly increase the limit while constantly monitoring the impact of the change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-03-18T10:39:44.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17767" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-18T11:00:43.953" Score="1" ViewCount="19448" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm dealing with a large plan developed by different people and it has some durations in days and some in weeks, but I'd like to unify them all in days. what is the best way to do this in MS Project 2010? I have tried to change from Options menus but it doesn't work, any clever suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22685" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-03-18T11:05:41.233" LastActivityDate="2019-03-30T16:54:21.583" Title="in MSP 2010 How to change task duration units from weeks to days in bulk" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17767" CreationDate="2016-03-18T12:46:51.720" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't believe you can change the way the Duration column is displayed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you can add a new number column, call it 'Normalised Duration' (or whatever you want) and make it display the duration you want:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add column of type Number 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Double-click on the heading and change it to whatever title you want&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Right-click the column and select Custom Fields&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click 'Formula'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the Formula field you can enter [Duration] which will show the duration in working minutes, then just divide by the number minutes in a working day (i.e. 8x60=480 for an 8-hour day), so the formula looks like &quot;[Duration]/480&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click Ok&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the working day duration will be displayed in your column no matter what duration units were used in the actual Duration column.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2016-03-18T12:46:51.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17760" CreationDate="2016-03-18T12:57:37.017" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no such thing as &quot;kanban efficiency&quot;. Only developers efficiency.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aBxyE.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aBxyE.png&quot; alt=&quot;Multitasking&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban WIP limits were implemented to avoid waste stemming from multitasking or waiting for others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However there can be multiple reasons for developers to start multitasking anyways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Several stories and/or tasks depend on each other. In this case it's logical to have them all assigned to one guy who implements them in one burst. To avoid this issue, the user stories should be created in such a way that they are self-contained, independent items.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are gaps in development. The developer might be waiting for code to compile, an artifact to be deployed, a product owner to provide feedback, etc. In such a case the story can't be worked on anymore at that time, so it's acceptable to have one story in stock to switch between the two to fill the gaps. This is fine as long as there is a reasonable limit on the number of concurrent tasks (usually two).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some people multitask by nature. Although these people are naturally rare, I personally worked with a few people that felt highly comfortable with multitasking. If they got stuck on one story they just switch between them without falling out of context, allowing for the solution to the first problem to come up from their subconsciousness while they performed a simpler task. Provide such a guy with an interruption-free working environment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, one more thing, you may want to check this video.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W92wG-HW8gg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W92wG-HW8gg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21857" LastEditorUserId="22447" LastEditDate="2016-03-21T13:08:04.747" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T13:08:04.747" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17689" CreationDate="2016-03-18T13:28:46.307" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a user story there is no such thing as a percentage complete.&#xA;It has binary state Done or Undone. Which is determined by &quot;Definition of Done&quot;.&#xA;99% complete is undone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is few methods to track the progress in sprint, release or project perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Burndown chart, both project and sprint. &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.methodsandtools.com/archive/scrumburndown.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.methodsandtools.com/archive/scrumburndown.php&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2013/august/burn-down-chart-%E2%80%93-an-effective-planning-and-tracki&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2013/august/burn-down-chart-%E2%80%93-an-effective-planning-and-tracki&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bXo3s.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bXo3s.png&quot; alt=&quot;Burndown chart&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cumulative flow diagram.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://brodzinski.com/2013/07/cumulative-flow-diagram.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://brodzinski.com/2013/07/cumulative-flow-diagram.html&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/yyeret/explaining-cumulative-flow-diagrams-cfd&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.slideshare.net/yyeret/explaining-cumulative-flow-diagrams-cfd&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1LLRj.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1LLRj.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Cumulative Flow Diagram&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agile EVM&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.methodsandtools.com/archive/archive.php?id=61&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.methodsandtools.com/archive/archive.php?id=61&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aLwca.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aLwca.png&quot; alt=&quot;Agile EVM&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21857" LastActivityDate="2016-03-18T13:28:46.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17761" CreationDate="2016-03-18T13:42:23.397" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No it's not. PM activities hardly depend on an industry, company culture, project.&#xA;And even if we will take a look at a typical workday of PM we shall find no similarities to create a standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find PM goofing-off and clock watching there is two extremes, either you don't need a PM or he is enlightened master who set up the team process so good that he deserves his free time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say not meetings but communication consumes plenty of PM's time.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more thing. Get your self a time tracker to determine whachadoin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-timer/ggnjbdfgigejghknieofeahaknkjafim?hl=ru&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WebTimer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://wakatime.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CodeTimer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://support.toggl.com/toggl-desktop-for-windows/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TimeTracker&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21857" LastEditorUserId="21857" LastEditDate="2016-03-18T14:17:21.660" LastActivityDate="2016-03-18T14:17:21.660" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17773" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17775" CreationDate="2016-03-18T14:18:37.787" Score="0" ViewCount="592" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am having a difficult time understanding how requirements are tracked through the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a list of requirements - do I link these to deliverables during planning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do i periodically review requirements, and if so, do i check off or document somewhere if and how it was fulfilled?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The requirements traceability matches a requirement to project objectives, but this seems more for alignment to goals than tracking progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a particular document and process that provides for documenting the fulfillment of a requirement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22689" LastActivityDate="2016-03-18T14:47:19.447" Title="Tracking requirements" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;scope-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17774" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17791" CreationDate="2016-03-18T14:23:58.593" Score="5" ViewCount="169" Body="&lt;p&gt;My company has a new governmental customer that is causing me a major headache.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That customer is a group of loosely based organisations existing within a regional hub. The regional hub has budget power and can implement things without the consent of the base, e.g. all of our users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My company is implementing our software on that regional basis, top-down. We started meeting to define the implementation timeline. When going to these meetings, one of the things that jumps out at me is that not all the organisations have the same incentive to change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of them are not interested in any changes, therefore not coming to the meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is worse, is that they do not have someone who can bridge the political gap, a champion who can represent all the organisations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can already feel the impending doom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The questions are the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does it sound possible for me to ask the organisations to name someone who can be our main contact and let them deal with the hassle of software change, therefore culture change, by themselves?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the answer is no, are there ways to influence the organisations to&#xA;make them organise themselves?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clarify, I work for the supplier that is implementing the system that will be used by all sub-organisations of a regional hub. There are 13 regions. We do not have a project board or a steering group. I'm the PM and also the customer care manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13597" LastEditorUserId="15972" LastEditDate="2016-03-21T06:32:53.613" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T08:37:54.880" Title="How to create a champion advocating change in a loose organisation" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;&lt;culture&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17773" CreationDate="2016-03-18T14:41:47.917" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is the project itself that links the requirements to the deliverables. All projects consist of a series of tasks for deploying the requirements in some way, and planning consists of planning and scheduling those tasks in time to determine the delivery timescales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not the requirements are &quot;allowed&quot; to change, and the acceptable pace of change in a project requirements and scope, will differ from organisation to organisation and from project approach to approach. So it is not possible to answer whether you need to be reviewing requirements- but typically it would not be the Project Manager who has responsibility for reviewing requirements, it would be an ongoing process between the &quot;business&quot; (i.e the customer) and the various team members (i.e. business analysts, requirements analysts etc.) who usually translate customer requirements into deliverable goals and objectives. The Project Manager would facilitate the review process and have some oversight of the review and outcomes, as well as tracking its progress against the planned review tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Requirements Traceability attempts to ensure that for every requirement or goal stated and defined in a project, there is a corresponding set of appropriate activities that deliver that requirement and test it has been delivered accurately. This is usually performed within various documents and allows someone to start with a documented requirement and trace that requirement through various documents (Requirements Spec, Functional Spec, Technical Design Spec, various development artefacts, Test Plans, Test Scripts, UAT Scripts and UAT Signoff etc. etc.). Then by ensuring all requirements are carried through all documents and have demonstrable deliverables, it can be easily demonstrated that a project delivers on its goals and requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2016-03-18T14:47:19.447" LastActivityDate="2016-03-18T14:47:19.447" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17774" CreationDate="2016-03-18T15:22:13.800" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no magical potion here.  You simply need top down sponsorship that can engage regional sponsorship to influence change across the organizations.  Without it, your chance of a successful transformation is closing in on zero.  You need to recommend an organizational change component as a major part of this project, either doing it in-house or contracting with a firm that specializes in this area.  Raise the threat that success is in jeopardy without a org change focus and communicate this threat and the recommended mitigation at every meeting you can.  And do not engage with this customer under a firm fixed price contract under any circumstances.  Finally, if the customer continues to not provide the organizational support this project needs, then recommend project closure and walk away.  Hard to walk away from a contract but you do not want to harm your reputation just for a bit of revenue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2016-03-18T15:30:04.620" LastActivityDate="2016-03-18T15:30:04.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17760" CreationDate="2016-03-18T16:58:50.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes it reduces efficiency due to context switching.  You may want to set a personal WIP limit for each developer on the team to be somewhere between 1-3 to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I always start having conversations with Kanban team members about personal WIP when they consistently go over 2 items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some studies out there that show every time an individual context switches (between two tasks or cards) it can take up to 45 minutes for the mind to re-tool to the new problem space.  That's your efficiency hit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also take this as an opportunity to explore WHY they have so many cards in progress in parallel.  Are the cards poorly defined?  Are they blocked and not figuring out how to get unblocked?  Etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2016-03-18T16:58:50.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17778" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-18T22:12:19.187" Score="3" ViewCount="1751" Body="&lt;p&gt;My group is using TFS for resource commitments. To get a clear overview of the project schedule I would like to use a Gantt chart in MS Project with 3 week sprint periods so we can see how we are doing against the delivery schedule. The 3 week period is easy but I cannot get the timescale to line up were I want it. I would also like to add labels for sprint #1,#2, etc... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22696" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T04:04:57.607" Title="Using MS project for overview with TFS to control the details of a mechanical development project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17767" CreationDate="2016-03-18T23:55:27.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a quick way to convert all durations (hours, weeks, and/or minutes) to days; durations already in days are left unchanged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Insert a numbered Duration field (e.g. Duration1)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Right-click the column and select Custom Fields&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click the Formula... button and enter this formula: [Duration]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click Ok twice to return to the main screen&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select the Duration1 column added in Step 1 and copy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select the Duration column and paste&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastActivityDate="2016-03-18T23:55:27.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17760" CreationDate="2016-03-19T01:21:14.367" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;All the body of knowledge in Kanban about multi-tasking, context-switching and WIP Limits - all of them encourage reducing multi-tasking and focusing on finishing what's already been started before taking up something new (&quot;Stop Starting! Start Finishing!&quot;).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of your team as a highway with a certain capacity.  If there are too few cars on it (same as some people on the team not having any/ enough work), you have low flow-efficiency.  On the other end of the continuum, think of the same highway jammed with cars - crawling at 5 MPH (each team member having so many cards that they take too long to finish any one of them - and overall, the total cards take longer than they would if they'd been taken up one at a time). So, there is an optimal loading (different for different contexts) at which you will see maximum flow efficiency - maximum flow.  Your experimentation with WIP Limits for your team will hep you get there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this is backed by a lot of research on how multi-tasking makes people less efficient and productivity drop significantly.  A lot of attention has been given to this in recent months - there is real evidence to suggest that the human brain works sub-optimally when multi-tasking and context-switching. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are just a few recent articles on this topic that will you might find useful - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.wrike.com/blog/high-cost-of-multitasking-for-productivity/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.wrike.com/blog/high-cost-of-multitasking-for-productivity/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/travisbradberry/2014/10/08/multitasking-damages-your-brain-and-career-new-studies-suggest/#7a01e6702c16&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.forbes.com/sites/travisbradberry/2014/10/08/multitasking-damages-your-brain-and-career-new-studies-suggest/#7a01e6702c16&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141008153512-50578967-multitasking-damages-your-brain-and-your-career-new-studies-suggest&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141008153512-50578967-multitasking-damages-your-brain-and-your-career-new-studies-suggest&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HTH&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2016-03-19T01:21:14.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17761" CreationDate="2016-03-19T01:36:56.510" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think I understand where you're coming from. I transitioned more or less organically from developer to PM role a few years ago. The thing is that PM &quot;work&quot; doesn't look like the kind of &quot;work&quot; that you're used to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It took me a good while to get used to this: I'd get to the end of the day, and I knew I'd been working hard all day because I was exhausted, but there was rarely anything concrete that I could point to and say &quot;that's what I did today.&quot; It's not like I had closed any tickets, or fixed any bugs, or written so many lines of code. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The part that took me completely by surprise was how much outward-facing management work there was: planning, writing reports, updating metrics, and generally translating upward across the technical-management interface layer. I'd had &lt;em&gt;no idea&lt;/em&gt; how much of that my PM had been doing, while protecting us developers from being distracted by it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it is not possible to prescribe time spent daily on key activities for several reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the overall balance of activities will depend on the approach to&#xA;project management used in the company. Eg, an agile style may spend&#xA;more time facilitating sprint work while a more traditional style may&#xA;spend more time writing schedules and reports.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it will depend on where you are in your project's development cycle (as Marv commented above) and in your company's reporting&#xA;cycle.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;part of a PM's job is to manage and solve problems, which means you will be interrupt-driven because problems don't make&#xA;appointments. :) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;part of a PM's job is communication in all directions, which also tends to result in an interrupt-driven day. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That interrupt-driven part might be why you think PMs might have &quot;little to do&quot;. If you frequently walk into your PM's office and find that she's immediately available to talk to you, it doesn't mean she wasn't busy: it means she's interrupting what she was working on (probably schedules or planning or metrics or reports, something involving Microsoft Office or equivalent) to prioritize what you need from her to do your work, because that's her job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest you try to connect with a more experienced PM at your new job who knows how things are done there to help you learn the ropes. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2016-03-19T01:36:56.510" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17782" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-19T07:59:46.817" Score="3" ViewCount="829" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BQqPF.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BQqPF.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this question how would I go about identifying the non value adding?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion non value adding would be activities with a wait and huge delay = 2,3,5,6,9 and 10&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a side note, would any of these be business value adding? Can someone please provide formal definitions for each and a process they would use to identify and sort processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please justify and correct my responses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22699" LastActivityDate="2016-03-19T09:08:14.637" Title="Value Adding VS Non Value Adding - Technique to identify." Tags="&lt;business-analyst&gt;&lt;process-engineering&gt;&lt;process-improvement&gt;&lt;business-case&gt;&lt;business-improvement&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17782" CreationDate="2016-03-19T09:00:57.207" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you reduce or remove a non value adding activity the overall outcome won't change, but the process time will be reduced.&lt;/strong&gt; Often the non value adding activities take some time, but they can be caused by unnecessary transportation, doing things again etc. In Lean production they are called &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://zsoltfabok.com/blog/2012/08/waste-in-software-development/&quot;&gt;waste&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. A couple of examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;corrections: when you have to fix things&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;over-production: when you do more than you need&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;over-processing: when something can be done in a simpler way&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;transportation: when you move stuff around unnecessarily&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;motion: when you have to move around unnecessarily&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;inventory: when you have to store something&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;waiting: when you have to wait for somebody or something&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are all non value adding activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you have a doctors appointment, when you wait for it, it is a non value adding activity from your point of view. Another example, if you have a small kitchen and you have to move stuff around all the time to be able to make breakfast, that is also a non value adding activity, however it has nothing to do with time; it is a &lt;em&gt;transportation waste&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your example is some kind of an exercise and I don't want to solve it instead of you, but when something &lt;em&gt;sits&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;waits&lt;/em&gt; is a waste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="468" LastEditDate="2016-03-19T09:08:14.637" LastActivityDate="2016-03-19T09:08:14.637" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17761" CreationDate="2016-03-19T14:51:50.567" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're transitioning from discrete or apportioned activities to level of effort activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.izenbridge.com/blog/introduction-to-discrete-efforts-level-of-efforts-and-apportioned-efforts/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Introduction to Discrete, Level of Efforts and Apportioned Efforts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22275" LastActivityDate="2016-03-19T14:51:50.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17761" CreationDate="2016-03-19T18:11:08.247" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rightly or wrongly, project managers are generally measured against the success of their projects and &lt;em&gt;those projects' adherence to a schedule or budget&lt;/em&gt;, rather than against a daily breakdown of the PM's allocated time. While every project management framework has an expected percentage of process overhead, this overhead isn't really meaningful in terms of measuring the PM's adherence to a schedule on an individual level. Even if it were possible, it wouldn't be a useful performance indicator for the project management role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Measuring Project Management&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it possible to define, in general terms, how PMs allocate their time, over a working day, to key activities such as Meetings with development, Admin and Stakeholder Management? Can these be expressed as percentages of the working day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you take a step back, what you're really trying to do here is to define performance indicators or trackable metrics for success as a project manager. However, how much time you spend on particular activities is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; how you measure success in the role. Instead, a project manager should be measured by how effectively they control the project (when given sufficient authority to actually do so), or how well they evangelize or communicate about the project within the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some &lt;em&gt;meaningful&lt;/em&gt; measures of project management effectiveness include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communications velocity (e.g. how quickly project information travels through organizational channels).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reporting accuracy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Transparency of project status.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Effectiveness at facilitating team and stakeholder meetings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ability to store and retrieve essential project management artifacts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some common but hard-to-measure (and therefore potentially less useful) metrics of efficacy may also include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ability to quickly identify projects that are out of tolerance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ability to use influence in roles without sufficient formal authority.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ability to collaborate with task performers and stakeholders to mitigate project risks as they are uncovered.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is often the case that project managers will be praised or blamed for the status of a project, even if they have no actual control over the outcome. However, the best project managers &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; influence the outcome of projects. They can justifiably take credit for designing and implementing project controls that keep the project within tolerances, or informing management in a timely fashion when a project can't be salvaged. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Communications&lt;/em&gt; is really the central key performance indicator for project managers, and communication tasks are where successful project managers spend the majority of their time outside of reporting and other framework-specific ceremonies. If your day isn't filled with communications-related tasks of one sort or another&amp;mdash;allowing for sufficient slack to handle interrupt-driven issues, of course&amp;mdash;then you're probably not focused on the right things within the role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-03-19T18:11:08.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17786" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-19T20:25:01.360" Score="0" ViewCount="521" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there anyone here who is studying for PMP exam or someone who has passed the exam already ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have two questions for those who have passed:&#xA;Q1. Let's say I have read the book and understood the process but didn't memorize anything including Process Groups and Knowledge-Areas mainly Input, T&amp;amp;T and Output process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will this help narrow down the situational questions and pass the exam ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q2. On the other extreme, I memorized all I/P, O/P and T&amp;amp;T of all Knowledge-Areas. Will this make me a better person to answer situational questions ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any clues on how you passed will help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those who are studying for PMP exam, or those failed before and trying again:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q. What is your strategy to pass this time around or pass on first attempt ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22704" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T01:55:19.477" Title="Anyone studying for PMP exam or have passed PMP?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2016-03-21T13:12:04.703" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17786" CreationDate="2016-03-20T05:50:10.563" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no tricks to passing the PMP. You need to know and understand the information to pass it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Passing the PMP is about understanding PMI's definitions of a project and how to run it. If you do not have a strong knowledge of the PMBoK and haven't memorized the formulas and key things like Process Groups, then you'll likely not pass the test. You could be a 20 year veteran of project management and not pass the test. You need to know the PMI-isms, or how PMI defines things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I passed through study and memory drills. That and being a project management professional with strong experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only suggestion I can offer you, is to use the computer tutorial time wisely. The exam walks you through a basic how to use a computer and the program tutorial. When I took it, it was about 15 minutes. During this time I instead took one of the provided sheets of paper, the provided pencil and started writing down all the key formulas and memory areas which I had memorized. I'd probably written that piece of paper twenty times before that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-03-20T05:50:10.563" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17752" CreationDate="2016-03-20T07:39:12.457" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use something like a Zapier service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://zapier.com/zapbook/zaps/4133/send-new-jira-issues-to-redmine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Send new JIRA issues to Redmine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep your issue tracking updated with this JIRA-Redmine integration. After you activate this Zap, every time a new JIRA issue is created, a matching issue will also be added to Redmine, providing effortless upkeep for your lists. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/E1sWZ.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/E1sWZ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8011" LastActivityDate="2016-03-20T07:39:12.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17786" CreationDate="2016-03-21T01:55:19.477" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Q1. Let's say I have read the book and understood the process but&#xA;  didn't memorize anything including Process Groups and Knowledge-Areas&#xA;  mainly Input, T&amp;amp;T and Output process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Will this help narrow down the situational questions and pass the exam&#xA;  ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, neglecting to memorize anything will not help you pass the PMP exam. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Q2. On the other extreme, I memorized all I/P, O/P and T&amp;amp;T of all&#xA;  Knowledge-Areas. Will this make me a better person to answer&#xA;  situational questions ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will put you in a better position to pass the exam but you will not pass with with rote memorization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Any clues on how you passed will help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Memorize Rita's process chart in the order it's in; understand why it's in that order.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find all the free tests you can.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;BrainBok.com also helped, and I paid for that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22275" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T01:55:19.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17692" CreationDate="2016-03-21T02:09:26.103" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was disappointed with PWA's timeline functionality because it wouldn't match my project's timeline. Some callout tasks would be misplaced and overlap each other in PWA while everything looked good in the MS Project 2013 file. The text color in the bars would always be black, regardless of what it was in the Project file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a workaround, I took a screenshot of the timeline in the MS Project file and saved it as an image. I created a webpart in PWA for rich text (html) and inserted the image (my timeline). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will be hard to address your issue directly because your enterprise will have unique functionality in it and not even Microsoft is willing (or able) to help you =/&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22275" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T02:09:26.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17774" CreationDate="2016-03-21T08:37:54.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest you &lt;strong&gt;go to the top&lt;/strong&gt;; somebody (or some group of VIPs) must have signed off on the order and approved this huge project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assume they still care about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find out who that was and discuss your concerns with them. Come armed with &lt;strong&gt;clear facts and figures&lt;/strong&gt;, not rumours and feelings. (&lt;strong&gt;Don't blame specific people&lt;/strong&gt;; you don't know the corporate politics, connections, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use the motto &quot;&lt;em&gt;Solutions, not Problems&lt;/em&gt;&quot; and suggest a solution: &lt;strong&gt;Ask them to designate a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_of_contact&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SPOC&lt;/a&gt; with whom, you will meet regularly&lt;/strong&gt;. This SPOC is your champion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your meeting agenda should include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Review initial aim of the project (roll out important project nationwide)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Issues encountered in the field (concrete data of uninterested parties)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Proposed solution (Designate a SPOC for weekly meetings to solve issues)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Method of reporting back to VIP (monthly status report sent by email)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A date for a follow-up meeting, if a SPOC was not designated at the initial meeting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your &lt;strong&gt;weekly meetings with the SPOC&lt;/strong&gt; should be a review of the previous week's Open Issues and a list of new issues. Meeting minutes should have the format of Action Items: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;SPOC will meet with A from B to understand why they missed their meeting&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T08:37:54.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17745" CreationDate="2016-03-21T11:13:15.367" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problem 1:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a solution to problem 1 you should &lt;em&gt;involve the customer in the process&lt;/em&gt;. As a part of scrum, every sprint has a sprint review which consists of two parts: one where you show the client the result of what has been done and one where the team reviews the sprint to see what went well and what needs to be improved (aka the retrospective). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sales department should be very clear towards the customer that the deadline is an &lt;em&gt;estimate&lt;/em&gt; and that the customer will be made a part of the process, giving them incremental demonstrations of the work that is being done so that they can give feedback along the way. If you have a client that doesn't want to be a part of the process, solving problem 1 becomes almost impossible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, as long as the sales department keeps making promises that are highly improbable to be kept, the company image will suffer. They &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be made to realise that it's better to have a later deadline and sometimes be done with the work before that than it is to promise a sooner deadline and have to buy more time with excuses or limit the scope of the project to be able to make the deadline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, the team should get a hand in setting the deadline: first the sales team gets the requirements from the customer, then the team turns those requirements into stories and tasks and makes a rough estimation of how much time it will take to complete them and finally you and/or the sales team adds a few sprints worth of time to that estimate to determine the deadline for the customer. If the team doesn't consist entirely of people who are fresh out of school, their experience (whether in the current team or another team) should help them make this very rough estimate and if the team stays together they will keep getting better at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problem 2:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can glean from my solution to problem 1, I don't entirely agree. &#xA;The start of the process in agile is to determine what the customer's needs are and defining those at a high level. As soon as this is done, one should work with the customer to break up the high level chunks into more concrete parts and the priority of those concrete parts should be determined. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on this information, the team can make a more concrete estimation of the work that will be required to satisfy the stories and on that estimate, you can base a roadmap: figure out the interdependencies, combine them with the priorities worked out with the customer and now you can define a general roadmap. This roadmap won't survive reality, but it should be a good indication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that sometimes, the customer will &lt;em&gt;insist&lt;/em&gt; that everything is of equal priority, they need it &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; done by the deadline. This is never true: surely in a spreadsheet app the ability for the app to make calculations is more important than the ability for the user to have a colour picker to make the cells in the table turn that colour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In general, remember &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the project management triangle&lt;/a&gt;!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the project is fixed price, the deadline is fixed &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; the scope is fixed, the only thing left that can vary is the quality. If the customer wants a high quality product, you &lt;strong&gt;need&lt;/strong&gt; to have flexibility on at least one point: cost, schedule or scope. This triangle has proven itself time and time again, pretending it doesn't hold true for your company is an illusion. Help your sales team understand this, work together to establish a process that works for the company and is acceptable for the customers. Inevitably you will lose some potential customers over this, but consider that it would most likely have been impossible to satisfy them to begin with. Rather than risking the company's good name (and the potential resources needed to complete the product before the deadline at all cost...) it is preferable to work with customers that can understand the reality of software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22447" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T11:13:15.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17778" CreationDate="2016-03-22T02:04:05.577" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are looking to  forecast sprints as part of Scrum then i would avoid the user of MS Project at all costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would be better served looking at a Release Burndown or just simply projecting your known velocity onto you backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The former can easily be plotted manually in Excel or on a physical board. It would take less than a minute each sprint to update and will give you better visibility and an understanding of progress towards your release goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/release-Burndown&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/release-Burndown&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While not an official artifact of the Scrum Guide, it is useful for Product Owners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The later is a feature  built into the Backlog tool in VSTS/TFS. If you go to the Backlog view you will see your historical velocity represented as a graph at the top of the screen. From this you can estimate both your mean, as well as pessimistic and optimistic, velocity. Then turn on the forecast option to draw lines for future sprints based on the velocity of your choice to get a rolling projection of where on your backlog you might get to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://msdn.microsoft.com/Library/vs/alm/Work/scrum/velocity-and-forecasting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://msdn.microsoft.com/Library/vs/alm/Work/scrum/velocity-and-forecasting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are both good planning visualisations that can help you project into the future. You have to let go of the old ways of project  management (they  don't work) and adopt some new ones.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastActivityDate="2016-03-22T02:04:05.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17796" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17797" CreationDate="2016-03-22T09:22:59.563" Score="1" ViewCount="336" Body="&lt;p&gt;We as a team were using Offline Board to hold our tickets from tracking system (Jira in our case) for quite some time.&#xA;Now we are finding that the tickets on the board do not work very well, but the board itself became a place where we gather for a standup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment we are investigating how to put something like calendar on it, but I believe there are other great usages for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'm curious what could be other use cases for an offline board?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22427" LastEditorUserId="22427" LastEditDate="2016-03-22T09:28:00.267" LastActivityDate="2016-03-24T06:37:57.623" Title="Use cases for offline board" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17796" CreationDate="2016-03-22T09:46:31.960" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Scrum I have seen physical task boards used for the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Holidays and planned absences (can be as simple as post-its with names and dates)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Burn-down or burn-up charts (updated daily)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team's definition of done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team's definition of ready&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product roadmap (giving the team a longer-term vision for the product)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the task board doesn't need to be only focused towards the team. You can use it as an &lt;em&gt;information radiator&lt;/em&gt; showing others in your organisation what the team is up to. Perhaps showing wire frames or screen shots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-03-22T09:46:31.960" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17798" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17802" CreationDate="2016-03-22T10:23:14.090" Score="7" ViewCount="477" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently joined a company that has started moving towards &quot;more agile&quot; development. I've already been product owner for an internal software project and that worked reasonably well as far as I can tell (I'm also new the role and not a developer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I will soon be Product Owner for a software project that is fixed cost. We have been given requirements with enough detail so that an offer could be proposed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is to have a kick-off meeting with the customer to obtain &quot;rough&quot; functional design specifications. A look at the contract reveals that, at least according to whats written there, this won't be so rough after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see a lot of problems coming my way. I am somewhat worried that in the end my company will expect me to work the backlog in a way so that the functionality  delivered is no more than that laid down in the &quot;rough&quot; specification, while the customer will see no reason to stop working until resolved perfectly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have very little experience as Product Owner and I really want this project to go well because I like what the customer wants to achieve with the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How I can take advantage of the benefits that Agile development offers, under these circumstances?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SPOILER (after a couple of month into the project):&#xA;As predicted by many in this thread (and kind of expected by me) it does not work so well. The problems I expected would come my way did come...&#xA;Fortunately this will most likely be the first and last project that was &quot;managed&quot; this way.&#xA;If you find yourself in a similar situation: protest, keep everything transparent so nobody will blame stuff on you, protest, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22732" LastEditorUserId="22732" LastEditDate="2016-10-04T15:52:43.120" LastActivityDate="2016-10-04T15:52:43.120" Title="How to leverage Agile development benefits in a fixed-cost project?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;&lt;fixed-price&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17799" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-22T11:34:59.833" Score="0" ViewCount="237" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to be project manager; now my job is .net/web developer . What is the best way to become a project manager and what are  the minimum years of experience needed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/certification/project-management-professional-pmp.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pmp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22735" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2016-03-22T14:54:00.047" LastActivityDate="2016-03-23T05:22:56.217" Title="Master degree business administration vs. Project Management Professional (PMP) to become project manager in Programming Inc. and why" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17800" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17801" CreationDate="2016-03-22T11:43:00.017" Score="0" ViewCount="95" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the different ways of negotiating with a client (online, email, face-to-face meeting, etc.) and what are the best practices in each of this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that it can depend on the specific case or situation but I guess that one can acquire these practices based on their experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be great if you could provide examples of successful negotiations  (a way of negotiating, challenge, what you have done to overcome obstacles, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for any examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22734" LastActivityDate="2016-03-25T13:53:25.300" Title="What are the ways and best practices when negotiating with a client?" Tags="&lt;negotiation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17800" CreationDate="2016-03-22T12:23:08.667" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Preparation is key.  The more you study your situation, the better your position.  Never sit at the table until you know most of the answers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;keywords=getting%20to%20yes&amp;amp;tag=googhydr-20&amp;amp;index=aps&amp;amp;hvadid=19936174157&amp;amp;hvpos=1t2&amp;amp;hvexid=&amp;amp;hvnetw=g&amp;amp;hvrand=6713455780678291149&amp;amp;hvpone=&amp;amp;hvptwo=&amp;amp;hvqmt=e&amp;amp;hvdev=c&amp;amp;ref=pd_sl_m32o2wijl_e&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Getting to Yes&lt;/a&gt;&quot; written by Ury, Fisher, and Patton is a fantastic read.  Also, you will want to research various &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.axial.net/forum/cognitive-biases-deals/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cognitive biases&lt;/a&gt; that play a key role during negotiations, including primacy and recency biases, framing, group think, and anchoring to name a few.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all, negotiations are critical for successful project management as you are engaging in some form throughout the entire project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2016-03-22T12:29:22.960" LastActivityDate="2016-03-22T12:29:22.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17798" CreationDate="2016-03-22T14:51:41.217" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum is an agile framework that is focused on adapting to change and delivering business value. It encourages feedback and looks to deliver what is needed, which is often not the same as what was originally planned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Combining Scrum with a fixed price, fixed scope contract is a challenge. It can often lead to arguments between the customer and the supplier as to what is a valid change and what should be paid for as 'new' functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is particularly difficult for you as it sounds like you are not in a genuine Product Owner role as you are not able to make decisions on scope. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation would be to use a very &lt;em&gt;transparent&lt;/em&gt; approach to your work. Ensure that all decisions on functionality are clearly described and the implications of the change are also made clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be worth doing frequent release planning. This is where you look at the velocity of the team and see how long it will take them to complete the work that is left to do. You may find that if the customer makes changes and if the team encounters technical problems that the project deadline (and project cost) change as well. The best approach is to make these changes and their impact as public as possible, so that they are discussed both by your client and by the management team in your organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some parts of Scrum can help you with making things transparent. Make sure the backlog is public and progress is clearly shown. Speak frequently with your stakeholders and ensure they are fully engaged with the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-03-22T14:51:41.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="233" CreationDate="2016-03-22T15:07:15.823" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When this happened - over 2 decades ago - at a company I worked for, I was given the title of Morale Officer! (Besides for my regular job.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was given a small budget and was charged with ensuring the company was a fun place to be in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g.: I spent money on ping-pong balls for the ping-pong table, and made sure it was in use, often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nosh is always appreciated and was provided regularly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of the trick was to walk around and engage people in conversation; find out what they think and inject positive comments into conversions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: Spend time actively lifting the mood. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;The end of the story? &lt;em&gt;The operation was a success, but the patient died&lt;/em&gt;. We all had a great time, until the company folded a few quarters later, but hardly anybody walked out on us despite firings every few months. &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-03-22T15:07:15.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17804" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17806" CreationDate="2016-03-22T16:04:34.663" Score="2" ViewCount="188" Body="&lt;p&gt;My development team splits there time between two completely distinct pieces of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;New functionality user stories &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bugs which relate to a completely different product (1 day a week)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically they work with their Kanban board until they have a day where they fix bugs (2). These bugs are brought onto their main Kanban board and then they work just for 1 day on these after that they stop picking up new work but they do finish any tickets picked up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that this dominates their WIP the next day if they are still finishing things off or of the Product Owner needs changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I have 2 Kanban boards, a swim lane or should I just adjust the WIP limits accordingly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastActivityDate="2016-03-22T17:59:23.653" Title="Does the team need 2 different Kanban boards for part-time work?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17740" CreationDate="2016-03-22T16:12:12.623" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others mentioned, scrum is a team effort. Although in reality, there will be some sort of barrier/separation but it shouldn't look like they are horses on a race track focusing only on themselves going through the finish line. How high that barrier is depends on the attitude/ego of the programmers. Pair programming is a good way to lower this barrier, unless one of them is not a team player then that will be a tough setup. also, do a retrospective to evaluate the sprint. If you weren't able to identify root  cause of the issue then do a one to one conversation, could it be that he uncovered somethings on the backlog which weren't anticipated such as off specs or he underestimate the tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I dont know how's the setup of the two programmers but i had been in the same situation long time ago. To cut the story short, i need to integrate another programmer's work (other programmer is not a good team player worse is that he wants to go to the next sprint in advanced as soon as he finishes 'his' sprint backlogs), whenever he says the done, the management will just go &quot;wow&quot;. Upon integration, some codes do have some bugs, lots of copy pasted sections, unnecessary excess and wrong usage of oop concepts/design patterns.  Being done is not just about being done, it must be done, written well, tested and in an acceptable quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8980" LastActivityDate="2016-03-22T16:12:12.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17804" CreationDate="2016-03-22T16:13:45.457" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You only want one Kanban board. You can be pulling from two Backlogs for your work, they still go into a single Kanban board. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Task Board, be it Scrum or Kanban or other, is the prioritized representation of the work the team has to do. If you have two boards, how do you rank the #1 item on both boards? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-03-22T16:13:45.457" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17748" CreationDate="2016-03-22T17:31:36.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you've selected Manual for &quot;Leveling calculations&quot;, you've told MS Project that you will level the tasks manually. If you selected Automatic, MS Project would level the tasks as you created them. Test this on a new file and changing the options as you create new tasks. &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Distribute-project-work-evenly-level-resource-assignments-9077102e-6db0-4d49-a9ce-94f018e7b4e2#bm4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Distribute project work evenly (level resource assignments)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think MS Project levels manual tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22275" LastActivityDate="2016-03-22T17:31:36.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17804" CreationDate="2016-03-22T17:59:23.653" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have a deeper problem, that you are using 1 day a week to fix bugs.  Kanban is about continuous flow.  The team should be able to take in bugs and story work at the same time and your stakeholders should agree on what the priority of work is regardless of what day of the week it is.  It sounds to me like the 1 day rule is a crutch that is preventing your stakeholders from learning how to negotiate priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find the team consistently having bug work carry over the 1 day boundary, the team should be retrospecting on why and figuring out how to improve their process so that it better serves all the stakeholders on the team.  Your WIP limit shouldn't change, if anything it might help to lower it if the team is struggling to have a cycle time of 1 day on defect cards.  Or you need to be realistic and acknowledge that a 1 day cycle time is not the right thing to aim for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team should not be dropping work.  Part of setting WIP limits and having the team stick to them is the discipline of getting something done done before moving to the next item.  With all my kanban teams I strongly encourage team members to only move cards forwards once they are in progress.  Cards that get blocked or are tempting for the team to move back to ready sit in-progress and hog up the team WIP limits.  The team needs to have the discipline to work through their bottlenecks/blockers and achieve flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2016-03-22T17:59:23.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17809" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17811" CreationDate="2016-03-22T19:04:34.663" Score="5" ViewCount="3646" Body="&lt;p&gt;I initially set up a JIRA Kanban board and would now prefer to convert to a Scrum board...is there a way to do this without having to re-create the stories and epics that currently exist on the Kanban board?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22743" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-03-22T19:48:21.730" LastActivityDate="2019-08-17T20:25:52.117" Title="How do I convert a JIRA Kanban board to a Scrum board" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;board&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17809" CreationDate="2016-03-22T19:24:17.837" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bad news is- You can't convert a board from one to the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good news is- If you're using filters or projects, then you just make a scrum board that points at the same filter or project and everything will come across. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Had to do this here at AOL just last month. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-03-22T19:24:17.837" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17809" CreationDate="2016-03-22T19:57:21.753" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In JIRA boards are simply views on projects. It is the projects that contain the stories, epics and other issue types.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that you can create a new board that points at an existing project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say for example your original Kanban board was called 'Team X'. When that was created it would have created a project called 'Team X' as well. The board would be a view on this project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can now create a new board of type Scrum. Make sure that when you create it you chose the option 'Board from an existing project'. Then select the project that you were using previously (in my example it is the one called 'Team X').&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you have a Scrum board that shows all the issues that were on your Kanban board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't even need to get rid of the Kanban board. Both of them will still work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/agile/jira-agile-user-s-guide/creating-a-board&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This is the Atlassian page that explains how to create a new board&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-03-22T19:57:21.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17812" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-22T19:57:51.130" Score="1" ViewCount="251" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a project where I am setting resources at 60% availability in general.  However, for certain tasks, I would like to divide the work proportionally between two resources.  The best way I can describe it is with an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say I have a 100 hour task.  I have it set to Fixed Work.  I have two resources, Tim and Bob, each set at 60% availability.  Tim is only responsible for 10% of the work for this task, leaving Bob 90% of the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can manually assign 10 hours to Tim and 90 hours to Bob using the Task Usage view, but for a schedule with several hundred lines, this can get tedious.  Is there a way to select multiple tasks and ration them out like I want?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22744" LastActivityDate="2016-03-23T11:56:41.267" Title="Resource Allocation - Two resources on one task at different ratios" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17813" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17823" CreationDate="2016-03-22T20:02:08.737" Score="1" ViewCount="96" Body="&lt;p&gt;A new working team was created few days ago in my company, I was usually natural leader on every team I worked on there. With no kind of differentiations in wages, just leadership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this new group, there is another like me, and it's very clear that he wants to be the leader as much as I do. So far, we didn't have any fight, but there were some tense moments between us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I act? Is it healthy for the team having two people fighting for leadership? Should I let him be the leader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional info that may be useful: In my company there are no team leaders, just a boss that mixes the teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22745" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2016-03-23T09:42:42.157" LastActivityDate="2016-03-23T19:47:06.447" Title="Leadership in new team" Tags="&lt;leadership&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2016-03-24T10:03:57.563" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17799" CreationDate="2016-03-23T05:22:56.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My suggestion would be for you to review the current job description requirements at the companies for which you want to apply for the project manager role. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many companies are not necessarily looking for candidates with a master's degree for this role. Some companies ask for professional organization credentials and others do not. Some companies will have different levels of project managers with different education, credential and experience requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think that your education and experience currently qualifies you for the project manager role, large companies often have human resources professionals that assist employees with promoting to roles within the organization. Have you considered applying for the role at your current company? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do not think that your education and experience currently qualifies you for the project manager role, the same human resources employees at the company that could help you promote can help you identify your training deficiencies and even enroll you in training programs to help you promote.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22747" LastActivityDate="2016-03-23T05:22:56.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17798" CreationDate="2016-03-23T08:50:07.703" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what &lt;em&gt;Agile&lt;/em&gt; (or any other methodology) has to do with this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without a signed off spec you're shooting at a moving target. You could work on something for a while, complete it, move on to other parts and then have to retool the initial piece which may affect all the subsequent pieces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rule #1 in efficient software development is &quot;&lt;strong&gt;NEVER work on rough specs&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;. Work is only done on specs signed-off by both the customer and the person in your company with relevant authority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more detailed the spec, the faster the coding and the fewer the changes. This may surprise you, but in some companies specs tend to be declared &lt;em&gt;complete!&lt;/em&gt; at some point. Any further changes come at an expense, as a &lt;em&gt;change request&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;I once worked for a contractor who won a tender at a very low price; below cost. His entire profit margin was based on &lt;em&gt;change requests&lt;/em&gt;. His game plan was to define the spec in such a way that it seemed complete, but in reality it was missing key pieces. When the customer requested these, he was charged for them.&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&quot;What? the door doesn't have a handle?&quot;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&quot;Nope, it's not in the spec. Only a keyhole was specified.&quot;&#xA;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seems like your customer is working the other way; keep the spec open-ended so that anything can be included in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-03-23T08:50:07.703" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2352" CreationDate="2016-03-23T10:10:18.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use Taxonomy Based Risk Identification from SEI.&#xA;Just get rid of parts you don't need.&#xA;It is also includes questionnaire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/twpQx.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/twpQx.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sei.cmu.edu/reports/93tr006.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.sei.cmu.edu/reports/93tr006.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21857" LastActivityDate="2016-03-23T10:10:18.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17812" CreationDate="2016-03-23T11:56:41.267" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wouldn't it be quicker and easier to granulate this task to show what each of the resources are working on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Underneath your current task, create two indented tasks, one for each resource. Set Work to 10 for Tim and 90 to Bob. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The higher level task will have the rolled up value of 100. You can set Work Complete on each resource individually and track what each of them has to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22750" LastActivityDate="2016-03-23T11:56:41.267" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17820" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17873" CreationDate="2016-03-23T14:27:35.537" Score="2" ViewCount="1481" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to make some form of recurring task that will occur after specified other tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of every x days/weeks/etc. occur after Task X, Y and Z (self specified)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help would be appreciated, I figured I'd try and ask here before making four duplicate task groups after task X, Y and Z.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm not a projectmanager, but a programmer who has to make a planning for development in MS-project)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In this case X, Y and Z are functionalities that are to be built into a product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Develop the function to request time off (X)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test function X&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Roll out new version with X&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Develop Reports for management (Y)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test function Y&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Roll out new version with Y&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Develop Sending mails in outlook to a user (Z)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test function Z&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Roll out new version with Z&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See what I mean with a repeating task?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to make it into a repeating task, that comes after the developing of a functionality, without having three times the same task. (redundancy is bad in programming, hence I wondered if there was a way)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22753" LastEditorUserId="22753" LastEditDate="2016-03-29T13:34:25.317" LastActivityDate="2016-03-29T16:12:20.517" Title="Plan a task multiple times" Tags="&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17798" CreationDate="2016-03-23T15:49:27.263" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile methodology and fixed price projects doesn't go well together as by doing a fixed price delivery you will not be able to get the best benefits of doing a project in an agile manner. To quote an example, it is difficult to incorporate demo changes and business changes when you execute within fixed boundaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, you can still do in sprints/agile fashion with the following steps/preparations done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure you understand the specs and functionality defined clearly before committing to the fixed bid.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't leave out any open items/ambiguous items - you either include them in your fixed price delivery after considering the risk factors or leave it out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plan your iterations and sprint goals. Sprint zero is a good phase to do this as you can club items together in sprints which might reduce the effort.(Note that this goes against the agile principles of doing &quot;just enough&quot; planning.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make a list of items/functions excluded from this phase of delivery (add rough estimates if possible).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep track of your progress and be transparent about delays and unexpected issues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Engage with the stakeholders as much as possible so that you can manage expectations effectively.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stay close to the team and make sure they understand and follow the requirements correctly. It could happen that they wander off and create unnecessary code/test data which means you lose time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conducting Demos in this pre-defined journey is a challenge. You'd probably have to add the suggestions/changes to the backlog with a view to tackle them in the next phase rather than implementing in the next sprint. If due to any reasons (say, business value) you are asked to implement any, make sure you swap an equal weight item.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Advice team to work in a much collaborate way so that scenarios are clear and this will reduce bugs and also make fixes easy and quick.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Above all, it is important that you discuss the approach and constraints with the team and business/product owner and other stakeholders and get their buy-in before you start.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It feels a lot like waterfall and is less satisfying for sure, but you can plan to deliver business value every sprint and keep going!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22080" LastActivityDate="2016-03-23T15:49:27.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17822" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-23T18:43:16.360" Score="1" ViewCount="369" Body="&lt;p&gt;How could I have answered the following interview question? Please piece together the high level steps of a project - from start to finish, but haven't found anything concrete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's how I understand it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;0) Sponsor has an idea&#xA;1) Sponsor drafts Project Charter&#xA;2) PM reviews Charter with the team&#xA;3) Once approved by PM, Project Management Plan is drafted by PM&#xA;4) Sponsor reviews/approves Project Management Plan&#xA;5) Team begins development cycle (Agile, Waterfall, etc)&#xA;6) Sponsor reviews/approves satisfaction with project&#xA;7) Project is completed&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22604" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2016-03-27T01:10:11.590" LastActivityDate="2016-03-27T01:10:11.590" Title="Project steps from start to finish" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2016-03-27T01:12:51.607" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17813" CreationDate="2016-03-23T19:47:06.447" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good leader is a leader that can be led on! How about leading by example? Setting a good example of how a leader can be also a follower, and when the other leader sees your humbleness and when in times of doubt or failure, you can help him/her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20765" LastActivityDate="2016-03-23T19:47:06.447" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2016-03-23T19:47:06.447" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17824" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17841" CreationDate="2016-03-23T21:01:05.153" Score="3" ViewCount="1474" Body="&lt;p&gt;I an an Agile Coach and Scrum Master for a development team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of developers has become impossible to work with because of her attitude towards in particular me and I am not sure how to handle it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice would be most welcomed!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have only been working with this team for 3 weeks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team member has said that I have a boring approach to coaching the team and that the previous coach was more fun&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team member speaks up and criticizes every single initiative I present to the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team member questions everything and flails between arguments. She doesn't fight one particular point or point of view, she fights for the sake of fighting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team member is not a team player and is unwilling to work as a team, very arrogant and always tells the team that she is always right. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team member is not professional at all. Other team members from other team members are difficult, but they are at least professional.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I would use an analogy for this team. Imagine a bunch of football players who were not interested in playing a game of football, they just wanted to kick the ball around. Now add me, their coach.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am at odds as I presume this is my job to sort this out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team is using Kanban and a couple of Agile development methods like XP, BDD etc. So they have a Kanban board, WIP limits etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Initiatives I was referring too were for example coaching them about WIP limits, Kaizen time, high quality demo's etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I think the team member works ok with the team, it is primarily about me, so I guess you could say she is a team player as I am not part of the team. She does not share her knowledge constructively no.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My role is very clear, but I guess because there is no strong team manager or team lead, I am trying to compensate for this, by doing things which are not part of my role. My role includes providing transparency about how the team is doing in terms of cycle time, process, coach and foster learning, mediate conflicts, remove impediments or flag to management, deliver coaching on all aspects of self organisation, support backlog refinement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastEditorUserId="4364" LastEditDate="2016-03-23T22:25:38.613" LastActivityDate="2019-04-16T12:55:30.443" Title="As an Agile Coach, how do I deal with argumentative and uncooperative team members?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17824" CreationDate="2016-03-23T21:09:26.383" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The last sentence makes it sound like you don't know why you're there(?), and if &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; don't know, there's a great possibility the team has no idea/will push back as you've seen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I like to cut to the chase - bring everyone (including your sponsors) into a room and dig into why you're there/why the team will benefit from coaching, what the larger goals are, what the expectations are from the team's side, how you can best help them, etc. and use tools like root-case analysis to really make some headway. However, that requires a lot of &quot;thick skin&quot; for all involved, and may not work in your org or environment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2016-03-23T21:09:26.383" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17824" CreationDate="2016-03-23T21:35:44.940" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a difficult situation and I sympathise with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider working with the team to form an agreed set of behaviours and appropriate responses in given situations. This is not something you can impose, it will have to be agreed by concensus with the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Explore the motivations of the person you are having trouble with. Try and understand why they are behaving as they are. Do they feel threatened? Do you challenge their authority within the team? Is there something else going on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-03-23T21:35:44.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17824" CreationDate="2016-03-23T22:04:58.403" Score="12" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are taking a potential team composition problem and making it your problem. That is not agile; that is a misunderstanding of your role. From an agile coaching perspective, teams need to be guided into assessing and resolving their own bottlenecks, whether it involves technical or human resource issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am at odds as I presume this is my job to sort this out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not really, no. Your job is to &lt;em&gt;coach the entire team&lt;/em&gt; and help them identify the process that works for them. Since they aren't following a formal methodology like Scrum and just want to be &quot;agile,&quot; you need to help them define what that means &lt;em&gt;to them&lt;/em&gt; rather than to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Team member speaks up and criticizes every single initiative I present to the team[.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why are &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; presenting initiatives at all? Unless your executive sponsor has tasked you with a traditional command-and-control role, as a coach your responsibility ought to be to educate the team about common practices, and then facilitate their exploration of their own initiatives. Whether or not this particular individual is really a problem is irrelevant to this particular point, although it is certainly germane to other teaming issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[The t]eam member is not a team player and is unwilling to work as a team, very arrogant and always tells the team that she is always right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds like a problem (if it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a problem) for the entire team. It is not &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; problem; it is theirs. You need to find out how the rest of the team feels about this person. From the team's point of view, does this person:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Help or hinder the team?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add value to the team's process?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pull her own weight within the development process?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Share her knowledge constructively with the rest of the team?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answers to these and other similar questions are not to the team's liking, then &lt;em&gt;the team&lt;/em&gt; has a process problem that the team needs to own up to, and collectively request action from line management to resolve. Voting an unhelpful team member off the island ought to be within the purview of the team itself, or the project's executive sponsors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Meta-Solution&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from spot solutions, the real issue is that your role and authority (if any) are not currently clarified by your executive sponsor. Presumably someone hired you to do a job, fulfill a role, or execute some set of deliverables. Rather than trying guess about the nature of your job, &lt;em&gt;ask someone&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases, agile &quot;coaches&quot; are hired to bring a few agile practices to the table while still functioning in a command-and-control capacity. In others, the management team really wants the team to learn, and to become self-organizing. This often requires a more Socratic approach to educating the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, you currently lack direction and authority. Talk to the person you report to about these things, and plan your course of action accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-03-23T22:04:58.403" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17822" CreationDate="2016-03-24T02:00:27.493" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/doc/288195735/PMP-Process-Group-Chart-Rita-s-8th-Edition#scribd&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rita's Process Chart&lt;/a&gt; for a high level overview of a project from PMI's perspective. The project charter will probably not be approved by the PM since she may be the one developing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22275" LastActivityDate="2016-03-24T02:00:27.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17796" CreationDate="2016-03-24T06:37:57.623" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use one of the offline boards to highlight the software components we are working on four other teams to identify dependencies. One is used for concepting and the last is used for project portfolio. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19274" LastActivityDate="2016-03-24T06:37:57.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10442" CreationDate="2016-03-24T12:17:46.980" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not sure how it came to be, but in my last two companies we used the following Sprint naming format: &lt;strong&gt;Year+StartWeekNumber+Teamname&lt;/strong&gt;. Resulting in something like &quot;&lt;strong&gt;2016W10 Team Blue&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; for our current sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in the last 7 years of doing Scrum I never felt the need to use the Sprint numbers after the sprint was done. Although sometimes it might be handy to see in which time period a feature was developed from in Jira.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of naming a sprint I would define a clear sprint goal and keep the name of the sprint very simple: &lt;a href=&quot;http://wall-skills.com/2015/sprint-goal-focus-for-the-scrum-team/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://wall-skills.com/2015/sprint-goal-focus-for-the-scrum-team/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2016-03-24T12:17:46.980" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10442" CreationDate="2016-03-24T14:46:05.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Though there is no right or wrong answer to this question, I have found it useful to use the last day of the sprint as the unique identifier for the sprint name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As as example, if a sprint ends on 03/28/2016, I would name the sprint as:&#xA;Sprint 20160328&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found that this works very well for the purposes of:&#xA;(1) giving the sprint a name that provides useful information about the sprint rather then some arbitrary number&#xA;(2) using a date ensures uniqueness within the context of an individual project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I never coach embedding elements of the program or project name in the sprint name itself. Topologically, it's cleaner to let the project and/or program exist at a level well above the work time box label.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22769" LastActivityDate="2016-03-24T14:46:05.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17798" CreationDate="2016-03-24T23:54:17.547" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fix the scope, then fix the price. Update constantly as you progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try the estimate the project in a range according to the rough spects you have. Because they are 'rough' - the cost and time estimate ranges can be relatively far apart. 10k - 20k or 3Q - 4Q of 2016. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use iterations for development. After each iteration you will gain more knowledge about the project, and specs. Any new knowledge that might affect the cost - should be appropriately communicated. Work with the team and update estimates accordingly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Analyze the progress and work left. Determine what is more important - delivering the product or not going over budget. Based on that balance the project out to deliver necessary results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two things should happen during the project, while you gain more knowledge and decrease uncertainty about requirements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You realize that it is not possible to deliver this Scope at this Cost. In which case you request budget increase and get it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cost stays the same, but you balance out the Scope to fit the budget.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile best practices you can use:&#xA;- Iterative approach (work in Sprints);&#xA;- Sprint/Release Planning;&#xA;- Backlog refinement (re-prioritize work each before each Sprint, based on situation on the project). You can use Risk - Value relationship to better prioritise it;&#xA;- Story Point Estimations which over time, will bring you velocity. With that you can work out and predict cost of future items you will work on from backlog. This will help you manage budget;&#xA;- Keep track of any changes, estimate their impact on cost schedule;&#xA;- Make the project as transparent for the Stakeholders as possible. You have to manage it in a way that they will understand &quot;WHY&quot; the project will cost more or take longer, if this will be the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22754" LastActivityDate="2016-03-24T23:54:17.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10442" CreationDate="2016-03-25T09:47:02.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have project divided into Milestones (1,2 ...5), you can name the Sprints inside each milestone to correspond to Milestone your are working on and the # of sprint in that Milestone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example if you are working on Milestone 1 - your sprints can be named Sprint 1.1 ; Sprint 1.2; for Milestone 2 - Sprint 2.1; Sprint 2.2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way you have a reference point to a Milestone and functionality executed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22754" LastActivityDate="2016-03-25T09:47:02.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17835" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17838" CreationDate="2016-03-25T09:50:59.173" Score="8" ViewCount="6303" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are using Jira for agile PM, but are having problems working with &lt;strong&gt;both&lt;/strong&gt; story points &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; sub task hours estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Articles like &lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/308053/remaining-estimate-time-tracking-and-stories.-how-to-apply-time-to-subtasks-during-planning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/agile/jira-agile-user-s-guide/configuring-a-board/configuring-estimation-and-tracking&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; just don't seem to help. The second article has a graphic image which doesn't seem to match the description, so we are quite stuck. I have read through &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/15516/why-use-both-story-points-and-hours&quot;&gt;this excellent description&lt;/a&gt; of why use both, and I am convinced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We want to do story point tracking from a high level point of view or can run just with sub-tasks and track estimates of hours but not both at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- Edit&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason we think we need to do both types of estimation, is that the user stories we have cross over three skill groups of staff and have (e.g.) 8 story points. So in tasks estimated, could be 6 days SQL, 1 day .net, 1 day HTML, or it could be 1 days SQL, 5 days .net, 2 days HTML, but &lt;strong&gt;I won't know until I estimate tasks&lt;/strong&gt;. So from a staff planning point of view I (as the scrum master) want to know that I have the right number of user stories / sub tasks / staff mix for the sprint. I cant do that unless I estimate sub tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or am I missing something?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22766" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2017-07-13T10:00:20.130" Title="Jira story points versus sub task estimation" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17824" CreationDate="2016-03-25T10:48:18.260" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend 1 on 1's with every Team Member. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hear them out. Get closer to understanding what drives them, what they like and don't like regarding the current situation. Find out their expectation of your actions, get some ideas on how would they improve the way the Team works right now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get them on your side. Explain the situation from your point of view, explain what you want to achieve and try to get them signed up to help you.&#xA;Try to create a &quot;working together to achieve something great!&quot; atmosphere in the Team. Try to gain their respect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of developers has become impossible to work with.&#xA;  1 on 1 with her should be a bit different, but with the same approach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understand why is that she behaves this way, and what would change this behaviour. Try to trade off some actions. Agree to try some of her ideas, but get her to agree to change her behaviour in a Team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;End point is- you should find a way to work together. It will not be easy but possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22754" LastActivityDate="2016-03-25T10:48:18.260" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17835" CreationDate="2016-03-25T11:25:05.993" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just do story points! If you already gained information about your velocity you don't need to estimate hours additionally. Usually we estimate only the complexity of the story and in the planning the team gets the chance to reestimate the story after planning all the tasks. The team then commits only those stories they manage to do in the sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- Edit&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our team also consist of backend (Java) and front-end (HTML, CSS, ... ). As in your description the stories always have different relations of both skills. Usually the product owner begins to present the stories starting with the most important. After each presented story we ask the team if they can do more or if we should stop here. When one of the skill groups had enough for the sprint we go through the backlog top down and take the next story the others can do. Hope it helps! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19274" LastEditorUserId="19274" LastEditDate="2016-03-26T09:36:14.310" LastActivityDate="2016-03-26T09:36:14.310" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17835" CreationDate="2016-03-25T11:31:28.207" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason Scrum teams often use story points for estimating is that it provides an effective way to calculate the capacity of a team. They also allow for lightweight forecasting when doing release planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reasons they use time-based estimates on tasks is different. It is so that they can:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spend time breaking work down, which often helps when it comes to implementation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can check that they haven't over-committed in a sprint (it may have looked fine as story points, but the task breakdown may reveal over-commitment)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check that they haven't overloaded a particular discipline (e.g. too much testing work and the team uses dedicated testers)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of Scrum teams start out with this approach as it helps to avoid some of the pitfalls of a team that is new to Scrum. More experienced teams can drop the time-based estimates if they no longer find them of value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-03-25T16:34:54.993" LastActivityDate="2016-03-25T16:34:54.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17800" CreationDate="2016-03-25T13:53:25.300" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No matter what negotiations are you in, consider this when negotiating:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Who makes THE decision?&#xA;Negotiating project budget with Client who approached you first, and with client which you approached and are trying to get project from - are very different negotiation processes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your status vs. your opponent&#xA;If you are a PM that will be negotiating with CEO, you will have a disadvantage in your role. Try to have someone else on your side, like CFO, or CTO or VP of PMO. Someone with more authority to back you up. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Having knowledge about the item/field of negotiations can leverage negotiations. If you think you are losing here, try to take an expert in that field to negotiations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Having unique resources that your opponent needs.&#xA;In order to leverage negotiations, you better have something that your opponent needs - skilled resources, unique product that opponent needs, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22754" LastActivityDate="2016-03-25T13:53:25.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17835" CreationDate="2016-03-25T16:41:52.170" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;+1000 on Daniel's post: Do not use task  hours at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hour estimating is something you'll find a lot of the leading agile experts recommend. And then look that the time stamps. I'm not aware of any leading agile voice that still supports hour tracking of tasks. It's been deemed counter-productive to relativistic estimating of story points. The goal of estimating is not to find out how many hours it will take, it is strictly for the team to decide how much work they can take on in the sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We don't care how long one task, or even on story takes. We care if the team delivers what they estimated they would deliver. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of hours for tasks, the general guideline I coach teams on is &quot;tasks should fit into a day's worth of work.&quot; This allows easier tracking of status since from daily standup to daily standup you should be completing tasks. This is a GENERAL guideline. Also remember that a &quot;day&quot; is really only 4-5 hours of actual work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-03-25T16:41:52.170" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17824" CreationDate="2016-03-25T16:50:23.853" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Retrospectives, retrospectives, retrospectives...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I find a team that is flailing, including flailing at me (been there, done that, got the bloody t-shirt), I will usually start with a simple retrospective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.innovationgames.com/speed-boat/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Speed Boat Retrospective&lt;/a&gt; with the focus question of &quot;What makes the team successful&quot;. This will quickly give us a wealth of stuff to look at. Then, when the issues are on the wall, I go to Dot Voting (usually 3-4 dots, depending on team size, more dots for smaller teams). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Dot Voting sets a rank ordered list of issues to look at. From there I start asking the team to come up with ideas for how to address them. You have to move to facilitation now to get the quiet people engaged, &quot;That was a great insight, bossy person. Quiet person, what do you think?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the team developed the list of issues, it means I'm now helping them solve their problems, not telling them their problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-03-25T16:50:23.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17820" CreationDate="2016-03-26T05:35:50.147" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you over-planning the project and under planning the task process? Could you put in your process documentation that this task always occur after you do xyz? For instance, after every test cycle, there is a test after-action meeting. The test may not always be the same, but the process of testing generally is. That after-action meeting may be included in the test plan and execution process as a mandatory step. Does this make sense? Also, what tier in the project WBS is this repeated task? Depending on how low in the WBS this task is, it could be included in the project management plan if at a high level or the process steps at the low level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22787" LastActivityDate="2016-03-26T05:35:50.147" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17835" CreationDate="2016-03-26T09:29:29.863" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds to me like it's your team organisation which is the root of your problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need to know how much SQL work there is in sprint, I assume it's because if there isn't much, the SQL guy will be twiddling his thumbs and it might seem like you could squeeze in some more SQL tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the problem with this is it mucks up the completion of stories. It's very difficult to say an individual task is done unless you can also say the story is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g., I have a task: write Db for WebPage and Task: write HTML for Webpage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and Feature: Webpage shows the username. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless they work together as a team both the HTML and SQL tasks could be marked done, each programmer assuming that the other task was doing the username feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you get to the end and the feature isn't done but the SQL guy is busy with some other task for a different story and can't jump back to the feature then you end up with lots of open tasks and 'kind of done' features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastEditorDisplayName="user16244" LastEditDate="2017-07-13T10:00:20.130" LastActivityDate="2017-07-13T10:00:20.130" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17847" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-26T13:35:59.673" Score="3" ViewCount="667" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am interested in working towards my PMP certification.  I have a 3 year BSc degree from someplace in Canada which I got back in the mid 1980s.  As I read the requirements, they specify a 4 year Bachelors would be required.  So I guess I am in the other group which needs 7500 hours experience.  Do I read this correctly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I work for a small company.   Our software development projects go on for years. I am project manager on a number of our large projects, but since we are a small company I have to do much of the programming work myself, for example.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I am managing the team of programmers for the entire development phase of the project, but I also do my share of programming.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The development phase might take two years and I am managing this aspect of the project the whole time, interacting with team members, the customers and other stakeholders, etc.  But the actual time spent 'managing' is smaller than the amount of time 'working'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I just take the whole two year term of the project that I managed as applicable experience or do I have to go through my work log and pick out only the moments in time where I was not doing project work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I can only use active management time and not the time for the programming tasks I assigned myself I cannot see that I would ever be able to get 7500 hours management experience while working at a small company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stephen &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22788" LastActivityDate="2016-10-20T10:40:10.560" Title="Requirements for PMI's PMP course" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;pmi&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17847" CreationDate="2016-03-26T14:20:05.080" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/~/media/PDF/Certifications/handbooks/project-management-professional-handbook-pmp.ashx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMP handbook&lt;/a&gt; says that you need the &quot;global equivalent&quot; of a bachelor's degree. PMI can't know or dictate the graduation requirements for higher learning institutions all around the world. I can't imagine they would quibble over one year in a degree that you earned three decades ago, is recognized as a bachelor's degree in Canada, and predates the current PMP requirements by a long time. I don't think you have to worry about reaching 7500 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The handbook also says, &quot;if you worked on multiple projects at one time, all the hours count toward the total.&quot; So the 36 months of experience must not overlap, but the hours can. This might help you if you have worked on more than one project at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be more concerned about accumulating the 35 hours of formal education. These have to be &quot;classroom instruction&quot; but don't have to be PDU's. Self-directed learning like reading books or websites will not be accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13325" LastActivityDate="2016-03-26T14:20:05.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17851" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-27T09:37:19.117" Score="5" ViewCount="62" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always thought that a process has to have an output in terms of a deliverable. However, I found the following in the ISO 12207:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;process outcome&#xA;observable result of the successful achievement of the process purpose&#xA;Note 1 to entry: An outcome statement describes one of the following:&#xA;• production of an artefact;&#xA;• a significant change in state;&#xA;• meeting of specified constraints, e.g., requirements, goals, etc.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be an example of a &quot;change in state&quot; outcome of a process in practice? Whatever it is, would there not usually be a document produced to provide confirmation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22797" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-03-27T21:17:38.353" LastActivityDate="2016-03-27T21:17:38.353" Title="Is it possible to have process outputs that are not products?" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;process-engineering&gt;&lt;deliverables&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17851" CreationDate="2016-03-27T12:29:22.783" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Service and training are two examples. There is a state change-a customer being served and a change in knowledge or skill-without having a product being produced necessarily. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-03-27T12:29:22.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17745" CreationDate="2016-03-27T18:28:07.333" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Coming from the dev side, I know that salespeople promising heaven and earth are a serious problem, especially, when they promise tiny features and gadgets, which have little actual value, but mess deeply with the system's architecture and premises. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprint velocities of teams take some time (many months) to determine, and even then, they are just averages. If you do old fashioned time estimates with an optimistic, average and pessimistic number (e.g.: 2,3,7 days), the pessimistic is often about twice the time and more than the average, but you must take it if you want to make a commitment that has nearly the chance of a Russian roulette headshot to miss the deadline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like either your customers are in a position of power to push your company to very risky or impossible commitments, or your company is too greedy in terms of growth, deliberately promising more than it can handle. In the first case, it is very risky, because the customers may end up not paying the price or even demanding penalties. If the salespeople can't negotiate for reasonable deadlines and sufficiently flexible conditions, the company is doomed. The last may work for a while, but is dangerous, because reputation takes damage, and development may be forced to create technical debt in form of really bad, rushed code, which is impossible to maintain, very difficult to improve and pure gambling on whether it works correctly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't do witchcraft on developers, or make them faster with a whip, their abilities are limited. Perhaps, agility allows you to scale down to a console application with typing commands and parameters, instead of a fancy GUI at the deadline (and perhaps make the rest later), but if it's really impossible, the employees will end up passing the buck to each other for the inevitable disaster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you do, never, really &lt;strong&gt;never&lt;/strong&gt; attempt to just beat down estimates or urge developers to make impossible commitments! Their estimates are serious requirements, and you would urge them to lie about them. This would, in addition, destroy all the predictability gained through the Scrum process. Remember, developers are for software design and programming, not politicans and not to stand up against pressure, so they may possibly give way to pressure and accept a lower estimate, knowing they will never be able to fullfill such a commitment! Everybody knows that the actual work required can't be beaten down with pressure!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22798" LastEditorUserId="22798" LastEditDate="2016-03-27T18:52:39.487" LastActivityDate="2016-03-27T18:52:39.487" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17851" CreationDate="2016-03-27T21:15:04.840" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the production of an artifact is the focal point of a process. Other times, artifacts are a byproduct of the process or they're not created at all. In some cases, it's simply a matter of perspective. For example, is a piece of working code an artifact, a change in product state, or the meeting of a requirement or goal? Pick any three. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While one can certainly point to processes that are arguably free of artifacts or milestones, it's a somewhat definitional exercise. The real point of the text you quoted is to communicate that a process need not produce a concrete deliverable to be considered a process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Changing State&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an agile context, user stories can represent state changes within the iterative development process. A user story generally changes state in several ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A user story conceptually moves from one queue or column to another. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a story may be handed off between development and QA, or&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a feature may be merged into the continuous integration branch.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be tangible outputs involved, the &lt;strong&gt;tracking process itself&lt;/strong&gt; has state-change as its primary output.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A user story changes its status from &lt;em&gt;not done -&gt; done&lt;/em&gt;, or &lt;em&gt;incomplete -&gt; complete&lt;/em&gt; according to the Definition of Done. This is about as pure an example of state change as you are likely to find.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, while a process &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; produce an artifact (e.g. a document, a demo at a Sprint Review, or a user-visible feature within the product), it doesn't &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to produce an artifact to be considered a process. A process may deliver something tangible like a new widget, change the state of something by updating a document or embiggening a whatsit, or it may simply output something intangible like an idea as input to another process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-03-27T21:15:04.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17855" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17869" CreationDate="2016-03-28T05:53:53.540" Score="0" ViewCount="1275" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are the manager of a software development project. One of the team members fails to meet the deadline for the coding and testing of a component. What do you do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22804" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2016-03-28T08:17:09.997" LastActivityDate="2016-03-29T11:13:59.663" Title="Your team member fails to meet the deadline for the coding and testing of a component. What do you do?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;deadline&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17855" CreationDate="2016-03-28T07:48:42.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You get used to it, as it happens all the time. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You start be readjusting the schedule. Then, if needed, you escalate the newer deadline to &lt;em&gt;those who need to know&lt;/em&gt;, so they can adjust their plans and the customer's expectation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the real world you probably have a buffer in the schedule so that the missed deadline doesn't cause major harm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this happens often, then you have to either learn to adjust the estimates this programmer gives you, or else send him to a course for better training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-03-28T07:48:42.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17855" CreationDate="2016-03-28T08:15:22.723" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In classical project management there is only communication. Your project is late not because that one developer, your project is late because of bad planning or risk management. What your stakeholders want you to do in this situation is explaining the situation, the consequences and of course what you do now to keep the postponement as small as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are still things to do support your developer with more developers and create an environment where they can focus on their work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he is basically done there is only honest communication - and don't forget to take responsibility, there is nothing weaker than blaming the developer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look on the root cause of the problem, your complete project depends of planning the wrong or too less people on a specific task. This is not bad project management. In software projects it's normal. On new software components it's simply not possible to plan properly, depending on the complexity of your software. That's why you should think about switching to agile methods like Scrum or Kanban. They deliver a much better way to plan and forecast based on solid statistics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19274" LastActivityDate="2016-03-28T08:15:22.723" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17859" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-28T12:03:39.667" Score="2" ViewCount="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wanting to quickly see everything that has been said regarding a particular task is very common. And often impossible, because both channels and PM contain discussions about multiple tasks. Therefore, not only discussions about a particular task come in pieces, these pieces are mixed with pieces related to other tasks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having one channel per task seems aberrant, but it effectively solves this problem. Has anyone tried something like this? Does it work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22215" LastActivityDate="2016-04-29T23:34:25.603" Title="One channel per task to track all discussions related to particular tasks in Slack: good or bad idea?" Tags="&lt;tracking&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17855" CreationDate="2016-03-28T12:11:42.840" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You manage your variances. Fast track or crash succeeding tasks where you can and what you can afford. And communicate early, honestly, and as much as possible. This is project management. Unless you consistently plan fat and happy, which is not an objective you should have, you will be late as much as you are on time and early. How you manage those unfavorable variances is what makes you a good PM, not that you are never late.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-03-28T12:11:42.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17861" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-28T13:40:13.623" Score="2" ViewCount="167" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the organization I work for we have a HUGE product. It has about ~10 associated scrum teams. We have two types of releases:&#xA;1. The big ones&#xA;2. Service packs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For #1, we have system QA. &#xA;For #2, we have service pack QA. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both test system, that includes areas of other scrum teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am uncomfortable with this approach because then if someone finds something, either it's at 11th hour and we have to run around or they find something but scrum teams are sometimes not aware.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you faced such situation? Did you find a way out or this is the same model that is followed in your organization as well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17131" LastActivityDate="2016-03-29T12:19:22.980" Title="Testing big systems in agile" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17861" CreationDate="2016-03-28T14:27:52.510" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That 1 &amp;amp; 2 exist indicates to me that while your teams are  not agile. You should be producing working software with no further work required to ship at least every 30 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to have all the testing done &lt;strong&gt;before&lt;/strong&gt; you get to  the 11th hour. This  generally means that you need to incorporate your testers into the development teams, and invest heavily in automation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each team should be contributing to the same working increment of the software that is tested on the same cadence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you  don't have buy in organisationally to make that change then you need to build testing into your development teams in your own. At some point, if you build in enough quality, your QA teams will become a cost center that  provides little value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You should be releasing your software much more frequently and ditch the whole idea of service packs.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on frequent working and integrated software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2016-03-28T14:27:52.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17861" CreationDate="2016-03-28T15:26:46.267" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;We face this situation in our AOL Advertising platform today. Like @MrHinsh suggests, the very first thing to do is move all QA into the scrum teams. We are actually in the process of moving all our QA into development roles where they are doing some development and all our developers towards full stack automation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to stop doing big bang releases. Sure you can turn stuff on for the customer in big bangs, it should all have already been running in production though. Code Rots, the minute you stop coding, it moves out of sync with production and every other person coding. So you need to release as quickly as possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the things that are working and what we are doing to move farther down the path of continuous deployment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No code check in without automated unit tests:&lt;/strong&gt; A new test must be written or an existing test updated to check in any code. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Everyone writes tests:&lt;/strong&gt; It's all code, feature or automated test, so everyone writes. QA's role needs to move more towards helping make sure requirements are well written and understood so good tests can be written. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;- Smaller, more frequent deployments:&lt;/strong&gt; If you release 100 features every three months, you have 100 things slamming together all at once. If you deploy 5 features every week, you have only five things breaking. If you deploy a feature every day, there is only one thing that could break at a time. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Important distinction you need to wrap your mind around: &#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Deployed&lt;/strong&gt; - Code it pushed to production, under flags so only development can see it. This allows you to test the code with production, without the customer seeing it. Whenever a user story is done, it should be Deployed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Released&lt;/strong&gt; - This is when you let customers see it. You can keep your Releases to quarterly by keeping things under flags. Or even just have some customers see it while others do not. Code should have already been deployed and tested well before you release. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-03-28T15:26:46.267" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17855" CreationDate="2016-03-28T20:33:01.353" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your success as a PM depends on your ability to create a bond of trust between the team members. Everyone on the team should feel and believe that truth, cooperation, and mutual support are values shared by all on the team. Throwing your tardy team member &quot;under the bus&quot; will destroy that bond. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead I would have a one-on-one with that person to understand what obstacles they faced that prevented them from meeting your expectations. Be willing accept and admit your role in creating those expectations. Recall the original agreement assigning the work in question. Was it &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/12317/how-do-i-elicit-measurable-business-objectives-in-the-real-world/12318#12318&quot;&gt;SMART&lt;/a&gt;? Ask what they thought would help them better deal with the obstacles they encountered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the next stand-up or retrospective meeting, you and the tardy team member state the facts and aforementioned obstacles. Let the needs of the situation speak for themselves without judgement on your part. This should be done in a routine manner at the daily stand-up meeting rather than a special event/flogging. Allow the team to self-organize the recovery plan so the entire team owns the situation, not just you or the tardy member. Set the grounds rules that we will keep the discussion positive and comments brief. Ask all to use &quot;I statements.&quot; This will reduce the projection of judgements and emotions they are moved to share. If team members start blaming, remind them that we all share in the consequences for the situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly I would end with the adage that &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1125/how-to-deliver-bad-news-to-a-project-sponsor&quot;&gt;Bad news never gets better with age&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; If anyone is having trouble at any time, they should speak up immediately so that the team can deal with the situation. The longer problems are hidden, the fewer our options for corrective action, and the more difficult our recovery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you take action without team consensus, the team morale will suffer and your action will appear arbitrary. However, after repeated missed deadlines and efforts to support this person, your team will likely realize that your tardy member is not up to par, and they will &quot;vote them off the island.&quot; With that consensus, your job as PM will be to make it so. Team members may be saddened (or not) the departure, yet they will know that they (and you) have done all that is reasonable to help their former colleague succeed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8524" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2016-03-28T20:38:16.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17866" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-03-29T07:25:56.887" Score="1" ViewCount="306" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are some of the ways I can do stake holder mapping and stake holder management ? &#xA;Although at the moment I am not sure what the end objective is, I am keen to understand the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22811" LastActivityDate="2016-03-29T11:14:23.040" Title="Stake holder mapping and management" Tags="&lt;stakeholders&gt;&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17835" CreationDate="2016-03-29T07:49:50.010" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the case of your team I would say a change to your estimation process is in order. Since you've concluded that you guys are having a hard time making an accurate estimate until you know all the tasks that will be required to fulfil the story, you should come up with them &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you do your estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can do this during your normal sprint planning process, simply describe the story under discussion as completely as possible, perhaps have some quick debate about what the best approach to solving that problem is and then just write down all the tasks (preferably on post-its so you won't need to write them down again later) and base your estimations on the total effort required for those tasks + adequate testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even with this approach, your team should still have a cut-off amount of points where if the estimation is higher than that amount, the story is split into multiple stories. Always try to keep your stories as self-contained as possible while still keeping them easily achievable in a single sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22447" LastActivityDate="2016-03-29T07:49:50.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17855" CreationDate="2016-03-29T11:13:59.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the developer failed to meet deadline - there is a reason behind that. Find out what happen, make sure it will not happen again, or create a contingency plan for when it will happen again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my practice, the best way to approach this - is to establish communication guidance with developers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, i would recommend for developers to give you their estimates for the task they will be working on, or if there is a deadline for the task, ask them to do a review/research for 15-30 mins and either confirm they going to meet the deadline or deny and provide new estimate, based on info they found out from research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the actual execution, Developer should update you if something went wrong (issue occurred, a risk was realized, or dev just understood that this is going to take more time) and he/she will not meet the deadline. Based on the reason, you can try to help him out in many different ways, if necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to avoid situations when you give developer a task with a deadline, and check the task progress only when the deadline comes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also your job as a PM is to support developers through their work and help them do their job at best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22754" LastActivityDate="2016-03-29T11:13:59.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17866" CreationDate="2016-03-29T11:14:23.040" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;On big projects with a multitude of stakeholders, it may be&#xA;hard for the project manager to properly cater to all of the stakeholders.&#xA;Therefore,  it is a must for the project manager to know who the most influential stakeholders are and who is able to provide support on a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the list of typical questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who will have or require direct/indirect involvement?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who has the power to kill the project?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the urgency of the deliverables?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who may require more or less information than others?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should perceive, that not all stakeholders are equal in influence and authority to make decisions in a timely manner. &#xA;Moreover, it is important to keep in mind that stakeholders can change during the life of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stakeholder mapping is most frequently displayed on a grid, comparing&#xA;stakeholders’ power and their level of interest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0DTWG.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0DTWG.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The four cells can be defined as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Manage closely&lt;/strong&gt;: They are the epicentr of your project. These people can&#xA;make or break your project. You must put forth the greatest effort to satisfy&#xA;them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Keep satisfied&lt;/strong&gt;: These people are high-powered, however they are less interested in the project. You must put forth some effort to satisfy&#xA;them but not with excessive detail that can lead to total disinterest.&#xA;They may not even get involved until the end of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Keep informed&lt;/strong&gt;: These are people with limited power but keen interest in the&#xA;project. They can be as an early warning system of approaching problems&#xA;and be able to assist with some technical issues. They are the stakeholders who often provide hidden opportunities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Monitor only&lt;/strong&gt;: This is group of people with limited power. They may not be&#xA;interested in the project unless a disaster occurs. Provide them with some&#xA;information but not with too much detail so that they will become bored&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21640" LastActivityDate="2016-03-29T11:14:23.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17525" CreationDate="2016-03-29T11:59:58.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are asking the schedule to function in a manner inconsistent with its design. The dates are supposed to move. The baseline dates never change so use those fields if you want to see constant dates. Else, use a spreadsheet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-03-29T11:59:58.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17861" CreationDate="2016-03-29T12:19:22.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The goal with Scrum is to have releasable code at the end of each sprint. Now that does not necessarily mean that you have to do a release every sprint. Just that the code you have is &lt;em&gt;potentially releasable&lt;/em&gt;. It could be that your Product Owner does not want to release every sprint, but they should always have the choice available to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be worth considering having a staging environment that is effectively production-ready code. All production releases would take place from this staging environment and the release would involve &lt;em&gt;no additional testing or configuration&lt;/em&gt;. In other words, your staging environment is production ready code that just happens not to be in production yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This staging environment represents the end of a release pipeline and it includes the integrated release code from all of the Scrum teams. Each team tests at the unit level, at the functional level plus they run full integration and regression tests on the main code trunk. This is done in each and every sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is usually impractical to do this using manual testing methods. A better approach is to have automated integration and regression tests that are maintained by all the teams (and run via continuous integration).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may seem like a difficult approach, but it offers the substantial benefit of avoiding discovering bugs at the 11th hour (a problem you mention in your question). You could also run a parallel release pipeline for your service packs, using a separate code branch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would highly recommend you take a look at the book &quot;Continuous Deliver&quot; by Jez Humble and David Farley for a detailed description of this kind of setup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-03-29T12:19:22.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17820" CreationDate="2016-03-29T15:14:07.863" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;MS-Project does not have the functionality you require, unfortunately. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nor are they the same tasks just because they deliver the same logical outcomes (tested something) using the same logical process (test something). You require a level of abstraction that does not exist in the product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just stick with manual tasks, the overhead to your effort and maintenance is minimal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2016-03-29T15:14:07.863" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17820" CreationDate="2016-03-29T16:12:20.517" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've done something similar by referencing external projects.  I have repetitive tasks that have one fixed deadline and a dozen other events that reference that deadline directly or indirectly (Task 1 must complete on date X; task 2 must begin 10 days after X, task 3 must complete 13 days before X, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I create a template for the tasks with all the right relationships and then I copy the template make appropriate adjustments and then &quot;include&quot; the template in my project plan. &#xA;If you can find the API for &quot;include&quot; you might be able to do what you want. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2016-03-29T16:12:20.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17875" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17879" CreationDate="2016-03-29T19:18:46.210" Score="2" ViewCount="109" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team currently uses zenhub, and are looking for something to better fit our needs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Current Needs ( Most are met by zenhub )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Must be able to paste image from clipboard into ticket ( having to upload an image is unacceptable )&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Muliple swimplanes ( Main reason I want to get away from zenhub )&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A Customer Portal that they can submit tickets and view the status of there tickets, or tickets tied to there customer ( or some other way to limit so one customer can not view another one's tickets )&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would be nice to have, but not a deal breaker&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Github intigration ( close tickets, move column ext, from git commit )&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an api we can hook into&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22819" LastActivityDate="2016-03-31T15:00:43.783" Title="Kanban / Scrum software" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-03-31T17:42:49.200" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17877" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17878" CreationDate="2016-03-30T07:14:23.313" Score="4" ViewCount="2455" Body="&lt;p&gt;In ITIL&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An &lt;code&gt;SLA&lt;/code&gt; is a Service Level Agreement (potentially a legal contract)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An &lt;code&gt;SLO&lt;/code&gt; is a Service Level Objective (and thus could be a KPI)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An &lt;code&gt;SLR&lt;/code&gt; is a Service Level Requirement (a clause in an SLA? a required level for an SLO?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But what does &lt;code&gt;SLE&lt;/code&gt; stand for?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the context, it looks like it is a &lt;em&gt;soft&lt;/em&gt; version of an SLA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22825" LastEditorUserId="22825" LastEditDate="2016-03-30T08:11:07.237" LastActivityDate="2016-03-30T08:16:15.207" Title="What does SLE stand for in ITIL?" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;&lt;customer-service&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17877" CreationDate="2016-03-30T08:16:15.207" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seems to be &lt;code&gt;Service Level Expectation&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informationweek.com/service-level-agreements-come-of-age/d/d-id/1074371?&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;an article in Information Week&lt;/a&gt; titled &lt;em&gt;Service-Level Agreements Come Of Age&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When you think of SLAs, you might also think of penalties, contract termination, &quot;free&quot; services, and other woes that all too often were part of doing business with Internet service providers. It's little wonder that some organizations, attempting to avoid negative connotations, prefer to use the terms &lt;strong&gt;SLE&lt;/strong&gt; (service-level expectation) or SLG (service-level goal).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-03-30T08:16:15.207" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17875" CreationDate="2016-03-31T15:00:43.783" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;what kind of budget do you have?  I am not aware of any free solutions that have all the features you like.  However, I can tell you I have used a couple of free solutions in my job which are quite good and worth a look:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;kanbanflow.com (my fave chanson solution)&#xA;Pivotal Tracker (awesome mobile app to go with it)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a budget, the best expensive solution I have found is Jira.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20573" LastActivityDate="2016-03-31T15:00:43.783" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17880" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17881" CreationDate="2016-03-31T18:12:51.193" Score="0" ViewCount="184" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to PMBOK, SPI&gt;1 means ahead of schedule, SPI=1 means on schedule, and SPI&amp;lt;1 means behind schedule. But I was looking on some projects on the Internet and they were indeed on schedule, but their SPI was lower than 1. How is that possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a PM Student, not profissional yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22572" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T12:50:31.433" Title="How can a given project have SPI lower than 1 and still be on schedule?" Tags="&lt;pmbok&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17880" CreationDate="2016-03-31T20:10:21.570" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not possible.  Folks are reporting on time and ignoring the metrics because they can't cope with bad news. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thinking about this a little more, I'd like to add this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SPI, as with the other EV indices, are as the name suggests: indicators.  As with all predictors, EV has predictive validity issues, i.e., nothing is 100% perfect.  So while an SPI can show under performance, there may be other indicators that suggest better performance and, putting them all together, you would draw your conclusion of where you are in your schedule.  You also have to remember that SPI is a lagging indicator.  That plays into your analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, if I had an SPI that was less than zero, I'd be hard pressed to conclude that I am on time except if I lost confidence in the EV reporting.  But that would also mean that I am flying blind with all the risks therein.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2016-04-04T12:50:31.433" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T12:50:31.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17880" CreationDate="2016-03-31T22:24:36.850" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;SPI = EV/PV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can only assume here without reference to the case you saw.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can assume a few things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1: They may be referring to a sprint(s) in the over all project being ahead of schedule (If the project has iterative components.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2: They are reporting incorrectly, taking into account only project components that the stakeholders really care about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3: Many more possibilities without knowing more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you provide reference to where you saw this project case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22833" LastActivityDate="2016-03-31T22:24:36.850" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17883" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17889" CreationDate="2016-04-01T02:02:41.640" Score="6" ViewCount="247" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum Review Meetings in theory look good on paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in real world , do this review meetings yield anything positive continuously ? Or people just go through the motions ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently in a team , where we just go through the motions and there is no feedback . I am new to Scrum and wonder if this is the norm . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might be opinion based/broad but i would like to know about real world experiences of other scrum teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22679" LastActivityDate="2016-04-01T17:31:19.493" Title="Scrum Review Meetings - Real World" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17883" CreationDate="2016-04-01T04:43:30.153" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you speaking specifically of the Sprint Review/ Demo meeting? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This meeting is one of the meetings that so very often goes off the rails. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The first flaw is many assume this is the meeting where the product owner accepts the work. If the PO doesn't accept the work until the Review, then if the story fails acceptance, it isn't done. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The next flaw is not having the right audience. The Sprint Review should have an open attendance. In specific you want your stakeholders, customers to be there. These are the people you want to be talking to and presenting to. You want to collect their feedback so you can adapt in the next sprint. If the stakeholders don't see the work until the very end, then it's little better than waterfall. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Next is the mindset of the meeting. Think of the Sprint Demo as a technical retrospective of the work done and not done in the last sprint. You want to talk about failures and why they happened. You want to talk about and demonstrate successes. The failures are important because stakeholders can often help with the cause of failures. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;And a last common issue is getting people to show up because they are &quot;too busy&quot;. If you have a number of teams doing scrum, band together and hold a &quot;demo time&quot; in a common area. Think of it like a science fair for code. Teams setup at tables and the stakeholders can walk around seeing each teams work product. Serve snacks and beer and turn it into a celebration. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-04-01T04:43:30.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17885" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17888" CreationDate="2016-04-01T05:26:47.913" Score="27" ViewCount="11121" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How many project managers are needed to change a lightbulb?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. Guys, it is April Fool's Day, so don't be so serious with &quot;off-topic&quot; ;-) I will delete this question tomorrow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2016-04-05T07:52:31.623" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T07:52:31.623" Title="How many project managers are needed to change a lightbulb?" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;april-1&gt;" AnswerCount="13" CommentCount="16" FavoriteCount="10" ClosedDate="2016-04-04T07:12:33.030" CommunityOwnedDate="2016-04-14T07:23:23.850" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17885" CreationDate="2016-04-01T07:55:11.223" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;None. That's an infrastructure problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2016-04-01T07:55:11.223" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2016-04-14T07:23:23.850" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17885" CreationDate="2016-04-01T08:51:09.477" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;1 PM; 1 electrician; 3 organizational change management consultants; 2 business process consultants; 1 safety engineer; 1 security consultant; 1 PMA; 1.5 risk management consultants; 2 earned value consultants; 1 scheduler; 4 ladders; 3 light bulbs (contingency).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edited to reflect ladder contingency from Loetn.  :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2016-04-01T10:55:28.430" LastActivityDate="2016-04-01T10:55:28.430" CommentCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2016-04-14T07:23:23.850" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17885" CreationDate="2016-04-01T11:36:13.920" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no change request for the prior lightbulb; the change from &quot;lit&quot; to &quot;dark&quot; was not authorized.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tasked the team from &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg&quot;&gt;seven parallel lines&lt;/a&gt; to perform an root cause analysis and produce an Ishikawa diagram.  They have had to replace the lead tech who apparently tried to assault the project manager with a chair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A second team has been authorized to review our process diagrams to determine who authorized the light bulb to go dark. They have outlined a comprehensive strategy that will incorporate both a historical analysis of the light/dark status of similar light bulbs, consultation with internal and external industry experts on lightbulb behavior and a validation of the Mean Time Between Failure(MTBF) ratings of the light bulbs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A third team has begun an Analysis of Alternatives for the replacement light bulb; they report that by the end of the week they will have identified the relative power and influence of the Compact Florescent lobby and the LED lobby. Although there is general recognition of the superior energy consumption profile of the LED, there have been some concerns about the ability of the supply chain to support our goals for sustainability and the committee on empowering the differently abled has requested a study of the impact of the blue tint of the LED's on the ability of potential colorblind employees. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A fourth team proactively began working on the SWOT analysis required for the charter which will authorize a project manager who will have the authority to produce the rest of the project documentation and to request that line management assign staff with the requisite technical skills needed to execute the resulting work package(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A fifth team has also proactively loaded a preliminary risk registry with some very pertinent questions about the required ladder. There appears to be some very good research that will help to quantify the relationship between the difference between the optimal ladder size and the actual ladder size on the probability and severity of resulting injuries.  While I am pleased that they were proactive about the task, they are being counselled because the preliminary risk registry is not based on the authorized Organizational Process Assets. Once the risk registry has been proven to be aligned with organizational best practices, the team will return to developing risk triggers and mitigation plans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A sixth team is charged with an analysis of the resources used in this project, and the development of an equivalency table that will enable us to evaluate each employee on the basis of Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities, and use those evaluations to develop a unit of measurement the &quot;project manager equivalent(PME)&quot; which can be used to support the Key Performance Indicator. The early estimates are that the answer will be in the 7.5 to 13.2 deca PME.  The manager has already begun the process of submitting the PME to the international standards organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had intended the seventh team (supply chain management), to begin work yesterday. They reported a delay because they had to run down to the 7-11 to buy a light bulb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a final note I'd like to find who underlined the words &quot;The Project Manager&quot; in my PMBOK and wrote &quot;singular noun marker; the answer is 'one'&quot; in my PMBOK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2016-04-01T14:26:23.270" LastActivityDate="2016-04-01T14:26:23.270" CommentCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2016-04-14T07:23:23.850" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17883" CreationDate="2016-04-01T12:16:43.147" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with most things in Scrum, if it doesn't &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; right then generally something isn't right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A key principle in Scrum is responding to change and focusing on delivering real business value rather than just turning out code. The Sprint Review is critical for this process as it is the opportunity for a wider audience to provide their feedback. The team talks continuously with the Product Owner throughout the sprint, but many stakeholders don't have the time available to do this. So they love the opportunity of the Sprint Review to really engage with the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master I emphasise to my teams that they need to go in to Sprint Reviews with the attitude of looking for feedback rather than demonstrating progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example rather than saying&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;This is what we did this sprint&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I much prefer a team to say &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We added a new search function on the home page. What do you think of the positioning? There was a lot of debate in the team about whether we should pre-load it with the last search. What are your thoughts on this?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One good trick is to use a Sprint Review rehearsal to identify possible discussion points. As a Scrum Master I would constantly interrupt a rehearsal with questions. Why did you do that? What is that for? Couldn't you have done that differently? Where there are doubts or differences of opinion I make a note and suggest that the team raises the point in the Sprint Review. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another piece of advice is to not expect the Sprint Review to follow a rigid structure. Anticipate that there will be feedback and encourage it. If the stakeholders detect a reluctance to accept feedback they will quickly switch off. Say, for example, a stakeholder gives some feedback and a discussion starts. Let that discussion run it's natural course. Don't interrupt and say there is not enough time due to more things you want to show.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you constantly fail to get good feedback at the Sprint Review then it is worth questioning who is attending. &lt;a href=&quot;http://cmforagile.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/empty-customer-chairs-illustrating.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;I have seen one practice where a team will reserve 3 chairs for customers and end-users&lt;/a&gt;. If these people do not attend the Sprint Review then the chairs are empty. This reminds the team that they are missing out on important feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-04-01T17:31:19.493" LastActivityDate="2016-04-01T17:31:19.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17885" CreationDate="2016-04-01T13:22:02.763" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only thing that is known is that the email chain letter grows exponentially the more people involved and the light bulb rarely gets changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22857" LastActivityDate="2016-04-01T13:22:02.763" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2016-04-14T07:23:23.850" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17885" CreationDate="2016-04-01T15:18:22.537" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's call a meeting to introduce the project to all affected department leads, discuss objectives and answer any questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22868" LastActivityDate="2016-04-01T15:18:22.537" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2016-04-14T07:23:23.850" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17893" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-01T15:52:10.523" Score="1" ViewCount="77" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to identify risks from 100 case studies of past construction projects. What the most relevant documents that I need to consider that would save my time.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you in advance,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mustafa&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22870" LastActivityDate="2016-06-08T11:16:00.863" Title="Identify risks from 100 case studies" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;risk&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-06-18T21:18:50.013" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17885" CreationDate="2016-04-01T17:03:58.067" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;No matter how many Project Managers it takes, by the time the light bulb has been changed, Product Management will have decided they wanted a candle instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-04-01T17:03:58.067" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2016-04-14T07:23:23.850" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17895" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-01T17:41:36.310" Score="1" ViewCount="392" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to figure out the best method to address this issue. We have a pool of resources that work on projects, BAU, and production support. PMs utilize these resources in an agile methodology and report time in JIRA on their tickets for product features. The problem is that I need to report these resources' time up to Corporate using MS Project Server.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project schedules are difficult to maintain because resources change in and out of tickets throughout the project, or a resource may contact a PM to say they worked on their project but didn't see a line item to report their time. The PMs go in, create the task, request hours needed at a t-shirt size (which could change).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I create a standard process and/or procedures and some type of project schedule to address reporting work, resources, and budget on an ever-changing project, with a process that allows me to adjust resources on the fly whether daily, weekly, or hourly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22875" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-04-03T23:05:44.367" LastActivityDate="2016-07-02T23:54:50.857" Title="How can our chaotic JIRA process be used to report resource allocation using MS Project Server?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;timekeeping&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17885" CreationDate="2016-04-01T18:31:25.313" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is to get to the other side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22877" LastActivityDate="2016-04-01T18:31:25.313" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2016-04-14T07:23:23.850" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17885" CreationDate="2016-04-01T18:39:19.350" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;None - project managers are always in the dark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22878" LastActivityDate="2016-04-01T18:39:19.350" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2016-04-14T07:23:23.850" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17885" CreationDate="2016-04-01T19:22:15.647" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not on PMs, but the FreeBSD version has always been amusing:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/funnies.html#idp64889168&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/funnies.html#idp64889168&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22879" LastActivityDate="2016-04-01T19:22:15.647" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2016-04-14T07:23:23.850" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17899" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-01T19:34:16.547" Score="2" ViewCount="2273" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use JIRA's Scrum boards. As tickets are added into the Active Sprint, each ticket is assigned to a developer with a Status = &quot;Open&quot;. The developer will then move it into &quot;In Progress&quot; to start work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once a ticket is ready to be reviewed by the Reporter (e.g. project manager, etc), the developer will change the Status to &quot;Ready for Review&quot;, &lt;strong&gt;but&lt;/strong&gt; keep the Assignee to himself/herself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point it time, should the ticket Assignee change to reflect the person that has to act on it next?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22880" LastActivityDate="2016-09-20T09:20:49.813" Title="How should I handle Assignee for a JIRA ticket as Status changes?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17893" CreationDate="2016-04-01T19:44:36.953" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not in construction but here's what I would suspect:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Risk and Issue Log&#xA;Change Log&#xA;Contract Performance Reports&#xA;Quality Surveillance Reports&#xA;Audit Findings&#xA;Engineering Reports&#xA;Architecture Reports&#xA;Local Inspections Findings&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and finally Lessons Learned or whatever the equivalent is in this industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="10510" LastEditDate="2016-04-09T09:29:37.550" LastActivityDate="2016-04-09T09:29:37.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17895" CreationDate="2016-04-01T20:06:33.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK, a few suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is designed to work with dedicated teams with a known velocity. This makes it easier to predict the capacity of the team in each sprint and hence makes it easier to plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally a Scrum team will work on one thing at a time, but in your situation it may be necessary to have them work on a mixture of project/BAU/support. Some Scrum teams will dedicate a percentage of their capacity to BAU/support. For example, they may say 20% of the capacity of the team will be available for BAU/support and the rest will be spent on project work. If you do this it becomes easier to plan the projects. Say you have a team with 5 members. In each sprint you can have one team member dedicated to BAU/support, leaving the remaining 4 members to do project work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To successfully use Scrum you do need some requirements stability. A Scrum team has stability during a sprint and then accepts change (i.e. new work, changes to priorities, etc) at the sprint boundaries. If in your organisation things change very rapidly then you could consider a short sprint duration, say of 1 week. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is not possible to get requirements stability even for a week then you might want to consider using Kanban instead. This is a continual flow of work that is tracked on a task board rather than working in fixed-length sprints. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other thing worth considering is allowing team members to create their own tasks in JIRA. That way they do not have to continually ask the Project Managers to do this for them. It is possible to configure JIRA so that all new tasks/issues generate an alert email to a given role. You could configure it so that the Project Managers are notified using this approach when new tasks/issues are added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-04-01T20:06:33.693" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17899" CreationDate="2016-04-01T20:20:35.353" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A common practice is to have the assignee reflect the person who is working on the issue. This is done for several reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is easy to work out who is working on a ticket by checking the assignee field&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is easier to send out notifications (e.g. in JIRA a user recieves a notification when an issue is assigned to them in the default notification scheme).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The assignee can log time to the issue&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth noting that issues contain a history of who has worked on them. So, if in your situation the reporter wanted to assign the issue back to the developer they could check the history to find out who did the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively you could consider adding a custom field called something like 'developer name'. The developer would put there name in this field before assigning the ticket back to the reporter. Then it would be even simpler for the reporter to know who did the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-04-01T20:20:35.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17885" CreationDate="2016-04-01T20:46:39.200" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;it doesn't matter because  by the end of project, there will be a flashlight with a  fire pit installed instead and the changing of the light bulb will be scheduled as a phase two initiative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22881" LastActivityDate="2016-04-01T20:46:39.200" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2016-04-14T07:23:23.850" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17885" CreationDate="2016-04-01T21:40:07.927" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless the light bulb was to be changed as part of a planned upgrade from incandescent to fluorescent, then it's a BAU issue and not a project. Yes, I know LEDs are the way forward, but we prefer to avoid being at the leading edge so will wait at least 4 generations before we trust that new-fangled technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2016-04-01T21:40:07.927" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2016-04-14T07:23:23.850" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17885" CreationDate="2016-04-01T21:43:44.230" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Practicably infinitely many.  The more basic question might be who, chosen or appointed how, is supposed to safeguard the replacement light bulb(s) against such untoward eventualities as would occur were each or all dropped, stepped on, or otherwise broken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond the project managers and their staffs and accountants, and beyond their attorneys and their own staffs and accountants, and the accountants' own staffs, we have the minor matters of the light bulb and ladder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It becomes necessary, of course, to interject the Federal and State (or other comparable jurisdictional) requirements for formal environmental impact analysis, and accordingly a Lead Agency.  The light bulb and ladder embody consumptions of natural resources, as well as infrastructures for their manufacture, transportation, wholesale and retail sale, and contributions to tax coffers.  The changes in electromagnetic flux affect more than negligibly the visibility of the work environs and user environs, and the entropy.  At greater than negligible risk of accidents in darkness or in unaccustomed bright or hot radiomagnetic flux, or even in the event of light bulb breakage under any of diverse circumstances, the entire crew of crews might well require summary transport to hospitals large and near enough to respond responsibly to their sudden emergency needs en masse, in concert, with predictable stresses upon transportation infrastructure, hospital staffing on duty or in reserve for such eventualities, and, of course, upon police.  An electrical malfunction would further stress firefighting equipment and staffs.  There would be an open probabilities associated with providing and manning ambulances, and with exposures to disease borne either by one or more victims to hospitals, or instead from hospitals' resident immune pathogens to such one or more arriving victims, along with their ambulance staffs, hospital staffs, attorneys and loved ones visiting them, and several other parameters which in interests of brevity we need not yet list.  In the event that participants, individually or as a class, were to bring suit over injuries, further stress upon infrastructures would ensue in the Federal, State, County (or similar), and City court systems and court houses, ranging from traffic to staff.  Stresses would affect the Legislative Branch, the Executive Branch, and the Judicial Branch of each tier of government.  Even stress upon the Fourth Estate would be reasonably expected, over initial selection of Lead Agency as well as over its decision, with similar stresses upon infrastructures of transportation, hospitals, and, of course, police and firefighters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even one challenge sounding in mandamus or prohibition in a court of competent jurisdiction in order to halt the proposed change in light bulb would surely speak to failures to respect natural resources as well as infrastructures, or if instead in order to impel the proposed change in light bulb would surely speak to failures to respect individual and public health and safety, either way to the everlasting chagrin of the decision makers in the Lead Agency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, the simpler approach would seem to be demolishing and replacing the entire building, as fewer project managers and others would be required for that than for changing the light bulb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22882" LastActivityDate="2016-04-01T21:43:44.230" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2016-04-14T07:23:23.850" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17906" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-01T22:05:28.087" Score="0" ViewCount="1501" Body="&lt;p&gt;What would be a good job title of the person who is typically tasked to run and manage a PMO?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22883" LastEditorUserId="22883" LastEditDate="2016-04-04T14:43:35.510" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T14:43:35.510" Title="What should the job title be of the person who runs a Project Management Office?" Tags="&lt;roles&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;&lt;pmo&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2016-04-18T14:29:30.840" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17885" CreationDate="2016-04-01T22:20:52.950" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Already answered: the key is that project managers are only one part of the equation.  ;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SK5cT.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SK5cT.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;funny image&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22884" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2016-04-03T10:03:45.873" LastActivityDate="2016-04-03T10:03:45.873" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2016-04-14T07:23:23.850" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12159" CreationDate="2016-04-03T16:25:49.213" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMHO, the key difference is the purpose: &lt;em&gt;Portfolio&lt;/em&gt; defines common constraints (how many projects the organization can run concurrently), and &lt;em&gt;Program&lt;/em&gt; defines common change vectors for a group of projects (what the organization needs to do for a particular goal).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22921" LastActivityDate="2016-04-03T16:25:49.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17913" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-03T20:04:32.113" Score="4" ViewCount="263" Body="&lt;p&gt;There were ISO 9001 (and adapted version for IT TickIT), CMMI - capability maturity model, Six Sigma, IEEE software development standards and so on. All that was intended for software quality management. What is left from this and what is being applied from this in today (as of 2016)? Maybe there is some good reference, practice report, review about the current situation in industry and the recommended best practices from the scientists?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that agile approach is used widely and there are no predefined standards except for team approved methdologies and practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22925" LastActivityDate="2020-03-11T09:18:13.853" Title="What quality management frameworks are used (appropriate) today - especially in software development?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2020-03-11T09:37:43.087" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17914" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17919" CreationDate="2016-04-03T20:09:48.700" Score="1" ViewCount="121" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a student developer team leading a comparatively small project with no experience in management. My team consists of a dozen students with little experience in development and little to no experience in management. So my questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What methodology is suitable for a team like this, Agile or Scrum, or something else?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What management tool should I use? Since we are students, something free would be preferable. Is Trello ok to start with?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What other pieces of advice can you give me?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22924" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T08:06:30.770" Title="Advice for developer team leading his first project" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-04-11T05:50:26.657" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17914" CreationDate="2016-04-03T21:22:05.577" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you have no experience, don't try to use complex methodologies or management tools. Otherwise, you can never finish your small project because of tons of new information and techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have no time to doing SCRUM appropriately, I suppose. So, use Agile principles and choose several techniques like pair programming (can be done remotely with tools like ScreenHero), iterations (sprints), continuous integration. After you feel comfortable with it - get another 1-2 techniques and so on. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Trello will be good start point. Don't forget to use some services to host and share your code (like GitHub/Bitbucket).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to complete small tasks frequently, instead of fighting with huge task. It is useful for many reasons like motivation, education, early feedback on the status of the project etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22926" LastActivityDate="2016-04-03T21:22:05.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17899" CreationDate="2016-04-03T21:53:23.033" Score="2" Body="&lt;h1&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once a ticket is ready to be reviewed by the Reporter (e.g. project manager, etc), the developer will change the Status to &quot;Ready for Review&quot;, but keep the Assignee to himself/herself...At this point it time, should the ticket Assignee change to reflect the person that has to act on it next?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no universally-correct answer to this question. However, in my experience there are two common workflows to consider: &lt;strong&gt;ticket-owner&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;task-performer&lt;/strong&gt;. Which one will work best for you will depend on your organizational structure, team culture, and the project's communications plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;&quot;Ticket Owner&quot; Workflow&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This workflow is based on the idea that a ticket has an owner who is responsible for shepherding it through your process. JIRA is somewhat limited in its ability to reflect collective or collaborative ownership of tickets. While it's technically feasible (albeit inconvenient) to assign tickets to a group, none of my enterprise clients ever do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, the ticket owner will often use the &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/conf54/confluence-user-s-guide/sharing-content/using-mentions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mention&lt;/a&gt; features in ticket comments to engage specific task performers. For example, if the ticket is assigned to Bob, he might change the status to &quot;Ready for Review&quot; and then add a comment to the ticket like the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[@alice] Please review feature foo by Friday, and let me know if solves the embiggening issue described in the ticket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will notify Alice that she has something to do, and she can likewise reply in the comments as well when the review is done, or when she needs help or clarification. This fosters communication and collaboration, despite the assignee field itself not being a particularly agile way to denote team (rather than individual) ownership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;&quot;Task Performer&quot; Workflows&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task performer workflows are composed of either hand-offs or subtasks. These are less agile workflows, in my opinion, but they can work well when the goal is to monitor or track who is doing what, rather than focusing on collaboration. The main downside to both of these approaches is the reliance on push queues rather than pull queues, which makes it harder to manage work-in-progress limits or accurately estimate workloads in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Assginee Hand-Offs&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this workflow, work is handed off to other people by explicitly assigning them to the ticket. For example, once Bob has embiggened the widget, he can then assign the ticket to Alice to for review. When Alice is done with her review, she can assign the task back to Bob, or to whoever is responsible for the next step in the ticket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Subtask Assignments&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of changing the person assigned to a ticket, a task or story owner may create subtasks and assign them to specific task performers. However, this workflow is less flexible than either mentions or assignee hand-offs because you can't create subtasks of subtasks in JIRA, and the additional task management creates additional process overhead that can quickly swamp small or fast-moving tasks. Also, the very act of &lt;em&gt;assigning&lt;/em&gt; subtasks to people rather than &lt;em&gt;collaborating&lt;/em&gt; with them is a project smell that whiffs of command-and-control rather than agility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the subtask workflow has a few benefits within JIRA. Individual steps become trackable as first-class items on the Kanban board, and it can help decompose larger tickets into items which are either &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;not-done&lt;/em&gt; in a more visible way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-04-03T21:53:23.033" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17906" CreationDate="2016-04-03T22:27:09.887" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Good Job Titles &lt;em&gt;Describe&lt;/em&gt; Officeholders' Roles&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a job title as an answer in both questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The underlying problem is that you're assuming there's a canonical answer to your questions about organizational structure and job titles. There isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, you should focus on describing the role. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_office&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;According to Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The PMO strives to standardize and introduce economies of repetition in the execution of projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What this actually means within the context of any given organization will vary. You can spoon around titles as you please. The important thing about titles isn't what you call something; what matters is that the title &lt;em&gt;communicates&lt;/em&gt; effectively about the named role. As long as the titles are meaningful within your organization, and serve as a useful shorthand to describe the scope of the PMO's services within your company, that's all that matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said all that, if your PMO is a one-man operation, the title of &quot;PMO Facilitator&quot; suggests itself. You are essentially describing a process coach or facilitator role, but one with very limited authority. Calling this person a facilitator clearly communicates the scope of the role without implying an executive or managerial function that hasn't been formally delegated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your best bet is to meet with the stakeholders to whom the PMO reports, and ask them to describe the role of the PMO as they see it. If all the stakeholders can agree on what the role is, they can then collectively agree on the appropriate title to describe that role succinctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-04-03T22:36:24.243" LastActivityDate="2016-04-03T22:36:24.243" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17895" CreationDate="2016-04-03T22:56:54.110" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are struggling because your JIRA ticketing is not aligned with your real-world process. In addition, you are trying to make your ticketing system your source of truth for time reporting into a separate system, which introduces a (possibly unnecessary) layer of indirection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long-term, you should fix your process so that the tools you're using are aligned with your real-world workflows. Shorter term, you should use the available features of your tools to capture time data directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;(Ab)using JIRA Epics&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use the &quot;Log Work&quot; function of JIRA to track hours spent on tickets. If your process is highly chaotic, and the goal is to track time spent rather than use JIRA to track the progress or completion of deliverables, then just create some high-level tickets (e.g. Epics) which can be used as per-project bucket for resources to allocate their time to. This is clearly not &lt;em&gt;The Right Thing to Do&amp;reg;&lt;/em&gt;, but may be useful in a pragmatic sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;JIRA Plugins&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;JIRA has some limited built-in time reporting, but you may also want to look at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/search?q=time%20tracking&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;variety of plugins&lt;/a&gt; available for this type of functionality. Whether any of them is suitable for your use case is highly subjective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;MS Project Server&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, consider that you are not locked into time reporting within JIRA. You might choose to use JIRA for ticketing, and use MS Project Server with some per-project buckets to track time. Since you have to report the aggregates in MS Project anyway, making it your &quot;source of truth&quot; for time reporting just makes sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-04-03T22:56:54.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17914" CreationDate="2016-04-04T08:06:30.770" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What other pieces of advice can you give me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Before you start &lt;i&gt;managing&lt;/i&gt;:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a clear definition of what you are trying to accomplish. (Specs).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Break down the project into manageable milestones that can be tested and delivered. (Your roadmap.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a clear list of tasks and who will do them. (This will also give you a sense of schedule.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure you have a &lt;em&gt;bug tracking&lt;/em&gt; system and a &lt;em&gt;software repository&lt;/em&gt; (like SVN or GitHub or similar.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure you have a &lt;em&gt;tester&lt;/em&gt; who can start by reviewing the specs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Every day:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Review your original list of tasks, as well as action items from meetings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Review the bug list and assign important bugs and close irrelevant ones.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check that code is being checked into the &lt;em&gt;software repository&lt;/em&gt; and that it compiles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure  everybody knows what they are supposed to be doing. Find out what bothers them from getting their job done and take care of it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Don't:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't have meetings that don't have a clear agenda and purpose.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't let meetings drift off the agenda. You can always call a second meeting for right after the first one with the new agenda.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T08:06:30.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17556" CreationDate="2016-04-04T11:02:08.073" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quite a lot of PM software can do it, I suppose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. Redmine do it with &quot;Blocks&quot; and &quot;Blocked by&quot; relation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;JIRA do it in another way, as mentioned @Venture2099.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I advice you to choose several popular software/services and check them for compliance with your needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22926" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T11:02:08.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17922" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-04T11:18:43.037" Score="6" ViewCount="263" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my &lt;a href=&quot;http://expertpjm.blogspot.co.il/2011/07/quick-small-change.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt; I assert that (in software projects) &lt;em&gt;the quick, small change does not exist&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's define &lt;em&gt;the quick, small change&lt;/em&gt; as a 30-second task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take a simple task: Deleting the &lt;em&gt;extra period at the end of a sentence&lt;/em&gt;, or changing the hue or text size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is that a big deal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is: the amount of work the software engineer has to do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She had to:&lt;br/&gt; read the Change Request, &lt;br/&gt;find the correct file, &lt;br/&gt;check-out the latest revision from the Revision Control, &lt;br/&gt;make the change, &lt;br/&gt;do a Diff on the file to ensure nothing else accidentally was changed, &lt;br/&gt;and then Check it back into the Version Control and compile. &lt;br/&gt;She then had to assign the Change Request ticket to QA to be tested and the Automated Scripts updated. &lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;By now she has completely forgotten what she was working on, and will have to get back into her original project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How is a PjM to decide when to sneak in a &lt;em&gt;quick, small change&lt;/em&gt;, and when to push it through the official procedures for change?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Or should it be an inviolate rule that no &lt;em&gt;quick, small changes&lt;/em&gt;, not matter what?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/17145/4384&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; deals with the question if you are using Agile, I'm wondering if people have other opinions for non-Agile projects for which no &lt;em&gt;stories&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;tickets&lt;/em&gt; are going to be created for tiny tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2016-04-06T11:14:12.670" Title="How to decide if a &quot;quick, small change&quot; should be implemented?" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17923" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17928" CreationDate="2016-04-04T11:42:36.247" Score="4" ViewCount="381" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am the PM of a small team of 6 programmers, recently we are trying to go more agile by including in our workflow some principles or techniques of XP, scrum, scrumban and lean. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A very important tool is our kanban, currently we are using github+zenhub for that. Zenhub provides a simple and customizable kanban(similar to trello) fully integrated into github issues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our current setup looks like this.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cMVsR.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cMVsR.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is some kind of combination of Taskboard Kanban and User story Kanban. But still where the 2,3 column are managed by the PO and PM while the last 3 columns are managed by the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that we have this mixtures of user stories and tasks, and I wonder what’s the typical approach to organize them. Some tasks are part of user stories, while others (non-functional features, chores and refactors) are not. Should they be part of the backlog? How would you improve this kanban?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22806" LastActivityDate="2017-10-30T12:06:37.243" Title="Any ideas for mixing a kanban with taskboards" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;&lt;lean&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17922" CreationDate="2016-04-04T12:27:43.000" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am assuming that this question is describing a &quot;change&quot; that is implemented bypassing a controlled change process.  If true, then I would agree there is no such thing as a small, quick change.  The issues of adopting the alternate point of view are many:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many small, quick changes equal a few large slow changes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The lengthy negotiations of what constitutes small will be entered into many times during the course of the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even if the definition of small and quick is agreed to, then there will be incentive of optimistically valuing a change in order to meet the small and quick criterion.  E.G., the definition of small and quick is 10 hours and 1/2 day duration.  A change comes across a developer's desk where the proper planning value might be 15 hours and a day or day and a half duration.  The planning value is reduced to hit the criterion putting the team at further risk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an ingredient to scope creep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T12:27:43.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4202" CreationDate="2016-04-04T13:14:15.303" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is from personal experience. We played games where we had to build a layout using &lt;a href=&quot;http://vorkspace.com/blog/index.php/did-you-know-that-lego-was-designed-to-build-teams-not-just-architecture/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Legos&lt;/a&gt; and that really helped break the ice. It also helps in bring out different skills like - thinker, strategy, leadership etch for involved individuals. You can read more about it - &lt;a href=&quot;http://seriousplaypro.com/2014/09/11/team-building-activities-with-lego-bricks/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://seriousplaypro.com/2014/09/11/team-building-activities-with-lego-bricks/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22810" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T13:14:15.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17923" CreationDate="2016-04-04T15:41:45.987" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd start by moving to a physical task board. Tools can be great force multipliers. However if you start in a tool, you will often get influenced by the tool and end up doing process by tool. This is happening to my teams at AOL now and I've got teams experimenting with physical task boards for day to day and Jira just to document the work for official records. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Figure out what works well for you, with a physical board, then figure out how to make the tool work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T15:41:45.987" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16545" CreationDate="2016-04-04T16:18:22.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;More Custom Fields are available in 2016 but you still can't use Custom Text Fields in a Chart, but you can use Custom Numbers. Don't understand why you can have number but not text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22944" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T16:18:22.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17923" CreationDate="2016-04-04T20:08:26.257" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically you would decompose your User Stories in subtasks&#xA;Tasks should be used for technical needs, not for decomposition of a user story&#xA;I don't know zenhub but in trello you could create checklist for US subtasks&#xA;You could have subtasks for tasks as well&#xA;What you must feel is that you have a hierarchy of elements and you would maybe need one board for each level, maybe you won't need a board for subtasks. In any case it seems difficult to represent two levels on the same board&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8927" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T20:08:26.257" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16615" CreationDate="2016-04-05T07:08:22.307" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I spend 2 hours every Sprint (2 weeks) for Backlog grooming. This is done with the entire team BA, Dev, Testers and PO. This should take care of most of the story boarding and Product Backlog Item Creation. I do this on Thursday of 2nd Week. Assuming we have 2 weeks from Monday to next Friday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2 hours are spent on Sprint Planning on first day of sprint. Here you talk about what needs to be taken up in the current Spring and what code needs to be refactored. Refactoring is a continuous process and is taken up during task execution as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally you should have very few defects from previous release if you follow clear definition of done and demo the functionality to PO during Sprint Review. We faced problems in the first few sprints , we identified the areas of improvement and allocated 1 Developer and 1 tester to handle previous bugs. They chime to the main sprint when the bug fixing is complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every one participates in 15 minute Stand Up every day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please let me know if this was helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22960" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T07:08:22.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6529" CreationDate="2016-04-05T07:51:11.190" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To plot a Burn Up Chart – plot work completed per day in story points and compare it with estimated work completed. Say you need to complete 20 story points per sprint i.e. 10 working days. If you complete 4 story points in the first day then you will plot 4 on the graph. The next day you complete 4 more story points then you will plot 8. So on and so forth. Map this to the expected story points and you have a burn up chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://screencast.com/t/AsyxrsAi0e1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://screencast.com/t/AsyxrsAi0e1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22960" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T07:51:11.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17931" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2016-04-05T08:03:21.710" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Despite the fact that jokes are off-topic on this site, during April Fool's Day even project managers aren't as serious as always. This is the day of the year, when you can feel free to ask your funny, foolish and absurd questions. But do not forget to mark them with this tag and be aware, that your questions will be closed or deleted as off-topic after the first of April.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2016-04-05T11:51:37.480" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T11:51:37.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17932" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2016-04-05T08:03:21.710" Score="0" Body="For funny unserious questions that are allowed only on April Fool's Day." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2016-04-05T11:51:41.717" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T11:51:41.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17922" CreationDate="2016-04-05T08:42:44.223" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with you, quick changes do not exist. But it also depends on how good your team is. If you have a good team then it is okay to take small changes. But please don't take it without a CR/Bug. It is helpful to track such changes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once I was working with a careless team that would not focus on the issue at hand. A simple change like deleting space before the colon and making the text - &quot;State: NY&quot; got failed by QA as the space was not properly deleted. The team took 2 hours for the first time and another hour for the second time. 3 hours is a lot of effort just to remove one space. With my team if I had a choice to defer such changes I would do that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We track all changes in TFS and have to check-in code with the associated Task or Bug. I suggest you do too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22961" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T08:42:44.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17934" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-05T09:55:42.197" Score="2" ViewCount="857" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am running a live technical project running kanban. There is only one developer on board and he is moonlighting to do it. The difficulty that I have is that the client is demanding more and more work to be done causing the developer a lot of stress since he can't keep up. Given a lack of company resources i.e. we cannot afford to hire somebody full time. As well as the fact that are a lot of the deliverables are post launch deliverables.I am stuck with this developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to deliver projects in this situation where a lack of resources is affecting your ability to deliver the project on time, or recruit additional resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="20871" LastEditDate="2016-04-05T10:57:13.643" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T12:52:09.400" Title="Delivering a project with limited resources?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17934" CreationDate="2016-04-05T10:10:44.860" Score="0" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First of all give some credit to developer, since he still works under that pressure. I can assure you that productivity and good implementation comes when developer is not pressed and is able to devote time to think out his project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Second, you gotta limit incoming tasks. Formalize them good enough, so that dev starts implemeting them when they're fully ready.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Give this dev only tasks that fit into his hours. He can't squeeze 80-hour project into a working week. Or he can once, but then his productivity will fall, due to need to for some recreation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you want to think about outsourcing, you gotta know that your billable hours will dramatically increase, at least during the first stage. You'll need to find people, chew on the tasks, make sure everything's ready and look after outsourcing guys very carefully.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next project - have post-launch stuff written in contract. Make sure client understands this as well. Post-launch procedures also require dev time. And dev time is billable, always. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your only ability is to plan good, steady release-cycle for updates, that are possible to deliver, and that are predictable. Having client hysterically shout that he wants something asap is not helping the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21145" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T10:10:44.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17934" CreationDate="2016-04-05T10:27:31.707" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Demanding more and more work means you get more time.  If you are not negotiating more time but accepting more work, you're out of control...change control to be specific.  We all do projects with less resources than what we would like.  You need to learn to set better expectations, to accept additional work with additional time and additional money.  If the developer cannot do the work in the time frame the customer wants it, you charge more money and get additional resources.  It's simple math.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way this reads, your project is not being managed.  So if you're the PM, you're the issue, not your developer, not your customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T10:27:31.707" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17934" CreationDate="2016-04-05T12:52:09.400" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to define milestones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each milestone will have some deliverable and a target date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will then create some sort of delivery schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this information, you go back to the sales team and inform them how this project will be delivered. (Make sure it's all documented; e.g. send it by email.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They can decide to accept it, or add resources. No 3rd choice available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now  that you've injected a &lt;em&gt;reality check&lt;/em&gt; into the Project Management, you can use that as a defense: &quot;I informed you that this part would not be delivered before that date&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T12:52:09.400" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17913" CreationDate="2016-04-05T13:07:08.470" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, &lt;em&gt;Quality Management Frameworks&lt;/em&gt;, have been replaced by the aim to pass the Acceptance Test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;smartphone&lt;/strong&gt; software development, the de-facto software quality standards are defined by the various App-Stores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to safely disseminate your app you need to pass their tests. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;web server&lt;/strong&gt; development, the final product will likely undergo some 3rd party penetration test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems that the field of QMF has splintered, and if you want to learn about it, you need to discover the acceptance test relevant to the type of product you are building.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T13:07:08.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17939" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18089" CreationDate="2016-04-05T13:25:56.033" Score="4" ViewCount="101" Body="&lt;p&gt;A classic scenario: Revamp a website with a new color scheme and a left navigation bar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the team has started working on it for a while, upper management decides to go with a completely different color scheme and a 3-panel navigational/highlight design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In terms of team morale&lt;/strong&gt;, what is better/worse? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should we call it quits and restart? &#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cancel the first project and start a new project. New code name, clear out the old schedules and tickets. Possibly shuffle the teams a bit. Maybe have a quick post-mortem and launch party.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My concern here is that the team may feel that it wasted its time and never completed the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or should we just treat it as a change request, and do as little change as possible?&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pretend it's the same project, tweak the schedule slightly as needed and have a quick meeting to inform everybody about the changes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My concern here is that the project seems to drag on forever, with the fear that another major redesign may yet ambush us again.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or maybe there are other options I have not thought of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-05-18T14:56:55.003" Title="Is it better to revitalise or restart a project that has been modified?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;morale&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17941" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-05T16:01:21.787" Score="-1" ViewCount="991" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMP experience requirement-I'm scrounging for hours!&#xA;1. On a parenting leave of absence from the workforce I started up a small business, went on training courses, incorporated the business, ran it for a few years and then closed the business to return to the full time workforce. Would this count as &quot;leading and directing&quot;? Being self-employed at the time, could I vouch for myself if audited?&#xA;2. I did a project management course- the whole course was on writing a project proposal (which I did). Would this count as &quot;leading and directing?&quot;&#xA;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22954" LastActivityDate="2016-08-07T14:57:29.900" Title="PMP experience requirement" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17942" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-05T22:01:35.680" Score="0" ViewCount="142" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you port projects and issues from one Jira server to another ?&#xA;To complicate things, the source server is 6 and target is 7.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19269" LastActivityDate="2016-04-06T05:45:39.360" Title="How do you port project and issues from one Jira server to another?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17943" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18522" CreationDate="2016-04-05T23:02:27.827" Score="0" ViewCount="138" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am hoping someone can clear up my misunderstanding of the sequence for developing a project plan according to PMBOK 5th Ed.  We see that creating a project plan inputs into it's subsidiary plans (Scope, Cost, etc.), however according to the book the subsidiary plans are also inputs to the Create Project Plan step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that this is legitimate if you are doing an iterative type project, but a conventional, one step water-fall approach you cannot have one without the other according to the guide. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would come first then?  The subsidiary plans or the over all project plan?  I know this is a very picky question, however it does seem there is a type of logical loop in the PMBOK guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am asking for the following reasons:&#xA;1: If this questions is asked in the CAPM/PMP test.&#xA;2: For my own edification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22833" LastActivityDate="2016-09-19T19:17:41.193" Title="Logical Loop: PMBOK 5th Ed" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;&lt;pmbok&gt;&lt;capm&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17922" CreationDate="2016-04-05T23:20:54.900" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hate to tell you, but developers do these quick changes all the time and never tell you (the pm) about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are getting push back, its because you are not accepting, or appearing to accept  the risk of the change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Accept the risk that the change will cause the release to fail or introduce career ending bugs OR follow your change control process and stick it in the back log with all the other changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T23:20:54.900" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17942" CreationDate="2016-04-06T05:45:39.360" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/jira/migrating-jira-to-another-server-151126305.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;official guide&lt;/a&gt; does not suite your needs, you have other option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you or your developers familiar with SQL/ETL you can migrate and transform your data from one database to another.&#xA;Of course, you should (partially) follow official guide in this case too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. I completed migration from JIRA to Redmine 3 years ago. It is complex, but possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22926" LastActivityDate="2016-04-06T05:45:39.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17947" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-06T10:06:42.550" Score="2" ViewCount="514" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am the SM for two teams of 9 totalling 18 people and 20 including SM and PO.&#xA;Half the team is at offshore so we are using Web conferences for our meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, should we hold different retrospective sessions for the different teams or a big one? The big one is hard because a lot of people want to speak and we don't have the time to. (1 hour)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5522" LastActivityDate="2016-04-06T16:17:34.240" Title="Should all teams hold the same sprint retrospective?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17922" CreationDate="2016-04-06T11:14:12.670" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience (incremental waterfall development/technical projects) there are two parallel models running in sync:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Formal Model: This is what the published project plan says coupled to what the methodology says should be happening&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Unwritten Model: This is what actually happens “at the coal face”&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first one is what gets published and reported upwards and outwards in the organisation in the project manager’s progress reports, both formal and informal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second one is kept private within the project team (including the project manager).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the formal model, which is where the formal and agreed change control method lives, no change should be unaccompanied by formal change control that understands the cost, both in time and money, of any change or deviation from the plan and specs and maintains approval of all stakeholders at all times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that strict adherence to the letter of formal change control, with all the attendant information gathering and approval cycles, is costly. In this world there is no such thing as a small change because of all the consequences have relatively far-reaching effects and costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in the informal model both the technical personnel &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; the project manager operate with greater flexibility within their circle of trust. As has been documented elsewhere here, developers &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; make unapproved changes without engaging Change Control if their risk is low. This can be a problem when the developer does not fully understand the risk and underestimates it. This can and does happen. The project manager will recognise it and seek to limit the damage because we absolutely don’t want anyone above the level of PM sniffing around at this level commenting on unapproved changes. However, for anything above a trivial change one hopes that the developers would seek the advice of the PM before making such changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is where the natural balancing act comes into play for PMs. Yes they know they may not allow changes through without going through Change Management approval. But they also may know that this will involve greater time and cost or even just a lot of painful hassle for all, with no clear benefit. A PM may sometimes, under these circumstances, allow a change to proceed “under the radar”. But the PM will also know that the buck for that stops with them and if the wheels fall off the wagon then they will have to take the responsibility for it. So the PM will probably think long and hard about it, and take several options into accounts. The point is to balance risk against reward and, in my opinion, it takes considerable PM experience coupled with domain experience before you get this right. Most PMs will have the scars from earlier in their career when they allowed through a “simple” change which then grew arms and legs, failed in testing and ended up breaking the budget to put right when it shouldn’t have been allowed in in the first place&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone that denies that the informal level exists is either incorrect or they exist at a level that just doesn’t see it. Any PM knows that they have to be in the loop of the informal level and will play the game of give and take it requires. If a PM is not in that loop then life will get very hard for all parties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2016-04-06T11:14:12.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17949" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2016-04-06T12:45:26.780" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2016-04-06T12:45:26.780" LastActivityDate="2016-04-06T12:45:26.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17950" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2016-04-06T12:45:26.780" Score="0" Body="For questions that deal with how project managers actions affect team morale, including improving team morale and what destroys team morale." OwnerUserId="4384" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2016-04-06T15:56:00.607" LastActivityDate="2016-04-06T15:56:00.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17952" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17956" CreationDate="2016-04-06T14:20:49.857" Score="9" ViewCount="5529" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my reading on SE, some people say 5-6 hours and this agrees with my experience. In our company, we commonly are &quot;at work&quot; 7.5 hours each day, but from a PM point of view...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How many hours should I plan in a work day for each staff member?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22766" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-04-06T15:47:44.470" LastActivityDate="2016-04-07T19:35:57.430" Title="For planning purposes, how many work hours per day should I expect of each staff member?" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;team-capacity&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17947" CreationDate="2016-04-06T14:52:47.530" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The retrospective is a team specific meeting; and as a result, you should have two separate retrospectives.  A more detailed explanation can be found &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2014/april/key-elements-of-sprint-retrospective&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if Team A likes a process and Team B doesn't like a process, that is an item that Team B is going to change and improve upon that Team A doesn't care about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, in my experience, it has been worthwhile to have a larger retrospective with the entire dev team (or representatives from each team) once every so often.  We have done release retrospectives that allow for feedback to move up the planning chain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22717" LastActivityDate="2016-04-06T14:52:47.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17952" CreationDate="2016-04-06T14:55:47.663" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;80% is the figure I have always heard, although trying to find internet citations that support that figure is surprisingly difficult and, in fact, I wasn't able to find any!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have flip-flopped in how to manage this within the sphere of project planning and scheduling. If you are using MS-Project then, on the surface, it seems obvious that you would set the working day to the full hours and use Max Units to define the productive percentage. Somehow, for reasons I cannot fully understand, I have never managed to make a plan track reality very well using this method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These days I ignore it and plan at full days, but use estimates that already take into account daily productivity thresholds (i.e. if we say a task will take 5 days in the plan, that is five days &lt;em&gt;including&lt;/em&gt; time lost to non-productive activities). This seems to work well for me, though that is perhaps based on two effects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am very used to working with this method&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The tasks I plan are typically measured in (~ &gt;3) days rather than hours&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also had some robust and brutal arguments with senior management in my career, about the fact they believe workers should be 100% productive from start of day to end of day. Rather than have those arguments on endless repeat, I found it easier on my sanity to include non-productive time in the task estimates, thereby &quot;hiding&quot; the effect. Since senior management never had any idea how long a task &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; take, they were just happy I was applying resource at 100%. Win-win. 'Twas ever thus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2016-04-06T14:55:47.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17952" CreationDate="2016-04-06T15:43:31.347" Score="11" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I recommend a &quot;fudge factor&quot; of 0.75 to baseline a new project, absent other data. This would mean 6 hours of project effort in an 8-hour day. I also recommend a more aggressive fudge factor of 0.4 to 0.6 for new teams to account for the overhead of team formation and process development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the following sections, I describe some considerations for estimating team capacity and some general advice about scheduling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Estimating Useful Work&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no &quot;one size fits all&quot; answer to this question. In my experience, 6 hours a day is a useful planning value when &lt;em&gt;including&lt;/em&gt; project overhead like meetings, conference calls, time tracking, and other process overhead, but a great deal depends on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The amount of process overhead imposed by your project framework.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you follow the math, this figure comes out to &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8520/4271&quot;&gt;roughly 26%&lt;/a&gt; in&#xA;common Scrum implementations. Other frameworks may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The amount of task-switching overhead imposed on workers due to multitasking, interruptions, or other cognitive disruptions.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some studies have pegged this value at an average of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.fastcompany.com/944128/worker-interrupted-cost-task-switching&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;23 minutes and&#xA;15 seconds&lt;/a&gt; per interruption. Jobs with higher cognitive load&#xA;suffer more from disruptions to flow, so you may find that IT&#xA;projects suffer from this more than construction projects, but your&#xA;mileage will definitely vary.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The amount of creativity required for tasks.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creative work is not an assembly line. You can't turn creativity on&#xA;and off like a water tap, and projects that involve novelty, idea&#xA;generation, or creative problem-solving are likely to yield only a&#xA;couple of productive hours per day &lt;em&gt;on average&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The process maturity of the team.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teams require time and effort to develop processes and learn to work together effectively. Some people refer to this as the &quot;Forming, Norming, and Storming&quot; stages of teaming, and frameworks like Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) attempt to label levels of maturity. New teams and processes can require a substantial amount of overhead to get up to speed, and targeting 40%-60% productivity at the start is often an aggressive but attainable estimate. You can refine this figure over time, but I would personally lack confidence in a schedule that estimated initial productivity any higher.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Schedule Estimation is an Art Form&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your best bet is to find a fudge-factor that gives you at least 80% confidence in your schedule based on a team's projected capacity. Build in enough slack for overhead and contingencies, but don't fall prey to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Parkinson's Law&lt;/a&gt; by radically underestimating capacity, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finding the balance is somewhat of an art form, rather than a rigorous science, because you have to base your estimates on statistical probabilities within &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; organization and given &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; resources. Productivity and efficacy in any problem domain vary widely between groups, so looking for a universal constant will invariably result in disappointment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An iterative approach to capacity/productivity estimation is often best. Start out with an achievable target, and refine your scheduling estimates over time. This is very much the agile approach used by Scrum and Kanban, but can work with more traditional approaches as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2016-04-06T15:43:31.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17947" CreationDate="2016-04-06T16:04:01.560" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Scrum retrospective is just for one team. The reasons for this are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communication is more difficult in large groups (that is why we limit the size of a Scrum team)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team will have problems specific to them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The retrospective helps the team to work better together&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also suggest to the teams that they share the results of their retrospectives with other teams. This is at the discretion of the teams as they may prefer to keep them private.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the teams find they get a lot of value from reviewing other teams retrospectives then it may also be worth suggesting they have an &lt;em&gt;additional&lt;/em&gt; retrospective for the combined teams. You could also suggest that to keep the meeting size down that only limited numbers attend from each team. For example, you could have 3-4 members of each team attend, rotating who attends with each meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-04-06T16:04:01.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17947" CreationDate="2016-04-06T16:17:34.240" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You say half the team is offshore. Do you mean half of each team, or is there one team at the main location and one team offshore?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In agile you can do retrospectives at the team level, and also with multiple teams or at a project level or for a release. The last types of retrospectives are sometimes called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.benlinders.com/2013/improving-collaboration-in-agile-projects-with-the-retrospective-of-retrospectives/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Retrospectives of Retrospectives&lt;/a&gt;, similar to Scrum of Scrums.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion would be to do both: retrospectives in each of the teams separately, and joint retrospectives with everybody which focuses on the remote collaboration. Those could include culture, communication, tools, etc, any thing that matters for the two sites to work together effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16919" LastActivityDate="2016-04-06T16:17:34.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17952" CreationDate="2016-04-06T16:39:12.077" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;While this is opinion based, I don't find having a parametric around utilization to be valuable in planning and estimate.  Everything's probabilistic.  Resource utilization will range from something as low as zero to higher than 100% for hyper performers; size of staff will vary; hours for work will range from a min to a max; and duration will range.  They play off each other with some correlation but also have a lot of random drivers at play.  And in many cases where you have a seller-buyer relationship, it doesn't even matter because the project team member will charge full-time to the work no matter if they are turning wrenches, attending meetings, or talking by the water cooler.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You just need to have the understanding that your team works productively something less than full-time so that you can build in contingency.  Using the same parametric may increase your precision but does nothing for accuracy.  Sometimes you need more, sometimes less.  Base this on your overall risk assessment for that team for that project at that time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-04-06T16:39:12.077" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14214" CreationDate="2016-04-06T16:43:58.717" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What defines opportunity, under the heading of risk, is the improvement to your already planned objectives. It is important to weed out real project opportunities from actions, which are things you already plan to, need to or must do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Opportunity is added value. It CAN and often DOES change &quot;the scope, deliverables, costs and benefits of the actual project&quot;. For example, if there is a possibility of carrying out two activities concurrently which were previously dependent upon each other and would have taken 4 weeks, then there is an opportunity to decrease (if not halve) that element of the schedule and possibly save resource/cost. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One has to take a pragmatic approach to this in the real world. Most people will, whether we like it or not, associate risk only with downside. Do not fall into the trap of trying to squeeze opportunity review into the same session as downside risk, especially at the end. It is mentally like slamming your car into reverse gear while in the fast lane of the motorway. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22980" LastActivityDate="2016-04-06T16:43:58.717" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17961" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-06T18:53:23.183" Score="1" ViewCount="172" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're running a project and we come to conclusion that the approach used in the project to handle the business issue is not performing as expected. We're changing the scope of the project to meet the business requirements. Should a change request be raised? Who should write it, if needed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18099" LastEditorUserId="18099" LastEditDate="2016-04-06T19:07:29.617" LastActivityDate="2016-04-06T19:07:29.617" Title="Change Request to change scope" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;scope&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17961" CreationDate="2016-04-06T19:06:56.957" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A change request or contract modification is certainly in order in this scenario. I'm assuming that the running of the project is part of a contract, so in almost all cases a significant change in scope would require the mod. If the contract is time and materials this may not be the case, but as a Project Manager it is important that you keep your customer informed, and in this case a new scope would be an important thing to discuss with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for who writes up the modification, it would depend some, but traditionally this is the responsibility of you the contractor. You may need or want input from the customer so that you both know what the impact and expected outcome of the case of scope entails, but ultimately since you have to accept the new work it's on you to write the mod.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the extreme, this scenario may be grounds for vacating the existing contract completely and starting with a new one that covers the specific appropriate business need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7689" LastActivityDate="2016-04-06T19:06:56.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17923" CreationDate="2016-04-06T19:09:57.337" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you mix stories with tasks my guess would be that you will have a hard time getting reasonable metrics out of your board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the key things when doing Kanban is measuring cycle time and making sure it meets your requirements. You should also think about types (classes of work) that you measure cycle time for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend having horizontal swim-lanes for different classes of work (bugs, features, technical debt) and only user stories. That is how you would be able to tell that on average, stories with size X take Y days to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My 2 cents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22983" LastActivityDate="2016-04-06T19:09:57.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14214" CreationDate="2016-04-07T13:27:26.530" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Risk - Which is something where you are not sure about achieving success or profit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Opportunity - there is saying that the higher the risk the bigger the opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is always the chance of failure in all tasks, but that does not mean you should not take risk. This is because opportunities are hidden in risk only. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22994" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-04-07T19:23:12.910" LastActivityDate="2016-04-07T19:23:12.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17952" CreationDate="2016-04-07T19:35:57.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best suggestion I would offer to anyone asking this is to ask each team member individually what they want to sign up for.  Check in weekly to see if there are changes they want to make to this going forward as their default or on a &quot;I'm at 0% since I'm on PTO&quot; type of feedback.  There are a few reasons for this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gets the individuals bought into the assumptions that are being made&#xA;in the plan.  It also gives you the opportunity to reinforce that&#xA;this is a &quot;plan&quot; and we are just looking for the best assumptions we&#xA;can make.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It allows you to get feedback and a discussion going for things that&#xA;might be able to impact the amount of time they can commit.  Maybe&#xA;it is other projects encroaching (valid or invalid) or maybe it is&#xA;something you weren't aware of as impacting certain team members.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It reflects the reality of different people have different pulls on&#xA;their time.  More Senior folks might have multiple cross&#xA;department/project responsibilities or participate in strategic&#xA;planning.  More Junior members may in fact be distraction free.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improves the data collection and gives you something to act on.  Is&#xA;7.5 hours a day &quot;good&quot;? If you see if being more like 5 hours, you have the option to take action.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Just about any tool you use can support allocation of this on an individual basis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of the above is assuming you are running an active project.  For planning purposes without a team I would suggest adding this level of detail is likely an unnecessary step unless you are paying hourly (either to the individual or as part of some department allocation/resource cost tracking system).  You pay people for a full day so estimating in the abstract is likely all that is required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastActivityDate="2016-04-07T19:35:57.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17971" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-07T19:58:45.080" Score="3" ViewCount="379" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working to establish a formal PMO in my current organization. Senior management and I agree on most things, but there is one point on which we cannot agree. We have several software maintenance teams in the company, and senior management believes that a project manager should be assigned to these teams as operational support. I, however, define projects as pieces of work with a distinct beginning and end. Thus, I feel these maintenance efforts should fall under the purview of someone else. I'm wondering if there is any authoritative literature on the subject that will help clear up the matter (in either direction). Thanks all in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22998" LastActivityDate="2016-06-07T19:52:53.597" Title="PM Role in Software Maintenance" Tags="&lt;maintenance&gt;&lt;pmo&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17972" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-07T22:02:36.360" Score="0" ViewCount="1862" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am using MS Project 2016. Summary calculations for duration are all correct, but SOME of the summary calculations for Work are double or quadruple what they should be, as if it's including subtotals (subtasks) in the calculation. Where do I look for the culprit &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23000" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-08T22:27:06.697" LastActivityDate="2020-11-16T14:40:45.617" Title="MS Project 2016 is returning too many hours in summary tasks for Work" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17973" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17989" CreationDate="2016-04-08T09:57:36.027" Score="0" ViewCount="116" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am researching project and portfolio management. I want to use the P3M3 self-assessment in my work and wonder if there any limitations regarding project management maturity level on using portfolio management? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, should a company not use portfolio management until it gets level 3 of project management maturity? Or can each company establish portfolio management independently of its project management maturity level?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23009" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-04-10T14:32:15.553" LastActivityDate="2016-04-10T14:32:15.553" Title="How do project management maturity levels relate to the introduction of portfolio management?" Tags="&lt;portfolio-management&gt;&lt;cmmi&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17971" CreationDate="2016-04-08T14:38:03.350" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Operations and maintenance operations are a function of a healthy system development lifecycle.  For reference, check out IEEE-12207. That document clearly defines what Operations and Maintenance activities are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Operations activities are normally defined as largely upgrades and installs. While these can be checklist-driven, they are time-boxed. For example, if you have a middleware server, it will probably receive updates on a quarterly or monthly basis.  As a O&amp;amp;M PM, you would need to get the patch, apply it in a test environment, regression test all of the systems on that environment, and then migrate the patch into production. Your PMO definitely drives this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maintenance activities revolve around defect corrections or minor enhancements. While the development supporting these operations are not difficult, they also have a specific release schedule and process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Call-center activities are another aspect of maintenance activities. You dont' need a PM to run those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12038" LastActivityDate="2016-04-08T14:38:03.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17630" CreationDate="2016-04-08T14:53:44.447" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A project management tool is only as good as the process they are implementing. Before trying a tools-based approach, you should think about the manual process you'd like to implement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, using pure math to arrive at task durations are very difficult because that approach can't take into account all of the possible variables: worker knowledge, task understanding, motivation, de-railers, etc. Basically, you are trying to toss a tool at a process problem, and that will never work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most modern PM's in the software development community guide their developers to arrive at task durations. The idea here is that only the person doing the work really understands how long it will take them to do the work. And then even that estimate will change as they start the work and learn more about the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you might have a new team, or perhaps you are new to them. I would suggest you start off with SCRUM, and use that approach to help you get used to your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12038" LastActivityDate="2016-04-08T14:53:44.447" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17972" CreationDate="2016-04-08T15:02:54.717" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the great things about the most recent versions of MS Project is that they &quot;auto schedule&quot; feature actually works. In past versions, PM's had to manually schedule many of their tasks to make MS Project work properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, check to make sure you're auto-scheduling as much as possible. Second, for the tasks you are manually scheduling, check out your task information to make sure everything is accurate. Third, make sure your predecessors/successors are set-up properly. Sometimes, folks will accidentally set a major task as a predecessor of a another major task's subtask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please let me know if this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12038" LastActivityDate="2016-04-08T15:02:54.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17978" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17981" CreationDate="2016-04-08T21:43:39.517" Score="5" ViewCount="149" Body="&lt;p&gt;The project which I'm working on was over, but I would like to reflect on managing a huge experimental decision made by one developer during development. This is what happened:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A developer strongly felt that something is not right with the current design of the project. Due to insufficient knowledge, he was unable to express out what is wrong. As we have deadlines, we cannot wait, nor work with him on his research as he cannot convince us what's wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be constructive, he told us to move on while he conducted his research and experimented huge redesigning works on his branch of the SVN.  A couple of weeks later, he presented to us a working, hugely redesigned (and refactored) project which he's confident of and explained to us everything. We were convinced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as we were changing and adding features based on the old design, it was as good as we were working on 2 separate projects and SVN merging became impossible due to the large difference. We had 2 options then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To work on our copy, which we would have to redesign all our features to the new standard as well as identifying all refactored stuffs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To work on his copy, which we would have to first identify changed features and implement back correctly in his design, followed by the new features.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We chose the first option, as the second option would still have to deal with lots of redesigning due to the changed features using obsolete classes and the likes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lots of time was spent, and everything felt like double (or perhaps triple) effort. Though it was worth it (we did meet the deadline through more effort), question is, given the circumstances, is there any methodology we overlooked that could have more properly handled such scenario? Or was what we were doing the correct decision and that this is actually a normal / common thing in development?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that he wasn't that confident of what he was doing either, so he had to finish everything that he was doing to see it working and confirmed his research before presenting it to us. Admittedly we were all amateur developers, including him, but he kinda instinctively knew what's wrong, but lack the terminologies and experience / knowledge of case studies to convey properly to us prior to his research. There was a chance his instincts could be totally wrong too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23017" LastActivityDate="2016-04-09T16:38:45.570" Title="Managing huge experimental decision by a developer" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;risk&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17980" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-09T10:31:55.290" Score="1" ViewCount="9824" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an interview this week for a PO position and they have set a hypothetical practical exercise where one of their clients is experiencing a problem with their mobiles app and for the candidate to present a suitable solution to improve user experience given various technical constraints. Might you have any advice on how the problem could be approached, such as tools, exercises, deliverables, check-lists, etc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ordinarily I would list and prioritize the biggest pain points and business risks, and then work with the team to brainstorm possible solutions and work through each to determine our collective, best approach. From there I'd work through technical feasibility and implementation which would naturally initiate development once we are all happy to go ahead. I think it's safe to say that they are looking for more rigor in the approach and I'm wondering what evidence they may be looking for candidates to demonstrate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23023" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-05-28T16:25:33.230" LastActivityDate="2016-05-28T16:25:33.230" Title="How should I approach a Product Owner interview test?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17978" CreationDate="2016-04-09T16:38:45.570" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question touches on a lot of topics, included areas of architecture and engineering which are not project management questions. So, I'll mostly limit my answer to the project management perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short answer is that you almost always learn lessons during a project that make earlier, initial choices suspect. Hindsight is 20/20, and this is an inevitable consequence of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cone of Uncertainty&lt;/a&gt;. This is why iterative project management and development methodologies that leverage emergent design are generally preferable to waterfall planning, as the cost of a full redesign is often untenable for a typical project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In cases where a redesign is required, there's no canonical answer to how to do that; it's a matter for each team and each project to consider based on specific circumstance. Beyond that, focus on working software that is &quot;good enough&quot; rather than idealized, and ensure that you are folding lessons learned back into your team's processes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&quot;Good Enough&quot; Software&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong with time-boxed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/spikes/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;story spikes&lt;/a&gt;, and rework and refactoring are &lt;em&gt;de rigueur&lt;/em&gt; for iterative development. However, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_aren%27t_gonna_need_it&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;YAGNI&lt;/a&gt; principle and &quot;good enough&quot; engineering argue against big-bang redevelopment unless your product is unfit for purpose or has accreted too much &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;technical debt&lt;/a&gt; to be modified or maintained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perfect is the enemy of the good. If your software is working and fit for purpose, it isn't good project management to discard it in favor of something better just &lt;em&gt;because&lt;/em&gt; it is better. There should be a valid business driver before project resources are spent on such an endeavor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Improve Development Processes&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While marginally out of scope, I would suggest that your development practices are suboptimal. You should work with the technical team to drive better practices, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Moving to a source control system that handles branching and merging better than SVN.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use techniques such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://martinfowler.com/bliki/FeatureBranch.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;feature branches&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Branching-Rebasing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;rebasing&lt;/a&gt; to enable teams to explore ideas or make changes that can be merged without requiring massive reintegration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make granular, progressive commits with good commit messages so that changes can be cherry-picked between lines of development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use test-driven development to ensure that you can &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_refactoring&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;refactor code&lt;/a&gt; without changing its external interface or its expected behavior.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use automated acceptance testing to validate user-facing requirements and to define expected behavior at the application level.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not intended to be an exhaustive list, as good engineering practices are outside the scope of project management. As a project manager, your job is to work with the team to ensure that &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; have the training, resources, and administrative/technical controls to deliver the product effectively, but &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; they do it at the technical level isn't your problem...unless they aren't operating effectively. If that's the case, you need to help the team and the stakeholders define a more effective process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-04-09T16:38:45.570" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17982" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17986" CreationDate="2016-04-09T18:10:56.513" Score="0" ViewCount="88" Body="&lt;p&gt;What would be the advantages of a Software Project Management course for a data scientist, from both an entrepreneurial and a job-seeking point of view.  How beneficial this course would be compared to just read/take online courses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR version:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I am a Master Student in Data Science (my bachelors was on Computer Science) and one week ago I was offered to take a limited course on Software Project Management.  In this course, I would act &lt;strong&gt;either&lt;/strong&gt; as a project manager or quality assurance manager for a group of Bachelor students doing their SEP project. My activities would include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project manager / scrum master&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planning: chairs planning sessions, stand up meetings, demos and retrospectives&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Organizes scrum board, keeps back log up to date&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reports progress to senior management:&#xA;        Weekly progress sessions&#xA;        Weekly e-mail metrics (time tracking)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quality engineer / manager&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Checks quality of documents&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Takes care that reviews are held&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Takes care that a proper testing environment is set up by the group&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Enforces “continuous testing”  approach&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Organizes peer reviews&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23026" LastEditorUserId="7019" LastEditDate="2016-04-18T14:08:04.453" LastActivityDate="2016-04-18T14:08:04.453" Title="What would be the advantages of taking a Software Project Management course for Data Scientists?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2016-04-11T17:24:57.777" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17721" CreationDate="2016-04-09T18:44:32.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a quite interesting question, since I was reading some articles regarding the same topic a few days ago. My answer, from my humble personal experience and what I have read, is that human psychology tends to always take into account deadlines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are always deadlines. We go from one deadline to another, on everything we do. The big problem is that most people have the inheritance to speed-up on dates close to such deadline. The extra stamina you get in that moment makes you two or three times more efficient. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there are people that are really good at managing their time, following the simple mentality of &quot;what can I do today that saves me time tomorrow?&quot;, but unfortunately these are rare cases, even more in the IT world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, in a business, delaying deadlines does not make any sense. Companies that cannot accomplish the deadlines simply reduce the features being provided to the client. This always tends to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What refers to planning, I would avoid using time measurements such as hours, weeks, etc. As you mentioned, the problem with such measurement is that you have to take into account activities that are inherent from software development (e.g. bug fixing), and the condition of the workers. Instead, I would use a fuzzy measurement done by myself, with my own time units, that just rely on comparing tasks. A task of size 2 should have the simple explanation of &lt;em&gt;&quot;it takes double the time that it takes to do a task of size 1&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. That way, you can get a more specific view of the amount of time necessary for each task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, to conclude this answer, you should be able to set your deadlines efficiently, in order to balance working-time and the quality of your product. &lt;strong&gt;At the end, the way you set your deadlines will determine the time it takes to achieve them, and not less&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23026" LastActivityDate="2016-04-09T18:44:32.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17972" CreationDate="2016-04-09T19:11:11.337" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whenever I see any calculation problems on summary tasks I check to see if the summary task in question may have had constraints set by accident, actual values of any kind set, resources applied to it, etc. Summary tasks should not have actuals, resources, any manually entered work values, etc. I've seen these kinds of things carry forward if the task was promoted to a summary task after data had been entered on it. If I was writing that code I'd do the same thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also we have noticed Project is not always happy when resources are added to tasks that have actuals recorded. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes we have to record all the data from the task in question, drop it, and re-create the task. Not fun and it's a last resort of course. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Manual scheduling &amp;amp; dependencies might come into play if leveling is being used and I'd have to do some experimentation with that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ummm, the other gotcha is filters, right? ... Sometimes someone has copied stuff in there and it's filtered out and you just miss that. Worth a try to kill all the filters and expand all the tasks if you haven't done that ... Been there!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23027" LastActivityDate="2016-04-09T19:11:11.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17980" CreationDate="2016-04-09T22:51:27.793" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If CodeGnome's comment were a post I'd +1. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on how you are going to understand the customer needs, not the technical solution. Three point/suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Watch Simon Sinek's &lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/sioZd3AxmnE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Start with Why&quot;&lt;/a&gt; TED Talk: This is the mindset a good Product Owner should always be in. You need to understand the &quot;why&quot; of your company to be able to deliver value to your customers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The PO decides &quot;What&quot;, while the Dev Team decides &quot;How&quot;. The PO's job is to figure out what the end solution needs to be. They don't need to dive into the technical details. Knowing it is valuable; however few dev teams want to be told how to do their job. A good tool here is Jeff Patton's &lt;a href=&quot;http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920033851.do&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;User Story Mapping&lt;/a&gt; book. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.innovationgames.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Collaboration Frameworks&lt;/a&gt; (a.k.a. Innovation Games), by Conteneo. &lt;em&gt;Prune the Product Tree&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Buy a Feature&lt;/em&gt; are key tools I coach Product Owners on using with their customers and stakeholders. Cities like San Jose can use these tools to build a budget with their community as do many leading Enterprise Software and &quot;Big Business&quot; companies such as Adobe and Transamerica. Do a little reading on how the games work to understand them. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-05-28T16:23:07.187" LastActivityDate="2016-05-28T16:23:07.187" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17982" CreationDate="2016-04-10T04:50:42.747" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In agile we like to stress you are never &quot;done&quot;. The best teams are always continuing to learn and improve. Like a world champion sports team, the best agile teams and individuals never take a season off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're getting a chance to learn more, then take it. Odds are incredibly high it will have some use/bearing on your future job and skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One small note- Scrum Master and Project Manager are two very different jobs. I've done both. Project Manager is the &quot;chief traffic cop&quot;. Scrum Master is chief &quot;cook and bottle washer&quot;. A PM's job is to call account and make sure the project is one schedule. An SM's job is to enable the team however they can to make them successful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be a Scrum Master, not a Project Manager. Today's software industry needs PMs and SMs that think like SMs, not like legacy PMs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coming from a former Command and Control Project Manager turned Scrum Master turned Agile Coach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck and enjoy the class! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-04-10T04:50:42.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17982" CreationDate="2016-04-10T10:45:58.577" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You mean you were offered to take the course for free ?&#xA;If free , i would take any one of the courses depending on your future goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to be in testing , take the QA course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;if you want to be in management. take the Project management course. But this would be far off as you first need to learn the bolts and nuts of development before you delve into this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to familiarize yourself with Agile , take the Scrum Master course ( This is the one i will lean towards if i was a masters student and nearing a job in near future )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;if project management/scrum master are bunched together go for that one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22679" LastActivityDate="2016-04-10T10:45:58.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17973" CreationDate="2016-04-10T14:11:08.730" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Effective Portfolio Management&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no formal limitation regarding when you can (or should) begin implementing &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_portfolio_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;portfolio management&lt;/a&gt; within Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI). However, as a practical matter, you will rarely see portfolio management introduced before CMMI level 3, or operationally effective before CMMI level 4. This is because &lt;em&gt;effective&lt;/em&gt; portfolio management requires repeatable, defined processes that leverage metrics-based controls to select, manage, and terminate projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;See Also&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model_Integration&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model#Levels&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CMM Levels&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gartner.com/doc/2837917/itscore-overview-program-portfolio-management#a2100391857&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PPM Maturity Model&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-04-10T14:18:45.710" LastActivityDate="2016-04-10T14:18:45.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17990" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-10T17:45:37.143" Score="4" ViewCount="1099" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a company, they are transitioning from agile to scrum. They have hired a very skilled scrum master to facilitate change, they have an up to speed product owner, a development manager who is up to speed with scrum, and the business supports the change. Also in this company, there is a test manager who has his own test team of four testers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scrum master disagrees with this tactic, saying that the testers are developers, and they are members of the scrum team, wanting to scrap the &quot;test team&quot;. He believes that each member of the team should be able to test as well as develop, but the test manager disagrees, believing that &lt;em&gt;his&lt;/em&gt; testers are specialized in what they do, and that testing before production is a vital job that he cannot leave it to chance, or to people who don't know the testing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The test manager gathers his testers for a mini meeting after the morning standup, in a separate room, without informing the others or updating them on their talks. The test manager has no previous scrum experience either. He believes that if any of his testers forgets or doesn't do something, he should go around and chase them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would your suggestions be for this business, and the development manager and scrum master for the test manager, who seems resistant to this business change and wants to retain his team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: The SM asked to be invited in the testers meeting. It turns out it is another stand up just for the testers. They are effective duplicating work after the team stand up. Is this necessarily bad though? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5522" LastEditorUserId="5522" LastEditDate="2016-05-24T09:48:10.400" LastActivityDate="2016-05-25T06:30:39.057" Title="What is the role of test manager in a scrum team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17990" CreationDate="2016-04-10T18:59:08.770" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Summary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master is mostly right, in that the ideal would be to have the team composed of &lt;strong&gt;cross-functional individuals&lt;/strong&gt;, but you can still create &lt;strong&gt;a cross-functional team&lt;/strong&gt; with collaborating specialists, too. Either way, the testers need to be embedded in the Scrum Team rather than being an external resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the &quot;test manager,&quot; there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;no such role&lt;/a&gt; defined within the Scrum framework. The business may choose to retain such a person as a line manager, but the role has no business being involved directly in the Scrum process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like this particular manager is trying to hold onto his traditional command-and-control role by inserting himself as a process intermediary, but from a Scrum perspective this simply creates a process bottleneck and reduces communications velocity and team effectiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master is the process referee. It is &lt;em&gt;his&lt;/em&gt; job to educate the business stakeholders about the &quot;Definition of Done,&quot; and convince them to disintermediate the test manager so that testing functions are directly integrated into the development process. The business should treat this as routine process reengineering rather than allowing the Scrum Master or the team to get into a power struggle with the test manager directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is, unfortunately, a common issue when transitioning from command-and-control to self-organizing teams. In most cases, the Scrum Master can educate and advise, but it is the &lt;strong&gt;responsibility of the company's executives&lt;/strong&gt; to structure and implement the organizational changes required to support agility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-04-10T18:59:08.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17990" CreationDate="2016-04-11T09:05:03.810" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The traditional Test Manager role is not compatible with the Scrum framework. Testers are members of the Scrum Team and they may well do some development and other activities in addition to testing. Note that they will &lt;em&gt;choose&lt;/em&gt; to do these other activities as they see that it is of benefit to the team. It is not something they are obliged to do. Testing is a skilled role and it may well be that these individuals spend a lot of their time focusing on testing as that is how they provide the most benefit to the team. It is for the team to self-organise and decide what is the best use of the skills available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that is worth considering for the person in the Test Manager role is to have them focus on organising a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_of_practice&quot;&gt;community of practice&lt;/a&gt;. This is a community of people who share a common interest, which in this case would be testing. It would not be restricted to those that have been in the traditional testing role, it may well also include developers and others in the organisation who are interested in testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A testing community of practice will help to spread the knowledge gained in the various Scrum Teams across the organisation. It can also help with setting standards and looking at potential technolgies and approaches that might be adopted in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Test Manager will not &lt;em&gt;manage&lt;/em&gt; this community of practice, but they may well become a &lt;em&gt;leader&lt;/em&gt; of it if the community decides this is appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-04-11T09:05:03.810" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17990" CreationDate="2016-04-11T21:32:56.097" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fire the test manager and create a cross-functional scrum-team if there is no risk to operational continuity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The test manager role is not needed and most of their coordiation and project management duties get distributed across the team and hopefully &quot;disappear&quot; with the more fluid communication networks that scrum teams are supposed to develop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2016-04-11T21:32:56.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2165" CreationDate="2016-04-12T12:40:06.423" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend you to go for PRINCE2 foundation certification first as: -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PRINCE2 – describes What to Do in project management&#xA;PMP – describes How to do in project management&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PRINCE2 is UK based certification whereas PMP is US based certification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23060" LastActivityDate="2016-04-12T12:40:06.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18000" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18279" CreationDate="2016-04-12T20:07:51.173" Score="2" ViewCount="167" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm no project manager but I have a time management issue. I'm a programmer in a small team with plenty of tasks distributed among many projects and I'm responsible for managing my time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm alright at analysis/design on small to medium projects and at slicing down work into reasonably-sized tasks. I generally produce decent estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately I still suck at placing estimated end dates on tasks. I go by instinct based on my perception of my current workload. As a result it's a very hit and miss process. I'm wishing for some sort of dynamic queue of tasks ordered by priority over a timeline. That way I could provide sensible estimated end dates for new tasks and I could see when changes would compromise my meeting certain end dates. What tool could help me? How is such a thing generally called?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(We use Jira as an issue tracker, although we may change for something simpler in the future.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23068" LastActivityDate="2016-05-15T19:40:01.393" Title="Dynamically queueing tasks to better plan ahead" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18002" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-13T04:16:56.010" Score="1" ViewCount="2077" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I am trying to create an &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_diagramming_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Activity on an Arrow diagram&lt;/a&gt; for the below table and I am having trouble grasping the whole concept I am currently in Visio trying to do it myself any input or help would be appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uFE06.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uFE06.png&quot; alt=&quot;Requirements&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23073" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-04-23T16:45:20.587" LastActivityDate="2018-04-10T11:51:50.247" Title="AOA Diagram Help!" Tags="&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18003" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18004" CreationDate="2016-04-13T08:03:31.847" Score="1" ViewCount="1822" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our agile requirements gathering sessions (not sure of the technical name sorry), where we engage with the product owner to list all stories that are required for the implementation, we typically estimate story points and priority as we go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this the &lt;strong&gt;correct&lt;/strong&gt; methodology? And further is it the most effective? Or should we be listing all our user stories, then going back and prioritising and estimating SP?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22766" LastActivityDate="2016-04-13T09:07:33.467" Title="When are Story Points and priority estimated in the planning phase of agile?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18003" CreationDate="2016-04-13T09:07:33.467" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Story point estimating and prioritisation is a continual process in agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing is to have story point estimates and prioritisation done for the work that the team is about to do. Typically this would be 1-4 weeks worth of the backlog. It is less important to have estimates and prioritisation done on stories that are further in the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is not to say there is any harm in estimating and prioritising ahead, just that we must always allow for the possibility of change. So the long-range estimates and prioritisation should be treated as &lt;em&gt;likely to change&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A common approach is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team makes a start at gathering requirements. They focus on the work they are likely to do first, perhaps 1-4 weeks worth of requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team prioritises and does story point estimates for the work they are about to start on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team starts work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As the team is working they allow some time for refining their backlog of requirements. For example, in Scrum we use 5-10% of the team's time on refining the backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When the team refines the backlog it will often do some more story point estimating and prioritisation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of it as a pipeline of requirements. The team is working on the highest priority requirements and is simultaneously planning for the next set of requirements they will do. The advantage of this approach is that it is very easy to accomodate change. If the requirements or priorities change it is easy for the team to adapt as they are not too far ahead with their planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some situations where the team may want to do story point estimates and prioritisation further in the future (say a month or two ahead). Teams often do &lt;em&gt;release planning&lt;/em&gt; when they want to focus on a particular milestone of functionality. The team knows roughly the rate at which they get through stories (i.e. they know their velocity in story points per iteration) and so by estimating further ahead on the backlog they can guage roughly where they will be in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important that these longer term plans are viewed as not being set in stone. Because the agile approach emphasises adapting to change we anticipate that change will happen. So we will usually continuously adapt our medium and long-term plans as we go along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-04-13T09:07:33.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18002" CreationDate="2016-04-13T13:34:28.303" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For an AoA diagram, the arrow itself represents the activity.  Create a node--a small black circle--and draw an arrow moving from left to right.  On top of this arrow, insert the letter A - 2 weeks and end the arrow with an arrow tip that touches your next black circle.  Do the same thing from this second black circle and draw an arrow moving from left to right.  On top of this arrow, insert the letter B - 5 weeks and end this arrow with an arrow tip.  The fact that the first arrow, A, is touching the node that begins the arrow, B, creates the dependency.  You would interpret this that B cannot start until A finishes and it will take A two weeks to finish.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply repeat the above process as you move from C to L.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hpkjr.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hpkjr.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I put letters in the node itself, which is not technically correct.  The arrow itself is the work; the node signifies start and stop.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2016-04-13T18:15:25.420" LastActivityDate="2016-04-13T18:15:25.420" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18006" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-13T15:38:23.707" Score="1" ViewCount="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently working for a company that has adopted scrum and we are trying to figure a rule for how to account for tech support, bug fixing and the unknowns of the Apple appstore within our sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially I'm wondering if we build in time for each sprint - say 20% of our time - goes to the above mentioned points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions would help a great deal as I haven't had much luck finding resources for this online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23082" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-04-13T15:43:38.767" LastActivityDate="2016-04-25T10:07:21.013" Title="Planning a release around the Apple's AppStore in mind" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;&lt;timeboxing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18006" CreationDate="2016-04-13T16:05:40.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;With respect to releases, you don't need to release after every Sprint. The output of a Sprint in Scrum is a Potentially Shippable Product. The keyword there is &quot;potentially&quot;. Every completed story should meet the definition of done (which should include all related tasking, such as documentation updates, unit testing, integration testing, acceptance testing, etc.). When you decide to ship your Potentially Shippable Product, this lives outside of your Scrum process and someone just goes through the submission process, probably after the Sprint Review is complete and prior to the Sprint Planning for the next Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bugs should be treated as stories. Most bugs should simply be put onto the Product Backlog and prioritized just like any other requirement or User Story. However, you may have a high priority bug. If so, the Product Owner may opt to work with the team to decide how to fit it into the iteration. This may involve removing a User Story from the Sprint Backlog and replacing it with the story for the bug.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tech support, if it is done by the Development Team, can be accounted for in the Sprint Planning session. When you are using your Velocity to determine how many Story Points to bring into the Sprint, adjust based on an allocation of time spent doing support work. If you have a consistent 20% of your team's time is spent on technical support every Sprint, then your Velocity would reflect this and you don't need to do any adjustment at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311942/should-we-factor-time-in-for-uat-fixes-deployments-as-part-of-a-sprint&quot;&gt;Should we factor time in for UAT fixes &amp;amp; deployments as part of a sprint?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/677/should-bugs-be-treated-as-stories-or-as-tasks&quot;&gt;Should bugs be treated as stories or as tasks?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2016-04-13T16:05:40.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18009" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-13T18:30:40.597" Score="0" ViewCount="178" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was developing an E-commerce web application using .Net framework for a school project. I have developed each module of these web app like sign in , signup , homepage etc and tested it before moving to the next module. Is this considered as a practice for Agile methodology?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23084" LastActivityDate="2016-04-14T09:05:44.300" Title="Agile Methodology on College projects?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-04-19T05:13:07.477" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18010" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-13T20:05:38.503" Score="0" ViewCount="609" Body="&lt;p&gt;I purchased Rita Mulcahy's PMP Exam Prep(8th Edition) and I have already finished the first eight chapters. However, I have realised that this book is only for experienced PMP attendants not for CAPM. But I'm going to take CAPM exam on 24th June and now I'm pretty stressed and sad. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I buy the same writer's CAPM Exam Prep Book or go on with PMP Book?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is simulation exams. Even these exams are gonna be useless for me I think. Instead of studying PMBOK Guide can I take the exam?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Helpful links for mock exams for CAPM could be great as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23086" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2016-04-14T08:46:24.937" LastActivityDate="2016-04-14T08:46:24.937" Title="Can I use the PMP Exam book to prep for a CAPM exam?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;pmbok&gt;&lt;pmi&gt;&lt;capm&gt;&lt;pmi-framework&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-04-19T05:12:39.863" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18010" CreationDate="2016-04-13T23:59:43.070" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you studied this book and are passing the tests with a reasonable score, you will / should pass the CAPM quite easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-04-13T23:59:43.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15517" CreationDate="2016-04-14T01:44:19.850" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know this is old, but try entering the finish date with the date AND time, like this: 4/13/16 6pm&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22275" LastActivityDate="2016-04-14T01:44:19.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18009" CreationDate="2016-04-14T09:05:44.300" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile is an approach rather than a methodology. When following the agile approach we favour interaction (i.e. talking) over process, working software over documentation and responding to change over following a plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developing a web application by building it one piece of functionality at a time is a common agile practice. Typically it would also involve releasing the software as you go along. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in your case it would be to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build the web application so that users can sign-in and release it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add the ability to sign-up to the web application and then release it again with the enhanced functionality.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add a detailed homepage and then again release it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By using this approach you are favouring having a working product over having comprehensive documentation (such as a detailed specification document). You are also able to respond to change, as by releasing frequently you can easily adapt your web application to changing requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question, you are taking some steps towards an agile approach. Remember that the important aspects are that you do frequent releases and that you can easily accept changes to requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-04-14T09:05:44.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18000" CreationDate="2016-04-14T13:55:08.450" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might want to investigate/try a personal kanban board. It would require &quot;sizing&quot; the tasks (estimating relative to each other) or breaking them down into a common size, but after using it for a bit and measuring the flow, you'd probably have a good idea of how long it takes a task to get done including the effects of re-prioritization, interruptions, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2016-04-14T13:55:08.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18000" CreationDate="2016-04-15T01:10:56.063" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use MS Project but that's probably overkill to manage your own tasks. You could try using an Excel spreadsheet like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xA;Task Name | Start Date | Daily Allocation | Remaining Hours | Est. Days | Finish Date&#xA;Task1     | 4/14/2016  | 25%              | 40              | 10        | 4/28/2016&#xA;Formulas  | 4/14/2016  | 25%              | 40              | =C2*D2    | =WORKDAY(B2,E2)&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just make sure your daily allocation always sums up to 100%. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Alternatives&lt;/strong&gt;, use this free agile planner from &lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/tour&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://trello.com/tour&lt;/a&gt;. &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thedigitalprojectmanager.com/microsoft-project-alternatives/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.thedigitalprojectmanager.com/microsoft-project-alternatives/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/five-apps/five-free-microsoft-project-alternatives/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/five-apps/five-free-microsoft-project-alternatives/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22275" LastActivityDate="2016-04-15T01:10:56.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17514" CreationDate="2016-04-15T17:42:21.137" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to measure performance you will have to assign some value to tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to differentiate between people you will have to assign them seperate valued tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The smallest evaluable task for a company is usualy a project. If you have external clients this is easy because they will pay you X for completion of thier project. Internal projects will usualy have a calculated value to the business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Projects are usualy too big for a single person, so they have teams assigned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore you can easily calculate the value of teams by the value of the projects they complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To break this down into an individual value you have to have enough teams and projects to allow you to switch the team members around frequently enough that you can statisticaly calculate thier value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately (I need to do the maths here) but if you have say 5 team members per team and say 3 teams its going to take maybe 100+? completed projects before you have anything significant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentialy you are relying on peoples CVs and references for info on thier past performance and your personnel impressions for thier current peformance. Just like in sales and operations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only difference is they dont care whether thier measure is accurate or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2016-04-15T17:42:21.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18019" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18021" CreationDate="2016-04-16T09:16:31.700" Score="0" ViewCount="784" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a scrum team there are automation testers and manual testers as well as database mid and front end developers.&#xA;While the automation testers from the beginning of the sprint start creating tests to automate the UI, manual tests usually wait for the code to be deployed, whilst creating lengthy test plans that will cover all the test cases for the job done. Then, they wait for the code to be deployed, and only then do they start testing, and putting their results in the central-testing software. This creates a massive testing overhead that ends up in stories not being done. Also, sometimes, despite short development, testing might take many days to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are your suggestions to adapt the manual testers, whilst maintaining software quality in the pre-production environment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5522" LastActivityDate="2016-04-16T16:10:59.893" Title="How to organise manual testing in a scrum team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18019" CreationDate="2016-04-16T16:10:59.893" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The sooner the developers can get code to the testers, the less the risk of back-loading the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of things the team can do to help with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Minimise the size of stories. The smaller they are, the earlier in the sprint there will be completed stories and the sooner the manual testers will be able to get started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plan carefully. Focus in the planning meeting on what order of stories will best keep the manual testers busy. Perhaps there are certain stories that require a lot more testing than others? These stories should be worked on first and if possible broken up so that they are delivered sooner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work through each story in turn and decide what is practical to develop and test in the sprint. It may be that some combinations of stories are just not practical, especially if they are all manual testing heavy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try and leave the sprint planning session with an idea of what will get done and when. Of course this won't be perfect, as unexpected things will happen once work has started. But you will find there is real value in spending time during planning so that these problems are minimised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the medium/long-run you might want to consider having the manual testers cross-train to learn how to do automated testing. This will give you more flexibility and enable you to generate more automated regression tests. It would also help if the developers were willing to assist with testing. This would allow you to reduce the elapsed time for the manual testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if you still have the issue of incomplete stories at the end of the sprint (as they have not been tested), then the team should start to bring fewer story points in to the sprint. Better to have the team working on a realistic amount of story points than to have them continually missing the completetion of some stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-04-16T16:10:59.893" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18022" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-16T20:18:32.177" Score="1" ViewCount="13097" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a resource with 50% availability for a project. I have set the Units in MS Project for 50% for him. He has a number of tasks assigned to him that can be done in parallel. How do I configure this on his schedule? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23108" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-01T10:03:02.070" LastActivityDate="2020-07-27T15:29:18.667" Title="How to configure the project schedule for parallel tasks?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;resources&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17514" CreationDate="2016-04-17T05:01:10.910" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen individual evaluations for programmers done reasonably well, and horribly wrong.  If leadership only ever evaluates a team as a whole, then that team has no way to reward individual initiative and identify/remove personnel who are detrimental to the team.  However, if leadership treats the team members &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; as individuals, they stop being a team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't offer you a perfect system, I'm afraid, but here are some heuristics I use when I'm creating incentives for programming teams I lead, and an example of how the technical team I'm currently on evaluates members:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This may be difficult to sell to your CEO, but: Never, ever, EVER set long-term or recurring goals based on statistics.  If you do this, your best programmers (who are by nature your best game theorists) will go &lt;em&gt;down&lt;/em&gt; in work quality, because they will align their work to minmax on the statistical measures rather than the goals and behaviors those statistical measures were a rough proxy for.  It's fine to have short-term, very specific quantitative goals, but never long-term or recurring ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bad Example:  Programmers get a bonus based on the number of bugs closed per quarter.  This incentivizes work on trivial fixes and disincentivizes tackling big problems, or doing refactors and testing work with long-term payoff.  It also disincentivizes vital, but hard-to-measure work like cross-mentoring teammates, researching problems, or collaborating with others to solve problems on bugs they will ultimately close.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good example:  Program $foo ships in two months, and is currently a laggy processor hog, so every programmer who comes up with a fix that provides at least a 2% performance gain (without unacceptable side effects) before the code freeze gets a bonus.  This is short term, and solves a specific, immediate problem.  It won't rack up technical debt over the long term or twist developer behavior.  It will provide focus, and show that extra effort on a concrete problem is appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't try to create a linear scale from &quot;good programmer&quot; to &quot;terrible programmer&quot;.  Not only does this implicitly encourage employees to compete with one another, but it minimizes the benefits of having a well-rounded team with different strengths and specialties.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;ALWAYS provide cooperative goals in addition to individual goals.  If you want your team to behave like a team, it helps to treat them like a team.  They should have shared goals and objectives where they all have some skin in the game.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;ALWAYS make sure that there are professional development opportunities to back up performance goals.  One of the fastest ways to kill morale is to provide performance incentives but not provide a clear way for employees to increase their capacity to meet those incentives.  This means that training, conferences, and so on need to be covered by the company.  This includes the time to actually do the professional development.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Performance measures should be &lt;em&gt;flexible&lt;/em&gt;.  Both of the best bosses I've had have included in each performance review the ability for the employee and supervisor to agree that a goal was inappropriate or not applicable.  This may happen because the organization's needs changed after the goal was set, because in retrospect the goal was not well enough defined, or because in pursuing the goal it became apparent that a shift in direction was needed for some reason.  Then that goal was not used in performance assessment.  I've absolutely learned and applied this when evaluating people I manage.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It should be clear to everyone what performance measures will and will not be used for, and with whom they will be shared.  Confusion around these issues can cause a great deal of stress and drama in any workplace.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is important that performance measures are not used as a replacement for dealing with problems in the workplace on an immediate basis.  Dealing with ANY problem six months after it begins to be a problem is far too late.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Encourage each team member to keep a running list of what they've done (this is sometimes hard, the childhood &quot;don't brag&quot; lessons stuck strong in many of us) and add accomplishments to every performance review.  This is useful for team morale (it shows that the manager is doing their best to ensure that everyone gets credit for their work), and for making sure that things don't slip through the cracks.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the pace of operations, reviews should happen monthly, quarterly, or biannually.  Annual reviews are FAR too infrequent to be useful or helpful, and going more frequent than monthly introduces too much jitter from the occasional bad couple of days or rockstar couple of days when one should be looking at the big picture.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, a good manager who's doing regular goal-setting and professional development activity with employees knows what everyone's performance is like already.  Formalizing it a bit can be a useful tool when, for example, advocating for professional development resources, making the case to promote someone or let someone go, or providing raises and other incentives.  The addiction to statistics is a dangerous one.  It can be a little dangerous in the best of situations, but dealing with programmers (all of whom are at least a bit good at game theory) it is disastrous--a recipe for minmaxing your team into oblivion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have performance evaluations for your team, the big question is what to do with them.  If they are used in a dysfunctional way, it can and will destroy your team.  I see it all the time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Zero-sum games break down cooperation and camaraderie by pitting team members against one another, reducing performance overall.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pressure induced by low salaries balanced against big performance bonuses can get the 10% or so of programmers who are uber-competitive to generate short-term bursts of productivity, but will burn out the other 90% who find such environments stressful.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The feeling that making a mistake will be held against one forever, or that one will be labelled in an unchangeable way will thwart management's attempts to foster improvement in underperforming employees.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fear about how performance reviews may be over-interpreted or used for social jockeying will cause employees to reduce communication with their managers, and even self-censor among their peers.  They will disengage from the review process (in self-defense) and their professional development will be hindered.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Employees who feel they &quot;can't compete&quot; my simply check out and do the bare minimum they need to keep their jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Employees who see an evaluation and/or reward system they feel is unfair (even if it's unfair in their favor) will lose sight of the team's real goals and get absorbed in frustration with that system.  They'll have trouble finding meaning or a sense of accomplishment in their work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if you do it right, an evaluation system can have positive effects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;By encouraging your programmers to formalize goals and track accomplishments, you can get them to think about their growth as programmers.  Encouraging this can combat the tech industry culture of &quot;promotion by job-hopping&quot; and help you retain employees by creating a basis for promotion and evolution of their careers within the company.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;By encouraging your programmers to compete against their previous best selves, to be ambitious in tackling specific, concrete problems that the team is facing, and to solve problems and reach goals as part of a team, you can create an environment where employees feel rewarded for their effort without feeling like they are being &quot;ridden hard&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The information gained in this process can be invaluable for advocating up the chain for things your team needs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The ability to not reward someone who's a drag on the team while still supporting them in getting better can improve the morale of the people who are picking up the slack in the short term.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Regular reviews of individual goals can help both you and your programmers notice when you have mismatched ideas about what current priorities are.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At my current workplace, my role in evaluations (apart from being on the receiving end) is purely informal.  I manage some student research assistants from time to time, but we don't have much we can do based on their performance aside from keep them on or not, write awesome letters of recommendation or not.  I do make a point of telling someone's supervisor if I think they've done something noteworthy, because we have that kind of culture, and I was one of the people who pushed back against 360 (peer evaluations) due to the potential politics involved.  (Our center ultimately stopped doing them.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, here's a rough description of what my supervisor does, which I really like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) He &lt;em&gt;asked&lt;/em&gt; each of us how we like to be praised/rewarded, and followed through on the answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Each employee writes a &quot;career management plan&quot; in collaboration with our supervisor upon starting with the org.  This CMP includes an outline of the employee's strengths and skills, their accomplishments up to this point, and their goals (both in terms of &quot;things to accomplish&quot; and personal professional development) for the medium and long term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) The CMP is reviewed by the employee and supervisor each six months (we're experimenting with quarterly for some employees, results TBD).  That review involves adding new accomplishments and their ramifications, noting which goals were accomplished and how well, and why other goals didn't happen.  Goals that didn't happen aren't assumed to be failures: they may have been poorly defined; priorities may have changed; they may have stalled or stopped due to something completely outside the employee's control; they may just be longer-term projects that are in progress or deferred.  If something was a failure, chances are that problems are already known (we're very good about dealing with things when they happen so we don't build up the social equivalent of technical debt) so the CMP review usually involves reviewing what has changed since then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) The CMP is updated with new info from step 3 and filed in the HR file; a new CMP is written for the next review period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) My supervisor uses the CMP process to inform his decisions regarding performance-based rewards, but I daresay there are other things he takes into account as well.  Unlike most other places I've worked, this is not a for-profit company, so we don't hand out much in the way of bonuses.  Reviews can impact promotions, what projects one is assigned to, and annual raises.  No, there's no &quot;get this many points or you get a terrible project and no raise&quot; system.  If there were, the two of us who are the most cynical and the best at game theory would get the best treatment no matter how hard our colleagues worked, and at least two of our best people would get mad and quit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, that's extremely subjective.  It rather has to be: I'm doing information security full-time now, and our team is extremely diverse.  Not counting the administrative staff, we have a lawyer, a programmer, a sysadmin, a compliance expert, and me (hacker-of-all-trades).  We're all doing information security, but we all do very different things.  No objective grading system could exist that wouldn't favor one specialty over another, and thus there could be no objective system that we'd find fair...yet the mission needs us to all specialize in different things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1665" LastActivityDate="2016-04-17T05:01:10.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18022" CreationDate="2016-04-17T14:53:23.793" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work on lots of projects where I have a number of tasks that can be done in roughly any order, but need to be completed by a milestone.  I have yet to find an ideal way to show them in a plan.  Often the most efficient order changes depending on external factors.  Rarely is it efficient to work in parallel on multiple tasks.  I do switch tasks when the current task can't be worked on while waiting for actions by someone else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two approaches to record these in the plan:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Just assign them in sequence, and allow him to work on them in order.  Consider setting the due date to a milestone date. This will likely reduce multi-tasking an may improve performance.  If some of the tasks contain long wait times, consider listing them at the beginning. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Add them with a percentage effort so that they run in parallel.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't consider either optimal, but prefer the first.  You do have to live with tasks completed out of order.  This may cause tasks to reorder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2016-04-17T14:53:23.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18022" CreationDate="2016-04-18T09:46:23.590" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider whether you really have to schedule each task on the plan with a definite start and end time, with tasks running in parallel and the resource assigned in a way that reflects reality. I have found that is rarely the case but if it is then you need to spend time assigning the resource to the task with appropriate percentage levels of allocation, and prioritisation of tasks together with constraints. However it is a lot of work and &lt;em&gt;quickly&lt;/em&gt; becomes out of date when reality diverges from the plan, requiring endless maintenance of the schedule. That’s a lot of detailed work and it is normally difficult to work out what you, the PM, is getting out of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is more likely that you have a bunch of tasks, that can be done in any order that works on a practical level, and you don’t care when they are done &lt;em&gt;as long as they all complete on a planned date&lt;/em&gt;?&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that is the case then consider this procedure:&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Optional: Place all the tasks within a summary task for convenience&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Optional: Ensure the tasks are prioritised higher than normal (so that if the resource is allocated to some other task these are still done first)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Let MS-Project place them in time where it likes (since it doesn’t matter to you or the resource) without using any constraints to force them into some kind of arbitrary order. Importantly the overall end date will still be the same since it is a function of the individual task durations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When the resource starts a task then mark the start date on the MS-Project task to match and begin tracking Actual Work from that date, for each task worked (whether they were “planned” to be worked on at that time or not). As work is done on any task, it doesn’t matter which, track the time spent in each task’s Actual Work. Then finally regularly Update the Project to set all (selected) uncompleted tasks after today’s date. This means that any unworked time for any task is moved to the right of today’s date (which is reality) and leaves any completed portions of tasks on the left (which is also reality)- This allows MS-P to re-plan and re-schedule all the remaining work and therefore tells you if you cannot achieve the end date.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This technique will ensure that the plan tracks reality and additionally allows MS-Project to work out whether you can still hit the overall end date for all of the tasks together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2016-04-18T09:46:23.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18029" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-18T12:26:27.087" Score="3" ViewCount="170" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a client project, we have a client who is always looking for free add ons. The problem is that when I tell them 'no, we can do this but it will cost you' they go ultra emotional and kick up an absolute stink.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you guys handle clients like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2016-04-18T14:30:35.023" Title="How to tell a client 'no'" Tags="&lt;change-management&gt;&lt;clients&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18029" CreationDate="2016-04-18T13:34:02.550" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let them be emotional.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do risk losing your client because there are many in this game that give away stuff all the time but there are a ton of downstream threats caused by that that negatively impact both the client and the ones giving free stuff away.  That said, if they find your work valuable, then likely it's just a tantrum to try to get their way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other clients out there.  Why degrade your profit margin and take on other risks for a client when you can replace them with another and maintain a healthier profit margin.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  There is a presumption in projects that change will happen and that it will impact cost, price, and time.  So you can approach this with an 'assumptive close,' that you assume the client already knows there will be a cost impact and, therefore, you are merely telling them how much.  The &quot;no&quot; is implicit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Validate the efficacy of the change, describe the cost and schedule impacts, state your company's position and then simply let them throw their tantrums.  You never have to curtly say no.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2016-04-18T14:30:35.023" LastActivityDate="2016-04-18T14:30:35.023" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4564" CreationDate="2016-04-18T14:02:11.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jira is a great tool, but in cases where the team is small it oftens becomes too much and too clunky to be effective. I think a good option would be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eylean.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Eylean Board&lt;/a&gt;. It is an agile project management software that offers task and time tracking, team management and automated reports. The board itself is drag &amp;amp; drop thus really easy to use and to get started. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we have a mixed team of developer and non-developer team members, we especially enjoy the possibility to integrate TFS tasks and have the whole team working in the same environment at all times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10336" LastActivityDate="2016-04-18T14:02:11.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18032" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18033" CreationDate="2016-04-18T14:55:56.257" Score="4" ViewCount="659" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is quite hard to sell testing in these days. Clients are always looking for cost savings and it often happens that they are not aware of low quality in the output. How do you deal with that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21640" LastActivityDate="2016-04-18T17:16:45.093" Title="How do you convince a client that testing is a must?" Tags="&lt;clients&gt;&lt;testing&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;&lt;quality&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18032" CreationDate="2016-04-18T15:21:27.140" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are building a product for a client, your internal testing / QC work is not subject to negotiations.  It is part of the work, part of the price, and there is no reduction in that area.  If the client does not want to conduct UAT, that's their choice and risk to accept; however, there's secondary risk on the seller in this scenario.  To mitigate the secondary risk, you need to craft your warranty and post production work very carefully where your liability has crystal clear limitations.  Your price would need to include a lot of reserves, too.  The risk of a bad reputation is there, too, and no amount of contingency can mitigate that.  It might be a good contract from which to walk away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-04-18T15:21:27.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18032" CreationDate="2016-04-18T17:16:45.093" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know what kind of work you're doing, but in IT, you could write the  contract to say &quot;client will test [list goes here]&quot;. When it's time to invoice, your sign off only includes [list goes here]. Make sure your contract clearly defines what you're responsible for during warranty period and that any issues related to items you didn't test are out of scope without an approved change request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also present the client with options for different levels of testing. With this, you explain that your bare minimum testing requirements will be cheap but do not cover x y and z. However, these are your bare minimum testing requirements and cannot be negotiated out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're in engineering, your company may be held accountable for safety and laws. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why would you want to talk them into testing if they're willing to accept the risk? The answer to that question will be your motivation to persuade the client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try searching Google for: &lt;pre&gt;cost of not testing filetype:pdf&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22275" LastActivityDate="2016-04-18T17:16:45.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18041" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18044" CreationDate="2016-04-19T06:26:45.573" Score="5" ViewCount="3463" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a paradox I have: when I create GitHub Issues (or JIRA tickets, or whatever issue tracker you use), my engineers like to make them very granular, so that it narrows the scope down for them. But at the same time, when I hand over work to clients and they complain of regression bugs, I can either open new issues or simply reopen old ones (the former being the granular approach, the latter being the simpler-to-manage approach). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which approach is better? I'll summarize the pros and cons of the approaches that we are considering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Our Granular Approach&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Pro&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Narrows scope more for developers. Especially useful when you do delivery-based compensation since it limits the risk for developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Con&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Makes keeping track of all these issues harder, especially when reporting progress to clients. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bug 324 was closed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We opened 452 as a regression on 324.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;452 was fixed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We opened 563 as another regression on 324, and it is in progress right now.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Our Simpler-to-Manage Approach&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The easier-to-manage approach is simply the opposite of the granular approach described above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23022" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-04-19T15:55:10.423" LastActivityDate="2016-04-19T15:55:10.423" Title="Should bug/regression tickets be reopened, or new tickets created?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;&lt;github-issues&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18041" CreationDate="2016-04-19T12:21:01.250" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to this question is a simple one:  you manage your work at the level of decomposition / abstraction necessary to manage your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a plus / minus equation.  On one hand, by keeping it at the higher level, you increase the ability for flexibility in the work and you save a ton of money in tracking and controlling.  But on the other hand, by keeping it at the higher level, you increase the risk of missing precious indicators of work performance degradation since those indicators will be masked in the summary performance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choose carefully. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2016-04-19T12:58:27.447" LastActivityDate="2016-04-19T12:58:27.447" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18041" CreationDate="2016-04-19T15:42:27.010" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have an X/Y problem created by skipping over analysis of the &lt;em&gt;process problem&lt;/em&gt; in favor of a tools-based approach. JIRA and GitHub Issues are tools, not processes, so until you fully define your process flow you will remain at disadvantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to define what you are tracking, why you are tracking it, and how you will use the tracking data to make work visible. As long as the team and the organization all agree on how this is being done, and what it's communicating, either approach can work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general rule, only improperly- or prematurely-closed tickets should ever be reopened. All other work represents new work with its own scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What Are You Tracking?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are conflating &quot;issue tracking&quot; with &quot;work tracking.&quot; They are never the same thing, although they can certainly be interrelated. Whether you reopen tickets or create new ones really depends on what you are trying to track, and how you plan to use the metrics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should strive to ensure that your process conforms to one of CodeGnome's Laws: &quot;No Invisible Work, Ever!&quot; Whichever approach you take, it should be clear what work is in progress and how much effort is involved. The status of the work should be clearly visible, and the process should remain transparent to stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;New Tickets&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Opening new tickets ensures that all new work or rework is treated as a first-class tracking item. In particular, it prevents rework (whether from bugs or iterative development) from being buried as invisible work inside reopened tickets, or from inheriting legacy time/effort estimates that don't apply to the &lt;em&gt;current&lt;/em&gt; work required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most ticketing systems, including JIRA and GitHub Issues, allow for tickets to reference or link to other tickets. When possible, I always recommend that any new work or rework be assigned a new ticket and a new estimate, and then link to any legacy tickets that might be related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Reopened Tickets&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there can be other reasonable arguments, from an agile perspective a ticket should only be reopened when it turns out the closure was premature because the work on the ticket didn't meet the &quot;Definition of Done.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a ticket meets the team's Definition of Done, but regressions are found later or requirements have changed, then this is work that was not within the scope of the previous ticket. The ticket was properly closed; the bugs or additional scope represent &lt;em&gt;additional effort&lt;/em&gt; required from the team to meet a new objective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Examples&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While not exhaustive, here are a couple of simplistic examples to help you think about the functional difference between new work and incomplete work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A ticket to &lt;em&gt;embiggen a widget&lt;/em&gt; was closed as complete, but the integration testing was not done. &lt;strong&gt;This ticket should be reopened&lt;/strong&gt; and the remaining elements of the Definition of Done should be performed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A ticket to &lt;em&gt;ensmallen a dongle&lt;/em&gt; to fit a new Model B Widget was closed as complete after meeting the Definition of Done. However, no one realized that the dongle needed milled edges to fit the new model. This specification change is new work, and &lt;strong&gt;the work should have a new ticket&lt;/strong&gt; even though the ticket can be linked to the &quot;Prototype the Model B Widget&quot; story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &lt;em&gt;customer tickling feature&lt;/em&gt; was added to your product. However, 12% of your customers are being killed from ocular stabbing by the feathers' quills, and this issue has been classified as a low-priority bug by the sales team. Locating and resolving the source of the bug is &lt;strong&gt;new work that requires a new ticket&lt;/strong&gt;, and should become a first-class tracking item. This ticket should then be prioritized appropriately by the Product Owner (or similar project role) and scheduled accordingly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tickets should only be reopened when they shouldn't have been closed in the first place. All other work represents new work with new scope, and should be treated accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-04-19T15:42:27.010" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18045" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2016-04-19T19:59:18.870" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://guides.github.com/features/issues/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GitHub Issues&lt;/a&gt; are more than just trouble tickets. They can be used for lightweight tracking and reporting within a project, and may also serve as one component of a project's key performance indicators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This tag should not be used for questions about engineering-level uses of this tool. Engineering questions are off-topic here, and might be more suitable for &lt;a href=&quot;http://rammers.stackexchange.com/help&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Programmers&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/help&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt; instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-04-19T19:59:18.870" LastActivityDate="2016-04-19T19:59:18.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18046" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2016-04-19T19:59:18.870" Score="0" Body="For questions about using GitHub Issues within project management to track features, bugs, milestones, assignments, hand-offs or other aspects of the project." OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-04-19T19:59:18.870" LastActivityDate="2016-04-19T19:59:18.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18047" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18048" CreationDate="2016-04-19T22:58:59.240" Score="4" ViewCount="249" Body="&lt;p&gt;Within a quite young and fresh Startup, I'm currently holding the role of a Scrum Master, as well as a developer. My tasks are split up 50/50 between those roles. The 1.5 years before that, I was working as a full-time (FTE) Scrum Master, so this role isn't completely new to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Team consists of 2 full-time developers, 1 freelance developer, 1 very gifted intern for QA &amp;amp; prototyping, a PO and me. So in total we have around 3.5 FTE developers, 1 FTE for PO and 0.5 FTE for Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the Product Owner (PO), it's his first time as this role, first time within a software company and also first time working in a software / Scrum / Agile project. He's doing very well and learning quite fast. He still got some rough edges, but I'm satisfied with his personal progress so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among the 2 full-time developers, there's that one guy who's my direct supervisor + is holding shares in the company. That person does have some background of Scrum, but in my opinion a quite dirty and ineffective one. Let's just call him Mike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to get all Team members thinking about the Scrum process, I asked everyone in the beginning about his role within the Team. Mike gave me the answer that he's just a developer. Period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, I'm facing the difficulty that Mike is pushing and enforcing things by his organizational role. I as a Scrum Master massively dislike this situation, as it's doing harm to the process and is also slowing us down. By pushing and enforcing I mean e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;secretly bringing in ungroomed and unestimated User Stories from the Product Backlog into an active Sprint Backlog, with afterwards arguing in favor of it based on his organizational role. I spoke to him about this situation in private. He told me that he knew it's wrong but needed / wanted to have that User Stories in the current Sprint. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;assigning User Stories of the Sprint Backlog to developers, rather than let them take the User Stories themselves&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;constantly trying to push in more work and tasks, which only increases our Work in Progress&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are now&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I'm used to &lt;em&gt;fighting&lt;/em&gt; with the PO concerning upcoming Sprint Backlogs, but I never had a situation without total backing of the Development Team. How do I gain that backing in such a situation?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do I solve the mixture of organizational and Scrum roles?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have I already been burned as Scrum Master for that Team?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12047" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-10-16T14:18:02.267" LastActivityDate="2018-10-16T14:18:02.267" Title="Mixing organizational and Scrum roles" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;startup&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18047" CreationDate="2016-04-19T23:42:39.270" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Companies have many choices in project management frameworks. However, if they choose Scrum, then they have chosen to abide by the framework's methodology. This includes enforcing the Scrum roles and rules of engagement. Anyone who disrupts the process in unconstructive ways &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be removed from the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Failing to remove disruptive team members undermines the Scrum process, disempowers the team, and prevents the organization from accruing any benefit from the formal Scrum framework. Do you want to captain that sinking ship? Probably not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any organization, a person has three choices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lead.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Follow.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get out of the way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your founding developer is doing none of these three things properly. Quite frankly, this is unsustainable from both methodological and organizational perspectives, and you are already experiencing toxic results this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the process referee, it's your job as the Scrum Master to &lt;strong&gt;educate the organization&lt;/strong&gt; about Scrum. If you have a supportive leadership team, you'll need to educate them about the Scrum roles, the need for work-in-progress (WIP) limits, and the non-negotiable requirement to have all priorities managed through the Product Owner. The Product Owner himself should be at your side, cheering you on as you communicate this to the stakeholders, because it affects &lt;em&gt;his&lt;/em&gt; ability to deliver an effective product too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Vote Him Off the Island&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you've already had a private conversation with the founding developer, he knows that he's violating the core principles of the framework, and has not undertaken to reform his ways, you will need to engage the rest of the leadership to remove him from the team. If they fail to do this, they might as well just replace the Scrum Master and the Product Owner with this guy, and let him manage the projects his way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to be prepared to defend the Scrum process and the capacity limits and self-organizing principles of the team. If you are not willing to defend them thoroughly, up to and including walking away from the Scrum Master roles (and possibly the company) if they don't want to adhere to the framework that they themselves chose, then you are setting yourself up for failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Stick to Your Guns&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If &quot;Mike&quot; has enough clout to get his way despite flouting the Scrum framework and principles, just call it &lt;em&gt;Mike's Pseudo-Scrum&lt;/em&gt; and let him be responsible for the results. If you and the rest of the team keep pretending that you're following a formal process while really just doing whatever Mike thinks is important, then you are abdicating your responsibilities and tacitly giving your approval for this deviation from process. Members of the Scrum team who allow any one member of the team to hijack the process are at least partially culpable for any process failures that result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Follow the process. Don't &quot;be like Mike.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-04-19T23:42:39.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18047" CreationDate="2016-04-20T08:48:50.213" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Scrum is just not a perfect fit for small software development start-ups. Its hard to commit and focus on a fixed scope of work for a fixed period of time when everyday new insights come in and clients/users are changing your world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Small companies need the flexibility to change their focus faster then Scrum allows, unless you do one weeks sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest to have a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.solutionsiq.com/what-is-scrumban/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ScrumBan&lt;/a&gt;. The flexibility of Kanban and the Agile mindset, roles and meetings of Scrum. An continuous flow of work and planning/releases are just-in-time. Schedule a nice rhythm for reviews and retrospectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2016-04-20T09:09:25.380" LastActivityDate="2016-04-20T09:09:25.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18050" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-20T09:26:28.720" Score="2" ViewCount="152" Body="&lt;p&gt;First time doing this, seems to be working well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently the Product manager/Scrum master, I have a team of 2 developers and a QA tester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product is organised in the following way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Weekly sprints.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After a sprint ends. A sprint retrospective happens with the main stakeholder showing what has been achieved from the sprint the week before, stakeholder and I have a brainstorming session on how to improve the product. Backlog is groomed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint planning session with the development team then takes place.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Based on the stakeholder needs following the last sprint, sprint plan for the new sprint comprises of backlog tasks prioritised according to stakeholder needs. The new items are generally high priority tasks. These tasks are estimated based on story points which are given by the development team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I then use a burn down chart to track progress of the team during the sprint. I use this as a topic of discussion during daily stand ups and deal with impediments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the stakeholder intervenes during a sprint, I step in and tell him that he should wait until the next sprint before asking the team to do tasks outside of the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cycle repeats itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2016-05-20T11:31:19.640" Title="Am I implementing scrum properly?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18050" CreationDate="2016-04-20T11:14:52.073" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are doing a lot right, but there are a few areas that are not following the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are typically two Scrum ceremonies at the end of each sprint: the sprint review and the retrospective. It sounds like you are combining these in to one meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the sprint review the Scrum Team meets with interested stakeholders and shows what has been done in the sprint. During the sprint review the stakeholders typically provide feedback, which the Product Owner may decide to use to adjust the product backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other meeting is the sprint retrospective. This is only for the Scrum Team and does not include stakeholders or others from outside the team. During the retrospective the team inspects how the sprint went and thinks of ways to adapt their approach in order to improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason the stakeholders do not attend the retrospective is that the Scrum Team may feel nervous about discussing some topics in front of them. To ensure that the retrospective is an open and productive discussion we limit who can attend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final area where you differ from the Scrum Guide is in the role of Product Owner. In Scrum the Product Owner is the product champion and they are responsible for managing the product backlog. It sounds like in your setup the Product Owner role has been split across you and the stakeholder. It may be worth considering having the stakeholder become the Product Owner if they are the person who is making decisions about the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would encourage you to carefully read the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; and if possible look to get some Scrum Master training. This will help you to understand how Scrum works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-04-20T11:14:52.073" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16239" CreationDate="2016-04-20T13:53:24.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Besides the differences mentioned before, I find that what really separates Scrumban and Kanban are the several rules that it takes from Scrum. While Kanban is loose and Scrum is strict, Scramban braces the middle and provides an option for a somewhat controlled Kanban process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of having no ceremonies whatsoever, Scrumban keeps the tradition of a daily scrum and an option to add any sprint meetings that the team feels necessary. The same goes with the process planning and while it is not mandatory to have sprints within Scrumban, the teams can opt out for them as they see fit. So while Scrumban is still a pretty loose process it brings in more control compared to Kanban and can be a great transitional point after Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23145" LastActivityDate="2016-04-20T13:53:24.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18054" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-20T14:46:42.107" Score="2" ViewCount="165" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just joined and become the Scrum Master for a team at a company. I came in on the last three days of one of its many sprints.  On the last day of the Sprint, they released the increment.  This took about five or six hours, coming across issues with the network, third-parties etc. to make it a lengthy process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, who performs the release? How is this normally estimated? Is there a separate task for it? What happens if it goes so slowly that it overlaps into the next Sprint? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks everyone!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23160" LastEditorUserId="22766" LastEditDate="2016-04-24T17:02:36.243" LastActivityDate="2016-04-24T17:02:36.243" Title="Who performs a release and how is it estimated?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;release-plan&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18055" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18062" CreationDate="2016-04-20T14:47:24.173" Score="-1" ViewCount="87" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Context&lt;/strong&gt;:  Working as a Developer within an enterprise delivery encompassing a full technology stack across 22 feature teams - very SOA and backend heavy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As part of the Agile journey for the teams we have moved gradually from SOA and technology platform teams to self-organizing feature teams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As complexity increased, teams migrated to SAFe and/or Nexus when multiple feature teams combined. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However during some reading I discovered this blog &lt;a href=&quot;https://kenschwaber.wordpress.com/2015/06/03/what-is-scaling-scrum/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;post&lt;/a&gt; by Ken Schwaber which states &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So you can have hundreds and hundreds of Scrum teams working on the&#xA;  same product area. However, when you have functionality that requires&#xA;  more than nine or so teams you have a choices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Build architectural and platform structures (IOS, API, etc.) that&#xA;  defines how the functionality from each set of Scrum teams must&#xA;  deliver and interoperate.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that a (slim) statement that in enterprise deliveries a platform model works with feature teams bolted on?    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read it as platform teams are the custodians of quality and procedures and (possibly) environments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2016-04-20T17:17:38.307" Title="Is Ken Schwaber advocating a platform model in this blog post?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;safe&gt;&lt;nexus&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18058" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-20T16:14:00.990" Score="0" ViewCount="220" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am unable to deliver a project because the developer is stuck on a problem for the past 3 days. It looks like he can't actually solve it. I am extremely frustrated, and so is the developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do? Client and MD is getting on my back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2016-04-20T20:13:22.060" Title="Developer is stuck, now what?" Tags="&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18058" CreationDate="2016-04-20T16:33:48.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, this can happen. We don't have crystal balls, we only take guesses at the problem and solution and time it takes to reach it and sometimes those guesses are wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask the developer for a plan. That could be more time, other resources or internal or external help. If he is stuck, he should already have reached out for help, for example to other developers in the company or Stack Overflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you know your budget for this feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe the problem is not solvable inside your budget. Not all problems are, I don't know your requirements or budget. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the developer is positive that he &lt;em&gt;cannot&lt;/em&gt; solve the problem in budget, negotiate a solution with your client. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make sure that does happen less often in the future, try to find out &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; the developer could not finish the feature and change whatever kept him from succeeding. Be prepared that maybe the requirements planning and budget were simply out of line, something a developer can do nothing about if he was not involved in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastEditorUserId="7559" LastEditDate="2016-04-20T16:37:34.607" LastActivityDate="2016-04-20T16:37:34.607" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18058" CreationDate="2016-04-20T16:45:10.720" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Communicate Project Status to Strategic Leadership&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am unable to deliver a project because the developer is stuck on a problem for the past 3 days. It looks like he can't actually solve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are the project manager, part of your job is to identify resource limitations and inform senior management of problems. In this case, the problem is a resource constraint and a project risk. Specifically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your developer is unable to deliver the feature, and you presumably do not have an alternative resource to apply to the problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The inability to solve the problem within a given time frame has introduced schedule risk, and possibly project risk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to take this information to your leadership team, and &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; need to resolve it. They may choose to allocate or hire additional development resources, adjust the project schedule, or change the scope or requirements to bypass the problem altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The decision of what to do about the problem itself isn't yours. &lt;em&gt;Your&lt;/em&gt; responsibility is to &lt;strong&gt;effectively communicate information&lt;/strong&gt; to those who are strategically responsible for the success of the project, e.g. senior management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-04-20T16:45:10.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18055" CreationDate="2016-04-20T17:17:38.307" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The statement just encapsulates Bob Lewis' &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.weblog.keepthejointrunning.com/?p=1836&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;oft-repeated trope&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To optimize the whole you usually have to sub-optimize the parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The post talks about the trade-offs involved in standardization vs. bottom-up architecture as it regards integration between Scrum teams &lt;em&gt;at scale&lt;/em&gt;. In this case, &amp;quot;at scale&amp;quot; is defined as integration between more than nine teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://kenschwaber.wordpress.com/2015/06/03/what-is-scaling-scrum/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;full quote&lt;/a&gt; is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you can have hundreds and hundreds of Scrum teams working on the same product area. However, when you have functionality that requires more than nine or so teams you have two choices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build architectural and platform structures (IOS, API, etc.) that defines how the functionality from each set of Scrum teams must deliver and interoperate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and/or take longer and only do as much as the nine or so teams can do at once. Then do more. Then do more.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In context, all this is saying is that you can't fully integrate at scale with a bottom-up approach except through emergent design. So you either need to provide standards, or accept that it will take longer to integrate projects produced by large numbers of teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Examples&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, if you have 50 Scrum teams working on web projects, they can &lt;strong&gt;integrate faster between teams&lt;/strong&gt; if you standardize platform elements like your database layer (&lt;em&gt;à la&lt;/em&gt; SOA), or provide a standard cross-team architecture (e.g. everyone will emit/consume JSON APIs) that makes it easier to integrate the projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, you can continue to let people do their own thing in a fully self-organized way, but your schedule will need to accept that &lt;strong&gt;integration between teams will take longer&lt;/strong&gt;. The integration itself will likely need an iterative approach to meld the disparate interfaces and platforms that typically emerge from a bottom-up approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2016-04-20T17:17:38.307" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18058" CreationDate="2016-04-20T20:13:22.060" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, there are several ways of implementing one feature, either technically, either functionally, or a mix of the two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes a feature is impossible to realize because it's functionally too much complex as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, the logical way of implementing a feature is not the easiest way. It could be the best, but not the easiest. And what the developer would have called &quot;crappy&quot; code is the solution to go in the first instance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you need an algorithm asking for a loop, you will try to factor code so that you don't write code duplicates. Sometimes this kind of method is hard to write and you need to create a first version of the code which is one step before, not as maintainable but that does the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the same for the functional side. When it's to hard, maybe we should find a compromise between us and the customer. Most of the time it exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8927" LastActivityDate="2016-04-20T20:13:22.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18054" CreationDate="2016-04-20T20:27:38.393" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;who performs the release?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally, the release engineer. Otherwise it would depend of the competencies needed to do the release. You will find that the QA engineer could do it, or maybe a developer, a technical leader...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How is this normally estimated? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, you don't have to estimate it. Because this is a recurring task in every sprint, with approximately the same kind of problems along the different sprints, it is already included in your sprint velocity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there a separate task for it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a separate task for the doer but as a repetitive one, no need to include it in the sprint backlog&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What happens if it goes so slowly that it overlaps into the next Sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same thing as what will arrive if a User Story is bad estimated. You would discuss about the problems in the retrospective and find together the potential solutions to them for next time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8927" LastActivityDate="2016-04-20T20:27:38.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18065" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-21T01:13:59.510" Score="1" ViewCount="1050" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm using Project Online and am trying to create a custom calculated column which shows me the percentage difference between my &quot;Actual Cost&quot; and a custom column called &quot;Profitability&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm having issues with the calculations actually working, and I feel like there's a bigger issue here than just the syntax of my formula. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For reference, it is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;(([Actual Cost] / [Profitability] * 100) &amp;amp; &quot;%&quot;)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After I created the column, I tried to get it to return a value and it wasn't returning anything at all, I broke it down even further to just:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;[Actual Cost] / [Profitability]&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still nothing, I even went further and tried to return the value of a column:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;[Actual Cost]&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No dice. I then tried to do a basic calculation (11*19), and even that wasn't returning a value. I checked my project out, re-published it and checked it back in to see if it I needed to force a re-calculation and that didn't help at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone provide any insight? I feel like there's a background issue that I'm not seeing here, and given how limited PWA is to diagnostics I'm not too sure where I should be looking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23165" LastActivityDate="2020-12-27T18:01:15.130" Title="PWA / Enterprise custom columns - formula not working" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18054" CreationDate="2016-04-21T07:26:54.000" Score="2" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is the task of the dev team. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;not estimated separatelly since its a task, its taken into consideration when estimating the story &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team can create a separate task in the backlog, if the team feels that it helps them. 4. Story isnt done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21264" LastActivityDate="2016-04-21T07:26:54.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18067" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-21T08:27:53.013" Score="4" ViewCount="1858" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently heard about a new methodology that mixes PRINCE2 and Agile called PRINCE2 Agile. I was wondering what could be the benefits and reasoning behind this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I understand PRINCE2 is a greatly traditional approach while Agile is quite the opposite – can two opponents actually make a great match?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23145" LastActivityDate="2016-10-13T14:54:57.580" Title="What are the benefits of PRINCE2 Agile?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18054" CreationDate="2016-04-21T09:18:09.190" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually a team self organises to work out who should do the release. In some teams there are team members that specialise in releases. Other teams share the responsibility around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically I would not expect a team to estimate separately for a release. This is because in Scrum the definition of done often includes the release. Which means that the time taken for the release should be factored in to the estimates for individual stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is quite common to have a task that tracks the release. However, this depends a lot on the effort required to do the release. Some teams have a very slick release mechanism and so do not feel the need to track releases as separate tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you rightly point out there is a risk that the release will be delayed for some reason. When this happens it can be very disruptive, both to the planning for the next sprint and to the business generally. Once again, if the definition of done for stories includes release then failing to release within the sprint should impact on the team's velocity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen a lot of approaches to releasing strategy. Some teams release on the last day of the sprint. Other teams release a day or two before the end of the sprint. It is also not uncommon for a team to have a staggered release so that work for each sprint is released in the subsequent sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What this highlights is the importance of a quick and simple release mechanism. Automating releases can be hugely beneficial to a team. This is because it reduces the time that the team spends releasing &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; reduces the risk of disruption due to release problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth considering making a business case for automating your releases. For example, say by automating your releases you can save 5-6 hours of effort per sprint. Over 10 sprints that would save 50-60 hours of effort and would also significantly reduce the risk of disruption. If the team was to spend 40 hours effort automating the release process then it would pay for itself in 10 sprints or less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-04-21T09:18:09.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18047" CreationDate="2016-04-21T09:39:05.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would speak with Mike privately and point out that as a Scrum Master it is your responsibility to ensure that the Scrum process is being followed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discuss with him what is motivating his behaviour. Perhaps he has concerns over deadlines or the output of the team? Once you better understand his motivation then you can work together to find a way of reducing his concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience the best way to solve this kind of problem is to highlight the issues and suggest approaches that could make things better. Try and create a positive and constructive atmosphere where the team is willing to step up and solve their own problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-04-21T09:39:05.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18067" CreationDate="2016-04-21T09:49:47.340" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have worked in organisations that attempt to mix Prince2 with Agile. The reason for this approach was that there was pressure to do Prince2 from the executive and from an external client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of conflicts between the Prince2 and Agile approaches. Most telling of these are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Agile  we favour responding to change over following a plan. Prince2 is very plan focused.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Agile we favour individuals and interactions over processes and tools. Prince2 is very process driven.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible to do Agile and include some aspects of Prince2 (such as the risk log). However, even this can dilute the value of the Agile approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, on one occasion I was working as a Scrum Master on a project that was also required to follow the Prince2 approach. The reporting and documentation needs of Prince2 meant that I had less time to spend on resolving the team's impediments. The team's performance suffered as a result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-04-21T09:49:47.340" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18071" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18073" CreationDate="2016-04-21T14:20:35.613" Score="4" ViewCount="257" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a developer.  We have a non-technical BA writing our stories.  There are a few stories coming down the pipeline that have a small business description.  These stories require an unusually large amount of technical design and work.  We do not want our non-technical BA writing up a bunch of technical detail.  We also do not want a single story that consumes 3 sprints of effort.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Contrived example story&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;As a user I need to identify our top paying clients so that I can send them a gift&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The technical design of this feature is complex.  It's ~3 sprints of work.  If we break it down then it will turn into a bunch of technical tasks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note this is a contrived example.  Roughly, the complexity of implementing this story involves writing complex analytical algorithms to aggregate the necessary data, writing several new API's to support the need, and calling into disparate legacy systems...in other words a bunch of technical this and that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can we resolve this kind of problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2663" LastEditorUserId="2663" LastEditDate="2016-04-21T15:51:37.893" LastActivityDate="2016-05-04T05:22:33.287" Title="How can we deal with a big story that does not break down?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18071" CreationDate="2016-04-21T16:52:33.450" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I think about a story, I think of it as a slice of 'what' needs to be done, not bound only to what an end user expects to see (the tip of the iceberg), but bound to the needs of any actor in the system. To that end I've stopped trying to ignore technical stories and am instead trying to embrace them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we focus on the what, then we can surface any need as potential independent shipable story. You probably need to partner with your BA to help her expose these needs and craft out the necessary stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, the UX developer may have needs, so might an API developer, or an Analytics team member. It's just a case of defining the needs as new stories that can be independently designed and shipped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Reports User I want ...&#xA;As a UX Developer I want ...&#xA;As an Analytical Model Developer I want ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make it easier for the BA to collaborate with the stakeholders over the backlog - keeping it nicely groomed and prioritized - you can consider using your BA's original story as a kind of top level Feature or Epic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3899" LastActivityDate="2016-04-21T16:52:33.450" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18071" CreationDate="2016-04-21T17:36:40.010" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Breaking stories down can be a real challenge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One trick is to step away from the original business story and evaluate if it is possible to deliver something smaller but that still produces business value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take the story you listed as an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;As a user I need to identify our top paying clients so that I can send them a gift&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would immediately see this as potentially two smaller stories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;As a marketing manager I want to identify top paying clients so that I can fascilitate future promotions&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;As a marketing manager I want to offer promotions to some clients so that they are encouraged to give us more business&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The value from the first stage in the example would be that a list of top paying clients is now available to marketing. But it would only be once the second stage is completed that they would be able to send out gifts to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it is necessary to introduce an intermediate stage like this to help break a story down. As long as each stage delivers value that is usually OK. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-04-21T17:42:36.200" LastActivityDate="2016-04-21T17:42:36.200" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18074" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18077" CreationDate="2016-04-21T18:32:35.337" Score="14" ViewCount="28977" Body="&lt;p&gt;Throughout the Scrum Open Assessments there often appears a question about who must attend to the Daily Scrum event. This is always correctly answered by saying that only the Development Team is required to participate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-daily&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; says the following about the Scrum Master role and Product Owner in regard to the Daily Scrum event:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master enforces the rule that only Development Team members&#xA;  participate in the Daily Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does that mean that the Product Owner &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; not be present at the Daily Scrum event, or does it merely mean that the Product Owner is allowed to be present but &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; not participate in the proceedings of the event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't only want to know which is true, but also I would like to know the reasoning behind this. An answer that cites some official source to clarify this would be best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22044" LastEditorUserId="22044" LastEditDate="2016-04-24T14:41:56.607" LastActivityDate="2020-01-31T13:13:24.153" Title="Is the Product Owner allowed to be at the Daily Scrum event?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18065" CreationDate="2016-04-21T19:26:42.720" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing I'm not clear on here is if you are checking out the project in the Web interface or in MS Project Pro. If in MS Project Pro, if you don't know, be sure to close the application down and reopen it so any changes to the ECFs come into the local work space. It doesn't dynamically load this sort of stuff. But you probably know that ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to know how the profitability field is defined, but, that's not terribly relevant considering you've cut it down to basic math and you are not getting results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you getting values on any tasks at all or just not on summary tasks? I ask because I often miss checking the right box for how to calculate for summary tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen it take a very long time to update when there are say 30 projects on the site. Like 30 minutes. That's projects in the 500 - 1000 row each range. Changing it several times in a row just gums things up worse. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About all I have left is to try it in MS Project Pro just to validate it's working. But again, 11*19 is pretty simple, yeah ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry I don't have more to offer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23027" LastActivityDate="2016-04-21T19:26:42.720" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12693" CreationDate="2016-04-21T19:40:08.080" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe it is too late to contribute this topic but I hope it may help somebody, somehow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You didn't have to loose one of your developers, it was not necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good coach could solve these kind of conflicts for all of their's good: conflict management!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem was not two that developer were &quot;bad&quot; people; they were different and they were in need of to be heard and concerned. There might be a solution which might satisfy everybody, however, it required a different approach, which is &quot;collaboration&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every person in a team wants to be considered and taking into account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the coach has had approached the situation to solve this concern, the result might have been different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key point is that: the solution might satisfy everyone's concerns; John, Peter and the Team!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not &quot;compromising&quot;, this is &quot;collaboration&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two developer might be responded differently if the question was this: &quot;Yes, I understand your point and I respect that, AND I need you to consider my point and the team's point...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there might have been more than 2 points, maybe 4 or 5. And it was possible to find a solution which fully satisfies every concern...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is called &quot;conflict management&quot; and it requires a lot of knowledge and experience...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regards,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Emin&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23178" LastActivityDate="2016-04-21T19:40:08.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18074" CreationDate="2016-04-21T20:35:20.793" Score="26" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Product Owners Are Silent Observers in Daily Stand-Ups&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the quoted description, the word &lt;em&gt;participate&lt;/em&gt; has the connotation of &quot;taking an active part.&quot; The Product Owner &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; attend, but should &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; participate. The daily stand-up is intended as a synchronization and coordination meeting, not a status meeting, and the Product Owner has no active role to play in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner (PO) is welcome to attend in order to &lt;strong&gt;listen and observe&lt;/strong&gt;, as Scrum processes should always be transparent, but the PO may not interact. Listening as the team plans the day's work serves a number of purposes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It provides an attentive listener with many of the same benefits as a formal status pull without being disruptive.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It provides the PO with early feedback about scope, which can be used outside of the standup to negotiate the scope of in-progress user stories, provide input for Backlog Refinement, or act as an &quot;early warning system&quot; that an Early Termination may be required.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It provides the PO with a front-row view of the team's day-to-day capacity. This is often helpful in setting expectations during Sprint Planning, and may provide advanced knowledge of what stories should be prioritized next Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It creates shared context, so that any discussions between the Development Team and the Product Owner throughout the Sprint don't have to start from scratch.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-04-21T20:35:20.793" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18074" CreationDate="2016-04-21T20:35:36.860" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you absolutely want your PO at the Daily Scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off remember that the Scrum Guide is something like 17 pages and only covers the broadest brush strokes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The product owner is part of the team. They are the direct connection to the business and the person who signs off on stories as done. You absolutely want the PO there so they know what's going on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The intent of the Scrum Guide is generally agreed to be that only the developers are talking and the PO would hold questions until after the standup. Most agile teachers recommend that the PO only ask brief questions during the standup, to clarify things. If a story is done, the PO is able to follow up with the team member after the Daily Scrum to approve the story, so it can be properly moved to done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly enough, Mike Cohn just issued some advice on this in his direct email letters to subscribers. He recommends that everyone, Scrum Master and Product Owner included give updates in the Daily Scrum. It's an evolution of our thinking which recognizes that there is other work, beyond the coding, that happens during a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And remember, it's all guidance. If it works for you, that's the most important measure of if you should do it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I'm in the process of gaining the Certified Scrum Trainers certification. So I'm explaining this from that perspective. The Scrum Guide is a framework. It is not prescriptive, it is a guideline. It is also an ever evolving concept. The last time it was updated was more than three years ago and Jeff Sutherland, one of the authors, has certainly continued to evolve his opinions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if anyone tells you &quot;You're not following Scrum by the book&quot; then they are the ones with the problem. A 17 page document cannot and was not intended to ever be the be all and end all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product Owners absolutely should be at the Daily Scrum. Every CST I know teaches that. The exact role of the PO at the Daily Scrum is up to the team to decide based on what they feel works. Remember, inspect and adapt. We don't hold rigidly, we do what works. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if i was your coach, I'd tell you to start with the &quot;by the book&quot; only the developers talk. Then use your retrospectives to decide if that works. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of other notes: &#xA;- Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber maintain the Scrum Guide. They are only two voice in the scrum community and not the only ones who were there when it was invented.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- The Agile Manifesto isn't Scrum and it is the over arching guidelines for us all. Inspect and Adapt is a key principle. As is individuals and interactions over process and tool. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="147" LastEditDate="2016-04-21T22:42:37.430" LastActivityDate="2016-04-21T22:42:37.430" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18074" CreationDate="2016-04-21T22:15:15.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've obtained my CSM certification a few weeks ago. One of the couple of questions I missed was exactly this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question asks the reason &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; the PO should attend the Daily Scrum (which, by Modus Ponens, implies that the PO &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; attend the Daily Scrum). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I answered that it was to &lt;em&gt;ensure the Dev team is still on target to meet sprint goals&lt;/em&gt;. A listener, as CG says (+1!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was surprised to know that the correct answer was &lt;em&gt;to help clarify requirements&lt;/em&gt;, which implies that the PO has an &lt;em&gt;active role&lt;/em&gt; during Daily Scrum. Go figure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, you should stick to what Joel BC (+1!) says: do &lt;em&gt;whatever works for you&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2016-04-21T22:15:15.880" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18074" CreationDate="2016-04-22T08:31:18.880" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the Scrum Guide sees the daily scrum as being for the development team as this encourages them to synchronise their activities during the sprint. However, there are also elements of synchronisation required between the development team and the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mike Cohn talks about the Product Owner participating in the daily scrum to highlight that they are just another &lt;em&gt;Scrum Team&lt;/em&gt; member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I would say that having a Product Owner that only occasionally attends a daily scrum is not a good idea. They will continually be behind on current events and so may delay the daily scrum by asking questions that the rest of the development team already knows the answer to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, if a Product Owner attends the daily scrum and treats it as an opportunity to check-up on progress then that is also not a productive use of the team's time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, a Product Owner that attends every daily scrum and speaks in a concise and informative manner would be beneficial to the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine if a Product Owner has chosen to relocate and is sitting with the development team. Would you then refuse to let them attend the daily scrum or speak at it? I don't think this would send a good message about the Scrum Team working together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-04-22T08:31:18.880" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18081" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18087" CreationDate="2016-04-22T12:58:53.913" Score="4" ViewCount="1002" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team keeps a detailed record of in progress and blocked items on the team task board (format: To Do, In Progress, Done).  The board is so detailed that meetings have turned into walking the board status updates that are simply read right off the board.  There is value in coming together to discuss after scrum items, particularly because half the team is remote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where are the impediments?  (Marked on the board) &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;What are you working on?  (Marked on the board) &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;What did you do yesterday? (Board updated to reflect any changes/completions) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team does not see the value in having a scrum meeting.  I've considered:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Get rid of daily scrum as it's been replaced with these async updates?  Management won't like that.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Changing the format to ask different questions.  What else is valuable?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can we fix this?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2663" LastActivityDate="2016-04-24T14:20:19.737" Title="Where is the value in walking the board with a detailed task board?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18081" CreationDate="2016-04-22T13:56:27.260" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Standups: An Eight-Hour Planning Exercise&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The daily standup is never supposed to be an exercise in &quot;walking the board.&quot; Instead, it is supposed to be a way for the team to synchronize with one another, and to do short-term planning for the day's increment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because agile methodologies value &lt;em&gt;individuals and interactions over processes and tools&lt;/em&gt;, in your scenario the standup is still essential. The focus should be on hand-offs and allocation of team resources rather than on story/task status, though. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bob says he'll be working on Story A today, and asks Alice if the widget she was embiggening yesterday is ready.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Alice says: &quot;Almost.&quot; She's refactoring a unit test to meet the Definition of Done and will have her story ready to hand off to Bob by lunchtime.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Charlie is working on Story B today, but needs help from Alice and Bob to ensmallen the whatsit. The three schedule a breakout meeting for the early afternoon to collaborate on the story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of these things are necessarily status updates, blockers, or discrete state changes the way a Kanban board might reflect them. They're really just &quot;planning in the small,&quot; as the team members coordinate with each other to map out the day's work and collabortively allocate team capacity towards the day's tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This type of mini-planning is the &lt;em&gt;ideal&lt;/em&gt; that Scrum (and other agile frameworks) aspire to through the use of the standup ceremony. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/daily-scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;three questions&lt;/a&gt; people typically use as the format for the ceremony are really just a widely-used mnemonic to help team members reach that goal, but treating it as a formal reporting template can sometimes lead the team astray.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Let the board be an &lt;em&gt;asynchronous&lt;/em&gt; information radiator. Use the standup to &lt;em&gt;synchronize&lt;/em&gt; the current day's work.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-04-24T04:20:03.997" LastActivityDate="2016-04-24T04:20:03.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18083" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18084" CreationDate="2016-04-22T19:23:27.383" Score="2" ViewCount="941" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Scenario&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Activity | Normal Cost | Normal Time | Crash Cost | Crash Time | Weekly Crash Cost&#xA;    A         5,000           4           5,000          4                0&#xA;    B         8,000           4           9,000          5              -1000&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I found the Weekly Crash Cost for Activity A &amp;amp; B to be 0 and -1000,&#xA;  but these answers are actually wrong. I don't understand why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23189" LastActivityDate="2016-04-22T21:46:43.313" Title="Why can't the Crash Time be greater or equal to Normal Time?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18083" CreationDate="2016-04-22T21:21:26.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you crash the schedule, what you &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to see is your duration to reduce.  That's the objective of crashing.  The threat created is against both cost and quality, mostly cost, and for cost it is really imminent that costs will climb.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in your chart, weekly crash cost can never be negative unless someone else paid your cost.  The formula would be: crash cost / week or $9,000 / 5 = $1,800.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it should not be five but something less than four.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality, crashing your schedule can either reduce your duration, not touch it, or cause it to climb.  Different tasks having different resource elasticity where adding people to do a task may do nothing or make things worse.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, moving boxes from point A to B should have a ton of resource elasticity and you should experience a reduction in duration unless the path where people are walking creates a bottleneck.  Doing surgery on someone's brain would have no resource elasticity and likely make things worse.  Adding surgeons inside the head would be catastrophic.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer the question, why can't crashing time be greater or equal than normal time:  It cannot because that's the objective of crashing is to reduce your duration.  It can, however, due to many other drivers that affect duration but when that occurs your crashing intervention failed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2016-04-22T21:46:43.313" LastActivityDate="2016-04-22T21:46:43.313" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18081" CreationDate="2016-04-24T04:13:35.290" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Daily Standups are one of the more misunderstood and improperly run ceremonies of Scrum/Agile. The Sprint Demo being the other big offender. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I teach agile I explain that the Daily Standup is like a daily retrospective. The purpose of the meeting is not to discuss status, the purpose is to: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Reflect on the last 24 hours and decide how you will change your plans for the next 24 hours in order to meet the sprint goal.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I encourage teams to use Burn Down charts for their sprints as just &quot;walking the task board&quot; easily leads into the trap of status reporting. Instead you should be looking at the work done and projecting forward &quot;if we continue at this pace, will we make our sprint commit.&quot; You also want to be paying attention day over day. If someone has been on the same task for three days in a row, with no change at all, the team should be calling this out. If we don't reflect on sprint status daily, we'll easily get to the end of the sprint without having gotten anything done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-04-24T04:13:35.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18081" CreationDate="2016-04-24T13:31:51.570" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds to me like you've found the one of the beautiful things about Kanban. The work is so visible, that you've made part of your process irrelevant. Congratulations, you've leaned out your process and removed some overhead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, you almost have. You've not done away with the overhead &lt;em&gt;yet&lt;/em&gt;, but you suspect that you can. Sounds like time to run an experiment. Talk to your team to see if they're interested in trying their next iteration without the stand up. Measure the results, and talk about both the measurements and the team members feelings about it at your retrospective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may find that they're already collaborating so early and often that the &quot;getting in sync&quot; part of the stand up is redundant. You might find that things go worse without it. In the latter case, be sure to shift the focus away from &quot;walking the tasks&quot; to &quot;Alice, do you have that widget done? I'd like to start implementing X and need your widget to move forward.&quot; and &quot;Hey Bob, you're really good at Y. I've not really done it much, could you pair with me a bit today?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for management not liking it, it sounds like someone needs to explain to them that there is no &quot;One true Agile way&quot;, and that Scrum isn't the only way to run a project. Go research Kanban, XP, and all the other processes out there. Agile is all about finding what works for &lt;em&gt;your team&lt;/em&gt;. Finding what works for you  requires some level of experimentation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having the numbers to back up your decision to do away with the stand up should sway your management team. Remember, meetings are &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; expensive and should only be held if they're actually valuable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, as for the title question of &quot;What is the value of walking the tasks?&quot;, there is value to be found in doing it by starting at the stories/tasks that are &lt;em&gt;almost&lt;/em&gt; done. By starting there, you can shift the focus from the traditional 3 scrum questions to focusing on flowing items through your system. Remember, almost done isn't Done. Kanban is all about limiting WIP and getting things to Done faster. By focusing on what needs to happen to get from Almost Done to Done, you'll get more value from your standup. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastEditorUserId="21039" LastEditDate="2016-04-24T14:20:19.737" LastActivityDate="2016-04-24T14:20:19.737" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18088" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-25T00:37:22.713" Score="0" ViewCount="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;for example, if I have two tasks start at different dates that end at the same date. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kzTYN.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kzTYN.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is, if I try to link these two tasks, the dates will automatically change, not the original dates I want to keep. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/leU6m.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/leU6m.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to solve this? Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23202" LastActivityDate="2016-04-25T22:05:39.370" Title="Is there a way to links tasks that have overlapped dates?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17939" CreationDate="2016-04-25T09:06:17.417" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you are in agile, I would treat this as new information discovered about the project and change/update User Stories / sub tasks. You are still doing a website development, so the basis of the project is the same and the team will be the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concerning the morale aspect. I would try some of the following (which &lt;strong&gt;may&lt;/strong&gt; help in different areas)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communicate with the management that this change will require a pause in the project to re-work it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Halt the project development and take stock of where all development is - put code into Git, document, test state. etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Re-plan your project to understand scope change and impact.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take some time out - dependent upon the length of the project, if it is 6 months take a few days to gather your team in, if 1 month, then take a day, but a minimum of a day I think, to gather the team in and engage with them about how they feel, but basically help them to understand the change.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shift around some of the guys in your team, especially if there are one or two that are particularly negative. You don't want that negativity going forward, it will infect the new project and will make it hard work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22766" LastActivityDate="2016-04-25T09:06:17.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18067" CreationDate="2016-04-25T09:32:00.263" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most agile frameworks, especially Scrum, are very light and tend not to focus on project delivery (favouring instead a very lightweight approach to product delivery). This isn’t a problem in many environments, but where a project involves governance processes (in regulated environments for example), complex dependency arrangements, multiple vendors, offshore locations etc, you need something that offers a little more structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prince2 Agile focuses on agility at the delivery level (Scrum, Kanban, etc etc), whilst still enabling/facilitating project type controls at high management levels - thereby ensuring a delivery that regularly tests a business case and stays within compliance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Standard Prince2 tends to ignore actual delivery, so has often been used in a very heavyweight way - the new course tries to fix that deficiency, and broadly does that well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3246" LastActivityDate="2016-04-25T09:32:00.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18006" CreationDate="2016-04-25T10:07:21.013" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe the links in the comment to your questions are valid and can be useful to your concrete situation. Especially when it comes to prioritizing work and making it visible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, may be there is one more item you might want to look at, trunk-flow. Its basically the flow that the team uses to version its work with git/svn or other systems. Trunk flow says that all commits go to the trunk and that releases are cherry-picked from the trunk and all fixes happen in the trunk. It relates to AppStores release conditions in a way that you could have a release being prepared every two weeks (thats how often Apps are typically reviewed) and this release has all the stuff that has been done so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interesting question is what is your DoD? When a feature is in the AppStore or just ready for release...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21264" LastActivityDate="2016-04-25T10:07:21.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18092" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-25T10:15:10.110" Score="1" ViewCount="2239" Body="&lt;p&gt;I run 1 week sprints, lately my sprints are finishing ahead of schedule (one day before the end of the sprint) for one member of the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that some PMs wait until the next sprint cycle, however that means losing a day doing no work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the best way to deal with this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="20871" LastEditDate="2016-04-25T16:19:48.847" LastActivityDate="2016-04-26T06:45:57.397" Title="What to do if a member of a team finishes all his sprint tasks ahead of schedule?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;resources&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18092" CreationDate="2016-04-25T11:02:59.740" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well first of all, you should wait and see whether this is a one-timer. If this is happening more often, discuss with the team, why they are committing to this amount of story points, although it's obvious, that they could handle more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also an option to have a small RnD project, which can be processed in such cases. Perhaps it makes sense due to some strategic goals. It's also a good motivation I think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, I've never faced such a scenario, since we have a bug-first policy here, which are usually, unplanned effort and therefore lowering the amount of available feature development time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said in the comments it's optimizing performance by repeating. The best thing of scrum is, that there is an agreement between PM and DEV, which is made on eye level. &#xA;This agreement must be adjusted, so that nothing is left at the end and no time is wasted. It's normal, that at the beginning the agreement is not ideal but it will definitely become it sooner or later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're now optimizing from your site by giving them an additional story within the sprint, it's a normal hierarchical situation and it might lower the motivation of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So be patient, and let the team learn its lessons as well as you have to learn yours. Let's say Week 1 the commitment is 30 SP and they are done by Thursday morning. Then in Week 2 the commitment could be 40 SP. Now they couldn't finish. No problem, on Week 3 the commitment should be 35 SP. Performance optimized with 3 weeks. &#xA;Of course you might face the issue, that, although you've have found an &quot;ideal&quot; commitment, the result is far from being ideal. But this is also normal, since you're dealing with human beings and not machines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3100" LastEditorUserId="3100" LastEditDate="2016-04-25T11:59:03.883" LastActivityDate="2016-04-25T11:59:03.883" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18092" CreationDate="2016-04-25T11:59:08.370" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically with Scrum we have a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/product-backlog&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;product backlog&lt;/a&gt; that contains a list of the work we expect to do in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the beginning of each sprint the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/product-owner&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Product Owner&lt;/a&gt; and the team sit down and discuss which stories to take from the product backlog in to the sprint. A lot of teams use a metric called &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/know-exactly-what-velocity-means-to-your-scrum-team&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;velocity&lt;/a&gt; to determine how much work to bring in to the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the sprint does not always go as expected. If there is unfinished work at the end of the sprint then we may reduce our velocity and so bring less work in to future sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, if the work allocated to the sprint is completed before the sprint ends then we do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to the Product Owner and see if there are any prepared stories on the product backlog that could potentially be brought in to the sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If we bring more work in and complete it by the end of the sprint then typically the velocity will increase and as such we will bring more work in to future sprints.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Experienced Scrum teams will often ensure that the stories at the top of the product backlog are small and are ready to start. That way, if they finish the work allocated to the sprint early it will be a simple matter to bring more work in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-04-25T11:59:08.370" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18092" CreationDate="2016-04-25T12:04:47.673" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have a few options at your disposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the available time to work on technical debts or fix bugs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask the team member to share load another team member to help her/him in completing the sprint backlog because its a cross-functional team and its their shared responsibility / commitment to deliver sprint items as a team. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pick the next highest priority item from the backlog after discussing with the Product Owner. Try to break the item down into a smaller or thinner slice which can actually be completed in the same sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/6300/sklivvz&quot;&gt;Sklivvz&lt;/a&gt; wrote the following in &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/10824/&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;you can add stories to a running sprint, if the team agrees to it. It's not a good practice though as it reduces the usefulness and predictive ability of the methodology&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same approach is also mentioned on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.axisagile.com.au/blog/planning-and-metrics/sprint-issues-when-sprints-turn-into-crawls/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this blog post&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I recommend you conduct a product grooming session which in this case acts as a cutdown sprint planning session for the small amount of new work that could possibly fit into the remaining time. If the new product backlog item(s) get completed before the end of the sprint their corresponding story points will count towards the velocity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2016-04-25T12:04:47.673" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18098" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-25T16:30:10.430" Score="6" ViewCount="427" Body="&lt;p&gt;My boss loves Gaant charts, because they give you a high level visual overview of the product roadmap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with Gaant, it is fixed time related and goes completely against the concept of the teams velocity which you only really find out once they start working on sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I devise a product roadmap for a particular version of the product?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2018-01-26T14:26:14.717" Title="How to create a visual product road map that follows agile?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18100" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-25T19:39:27.763" Score="0" ViewCount="870" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our team doesn't have a dedicated UX/design employee.  Is is better for product or the engineers to have the final say for UX/design decisions?  Or should it be a majority vote?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23215" LastActivityDate="2018-01-15T17:57:06.940" Title="Who should make the final design and UX decisions on a team without a designer" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;design&gt;&lt;user-experience-design&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18088" CreationDate="2016-04-25T22:05:39.370" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Link the tasks as Finish-to-Finish instead of the default Finish-to-Start. Change the Predecessor field to say 2FF.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastActivityDate="2016-04-25T22:05:39.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18102" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-25T23:28:17.833" Score="0" ViewCount="1049" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the link between Risk Register Database &amp;amp; Project Summary Risk Reports and other risk management and project management procedures?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23217" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-04-26T09:49:49.950" LastActivityDate="2017-06-26T05:47:11.203" Title="Risk Register &amp; Project Summary Risk Report" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;risk&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18103" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18117" CreationDate="2016-04-26T00:59:46.067" Score="1" ViewCount="1973" Body="&lt;p&gt;In one of my MS Project 2013 files, the drop down menus appear when I hover over the column headers in the Task Sheet view. In another file and new files, the drop down menu option does not appear in any views for any column headers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How could I get the drop down arrow back?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22275" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-15T09:15:46.960" LastActivityDate="2019-01-15T09:15:46.960" Title="Drop-down menus in MS Project 2013 disappeared" Tags="&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18103" CreationDate="2016-04-26T01:29:01.427" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;File &gt;&gt; Options &gt;&gt; Advanced &gt;&gt; Set AutoFilter on for New Projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your project exists and therefore is no longer new, press Alt + F11 to bring up the VBA editor and copy/paste this macro:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;Sub autofilter()&#xA;  ActiveProject.autofilter = True&#xA;End Sub&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Click somewhere in the macro and press F5 to execute the macro.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22275" LastActivityDate="2016-04-26T01:29:01.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18100" CreationDate="2016-04-26T06:00:49.050" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's the product owners duty to define acceptance criteria. This &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; include usability features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For example:&lt;/strong&gt; As a color blind user, I want to use this feature without any impediments&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's the engineers duty to figure out &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; to do that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For example:&lt;/strong&gt; Subtask: As a user, I want my color blindness settings from the main application to take effect when using this feature&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe the engineers decide to use a thumb-up / thumb-down instead of a red/green traffic light here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you chose. the Product owner says &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; he wants, the engineers decide &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; this is done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UX is &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2016-04-26T06:00:49.050" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18092" CreationDate="2016-04-26T06:45:57.397" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're a PM assigning tasks to individuals. You've used the word sprint, but isn't scrum, what is it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum answer would be for the development team member to move on to whatever task helps the Team achieve their commitments. Whether that is picking up 'someone else's task' (this isn't a thing in scrum) or pairing. The thing about pairing is that if the team member lacks the skills to help another, this helps them aquire them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend against pulling more work until the team has capacity, not just an individual. Improve cooperation so that everyone can work on the current work in progress first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17705" LastActivityDate="2016-04-26T06:45:57.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18098" CreationDate="2016-04-26T07:19:20.473" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One approach I have seen used is to have a roadmap which has epics/features shown as circle or ovals whose size gives a rough indication of the work involved. There is either no time units indicated or at the most quarter years are shown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is to make it deliberately vague, but still give an indication of the possible order in which work will be done. The more precise the roadmap looks, the more people will interpret it as having fixed dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even using this kind of visual roadmap is dangerous as it creates some expectation for delivery. I would deliver the roadmap with a clear message that as you are working in an agile fashion it is possible or even likely that the roadmap will change over time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-04-26T07:19:20.473" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18098" CreationDate="2016-04-26T08:37:25.290" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;On approach that I have created is the &lt;a href=&quot;https://medium.com/startup-strategy/the-lean-roadmap-9f96f507dca8#.w991i5oks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lean Roadmap Model&lt;/a&gt;. It combines 2 product strategy theories, the Lean Analytics Stages Model and the Hooked Model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach is useful if you are a startup, or if you are in the early stages of the product development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here the time and velocity variables are not taken into consideration. What is taken into consideration is how each improvement impacts the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MIHuy.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MIHuy.png&quot; alt=&quot;Lean Roadmap&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23222" LastActivityDate="2016-04-26T08:37:25.290" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18100" CreationDate="2016-04-26T14:56:50.463" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In agile we try to achieve as much as possible by consensus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try and build a working relationship between the product people and engineers such that consensus is reached frequently and there is no need for a vote or for one party to be given final authority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, you could reach agreement that the product people get to decide the overall design, but that the engineers can decide on the details. Or you might agree that a style guide is followed but that product people can make decisions as long as they do not conflict with the style guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing is to have an approach that allows everyone to feel comfortable with the design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-04-26T14:56:50.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18112" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18606" CreationDate="2016-04-26T15:22:33.287" Score="2" ViewCount="79" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a newbie to Project Management. While going through a course for basic understanding of Project Management, I got stuck with the Closing Process Group of Project HR Management Knowledge Area. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book says, Executing Process Group for HR Management includes processes to acquire, develop and manage project team however the Closing Process Group contains no activities or processes. Shouldn't it contain the releasing process of the resources?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23232" LastActivityDate="2016-12-31T16:30:48.347" Title="Why is Closing Process Group of Project HR management empty?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18100" CreationDate="2016-04-26T18:42:38.617" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set aside time for your team to learn some basic UX/usability, whether it's looking over blogs or videos together or actual training. Even if you get a dedicated person later, helping your team become more T-shaped will pay dividends. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work &lt;em&gt;together&lt;/em&gt; to create a proxy for a UX designer, i.e. a visual style guide that can be followed by almost anyone when implementing something, and referenced in discussions. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your product goes beyond simple functionality, you should consider incorporating guidelines for how a user should feel when using it. This will drive important discussions around specific decisions. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do what you can to get that true UX/usability member, even if it's just a part-time contractor putting their eyes on the most critical pieces like the style guide, large changes, new features that set precedence, etc. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: almost forgot the most important point - validation! Do usability tests, get user feedback, and involve as much of the team as possible - there is a much higher chance they will own the iteration and solutions needed when problems arise, and they get a chance to be closer to the user perspective. Even with a dedicated UX member taking the first stab at designs, true user validation is invaluable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastEditorUserId="17485" LastEditDate="2016-04-26T18:51:09.233" LastActivityDate="2016-04-26T18:51:09.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18098" CreationDate="2016-04-26T18:54:06.530" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;User story mapping (with planning overlaid on it - sprints marked, velocity/points, etc.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Great resource for applying it: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1491904909&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/User-Story-Mapping-Discover-Product/dp/1491904909&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2016-04-26T18:54:06.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18103" CreationDate="2016-04-27T00:32:30.113" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To do this with the menus do this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;View&lt;/strong&gt; &gt;&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Filter&lt;/strong&gt; &gt;&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Display AutoFilter&lt;/strong&gt; .... (shorthand for below)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Click on the &lt;strong&gt;View&lt;/strong&gt; tab. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then look for the &lt;strong&gt;Filter&lt;/strong&gt; drop down. It's about in the middle and has a little funnel next to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Click on the drop down arrow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost at the bottom of that menu, next row to the last, should be a selection for &lt;strong&gt;Display AutoFilter&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Click on that and the auto filter arrows should get turned back on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps! (please mark whichever answer you find the most suitable as the answer)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23027" LastEditorUserId="23027" LastEditDate="2016-04-27T00:38:28.557" LastActivityDate="2016-04-27T00:38:28.557" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18118" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-27T11:22:21.767" Score="5" ViewCount="132" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the middle of a sprint right now, the following problems have arose:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Urgent bug has cropped up that needs resolving&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Stakeholder urgently needs a requirement integrated which is preventing a deliverable from going live. This was missed out during planning because they did not realise at the time they needed it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of story points both tasks are (0.5 points) after speaking to my dev team during a daily stand up. To fit this into the sprint I replaced an equivalent story in the sprint that is (1 points) with both of the 0.5. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;0.5 + 0.5 = 1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If these tasks were not urgent, I would have put them in the backlog and waited for the next sprint cycle to begin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this the correct way to handle the situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2016-04-27T12:09:09.710" Title="Exchanging equivalent user stories (Story points based) in a sprint" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18118" CreationDate="2016-04-27T12:09:09.710" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as Sprint Goal is kept the Sprint Backlog can be changed as needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Scrum Guide is written:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the Sprint:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;No changes are made that would endanger the Sprint Goal;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Quality goals do not decrease; and,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Scope may be clarified and re-negotiated between the Product Owner and Development Team as more is learned.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What else can you do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cancel the sprint and start all over? It is very traumatic for the team at it seems Sprint Goal is valid.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Continue on the agreed scope? What would be the consequence?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mentioned you discussed this with the Development team. As the Sprint Backlog is owned by the Development Team they need to agree on the scope change. If they did, that is OK. It is always better to explain to the Dev team why would you like to modify the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Especially, if they did not yet start to work on the item that should be put out the impact of they work should not be high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, one has to be careful. Are you sure the tasks are urgent? Does this happen often (if it does, something is probably wrong - length of sprint, understanding how your team works by stakeholders, poor sprint planning  discussion,...) ?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also suggest to discuss this in the sprint retrospection. Will the team think that it significantly impacted their work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23238" LastActivityDate="2016-04-27T12:09:09.710" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18121" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18122" CreationDate="2016-04-27T15:33:52.370" Score="2" ViewCount="268" Body="&lt;p&gt;My total work estimate is 1056 man days&#xA;Release Start time: May 10&#xA;Release End time: October 10&#xA;total Work days available: 101&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1056 / 101 = 11 resource Approx.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this correct calculation? If not how to arrive best resource estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23242" LastActivityDate="2016-04-29T23:17:01.947" Title="How to estimate number of resources when I have my timelines fixed, but work effort is more" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18121" CreationDate="2016-04-27T15:44:01.207" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only caveat I would suggest is that the formula yields 11 FTEs, not necessarily resources or actual people.  If you have 11 FTEs, you may need to staff it with 13, 14, or even 15 people because we all work something less than 100% utilization on any given work day.  So unproductive time needs to be accounted for.  The other side of the coin is that some job families work well over an eight-hour day so utilization climbs closer to 100% again.  And, finally, it does not really matter when you have a buyer-seller relationship because the seller will charge 100% of time no matter what was actually productive.  So use that formula as a guide but consider these other drivers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2016-04-27T18:17:02.987" LastActivityDate="2016-04-27T18:17:02.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18123" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-27T16:29:30.240" Score="1" ViewCount="113" Body="&lt;p&gt;My client has requested access to their server we have not delivered yet, due to the development of the project is still in progress.  They do not have anyone on staff with technology experience.  And if they brought in someone from outside their office, this person would not easily understand our stack overflow or our software.  Bottom line, the integrity of the project and software is at risk, we know it but I am at a lose for words to explain this to the client.  Basically looking for a short cut documentation of some sort.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23244" LastActivityDate="2018-11-19T11:40:12.037" Title="How to diplomatically deny client access to their server" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;clients&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18124" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-27T18:00:28.720" Score="3" ViewCount="329" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an organisation they decided to hire a full time scrum master to help them transition to scrum. Most of the developers onshore and offshore were new to the company's huge system, and new to scrum. Three months later, the management decided to start taking over the process in order to deliver &quot;something&quot; as the first crucial deadline approached, since the scrum team's velocity was not ideal and often they were dropping stories, or bringing them to the next sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The management thinks that too much detail is given in trying to split down user stories and gauging the team's performance, so they will just have to take over and leave the &quot;agility&quot; at the side for the next couple of months until they actually deliver something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should the scrum master do granted that this is a management decision?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5522" LastActivityDate="2016-04-28T13:37:53.213" Title="What should a scrum master do if his manager insists on managing the team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18124" CreationDate="2016-04-27T20:21:00.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without knowing the details/context of your company culture and management, my first instinct would be to round up the dev teams and management (or as much of each as possible) and do a root-cause analysis of the current situation; using the 5-why's or a similar approach. At least then you will have a clear idea of where everyone stands in terms of really giving Scrum a shot, what is preventing adoption, and management's tolerance for risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you will definitely want more than a single SM for training and supporting multiple distributed teams AND management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2016-04-27T20:21:00.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18124" CreationDate="2016-04-27T23:49:04.753" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;For an agile transformation to be successful, it requires support from the Top, the Middle and the Teams. While resistance in the Middle or Teams can slow things down, lack of active support from the top almost always leads to failure. Unless the team is already high performing and management is happy with their work, guerrilla agile rarely works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I nearly worked for just such a company. Thanks to contacts in the company I learned that the scrum master's boss was fired fairly early on and the scrum master only lasted another couple of months as management tried to decide if they were effective. Of course they were not because management didn't really want to be &quot;agile&quot;, they wanted a quick fix silver bullet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I have coached people facing this situation the advice I always give is simple. Run...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't have support, the organization is sick and you're a very convenient target. Unless you can get at least one top level manager to support you then you're on quicksand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry, not a fix. May save you a lot of heartburn though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-04-27T23:49:04.753" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18123" CreationDate="2016-04-28T01:30:10.880" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume the hardware and software (done as work for hire) are legally theirs. If the contract does not address this situation, find a way to amend the contract or otherwise put in writing that you are not liable for any changes made to the system by anyone outside of the team that was hired to do the work (i.e. your team). Granting them read-only access might be another option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also seen a consultant raise his rate when the client reveals their intention to give his work to other contractors, essentially as an early-termination penalty. Basically what you want to do now is not avoid having other people rummaging through your code, but protect yourself from any effects it may have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13325" LastActivityDate="2016-04-28T01:30:10.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18128" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-28T02:12:08.447" Score="4" ViewCount="484" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for a small software company and I am the Scrum Master. In this company we have a small group of people who consist our StakeHolders. To represent the StakeHolder's interest the stakeholders choose one of themselves to be product owner. To me this is all fine and dandy as long as we have some one who is responsible for what the development team works on. Unfortunately the company is maintaining several projects at one time and there is always competing items for development time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is my question, at what level does the product owner prioritize work? My product owner likes to say we need to work on Large Project A, Large Project B, Small Project C. The time line for these items are due in 2 months. A the Product Owner considers that to be the priority of items. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alot of the resources I have read about Scrum says the Product Owner organizes work by features. Supposedly, a great product owner will organize items in priority to maximize the amount of work the team can do. From what I read, it seems to me that our product owner is only a Product Owner in name, where he is actually just a StakeHolder representing StakeHolders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I am right about this, what is an effective way to correct the Product Owner and Stake Holder on his management style?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21682" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-04-28T15:38:57.433" LastActivityDate="2016-04-28T15:38:57.433" Title="At what level should the Product Owner prioritize work?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18129" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18135" CreationDate="2016-04-28T06:07:57.660" Score="1" ViewCount="299" Body="&lt;p&gt;If( [Text1] And [Text4] &gt; 0, [Text1] - [Text4], &quot;&quot; )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need a syntax for Null/Empty cells in [Text1] and [Text4] to avoid #ERROR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank You&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23255" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-04-28T10:27:40.790" LastActivityDate="2016-04-28T14:46:10.487" Title="Custom Field Formula for MSP" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18128" CreationDate="2016-04-28T07:55:15.220" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I understand from what you provided so far, your symptom is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;there is always compete items for development time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is in itself a very normal challenge of (software dev) life, which the product owner is responsible for taking care of. So far you seem to be on the right track, just the problem seems to be that you have multiple projects for one team, with dedicated people in the team for each project.&#xA;Now, in case the various projects don't have any interdependence, I would recommend to split up the teams in smaller ones - each consisting of the dev team that works on one product backlog for one of the projects you have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If splitting up the team is not an option (because of dependencies), you need to include all projects into &lt;strong&gt;one&lt;/strong&gt; backlog for the &lt;strong&gt;one&lt;/strong&gt; team you have. Then it is again up to the PO to decide about priorities inside that backlog. And yes, it is normal that this migth be challenging for the PO. &#xA;In general, you can have one backlog for multiple teams - but you can not have multiple backlogs for one team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22418" LastActivityDate="2016-04-28T07:55:15.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18128" CreationDate="2016-04-28T08:35:17.963" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum is at its most effective when there is one backlog and one &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/product-owner&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Product Owner&lt;/a&gt; for a delivery team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The backlog is designed so that the work that is about to be started is defined at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/user-stories&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;user story level&lt;/a&gt;, which is convenient for the delivery team to work on. But the backlog may also contain planned work that is several weeks or even months away. This work can sometimes be defined quite roughly and is represented by &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/stories-epics-and-themes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;'epics' or 'themes'&lt;/a&gt;. These are probably the closest thing in Scrum to the 'Project A', 'Project B' and 'Project C' that you mention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is that the Product Owner is continually refining the backlog. They break down the roughly defined work in to more concrete user stories in a just-in-time fashion. Such that the work that is about to be started is nicely defined, but future work may be less clear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although the Product Owner is responsible for the backlog that does not mean they are the only person who works on it. It is quite common for the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/scrummaster&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum Master&lt;/a&gt; and the delivery team to sit with the Product Owner and help them with the task of breaking future work down in to user stories. This is particularly common when the Product Owner is not very experienced in the role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first recommendation would be to suggest that the person who is currently in the Product Owner role gets some training. Product Owner certification is ideal and is usually just a couple of days worth of training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, have the Scrum Master and team work with the Product Owner to help them to break the ill-defined work down in to requirements that the team can work with. I would suggest you do this as a part of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/product-backlog-refinement-grooming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;backlog refinement&lt;/a&gt; meetings that happen quite frequently. You may well find that once you have done this a few times the Product Owner starts to grasp the concept and will then do a lot of the refinement themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-04-28T08:35:17.963" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18124" CreationDate="2016-04-28T09:20:45.090" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sadly this is not an uncommon situation (I have faced it myself a few times).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the management team does not understand the Agile approach they often assume it is a &lt;em&gt;luxury&lt;/em&gt; and that it slows delivery down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master's role is to ensure that Scrum is being followed. To do this it is often necessary to spend a lot of time coaching people about the how and the why of Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would take the opportunity of the 'management takeover' to spend time explaining the benefits of the agile approach. Place particular emphasis on how Scrum can appear to be slow because it tends to be a very open and transparent way to work. It is also worth talking about the continual improvements that you get with Scrum and how in the medium/long-term these will often produce sizable benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some excellent books out there that you can use as ammunition for your arguments. I would recommend &quot;Scrum - The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time&quot; by Jeff Sutherland and &quot;The Nature of Software Development&quot; by Ron Jeffries. Both books are targetted at management level readers and so will be helpful in your current situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-04-28T13:37:53.213" LastActivityDate="2016-04-28T13:37:53.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18128" CreationDate="2016-04-28T09:52:28.733" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems that you have problem with coherent &lt;strong&gt;Sprint goal&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know how the team uses Product(s) backlog but you should emphasize to the PO that the more coherent the sprint content is, the more efficient the team works. If each member works on his/her own item it is not really Scrum (I mean the origin &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;meaning from Rugby&lt;/a&gt;). To take advantage of Scrum (framework) whole team must have the one common goal of the sprint to increase collaboration and self-organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more thing.&#xA;In the post you mention:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Supposedly, a great product owner will organize items in priority to&#xA;  maximize the amount of work the team can do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The product owner is here to maximize ROI (return on investment) of the project not the amount of work. PO should order the product backlog so that the project delivers the maximum possible &lt;strong&gt;value&lt;/strong&gt; every iteration (so that team works on the most important items first).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23238" LastActivityDate="2016-04-28T09:52:28.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18129" CreationDate="2016-04-28T14:46:10.487" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This will skip non-numeric values in the Text fields:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;IIf(IsNumeric([Text1]) And IsNumeric([Text4]),[Text1]-[Text4],&quot;&quot;)&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally, numeric values are stored in number fields (e.g. Number1, Number4), which eliminates the need to validate the inputs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;p.s. If your custom formula is in a Number field, change the last argument of the IIf function to 0 instead of &quot;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastActivityDate="2016-04-28T14:46:10.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2820" CreationDate="2016-04-28T17:44:25.973" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it depends upon the project.  MS Project is best for planning and scheduling, so the project will need to have a little size to be justified.  And if the project is fairly large, you will probably be best with some other tools to help the developers manage the sprints and iterations, which include a lot of meetings as well as development of epics and stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23263" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2016-04-29T07:48:44.277" LastActivityDate="2016-04-29T07:48:44.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14752" CreationDate="2016-04-28T18:48:53.067" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile development occurs in a very collaborative environment.  MS Project, generally, is not a collaborative tool.  As a result, it would appear it could be helpful as a higher level tool for planning and monitoring according to progress on higher level tasks.  However, it seems very cumbersome at best to accommodate the degree of collaboration and organic change that occurs on agile projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23263" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2016-04-29T07:47:40.467" LastActivityDate="2016-04-29T07:47:40.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18138" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-28T20:28:18.860" Score="3" ViewCount="608" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a team of junior web developers, who are very motivated to improve their skills, and applying their new knowledge to the development has produced great results so far. But I am conscious of the time they would be spending on learning during their work hours. What is the ideal balance of allocating them a number of hours for online training/courses in a week so much that it does not affect their deadlines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23265" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-01-25T17:23:35.777" LastActivityDate="2018-01-25T17:23:35.777" Title="How many hours should the development team spend on skills improvement during work?" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;skills&gt;&lt;training&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18138" CreationDate="2016-04-28T20:52:12.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since this is a PM forum, I think this is an easy answer.  The answer is zero.  A customer should not have to pay for one hour of learning.  People will learn as a side effect of doing the work but every hour they work needs to provide value to the project, not the other way around.  The only caveat to that is training within that specific project context, i.e., training to handle project-specific processes and procedures, rules, specific tool sets, etc.  Otherwise, those people on the project need to be ready to go if they are charging for those hours.  If a seller of work needs to train their people, they can put them on a project but those hours worked do not get billed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like a teaching hospital.  A patient or his insurance company will not get billed for the fifteen physicians doing rounds.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more caveat:  If the customer is requiring the use of a brand new technology that is not well known in industry, then a seller can negotiate training as part of its work proposal.  That would be reasonable but also pre-negotiated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  This applies to in-house, too.  In-house project workers are building something for an in-house customer.  In-house projects cost money, too.  Any training taking place, whether it is a buyer-seller situation or in-house, it is NOT part of the project but part of the overhead, including the seller's overhead.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those that had such heartburn with my answer, let's bring it home.  Say you hired a landscaping company T&amp;amp;M (hourly) to get your yard ready for summer.  Two hours in, you look out and see all eight sitting in a circle on your lawn being taught about different types of soil and which is more conducive for different types of flowers, taking up two hours.  After a total of eight hours, they finish and you get a bill for eight hours x each employee.  Would you pay it?  If so, I would like to sell you some lawn services.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2016-04-29T13:29:36.713" LastActivityDate="2016-04-29T13:29:36.713" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18138" CreationDate="2016-04-28T22:02:19.150" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you put &lt;em&gt;Scrum&lt;/em&gt; tag I will answer from the Scrum point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The team should spend as much time for learning as they think it is necessary to produce product increment every sprint according to the definition of done.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as Product Owner (PO) is happy with team progress I cannot see any reason to influence the team's training time. If the PO would think that the less learning would increase team's velocity (in a long term) he/she can discuss this with the team - to what point the education helps the project and to what point it is not necessary or the training scope is outside of the required skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When discussing a sprint goal the team should be aware of how much would they need to spend on education to finish the Sprint backlog. Here is the best time to  address the issue. If the learning is not strictly connected to the sprint goal, it should be discussed how this learning can increase teams effectiveness in long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23238" LastEditorUserId="23238" LastEditDate="2016-04-30T09:24:03.340" LastActivityDate="2016-04-30T09:24:03.340" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18138" CreationDate="2016-04-29T01:00:34.537" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;...has produced great results so far.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sounds promising! I can think of several approaches to managing skills improvement / professional development in the context of scrum:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Arguably, professional development could be considered &quot;all part of the day's work&quot; which is supposed to go on during a sprint. If you're figuring sprint capacity supposing that, say, 30-40% of the workday is devoted to such routine tasks, then perhaps they could spend up to 10-20% on learning. (Adjust numbers for your actual situation of course.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If your team is not continuously sprinting, time between sprints could be used.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If your team can afford to cycle one developer at a time off the sprints, that developer could spend their time on a combination of skills improvement and tech debt. Note that some teams routinely keep one team member out of sprint to be available to squash bugs or deal with other urgent problems, eg &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/15777/how-to-deal-with-unavoidable-on-demand-tasks-in-scrum-or-should-we-even-try/15784?s=1|0.1488#15784&quot;&gt;Batman&lt;/a&gt;: this model could be combined with learning time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If there is a specific area or technology that the team either anticipates needing, or has identified as an area that needs improvement (eg in retrospectives), and if your PO is onboard with the idea that such learning would be a good investment, you could devote a sprint to this, with an appropriate sprint goal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the difficulty is persuading the PO and/or other stakeholders that the learning is a good investment, I would suggest making two points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;professional development is a good investment in junior developers; it's how they become senior developers who can be more productive and/or bill at a higher rate. It also keeps morale high, as you have already alluded to in your question.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;presumably your &quot;great results so far&quot; mean improved productivity or quality, ie higher velocity or smaller bug count. Pull out those numbers! and negotiate with your stakeholders about how much time to invest for the kind of return you are getting or can reasonably project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, some companies have policies about continuing professional development, and it's included in their staffing plans: eg, 1 FTE turns into 0.8 FTE after sick time, vacation time, &amp;amp; prof dev are taken into account. Check with your line manager and/or HR dept to see if that's true in your case. If so, then treat learning time like any other time off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck! And good for you for trying to grow your team's skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2016-04-29T01:00:34.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10442" CreationDate="2016-04-29T13:35:46.980" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a slightly different take on this.  Our team has evolved an approach (branching model, organisational structure, overall approach) which allows us to run multiple sprints in parallel - this is especially useful for ensuring high utilisation, so nobody is sat idle waiting for QA to finish their task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The downside is, at any given point, we don't know which sprint will go out first, thus date-based, or ordinal naming is useless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus we went for the 'colourful but meaningless' approach and named our sprints after moons in the solar system (there are quite a lot!).  The names themselves don't convey anything, but its a very useful way to be able to talk about a collection of features, enhancements and fixes in a way that everyone involved can relate to.  I take issue with the assertion that your sprint name HAS to mean something - in our case its simply a logical grouping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We've ran with this system for over two years, over something like fifty point releases, and it works very, very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, we currently have sprints 'Phoebe' and 'Ceres' in development - the project plan calls for Phoebe to become the next point release (1.80.0) but there are no guarantees, and we remain agile enough to change the planned order of releases, with minimal impact on delivery.  Thus we may find problems with Phoebe in the QA cycle that delays it, and Ceres will go out as 1.80.0, and Phoebe will (probably!) become 1.81.0.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23271" LastActivityDate="2016-04-29T13:35:46.980" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18138" CreationDate="2016-04-29T21:17:27.333" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kanban offers a great way to handle continuous improvement. You just need to introduce slack in the system. A developer can pick up work from the continuous improvement board whenever they're blocked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23025" LastActivityDate="2016-04-29T21:17:27.333" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18121" CreationDate="2016-04-29T21:27:53.360" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think David has a very good answer. And another consideration: In many projects, you cannot have all 11 or however many, working at the same time. If the work is indeed very 'bite-sized' and independent, so all FTEs can work concurrently, then perhaps a purely mathematic answer can work. But if there are periods while only 2-3 people can be working at the same time, you must plan with a more detailed schedule. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23274" LastActivityDate="2016-04-29T21:27:53.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18121" CreationDate="2016-04-29T23:17:01.947" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the above from David and SGoff, you should consider any dependencies between tasks to arrive at a total duration.  If this duration goes beyond the target release date, this will indicate you need to increase the number of resources for critical-path tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23275" LastActivityDate="2016-04-29T23:17:01.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17859" CreationDate="2016-04-29T23:34:25.603" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tracking responses at the task level in a tool such as Slack defeats the purpose of the 'project team', whereby active and open communication are key.  Individual task discussions should happen verbally, better yet in-person (if possible).  I've seen success in using Slack to track team discussions by product Feature, whereby the team agrees at the project outset (&quot;team agreements&quot;) to review posts daily and verbally communicate in the daily stand-up, or in outside team collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23275" LastActivityDate="2016-04-29T23:34:25.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18147" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-04-30T00:14:47.593" Score="2" ViewCount="10730" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not understanding how MS Project (2016, in this case) calculates the BCWP component of Earned Value. To illustrate: below is a one-task project. The task is five days long, has one resource assigned 8/hrs per day at $10 per hr. The task starts 4/29 and finishes 5/5.The task is set to use Physical % Complete as the basis for Earned Value calculations, and the project is set to not calculate Actual Cost automatically (so I can enter an Actual Cost manually). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I set the project's baseline and all works as it should: baseline cost is set to $400. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I set the task to 100% complete and the Physical % Complete also to 100%. I enter an actual cost of $500. ACWP correctly displays that value, and correctly displays the $400 BCWS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, I set the Project Status Date to 5/9/16, after the finish date of the task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I get is shown below. I don't understand why BCWP is $0.00. The task has been performed, it has a Budget Cost of $400. Shouldn't Project show $400 for the BCWP on this completed task? Calculating the Project has no effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lTVKx.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lTVKx.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Earned Value for one task&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not the world's greatest MS Project expert, so I suspect I'm doing something wrong here, and I'd appreciate any insights as to what my error is. Am I mis-understanding BCWP? Do I have some setting wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for any help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23276" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-08T22:29:05.280" LastActivityDate="2019-08-27T19:39:49.553" Title="Why is MS Project 2016 Showing a $0 for BCWP on a completed task" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;&lt;evm&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18149" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-01T01:12:23.880" Score="0" ViewCount="4576" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say I have three tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want Task2 (hammock activity) to start at the same time as Task1 but finish at the same time as Task3. Is there a clever way of doing this? This task will adjust it's start, finish and duration based on the tasks it's linked to in MS Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22275" LastEditorUserId="27722" LastEditDate="2018-08-31T13:50:49.703" LastActivityDate="2021-04-17T19:52:51.003" Title="Start-to-Start and Finish-to-Finish Logic in MS Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;dependencies&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18102" CreationDate="2016-05-01T14:34:28.443" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems (based on some Google searches) that the &lt;em&gt;Risk Register Database&lt;/em&gt; is used to track the progress and status of the risks identified. This is updated very frequently, to ensure the project remains on track, by removing/mitigating the risks identified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Project Summary Risk Report&lt;/em&gt; would be the master list of issues that were identified - the result of a risk analysis process. This list fed the Risk Register Database, but it remains static (unless new risks are identified), to provide a baseline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be other names for these documents. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only other Risk Document I can think of is the result of a post-mortem, where the Project Summary Risk Report is compared to the Risk Register Database and lessons learned are added to the list of things to consider in future project planning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-05-01T14:34:28.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18149" CreationDate="2016-05-01T17:45:22.227" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure I'd call this 'clever' or not. The only way I know of to do this would be to write a macro or program. I don't have any code for this handy, sorry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my mind it would require that a number or text field be set on the tasks where you wanted this to happen as a multiple value flag field. This is not something to do for every task, of course. Not that you are suggesting that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The macro would: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look for the flagged task &amp;amp; select it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the SS predecessor link to find Task 1, say.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set the start date for the flagged task based on the predecessor task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do the same thing on the FF successor. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look for the next flagged task ... lather, rinse, repeat ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to have values in the flag field to identify what to do about things like multiple successors or predecessors with SS / FF relationships &amp;amp; there would be code to deal with the different conditions if so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would not be too hard for the simple case presented in the OP. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Resource leveling is not a solution for this case. Without getting to far down the rabbit hole, resource leveling is just not designed to derive a tasks duration between constraints or actuals of other linked tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that said, this is one of those things a lot of PMs would likely not want to have happening automatically during project execution. But, it might be a useful tool during a schedule build or significant update. Having it in a macro that you have to trigger yourself seems okay to me ... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for the question. If this answers your question, please mark it as such. If I get some time maybe I can post some code. Don't wait for me though!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23027" LastActivityDate="2016-05-01T17:45:22.227" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18147" CreationDate="2016-05-02T08:16:41.123" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My guess is that you didn't &lt;strong&gt;save a baseline before marking the tasks as 100% complete&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/BCWP-Earned-Value-or-EV-fields-e0c570ea-9c7b-4864-8a6b-920ed0f7b847&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;definition of BCWP by Microsoft&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is BCWP Calculated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a task is first created, the BCWP is 0.00. &lt;strong&gt;As soon as a baseline is saved and progress is reported for the task&lt;/strong&gt; (as actual work, actual duration, or percentage of work complete), Microsoft Office Project calculates BCWP. This calculation is based on the percentage of work complete, &lt;strong&gt;as compared with the task's baseline duration&lt;/strong&gt;. Project then calculates the cumulative baseline cost and provides the value of what the task's actual costs should be, given the task's progress to that point in the task's baseline duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2016-05-02T08:16:41.123" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18155" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-02T19:48:23.257" Score="1" ViewCount="133" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am project managing on an on going bases an e-commerce site for a client. I have only one resource working on it, a sub contractor due to a lack of resources. He is working remotely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am having great difficulty managing him, and it is affecting my ability to deliver tasks in a timely manner. He has delivered the site, but it was after many delays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some of the issues that I am having:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not always returning calls, text messages, emails. Sometimes this is understandable since he is working during the day, but in evenings or weekends he is not always responsive.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only completing tasks according to his own time table and not when the client needs it. Simple tasks take three times as long to do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Often ignoring requests I may have for work to be done, unless the situation becomes extremely critical and the client starts repeatedly asking me when x task will be done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tells me he will do work by a certain deadline, but does not meet it leading to delays.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I am unsure about something technically, and need his opinion, he is not always available to answer in a timely manner.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Difficulties I am now having:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Client wants to improve their web site, due to my resource's general unreliability, I am unable to take any new work on. This is frustrating for us as a company since it is affecting our cash flow.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My credibility as a PM has dropped with the client since the project is often delayed, or I am not always able to get back to them quick enough about any queries. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am often extremely stressed out because of this project, upper management is fully behind me, since we eventually delivered the build. But I am not enjoying managing it. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am working on weekends, often on standby, in case of any client requests. This alleviates my stress levels, since if something goes wrong, I am not sure he is reliable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have escalated this to upper management requesting that we replace the resource, we are looking into doing this. However, for the time being I need my resource to do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bug fixes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set up a staging environment for handover period&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite several requests, he is not listening to me and is doing it in his own time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I manage this situation better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since there is some confusion here about the arrangement with the subcontractor:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He knew before signing up that he will be working on weekends or evenings since he has a day job. At the time he signed up, he felt confident that he could deliver the project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I had just joined the company then, so did not have enough time to recruit somebody.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I do not set his deadlines, rather I ask him when he will be able to do x task done by. He often tells me when, but then it turns into a situation where he does not end up delivering by that date causing me to start badgering him.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="20871" LastEditDate="2016-05-08T00:29:51.750" LastActivityDate="2016-05-08T00:29:51.750" Title="Having trouble managing a sub contractor" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;subcontractor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18156" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-03T02:47:56.977" Score="4" ViewCount="189" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for a small distributor of technical products. We're about 20 employees strong; our primary business involves sourcing and selling often-obscure technical equipment and accessories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been made team lead of our three-person &quot;data team&quot;. Our responsibilities revolve around the maintenance of the rapidly-changing data on which our business depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My goal: I want to adopt an effective methodology (or combination thereof) for my team that acknowledges our main challenges:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My team is involved in both &lt;strong&gt;projects&lt;/strong&gt; and in &lt;strong&gt;operations&lt;/strong&gt;. We must make reasonable progress on priority projects while always reacting to issues brought to our attention.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Our assigned projects are many, small, and typically short-lived.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the environment is often organizationally &lt;strong&gt;chaotic&lt;/strong&gt;. Several small projects are completed weekly, but even more are created meanwhile, and throughout it all we're bombarded with issues and requests major and minor. Our task lists are growing at all times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I won't delve into the steps I've taken to help resolve the 'company culture' side of the problem. I'm concerned here with doing right by my team and by the work we are reasonably capable of doing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there a methodology (or hybrid) around which to structure my team's work?&lt;/strong&gt; The vast majority of the methodologies and tools I've encountered are centered around major, multi-step projects that are attacked by project-focused teams. This is not our environment. I'm hoping that people brighter than me have developed effective ways to operate in these or similar conditions. I don't expect a perfect system, but I'm struggling to even find one that will serve as a starting point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Note: our company's official project management tool is TeamworkPM. My team uses this daily. However, I'm interested more in a system than a tool; I can adapt our use of TeamworkPM as needed.] &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23295" LastActivityDate="2016-05-03T15:09:15.000" Title="What's a project management methodology suitable for a small team that addresses both operations and rapid-fire small projects?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18156" CreationDate="2016-05-03T14:23:52.687" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As RubberDuck noted, kanban seems like a pretty good place to start in terms of process. Just constructing the board and flow will probably give you and the team a lot of insight into the amount and nature of the &quot;chaos&quot;, and if you can use it for a few weeks, gain a lot more insight into bottlenecks, loops, blockers, etc. Just be sure to use columns or a flow that actually maps to your &lt;em&gt;current reality/steps&lt;/em&gt;, not an idealized version, or what you think it should be eventually. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2016-05-03T14:23:52.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18156" CreationDate="2016-05-03T15:09:15.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Scrum!&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see two levels of Scrum to fit your description. &#xA;Level one, a Scrum &lt;em&gt;program&lt;/em&gt; management system. &#xA;Use Scrum to backlog and prioritize your various projects. &#xA;You may have to take some liberties with sprint timeboxing to accommodate, or then again, maybe not; maybe the length of the Sprint is a good time to re-assess and re-prioritize and evaluate the project's continuation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second level would be to manage each project through Scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;What you said:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our assigned projects are many, small, and typically short-lived.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...the environment is often organizationally chaotic. Several small&#xA;  projects are completed weekly, but even more are created meanwhile,&#xA;  and throughout it all we're bombarded with issues and requests major&#xA;  and minor. Our task lists are growing at all times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We must make reasonable progress on priority projects while always&#xA;  reacting to issues brought to our attention.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Why Scrum fits:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For you, I think the backbone of how Scrum will work is it's ability to tame chaos, and deliver constant results.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By committing to do certain items (Sprint goals) within a short period of time (Sprint) you minimize the effects of constant change on your ability to make progress, and you keep morale up &lt;em&gt;because&lt;/em&gt; you are constantly making progress and constantly delivering.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is designed as a way to manage complex and changing projects. It's not limited by focus or product - anything that fits as complex or has changing requirements can, in my experience, benefit from Scrum. &#xA;In my experience (I'm not a software developer by the way - we're using Scrum to manage the design and development of hard goods [highly engineered hard goods]) Scrum works very well for &lt;em&gt;collections of&lt;/em&gt; short projects and for long, complex projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also serves really well when your &quot;assignments&quot; come from multiple places.  Sometimes it can be hard to manage conflicting priorities from multiple groups.  What I recommend here is to organize the various groups into a quasi-council to serve the &quot;Product Owner&quot; role - and let them reach consensus on what will be worked on each Sprint, and let them organize and re-prioritize the backlog.  This can work &lt;em&gt;wonderfully&lt;/em&gt; with the right approach to get drastically better results and better satisfaction from multiple departments.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What Scrum does well (IMHO) is that it does not attempt to &lt;em&gt;stop&lt;/em&gt; the chaos, but it provides a way to &lt;em&gt;tame&lt;/em&gt; chaos, and makes it sustainably manageable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Afterthoughts&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I purposely avoided getting into the nitty gritty of how Scrum works, describing the roles, ceremonies, etc.  There is information ad-nauseum about this available on the web, and many other questions that have discussed these topics on this SE site even.  I will however share some of my favorite resources for the basics.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.collab.net/services/training/agile_e-learning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Collabnet's e-learning&lt;/a&gt; series provides a great overview of all the basic concepts in easy to follow video format.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mountaingoatsoftware&lt;/a&gt; is Mike Cohn's site and he has many good blog articles, powerpoint presentations, videos, etc. available for free, and more detailed video training and even in-person training available for purchase.  (Mike is one of the primary founding contributors to Scrum's development).  And there are many good books on Scrum - a popular choice, and one I'll admit I've only made it part way through, is &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.com/0137043295&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Essential Scrum by Ken Rubin&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm less familiar with hybrids, but I know &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrumban&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrumban&lt;/a&gt; is a popular hybrid approach for combining Scrum practices with a Kanban &quot;pull&quot; system. I personally haven't done enough research on it to offer any insights or opinions; at this time, I'm merely aware of it's existence :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19296" LastActivityDate="2016-05-03T15:09:15.000" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18155" CreationDate="2016-05-03T18:52:55.450" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The situation can be better handled via SLAs set when a PO is issued for the sub-contractor. The SOW needs to be clearly defined and if the 3rd party resource does not deliver as per the SLAs, then you can clearly define the &quot;Damages&quot; in terms of monetary compensation or additional support/alternate resource added to the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the project progresses, the SOW may get modified or extended- As PM, its your job to extend the POs and provide compensation for additional work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this is a risk when 3rd party contractor is involved.Hence Peer reference and prior work history of contractor needs to be evaluated before awarding the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23307" LastActivityDate="2016-05-03T18:52:55.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18165" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-03T19:07:34.023" Score="2" ViewCount="153" Body="&lt;h2&gt;The Question:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are the distinct advantages and/or disadvantages of a Digital (excel or dedicated PM software) approach to Sprint management as it relates to documenting the development process for the purpose of satisfying ISO 9001 (or other similar sanctioning bodies) compliance requirements?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answers should &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer&quot;&gt;follow these guidelines&lt;/a&gt; :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Background:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We’re an ISO 9001 regulated company. As such, we are required to generate and maintain records which show evidence of: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk based thinking (identification and acting upon opportunities and identifying and acting upon chances for defects)   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Process based approach (evidence of having a system and following that system)   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plan-do-check-act cycle (plan what you will do, do it, analyze the outcome, act on opportunities to improve based upon your outcome)   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This stuff is all inherently built into the Scrum process &lt;em&gt;YAY!&lt;/em&gt; but showing evidence of it is where the digital tools seem to have the advantage.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Excel, and most of the dedicated Scrum software I've seen, does this handsomely by documenting the product backlog, user stories, the sprint backlog, tracking progress, etc., etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have mixed feelings about the value of these tools in that regard vs. their alignment to the Agile principles.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically I have concerns about the following: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Working [processes] over comprehensive documentation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Working [product] is the primary measure of progress.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The requirements for evidence are pretty open ended, and do not preclude analog tools. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I can satisfy the requirements for evidence of Risk-based thinking and PDCA by taking pictures of the product backlog boards and sprint boards before/after grooming, sprint planning, and sprint completion, etc. We're already tracking retrsopective minutes with OneNote, while using an analog approach, which works fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being new to Scrum, I'm not sure what is the right approach, and was hoping to get inputs from more experienced Scrum teams who may have some experiential insights to offer :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19296" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2016-05-04T16:35:44.873" Title="Digital Sprint management with regards to ISO compliance" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18165" CreationDate="2016-05-03T19:31:11.013" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seemed more appropriate to split this into an answer, to be voted on/commented on/edited and generally considered by the community separate from the question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Recommendation:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;*Perhaps the ideal approach for this particular situation would involve using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lovemysurface.net/onenote-as-a-virtual-whiteboard/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OneNote as a Digital Whiteboard&lt;/a&gt;. *&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A touch capacitive whiteboard running OneNote (or some similar software) provides most of the same advantages of the analog approach, while offering may of the advantages of the digital tools - including the distinct advantage of persistence for providing evidence of ISO compliance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also offers the advantage of being able to easily copy/paste data to do tracking in excel other software programs, and the convenience of being able to add pages related to a Story to document the research done and risk considerations, decision making, etc.  OneNote also offers the ability to link or embed attachments, making it a good central repository for all the work being done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Summary: Digital vs Analog&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The digital approach offers distinct advantages in the form of more complete and persistent documentation, better data aggregation and analytics, better meta-data analysis (long term velocity tracking, similar projects evaluation, etc.) and ease of searching for and finding information relating to the work done and considerations on feature integration/refusal, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, Excel and most (all that I've seen) Scrum based tools require much work to setup and get working right, and require diligence in entering information in the expected (rigid) format.  These trade-offs are not well aligned to the Agile values and principles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The analog approach is better aligned to the values and principles of Agile, offering great flexibility and freedom to adapt, change, and refine the approach, but everything is temporary (with each Sprint, the board is reset, and aside from taking pictures, there is no evidence inherently generated on the work done in prior Sprints).  Taking pictures of the board at various states requires extra effort, and is a weak link in the process that is easily defeated by forgetfulness or simple human factors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Agile Alignment&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Working process &gt; documentation&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is not much to break with a whiteboard (maybe a sticky falls off? or someone drags it out in a windstorm) but there is much that can (and usually will) go wrong with custom software.  Also, every where I've worked people manage to break excel files &lt;em&gt;constantly.&lt;/em&gt;  Lastly, as we attempt to refine and continually adjust our process, will the rigid framework of these tools become a barrier to our experimentation?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Working product is the primary measure of progress.&lt;/strong&gt;  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We already have the one KPI needed.  What is the real value of all that extra tracking, and does it outweigh the compromises to the other values?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Maximize the work &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; done.&lt;/strong&gt;  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much time is spent making the process fit the tool? What about finding, reporting, and fixing bugs or broken references?  Making adjustments to the framework when we want to try something new?  Is this work that needs to be done, or is it more work that does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; need to be done?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Best architectures, etc. come from self-organizing teams.&lt;/strong&gt;   &#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I believe this speaks as much to the product being developed as the development process itself.  Many Agile and Scrum &lt;em&gt;processes&lt;/em&gt; evolved this way too. When following a rigid and existing framework, will it stimey the team's ability to develop it's own framework/process?   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;...Reflects...on becom[ing] more effective...tunes and adjusts...&lt;/strong&gt;  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much wasted time and energy will go into tuning and adjusting spreadsheets or software tools?  Will that detract from tuning and adjusting the &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt;? Will the rigidity of the tools get in the way of experimentation in our process?  These things were mentioned in my earlier points, but worth reiterating here. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;My Experience&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not much. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been researching Scrum for about 9 months, and we've been doing it for about 2.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have my own beliefs on what matters, but I don't have the experience to recognize holes in my thought process or know what has/hasn't been done, or compare approaches first hand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Pros &amp;amp; Cons&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With limited experience, this seems my best method to approach the topic analytically.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I weighted the Pros (+) and Cons (-) of each item on a scale of 1 to 3 for impact/value. &#xA;(e.g. + has less value/impact than +++) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analog&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;+++ Flexible&lt;br&gt;&#xA;+++ Collaborative&lt;br&gt;&#xA;+++ Constant Visibility&lt;br&gt;&#xA;++ Easily reconfigured&lt;br&gt;&#xA;++ No intrinsic constraints/limitations on data entry or formatting &#xA;+ Handwriting allows us to draw pictures, create emphasis, etc&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- - Creating evidence requires additional effort (e.g. take pictures of Scrum board and add to project folder, add up points completed track velocity, etc.)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- - Tracking takes additional effort, and can easily be forgotten or done incompletely.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- - Archived stickies and photos of whiteboards are not text searchable&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- - Requires extra effort/discipline to identify the story associated with a task, so when tasks are complete their value is added to the story - and for figuring out how much effort was really required, vs estimated.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Not very green (paper and markers are environmental waste)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Digital, via EXCEL&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;+++ Tracking is automatic and gives instantaneous feedback&lt;br&gt;&#xA;++ Easy to save historic evidence&lt;br&gt;&#xA;++ Lends well to data aggregation &amp;amp; analysis&lt;br&gt;&#xA;++ Text searchable&lt;br&gt;&#xA;++ Remote accessibility (if shared via google docs or similar)&#xA;- - Tracking systems need to be developed up front (e.g. formulas, macros, data-entry format, etc)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- - - Rigid format; data must be entered consistently to use advanced tracking abilities.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- - - Doing more non-essential work. This is the big one for me. We're not a software company - we don't have programmers on staff, and building excel templates and macros and whatnot doesn't directly add value to the product.  Can I program?  &lt;em&gt;Yes. In a couple languages now.&lt;/em&gt;  Can I build an excel sheet (with formulas and pivot tables and arrays) that would offer advanced tracking?  &lt;em&gt;You bet.&lt;/em&gt;  Can I download a template from the web and use it as a starting point to save some time?  &lt;em&gt;Sure!&lt;/em&gt;  Is there still time, money, and resources that must be spent developing and maintaining these types of things?  &lt;em&gt;Yes, absolutely.&lt;/em&gt; Is that work primary to achieving the Sprint goals?  &lt;em&gt;I don't believe it is&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;- - - Inflexible. The added structure and added complications of changing worksheet layouts, formats, formulas, macros, etc. seems like it would be a barrier to changing the process (continuous improvement).&#xA;- - Not an information radiator (must have computer available with excel to log in and be able to view). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Digital, via Dedicated Software&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;+++ Tracking is automatic and gives instantaneous feedback&lt;br&gt;&#xA;++ Easy to save historic evidence&lt;br&gt;&#xA;++ Lends well to data aggregation &amp;amp; analysis&lt;br&gt;&#xA;+ Searchable&lt;br&gt;&#xA;++ Remote accessibility (for some software - cloud based). &#xA;- - What to track needs to be developed up front.  Are we tracking right things?  What benefit does the data provide?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- - - Rigid format (for data entry, for information presentation, etc.)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- - - Inflexible. The added structure inability to make changes to that structure on our own seems like it would be a barrier to changing our process when needed (a key agile value).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- - - Inability to change.  What if we want to do something that isn't currently offered by the software?  Maybe we need a new feature, or want to change the way we do something, or want to track something differently, or maybe we want to switch to t-shirt sizes instead of story points, or some other off-the-wall rating system, or a myriad of other things that might not be offered by the software currently.  Since we do not control the design/development (unless open-source, but then see multiply my concerns with complications from Excel by 100x if we're modifying and maintaining our own software) which seems like a huge barrier to change and subsequently to continuous improvement.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- - Not an information radiator (must have computer, log in to computer and open software to view.  With cloud based software, must have computerr and internet connection to view. ) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19296" LastEditorUserId="19296" LastEditDate="2016-05-04T16:35:44.873" LastActivityDate="2016-05-04T16:35:44.873" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18167" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-03T22:21:15.837" Score="-3" ViewCount="71" Body="&lt;p&gt;Im starting a project with some college friends and we want to make a team of audio engineers and software developers. We have experience in apps development, filters implementation and audio streaming (wireless and usb) but now we want to develop apps for real time audio streaming and audio processing in smartphones using usb accessories and wireless accessories. We have to do a lot of research, testing and development for this apps and features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example we want to develop a feature for noise cancelation when some one is  working in the office. Considering that we have a headphone with microphones. The audio is capture by the microphones and is streamed to the smartphone, in the smartphone the audio is processed (in this case the noise is cancelled) and then is sent it back to the headphones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What methodologies do you recommend me to manage the development of features of this nature?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23308" LastActivityDate="2016-05-09T20:43:34.337" Title="Project Management Methodology for software and real time audio processing project" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-05-22T12:05:26.457" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18071" CreationDate="2016-05-04T05:22:33.287" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should never  bring big stories into the Sprint. There are key mechanisms in Scrum, as described in the Scrum Guide, to facilitate this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Backlog Refinement&lt;/strong&gt; - Your Product Owner has up to 10% of the Development Teams time to help break the Backlog Items for  the next 3 sprints into actionable items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprint Planning&lt;/strong&gt; - Since the Development Team selects what it can do in the Sprint they can refuse to take an item that they  don't understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is responsable and accountable for the Product Backlog and  everyone's understanding of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2016-05-04T05:22:33.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18098" CreationDate="2016-05-04T05:43:07.470" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your backlog combined with your velocity is a rough road map.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Next 1-3 Sprints&lt;/strong&gt; - well defined and decomposed. We understand this and have  some certainty.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Next 6 Months&lt;/strong&gt; - Bigger rocks that we can long term for sat&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;6-12 months&lt;/strong&gt; - Ideas (even bigger rocks)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;12 months +&lt;/strong&gt; - vision, direction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can easily draw columns that are sprints  and place the backlog you have for planning. Just remember that the further out you go  the more uncertainty there is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastActivityDate="2016-05-04T05:43:07.470" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18172" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-04T13:25:04.233" Score="-2" ViewCount="1242" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ms project, how to calculate difference between actual duration and duration ?&#xA;i mean for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;if any resource finish the task before the actual finish date , how can i calculate this overtime ????&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/q4611.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/q4611.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23321" LastActivityDate="2016-12-30T18:12:26.953" Title="Ms project, how to calculate difference between actual duration and duration?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18172" CreationDate="2016-05-04T14:36:23.410" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Baseline the project and insert the Duration Variance column. The values work as a timeline where 0 equals the baseline finish and a negative value means it finished early, because it's before the baselined finish (0).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22275" LastActivityDate="2016-05-04T14:36:23.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18174" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18181" CreationDate="2016-05-04T23:54:18.070" Score="2" ViewCount="193" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am going to give the Prince2 exam soon. And in there, it says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is the Issue Register NOT used for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the answer is &quot;Capture any threats or opportunities that might have an impact on a stage&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought that is what issue register does.. It records issues?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17229" LastActivityDate="2016-05-05T10:24:34.993" Title="Which is the Issue Register NOT used for?" Tags="&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18175" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-05T02:50:44.020" Score="6" ViewCount="1659" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a scrum master for two years, and recently one of my peers raised a concern that our stand-ups are taking too long. While I am trying to keep the first part of the stand-up (i.e. updates) as short as possible, post-scrums take up to half an hour since there are usually 3-4 topics to discuss, each taking 5-7 minutes. What are known best practices of having effective stand-ups, including post scrums, and what are the responsibilities of the facilitator in this case? For example, one of the approaches I was recommended is converting long discussions into meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16493" LastActivityDate="2020-01-30T20:00:49.477" Title="Post Scrum facilitation" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;&lt;facilitation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18175" CreationDate="2016-05-05T06:03:11.020" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Purpose of daily scrum meetings&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Daily standup meetings help the team in tracking its progress with reference to their commitment. They have made a commitment to deliver agreed upon tasks during a time-boxed duration, so they sync up daily for better team coordination to achieve the sprint goal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As per the scrum guide:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master ensures that the Development Team has the meeting, but the Development Team is responsible for conducting the Daily Scrum. The Scrum Master teaches the Development Team to keep the Daily Scrum within the 15-minute time-box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What a scrum meeting is NOT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is not a planning meeting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is not a status update meeting for managers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is not for doing technical discussion and problem solving&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The daily scrum meeting is not a status update meeting in which a boss is collecting information about who is behind schedule. Rather, it is a meeting in which team members make commitments to each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/daily-scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/daily-scrum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Role of scrum master&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team is supposed to conduct daily standups. As a Scrum Master its your job to facilitate the team and make sure that process is being followed. Coach them to make the standups effective as opposed to having just mechanical updates during the daily ritual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master ensures that the Development Team has the meeting, but the Development Team is responsible for conducting the Daily Scrum. The Scrum Master teaches the Development Team to keep the Daily Scrum within the 15-minute time-box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Remember&lt;/strong&gt;: There is no such thing as &lt;em&gt;post-scrum&lt;/em&gt; in Scrum. In case there is a need to have technical discussions or problem solving session then arrange a separate meeting and invite just the concerned team members instead of the whole team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2016-05-05T06:03:11.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18175" CreationDate="2016-05-05T06:51:14.080" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When we started with Scrum we had a similar problem. The scrum was new for all parties and we struggled to have the daily stand-ups short and informative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gradually we got better though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We got better by emphasizing one simple thing. &lt;strong&gt;The daily scum is not discussion for adaptation&lt;/strong&gt;. As you probably know that Scrum as empirical control process is based on three pillars: &lt;em&gt;Transparency, Inspection and Adaptation&lt;/em&gt;. While daily scrum is needed for sprint inspection, the adaptation should be done outside of the stand-up. The daily scrum is to find out that something needs to be done and eventually who should be evolved. The sub-groups should discuss this after whenever it is the most convenient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the inspection part you have to say: &lt;strong&gt;&quot;The daily is over, please align with each other if needed be&quot;. And simply go.&lt;/strong&gt; If they think the whole team should stay and listen, well, so be it, but give the opportunity to not-involved to continue to work. Not everyone needs to listen to everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you start to do it, people will not take the discussions after as a part of daily scrum anymore.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that it is tempting to facilitate this post daily discussion as well, but like that the team will never learn that they are responsible for execution of the Sprint, not Scrum Master. Step inside only when you find out they need your help to move forward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23238" LastEditorUserId="23238" LastEditDate="2016-05-05T07:04:44.487" LastActivityDate="2016-05-05T07:04:44.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18175" CreationDate="2016-05-05T07:25:58.823" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you are describing may well be healthy Scrum behaviour. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum relies on communication between the development team members as this promotes synchronisation and improves team effectiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to remember that &lt;em&gt;healthy&lt;/em&gt; conversation is often a productive use of time for team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master if I saw several conversations happening after each daily Scrum meeting then I would be happy. The exceptions to this are if the conversation only concerns some of the team, but the whole team is staying to listen to them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some suggestions you might want to make to the team are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If discussions are about improvements they could possibly be held back for the sprint retrospective&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the discussions are about design/architecture, then possibly the team would benefit from having regular design/architecture meetings?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If discussions are about the backlog then possibly the team needs more planned backlog refinement time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a facilitator, the Scrum Master might want to find a good location for the daily Scrum so that once the meeting is finished it is easy for the team to split up and complete any additional conversations that are needed. A good location might be a break-out area with lots of separate seating.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-05-05T12:48:35.870" LastActivityDate="2016-05-05T12:48:35.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18175" CreationDate="2016-05-05T09:39:07.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are known best practices of having effective stand-ups, including post scrums, and what are the responsibilities of the facilitator in this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will split your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are known best practices of having effective stand-ups, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case I would follow the scrum guide. Have all team members answer the three questions. I've heard many Scrum Masters say, that these questions are boring and outdated. But not answering these questions may lead into missing focus regarding the sprint goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all team members focus on answering the three questions, the daily should be done within the timebox of 15 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;..., including post scrums, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let the team members always talk about issues that lead to a successful sprint! In my opinion you should never wait for improvement until the retrospective. Because in the worst case you will wait four weeks (for a four week sprint) until a problem will be discussed the first time...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This leads to one of the most important questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...,and what are the responsibilities of the facilitator in this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All discussions should be facilitated!&#xA;As a Scrum Master you are responsible for the quality of the cooperation. Facilitated discussion means, that you care for the structure and the team cares for the content of a discussion. You help keeping the focus on the discussed issues. Make sure, that the outcome is SMART ( „Specific Measurable Accepted Realistic Time Bound“). So everyone knows what to do after the discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23278" LastEditorUserId="23278" LastEditDate="2016-05-05T11:44:31.077" LastActivityDate="2016-05-05T11:44:31.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18174" CreationDate="2016-05-05T10:24:34.993" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;PRICE2 differentiates between &quot;issues&quot; and &quot;risks&quot;. An issue is something that is happening or has happened in the past. A risk is something that may occur and impact a project. Threats or opportunities that might impact a stage would be considered risks, and not issues, and would therefore be tracked on your Risk Register.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2016-05-05T10:24:34.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14828" CreationDate="2016-05-05T15:12:25.667" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;An expeditor acts primary as a staff assistant and communications coordinator and has no decision-making capability. A coordinator has some authority and some power to make decisions and reports to a higher level manager. Therefore the correct answer appears to be coordinator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23329" LastActivityDate="2016-05-05T15:12:25.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18184" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-05T15:19:25.803" Score="-3" ViewCount="163" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently project managing a software build, managing 2 developers, a QA engineer and UI/UX designers in the process. I am no longer hands on. Previously I was a former developer, but I did not enjoy it so switched to management as an agile project manager and find it much more interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to make a career out of this, but I do not want to ever go back to hands on development, is it possible that I can?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2016-05-05T21:37:40.997" Title="Leading technical teams as an agile non technical project manager" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2016-05-15T07:53:25.113" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18184" CreationDate="2016-05-05T21:24:47.943" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you can see from the comment by @TiagoCardoso, there is no consensus answer. This is remarkable given that a forum like StackExchange will self-select toward the technically inclined participant. So the the general theme of &quot;It's handy to be technical but not necessary&quot; indicates that having a state-of-the-art grasp of the project technology is not essential.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As per the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Management_Body_of_Knowledge&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Project Management Body of Knowledge&lt;/a&gt;, the PM spends 90% of his/her time communicating. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/18184/leading-technical-teams-as-an-agile-non-technical-project-manager/18185#18185&quot;&gt;Leading technical teams as an agile non technical project manager&lt;/a&gt;. You will need to reach out frequently to internal and external stakeholders. The former are team members and supporting personnel and anyone appearing as a task or activity owner on your WBS. External stakeholders are customers, top management, trade associations, other divisions in your firm, or anyone you can influence your project positively or negatively. More on stakeholder management at &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/11736/working-with-a-single-point-of-contact/11738#11738.See&quot;&gt;Working with a &amp;quot;single point of contact&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/14858/how-to-transition-from-programmer-to-project-manager/14868#14868&quot;&gt;How to transition from programmer to project manager?&lt;/a&gt; for more suggestions on making the transition.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there is no time for you to actually do &quot;real work.&quot; As PM, you remove obstacles and encourage progress. That's why non-technical PMs can thrive and gain team member respect and support. The team will appreciate your ability in keeping the budget and resources flowing and keeping sight-seeing managers out of their hair. The team's lead developers should do the technical troubleshooting, with the occasional consultant brought to address the more intractable problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8524" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2016-05-05T21:37:40.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18187" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18206" CreationDate="2016-05-06T05:13:51.420" Score="0" ViewCount="1451" Body="&lt;p&gt;On a sample Prince2 exam online, I found that it says what risk response type can be used to respond to a threat and an opportunity. And the answer given is Share.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the diagram here, there is no single risk response type for both threat and opportunity. What am I not understanding correctly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Mg9La.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Mg9La.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17229" LastActivityDate="2016-05-09T04:02:45.217" Title="what risk response type can be used to respond to a threat and an opportunity?" Tags="&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18188" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-06T06:30:29.133" Score="4" ViewCount="578" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am from small organization, where currently we are planning to practice stand-up meetings. There are three developers currently, one developer is involved in two projects and the other two are each in one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm confused as to whether all these three should do the stand-up meeting together or separately, project wise. What impact can it make if it is held all together?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22367" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-05-06T08:20:15.273" LastActivityDate="2016-05-06T19:59:42.337" Title="Should developers from different projects do a stand-up meeting together in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18188" CreationDate="2016-05-06T07:37:39.697" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you described, you are planning to practice stand up meetings.&#xA;So my first questions are: What do you expect from a daily? Why do you plan to have one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such a small company I would have all people in a stand up --&gt; CEO, Sales, Project Manager, Developers. Talk to each other, offer and demand help if you need some.&#xA;But this has nothing to do with scrum. It's just for information exchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23278" LastEditorUserId="23278" LastEditDate="2016-05-06T07:44:15.267" LastActivityDate="2016-05-06T07:44:15.267" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18188" CreationDate="2016-05-06T08:25:47.373" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea of a daily stand-up meeting is to help developers synchronise their activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer to your question is that developers should engage in a stand-up meeting together if they have a &lt;em&gt;daily&lt;/em&gt; need to synchronise their activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project A: Jane and Bob&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project B: Sam and Bob&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bob needs to synchronise with Jane as they work together on Project A. Bob also needs to synchronise with Sam as they work together on Project B. But Jane does not need to synchronise with Sam as they are not working on the same project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this situation we would have two stand-up meetings. One for Project A and one for Project B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-05-06T08:25:47.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18191" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-06T10:05:06.727" Score="7" ViewCount="2615" Body="&lt;p&gt;Long story short, we are building a product and I have introduced then implemented the Scrum framework for product management. It has been working extremely well, and my team have done an amazing job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem that I am having now, is that the main stakeholder is starting to get feature hungry to the point that the quality of deliverables is getting affected from an increased amount of items in the sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every time we do a good job, i.e. meet the sprint, the following week, the stakeholder then asks for more features. He feels that because we met the sprint, we can do more work the following week. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Right now, he wants 3 features delivered per week)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My team then have to make up for this by upping their velocity. Eventually it has got to a point, where in one sprint we've had the kitchen sink thrown at us, and are expected to deliver triple amount of features relative to previous sprints. Due to the increased velocity that also means more bugs are appearing from features being rushed to production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am now in a situation when we are starting to fall behind on our sprints, with my co workers complaining that the workload is too much. I am also getting a lot more heat from the stakeholder for not completing all of the work that has been promised. At our next team meeting, I am think about talking to my stakeholder with the dev team about this, is this a good idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I handle this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2016-05-08T17:58:12.437" Title="How to manage stakeholder expectations when they keep on raising the bar" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18191" CreationDate="2016-05-06T10:38:23.557" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Raising the bar is a good thing.  You should get behind this and continue pushing for more.  Adding challenges to a team causes the team to figure out how to meet those challenges, and many times a very pessimistic team who predicts 'it cannot be done' gets it done.  Somehow, teams adapt and innovate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also mitigate things like Parkinson's Law and Student Syndrome when you constantly challenge a team that believes 'it cannot be done.'  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I agree this is not with out cost and risk.  You need to monitor those things and watch team morale, defect density issues, stakeholder complaints when their expectations are not met, etc.  I think you'd be surprised, however, how many of those costs and risks do not actually materialize when you think they would.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is interesting about planning values and stakeholder expectations.  Plan for 2 features and achieve them in a given time period.  Plan for 4 and get 3 in the same time period.  The first one you met a goal.  The second one you missed your goal.  But which is actually better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  To @bobo2000's comment:  I would expect there would be a point of diminishing returns.  In my observations, that point is further out than what many believe or predict.  Nevertheless, if you think you're at that point, then you need to get really comfortable with telling your customer 'No'.  If you choose to say yes to the challenge, then you need escalate in a very formal and loud way the risks you see, e.g., it is very likely we will not achieve all the objectives this sprint, or we may likely see an uptick in Sev 1 and 2 defects this go around.  At some point, you need to begin controlling the conversation.  Your customer is going to push and push because they look at it from a 'maximizing benefit for every $ spent' point of view.  Say no and escalate risk.  This is part of your job as a PM!  Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@Rubberduck: Increased defects and missed deadlines could mean you have reached capacity if you have enough observations to rule out normal cause. Else, you may have a  false positive.  Both are probabilistic driven by many stochastic drivers.  Increasing defects by itself does not say much.  If 10% defect rate was expected, they have been performing at say 4%, and then they increase to 6%, does this suggest over capacity?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And your comment about confidence and process is exactly my point. If a team can improve its capacity by improving its procedures, then it was not at capacity to begin with.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teams can adapt to challenges by way of innovation. If you don't force a challenge, teams will not innovate or adapt. In fact, they degrade...Parkinson's! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2016-05-08T17:58:12.437" LastActivityDate="2016-05-08T17:58:12.437" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18191" CreationDate="2016-05-06T12:20:25.337" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I actually have to disagree to some extent with David Espina. It is essential in Scrum to understand who owns which piece of the process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Product Owner&lt;/em&gt; owns the &lt;em&gt;Product Backlog&lt;/em&gt;. It is their job to prioritize the highest-value items at the top, to express their vision clearly to the Scrum Development Team, and to ensure that high value is being produced.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Development Team&lt;/em&gt; owns the &lt;em&gt;Sprint Backlog&lt;/em&gt;. It is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; in the PO (or any stakeholder's) purview to dictate what goes in to each Sprint -- in fact, that works directly against a good implementation of Scrum.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Scrum Master&lt;/em&gt; owns the &lt;em&gt;Process&lt;/em&gt;. Whether it's you, Bobo2000, or someone else, to truly and effectively adopt Scrum in your organization the ScrumMaster needs to step in and guide the stakeholders and PO on the proper application of Scrum here.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By letting the PO (or, worse, a Stakeholder) dictate what makes it into a Sprint, you're diminishing the effectiveness of the team and putting the quality of your work at risk, as you've already noted in your post. This isn't to say that the ScrumMaster or Product Owner can't encourage the team to take more on or even guide them towards an aggressive Sprint Commit, but no one but the the team can commit an item to the Sprint Backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your shoes, I'd take some time to explain to stakeholders and POs that, hey, look at how much more we're getting done with Scrum -- you can't expect a miracle every Sprint. Velocity will generally increase, but sometimes it will decrease as well (whether the team makes a bad estimate or something is a &quot;heavy&quot; 8 instead of a &quot;light&quot; 8 for instance.) I'd tell them that we need to let the Development team do what they do best and trust the team to commit as much as they are able to a Sprint without jeopardizing the quality of the features that are being delivered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16314" LastActivityDate="2016-05-06T12:20:25.337" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18188" CreationDate="2016-05-06T19:59:42.337" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Barnaby mentioned (+1!) you should be using daily scrum when there are tasks to align. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in such a small team with (it seems) low relationship between them, each one would be taking about topics that would add low to no value for each other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you want to have a multi skilled team capable of covering all projects, you could benefit of having developers rotating across projects. This way, each one would know where the project is by the time they have to move into it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottomline: don't do daily scrum unless the team feels the need of it. Daily scrum is a tool for a mean, not the result itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2016-05-06T19:59:42.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18155" CreationDate="2016-05-06T23:25:32.287" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I notice you've tagged this &quot;risk management&quot;. I think you have at significantly increased the probability of late delivery (increased the risk) by using someone who seems to be working during the day for one party and during evenings and weekends for you. He doesn't get any time to rest. Regardless of his usual skill, ability, and motivation I would expect him to be working at far below his best. You can change this by finding a partner who is actually able to function at their best. Until you do this you will always be suffering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I think you can make things better for both of you by ensuring regularity and focus...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ensure he has just one priority to deliver at any time. Always one thing on his list, no more. That's all he has to do. Do not confuse or distract him with anything else. This will be hard for you, as you will have to prioritise ruthlessly. If you change your mind then you will be distracting him and throwing time away. With one thing on his list his responsibility is clear, and there are no excuses.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make his &quot;one thing&quot; always as small as possible. Then he will deliver it quicker and you can choose the next thing sooner. (Which might be an extension of the first thing, or something else.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Agree times at which you will always speak, without fail - always a short call to catch up on progress and (crucially) how you can help him today. Make it regular (maybe daily), make it short (max 10 mins). You need to set the standard by always being on time yourself, whatever the circumstance. Do not distract him with other calls.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Track how many things he really does deliver per week/fortnight. This gives you a rough ability to plan ahead. But it's only rough. His estimations for delivery won't count for much, because we all estimate badly; what counts is what he actually delivers. Track that. That's the real delivery rate.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you need him to advise you on certain things then you might add a regular weekly meeting in the calendar with him for this (and a fixed duration). If one week you don't need it, then cancel it - he gets to spend more time delivering your one thing. Don't give him actions from this; outside the call he needs to be working on the one priority.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this focus he has the best chance to succeed, and you will find out at what rate he really delivers stuff when given the best environment (aside from the fact that he seems to be denied any rest). And if that reality is not good enough for you, then it's time to move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14893" LastActivityDate="2016-05-06T23:25:32.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18196" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18202" CreationDate="2016-05-07T00:55:20.987" Score="2" ViewCount="168" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First of all&lt;/strong&gt;: if this is not the right place for this question, please move it to the appropriated one. This one was the closest I found to the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Context&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Some context: Junior enterprises are completely &lt;strong&gt;voluntary&lt;/strong&gt; work. I'm a member of a junior enterprise of a Computer Science course at our federal university. We are going through some bad time in terms of external products, negotiations and growing in general.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Problem&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Thing is&lt;/strong&gt;: the members of the enterprise are kind of settled down, accommodated to the situation, without motivation to learn, to develop systems of their own, to &lt;strong&gt;bring value&lt;/strong&gt; to themselves and the corporation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We know that the fact that not having progress at negotiations is a big turn down to any enterprise, and it seems that is too hard to create an internal project that would motivate by &lt;strong&gt;deadlines&lt;/strong&gt;, like an external project would do with a real paying client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Forcing&lt;/strong&gt; the members to deliver value by &lt;strong&gt;punishment&lt;/strong&gt; rarely is a solution, and in our case specifically, doesn't seem to be a good idea since, from the beginning, we are &lt;strong&gt;voluntaries&lt;/strong&gt;. We are starting to apply a - kind off - simple &lt;strong&gt;benefits policy&lt;/strong&gt;, but personally I think it will not, by far, be enough...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it's a situation with a lot of variables envolved, lot of details and background history, and should take a longer text to give it all. I've tried to make as simple as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After all, what we really want to ask, and receive some advices maybe, is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How&lt;/strong&gt; do we treat an internal crisis of a junior enterprise, composed of &lt;strong&gt;voluntaries&lt;/strong&gt;, not experienced members, that &lt;strong&gt;won't bring value&lt;/strong&gt; for the enterprise of for &lt;strong&gt;themselves&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23350" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-05-08T05:30:08.487" LastActivityDate="2016-05-08T10:47:15.150" Title="How can I motivate members of a university project without money or punishments?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18191" CreationDate="2016-05-07T16:41:48.163" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not quite who is pushing your team. You or the stake holder?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1: obviously any team needs to be constantly encouraged and challenged to achieve more and become more productive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2: again obviously, regardless of 'what scrum says' deadlines matter if you want to get paid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But! The dev team should be estimating the tasks on the back log and the velocity from the previous sprint should give you an estimate of how many tasks 'are in' the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team are pressured to make lower estimates, it doesnt change the amount of work done, just the velocity number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the stakeholder is happy with more features and maybe less testing or less detail on each feature then thats their call and should be reflected in the stories. We all know that the last 10% of a story usualy takes 90% of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you or the stakeholder are directly pressuring the team to work harder or faster or longer hours thats just a management call on whether you think they are slacking or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your scrum master should protect the team from this kind of direct interaction with the stakeholder though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2016-05-07T16:41:48.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18155" CreationDate="2016-05-07T22:01:41.770" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a very experienced contractor (35+ years) with an amazing list of clients, so I have some experience that may be useful here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contact: First, you should not be contacting your developer outside business hours. If I were him I'd charge you double my hourly rate every time you did so. It is completely unreasonable of you to expect any response. It is likely that a lot of the behaviour you're seeing is because of this. If your reputation is falling as a PM it's because you're not doing a good job and your reputation really should be reduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimates vs Actuals: You've said that this is the only resource on the project, and that tasks take 3 times as long to do. I'm assuming you mean that they take three times as long as his estimate? It's an estimate -- they're usually wrong, usually by a factor of 2, often more. If you're worried about it you should have had a retrospective with him (actually -- many retrospectives), to find out why this is happening. If you haven't (and you've not mentioned that you have), then the developer assumes that this is fine and will carry on -- he's being rewarded for his work as it is and has no motivation to change or or indication that you're not happy. Again, this is your problem as a manager, not his. What did you ask him to estimate? How long it will take to code? Or how long it will take to finish and ship into production? Did you ask him for a task breakdown or just take the fist number he gave you? Or, did you tell him how long he had to complete the task based on the project schedule? I'm guessing it's the latter because a stressed out workaholic (which is how you come across) is unlikely to be doing a good job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work Items: Ignoring requests for work. I imagine that you're giving him more than one task at a time and not prioritising the work you do give him. Again, your fault.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deadlines: Missing a deadline or two is perfectly normal. Have you had a retrospective with him to find out why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technical Opinion: you're a PM -- why do you need a technical opinion? And, we've covered contact hours so I won't go into that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on what you've put here, I think it's all your fault. You are a workaholic and you're forgetting that it's just a job. You're stressed and you're mismanaging the whole thing leading to having a developer that seems not to be performing, who's job is about to be lost, but who is actually just confused and dazed by your lack of management skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend getting some training in software engineering management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23355" LastActivityDate="2016-05-07T22:01:41.770" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18196" CreationDate="2016-05-08T05:20:14.033" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Motivation Requires Perceived Value&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you're really asking is &quot;How do I motivate people without meaningful rewards or punishments?&quot; If you don't have people who are intrinsically motivated by the work or the success of the project, and you have no real leverage with them, then you can't succeed in creating motivation where it doesn't already exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People work for rewards (intrinsic or extrinsic), or to avoid what &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; perceive as negative consequences. Either form a team with people who are intrinsically motivated by the work at hand, or by the perceived reward/punishment of the work's effect on their grades, or admit that you have the wrong team and terminate the project early through whatever channels are available to you as part of this assignment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a project management standpoint, those are your options. Anything else is likely to be based on something other than the pragmatic practice of project management methodologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-05-08T05:20:14.033" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18196" CreationDate="2016-05-08T10:47:15.150" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Play with their reputation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create a dashboard/scoreboard and place the photos and names of each team member. Put some metrics there like tasks assigned, completed on time, late tasks and a effectiveness ratio. Define this in your charter as a performance management system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Print this dashboard in a A2 paper and stick to the wall. You can update de metrics using post-it notes. Use your creativity!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you can establish a ranking/badge system, like the guys on MacDonalds. When they achieve a specific goal, they get publicly recognised and get a increase in their rank.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People will be more careful on how they are seen by others and start to perform better. This doesn't cost anything! Just a little bit of management time. You can even define that people that score poorly on a given week/month need to bring muffins (at their own expense) to the office (that's positive punishment).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good people will like the exposure, the bad people will need to make a call, on looking bad on the scoreboard or simply leave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Human being is competitive by nature, use the competition as motivation. Money or punishment doesn't motivate people, competition does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try it and post the results back to the forum. I'm curious to see how it will go ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leo&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20923" LastActivityDate="2016-05-08T10:47:15.150" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18123" CreationDate="2016-05-08T17:30:34.913" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's unclear what the legal situation is here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are creating some software for them and haven't finished or presumably been paid for it yet. Then I think it's a fairly understandable position to say to your client: &quot;hang on, you don't own the code yet, if we showed it to you, you could just copy it and not pay us. Sorry we can't take the risk.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are providing a server as part of the contract AND using that server as your dev environment then I think you are probably in trouble. Give them a new blank server instead. Say you haven't deployed to production because it's not finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are working on a per day basis and they have paid you for work done to date, then you are going to have to show your hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastEditorDisplayName="user16244" LastEditDate="2018-11-19T11:40:12.037" LastActivityDate="2018-11-19T11:40:12.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17745" CreationDate="2016-05-08T19:10:27.403" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You get the same problem you get with any methodology. You are going to run the risk of missing that deadline!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a customer spec in advance is actualy a bonus because it defines your criteria for success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aglie advises againt planning upfront because it damages the changes of achieving business value. In your case you dont have to do that, just achieve what was requested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1: Make sure you hit your deadline by being &lt;em&gt;*ruthless*&lt;/em&gt; about the minimun possible product which matches the spec. If the colour isnt specified its whatever the dev put in that day. If they didnt specify response times, dont raise a bug for slow pages. You really have to be brutal even if you think its sh*t. &lt;em&gt;do not add/change features&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2: Aim to finish at least 75% of the allowed project time. If you arent on track, start worrying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3: at 50% you should have that minimun product done. Phew! contractualy you are safe. Show the customer, you have 25% of the time left to respond to 'bugs' and tweaking, making it nice and the customer happy, polishing etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4: at 75% lock down and start your go live/deployment whatever. This always exposes new bugs. You have 25% wiggle room left if you havent had any problems, new features, unexpected illnesses etc to fix them. In practice you will be asking the customer for another 2 weeks and those ftp/firewall/policy wording details they promised you last month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastEditorUserId="17049" LastEditDate="2016-05-08T19:15:39.377" LastActivityDate="2016-05-08T19:15:39.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17740" CreationDate="2016-05-08T19:22:20.083" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Face facts. This guy isnt going to magicaly get more productive because you have a deadline. Get more devs on the team and be glad for the ones you have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone wants delta force for their mission; but you have to work with what you've got.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2016-05-08T19:22:20.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18187" CreationDate="2016-05-09T04:02:45.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bzGB5.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bzGB5.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found the following online that explain this nicely&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Share is both a response for threats and opportunities. Share is very&#xA;  common in customer/supplier projects where both parties share the gain&#xA;  if the costs are less than the planned costs and share the loss, too,&#xA;  if the costs are exceeded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example:&lt;/strong&gt; In the concert example, suppose you have a supplier that provides VIP toilet facilities and people are charged €1 for each&#xA;  service. There is a certain fixed cost that you must pay to provide&#xA;  this service and you agree with the supplier to share the profits if&#xA;  the revenue is above this fixed cost amount and share the losses if it&#xA;  is below this amount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17229" LastActivityDate="2016-05-09T04:02:45.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18208" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18209" CreationDate="2016-05-09T11:57:02.650" Score="3" ViewCount="2349" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do 'Sprint' and 'Phase' in project management define the same concept or do they explain 2 different concepts?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17511" LastActivityDate="2016-05-09T13:21:14.207" Title="Phase and Sprint in Project Management" Tags="&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18208" CreationDate="2016-05-09T13:13:04.207" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short Answer:&lt;/strong&gt; Generally no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Longer Answer:&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;Phase&quot; is not a defined term in Scrum, while Sprint is very strictly defined. A Sprint is a timebox -- a 1-4 week period in which work is done. Sprints always end, and Sprints always have certain ceremonies around them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Phases can mean different things to different people. Some organizations use a &quot;phase&quot; to delineate a version or release. Others define it as a large set of tasks that must be done before moving onto the next set. Yet others see it as a set time limit. So phases can correspond with Sprints, but generally the two terms are not the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16314" LastActivityDate="2016-05-09T13:13:04.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18208" CreationDate="2016-05-09T13:21:14.207" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The term &quot;sprint&quot; comes from Scrum. It is that process framework's term for a timeboxed iteration. A sprint begins with a planning session to review a queue of work (in Scrum, the Product Backlog) to estimate tasks and determine what work will be done in the timebox. The purpose of a Sprint is to produce a potentially shippable increment of software that adds new capabilities and/or solutions to problems delivered in previous increments. At the end, the work done is demonstrated and the team reviews the methods to improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've typically seen the word &quot;phase&quot; used in the context of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase%E2%80%93gate_model&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;phase-gate&quot; or &quot;stage-gate&quot; processes&lt;/a&gt;. A phase is a collection of activities that take some kind of input and create outputs by transforming the inputs or creating new outputs. The gate part refers to deciding if the project should continue based on what has been learned or done in the previous phase or if the artifacts produced in the phase are sufficiently stable to do further work with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose that you can refer to a Sprint as a phase. It has inputs (a prioritized Product Backlog), activities (a Sprint Planning Meeting, a Daily Scrum and daily work, a Sprint Review, and a Sprint Retrospective), and outputs (a Potentially Shippable Increment, updated Burn-Down Chart, updated source code and unit tests, updated documentation). However, I don't think I've ever seen it referred to in that way, simply because &quot;phase&quot; evokes the idea of a more plan-driven methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2016-05-09T13:21:14.207" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18211" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-09T15:29:49.443" Score="1" ViewCount="406" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say for example, you are in charge of a particularly large project, with a big time frame, and you and your team decide that Agile would be a better methodology to follow. Is it practical/possible to change from one methodology to another during a project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23370" LastActivityDate="2016-05-09T21:04:18.210" Title="Is it possible to change from Waterfall/V model methodologies to Agile during a project?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18212" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-09T15:47:04.277" Score="10" ViewCount="2994" Body="&lt;p&gt;My organisation is pushing for strictness on what they consider a Sprint Failure or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have decided that if there are any User Stories not fully completed (as per the DoD) at the end of the Sprint, the Sprint has failed.  This also includes Stories that have been removed from the Sprint (either because the Dev Team realised it could no longer complete the work, or because the PO has deemed the Story as redundant or lower priority). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand the concept and the objective of this (complete all planned work in a given Sprint seems sensible) but there is no focus on the Sprint Goal.  To me, the objective of each Sprint is to achieve the Sprint Goal.  If this means a Story has to be removed (without it affecting the Sprint Goal), then it's not necessarily a Sprint failure. The team can still learn from this in the next Sprint.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a User Story was not completed in full but the Sprint Goal was still achieved because the unfinished Story was not that vital to the Goal, is this really justification for a failed Sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master, I have a hard time with this 'rule' but I'm not entirely sure how to back my opinion up.  Any thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23372" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-05-10T11:17:54.007" LastActivityDate="2016-05-10T13:30:14.687" Title="Sprint Goal and Failure of a Sprint" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18214" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18216" CreationDate="2016-05-09T17:24:50.927" Score="4" ViewCount="358" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a Business Analyst for a company whom have an in house development team and an in house administration system. We also have an off the shelf system including service contract that directly works with the in house administration system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue is that I know I am responsible for the in house system requirements but they overlap into the requirements for the off the shelf system. Now is it my responsibility to write technical requirements for their system or is it the BA of the off the shelf company who should pick this up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23374" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-05-09T18:10:27.883" LastActivityDate="2016-05-10T08:27:22.790" Title="Who is responsible for the requirements?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18214" CreationDate="2016-05-09T18:11:59.720" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should write the requirements of your company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are then partly fulfilled by an off the shelf product and partly fulfilled by an in house system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In chooseing the best off the shelf system you use the total list of requirements and compare with the features lists of the various options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The remaining requirements you give to your in house team to implement features which fulfill them&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2016-05-09T18:11:59.720" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18214" CreationDate="2016-05-09T18:40:41.190" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bottom line is: as one of the (or the only?) Business Analyst(s) for your company, you are responsible for reviewing your business process, technical, resource, and product needs. So if you have requirements that overlap both in-house and off-the-shelf systems, you still have to capture those requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many organizations, a systems engineering or administration group would then be responsible for deciding if your requirement is satisfied by an in-house application or an off-the-shelf application. A natural conversation would involve you in those discussions with the systems people and you could (should!) modify your original requirements to clarify any specific points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is another individual who is responsible for the off-the-shelf applications and requirements, then you should still write your own requirement but coordinate with that other person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, you are writing requirements for the overall &quot;business&quot;. It's up to the systems admins or engineers to decide how to satisfy that requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other half of your question refers to the BA in the company making the off-the-shelf (OTS) product. Don't worry about their requirement. You only need to make the requirement clear from your company's point of view. The OTS company will accept your requirement as a customer input, then will create their own internal derived requirements from that (and hopefully modify their OTS product to support your need).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21791" LastActivityDate="2016-05-09T18:40:41.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18212" CreationDate="2016-05-09T18:50:14.957" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A sprint should be considered as a time-box in which to limit the scope of work that can be (hopefully) successfully completed. A sprint doesn't succeed or fail, it just ends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real measure of success or failure (if you want to re-direct your organization's attention) is how a set of user stories meets the user's stated requirements. Most of the time, there are several stories that can &quot;attach&quot; to a single user requirement. These can be rolled up into an Epic and directly associated with the user requirement. (This is your basis for the RVTM by the way.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;Goals&quot; exist for a project. Those goals include user requirements. The user requirements are separated into technical/usability/functional and into budget/schedule/resource related areas. The sprints are a useful building block to consider how the overall engineering and tasks are executed to meet your customer's project requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I have decades of DoD contracting experience, and have run into this point of view before. All parties needs to have a clear understanding of where to appropriately apply the terminology and project-level requirements.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21791" LastActivityDate="2016-05-09T18:50:14.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18218" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18226" CreationDate="2016-05-09T19:30:58.827" Score="4" ViewCount="176" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just read about &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/has-elon-musks-management-discomfort-gone-too-far-lynne-everatt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;management by discomfort&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; that Elon Musk uses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The challenge is he is a machine and the rest of us aren't. So if you&#xA;  work for Elon, you have to accept the discomfort. But in that&#xA;  discomfort is the kind of growth you can't get anywhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that this kind of motivation is not something new and is used in a lot of companies. At the same time I can't find any references by searching the web for the relevant keywords.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What &quot;management by discomfort&quot; is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23376" LastActivityDate="2016-05-09T21:16:53.680" Title="What &quot;management by discomfort&quot; is?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2016-05-11T02:39:44.727" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18211" CreationDate="2016-05-09T20:05:24.700" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's a particularly large project then agile probably isn't a good idea. However, I think that we could easily be talking about a personal interpretation of 'particularly large'. I use the term to describe 100's of programmers and many more testers, managers, designers, architects, stakeholders, etc. on a multi-year project costing tens of millions of pounds/dollars/euros and spanning many business centres, possibly internationally. I'm thinking of programmes to generate control systems for new nuclear reactors, or the James Webb telescope/satellite. Projects this size shouldn't be agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you mean something smaller then you probably should have been agile to being with -- this is 2016, not 1998 -- this stuff really isn't up for debate any more. What were you thinking by not trying to be agile in the first place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, none of that will help. You should change to an agile approach as quickly as possible. Start by breaking your project into features and your requirements down into stories, store them in jira. For each story provide a cost, preferably in money, and a value, also in money. Then have the stakeholders (all of them -- product-owner, business, users, ops, devs, testers) prioritise the stories. Then start feeding the team the stories, tracking how they progress on a kanban board. If you're going too slow, start limiting work in progress and you'll go faster. Practice TDD, BDD, DDD, CI and CD. Feed stories sequentially to the devs via jira, and track their progress the same way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do all of this. Do it now. If you hurry you might just save your project and your shareholders might not eat you alive for having failed in your fiduciary duty to control risk (which is what agile is for).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, above all, have fun. It's meant to be fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23355" LastActivityDate="2016-05-09T20:05:24.700" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18212" CreationDate="2016-05-09T20:19:10.447" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Planning is part of the sprint. If you're removing stories then your planning was defective and the sprint could be said to have failed. If you sign up for a dozen points worth of stories, and only complete 1, but remove the rest of the stories from the sprint backlog, could you say the sprint was successful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The failure should be recorded so that remedial action can be taken. You should not be saying everything was ok, because the team failed at estimation. Your superiors obviously think that this is worth tracking and you should pay attention to the feedback and get better at estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The temptation would be to game the system though -- you could only ever commit to a single story point, then over deliver every sprint. This should be seen as a failure too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there should be some margin for allowed error in the measure of velocity that leads to success/failure status. Depending on the natural variability of your measured velocity. If, say, on average you manage 20 points per sprint, but you deviate by up to 3 points, then you should only really fail if you drop below 17 points. But, again, this is open for gaming and abuse -- what is an acceptable variance level? You might average 20 pts but vary by 15! That is, the margin should be small. Perhaps 10% or less. If you're signing up for stories not points, then if you're signing up for 10 stories, then you might allow a margin of error of 1 story -- because nobody is perfect all the time. Or you might not -- every mistake or failure is a learning opportunity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23355" LastActivityDate="2016-05-09T20:19:10.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18167" CreationDate="2016-05-09T20:43:34.337" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should take a look at Kanban. It's remarkably simple. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would have a 'backlog' of work, written up as simple reminders to do something (we call that a story), which as a group you prioritise, adding new stories to the backlog whenever you want. You can then track the progress by moving the items across a three column table -- ready to be done, in progress, and complete. You'd move items from the backlog to the first column when you all agree that work should be done, you move it to the next column when someone is working on it, and the final column when the work is complete. Try to limit the work in progress to two items per person, then play with that number as you progress and get comfortable with the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find this fits very well with a creative, entrepreneurial product development process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23355" LastActivityDate="2016-05-09T20:43:34.337" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18212" CreationDate="2016-05-09T20:50:45.453" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;TBH, you should simply throw away the concept of a failed sprint. As the saying goes (and as you point out), the only failure is not using it as a chance to learn. What were the causes of not completing the items? Is the team still learning how to plan manageable amounts of work? Did &quot;unknown unknowns&quot; emerge? Did something external block people? And in the end, did it actually harm the &lt;em&gt;delivery of value&lt;/em&gt; towards the goal(s)? Talking about these, coming up with improvements, and helping the team along the road of self-learning to be more responsive is &lt;em&gt;far&lt;/em&gt; more valuable than deciding whether or not it was a failure or &quot;success&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2016-05-09T20:50:45.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18212" CreationDate="2016-05-09T20:51:58.783" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no such thing as a 'failed sprint'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You bring work in according to your velocity and attempt to complete it within the sprint. If you don't complete all the work you bring in then your velocity is reduced and you bring less in to future sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is inherent uncertainty in any sprint due to the following reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is always some technical uncertainty&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is always some requirements risk&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team members may unexpectedly have less time than was planned for (due to illness or some other distractions within the organisation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimates are not perfect&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such there is &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; a guarantee that you will complete all the planned work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To only judge a sprint as a success when all stories are completed is going against the spirit of Scrum and Agile. It is also a risky approach as it could potentially result in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team's cutting corners to avoid a 'failed sprint'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A culture of fear of failure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduced morale&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-05-09T20:51:58.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18212" CreationDate="2016-05-09T20:57:23.360" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprint Goal is something what should help the team to focus and understand purpose of the sprint better, not to determine team's failure.&lt;/strong&gt; If your organization uses this for performance evaluation they use it wrong and it can cause more harm than good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What they should follow is burn-down chart and velocity, not FAIL/PASS flag. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprint goal is really something what should help the team and PO keep on track (Do I contribute to the Sprint Goal?), to make contribution and decision making (When the sprint should be canceled?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, when you &lt;a href=&quot;http://wall-skills.com/2015/sprint-goal-focus-for-the-scrum-team/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;search a little&lt;/a&gt; about sprint goal, it is obvious that goals like: &quot;To complete all the 5 items we pulled to the sprint&quot; are considered to be poor sprint goals which do not help or serve any purpose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If people judge sprint only considering finished items they are missing a lot from project complexity. That is also the reason, why they should not do it and rather focus on measures typical for scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As other people write here, there is nothing like failed sprint. There is sprint in which something can be done better, for sure. However, to judge what went wrong and what can be improved is usually done during the Retrospection where PO+Team+SM discuss this. The organization is here to support, not to pass judgments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, this is not untypical as in some cases management ignores the complexity and tries to fit the old thinking on the new framework. If I would be in your place I would:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Diminish any impact on team's morale as much as possible.&lt;/strong&gt; Explain them what Sprint Goal means, that they set the goal, not organization and that PASS/FAIL flag is not important at all.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to emphasize other indicatives for performance evaluation like burn down and velocity to the organization. Pay attention when sprint FAIL/PASS is mentioned and if that is really important and why.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to point out that sprint planning is for forecast of the sprint, nothing more. And that there is no actual FAIL as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.retrospectives.com/pages/retroPrimeDirective.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;per retrospective prime directive&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to teach organization about the quality sprint goal and its connection to sprint backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be patient, some things take time to change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23238" LastActivityDate="2016-05-09T20:57:23.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18211" CreationDate="2016-05-09T21:04:18.210" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is definitely possible to adopt an Agile approach on an existing traditional project. I have seen this done many times and although the results varied there was always recognisable benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that Agile is an &lt;em&gt;approach&lt;/em&gt; to doing development. There are a wide variety of Agile frameworks and techniques that can potentially be useful. You don't have to adopt them all right away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I would recommend is that you clearly identify the reasons for switching to Agile. Do you want to be more adaptable to change? Do you want to have more frequent releases? This will help you to determine what aspects of Agile you chose to follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things that are likely to provide early benefits include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Looking to do interim releases rather than waiting until the end of the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doing regular retrospectives where the team discusses ways they can improve&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Engage regularly with your end users, perhaps using showcases to demonstrate work that is 'done'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prioritising your requirements so that the team is working on the most important things first&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-05-09T21:04:18.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18218" CreationDate="2016-05-09T21:16:53.680" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not sure if it's an actual management framework or encapsulated approach, but my takeaway is that working for him is simply challenging in terms of expectations and effort. People tend to grow when challenged at just the right amounts, as they stretch themselves to match the environment (think of athletes competing among those slightly better than themselves). And the sad truth is that many orgs still don't challenge their employees in ways that engage and grow them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17485" LastActivityDate="2016-05-09T21:16:53.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18214" CreationDate="2016-05-10T08:27:22.790" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to this is &quot;it depends&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on the nature of the contract and engagement your company has with the supplier of the off-the-shelf system. Only by looking at that relationship can you answer the question categorically for your organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is because it can work in many ways. Usually the supplier organisation will want to create the change specifications because that is an income stream for them (i.e. they will bill their client for the effort and make a profit on the income). In addition, by taking responsibility for writing the specs they are taking control of the change pipeline and, unfortunately, can manipulate that workstream in terms of scope and timing to their own advantage. Yes you may consider that unethical from a user point of view, but have no doubts that it does go on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the client may want to write the specs specifically to avoid the above. However, be aware that you, as the user/client-side analyst, &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; only ever go as far as Business Requirements and Functional Requirements specifications because you are not best placed to write Technical Specifications for a third-party product. If the supplier actually allows you to do this, and accepts what you specify on a fixed-price contract, then it's a win for you as you have taken some control over the product (which is why the supplier should never want you to do it!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be &lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; wary of being &quot;allowed&quot; to write the technical specs for a third party system &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; the contract is a Time and Materials (i.e. Cost plus) basis as this could prove very lucrative for the supplier. Common sense should (but rarely does) prevail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2016-05-10T08:27:22.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18212" CreationDate="2016-05-10T11:11:45.330" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They have decided that if there are any User Stories not fully completed (as per the DoD) at the end of the Sprint, the Sprint has failed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not only incorrect, it's an abuse of the Scrum framework and a thorough misunderstanding of how work is selected for inclusion into a Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of a Sprint is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to complete user stories. That's simply a means to an end. Rather, the purpose of a Sprint is to provide a time-box to work on Product Backlog items that collectively deliver the value defined by an overarching Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Sprint Failure Conditions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While not addressed specifically within &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;, a Sprint really has only three failure conditions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Sprint Goal has not been met.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The delivered Increment is not in usable condition.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Increment does not meet the &quot;Definition of Done.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's it. Individual stories can be done or not-done, forecasts (estimates) can be missed, and the team may have successfully delivered the wrong MacGuffin. Such Sprints are still technically &quot;successful&quot; in that they delivered a potentially-releasable Increment and leveraged the framework to provide the business with process transparency and appropriate opportunities to inspect-and-adapt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Sprint Goals and Increments&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following elements of the Scrum framework are explicitly defined in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;. The Sprint Goal is developed during Sprint Planning, and provides guidance throughout the Sprint. The Increment is the work completed according to the Definition of Done, and is essentially the &lt;em&gt;de facto&lt;/em&gt; deliverable for the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Sprint Goal&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The selected Product Backlog items deliver one coherent function, which can be the Sprint Goal. The Sprint Goal can be any other coherence that causes the Development Team to work together rather than on separate initiatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Increment&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the end of a Sprint, the new Increment must be “Done,” which means it must be in useable condition and meet the Scrum Team’s definition of “Done.” It must be in useable condition regardless of whether the Product Owner decides to actually release it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Educational Opportunities&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, your management team's approach is exhibiting a number of smells that indicate a faulty Scrum implementation. It is the Scrum Master's job to educate the entire organization, including the Scrum Team and senior management, about the way Scrum actually works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, you should use this as an opportunity to address the following project smells implied by your original post:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A Sprint should have a &lt;em&gt;coherent&lt;/em&gt; goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As defined by the Scrum Guide, each Sprint should have a defined goal which causes the team to work &lt;em&gt;together&lt;/em&gt; rather than on separate initiatives. If you don't have a coherent Sprint Goal, a coherent Increment, or a collection of Sprint Backlog Items that are interrelated, then the framework is being implemented incorrectly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Work is &lt;em&gt;selected&lt;/em&gt; by the Scrum Team, not assigned from the outside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner prioritizes work on the Product Backlog, and the team negotiates with the Product Owner during Sprint Planning to select stories for the Sprint Backlog that will:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fit within the time box.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Support the Sprint Goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collectively deliver a vertical slice of value.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assigning stories to the team, selecting unrelated stories, or failing to leverage the &quot;team&quot; aspect of the Development Team when performing Sprint Planning are all huge red flags.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Forecasts are not money-back guarantees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprint Planning is a &lt;em&gt;short-term&lt;/em&gt; planning exercise that estimates both level-of-effort and team capacity to arrive at a reasonable forecast of the work that can be completed within a given time box (the Sprint) with the resources and knowledge currently available. Forecasts can be missed for a wide variety of reasons; it is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; inherently a failure of either the framework or the team's work during the iteration. Instead, a missed forecast is an opportunity to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;- Learn more about the problem domain.&#xA;- Inspect-and-adapt the framework or development process.&#xA;- Improve estimating techniques.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is more effective to &lt;em&gt;iterate&lt;/em&gt; rather than to affix blame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your organization is trying to &quot;hold people accountable&quot; for forecasts, they have misunderstood the difference between an estimate and a guarantee. Educate them about how iterative development and iterative process improvement actually work, and explain how the Scrum framework provides them with the tools they need to effectively manage emergent designs and processes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-05-10T11:11:45.330" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18229" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18230" CreationDate="2016-05-10T12:37:54.577" Score="2" ViewCount="1129" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my teams is struggling with user story sizing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of weeks ago the stories seemed to be too big i.e. they were dragging along / staying on the board for weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PO has started to create more granular stories but now the opposite is occurring, there are too many code dependencies between different stories e.g. one dev pushes a story to done, another dev picks up the new story and its so tightly dependent that they both need to unpick the original code and or struggle to merge code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update: Team is using Kanban&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastEditorUserId="4364" LastEditDate="2016-05-10T12:57:15.680" LastActivityDate="2016-05-10T14:03:44.620" Title="How to find the right size for user stories for a dev team" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;lean&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18229" CreationDate="2016-05-10T12:54:46.577" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds like your development team is not being allowed to sufficiently discuss the stories in the product backlog prior to moving them into the sprint or iteration backlog. The development team should be able to take stories that are either too big or too small and decompose or aggregate respectively. The team should be discussing this during sprint/iteration planning so that they can identify where they will have internal dependencies that suggest aggregating a set of stories or when they discuss a story they find identifiable sub capabilities that suggest further decomposition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the development team is not having a full role in the creation of the sprint/iteration backlog during planning, then you may need to do a course correction on your process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just realized you didn't actually say you are using Scrum (which most of this is written for), but for any Agile method that is laying requirements on a development team it would be wise to have them intimately involved with the Product Owner to work toward that balance you're seeking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7689" LastActivityDate="2016-05-10T12:54:46.577" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18212" CreationDate="2016-05-10T13:30:14.687" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Planning is part of the sprint. If you're removing stories then your&#xA;  planning was defective and the sprint could be said to have failed. If&#xA;  you sign up for a dozen points worth of stories, and only complete 1,&#xA;  but remove the rest of the stories from the sprint backlog, could you&#xA;  say the sprint was successful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Engineer Dollery&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My response to this is if the Sprint Goal was achieved then yes, the Sprint can be considered successful.  Not only was the Sprint Goal achieved (and there is good argument for saying it could be considered successful even if the Goal was &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; achieve), but the team can better plan (&lt;em&gt;adapt&lt;/em&gt;) for the next sprint by &lt;em&gt;inspecting&lt;/em&gt; the previous Sprint's planning mistakes.  Where there is a lesson learned (or the opportunity for it), there has been success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23385" LastActivityDate="2016-05-10T13:30:14.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18229" CreationDate="2016-05-10T14:03:44.620" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe you need to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;INVEST in your user stories&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Independent   The user story should be self-contained, in a way that there is no inherent dependency on another user story. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Negotiable    User stories, up until they are part of an iteration, can always be changed and rewritten. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Valuable  A user story must deliver value to the end user. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimable You must always be able to estimate the size of a user story. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Small User stories should not be so big as to become impossible to plan/task/prioritize with a certain level of certainty. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testable  The user story or its related description must provide the necessary information to make test development possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This takes practice, but you'll get there. One idea that works well for Kanban is to add a &quot;Breakdown&quot; column to your board. There is no concept of a sprint backlog in Kanban, there's just one product backlog, but this column can serve a similar purpose. By making this a part of your process, you can make your team think about how the stories can/should be broken into smaller pieces of deliverable, valuable, and testable functionality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastActivityDate="2016-05-10T14:03:44.620" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18233" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-10T14:52:32.907" Score="0" ViewCount="7561" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a task is late in the status how can we set it up to show how many days it's late not just late?  I want to see on each task how many days it's late.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23387" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2016-05-12T15:19:52.360" LastActivityDate="2016-05-12T15:19:52.360" Title="How to show how late a task is in MS-Project 2013?" Tags="&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18234" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-10T15:28:26.830" Score="-1" ViewCount="677" Body="&lt;p&gt;So today I was managing my team and they are in the middle of a sprint, I went over to my dev team just to find out how they are getting on. Turned out that one of my developers was waiting on his colleague to finish his side of the story before beginning work. In the mean time, he was working on items in the backlog out of his own accord, since the rest of items in the sprint required his colleague to completed before he could intervene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When this happens, should you add items from the backlog into the sprint for the developer to complete during the time he is waiting for his colleague to complete his side of the work? Or should you let the developer freestyle?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2016-05-11T11:54:00.163" Title="What to do if a developer is waiting on a colleague to complete his side of the story during a sprint?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18233" CreationDate="2016-05-10T16:01:16.010" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly you need to Baseline your plan at the start of the project, when all the planning has been done and you have a plan you are happy with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then add the Column 'Finish Variance' to your view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever the currently forecast Finish date is different to the date it was supposed to have been in the original forecase (i.e. the baselined plan), the difference will be shown in the Finish Variance column.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2016-05-10T16:01:16.010" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18234" CreationDate="2016-05-10T19:14:42.340" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like your development team is working the way it's supposed to work. The dev who is blocked has not been idle, he's grabbed work from the backlog. No real worries at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, this story dependency should be caught in the Sprint Planning meeting. At that time, the blocked dev could be assigned backlog items in anticipation of the wait. The planning metric to watch in this case is the overall points total for the sprint, and how many story points both of those devs are assigned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this dependency was discussed in the Sprint Planning meeting &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; an appropriate level of points assigned to each dev, then I would guess the blocking story is taking more time (points) than originally estimated. In this case, your dev team is still working as it's supposed to. Some stories may potentially get dropped because this blocking story has grown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last possibility is the dependency was discussed, the appropriate level of story points assigned to the devs, but the dev working the blocking story has been side-tracked onto other (higher priority) tasks. This situation requires the scrum master to step in and re-balance stories and priorities to keep the work moving along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all though, it sounds like your agile dev team is working it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21791" LastActivityDate="2016-05-10T19:14:42.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18237" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18239" CreationDate="2016-05-10T21:16:44.207" Score="3" ViewCount="710" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of websites out there that have different messages regarding scrum. For example, some websites state that items can be added to the sprint backlog AFTER the sprint has commenced, while others say that this is not allowed under any circumstances. I have found numerous other contradictions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an official website or resource for learning scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23392" LastActivityDate="2016-05-11T16:15:43.957" Title="Is there an official website for scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18237" CreationDate="2016-05-10T23:31:22.500" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/faq.html&quot;&gt;ScrumGuides.org&lt;/a&gt; is run and maintained by the co-creators of Scrum, Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland. This site is the official Scrum site. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of particular interest to you, is this quote. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the Sprint:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;No changes are made that would endanger the Sprint Goal;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Quality goals do not decrease; and,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Scope may be clarified and re-negotiated between the Product Owner and Development Team as more is learned.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes. Items theoretically may be added to the sprint, provided that it does not endanger the sprint goal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, in reality, adding new stories mid sprint is very likely to endanger the sprint goal. That is why you often see it &quot;forbidden&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastEditorUserId="21039" LastEditDate="2016-05-10T23:53:18.040" LastActivityDate="2016-05-10T23:53:18.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18240" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18244" CreationDate="2016-05-11T02:26:00.717" Score="1" ViewCount="712" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hello &lt;em&gt;Stack Exchange&lt;/em&gt; colleagues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm trying to set up a project that has 3 full time project staff and&#xA;  2 part time staff (students).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way I'm planning is that all tasks are common to any of them, but once 1 part time staff is allocated, the task duration should be update accordingly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;**&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;John (FULL TIME 40H) work on TASK1 (100 h task);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mary (PART TIME 20H) work on TASK1 (100 h task);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;**&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/O9ExJ.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/O9ExJ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you see above example, I just created the task, allocated both member, then edited MARY to be 50% work allocation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why they MS PROJECT keeps 100h and same END DATE?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23393" LastActivityDate="2016-05-11T10:17:31.440" Title="Part time project member: how to specify his 20 hours a week?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18234" CreationDate="2016-05-11T02:37:42.650" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Scrum Team Members Aren't Individual Resources&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When this happens, should you add items from the backlog into the sprint for the developer to complete during the time he is waiting for his colleague to complete his side of the work? Or should you let the developer freestyle?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither. Your process needs to stop thinking of developers as individual resources. Instead, the Development Team is collectively responsible for the stories accepted into the Sprint in support of the Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Never Pull Product Backlog Items Unless Sprint Backlog's Empty&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the mean time, [the blocked developer] was working on items in the backlog out of his own accord, since the rest of items in the sprint required his colleague to completed before he could intervene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;100% utilization is not the point of agile processes, so the question shouldn't be whether the developer was busy, but rather whether or not he was contributing in a sustainable way to the team's overall effort. Working on other work already in the Sprint Backlog while waiting for a prerequisite task to become unstuck is certainly one viable option, so long as it doesn't introduce task-switching overhead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is for developers to combine resources to complete stories that require more effort to complete. While &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%E2%80%99_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Brooks' Law&lt;/a&gt; may still apply in some cases, on a small team it can be very helpful to do pair programming or collectively &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/147665/57614&quot;&gt;swarm&lt;/a&gt; over stories to reduce work-in-progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter how you approach the situation, under no circumstances should you be introducing new work into an incomplete Sprint. This is an anti-pattern based on notions of individual productivity and idempotent tasking, neither of which is relevant to a well-run Scrum implementation. All work should come from the Sprint Backlog until the Sprint Backlog is empty or the Sprint Goal has been met according to the Definition of Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:31:53.287" LastActivityDate="2016-05-11T02:37:42.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18234" CreationDate="2016-05-11T08:11:26.937" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Introduce pair programming or swarming to your team, as CodeGnome already mentioned.&#xA;This helps getting items finished, before starting new ones. Also the team members can transfer knowledge, which is very important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23278" LastActivityDate="2016-05-11T08:11:26.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18234" CreationDate="2016-05-11T09:27:05.520" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a developer is blocked it can be tempting to bring work in to the sprint from the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you do this, consider the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the story coming in only require development effort? If it requires other activities, such as testing, then does the team have the capacity to complete the new story? I have seen many instances where work is brought in to a sprint to keep developers busy that then ends up overloading the team tester.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the story coming in impact on the team's plan for the sprint? Perhaps the team has worked through how they want to handle the stories for the sprint and the new story will require a rethink of those plans.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the Product Owner aware of the new work being added to the sprint? Perhaps they have recently been rethinking that particular story or maybe they want to prioritise something else instead.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of alternative uses of the developers time if they are blocked:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The developer could pair with the person they are blocked by. This could speed up completion of the story and may also share some knowledge to prevent future blockages.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The developer could look to help out other members of the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The developer could write some automated regression tests and so improve the team's regression coverage.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The developer could do some quality improvements, such as running code quality analysis and fixing any issues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The developer could start to review stories at the top of the backlog in preparation for backlog refinement and planning sessions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I would discuss the situation in the retrospective. Did the team anticipate the dependency between developers in planning? Is there a way to avoid this situation in the future?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-05-11T11:54:00.163" LastActivityDate="2016-05-11T11:54:00.163" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18240" CreationDate="2016-05-11T10:07:40.583" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have defined your task as being Manually Scheduled with a Duration of 100 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you apply resource to this task, since it is manually scheduled, MS-Project will keep the duration at 100 hours as that is what you made it. It will calculate how much Work is done in that task by calculating the total based on the amount of resource you apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you make the Work column visible you will see that MS-Project has calculated the work for this task as 150 hours. This is because you have used John at 100% of 100 hours and Mary at 50% of 100 hours, equals 150 hours. 150 hours work fits into a 100 hour duration using resources totalling 150% of the duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want MS-Project to vary the time depending on the resource applied then a) make it Auto-Scheduled b) Check the &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Effort-Driven-task-field-2155647a-a232-48a6-a832-ed64fa87dc71&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Effort Driven&lt;/a&gt; box for the task&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Description&lt;/strong&gt;     The Effort Driven field indicates whether the scheduling for the task is effort driven scheduling. When a task is effort driven, Project keeps the total task work at its current value, regardless of how many resources are assigned to the task. When new resources are assigned, remaining work is distributed to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Best Uses&lt;/strong&gt;     Add the Effort Driven field to a task sheet when you want to set whether tasks are effort driven or resource driven directly on that sheet. If you want the same duration to be scheduled regardless of the number of resources assigned to the task, click No in the Effort Driven field. If you want the duration to be dependent on the availability and effort of the assigned resources, click Yes in this field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example&lt;/strong&gt;     You have a task to create a set of architectural drawings with a duration of four weeks, which is how long the task would take one drafter to complete. Because the task is effort driven, you assign four drafters to the task and Project will schedule the task to be completed in one week. In this case, you click Yes in the Effort Driven field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;support.office.com&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2016-05-11T10:17:31.440" LastActivityDate="2016-05-11T10:17:31.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18245" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18246" CreationDate="2016-05-11T11:19:13.907" Score="3" ViewCount="107" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to introduce Scrum to my group of devs. We are students and some of us have jobs. Our availability of dev hours is not ideal but Scrum seems to be very good for us. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do we need to know exactly how many hours a week each of us can invest in the project? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, would it be better to keep these hours consistent? e.g. 3 hours on Monday, 2 hours on Tuesday each week of a sprint, etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23328" LastEditorUserId="23328" LastEditDate="2016-05-11T11:25:01.917" LastActivityDate="2016-06-07T21:58:00.180" Title="Scrumming part time. Need to know exact hours?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18245" CreationDate="2016-05-11T11:48:25.553" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many Scrum teams use Story Point estimations, which removes the need for hour level tracking/estimation. So, no, you don't need to know the number of hours up front. After the first iteration you should be able to get a rough baseline of your team's capacity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be best if your team gave consistent hours each iteration. That way, your get a better forecast of what you're capable of accomplishing in an iteration, but even if you don't, it should &quot;come out in the wash&quot; over time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastActivityDate="2016-05-11T11:48:25.553" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18247" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18251" CreationDate="2016-05-11T12:46:33.457" Score="3" ViewCount="811" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team is newly formed and trying to establish a baseline for their velocity in story points per sprint. The problem is at the moment the QA is part of the sprint. It has been suggested that it is excluded and that only the development phase is in the actual sprint. Why? Also should the velocity of QA (and BA before the sprint I guess) not be part of the team velocity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23342" LastActivityDate="2016-05-15T17:45:48.170" Title="What are the reasons to (or not to) exclude QA from your sprint" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18247" CreationDate="2016-05-11T12:50:54.083" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is one central question that I considered when addressing this question for myself and my team: is QA required for an issue to be &quot;Done?&quot; I would argue that the answer is always yes. Nothing leaves our development process until QA has verified and tested it, so therefore we can't get anything to Done in a Sprint until QA has looked at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calling issues Done without putting them through your QA process will only lead to an artificially-inflated velocity and hurt your team in the long run. Whether it's through bug reports or PBIs being returned to you for a future Sprint, it's not a sustainable way to develop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, each Story/PBI should have to be put through your QA process before it is Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16314" LastActivityDate="2016-05-11T12:50:54.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18249" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-11T13:36:03.930" Score="1" ViewCount="865" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a projects for example a brochure website for a client to be built on wordpress, its 6 pages. Lets say we already have the design and to make it a finished thing it requires aa mix of frontend and backend developers to deliver the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have every unique layout designed for each page. In an agile scrum environment whats the best way to task this would you create a user story for each design&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;as a user I can view and interact with the homepage as per the 'homepage design'&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then a front end person might create tasks under this story&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;create the framework for the navigation&#xA;create the jscript to manage the slider&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a backend would add stories like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;integreate into Wordpress' menu system the main navigation etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-OR-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;would we treat each design as an epic which would be 'make the frontpage' and the stories would be along the lines of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;front end wise&#xA;As a user I can interact with the main navigation (as in the visual) so I can browse different pages&#xA;As a user the slider needs to be able to move left to right after 3 seconds so as to present a different message *&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;this would involve a front end and a back end person would this then get sub tasked?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suggestions appreciated&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23397" LastActivityDate="2016-05-12T07:48:56.737" Title="How to structure a simple Wordpress project in Agile Scrum Team" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18247" CreationDate="2016-05-11T15:36:16.240" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If dev and QA teams have traditionally operated separately, their processes and knowledge domains might be too different for them to effectively make estimates together, and thus establish a common velocity together. What I have seen done is stagger the dev and QA sprints so that one starts in the middle of the other. For example, if they are using two-week sprints, QA starts one week after dev. That gives dev enough time to finish a few stories and start handing them off to QA early instead of waiting until the dev sprint ends. This might be workable in your case while QA becomes more integrated with dev.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13325" LastActivityDate="2016-05-11T15:36:16.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18247" CreationDate="2016-05-11T15:38:49.857" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short; anything that has &lt;strong&gt;verifiable acceptance criteria&lt;/strong&gt; should go through QA and they should be complete members of your sprint / agile team.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In detail:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, in agile / scrum, at the end of the sprint you are able to release the completed work to production.  So that work needs to be tested and verified before it can be release, which means that QA needs to be part of your estimating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when estimating, any work that is &lt;em&gt;&quot;testable&quot;&lt;/em&gt; would have to take into account the test time and any time to resolve any found issues.  This means that your velocity will likely slow down in the short term, but in the long term it will create a more stable and viable product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Just because a developer marks a story as done doesn't mean ALL of the acceptance criteria have been met.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You decide to exclude QA and verify the acceptance criteria yourself.  That doesn't work because the acceptance criteria is expected behavior and a QA can often make really strange things happen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the unlikely event that the developer happens to do everything regarding their story perfectly; it likely has to interact with other parts of the system and that could introduce bugs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why Not:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not every story requires QA.  For example; a documentation story or refactor story may not be something a QA needs to / can test.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is the only instance that I can think where a QA would not be needed.  Even then, they should vote on everything that is not exclusively technical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that; the above &quot;why not&quot; is complicated because some would say that purely technical sprints / stories are invalid because they are not delivering value.  So then you go in the opposite direction and end up with massive stories that others would say are too big and need to be split into smaller stories.  At that point; you have to figure out what works for the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22717" LastActivityDate="2016-05-11T15:38:49.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18237" CreationDate="2016-05-11T16:15:43.957" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether there is an official website for scrum and whether there is an official website for &lt;em&gt;learning&lt;/em&gt; about scrum are two slightly different questions, even though the answer to both is no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The three &quot;most official&quot; sites are the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ScrumGuides.org&lt;/a&gt; - The official home of the Scrum Guide itself, which is the document that defines scrum. It's a good read; not just because it helps you understand the framework, but because you will see what vanilla scrum is. A lot of what people evangelize as part of scrum (e.g. story points, burndowns...) are useful but not really a part of scrum.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ScrumAlliance.org&lt;/a&gt; - Co-founded in 2002 by Ken Schwaber, one of the fathers of scrum. This organization issues the Certified Scrum Master (CSM) and Certified Product Owner (CSPO) certifications. The CSM is currently the best-known scrum certification.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum.org&lt;/a&gt; - Founded by Ken Schwaber in 2009 after leaving ScrumAlliance. This organization issues the Professional Scrum Master (PSM) and Professional Product Owner (PSPO) certifications. The PSM is gaining mind share.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/history.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This page&lt;/a&gt; helps summarize the differences between ScrumAlliance.org and Scrum.org.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13325" LastActivityDate="2016-05-11T16:15:43.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18249" CreationDate="2016-05-12T07:48:56.737" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/user-stories&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;user story&lt;/a&gt; describes something that a user wants to do and why they want to do it. A common format for user stories is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a &lt;em&gt;who&lt;/em&gt; I want to &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; so that &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a website user I want to view a list of articles on cooking in time-sorted order so that I can see the latest stories first&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story does not contain any implementation or design details. For example, it would not mention a slider, a carousel or any other web component.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; is important as it gives the development team context and so can guide them on their implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;who&lt;/em&gt; is also important. For example, some stories could mention first-time users of the website and other stories could mention experienced users of the website. Different users may have different needs from the site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The development team discusses these user stories as a part of sprint planning. They may then break each story down in to a number of &lt;em&gt;technical tasks&lt;/em&gt;. These tasks will contain implementation details and will cover all that is needed to actually do the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do we do this? A user story is intended to be understood not just by the development team but also by the end users. There is a clear separation between the user story, which is user-focused and the tasks, which are implementation-focused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-05-12T07:48:56.737" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18254" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-12T10:38:19.657" Score="1" ViewCount="357" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I had a quick meeting today, my Boss who is leading the sales team has given me one sprint to deliver a shopping list of work for a end client. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have told him that a week is not enough time to deliver that amount of work and properly test everything. Only in the best case scenario, if everything works fantastically well, it will be delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently facing the following issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My boss doesn't seem to care and will just set the aggressive deadlines anyway because it's an opportunity to get business in.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My boss is not respecting the fact that my team are contractually obliged to work 40 hours a week (UK), he just wants this level of work delivered in a sprint even if it means a lot of overtime.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have warned him about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tech debt resulting from very aggressive deadlines and being able to create a contingency in my project management.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have repeatedly told him that we can't let clients dictate our sprint cycles this way, but his argument is that if we are not aggressive enough with timeframes we will lose business.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I handle this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2016-05-23T16:19:53.233" Title="Sales team keep on setting aggressive deadlines" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;sales&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18256" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18269" CreationDate="2016-05-12T19:40:34.393" Score="5" ViewCount="226" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK; this is a real-world question rather than a theoretical construct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Context&lt;/strong&gt;: Multinational company flirting with scaled Agile and/or Nexus.  Currently have 3 large agile programmes of 200+ developers in each. The most mature programme has 20 feature teams and 6 of those feature teams have been selected to pilot Nexus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problem&lt;/strong&gt;: The teams were originally structured around product feature sets (teleconference integration, digital transformation, sales/customer contact history) which had little to no dependency between each team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The move to Nexus means all teams should prioritise all of the highest priority stories even though it means all teams start working within the same codebase (, that is, all work on teleconference integration).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Curveball&lt;/strong&gt;: The technology we are working on is not very mature and it has no version control at present. It's coming in the next 12 months. Essentially, one developer locks out a coding object until it is deployed to the next environment which causes delays for other developers and teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;  What is the best way to scale delivery? Is it for all teams to work on the highest priority items (a la Nexus guidance) even though dependencies will slow down delivery; or is it better to split the feature sets across teams so they can work independently and integrate the increments in a longer cycle?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking for thoughts from the agile community; I have my own opinion, but I want to see how others have interpreted Nexus and the solution to this problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="8313" LastEditDate="2019-01-26T21:44:47.087" LastActivityDate="2019-01-26T21:44:47.087" Title="Multiple feature teams but no version control; how to scale delivery?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;nexus&gt;&lt;scaled&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18257" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-12T21:32:43.297" Score="4" ViewCount="218" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm struggling to determine where capturing of user story elaborations and discussions fits into agile. A lot of what I have read and agree with is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You should be focusing on discussions with your BAs and clients to elaborate the stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Figure out what needs to be done rather than documenting every single requirement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do we capture enough details so that in a month or so, when someone in those discussions comes back and their memory of it was different from ours, we don't get into a debate/discussion over whether it is a new story or a bug because we didn't implement right in the first place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This debate occurs because of maybe the scale of the change required due to this disagreement. Do we need to capture every decision &quot;on paper&quot; to avoid debates? Doing this is appears a bit contrary to some of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8841" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-05-15T14:28:02.780" LastActivityDate="2016-05-15T14:31:36.000" Title="How do we prevent debates over whether changes to user stories are new work or bugs?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;&lt;specification&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18257" CreationDate="2016-05-12T22:20:54.273" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will answer your question from the point of view of Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/user-stories&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;User stories&lt;/a&gt; may be captured weeks or even months before the sprint in which the work is done. But a user story is a simple one or two sentence description of the requirement. There will be few if any requirement details captured and nothing about the implementation. Because these stories are so simple they tend to have a long &lt;em&gt;shelf life&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum we use a just-in-time approach to user story discussions. At the beginning of each sprint the team meets with the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/product-owner&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Product Owner&lt;/a&gt; during sprint planning. They run through each story they plan to include in the sprint and the Product Owner provides the details they need to do the implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it is only at the last minute that the discussion takes place and all the details are fresh in the team's minds as they start their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the Scrum concept of the Product Owner is that they are the primary source of all requirements. The Product Owner spends a lot of their time speaking with stakeholders and builds up a strong understanding of what work needs to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is also available to the development team throughout the sprint. If there are any questions or clarifications needed then the Product Owner is on hand to answer them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, at the end of the sprint the completed stories are demonstrated at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/sprint-review-meeting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sprint review&lt;/a&gt;. This is an opportunity for the Product Owner and stakeholders to double-check that the new features are as they would expect them to be. If they spot a problem then any necessary fixes are added to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/product-backlog&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;product backlog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-05-12T22:20:54.273" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18254" CreationDate="2016-05-13T08:48:39.110" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reflect the pain back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As things stand, your boss is not feeling the pain the team is feeling in delivering against artificial and aggressive deadlines. Your challenge is to make sure they see the consequences of their actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Produce a sprint report that details what has or has not been tested. Make it clear that by accepting a release under these conditions your boss is also accepting the responsibility for any bugs that arise from untested code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We have managed to test the new features delivered in this sprint, but we have not had time to do any regression testing nor have we we tested on other browsers or devices. The product may well have bugs that we have not discovered.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do the same kind of thing with code quality. Every time you rush a delivery you build up technical debt and you reduce the quality of your code. This can be reflected back in terms of the difficulty of doing future enhancements on the code base:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;In order to achieve the last delivery deadline we had to hard code a number of values rather than using a more effective coding approach. The code base will be harder to work on now and as such we are likely to be slower to deliver any future work.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, emphasise the impact of working long hours on the team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The team has been working evenings and some weekends for several weeks now. Team morale is low and motivation is much reduced. As the team members are tired all the time they are making more mistakes, which is resulting in increasing amounts of re-work.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-05-13T08:48:39.110" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18254" CreationDate="2016-05-13T10:35:33.573" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A well covered and detailed answer for the situation. Ensure you share few emails and reports supporting the facts about the difficulties and the flaws of tight and unrealistic goals for the team. Adding few of the tools through which each of this could be achieved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maintain a well documented and self explanatory &lt;strong&gt;Tracibility Matrix&lt;/strong&gt;. This would cover the Scenarios and the Test cases that were executed in a specific Sprint for a release. In a release report mention the features that were not regressed. Make a practice to share a release report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During your emails about the Code freeze details, mention the Code has not been &lt;strong&gt;self reviewed and Peer reviewed&lt;/strong&gt;, due to the deadlines. The testing team is waiting the the implemented feature for their test activities. Thus, opening gates for few obvious issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the team moral and motivation issues. Do monthly &lt;strong&gt;one to one meeting&lt;/strong&gt; with the team members. The goal of the meeting should be to set a monthly goal for the team members and identify and resolve any roadblocks for them. In such a scenario, the team members will come with issues that would be a red flag for the management. Share the same and seek solution to their issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once, these discussions would come on the table, the management team and the HR team would look for a solution to the current difficulties the team is facing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13556" LastActivityDate="2016-05-13T10:35:33.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18254" CreationDate="2016-05-13T11:47:40.830" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the risk of more down votes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This kind of question leads to a ton of feel good answers for labor.  But feel good answers for labor are not necessarily the right answers for leaders and managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You cannot consistently use a planning value, an estimate, that has so much contingency in there to handle any and every threat, every random and non random variable, in order to meet that estimate 100% or near 100% of the time.  Labor will want this and will scream for it but as a manager you cannot allow it.  Fat estimates are not competitive and, if you want to stay in business, you have to commit to far more aggressive estimates and figure out how to get it done.  Get comfortable with P30 and P40 estimates.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Parkinson's and Student Syndrome are real phenomena.  If you do not challenge your estimates, you will end up with a constantly growing and overworked team that is producing nothing more than previously produced.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teams adapt.  With pressure, teams will adapt and find new ways to be successful.  This is how innovation works.  Without pressure, no change.  This is not management BS.  This is science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notwithstanding contractual issues, there is no link between working over 40 hours and low morale and increased errors.  The origin of 40 hours it not based on science but based on politics.  Human capacity can handle way more than this before both morale and errors increase.  Morale is more tied to purpose, autonomy, and mastery.  Nothing about 40 hours.  Again, science, not labor feel good pop psychology.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a point of degradation in performance.  You'd be surprised how far out that is than what it feels like.  But without metrics to show when this is occurring, you have nothing.  You cannot establish the judgement of &quot;too aggressive&quot; without metrics to show it...not one or two observations but consistent observations over a period of time of degraded performance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Flame suit is on....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-05-13T11:47:40.830" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18262" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-13T11:51:18.467" Score="2" ViewCount="130" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a project engineer with a consultancy. My work includes planning but also chasing after  contractors to make sure they deliver what they are paid for, and to keep communication between us, customer and contractor. I guess this can be seen as project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm in a late phase of my first project in this role. I plan to write a journal (for me, not to share with boss/coworkers) with what went wrong and how to improve next time. This will focus on the process issues, not on the technical ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The obvious way to go about this is to ask myself these questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What went wrong?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What could have gone better?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What should I try different the next time?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there other questions I should ask myself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23400" LastActivityDate="2016-05-13T12:30:01.367" Title="Good way to do a personal project review - what questions to ask" Tags="&lt;evaluation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18262" CreationDate="2016-05-13T12:30:01.367" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is known as a 'Lessons Learned Log' and if you &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=lessons%20learned%20log&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google this term&lt;/a&gt; you will find many definitions, discussions and even templates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2016-05-13T12:30:01.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18264" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18268" CreationDate="2016-05-13T17:15:20.120" Score="3" ViewCount="181" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a technical background in software development and spent some time as a lead for a small team. Last year, I officially became a project manager in a much larger team whose work I am much less familiar with, and have less time to learn the technical details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes when I am looking for information, a developer might tell me that the information I am looking for is in some folder buried inside the application or in a git repository, as if expecting me to go look for it there. I technically could spend the time and effort doing so, but that is no longer my responsibility and would take time away from my real responsibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I tell them, politely but authoritatively and without sounding like &quot;that's not my job,&quot; that I need them to provide me that information in an already-digested form?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13325" LastActivityDate="2016-05-16T06:59:57.227" Title="How do I tell resources that I need them to do something I could technically do myself?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;authority&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18264" CreationDate="2016-05-13T17:31:05.777" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're the one who needs the information, and the developers are already busy doing development, why is it their job to find the information for you? By saying &quot;I think it's in this repo&quot; they might be thinking that they're being helpful by pointing you in the right direction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19375" LastActivityDate="2016-05-13T17:31:05.777" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18264" CreationDate="2016-05-13T18:38:29.220" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are the project manager and those resources report to you, then delegate the task and outline your expectations of what you need, how you want it, and when you want it, and if you're ignored, take action.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2016-05-14T00:57:31.173" LastActivityDate="2016-05-14T00:57:31.173" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18264" CreationDate="2016-05-13T20:41:16.717" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe you need to adjust the way you ask for information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have no longer the time to do the fact-finding yourself, you have to delegate it. But you need to make sure you communicate this change clearly. Obviously people still think you can just grab data from the repository. Next time, make clear what you need:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hey Bob, can you please prepare a short report about how the &lt;em&gt;bar&lt;/em&gt;ing for our three main &lt;em&gt;foo&lt;/em&gt;s work concerning the new widget and send it to me by tomorrow morning? Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh and don't call people &quot;resources&quot;. If you called me a &quot;resource&quot; I'd sent you a reply asking you to please go through my line manager for tasks. Be nice and you will meet nice people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2016-05-13T20:41:16.717" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18264" CreationDate="2016-05-14T00:25:41.207" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've framed your question as an interpersonal issue, with the presumption that it has to do with your delegated authority within your organizational framework. This is an &lt;em&gt;assumption,&lt;/em&gt; which we'll talk about shortly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if we accept the premise that this is an issue of your authority, it is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; necessarily a personal or interpersonal issue. Since a project manager's scope of responsibility is to apply controls to a project, any failure to control for known issues within a project may affect the success of the project. It is therefore better to frame the issue in a project context rather than an interpersonal one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, project managers are often responsible for a project's process, and for managing communications within the project and among its processes. Those are generally areas that receive less attention than budget and schedule&amp;mdash;and &lt;em&gt;certainly&lt;/em&gt; less than politics and issues of positional authority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With all of this in mind, I recommend that you &lt;strong&gt;inspect your project's processes and communications&lt;/strong&gt;. If you find gaps or failures in either, you can then work with the project team to adapt them as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Documenting Assumptions is Valuable&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question, as currently posted, is plagued with assumptions. It contains assumptions on your part, as well as forcing the reader to make assumptions about the roles, authority, and context of your situation. In the interests of answering the question &lt;em&gt;as originally posted&lt;/em&gt;, I will therefore document some foundational assumptions to enable an answer. The assumptions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are making ad-hoc requests of developers which are not part of their currently assigned tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have the &lt;em&gt;authority&lt;/em&gt; to assign ad-hoc tasks within your project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The developers have a &lt;em&gt;responsibility&lt;/em&gt; (however delegated) to respond to your requests.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are making your requests in socially, politcally, and organizationally appropriate ways.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your developers are giving you what &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; believe are contextually-appropriate answers, rather than saying RTFM or &quot;up yours!&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If any of these assumptions are false, then the answer will be left as-is for future visitors, but you may need to revise your question to more accurately reflect &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; given circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How to Solve for Process and Communications Failures&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since we're assuming, &lt;em&gt;a priori&lt;/em&gt;, that you genuinely need the information handed to you by the developers and that everyone is asking and answering in what they think are appropriate ways, then we are left with the presumption that there is a process or communications failure at work here. Let's look at both possibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Process Failures&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are under time pressure to deliver something (e.g. a report or other project artifact) and therefore need something from the developers. However, unless this task was assigned in the standard way for your project, you are &lt;em&gt;creating&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;time pressure&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;schedule risk&lt;/strong&gt; for the developers (and therefore the project) by asking them to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Task-switch.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.fastcompany.com/944128/worker-interrupted-cost-task-switching&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Task-switching&lt;/a&gt; can have a huge negative impact on cognitive flow in knowledge work. It isn't merely the time it takes to switch gears; this also involves cognitive disruption, and creates cognitive load as the knowledge worker &lt;em&gt;shifts context&lt;/em&gt; to another task. As a one-off, this isn't a project-killer, but team capacity generally drops as task-switching and cognitive load increase.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Shift capacity.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your requests essentially require that developers shift a portion of their available capacity from whatever they was working on, or whatever milestones were set for them at this stage of the project, towards something else. This has a direct cost to the project, as projects generally have finite capacity. This may also have knock-on effects if any dependent tasks are affected by a team member's reduced capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't take much reduction in team capacity to affect a schedule. As many organizations fall prey to the 100% utilization fallacy, it doesn't take much variance in individual or team capacity to throw a project out of tolerance. Even if your project schedule provides some slack, you need to consider how much impact these requests cumulatively have on the available slack, or whether the reduced capacity simply creates more pressure to meet deadlines despite insufficient slack.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Perform invisible work.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this request isn't part of the project schedule, and presumably isn't tracked as a project deliverable, you are asking the developer to switch from a visible task that he is held accountable for to an &quot;invisible&quot; task that won't be immediately visible to the stakeholders or his line manager. As these types of requests can add up quickly, you may be creating more &quot;off the books&quot; work than you think.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is never an easy answer for process failures, as they are (by definition) systemic in nature. However, you may be able to inspect-and-adapt your process in one or more of the following ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bundle up requests to reduce task-switching overhead.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure documentation, reporting, and research tasks are accounted for within the project schedule. Slack is fine, but having explicit tasks on the project schedule for things you can plan for (like reports or documentation) is even better.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure you have sufficient slack in your capacity planning and your scheduling to account for unplanned/unscheduled tasks. Remember too that you need to add slack for the time it takes to get back on track when flow is broken, and not just budget for the tasks themselves.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure all requests are tracked by the project. CodeGnome's Law says: &quot;No invisible work, ever!&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be other ways to fix the process, too. Discuss it with the developers, and see what you can work out!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Communications Failures&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is actually a much more complicated issue with many more variables than a potential process failure. However, we can roll most of it up into two key areas: &lt;em&gt;context&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;transparency&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Context&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a context regarding what you need, what the project needs, and what everyone's roles are. This may not be a shared context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, the &lt;em&gt;developers&lt;/em&gt; have a context as well. You may or may not understand the developers' context, or have a full understanding of what their perceptions and motivations are within your mutual context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;You probably ought to discuss those things&lt;/em&gt; together.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Transparency&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a process level, you may lack visibility into what the developers are doing and what pressures they are under. The reverse is almost certainly true: developers rarely have insight into what project managers are doing, or the impact that &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt; has on the project outside their assigned responsibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a communications standpoint, what's missing is transparency. You and the development team may need to communicate more effectively about pressures on the project as a whole, and about how those pressures affect the team. It may also help to have more transparency about the organization, including the chain of command and lines of delegated authority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way to improve transparency from a communications standpoint is to talk about things explicitly, rather than relying on shared context or assumed frames of reference. Perhaps you feel that you shouldn't &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to haul certain things out in the open and talk about them, but unless you do they will remain opaque problems for all parties involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;So, talk about things. Together!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are certainly other types of communications failures. Perhaps you will uncover some of them as you dig further. In the end, though, the solution will almost always start with talking more openly, and ensuring that issues are discussed in an explicitly-shared context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-05-14T00:25:41.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18256" CreationDate="2016-05-14T05:24:57.677" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nexus is about integration. It's very hard to do integration well without an adequate toolchain, but following the Nexus framework should enable you to iteratively improve your organization's ability to integrate. Your main challenge seems to be either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A misunderstanding of the way that the Nexus Product Backlog items are refined, visualized, and selected across teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Missing Product Backlog items related to developing the capabilities required to actually integrate the Integrated Increment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, the process side of the problem can be addressed during the Nexus Refinement and Nexus Sprint Planning events. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Using the Product Backlog Effectively in Nexus&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following is a restatement of your interpretation of Nexus as it applies to your situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A move to Nexus means teams should select the highest priority stories even if it means all teams start working on the same code, i.e. all teams would work simultaneously work on teleconference integration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an understandable misinterpretation based on common Scrum practice. However, it is incorrect for three reasons. The reasons are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum Teams within Nexus are expected to be structured around subsystems.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While not clearly stated within the guide, the framework nevertheless contains this guidance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To the extent that requirements, team members’ knowledge, and code/test artifacts are mapped to the same Scrum Teams, dependency between teams can be reduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When software development using Scrum is scaled, these dependencies of requirements, domain knowledge, and software/test artifacts should drive team organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, Nexus is all about &lt;em&gt;integration&lt;/em&gt;, not adding more resources to the same set of tasks. Structuring your Scrum Teams around feature sets or subsystems that need to be integrated, with an eye towards minimizing cross-team dependencies, is the ideal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Nexus framework requires the Nexus Integration Team to refine the Product Backlog to eliminate or minimize dependencies between teams.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Backlog needs to be decomposed so that dependencies are identified and removed or minimized. Product Backlog items are refined into thinly sliced pieces of functionality and the team likely to do the work should be identified as early as possible...Only when the Product Backlog items are adequately independent can they be selected and worked on without excessive conflict between Scrum Teams in a Nexus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't really about &lt;em&gt;assigning&lt;/em&gt; work to teams. Rather, it is supporting the notion that the teams should work on loosely-coupled areas that are integrated daily within the Nexus. This is much easier to do when teams are formed around feature sets or subsystems.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Product Backlog in Nexus is not intended to be addressed in strictly linear order.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of a strictly linear or sequential order, a Nexus Product Backlog is intended to carry additional information to guide selection of items during Nexus Sprint Planning. Consider the following statements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As the Product Backlog items are refined and made ready, indicators of which team will do the work inside a Sprint are made visual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Product Backlog items are refined into thinly sliced pieces of functionality and the team likely to do the work should be identified as early as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first part of cross-team Refinement should be spent decomposing Product Backlog items into enough detail in order to understand which teams might deliver them, and in what sequence over upcoming Sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During Nexus Sprint Planning, each team selects work for the Nexus in a Scrum-like way, but teams should be selecting the topmost backlog items that support &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; specific Sprint Goal within the overarching Nexus Sprint Goal. Any additional refinement or reordering can be done by the Product Owner on the fly, if needed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By ensuring that your Scrum Teams are cross-functional but as loosely-coupled as possible with other teams, you are more likely to achieve scale. Your use of the Product Backlog must support this organizational structure, and be optimized for cross-team refinement and integration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Add Missing Integration Stories to the Product Backlog&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal of Nexus is to scale Scrum for &lt;em&gt;integration&lt;/em&gt; between subsystems. If your process or toolchain doesn't support integration, then you need to iterate until it does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The role of the Nexus Integration Team is to identify what needs to be done to facilitate integration. If integration is difficult because you lack the tools or infrastructure to integrate properly, then the Nexus Integration Team should work with the Scrum Teams and the Product Owner to create and prioritize integration items on the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't just an ideal; it's actually a &lt;em&gt;requirement&lt;/em&gt; of the Nexus framework. The guide specifically says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Nexus Integration Team takes ownership of any integration issues. It is accountable for successful integration of all work by all Scrum Teams in a Nexus. Integration includes resolving any technical and non-technical cross-team constraints that may impede a Nexus’ ability to deliver a constantly Integrated Increment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Product Owner or the stakeholders won't allow integration to be prioritized, the Nexus implementation will probably fail. Treating Nexus as a way to scale resources without addressing integration misses the entire &lt;em&gt;point&lt;/em&gt; of the framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-05-15T01:43:17.473" LastActivityDate="2016-05-15T01:43:17.473" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18270" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2016-05-14T15:57:32.397" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Resources/The-Nexus-Guide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nexus Framework&lt;/a&gt; uses &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt; as its building blocks. It is intended to integrate the work of three to nine Scrum Teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The name of the framework is sometimes confused with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sonatype.com/nexus-repository-sonatype&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nexus Repository&lt;/a&gt;, which is often used for managing software build components or artifacts. As the focus of this site is project management, the tag should always refer to the framework rather than the tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-05-14T16:04:23.543" LastActivityDate="2016-05-14T16:04:23.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18271" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2016-05-14T15:57:32.397" Score="0" Body="For questions about the Nexus scaled agile framework built on Scrum. This tag is NOT about the Nexus Repository by Sonatype." OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-05-14T16:04:23.543" LastActivityDate="2016-05-14T16:04:23.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18272" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18273" CreationDate="2016-05-14T22:21:25.717" Score="3" ViewCount="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in the process of completing the acceptance testing with a customer for a web based system and after 3 rounds of acceptance testing we have found that one particular feature of the system does for some reason not work on the clients 2 machines we have used for testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is pretty unusual for a browser based application and we have gone through an in-detail compare of the computers and the test environment. There are also possible programming problems that may exascerbate the problem&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately a lot of other things have gone wrong in the project as well, and this has contributed to a loss of trust and made acceptance testing very tedious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for ways to manage this better in the future, apart from of course identifying the actual difference that is causing this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can people here recommend project management and contractual preparations that are realistic for this scenario? The applications target market is only about 100 people with the 2 key people at the client obviously being super admins of the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;my business partner thinks its too hard a requirement to force acceptance testing as complete if only tested on a platform like browserstack.com - what do other people think&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;should I include the right to force a memory test or other IT checks on the desgnated test equipment?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;or is this simply something that can happen, bad luck?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="747" LastActivityDate="2016-05-15T09:25:23.430" Title="Acceptance Testing fails on owners machines only" Tags="&lt;acceptance-criteria&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18272" CreationDate="2016-05-15T08:27:28.607" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually I think you see this more with web applications vs 'normal' apps. Clients can have a whole host of browsers/plugins/firewalls etc which you dont have in your test enviroment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In regards to how to mange these problems, it sounds like you are doing the right thing by testing on the customers own devices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would add that carefull and conservative choice of acceptance criteria is a must.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ie. Always specify supported browsers, stay clear of low response times, state requirements such as good internet connnection, no plugins, open firewall etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another good thing is early testing with the customer. Get a basic site up and make sure they can see it. Do frequent mini demos when you are on site and catch problems with features when they are still 'new and not completely finished' so your customer will excuse and expect minor issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2016-05-15T08:27:28.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18257" CreationDate="2016-05-15T08:47:43.790" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think scrum and agile in general dodge this question by always keeping the requirement very simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't write the acceptance criteria down in a concise 'given x then y' style then you are doing too much upfront planning of the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2016-05-15T08:47:43.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18272" CreationDate="2016-05-15T09:25:23.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a big fan of using &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/SeleniumHQ/selenium/wiki/Grid2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Selenium Grid&lt;/a&gt;. It is open source and so not expensive to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This allows you to run lots of combinations of browsers and operating systems. You write the test once, but run it on a lot of different environments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an up-front investment of time to get the grid up and running. But once that is done, the effort to maintain it is light. You will need some serious computing hardware available though, if you plan to do a lot of testing across a wide range of environments. It works particularly well if you have a virtual machine setup available as you can spin-up VMs as and when you need them for the testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The beauty of this approach is that it is not difficult to add in a new test environment. Take the example of the failure on your owner's machine. As soon as a problem was reported you can find out what version of browser they are using, what operating system and what plugins they have. Configure that on a grid node and add it to the testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-05-15T09:25:23.430" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18257" CreationDate="2016-05-15T14:18:29.420" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do we capture enough details so that in a month or so, when someone in those discussions comes back and their memory of it was different from ours, we don't get into a debate/discussion over whether it is a new story or a bug because we didn't implement right in the first place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You and the customer are currently trapped in waterfall thinking. You're doing your planning upfront, and arguing over specifications later as if the project has one (and only one) bite at the apple for each feature. This is a misunderstanding of several foundational agile principles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The need for ongoing collaboration.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't capture a story or specification during upfront planning, when the cone of uncertainty is largest, and expect the story or its implementation not to change over time. User stories are &lt;em&gt;conversation placeholders&lt;/em&gt;, not detailed specifications, so they're meant to be elaborated on in the iteration in which they are addressed. This is done by integrating the customer (or a proxy, such as a Scrum Product Owner) into the iteration through active collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Iterative development requires frequent course corrections.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In iterative development, all parties need to embrace change as an integral part of the process. This is why iterative development requires a tight feedback loop, and prioritizes &lt;em&gt;working&lt;/em&gt; features over &quot;perfect&quot; features. Iterations should be just long enough to complete useful increments, and the development team and customer should be inspecting the increment at the end of each iteration to &lt;em&gt;refine&lt;/em&gt; it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Iterative development is a continuous process.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In agile frameworks, &lt;em&gt;imperfections are not bugs or defects&lt;/em&gt;; they are simply additional work that needs to be done in a future iteration to &lt;em&gt;incrementally&lt;/em&gt; improve towards the desired state. As you increase effective collaboration and communication, the number of misfeatures delivered will go down.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're only collaborating with your customer at the beginning of a project, or only gathering their feedback weeks or months after a feature has been considered a final deliverable by the team, then the blame-game that you're experiencing is inevitable. To avoid mutual finger-pointing, adapt your process to work more closely together. When you provide a customer with more transparency into the process, and more inflection points to inspect and adapt the product, you will change the dynamic from &quot;us vs. them&quot; to one of &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;shared responsibility&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-05-15T14:31:36.000" LastActivityDate="2016-05-15T14:31:36.000" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18257" CreationDate="2016-05-15T14:27:27.203" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile Manifesto says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Working software over comprehensive documentation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but also!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the&#xA;  items on the left more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer is: &lt;strong&gt;as much documentation as necessary, but not more&lt;/strong&gt;. Definitely do not make a habit for it. Try to avoid to have specification for each requirement just because you usually do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The description of user story has to be as good as allow you to work with it. As Barnaby Golder wrote. The requirements in the low part of the backlog do not have to be described in the high detail if the current description gives PO (Product Backlog) enough information to prioritize it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The items which will be take in the next sprint or the following one are usually in more detail so that team can estimate them better or pull them to the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maintaining extensive documentation is really a waste of time in Agile environment as customers can change its mind. &lt;em&gt;(Last week our customer just changed his and decided that he does not need 3 features anymore. Boom. All time we spent on documentation and discussion became waste of time. We learned our lesson, until the feature is higher in the backlog, development team should minimize time spent)&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to wrap it up: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;first you need enough text per user story to allow PO to prioritize&#xA;backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;later enough so that Development team can (roughly) estimate it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;at last enough so that Development team can develop it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So just ask the people, do you need more information? If not, do not waste time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23238" LastActivityDate="2016-05-15T14:27:27.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18247" CreationDate="2016-05-15T17:45:48.170" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This really depends what you mean by QA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of every sprint you should have working shippable software. What does shippable mean to you? I  would asume that you need to test, but you may have an external validation step. The development team should have all the skills and knowledge to make software that will pass all external validation steps with no additional work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BA's  should work for the Product Owner and are not  necessarily working on the Development Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastActivityDate="2016-05-15T17:45:48.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18000" CreationDate="2016-05-15T18:04:58.720" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can figure out how to get two pieces of information out of Jira, you can provide very reasonable estimates by utilizing Little's Law. You'll need to know the date you began a task, and the day it was considered done. The more history you have, the more accurate this will be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Start Date - End Date = Cycle Time&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Excel, to exclude weekends (important later)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;=NETWORKDAYS(StartDate, EndDate)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cycle time is the number of days it takes you to complete a single item, from the time you began working on it. Perform this calculation for all of your previously completed tasks, then calculate your average cycle time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next step is to figure out how much work you can do in an iteration. We use two week iterations, so I'll use 10 business days as an example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Tasks per iteration = Avg. Cycle Time / Days in Iteration&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ex:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have an average cycle time of 3.5 days. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;(1 item / 3.5 days) * ( 10 days / 1 iteration)&#xA;&#xA;10 items / 3.5 iterations = 2.86 items / iteration&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I can accomplish (on average) 2.86 items every 2 weeks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now it's trivial to take the number of items in my queue, divide it by the average number of items I can do in an iteration and determine when the &lt;em&gt;last&lt;/em&gt; one will be done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;10 items in queue / ( 2.86 items / iteration)&#xA;Last item in queue will be done in 3.50 iterations. &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when will my other items be done? Instead of dividing the total number of items in the queue by the average number done, replace it with its priority ranking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ex: When will my 5th rank task be done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;5 / 2.86 = 1.75 iterations &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've mastered this, you can take your estimations further out by looking at when an item is entered into the backlog and when it is done. This is called &lt;em&gt;Lead Time&lt;/em&gt;. The calculations are the same, but provide a longer term view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of important note is that &lt;em&gt;none&lt;/em&gt; of this relies on how good you are at guessing how long a particular item will take. It relies purely on historical data of how long it &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; took you to get things done in the past. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastEditorUserId="21039" LastEditDate="2016-05-15T19:40:01.393" LastActivityDate="2016-05-15T19:40:01.393" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18264" CreationDate="2016-05-16T06:59:57.227" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a project manager you can delegate the job to your trusted team members. Please change your command and control approach to this problem. Show your servant leadership quality to your team members and support them in their day to day activities. It does not mean that you have to do their job. Explain the importance of the information you are looking for and gain the involvement of your team members&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23024" LastActivityDate="2016-05-16T06:59:57.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18282" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18286" CreationDate="2016-05-16T10:14:45.273" Score="16" ViewCount="6261" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently in a proxy product owner/Scrum master role, I do my planning in the following way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Weekly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Retrospectives at the end of the week, sprint review on Mondays (with the stakeholder) followed by a Sprint planning meeting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My boss the product owner has been asking me to show a gantt chart for a couple of months. I have been really pushing back on doing this because of the following reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's based on time when I measure performance based on the teams velocity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is too high level. Currently one of the problems that I am currently seeing is where our original plan gets skewed by unforeseen customer requests, resulting in new features being developed for the platform which we did not originally scope. Since I do my planning weekly, I am able to adapt to change requests as they come in by adding it in the following sprint. If I have a gantt, the planning becomes very rigid if followed 100%.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I do not want to commit to it, only for it to bite me in the ass with my boss saying 'you promised x and y thing on week 7 why hasn't it been delivered?' irrespective if we were forced to work on other things in that time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am thinking about doing a high level gantt chart just to keep my boss happy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I do this (even if it is inaccurate) on a sprint by sprint bases?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We aim to complete x y think on x week then z thing on y week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE TO SINCE THIS QUESTION WAS POSTED&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been doing this for 2 weeks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pros of Gantt Charts&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gives a high lever overview on how you plan to structure upcoming sprints, that is easy to see. It can be used as a product roadmap.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Drawbacks&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Too rigid, cannot adapt to change at all. I have found that once requirements came in that were not originally specced, it went out of whack.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can probably use a Gantt chart as long as you inform your stakeholder that it is subject to change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="23543" LastEditDate="2017-11-14T12:08:37.607" LastActivityDate="2017-11-14T12:08:37.607" Title="Being pressured into doing a Gantt chart" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18282" CreationDate="2016-05-16T10:28:17.557" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Part of the reasons we measure velocity and score stories weeks in advance (even though this is subject to change), is so we can project into the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your boss is saying Gaant Chart, but what they really want is some kind of projection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Improve/split up the stories in your backlog ahead of time, score some stories, look at velocity, and see if you can create a road map. Explain how this is an evidence based prediction exercise and not a commitment. Explain that it's subject to change if their needs change. Point out that one of the benefits of evidence based predictions over commitments is that you can be honest with your customer and don't have to 'pad' schedules. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17705" LastEditorUserId="17705" LastEditDate="2016-05-16T10:34:50.337" LastActivityDate="2016-05-16T10:34:50.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18282" CreationDate="2016-05-16T10:40:06.113" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Scrum you need not prepare Gantt Chart. Instead you can rely Release burn-down chart, Burn-down chart, Burn-up Chart. During the release planning itself you should have arrived at no of releases using the ratio total number of story points to velocity. Everything will be displayed in dash board. You are not using Information Refrigerators like Gantt Chart in Scrum. Use only information Radiators&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23024" LastActivityDate="2016-05-16T10:40:06.113" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18285" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-16T10:40:43.363" Score="1" ViewCount="2491" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am struggling with Work/Duration/Units.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: I have a product that takes 184 hrs to build, we typically have 5-6 guys working on it and in real time, takes about a week to complete. When I enter the task in project and assign the resources, it appears that it will take a month to build? But I know that's not the case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What am I doing wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23439" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2016-05-16T11:00:28.630" LastActivityDate="2016-08-04T06:30:14.160" Title="Relationship between Work, Duration and Units in Microsoft Project 2013" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18282" CreationDate="2016-05-16T10:52:49.983" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are the one responsible for reporting to the project management and they love Gantt Charts, there is maybe more damage not to do them then to do them even if you know they are not the correct way how to visualize the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ken Schwaber, the &lt;em&gt;co-inventor&lt;/em&gt; of Scrum, describes similar situation he had during his experience in his book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/073561993X&quot;&gt;Agile Project Management with Scrum&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;I really recommend to read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here they reported in Gantt but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have the Gantt chart in features rather than tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;made sure they produced also Release burn down chart which is much more informative and can show the added scope&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like that they satisfied the organization which was not willing to change but keep the report valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You cannot avoid the plan changes in the future due to some new coming features but I am sure your boss and you both know that. If something was not delivered because the project owner (he) wanted to add something new, that should be understood. &lt;strong&gt;You cannot put 5 liters of water into the 3 liters glass.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23238" LastActivityDate="2016-05-16T10:52:49.983" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18285" CreationDate="2016-05-16T14:23:24.070" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly ensure the task is &quot;Auto Scheduled&quot;, then make sure that the &quot;Effort Driven&quot; box is checked. This means that as you add or subtract resources (assuming it is not set to Fixed Duration) the elapsed time will move accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2016-05-16T14:23:24.070" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18282" CreationDate="2016-05-16T16:56:46.940" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;An Agile concept that I've used to map somewhat nicely to a gantt-like chart is a Story Map. There are many different styles, you can research on the interwebz to find the one that seems to fit your project best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the common problems I've seen with agile development teams is that it's easy to get focused on &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;this sprint&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; and lose the overall sense of the project (/product/application/etc). Story maps have proven, on my projects, as a good means of maintaining the higher level view and helping the individual developers organize their work with goals (deadlines, deliveries, etc) in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since a single product requirement is often broken up into many stories, those stories can collectively be organized under a single Epic Story. I'll often directly link a single user requirement for a feature to a single Epic. Then all the individual stories that fall out as a result (i.e. derived requirements) are still associated with that one Epic Story. The Epic will often require several sprints to fully implement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you lay out all your Epic Stories over a series of sprints, the development team can get a much better sense of how the individual stories build up overall -- much better than just a backlog picture. The project deadlines or deliveries can line up with the Story Map so the development team can adjust either the a) features ready for delivery, or b) the delivery date (whichever is mutable).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you don't have all Epics fully broken down into stories yet, you can still make an educated engineering estimate for how long they will take to implement and test. (Color these gray if you like, to show there is more uncertainty for those Epics at this time. Perhaps color coding for the confidence of your time estimate might work.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And oh by the way, the Story Map looks very similar to a gantt chart and your customer will likely be happy with that. Some of my customers that have been reluctant supporters of our agile process felt as if they &quot;bought in&quot; by accepting the Story Map as a communication/schedule tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Managing a project is a balancing act of communication between the development team and the customers, often translating one language (development-speak) into another (customer-product-speak). A Story Map is another thing to try and see if it might fit your situation and customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21791" LastActivityDate="2016-05-16T16:56:46.940" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18282" CreationDate="2016-05-16T19:01:59.290" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, being able to accurately predict the completion of upcoming deliverables (predictability) is mostly a function of how many dependencies you have on other teams. If you rely on other teams to finish their work first, you need to call out as a risk those teams not delivering on time, which will impact your schedule at best, or prove to be a complete roadblock at worst.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your specific points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;It's based on time when I measure performance based on the teams velocity&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why are you measuring performance by the team's velocity? This is not a correct agile practice; velocity was intended to measure capacity, not performance. I'll assume this may just be equivocation of terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting aside that question, time should be relevant to an agile workflow in terms of sprints. So you should organize the Gantt chart according to your sprint cycle length, or just sprint by sprint (treating a sprint as a single event or deliverable). Assuming you have some kind of sprint structure in place, it shouldn't be too difficult to diagram this along a time dimension. Many agile tools can make such graphs for you, as previous answers have pointed out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;It is too high level.&quot; (scope creep, planning becomes more rigid, etc...)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thinking like a manager, this is a good thing. Managers generally want rigid schedules and high level views. Rigidity is not a problem in itself, nor does it mean you can't still be agile. It's a matter of clearly defining your definition of done and HOW rigid the schedule will be - what is an acceptable margin of error. Working agreements should be set up to prevent scope creep. Allow a time window for incoming requests, after which requests will be pushed to the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;I do not want to commit to it, only for it to bite me&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being predictable means knowing how much you can and can't do, and sticking to it in either case (scope creep allows you to say &quot;this is too much&quot; while previous velocity viewed, again, as a measure of capacity, allows you to say &quot;this is a reasonable amount of work for one sprint, we can commit to that.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disruptors will always come up and you have to call that out as a risk immediately to your management. Don't wait until the end of the sprint when the deliverables are due. When something comes up, communicate it to management and ask which task has the highest priority. Then go with the answer they give you, and communicate the priority difference to the customer. If the customer doesn't like it, let them work it out with management themselves. The point here is to actually HAVE that priority discussion during the sprint, before the deadline. Not after the fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you grow in agile maturity, you will become more confident of what you are able to deliver. You can even back it up with data. e.g. &quot;90% of our sprints we were able to deliver X of Y number of features / stories we had committed to. Because of that, this next sprint we have committed to delivering X stories and as such, we have a 90% confidence that we will deliver them on time, assuming no disruptors or higher priority items impact the schedule.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23450" LastEditorUserId="23450" LastEditDate="2016-05-16T19:42:30.163" LastActivityDate="2016-05-16T19:42:30.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18282" CreationDate="2016-05-17T07:43:11.930" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Gantt chart is a project status report, not a planning or control tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your manager is really asking you for the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a list of features&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;status of features&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;dependencies between features&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;visual representation of relative resources needed to complete features&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;key resources needed to complete features&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to construct a Gantt chart that communicates the above information using agile data is to...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a feature backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perform dependency analysis to understand which features depend on other features&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Generate a story point estimate for features using a Cohn scale&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the team velocity to project feature durations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Construct the Gantt chart&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is step four above. You will be tempted to specify an exact duration for each feature, but avoid that trap. Instead, show three durations for each feature corresponding to an optimistic, expected, and pessimistic projection. For example, if a feature is estimated at 8 on the Cohn scale then that translates to an expected duration of 8, with an optimistic duration of 5 and a pessimistic duration of 13.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Cohn scale is an adjusted Fibonacci scale: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, 60, 100...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use velocity to convert point estimated to duration estimates. If the velocity for a two week sprint is 100, then an 8 point story becomes...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;100 points / 10 days = 8 points / N days&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;N = 8/10 = .8 days&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;N_optimistic = 5/10 = .5 days&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;N_pessimistic = 13/10 = 1.3 days&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use the Gantt chart for its intended purpose, to communicate known status along side schedule projections. Also, you may be able to show a critical path, which would be the chain of sequential features that add up to the most story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pro tip: Take a look at James Shore's risk adjusted burn up charts as an experimental alternative to a Gantt chart that may meet your manager's needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2305" LastActivityDate="2016-05-17T07:43:11.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18291" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-17T11:17:25.807" Score="1" ViewCount="747" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been asked by senior management to create a roadmap:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/18282/being-pressured-into-doing-a-gantt-chart?noredirect=1#comment23870_18282&quot;&gt;Being pressured into doing a Gantt chart&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some contributors have recommended that I create a release burn down chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Questions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I have epics that are not broken up into stories yet, how do I    add them in the release burn down chart&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I stories where the    team does not have the knowledge yet to compete the story, how many points do we give them?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who assigns points to the story? Me or the team? How can I/they assign points if they do not yet have the skills to complete the work?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2016-05-19T10:16:45.400" Title="Creating a release burn down chart for forecasting" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;roadmaps&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18291" CreationDate="2016-05-17T14:04:00.673" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe some project management software which supports burndown charts can help you. As &lt;strong&gt;I'm working as a support specialist for Eylean Board&lt;/strong&gt; I can answer your question in the context of our software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, in Eylean you can have two or more levels of tasks (based on a parent-child hierarchy principle). You can use parent tasks as epics and child tasks as stories. Then you can simply choose whether to include child tasks in reports or not. If you prefer the latter then in your burndown chart you will see only epics. Below I have attached a couple of screenshots to help you understand what do I mean:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RAlM8.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RAlM8.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talking about estimation itself, I believe that you should decide that with your team. Scrum says that you should estimate stories during the Sprint planning and the team as a whole is responsible for that. Anyway, wheter you decide to estimate at the begining and re-estimate during the project, In Eylean you will be able to do that without any worries as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me know if you need an additional explanation on this subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23460" LastActivityDate="2016-05-17T14:04:00.673" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14214" CreationDate="2016-05-17T23:45:55.810" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Www.threatsandopportunities.com best answers the issues above.  Risk comprises known outcomes with associated probabilities, given the occurrence of an vent r condition. Threats are negative outcomes and opportunities are positive outcomes as they affect the cost, schedule, or performance objectives of a project. PMs handle threats through avoidance, prevention, mitigation r transference and handle opportunities through acceptance, exploitation, improvement, or transference. Addressing both threats and opportunities like with SWOT brings risk management closer to a science than an art as industrial engineers and operations research analysts can attest to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23466" LastActivityDate="2016-05-17T23:45:55.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18291" CreationDate="2016-05-18T06:55:14.397" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If I have epics that are not broken up into stories yet, how do I add them in the release burn down chart&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to do a release burn down that includes the epics then you will need to estimate the number of story points in the epic. It is up to you and the team to decide how much effort you will put in to this. For example, the team could take a look at the epic and say it is roughly 30 story points. Or they could decompose the epic in to stories and go through estimating each story in turn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If I stories where the team does not have the knowledge yet to compete the story, how many points do we give them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, you have a number of different approaches. The team could simply guess the number of story points. Alternatively, they could spend some time investigating the story so that they have sufficient knowledge to do a more reliable estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Who assigns points to the story? Me or the team? How can I/they assign points if they do not yet have the skills to complete the work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically in Scrum estimates are done by the people doing the work. Identify who will be doing the work and ask them to provide estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These answers may well make you feel uncomfortable. This is to be expected as a release burn down is attempting to predict something that has inherent uncertainty. This is one of the reasons why the release burn down is no longer a part of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I think that a release burn down becomes less useful the longer the period it is trying to predict. If a team is planning a release in 2-3 sprints it can be quite accurate. If the team is planning a release that is 4-5 sprints then there is a larger margin of uncertainty. I struggle to see the value in using a burn down for 5+ sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The intention with Scrum is that the team will respond to change during the course of development. A long term prediction is unlikely to be accurate if this is happening. I would argue that it is better to minimise the time you invest in estimating stories and epics that are a long way down your product backlog. Why spend a lot of time when there is little if any benefit to be gained?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-05-18T06:55:14.397" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18291" CreationDate="2016-05-18T11:37:07.700" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile Planning is continuously done from vision level to daily level. Product Manager, the representative of the customer, in consultation with the sponsor prepare product backlog and try to prioritize the product backlog based on the estimation done with the help of all stakeholders, team members and others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimation could be done with story points or ideal days. When the total number of story points for the entire product backlog is divided by the velocity of the team you will be getting the number of releases that can be made. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User stories are written on a card (front and back). Extensive documentation is replaced by face-to-face conversation among the team members. Doubts are cleared and the story is confirmed with definition of done. Agile recommends that the good user story must conform to INVEST principles - Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimatable, Small and Testable. Using planning poker you size your stories with points 1,2,3,5,8,13,20,40. If the size of your user story exceeds the size of 40 points then it may be called as Epic. So the epic must be broken down to small independent stories. You can gather the related user stories and named it as Theme. Scrum deals with small small user stories and themes which would be sufficient to process within 2 weeks or 4 weeks sprint/iteration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The size estimation of user stories enables you to find out the velocity of the team. However, it is not fixed. The velocity is the number of story points the particular team is capable of completing within 2 week or 4 week iterations. It may increase or decrease over a period of time. Total number of story points to velocity of the team gives you the no.of releases. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During sprint planning the team picks up prioritized backlog items from the product backlog and include them in sprint backlog (the items to be developed in each iteration). Release planning is a high level planning at product level and sprint planning is sprint level planning. At the end of each iteration Minimum Marketable Feature is delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23024" LastActivityDate="2016-05-18T11:37:07.700" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17939" CreationDate="2016-05-18T14:56:55.003" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Putting scrum aside, is the application written in a flexible manner? Although scrum welcomes change, the way the application was written should be flexible as well up to some extent. if it is too rigid at the very early beginning, you should rethink how to cope with future change requests. Second note, i had seen scrum being abused about change. Even though scrum says that it responds to change very well, sometimes you need to assess the benefits and  learn how to say &quot;no&quot; especially if the change request has no business impact or is too shallow as this may affect the project timeline and project budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8980" LastActivityDate="2016-05-18T14:56:55.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18297" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-18T16:20:17.773" Score="4" ViewCount="162" Body="&lt;p&gt;My dev team consists of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2 developers&#xA;1 QA tester&#xA;1 Scrum master (me)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently the QA tester is part of the scrum team, however I do not make him follow a strict sprint from not having a lot of work. Whereas I protect the dev team from outside interference since they have a lot of work to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since he is only active once work has been completed which is generally at the start or end of the day, he does other tasks when he is idle. Hence, we have just set a time at the start of the day and end of the day for 1 hour to do QA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this ok?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2016-05-19T12:36:53.733" Title="Do QA testers have to follow their sprints strictly?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18298" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18309" CreationDate="2016-05-18T16:29:02.070" Score="10" ViewCount="3745" Body="&lt;p&gt;On past projects, I've seen a common theme. A particular feature will require very simple front end work (eg. make a button on a screen that says &quot;submit&quot;), but there will be a large amount of work on the backend. If we have say one backend developer and one front end developer, the backend dev finds themselves often doing work that doesn't get feedback, is behind the front end by several days or more, and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some solutions would be to either slice the story in a more even vertical between the two types of work, to go less &quot;in-depth&quot; with the backend work, or to work to make your developers cross-functional between the back and front end work, but I haven't had a situation yet where that's really a reasonable solution. Is there anything else that can be done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19375" LastActivityDate="2016-05-20T04:25:18.587" Title="What to do when the backend work is much larger than the frontend?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;process&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18298" CreationDate="2016-05-18T19:15:45.770" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume that since the question was tagged as &lt;code&gt;scrum&lt;/code&gt;, you are using sprints and stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Scrum story has the following basic conditions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The story description relates to a user persona, such as administrator, and either describes a business value or addresses&#xA;  technical debt.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The story acceptance criteria are measurable and testable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given your example and the story definition; let's look at your solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Slice the story in a more even vertical between the two types of work&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a.  This is not valid because having a story to add a button to the UI without adding any functionality is delivering no value and would be considered a bug if a user clicked the button and nothing happened.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Go less &quot;in-depth&quot; with the backend work&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a.  This &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be a viable solution, but in some instances you can't break the &quot;back-end&quot; work into multiple functioning stories that each deliver value.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Work to make your developers cross-functional between the back and front end work&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a.  This is the most viable solution because you are able to have a single story, but it is not always viable with a more complicated UI.  On top of that, there is the time constraint and learning curve of brining both developers up to speed in areas outside of their comfort zone.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The &quot;Solution&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are describing is: multiple &lt;code&gt;tasks&lt;/code&gt; belonging to a single &lt;code&gt;story&lt;/code&gt;.  Multiple developers can work on a single story, and that story is done when all of the tasks are completed and verified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These tasks should be identified during the teams planning session prior to the start of the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;The problem comes when you have backend work that goes across multiple sprints at which point there can be a debate about the best course of action.  In my opinion, I would break the technical work into multiple stories and the UI work would be a part of the final sprint / story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22717" LastActivityDate="2016-05-18T19:15:45.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18297" CreationDate="2016-05-18T19:25:43.253" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is largely going to depend on your work environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, QA can support a team of 3-5 developers, so your QA is definitely under-utilized.  This can be addressed by adding more devs to your team / spread the QA across multiple teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond resource allocation; your QA can do more than just test the functionality delivered during the course of the sprint.  They can:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write test cases for the work that is to be delivered during the sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write automation tests for the application&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Setup test data for the current sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(Not traditionally considered)  Include QA in requirements gather / sprint preplanning as they will often be able to poke holes in the stories that aren't considered.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be worth asking this question on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://sqa.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Software Quality Assurance &amp;amp; Testing&lt;/a&gt; Q&amp;amp;A site as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22717" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:41:46.073" LastActivityDate="2016-05-19T12:36:53.733" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18301" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18307" CreationDate="2016-05-18T20:44:00.730" Score="4" ViewCount="121" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our work is organized around epics, which are the unit of business decision making and prioritization. Each represents a higher-level business feature or technical task. Epics are divided into user stories and take usually 1-3 weeks to finish in a team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our team works in a kanban-ish process where we pull stories from the epic, mixing in bugs and sustaining tasks as needed. There are no time-boxed sprints. We follow the rule that WIP is limited to 1 epic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The problem I've noticed is&lt;/em&gt; that there seems to be a lot of time wasted on the boundary between epics. Towards the end of work on an epic, we get increasingly blocked by lack of tasks we can work on or dependencies. We've tried increasing WIP to 2 epics but it didn't help much - there's still hesitation and waste before we open a new epic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can we improve our process to eliminate wasted time on the boundary between subsequent epics? Does limiting number or epics in progress make sense? Should we put a limit on WIP for stories only?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23473" LastEditorUserId="23473" LastEditDate="2016-05-20T07:41:14.293" LastActivityDate="2016-07-19T23:47:48.300" Title="How to eliminate wasted time / improve cadence on epic boundaries" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;epics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18302" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-19T00:20:09.637" Score="4" ViewCount="155" Body="&lt;p&gt;I searched a lot and couldn't find an answer to this anywhere - I wanted to know if there were any Slack Teams that have been created specifically for Project Managers to network, find mentors, discuss certifications, methodologies, share conferences/events that offer CE credits, etc. Does anyone know of one? I have created my own but would rather join one that's already off the ground. Thanks in advance for any direction you can offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21433" LastActivityDate="2016-11-03T20:03:30.790" Title="Slack Team for Project Managers who want to Network, Mentor, etc" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;communication-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ClosedDate="2016-11-04T09:24:47.763" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18303" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-19T04:39:40.443" Score="0" ViewCount="3579" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm new to MS Project. I want to calculate the difference between the baseline start date and the actual start date. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know how to calculate that? I've seen in another forum that I need to use a formula to calculate that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23480" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-05-19T12:55:38.303" LastActivityDate="2016-05-19T12:55:38.303" Title="Calculating the Difference Between Actual Start Date and Baseline Start Date" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18297" CreationDate="2016-05-19T07:55:31.680" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum teams should work cross-functional. If testers only test after development is done they lag behind. This could lead to situations where work is &quot;Done&quot; but un-tested at the end of the sprint. Now the tester is going to test it the next sprint? and the issues are fixed adhoc? This removes the whole focus on a Sprint idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are suggesting sounds like a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2012/january/a-sprint-is-not-a-mini-waterfall&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mini-waterfall&lt;/a&gt;, where disciplines are waiting on each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Testers should work in parallel with the team preparing the tests and implementing them preferably automated. When the work is done anyone should be able to verify/test the finished work. Do this before anyone starts on new work, finish user story per user story with the whole team. Developers can also test and testers can also code, do UX, document or any other needed tasks to finish a user story. Use the tester as the test expert in the team instead of solely responsible for testing. The team is responsible for the quality not just the tester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agiletester.ca/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Testing&lt;/a&gt; book or let your testers do the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.qa.com/training-courses/business-systems-development/testing-skills/certified-agile-tester-inc-examination&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Certified Agile Tester course&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2016-05-19T08:03:21.033" LastActivityDate="2016-05-19T08:03:21.033" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18297" CreationDate="2016-05-19T08:18:18.837" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Scrum there is no such a role as tester. In Scrum Guide it is written:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum recognizes no titles for Development Team members other than&#xA;  Developer, regardless of the work being performed by the person; there&#xA;  are no exceptions to this rule;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should keep the QA within the Sprint to ensure that after each &lt;strong&gt;sprint you have a potentially releasable product&lt;/strong&gt;. Without QA, the testing is not done and the increment is not done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, by enforcing work on features one by one rather then in parallel and finish them all at once in the end of the Sprint&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your QA would have all time something to do,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Development team will find out bugs sooner and have time to fix them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Development team will have better control on what can be finished and what cannot&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case there will be still some free time for the QA, s/he should improve her/his skills to be more useful in other activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23238" LastActivityDate="2016-05-19T08:18:18.837" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18301" CreationDate="2016-05-19T08:35:13.163" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I worked with an organisation that had a similar problem (although we were using Scrum rather than Kanban). What we found was that the work became very bitty towards the end of an epic and it was often difficult to keep the team busy. The problem was made worse by the fact we had different Product Owners across different epics. So the boundary of epics became a boundary for the Product Owner as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The solution was simple. Stop planning around epics and instead plan at the task or story level. At this finer level of detail it is easier for the team to balance its work. For example, they would often mix the start of a new epic with the end of the previous epic. This allowed the team to be fully utilised and to transition cleanly between epics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-05-19T08:35:13.163" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18303" CreationDate="2016-05-19T08:37:00.163" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may not need to calculate it- Just add the 'Start Variance' column into your view- that will automatically show the difference between Start and Baseline Start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whilst this is not the same as Actual Start, it is more useful for calculating slippages as it works on tasks for which no work has yet been done. At the point you enter actual work then MS-Project moves Start to match Actual Start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2016-05-19T08:37:00.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18298" CreationDate="2016-05-19T08:47:10.807" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;One approach I have seen work is to initially stub the backend functionality before doing the detailed development work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the steps the team takes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The backend developer defines an API that the frontend will use for the feature&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The backend developer builds a very simple stub that allows the frontend developer to make API calls and get back reasonable results (e.g. they make the call getUser() and always get back the same user details)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The backend developer carries on with developing and when they are ready swaps out the stub and swaps in the real code&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The frontend developer is no longer blocked and can get feedback on their work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth noting that this approach often helps with testing as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, although this approach is effective it is not the best solution to the problem. The best long-term solution is to cross-skill the developers so that they can do both frontend and backend development. This gives the team a lot more flexibility on how they do their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-05-19T08:47:10.807" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18310" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18394" CreationDate="2016-05-19T09:58:19.780" Score="1" ViewCount="405" Body="&lt;p&gt;During the lifecycle of a project, the project management team might evolve or change. Where in the PRINCE2 process model is this project management team structure being reviewed, and updated if required?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17229" LastEditorUserId="23497" LastEditDate="2016-05-24T09:03:56.387" LastActivityDate="2016-05-27T21:22:54.667" Title="In the PRINCE2 process model, when is the project management team structure reviewed?" Tags="&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18291" CreationDate="2016-05-19T10:16:45.400" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the target of what to include in a release is not fixed, I generally prefer to create a release &lt;em&gt;burn-up&lt;/em&gt; chart, rather than a burn-down chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A release burn-up chart shows on the horizontal axis the sprints and on the vertical axis the story points that have been completed/estimated. It also has (at least) two lines on it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A line representing &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the work considered for the release, with a projection into the future assuming the total amount of work remains stable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A line representing the work that the team has completed so far, with a projection into the future of how much work the team can complete based on the average velocity. If you want to be really fancy, you could add a cone of uncertainty around this projection to indicate that variations in velocity have an impact on the projected release date.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After each sprint, you would update the chart with the most recent values for the total size of the backlog and the porting that the team has completed. If you do this for a longer period of time, you will see that the total size of the backlog will fluctuate, because features get added/removed and story estimates get revisited. This is entirely normal and should be valuable information to your project-manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your specific questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If I have epics that are not broken up into stories yet, how do I add them in the release burn down chart&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the epic isn't broken into stories yet, then you should estimate the epic as a whole. The uncertainty on the estimation will be bigger, but that is not a problem. When you get around to breaking down the epic, the estimates have to be revisited anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If I stories where the team does not have the knowledge yet to compete the story, how many points do we give them?&#xA;  Who assigns points to the story? Me or the team? How can I/they assign points if they do not yet have the skills to complete the work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best estimates come from the people who will do the work. This holds even if they don't yet have all the knowledge yet to actually do the work. The only thing is that the estimates will generally be more conservative (i.e. higher) because a larger risk-buffer gets included due to uncertainty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You shouldn't spend too much effort in getting the estimates for stories/epics far in the future to be accurate. One rule to keep in mind is that estimates can always be revisited/changed in Scrum. Only after you have taken a story into a sprint should the estimate be considered to be fixed/final.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2016-05-19T10:16:45.400" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18312" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-19T13:56:41.627" Score="-3" ViewCount="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently working with a customer who keeps on requesting changes. This is preventing me from signing the project off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2016-05-31T06:51:41.643" Title="What's the best way to deal with customers that do not know what they want?" Tags="&lt;change-management&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2016-06-01T09:57:31.250" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18313" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-19T15:14:03.733" Score="5" ViewCount="228" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work as a PM for a small company active in the metal carpentry business.  We have 3 PMs managing up to 50 projects per year ranging from few weeks to three years each.  Design, shopfloor and site installation people are, of course, shared across the projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are struggling to find a good way to manage a global schedule where we can spot and anticipate resource shortage or contention across all the projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MS Project seems fine as long as we use to plan at a week resolution level for projects far down the pipeline.  As soon as we need to manage the shopfloor or site planning for the next week, the interplay between resources, changing priorities and activities becomes so fluid that it seems impossible to track things down with Project (it takes more to update the tool than manage things with paper and pencil).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once we get hit by this &quot;wave&quot; people gets frustrated and lose confidence in using MS Project for the coming  planning, but we see that there is a big potential in using it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this pattern is quite common.  What method would you suggest to approach this type of situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23483" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-08-09T12:20:28.910" LastActivityDate="2016-12-07T14:54:03.213" Title="Advice needed on managing parallel projects at different detail levels" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17525" CreationDate="2016-05-19T19:57:30.173" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;These people are completely wrong.  It is not inconsistent with the design of Project.  Project is absolutely designed to deal with tasks that have to start on a particular date regardless of what comes for before them, how long those tasks, or when they are scheduled.  They are called constraints and can be set in the Task Information under the Advanced tab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23487" LastActivityDate="2016-05-19T19:57:30.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18315" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18356" CreationDate="2016-05-20T01:56:49.587" Score="0" ViewCount="115" Body="&lt;p&gt;In terms of &lt;strong&gt;Prince2&lt;/strong&gt;, let us say that an individual can influence external supplier Business Case. can he be picked for &lt;strong&gt;Senior Supplier for a project&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17229" LastActivityDate="2016-05-23T20:55:18.853" Title="If a user can influence external supplier Business Case, can he be picked for Senior Supplier for a project" Tags="&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18298" CreationDate="2016-05-20T04:25:18.587" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If we have say one backend developer and one front end developer, the backend dev finds themselves often doing work that doesn't get feedback, is behind the front end by several days or more, and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't understand how the situation you describe could result in the backend dev not getting feedback - could you elaborate on that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as for backend being days behind frontend, one possibility that occurs to me is to take a larger rather than a smaller view, and ask about the balance of work in your sprint. In my team, it is often the case that one subsystem has significantly more work than another subsystem in order to complete a story. In this case, we might do a couple things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;assign all the DefnOfDone tasks for this story to the frontend dev (documentation, testing, etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;look for a story that had the reverse balance of work (complicated frontend, simple or no backend) to add to the same sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also look for multiple &quot;subsystem handshake&quot; opportunities, similar to Barnaby's answer: stubbing out pieces &amp;amp; defining API early, so that we can verify the system is performing the round trip (user info in, properly received, backend info out, properly displayed) even if the values produced by the backend aren't yet correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2016-05-20T04:25:18.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18317" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18393" CreationDate="2016-05-20T05:49:26.770" Score="1" ViewCount="116" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the PRINCE2 process model, we actively &lt;em&gt;capture previous lessons&lt;/em&gt; during the &lt;em&gt;Starting up a Project&lt;/em&gt; process. This seems to be the only explicit activity where we do this.  Are there other moments where this is being repeated in PRINCE2, e.g. during the &lt;em&gt;Initiating a Project&lt;/em&gt; or elsewhere? &lt;strong&gt;What I will like to know is whether PRINCE2 allows this to happen in other places?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17229" LastEditorUserId="17229" LastEditDate="2016-05-25T14:41:23.380" LastActivityDate="2016-07-15T19:46:55.693" Title="Where in the PRINCE2 process model do we actively apply the Learn from Experience principle, and capture previous lessons?" Tags="&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8645" CreationDate="2016-05-20T06:13:10.337" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I say have both. Do realize that it is the Executive who makes the final call when there is a conflict. So both of them can be the Senior Suppliers. &#xA;As a PM, you can always enjoy the arguments!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17229" LastActivityDate="2016-05-20T06:13:10.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18320" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18327" CreationDate="2016-05-20T06:30:42.733" Score="0" ViewCount="84" Body="&lt;p&gt;We all know that in Prince2,  If a project is no longer justified it should be stopped. That is,  The justification for the project should remain valid. However, can the  &lt;strong&gt;Continued Busines Justification&lt;/strong&gt; for a project change in Prince2? or must it remain the same throughout the project ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17229" LastActivityDate="2016-05-20T08:04:24.320" Title="can the Continued Busines Justification for a project change in Prince2" Tags="&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18321" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-20T06:43:03.070" Score="1" ViewCount="654" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have decided to work on risk analysis for my MA thesis, but I am stuck with choosing the theoretical framework for that. I am not studying MBA or other Management fields, and that makes my job hard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found that to date, there have been two major attempts for applying risk management techniques to my field of study, both of which developing a Risk Breakdown Structure (RBS) based on PMBOK. I wanted to move forward in this are, so I thought assessing risks and finding out how much each one of them could be influential in the companies could be good. The methodology is confusing me, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess FMEA, FTA, and FFTA are helpful for this purpose, but I do not know the reason behind these models.I am not much familiar with advanced mathematics because I major in humanities, but I believe I can handle it if it the calculations are at high school level for I have studied Mathematics at high school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23494" LastActivityDate="2020-05-20T08:01:00.843" Title="FTA (Fault Tree Analysis) or FMEA (Failure mode and effects analysis): how they are different from each other?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;risk&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18322" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18334" CreationDate="2016-05-20T06:56:48.920" Score="2" ViewCount="109" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scenario:&lt;/strong&gt; Let's say there are two items A and B in the product backlog of a Scrum team. From a PO point of view B has more customer value than A and is therefore ranked higher. When asking a developer for the estimated time to work on these items he gives the following input:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A takes 2 days&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;B takes 2 days; but if A is done before then B only takes 1 day (as some prerequisite work is done in A as well)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that, when B is done first and then A, the overall time for those two work items is 4 days. But when A is done before B the overall work time will be 1 day. But this will be against the priorities as B is ranked higher than A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please assume that both work items cannot be completed in the same sprint. Otherwise, there is no need for this question :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Actual question:&lt;/strong&gt; Should estimates incorporate such information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Our thinking:&lt;/strong&gt; We've been discussing this yesterday on whether the estimates for work items should keep this in mind. Should a PO have this information to reorder the product backlog based on this information? We came to the conclusion that estimates should not contain this information, i.e. B takes 2 days time, period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reasons for that are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The product backlog is ordered based on customer value&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When B shares a task with A, what about the other items? There will probably be more tasks like that that need to be looked at. This will lead to long lasting discussions without a reliable result.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are we missing sth. or is our thinking correct? There are probably more reasons to add to that list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16188" LastEditorUserId="16188" LastEditDate="2016-05-20T11:59:00.093" LastActivityDate="2016-05-20T13:59:48.820" Title="Estimate depending work items in Scrum" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18323" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18325" CreationDate="2016-05-20T07:18:24.407" Score="0" ViewCount="1229" Body="&lt;p&gt;What does it mean by Expected Benefits need to be measurable in Prince2 ? However, benefits are not always measurable right? So basically in Prince2 , benefits can be unmeasurable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17229" LastEditorUserId="23497" LastEditDate="2016-05-24T09:03:37.823" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T09:03:37.823" Title="What does it mean by Expected Benefits need to be measurable in Prince2" Tags="&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18301" CreationDate="2016-05-20T07:47:42.153" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is another suggestion that I got at our local agile meeting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Kanban, the WIP limit can be defined to different columns on the Kanban board. We could introduce new column/state for epics called &lt;em&gt;in deployment&lt;/em&gt;. An epic would pass to this state when all that's left is waiting for deployments, dependencies, or backwards compatibility removals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would allow us to start working on a new epic at a clearly defined point in time, when the previous epic is not finished yet, but there's no real work left. There could be two epics in progess, but at most one in development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23473" LastActivityDate="2016-05-20T07:47:42.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18323" CreationDate="2016-05-20T07:51:21.017" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PRINCE2 definition of a benefit is &quot;The measurable improvement resulting from an outcome perceived as an advantage by one or more stakeholders.&quot; (from the glossary in the official PRINCE2 manual).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you need to make a distinction between output, outcome and benefit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An outcome is &quot;the result of the change&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An output is &quot;a specialist product that is handed over to a user(s).&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you are building a new webshop for your website (the output)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in order to increase the sales revenue by attracting new/online customers (the outcome)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the 1st year you expect to have $50k of online sales revenue, the 2nd year... (the benefit)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The output is typically expressed as more or less of something (e.g. more online customers, more online revenue). The benefit is how much more or less, so this needs to be a number to be measurable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23497" LastActivityDate="2016-05-20T07:51:21.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18326" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-20T08:03:21.747" Score="3" ViewCount="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;How exactly one can find out the influence of each risk component in Fault Tree Model? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that possible at all with model? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23494" LastActivityDate="2016-09-02T16:47:54.750" Title="How exactly one can find out the influence of each risk component in Fault Tree Model? Is that possible at all?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;risk&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;&lt;theory&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18320" CreationDate="2016-05-20T08:04:24.320" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course the business reasons to do a project might change. It might become more interesting to do a project, or less... It all depends on the environment you're in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the strategy of the department or larger organization might change, e.g. it's no longer our core business; or new responsibilities make the need for the new system even more important.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there is a change in legislation that forces us to do more; or makes the desired benefits less likely...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the competition has launched a similar product or service, and is now claiming a part of the market you were hoping for.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's inherent to a project that it involves change, so also the business rational might change. As long as there still is a business justification, it's fine. PRINCE2 does not state it should be fixed! But rather it should be reviewed regularly, and verified if it still makes sense to do/continue the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23497" LastActivityDate="2016-05-20T08:04:24.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18322" CreationDate="2016-05-20T09:31:47.603" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ideally backlog items are independent of each other, in which case this question would not arise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where there are technical dependencies then it is down to the development team and the Product Owner to decide on the best approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some things to consider when deciding on an approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a higher value item is moved later in the backlog then the time it starts to deliver business value will also be delayed. It is up to the Product Owner to decide on the impact of that delay.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is usually better to have delivered value than work in progress. Hence delaying delivery of value to increase the overall efficiency of delivery can sometimes be a mistake.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The efficacy of starting on item B before item A assumes that both items will get completed. There is always the possibility of a change in priorities and item A may not get done as a result.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth remembering that the Agile approach emphasises optimising delivery of business value rather than optimising the efficiency of development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These two things may sound the same but when responding to change they may not be. It is sometimes more effective to make compromises on the efficiency of development in order to more quickly respond to change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-05-20T09:31:47.603" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18322" CreationDate="2016-05-20T09:33:19.573" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We would decide this in the sprint planning.&#xA;If B really depends on A, then the answer is easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If A being done makes B less &quot;painful&quot;, try to put them in the same sprint, keeping that in mind and reducing the effort for B accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, the dependecy would be incorporated into the estimation, IMHO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If A and B remain equal... well, do whatever you like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23500" LastActivityDate="2016-05-20T09:33:19.573" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18331" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-20T13:02:57.690" Score="1" ViewCount="132" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know the areas of risk in a group of companies based on a Risk Breakdown System.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With what model shall I analyze them afterwards? Is FMEA good for this purpose? If yes, how should I apply it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23494" LastActivityDate="2019-11-10T12:01:51.713" Title="What risk analysis model shall I use if I know the areas (sources) of risk?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;risk&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18332" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-20T13:03:14.083" Score="2" ViewCount="204" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the &lt;em&gt;next&lt;/em&gt; stage (list) in a Kanban is &lt;em&gt;full&lt;/em&gt; (at it's Work In Progress (WIP) limit) then it seems you should/can not move the finished card to that List. Only solution I see is to split each list into &lt;em&gt;Doing&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Done&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One subtle issue with Kanban is that if you have 3 stages/lists, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spec&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...And Design list is &quot;full&quot; (at the Work In Progress limit) then if you finish a Card in Spec, you can't add it to Design (b/c it's full).&#xA;But if you leave it in Spec, you don't know it's done. (The List it's in communicates it's status).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems that you need to split each List into:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spec Doing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spec Done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefull, the &lt;em&gt;Done&lt;/em&gt; doesn't normally have a lot in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, do you move the card anyway, ignore the WIP limit (for the time being) but then remember that you should not add any more work to the input of this board (which kinda defeats the purpose of the Kanban WIP limits).  The won't be communicated &quot;upstream&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FYI, I am using Trello for my Kanban wbboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8942" LastActivityDate="2016-07-19T23:45:02.300" Title="Kanban - If List is &quot;full&quot; (at WIP limit) do you just split list into DO and DOING?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18332" CreationDate="2016-05-20T13:27:30.647" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea behind &lt;a href=&quot;http://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/definition/WIP-limit&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;WIP limits&lt;/a&gt; is that they are an indication that the team needs to act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if the design column is full, the team's main focus is to empty it. Just queueing work up in a 'done' column defeats the object of setting WIP limits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban is all about maximising the flow of work by recognising bottlenecks and reducing them. Typically the team will measure the time it takes task to be completed. Then they will adjust the WIP limits to try and minimise that value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-05-20T13:27:30.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18322" CreationDate="2016-05-20T13:59:48.820" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that your thinking is correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your estimates should be based on the &lt;strong&gt;currently existing codebase&lt;/strong&gt; and not based on &quot;what if&quot; scenarios.  In your example, Story A may never be completed and it would continue to get pushed down the priority list as new  information becomes available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On top of that, it would also stand to reason that doing A before B makes B faster because groundwork is completed that doing B before A would make A faster because of that common groundwork.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22717" LastActivityDate="2016-05-20T13:59:48.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18312" CreationDate="2016-05-20T20:08:48.677" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume from the tone of your question that you get paid for finished projects rather than per day worked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case you have to be very clear about what you agreed to deliver. Usualy you would have a contract which specified extra charges for changes to this specification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming again, that this is not the case and you have a vague contract which basicaly says keep the customer happy but also finish asap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would try a number of different ways of saying no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Suck teeth&lt;/em&gt; ooooo I think we would have to look at charging you extra for that. (If they agree, start a phase 2 contract)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe we can move that into phase 2? (Phase 2 can be all their dreams, you can charge them extra)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I will asks the devs to investigate and see if that is possible. (Its is not. You don't understand the reason yourself)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which bits do you feel you can sign off on as is? (Great, lets never talk about those bits again)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let's make a list of the changes required before sign off (this list is now the spec)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastEditorUserId="22766" LastEditDate="2016-05-23T08:51:26.597" LastActivityDate="2016-05-23T08:51:26.597" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18337" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18351" CreationDate="2016-05-20T20:49:57.507" Score="0" ViewCount="378" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are 2 types of product management broadly - New Product and Existing products. For an existing product, the task of the product manager is to increase revenue, in a declining market share scenario arrest/protect the revenue from further decline. Find ways for cost reduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to collectively look at the performance of the PM by looking at the aforementioned indicators and other metrics and condense them into a single composite variable or index of sorts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such that when one looks at the number, depending on the magnitude one can say the PM has done his job well, moderately well, or has performed poorly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23508" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-05-23T13:14:57.163" LastActivityDate="2016-05-23T14:59:13.143" Title="How to measure the value of Product management?" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;measurement&gt;&lt;kpi&gt;&lt;value&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18313" CreationDate="2016-05-20T22:45:11.337" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you considered using a different PM solution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you need a PM tool that organizes your projects, people and priorities while having visibility at a high and a drill down level to ensure everyone is on track. With this visibility into project plans, those working on the projects tend to have more confidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest trying out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.liquidplanner.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LiquidPlanner&lt;/a&gt;. I think their approach may be able to help you.&#xA;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23490" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-05-21T08:54:18.167" LastActivityDate="2016-05-21T08:54:18.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18340" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-21T04:55:53.380" Score="0" ViewCount="74" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using MS Project 2013, I would like to express the following situation. I have schedule/tasks set to fixed work which means work hours remains unchanged irrespective of the increase in duration when updated. However, when I change the duration it also changes the work hours. Can I stop this? Please advise me how to deal with this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23511" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-05-21T08:39:33.970" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T00:39:58.793" Title="Fixed work which means work hours remains unchanged irrespective of increase in duration when updated" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18340" CreationDate="2016-05-21T13:42:26.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The behavior you are describing suggests your task is set to fixed utilization. Double check to make sure your task is set to fixed work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2016-05-21T14:05:05.583" LastActivityDate="2016-05-21T14:05:05.583" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17941" CreationDate="2016-05-22T20:44:52.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can add your small business experience as credentials to apply for the PMP. The important thing is to list the projects you have had done through that time and how did you approach each project. it is important to explain how you initiated, planned, monitored &amp;amp; controlled, and closed that project. try to read about these process so you know how to document your projects for the application.&#xA;Good Luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23329" LastActivityDate="2016-05-22T20:44:52.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18347" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-23T13:49:29.273" Score="3" ViewCount="2383" Body="&lt;p&gt;We run scrum agile methodology and have a development environment for development. At the end of each sprint, we close off all the tasks/stories that have been completed and promote the code/system to the user test environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As bugs are found during testing, they are put into the sprint backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ordinarily&lt;/strong&gt;, bugs are quite small defects, relative to the development and we raise these as bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But&lt;/strong&gt;, if it is found that the original user story wasn't really completed correctly, should the original user story be reopened?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- Edit --&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following some very worthwhile comments/answers, which have got me thinking, I think I would clarify the situation, drawing together my comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project is the delivery of a Tb data warehouse project consolidating data from 8 source systems, with about 30 developers and a dozen testers. We have defined user stories but, specifically due the difficult UAT process, the &lt;em&gt;Definition of Done&lt;/em&gt; for a user story, is to pass unit testing and pass some fairly superficial system and integration testing. This may be an incorrect thing to do, and is the crux of my question now! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The UAT process is quite long winded and takes &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;several days to create the environment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;24 hours of continual elapsed time to loading the data from the source systems into the data warehouse. This time could be sped up, with lots of ££ spent on hardware, which the project doesn't have.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 days to perform the actual tests. Some are automated using a front end portal, others are execution of data from the source systems and comparing to the data warehouse. This time could be sped up to 2 days with some more staff.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So within a 3 week sprint, this is not really feasible to fit in, as there needs to be a code freeze of all the developers at a point in the week which is then promoted to the UAT environment, then the above process is performed. We would roughly lose one third of our sprint in testing, where the developers would not be doing anything, because if they did, then their code would need UAT and couldn't be delivered in the current sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently we are reopening user stories that have been closed when bugs are found, inserting a new &quot;bug&quot; subtask and then putting that into the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be interested particularly in hearing from someone who has engaged with a large project; that is not to invalidate people with good theory or small project knowledge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this the correct way to do things? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22766" LastEditorUserId="22766" LastEditDate="2016-05-25T17:39:24.840" LastActivityDate="2016-07-22T08:57:55.080" Title="How to Record Bugs Following User Story Completion - in Large Projects" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18347" CreationDate="2016-05-23T14:08:39.867" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A User Story is completed if it meets your Definition of Done. The story should be accepted by the Product Owner in the live environment. If the acceptance criteria are met then the user value is delivered and the story is done. So for me there is no benefit from re-opening stories if there are defects found. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to focus on defining a meaningful Definition of Done, defining clear acceptance criteria and regarding the acceptance of stories as a serious ceremony. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23529" LastActivityDate="2016-05-23T14:08:39.867" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18347" CreationDate="2016-05-23T14:23:54.957" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you have a story, it has a Definition of Done that includes all of the testing and quality assurance activities. I would recommend that a defect in a user story doesn't exist unless it was found after the story has been called Done. Anything that you find before this point isn't a defect, but part of the normal iterative development process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/18347/how-to-record-bugs-following-user-story-completion#comment23973_18348&quot;&gt;your comment&lt;/a&gt;, the fact that testing in your clean, non-development environment isn't part of your Definition of Done is the problem. I can understand the need for a development environment with development tools (compilers, test harnesses, debug configurations and builds, analysis tools, a complete and real data set, etc) that don't exist in the deployment environment. However, if you keep running into issues that are only found in this environment, then someone testing in that environment should be part of your definition of done. Your team performing a deployment to your clean environment and executing the tests should be part of your acceptance criteria and Definition of Done. This deployment to your clean test environment should happen throughout your sprint so you can be reasonably sure that when you deploy to the real environment, you won't keep having these issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2016-05-23T14:23:54.957" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18347" CreationDate="2016-05-23T14:47:10.823" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Separating out development from testing is almost always a bad thing. The reasons for this are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is difficult to get a true measure of progress. When stories have been developed but not tested it is difficult to know how much effort still remains. You can give the impression of good progress (&quot;we have developed 6 stories this sprint&quot;) but what if when they are tested some serious bugs are found?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Typically the longer the time between the development work and the bug being raised the longer it takes to fix the bug. When a developer is asked to fix a bug on something they worked on an hour ago they often do it quickly. Ask a developer to fix a bug on something they worked on weeks ago and it is much more difficult and usually takes longer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Separating out development from testing tends to encourage developers to ignore quality.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Separating out development from testing tends to encourage a &lt;em&gt;silo&lt;/em&gt; mentality.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; is says the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The heart of Scrum is a Sprint, a time-box of one month or less during which a 'Done', useable, and &lt;em&gt;potentially releasable&lt;/em&gt; product Increment is created.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are often technical challenges to developing and testing in the same sprint. But it is better to work to overcome those challenges than to risk the problems listed above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-05-23T14:47:10.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18337" CreationDate="2016-05-23T14:59:13.143" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many ways to define the value added to a product. These include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Revenue generated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cost savings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cost of not doing the work (e.g. if we don't do this work a security breach is possible that would damage the organisation)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Helps to reach the organisation's objectives (e.g. helps to extend market share, helps to enter a new market, helps patients, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Regulatory&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Compliance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each organisation will have their own definition of value that may be a combination of the factors listed above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One metric might be the value (as defined by the organisation) added to the product over time. However Product Management does not work in isolation. A better metric would measure the overall effectiveness of the product team that includes &lt;em&gt;both the Product Management and the Delivery Team&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can imagine a metric for a product team might be: value added divided by the the cost of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-05-23T14:59:13.143" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18347" CreationDate="2016-05-23T16:09:20.033" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In one of our projects, where we used JIRA, we defined another state aside of &lt;em&gt;Open, In progress&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt;: &lt;strong&gt;resolved&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once a feature is developed by developer it is set to resolved and tester knows s/he can start to test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We did it to support &quot;instant contact&quot; since our team was distributed to different team zones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Example:&lt;/em&gt; Lets say that developer finishes work, but tester sleeps on the other side of the world. Developer then sets the status to resolved. When tester comes to work (developer already home) s/he sees what has been done and starts to test. Each bug s/he founds links to the user story and until all linked bugs are resolved, the user story in not put to &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23238" LastActivityDate="2016-05-23T16:09:20.033" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18254" CreationDate="2016-05-23T16:19:53.233" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is precisely why I like the Kanban approach to PM. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make a big unordered list of all the &quot;wist list&quot; features people have requested.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rank each feature/story in priority order. Which ones must be done now and will help the business?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once you agree on the priorities, the implementation is in your court. It shouldn't matter if the top story is going to take 6 weeks and the 2nd is going to take 2 hours. Sure, you could deliver it faster, but it's not the most important so don't do it yet.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You and your manager need to agree that you're not going to ship a feature that isn't complete. You'll focus as many resources (people, budgets, time, attention, etc.) on the stories in the agreed upon order and they'll be delivered to the customers when they're complete. No sooner and no later. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is, without dispute, the fastest way to deliver value to the customers in the shortest timeframe. If, in a week, your manager says he needs a different feature delivered first, you say, &quot;Great. Let's sit down and look at the priorities. Do we both agree that B should be done before A?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's better for the business, then drop everything and do B. It's okay to make that decision as long as everyone knows what the costs &amp;amp; ramifications will be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23532" LastActivityDate="2016-05-23T16:19:53.233" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18354" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18363" CreationDate="2016-05-22T13:13:50.067" Score="4" ViewCount="260" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in an organization that follows scrum process and we have been struggling to stand up to sprint commitments and are having to stretch our work hours every time to fill this gap, some times even after that we dont deliver what we have committed. Its very frustrating now as this disturbs the work life balance and even then the end user is left dis-satisfied. So I thought of getting some suggestions online to tackle the scenario, I read some links but didn't get concrete answers. So I would describe the scenario below hoping to get back some solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;first I would like to describe the team structure : &#xA;We are a team of 7 developers now including one developer who joined the team recently and are working on a project which is running from past 9 years. The team has developers with different experience levels in the project, resulting in not everyone having the same level of exposure to the project and also &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following are the questions being raised by the client side causing several escalations and a huge pressure is building up on the team. So before I counter back I would like to get some perspective on the opinion I hold , please let me know if what I think is the right approach or there could be a better approach :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the past few sprints the sprint velocity has decreased even though the team size has increased : &#xA;-&gt; increasing the team size does not guarantee a increase in the velocity, instead it tends to decrease as the new member becomes more of a liability to the team. Also many of agile links I read stated that the team velocity is unknown when the team is new, the project is new or in case new members board the team or old ones leave.So the approach should be to take a few steps back and start with a lower velocity that the team can achieve rather then enforcing them to deliver at the same rate.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Things to consider while sizing a story : &#xA;-&gt;given that we have team with different level of experience in the project, should we also consider the analysis time taken by the ones who have less exposure to the application, as its possible that for a person who is working in the project from last 5 years things are clear and he might feel that the size should be 5, while for the one with 1 years of experience in the project might spend additional time in analyzing resulting in an increase in the size. Also since every individual gives his own estimate for a story, is it fair to consider the analysis time needed while estimating the size ?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We have a scrum master who is also part of the production support team for the application, which means he is well versed with the application both functionally and technically &#xA;-&gt; is scrum masters involvement in estimating the size of the story the right approach or its entirely the development teams decision and scrum master has no word to say in this. as we have had cases where our scrum master went down to saying that its his personal opinion that the team gives more size to the story then needed. this kind of involvement by the scrum master is now having an influence in the sizing game and the team is not able to give sizes freely.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23608" OwnerDisplayName="Suraj Kumar" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T14:56:26.730" Title="what should I do to overcome the agile process related issues in my organization?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18315" CreationDate="2016-05-23T20:55:18.853" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The scenario you are describing is an example of a &lt;strong&gt;commercial customer/supplier environment&lt;/strong&gt; in PRINCE2.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such a commercial context, there are (at least) 2 Business Cases: the customer's Business Case and the supplier's Busines Case.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;(remark: if there's more than one supplier, there will be multiple supplier's Business Cases.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the key decisions related the the project organization in this case has to do with who can take the role of the Senior Supplier. Will the other Project Board members have enough trust in a person from an external organization? What if sensitive issues have to be discussed, e.g. related to extra funding or changes, or even the termination of the contract with the supplier...  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PRINCE2 offers 2 options in this case:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;appoint the external person to the Senior Supplier role. If sensitive discussions would come up, this person might be excluded from participating in those. (e.g. leave the meeting room for these topics)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Appoint a person from the customer's side, that could be the liason. This could for instance be a procurement manager, or contracts manager.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Project Board is accountable for the success (or failure) of the project, and needs to provide &lt;em&gt;unified direction&lt;/em&gt;, i.e. it's important that they have a unified vision on what exactly that direction should be for the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will be the Executive's call who will be appointed to the role of Senior Supplier, taking into account the level of trust he/she has in either one of the above options. Be aware that the Executive is the ultimate decsion maker! He/she needs to make sure that an effective Project Board is put in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23497" LastActivityDate="2016-05-23T20:55:18.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18354" CreationDate="2016-05-23T21:45:36.070" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not quite sure what is your specific question (which agile process issues?). it is also quite possible that the problems you have are not connected to agile. If I got it right you want discuss the 3 points. So lets start with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. team velocity vs. team size&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed these are not in correlation at all. As you mention, most if the time once you hire a new team member the velocity decreases. This can be from several reasons, some of them predictable (team needs to spend time explaining things to new member) some of them less predictable (new member has personality not fitting into the team). If you would like to increase team's productivity there are other ways which can be done and are considered important. A very good short video describing the key pillars can be found on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scruminc.com/scrumlab-open/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;www.scruminc.com (open videos - Scrum Best practices)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since project is a complex system, when you change something the results can have significant consequences. So it is true what you write, once you change the team, the whole process of estimates and velocity can change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Team estimates&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the sprint planning the team should have enough discussion in order to enable all people estimate. Do not forget that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the team estimates relative size not absolute time. If for one member things a story is 5 times bigger then other story and the other things that they are the same, they need to discuss why.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you cannot guarantee that the person most proficient in that technology will in the end work on that, team should be aware of that&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For sure the new person we need more time, but he would need time for each feature. We estimate relative size. If the team decides to include analysis as a subtask, so be it, that is up to them. (I am trying to avoid that though, we usually discuss what needs to be done (sub-tasks) until everyone is comfortable to estimate.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Scrum Master estimates&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, if the scrum master is also part of the development team (I do not recommend that though), s/he should estimate. But not as some super-team member but as a regular member. If s/he does not agree on the estimates s/he can do it during the planning session as any other member. Once the estimates are done though, s/he should accept that as a team decision and thats it. From the position of the Scrum Master s/he has not right to say it the estimation is right or wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23238" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2016-05-23T21:45:36.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17095" CreationDate="2016-05-23T21:49:45.213" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question asks for the difference between &lt;strong&gt;(customer's) quality expectations&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;acceptance critera&lt;/strong&gt; in the &lt;strong&gt;Project Product (Description)&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;(Words between brackets added to show the correct PRINCE2 terminology.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The definition of &lt;em&gt;acceptance criteria&lt;/em&gt; is given in the first answer. The official PRINCE2 manual gives also the definition of the other element:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;customer's quality expectations&lt;/strong&gt; — A statement about the quality expected from the project product, captured in the Project Product Description.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(see the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.axelos.com/Corporate/media/Files/Glossaries/PRINCE2-2009-Glossary-of-terms_GB-v1-1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PRINCE2 2009 Glossary of Terms&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take a simple example to clarify the distinction: you go to a local car dealer in order to buy a new car. The salesman walks up to you and asks what type of car you are looking for.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You answer, &quot;A family car that is not too bad for the environment&quot;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;(customer's quality expectations in PRINCE2 terminology)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;These then need to be translated into something measurable, e.g. a car with 5 seats, and a hybrid engine that meets the most strict emission standard currently in place in your country. &#xA;&lt;em&gt;(acceptance criteria in PRINCE2)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23497" LastActivityDate="2016-05-23T21:49:45.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18354" CreationDate="2016-05-23T23:45:22.037" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think what you have right now is sufficient to approach the problems you and your team are experiencing right now. I'll just add a bit to that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Velocity, as you implied, is relatively based on experience. You can almost accurately determine the velocity of your team after that team runs a few sprints. Adding a new team member basically means having a new team. Thus, this new team will have a different velocity than the previous team which can only be determined, again, through running a few sprints. It is important for all related parties to understand this concept so that they don't expect immediate acceleration right after adding more people to the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimation should consider everything a person needs to do to accomplish his/her tasks which includes analyzing or even learning new technology as required. This is totally fair.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum Master should refrain from taking over the estimation process, even if he's a senior in the team. He too needs to position himself as equal members of the team and discuss (not decide) the best estimate for the team. In fact, no team member should feel that they have the right to decide the best estimate for the team; Scrum Master or not. This is an important attitude during estimation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's all I can share for now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: If you haven't tried WSJF, specifically the planning poker, I think you should go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16643" LastActivityDate="2016-05-23T23:45:22.037" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18361" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18376" CreationDate="2016-05-24T12:50:53.350" Score="0" ViewCount="103" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are working since couple of years with an &lt;code&gt;CMS&lt;/code&gt;. &#xA;Until now our working &lt;code&gt;model&lt;/code&gt; was divided in the following &lt;code&gt;phases&lt;/code&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Preparation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Online Meetings &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Soft Kick off-online &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Scoping Workshop&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Concepting&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Summarization  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Output: Proposal &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Realisation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Installation/Hosting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Design &amp;amp; Theming  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Konfiguration  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Programming  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Quality Assurance &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Training preparation  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Training &amp;amp; Testing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Admin-Training &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;User Acceptance Testing  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;UAT attendance  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Finishing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Go Live&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Preparation &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Transformation from Test to Live &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Acceptance Live-Instance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;GO LIVE&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Post Go Live attendance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with this model is, that we are strugleling in the most of the time with the projects. In each moment we have misscommunication or lack of resources.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Right now we have about 30% work of the preparation and the other 70% are in the last 3 phases. As it seems that is not enough. It is every time the same CMS, just with adapting some changes to fit the customer (as in the configuration, as well in the code). &#xA;How to transfer that, so most of the work happens even before the actual realisation of the project? Or even to automate it? It won't bother us, if we make one big preparation and the just fit it to each project. But where to finde guidance for such work to be done? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have in our team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;back end developer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;front end developer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;project manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;support team (doing mostly configuration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23542" LastActivityDate="2016-05-25T01:40:49.927" Title="Optimizing the phase model of CMS-project" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;customer-experience&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2016-05-29T03:55:44.467" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18354" CreationDate="2016-05-24T14:56:26.730" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum has no commitments, just a forecast:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of the most controversial updates to the 2011 Scrum Guide has been&#xA;  the removal of the term “commit” in favor of “forecast” in regards to&#xA;  the work selected for a Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read these two blog posts about why this change was implemented:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/About/All-Articles/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/95/Commitment-vs-Forecast-A-subtle-but-important-change-to-Scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.scrum.org/About/All-Articles/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/95/Commitment-vs-Forecast-A-subtle-but-important-change-to-Scrum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/answer/Scrum-team-commitments-More-harm-than-good&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/answer/Scrum-team-commitments-More-harm-than-good&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answers to your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scruminc.com/yesterdays-weather/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;yesterdays weather technique&lt;/a&gt; and eventually you will find the real velocity of the team. This could take some sprints.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here’s how it works. First, the Team determines their average Velocity&#xA;  for the past three Sprints, adjusted for team size. For example, if&#xA;  one person of a five-person Team is on vacation for the entire Sprint&#xA;  in which 50 points of work is completed, the Team's raw Velocity (50)&#xA;  should be divided by 80% (4 instead of 5 Team members) for a&#xA;  normalized Velocity of 60 points. Normalized velocity is the number of&#xA;  points you would expect the team to complete if all team members are&#xA;  available full time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What happens if the more experienced team members are sick, now the less experienced need to pick up the tasks, taking them longer. I would average the estimation if they cannot come to a consensus because estimations of the inexperienced are higher. Since the average estimation is a bit higher it takes in account the uncertainty when someone else needs to pick up the tasks. Letting the whole team work on a single story before picking up the next one, this will force them to share knowledge and let everyone grow as fast as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the Scrum master is not a developer in the team he/she is facilitating then he/she should not influence the estimations of the team ever, nor should a technical (ex-developer) product owner.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T14:56:26.730" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17364" CreationDate="2016-05-24T15:27:28.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My approach would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let both developers log work on the issue they worked on together. It is the simple truth that if 2 developers worked for an hour on to then 2 hours are spent. The logged work is not time but effort. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For everything the dev do that is not directly related to stories I would recommend &quot;pooling tasks&quot;, e.g. a task &quot;Meetings April&quot; where every participant of a meetings logs work in this issue. If you have these on a monthly base you will get a nice report how much time was spent on &quot;everything else&quot;. Something that is a great opener in a retrospective when you show the team how much time they actually spent on things that are not story-related. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I would recommend to log work only on stories not on tasks. If something aims at several stories I would split work logged between them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is only a problem if you want to do a deep-dive into the work done for a specific story. For metrics like cycle time and lead time it should not make any difference. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice for a process change would be to question time tracking altogether. Time tracking is a method from the command &amp;amp; control way of project management. I would recommend to use Scrum where you have sprints as fixed time-boxes. With simple steps you get a pretty good understanding of the work capacity a team has.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Management should focus on strategy and trust the teams that they will continuously improve their processes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23529" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2016-05-24T17:30:55.623" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T17:30:55.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18365" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-24T15:41:39.510" Score="4" ViewCount="1019" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am the scrum master, using the following system loosely:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;0.2 points approx &amp;lt; 1 hour&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;0.5 points approx &gt; 2 hours but &amp;lt; 3 hours &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 points approx &gt; 4 hours (half a day) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 points approx &gt; 8 hours (1 day) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 points approx &gt; 16 hours (2 days)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use the approximations as a guide for how long the task would approximately take. Using this as a guide to work out a weeks worth of work worth is. My sprints are typically 4 days long. So in that case the team the points will add up for the week equivalent approximately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After tracking my teams progress after 3-4 sprints, I am finding that allocating time against the points is becoming pointless, since the total amount of story points they can complete increases as the weeks go on. Last week it was 6.2 points, this week that figure has increased to 9, typically this varies and I am trying to find the team's average velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I measure the teams performance by the average amount of points they can complete in the sprint or attaching time to the points as an approximation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="20871" LastEditDate="2016-05-24T16:19:48.647" LastActivityDate="2016-06-09T19:08:25.540" Title="Can we allocate time to story points?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18365" CreationDate="2016-05-24T15:56:15.780" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Story points are an ABSTRACT measurement for the complexity of a product increment. The idea is that complexity is the same for everyone, whereas the effort needed to complete it varies depending on the skills and experience of a developer. &#xA;So calculating time from story points makes no sense at all to me. As you are already experiencing a rising velocity while working hours remain stable you can see that there is no direct relation between story points and time. And I would not recommend to measure the performance of a team by either time or story points. Instead I recommend to look at work capacity (how much is the team able to successfully complete within a sprint) and at focus (how much of their time is actually invested towards the sprint goal). &#xA;You will see much better results if you support the team in becoming more agile instead of calculating time from story points. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23529" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T15:56:15.780" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18367" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18375" CreationDate="2016-05-24T16:29:09.627" Score="0" ViewCount="421" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to make a portion of my MS Project schedule work backwards, and it's not working quite right. I'm hoping you can help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a schedule where Task 45 ends on 2/1/17. Tasks 46 through 50 are all chained together, Finish-to-Start. I want Task 50 to end on the same day as Task 45 (2/1/17) and for Tasks 46-49 to all start as late as possible but still be done in time to have Task 50 end on the same day as Task 45.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To do this, I've set up Tasks 46-49 to start as late as possible, and for Task 50 to start as early as possible with Tasks 45FF and 49FS as predecessors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately what is happening is that Task 50 is ending on the project's end date, not on the same day as Task 45. It appears that Project is looking at the predecessors for Task 50 and thinking that as long as it ends some time after Task 45 it's ok. What I want it to tell Project that Tasks 45 and 50 must end on the same day. Is there a way to do that without entering in a specific date?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23547" LastActivityDate="2016-08-23T01:36:27.733" Title="Working (part of) an MS Project schedule backwards" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18365" CreationDate="2016-05-24T16:47:49.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;So there are potentially a number of things going on here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off; story points should not directly correlate to hours because they will fluctuate based on a number of factors.  After several sprints, you can take the average of the last few sprints to determine the teams velocity and use that to project work going forward.  That projection will also end up being an estimate because some work gets done early and other work gets done later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, I have a couple of observations / thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My sprints are typically 4 days long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that your sprints are too short to get an accurate read of your teams performance over time.  From personal experience I would expect that you would frequently have carryover or be completing stories that are not being tested.  I think best practice is for sprints to be no shorter than 1 week and no longer than 4 weeks; and most commonly sprints are 2 weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After tracking my teams progress after 3-4 sprints, I am finding that allocating time against the points is becoming pointless, since the total amount of story points they can complete increases as the weeks go on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The behavior of story point output increasing from sprint to sprint is normal.  It will eventually level out after X amount of time.  This can be attributed to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuckman%27s_stages_of_group_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;forming, storming, norming and performing&lt;/a&gt; phases of team growth.   Basically, in summary, your team is figuring out how to be efficient while working together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your story point scale seems off to me.  I would consider using Fibonnaci numbers if you must use numbers, or if you can get away with it [Small, Medium, Large, XLarge] or some variation [Efficiency, Apartment, Condo, House, Mansion] that you are comfortable with.  In my opinion anything less than 1 point / half day is too small an amount to estimate and if your team is using those points / scale to estimate, they will likely be off because developers are generally over optimistic about how much can get done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22717" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T16:47:49.463" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18370" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-24T18:44:31.033" Score="6" ViewCount="540" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just taken over a team of developers that appear to be quite technologically sound and on the ball.  That said they are all very quiet, hours can pass without anyone really talking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not necessarily a bad thing as they appear to be delivering their content in a timely manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I find that discussion facilitates the effective creation of team norms/documentation/expectations and want to ensure that key points are not missed when we have these discussions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is a good method to elicit input from in this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now I am looking at reviewing the definition of done with the team, but it could be sprint planning or a team norms document just as easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit:&lt;/em&gt;  As discussed in the comments I am not attempting to alter the behavior of the team members.  Attempting to turn an introvert into an extrovert is misguided and futile at best and outright damaging to the individual and team at worst.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More specifically my intent is to find a method that will ensure I get everyone's input so each has their say in the creation of these documents and thus buy's into the team norms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17527" LastEditorUserId="17527" LastEditDate="2016-05-24T19:35:12.133" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T22:41:25.640" Title="Method for managing Scrum ceremonies with an introverted team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;definition-of-done&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18371" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18380" CreationDate="2016-05-24T19:14:54.633" Score="2" ViewCount="400" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently trying to setup a meeting in ms-project with 2 resources: Alice and Bob&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alice's calendar is based on the standard calendar (working every weekday):&#xA;And Bob's calendar is based on the based calendar (working every weekday except on Tuesdays):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By default, ms-project sets the tasks to &quot;Fixed Units&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When I assign the task to Alice only, the meeting is scheduled for Tuesday -&gt; ok&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When I assign the task to Bob only, the meeting is scheduled for Wednesday -&gt; ok&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When I assign the task to the both of them, the duration changes to 2 days, the work remains at 16 Hrs but the task expands over Tuesday and Wednesday -&gt; Not OK&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When I change the task to a fixed duration, ms-project complains that Alice is allocated at 200% and Bob at 0%...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I set project up to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;keep the duration to 1d?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;keep the work to 16 hrs?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have ms-project reschedule the task to the first common available day (i.e. Wednesday) automatically?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance for your help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23550" LastActivityDate="2016-05-25T09:56:59.400" Title="How to force ms-project to reschedule when all resources are available?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18370" CreationDate="2016-05-24T19:45:28.873" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most important part of this is: &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;be yourself&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. Your team will work best when they are being themselves too. Having said that though, the dynamic of the team is changing (naturally) because a new team member (you) is joining. So everyone (you included) will have to adjust to find the new collective norm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may be introverted or extroverted naturally, and it's good you recognize the team has it's own collective personality. I've found it best to approach your role slowly (even with deadlines looming or customers raging), and establish your own credibility. You have to trust each member of the team but they also have to trust you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my suggestion is to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sit down with each of them informally and just chat, visit, dream, ask questions, and let each of them understand who you are so you can understand who they are.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At first, privately ask each person what they think of the process and what needs improving, and what they think of the team and what needs improving. At this stage, just listen. Everyone instinctively knows what's wrong and what to fix, whether they'll voice it or not. They just need someone to listen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then introduce the same questions about process and team in a team setting (the very end of the daily standup is a good time). Doesn't have to be a long conversation unless it naturally goes there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your experience and leadership has value too, that's why you were hired and/or put in this role. So make your suggestions or directives when it's appropriate. I think you'll find once a discussion is started, you'll hear everything you need to know.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21791" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T19:45:28.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18370" CreationDate="2016-05-24T19:47:29.707" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My suggestions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apart from having meetings, ask them for input individually; being a technically-minded, nerd introvert myself, group settings generally make for discomfort, which can be amplified when they are put on the spot or asked to share their feelings in public.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gamify where possible; nerds love games and will never turn down an opportunity that sounds like fun. Hand out rewards for providing input. I will leave it up to you to determine what type of rewards are appropriate (candy, red bull, skip the next retrospective free card, etc...). I know it seems simple, but you might be amazed how well it can work. One popular example of this is Planning Poker; Centare made a great free iPhone app for this so you don't need to buy any actual cards.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use an anonymous digital voting and polling service like PollEverywhere.com. This makes contributing less stressful, and nerds generally love their phones and using cool digital apps on them, so it's a win-win. They can use their mobile phones to vote or comment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Help them to buy into why you are doing it. If they understand and agree with your approach, and are as on the ball as you say, they will see the value in providing feedback and begin to work with you more. It may be a slow process, so do what you can to help them not feel distracted by having to provide feedback. For example, if you schedule meetings with them, ask for their feedback on the meeting, and shorten the meeting to match the amount of interaction that you are or aren't getting. If you begin to see more traction, lengthen the meeting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23450" LastEditorUserId="23450" LastEditDate="2016-11-22T22:41:25.640" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T22:41:25.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18370" CreationDate="2016-05-24T19:50:22.577" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the place to start is with the actual scrum ceremonies: planning, standup and retro and see if you can gather the information you want instead of forcing it elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For standup:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you did yesterday and what you are doing today are straight-forward.  When I was a team lead / scrum master I found out that replacing &quot;What are my impediments?&quot; with &quot;What is slowing me down?&quot; tended to provided better insight into the impediments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For planning:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found that having people use planning poker cards / &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.planningpoker.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;tools&lt;/a&gt; where they estimate individually first and then reveal to the group can spawn a valuable discussion that might not normally happen if you have especially quiet or overbearing people on the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For retrospective:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once again, introduce a &lt;a href=&quot;http://funretro.github.io/distributed/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;tool&lt;/a&gt; or process to generate discussions.  If people are worried about confrontation collect the negatives in an anonymous fashion.  Provide the initial feedback as scrum master to get the conversations started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other Ideas&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your work environment, it might be worth having a release retro to generate a discussion about how to make things better that doesn't focus on the team individually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22717" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T19:50:22.577" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18367" CreationDate="2016-05-24T22:59:52.013" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you have set up should work under most circumstances. My guess is that you have a later task linked to Task 50 through successors that has a Must Finish On date. Try changing the MFO date(s) to Finish No Later Than.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ALAP tasks will push everything out to meet the MFO date, but won't push out to meet a soft constraint--Finish No Later Than.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastActivityDate="2016-05-24T22:59:52.013" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18361" CreationDate="2016-05-25T01:40:49.927" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A phased approach to CMS implementation often indicates that you've optimized for resource efficiency rather than flow efficiency. While this does a good job of keeping your specialists productive, it usually leads to slower delivery times for features, due to the hand-offs between team members or the transition between phases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See Johanna Rothman's series on resource vs. flow efficiency for some ideas about changing your working model.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jrothman.com/mpd/agile/2015/09/resource-efficiency-vs-flow-efficiency-part-1-seeing-your-system/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.jrothman.com/mpd/agile/2015/09/resource-efficiency-vs-flow-efficiency-part-1-seeing-your-system/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23553" LastActivityDate="2016-05-25T01:40:49.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18377" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18411" CreationDate="2016-05-25T04:24:35.417" Score="2" ViewCount="94" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to get a gist of Value Stream Mapping and how to apply it to a suggestion to working software process that we have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since we are developing products, and don't do client work, there's no hard &quot;pull&quot; - customer requests something, and if sufficient number of people is interested we'll consider adding it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customer requests a feature,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Support records feedback and adds +1 for the feature,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Support prepares a monthly report,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product owner reviews the suggestions report,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product owner decides that feature should be developed,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feature is analyzed and designed,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We wait until one development team is free to take on the feature,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product owner presents the feature to the development team,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team has a (longish) meeting where feature is broken down to small tasks, and each task is given an estimate. Based on these estimates, due date is set,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team implements a feature,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;QA is done (feedback loop included, developers may need to correct the software)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Code review is done (feedback loop included, developers may need to correct the software)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Documentation is written&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Announcement data is written&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feature is released&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customers who requested the feature are informed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's a lot of steps. I included everything, for the sake of an exercise. Which of these steps would you consider Value Adding and which Non-Value Adding and why? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One bit in particular pushed me to create this question: should we consider detailed estimation step VA or NVA? Developers do a lot of design work in that stage, so I'm not 100% sure where to put it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6506" LastActivityDate="2016-06-02T00:53:42.797" Title="Mapping value stream for a feature suggestion to working software process" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;lean&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18378" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-25T06:28:47.750" Score="-1" ViewCount="305" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new to this community and please go easy on me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been doing C# dev for like 10 years and recently I am considering a Business Analyst (BA) position. When I applied for the role, the manager asked me to do some little homework and I hope I can get some advice from you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The preparation for the interview was to describe an existing cinema online booking system in 200 words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What got me was the number of words as 200 words isnt much and it makes thing tricky. I want to get some advice on if there is any specific BA way to describe a system. How would you describe a system in 200 words? would you do that in point form?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realised I didn't make my question very clear. I was asked to describe a particular cinema movie booking system, so it is not any booking system. I just didn't want to name the particular cinema in my question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can even try to explain my approach and hope everyone can tell me if this is a BA way to doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Evaluated the booking system and understood its booking process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Drew up a UML Sequence diagram to note down the end-to-end booking steps &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Translating the booking process from diagram into words&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this is something acceptable for most&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23558" LastEditorUserId="23558" LastEditDate="2016-05-26T11:53:58.683" LastActivityDate="2016-05-26T11:53:58.683" Title="How to describe a system" Tags="&lt;business-analyst&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2016-05-26T12:27:13.003" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18371" CreationDate="2016-05-25T09:56:59.400" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;MS-Project does not support this functionality natively, but you can force the effect as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set up a dummy preliminary task with duration of 1 minute.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assign both resources to it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Level the task, so it splits between both days depending on the resource availability.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make that task a predecessor of your actual task- It will then be scheduled to after the preliminary task&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2016-05-25T09:56:59.400" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18370" CreationDate="2016-05-25T10:09:06.727" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be careful to push them to follow standard scrum steps, sometimes introverts don't like it. I'd suggest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you have to ensure that each team-member understands the theory and benefits&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;after successful achievement of point #1, you have to implement scrum activities point-by-point&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12166" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2016-05-27T09:44:02.353" LastActivityDate="2016-05-27T09:44:02.353" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18370" CreationDate="2016-05-25T11:41:41.273" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advice would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep meetings to as few people as possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep the meetings short and succinct.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a relaxed and informal atmosphere in meetings. Things like snacks and fizzy drinks help the team to relax.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not try to lead the meetings too much. Allow the introverted team members to speak even when you feel there is something you want to say in response.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure the team values the Scrum ceremonies. If they do they will be more inclined to speak out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't be stressed by quiet spells in the meetings. Allow the introverted team members to fill the silences so they become used to speaking and leading the discussions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-05-25T11:41:41.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18378" CreationDate="2016-05-25T13:47:37.480" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's hard to read the manager's mind; my guess is that he is looking to see if you can communicate efficiently.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify the problem that the &quot;cinema online booking system&quot; is supposed to solve.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify the features that the &quot;cinema online booking system&quot; must have to solve the identified problem.  You can probably limit this to 5 or 10 due to the word limit in place.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prioritize the list of features identified in step 2.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write a 200 word &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2009/january/the-product-vision&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;product vision statement&lt;/a&gt; for the system using the information gathered in steps 1-3 above.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22717" LastActivityDate="2016-05-25T13:47:37.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18384" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18385" CreationDate="2016-05-25T14:58:43.733" Score="9" ViewCount="677" Body="&lt;p&gt;The whole development are stuck on one task in a sprint, they would rather work on other tasks then try and solve it. This is the only task remaining in the sprint, all other tasks have finished. The task is not majorly important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the best way to handle this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2016-05-26T11:34:20.550" Title="Both of my developers are stuck on one task, now what?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18384" CreationDate="2016-05-25T16:19:25.737" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let the team decide.  It's their Sprint goal.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a short answer because it's a simple problem.  Eventually you have to step away from being a Scrum Bouncer and simply let the team make their own way.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have a goal, they have a task outstanding.   Simply watch and observe and take notes on the dynamic then approach the retrospective with the information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2016-05-25T16:19:25.737" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18384" CreationDate="2016-05-26T00:31:53.877" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the value-add of the task? Developers can smell unnecessary work, and pressing them to do something that few people besides yourself care about can lead to resentment or openly challenging you, especially if the task was selected by you instead of the product owner. If this is a nice-to-have that the PO asked for, and there are other more valuable items in the backlog, you may need to talk with the PO about how/why to order the backlog so the team always works on the most important items first; although even so, the team should be &lt;em&gt;negotiating&lt;/em&gt; the scope with the PO, not unilaterally deciding what is and isn't worth doing. If halfway through the sprint they decide not to do something, there should be a valid technical/organizational/capacity reason for dropping the task, not just because they don't feel like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is genuine value in the task, then you need to make sure there are appropriate consequences if they neglect it. Your first option should be to teach them the importance of keeping their sprint commitment. If that doesn't work, have the PO explain to them why this task is valuable and necessary. If all else fails, escalate to their manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13325" LastEditorUserId="13325" LastEditDate="2016-05-26T11:34:20.550" LastActivityDate="2016-05-26T11:34:20.550" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18384" CreationDate="2016-05-26T05:59:32.843" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The first step is to understand why the team cannot progress.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the challenge? Help them resolve it by removing obstacles, facilitating help/support/knowledge transfer from people or teams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Encourage the team to complete it as unfinished items in sprints create a habit of leaving things behind. &#xA;Help the team to stay focused and finish the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;On the other hand, if however the task is not resolvable, &#xA;make sure you discuss it in the retrospective&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) understand why it turned out to be so? &#xA;For eg, Is this indicate the lack of skills which you need to address? Is it reflective of the lack of planning you have done? Is it the story itself? Is it inappropriate to include such unimportant tasks to sprints which takes up time but add no value?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) Agree to the action items/changes you would need to make so that this situation doesn't repeat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22080" LastActivityDate="2016-05-26T05:59:32.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18370" CreationDate="2016-05-27T10:56:32.070" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Create sense of freedom by introducing &lt;a href=&quot;http://thecoreprotocols.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Core Protocols&lt;/a&gt;, especially Pass and Check-In protocols. That will give them a safety belt when needed, it's universal and can be used beyond Scrum. You, on the other hand, would be more encouraged to ask the team and engage them, as they'll just simply pass if not interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastEditorUserId="1021" LastEditDate="2016-05-29T12:26:21.623" LastActivityDate="2016-05-29T12:26:21.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18317" CreationDate="2016-05-27T20:26:29.130" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, this can happen at other instances as well!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's first review the &lt;strong&gt;Learn from Experience&lt;/strong&gt; principle: the official manual (full title &lt;em&gt;Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2&lt;/em&gt;) states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PRINCE2 project teams learn from previous experience: lessons are sought, recorded and acted upon &lt;strong&gt;throughout the life of the project&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This learning from experience principle permeates the (PRINCE2) method:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When starting a project, previous or similar projects should be review to see if lessons learned could be applied&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As the project progresses, it should continue to learn. Lessons should be included in all reports and reviews.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As the project closes, it should pass on lessons.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(source: PRINCE2 manual, section 2.2)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, let's look specifically at the &lt;strong&gt;Capture previous lessons&lt;/strong&gt; activity, that is part of the &lt;em&gt;Starting up a Project (SU)&lt;/em&gt; process:&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;The idea here is that lessons might have been learned in other projects, programmes, at corporate level or even in other, external organizations about strenghts and weaknesses of specific processes, procedures, techniques, tools and so on.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;So the purpose of this activity is to review lessons from these sources and identify which ones are also applicable to this project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is done for the first time during &lt;em&gt;Starting up a Project&lt;/em&gt; process, as it can already have an influence on the other activities in this process, e.g. how we set up the project management team, or when preparing the (outline) Business Case etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Applying the philosophy of the learn from experience principle, it is obvious that this could be repeated when relevant.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;And the PRINCE2 manual confirms this logic, as it states explicitly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When moving from the general view in Starting up a Project to the detailed view in Initiating a Project and updated view in Managing a Stage boundary, it may be necessary to look beyond the Lessons Log, &lt;strong&gt;by repeating this activity, to capture any further releavant external lessons.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(source: PRINCE2 manual, section 12.4.2)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, it can happen at other places as well.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;For detailed questions like this one, the PRINCE2 manual is your best friend and should be the reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23497" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2016-05-29T15:41:42.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18310" CreationDate="2016-05-27T21:22:54.667" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In PRINCE2, the project management team structure is set up during the &lt;em&gt;Starting up a Project&lt;/em&gt; process:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Individuals are appointed who will undertake the work required in project initiation and/or will take significant project management roles in the project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(source: &quot;Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2&quot;, a.k.a. the PRINCE2 manual; section 12.2)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The activities where this happens are &lt;em&gt;Appoint the Executive and the Project Manager&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Design and appoint the project management team&lt;/em&gt; (see sections 12.4.1 &amp;amp; 12.4.3 in the PRINCE2 manual).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While we are executing the &lt;em&gt;Initiating a Project&lt;/em&gt; process, we build a more detailed view of the project, and might alter or further develop the project management team. These are some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We did not have sufficient detail yet during Starting up to fill in all roles and we merely created a skeleton with the bare minimum.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or we now know who will be the team managers for the first delivery stage.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or a Project Board member decides to appoint Project Assurance to a dedicated person.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So during &lt;em&gt;Initiating a Project&lt;/em&gt;, we can review, refine, update the project management team structure, if relevant. This is being considered during the activity &lt;em&gt;Set up the project controls&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...this may include finalizing any roles not previously allocated, re-allocating roles previously filled and, if necessary, re-designing the project management team  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(PRINCE2 manual, section 14.4.5)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, also during the &lt;em&gt;Managing a Stage Boundary&lt;/em&gt; process, we (re)consider the compostion of te project management team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Review and, if necessary, update the Project Initiation Documentation (in particular the ... &lt;strong&gt;project management team structure and role descriptions&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(PRINCE2 manual, sections 17.2 &amp;amp; 17.4.2)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the project management team structure is set up during &lt;em&gt;Starting up a Project&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and reviewed and updated, if required, during &lt;em&gt;Initiating a Project&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Managing a Stage Boundary&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23497" LastActivityDate="2016-05-27T21:22:54.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17980" CreationDate="2016-05-28T16:07:40.517" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, a Product Owner should focus on process, not on technical solutions. Your role on a Scrum Team is to represent the stakeholders or users, and to drive the development of the product, rather than to manage implementation details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Backlog it a set of high-level deliverables, not a set of specification documents. Don't get caught in the trap of treating user stories or Product Backlog Items as specification documents, or attempting to drive implementation-level details which are the responsibility of the Development Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Focus on Process&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner's job is to work with stakeholders to gather requirements, and with the team to refine user stories. Whether in an interview or in an active role, I'd focus on the methodologies used to gather requirements and build consensus; leave the technical solution alone unless you're specifically being hired for your UX expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Example Process: Theme Screening&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you might talk about how you would use a tool like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/theme-screening&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Theme Screening&lt;/a&gt; to quickly build consensus about what Product Backlog Items (PBIs) should be prioritized for the project. Consider the following: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9OiAs.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9OiAs.png&quot; alt=&quot;Theme Screening Example&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this example, stakeholders should be able to easily compare the relative merits of the Baseline, Embiggening, and Ensmallening themes/epics against one another. Given the right selection criteria, your stakeholders should quickly develop consensus around spending available project resources on the highly-ranked Embiggening theme, and on all the user stories that collectively compose it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later on, you will refine whether your Baseline or Ensmallening themes are more important by repeating this process as the project progresses and the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cone of Uncertainty&lt;/a&gt; narrows. Stakeholder input should be just as iterative as the product development itself, so this &lt;em&gt;type&lt;/em&gt; of ranking process should be an expected practice when a project needs to establish relative rankings for its deliverables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-05-28T16:07:40.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18396" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18397" CreationDate="2016-05-29T20:02:21.140" Score="6" ViewCount="672" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Introduction:&lt;/strong&gt; In theory, Scrum says that the development team is fully responsible and self-organized when it comes to all things related to development. This also includes code quality which imho is a result of CI, automated testing and more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scenario:&lt;/strong&gt; A Scrum Product Owner is responsible for some software product. The quality lately decreased due to increasing complexity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; How can the Scrum Product Owner influence the development in a way that they look more into quality? Items in the product backlog are features that have &lt;em&gt;direct&lt;/em&gt; customer value. Code quality only has &lt;em&gt;indirect&lt;/em&gt; customer value. Can the Product Owner force the dev team to increase quality, e.g. by using CI, more/better automated tests, ... ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16188" LastActivityDate="2016-05-31T10:49:11.260" Title="Influence code quality as Scrum Product Owner" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;quality&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;&lt;definition-of-done&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18396" CreationDate="2016-05-29T21:12:02.753" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner has responsibility for the backlog and the development team has responsibility for delivery. However, in Scrum we work as a team and there is nothing to stop the Product Owner discussing concerns over delivery with the development team. Just as there is nothing to stop the development team discussing concerns over the backlog with the Product Owner. &lt;em&gt;We favour collaboration over contract negotiation&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your situation, the key is to try and &lt;em&gt;influence&lt;/em&gt; the development team to improve their code quality rather than forcing them to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest some or all of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Highlight the impact quality is having on the customers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If possible, quantify the cost (e.g. &quot;we failed to land a customer worth 10k due to concerns over quality&quot;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Emphasise that quality is a priority to you and that you are willing to accept delays in delivering functionality if the quality is high. Sometimes the development team assumes that delivering functionality is the highest priority.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explore the reasons why the development team is not focusing on quality. Perhaps they lack experience or perhaps they feel under time pressure to deliver?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Forumulate user stories that encourage quality.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Forcing the development team to do something may work in the short term, but there is a danger they will just slip back in to old patterns of behaviour. A better approach is to get the development team to value quality as highly as you do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-05-29T21:12:02.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18398" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-05-30T06:39:18.990" Score="13" ViewCount="1266" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any methods to fairly estimate story points for a project before deep diving into the planning poker part. I am asking this because sometimes at project initiation it helps to know the tentative amount of work in terms of story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any techniques that could be used to roughly come up with some figures at the start?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23615" LastEditorUserId="12242" LastEditDate="2016-06-03T08:31:13.403" LastActivityDate="2017-01-18T23:55:57.003" Title="Forecasting Story Points in Agile" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18398" CreationDate="2016-05-30T09:59:44.460" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several techniques used that help with story point estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One approach is to pick out a &lt;em&gt;baseline&lt;/em&gt; story and use this as a reference for the other stories. In a BI team I worked for their baseline story was to add a single measure to a report. They would judge all other stories against that one. Having a baseline made it quite simple for the team to say 'smaller than the baseline' or 'bigger than the baseline'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another approach is to write your stories on cards and sort them in to size order. So that the biggest story is at the top and the smallest story is at the bottom. Then you decide where the boundary points are in the list between the various story point sizes. For example, say you had 20 cards sorted in order and you decide the bottom three cards are 1 point, the two cards above that are 2 points and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mike Cohn has &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/the-best-way-to-establish-a-baseline-when-playing-planning-poker&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;blogged about this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-05-31T18:10:26.643" LastActivityDate="2016-05-31T18:10:26.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18398" CreationDate="2016-05-30T17:57:36.190" Score="11" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A common approach is to do a &lt;em&gt;rough&lt;/em&gt; initial estimate of the Product Backlog using a sorting method like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2016/january/agile-estimation-techniques&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the bucket system&lt;/a&gt;, with variations described by &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/bucket-theory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ThoughtWorks&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/how-can-we-get-the-best-estimates-of-story-size&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mountain Goat Software&lt;/a&gt;. A few other techniques are also listed for reference at the very bottom of this answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general idea of the bucket system is that you identify a baseline story, assign it 1-2 story points, and then guesstimate relative sizes of the rest in relation to the baseline. It's similar to Planning Poker in some ways, but intended to provide quicker results at the expense of granularity and accuracy because you aren't doing the level of decomposition that you would normally do during Sprint Planning or Backlog Refinement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This type of sorting can be very quick when compared to Planning Poker, especially if you remember that the point of the initial estimate is to do high-level release planning, rather than plan out all your sprints in advance. In other words, you are really just doing a rough estimate of the first couple of sprints, while the rest of the Product Backlog is full of themes and epics that you may or may not ever get to under the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_aren%27t_gonna_need_it&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;YAGNI principle&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use bucket-sorting, or other similar techniques, to create inputs for the remainder of the project. You will still need to replan and re-estimate each Sprint, and determine how (or even if) you want to form a release plan for the overall project. I discuss each of these topics in more detail below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Replan and Re-Estimate Every Sprint&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that initial backlog estimation is the &lt;em&gt;start&lt;/em&gt; of a series of processes, not the end-state. You will re-estimate the likely stories for each upcoming Sprint again during Backlog Refinement, and do another fine-grained estimate during Sprint Planning at the start of each Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, your initial estimates will change over time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cone of Uncertainty&lt;/a&gt; narrows as the team and stakeholders gain additional domain knowledge and feedback from previous iterations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As changes are made to the Product Backlog or user stories, since the Product Backlog is a living document that is expected to change throughout the project lifecycle.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As the team gets better at estimating, and as the team's capacity over time stabilizes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As just-in-time planning for each Sprint is always going to provide a more accurate forecast than guesstimates from project initiation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your release plan contains high-level estimates of the &quot;broad brush-stroke&quot; variety, while your Sprint Backlog really ought to contain a more granular forecast of the work immediately ahead of the team in the current Sprint. Some teams use bucket-sorting for Sprint Planning too, but I'm a big fan of Planning Poker to estimate in Story Points during the first half of Sprint Planning, and &lt;strong&gt;sanity-checking the Sprint Backlog tasks against the team's estimated capacity&lt;/strong&gt; in ideal hours or calendar days during the second half to avoid overcommitting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your mileage may vary by technique, but the rule of increasing granularity as you move from Release Planning to Sprint Planning should still apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Plan Just Enough for Agile Release Planning&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main goal of initial planning is generally to make an educated guess about velocity, and to provide an initial baseline for &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/16376/4271&quot;&gt;agile release planning&lt;/a&gt;. It can be tempting to estimate the entire Product Backlog, but in my own practice I've found that estimating just enough of the backlog to forecast the first few sprints is enough to make educated guesses for the overall project release schedule. Most of the remainder of the backlog won't survive the continuous cycle of Backlog Refinement, Sprint Planning, and modifications from Sprint Reviews and Sprint Retrospectives anyway. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A decent Jedi mind-trick here is to do the bucket sorting, guesstimate the initial velocity, and then see if the stories that would be picked for the first Sprint &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; like they would fit. Sometimes, you'll find that something just feels wrong about the estimates of Product Backlog Items or team capacity, while other times you'll feel like you have at least an 80% chance of meeting your first Sprint Goal using the velocity and story-point estimates you're guesstimating as your baseline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In agile release planning, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;traditional triple-constraint&lt;/a&gt; still applies, but the dimension that most often shifts is &lt;em&gt;scope&lt;/em&gt;. So, you can still form a release plan based around key milestones in the project using epics/themes, but you will have to adjust your Sprint Goals and refine the scope of each Sprint to fit the release plan. This approach doesn't require a full estimation of the entire backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, you can base your release schedule on how long you expect it to take to complete &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; work in the initial Product Backlog. If you do this, you will need to periodically re-estimate the entire remaining backlog, and track a release burn-down in addition to ensuring you have a potentially-shippable product at the end of each Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, I strongly recommend the former approach. Still, &lt;strong&gt;if project &lt;em&gt;scope&lt;/em&gt; is fixed but &lt;em&gt;schedule&lt;/em&gt; is an adjustable dimension&lt;/strong&gt; for your project, then the latter approach can work, too. It's just more work, and in many cases less accurate during early-stage planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;See Also&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These links aren't particularly canonical, but they address some well-known alternatives to either planning poker or the bucket system. There are certainly others, but these are among the most common:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flowless.eu/relative-mass-valuation/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Relative Mass Valuation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://martinfowler.com/bliki/DotVoting.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dot Voting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agileadvice.com/2015/10/13/agilemanagement/9-agile-estimation-techniques/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TFB/NFC/1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relative Mass Valuation has a lot of mindshare in the agile community, but despite the name I think that TFB/NFC/1 is a surprisingly useful technique that deserves more attention. YMMV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2016-05-30T18:17:40.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18396" CreationDate="2016-05-30T23:07:04.713" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The product owner can add anything they like to the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Setup a CI build server&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Add unit tests untill you have 90% code coverage&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the business justification for these things is pretty vague and revolves around the productivity of the dev team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team isnt already doing these things in a 'sprint zero' they need either some training or some time to get it done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although you can apply scrum to 'project : setup a dev team' generaly its assumed you have a team and they have the tools computers, software licences, desks, an office etc they need to start work on 'project : write me a program'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These days an automated dev ops enviroment with various enviroments, source control, unit tests and a ci build server should be considered part of that tool set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2016-05-30T23:07:04.713" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18365" CreationDate="2016-05-30T23:19:30.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Should I measure the teams performance by the average amount of points they can complete in the sprint or attaching time to the points as an approximation.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think most people attach a time to the points in their head when estimating. However, if you try and measure performance by story points completed you are encouraging over estimation of tasks. I can do a million story point sprint easy. You wont like my estimates though!!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Forget about 'team performance'. Story points are about estimating how long it will take to complete the project. Take the average per sprint and divide the remaining by that number to get your expected completion date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2016-05-30T23:19:30.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18312" CreationDate="2016-05-31T06:51:41.643" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many ways to handle the situation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Customer Engagement - This is highly important to set right expectations on the operating model that you follow to deliver a product. This operating model should include 'Project Delivery Process', 'Process to handle Change Requests', 'Process to handle Risks' and all related phases that are required for your project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Business Case - Usually there will be a Business case for each requirement given by customers . You can check with your customer if there is a change to Business Case and accordingly can suggest/discuss feasible enhancements that best suits to new Business Case. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Manage by Control - Ensure you have controlling stages at each and every phase of your process&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sign off From Customers - Ensure you receive sign off from customer for respective phases as per your operating model&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be able to provide more approaches based on your project demand, customer engagement, scope of project, etc..&#xA;Please feel to provide more details in case you need additional information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23521" LastActivityDate="2016-05-31T06:51:41.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18313" CreationDate="2016-05-31T07:30:08.370" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Solution is very simple&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Categorize your projects (These categories should be sub projects of your main project)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add all projects in the tool &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define simple tasks for each project that you can manage but provides you complete control on the project&#xA;(can create a template with tasks for each project category )&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allocate resources for the tasks &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go To EasyGantt, you should be able to see UnAssigned tasks and resources with current allocation &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tool allows you to allocate UnAssigned tasks to resources&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lemme provide you an example&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Company Roadmap demonstrates planning of projects at company level&#xA;UnAssigned Tasks and Resources with current allocation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This management process can be achieved through &lt;strong&gt;EasyRedmine&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0Nx0d.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0Nx0d.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23521" LastActivityDate="2016-05-31T07:30:08.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18396" CreationDate="2016-05-31T10:05:31.890" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would be interested to know what you mean by quality.  Bugs, or something else? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the concerns are related to quality that is visible to the end user, than I would focus on what you, as the product owner, can do to better define the acceptance criteria for your stories so as to preclude the problems you are having from being accepted.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your role, as the Product Owner, is to give clear direction and provide continuous feedback on work completed.  Make sure you and your team are communicating regularly about your goals and about story acceptance criteria, and make sure you are providing good direction and honest feedback on completed work. Make sure your team understands that they should be coming to you regularly to discuss any questions with execution and to clarify any ambiguity in stories/tasks.  Make sure you make yourself available to them to listen to and answer these questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More specifically, here are a couple of ways to deal with different &quot;quality&quot; issues: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's bugs, work on your definition of done to ensure features are properly tested - including regression testing as they are integrated.  Work on your own story writing skills and how you define up front and communicate the acceptance tests for your stories. Finally, if the requirements for testing and integration are clear, and the Definton of Done precludes buggy code from being accepted, and the team is failing to achieve this, then discuss the problem with your team at the next retrospective, and work with them to address it.  Also, make sure you utilize your Scrum Master, who should be trying to figure out what's impeding the teams' ability to properly test the work done during an iteration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If what you mean by a quality problem is not bugs, but something else, such as a request for information taking too long to execute, or a user interface that is not cohesive between screens, or something of that nature, here are a few tips for handling these types of problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, again focus on developing a better DOD and better defining acceptance tests during backlog grooming and sprint planning.  Also, work with your Scrum Master to ensure the team fully understands their responsibilities.  If something is ambiguous or unclear, the developers are responsible for getting with the Product Owner or Customer to discuss and clarify. Ideally, everything is clarified during Sprint planning, but this might not always be the case, and it's important the developers know thy are responsible for clarifying the requirements and acceptance criteria for a story or task by discussing it with the PO (or directly with the Customer/end-user). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, if this functionality already exists (e.g. was part of an earlier story that was already accepted) and you're just not happy with the execution, then simply create another story to further clarify what it is you want.  E.g. If requests take too long to return information, then write a story &quot;I want X to happen quickly&quot; and then follow the advice above to work with your team to clarify what will be acceptable for satisfying &quot;quickly.&quot;  Or if the issue is with user interface, write a story &quot;The user interface should be consistent when switching screens.&quot;  Again, clarification of either would ideally take place during Sprint planning or backlog grooming, as the team asks questions to estimate the story or as they start breaking it down into tasks to execute. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, remember you are a team, and remember you meet regularly to discuss and improve your process.  If you think the team would benefit from continuous integration, or pair programming, or some other development tool or strategy - I would suggest it during a retrospective as something that might be worth trying.  Ultimately though, it is up to the development team to decide how they want to develop.  As the PO you are responsible for setting the requirements for the end user, and the team is responsible for developing the solutions to said requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19296" LastEditorUserId="19296" LastEditDate="2016-05-31T10:49:11.260" LastActivityDate="2016-05-31T10:49:11.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18398" CreationDate="2016-06-01T11:49:45.687" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have had great success with &lt;a href=&quot;http://theagilepirate.net/archives/109&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Swimlane Sizing&lt;/a&gt; to estimate a big list of possible changes, its is similar as the bucket system CodeGnome describes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Divide the deck of stories amongst your team and ask members to spend&#xA;  a maximum of 5 minutes silently placing their stories in the swim&#xA;  lanes – with stories of increasing size from left to right.  E.g.&#xA;  smallest stories in the left-most lane.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read the whole process in this blog post: &lt;a href=&quot;http://theagilepirate.net/archives/109&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Swimlane Sizing – Complete &amp;amp; Fast Backlog Estimation&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2016-06-01T11:49:45.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18408" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-01T16:40:03.240" Score="0" ViewCount="359" Body="&lt;p&gt;I enjoy project managing, but after doing a period of account management in parallel to it, I really disliked Account management. I did not enjoy dealing with customers, but I enjoyed working with my internal team to help deliver the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moving forward, does an agile project manager need to have account management skills?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2016-06-03T10:53:02.850" Title="Are account management skills important for project managers?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18408" CreationDate="2016-06-01T17:34:49.193" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. It will be an important skill: managing your client and their expectations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an Agile world, relationships are key. Since things are moving fast, they have the potential to break faster too. Hence the relationship will help you manage and grow your account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23652" LastActivityDate="2016-06-01T17:34:49.193" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18410" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-01T19:16:04.783" Score="-1" ViewCount="86" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a team lead and we are using Microsoft Project Server 2013. My team members have many tasks assigned across different projects. How can I view the tasked assigned to my team members within SharePoint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are only an organizational team, not a project team defined in Microsoft Project server.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23650" LastEditorUserId="23981" LastEditDate="2016-07-07T06:29:28.613" LastActivityDate="2018-03-06T03:07:32.913" Title="How can I view the tasks which are assigned to my organizational team members?" Tags="&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;&lt;project-server&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18377" CreationDate="2016-06-02T00:53:42.797" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can likely answer your question by asking some questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can a customer feature be created without this step?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If yes to 1, is there an internal need for this step to fulfill an internal process or allow a needed communication?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If we stop doing this step, what happens? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing to do is to perform a 5 Whys analysis on each step. Ask &quot;Why is this step important?&quot; Then when you get an answer ask &quot;Why is that the case&quot;. Do this down to five levels to see what's the root cause of why you are doing something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, do you really need customer support to record the request or could you automate it so customers can just submit requests direct into a customer request backlog? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-06-02T00:53:42.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18408" CreationDate="2016-06-02T05:34:38.047" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it really depends on the size of the project/product and how it is defined. In my current company, TPM (tech side) do not have to manage CRM stuff and neither do the PMs. We as tech and tech-related teams need to dedicate ourselves to arriving at the best product. Again, this varies for companies of different sizes and responsibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23657" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-06-03T10:04:57.227" LastActivityDate="2016-06-03T10:04:57.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4440" CreationDate="2016-06-02T05:41:24.507" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am on a back-end service team and we are using Agile the whole time. The key to this is to separate work status from agile process and to select an appropriate sprint period. Know your team's velocity and pace, pick a sprint of two or three weeks duration. If you get familiar with Agile, Scrum can be applied to any team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only difference is the deliverable may vary and you as a manager need to define what is 'done'. Not Surprisingly, a researcher wrote an article on how to apply Scrum to a team of researchers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.umd.edu/~mwh/papers/score.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cs.umd.edu/~mwh/papers/score.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not limit your capacity with your imagination. Good Luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23657" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-06-02T14:47:13.770" LastActivityDate="2016-06-02T14:47:13.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4707" CreationDate="2016-06-02T05:44:13.930" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMHO,&#xA;In short, they have different responsibilities and the Scrum Master role is not fixed while the Product Owner usually stays the same for each product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In long, the Product Owner will be to blame if the product fails, while the Scrum Master has nothing to do with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23657" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-06-02T14:44:33.477" LastActivityDate="2016-06-02T14:44:33.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18408" CreationDate="2016-06-02T17:17:42.613" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You already build relationships with your team, but you find it hard to build a relationship with a customer. Perhaps someone has repeated the old saying &quot;the customer is always right&quot; once too often and you are now afraid to stand up for yourself: that's actually not uncommon, and customers know it too. That's why they sometimes act the way they do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My view is that if you want to be a PM and the role needs you to deal with customers, there are strategies to cope with that. Assuming your company also employs sales people or people with &quot;Account Manager&quot; as part of their formal role, why not take them into customer meetings with you? It would be essential to brief them about the issues in advance, and most importantly, work out a strategy for dealing with the difficult situations that will inevitably arise, and predict how your customers are likely to react (especially to bad news). Think about how you want to respond to customer behaviours: maybe you can be flexible sometimes, while at other times, you need to put your foot down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But also look for positive achievements that you can tell your customers, and win their trust. If you are only giving bad news, it's really tough out there. So don't just give bad news. Tell them about what you have achieved, what opportunities they will get from the things you are delivering, and make suggestions as to how to progress the project. Also ask for their help. People like to offer assistance, and it starts to make them part of your team, solving problems, instead of just throwing rocks at you while you sit and absorb the criticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, back to your question: does an agile PM need account manager skills? - Yes, inevitably, but you can develop coping strategies and subcontract these skills to someone else until you have built your own confidence and can create the good working relationships that actually make the role feel rewarding. Use your wider team, and use the same interpersonal skills that make you a good delivery manager, and it will get easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2016-06-02T17:17:42.613" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18408" CreationDate="2016-06-03T10:53:02.850" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No one comes to the table with all the strengths necessary to the be ideal project manager.  Every PM practitioner out there--and I really mean 100% of them because it is a human condition of our significant inability to be perfect--has varying degrees of strength and gaps in knowledge, skills, and abilities to be a PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is fantastic about your post is that you have identified and admitted to a weakness in your skill set, which is quite atypical in the can-do arrogance often exhibited.  This means you have an opportunity to 1) grow this skill the best you can and 2) figure out how to cope with this missing attribute by delivering this capability in another way.  Dealing with your account is extremely important so it will not be easy to resolve for you but it is not impossible to resolve, either.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get comfortable with the fact you will never be great at all things PM.  You will have areas at which you are an expert, areas you are okay, areas you are mediocre, and still other areas where you are incompetent.  Do what you can on those weaker areas but become great and greater where your strengths are and find coping mechanisms for those other areas...like the rest of us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-06-03T10:53:02.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18418" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18419" CreationDate="2016-06-03T19:04:25.033" Score="1" ViewCount="276" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a good reason to apply &lt;strong&gt;BPM&lt;/strong&gt; to &lt;strong&gt;agile methodologies&lt;/strong&gt; such as SCRUM in order to improve the Agile process? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23675" LastEditorUserId="23675" LastEditDate="2016-06-04T16:24:38.917" LastActivityDate="2016-06-04T16:24:38.917" Title="Is there a reason to apply BPM to agile methodologies such as SCRUM?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;process-improvement&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18418" CreationDate="2016-06-03T19:40:13.003" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile methodologies already have a self-improvement process built in. So applying BPM to any agile method itself is superfluous. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you may want to apply BPM to the whole company, to see if your agile method actually is the optimal approach to your companies goal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2016-06-03T19:40:13.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16860" CreationDate="2016-06-05T14:25:38.460" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 8-80 rule was created to help 24/7 health care facilities avoid overtime pay because of scheduling difficulties related to union labor contracts giving the regular staff at least every other weekend off.  Because of the weekend off requirements, it was mathematically impossible to adhere to the previous 8-40 rule without a mish mash of overtime payment requirements. The 8-80 rule allowed these facilities to schedule 40 hour a week staff to work 6, 7 or 8 consecutive days in a defined two week period.  (If you ever wondered why there is so much burn out, fatigue and attrition in 24/7 health care facilities, you may want to examine the effects created by the 8-80 rule).    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23683" LastActivityDate="2016-06-05T14:25:38.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18421" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18422" CreationDate="2016-06-06T07:59:52.450" Score="3" ViewCount="237" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a number of tasks (which perhaps could be defined as user stories) that re-occur through our project, once every sprint. They are IT/ops related tasks that the rest of the developers depend upon for their coding/testing to work effectively. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have our IT/Ops guy as part of the agile team and is involved in the same way as the devs in the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My question&lt;/strong&gt;: Should I create a task for this each sprint which then is completed each sprint, &lt;strong&gt;or&lt;/strong&gt; should I create one task that stays open and moves from sprint to sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22766" LastActivityDate="2016-06-06T22:24:57.077" Title="How to deal with reoccurring stories in agile?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18421" CreationDate="2016-06-06T10:45:14.613" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself a question, why are you creating tasks and user stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can think of several possible reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You want to know the capacity of the team for future sprints&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You want to track who is working on what&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You want to track progress by seeing when tasks/stories are completed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the IT/ops related tasks take up the same amount of time each sprint then they can be treated as an &lt;em&gt;overhead&lt;/em&gt; when calculating capacity. Just do the work as required and expect your velocity to reflect this by being lower. There is no need to track the tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, however, you wish to track progress in the sprint then it would be worth having a new task each sprint that allows you to see when the IT/ops related work is done and by whom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be careful though, as I have found a lot of IT/ops tasks are related to user stories and could be wrapped in to those stories. For example, say the team rebuilds their test database when starting on a new functional area of their product. The task for this should be wrapped in to the estimate for a user story in that new functional area. That way the stories correctly reflect the work done to complete them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-06-06T10:45:14.613" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18423" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-06T16:41:23.663" Score="1" ViewCount="241" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an agile project manager, I am currently working with one sub contractor, the problem that I am currently facing is that he is just not pulling his weight with not only doing the work but also answering technical queries, and my boss is expecting me to investigate and on a theoretical level solve the problem for him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not mind at all doing this, but I have expressed the following concerns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am not an expert in that particular technology, so I am much more prone to making an error than if it is him -  who is an expert in that technology. I am happy to support him, providing that he contributes to the investigation too. Which is not what he is doing. He is expecting me to hand hold him.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I feel that since I am not hands on coding, the support that I can provide is limited, given that I cannot try different things out with the code. If I am required to start developing, than that is going beyond my job description. I have made it clear to my boss that I have no interest at all writing code again.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I feel that at best I can point him in the right direction and give suggestions on how to solve the problem, but in the end, he has to find the solution.  My boss doesn't seem to get that and expects me to hand hold him.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am much more interested in project management activities, requirement gathering, optimising my sprints, organising my backlog, reading burn down charts, making sure scrum is followed properly and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I convey this to my boss without getting to confrontational? Is he correct, and is the level of support that I am supposed to provide?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="20871" LastEditDate="2016-06-07T08:33:37.337" LastActivityDate="2016-06-10T17:29:33.743" Title="Boss is making me liable for developers actions" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;subcontractor&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18302" CreationDate="2016-06-06T17:49:39.490" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.drift.com/the-7-best-slack-communities-for-product-managers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this blog post&lt;/a&gt; by Aja Frost to be very good. She recommends several, some of which are free, some of which are paid. A very good place to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I joined the &lt;a href=&quot;http://slack.mindtheproduct.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mind The Product Slack&lt;/a&gt;, which is well worth getting involved with. I'm also considering the Product Manager HQ Slack, which is a paid option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps! If you do join the MTP Slack, my username is &lt;code&gt;mathew&lt;/code&gt;. Say hi ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3545" LastActivityDate="2016-06-06T17:49:39.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11266" CreationDate="2016-06-06T19:19:29.810" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first answer is exactly what you would expect on a PM site and is wrong, for the very reason it gives as being right:&#xA;&quot;In essence, you are getting hung up on the idea that backlog items or user stories should add value to the product (in your case, a software product), and that anything that isn't part of the software product is therefore an externality.&quot;&#xA;Backlogs track business value. As it burns down, value should burn up. If there are things that prevent it from burning down, including them in the backlog gives the wrong impression that the backlog is bigger than it is, and that the velocity is going towards burning it down. Instead, lower your capacity and show how &quot;externalities&quot; are impacting your progress. To do otherwise is not transparent. &#xA;The only reason we try to establish a velocity is to create some &quot;predictablility&quot; in a process we know is not. If you hide work like this, you undermine that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23689" LastActivityDate="2016-06-06T19:19:29.810" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18421" CreationDate="2016-06-06T22:24:57.077" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adding a bit of straight forward answer here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Judging from your condition, that is: &quot;They are IT/ops related tasks that the rest of the developers depend upon for their coding/testing to work effectively,&quot; I personally will go with &quot;&lt;strong&gt;create a task for each sprint&lt;/strong&gt; which then is completed each sprint&quot;. Another option that I will consider is &lt;strong&gt;wrapping those task inside relevant user stories&lt;/strong&gt; (just like what Barnaby suggested) so that I can see which user stories actually depends on that IT/ops tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16643" LastActivityDate="2016-06-06T22:24:57.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18423" CreationDate="2016-06-07T07:19:45.943" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Project Manager, you should be the buffer between the customer and the developers. It's part of your job description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, it makes sense that the questions are handed to you, so that you can quiz the developers for the answers, without interrupting their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can do this formally in meetings, or informally around the water cooler.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The customer, on the other hand, if he should start interfacing directly with the developers, would invariably be interrupting their work. Not to mention the stress it puts on developers who have to deal with customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your boss is right: You are the buffer between the developers and the &lt;em&gt;outside world&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-06-07T07:19:45.943" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18430" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18434" CreationDate="2016-06-07T11:25:30.403" Score="19" ViewCount="26808" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't get what is the difference between both. They seem to be similar to me. For instance, I have this typical login/register User Story. Can you provide some DOD examples?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a user&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to register and login&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So that I can register on application and start using cloud memory&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acceptance criteria:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I should be able to hit the URL&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I should be able to view and select &quot;Register&quot; button&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I should be redirected to &quot;Register&quot; form&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;After user submits the form an email will be sent to his/her &#xA;registered email id, this email will the account password&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This password can be changed&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;After completing my registration I will be able to select a package suitable for me.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I can also register via Facebook, Twitter, Google.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21640" LastActivityDate="2018-12-12T03:08:45.017" Title="What is the difference between acceptance criteria and the definition of done?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;definition-of-done&gt;&lt;acceptance-criteria&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18430" CreationDate="2016-06-07T11:39:21.253" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The acceptance criteria are to verify the new feature is working as expected by the stakeholders. They are better called &lt;a href=&quot;http://martinfowler.com/bliki/BusinessFacingTest.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Business Facing Tests&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A business-facing test is a test that's intended to be used as an aid&#xA;  to communicating with the non-programming members of a development&#xA;  team such as customers, users, business analysts and the like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The definition of done is to see if the feature is ready to be deployed to production and only for programming team members. The definition could include that the feature has tests, documentation is updated, release notes are written, version control is cleaned and anything your team needs todo to make it able to release this feature. Some also call it &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jamesshore.com/Agile-Book/done_done.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DoneDone&lt;/a&gt; as in really done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example Definition of Done from &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scruminc.com/scrum-shock-therapy-how-to-change-teams/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Scrum Shock Therapy&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My initial definition of &quot;Done&quot; is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Feature Complete&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Code Complete&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;No known defects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Approved by the Product Owner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Production Ready&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also have a look at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scruminc.com/definition-of-ready/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;definition of ready&lt;/a&gt;, which is used to check if user stories are ready to be picked up by the development team. It should include that the acceptance criteria have been written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2016-06-07T15:17:29.167" LastActivityDate="2016-06-07T15:17:29.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18430" CreationDate="2016-06-07T13:05:45.243" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, there is no difference.  Definition of done and acceptance criteria are used interchangeably.  You cannot meet the definition of done without all criteria being met and you cannot be not done if all criteria have been met.  If you find yourself in the latter, then you simply have two sets of criteria for some unknown reason.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-06-07T13:05:45.243" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18430" CreationDate="2016-06-07T13:55:07.500" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an answer based on my experience, but after googling around a bit, it seems that the answer is whatever works best for you in your process.  As David Espina mentioned in his answer, they can be the same, or they can be different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Acceptance Criteria&lt;/code&gt; are a set of statements, each with a clear pass/fail result, that specify functional (e.g., minimal marketable functionality) requirements. These requirements represent “conditions of satisfaction.” There is no partial acceptance: either a criterion is met or it is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Definition of Done&lt;/code&gt; is a set of statements that specify non-functional (e.g., minimal quality) requirements. These requirements represent “conditions of satisfaction.” There is no partial acceptance: either a criterion is met or it is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference between the two is functional vs nonfunctional.  The non-functional conditions usually consist of things like code reviews and unit tests among other things that do not deliver traditional value but are measures to ensure a high-quality product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22717" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-12-12T03:08:45.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18430" CreationDate="2016-06-07T15:25:00.563" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The acceptance criteria you have listed are really a mixture of stories and tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given your example story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a user I want to register and log in so that I can register on the application and start using cloud memory&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would break that down in to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a user I want to register so that I can gain access to and start using cloud memory&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a user I want to log in so that I can securely access my cloud memory account&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several of your acceptance criteria are also user stories. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a user I want to be able to change my password so that my account is more secure&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a user I want to be able to register using Facebook so that I can quickly and conveniently register without typing in all my details again&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Acceptance Criteria&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acceptance criteria are &lt;em&gt;story specific&lt;/em&gt; requirements that must be met for the story to be completed. They are a technique for adding &lt;em&gt;functional&lt;/em&gt; detail to user stories. Acceptance criteria are often added during backlog refinement or during the sprint planning meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples of acceptance criteria:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No password longer than 16 characters should be allowed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;VAT should be included in all figures&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These acceptance criteria add details to the user story and they also provide a convenient guide for testing the completeness of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Tasks&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a part of a user story, you might define some sub-tasks which are &lt;em&gt;related to implementation&lt;/em&gt;. For example, as a part of the registration user story the development team might add a sub-task:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Add a &amp;quot;Register&amp;quot; button that the users can click on&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Add in an HTTP redirect for unregistered users to the registration page&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tasks are used by the technical team to help them organize the work on the story. Typically tasks would be of no interest to non-technical people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Definition of done&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The definition of done is a list of things that need to be completed for &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; story to be considered done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The definition of done is agreed by the team prior to starting work. It covers what the team feels is necessary to consider any story done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples might be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regression testing completed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User documentation updated to reflect new story&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seen by and approved by the Product Owner&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Performance testing benchmark achieved&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Architecture updated&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Peer reviewed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-12-11T21:08:25.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17971" CreationDate="2016-06-07T19:52:53.597" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.en.it-processmaps.com/index.php/ITIL_Service_Operation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ITIL Service Operations&lt;/a&gt; might provide the background you need to support your view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On its &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.en.it-processmaps.com/index.php/ITIL_Roles#ITIL_roles_and_boards_-_Service_Operation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;roles&lt;/a&gt;, there's no reference to Project Manager per-se.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice, however, that most of the roles there are borderline with the 'common Project Management' role, such as the &lt;strong&gt;IT Operations Manager&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most important than define roles, is to understand that although a project may not need a manager, it might need management. If it's going to do by a &lt;em&gt;Project&lt;/em&gt; or a &lt;em&gt;Operation&lt;/em&gt; manager is a minor discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2016-06-07T19:52:53.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18430" CreationDate="2016-06-07T19:58:38.257" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;definition of done&lt;/strong&gt; is something that &lt;em&gt;all your stories&lt;/em&gt; should adhere to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;strong&gt;Acceptance Criteria&lt;/strong&gt; is &lt;em&gt;specific to the Story&lt;/em&gt; you'll be working at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2016-06-07T19:58:38.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18332" CreationDate="2016-06-07T21:51:25.970" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Doing&quot; and &quot;Done&quot; columns can be useful and might address the issue in the short term, but be cautious. You should be optimizing for end-to-end flow, not for &quot;maximum productivity&quot; of any particular column. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I mean is, completing more 'Spec' work and queuing it up for the 'Design' team isn't going to help you deliver completed features any faster. A story can't go to 'Implement' phase until 'Design' is done. If 'Design' needs 2 days for each story then they need 2 days. Stacking up work feels &quot;efficient&quot; but it isn't &quot;effective&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, look at ways to relieve the 'Design' bottleneck. Do you have anyone that can step in and help them? If this is an ongoing issue can you help them recruit or outsource to increase their productivity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23532" LastActivityDate="2016-06-07T21:51:25.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18245" CreationDate="2016-06-07T21:58:00.180" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I prefer more of a Kanban approach. Have you all agreed on the priorities? If you stack rank your features in priority order (e.g., A needs to be done before B, and G is way down the list) then the amount of time spent becomes less important. It doesn't really matter if A is going to take twice as long to complete as B if everyone agrees that it's the most important thing and should be done first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's better to have 1 feature 100% complete than 4 stories 25% complete (or even 80% complete). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23532" LastActivityDate="2016-06-07T21:58:00.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17767" CreationDate="2016-06-07T23:52:41.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just had the same problem but easily fixed. I had a mix of days and weeks in the Duration column.  Go to Options, Schedule - click on Duration - I changed the Duration from Weeks to Days then saved.  I still had a mix BUT I redid and changed duration to weeks and saved - All durations changed to weeks. Fixed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23704" LastActivityDate="2016-06-07T23:52:41.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18423" CreationDate="2016-06-08T20:45:23.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK I think you have a number of different issues here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1: How to assess the performance of a developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A very difficult problem which often comes up on this site. My view is you can only do this by comparing output with your other developers. But if they are a contractor, just fire them and get a new one. On the other hand even a low performing resource is a resource. So its really a value for money thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2: Are you asking your developers to do non development tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously you have only given a brief description. But in my experience developers do not like answering 'technical queries' instead try asking them to write 'solution recommendation documents' to written problems. ie &quot;How should we increase the speed of our website?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3: Should you (as an ex dev?) be expected to evaluate the code and/or train up your dev team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you are on stronger ground here. Even if you are a developer yourself experience in a particular area counts for a lot. An inexperienced dev might think a problem is easy and put in a quick solution; where a more experienced person would take much longer covering problems areas they have come across in the past and building a better solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this kind of task should be covered by a perm senior/lead developer, architect or tech director.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4: How do you make that argument to your boss?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well this is a workplace problem question rather than a project management one. My advice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't. At the end of the day you are employed to help your boss with whatever needs to be done. Have a look at the guys work and make a judgement call. Is the problem hard or is the Dev weak? The safest call career wise is probably to say the problem is hard and request more/better specialist developers. If you say the dev is weak and your boss thinks of you as a dev you might end up with the task!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2016-06-08T20:45:23.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18442" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-09T07:04:07.137" Score="3" ViewCount="832" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there an alternative to Scrum Alliance's CSM and Scrum Org's PSM for becoming a scrum master? I have been talking to a lot of people who have taken these courses and find the content of CSM and PSM very outdated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23698" LastEditorUserId="38380" LastEditDate="2020-03-05T10:03:39.930" LastActivityDate="2020-09-01T12:11:26.190" Title="Alternative to CSM and PSM for becoming a Scrum Master" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18443" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-09T07:58:21.210" Score="0" ViewCount="185" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an Outsourcing IT project we are are trying to estimate the relationship  between the governance cost and the project size in FTE. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if the governance cost of a 500 FTEs project is X the cost for a 1000 FTEs project won't be 2X. It will grow up but not in the same proportion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any benchmark or guidelines that describes this relationship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23713" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T17:54:49.203" Title="Governance cost as percentage of FTEs" Tags="&lt;cost-management&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;project-governance&gt;&lt;outsourcing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18445" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18447" CreationDate="2016-06-09T15:15:59.240" Score="4" ViewCount="478" Body="&lt;p&gt;How to handle points in the following scenario:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a story set to 4 points, because the team believes that the amount of work is 4 points in total. To be able to complete this story, two people with their special knowledge, needs to work together on that item. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not that the first person will do the first half, then the next person will do the second half, they will have to do all of the four points together, by pair programming for instance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems unfair to say that if both persons have 8 points each in a sprint, we can fit four 4 point stories in. Since both will be working together, only 2 four point stories will fit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to handle this? Should the points of the story be increased or should the peoples capacity be lowered somehow? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16955" LastActivityDate="2016-06-09T15:59:38.260" Title="How to set story points when two people work on the same item together?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18445" CreationDate="2016-06-09T15:50:58.370" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Story points reflect relative size and complexity of a story. That is the effort required to complete a story is the only measure to assign points to a story. If your PBI is complex enough that two people will have to work on it together than it should be assign more points compared to a similar sized PBI which can be finished by only one person. I don't think capacity should be artificially lowered for this as it will incorrectly impact your metrics such as team velocity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2016-06-09T15:50:58.370" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18445" CreationDate="2016-06-09T15:59:38.260" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, it's important to realize that Velocity is not on a per-person basis, but a measure of the team's capability to deliver work in a Sprint. Every Sprint, your team completes so many Story Points. You use this to determine how many items to bring into the next Sprint, based on history and considering level of effort by staff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each item in the Product Backlog has a number of Story Points that is estimated by the team. You shouldn't be estimating the size of an item in the Product Backlog based on how long it will take or how many people it will take, but by relative complexity. A User Story that requires two people with specialist knowledge, by definition, is more complex than one that doesn't. Therefore, it should be worth more points than a User Story that doesn't require any specialist knowledge or one that requires less specialist knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you begin planning on a team capacity level instead of an individual capacity level and consider complexity instead of effort and time, then I think your issues will start to resolve themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2016-06-09T15:59:38.260" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18365" CreationDate="2016-06-09T19:08:25.540" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main reason for story points and other abstract measuring systems is to prevent you from thinking in terms of time.  If you are going to associate them with time just get rid of story points altogether and go back to man hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By attempting to relate points to time you are subverting the whole system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can measure time vs points and figure out how they tend to equate and then use a burn down chart to figure out how many points you need to remove to make a delivery date, but that is supposed to be your only control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You cannot say things like &quot;we need to make this date with these features, and you cannot assign the points to the features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much of the original XP stuff was about fixing project management, not project development and the most important points like this one are the ones that have filtered into the offshoots like scrum.  Reading some of the original XP stuff can help get a handle on why some of these processes work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4597" LastActivityDate="2016-06-09T19:08:25.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18442" CreationDate="2016-06-10T08:50:03.130" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion both certificates are just that - certificates. They don't make you a Scrum Master. They get you started with the general ideas of agile and scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tricky part is the day to day work with a team as a Scrum Master. &#xA;Ideally you have some senior Scrum Masters or Agile Coaches to lead you and help with all the ideas and approaches. If that is not the case I suggest just to jump in the cold water. That way you can fail fast and learn a lot.&#xA;Sorry if this sounds whacky at best :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One side note to CSM: since you partake in a course you may want to look for great coaches to learn from. There you could also address first problems or questions that may have arisen from your own work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23732" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-06-10T11:08:46.087" LastActivityDate="2016-06-10T11:08:46.087" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18451" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-10T09:57:49.253" Score="2" ViewCount="205" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working at a custom software development company. The number of incoming custom projects has increased over the last few years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first problem is that not all customers are willing to pay us for the development of the requirements specification. Thus, we are losing money due to the estimation of some projects, which we reject.&#xA;The second problem is that projects are complex and do not have a lot of standard tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any tools helping to estimate a project with sketchy requirements?&#xA;It would be perfect to have automatic estimation, but speeding up the process for a human would be enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will be glad to hear any tips and ideas on this subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. I don’t like the idea of rejecting every other project by default :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPD: When I can affect the type of contract - T&amp;amp;M is simplest solution, of course. But this is rare case. Also, sometimes I have to take on &quot;difficult&quot; projects, to ensure that sufficient cash flow for paying bills, as well as for investment projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually requirements occupy a hundred pages, but are still sketchy and unclear. So I'm looking for ways to accelerate at least a primary estimation of the  requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22926" LastEditorUserId="22926" LastEditDate="2016-06-10T19:33:14.723" LastActivityDate="2016-10-28T11:03:40.350" Title="How to shift to the semi-automatic estimation of the projects?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18451" CreationDate="2016-06-10T11:16:42.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I worked with one consultancy that did some estimates based on risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They used a formula that would evaluate the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Type of customer (e.g. how collaborative they were, had we worked with them before, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Size of project (small, medium, large)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical complexity (low, medium, high)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and create an estimate based on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The estimates were not very accurate, but they were quick and cheap. The price charged to the customer was increased to account for the added uncertainty of using this approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A customer makes contact requesting some work to be done. The requirements are not well defined, so the technical team looks them over and estimates that it is a 'medium' sized project. They typically think of 'small' as under one month, 'medium' as 1-2 months and 'large' as over 2 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project involves no new technologies and is a repeat of similar work the agency has done before. They rate it as 'low' for technical complexity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After talking with the customer they find them to be quite defensive and very contractual (i.e. they insist on a deadline and full scope delivered). They rate the customer as 'challenging'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They apply this information to a spreadsheet using a simple weighted formula. This results in a project estimate of 40-60k. As the customer is 'challenging' they decide to go with the upper end of the range and quote 60k.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-06-14T10:51:37.037" LastActivityDate="2016-06-14T10:51:37.037" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18451" CreationDate="2016-06-10T11:33:48.197" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're solving the wrong problem.  If the scope is ambiguous and uncertain, then you need to pursue a type of contract consistent with that situation.  Do not enter into a contract when no one knows the scope where you share or take fully the cost risk.  Simply say no.  Enter into a T&amp;amp;M contract, where you can never lose money due to uncertain scope.  If your customer objects, walk away and let some other contractor lose money.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some reason, getting into a firm fixed price contract or cost plus contract is highly prevalent in the IT space where requirements seem always unknown.  You will never see this in other industries, such as construction.  Can you imagine hiring a builder to build you a home and all you tell them is it's going to be a home.  &quot;Where, how big, the style of it and materials will be decided later but please provide a fixed price now!&quot;  It'll never happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-06-10T11:33:48.197" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18423" CreationDate="2016-06-10T17:29:33.743" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Project Manager, your job is to get the project done. This project is one of your boss's goals and you are there to help your boss get his job done. If you have repeatedly explained to this subcontractor what he is supposed to do and how productive he needs to be, and it is not working out, then you need to replace the subcontractor, because he is not helping you get YOUR job done. If you have not yet explained this to the subcontractor, then that's the next step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="629" LastActivityDate="2016-06-10T17:29:33.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4440" CreationDate="2016-06-11T08:27:29.927" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile for infrastructure&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The triumph of Agile over traditional waterfall in software development is it's focus on product delivery. Being able to constantly get assurance and modified requests in its iteration process has proven to produce 'true-to-request' features in end products. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet in infrastructure the hurdle is its value-chain. It's more long-tail than traditional SDLC in that it has setup requirements (value-chain) to facilitate deliverables. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither is it wholly credible to argue agile for infrastructure based mainly on Cloud computing. As cloud computing is essentially just migration - the tail end of most infrastructure project.  To properly consider agile for infrastructure is not just a change of mindset but a need to integrate forward scheduling, so that the window of 'release' or delivery should be planned &amp;amp; iterated in phases.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In another logical approach if agile can work in construction then it should be able to apply in traditional infrastructure (yes the bare metal)  set-up of a data center. Ideally, each phasing is a program of relating deliverables, think WBS (ie Servers: Conception through design - procurement - construction - construction phasing), the iteration is based on scheduling time frames &amp;amp; collaborative working on all the moving parts then agile can work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kaban is the most favored as its open-ended. I, in summary, would consider the Wagile (Waterfall &amp;amp; Agile) framework with Kaban equally suitable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23743" LastActivityDate="2016-06-11T08:27:29.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18451" CreationDate="2016-06-11T08:40:53.153" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have worked with four different models&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fixed price&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time and Materials&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time and Materials within a number of days worked range&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Small chargeable scoping exercise, followed by a fixed price&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with &lt;strong&gt;Fixed Price&lt;/strong&gt;, especially in your situation, is that you need to understand the problem well, otherwise you will have to add lots of contingency. Then you become uncompetitive. With fixed price, one of the other party is the loser and we have rarely had a good experience with it, unless it is for very small pieces of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Time and Materials&lt;/strong&gt; on the other hand, from a customer perspective is like writing an blank cheque.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Time and Materials within a number of days worked range&lt;/strong&gt; is similar to fixed price, but the benefit to the supplier is that you can build some contingency into the price, but not necessarily make it uncompetitive and the customer has the benefit of knowing a range of days, so it is gives them the benefit of that safety net. The basis of the range of days, is still upon experience of similar projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Small chargeable scoping exercise, followed by a fixed price&lt;/strong&gt; works the best, especially if the result of the scoping exercise is a document that can be given to the client, that they can choose to go to other companies for quote. Then giving a fixed price quote on the back of that is much lower risk for you and gives the client the flexibility of having worked with you a little for scoping so they will know if they like you and your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our experience options 3 and 4 are the overall best for both parties, and in practice option 3 is the one most clients would prefer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some projects that because they are so ill defined (this we find especially with tenders), that we cannot quote sensibly and so give a very high quote that includes a safety margin, expecting not to win. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember you don't want to win all projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22766" LastEditorUserId="22766" LastEditDate="2016-06-14T10:42:50.390" LastActivityDate="2016-06-14T10:42:50.390" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18458" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-12T14:03:42.503" Score="-6" ViewCount="71" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the definitions, and examples of to show the differences between:&#xA;Vision,&#xA;Business outcome,&#xA;Goal,&#xA;Objective,&#xA;Requirement,&#xA;Scope,&#xA;Product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23754" LastActivityDate="2016-06-13T11:32:23.963" Title="PM project definitions" Tags="&lt;definition&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-06-13T18:31:19.507" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18460" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-13T07:53:58.567" Score="0" ViewCount="1196" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you share some of your tips and tricks on how to pull out the information from stakeholders in order to write good CSF? What questions do you ask to get to the heart of the project? Can you provide some templates for CSF?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21640" LastActivityDate="2017-04-30T18:00:16.477" Title="How to write a good Critical Success Factor?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;&lt;initiation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18442" CreationDate="2016-06-13T11:03:54.683" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Certificates are there to show you are familiar with the basics, tools, techniques, and the overall knowledge of that particular field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you read and experience more in Scrum or any other Agile environment, you will realise that &quot;Scrum (Agile) is difficult to implement and execute&quot; but it's very easy to learn and to teach the others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real value comes from practical experience, not from a particular certificate or a degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PSM and CSM are similar in nature. In fact, there is another alternative; ScrumBok by PMStudy.  But you should consider the cost, effort, and difficulty to get the certificate as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For CSM you need to pay more and spend the valuable time to attend the mandatory training. On the other hand, to get PSM, you can just do self-study then buy exam voucher and boom; get certified :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be better if you invest your time and learning other Agile frameworks/methodologies, such as DSDM, FDD, XP, and TDD, as well. Again, I re-emphasize that the Practical Experience is the key.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers, &#xA;Rasoul Baghban, PMP&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23757" LastEditorUserId="23757" LastEditDate="2016-06-13T11:17:51.270" LastActivityDate="2016-06-13T11:17:51.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18458" CreationDate="2016-06-13T11:32:23.963" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One by one&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Vision&lt;/strong&gt;: in simple words, a dream or a big picture of future. For example You are doing this job to diminish poverty in the world. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Objectives&lt;/strong&gt;: To diminish the poverty, you have to set reachable objectives. Usually using KISS &amp;amp; SMART&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Business Outcome&lt;/strong&gt;: You have to perform many projects in order to achieve your Objectives. What will you get from Project A, B, and C? these project Outcomes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Goal&lt;/strong&gt;: sets of small, reachable, and measurable objectives withing your programs, projects, or daily tasks. Total sums of Goals could be Objectives. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Requirement&lt;/strong&gt;: Diminishing Poverty in the world needs resources (Money, Support, Labour, Time). In other words, the requirement is all you need to make that objective reachable. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scope&lt;/strong&gt;: you have to do a lot of works and not to do some works to achieve your goals, and ultimately your objectives. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product&lt;/strong&gt;: after all these efforts, you created a box. A box can hand over to poor people and boom; they will be rich. That box is product :)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you can figure out the dependency and the interrelationship of them yourself :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;cheers, &#xA;Rasoul Baghban, PMP&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23757" LastActivityDate="2016-06-13T11:32:23.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18460" CreationDate="2016-06-13T23:44:07.613" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Critical success factors (CSFs) are, as the name implies, a set of conditions that must be met or a set of things that must be done to be successful. Thus, to define good CSFs, we first need to understand the goal we're trying to achieve. After that, we can define a set of things that will cause the goal to be achieved. There is a possibilty of a cause and effect relationship between these causes, so we need to be careful and only identify the direct causes and leave out the indirect ones. Once we've finished identifying all the direct causes for a goal to be achieved, we can use them as our CSFs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the key point in defining good CSFs is to understand the goal of the project. To do this, we need to find the key stakeholders. These are the people who really understand what the expected result of the project. In this sense, the project owner is the first person we need to go to. Asking for an overview of the purpose of the project and how that relates to the organization's goal might give us a good start at understanding the goal of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the identification of the causes, I can't share much. There are times when Fishbone diagram is sufficient, but there are times when a more specific approach is worth using. For example, in a typical software development project, I put the goal on top of a pyramid and work my way down by defining the features required, then the information required to support those features, then data required to support those information, and in the end, the things we need to do to provide those data. In this case, I define the CSFs based on the information required (not the features).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above is purely based on my experience. It is far from being comprehensive, but hopefully stil useful in answering this question. One thing to remember that defining CSFs is a bit tedious, so you definitely should consider something practical to do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16643" LastActivityDate="2016-06-13T23:44:07.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18465" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-14T00:33:54.730" Score="3" ViewCount="1003" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working with TFS and I set the story points for all the user stories using the Fibonacci series and set the velocity of the team. TFS has a field called ´Remaining work´ for the sub-task, it is a value in hours. Is recommended working with this field or how can I use it because the philosophy of Scrum is not working with exactly hours, or am I wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23763" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-06-23T11:21:51.470" LastActivityDate="2016-06-23T11:21:51.470" Title="Scrum - Is a good practice to set the remaining work of a Sub-task?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18465" CreationDate="2016-06-14T00:50:30.650" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using the &quot;remaining work&quot; field is not a problem as long as you don't mix it with story points. IMO, both are not compatible to one another. Nevertheless, there's still a possibility of using both at the same time for different purposes, e.g. the story points for velocity and the &quot;remaining work&quot; for reporting. Just remember that you might be adding a bit of complexity (and perhaps, confusion) to the team when you're using both measurements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: I personally will stick to story points when I'm not required to do time tracking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16643" LastEditorUserId="16643" LastEditDate="2016-06-15T21:31:33.427" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T21:31:33.427" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18467" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-14T04:33:30.697" Score="3" ViewCount="226" Body="&lt;p&gt;My product have been going for almost three years without any product requirement or documentation at all. And at this moment things are getting out of hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example when I hire new people, it takes a lot of energy and time to teach them because the knowledge is centralized into few key people. And when we want to develop or improve new feature we don't have any idea what are the KPIs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore I'm planning to document all of my products. I do have some key points in my mind that I want to document, such as the goal of the product, the KPI, the user flow. But I don't have any idea how other organization are doing it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How should I start? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What other important things I should document aside from points I mentioned above?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there commonly used document template for this?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are commonly used tools for this?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks a lot!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23766" LastActivityDate="2016-06-14T06:34:30.847" Title="How to document existing products and their development?" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18467" CreationDate="2016-06-14T06:34:30.847" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the sake of being straight forward, here goes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Start now, start small.&lt;/strong&gt; Goal, KPIs, and user flow should be enough to get you started. Document those things appropriately before going any further.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Add some technical things&lt;/strong&gt; like data source, third party tools, or other things that might be beneficial when you're products are going through further development.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you &lt;strong&gt;go with a wiki approach&lt;/strong&gt;. Thus, you can focus more on the content of your documentation instead of the format of your documentation. As I said before: start now, start small.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Wiki tools&lt;/strong&gt; are definitely my recommendation for you. There are a lot of wiki tools out there for us to use. Pick one and start documenting.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16643" LastActivityDate="2016-06-14T06:34:30.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18465" CreationDate="2016-06-14T08:46:28.297" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some teams, especially those that are new to Scrum, use a combination of story points and task hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story points set the capacity of the sprint, but the task hours allow the team to do several things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensures no individual in the team is overloaded in the coming sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensures that no task is to big (e.g. some teams set a maximum limit of 1 day for tasks)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gives a forum for the team to discuss each task in detail&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gives a sanity check on the story point capacity (e.g. once the task estimates are done, does the story points allocated to the sprint still make sense?)&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all teams will find task hours useful. A lot depends on the circumstances of your organisation and how much experience with Scrum the team has. Estimating in both story points and task hours represents waste and the only reason the team should do it is if they get some obvious value from this approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-06-14T08:46:28.297" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18442" CreationDate="2016-06-14T11:44:27.220" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As mentioned by others, they are just certificates - they demonstrate to employers/bosses that you have applied yourself to learn the basics of the framework. That is not necessarily a bad thing, some people like seeing a PM with certs, some companies require you to have a &quot;higher level&quot; PM cert.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They may feel dry and &quot;out dated&quot; because they adhere to the framework, it is the whole &quot;do not reinvent to wheel&quot; dogma, it is a tried and true framework that does not need any modernization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is not a be all end all, practical &quot;on the job&quot; experience will get you much further than attending the course and taking a test. Not every company does purely Scrum either, as it is just a framework, you will encounter hybridization of different methodologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I had to choose between the two I would go for PSM, only for the sake of it being self-paced rather than taking a few days off to attend an expensive course. My company hires a lot of PMs, most of us (to include myself) do not have a cert at all, our CDO has his PSM and that is it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps, good luck whichever path you decide to go down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23735" LastActivityDate="2016-06-14T11:44:27.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18472" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-14T11:56:34.407" Score="3" ViewCount="620" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't seem to find them accurate at all for forecasting. They are probably worse than Gantt in some ways, since Gantt gives someone a high level idea of what we aim to achieve and by when.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every time I have used them, they give a high level forecast which is not a reflection of what actually happens, given that velocity fluctuates. Since velocity fluctuates, what is the point of using them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2016-06-15T09:17:33.427" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T10:33:41.747" Title="What's the point of a release burndown chart?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18472" CreationDate="2016-06-14T12:11:45.153" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When your velocity is too unstable, you can't make any solid predictions. Even with a solid velocity a lot depends on the level of detail on your backlog, the quality of the estimates and the level of refinement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Forecasting at the Product Backlog Item Level for more than a few sprints is wrought with issues. If it isn't the quality of the estimates and the level of refinement, it's that priorities will still change, you should expect feedback on the upcoming sprints and the understanding of the product/problem may change significantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Release Burndown is nice when you're still thinking in releases and a lot of the practices are still in place. Instead, you may want to look at ways of estimating at a higher level than the Product Backlog Items, use Features or Epics and establish their own relative estimates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7393" LastActivityDate="2016-06-14T12:11:45.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18474" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18502" CreationDate="2016-06-14T12:32:33.183" Score="2" ViewCount="206" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say, I am given a list of 5 developers, and I have to choose 3 of them for my project. What will be the best way to do so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, I just give them a basic module from the current project and assess the code and the time taken. Is there a better way that does not require 2-3 days of work from all the developers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23395" LastActivityDate="2016-06-16T11:29:39.060" Title="How to assess technical knowledge of the team?" Tags="&lt;technical-leader&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18472" CreationDate="2016-06-14T12:54:53.667" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Gantt charts are good to depict the dependency and relationship between the tasks and work packages. We can get the most from PERT, when combining numbers with Gantt charts, which is also known as Critical Path Method. CPM and PERT are a foundation of predictive project management (Waterfall/Traditional). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Burndown chart, as a simple tool, provides the Product Owner, and the Development Team, an indicator to predict the completion date. It is also a very simple baseline for measurement of the project and sprint progress. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The burndown chart is useful to increase the transparency among the DevTeam. Everybody understands what the current situation is. Also, Product Owner could use it to communicate with stakeholders and customer. To get more time or to reprioritise the Product Backlog to maximise the value of the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23757" LastActivityDate="2016-06-14T12:54:53.667" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18474" CreationDate="2016-06-14T13:55:24.850" Score="3" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Check their CVs and look for experience and other talents that will add value to the team. Also, keep in mind which skill sets are key to your project&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Get feedback from previous project managers and tech leads because mastery in technical subjects not always translates to a good team member. Important to check timely delivery and if possible, code quality/defect rate&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Check if they have worked together before  and ask each one (if possible) out of 5 developers who would they pick to form the &quot;A&quot; team &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Remember that the project is good as the TEAM that work on it, not the individual. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Follow your instincts&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20923" LastActivityDate="2016-06-14T13:55:24.850" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18443" CreationDate="2016-06-14T14:08:28.037" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think so as it depends on the composition of your FTEs. If you have 500FTEs of developers, you may need different governance than 500FTEs composed of 300FTEs of developers, 200FTEs of Testers and 100FTEs of Business Analysts and Architects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you should also acknowledge that the level of governance may vary based on the phase of your project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I never saw any formula or guideline, but talking about parametric estimation, you should define your parameters based on your FTE composition and apply some sort of sanity check to assess if the level of governance is appropriate to your project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good practice is to document these parameters and refine it over the time based on lessons learned from previous projects&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20923" LastActivityDate="2016-06-14T14:08:28.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18472" CreationDate="2016-06-14T17:34:53.350" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best use I can see for release burndown charts are on projects with calendar based deadlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples might be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product development for an Olympic Games&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A charity running a Christmas campaign&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A betting company releasing products leading up to a big race event&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt; &#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this kind of situation a release burndown can help to show &lt;em&gt;what will not be ready in time&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The release burndown would be continually updated with the latest velocity and any backlog changes. You could imagine then the business users realising that some backlog items are not going to make it and so altering their plans to adjust to this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-06-14T17:34:53.350" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18474" CreationDate="2016-06-15T09:19:38.337" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're going to base it on code, then why not take code they've written already? That would save the 3 days. ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming your company (like all companies) hires &lt;em&gt;only the best people&lt;/em&gt;, the quickest would be to have the team decide. Put them all in a room, outline the project (and skills needed and milestones/deadlines) and tell them you want a team of 3. Walk out and give them 15 minutes to pick a team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way you won't spend any time on team-politics. They chose to work with each other, so they won't complain about having to deal with each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also agreed to the deadlines, so they hopefully feel a sense of responsibility to meet them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're really paranoid, you could meet privately with each member of the new team, and check that they really want to work with the other 2 on this project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T09:19:38.337" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18472" CreationDate="2016-06-15T10:05:32.943" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Burndown charts are only useful if you know exactly what you need to build up front. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even on the scale of two weeks, it's nearly impossible to break things down so fine grained up front that each and every task is accounted for &lt;em&gt;before you start building it&lt;/em&gt;. Even if your team &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; achieve this level of detailed planning up front, before the sprint begins, &lt;em&gt;should they&lt;/em&gt;? Is the value they provide worth the the huge amount of effort it takes to make an accurate burndown chart? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine a project where your PO &lt;em&gt;literally doesn't know&lt;/em&gt; what they ultimately need. All they have is a vision. How could you estimate well enough to provide an accurate burndown?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine a project where your team has never worked with the technology that they'll need to work with. How could they possibly estimate well enough to provide an accurate burndown?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't provide these examples of when burndown charts &lt;em&gt;just don't work&lt;/em&gt; because I'm anti-burndowns or anything. They can be useful if you have a stable backlog and a lot of known knowns and very few unknown unknowns. I just wanted to illustrate that you may be totally justified in your frustration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Burn-ups and Cumulative flow charts are often used in lieu of burndowns. They might be worth trying for your team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T10:05:32.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18472" CreationDate="2016-06-15T10:33:41.747" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;All forecasting, no matter the tool, are marginal at best in terms of accuracy.  If you are forecasting definitively, a straight line of performance or a single value, then your forecasting will always suffer from severe low accuracy.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All work, all activity, are probabilistic.  You need to forecast in a probabilistic way, a way that enables you to derive a range of future results with some known probability across that range.  This holds true whether you're doing a burn down chart, an S curve analysis, earned value, or any type of predictive analytics.  You are looking for a high degree of precision in your estimation while accuracy remains marginal at best.  So understand the difference between precision and accuracy or reliability and validity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, when dealing with stakeholders, you cannot report a range of results.  They expect a definitive value.  But this does not stop you from forecasting probable results and then reporting where your analysis suggests is most likely.  When you understand that range, you understand the risk above and below the definitive value you reported.  If your final result falls within the probabilistic range you identified, your forecasting capability is top notch and that is all we have at our disposal with which to work at our current level of technology and smarts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T10:33:41.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18484" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-15T10:44:15.440" Score="8" ViewCount="1149" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am the scrum master, proxy product owner here - what is the best way to deal with an impatient stakeholder? At first I was able to tolerate it, but it is becoming stressful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give a few examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The team have committed to delivering work based on a product roadmap that the Product Owner and I have agreed on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have then planned the resources to deliver work based on that roadmap by organising my upcoming sprints accordingly. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We've used a Gaant chart in this case, just to visualise upcoming sprints - although this is not set in stone and the PO is aware.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team have delivered everything requested often ahead of schedule.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As sprints are undertaken, and work has been delivered based on what has been agreed, I have then been faced the following issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is difficult to please him with the quantity of work delivered on a weekly bases. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is irrespective on the amount of work that has been delivered, he keeps wanting more and more to the point that I keep having slightly heated conversations with him, telling him that without the team working unpaid overtime (which they have told me that they do not want to do), it is not possible to deliver 60 hours work in a 40 hour week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The stress of him having a go at me is starting to affect me, since I often find it hard to relax at work, not knowing if what we have done on a weekly bases is good enough.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have members of staff in the scrum team working their butts off, to the point one developer right now is coming into work sick, so that he can help the rest of the scrum team meet their sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Product owner seems to take no interest in learning low level of agile. I often break high level functionality into very small pieces i.e. user stories so that it is manageable for the team. This has created some tension with the PO, since he thinks stories should not be broken into slices but be one story that contains sub features.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to give one example, the team were asked to implement a report. The report has a search feature, a table which contains data and a filter to view report by date range.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would break that one feature down into 3:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story 1: Table &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;Story 2: Search&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;Story 3: filter&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since they are all features in themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have told him that it is important that features are properly broken down otherwise I can't make forecasts on when they will be delivered and at what quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PO tells me in private that I am doing a good job despite his bitching.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, after introducing my project management approach, the product is much better than what he had before since my team rewrote the old product from it being badly written - previously he was managing that. He knows this and has acknowledged this, but the stress and constant bitching is getting to me. How do you guys handle this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-12-14T14:03:37.860" LastActivityDate="2016-12-14T14:03:37.860" Title="How to deal with an impatient stakeholder?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;&lt;conflicts&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12207" CreationDate="2016-06-15T11:44:03.663" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion if the boss is requiring this feature this strongly it is because it's something he really needs for the business, and ultimately that's what pays everyone's salary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SCRUM is a great set of tools that helps being more productive, but sometimes its strict rules don't apply very well to the real world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course the boss needs to understand better how scrum works and try to adapt to it. It's like your boss is trying to drive a car but refuses to use the steering wheel, the car might get somewhere, but hardly where he means to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These considerations though should have been tackled earlier, now you are facing a situation that looks like an emergency. If your boat is sinking it might not be sufficient to plan closing the hole during the next sprint, even though closing holes in the hull might not have been agreed in the sprint planning. Staying afloat gets priority on any procedure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would advise to comply with the request on a 'best effort' basis, try to push back the proper specking of the story so that you at least can work on it knowing what's required from you. Basically try to adopt scrum as much as you can, but remembering that this is an emergency situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also note everything down and at the next sprint review discuss it with the team, try to get proposals on how to tackle future similar situations, and then you might need to have a chat with the boss, to explain him the consequences of his request, and you will be in a position to discuss effective proposals (from the team) and because they won't be coming from you alone, but from the entire team, the boss will not be able to discard thing easily. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You, the team and the boss are on the same boat, everyone's actions have consequences, you all have the same goal, but different visibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23789" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T11:44:03.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18484" CreationDate="2016-06-15T12:16:08.377" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes you have to say, &quot;Unless my boss tells me to do it, I'm not doing it.&quot; And the PO is not your boss. Your job is to be a servant-leader to both the devs and PO, not just a servant to the PO and leader to the devs. You need to stand up for your team, too, even if that occasionally means saying in a Captain Picard voice, &lt;em&gt;&quot;The line has to be drawn heah!&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point, unfortunately, you may have set too much precedent for the PO to take you seriously about changing the process or his expectations, so I would escalate to management (having someone come in to work sick is dangerous to both the employee and the rest of the team, and can get your employer in legal trouble) and explain the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the PO is not going to adjust his expectations regardless of who talks to him about it, then scrum is not the right way to manage this project and you should talk to your boss about changing to a different style that is not as adversarial to the PO's (arguably unreasonable) attitude. A waterfall approach could provide the rigidity you need to keep the customer in check; just make sure you understand the restraints it will place on your team as well, and how it will affect quality and delivery speed of the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13325" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T12:16:08.377" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18484" CreationDate="2016-06-15T15:04:22.957" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly, this sounds like the Product Owner is a typical type-A personality that has learned to get better results from relentlessly pushing his teams to always do more and better. (Think Elon Musk.) There's nothing inherently wrong with this because it's his style. As the Project Manager, it's your job to bridge communications between the Product Owner and the Dev Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it can be more stress to you (and hopefully not), my recommended approach is to insulate the dev team from the CEO/PO. This way you calmly listen, discuss, and negotiate with the PO without stressing the dev team. Then you can &quot;translate&quot; the PO's needs and directions to the dev team and remove the stressful/pushing aspects of the PO's directions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much of &quot;good agile&quot; practices call for the PO to have access to the dev team for immediate feedback on their work and the functionality in development. But, a good PM needs to evaluate and balance the level of interaction with the PO to the disruption it can cause. A PM's job is often little more than being a communicator/bridge/translator/explainer between the dev team and the POs. And a significant part of the PM's job is to manage the environment for the dev team as well as the environment the &quot;project&quot; has with the PO. Manage to the strengths of both sides. (And in this case, since the PO is the CEO, you definitely have to manage &quot;up&quot;!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going toe-to-toe with the PO will never work, especially since it's his company. So manage, insulate, communicate, translate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21791" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T15:04:22.957" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18484" CreationDate="2016-06-15T15:32:33.840" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The proxy Product Owner role is very difficult to do well. Combine being a proxy Product Owner with being a Scrum Master and it is hard to see how it will ever work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum we make a pact. The Product Owner focuses on generating requirements and prioritising them. The development team focuses on delivery and on improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master role is there to make sure this all works smoothly. Typically this means removing impediments and coaching both the development team and the Product Owner to ensure they are doing Scrum properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's be clear here. There is nothing in the Scrum Master role that says you tell the team to work harder. In fact the opposite is true. The Scrum Master usually coaches the team to work at a sustainable pace as overloading is a common impediment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest you sit with the CEO and discuss what your role is and whether as an organisation they are committed to using Scrum. If they do want to do Scrum then your role needs to change so that there is no conflict of interest (combining proxy Product Owner with Scrum Master). Your CEO also needs to stop using you as a manager for the development team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T15:32:33.840" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18489" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-15T18:03:04.933" Score="1" ViewCount="2727" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have 6 user stories for a sprint of 14 days. I have the detailed description in the stories for what the team needs to develop, and the team is new to scrum. (this would be their 2nd sprint). The only thing I haven't done so far is to assign an estimate to the stories, using a systematic approach. (like a point system). I want to start with Agile planning poker approach, but how do I assign a number of days after the developer assigns a size (number, color etc) to a story? My point is why do we need to have a point system if we are eventually going to estimate in terms of days?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23265" LastActivityDate="2016-06-17T01:03:32.293" Title="How to estimate times during Sprint Planning?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18489" CreationDate="2016-06-15T22:03:40.180" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you're doing it wrong. You shouldn't bother assigning the number of days to the story. Your team has 14 days to work on the stories. So estimating points to stories is your way to decide how much work can be completed during those 14 days. If the total points for a single sprint is too big or too small (you know this by reflecting to past sprints), then adjustments to the amount of stories might be required so that you can deliver what you &quot;promised&quot; in 14 days. I believe that's the way to go in implementing Scrum. Assigning number of days for stories based on their size is a step not required; it's not even useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: If you need to do time tracking, that's another story. Try reading this Q&amp;amp;A for a start: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/18465/scrum-is-a-good-practice-to-set-the-remaining-work-of-a-sub-task&quot;&gt;Scrum - Is a good practice to set the remaining work of a Sub-task?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16643" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T22:03:40.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18491" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-15T22:37:58.343" Score="2" ViewCount="443" Body="&lt;p&gt;Other than than code reviews by another developer and by trusting your developers won't do anything nefarious or stupid, is there any way to ensure that when you release a build to production or even QA that it doesn't include any extra code that's not part of the assigned requirement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21062" LastActivityDate="2016-08-18T13:13:41.667" Title="How to ensure developers don't sneak in code not part of requirements?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18465" CreationDate="2016-06-15T23:16:48.080" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is a good practice to set the remaining work of a Sub-task?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;good practice&lt;/em&gt; is something beneficial for you / your team. Most of the answers here will be focused on personal experiences rather than a canonical answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having that said, is important to remember one of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Principles behind the Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount  of work not done--is&#xA;  essential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if your team needs and will benefit on tracking hours and have remainings at subtask level, then go for it. But &lt;em&gt;avoid doing anything with your team&lt;/em&gt; because it &lt;em&gt;works for another team&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2016-06-15T23:16:48.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18493" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-16T02:04:49.817" Score="1" ViewCount="7636" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Microsoft Project 2013, when I enter a start day of 16/6/2016 and end date of 16/6/2016,  the default duration is 0.88 days. When I go into change working time it shows 8 hours per day. Problem is, when I enter a task as 1 day, it creates a start date of say 16 June and finish 17 June when it should start and end on the same day. Anyone know how to fix so that when I enter the same start and end date, the duration is 1 day? Thanks :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23799" LastActivityDate="2019-05-23T17:31:19.810" Title="Changing default time from 0.88 days to 1 day" Tags="&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18491" CreationDate="2016-06-16T06:44:18.387" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a lot you can do that ensures that the code does what it's supposed to do, but aside from trusting the people developing it (including their reviewers) there is basically no way to make sure it does not do &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it comes down to that trust in any other job, too. At some level, you need to trust the people. If you cannot, get others that you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; trust. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2016-06-16T06:44:18.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18496" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-16T08:01:47.687" Score="2" ViewCount="3478" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like a JQL query to find all issues in a project which are not linked to anything else (links = empty). Using Jira 6.4.12. As far as I can see this isn't possible. Tell me I'm missing something and it's do'able?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Googling says it's possible with plug-ins - but that's probably a non-starter this end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23208" LastActivityDate="2017-02-23T22:58:49.687" Title="Jira query to find issues without links" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18493" CreationDate="2016-06-16T08:52:02.393" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a classic mismatch between the default &quot;Hours in a working day&quot;, which you probably have left at the default of 8, and actual working hours which you have probably set in your calendar to be 7. So when you tell it to schedule a 1 day task it makes it 8 hours long- If the working day is only 7 hours then the task spills over into the next day. It is important in MS-Project to align the working hours per day setting with the actual hours worked in the calendar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Resolution&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agree the length of the working day. It sounds like you are using 7 hours but obviously it can be anything&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure the working hours you are setting up in your calendars add to the same number you arrived at in step 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set the default working time to match the same number hours per day in the settings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will solve the problem going forwards, but it is common at this point to have many existing task with fractional day durations or overspilling. So finally you need to go through the durations of all erroneous tasks, resetting them to the correct duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next time you create a new project, remember to go through steps 1-3 &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; adding any tasks and all will be well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2016-06-16T08:52:02.393" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18489" CreationDate="2016-06-16T10:47:37.323" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea of story points is that allow you to &lt;em&gt;measure&lt;/em&gt; how much you typically do in a sprint. Then you use this measurement to determine the capacity of future sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say you are about to start a sprint. Your team has a choice between two ways of estimating how much work will go in the sprint:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Time based estimating&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team looks at each story and works out how long they think it will take to complete. They also calculate how much time is available in the sprint. They add stories to the sprint until the sum of the estimates on the stories added equals the time they believe is available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Story points estimating&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team estimates stories using relative sizing. They could use small/medium/large or they might use the Fibonacci sequence numbers (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13). The actual values used are not important. What is important is that stories requiring a similar amount of effort have similar estimates. e.g. two stories estimated at 5 points will take roughly the same amount of work to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the team just gets on with doing some work. But the clever bit is they measure how much they get done in a sprint. They then use this measurement to determine their capacity for future sprints. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say the team works for a sprint and completes 20 story points. There is a good chance that in the next sprint they will also do around 20 story points (as long as their &lt;em&gt;sizing&lt;/em&gt; is consistent).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice how time is never mentioned. It is simply relative sizing and measuring how much gets done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-06-16T10:47:37.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18442" CreationDate="2016-06-16T10:56:55.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the key question is what all options exist as a alternative to CSM and PSM. So the answer is there are 3 options that do exist&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.simplilearn.com/agile-and-scrum/agile-scrum-master-certification-training?&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Scrum Master certification (ASM)&lt;/a&gt; by EXIN is a new take on Scrum master training that looks at exploring the modern day scrum team challenges including geographically dispersed teams' management. The training is provided by Certified Agile Coaches with years of Industry implementation level experience. This is also the only Scrum Master training course that can be taken Online through an Instructor led live training. For both PSM as well as CSM it’s delivered by CSTs or PSTs in physical workshops alone, something that is quickly losing relevance in a world that is evolving at a rapid pace. Additionally there is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110128064452/http://agilescout.com/denounce-your-csm/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;growing dissonance around the CSM&lt;/a&gt; and Scrum Alliance in general by the thought leaders in the domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;PMI-ACP: it’s a holistic Agile training and thus covers a wider scope but lacks that sharp focus that some scrum centric teams may desire, nor does it train you to be a scrum master. This training is available with only some of the training providers that offer PMI certification training courses as the course is really wide and a little niche. But worth a shot as it cover XP, TDD, SCRUM etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;SaFe: Scaled Agile Framework looks at implementing agile over a wide scale and geo depending on business requirement. This again is a new certification compared to CSM or ASM&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For all the above the feedbacks on training are quite good specially on the learning outcomes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23805" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-08-03T12:51:04.833" LastActivityDate="2020-08-03T12:51:04.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18474" CreationDate="2016-06-16T11:29:39.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;So as I understand, you would not like to invest 2-3 days in assessing their skills (of course the best method is the code writing efficiency) to make selections?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel one of the most important skills for a programming guy is the ability to debug programs. Better the debugging skills, better the efficiency of the programmer. I have always assessed the skills of a developer that way. So, get some programs (of the platform your team is working on) with some issues and ask each one of them to debug and find the reasons. This should not take more than 4 hrs and will provide you an answer, which will give you a good assessment of their programming skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another remote option is to make the assessment based on the analytical ability. It may not be directly linked but can be a good way of judging their ability to be a good programmer. There are plenty of analytical ability tests available on the internet but be sure to choose questions, which requires the programmers to use their analytical skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23790" LastActivityDate="2016-06-16T11:29:39.060" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18491" CreationDate="2016-06-16T12:29:21.333" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using a Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) or Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) approach means that the code is self documenting. So introducing functionality beyond the original requirements would be obvious to anyone who paid attention to the code base.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What constitutes 'extra code' is a much more difficult question. It is quite possible that code is added:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To indirectly support the requirements (e.g. helper classes)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To refactor and improve the quality of the code base&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To ensure the expansability of the code&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To deal with non-functional requirements (performance, security, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only somebody who is deeply engaged with the development team is likely to understand the significance of all the code being added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-06-17T07:16:05.160" LastActivityDate="2016-06-17T07:16:05.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18505" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-16T17:07:22.843" Score="7" ViewCount="1161" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am planning my Master thesis through Microsoft Project. Since some tasks can be exhausting (e.g. writing), I would like to distribute some selected tasks over many days. For example, I am estimating that working on a section of the thesis would take 9 hours, but I would like to distribute the 9 hours over 3 days (3 hours/day).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example of my setup for a given task is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unit type: Fixed Duration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Duration: 3 days&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hours: 9 hours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, my issue is with the following task. Here is a screen capture:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QuXew.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QuXew.png&quot; alt=&quot;Example of the bug&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you may see, the task number 6, which has a work duration of 1h, is automatically setup the next working day. However, it is weird since I obviously have the time to do this task right after its predecessors, the same day its finish (my working hours is 9 to 1h30PM, then having 4.5 hours per day available).&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/13V35.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/13V35.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All allocation is done automatically using leveling. I tried to reset the start and finish date (since Project consider task 5 to finish at the &quot;end&quot; of the day), but I still have the issue. Both working time and Option--&gt;Schedule--&gt;Hours per day are set up at 4.5 hours per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any idea why Project refuse to behave nicely!? Is there another way to better set up my task for a better hours distribution over days?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for your help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maxime&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23811" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-14T09:44:33.337" LastActivityDate="2019-01-14T09:44:33.337" Title="MS Project - Span a task over many days AND allow successor to start right after" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18489" CreationDate="2016-06-17T01:03:32.293" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You'll be hard pressed to actually estimate how many stories you can do in the 2nd sprint. Particularly with a new team. Use it as an opportunity to practice point estimation and then use the the number of points completed (&lt;em&gt;deployed to production&lt;/em&gt;) to determine how many points to pull into the 3rd sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the thing though... A single sprint's worth of data is practically worthless. A single data point just isn't enough to accurately forecast. They'll also be wrong about how big stories are.  They won't agree about how big stories are. Problems will happen, expect it and don't knee jerk when they fail to finish as many points in the 3rd, or when they finish twice as many in the 4th. It's going to take time for a new team to find the sweet spot and their rhythm, but they will... eventually. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For perspective, it took my team a dozen iterations to achieve a stable,  predictable, &lt;em&gt;forecastable&lt;/em&gt; capacity. That's &lt;em&gt;six months&lt;/em&gt;. Don't expect miracles. Just record the data, reflect, and adapt accordingly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastActivityDate="2016-06-17T01:03:32.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18507" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-17T04:40:21.460" Score="3" ViewCount="43980" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have 4 years of work experience as Network consultant. I have worked in a team and also led a team of 3. However, I have never worked as a Project Manager. Can I go for the PMP certification or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23815" LastEditorUserId="25334" LastEditDate="2016-08-05T08:30:52.733" LastActivityDate="2016-12-27T07:58:06.560" Title="Can I go for PMP certification without having any project management experience?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18507" CreationDate="2016-06-17T06:30:31.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer: NO.&lt;/strong&gt; There's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/certification/project-management-professional-pmp.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a minimum requirement&lt;/a&gt; of project management experience for someone to sit on the exam. Even though you have experience as a team leader, leading a team is not really the same as leading a project. The only way to still go for it is to fake your experience. That is definitely not something you should do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: I'm not a PMP certified myself even though I've managed many projects because I never really need that certification in my CV. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16643" LastActivityDate="2016-06-17T06:30:31.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18491" CreationDate="2016-06-17T14:39:42.030" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Undesirable functionality can become a significant software security risk. The absence of architecture, design, formal requirements, specifications, test cases, and infrastructure can turn a harmless Easter egg into a massive data breach. In some organizations, this is a firing offense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Code review is recommended but not sufficient for larger applications with limited budgets. Positive testing as practiced by most QA testers will be hard pressed to identify unwanted functionality. Such functionality is by definition absent from the software specifications or resulting test cases. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/57918/static-code-review-approach&quot;&gt;Static code analysis&lt;/a&gt; (SCA such as Fortify, Veracode, etc) will detect &quot;dead code&quot; aka code that is not executed during data flow analysis. (This goes well beyond compilation.) Then you can review the findings to determine what is happening and what to do. SCA will also find other concerns which could be equally serious.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/54865/effectiveness-of-interactive-application-security-testing&quot;&gt;Dynamic and integrated code analysis&lt;/a&gt; such as fuzzing could detect unwanted functionality in the application. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8524" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-17T13:14:47.253" LastActivityDate="2016-08-18T13:13:41.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18491" CreationDate="2016-06-17T15:55:34.670" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Answering this question in a product/project agnostic way, this is what the quality processes are about, specifically quality control.  Product inspections before delivery to verify and validate it meets requirements and delivery criteria.  It should not matter if the product is an IT solution or a remodeled bathroom or an ice cream cone.  Inspect, exercise the product, use a checklist, and then sign off on it or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-06-17T15:55:34.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18512" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-17T19:34:09.043" Score="-1" ViewCount="2001" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had set a baseline previously and I am now updating to show what has actually happened.  I went into the task information and changed the &quot;start&quot; and &quot;finish&quot; dates to what actually happened.  When I hit ok MS Project then changes the &quot;actual duration&quot; to 0 days... even though it should be 7 days.  Any ideas why this happens?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TiPKH.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TiPKH.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20845" LastActivityDate="2018-02-06T08:18:00.827" Title="In Microsoft Project why is my actual duration calculating to 0 days?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18484" CreationDate="2016-06-18T19:10:11.087" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You probably heard of Brooks law &quot;nine women can't make a baby in one month&quot;. It sounds like your PO wants one woman to have a baby in 3 and not 9 months. I've had relatively similar case lately and my personal instinct was and is to resist inflicting more pressure on the team - squeezing more velocity out of them is acceptable if you have an important release coming soon or smth., but not as a regular &quot;process optimization&quot;; it will produce a false positive result - your PO won't be encouraged to change, seeing his seagull management is working, and your resources are becoming vulnerable (quitting, loss of motivation, productivity etc.). &#xA;Easier said than done, I know - as to PO - I'd stick with a broken record of &quot;which would you prefer - adjusting scope or deadline?&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23828" LastActivityDate="2016-06-18T19:10:11.087" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18507" CreationDate="2016-06-20T11:54:45.037" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Management is all about meeting customer expectations and run a business successfully. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider yourself on a junction where you see many roads that lead to your destination. As long as you know which road you have to take to reach your destination faster/safely/hassle free journey, you are on a right path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certifications help you to gain theoretical knowledge on management skills (like it helps you to decide which road to take) like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is a project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Processes to execute a project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;handle risks/mitigation plans and many aspects of projects for the successful completion of project on-time without compromising on quality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whereas real time experience helps you to improve your skills.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now it is upto individual's interest to decide whether to go for certifications to gain theoretical knowledge or gain practical experience as and whenever an opportunity knocks your door.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23521" LastEditorUserId="11925" LastEditDate="2016-08-04T22:16:13.480" LastActivityDate="2016-08-04T22:16:13.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18491" CreationDate="2016-06-20T12:06:33.097" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understood that you are looking out for a Development process where in the code should not call for any additional functionalities expect the ones that are asked for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lemme try to pen down a simple approach here&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Requirements Workshop - Once the requirements document is signed off by customer, arrange a requirements workshop meeting with Requirement provider / IT Expert (Developer) / Test Engineer - This helps to ensure that there is common understanding with three stakeholders&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Work Break down structure - After Requirements workshop, set up a phase for IT Expert to provide work break down structure for the given requirement and get reviewed by reviewer - This helps IT Expert to focus on requirement and analyse dependencies.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Test Scenarios - After requirements workshop, set up a phase for Test Engineer to provide Test Scenarios and get reviewed and sign off by Requirements provider. The same test scenarios will be executed by IT expert as part of Unit Testing - This helps all teams to be on common understanding&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23521" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T12:06:33.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18460" CreationDate="2016-06-21T01:34:51.530" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A simple approach is to &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;define milestones for your project to the level that you can handle and control all the milestones (if you provide type of project, I would be able to suggest milestones)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;define milestone owners&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;share responsibility to each milestone owner and set up checkpoints to ensure completion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maintain checklist for each milestone (if you provide type of project, I would be able to provide checklist for each milestone)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project&lt;br&gt;&#xA;S.No    Milestone Description   Milestone Owner Completion Date Status  Comments&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CSF - can use this formula for continuous tracking of CSF.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23521" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2016-06-21T10:17:02.017" LastActivityDate="2016-06-21T10:17:02.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17943" CreationDate="2016-06-21T18:16:12.897" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm new to the Project Management world, but I hope I can help you with this piece of information from Andy Crowe's book (5th edition, pp. 86, 87):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(About Scope Management Plan, but it applies to all other processes and I believe it answers your question)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;This process is a bit unusual in that it appears to be part of a loop. [...] Scope Management Plan is part of the Project Management Plan, which is an input into Plan Scope Management. To understand this, consider that this process has several parts that are developed together. &lt;strong&gt;The unfinished Project Management Plan is brought in, and the Scope Management Plan is produced.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  The Project Management Plan, although unfinished at this point, is brought in to help determine how the scope will be gathered, defined, broken down, validated and managed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23846" LastActivityDate="2016-06-21T18:16:12.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18523" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-22T08:09:05.873" Score="2" ViewCount="199" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a developer in a new job where the team uses Agile. This is the first time I've been in a fully Agile team and I'm feeling a bit lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been asked to do a spike for the next block of work but after doing what I thought was expected of me, I've now been told that what is required is the business rules, because the goal is clear but the details haven't been worked out yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've looked for &lt;a href=&quot;http://agileatlas.org/articles/item/spikes-in-scrum-the-exception-not-the-rule&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;information on what a spike is&lt;/a&gt;, and business rules don't seem to fit into it, being either technical or functional, which seems like the business rules should be mostly worked out by then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What seems to be required is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilearchitect.org/agile/role.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;solution architecture&lt;/a&gt;. Do I understand this correctly or do I have a misunderstanding?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23852" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-06-28T16:44:40.943" LastActivityDate="2016-06-28T16:44:40.943" Title="Is defining business rules the same thing as a story spike in Agile?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18524" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-22T10:29:47.463" Score="2" ViewCount="745" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently a proxy PO, although my main role is as a Scrum Master but I help the PO with grooming the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are developing a start up product - the PO wants me to manage everyone in the Scrum team from top to bottom, this includes the UI/UX designer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whilst doing this, I am finding that guiding the UI/UX designer is extremely challenging since the PO wants work done in a very specific way and it slows the process down of getting the designs approved from going back and forth with the PO for approval. Leaving the PO frustrated if work has not been delivered quick enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have suggested to the PO that it is pointless that I work with the UI/UX designer, and it is better if he works with him directly. Given time constraints he is finding it hard to find the time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way handle this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2016-06-23T22:41:13.213" Title="Should UI/UX designers work directly with the Product Owner?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18524" CreationDate="2016-06-22T11:43:29.600" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me it seems there are 2 tasks here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Managing the UI/UX designer's schedule&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Approving the UI/UX designer's work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are being asked to manage the UI/UX designer's schedule - and that includes ensuring the UI/UX design is approved by the PO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Approving the design is not your job (so it seems), so don't do it. Make sure the UI/UX designer gets the PO's approval in a timely fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the PO then decides it's your job to approve the UI/UX design, then it becomes your job and the PO is taken out of the loop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-06-22T11:43:29.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18523" CreationDate="2016-06-22T12:02:48.967" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Scrum the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/product-owner&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Product Owner&lt;/a&gt; provides the requirements and the development team works on delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner provides requirements in the form of a backlog and the delivery team then estimates how much they can fit in the next sprint and then works out how to deliver the requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the delivery team finds that it is struggling to provide an estimate for a requirement, or they may be struggling with the technical details of delivery. When this happens, the team may decide to do a spike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The spike has a very specific purpose. It is so that the team can resolve some unknowns, so that they can go back to working normally. That is why spikes are an &lt;em&gt;exception&lt;/em&gt; rather than a regular occurance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically the Product Owner will provide business rules as a part of their requirements, or at least will know who to ask to find them out. They may, on occasion, ask for the development team's help with getting the details of a requirement. Scrum is a &lt;em&gt;collaborative approach&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like in your situation the Product Owner has asked the development team for help with discovering some business rules. This is not all that unusual, particularly with a poorly documented legacy system. The development team have wrapped the discovery in a spike as the information is needed before they can estimate and make a start on the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-06-22T12:02:48.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11301" CreationDate="2016-06-22T13:13:33.547" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Optimal WIP are limits highly dependent on the size of your team.&#xA;Lower WIP limits indicate smaller lead-times, but if you set the WIP limits too low your overal project duration will extend. If you set the WIP limits too high you'll create bottlenecks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I created a small simulation tool where you can play with wip limit, team size, swim lanes etc. The tool is open source and free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/devchild/wip-vs-leadtime&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://github.com/devchild/wip-vs-leadtime&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23855" LastActivityDate="2016-06-22T13:13:33.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18523" CreationDate="2016-06-22T14:29:54.967" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You likely have an &lt;a href=&quot;https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/66378/185951&quot;&gt;X/Y problem&lt;/a&gt;. You haven't articulated what the central user story is, or what the goal of your story spike is supposed to be. In such cases, you should &lt;em&gt;halt the line&lt;/em&gt; until you gain clarity on the actual objectives from the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Story Spike Defined&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, a &lt;em&gt;story spike&lt;/em&gt; is just a time-boxed learning experiment where the team does research or a small-scale proof of concept in order to accurately estimate some other piece of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, given a story that is large or complex like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a widget customer&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want an assembled machine that consists of 100 widgets&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I can display it on my desk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you might not know how much time or effort that will take. You might decide that you'll create a scaled-down user story for this Sprint so that you'll have some lessons learned to aid your estimation of the &quot;real&quot; user story next Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your story spike for learning about the &quot;real&quot; story above might look like the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a widget engineer&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want to assemble five widgets&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I can generate an estimate for assembling 100 widgets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Other Solutions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on what the real problem is, you might find that you need to consider alternative solutions. Some examples include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not accepting poor-quality user stories into the Sprint in the first place.&lt;/strong&gt; Good user stories should follow the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST mnemonic&lt;/a&gt;. The success criteria should be well-understood and &lt;em&gt;measurable&lt;/em&gt; before the story is accepted into the Sprint by the Development Team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reworking the story with the Product Owner during Backlog Refinement or Sprint Planning until the objectives are clear to everyone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Creating a separate business analysis or requirements-gathering user story as a prerequisite to this one, or rolling this work into your estimate or Definition of Done for the story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Treating user stories as conversation placeholders instead of as specification documents.&lt;/strong&gt; Good user stories describe what is needed, not how it will be implemented.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the X in your X/Y problem is most likely improper use of user stories or poorly-defined requirements. Even if the problem is something else, &lt;em&gt;communication&lt;/em&gt; is the missing ingredient in correctly identifying the problem and working towards an effective solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-20T10:29:45.420" LastActivityDate="2016-06-22T14:35:17.287" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18524" CreationDate="2016-06-23T00:05:00.530" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think we've all been in this kind of situation before. The &lt;strong&gt;proper way&lt;/strong&gt; to sort this one out is to have the PO work directly with the development team. You'll be out your &lt;em&gt;proxy&lt;/em&gt; role and the speed of development should accelerate significantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next feasible option is to have the PO out of the loop completely. That means you'll be the one making the decision about the UI/UX design. You don't have to go back and forth to the PO and the speed of development might accelerate. It's just that there's a high risk of having a disappointed PO because the design doesn't suit his way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if I understand your situation correctly, both of the above options can't be done. In this case, you can try to minimize the iteration in the design development and approval loop. You need to tell the PO to be less specific about the design so that development can move faster. You might even try suggesting a limit of the iteration in the loop. This way the PO (and everyone involved) knows how many times he can provide an input before the design is finalized. If the PO agrees, you won't have to go back and forth as often as before and, hopefully, the speed of development might accelerate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: Just to clarify things. I'm all the way with enforcing Scrum roles and responsibilities. That's why I put option 1 and option 2 at the top. However, in occasions where option 1 or option 2 is not feasible, I'd go with option 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16643" LastEditorUserId="16643" LastEditDate="2016-06-23T22:41:13.213" LastActivityDate="2016-06-23T22:41:13.213" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18524" CreationDate="2016-06-23T05:08:43.747" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leaving the PO frustrated if work has not been delivered quick enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;better if he works with him directly. Given time constraints he is finding it hard to find the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you juxtaposed these two items for him and pointed out the contradiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might help to try a very incremental approach. Ask if he can find just 15 min in his schedule to sit with the UX designer; then get the designer to do serious prep for that 15 min so it can be very efficient and a positive experience for the PO. (eg, mock up several options to present to get feedback &amp;amp; start conversation) Then make sure the designer quickly delivers at least some piece of some thing that the PO approved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That could be evidence for a &amp;quot;bang-for-the-buck&amp;quot; conversation with the PO: &amp;quot;That investment of 15 min of your time produced great results! I think we can build on that, what do you think?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working with customers/POs who are overworked/overscheduled can be challenging. I have had good results by demonstrating that I clearly understand and respect their limited availability, and doing everything I can to make sure we use their time as efficiently as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2016-06-23T05:08:43.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18524" CreationDate="2016-06-23T09:29:00.140" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As CodeGnome pointed out in the comments, enforcing the roles and responsibilities of Scrum will go a long way to increasing collaboration between the team.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although this isn't an answer to your question, first, if you're being asked to &quot;manage&quot; the team, then by Scrum's definition you are not the ScrumMaster.  The ScrumMaster's role is to teach the Scrum Team (Product Owner and Development Team) the correct way to do Scrum and facilitate all of the meetings while leaving leading the meetings up to the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to team structure and who collaborates with the product owner, Scrum says that every Development Team should have all of the skills necessary to produce a working product increment. Therefore, a UX/UI designer could collaborate easier with the Product Owner and those writing the code if he/she is working on the Development Team. Moreover, the UX/UI designer, as well as any member of the Development Team, should be talking directly to the Product Owner, without go-betweens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like the problem may be that the Product Owner is too busy. As ScrumMaster, it's your job to help this person find out what tasks are important to being an effective Product Owner and then finding ways to delegate work that isn't related to the product to others.  As a key member of the Scrum Team, the Product Owner should be available to the team to clarify requirements, such as what the UI should look like, and to answer questions the Development Team has about the forecasted work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information, see the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2010/april/common-product-owner-traps&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;The Overworked Product Owner&quot; section of &quot;Common Product Owner Traps&quot; by Roman Pichler&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To avoid an overworked product owner, try the following: First, free the individual from all other responsibilities. Start with the assumption that being a product owner is a full-time job, and that one product owner can look after only one product and one team. Second, ensure that the team makes time in every sprint to collaborate with the product owner. Scrum allocates up to 10% of the team’s capacity in every sprint for supporting the product owner (Schwaber 2007).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2016-06-23T09:29:00.140" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18465" CreationDate="2016-06-23T09:47:48.300" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is often a good idea to use hours on tasks to track Remaining Work and plot that on a burndown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Guide only requires that a team have a &lt;strong&gt;plan to complete&lt;/strong&gt; the selected backlog items and be able to easily understand the &lt;strong&gt;remaining work&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;TFS/VSTS &amp;amp; Scrum&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hours on Tasks&lt;/strong&gt; - This is the most common way to figure out your remaining work. It is simple, quick, and has very little waste. Simply updating the field of the task in TFS is very minimal at the end of each work session. The benefit you get in TFS/VSTS is to get a burndown in the web access or reporting services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Number of Tasks&lt;/strong&gt; - even easier, but requires more discipline in the team in creating discreet tasks that are more normalised in size. In TFS/VSTS you will not get a burndown for this (unless you have a rule to always put a 1 in each task). You can get this report in TFS with reporting services, but not in VSTS without from code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Acceptance Tests&lt;/strong&gt; - it can be very effective to monitor remaining work in the number of acceptance tests that have not yet passed. You can create a dashboard burndown with a query on the year plan for the Sprint and pin it to your home page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;Remaining Work&lt;/strong&gt; field in TFS/VSTS does not require hours, that is simply the convention. You can use any numerical value you like. Hours, days, nebulous units, whatever...s long as it has a value you get the features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have some customers that use TFS that set a default value in the process template for the task work item type definition that makes this easier. This is not currently available in VSTS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2016-06-23T09:47:48.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18536" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18542" CreationDate="2016-06-23T15:51:01.070" Score="6" ViewCount="1961" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are having a challenge with fitting QA work into the Scrum process and specifically due to a need to do a full regression and load testing before releasing into production which takes up to 3 days. We are on 2-weeks sprint cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the obvious answer seems to overlap sprints for development and QA since the reality is that QA always lags behind development to some degree due to full regression and load testing, we are considering the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;QA will work on shorter sprints (1-week) and 1 iteration behind the main development (2-weeks sprint).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words: first week:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;dev is developing new stuff during the first week&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;QA goes through regression testing of previous sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;QA works with dev on each individual user story&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;second week:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;QA goes through full &quot;new feature&quot; testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dev addressing bugs or working on completing minor stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming we want to keep developers developing and tester testing, what would be a better practical solution? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23868" LastActivityDate="2016-06-24T20:16:01.323" Title="Better approach to sprint for QA and Dev team" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18537" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18539" CreationDate="2016-06-23T16:39:15.937" Score="5" ViewCount="3707" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it OK if the Scrum Master and Architect is one person? I clearly understand why it's bad idea to combine Scrum Master and Product Owner roles: conflicts of interest, SM cares about development, PO cares about the business. However, I'm not sure what is wrong with being both the Scrum Master and an Architect at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23845" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-06-23T19:24:00.543" LastActivityDate="2018-06-08T09:28:18.507" Title="Can one person be both Scrum Master and Architect at the same time?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;roles&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18537" CreationDate="2016-06-23T17:42:46.217" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-sm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum Master role&lt;/a&gt; provides two things to the Scrum Team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It helps the team to resolve impediments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It helps to ensure the team is following Scrum by providing coaching and facilitating Scrum ceremonies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If an individual can provide those two things then they can do the Scrum Master role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is nothing to say how long these activities will take. In a large team that is new to Scrum and in a difficult business domain the Scrum Master may well be very busy. In a smaller team, or with a team that is very experienced there may be a lot less for the Scrum Master to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is to see the Scrum Master as providing a service to the team. If they can provide that service and have enough time to do other things then that is fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have often worked with teams where the Scrum Master role is performed by a non-specialist team member. I have seen developers, testers and a business analyst perform the Scrum Master role. I have not worked with an architect in the Scrum Master role, but I cannot see any reason why this would not work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is difficult to see any conflict of interest between the Scrum Master role and any other development team role. A Scrum Master does not have authority over the team, so they cannot tell them to do things. The Scrum Master also doesn't have final say on technical matters. The team as a whole makes technical decisions via consensus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-06-23T17:51:16.500" LastActivityDate="2016-06-23T17:51:16.500" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18537" CreationDate="2016-06-23T19:27:03.247" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Scrum Master and Development Team Roles &lt;em&gt;Can&lt;/em&gt; Conflict&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it OK if the Scrum Master and Architect is one person?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Presumably the Architect is considered a member of the Development Team. The Scrum Master role is a distinct role with the responsibility to be a &lt;em&gt;process referee&lt;/em&gt;, whereas the Development Team is charged with &lt;em&gt;implementation&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it's technically feasible for one person to fulfill both roles, it is much more common to see a conflict between the requirement to deliver and the requirement to facilitate a formal process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, the &lt;em&gt;time&lt;/em&gt; required to perform both roles also represent a conflict of interest. For example, if you have one day to implement an architectural story that your team is depending on, as well as Scrum Master tasks such as impediments to clear or a long Backlog Refinement session to attend with the Product Owner, which do you prioritize? If you can't do both without cutting corners, then you serve neither role properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with all things, your mileage may vary. However, it won't vary by much if you're implementing Scrum properly. Also note that if you're looking to avoid budgeting an extra resource for one of the roles, you'll still pay for that resource in lost team capacity because &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain%27t_no_such_thing_as_a_free_lunch#.22Free_lunch.22&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TANSTAAFL&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-04-18T23:12:45.877" LastActivityDate="2018-04-18T23:12:45.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="55" CreationDate="2016-06-24T05:43:30.877" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As noted in other answers, it is always valuable for the PM to have some technical background, yet on my experience is not always mandatory to have it in order to have a good PM within the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A competent PM will be able to ask the right questions, translate and understand the technical side to other language domain (e.g business) so that all parties involved in the project are on the same page, even when it is not the detail. This includes being able to &quot;translate&quot; estimates, blockers, impediments and identify risks within the team, and at the same time track these to make sure they are being tackled.&#xA;This is why communication is the key part of the PM role, failing to understand at least the basics of the technical aspect, overlook or ignore comments from the team for estimates (or giving a green light to everything just because the team estimated so) and impediments (a 5 Whys session could be more than enough to get to a root cause that everyone can easily understand) can lead to problems within the project (imho).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More than anything, a savvy yet non-technical PM would have a technical lead or a technical right hand within the project that could advise on these type of complexities. I wouldn´t expect everyone on the team to be able to translate technical jargon to a non-technical PM, however more than often a technical lead is able to provide such help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, the PM role &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/About-Us/About-Us-Who-are-Project-Managers.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;as described by PMI&lt;/a&gt; mentions that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They have a broad and flexible toolkit of techniques, resolving complex, interdependent activities into tasks and sub-tasks that are documented, monitored and controlled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These techniques known by the PM need to be able to resolve and mvoe forward technical inquiries and impediments within the team, with/without having the technical knowledge for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4177" LastActivityDate="2016-06-24T05:43:30.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="92" CreationDate="2016-06-24T06:14:14.780" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I consider I entered the management side too early on my career and without the proper training before hand. &#xA;Looking back this is what I believed I failed at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not creating more leaders.&lt;/strong&gt; As a newly made PM I thought the PM chair was for me and only for me, later on I understood I needed more people &lt;em&gt;next&lt;/em&gt;  to me to make the right calls, as well as training more people to have the right conversations and continuously improve a project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not building a team, and prefer office co-workers&lt;/strong&gt; I understand sometimes it is close to impossible due to people working remote or other personal matters, yet building a team should be one of the main priorities of the PM, everyone and business itself gets huge benefits from a highly motivated and cohesive team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hiring with hard skills over soft skills&lt;/strong&gt; Soft skills can maintain a team together when a challengue surpasses the hard skills. Commonly known as &quot;Divas&quot; with a high set of hard skills can easily destroy your project and break a team in no time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Failing to provide constant goals and motivation for a team&lt;/strong&gt; We all need motivation, we all need goals - for me - the PM should always be reminding the team of where they are going,  creating and reaching milestones, asking for input and adjust according to personal motivations within the team. Don´t leave it on a crappy PPT at the start of the year that no one will remember by Q2.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not delegating tasks&lt;/strong&gt; A basic one, yet one that is easily overlooked. It is hard to let things go sometimes, yet a PM needs to delegate accordingly to balance out the work and trust the team members.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Micro-managing&lt;/strong&gt; Another basic one but that is find way too often. A PM needs to be able to open communication and create activities to gain trust within and from the team, this does not mean checking everything and deciding how everything should be done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Treat every team the same&lt;/strong&gt; Many PMs come with straight out of the book ideas or plans that will not necessarily work with the team at hand. Seasoned PMs understand that every team is different, and that what worked for team A, doesn´t necessarily work for team B. A PM needs to adjust and be open enough to experiment and make whatever it takes to make the team work and grow together. Same applies to each team member, what improved the work of team member A will not necesarrily do the cut for team member B.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4177" LastActivityDate="2016-06-24T06:14:14.780" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2016-06-24T06:14:14.780" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18536" CreationDate="2016-06-24T10:24:45.483" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you're doing Scrum, let's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-dev&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;look at the guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Scrum recognizes no sub-teams in the Development Team, regardless of particular domains that need to be addressed like testing or business analysis; there are no exceptions to this rule; and,&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Why does scrum take such a strong stance against the sort of thing you're trying to do?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your team is not regularly and reliably producing shippable software.&lt;/strong&gt; At the end of a &amp;quot;dev sprint&amp;quot; it isn't tested properly, so it's still work-in-progress. More testing and potentially more dev effort is needed. It's not shippable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're lucky and the regression tests all pass first time without dev effort, that’s shippable. Otherwise, you have the choice whether to derail the new &amp;quot;dev sprint&amp;quot; or just record (potentially serious) bugs (/failure of stories to be delivered to acceptance criteria) for later. Neither of these is a good outcome and neither result in shippable software that sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You've damaged your ability to respond to change&lt;/strong&gt;. Let's assume that this is one of the weeks we get lucky with the regression testing and everything passes. We hand the software to the customer and do our demos. We get lots of useful feedback. Unfortunately we already decided what the priorities of the next sprint should be last week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You've divided up the team&lt;/strong&gt; A team committed to delivering a goal is a powerful thing. This sense of shared responsibility cannot really exist in this situation. QA and Dev are working towards different goals. When a Dev helps a QA complete their sprint goals, the dev imperils their own. People become less T-shaped as responsibilities are heavily siloed and there isn't a sense of everyone pitching in towards the same goal. Team dynamics are incredibly important and this will matter more than you probably think it does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;So what should you do?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Regression tests that take 3 days aren't something you should work around, they're something you should fix.&lt;/strong&gt; Sorry, Scrum isn't an infinitely malleable process that can cover for teams that don't want to adapt, improvement and fix their underlying technical problems. Which is why, incidentally, much like Extreme Programming (XP), it isn't for everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you're selling tickets for the most boring spectator sport of all time, you're job isn't to &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;keep developers developing and tester testing&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;, it's to deliver value. &lt;strong&gt;If you have to take on less work, finish a bit earlier to allow for 3 days of testing, do that. In exchange you get the opportunity to continuously release actual done working software&lt;/strong&gt;, it's worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can always use the dev time towards the end of the sprint to improve the speed and automation of your tests. QA time towards the start of the sprints should also be used for this, as well as things like exploratory testing. Good CI and good automation will be big wins for your teams productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17705" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2016-06-24T20:16:01.323" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18544" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18552" CreationDate="2016-06-24T16:34:18.540" Score="2" ViewCount="199" Body="&lt;p&gt;A designer delivers a mockup to a developer.  That mockup is delivered as part of the story, but may or may not be considered actual acceptance criteria.  After all, the mock may not even look finished or behave correctly.  So how can it be considered AC?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the developer delivers the product the designer looks at it and doesn't like the result.  The designer requests N# of changes mid sprint.  This is a cause of scope creep because these changes: colors, scroll behavior, font used, hover behavior etc were not captured prior to the start of the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can this process be improved?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2663" LastActivityDate="2016-06-25T21:18:17.267" Title="How can developers and designers work together in an agile way?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18545" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18548" CreationDate="2016-06-24T20:34:18.970" Score="3" ViewCount="230" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently my team transitioned from Perforce to Git. As part of the transition, the developers responsible for the transition wrote documentation and provided links to interactive tutorials to help other developers with understanding Git commands and terminology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that the switch has occurred, it's becoming clear that a majority of people on the team may not have followed the transition's team advice to participate in the interactive tutorials, and I don't know how much of the documentation has been read beyond the simple setup steps. I am relatively new to the overall team but one of my first tasks was to assist with the transition to Git as I have Git experience from prior jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I (or team management) encourage people to take the time to learn the new Git material?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23885" LastActivityDate="2016-06-29T09:03:10.110" Title="How do I encourage self-learning of Git?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18545" CreationDate="2016-06-24T21:35:15.787" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I understand it your team already has no other option and sooner or later they must start using Git, or they will not be able to do their work properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion the most important thing for your team is to understand why the transition is being done and why Git is so awesome (and it really is).&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/a/2778344/1611876&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is really good answer for the benefits of Git. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A common approach in my company is to organise internal trainings - e.g. Git for Beginners, Intermediate Git, Advanced Git. This training contains presentation and practical exercises with realistic scenarios which participants should complete during the training. I'm aware that this costs time but gives really good results and you'll have more visibility of their progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23889" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:41:23.897" LastActivityDate="2016-06-25T12:59:02.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18545" CreationDate="2016-06-24T23:10:00.040" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Infrastructure Change Has Costs; Company Must Absorb Them&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can I (or team management) encourage people to take the time to learn the new Git material? ...&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/18545/how-do-i-encourage-self-learning-of-git#comment24312_18545&quot;&gt;There is no explicit Git learning time set aside, but the scrum master and dev manager have both said the team should do what is necessary to learn.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what is commonly known as an &quot;unfunded mandate.&quot; By taking this position, you are essentially asking people to work off the clock to avoid charging the necessary time or training costs against the project. This is a pragmatic &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; an ethical no-go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the organization determined that they needed to switch to Git, the company/project should absorb the &lt;em&gt;full&lt;/em&gt; cost of the change. That most definitely includes budgeting for education or training, and adjusting the project schedule to making &lt;em&gt;time&lt;/em&gt; for the development team to learn the new system and to get up to speed on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a traditional project management shop, training and education work packages should be added to the schedule. Scope or schedule should then be adjusted to acknowledge that developers will be busy learning rather than developing, as well as factoring in a slowdown in productivity until the workflow fully adapts to the new tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an agile shop, you need to accomplish much the same thing, but would do it by ensuring that there are training and education stories on the Product Backlog. The team may also have to temporarily reduce the number of story points accepted into each iteration to address the fact that &lt;em&gt;integrating&lt;/em&gt; a new system into the workflow has a cost beyond the initial learning itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-06-24T23:10:00.040" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18545" CreationDate="2016-06-25T05:04:29.090" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;it's becoming clear that a majority of people on the team may not have followed the transition's team advice to participate in the interactive tutorials, and I don't know how much of the documentation has been read beyond the simple setup steps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds as if you &lt;em&gt;observe&lt;/em&gt; that the majority of the people are having trouble with git, and you &lt;em&gt;infer&lt;/em&gt; that they may not have done the tutorials or read the documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But git has a notoriously difficult learning curve, so my first response is to wonder about the reliability of the inference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would start by having a team discussion about how the transition is going: what have they mastered, what are they still having trouble with, what are they confused about? Did they find the docs/tutorials helpful? Do they want a team wiki page with documentation written by the team, containing project-specific examples? Who (else) on the team has git expertise, and can be asked for help? How would they find it most helpful to proceed? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would strongly recommend the team wikipage, because no matter how good a general tutorial is, a concise project specific cheat sheet with clear notes on how to do common project tasks is an incredibly helpful crutch for climbing up the learning curve. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some things I would offer as possible ways to proceed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a group walk-through and work-through of the tutorials, so people can ask questions and make sure that everyone has the same understanding of what's going on and is using the same workflow.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a git training day, with snacks provided by me, where everyone mostly works through the tutorials independently, but can ask each other questions. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;add training stories to the next sprint that, if possible, also have some minimal project value. For instance take some trivial bug fixes or tech debt or even documentation tasks, if you're keeping your docs in the repo, and go through specific workflow steps.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;an entire sprint devoted to Learning Git, in which the sprint goal is that each team member has demonstrated a desired level of mastery, and the stories are defined by the team as helpful steps in getting there&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2016-06-25T05:04:29.090" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18544" CreationDate="2016-06-25T16:30:52.483" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about this approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A developer and a designer sit next to each other. The designer prepares a mockup and while doing it occasionally shows it to the developer. When the mockup is done the developer starts work and frequently shows the designer how it looks. Feedback is given througout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't scope creep, it is two team members working together effectively to deliver a product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-06-25T16:30:52.483" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18544" CreationDate="2016-06-25T18:48:36.470" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the key goals of agile approaches is to speed up delivery by splitting it up into a number of small &lt;strong&gt;achievable&lt;/strong&gt; tasks. But to make this happen you &lt;strong&gt;MUST&lt;/strong&gt; have clear and detailed AC for each task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This pushes a lot of work back on whomever is writing the AC. In fact in my view it makes it impossible to define tasks correctly the first time around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way to counter this isn't to change AC mid sprint, or to have team members 'work together' on undefined tasks. It's too keep the task small and do things incrementally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes you need a design for that webpage, but don't try to make it the perfect final design. Just make it black and white with some holding text. Next iteration Add colour, Next add the text from marketing etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because you can see what happens at the end of each sprint you get the chance to feed that into the design moving forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need that wheel of feedback and change to spin faster. Do shorter sprints. Don't be tempted to look at the finished tasks mid sprint and add changes. This only slows things down in the long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS. I would also suggest adding more rigour to the design process to try and cut down on redesigns. Get sign off on the colour pallet, menu top or left etc. get people to justify their choices. Choose the colour which sells most units not the one the ceo likes today &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastEditorUserId="17049" LastEditDate="2016-06-25T18:55:20.477" LastActivityDate="2016-06-25T18:55:20.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18544" CreationDate="2016-06-25T20:03:33.947" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;New Work Isn't Allowed Into &lt;em&gt;Current&lt;/em&gt; Iteration&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When the developer delivers the product the designer looks at it and doesn't like the result. The designer requests N# of changes mid sprint. This is a cause of scope creep because these changes: colors, scroll behavior, font used, hover behavior etc were not captured prior to the start of the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then they don't get included in the current Sprint. They become work that the &lt;em&gt;Product Owner&lt;/em&gt;, not the designer, gets to prioritize (or not) in a future Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile methodologies work in iterations. Work that meets the criteria defined at the start of the Sprint or otherwise meets the Definition fo Done (DoD) is considered complete, while work that isn't specified for the Sprint or included in the DoD is considered out of scope for the current iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your Product Owner and Scrum Master, or whatever equivalent roles you've defined if you aren't using Scrum, need to enforce some rigor in your process. No one can succeed if you keep moving the cheese, so stop doing that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-06-25T20:03:33.947" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18544" CreationDate="2016-06-25T21:18:17.267" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A designer delivers a mockup to a developer. That mockup is delivered as part of the story, but &lt;strong&gt;may or may not be considered actual acceptance criteria&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you saying that whether or not it is AC varies &lt;em&gt;from time to time&lt;/em&gt;, or that there is disagreement about this &lt;em&gt;between designer and developer&lt;/em&gt;? If the latter, this is the first thing to get clarified: you have to have a common understanding of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After all, the mock may not even look finished or behave correctly. So how can it be considered AC?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This smells a bit of legalistic word-chopping to me. If this is the argument you're using with the designer or with management, I wouldn't expect them to be at all convinced. Especially if the conversation happens after development, instead of when the mockup was presented. Developer &amp;amp; designer need to understand themselves as part of the same team, working together to make the best product, rather than against each other trying to &quot;win&quot; some point or other. Part of PM's job is to cultivate that teamwork.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mockups can and should be accompanied by verbiage describing anything not on the mockup, that are intended as AC. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of the iterative nature of agile, AC should generally be understood as &quot;minimum for acceptance&quot;, not &quot;exactly how we want it&quot;, with the understanding that desired improvements can go into the backlog &amp;amp; be prioritized alongside everything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the concern in your comment above&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My concern is that if [designer &amp;amp; developer] work together like this then a control that we estimated to be 2 points could be in fact an 8 point control depending on what the designer actually decides they want. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This again sounds like you're not nailing down agreement on scope at the beginning of the sprint. The designer, of course, has to understand what the scope is &lt;em&gt;for this sprint&lt;/em&gt;. Emphasizing that the sprint is timeboxed may be helpful: most people understand that you can only get a finite amount of work done in a finite amount of time. You may also need to explain (and reiterate) the concept of scope creep and its risk to the project overall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does the accompanying story look like? Maybe taking the design mockup as AC is part of the problem. A well-written story should specify &lt;i&gt;what&lt;/i&gt; the user (or other actor) should be able to do, not &lt;i&gt;how&lt;/i&gt; it is done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EG, if the story says &quot;A user can enter text in 2 fields and choose options from 3 dropdowns&quot;, then any issues such as these&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If they add scrolling, editable fields, tooltips, animations, responsive design etc after the fact then this could actually happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;are very obvious scope creep &amp;amp; there should be no problem rejecting them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2016-06-25T21:18:17.267" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10647" CreationDate="2016-06-26T11:04:26.893" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently began working as PM for a person who shovelled me uninhibitedly with plethora of ideas he’d like to see materialised. I have thus quickly found out I have exactly &lt;em&gt;four&lt;/em&gt; ‘project pipelines’ in my brain.&lt;p&gt;&#xA;I believe there is a limit to how many projects can one keep himself mentally engaged in. I don’t believe the number is strictly a function of available hours as suggested in other answers; the hours should only determine how timely can one push things forward. (However, not working full-time will likely subtract from the number of projects one can keep moving—but because that person likely has other things on the side to manage too.)&lt;p&gt;&#xA;I do acknowledge that a difficult project can only be complemented effectively with minor, easy ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23856" LastActivityDate="2016-06-26T11:04:26.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18545" CreationDate="2016-06-26T14:14:44.153" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a typical situation of change management. You think that the team didn't do enough effort to switch from Perforce to Git. However, it's very typical to humans that they resist change. To speed up the process you might want to set some type of accountability process to encourage them to use Git. You also might want to set up some type of skill transfer process by utilising internal or external trainings (by yourself, online, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23897" LastActivityDate="2016-06-26T14:14:44.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18555" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18561" CreationDate="2016-06-26T21:42:25.403" Score="1" ViewCount="130" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to do an empirical study on risk management by translation trainees for my MA thesis. Translation is an act full of decision-makings for rendering risky parts of the text. I want to interpret each decision the subjects make in their own context, and I believe the only tool I have to assess whether the decisions made are risk-averse or risk-taking is to interpret &lt;strong&gt;justifications they provide for the decisions they make&lt;/strong&gt; (both when thinking out loud and in the interview I will have with them after the task). But I need a framework for the basis of such interpretations; I guess something that specifies A, B, and C types of arguments in their justifications show that their decision has been risk-taking, and X, Y, and Z arguments show that their decision has been risk-averse. Something that can be applied to each decision made, not an overall approach to the decision-maker's characteristics. Do you suggest any theoretical framework for such work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.: Risk in translation? Well, some believe risk is &quot;The probability of a desired or an undesired outcome as a consequence of a (translational) action&quot;. Pym also argues that each text consists of high-risk, medium-risk, and low-risk items, e.g. the title in a letter is a high-risk item (very important in communication) but conjunctions are low-risk items. Pym also raises this idea that translators deal with 3 kinds of risks: credibility risk (keeping/losing the reputation as the translator), uncertainty risk (about HOW to translate items), and communicative risk (which is related to the text itself). On the other hand, some scholars believe that each element of a text can have political, economic, etc. type of risk within itself, but they do not raise this idea in a structured way.The latter group believes that for example if you are working for a Pan-X newspaper and translate the item Y in a way which is opposing the ideologies of the newspaper, you are taking a risk, because it can make you get fired. [Which sense you find reasonable, by the way?]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23494" LastEditorUserId="23494" LastEditDate="2016-06-27T12:12:12.367" LastActivityDate="2016-06-27T23:38:41.107" Title="Finding out whether a decision made has been risk-taking or risk-averse" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;risk&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18556" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-27T17:36:18.563" Score="5" ViewCount="3008" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently working with the Product Owner/CEO in a Scrum role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My management style is starting to clash with the PO. His style of management is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;working long hours and taking work home on weekends. 9am to 9pm with unpaid overtime. So far he has not imposed this onto us, mainly because there has been a lot of resistance from the Dev team and I. The teams he is leading (sales) are however working long hours 8-6 (9 hour days) when the should be working 8 hour days (40 hour weeks)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Waterfall method of management &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hard to please, always wants more.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Micro management, watching computer screens, being on people's back to ensure that they are doing the work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Process driven &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My style of the management:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Avoiding overtime at all costs, only resorting to it in an emergency situation. Strong believer in work/life balance and feel that 40 hours a week is A LOT of time to get work done.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Agile driven management &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Process driven, with a heavy dose of planning sprints properly to avoid emergency situations from occurring.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Delegate work where and when I can, maximizing the resources as much as possible. Guiding colleagues as opposed to managing them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tracking the team's velocity without micromanaging them from reading burn down charts and addressing impediments during stand ups&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Giving the development team a lot of freedom in terms of how they complete tasks once a backlog is committed and sprint has begun. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Keeping morale high, and subsequently keeping the team on my side to remain a positive  influence and high work ethic.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am finding that our management style is starting to clash, since I am being under pressure at times to change my management style to be more like his. I am currently looking for a new job where I can practice agile in an environment which truly embraces it. What other things can I do? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tried talking to him about being more relaxed with the team citing a decrease of morale leading to poor quality work if we force the Dev team to work beyond their contracted hours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having no luck, he just thinks that we are not working hard enough since we are not working a lot of overtime. I.e. 9-11 hour days instead of the standard 8&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whilst I am here, I really want this company to change so that it properly embraces agile and continues to be ethically run once I move on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-06-27T21:58:02.620" LastActivityDate="2020-01-30T10:33:05.617" Title="How should a Scrum Master handle a Product Owner who micromanages the team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;conflicts&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18557" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-27T18:54:16.593" Score="4" ViewCount="1085" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the context of daily stand-ups in scrum meetings, when the banter gets too heinous, what criteria should a scrummaster set for back-and-forth questions?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say for instance, there's a developer and a tester working on the same thing, and the tester has questions for the developer about what they did the previous day (one is on the phone, so you can't just give 'em nasty looks or step on their feet), which are usually pertinent to the goals of the entire team and they keep it pretty quick (about 30 seconds to a minute).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should a scrummaster or a member of the scrum team do?  Is it not within their rights as fellow team members to ask clarifying questions of each other?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is even appropriate, when could these questions be asked?  Right after the first person finished their piece or when the second person's turn comes around? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16260" LastActivityDate="2020-08-01T10:29:11.503" Title="Back-and-forth questions in daily stand-up meeting" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18557" CreationDate="2016-06-27T19:05:35.197" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the information is useful to the entire team, the discussion isn't stopping the standup from completing within the timebox, and the standup is achieving its purpose to inspect progress toward the goals and plan the day, there isn't a problem with discussions in a standup. Ultimately, everyone should continue to get better and providing relevant information to all present parties so that this back-and-forth isn't needed. If there are things that the tester needs as a task moves from development to testing, then the developers should understand what the testers need so they can provide it. Alternatively, the required information can be provided in the ticket so that the tester has fewer questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a need for extended discussion, the best thing to do is to have those discussions immediately following the standup, between the people who are required to be in the discussion. Unless someone has an engagement immediately following the standup, it should generally work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2020-08-01T10:29:11.503" LastActivityDate="2020-08-01T10:29:11.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18556" CreationDate="2016-06-27T21:55:40.513" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Enforce the Roles of Scrum&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, the Product Owner owns the Product Backlog but is not the &quot;boss&quot; of the team. He is, in fact, intended to be a collaborative peer of of Scrum Master and the Development Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner cannot assign work to the team. The team &lt;em&gt;selects&lt;/em&gt; Product Backlog Items to accept into the Sprint based on projected team capacity (e.g. velocity) and negotiation with the Product Owner during Sprint Planning. The Product Owner may need to be reminded of the fact that he controls the contents of the Product Backlog and their priorities, but he does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; get to set the team's pace or dictate implementation details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is often desirable to have a Product Owner invest more time in the team, and to be available to the team outside of formal ceremonies to answer questions and collaborate with the rest of the Scrum Team, in this case you may want to use your Scrum Master role of &quot;process referee&quot; to bar him from access to the Development Team outside of formal ceremonies. It's up to you whether you do so quietly on the side, or publicly during the Sprint Retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Product Owner refuses to obey the rules of Scrum, or to follow the roles appropriately, then you must escalate to his line management. It is then up to them to discipline him, reform him, or replace him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they won't do any of those things, then you're doing the right thing by looking for another job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-06-27T21:55:40.513" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="92" CreationDate="2016-06-27T22:28:34.503" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Communication is a KEY factor in successfully managing a project.  Failing to communicate on a regular basis is big mistake.  To help organize communications, devise a Communication Plan that includes different schedules and formats depending on the target audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Know your audience and communicate effectively to that audience.  This means that the same message needs to be adapted appropriately to the target audience... bullet points for C-levels, detailed specs for the technical team, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23913" LastActivityDate="2016-06-27T22:28:34.503" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2016-06-27T22:28:34.503" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18555" CreationDate="2016-06-27T23:38:41.107" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend establishing (quantifying) risk tolerance first.  Risks accepted near or above the risk tolerance are risk taking; risks rejected near or below the risk tolerance are risk averse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the trick is to find a way to calibrate your measurement of translation risk.  Sounds like you have a beginning - differentiating between titles and articles and adverbs. I don't know the field very well, but I suspect you could begin by generating a set of possibilities for key words in translation, and then measuring the improbability of the choice.  I suspect that you could generate markov chains of word sequences in both languages. I remember that there is some pre-existing research that enables you to measure the distance of a word pair from a baseline, but I haven't looked at the topic since the last century; I'm confident you can find something relevant to your field and use that to establish a baseline risk tolerance - some translators will choose conventional translations, while others will select non-conventional terms in an attempt to convey subtle nuance.  The non-conventional choices represent higher risk.  My hypothesis is that each translator will have a pattern - a range of risk in translation.  That also permits you to identify translation choices that significantly deviate from the comfort zone; those can be classified as risk averse (closer to convention than to the translator's baseline), or risk seeking (further from convention than the translator's baseline.  Those become the center of interviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm well aware of my ignorance, and I hope that I haven't offended you by over-simplifying your research.  I'm trying to articulate something that is partly lost to age and memory and partly something that exceeds my competence.  Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside 1: there is ample scientific research to indicate that the NIST 800-37 risk management standard (&quot;high&quot;, &quot;medium&quot; &quot;low&quot;) has negative value - differing calibrations of those terms actually interfere with communications and preclude risk management.  Avoid this if you can. If you must use qualitative risk management, calibrate it carefully so that independent observers reach the same conclusion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside 2: you may wish to consult the society of information risk analysis. You may also wish to research Tony Cox's writings on risk. They aren't referring to project risk, but to information security risk, but they have a more academic, more formal approach to risk management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2016-06-27T23:38:41.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18562" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-28T08:00:07.820" Score="5" ViewCount="109" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a Post Graduate student in Infrastructure Engineering and Management. I want to do a project regarding Agile Project Management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the Agile approach successful in construction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I do a Project on the topic &quot;Agile Project Management in Construction&quot; will I be able to get relevant data from construction companies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23915" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-06-28T08:25:47.267" LastActivityDate="2016-06-28T12:16:01.017" Title="Agile in Construction" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18562" CreationDate="2016-06-28T08:33:41.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know much about construction, but it seems to me that it's more suited to Agile than software. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The steps to be taken are clearly defined, as the length of time each step takes is also well known, usually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it boils down to planning it all carefully so that the right people and items are present at the correct time, and then dealing with delays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can probably get relevant data of the internet if you dig deep enough. If not, go to a construction site and buy the headman a pint of beer, and get all the info you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-06-28T08:33:41.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18557" CreationDate="2016-06-28T08:38:52.787" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing I have noticed over the years is that some Scrum Team members feel that the daily scrum is the primary time they should communicate with other team members. This is particularly true in distributed teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master I will encourage the teams to talk frequently as a part of their normal activities. The value of the daily scrum is that it tends to pick up communications &lt;em&gt;that have been missed&lt;/em&gt; during a normal day. Perhaps one developer was making a change and hadn't bothered to communicate it because they felt it had no impact. But at the daily scrum they mention it and it is picked up by other team members as something they need to know about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The daily scrum really shouldn't be a substitute for routine daily team conversation. If it is then I would act to improve things by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Raising the topic at retrospectives&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Checking to see if the team is happy with the tools they use for communication (text chat, phone, audio conferencing, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Highlighting at the daily scrum where a conversation could have been had as a part of the normal daily routine&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-06-28T08:38:52.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18556" CreationDate="2016-06-28T08:41:36.743" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are 2 issues here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One is which &lt;strong&gt;method&lt;/strong&gt; of Project Management the company should use. This should be decided upon, but it should be clear that a defined method needs to be used, and not the &lt;em&gt;let's get it done already&lt;/em&gt; approach. You can discuss this with your CEO and come to some kind of agreement. You may have to compromise a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second issue is one of p&lt;strong&gt;eople management&lt;/strong&gt;. I don't think you have to be the barrier between the CEO and the workers (even though a PjM usually does just that). I suggest you discuss it with him make it clear that everybody is working towards  the same goal - and that some people work more efficiently at 8 hours/day and others are more efficient at 11 hours/day. Forcing people to work against their prime efficiency  level will produce less output, not more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Decide on goals and prove to him that the team is meeting the goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-06-28T08:41:36.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18562" CreationDate="2016-06-28T11:11:43.827" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is the Agile approach successful in construction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know, but I doubt it would be successful. One of the core ideas behind Agile development is &quot;Responding to change&quot; and I can't see how that would work for a construction project. In construction, you can't afford to have someone say &quot;I don't like that wall there. Move it over 6 inches.&quot;, but that's very inexpensive to do in software. Also, the parts of a building must be built &lt;em&gt;sequentially&lt;/em&gt;. You have to pour the foundation, then frame it, then the roof, then finish the inside. You've got to line up all those men and materials up months in advance in order for things to go smoothly. Lastly, construction is usually done by &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; specialized teams, rather than a single cross functional one. I don't want a plumber nailing shingles down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, one area of construction work where I think Agile development &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; work is in Architecture. I can easily envision a team of architects using Scrum to design a building or bridge. Note the parallels to software:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's knowledge/design work. The finished product is simply a blue print for mass producing the &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; product. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change is easy and cheap. &quot;Can we change that? &lt;em&gt;click click, tappy tap&lt;/em&gt; Done.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastActivityDate="2016-06-28T11:11:43.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18562" CreationDate="2016-06-28T12:16:01.017" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Never heard of it, except a KanBan in supply management. But I have a story for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have an uncle. He strongly believed that man should be able to build a house on his own, with family help of course. He still working on it, as there is no limit to perfection.&#xA;When I first found the Agile approach for product development, I was surprised how close it was for uncles building approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Development was organized in timeboxed releases called seasons, and monthlong sprints. Basically, he built it from May to September each year, and gathered feedback from family and friends from October to April. There was an undocumented backlog of features, that was constantly prioritized, and estimated in relative size.&#xA;Family picked up features from this verbal list to the &quot;sprint backlog&quot; prior the start of a season based on what they have managed to finish last season.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He started for building the MVP, that was garage dug in the hillside, to have a temporary shelter and a simple toilet and shower to make stay a bit more comfortable. It allowed the family to stay there during the season, without the need to return to their apartments in the city.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next season family decided to connect their homestead to the centralized power grid and water supply, to make the stay more comfortable and also he built terraces on the hillside to reinforce the hill and divide it into areas, so he can develop areas separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next season they planted a garden, and added basement to store the goods from garden and annex to store the tools, spare parts for a car, materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next season they finished ground floor, with the electric network.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Season after they finished interior design, added windows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Season after they have planted the vineyard to protect house from sun and create dinner zone outdoors in the shadow of it.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next season they built one more floor and an attic to host friends and family. Installed solid fuel boiler and heating system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next season they have rebuilt balcony into a kitchen and added the indoor shower and toilet, with sewerage, outdoor toilet and shower now used as a shed for garden tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next seasons they have made a pond for a swimming, and fishing. Dug out the weels to get clear water, added climate control, the internet and the satellite TV, plant spruce in front for Christmas and a new year, installed energy saving upgrades, basen, teeterboard, veranda, automated irrigation system, car repair shop  e.t.c.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They strongly followed lean principles, without even knowing what it is. They had a strong definition of done, they always had a &quot;sitdowns&quot; on morning and evening, where they have discussed progress, plans, and issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the result, they have the best custom tailored house in the area, they started to live there before any other neighbour. Total product cost is significantly less than in big bang house of neighbors, as they bought materials on sales, and discounts, on low market seasons. Each and every detail is thought through after using a house for years, I have never seen such comfortable house ever after in 13 countries I have visited. The vision of the house shifted through years and the current house version was far from original design. A lot's of typical mistakes of generic house projects was avoided, due to an iterative approach, and early problem detection, maintenance cost a very low, because the house was built to stand there for ages, and still the design has a potential to add more rooms at low cost.&#xA;The difference between the generic houses around and uncle house is dramatic despite superior annual family incomes of the neighbours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You possibly can't go that way if you build generic, fire and forget, big plan up front, strict budget houses for sale, but agile is a weapon of choice if your intention to build maximum comfort environment for your family, at low price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recommended reading:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0195024028&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.amazon.com/Timeless-Way-Building-Christopher-Alexander/dp/0195024028&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0195019199&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Language-Buildings-Construction-Environmental/dp/0195019199&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0195018249&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.amazon.com/Oregon-Experiment-Center-Environmental-Structure/dp/0195018249&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21857" LastActivityDate="2016-06-28T12:16:01.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18568" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-28T12:40:54.447" Score="1" ViewCount="904" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a board with issues sorted by rank, I would like to create a filter with issues that are &quot;higher&quot; than particular issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to filter issues with rank &gt;= SSP-4, so the result should be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SSP-3&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SSP-8&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SSP-4&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1jzlN.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1jzlN.png&quot; alt=&quot;![Backlog example&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20439" LastActivityDate="2016-11-04T12:56:06.263" Title="How can I create filter by rank?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="55" CreationDate="2016-06-28T15:10:18.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The requirements for a project manager always go out from a project profile.&#xA;Check &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/asadimsian/pm-final01&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DPCI&lt;/a&gt; for instance. You can use risk profiles as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More technical experience:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Small - you just won't have enough administrative tasks to do, so you better write code with others. You can always back your guys in case sick leaves. And sometimes it's just simpler to fix the bug then create a ticket, and describe the story behind it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Short period - you don't have time to wait for SME, you need the solution here and now.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Limited resources - you can't get more developers to it, so it's time to get hands dirty.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clear objectives and scope - there's no need to work on specs and with stakeholders, you just need to make the things to happen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simple organization structure - there's no need for advanced workload management, you don't need to participate in internal politics, you can rearrange team flexibly, everyone works for the one project, and you know to whom address the issues raised. The only thing you need to do is to code. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adequate and engaged stakeholders - stakeholders share one culture, tech level and product vision with you, they know what they want they are nice guys to work with, you don't need to negotiate, contract wars and try to guess they expectations. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;New technology - it's always a huge risk, so you need to be an expert to mitigate them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Junior team - someone just have to mentor Juniors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk-free environment - you don't need to model scenarios, create risk charters and risk mitigation strategies, just code.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Less technical experience:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Big - you just don't have time to code.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Long period - there's always a time to ask someone who knows more than you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unlimited resources - you don't need to think about workarounds and tradeoffs just make it the better way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unclear objectives and scope - someone need's to clear this mess, engage stakeholders, achieve and maintain crystal clarity through a project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Complex organization structure - in big and complex structured company PM should be an ambassador of a team, know the right persons to get what's needed to keep things smooth and running.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inadequate and unengaged stakeholders - I was lucky enough to work with exceptional customers, but most my colleagues don't. You need a master smooth talker and a king of crooks to deal with customers who try to cheat you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mature technology - you don't need a spark of genius to google for a solution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mature team - when you manage all-stars senior+ team you just need to sit back and watch the show.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risky environment - while tech pm can focus on implementation on risk-free env., in risky env. you need to have a broad look on all aspects, to be a night watch for a project seeking for a wolf-pack of troubles trying to get your project down.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why not have both? Scrum divides the PM on TeamLead, basically a technical expert, SM as a process expert and PO as a product and customer engagement expert.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also noticed that there is a two extremes for tech knowledge of PM's.&#xA;One is you need to know enough to speak one language with the team and understand basic tech concepts, the other is that you should be the best developer in the team.&#xA;Everyone in between tends to propose implementations that fall below teams capabilities.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21857" LastActivityDate="2016-06-28T15:10:18.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18570" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18571" CreationDate="2016-06-28T18:04:17.303" Score="-3" ViewCount="105" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are using three tools for handle our jobs,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Slack&lt;/strong&gt; for communication&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Trello&lt;/strong&gt; for Task Management&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Google Docs&lt;/strong&gt; for Documentation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;because these tools have not good integration with each other ( and also we need better task management system) we are looking for a tool that satisfy our requirements in best way&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Our requirements&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Documenation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task and Project Manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communication &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We found some solutions &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/try&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Atlassian Family&lt;/a&gt; ( Jira + Hipchat + confluence )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bitrix24.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Biritx24&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://podio.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Podio&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.exoplatform.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Exoplatform&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;we are really getting confused what is best solution for us(&lt;strong&gt;we looking for a tool that provided all of requirements in one&lt;/strong&gt;)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;we are a company with several departments ( our jobs is around web) and at this time we have 15 users ( but we'll grow up)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;appreciate any help&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23920" LastEditorUserId="23920" LastEditDate="2016-06-28T19:50:18.797" LastActivityDate="2016-06-29T00:16:22.533" Title="Best solution for team managment" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-06-29T12:28:58.167" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18570" CreationDate="2016-06-28T19:12:17.620" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Documentation - Git + Confluence.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task and Project Manager - Jira.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communication - Slack + Google hangouts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21857" LastActivityDate="2016-06-28T19:12:17.620" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18570" CreationDate="2016-06-29T00:16:22.533" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Considering your requirements, I'd definitely fork up money for the Atlassian stack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Confluence + JIRA + HipChat integrate &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; well and Confluence and JIRA are very flexible tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you take the on-premise versions though. it's a bit of a step-up in terms of administration effort and cost from your current solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, if 2/3 + 1/3 is OK, consider GitLab, GitHub or BitBucket with the Wiki in the Git repo, and use Slack for communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1936" LastActivityDate="2016-06-29T00:16:22.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18545" CreationDate="2016-06-29T09:03:10.110" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you using windows? If yes, consider using Git with integrated UIs like TortoiseGit but don't remove the option of Git Bash on Windows Explorer integration for those who insists on using command lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I took the Git training from Udacity and they are using command lines, but I am still encouraging my co-workers to use TortoiseGit as it boosts our productivity and it has some good things like auto-complete when placing comments on the commits, very easy to compare submodules, no need to memorize commands, etc. We are using command-line only on our build servers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8980" LastActivityDate="2016-06-29T09:03:10.110" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18574" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18575" CreationDate="2016-06-29T09:17:02.363" Score="8" ViewCount="792" Body="&lt;p&gt;A fully agile centric question.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If an exception, error, defect or bug occurs prior to the completion of a user story; do you log it is a bug or do simply consider part of the work required to make a user story done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2016-06-29T10:54:39.697" Title="Do you consider a defect an actual defect if it occurs in Dev prior to the acceptance of the User Story as Done?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;&lt;defect-fixing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18574" CreationDate="2016-06-29T10:44:49.613" Score="16" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Working software&lt;/strong&gt; over comprehensive documentation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I'd say that it just gets fixed and considered part of the work needed to complete the story. When you found the bug, you added a failing test to document it prior to fixing it, right? &lt;em&gt;Right?&lt;/em&gt; Thats more than enough documentation for most use cases and doing anything more is useless overhead. (Obviously just my opinion, but I know many who would share it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you might have very good reasons to track this information anyway, in which case, you should log the bug. For example, we currently have a quality initiative where I work. We want to show that the time spent doing code reviews, unit testing our code, and a QA check are reducing the number of bugs that make it to production. So when we find a bug prior to release, we tag it with the stage of our process the bug was discovered in. Using this information, we've been able to show the business that this is time well invested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reason you may want to track these pre-release bugs is if you need to meet &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail?csnumber=59752&quot;&gt;ISO 13485:2003 specifications&lt;/a&gt;. When your software is used to manufacture medical devices, every code change needs to have a documented reason for changing. I'm not 100% sure that pre-release bugs need to be documented to meet this requirement, but my team didn't want to take that risk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another good reason to track the bug is to make the work visible. Let's say you're using a Kanban board. Dev finished a story and sends it over to QA (who sits right next to them, right? &lt;em&gt;Right?&lt;/em&gt;). QA finds a bug in the story, logs the bug, and puts in on the board's &quot;Urgent&quot; lane (or simply the top of the backlog). Then it's very visible that this bug needs to be fixed in order for that story to be completed for this iteration. The QA documented the bug, so the next available developer can pull the bug, whether or not that was the dev who was working on that story. This maximizes the team's cohesion and flow, forcing the team to work as a team in order to meet their goals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, like all things in software, &lt;em&gt;it depends&lt;/em&gt;. Do what works for your team. Don't have a need to log it? &lt;em&gt;Great. Don't. Maximize the work not done.&lt;/em&gt; Have a need to keep track of these things? &lt;em&gt;Fantastic!&lt;/em&gt; Then keep track of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastEditorUserId="21039" LastEditDate="2016-06-29T10:54:39.697" LastActivityDate="2016-06-29T10:54:39.697" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18313" CreationDate="2016-06-29T12:58:04.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I propose you to use KanBan+Lean for it. Correct me if I'm wrong but your projects are very similar in stages and activities, the difference only in size and duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also would need a person responsible for resource allocation and prioritization, and work agreement on how it should be prioritized, that is shared through the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why it's works: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefabricator.com/article/shopmanagement/can-lean-manufacturing-work-in-the-job-shopr&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.thefabricator.com/article/shopmanagement/can-lean-manufacturing-work-in-the-job-shopr&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What to use: Jira, Trello any kanban board shall do the trick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21857" LastActivityDate="2016-06-29T12:58:04.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18578" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18595" CreationDate="2016-06-29T13:00:27.973" Score="1" ViewCount="95" Body="&lt;p&gt;A story that has been picked up by a development team is too big. Is it 'okay' to break it down even though work has already commenced? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastActivityDate="2016-07-01T22:28:14.467" Title="Can I break a user story down after work as already started?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18578" CreationDate="2016-06-29T13:32:47.257" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why not? It's even better to do this as it makes you more flexible during development, by &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W92wG-HW8gg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;minimizing work in progress&lt;/a&gt; or in case velocity dropdown or changes in the sprint backlog. &#xA;Check &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agile-ux.com/2011/04/19/10-strategies-to-split-large-user-stories/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10 strategies to split large user stories&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://agileforall.com/new-story-splitting-resource/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;New Story Splitting Resource&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21857" LastEditorUserId="21857" LastEditDate="2016-06-30T07:07:53.747" LastActivityDate="2016-06-30T07:07:53.747" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18578" CreationDate="2016-06-29T17:20:28.177" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, don't change stuff once work has started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you can split it without changing the requirements it will change the way it is implemented because you will be effectively adding interface requirements between the sub tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paint the fence red! Dev proceeds to buy paint sprayer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paint this fence plank red. Dont change the colour of the pther planks! Dev throws away paint sprayer and scrubs paint off half the planks. Buys paint brush&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastEditorUserId="17049" LastEditDate="2016-06-30T12:36:22.490" LastActivityDate="2016-06-30T12:36:22.490" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18583" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-30T05:35:16.860" Score="5" ViewCount="373" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been reading a lot about agile, stories, and INVEST recently, and trying to apply it to my work (with a view to introducing it all more broadly within our organisation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can see the value of Independence (and other points) within the INVEST mnemonic, but I'm not sure how it should work in some scenarios.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, I'm writing a tool from scratch at the moment. The basic intent is so that it can pull lists from a database. So of course, I can write stories like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user, I would like to be able to get a list of all users from the database.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user, I would like to be able to get a list of comments from a specific user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seems simple - but I haven't yet written the common framework these commands will run through. I guess this is another user story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a developer, I would like an interface to the database so I can produce lists that the user requests from a command line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oops - there's now a dependency...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is Independence achieved in situations like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3178" LastActivityDate="2016-06-30T07:56:53.350" Title="Achieving independence for story items" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18583" CreationDate="2016-06-30T06:22:09.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, there's always a certain degree of dependencies between stories. It might not occur in the first iteration of identifying the backlog items, but as we start breaking the stories to smaller stories, you'll start seeing those dependencies. Your example clearly shows this situation. I think this is normal and not something we can avoid completely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really want &lt;strong&gt;total&lt;/strong&gt; independence, you should refrain from breaking down stories into multiple dependent stories. Once you start seeing those dependencies, you should create a sub-task instead. Just for the purpose of explicitly stating what needs to be done to complete the story. This way, dependency will be isolated as sub-tasks of each story and you'll avoid the risk of having dependent stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a side note, I personally think that total independence &lt;strong&gt;is not&lt;/strong&gt; what the INVEST mnemonic aims for. We should simply minimize the amount of dependencies so that each story can be moved freely between backlog and sprints. This flexibility is important during Sprint planning. This is the reason why we need more independent stories. Forcing total independence to work might not add anything for that purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16643" LastActivityDate="2016-06-30T06:22:09.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18583" CreationDate="2016-06-30T07:00:09.447" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In agile project typically you have sprint 0.&#xA;Which basically about creating architecture, interfaces, and maybe minimum viable product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to user story's it's a good practiсe to incorporate all tech stuff in it.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pWaTo.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pWaTo.png&quot; alt=&quot;Mike Cohn Agile Estimating and Planning&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should do the trick in your case. But you can't get rid of dependencies at all. That's why agile uses &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilemarketing.net/epic-vs-theme-2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;themes and epics&lt;/a&gt; .&#xA;Also it's wise to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilebuddha.com/agile/story-mapping-andvs-process-maps/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;map the storys&lt;/a&gt; for complex processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21857" LastActivityDate="2016-06-30T07:00:09.447" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18583" CreationDate="2016-06-30T07:24:06.973" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Who will use the tool you are building? What do they want it for? That information drives your user stories and not the technical implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The stories you give as examples miss the important element of &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you sure there is only one type of user? Does everyone use the tool in the same way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As an administrator I would like to get a full list of users so that I can send out an email about changes to the product&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that if you write the stories in a more user-focused way you find it easier to make them independent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, it is not unusual for there to be some common framework as you mention. But you don't have to write a user story just for that. Instead, write your stories in the usual user-focused way, but expect the first one you do to require a lot more work than the others as it will &lt;em&gt;include&lt;/em&gt; the building of some of the common framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this way there is an impact on your estimates of the size of the stories, but there is no impact of the implementation on the user stories themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-06-30T07:56:53.350" LastActivityDate="2016-06-30T07:56:53.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18587" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-30T14:24:17.420" Score="2" ViewCount="6030" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm assisting with interviewing a few new PM candidates, and I've been given the task of asking questions related to their MS Project knowledge. The other interviewers are using experience-based questions, ie &quot;can you tell me of a time...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What sort of questions would you include? Frankly, I think most software knowledge can be gained after the fact and that soft skills are most important, but I'd like to be able to assess the level of the candidates as a sort of tie-breaker if needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23945" LastActivityDate="2016-07-03T12:38:48.283" Title="Interviewing for MS Project skills" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18588" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-06-30T14:33:24.213" Score="-2" ViewCount="236" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my colleagues is in charge of QA (acceptance testing), and I keep on having to double check his work, and when I do, I find bugs - it is becoming tedious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short of double checking his work, how can I improve the process so that it is more efficiently done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2016-07-03T08:03:41.740" Title="How can I improve the efficiency of QA?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18588" CreationDate="2016-06-30T15:12:02.277" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's divide QA(Quality Assurance) from QC(Quality control), check the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.diffen.com/difference/Quality_Assurance_vs_Quality_Control&quot;&gt;difference&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short term solution for manual QC would be to create test plans, acceptance criteria's, force your QC to add test evidence(Screenshots, screencasts, logs, SQL query results), which prove that all ok, you should also plan the number of bugs based on previous development history. For instance, on one of my projects, used only manual QC, there was 0.8-1.2 bug for each 10 hours of development. That means that for 40h feature there must be from 3.2 to 4.8 defects. So I shall plan to find at least to find at least 5 of them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;General advice would be to switch from QC to QA. On all stages of the project. &lt;a href=&quot;http://codemanship.co.uk/parlezuml/tutorials/agile_qa/Example_Agile_Quality_Assurance_Strategy.pdf&quot;&gt;Example&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21857" LastActivityDate="2016-06-30T15:12:02.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18102" CreationDate="2016-06-30T15:47:34.173" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_register&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Risk Register&lt;/a&gt; Database - just a list of risks with all it's attributes. Typically excel or SQL table, that is constantly reviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project Summary Risk Reports - it's a report made of this &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_register&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Risk Register&lt;/a&gt; Database. Typically risk matrix, and number of pivot tables/nice looking charts, giving you high-level overview of risk impacts in total, by date, by category, by strategy, by owner and ROI of mitigation/contingency . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21857" LastActivityDate="2016-06-30T15:47:34.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18587" CreationDate="2016-06-30T19:42:13.373" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Q - How do you make MS Project information available and understandable for non PM team members?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A - Typically this will involve views printed to PDF, exports to Excel, sometimes people have experienced Project Server and the answer will involve web based reports. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q - How does MS Project determine a task is on the critical path?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A - If total slack is &amp;lt;= 0 it's on the critical path. Depending on the version this can be configured. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q - What is critical path?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A - It's the longest path of tasks to either a deadline or the last task in the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q - Do you set predecessors or successors to summary tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A - Depends on who you ask and your organization may have guidance on this. Personally I never do this because it tends to hide tasks that may be on the critical path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q - Do you prefer auto schedule or manual &amp;amp; why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A - Again, more of a discussion point. There are reasons that both make sense. I use auto and sometimes set constraints on a tasks by task basis. Small schedules sometimes are better off with manual scheduling. The more experienced someone is with MS Project the more likely, I believe, they are to use automatic scheduling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q - Say someone wants a custom view for their team, how might you do that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A - Usually the answer is to set up a custom text field with a pick list, assign the team names to the tasks, filter on that field and either print to PDF or export to Excel. A more advanced solution is to create a custom view. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q - Tell me two ways to filter in Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A - One is with the Auto Filters. Two is to create a custom filter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q - Have you used resource leveling? What are the pitfalls?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A - Again more of a discussion point. The biggest pitfall can be that leveling can push tasks around time wise if it's not set correctly. Most folks don't like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully these questions stimulate a conversation &amp;amp; some reflection on the tool. As you know MS Project is very rich and thus very complex. There is almost always more than one way to do anything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: One more -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q - When would you NOT use MS Project to schedule a project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A - &quot;Small&quot; projects. To me that means not more than 50 tasks and not more than a month or two in duration. An exception here is if it's a program that is made up of many small projects that all need to be linked to show critical path or reporting across the program (or portfolio)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23027" LastEditorUserId="23027" LastEditDate="2016-06-30T19:50:53.503" LastActivityDate="2016-06-30T19:50:53.503" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16559" CreationDate="2016-07-01T09:08:48.957" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's very easy I have worked in a company where there were 15+ developers and 12 project managers(sic!). We have made simple and clear work agreement regarding relative task prioritization through all projects, and delegated possibility to manage workload to one of the developers, basically he drag out new tasks from ready for development pool and assigned to free or best fit developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21857" LastActivityDate="2016-07-01T09:08:48.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18578" CreationDate="2016-07-01T22:28:14.467" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, this is &quot;Okay.&quot; ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/strong&gt; (scrumguides.org) actually encourages responding this way to emergence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Development Team modifies the Sprint Backlog throughout the Sprint, and the Sprint Backlog emerges during the Sprint. This emergence occurs as the Development Team works through the plan and learns more about the work needed to achieve the Sprint Goal. &lt;em&gt;- scrum guide / sprint backlog&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional points from the Scrum Guide &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Sprint Goal is what guides the Dev TeamThe Sprint Backlog BELONGS to the Development Team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No one tells the Development Team HOW to turn the product backlog into Increments of potentially releasable functionality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23922" LastActivityDate="2016-07-01T22:28:14.467" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16559" CreationDate="2016-07-02T12:09:31.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're stating that you have two managers that can covers complementary timezones. You need to ask yourself why would you need manager to supervise what developers do? That's not a role of manager in modern organizations anymore. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They should rather provide environment for the team than to supervise the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, I've never seen someone having to report to two separate people. Maybe you don't need two managers and role you're looking for is something else?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend further reading in the topic of what modern management in software team means. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00DY5A8X2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Peopleware by Tom DeMarco&lt;/a&gt; and whole &lt;a href=&quot;https://management30.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Management 3.0&lt;/a&gt; popularized by &lt;a href=&quot;http://jurgenappelo.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jurgen Appelo&lt;/a&gt;. As per latter: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Management is too important to leave it to managers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3501" LastActivityDate="2016-07-02T12:09:31.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18597" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18599" CreationDate="2016-07-02T14:35:57.270" Score="7" ViewCount="1279" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#theory&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Three pillars uphold every implementation of empirical process&#xA;  control: &lt;strong&gt;transparency&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;inspection&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;adaptation&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the pillars of the Kanban process? Are they the same or is something different?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;N.B.&lt;/strong&gt; I understand that Kanban surely has transparency via kanban board or other information radiators; inspection is also done regularly and there are even explicit rules for adaptation towards finishing expedited items or managing the delivery process. Nevertheless, the quote is from the Scrum Guide, which is a different framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23935" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-07-02T17:08:20.267" LastActivityDate="2016-07-02T17:08:20.267" Title="What are the &quot;pillars&quot; of the Kanban process?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;theory&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18597" CreationDate="2016-07-02T16:50:07.027" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kanban isn't nearly as well defined as Scrum. There is no equivalent to The Scrum Guide, as far as I know. However, I can share with you &lt;em&gt;my&lt;/em&gt; &quot;pillars of Kanban&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Start where you are and continuously improve from there.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where ever you happen to be, that is where you are. The best way to get to where you're going is one step at a time. As often as possible or necessary, reflect on where it is you are right now and where you want to go, then course correct to get there. Change and improvement happen in baby steps. Big Bang &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt; rarely works out well. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make the work visible.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both to the team and your stakeholders. Typically done with a Kanban board, but I imagine other visualizations could be invented (always be open to new ideas!). People absorb information best when it's visual. Visualizing your work allows you to spot bottlenecks/issues and address them sooner. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Minimize Work In Progress.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone knows that developers (people in general) are single threaded and terribly inefficient at switching between tasks. Keeping the WIP to a minimum raises the efficiency of your system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;There are a lot of other reasons keeping WIP to a minimum will raise a systems efficiency. This all related to Queue Theory and originated, to the best of my knowledge, from Lean Manufacturing techniques. It can be a bit heady; I recommend you do your own research on both topics.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's not done until it's in production and we should focus on getting the things closest to done, DONE.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our work isn't valuable until it's been deployed. If something is &lt;em&gt;almost done&lt;/em&gt;, then we should focus on delivering that value. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pull, don't push.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pushing work through a system causes backups and bottlenecks. Resulting in a lot of work that's &lt;em&gt;almost done&lt;/em&gt;. Pulling from a queue (with a WIP limit), alleviates this and allows our work to flow efficiently through the system. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastActivityDate="2016-07-02T16:50:07.027" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18597" CreationDate="2016-07-02T17:05:51.973" Score="10" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are the pillars of Kanban process? Are they the same [as Scrum] or is something different?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban doesn't define &quot;pillars&quot; in the same sense as Scrum. However, as one of the core agile methodologies, it espouses a set of rules and principles that &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; map to the same agile objectives. The current set of six practices (described below) collectively map to the pillars you describe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Kanban Method&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, David Anderson's &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_(development)#The_Kanban_Method&quot;&gt;Kanban Method&lt;/a&gt; describes the following four basic principles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start with existing process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agree to pursue incremental, evolutionary change&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Respect the current process, roles, responsibilities and titles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leadership at all levels&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban, which grew out of manufacturing, describes the following rules for manufacturing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;A later process tells an earlier process when new items are required.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The earlier process produces what the later process needs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;No items can be made or moved without a Kanban.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Defects are not passed on to the next stage.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The number of Kanbans is reduced carefully to lower inventories and to reveal problems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash; Mattias Skarin. Real-World Kanban (Kindle Locations 188-191). The Pragmatic Bookshelf, LLC. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Open Kanban&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_(development)#Open_Kanban&quot;&gt;Open Kanban&lt;/a&gt; then defines four key practices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Visualize the workflow.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lead using a team approach.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduce the Batch Size of your Efforts or Reduce BASE.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn and improve continuously.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within these practices, the &lt;em&gt;Visualize the workflow&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Learn and improve continuously&lt;/em&gt; principles provide the inspect-and-adapt cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Kanban's Six Practices&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth noting that most practitioners now accept that there are &lt;em&gt;six&lt;/em&gt; key practices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Visualize workflow.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Limit Work-In-Progress (WIP).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Manage flow.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Make process policies explicit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Implement feedback loops.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Improve collaboratively, evolve experimentally.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash; Mattias Skarin. Real-World Kanban (Kindle Locations 195-206). The Pragmatic Bookshelf, LLC.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, there is a much clearer mapping to the Scrum process controls:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Transparency&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Visualize workflow.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make processes explicit. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Inspection&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implement feedback looks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Evolve experimentally, because the exposition of this principle refers to the scientific method, which requires both measurements and observation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Adaptation&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implement feedback loops.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improve collaboratively, evolve experimentally.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it's not as simplistic as the &quot;three pillars&quot; in your question, and there is some complexity and overlap in the implementation, current Kanban practices do a good job of providing the same things, and can often be smoothly integrated within Scrum, Lean, or even XP implementations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-07-02T17:05:51.973" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18588" CreationDate="2016-07-03T08:03:41.740" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Clearly document the &lt;em&gt;finds&lt;/em&gt; in emails to your colleague, and CC this colleague's direct boss (and maybe the one above them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After 3 such emails it's appropriate to ask the boss to request your colleague to either shape up or ship out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Most times, after one such email+CC your colleague will make sure to clean up their act.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-07-03T08:03:41.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18587" CreationDate="2016-07-03T09:48:59.433" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you need to be very careful about using knowledge of MS-Project as a tie-breaker. I am not convinced that will help you very much. In the event you had two identically experienced or desirable candidates, obviously you have to choose &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; to pick between them, but I doubt they would be &lt;em&gt;so&lt;/em&gt; close that only MS-Project skills differentiated them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difficulty is this: It is such a huge and complex tool, with so many different yet intertwined ways of achieving the same outcome, that knowledge of any one functional item does not correlate to the competency of any individual PM. Great project managers can be rubbish with MS-P, and expert users of MS-Project, with fantastically detailed MS-Project plans (I know a Gantt chart is not a project plan from a purist point of view, but it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; from a de facto point of view with every single PM I have ever met), can nonetheless be unable to manage their way out of a darkened room. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarise, I would &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; try to find some other correlator of PM competency before looking at how well they know MS-Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However if you insist this is the way forwards then I offer the following (note that I am not intending to provide answers, quite deliberately, as it would enable future candidates to &quot;cheat&quot; when asked such questions):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Discuss why project managers even use MS-Project (or some other project planning and scheduling software) at all? I have seen many project plans hand-crafted in Excel and there are times this is entirely reasonable. If the candidate knows &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; this is sometimes appropriate they will be demonstrating an understanding of how their plans can be used and also communicated to audiences and why that is important&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What are MS-Project's limitations? This is a bit of a trick question because, since it is so flexible, a limitation in one area of use may not be apparent in another area of use, but the candidate's answers may illuminate any difficulties they find with the product, and from there you may be able to judge their competency with MS-Project and some of the more challenging features of project planning and scheduling in general&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What do we use constraints for and when should they be used? Inexperienced PMs tend to overload their plan with constraints. If your candidate understands this, and more importantly explain why that is a bad idea (and what to do instead) then you will have someone who understands some of the common problems people have with MS-Project and how to avoid them&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What is your standard set of steps you go through when starting a brand new MS-Project for the first time on a new project? I would expect to see some tasks around the project calendars, working time,  project holidays etc. But the candidate will need to be able to explain what they are doing and, most importantly, why they are doing these steps. Failure to get these right leads to common and potentially severe problems down the line. Knowing and understanding these effects will demonstrate a PM that has faced and conquered these common &quot;beginners'&quot; issues&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's one thing to use MS-Project to create a plan for a project before it is started. But how does a PM use MS-Project once the project is under way? Good candidates should be able to take you through the steps they perform during a project, and most importantly, &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; they do them. What are the reasons for these steps, what are the outcomes, what issues are they trying to avoid. When do they &lt;em&gt;stop&lt;/em&gt; updating MS-Project&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How would you add contingency into an MS-Project plan? Another slightly trick question as there are many ways of doing this, none more right than the others, but the conversation will illuminate the candidate's views on contingency in the first place. In any case, how it is represented in the plan is very important and can lead to, or solve, many common future issues. If the candidate can demonstrate an understanding of this and how to deploy it then the signs are good&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, I urge you to be slightly more circumspect in your view that &quot;...most software knowledge can be gained after the fact&quot;. With MS-Project it is very easy to pick up the basic skills, which look so intuitive, but it is very difficult to scale those skills up to a more complex plan and use of the tool. An understanding of what that takes and what that means will indicate a PM that has been through that mill (but they still might be a rubbish PM, which is why using MS-Project as the tie-breaker will not help much!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that helps. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2016-07-03T12:38:48.283" LastActivityDate="2016-07-03T12:38:48.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8070" CreationDate="2016-07-04T02:32:47.143" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on my experience, breaking down tasks into more granularity can lead to additional complexity and time rather than simplification.  The WBS for the web construction is appropriate since the design of the UI and classes is complete. It is important to proceed promptly and accurately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23970" LastActivityDate="2016-07-04T02:32:47.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18604" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18621" CreationDate="2016-07-04T12:18:14.813" Score="0" ViewCount="108" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm pretty new to Microsoft Project and I'm trying to put several views in place. However, for some reason, if I edit one view (Issue Log view) my Gantt Chart view gets the same updates. So if I remove columns in one, the other gets the same column removed. Is this normal behavior?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23975" LastEditorUserId="23981" LastEditDate="2016-07-05T11:37:50.923" LastActivityDate="2016-07-06T19:51:21.153" Title="Microsoft Project views" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18326" CreationDate="2016-07-04T14:56:06.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quoting &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fault_tree_analysis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fault tree analysis (FTA) is a top-down, deductive failure analysis in which an undesired state of a system is analyzed using Boolean logic to combine a series of lower-level events. This analysis method is mainly used in the fields of safety engineering and reliability engineering to understand how systems can fail, to identify the best ways to reduce risk or to determine (or get a feeling for) event rates of a safety accident or a particular system level (functional) failure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, how many tiny pieces can break when it breaks then what else breaks as a result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;influence of each risk&lt;/strong&gt; can be determined by understanding the system-wide consequences of the failure - which is not readily apparent in the FTA. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: An indicator light that fails to turn on could either fail to inform you the oil is overheating or that the trunk is not closed properly. The potential consequences are very different depending on the weather and the value of the baggage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A full understanding of the system in question would be needed to understand and assess the  influence of each risk. (And as I've often said, a PjM who doesn't understand the technicalities of their project is a ticking time bomb.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-07-04T14:56:06.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18112" CreationDate="2016-07-04T15:01:23.553" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Shouldn't it contain the releasing process of the resources?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. You don't want to &lt;strong&gt;release&lt;/strong&gt; your human resources after each project - that would entail firing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You simply want to free them up for the next project, so you simply close the process group. The resources are  no longer attached to the old project and can be relocated to another one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-07-04T15:01:23.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18557" CreationDate="2016-07-05T01:08:37.003" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a great question highlighting an issue that many (especially inexperienced) Development Teams face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the Daily Scrum the Development Team members should be inspecting progress toward the Sprint Goal, noting impediments that need to be raised, and adapting their plan for the current day's work through a discussion.  Focused questions in creating that plan are necessary.  Conversations regarding details of how work was done or will be done are not meant for the Daily Scrum event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Experience and/or coaching can help the Development Team reach a consensus on a technique to identify and address discussions that need to be tabled for later, after the function of the Daily Scrum has been fulfilled.  As previously mentioned, a 30 second or minute rule can be helpful.  As the Development Team members conduct the event, topics can be mentioned to be placed on a list to be discussed immediately following the Daily Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More importantly, as was also pointed out, this is indicative of a problem of a lack of collaboration by the Development Team members throughout the day; pair programming can help improve this disconnect.  The opening post spoke in terms of developers and testers.  While each person has distinct strengths, removing these roles and cross-training can also help reduce the risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, as a Scrum Master your role is to teach the Development Team to conduct the Daily Scrum within the 15 minute time-box, not be a participant in the event.  It would be fruitful to &lt;em&gt;observe&lt;/em&gt; the event as needed (more frequently for a less experienced team) in order to identify possible areas for improvement to be suggested at another time such as during the Sprint Retrospective event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While one result of the Daily Scrum is a shared understanding of progress, it is not a status meeting.  Remove that term from the language.  Remove practices such as pass-the-baton that result in such an event.  It should feel like a planning discussion rooted in the three questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2016-07-05T01:08:37.003" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16857" CreationDate="2016-07-05T01:49:18.043" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;User Stories are a technique for the items in the Product Backlog.  The individual tasks, such as testing, should be part of the &lt;em&gt;Definition of Done&lt;/em&gt;.  The task of testing supports the user story for the product backlog item that is to be done by the end of the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2016-07-05T01:49:18.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16578" CreationDate="2016-07-05T02:04:16.990" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As stated, there is no Sprint Zero.  However, there is plenty that can be done before beginning to utilize the Scrum framework that can help create productivity and success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn Scrum (&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://scrumguides.org&lt;/a&gt;,  &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrum.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://scrum.org&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create an initial Product Backlog, especially by engaging customers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prepare environments, especially continuous integration testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a Definition of Done, the more robust in the beginning the better&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Share the vision, engage the Scrum Team to move together&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cross train on job skills, Development Team members have no titles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Enhance domain knowledge&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Review/Establish coding standards and best practices&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Train on technology skills&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dive-right-in or shock approach can be successful, but there is a high risk that a lot of debt will occur and/or not much production-ready software will be produced in the first several Sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2016-07-05T02:04:16.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18610" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18613" CreationDate="2016-07-05T04:45:24.773" Score="1" ViewCount="103" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a 5 Whys Analysis what would be the typical timeframe for the full process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a reference let's consider the &quot;engine not working&quot; example, in orders of magnitude (minutes, hours, days).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any guidance or best practice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it supposed to be a fast brainstorming or a meticulous drill-down of each why-step?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23981" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-07-05T09:10:24.787" LastActivityDate="2016-07-05T17:57:10.577" Title="What is the average (intended) timeframe for 5 Whys Analysis?" Tags="&lt;analysis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18611" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-05T07:37:20.720" Score="0" ViewCount="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;I mean like small, medium and larger project. I have seen in some places the following could be factors for determining the project:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scope&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time/Schedule&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cost/Budget&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resources&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any tools to determine what type of project it is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23983" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-07-05T09:07:31.100" LastActivityDate="2016-07-05T09:11:48.527" Title="Are there any tools for categorizing the project?" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18611" CreationDate="2016-07-05T09:11:48.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the official PRINCE2 Manual (i.e. &quot;Managing Successful projects with PRINCE2&quot;), there is a chapter (no. 19) on tailoring the PRINCE2 method to the project environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the factors described in there is the project scale, i.e. how big or how small is the project (measured in terms of time, cost, resources...), how complex is it, the level of risk...&#xA;It also includes some (examples of) characteristics for the different scales:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simple project: low risk, cost, importance, visibility. A single organization and a single site.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Normal project: medium risk, cost, importance, visibility. A commercial customer/supplier relationship. Multiple sites.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are just examples of what could be characteristics. The manual gives some guidance on how to apply PRINCE2 to these different types of projects.&#xA;It's definitely not the most elaborate section, but gives you some suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have access to the PRINCE2 manual, it's section 19.5 and table 19.2 I'm referring to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some more pointers to information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prince2primer.com/using-project-scale-in-a-prince2-project/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Using Project Scale In A PRINCE2 Project&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prince2primer.com/prince2-project-scale/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Scale – a key PRINCE2 tailoring factor&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The white paper from AXELOS: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.axelos.com/case-studies-and-white-papers/prince2-for-small-scale-projects&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PRINCE2 for small-scale projects&lt;/a&gt; (Requires registration, but is free. Don't be misled by the titel of the whitepaper in the web version. It refers to MSP, but seems to be wrong to me. It has the right content. You can also download a pdf version, that one has the right title.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these look at project scale from a PRINCE2 perspective obviously!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23497" LastActivityDate="2016-07-05T09:11:48.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18610" CreationDate="2016-07-05T09:54:57.770" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This greatly depends on the complexity of the thing you want to analyse.&#xA;The sessions should be long enough to focus on real issues and not just the symptoms. Keep in mind that you do not need to solve the root-cause during the analyses, this can happen afterwards by different people or a smaller group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are three group sizes that are common for the analyses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Personal analyses, one person: Should be pretty quick&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One-on-one analyses, two persons: +- 15 minutes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teams, 2+ persons: time-box the session, for example 30-60 minutes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For defects in software most sessions take around 15 minutes in my experience. This is mostly just a two person session to find process improvements to prevent defects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For team sessions I always time-box a full hour to have room for discussions and insights. No need to use to full time-box when you found what you are looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some interesting reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.isixsigma.com/tools-templates/cause-effect/determine-root-cause-5-whys/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Determine the Root Cause: 5 Whys&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jamesshore.com/Agile-Book/root_cause_analysis.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Art of Agile Development: Root-Cause Analysis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/root-cause-analysis-of-the-failure-of-root-cause-analysis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Root Cause Analysis of the Failure of Root Cause Analysis&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://intland.com/blog/safety-engineering/using-root-cause-analysis-to-drive-process-improvement/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Using Root Cause Analysis to Drive Process Improvement&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="23981" LastEditDate="2016-07-05T17:57:10.577" LastActivityDate="2016-07-05T17:57:10.577" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18614" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-05T11:44:11.003" Score="2" ViewCount="414" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are transiting from Scrum to Kanban. One of the things we need to still have to &lt;strong&gt;stick to some deadlines&lt;/strong&gt; (stakeholders need to know some dates).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have some classes of tasks negotiated with clients (SLA levels). They also have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fixed deadline&lt;/strong&gt; - ordinary tasks that turn into high priority if the deadline is very close.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;High priority&lt;/strong&gt; - tasks to be done as soon as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Expendite&lt;/strong&gt; - all current work needs to be abandoned and this issue should be addressed. (like PROD env is down or equivalent)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We do grooming of backlog, break deadline items into tasks, decorate them with deadline time. After some time the deadline is approaching, some of the tasks turn to be high priority. Still we are confident about our commitment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But our boss comes and tells to start working on something equally important (other thing or PROD issue). Now, we understand that we can't deliver committed features on time.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. How those situation are managed in Kanban?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Are there any application that can calculate automatically new delivery date?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;P.S.&lt;/strong&gt; Team is multifunctional so not everybody can do all the work, so personal WIP are also imposed and should be calculated towards new dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23935" LastActivityDate="2016-07-06T09:12:55.943" Title="Predicting release date change in Kanban due to PROD issues" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18614" CreationDate="2016-07-06T04:02:09.283" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nothing really to do with Kanban, its just management. Ask the stakeholder which work should be removed from the commitment (or system) to make space for the new work. The good thing about Kanban is, it is a pipeline so you only need to finish one thing at the end and if everyone is available to pull work from the previous stage a free slot should open up at the beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding question 2: I thought your delivery dates were fixed deadlines. If your delivery dates are currently based on calculations, then why cant you redo these calculations to see what the new delivery date might be? If they are decided based on business reasons then calculations might not help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="763" LastActivityDate="2016-07-06T04:02:09.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18617" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18619" CreationDate="2016-07-06T08:54:41.993" Score="4" ViewCount="640" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have three teams contributing to the same product. Currently our automated system tests are being written by two QA people that see what has been finished in the reviews and then write appropriate tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That has been working okay, but we are now pushing towards continuous deployment and need to ensure that the system tests are written during the Sprint so that we can immediately run regression tests. Since none of the teams fully own the feature right now we are unclear on who should be responsible for system testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23992" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-07-06T13:35:21.240" LastActivityDate="2016-07-07T00:38:53.000" Title="In an scaled Scrum with multiple teams, who should be responsible for writing automated system tests?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;testing&gt;&lt;scaled&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18614" CreationDate="2016-07-06T09:12:55.943" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Kanban there are no deadlines, only &lt;em&gt;priorities&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Kanban board is typically in priority order with the highest priority work items at the top and the lowest at the bottom. The team works on the highest priority work item(s) and get them completed first before working on lower priority items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a work item has a deadline associated with it then this needs to be translated in to a priority. For example, a work item with a tight deadline might well be the &lt;em&gt;highest priority&lt;/em&gt; work item and go straight to the top of the Kanban board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that if your boss comes along and introduces new work that you ask the boss to tell you what the priority is (i.e. how high up the Kanban board the item should be added).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, say the team has the following on their Kanban board:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Item X&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Item Y&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Item Z&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The boss comes along and says that there is a new piece of work called Item W. The team asks the boss what the priority of Item W is. The boss replies that it is urgent and needs to be done in a few days time. The team says that they will then put Item W at the top of the Kanban board and work on it as a priority over the other items on the list:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Item W&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Item X&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Item Y&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Item Z&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team informs the boss that this means that Items X, Y and Z will now be delivered later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2016-07-06T09:12:55.943" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18617" CreationDate="2016-07-06T11:03:29.167" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-dev&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; states that a Scrum team should have all the skill necessary to deliver a product increment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is that a team will take one or more features and fully implement them by the end of a sprint. Scrum teams &lt;em&gt;own&lt;/em&gt; the features they are working on and this will include system testing and deployment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have multiple Scrum teams working on the same product then a common practice is to have each team working on a feature theme (for example, one team could be working on security features and another might be working on personalisation features).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of how the work is divided between the teams the approach is the same. Each team takes full responsibility for the delivery of a feature until it is &lt;em&gt;potentially releasable&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In you situation I would suggest you consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having the system testers join your Scrum teams&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having Scrum teams own features end-to-end&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Divide work between your teams based on a criteria such as feature themes (empower the teams to work out the best approach to dividing the work)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also want to reconsider the way you do your automated testing. A lot of automated testers I have worked with will start on the tests &lt;em&gt;at the same time&lt;/em&gt; as development starts. They do not wait for development to finish before they start to create the automated tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A common approach is for the developers to quickly produce a stub release that mimics the feature they are about to develop. The testers then immediately get started on writing a test. Once the developers have finished development they swap out the stub and replace it with the real code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-07-06T11:03:29.167" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18617" CreationDate="2016-07-06T13:32:22.663" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Each Scrum Team Tests Its Own Work&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot depends on your scaled framework, but in general the answer will be that each individual Scrum team is responsible for testing its own work. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Portals/0/NexusGuide%20v1.1.pdf&quot;&gt;when using Nexus&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Teams are responsible for developing Increments of potentially releasable software, as prescribed in Scrum. &lt;em&gt;[NB: A completed increment should encompass the full Definition of Done, including &lt;strong&gt;testing the increment.&lt;/strong&gt;]&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Nexus Integration Team takes ownership of any integration issues. It is accountable for successful integration of all work by all Scrum Teams in a Nexus. Integration includes resolving any technical and non-technical cross-team constraints that may impede a Nexus’ ability to deliver a constantly Integrated Increment. &lt;em&gt;[NB: Testing each Scrum team's increments for them is not a cross-team function that belongs to the Nexus team. The proper focus of a Nexus is the &lt;strong&gt;integration between teams.&lt;/strong&gt;]&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Nexus, there might be members of the Nexus team who are responsible for testing the &lt;em&gt;integration&lt;/em&gt; of the work between teams. However, the assumption is that each Scrum team is delivering functional, tested work to be integrated into the Nexus increment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Don't Externalize Testing&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're trying to shave costs or take some kind of operational shortcut by externalizing testing activities, you're not following a scaled Scrum approach. You're not even following agile best practices at that point. Instead, you're taking a step &lt;em&gt;backwards&lt;/em&gt; from integrated, cross-functional teams towards a more traditional waterfall approach where development and QA are separate and sequential functions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-07-06T16:39:49.933" LastActivityDate="2016-07-06T16:39:49.933" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18604" CreationDate="2016-07-06T19:51:21.153" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you add or subtract columns you are changing the &lt;em&gt;table&lt;/em&gt; which is part of the view.  I suggest making custom tables to apply to the custom views.  You don't note which version of Project - so assuming you are using 2013 or later: Click the View Ribbon and open the Tables drop down in the Data group.  Choose &quot;Save Fields as New Table&quot;.  The custom table should now be part of the view.  Apply the Entry table and reset it to the default.  Many views in Project use the default entry table. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2016-07-06T19:51:21.153" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18617" CreationDate="2016-07-07T00:38:53.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Who should be responsible for writing the automated tests?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The developer who writes the code.&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;em&gt;preferably&lt;/em&gt;, before the production code is written. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Call me a TDD zealot if you like, but I've been able to measure the difference in test coverage between code I wrote TDD and when I wrote the tests after the code was finished. Branch coverage is better by ~20% in my admittedly unscientific research (with an admitted sample size of 1 developer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastActivityDate="2016-07-07T00:38:53.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18568" CreationDate="2016-07-07T07:43:22.053" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't do it. This is very brittle approach - if someone moves SSP-4 to the top, you'll have nothing else there. And what about when SSP-4 is completed/cancelled/blocked?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you need to create a Sprint and put SSP-4 in it then negotiate with your Product Owner what else should go in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="101" LastActivityDate="2016-07-07T07:43:22.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18624" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-07T13:23:04.850" Score="2" ViewCount="2273" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a query on Agile certification - which one is best for me or would none be best?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically I'm into release management, driving the day to day activities of a software release from end-to-end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My primary role and responsibility includes coordinating with interfaces to set up test environments, coordinating test cases/users and production deployment/planning/risk assessment from the process perspective/ITIL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our team follows the Agile/Scrum approach so we are familiar with user stories, sprints and JIRA. However, I am not a Scrum Master, Product Owner, nor am I a member of the development team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will doing EXIN agile foundation/advanced or CSM or PSM help in any way? Will it help me to qualify for Scrum Master roles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24008" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-07-08T11:04:21.933" LastActivityDate="2016-10-10T08:33:49.740" Title="Scrum certification for Release manager managing agile releases" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;certification&gt;&lt;release-plan&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18505" CreationDate="2016-07-07T14:32:28.933" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think if you add the peak units field to the time scaled portion of the Resource Usage view - you will have your answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maxine is assigned at 67% Assignment Units to task 3  (3 hours of work each day for 3 days)&#xA;Maxine is assigned at 33% Assignment Units to task 5 (1.5 hours of work each day for two days)&#xA;Maxine is assigned at 100% assignment units to task 6 (1 hour of work in 1 hour duration)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both tasks 3 and 5 can be schedules at the same time because her max units is 100% and the assignment units add up to 100%.  However, task 5 &amp;amp; 6 add to 167% so she is overallocated on an &lt;strong&gt;hour by hour&lt;/strong&gt; basis.  Set your &quot;Look for overallocations on a&quot; to day by day - she is not overallocated and task 6 can happen concurrently with task 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2016-07-07T14:32:28.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18626" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18670" CreationDate="2016-07-07T20:35:52.927" Score="0" ViewCount="158" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have several reports, some are running every day, but other are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where can I see and change settings for the scheduled running of reports?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4618" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-07-08T11:08:24.000" LastActivityDate="2016-07-15T16:49:34.543" Title="How to schedule reports in HP Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) Center 9.12?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18627" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-08T09:10:50.210" Score="2" ViewCount="115" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've got a project based on a WBS with 4 main phases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Initiation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implementation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acceptance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to do some kind of partial acceptance during implementation for a few already-implemented requirements. Do the necessary work items have to be part of the implementation phase or the acceptance phase? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, in a timeline the implementation phase would look like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implement requirement 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implement requirement 2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acceptance of requirement 1 &amp;amp; 2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implement requirement 3&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implement requirement 4&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acceptance of requirement 3 &amp;amp; 4&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Afterwards there would be the acceptance phase with the big acceptance of the whole project. Should I put work item 3 into phase &quot;implementation&quot; or into phase &quot;acceptance&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24014" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-07-08T14:32:14.297" LastActivityDate="2016-07-08T15:04:54.183" Title="Can I have partial acceptance of Work Breakdown Structure packages?" Tags="&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;&lt;milestones&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18624" CreationDate="2016-07-08T12:43:37.367" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The CSM Certification is a good start for just about anyone involved in Scrum/Agile -- its goal is to give everyone a solid foundation in the principles of the framework. I think that would probably get you the most ROI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I'll give the caveat here that I always give with recommending Scrum certifications: the cert itself is fairly valueless. The value in the certification comes from having a talented and experienced trainer running your course. The right person can make the course hugely useful, while the wrong person won't tell you anything that you can't get out of a book. Make sure to find a good Scrum trainer if you pursue your CSM or any other Scrum certs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16314" LastActivityDate="2016-07-08T12:43:37.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18627" CreationDate="2016-07-08T15:04:54.183" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's nothing wrong with building in inspect-and-adapt &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase%E2%80%93gate_model&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;phase gates&lt;/a&gt; into a project management process, even a traditional waterfall model. In fact, it's a very sensible approach to ensure that you have completed a work package (or set of packages) before moving onto the next phase of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Make Phase-Gating Activities Explicit&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would suggest adding the gates or milestones, along with an explicit feedback loop, directly into the plan. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Phase I&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implement requirement 1,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implement requirement 2.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Phase Gate: Acceptance of requirements 1 &amp;amp; 2, or restart phase.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Delivery of Milestone A.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Phase II&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implement requirement 3.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implement requirement 4.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Phase Gate: Acceptance of requirements 3 &amp;amp; 4, or restart phase.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Delivery of Milestone B.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even before I fully embraced more agile methodologies, I found this technique extremely helpful in my own project management practice. While I now consider phase gates to be part of the Definition of Done, and bake milestones into Scrum's &quot;potentially-shippable increments,&quot; I &lt;em&gt;still&lt;/em&gt; find the techniques useful to this day. This is especially true for larger projects, or projects that require release planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your mileage may vary. Hopefully, though, you'll find the technique as useful as I continue to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-07-08T15:04:54.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18624" CreationDate="2016-07-10T12:13:30.480" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum.org focuses more on delivery of software and the material reflects this. &lt;em&gt;In the interests of fairness I should point out that I am a licenced PST, and that the Scrum Alliance also have similar courses in name.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For the theory I would recommend the &lt;strong&gt;Scaled Professional Scrum (SPS)&lt;/strong&gt; as it focuses not only on release, but release at scale. It covers many of the DevOps practices that you need to deliver and automation is a big focus.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For practical experience coupled with theory I would recommend the &lt;strong&gt;Professional Scrum Developer (PSD)&lt;/strong&gt; course as it focuses on the mechanics of delivery. The practical nature of the course, working on brownfield buggy code in class, gives it quite a bit of oomph. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;Professional Scrum Master (PSM)&lt;/strong&gt; is more geared towards coaching and facilitation for those advocates and advanced practitioners, so a good place for experienced Scrum Masters trying to up their game.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For the basics I would recommend the &lt;strong&gt;Professional Scrum Foundations (PSF)&lt;/strong&gt;, same level as the CSM, for getting to know Scrum fundamentals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrum.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://scrum.org&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2016-08-19T01:38:18.450" LastActivityDate="2016-08-19T01:38:18.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18634" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20034" CreationDate="2016-07-11T07:23:14.323" Score="-1" ViewCount="531" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have been working on the high-level product planning phase for a client.&#xA;We usually call it &quot;a discovery phase&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was &quot;sold&quot; in a way that we will deliver &quot;Full-featured product vision, Project roadmap with milestones and pricing&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I would like to clearly understand what should be included in those documents, so that I can plan the work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The easiest way is to ask sales and clients what is their expectations and what they want to see there.  At the end - client will want &quot;what is going to be delivered, when and how much&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I would like to understand the differences better.  For me, a proposal may include vision and roadmap.&#xA;Also roadmap may include parts of vision (e.g. high-level features)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'm looking for some standards or best practices which outlines differences between roadmap , vision, proposal etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could you suggest some reliable sources or probably you may answer here ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7644" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2016-07-11T12:01:53.213" LastActivityDate="2016-09-08T01:19:31.190" Title="Roadmap vs vision vs proposal best practices or examples" Tags="&lt;project-proposal&gt;&lt;vision&gt;&lt;roadmaps&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18635" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-11T08:17:37.027" Score="1" ViewCount="2628" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am building a project management template (from the standard excel template) that tracks the status of activities as they progress. Some activities are dependent on previous ones so they can only start once another is complete. The time between the activities are also varied. How can I build this into the functionality? Right now I can just set the activities to start on specific days and have a specific duration but are not interdependent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hoffU.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hoffU.png&quot; alt=&quot;Attempts at increasing functionality&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KPG4f.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KPG4f.png&quot; alt=&quot;A bit cleaned up&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24035" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-12-20T13:20:17.643" LastActivityDate="2017-05-19T23:12:26.197" Title="How to build an excel based gantt chart that adjusts future activities with delay of previous activities" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18635" CreationDate="2016-07-11T12:00:05.940" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is core to the function of a gantt chart; gantt charts adjust schedule based on dependency and delay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Couple of rules I had to learn the hard way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Never never never touch the start date (except the first task).  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Never never never touch the finish date&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manage the schedule by adjusting duration and dependency.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/15364/4367&quot;&gt;driving milestones&lt;/a&gt; heavily&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sensei project solutions had a very good intro to pragmatic WBS/Gantt; I can't find it right now, but it may be worth your while to write to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just spotted the fact that the question addresses excel, not project.  My apologies for missing that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bulk of my advice remains the same; manage duration and dependencies and allow code to manage start and finish dates.  Make sure you have a cleanly written formula to calculate the date offset (Task X finish date plus duration of task Y is the finish date for Y) and then spend 80% of your time writing an ironclad dependency function (the start date for Task X is the last actual finish date for task A, B, C....) Given that you don't know how many dependencies a given task will have, this is going to be fiendish to develop in excel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only modification I would make is to run away fast now.  Excel isn't as good as it thinks at dates; there are too many chances for error and I predict that you'll spend an inordinate amount of time managing exceptions and error checking code.  I'm not going to say it can't be done, but I believe that if you get it working, you'll have spent time you could h&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you make the assumption that every deliverable has one and only one predecessor (which is not realistic), then you might be able to make this work by setting the start date for every deliverable to be the finish date of the precursor plus the variance of the precursor, and the finish date for every deliverable to be the start date plus the duration.  if tasks are late, the variance will delay the start of all subsequent tasks. If tasks are early, negative variance will speed the start of subsequent tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2016-12-20T14:23:51.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18637" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18669" CreationDate="2016-07-11T15:23:25.890" Score="2" ViewCount="159" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our team looks like this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;4 developers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 testers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 Boss (Product owner, CEO etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A designer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have tried 4 different boards till now. Assembla, Youtrack, JIRA as scrum and JIRA as Kanban. Every single time, what ends up happening is that the list of tickets grows and becomes pretty large and becomes unapproachable from my perspective. There are about 250 unresolved issues. I would never want to go through that list and pick something out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a whole team, we have sometimes given up on long lists of issues and we have moved on to create new boards hoping to have a good process. But we have not achieved this at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We always go back to something like a simple todo list or an excel sheet till we delete everything and start a new board. A list of 10 items seems far more easier to fathom than say 250. How can we fix this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13778" LastActivityDate="2016-07-27T13:47:09.030" Title="Is a ticket management system necessary for our org?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18638" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-12T00:39:06.183" Score="2" ViewCount="256" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working in an agency and we are seven employees. Most of the employees have very specific skills. There is one employee for video productions, two for design, one for social network, one for websites, one for general administration and me for web applications. Two of them are bosses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of those different skills, each person can't be replaced by another. We work mostly alone on our projects but we need others sometimes. We are very autonomous in our work and we manage ourselves most of the time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are looking for tools to have a clearer vision of our projects. We want to know if someone is busy or not and when task we assign to others will be done. We also need to see when things goes wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm reading about Kanban and Scrum. They seems to be focused on larger teams and bigger projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can we do for us, with fragmented team with short projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT 19/07/2016&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I plan to do two things. First, I want to add a board with two columns. The first column is for problems. A team member can add a title for a problem an his name in the parentheses. Other persons with the same problem will add their name in the parentheses so we know if it's a personal problem or a team problem. The second column is for ideas of solutions. Ideas can be related to a problem. Once a week, we will have a meeting to speak about problems we live and try to find solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second board in splitted like this :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;&#xA;        | Recurring | To Do | In progress | in validation | done | waiting&#xA;Design  |           |       |             |               |      |        |&#xA;Video   |           |       |             |               |      |        |&#xA;Dev Web |           |       |             |               |      |        |&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recurring is for tasks we have to do every day, week, month... waiting is for tasks we have to wait for external event. Other columns are self-explicit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A task must a title, a priority and velocity. The priority is set by the person who add a tasks and the velocity have to be set by the person in charge. I plan to give a number of magnets (3 or 4) and they can place it on tasks they're working on. If they want to work on something else and they haven't a free magnets, they have to do a tasks before to start another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you think? I'm not sure about the &quot;To Do&quot; column because a tasks without a magnet is a task to do. Maybe I can find better columns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24045" LastEditorUserId="24045" LastEditDate="2016-07-19T14:18:20.653" LastActivityDate="2016-07-19T14:18:20.653" Title="What can we do for a fragmented team with short projects?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18639" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18680" CreationDate="2016-07-12T01:20:56.157" Score="4" ViewCount="329" Body="&lt;p&gt;We had developed a custom solution from scratch for our client. Recently the client asked for a quotation to integrate it with a third party software. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, we merely received a hastily guided demo of that software from its vendor, a demo API endpoint, and some paltry 'documentation' containing examples on how to call the API with no explanation of the data returned whatsoever. We've asked for more documentation or at least demo access to that software so we can 'reverse engineer' the API (kind of silly, I suppose) but unfortunately the vendor refuses to give any of that unless our client signs a year long contract with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the massive lack of visibility on this, I am hesitant to provide any kind of quotation. However, I was pressured into giving one, so I quoted a high price for it to cover the risks involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the client is unhappy with this and claims he can't afford to pay for it. Furthermore, somehow it seems that vendor has told the client that &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; can do the integration themselves at a much lower price by modifying &lt;em&gt;our&lt;/em&gt; software. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the code we've written now belongs to the client and they can do whatever they want with it, how do I tell them this is a very bad idea and will most likely fail? Also, the client is still paying us for software maintenance, so we would like to keep the code in a good state and of course, we would not want to be blamed (or be fixing) for any issues that might arise from the vendor's changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21549" LastEditorUserId="21549" LastEditDate="2016-07-19T10:02:12.360" LastActivityDate="2016-07-19T10:02:12.360" Title="How to justify integration costs to a client?" Tags="&lt;clients&gt;&lt;integration-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18638" CreationDate="2016-07-12T08:36:55.350" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seems like you need to add a periodic activity to your management called &lt;strong&gt;integration.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once a day/week/month you need to all sit together and figure out when you need each other- and for how long, and schedule accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A set of sticky-notes on a wall  - one lane per person - is all you need for tracking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-07-12T08:36:55.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18638" CreationDate="2016-07-12T09:09:14.107" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;At first, you - I meant team - should track all your task during all your projects. It helps you to know about your availability. Of course, you can try to use Kanban board or something like that, but you have to choose your own way to do that. &#xA;Second, for reducing time to planning, you can track tasks during only one iteration - as it was said in the previous comment.&#xA;Third, about tracking fails. Because of a small team, you can calculate your velocity very quickly. Also, you have to take into account your additional time to correct mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The periodical meeting is a part of SCRUM. And it really helps you to work more efficiently. On this meetings, you can discuss your problems, to schedule help on another project and etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24049" LastActivityDate="2016-07-12T09:09:14.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18639" CreationDate="2016-07-12T09:17:54.853" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You consider the vendor a large risk, which in a fixed price situation means you have to cover it. Your quote is you honest assessment and you'd be foolish to lower it. I hope you've explained your reasoning to your client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;time and materials&lt;/strong&gt; contract would be better for both of you. You don't take on that risk (specifically you don't run the risk of being hung out to dry by your client's unreasonable vendor / your snubbed ex competitor). As the customer doesn't have to cover your risks, they get a fair price. The customer seems to trust the vendor more than you, and given his direct relationship with them is probably better placed to encourage their cooperation. I don’t think it would be hard to convince them that T&amp;amp;M is the cheaper route here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While support contracts are a great source of recurring revenue, hopefully involving little actual work. Supporting your code after modification by a third party is not something I’d want to get into. While the T&amp;amp;M route should be presented as the probably cheaper &lt;em&gt;heaven if they do&lt;/em&gt;, you sell this mess of (expensive for the customer, hopefully) software support as the &lt;em&gt;hell if they don't&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17705" LastEditorUserId="17705" LastEditDate="2016-07-12T09:24:09.510" LastActivityDate="2016-07-12T09:24:09.510" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18637" CreationDate="2016-07-12T09:23:06.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really don't understand how you manage to collect so many issues. And if I understand you right, you try to use something like &lt;code&gt;SCRUM&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In this way, firstly, you have to learn base terms of it - like &lt;code&gt;product backlog&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;sprint backlog&lt;/code&gt;. Since tasks should be put on the board only from &lt;code&gt;sprint backlog&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24049" LastActivityDate="2016-07-12T09:23:06.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18637" CreationDate="2016-07-12T09:55:11.190" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might be worth suggesting that the problem may not be with the tracking system but with the sheer quantity of cases. It sounds like you might be taking on more work that you have capacity for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd print all the cases out on a big spreadsheet and go through them, prioritise them (using something like Red, Amber, Green) and set up timeboxes for the Dev team to get through them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24050" LastActivityDate="2016-07-12T09:55:11.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18624" CreationDate="2016-07-12T10:00:08.263" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Basically I'm into release management, driving the day to day activities of a software release from end-to-end. My primary role and responsibility includes coordinating with interfaces to set up test environments, coordinating test cases/users and production deployment/planning/risk assessment from the process perspective/ITIL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at your current role, PSD (Professional Scrum Developer) is probably the most compatible with your profile. It focuses on every day developer good practices in an Agile environment. Most of this is not part of the canonical Scrum guide, but is considered good practice and referenced in other Agile methodologies like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Extreme Programming (XP)&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://growsmethod.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GROWS™&lt;/a&gt;. For instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Continuous integration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Version control&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test driven development&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Types of testing (unit, integration, functional, smoke, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can do the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Assessments/Open-Assessments&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;PSD test assesment&quot;&gt;PSD test assesment&lt;/a&gt; to get a feel for the material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Will doing EXIN agile foundation/advanced or CSM or PSM help in any way? Will it help me to qualify for Scrum Master roles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a certification to help qualify you for a role as Scrum Master, PSM I is indeed the best fit. It contains all the essentials and is the 'default' certification for Scrum Masters. It will likely help you qualify. For actually doing a good job at it, experience &lt;em&gt;heavily&lt;/em&gt; outweighs the certification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17421" LastActivityDate="2016-07-12T10:00:08.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18646" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-12T11:01:25.560" Score="7" ViewCount="646" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any technique to make a decision whether to include the feature in &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;MVP&lt;/a&gt; or not? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21640" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-07-12T14:23:54.787" LastActivityDate="2018-01-14T14:35:12.497" Title="How to decide what features should be in MVP?" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;customer-satisfaction&gt;&lt;startup&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2018-01-14T15:40:55.123" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18638" CreationDate="2016-07-12T12:02:26.063" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum offers you the daily standup. This is &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; moment for discussing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;if someone is busy or not and when task we assign to others will be done. We also need to see when things goes wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, anyone at any convenient time can touch base with a fellow member of the development team. Or in official Scrum guide terms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Scrum users must frequently inspect Scrum artifacts and progress toward a Sprint Goal to detect&#xA;  undesirable variances. Their inspection should not be so frequent that inspection gets in the way&#xA;  of the work. Inspections are most beneficial when diligently performed by skilled inspectors at&#xA;  the point of work.&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a side-note: you may want to work on making the team a bit more multi-disciplinary. There's bound to be some overlap in the team members skills, or areas where this can be created. For instance: testing a team member's work, handling documentation or communication, the design people learning more about video and social networking and vice versa, website and webapp learning more about each others projects. Expertise is very hard to transfer, but some small steps can do a lot to take away the brunt of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;bus factor&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally: if you're looking at Scrum and Kanban, and having a hard time making Scrum 'click', start with Kanban. It has very little rules and gives you a lot of freedom, while enabling the team to track and inspect how your work 'flows'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17421" LastEditorUserId="17421" LastEditDate="2016-07-14T11:05:04.033" LastActivityDate="2016-07-14T11:05:04.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18648" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-12T12:15:31.940" Score="4" ViewCount="231" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to fully learn about critical chain project management in scheduling construction projects. I've gone through many videos and journals, but can't find any clear cut ideas or proof that shows how &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; critical chain method is different from the critical path method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like a clear justification that the critical chain method is more successful than critical path through a network diagram. Can anyone please suggest me some ideas on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24052" LastEditorUserId="17421" LastEditDate="2016-07-12T14:24:17.727" LastActivityDate="2016-10-11T13:55:14.393" Title="critical chain project management" Tags="&lt;critical-path&gt;&lt;constraints&gt;&lt;critical-chain&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18649" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-12T12:36:02.243" Score="2" ViewCount="5137" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/17004/24053&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt;, an epic-story structure is suggested. I like this approach and I'm trying to utilize it. But, the problems how to handle priorities. More specifically, assume I have two epics (e1 and e2) and each has three stories (s11, s12 and s21, s22). My goal is to prioritize the epics (say that e2 is more urgent than e1) and inside each epic prioritize the stories. Eventually, I want the backlog to show the prioritization based one epic/story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Epic 2&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Story 22&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Story 21&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Epic 1&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Story 11&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Story 12&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, it seems like stories and epics are completely mixed in the backlog and there's no way to fine tune the priorities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24053" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2016-09-30T17:50:29.667" Title="Epics and stories prioritization in JIRA" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;&lt;epics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18537" CreationDate="2016-07-12T12:47:53.107" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can speak from some experience, as I'm currently both Scrum Master and development team member &lt;em&gt;(such as an architect, who is 'just' a development team member in Scrum terms)&lt;/em&gt;. Though often frowned upon, this &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; possible and not explicitly forbidden. For me, this part in the scrum guide is the most indicative and grants us some freedom:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Team consists of a Product Owner, the Development Team, and a Scrum Master. Scrum Teams are self-organizing and cross-functional. Self-organizing teams choose how best to accomplish their work, rather than being directed by others outside the team. Cross-functional teams have all competencies needed to accomplish the work without depending on others not part of the team. The team model in Scrum is designed to optimize flexibility, creativity, and productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the entire Scrum team is mentioned, not merely the development team. That being said, a number of conflicts may arise:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Time&lt;/strong&gt;: as mentioned by CodeGnome, there are days when the  Scrum master and the development role need full attention. Especially near the closing of the sprint, a developer is in the heat of wrapping things up to finish stories, while the Scrum master probably needs to facilitate the Product owner in backlog management.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Goals&lt;/strong&gt;: the entire Scrum team is committed to the sprint goal. However, a proper Scrum master maintains a coaching agenda as well. On some occasions, this may mean that the Scrum master needs the team to experience a form of failure, for instance not fully finishing a user story, for them to learn, inspect, adapt and improve. As a developer, you never want this to happen, you want to succeed in the best way possible. This conflict may turn the scrum master into a 'scrum mom' who chases after everything to keep the team successful. This ends up looking a lot like an embedded project manager or servant micro-manager at the least.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Confusion&lt;/strong&gt;: during formal events for inspection and adaptation, it can be hard for other team members to know who's speaking. The scrum master, or the developer? As a developer you may want to express a strong opinion during the retrospective, but no-one can tell as whom you're speaking. This runs the risk of coming across as an authoritative Scrum master, which starts to look a lot like a team lead. As silly as it might sound, you probably want to start all your sentences &lt;em&gt;with 'speaking as a developer / scrum master'&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That all being said, experienced teams with a strong bond can handle this mix-up in most cases. Then again, it's never the ideal situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17421" LastActivityDate="2016-07-12T12:47:53.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18648" CreationDate="2016-07-12T12:54:48.453" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If we go back to PMBoK basics, the definition in the 5th edition is  is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Critical Chain Method:&lt;/strong&gt; A schedule method that allows the project team&#xA;  to place buffers on any project schedule path to account for limited&#xA;  resources and project uncertainties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;vs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Critical Path Method:&lt;/strong&gt; A method to estimate the minimum project method duration and determine the amount of scheduling flexibility on&#xA;  the logical on the logical network paths within the schedule module.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Critical &lt;em&gt;Path&lt;/em&gt; uses durations that are &lt;em&gt;assumed&lt;/em&gt; to be accurate. Any schedule flexibility you get from the result only occurs in WBS elements that are not critical. For an ultra simple example, if drywall delivery is scheduled to take one week but dry wall prep is two days, both of which need to be complete before drywall installation, there is three days of flexibility in the drywall prep step since the &lt;em&gt;delivery&lt;/em&gt; is on the critical path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's extend the ultra-simple example. In a Critical Chain situation, you've decided that you don't trust the estimates for the entire critical chain of drywall installation. You add two days at the end of drywall installation as a Feeding Buffer and push back the start date of your finish carpenters to minimize the impact of your dry wall team being slow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding or subtracting buffers allows you &quot;protect&quot; the underlying critical chain. A good half-dozen construction specialties rely on slab, underfloor, and plumbing to be complete before they can start (electrical, drywall, HVAC, etc.). If you have buffers on each of these feeding critical path elements, you can balance the actual performance vs. the plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2016-07-12T12:54:48.453" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18646" CreationDate="2016-07-12T13:49:03.840" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use MoSCoW prioritisation with clients (Must, Should, Could, Won't) and build developments around that. If the client would cancel the release if 'X' feature wasn't delivered, or if there is no workaround, then 'X' feature is a must.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore the MVP is then defined by the list of 'Musts' in the prioritisation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24050" LastActivityDate="2016-07-12T13:49:03.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8567" CreationDate="2016-07-12T16:04:13.010" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe it depends on the nature of the story. If the story is comprised of tasks that are interrelated or clearly part of a well-defined whole, then the story should not be split if not done, and should be moved to a future sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if the story contains tasks that are loosely coupled, such as a story for miscellaneous cleanup work or something like &quot;make the interface more user-friendly&quot;, where the tasks are clearly self-contained and independently verifiable, then it can be very appropriate to split the story.  Why not take credit for the work that is complete, tested, and can benefit the product, if other tasks that aren't dependencies are not complete?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24055" LastActivityDate="2016-07-12T16:04:13.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18646" CreationDate="2016-07-12T20:45:00.450" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally the way to determine a MVP would be to sit down with the Client and put together a list of the requirements. Once the list is gathered, it is best to then rank them based on priority. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many methods to do this, assigning numbers (1-10, 1-100), MOSCOW, Fibonacci etc. it depends on the client as to what they prefer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would then examine the top priority requirements and determine their dependencies, and then go from there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24057" LastActivityDate="2016-07-12T20:45:00.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18639" CreationDate="2016-07-13T01:23:39.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of my experience comes from the architecture/construction world and I think that there is a billing model you can borrow. Typically, the initial &quot;schematic design&quot; phase is billed by the architect on an hourly/time and materials basis and only after that is complete is the &quot;construction documents&quot; contract signed and the price set. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be worth it to try a two-phase approach: a initial development phase (call it &quot;suitability study&quot;, &quot;preliminary development&quot;, or something) at time and materials contract and a more normal contract to be determined at the end of the initial phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the initial phase, you do need to have meetings and discussions with the client. You don't want to over-spend the client's willingness to pay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2016-07-13T01:23:39.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18638" CreationDate="2016-07-13T12:17:55.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is very little you can do with the lack of focus and distributed work that your current model encourages. You can monitor all of the work on a kanban board and try to maintain flow, but visibility if your best result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Cross-Functional Teams&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teams are far more productive and produce better quality than siloed individuals. There is however no requirement from Scrum that everyone on a team can do every job. Only that any team can tackle all of the work they take on autonomously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Single source of truth&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you assembly all of the work that needs done into a single backlog and have the &amp;quot;bosses&amp;quot; prioritise it you can then have a cross-functional team work through that list delivering the highest posible value first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Read the Scrum Guide (&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://scrumguides.org&lt;/a&gt;) and try to enact the Values and Principals that it contains.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2016-07-13T12:17:55.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3582" CreationDate="2016-07-13T14:24:46.030" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just use the Actual Work Column.  If you have more than 1 resource assigned, it'll calculate a blended rate.  So if each resource will work 40 hours, put 80 hours actual work.  If 1 bills $100/hr, the other bills $50/hr = $75*80 as far as Actual Cost&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24066" LastActivityDate="2016-07-13T14:24:46.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18665" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-14T13:35:49.817" Score="2" ViewCount="1997" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an effort driven task which should take 20 days, to which I assigned 2 resources. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Initially, the work got distributed equally between them (10d each). During the first week of work there were some setbacks for one of the resources, and they only managed to work 3 days.&#xA;So when I update the progress, I get the following remaining work per resource:&#xA;A - 5d&#xA;B - 7d&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, I would like the remaining work to be distributed evenly between them so that each will have 6 remaining days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I achieve this in MS Project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24075" LastActivityDate="2018-08-06T03:00:45.600" Title="MS Project: how to distribute remaining work equally" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18666" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18676" CreationDate="2016-07-14T13:48:16.913" Score="0" ViewCount="701" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a schedule I am putting together for a repeating layout multi-floor building.  Is there any easy way to copy the tasks and their predecessors and successors from say floor 2 and with minor renaming and editing and use them for floors 3-6?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried copying and pasting small batches of tasks, 6-8 at a time, and the logic within the task range updates with the new relative Task IDs, predecessors and successors outside of the copied task range stay the same, which is great but I am seeing other inconsistencies in the pasted task logic that has me wondering if I am missing something or maybe there is a better way to do this (short of using sub-projects for each floor).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice would be appreciated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24076" LastActivityDate="2016-07-16T00:33:39.343" Title="MSP 2010 - duplicating tasks and logic" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18667" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18671" CreationDate="2016-07-14T15:41:07.407" Score="0" ViewCount="97" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am involved in a project for my summer internship.  Prior to the start of the internship, I have set several milestones to help me track the progress made toward reaching the goals of the project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After few weeks; unfortunately, I have noticed that the project tasks that I was working on are not exactly part of the ordered milestone that I was planning to achieve.  This might be because I did not have a detailed understanding of the project and the specific methods to reach the project goal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is what should I consider at this point so I can keep track with the project time limit.  What is the practical practice to consider to complete the project with minimal losses? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24077" LastActivityDate="2016-07-15T17:00:55.977" Title="My Project Milestones Do not Represent My Current Tasks. What should I do to track my project?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;milestones&gt;&lt;internships&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18637" CreationDate="2016-07-15T04:22:06.260" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Product ideas and defects are so hard to collect. You should not regularly dump them to trash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;250 work items is a very small number for 4 developers and 1 designer. Issue tracking system is useful exactly when you have a lot of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just introduce notion of versions. It's both good for you and for the business, because users should be reminded about your product with a regular version cadence, even for web-sites. Without milestones/versions it's nearly impossible to introduce major changes, you may end up with a lot of technical debt, which eventually leads to complete rewrite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let you boss put all visible improvements/defects to 3 version buckets: V.Next, V.Next+1, TBD. Or make the preliminary decisions yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your boss wants all work items selected for some version be worked simultaneously, it will slow down your work. You need to manage your boss by selling him/her Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24082" LastActivityDate="2016-07-15T04:22:06.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18637" CreationDate="2016-07-15T13:34:45.637" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dispose of your low value cards.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stuff you won't do is inventory and &lt;strong&gt;there is a cost of keeping them around&lt;/strong&gt;, which you're encountering now. You should have a good idea of what the rough value order of your cards are, and you need to be disciplined about binning the ones under a cut-off point. If you make a mistake, and dispose of something important, it will reappear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ron Jeffries has another idea for dealing with these infinite backlogs. &lt;a href=&quot;http://ronjeffries.com/xprog/articles/petitiontheking/&quot;&gt;Petition the King&lt;/a&gt;. Essentially, if it’s important to a stakeholder but can’t be done now (ie, isn’t the &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; important thing) rather than record it in ( / lose-in-the-depths-of) your backlog you can rely on them asking for it again later on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if the Petition the King is a bit radical for you, &lt;strong&gt;if you want to keep a tight backlog you will have to delete things&lt;/strong&gt;. (Note: &lt;strong&gt;Moving into some folder, like &quot;low priority items&quot;, is just cowardly deletion&lt;/strong&gt; without the benefits. It's never going to be worth someone’s time to dig into a walled-off non-current part of the backlog). &lt;em&gt;Petition the King&lt;/em&gt; is just a way to make sure the customer continues to agitate for the known issues that are currently important to them. It depends, I would say if you don't see yourself doing a task within your current release planning horizon: bin it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use physical cards on a board&lt;/strong&gt;. Your main problem is unchecked growth, if no more physical cards will fit on a physical board, it will be pretty clear what will have to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They're also tangible, a physical artefact that forms a focal point for human interaction. As well as the board being fixed size, so are the cards, so it keeps their descriptions terse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17705" LastActivityDate="2016-07-15T13:34:45.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18626" CreationDate="2016-07-15T16:49:34.543" Score="0" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Open this web application.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Menu: Open -&gt; Reports -&gt; View Reports&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select Report Type and click “Search” button.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You see list of reports. To sort them by date to see last reports, click on Run Date header.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click on Submission Details.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you want to reschedule this report, click “Copy”&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Enter details and click “Submit”.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4618" LastActivityDate="2016-07-15T16:49:34.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18667" CreationDate="2016-07-15T17:00:55.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;It is all relative to the project size&quot; is the first sort of unspoken thing to understand-whether a 1-day, 1-month, or 1-year project. But, one basic way, no matter which tool or process you are using, is to force rank every task that needs to be completed under a milestone. If there are sub-tasks, then force rank them too under their respective tasks. Force ranking just means you assign a linear priority to each task that says, do this task 1st, do this other task 2nd, etc. and with estimated time to complete, and no task can have an equal assignment to another(so there is no ambiguity), until you get through all the tasks for that day/milestone. Of course this is all relative. And adding in dependencies other things the team is doing is another level. But for a single person, you'll need to have broken down your tasks into a relative number that can be accomplished in a day or two--otherwise your planning is still too high level. Again, also depends on your process. If you are using Agile, you might not detail too far out or you might change in the middle and reorganize, but that's ok too--because that's the process. It takes a little time to get the hang of force ranking, but the process of force ranking itself is very informative and you'll learn from it. Best part is, the learning is all relative to the project scope so it can be applied/leverage for future similar projects. Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24078" LastActivityDate="2016-07-15T17:00:55.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18317" CreationDate="2016-07-15T19:46:55.693" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is something I've been working on for a long time, learning during delivery. I've developed a PRINCE2 Health Check and maturity model that helps assess quality at each process/stage. It was so useful I'm now sharing free on line to PM's can use it an create lessons learnt along the way. i.e. as you suggest when you complete SU you can run the check. Please take a look here &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.totalprogrammecontrol.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.totalprogrammecontrol.com/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regards&#xA;Nick&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24094" LastActivityDate="2016-07-15T19:46:55.693" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18512" CreationDate="2016-07-15T23:39:38.790" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Display the remaining duration field.&#xA;Open Task Information, go to the advanced tab. Uncheck the box for &quot;mark as milestone&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24096" LastActivityDate="2016-07-15T23:39:38.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18666" CreationDate="2016-07-16T00:33:39.343" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Create a summary task for floor one indenting all of the work underneath.  Collapse the summary task - copy and paste.  The links between the subtasks should be retained.  What inconsistencies are you seeing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2016-07-16T00:33:39.343" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18665" CreationDate="2016-07-16T00:45:31.360" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would manually edit the remaining work. If you have updated the progress after 5 days, the task duration should be 12 days.  Resource 1 will finish his/her work as scheduled.  However, the remaining work for Resource 2 shouid have been pushed to the right. Split the screen from a Gantt chart to show the Task form in the lower pane.  Format the task form to show work.  Edit the remaining work so each has 6 days.  The duration will drop back to 11 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2016-07-16T00:45:31.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4251" CreationDate="2016-07-17T10:38:35.800" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think story points for a task is in fibonacci so that it can be decomposed into two (or more) smaller sub-tasks with appropriate story point.&#xA;Ex. Say I assigned 21 story points to a task. Later I realized that this task can be broken down into 2 smaller sub-tasks. So, I can create 2 sub-tasks with story points 8 and 13. This way I can easily manage 2 sub tasks (with its own story points) without affecting the total story points I took for the bigger task in a sprint (which was 21 in this case).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24098" LastActivityDate="2016-07-17T10:38:35.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18639" CreationDate="2016-07-17T19:11:49.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Presumably your client has shown your code to the third party and being in possesion of all the information they have less risk to cover than you when making their bid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, your client has the risk that they are simply putting in a low bid so that your client buys their main software and they might never deliver on the integration work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than try to explain your risk to the client. Highlight their risk with the third party option by saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- Any changes to the code run the risk of breaking existing functionality&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2- You are unable to continue supporting the product if changes are made to the code. Will the third party take over this support for the WHOLE product?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3- If the third party fails to deliver, or bugs are found after the work is comple and your client comes back to you to fix the problems. The costs are likely to be of a similar amount to you doing the work in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4- Suggest that the third party simply wants to sell their off the shelf product and has no interest or stake in the integration work. Where as you are committed to on going support and quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2016-07-17T19:11:49.820" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18681" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-18T05:02:57.130" Score="5" ViewCount="256" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a ScrumMaster running a development team using scrum. We are working in 3 week sprints and at the end of the sprint we often do not release our code to production right away. It could be a number of weeks before the PO passes the code in UAT and sets a deployment date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to count the 'done' story points and calculate velocity the team has been counting anything 'QA approved' as 'done'because the development work is completed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone worked in a similar way, or believe this is the wrong way to count our completed effort?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice on how we should measure progress and 'done'?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24100" LastActivityDate="2016-07-20T05:02:43.637" Title="Can 'QA approved' count towards your team's definition of done?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;definition-of-done&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18681" CreationDate="2016-07-18T08:01:37.900" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We always use &quot;QA approved&quot; as the definition of &quot;done&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deployment is often a sprint of its own, if it's big enough, since we first deploy to a staging server and the have a gradual roll-out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-07-18T08:01:37.900" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18681" CreationDate="2016-07-18T08:17:00.783" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The definition of done should be something that &lt;em&gt;your team&lt;/em&gt; can do. Having external dependencies in a definition of done is a nightmare. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to test your story thoroughly, which is great, you need to have a resource on your team that can do that. Your team is supposed to deliver a final increment  of the product. Delivering an increment that is not done is the antithesis of Scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if your DoD contains &quot;QA approved&quot;, you need to have a QA resource on &lt;em&gt;your team&lt;/em&gt; that can do the approval in &lt;em&gt;your sprint&lt;/em&gt;. Because otherwise, your stories will inevitable end in &quot;...and we haven't heard back from QA yet.&quot; because they are on their own timetable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2016-07-18T08:17:00.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18684" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-18T13:50:07.197" Score="1" ViewCount="405" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our team mostly does web application projects, working directly with our clients.  For projects without a public-facing interface, design is rarely a major issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nearly every project that involves a public website component, however, results in a &lt;strong&gt;lot&lt;/strong&gt; of back-and-forth about multiple design details, ranging from color choices, to placement of content elements, to navigation menus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, it is one or more key stakeholders who identify something they don't like, ask it to be changed, give vague descriptions of &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; it should be changed (ranging from &quot;it's too dark&quot; to &quot;it should look 'new' and 'modern', and this [entire component] looks &lt;em&gt;outdated&lt;/em&gt;&quot;).  The expectation is usually that we redo it, so they can see if we got it &quot;right&quot;, and if we didn't, we get new feedback (&quot;that looks better, but now it doesn't have enough contrast compared to [adjacent component]&quot;, or &quot;that's definitely better, but it still doesn't 'pop' enough!  I want something that really draws attention....&quot;), and are expected to do it again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases, this can result in half a dozen design iterations or more.  This creates a large amount of scope creep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are working on better structuring of definition of done for our projects (we're moving... slowly... towards a Scrum approach to development), but I'm at a loss for how to employ this approach for graphic design elements.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, what I'd like to accomplish is to either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Limit the number of design revisions that can be requested before sprint completion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find some way to effectively communicate to stakeholders what we're including in the design portion of the estimates, and at what point their requests will start impacting our scope (preferably before we get to that point).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Number 1 would be my strong preference, as it would make it easier to maintain an overall schedule without impacting other sprints or projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Number 2 might be as easy as &quot;we devote x hours to design, and anything over that costs extra&quot;, but our previous attempts at this have sometimes frustrated clients, resulting in their arguing that the design wasn't &quot;done&quot; because it didn't contain features that they hadn't previously defined (this was in projects where we failed to get adequate definitions of done, however).  Other clients agree to continue paying the extra costs, resulting in a lot of extra billable time, which is great until we have to explain to another client that we have to delay their project because the previous one is running weeks beyond schedule (we're a very small team).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that we do not have a dedicated graphic designer, and, while it's on my wish list, we are unlikely to get one anytime soon.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2277" LastActivityDate="2016-07-20T15:33:18.410" Title="Managing scope changes and timelines for graphic design components of a project" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;scope&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;&lt;design&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18685" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-18T14:32:28.883" Score="4" ViewCount="563" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can I do the following in (easy)redmine and what plugins would I need?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 1: Create Human resources and set holidays for them&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 2: Create tasks with a start and duration and assign them to resources&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 3: Connect the different tasks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Expected result: When I move a task to a duration that has a resource holiday in it the task should be adjusted in length&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I actually can't work out how to do this. I don't know if I am special but I think this would be the basic functionality for a project planning tool. Why would I use a software at all if I need to check holidays by hand for all dependendant tasks when moving/changing one of the earlier ones?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24108" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-07-18T19:03:21.457" LastActivityDate="2016-12-13T05:27:45.917" Title="Human resources in (easy)redmine and automatic representation of their holidays in Gantt" Tags="&lt;redmine&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18684" CreationDate="2016-07-18T15:30:32.943" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, design is a very personal thing and (in my experience in a similar industry) this makes it very difficult to set the 'back-and-forth' process to a specific number of iterations. I think your second suggestion is much closer to how I would approach it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To keep the back-and-forth to a minimum though, I would consider getting the client involved at the Wireframe stage or gather more detailed requirements than you might do in other industries, and then keep in regular communication with them throughout the process. The time spent at the start getting the requirements and layouts right for the client may well pay dividends when it comes to the design process further down the line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24050" LastActivityDate="2016-07-18T15:30:32.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18681" CreationDate="2016-07-18T18:52:32.397" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the big advantages of using Scrum is that it makes true progress visible. By having a definition of 'done' and by looking to have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-dev&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;potentially releasable increment&lt;/a&gt; at the end of each sprint the progress of the team is very transparent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have UAT outside of the sprints then progress will be unclear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, say the team has 5 stories done at the end of the sprint. A few weeks later when the stories went through UAT some serious problems were found and the team had do a lot of rework. It is clear that in these circumstances &quot;5 stories done at the end of the sprint&quot; has little meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation would be to try and do UAT as a part of your sprints. This can be a challenge, but it is usually possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that helps is to get a commitment from your Product Owner that they will be available for a certain amount of time during the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing that can help is to have pre-booked 'slots' in the Product Owner's calendar when they know they will receive stories to be tested. For example, one team I worked with had a 2-hour slot in the Product Owners calendar every week on a Tuesday. The Product Owner new to keep that time free as they would be expected to do UAT during that time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-07-18T18:52:32.397" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18639" CreationDate="2016-07-18T23:25:20.953" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many customers can't stomach T&amp;amp;M so you are forced to do a fixed price quote - this is pretty common.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you do a fixed price quote for a Proof of Concept or a Minimum Viable Solution? Which 3rd party API, integrated with your solution, provides the most benefit with the least amount of risk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quote the MVS/PoC work with some contingency and set the expectation that the rest of the work can be quoted once the PoC is done.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the completion of the Proof of Concept it should be pretty clear what your capabilities are, what the 3rd party team can handle, and the customer should have a good idea about who can actually deliver on time and on budget. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all goes well and the 3rd party team is great, then your risk &amp;amp; price go down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it doesn't go well, then your customer should understand the source of the problem, and your price will make sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is crucial that your customer knows that the complete solution will be an iterative process and you will be coming back to the well for more money.  The customer should appreciate this approach because small projects succeed far more often than large projects: &lt;a href=&quot;https://thisiswhatgoodlookslike.com/2012/06/10/gartner-survey-shows-why-projects-fail/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gartner Survey&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16242" LastActivityDate="2016-07-18T23:25:20.953" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18684" CreationDate="2016-07-19T07:35:31.450" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Move your design and UX skills under the Product Owner and not on the development team. Spend as much time as you like getting the right design, and then only push the &lt;em&gt;final&lt;/em&gt; one down to the development team for implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make the UI, UX, and Behaviours part of the Product Backlog Item.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has the benefit of minimising the rework for the team, which is both waste and demoralising. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many tools out there from Balsamic to PowerPoint that can be used for storyboarding. Your stakeholders then iterate on UI with the Product Owner (and their new minions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastActivityDate="2016-07-19T07:35:31.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18681" CreationDate="2016-07-19T07:38:59.500" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It can. But its a bad idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you are veing very strict about the acceptance criteria QA means adding features to a product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore if you cant mark a feature done withput passing QA you will be changing requirements on the fly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;QA should be part of the iteration of design, feeding features and bugs into future sprints. Your acceptance criteria for a feature being done should be static and not include a human judgement component.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said. It is quite common to do testing or QA 'in the sprint'. My view is that this comes from a waterfall style expectation of 'done'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Embrace the idea that a 'done' feature is just an iteration and not a final product. You will have changes you want to add. You can wait two sprints to get them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastEditorUserId="17049" LastEditDate="2016-07-19T07:48:20.517" LastActivityDate="2016-07-19T07:48:20.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18684" CreationDate="2016-07-19T10:36:22.647" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd try to work with one representative, collect feedback from all others during a demo, and let the representative choose where to focus next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd start focussing on functionality and bring the site live as soon as possible. Half finished, on a testenvironment, but live, with content. As soon as you have a live website people tend to care about what it can do. &#xA;If the logo is all you give them, they will care about it. So give 'm more to care about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd make sure that the one representative is close&amp;amp;available to the designer when design is being done. It's best when they're in the same room during that time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way you achieve a couple of things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The product owner (that's what he/she is) can choose between functionality or design. The Sprint can contain stories about design as well as functionality. &#xA;Since you have only one person to deal with, you will eventually reach a result.&#xA;This person (let's call him/her the Product Owner) will 'own' the design, having been part of the process.  He/she can explain to the rest of people 'yes, the logo is a bit dark but we decided to focus on the login functionality this sprint'.  Or 'Ok, we will change that the next Sprint'.  Or 'Sorry but we tried that and it was voted out two weeks ago'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24119" LastEditorUserId="24119" LastEditDate="2016-07-19T10:41:55.630" LastActivityDate="2016-07-19T10:41:55.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18693" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18694" CreationDate="2016-07-19T14:03:33.907" Score="2" ViewCount="533" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just started to learn the ropes of Project Management. While doing so I was confronted with the concept of Project governance. As I like the concept of scrum I was somehow reminded of the scrum master. As far as I understand I would put the project governance on a higher level than the scrum master (more or less a scrum master of the scrum master and his team).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this understanding reasonable? As I do not think this is a proper description: Is there a more accurate way to describe this relation? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are these two concepts compatible at all? Or do they exclude each other? What are your experiences?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the main differences and similarities?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for the fast replies. In the meantime I also did some further research and found an interesting &lt;a href=&quot;https://coding.abel.nu/2012/03/scrum-and-project-governance/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt;. I think I have a better understanding how project governance and scrum work together now. Further contributions are welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22345" LastEditorUserId="22345" LastEditDate="2016-07-26T08:31:30.267" LastActivityDate="2018-07-17T10:16:19.553" Title="Project governance and scrum. Compatible? Differences?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;project-governance&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18693" CreationDate="2016-07-19T14:43:26.093" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My experience is that governance in an Agile setting is successful when it's put in place to enhance the work itself rather than as a means to control the workers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum has certain elements of governance built in.  The Product owner has governance over the Product backlog.  The team has governance over the Sprint backlog.  Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basic Scrum does not address governance across larger teams (teams of teams).  Certain scaling frameworks address governance (i.e. - Disciplined Agile embraces an architecture owner).  Most scaling frameworks allow for a Program Layer and Portfolio Layer that exist above the team level.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23922" LastActivityDate="2016-07-19T14:43:26.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18693" CreationDate="2016-07-19T18:58:35.420" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have always understood the term 'project governance' to mean the method by which an organisation chooses to apply checks and controls to its projects rather than the hierarchy of management and responsibility over resources within an organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for example an organisation might define its Project Governance as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The PM will have 10% tolerance over budget and 5% tolerance over timescales&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We will always use a Project Board comprised of [these] stakeholders and the project manager will report to the Project Board&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Budgets will be granted by [this process] and changes to budgets will require full change control approved by the Project Board&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Project Manager will issue progress reports fortnightly and have a face to face progress meeting with the Project Board on a monthly basis as well as issuing key comms to the wider business on a quarterly basis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc. etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I.e. it is a description of the operational mechanics of delivering the project, in sufficient detail to allow the audience to understand how things are going to get done and where the reporting and responsibility lines and demarcations are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the specific methods employed within Scrum would form part of the project governance at that organisation, together with other principles and processes within and without the actual delivery team(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2016-07-20T16:26:38.060" LastActivityDate="2016-07-20T16:26:38.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18696" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18703" CreationDate="2016-07-19T21:19:47.227" Score="1" ViewCount="420" Body="&lt;p&gt;I began my career as a control systems engineer for petro/oil/chemical/cement plants (handled everything from meeting the customer in the field, gathering input, setting up meetings with different module owners to get buy-in, design, dev, testing and handing over the final system to the customer). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I switched to signal processing and got an MS and PhD in video compression. I've been working as an R&amp;amp;D engineer for &gt; 2 years been handling large feature requests each taking close to 2 months (again - gather requests from product managers, design, develop, reviews, unit tests, integration, coordinate with QA, bug reports, etc). Though we are head-quartered in NY, our team is spread around the world and I coordinate daily with several teams to get my work through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am considering shifting to a program/product manager role and I would like some advice with this. I enjoy innovating and coming up with solution to tough engineering problems, and I often find myself drawn into big-picture discussions and volunteering my opinions on product plans while talking to managers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My company doesn't have any PM/TPM roles (only Senior Engr., Staff Engr. Principal Engr., Manager, Director, VP, etc.) - so my search will most likely have to be outwards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking into firms in other domains too - problem is that I am mostly a C, C++, MATLAB, scripting (bash, python) sorta engineer with lots of experience in Agile methodologies and tools that a CS company should be using (version control, bug reporting, code inspection, profiling, etc.). Apart from my writing my own websites in HTML and CSS/ or using Wordpress (with some PHP coding), I have very little experience in mobile technologies or the web stack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I make this switch? Do I need to get a certification first? Any suggestion will help me greatly. Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry if this question has been asked before! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24128" LastActivityDate="2016-10-21T20:50:54.223" Title="Switching from a R&amp;D to program/project management after a PhD" Tags="&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18684" CreationDate="2016-07-19T22:23:04.683" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the benefits of having a Product Owner when working with Scrum is that they are a single voice for requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that they:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spend time speaking with the stakeholders and so prevent the development team from getting distracted&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remove confusion over requirements and prevents conflicting requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rationalise the multiplicity of requests from stakeholders and boil them down to a simple prioritised list&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Realise the cost of making changes and weigh them up against the benefit they deliver&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why Scrum introduces the Product Owner as an intermediary between the development team and the stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth remembering that the goal of Scrum is to deliver what the customer wants and so &lt;em&gt;feedback and constructive change is encouraged&lt;/em&gt;. The key to stopping it becoming a problem is to have somebody in the Product Owner role who realises that every change made comes at the cost of pushing back other work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smart prioritisation will minimise UI tweeks with little business value and will encourage better communication of requirements to minimise waste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-07-19T22:23:04.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7954" CreationDate="2016-07-19T22:45:24.223" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know there's an answer for this and I mostly agree with @Lunivore and @jmort253 answers but I thought I would chime in on how I have seen and heard technical debt handled?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our company we recently started trying to allocate dedicated week-long sprints that we focus on technical debt. Unfortunately this hasn't worked super well when there are certain features that go over the course of multiple sprints, in which case it's impossible to prioritize low-priority fixes vs features that need to ship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kind of building on above, I believe &lt;strong&gt;it's important to show and communicate communicate how technical debt is affecting the team's velocity&lt;/strong&gt;. This naturally starts with being able to know what your team's velocity is, and then showing it is simply a matter of process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently we have started costing out all issues with &lt;a href=&quot;https://agilefaq.wordpress.com/2007/11/13/what-is-a-story-point/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;story points&lt;/a&gt; (whether it be features and the small tasks associated with features, or just nitpicky bug fixes) everything is costed out with a certain value. After a period of time, our manager is now able to give a ballpark range of how much bandwidth each engineer has and how much time they can allocate to fixing certain bugs. When we first started this, it was naturally really bumpy because we would forget that there was more to a task so its generally better to overestimate than underestimate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After some time though, we were able to give a good sense of what we can fit into the sprint and what we can't and we have been given dedicated time to fix bugs that makes sense (hey you have this feature but from what was costed out you seem to have time for some small bugs?). I think we are still working on a good rhythm and we have juggled between alternating people to fix bugs or just dedicating time for the entire team (especially useful if you have new devs) -- maybe I'll chime in again when we have narrowed that down but we have definitely seen an improvement in how fast we do things when given the time to fix the things that no one sees and it's nice that everyone can &quot;see&quot; it too now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In regards to responsibility, I don't necessarily think it's the PM's responsibility? Our &lt;strong&gt;engineering manager and tech lead drives managing technical debt&lt;/strong&gt; while our PM drives the projects and timeline of features. That being said, &lt;strong&gt;it's important there is dedicated time for the PM and the manager to coordinate and set expectations&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22537" LastActivityDate="2016-07-19T22:45:24.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18332" CreationDate="2016-07-19T23:45:02.300" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First thing to know ist, that higher WIP means longer cycle times, and vice versa (Little’s Law).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reducing WIP shortens Lead Time. Shorter Lead Times mean it is possible to release working code more often. More frequent releases build trust with external teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it depends what you want and your question is a question of definition&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24131" LastActivityDate="2016-07-19T23:45:02.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18701" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-20T01:01:22.750" Score="4" ViewCount="917" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have 2 projects with the proper boards displaying their workflows accurately. Project A has one board.&#xA;Project B has three boards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When i'm inside Project A i cannot see the boards from Project B and vice versa. I would like the 'boards' tab to show the boards from all projects so i can jump between them quickly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The projects have very distinctive workflows.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24132" LastActivityDate="2017-08-20T02:24:12.780" Title="Inside Jira how do I see boards from multiple projects in a single drop down?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18681" CreationDate="2016-07-20T05:02:43.637" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;With the comments in the question, the PO is not available to confirm if an increment or feature is successfully added to the Product. Also, you are not delivering the product after each Sprint. Your Sprints are focused towards adding new features &amp;amp; fixing few older issues in different features of the application. Here you have few points to consider for different Scrum Ceremonies with the PO and the team members:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Backlog Grooming Meetings -&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure the meeting is regularly done. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PO have his Top 10 priority Stories on the Top of Backlog for the Team to&#xA;discuss. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;During the meeting encourage the team (Dev &amp;amp; QA) to ask questions about Story and get as many tasks added as needed (to a Story) with DOD &amp;amp; Scope of the Story and different tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;DOD should be defined by PO, For DEV, say (adding a page with the mentioned features. DEV team could have an analysis task for the same and share a document on the way implementation would be done to the PO and Team). For QA, say (DOD would be &quot;Environments to be Test the feature, Creation of Test cases). Adding Bugs in the bug tracker&quot;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any newly introduced bug related to the feature should be fixed as&#xA;the part of the Story and a broken feature should also be fixed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is only after this you could mark a Story as done to calculate the velocity of the team. Ensure, the team does brainstorming before assigning Story points to stories. Else, incorrect velocity would be calculated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Daily Standup Meeting -&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep the Meeting Short and crisp with the teams focus of the&#xA;completion of Stories, raising impediments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work to resolve the impediments. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do meetings with the PO and team (if needed) for any queries from the team. Ensure the meeting has the right attendees. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprint Demo -&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure Sprint Demo is done for the maximum Stories of the feature.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PO and other Stakeholders attend the Demo. Record the Demo to be shared with the team and get an approval from the PO after the Demo on a specific Story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13556" LastActivityDate="2016-07-20T05:02:43.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18696" CreationDate="2016-07-20T08:28:15.563" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you've done some pretty good research already. I'd say that if you're serious about it, invest in getting qualified (which qualification you go for should depend on the field you're going into - but there's plenty of other Q+A's on that already) as it will make your job hunt a bit less difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finding a PM job without having been a PM before is (ironically) very tricky, but having the qualification under your belt will show that you're serious about the move to any potential employer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, it might be worth speaking to your current employer about your long-term career intentions and see if there's any way of developing that within the company you're in. It may be that they could create a new role for you or add different responsibilities into your existing role - it'd save a lot of the headache of finding a new job outside of your current organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24050" LastActivityDate="2016-07-20T08:28:15.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18696" CreationDate="2016-07-20T10:46:29.433" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience with this work I would put your experience as the most valuable asset. Qualifications might look good on a resume, but I my experience I have not seen one that has been valuable in a general sense. I could be wrong, but I wouldn't waste my time on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion would be to apply for as an engineer at a company that has what you look for as a career path. There are several reasons for this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It can be hard to get the job without prior experience.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I believe that doing a good job as PM/TPM requires good knowledge in the company's product, technology, culture, and so on. Some hands-on work is the best way IMO to gain this. Also, the people developing the product will be sure about your competence.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I think it is good practice to recruit for these positions internally. From the above reason of knowledge, and I think companies that do this are thinking in the longer term.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mainly things to think about; hope it helps :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24137" LastActivityDate="2016-07-20T10:46:29.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18507" CreationDate="2016-07-20T12:12:44.173" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A PMP certification requires you to have at least 4500 hours (if you have a 4-year degree) to 7500 hours (if you have a secondary degree) of experience in leading a project (Source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pmi.org/certifications/types/project-management-pmp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMI&lt;/a&gt;). That doesn't mean that you can't start preparing for the exam now though, because you also need 35 hours of training. My advise is to get practical experience first, but simultaneously further educate yourself on project management, so when you have collected enough hours and feel like you want to do a certificate, you can do so immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24138" LastActivityDate="2016-07-20T12:12:44.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18347" CreationDate="2016-07-20T12:58:46.713" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;So... you discover bugs after your development team declares its work 'done' and then have to go back and fix them.  Whilst new code has already been developed by the time you discover the defects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because testing in your Sprint takes too much time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A sarcastastic person might conclude 'you have no time to do it right the first time, but somehow you do have time to do it again'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have found an impediment (group of impediments) that hinder your team to finish the stories.&#xA;A few suggestions to deal with the impediment: &#xA;You can start loading a test system in the 3rd week of the Sprint. Perhaps load the system on Friday evening so it loads over the weekend and your team is ready to test on Monday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your developers can invest time in automating the deployment and setup of the test-environment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your developers can start automating testcases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, you'd start a deployment on Friday evening. It would run through the weekend and runs tests that ensure that basic functionality still works, and preferably run functional regression tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the user-test the last Sprint-week, the developers spend their time fixing the bugs and automating more of the tests the users perform.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Results: Deployments go faster, freeing time from developers. &#xA;Regression-tests are already done by the time Users start testing, so less time is wasted on bugs in software that should have worked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eventually you might even deploy more often during a Sprint or shorten your Sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may need some additional hardware to create a test-environment for the Dev-team, but hardware is cheaper than hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may be tempted to go to 1 month Sprints although I wouldn't. I'd prefer not to put too so functionality in a Sprint that large bugs can hide in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24119" LastEditorUserId="24119" LastEditDate="2016-07-22T08:57:55.080" LastActivityDate="2016-07-22T08:57:55.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18684" CreationDate="2016-07-20T15:33:18.410" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product ownership&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get your clients to appoint one product owner. He is the one who communicates with the team and make sure all stakeholder interests are looked after. This way, the constant change and minimal changes are felt more within their organization and/or team, and less in yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Plan for a number of sprints, or don't plan other projects&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give transparency and an honest outlook to your clients, you have roughly two options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When first starting the project, plan together with the client / product owner for a number of sprints to be run. Make clear that you have other projects that need fulfillment. When scope is increased in design, immediately point to the fact that quality and time are fixed. Therefore, scope in other stories needs to be altered, or something on the bottom of the backlog will not make it to the sprint. This option ensures you can adhere to time schedules, but may leave clients unhappy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't plan other projects until a running project is complete. Or at least not until you're fairly confident the project is wrapping up. This option makes planning future projects harder, but ensures you can fully serve clients (they can keep adding sprints until they're happy).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Optimize your design process, or outsource it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are numerous methods to running a design process. Some will be better suited than others. Do research on this, incorporate what fits your situation into your process. For instance: use a style tyle / style guide to quickly set a general frame of reference for all design and ui. If the client agrees, point to the style guide whenever changes are proposed. If it's still being pushed, once again make clear that this will affect some other stories scope.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cut the design process loose from everything else. Treat it as a separate project. Possibly use a freelance designer for this. This way, the unpredictability of the design phase is contained inside that project. Once that design has been agreed upon, your team can deliver the project as specified in the design.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On something of a sidenote I'm quite interested in how you currently handle maintenance or incidents, and how you handle scope increase during development. What I mean to say is: there are more reasons for scope, complexity and effort needed to increase, besides design. How do you cope with that in your current workflow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17421" LastActivityDate="2016-07-20T15:33:18.410" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18708" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-21T04:26:23.303" Score="5" ViewCount="512" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team works in a 3 Weeks sprint, and accordingly we calculate the capacity of Team member based on his or her planned holidays and company Vacations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But we cannot deny any unplanned / Sick leaves, Unplanned meetings and Training. Different Inter &amp;amp; Intra team communications which may be important for my own project or other teams. Knowledge sharing is an important core value of a growing organisation that encourages open cross team interactions.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different Sprint Ceremonies also take some time of the team members during these 3 weeks. What points are important to be considered calculating the Capacity of the Team members considering they spend 8 hrs in the office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13556" LastActivityDate="2017-09-15T19:55:27.427" Title="Identifying and considering the important factors to calculate a persons Capacity for a Sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;team-capacity&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18708" CreationDate="2016-07-21T10:40:34.680" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-planning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; says this on the things to take account of when determining the commitments for the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The input to this meeting is the Product Backlog, the latest product Increment, projected capacity of the Development Team during the Sprint, and past performance of the Development Team. The number of items selected from the Product Backlog for the Sprint is solely up to the Development Team. Only the Development Team can assess what it can accomplish over the upcoming Sprint.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing to take account of is the &lt;strong&gt;actual evidence of the work you've achieved in the past&lt;/strong&gt;. The measure of how much your team can get done in an iteration is typically called &lt;strong&gt;Velocity&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter whether team members are there for 8 hours. It doesn't matter that sometimes there are meetings. We aren't individually interested in these things, and it's much better to directly measure the thing we do care about, our velocity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that &lt;strong&gt;the Development team is responsible for deciding commitments&lt;/strong&gt; (not the scrum master), and that &lt;strong&gt;performance is measured as a team, not as individuals&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the Scrum guide leaves the &quot;How&quot; the development team estimations stories an exercise for the reader, most successful teams use something like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/points-estimates-in/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Story points&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, lets say my team has a few stories of size (in points, left is highest priority) &lt;code&gt;{ 1, 5, 8, 3 }&lt;/code&gt;. If last sprint, we managed 6 points, the team knows to take on &lt;code&gt;1&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;5&lt;/code&gt; only. If we managed 9 points, we know I can take on &lt;code&gt;1&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;5&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;3&lt;/code&gt;. The thing powering the team's decisions is evidence from previous iterations. A &quot;point&quot; is not linked to any amount of time other than through our evidence based measure of velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teams that use hour estimates in practice don't make good use of velocity and therefore plan poorly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to summarize,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimate stories in points rather than hours&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Measure the Velocity of the team and use that to decide how many points to commit to&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure the development team is making these decisions, not you &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17705" LastActivityDate="2016-07-21T10:40:34.680" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18708" CreationDate="2016-07-21T10:44:19.770" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm deducing that your team uses story points for an initial estimation then, at the planning meeting, breaks stories into tasks and estimates them at the hour level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, some general suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Never schedule 8 hours a day. Interruptions happen. Only schedule about 6 hours a day for development tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you're removing those planned days off from the team's capacity. Likewise, be sure to remove &lt;em&gt;known&lt;/em&gt; meeting times from the capacity as well. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you seem to know that already. You want to know how to handle unexpected absences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Leave some slack in your planning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We humans are really bad at estimating. Things usually take longer to do then we estimate they will. Leaving a bit of slack in your schedule allows you to absorb both the bad estimates and some absences. If the team does meet their iteration goal early, then they have some time to pay off some technical debt. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Accept that any given estimate will likely be wrong and you won't always get all the stories done, even if every one shows up every day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, don't worry about it. Take some time to remember that developers are people, that &lt;em&gt;you're&lt;/em&gt; a person and not code generating machines. Embrace the uncertainty of software development and find ways to be flexible. Can we drop a story from this iteration? Joe got his tasks done early, can he pick up Susy's while she's out? Can we extend this iteration another week? Learn to be flexible (dare I say, &lt;em&gt;agile&lt;/em&gt;) and react to the unknown with grace. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you failed to deliver every story in the iteration? &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Big deal.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; It happens. Bring it up in the retro, let the team talk about why and how they can lessen the impact of unplanned days off. They'll have way better ideas than strangers on the Internet. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Stop doing hour level estimation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's largely a waste of time that generates a false sense of knowing, in my personal experience. Instead, use the historic number of story points completed as your team's capacity. In any specific instance, it will be wrong, but so will the hour level capacity planning. Sometimes they'll get more done, sometimes less, however &lt;em&gt;on average&lt;/em&gt; it's a pretty good indication of how much the team can accomplish in an iteration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal isn't raw throughput of tasks. The goal is an iteration of working and valuable piece of software. Do the most important thing first, and you'll have that whether or not someone on the team gets sick for a few days. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastEditorUserId="21039" LastEditDate="2016-07-21T14:05:22.200" LastActivityDate="2016-07-21T14:05:22.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18708" CreationDate="2016-07-21T21:02:41.000" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimate your team's capacity as an aggregate range based on historical performance, rather than as a sum of the ideal hours available to each individual. Furthermore, you should carefully consider what you hope to accomplish with such a calculation, and determine whether a more agile approach to productivity and statistical estimation might not be a better fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Estimate &lt;em&gt;Team&lt;/em&gt; Capacity&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My team works in a 3 Weeks sprint, and accordingly we calculate the capacity of Team member based on his or her planned holidays and company Vacations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, velocity or capacity for an individual is &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; calculated. Instead, you calculate the projected capacity of the &lt;em&gt;entire team&lt;/em&gt; based on empirical measures of past performance, and expect minor variations in individual or iteration capacity to even out over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More importantly, while you can use various techniques to estimate ideal hours available to the team, this will not give you good predictability regarding the &lt;em&gt;amount of work&lt;/em&gt; you can do in a Sprint. Unless it's your very first Sprint, you're much better off using relative sizing (e.g. story points) and estimating how much work you'll be able to accomplish in any given iteration based on empirical data about how much work the team has been able to accomplish in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Ideal Hours&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you choose to use ideal hours rather than story points, you would calculate a team capacity. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure you include all elements of your Definition of Done in your definition of &lt;em&gt;work&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assume a baseline of 4-6 hours of &lt;em&gt;useful&lt;/em&gt; work per business day.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multiply by the number of team members.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, a five-person team has 60-90 ideal man-hours available in a three-week Sprint. You could just stop there, and let statistical variation iron itself out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an alternative, you can apply a fudge factor to adjust for &lt;em&gt;known&lt;/em&gt; issues in a forthcoming Sprint. For example, you might:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduce total capacity by at least 20% if a member of a five-person team is on extended leave.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduce capacity by 7-10% to account for a holiday in the middle of your upcoming Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pragmatically, I tend to apply fudge factors for large potential drags on velocity, but generally ignore them for minor perturbations like a planned dentist appointments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Solving Your X/Y Problem&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems likely that your real problem isn't a lack of precision estimation, but rather than you are treating team members as individual resources and striving to optimize for utilization rather than throughput. While you didn't explicitly say so, the way your question is phrased at least implies that tasks are being assigned to individuals, rather than collectively owned by the team, and therefore the absence or reduced capacity of any member of the team can create bottlenecks or expose dependencies within your delivery pipeline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, make sure that backlog items are owned by the entire team, and that the team is working collaboratively to complete stories rather than sequentially or in parallel. In addition, backlog items should be as independent of one another as possible, so that the inability to complete one due to resource or time constraints doesn't &quot;halt the line&quot; for other backlog items as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you're not making the mistakes I just outlined, please take some time to &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; consider why you are trying to trace capacity metrics to the individual level, rather than taking the team-based approach that underpins most agile methodologies. You may be surprised to find that doing so is unnecessary, and even counterproductive, in many circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-07-22T21:59:39.890" LastActivityDate="2016-07-22T21:59:39.890" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18708" CreationDate="2016-07-23T06:39:35.547" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try adopting the LEAN idea of 'waste'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get the team to record their hours against tasks, meetings, admin etc so that you can work out exactly how much time you are spending on 'non work' tasks each week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will give you both an average percentage of 'waste' time which you can factor into individuals capacity AND enable you to identify stuff that you can cut out to increase capacity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2016-07-23T06:39:35.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18714" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18716" CreationDate="2016-07-24T05:53:45.477" Score="5" ViewCount="2392" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to solve following problem we have in our company:&#xA;We are trying to follow SCRUM&#xA;We are using git-flow-like branching model.&#xA;When we encounter bigger story that takes 2,3 sprints it's not merged back until all substories are done.&#xA;As a result we have long running branch that is difficult to merge at the end. We start other stories based on a master branch which is completely not up to date dues to big feature-story branch.&#xA;I proposed to merge early substories back to master whenever possible, but management said it's too risky as the changes might break deployments.&#xA;How do you deal with a long running stories and branches?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24183" LastActivityDate="2017-09-16T00:06:32.663" Title="avoiding long running branches on big stories" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18714" CreationDate="2016-07-24T08:58:44.397" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;'When we encounter bigger story that takes 2,3 sprints'&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't work around that, fix it. You should be able to merge an &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt; story. Notice the S stands for small. &lt;strong&gt;Make your substories valuable and mergable.&lt;/strong&gt; Having monolithic stories is a huge (but very common) problem. I suspect your sub-stories resemble stages in a technical design, rather than deliverable increments. That's not quite right. People write books about this sort of thing, but I'll just link you to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://agileforall.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Story-Splitting-Flowchart.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;very simple and useful flowchart&lt;/a&gt; for how to approach subdividing your stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;'We start other stories based on a...'&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;You have too much work in progress (WIP)&lt;/strong&gt; and this is one of the minor annoyances. Get better at collaborating and pile onto fewer stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;'but management said it's too risky'&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly this might be related to your WIP problem. When you finish your multi-sprint story (epic might be a better word), there's always some other half done work in flight as well. They don't want that all in master, but the solution isn't to take it out, it's to have less WIP. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, the stories you pick up each iteration need to be done (Dev, QA in test environments etc) using the skills inside your team. You need to release every iteration, that's the point. It's how you deliver value and get customer feedback quickly. You need to push back against this. But you also &lt;strong&gt;need to make sure that you have high quality standards&lt;/strong&gt; (ie lots of test automation) so that people don't feel that taking your code is a big risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TLDR&lt;/strong&gt; The solution isn't cunning branch management and git can't save you. Split your stories, and read up on what iterations are mean to achieve. Or, I suppose, budget for horrible merges. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17705" LastEditorUserId="17705" LastEditDate="2016-07-24T22:32:33.890" LastActivityDate="2016-07-24T22:32:33.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18714" CreationDate="2016-07-24T09:46:12.373" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea of Scrum is to finish work in sprints so that you can make transparent your progress. If you have stories that span 2-3 sprints then you will be hiding progress and making the Scrum framework less transparent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be a good idea to focus on breaking the larger stories down. This can be a challenge at first, but it is a skill that Scrum teams need to acquire to be successful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find you still need to maintain long-lived feature branches then consider the following approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Merge feature branches back into master as frequently as possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it is not possible to merge back to master, consider merging &lt;em&gt;from&lt;/em&gt; master into your branch. That way your branch will never get too far away from master.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have more than one long-lived feature branch consider merging them together regularly. That way the risk of feature branch merge conflicts is reduced.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finally, consider using continuous integration for the merging process. It is possible to configure routine merges that give the team rapid notice of any merge conflicts. This means that the team will be solving merge conflicts soon after they write the code that causes them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-07-24T09:46:12.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18714" CreationDate="2016-07-24T16:30:52.993" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use feature toggle technique ( [Wikipedia feature toggle]: &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_toggle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_toggle&lt;/a&gt; ) and so far we have been very effective in being able to deliver in time, handling large feature gracefully and turning off features that are not done by the release date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A feature toggle, (also feature switch, feature flag, feature flipper,&#xA;  conditional feature, etc.) is a technique in software development that&#xA;  attempts to provide an alternative to maintaining multiple source-code&#xA;  branches (known as feature branches).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Continuous release and continuous deployment provide developers with&#xA;  rapid feedback about their coding. This requires the integration of&#xA;  their code changes as early as possible. Feature branches introduce a&#xA;  bypass to this process. Feature toggles bring developers back to the&#xA;  track, but the execution paths of their features are still &quot;dead&quot; if a&#xA;  toggle is &quot;off&quot;. But the effort is low to enable the new execution&#xA;  paths just by setting a toggle to &quot;on&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The technique allows developers to release a version of a product that&#xA;  has unfinished features. These unfinished feature are hidden (toggled)&#xA;  so they do not appear in the user interface. This allows many small&#xA;  incremental versions of software to be delivered without the cost of&#xA;  constant branching and merging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another benefit of feature flags are canary launches. A canary launch&#xA;  (aka canary deployment or canary release) is rolling features out to a&#xA;  small number of users to assess the reaction of the overall system. A&#xA;  canary launch allows you to roll out a feature slowly, and measure the&#xA;  reaction from real user “canaries”, looking for early indicators of&#xA;  danger. If a feature is not good, it can be rolled back. Canary&#xA;  launches are a best practice for agile development organizations&#xA;  practicing continuous delivery to move faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We define shipable feature as an minimum viable product MVP, that usually will be translated as an Epic that can spread across many sprints or within a Sprint (our sprint is a week long), an Epic will be broken into several INVEST user stories, high level and customer-centric. Any finished user stories get merged into the  the master branch on a daily basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16934" LastEditorUserId="16934" LastEditDate="2016-07-24T16:58:28.230" LastActivityDate="2016-07-24T16:58:28.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18714" CreationDate="2016-07-24T19:24:46.360" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Others have addressed the fact that your stories are too large, but if you break them down (&lt;em&gt;and you should&lt;/em&gt;), you'll have done stories that may not quite be ready for &quot;prime time&quot;. You don't want to deploy these half done features and neither does your marketing department. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But here's the secret...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt; want to deploy them. It's your marketing dept that doesn't want to. &lt;em&gt;And you're both right&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Marketing doesn't want half done features going to prod, but you want to merge these changes in and deploy so that it's easier. So you do both. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write in a feature toggle for these long in progress features. Merge your stories in when they're done, just like any other story. Now, for testing/demo purposes, you turn the feature on, &lt;em&gt;but turn it off for production&lt;/em&gt;. This allows you to frequently merge, ship the feature to your QA &amp;amp; Product Owner for fast feedback, yet leave it &quot;unshipped&quot; for your end users. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to do that could easily fill a series of blog posts, so I'll leave further research on feature toggles to you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastActivityDate="2016-07-24T19:24:46.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18720" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18721" CreationDate="2016-07-26T10:28:35.463" Score="2" ViewCount="1039" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scope creep can easily transform a good project into a distressed one.  What are the methods for minimizing continuous expansion of project requirements? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21640" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-07-26T12:12:26.263" LastActivityDate="2017-04-22T07:12:15.880" Title="How to minimize scope creep?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;scope&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;&lt;scope-management&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18720" CreationDate="2016-07-26T10:28:35.463" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been dealing a lot with a scope creep over the last 2 years. I created a list of things that is a must to keep in mind in order to minimize the negative impact on the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;At first - you should realize that scope creep will happen!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You should:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;know the requirements;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;know the client's expectations;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have balls to say &quot;No&quot;. Saying &quot;Yes&quot; to placate the customer can cause a sufficient scope creep. As a result - a good project might become a distressed project;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;always question the necessity for the change. Make sure that there is a decent justification for a change. Define change control process in advance;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;determine how the scope change will affect the schedule, cost and resources. See whether some of the milestone dates can or can't be shifted;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;get user involvement early. A good idea might be to make customer research interviews before having an actual product;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;know who has &quot;signature authority&quot;. You should manage closely this kind of stakeholders;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;avoid gold plating and perfectionism. Change your mindset from making everything &quot;perfect&quot; to &quot;just enough&quot;;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;be aware of penalty clauses for late delivery. By pushing through scope changes that will elongate the schedule, the PM could avoid penalty clauses.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21640" LastActivityDate="2016-07-26T10:28:35.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18722" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-26T14:01:02.073" Score="0" ViewCount="681" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Not using Project Server)&#xA;I find a frequent need to open sub-projects in a new window and looking for an easy way to open that project from within the master project instead of having to go through the typical File/Open and file search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any shortcuts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rachel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24205" LastActivityDate="2016-07-26T17:42:51.333" Title="Opening sub-projects from within the Master Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18723" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-26T14:35:48.160" Score="0" ViewCount="65" Body="&lt;p&gt;As my project develops, I find I am constantly tweaking various fields, views and filters.  Is there a way to apply these tweaks to multiple projects rather than the many sub-projects, one at a time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many Thanks,  Rachel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24205" LastActivityDate="2017-10-20T01:45:21.287" Title="Applying Field formats to multiple projects" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18724" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-26T15:18:19.387" Score="0" ViewCount="434" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you make  a custom timeline by corporate periods? or add the periods over the dates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our company refers to time in Periods where each period has 4 weeks. Is it possible to remove the dates or add the period distinction maybe above the timeline?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks,&#xA;Lori&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24207" LastActivityDate="2016-07-26T17:33:11.380" Title="Can you make a custom timeline?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;&lt;timeline&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18725" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18736" CreationDate="2016-07-26T15:25:35.983" Score="0" ViewCount="87" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just started using omniplan and it's somehow showing my project taskas one per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I revert this to multiple tasks per day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jdn1V.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jdn1V.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24208" LastActivityDate="2016-07-27T09:53:25.203" Title="OmniPlan showing one task per day" Tags="&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18724" CreationDate="2016-07-26T17:33:11.380" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can change the format of the dates in the timescale (area above Gantt chart) but you cannot define your own time periods, nor add custom text.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest using Middle Tier in Weeks with the label of Week 1, Week 2 or something similar.  Right click on the timescale and choose Timescale from the shortcut menu.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2016-07-26T17:33:11.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18723" CreationDate="2016-07-26T17:37:16.223" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can copy custom views, filters, and field definitions between projects using the Organizer.  Open both files and in the file with the customization, File &gt; Info, click Organizer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2016-07-26T17:37:16.223" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18722" CreationDate="2016-07-26T17:42:51.333" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No direct method that I know of.  If the inserted subprojects are linked to the master, you can copy the file path from the Inserted task Information dialog (Advanced tab).  Paste into file explorer.  But, I'm not sure that is any more efficient. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2016-07-26T17:42:51.333" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18720" CreationDate="2016-07-26T20:44:46.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Focus on customer value. &#xA;Just because the client thinks of a new function doesn't mean the one you are writing right now has lost its value. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I try to follow these guidelines:&#xA;- Slow down. Do not jump to the new scopy things. The original scope was analysed and considered carefully. The new scope probably just popped up. No way all the requirements and implications are known. Give the idea time to mature. While you work at the original scope.&#xA;- Once you're out of 'jump-at-it' mode, capture the new scope in requirements, userstories, etcetera. &#xA;- Check how it fits in and if your original scope already provides part of this new scope.  And while you are at it; ask for a businesscase for the new scope. How is the client going to earn the money back? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many ideas fail this stage as they are already possible, or are not really close enough to the hearth to actually write down the specs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For ideas that survive, I still like to get the program running in Operation first. Check out 'minimal viable product'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When your program is in actual operation, you will have meaningful discussions: Do we add on the things we thought of originally (original scope)? Or would you rather have us build that new idea first?&#xA;Which idea adds the most value at this point?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you do this right, the word 'scope creep' looses its meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24171" LastActivityDate="2016-07-26T20:44:46.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18714" CreationDate="2016-07-26T20:51:40.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Funny reasoning, your management. &#xA;Merging the branch early risks breaking deployments, so it's better to add lots more code to that branch before merging it. How exactly, pray tell, does adding many weeks of code &lt;em&gt;decrease&lt;/em&gt; the risk of breaking the deployment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Automate your deployment and deploy often to a testing environment. Aim for daily but more frequent if you can.&#xA;That way your 'broken deployment' is always caused by the few lines of code that you just wrote. Easy to fix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your management has a sense of humour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24171" LastActivityDate="2016-07-26T20:51:40.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18732" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2016-07-27T04:30:58.000" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2016-07-27T04:30:58.000" LastActivityDate="2016-07-27T04:30:58.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18733" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2016-07-27T04:30:58.000" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2016-07-27T04:30:58.000" LastActivityDate="2016-07-27T04:30:58.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18734" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-27T04:32:41.260" Score="-2" ViewCount="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to collect pdus for my re certification as PMP before July 2017. &#xA;Can I just do self study and online podcasts, webinars to account for 60 PDU&#xA;in category A, B And C - Education PDUs . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do i have to get PDUs  in categoty D E F - Contribution PDUs seperately  ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24212" LastActivityDate="2016-10-04T01:54:23.680" Title="pdus for continuing certification as pmi 's pmp" Tags="&lt;acceptance-criteria&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18725" CreationDate="2016-07-27T09:53:25.203" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This was resolved by changing the &quot;Granularity&quot; in the project info window from 'Daily Scheduling' to 'Exact Scheduling'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/T2rQD.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/T2rQD.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24208" LastActivityDate="2016-07-27T09:53:25.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18637" CreationDate="2016-07-27T13:47:09.030" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my perspective and experience in important to keep track of all issues your projects/products have. Your team is already big enough to justify a ticket management system, but you need to be sure what do you want:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A way to organize work inside team&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your need is only to organize your work inside of the team, an excel is enough, but with a ticket management system you can have many benefits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;focus discussions inside a single ticket, not all whole project again and again&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;keep track of all changes of status (analysis, design, development, testing, etc.. ) from all the team. In excel this is a pain&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A way to communicate advancement outside of the team&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the tricky part. If you need to do it, you need the right costumer. I really don't know about your market, type of customers or so on, but anyone in the world read manuals, think about issues.. I think a report from project manager is enough!&#xA;If you are lucky and have a collaborative customer, you can add customer as part of the system, with even issues assigned to him/her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As tool, a ticket management system require discipline: you simply can't grow a list of 250 issues. Any issue must be evaluated before insertion into the system and assigned to someone to work on it, with a scheduled time, otherwise is simply a backlog and .. maybe is not really an issue, but a &quot;future idea&quot;.&#xA;It's the duty of any project manager to control advancements, help the team and find a way to organize better teamwork.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bonus&lt;/strong&gt;: I'm not a fan of kanban board, like Trello, but you can use them for manage different projects, but again, you have to keep control on issues lifecycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24221" LastActivityDate="2016-07-27T13:47:09.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18720" CreationDate="2016-07-27T16:39:32.037" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to minimize scope creep is careful planning and a structured change management process. By having a clear project plan and schedule and not letting change uncontrolled from the very beginning, is the best way to avoid scope creep. You can make adjustments to the project plan, but you'll have to assess how it will affect your budget, schedule and scope. A must in every project is also to document the scope in a scope statement, this document will help you justify your measures to your client and serves as proof at the end of the project that you have fulfilled the requirements in the contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24138" LastActivityDate="2016-07-27T16:39:32.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18720" CreationDate="2016-07-27T16:56:22.890" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, you shouldn't try to minimize expanding requirements.  Change will occur and should occur and there should be no pressure to inhibit that.  What is needed is a change control process, one that can process change both prospectively and retroactively, the latter being used only minimally.  Therefore, when requirements change or new ones are identified, you process the change quickly, incorporate the new scope into the project, get time and money, and keep working.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Change is good.  It makes the product for the customer more valuable and, in the case for sellers, increases revenue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-07-27T16:56:22.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18740" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-27T18:41:04.047" Score="1" ViewCount="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a banking professional and would like to have a PMP qualification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience is related to projects, but most of them are continuous projects: each project has a start date but not a closing date. Can I use this kind of project as my experience of project supervision?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24225" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-07-28T20:54:55.640" LastActivityDate="2016-10-29T16:34:16.683" Title="PMP documentation without closing date" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18741" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-28T13:21:18.003" Score="1" ViewCount="552" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a beginner with Project Management, but I am trying to apply my knowledge to one endeavour in my job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a deliverable that can be satisfied by two solutions: one more desirable and one less efficient. However, the choice is out of my control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will ask for approval for the more desirable option, but if it is denied I will have to implement the alternative. How do I model this in a WBS? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use a PM solution developed by a local company (PM3 from Result), that looks like MS Project, but is not exactly the same. So I'm looking for an answer that is not too software dependent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for any help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24236" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-07-28T21:01:18.123" LastActivityDate="2016-07-29T11:03:39.907" Title="How to define work breakdown structure (WBS) with alternative paths?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18742" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-28T15:34:46.907" Score="2" ViewCount="298" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I understand, then ISO 9001 Quality Manual should contain the following information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;statement about quality policy (vision, committment)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;statement about quality objectives (for each line of business, product)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;list of all the procedures (the content of procedures should be in appendices, procedures themselves further specify how records, required by Standard, should be collected, kept and used)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's all, only 3 short parts. Is that all? Then why all the available sample Quality Manuals tries to reproduce standard and does not goes into specifics of companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22925" LastActivityDate="2016-09-02T14:36:30.847" Title="What should be in ISO 9001 quality manual?" Tags="&lt;quality&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18743" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-28T21:16:02.803" Score="1" ViewCount="57" Body="&lt;p&gt;CMMI has 4 categories of process areas in staged representation, those categories are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;process management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;project management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;engineering&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;support&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the CMMI process areas are categorized in these 4 categories. We can take example - process/activity &quot;software implementation/coding&quot;. Apparently this activity is controlled by procedures from different process areas from all the 4 categories (e.g. by 'Technical solution', 'Organizational Process Focus', 'Project planning', 'Configuration management'), actually - one can attribute almost any process area to this activity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How one is supposed to live and work with this? E.g. how one can describe and depict all the process interdependencies for one such activity &quot;coding&quot;? Does every procedure should refer to almost every activity in the company so that each activity is covered by 4-dimensional grid of CMMI PA categories or even worse by 24-dimensional grid of CMMI process activities (from all the 5 maturity levels)? Or maybe different process areas refer to different abstraction levels of the same activity? I am totally confused...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need to write quality manyal for CMMI compliant (and agile) organization but no idea how to tackle this grid or network of interdependencies. Sole coding is much more simpler.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22925" LastActivityDate="2016-07-29T01:59:38.340" Title="How to document and manage activity that is managed by different procedures from different categories (CMMI)?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;quality&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18743" CreationDate="2016-07-29T01:59:38.340" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're right that there are relationships between the process areas. For example, the activities that occur in Project Planning inform Project Monitoring and Control as to what needs to be monitored and controlled, and based on the monitoring, replanning may be done in accordance with Project Planning. There are also relationships between the Categories. For example, the Project Management process areas feed the Requirements Development and Requirements Management process areas, which inform Technical Solution as to what needs to be designed and implemented, and the outputs of Technical Solution are verified in accordance with Verification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's an entire chapter of &lt;a href=&quot;http://resources.sei.cmu.edu/library/asset-view.cfm?assetID=9661&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CMMI-DEV 1.3&lt;/a&gt; devoted to relationships among the process areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, all activities that you can do on a project can fit neatly into one of the process areas. For example, you mention coding in your question. Coding is part of the Technical Solution process area. However, other things are also part of Technical Solution - writing support documentation (training materials, user's manuals, help), performing make/buy/reuse analysis, select solutions. Some of these are related to other process areas. For example, you Decision Resolution &amp;amp; Analysis (DAR) processes can be used in selecting a solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you may realize that some related processes are at different levels. For example, Configuration Management and Requirements Management are at Maturity Level 2, while Technical Solution and Requirements Development are at Maturity Level 3. Clearly, if you are managing the configuration, you must have a solution that you are managing. However, it refers to what processes you need to have defined and have objective evidence of performing. It is expected that you have a defined and consistently implemented process for establishing baselines, tracking and controlling changes, and ensuring the integrity of your product before you have a defined and consistently implemented process for implementing a technical solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something else to consider is that your processes may not may 1:1 with the CMMI Process Areas. Again, looking at Technical Solution, there are three specific goals - select product component solutions, develop the design, and implement the product design. Each of these could be three separate processes in your organization (as defined in Organizational Process Definition). You may be better served by looking at the General Goals and Specific Goals and grouping them appropriately in how you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that Generic Goal 2: Institutionalize a Managed Process is most relevant to you. The first Generic Practice is to Establish an Organizational Policy. Here, the guidance is to simply elaborate on the process areas. There is no rules on how you go about elaborating. I also think that Generic Goal 1: Achieve the Specific Goals is something that you need to consider. You do this by implementing Generic Practice 1.1: Perform Specific Practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When designing a process or process framework for CMMI, the goals and practices are far more important than the process areas. These goals and practices are the things that are essential for a successful software project. There are countless ways to achieve them, and it will depend on your organization, your industry, your product, and more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, since you mentioned the agile methods, you may be interested in information about &lt;a href=&quot;http://resources.sei.cmu.edu/library/asset-view.cfm?assetid=8533&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;embracing both agile and the CMMI&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2008/july/agile-and-cmmi-better-together&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;how the agile methods and CMMI complement each other&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2016-07-29T01:59:38.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18741" CreationDate="2016-07-29T02:57:41.090" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You currently have an X/Y problem because &lt;strong&gt;your work packages have dependencies on a currently-undefined business strategy&lt;/strong&gt;. This drives your need to develop branches for &quot;alternate paths&quot; in your project plan. If you capture the strategic business goal correctly in the first place, then &lt;strong&gt;you won't have to address branching paths in your software or in your project plan.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make senior management earn their pay by making a strategic decision about which deliverable they actually want. That will simplify your planning immensely, and is really the &quot;correct&quot; way to plan any project: by planning the right plan in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you ignore this sage advice, then you still have options. Rather than trying to present multiple plans that represent different chains on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_path_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;critical path&lt;/a&gt;, you should refactor your WBS packages so that you have a single schedule with adjustable scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Pick a Business Strategy First&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of your challenge is that you're not engaging in active communication with the business. A choice between a &quot;better&quot; (however you choose to define that) solution and one that takes longer to build or that will cost more is a &lt;strong&gt;strategic decision that belongs to senior management&lt;/strong&gt;. It's not your job or your responsibility. However, if you communicate effectively and charter the &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; project, then you won't have to waste time trying to plan for features or milestones that may be completely irrelevant once a business decision has been made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, go do that first. Explain the options to the executives, including the potential impacts on schedule, budget, scope, and quality, and then let them pick a strategy. Once they've done that, then you can build the correct project plan to meet the needs of the business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Decompose WBS Packages per INVEST&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not you've followed the advice to communicate with the business, let's look at what a work breakdown structure really is. Wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_breakdown_structure&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;defines a WBS&lt;/a&gt; as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A work breakdown structure (WBS), in project management and systems engineering, is a deliverable-oriented decomposition of a project into smaller components.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your problem isn't really how to generate a WBS; your issue is how to create work packages that follow key elements of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;INVEST criteria&lt;/a&gt; so that executive leadership can choose which packages belong on the critical path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, if your work packages are decomposed well and are largely self-contained (in order to reduce dependencies between packages), then you can treat the inclusion or exclusion of specific packages as a scope issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While few project plans can contain completely idempotent work packages, if your work packages are small enough to be easily estimated and tested, and independent enough to be added or removed from the scope without creating a huge cascade effect on dependent packages, then even a non-agile project can benefit from making scope the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;adjustable constraint&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A Silly But Useful Example&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say that your project is codenamed WonderWidget&amp;trade;. You have several options for building the widget:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hand-craft cogs for the widget in loving detail, starting from expensive bars of the purest unobtainium. This will create a wonderful product, but will require a big budget and a longer schedule.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use mass-produced cogs from the Cogs 'R Us&amp;reg; corporation. Buying in bulk and focusing on assembly will reduce costs and time-to-market, but will also reduce the quality of the finished goods.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We assume &lt;em&gt;a priori&lt;/em&gt; that one method has more manual steps and higher labor/material costs while the other method has potential quality issues. Which one is &quot;better&quot; is a business decision, and is largely irrelevant to project planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A WonderWidget&amp;trade; that requires 53 cogs to be assembled probably has exactly the same work packages on either path &lt;em&gt;except&lt;/em&gt; for the cog production or purchasing steps. If there are 47 manual steps to hand-craft each cog, contained in 12 tightly-coupled work packages, but only two work packages are involved in ordering cogs from your vendor&amp;mdash;well, that's certainly a set of considerations for schedule, budget, or quality. However, from the standpoint of chaining project activities together, the two options are essentially interchangeable because &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; the cogs are produced may have very little to do with the work packages related to widget assembly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even the most complex project plans can benefit from INVEST-driven work packages. Does one strategy require that you embiggen a thingamabob while the other requires you to ensmallen a whatsit? Fine! Swap out the packages, or represent both as an either/or choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Evaluate Your Process&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A project plan with a modest number of branches, optional packages/milestones, or decision points is perfectly reasonable. However, if you find that your plan is starting to become complex enough to look like a bowl of spaghetti, then you need to stop and revisit your underlying assumptions about what the project is supposed to deliver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the example above, whether or not to outsource your cog production is probably a reasonable branching of the project plan. However, deciding whether you're building a &lt;em&gt;Widget of Awesomeness&amp;trade;&lt;/em&gt; or a &lt;em&gt;Widget of Mediocrity&amp;trade;&lt;/em&gt; is something you need to define at the outset of the project, rather than discovering it like an emergent design at some indeterminate point during the project lifecycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether your process is agile or traditional, you need to build the right thing. If you don't have enough information about what the &quot;right thing&quot; is, go back to the business and &lt;em&gt;ask them&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-07-29T02:57:41.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18746" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-28T13:47:37.370" Score="5" ViewCount="2406" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my scrum team, we basically don't have a vision for the product. Our product owner thinks she's writing user stories but they are really just high level epics. Breaking down those 'stories' ends us up with having to interact with dozens of different stakeholders in the business and gathering requirements for something we have no idea what it is!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My concern with doing this, is that stakeholders don't really know what they need. Each of them might give us conflicting information. Then, each of us on the development team might hold conflicting information and all hell breaks lose when we attempt to build the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm increasingly feeling that it's the sole responsibility of the product owner to engage all the stake holders, aggregate information they give and form a vision for the product; something it seems, is being farmed out to the development team instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it a good idea for us developers simply refuse to engage stakeholders?  How can a Scrum team encourage the product owner to work with the team in breaking down the user stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Divyanth Jayaraj" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T14:28:46.660" Title="In Scrum, are the developers supposed to engage stakeholders at all? Or is it solely the responsibility of the product owner?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18746" CreationDate="2016-07-28T14:29:45.517" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your workplace is this disorganized then I highly doubt you have a right to &quot;refuse&quot; certain procedures. Chances are you'd be fired or let off the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation is as follow:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bring up your points on what is unclear and why it is unclear. Don't point fingers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you can't bring up points and you are forced to work in such a environment, then consider leaving. There is really no way to go to upper management and &quot;refuse&quot; to do work they assigned you. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Dan" LastActivityDate="2016-07-28T14:29:45.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18746" CreationDate="2016-07-29T07:49:06.730" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, when it comes to communication, Scrum is a framework, like any other Agile methodology, which encourages collaboration between business people and stakeholders.  This is reflected in the 4th &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Principle&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, development teams should &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; refuse to work with stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the development team shouldn't be solely responsible for breaking down epics into implementable user stories. This is the job of the entire Scrum team, which includes the product owner.  While not an official Scrum event, the Backlog Refinement meeting is what many Scrum trainers recommend Scrum teams adopt. Michael James, CST, explains this in &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumtrainingseries.com/BacklogRefinementMeeting/BacklogRefinementMeeting.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Training Series - The Backlog Refinement Meeting&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2016-07-29T07:49:06.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18741" CreationDate="2016-07-29T11:03:39.907" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not think this is a difficult problem to solve.  The way this is written, I am assuming the decision between alternative A or B is made some time after the project has started, thus the need for two different WBS.  Simply create a second control account structure.  For example, WBS 1.0 contains the packages that are shared and, I assume, would be underway before the decision is made.  WBS 2.0 contains alternative A.  WBS 3.0 contains alternative B.  Both 2.0 and 3.0 would be planned with appropriate dollar, duration, and time values, both would be baselined, both could be modeled with its own critical path, i.e., show two of them.  At the time when the decision is made, execute a change and reduce whichever alternative that was not chosen and remove it from the baseline.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think this has to be any harder than this.  A bit more work so make sure you get paid for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-07-29T11:03:39.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18750" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-29T13:56:31.573" Score="2" ViewCount="2119" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been asked to create a &quot;plan on a page&quot; to give to Senior Management for an agile project, and I am struggling with how to reconcile two very different ways of working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are looking for when certain aspects of the project will be delivered, including nice-to-haves, and I am trying to explain that since it is iterative, there is no fixed plan of delivery and some/many of the nice-to-haves will change and be adjusted as part of the iterations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24240" LastActivityDate="2020-08-04T14:53:56.930" Title="Create a &quot;plan on a page&quot; for an Agile project?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18750" CreationDate="2016-07-29T16:02:26.903" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe there is no fixed plan, but there is one plan to date and you should be able to represent it, because it's important to share the vision, not only with your management, but with anybody in the team needing a quick insight on the project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal could be to make it depending on your variables (e.g. current velocity compared to current backlog estimated) so that you can update it easily each time the strategy is changing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8927" LastActivityDate="2016-07-29T16:02:26.903" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18750" CreationDate="2016-07-29T16:50:10.297" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the very least, you should be able to show the start and end dates of each sprint, including the key deliverables of the current sprint plus any working assumptions as to what will be in the next sprint. If there are any hard target dates (which I appreciate should not be there, but we all know that is not always reality), then show them as milestones on your plan-on-a-page. If you won't actually release a new version at the end of the current sprint, try to indicate any anticipated release dates too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that a plan-on-a-page can be a powerful way to explain to senior stakeholders how the project is progressing, even if it is not 100% accurate. I'm not suggesting for a moment that you should deliberately misrepresent the truth, but you can put whatever you like in such a document, and if used carefully, you will gain credibility and trust - which has to be a good thing. Remember, this is a communications tool, not a tool that you will necessarily use within the team or in scrums, so tailor your communications to your audience and recognise that they will not adhere strictly to the principles of your chosen methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastEditorUserId="301" LastEditDate="2020-08-04T14:53:56.930" LastActivityDate="2020-08-04T14:53:56.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18750" CreationDate="2016-07-29T17:58:56.783" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is one of the difficulties with running an agile project in an organization where management is not yet completely comfortable with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember the sacred triangle (Resources, Time and Results/Scope). You are being asked, given a set of resources, when (time) will you have a given result (scope) accomplished. However, using an agile methodology, you likely do not even have the stories all sized, yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a fixed schedule and fixed resources, all you have left to vary is scope. So, I would suggest that you look at key points in time (perhaps 1/4, 1/2, 1/3 and completely through the project) and for each point create two lines, one very conservative, the other aggressive, showing a range of what you expect could be accomplished by that point. You will have to come up with some spitball estimate for story sizes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important point is, do not infer greater precision to your estimate than your knowledge allows, and emphasize that this is a broad plan for an agile project, which means that it will change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24249" LastActivityDate="2016-07-29T17:58:56.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1973" CreationDate="2016-07-29T18:11:23.133" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm more on the development side, and I just wanted to chime in here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One common mistake I see PMs make, is to try to lock blocks of work into a regular schedule, rather than scheduling the block of work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, consider a situation with 6 planed blocks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feature A (1w 3d)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improvement B (4d)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feature C (1w 1d)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Approved BugFixes (3d)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Refactor 5 (2w 4d)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Error Handling Improvements (2d)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Attempting to chunk these into 2 week sprints will force ordering them in a way which will create more work for your dev team, and break up some blocks into multiple sprints. This is exactly what agile is supposed to avoid. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, consider planning the blocks that need doing, how much time each will take, and the logical order they should be delivered. Then make each block its own sprint, and schedule them. Let there be a 2-day sprint for Error handling. Let there be a 3 week sprint for the refactor. Project Management and scheduling should manage the project, not drive it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24250" LastActivityDate="2016-07-29T18:11:23.133" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18756" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-29T19:21:38.250" Score="0" ViewCount="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;While writing a proposal, I came across a section on the template, under &quot;PROJECT PLAN.&quot;, and I am at a loss as to the exact nature of information to provide in response to a request for&quot; The process that has brought about the proposal and its submission.&quot;.   Is this a request to further explain what steps the organization took in preparing the proposal for submission(proposal creation strategy) or is this a request for further explanation of the rationale behind the choice of the problem this proposal is to solve(decision-making process)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8478" LastActivityDate="2016-08-05T00:44:28.197" Title="The process that has brought about the proposal and its submission?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18750" CreationDate="2016-07-29T22:01:36.350" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Agile Release Planning&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/16376/4271&quot;&gt;agile release planning&lt;/a&gt;, the unbound constraint is usually scope. So, an agile project generally has a fixed delivery cadence, fixed time-boxes, or a fixed number of iterations, but in general &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; to expect a piece of functionality to be delivered is only a &lt;em&gt;forecast&lt;/em&gt; calculated from historical lead times rather than a fixed date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are certainly methods of delivering fixed-scope via agile, but they generally require treating schedule as the flexible constraint. This is probably the opposite of what you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;One-Page Project Planning&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're being asked to provide a one-page project plan, it's certainly &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt; to do that, although whether it's &lt;em&gt;useful&lt;/em&gt; is debatable. I've bought (and personally disliked) the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.oppmi.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;One-Page Project Manager&lt;/a&gt; agile template, which may meet your management's goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For myself, I found the template to be too &quot;visually busy&quot;, and felt that it didn't really fit my conceptions of core Scrum and Kanban planning practices. In particular, the template and guidance seem very opinionated about release planning, estimation, prioritization, and the whole concept of done/not-done in ways that run counter to my own Scrum implementations. It also calculates burn-downs based on idealized hours and percentages, which is something I inherently dislike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite my personal opinions about the template's suitability for &lt;em&gt;my&lt;/em&gt; projects, it certainly seems like the concept (if not necessarily this specific implementation) would suite your needs well. You may even find that the template works well for you, even if it didn't work for me. It's definitely one of those &quot;your mileage may vary&quot; types of things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2016-07-29T22:01:36.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18758" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-07-30T06:38:38.977" Score="2" ViewCount="318" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Scrum with JIRA, what does Atlassian recommend us to do on the User Story when we realize mid-sprint that it cannot be completed within that sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What I am doing now:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my current practice, the story points are estimated on the User Story during Grooming, while the hours are estimated on the newly created sub-tasks during Sprint Planning. The User Story is completed when all sub-tasks are completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If the User Story is originally thought to be small, no sub-tasks are created for it, and both story points and hours estimate will be on the User Story.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are times, sub-tasks are underestimated. At this point, I would split (edit) the in-progress sub-task to reflect what I will complete and the new sub-task with new hours estimation to reflect what I cannot complete. At the end of the sprint, the sub-task will roll over together with the User Story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My concern is: at the end of the Sprint when the User Story returns to the backlog, and we do story point estimation on the remaining work and update on the User Story, will it impact any reports that used the original story point?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4042" LastActivityDate="2016-08-01T14:38:26.300" Title="Action when realising that the user story cannot be completed by the end of the sprint" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18750" CreationDate="2016-07-30T08:18:01.657" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum release planning works well when it is targetted at the team's Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner works closely with the team and so they understand the assumptions that are made as a part of the planning. They are also the ones that get to make decisions about adding new stories and changing priorities. Hence they fundamentally understand that the &lt;em&gt;plan can change&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where release planning typically fails is when it is delivered to a senior management that are not fully engaged with the team. The classic 'plan on a page' starts out well intended, but often damages the Scrum process. This happens because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plans can become deadlines.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once a plan is accepted it often results in a &lt;em&gt;resistance to change&lt;/em&gt;. When changes are discussed there is a fear that they will impact on the plan and as a result change is avoided.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is not unusual for senior management to misunderstand the implications of responding to change. Hence they will not interpret the plan in the way it is intended to be used.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People who are not fully engaged with the Scrum Team will often not understand the assumptions made as a part of planning. These assumptions may relate to technical approach, to requirements or to the people on the team (such as when holidays will happen, etc.).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt; &#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation to you would be to work with your Product Owner to do release planning. Then ask the Product Owner to &lt;em&gt;verbally communicate&lt;/em&gt; the release plan to senior management. Don't write things down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner should talk in terms of possible approaches and assumptions rather than in terms of definite dates. They should emphasise that they anticipate change and that this is likely to impact on timelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-07-30T08:18:01.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18740" CreationDate="2016-07-30T08:45:03.247" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Continuous activities are operations not projects, but even these activities will involve some projects like creating new systems, upgrading, inventing new products or services, changing adminstrative procedures, or a project to get ISO certification for the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;      &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;        &lt;p&gt;Mentioning operations as projects will be a fatal mistake&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;      &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24233" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-07-31T09:23:04.363" LastActivityDate="2016-07-31T09:23:04.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18758" CreationDate="2016-08-01T14:38:26.300" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not change the user story. You will just not earn the story points this Sprint. During the planning session re-estimate, but do not update the user story. Do substract the difference of the max story points the team would pick up this Sprint. When using &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scruminc.com/yesterdays-weather/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;yesterday's weather&lt;/a&gt; as suggested by &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Sutherland&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jeff Sutherland&lt;/a&gt; you always take the average of the last three Sprints to calculate the velocity of the team. Then it doesn't really matter when the story points where earned anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yesterday's weather explained:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here’s how it works. First, the Team determines their average Velocity&#xA;  for the past three Sprints, adjusted for team size. For example, if&#xA;  one person of a five-person Team is on vacation for the entire Sprint&#xA;  in which 50 points of work is completed, the Team's raw Velocity (50)&#xA;  should be divided by 80% (4 instead of 5 Team members) for a&#xA;  normalized Velocity of 60 points. Normalized velocity is the number of&#xA;  points you would expect the team to complete if all team members are&#xA;  available full time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing it this way will not influence your reporting in Jira. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2016-08-01T14:38:26.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18763" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18766" CreationDate="2016-08-01T20:05:24.150" Score="-3" ViewCount="175" Body="&lt;p&gt;As owner of and project manager for a medium (~20 devs) Rails shop, I find myself constantly sifting through a dozen tabs trying to gauge any given project's current status. My team embraces continuous integration and rigorous unit testing; we use GitHub, Trello, FogBugz, and Slack for version control, feature/issue tracking, and communication respectively. I'm curious to know the daily work-flow of other PMs, especially before reporting to clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Internally, we're contemplating aggregating commit messages, Kanban sprites, recent Slack messages, open issues, etc. and some basic metrics into a single dashboard to simplify this &quot;dozen tabs&quot; conundrum. The aim of the internal project is to dissuade the replication we observed while using Asana. Tasks would be assigned through Asana and immediately find themselves on a Trello board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any value mapping textual exchanges, e.g. the assignment and completion of a feature in Trello, to the code base, e.g. a commit message and git hash? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wondering if any other PMs would find such a dashboard useful? Whether we should open it to the public?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24275" LastEditorUserId="24275" LastEditDate="2016-08-02T14:39:33.773" LastActivityDate="2016-08-02T19:12:04.483" Title="Should project management software be comprised of the technologies the developers use?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;lean&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18763" CreationDate="2016-08-02T13:54:15.770" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was told that Project Managers will be replaced by automated software.&#xA;In a way, that is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what project management was (and still is), then?&#xA;It is partly setting up processes to embrace change, communicate promptly, assess and manage risks, facilitate teamwork, measure quality and progress, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is (unless you are a mere project coordinator - PMP definition and acception used here): you are there to help the professionals do their job, reduce the stress and the hiccups, and keep everything on beat (musical metaphor intended - jazz players please intend off beat!).&#xA;Which software your team is using is, partly, your choice. Therefore, as long as you keep updated on the tools and processes, your job as project manager will never die. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the future, project managers may be less in number, but much more skilled... or they will be more in number, less skilled, less paid. Who knows? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about the industrial revolution and the forecast of nobody working in the factories anymore... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then think about the information era, its revolution and the forecast of nobody working because everything about information management will be automated. Think about how many developers are needed in the next 20 years to fulfill the needs for the information industries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then think about the third industrial revolution, where robots will replace all human contribution in the build chain, but still... it seems that humans are needed somehow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18116" LastActivityDate="2016-08-02T13:54:15.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18765" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18769" CreationDate="2016-08-02T16:55:14.610" Score="0" ViewCount="1398" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am building a capacity planning model in Project 2016.  My goal is to illustrate that in real life no one does a single task 100% of the time.  I want to show that 10% of the resources' time is dedicated to administrative functions (one task, each resourced allocated at 10% for the duration of the time period in the plan).  For the project work in the same plan, my example is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project 1 has 6 phases (each phase is one task).  Design is 4 days.  Development is 5 days.  Development can begin halfway through Design.  Resource allocation for the Developer is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;90% for the first two days of Design (accounting for the 10% admin time).&#xA;45% for the last two days of Design.&#xA;45% for the first two days of Development.&#xA;90% for the last three days of Development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project assumes 100% availability for the resource so he appears over-allocated during the days where Design and Development overlap.  What is the most effective way to tell Project that there are varying degrees of availability during a phase (again, one task per phase)?  I know that I can break the phase into multiple tasks but this is just a capacity planning model, not a real project, and I want to keep it as simple as possible.  The project doesn't have to be tied to specific calendar days but the duration needs to be fixed.  Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24287" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T20:05:12.473" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T20:05:12.473" Title="How to do resource allocation between overlapping tasks in MS Project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;&lt;team-capacity&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18763" CreationDate="2016-08-02T19:12:04.483" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think ideally you would be able to use a subset of functionality from your dev systems as your project management tool(s).  However, it sounds like you have a lot of systems in the mix.  The problem is that when you aggregate outputs from these systems into an entirely new system you've just created even more moving parts to manage.  It may work and help for a little while but you'll eventually change out one of the parts in your system.  Will that blow up your whole system? Why do you use all of these separate systems now instead of finding one that does (nearly) everything to reduce the number of moving parts? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, this would make it all more difficult to drive value and clarity to my customers and team, so I'd look at consolidating.  May mean the tools are more expensive, but in the end if you have fewer moving parts you'll be better off.  Don't go the route of 16 tools with automated connections between.  The time spent on this could have been spent on licensing for a better setup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24291" LastActivityDate="2016-08-02T19:12:04.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18746" CreationDate="2016-08-02T19:21:14.127" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your only solution is to find a way to plug your Product Owner into a scenario where she can be challenged on her user stories effectively.  Is she open to joining practice groups?  Benchmarking with another similar company who has a mature Scrum setup?  Your developers should be able to engage with the customer, but if you have no real product owner they'll have zero direction, so any customer contact is completely futile and may spread the view to the customer that your team doesn't know what it is doing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is she open to learning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24292" LastActivityDate="2016-08-02T19:21:14.127" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18746" CreationDate="2016-08-03T13:06:24.613" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ideally the Product Owner is the single point of reference for any questions about the stories. So no, &lt;em&gt;ideally&lt;/em&gt;, devs shouldn't talk to stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for this is, as you say, two stake holders can have differing opinions and priorities. You need a single answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, talking to stakeholders when they give clear and united answers isn't a problem if the PO doesn't mind. So really I think you just need to be a bit more rigorous with the documentation of these questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add the questions to the story/epic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add the answers to the questions, with who said what when.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you only need to raise a problem when you get unanswered questions or answers that conflict. These you can kick back up the product owner for resolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2016-08-03T13:06:24.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18765" CreationDate="2016-08-03T14:58:26.290" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can contour a resource's max units over time using the Resource Information dialog - however, the fine tune to 2 and 3 days is just not feasible for a big project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way to achieve what you want is to manually contour the hours in the Task Usage or Resource Usage view.  Assign the resource to the tasks and then change the 8 to 7.2 for the 90% days and 3.6 hours per day for the 45% days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2016-08-03T14:58:26.290" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18771" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-04T00:53:53.450" Score="59" ViewCount="17421" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a largish, multi-team software development shop that builds a vertical B2B solution suite for a highly regulated domain. We are trying to become more Agile; we are iterating better than we have in the past, but there is still a lot of waterfalling going on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the last year, we have become pretty hardcore in adopting the principle that engineers must fix their own defects (those found internally and those that escape to the end users). Not only are they supposed to correct them, they are supposed to correct them on their own time, without impacting plans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I get the internal stuff, and in theory I buy all of the accountability arguments of the escaped items too. In practice though I have observed the interruptions to correct the defects is both velocity- and morale-killing and they make predictable project plans darn near impossible to build. Plus unhappy engineers are darn near impossible to keep. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not that we have bad engineers who are just generating bugs left and right; it is that we have highly complex systems with mixes of new and legacy technology and significant external, internal, and governmental timeline pressures resulting in an environment that does not result in pristine software. Bugs exist and that's a fact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am trying to make peace with this. I feel like I can be more open to our approach, but I also want to minimize the highly costly disruptions the process puts upon the teams and the human costs of the demands of off-hours work. I feel like we are trying to solve a quality problem backwards by fixing bugs instead of focusing on preventing their generation in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any experienced project managers out there with some words of wisdom to share on this topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24303" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-08-06T08:40:16.937" LastActivityDate="2018-05-10T22:09:23.307" Title="Is it sound project management practice to make software engineers fix bugs &quot;off the clock&quot;?" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;quality&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;" AnswerCount="18" CommentCount="39" FavoriteCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18771" CreationDate="2016-08-04T01:14:00.620" Score="77" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And not only are they suppose to correct them, they are suppose to&#xA;  correct them on their own time without impacting plans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is your problem. Why don't your plans include the time for fixing bugs that you know will be there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We all know it's impossible to write perfect code. We all know that bugs inevitably creep in. Expecting engineers to fix their own bugs on their own time without planning for that work is not &quot;hardcore&quot;: it's bad project management. It means the work required to fix the bugs is hidden work, invisible to upper management &amp;amp; other stakeholders. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a variety of ways to plan for that work, &amp;amp; there are a number of other questions here that discuss that. But you have to get it in the plan, and stop expecting your engineers to be perfect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is not to say that you shouldn't &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; continue to work on bug prevention, of course. But your approach as a PM and as a team needs to accommodate the fact that bugs exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were going to put forward an argument against this practice, I think I'd do it with a risk management approach. Identify bugs as a known risk, and list a variety of mitigations, including all your bug reduction practices as well as planning for bugs that escape nevertheless. Maybe add poor morale and/or exhausted engineers as another known risk, and suggest as a mitigation ending or limiting the practice of having employees fix bugs on their own time. Point to some studies on the effects of overtime on employee performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need to have something else to put in that accountability slot -- which presently seems to be more punitive and individually-oriented than is generally encouraged in agile development, which emphasizes the team and the team's investment in a quality product -- hm, I don't know. Maybe focus on accountability for violating the bug-reduction practices, instead of on bug escapes which are a fact of life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastEditorUserId="11661" LastEditDate="2016-08-04T02:09:33.903" LastActivityDate="2016-08-04T02:09:33.903" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18771" CreationDate="2016-08-04T05:51:56.720" Score="45" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Over the last year we've become pretty hardcore in adopting the principal that an engineers must fix their own defects (those found internally and those that escape to the end users). Not only are they supposed to correct them, they are supposed to correct them on their own time without impacting plans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me ask you a question. Whenever a plan changes, do &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; change the plan on &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; own time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nobody is a robot. Normal humans make mistakes. And the more valuable the work of someone is, the more time it will take to fix a bug in it. I work on core components that save the company tons of time. However, if there happens to be a bug, then lots of components are affected and it will take a lot of time to properly fix it. The second you let me fix a bug in that &lt;em&gt;on my own time&lt;/em&gt;, you will get a letter from my lawyer. You want me to work, you better pay for it. You want me to do regular overtime? You better have a reason. &quot;Normal business&quot; is no such reason. Most likely it will take a few weeks to hand in my resignation for even trying to pull such a stupid stunt on me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a new developer, I would never start at your company. If I am inexperienced, I will make mistakes. That's why you pay me less than others. However, I will be punished for the same reason you &lt;em&gt;already&lt;/em&gt; pay me less &lt;em&gt;again&lt;/em&gt; when I have to fix it. Why would I work for you then?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People having to fix their own bugs is a good thing. How about asking how that bug slipped through your testing? You do have testing, right? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the error lies squarely with your planning. You are planning people to work 100% and then you need to fix a bug. As if a bug is something you could never have imagined to happen. Bugs are part of developing and improving software. If you want to fix them on time, only plan tasks for your people for 70%. Or 60%. Or 90%. Whatever works for your number of defects. But it's &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; job to get that right. Assuming there will be no bugs and then letting the developers pay for your failure to come up with a plan that matches reality is going to get you a very empty development department really soon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to have fewer bugs, you will need to educate your developers on techniques to prevent them. You will need to give them the time to actually use those techniques. And you can do metrics on the bug tickets. But be careful with that. I have rarely seen a developer rushing a feature to production because he or she was keen on delivering a buggy product. The most likely reason is a project manager breathing down the developers neck because he or she stupidly promised that feature to the customer without consulting the developer for a realistic timeline. So when you have metrics, make sure you include &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; factors. And don't be surprised when the decisive factor is outside the development department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum it up: making your plans work &lt;em&gt;including bugs&lt;/em&gt; is the project managers &lt;em&gt;job&lt;/em&gt;. If the bugs conflict with your plan, it was a &lt;em&gt;faulty&lt;/em&gt; plan. If the plan only works if things work perfectly, the world would not need project managers. I could do that with a two-line script. So train your project managers to work with reality and train your developers to make reality more predictable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastEditorUserId="7559" LastEditDate="2016-08-04T09:54:46.350" LastActivityDate="2016-08-04T09:54:46.350" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18285" CreationDate="2016-08-04T06:30:14.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly you should understand the difference between &quot;effort&quot; &amp;amp; &quot;duration&quot;. You can read this article - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmbypm.com/difference-project-effort-and-duration/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pmbypm.com/difference-project-effort-and-duration/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's talk about 3 different terms&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work - In MS Project, &quot;effort&quot; &amp;amp; &quot;work&quot; are synonymous. It is the&#xA;a/m of labor units to complete a task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Duration - It is the length of time to complete a task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Units - In MSP, &quot;units&quot; is (sort of) equivalent to &quot;no. of resources&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following formula provides a rough relation between these three terms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work = Units * Duration&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As per the wording of your Q, it looks like 184 hours is &quot;effort&quot; and one month is &quot;duration&quot;. In your case &quot;units&quot; is 5-6 resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MSP provides 3 different options for task scheduling - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fixed Work - The work (184 hours) would not change if you change one of the other 2 parameters&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fixed Units - The units (5 resources) would not change if you change one of the other 2 parameters&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fixed Duration - The duration (1 month) would not change if you change one of the other 2 parameters&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To understand which option you are using, you should use the &quot;task details&quot; dialog. You can also use &quot;work&quot; and &quot;duration&quot; column in &quot;gantt chart view&quot; of MSP to see the relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25305" LastActivityDate="2016-08-04T06:30:14.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18507" CreationDate="2016-08-04T06:42:22.190" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are 2 requirements to appear for PMP certification -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Management Experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;35 hours of Project Management Education&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Regarding Project Management Experience&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need 4500 hrs of experience if you have done 4 years of degree (bachelors degree or equivalent). Other wise if you have a diploma of equivalent then you need 7500 hrs of experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM experience should be in a leading &amp;amp; directing role. So, PM role is must before doing PMP. However, PM role is not equivalent to PM designation/title. PM role means that you should have managed full or part of a project. Your role in the project could be of vendor management, team management, client management etc. The projects could be related to any industry. They could be big or small, technical or non-technical etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read more about the details of 4500 hours of experience here - (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmbypm.com/go/4500-hours-explanation-cornelius-ficthner/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pmbypm.com/go/4500-hours-explanation-cornelius-ficthner/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Regarding 35 contact hours&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can get them through a PMP training. A training can be done in 3 different modes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Self-learning online training&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Instructor-led online training&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Regular classroom training&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Out of these self-learning courses are least expensive while classroom courses are most expensive. You can get an self-learning course for less than $50. &#xA;The price and availability of the classroom courses varies with the region. The classroom courses are generally available only in the big cities. You can check on Internet is there is a PMP training provider in your region. More important is to check if the trainer is good or not.  If the trainer’s feedback is not good, it is better to go for an instructor-led online training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have done a comparison of popular online training courses - both self-learning courses and instructor-led courses. Out of all the options, self-learning courses are the cheapest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are looking for a self-learning option, you should read comparison of popular self-learning online PMP training courses (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmbypm.com/best-self-learning-pmp-online-training-course/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pmbypm.com/best-self-learning-pmp-online-training-course/&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you are looking for an instructor led option, then You can read comparison of popular instructor-led online PMP training courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25305" LastActivityDate="2016-08-04T06:42:22.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18507" CreationDate="2016-08-04T08:59:06.907" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will try to not repeat too much of what has been said before. So lets skip the 35 h of formal training as they are easy to obtain one way or another. Furthermore, it has been pointed out that you require 4,500 or 7,500 hours of experience depending on the level of higher education. Be aware that the proof of experience needs to cover all of the five process groups of PMI:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Initiating &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planning  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Executing &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Monitoring and Controlling&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Closing &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I strongly advise against forging the presented experience to gain admission to the PMP certification. Not only violates it the work ethics that PMI puts much of its emphasis on but it also violates the Terms and Conditions of PMI resulting in exclusion from PMI and the revoke of any certification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In determining the experience however I want to point out to consider what a project is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;It's a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that's quite broad. According to the instructor of the boot camp I attended this includes numerous things in and outside the work place:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Got a bachelor and/or masters degree doing an original thesis? Working towards and writing a thesis is a project par excellence. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work (managerial not technical) that &lt;em&gt;supports&lt;/em&gt; the Project Management Team, i.e. not being the project manager yourself but contributing to the management tasks. This includes contributions to definition of scope, requirements analysis, stakeholder analysis, various tasks of executing, monitoring and control as well as many more. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acted as workpackage leader during any stage of a project. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did anything related to project management outside the work place, e.g. in charity work or a nonprofit association?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be honest and clearly explain your role in the project team, the tasks completed, and the time spent on managerial tasks when listing the items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have 4 years of work experience as Network consultant. ... and also led a team of 3. However, I have never worked as a Project Manager. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Investigate what part of the work was either projectized (in the sense of an PMI project) or used tools and formal methods that could be applied to Project Management too. If you have trouble identifying these there's a good chance you're not ready for certification yet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. leading a team (the processes that organize, manage, and lead the project team) is the knowledge area &lt;em&gt;Human Resource Management&lt;/em&gt; of project management, but again be aware the experience need to cover all knowledge areas and all process groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I am not aware how PMI calculates the hours of experience for eligibility it is worth to consider that a full time job amounts for approx. 1,800 hours a year. So if you're doing technical work too only a part of that time will qualify as project management experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a final remark: Once again, &lt;em&gt;be honest&lt;/em&gt; about your experience and be reminded that the test for certification itself examines for a deep understanding of the matter thus requiring real-world PM experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11925" LastEditorUserId="11925" LastEditDate="2016-08-04T09:05:12.810" LastActivityDate="2016-08-04T09:05:12.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18771" CreationDate="2016-08-04T10:08:30.270" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer: &lt;strong&gt;No, it isn't!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The not-as-short answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your company has come up with the idea that the existence of bugs is a professional failure on the part of the developer. &lt;strong&gt;This is not true.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;All code contains bugs. Quality code contains fewer bugs.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your developers are doing quality work for you when they find and fix bugs. This is them doing their job. Would you try insisting your quality control department had to do all their work in their own time if you were in manufacturing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Accountability&quot; might mean fixing your own bugs. (Actually, the most important thing is that somebody is fixing the biggest bugs.) Whatever. At your company, it has been twisted to mean your programmers should work for free. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have any of your devs quit recently? Just asking... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NB:&lt;/strong&gt; You can obviously see there's a problem with this, so good on you and well done for asking about it. Whoever is propagating this insane philosophy in your company is to blame for tying your hands and your dev team's hands behind your collective backs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25313" LastActivityDate="2016-08-04T10:08:30.270" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18771" CreationDate="2016-08-04T11:17:17.487" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a troubling post.  Your company is penalizing its workers for what is a normal and expected occurrence--performance variability.  The whole reason to &quot;punish&quot; someone is for a behavior change, to replace a maladaptive behavior with an adaptive one.  In this case your punishment will yield nothing because we do not have the capacity of reducing variability.  In fact, neither do machines.  Machines also produce variable results and, now and again, will produce a result out of tolerances.  Would you make the machines fix such a result on &quot;its own time&quot;?  That's not even possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  Much of performance variability are random, i.e., you cannot control them.  If you measure the results of a process, it is assumed that observations between +3 and -3 sigma are random results.  However, those results could fall out of tolerances and thus be deemed a defect.  Punishment to try to control them is EXACTLY like punishing you for rolling a 3 or a 6 on a fair dice toss, with the expectation  that 3 and 6 will occur less after a few punishing electric shocks.  If you are looking for an argument to change this policy, this is it.  Many defects occur because of random drivers over which NO ONE has control.  To try to hold an engineer accountable for them is chasing stochastic noise, a futile endeavor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are not scheduling time for rework and quality fixes?  I don't even know how to respond to that.  I guess this: start doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your developers are most likely exempt employees.  However, if you adopted this across the board with other job roles, some of which are non exempt, then you would have a HUGE labor violation on your hands as there is no such thing as unpaid work for a non exempt role.  And the reason is because companies make really bad employment decisions such as having its workers fix their errors on their time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't try to get good with your company's policy here.  Change it.  It's simply wrong under every conceivable standard.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2016-08-04T13:09:06.193" LastActivityDate="2016-08-04T13:09:06.193" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18771" CreationDate="2016-08-04T13:55:19.187" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try suggesting an alternative approach to the management:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Integrate code quality metrics, and test coverage into the CI server and have developers comply with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This checks the problem before it makes to production not after&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Makes the developers happy as they are not fixing someone else's problems, they're testing their own code&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provides an objective measure of what's expected from the developers as opposed to &quot;NO BUGS!&quot; which is unattainable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Compliance with standard and test coverage is a better indicator of individual performance than number of bugs, which could be due to the complexity of work assigned and not the person’s skill&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the management aren't interested in going this route, that tells me they’re more interested in getting free work than anything about quality. Having developers write more tests would require allocating more time. Letting things blow up in production and guilt tripping them into late night debugging sessions costs nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It’s a false economy anyway. You’ll end up with lower team morale and a bunch of disgruntled developers ready to jump the ship. And cost of fixing that could be more than what was gained with the free bug fixes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13761" LastEditorUserId="13761" LastEditDate="2016-08-09T10:30:26.830" LastActivityDate="2016-08-09T10:30:26.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18771" CreationDate="2016-08-04T15:37:14.017" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK, let's skip all the moral and legal arguments by assuming you are working on a cure for the zombie plague and all the developers work 24/7 for their share of the last remaining pure water to meet the approaching (un)deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you find some bugs in v1 of the cure and look around to assign someone to fix them. You have been bitten too, so you need to get this finished and not upset The Plan as much as anyone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you choose:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developer A: He missed a semicolon due to tiredness and is the cause of the bug.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developer B: Superfast programmer finished his task early and got a good nights sleep.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developer C: Newly trained developer, super keen, but low experience means high risk of mistakes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developer D: Been here ages and almost fully a zombie and is disliked by the team. No moral penalty, but it takes ages to get things done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is of course that you want to get the quickest/least risky solution to get the job done. Not play some weird morality 'hunger games' with your employees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastEditorUserId="8313" LastEditDate="2016-08-07T18:33:55.250" LastActivityDate="2016-08-07T18:33:55.250" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18771" CreationDate="2016-08-04T15:43:19.670" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aside from the main issue you are asking about, there's also something a little concerning about this part: &quot;defects (those found internally and &lt;strong&gt;those that escape to the end users&lt;/strong&gt;)&quot;  I don't see anything about QA being asked to create the missing tests on their own time.  This (assuming this is correct) along with your main concern demonstrates to me that the project management group in general is antagonistic towards the developers.  I've seen this a lot and it never ends well.  I think usually it's rooted in the PMs not understanding how hard it is to precisely predict how long things are going to take in development.  That's what I hear when PMs start talking about 'accountability'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That aside, the policy you refer to is extremely wrong-headed.  The other answers give good reasons, bad morale, mental exhaustion, attrition but it's also very self-defeating at a very basic level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any seasoned developer has some idea of the following curves in their head:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RvQ1N.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RvQ1N.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key here is that if I am rushing stuff out, I will spend more time fixing stuff than I did writing it.  If I spend a little more time on the dev phase, I can get that under control.  But there's a diminishing return on spending more and more time on initial dev.  Most of the bugs are easy to find but the really tricky ones could take ages to spot, if you spot them at all.  QA time has a similar curve to the fix time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you care about as a PM is the total cost (purple.)  That curve comes down initially as the developer takes more care but starts to go up again.  You want to encourage developers to be careful enough to get close to the bottom of that dip but you don't want them to be more careful than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The policy you describe is going to push them towards the overly careful end.  The reason is if they take lots of extra time to avoid creating bugs (the blue line), that falls under their normal working hours.  The fixing cost (red line) comes out of their free time.  They can minimize the time they spend off-hours on fixing but as a result that increases the total cost of the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25317" LastEditorUserId="25317" LastEditDate="2016-08-04T20:53:15.647" LastActivityDate="2016-08-04T20:53:15.647" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18771" CreationDate="2016-08-04T15:47:06.683" Score="52" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just as a side note to the other good answers - developers tend to have minds that look at process and (un)consciously find ways to game it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What you are training your developers to do here is to not raise tickets for defects they find when they are developing&lt;/strong&gt; (as either they, or possibly worse for them, one of their colleagues) would then have to work late to fix it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a subtle bug, they may just hope nobody notices (particularly if it's not directly related to what they are doing at that point in time).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's well known that the earlier you find a bug, the cheaper it is to fix - if this results in more bugs being found in live rather than during development cycles, then this can't be a good thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19202" LastEditorUserId="19202" LastEditDate="2017-05-10T15:10:38.843" LastActivityDate="2017-05-10T15:10:38.843" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14246" CreationDate="2016-08-04T16:27:07.870" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been searching the same topic and trying to used SCRUM with Visual Studio. &#xA;I came across &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/docs/work/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This guide&lt;/a&gt; provided by Microsoft to use Agile approaches with Visual Studio. They changed Visual Studio Online to Team Service and you can use it within premises or on the cloud. &#xA;In that provided link you will find Ideas and steps about using the Team service with Agile, Scrum and Kanban. &#xA;I hope you find this helpful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25320" LastActivityDate="2016-08-04T16:27:07.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18771" CreationDate="2016-08-04T17:18:34.830" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a PM. I'm a developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But we've partially solved that problem in an interesting way where I work.&#xA;We have a team dedicated to new development. They're agile, and don't get distracted by bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a separate team dedicated to bug fixing. That team isn't agile. We just take things in stride and are constantly being interrupted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, this doesn't solve the accountability problem, but it does prevent the main dev team from becoming dissatisfied and frustrated. Although, the side effect is you do have to have a small team that takes on the brunt of the stress. Those positions are hard to fill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25322" LastActivityDate="2016-08-04T17:18:34.830" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18771" CreationDate="2016-08-04T21:17:42.617" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to others, I also find this post disturbing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen Project Managers want to place all sort of metrics on developers, but never on themselves, Product Managers, QA, management, etc. It takes more than software developers to release a project and get it right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you keep track of what was the root cause of the bug? Who has to work on their own time if it was a missing requirement, or something else that is beyond the scope of the developers control? &#xA;What sort of processes are you putting in place to make sure that type of bug doesn't happen again, or will get caught earlier in the process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bugs are part of the software development process and need to be accounted for as part of time/resource planning. Period. Even more so in an environment with 'highly complex systems with mixes of new and legacy technology and significant external, internal, and governmental timeline pressures'.&#xA;It definitely sounds like your company is antagonistic towards developers and is trying to make scapegoats out of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've worked on both sides of the fence as both a PM and a developer, and I can tell you that as a developer I would only put up with this 'policy' as long as it took me to update my resume.&#xA;As a PM I would also be looking for another position where developers are treated with more respect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25339" LastActivityDate="2016-08-04T21:17:42.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14246" CreationDate="2016-08-04T21:20:08.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Scrum template is a bit messy. TFS &lt;sup&gt;*The management tool, not the VCS&lt;/sup&gt; is basically made to be everything to everyone and the Scrum template leaks that. There are a lot of features the aren't going to be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hour estimates on tasks are not helpful.&lt;/strong&gt; Stories are things we estimate (hopefully in points not hours). Tasks are a simple organisational tool to facilitate cooperation on stories. They can to some extent be populated up front, but tend to emerge from the work. The predictive power of Scrum comes from the evidence based feedback loop of measured velocity. We can't use this evidence in the precise estimates of tasks. We have to let go of our desire to do fine grained planning (which never worked anyway). In fact, the fact management is so interested in these suggests it's a dangerous vector for micro-management (I'll bear that in mind in future). &lt;strong&gt;TFS includes hour estimates, I would set them all to 1.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Completed stories are the measure of delivered value&lt;/strong&gt; Pay attention this this instead. You may need to run your own numbers and make your own charts. If your objection sounds like &quot;but midway through the sprint we don't have anything done so it looks like we haven't made progress&quot;, work on minimizing your WIP. If your stories are too large it will also give you problems, etc. It's really a great metric for exposing process problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've mentioned micromanagement above. You need to focus the business's attention on the value you're delivering. This means stories. Here's a great article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ronjeffries.com/articles/016-03/you-want/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Do you want Crappy Agile?&lt;/a&gt;, on metrics by Ron Jeffries (one of the founders of XP).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17705" LastActivityDate="2016-08-04T21:20:08.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18771" CreationDate="2016-08-04T21:54:00.170" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This practice is good way to drive out your best and brightest, leaving you with a skeleton crew of your bottom performers. I have developed software for &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-generation_jet_fighter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;generation 4&lt;/a&gt;&amp;amp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth-generation_jet_fighter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;5 fighter jets&lt;/a&gt; and managed software-intensive programs for the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USN&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;USN&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pmi.org/certifications/types/project-management-pmp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMP Certification&lt;/a&gt;, multiple graduate engineering degrees, Eagle scout, yada yada, yada. The original posts leads me to wonder if the issue truly is integrating better &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SQA&lt;/a&gt; practice at the line-level to detect, remove and, most importantly, prevent defects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every half-decent engineer will gladly fix a minor 'happy to glad', however, it would not surprise me if the system requirements are not properly documented and any gaps are labeled as defects. Defects in my industry kill people, so engineers take them seriously.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience (and documented across the industry) my ability as the project manager to ruthlessly remove scope creep and reduce function points drives down the number of defects.  Reducing scope so that a team of three (or less) good programmers produces higher quality (minimizes software bugs). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not attempt to make peace with this practice: you have a serious problem you must address. If left to fester, it (to use a flight analogy) will ultimately reach a flat-spin and end up Class A. Instead, listen to your peers and focus on SQA procedures for defect prevention and you must plan for defect correction (these items should be prioritized into the backlog with customer) in schedules and software process development. Do you have an SQA plan?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25338" LastEditorUserId="25338" LastEditDate="2016-08-11T14:51:08.567" LastActivityDate="2016-08-11T14:51:08.567" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18771" CreationDate="2016-08-04T22:14:04.503" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can make a remarkable number of approaches work.  I generally agree with the rest of the answers here: the idea of trying to demand that developers fix their bugs off-the-clock is a bad way to do things.  However, for sake of argument, let's say this is a reality.  Can it still work?  Of course.  There's even a model for this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contractors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What your company has done is turn all of their employees into contractors.  If the employee has to finish the task on their own time (for bugs or any other reason), then they are being paid as a contractor.  They get paid for the quoted number of hours, and if it takes more hours to do the job, they have to eat that cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach moves risk off of the business onto the contractor (or, in your case, the employee).  Contractors are compensated for this risk: they charge higher $/hr rates because they are assuming that risk.  They also typically have contracts to bound that risk (if you go on the graphic artists stack exchange, there's dozens of examples of how to write support contracts that don't burn you out).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much are they paying their employees?  Are they paying contractor rates?  If so, expecting contractor grade performance is reasonable.  If they are paying more typical employee rates, then they should not be expecting their employees to assume risk as though they were a contractor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21960" LastActivityDate="2016-08-04T22:14:04.503" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18771" CreationDate="2016-08-04T23:27:00.577" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kudos to Robert Grant for pointing out the difference between a contractor and a fixed price contract, that jumped out at me too.  Even as a contractor billing by the hour I've done work for free a couple times (an hour at $120/hr on 2 occasions) but for reasons of my own for good clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an employee, unpaid overtime leads to job searches on company time and workplace theft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OP: Have you considered this thought experiment? Flip the process and pay the developers for bug fixes, but have them write code on their own time.  Silly, right? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25341" LastActivityDate="2016-08-04T23:27:00.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15088" CreationDate="2016-08-04T23:33:16.950" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know the horse seems to have left the barn, but did no one think to have the vendor do documentation as part of the development?  Might it be cheaper to pay the vendor to do documentation (by which I mean hand over the existing documention... 10M LOC?  For reals?) rather than hire a dozen people to start as scratch?  By the way, you just became an IT company.  Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25341" LastActivityDate="2016-08-04T23:33:16.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18734" CreationDate="2016-08-05T00:42:23.540" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe PMI did away with these categories in December. They now require a certain &lt;em&gt;area&lt;/em&gt; of study instead of a certain &lt;em&gt;type&lt;/em&gt; of study. I highly recommend reading through this &lt;a href=&quot;http://edward-designer.com/web/new-pmp-pdu-requirements/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Infographic Highlighting Changes in PMI PMP® Requirements&lt;/a&gt;. You should also go straight to PMI and read their requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short answer, you don't have to get PDUs in D, E or F category &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;but&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; you do have to make sure your education is in the right areas of study, which is very different than it was before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25343" LastActivityDate="2016-08-05T00:42:23.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18756" CreationDate="2016-08-05T00:44:28.197" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on the context, but this sounds to me like you are being asked to explain how you came to the conclusion that your project was necessary. What discovery work have you done upfront to make sure this project will benefit the business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25343" LastActivityDate="2016-08-05T00:44:28.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19795" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19803" CreationDate="2016-08-05T01:48:35.930" Score="3" ViewCount="341" Body="&lt;p&gt;A developer has repeatedly shown an unwillingness to co-operate with the team in a few ways: being passive aggressive, sometimes not creating stories/tasks for the work he is actively doing, pessimistic and arguing about the way we point stories.  This problem has been going on for months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He tends to over-engineer things.  This developer is overall a nice guy.  He is a strong, intelligent developer and a hard worker.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IME, it's best to focus on the issues and not the people.  I'm struggling with finding ways to point out the issues in this case without pointing at the person.  I am the scrum master.  I've been approached by another person on the team about at least some of these issues.  Should I discuss these issues in retrospective or just pull the person aside and try to work it out between the two of us?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2663" LastActivityDate="2016-08-16T13:00:44.343" Title="Should issues with individuals be called out in retrospectives?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19795" CreationDate="2016-08-05T02:14:07.717" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The retrospective is about making the team better - getting the team to identify what went well, what didn't, and how to do things better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be tempting to point out this individual in a retrospective as &quot;something that isn't going well&quot;, but even if it doesn't devolve to bullying, it is going to end up creating resentment in that individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get this developer into a one-on-one - and without getting confrontational, ask him why he is working the way he is. Work with him to try and get a resolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, be prepared to lose this guy - if you have a successful development team that is mostly working well with the process, having someone cowboy their way along is going to end up causing problems for the whole team. No developer is talented enough to offset a good team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3178" LastActivityDate="2016-08-05T02:14:07.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19797" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-05T03:21:15.157" Score="8" ViewCount="799" Body="&lt;p&gt;At our workplace, we use Agile Scrum method.  However, we don't really follow it religiously.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, we do very thorough code reviews.  The problem with code reviews is that it's takes a while to document the problems with the code, and send it back to the developer.  I suppose they want the code reviews to be documented because it might be good for auditing purposes, and also proves that the code reviewers is actually doing his/her job properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it is seems take a lot of time out of the day where we analyze someone's code, and document mistakes.  It would have been better to spend the time doing new development/research/support/maintenance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can we speed up code reviews without sacrificing thoroughness of the code reviews?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8622" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-08-05T11:13:24.737" LastActivityDate="2020-08-01T07:36:58.707" Title="How can we speed up code reviews without sacrificing thoroughness of the code reviews?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;reviews&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18771" CreationDate="2016-08-05T03:56:30.677" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Hardcore&quot; indeed. I don't have much to add to the other good answers, but I'll relate an experience of my own as a developer. I worked for a company in which the culture was similar to what you are describing, in that there was heavy pressure to work long hours and weekends without pay fixing stuff that we'd been required to produce in unreasonably short amounts of time. I can still feel the stress reaction in my body as I write about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is fair to say that I was the strongest developer in our small team. I came up with all the original work, setting the patterns which the others then tended to copy. I solved a lot of difficult problems in the challenging application we were developing. I was also the only team member who sometimes said &quot;no&quot; to demands for unpaid overtime - I had parenting responsibilities and a creative life outside of my main development gig. I believe the independence of mind which allowed me to be a creative developer went hand-in-hand with my not being a &quot;yes man&quot;. However when time came to appoint a team leader, and my immediate boss put forward my name, his manager said that I &quot;pushed back too much on overtime&quot; and decided to advertise instead. I knew at that point that enough was enough and I quit, soon finding a job that offered 50% higher pay and work-life balance to boot. Feeling well nurtured, remunerated and rested, I produce better work and I feel loyal to my company. I feel invested in the product and I happily work long hours when necessary because I enjoy being part of the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Culture matters. A positive, appreciative culture will have flow-on effects in terms of code quality, employee loyalty and retention of talent. Ultimately, when you punish developers for bugs, you are telling them that you don't care about them as people but only as cogs in your imaginary well-oiled machine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bugs are normal. They aren't sins. No-one - not Gates, not Wozniack, not Torvald, no-one - writes pure, bug-free code straight up. Software development is an iterative process and the eradication of defects is just one normal part of that process. Honestly, not paying developers for fixing bugs is like not paying gardeners for weeding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25346" LastActivityDate="2016-08-05T03:56:30.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19795" CreationDate="2016-08-05T06:44:40.540" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Go with Mantra:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Praise in public.  Criticize in private&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In retrospection, concentrate on processes rather than individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25351" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2016-08-05T06:55:40.170" LastActivityDate="2016-08-05T06:55:40.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19797" CreationDate="2016-08-05T06:55:05.893" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple of suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Code Quality Tools&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth thinking about using automated code quality tools like &lt;a href=&quot;http://findbugs.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;Findbugs&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://pmd.github.io/&quot;&gt;PMD&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://checkstyle.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;Checkstyle&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally get the team to agree on a set of coding standards and implement them as templates in the various code quality tools. Then run the tools from continuous integration and possibly even fail builds when the quality standards are not met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This won't replace code reviews, but it will hopefully reduce discussions at code reviews relating to coding style, formatting, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just the fact that you have clear standards will help reduce the time spent on code reviews. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Code Review Tools&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some good code review tools around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/software/crucible&quot;&gt;Crucible&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These kinds of tools are great for helping with the facilitation of code reviews and they also help a lot with code reviews run remotely (say when a team member is working from home).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-08-05T07:05:04.800" LastActivityDate="2016-08-05T07:05:04.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19797" CreationDate="2016-08-05T07:00:58.623" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are the goals that the review can be audited? or to prove the auditor is doing his/her job? We document them as new tasks/discoveries on our Scrum-board and some just picks them up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the main goal of code reviews is knowledge sharing and finding recurring code mistakes, not the documentation, unless you need it by law :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Checklist based code reviews&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://smartbear.com/resources/ebooks/best-kept-secrets-of-code-review/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This e-book&lt;/a&gt; has a great practical and light-weight strategy for peer code reviews. For a summary if this strategy read &lt;a href=&quot;https://sqa.stackexchange.com/a/17638/3201&quot;&gt;my answer to another question&lt;/a&gt; on SE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pair programming&lt;/strong&gt;: Some teams think &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules/pair.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;pair programming&lt;/a&gt; is a good alternative to code reviews as the code is reviewed by another person during the act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-08-01T07:36:58.707" LastActivityDate="2020-08-01T07:36:58.707" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19795" CreationDate="2016-08-05T07:01:02.543" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm sorry to see that this has been going on for months. Did it ever come up in the retrospective? During stand-ups? Since it seems to be hampering the team I would have expected that one or more team members had raised it in a retrospective. Then that would  have been the first spot to discuss it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do other team members feel about how this developer behaved? How do they react to it? Reason for asking this is that I prefer to solve it with the team together, and not in a one-on-one. It's not an issue between you and him, it's a team working problem. Even though it has been ongoing too long I'd prefer to take it at team level first. But that should happen now, this has been ongoing too long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is to pay attention how the team reacts on him, and use their reaction to discuss the matter. Signal the issue when this happens in a stand-up, planning, or any other opportunity and then agree with the team on how to take it up (a short retrospective sounds suitable). If you want to do it in a retrospective, then some of the exercises that you can use are a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.benlinders.com/2013/feelings-matter-in-agile-retrospectives/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;one-word retrospective&lt;/a&gt; or a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.benlinders.com/2014/getting-feedback-with-the-perfection-game/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;perfection game&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that since that has been going on too long you need to deal with the damage and the feelings that have build up over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also you may want to look back why this hasn't popped up in the retrospective, learn from that, and find a way to deal with similar problems quickly in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16919" LastActivityDate="2016-08-05T07:01:02.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19795" CreationDate="2016-08-05T07:01:24.627" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a tricky situation for a Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally you want the team to resolve it themselves. They should recognise the problem, self-organise and work out a better way of working together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To help facilitate this you can make the effects of the developer's actions more visible. For example, you could point out the length of planning meetings and ask if the team thinks there are ways of speeding up the way you allocate points to stories. Or you might mention the impact that unplanned work has had on the sprint goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not about naming names. It's all about emphasising problems that the team faces so that they realise they need to fix them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-08-05T07:01:24.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18771" CreationDate="2016-08-05T10:30:59.450" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Defects are part of software development cycle. It certainly cannot be blamed on just a single person. The whole chain is responsible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any found &lt;strong&gt;defect&lt;/strong&gt; should be &lt;strong&gt;categorized and prioritized&lt;/strong&gt;. Then it should be picked up by the responsible team, quality is a team effort not individual. &lt;strong&gt;Afterwards&lt;/strong&gt; the original developer with the team should &lt;strong&gt;do a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jamesshore.com/Agile-Book/root_cause_analysis.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;root-cause analyse&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; to figure out how to prevent something similar of happening in the future. Just blindly fixing them as soon as possible will not improve the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Setup a good &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://medium.com/quality-functions/the-zero-bug-policy-b0bd987be684#.qowehv6nv&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;zero defect policy&lt;/a&gt;&quot; process to prevent just fixing everything instantly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/o1GYX.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/o1GYX.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would add a fifth classification &quot;Closed&quot; for defects that should never get priority, because they are to trivial. Make sure you communicate clearly and fair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2016-08-05T12:01:37.900" LastActivityDate="2016-08-05T12:01:37.900" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19806" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-05T12:03:38.667" Score="8" ViewCount="649" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that KPI is a metric and metric is not necessarily a KPI, but I still don't understand the difference between these two. Let's take Periscope application as an example. What are possible KPI and metrics for this app, from a PM perspective? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21640" LastActivityDate="2018-02-23T14:05:36.943" Title="What is the difference between metric and KPI?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;business-analyst&gt;&lt;kpi&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19806" CreationDate="2016-08-05T12:53:53.053" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/metrics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;metric&lt;/a&gt; would be &lt;em&gt;a standard of measurement&lt;/em&gt; in the context of PM. A performance indicator on the other hand is also just a type of performance measurement. Both terms could be and are used synonymously, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scoro.com/16-essential-project-kpis/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;K&lt;/strong&gt; in KPI would be the difference if any. One would consider the &lt;strong&gt;Key&lt;/strong&gt; performance indicators the most important metrics that provide the best oversight of the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A key performance indicator:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has a very high predictive validity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is an indicator that aligns with the objectives of that particular project. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11925" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-02-23T13:23:05.870" LastActivityDate="2018-02-23T13:23:05.870" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19806" CreationDate="2016-08-05T17:21:25.683" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I once read a case about a development organization - they were trying to improve the administration of justice in an underdeveloped country.  They had a way to measure the administration of justice (IIRC, the % of decisions that were overturned on appeal or review).  But they had no way to influence the actual decision.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Root cause analysis indicated that part of the cause for the corruption was that there were only a few lawyers and they were all &quot;alike&quot;.  Follow the root cause back and they decided to intervene by increasing reading education. (If you can't read, you can't go to law school, if you can't go to law school, you can't be a judge.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The metric was &quot;% of children who graduated with enough reading skills to enter law school&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The KPI was &quot;% of decisions overturned on appeal&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2016-08-05T17:21:25.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19809" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-05T18:07:34.747" Score="4" ViewCount="3342" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've created an event planning project that explains all of the relevant tasks before, during, and after a given event in MS Project 2003. I would like to calculate the number of days between a given task and a task I've created called &quot;Host Event&quot;. The best way I've been able to do it thus far is create a custom number column with a formula of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Int([Project Finish]-8-[Start])&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It essentially does the trick, as the &quot;Host Event&quot; task is 8 days away from the Project Finish date. However, this seems like bad coding because I hard-coded the 8 days and if I were to ever change any task durations after the &quot;Host Event&quot; task, it would completely throw off the formula.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a better way that I can perform the following calculation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Int([Project Finish]- [&quot;Host Event&quot; Start])&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0ZBMZsVFP5_OXNoeTRmeEdzOVk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Link to Microsoft Project File&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25369" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T18:54:12.620" LastActivityDate="2019-08-08T22:00:45.090" Title="How do you calculate the number of days between two tasks in Microsoft Project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;ms-project-2003&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19809" CreationDate="2016-08-05T21:05:49.450" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure I understand entirely.  Do you want to calculate the difference between the Host date and the &lt;strong&gt;Project Finish&lt;/strong&gt; date or from the host date to the finish date for all tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could enter the date of the host event into a spare date field. (Date1 for example).  Fill the date down and then write the formula&#xA;int([Finish]-[Date1])&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short of code (VBA) there is no way to refer to another tasks's information for a single task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2016-08-05T21:05:49.450" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="737" CreationDate="2016-08-06T01:42:33.467" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Follow a well defined process e.g.: confirm/reproduce -&gt; analyze impact and decide priority-&gt; analyze fixes -&gt; fix&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;honesty when tracking (important for PM) - no premature closing of bug, no rejection of &quot;unimportant bugs&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;keep the &quot;small&quot; bugs, too (important since when finishing to get it finally done also these will steal time)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look at the &quot;critical, not fixed/started&quot; statistic every day (e.g. in the JIRA dashboard).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;feature freeze early enough&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25386" LastActivityDate="2016-08-06T01:42:33.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16675" CreationDate="2016-08-06T11:48:43.420" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMI does not publish its questions nor do they provide practice exams.  There are a ton of PMP prep providers out there with questions of their own.  Taking them when I was preparing to sit for the exam, I discovered that the so called practice questions were substantially harder than the questions on the actual exam.  While this is completely opinion based, I think those providers purposely make those questions extremely difficult in order to increase anxiety so that they can sell additional prep services.  I have no idea if these questions truly prepare anyone to take the test.  Maybe they do, maybe they don't.  What they succeed in doing is making your bank account less and their revenues higher.  There can be no debate about that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-08-06T11:48:43.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19814" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19815" CreationDate="2016-08-07T01:56:09.067" Score="4" ViewCount="839" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a Project Manager / Scrum Master at a company that implements custom solutions for our clients.  We do our best to adopt agile practices, but it's been very difficult - every client is different, and the way we scope projects most of the time is almost straight waterfall.  We do agile practices &quot;in house&quot; but still deliver everything very linear and very deadline heavy.  Many of our clients don't understand agile, which makes it very difficult to communicate changes in scope and duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where is the comfortable middle ground for a small company like ours to be profitable, deliver and projects, and still be as agile as possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25402" LastActivityDate="2016-08-09T05:45:07.357" Title="How can a professional services / custom solutions company adopt agile and be successful?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19814" CreationDate="2016-08-07T07:56:29.810" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using an Agile approach while contrained by traditional contracts and customer attitudes can be very challenging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are many aspects of Agile that should still be of value:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Transparency&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even when working with fixed scope and deadlines it is worth using the approach of incremental delivery. This helps to reduce risk and will build up trust between you and your clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Engineering Practices&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many Agile engineering practices (such as those used in XP) can be used even in traditional projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look to leverage the value of pair programming, continuous integration and automated regression testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Teams&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile teams work well because they are empowered and self-organising. Try to keep your teams together as much as possible, even spanning over several projects. This will help the teams to learn how to work together and to gain benefits from inspecting and adapting their approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Communication&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Emphasise the importance of communication:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Daily stand-up meetings with just the core team members (for synchronisation, not as progress reports)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Information radiators such as physical task boards or visible product backlogs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work closely with the customer to ensure you fully understand their requirements, perhaps have them co-locate with the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;And then...&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Build up a relationship of trust with your clients by working closely with them and delivering value frequently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over time you may find that your clients are more willing to be flexible about their contracts and the nature of their engagement with your organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, some organisations like to form joint teams consisting of in-house and outsourced people. These mixed teams create a lot of trust and they may then consider a time and materials based contract rather than insisting on fixed price contracts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there are a growing number of Agile contracts around. I suspect that you need to have a strong relationship with a client before they would be willing to accept such a contract, but it is possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-08-07T07:56:29.810" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16372" CreationDate="2016-08-07T14:01:36.810" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use buffered Moscow rules&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mse.isri.cmu.edu/software-engineering/documents/faculty-publications/miranda/mirandabufferedmoscowrules2.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://mse.isri.cmu.edu/software-engineering/documents/faculty-publications/miranda/mirandabufferedmoscowrules2.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regards,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25408" LastActivityDate="2016-08-07T14:01:36.810" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17941" CreationDate="2016-08-07T14:57:29.900" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to have 4500 hours of PM experience in a leading &amp;amp; directing role to to do PMP. So, PM role is must before doing PMP. However, PM role is not equivalent to PM designation/title. PM role means that you should have managed full or part of a project. Your role in the project could be of vendor management, team management, client management etc. The projects could be related to any industry. They could be big or small, technical or non-technical etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, some of your business experience can be counted as PM experience - only you can determine how much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read more about the details of 4500 hours of experience here - &#xA;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmbypm.com/go/4500-hours-explanation-cornelius-ficthner/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pmbypm.com/go/4500-hours-explanation-cornelius-ficthner/&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25305" LastActivityDate="2016-08-07T14:57:29.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8" CreationDate="2016-08-08T10:20:11.567" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on what you'd like to achieve. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine that your goal is be to improve your body shape. You got a recommendation from well informed source, that it takes 30 minutes of daily workout routine to achieve this goal within 3 months. Each day you skip it  this period is extended by 2 days. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the time most of people hate exercising. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, would you workout everyday to achieve the goal quickly OR workout only the days that you feel you want to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1021" LastActivityDate="2016-08-08T10:20:11.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19797" CreationDate="2016-08-08T18:04:28.163" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stop doing code reviews and start pair programming.  If the purpose of code reviews is to improve the quality of the code and while helping team members increase their domain knowledge, then pair programming is a much more pro-active form of code review.  It also builds quality earlier into your development process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speed up = improve efficiency.  So you're asking how do we increase efficiency without sacrificing effectiveness.  One big down-side of code-reviews is that the team members doing the code review first need to understand the business problem as well as code they are trying to review.  This is often done by re- actively reviewing the user story and code after everything is already &quot;done.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A hands-on way to get the same knowledge is through pair programming.  You're killing two birds with one stone; implementing the user story and doing a thorough CR in parallel.  There's your efficiency gain (and its usually more effective too since most adults learn better through hands-on activities vs passively studying on their own).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2016-08-08T18:04:28.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19797" CreationDate="2016-08-08T18:43:50.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few years back my team was in a major time/resources crunch.  We solved this question by assigning a senior (me) to do the code reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used Findbugs to narrow my search and identify obvious bugs, but didn't trust it fully because it was prone to report false positives.  For example, it would frequently claim that the logger was and unused variable when I could see  that the code logged heavily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once I had used findbugs to this extent, I reviewed code in question manually in context to rule out false positives and to find issues the findbugs is ill-equipped to find (Spelling and grammatical errors).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would spend 30 to 60 minutes prepping for code review, then 10 minutes in the actual meeting.  Total resources expended averaged under 1 programmer hour.  We never failed to find and eliminate at least three bugs in any meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25388" LastActivityDate="2016-08-08T18:43:50.520" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16998" CreationDate="2016-08-08T19:25:17.973" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmbypm.com/what-is-project-charter-is-it-contract/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;project charter&lt;/a&gt; has a high level synopsis of the the project. It usually includes a milestone schedule, high level requirements and overall budget. But, it is not created to describe the project. Rather it is created to &lt;strong&gt;authorize&lt;/strong&gt; the start of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your specific Q, consider that you have to make arrangement for a wedding. You will not take on this project if you do not know the wedding date (milestone schedule), high level requirements and an overall budget. But requirements &amp;amp; budget can change as you plan the wedding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25305" LastEditorUserId="25305" LastEditDate="2016-11-19T08:36:39.873" LastActivityDate="2016-11-19T08:36:39.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17847" CreationDate="2016-08-08T19:33:54.410" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you should write to PMI customer service to get a clarification on your degree status. I believe they will allow you to showcase only 4500 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should read this article. I think, it will answer some of your Q - 25 Frequently Asked Question on PMI PMP Audit Process (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmbypm.com/pmi-pmp-audit-process/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pmbypm.com/pmi-pmp-audit-process/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me describe the complete PMP procedure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PMP Requirements&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are 2 requirements to appear for PMP certification -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Management Experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;35 hours of Project Management Education&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Regarding Project Management Experience&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need 4500 hrs of experience if you have done 4 years of degree (bachelors degree or equivalent). Other wise if you have a diploma of equivalent then you need 7500 hrs of experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM experience should be in a leading &amp;amp; directing role. So, PM role is must before doing PMP. However, PM role is not equivalent to PM designation/title. PM role means that you should have managed full or part of a project. Your role in the project could be of vendor management, team management, client management etc. The projects could be related to any industry. They could be big or small, technical or non-technical etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read more about the details of 4500 hours of experience here - (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmbypm.com/go/4500-hours-explanation-cornelius-ficthner/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pmbypm.com/go/4500-hours-explanation-cornelius-ficthner/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Regarding 35 contact hours&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can get them through a PMP training. A training can be done in 3 different modes:&#xA;1. Self-learning online training&#xA;2. Instructor-led online training&#xA;3. Regular classroom training&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Out of these self-learning courses are least expensive while classroom courses are most expensive. You can get an self-learning course for less than $50. &#xA;The price and availability of the classroom courses varies with the region. The classroom courses are generally available only in the big cities. You can check on Internet is there is a PMP training provider in your region. More important is to check if the trainer is good or not.  If the trainer’s feedback is not good, it is better to go for an instructor-led online training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have done a comparison of popular online training courses - both self-learning courses and instructor-led courses. Out of all the options, self-learning courses are the cheapest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are looking for a self-learning option, you should read comparison of popular self-learning online PMP training courses (Best Self-Learning PMP Online Training Course (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmbypm.com/best-self-learning-pmp-online-training-course/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pmbypm.com/best-self-learning-pmp-online-training-course/&lt;/a&gt;)). It will help you in determining which is the best one for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you are looking for an instructor led option, then You can read comparison of popular instructor-led online PMP training courses (Best Instructor-Led Online PMP Training Course (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmbypm.com/best-instructor-led-online-pmp-training-course/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pmbypm.com/best-instructor-led-online-pmp-training-course/&lt;/a&gt;))&#xA;You can also refer to the complete guide to PMP certification (How to get PMP Certification (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmbypm.com/go/complete-guide-pmp-cornelius-fichtner/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pmbypm.com/go/complete-guide-pmp-cornelius-fichtner/&lt;/a&gt;))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25305" LastActivityDate="2016-08-08T19:33:54.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19814" CreationDate="2016-08-09T05:45:07.357" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From delivery perspective, Waterfall to Agile is change in way of execution.  Scope for that is within delivering organization perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, for agile, you need more contribution from client compared to earlier ones.  It might require cultural change and adaptability from client organization side as well.  If you have client who doesn't understand agile practices, it will be roadblock for your development.  You can have Agile coach to help that.  But for smaller organization, I am not sure whether having agile coach would be profitable model to train even customer.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25351" LastActivityDate="2016-08-09T05:45:07.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19825" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-09T09:54:19.050" Score="1" ViewCount="572" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have organized my plan with Summary Tasks and many, many subtasks. Since it is a little bit difficult to manage every single subtask, I would like to do these operations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;assign predecessors to Summary Task&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an effort estimation in terms of day (column Work) for every subtask&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;assign a resource for every subtask&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in this way have the subtasks automatically schedule with all dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see from the image below I have assigned predecessors to summary tasks. The last column is the &quot;Work&quot; Column. The problem is that all the tasks start from 13/10/2016 and so the plan is not correct...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know if there is some option in Project to have a tidy plan?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jpHcE.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jpHcE.png&quot; alt=&quot;example&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25459" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-08-09T20:59:12.493" LastActivityDate="2016-08-09T20:59:12.493" Title="MS Project - how to schedule subtasks" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19825" CreationDate="2016-08-09T11:21:54.280" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Load your predecessor successor logic on your sub tasks.  This will fix the problem.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, my practice is to load all the logic on the lowest level task I have in my schedule.  I do not load any logic, predecessor-successor, resources, etc., in the hammock tasks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-08-09T11:21:54.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19797" CreationDate="2016-08-09T14:51:13.570" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could consider using elements of Test Driven Development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might find the code reviews quicker, and no less thorough by having the tests created prior to the development, so that the developer can continuously analyse his or her progress until it meets the requirements of the pre-approved test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could certainly reduce the back-and-forth nature of the review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24050" LastActivityDate="2016-08-09T14:51:13.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19828" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-09T16:40:02.807" Score="0" ViewCount="433" Body="&lt;p&gt;My company provides IT managed services support to multiple clients that have SLA agreements with us. We have multiple technicians tackling the many tickets that flow in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For each ticket we have two SLA levels: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Responded (Whether we responded to ticket within a time frame.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resolved (Whether ticket was resolved within a time frame.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use a software system (ConnectWise) that tracks the time resolved, time responded, and the technician(s) that completed those stages of the ticket. Sometimes just one tech may complete all cycles of a ticket's SLA but sometimes a team of people may be part of a ticket (e.g. one person responded, then he passed it on another tech and a couple other techs may work on it too).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the most accurate way to gauge each tech's SLA performance on these tickets?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One caveat that impedes an accurate SLA performance by technician is that ConnectWise only associates ONE person that responded and ONE person that resolved the ticket.  Here are some scenarios.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We may have a tech who just started his shift and saw a ticket that hasn't been responded for some time. He responds to it, ConnectWise labeled him as the responder, but then he may be hit with a missed response-SLA.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A ticket may pass through different hands and the last person who worked on it and resolved it tagged the ticket Resolved. But he may get hit with a missed Resolved-SLA and this isn't fair because he may not be the one working on resolving it from beginning to end. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd appreciate any thoughts and suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23510" LastActivityDate="2017-12-30T13:29:50.547" Title="How to Measure the SLA Performance of IT Techs in Managed Services Provider?" Tags="&lt;performance&gt;&lt;kpi&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2017-12-31T20:27:21.877" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19829" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-09T19:33:33.467" Score="1" ViewCount="118" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can I add columns in MS Project Pro to display time-phased costs? I would like to see a cost column for each year of the project. The year-column would only include costs for that year. I can almost do it by using formulas in custom-cost columns, but the tasks split between years are missed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yfbfg.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yfbfg.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25467" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-11-01T11:19:36.133" LastActivityDate="2017-10-27T16:40:10.177" Title="Can I add columns in MS Project Pro to display time-phased costs?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1973" CreationDate="2016-08-10T10:45:33.757" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a tradeoff. If the sprint duration is extremely small, there are higher overheads such as # of retrospectives, demos etc. So the transaction costs are high. If the sprint duration is too long, then the completed features reaching in the hands of customers takes longer resulting in delayed revenue. i.e. Higher Holding Costs. Your optimum Sprint duration is when your transaction and Holding costs meet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25480" LastActivityDate="2016-08-10T10:45:33.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16477" CreationDate="2016-08-10T10:54:42.693" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have it where the SM and PO attend the meeting. The frequency is once a week. Focus should be on identifying blockers and inter team dependencies. We typically start by reviewing the Iteration Backlog and check if the remaining stories can be completed in the left over time and what stories may spillover &amp;amp; their impact. Each Scrum Master then gives an overview of what is done, planned and blocked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25480" LastActivityDate="2016-08-10T10:54:42.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19834" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19876" CreationDate="2016-08-10T12:33:22.950" Score="2" ViewCount="363" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the MS Project file I am building, some of the tasks depend on environmental conditions – specifically tidal currents being below a certain flow speed.  I know precisely the start, finish and duration of every ‘slack water’ period – when the flow speed drops below the critical threshold – but each slack period is different in length and the pattern is irregular.  Each slack water period typically lasts between 30 minutes and 2 hours, on an approximately 6-hourly cycle.  However, I need to be able to work with specific timings for every slack period: average timings are not accurate enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, if the next task requires the flow speed to be below the critical threshold, and the next slack water period does not start for another 3 hours, then the whole project must wait 3 hours for the slack period to start. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have had 2 attempts at solving it that have come close, but neither has worked.  The attempts are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1)  At the top of the Gantt Table, enter a series of dates/times to represent the start of every ‘Slack Water’ period, essentially a list of milestones.  It is possible to manually select one of these milestones for every task that is dependent on slack water.  This works fine for the initial schedule: every slack-dependent task only starts when the next slack water period starts, and the gaps that appear in the schedule are accepted.  However, the problem starts when the project is live: delays happen, and some of the slack-dependent tasks overshoot the end of their planned slack water periods.  In reality the project would wait for the next slack water before those critical tasks can start, but I have not found an automatic way of MS Project re-selecting the next available slack water period.  This would amount to MS Project automatically changing certain task dependencies, which I believe is not possible.  I believe it’s also not possible to use ‘IF’ logic to determine the timings of tasks (but if it were possible, then perhaps there would be a way of using compound IF statements to select the most appropriate slack-milestone in the Task Dependency column based on the ‘estimated finish’ date/time of its predecessor task). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2)  Enter a Resource called ‘Slack Water’, and input the precise times when that resource is available to work, according to the start and finish times of each slack water period.  This is on the basis that the Resource Calendar would supersede the Project Calendar for the tasks on which the 'Slack Water' resource is assigned.  In principle I thought this should work, until I realised that the Resource Availability information cannot be entered for such short time periods, or for more than one period per day.  For this approach to work, I would need to enter 4 short periods of availability per 24 hour cycle, which I now believe is not possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone suggest how either of these approaches could be successfully amended, or to explain an alternative solution within MS Project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25484" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-08-10T13:02:04.707" LastActivityDate="2016-08-18T13:18:13.210" Title="MS Project: How should I enter scheduling constraints to reflect multiple short and irregular operating windows?" Tags="&lt;resources&gt;&lt;dependencies&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19835" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-10T13:25:23.630" Score="2" ViewCount="120" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are currently setting up a development team that will deliver Web and iOS/Android App functionality. The team will stream their work in scrum sprints. The team will rely on an API managed by another team outside of the web/app team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To ensure that we can develop as a feature team we rely on the support of the API team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is how best to facilitate this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should the API developers be embedded and collocated with the web/app team and attend all the scrum ceremonies with the ability to effect the API on the web/app team's behalf?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to have an SLA in place whereby key API individuals work within the confines of the API team but are dedicated to any requests that flow from the web/app team either through release planning or work identified in technical tasks. The API team have to synch their release schedule with that of the web/api team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without a degree of control or visibility of the required changes being made to the API the web/app team will be at the risk of being blocked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19267" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-10-09T20:38:26.117" LastActivityDate="2016-10-09T20:38:26.117" Title="Collaborate a Mobile App teams work with an API developed in another silo" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;api&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12375" CreationDate="2016-08-10T14:53:42.377" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have a already a big advantage as you are a PMP. You can then just first focus on learning the PRINCE2 process.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PRINCE2 Foundation:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- As a PMP, you do not need to do this exam&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- You are entitled to sit the PRINCE2 Practitioner Exam directly   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PRINCE2 Practitioner&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- You will need the official book: Managing Successful Projects...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Most people do a classroom training&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- But a Self Study is a lot more cost effective: Ggoogle &quot;PRINCE2 Online Course&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tips for getting into the PRINCE2 Process:&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) The PRINCE2 Timeline video (20 mins) &#xA;   - &lt;a href=&quot;http://bit.do/P2-Timeline&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://bit.do/P2-Timeline&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;   - This is a simple high-level introduction to a PRINCE2 Project &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) PRINCE2 Pre-Course - (60 mins video)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Search on Youtube for this video  &quot;PRINCE2 Pre-Course&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- It shows you how a PRINCE2 project works&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Useful site: 1) SlideShare, 2) PRINCE2.wiki 3) AXELOS.com      &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25493" LastEditorUserId="25493" LastEditDate="2016-08-10T15:03:08.100" LastActivityDate="2016-08-10T15:03:08.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19837" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-10T14:56:18.607" Score="4" ViewCount="358" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm the Scrum Master on a project with three developers, one QA person, one designer, and me. We work on a project that we inherited about three years ago, a &quot;portal&quot; website and a cordova app. We're now planning to scale down the team to a skeleton crew of one developer, aiming to finish up everything critical in the next ~five weeks before we do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project has always struggled with the issue of technical debt we inherited along with the codebase, and now the team would like to see if there is some way we can integrate this work without it getting us &quot;off track&quot; on the main features and bugs we want to complete before our five weeks are up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's important that the team stay as focused on the features and bugs as possible because they've been working on a few pages of the app now for months and are are excited to be done with it. For their morale I want to make sure we keep that focus, but they also feel strongly that some of these engineering chores should be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should we balance these two things so that the developers still feel they can make progress on the engineering initiatives while remaining focused on finishing the feature set?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19375" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-09-08T17:10:52.913" LastActivityDate="2016-09-08T17:25:43.637" Title="How should we balance chores to reduce technical debt with impending deadlines for features?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;&lt;technical-debt&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19837" CreationDate="2016-08-11T07:13:02.950" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What can help is to think of everything in terms of the value it delivers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The value of finishing the feature set is obvious, but the value of technical debt chores requires a bit of thought. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, say clearing out a bit of technical debt makes it easier to add new features. This then gives a small efficiency payoff with each new feature that is added. You can make a case that this kind of technical debt work has more value than just adding a single new feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now start to prioritise your technical debt alongside the new development work. You may well find that certain types of technical debt end up quite high on your priorities. Other types may deliver less real-world value and so end up being lower priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-08-11T07:13:02.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19840" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-11T09:58:53.660" Score="1" ViewCount="158" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently working with an agency for a client to implement new features or fix bugs. The trouble that I am having is that they can never give me a definite quote in terms of hours, their business model is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Pay 2-5 hours for investigating, if it is fixed during those hours we will quote you based on the time it took.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that if the requirement takes longer than 5 hours, they will quote me at the time and if the requirement is not solved we will still have to pay them. This is totally wrecking my budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure how to handle this type of situation? Thoughts&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="20871" LastEditDate="2016-08-11T11:00:46.100" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T02:50:08.607" Title="Dealing with an agency who can't give a definite quote" Tags="&lt;budget&gt;&lt;subcontractor&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19840" CreationDate="2016-08-11T11:15:13.160" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The agency is avoiding risk.  What they seem to be doing is accepting work as if they are working under a fixed price arrangement but dealing with payment as if under a time and materials arrangement.  They are getting the best of both worlds and avoiding the risks and problems with each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When scope and effort are unknown and contain a lot of risk, then time and materials would be the best approach but that does mean that you would need to oversee them and direct them and monitor them in a very different way.  You cannot just send work over and then wait and see what comes back.  You would need to know who is doing what work, when they work, how they work, ideas they are pursuing, etc.  You would need to manage them as if they were your employees and on a daily basis.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you pursue this alternative, then they need to commit to rates against each role and commit their people to your leadership.  And then move forward in your work.  If you do not like this alternative and want a firm price, or if they do not want a T&amp;amp;M approach, then search for an alternative firm to help you with your work.  Because as of now, you carry all the risks and headaches and they are exploiting a cash cow.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  CodeGnome brings up a good point regarding dual employment based on my comment above regarding a T&amp;amp;M type arrangement and treating the contractors like employees.  This issue is a legal risk when working with contractors so a clear separation between employees and contractors is necessary.  The scope of &quot;as if they were your employees&quot; is intended to mean an increase level of control over work, who is doing it, how, etc., over other types of contractual relationships, such as fixed price.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2016-08-12T20:57:15.403" LastActivityDate="2016-08-12T20:57:15.403" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19837" CreationDate="2016-08-11T14:18:02.900" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could also incorporate tech debt work into definition of done. &#xA;I.e. 10 or 20% of time spent on delivering new feature should be spent on tech debt tasks like refactoring the legacy code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will work for small items and could change teams's approach to tech debt. Then you could introduce bigger debt items to product backlog and prioritise along with features. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25508" LastActivityDate="2016-08-11T14:18:02.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17847" CreationDate="2016-08-11T15:04:07.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the other answers I want to point out that (according to the Project Management Professional Handbook, a PDF available at PMI):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All project management experience must have been accrued within the last eight consecutive years prior to your application submission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for calculating the eligible hours of experience it is noteworthy that a full time job amounts for approx. 1,800 hours a year. As you have pointed out doing technical work outside the role of a project manager does not count towards that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can I just take the whole two year term of the project that I managed as applicable experience or do I have to go through my work log and pick out only the moments in time where I was not doing project work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to my understanding (and backed by the feedback of my certified boot camp instructor) it is not neccessary to do a detailed calculation. Doing a rough but of course honest (!) and realistic estimate of the amount of time spent on managerial tasks vs. technical work should do fine. For 7,500 hours that would mean roughly half of your working time has to be devoted to project management tasks (approx. a third for the required 4,500 hours). You'll have to figure out how the proportions of tasks of work have been so far.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In determining the required experience however I want to point out to consider what a project is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;It's a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That definition is quite broad. According to the instructor of the boot camp I attended this includes numerous things in and outside the work place, such as doing anything related to project management outside the work place, e.g. in charity work or a nonprofit association. In any case: be honest and clearly explain your role in the project team, the tasks completed, and the time spent on managerial tasks when listing such items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11925" LastActivityDate="2016-08-11T15:04:07.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19837" CreationDate="2016-08-11T15:07:43.030" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why are you going to a skeleton crew? Sounds like the long-term plan for these apps/sites is that they die a slow death. In that case, who cares about paying off technical debt?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technical debt raises the cost of future work. This isn't a problem if there won't be any significant future work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note, you've had this project for three years: you should have been paying down technical debt over the past three years. Paying it down early would've made the rest of the time on your project more productive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8340" LastActivityDate="2016-08-11T15:07:43.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19845" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19853" CreationDate="2016-08-12T07:14:16.947" Score="1" ViewCount="139" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have seen different managers entering preferred Duration in days and some in  hours. Is there any best practice?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have seen many manager will update &quot;% complete&quot; to update a task progress. Is this perfect way to capture process?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Someone told me, If you have a task with more than 40 hours, break it down further into smaller tasks. It may not be possible. Right? Having said that, I have seen tasks in MPP with over 200 hours. Is there any best practice here?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17414" LastActivityDate="2016-08-16T12:51:50.590" Title="MS Project: Few basis questions on tasks management" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1973" CreationDate="2016-08-12T08:13:00.030" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In one of my projects which last 60 weeks (&lt;strong&gt;similar to yours&lt;/strong&gt;) my team has worked in 4-week sprint and it has been going well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, to answer your question: There is &lt;strong&gt;NO rule of thumb&lt;/strong&gt; on reasonable number of sprints. I have been managing many projects, currently 5 projects at the same time. Some of them last for less than 10 sprints, some last 10-30 sprints, and some particularly long projects take &gt; 50 sprints. And &lt;strong&gt;each project can have different sprint length (1, 2 and 3 week)&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In Agile group where I participate&lt;/strong&gt;, many teams choose 30-day period, while many teams choose 2 weeks and 3 week. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how do I determine the sprint length? The decision is made after considering: Estimated length of project, nature of product, nature of your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;1) Estimated length of project.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The estimation needs not to be precise 100% to give you a sense of how long the project will last. If it last more than 6 months, it makes sense to consider 3-week length or 30-day length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;2) Nature of product.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to ask yourself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Does this product need to adapt frequently to market/real users’ need to make value for stakeholders? If it does, you should shorten&#xA;  the sprint length and give more frequent workable version to get&#xA;  public’s feedback.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Technically, is it possible to deliver product in short iteration? As you know, short iteration is encouraged, but you cannot do it 100%&#xA;  of the time due to technical difficulties. In some project we need to&#xA;  implement complex algorithm for example, before showing it to&#xA;  stakeholders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;3) Nature of your team&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does your team work most efficiently in 1-week sprints, or in 30-day&#xA;  sprints? If you have worked with the team on several 2-week sprint and&#xA;  you feel that they work well, why not consider it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may have the temptation to try 1-week sprint, but keep in mind that the actual work of coding is reduced, due to the (almost) same amount of effort spent on Agile (meetings, communication, etc..). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my current projects, for maintenance projects we often choose 1-week sprint and for others, we are working efficiently in 3-week sprints, and 4-week sprints, for to share personal experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21101" LastActivityDate="2016-08-12T08:13:00.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19840" CreationDate="2016-08-12T12:33:42.410" Score="4" Body="&lt;h1&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's nothing wrong with your vendor's model. The problems are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There's a mismatch between their business model and yours; and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your budget doesn't account for the &lt;em&gt;known&lt;/em&gt; costs and business model of your current vendor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have lots of alternative options. Pick one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pay 2-5 hours for investigating, if it is fixed during those hours we will quote you based on the time it took.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is no different than taking your car to the mechanic, where they charge you a labor fee to diagnose your problem before giving you a quote to fix it. You may not &lt;em&gt;like&lt;/em&gt; the model, but it is neither uncommon nor unprofessional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your idea of &quot;requirements&quot; is probably also not theirs. &quot;I want the widget embiggened in six dimensions&quot; is a requirement, but identifying all the dependencies and the level of effort required to shoehorn that into your existing product is potentially undefined. In such cases, consultants often build in a discovery phase to a project in order to determine the actual scope, level of difficulty, and complexity of a project before committing to anything other than a straight time-and-materials estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, it sounds like the consulting firm you're using is doing what they're supposed to do. The problem is that what they're doing doesn't match &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; expectations, or whatever fixed budget you've allocated to the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some alternatives to consider include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Providing the vendor with concrete, detailed, upfront specifications that have been properly scoped and estimated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pay the vendor on a strict time-and-materials basis, avoiding the need for an initial analysis or separate discovery phase.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Move the work in-house, so that you can absorb those costs directly rather than dealing with an outside vendor. (NB: This may also be a good learning experience to see why smart consultants don't do fixed-price work without an analysis phase.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increase your budget to account for up to five hours of analysis, plus any work that exceeds that amount.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find some other vendor that will work within whatever budget you currently have. (NB: Consider the consequences that lowest-bidder or fixed-price contracting may have on quality. There are reasons for all the jokes about things built on low-bid government contracts.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep doing what you're doing. You may not like it, but if you're getting good results it may be an option worth considering.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your vendor is unlikely to change a business model that works well for them. Therefore, while I certainly encourage you to collaborate with them more closely, almost all the business process change will be from your side, regardless of what alternatives you eventually pursue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-08-12T16:26:36.960" LastActivityDate="2016-08-12T16:26:36.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19840" CreationDate="2016-08-12T12:55:24.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did you shop around and get quotes from different agencies before you went with this agency? Or does the client insist that you work with this particular agency? If you have a choice of agencies, and there is further work to come on the system you are working on, approach competing agencies and get quotes from them for the volume of work you have. Other agencies may have business practices more suited to your requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also are you or an in-house member of staff able to investigate fixes, bugs etc yourselves? If so you could then simply approach the agency in question, and perhaps other agencies or freelancers, with the requirements for the fix or enhancement. You would also know approximately how long it would take. For all you know they are overcharging you. I have seen this so many times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23146" LastActivityDate="2016-08-12T12:55:24.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19850" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-12T13:04:02.273" Score="2" ViewCount="1519" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just started in a new company that has decided to become more agile. They have decided to create the requirement specification in Jira. As an ux/ interaction designer, I find it difficult to see the big picture when seeing the list of Epics and tasks in Jira.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm used to have requirements per page and per function as it sets the requirements in a context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) How should I structure a sort of Agile requirement specification in Confluence?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Can an Epic be e.g. Start Page or Profile Page?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25526" LastActivityDate="2016-08-13T06:41:12.973" Title="How should I structure requirements in Confluence?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19845" CreationDate="2016-08-12T13:10:35.400" Score="2" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I know of no best practise in respect of this (doesn't mean it doesn't exist!), but as far as I am concerned I mix and match depending on my needs. If the task is 2 hours long I put in 2h rather than 0.25d. If the task is two days long I put in 2d and not 16h. Use whatever you are comfortable with.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is very common and leads, I believe, to a lack of clarity as it is quite difficult to estimate percentage complete for all but the most trivial of tasks. I always use Work, Work Completed and Work Remaining, reviewing frequently to track progress in a task, and let MS-Project work that out as a percentage. This works better because people seem more able to be able to estimate how many hours work there is left to finish a project, so if that is the question you ask you automatically get a) the derived percentage complete but more importantly b) an instant review of the overall duration of the task, which may have moved from the planned values.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;MS-Project doesn't care whether your task is 40h long or split into subtasks. It is a matter of personal preference. Sometimes you need to deal with individual subtasks on a granular level, so split it up, and sometimes you only need to work at a macro level, so leave it at 40h. It doesn't automatically somehow become better practise just by splitting the task(s).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2016-08-12T13:10:35.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19845" CreationDate="2016-08-12T13:48:57.433" Score="0" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't think there is a definitive answer on whether one should use days or hours.  My suggestion is to use whichever makes the most sense to you and the stakeholders to whom you report.  The schedule and its performance baseline are tools for you to use to gauge how healthy you are.  The methods you use needs to make sense to your mental model so you can answer those questions that will be asked.  Personally, I like to keep effort and duration separate so as not to confuse anyone...including me, so I use days for duration and hours for work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I use all three ways of estimating progress and remaining work.  Physical %, work %, and % complete for duration.  All three answer the question of when you will finish in a different way so all three metrics are strong indicators and can indicate differently.  If you depend on only one, then you may over- or under-estimate your finish.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Break down your work so you can manage it.  This could mean that you would need to break down work to very low levels for some packages while remaining high on others.  The question you need to answer is: the level at which I broke this package down can I answer how progress is being made and where my risks are with a decent degree of confidence.  And, you have a trade off here: the lower level you break the work down, the higher your costs are in tracking.  The higher level you break the work down, the less insight you have on what's going on.  I do not follow any type of rule, such as duration no more than x days or work no more than y hours.  I break it down until I'm comfortable and have the resources to track it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2016-08-12T13:51:33.333" LastActivityDate="2016-08-12T13:51:33.333" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19845" CreationDate="2016-08-12T14:10:06.830" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Others have answered Q1 &amp;amp; Q3 well; I'll add only the observation that my girlfriend is working on projects with a 10 year duration; most of my projects are measured in &amp;lt; 2 months.  We're going to give different answers to those questions and it is entirely appropriate that we do so.  You must consider total project duration and Organizational Process Assets in the answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I have seen many manager will update &quot;% complete&quot; to update a task progress. Is this perfect way to capture process?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there were anything that were &quot;perfect&quot; then project managers would be paid minimum wage.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;% complete is an opportunity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;strong&gt;define&lt;/strong&gt; % complete when you define the work package, then you can update the % complete and gain an understanding of progress. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you work in one of the areas where % complete is obvious (e.g. &quot;Paint this 10x10 wall), then you're lucky.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't work in that kind of area - my projects involve a lot of software integration, which makes it effectively impossible to determine the hours spent or the physical percent complete.  Subject Matter Experts spend the majority of their time discussing problems, and there is generally no way to tell when they're done until they're done.   I also work primarily in a time &amp;amp; materials contract environment where the cost of labor is not the primary concern.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this kind of arena, where % complete is effectively impossible to determine, then the &lt;strong&gt;key is to &lt;em&gt;define&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;agree&lt;/em&gt; on the definition.&lt;/strong&gt;  I use the work breakdown structure dictionary for this purpose. Every work package should have a definition of % complete.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example: for many documentation tasks, we have a convention that when you start the task and set up the document, that is 10% done. When you have the first draft ready for coordination that is 30% done. When you submit to the customer for review &amp;amp; edit that is 60% done. When the customer accepts the document it is 100% done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example: For one class of reports, we use 50% to indicate that the report is complete and in peer review, and 90% to indicate that it has been submitted to the customer for review &amp;amp; edit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A counterexample: When I'm sitting in a meeting and I hear a project specialist say something like, &quot;OK, there has been some progress, so let's just advance this task by 5%....&quot; I get sick to my stomach.  At that point I have &lt;em&gt;zero&lt;/em&gt; confidence in their schedule, their variance, their earned value management, their risk management, etc.  They are managing the project by gut and rumor and concealing it with fancy % values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-08-16T12:51:50.590" LastActivityDate="2016-08-16T12:51:50.590" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19840" CreationDate="2016-08-12T14:46:53.300" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A part of the equation not obvious is the agency's experience with the existing code and your client. That factor could be significant. Or simply it could be a typical vendor relationship, money in, work out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possible improvement to the situation would be to work towards them becoming a Trusted Key Partner. As they work with both you and the code,  seek to develop mutual trust and respect. Return to them as much as possible for work. As their confidence and knowledge of the system increase there will be less risk for them. You might then be able to manage your budget as they manage their risk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25527" LastActivityDate="2016-08-12T14:46:53.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19850" CreationDate="2016-08-12T19:24:44.827" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is difficult to answer. At a glance, you're asking the kind of question that would make an agile practitioner wince. Your reasoning also reads as if you're prioritizing your personal (&quot;the few&quot;) comfort higher than the team's (&quot;the many&quot;) success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Setting that aside, some questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you say &quot;they have decided&quot;, who is they? Management? The development team? What's the role of these requirements in your project? When are they written relative to the rest of the project cycle, who writes and maintains them, and who is their audience? Where does the audience tend to work from?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the team made this decision, shutting it down unilaterally means you&#xA;  are &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; agile, please gather your things. If management made this&#xA;  decision, start by talking to your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're defining full requirements up front (this is the part that tends to cause wincing), then the most critical audience is the development team, and they hopefully start at JIRA or some other task-oriented tool (friends don't let friends use Confluence as a task manager).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, the document layout matters a lot less than keeping the contents linked to the JIRA tasks for implementation. If your team is using stories, each story in JIRA should be a hub and a home page for all of the information your team needs to build it from start to finish. If your team knows they can start from the story and find a clear path to the Confluence page, it doesn't really matter where that page is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're interested in some documentation layout ideas, and you're using things like stories and epics, consider looking into &lt;a href=&quot;http://jpattonassociates.com/user-story-mapping/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;user story mapping&lt;/a&gt; for a two-dimensional way of looking at the bigger picture and forming a documentation scheme from that. It plays very nicely with Initiative &gt; Epic &gt; Story hierarchy along with free-form Theme tagging (in case you ever buy into Atlassian's Portfolio product). This sort of hierarchy + tags scheme maps to a Confluence page tree + page labels approach quite painlessly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also aligns with JIRA and Confluence's native prescription. Confluence's out-of-the-box requirement templates behave like Epic pages with Story tables, and JIRA Agile's Epic management has Confluence page linking plastered all over it. Atlassian &lt;em&gt;wants&lt;/em&gt; you to make Epics the smallest unit of 'page' in Confluence, so go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just try to remember that requirements up front are themselves very much a product, and like a product they have their own requirements and customers who have a say. Make sure whoever will actually be using your requirements has an active role in deciding how they'll be delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16138" LastActivityDate="2016-08-12T19:24:44.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19850" CreationDate="2016-08-13T06:41:12.973" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remember that the Agile approach is focused on &lt;em&gt;responding to change&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To achieve this it is useful to not commit early to detailed, written requirements. That is where the concept of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/user-stories&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;user stories&lt;/a&gt; came from. A user story is not a detailed requirement, &lt;em&gt;instead it is an invitation to a conversation&lt;/em&gt;. It is the conversation that communicates the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, as you point out, this approach can make it difficult to view the big picture. So my suggestion would be to have &lt;em&gt;just enough&lt;/em&gt; detail in Confluence to give your team an overview of the design. What 'just enough' is will vary from team to team and from project to project. Try and find a happy medium between lots of detail and lots of flexibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can an &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/spotlight/mike-cohn/march-2014/agile-user-stories-epics-and-themes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;epic&lt;/a&gt; be a start page or profile page? User stories and epics are there primarily for the benefit of the Product Owner and stakeholders. They are focused on explaining to the non-technical what is going to be delivered, rather than being an aid to implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer to your question is an epic can be a start page or profile page if that approach is useful to the Product Owner and stakeholders as well as to the development team. I can certainly remember projects where this was true, but it won't be true all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-08-13T06:41:12.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16196" CreationDate="2016-08-13T08:14:48.717" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should use import map in import wizard to achieve this. For more details you can refer to the following article&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;6 Practical Scenarios Where Excel Import is Useful - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mpug.com/articles/6-practical-scenarios-where-excel-import-is-useful/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mpug.com/articles/6-practical-scenarios-where-excel-import-is-useful/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will also find some other useful techniques of importing in this article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25305" LastActivityDate="2016-08-13T08:14:48.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19858" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19861" CreationDate="2016-08-13T18:07:06.107" Score="1" ViewCount="1036" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our team has 1 BA, 3 devs and 1 QA. We are trying to follow &lt;code&gt;SCRUM&lt;/code&gt; as much as possible and since recently the term &lt;code&gt;Risk management&lt;/code&gt; was not a part of our dictionary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the past few months our team had to work on a part of our product which is very old, most of the people who have implemented it are no longer part of the company and the domain itself is pretty fragile and at the same time, complex, so we end up with continuously delivering bad code in every meaning of the word. The testing also get worse since the tester (we had 2, now it's only 1) was/is not yet familiar with this part of the application and together with the huge amount of bad code and the lack of experience the end result was poor performance sprint after sprint. Sometimes finishing the stories but introducing bugs in the system, other times, not able to finish what we have committed to and sometimes a mix of both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, there was a proposal from our manager to try and adopt risk management as part of our working process. As it is right now, the idea is that there is nobody personally responsible for the risk management related stuff. We decided that for now this should be obligation of each member of our team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we have done was to make some sort of brainstroming and try and come up with as many risks as we can identify and then try to investigate each individual risk and find solution to each one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though the above approach seems good enough for some of the members of our team (for now) I personally don't find it very constructive. Past weeks or two I've read a lot of articles about this topic. I know I can't become a risk manager for 2 weeks and it will take a lot more than several articles to gain the knowledge necessary but I what I see is that there are people who have came to the same conclusions as me and now I would like to go even deeper on the topics that I find most burning for my particular case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So straight to the point. During the brainstorming we were able to identify a lot of &quot;risks&quot; but analyzing the results I came to the conclusion that they are not the root cause of the problem but just indicators that something is really going on bad. We have identified a lot of risks like &quot;Deploying code with bugs on live&quot;, &quot;skipping tests&quot;, &quot;Performing tests which don't cover the full functionality&quot;, &quot;Deploying partially implemented functionality&quot; and so on, but for those are not the real risks, those are just the idicators/symptoms of something more general. And I don't know if in terms of risk management it's good idea to generalize things so much, but for me there is on basic risk which is - &quot;Delivering of bad product&quot; and a lot of so called &lt;code&gt;event trees&lt;/code&gt; to get to realization of that risk, where most of the events are triggered by the same thing - a lack of knowledge in the team about this part of the product, and maybe just not enough experience in the software development at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason to write this question is because I don't know to what extent the risk management should deal with these problems and what is just, how to say... just a team issue. From my prespective, it's useless to focus on a risk like &quot;Deploying a code with bugs on live&quot; if it's obvious that still the team is struggling with getting familiar with the whole complexity of the project and all hidden interactions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What happens is that every time I try to squeeze more time for certain task because I know from experience that certain types of tasks are historically difficult and potentially hide a lot of complications once you start to work on them, I get the response that I'm basing my request on fears and that quite the opposite - if there is something that we already have done (even though it's not 1 to 1 the same) and already we had to deal with some of the problem then now we should need less time, and it should be easier for the team this time. I must admit, this sounds quite logical and it's hard to find arguments against that except the reality that despite all logic, more than often even though it seems that we are hitting the same wall, it's actually &lt;code&gt;almost&lt;/code&gt; the same wall and this &lt;code&gt;almost&lt;/code&gt; usually leads to the fact that we have to invest the same amount of time as the previous time and even worse it seems like we haven't learn our lessons and repeat old mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, it's hard for me to decide how much it's due to the fact that the team is not able to learn fast enough, and how much of the problem is due to the fact that we leave the same thing to hit us twice the same way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read that the best way to identify risks is the experience, and problems that you or the team had in the past. This sentence makes me think that this case is not completely out of scope of the risk management theory. However, I must admit that having not the same, but similar issue more than once and not being able to deal with them in fasted and cleaner way is also a problem of experience, abilities of the team itself. But in 2 weeks sprint it's hard to hit a problem, learn from it, and on the third week to be able to quickly solve similar issue. It's a matter of learning and learning takes time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that I find almost useless is to waste time trying to solve symptoms when, at least for me, the root cause is clear but it just requires more time to overcome it, like the issue with learning and getting better. For me it's a risk to take a story where you know from previous experience that there might be hidden complications but I can not find a lot of arguments why this is risk and not just say... incompetence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would really like to make clear for myself is - what part of the above may be considered as risk. What should be dealt with the tools of risk management (and how) and what do you think about the things that stay outside the scope of risk management. I know that this team is capable, I know this team lack experience and I think that it will be a huge waste of time and effort if we decide and go for solving issues which looks much more like symptoms than a root cause and how do you think such issue should be handled?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25532" LastActivityDate="2020-12-29T14:54:01.873" Title="Is lack of knowledge/experience in the dev team a risk according to the risk management theory" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11486" CreationDate="2016-08-13T22:04:37.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've adopted a system where I am using Jira portfolio to map out the initiative in high level Initiative-&gt;EPIC-&gt;Story hierarchy. This can come from a traditional project plan or a story mapping exercise, using Post-its. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I attach the EPIC-&gt;Story list to a project that I've labeled &quot;Feature Grooming&quot;. We then put this through a workflow of Stakeholder Review, Engineering Review, then &quot;ready for prioritization&quot;. There is also a Parking Lot, for issues we decide not to assess at this time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I then move the tickets from the Feature Grooming project over to the actual Project Backlog, where they will be executed by the engineers. The engineers can then use my stories to map sub-tasks, thus keeping the hierarchy in tact. I can &quot;break&quot; if engineers go right to the backlog and write a task/story ticket. But for the most part those are one-offs that I can catch-up with later. There is a good free add-on for creating multiple sub-tasks call Qucik-Sub tasks that help the engineers quickly enter linked sub-tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.hascode.plugin.jira-quick-subtasks/server/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.hascode.plugin.jira-quick-subtasks/server/overview&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24110" LastActivityDate="2016-08-13T22:04:37.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19858" CreationDate="2016-08-14T02:18:27.153" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of what you are looking as risk, appears to be process deficiencies. (A deficient process is a risk and should be mitigated.)  Identifying the risk and cost of the various outcomes of the deficient process may help you focus your process improvement efforts.  It appears the main risk is introducing bugs into production, and it has a high probability. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actions like &quot;skipping tests&quot;, &quot;Performing tests which don't cover the full functionality&quot;, &quot;Deploying partially implemented functionality&quot; and so on are factors that may or may not lead to &quot;Deploying code with bugs on live&quot;.  Review which of these contribute to or could mitigate any introduced bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the code is old, complex and fragile, there are several process issues that I would expect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The code likely doesn't have automated unit tests.  These may go a long way to mitigating the risks.  Before modifying code, the developers should create a reasonable set of unit tests to ensure that their changes don't break existing functionality.  The changes should also have unit tests, so that the change can be verified. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having the developers peer review each others code is another technique that often uncovers issues.  You may want to try other techniques like pair programming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have often worked on many systems where incomplete functionality was released.  There are various mechanisms for controlling whether the code is active.  New functionality that depends on a new code value can often be kept inactive by not introducing that code value into production.  Other code may need a switch mechanism, for which I prefer a disable flag.  Flags can add additional complexity, so you may want to remove them when the code is complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2016-08-14T02:18:27.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19858" CreationDate="2016-08-14T08:56:32.267" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the benefits of using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt; framework is that it &lt;em&gt;reduces risk&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does it do it? Well risk is all about surprises. Often that means thinking you will get X amount of work done, but finding that you have only got Y amount of work done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With Scrum, rather than guess at what we will get done we &lt;em&gt;measure&lt;/em&gt; actual progress. That is not just progress in completing development tasks, but true progress in terms of completing functionality to a stated standard (a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/multiple-levels-of-done&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;definition of done&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take the example from your question. The team is working in an area of the code they are not familiar with and that is not well built. This is clearly going to have an impact on the rate of progress of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum approach would be to first agree the definition of done. Perhaps the team will look to refactor each component that they work with to get it to a minimimum quality standard? Perhaps they will document any un-documented code? Perhaps they will do more code reviews as the code is so problematic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the team has agreed the definition of done they start work. In the first time-boxed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-sprint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sprint&lt;/a&gt; they see how much they can get to &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt;. That does not include work still in progress or technical tasks that on their own deliver no business value. No, the true progress is how much functionality is &lt;em&gt;potentially shippable&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the first sprint the team sits down and works out how much they completed. They then use that as a guide for future sprints. After a few sprints the team has a &lt;em&gt;realistic&lt;/em&gt; idea of their capacity. This allows them to make a stab at how long it will take to do work in the future. Now this may well come as a bit of a shock. Often using this approach reveals that the team's capacity is nowhere near as large as was imagined. But at least the team is being realistic now and hence has much reduced the &lt;em&gt;risk&lt;/em&gt; of surprises.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum doesn't stop there. Not only does it encourage the team to be realistic in measuring it's capacity, but also it encouragest he team to think of ways to improve ('inspect and adapt'). It is possible by continually reviewing how things are going that the team can find ways to improve their effectiveness and hence improve their capacity to do work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2016-08-14T10:26:19.280" LastActivityDate="2016-08-14T10:26:19.280" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19862" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19863" CreationDate="2016-08-14T17:17:02.953" Score="1" ViewCount="176" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently we are following a lot of the &lt;code&gt;Scrum&lt;/code&gt; routines like stand ups, refinements, planning 1/2, demo, retro... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The past few months we were heading downwards showing poor performance and delivering bad product/code at the end of the sprint. At first glance it seems as if we are too optimistic when we are planning and committing. After that, during the sprint we hit a lot of problems, and due to the lack of time which partially is caused by the poor commitment we end up with what I've stated at the start of the post - badly implemented features with a lot of bugs. Our PM suggested to try and include some sort of risk management during our refinements/planning which sounds reasonable since it's obvious that there are things that we do not take into consideration during the refinement and when we actually hit a problem it's usually during the sprint when we are already committed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After some investigation about risk management in Scrum I end up with the idea that maybe Scrum has it's own risk management implemented in it's very nature. The daily stand ups with the questions &quot;What have I done yesterday&quot;, &quot;What problems did I hit&quot;, &quot;What I'm gonna do today&quot; sounds to me like a pretty good risk investigation and the retro meeting at the end of sprint being a lot longer than an usual stand up meeting is giving a chanse to analyze in more depth things that the team thinks are important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since Scrum methodology itself has a lot or rituals that are taking from the time of the team, along with some additions specific for our team like having intentions written for each story, having technical design document (very high level one but still..) we already have somewhat heavy process and I'm wondering is there really some truth in what I think, that retros and stand ups could be a good replacement of standard risk management and could these or other Scrum rituals/routines be used in order to better our risk management rather than including entirely new methodology in our work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25532" LastActivityDate="2016-08-15T19:10:04.703" Title="Are retrospectives and daily stand ups replacement of risk management" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19862" CreationDate="2016-08-14T20:53:27.657" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like &lt;code&gt;Scrum&lt;/code&gt; practices have been adopted using a &lt;code&gt;cargo cult&lt;/code&gt; approach.  If you are consistently delivering poor quality results then you are missing some practices.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would consider &quot;What problems did I hit&quot; to be a significant question. Addition detail is needed.  Was it solved?  If so, how was it solved? If not, what needs to happen to get it solved?  What impact will it have on the sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a risk management perspective, examine your processes with a view to answering the question: &quot;If we eliminated the process what is the risk that code quality would decrease?&quot;.  Before adopting a new process, consider how likely it is to increase code quality?  There are well-researched data on the effectiveness of a number of techniques.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When planning consider the risk that the estimate is wrong.  For things that are very similar to other you have done successfully, the risk should be low.  If your team does not have a clear understanding of how to implement the solution, then risk would normally be high.  Do the same with how certain your understanding of the story is/will be.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take some time to understand the techniques you are using.  One of the best decisions I ever made was to spend a couple of months researching development processes before launching a major project.  That project was delivered ahead of schedule with higher quality than normal.  Consider my comments on &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1361/who-pays-for-learning-curve&quot;&gt;Who pays for learning curve?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2016-08-15T02:10:24.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18771" CreationDate="2016-08-15T02:19:41.593" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bugs are your deliverables. You should not be afraid of them or make anyone afraid. You should be embracing them, encouraging everybody to find and report them, as much as possible. You should never punish your team or programmers for bugs! That would be a terrible mistake. Watch this video: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DYr8GYzJ6Q&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DYr8GYzJ6Q&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2016-08-15T02:19:41.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18685" CreationDate="2016-08-15T03:33:33.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you described is &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Leave management plugins&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;. They are used to manage leave days of employee - employee can apply for leave days, managers can approve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I checked out some leave management plugin, such as&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redmine.org/plugins/leave_management_system&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.redmine.org/plugins/leave_management_system&lt;/a&gt;, but it seems&#xA;  that it does not support your &quot;automatically extend length&quot; function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there are many reasons not do build the function:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I suppose when you talked about task length, you were talking about &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;estimation length&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. Because actual time is logged independently. If the estimation length is automatically extended, it will &lt;strong&gt;distorts&lt;/strong&gt; the numbers. In short sprint (2-week for example), one 16-hour task can become 40-hour task if the assignee leave for 3 days.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In Scrum this function is not actually helpful&lt;/strong&gt;. You need to adapt to change frequently, which means you need to always know your position. And knowing your position means you need to remember who is doing which, which one will leave on which days, which tasks currently on this sprint and who should be in charge of the task if original assignee is absent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People often leave unplanned. For example if they are sick, they can't plan it. In case of holiday, they plan it early and give it to you early. You should put it to calendar, and &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;the best way to deal with this situation is not to &quot;extend task length&quot;, but to figure out who is the substitute to handle what needs to be done.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21101" LastActivityDate="2016-08-15T03:33:33.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19867" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-15T03:47:44.263" Score="2" ViewCount="1286" Body="&lt;p&gt;DevOps – a cultural and professional IT movement focused on changing the mindset of how organizations function – will no doubt make a significant impact across many companies. In my companies, we have a portfolio of products that needs no downtime delivery. We want to apply DevOps, so as the scrum master, how can I contribute to the process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21101" LastActivityDate="2016-08-15T07:12:55.283" Title="As a Scrum Master, what could I do to encourage devops in my company?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;devops&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19867" CreationDate="2016-08-15T07:12:55.283" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master you influence the development approach by coaching and advising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some areas you might want to consider coaching in are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The benefits of cross-skilling and having a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-shaped_skills&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;t-shaped&lt;/a&gt; skills profile&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Treating &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrastructure_as_Code&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;infrastructure as code&lt;/a&gt; (such as including config in source control and testing it alongside the code)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Encourage more training in the appropriate areas&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Evangalise about the benefits of having a joined up approach to development and operations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-08-15T07:12:55.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19795" CreationDate="2016-08-15T09:11:47.233" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest you to find the outcome of this behavior. You need &lt;em&gt;facts&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it bring the team's velocity down? By how much?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much time has he been working on &quot;invisible&quot; tasks? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did other developers leave the team because of it? How many?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did the over engineering cause bugs or delays? How much?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you want to talk about it in retrospective, talk with him &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt; and warn him that you're about to bring the subject with the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25545" LastActivityDate="2016-08-15T09:11:47.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19872" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19896" CreationDate="2016-08-15T10:57:41.560" Score="5" ViewCount="1105" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the Scrum Masters came to situation, that they want to describe their role to people without knowledge about agile, about development processes even about software developing etc..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can you explain - to your mother, grandma, friends in pub - what are you doing at work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20439" LastActivityDate="2017-03-03T11:14:52.843" Title="How can I explain Scrum Master role to my grandma?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19872" CreationDate="2016-08-15T12:05:33.507" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Scrum Master is a role in a team which uses Scrum, which is one of the Agile methodologies of software engineering. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum Master is a servant-leader of the team. &#xA;He is a person responsible for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;maintaining proper understanding of Scrum in the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;facilitating Scrum events (meetings), which are ment to make work of the team transparent to others (like stakeholders, managers, etc) and to adapt (be agile) what the team is doing to current requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;solving the problems, which team faces (not only technical ones, but organisational as well)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25548" LastActivityDate="2016-08-15T12:05:33.507" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19795" CreationDate="2016-08-15T16:11:32.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another approach is use Sailors &amp;amp; Anchors ... and see what happens ... I believe in your scenario it will work very well ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically Sailors will be the the things that help you sail through the sprint and Anchors will be the blockers . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a bit modified  form of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.innovationgames.com/speed-boat/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.innovationgames.com/speed-boat/&lt;/a&gt; taken from Innovation games. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6688" LastEditorUserId="6688" LastEditDate="2016-08-16T13:00:44.343" LastActivityDate="2016-08-16T13:00:44.343" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19862" CreationDate="2016-08-15T19:10:04.703" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you are missing one of the key aspects of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is how it works:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly the team decides on it's &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/multiple-levels-of-done&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;definition of done&lt;/a&gt;. This is all the things you expect to do when you deliver good quality finished features. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next you get to work. At the end of a time-boxed sprint you measure how much work you got to your definition of done (do not include work that is still in progress). This amount then becomes your guide for what you can achieve in future sprints. You may find in some future sprints you do a bit more or a bit less. A lot of teams will calculate their capacity (called &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/know-exactly-what-velocity-means-to-your-scrum-team&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;velocity&lt;/a&gt;) using a rolling average of what they got &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt; in the last 3-4 sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this way the team finds out what it's true capacity to do work is. There is no such thing as 'being optimistic in your planning'. There is only what you have &lt;em&gt;measured&lt;/em&gt; to be your team's capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find that your team regularly does not get all the planned work in a sprint completed then the answer is very simple. Put less into future sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-08-15T19:10:04.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19834" CreationDate="2016-08-15T21:00:26.090" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;James,&#xA;I would create and apply a specific Task Calendar for these activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the Project Ribbon, click &quot;Change Working Time&quot;, then &quot;Create New Calendar.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give it a name like &quot;Slack Tide,&quot; and make it as a copy of the default 24 hour calendar.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now, still in &quot;Change Working Time,&quot; select your new Slack Tide calendar and create an exception for each single day that you need to enter the slack tide periods.  That is, give the first exception line a name like &quot;20160815 Slack Tides,&quot; and assign the date (same date start and finish).  Then click &quot;Details&quot; and assign up to 5 &quot;Working times:&quot; intervals for that date. (5 is the max with this method.) Note that the default is to set nonworking times, so just change the radio button.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After your work time exceptions are all created, just assign your new calendar as the &quot;Task Calendar&quot; for the specific tasks affected.  The work will be scheduled accordingly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your entire project is scheduled this way, then you could apply your new &quot;Slack Tide&quot; calendar as the background &quot;Working Times&quot; for the Gantt Chart.  Then the basis for the working durations is clear.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck, tom&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Edit: You could also apply your new calendar to a resource and achieve the same effect, though I see that as an unneeded step.  As described, the timing restrictions seem more a function of the task than the resource.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastEditorUserId="25557" LastEditDate="2016-08-18T13:18:13.210" LastActivityDate="2016-08-18T13:18:13.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19877" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-15T22:38:43.210" Score="2" ViewCount="139" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently, I am performing a research focused on the effects of rotation in software development. &#xA;So, I'm interested in understand how developers, software engineers, testers, that is, all individuals participating in the software development process, see and feel about this practice of rotation among projects or teams, that many companies apply. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I was wondering, if someone around here has experienced this in his/her job. Like, you are in the middle of a project and the manager rotated you to another project. You had to leave your team, your tasks were assigned to another person and you start to work in a different project with a different team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to know how does it feel, like, how was this experience? How did it happen?&#xA;What were the positive aspects (good things that the rotation brought)?&#xA;What were the negative aspects (bad things that the rotation brought)?&#xA;How did it affect your performance at work?&#xA;How did it affect your previous team?&#xA;How do you see or what do you think about this process of rotation among different projects in the middle of the development?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am very thankful in advance for all the answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25558" LastEditorUserId="25558" LastEditDate="2016-08-16T01:18:32.727" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T01:03:23.130" Title="What are the effects of rotating of professionals among different projects during software development?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19877" CreationDate="2016-08-16T06:49:50.350" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently a Project Manager, but I have some years working as developer, and I can tell you my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was changing on some projects when I was quite a fresh developer. In fact, I think that &lt;strong&gt;the little experienced you are, the more likely that PM will ask you to change&lt;/strong&gt; projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;You have little experience overall or little experience in the project. In all cases you are not key member and your moving out of&#xA;  project will not affect its status.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;When you are not very experienced and young, you are more eager to learn new technology. Manager can move you to researching project,&#xA;  sometimes not-very-important project for testing some idea and&#xA;  technology. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;In Offshore Sofware Development Center (OSDC) model, clients can pick the most experienced members to work for them and they don’t want&#xA;  and will not allow replacing their current developers with others,&#xA;  especially when I don’t know about the new people’s expertise.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is not to say, experienced members do not have to move. When current projects finish, when manager want to build team with both seniors and juniors, when seniors actively ask for a move, etc.., they will be assigned to new projects.  In my opinion, team is formed mostly to do projects. Team and projects go together, &lt;strong&gt;no managers create team just for the sake of creating team&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back to my story: &lt;strong&gt;The 1st move&lt;/strong&gt; was when I moved from Php team to ios team. Actually the team had only 1 member – me. The company which was doing well in web technology, now want to experiment in new field – mobile application. I was young, eager and super fast in learning new technology, so I was moved to the project. I lasted for 6 months and I finished the project. &lt;strong&gt;The experience was quite positive&lt;/strong&gt; – I learnt about mobile technology which I never had chance to learn, and I was quite enjoyed the technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The 2nd move is not a good one.&lt;/strong&gt; After the 6-month project I was one again moved to Java Web team. Reason: the company somehow did not want to proceed with creating mobile team. They had projects in Java that was more lucrative and less risky. At the moment I got the feeling of &lt;strong&gt;unstability, uncertainty&lt;/strong&gt; that if I kept changing that frequently, I would end up no expert in (many) technologies. So it was negative experience for me, to the extent that I thought of changing company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, &lt;strong&gt;human resource changes should not happen in middle of development&lt;/strong&gt;, unless you are convinced that there are something of importance that need to address, you don't have other options than moving people, and you have strong willingness of people who move. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise you will have many problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Replanning of current projects because of human changes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Feeling of uncertainty and unstability resulting in low morale&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21101" LastEditorUserId="21101" LastEditDate="2016-08-16T07:07:04.713" LastActivityDate="2016-08-16T07:07:04.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19881" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19883" CreationDate="2016-08-16T08:51:47.090" Score="3" ViewCount="634" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some companies have real, physical Kanban boards (each board for each project). In daily meeting the team would gather in front of Kanban board and perform the meeting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) What values does a physical Kanban board offer? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) How to make and use it? I mean, who is going to cut paper to make &quot;card&quot;, write down on the card, etc..? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Is it really worth the effort?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21101" LastActivityDate="2016-08-19T15:41:27.797" Title="How to use a physical Kanban board?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;&lt;kanban-board&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19882" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20472" CreationDate="2016-08-16T09:02:29.063" Score="4" ViewCount="345" Body="&lt;p&gt;Very often you may want to breakdown a project into big User Story and from there you create small tasks. Depending on how your company/team works, you may have many-level hierarchy of tasks. &lt;strong&gt;Looking at the hierarchy is quite helpful because you know which tasks belong to which parts&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, hierarchical view does not go together with Kanban board. For example, Trello does not support card hierarchy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some company uses real, physical Kanban board. That case will be similar to trello - cards are cards and cannot be represented physically as &quot;children&quot; of other tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Without hierarchical view, you will not be able to see &quot;big picture&quot; of project. How do you overcome it?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;=============&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer&lt;/strong&gt;: I am currently managing projects using Redmine which supports both hierarchical view and Kanban-view (although Kanban-view is rather too simple and works not as smooth as Trello) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21101" LastActivityDate="2016-11-10T22:08:47.117" Title="Kaban board lacks of hierarchical view - how to overcome it" Tags="&lt;redmine&gt;&lt;kanban-board&gt;&lt;trello&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19881" CreationDate="2016-08-16T12:34:39.583" Score="8" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The physical Kanban board offers the face-to-face meeting approach. It necessitates all team members to come together. Moreover the feeling for &quot;What I'm now responsible for&quot; increases. We introduced a physical Kanban board at our customer once before we shifted to a digital one. The method is initially better taught in a physically way&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get a Whiteboard and structure your Kanban Columns with a &lt;strong&gt;permanent&lt;/strong&gt; marker and a ruler. Write down the task on stickies (no cutting paper needed). To give some incentive, invest in good quality markers (e.g. Sharpie not the once you've never wanted to write with). For each team-member use a magnet with it's name on it and put the magnet on the sticky (the task).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yes it's worth the effort. The physically celebrated meeting teaches the team the process and gives some space for adjusting the process to the peoples preferences. You may like to switch to a digital approach, when the team has manifested the process. But when your team isn't distributed, what's the matter with facing up once a day in front of the board?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25565" LastActivityDate="2016-08-16T12:34:39.583" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10647" CreationDate="2016-08-16T14:18:33.557" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an old thread, BUT since I stumbled across it I thought I would point out that the data shows 8 project per PM in high performing organizations. 11 project per PM in LOW performing organizations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmsolutions.com/blog/view/optimal-project-manager-load/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pmsolutions.com/blog/view/optimal-project-manager-load/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25567" LastActivityDate="2016-08-16T14:18:33.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19840" CreationDate="2016-08-16T15:41:31.747" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you will reduce the 'waste' time if you batch up multiple problems and ask for as many to be fixed as possible in a week rather than sending single problems with a cut off time of half a day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developers will naturally look at the each problem with the other problems in mind, so instead of investigating a single problem at a time and giving up when the clock hits 5h, they will be thinking about the harder problems while they fix the easier ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2016-08-16T15:41:31.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19877" CreationDate="2016-08-17T00:57:44.113" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The disadvantages of mid-project rotation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Interpersonal trust can be compromised&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Loss of subject matter expertise (vs technical expertise).  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Disruption of the team's emotional intelligence. The team reverts back from performing to storming.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Creation of survivor guilt/regret&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communication capabilities disrupted&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;External stakeholders become anxious over project turn-over&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resolve an intractable personality conflict&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Re-balance technical skill sets according to the stage of the projects maturation (swap a network architect for an information architect)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Replace less effective personnel with more effective personnel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Downsize the project as workload tapers off toward project completion. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Free up staff for new projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Substitute senior staff with less experienced staff now that deliverables are defined and underway&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8524" LastEditorUserId="8524" LastEditDate="2016-08-17T01:03:23.130" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T01:03:23.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19887" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19905" CreationDate="2016-08-17T01:44:52.027" Score="2" ViewCount="266" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a small mobile development team (6 developers, 3 QA, 1 team leader). We're a little new to agile, and are just learning the ropes/making mistakes as we go. The whole team reports to a project manager in another country, who in turn talks to the client directly. This is done because of language barrier issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are currently trying to adapt an agile procedure, where we do weekly scrums. For each release, here is the current flow:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The specifications are taken from the client in the beginning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After studying what the client wants to do, we prepare prototypes and questions/clarifications and have the project manager in the other country reword and prepare for the client.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After the client replies, we either proceed to step 4 or repeat step 2 until everything is aligned.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We start implementing the specifications.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm aware that not every issue or error case in the specifications is determined in step 2, and may still arise in the later phases of the current release. However, there are times when, in step 4, the developers still get cases (sometimes edge cases) that they assert that the cases need to be handled and we should repeat step 2 again. It's currently giving the team a bad reputation to the manager, and most likely the company a bad reputation to the client. For these kinds of issues, is it better to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;lock the specifications and any questions once step 2 is done, and move all the other cases (unless critical) to the next release for fixing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;add more time to step 2 (this, however, is also risky since giving more time for the developers give them more time to slack off (e.g. - the deadline is still far, I can take a breather for now))&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am aware this is a case-to-case basis, but on a general note, which would be better? Or are there any other possible solutions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25574" LastActivityDate="2016-08-30T21:56:08.890" Title="How do you handle scheduling with developers who always come up with new cases in specifications?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19872" CreationDate="2016-08-17T01:54:33.133" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems like an ELI5 question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll be quoting this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Scrum master is a role in a team which uses a set of methodologies&#xA;  called Agile. A scrum meeting is a moment where the team team members&#xA;  talk about what they are doing, how they are going and if there are&#xA;  problems (blocks on the road) to achive the project goal. The scrum&#xA;  master coordinates this meeting; he reminds people of which are the&#xA;  current goals. Sometimes he is also responsible for the organization&#xA;  of other artifacts of the agile methodology like Kanban. If you&#xA;  were a kid in a new school the scrum master would be the kid which&#xA;  shows you around, help you to find your locker, introduce you to new&#xA;  people, help you to organize the books, etc. Notice that the scrum master is not a boss but a&#xA;  mediator of the interests of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2spe3n/eli5_scrum_masters/cnro7hv&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2spe3n/eli5_scrum_masters/cnro7hv&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest for things like these, just Google &quot;• &lt;em&gt;what you want explained in simpler terms&lt;/em&gt; • ELI5&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25574" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T01:54:33.133" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19840" CreationDate="2016-08-17T02:50:08.607" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is &lt;strong&gt;nothing wrong in the agency's business model&lt;/strong&gt; that you described. @Codegnome already explained it well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just want to suggest &lt;strong&gt;alternatives&lt;/strong&gt; when you have limited budget:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;1. Post the tasks on freelance networks such as elance, freelancer, etc.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The freelance networks will act as arbitrator, holding your money and only transfer to developers' account once the job is done. That way you can significantly reduce risk. One more plus point is that, many developers are very eager to build up profiles and they will work hard to finish the job even the payment is not comparable to effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Experiment&lt;/strong&gt; with some tasks and see how it costs. Once you are familiar and have trust in some particular developers, you can choose to only work with them only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Disadvantage is that despite the fact that there are many good&#xA;  developers on freelance network, sometimes you encounter a&#xA;  irresponsible one. You might not lose money, but your task is not done&#xA;  and you wasted effort in communicating with the developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;2. Find a freelance developer&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find a good developer on stackoverflow and github or other trusted sources. Connect with them directly. Ask them to do 1-2 small tasks (4-8h) as an experiment. If they do them well in reasonable time, you will trust him as your agency and pay for the done tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then each days you will provide him with some tasks and check the time he logged frequently. &lt;strong&gt;Put a limit&lt;/strong&gt; such as he can only log less than 30 hours per week.&#xA;I was developer and was working as agency, in this business model. The client appeared to be happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But since you get the high quality developer, their rate are often&#xA;  very high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;3. An outsourcing company.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both option 1 and 2 will need your effort to communicate and watch over agency's work frequently. If you don't want to spend much time on it, do as you are currently do - working with a company in their business model. Try it for a month and see yourself. You can also &lt;strong&gt;put a limit&lt;/strong&gt; such as 160 hours per month, to reduce risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21101" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T02:50:08.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18701" CreationDate="2016-08-17T04:18:50.023" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you &lt;strong&gt;create a Board&lt;/strong&gt;, it will ask if you want to create a board &lt;strong&gt;based off of a pre-existing project or projects, select this option&lt;/strong&gt;, and select all of the projects that you want to have represented in the Board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use &lt;strong&gt;filter&lt;/strong&gt; to only display tasks from projects that you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read more in &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/agile/jira-agile-resources/jira-agile-faq/how-do-i-get-a-board-to-point-to-multiple-projects&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://confluence.atlassian.com/agile/jira-agile-resources/jira-agile-faq/how-do-i-get-a-board-to-point-to-multiple-projects&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21101" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T04:18:50.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19881" CreationDate="2016-08-17T05:46:44.023" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given your questions, I assume you have not yet read some of the recommended books on Kanban or attended any Kanban training.  I highly recommend you start by reading the book - &quot;Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business&quot; by David J Anderson.  It answers all types of questions around the design and use of Kanban boards/ systems and the benefits that Kanban and some its practices - such as the Daily Standup or Daily Kanban meeting and the Replenishment meeting - provide to &quot;knowledge work&quot; teams such as IT or software or other business functions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, you can choose to get more reading and training on Lean/ Kanban, Agile and related topics to fully be able to adopt and implement Kanban and benefit from its capabilities. One place you can also look at is our website for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.swiftkanban.com/kanban/what-is-kanban/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;What is Kanban&lt;/a&gt; and related topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T05:46:44.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11893" CreationDate="2016-08-17T06:10:55.353" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer - you do not need another training to fulfil 35 hour contact requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;35 contact hours do not expire. For more details, you can read this article - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmbypm.com/pmp-pdu-validity/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pmbypm.com/pmp-pdu-validity/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, attending another training has many advantages. The main advantage is that you get access to latest exam material. You should read the following article to understand all the advantages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;6 Reasons To Do A PMP Training Again - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmbypm.com/pmp-training-again/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pmbypm.com/pmp-training-again/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25305" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T06:10:55.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19894" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-17T08:40:02.420" Score="4" ViewCount="2465" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have some task in my Jira backlog that I don't know if them should be inside a user story. There are tasks related with development, server, configuration, etc. User didn't ask to have those task/features but as a developer we know that we need to have them. e.g:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Minify code with gulp task&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could convert that task into a user story as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a user I want minimize website size so navigation is faster&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could change role for developer but &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.industriallogic.com/blog/as-a-developer-is-not-a-user-story/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;that will not be a user story&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a developer I want a automatic system that minify the code so website size is smaller&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this task a good example of creating user stories where there is not user story? A user story with (too) general tasks. e.g:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Configuration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or should I just have it as a simple task (no user story) in my backlog:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Minify code with gulp task&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other examples of technical user stories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change app name and icon&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Proxy api requests with nginx&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Buy domain&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Configure SSL&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25577" LastActivityDate="2016-10-06T07:32:52.367" Title="Technical user stories or development related tasks" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19894" CreationDate="2016-08-17T09:07:39.413" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Creating user stories is to get the conversation going and to give the team context to understand the problem at hand to create the correct solution. Also it forces the writer to think about the value it adds. Using something like &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt; makes sense here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the value of the technical tasks is clear I think using a user story format is just waste of time. Question yourself why you want to write it in such a format, what do you gain? Just for writing all tasks in the same format is a invalid reason if you ask me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example users do not want to minimize the website, that is the solution. They want it to be faster, but do they really or is it a developer thinking the users wants this? Writing a user story about &quot;Users wanting a faster website&quot; could lead to more solutions that just minimizing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question value, find a way to do it, do not limit yourself to the user story format. Find out what works for you for each different type of task. I would be fine with simple and clear tasks on my backlog as long as we can INVEST it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end it is just about getting the work done! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2016-10-06T07:32:52.367" LastActivityDate="2016-10-06T07:32:52.367" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19872" CreationDate="2016-08-17T12:44:55.593" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master you act as a coach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You guide the team continually improve so they can perform at their best and help remove obstacles so that they can focus on their work.  You work with management in order to promote a more productive working environment.  ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-sm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-sm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T12:44:55.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19887" CreationDate="2016-08-17T12:53:13.993" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You build based off of what is known at the time.  When something is discovered during development, it can go into another &quot;step 2&quot; discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team or the product manager want the specification to be complete before work begins and changes to them are not acceptable, then the question is whether or not you are not doing agile software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Review the Manifesto for Agile Software Development: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.agilemanifesto.org/&lt;/a&gt;  The four values and twelve principles are powerful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2016-08-17T17:24:10.153" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T17:24:10.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18746" CreationDate="2016-08-17T14:28:46.660" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are not alone in this problem.  Often times, individuals are placed in the role of Product Owner without understanding the role and its importance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much like the Sprint Goal, the product vision (provided by the Product Owner through collaboration with the customer) provides a common Focus for all involved: Scrum Team, customers, business stakeholders, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's good for the Product Owner to begin with epics.  Further understanding can be shared during Product Backlog refinement with the Development Team.  As a member of the Development Team, you want Product Backlog items with enough detail to complete the work and not necessarily a highly detailed specification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If refinement is done well, many questions will surface before work on that item begins.  Sometimes additional questions will arise during the Sprint Planning event.  Another place where the Product Owner can provide these answers or make a decision that the item needs to be re-prioritized until further clarification from the customer can be gathered.  The Product Owner is to be the one source of requirements for the Development Team&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While Scrum does not prohibit the Development Team from interacting with the customer, the value of Focus should make one consider the amount of such activities and the effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The place to bring up these concerns is the Sprint Retrospective event.  The behavior is affecting the Scrum Team's ability to deliver value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is The Scrum Guide being followed?  Do have an absentee Product Owner?  If there is no alternative, do what you can as a team and keep reiterating the impacts of the situation and possible solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-po&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-po&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T14:28:46.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19900" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-17T14:53:12.203" Score="-4" ViewCount="134" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum is based on velocity and using that forecast when something will be delivered, however most subcontractors charge by the hour, hence the two do not go hand in hand. In which event, I manage them using the kanban approach and measure cycle time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to apply Scrum to subcontractors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T15:04:44.470" Title="Is it possible to apply Scrum to time based sub contractors?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;subcontractor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18442" CreationDate="2016-08-17T14:55:39.133" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because the PSM from scrum.org is based upon the authoritative document, it is updated with each revision of The Scrum Guide.  Recently, they even modified the Scrum Master certifications into into three levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T14:55:39.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19902" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-17T14:59:09.840" Score="-1" ViewCount="116" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typical problems I have found that there is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a delay in communication, even after using project planning tools.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More delays. Remote worker not having the self discipline to work structured hours and subsequently lesser visibility from my side of knowing how they are spending their time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;less reliability, situations have arised where the remote worker disappears for a while.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen otherwise good workers that I have managed, go from being very efficient onsite then to making a lot of mistakes once they work remotely. This eats up a lot of time and energy, since I am finding that I am having to chase them up a lot more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2016-08-26T23:16:17.873" Title="Is it normal to find managing remote teams/subcontractors harder?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;remote-teams&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19900" CreationDate="2016-08-17T15:04:44.470" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is not based on velocity; velocity is a technique that can be used within the Scrum framework.  Hour estimation could be used as well; forecasting and execution could still be done in a Scrum or other time-boxed iteration context.  However, it sounds like a Kanban (pull) approach might feel better to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T15:04:44.470" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19881" CreationDate="2016-08-17T18:18:25.607" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A physical Kanban board acts as an &lt;em&gt;information radiator&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is useful for several reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It allows the team to coordinate their efforts by giving them the big picture. For example, they may notice that one column is filling up fast and realise there is a bottleneck. It allows them to &lt;em&gt;tune&lt;/em&gt; their workflow.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It helps with communication. A member of the team can glance up at the board and instantly know what work item is at what stage of development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It avoids confusion. Without a physical task board the team has to rely on continually updating each other. It is easy to miss something or forget to tell one member of the team. This could result in two people working on the same item, or many other forms of disfunction.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It advertises what the team is up to. For other people in your organisation that do not interact day-to-day with your team it might not be clear what your team is doing. If the team is busy this will be visually apparent from the board. This will encourage people outside of the team to avoid distracting the team or giving them superfluous work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It can be used to give a clear indication of priorities. The higher a work item is up the board, the higher it's priority.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have the team discuss the best approach to maintaining the Kanban board. You could have one team member tasked with creating the cards for new work items. Or you could share the responsibility around. Do what works best for your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is often useful to have a morning stand-up around the board. As each team member talks they also update the board by moving any cards they are working on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it worth the effort? Well try it and see. If you find that there is no change to the effectiveness of the team then it probably isn't worth the effort of maintaining the board. But if you find that the team is better coordinated and that less mistakes are being made then surely that justifies the time taken to keep the board up to date?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T18:18:25.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19887" CreationDate="2016-08-17T18:42:28.603" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main reason Agile came about is that people realised that change is inevitable in software development. This change comes from several sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requirements change - People are notoriously bad at defining requirements up front. They are much better at critiquing something they are shown.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical risk - Development is a tricky business and you often find once you start on a solution that you realise things you didn't know before.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The world around you changes - Team members get sick, meetings get re-organised, people change their minds. The world is full of change.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For many years people tried to fight change. They attempted to get better at doing requirements up front. They attempted to allow contingency for unexpected events. None of this really helped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your two suggestions follow this pattern. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is where Agile came in. With Agile change is not only accepted it is actually &lt;em&gt;encouraged&lt;/em&gt;. Once you accept change is going to happen you can build your processes around it happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to go for an Agile solution. Expect change to happen. Don't lock down how long you think things will take, but allow flexibility. Expect every time you show something to your customers to get back feedback and to have to make changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T18:42:28.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19881" CreationDate="2016-08-17T21:06:51.143" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) What values does a physical Kanban board offer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Visualize all team work using a very low-tech, low-budget tool while promoting face-2-face communication between team members, collaboration, and team-based problem solving.  Physical Kanban boards have been around since the 80's and continue to be used by many, many organizations to help with work visualization, staying on track, and keeping teams of people focused on solving the right problems.  Digital boards are becoming more and more popular with fairly flexible offerings from Jira, Rally, VersionOne, etc, but at the end of the day they all replicate the exact same behaviors you can drive on a team using a physical board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) How to make and use it? I mean, who is going to cut paper to make &quot;card&quot;, write down on the card, etc..?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3M and numerous other companies make stickies.  Index cards with tape work fine too.  Anyone that learned to write can create a Kanban card.  If you have $50 you can build a pretty sweet kanban board + tickets in very little time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Is it really worth the effort?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It takes less than an hour to create a physical kanban board.  All you need is a surface, some lanes (you can draw them with a marker of use tape), cards, and something to write with.  If an hour invested that helps promote collaboration, work transparency, and team-based problem solving for the life of a project or team seems like a large investment, you probably have deeper issues to fix first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hard part is getting the team to own the process and working agreements the kanban board represents ;).  Trying to create a kanban board is often the first step to achieving these behaviors, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T21:06:51.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19908" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19912" CreationDate="2016-08-18T01:10:27.357" Score="3" ViewCount="289" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently implementing Scrum and a switch to Ruby on Rails within my organization. We have a team of six developers, only two of whom have experience in Ruby on Rails. Two of the other developers are getting the hang of Rails relatively fast, but the third is reluctant, constantly complaining about Rails, and how she dislikes the framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have provided moral coaching, as well as several resources for them to pass the Rails curve as fast as possible, but I just can't seem to get this person on board by committing to our Sprint goals and work tools (i.e. Rails). Once she gets frustrated by something she goes into a mental block that ticks off the rest of the team (me included, although I handle the events in a calm manner). I think its more of a tantrum or fit rather than an actual technical issue in terms of learning the framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas or feedback that might help me be a better manager, and hopefully get this person on board?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21723" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-08-18T21:02:01.810" LastActivityDate="2016-08-20T22:33:58.500" Title="How can I deal with a developer who isn't on board with a new PM and programming framework?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19902" CreationDate="2016-08-18T10:26:28.837" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes that's normal. You need very open, disciplined and well motivated workers to have a remote setup work. Also, time difference and cultural differences add up if they are actually &lt;em&gt;remote&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also takes a while for the manager to get the same &quot;feel&quot; for the team. On premise you can walk into a room and &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; if the team is happy and on track or frustrated and late. Taking these subtle hints from a chat-room or mail instead of a real room takes practice too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a good question already: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/15244/how-to-manage-remote-developers&quot;&gt;How to manage remote developers?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to stress the need of real-time communication. Have a chatroom or messenger where you can keep in touch. It's better for you to keep in touch with them and &quot;feel&quot; how it's going and it's better for them to have a direct contact to you without getting lost in some mailbox for days.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2016-08-18T10:26:28.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19910" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19911" CreationDate="2016-08-18T12:09:44.173" Score="5" ViewCount="727" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team is adopting Scrum. When estimating story points for a backlog item, we use planning poker to reflect the team's average vision of the story's complexity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When estimating task hours within a story, should we plan based on the capacity of the person executing the task or on the team's average capacity? What happens if someone who is slower assumes that task? Should we then re-estimate the remaining work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9194" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-08-18T19:33:30.363" LastActivityDate="2016-08-20T17:05:09.163" Title="Should a team estimate tasks based on the executor's capacity or on the team average?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19910" CreationDate="2016-08-18T13:11:09.140" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have to balance two competing needs in project management: the need for accuracy and the need for flexibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Calculating task hours based on the executor's capacity will likely&#xA;be more accurate. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Calculating task hours based on the team average&#xA;will under/overrun depending on who is performing the work, but you&#xA;gain flexibility because ALL of your tasks are computed using the&#xA;same average.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As always, reality is specific to your situation. You, as the PM, must use judgement on the likelihood that another developer will take over a task once it's been assigned, then use the hours-calculation method most appropriate. This decision can also be dependent on your customers/stakeholders and their requirements for accuracy vs flexibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is to choose one method and go with it. Review the accuracy of the estimates over the next few sprints and gauge its efficacy then adjust your methods as needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a customer who is pushy on this topic, simply state your methodology &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; your plan to adjust. Good project management is about making a timely decision and implementing it and then reviewing the effects of the decision and adjusting as necessary. (It never really ends........)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21791" LastActivityDate="2016-08-18T13:11:09.140" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19908" CreationDate="2016-08-18T15:32:55.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way I've found to help a whole team or an individual team member get on board with a new project/technology/skill/necessaryevil is &quot;subversion&quot;. (note the tongue-in-cheek quotes)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A person who is heavily against a certain technology (in this case) is clearly feeling isolated or ignored or that their status in the group is being undermined. So your job as a PM is always going to involve managing the personalities of your team, and this is no exception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People want to feel that their position is secure, their input and opinions are valued, their voice is heard. So you're going to have to analyze why this person is feeling the way they are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Because they've never liked change of any kind? If so, then her grumbling is just a &quot;normal&quot; part of everyday life for this person (which makes them happy by the way, nothing really wrong with that).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Because they recommended Python-based server-side scripting and RoR was chosen instead, i.e. their opinion/input was not taken? If so, then she's feeling ignored and undervalued and it's going to take some ego massaging on your part to help her get over it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe hers is a philosophical objection to the way the Rails framework was implemented, and &quot;she would have done it differently&quot;. What framework philosophy does she support and why? If it's this situation, then she likely needs to feel that her technical guidance is valued and being applied to this transition. (In other words her position and status have been attacked.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So once you have the underlying cause figured out (and the descriptions above are only some of them and probably WAY too simplified), then as PM you must re-validate her position in the group by giving her work that eases her mind. So...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not liking change of any kind? Then choose to hear her comments as &quot;entertainment&quot; -- absolutely NOT laughing at her, but using good natured humor and support in encouraging her &quot;attitudes&quot;. (more easily said than done of course)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Her recommendation wasn't chosen? Then forestall her complaints by giving her a challenge to solve using Rails that would more or less force her to study the RoR framework and positively leverage the framework to get the job done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's a philosophical objection? It sounds like your project is way past the stage that a change away from Rails is possible, the commitment to Rails has already been made. If she is technically competent, she may have valid points (and she should be respectfully treated that her points are valid anyway). So ask her how to overcome these &quot;shortcomings&quot; in Rails and how any potential solutions she has can add value to your project as it is.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these solutions are simplistic of course, but hopefully give you an idea of how to get your whole team and the one dissenting developer to &quot;buy in&quot; to the new Rails framework. Make them own it. Address their objections by asking for their solution within the framework (i.e. tossing out Rails is not the answer). If you can get the developer focused on the details of overcoming their own objections, you get the buy-in you need and a more peaceful team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21791" LastActivityDate="2016-08-18T15:32:55.663" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19910" CreationDate="2016-08-18T15:51:47.420" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What do we know about time estimation?  It is inherently inaccurate for complex cognitive work regardless of what method is utilized.  Thus the preference for relative sizing.  Estimates are really best guesses.  What really matters is the empirical data that can be gathered after work has been completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprint Backlog progress can be measured by various methods.  As long as understanding of how progress is measured toward the Sprint Goal is Transparent, it doesn't matter what units of measure are used.  Some alternatives are number of tasks, Product Backlog item estimates, number of Sprint Backlog items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of method, an initial estimate is be made by the Development Team.  As each task is picked up by a Development Team member, and throughout the Sprint, that value should be updated to measure progress toward the Sprint Goal.  After all, that is its purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2016-08-20T17:05:09.163" LastActivityDate="2016-08-20T17:05:09.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19894" CreationDate="2016-08-18T18:02:19.513" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have some task in my Jira backlog&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where did they come from? Typically the Product Owner will be managing the product backlog and adding in user stories to signify what they want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;User didn't ask to have those task/features but as a developer we know that we need to have them&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then speak with the Product Owner and explain to them the value of the work. I'm sure the Product Owner will see the point of the work and will create a story that signifies the value to the users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, however, you are talking about routine development tasks (like setting up environments, adding configuration, etc.) then just add them as separate tasks (don't bother with the user story format). It is the development team's responsibility to deliver a quality product. They don't need to justify each and every task they do to achieve that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively you can wrap them underneath an existing user story. For example, say the first story you plan to do in a sprint is to set up the welcome page for the site. Wrap up all the technical tasks you need under this story (such as getting the SSL certificate, configuring the proxy, etc.). That way, when you deliver the first story you also deliver a releasable increment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will make the story bigger, but that is fine as it simply reflects the work you need to do to get the first story out the door. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not unusual for Scrum teams to only deliver one story in their first sprint. This is for the reason stated above, they wrapped all the foundation work into that first story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-08-18T18:02:19.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19910" CreationDate="2016-08-18T20:16:39.240" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's likely that your process issues are a result of the following Scrum implementation errors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're treating estimation as a team activity, but task performance as a solo activity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're trying to assign ideal hours at the task-performer level, rather than focusing on collaborative estimates at the team level.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't do those things. Estimate stories collaboratively, and time-box your stories and tasks rather than spending time on the chimera of task-level precision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Don't Intermingle Group Estimates with Solo Assignments&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have created a false dichotomy between estimation and task performance. When you ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When estimating task hours within a story, should we plan based on the capacity of the person executing the task or on the team's average capacity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you're violating several interconnected principles of effective Scrum implementations. Specifically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only the task performer can properly estimate his or her own work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All work collectively belongs to the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stories and tasks should never be &lt;em&gt;assigned&lt;/em&gt; to an individual.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team itself should determine which team members (and it may be more than one at a time!) should be responsible for each task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team should collectively swarm over a story or task that has exceeded its time box.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the underlying problem is that you're treating estimation as a team activity, but task performance as a solo activity. Don't do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Story vs. Task Estimates&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're also creating a false comparison with your estimation practices. Generally, teams collaboratively estimate Product Backlog Items (PBIs) such as user stories, but effective Scrum teams rarely decompose stories below a half-day, and typically don't estimate tasks at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you can certainly find some support in the literature for estimating PBI tasks in ideal hours, doing so is often orthogonal to agile estimation, which relies on statistical averages over time rather than on an artificial (and often misleading) level of precision. Can you &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; forecast most human-driven tasks accurately enough to justify the overhead of estimating them individually? In the software world, at least, the answer is usually &quot;no.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, you should play planning poker (or use some other team estimation technique) on user stories. Since stories are either &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;not-done&lt;/em&gt;, there's rarely value in estimating the tasks at all, and almost never as a group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the rare edge case where there is some sort of value in estimating individual tasks, you should leverage the daily standup to enable the team to coordinate tasks within a 1-2 day time box. Some examples of this coordination are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I expect to have Task A done by lunchtime.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I expect to have Task B done by the standup tomorrow.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Alice, will you be able to finish Task C today in time for me to finish Task D?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Bob, you weren't able to complete Task Q yesterday, even though you thought you would. How can the team work together to get it finished today?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;We have two days left in the current Sprint, and won't have time to finish Task Z.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on getting &lt;em&gt;stories&lt;/em&gt; done at a sustainable pace, rather than on whether specific task-level estimates are precise to two decimal places. When done properly, this will generally &lt;em&gt;improve&lt;/em&gt; the overall accuracy of your estimation process, as counterintuitive as that may seem. And even if it doesn't improve accuracy, at least you won't spend an inordinate amount of time trying to assign a fallible level of precision to things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-08-18T20:16:39.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19908" CreationDate="2016-08-18T21:43:37.483" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I've only heard &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; side of things, I'm unwilling to assume the problem is the individual you're talking about. While I agree that there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a problem, the problem is one that involves people, processes, and change management. It will require you to acknowledge this before the problem can be resolved to anyone's satisfaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most likely, you will need to make some changes to the composition of your team. That is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; an indictment of the team member; it's simply that effective change management sometimes requires changes in personnel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you ask this question on a different Q&amp;amp;A site like &lt;a href=&quot;https://workplace.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Workplace SE&lt;/a&gt; you may get a different answer. From a project management perspective, though, and especially from an agile perspective, you have not implemented organizational change properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Introduce Organizational Change Properly&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In programming, you change one simple thing at a time so you can debug it. You have changed at least two &lt;em&gt;complex&lt;/em&gt; things at the same time, and are struggling to debug it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum (or any project management framework) requires training and time to be implemented effectively. In addition, agile frameworks require buy-in from the entire team, not just the project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have team members who aren't interested in agile practices or Scrum ceremonies, and you have truly exhausted all teachable moments and coaching opportunities, then you need to take responsibility for having prescribed a framework without having first created buy-in. After you do that, you need to form a team that contains self-organizing people who &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to follow an agile framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Introduce Job Changes Properly&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the job front, you've introduced a host of changes to the team's job description, including changing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project management framework&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Language&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Web application framework&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technology stack&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technological ecosystem&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've changed all that, you've also probably changed the product that you're building, too. That's a lot of change to a person's job description, and not everyone in I.T. wants to be cross-functional or learn new languages and frameworks that don't fit their cognitive patterns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people enjoy the chance to use new technologies or work on a new project, while others prefer stability and to stay within a well-defined comfort zone. If you just switched someone's job description from .NET or Java programmer in a waterfall shop to Ruby on Rails developer in a Scrum and/or DevOps organization, there are certainly going to be people who can't or won't make the switch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the &lt;em&gt;team&lt;/em&gt; didn't drive this change to the technology stack, then management needs to be ready to take responsibility for having changed the job description. Furthermore, both senior management and the project manager should expect to have to retrain and reform a team around a new technology stack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&quot;Change&quot; Often Requires Actual Change&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all change is the responsibility of the employee. It's great that you've got five out of six of your current team members on board with the new project and technology frameworks. Now it's your job to determine whether there is a role for anyone who doesn't fit your new I.T. model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps this person can take on a different role within the company or the team. Maybe there are other projects or other teams that this person can work on, that may be of more interest to her. If not, you're essentially saying: &quot;Adopt the new paradigm or find a new job.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a business, that's may not be an unreasonable perspective. From a team-building standpoint, though, you will generally get better results by acknowledging that not every person is the right fit for every team or organizational culture. Keep that in mind if and when you decide to make changes to your team composition, as nothing destroys team cohesion as quickly as blaming workers for the results of strategic decisions by the business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Treat this as a change in job requirements, rather than an interpersonal issue. Not only is this a more constructive approach than trying to assign blame, it is also more likely to result in an objective resolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-08-18T21:43:37.483" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1079" CreationDate="2016-08-19T06:50:17.953" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, Scrum and be used with PRINCE2 as described above.  PRINCE2 just becomes the Management Layer above Scrum which is fine.  PRINCE2 can be used to communicate with the management while Scrum is used by the teams who create and reviews the products.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An alternative to the PRINCE2 management layer is Scrum of Scrum.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25493" LastActivityDate="2016-08-19T06:50:17.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2833" CreationDate="2016-08-19T07:16:53.123" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes it is possible to take a 3 day course and pass the PRINCE2 Foundation Exam and yes the above comments of a brain dump  (PPT Slide Dump) are correct.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This is why less than 5% of people who have a PRINCE2 Cert ever use as don't know how. They just want to pass the exam and don't care about learning PRINCE2. What a Waste :-( &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion: Classroom Training&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If your company pays for a classroom course, then take it.  But do about 6-8 hours of homework and you will get a lot more from the course.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;1) The PRINCE2 Timeline video (20 mins): (Search &quot;PRINCE2 Timeline&quot; on Youtube)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    - This video offers a simple high-level introduction to a PRINCE2 Project &#xA;    - This is the best introduction to PRINCE2  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) PRINCE2 Process Model video (60 mins): (Search &quot;PRINCE2 Pre-Course&quot; on Youtube)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;   - Also available in Book, Audio &amp;amp; Q&amp;amp;A formats (80 Q&amp;amp;A)&#xA;   - This is similar to the above Timeline video but more detailed &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Running a PRINCE2 Project:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://bit.do/P2Trello&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://bit.do/P2Trello&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;- These video will show you how to use PRINCE2 to run a simple project &#xA;- This give you a more practical approach to learning PRINCE2  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion: Online Training &#xA;- See www.prince2(.)center - List of online PRINCE2 Foundation Courses&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Choose a course that offers more than just PPT slides with a voice over &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25493" LastActivityDate="2016-08-19T07:16:53.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1079" CreationDate="2016-08-19T09:16:11.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Probably, but I think it leads to idea-fall and Scrum factories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project idea's and requirements come from people with the least knowledge, but are committed to on a project road-map. The Scrum team here is just an iterative factory. Instead of giving teams high-level &lt;a href=&quot;http://leanperformance.com/en/okr/what-is-okr/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;objectives&lt;/a&gt; and letting them learn and coming up with innovate solutions, what I think being Agile and Lean is all about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although unrelated to Prince2. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dccd8lihpQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt; of Marty Cagan about idea-fall, only the build steps are iterative. Not the product design, which often leads to failed products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7NdQc.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7NdQc.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like his idea of doing &lt;a href=&quot;http://svpg.com/dual-track-scrum/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dual-track Scrum&lt;/a&gt; to facilating the discovery and delivery process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-21T06:43:07.747" LastActivityDate="2020-07-21T06:43:07.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19881" CreationDate="2016-08-19T15:41:27.797" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with @fisehara as the most effective method, I would just add one extra comment. You can also break down each column with permanent swimlanes that denote the WIP limits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if your WIP limit is 3, your colum has 3 sections. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The posties can only go in a section so it shows if you are at WIP limit and prevents going over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22750" LastActivityDate="2016-08-19T15:41:27.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19922" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-19T15:51:51.280" Score="1" ViewCount="194" Body="&lt;p&gt;People often open a JIRA issue by URL, and then start working on it.&#xA;They have to manually refresh (usually after seeing an email notification) to see any changes to the ticket like edits to the description or new comments, or any other change for that matter by other users (or even themselves in a different window).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar to other agile boards, is there any mechanism to periodically check if a ticket has changed since the page was loaded? Examples might be  popup message or link to refresh the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25601" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-01-15T09:16:14.350" LastActivityDate="2019-01-15T09:16:14.350" Title="Is there a JIRA mechanism that will notify users in-browser when a ticket changes?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19922" CreationDate="2016-08-19T16:23:51.533" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jira integrates well with &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.hipchat.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;hipchat&lt;/a&gt;, and if you have set notifications on for a particular project, then when someone updates, or changes the state of a particular ticket, then there is a notification to that hipchat channel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further to this, &lt;a href=&quot;https://bitbucket.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;bitbucket&lt;/a&gt; is a GIT solution that is integrated strongly into hipchat and jira. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not sure if this answers your question, but I hope so, it depends on your way of working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Declaration: I am not associated with Atlassian, but think their software is pretty cool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22766" LastActivityDate="2016-08-19T16:23:51.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19926" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19929" CreationDate="2016-08-19T23:34:23.370" Score="5" ViewCount="2361" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've got a bit of an involved question, here. (Apologies if I provided too much unnecessary explanation; if so just skip to 'The Problem'.) First, let me explain...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The Situation:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're a middling-size company with a relatively small development department - 7 people. Until recently, pretty much all the work that came in was fairly small stuff, assigned to a single person, with the only project management being a simple ticket system (which no one even really used that often, anyway). Now, however, we've got a significantly-sized project - estimated at 18 months. For the sake of this project, we've started using actual project management techniques - in this case, Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The Team:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We started the project with a team of one full-time employee developer, two contract-employee developers, a Product Owner (her theoretical job title is 'project manager', though because we're so understaffed she ended up also being Product Owner, BA, and QA), and the project owner, who is the CIO. We recently (a few months back) also added a senior developer, who works with completely different technologies and has some trouble communicating effectively, into our team to work on certain tasks only she can accomplish - or even fully understand. The developers all work together, in a single cubicle, while the PO and CIO work in a separate building, about a two-minute walk away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PO is great, having recently completed a Project-Management-Scrum course before being hired, and the developers were anxious to finally get some sort of project structure, so we've generally got good buy-in from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the CIO, his opinion was along the lines of 'I don't care how you organize yourselves, just get it done.' This later morphed into slight push-back when he realized how different Agile was from the Waterfall he's used to, but since everyone else in the department strongly dislikes Waterfall, he's mostly backed off - but also remains mostly uninvolved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Myself:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am one of the aforementioned contract-employees. I'm also a junior developer... and also the Scrummaster. A strange choice, I realize, but since I'm the only one who's had any actual experience with Scrum, I was pretty much nominated. I'm not a certified Scrummaster by any means, but seeing as we're a year into the project and nothing's on fire yet, I figure things aren't going too badly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The Problem:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We started out doing Scrum mostly 'by the book' (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.infoq.com/minibooks/scrum-xp-from-the-trenches-2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum from the Trenches&lt;/a&gt;, specifically) - daily standup (which consisted of developers), pre-planning meeting (where just the developers hash out the technical details of stories), planning meeting (where the devs estimate the stories with the PO's assistance), demo, retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, for the daily standup, demo, and retrospective, interest quickly waned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were several mild complaints about the daily standup - &amp;quot;Why bother, when we all sit two metres from each other all the time?&amp;quot; Of note is the fact that neither the PO nor the CIO were present at the daily standups (should they have been?). So over time, as people were late or busy and I'd forget to conduct the meetings, they just sort of got phased out, and we don't do them anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the demo, we originally had the CIO involved, but he was worried he'd stifle the project after there were repeated occasions of him mentioning a change and that change not being implemented immediately - leading to him mistakenly believing that we wanted him to stop providing feedback, so he stopped attending fairly early. Several months after that, it was decided that we needed to start having Quality Assurance... despite not having a QA. So the PO got roped into becoming the QA. And so, since she had already gone over every single story during the QA process, she considered attending the demo to be redundant. After that, the demo pretty quickly got dropped, as focus shifted to completing features over 'wasting' time preparing and implementing a demo that only the developers would see. I've brought up the remaining benefits of the demo (that it's a good form of retrospection, and that it's a useful additional bug-check), and while the other developers agree with me, none of them seem to have any interest in actually putting forth the 5-minutes-of-work-per-story to actually accomplish a demo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And now, as we near the first milestone, pressure mounts, and stories become increasingly less-well defined (did I mention that our PO is also a BA &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; a QA?), the retrospective and pre-planning meetings have started falling off as well. I've received much positive feedback about the pre-planning, so I'm sure that will pick back up again once the milestone passes, but I worry the retrospective may end up dead in the water as well. I haven't even bothered attempting to fold the senior developer into the retrospective, since she's well behind schedule and working on a bunch of different projects at once. Should I attempt, regardless? What about the CIO?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I realize that part of Agile is the ability to modify processes to fit the environment, I worry that these meetings have been erroneously, or at least prematurely, pruned. It's possible that my own lack of understanding of, or inability to convey, the purposes of these meetings has contributed to this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I just accept that these meetings don't fit well into this organization and allow them to disappear? If not, what can I do to improve buy-in for them? Should I request that the PO attend the stand-ups? Can/should I just exercise my 'authority' as Scrummaster to force people to attend these meetings (keeping in mind that I have little formal authority, since my official position is junior developer, not Scrummaster)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-07-09T14:00:15.003" Title="Daily Standup, Demo, Retrospective - Mandatory? How?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17424" CreationDate="2016-08-20T00:09:19.183" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Speaking from experience both working under and being a Scrum Master developer... yes, yes they can.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;While it is a bad idea for the Scrum Master to also be the Product Owner (since they have occasionally contradictory roles), the Scrum Master role aligns with the role of Developer fairly well.&#xA;As per the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/why-scrum/scrum-guide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;, the Scrum Master's duties to the Development Team include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coaching the Development Team in self-organization and&#xA;cross-functionality;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Helping the Development Team to create high-value products;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Removing impediments to the Development Team’s progress;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Facilitating Scrum events as requested or needed; and,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coaching the Development Team in organizational environments in which&#xA;Scrum is not yet fully adopted and understood.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of those present any significant impediments to a Developer that would not be present for a dedicated Scrum Master (aside from a bit of split focus between Scrum Master duties and actual development work, which could somewhat hinder a single developer - you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technically speaking, you don't &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; a certification to become a Scrum Master - if you perform the duties of a Scrum Master, and are acknowledged as a Scrum Master by the team, then you are a Scrum Master. While a certification is helpful for learning the basics and proving to employers that you are competent, as with everything else, experience is the best teacher. If you want to get up to snuff as quickly as possible (aside from just diving in head-first), the best route is to learn directly from an experienced Scrum Master, though readings can prove invaluable as well - Niels van Reijmersdal provided several useful ones already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-08-20T00:09:19.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19926" CreationDate="2016-08-20T03:50:05.553" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum has exactly one authoritative 'book': &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;.  I haven't had the opportunity to read Scrum from the Trenches yet (it's on my list) and I am sure that it has valuable information in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of the Daily Scrum is for the Development Team to inspect Sprint progress, synchronize, and plan.  If it is conducted as a status report or the purpose isn't met &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.benday.com/2015/04/06/5-reasons-your-daily-scrum-is-boring/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;it can become stale&lt;/a&gt;.  Just because the developers are collocated, doesn't necessarily mean that they are working together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lack of definition in the stories is an issue.  They goal is to deliver value to the customer early and often; if you don't know what they want, that is an impossible goal to achieve.  This needs to be discussed with the Product Owner.  The issue certainly comes to light in the Sprint Planning event.  It would be more visible if Product Backlog refinement was occurring within the iteration.  If nothing else, this could be discussed at the Sprint Retrospectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were customers invited and participating in the Sprint Reviews?  Calling it a &lt;em&gt;demo&lt;/em&gt; negates its purpose and diminishes its value.  There is extensive purpose for the event, missing those does create a senseless to it.  Also it is an important opportunity to receive feedback and input from the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Scrum Team or Development Team is not working collaboratively, that is a root issue which needs to be addressed.  It was possibly good that the CIO has some training, if it were quality; there is a lot of &quot;Agile&quot; training out there that furthers ignorance to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; and specifics such as Scrum, DSDM, and XP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;RubberDuck's comments are worth considering when the agile software development team and organization are mature in living up to the the agile values and principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully this is helpful and not too disjointed in my sleepy state.  Please ask for clarifications if desired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2016-08-20T03:50:05.553" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19926" CreationDate="2016-08-20T08:20:18.700" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two parts to the Scrum Master role:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Helping the team to resolve impediments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensuring that Scrum is being followed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second part often gets neglected, but it is very important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team does not see value from the Scrum approach they will quickly stop following it. The Scrum Master should coach the team to ensure they understand why it has ceremonies like the stand-up and retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you just &lt;em&gt;tell&lt;/em&gt; the team to do the ceremonies then sooner or later they will stop doing them. They have to understand &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; the ceremonies are valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Daily Scrum&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The daily Scrum is a classic example. Many teams treat the daily Scrum like a progress meeting. Development teams rarely see value in progress meetings and so they often fall by the wayside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you hear things like this at your daily Scrum then you have a problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;It's almost the end of the sprint and we have loads still to do.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Is that story fixed yet? We are getting behind.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Is that all you managed to do yesterday?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact the daily Scrum has nothing to do with measuring progress. It is all about synchronisation. That is why the conversations at the daily Scrum should be related to synchronisation matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should hear things like this at your daily Scrum:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I'm going to rebuild the QA server today, so won't be able to do any testing&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;That bug we found yesterday is a real problem. Can anyone help me with it?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Yesterday I got most of the first page done, would anyone like to see a demo?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth noting that most Scrum teams have the Product Owner present at the daily Scrum. This helps to reinforce that this is a &lt;em&gt;Scrum Team&lt;/em&gt; meeting rather than a &lt;em&gt;development team&lt;/em&gt; meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't invite your CIO as they don't have a Scrum role and are not part of the Scrum Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Retrospective&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For restrospectives it is important to realise they are about improvement. The idea in Scrum is to &lt;em&gt;work smarter&lt;/em&gt; rather than to &lt;em&gt;work harder&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you focus on demonstrating value in the retrospectives. For example, teams typically take one or two items from each retro and say they will fix them in the next sprint. Then, at the next retro they check to ensure they did manage to make those changes. If retrospectives just focus on problems and not solutions then they quickly lose value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Sprint Review&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the sprint review. This is a key aspect of Scrum because it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Substitutes for reporting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is the time when the team corrects its course (ensures it is doing what the stakeholders want)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is the time when a lot of change gets injected into the backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of Scrum is that the team focuses on &lt;em&gt;delivering customer value&lt;/em&gt;. If you are not engaging with your customers then you have no idea if what you are doing is what they really want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may be working hard, but there is little point in working hard on the wrong features or features that are not a true priority to the stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2016-08-20T08:20:18.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19910" CreationDate="2016-08-20T09:56:43.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you do planning, better to go with Team's average.  When task is owned by each individual, it should get sorted out.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other perspective is that, For team also, you can't have major difference between individual + team's average.  If so, there will definitely other overheads like attitude issues, etc.  When there is one hyperactive, there will be totally opposite to that as well in the team.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25351" LastActivityDate="2016-08-20T09:56:43.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19931" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-20T14:29:22.433" Score="13" ViewCount="9896" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a developer on a scrum team and I'm finding it hard to understand and empathize with the end goal when stories start with &quot;As the system&quot;. These stories should be straight forward because as a developer I should be able to build to meet the acceptance criteria, but I find they are frequent getting pushed back to me after review because there was some stakeholder's needs that are not being met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, there was such a story that involved a bunch of edge cases and seemed to be growing in complexity by the day. When I probed deeper to understand why we are covering these edge cases it turned out that there were features being built for one stakeholder and features being built for a completely different stakeholder. Which probably could have saved many communication trips between the PM and me if they were defined as two stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, should we avoid using stories that start with &quot;As the system&quot;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25611" LastEditorUserId="147" LastEditDate="2016-08-24T19:37:24.167" LastActivityDate="2016-11-15T20:10:36.640" Title="Is it a problem when many stories start with: &quot;As the system,...&quot;" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;definition&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19931" CreationDate="2016-08-20T16:28:15.490" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short, not necessarily but it does have a &quot;bad smell.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds as the root issue is that they might be poorly written and, more importantly, are poorly understood.  I sounds like there needs to be improved communication regarding the purpose and goal of these items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2016-08-20T16:28:15.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19931" CreationDate="2016-08-20T21:53:34.617" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. Using 'the system' as a user in stories is bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole point of the &quot;as a ... I want ... So that ...&quot; Format is to give the developer an insight in to the reason for the requested feature. This should allow them to fill in the gaps in the specifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than &quot;make the button red&quot; you would have &quot;as a customer i want the buy button to be red so that I can easily identify it and click it easily&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when you get the request and you see the background is also red under condition X. You dont just blindly go ahead and make the button invisible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should insist that the BA/PM/SM or whom ever, draw up a list of users of the system and that each story should use one of the users from that list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastEditorUserId="17049" LastEditDate="2016-08-21T09:43:57.730" LastActivityDate="2016-08-21T09:43:57.730" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19926" CreationDate="2016-08-20T22:16:39.827" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You story sounds very familar to me. You should drop scrum and do 'no-process'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Standups and Demos are not for the benefit of developers. If your PO and CIO dont understand or care about them then you are not in a position to make them work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some hard truths about scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The daily scrum : The purpose of this meeting is to report progress to the PO and ensure developers dont get pulled off onto other projects/low priority features or facebook. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the PO dosnt at least check the board to make sure stories are being done. Dont bother with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint Demo : This is QA the PO and stake holders can see whats been done. Bugs are immediately apparent. If stuff looks crap they can make a fuss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If stakeholders dont turn up to the demo. Dont do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the scrum meetings have good purposes behind them, they try to make managing a project easier, predict whether you are going to hit your deadlines etc. But its really for a PM to care about these things. If they dont you should concentrate your efforts achieving what the business DOES care about. Presumably adding features as fast as possible, which, assuming the specs are understandable, you can bash put without any meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2016-08-20T22:16:39.827" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19908" CreationDate="2016-08-20T22:27:46.030" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The fact of the matter is that Rails is an outdated, slow, buggy framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume you have been forced to take on some legacy project work which mandates its use, but you have to recognise that working on this project will not be benefical to the careers of your developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you compensate them with increased pay, working from home, less hours or something the good ones will go work somewhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The solution is simple. Ask the dev &quot;If you were a freelancer how much extra would you charge for a Rails project over a 'favorite language' project?&quot; Then pay them the extra percentage&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastEditorUserId="17049" LastEditDate="2016-08-20T22:33:58.500" LastActivityDate="2016-08-20T22:33:58.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19931" CreationDate="2016-08-21T08:09:07.200" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/user-stories&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;User stories&lt;/a&gt; are an Agile approach to requirements that emphasise end-user value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All user stories are written in the language of the end-user such that they can be understood by a non-technical person who will instantly 'get' the value the story delivers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason this is done is that it helps the non-technical end-users understand what progress the team is making and to prioritise work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something that begins with &amp;quot;As the system...&amp;quot; is not a user story. It is a technical task wrapped up in the user story format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So where do technical tasks fit in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/product-owner&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Product Owner&lt;/a&gt; will create user stories that signify end-user value. They will prioritise them and then present them to the team as a part of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/product-backlog-refinement-grooming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;backlog refinement&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/sprint-planning-meeting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sprint planning&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The technical team often cannot look at a user story and understand exactly what it is they need to deliver. This is because a user story is an &lt;em&gt;invitation to a conversation&lt;/em&gt;. The Product Owner talks the technical team through the user story. While they are doing that the technical team often breaks the story down in to one or more &lt;em&gt;technical tasks&lt;/em&gt;. These technical tasks do not need to be understood by the end-users, can be written in a non-story format and can be highly technical in nature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An an example, say I have the following user story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a first time website user I want to register so that I can get access to the website&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The technical team might look at that story and break it down in to a number of technical tasks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create user table in database&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Design the registration pages&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Add validation to input fields&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There should be few or no technical tasks that do not relate to a story. Even something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Set up the development environment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;can be wrapped in to the first user story that delivers end-user value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal with this approach is to have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User stories that the end-users can understand&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical tasks that the technical team understands and that are sufficient to deliver the user stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2016-08-21T08:09:07.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19894" CreationDate="2016-08-21T12:49:43.513" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;With any project stories are written within a context of assumptions. &quot;the website will be hosted&quot;, &quot;users will have internet access&quot; etc &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes these are clarified with a &quot;Definition of Done&quot; or a set of &quot;technical requirements&quot; which apply to any story. But I would suggest you attack them as a &quot;Sprint 0&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Sprint 0 you setup the environment and frameworks you will be using, choose languages and frameworks, buying domain names etc. This would include Continuous Integration and Deployment scripts, so compressing and bundling scripts etc would be built into the build process. In your particular case 'create a build script which runs gulp on all files'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is to get all the setup tasks out of the way, so that you can concentrate on delivering features for the project rather than constantly being hit by technical blockers, &quot;we have to wait for the firewall&quot; or &quot;CI is broken again&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of sprint 0 you should have a basic &quot;hello world&quot; project up and live with unit/integration/acceptance tests or whatever other base requirements you have in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From them on its all about adding extra features into this base project, following the template of what is already there. Rather than having to invent or discuss technical solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2016-08-21T12:49:43.513" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19829" CreationDate="2016-08-21T12:58:18.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cost is timephased in either the Task Usage or Resource usage view (right hand side).  Add Cost (right click in the background of the right hand side and choose Cost from the shortcut menu).  Zoom out as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastEditorUserId="6840" LastEditDate="2016-09-02T10:06:15.203" LastActivityDate="2016-09-02T10:06:15.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10447" CreationDate="2016-08-21T17:11:25.987" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to have 4500 hours of PM experience in a leading &amp;amp; directing role to to do PMP. So, PM role is must before doing PMP. However, PM role is not equivalent to PM designation/title. PM role means that you should have managed full or part of a project. Your role in the project could be of vendor management, team management, client management etc. The projects could be related to any industry. They could be big or small, technical or non-technical etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25305" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2016-08-25T03:27:28.920" LastActivityDate="2016-08-25T03:27:28.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9672" CreationDate="2016-08-21T17:18:22.167" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a risk but it is same as it was before. You should read this article - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmbypm.com/pmp-training-again/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pmbypm.com/pmp-training-again/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25305" LastActivityDate="2016-08-21T17:18:22.167" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19902" CreationDate="2016-08-22T10:28:14.220" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to have some SLAs bound to payments which will keep the remote team bound and punished if not disciplined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25619" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-08-22T13:11:02.893" LastActivityDate="2016-08-22T13:11:02.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18649" CreationDate="2016-08-22T13:56:54.343" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Jira, You have to prioritise your backlog by user stories but if you want to check the epics priorities you can use the floating panel in the backlog view but I suggest you create an Epics dashboard with more details and use the floating panel just to sort the priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22484" LastActivityDate="2016-08-22T13:56:54.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9672" CreationDate="2016-08-22T14:58:58.097" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is noteworthy (in addition to the existing answers) that the current PMBOK Guide (Fifth Edition) got an appendix to cover the differences to the previous edition: &lt;em&gt;Appendix X1 Fifth Edition Changes&lt;/em&gt;. This is the best place to figure the differences out and focus on learning these. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might also be a good idea to apply for PMI membership prior to the exam and thus get the complimentary PDF download of this standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11925" LastActivityDate="2016-08-22T14:58:58.097" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6603" CreationDate="2016-08-22T20:24:51.113" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are only 2 requirements to appear for PMP exam-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Management Experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;35 hours of Project Management Education&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding Project Management Experience - You need 4500 hrs of experience if you have done 4 years of degree (bachelors degree or equivalent). Other wise if you have a diploma of equivalent then you need 7500 hrs of experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM experience should be in a leading &amp;amp; directing role. So, PM role is must before doing PMP. However, PM role is not equivalent to PM designation/title. PM role means that you should have managed full or part of a project. Your role in the project could be of vendor management, team management, client management etc. The projects could be related to any industry. They could be big or small, technical or non-technical etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does not matter if you have not handled budget. You need to have practical experience of initiating, planning, executing, monitoring &amp;amp; controlling and closing the projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read more about the details of 4500 hours of experience here - (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmbypm.com/go/4500-hours-explanation-cornelius-ficthner/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pmbypm.com/go/4500-hours-explanation-cornelius-ficthner/&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the best.&#xA;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmbypm.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pmbypm.com/&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25305" LastActivityDate="2016-08-22T20:24:51.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19949" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19950" CreationDate="2016-08-23T00:20:38.550" Score="1" ViewCount="334" Body="&lt;p&gt;So from what I've understand by reading the tutorials on the Atlasian website, the backlog is populated by the project manager and can contain entries as abstract as he wants, with various degrees of importance. The backlog can (and should) constantly change to reflect the needs of the market and the feedback the product receives.&#xA;At sprint planning, the team looks at the backlog, discusses the issues, tries to estimate them (either with story points, time or whatever the team likes). The team picks from the backlog what should be done in this sprint (taking into account that degree of importance set by the manager). Further changes to the backlog will not affect this sprint. Am I right? It seems like I'm missing something. Should the team go through everything in the backlog and try to give rough estimates? Or stop when it feels like it should stop? This part is unclear to me. How exactly is the team pulling work from the backlog into the sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25627" LastActivityDate="2020-08-06T19:25:24.663" Title="Scrum backlog and sprint planning" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19949" CreationDate="2016-08-23T01:58:48.273" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the backlog is populated by the project manager&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum, as it's defined&lt;/a&gt;, doesn't have a role called &amp;quot;project manager&amp;quot;. There are only three roles - Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Development Team. The Product Owner is responsible for maintaining the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and can contain entries as abstract as he wants, with various degrees of importance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's technically true. The Product Owner puts everything - features and functionality, enhancements, fixes, and other work items into the Product Backlog. However, to be actionable by the Development Team, there needs to be sufficient information in the backlog item. The order of the items in the Product Backlog indicates their importance - more important stories should be at the &amp;quot;top&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the more abstract stories, the Development Team works with the Product Owner to perform refinement. The Scrum documents suggest that this activity is about 10% of the capacity of the Development Team. That is, in a team of 5 working a standard 40 hour week, you can expect at most 20 hours of refinement. Refinement can be discussions, wireframing, prototyping, or other things to make the intent clear. The Development Team wants the items at the top of the backlog to be well understood come Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The backlog can (and should) constantly change to reflect the needs of the market and the feedback the product receives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, the Product Owner can reorder the items in the Product Backlog. However, there may be technical dependencies on some of the stories. The Development Team should have input regarding the order of work to ensure the quality of the product from a technical perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At sprint planning, the team looks at the backlog, discusses the issues, tries to estimate them (either with story points, time, or whatever the team likes). The team picks from the backlog what should be done in this sprint (taking into account the degree of importance set by the manager).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Refinement should be an ongoing activity to understand forthcoming changes, since these may guide the design and implementation of the rest of the system. But as a general rule, the Sprint Planning meeting attempts to determine what work can be done in the upcoming Sprint and how to go about doing that work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team shouldn't just be picking randomly from the Product Backlog, but it should generally go top-down. There may be some exceptions - some items that aren't well understood or technical dependencies on lower priority stories are two examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The amount of work picked from the Product Backlog and placed into the Sprint Backlog is based on the team. If the same team has been executing on the project using Scrum for a while, previous Sprint performances are a good baseline. It's tricky to get it right in the initial Sprints for a new project or a team that has new people on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further changes to the backlog will not affect this sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Development Team owns the Sprint Backlog. There is always room to collaborate with the Product Owner to change the Sprint. For example, if a higher priority bug fix is required, a lower priority bug or a new feature may be swapped out. However, since Scrum (and the agile methods) are about sustainable performance, you wouldn't want to add work randomly - you want to make sure that things that are added also have items removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner maintains the Product Backlog in isolation from the Sprint Backlog, and changes there won't affect the current Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should the team go through everything in the backlog and try to give rough estimates? Or stop when it feels like it should stop?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The members of the Development Team participating in the refinement activities (which should be most, if not all, of the team) should be able to get rough estimates of the effort needed to do the work. Once the Backlog Items are sufficiently understood, though, the team only needs to determine that their Sprint is loaded to an appropriate capacity. They don't need to estimate every item. They can also refine estimates as they learn more about the problem space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How exactly is the team pulling work from the backlog into the sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's methodical - the team starts at the top of the Product Backlog and fills the Sprint Backlog until they hit their capacity. They do this once at the start of the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2020-08-06T19:25:24.663" LastActivityDate="2020-08-06T19:25:24.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19951" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19955" CreationDate="2016-08-23T13:26:07.883" Score="1" ViewCount="162" Body="&lt;p&gt;When boss tells you to make changes in the pre-production system and he/she doesn't know that to make these changes. Each change causes several problems because you have to change the database and system structure in other modules. This repeats every three or four days systematically and there is no project plan. Is this normal or my boss has not enough experience in project management? What can I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25639" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-08-23T13:31:30.957" LastActivityDate="2016-08-24T19:32:11.757" Title="What can I do when my boss has no project plan and the structure of application changes systematically?" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19902" CreationDate="2016-08-23T13:46:14.100" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, of course. Even more so if it comes to first work experiences together. &#xA;Time helps a lot to know each other and to assess urgencies or misunderstandings. &#xA;Time to task estimated and reviewed together are the best way to generate a common level of conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25634" LastEditorUserId="25634" LastEditDate="2016-08-26T07:55:06.067" LastActivityDate="2016-08-26T07:55:06.067" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2918" CreationDate="2016-08-23T18:34:43.297" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are only 2 requirements -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Management Experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;35 hours of Project Management Education&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding Project Management Experience - You need 4500 hrs of experience if you have done 4 years of degree (bachelors degree or equivalent). Otherwise if you have a diploma of equivalent then you need 7500 hrs of experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM experience should be in a leading &amp;amp; directing role. So, PM role is must before doing PMP. However, PM role is not equivalent to PM designation/title. PM role means that you should have managed full or part of a project. Your role in the project could be of vendor management, team management, client management etc. The projects could be related to any industry. They could be big or small, technical or non-technical etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read more about the details of 4500 hours of experience here - (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmbypm.com/go/4500-hours-explanation-cornelius-ficthner/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pmbypm.com/go/4500-hours-explanation-cornelius-ficthner/&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the best.&#xA;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmbypm.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pmbypm.com/&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25305" LastActivityDate="2016-08-23T18:34:43.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3461" CreationDate="2016-08-23T18:47:52.390" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have written a post that describes 15 reasons why aspirants &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmbypm.com/reasons-why-people-failed-the-pmp-exam-how-to-pass-pmp-exam/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Failed PMP Exam&lt;/a&gt;. You should read this and imbibe all the points written in the post. This will help you in determining what you should do and what you should avoid.&#xA;Let’s talk about specific things that you should do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Attend a Formal 35 contact hours training&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should attend a formal training followed by self study. This approach has many benefits. A formal training&#xA;* can reduce your effort (and save time) by helping you to do a targeted study.&#xA;* would clarify your doubts and make your self-study easier.&#xA;* would motivate you do finish exam quickly.&#xA;* would give you study material and tips for passing the exam.&#xA;Usually the classroom training is the best. But it is more expensive also. If you are worried about the cost or if the classroom training is not available in your region then you can go for online classroom. You can read this article for review &amp;amp; comparison of 6 courses - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmbypm.com/pmp-live-online-training-course/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMP Live Online Training Course&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an alternative, you can go for an online training that costs much less. You can read this article for review &amp;amp; comparison of 7 courses - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmbypm.com/best-pmp-online-training-course/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Best PMP Online Training Course&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Must Study PMBOK Guide&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;You should not skip the PMBOK Guide even if you have 2–3 reference books. It is important to understand Guide’s terminology, concepts and language directly from the source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Get a Good Study Guide&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMP reference book is important part of the preparation. A book would be your constant study companion so you should choose it well. You can read this for review &amp;amp; comparison of 4 best selling books - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmbypm.com/best-pmp-book-head-first-vs-rita-mulcahy-vs-andy-crowe-vs-kim-heldman/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Best PMP Study Guide&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This article will tell you which is the best book for you. Different people have different learning styles. So what may be good for others, may not be suitable for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4. Prepare &amp;amp; Follow a Schedule&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discipline is very important for anything in life, including PMP exam. You should prepare a schedule that your style of learning and follow it. You should study everyday and should not have gaps in-between your studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;5. Invest in a Good Simulator&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would need a good exam simulator to get ready for the exam. A simulator provides many benefits is is essential part of exam prep. To understand its benefits you can read - 13 Reasons to Invest in a Paid &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmbypm.com/reasons-invest-paid-pmp-practice-exam/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMP Practice Exam&lt;/a&gt;. You can also check if you are ready for the exam or not by reading this article - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmbypm.com/best-way-determine-pmp-exam-passing-score/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMP Exam Passing Score&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To buy a good simulator, you can this article for review &amp;amp; comparison of 6 popular simulators - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmbypm.com/best-pmp-exam-simulator/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PMP Exam Simulator&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25305" LastEditorUserId="25305" LastEditDate="2016-10-25T18:25:54.437" LastActivityDate="2016-10-25T18:25:54.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19951" CreationDate="2016-08-23T22:11:39.097" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your project probably had a series of problems due the way it is going; both in the technical aspect (bug count increasing, poor quality, high cost) and personal aspect (repeated extra hours, people leaving the project).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can gather these and present them to your boss and any other person involved/affected by the project in a meeting. Asking them to tell what they &lt;strong&gt;feel&lt;/strong&gt; about these issues and to brainstorm new ways of work to address them. This meeting would be similar to an &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hnD43Gs_ys&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile Retrospective&lt;/a&gt;. Many ideas will be raised and just a subset of them are workable right away. Thank everybody and address the workable action items to people. Repeat this meeting regularly to review the result of the action items and new issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically to the problem of &quot;This repeats every three or four days systematically&quot;, you can use the idea of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telerik.com/blogs/the-importance-of-timeboxing-and-iterations-for-agile-planning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;timeboxed iterations and planning&lt;/a&gt;. The development team will extract from your boss as much information as possible about a subset of the visible work to do and implement it (changing scope as little as possible - i.e., only change if new information will make your work better) in a &lt;strong&gt;short&lt;/strong&gt; period. Both timeframe and scope should &lt;strong&gt;agreed&lt;/strong&gt; by both the development team (affirming they think they are capable delivering it in the given time) and management (affirming he wants the dev team to implement this thing and he will give both time and support to the dev team).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the project plan, and assuming you are not talking necessarily about a document, but about a vision; I'd be open and honest with my boss and ask him the reason for building the product, into what context it will be used, what are the important that he can vision. Remember that this direct will undoubtedly change during the project, so, it is important to tell him that &lt;strong&gt;regular&lt;/strong&gt; updates about stakeholders expectations are important so the team can analyze the correct direction - working together with him to deliver value. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25646" LastEditorUserId="147" LastEditDate="2016-08-24T19:32:11.757" LastActivityDate="2016-08-24T19:32:11.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17373" CreationDate="2016-08-23T22:28:44.863" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been using story points for many years and find them to be a far more effective estimation approach than using absolute time.  That said you need to know their limitations.  Just because a backlog exists does not mean a team and go through and with even moderate accuracy size it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A team must have enough information about a story to relate it to something they have done on the past.  Simply having a one line description of a story(As a Administrator of System X I need to be able...) normally does not provide a team enough information to size the story unless it is something very simple.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Backlog grooming and sizing is a continuous process where the team, product owner, stakeholders, etc. discuss the whats and hows of the story.  Epics and stories are being split and/or spawning new stories while the sizes are being further refined.  The point is attempting to come up with a project level estimate using by sizing all the stories up front is just thinly veiled Big Up Front Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are much better off looking at your project history and finding 2 or 3 projects that are similar in nature to give you a range of time and cost.  Then determine if the value you are trying to achieve with the project is cost justified.  You can further validate that decision by doing a limited implementation of some key pieces over a handful of sprints.  That gives you real information to go off of versus speculation.  Reliable information is not free.  You don't get more reliable information by doing more detailed estimation.  You get more reliable information by actually beginning implementation which of course costs money.  You can continue with that approach and if at any point you determine it is no longer worth the remaining investment you kill the project. Too many businesses assume once a project starts it must be completed.  Killing projects when they no longer provide the necessary value is a healthy thing and should be considered a win not a failure.   Most businesses assume they can plan away the majority of the risk before they spend any of the investment.  Guess what?  That just isn't reality.  It's like asking a stock broker to guarantee an ROI on a stock before you buy it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand the quandary with the consulting world and it is a fundamental problem with the way most companies do business with vendors/consultants.  Again, they want a guarantee on something that is extremely difficult to predict with both accuracy and precision yet you are forced to do it because it is the only way to get the business.  It is dysfunctional because the company bidding out the business thinks they have limited their risk by forcing the bidder to lock in on price and scope.  The reality is the risk has not truly been mitigated.  The company winning the bid more often than not knows they have underbid it and will try to make it up along the way via a variety of different methods.  The point is the project is set up for failure from the outset.  Neither side normally wins in that situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25647" LastEditorUserId="25647" LastEditDate="2016-08-23T22:36:55.377" LastActivityDate="2016-08-23T22:36:55.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19931" CreationDate="2016-08-24T20:45:51.287" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;User stories should be vertical slices that deliver value to an end user.  The system is a mindless machine that doesn't care about value so user stories that start with 'as the system' generally will not help you understand why we are doing something from the perspective of the business or a customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there will be stories where you will write 'as the system' that may at first seem very technically complex or 100% backend that do not have any tangible end user value.  Take a harder look and try to really understand why we want the system to do something or behave in a certain way because the system is always designed to interact with a human at some point and help that human make some type of decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2016-08-24T20:45:51.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19959" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19969" CreationDate="2016-08-26T06:49:47.953" Score="-2" ViewCount="133" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a simple question: which media do you use to send plans to your clients?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have built an internal tool for that but I am sure there are more efficient way to proceed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25678" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-08-29T11:06:56.680" LastActivityDate="2016-08-29T11:06:56.680" Title="How do you share plans with your clients?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19959" CreationDate="2016-08-26T07:37:04.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends on what level of detail that you want to share from your plan and also your communication plan (status communication, frequency) &amp;amp; stakeholder level that you are targeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plan that is created for running project will have detail end-to-end, whereas client may not be interested in all details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Better would be to convert your internal tool values to Excel, convert them to pictorial representation of the progress and highlighted plan for coming period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is not part of your regular plan updates, share Milestones that client is interested in (areas that would impact client)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25351" LastActivityDate="2016-08-26T07:37:04.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19961" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19966" CreationDate="2016-08-26T12:00:52.140" Score="5" ViewCount="313" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to explain the needs for integration of a web-based service on our website to the programmers. I want to find out the best structure for such a request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I describe the features I want from a non-technical point of view?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25683" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-08-28T02:56:57.290" LastActivityDate="2016-08-29T06:43:38.800" Title="How should a non-technical person define tasks for technicians?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;specification&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19961" CreationDate="2016-08-26T13:46:48.820" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stories should always be defined in &lt;em&gt;business&lt;/em&gt; terms. &lt;em&gt;Why&lt;/em&gt; does there need to be web integration? &lt;em&gt;Who&lt;/em&gt; is it for? &lt;em&gt;What&lt;/em&gt; exactly does it need to accomplish?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; directly-related to a business requirement (unlikely for web integration, but theoretically possible), then it should instead be a developer task, and thus it should be defined by a developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developers define developer tasks. Non-developers define business stories - if more technical details need to be filled in, then the developers can do that themselves. This should, ideally, be done in collaboration with someone who understands the business aspect, so as to quickly catch misunderstandings regarding what the story is supposed to actually accomplish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-08-26T13:46:48.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19902" CreationDate="2016-08-26T23:16:17.873" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Working with a remote team can be challenging, but it doesn't have to be. Here are some things I've done that helps with dealing with contractors working remote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) You're a project manager, assign them measurable projects, it's far less stressful for both of you to have a clear and concise deliverable that they are expected to give you by the end of the day, 2 days or a week (not sure which projects you're dealing with, but it shouldn't matter). Make sure they are not too long (under a week) to make sure they are actually working and not procrastinating. Also ask them how long does each task takes them, or will take them, and expect to quote this back to them if they are asking for extra time (but be reasonable).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Trust them, this will give you peace of mind, and it will make them more responsible (just like children, or a new girlfriend). If you can't trust your staff to perform a certain job in a certain time, I'm sure next time you can hire new people that you can trust, making integrity your number one priority when recruiting.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Talk to them, you need to have communication with them, it doesn't have to be a f2f chat every week/month, if you have a chat tool, google chat, or skype, ask them to be present, some of these tools can tell if the other person is not at their desk, so make sure you don't punish them for not being at the computer 24/7 (or 8 hours a day), but establish that if they are on working hours, you're expecting them to answer any of your questions regarding the project within reasonable time (since people do go to the bathroom/drop their kids off school/etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Auditing works wonders for remote work. If the project is on time, on budget, and on scope, everything should be OK, if not, make sure they know it, and to add extra effort to bring the project up to speed. Auditing a project can be as simple as making sure project deliverables are present (which should be your job), are submitted on time, scope is met, clients are happy. If they are not, than you should take corrective actions in letting know your staff they need to put more effort on X &amp;amp; Y, because of X &amp;amp; Y reason that resulted from your audit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helped!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7598" LastActivityDate="2016-08-26T23:16:17.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19887" CreationDate="2016-08-27T03:17:17.540" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;So you're running agile.  You have a sprint planning session and the client wants a stove installed in his kitchen on the north wall between the cabinets.  The developers ask all the right questions.... Whats the size of the stove, whats the color, gas or electric, btu output.. etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well... Lo and behold one week into installation the developers discover the countertop installers left some over hang on their counters and the stove doesn't fit in its spot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your proposed solution is &quot;the requirements are set.... Get a tow truck and a chain and press the gas pedal until that sucker fits&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, if the client isn't available, who is the product owner?  A 20 minute conversation with a product owner would decide whether to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A) tear out the counter tops&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;B) buy a smaller stove&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;C) move the cabinetry over&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like the problem is that the client is not available and no one is stepping up to act as the product owner to step into the clients shoes and make a best judgment call.  Someone just has to say &quot;get the smaller stove and tell the client why we did it&quot;.  No one wants to take any ownership.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25686" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2016-08-29T13:49:02.947" LastActivityDate="2016-08-29T13:49:02.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19961" CreationDate="2016-08-27T03:49:07.327" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Imagine you are going to the hospital and meeting with a doctor to help you because you have chest pain.  Do you tell the dr straight away  &quot;I have a heart problem, i just read webmd, I need a heart transplant, schedule it for tomorrow&quot;?  Obviously, I'm sure you could understand why a dr might grin in this circumstance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you usually do is say &quot;I have a pain in my chest, it started an hour ago&quot;.  The dr might ask &quot;what did you eat for lunch&quot;?.  They might take a blood test or run an EKG.  They may conclude you just have acid reflux.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point is... An &quot;integration&quot; is a solution.  Not a problem. Explain the problem.   Technical people are put off when non technical people approach them with solutions.  Non technical people tend to only accidentally stumble on good technical solutions if ever (emphasis on the non technical).  Yes, occasionally there are very savvy people who are the exception... But it's best to play dumb and let the technical people arrive there themselves.  They've had too many run ins with the norm that teach them otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25686" LastActivityDate="2016-08-27T03:49:07.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19961" CreationDate="2016-08-28T02:53:29.907" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should not be defining &lt;em&gt;tasks&lt;/em&gt; for technical people. Instead, you should describe a &lt;em&gt;value proposition&lt;/em&gt; and some testable acceptance criteria, and then turn your technical experts loose to find a solution that delivers the defined value you're looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;User Stories Describe Value&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User stories are a good vehicle for defining value. Using the standard Connextra format of &quot;role, feature, reason&quot; is a good starting point. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a &lt;em&gt;banking client&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want to be able to &lt;em&gt;view a list of recent transactions&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I can &lt;em&gt;reconcile my checkbook&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The role (or &quot;value consumer&quot;) defines the intended audience of the feature. The feature itself describes what the feature should do, and the reason provides some context about &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; the user may want the feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The feature is described in terms of &lt;strong&gt;outcomes&lt;/strong&gt;, rather than specifying the underlying technical implementation. Constraining the implementation is generally a bad idea. Instead, you define a business or UX objective and allow the technical team to find the best way to meet it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason (or &quot;context&quot;) is also very important. Using the example above, there are lots of ways to display a set of transactions. However, by describing a specific use case (e.g. reconciling a checkbook), you are providing guidance to the team that can help them select the best technical implementation to meet the objective from among the available options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Make Sure It's Testable!&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing one can do, whether using user stories or specifications, is to ensure that the objectives are presented in a way that's &lt;em&gt;testable&lt;/em&gt;. If it's not testable, it's hard to reach a genuine understanding between the business and the technical team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the example story above, one might use the output of the feature to reconcile a sample checkbook. You and the technical team might define an account for John Doe as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;John starts with $100.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The recent transactions should add up to $60 in checks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;John should then have $40 left.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can then be verified using manual or automated tests. If the test passes, then the feature has been successfully delivered, and can even be refined further in the future. If the tests fail, then obviously a working solution is still needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&quot;How to Fail&quot; in Two Easy Lessons&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Vague Stories&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare the advice about &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;good user stories&lt;/a&gt; to a vague user story such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As anyone at all&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want to see a pretty list of transactions&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  using an attractive font.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sort of story is entirely subjective, and can't be tested. Who will use this feature? What's &quot;pretty?&quot; Which font will be considered attractive? Neither the technical team nor the business can succeed with hand-waving criteria like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Over-Specification&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, over-specification isn't your friend either. Consider this example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As user 321&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want to see exactly 10 checking transactions displayed&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  in a sans serif 6 point font named &quot;Obscure Sans.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This type of specification is probably testable, but overly constrains the solution. The implemented solution might only apply to a single user, who must be specified using a numeric ID. It fails to address all the possible edge cases (e.g. what happens if user 321 only has 6 transactions in total?), and forces a technical implementation such as a specific font choice that may or may not work in all browsers, or even be readable at the specified font size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;At Least Fail in a Testable Way&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both vague stories and over-specified stories are likely to lead to misfeatures or outright bugs. However, if you have to err, at least err on the side of testability! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-08-28T02:53:29.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19961" CreationDate="2016-08-28T16:23:38.090" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mostly agree with @codegnome and just summing up and adding my 2 cents &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Describe features in terms of stories (it's often a good way to convey information that you could ignore as for you are trivial giving your background) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to transform the Story in terms of Interfaces and desired Input and Output through them, implementation details should be out of this scope. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testing: define what you are going to test and how you are going to test it. &#xA;Developers will then be able to create code that passes the tests (TDD) and that's consistent with the story &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25702" LastEditorUserId="25702" LastEditDate="2016-08-29T06:43:38.800" LastActivityDate="2016-08-29T06:43:38.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19959" CreationDate="2016-08-29T06:56:15.763" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agree with @Barani about the level of detail: before sharing something with client be sure you realized what kind of information client is interested in (Milestones, Deliverables, ...) and then define an effective format (graphs maybe). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover consider the reason why you are sharing: do you want the client to be aware of any critical situation? Do you need any feedback by the client? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the latter should be involved in the decision process, be sure to share all the necessary details as well as the (short, mid, long term) estimated outcomes &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25702" LastActivityDate="2016-08-29T06:56:15.763" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19887" CreationDate="2016-08-29T12:19:40.300" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;you are right, it is always a situational decision. The better you know what the client needs to receive from the project/phase/sprint you can start to learn as a team where within the application you, as a team, derive value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you start prioritizing with the client where value will be driven, then it is their time to direct you to get there the cheapest and easiest way possible. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The better you explain how long your design/approach will take based on this priority, the better the client can direct your time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Always under promise and over deliver &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agile is a cycle, as a team: prioritize, discuss options based on time to deliver and value, make a decision and go. &#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lock in on a decision per sprint, a measurable goal is always best, then evaluate the outcome. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't get into &quot;analysis paralysis&quot;, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As your employees and the client team get better at priorities, requirements, time estimates and over-delivering, you will be better able to answer the question asked above.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25707" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2016-08-29T13:57:49.313" LastActivityDate="2016-08-29T13:57:49.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19837" CreationDate="2016-08-29T18:49:04.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;they've been working on a few pages of the app now for months are are (sic)&#xA;  excited to be done with it [...] but they also feel strongly that some of these engineering initiatives should be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's the &lt;em&gt;main reason&lt;/em&gt; why you'd avoid clearing away technical debt, then the first step is to talk to the Team and find out which &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; think is more important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More likely, however, you probably cannot choose to simply delay the 5-week deadline in order to start cleaning up technical debt. That doesn't (necessarily) mean that you can just &lt;em&gt;ignore&lt;/em&gt; it, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that, once you've &quot;finish[ed] up everything critical&quot;, the Team is being reduced to a single developer, in spite of the large bulk of technical debt, is concerning. Is that developer going to be focused solely on cleaning up the debt? Or is s/he going to be focusing on maintenance, lower-priority requirements, and other projects as well? If the latter, then the debt is just going to pile up, and the project code may end up collapsing under the weight of its own imperfections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you deal with the debt &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt; (potentially delaying the deadline) or deal with it &lt;em&gt;afterwards&lt;/em&gt;, either way you'll need to have sufficient time and effort budgeted to taking care of it. If you don't, you'll be paying for it down the line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind, however, that this applies only under the assumption that your project is going to be &lt;em&gt;maintained indefinitely&lt;/em&gt;. If it's &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt;, then technical debt becomes less important - especially as you get closer to the 'drop date'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-08-29T18:49:04.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14207" CreationDate="2016-08-29T22:29:22.427" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our team prefers having all meetings in one day. Our schedule is as follows, on every other Tuesday:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;10-11am: Sprint Review&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;11-12pm: Sprint Retrospective&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1-5pm: Sprint Planning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grooming occurs on mid-sprint Tuesdays. This schedule was suggested in my Scrum Master training class, and it's working out great for us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25713" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2016-08-30T08:53:04.880" LastActivityDate="2016-08-30T08:53:04.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19837" CreationDate="2016-08-30T02:20:48.910" Score="1" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gather the team's input to build a &lt;strong&gt;prioritized backlog&lt;/strong&gt; of technical debt (not all tech debt is created equal).  Make sure to capture their suggestions. Its unlikely all of the tech debt may ever be addressed, but this information can feed into future &quot;engineering initiatives&quot; and project checklists.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;While five weeks does not leave much time to address items that are not on the &quot;critical path&quot;, ask yourself and the team - &lt;em&gt;does any of the tech debt block work on the critical path?&lt;/em&gt;  If so, can you negotiate an extension? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25715" LastActivityDate="2016-08-30T02:20:48.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19974" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-30T05:45:48.390" Score="0" ViewCount="578" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know difference between assignment units and Peak units , but can any one explain how max units and assignment units are related to each other ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25717" LastActivityDate="2016-08-30T12:43:06.143" Title="Difference between max units and assignment units in MS Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19974" CreationDate="2016-08-30T12:43:06.143" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Max. Units is set on a resource level - usually in the Resource Sheet view.  When assigning a resource, Project will, by default, use the max units as the assignment units value.  However, you can assign a resource at any value - below or above - the max units manually.  If a resource's Peak Units exceed Max Units - the resource is overallocated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2016-08-30T12:43:06.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14207" CreationDate="2016-08-30T15:25:23.827" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, these should generally be across two days. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does depend however on the size, preferences etc of the team but also the length of the sprints. The team should all collectively decide on this in line with Scrums values. @CodeGnome asked where @Arek got his timings from. These are based on halving the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;scrum guides&lt;/a&gt; maximum time boxes for a 1-month sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reasons I believe it should generally be two days are due to both focus and context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, having a day full of meetings is generally not a good idea as people will loose focus easily and miss something. This can be slightly alleviated by having regular breaks, say every hour if it is a requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of context, we are looking at items from one sprint and then items for another sprint so it is good  to give them a break in-between. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also a general business overhead that should be considered, and someone else mentioned, regarding checking emails and other business activities. These should be given time to be done bearing in mind that no-one should be fully allocated for a sprint to account for these anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you get the situation where there are a few hours left at the end of the day then these extra activities can be completed along with potentially some training so it's never wasted time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going back to my earlier comment, though, take this information to the team and let them collectively decide it. It's not set in stone and can change over time in line with Kaizen as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22750" LastActivityDate="2016-08-30T15:25:23.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19887" CreationDate="2016-08-30T15:30:43.753" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Totally agree with @Barnaby Golden&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the challenges that Agile is for. It's always difficult for a team transitioning and in particular when consulting for external clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key here is training. Invest in some quality training for the whole team and include the BA's and sales teams as well so all is understood and conveyed to the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22750" LastActivityDate="2016-08-30T15:30:43.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19887" CreationDate="2016-08-30T21:56:08.890" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you're doing Scrum. The Scrum framework offers you two answers, both of which you should implement as soon as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-po&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Product Owner&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole point of a product owner is someone highly available to the team who has the authority to make decisions. One quote: &quot;A good product owner should ensure your questions are answered within 5 minutes 85% of the time.&quot; -Jim York.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your project manager might be acting as the Product Owner, but this should be explicitly clear, and this person needs to be available and empowered to make decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't get a real Product Owner, you might want to consider doing something other than Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#theory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Empirical Process Control&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Transparency, Inspection, and Adaptation are the pillars of Scrum. The point of Scrum (and Agile in general) is not to answer every question ahead-of-time in order to &quot;get it right the first time.&quot; The point is to build something that works, get feedback on it, and then make it better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to check every single decision you need to make with the PO prior to doing the work. The idea is that the developers make good decisions, present their work for feedback, such as at the Sprint Review, and then iterate to make it better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An example&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say the PO asks that homeowners be able to provide the date range for how long they lived in their previous house.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before taking the PBI into your sprint, you get some clarification that this should only cover date ranges in the past and that there must be an end date since this is about the house they are not currently living in (good job!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After getting started, you ask and verify that the date range should include the dates selected (inclusive). The PO answers right away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you're almost done, you realize that your solution does not allow one-day-long ranges. The PO is out sick, so you make the decision to stick with your current solution since living in a house for a single day seems really unlikely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the Sprint Review, you point out that date ranges must be two days or longer. The PO admits that you had a reasonable assumption, but that there are numerous examples of single-day residency in the legacy system, so he wants to make sure the new system can also handle this. The PO creates a new PBI to allow homeowners to enter single-day date ranges and moves it to the top of the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good job all around!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8340" LastActivityDate="2016-08-30T21:56:08.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19981" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19982" CreationDate="2016-08-31T06:00:13.947" Score="0" ViewCount="519" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm just getting started with Microsoft Project and I'm using it to plan out a project we have. There are several tasks on it where I would like the whole team (5 people) to work on a Task. My understanding is that if I put 5 Resources, each at 100% Units, on a Task it would make the Work be 5 times as much as the Duration. This was the case when I initially entered these Tasks, but when I came back to them later (after working on other tasks) I noticed that the Work is now the same as the Duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.imgur.com/dnIkySE.png&quot; alt=&quot;Screenshot&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Bonus, the one at the bottom seems to have a completely arbitrary relationship between Duration and Work)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I manually change the Work value to what it should be and then choose &quot;Increase the hours resources work per day (units) but keep the same duration.&quot; then it sets 4 of my resources to 0% and the remaining resource to 500%. Changing all resources back to 100% makes the Work equal to the Duration again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this issue started after I clicked &quot;Level All&quot; in the Resources menu, but I didn't notice the exact moment so I can't be completely sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25729" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-08-31T14:49:48.330" LastActivityDate="2016-08-31T14:49:48.330" Title="In Microsoft Project, the values for my Work column appear to be wrong" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19981" CreationDate="2016-08-31T06:27:14.043" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I removed the resources from the task and re-added them and it fixed the issue. I think the issue actually started when I used copy/paste to duplicate these items, as they occur twice within the project. The original worked fine, but the pasted copy had this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25729" LastActivityDate="2016-08-31T06:27:14.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19981" CreationDate="2016-08-31T10:06:40.150" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The relationship between Work and Duration can be controlled in a couple of different ways.&#xA;Effort driven vs non-effort driven and task types of Fixed Units (default), Fixed Duration, or Fixed Work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your scenario - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My understanding is that if I put 5 Resources, each at 100% Units, on&#xA;  a Task it would make the Work be 5 times as much as the Duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is true as long as the task is not effort driven and as long as none of the team has non-working time in their calendar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it sounds as if you have resolved your issue by re-building the assignments, but you may find that working with the task form in the lower pane helps explain some issues as it will show each resource assigned and the amount of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2016-08-31T10:06:40.150" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19986" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-08-31T19:22:41.490" Score="3" ViewCount="1090" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background:&lt;/strong&gt; I have worked with many scrum teams over the past 5 years using Atlassian JIRA. I changed companies and they are using TFS 2015.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Issue:&lt;/strong&gt; Using JIRA there was one scrum board per team and that all roles on the scrum team use the scrum board to understand where stories are in the process during the sprint. It gave the QA member information around when a story was ready for testing, it gave DevOps information about when an item could be deployed, etc. etc.. In TFS 2015 the scrum board is fixed based on the BPI (or User Story depending on the Process Template you are using). It seems that during a sprint team members have to view both the BPI/UserStory board and the sprint board to get the full picture of what is happing with a BPI/Story in context of the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don’t mind and kind of like the separation of concerns around the fact that epics, features, BPI/Stories have their own boards. This is great for the PO to track their process in preparing work for the team. What is frustrating to me is it seems that it would be better to allow the scrum team to define their scrum board to map to their process separate from what the product owner is doing on the BPI/Story board. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this new job I am getting back into the Microsoft stack (I left it for ~5-6 years for the JBOSS/Tomcat/Apache/Linux stack). It seems to me Microsoft is being heavy-handed forcing development teams to do it the way they think it should be done versus giving the teams the flexibility to find what works for them. A lot of things about Microsoft gives me that impression and, for me, it is hard to swallow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to customize the sprint board (I have not found a way via the web interface)? Maybe the process template XML? Does anyone else feel this way? Am I thinking about this wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7891" LastEditorUserId="7891" LastEditDate="2016-08-31T19:29:42.623" LastActivityDate="2016-12-31T18:30:57.337" Title="Scrum Task Board Customization in TFS 2015" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19986" CreationDate="2016-08-31T19:50:56.077" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;More of an alternative than a direct answer, but - does your whole Team all work in the same place? (And if not, is it possible to change it so they do? The Team really should, ideally, be co-located.)&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;If so, you could always just use an &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; board, with sticky-notes for the stories (might consider also using tacks to make sure they stay on - just in case). If you need to split the stories in the backlog based on functional areas or some other criteria, you can simply use differently-coloured sticky notes, or place actual stickers upon or otherwise mark the notes.&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;If you do that, you can organize it however you want and Microsoft won't be able to do anything to stop you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-09-01T18:43:08.503" LastActivityDate="2016-09-01T18:43:08.503" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19988" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-01T04:53:20.613" Score="-2" ViewCount="303" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hired hourly employees, they work remotely and choose when to work by themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The work includes working on a computer + making phone calls. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I check the actual number of hours they spent? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25740" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2016-09-01T11:10:33.703" LastActivityDate="2016-09-14T07:23:14.217" Title="How to check the actual number of hours spent by remotely working employee?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;process-controls&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19989" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-01T08:04:20.710" Score="2" ViewCount="607" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a software company where we have many projects for different clients. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are facing the problem that some of the software is built on an old framework (Rails 3.2). &#xA;Now, the customer has paid for making some new features to the project. The question arrises on upgrading the framework (at least to Rails 4.2, last version is 5), or just work with the software the customer has paid for.&#xA;Our options (how I see it) are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to convince the customer to paid for a framework update. It's pretty hard since they won't see any change, but it's easier to maintain. If the customer doesn't want to pay, this means to work with the old framework.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Update the framework and count it as a mandatory fee for &quot;touching&quot; the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is important not only for this project, but a guideline for future projects. Should we allow to have outdated projects? This is quite annoying for developers. On the other hand, update the framework can be pricy as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25742" LastActivityDate="2016-09-06T14:06:24.623" Title="Convince client of software update vs just charge for it" Tags="&lt;maintenance&gt;&lt;pricing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19988" CreationDate="2016-09-01T09:26:55.917" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can define tasks and estimate for each one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then employees logs their work hour on each task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And based on the task (difficulty, blockers, ...) you need to compromise on logged times and estimated&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24025" LastActivityDate="2016-09-01T09:26:55.917" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19991" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20032" CreationDate="2016-09-01T10:45:43.793" Score="2" ViewCount="692" Body="&lt;p&gt;When running a project meeting it is sometimes difficult to make meeting minutes/notes and lead the meeting. I have considered using a voice recording application so I can play back the meeting after to add more clarity to the notes I do manage to take down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone actively record meetings? do you find this technique useful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23923" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-09-01T11:47:51.613" LastActivityDate="2016-09-07T19:02:12.057" Title="Recording a project meeting using a Dictaphone" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19989" CreationDate="2016-09-01T11:01:57.010" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am making an assumption here, that your client owns the software you have built for them. If that is the case, you don't get to make the decisions about what work should be done in the software, they do. Deciding to make platform changes to suit your developers and your organisation and then expecting them to pick up the bill for that is plain wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Change to the underlying software platform, to keep it in line with best practise, currently supported software etc. etc. should be covered in a support and maintenance agreement with the client. This will usually take the form that they agree to pay a fixed annual support fee and you agree to keep their software working and current.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2016-09-01T11:01:57.010" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19991" CreationDate="2016-09-01T11:09:23.150" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;We cannot give legal advice here, which in any case would differ from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have in the past used this exact method- primarily because I came to realise that my boss would make a decision or issue a diktat, and then in subsequent meetings flatly deny he had done so. Having deployed the recording technique (it was for departmental meetings) I noticed two effects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My boss completely ceased to U-turn&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It was a monumental nightmare to listen to recordings and make notes from them that, counter-intuitively, seemed to take longer to achieve than just taking notes in the meeting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So overall I ditched the idea and applied myself to learning how to take quick efficient notes within meetings, even if I was doing most of the talking. The key to this is understanding what key bits of information you need to record and &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; noting that. Taking full &quot;he said, she said&quot; notes is difficult, labour intensive and ultimately a complete waste of time under normal circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hone your note-taking skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2016-09-01T11:09:23.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19988" CreationDate="2016-09-01T11:16:10.140" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is only one answer to this question, and I am sure you know it, you have to ask your employees to record the time they are spending and then monitor your records. There is no stealthy magic process that will inform you of what they are really doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These kinds of questions are usually asked because the employer believes the employees may be slacking and billing for time they did not spend. First consider if there is any real evidence of this or whether you are just being paranoid. If the work is getting done in roughly expected timescales then be happy and don't try to micro-manage every employee's working hour- it is a counter-productive exercise, you will not &lt;em&gt;win&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; evidence that you are being ripped off then you are in a difficult position. Unless you deploy some computer-based controls for remote workers you &lt;em&gt;have to&lt;/em&gt; just trust what they are saying, there is no other way to know. If you cannot do that, then you will need to bring the employees into a controlled environment- i.e. cease allowing remote working and force everyone into the office where slacking is easier to detect and deal with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastEditorUserId="7335" LastEditDate="2016-09-01T21:05:43.310" LastActivityDate="2016-09-01T21:05:43.310" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19988" CreationDate="2016-09-01T22:13:24.507" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Don't Solve the Wrong Problem&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; an X/Y problem. It is almost always an attempt to address systemic organizational failures by &quot;holding employees accountable.&quot; Any process or technical control you can apply to tracking employees, rather than tracking &lt;em&gt;productivity&lt;/em&gt; directly, is (at best) a proxy for failing to address the underlying issue: you are tracking a proxy metric for productivity, rather than tracking results directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Devise Results-Based Metrics&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Building process controls and tracking metrics around results can be hard. However, all jobs should have a value proposition that can be tracked in a quantitative way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, your remote employees make phone calls. You don't say what the calls are for, so we'll assume some basic things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The calls don't directly make money (e.g. they aren't sales calls).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The calls serve an organizational purpose. The purpose doesn't really matter, other than that the business is better off than it would be if no one made the calls or answered the phones.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have the correct processes in place to track the organizational benefit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good results-based metric wouldn't look at call volume or call length, as they are (usually) proxy metrics for productivity anyway. Instead, you should establish a baseline, and then track the organizational benefit that good call-handling is supposes to produce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, let's imagine that the calls are technical support calls. These calls don't actually generate revenue. Heck, the entire technical support department might be considered a cost center! However, good technical support prevents product returns or lost customers, so there is a clear organizational benefit to the activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the above, if customer retention or product returns remain the same or better, then your team is doing the job the organization needs them to do. If you lose customers due to poor technical support, or you have a spike in product returns that could have been resolved through technical support, then the team is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; doing their jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't identify the organizational benefit, or are unable to track the benefit, then fix &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; instead. Tracking the wrong metric or incentivizing the wrong behavior is often worse than not tracking productivity at all. Instead, you will be training your team to look busy, or game the system, without any meaningful benefit to the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't want to be the person who creates a culture of busywork and unproductive behavior at your company. That's the fastest track to the unemployment line that I know of, and treating your employees as presumptively lazy or incompetent is just greasing the skids. Don't be that person!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-09-01T22:13:24.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19998" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20003" CreationDate="2016-09-02T04:51:50.420" Score="0" ViewCount="253" Body="&lt;p&gt;What facts and sources can I use to convince a manager I'm currently working with that rewriting a project of ~20'000 lines of code in a month is a completely unrealistic plan, and that writing ~5'000 lines of functional code in 3 weeks is actually a good result?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25753" LastActivityDate="2016-09-02T14:08:18.333" Title="Dealing with unrealistic performance expectations" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;performance&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ClosedDate="2016-09-04T08:32:46.060" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19999" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-02T08:58:36.280" Score="1" ViewCount="1448" Body="&lt;p&gt;The conversation feature in TFS is very basic. If you see it in Asana, it's very user friendly. How can one achieve same, without switching from TFS ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17886" LastEditorUserId="15972" LastEditDate="2016-09-12T09:42:36.803" LastActivityDate="2021-04-20T05:49:05.873" Title="How to sync Team Foundation Server with Asana, in order to use Asana features on top of TFS" Tags="&lt;tfs&gt;&lt;asana&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19998" CreationDate="2016-09-02T11:14:03.137" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you are talking about lines of code, you could check a popular github projects graphs to see how many lines are committed in similar time periods&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/Microsoft/dotnet/graphs/contributors&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://github.com/Microsoft/dotnet/graphs/contributors&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2016-09-02T11:14:03.137" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19998" CreationDate="2016-09-02T12:33:12.663" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/16084/30&quot;&gt;A previous answer that I wrote here on Project Management Stack Exchange provides high/low/nominal values for source lines of code written based on project type per staff-month.&lt;/a&gt; More specific data is always better - using historical data from your past experiences or past projects at your company of similar size and scope - would be more relevant. As you can see from that data, even 5000 SLOC/staff-month is well outside of nominal ranges for every application type and size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2016-09-02T12:33:12.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19989" CreationDate="2016-09-02T13:04:20.340" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Client is coming to you to solve a problem, and if you have already committed to the work then it is disingenuous for you to want them to update their framework just to make your developers' lives easier, especially if there will be no value added to them, and just an extra expense - I'd tell you guys to pound sand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way it would even be okay to approach the Client would be if the updated Framework added a great bit of functionality, had future uses, and you commit to an upkeep period that is cost-effective to them, and letting them know that you can probably complete other small projects faster may convince them to go ahead with the upgrade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To avoid that problem in the future, add a maintenance period into your contracts - that for a set amount of time after Production, the client agrees to pay a flat rate and agrees to having upgrades done as they become available, as well as regular support, then everybody wins. You have to forward think these things - software is capricious, and languages are always updating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23735" LastActivityDate="2016-09-02T13:04:20.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17527" CreationDate="2016-09-02T13:16:38.267" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Traditionally &quot;PMO&quot; should mean Project Management Office - what the role of the organization's PMO is variable. One military contractor I worked for had the PMO split into different &quot;disciplines&quot; with Business Operations PMs (poor dudes who just had to generate requirements from the Government), Implementation PMs and Software Dev PMs all in different areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other organizations the PMO is the chief authority and acts as more or less as an consultant within that Organization to make sure practices, processes, frameworks and/or any other HR/Business buzzwords that they append to Project Management as a whole is followed - I've been in a small insurance company where the &quot;PMO&quot; had a Program Director and a bunch of other Business (not technical) people in it that directed the IT department in how they were supposed to lead projects and develop software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And even rarer - I was in another MIL/GOV Contractor company that had a PMO mean Project Management Officer, he was essentially a Director or VP of Operations that tried to institute his Waterfall methodologies to our Scrum Teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So - examples aside, if it is a new department there will be some growing pains, especially as it continues to evolve and define itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23735" LastActivityDate="2016-09-02T13:16:38.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19998" CreationDate="2016-09-02T14:08:18.333" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's more to estimating/evaluating a project than just the lines of code that need to be (or were) created/modified. Size and nature of the modification/addition, complexity of the code, code re-use, programming language, verbosity of the code (you can have one line do the exact same thing as five lines - and this may be good or bad depending on situation and opinion) and use of external packages, to name a few. And many of these will change, not just on a team-to-team basis, but on a &lt;em&gt;project-to-project&lt;/em&gt; basis.&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;The only people who are really equipped to give any sort of reasonable and realistic estimation, given all of these factors, are the people who &lt;em&gt;actually do the work.&lt;/em&gt; If a manager tries to estimate what is 'realistic', their estimate is going to be coloured by other factors - such as timelines and other constraints - which would falsify such estimates even if the manager &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; have the ability to otherwise properly estimate the work.&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;A more effective system is for the developers to make the estimate, the manager to &lt;em&gt;trust&lt;/em&gt; the developer's &lt;em&gt;ability&lt;/em&gt; to make estimates (if the manager does not, that is a separate problem that must be addressed), and then the manager must make a decision on whether the value added by the work is worth the estimated effort expended to accomplish it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-09-02T14:08:18.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18742" CreationDate="2016-09-02T14:36:30.847" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every Quality Manual will be specific to the company that has implemented the ISO 9001 standard, and no two will be completely identical even when looking at companies in the same industry. If you are looking online for sample manuals to use as a starting point, you won't be able to find a sample that includes any company specifics unless you are referencing an actual ISO manual from an organization that has shared this online. Typically, when companies are starting the process of moving to ISO they will engage the assistance of certification experts who works with management in creating the quality manual for the organization based on the outline of the original standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25755" LastActivityDate="2016-09-02T14:36:30.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20008" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-02T16:39:37.757" Score="2" ViewCount="336" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my organization I realize that at times there are teams that work better in certain combinations of devs (IE: John + Travis have a better dynamic than Dennis + Travis so they result in a faster working team). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been tinkering with the idea of finding a way to optimize teams internally but I'm still a bit green so I'm unsure if I'm seeing unrelated patterns. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anybody else found inter-team social dynamics impacting the end result of projects in terms of pace, quality, etc.? If otherwise, how much of an impact have you found group dynamics have on your projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21106" LastActivityDate="2016-12-10T21:41:43.333" Title="Inter-Team Dynamics - Is it worth planning / optimizing for?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20008" CreationDate="2016-09-02T16:53:10.597" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The human element will always have an impact on your projects, end of the day you still need happy devs to code, and happy engineers to build cabinets, etc. You can certainly plan to have people work together - but the full team dynamic is a lot more important than breaking off into cliques within teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there is the fact that members may move on, be out sick, get promoted, or stop working well together and now you just hampered your capabilities. To borrow a Scrum-ism: &quot;Build great teams of people, not teams of great people&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a PM one of your assumed duties is coaching your team members to all contribute to the team effort and working well together to build a tempo and gain momentum, challenge them to break out of their comfort zones to really get in-sync. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of what I said could be subjective, but I believe Project Management is subjective in its application at the end of the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would direct you to read up some on Agile PM'ing and Scrum - a lot of team-centric stuff are identified there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://agilemanifesto.org/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/why-scrum/core-scrum-values-roles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.scrumalliance.org/why-scrum/core-scrum-values-roles&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/About/All-Articles/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/1036/Multicultural-Scrum-the-Impact-of-Culture-on-Living-the-Scrum-Values&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.scrum.org/About/All-Articles/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/1036/Multicultural-Scrum-the-Impact-of-Culture-on-Living-the-Scrum-Values&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/learning/thought-leadership/series&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pmi.org/learning/thought-leadership/series&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23735" LastActivityDate="2016-09-02T16:53:10.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20010" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20011" CreationDate="2016-09-02T18:13:59.717" Score="5" ViewCount="453" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way I understand Scrum is that the team organizes itself. As a developer, I should decide what's the right way to reach a goal. If necessary, I should communicate with other team members to get things done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A short time ago, one of our team members became the team leader. During the daily standup he comments on or criticizes team members for what they do, or the way they want to do work. He tries to force team members to do things the way he wants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Isn't that all against the idea of a self-organized team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13697" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-09-07T19:26:15.790" LastActivityDate="2016-09-12T14:35:26.340" Title="Is it right for a team lead to force the team to do work in a particular way?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20010" CreationDate="2016-09-02T18:28:05.053" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Isn't that all against the idea of a self-organized team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes and no.&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Since the 'team leader' &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a member of the Team, his opinion &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be taken into account. If any team member's opinion is ignored during organization, then that's a strong smell that there's something wrong with the whole 'self-organizing' situation.&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;One thing you and he need to take into consideration, however, is that Scrum recognizes no 'team lead' role. The only roles in the Scrum Team are Product Owner, Development Team Member, and Scrum Master. No member of the Development Team intrinsically has more &lt;em&gt;decision-making&lt;/em&gt; authority than any other member.&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;The 'team lead' does not own the issue. However, &lt;em&gt;neither does the person working on it&lt;/em&gt;. The &lt;em&gt;entire Team&lt;/em&gt; owns each issue (once they've entered into the Sprint), and as such any complications or concerns regarding implementation details of those issues are the purview of the &lt;em&gt;entire Team&lt;/em&gt;.&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;When something like this comes up, the details need to be discussed (note: &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; during the daily Scrum, that's not the purpose of that meeting) and a &lt;em&gt;consensus&lt;/em&gt; needs to be reached. If the 'team lead' believes there is a problem with how someone else is approaching an issue, then what he should be doing is explaining the problem and convincing everyone that his approach will be better - not simply dictating how it should be done and assuming his orders will be followed. Likewise, this can and should be done when &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; Team member sees a problem with an issue being worked on by &lt;em&gt;any other&lt;/em&gt; Team member. It's not just the 'team lead' who should do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-09-12T14:35:26.340" LastActivityDate="2016-09-12T14:35:26.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19931" CreationDate="2016-09-05T09:57:05.573" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would argue that it all depends on what is the goal of this particular requirement. There are some cases or requirement types which we could consider here, e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;stuff that delivers value to an actual user of the system be it a human being (&lt;em&gt;As a teacher ...&lt;/em&gt;) or another system (&lt;em&gt;As SAP, I need a correlation ID for each request I make to your back-end so that ...&lt;/em&gt;). &lt;em&gt;As the system&lt;/em&gt; could fall into the later type, it all depends on who or what is the actual user of your product. Looking at your question and example, that is most likely not the case. &lt;strong&gt;That's why I'd advise to try and focus more on user perspective and not use this format.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;stuff that also delivers value but throughout the whole product. These might be various types of non-functional requirements or constraints which must be taken into account when developing the product. Not the case either.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note, I'd say your question touches a very broad topic. Use whichever approach to documenting requirements that brings clarity to your development process, reduces confusion throughout involved parties and doesn't involve unnecessary overhead. I intentionally haven't mentioned explicitly focusing on documenting value here - not because it's unimportant, but because focusing on user value can be achieved in a number of ways and documenting the &quot;so that&quot; part of user story and avoiding &quot;as a system&quot; stories, is just one of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25785" LastActivityDate="2016-09-05T09:57:05.573" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20018" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-05T17:58:22.997" Score="2" ViewCount="11650" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've got a strange issue in my mpp. I've got one task which was originally estimated to take 20hrs which I scheduled over 15 days (resource only available 30% of the time). Looking at the dates I noticed that the task was starting in early August and ending late October, obviously beyond the 15 days. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I changed it around to test and when the task was estimate of 1hr duration, it still started early August and finished late Sept... Definitely something wrong&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I have checked and is not wrong:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project working week is as expected - 8 - 5, monday to friday, no mass holidays&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No resource holidays over the period&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No percentage of complete entered&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Automatically scheduled&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Predecessors and Successors not showing same problem&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However other tasks in the mpp are having similar problems around the same dates, so I'm sure it must be a calendar issue but I'm not sure where to look.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problem is this affects my whole timeline now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please advise what I should look into,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25788" LastActivityDate="2017-06-10T15:57:46.453" Title="MS Project - task duration and end dates don't match" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19989" CreationDate="2016-09-06T14:06:24.623" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been in similar situations. My experience has been that when you talk about it, customers usually have at least an intuitive understanding of the issue, but will look for any way to avoid the announced cost. They have been working with you for years, have gotten accustomed to a certain rhythm of deliveries, have a feel for how much something costs and now you drop this bomb saying &quot;we'll need 10x more money which will give you no new features and quite likely introduce regressions&quot;: they don't want anything to do with it, right? At the same time, things are blowing up in your face as fewer and fewer people in the larger community are able to help you troubleshoot obscure issues, documentation is hard to find and you basically break deadline after deadline, bleeding money all of the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From where I stand, there are a few options. You can try to argue that this kind of work doesn't happen often, but cannot be avoided and makes future work more efficient/cheap/productive. If these are key customers, you can offer a discount for the work or even subsidize it in order to protect your employees' sanity and prevent an oncoming exodus of developers fed up with having to use technologies today's graduates haven't even heard of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that fails, there are really two things you can try and do. One is to plod on on the current platform and charge significantly more as a kind of compensation for the added risk, frustration and ever more frequent technical issues no one on-line knows anything about any more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if all of the above fails, you're basically stuck in a project you can't get a profit on, so you can only offer to hand it over to a vendor of their choice for future work, but will have nothing more to do with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25794" LastActivityDate="2016-09-06T14:06:24.623" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19999" CreationDate="2016-09-06T14:39:40.330" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some 3rd Party Plugins from a few different vendors/providers that allow certain non-proprietary features to overlap with TFS and Asana - Zapier for example (&lt;a href=&quot;https://zapier.com/zapbook/asana/visual-studio-online/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://zapier.com/zapbook/asana/visual-studio-online/&lt;/a&gt;) has some &quot;Zaps&quot; that overlay some functionality. It has the ability to custom-create a &quot;Zap&quot; as well, I do not know that much about Asana to reliably tell you that you can overlap both of the features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23735" LastActivityDate="2016-09-06T14:39:40.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8853" CreationDate="2016-09-06T14:40:52.080" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No answer just a tip.&#xA;Keep track of these stories and the time spent analyzing, refining, estimating and debating them.  Count the committees as well. &#xA;Then post how many hours are lost on stories which were, at the end, not going to be built.  There's easy savings for your organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24119" LastActivityDate="2016-09-06T14:40:52.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19991" CreationDate="2016-09-06T15:01:23.857" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tried it a number of times and found it not useful in the overwhelming majority of cases. Sometimes, though, when you're forced to deal with extremely manipulative, antagonistic people (which is thankfully very rare in my case), a recording can be useful to better understand the person's strategies to side-track the discussion or otherwise avoid arriving at an unpleasant, but logical conclusion. In these rare cases, recordings have been somewhat enlightening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I've been in (too) many &quot;he said, she said&quot; discussions which were frequently fruitless because they depend on meeting minutes or e-mails from a year ago and it would be completely impractical to listen to e.g. several 1-2h meetings just to prove one point, even if you had recorded them all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25794" LastActivityDate="2016-09-06T15:01:23.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19991" CreationDate="2016-09-07T01:38:36.280" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider for a moment that leading a meeting should not be a very onerous endeavor. I lead many meetings, and rarely need to do more than kick it off and then gently prod to keep things on the rails. It leaves plenty of time for note taking. You may be taking too active of a role. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps what you need isn't a better way to record the meeting, but simply to let go of fine grained control of the meeting enough to allow yourself the time to take better notes. You may even find that people are more engaged when not so pressured to stick &lt;em&gt;precisely&lt;/em&gt; to an agenda. (The agenda is still important, just not so important that it should stifle collaboration.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, a bit more bluntly, be quiet long enough for others in the room to speak. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastActivityDate="2016-09-07T01:38:36.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20026" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-07T07:24:37.603" Score="2" ViewCount="277" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to import JIRA issues into Redmine without Redmine then updating JIRA. Is there a way to do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25804" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-09-07T17:46:28.653" LastActivityDate="2016-09-07T17:46:28.653" Title="How can I import JIRA issues into Redmine?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;redmine&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20026" CreationDate="2016-09-07T12:24:35.513" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an older (8 years+) script made for JIRA to do an XML dump of information for import. A quick Google search and some reading got me there, I can't tell you if it will work or not but that seems to be your best bet: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redmine.org/issues/1385&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.redmine.org/issues/1385&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question was also covered in another PM.se topic: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/17752/can-i-import-jira-tickets-into-redmine&quot;&gt;Can I import Jira tickets into redmine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It links to another Zapier &quot;Zap&quot; (plugin), which I have used for other products, but again, not JIRA nor REDMINE: &lt;a href=&quot;https://zapier.com/zapbook/zaps/4133/send-new-jira-issues-to-redmine/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://zapier.com/zapbook/zaps/4133/send-new-jira-issues-to-redmine/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23735" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2016-09-07T12:24:35.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19991" CreationDate="2016-09-07T18:09:39.040" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;A Process-Oriented Way to Think About Meeting Notes&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, you are solving the wrong problem when you focus on &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; to take notes rather than on the role of note-taking itself. Please consider the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your job as a project manager is to facilitate meetings, not perform the role of meeting secretary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A meeting should be focused. If you find yourself covering so many topics that personal notes are necessary, you may be abusing the meeting process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some people can take notes while participating, and some can't. If you can't, focus on active listening and facilitating instead.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you don't take good notes, delegate the role of keeping minutes to another person on the team or an outside resource.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're just trying to nail down meeting outcomes, circulate a meeting summary afterwards for confirmation, and ask people to identify any key points that may have been missed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are certainly meetings where I take notes (e.g. a requirements-gathering session with a client), but the majority of my meetings are spent focused on coming to an agreement about something specific. Documenting that agreement afterwards is generally a good idea, but rarely requires detailed note-taking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, you should re-examine your assumptions about what your role is in meetings, and what problem you're trying to solve with detailed notes. Then, find a process-oriented solution that works &lt;strong&gt;for &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; team&lt;/strong&gt; and go with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-09-07T18:09:39.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20018" CreationDate="2016-09-07T18:24:35.797" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Considering the basis of your question as your requirement: &#xA;20 hours’ work required for a task, over 15 days duration with 30% resource allocation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;30% of a single day is 2.4 hours, times 15 days = 36 hours and not 20 hours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a mismatch in your requirement between the 20 hours of work vs. 36 hours of work yielded from the 30% allocation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will need to 'freeze' some combination of your Duration, Work, % Resource Allocation and allow the other to ‘float’ in the calculation process. Here are some options below: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Freeze 15 days and 20 hours total work: either 16% or 17% resource allocation (running tests on MS Project 2010 standard; does not handle fractional % allocations – comes up with 17%)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Freeze 30% allocation and 15 days: 36 hours work&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Freeze 30% allocation and 20 hours:  8.33 days duration&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can allow MS Project to perform the desired calculation by adjusting your Task type or 'fixed-ness’ by choosing the desired task and performing the following: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task Information ==&gt; Advanced tab ==&gt; Task Type drop down&#xA;Then choose between &#xA;-   Fixed Units&#xA;-   Fixed Duration&#xA;-   Fixed Work&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An additional consideration is the effort driven check box, also on the advanced task. This mostly comes into play when you have more than one resource on a task, which did not seem to be a part of your requirement and question. From the Microsoft website at the second link below: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“When you assign or remove people from a task, Project lengthens or shortens the duration of the task based on the number of resources that are assigned to it, but Project does not change the total work for the task. This is called effort-driven scheduling and is the setting Project typically uses when you assign resources to tasks.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Additional information&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task Types: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-US/article/Change-the-task-type-for-more-accurate-scheduling-B0B969AD-45BC-4E9E-8967-435587548A72&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://support.office.com/en-US/article/Change-the-task-type-for-more-accurate-scheduling-B0B969AD-45BC-4E9E-8967-435587548A72&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Effort Driven checkbox&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-US/article/Change-the-effort-driven-setting-for-task-types-18EFD7C7-D146-4B06-BDBE-B6A11564BDF3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://support.office.com/en-US/article/Change-the-effort-driven-setting-for-task-types-18EFD7C7-D146-4B06-BDBE-B6A11564BDF3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25568" LastActivityDate="2016-09-07T18:24:35.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19991" CreationDate="2016-09-07T19:02:12.057" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recorded meetings in the past and although, as is obvious, it can be a life-saver to capture 100% of what is said in the meeting, it is time consuming because in order to document, you will have to listen to the entire meeting again, at least once, if not take even more time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a few comments to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the purpose of the notes and who is the audience? I have recorded meetings, taken the time to document every important point, distribute the meeting notes and found the level of detail to be overwhelming and too much for my audience to gain any advantage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may need to only capture enough information for executive leaders to refer to in the subsequent meeting(s). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In cases where the meetings are say, higher level project meetings, it may be necessary to just document action items, decisions, as well as issues and risks which should have actionable information (who, when, what, etc.). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In periodic project meetings, often the basis of the agile scrum practice is useful, which is: &#xA;1. what did you do in the prior period&#xA;2. What are you going to do in the upcoming period&#xA;3. What obstacles are you facing&#xA;Note: there is also a parking lot concept for any item not related to the above three items. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, the critical items are action items and decisions. These are those things that need to be tracked, reviewed and revisited by project management staff. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to give that a try, in conjunction with your recordings to see how that works out. In such a case, you will have the recording as a backup. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps and good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25568" LastActivityDate="2016-09-07T19:02:12.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20010" CreationDate="2016-09-07T19:59:19.133" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Symptoms of a Partial Scrum Implementation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the daily standup he comments on or criticizes team members for what they do, or the way they want to do work. He tries to force team members to do things the way he wants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have multiple problems with your Scrum implementation, and they aren't just the ones you think you have. Specifically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In Scrum, there is no role labeled &quot;team lead.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; All members of the development team are equal members of the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The daily standup is for planning and coordination of the daily increment, not code reviews or debates.&lt;/strong&gt; Besides being toxic in his approach, the &quot;team lead&quot; is misusing the ceremony and should be reminded of the purpose of the meeting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Keeping the daily standup on track and enforcing the Scrum framework is the responsibility of the Scrum Master.&lt;/strong&gt; Where is she in all of this?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Recurring problems should be brought up and addressed during the Sprint Retrospective.&lt;/strong&gt; It doesn't sound like the team is leveraging that properly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The team is &lt;em&gt;collectively&lt;/em&gt; responsible for product development.&lt;/strong&gt; Self-organizing doesn't mean team members can do whatever they want in isolation; it just means that no one outside the Scrum Team should be allowed to interfere with the team's processes or workflow.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The second half of Sprint Planning (where Product Backlog Items are decomposed into tasks for the Sprint Backlog) is where team discussions about implementation should take place.&lt;/strong&gt; It doesn't sound like the work is being agreed to by the entire team during Sprint Planning, which is a huge red flag. There's nothing stopping team members from having discussions (or even formal meetings) outside of the Scrum ceremonies to address implementation details, but the team should always exit Sprint Planning with a shared vision of the work to be done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the Scrum framework is not being followed. An experienced, active Scrum Master is needed to help the team work more effectively within the Scrum framework, and to provide &lt;em&gt;guidance&lt;/em&gt; to team members about their roles and workflows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-09-07T19:59:19.133" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18634" CreationDate="2016-09-08T01:19:31.190" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;Vision&lt;/strong&gt; is the expected end state, especially as it pertains to the business/user/customer facing end state. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simple example: Umbrella or similar product&#xA;Vision: when walking outside I will be, using a light-weight, easily portable device, protected from sun, rain, wind.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Proposal&lt;/strong&gt; will describe what product or service the contracting organization will deliver to the customer, especially in terms of measureable characteristics... characteristics defines sufficiently so the customer can view delivery, and the proposal and easily say 'yes' or 'no' to whether the contracted delivery was made. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simple, relate example:&#xA;We propose an device we will call an umbrella. It will be light-weight and will be portable. It will protect the user from rain. In sunny and windy weather it will also protect the user. It will be made of high quality materials that will be water prove and will opaque so as not to allow the hot sun to peak through. The material will be such that it will remain functional in strong winds, protecting the user while not collapsing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Roadmaps&lt;/strong&gt;, in my experience have generally been related to products, rather than projects, although in some circles it may be used. My experience of a roadmap would be the plan for product features that would be released to the public at various times. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One simple example Credit Cards and associated systems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;introduction: They first came out and to use them the retailer used the monstrous swipe machine that transferred the image of the credit cards numbers to a carbon multipart form. Your received a copy and the merchant kept copies.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2nd phase or milestone on the roadmap: Magnet strip and magnetic strip readers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3rd phase or milestone on the roadmap: telephone transactions using 3 digit code&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4th phase or milestone on the roadmap: online transactions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5th phase or milestone on the roadmap: hologram cards&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;6th phase : chip cards and chip readers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not a credit card systems expert, just a user, but if you have been around credit cards for any length of time, I think you will be able to relate to the concepts in the example relate to roadmaps. The roadmap in the conception stage would show each of the phases or milestones possibly one year apart. If credit cards were know today the roadmap may be as follows: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2016: Plastic cards with account number and expiration date&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2017: Phase 2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2018: Phase 3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2019: Phase 4&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I hesitate to perpetuate the term &lt;strong&gt;&quot;best practices&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;. Although it is well used, if not overused in industry, there can be no such evidentially sound concept. 'Best' would have to denote something to which the practice can be compared to determine it is indeed the 'Best'. Theoretically, it would have to be placed against every other similar practice and evidentially determined to be 'Best'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25568" LastActivityDate="2016-09-08T01:19:31.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20035" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-08T01:36:11.327" Score="0" ViewCount="66" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen many job descriptions for project managers in which organizations want the candidate should have been worked on different audits and audit reporting. I have 2 questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kindly explain what kind of audits we have in service based IT industry?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a project manager how I will support auditing?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25718" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2016-09-08T08:09:37.787" LastActivityDate="2016-09-09T18:17:34.657" Title="Types of audits in service IT industry" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2016-09-25T07:55:50.917" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20036" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-08T10:31:12.503" Score="5" ViewCount="1566" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently helping out a team in the role of Scrum Master. Everything is running smoothly. The last couple of retros we had very little to talk about, and if there were issues we mostly agreed upon them immediately, took action, and resolved them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now  I'm wondering if there are any good ideas for a retro when everything is going well. We're mostly on track with what we are committing to, communication is great, stories are well-defined, and everybody seems happy. On the other hand, I wonder if there are things I might be able to tickle out of the team when using different approaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24169" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-09-08T16:05:35.837" LastActivityDate="2016-09-08T16:05:35.837" Title="What should a team do in the Sprint Retrospective when everything is going well?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20035" CreationDate="2016-09-08T11:20:05.440" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The type of audit is going to vary widely - audits in Germany are going to be different from audits in USA. Audits in the public sector will differ from private sector. In general you're going to experience audits for any certificates you have (ISO, PKI, CMMI, etc.), for any government regulations (OMB, FIPS), and you're going to have periodic audits for computer security (multiple audits/year), budget, risk, physical inventory, software inventory, etc. Plus the inspector general wants to feel needed, so they will audit someone every year.  If you include data calls (which are a type of audit), then we're audited about sixty times a year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a PM, how do you support the audit? Depends on the audit.  Once a year they come through to audit all physical inventory that costs more than a threshold.  We don't need to support that much at all.  On the other hand when the security team comes through there is a week of collecting documents, a week of face to face interviews &amp;amp; demonstrations, and a week of writing plans of action &amp;amp; milestones.  If the CMMI team comes through, we take a team of people offline for  between one and six months to write documentation/artifacts, and the entire management team is on call for the duration of the audit.  Plus all the post audit action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(hat tip to @Laconic Droid) - Internal audits vs external audits will require significantly different preparation. On the other hand, I'd be suspicious of any job that requires experience preparing for internal audits. If such a job were advertised, I'd ask some pointed questions about what skills/knowledge/abilities they were seeking. Internal audits differ vastly from office to office, and I'm not sure how much skill transference is possible.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-09-09T17:58:35.877" LastActivityDate="2016-09-09T17:58:35.877" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20036" CreationDate="2016-09-08T11:46:46.637" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are always things you can learn from, the Retro gives you an opportunity to keep refining your processes and strategies - identify any areas where you can shave time off, increase the quality of your increments of done work, maybe a different QA approach, a different Dev approach. Maybe you want to talk about how things would have gone if you brought in more things from a backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The caveat to that it, which I am sure you know, is not doing any drastic changes, don't swap out responsibilities, or do anything to otherwise change the team dynamic as that will cause a disruption in performance. I'd also caution against putting too much pressure to pick up intensity or speed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also use the Retro to look back on lessons learned from other Retro, Planning and other internal reviews/meetings you have called during the Sprint, or other iterations to see how you took those lessons to heart and improved. Metrics can be pretty boring or feel like a waste to some, but nothing is cooler than showing a Scrum/Agile team 3 months worth of charts and other metrics that show improvement coming from adhering to lessons learned and processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23735" LastActivityDate="2016-09-08T11:46:46.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20036" CreationDate="2016-09-08T12:20:42.147" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When things are going well and the team is doing good, you can look for ways to use the strengths that team members poses to become great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several retrospective exercises that I use to discover strengths and use that to further improve, address problems, increase performance, or make things go smoothly. Some of them are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.benlinders.com/2014/getting-feedback-with-the-perfection-game/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Perfection Game&lt;/a&gt; where people state what they like and how they could improve that&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.benlinders.com/2015/exploring-strengths-with-core-qualities/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Core Qualities&lt;/a&gt; to discover the positive qualities, strengths that people have.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.benlinders.com/2015/using-strength-based-questions-in-retrospectives/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Strength-based Questions&lt;/a&gt; to explore existing skills and experience to become great in doing things that teams are already good at.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.benlinders.com/2013/using-solution-focused-in-a-strengths-based-retrospective/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Solution-focused approach&lt;/a&gt;, focus on the present and future and examine “what works” in a given situation, and use that to address existing problems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All these exercises help you to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.benlinders.com/2015/learning-from-things-that-go-well/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;learn from things that go well&lt;/a&gt;. The knowledge gained can be used to solve ongoing or upcoming impediments or to be better prepared when they pop up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW: It could also be that your team is suffering from retrospectives fatigue where just using a new and different exercise in the retrospective would bring out useful actions. Also in such a situation, doing one from the above exercises would be valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16919" LastActivityDate="2016-09-08T12:20:42.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20036" CreationDate="2016-09-08T16:01:55.343" Score="11" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Retrospectives: For Continuous &lt;em&gt;Improvement&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The misunderstanding of the retrospective as a place to fix problems is very common. However, the goal of the retrospective isn't just to discuss problems; the goal should be &lt;em&gt;continuous improvement&lt;/em&gt; of the team's processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When things are going well, the team should be asking themselves &quot;What did we do &lt;em&gt;well&lt;/em&gt; this Sprint?&quot; so that they can do more of it. You don't need clever games or techniques to elicit this information. Once you've eliminated the obvious problems, simply asking the team what went well is usually enough to offer opportunities for process improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-09-08T16:01:55.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19837" CreationDate="2016-09-08T17:25:43.637" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Problem&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are trying to balance technical debt with product features within the Development Team, but this is a violation of basic Scrum principles. The team should be making technical debt visible and recommending solutions, but the responsibility for &lt;em&gt;managing&lt;/em&gt; the debt belongs to the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm the Scrum Master on a project with three developers, one QA person, one designer, and me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are missing a clearly-defined Product Owner. Scrum requires active participation by all three roles (Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Development Team) in order for the framework to operate effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How should we balance these two things so that the developers still feel they can make progress on the engineering initiatives while remaining focused on finishing the feature set?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All work contains overhead, including refactoring and &quot;paying interest&quot; on existing technical debt. That should be covered in your estimates when you accept work into each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, scheduling work that consumes substantial team capacity is never something the Development Team should be doing directly. The role of the Product Owner is solely responsible for the content and prioritization of Product Backlog Items, and it is &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; decision whether or not to allocate team resources to paying down technical debt or towards new features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if there is substantial debt and it is not repaid, that acts as a drag on the team's productivity. Balancing that drag against the delivery schedule is the Product Owner's job, though, not the Development Team's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Team as a whole should be making the cost of the technical debt visible through estimates, velocity tracking, and retrospectives. Recommending Product Backlog Items that reduce technical debt should be done during Backlog Refinement or the Sprint Retrospective, but actual management of the Product Backlog remains the purview of the Product Owner at all times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-09-08T17:25:43.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20042" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-08T23:22:47.910" Score="4" ViewCount="143" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been working in an old-fashioned company that has a small IT department and zero experience with project management. I'm having trouble finding the right approach to present IT solutions, transform these solutions into projects and manage them in a way the stakeholders will understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main trouble at the moment has been that every project I propose is not well-received, since it will &lt;strong&gt;cost money&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;time&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;resources&lt;/strong&gt; and people will need to be trained in their own jobs (&lt;em&gt;e.g.&lt;/em&gt; if I want to introduce a Help Desk solution to our spreadsheet-oriented Help Desk dept.) - and no one likes learning how to do their own job again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm trying to do presently: show the solution and why it would be good; estimate how long it would take to implement; how many resources the project would need; and how much it would cost (person/hour + software costs + etc). But I'm having trouble to exemplify how much we would &quot;profit&quot; in the long term. Remember, these are non-TI people, so arguing that (e.g.) it's more secure having databases than spreadsheets is not a strong argument, and I don't know how to make it appear strong, so I'm trying to talk in money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Example:&lt;/em&gt; employee A does task X in 2 hours, which is very long, with an IT solution he would take fair less, but I can't precisely estimate he will take 30 minutes - if I could, it would be easier to present the long-term profit to the stakeholders in financial values. He could take 30 minutes, or 15, or 1 hour and 10 minutes - all would present benefits in the long-term, financially speaking, but I can't be precise on how much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be the best way to approach this scenario? Introduce and initiate IT projects successfully, all while communicating the benefits from these in a way non-IT people can understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1322" LastEditorUserId="1322" LastEditDate="2016-09-12T00:21:52.147" LastActivityDate="2018-09-20T10:05:04.663" Title="How to sucessfully introduce/initiate IT projects in a non-IT org.?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;initiation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20043" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20074" CreationDate="2016-09-09T09:35:50.860" Score="1" ViewCount="1137" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have just started using JIRA and I'm setting it up now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a huge product and an external team which develops and supports the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our product involves a lot of projects. The development team will be working on several different projects in any given sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can we set up workflow for this in JIRA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should we have all our projects combined as a single project in JIRA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can we combine stories from different projects in a single sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe our projects should actually be epics? Or something else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPD&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for delay. &quot;Project&quot; for us it is some part of our big web-site. For example &quot;Search 2.0&quot; or &quot;Integration with XYZ&quot;. Project has deadlines. &quot;Project&quot; can be done. It doesn't have scope and team from start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25830" LastEditorUserId="25830" LastEditDate="2016-09-14T14:20:51.753" LastActivityDate="2016-09-20T08:43:02.847" Title="Epics vs Projects vs something else" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;epics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20044" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-09T12:25:25.170" Score="3" ViewCount="18923" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have some problems with a question I found learning for the Professional Scrum Master 1 exam. The question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Multiple scrum teams working on the same project must have the&#xA;  same sprint start date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that multiple teams &lt;strong&gt;should&lt;/strong&gt; start at the same date, but do they really have to? The word &quot;must&quot; really confuses me. Thats why I would choose false, when I had been asked this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the quoted statement true or false?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25832" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-09-09T21:14:41.057" LastActivityDate="2016-09-10T08:52:14.303" Title="Is it true that multiple Scrum teams working on the same project MUST have the same start/end dates for their Sprints?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;process-scaling&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20044" CreationDate="2016-09-09T13:19:27.000" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, there is no definition or ideology of scaling nor syncing Scrum teams - as long as they are all drawing from the same Product Backlog and adhering to the Definition of Done that was set it is irrelevant when they start/finish. So the answer would be FALSE, as is your thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend reading the Scrum Guide a few times and slamming out Open Assessments of the PSM I, it really helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23735" LastActivityDate="2016-09-09T13:19:27.000" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20046" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20063" CreationDate="2016-09-09T13:34:52.727" Score="1" ViewCount="96" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the key problems I face when it comes to project management is determining when I should prioritize based on &lt;em&gt;time&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;difficulty&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus far, I have no method of determining something like this; for the most part, I end up just doing it based on difficulty but I would like to employ a more rigorous method that is backed by some research and logic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When do I prioritize based on &lt;em&gt;time&lt;/em&gt; to complete a task or the &lt;em&gt;difficulty&lt;/em&gt; of the task?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. What are some other ways of thinking about this? I understand that there are other variables at play i.e. deadline, impact of the task etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18040" LastActivityDate="2016-09-11T03:25:14.190" Title="Prioritization: How do I know if I should do it based on time to completion or difficulty?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20042" CreationDate="2016-09-09T16:34:31.630" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a problem in estimation, which is very much a PM skillset.  Wish I could provide a good general answer, but the best I can do is pick at a couple of items you mention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since we're talking about estimating, let me mention a couple of principles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Methodology is more important than accuracy.  I've (almost) never been questioned on an estimate if I provide the supporting methodology. THe one time I was questioned was when my estimate was 10**6 larger than the bosses estimate; I showed him the underlying methodology and offered to adjust any factor he found unreasonable.  They went with my estimate.    Build the spreadsheet identifying your assumptions and show the math.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_evaluation_and_review_technique&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PERT&lt;/a&gt; - PERT (or more properly PERT estimated time) is magic; if you include PERT in your estimate, everyone assumes you know what you're talking about.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Security - this is a fascinating research area; I'd recommend you consult the &lt;a href=&quot;https://societyinforisk.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Society for Information Risk Analysis&lt;/a&gt; - they have multiple ways to measure security. Most of their methodologies are too complex for simple needs, but they have given me a lot of ground for thought.  There are a couple of common ways to measure security:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Breach cost - the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.verizonenterprise.com/verizon-insights-lab/dbir/2016/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Verizon Data Breach Report&lt;/a&gt; provides examples of real world breaches, which permits you to provide some estimates backed by solid data.  You can pick your favorite cost/record and use the VDBIR to identify an industry/market segment similar to your own and predict the likelihood and impact of a breach.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Replacement cost - if you were attacked, what would it cost to recover? The minimum cost is the cost to restore from backup. If you have records of security incidents from the past year, use those costs. (if not, why not?)  VDBIR provides values for estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Technical debt - this is one of the coolest ways, but you've got to be mature. Put simply, once you know you have a flaw/vulnerability estimate how long it will take to fix the problem (ask each programmer to estimate independently and PERT the lot).  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;error cost - how many errors did the people make with manual processes? Most errors are security relevant, but most institutions keep better record of errors/quality control. You can use the quality control/ error information as a proxy for security.  (not a 1:1 proxy, but the point is that if I can reduce errors by X % then I will reduce security relevant errors by X%).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Audit cost - how much longer will your next security audit be?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could go on and on.... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much shorter - again the general principle is to ask the worker, and then PERT the resulting estimates. See if you can get permission to do a timeboxed mockup of the new process and test it.  If they're willing to grant you 40 hours for a mockup &amp;amp; test, you can give them real numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary and last thought.  If you can get permission for one, then make sure you capture lessons learned statistics, etc. You want to finish with, &quot;You gave me 40 hours to make this work; the resulting process will save you 1 hour a month, which will pay off in 3 years.  Find me any other investment that will pay off that fast.&quot; or something like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other resources that may be helpful: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.secureconsulting.net/2016/09/change-the-incentive-model-cha.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Examine the incentive&lt;/a&gt; - I think his observation that change must address a problem that the stakeholders believe to be important is relevant to your problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2018-09-20T10:05:04.663" LastActivityDate="2018-09-20T10:05:04.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20035" CreationDate="2016-09-09T18:17:34.657" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are different kinds of audits, which vary by industry - and those are just the external audits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Army we had a CIP audit which was decently detailed - it handled site security, INFOSEC, adherence to IA directives and policies as well as cryptographic material storage and classification audits for spillage and aggregation. I was an acting project manager (not official rank/title at the time) and had to take time showing the investigators all of our facilities, handing over project documentation that was sent via email or stored in plain text to screen for classified material, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the private sector it varies differently like I mentioned by industry - one of the contracting firms I worked for was CMMI lv 3, and that was a huge pain, especially if people from your team or yourself got pulled off - I won't reiterate what the @Mark already mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also have internal policies and processes from the IT Gov/PMO which may or may not outline internal audits. For my particular company our Audits involve quarterly review of 15% of projects that are currently active - if your project gets pulled you will have to submit all of your status reports, IDPs, CRs, KPIs, and anything else your organization happens to use. My company gets a little zealous and will pull audio from recorded meetings to ensure everyone is following the SDF (Solution Delivery Framework) as designed, so as a PM not only do I get audited, I help audit others through our &quot;peer reviews&quot; bi-yearly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of it depends on the industry and company you are in, but those are some examples as a PM you will have to assist or get dragged into one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23735" LastActivityDate="2016-09-09T18:17:34.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20010" CreationDate="2016-09-09T18:31:44.623" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would add that it is also a &quot;people problem&quot;. Isn't the team leader a star (person with high ego and probably high knowledge)? Or primma donna developer? Some people can't help but know better and they keep impose other their will. The issue sooner or later will come up during retrospectives and developer team would solve it. If not, scrum master should react and empower other team members to dare to have and implement their own ideas. There is a common misconception that stars are irreplaceable. Rarely the are. Don't get intimidated! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19305" LastActivityDate="2016-09-09T18:31:44.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20046" CreationDate="2016-09-09T19:47:58.883" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Ask Senior Management&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At work, one should generally &lt;strong&gt;prioritize deliverables based on &lt;em&gt;business value&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. How the business assigns that value to each deliverable will vary widely, and there's no canonical answer. Sometimes speed or cycle time is more important; sometimes a specific feature or earned value matters more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; the responsibility of senior management to define business value.&lt;/strong&gt; While this responsibility can be delegated to a Product Owner, portfolio manager, program manager, steering committee, project manager, or some other group or individual, assigning value doesn't happen in a vacuum. The framework for determining business value &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be defined at the top, so any questions you have about how to define business value within &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; current organization should be referred up the chain of authority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-09-09T19:47:58.883" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20044" CreationDate="2016-09-09T21:10:59.400" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I think that multiple teams should start at the same date. But do they really have to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes and no. You're trying to parse a poor-quality question, and exam practice questions are (by definition) not questions taken directly from the exams. Furthermore, just because a question is in an exam doesn't mean it's got real-world significance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you consider a framework such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Resources/The-Nexus-Guide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nexus&lt;/a&gt;, the overall increment (the &quot;Nexus&quot;) kicks off and ends at the same time for all teams. If you think about it, this is a hard requirement for ensuring that cross-team work is integrated at the end of each increment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, Nexus doesn't actually require that team Sprints within the Nexus start or stop at the same time. It is certainly strongly implied, as doing so makes integration between teams much easier, but there's nothing in the framework that stops you from having a two-week iteration for one team, and a four-week iteration for another, or having one team end its Sprints on Wednesdays while another team ends theirs on Fridays. However, the framework's design ensures that Scrum teams can't move onto the next iteration until the Nexus is complete, so there would seem to be little value in having different start and end dates. In fact, &lt;strong&gt;allowing team cadences to diverge would break the per-iteration feedback loop&lt;/strong&gt; that is the cornerstone of both Scrum and Nexus!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, while scaled agile is largely about reducing dependencies between work streams, they are being scaled precisely &lt;em&gt;because&lt;/em&gt; the work needs to be integrated at the end of each iteration. Truly agile organizations will interpret this to mean frequent (if not truly continuous) integration between streams, while less agile organizations will typically fall back on an explicit integration step at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Running Sprints with different cadences inside a Nexus seems like a process smell, and I can't think of a pragmatic reason for it other than work-product dependencies. Such dependencies are inherently anti-patterns, and suggest that the Nexus Team or the Scrum-of-Scrums isn't managing the top-level Product Backlog correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-09-09T21:10:59.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20054" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-10T01:13:46.067" Score="3" ViewCount="1612" Body="&lt;p&gt;The analysis and design may take long, normally more than a day even for a 2-week sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I do them during sprint planning, then the planning will take too long, which normally should not be more than 8 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I do them before the planning, then it means I do them at last Sprint. This doesn’t sound scrum, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I do them after the planning, then after I do them, work division and estimation may be different big time. As a result,the schedule changes a lot and the original Sprint plan may be kind of useless. I guess this is not a good way to manage expectations from the Product owner and the organzation, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25840" LastActivityDate="2016-09-11T20:44:21.270" Title="When should I do analysis and design regarding Scrum's Sprint planning?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20046" CreationDate="2016-09-10T04:48:58.340" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Prioritize to manage project risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mentioned time and difficulty, but another key consideration is risk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A task whose requirements or scope are not well understood is riskier than a task that is well defined and a variant on work the team has done before. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A task that requires the use of new technology is riskier than a task that can be built on existing foundations. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A task that is critical to the success of the project carries greater risk than a task the project could succeed without. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A task which, when complete, would surface potential problems elsewhere in the project which are unlikely to be identified by other means is riskier than one which does not. This last is one reason the agile methodologies often recommend vertical slices through an application: as soon as you give your users/testers/project owners &lt;em&gt;actual working code&lt;/em&gt; that they can play with, they can discover that they didn't get the requirements right.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Difficulty&quot; captures some of this -- a complex task is riskier than a simple task -- but not all of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prioritize risky tasks, because if they're going to fail, you want them to fail early: in the case of a recoverable failure, so that you have more time to recover; and in the case of a catastrophic failure, so that your sunk costs are minimized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2016-09-10T04:48:58.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20056" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-10T07:45:32.753" Score="3" ViewCount="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a dev team of 8 without an official PM. Up to now we have organized our workload by always having around 20-40 upcoming tasks pinned to a whiteboard. Basically, it's a table with people's names as headers and their tasks in their columns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is helpful, as it's clear what everyone is working on and will be working on soon. However, one problem we face is knowing when a series of tasks are going to be finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Planning everything in Excel seems fairly inflexible. As soon as one task shifts, it seems like a lot of rework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a method that combines the simple whiteboard planning approach and its flexibility with a method to predict release dates and ideally supports a good method of dealing with changing estimates for the individual tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25841" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-09-11T15:26:16.187" LastActivityDate="2016-09-11T16:05:45.607" Title="How can we estimate an end date for a project using our whiteboard system?" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;release-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20042" CreationDate="2016-09-10T08:33:19.897" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make a list of all of the potential benefit areas. For each, make an estimate of benefits if you can, in financial terms, over (say) a two year period. Something like &quot;This will save $1,000 dollars per year so over two years it will save the company $2,000 dollars&quot;. That's the easy bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more difficult - yet important - bit is where there is no obvious financial benefit. Here's where you need to get creative. Don't create fantasy numbers, but identify non-financial benefits - such as &quot;If we do this, it will allow us to answer helpdesk calls 5 minutes faster&quot;. Look for a benefit for the business for this - &quot;This will allow the sales department to deal with 3 more customer calls per day&quot;. Ask the boss what that would be worth in increased revenues and profits. Then you have an answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that still doesn't give you what you need, see whether there are other benefit areas. &quot;This bit of software would give the company an opportunity for publicity in the trade press. What is that worth?&quot; - It may not give a direct benefit, but if the boss would pay for that, and you save that cost - voila!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then add up all of the results and discuss them with multiple stakeholders before formally presenting them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sell the benefits first, then estimate the costs. Once you have the support for the project, it will be much easier to get the business to buy into the necessary investment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2016-09-10T08:33:19.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20054" CreationDate="2016-09-10T08:38:45.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea is to be able to comfortably estimate for work items in sprint planning. How you get to that point is up to your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What a lot of teams will do is have &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/product-backlog-refinement-grooming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;backlog refinement&lt;/a&gt; sessions. These will be just long enough and frequent enough to ensure that when they get into sprint planning they have enough stories that are ready to be estimated to fill the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important part here is that you do &lt;em&gt;just enough&lt;/em&gt; analysis and design to estimate. All the rest of the analysis and design work will take place in the sprint as a part of completing the work item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-09-10T08:38:45.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20044" CreationDate="2016-09-10T08:52:14.303" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Synchronising sprints is neither required nor is it necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically the reasons given for synchronising sprints are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The teams only integrate their code at the end of sprints&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testing in Scrum teams is constrained to work done by the Scrum team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Product Owner does not have sufficient time to attend multiple meetings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The approach to source code control depends on synchornisation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these reasons are indicators of areas in which the team should look to improve. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, the team should be looking to continuously integrate their code. All teams contribute to the integration process and to fixing issues that arise from integration. If this is done as frequently as possible then integration issues are dealt with close to the time they are introduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-09-10T08:52:14.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20046" CreationDate="2016-09-10T11:21:13.227" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Prioritize against all criteria, not just one criterion.  A common prioritization model I have used is to compare value against cost and risk.  You can further decompose each of these three to a lower level if you desire.  Score each criterion and then take the ratio of value over cost + risk.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can add a weight to each criterion, as well, if desired.  So if, for a particular project, time is critical, then you can put a higher weight on the time criterion over the others.  If cost is critical on another project, then weight it higher.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example scoring sheet that I have used:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/t4nEI.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/t4nEI.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are facilitating this with others, I would hide the results, the priority column, so that will not influence the scoring for someone's pet project.  You can also add scoring rules to help approach true objectivity; for example, with cost, you may indicate that a project that costs below $500K scores 3; projects that cost below $1M score 5; on and on.  Try to create as many scoring rules as you can but some criteria will need to be approached more subjectively.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2016-09-10T11:52:50.960" LastActivityDate="2016-09-10T11:52:50.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20042" CreationDate="2016-09-10T11:48:02.987" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, you need to climb higher and talk about your company's standing in its competitive market.  Don't sell the IT solution; it is only one of the many enablers to a competitive business.  Instead, take a look at how well your company is doing in the market place, its revenue capture as compared to total capture, its sustainability in this very dynamic, technically oriented environment, its performance over the last x number of years, threats of new entrants--both companies and products--ability to innovate, agility, flexibility, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story begins with your company's true outlook in the next year, next five years, next ten years.  If that story looks bleak, then you now have a compelling reason to change and the leaders of the company can sponsor such a change.  The cost of change is much less than bankruptcy and closure.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as I wrote above, the IT solution is only one enabler of likely many that have to evolve to its next version of itself.  Do not become IT centric; instead, incorporate IT solutions along with other solutions that enable capability.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You cannot sell anything without a need or want.  Establish the need, then sell.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-09-10T11:48:02.987" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20062" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-10T23:10:26.130" Score="-3" ViewCount="729" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a project manager, is it a good idea to replace potential risks with 'to be determined' (TBD) as a placeholder in a project guide?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25848" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-09-11T01:20:47.173" LastActivityDate="2016-09-13T13:13:02.087" Title="Potential risks or TBD?" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2016-09-14T07:25:49.083" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20046" CreationDate="2016-09-11T03:25:14.190" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Scaled Agile Framework uses an equation named Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) for prioritization. It's applicable to any set of initiatives, regardless of development methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Briefly, you'll be comparing the projects you're ranking by business value, time sensitivity, investment value (risk reduction or opportunity enablers), and the size of the job (or difficulty).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you add up the first 3 and divide the total by the last one, that will give you a priority score. The higher the score, the higher the priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The logic is that high-profit, time-sensitive, or strategic investment jobs are great, but may take a back seat to quick wins if the effort is too significant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the scoring, it's all relative. A good approach to start off is to take an obvious low or high-scoring item in a category, and give it a 1 or 21. Then, everything else is a question of &quot;is this more or less valuable/time-critical/etc.&quot; As time passes and new projects are introduced, you can adjust and re-rank as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scaledagileframework.com/wsjf/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://scaledagileframework.com/wsjf/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25826" LastActivityDate="2016-09-11T03:25:14.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19988" CreationDate="2016-09-11T06:54:32.210" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's possible to setup a system such that your devs need to work on a server you own, and that logs their activity... but that's probably more trouble than it's worth, and it would likely hinder productivity more than help. Beyond that, it would probably take a lot of your time to take whatever data you've gathered and tie it back to what they said they were doing at any given time, double-checking their hours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately though, if you're not going to track all of their activity, you'll need to take them at their word. I've had remote developers take advantage of the situation, and it sucks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if that's the case, eventually one of two things will happen: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They won't get the work done on time because they'll push and see what they can get away with. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The amount of work that actually gets done won't justify what they're billing. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, when I'm managing remote developers, if they get their stuff done on time and they stay on budget -- I actually don't care a whole lot if I know exactly how much time they're spending. What matters are results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17925" LastEditorUserId="21039" LastEditDate="2016-09-14T07:23:14.217" LastActivityDate="2016-09-14T07:23:14.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20056" CreationDate="2016-09-11T16:05:45.607" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Estimate Delivery Milestones from Throughput&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have half a solution already. While your scheduling process isn't particularly agile, you can extend what you're already doing by calculating cycle times and using that to estimate your release schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the risk of oversimplifying, you an get a reasonable estimate of your release date by doing the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Track the average time it takes the team to complete each unit of work. (NB: This basic data can also be used to calculate lead time, cycle time, takt time, and other related metrics.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Count up &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the work needed to reach a milestone or release. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multiply the total work units needed to achieve your objective by the average time needed to complete units. In other words, &lt;em&gt;cycle_time * backlog_items = lead_time&lt;/em&gt; for each milestone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apply fudge factors for external dependencies, if any.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the result as a forecast against which you will track progress, not as an iron-clad guarantee.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the informal basis of most Kanban and Lean metrics. It's a relatively lightweight system to layer on top of the scheduling process you already have, and generally yields &quot;good enough&quot; results without a lot of process overhead spent chasing false precision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-09-11T16:05:45.607" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20067" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-11T16:28:07.147" Score="0" ViewCount="106" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say you have a small team 3-10 people and some kind of decision needs to be made. What are some techniques for encouraging a decision to be made and/or accepted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure I can pick a good concrete example as the answer might be different depending on the type of decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe describing a situation first: The team needs to make a decision about something but no one is actually making the decision. The manager, or PM, might then say, &quot;okay, how about we do X&quot; but gets no feedback from the team on if it's the right decision, or a decision they agree with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What techniques exist for encouraging consensus? Is this a problem of leadership that that PM isn't leading well so no one is following? What techniques could help solve that, whether it's getting the team to make the decision or, for them to at least follow if they're not going to choose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25853" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2016-09-14T07:25:05.130" LastActivityDate="2016-09-14T08:08:09.843" Title="What techniques to use to lead teams to a decision?" Tags="&lt;leadership&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20067" CreationDate="2016-09-11T19:58:44.863" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Making a decision and taking action, even if it is not the best choice, is more productive than doing nothing.  This is something that the team should understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the root cause of this decision paralysis?  Is there fear of repercussions for making the &quot;wrong&quot; choice?  Is there apathy?  Without finding it, the problem (or others which are related) may continue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is a reoccurring issue, perhaps asking the team to come to an agreement about how these situations might be resolved in the future; the agreement can always be changed if needed.  Perhaps a vote: blind or open.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2016-09-11T19:58:44.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20054" CreationDate="2016-09-11T20:44:21.270" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are your Product Backlog items &quot;Ready&quot; for Sprint Planning? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Product Backlog items that can be “Done” by the Development Team within one Sprint are deemed “Ready” for selection in a Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprint Planning is for &lt;em&gt;just enough&lt;/em&gt; design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Development Team usually starts by designing the system and the work needed to convert the Product Backlog into a working product Increment.&#xA;  Work planned for the first days of the Sprint by the Development Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Analysis can best be achieved when done continuously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Product Backlog refinement is the act of adding detail, estimates, and order to items in the Product Backlog. This is an ongoing process in which the Product Owner and the Development Team collaborate on the details of Product Backlog items. Product Backlog items can be updated at any time by the Product Owner or at the Product Owner’s discretion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your first question, within the Scrum framework it is &lt;strong&gt;expected&lt;/strong&gt; that analysis occurs for items to be done in the future.  In accordance with the Manifesto for Agile Software Development's values and principles, you shouldn't be creating a long term timeline with highly detailed specifications that cannot be easily changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another concern, based on your post, is whether or not your Product Backlog items are scoped small enough.  Are the items so large that a lot of design needs to be completed?  That may be an indicator that refinement should include slicing items into smaller pieces that can be &quot;Ready&quot; for a Sprint.  Toward your second question, this will help strengthen the Scrum Team and business relationship through more consistency; remember that the Sprint Backlog is a &lt;strong&gt;forecast&lt;/strong&gt; and not a promise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stick with the authoritative:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://scrumguides.org/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://agilemanifesto.org/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.scrum.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2016-09-11T20:44:21.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20067" CreationDate="2016-09-11T22:34:55.427" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a technique that &lt;strong&gt;will&lt;/strong&gt; push things forward. I'll leave you to judge whether it's appropriate given your team/company/culture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talk to the most senior person in your group 1-on-1 and get their opinion. Tell them you're going to present that opinion to the group as the default--and if no one else has any ideas, their plan will be the final decision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give the team a deadline to counter this decision, come up with a new plan, object, etc... If no one speaks up or objects, move forward with most senior leader's plan, and take personal responsibility for it. If things go awry, the senior leader can back you up--it was their idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, this is situational, but it's &lt;strong&gt;a technique&lt;/strong&gt; you can use, and it will move the project forward with a reasonable decision in place, and with backing from someone in senior management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17925" LastActivityDate="2016-09-11T22:34:55.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20062" CreationDate="2016-09-12T12:44:13.900" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Insufficient information to answer the question.  I'm not sure what a &quot;project guide&quot; is, or what role it plays, and I'm not sure what the difference is between a &quot;potential risk&quot; and a &quot;risk&quot;. Most important however is that I don't know &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; someone is indicating that the risk is &quot;TBD&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use TBD as a short term placeholder until you can gather the right people to do the analysis, that is fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, on the other hand, the analysis is never done, if there are risks in the registry that haven't been analyzed in weeks, then there is a problem. That tells me that risk assessment/analysis isn't being performed, and that is very much a problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is whether you're doing effective risk management or not; &quot;TBD&quot; can be a symptom or indicator of weak risk assessment.  The real question is whether your risk management &lt;em&gt;as you perform it&lt;/em&gt; is reducing risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2016-09-12T12:44:13.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20062" CreationDate="2016-09-12T14:03:47.377" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some risk literature, there's a definition for a &quot;hazard&quot;, which means a condition that would become a threat if the hazard would be put in play.  For example, flying in a plane has inherent hazards that can be quantitatively measured.  It is not a threat to you until you board the plane and until the plane begins its take off roll.  Up to that point, it is only a hazard.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a project sense, as a management team is trying to determine which project to undertake, the lists of risks are really hazards, or potential risks, that would be come risks when the project is selected and begins.  Assuming the OP means this, then capturing potential risks, or hazards, is a must do.  Capturing it as TBD is a waste of time and shows a lack of analysis and initiative, unless it is used as a VERY temporary indicator to show the rest of the analysis will start ASAP.  A potential risk or risks should be well thought out, analyzed, quantified where you can, and with potential mitigation strategies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This type of project risk would be captured in a project's business case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a project that has already started, a potential risk, or hazard, would be a secondary risk created due to a mitigation action of a primary risk.  Capturing the secondary risk would be done as part of the documentation of the primary risk.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-09-12T14:03:47.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20067" CreationDate="2016-09-12T19:12:21.530" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;'The Team' should not be making decisions unless you are a cooperative, a political party or a board of directors. In which case, consult your articles of encorporation or whatever to see the prescribed method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all other cases there will be someone who holds the budget for the project and thus has the responsiblity of making the call.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'The Team' should make recommendations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastEditorUserId="17049" LastEditDate="2016-09-12T19:44:21.363" LastActivityDate="2016-09-12T19:44:21.363" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20043" CreationDate="2016-09-12T19:41:20.723" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want multiple 'projects' to be on the same Scrum-board Sprint, then you can accomplish that by having a board with the JQL filter set to read from multiple JIRA projects (ie. 'project = MultiTestOne OR project = MultiTestTwo ORDER BY Rank ASC'). Boards and projects are set up 1-to-1 by default when you create a project, but there's nothing stopping you from later altering the JQL.&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;As for Epics: without further information on what exactly you mean by 'project', I can't give an opinion on whether or not they would make sense via Epics. If it works and everyone on your team is okay with it, though, then I don't see why not. At their heart, all Epics in JIRA are is simply a way to group Issues.&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Without further information, I can't possibly decide for you which of the two (or a perhaps a third) options is the best for your situation. You need to discuss with the Team to see what makes the most sense.&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;As a side note, you stated that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The development team will be working on several different projects in any given sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the reason for this? Are the projects highly related? Are they just so small that doing only a single project per sprint is infeasible? If the Development Team is working on a multitude of unrelated tasks during a sprint, you may want to consider an approach other than Scrum, such as Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-09-12T19:50:43.983" LastActivityDate="2016-09-12T19:50:43.983" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20067" CreationDate="2016-09-12T21:56:07.847" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming you're in a scrum or kanban team setting or some group of up to 10ish people...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Decider protocol is great, you can google it.  Thumbs Up = &quot;yes&quot;, flat hand in the middle = &quot;I'm neutral and can go either way&quot;, thumbs down = &quot;no, and I have a alternative idea&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its a nice one because its drives towards an outcome, it doesn't allow people to say no and avoid making the decision outright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2016-09-12T21:56:07.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20076" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-13T00:03:30.640" Score="3" ViewCount="3306" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before the Internet, when I ran my own small business, I took a seminar that taught me about using the priority matrix. That was useful, but the second part was even more useful and I'm struggling to remember how to implement it. It had you put your tasks on a grid, using rows and columns, running from Q1 to Q4 at the bottom and far right. You then compared each task to every other task and assigned it a number as to which task you felt was more important. The grid is easy enough to set up, but I'm having trouble remembering the number system and how to rate the tasks. Does this sound familiar to anyone? I know I kept the paperwork from this seminar, but after 20 years, it might be almost impossible to locate. (It's possible it didn't start with the priority matrix and was just a different way of prioritizing tasks.) Either way, at the end, you had this nice list of prioritized tasks, even if there were 50 of them. I'm looking everywhere for how to do this. If it had a name, I don't remember which makes it hard to search for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25868" LastActivityDate="2020-12-06T16:32:34.747" Title="Prioritizing WITHIN the priority matrix" Tags="&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20042" CreationDate="2016-09-13T00:45:13.210" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately this kind of process automation is not a good candiate for IT showing a return on investment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact larger companies tend to use manual labour over automated IT solutions because they are cheaper  more flexible and go wrong less spectacularly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are looking for opportunites to introduce an IT project there are a couple of drivers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1 : regulation. Lots of legal responsiblities that may fall on a company require documented processes and exensive record keeping. An IT system which ensures the process is followed, records the process being followed and reports on it can satisfy those requirements better than a manual process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2 : New digital markets. Stuff your company isnt currently doing but other companies are. Do you have a website? a mobie website? An app? A mailing list? What about social media? SEO? etc etc all these things dangle the carrot of new untapped profits and require technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2016-09-13T00:45:13.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20078" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-13T06:10:13.773" Score="-3" ViewCount="765" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for one of the largest tech companies in the world. My role is Project Manager, without direct authority over resources. I joined this company 3 months back.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I joined this company from a startup which was later acquired by BIGNAMECO company and everyone from the startup left. I have an extensive technical background. In my last role I was a Data Engineering Manager. I was leading a team of four engineers. I was hand-on at my previous job and did a lot of coding along with other engineers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This new company I joined seems to be moving at a snail's speed, even though they claim they are moving really fast and are the world's biggest startup (haha!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone seem to be super focused on internal processes - 90 % of which are useless. There is less focus on actual delivery. From my previous job, I got into the habit of moving and finishing projects at lightening speed. A project estimated here as 6 months can easily done in 2 months at a startup. I also have a better understanding of the technologies used in the project than all the other engineers combined. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I am new and don't have direct authority I tend to keep quiet. But, I get incredibly bored creating useless documents. To be honest these documents mean nothing. The only good thing about this new job is the paycheck. In a not-so-expensive city, I make good money. I can't switch jobs immediately due to other hurdles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My next goal is to move into the broader role of director or VP of analytics/data science in 2 years from now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions on what shall I do and how do I find a way to keep myself challenged technologically and achieve my next goal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25869" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-09-14T07:24:00.373" LastActivityDate="2016-09-14T07:24:00.373" Title="Project management at new company is boring and super slow. What shall I do?" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-09-15T02:02:49.487" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20062" CreationDate="2016-09-13T13:13:02.087" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you decide to use TBD as a placeholder, make sure you have a clear list of the TBS's and a plan (schedule + owners) of how to replace them with real data, real soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-09-13T13:13:02.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20076" CreationDate="2016-09-13T13:21:04.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This post on &lt;a href=&quot;http://ppmexecution.com/prioritization-matrix/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Prioritization Matrix&lt;/a&gt; seems to be what you are referring to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They number things from 1 to 5 as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3z3Zm.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3z3Zm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;eSample Priority Matrix&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-09-13T13:21:04.820" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20078" CreationDate="2016-09-13T13:33:11.207" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since I am new and don't have direct authority I tend to keep quiet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's true that, as a new employee, you should avoid being all gung-ho and attempting to change everything, but that doesn't mean you have to be &lt;em&gt;quiet&lt;/em&gt;. Instead, try to approach things from a neutral standpoint, or even better, from a position of wanting to learn. Instead of saying, &quot;That's wrong, don't do that&quot;, try something like &quot;Why is this necessary? Who benefits?&quot; or &quot;What's the rationale/history behind this requirement?&quot;, perhaps followed by &quot;Is there a reason why we can't do [alternative] instead?&quot;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;If you approach things from the standpoint of simply pointing out flaws, then you could be seen as 'that arrogant upstart who thinks s/he's better than us.' If, instead, you approach with an attitude of wanting to learn and do things for the good of the company, then the worst you could come off as is a little annoying - with the best case being you bring about actual improvement.&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Keep in mind, also, that you might simply not understand some of these 'useless' processes. Keep an open mind and you might just learn some things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-09-13T13:33:11.207" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20067" CreationDate="2016-09-13T13:37:44.320" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It somewhat depends on the decision needed to be made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://expertpjm.blogspot.co.il/2011/08/any-decision-is-better-than-no-decision.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;As I wrote on my blog&lt;/a&gt;, often &lt;em&gt;any decision is better than no decision&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If we're talking about GUI elements&lt;/strong&gt; or similar&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;If the team (or whoever has a vote) cannot make up its mind (for whatever reason) and the decision is holding up the schedule, then simply make a decision. Any decision. Flip a coin, if needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will probably be quicker to change the decision at a later date than to have the team spend time on the decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If we're talking about design&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;You don't want to change design - so you need to make a wise decision. The people deciding (voting) need to understand the item being decided and its implications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have removed all those who don't qualify to make the decision (e.g. lack of technical skills) then you need an open discussion with people presenting the reasons for their decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then they need to persuade each other why one decision is better than another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The person chairing the meeting should probably not be a stakeholder; only making sure that the discussion remains technical, and doesn't become a shouting match. (&quot;I say so&quot; and &lt;em&gt;having a louder voice&lt;/em&gt; are not reasons to win the arguments.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If need be, the team may need/want to consult with experts in the field, in order to make the wisest decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If nobody really cares what the decision will be, then it becomes like a GUI-type decision. Just make some decision, and go back to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-09-13T13:37:44.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20083" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20086" CreationDate="2016-09-13T14:11:24.357" Score="12" ViewCount="1365" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, I have seen it happening, especially with online tools: The backlog grows till you don't see the forest for trees, important features drowns in a sea of issues, and duplicates appear because it is too heard to keep track of what is in the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Backlog &lt;del&gt;grooming&lt;/del&gt; refinement to the rescue, and it seems to be an undisputed best practice. But I see it more as a cure for symptoms rather than cause. Beside, while time spent &lt;del&gt;grooming&lt;/del&gt; refinement the backlog could save time elsewhere, the time is still not a value adding activity. Wouldn't it be a better approach to prevent the &lt;del&gt;grooming&lt;/del&gt; refinement? That is, are there practices to follow that reduce the need to spend time on &lt;del&gt;grooming&lt;/del&gt; refinement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I think I read something on this subject in a blog post or article. Can't find it though, so if anybody knows please tell.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24137" LastEditorUserId="24137" LastEditDate="2016-09-15T10:31:10.593" LastActivityDate="2016-10-03T13:33:10.943" Title="Is backlog refinement (grooming) waste?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20083" CreationDate="2016-09-13T14:36:14.957" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The backlog growing extremely large and overflowing like that is unfortunately inevitable in a lot of organizations, especially ones such as mine where they tried to turn a multi billion dollar company IT shop from a free for all into an Agile shop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with the premise Grooming is a not a value added task, and is much like deferring a payment until a later date - you are only pushing off the inevitable. There really isn't a &quot;best practice&quot; I hate that term, it's very HR/Business-centric. There are some solutions which may or may not work for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only control measure is the WIP Limits from Kanban frameworks, setting a hard cap on work you could have in the Backlog can help your teams from overcommitting and having a giant backlog in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of that will have to do with who is setting these projects, in my current organization we have 3 stacked levels of Business (who want to be IT) above us that shove Requests down to us, with no PMO or Delivery Team buffer in between us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If  your organization is also open to it, consider having a PM advisor getting attached to the Business (Governance/Practice, whatever it is called) to get them to stop burying your Teams, and make sure your Teams do not over commit to work that needs to be done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23735" LastActivityDate="2016-09-13T14:36:14.957" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20083" CreationDate="2016-09-13T23:55:25.113" Score="5" Body="&lt;h3&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with you that, &lt;em&gt;once you've got a grip on your backlog&lt;/em&gt;, that grooming is wasteful. Spending time breaking down requests that will never be implemented is waste and violates the spirit of &amp;quot;Maximizing the work not done.&amp;quot; Delay breaking things down until the last practical moment (but no longer!) and you'll need to do very little grooming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, you &lt;em&gt;have to&lt;/em&gt; get control of your backlog before you can get to a point in your journey where that's feasible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best thing to do is not create a user story until you're relatively certain that it's going to be implemented at some point in the near future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, I'll share my vision for my team, then the reality of where we started and how to got to our current stage of our journey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Ideal:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Epic/Feature/Story structure to the product backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work one Epic per team at a time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cap the number of Epics. Once you hit that cap, PO must &lt;em&gt;remove&lt;/em&gt; a low priority Epic from the product backlog. (It's &lt;em&gt;okay&lt;/em&gt;, if it becomes important later, it can be re-added. Truly important things will come back up naturally.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Epics are not broken down into Features until they're the next priority &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; the current Epic is nearly finished.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Features are not broken down into Stories until they're the next priority.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This delays work and decisions as long as possible, while leaning out the grooming process. You can't groom things that don't exist and any grooming that &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; need to occur, can happen during the prioritization process. That feature isn't as important as you used to think? Scrap it. No big deal. We've no sunk cost in it yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Capping the number of Epics/Features in the backlog keeps it from ever growing large to begin with. It also highlights how limited a resource your developers really are and facilitates the prioritization process. It really forces the PO to think about what's &lt;em&gt;really, actually&lt;/em&gt; important. You can't have every feature you come up with on a whim. We need to focus our efforts on what brings us and our customers the biggest value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But like I said, that's an ideal my team hasn't actualized quite yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Where we started:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Huge, unorganized, unprioritized, garbage heap of every thing anyone ever asked for. All of it in a few hundred stickies stuck to my boss's office wall. I shit you not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The steps we took:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lots and lots and lots of backlog grooming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Moved the mountain of stickies out of our manager's office and into a public space.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did a rough grouping by area of the business. (Marketing, Quality, Shipping, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Determined who could answer questions and make decisions about each area. (Established product owners.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attempted to discover what each sticky was about at a high level. If no one could answer &amp;quot;What is this?&amp;quot;, the sticky was thrown away. (Literally, crumpled and thrown away.) Again, don't  panic, if it's actually important, someone will ask about it again.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team made a &amp;quot;best guess&amp;quot; prioritization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Individually, held initial prioritization meetings with each PO.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Made the prioritization meetings recurring.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Started entering &lt;em&gt;new&lt;/em&gt; requests as stories in our electronic tracker (TFS, Jira, whatever you've got). They also got a sticky on the backlog with an issue number written on them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Determined which items were bugs and tried to reproduce them. If they could be repro'd, they were entered into electronic system and its number written on the sticky. If it couldn't be reproduced, we threw the sticky away.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Started putting effort into entering remaining stories into electronic tracker. Numbers, again, written on stickies as they were entered. After several months of a couple hours a week, everything was digitized, but the physical board remained. Again, if no one could answer &amp;quot;What is this?&amp;quot;, it was trashed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identified all current projects and entered them as Epics. Attached related stories to them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identified upcoming projects and entered them as Epics. Broke down top priority Epics (top 3) into Features only.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Started grouping loose stories into Features and Epics, starting with currently WIP Epics. This did involve a handful of placeholders for &amp;quot;miscellaneous, stories that aren't really part of a project&amp;quot; Epics &amp;amp; Features. Stories were &amp;quot;right sized&amp;quot; and turned into Epics/Features as the team saw fit during this process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discontinued use of physical board.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team works with PO to break down &lt;em&gt;current&lt;/em&gt; Epics into Features and Stories. POs prioritize Epics &amp;amp; Features. Team prioritizes and pulls stories within the top priority feature as they see fit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Desperately try to convince POs that if an Epic is consistently their lowest priority, there's no sense in having it on the backlog, because it will never get done. It's a manufacturing company, so we've had &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; success explaining that a backlog is inventory and inventory is waste. Not a lot of success, but some.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The process I described has taken us &lt;em&gt;9 months&lt;/em&gt;. We've still a way to go, but we have been able to reduce the backlog's size and convince all of our POs that there is &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;absolutely zero sense&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; in breaking down and estimating Epics (even Features) that we may never actually implement. Added bonus: there's is infinitely better visibility for both the team and our stakeholders about how much work is in the queue, being done, and has been done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Next Steps:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Convince POs that it's okay to remove things from the backlog that we'll never actually do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put a hard cap on the number of Epics &amp;amp; Features in the backlog (per area).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;???&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Profit!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2016-10-03T13:33:10.943" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20067" CreationDate="2016-09-14T08:08:09.843" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If decision is for a problem, you can take team to room and list down root-cause of the problem.  That will help team to concentrate on root cause and come to conclusion for the problem, which will be one set of decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is for an approach, you can go with 'Management by Objectives' and make team to explain objective for sitting together to come-up.  Decision is to be made to achieve some 'x'.  Make to be clear on 'X', ask them to come-up with different possible ways to achieve, list down pros &amp;amp; cons of each approach, weigh them in terms of time/effort, cost and quality.  Then, make them to decide on what is the approach.  Basically, you would be driving them towards decision tree approach with some kind of Delphi method (I assume your team is kind of SME for taking a decision)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try with 6 thinking Hats with the team is also another approach.  But, you have to educate them and moderate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25351" LastActivityDate="2016-09-14T08:08:09.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1497" CreationDate="2016-09-14T10:31:38.853" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both are managerial positions however project lead is more delivery focused where as project managers are more focused on business development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25885" LastActivityDate="2016-09-14T10:31:38.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20090" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20092" CreationDate="2016-09-14T14:32:38.943" Score="15" ViewCount="1921" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a small video game development studio, where the whole company is one team working on one product, and each person has a fixed broad function (e.g. programmer, artist, musician). We can't be cross-functional since the range of functions is very wide - it's not like the typical cases I read about where e.g. &quot;the database engineer can do a bit of front-end engineering too&quot; - it's rare to find programmers that have artistic talent and even rarer to find artists that can code at all!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Kanban, it looks like one recommended way of dealing with this is to have each discipline as a column, and to move stories from e.g. &quot;In progress - engineering&quot; to &quot;In progress - art&quot; as it progresses, but in video games there's generally there's not a hard dependency between the disciplines (don't need to wait for all of one discipline to be done before the other can work), and if there is, the disciplines will work closely together to iterate on that one task/story, so pipelining it like this doesn't make sense to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, when picking a set of stories to accomplish in one sprint, some sprints will have mostly art-heavy stories queued up, and some sprints will have mostly engineering-heavy stories queued up. By picking the next most important stories, we'd be committing to having some disciplines sat idle once their part is done, since as I said, artists are unable to move on to engineering tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases, in a small company, any spare capacity can't be moved to other teams, and the hiring process (to increase capacity for some disciplines) is &lt;em&gt;far&lt;/em&gt; slower than actual work (and of course, not always possible or desirable).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; may be good ideas (though I haven't read anything like this anywhere, hence why I'm asking this question!) are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For Scrum, fiddle the priorities of stories to account for capacity across disciplines, so rather than take on a second engineering-heavy story, look down the backlog for an art-heavy story, to make sure the sprint contains about the right amount of work for each discipline. This doesn't feel quite right because it means we're not always working on the most important story.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For Kanban, have a lane for stories, and a lane for each discipline, pull stories into 'doing' when any discipline starts work on it (and to 'done' once all disciplines are done with it), so each discipline can get a bit ahead if there is spare capacity (but if staffing levels are right, it'll average out over the course of the project). This doesn't feel quite right because the stories lane will need to ignore WIP limits, meaning there will be some waste if things change. Also it just looks messy!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I thinking about this in the right way? What do other non-cross-functional teams do? And what's the actual name for non-cross-functional team so I can search for this better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25889" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-07-08T12:13:42.973" LastActivityDate="2020-12-05T13:27:07.447" Title="What to do if team can't be made cross-functional?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;cross-functional&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20090" CreationDate="2016-09-14T15:14:20.933" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good question, first off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are my suggestions, and you pretty much already said it without knowing it is to adopt a more-or-less hybrid framework: Scrumban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can have you Kanban Board setup in the way you suggest, in the normal 'To Do', 'Doing', 'Done' fashion (with QA/UAT anything else the actual Programmers/Devs will be doing) and with breakdowns in the Doing to identify an area/discipline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more refined way to do that would have your Kanban Cards colored/styled in a way to identify the Team/Discipline working on it - i.e. Red Cards for Dev, Green Cards for Art, Yellow Cards for Engineering, etc. That way your board doesn't get unnaturally big and stays within WIP Limits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also have different boards for different Scrum Teams - if you have truly non-cross-functional - i.e. IT teams, Art teams, Voice Acting teams - you can split them into their own Scrum Team, with different Kanban Boards - however you want to share the same backlog as that is where you measure OVERALL Throughput, Burndown and Cumulative Flow from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only problem is where you would have to do things in a iterative/Waterfall fashion, where one task absolutely CANNOT be completed without another user story/card being &quot;Done&quot; - which may cause you to want to either keep the Scrumban/Agile teams together, or if you do decide to split and do different boards, have all the Scrumban/Agile Teams attend the same Daily Standup, so everyone is cognizant of the work besides staring at a Board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My organization follows this hybrid Scrumban framework - more because the Business Unit outgrew the IT Department and they figured &quot;Scrum&quot; would solve all issues. It works decently well, we have added some 'unofficial' ceremonies/Sprint lengths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our Sprints are really 3-work week Iterations of 15 days each, the Domain walk identifies hold-ups, over-commitment and major Roadblocks and also hints at what work will be released to the &quot;To Do&quot; lists upon the next Iteration. We do that so we do not have to do the Sprint Review/Retro and Sprint Planning all the time, it is a constant improvement with the stipulation being abiding by the WIP Limit for that Iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23735" LastActivityDate="2016-09-14T15:14:20.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20090" CreationDate="2016-09-14T15:18:25.253" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, I should note that, as per my understanding of the term 'cross-functional team', it is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a team where every member can do everything. Rather, it is a &lt;em&gt;team&lt;/em&gt; that is capable of doing everything. If your team is capable of taking a project from start to finish without waiting on dependencies, then it is cross-functional. If the team has to spend a month waiting for 'the architect guys' or for 'marketing' (ie. external, non-team members) to do their thing, then the team is not cross-functional. Having cross-functional team &lt;em&gt;members&lt;/em&gt; is a separate issue that, while also useful, is, as you note, often a pipe dream.&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;That being said, your suggestion for Scrum seems fine to me, with the caveat that the Product Owner is involved. Keep in mind that the Development Team is not the ones who decide which stories are more 'important'. During the Sprint Planning meeting, the Dev Team will negotiate with the PO on what should be included in the Sprint.&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;For example, if the Dev Team informs the PO that &quot;For this next sprint, we can either do stories A, D, E, and F, or just stories A and B&quot;, then it's entirely possible the PO might decide that D, E, and F suddenly became higher priority then B. Or, the PO might truly decide that B is super important and the Team should work on A and B, even though this means D, E, and F get put off. This is the PO's call. Additionally, keep in mind the &lt;a href=&quot;https://dzone.com/articles/100-utilization-myth&quot;&gt;100% utilization fallacy&lt;/a&gt; - it's not the end of the world if some members' workloads are not filled up.&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Regarding the Kanban: though I've never done it myself, what I've seen done is have stories set up on the left of the board, with their tasks moving through the lanes. Once all the tasks of a story move to 'Done', the story moves as well. In this way, stories are essentially removed from the lanes and the WIP limits, with tasks taking their place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-09-14T15:18:25.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20090" CreationDate="2016-09-14T18:55:07.993" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not an unusual problem, like you say, some places divide up their programmers by language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to make a clear distinction between scrum and kanban though. I think a lot of people think kanban is just scrum without sprints, but the philosophy is inherently different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lets use an extreme example of we are baking cakes and one team member is solely responsible for putting the cherry on top.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum : The goal is to incrementally build a product. So each sprint you need to finish a set of features to finish at all. If some team members are not fully used, they cant really move onto the next sprint, so you lose that time each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;eg. you can't put the cherry on cake 2 yet because the results of cake 1 might change where you put it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban : The goal is to push tasks through a series of processes. each task can be completed in of itself. if one of the processes is quicker than the others then you can possibly move it top the start or end and do all the quick processes in one go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;eg. you can back all the cakes and hire the cherry placer for 1 day at the end of the project to put all the cherries on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2016-09-14T18:55:07.993" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20083" CreationDate="2016-09-14T20:39:03.707" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/product-backlog-refinement-grooming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Backlog grooming&lt;/a&gt; (or &lt;em&gt;backlog refinement&lt;/em&gt; as it tends to get called these days) is the process of making sure the backlog is in a good enough shape to take into a Sprint Planning meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It came about because teams realised that leaving everything to the planning meetings was a dangerous approach. By doing backlog refinement in the previous sprint you allowed yourself time to fix issues with the backlog before you entered in to a planning meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A team might look at the top 5-6 stories on the backlog in the backlog refinement meeting. They will talk through them with the Product Owner and they may even estimate if they fully understand a story. But there will be times when the discussion on a story reveals a gap in knowledge. For example, say the development team looks at a story and explain the technical implications of doing it to the Product Owner. The Product Owner then realises that the story is more complicated than they imagined and so decides to break it down further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They don't have to do this break-down during the backlog refinement session. They might take it away and fix the stories in the days between backlog refinement and Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is how it is described in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Product Backlog refinement is the act of adding detail, estimates, and order to items in the Product Backlog. This is an ongoing process in which the Product Owner and the Development Team collaborate on the details of Product Backlog items. During Product Backlog refinement, items are reviewed and revised. The Scrum Team decides how and when refinement is done. Refinement usually consumes no more than 10% of the capacity of the Development Team. However, Product Backlog items can be updated at any time by the Product Owner or at the Product Owner’s discretion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the cap of 10% of the team's time spent on refinement. This is to ensure that teams don't get sucked in to excessive fiddling with the backlog. They should do &lt;em&gt;just enough&lt;/em&gt; refinement to make their Sprint Planning meetings go smoothly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-09-14T20:39:03.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20090" CreationDate="2016-09-14T22:58:27.720" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;in video games there's generally there's not a hard dependency between&#xA;  the disciplines (don't need to wait for all of one discipline to be&#xA;  done before the other can work), and if there is, the disciplines will&#xA;  work closely together to iterate on that one task/story&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are already cross-functional (CF) to some extent. As Marut pointed out, a CF team does not mean each team member is poly skilled, just that the team is. e.g. a testing team is not a CF team but a development team consisting of front-end and back-end devs, testers, analysts and sysadmins would be considered a CF dev team. You can very well do with a CF team of specialists if the ideal of a team of CF people seems unrealistic. This is discussed in detail in a chapter on Team Design in my book Agile IT Org Design. Coincidentally, the chapter is available as a free sample courtesy of the publisher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informit.com/content/images/9780133903355/samplepages/9780133903355.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.informit.com/content/images/9780133903355/samplepages/9780133903355.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the disciplines aren't heavily dependent on each other, they can be treated as three teams as VaeInimicus suggests. Doing so does not degenerate into waterfall in your case because I doubt that your problem space can be decomposed in terms of programming stories each with its own art &amp;amp; music component. Or they can be treated as three &lt;em&gt;logical&lt;/em&gt; teams each working off their own backlog but still sitting and working together and reporting to the same product owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2247" LastEditorUserId="2247" LastEditDate="2016-09-15T01:13:12.137" LastActivityDate="2016-09-15T01:13:12.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20097" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-15T06:21:56.200" Score="-3" ViewCount="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have already developed website in nodejs and MySQL &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now my client wants to add payment functionality. We have lots of features in the website like:- &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Copy &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Save &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Delete &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Groups &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) Read,  and many more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a different package for each feature. I am not sure how to manage this? Can anyone tell me what will be the best approach to do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25898" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-09-15T11:05:56.067" LastActivityDate="2016-09-15T11:05:56.067" Title="Different user can access different feature" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-09-18T15:21:48.593" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20097" CreationDate="2016-09-15T07:50:09.110" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming you want PjM advice (as per your tags):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are describing is called a &lt;em&gt;change request&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define exactly what the client wants - this is documented as a &lt;em&gt;change request&lt;/em&gt; that the client signs off on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decide how to price it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write a Technical Spec including the design changes and the GUI elements needed.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Review existing design to see what else will be affected and include it in the Technical Spec.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Figure out the tasks, create a schedule and then track, implement, test and ship.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-09-15T07:50:09.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20101" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20105" CreationDate="2016-09-15T11:25:17.113" Score="2" ViewCount="108" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for an agency that has a number of customers that fall into the same trap. They have a concept for a piece of software, we do some analysis, sign-off on initial scope/backlog and a reasonable budget and start agile development. However once the client starts to see the product they cant help but tweak endlessly despite our protests and go massively over budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the state of the art in building new software products efficiently as possible? Should we be prototyping the interface (smoke and mirrors, no backend functionality) until it looks and behaves exactly the way users want it, then build out the functionality? When does a prototype stop and the real product start? Who are the most progressuve thinkers on this front and what are the leading concepts in delivering new software products to market quickly and with minimal waste? Is lean startup (Ries) the most forward movement to adopt?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25902" LastEditorUserId="25902" LastEditDate="2016-09-16T02:40:09.197" LastActivityDate="2016-09-16T02:40:09.197" Title="Rapid and efficient product development processes" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;lean&gt;&lt;startup&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20101" CreationDate="2016-09-15T14:30:14.967" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like the approach you are taking is on the right track, however every time they ask for one of these tweaks I would reinforce the point of maximising value.  If they ask to move something / change the UI, I would be saying &quot;Sure we can do that, if you think it is higher priority than adding (the current top priority missing feature)?&quot;. If they genuinely think that is the highest priority, then deliver it - it's their problem if they are paying you to deliver lower value work, not yours.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6825" LastActivityDate="2016-09-15T14:30:14.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20101" CreationDate="2016-09-15T14:31:49.357" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two factors that you can manage: time and scope.  The classical (waterfall) system was to attempt to predict and control both.  The results were projects running over budgets for time &amp;amp; money, not delivering the original scope, and low quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When creating and delivering with agile software development, you often choose one to limit and the other becomes a forecast.  For example, time (cost) can have a set limit and the scope (features) forecast is updated as work progresses.  This maintains a fixed cost and makes visible the effect of ever-changing desires.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this is all assuming that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Manifesto for Agile Software Development&lt;/a&gt; is being honored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-09-15T19:03:48.373" LastActivityDate="2016-09-15T19:03:48.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20101" CreationDate="2016-09-15T15:54:39.753" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They have a concept for a piece of software, we do some analysis and agree on reasonable budget and start agile development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However once the client starts to see the product they cant (sic) help but tweak endlessly&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;despite our protests&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why are you protesting? If you're in an agile environment, you are supposed to &lt;em&gt;embrace&lt;/em&gt; change, not protest it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;and go massively over budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here we see the problem. When you add something &lt;em&gt;into&lt;/em&gt; a project, you must take something (requiring approximately equal time+money) &lt;em&gt;out&lt;/em&gt;. Or, alternately, you need to add more time and/or money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Customers changing their minds is normal, expected, and to a point even &lt;em&gt;required&lt;/em&gt; by Agile processes and sensibilities. Whereas more traditional methodologies (such as Waterfall) attempt to reduce the likelihood of change, agile methodologies attempt to reduce the &lt;em&gt;cost&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem here seems to be that you aren't reducing the cost - which leads to expensive changes. The traditional reaction to expensive changes is to &lt;em&gt;avoid changes&lt;/em&gt;, which seems to be what you are attempting to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From an Agile perspective, that is wrong. What you should be doing, instead, is making the change beneficial, rather than costly. Make sure that every change adds value to the project - keeping in mind that the only one who is authorized and empowered to determine value is the customer (or the customer's representative, such as the PO in Scrum).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the customer comes up with a change like this, you need to make certain all impacts of the change are visible to the customer - they need to give up this other feature, or they need to pay more, or the project deadline needs to be pushed back, or some combination of these. (Worth noting, however, that throwing more money at a problem has its limits in effectiveness.) After this, the customer makes the decision of what to compromise - or, perhaps, they'll decide they don't need their shiny new widget after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the state of the art in building new software products efficiently as possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Massively subjective, if you're talking about methodologies and processes. Not only will opinions differ, but the processes themselves vary in suitability based on the situation. There is no one true 'best practice' for software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should we be prototyping the interface (smoke and mirrors, no backend functionality) until it looks and behaves exactly the way users want it, then build out the functionality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How far you go with prototyping is a trade-off between giving more 'visible' functionality to the customer sooner versus having more &lt;em&gt;working&lt;/em&gt; functionality sooner. Typically, the customer should be the one to determine the value of each, though this varies depending on what process you're doing. In Scrum, for example, if you spend the entire sprint creating a big shiny prototype, and you end up not having a shippable product, that's bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest of your questions are, as with the 'What is the state of the art?', highly subjective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-09-15T16:02:06.670" LastActivityDate="2016-09-15T16:02:06.670" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20107" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-15T17:20:55.093" Score="2" ViewCount="405" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our company has recently implemented Scrum in the development process, and it seems to be somewhat successful. They are now suggesting that we carry it over to other activities within the company such as software implementation where many of the activities are totally outside of our control, i.e. the customer does not provide information on the schedule you set. Is Scrum really applicable here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25905" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-09-15T17:30:26.833" LastActivityDate="2016-09-15T18:52:26.080" Title="Can Scrum be used in non-development activities?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;frameworks&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20107" CreationDate="2016-09-15T17:51:00.917" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to accomplish Scrum, the following conditions must be met:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There must be buy-in from upper management (based on your question, you already have this)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There must be buy-in from the Team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There must be a Scrummaster who understands Scrum and is empowered to be its evangelist&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There must be a Product Owner who is authorized and empowered to make decisions on behalf of the customer (it sounds like this may be your sticking point)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The work must be such that a potentially shippable product can be produced with each iteration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The work must be estimable (difficult-to-estimate work is fine, but if the nature of the work is such that it &lt;em&gt;cannot&lt;/em&gt; be estimated, then you cannot do Scrum)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team must be cross-functional (note that this is not a team where every member can do everything. Rather, it is a team that is capable of doing everything)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While most commonly used for software development, there's nothing inherent to Scrum that makes it bound solely to software development. If you can fulfill the above requirements, then you should be able to implement Scrum successfully. If you cannot fulfill the above requirements, then it's time to re-assess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-09-15T17:51:00.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20107" CreationDate="2016-09-15T18:52:26.080" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Non-Software Scrum Exists, But...&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum can be used for projects (as opposed to ongoing activities) outside of software development. However, in my experience adapting Scrum to administrative or other non-software projects requires a great deal more maturity and adaptability than your organization probably has if your current Scrum implementation is only &quot;somewhat successful.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from the fact that you don't consider your current implementation to be fully successful, another red flag is that you talk about the customer not providing information (of whatever sort) on a set schedule. This seems like legacy, top-down command-and-control rather than either agile collaboration or Scrum time-boxing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Some Simple Considerations for Success&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are five additional points you should keep in mind in order to implement customer-facing Scrum well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decide whether you have a project or an ongoing business activity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure you have the organizational experience with Scrum to make it successful where it's already been applied before attempting to extend it into other domains.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plan how you will interact with customers in iterative delivery cycles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Modify your processes to integrate ongoing customer collaboration rather than tail-end feedback.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define communications plans for broken feedback loops, or feedback loops that that exceed your iteration time-boxes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't dramatically different from Scrum for software development, or Scrum implementations where the &quot;customer&quot; is internal to the business. In any Scrum implementation, communication, transparency, and continuous collaboration are always essential elements. These elements just take on a little more urgency when you are dealing directly with customer-facing delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-09-15T18:52:26.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20090" CreationDate="2016-09-15T19:32:00.513" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Optimize for Flow, Not Utilization&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, when picking a set of stories to accomplish in one sprint, some sprints will have mostly art-heavy stories queued up, and some sprints will have mostly engineering-heavy stories queued up. By picking the next most important stories, we'd be committing to having some disciplines sat idle once their part is done, since as I said, artists are unable to move on to engineering tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are falling prey to the &amp;quot;100% utilization fallacy.&amp;quot; In agile methodologies, the goal is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to keep everyone busy or to optimize for team-member utilization. Rather, the goal is to optimize for a smooth and sustainable &lt;em&gt;flow&lt;/em&gt; of features or functionality over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind, there are some things you should do in your specific circumstance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Craft product backlog items that consist of &lt;strong&gt;thin, vertical slices of functionality&lt;/strong&gt; that require the combined skills of the entire team whenever possible. User stories that require only one team member to complete are often a process implementation smell.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Encourage whole-team collaboration to complete each user story, rather than parceling out stories to individual silos.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accept that overly-narrow stories may cause idling for some members of the team, but recognize too that this evens out over time. For example, your graphics artists may have more to do one iteration, but your engineers may have the lion's share of work next time. &lt;strong&gt;You are optimizing for &lt;em&gt;flow&lt;/em&gt;, not utilization!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build in more feedback loops and collaboration opportunities between disciplines. For example, graphics artists and front-end engineers should be &lt;em&gt;collaborating&lt;/em&gt; together in a tight feedback loop, not sequenced in a way where change or opportunity costs go up.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of your agile methodology, your goal should be to reduce hand-offs and queue times. Active collaboration within a Scrum team will do this intrinsically for work-in-progress (WIP). Creating Kanban queues and tracking cycle, lead, and takt times will not inherently do this, but will certainly make process waste visible and explicit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2020-12-05T13:27:07.447" LastActivityDate="2020-12-05T13:27:07.447" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20111" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20112" CreationDate="2016-09-16T14:04:09.283" Score="3" ViewCount="1284" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to figure out how JIRA can help track an Agile Scrum project we are running, in particular I want to be able to create burn down charts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I created a few stories and tasks, and noticed that I can only enter in story points for epics and stories, though it seems like this may be configurable. Specifically, the documentation says this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many Scrum teams separate estimation (which is used for measuring the size of a backlog and calculating velocity) from tracking (which is often the burndown of hours used during the Sprint to be sure we're not way off the pace necessary to complete the stories in the Sprint timebox), and use different units for each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(info) Note that, by default, the Story Points field is only available to issues of type 'Story' or 'Epic' — you can change this as described in JIRA Agile - JIRA Configuration.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've went through some basic Agile training and I haven't come across this concept yet where the tracking and estimation is different, though I am sure some people do it that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I considered trying to configure JIRA to use Story point estimations for tasks and sub-tasks, but before I try that I want to understand what the flow used by &quot;many scrum teams&quot; in JIRA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, it seems that the &quot;log work&quot; option once a sprint has begun doesn't effect the story points estimation at all. With the current flow, it seems like I would have to enter in the estimation in story points for epics and stories, and then re-enter in something similar for the time estimations for every item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone can help me with a recommended workflow where I don't have to enter in everything twice, and I can do a day-to-day tracking of how much each story/task/sub-task is completed (with burndown chart), I'd appreciate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE: I tried showing a burndown chart and I see it only shows story points, which I guess is as expected. My problem is that this means none of the tasks or sub-task completion will reflect on the burndown chart, which seems strange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE 2: By changing the board time estimation mode to &quot;Remaining Estimate and Time Spent&quot; I was able to select &quot;Remaining time&quot;. However, when I close sub-tasks, for some reason that chart doesn't adjust. It seems that I have to manually update the &quot;remaining time&quot; to &quot;0&quot; which is a pretty awkward interface (why doesn't it do this automatically?). Furthermore, my fundamental problem of needing to manage estimates and tracking in different places is not solved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(NOTE: I tried to ask this on answers.atlassian.com, but no response so reposting here)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25912" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-07-08T12:14:22.693" LastActivityDate="2019-07-08T12:14:22.693" Title="Separating tracking and estimation with Agile Scrum and workflow" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20111" CreationDate="2016-09-16T14:59:05.257" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, estimation and time tracking are completely separate concepts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've went through some basic Agile training and I haven't come across this concept yet where the tracking and estimation is different&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimation in Scrum is done in story points, while tracking is done in time. Story points are a measure of relative &lt;em&gt;effort&lt;/em&gt; required to complete a story. Time tracking is a measure of how much &lt;em&gt;time&lt;/em&gt; it took to complete that story. While related, these concepts do not directly map to each other. For example, you might have a relatively small story (ie. 1 story point) and a relatively large story (ie. 5 story points), but the small story might take ten times as long if, say, the server becomes extremely overloaded for a day or two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason JIRA does not by default allow story points for tasks is because they are not stories - they provide no &lt;em&gt;direct&lt;/em&gt; business value. It is assumed that an abundance of work in tasks will be reflected in a reduced focus factor, meaning the team will complete fewer story points overall during that sprint. As for sub-tasks, the story point estimation is already done for their parent stories, so duplicating that estimation into the subtasks would be redundant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the burndown, you need to decide which you're going to track - story points (relative measures of effort of stories which provide direct business value) or time (amount of hours worked). If the former, then you don't &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; tasks nor sub-tasks to show up on the burndown. If the latter, you can change the burndown from showing 'Story Points' to 'Original Time Estimate'. Obviously, this will only do anything if you put in an original time estimate on each story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;and I can do a day-to-day tracking of how much each story/task/sub-task is completed (with burndown chart)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is your purpose for doing this? As per Scrum's concepts of 'Definition of Done' and having a potentially-releasable product each iteration, having a partially-completed story is considered to have zero (or even negative) value. A story that is 50% done is useless and provides no value - this is why by default burndowns track only stories which are 100% done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, why do you want to track time in the first place? In my experience, teams gain no benefit from tracking time - tracking relative effort &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2765/why-use-story-points-instead-of-hours-for-estimating&quot;&gt;has been shown to be&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scruminc.com/story-points-why-are-they-better-than/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;far more accurate and productive&lt;/a&gt;. The only reason I can see for tracking time is if upper management is demanding time keeping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2016-09-16T14:59:05.257" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20113" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2016-09-16T17:16:34.240" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An API call is used to direct communication between different software programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25755" LastEditorUserId="25755" LastEditDate="2016-09-18T15:22:17.373" LastActivityDate="2016-09-18T15:22:17.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20114" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2016-09-16T17:16:34.240" Score="0" Body="This tag references discussions about application program interface (API) calls. " OwnerUserId="25755" LastEditorUserId="25755" LastEditDate="2016-09-18T15:22:13.307" LastActivityDate="2016-09-18T15:22:13.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20116" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20128" CreationDate="2016-09-17T21:19:26.370" Score="1" ViewCount="567" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are building a customer portal to be used by 50,000 customers around the world for placing orders, viewing invoices and reports. In parallel, we have two continuous improvement teams, working on devops and BDD. We are using a mix of internal staff and a software house. The portal interfaces to SAP and Siebel. We are using scrum, and have a product owner and scrum masters.  We also have a project director, delivery manager, change manager and test manager.  Where and how could a Project Manager add value?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25696" LastActivityDate="2016-09-19T16:23:48.523" Title="Project Manager role in Scrum project" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2336" CreationDate="2016-09-17T21:56:11.390" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Legally, you own the rights to your own work, and, unless stated elsewhere, the client owns only the &quot;use&quot; of your work for a specific project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25921" LastActivityDate="2016-09-17T21:56:11.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20116" CreationDate="2016-09-18T09:09:16.357" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a difficult question to answer as so much depends on the particular circumstances in your organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum defines just three roles: The Product Owner, The Scrum Master and the Development Team Member. Those three roles cover &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; that is necessary to deliver the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of the traditional activities of Project Managers are no longer relevant when doing Scrum. For example project planning and reporting are typically very different to traditional projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may, however, be some activities that are traditionally performed by a Project Manager that are still relevant. Examples might include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Billing and other finance related activities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Liaising between teams&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dealing with contractual matters&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that we are talking about activities here and not a role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The appropriate way to include these activities in to Scrum are to assign them to one of the three Scrum roles. It might be, for example, that the Product Owner picks up the role of handling the project finances. It might also be that a Development Team Member is doing these activities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There could be a case for taking somebody with Project Management experience and making them a Development Team Member. The key point here is that they are not acting as a Project Manager, but instead they are acting as a team member with particular skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-09-18T09:09:16.357" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14214" CreationDate="2016-09-18T10:58:25.867" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Risk is the effect of uncertainty and the effect could be adverse (threat) or beneficial (opportunity).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25926" LastActivityDate="2016-09-18T10:58:25.867" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2336" CreationDate="2016-09-18T17:20:48.870" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What has your client paid for so far?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were in your position, I would give the client the deliverables for whatever work he has &lt;strong&gt;already paid for&lt;/strong&gt;, in its current state. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If some of the project parts that he wants are completed but NOT paid for yet --&gt; then I'd explain that we can give him those parts for whatever &lt;strong&gt;additional&lt;/strong&gt; cost would cover the work already completed on those elements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd further explain that these deliverables are incomplete, however, and he's going to receive them in their unfinished form, reflecting the work that had been done up until his final payment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that's the cleanest way to handle it without arguing over nomenclature, semantics, understanding of project manager process terminology, and standards, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own opinion, having been on both sides of this argument before:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I were your client, &quot;cost-estimate&quot; means an estimate for work &lt;em&gt;not yet done&lt;/em&gt;. So I'd be upset if my contractor told me that he couldn't give me elements of work that I'd already paid for. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From your perspective, I understand sometimes it's not always that clean and clear, but that's a risk PM's need to mitigate when these issues come up. (And similar things have happened many times for me. I've had lots of clients who were capricious and employers who couldn't say 'no' to requests that seemed overly complex and absurd to me as a PM. So sometimes you just need to do the best you can given the situation. This sounds like one of those times.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a matter of principle though -- I think clients should be able to get whatever work they've actually paid for, even if it's incomplete, and the project was canceled. Sometimes projects get messy, but that's okay. There are no hard and fast rules in project management (no matter what anyone says), and I think giving the client what he's paid for--and nothing more or less--is the fairest way to handle this case for everyone involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it all works out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17925" LastEditorUserId="17925" LastEditDate="2016-09-18T17:25:57.000" LastActivityDate="2016-09-18T17:25:57.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20123" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-19T01:41:20.597" Score="0" ViewCount="58" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to carry out following and having difficulty but I cannot figure out why, I am not expert at MS Project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have one &quot;100% completed&quot; task with duration 35days&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No Resources have been assigned to this&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have set the task type to &quot;Fixed Work&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I want to add a &quot;work&quot; of 111 hours to this&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When I type in 111 hours in work column it changes duration to 13.88days (calculated by 8hrs/d)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When I extend the duration back from 13.88days to 35days, it changes the &quot;work&quot; to 280hrs (35d x 8hrs/d) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why does it do this? I thought &quot;Fixed Work&quot; tasks don't change &quot;work&quot;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;thank you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25933" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-01T10:02:27.643" LastActivityDate="2018-11-01T10:02:27.643" Title="Task Duration and work" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20123" CreationDate="2016-09-19T11:07:11.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You've got to set it to Fixed Duration instead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fixed Work task type (along with &quot;Effort Driven&quot; checkmark) sets task to calculate its duration on the base of duration of work (111h in your case)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25937" LastActivityDate="2016-09-19T11:07:11.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20126" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20127" CreationDate="2016-09-19T11:30:59.253" Score="-1" ViewCount="902" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to figure our if the following system requirement is a Functional requirement or a Non-Functional Requirement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The Stock Control system must update the stock item quantity when a stock item is sold.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally believe that it must be a NF requirement, due to the 'when' part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;please help to clarify.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25938" LastActivityDate="2016-09-20T08:46:28.203" Title="Is this a Functional or Non-Functional requirement?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20126" CreationDate="2016-09-19T12:24:31.420" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is a functional requirement.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare it to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_requirement&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;definition of a functional requirement from Wikipedia:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A function is described as a set of inputs, the behavior, and outputs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Functional requirements [...] define &lt;strong&gt;what&lt;/strong&gt; a system is supposed to accomplish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia article describes the difference between functional and non-functional requirements as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Generally, functional requirements are expressed in the form &quot;system must do &quot;, while non-functional requirements are &quot;system shall be &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25939" LastEditorUserId="25939" LastEditDate="2016-09-19T14:45:03.193" LastActivityDate="2016-09-19T14:45:03.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20116" CreationDate="2016-09-19T16:23:48.523" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally don't think the PM role maps to either that of Product Owner, since they generally don't have the requisite business knowledge, or Scrum Master due to conflicts of interest around organisation of tasks, scheduling etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DSDM (www.dsdm.org) defines the PM role in a scrum environment as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Managing the work environment in which Scrum Teams operate, ensuring appropriate resources, facilities and tools are available as required&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Performing high level planning and delivery coordination, influencing scrum teams through negotiation with their product owners&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Monitoring progress against baselined high level plans&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Managing risk and handling problems escalated from the scrum teams&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Organising and participating in project planning events&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am guessing between the Project Director and the Delivery Manager you have this covered ...?!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25893" LastActivityDate="2016-09-19T16:23:48.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20126" CreationDate="2016-09-19T17:51:41.760" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the wikipedia definition of NFR, I would say a NFR describes &lt;strong&gt;how&lt;/strong&gt; the system (or a specific feature) should behave; while a functional requirement describes &lt;strong&gt;the behaviour itself&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other thing you could keep in mind with these definitions is &quot;Is this statment applicable throughout the application?&quot;. A requirement that says &quot;The user should be able to sign in&quot; is the behaviour itself - it does not extend other definitions. While &quot;the user should perform any activity in 15 clicks, maximum&quot; is a extension of behaviour that is applicable to other behaviours. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.utdallas.edu/~supakkul/tools/RE-Tools/NFR-Framework.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NFR Framework&lt;/a&gt; makes this extension characteristic explicity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia has &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-functional_requirement&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a list of NFRs&lt;/a&gt; that may make more clear what is a NFR.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25646" LastActivityDate="2016-09-19T17:51:41.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20130" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-19T22:40:30.783" Score="3" ViewCount="1045" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an internal Agile Coach, I'm often asked to help select new Scrum Masters for teams. I would like to develop a set of questions to evaluate existing employees for their fit for being a scrum master (which are often considered a subset of the Project Management profession). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there is a lot that can be done on &quot;gut&quot; with this, senior management would like something more tangible to see how vetting is done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have &quot;got to&quot; questions you use when evaluating Scrum Masters? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="147" LastEditDate="2016-09-20T19:51:47.783" LastActivityDate="2016-09-21T08:01:31.343" Title="Scrum Master Interview Questions" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2016-09-21T13:13:41.753" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12143" CreationDate="2016-09-20T08:15:41.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Click on 'File' tab, select 'Options'.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 'Project Options' dialogue window will open.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Select 'Display'.  Check the 'Entry Bar' option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25951" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2016-09-20T11:39:02.120" LastActivityDate="2016-09-20T11:39:02.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20043" CreationDate="2016-09-20T08:43:02.847" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use JQL to show projects in a single board, &#xA;then you can plan sprints with issues from multiple projects, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but as the team/roles is same(i am assuming as it seems that the projects are branches of a large product), use the same workflow for all projects, (not essential but easier on reporting)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also your projects do not need to be just Epics in this scenario, what if the smaller projects evolve into large products, the hassle will be enough to commit suicide. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;also take a look&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/64932/combining-multiple-projects-into-1-sprint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/64932/combining-multiple-projects-into-1-sprint&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep Calm and JQL it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25934" LastActivityDate="2016-09-20T08:43:02.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20126" CreationDate="2016-09-20T08:46:28.203" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a Functional Requirement, &#xA;Clue one: &quot;Must&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clue two: part of correct working of the system, (if ignored, you will be selling products you dont have in the inventory)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;clue three: your other systems like auto re-stock etc wont work without this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;this is so far deep in the functional requirement section, that it is even not visible from the boundary of Functional-Nonfunctional reqs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25934" LastActivityDate="2016-09-20T08:46:28.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17899" CreationDate="2016-09-20T09:20:49.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had the same problem, What I did is add a custom field, &quot;Ball In court&quot;. &#xA;as I needed to keep the assignee for the issue stuck to the developer for reporting purposes .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do not want to add custom field, It is best to create a state in your workflow, &quot;Needs review by PM&quot; and allow the dev to move move from in progress to this  state. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now create a simple board for pm and add this state issue to a column, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can elaborate more if you provide multiple scenarios, the issue can go to from one state to another&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25934" LastActivityDate="2016-09-20T09:20:49.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20130" CreationDate="2016-09-20T12:25:49.050" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use the definitive source, &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;, to develop a list of questions that have concrete answers proving knowledge of the framework.  Be certain to keep it up to date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2016-09-20T12:25:49.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20130" CreationDate="2016-09-20T12:45:29.063" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Morning Joel,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a standard list of questions can be beneficial in some cases. For instance, when I am interviewing potential new team members I have a list of 3 questions that I always ask to ensure I am asking the right questions to avoid not knowing how I feel about the candidate when they walk out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that being said, here are some questions I think you may find helpful to ask when considering bringing a Scrum Master onboard...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a Scrum Master on a team, what activities do you find to be the most important during a sprint? Can you share some examples of why you believe that to be the case?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will give you a sense of how much they understand team dynamics and handling different scenarios throughout the sprint. It may also inform you on whether or not they understand the role of the Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Say your team has spent a year building a product from the ground up and the release date is approaching quickly. What would you generally see yourself doing in the final weeks leading up to the release date?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will help give you an understanding of your candidates ability to be proactive. You want to be sure you are hiring someone who will be ready to do what it takes to assist the team in being successful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What does being a Scrum Master mean to you and why does it matter? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an agile atmosphere, it's important to have people on your team that understand and embrace their role. The fast pace nature of our industry especially, emphasizes this fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this short list helps you in your search for amazing talent. Happy head hunting!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25955" LastActivityDate="2016-09-20T12:45:29.063" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20137" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-20T18:51:33.900" Score="5" ViewCount="663" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a 6 year old and 8 year old child. I would like to implement Scrum in my family to make getting chores done more efficient. Can Scrum be implemented in this context?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25958" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-09-20T20:05:00.587" LastActivityDate="2016-09-27T21:11:05.087" Title="Can Scrum be used to schedule family chores?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;frameworks&gt;&lt;recurring-tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20137" CreationDate="2016-09-20T19:06:00.070" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just do it? doing is the best example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set an iteration cycle period, lets say a week&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a backlog together with the family&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do a planning sessions&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimate the work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make a realistic Sprint plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Daily monitor progress&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Visualize it on a board, todo, in progress, done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the end of the week review the victories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Evaluate whats going well and where your family can improve&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see no reason why children couldn't follow a plan like this. No need to explain just execute! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like how the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilenutshell.com/how_does_it_work&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agile in a Nutshell website&lt;/a&gt; puts it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At its core, Agile does the same thing you and I do when faced with&#xA;  too much to do and not enough time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;You make a list&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;You size things up&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;You set some priorities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;You start executing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;You update the plan as you go&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One note of warning, iterative household tasks is not for everyone. I know one of my Agile trainers who's girlfriend really hated it. They are separated now... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2016-09-21T07:17:33.080" LastActivityDate="2016-09-21T07:17:33.080" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20139" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-20T20:45:40.067" Score="5" ViewCount="271" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been throwing &quot;things that team will do later&quot; (TTWDL) into the product backlog along with product functionality to be implemented. Needless to say it is now long and full of bugs/ tasks from previous sprints. I can't figure a different place to keep track of open items from previous sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read the following two posts and am in no better spot:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/20083/is-backlog-refinement-grooming-waste&quot;&gt;Is backlog refinement (grooming) waste?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/8214/sprint-backlog-vs-product-backlog&quot;&gt;Sprint Backlog vs Product Backlog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I keep track of open bugs/tasks from previous sprints separate from product backlog items related to new functionality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25961" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2016-09-21T08:47:31.610" Title="Where should I keep track of open items from previous sprints?" Tags="&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;&lt;features&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20139" CreationDate="2016-09-20T21:22:48.313" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you have the right place. ie the backlog. But only if you are actually going to do them and they should be at the TOP!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you aren't going to do them, I suggest a 'will not fix' or 'phase 2' dumping ground column/tag/board but don't kid yourself that they will somehow be picked up and done magically without taking up time you want spent doing other features &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2016-09-20T21:22:48.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20139" CreationDate="2016-09-20T21:26:47.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can I keep track of open bugs/tasks from previous sprints separate from product backlog items related to new functionality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You shouldn't even try! One of the purposes of the Product Backlog is to act as a parking lot for things related to the project that may never be &lt;em&gt;reached&lt;/em&gt; during the project lifecycle, but that should be captured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By keeping the information, you avoid entering duplicates, and can also provide estimates of project run-time with or without features in your parking lot. This can be useful for project planning, up to a point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should generally only prioritize fine-grained stories for one or two Sprints ahead. The rest of your backlog should be left alone as YAGNI items until they are actually needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you have items that you know will &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; be done no matter how long the project runs, you should simply discard them as clutter. If the issues are important, they will be re-raised by the team or the stakeholders; otherwise, if no one cares about those particular Product Backlog Items, why continue to track them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you just can't bring yourself to discard anything, even if it's causing you friction in your process, then archive the items. If you're using Trello, archive the cards or move them to a Parking Lot list. If you're using Excel, move the items to &lt;em&gt;parking_lot.xlsx&lt;/em&gt;. If you're using something else, you get the general idea: items that will never be done, but that isn't thrown away, are filed away where no one has to look at them during Backlog Refinement or Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal rule of thumb is that if a user story reaches &quot;we're never going to do it&quot; status, I throw it away. The &quot;maybe someday&quot; stuff just settles to the bottom of the Product Backlog, like sediment in a pond.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-09-20T21:26:47.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20142" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20154" CreationDate="2016-09-20T21:50:26.573" Score="0" ViewCount="225" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was hired as a project manager / senior programmer to manage an internal group of programmers in a company. I'm responsible for coordinating 12 programmers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My boss has no programming background, how can I convince him to let go of an ineffective programmer? My boss's argument is that the programmer knows that he is not very good, but because of that he is cheap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of his code must be cleaned up. Today I found code he committed which was filled with difficult-to-understand and outright misspelled content (which would increase cost of maintenance of the code later on):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;public static bool isDivisibleBy(this int num, int numnum)&#xA;    {&#xA;        var tmp = (float)num / (float)numnum;&#xA;        var res = tmp.ToString();&#xA;&#xA;        if (res.Contains(&quot;.&quot;))&#xA;            return false;&#xA;        else&#xA;            return true;&#xA;    }&#xA;&#xA;    public static int reminder(this int num, int numnum)&#xA;    {&#xA;        var absNum = Math.Abs(num);&#xA;        var absNumnum = Math.Abs(numnum);&#xA;&#xA;        //speedup&#xA;        if (absNum.isDivisibleBy(absNumnum))&#xA;        {&#xA;            return 0;&#xA;        }&#xA;        else&#xA;        {&#xA;            var tmp = absNum / absNumnum;&#xA;            var tmp2 = absNum - (absNumnum * tmp);&#xA;&#xA;            var tmp3 = tmp - tmp2;&#xA;&#xA;            //sign&#xA;            if ((num &amp;gt; 0 &amp;amp;&amp;amp; numnum &amp;gt; 0) || (num &amp;lt; 0 &amp;amp;&amp;amp; numnum &amp;lt; 0))&#xA;            {&#xA;                return Math.Abs(tmp3);&#xA;            }&#xA;            else&#xA;            {&#xA;                return Math.Abs(tmp3) * -1;&#xA;            }&#xA;        }&#xA;&#xA;        return 0;&#xA;    }&#xA;}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25962" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-09-21T11:55:27.087" LastActivityDate="2016-09-21T19:51:41.963" Title="How to convince my boss to let go an ineffective programmer" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20142" CreationDate="2016-09-20T23:54:13.770" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before jumping straight to 'fire the guy', consider other alternatives, such as providing training. If the programmer &lt;em&gt;knows&lt;/em&gt; he has room for improvement, then chances are he'd be willing to put in the effort to actually &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; so. If he knows he's not very good at programming &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; he doesn't care about improving himself, then he should possibly consider alternative career options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your boss isn't okay with the cost of training the programmer (or hiring someone else, if the programmer refuses training or is somehow genuinely incompetent), then you need to make sure the costs of low-quality code and developer incompetence (such as increased maintainability, more defects, lower morale, decreased performance of the team overall, etc.) are fully visible to him. If you lay out exactly what the pitfalls of technical debt are, ideally in a formalised fashion with research to back up your position (which is, in lieu of such 'proof', can be taken as rather subjective), then hopefully he will make the decision to let the programmer go on his own. And if he doesn't? That's his call.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally I'd also suggest first making &lt;em&gt;sure&lt;/em&gt; your opinion actually has some merit to it, but after looking at the block of code I can agree that in this specific case there is, at the very least, room for improvement. Assuming, of course, that the sample above is indicative of the programmer's actual ability, and not a result of time pressure, excessive workload, unfinished process (you said he &lt;em&gt;committed&lt;/em&gt; the code - was it pushed to production? If not, it's possible he was planning on going back to touch it up and just hadn't gotten around to it yet) or any number of other possible, legitimate reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-09-20T23:54:13.770" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20139" CreationDate="2016-09-21T00:06:57.393" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bugs &lt;em&gt;shouldn't&lt;/em&gt; be kept separate from the other tasks in a backlog. If they are, then how is the Product Owner (I'm assuming that, as you mentioned 'sprints', you're doing Scrum) going to prioritize them? If you've got the following in terms of most-important to least important:&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Story A, Bug/Task 1, Story B, Bug/Task 2&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Then how on earth are you going to signify that while keeping stories and bugs in separate places?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, what you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; do is find some way to delineate bugs separately from stories - many issue tracking systems will have this functionality built-in, allowing you to easily filter through them to view only that in which you are currently interested. Failing that (if you're using, say, Microsoft Word or even just a bunch of printed pieces of paper (please no)), you can simply mark them as a different colour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-09-21T00:06:57.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20139" CreationDate="2016-09-21T03:00:57.903" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;things that team will do later&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; (TTWDL) ... &lt;strong&gt;bugs/ tasks&lt;/strong&gt; from previous sprints. . . . &lt;strong&gt;open items&lt;/strong&gt; from previous sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in what these items are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they're new work that you just didn't get to (eg, you descoped the sprint to finish within the timebox), then they definitely go back on the product backlog to be reprioritized later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they're items that were dinged against your acceptance criteria, I call those liens. I put them back in the product backlog, but tagged accordingly so that status is visible when we're prioritizing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they're cleanup tasks, to bring the code quality up to production standard now that you have an initial implementation, then the first thing I ask is, what's your Definition of Done? Does it include production quality elements (tests, documentation, responses to code review items, etc)? If not, then it should, and you need to include that when figuring how much scope you can get done in your timebox (or vice versa).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That aside, my team tends to put items like this in the technical debt pile, with the understanding that they'll be worked between sprints or as able, and the expectation that we may sometimes do a sprint whose goal is to reduce the technical debt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they're things that came up as additional good ideas during the sprint, definitely the product backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they're bugs that were discovered after the sprint was completed, then you might or might not have a separate process for handling bugs. If you don't, put 'em on the backlog, tagged as bugs and/or known issues so that is visible when prioritizing. You might sometime have a sprint whose goal is &quot;squash bugs&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2016-09-21T03:00:57.903" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20130" CreationDate="2016-09-21T08:01:31.343" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum Masters should have clear coaching skills. Depending on their experience level I would ask them to give an adhoc 15 minute training session about subjects you find important. Preferable stuff that is not in the Scrum guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain Scrum to a potential new client&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you kick start a new team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you teach the organisation to promote and create self-organizing teams&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also have a look at this &lt;a href=&quot;http://lmsgoncalves.com/2016/02/28/scrum-master-role/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scrum Master job description&lt;/a&gt;, asking questions to verify that the person can execute most of these responsibilities should get you a nice list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The main goal of having a Scrum Master at a company should be to&#xA;  create stable and self-organised teams with a clear and engaging&#xA;  direction, help to identify and resolve organisational impediments, as&#xA;  well as educate the organisation on Agile Methodologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Responsible for the Scrum Artifacts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Developing and nurturing team dynamics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Serving as a mirror to the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Provide support to Product Owner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Update himself in order to teach and mentor the team and organisation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Responsible of helping the team to maintain the big picture&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;read &lt;a href=&quot;http://lmsgoncalves.com/2016/02/28/scrum-master-role/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the details here&lt;/a&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2016-09-21T08:01:31.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20139" CreationDate="2016-09-21T08:47:31.610" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: On the top of the product backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sounds like your tasks are not &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jamesshore.com/Agile-Book/done_done.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DoneDone&lt;/a&gt;. Completely finish and make features production ready before picking up any new features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't want to reserve time later to make it release ready, because how much time you need is uncertain, but more important context switching is expensive. Fixing or finishing tasks later will consume much more time then doing it now, because everything is still fresh in memory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Handling defects&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you implement a &lt;a href=&quot;https://medium.com/quality-functions/the-zero-bug-policy-b0bd987be684#.vd80k7enl&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;zero-defect policy&lt;/a&gt;, see this answer for more details: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/19805/8528&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/19805/8528&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Promote &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilenutshell.com/production_readiness&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;product readiness&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is a saying in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilenutshell.com/xp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;XP&lt;/a&gt; that production starts on day one of the&#xA;  project. From the first day you write a line of code, you treat the&#xA;  project as if it were in production, and after that, you are merely&#xA;  making changes to a live system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It’s a profound difference in how you view your code. Instead of&#xA;  viewing production and deployment as some event way off in the distant&#xA;  future, you imagine you and your team are in production today and&#xA;  start behaving accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Doing this has the following advantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Team respects the code base - leading to higher quality.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;It’s easier to make changes - as a result of well refactored code.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Pride of ownership goes up - because team is doing quality work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;You can release at any moment - which is the only time we add value.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qBCt6.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qBCt6.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2016-09-21T08:47:31.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8189" CreationDate="2016-09-21T10:05:02.030" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in a situation similar to yours:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Big team 12+ members (backend + ios + android developers, testers)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;6 projects. Some projects need collaboration with team from other companies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;I am the only PM of the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In real-life software development, managing a team with fixed number of people working in only 1 project is desirable, but we are not usually in this situation. For example, when &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;one project is put on hold&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; due to dependency with other teams (which sometimes we could not control), we need to temporarily move members to other projects. Some other times we need to have &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;backup&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (in case the only ios/android developer leaves), so one person working on one project may also learn and work on other projects as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In this case it is really difficult to apply every words of Agile&lt;/strong&gt;. Instead, we have standup meeting for each project every two days i.e. Today we have meeting for project 1, 2, 3; tomorrow we have meeting for project 4,5,6; and then the day after tomorrow, project 1, 2, 3 again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In today’s meeting, &lt;strong&gt;I won’t request everybody from project 1, 2, 3 to attend meeting from the start to the end&lt;/strong&gt;. At first, I ask A, B and C who work on project 1 – we have standup meeting for project 1. After that, I invite D who works on project 2 to meeting and release A since he is not working on project 2. Now B, C and D will have meeting for project 2, and so on..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not Agile, but so far we are happy with current approach. Developers don’t need to spend too much time listening to unrelated information, and we got quite sufficient information to work for 2 days between meetings. &lt;strong&gt;If any questions arise, we are willing to discuss on-person, or call for meeting, during the workday&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After all, standup meeting is just a tool; it may not answer all questions – you need to answer as much as possible in most efficient way, and use other tools – communication during workday - to support it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21101" LastActivityDate="2016-09-21T10:05:02.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20142" CreationDate="2016-09-21T10:10:53.013" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you should explain your boss the existence of &lt;a href=&quot;http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?NetNegativeProducingProgrammer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Net Negative Producing Programmers&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Software development is one of the professions where its possible for employees to have a negative production. This means they cost more time in the long-run then their results add value on the short-run. Even if they are cheap, they will waste time of the expensive developers. And we all know you always come a couple of developers short on a project!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Identifying and handling NNPPers is not so easy, but some signals as not delivering &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0132350882&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;clean code&lt;/a&gt; could be a start. Still isolated signals might be resolved with proper training. The real NNPPer also have an attitude problem where they think their ways are the correct ones and are hard to train.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CowboyCoders are identified more by their attitude than by their&#xA;  circumstances. CowboyCoders prefer -- nay, insist! -- to avoid&#xA;  standards, processes, and policies, and hate working with others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be sure to read this pretty long blog about &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mehdi-khalili.com/dealing-with-net-negative-producing-programmers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dealing with net negative producing programmers&lt;/a&gt;&quot; and share it with your boss if you like it. Maybe even share it with the developer you are having issues with, this might give him/her insights about why you are having issues with their behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My pick from that article as advice to you is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Taking a poor performer off the team can often be more productive than&#xA;  adding a good one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See if you can get him/her reassigned into another project or product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2016-09-21T10:23:54.310" LastActivityDate="2016-09-21T10:23:54.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20150" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-21T11:57:33.590" Score="1" ViewCount="57266" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the difference between job titles operations lead and operations manager in an organizational hierarchy. Which one holds the greater position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25969" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-09-21T14:47:52.450" LastActivityDate="2019-08-27T01:26:10.350" Title="What is the difference between titles &quot;lead&quot; and &quot;manager&quot;" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2019-08-27T05:19:25.573" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20150" CreationDate="2016-09-21T12:53:27.210" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &quot;manager&quot; title normally implies you can shape your team, while a &quot;lead&quot; is often presented with a given team he has to lead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, job titles are not regulated. A company could appoint someone to manage the whole company all by himself and call him &quot;senior clown&quot; and that would be perfectly legal. So check the job descriptions to be sure what each job is about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2016-09-21T12:53:27.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20150" CreationDate="2016-09-21T15:06:11.293" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lead --&gt; means someone who manages a particular discipline (design, engineering, even project management)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manager --&gt; means someone who manages overall processes in aggregate, without regards to discipline. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, a &quot;Design Lead&quot; would be concerned with the design of a project, and that's his domain, all he worries about. A manager looks at the project holistically, conferring with the various team leads to make decisions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in my experience, the team leads make decisions within their discipline--managers make sure those decisions are implemented/enforced, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17925" LastActivityDate="2016-09-21T15:06:11.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3126" CreationDate="2016-09-21T19:17:56.903" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently wrote an article on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.tallprojects.co.uk/articles/scoping-documents-the-agile-statement-of-work/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;scoping documents for digital projects&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this I explain the structure I use and the level of detail I go into. This is based on many years of experience in planning and delivering large digital projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very happy to answer any questions / comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25975" LastActivityDate="2016-09-21T19:17:56.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20142" CreationDate="2016-09-21T19:51:41.963" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Route Around Resource Constraints&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My boss has no programming background, how can I convince him to let go of an ineffective programmer? My boss's argument is that the programmer knows that he is not very good, but because of that he is cheap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of the issue here is that you are solving the wrong problem. Rather than trying to get the guy fired, which may or may not be justified and which &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; boss clearly isn't interested in doing, from a &lt;em&gt;project management&lt;/em&gt; standpoint your objective is to deliver a working product within your project constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/20142/how-to-convince-my-boss-to-let-go-an-ineffective-programmer#comment25042_20142&quot;&gt;a comment&lt;/a&gt; you made above, you said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I tested to remove him from the project and it boosted the productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In PM-speak, removing him as a resource assigned to a deliverable improved productivity. Great! Rather than using this as the basis for an argument with your boss, a more pragmatic approach may simply be to assign non-critical work to this person. If doing so allows you to deliver a better product faster, then you are performing the essential function of your role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it seems like replacing the programmer may be better for the project, it may not be better for the company for some reason. The budgetary waste is really your &lt;em&gt;boss'&lt;/em&gt; problem, not yours, once you've raised the visibility of the issue. Making efficient use of the available budget and talent &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; your problem, though, so unless it's a potential HR issue I'd simply move this person off the project's critical path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you're being transparent, your boss can:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Insist on keeping an underperforming person on the critical path, and thereby accept whatever drag on the project this may cause.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be glad that you're delivering on time and within budget, while quietly ignoring the situation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get tired of paying someone to play minesweeper or sort paperclips, and remove or replace the person.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not having this person actively engaged on the project is truly more productive than having him participate, then it probably doesn't matter which option your boss chooses. Making those types of choices is what he gets paid for, after all, so leave that up to him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-09-21T19:51:41.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20155" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-21T20:27:38.147" Score="-2" ViewCount="83" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have done my Masters in Business Administration with HR and Marketing as my Specialization. It's been four years. I am currently working as Lead Recruiter with  a Reputed Organization. So, I just want to know whether or not I am eligible to get the PMP Certification. If so, what would be the channel to get it done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please help me; what would be the best way to get the certification done and what are the pros and cons I will be facing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would really be a great help to change my domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25976" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-09-23T09:08:11.860" LastActivityDate="2016-09-23T09:08:11.860" Title="Am I eligible to get PMP Certification?" Tags="&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-09-24T10:09:59.663" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20156" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-21T21:11:41.437" Score="3" ViewCount="272" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am relatively new to creating process maps. Is it common to map out exceptions to a &quot;happy path&quot; process (handling errors), or is there a better way to document those exceptions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23890" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-09-22T15:01:32.717" LastActivityDate="2016-12-21T17:13:31.010" Title="Should a process map include exceptions?" Tags="&lt;process-engineering&gt;&lt;business-process-mapping&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20156" CreationDate="2016-09-22T09:26:44.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A common approach is to use Process Failure Modes and Effects Analysis in conjunction with a happy path process map.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of P-FMEA is to identify potential ways each step in the process may fail, the impact of failure, and the ability to detect that failure has occurred. Once a P-FMEA analysis has been conducted for a process, then the list of possible failure modes is prioritized and there are three courses of action for each item in the list: defer, redesign, or mitigation. Handling of low priority failure modes can be deferred until higher priority failure modes are addressed. The process can be redesigned to eliminate the possibility that a failure mode occurs. Ability to detect occurrence of a failure mode can be improved, along with establishing a response plan when that mode is detected. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failure_mode_and_effects_analysis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FMEA on Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; for a more detailed introduction and additional information about Process FMEA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2305" LastEditorUserId="2305" LastEditDate="2016-09-22T09:32:36.760" LastActivityDate="2016-09-22T09:32:36.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20156" CreationDate="2016-09-22T10:28:45.237" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your process map is not complete unless you map out every possible path work can flow, no matter how small its frequency or probability.  Otherwise, when that very small possibility occurs, your process will fail and no one will know what to do.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In real life, however, you may not have the time to map it out, design it, or even identify where an exception could occur because your process map is likely an input to the next piece of work for whatever transformation you are going through.  So this typically becomes an action to resolve as your overall all capabilities under the transformation effort matures.  Building upon your process map, both to make it more efficient and of higher value as well as to map out low occurring paths, is a maturity thing.  Takes time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-09-22T10:28:45.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20155" CreationDate="2016-09-22T13:11:04.723" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You must work on project mode and meet the requirements noticed in the PMBOK. here is the requirements from the PMBOK:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(PMBOK® Guide—Fifth Edition)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jYBEL.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jYBEL.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regards :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25654" LastActivityDate="2016-09-22T13:11:04.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15418" CreationDate="2016-09-22T14:52:01.990" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. Don't do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only the tasks in the &lt;em&gt;product&lt;/em&gt; backlog could be prioritized via the MoSCoW method. If one were to do as you suggest, trying to get a distribution of priorities in the Sprint backlog, then the Team will be ignoring those project-priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the situation where there are 6000 must-haves, 2000 should-haves, 1500 could-haves, and 500 won't-haves in your project backlog. You then start a sprint, with an actual velocity of being able to take on 20 stories (in this hypothetical scenario, all the stories have identical story-point costs). If you were to use the MoSCoW method for the sprint backlog, then during that sprint you would end up accomplishing 12 must-haves, 4 should-haves, 3 could-haves, and 1 won't-have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comparing that to the alternative of taking simply 20 must-have stories into the sprint, I think it becomes obvious which approach is better. Assuming constant velocity, the MoSCoW-sprint method will take 500 sprints to complete all of the must-haves, while relying only on the backlog priorities would complete them all in 300 sprints (again, assuming this hypothetical situation where every story requires equal effort and nothing blocks anything).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a Development Team runs out of work during the sprint, then the Product Owner should be informed and either the sprint should be concluded early or more work should then be added to the sprint. This should, ideally, not be a very common occurrence. If a Development Team consistently under-estimates work for their sprints, then there are issues with their estimation process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-09-23T14:49:12.073" LastActivityDate="2016-09-23T14:49:12.073" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20161" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2016-09-22T15:07:42.547" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_mapping&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Business process mapping&lt;/strong&gt; refers to activities involved in defining what a business entity does, who is responsible, to what standard a business process should be completed, and how the success of a business process can be determined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The main purpose behind business process mapping is to assist organizations in becoming more efficient. A clear and detailed business process map or diagram allows outside firms to come in and look at whether or not improvements can be made to the current process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Business process mapping takes a specific objective and helps to measure and compare that objective alongside the entire organization's objectives to make sure that all processes are aligned with the company's values and capabilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;International Organization for Standardization or ISO 9001 : 2015 encourages a process approach to quality management. It is important to understand how each process relates to other processes within the organization and how those interactions impact Quality Management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-09-22T15:07:42.547" LastActivityDate="2016-09-22T15:07:42.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20162" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2016-09-22T15:07:42.547" Score="0" Body="This tag is used for questions about business process mapping activities or diagrams." OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-09-22T15:07:42.547" LastActivityDate="2016-09-22T15:07:42.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20163" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-22T17:41:55.363" Score="2" ViewCount="163" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently read an article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://mikehadlow.blogspot.com/2014/06/heisenberg-developers.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Heisenberg developers&lt;/a&gt;.  In a nutshell, the author is arguing that &lt;em&gt;the act of measuring progress has the effect of slowing progress&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this principle have an official name (or even a buzzword) in project management circles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this an area of project management research?  Is there any evidence that it is true, and in what circumstances?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25984" LastEditorUserId="25984" LastEditDate="2016-09-22T18:16:12.350" LastActivityDate="2016-09-22T18:26:12.643" Title="Does the act of measuring progress also slow progress?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20163" CreationDate="2016-09-22T18:03:37.627" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Excessive Inspection: A Form of Micromanagement&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Is it true that] the act of measuring progress has the effect of slowing progress[?]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is true &lt;em&gt;prima facie&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt; Any process, or process control, consumes non-zero time, so the notion that gathering or analyzing metrics to inspect-and-adapt your project takes measurable time shouldn't really be a surprise. The time consumed will vary widely based on the specific controls applied and (again unsurprisingly) by how automated the controls are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A healthy level of inspection and adaptation are desirable, but if your inspection or feedback process is too frequent or too finely grained then you certainly run the risk of diverting team capacity to reporting instead of towards effective product delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Broadly speaking, excessive inspection is considered a form of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromanagement&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;micromanagement&lt;/a&gt;, and there is a presumption that it has deleterious effects. If you're looking for academic citations about the &lt;em&gt;quantitative&lt;/em&gt; effects of micromanagement, I won't be able to help you scan the available literature. However, the &lt;em&gt;qualitative&lt;/em&gt; impact of this type of management is widely discussed in agile literature, and is often contrasted with self-organizing principles and results-based management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-09-22T18:03:37.627" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20163" CreationDate="2016-09-22T18:26:12.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is kind of a trick question.  I agree with @CodeGnome that PM controls is a non zero task.  It requires the project to stop or slow down turning wrenches in order to participate in the control process.  As such, tempo slows so overall time should increase.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &quot;slow progress&quot; implies an unfavorable variance from plan when in fact reporting activities for those controls should be part of the plan such that your planning values include that effort.  Therefore, assuming a perfectly working process, your progress does not &quot;slow&quot; because it was built in the plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also has a pay now or pay later kind of dynamic.  Measuring progress might be a non zero activity; however, good controls mean early visibility on variances, which means early mitigation / course correction, which means better time results.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to get more real, there are thousands of random variables at play on a complex project.  I would challenge anyone to credibly point at &quot;controls&quot; as a primary or leading driver to an unfavorable time variance.  A lot of our results are simply random.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-09-22T18:26:12.643" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15418" CreationDate="2016-09-22T18:52:12.517" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in an organization that is Scrum-ish, like so many other places that go from doing these Waterfall/Traditional and end up wanting to implement Agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We do a similar prioritization for all Iteration planning sessions, we have 15 day iterations and call out Need to Have/Nice to Haves based on the committed hours, which is absolutely hellacious on burn down and velocity as you have user stories/tasks/defects constantly being bumped to a next iteration's release or pulled back into the backlog to make room for something with a higher &quot;business&quot; need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So do not do that, you should be doing it when you are finishing up requirements and positioning it in the backlog during your Domain Walk/Sprint Planning meetings&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23735" LastActivityDate="2016-09-22T18:52:12.517" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20167" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20170" CreationDate="2016-09-22T22:02:50.300" Score="2" ViewCount="16619" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently work in an agile environment that works primarily in web development for a university. My boss always talks about the differences between maintenance and development while also considering the possibility of enhancements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is... Is there a specific definition that can define the differences between maintenance/development/enhancement? And, does that definition also depend on the type of process your team is using (i.e. we are currently using SVN and making a transition to git)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25985" LastEditorUserId="25985" LastEditDate="2016-09-23T17:47:52.497" LastActivityDate="2018-10-08T07:34:49.330" Title="Difference between maintenance and development" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20167" CreationDate="2016-09-22T22:54:46.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there a specific definition that can define the differences between maintenance/development/enhancement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Development is, &lt;em&gt;hypothetically&lt;/em&gt;, simply work done by developers. However, more likely it is being used as shorthand for 'new development', which is the creation of new features/functionality in the product. An example of new development is allowing orders customer to be copied in an order-tracking system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An enhancement is a new feature request, especially an 'unnecessary' one. Something that improves (enhances) the product, but is not actually &lt;em&gt;required&lt;/em&gt; in order for the product to work/be accepted. In most cases, an enhancement or 'future enhancement' is an improvement on existing (or soon-to-be) functionality. An example of an enhancement would be including hotkeys for certain functionalities in a product (such as allowing ctrl-c and ctrl-v to copy-paste an order).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maintenance is the process of providing upkeep on an existing product. The most common case of this is fixing bugs, though things such as software refactoring, changing to use a new framework, or even updating documentation could be considered maintenance. An example of maintenance would be fixing copy/paste functionality after you realize you broke it a week ago when you added those hotkeys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And, does that definition also depend on the type of process your team is using (i.e. we are currently using SVN and making a transition to git)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-09-22T22:54:46.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15418" CreationDate="2016-09-23T00:42:42.587" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's too fine-grained. The acceptance criteria should depend on must-haves, only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be ok to also have &quot;stretch&quot; goals, depending on how you are defining the sprint goal and selecting items from the product backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: if the sprint goal is &quot;implement functionality X&quot;, then the stories and the AC are strictly limited to the minimum needed to implement functionality X. However, if there are related small tasks in the product backlog that (per the PO) would make X nicer, or implement a closely related functionality Y that would add value to X, then I think it's fine to identify them at sprint planning time, keep them in mind as you work, and pull them into the sprint if and when a) you have completed all the planned sprint work b) with enough time left that you are confident you can complete the stretch task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might be more of a scrum-ban approach, I suppose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it will mess with your velocity calculations, so if that's important to you, don't do it. (Even if you account for the added story points when you add them, there's a methodological difference between &quot;we attempt X points in Y days and our velocity was X/Y&quot; and &quot;we attempt X points in Y days and finished early, so we took on another Z points because we were sure we could get it done, woohoo&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finishing a sprint early also allows the team to use that time to catch up on tech debt and do other non-sprint work, which has its own value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2016-09-23T00:42:42.587" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20167" CreationDate="2016-09-23T01:21:42.207" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is based on personal experience, so if it differs from your own, feel free to jump in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Development&lt;/strong&gt; - refers to the primary implementation of &lt;em&gt;new projects&lt;/em&gt;. Once an initial development project is complete, and the clients/stakeholders have accepted it, then you will typically move into a new phase--either maintenance or enhancement. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Maintenance&lt;/strong&gt; - refers to ongoing administration of accepted and &quot;completed&quot; functionalities/features. For instance, you may have a maintenance contract to:&#xA;provide ongoing support to end-users, to fix previously unknown bugs in the accepted functionality, to ensure that the server doesn't go down, and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Enhancement&lt;/strong&gt; - refers to adding &lt;em&gt;new features&lt;/em&gt; to an already completed project. For example, if you make me a social media application, and 2 years later, I ask your team to &lt;em&gt;add&lt;/em&gt; e-commerce functionality that wasn't previously expected or scoped, that's an enhancement.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, short version:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Development = Completely New Projects&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maintenance = Ongoing Technical Support&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enhancement = Adding New Features to a project, as a new phase, after completion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17925" LastActivityDate="2016-09-23T01:21:42.207" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20150" CreationDate="2016-09-23T09:23:26.487" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The TTKDroid definition is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LEAD = Has subject matter expertise, but not necessarily manages. Can articulate the lower level details and be a role model for the team. Provides technical/SME guidance to junior team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MANAGER = Doesn't necessarily have subject matter expertise, but manages to assign people and resources required to complete the tasks at hand. May not articulate the lower level details, but can leverage the team expertise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20923" LastActivityDate="2016-09-23T09:23:26.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20172" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-23T12:18:46.200" Score="6" ViewCount="378" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a company, the development manager comes from a technical and PM background. He also acts as a tech lead, without doing any development work though. He focuses on the management side of the role. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the morning scrum meeting, the developers start talking about yesterday, today and if there any impediments. The development manager starts asking questions to the team members such as &quot;where are we on this?&quot;, &quot;why did this occur?&quot; etc. The team members reply, therefore many times starting going into details. The Scrum Master has tried mentioning that this is not a technical meeting, but the manager replies that he wants to know what's going on &quot;with this specific thing&quot; or &quot;we need to understand this better&quot;. Sometimes he replies to the SM &quot;hold on, we need to discuss this&quot;, therefore the SM has given up trying to refocus the discussion. Other times, the SM will try to coordinate the discussion on a topic, and the manager will say &quot;let's move on, this can wait&quot;. Sometimes he will even get annoyed if the SM says &quot;let's take this offline&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The SM had separate discussions with the manager on this, and the manager replies with arguments such as &quot;the morning scrum is a great place to catch up on what is going on, without distracting people throughout the day&quot;, and &quot;some people need coordination, therefore we need to hold their hands for a bit&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this company the manager is responsible for the delivery of the product and has been working very closely to the team since day one. He has contributed a lot and still does, but it seems that he wants to control every aspect of the meeting, and the development (this propagates down to planning, where the manager will ask things to be done and therefore prioritising the backlog along with the PO). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this company, there is a fixed project deadline, and it sounds far more important to meet the deadline &quot;no matter what&quot;, rather than cultivate a scrum environment. The SM and PO feel hopeless, and they don't feel things can change. What would be your suggestions to SM and development manager, in order to facilitate scrum better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5522" LastActivityDate="2016-09-25T09:45:07.803" Title="Development manager in the morning scrum" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20172" CreationDate="2016-09-23T12:54:44.847" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there support from other levels of management that may be able to assist with resolving this issue?  A best case scenario might be that others will be able to help enlighten the Dev Mgr as to how his interactions can be unhelpful and even damaging to efficiency and ultimately success.  It's also important to reinforce the positive interactions.  &quot;The Scrum Master helps those outside the Scrum Team understand which of their interactions with the Scrum Team are helpful and which aren’t. The Scrum Master helps everyone change these interactions to maximize the value created by the Scrum Team.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside: Does the &quot;fixed project deadline&quot; include a fixed scope?  If so, many benefits of Scrum can still be achieved; however, there will certainly be problems of the waterfall variety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2016-09-23T12:54:44.847" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20172" CreationDate="2016-09-23T15:15:54.963" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several problems going on, here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For one thing, one person is running the daily scrum. This by itself is a problem. The purpose of the daily scrum is not a status pull; its purpose is to improve team &lt;em&gt;co-ordination&lt;/em&gt;. It is a meeting by the Development Team, &lt;em&gt;for&lt;/em&gt; the Development Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that it's being run by someone who &lt;em&gt;not even on the Team&lt;/em&gt; is even more concerning. If your technical lead isn't the Product Owner, isn't the Scrum Master, and isn't doing any development, then it sounds like he shouldn't actually be part of the Scrum Team at all (though he may still be considered part of the Development Team even if he doesn't do any development. It depends on what exactly 'the management side of the role' entails). If he's not part of the Scrum Team, then not only should he not be &lt;em&gt;leading&lt;/em&gt; the daily scrum, he probably shouldn't even &lt;em&gt;be there&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also assuming the meeting isn't being time-boxed. The daily scrum should take at most 15 minutes (there's a reason I've often heard it called the 'daily standup'). If the Team is constantly going off on tangents, then it's pretty unlikely that time-box is being honoured while still allowing everyone to speak their part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By far the biggest problem, however, seems to be a lack of buy-in. If it is &quot;more important to meet the deadline 'no matter what', rather than cultivate a scrum environment&quot;, then as long as that holds true, you're going to have difficulty getting traction on any improvements. Before anything else, you need to find a way to improve buy-in. The simplest way to do this is to show what sort of problems the current process is causing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is, of course, assuming that the current process is &lt;em&gt;actually causing problems&lt;/em&gt;. You mentioned the Scrum Master and Product Owner feel helpless. Have you discussed this with the Development Team as well? Has it been brought up in a retrospective? Do you have actual metrics describing incurred costs? The first step is to discuss and examine current issues. The next step is to make them visible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-09-23T15:15:54.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20167" CreationDate="2016-09-23T22:05:03.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are asking the wrong question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understand this - the difference between maintenance job and development job is that after every development job - there is a maintenance job to support whatever developers did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you studied a new methodology for interaction between managers of the company and its customers. You come to your boss and propose that you create a CRM system in which you will store all information about your customers and etc. You get an okay and start the job, you develop CRM system and hand it in - it is installed and used in operations. You get a hefty bonus for doing the great job and leave to another company to work on greater goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you leave - requests start to come in. People are wondering why things are done in certain way. Could they be changed a little bit and made easier to use? And in this and that situations that CRM system is completely wrong. And here starts the maintenance work - there should be someone who will teach the end users to use your CRM, someone to change the forms a bit - so they are easier to use, someone to make little upgrades, supporting the infrastructure - ensuring everything runs smoothly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say that you developed your CRM in a way that requires daily operations by an admin. That means that there should be always a person on staff - who will be capable of doing that operation. If they don't - the system no longer works. If they are on vacation - there should be another person available. A great example is the usage of paid SMS services to send important notifications to the users of the system - since the service is paid and external to your company - someone should always ensure that the bills are paid and that SMS service provider will not stop sending your SMS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, whenever you develop something - you should always make sure that you are developing in such way that support and maintenance of your system is not a hard thing, or at least that it is a manageable thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26001" LastActivityDate="2016-09-23T22:05:03.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20178" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20182" CreationDate="2016-09-24T06:35:17.043" Score="1" ViewCount="237" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I do a project timeline, there will be a workshop at client office, usually it's 400km away from our office. In my timeline, I would like to add the travelling time (eg. 1 day before workshop and 1 day after workshop), without creating activity in the timeline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar to lag, which add after the activity, but I need to add it before the activity, without overlapping with predecessor task (lead).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Appreciate the help! Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26004" LastActivityDate="2016-09-24T15:01:36.150" Title="Add travelling time in ms project 2010" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20150" CreationDate="2016-09-24T06:41:33.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on organisation practice, but usually its:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lead : may/may not do the project work, but responsible for technical deliverable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Manager : not doing the project work, but responsible for the timeline of the project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26004" LastActivityDate="2016-09-24T06:41:33.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20172" CreationDate="2016-09-24T09:58:06.547" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One approach you could try is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speak with the development manager and ask him to remain silent during the daily scrum, while the team are answering their 3-questions and self-organising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once all the team members have spoken the Scrum Master declares the daily scrum to be over and asks if there is anything else to cover. At this point the development manager can ask their questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps they won't need the whole team to be present for their questions as they may be specific to certain individuals. Then the other team members can return to their work. This is a more efficient use of their time than having the whole team listen to conversations that may not be relevant to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-09-24T09:58:06.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20172" CreationDate="2016-09-24T13:13:21.217" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master has to demand any people not part of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-dev&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Development team&lt;/a&gt; to be 100% silent during the Daily Scrum. This is the rule according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-daily&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Scrum guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master enforces the rule that only Development Team members&#xA;  participate in the Daily Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the Daily Scrum it is fine to discuss a little bit about details if needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you also let your manager read the &lt;a href=&quot;http://less.works/less/management/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LESS pages about Management&lt;/a&gt;. This to make him understand what is expected from managers in Agile environments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now it is possible he does not want to change his behaviour and he doesn't care if your team is doing real Scrum or something that looks like Scrum. I would try to get the whole team to say (out loud together) they want to follow and implement Scrum by the book, since it generates the most value. Afterwards you should also learn your manager the &lt;a href=&quot;http://martinfowler.com/bliki/ShuHaRi.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Shu-Ha-Ri&lt;/a&gt; and if he want to play Ri he should first learn and play the game for a while, like a few years before altering it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To end I would like to quote Martin Fowler as a final suggestion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you can't change your organization, change your organization!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have done both sides in the past and really its great either way.&#xA;If you think you can change the organization don't give up after some push backs. Keep repeating and repeating with respect, eventually they will turn around. Change of culture can be a process of years, so you need to have a long breath.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2016-09-25T09:45:07.803" LastActivityDate="2016-09-25T09:45:07.803" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20178" CreationDate="2016-09-24T15:01:36.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simply link the two tasks together and put a one day lag between.  However, I understand, and I am not sure why this occurs, that having leads and lags in your horizontal logic can hose up critical path calculations.  Therefore, I would suggest putting your travel time as an activity and then link everything together with zero leads and lags.  There must be a reason why you do not want the travel time as an activity; however, I cannot think of what that might be.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-09-24T15:01:36.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20172" CreationDate="2016-09-25T02:14:45.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like Barnaby, I think you need to get the devmgr to be quiet during the first part of the meeting, but I suggest two specific approaches to that end:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Work with his comment that &quot;some people need coordination, therefore we need to hold their hands for a bit&quot;, especially if there is a line manager who is not the dev manager that you can enlist for support. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain to the devmgr that the daily scrum is &lt;em&gt;explicitly structured&lt;/em&gt; to facilitate and teach team coordination, and that it is therefore important to allow this brief (&quot;10-15 min&quot;) ceremony to proceed without interruption so that those who aren't good at coordinating can practice this on their own every day without handholding. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Frame it as low-cost skills development (this is where the line manager may be able to back you up), &amp;amp; use analogies like letting toddlers try to cruise on their own before handholding or they'll never learn to walk on their own. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then defer to his concerns/worldview: &quot;after the ceremony, if there are coordination issues they haven't resolved themselves, or if you need more details to fully understand what's going on, that's when the handholding is valuable to the team &amp;amp; to the project.&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe encourage him to take notes during the ceremony, to be sure he doesn't forget anything he wanted to come back to.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, or if that doesn't work, give up on defending pure scrum (for now, until you can get help/allies/etc). Create and circulate a standard agenda for this daily meeting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agenda item 1: Scrum ceremony (dev team only)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agenda item 2: Discussion of issues arising (dev manager)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then you can point to the agenda every time he interrupts: &quot;Right, we'll get to that in the next agenda item - hold that thought.&quot; If your workplace has a strong culture of meetings with agendas that are to be followed, this should help.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2016-09-25T02:14:45.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20186" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-26T09:30:18.860" Score="4" ViewCount="1719" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master, I want to help my Product Owner to make an educated guess of when features in a project will be implemented, in order to communicate with stakeholders so that they can manage Scope. Leading to priorities and a release plan forecast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to forecast is to create a backlog of &lt;em&gt;Epics&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;User Stories&lt;/em&gt; and ask the team to give a high-level guesstimates in story points. For example with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://theagilepirate.net/archives/109&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Swimlane sizing technique&lt;/a&gt;. Then populate the Jira estimation field with these values. After some sprints you could use the &lt;em&gt;Release burndown&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Version report&lt;/em&gt; to forecast dates when certain features might be completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as Jira only has single Estimation field I am afraid when this fields is already populated this will influence the developer estimations during the Sprint planning meetings, certainly because the initial project estimates might not really size relatively to what we using during our Sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather I would like to do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a high-level guesstimate in T-Shirt sizes (not Story Points)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create around two Sprints worth of detailed Story Points estimated Backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the velocity of the previous Sprints to calculate how much high-level estimates we can process to give a forecast&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Update guesstimates during Backlog Refinement sessions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Preferable automate this with the &lt;a href=&quot;https://hub.alfresco.com/t5/alfresco-content-services-blog/inside-the-jira-version-report/ba-p/287885&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jira Version Report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now my question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have a setup like this working in Jira and how did you implement this?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have a better alternative plan for giving project forecasts in Jira?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Could we use something else instead of Jira to give these forecasts?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-08-10T13:11:32.323" LastActivityDate="2020-08-10T13:11:32.323" Title="Calculating project forecasts in Jira" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20186" CreationDate="2016-09-26T16:01:04.027" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Overall it seems that you are on track.  Remember &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Development Team is responsible for all estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Allow the Development Team to create the high-level estimates.  Therefore the field can be used as intended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2016-09-26T16:01:04.027" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20189" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-26T20:34:46.300" Score="3" ViewCount="873" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a relatively new scheduler to my company and new to project scheduling and earned value.  My company has training sessions but some things remain unclear and the answers I am getting from some folks here do not make a lot of sense.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am told there are several ways of claiming % complete and that each way has issues with them in terms of subjectivity or accuracy.  I was told that physical % complete is the most accurate since it's something you can count.  However, it does not make sense in terms of how planned value (PV or BCWS) is calculated and how I would take EV.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the issue:  I have three team members working a project that is supposed to last 20 days.  20 is my duration.  This project will cost (BAC) $6,400.  So my cumulative budget (S curve) across those 20 days is pretty much a straight line going up.  So PV at day 10 will be $3,200.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Physically, the work is what they call back loaded so by day 10, they will only be 30% physically complete, so EV will only equal $1,920.  This would mean that we are behind schedule when we really are not behind.  Also, assuming costs are what they are supposed to be, AC would be, $3,200 and then this would mean we are also overrunning costs which would also not be accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am confused as to how physical complete is desired but then this scenario would make everything not accurate.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Help!!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26021" LastActivityDate="2016-12-26T01:09:10.410" Title="earned value and physical percent complete" Tags="&lt;evm&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20189" CreationDate="2016-09-26T23:50:06.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would map your physical % complete with the PV/BAC for any given period, and then when you complete a specific physical % of the work, you can claim the mapped PV/BAC as your earnings.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2Mg3x.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2Mg3x.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a graph that shows the S-curves for PV/BAC, the top line; % work, the second top line; % complete, the third line; and physical %, the bottom line.  The physical % lags as was your example.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So let's say we are in period 4 and you completed the work on time, you would be about 45% physical complete, which maps to 86% PV/BAC complete (draw a vertical line from the bottom curve all the way to the top line curve and then a horizontal line to the y axis.)  Therefore, for 45% physical complete, you would claim 86% EV or BCWP.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-09-26T23:50:06.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20191" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-27T04:40:40.537" Score="2" ViewCount="91" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a project but we have very short period of time vs the requirements. We have only 2 developers and 1 designer. What we are thinking is to hire freelancers to help us on different modules and the core team will do the integration of the tasks from freelancer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The coding pattern will be provided by our team and it should be followed by the freelancers and the core team will check the code before approving it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The management is not willing to hire staff here as it is expensive so the only choice is to hire freelancers which will work on project based.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this is a risky approach, but I can't think of other solution for this. Any suggestion? Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26025" LastEditorUserId="26025" LastEditDate="2016-09-27T09:09:00.927" LastActivityDate="2016-09-27T14:59:41.317" Title="Is it good idea to divide the modules to different developers? considering that they are freelancers" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11639" CreationDate="2016-09-27T10:12:36.300" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It surely is a tough ask to manage concurrent projects with limited resources. I have been facing these issues lately and found a way out by implementing agile and some bits of KANBAN.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ensured that there is a PM + task management tool, that supports me in all processes throughout project life-cycle. I implemented Redmine to manage projects and tasks. Linked all team members on to the portal, defined sprints after conducting scrum of scrum and further holding daily scrums to ensure project/task timelines are met. Unfortunately, me as PM was also responsible to collect and document requirements and later on test them on staging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize, I would suggest you following quick steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implement Agile Scrum&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implement project + task management tol (redmine, basecamp, jira, TFS etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a KANBAN Board to monitor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Before initiating a project, conduct a scrum of scrum.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conduct daily scrums for active projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure the team members update task statuses on the PM Tool.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These steps would pretty much control the chaos with managing multiple projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16903" LastActivityDate="2016-09-27T10:12:36.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20193" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-27T12:33:04.623" Score="-3" ViewCount="279" Body="&lt;p&gt;We all know that &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; project managers (those that follow PMBOK/PMP) do earned value analysis to know SPI and CPI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Schedule Performance Index (SPI) = Earned Value ÷ Planned Value -- How are we doing against the schedule?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cost Performance Index (CPI) = Earned Value ÷ Actual Cost -- How are we doing against the budget?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have two questions : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose we have client X and contractor Y.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;X wants to build a website and selected Y as its vendor. The contract signed was of type T&amp;amp;M (time &amp;amp; material).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does the vendor (Y) do Earned value analysis, and how is it different from that of client (X)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, what parameters does a vendor consider while calculating earned value, planned value and actual cost?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25718" LastEditorUserId="10462" LastEditDate="2016-09-28T08:40:36.217" LastActivityDate="2016-10-14T11:07:57.360" Title="Earned value analysis by client and vendor" Tags="&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;&lt;budget&gt;&lt;performance&gt;&lt;evm&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20191" CreationDate="2016-09-27T14:08:45.030" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are already short on time, hiring freelancers, ie 'paid on completion of spec' is probably not a good choice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing the spec, negotiating contracts, testing the product against the spec, going back for changes etc will all take up a lot of time. Unless you have a large chunk of easily defined work which is separate from the rest of the project I would not advise it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other options include : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hire Contractors. ie paid per day, to work in the office with your perm team. You will have less work to do speccing and dividing up the project. Plus being right there in the office will reduce your concerns over code quality etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use an off the shelf product to fulfil some of the requirements&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get tough on the requirements and deliver the bare minimum product&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just miss the deadline, after all, you might miss it for any number of reasons, presumably there is some penalty clause in the contract to cover the scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your question it sounds like you are locked down on Time, Scope AND Resources though. In which case there is no solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2016-09-27T14:08:45.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20191" CreationDate="2016-09-27T14:59:41.317" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We have a project but we have very short period of time vs the requirements.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to be the root of the problem, and by the sounds of it, it's an understatement. In this case I would want to pare down the initial delivery to the absolute MVP and phase the rest of the work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my perspective (and from experience using freelancers) hiring freelancers sounds too risky as it takes time to educate developers in the companies' practices and structures and to rush this is to introduce even more risk. This is also not fair on the freelancers themselves IMO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OP doesn't specify, but I assume they are the PM in this instance. In which case I would suggest Jamcoder discusses de-scoping the deliverables with management and potentially the client to try and find a way of delivering an agreed product, because at the moment the whole project looks set to fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;sorry to be so negative!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24050" LastActivityDate="2016-09-27T14:59:41.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20137" CreationDate="2016-09-27T21:11:05.087" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been using Kanban for Family chores for about a year now. Scrum had too much overhead for simple chores and none of the chores required a any degree of planning or collaboration, so Kanban seemed the best choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My kids are 9 &amp;amp; 11 and they really took to it at first, because of the novelty. Then it all fell apart when they realized the &quot;story points&quot; would only convert to $0.20 per point of allowance, they revolted, unionized, and came back with a counter offer of $0.40 per point. Since then, its worked quite well and I am paying them an weekly allowance of about their age ($9 or $11 / wk)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a list of pre-established tasks with points (color corresponds to point value). Parent moves something from To Do to Asked. Kid moves it from Asked to Taken/Doing and then Done. Kid can also move from To Do to Doing and Done without being asked. Parent moves from Done to Accepted and gives the Kid a tally of points (red post it), which at the end of the week gets calculated into to allowance they will receive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One swim lane for each kid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kids like it because it is empowering for them to choose tasks and understand the value of those tasks relative to others. It took a while to establish the habits to understand what constituted Accepted, so there was a fair amount of re-work. But now that we are in the swing of it it moves well, except after grandma sends a $20 in the mail, they feel cash rich and velocity sags. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4x6xR.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4x6xR.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24110" LastActivityDate="2016-09-27T21:11:05.087" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20198" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20202" CreationDate="2016-09-28T06:22:09.777" Score="4" ViewCount="159" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I've been trying to read about what we should do if the Sprint goal is reached beforehand and from what I've understand there are 2 options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take in new tasks and change scope&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;End sprint beforehand (doesn't sound viable)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But both options doesn't seem very good when you work in a team. To make an example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lets say you have 3 team members working on multiple different stories. By halfway through the sprint there is no more new tasks, 2 members are sitting at some tasks that still goes on but 1 member has no more task to start. Now if we take new tasks in so the member doesn't run out of tasks the scope will change and we could continue to do this but we'll never reach a completed sprint. If we don't take new tasks in the sole member will have to help the 2 others (might not be possible) or work outside the sprint (not recommended either) because we can't end it while 2 members still are working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how would you guys recommend handling running out of task beforehand but only for some team members?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25966" LastEditorUserId="30105" LastEditDate="2018-02-24T00:52:43.720" LastActivityDate="2018-02-24T00:52:43.720" Title="Scrum when reaching goal beforehand" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20193" CreationDate="2016-09-28T07:20:40.290" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the vendor is measuring perfomance of 'The' project then its the same calc who ever does it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the vendor has an internal project to rent out their employees on a per diem basis then you can see the value and costs would be completely different things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Value would be money paid for working on projects&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cost would be employee salaries, sales, marketing, taking clients out to lunch etc etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can see the thrust of your question though is whether the vendor has the same goal as the client, ie completing the project under budget. Or whether they have a vested interest in it over running (as this would increase money earned)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see though that the vendors project is really about getting more and more clients and constantly increasing the day rate they are able to charge. Completing a project under budget and building reputation is the easiest way of doing this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastEditorUserId="17049" LastEditDate="2016-09-28T07:31:19.810" LastActivityDate="2016-09-28T07:31:19.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20198" CreationDate="2016-09-28T07:52:19.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several possibilities and which one to take will change from situation to situation. In the end, the most important factor is that the development team and PO agree that the chosen action is the most valuable for that case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are close enough to the end of the sprint that it isn't possible to take on new work with a reasonable chance that it can be completed within the sprint, then&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the developers without work could assist the others to ensure that their work also gets completed within the sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the developers without work could work on improvements that don't immediately add value for the business but to pay back some technical debt.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If there is still time enough to complete an additional story, my recommendation would be to add an additional story to the sprint. In collaboration with the PO, this doesn't have to be the top-most story from the backlog but could also be a smaller story that is a bit further down if that fits better within the remaining time of the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2016-09-28T07:52:19.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20198" CreationDate="2016-09-28T12:52:43.383" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once a Sprint begins, its duration is fixed and cannot be shortened or&#xA;  lengthened. &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;2 members are sitting at some tasks&quot; means that &quot;scrum goal is reached&quot; is probably not true.  (Sprint Goal BTW)  If all of the Product Backlog items selected during Sprint Planning are not complete, then that needs to be accomplished.  The Development Team should be working together collaboratively to complete all of the items in the original forecast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all of the initial forecast has been completed, the Development Team and Product Owner should work together to determine the best use of the additional time.  There are many options that may be viable:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Backlog refinement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adding a new item that can be completed within the Sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Addressing technical debt (avoid technical debt escaping any Sprint)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Automation improvements (tests, builds, deployments, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Knowledge share&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Skills improvement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cross-functional training&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Celebrate accomplishments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master may have some other suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;we'll never reach a completed sprint&quot; is inaccurate, as each Sprint ends when the time-box expires.  The forecast may not have been completed or the work may have been completed more quickly; it's okay, these things will happen.  Use the Sprint Review to make transparent why that occurred: unforeseen complexity, technical debt in the way, sick days, new technology, etc.  If this not completing the forecast happens regularly, us the Sprint Retrospective to create a plan to address the root issue.  Inspect and adapt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2016-09-28T12:52:43.383" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20193" CreationDate="2016-09-28T14:43:53.707" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on how you set it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that both parties agree on the WBS &amp;amp; WBSD, and agree &lt;strong&gt;at the start&lt;/strong&gt; on the definition of value.  That will make it easier for all concerned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EVM works if and only if you establish the definition of &quot;value&quot; at the start. If you make value = cost, then you've got a self-licking ice cream cone in which every dollar spent returns a single dollar's value.   EVM is simple when you're measuring physical output (meters of wall painted, widgets produced).  When you're developing a website it requires some planning.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the client/vendor is (or should be) a distractor. The key element is how do you define value.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2016-09-28T14:43:53.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20198" CreationDate="2016-09-28T20:44:02.460" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So how would you guys recommend handling running out of task beforehand but only for some team members?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Responding to change over following the plan&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some ideas in no particular order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;See if someone else on the team needs help.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pay down technical debt (refactor, automate tests, fix &quot;flakey&quot; tests).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn something new; having some free time is a healthy thing.  Read a book, write some code for fun, learn an XP skill, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pair with someone on something in flight; learn a new skill or help them out even if they have a different role than you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get a head start on next sprint.  It's not a bad thing to get an early start, and stories can carry-over.  Be transparent about it since this is a team decision.  Just be careful that unfinished story code doesn't go to production or endanger the sprint goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-09-28T23:51:26.657" LastActivityDate="2016-09-28T23:51:26.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20206" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-29T03:04:12.813" Score="3" ViewCount="1481" Body="&lt;p&gt;My question is kind of a follow-up on &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/12548/how-can-we-apply-agile-to-a-consulting-firm&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;. I've started using the Personal Kanban method at work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm using Trello, with 2 boards (Options and Tasks).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I chose to keep the Options (Backlog) board separate since I have a lot going on and it would be overwhelming to have everything in one place, especially since Trello doesn't allow users to collapse boards.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &quot;Tasks&quot; board has the following columns: Short term, Priorities (limit of 5), WIP (limit of 3), Pen (Blocked), and Done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm using color-less labels for projects, and colour labels for types of work (admin, urgent, unplanned, quick), etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment I am using this system for myself only, but people are starting to notice what I'm doing, and some of them are interested in trying it out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work in public engagement and communication consulting, and we typically work in small project-based teams that can stay active for a few weeks or a few months, depending on the project. Most of us work on several projects at a time - for instance, I'm working on 10 active projects right now, each with different teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My understanding is that ideally, anything anyone from our 12-people team is working on should be on the same board since otherwise it would make it hard to limit WIP, and in order for it to not become overwhelming, the task size should be kept at high level and we should use subtasks to account for individual work. My concern with this is that it would make it hard to track WIP at the individual level. &lt;strong&gt;Would you recommend using a personal kanban board (separate from the team board) to track individual work? If so, how do you make sure people keep updating both (personal and team) boards as they go along? And what do you do with small tasks that don't fit under a higher-level task?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26063" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2016-09-30T07:18:46.547" Title="How to use Kanban for consulting work, take 2" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;lean&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20207" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20211" CreationDate="2016-09-29T08:51:54.440" Score="3" ViewCount="310" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in charge of a project in my company and currently trying to gather information about the current process in place and how to improve it on post-launch tracking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to do so, my manager told me I should plan a brainstorming session with teams from two different services so that I can have ideas on the definition of the project and the intended outcome. The problem is that I am afraid the brainstorming session will be difficult to monitor in those conditions since those people are not used to all work together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have an idea on what the flow of the 90-minute meeting should look like, so that I don't lose my audience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26053" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-09-30T00:39:31.290" LastActivityDate="2016-10-13T18:10:17.783" Title="How to plan a brainstorming session" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20207" CreationDate="2016-09-29T09:36:12.460" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on how big the teams are on each side I would suggest taking the time to consider a very high level agenda. Once you have this in place I'd circulate it to either all members of the team, or just the managers if it's a big group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This gives the team a chance to consider responses which are directed to the questions you want to ask and points you want to over and also reduces the chance of sidetracking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24050" LastActivityDate="2016-09-29T09:36:12.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20209" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20220" CreationDate="2016-09-29T10:54:44.270" Score="0" ViewCount="1924" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've set a formula to monitor variance between baseline and scheduled finish. I know that there is a simple finish variance column for this kind of thing, but in my organization we've got certain deviations thresholds so default field set will not work.&#xA;Please take a look at this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;&#xA;Switch(Not [Baseline Finish]=[Scheduled Finish];Iif((DateDiff(&quot;d&quot;;[Baseline Finish];[Scheduled Finish])&gt;14) OR (DateDiff(&quot;d&quot;;[Baseline Finish];[Scheduled Finish])&amp;lt;-14);DateDiff(&quot;d&quot;;[Baseline Finish];[Scheduled Finish]);&quot;&quot;);([Baseline Finish]=[Scheduled Finish] And [% Complete]=100) Or ([Baseline Finish]=[Scheduled Finish] And [% Complete]=0);&quot;&quot;)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is achieved here is that in a text30 field the variance data is only displayed if it meets certain threshold parameters (e.g. -14 and +14 days).&#xA;The need for this is that i do have a set of flags that trigger to YES/NO depending on text30 column data (e.g. red arrow if deviation is &gt;60 or green arrow if deviation is &gt;15&amp;lt;31 etc). And then based on those flags the custom milestone icons are displayed on gantt.&#xA;Question is how can i simplify the a/m formula?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25937" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2016-09-29T14:47:54.440" LastActivityDate="2016-09-29T22:00:29.957" Title="MS Project: Finish Variance formula simplification" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20207" CreationDate="2016-09-29T12:21:53.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are ample documents on how to structure a brainstorming session.  Google brainstorming.  Recent research has shown that brainstorming doesn't actually work very well, but your boss has assigned you to do this, so facts don't really matter.  The key rule of brainstorming is that there must be no criticism, and that all contributions are taken seriously.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two general strategies to enforce the brainstorming rule. The first strategy is for you as the moderator to step on any criticism fast and potentially hard.  Make it clear that contributions are welcome and criticisms are not welcome.  Friendly, respectful edits &amp;amp; clarification are ok.  The second strategy is to democratize the responsibility.  Our team keeps a set of yellow soccer flags in a bowl on the table; if anyone feels that anyone else is being disrespectful/critical, &lt;em&gt;anyone&lt;/em&gt; can throw a flag on the play. The second strategy requires a more mature, more trusting team. The first strategy requires you to bring your A game and may require you to stop recording and focus on moderating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is too little information to answer the question.  In a comment (which you really should edit back into the question, so that we have all the information necessary) you mention that there will be six people from two services.  I would probably structure the meeting this way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;10 minutes establishing the goal of the process - ensure that everyone has a shared vision of the outcome including any relevant quality standards.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;15-20 minutes documenting the current process. I'd probably force each team to document the &lt;em&gt;other team's&lt;/em&gt; process with an emphasis on the interfaces between the teams and between the teams and the external stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;10-15 minutes documenting opportunities for improvement -  identify the pain points.  Impose a rigid &quot;no response&quot; rule - nobody gets to defend the status quo, nobody gets to criticize or offer feedback.  The goal is to capture places where at least one person believes that the current process is painful.  If one person believes it is painful and five people believe it is optimal, then the group must accept it as painful.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;15-20 minutes on optimization - Once again, standard brainstorming rules, no criticism, no defense.  Crazy ideas permitted, unworkable ideas encouraged.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Select and optimize the best candidates for the remaining of the meeting.  Which of the options has the best chance of success? Which is the quickest win? Which has the greatest long term potential to optimize? Which can only succeed with strong executive sponsorship?  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;10 min Debrief and establish an agenda for future work.  Who is accountable for doing what, and how will the action be briefed?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2016-09-29T12:21:53.120" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20212" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20213" CreationDate="2016-09-29T13:05:35.627" Score="0" ViewCount="100" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've came to a situation where the client asks me the next two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Give me your project plan of how you would approach this project to make sure I have a result at the end of a specific month.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Elaborate how you would analyze the existing code for the front-end and the back-end to make sure you understand what the previous programmers have done.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is from a freelance perspective where I &quot;act&quot; both as a PM and as a programmer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What kind of answer should I provide to the client? We are at the phase where he is interested in my services and wants to know how would I do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26069" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-09-29T13:22:36.133" LastActivityDate="2016-09-29T15:26:19.143" Title="How to show planned project approach to the client?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;clients&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20212" CreationDate="2016-09-29T13:24:28.230" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have two methods you need to disclose to your potential client:  1) PM, 2) Software, SDLC.  These two methods are separate but need to work collaboratively.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll answer to #1 and leave #2 to the more technical folks on this exchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your client is looking for how you scoped the project in terms of what is it you will deliver at the end of the project as well as interim deliveries during the project.  This is best exhibited as a project scope statement, often found in a project charter but also within your Project Management Plan (PMP) as well as an initial Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and possibly an initial WBS Dictionary.  This is the what.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your client will want to see how you are scheduling the work, the phases you are proposing, the amount of time you will need to make the deliveries.  This is best displayed as a high level schedule with milestones, such as a Gantt chart, but your client may want to see your preliminary schedule showing your WBS loaded across time.  This is the when.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your client will want to see the cost of the project.  This is best delivered as your cost proposal with price but your client may also want to see how much components of the project cost, which is exhibited as part of the Performance Measurement Baseline (PMB) and within your WBS Dictionary.  This depends, however, on your type of contract with your client.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, within your PMP, your client will be interested in your management approach to manage and control the project, covering such topics as risk, quality, communications to stakeholders, your procurement approach for materials you are going to need, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a lot of information you likely don't have all sorted out yet since you do not even have the job.  So scale this information accordingly, i.e., show what you have at a high level, more strategic kind of view.  You will likely not have hard core plans and schedules to show at this stage so you will want to deliver this information more in a presentation format.  The communication message is that you know how to organize, execute, manage and control work to get to the finish as efficiently as possible and to be able to communicate early and often when things go south.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-09-29T13:24:28.230" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20215" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-29T14:53:31.960" Score="2" ViewCount="1145" Body="&lt;p&gt;Relatively new to MS Project and have come across an issue, I've searched through threads to see if I could see anything similar without luck, so apologies if this has been covered previously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The base scenario is that I've produced a high level schedule with activities and durations (in days) without resources or work inputs. A key stakeholder wants to understand scenario planning options. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My base case intention was for 10-hour days, so each entry of 1 day would be equivalent to 10 hours (even though I didn't change the working time in calendars).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My second case is to switch from day shift to night shift which would essentially have the same number of hours, however I wanted to add in 20% contingency. I couldn't figure out a blanket way to attack this, so I just increased all the durations by 20% (i.e. 2 days is now 2.4 days). I don't quite think this worked perfectly, either. (Anyone care to weigh in?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My third case is working 6-hour days instead of 10-hour days, to determine the impact it has on the final construction completion date. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My hope, misguided as it may be, was that I could have my base plan at 10-hour days (changing a few options and calendars in the base plan), and then simply modify the working hours / calendar to spit out my other scenarios.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I did change the calendar to 10-hour days, Monday to Friday, the durations for each activity would change from 1 day to 0.8 days. Is there something I need to change in task type, or do I need to re-enter all values? I even tried changing duration to hours and entering 10 hours after modifying calendar and it pushed 1 day activities into the next day ... unsure why. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions on how to tackle this in the most appropriate way? Is it possible without assigning resources and work efforts etc? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26072" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-09-29T18:58:46.040" LastActivityDate="2018-11-02T07:00:24.890" Title="MS Project: Scenario planning issue" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;management&gt;&lt;schedule&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20212" CreationDate="2016-09-29T15:26:19.143" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A technical perspective:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the information you have provided I infer that the client is technically competent and understands the risks of transferring a code base to a different programmer very well. It is a frequent problem that programmers underestimate the effort to dive into an existing code base.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my point of view it will be important to demonstrate that &lt;em&gt;you don't&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Factors influencing effort to take over an existing code base&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the size of the code base it will be very hard to provide a reasonable estimate, because the following factors can heavily influence the required effort:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Size - rough metrics such as files, lines of code&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technological basis: Is it based on a well known framework, one you might even now? In my opinion this would immensely increase the trust in your capability.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Documentation, comments in code: Do those exist and were they maintained?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Capability of the previous programmers and reason why they abandoned the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Age of software: From experience I would say the older the code base gets it becomes more and more probable that you will find hacks and shortcuts unless the development was very disciplined and refactored code from time to time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;External depencies (libraries): Are they mature and stable, manageable? Or were some obscure pre-release libraries used.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lots of custom meta programming and &quot;ruby magic&quot; as frequently seen in rails projects can be very problematic when trying to understand the internals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test-Coverage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would advise you to elicit as much of such meta information beforehand in order to demonstrate your competence and planning your actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;General approaches&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For getting into the code, it would be ideal if you could arrange at least one review with one of the original programmers, so he can give you a high &#xA;level design and explain their design decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another common approach for familiarzing oneself with a codebase is to pick a specific use case and debugging through it from the top to the bottom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the size of the code base you might consider using specialized tools for visualizing object dependencies, analyzing code quality and the like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25939" LastActivityDate="2016-09-29T15:26:19.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20206" CreationDate="2016-09-29T19:03:32.887" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;From past experience it is very difficult to get someone to update one piece of work in two different places, so I would recommend having a single team board where all items are visible, but you can filter down based off of the current need. It also fits two of the main purposes of kanban as well, which are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The kanban methodology relies upon full transparency of work and real-time communication of capacity, therefore the kanban board should be seen as the single source of truth for the team's work.&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/agile/kanban&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.atlassian.com/agile/kanban&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The first option&lt;/strong&gt; is to use filters on the board based off of who owns the task, and labels. For this to work you will need to create multiple boards, either team-based or project-based depending on what makes more sense for your group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a project based board for example, you would add all the tasks required for the team members on that project to complete it. You can then view the entire scope of work needed, and when monitoring your own work just open the filters and select your name, and it will only show you the work assigned to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, if there are more common ways of filtering down just assign a label, and then filter by the label. This then allows you or any member of that project to view at a glance any aspect of the project they desire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The second&lt;/strong&gt; way to do this would be to go ahead and do one giant board for the entire team, and use labels for each project. You can then view any project using the filter, or by combining multiple labels together, including labels plus assigned users. All the concepts of the first option are the same, just on a broader scale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A third option&lt;/strong&gt; would be to use a Jira board instead of a trello board. The main reason this could be useful is &lt;em&gt;in Jira you can create as many boards as you want based off of the same tasks in one or more projects&lt;/em&gt; This is the only reason I bring it up. You could create a project to hold all your tasks, assign them out, and then create a team kanban board, and then let each team member create their own personal board based off of the same tasks. &lt;em&gt;Update the task in either place and it will be reflected in any board it's on.&lt;/em&gt; There are also more options at the task level, such as linking tasks together to show dependancies or blockers, and the filter to view issues assigned to you for the main board is built in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However; there are several cons to this approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jira is cheap, but not free. It costs $10 a month for up to 10 users, $75 for up to 15 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/pricing?tab=host-in-the-cloud&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/pricing?tab=host-in-the-cloud&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jira is harder to use than Trello. One of the main benefits to trello is how easy the interface is. Especially given some of the options I mentioned, which are harder. For this reason alone Trello is probably better for you, but I still wanted to share how this works. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You will need to make sure that your boards have the same workflows (based off of task steps), so that also is more overhead and maintenance of the board itself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your projects are fairly separate you might want to use something like the first option, to make it easier to switch between projects. If they are not, then the second option is probably best.  Full disclosure, my workflow is in software development in a complicated setting so I use Jira in my day-to-day work and am more familiar with it than Trello. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26060" LastActivityDate="2016-09-29T19:03:32.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20218" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-29T21:20:34.970" Score="4" ViewCount="4464" Body="&lt;p&gt;First some background:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a team of ~18 devs working across several projects large and small (it generally breaks down to 3-5 scrum teams). We are all working in the same codebase and our sprints are aligned, give or take 24 hours due to scheduling challenges. We have a global code freeze 8 days into our 2-week sprint, after which there is a 1-week QA period. (Meanwhile, the dev team moves onto the next sprint.) At the end of 3 weeks we release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Already you can probably see a number of problems with this approach. Without getting into details, I'll just say that it has been a business-driven evolution.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For us, the biggest challenge is the dev/QA disconnect during the overlap period. In short, with the dev teams jumping into a new sprint and QA checking the previous sprint, the capacity planning becomes very difficult. Devs commit to X number of points in the new sprint and then they get slammed with bugs from the previous sprint. The new sprint then suffers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we WANT to do is move to a true 2-week sprint model in which all development and QA happens &lt;em&gt;within the 2-week timebox.&lt;/em&gt; Again, many reasons to do this which I won't get into here. For us it's mostly about quality and working towards continuous integration (we would release every 2 weeks instead of every 3 weeks).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just wanted to see if anyone has had to pull of this bandaid and what kinds of challenges they encountered along the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23177" LastActivityDate="2016-10-03T11:29:57.633" Title="Moving from 2-week dev sprint / 1 week QA sprint model to a &quot;true&quot; 2-week sprint model - tips?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;quality&gt;&lt;timeboxing&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20215" CreationDate="2016-09-29T21:28:16.267" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few suggestions.  As you are going to be switching the definition of a day you may want to show durations in hours or consider hiding the duration field all together and show only start and finish dates.  If you don't have resources assigned you can then enter the work estimates as the duration in hours.  The number of hours of duration shouldn't change when you change the number of working hours per day - just the finish dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far a changing working time - think about creating some different calendars and then just apply those calendars as the Project calendar.  It will save you having to re-edit the same calendar over and over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the 20% contingency - why not just make a night shift calendar with only 8 working hours per day.  That will give you the change in finish dates to show the effect of only an 8 hour day or a 20% drop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2016-09-29T21:28:16.267" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20209" CreationDate="2016-09-29T22:00:29.957" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try:&#xA;Switch([Finish Variance]/[Minutes Per Day]&amp;lt;=-14,[Finish Variance]/[Minutes Per Day],[Finish Variance]/[Minutes Per Day]&gt;=14,[Finish Variance]/[Minutes Per Day],[Finish Variance]/[Minutes Per Day]&amp;lt;14 And [Finish Variance]/[Minutes Per Day]&gt;-14,&quot; &quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you are testing for % complete in the flag formulas I'd just show [Finish Variance] in Text30.  Because you are using a text field, the Finish Variance is going to be in minutes - hence dividing it by [Minutes per day]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2016-09-29T22:00:29.957" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20218" CreationDate="2016-09-29T23:19:25.173" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obviously your first hurdle will be getting buy-in, both from upper management and from the Team. But assuming you already have that...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One problem you might run into is QA being under-worked at the start of sprints when there's not much to test, while the developers are under-worked towards the end, when most of the stories are in QA. While 100% utilization is a fallacy, severe under-utilization is hardly desirable either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other Q+As about this, but the basic takeaway is to try to find alternative tasks to fill up the lighter schedules. Ideally, developers should be able to help out with testing, and QA personnel should be able to help out with development. Of course, in reality one or both of those are often nothing but a pipe dream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, there &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; things both developers and QA personnel could do to productively fill up their time, including but not limited to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing more tests (be they unit, integration, acceptance, whatever).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Performing spikes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Researching new technologies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Addressing technical debt.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Backlog refinement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Working on smaller/lower-priority side-projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, worth noting: you mentioned that you currently have a triweekly release schedule, and are moving towards two-week sprints. Have you considered three-week sprints? Such could be essentially the same as what you are planning, only without messing up your organization's entrenched release schedule pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-09-29T23:19:25.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20206" CreationDate="2016-09-30T07:18:46.547" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could use a tool like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.swiftkanban.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SwiftKanban&lt;/a&gt; that provides the capability to track person-wise WIP and have people working on multiple boards (multiple projects) at a time. You can define board level WIP limits for each column (process stage) that regulates flow on that board.  You can also define individual-level WIP limits - and it gives you a 'personal-kanban' style view that show who is loaded how much in which project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having too many individual level Kanban boards may get tricky and difficult to manage by the individuals as well as the various teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing this tool allows you to do is define multiple swim lanes on the same board, and have separate workflows for each. You could have the swim lane dedicated to an individual or a team, by work-type, by a product/ project or a class of service. It gives you several options to organize your board and your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2016-09-30T07:18:46.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20225" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-09-30T11:47:21.847" Score="0" ViewCount="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am very often finding myself in situations where the sub contractor at the end of the project is asking for more money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is despite clearly agreeing to a fixed price at the start of the project. Often at the end, they will complain that they feel short changed from working longer than expected. This is despite them setting the time frames and not delivering the work in that time frame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to handle this? I remind them that we have agreed on a fixed price. They cannot say much, but it does end up leaving our relationship strained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2016-09-30T13:47:07.347" Title="Sub contractors changing the invoicing agreement" Tags="&lt;subcontractor&gt;&lt;fixed-price&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20225" CreationDate="2016-09-30T13:47:07.347" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are always two sides to a story.  You should stick to the terms of the contact, which means honoring the fixed price assuming the scope was delivered, no matter if late (claiming any penalties if you had them in the contract).  However, this also means to pay attention to the oft times ignored assumptions, exclusions, limitations, and any other exceptions written in and agreed to within the contract.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Complaining that they worked more than expected is a weak argument and a non starter.  Unless they're completely unsophisticated and way outside their depth, my bet is they have a laundry list of items that meet to some degree the exceptions written into the contract and that you grabbed the weakest of the arguments in your OP.  I don't know you but I watch this all the time.  It's a form of confirmation bias so you sort of paint a picture to get the results you want to hear.  YMMV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, sit down and have a professional, open conversation and listen to their arguments and look at the contract and see how they may fit in the terms and conditions to which you agreed.  A win-win outcome is best for all of you, protecting both of your interests and your long term relationship.  If they truly have nothing to stand on, then commit to helping them with a better contract next time so you two can be true partners in it for the long term.  If they're facing extinction, and you value them and their work, you may want to consider violating your agreement and get them in a better place if you can afford to do so.  Long term wins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-09-30T13:47:07.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20218" CreationDate="2016-09-30T15:57:24.817" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having gone through something similar myself, here are some considerations. I'll try not to get too wordy but there are some aspects of Scrum that need to be brought up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Making this sort of change can be extremely beneficial, but first and foremost needs &lt;strong&gt;buy-in from the developers&lt;/strong&gt;. If they are not supporting changes it won't work, and Scrum should be run by the devs. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Development Teams are structured and empowered by the organization to organize and manage their own work. The resulting synergy optimizes the Development Team’s overall efficiency and effectiveness. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot;&gt;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind I would make sure (if you haven't already) to bring up the challenges your current process is having, review the scrum principles and the reason they exist, and then ask the dev team what should be done to make this work. Guide them in the right direction instead of telling them, and the team will be far more successful. Like I said you may already be doing it that way but it's worth mentioning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can show success through your empowered team making improvements it will also help you push further change and acceptance on the business side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The main process change to help this work is to &lt;strong&gt;involve the entire team as early as possible&lt;/strong&gt;. What I mean by that is make sure that the devs and QA are working together from the start of the sprint. They should all be present in scrum meetings, and working together to complete the sprint goal. The best way I have found to do this is as follows:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure each member of the team knows the business side of the project, the why, the use case, and the value it will bring. Give them the opportunity to ask questions early on ( I actually prefer to have this happen before the product owner has even shown anything to stakeholders, executives, and customers. That is not always necessary if you have an awesome PO though.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have QA review each story before work is started&lt;/strong&gt; (so in backlog planning or in sprint planning) and have them add their acceptance criteria. This will ensure that QA is familiar with the task, and that the devs are thinking about what it needs to do before they even start coding. It will also create a conversation early if there is confusion as to the desired outcome, and make it clear devs and QA should be working together.&lt;em&gt;(One thing I like to do here is give everyone the rest of the day after sprint planning to review the stories, get in the code, research, add notes etc... and then give them the opportunity to ask follow up questions the next day. This can be very helpful to frontload questions to the PO as well, so those don't all come at the same time towards the end of the sprint)&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Break the stories down as small as possible&lt;/strong&gt;. This will ensure that stories are coming to QA very quickly and steadily, so that they can be testing basically from day one of the sprint. This will also encourage the developers to test their own code (which they should be doing) before it gets to QA and reduce QA's load at the end of the sprint. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Push the idea that the entire team (dev and QA) is responsible for achieving the sprint goal&lt;/strong&gt;. Adjust your scrum board's columns if needed, but make sure the team understands that it is the entire teams responsibility to get the scope of the work in the sprint completed. This is one of the main reasons Scrum does not recognize any other title than developer on the dev team team.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum recognizes no titles for Development Team members other than Developer, regardless of the work being performed by the person; there are no exceptions to this rule;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot;&gt;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for that is not to make things more difficult, but to ensure the team works together till they have achieved the sprint goal with their Definition of Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You mentioned the devs commit to the sprint work. As part of what I said above, make sure that &lt;strong&gt;Dev and QA commit to the sprint work&lt;/strong&gt;. They are in this together and need to be supporting each other equally. QA work needs to be reflected in your estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Again, bring these things up in retrospectives. Get ideas and buy-in from the team. Show improvements to the business so they see how empowering the team is effective. As you make changes find out what works and what doesn't and adapt, be agile. Remember that Agile and Scrum are frameworks, meant to provide you with ways to quickly make great changes to achieve the best quality of work that meets the customers needs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a final note, remember that Velocity is not for comparing team progress against each other, or to report to the executives on by itself. It is to determine how much work the team can do in a given sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26060" LastActivityDate="2016-09-30T15:57:24.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9493" CreationDate="2016-09-30T16:11:40.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One key objective of modified Fibonacci series in story point is to avoid false impression of precise multiplication between relative sizes. For an example using a series of 1,2,4,8,... implies some preciseness that 4 story point worth of story is exactly 2 times bigger than a story point 2 worth of a story. When keeping that in mind, using 0.5 will also create the same confusion because 0.5 to 1 is exactly the double and 1 to 2 also exactly double the size. Hence avoid using 0.5 in your sizing scale.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25478" LastActivityDate="2016-09-30T16:11:40.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18649" CreationDate="2016-09-30T16:31:37.240" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are using Jira 6 or above, it shows epic of its each story like a label in planning board with unique colour for each epic (not visible in Active board though). It should help you to see if any story belongs to e2 located at the bottom of the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25478" LastActivityDate="2016-09-30T16:31:37.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18649" CreationDate="2016-09-30T17:50:29.667" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me sum these up and provide a little more clarity since I can't comment yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jira no longer shows Epics in the same manner it shows stories. In the past you could prioritize the Epic itself by moving it up and down the product backlog, or within the scrum board itself. While useful that had some problems of it's own, and in the newer versions of Jira Epics no longer function like stories and must be handled in the backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost the same question was answered here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/33139464/is-there-an-easier-way-to-prioritize-epics-in-a-scrum-board-backlog-other-than-drag-and-drop-in-the-filter-pane-&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/33139464/is-there-an-easier-way-to-prioritize-epics-in-a-scrum-board-backlog-other-than-drag-and-drop-in-the-filter-pane-&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The response is basically saying the only way to order the Epics is to drag and drop them in the dropdown on the left of the product backlog view (this is collapsed, look for &quot;Versions&quot; and &quot;Epics&quot; reading lengthwise to the left of your stories in the backlog, click on &quot;Epics&quot; to open the pane). Once you have assigned stories to Epics they will get the appropriate Epic label with an assigned color, &lt;strong&gt;which is visible in both the backlog view and the scrum board&lt;/strong&gt; (Clicking on Active Sprint).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From there simply drag and drop your stories appropriately using the Epic labels as visuals. So using your example it would look more like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Epics pane)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Epic 2&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Epic 1&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Backlog)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Story 22 (Epic 2 label) &lt;br&gt;&#xA;Story 21 (Epic 2 label)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Story 11 (Epic 1 label)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Story 12 (Epic 1 label)&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have prioritized your Epics in the Backlog add the Epic swimlane to your scrum board, which will allow a better visual of work within the Epics. &lt;strong&gt;They will show on the board according to the priority you gave them in the backlog.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For further questions about Epics in Jira read through the help here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/agile/jira-agile-user-s-guide/working-with-epics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://confluence.atlassian.com/agile/jira-agile-user-s-guide/working-with-epics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26060" LastActivityDate="2016-09-30T17:50:29.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20218" CreationDate="2016-10-01T09:14:35.923" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have made a critical error in your understanding of how this will work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are not going to be moving from a 3 week release cycle to 2 week. You are moving from 3 weeks to 6 weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problems you experience with developers commiting to a sprint and the &quot;being slammed with bugs&quot; are not due to a disconnect between them and QA but due to adding tasks to an in progress sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This problem will only be exacerbated if you allow QA to add bugs into the current in progress sprint so your cycle will be :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;S1: feature dev with some features tested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;S2: test remaining features and dev S1 reported bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;S3 : dev S2 reported bugs. final QA run through and sign off. Start next release branch features because theres not enough dev work left&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A better approach is to have offset but equal length dev and test sprints and make them 1 week&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;S1 dev release 1 features&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;S2 test S1 features, dev release 2 features in new branch&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;S3 test release 2 features dev S2 reported bugs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Release 1 at end of S3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;S4 dev S3 reported bugs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Release 2 at end of S4&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If test have 'down time' they should use it to write the tests for the next set of features prior to development&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2016-10-01T09:14:35.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="531" CreationDate="2016-10-01T22:05:13.990" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A read receipt is controlling. I hate them, my back goes up. But, I am notorious for not replying due to: inbox overwhelm, non-interest in subject, don't like the person and want to piss them off, or genuinely did not see the email. If it is someone I have ignored for awhile, and they ramp up the emails to get my attention, I will respond to the read receipt on an ad hoc basis to make them feel good for awhile, that I am on top on things, then I slide back into ignoring them, just as they start to feel I am 'in line'. Then the process starts again, but not before I send THEM a read receipt back. You see, office dynamics turned me into a conniving plotter. I quit and have never looked back. If you feel better sending these silly receipts, then do so. But the glow of happiness lasts only a few minutes as you then start obsessing that a) they have not responded, and b) have responded but not actioned your request. Then what do you do? Nag them some more? If you are my last boss, you mismanage your time so badly you send an email every nine minutes. My response: DELETE email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26092" LastActivityDate="2016-10-01T22:05:13.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9735" CreationDate="2016-10-02T11:32:43.307" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can create tfs work items that are linked to Outlook objects using TMO. I think this is what you want to achieve. More information and download here - &lt;a href=&quot;https://gotmo.co.uk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://gotmo.co.uk&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26094" LastActivityDate="2016-10-02T11:32:43.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20218" CreationDate="2016-10-02T14:15:50.313" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Automate as much as possible of your regression testing. This leaves the QA's free to focus on new functionality. This then allows the team to test as they go along in a sprint, rather than waiting for the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think carefully about the way you use version numbering and environments. For example, some teams I have worked with will do a drop to a QA environment every few days in a sprint. It is important when you take this approach to raise bugs against a given version so that there isn't confusion with on-going work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look to integrate continuously between the teams. Don't wait for the end of the sprint to do this. Even better, combine continuous integration with regression test automation to get regular feedback on the merged code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, plan carefully. If you want to be testing throughout the sprint you need to have small stories with no dependencies. Always have the conversation during planning about what you will test first and how quickly it will be ready. For example, a team might target having the first few stories ready for testing after 2 days of the sprint. If you have a story that will be particularly difficult to test then there is no point starting testing on the last day of the sprint. Look to tackle it early in the sprint with sufficient time to test. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, encourage communication between team members. Stop thinking of testing as a QA activity. It is a team activity and involves everyone (including the Product Owner).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-10-02T14:15:50.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17752" CreationDate="2016-10-02T14:50:00.530" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This script mostly works: &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/Kulgar/jira2redmine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://github.com/Kulgar/jira2redmine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though I had to edit it slightly to account for changes in the Jira XML format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26096" LastActivityDate="2016-10-02T14:50:00.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20218" CreationDate="2016-10-03T11:29:57.633" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have encountered a few similar problems in one of my projects. Like yours, one of my team had testing efforts piling up towards the end of the sprint. When stories were incomplete (i.e, testing not done in this case), it caused stories being carried forward to the next sprint, disruption to the flow, delay in delivery, coordination issues(between QA and Dev), chaos etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way I came out of this is by developing this mindset &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;what we commit in a sprint HAVE to be finished within the sprint .&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Ask the team to estimate and choose the stories that they think can develop, test and deploy-ready within the 2 week timebox. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is difficult to make this shift, but teams become better as they practice this a few sprints. To start with you might have business complaining about slow delivery, team not coming to a conclusion easily, and much more. But do it gently and slowly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indispensable factors to focus on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start your sprint with planning.     &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set a  Sprint Goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make stories more granular, smaller and TESTABLE.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plan together  as a team (Developers and QA both involved)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimate a task/story considering development, testing, deployment (scripts, config changes, etc) - all aspects to get that story to live or align wit (DOD)definition of done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coach the team to do BDD or TDD which promotes QA involvement early in development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Retrospectives are very useful in situations like this so you understand what is working and what is not. Adapt accordingly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improve the process, but introduce improvements slowly and gradually  only. Do pre-planning, backlog grooming once things are stable.  Bring some rhythm to the process.(I've found this so useful as it helped me to manage business expectations better than before.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Measure progress - I used burn down chart every day in start up to bring to everyone's attention any delays.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Truly and wholeheartedly support the team as changes/shift in ways of working  can cause morale/motivation issues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22080" LastActivityDate="2016-10-03T11:29:57.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20239" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20241" CreationDate="2016-10-04T21:03:24.527" Score="12" ViewCount="1811" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are having a hard time meeting Sprint comits, one reason I suspect is that we are not doing a good job estimating and one of the causes of this is that we don't do a good job decomposing the story down to a sufficient level of granularity to fit within the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see a lot of comments on Agile that it is critical to have granular stories that are small enough to fit in the sprint, but I have not found any recommendations or best practices for HOW to decompose a story to the correct level of Sub-Task granularity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have good practices or heuristics as to what is the &quot;right&quot; level of granularity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24110" LastActivityDate="2016-10-19T10:18:54.460" Title="Story Decomposition Granularity" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20239" CreationDate="2016-10-04T21:19:53.663" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two different approaches I've seen work fairly well. Both make use of the following sequence: 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Use 'ideal man days' as these story points. For example, if it would take an average developer 3 days to complete the story, given perfect conditions (No meetings, no interruptions, perfect working environment, perfectly understood requirements, no scope creep, etc.), then it's 3 story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Pick a single, completed story that could pass as both 'typical' and small enough to be easy to estimate and set that amount of effort as your baseline (1). For any new stories, if they're about half as much work, they're 0.5, if they're about 5 times as much work, they're 5, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, if you aim to generally keep around the [0.5, 3] range, you should be at an acceptable level of granularity. Though, as always, mileage may vary - different people and teams will work best with different degrees of granularity. The best advice I can give is to try something, measure how well it worked, and then adjust (or accept if everyone's happy with it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-10-04T21:19:53.663" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20239" CreationDate="2016-10-04T23:02:43.997" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask yourselves this one question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there any possible way to do anything less, and still deliver value?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If yes, write that smaller thing down. Then, ask yourselves again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there any possible way to do anything less, and still deliver value?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If yes, write that smaller thing down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Repeat until the answer is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No. It's simply not possible to make a smaller change and still deliver something valuable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sound flippant, but I don't mean it to be. This is an absolutely &lt;em&gt;terribly difficult&lt;/em&gt; thing to learn how to do. &lt;em&gt;But it works.&lt;/em&gt; It seems deceptively simple, but this is the exact process we use on my team and we've had great success with it. Think of it kind of like &quot;The 5 Whys&quot;. You recurse into each answer until you've got a tiny piece of functionality to deliver. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a pseudo real life example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Jim, the gamer, wants a green icon &#xA;when the battery is &amp;gt; 20% and a red &#xA;icon when the battery is &amp;lt;= 20%,&#xA;so he doesn't kill his phone &#xA;and miss calls. &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Woah. Wait. Does Jim really want a &lt;em&gt;green&lt;/em&gt; icon, or does he want to know how much battery he has left?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You're right. We &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; just display the number for now, then add the fancy graphics later. We'll need to calculate the battery remaining anyway. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cool. Now if we don't get around to the graphics next week, we still have something to deliver. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a bit contrived, but is based on a very real conversation I had when grooming a backlog with our PM &amp;amp; QA a few months back. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastActivityDate="2016-10-04T23:02:43.997" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10672" CreationDate="2016-10-05T17:23:20.317" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to your question is - YES. It totally makes sense to have a bucket for 'work streams'. Every project I have been on in the past 15 years has had a work stream construct. No need to split hairs on the name either. Workstream is pretty common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My assumptions - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You said you are working with &quot;applications&quot; so I am assuming this is IT related.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I think you've told us the audience, it's the workstreams and the team(s) associated with them.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding &quot;general&quot; and flavors of &quot;other&quot; my practice is to simply not put that on the list. I talk people down off the &quot;other&quot; ledge all the time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the sorting thing of choice has more than say 8 - 10 options, what @Marina Martin said becomes true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience buckets come and buckets go. As we all know communicating those changes is key ... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that answers the question, if so, please mark is accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23027" LastActivityDate="2016-10-05T17:23:20.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10612" CreationDate="2016-10-05T18:25:57.643" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Belated answer, however this is still a common issue for many. I thought I'd provide what I can to help anyone else coming across this with the same question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I'll address the project organization question first since that's what the OP asked, below that are some technical factors that may help you work around the file size problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Organization:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have typically had development and support in different projects. That is my default. In fact, I usually don't treat support as a project. However, in this case I think you have a time management need and you are trying to minimize the number of 'tools'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We tend to group work by specialty area and those would be different schedule files. These areas typically have some sort of a team lead person associated with them, that's pretty key. 'Course a lead could have accountability for several projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lets assume you are producing content for a business school, maybe you could break it up like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Accounting&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Human Resources&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finance&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Strategy&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Marketing&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there would be a support project for each. Can there be one support project? Maybe if there is one task per product that would be okay ... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or ... as I look at that and consider the numbers of projects you are doing I think maybe you could keep the support projects in each departmental project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you are working across multiple schools and the school is the basis for the project file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question -&lt;/strong&gt; how does your team see themselves in terms of working groups? Maybe that's the way to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best phrase I've heard on this is, &quot;Sometime we have to torture things into these buckets&quot;. ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know about master projects and how to set up sub projects in a master project? What we use the master project for is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Setting links between projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rationalizing critical path&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reporting &amp;amp; XLSX exports for reporting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We don't routinely work out of the master project. We use it at report time and maybe once or twice a day to check thing. If it's set up as read write it locks the sub projects as soon as you expand them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Technicals:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Key Point - The underlying data base has placeholders for every potential cell. That's the list of columns. It's huge. Once they get any data in them at all, it seems to me that it's quite impossible to recover the space unless the entire row is deleted. Formatting is data too. I've tried to programmatically clean things up too, difficult and not always effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Formatting - Keep it simple and dull. If you need special formatting put it in a view that has it's own table defined for it. Good practice anyway. Keep the base Gantt view and Entry table as default so you have something to go back to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inactive tasks - New feature in the past couple of versions. I find my PMs L-O-V-E to keep these things around. It leads to schedule bloat. If you need them for reference copy them off to another .mpp file. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Turn off auto sizing on the columns - eats a ton of CPU&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a pinch you can turn off auto-calc but this gets tricky cause people forget ... I've burned myself a lot on that one ... ;-(&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Resources - If you can resource by type -vs- named person to minimize the resources. If you have costs assigned ask if you really need them. Costing can be done in Excel based on output from Project too. More steps, yes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bar Formatting - If the Gantt bars are default they use shading &amp;amp; gradients. Another CPU suck. Redefined them to be the old solid colors with no gradients. You can use special views for reporting so you don't have to work in the more user friendly views all the time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Computed columns - If you have computed columns you want to at least challenge the need for them. Every time you change a cell they all have to be processed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, so the theme there is to trim the fat on anything that smells like it gets done on a cell change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Um ... either delete or copy off closed projects or other cohesive &quot;chunks&quot; of work to keep the file size down as best you can. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;File size - We find that anything north of 75MB is a challenge and anything north of 120MB tends to fail and self corrupt. Everything I've mentioned drives file size. Oh, you have to close &amp;amp; save twice to get it to recover available space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;File clean up - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Files under about 50MB can be exported to XML and reopened as new files. The biggest problem here will be links to external projects getting dropped. This can help reduce file size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Saving back to the lowest version you can go with your current version and then reopening in the current version can strip out newer fields that you are hopefully not using. Obviously if you are using newer features this can be tricky or totally unworkable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps some ... running the scheduling engine is it's own project!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23027" LastActivityDate="2016-10-05T18:25:57.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10612" CreationDate="2016-10-05T20:04:28.180" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have a large number of simple projects with the same or similar activities, I have found the best way to manage them is with an Excel spreadsheet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The activities are listed along the top of the spreadsheet, with two columns per activity (start date and end date).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The projects are listed along the left of the sheet, each with two rows (one for planned dates, one for actual dates).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sheet is set up with conditional formatting so that completed tasks are green, late tasks are red and imminent tasks are yellow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage of this sheet is that the information density is far higher than a gantt chart's. You can see at a glance the condition of individual projects and the whole programme, and it is simple for people to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25572" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-10-06T09:57:06.310" LastActivityDate="2016-10-06T09:57:06.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19835" CreationDate="2016-10-05T21:02:12.470" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I actually see two questions, here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Should the two teams (API and application) be part of the same Scrum Team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Should the Scrum Team be sat/work closely together?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going strictly by 'best practices', the answer to both is 'yes'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because Scrum Teams should be cross-functional, both groups should be part of the same Scrum Team (and therefore part of the same Development Team). If they aren't, then members outside of the Team can become roadblocks, causing any interaction with them to incur risk. Of course, this is for the ideal case - it may be that in reality, the API group is working alongside a dozen other teams and so this is infeasible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, all members of a Development Team should be sat together. While it may or may not be realistically possible to physically co-locate the Team, at the very least all members of the Development Team should be working tightly coupled to each other. They are, after all, &lt;em&gt;part of the same Team&lt;/em&gt;. All Development-Team activities should involve all members of the Development Team. For example, estimation and commitment. Since these are done on behalf of the &lt;em&gt;entire Team&lt;/em&gt;, it would be pretty infeasible, for example, for the application team to commit to completing a story in a day when, if the API-team had a say, they would be pointing out that their development on that story would require a full week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-10-05T21:02:12.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20249" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20250" CreationDate="2016-10-05T22:38:39.247" Score="2" ViewCount="547" Body="&lt;p&gt;My question is quite simple : Is Scrum methodology compatible with PMBOK® Guide ? In other words How can we manage a project using the Scrum methodology in the PMI Framework?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25654" LastEditorUserId="25654" LastEditDate="2016-10-13T16:11:50.183" LastActivityDate="2018-02-09T22:47:04.480" Title="Scrum compatibility with PMBOK® Guide" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;pmi&gt;&lt;pmi-framework&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20249" CreationDate="2016-10-06T11:54:28.497" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMI is fully compatible with Scrum - they even have a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pmi.org/certifications/types/agile-acp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)®&lt;/a&gt; certification - to quote from that page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you’re experienced using agile approaches, have good collaboration skills, eagerly embrace complexity and thrive on rapid response times, then your talents are in demand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)® formally recognizes your knowledge of agile principles and your skill with agile techniques. It will make you shine even brighter to your employers, stakeholders and peers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PMI-ACP® is our fastest growing certification, and it’s no wonder. Organizations that are highly agile and responsive to market dynamics complete more of their projects successfully than their slower-moving counterparts — 75 percent versus 56 percent — as shown in our 2015 Pulse of the Profession® report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PMI-ACP spans many approaches to agile such as &lt;strong&gt;Scrum&lt;/strong&gt;, Kanban, Lean, extreme programming (XP) and test-driven development (TDD.) So it will increase your versatility, wherever your projects may take you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2016-10-06T11:54:28.497" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6071" CreationDate="2016-10-06T16:08:04.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know what you mean, passionate people (especially developers) can be very assertive in meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you have to do is try and shift the power balance. Ask yourself 'why am I in this meeting?' 'who is the decision maker?' and 'what am I trying to achieve?'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may find it productive to say less and frown more. a few 'Hmmms' and frowns may prompt someone to ask your opinion. A talkative speaker will often stop if they find they are getting no feed back at all. A short expression of worry about an idea may lead to being asked to elaborate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are able to remain silent through the entire meeting with no-one asking for your input, then you have to question why you attended in the first place. Are you giving tacit approval to the outcome of the meeting by attending?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2016-10-06T16:08:04.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6057" CreationDate="2016-10-07T19:41:56.173" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find this article VERY helpful, it contains the questions to ask to your team or PO to collect feedback about the SM&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://illustratedagile.com/2015/03/24/how-to-capture-scrum-master-feedback&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://illustratedagile.com/2015/03/24/how-to-capture-scrum-master-feedback&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I transferred into a survery format, but f2f is better of course &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/a/raye7.com/forms/d/1mde10aWi-kVgyIiKic4-mTq_MxPGCRj9PEc0OEEdlzY/edit&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://docs.google.com/a/raye7.com/forms/d/1mde10aWi-kVgyIiKic4-mTq_MxPGCRj9PEc0OEEdlzY/edit&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26159" LastActivityDate="2016-10-07T19:41:56.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20253" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20330" CreationDate="2016-10-08T05:49:04.563" Score="2" ViewCount="1107" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am creating a work breakdown structure for a project I am on, but my supervisor seems to think it is taking too long.   He says I should be able to create a usable document in somewhere between 2-8 hours.   However, I've been working on the WBS for several days now and my work only goes as fast as the conversations with the project team members.  I feel like I'm being productive but, based on his feedback, I am concerned that I am going into too much detail.   How can I get a better sense of the right level of detail, and produce a WBS that provides an understanding of the work without taking too much time to produce?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25587" LastActivityDate="2016-10-17T16:44:00.677" Title="How long should a work breakdown structure take to create?" Tags="&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20253" CreationDate="2016-10-08T10:33:07.580" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The complexity of your product the project is creating dictates how the complexity of your WBS.  Can you imagine what the WBS of a fighter aircraft looks like?  However, one person would not be responsible for building the entire WBS; it would be created by SMEs of the very components being built that create the aircraft when all put together.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your OP reads as if you are the only one creating it and are slowly and painstakingly interviewing those SMEs as necessary.  I cannot opine on an acceptable duration since that varies across projects, industries, etc., but it seems your chosen process is not the most efficient, if my assumption is right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you break down the first couple of levels of your product, you need to charge others to continue decomposition in their respective areas.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding how low you go, there's no one answer fits all solution.  You break it down as far as you need to go so you can manage the work and no further.  Some would put rules down such as you break down the product and its tasks to the point that its planned duration does not exceed a certain period of time.  Those kinds of rules might help you in this case.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-10-08T10:33:07.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20253" CreationDate="2016-10-08T13:08:47.267" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That depends on a few different factors. What level of detail the business expects, the complexity of the project, and how fast you yourself do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the first factor, your best bet, I'd say, is to look at a previous WBS from a previous (ideally successfully-completed) project, ideally around the same level of complexity as &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; project, and see how much detail &lt;em&gt;it&lt;/em&gt; went into. While there's always going to be some subjectivity in questions such as 'How much detail should I go into?', precedent is usually a good place to start. If possible, you could also try to find out how long it took to make that previous WBS, to get a benchmark for time as well as detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second factor only really matters if you can't find a precedent that's of a comparable complexity. In which case, you'll have to estimate the relative difference in complexity between this project and your precedent, and adjust your benchmark accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for how fast you yourself do it, I'm assuming from your question that this is one of your first ones, so it's probably going to take longer. Don't be too distraught if you end up going over by a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-10-08T13:08:47.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20256" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20258" CreationDate="2016-10-09T08:19:04.020" Score="1" ViewCount="91" Body="&lt;p&gt;My company has several product offerings, each with a dedicated development team, plus a number of people on the business side that control the product's direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We currently use a homegrown ticketing solution that allows business to create tickets, work with project managers to gather requirements, and eventually drop the tickets on a product's development queue. The business owner of that product controls the order of the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In JIRA, what is the optimal way to get this functionality across?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand JIRA Software now has the concept of &quot;business projects&quot; and &quot;software projects&quot;. Should I move tickets from one to the other? Business doesn't need to see all of the development fluff we need for day-to-day operations, and we do not need to see what they are currently planning on their side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26163" LastActivityDate="2016-10-09T11:33:27.577" Title="How do I incorporate product managers with Backlog control into JIRA?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20257" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-09T10:31:58.710" Score="0" ViewCount="69" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a problem with filtering in Microsoft Project 2013. When I create a filter based on some criteria, the results doesn't show correct total work and actual work. In fact, it sums actual work of all tasks and ignores the filter. In some filters, group by resource is useful but in this case group by is incorrect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26165" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-10-09T20:38:16.730" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T20:54:46.403" Title="Filter with wrong total actual work" Tags="&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20256" CreationDate="2016-10-09T11:33:27.577" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What a lot of teams will do is to use the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/user-stories&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;user story&lt;/a&gt; format for requirements and sub-tasks for implementation details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The stories are written in the language of your business users, so they can easily understand what the value of each story is. JIRA hides the sub-tasks in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/agile/jira-agile-user-s-guide/using-a-board/using-the-backlog&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;backlog view&lt;/a&gt; of a board, so business users aren't exposed to the technical details of implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several advantages to this approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business users can see where there requests are in the backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business users get to see what their requirements are &lt;em&gt;competing against&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The development team can see what is coming along in the future - allowing them to prepare for it early&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anyone who wants to see what the team has on its backlog can see it in one location in JIRA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-10-09T11:33:27.577" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20259" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-09T14:26:04.263" Score="-1" ViewCount="309" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do I expand the tasks in the project execution phase in order to include enough sub-tasks that show the use of Scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26167" LastEditorUserId="26167" LastEditDate="2016-10-11T14:31:49.273" LastActivityDate="2016-10-17T14:00:00.057" Title="How do I make a Gantt Chart where the project execution phase in the WBS is modified to implement Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20260" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-09T16:33:40.840" Score="2" ViewCount="7369" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being a Scrum Master, I would like to understand if I should request the Development team, specific persons who owned the Stories to do the Demo or it should be the Product Owner who should do the Demo and share the information related to the increment done in the Project. &#xA;How did the Product Owner gets the knowledge about the increment done by the team and the workflow added, since he is not involved with the team during the regular working days?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13556" LastEditorUserId="13556" LastEditDate="2016-10-09T16:40:35.357" LastActivityDate="2016-10-14T16:22:22.827" Title="Who is the Owner of the Sprint Demo activity, Is it the Product Owner or the Development team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20260" CreationDate="2016-10-09T16:44:37.447" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;They both have separate roles; each leads a different section of the meeting, with much of it being cooperative. From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v1/scrum-guide-us.pdf&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Attendees include the Scrum Team and key stakeholders invited by the Product Owner;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The Product Owner explains what Product Backlog items have been “Done” and what has not been “Done”;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The Development Team discusses what went well during the Sprint, what problems it ran into, and how those problems were solved;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The Development Team demonstrates the work that it has “Done” and answers&#xA;  questions about the Increment;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The Product Owner discusses the Product Backlog as it stands. He or she projects likely completion dates based on progress to date (if needed);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The entire group collaborates on what to do next, so that the Sprint Review provides valuable input to subsequent Sprint Planning;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Review of how the marketplace or potential use of the product might have changed what is the most valuable thing to do next; and,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Review of the timeline, budget, potential capabilities, and marketplace for the next anticipated release of the product.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-10-09T16:44:37.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20259" CreationDate="2016-10-10T10:38:15.827" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are not going to like this; the answer is you cannot.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Scrum project can ally to a release plan but a Gantt chart is the antithesis of Scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2016-10-10T10:38:15.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20260" CreationDate="2016-10-10T11:01:16.707" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The sprint review is more than just a demo. It is an opportunity for the team to review their progress and to make &lt;em&gt;course corrections&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also an opportunity for the Scrum Team to engage with a wider audience, usually stakeholders for the product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How did the Product Owner gets the knowledge about the increment done by the team and the workflow added, since he is not involved with the team during the regular working days?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best Scrum teams I have worked with will be demonstrating stories to the Product Owner throughout the sprint. As such, there are &lt;em&gt;no surprises&lt;/em&gt; for the Product Owner during the sprint review. This allows the team to focus on details, such as reviewing what has been done and what they plan to do in the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for ownership, the whole Scrum Team (Scrum Master, Product Owner and Development Team) are involved and so take joint ownership of the ceremony.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-10-10T11:01:16.707" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20259" CreationDate="2016-10-10T16:28:55.310" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why are you attempting to produce a Gantt chart?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you read the Scrum Guide as this will provide a background into relevant Scrum artifacts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I expect the real reason is that the business is not buying into Scrum and is expecting artifacts based on project management methodologies such as Prince or PMP in which case you have 3 options...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attempt to facilitate change in upper management's ideas&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Forget Scrum and use said PM methodology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leave and find a position willing to adopt Scrum and not saying 'Our version of Scrum'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22750" LastActivityDate="2016-10-10T16:28:55.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20260" CreationDate="2016-10-10T17:45:43.830" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Original Scrum guidance says Sprint review is the Product Owner's place where s/he demonstrate &quot;Team's incremental progress with what Business Value it is achieving&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How did the Product Owner gets the knowledge about the increment done by the team and the workflow added, since he is not involved with the team during the regular working days&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a scrum master I would ask why PO is not involve with team on day to day work? is he managing multiple products? if so this is not the ideal arrangement.&#xA;as other members have suggested, PO should be available to team all time to answer their questions promptly &amp;amp; that includes demo of the individual stories by developers throughout the sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my current experience mostly a team member performs the demo but we make sure that we have got appropriate data to show all the use cases affected by the work done. If the team is new and getting in to the process of Agile, it is better PO handles the Sprint Review and Team can learn from it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team, PO, or Both,  who ever take charge of the sprint review, needs to make sure that appropriate business case is blend in to the demo so that audience can understand the work done and how/what business value being delivered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: In our current implementation we have 15 min max allocated for sprint review where one or more members from exec team will be there. and hence we strictly stick to demoing the work done and getting their feedback on what they have to say. We do Sprint retrospective and sprint planning afterwards where only team &amp;amp; PO meets. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7125" LastEditorUserId="7125" LastEditDate="2016-10-10T17:57:19.923" LastActivityDate="2016-10-10T17:57:19.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18282" CreationDate="2016-10-10T18:20:56.533" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The root cause you are having is different than what you have asked here:&#xA;I am not experience with Gantt Charts so I will just address the issue your boss might be trying to solve. The reason s/he is asking for the Gantt chart is to predict the release cycle and confidently say to stake holder/customer that in which release what feature will be available, and of course the reason you mentioned: they want someone to hold accountable if the promised worked not delivered and that is fair &amp;amp; normal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My take would be to look in to something called &quot;Release Planning&quot;. &#xA;this would involve Scrum master, PO, and your Boss to start with. Once the Boss/PO prioritizes the features by upcoming release,  go back to teams historic velocity and make it visible to team/Boss/PO. They All need to know the reality. Once they all see this together real questions will come up. for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is product backlog appropriately organized and prioritized?&#xA;Is team working on things that is important to PO ?&#xA;Is team completing what they committed?&#xA;Is there a lot of scope change during the sprint?&#xA;Is team distracted by lot of interrupters during sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are just an example so be prepared. you might have to speak up if nobody in the meeting speak up and try to get this reality out. Answering such questions is a start point to get something done and delivered meaningful and make everyone happy. &#xA;If you need any help with this I am happy to guide/co-ordinate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7125" LastActivityDate="2016-10-10T18:20:56.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20272" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-11T11:25:07.810" Score="2" ViewCount="623" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RrqfR.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RrqfR.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hi folks, I have a question regarding to the following table.&#xA;So I am required to draw a network diagram and a critical path.&#xA;However, I don't know how I should draw from C,D to G,H and also how I can draw J,K,L from two dependent activities. I am not sure how many lines should I draw. I am so confused. Please help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26198" LastActivityDate="2017-05-11T17:52:19.530" Title="Two activities generate two activities? (Network diagram)" Tags="&lt;critical-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20239" CreationDate="2016-10-11T13:47:18.247" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often run an Agile Requirements workshop with the product team. It's fairly strait forward and easy to run. Get your entire product management team and add enough coders and testers to have all disciplines represented on teams of 3-6 people. If you need architects' or other disciplines' then include them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Present Agile Requirements: INVEST, Given/When/Then&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let them self organise into teams&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get each team to choose a PBI/Feature/thing that they have previously delivers. Preferably one of the things that took longer than a sprint to deliver.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give them 120 minutes to break it down into what they believe is good decomposition. Go round and question decisions, point out size and vagaries. Ask each disaplin if they believe that they can deliver each item inside of a sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do a retrospective&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Generally lunch&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get them to select a PBI/Feature/thing that they have not yet delivered.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give them 60 minutes to break it down into what they believe is good decomposition. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Repeat as necessary&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end, everyone should have a better idea of what is needed, and now understand what is involved in refinement.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastActivityDate="2016-10-11T13:47:18.247" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18648" CreationDate="2016-10-11T13:55:14.393" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the PMBoK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The critical chain can be defined as “the longest path in the network diagram considering activity interdependence and resource constraints.”&#xA; &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PSU71.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PSU71.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Path “Start-&gt;C-&gt;D-&gt;E-&gt;F-&gt;End” is the critical chain.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The critical path can be assumed as a particular case of the critical chain when the project has access to unlimited resources that will never run out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information see here &lt;a href=&quot;https://pmstudycircle.com/2014/02/critical-chain-method-ccm-in-project-management/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://pmstudycircle.com/2014/02/critical-chain-method-ccm-in-project-management/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25654" LastActivityDate="2016-10-11T13:55:14.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20275" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20281" CreationDate="2016-10-11T14:32:56.653" Score="0" ViewCount="1091" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm building a Gantt chart using &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ganttproject.biz&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GanttProject&lt;/a&gt;. I'd like to hide the dates (that &quot;rule&quot; above the chart), I mean, not using real dates, but week 1, 2, 3 ou day 31, 32, 33 and so on, just to give a perception about how my team and me are organizing each activity in my project. How can I do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26201" LastActivityDate="2016-10-11T23:29:37.200" Title="How to hide dates in GanttProject?" Tags="&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15827" CreationDate="2016-10-11T17:14:19.970" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is how you could do it with git:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;for every Work-Package, create a feature branch with read-only access to others&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ask your Developer to fork the branch and then create a pull request with his changes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;review the pull request and, after approval, merge into your feature branch&#xA;(in the git log you will be the author of the merge commit)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if necessary, write some logic to integrate the new feature (for example, rename labels, correct port numbers matching your client environment, fix colors in GUI's and so on)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;merge from the feature branch to the main branch of your client&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This workflow means that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you have to proxy every requirement and explain it to your programmer, then gather every question and consult with your customer, which can be complicated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you have to became very good in delegation and not micromanage your developers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;for me, working with screen-casts, explaining what is to be done in addition to writing User-Stories and conducting regular Skype meetings, worked fine&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14779" LastEditorUserId="14779" LastEditDate="2016-10-11T22:09:53.003" LastActivityDate="2016-10-11T22:09:53.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20272" CreationDate="2016-10-11T18:50:14.050" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try to give it a real life situation and it will make sense to you. When you make dinner, it's ready at 7:00. One person may use your output at 7:10, and another person at 7:30, the second person having been busy doing something else. In other words, your output serves two people that need food, but these two people are a singer and drummer who need to work together and record a song for another person. Please note that in the first case, the 7:10 person got 20 minutes to rest. The 7:30 person will delay the process... find the path with no &quot;rest&quot; and this is your critical path&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="563" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-10-13T10:54:22.083" LastActivityDate="2016-10-13T10:54:22.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20253" CreationDate="2016-10-11T19:11:46.943" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;this is not a question about project management but about comunication between you and your supervisor. he may not have defined good enough what he expects... he might be looking for high level tasks just to get the management approval before moving on. maybe someone already made some work that you should rely on instead of inventing the wheel. tell your supervisor what you did and what took you so much time and ask him where he thinks you have not been efficient....and if he can guide you the first time... this is if you believe he is a good guy.  he might just enjoy abusing you or teasing you...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="563" LastActivityDate="2016-10-11T19:11:46.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20215" CreationDate="2016-10-11T19:30:42.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Microsoft Project has multiple parameters that affect the time. The relevant ones are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;fixed days or fixed duration or fixed units&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;general calendar&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;generic / specific resource calendar. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;work hours per week&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you use fixed duration, if you set it to 3 days, it's not going to change when you change the resource allocation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you should use fixed units and define the resource calendar and percent allocation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="563" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-10-12T18:45:22.613" LastActivityDate="2016-10-12T18:45:22.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20275" CreationDate="2016-10-11T23:29:37.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;GanttProject support forum is here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://forum.ganttproject.biz&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://forum.ganttproject.biz&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spoiler: no such feature in GanttProject. Existing enhancement request: &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/bardsoftware/ganttproject/issues/85&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://github.com/bardsoftware/ganttproject/issues/85&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26207" LastActivityDate="2016-10-11T23:29:37.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20239" CreationDate="2016-10-12T01:08:31.037" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way of looking at it: if a story is estimated at an equivalent of 3 person-days or more and does not have sub-tasks, it usually means that the team does not have a clear line of sight to implementation, and the task is quite opaque. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering that engineers tend to underestimate opaque tasks, it usually leads to optimistic sprint plans, and hence under-delivery. We have been tracking average story size in each sprint, and observed a clear inverse correlation between story size and sprint completion percentage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are various methods of getting lower story sizes, and there is no magic bullet. We use a combination of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spike tasks: dedicated analysis stories, which success criteria&#xA;is a reviewed low-level design, and a fine-grained story breakdown.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Forcing smaller acceptance criteria, as described in one of the&#xA;answers above &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Again, similarly to answers above: backlog grooming, team commitment etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most effective method for us is spike tasks, though the downside is that they work best with smaller sprint sizes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25908" LastActivityDate="2016-10-12T01:08:31.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20283" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-12T09:05:10.900" Score="3" ViewCount="526" Body="&lt;p&gt;In JIRA, we have a task for standups and meetings, obviously this task does not need an estimate, but it is useful to have time tracking on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, when I log time on this issue, the remaining estimate either becomes N/A (first time I log time; cannot submit the time log) or it becomes minus however long I logged (also cannot submit the time log).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way I can create tasks that have no time estimate? Or do I need to adjust the remaining to 0 each time I log time on a meeting or standup?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21337" LastActivityDate="2018-01-06T23:32:10.417" Title="How can I stop my remaining estimate to be adjusted?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20285" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-12T15:19:23.257" Score="-1" ViewCount="171" Body="&lt;p&gt;A client of ours seems to always complain. We could do many things right, but as soon as something goes wrong, they complain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way of handling a client such as this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-10-14T13:21:29.770" LastActivityDate="2016-10-23T08:04:13.680" Title="What is the best way to deal with a client that is always complaining?" Tags="&lt;clients&gt;&lt;conflicts&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-12-04T00:25:33.410" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20285" CreationDate="2016-10-12T15:28:32.960" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;20% of your clients cost you 80% of your time. I would try to get rid of the 20%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to quote you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;but as soon as something goes wrong&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would complain too if something goes wrong, seems a logical cause and effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When ever something goes wrong be open and honest about it. After fixing it communicate clearly. Execute a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jamesshore.com/Agile-Book/root_cause_analysis.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Root-Cause Analyses&lt;/a&gt; and communicate how you are going to prevent something similar in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2016-10-12T15:28:32.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20257" CreationDate="2016-10-12T18:40:45.257" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Project, filters do not show the sum of just the filtered tasks.  You'll need to use groups to show summary data by group.  If you are trying to group by resource assigned, try grouping the Task Usage view, not the Gantt view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2016-10-12T18:40:45.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20288" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20299" CreationDate="2016-10-13T07:37:38.473" Score="4" ViewCount="716" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the common problems with traditional spec is that it's usually out of date. However, if we use a list of user stories as the spec, the thing is that the requirement may be scattered and cannot follow once it becomes complex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, we delivered a user story and some time later, we decide to change some behaviors which make some acceptance criteria of that user story obsolete. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If we don't update that user story and just create new one, long time later the new member cannot follow the changes. While doing regression test, our QC may miss those old changes. How can we prevent this?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If we update the user story, then how to version those changes throughout the time? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26229" LastActivityDate="2016-10-13T17:17:58.507" Title="How to manage spec / user stories in Agile/Scrum" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20288" CreationDate="2016-10-13T11:49:59.453" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The User Stories aren't a spec. They're a place holder for a future conversation. Separate the Tests/Spec from the User Story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many teams that TDD, you'll hear&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The spec is the test and the test is the spec.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We keep track of the specification as close to our code as possible. So close, in fact, that it's executable code itself. This way, when a new user story comes up that contradicts the original spec, the spec (tests) &lt;em&gt;have to be&lt;/em&gt; updated. The spec never gets out of sync with the code. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hear you though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But you can't unit test &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;! Some things still have to be manually tested!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you're right, but that doesn't mean that we can't still keep the tests separate from the story. Any QA worth their salt has a bunch of test scripts that they follow when manually testing a system. If the spec has changed, then the QA needs to update their test procedure anyway. So, just like our automated tests, these test scripts are where we keep the system specification. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastEditorUserId="21039" LastEditDate="2016-10-13T12:38:37.420" LastActivityDate="2016-10-13T12:38:37.420" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20290" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20291" CreationDate="2016-10-13T13:17:50.557" Score="2" ViewCount="506" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to create a board with different columns, but all of them have the same status, but belong to different &quot;teams&quot;. So I'd like to have a column for each team. Is it possible to create a column based on a filter/query and not only on a status?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26235" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-01-15T09:16:34.457" LastActivityDate="2019-01-15T09:16:34.457" Title="On JIRA, can I have a column in my agile board based on a filter and not (only) on a status?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20290" CreationDate="2016-10-13T13:41:27.850" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, I don't believe that is possible. Furthermore, I don't see how it &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the situation where you have two separate 'filter-columns', and a given story fits &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; filters. What would happen? Would it show up &lt;em&gt;twice&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an alternative, you could just add more statuses - 'In Progress Team A', 'In Progress Team B', etc. Simplest thing to do from there is just to include two statuses in each column, and each Team will drag theirs to the correct one when they move it. There might also be a way to automate it based on workflow and currently logged-in user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-10-13T13:41:27.850" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18067" CreationDate="2016-10-13T14:54:57.580" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;we have a comprehensive comparisons of the two (with multiple references) that concludes they are like oil and water and explains why in practical terms here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmis-consulting.com/combining-agile-with-prince2-msp/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pmis-consulting.com/combining-agile-with-prince2-msp/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25727" LastActivityDate="2016-10-13T14:54:57.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20283" CreationDate="2016-10-13T15:00:49.710" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am fairly certain the answer is no, unfortunately. After researching it, it seems you cannot adjust the &quot;Remaining estimate&quot; automatically, or manually set it to not update. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being the case I looked into a way to remove that value from your task, while leaving the ability to log time. My thought was you could create a new project, modify the fields to show what you want, create that task, and then port it into your board so it would have slightly different behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that when adding or removing fields, both of the fields are added and removed concurrently under the &quot;Time Tracking&quot; field. There is no way to separate them, therefore also no way to have them function independently of each other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See: &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/agile/jira-agile-user-s-guide/configuring-a-board/configuring-estimation-and-tracking&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://confluence.atlassian.com/agile/jira-agile-user-s-guide/configuring-a-board/configuring-estimation-and-tracking&lt;/a&gt; for overall time tracking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding or removing the fields is discussed here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/11439406/the-original-estimate-field-is-missing-when-creating-stories-and-sub-tasks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/11439406/the-original-estimate-field-is-missing-when-creating-stories-and-sub-tasks&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't use time tracking on my boards right now so it's possible there is some out of the box method I am missing, but given that the fields are added together I am not seeing any other way to accomplish it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26060" LastActivityDate="2016-10-13T15:00:49.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20260" CreationDate="2016-10-13T15:05:01.407" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;answers to questions like this can not come from a 'manual'. If the PO has never seen the outputs of the sprint before you can't expect them to demonstrate them.  Developers or someone who is familiar with the output of the sprint must do that but it is for the PO to comment on what he/she sees and for the rest of the team to listen, take note (literally) and if necessary take the relevant actions.  This is not an informal activity and PO's quite rightly won't be amused if the team does not make a note of all comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25727" LastActivityDate="2016-10-13T15:05:01.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20285" CreationDate="2016-10-13T15:20:24.127" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree honesty and openness is always the best way and if someone complains you have to remain professional and deal with their issue (esp if you have caused it).  There is no way out of this one.  You may (or may not) get the chance to choose some time in the future whether you want to work with them again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that may help and reduce the negative 'feel' when this happens is to be clear with them what you will do if they have any issues and working more collaboratively with them (if that is possible) so that you can prevent these instances before they happen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25727" LastEditorUserId="25727" LastEditDate="2016-10-17T13:45:21.133" LastActivityDate="2016-10-17T13:45:21.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20259" CreationDate="2016-10-13T15:26:53.427" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes projects require more than Scrum artifacts - Scrum artifacts deal with what's in the Sprint (and product backlog) but on larger projects there are also other things to do (that fall outside of any Sprint).  In those cases, there is nothing wrong with a WBS or a schedule.  Assuming you have something like major features or epics I would show these in the WBS - the WBS should show at summary level everything that is to be delivered and ultimately any project would benefit from a clear view of all the deliverables (software or otherwise). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes there is more to life than software. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25727" LastEditorUserId="25727" LastEditDate="2016-10-17T14:00:00.057" LastActivityDate="2016-10-17T14:00:00.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20253" CreationDate="2016-10-13T15:33:42.403" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;the quickest and by far the best way to create a 'first-cut' WBS is to get the right people in a room (or online) and jointly develop the WBS.  I have done this on a major aircraft project and developed the first-cut WBS in a single afternoon.  Populating it is then a different story - a WBS is not just a picture - it is a description of the scope of the project.  Populating the WBS properly will take time - weeks at least. Forgot to add - we have a post that describes how to create a WBS - hope this helps. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmis-consulting.com/how-to-create-a-work-breakdown-structure-wbs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pmis-consulting.com/how-to-create-a-work-breakdown-structure-wbs/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25727" LastEditorUserId="25727" LastEditDate="2016-10-17T14:07:43.947" LastActivityDate="2016-10-17T14:07:43.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20249" CreationDate="2016-10-13T15:41:06.790" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think questions like this need to be answered with great care. PMBoK is not necessarily incompatible with Scrum but it has to be said that PMBoK  started out very much as a predictive planning approach to projects. You could argue that &quot;initiate, plan, control etc.&quot; is being applied to each sprint but that was not how PMBoK evolved.  The fact that PMI have a certification aimed at Agile is not proof of compatibility it is about revenue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile, most of all, is about flexibility.  The mindset between the two can be worlds apart. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25727" LastActivityDate="2016-10-13T15:41:06.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20288" CreationDate="2016-10-13T17:17:58.507" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, agile values working software over comprehensive documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your application's behavior changes, the most important outcome associated with it is that it should work as expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second comes the documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is where you would want to think what is your preference for documentation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you prefer to keep your user stories updated and/or grouped together?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so you could create the new story and relate it to the old story with original descriptions. You could write the story and make the &quot;new&quot; acceptance criteria clearer to avoid any confusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or do you prefer to use your regression test suite (if you have one) as the key documentation?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, reflect the changes there with clarity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or prefer your source control logs/release logs/code comments as the key source?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then have strict commit regime, release documentations, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now for post-live reference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the development projects I've involved, use Jira actively while development is active. Once the project moves to BAU mode, Jira is not the tool that is used often, it could  be wiki write up or support manual. Best to stick with what your company adheres to for post-live references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22080" LastActivityDate="2016-10-13T17:17:58.507" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20207" CreationDate="2016-10-13T18:10:17.783" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;in my experience brainstorming does not very well and is made worse if people arrive 'cold' - the key for me is preparation i.e. finding a way for attendees to arrive with: a clear knowledge of why they are there; what their role is inside the meeting; what the specific purpose of the session is; having had some time to think about the problem before they arrive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they arrive without even reading any documents that are sent out beforehand, it can be a waste of time and effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25727" LastActivityDate="2016-10-13T18:10:17.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20301" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-13T19:33:58.710" Score="-1" ViewCount="1095" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am using MS Project and OmniPlan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work alone, and right know in my plan there are several tasks that can be tackled simultaneously (for example, looking in internet for a street local, to investigate about decoration, investigate about electronics, and to go to the town house in order to ask some questions about the street local permissions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want the Gantt diagram to assign 8h between the 4 tasks. So I work 2h in each. But also, when one of the tasks finish, to share 8/3=2.6 hours to the 3 tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By following this logic, this way of calculation should take the same amount of time than the standard: &quot;only 1 task at the same time&quot;, in order to calculate the project finish date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen I can adjust a % to a task. But I don't want a fixed %, I want the program to share my available working time. Right now I am out of ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26240" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-11-14T20:42:51.173" LastActivityDate="2018-03-10T03:14:44.677" Title="Resource to divide time between several tasks, depending of the number of tasks" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20285" CreationDate="2016-10-13T20:01:46.667" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stakeholder needs to be more involved and your PM needs to be more transparent, consider complaints as feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26241" LastActivityDate="2016-10-13T20:01:46.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20285" CreationDate="2016-10-14T05:35:24.747" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to reduce the trouble caused by these type of clients is by documenting everything and anything that is related to your project. Get approved by them and Organize it in a common place. Even then if something goes wrong the best way is to agree with the client and accept the mistake. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26247" LastActivityDate="2016-10-14T05:35:24.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20193" CreationDate="2016-10-14T11:07:57.360" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;the fact you have a client and vendor should (in theory) have no impact on EVM at all but in practice it can if the vendor knows nothing about EVM or the requirement to do EVM is not part of their contract.  How you set up EVM is critical and I include contractual obligations to provide periodic data to do EVM, not just how the process and system that are created designed - this is important too.  Mark's comments are spot on too. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25727" LastActivityDate="2016-10-14T11:07:57.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20239" CreationDate="2016-10-14T11:13:55.770" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that not being able to 'size' and therefore meet a sprint is a common issues and almost always caused by poor estimating.  It's something many people try to shortcut and to their cost.  You have two choices - you have to decompose stories (or whatever you are using) to a point where you can estimate them and either use hours, or simply give them a relative size against an item in the sprint that you can confidently estimate.  The second method can be harder and is likely to need more of a planning poker type of approach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also think it is not a 'size' thing (i.e. level of detail) that gets you to the point of being able to get to 'reasonable' estimates.  It is more about asking questions when you look at a feature/story the answers to which determine if you need to decompose more to get to an estimate you can have faith in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25727" LastEditorUserId="25727" LastEditDate="2016-10-14T21:00:35.350" LastActivityDate="2016-10-14T21:00:35.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20285" CreationDate="2016-10-14T13:04:12.967" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Observe and ponder on situations when things go wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is that the client complaint about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(a) about the thing that gone wrong?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(b) that you didn't inform them soon enough?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(c) about the predictability?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(d) about the overall  quality?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(e) or something else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These all fall under the topic &lt;strong&gt;stakeholder management&lt;/strong&gt;! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make it work for both parties you will need to figure out what is causing agony to the client and take remedial actions where you are failing.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Mistakes happens, but it is how they are perceived what makes it different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coach/mentor the team to learn from each mistake, it is important not to do it again. This can severely damage client's expectation and trust on you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you highlight those which went well, for both client's and team's benefits. (Help to boost the confidence of the client and morale of the team.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remain transparent and honest always. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you have tried all the avenues yet situations don't improve, you can be assured you tried your best!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22080" LastActivityDate="2016-10-14T13:04:12.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20260" CreationDate="2016-10-14T16:22:22.827" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best Sprint Reviews I've been a part of are the ones where the entire Scrum Team collaborated to execute the meeting.  The Scrum Master would facilitate the call and handle meeting logistics.  The PO would summarize sprint goals and accomplishments and lend more in depth business value discussion into the conversations during the actual demo.  They were responsible for driving the conversation.  The actual demonstration of the sprint deliverables was conducted by the development team.  There is no one more qualified to provide that demo than the individuals that actually did the building.  It also allows them the opportunity to be included rather than being in an &quot;observer&quot; mode only for the review.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seeing all components of the scrum team collaborate during the Sprint Review is like all the components of a symphony coming together.  The Product Owner &quot;owns&quot; the ceremony as they are accountable for the information being conveyed to stakeholders and feedback being shared.  The execution though of the ceremony should be a shared responsibility.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26255" LastActivityDate="2016-10-14T16:22:22.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20310" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20313" CreationDate="2016-10-14T19:57:56.063" Score="1" ViewCount="3305" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying out TFS online and using the Scrum template. I have Sprint 1 under &lt;code&gt;Current&lt;/code&gt; and then I have Sprints 2 - 6 listed under &lt;code&gt;Future&lt;/code&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once I have all tasks moved to the &lt;code&gt;Done&lt;/code&gt; column, how do I close out Sprint 1 and make Sprint 2 the &lt;code&gt;Current&lt;/code&gt; Sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26258" LastActivityDate="2016-10-15T00:04:26.240" Title="How to complete Sprint and move to next Sprint in TFS Online" Tags="&lt;tfs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20301" CreationDate="2016-10-14T19:59:44.520" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't speak for OmniPlan - but Microsoft Project will not automatically assign resources to tasks.  You could set up all four tasks as fixed duration = 1 day, enter in the 2 hours of work and Project will calculate the assignment units.  However, it will not know that you finished one of the tasks without you telling it and it will most certainly not re-adjust the assignment units for the remaining tasks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2016-10-14T19:59:44.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20301" CreationDate="2016-10-14T20:47:43.823" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Change to the resource usage to see how the work is split between the tasks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For replaning your time you'll need to write a macro that calculates the time saved. Finds the related tasks and splits the extra time between them&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="563" LastActivityDate="2016-10-14T20:47:43.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20310" CreationDate="2016-10-15T00:04:26.240" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have to set the iteration dates. Once you've applied dates to the iterations, the Current iteration is based on today's date. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastActivityDate="2016-10-15T00:04:26.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20314" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-15T15:18:15.007" Score="3" ViewCount="391" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am learning about using Scrum with Team Foundation Server (TFS). The project template is Scrum and we have the three columns &lt;code&gt;Todo&lt;/code&gt;,  &lt;code&gt;In Progress&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;Done&lt;/code&gt;.   Once the developers have completed their work and moved their tasks to &lt;code&gt;Done&lt;/code&gt; what is the best practice to let the QA team know the work is done and they need to test it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I watched the TFS Scrum training on PluralSight and this was brought up in the video and the facilitator said the answer was to just &quot;tell the QA team its done and they would start their test plans&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this really the way its done in Scrum? You just tell them QA person, either verbally or in email, &quot;Hey, I am done with Task 34, start testing?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be curious to know how others are doing this.  This is our first time trying to full utilize Scrum on my team and I know this is going to come up especially with my QA team whom is used to Waterfall and being assigned tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26258" LastActivityDate="2016-10-15T15:33:29.443" Title="Assign work to QA team using Scrum template in TFS" Tags="&lt;tfs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20314" CreationDate="2016-10-15T15:33:29.443" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum itself doesn't really define &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; you're supposed to communicate within the Team. If just non-formally informing QA works for you, great. If not, look into a tool to do it. An important point, though: a story that has not yet been approved by QA should not be considered 'Done'. It's only Done once it's ready to ship to the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A common practice is to add a 'QA' column on the scrum board, between 'In Progress' and 'Done'. Devs move stories from 'Ready' to 'In Progress' then to 'QA'. QA personnel then move it either to 'Ready' (if a problem was found with it) or 'Done'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Scrum prescribes cross-functional teams, the QA personnel should, ideally, be part of the Scrum Team. And as they are part of the Scrum Team, they should certainly have visibility to the Scrum Board. At which point, with a QA column, seeing which stories are ready to QA should be trivial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-10-15T15:33:29.443" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20301" CreationDate="2016-10-15T17:51:58.177" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hope you are not driving to the town house while running three different queries.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears you have four tasks that get you to a milestone.  Planning tools generally sequence them to determine the earliest date for the milestone, or the slack time until the milestone.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your tasks would chart as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;- start - looking in internet for a street locale  -  milestone (done)&#xA;     \\ - investigate about decoration             -  //&#xA;      \ - investigate about electronics            -  /&#xA;        - go to townhouse to investigate...        -&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given one resource, they should only work on one of these tasks at a time.  The ordering doesn't matter.  A tool that imposes ordering is adding constraints that don't really exist.  Just ignore the ordering and work the tasks in the order that makes more sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A better model might be a list of steps to the milestone.  Pick one step to start with, and when you are done or blocked start another step.  Try to minimize the unfinished steps.  Last time I used it Microsoft Project did not support planning this, but can be used to track progress.  I haven't used OmniPlan, but I suspect it works in a similar manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;milestone&#xA;- looking in internet for a street locale&#xA;- investigate about decoration &#xA;- investigate about electronics&#xA;- go to townhouse to investigate.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2016-10-15T17:51:58.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20285" CreationDate="2016-10-16T00:19:10.620" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Very general advice that will work to &lt;em&gt;some extent&lt;/em&gt;, no matter the client:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each time they complain about something, take a note.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then, next time you talk to them, tell them what you've done to address their complaint. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problem is, actually addressing all of their complaints will take a TON of your time. But if you care about this client, and make a sincere effort--and show them you are making a sincere effort--then you should see some results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If after all of that, they're still unappreciative... Then it's them, not you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17925" LastActivityDate="2016-10-16T00:19:10.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20318" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20319" CreationDate="2016-10-16T02:42:26.147" Score="0" ViewCount="2180" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to do some planning for an hypothetical DropBox-like project. I was wondering if in general the Functional Decomposition Diagram I came up with makes sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/N3fwd.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/N3fwd.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I focusing on the right stuff? Am I listing too many processes for some functions and too few for others? Do I have the dependency lines drawn properly? Any help would be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these questions too general? Is there a newbie-friendly help site?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26264" LastEditorUserId="26264" LastEditDate="2016-10-16T23:06:52.967" LastActivityDate="2016-10-16T23:06:52.967" Title="Functional Decomposition Diagrams help" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20318" CreationDate="2016-10-16T19:15:40.653" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few comments first:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This looks more like functional decomposition rather than DFD: there are no flows as such.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The breakdown between &lt;code&gt;Customer Service&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;Data Service&lt;/code&gt; is unclear. On one hand, you have authentication listed on the left, on another &lt;code&gt;Desktop App&lt;/code&gt; (which presumably includes authentication) is on the right.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're decomposing based on function, rather than deployment (client vs. server side), then the top-level entities could look like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Registration and Authentication&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;File management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Integration to client apps (Mobile/email/browser)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Notification/event system&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multi-user collaboration: sharing etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's of course more, but that's a start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're decomposing based on deployment or going for a classic DFD, then the top list would start with client-/server-side, and then for the server side, go into file storage (including CDN), NoSQL DB (also including scalability), API etc. etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the comment above says, it really depends on how far you want to go. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25908" LastActivityDate="2016-10-16T19:15:40.653" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20253" CreationDate="2016-10-16T22:16:12.683" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask your supervisor which level of the WBS he want you to operate on. You can definitely spend weeks in this task depending on the level you go. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just keep in mind that you may not need to go to the very low level of details. If you can isolate nodes that can be assigned to a resource and is not longer than 40h duration you can start work. The further breakdown can happen later, as long as it doesn't compromise the duration and effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20923" LastActivityDate="2016-10-16T22:16:12.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20321" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20322" CreationDate="2016-10-17T00:33:03.377" Score="9" ViewCount="794" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a typical non-Scrum environment, a Project (or, Product, maybe) Manager will be the one responsible for project/product success, and so assigns tasks to the members, make sure it gets completed. Gives pressure to the assigned members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When considering a developer's performance, whether you use Waterfall or Scrum, unless a developer has a very highly professional mindset, there exists a certain amount of pressure (to complete the job) which would make the performance of developer at its highest, I think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to learn Scrum, but cannot figure out what (or who) would be the one giving this pressure to the developers.  Or, does Scrum (when ideally practised) trust each developer to control his or herself and do whatever is necessary to optimize their performance, on their own?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26017" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-10-19T11:03:50.817" LastActivityDate="2018-10-09T17:53:21.860" Title="What would be the pressure for developers in scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20321" CreationDate="2016-10-17T01:31:04.393" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, knowledge workers work better under &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y&quot;&gt;Theory Y&lt;/a&gt;, meaning creating an environment such that the primary motivation driving them is their own desire to see the project to completion. This also ties well into Scrum's mandate of a 'self-organizing team'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not to say the business can just dump a project onto the Team's laps and then wander off, providing no input nor constraints from then onward, of course (putting aside that the stakeholders should be receiving updates and providing feedback every sprint at the Sprint Review meeting). For what you seem to be looking for, someone responsible for making sure each individual requirement is completed to satisfaction, the role of Product Owner fits best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner's role is to be the evangelist and, well, &lt;em&gt;owner&lt;/em&gt;, of the product. This includes not only things like prioritising the backlog and ensuring the Development Team understands each requirement, but also managing the stakeholders' expectations. &lt;em&gt;Hypothetically speaking&lt;/em&gt;, if the Development Team isn't 'properly' completing tasks, but all of the stakeholders are still fully satisfied, then there isn't really a problem. If the stakeholders &lt;em&gt;aren't&lt;/em&gt; satisfied, then it becomes the Product Owner's job to fix that - either by adjusting the stakeholders' expectations or, as is more in vein with your question, bringing the issue up to the Development Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-10-17T01:31:04.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20323" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20325" CreationDate="2016-10-17T10:06:43.263" Score="-2" ViewCount="365" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have two different teams (which are separate implementation vendors) doing design and development for an implementation of Microsoft dynamics CRM, currently at the prototyping stage. The Design team feels that the Development Team is unable to interpret the design and develop while the Development Team feels that the output of the Design Team is substandard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I improve their collaboration and change how they evaluate each other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26276" LastEditorUserId="26276" LastEditDate="2016-10-19T02:19:16.537" LastActivityDate="2016-10-19T02:19:16.537" Title="Conflict Management between Development team and design team" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ClosedDate="2016-10-18T15:17:21.283" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20324" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20349" CreationDate="2016-10-17T13:27:49.383" Score="3" ViewCount="759" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a small development team, and we have recently started using TFS and visual studio online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Up until now, we have only been using Product Backlog Items, Bugs and Tasks. We would like to start making proper use of Features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should all PBIs exist inside a feature, or is it okay to keep some of them &quot;stand alone&quot;?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that a lot of it is down to what works best for the individual team, but are there any guidelines or official suggestions on the topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit to clarify how we use VSO currently&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We currently use visual studio online in a simple manner, up until now we have only used PBI, bugs and tasks. The primary purpose right now for us is a work log for the developers so we know what we have to do and can track our progress. We do not use it for reporting to higher management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &quot;create a new widget&quot; would go in as a PBI, and would have some tasks under it such as &quot;create DB tables&quot;, &quot;create HTML form&quot; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly with bugs, &quot;pressing this button raises an error&quot; would go in as a bug with tasks underneath it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This effectively gives us a pretty long list of PBIs and Bugs each sprint, and we would like to start grouping the PBIs by features. For example, we would create a feature called &quot;Create a user account area&quot; and put PBIs underneath it such as &quot;Create reset password function&quot;, &quot;Create notification settings page&quot; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question then boils down to, is the &quot;proper&quot; way of using VSO to have all PBIs under such a feature, or whether its okay to keep some unparented. For example, if we had a PBI called &quot;Log users out after 1 hour of inactivity&quot; and we have no logical feature to put this under, should we create a new feature specifically for this (such as &quot;Session Functionality&quot;), create a generic feature (such as &quot;Miscellaneous Changes&quot;) or just leave the PBI unparented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note these are all just examples&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26279" LastEditorUserId="26279" LastEditDate="2016-10-18T11:49:37.947" LastActivityDate="2016-10-19T17:10:21.587" Title="Should all backlog items exist inside a feature?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20323" CreationDate="2016-10-17T13:37:07.800" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;having two separate teams is bay far the best way to get conflict.  If you have some developers work with the designers and visa-versa the benefits will be great. Developers will understand the design better and designers will understand what developers want and need better. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;here is a good example of how one firm did it: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/LeonBarnard/leon-barnard-productcamp-sf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.slideshare.net/LeonBarnard/leon-barnard-productcamp-sf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25727" LastEditorUserId="25727" LastEditDate="2016-10-17T15:21:19.080" LastActivityDate="2016-10-17T15:21:19.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17525" CreationDate="2016-10-17T13:42:12.087" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;these people&quot; are not wrong at all. MS project and every other critical path based planning tool will always update the dates based on user input and the movement of time or data. If you don't want this to happen, use another type of tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25727" LastActivityDate="2016-10-17T13:42:12.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20324" CreationDate="2016-10-17T13:43:07.550" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Strictly speaking, a Story is for that which is the smallest amount of work which still provides direct business value. This could be any number of things, such as (for software) 'improve how fast it runs', 'protect against DDS attacks', 'create of user documentation', or even 'create that report the CEO asked for'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At that point, it becomes clear that there exist some stories which might not make sense being called 'features'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-10-17T13:43:07.550" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20323" CreationDate="2016-10-17T14:07:32.533" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen companies outsourcing each phase of SDLC to different vendors. It asks for more collaboration plus strenuous and strict processes to avoid conflicts and ensure smooth running of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now an important question to ask:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the two activities, design and development happening in parallel with design a little ahead or so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it that you/development team wait for the requirement analysis and design to finish to embark on development journey?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If both teams are working simultaneously, the best way to resolve conflict is to encourage constant collaboration between the two teams. &#xA;You could do agile incremental delivery of your deliverables and involve the designers in planning to understand you interpret the requirements correctly from the design. Also it is equally important to invite design team to the demo/showcase of the completed stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If on the other-hand if you are yet to start the development, make sure your team spend some upfront thoughts into the designs handed over to you before starting the development work.  It will help the team to figure out if the designs are the best possible and feasible solution for the problem you have. Do a sprint zero kind of activity to derive your key deliverables from the design  documents.&#xA;Ask design team for clarifications and set up reviews if needed. Establish a solid understanding of the system high level before you code it. You will need to make sure the design team agree on this understanding - otherwise it will turn out to be interpretation error!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22080" LastEditorUserId="22080" LastEditDate="2016-10-17T14:16:48.080" LastActivityDate="2016-10-17T14:16:48.080" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20253" CreationDate="2016-10-17T16:44:00.677" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fast-good-cheap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good WBS is created in tandem with the people who are accountable for the work packages. A poor WBS is created in isolation. You can create a poor WBS in 2 hours. (I can do it in 1 hour for half the cost, and 10% of the quality).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Up to some limit, the more time you spend on the WBS, the more effective it will be in planning and predicting project closure.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, your boss has expressed an unreasonable request.  If my boss asked for that, I'd submit three WBS within 5 hours - an optimistic, a pessimistic and a PERT estimate. I'd promise only that the results were within +/- 100% of the most likely value, and I would include a cyclical activity for reification of the resulting project plan narrowing those confidence intervals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also start to plan a campaign to educate my manager on the true value of a WBS - if you develop it fast and cheap it will be a very poor tool for predicting the future. If I couldn't come to agreement with my manager, I'd start circulating my resume.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2016-10-17T16:44:00.677" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20239" CreationDate="2016-10-17T17:22:18.327" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a balance between the Product Owner providing a clear picture of the requirements in the story and then the Development Team being able to take that information as well as collaborating with the PO (woah, there's a crazy idea) to discuss what work is required to fulfill those requirements.  If the team doesn't know something from the &quot;WHAT&quot; that the PO is asking for then the PO should find out and the story should continue to be groomed.  As the team begins to have feedback about what work would be required to build the requirements then they can help specify &quot;HOW&quot; the work is broken down.  The PO should remain open to breaking stories down as that will give them the most transparency around how work is progressing once it gets pulled into a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The teams I work with have a PO that puts in as much information as they can into a story to provide the best picture of what they expect AND the value it provides.  They then collaborate with the team during the estimation exercise as the developers talk through and whiteboard the work that is necessary.  If something feels too big then the conversation keeps going to break it down.  The team should have feedback to the PO if they feel something is missing or if the stories are too detailed (as that can happen too).  Stories with good descriptions, acceptance criteria, mockups, etc. also help paint that picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26255" LastActivityDate="2016-10-17T17:22:18.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20324" CreationDate="2016-10-17T18:01:53.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you at a high-enough level in the organization, or is your project big enough, to warrant the use of features? If features help you track and deliver work better, use them. But if they just add more clicks to your work flow and make it more complicated to report on progress, don't use them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13325" LastActivityDate="2016-10-17T18:01:53.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="534" CreationDate="2016-10-18T06:49:26.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Encourage face to face discussions for co-located teams. For distributed teams, use phone calls, Skype calls, whatsapp calls etc. Only use emails for follow ups and documentation.Daily scrums are also an effective tool for communication.&#xA;For stakeholders, have  detailed status reports presented regularly at a defined time. Make sure to communicate progress, risks, issues, dependencies clearly to avoid surprises if things go wrong&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26276" LastActivityDate="2016-10-18T06:49:26.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20338" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20350" CreationDate="2016-10-18T14:50:53.310" Score="0" ViewCount="978" Body="&lt;p&gt;When using the KANBAN board on JIRA, and I change the status of an EPIC to IN PROGRESS (either changing the status through the status field or moving the card to the &quot;IN PROGRESS&quot; column), the respective card disappears from the board. I still can see them through filters, in the issues view, but not in the kanban board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know why that happen? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And is there a way to show those EPICS in the IN PROGRESS column/status from the KANBAN board?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26235" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-01-15T09:16:27.173" LastActivityDate="2019-01-15T09:16:27.173" Title="JIRA: How to show Epics with the status &quot;In Progress&quot; in the Kanban board?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20339" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20340" CreationDate="2016-10-18T17:35:07.250" Score="0" ViewCount="166" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team consists of three people. We are visiting the same school and are working on the diploma project, which should be finished in about one and a half year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may seem a bit silly, but I can barely resist not doing the hole work of the team by myself which is bad, because now I don't have much time for school. I think motivation is a big player when it comes to working on a project. The second question therefore is: &quot;&lt;code&gt;How can I motivate my team to do something, without forcing them?&lt;/code&gt;&quot;. I don't want to force my team, because they are still my friends and this shouldn't be changed by the project, so this is a big NO-NO!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTE:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes - I've created a detailed plan for the project and I've talked with them about how to use certain tools, so there should be no lack of knowledge!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26290" LastActivityDate="2016-10-18T18:39:00.923" Title="Resist doing all the work by myself" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;&lt;communication-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20339" CreationDate="2016-10-18T18:03:36.820" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project management is simple - based on the information you have, predict &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;when the project will be done (schedule), &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what the project will cost(Cost) and; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how well it will fill the need (quality).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I understand the problem, you're doing more than your fair share of the work.  There are two possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I can barely resist not doing the [w]hole work of the team by myself &quot; - in which case the cost of the project is measured in the impact on your schoolwork and on your future earnings potential. (Cost can be opportunity cost as well as dollar/pound/franc/etc. cost).  If the project delays your degree it will have a &lt;em&gt;huge&lt;/em&gt; impact on your lifetime earning potential.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can't help doing the work because the rest of your team is not motivated to  do the work.   There are many things you can do from a leadership perspective, but from a project management perspective, you just adjust the schedule, cost and quality based on observed behavior.  (This is a situation in which I find myself frequently).  &quot;You agreed to do X by date Y, but  you're only 50% done, which means that X will not complete until Z; that will delay the completion date for entire project until date W.&quot;  If everyone is comfortable with W, then fine.  But if W creeps forward until W is long after graduation date, then that discussion may lead your team to either change behavior or close the project.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just saw the update to the question, in which you point out that one of the potential costs of the project is your friendship. Excellent observation, and you need to find a way to discuss and quantify that potential cost. (realistically, there is no way to quantify the value of friendship; in the past in similar situations what I've done is to give everyone veto power.  If anyone feels like this project's burden is rising to the point where it threatens the friendship, then that individual can pull the plug.  Others agree that there will be no judgement, no condemnation.  I've worked on projects where the stress was sufficient to require medical care.  Is this project really worth that cost?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Emphasis&lt;/strong&gt; note that this is not judgmental, this is just evidence. I don't care why you missed the deadline(illness, death in the family, alien invasion), I just care about the impact on the project.   PM isn't about judging people, it is only about the impact on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases, the goal is to measure the impact on the project and then plan mitigations.  Your project is at risk of failure, and you need to mitigate that risk.  Analyzing the project permits you to ask over and over again,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;is this project worth it? Is the benefit of this project worth the cost? Or do I need to reduce the cost, change the schedule, or change the scope (or quality)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I missed the fact that this is schoolwork (I thought it was a side project).  It is very difficult to &quot;close&quot; a school project.   Back when I went to school, there were no group projects; now they seem to be commonplace. I've got two additional suggestions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Manage scope.  If you are not getting team participation, then first make a plan and second talk to the professor.  Explain the problem and what you've done, and make sure to indicate that you'll continue to work to motivate the team. But if participation doesn't increase, then you will scope your participation to a clearly identified portion of the project. (picking an arbitrary example) &quot;I will outline European history from 1200 to 1600, but I personally will be responsible for Turkish history 1300 to 1450.  I have four courses and I'm not willing to fail those courses in order to pass this course, so I have to establish some limits.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Build a smaller group.  My girlfriend had a similar problem in her grad courses; she went to the regular group and worked with them, but she then scheduled a smaller group meeting with the people who were willing to work.  The core team knocked things out because they were working with one another. Harsh, but sometimes the only realistic solution.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In truth your problem goes beyond project management - I've tried to limit my answer to project management interventions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-10-18T18:39:00.923" LastActivityDate="2016-10-18T18:39:00.923" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20239" CreationDate="2016-10-19T10:18:54.460" Score="2" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Coach your product owner. Often you will find that Product Owner have simply cut the system they want into bite-size bits, instead of specifying which value each story delivers.&#xA;Once you focus on value, you discuss how to deliver value with the smallest possible change. This is the red-battery-icon discussion above. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Draw all days of your Sprint on paper. Let your team plan in detail when they plan to do which story.&#xA;Sprints are preferybly NOT larger than 2 weeks, otherwise too much complexity gets a place to hide itself.  Stories larger than 3 days must be viewed with extreme suspicion. When a programmer plans to bury himself for &gt; 3 days with no intermediate checks or feedbacks, he's saying 'I don't know'.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use the retrospective to answer this question. Make sure you have hard data about what happened the last Sprint. No guessing or feelings. Facts!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24119" LastActivityDate="2016-10-19T10:18:54.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20321" CreationDate="2016-10-19T10:31:48.720" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You make an important assumption - that pressure is necessary. &#xA;This assumption maybe true or false - but it does limit your view of the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum operates under different assumptions.&#xA;You will not 'get' Scrum because you will keep looking for a way to apply pressure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not saying that either you or Scrum are right - or wrong.  But your worldview is different; like trying to explain the benefits of a bicycle to a bird. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will not change your view on the world but it may open you to the possibility that there are more ways to get people to do their work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dan Pink: The surprising truth about what motivates us&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24119" LastActivityDate="2016-10-19T10:31:48.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20324" CreationDate="2016-10-19T17:10:21.587" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask why is is necessary to use this extra level of hierarchy.  If the benefit can be defined, then the answer to your question will reveal itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often this becomes a way to answer &quot;When will feature &lt;em&gt;XYZ&lt;/em&gt; be complete?&quot;  Since the Product Backlog is often evolving, it may not make sense to look at it in such a way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When forced to use additional hierarchies, such as &lt;em&gt;features&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;epics&lt;/em&gt;, Scrum Teams often leave items outside of this system when it makes sense.  It all comes down to the purpose of adding the additional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2016-10-19T17:10:21.587" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20338" CreationDate="2016-10-19T19:26:02.007" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Kanban board has a mapping of statuses to columns (in the board configuration).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible that you have no column that is mapped to the &quot;In Progress&quot; status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means that any issue with a status of &quot;In Progress&quot; will not appear on the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also possible that you have a trigger associated with the transition to &quot;In Progress&quot; that is doing something that might make the epic invisible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-10-19T19:26:02.007" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20351" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20352" CreationDate="2016-10-19T21:05:43.987" Score="4" ViewCount="4791" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to define epics for the following project: &quot;a mobile application which makes you discover a city through a detective game&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The game basically needs to display your position on a map to get you from one key point to another; when you arrive at a key point, you have to solve some kind of riddle to unlock the next key point. The fact that the game can be played offline is required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am new to Agile and project management (as it is a university project) and I tried to gather some epics. I found plenty of example of epics for Web projects, but nothing for mobile game development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far, I have the following epics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a user, I want to be able to know where to go next&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a user, I want to be able to store my progression in the game&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a user, I want to be able to share my progression in the game&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a user, I want to use the application offline&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My questions are:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which &quot;&lt;em&gt;who&lt;/em&gt;&quot; should I put: only &quot;&lt;em&gt;user&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, or should &quot;&lt;em&gt;developer&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, &quot;&lt;em&gt;tester&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, &quot;&lt;em&gt;admin&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, etc. be included?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From which point of view should we see things?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;For instance, should it be &quot;&lt;em&gt;As a user, I want to use the application offline&lt;/em&gt;&quot; or &quot;&lt;em&gt;As a developer, I want the application to work offline&lt;/em&gt;&quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are epics 2 and 3 not user stories instead? Should they not be part of a same epic &quot;As a user, I want to store and share my progression&quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have any examples from your experience or ideas of epics which could fit this project?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26307" LastActivityDate="2016-10-26T08:01:39.357" Title="Example epics for an mobile game" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;epics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20351" CreationDate="2016-10-20T00:50:42.573" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you've marked your question as Scrum, my advice to you is to have your Product Owner &lt;em&gt;talk to the stakeholders&lt;/em&gt;. Both the ones sponsoring the project (in your case, the teacher), and the ones who (hypothetically or otherwise) would actually &lt;em&gt;use&lt;/em&gt; the system. If you don't have any users, go out and find some! Interview random people (or, failing that, friends and family), asking them what they would like the product to do if they were to actually use it. Market research!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that done, epics should evolve naturally as you compile all the requirements (both feasible and not) that the Product Owner has gathered. In the end, the point of Epics is essentially to group Stories, after all. Doesn't make much sense to have Epics if you don't even &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; any Stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, to actually answer your listed questions...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1 and 2):&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Stories should be written from the perspective of the person who actually &lt;em&gt;wants&lt;/em&gt; the requirement. 'User' fits fairly well for all of the above. A typical developer won't really &lt;em&gt;care&lt;/em&gt; if an application they're never going to use can be used offline or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you had something along, say, the lines of security, though... 'As a user, I want to make sure all the SQL is sanitized so I cannot break through into the database and steal all the company's information' doesn't really jive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases you can/should get more specific, such as 'As an experienced user, I want hotkeys for (feature), so I can complete it more quickly', or 'As a novice user, I want the usability of (feature) to be simple enough that I can figure it out without needing to check documentation.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3 and 4):&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;It seems to me that &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of the ones you've provided there are more 'stories' than 'epics'. As a general guideline, each story will have one requirement, while each epic will have &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epics I've seen are more along the lines of 'User Interface Design', 'Integration with Order Management System', or 'Image Attachments'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-10-20T00:50:42.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20351" CreationDate="2016-10-20T04:31:04.283" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm yet to see a clear standard on what epics are. However, in real-life situations, epics are often used to define a macro requirement that is too big to fit into a sprint and delivered as a single user story. &#xA;From this standpoint, your four entries look good. For example, the &lt;em&gt;As a user, I want to be able to know where to go next&lt;/em&gt; epic could be comprised of stories along these lines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a level designer, I want to be able to define which cities one can go from a given city.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a level designer, I'd like to define conditions which open a new link from city X to city Y for a given user.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a tester, I'd like an ability to provide mock map data that defines links between cities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc. etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, coming back to your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) At the epic level, I'd usually talk about the end-user, as macro requirements tend to provide a requirement that's of use to the customer. However, at the story level, it might be quite different as you saw from my examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Same answer as for the question above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) I think they make sense in their own right. It's possible to release version 1.1 of the game with saving, and 1.2 with sharing: they don't have to be bundled together. Also, most likely either won't fit into a single sprint and would require a similar breakdown to the one in the first epic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Here are a few examples that come to mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a user, I would like to be able to register to the game&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As the game developer, I would like the ability to gather statistics about game's usage, so I can focus my future roadmap (&lt;em&gt;I realize I contradicted my answer to 1 here a bit)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a user, I would like to choose and solve a riddles in a given city&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As an Android user, I would like to play the game on Android 4.0 and newer devices.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The disclaimers are that I have not done full project planning for a mobile game, and that this is not an exhaustive list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25908" LastActivityDate="2016-10-20T04:31:04.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20290" CreationDate="2016-10-20T09:47:15.280" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For exactly this situation, JIRA offers quick filters for Agile Board. What I do is add these filters according to the team and then you see the status for each of the team.&#xA;This can be accessed by &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/k3scz.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/k3scz.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which will take you to board configuration where you can add Quick Filters.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0CEAP.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0CEAP.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the filter is visible on the top of the board.&#xA;For more detail, please refer &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/agile/jira-agile-user-s-guide/configuring-a-board/configuring-quick-filters&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Atlassian Documentation&quot;&gt;Atlassian Documentation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2859" LastActivityDate="2016-10-20T09:47:15.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9983" CreationDate="2016-10-20T10:49:19.560" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be wary of using eDays, as these will give unexpected results if your lags span weekends or other non-working days. These are specifically delays in calendar days.&#xA;If you have a milestone starting on Tuesday, say, at the beginning of the working day, a subsequent milestone with a lag of 1d will be posted at the end of the same working day. You can see this by changing the date format to show hours and minutes as well as the date.&#xA;However, if you have a task which is initiated by that milestone then, by virtue of the fact that the work has to be done during working hours, it will schedule from the start of the following day, as it should.&#xA;And what is more, if you put a milestone on that task with a SS dependency, then it will show Wednesday, at the beginning of the day... as you wanted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26315" LastActivityDate="2016-10-20T10:49:19.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20358" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-20T15:54:28.260" Score="2" ViewCount="914" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is the situation:&#xA;I have one project with several issues relating to tasks our team has to complete. We (currently) have two &quot;categories&quot; of tasks to complete. Let's call them: &quot;Environment Setup&quot; and &quot;Technical Debt Removal&quot;. I want a way to track whether tasks are completed, and who is working on what.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have issues in my project that either relate to one or the other, not both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to have two separate Kanban boards to track the work on these two things independently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried to create several boards within the project but this doesn't work, since all the issues show up in both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26318" LastActivityDate="2016-10-20T16:44:28.950" Title="JIRA: how to have many Kanban boards for one project" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20358" CreationDate="2016-10-20T16:44:28.950" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What field are you entering the categories into? I would recommend using &quot;component&quot; (but using label or epic would also work) and then creating either quick filters or swimlanes for the 2 different components. This way they would live on the same board, but you can easily switch between quick filters to see only 1 category at a time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you have your heart set on 2 different boards, you can easily do that also by changing the board configuration filter query. (Under General &gt; Filter &gt; Saved Filter &gt; Edit Filter Query. JQL would be &quot;component = Environment Setup&quot;. Then create a new board, with &quot;component = Technical Debt Removal&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22225" LastActivityDate="2016-10-20T16:44:28.950" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20362" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-21T09:38:01.947" Score="-2" ViewCount="1876" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a proposal for my project to create a data warehouse for a company. I came to the question of the Project Outline and I am a bit not sure of what shall I say in regards to this section! Does it mean a summary of the project itself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help would be appreciated!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26324" LastActivityDate="2016-10-23T07:39:43.347" Title="Project Outline" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;definition&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20366" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20367" CreationDate="2016-10-23T00:44:12.863" Score="4" ViewCount="564" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our Scrum there is a common phenomenon whereby the burndown chart does not represent well the team's progress. Most of the way into the sprint, only a third of the stories are closed, and the bulk of the remainder gets resolved in the past couple of days. This makes the burndown chart opaque, and not very useful for tracking sprint's success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main reason for this opacity is not team's unwillingness to close tasks, but rather the fact that we close stories only when they have been validated and demoed (as they should), and the validation process involves an unwieldy build installation/deployment which may take a few days from the point where the developer completed the code changes.&#xA;The install/deploy cycle could be shortened, but the nature of the business we're in (network appliances) can never make it very fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd be interested in best ways to deal with this. The options I was thinking of were:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Just ignore the burndown charts, and use other metrics to track progress.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Separate coding and validation tasks into separate stories (obviously, not very clean, as the point of a story is to provide customer value). In other words, promote tasks into stories, and stories into mini-epics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25908" LastActivityDate="2016-10-23T12:24:59.703" Title="Opaque burndown charts and story validation" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;burndown-chart&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20366" CreationDate="2016-10-23T00:54:41.770" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly, I'm not sure I'm seeing the problem. The primary purpose of a Scrum burndown chart is to measure and predict velocity, is it not? In which case, while the chart might not be &lt;em&gt;pretty&lt;/em&gt; if most of the tasks are burned down in the last couple days, it's still going to be just as useful. As far as velocity planning in concerned, what happens day-to-day doesn't really matter - it's only the velocity for the full sprint that is important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding having the stories burn down before they're accepted, I would caution against it. What if the validation fails? Would the story get burned back &lt;em&gt;up&lt;/em&gt; again? Now &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; would make the chart hard to read!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, for whatever reason, you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; need day-to-day updates of when initial, non-accepted development work on stories is done, then I would suggest using a separate chart. Don't throw away the burndown, though. Keep it for completed stories and velocity planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're just looking for a way to determine likelihood of reaching a Sprint's Goal, can't you just look at the sprint board? Assuming you have sufficient columns ('waiting for install/deploy' comes to mind, in your case), it should provide a decent overview of the sprint. If you're halfway through the sprint and 80% of your stories are still in 'TODO' or 'In Progress', then you've got a problem, etc. While it's not a precision metric, it should suffice in most cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-10-23T03:25:50.443" LastActivityDate="2016-10-23T03:25:50.443" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20362" CreationDate="2016-10-23T07:39:43.347" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project outline should consist of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1: Business requirement&#xA;2. What is being proposed&#xA;3. Technology to be used&#xA;4. Timeline &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should give an idea if what you are going to talk about in subsequent slides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26351" LastActivityDate="2016-10-23T07:39:43.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20285" CreationDate="2016-10-23T08:04:13.680" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every complaint should be responded with a reason and corrective action to be taken to prevent it's future occurrence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should also be recorded for reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outcome of periodic Analysis could be following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Training need&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Process change&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change in team size&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change required in experience level of the team members&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it the default behaviour of the client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regards&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26351" LastActivityDate="2016-10-23T08:04:13.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20366" CreationDate="2016-10-23T12:24:59.703" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Burndown charts are a useful way for teams to see whether or not they are making a steady progress towards completing the planned work in a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lots of Scrum teams recognise that there is value in having stories completed steadily throughout a sprint, rather than being resolved towards the end of the sprint. For these teams burndown charts are a useful tool, as they can give early warning that the team is back-loading a sprint. They could review the burndown chart during their daily Scrum meeting and a poor burndown may be seen as an indication they have too much work in progress and are not completing stories early enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say in your case the burndown chart is working exactly as it should. It is indicating that you are backloading sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not your team worries about this, is up to you. But the burndown chart is not the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The install/deploy cycle could be shortened, but the nature of the business we're in (network appliances) can never make it very fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You know your business of course, but I doubt that this is impossible to do. Often it comes down to a trade-off of the benefits against an investment of time (and likely money). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-10-23T12:24:59.703" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20371" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-23T17:10:39.413" Score="-2" ViewCount="520" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have an existing application. What are the most efficient ways to get patent ideas out from a group of people during a brainstorming session? For example, brainstorm ideas and list them on a board or ask participants to write ideas down on stickers and then collect the stickers and then use them as a base. By efficient I mean both quantity and areas these ideas cover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16493" LastEditorUserId="16493" LastEditDate="2016-10-25T00:31:40.633" LastActivityDate="2016-10-25T09:42:07.770" Title="Efficient patent brainstorming session" Tags="&lt;meetings&gt;&lt;facilitation&gt;&lt;startup&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2016-10-30T13:13:22.083" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20374" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20379" CreationDate="2016-10-24T18:28:18.523" Score="7" ViewCount="1891" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently become scrum master for an established team that has been doing many parts of Scrum, but has not had a scrum master. The team is great team who does well and I have been trying hard to continue with what they are doing that works, while still seeking ways to improve and adapt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team is all in the same time-zone, but they all work remote. This has only been a problem for me in one way, the Sprint Retrospective. Perhaps in part because the meeting is held using an online tool, I often times have very long periods of silence after I ask a question. While I don't worry too much about silence, from individual discussions I know there are things that are not being brought up, and I also feel we are not being very efficient where the meeting is longer than it should be due to the silence. I am fairly certain the main problem is since everyone is on their own machines and our program doesn't allow everyone on the team to be on webcam at the same time (team is too large atm, another story), they are just kind of ignoring most of the meeting and working through them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some things I have either tried or am thinking of trying, can anyone chip in on those and let me know if they have tried some of these and had success or not, or have other little things you have done to encourage participation? &lt;strong&gt;To be perfectly clear I am confident in the team, and also that we will improve, but I would love to hear of other ideas to help if I am not thinking of something, or validation of a good idea.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Main thing I have just started doing is talking more to team members individually, and asking them why they think the team devolves into silence sometimes. This is simple but my main plan to improve our meeting communication.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have toyed with the idea of doing safety checks, I don't think that's the problem but still might do one to be sure.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have done some anonymous polls or questions, but haven't had much response from those.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have considered having random team members run the retrospective, to see if that helps everyone be more comfortable. This is in part because I am the new team member, so that was my thought there.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have sought feedback after meetings on what they liked and didn't like, but haven't got much response there either.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I do keep the meetings as short as possible and try to add some things in so they are not boring.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any insight from experience is appreciated, just trying to make sure I am doing the right things and not missing something important. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26060" LastActivityDate="2016-11-03T15:04:21.833" Title="How to encourage more participation in web scrum meetings?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;&lt;remote-teams&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20374" CreationDate="2016-10-24T19:12:35.920" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been in similar situations, and had similar ideas to yours. Like you observed, it's very easy for people to just work through these meetings when they are remote. Many developers consider this meeting as something &quot;for the managers&quot;, which adds to the effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Raising difficult questions usually helps: e.g. &lt;em&gt;why did we only achieve 50% of our sprint commitment?&lt;/em&gt; as opposed to generic questions (&lt;em&gt;what can we improve in our process?&lt;/em&gt;). This causes people to take note and share their thoughts: especially if they had to do overtime, or do unnecessary work during the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team has an established velocity, and stable dynamics, then it might even make sense to make the meeting optional and run it on demand in sprints which digressed from their goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25908" LastActivityDate="2016-10-24T19:12:35.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20376" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-25T05:55:28.440" Score="3" ViewCount="962" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've got a situation where I'm planning a job running two crews on a 10 on, 4 off roster (days). This means that over a two week period, there are three days where I have both crews working. I am trying to utilise them as a single resource to allow for leveling as either crew can perform the task. If I operate them as separate resources with different calendars, tasks are put off till the resource comes back (even though the other crew can do it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way I can allow over allocation of a resource for a three day period (reoccurring over the life of the project)? If possible, is there a way to ensure that allowing over allocation to be for concurrent tasks? putting both crews on a single task would not yield any increase in efficiency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming this can be done and my skills are not up to the task so if anyone can walk me through it, that would be great. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26377" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T13:36:02.200" Title="Resource Over Allocation in MS Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resources&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20371" CreationDate="2016-10-25T09:35:18.020" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have a look at '&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gv.com/sprint/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Design Sprint&lt;/a&gt;' as an alternative to brainstorming. Its a funnel like method to go from generating new idea's to a validated concept. (I have executed one and I was greatly surprised about how effective it is. Also just reading the book is worth your-while to get new idea's how to facilitate &quot;brainstorming&quot; sessions that do not stifle innovation, including good examples.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This because brainstorming sessions are the least effective way of coming up with new innovative idea's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/nataliepeace/2012/04/09/why-most-brainstorming-sessions-are-useless/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Why Most Brainstorming Sessions Are Useless&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There have been several studies done on the effectiveness of&#xA;  brainstorming, and the results are disappointing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He goes on to say that “people are more creative away from the crowd.&#xA;  It is a universal phenomenon emerging in work across the world,&#xA;  including America, India, Thailand and Japan. In short – for seventy&#xA;  years, people have been using brainstorming to stifle–not stimulate&#xA;  their creative juices.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2016-10-25T09:42:07.770" LastActivityDate="2016-10-25T09:42:07.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20378" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21439" CreationDate="2016-10-25T14:30:00.870" Score="4" ViewCount="135" Body="&lt;p&gt;Somebody asked me to look over their cost calculation for an internal IT project in the 1.5 mio € range. They did some eyeballing, and are now asking me to cross-check it for them with a few hours of effort. There is no malice involved, i.e. I am 100% certain that they won't blame me for anything that happens now or later, no matter what my conclusion about their project is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project includes software, hardware, and time&amp;amp;material for installing the latter; the hardware and the T&amp;amp;M are special enough that neither I nor anybody else outside of the project know much about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, it makes little sense for me to go number-crunching now, as I know nothing about their project except what they already knew and used for their calculation. I also don't want to simply say &quot;no&quot;. So my plan is to teach them a small hands-on method to do the work themselves (maybe with me consulting/moderating).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know of a good way to check such calculations? I know that there are many methods for this kind of work out there, some of them very involved, but I am specifically looking for one which fits on 1-2 slides, can be demonstrated/introduced quickly, and which at least gives some measure of improvement beyond just going by gut-feeling, within a short 1-2 day workshop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are not going to base the final go/no-go on this; it is more a &quot;should we go along with this at all&quot; decision right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26382" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T22:08:33.727" Title="Pragmatic method to check/improve effort calculations" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20374" CreationDate="2016-10-25T19:06:14.727" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience periods of silence in a retrospective are caused by the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team sees no value in the retrospective&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team is too large and people are uncomfortable talking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team has a lot of introverts that feel uncomfortable talking in meetings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is quite possible that you have a combination of all three problems. Throw in the fact it is a remote meeting and you have a powerful combination of factors that discourage conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lack of video is a big issue. People use visual queues in conversation to know when to start speaking and when to listen. You will not get the natural conversation that a retrospective needs using audio only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder whether you could escalate this and try and facilitate a full video-based meeting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, consider gathering the teams good/bad/suggestions list prior to the meeting. Email the team a day before the retro and ask them to reply with what they think has gone well, what went badly and any suggestions they might have. This gives them time to come up with ideas and may help the meeting to flow a little better. It also means that if the conversation dies you can quickly move on to the next item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-10-25T19:06:14.727" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20374" CreationDate="2016-10-26T02:12:46.930" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One simple thing we can do to encourage their participation is reward system. You can announce that the active involvement of every individual will be rewarded with a point. So whoever leads the table at the end of every week or month will be awarded with a small token of appreciation. People basically get involved in an act or event when they get something in return for their effort. Apart from all these technology needs to support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26247" LastActivityDate="2016-10-26T02:12:46.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20382" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-26T02:54:11.490" Score="0" ViewCount="304" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently I am using MS Project to manage projects, I define all milestones and key achieves for a whole projects, but I don't have enough detailed tasks inside. I am wondering, do I need to break down every possible detailed tasks into this Gantt charts, as an example, some technical details like design how many lanes for high speed and what kind of function need to be implemented in software, or should I just keep it as it is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the project team has several members and each member own different functions, It's almost impossible to get a detailed task what they have planned and done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks a lot for your suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26166" LastActivityDate="2016-10-26T17:01:34.730" Title="Project Gantt Chart tasks breakdown question" Tags="&lt;gantt&gt;&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20351" CreationDate="2016-10-26T07:54:35.137" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do you interpret the term &lt;em&gt;epic&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have mentioned, you don't have epics, you have user stories. It's all in the name: &lt;em&gt;user story&lt;/em&gt;, which quite literally means the &lt;em&gt;story&lt;/em&gt; of the &lt;em&gt;user&lt;/em&gt;. You can think of an epic, on the other hand, as a collection of user stories under a particular context. The Scrum Alliance itself has a good breakdown of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2014/march/stories-versus-themes-versus-epics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stories vs Epics vs Themes&lt;/a&gt;, which is well worth a read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Epics resemble themes in the sense that they are made up of multiple stories. They may also resemble stories in the sense that, at first, many appear to simply be a &quot;big story.&quot; As opposed to themes, however, these stories often comprise a complete work flow for a user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it must be noted that Mike Cohn, co-creator of the Scrum process, disagrees slightly with this, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/stories-epics-and-themes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;stating&lt;/a&gt; that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A user story is simply something a user wants [...] A Scrum epic is a large user story. There's no magic threshold at which we call a particular story an epic. It just means “big user story.” [...] Finally, “theme” is a collection of user stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I've always treated an epic as a high-level category for a collection of related stories, and used it interchangeably with Cohn's definition of &lt;em&gt;theme&lt;/em&gt;. For example, one epic can simply be about &lt;em&gt;login&lt;/em&gt; with a dozen user stories under it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;logging in as different user types&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;first-time login and flow&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;repeat login&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;concurrent logins from different devices&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;failed login attempts, and so on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YtXnT.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YtXnT.png&quot; alt=&quot;a typical structure with epics, containing user stories&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, to give a generalised answer to your questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The clue is in the name; the point of view in your &lt;strong&gt;user&lt;/strong&gt; story is &lt;em&gt;a user of the system&lt;/em&gt;. Let's say we're building a database-driven sales interface. Some typical users will probably include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a sales person (who needs access to the UI for entering and saving sales data)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a sales manager (who needs global access to all sales person data, as well as user management access)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a system administrator (who needs user emulation rights, and direct database access)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So depending on your system's functionality, you will phrase your user stories based on &lt;em&gt;who&lt;/em&gt; the functionality is for, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As an administrator, I need to be able to login as another user, so that I can troubleshoot in the user's context.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a sales manager, I need to be able to see cumulative statistics from all sales agents, so that I can form comparative views.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22240" LastEditorUserId="22240" LastEditDate="2016-10-26T08:01:39.357" LastActivityDate="2016-10-26T08:01:39.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20376" CreationDate="2016-10-26T14:39:33.203" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe if you create a calendar for the resource and assign the correct working / non-working days, MS Project should level correctly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dependent on how the Project and task calendars are defined, they also may need to be amended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When setting up the resources, you can define the correct resource max units to the crew size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These two help files should advise how to create and assign calendars:-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/Add-a-resource-s-vacation-time-8240adc0-692b-4d23-827b-a81fb560945d?ui=en-US&amp;amp;rs=en-GB&amp;amp;ad=GB&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/Add-a-resource-s-vacation-time-8240adc0-692b-4d23-827b-a81fb560945d?ui=en-US&amp;amp;rs=en-GB&amp;amp;ad=GB&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/Assign-a-calendar-to-a-resource-or-task-224ceac2-a9ba-47aa-90a6-b6185f3c54f9?ui=en-US&amp;amp;rs=en-GB&amp;amp;ad=GB&amp;amp;fromAR=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/Assign-a-calendar-to-a-resource-or-task-224ceac2-a9ba-47aa-90a6-b6185f3c54f9?ui=en-US&amp;amp;rs=en-GB&amp;amp;ad=GB&amp;amp;fromAR=1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8722" LastActivityDate="2016-10-26T14:39:33.203" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20387" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20398" CreationDate="2016-10-26T15:52:53.610" Score="8" ViewCount="353" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you have a Product Owner who is less technical, can developers be brought into discovery with users and stakeholders?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g. A new project is underway and the PO is doing discovery, creating epics, user stories etc. However, the developers understand the technicalities better than the PO; should they be brought into the discussions with the users and stakeholders?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like it's not a good idea, but I have never really thought about it before and Mike Cohn doesn't really go into it in any of his literature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2016-10-27T13:37:05.707" LastActivityDate="2016-10-27T14:58:58.590" Title="Should developers be talking to users during Story planning / refinement?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;acceptance-criteria&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20387" CreationDate="2016-10-26T16:13:26.453" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In theory you could, but that could result in a significant drain on the Developer due to time involved and task switching, &lt;em&gt;especially&lt;/em&gt; if this is done in the middle of a Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What advantage would you be hoping to leverage from having developers present during discovery?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's so that the developers gain a better understanding of the requirements, then I would instead focus on improving your PO's ability to analyze and disseminate these to your developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's so that the stakeholders can get a better idea of what is feasible, this could probably be brought up during the Sprint Review, to which stakeholders can/should be invited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-10-26T16:13:26.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20382" CreationDate="2016-10-26T17:01:34.730" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no single right answer to this question - it depends entirely on the level of control that you need or want, and the level of reporting and monitoring that is required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a rule of thumb, go down to the level that makes you feel comfortable and that allows you to talk sensibly to each team member. This may mean that you manage different parts of your project at different levels of breakdown, depending on a number of factors. These may include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The experience of the team member;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The size of the individual high level task;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your knowledge of the task from your own experience or past history;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The level of trust you have in each team member and their past history of delivery;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The criticality of the task;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The number of other people or teams required to deliver the task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There will be other factors that you will be best placed to determine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would advise against going to too low a level as a default - start high then break it all down to a meaningful work breakdown structure, as described above. The more detail you work with, the better your estimating needs to be and in my experience, the more &quot;padding&quot; people will add into their estimates!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2016-10-26T17:01:34.730" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20387" CreationDate="2016-10-26T17:43:01.840" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In certain situations I think they should, but there are a lot of caveats and gotchas to it. Let me list out reasons I have done it, and also times when I would not do it and maybe that will help as you consider what you need. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before I start I want to echo Sarov though in that if your main reason for doing this is because the PO is not technical then some training should be done there to help his/her understanding. Regardless of any validity to the below reasons, that lack of experience/training should still be corrected over the long term. &lt;strong&gt;If requirements are your primary issue, I would have the scrum master assist the PO with writing requirements and explaining them to the team, and over time helping the PO to do that better. This is probably the main answer to your question but I am going to talk about dev involvement as I still think that could be valuable to you.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reasons I have involved devs in discovery:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I identified an issue where discovery was going very slowly, and there was a large problem where the business and the PO would get far to deep on their ideas and how they were going to be implemented, get emotionally invested, and then toss it over the wall to development. As part of my strategy to fix this I instituted a process where the entire product team was involved from day one to help guide the course of the product. This was not always attendance, but it was visibility to everyone. I did at first have a dev and a designer go to the main meetings, but as I had hoped as everyone got more used to working together and communicating this became less and less necessary as trust and respect was established and the PO became more versed in dev issues. Communication did continue even when there was no attendance, time needed from the dev was minimal, and the projects were ready faster, more on track, with higher dev buy-in. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another good reason I have involved devs early on, is that for some projects I have wanted them to hear the pain points first-hand from the customer's mouth. This does require a little bit of time for a dev, but again leads to much greater buy-in, and understanding of the issue the project is trying to solve. I have found that in many situations this leads to increased creativity and ingenuity on the dev's side, as they have a better understanding of the challenges to the customer. This leads to a better product than otherwise might be the case, which is one of the primary reasons for Agile, and is supported by these principles in the Agile Manifesto:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer&#xA;  through early and continuous delivery&#xA;  of &lt;strong&gt;valuable&lt;/strong&gt; software. &lt;em&gt;-Emphasis added&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The most efficient and effective method of &#xA;  conveying information &lt;strong&gt;to&lt;/strong&gt; and within a development &#xA;  team is &lt;strong&gt;face-to-face conversation&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;em&gt;-Emphasis added&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The last reason is an extension of the second one, in some cases I might want a higher level of communication between customers and developers during the project. By involving them early I am helping both sides establish trust and familiarity. The customer trusts that the developer(s) understand their problem, because they were there when they first explained it. The devs feel more comfortable asking the customers a question because they know who they are and where they are coming from. Again, this is something that needs great care, for it can be either very useful to getting the right product, or a waste of the developers time depending on the situation. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long story short the main reasons to involve development are if it will help them build a better product. This must be analyzed on a project by project basis, and generally should be the decision of the team. If the project is small, or more internally based, or really high-level at first and a simple overview or meeting notes will convey the meaning, then I wouldn't worry about involving the devs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26060" LastActivityDate="2016-10-26T17:43:01.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20387" CreationDate="2016-10-26T20:26:27.483" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually it is considered that developers can engage with users and stakeholders in the way you've asked &lt;strong&gt;as an exception rather than the rule&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Generic answer&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You always have three roles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stakeholder who knows &amp;quot;what to do&amp;quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developer who knows &amp;quot;how to do&amp;quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PO/BA in between who facilitates transformation of &amp;quot;what to do&amp;quot; into &amp;quot;how to do&amp;quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is always someone in each of those hats. It might be one person who seats behind the screen writing new social network in three hats on top of each other. Or a huge company with departments walking around in one narrowly specialised hat each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going back to your question, how to actually make a decision &amp;quot;should developers be talking to users during discovery&amp;quot; or not? It depends solely on the goal you want to achieve, is it good for your goal or not. And I assume that the goal is the vision of organisation as a mechanism behind the product delivering it as a value in the most efficient way possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If current hats(roles) distribution across people is the same as it should be in your organisation - then you are doing everything right. But since person with PO title exists we can conclude that this very person is supposed to carry PO hat, and in reality cannot. Hats distribution seems to be wrong and the answer to your question in your situation is: no, they should not. (Or someone has a wrong title not matching real role.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also some examples when you want direct engagement &lt;em&gt;not in the way you've asked&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let people meet in person to become acquainted. It is more comfortable for us when we know real person behind username on the screen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let development team listen, to share the pain as Majaii mentioned already. We love to help and know about relief of actual person.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let all project participants be gathered together and literally sit on one side while you present product/project changes and results.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Situational answer&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Development team has nothing to do since PO as a bottleneck can't load the team. We can alleviate the bottleneck bypassing it and load development team from users directly. Should we do that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately this is where actual art of project management takes place. You need to consider all the risks, consequences and benefits both short and long term. Some of them are already mentioned in other answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. Your question assumes, that stakeholders are somehow &lt;em&gt;more technical&lt;/em&gt; than PO. Moreover, development team needs to obtain technical knowledge from stakeholders. This sounds very suspicious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26385" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2016-10-26T20:47:36.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20393" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-27T06:36:32.567" Score="-3" ViewCount="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently suggested to my team that we should try SVN source code email notifications on commit. I thought it would help the team to feel more connected, informed, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, majority of people said clear: no. They feel it would be too much emails. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried the notifications in previous companies I worked for, and now I feel I can't do without it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What benefits do the notifications bring to your team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12034" LastActivityDate="2016-10-27T13:12:34.303" Title="Source code email notifications benefits to your team?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20394" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-27T07:09:09.083" Score="-1" ViewCount="586" Body="&lt;p&gt;been thinking about how to do this, maybe it requires a macro?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scenario:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Resource A is allocated to Task 1 @ 50%, and Task 2 @ 50% for the same week. I now want to change the Task A allocation to 80%, which updates Work to 32hours, and want Task 2 to auto-update to 20% (and the respective Work to 8). Is this doable? Using leveling doesn't reallocate percentage but instead lengthens tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also appreciate that a particular difficulty is if Resource A is allocated to more than 2 tasks e.g. Task 1 @ 30%, Task 2 @ 30% and Task 3 @ 40%: if I update one, how does it take percent allocation from the other two?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26405" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-14T13:30:35.883" LastActivityDate="2019-01-14T13:30:35.883" Title="MS Project 2010 Auto-calculating and setting Resource % Allocations" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20395" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-27T09:55:58.967" Score="1" ViewCount="1011" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's assume that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the standard number of hours worked per day is 8h&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have a task with a Duration of 2 days and 16 Work hours&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The resource RA is assigned 100% to this task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;this task mode is set to Fixed Duration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if I log 24 hours in the Actual Work field, rather then having the usage of the resource RA increasing to 150%, I get the following error message:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The resource is assigned outside the original dates for the task XXXX.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The duration of this fixed-duration task will change to accommodate&#xA;the resource assignment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23076" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-02-15T13:01:49.253" Title="How to get MSProject to automatically increase resource usage to over 100% when the average Acutal Work hours is above the standard day work hour?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20393" CreationDate="2016-10-27T13:12:34.303" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;No matter what sort of benefits source-control-emails may or may not bring to your team, they are going to be &lt;em&gt;strongly&lt;/em&gt; counterpointed by the negative feelings your team will undoubtedly have from you introducing something which they &lt;em&gt;specifically requested you not to introduce&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you absolutely cannot live without these emails, then try explaining to your team &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt;. Perhaps in doing so, your team will see the same benefits you do, and you will have successfully created buy-in. If they &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt;, consider finding a solution where &lt;em&gt;only you&lt;/em&gt; receive these emails (may be as simple as setting up the team's email clients to block these emails). This way, you get your emails, and the team gets their smaller inboxes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-10-27T13:12:34.303" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20397" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20399" CreationDate="2016-10-27T13:57:17.587" Score="-2" ViewCount="311" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to understand the difference, from a project-management perspective, between application development and other, non-application development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26409" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-10-27T17:27:39.640" LastActivityDate="2016-10-27T17:27:39.640" Title="What is unique about application development projects?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;&lt;pmi&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2016-10-30T13:14:15.197" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20387" CreationDate="2016-10-27T14:58:58.590" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, ofcourse, why should the development team settle for second hand information. Self-organizing teams should get the information from the source!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really like this item from &lt;a href=&quot;https://age-of-product.com/cargo-cult-agile-state-agile-checklist-organization/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Cargo Cult Agile Checklist&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stakeholders are prevented from talking to the Scrum teams&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are stakeholders? (quoted from Agile Modeling: &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemodeling.com/essays/activeStakeholderParticipation.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Active stakeholder participation&lt;/a&gt; )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A stakeholder is anyone who is a direct user, indirect user, manager&#xA;  of users, senior manager, operations staff member, the &quot;gold owner&quot;&#xA;  who funds the project, support (help desk) staff member, auditors,&#xA;  your program/portfolio manager, developers working on other systems&#xA;  that integrate or interact with the one under development, or&#xA;  maintenance professionals potentially affected by the development&#xA;  and/or deployment of a software project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this means everyone is a Stakeholder. Engage them! But who to invite, all of them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current teams try to invite key stakeholders to our refinement and planning sessions to get the context from the source. Who is invited greatly depends on what topics we are handling. The Product Owner makes this call, the Scrum master makes sure the PO thinks about who to invite upfront. The stakeholders explain context, the development team asks questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Promote that the development team talk to as many stakeholders as they can. This to retrieve domain knowledge and understanding of how actual users use the product. Planning, review and refinement meetings are the ideal place for this as developers are already out of their (coding) zone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just try it and Inspect and Adapt after some sessions with PO, users and developers included. Ask them for their feedback or hold a specific retrospective to see what is working and what not for this type of discovery communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2016-10-27T14:58:58.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20397" CreationDate="2016-10-27T16:52:27.110" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;tl; dr&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;90% of project management is communications. 90% of communications is trust.  The more relevant experience the PM has, the easier it is to gain and retain the trust of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;discursive rambling&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a pure project management standpoint, all projects are the same.  The goal is the same; to close the project on time, on budget, on quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, a PM with software development experience will be more effective at &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;estimating software development time and effort,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;establishing WBS &amp;amp; WBSD,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;identifying, assessing and analyzing risks, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;developing mitigation plans, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;identifying, assessing and disposing of issues,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;identifying and managing technical debt,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;establishing and evaluating quality standards,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;working closely with developers and in a development culture,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;applying&lt;/strong&gt; the project management methodology to the team and project in question.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2016-10-27T16:52:27.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20167" CreationDate="2016-10-27T18:14:39.270" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's take a BigShop using SalePlatform as an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When BigShop marketing department wants new discount campaign they raise a ticket to BigShop &lt;strong&gt;maintenance&lt;/strong&gt; department to create new discount and assign products to it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When BigShop maintenance department realizes that discount feature does not work they raise a ticket to SalePlatform &lt;strong&gt;support&lt;/strong&gt; department.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When BigShop marketing department receives a reply that discounts feature actually does not exist they raise a ticket to SalePlatform &lt;strong&gt;development&lt;/strong&gt; team to implement it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26385" LastActivityDate="2016-10-27T18:14:39.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20401" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21700" CreationDate="2016-10-27T20:11:31.153" Score="0" ViewCount="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to classify a task based on whether – &#xA;1) materials are issued by the department,&#xA;2) materials are not required,&#xA;3) materials are procured by contractors themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What different terms are used in business for these kind of model?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26413" LastActivityDate="2017-05-26T22:06:05.687" Title="In business model, how can I classify the tasks based on from where materials are utilised?" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20374" CreationDate="2016-10-27T21:13:48.900" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a similar situation to this, with a distributed team that was getting quite large, and there was a lot of &quot;wasted&quot; time in side conversations, silences, or people needing to be pulled out of work they were doing on the side to chime in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way we addressed this was twofold:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;we used an online note board for the sprint retrospective, which was shared publicly with the team &lt;em&gt;at the beginning of the sprint&lt;/em&gt; so that at any point someone could quickly throw a card in for something to review at retro&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the day before retro everyone was asked to add cards to the board or send notes to the po/sm (we asked from everyone to send us their top 3 positive, top 3 negative issues, and a shout out to a peer who did something awesome)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, before our retro we'd go in, categorize the cards and find common themes. Then when we held the retro, we were able to chug right through the themes, using individual cards or notes as supporting evidence and to call out specific people to chime in making sure we called out people evenly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Retro was 1000% more effective, everyone was engaged, and it took half the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26415" LastEditorUserId="26415" LastEditDate="2016-10-27T21:22:13.320" LastActivityDate="2016-10-27T21:22:13.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20403" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20414" CreationDate="2016-10-28T01:48:34.650" Score="3" ViewCount="212" Body="&lt;p&gt;After running a few projects that refresh technology rather than add functionality, I've noticed a few recurring themes:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technology refresh projects are more likely to go over budget/schedule; projects that provide incremental new features are less likely to exceed budget &amp;amp; schedule estimates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Development teams are more likely to underestimate technology refresh projects.  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;New functionality tends to have well-defined requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Old functionality is always a journey of discovery, especially on widely deployed products with history of customer-driven fixes and enhancements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A large part of this hidden legacy only comes out after the team has a chance to make serious headway with refactoring.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of that makes early feasibility assessment and ROI analysis on such projects challenging.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried two techniques to address this. One technique is to add a constant tax on top of team's estimates, but that can be crude and imprecise, since refactoring projects are not born equal. Another is to delay estimate and schedule projections until the team has spent reasonable effort flushing out the hidden costs. This does not always work though, since sometimes such reasonable effort in itself is expensive, and/or the business requires early prioritization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd be interested in collective wisdom from people who've run such projects. How can I get get reasonable predictability when planning a technology refresh?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25908" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-10-31T17:10:44.803" LastActivityDate="2016-11-01T17:31:42.037" Title="How can I produce more reliable estimates for technology refresh projects?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;&lt;budget&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20404" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-28T09:08:33.390" Score="4" ViewCount="110" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technical team and I are having trouble signing off a project. We simply cannot solve the client's problem, and have been stuck for a few months trying too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure what to do in this situation? To add complications to the matter, we have outsourced some of the work, and they are expected to be paid for their time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2016-10-28T12:36:02.903" Title="Unable to sign off a project" Tags="&lt;small-projects&gt;&lt;delays&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20404" CreationDate="2016-10-28T12:36:02.903" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Notwithstanding how you were supposed to get paid by the client, you need to have the best interests of your client in mind.  This means you need to inform your client of your inability to resolve the issue and make a recommendation to your client to either find another solution provider or to abandon the solution because maybe there might not be an available solution invented, yet.  The desire to continue chasing sunk costs is huge; this is a commitment bias and you need to fight the urge and help your client to fight the urge, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope you entered into a type of contract that compensated you for your effort in this problem resolution versus delivering the solution.  If the latter, you're out of luck getting paid and you need to pay your obligations for what you outsourced.  Lessons learned for the type of contract into which you need to enter for work like this.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-10-28T12:36:02.903" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20407" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-10-28T14:39:07.590" Score="2" ViewCount="124" Body="&lt;p&gt;We get repeated requests for consulting projects. There are couple of experts in our firm. They have different expertise in different fields. We would like to choose for each project the expert who has the highest probability of success. But only the experts themselves know their qualifications for each of the projects. We would like to have some mechanism of allocating the projects to the experts so we will be able to make them report honestly us who has the best fit for each project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26427" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-10-31T21:14:04.300" LastActivityDate="2016-10-31T21:14:04.300" Title="How to effectively allocate experts to projects?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20407" CreationDate="2016-10-28T15:42:56.793" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Delphi method&lt;/strong&gt; could be used if you trust in the ability of your experts to self-assess. Ask each expert to recommend which of their peers (or themselves) are best suited to the project as described, and have them report back in confidence, rather than to the group. If there is consensus, move forward. If not, re-query with the narrowed choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This leaves open the possibility of the experts all choosing themselves, or everyone choosing someone else without the ability to narrow down the choices, but resource availability should also factor in and help to make a clear determination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26423" LastActivityDate="2016-10-28T15:42:56.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20374" CreationDate="2016-10-29T08:54:10.560" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think silence is not such a bad thing.  Taking time to think before you talk is very smart.  I've been called an introvert and know other introverts who don't like to hear myself talk unless I really have something worthy to say that will bring progress and help solve the problem quickly and efficiently.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26432" LastActivityDate="2016-10-29T08:54:10.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20412" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20424" CreationDate="2016-10-31T09:20:35.437" Score="0" ViewCount="122" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently using Microsoft projects 2016 with time sheets. How can i create a task which is always shown in my time sheet with 0 planned work time? I have administrative tasks beside my project tasks which I can't plan on an explicit date. I have already tried to do this with an administrative time category, but this is shown for every user. Is this currently supported? How could I implement this feature by myself through an add on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26450" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T20:04:06.927" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T20:04:06.927" Title="MS Projects show task always in timesheet" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20403" CreationDate="2016-10-31T10:31:16.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my observations working in this industry over the years, I do not opine that IT projects suffer from anything different than any other project in other domains.  What I see is an industry specific pressure placed on IT projects that other domains have worked out.  There is a significant pressure to low ball project price just to get the project selected.  This begins long before any type of proposal request hits the street for IT vendors, and then the next pressure for a low ball price begins.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the federal space here in the US, there is a push to get everything in at a firm fixed price, even for projects where the federal customer doesn't really even know what they want and will be &quot;discovered&quot; during the project.  No other industry selling provider would ever sign up for a contract like that but IT vendors do it all the time.  Can anyone imagine a building contractor signing up for a fixed price build to build a &quot;house somewhere over here&quot;?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under estimating occurs in all projects because it is a human bias called optimism bias.  But the other estimating methods help control that, e.g., using historical data, parametrics, Delphi Technique, etc.  However, before using these proven methods, this pressure for pricing illusion needs to be resolved.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2016-11-01T17:31:42.037" LastActivityDate="2016-11-01T17:31:42.037" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20403" CreationDate="2016-10-31T17:14:24.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have enough experience to confirm or rebut this hypothesis.  That said, if I were in the position, I would propose the minimum possible refactor project (kind of like my academic colleagues used to have the &quot;least publishable unit&quot;) If I understand correctly, working from existing requirements involves discovering (through trial and error) a set of what might be called latent, unstated, cultural requirements (closely related to &quot;tribal knowledge&quot; and &quot;Organizational Process Assets&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So let's charter a project to do the least imaginable technology refresh. That puts a team in place (and more importantly in communications) with the stakeholders who will suddenly reveal those new requirements.  If we charter a 1 month project to do a trivial technology refresh. (&quot;Everyone gets a new mouse&quot;), that should provide us with a parameter that we can use to improve the accuracy of larger technology refresh projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think the accuracy is going to improve by an order of magnitude.  At best, I think this would do a better job of uncovering closet stakeholders (and or zombie stakeholders - you know the ones - you can't change this because Bob who retired 10 years ago and died 3 years ago... Bob set it up so you can only do this workflow from his desk and not on a Friday....)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2016-10-31T17:14:24.927" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20407" CreationDate="2016-10-31T17:34:15.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Your Problem, Restated&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is somewhat of an X/Y problem. If I read your post with a critical eye, there's an unstated command-and-control assumption here that the organization must &lt;em&gt;assign&lt;/em&gt; a specific resource to a project, but lacks the technical knowledge or insight to do so properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is exactly why agile organizations advocate collective ownership and self-organizing teams. You don't have to become an agile shop, but may want to at least give agile teams, estimation, and resource management a try to address the problem at hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Experts Should Allocate Themselves&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than trying to fix a broken process, I'd recommend that you adopt the concept of self-organizing teams. Your subject-matter experts should be allocated to a team that collectively owns the resource-assignment process. They would be responsible for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Working with your sales and business analysis peoples to gather specifications for the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using their detailed knowledge of the specifications to define high-level work packages.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Determining amongst themselves which of them (or which combination of them) would be best suited to address specific work packages.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reporting their work breakdowns and other conclusions to project leadership.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The organization would then support the team in coordinating these work packages with one another, and with the customer. This process embodies core agile principles, and works extremely well when you have qualified and engaged team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Collective Ownership&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that for this process to work, the &lt;em&gt;entire pool of SMEs&lt;/em&gt; would have to &lt;strong&gt;collectively&lt;/strong&gt; own the planning and delivery process. Otherwise, you will simply end up with a sort of slapstick reverse-volunteerism where the SMEs or the organization pick out a scapegoat who is then &quot;held accountable.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Holding involuntary parties accountable never works out well for anyone involved. Don't do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-10-31T17:34:15.200" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20417" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-01T11:04:37.947" Score="-2" ViewCount="74" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scenario:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A task, say &quot;Paint the wall&quot;, requires total 24 hours to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For a day, we expect daily working hours for each person is 8 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The project needs to start by Wednesday. (i.e., 7 Jan 2015 in this video)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;3 people were assigned to complete this task effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We expected 8 hours from each, hence we expected the work to be completed in one day!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, we have the following constraints:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1st person &quot;A&quot; can work only for 4 hours daily.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;2nd person &quot;B&quot; can also work only for 4 hours daily.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;3rd person &quot;C&quot; can work only for 2 hours daily and also not available to work on Thursday and Friday.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Saturday and Sunday are generally holiday and no work is expected.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the above constraints, this 24 hours work can be completed by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On Wednesday,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;People &quot;A&quot; and &quot;B&quot; will work for 4 hours each. Person &quot;C&quot; will work for 2 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hence, 4+4+2 = 10 hours work should be completed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On Thursday,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;People &quot;A&quot; and &quot;B&quot; will work for 4 hours each. Person &quot;C&quot; will not work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hence, 4+4 = 8 hours work should be completed. (Total: 18 hours work completed so far. Remaining work expected is 6 hours)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On Friday,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;People &quot;A&quot; and &quot;B&quot; will work for 3 hours each. Person &quot;C&quot; will not work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hence, 3+3 = 6 hours work should be completed. (Total: 24hours work completed by Friday. This is the expected output.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But while trying the above scenario, Ms Project calculates differently and splits the work incorrectly to resources and shows that work will be completed by next Tuesday only! (i.e., 13 Jan 2015 in this video).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We need assistance how to fix this. Or on how to achieve the desired result in ms project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The steps tried are shown in the video, which incorrectly calculates and shows the work will be completed by 13 Jan 2015 (Tuesday only).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the video on YouTube: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9fhXiejG7I&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Project 2013 Case Study&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please suggest how to achieve the desired result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26457" LastEditorUserId="15972" LastEditDate="2016-11-22T06:18:06.060" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T06:18:12.383" Title="Expected task end date is not reflecting . Need help (Microsoft Project)" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20417" CreationDate="2016-11-01T15:02:47.573" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To get what you want, you need to manually change the assigned work for resources A/B from 8 hours to 11 hours and for resource C from 8 hours to 2 hours.  You can do this with either the Task Usage or Resource Usage view on the bottom pane.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qgK4q.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qgK4q.png&quot; alt=&quot;MSP Resource Usage View&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike what you expect, MSP will not treat three distinct resources as fully interchangeable commodities, allocating work among them for the shortest possible schedule.  That is the project manager’s job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is another tool – Spider Project – that incorporates skill-based resource scheduling.  You may consider that if your need is great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastEditorUserId="15972" LastEditDate="2016-11-22T06:18:12.383" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T06:18:12.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8377" CreationDate="2016-11-01T19:10:09.990" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the methodology and the context.  Is this an Agile/Scrum project? Is this a Waterfall project?  Is this a Agilefall project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting requirements right seems to a major problem for any project using any methodology.  The only common thing in all of them is to provide &quot;an result&quot; early and get feedback.  If either the requirements (and/or user story) have changed or the requirement was misunderstood then early feedback will move the requirement towards what the customer really needs solved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when in doubt &quot;iterate&quot; soon and often!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I understand that doesn't work easily or at all when there is no visible input/output on a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tom&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26461" LastActivityDate="2016-11-01T19:10:09.990" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20008" CreationDate="2016-11-02T03:07:57.183" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely - in some of my projects team dynamics mattered more than engineers' individual capabilities, and made a big difference to the schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are all kinds of variables: A might be working well with B, but less so with C, and as a result a Scrum team without C might be more productive. &#xA;There is some anecdotal correlation to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.opp.com/en/tools/MBTI/MBTI-personality-Types&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mayer-Briggs types&lt;/a&gt;, and similar cultural background, but it is by no means precise science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, this crosses from project into people management in many ways: it is, to a large extent, the line manager's job to observe collaboration in their group, resolve negative dynamics, and foster positive ones. Again, it is more of an art rather than recipe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that you are asking the question already shows that you are mindful to this, which is more than many project managers could say. The next step is observing, and following that, doing something like Mayer-Briggs or Insights Discovery. Plus, as Mark Wallace mentions above, there are some people that improve dynamics irrespective of who is around them (some call them the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-signs-youre-unicorn-employee-ryan-holmes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;unicorn employee&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25908" LastActivityDate="2016-11-02T03:07:57.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20421" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-02T19:58:06.310" Score="11" ViewCount="212" Body="&lt;p&gt;Where should employee training/reinforcement of new skills and techniques fall into the project life cycle?  Is anyone able to find any studies conducted about how the end product is affected resulted if training is done on the production code during development as opposed to conducted between projects on non-production code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My team just finished a few releases of different product variations.  We now have some lull before our cycle picks back up.  Being the team lead, I gave the team members an assignment to re-write an application (one used to gauge prospective employees) using things they've learned since joining the team.  Things expected to see was use of dependency injection, unit testable code, and use of the MVVM pattern (a C# WPF design pattern).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My supervisor found out and didn't think this was the right thing to do with this down time.  He believes that employees should learn the above things on production code/products to be shipped and that any additional learning and such should be done on their own time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do see the business perspective, but we currently have a product that we are about to redo from scratch because we employed this way of thinking in the past.  I don't think we should do this, as that produces code that is hard to maintain and is usually buggy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did I make the right call for this lull or is there something better to do with the time?  I was unsure what to search for and any studies conducted would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22364" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-11-03T13:31:45.693" LastActivityDate="2016-11-05T10:21:51.737" Title="Where should employee training fall into the project life cycle?" Tags="&lt;training&gt;&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20421" CreationDate="2016-11-02T21:09:30.087" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;While there might be a theoretical 'best practice', in reality it depends in large part on what your organization values. Even the decision to go ahead and assign a new project to the team rather than 'consulting'/'wasting the time of' your supervisor could be seen as a bad/good thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has your supervisor been apprised of the costs of technical debts? If so, that's something that definitely needs to be done - not just for things like this, but for new development as well. If executives don't know the cost of technical debt, then they cannot make informed prioritization decisions regarding technical debt. If they &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; know the cost of technical debt, and they tell you to work on something &lt;em&gt;else&lt;/em&gt;, then you should listen to them unless you have some cause to believe you understand what the priorities should be better than your superiors. In which case, you have bigger problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-11-02T21:09:30.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20412" CreationDate="2016-11-03T11:26:17.227" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found a workaround for this. You can create a task with any duration (for example from 01.10.2016 to 31.12.2100) and with a total work amount of 0.1 hours. Projects will plan 0 hours every day for this duration and the task is always shown in your timesheet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creating the task:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/i30up.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/i30up.png&quot; alt=&quot;Creating the task&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Appears in your timesheet:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8xpsH.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8xpsH.png&quot; alt=&quot;Timesheet&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26450" LastActivityDate="2016-11-03T11:26:17.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20421" CreationDate="2016-11-03T14:49:42.697" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my view, formal training has no place whatsoever in a project life cycle.  None.  Projects are, by definition, discrete pieces of work having a finite time period and finite resources.  No project dollars should be invested in formal learning of any project team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Informal learning occurs as a consequence of doing work.  Training on the job of a newer team member is normal and project dollars will go towards that; however, work is still progressing during that time even when some rework needs to occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other types of sanctioned project training would be for specific project type things that have to be transferred to the team.  This is so the team will know how to operate within the project context but also to train something that cannot reasonably be found in the general resource pool.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, the buyer of a project should not be on the hook to spend their money to train people who are only associated with his product for a specific period of time.  That's 100% inappropriate.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My views on this subject are unpopular, I know.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-11-03T14:49:42.697" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20374" CreationDate="2016-11-03T15:04:21.833" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As totally agree with the points that Barnaby Golden mentioned.&#xA;In the company I work for, there were no camera meetings, so the first thing I did when I joined was to say &#xA;&quot;&lt;em&gt;It's 2016, we're a technology company, we need to have cameras.&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&#xA;It's not optional, it's mandatory, if you want to achieve meetings as close as real life gets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next thing is the No Laptop Sessions (NLS). Make sure that no one is using a laptop or his phone, in fact, ban them in the meeting(s). I always say &quot;&lt;em&gt;If you're too busy working on something else, then you shouldn't be in this meeting. Choose what you need to do.&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Retrospectives can get boring quickly due to their repetitive nature: they're not fancy, they're merely a retrospective view on what happened the last two weeks. Why not make it more fun and try new methods? A very good website is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.funretrospectives.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.funretrospectives.com&lt;/a&gt; (not affiliated). It includes from warm-up, to team building, to check in, to retrospective games/activities. You can pick a few and rotate them through your sprints so that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) the team becomes familiar &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) pinpoint different issues and touch upon different areas every time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Retrospectives are not an easy thing to run, especially when you have to &quot;make people talk&quot;. Be careful not to prompt people to talk, because that might switch them to defensive mode and make them even less likely to talk! Bear in mind that there will always be some people who won't talk, or don't feel like contributing in the current session, and that's fine. Just make sure this is not the majority. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last, remember that the team needs time to be accustomed to the various ceremonies, and some people might need more time than others to open up. Make sure that managers are away, so that the team doesn't feel it's been monitored by management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5522" LastActivityDate="2016-11-03T15:04:21.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20429" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-03T20:14:57.763" Score="4" ViewCount="1105" Body="&lt;p&gt;There doesn't appear to be any medium here but I have a Kanban board in Jira and all issues are assigned to an Epic. The filter specifically does not include Epics because in Kanban if Epics are included in the filter Jira adds them to the list of work (undesired in my case.) In Agile boards, the Epics do not appear in the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the bahavior I want, however, if I remove epics from the filter, it will not show the Epic tags on the Kanban board. &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirakb/epic-tag-or-label-is-missing-on-sprint-board-779158640.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Jira documentation mentions the only fix for this is to include Epics in the board filter.&lt;/a&gt; Is there any workaround to this? Is it possible to create another type of Agile board that does not show Epics but also is not running off of sprints? It's highly annoying that this is an all or nothing thing. It doesn't make sense they have functionality for one board but not the other. Perhaps another type of sprint-less board will work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26479" LastActivityDate="2016-11-04T13:19:47.847" Title="Show Epic label in backlog without adding Epics to board filter in Jira?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18568" CreationDate="2016-11-04T12:56:06.263" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Jira go to search. Select your project, and leave the other criteria at default and the text field blank (meaning you are seeing everything in your project). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go to the columns indicator and add &quot;Rank&quot;, then just click on the column heading to sort Rank descending. Click the &quot;Save As&quot; button at the top to save your filter, name it, and you are good to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to say I don't fully understand what you are trying to do or why you would need this, so if this is not what you are looking for please give us more detail so we can provide better answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26060" LastActivityDate="2016-11-04T12:56:06.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20429" CreationDate="2016-11-04T13:19:47.847" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Moving this to an answer as it got too long for my comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There used to be a simplified workflow board that I believe allowed this, but in the new versions I haven't seen it and you can only choose scrum and Kanban. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a possible workaround, you can modify your filter using labels to fix this issue. What you need to do is add a label to all your tickets that are included in that board, except the Epics. Then modify your board filter to include only tickets that include that label. This will allow you to leave the Epic tags, but not show the Epics themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously this is not ideal since you need to make sure you label everything or it will not show on the board, but it is the only way I know to do what you are asking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26060" LastActivityDate="2016-11-04T13:19:47.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="222" CreationDate="2016-11-05T10:15:59.373" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Development Manager takes responsibility more of the technical parts of the project/s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Project Manager is responsible for managing the project deadline and ensuring the tasks are achieved well in time. They can be either technical or non-technical. However, they should have a skills-set including such things as decision making, analysis, team management, staffing, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Product Manager's responsibility is to take the product once both a development manager and a Project Manager have finished it. They take total ownership of the product's post-production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26492" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-11-05T13:09:48.207" LastActivityDate="2016-11-05T13:09:48.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20421" CreationDate="2016-11-05T10:21:51.737" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Training is a continuous  process. Hence, an informal training takes place on every single aspect of process. In case of formal training one need to follow the company or project guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or else the best way could be PMI/TSAT etc. to identify training need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26492" LastActivityDate="2016-11-05T10:21:51.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6380" CreationDate="2016-11-06T17:53:19.833" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interesting question - I would love to see where this question led in the end, if there is one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I happen to be researching a very similar problem... related to personal scheduling. There are individuals who manage all their tasks and appointments in a single place - their calendar. I happen to be searching for quality indicators that can be used to give a user feedback. (I call them Total Task Schedulers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to Gantt charts, I think there are a few metrics which also apply to personal schedules, such as:&#xA;- an effective completion metric (lag) that tells how effective a chart was in retrospect. In other words, was it followed and to what degree? Did tasks take as long as predicted and were they completed on time&#xA;- a predictive completion metric (lead) that tells how likely a chart will be followed in reality.&#xA;- a tightness metric that estimates the amount of slack built in for emergencies&#xA;- a measure of critical path dependence - how much does the chart rely on the critical path (are other paths also close to being critical?) (lead)&#xA;- if historical data exits: are task estimates unbiased? (lead)&#xA;- there can also be measures related to human resources and their ability t to deliver on time (lead)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(In each case I have indicated where a metric is a lead or lag indicator.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond this list, I suspect an experienced project manager can just look at a Gantt chart and interpret the state of a project with a glance! Perhaps they can also sit in on a project meeting for five minutes and do the same thing. It would be great to quantify those things they are looking for in each case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26508" LastActivityDate="2016-11-06T17:53:19.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20438" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20456" CreationDate="2016-11-07T08:15:11.943" Score="-2" ViewCount="869" Body="&lt;p&gt;is there a way to show a calendar exception name when viewing a gantt chart ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MgnR1.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MgnR1.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26516" LastActivityDate="2016-11-08T17:25:48.707" Title="MS project - Show calendar exception name on gantt" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20439" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-07T11:53:08.210" Score="-1" ViewCount="615" Body="&lt;p&gt;We currently do User Acceptance Testing (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acceptance_testing#User_acceptance_testing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UAT&lt;/a&gt;) at the end of the every sprint. I circulate an email to the team letting them know the features that have been developed. The idea is for them to report any bugs to the dev team for the features developed in that sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need to put a process in place to ensure that the team are doing UAT properly, since the team has trouble doing UAT. What checklists should I give the team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-11-07T18:25:41.657" LastActivityDate="2016-11-07T18:41:05.143" Title="What UAT checklists should I give the testing team?" Tags="&lt;testing&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;&lt;definition-of-done&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6380" CreationDate="2016-11-07T13:06:07.907" Score="0" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_value_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Earned Value Management&lt;/a&gt; derives a variety of information from a Gantt chart. (assuming that the Gantt chart has been built to support the analysis). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Critical path(s) (@Stephan pointed this out and deserves the credit.) Calculation of critical path is vital; automated analysis could concentrate on multiple critical paths. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Carlo_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Monte Carlo Analysis&lt;/a&gt; - this is probably the most valuable thing you could add.  Monte Carlo Analysis is not easy to set up, but is the only way to answer questions about the consequences of multiple risks/opportunities.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are at a Project Management Office, and you have access to multiple Gantt charts from multiple projects, it might be interesting to analyze the charts for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Project closure rate - how many projects close successfully and how many close before the value is delivered?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Estimation accuracy/variance - how close is estimated duration to actual duration? What variables affect accuracy.  You'll need to separate issues of chance (aleatory issues like &quot;the supplier had a trucking strike and was late in delivering materials&quot;, from epistemelogical issues like, &quot;The dev team overestimated their familiarity with the BlueDuck programming framework.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Which types of work packages were late/early and by how much?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;WHich teams were late/early? By how much and why?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have access to a set of Gantt charts, you could probably learn a lot by studying change mangement across the set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the velocity of change? (A colleague once worked on a project that had more than 100 authorized changes in a quarter; this was a clear signal of problems with the project.  The project I was managing at the time had changes only prior to financial reviews - which was a sign of a different kind of problem).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-11-07T14:10:27.797" LastActivityDate="2016-11-07T14:10:27.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20439" CreationDate="2016-11-07T15:35:42.997" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are getting UAT done to check the functional flow of the program.&#xA;The way is to get the test cases prepared by end user who has given the requirements. &#xA;Request him/her to run through the cases during testing. &#xA;This must include the additional cases which you should add during impact analysis.&#xA;In case of a bug fix, user should test test cases prepared by you.&#xA;UAT sign off should be only if the test passes through all test cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't forget to ask for all artifacts(screenshots) of test done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Add these as RFC checklist before production release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26351" LastActivityDate="2016-11-07T15:35:42.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19806" CreationDate="2016-11-07T15:43:25.863" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In simple term, Metric is how you measure something and KPI can be outcome of the measurements.&#xA;For example,&#xA;In a production support every month you present no. of tickets(Metric) as a trend. &#xA;KPI is the trend should show reducing tickets month on month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26351" LastActivityDate="2016-11-07T15:43:25.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20443" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-07T15:47:36.833" Score="2" ViewCount="1182" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;5 products on 4 platforms &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;~100 projects implementations at different stages(Where a project is a set of products customized for customer.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;15 developers + 5 QA's&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Swarm of small clear tasks/CR's/Storys from 8 to 100 hours size, easy to estimate as they are simple and more or less similar.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inflow of new story's for project and product is unpredictable &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is best practice for such a situation. I am intentionally omitting my solution to search for an alternative solution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21857" LastEditorUserId="21857" LastEditDate="2016-11-07T22:10:30.297" LastActivityDate="2016-11-07T22:10:30.297" Title="How to share developers between multiple agile projects?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20443" CreationDate="2016-11-07T17:28:31.467" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to share developers between multiple agile projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't. Doing so is inherently non-agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This smacks of an X/Y problem, where X (the &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; problem) is likely to be an executive mandate to &quot;do more with less&quot; without prioritizing projects based on both business value and resource constraints. However, you or your organization may have decided to solve for Y by looking for a silver bullet that will make the impossible possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;There is no silver bullet.&lt;/a&gt; Make sure you're solving for X, rather than Y!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Your General Options&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an agile practice, you can generally choose between:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fixed, cross-functional teams that work on different projects, but only one at a time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product-based teams, where the teams are formed around each product. Note that each product will have its own separate Product Backlog, and each team will work from exactly one Product Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feature-based teams, where teams are formed around features (rather than projects), who may either share a single Product Backlog or have one backlog per feature team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How you delineate projects, products, and features can complicate this, but the distinction between a single product with many features and multiple products should be your guiding principle. A great deal depends on correctly conceptualizing the project, and not being afraid to split off related projects when they no longer fit within the bounds of a single product or team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;You Must Address Resource Constraints.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all cases, you can't really do what you seem to be trying to do, which is spread the peanut butter ever thinner without adjusting your resource constraints. Specifically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;20 team members are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; enough to support 100 concurrent projects. &lt;strong&gt;One team, one project!&lt;/strong&gt; is a hard rule with &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; agile frameworks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unless you've done a better job abstracting your architecture or building cross-functional teams than you've described here, &lt;strong&gt;you don't have five products, you have twenty!&lt;/strong&gt; As a general rule, &lt;code&gt;5 products * 4 platforms = 20 product backlogs&lt;/code&gt;.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This would require at least 20 teams unless you prioritize and &lt;em&gt;sequence&lt;/em&gt; the deliverables.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You might also consider cross-functional teams that can build one product from one backlog that targets multiple platforms (think PhoneGap as an example), but you still don't have enough people to staff for five such teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other problems with your conceptual approach, too, but they all boil down to the fact that you're trying to do too much with too little. No matter how you structure your projects, you can't do them all at the same time with the resources you have. You either need to add resources, prioritize the use of your available resources, or (ideally) do both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-11-07T18:06:04.640" LastActivityDate="2016-11-07T18:06:04.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20439" CreationDate="2016-11-07T18:17:27.073" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;UAT Checklists Should Come From Users or Their Proxies&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What checklists should I give the team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From an agile perspective, &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; should not be giving the team a user acceptance testing (UAT) checklist at all. Your product's users (or at least a Product Owner or business analyst if you're not agile enough to work directly with your users) should be working with the development team to develop acceptance tests &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;prior&lt;/em&gt; to the development of the feature.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, these acceptance tests should be executable (if software) or automatable (for example, via computer-vision validation). That way, there's no subjective question about whether the right thing was built, since the desired result was defined up front.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even in legacy shops where UAT isn't automated, and basically involves a great deal of subjective poking around rather than formal validation, the &lt;em&gt;criteria&lt;/em&gt; for &lt;strong&gt;what should be delivered&lt;/strong&gt;—and perhaps more importantly, &lt;strong&gt;how it will be measured&lt;/strong&gt;—absolutely must be defined first to ensure an effective delivery pipeline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-11-07T18:17:27.073" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20439" CreationDate="2016-11-07T18:41:05.143" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with @CodeGnome but not just with Agile.  No matter the method, the product, or even the domain, UAT needs to belong to the users, in scope, conduct, and outcome.  The client side needs to define how to conduct UAT, the scenarios it will run, procedures, training people, how to document findings, any criteria needed, etc.  After all, UAT is a client risk and quality action.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only caveat I would have to this is if their UAT action, or inaction, is adversely impacting your ability to get to production in some way.  This is why I keep asking what you are observing in the comments above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-11-07T18:41:05.143" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20447" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-07T19:11:25.323" Score="3" ViewCount="770" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm torn because the other suppliers that are still on track with the original timeline might run in to issues of their own so perhaps working to the original timeline is a good way to reduce risk.  However, pressuring the suppliers that are still on track with the original timeline to stay on track to the original timeline feels somehow wrong.  Perhaps if they were aware of our new timeline they could change priorities and run their business more efficiently&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20845" LastActivityDate="2016-11-14T07:12:39.037" Title="If one supplier has delayed your project schedule should the other suppliers on the project be alerted to the new timeline?" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;timeline&gt;&lt;procurement&gt;&lt;suppliers&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20447" CreationDate="2016-11-07T19:29:33.820" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can think of only one reason why you would inform and alter the schedule of one supplier when another is late: dependency, in which case you would have integrated the schedules and everyone involved will see the variances and impacts accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All projects produce variances.  A variance free schedule is a fake one.  I cannot imagine trying to recalibrate other schedules when one schedule produces a variance, especially since that variance may disappear and another appears.  Ever day, you would be rebaselining schedules and chasing what is mostly random.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-11-07T19:29:33.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20443" CreationDate="2016-11-07T21:02:44.690" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;CodeGnome gives a great response and he's 100% correct, you don't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number 1 tool I've used to explain why, to management, is a ten minute exercise that takes nothing but a blank piece of paper and a pen. I call it the &quot;Multi-Tasking Letters Game&quot;, I'm sure it has other names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To play:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have each person lay a blank piece of paper in front of them landscape (on its side so wider than taller).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Draw three equal columns. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Draw a horizontal line about two inches from the top. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You now have six boxes, three small ones on the top and three long ones on the bottom. &#xA; 4. Label the small boxes &quot;1&quot;, &quot;A&quot;, &amp;amp; &quot;I&quot; (Roman Numeral 1)&#xA; 5. Explain the exercise&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Your job is to create characters. Each column represents a different product, the numbers, the letters and the roman numerals. Each product consists of the first ten characters in the sequence, A-J, 1-10 and roman numerals 1-X&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;6&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain the first round:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;In the first round we want to make sure we are working on everything so it all gets done as fast as possible. So you will work from left to right, writing down &quot;A&quot;, then &quot;1&quot; then Roman numeral 1 before going on to do &quot;B&quot;, &quot;2&quot; and Roman Numeral 2. When you have finished the entire page please raise your hand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;7&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;With a stop watch ready, tell them to begin. Start timing. When the&#xA;first person raises their hand, hit the Lap timer. When the majority&#xA;of the room is raising their hands, stop the timer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally the first person will finish somewhere around 25-30 seconds with everyone finishing before 40 seconds have elapsed. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Record the results in a highly visible location.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Explain the rules for round two&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;This time we want to focus on a single product at a time. So start by doing A through J, then move on to the numbers and then the numerals. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Position yourself where you can see multiple participants pages easily. With the stop watch ready tell them to begin. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Scan the participants and as soon as you see someone move to the&#xA;number column hit the Lap timer. When the majority of the room is&#xA;done, stop the timer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally the first person will finish the first column 4-6 seconds and the entire room will be done in less than 30 seconds. The total time for round 2 will almost always be less than the time it took the fastest person in round 1 to complete. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Record the results and reflect on what happens when you focus on&#xA;only one thing at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-11-07T21:02:44.690" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20447" CreationDate="2016-11-07T22:21:47.220" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;The many are smarter than the few&quot; is a mantra I've taught to my agile teams for years. There is even a book, The Wisdom of the Crowd, founded on this very concept. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would promote full transparency for the very reason that by doing so you tap into the greater whole. One person can't see all the moving pieces and all the relationships. By sharing with all your suppliers you may find someone has a solution to help that other supplier. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is completely counter to how I used to work, as a traditional project manager, where I had an almost institutional distrust of everyone on the team and thought things like &quot;If I tell them they have more time, they will just use it.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, set regular (weekly or every two weeks) goals and checkpoints, be fully transparent and trust your team (and suppliers) to be professional. I've been amazed at the results as I shifted from my old command and control project management to facilitating goal focused teams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-11-07T22:21:47.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19806" CreationDate="2016-11-07T22:57:41.053" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds like a homework question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A metric is a quantitative or qualitative measure of some sort that can be measured repeatedly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A KPI is a metric that is considered very important in predicting some kind of outcome or making a decision.  Its also just a fancy term that MBA's and business people sometimes use for the word 'metric.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you're talking about KPI's you want to understand WHY that metric is important and how it will be used to make a decision.  If you don't understand that, then its just another metric.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2016-11-07T22:57:41.053" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20453" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-08T11:28:03.767" Score="4" ViewCount="3980" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every career has juniors, intermediates, seniors, gurus and whatnot. I'm looking for what separates the different levels so I know how to structure a career path within a company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally I'd like to have something like &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/14925/109827&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/14972/109827&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; applied to scrum masters/agile coaches as a guidance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7155" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:45:57.110" LastActivityDate="2016-11-09T15:29:39.627" Title="What's expected from different career levels for a scrum master?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;career&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17413" CreationDate="2016-11-08T15:46:46.357" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an Information Security Architect, I am with you on the idea of anti-story, and I would counter Daniel and request that they &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt; become permanent record.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Archimate, you can model risk as events, then design security measures to counter them. The same approach could work well for user stories. This is similar to Daniels last approach, but retains the user perspective (let's be honest, almost no user cares for 2FA)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user, I would like to be confident that only I can access my account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As the super-villain, I want that my death-ray can only be used by me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a similar approach in linguistics. The idea is to negate the sentence while not negating its meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also go all-in on the anti-story concept and formally define them as anti-stories, to be resolved when they have been fixed. That might be a tad unusual, but I can imagine that it would create some excitement in the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26536" LastActivityDate="2016-11-08T15:46:46.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20453" CreationDate="2016-11-08T16:43:36.190" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Junior&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A junior scrum master should understand and be able to explain the fundamental principles and founding ideas behind agile. They should be able to explain to the more reluctant members of a team why they are doing Agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;JSM's (if I can shorten it that way) should be able to facilitate and mediate all of the basic Agile ceremonies at a very informal, casual level. This would include daily standups, sprint planning, backlog refinement, sprint review, and retrospective meetings. They should understand the basic purpose of each meeting and provide the team some level of direction, as well as steer the meeting without meddling. Allow the right conversations to happen naturally, but also steer them away from going off on a tangent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Intermediate&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this level, the scrum master needs to get better at understanding the team's work, and explain it or provide updates on things if required. ISM's should start helping with work intake. They should be able to have basic discussions with the team's business analyst and other stakeholders to help define and break down requirements and document work, and to make sure the requirements and the work intake capacity are in agreement with team goals and previous sprint capacities. They should be able to work with the product owner to understand priorities and should then ensure the team's sprint plans agree with those priorities, and help the team communicate to the PO any delays, roadblocks, or unexpected work coming in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scrum master should also act as a roadblock-mover. They should be able to help get things escalated and resolved so that the team can work more efficiently, and they should start to look at inter-team dynamics. For example, during retrospectives, they should begin to see if certain team members are causing trouble for others, and look at ways to remedy that. They should feel more comfortable having difficult discussions when necessary (&quot;your behavior is hurting your team, what ideas do you have to fix that?&quot;). Not taking on the role of manager, but they do have to manage certain things day to day and make sure the team is meeting their commitments. The scrum master should feel like an integral part of the team and should celebrate their team's successes and feel badly about things that slow their team down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ISM's should help the team manage their backlog in terms of the grunt work of making cards and filling requirement details in and prioritizing work from discussions with stakeholders; they should be able to take a few notes as to what needs done and go do it later, without taking valuable time during the Agile meetings that could be used for team collaboration and discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meetings should become more structured and formalized. The team backlog should be well documented, either digitally or physically, and some effort should be made to ensure that cards are moved at each standup, and team members should be held accountable for providing an update. If they are not able to be physically present at the meeting, they should provide an update through email or some other means, having someone else fill in for them. The team should feel like they are in sync. There should be a working agreements document posted somewhere and the entire team should be aware of it and have voted it into practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ISM's should begin helping their team to become more self-organizing and to rely on the scrum master less and less. The greater their skill, the less they should be required, sort of shrinking into the background and being less of an active participant and more of an enabler and an observer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Senior&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the senior level, scrum masters should build up a refined sense of their team's weaknesses and strengths and should develop a plan to specifically address those findings. They should feel comfortable addressing the team as a whole and with a certain amount of authority, only to motivate and enable them to do their best work. They should be able to address infractions and encourage the team to further adopt Agile practices. At this level the shift from &quot;doing Agile&quot; to &quot;being Agile&quot; should be complete. They should understand when their team feels uncomfortable with or resistant to being Agile, even when those concerns are not voiced out loud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They should be able to get ahead of the game and help the team react to disruptors, getting resolution quickly or at least helping the team communicate the roadblocks effectively and work out what to do with the appropriate stakeholders. They should be experts at getting feedback and improving, not just the team but also themselves and how they facilitate the Agile ceremonies. They should use each meeting well, digging into the depths of the team's workload, publishing each triumph, and when issues occur, getting to the crux of what went wrong, and how to fix it going forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They should hold their team accountable to their working agreements and not be afraid to challenge team members and get tough when required. This should still be done in an Agile frame of mind, being willing to adapt if the team decides as a whole that things should change. Getting a feel for where the team is at and what they are thinking should be easy at this point. The working agreement document should be further refined and capture team policies for Agile meetings and learnings from past mistakes. The senior scrum master should be able to mediate and resolve conflicts between team members and to keep team meetings focused and productive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this stage they should ensure that all work is broken down into sprint size tasks prior to the beginning of a sprint, and that during the sprint the work is broken down further into day-size work or smaller, so that cards can be moved during the daily standup. Standups should be mandatory at this point, though the schedule would be somewhat flexible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The retrospective in particular should be quite detailed and should really get the team thinking. Senior scrum masters know how to finesse every last detail from their team without having to beg for it, and how to help each person participate and enjoy doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The SSM should become the &quot;man behind the curtain&quot; - helping the team along in their Agile maturity without interfering and teaching the team to run the scrum processes on their own more and more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Guru&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum master gurus should be able to teach what they know and mentor new scrum masters. They should know Agile inside and out and be able to explain and defend its core tenets easily. They should be able to tailor their approach to an individual team and should be experts at reading people and understanding the team's interactions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They should have a great enthusiasm for Agile and be able to relate any situation to its corresponding Agile principle. They should be able to perform the scrum ceremonies admirably for any team, whether brand new to Agile or quite mature. They should have multiple plans and ideas for every aspect of being Agile, and be able to quickly select the best one that applies to each scenario or to each team or even individual. They should be able to quickly build a deep technical knowledge of their team's workload that enables their team to be far more productive and efficient. They should be able to explain the work the team does in detail, and make minor decisions related to work intake, and should push back on attempts to overfill the team backlog or to hold the team to a previous velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They should be able to teach the team to self-organize and manage their own backlog, and handle the Agile meetings and ceremonies smoothly and without intervention or moderation. They should exemplify Agile practices and be able to take criticism from the team, even requesting it, and use it to improve themselves. They should be able to help the team improve but to do so while being basically invisible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23450" LastEditorUserId="23450" LastEditDate="2016-11-09T15:29:39.627" LastActivityDate="2016-11-09T15:29:39.627" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20438" CreationDate="2016-11-08T17:25:48.707" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Microsoft Project does not allow that functionality.  The shaded areas of the Gantt chart (depicted in your figure) represent non-working time of the calendar that is selected in the &quot;Non-working time&quot; tab of the Timescale window.  There is no other customization allowed beyond selection of the calendar.  (Typically only a small portion of this non-working time comes from exceptions anyway, as night-time and weekends are not exceptions.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Others have tried to address the same need by drawing text boxes in the Gantt chart area or by including explicit Tasks (and corresponding bars) to identify specific non-working time.&#xA;Good luck, tom  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2016-11-08T17:25:48.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20453" CreationDate="2016-11-08T18:38:07.643" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the different levels can relate to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-agile-simon-powers&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Agile Onion as described by Simon Powers&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RqkBH.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RqkBH.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Entry level&lt;/strong&gt;: Can implement the tools and processes, but doesnt have a good understanding why the processes, practises, principles and value's exist. Could lead to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jamesshore.com/Blog/Cargo-Cult-Agile.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cargo-cult Agile&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Intermediate&lt;/strong&gt;: Can work on a team level, but does not yet have the experience to change organizations. Understands principles and value's, but might not yet be the best to teach other Scrum Masters. But should coach teams on Agile practises like &lt;a href=&quot;https://less.works/de/less/technical-excellence/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;technical excellence&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Senior&lt;/strong&gt;: Assist management to create structural and cultural changes in the organisation to become more Agile. Leads &lt;a href=&quot;http://martinfowler.com/articles/agileFluency.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the path through Agile Fluency&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Guru's&lt;/strong&gt;: Leads (larger) succesful Agile transformations, writes books, etc..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2016-11-08T21:54:39.883" LastActivityDate="2016-11-08T21:54:39.883" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17413" CreationDate="2016-11-08T21:20:44.493" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's really no such thing as an &quot;anti-story.&quot; Reasonable terms for the concept you're trying to express are probably one or more of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Threats.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Threat models.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business risks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Non-functional requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Process or security controls.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Refactoring some assumptions about the way such a user story should be structured can help a lot. Rather than trying to describe an anti-feature, describe the feature as a &lt;em&gt;process control&lt;/em&gt; instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Restate Your Feature as a &lt;em&gt;Process Control&lt;/em&gt; to Mitigate a Risk/Threat&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you're really describing is a &lt;strong&gt;process control&lt;/strong&gt;, e.g. you don't want your minions to be able to foil your plans by blowing up your secret base in their final moments. The problem with your &quot;anti-story&quot; approach is that double-negatives and complex inverted logic make user stories hard to follow. Instead, I would reconsider who the value consumer is, and what the context and value proposition are really supposed to be. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a criminal mastermind,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  my secret base should include security measures that guard against sabotage&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that a dying minion acting alone can't blow up my base single-handedly or by accident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not a user story about an anti-feature. In fact, it's a user story that clearly describes a threat model, a feature to address that threat model, and the actors involved (e.g. the criminal mastermind who is the value consumer, and the dying minion who is the &lt;em&gt;target&lt;/em&gt; of the technical or administrative control).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you conceptualize it this way, you end up with a valid (albeit amusing) story in Connextra format. This also results in a more straightforward and testable story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-11-08T21:20:44.493" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20453" CreationDate="2016-11-08T21:21:22.423" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our organization, junior SMs facilitate the cadence of the project. They make sure the meetings happen, make sure the right people are there, help the team members self organize, and also track things like story point burndown, etc. They provide summaries of team work at internal sprint reviews, and bring up issues the team has to management. As with the classic definition of agile scrum, they are always looking out for impediments and seeking to remove them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mid level SMs are generally obvious because of their people skills. Mid level SMs are leaders (not in a traditional manager sense, but they are someone the team tends to look to and rely on). Mid level SMs are great at generating team cohesion and team morale tends to be high. At this level, the Sm tends to become much more comfortable using their experience to look at past sprints and be able to make projections about future work that make them very useful to PMO types. A SM at mid level can not only help facilitate a planning meeting, but has experience with the team and can contribute estimates of what might or might not be too big of an item to take on based on past performance. This tends to help the tech leads and BAs a lot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Senior SMs tend to get sucked up into the management functions that are (in my opinion) the weak area of agile scrum. Senior SMs are often involved in organizing project-wide initiatives, keeping SQA efforts on track (organizationally), making sure that teams are covering needed areas when it comes to release issues, defect prioritization, etc. For a larger project, they tend to fill the void left where &quot;self organize&quot; basically fails (anything larger than 40 people or so) and step into a lot of roles traditionally covered by a PM or PMO staff. Unfortunately this means that senior SMs are often spread too thin between way too many responsibilities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26292" LastActivityDate="2016-11-08T21:21:22.423" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20447" CreationDate="2016-11-09T00:51:23.120" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Primarily it depends upon how mature your suppliers are.&#xA;If your suppliers are mature, then can trust them to see the whole picture and deal with the delays in a way that is best for them and all concerned.  If they are not mature, then they may be tempted to simply use up any new time, or use it to mask their own issues that they have not yet informed you about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, regardless of how mature your suppliers are, if there are dependencies between your suppliers then you must inform the impacted suppliers as a minimum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26540" LastActivityDate="2016-11-09T00:51:23.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14233" CreationDate="2016-11-09T06:13:57.207" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume the task type is fixed unit. If R1 has standard calendar (8 hrs per work day) and assigned 50% to the project and you use day unit for duration, then he can do a 4 hrs task in 1 day; therefore ms project calculation is wrong and the reason is that task type is fixed unit. you can change task type to fixed duration or fixed work. both work right for your situation: enter work filed or duration filed as 4 hrs; other filed will be 4 hrs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2nd solution is to keep duration unit as day and enter work filed as 4 hrs, duration will be 1 day as expected for R1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26542" LastEditorUserId="26542" LastEditDate="2016-11-09T09:51:09.733" LastActivityDate="2016-11-09T09:51:09.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20464" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-09T12:37:20.467" Score="5" ViewCount="1041" Body="&lt;p&gt;When answering and discussing &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/20453/whats-expected-from-different-career-levels-for-a-scrum-master&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; an new question came to mind, first some context:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-sm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum guide&lt;/a&gt; states that the Scrum Master services the organisation with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Leading and coaching the organization in its Scrum adoption;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Planning Scrum implementations within the organization;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From reading this article &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agile-ux.com/2010/03/30/the-scrummaster-is-not-an-agile-coach/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Scrum Master is not an Agile coach&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. I get the idea that the Scrum Master should only focus on the Scrum Framework and not other Agile practices, principles and values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to disagree, because I think Scrum covers only the project management part of &quot;being Agile&quot;, but (for example) skips the important &lt;a href=&quot;https://less.works/less/technical-excellence/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;technical practices&lt;/a&gt; that make products Agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Organizational Agility is constrained by Technical Agility&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In other words, when you are slow in making changes to your product,&#xA;  then it doesn’t matter how you structure your teams, your organization&#xA;  or what framework you adopt, you will be slow to respond to changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can we successfully implement Scrum as a Scrum Master without also being an Agile coach? The Scrum guide states it is &quot;Difficult to master&quot;. I think this is because it only handles the process and not the full cycle as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Extreme Programming&lt;/a&gt; does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leading to the following question: &lt;em&gt;Should the Scrum Master also be an Agile coach, or are they the same?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2017-12-04T18:51:33.140" Title="Should the Scrum Master also be an Agile coach, or are they the same?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20464" CreationDate="2016-11-09T14:12:21.003" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer is fairly straightforward: In an ideal situation, they shouldn't have to be. Either the team already understands and adheres to the principles of Agile, or else they have an actual, dedicated Agile coach. This would allow the Scrum Master to focus on their own tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, in a non-ideal situation, where the above is not possible, the Scrum Master. being already effectively a Scrum Coach, is a decent pick should the responsibilities of an Agile coach need to be foisted onto someone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-11-09T14:12:21.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20464" CreationDate="2016-11-09T15:20:28.353" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;They are not the same, and definitely a Scrum Master within an organization can not do Agile Coaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Main activities of the Agile Coach within a company is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coaching or assisting when a project starts, defining the perfect methodology regarding project. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Making different training about Agile methods etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on experience a professional company has its own Agile Coach. For example, in our company we have like 10 Scrum Masters on different projects, and an Agile Coach with his main duty is to up the company's Agility competencies,  and he is assisting projects at different stages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on theory, a perfect way is that when Scrum Master is assigned to just one project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26549" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2016-11-09T15:28:48.790" LastActivityDate="2016-11-09T15:28:48.790" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20464" CreationDate="2016-11-09T16:25:00.933" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A scrum master is definitely an Agile Coach to a degree, but whether a separate role is required depends on the organisation.  Within a single team the nature of the Scrum Master role is being an Agile Coach - instilling both the process of Scrum, but also the agile principles. In practice, this generally extends to those involved with the team as well.  In a small organisation this might be all you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good Scrum Master isn't just 'following the book' of scrum, but is instilling the agile principles.  An Agile Coach is doing the same thing, however approaching the problem from all levels of the organisation, rather than just focusing on a singular development team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In saying that, I don't like the concept of a 'Scrum Master' as a job title but instead a role. I'm a firm believer that Scrum is a temporary step in building a good agile team, who will evolve their own process. I'd much rather have an Agile Coach acting as a Scrum Master for a while, than someone who spent a day or two becoming a Certified Scrum Master restraining a team to using scrum for a long period of time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll caveat this with the fact that I am an Agile Coach who is also acting as a Product Owner currently - so I break all the rules ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6825" LastEditorUserId="6825" LastEditDate="2016-11-10T12:42:53.270" LastActivityDate="2016-11-10T12:42:53.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20464" CreationDate="2016-11-09T22:53:04.380" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think of agile coaching as an activity rather than as a role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have somebody with agile experience they can pass it on. If it just so happens that the Scrum Master has that experience and that they have the time to spare, then it makes sense for them to coach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be just as valid for another team member such as a developer or a Product Owner to coach; but only if they had the necessary experience and the available time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Equally, if no team member has the experience or the time, then perhaps a full-time agile coach would be more appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-11-09T22:53:04.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20470" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-09T23:17:58.763" Score="0" ViewCount="285" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I have 9 projects that are working concurrently.  Many of the resources used are the same. We have different work-plans for each, but we want to put it into one master-plan.  I have created the master plan, but I need a calendar that shows all of the tasks and work-plans for all of the projects in one calendar.  How do I do that? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26552" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-11-10T01:41:16.753" LastActivityDate="2018-05-06T00:13:53.737" Title="How to Create a Comprehensive Calendar for a Master Project Workplan that Includes Timelines from all 9 of Other Projects" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20471" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20473" CreationDate="2016-11-10T01:36:26.040" Score="5" ViewCount="176" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are running Scrum on waterfall-style projects. This means that we use Scrum as a planning unit, conduct the ceremonies, have the PO/Scrummaster roles, but we do not have a customer-facing release at the end of each sprint (though we might have demoable features).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is mostly driven by the nature of our business, and mostly works well. The one catch is that waterfall-style projects have distinct phases: development, regression testing, bug fixing, hardening etc. The latter three (regression testing, bug fixing, hardening) are quite different to the normal development cycle, and are more Kanban-like in nature. Essentially, team's velocity for planning purposes becomes less predictable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best approach of planning those phases? We are mostly dealing with it by applying factors such as 0.5 to teams' established velocity during planning, but it is imprecise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25908" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-10-21T22:24:29.033" LastActivityDate="2019-10-21T22:24:29.033" Title="Velocity at different project phases" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;&lt;velocity&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19882" CreationDate="2016-11-10T04:36:14.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My organization uses hierarchical Kanban boards. We use what is known as SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework for Enterprises).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LeanKit is one product that supports this, but there are others too. Basically you have three different steps in the hierarchy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Top level&lt;/strong&gt;: These are enterprise epics and we time box them by quarter. They are organization level goals, very general and broad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mid level&lt;/strong&gt;: These are domain level epics or features. They all roll up to an enterprise epic, and on the top level board you can see all of the features under each epic. At this level, one or more specific teams are given projects or features from here. In my experience these are project level tasks although they can also span multiple related projects which share a long term goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bottom level&lt;/strong&gt;: This is an individual team board as you are probably already familiar with. Tasks at this level roll up under their respective epics at the domain (mid) level. So if you were looking at a domain epic, you might see something like 5/7 features complete. Those 5 features might all be assigned to different teams. Either way, you could click on one and zoom down to the bottom-level team board containing that card.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23450" LastEditorUserId="23450" LastEditDate="2016-11-10T22:08:47.117" LastActivityDate="2016-11-10T22:08:47.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20471" CreationDate="2016-11-10T07:59:45.030" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't distract the whole team with bugs coming from the latter three phases. Pull one (or how many you need) developers from the team and dedicate solemnly on resolving bugs from The phases. Rotate them every week or sprint while The phases keep going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is not so many load from the phases - let them work on 'standard' regression bugs or whatever you have &lt;em&gt;apart from the development of new features&lt;/em&gt;. If one man can't cope with the load - usually there is a good room for improvement in The phases process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The approach is to divide and conquer. Dedicate people on non-sprint activity and don't disturb rest of the team who is still doing sprint activities. Pulled out part of the team can concentrate on the phases and rest of team can keep their tempo (with dropped velocity).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26385" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-11-10T14:24:49.663" LastActivityDate="2016-11-10T14:24:49.663" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2730" CreationDate="2016-11-10T13:38:50.427" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently attended a CSM certification training by QAI as part of an effort to bring more agility into my own company's marketing processes and I found the entire experience very valuable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, CSM is a foundation level course and in no way adequate for a person to be able to lead any agile initiative within their organization. But it does build a very solid foundation for understanding Agile concepts and their relevance in what is a very fast changing marketplace. I would recommend it to everybody looking to bring more efficiency into their internal processes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just make sure to choose training organizations with consulting experience as they have a more real world approach using actual client stories and experiences that are far more interesting to learn from as compared to theoretical text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As regards the certification, its always a positive differentiator especially since knowing that there is an exam to clear at the end of a training brings more seriousness and effort into the learning process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26555" LastActivityDate="2016-11-10T13:38:50.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20476" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20479" CreationDate="2016-11-10T18:48:53.650" Score="3" ViewCount="86" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in a Business Intelligence analytics group that has started trying to adopt Agile and Scrum over the past 6 months or so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As data analysts, our group doesn't develop any software or write any documentation. We pull data, run statistical models, and present our findings in either PowerPoint or Tableau.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During our first Retrospective, the leader of my small group kept referring to the Agile principal of &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Working software over documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While no one in the group has ever written any documentation for anything in the past he says that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We shouldn't spend too much time writing documentation, so just make a&#xA;  screen recording of yourself explaining your statistical modeling code&#xA;  and that will be our documentation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one has actually done this though, because none of our business clients have any interest in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried saying that I think the analogy of &quot;documentation&quot; in our group would be the PowerPoint and Tableau presentations, as they are our way of documenting what we did and the conclusions of our work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is this valid?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally the small group leader selectively misinterpreted this idea and responded:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Good point. Presentation is the most important thing we do. We need to&#xA;  invest more time on presentations and ask the business to give us more&#xA;  training on making good presentations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To his point, half the time the leaders in our group totally disregard the statistical analyses as not coming to the conclusions they wanted to make, and they just spend all of their time on PowerPoint presentations with made up results...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21892" LastEditorUserId="7559" LastEditDate="2016-11-14T05:46:18.830" LastActivityDate="2016-11-14T05:46:18.830" Title="Are presentations considered &quot;documentation&quot; when applying Agile and Scrum to BI?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20471" CreationDate="2016-11-10T19:08:06.357" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is to look at a development life-cycle that I've seen used in some &quot;Waterfall Release&quot; companies using agile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to this is the word &quot;Potentially&quot; as in &quot;potentially releasable Increment of “Done” product at the end of each Sprint.&quot;. Scrum doesn't actually say to ship every sprint. It just says it should be releasable. This has been widely interpreted as being &quot;Ship every sprint&quot; over the years. This in turn leads to many Enterprise companies only using Scrum/agile in the strict limits of the &quot;coding&quot; phase and then wrap waterfall around this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead you need to separate the concept of Deployed and Released from one another. You need to step down the path of Continuous Integration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Deployed:&lt;/strong&gt; The feature is done, it is in the system. It is just under a flag so that only specific users can see this. Sometimes referred to as A/B testing. You start by deploying the feature internally and testing it yourself. Microsoft's TFS team does just this every three weeks with it's cloud service. Internally they see the feature a week before the public does. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Released&lt;/strong&gt; The feature has been released to one or more users by changing the permission flags on the feature.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You build everything in your sprints to be deployed, even if that deployment is an internal production mirror. When you have enough features to warrant a release to the public, you just flip the switch and make them live. You separate the act of building from the act of giving it to the customer. Not unlike manufacturing where you could have a thousand Wigets in your factory before you ever sell one to a customer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other advantage of this method is it means if you have to, you can ship any time you need. For example, imagine a major security threat comes along. If you are able to ship every two weeks and just choose not to, then if there is a major security issue, you can choose to release. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This technique is being used successfully by most of the major &quot;service&quot; related internet companies now, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple OS, Microsoft Cloud anything, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Move your development away from Waterfall, keep your product releases to the customer on their longer cadences.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-11-10T19:08:06.357" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20476" CreationDate="2016-11-10T19:16:44.423" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer- Sounds like you are doing the right thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The agile manifesto is actually officially titled &quot;Manifesto for Agile Software Development&quot;, so it is naturally very skewed towards software. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the last fifteen years though, we have discovered that the values and principles are applicable to almost anything where you start with a vision and end up with some kind of result. To this end you will commonly now see the second Agile value written as: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Working Product over...&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Shipping Product over..&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you demonstrate in your Sprint Review is actually driven by the definition of what you are building. When you are deciding what to build, one of the key questions is &quot;how do we know if we are done.&quot; One of the tricks to answering this question is to ask &quot;how will we demonstrate what we've done.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A video of you showing what you are doing may be the answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A PowerPoint presentation with the final results may be the answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, is the customer satisfied with what you are shipping is your ultimate test of if your demonstrating the right thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-11-10T19:16:44.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20464" CreationDate="2016-11-10T19:29:17.773" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is one of those classic &quot;It Depends&quot; questions. One key thing here was said by SpoonerNZ &lt;em&gt;&quot;Scrum Master' as a job title but instead a role.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; There are no titles in Scrum or agile. In Scrum there are three roles, which can be completely unrelated to what HR says your job title is (I'm an Agile Coach, HR says my official title is a Senior Principle Technical Project Manager).   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I teach agile I spend some time talking about roles to try and help clarify this. Not just what the roles are, also how they relate and what their paths are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum Master:&lt;/strong&gt; The SM's focus is on their individual team. They are there to help the team to reach their sprint goals and to protect the team from outside impediments. They tend to have a focus on a time horizon of the next 4-6 weeks (2-3 typical sprints). A scrum master can and often is an active part of the team as a developer or tester and even if they are not, they are measured along with the team on how successful the team is at making and delivering on its commitments (sprint plans). A good scrum master can grow into an agile coach, given the desire and space (not all scrum masters want to be coaches). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;People Manager:&lt;/strong&gt; While the SM is focused on the team, the people manager is focused on the individual. The people manager's time horizon is six months to a year, focusing on how the individual will grow to be a better teammate. If the company is progressive, they people manager is not measured on if the product shipped, they are measured on if their teams are growing and successful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Agile Coach:&lt;/strong&gt; An agile coach is not directly connected to the act of shipping product. Instead, their focus is on the organization. They are paid to help the organization be more Predictable and more Productive. And as agile coaches, they should be doing this by focusing on helping teams to be more engaged, happier and self-organized (Think Dan Pink's Autonomy, Master, Purpose). An agile coach can be a scrum master, however, this means they are splitting their focus, which breaks one of the core tenants of agile &quot;focus&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="147" LastEditDate="2017-12-04T18:51:33.140" LastActivityDate="2017-12-04T18:51:33.140" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20008" CreationDate="2016-11-10T21:23:15.437" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is where self-organization can really shine. There are a lot of models out there (myers-briggs, roundpegg, etc) that can help you build better teams, but humans are naturally really good at doing this ourselves. Can you give people some control over their team composition to allow people to gravitate toward the teams they'll work best with? Or, if your structure won't allow that, maybe organize some hack-a-thon days or other small events where you do have the ability to let people form their own teams and watch what works and doesn't, then use those observations to inform your team building.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2016-11-10T21:23:15.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10391" CreationDate="2016-11-11T01:47:06.183" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a pretty firm believer in the Agile approach but as with everything else, it is the quality of your historic experience with anything that determines your opinion of it. Agile is deceptively easy to assimilate but very hard to really apply and can easily turn frustrating without the right support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, Agile principles are not just relevant to software development - they hold value across organization functions - anywhere where change is a constant. I am part of a very successful website scrum team in which we are following the Scrum approach to show incremental but very real progress week on week. It keeps the momentum high when you get something done.. something your customers ( and sales team) can experience  just a few weeks after conceptualizing it. Something that reflects in  your Analytics report as a clear win or loss&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;May I suggest that you try a coach or training organization with some real world consulting experience who can really show you how the best in industry are doing and winning with Agile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Amazon, Google, Spotify, Skype, Facebook, Paypal... These are just some examples of companies winning with Agile. I would  strongly suggest that you give it another try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26555" LastActivityDate="2016-11-11T01:47:06.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10391" CreationDate="2016-11-11T03:08:32.940" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally, people don't like what they don't understand. I think your dislike of agile is not spiteful but simply out of mistrust, which means you haven't seen it work well and therefore it would not make sense for you to place trust in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say, be a scrum master if you want, but first I would challenge you to work hard to understand agile. The key is, once you truly understand it and let the ideas mull over in your mind, you may find that you no longer dislike it. Such was the case with me. I had a resistance to it until I fully understood what it was about and what it stood for. If you think of it in terms of sprints, stand ups, and retrospective meetings, that stuff isn't what agile is about. Those are the means to the end. I imagine there are agile methodologies that don't use any of those things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The deeper concepts (the &quot;why&quot;) don't usually come across well when first implemented. On the surface it may seem like agile is about the processes and tools that one company or another is using to facilitate their own version of agile, and these often clash with more traditional methods such as waterfall. This is especially true of people that have been doing waterfall a long time, and can be made worse if your scrum master isn't as good at teaching the why of agile. Processes and tools are known as doing agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being agile is about thinking differently. The way we think is a huge part of who we are and it takes a long time to change that, not to mention you have to be willing to change in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So give it time, learn more about it, and eventually you may come to like agile. At that point, I see no reason you couldn't become a great scrum master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another related example: I used to despise public speaking because I found it uncomfortable and was not good at it. After having to confront my dislike and learn more about public speaking, I got better at it. Now I enjoy it because I'm no longer horrible at it. At this point, it might make sense for me to take on a role that involves a lot of public speaking. But back when I still disliked it? I don't think becoming a toastmaster would have been a good idea then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23450" LastEditorUserId="23450" LastEditDate="2016-11-11T03:14:51.000" LastActivityDate="2016-11-11T03:14:51.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20394" CreationDate="2016-11-11T13:07:24.147" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no built-in method for Project to automatically change assignment units.  The overallocation alert is there to tell you when a resource is overallocated, but it is up to the project manager/scheduler to decide how to resolve the overallocation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2016-11-11T13:07:24.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20395" CreationDate="2016-11-11T13:16:00.987" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not seeing this in either Project 2016 or Project 2010.  When I apply the tracking table and enter 24 hours of actual work on a Fixed Duration task, the message does not appear.  Please check to see that your version of Project 2013 is up to date with the most recent public updates.  See: &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/projectsupport/p/msp13/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/projectsupport/p/msp13/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2016-11-11T13:16:00.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20470" CreationDate="2016-11-11T13:21:37.920" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can create a master project by inserting the project plans together.  I am guessing you have not created a resource pool file nor are you working on Project server.  If the same resources work on the nine project plans, best to create a resource pool file and attach the resources to each plan.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;see: &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Create-and-share-a-resource-pool-64a2416e-b811-4ddf-b039-e0347e233581&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Create-and-share-a-resource-pool-64a2416e-b811-4ddf-b039-e0347e233581&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2016-11-11T13:21:37.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20488" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-11T20:14:10.843" Score="4" ViewCount="117" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, in the sprint item's Description, is there a way to enclose portions with some tags, like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;$region 1.0 Name of Chapter 1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Description goes here.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;$endregion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then later be able to build a documentation dynamically from all the tags from different Sprint items?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26574" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-11-14T20:43:40.110" LastActivityDate="2017-05-13T23:26:06.183" Title="Is there a way to &quot;tag&quot; portions of Sprint item descriptions and build documentation from it?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2017-05-14T00:28:31.263" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20488" CreationDate="2016-11-11T22:51:41.727" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't believe you can, no. However, you might be able to get something similar by adding a custom (text) field, and putting it into &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; instead of into the Description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-11-11T22:51:41.727" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20447" CreationDate="2016-11-14T07:12:39.037" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, you need to do what is going to give your project the best chance of success. While notifying other suppliers that the baseline has moved may help them run their business more smoothly, consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It increases risk by complicating the situation. Your other suppliers now have a change to their deadline, that can lead to new risks that wouldn't have occurred had you left it as it was&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leaving the current timeline in place gives other suppliers a bit of bonus wiggle room if something unexpected should occur. If you give someone extra time to deliver, they'll use it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As @DavidEspina has said, there's additional overhead in constantly changing timelines for changes such as this&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply put, don't make a change unless there's a definitive reason and benefit for that change; I can't see any particular benefits to your project by alerting your suppliers to this info.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17177" LastActivityDate="2016-11-14T07:12:39.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20494" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-14T07:42:08.953" Score="-2" ViewCount="117" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a HR Head in an IT company. One of our employees was having some issues regarding his leave and some had been solved immediately. He was unsatisfied with solution and I asked him, many times, to meet me for further clarifications. He is misbehaving and writing mails instead of meeting and solving all the issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you please help me with sample memo and some solutions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26587" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-11-14T14:18:16.117" LastActivityDate="2016-11-14T15:46:19.777" Title="Employee Being Disrespectful by not following HR Policy" Tags="&lt;human-resources&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2016-11-14T22:17:31.633" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20488" CreationDate="2016-11-14T08:27:41.853" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Delimiters, APIs, and Project Sponsors&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use good delimiters, you could use the &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.atlassian.com/jira/REST/cloud/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;JIRA API&lt;/a&gt; to parse &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.atlassian.com/jira/REST/cloud/#api/2/issue-getIssue&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;issues returned in JSON format&lt;/a&gt;, but the engineering-level details of how to do so are beyond the scope of a site about Project Management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a project management perspective, spinning up a project to have your software engineers write such a plugin might be something your company wants to spend resources on, or it may not. If your process genuinely needs such a tool, and nothing is available in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Atlassian Marketplace&lt;/a&gt; that suits your needs, then finding a project sponsor for an internal initiative may be a reasonable next step for you &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; you exhaust your research efforts on what's already out there in the ecosystem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-11-14T08:27:41.853" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20494" CreationDate="2016-11-14T14:23:52.053" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;How have you tried to set up the meeting? Did you just say 'We should meet' or 'Please set up a meeting' and then wait? What might work better is to instead set up a meeting, yourself, and then simply &lt;em&gt;tell&lt;/em&gt; him to attend. If &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; doesn't work, you could try going right to his desk and talking to him about it immediately - hard to avoid that meeting!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also of note is the fact that you are assuming he is being disrespectful by avoiding this meeting and sending emails instead. Have you asked him &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; he prefers emails? In all likelihood, he has some reason (legitimate or not).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-11-14T14:23:52.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20494" CreationDate="2016-11-14T15:33:46.143" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think this is a project management question - you haven't described anything in the context of a project - the situation seems more line/operations management.  That said, Mr. Espina has persuaded me to think about the problem in the terms of project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Communications &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a project management skill.  From my perspective and based only on the information you've provided, you have a communications problem and you're making it worse.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He was unsatisfied with solution and I asked him, many times, to meet me for further clarifications. He is misbehaving and writing mails instead of meeting and solving all the issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Terms like &quot;misbehaving&quot; are judgmental, and they communicate a very clear message to the employee. They communicate that the employee's options are to behave or to misbehave, and that you are the arbiter of proper behavior. This concerns me greatly from a corporate HR official.   If my HR head expressed this much contempt for me, I would feel compelled to begin to defend my position.  I would shift all communication from oral to written and contact legal counsel.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the context of &quot;misbehaving and writing emails&quot;, you've communicated a contempt for those of us who prefer email communication.  Many of us in technical professions live and breathe by emails.  Many of us have been subject to the tyranny of meetings that prolong discussions and never resolve issues. (The actually issue and resolution isn't clear from your posting, presumably out of respect for the employee's privacy).   Many of us in the technical profession prefer record copies of communication  - particularly communications that can affect our pay or benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are trying to discuss the matter in meetings (a non-record medium) and the employee is trying to discuss the matter in emails (a record medium), then the conflict may have already escalated beyond the point where you can exert control.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Aside: It is possible that I have misunderstood the situation - if the employee is writing emails about you and your company to others outside HR/Line management, then the problem is quite different.  ]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It isn't clear to me what the desired outcome/action is, but in general, if I want an action (and in this case you want to close this issue with the employee), strategy compels me to choose a communications style that is acceptable to the individual who must take the action.  When I communicate with my boss or my senior stakeholders, I choose the communications method they prefer.  I don't demand meetings if they prefer phone calls.  In this case, you're frustrated that he prefers a different communications style, but your requests that he follow your preferences haven't been productive; trying the same thing again is going to both be unproductive &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; communicate even more effectively to the employee. Continuing down this path is a clear communication that you do not respect the employee.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You're asking for a sample memo, but I don't know what the sample memo is intended to convey.  Is it a written warning? a memorandum for the record? What is it you want to communicate to the employee? What is the message?  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend that you take a step back and determine what you want from this employee. What is the outcome you want?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd ask the employee outright what outcome the employee wants - this conflict has escalated - what would de-escalate it and keep the employee satisfied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is settling the issue worth responding to his emails?  Does your organization have a process for escalating employee disputes? do you have an alternative resolution procedure?  If not, I would invite the employee to work with me to establish that procedure and document in Organizational Process Assets.  I'd ask the employee to help me craft a memo that could be used the next time an employee and HR cannot agree on the resolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me return to project management in closing.  PM's care about closing the project.  Everything we do is in the context of &quot;What impact will this have on the project?&quot;  Your communications &amp;amp; interactions with this employee have decreased the value of the employee to the project and to the company.  Until this issue is resolved that employee is unhappy and that unhappiness impairs productivity.  This issue is costing the company money, productivity and progress.  I urge you to reconsider the issue not as &quot;employee being disrespectful&quot;, but as &quot;An issue which is damaging employee productivity and needs to be resolved to mutual benefit.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(PostScript - I mentioned this above, but I acknowledge that I may have completely misunderstood the problem; you are (properly and correctly) concealing the issue from us - that is your professional obligation.  If I've inferred material which is inaccurate, then I apologize; you asked for advice and I've given the best advice I could within the constraints of the information you've provided and the methodology of project management. I don't pretend to be an HR professional.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2016-11-14T15:33:46.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20494" CreationDate="2016-11-14T15:46:19.777" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll try to answer this within a project context.  Projects by definition are of limited duration and resources.  All types of resources and talent you deploy on a project must be fit for service and perform as expected.  Of all the resources and talent you deploy, humans are the most complex and variable in performance.  Not only is the a HUGE variance in knowledge, skill, and abilities despite resumes reading the same, you have to deal with biases, personalities, feelings, social pressures, legal protections, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite the complexities, you still need to ensure fitness to duty and performance to expectations and, when neither is being met, you need to remove the offending enabler (human in this case) and replace and you need to do so as fast as you can.  You need to do so legally, gently, and fairly but you need do it so you can deliver the project as promised.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Call the individual in, put him / her on a corrective action plan within a definite time period and clear, achievable objectives, and, if not met in that time, remove and replace.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an operations, I think there are other obligations to be met, but this is a PM site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-11-14T15:46:19.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19931" CreationDate="2016-11-14T20:58:18.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The point of saying &quot;As a .., I want to&quot; is to show who the story helps, and give info to the developer on who to ask to complete it.  Saying &quot;As a system&quot; implies the system cares (really?) and is actually solution-ising as part of the requirements (you are assuming this is some kind of non-interactive piece).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to think about who you need to help, and write the story from their point of view, then think about how you can solve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3336" LastActivityDate="2016-11-14T20:58:18.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20500" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20502" CreationDate="2016-11-14T23:45:47.293" Score="7" ViewCount="243" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the Scrum guidelines, the development team has to do all the tasks required to fulfil the definition of &quot;Done&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are projects like mine, however, which are organized on teams focused only on parts of the development(a team build frontend, an other build the database, other does the QA and so on). &lt;strong&gt;So, should these projects restructure themselves into a feature oriented approach in order to adopt Scrum or Scrum shouldn't be applicable for such projects?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26602" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2016-11-15T15:05:36.387" LastActivityDate="2016-11-16T02:55:54.817" Title="Does Scrum only works for teams working on actual features?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20500" CreationDate="2016-11-15T11:54:51.720" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say yes. Teams working on maintenance (application management) will rather benefit more from Kanban boards or other approaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, maintenance teams might also work on releasing hotfixes or cummulative updates, which are projects that could be carried out according to Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21836" LastActivityDate="2016-11-15T11:54:51.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20500" CreationDate="2016-11-15T12:16:16.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use scrum for a combination or bug fixes and features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have a large backlog of issues it is easy to get stuck churning through the backlog of issues and never feel ready to release. For my team, we plan the time for the bug fixes and prioritize them accordingly so that we react quickly and have a vision of the release for the next iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban also works, but I think it depends a lot on the team culture. You can switch from SCRUM to Kanban if the situation calls for it (such as launching a new product that cannot be launched before the set of issues are fixed). However, if a Kanban is not well managed, there is a high risk of getting into a never ending development where you are never ready to release because new issues continually crop up. SCRUM ensures you release and ensures that everyone knows and agrees that the release will happen and is equally responsible. To achieve the same culture in a Kanban would require a lot more discipline from the entire team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the development team has to do all the task requiered to fullfill the&#xA;  definition of &quot;Done&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This depends on what the definition of Done is. If you have a feature that affects different areas or so different teams then yes. But if you follow SCRUM you will find that some parts of the SCRUM don't depend on others and you can have a release of the individually &quot;Done&quot; items while moving the unfinished items to the next iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Use feature tems have any advantage, like easuer way to comper the&#xA;  productivity, make estimates, fast delivery?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SCRUM is a methodology. It is a list of guidelines and not a strict set of rules to follow. The most important lesson in SCRUM is to learn to adapt. Adapt to your team, your environment and your goals. Don't be afraid of making a mistake and learning from it. That is why you have a retrospective at the end of every sprint, to learn and adapt. And that is why you have a sprint, to time-box your work, keep it short, on schedule and learn fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16640" LastActivityDate="2016-11-15T12:16:16.717" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20500" CreationDate="2016-11-15T12:55:54.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum can be used for application development or for maintenance projects. Ideally small changes or modifications are not added to scrum however for a middle to large sized projects, Scrum is a must.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum helps you stay focused and at the same time takes burden off you to think about a large project on hand. It has to do with how a project can be managed in chunks that decides the efforts that a team need to apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Maintenance projects, kanban or Waterfall approach also makes sense but for application development projects, opt for scrum, no matter you are a part of testing, UI designing, Development or any of the teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26613" LastActivityDate="2016-11-15T12:55:54.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19931" CreationDate="2016-11-15T20:10:36.640" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, as a product owner who writes user stories all the time for a VERY large project that is considered an agile pioneer in our industry, I can say that we would never write &quot;As a system...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A user story is a story about a &lt;em&gt;user&lt;/em&gt;. If you drill down through the logic of why something is needed, there is &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; a human under there somewhere and that person is who the story is about. Even in cases where you are writing a story about an external service that has to share data with us on the back end, there is a user of that service somewhere, inevitably. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm pretty confident about this because our project as a whole has put a lot of effort into the practice of creating useful user stories, and we product owners actually peer review our stories regularly. If one of us wrote &quot;As a system...&quot; I guarantee they would get cut to pieces in the peer review session. Even worse, if the story was actually delivering functionality to two different customers, they would be cut to pieces even worse. Good practice is to cut the story down to the smallest useful vertical slice, and it should always be focused on the needs of &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; user (or class of users) that is clearly defined. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the fact that your story was &quot;growing in complexity by the day&quot; indicates that there is something dysfunctional going on with your story grooming process. A user story should be kept small to allow for better tracking of team velocity, easier planning, and (in an ideal world) allow for something deliverable (albeit small) every sprint. A user story should be focused on one user, as small as practical, and let go of by the creator of the story once development begins. I have had to change acceptance criteria in-flight (while a story is in development) before, but I am extremely reluctant to do so and will make very clear to the dev &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; why it must be done. 99% of the time, if something new comes up that changes things after the story is in flight, it will simply become a new item in the backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over all, I really think you guys should probably review how you are approaching story creation, story grooming, and planning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26292" LastActivityDate="2016-11-15T20:10:36.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20500" CreationDate="2016-11-15T21:46:01.903" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum teams consist of all the people needed to build a working product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a &lt;em&gt;core&lt;/em&gt; value of the Scrum framework. The Scrum guide states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cross-functional teams have all competencies needed to accomplish the work without depending on others not part of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A team like this has few external dependencies, which means:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They can solve most of their problems within the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is easier to plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communication is easier&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is easier to work out the team's capacity and so estimating is more effective&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a more efficient way to work that usually delivers substantial productivity gains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-11-15T21:46:01.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20500" CreationDate="2016-11-16T02:55:54.817" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We also use Scrum for teams that have both new feature and maintenance tasks in a given sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On established, selling, products, it is uncommon to see a complete segregation between maintenance and new features. Engineers who developed feature X on the previous release are likely to support it in the current one, and can't be pulled 100% to new work. Engineers also become subject matter experts (SMEs) in a given area, and have to devote some of their time to maintenance while working on the next release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As L.Young correctly points out, maintenance work also has release and sprint targets. So, Scrum &lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt; to work in situations where teams are organized based on technical ownership, and again, in my experience, it does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban is a good approach when it comes to troubleshooting and dealing with unplanned issues from the field. However, as soon as the issue is understood and slotted for a release, it should fold into the same Scrum framework that is used for new features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, there is no strong reason to reshuffle them across features: not unless there is existing evidence that the current arrangement does not work. Moreover, if engineers are already engaged on a mix of feature/maintenance work, and/or you have many small features in your releases, then such a change is likely to reduce productivity, and drag people into multiple concurrent feature Scrum teams. &#xA;On the other hand, if you have a few major features that occupy people 100%, and little maintenance work, then shifting into feature teams may help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a bit more on that here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://romankleiner.blogspot.com/2015/04/scrum-part-xi-module-teams-or-feature.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://romankleiner.blogspot.com/2015/04/scrum-part-xi-module-teams-or-feature.html&lt;/a&gt; .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25908" LastActivityDate="2016-11-16T02:55:54.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20508" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-16T04:52:52.103" Score="3" ViewCount="269" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for a small tech start-up and we are trying to figure out an efficient way for track the developer's time and budget which doesn't take a lot for the dev team to fill in. An efficient way to track the tasks and time spent on it so that the business side can understand the internal costs. We found that hourly time tracking was not the best way to approach this and having the team fill in a google sheet wasn't successful. If you could share some tips and ideas to tackle this problem or if you could share your company's own success with time tracking, all help would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26620" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T12:10:57.523" LastActivityDate="2017-03-17T11:52:38.650" Title="How can a small dev team track time successfully?" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;timekeeping&gt;&lt;startup&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2017-03-20T18:37:19.697" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20508" CreationDate="2016-11-16T05:28:48.277" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can achieve this in multiple ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Track time in real time, you can look for &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.toggl.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Toggl&lt;/a&gt; which is probably the most used of its kind&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Require your team to track time daily, this is what we are doing in my company. We actually block the access to the tool if you didn't track your time the day before.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Track the time based on the tasks completed. This require to have estimated all the time needed for each tasks and if there is a difference between estimation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25678" LastEditorUserId="25678" LastEditDate="2016-11-16T05:37:35.977" LastActivityDate="2016-11-16T05:37:35.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20508" CreationDate="2016-11-16T10:10:54.543" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A tool won't save you.  Discipline will.  Other professionals, such as lawyers, do it all the time for decades, with accuracy, and without a fancy tool.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-11-16T10:10:54.543" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20511" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20514" CreationDate="2016-11-16T10:23:06.587" Score="4" ViewCount="751" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a large program, of which my team are a small but vital part. We have three development teams on aligned on three weekly sprint cycles. We assign stories from the backlog based on a development team's own capacity (the number of story points) which they commit to for a given sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developers are required to report their capacity commitment for Sprint N+1 on the Thursday of the 2nd week of Sprint N. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developers are also required to factor into this Sprint N+1 commitment the approximate effort they will spend in estimating stories to go into future sprints.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have an internal mandate from management that for a story to go into sprint N+1, the estimation must be completed by the Wednesday of the final week of sprint N. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The amount of estimation effort per sprint is highly variable, but usually between 1 and 2 days.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem we are seeing, which is recurring pretty much every sprint, is that the teams prioritise their sprint N delivery over the sprint N+1 estimation. This usually results in the estimation work being shoved up towards the end of sprint N. When this happens, we often do not have sufficient estimated stories in the backlog to feed Sprint N+1. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This comes up time and again in sprint retrospectives. I have approached management and suggested a solution which would involve having a separate &quot;estimation backlog&quot; which could be used to feed the team backlogs. However, this has been rejected.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem can be somewhat mitigated by getting the estimation tasks to the developers as early in the sprint cycle as possible - the earlier we get them, the more likely they are to be estimated within the deadline for inclusion in next sprint. However, this is often not possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wondered if anyone could advise on a way to make this problem more manageable, or suggest a solution which I could take to management?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10480" LastEditorUserId="10480" LastEditDate="2016-11-16T17:04:18.577" LastActivityDate="2016-11-16T21:02:31.940" Title="How to address friction between estimation requests and delivery commitment" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20511" CreationDate="2016-11-16T11:58:30.690" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;How about working with the Dev Team and the Management to assign a period of a given day (say Wednesday afternoon) in the Sprint 'N' week and dedicate that time to N+1 estimating?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reason for may be that the sprints are too full, so the Dev team are so worried about not being able to complete the work in 'N' sprint that the estimating becomes less of a priority. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest cutting down the items in the sprint and setting a few hours in any given day for the entire team to do the estimates for the next week. If they have time left at the end of Sprint 'N', they could always pull more items from the backlog to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'd soon find the balance of amount of work in Sprint 'N' and the amount of time needed for estimates for 'N+1'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24050" LastActivityDate="2016-11-16T11:58:30.690" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20513" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20527" CreationDate="2016-11-16T14:38:47.853" Score="6" ViewCount="1127" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a sprint where we fix old bugs as well build new features, we will encounter 3 types of &quot;bugs&quot; in in a scrum board:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bugs introduced by current stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bugs newly discovered during sprint but are not from current stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bugs previously identified and planned in backlog and are moved into current sprint to be fixed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;for (1), these are created as sub task issue type under the story to be worked on as part of the story. Stories are not done unless all sub tasks are done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For (2), we create them as bug issue type in the current sprint so that we know how many bugs are discovered mid sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problem is with (3). Since they were bug type in backlog, when moved to sprint they continue to have bug issue type and this messes with (2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the JIRA way of differentiating between old and new bugs during sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am very tempted to convert all type (3) Bugs to Tasks and Change Requests to Story at the beginning of sprint. Is this acceptable JIRA practice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4042" LastEditorUserId="4042" LastEditDate="2016-11-20T03:51:50.877" LastActivityDate="2016-11-20T03:51:50.877" Title="How to differentiate old bugs from new bugs during a sprint?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20511" CreationDate="2016-11-16T15:10:08.687" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer: I assume, based on your usage of the word 'Sprint', that you are working in Scrum. Even if you're not, you should still considering implementing a planning meeting.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;TLDR: Estimate in the planning meeting.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, ask yourself (and, if you don't know, upper management) &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; some of these mandates are in place. It may be that you can fix this problem simply by removing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Developers are required to deliver their capacity commitment for Sprint N+1 on the Thursday of the 2nd week of Sprint N.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why? Locking developers into their commitments earlier than necessary seems distinctly non-Agile to me. What if requirements for those stories change? Are developers unable to remove/add commitments then?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Developers are also required to factor into this Sprint N+1 commitment the approximate effort they will spend in estimating stories to go into future sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not really a big deal, but is there a reason you don't simply reduce focus factor to account for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have an internal mandate from management that for a story to go into sprint N+1, the estimation must be completed by the Wednesday of the final week of sprint N. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same as my first point, this seems like a &lt;em&gt;bad idea&lt;/em&gt; to me. What would be a much better idea is for a story to be &lt;em&gt;Ready&lt;/em&gt; by Wednesday of final week. They can then estimate it in the planning meeting for sprint N+1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the teams prioritise their sprint N delivery over the sprint N+1 estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is just natural, as developers (typically) tend to focus on development before all else. However, if you have a mandatory, scheduled planning meeting, then there's not really any wiggle room to &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; estimate during said meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;suggested a solution which would involve having a separate &quot;estimation backlog&quot; which could be used to feed the team backlogs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NO.&lt;/strong&gt; What if the estimates change?? Note that I'm not saying that estimating early is a bad thing. But if that is done, the estimations should be &lt;em&gt;reviewed and changed&lt;/em&gt; closer to the sprint. Estimating early and then using those as &lt;em&gt;commitments&lt;/em&gt; flies in the face of Agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;somewhat mitigated by getting the estimation tasks to the developers as early in the sprint cycle as possible &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See above; this might mitigate your current problem, but it will cause others. Don't do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-11-16T15:10:08.687" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20511" CreationDate="2016-11-16T15:46:46.743" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stop with the word commitment in context with estimations. One of the biggest Agile frameworks &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/About/All-Articles/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/95/Commitment-vs-Forecast-A-subtle-but-important-change-to-Scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum changed their text from commitment to forecast in 2011&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Software development is a highly uncertain creative process. Its done when its done, not when you said it would be done. It just doesn't work like that. This means there is also no good reason to commit to it, unless you want to pressure developers in doing overtime (which ofcourse is stupid, because they will make a mess, meaning you will go slower in the long run).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile cycles do estimations for different reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Long term (probably inacurate) forecasts, and only if needed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get discussions going around tasks and see if everyone understand the task at hand&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Giving the team &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sustainablepace.net/what-is-sustainable-pace&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a sustainable-pace&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teams should be commited to delivering a highly valuable and high quality product, but not to estimations. If managers are too focused on commitments it shows they have no clue about sustainable software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a side-note I am pretty worried by your words: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This comes up time and again in sprint retrospectives. ... ... However, &lt;strong&gt;this has been rejected&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rejected by whom? Management? Let the people who do the work decide how they work. Isn't that an Agile 101, read the manifesto and look for words like trust, sustainable and self-organizing: &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Management should be facilitating:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The role of middle management is to see the whole and build the&#xA;  capability of the organization to build great products. He should help&#xA;  team and ScrumMaster with removing obstacles and making improvements.&#xA;  He should teach the team how to improve and solve problems. He should&#xA;  Go See to understand what is really going on in the place of work and&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;see how he can best help the team improve their work&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Read more here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://less.works/less/management/role_of_manager.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://less.works/less/management/role_of_manager.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your-case you found improvements in the retrospective, but someone won't let you implement them. Sounds like a pure command-and-control situation. You should teach the organisation to embrance self-organising continuous improvement or maybe just stop trying to do Agile at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2016-11-16T21:02:31.940" LastActivityDate="2016-11-16T21:02:31.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20518" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23543" CreationDate="2016-11-16T19:51:56.533" Score="1" ViewCount="3731" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’m taking Intro to Project Management online and the instructor has required us to produce Gantt charts with deliverables prominently in their own column on the far right. We can use any software we want, as long as it looks good and professional. I'm a newb when it comes to the available options for Project Mangement software, and we haven't learned any of them in this course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I presumed that given the plethora of project management software and online dashboard tools available, that adding a custom column on the right would be a fairly easy thing to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that one can do this with Excel, but isn’t this a situation of “don’t reinvent the wheel”? So what I’m wondering is how can I do this with other project management software?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What I've Tried Already&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried the following softwares:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;MS Project 2016&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;TeamGantt&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gantt Project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not been able to discover how to place the deliverables at all, let alone to show them in one aligned column on the right. Also, none of them format well to fit on one page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also tried this link:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/15672/how-to-create-custom-fields-at-project-level-in-ms-project&quot;&gt;How to create custom fields at project level in MS Project&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, it did not provide the clear solution for my question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help is appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26519" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2018-02-12T10:07:24.180" Title="How to create deliverables column in Gantt chart?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;deliverables&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20519" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-17T00:45:21.593" Score="3" ViewCount="167" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take a scenario where the project deadline is predetermined by senior management and the project team is asked to execute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any methodology which can be used?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can a project plan be created in such a case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26634" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-11-18T14:49:26.377" LastActivityDate="2016-11-18T18:49:50.333" Title="How to Plan a Project with a Fixed Management Deadline?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20519" CreationDate="2016-11-17T00:54:49.680" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sure; the example you give, while not ideal (particularly the part where the timeline is decided by management, rather than the team), is not impossible to work in. Nor is it that uncommon, unfortunately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most methodologies should still work, you just have to frame your thinking differently. For instance, instead of determining whether or not you need to extend your deadline (which in this case is possible), you can determine whether or not you need to strip out some of the features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's not possible (ie. if both time &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; scope are fixed), then the most significant benefit from forecasting is determining how &lt;em&gt;likely&lt;/em&gt; you are to succeed/fail at the project - there's not much way to actually &lt;em&gt;prevent&lt;/em&gt; it from failing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-11-18T18:49:50.333" LastActivityDate="2016-11-18T18:49:50.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20513" CreationDate="2016-11-17T06:34:09.773" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bugs are defects found after an increment of work has been released. Work-in-progress is either &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;not-done&lt;/em&gt;; almost by definition the current agile increment should not be generating &quot;bugs&quot; in the ticketing sense of the term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Released Defects vs. Incomplete Increments&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the problem may be the way that you're treating defects in features that are under development within an iteration. Your question implies that there's some sort of internal cycle to your iterations where &quot;bugs&quot; are being tracked as defects, rather than simply treated as unfinished or incomplete features that don't yet meet the Definition of Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if Feature Foo from the current iteration isn't passing the acceptance criteria defined for the feature (you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; using some form of test-first development, right?) then the work is simply &quot;not done&quot; rather than a bug. If you're tracking it as a bug, it strongly implies that your developers and your testers are not actively collaborating. I'd treat this as a process smell, rather than trying to create some new category of &quot;work-in-progress bug&quot; that should be tracked separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if Feature Bar met the Definition of Done in a previous iteration, but bugs were later found after the feature was declared &quot;done,&quot; then while you may choose to log it as a bug in JIRA, from an agile perspective it's really &lt;em&gt;new work&lt;/em&gt; for a subsequent iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Active Collaboration&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Collaboration in an agile sense is about working together, in as close to real-time as possible. In software development, this generally results in patches, pull requests, or red/green/refactor cycles rather than team members filing tickets against each other's work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have testers filing bugs against work-in-progress, you need to improve your process to create closer collaboration. This may require moving the testers into your development team rather than treating them as external resources, or training your developers and testers in pair-programming or test-first development practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want to foster collective ownership instead of finding new ways to file or track tickets. You have a real opportunity for significant process improvement here; focus on the process, not the tool!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-11-17T06:34:09.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20519" CreationDate="2016-11-17T10:44:54.070" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the schedule is fixed, you will need some wiggle room on the other corners of your project management triangle (cost, schedule, scope). If you are free to reduce your scope, you are fine. If you are not, you might need more resources, which increases cost. If your fixed on all three of them, you're in trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for as a methodology is concerned, it's hard to tell what works for you. If you are strictly time boxed, your requirements are yet unclear or changing quickly and your scope is flexible, you might want to go ahead agile (e.g. SCRUM). In a different environment another approach might work. But for that we'd need to know more detail, e.g. type of project, requirements, team etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26637" LastActivityDate="2016-11-17T10:44:54.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2528" CreationDate="2016-11-17T12:24:04.083" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Overview of CAPM &amp;amp; PMP&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CAPM is an entry level certification for people who are working in projects. It is a knowledge based test based on the PMBOK Guide. If you study hard, you can easily pass the exam. You need to study PMBOK Guide and learn about the processes &amp;amp; ITTOs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMP is an advanced level certification for people who are managing complete project or part of a project i.e. they have experience of leading &amp;amp; directing projects. PMP is mostly based on the PMBOK Guide but not entirely on it. It is based on Project Manager's role as defined by the PMI. PMP tests the aspirants on the application of PMBOK Guide's concepts (Processes &amp;amp; ITTOs) and hence it is much more difficult than CAPM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CAPM Requirement&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are 2 ways to fulfill the requirement to appear in the CAPM Exam -&#xA;Option 1 - You need to have high school diploma or global equivalent with 1500 hours of professional experience on a project team&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option 2 - You need to have high school diploma or global equivalent with 23 contact hours of formal education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Contact Hours&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can gain contact hours by doing an online course. I would recommend that you should look at some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmbypm.com/top-udemy-courses-project-management/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;top courses on udemy&lt;/a&gt;. Udemy courses are reasonably priced and you get lifetime access to the course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25305" LastActivityDate="2016-11-17T12:24:04.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20519" CreationDate="2016-11-17T12:39:52.950" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Planning values are always fixed.  No one in their right mind will commission a project with an open checkbook and timeline.  Planning values are typically aggressive and optimistic, as they should be, because who wants to commit to pay for a product or an outcome more than other pays for the same product or outcome?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you create your plan and schedule targeting those aggressive planning values and then expose the risk you are facing in execution.  And then during execution, you forecast and expose your variances to management as you move along, with any mitigation strategies you can develop and use.  And, if your forecasting a late delivery or over cost budget with no chance of recovery, communicate it out and request use of your contingency/reserve dollars and finish your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work is and will always be probabilistic.  Targets will likely always be optimistic.  And you will always have variances, sometimes favorable, sometimes unfavorable.  Great PM is not about meeting targets all the time but is about knowing where you are, predicting where you're going, communicating effectively, planning for risks, and having plans b and c to cover those risks when they're realized.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-11-17T12:39:52.950" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20508" CreationDate="2016-11-17T14:33:14.493" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wonder if you really need to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;understand the internal costs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe track it for a while, but don't force developers to track time unless it is absolutely necessary. Like billing clients per hour, but even then you could bill them on relative effort sizes and remove the need to track time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might wonder why shouldn't developers track-time? Let’s take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Sutherland&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jeff Sutherlands&lt;/a&gt; rant on the lameness of timesheets to see why:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Actually time sheets are worse than lame:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;they demotivate developers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;10-15% loss of productivity is the minimum&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;developers have to fake the time to fill them out properly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;erroneous data is used for reporting and management makes bad decisions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;customers are deceived&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;they have nothing to do with quality code production&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;they focus the whole organization on phony data instead of production&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, this is not enough for many managers to give up time&#xA;  sheets. Just like the waterfall process, there is a psychological&#xA;  dependency so strong, it is as if they are on drugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developers are smart people who perfectly know when something they are doing is just waste. This is therefor very demotivating, they rather create code in the same time. So unless you can convince developers that tracking time is totaly worth it, just stop doing it, because it will cost you more than you think you gain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not so hard to divide relative estimates by average team costs, to get an good idea what stuff costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2016-11-17T14:33:14.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20526" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-17T14:34:41.620" Score="5" ViewCount="1976" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/20521/25606&quot;&gt;previous answer&lt;/a&gt; stated that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if Feature Bar met the Definition of Done in a previous iteration, but bugs were later found after the feature was declared &quot;done,&quot; then while you may choose to log it as a bug in JIRA, from an agile perspective it's really &lt;em&gt;new work&lt;/em&gt; for a subsequent iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, while I can see that a feature not working &lt;em&gt;before the feature is considered Done&lt;/em&gt; is obviously just evidence that the feature isn't Done yet, I'm having trouble wrapping my head around how something not working after the feature was considered complete being anything other than a defect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So... is there an obviously 'correct' approach (as opposed to simply being opinion-based)? And if so, what is the rationale behind it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2016-11-18T16:19:19.843" Title="Defect Found in Previous Iteration - Bug or New Work?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20513" CreationDate="2016-11-17T16:14:13.547" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just wanted to expand on &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/20513/how-to-differentiate-old-bugs-from-new-bugs-during-a-sprint#comment25484_20513&quot;&gt;my comments on the question&lt;/a&gt;, as an answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of the three types of defects that you identified in the question, I only see two types of defects. The first one, bugs introduced by current stories, is an in-phase defect. The other two are out-of-phase defects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concepts of &quot;in-phase&quot; and &quot;out-of-phase&quot; come from the measurement of defect detection efficiency or defect removal efficiency. In a sequential model, a &quot;phase&quot; is an activity of development - requirements, design, coding, etc. In an agile methodology, I'd consider a &quot;phase&quot; to be an iteration. If you do not release at the end of every iteration, you may consider a &quot;phase&quot; to be a release, as well, but I think that it is easier to track each iteration as a phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you detect an issue before a story is marked as Done (as defined by your Definition of Done), you can create a subtask on the ticket. In the instance of JIRA that I use, a Story can have different types of subtasks, one of which is a Story Bug. A Story Bug would indicate that an issue was found in code review, independent QA, or acceptance testing that needs to be resolved while a Task subtask would simply be something to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once a story is marked as Done, if there is an issue with it before the release (perhaps because of a conflict with another story or change made), it can be reopened and an appropriate subtask added. However, any issues found related to a story or task that has already been released are put in as a Bug, which is a top level task type in JIRA. It's also linked back to the appropriate story for record purposes, but the original story remains in a Released state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you also add a field in JIRA to track the Sprint where you suspect the issue was injected, you can do some more fine-grained tracking about the age of the issue. This may help in prioritizing. However, it may not be entirely accurate - you may not always know for sure when a defect was actually injected into the software, but you can guess based on file change history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When reporting, there's no reason to differentiate between what you are considering type two (bugs discovered but are not from current stories) and type three (bugs from previous work that are moved into current sprint to be fixed) bugs. If, in the course of doing work on an iteration, you find a bug that has yet to be reported and exists in released code, simply enter it as a bug and have it go through your triage process. If it's severe enough, you can adjust your iteration scope. If it's not, you can prioritize it for the next iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2016-11-17T16:14:13.547" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20526" CreationDate="2016-11-17T16:15:57.997" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does it matter how you name it? All extra work is new work when you look at it from a grammar point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You found work that first was not expected (or planned) in the form of a defect. I guess your question comes down to 'how to handle defects? in an Agile environment'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there is only one 'correct' (very opinionated) way: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Always place defects on the &lt;strong&gt;TOP&lt;/strong&gt; of the backlog. Using a &lt;a href=&quot;https://medium.com/quality-functions/the-zero-bug-policy-b0bd987be684#.cwpevjaft&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;zero defect policy&lt;/a&gt; as described in &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/18771/is-it-sound-project-management-practice-to-make-software-engineers-fix-bugs-off/19805#19805&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not estimate defects on your backlog, unless they are classified features/improvements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you fix defects (without estimations) your velocity will go down relatively. Because fixing defects costs time, but you do not earn story-points.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technically this adds extra effort to the story that created this defect. If you use an average velocity overtime, it will also give you an more realistic forecast, as defects do just happen. Even when you think your done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would advise against re-opening done work, unless it is such a big mess that it should be just be re-done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2016-11-17T19:45:53.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20526" CreationDate="2016-11-17T17:54:38.550" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can tell you how my project handles this kind of thing, not necessarily what the objective &quot;correct&quot; way is. I do believe that we are a good basis for consideration as a very large project that has thought though many, many issues over the course of several years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For us, &quot;Definition of done&quot; means &quot;done&quot; from the perspective of the dev team. Each development team agrees cooperatively on a number of items without which they will not consider a story to be &quot;done&quot;. This is over and above any acceptance criteria on the story. This definition of &quot;done&quot; can actually be different depending on the team that agreed to it, because it is a product of &quot;self organization&quot;. Generally, the project sees a pretty consistent set of things on the &quot;definition of done&quot; list though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the story is &quot;done&quot;. It will go through a number of different types of testing. We do &quot;scrum testing&quot; inside the dev team before we &quot;release&quot; the story into the build, and once it is included in the development build, it will have to go through multiple iterations of testing in different environments before it finally reaches production. This means that a team could hand off a story as &quot;done&quot; and have a defect come back related to that story months down the road. It doesn't make sense in this circumstance to not consider it &quot;done&quot; until ALL defects are resolved, especially since functional, customer-facing behavior might depend on external dependencies (like, say, the customer upgrades their standard browser to IE11). Defects are endless, since there are so many externalities that can change the way the product behaves from a tester's viewpoint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the way we work with our customer, there is a big difference between a defect and an enhancement. That is because a defect = the difference in behavior between the delivered product and the agreed upon scope for that release. If the product is not behaving the way we all agreed that it should up front, that will be a defect and we are on the hook to make sure it is made good. An enhancement is a different story. Often, as UAT (User Acceptance Testing) testers are digging into new functionality, they see ways that this could be improved to make their lives easier and give them a more productive workflow. These suggestions are captured as enhancements. Since enhancements are not part of the formerly agreed upon scope for that release, but they grow organically from the new features, these are treated in a different way for contractual and billing reasons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, going back to the OP: the feature bar met the definition of done in a previous iteration, so it is &quot;done.&quot; Later, &quot;bugs&quot; were found, so these would either be defects (if the bug interferes with the intended functionality of the feature) or enhancements (if the testers realized that they really didn't want exactly what they asked for once they got it in front of them). If I had to guess, I would say that 90% of the time we are talking about an enhancement here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26292" LastActivityDate="2016-11-17T17:54:38.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20526" CreationDate="2016-11-17T18:44:34.603" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is, &quot;Yes.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Niels is right that it really is just grammar semantics. No matter how you look at it, it is new work. One thing to remember is that at any time before the feature/product is live, it can be de-prioritized. Perhaps the defect turns out to be a really nasty infrastructure problem that will require months of work. At that point the Product Owner may decide not to put the defect on the backlog and not ship the feature/ product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in this I guess I do differ with Niels a little. All defects go into the backlog. The product owner has to make the business decision of if it needs to be fixed. There are a wealth of reasons a feature might be descoped or even a decision to ship with a known defect. Is it good technical practice to ship with a known bug? No. Can there be business reasons? Yes. At the end of the day the Product Owner decides what gets built, the engineers decide how. (Does give a little incentive to build it right in the first place). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With my teams I have found that refining the definition of the new work is helpful. We have Bugs and Defects. Bugs are anything that is found after the sprint ends and before it is live in production. Most of our teams are on monthly cadences with two week sprints so we often find things when everything gets put all together for the releases. Defects are anything found in production, no matter if it is found by an inside person or outside person. Defects are addressed based on whatever the existing support arrangement is, so may be automatically driven up the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-11-17T19:38:25.693" LastActivityDate="2016-11-17T19:38:25.693" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="871" CreationDate="2016-11-18T08:46:18.713" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PMP &amp;amp; Career Opportunity&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMP, per se, does not create any job opportunity. But it can help in enhancing your career. The scope of PMP is excellent. It is a well renowned &amp;amp; respected certification. According to various surveys, it is one of the top 10 certifications in the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PMP Scope&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many companies have made it mandatory for the PMs to attain a PMP or equivalent certification. You will find many JDs saying “PMP mandatory”. If you do not have the certification then you are not considered for the PM designation. This might restrict your career progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reason to do PMP is salary. According to PMI's Salary Survey 9th edition - those with a PMP certification garner a higher salary (20% higher on average) than those without a PMP certification&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also refer to PMI salary survey (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/learning/project-management-salary-survey.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.pmi.org/learning/project-management-salary-survey.aspx&lt;/a&gt;) and check out the salaries for your geography and your industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PMP Requirements&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are 2 requirements to appear for the PMP certification -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Management Experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;35 hours of Project Management Education&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Regarding Project Management Experience&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need 4500 hrs of PM experience if you have done 4 years of degree (bachelors degree or equivalent). Other wise if you have a diploma of equivalent then you need 7500 hrs of PM experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PM role is important for doing PMP - 4500/7500 hours of experience should be in leading &amp;amp; directing projects. However, PM role is not equivalent to PM designation/title. PM role means that you should have managed full or part of a project. PM role could mean vendor management, team management, client management etc. The projects could be related to any industry. They could be big or small, technical or non-technical etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read more about the details of PM experience here - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmbypm.com/go/4500-hours-explanation-cornelius-ficthner/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;questions on PMP requirements&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Regarding 35 contact hours&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;This article that will tell you everything about PMP 35 hours training - &lt;a href=&quot;https://goo.gl/t4qoEb&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Complete Guide to PMP 35 Contact Hours&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can do self-learning online training to get 35 contact hours - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmbypm.com/best-pmp-online-training-course/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Best PMP Online Training Course - 6 Popular Courses Compared&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you can go go for an instructor-led online course - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmbypm.com/pmp-live-online-training-course/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Best PMP Live Online Training - 6 Popular Courses Compared&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25305" LastActivityDate="2016-11-18T08:46:18.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20533" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20607" CreationDate="2016-11-18T14:25:12.393" Score="0" ViewCount="112" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have used MSP before but not for years.  I have some long term tasks and I would like to allocate varying quantities of resource requirement (against single resources) each month on these tasks - can I do this in MS Project 2013 or any tips would be greatly appreciated.  It does not make sense on this project to break the tasks up (it is a 5 year project).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have had a good look online and so far found nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25727" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-08T22:29:16.697" LastActivityDate="2018-11-08T22:29:16.697" Title="MS project 2013 - complex resource allocation" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20535" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20537" CreationDate="2016-11-18T16:14:07.357" Score="11" ViewCount="1063" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been working in a Scrum team for more than 1 year. As this is my first job and have no previous experience so can't compare with anything else, so thought of asking here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a basic Scrum team setup. Total 7 engineers, 5 developers, 1 QA and one designer. 3 developers are seniors with +4yr experience, and 2 I and another are juniors, 1yr experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We do sprint planning, estimate stories. But the seniors don't much work. We juniors do at least 60+% of the work in each sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have below problems, if any body can guide with them all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Seniors don't work but take all the credit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People outside of team don't know who worked on what, like management and other teams. So they think all work is done by seniors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They pick a story, and keep it with them for two whole weeks and just make them self look busy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum master praises them in meetings, I don't know why.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They have good communication skills, so they just communicate well and every body thinks they did all the work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this common in Scrum teams?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What can I do in this scenario.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I raise a complain to Scrum Master, he will just say that Scrum is all about team, team works not individuals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any guide you can give me if you have ever been in a situation like this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26654" LastActivityDate="2020-12-12T11:21:52.100" Title="Problem with in Scrum team - with seniors" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20526" CreationDate="2016-11-18T16:19:19.843" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bugs and defects (however you choose to define them) are always new work from an iterative development perspective. While some may disagree with the term &quot;new,&quot; anything that doesn't fit within a single iteration should be (re-)scoped, (re-)planned, and (re-)prioritized in future iterations regardless of the source of the work, and regardless of whether or not these activities were performed in previous iterations. In other words, the work should be &lt;em&gt;treated&lt;/em&gt; as new when it comes into scope, even if it's been on the backlog for six months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile practitioners sometimes disagree about &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; to do these things because of organizational policies and how they've implemented their project-tracking metrics. However, who would want to argue that bugs and defects aren't things that will direct resources away from other things in other iterations, and that they therefore don't represent &quot;work?&quot; That line of reasoning would be pretty hard to defend!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Done Doesn't Mean Perfect&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, while I can see that a feature not working before the feature is considered Done is obviously just evidence that the feature isn't Done yet, I'm having trouble wrapping my head around how something not working after the feature was considered complete being anything other than a defect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just because something is &quot;complete&quot; in terms of the Definition of Done doesn't mean something is guaranteed to be free of bugs or defects. It just means a work increment met the defined objectives and quality goals for the iteration!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Bugs vs. Defects&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The distinction between bugs and defects is subtle, subjective, and (at least from a pragmatic viewpoint) probably immaterial. Google offers the following definitions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;bug&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  an error in a computer program or system.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  synonyms: fault, error, defect, flaw&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;defect&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  a shortcoming, imperfection, or lack.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  synonyms: fault, flaw, imperfection, deficiency, weakness, weak spot, inadequacy, shortcoming, limitation, failing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are largely synonymous, but in my own practice I differentiate between them this way: a bug is an &lt;em&gt;unexepected error&lt;/em&gt;, while a defect is a gap between current state and specifications/expectations. For example, consider an imaginary calculator app with the following qualities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The app calculates that &lt;code&gt;2 + 2 = 5&lt;/code&gt;. This is a bug, because it is an unexpected error.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The app ships with basic operations like addition and subtraction, but lacks a power operator. This is a defect, because it doesn't meet the expectations of the target audience of rocket scientists, but is not necessarily a &quot;bug.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, even though one may draw a distinction between bugs and defects, it is not &lt;em&gt;inherently&lt;/em&gt; useful to do so. In either case, bugs or defects represent &lt;em&gt;potential&lt;/em&gt; work for the team &lt;strong&gt;if and when they come into scope&lt;/strong&gt; during iteration planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Prioritizing Backlog Items&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of a defect, the team may simply have not gotten to the implementing story yet, or perhaps no one even thought this feature would be needed so there's no story on the backlog yet that covers this issue. This may not be an omission: agile development is about minimum viable product and emergent design!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the former case, if there's already a story for it on the backlog, it's up to the Product Owner to prioritize the story in terms of its business value. Maybe there is other work that is more important to deliver first, or perhaps this feature is so critical that the power operator should be delivered before anything else. Only the Product Owner can make the final decision! In either case, since the story hasn't been started yet, it is new work for the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the latter case, logging a defect is only a placeholder for generating a new Product Backlog Item to describe the feature or functionality to be developed. Because this functionality is not currently in the product, developing it is still new work for the team. It is up to the Product Owner to decide when capacity will be directed towards this new work by adjusting the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pragmatically, bugs aren't really any different from the defect examples above. Fixing the bugs still consumes team capacity and requires new work effort, and should therefore be tracked. In many agile systems, the measure of team capacity to deliver work is &lt;em&gt;velocity&lt;/em&gt;, and therefore treating bugs or defects as non-work skews the metric. In addition, not treating bugs or defects as &lt;em&gt;new&lt;/em&gt; work often leads teams into anti-patterns such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not scoping the work properly during iteration planning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not estimating the level of effort required to complete the work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bypassing the Product Owner or the prioritization process, e.g. by placing bugs/defects at the top of the backlog regardless of business value.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point here is that work is work, from a team-capacity or iteration-planning standpoint. The difference (if any) will be a matter of organizational policy and prioritization within your chosen project/product management framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-11-18T16:19:19.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20535" CreationDate="2016-11-18T16:57:40.447" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Parts of your question smack more of a workplace issue than a Project Management issue, but I'll answer what I can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this common in Scrum teams?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doesn't really have anything to do with Scrum. What you describe above, assuming the problem actually &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; as you describe (neither exaggerated nor misunderstood/misrepresented), is an issue with the workplace, not the methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What can I do in this scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't just bring it up to your ScrumMaster. Bring it up in the retrospective. This is an issue that affects the whole team, and thus should be visible to the entire team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If I raise a complain(sic) to Scrum Master, he will just say that Scrum is all about team, team works not individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This applies primarily &lt;em&gt;outside&lt;/em&gt; the team. Within the team, the team itself still has to deal with intra-team issues. To take a hypothetical, extreme example, if someone in the team is slacking off, spouting off racist/offensive remarks, and throwing garbage everywhere, it's not like the problem can just be entirely ignored just because the other team-members are cleaning up after him/her. Yes, it can be considered a problem with the team itself. The team then has to &lt;em&gt;deal with it&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Worthy of note is the fact that this is actually &lt;em&gt;not even being followed, anyway&lt;/em&gt;, as noted by how you mention the senior members take/get all the credit. If Scrum is working properly (as your ScrumMaster claims it is), then the seniors do not get credit. The &lt;em&gt;team&lt;/em&gt; gets credit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Any guide you can give me if you have ever been in a situation like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bring up in retrospective. If that doesn't work, first examine and research to make sure you have actually, accurately assessed the problem. If yes, then escalate. If that doesn't work, polish up your resumé.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-11-18T16:57:40.447" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20535" CreationDate="2016-11-18T19:46:49.573" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master I always like to promote swarming:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is that you get all the developers to work (swarm) on a&#xA;single story, instead of having each developer working on a separate&#xA;story. The goal is to get more stories fully completed. It's better to&#xA;have 80% of the features 100% done, instead of having 100% of the&#xA;features 80% done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Swarming works well with another Agile practice namely &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jamesshore.com/Agile-Book/pair_programming.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pair Programming&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When using these two practices you optimize the team for knowledge sharing, focus and giving room for seniors to teach juniors. It will make it impossible for people to hijack the fun tasks, or in your situation 'fake' to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some challenges, most importantly you need to be able to cut up a story into work items that people can work in parallel on. My current team takes the following steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hold a team-wide architecture and design session&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team starts thinking about a test-plan and come up with test-cases&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They create sub-tasks on our Scrum-board&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They pick up sub-tasks in rotating pairs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would ask the Scrum Master or the team in a retrospective to try swarming or pair programming for a couple of Sprints. They are classic Agile practices, so it should be very acceptable. Certainly if you feel there are issues surrounding working as a team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.infoq.com/news/2013/02/swarming-agile-teams-deliver&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.infoq.com/news/2013/02/swarming-agile-teams-deliver&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/should-a-team-swarm-on-to-one-backlog-item-at-a-time&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/should-a-team-swarm-on-to-one-backlog-item-at-a-time&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Architecture, Design and testing: &lt;a href=&quot;http://less.works/less/technical-excellence/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://less.works/less/technical-excellence/index.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jamesshore.com/Agile-Book/pair_programming.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.jamesshore.com/Agile-Book/pair_programming.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="43486" LastEditDate="2020-12-12T11:21:52.100" LastActivityDate="2020-12-12T11:21:52.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20535" CreationDate="2016-11-18T19:48:19.167" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sarov hits a lot of the main points here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't healthy Scrum. I've of course seen it all to often. As Sarov points out, the team needs to self-organize. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have another channel to go with as well. That's your manager. If you're team isn't working and that's making you not happy, your manager should know about it. The manager's job is to make sure individuals have what they need to be most productive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an idea you could try and float: If you could either get yourselves another tester or be willing to take on your own testing you could suggest splitting the team into two teams. You're already at the upper edge of what is considered healthy and recent studies have found 4-5 person teams are more productive. Then put all the new guys on one team and all the old guys on another team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My guess is the old guys are going to push back heavily. You most likely have a situation going on that I've &lt;a href=&quot;http://thegorillacoach.com/the-gorilla-pareto-agile-adoption-anti-pattern/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;blogged about&lt;/a&gt; in the past. It's a classic anti-pattern based on the Pareto principle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-11-18T19:48:19.167" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20540" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-19T12:02:39.463" Score="0" ViewCount="256" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a Kanban board in the cloud-based version of JIRA that uses the JIRA Software Simplified Workflow.  When I create a new issue, it automatically assigns a &quot;Backlog&quot; status.  I would like the default status to be &quot;Selected for Development&quot; instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know how to do this?  I exhausted all the Google leads I could find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26660" LastActivityDate="2017-04-12T19:22:53.620" Title="Setting default issue type in JIRA" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20541" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-20T14:53:45.420" Score="4" ViewCount="205" Body="&lt;p&gt;My company is the client. An offshore company is developing our product. We pay them on a monthly basis. They send us an invoice with a  fixed rate per full time resource. They also send us a breakdown of all tasks done by each resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Should we be paying for non-planned things that are neither a part of our requirements nor are a change request from our side (i.e. deployment to staging server not working, updating codebase to support newest iOS version, etc.)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;After user acceptance testing, should we be paying for the development team to fix defects we find in features they delivered as complete?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note our contract doesn't say anything about handling these issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5574" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-11-20T17:51:35.260" LastActivityDate="2016-11-21T16:30:09.587" Title="In Scrum, should we be billed for defects and unplanned activities?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;&lt;contracts&gt;&lt;defect-fixing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20542" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-20T15:15:15.330" Score="-3" ViewCount="2463" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on transitioning my team's project methodology from the waterfall model to an Agile one. I'm looking at the Scrum framework as a starting point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, we have these &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_application_design&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Joint Application Development&lt;/a&gt; sessions where team gets together with our stakeholders to define requirements. These sessions are often used on &quot;traditional&quot; IT government projects, so I'd like to keep them to lessen the friction. However, I'm not sure to which Scrum ceremony these meetings map, or if it would be better to sell the stakeholders on getting rid of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26528" LastEditorUserId="26528" LastEditDate="2019-01-30T02:18:58.843" LastActivityDate="2019-01-30T02:18:58.843" Title="Where would Joint Application Development sessions fit into the Scrum framework?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20542" CreationDate="2016-11-20T15:31:00.260" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Requirements gathering is performed throughout the lifetime of the project by the Product Owner. Typically, much of this will occur before the Development Team begins sprinting, but at the end of every Sprint, a Sprint Review meeting is held, allowing the Product Owner and stakeholders to view the current state of the project and the product. This then allows the requirements to be refined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for official, formal meetings that are a part of Scrum, there are only those from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;. The daily standup, the retrospective, the planning meeting, and the review. Anything beyond this is part of a specific organization's procedure, not part of Scrum itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-11-20T18:23:15.750" LastActivityDate="2016-11-20T18:23:15.750" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20541" CreationDate="2016-11-20T18:42:48.320" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. Under your current contract and within your current process, you should pay the vendor for all work completed. Unless you have a fixed-price, fixed-scope contract, all the problems you've described are process issues for which your company (rather than the vendor) is responsible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are having difficulties because you are treating the offshore company as an external vendor, rather than actively collaborating with them during each iteration. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; values:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Customer collaboration over contract negotiation[.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both problems are resolvable by better agile collaboration. In the meantime, as a purely pragmatic matter you should probably pay the invoices if you wish to continue using this company as a vendor. Treat it as a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sunk cost&lt;/a&gt; and improve your process as you move forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Scrum Scoping and Deliverables&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the following statement, you aren't leveraging the Scrum framework in your current process. You ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should we be paying for non-planned things that are neither a part of our requirements nor are a change request from our side (i.e. deployment to staging server not working, updating codebase to support newest iOS version, etc.)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question highlights several issues with your current process, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your company should either be providing the Product Owner for the process, or actively collaborating as a stakeholder through a Product Owner on the vendor's side.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You mention of &quot;unplanned work&quot; indicates that Product Backlog Items are not being properly decomposed and planned out at the start of each iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The failure to expect the unexpected, especially in IT, violates the core agile principle of embracing change, and generally indicates a lack of sufficient slack and iterative planning in your process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The mention of &quot;requirements&quot; and &quot;change requests&quot; indicates an organizational mindset focused on upfront specification rather than truly iterative or collaborative development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To fix these sorts of problems, you will most likely need a fundamental shift in how you work with your vendor. At a minimum:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There must be a clearly-defined Product Owner role, and both the stakeholders and the development team should actively collaborate with the Produc Owner to manage scope and prioritize deliverables.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The work for each iteration must be taken from a prioritized list of work items (the Product Backlog) and decomposed into tasks for the Sprint Backlog. This just-in-time planning is essential to proper scoping and identifying &lt;em&gt;knowable&lt;/em&gt; (but potentially unplanned) work that will impact the current iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your process &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; contain sufficient slack to handle a reasonable amount of uncertainty. IT development is an inexact science, and expecting 100% certainty or 100% utilization will serve you very poorly in your planning. An immature Scrum process should generally target only around 60% of team capacity in order to handle the vicissitudes of software development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The process must begin treating Product Backlog Items and the Product Backlog as an ongoing conversation between stakeholders and the development team. The backlog is not a list of fixed specifications; each item on the backlog is a starting point for iterative planning and collaborative development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Testing, Defects, and the Definition of Done&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't expect anyone to hit  moving target. When you say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After user acceptance testing, should we be paying for the development team to fix defects we find in features they delivered as complete?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you are implicitly saying that you reserve the right to move the finish line &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; you've already agreed on the Definition of Done for an increment of work. Don't do that!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question shows that there is a lack of test-first development in the current process, and that you and the vendor are not actively collaborating on the Definition of Done for Product Backlog Items. In order to resolve this, the process must change from subjective, post facto testing to objective (and ideally executable) criteria for measuring success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To address the gaps in the current process, carefully consider the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collaborate with your development team on the acceptance testing criteria &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; they do any development. This ensures that everyone agrees on an objective definition of &quot;potentially shippable&quot; for the increment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work that doesn't meet the agreed-upon criteria isn't defective; it's simply &quot;not done.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have a lot of work that ends up &quot;not done&quot; at the end of each Sprint, this is ideal process-improvement material to discuss in your Retrospective.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If work meets the agreed-upon criteria, but you need refinements or changes, then this is &lt;strong&gt;future work&lt;/strong&gt; that belongs on the Product Backlog for prioritization and planning. &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/20536/4271&quot;&gt;Being imperfect is not a defect&lt;/a&gt;; it is a transitional state for emergent designs within an iterative development process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even if you find out after the fact that everyone agreed on the wrong criteria, it was &lt;em&gt;still&lt;/em&gt; the increment of work agreed-upon at the outset. The development team shouldn't be penalized because the stakeholders and the Product Owner asked them to build the wrong thing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Inspect and Adapt &lt;em&gt;Iteratively&lt;/em&gt;!&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are certainly other issues with the current process that need to be addressed as well. Make sure that you and the vendor collaborate on a joint Retrospective, and work together &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; iteration to continuously inspect and adapt your process until it runs more smoothly for both of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please remember that &quot;smoothly&quot; doesn't mean perfect! It just means that the overall process operates within defined tolerances, and that the project management controls perform as expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2016-11-20T19:37:40.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20541" CreationDate="2016-11-20T20:23:13.773" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to this question has nothing to do with Scrum or any other type of development method.  It's a contractual issue.  A fixed rate per individual plus a listing of tasks is a time and materials agreement.  That means, every burned hour against a task to your product is your liability.  However, it also means that you should be involved on a daily basis about those tasks instead of being surprised at invoice time.  You have a seat at the table regarding what tasks should be performed and by whom because you are paying for it.  If you don't like this type of risk, then establish a fixed price contract next time around.  However, with a fixed price, you can expect to be charged on the higher side of the range in order to cover their risks of the unknowns.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT to answer question in comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;UAT is part of the SDLC.  It is part of product development as a quality risk mitigation to help improve the product before go-live.  To try to create a scenario where liability of a defect needs to get paid for by the vendor will create behavior that is inconsistent with the goal of improving quality.  The vendor will defend itself against defect identification and you will spend a lot of time--and money--trying to get a defect acknowledged and worked on.  Also, you can expect the vendor to take way more time--and charge you way more money--to build the product before UAT to reduce its risk of penalty.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Known unknowns and unknown unknowns are a certainty in projects.  Who is liable for them is a contractual issue.  If you don't want to pay for each surprise, then pursue a fixed contract; but don't fool yourself, you will pay for these surprises in the fixed price in some fashion.  If, under a T&amp;amp;M, you try to push the liability of these surprises to the vendor, then you can expect the vendor to protect itself by 1) not reporting the issue, 2) focusing blame on other causes, 3) rerouting its best talent to other more profitable work and committing mediocre talent to your project, 4) increasing hours rates a the next period of negotiations, or a combination of these.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you want to pursue a partnership with your vendors for a win win solution.  Protecting yourself on one side might mean you're going to pay dearly on the other side.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2016-11-21T14:04:49.420" LastActivityDate="2016-11-21T14:04:49.420" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20546" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-21T03:05:24.077" Score="4" ViewCount="393" Body="&lt;p&gt;How are new team members in a Scrum team most appropriately handled?  If they can't directly work on customer driven stories, how are they involved in Scrum's story-centric process? Are they assigned stories?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26673" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-11-29T21:14:30.590" LastActivityDate="2016-11-29T21:39:46.827" Title="Stories for new team members?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;onboarding&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20546" CreationDate="2016-11-21T03:18:55.560" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends where you work, really. I don't believe there's anything official in the Scrum documentation for handling this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I've seen work well is to just include a lot of pair programming until they get up to snuff. They're definitely assigned stories, though typically smaller ones (be careful of assigning lots of bugs to them, though, as you don't really want a new hire in charge of improving code quality). They're a full member of all Scrum Development Team activities, such as planning and retrospecting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As in most things, the best way to learn is to dive straight in, whilst having someone to watch over you to make sure you don't drown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-11-21T03:18:55.560" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20548" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-21T14:36:57.097" Score="8" ViewCount="322" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both in my Scrum Team and in the IT Department as a whole, we do not have a single hired QA-personnel. In fact, it is mandated by upper management that we cannot hire one (and I do not think this likely to change). Despite this, there still exists a requirement for quality, functioning work - even before it's handed to the (internal) users for beta testing/UAT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How this has been solved thus far is by having the PO also act as QA. However, worth noting is the fact that she &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; serves as PM for every project the department has, &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; sometimes even as a secretary. As a result, stories are often considered 'Done' only towards the end of a Sprint, or else pushed one (or more) Sprints ahead before she can find the time to QA them. Obviously, we can't just have the developers just sit around for a month to allow her to catch up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I see it, the only solutions I've come up with are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Continue as we are.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dedicate an hour of each developer's time each day to QAing each others' work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remove QA entirely and just increase testing by the developer who did the work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not terribly fond of any of these options; is there a better route to improve our process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-01-08T19:50:24.373" LastActivityDate="2019-01-10T09:45:48.550" Title="QA-Challenged Team - How to Improve?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;testing&gt;&lt;quality&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20548" CreationDate="2016-11-21T16:24:56.423" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Automated UI Tests&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Require the devs to write automated tests which prove the functionality of the features they develop. ie seleninum/TestUI/CodedUI etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will increase load on writing specifications and decrease load on testing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2016-11-21T16:24:56.423" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20541" CreationDate="2016-11-21T16:30:09.587" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you want these things to happen, thus you should be happy to pay for them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By paying for time rather than features you are relieving yourself of the burden of having to specify every little detail of the thing you want done and relieving them of the burden of having to estimate and each feature including a budget for unexpected overruns. Overall it should end up being cheaper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2016-11-21T16:30:09.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20553" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20556" CreationDate="2016-11-21T19:19:22.113" Score="0" ViewCount="271" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have already completed my class for the 35 hours of coursework, and am working through my second full read through the PMBOK 5th edition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also been looking online for test prep exams and find that many of them are claiming to be PMBOK 5th edition questions, but many of the questions contain Maslov's hierarchy of needs, etc. However none of this is covered in the 5th edition of the PMBOK from what I can find. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the current exam actually contain these items? Hopefully the answer is from someone who tested in the past few months. If so how much time should I focus on them?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Were these questions from previous versions of the PMBOK that are somehow still in these test exams? I would assume the answer to #1 will answer this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8716" LastActivityDate="2019-08-11T03:28:50.143" Title="Does the current PMP exam ask about human motivational theory?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;pmbok&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20554" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-21T21:23:42.083" Score="3" ViewCount="453" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short version:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How and in which units is it better to measure the product scope (volume of incoming requirements / amount of business functionality) if different parts of product (different requirements / different parts of business functionality) have a different nature?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long version:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our company, we want to develop and implement a methodology for measuring the scope of the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We want to reach the following goals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To make business requirements measurable and thereby more transparent. I.e. we want to measure all incoming requests for product improvement in some units.&#xA;These units &lt;strong&gt;should not be related with real man-days&lt;/strong&gt; because we don’t know who exactly will implement these requirements. Furthermore, these units &lt;strong&gt;should not be related with ideal man-days&lt;/strong&gt; because ideal man-days are for the work scope, not for the product scope. For example, we can implement the same requirement in three different ways: we may implement it fast with bad quality of code, slow with good quality of code and extremely slow with parallel refactoring. It’s depends on us, how we will do this item, but we want be honest with our internal customers (another departments of our company) and show the same «price» for all equal requirements (regardless of how we will do it).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Calculate productivity of the team. As noted above, the work scope is not equal to the product scope. Productivity in our understanding is the amount of the product scope units that we did within a fixed amount of time (that’s iteration). I.e. the team may do a lot of useful work (to reduce technical debt, for example), but if they don’t implement enough requirements, productivity will be low.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To achieve these goals, we need to choose a unit for the product scope and learn how to measure it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story points are good candidates for these kind of units, but we have a problem with them: we have a lot of different technical systems within our product. So, there are many different kinds of requirements: make additional automatization for engineers, create new reports to managers, implement new functionality to end users, etc. Furthermore, one requirement may be related with several technical systems. Managers can’t compare such incompatible requirements just as developers can’t compare tasks for different technical systems (to implement such incompatible requirements). It’s like comparing red and hot. I tried to solve a similar problem here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/15195/how-to-use-story-points-if-user-stories-are-completely-different&quot;&gt;How to use Story Points, if User Stories are completely different?&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the current moment, we do the following: we have created a table for the different types of requirements, defined the reference stories (the reference requirements) to each of these types, and estimate other requirements based on these reference stories. There are two (three) big disadvantages in this solution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have chosen reference stories such that, their implementation took roughly the same amount of time. So, this is a fundamental problem: we have a relationship between reference stories and man-days at the moment when we defined them (we wanted to avoid this situation, see above).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As far as we will make changes within technical systems, story points of a different kind will drift apart. In some systems technical debt will increase and related story points will be more «expensive». In others systems technical debt will be decreased and related story points will be «cheaper». As a result, after some time one story point related with different requirements will have a different cost. In that case we will not achieve our first goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If we periodically normalize story points, by choosing the new basic story of each type, that will have the same man-days estimates, then we will not be able to see any change of the team's performance over time. So we will not achieve our second goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I heard about a &lt;strong&gt;function point&lt;/strong&gt; but I didn’t look in this direction. It seems a little complicated. Should I look at it more deeply?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Maybe there is another way to solve my problems?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update after receivied answers (19.12.16)&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I meant a volume of business requirements, not a value of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will try to give an example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine, we are refurbishing an apartment. We have two requirements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To hang a picture;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To install a chin-up bar for pull-ups.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Volume of requirements (i.e. product scope):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To hang a picture: 1 point, because it is necessary to drill one hole. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To install a chin-up bar for pull-ups: 4 points, bacause it is necessary to drill 4 holes. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Volume of work to implement requirements (i.e. work scope):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To hang a picture: 1 point, because to make a hole in dry wall is very easy. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To install a chin-up bar for pull-ups: 16 points, because a chin-up bar for pull-ups should be installed with wide bolts on load–bearing wall which is usually is made of concrete and I have a low power drill. Accordingly, I know that to make a hole with my low power drill on a load–bearing wall is roughly four times harder than making a hole in dry wall. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, the volume of requirements should be close to the volume of work to implement the requirements. For example, if I were to buy a good drill, it will be no difference, which material the wall is made of. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The question is, what units and how to measure the volume (not the value) functional requirements, regardless of exactly how we will implement them and how much time we need for this.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2016-12-24T19:38:05.927" Title="How (and in what units) to measure the product scope?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;scope&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20553" CreationDate="2016-11-22T05:38:28.810" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I passed the exam 6 months back. I didn't use the same approach than you, I read only very few chapters of the PMBOK. The way I did was doing a maximum of tests and studied the reasons why I failed some questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lot of them were about human motivational theories (Herzberg, Maslov, McGregor, etc.), I would definitely recommend you to learn and remember these theories because indeed they may be included in the tests. Actually I found these sections the most interesting one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So:&#xA; 1. Yes and you should learn the basics of each&#xA; 2. May be, I didn't read the previous versions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25678" LastEditorUserId="25678" LastEditDate="2016-11-22T05:46:15.177" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T05:46:15.177" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20557" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20558" CreationDate="2016-11-22T06:59:54.093" Score="10" ViewCount="704" Body="&lt;p&gt;The system that i work on has a front-end and a back-end. At the moment, my team is working on the UI tasks and other team is working on the back-end tasks. There is also another team which handles legacy system tasks. Our target is to retire the legacy system and replace it with the new one which has a front-end and a back-end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are about 8 members in each team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going forward, management has decide to shuffle above mentioned teams and another team to create 4 teams, each containing 8 members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each team will be working on a feature of the system (front-end and back-end work). Any single team won't own the back-end or the front-end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We follow agile and Will this approach be good when going forward or do we have to make any other suggestions to make this work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26688" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T10:11:16.927" Title="Assigning features to teams rather than assigning front-end or back-end work?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20557" CreationDate="2016-11-22T09:44:32.290" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Working software is the primary measure of progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A front-end without a back-end is not working software in my book, ofcourse you need a single team that creates a fully working piece of functionality. To be able to deliver working features end-2-end you need a cross-functional team. Meaning the team should be able to execute all neccacary disciplines to make a full working product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UmFO0.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UmFO0.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Slicing vertically should be an Agile teams main focus, delivering working software each iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Workshop&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a training exercise you can try to get better in making smaller vertical slices and getting everyone to understand the concept, its called Elephant Carpaccio:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Elephant Carpaccio exercise is a great way for software people to&#xA;  practice &amp;amp; learn how to break stories into really thin vertical&#xA;  slices. It also leads to interesting discussions about quality and&#xA;  tech practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://alistair.cockburn.us/Elephant+Carpaccio+exercise&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Elephant Carpaccio exercise&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/TotherAlistair&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Alistair Cockburn&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Detailed step-by-step: &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TCuuu-8Mm14oxsOnlk8DqfZAA1cvtYu9WGv67Yj_sSk/pub&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TCuuu-8Mm14oxsOnlk8DqfZAA1cvtYu9WGv67Yj_sSk/pub&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2016-11-22T10:11:16.927" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T10:11:16.927" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20548" CreationDate="2016-11-22T10:46:25.563" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've struggled with the same issue on my team, while there's no replacement for a quality QA on the team, we've managed to get along by wearing multiple hats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is our workflow:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;TDD the story until it's ready to integrate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developer integrates and manually tests.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developer requests code review.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2nd dev reviews the code.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2nd dev pulls the changes local and QA's it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of points of interest that make this effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We're constantly expanding our automated test suite. Regressions are becoming rare beasts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;QA&amp;quot; is also the peer reviewer and they review the code &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; testing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means they get a chance to &amp;quot;white box&amp;quot; test the code. Given that they already have some understanding of the code, it's easier to find edge cases that may have been missed and generally weird ways to break the new feature. It also means that bug reports often include the &lt;em&gt;line number&lt;/em&gt; of where the bug is and a suggestion on how to fix it. (but never an actual fix, we don't want to incentivize sloppiness.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all seriousness though, keep pushing for a QA. In my experience, not even the most quality minded developer can hold a candle to what a great QA can do. We've been able to get by, but not every dev is cut out to make the context switch from &amp;quot;make it work&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;how can I break it?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2016-11-23T02:05:46.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20548" CreationDate="2016-11-22T12:45:17.350" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you should hire a person with a QA background, but not as someone to-do the actual testing, but as someone who &lt;a href=&quot;https://sqa.stackexchange.com/questions/23869/what-practices-do-you-use-to-test-infect-your-engineers&quot;&gt;infects everyone else with the test-virus&lt;/a&gt;. If you cannot hire a tester, hire a developer with test experience, or find someone in the team who wants to specialize a bit more into testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I firmly believe part of being a good software developer is being a&#xA;  good tester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;-- &lt;a href=&quot;https://simpleprogrammer.com/2015/02/16/joel-test-programmers-simple-programmer-test/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;John Sonmez&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Testing should be done up-front and in parallel with coding, not at the end. So it makes total sense that people from the Scrum team do the actual testing. Both automated and with exploratory testing sessions. Learn about &lt;a href=&quot;http://lisacrispin.com/2011/11/08/using-the-agile-testing-quadrants/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Agile testing quadrants&lt;/a&gt; and find a good balance between testing efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suggested reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://less.works/less/technical-excellence/thinking-about-testing.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://less.works/less/technical-excellence/thinking-about-testing.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agiletester.ca/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Testing, A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams&lt;/a&gt; (Book)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.xebia.com/are-testers-still-relevant/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://blog.xebia.com/are-testers-still-relevant/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/agile-tester-30&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/agile-tester-30&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2016-11-30T15:03:41.490" LastActivityDate="2016-11-30T15:03:41.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20554" CreationDate="2016-11-22T16:21:56.337" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are absolutely on the right track with the Story Point concept. What you are looking for is Business Value vs Level of Effort (Cost). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a classic user story card we are used to seeing a number (usually in the bottom right corner), which represents the Level of Effort (or Cost) to build the feature. What we are missing is that there is supposed to be another number on the card. A number representing the Business Value of the Feature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We miss this distinction a lot in software these days. Connecting business value to feature work has become something of a lost art. You ask product people &quot;what is this worth?&quot; and they wave their hands and push back on being able to quantify (I know I was one and used to do this). Or you get the product manager who has gone 20 levels into the industry analyst reports and created this highly detailed forecast which in the end will turn out to be pure fiction (I know, I did this as well). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you really need is just a dirt simple way of asking &quot;Is this feature more valuable than that feature?&quot; There are two ways I've found to do this with effectiveness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Team Estimation Game:&lt;/strong&gt; The first is to just use the same estimation game I recommend for Level of Effort (Cost) estimation. The Team Estimation Game was created by Steve Bockman (there are a couple of parallel developed exercises out there that are very similar). I go into details on why I like this game in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://thegorillacoach.com/dont-play-planning-poker-with-the-gorilla/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt; and how to play the game in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://thegorillacoach.com/how-much-for-tha%E2%80%A6-to-requirements/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt;. Steve also published an &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00SS794IQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ebook on Amazon&lt;/a&gt; for $0.99.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With Team Estimation you are just assigning an arbitrary value based on the team's (in this case the business side) gut on what is more valuable than the next. &quot;Are new carpets going to add more or less to the home's value than new kitchen appliances?&quot; At the end you have a set of Fibonacci numbers for Business Value (Value). You can then run the same game to get the Cost and you have know now how valuable each piece of work will be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Buy a Feature&lt;/strong&gt; This is an Agile Collaboration Framework created by &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://conteneo.co/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://conteneo.co/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (Formerly Innovation Games). Buy a Feature is useful when you have a lot of differing views, diverse customers or really want some hard data to back up your decisions. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.innovationgames.com/buy-a-feature/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Buy a Feature&lt;/a&gt; let's you assign (arbitrary) values to features and then let the customers (internal or external) go through an exercise where they use fake money to purchase the features they want. No one has enough money to buy more than a couple of features, so cooperation must happen to get to a final result. At the end you have a list of purchased features reached by joint decision. You also have something reflecting what the customer really wants. You may still want to assign some Value figure to the purchases features so you can delineate between one that was quickly bought and a feature only one or two people really championed for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you are done with assigning Business Value and Cost it becomes a simple exercise to obtain priority. Divide Business Value by Cost and this will give you your priority on the backlog (of course some human tweaking will almost always be needed). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T16:21:56.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20562" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-22T16:54:38.617" Score="5" ViewCount="1646" Body="&lt;p&gt;We realized that we have an urgent requirement to complete a series of automated testing stories in a sprint. Therefore we took in automation only stories. Some manual testers took in a few other urgent stories, therefore in the Doing column we have a bunch of stories waiting to be tested. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously this will continue going forward because there will be a backlog of stories to be tested, whereas development will continue (we can't halt development because of this).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions to get around this issue? Throw in more testers? Btw, our developers (and management) don't think that developers are good testers because they don't have the tester's eye, so they're more likely to make mistakes in their testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5522" LastActivityDate="2016-11-26T16:37:39.833" Title="Test only stories in the Sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20554" CreationDate="2016-11-22T17:21:29.903" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;The Agile Approach&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story points are meant to convey level of effort or complexity for a unit of work, and &lt;strong&gt;the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_story#Format&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Connextra format&lt;/a&gt; typically used for user stories provides context and scope&lt;/strong&gt;. However, while prioritization within the Product Backlog is often the main &lt;em&gt;expression&lt;/em&gt; of business value, the actual value is more accurately tracked through a separate metric.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technically, business value is determined by stakeholders, while prioritization is determined by the Product Owner. This is an important distinction, but the distinction is often blurred when people talk about agile approaches because most of the extant literature focuses on the Development Team rather than the Product Owner or stakeholder processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general agile approach is to &lt;strong&gt;enable stakeholders to &lt;em&gt;estimate&lt;/em&gt; business value based on agreed-upon criteria&lt;/strong&gt;. This creates a consensus around the relative business value of your high-level product increments, which can then be used to prioritize the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Tools and Techniques&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a wide variety of tools and techniques for implementing the agile approach outlined above. Among them, Mountaingoat Software provides a number of tools for deriving stakeholder-driven metrics of business value. Provided techniques include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/relative-weighting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Relative Weighting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Relative weighting is a prioritization approach that considers both the benefits of a feature and the cost of that feature. The technique is best applied for setting approximately quarterly goals rather than each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/theme-screening&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Theme Screening&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Theme screening is a useful and easy prioritization technique that can be used to prioritize themes and/or epics against one another. It can also be used to prioritize entire projects or products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/theme-scoring&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Theme Scoring&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Theme scoring is a prioritization technique that can be used to prioritize themes (groups of user stories) and epics (large user stories) against one another. It can also be used to prioritize projects or products against one another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, all these approaches provide a numerical result that can be used to measure &lt;em&gt;relative&lt;/em&gt; business value. This approach is highly flexible and very effective at building consensus among stakeholders, and only requires that you create buy-in among the stakeholders in the design of the filtering criteria and the choice of methodology. As long as everyone has agreed on &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; business value will be estimated, there is likely to be wide acceptance of the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-11-22T17:39:03.017" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T17:39:03.017" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20562" CreationDate="2016-11-22T17:32:09.237" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have both 'developers' (development-centric developers) and 'testers' (test-centric developers) in your Development Team, then they should be working &lt;em&gt;together&lt;/em&gt;, in order to improve your regular developers' abilities to QA, as well as to decrease the workload of the testers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it's unclear in your question whether the automation-testing is done before or after a story's development. This should be done &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt;. If it's not, consider changing this - in addition to Test Driven Development's other benefits, this will help mitigate the bottleneck of things waiting for testing after development is done. User Acceptance Testing should be done afterwards, but there's no reason to put automated-testing off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, regarding your comment of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;we can't halt development because of this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that in Scrum, a story which is not 'Done' constitutes zero (or even negative) value. If your process is such that the developers are just creating a bunch of non-finished stories, you'd actually be better off having them stop development and help testing catch up however they can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-11-22T17:40:09.597" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T17:40:09.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20562" CreationDate="2016-11-22T18:14:38.790" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Stop the Line; Fix the Process&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Obviously this will continue going forward because there will be a backlog of stories to be tested, whereas development will continue (we can't halt development because of this).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words: &quot;Help, we have a broken process! How can we keep doing what we're doing, and fix it without fixing it?&quot; You're trying to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipstick_on_a_pig&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;put lipstick on a pig&lt;/a&gt; rather than &lt;em&gt;stopping the line&lt;/em&gt; to fix the underlying process problem. This is an agile anti-pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An agile story is &quot;done&quot; or &quot;not done.&quot; Nothing is stopping you from removing successful test completion from your team's Definition of Done, but this is generally a process smell found in organizations that value the illusion of progress towards arbitrary management targets over working software. &lt;strong&gt;The fact that there are deadlines is immaterial to the fact that your system has constraints.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a metaphor, consider that it still takes typically takes nine months to have a baby, regardless of how many people you throw at it, or how many columns you put on a Kanban board. The biological system imposes constraints that can't be wished away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Why Your Process is Broken&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your process is fundamentally broken because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your developers and your testers aren't actively collaborating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Development and testing are a type of collaborative ping-ping. Even if you don't follow a test-first methodology, developers and testers need to operate in a very tight feedback loop for agility. This means:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Being &lt;em&gt;inside&lt;/em&gt; the same team, rather than treated as an externality or a drag on delivery.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Working together in as close to real-time as possible. Post hoc testing in a separate iteration isn't even close to this fundamental requirement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Treating only verified, working code as &quot;delivered.&quot; Anything else is wish-fulfillment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your developers are writing code without tests to define success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing code before the tests is like building a house without an architect's plans or before pouring the foundation. Good luck insuring that house!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're practically &lt;em&gt;begging&lt;/em&gt; for bugs to be filed when you write code that may or may not meet executable specifications (pronounced &quot;tests&quot;) that are developed separately.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Features, tests, bug reporting, analysis, patching, and retesting all take non-zero time from both developers &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; testers. Trying to sweep everything but features out of the way of &quot;development&quot; to meet management targets is fundamentally unsustainable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;How to Fix It&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to factor testing into your team's capacity for getting work done, as well your Definition of Done. Doing this may slow your apparent pace of development, but it will not affect your &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; capacity for delivering working software. Once you know your real, sustainable cadence for delivering finished increments, you can adjust your project schedule or scope based on your then-current system constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-11-23T17:01:05.630" LastActivityDate="2016-11-23T17:01:05.630" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20562" CreationDate="2016-11-22T20:54:23.587" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Test only sprints, yeah! Developers not testing, bleh... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I firmly believe part of being a good software developer is being a&#xA;  good tester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Testers should teach developers to test, it has nothing todo with having a testers eye.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your questions conflict with your tags. You are describing a Waterfall process while thinking your doing Scrum/Agile. Testing is a parallel activity and quality is a team responsibility, not that of a testers as an after thought. If your management loves Waterfall, please do waterfall and don't call it Agile/Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also read an similar answer I gave here with details about modern Agile/Scrum testing practises, it contains a good suggested read list: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/20560/8528&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/20560/8528&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T20:54:23.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20567" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20568" CreationDate="2016-11-22T23:07:02.113" Score="0" ViewCount="167" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am filling out my application for PMP cert, but a very small percentage of my hours are allocated to the 'Initial' phase. Would this a deal-breaker?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26701" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T23:17:39.140" Title="PMP certification experience hours for each PM phase" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-11-27T13:51:33.870" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20567" CreationDate="2016-11-22T23:17:39.140" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, the application's first and foremost tracking is &quot;do you have the hours required.&quot; The detailed breakdown just give more information to them and you (shows you where you probably need to study more). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T23:17:39.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20508" CreationDate="2016-11-22T23:42:20.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would only worry about this if you really need to understand cost of goods sold, are doing billable work, or do accounting for software capitalization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's better to just track team throughput using velocity metrics. It vastly simplifies estimating and scheduling and once it matures it is a much better predictor of future performance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All done without demotivating your engineers, so easier to get buy in to participate in estimating and planning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24110" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T23:42:20.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20570" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-23T10:11:08.780" Score="5" ViewCount="125" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having a situation where sometimes the stakeholder asks me if something has been delivered, and I am finding it hard to keep track of all of my deliveries. I have completely forgotten many deliveries since it was delivered 4-5 months previously. This ends up making me stupid, and come across as somebody who is not very involved. I am concerned that this may affect my reputation and standing in the company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to get a grip of this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2016-12-05T09:41:00.807" Title="Having trouble remembering everything that I have delivered" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20570" CreationDate="2016-11-23T10:42:03.523" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tracking deliveries is an important task for a Project Manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should simply start writing down when did you have which delivery and for each delivery what were the functionalities in those deliveries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At beginning of the project when you get specification from the client, you should write those functionalities, estimate them and then plan the deliveries of every part. Once the delivery has gone to the client, just write a date and sort them depending on the date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are tools that can be used for this in case you are managing more projects and want to simplify and speed up the process. In my company we are using Atlassian Confluence and Jira for this purpose. In Jira you can see which functionalities go into which delivery and in Confluence we write manually the dates of the deliveries in the past and those that are planed (in the future).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26280" LastEditorUserId="26280" LastEditDate="2016-11-23T13:07:34.827" LastActivityDate="2016-11-23T13:07:34.827" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2588" CreationDate="2016-11-23T10:57:21.253" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a really good Jira User Story Mapping Plugin that you can use&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.bit.agile.bit-storymap/cloud/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.bit.agile.bit-storymap/cloud/overview&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26280" LastActivityDate="2016-11-23T10:57:21.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20570" CreationDate="2016-11-23T14:39:12.730" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;An alternative to pull-type notification is push-type notification. Whenever your team &lt;em&gt;completes&lt;/em&gt; a feature, you could notify the stakeholders. This alleviates the need to remember things that were completed X months ago. Additionally, if the stakeholder then later asks anyway, at least at that point you have &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; forgotten, so you don't look as bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What sort of methodology (ie. Waterfall, iterative waterfall, Scrum, Kanban, etc.) are you using? If it's something iterative, it should be simple enough to send stakeholders a list of completed items at the end of each iteration. Scrum in particular has the Sprint Review meeting that is practically made for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-11-23T14:39:12.730" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20570" CreationDate="2016-11-23T17:22:07.467" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Collaboratively Design a Tracking Artifact&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a process point of view, &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; projects need an artifact to keep track of deliverables. The best way to design the right artifact is to work with your stakeholders to determine how they will collectively &lt;em&gt;use&lt;/em&gt; the artifact and the information it contains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The format and contents of the deliverables artifact is entirely up to you and your stakeholders. Some common themes include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A spreadsheet or report to track deliverables. The contents can be as simple as &quot;feature X was delivered on Y date&quot;, or as complicated as a chart with lead and cycle time data for every feature in the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A Sprint Review agenda, or a post-meeting summary listing what was reviewed with the stakeholders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A column or archived list in your Kanban or Trello board containing all the cards that have been delivered per the Definition of Done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are certainly other ways to do this, too, but as you can see you're constrained only by your chosen tools and by your company's collective imaginations. Anything that is agreed upon with the stakeholders as sufficient for radiating information about the project's status should be good enough for covering yourself, while also helping the project focus on effective organizational communication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-11-23T17:22:07.467" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20575" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20595" CreationDate="2016-11-23T19:40:16.263" Score="3" ViewCount="178" Body="&lt;p&gt;On JIRA, how can I restrict a specific status of my workflow to hold only one issue per time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because we're automating all our workflow, I want to have a specific status (ACCEPTANCE) that only accepts ONE issue per time. So in our board, no regular user should be able to move a second or more cards to that column while there's one card there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26235" LastActivityDate="2016-11-26T09:21:56.953" Title="On JIRA, how can I restrict a specific status of my workflow to hold only one issue per time?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20576" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-24T11:06:55.447" Score="12" ViewCount="701" Body="&lt;p&gt;(I'm new to Scrum) At my company we are relatively few developers (1-3 / per team) with very fixed project responsibilities (If you started product X, you'll be responsible for it as long as it exists).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most devs are approached by POs, support, etc. with varying frequency to help with problems like recovering data, fixing setups, tracking bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This goes directly against the idea of a sprint that a dev team should be able to work undisturbed on their spring goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously the ideal solution would be to have dedicated people for these problems but we are simply not there personnel wise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the options I see:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to shift as much of these capabilities to the support department as possible. There are however reservations among the developers to let support have the necessary power tools. Also I reckon there will remain a good number of issues that support will not ever be able to handle and will have to be dealt with otherwise&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add these help requests to the product backlog and prioritize them for the next sprint. This would incur up to 2 weeks waiting time for the affected customer, which won't go over will with sales&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add these help requests to the sprint backlog to be tackled as soon as the developer finished his assigned item. I've learned that sprints should have some slack rather than be too ambitious. One such problem probably shouldn't jeopardize the sprint goal. Maybe we could limit this to one interruption per sprint the rest would go to the product backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the most Scrum way to do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2016-11-25T07:08:46.673" LastActivityDate="2016-11-26T04:56:17.013" Title="How to deal with non-project work requests on developers?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20576" CreationDate="2016-11-24T12:49:00.907" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Facing similar things in the past I combined a few solutions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try to get all the non-urgent work into the backlog, so that it is visible and foretasted for the team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try to get an idea of how much urgent work is still making it to the team, so you can take this into account in sprint planning. When something comes in, add it to the wall in a different colour, so you can see it's a new item. If you list all those interrupting tasks, you will quickly learn (for example) about 30% of a teams work is non-sprint related each sprint.  While you can try to minimise this, at least you can take it into account in the sprint planning meetings, and see if you are making progress in reducing the amount of distracting work.  This also has the benefit of being able to accurately explain why sprint goals were missed, so you have transparency of the impact the various product owners unplanned work is having on the planned work.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6825" LastActivityDate="2016-11-24T12:49:00.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20578" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-24T14:12:48.583" Score="-4" ViewCount="102" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a question about assessing the cost/benefit or ROI of a prospective project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm working in 6-8 old years software project. It has a lot of issues and also failures plus some failed people on its way.&#xA;Right now after raising the project (software application) from the dead, when the new requirement comes, the developers are looking in the code (not in the working features in terms of usage) the corresponding code.&#xA;There are ideas of creating, rewriting the project from the beginning.&#xA;I wonder if there is a sense from your point of view to look in the old code something that corresponds the new requirement for the current application?&#xA;Because if it is different, then the developers are getting back to the requester, describing what they found in the code, and once again discuss requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one side it fosters requirements engineering and requirements gathering process, on the other hand it may be waste or unnecessary extension of the time. Because it may be better and faster start from scratch with the new code for the new feature. And especially if the new system or rewriting the system can be the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there may be opinions on this subject, it would be helpful to find a methodology so I could recommend whether the stakeholders are better off continuing to invest in the old code or build from scratch?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="878" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2016-12-26T21:03:50.807" LastActivityDate="2016-12-26T21:03:50.807" Title="Methodology for Deciding Between Building on Existing Code or Starting New" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;technical-debt&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20576" CreationDate="2016-11-24T14:46:10.300" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several factors which could be problematic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A team of 1-2 developers is not really a team. 3 people can function as a Scrum Team, but less that that is somewhat less than feasible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're right that adding work to a sprint backlog while the sprint is in progress should be an uncommon occurrence. Note also that when this &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; happen, something in the sprint also needs to be taken &lt;em&gt;out&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The idea of these 'fixed responsibilities' flies in the face of shared code ownership. It also seems like a terrible idea - is your company &lt;em&gt;trying&lt;/em&gt; to make massive knowledge silos, so that if one person leaves, no one knows anything about what they were working on?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, there are two ways you can go about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can try to change how your company works, to better facilitate Scrum. You can do this by pointing out the negative repercussions these things could cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, consider the possibility that Scrum does not fit well for you. While it works well for development, because of its fixed-sprint iterative nature, it is ill-suited for environments involving many hotfix support requests. You might want to look at Kanban for an alternative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you might also be able to combine the two; do Scrum when starting out developing a product, and then switch to Kanban once the project is done. Or have two teams running in parallel, if you have enough support requests to justify having a dedicated team in addition to the Scrum team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-11-24T16:26:19.840" LastActivityDate="2016-11-24T16:26:19.840" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20576" CreationDate="2016-11-24T15:56:04.183" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two situations you can be in with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1: You are expected to do the work&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2: you are expected to push back and not do the work&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are in 1, then just do it and add a card to the current sprint. at least then you can track why you missed the sprint goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are in 2, (presumably because you did 1 for a bit and then people told you to stop being helpful and concentrate on the task in hand) then put the work on the backlog for prioritisation (ie never going to happen)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are running the company my advice is to resist the temptation of 1. All those admin tasks that seem important tend to be of very low actual value. It's cheaper to deal with them manually than to create a program to deal with them and maintain it and you will find that many of them are just people being lazy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ie If you get a task that means you have to go through a spreadsheet line by line checking for errors, when you know the dba can do run a query that produces the result in 1 sec. It's very tempting to demand that it be done rather than wasting your time. But in reality that query has to be designed and tested and rechecked, you need meetings to explain the problem and schedule the time etc. And that DBA is probably going to have to do some of the sheet manually anyway just to check their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2016-11-24T15:56:04.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20576" CreationDate="2016-11-24T16:04:27.233" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've spent the last year and a half working with over twenty teams that have faced very similar issues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over that time we've experimented with several techniques and found some that work well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off to answer you questions: &#xA;1- Yes, absolutely train support. This is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://dailygenius.com/neil-degrasse-tyson-bill-gates-wouldnt-bother-picking-up-45000-off-the-ground/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Bill Gates Penny&quot;&lt;/a&gt; problem. The developers are paid to create new functionality, not to fix minor issues. Always have the developers ask themselves &quot;Can someone else do this?&quot; If the answer is yes, then let them. Developers want people to trust them, they need to trust Support. Start slow, have support pair with a developer at first so the dev can review. Then move to Dev review and then move the Dev out of the process completely. &#xA;2- Only add something to the product backlog if it directly connects to the goals of the product. If the work is directly related to an existing feature, then add it to the backlog. If it is work required to support near term work, add it to the backlog. Defects found in production get added to the backlog, they impact the shipping product. If something does not contribute to the sprint goals or product goals, don't add it to the backlog. &#xA;3- No, don't add things mid-sprint. The one and only exception to this is mission critical. If you have a bug in production that is halting the service, drop everything and fix it. Otherwise, don't interrupt the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what is working now for me: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- Only Blocker bugs can interrupt the sprint. Blockers are specifically defined with an SLA from the support organization. Blockers are added into the sprint as work. However they are not estimated. They are not part of the sprint commit so velocity should go down when you work on them. If you're constantly having your sprint interrupted with production issues, then you likely have a bigger problem that needs to be addressed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2- All requests go through the product owner. When someone comes to the team and says &quot;Can you do X&quot;, the team member says &quot;have you asked the product owner?&quot; The product owner owns the business outcome of the team and needs to make these decisions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3- Only sprint or product contributing go in the backlog. Everything else is an Impediment or Blocker. If a product manager asks you to come up with charts for his next presentation, that isn't part of your sprint goal. While it may need to be done, it is an impediment to your real goal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4- Have an Impediments List: Very easy if using a physical task board, requires a little imagination if doing it all electronic. Next to the task board have a place for impediments. Anything the team is being asked to do that is not part of the sprint plan goes here. Impediments don't get estimates as they are impacting the actual team goals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5- Change your Standup Questions: Mike Cohn had some great advice on this. He recommends to add &quot;that contributed to the sprint goal&quot; to the end of the three standup questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I did W yesterday, that contributed to the sprint goal.&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I plan to do X today, that will contribute to the sprint goal.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;However I'm working on Y and Z right now, which do not contribute to the sprint goal, so not sure I'll get Y done today.&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With these rules and practices in place, the visibility of the interruptions becomes very clear. When someone wants non-sprint work done, you can start asking &quot;Is it more important that this work?&quot; When people ask &quot;why are you not getting anything done?&quot; you can show them the Impediments list and how it impacted the sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also want to do a quick Multi-Tasking Myth Exercise. Here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://davecrenshaw.com/multitasking-exercise-v2.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;one&lt;/a&gt;, however Google and find many more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-11-24T16:04:27.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20582" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-24T18:38:31.603" Score="1" ViewCount="777" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to create multiple pools of resources (each containing interchangeable resources within). To clarify I need a pool of front-end developers, another of back-end developers, and a pool of testers. Each pool has temporary contractors that come and go from the project at different dates. Then, for example, I will have some Tasks that assigned to front-end only, whilst other as a mix of front-end and back-end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I Googled this issue without luck. Any help would be welcome!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5484" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-14T13:27:45.093" LastActivityDate="2019-01-14T13:27:45.093" Title="How to manage &quot;pools of resources&quot; in Microsoft Project 2016?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20583" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-25T00:42:47.373" Score="6" ViewCount="356" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do software developers operating under some sort of agile development cycle and presenting a series of 'deliverables' to their customer expect&amp;mdash;or contract&amp;mdash;their clients to make a stage payment per acceptable deliverable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask as many systems take months to produce, test, and implement at the client's HQ and the developers have continual outgoings on salaries, rent, sub-contractee payments, etc. It's hard to see a bank holding their nerve for long without cash flow. House builders demand stage payments. Machinery builders demand deposit up front against materials. So why not software developers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26720" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2016-11-29T19:29:08.810" LastActivityDate="2016-11-29T19:29:08.810" Title="Can contracts based on agile project deliverables be tied to staged payments?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;contracts&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20584" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-25T00:59:06.940" Score="3" ViewCount="402" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in IT and I'm planning a large-scale migration project, which the end user is onboard with and is happy with the functionality etc. I've done a lot of the leg work, which involves different teams, negating the need for a PM. At a high level, it's an ambitious project but most of the work is all automated now via scripts so I'm not manually involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I need a light-touch PM but there is no resource for this. Is it wise starting this sort of project without a PM? The migration will take years to complete due to the scale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26722" LastActivityDate="2016-12-06T04:25:38.617" Title="Starting a project without a project manager?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20584" CreationDate="2016-11-25T05:18:06.057" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't need a PM as such but you need someone to take the ownership of the project. This person is crucial at least to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Monitor the pace of the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remove any impediment occurring&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be the point of contact to anything related to the topic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it seems that you are the man of the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25678" LastActivityDate="2016-11-25T05:18:06.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20583" CreationDate="2016-11-25T06:34:49.257" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Agile Projects Generally Work Best When Billed as Time-and-Materials&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do software developers operating under some sort of agile development cycle and presenting a series of 'deliverables' to their customer expect—or contract—their clients to make a stage payment per acceptable deliverable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the world of contracting, anything the parties agree on (provided it isn't illegal) is generally acceptable. So, you could certainly do this. Whether or not it is &lt;em&gt;common&lt;/em&gt; is a different question, and that's likely hard to quantify.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile projects &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be structured around piece-work, or around stages or phases of the project. However, such payment terms are usually a thinly-veiled attempt at fixed-cost pricing for fixed-scope specifications. This doesn't work well with an iterative development methodology that explicitly values &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;collaboration over contract negotiation&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my professional experience, agile projects are most effective when billed on a time-and-materials basis, with project controls on both sides to manage scope, budget, and risk. In particular, Scrum is designed to establish a cadence for the project such that a potentially-shippable increment is delivered each Sprint. The project can be stopped at the end of any Sprint, either because the goals were met or because the project has successfully &quot;failed early.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want the benefits of an agile methodology, then you need to use a contract structure that encourages collaboration and continuous engagement rather than risk management. Contracts that shift all the risk to the vendors, especially the risk of potential process issues originating on the client side, almost always prevent real collaboration on emergent designs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-11-25T06:34:49.257" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20584" CreationDate="2016-11-25T06:50:02.303" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Summary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your milage may vary. A project can succeed without a project manager, but running a project without controls is a business risk that must be accepted by the leadership team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A project doesn't &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; a project manager unless the project needs to be managed! However, &lt;strong&gt;every process needs a process owner&lt;/strong&gt;. In a formal project, the process owner for a project is usually the project sponsor, although responsibility for &lt;em&gt;managing&lt;/em&gt; the project is usually delegated to a project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not your organization needs an actual project manager for this specific initiative is entirely up to your leadership team. Starting a project without a project manager or any formal project controls is simply a business risk; it's up to your company executives to measure that risk, and then determine if the level of risk is acceptable or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A better question is: What happens if you later determine that the project &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; need a project manager? If your leadership team is unlikely to give the project the necessary time to stop the line, inspect the process, and adapt it where needed in the event that the initial laissez faire approach doesn't work, then you're better of starting out with a more formal framework than trying to retrofit one later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-11-25T06:50:02.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20518" CreationDate="2016-11-25T11:37:15.633" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Best practice is to create a milestone for eache deliverable. Then, your deliverable will have dates for completion, and you can show clearly in the timescale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also create a new custom field, but you will not be able to monitor them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26726" LastActivityDate="2016-11-25T11:37:15.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20582" CreationDate="2016-11-25T12:32:09.450" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try create a resource with its own calendar and a max capacity of 400%, 500% or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the way several pools of resources work in Project. For example, you can make a resource called &quot;Testers&quot;, value 500% for 5 testers. Then, you can assign your task to that pool. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A pool of resources is when all resources in a pool have the same calendar and the same cost. If not, you don't have a pool, because you have a differente restriction in your project for each member. You need a cost and time baseline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26726" LastEditorUserId="26726" LastEditDate="2016-11-25T14:24:21.130" LastActivityDate="2016-11-25T14:24:21.130" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20578" CreationDate="2016-11-25T13:06:33.357" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question is pretty complex and does not lend itself to a clear answer. Given the abiguity of issues your question raises, you will find most StackoverFlow participants inclined to discount it as opinion-based. Nevertheless the question is a real one that IMHO deserves a reply. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The legacy code is familiar to the to the programmers that wrote it, so they will naturally look there first to address new requirements.  The requester likely does not care how the task is accomplished, but they will lean toward fixing the existing code. Unless they are aware of how code is written and works, they will have the view that repair would always be quicker and cheaper than replacement. Often that is the case, depending on the new requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the accretion of patches over time can generate &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;technical debt&lt;/a&gt; that can jeopardize not only the application's enhancement but also undermine its performance. See work by Martin Fowler, Ward Cunniham, and Steve Mconnell, in particular the latter's &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEKvzEyNtbk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Managing Technical Debt Webinar&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, the advent of new languages and frameworks can lead to more effective, secure, and/or efficient solutions. Moving to these new approaches may be seen as a welcome challenge or terrible idea depending on the developer's personality. I would identify a couple target application architectures and draw up the advantages, disadvantages, and interesting points (that dont fall into either category). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineerin&lt;/a&gt;g by Fred Brooks is a classic book on software engineering that gives a high level perspective of these issues. Look for &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the second system effect&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kindly search &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;https://stackoverflow.com/&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/&lt;/a&gt; for relevant entries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8524" LastEditorUserId="8524" LastEditDate="2016-11-25T13:21:42.887" LastActivityDate="2016-11-25T13:21:42.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20584" CreationDate="2016-11-25T15:43:10.447" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need some level of control, whether that is via a project manager or another resource. Given that you expect the migration to take years to complete, it would be important to be able to monitor and track progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26728" LastActivityDate="2016-11-25T15:43:10.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20584" CreationDate="2016-11-25T15:50:35.097" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The role of PM is always there, whether you assign a person to the role and give them the title.  The way you are describing the work you're doing, you are not negating the PM but instead are the PM.  Congratulations!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-11-25T15:50:35.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20584" CreationDate="2016-11-25T17:09:25.567" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on your description, everything is automated so there would be no formal need for Project Manager. However, besides above mentioned topics, I would add following: since this is the project that will last couple of years, there should be a person who is responsible if a negative event occurs which will affect the project in a matter of time, money and quality. If that is you, than you are the Manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26717" LastActivityDate="2016-11-25T17:09:25.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20576" CreationDate="2016-11-26T04:56:17.013" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, we had kind of the same issue at SkuVault, and we decided to use an on call approach for some devs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: our team is bigger. And around 3 FrontEnd and 3 Backend devs are there to support the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We started by asking developers to fill a small questionnaire to find out how often they are distracted from new feature development by urgent client requests or bugfixes requiring immediate attention. It turned out that significant time (up to 80%) had been taken by Urgent Tasks, which distracted devs and made their work less efficient.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;So management came up with teams of on call devs. These teams (2 devs: Frontend and Backend) would work only on urgent tickets, which allowed the rest of the team to work on regular tasks, ideally, without distraction. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On duty team concept has been rethought a couple of times, as client base grew significantly, and so have the requests, tasks and points of attention. Some of developers still get pulled to urgent tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the concept itself proved to be extremely helpful, and overall the issue is resolved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did we create more unification across the system in order for different devs to be able to more or less work and substitute each other in general development? Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, since our system relies on integrations heavily, and different partners / retailers may change something and break how our systems interact -&gt; devs that were originally implenenting the integration are required. This is not resolved fully, as any dev practically can be pulled from new feature development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the overall unification led us to the point, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;that 1/3rd of integrations are shared across devs; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1/3rd are specific to certain devs, but don't break often; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1/3rd can often be broken and pulling original dev is necessary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21145" LastActivityDate="2016-11-26T04:56:17.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20575" CreationDate="2016-11-26T09:21:56.953" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Out of the box, JIRA will let you set issue count as a column constraint in the column settings of a particular agile board's configuration. I don't believe this prevents a status transition, though. It simply uses visual indicators (color of the column) when the issue count meets or exceeds the defined limit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To actually block it, a condition would have to be added to whatever transitions point to 'Acceptance' in your workflow(s). No native JIRA condition types can do this for you (as of JIRA 7), but there are add-ons that'll help. ScriptRunner and JJupin come to mind, and so does JIRA Misc Workflow Extensions, which adds support for writing groovy script conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I have no skill at Groovy whatsoever, and I break every novice coding rule in the book, but starting from an example in ScriptRunner's documentation for a script that uses JQL, I was able to make something that does work when used as a scripted condition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;import com.atlassian.jira.component.ComponentAccessor&#xA;import com.atlassian.jira.issue.search.SearchProvider&#xA;import com.atlassian.jira.jql.parser.JqlQueryParser&#xA;import com.atlassian.jira.web.bean.PagerFilter&#xA;&#xA;def jqlQueryParser = ComponentAccessor.getComponent(JqlQueryParser)&#xA;def searchProvider = ComponentAccessor.getComponent(SearchProvider)&#xA;def issueManager = ComponentAccessor.getIssueManager()&#xA;def user = ComponentAccessor.getJiraAuthenticationContext().getLoggedInUser()&#xA;&#xA;// edit this query to suit&#xA;def query = jqlQueryParser.parseQuery(&quot;project = ABC and status = ACCEPTANCE&quot;)&#xA;&#xA;def results = searchProvider.search(query, user, PagerFilter.getUnlimitedFilter())&#xA;&#xA;return (results.total == 0)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(adapted from &lt;a href=&quot;https://scriptrunner.adaptavist.com/latest/jira/recipes/misc/running-a-jql-query.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Execute a JQL Query&lt;/a&gt; as of 2016/11/26)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The query can be whatever you want it to be, such that it would return issues in the restricted status. The final line will basically return TRUE only if the query has no results, meeting the terms of the condition and allowing the status transition to appear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want it to be more portable, there's probably a way to retrieve the project key of the current issue and concatenate that into the JQL. But if this is only happening in one project, you can skip the extras.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16138" LastActivityDate="2016-11-26T09:21:56.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20596" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-26T12:16:16.990" Score="0" ViewCount="195" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm completing some coursework for my Software Project Management university module (studying Computer Science). We have to assemble a bid for a hypothetical software development project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have calculated my daily charge-out rates for each of my employees (salary + overheads / number of working days) and calculated the cost of each work package.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the Bid Summary document we need to calculate the labour costs and non-labour costs for the entire project. I'm a bit stuck of what is included in each; are overheads included in non-labour costs or labour costs? It'd be good to have a reference as well so I can back up my calculations. Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26737" LastActivityDate="2016-11-30T16:09:13.610" Title="Do non-labour costs involve project overheads?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20562" CreationDate="2016-11-26T16:37:39.833" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sorry, but it looks like some of the answers above address the wrong question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, &lt;strong&gt;manual validation&lt;/strong&gt; is a must for acceptance, and yes, it usually should be done by people qualified to do it, and ideally working in the same Scrum team. However, the original question was not about that, but specifically about how to treat QA automation under the Scrum framework assuming resource contention. This is much more specific, and something that I also tried solving via different means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It often happens that automation is an epic in itself, as it requires setting up an environment, developing the framework, code for the tests, the tests themselves, and then hooking up to CI. &#xA;Automation can also be expensive, and putting it as success criterion for all development stories can easily grind software delivery to a halt. On the contrary, it is perfectly legitimate to release feature manually tested.&#xA;Hence, I don't see any issue with having &lt;strong&gt;automation&lt;/strong&gt; as a separate entity in Scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it can be prioritized against other backlog tasks, assuming that the original feature was tested manually, and that the business is happy to pay the price of manual regression testing until automation gets in place. Backlog priorities would depend on how liable the feature is to be modified in the future (and hence require retesting), and how soon will automation provide ROI compared to recurring manual tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom-line, this is more of a resourcing question. If you find manual regression price tag constantly growing, and/or defects escaping due to lack of automation, you have a good business case to present to the management: for example to slow down development to catch up on automation, to hire a contractor for a one-off boost to your automation gap, or any other option that the budget can afford.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, it is more and more common to find the &lt;em&gt;Software Engineer in Test&lt;/em&gt; skillset profile, i.e. people who are both automation specialists and can also pick up development tasks. Having these engineers in the team gives the flexibility to put more emphasis on automation if required. There are other tactics, but as with all real-life situations, there's no silver bullet. For a more detailed answer, I'd need to understand your business's situation a bit better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25908" LastActivityDate="2016-11-26T16:37:39.833" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20584" CreationDate="2016-11-27T00:53:55.950" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have stated, you are the de facto PM. But in addition to worrying about who the PM is, you need to make sure that there is some kind of project charter in place. If this project is going to take years to complete, someone at some point will forget or challenge the reason the work is being done. There needs to be a written record of what is being done, why it is being done, who authorized it, who the high-level stakeholders are, and specific success criteria. If you don't have that, it will be easy to dismiss your efforts (however valuable) as a pet project that can be cancelled or postponed indefinitely while higher priorities are addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13325" LastActivityDate="2016-11-27T00:53:55.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20596" CreationDate="2016-11-27T01:31:45.433" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are in the United States or Asia, I'd recommend checking a resource like the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK). In Europe of the Middle East check the Prince2 guides. These are considered the &quot;official&quot; answers for project management related questions in their respective regions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Code Gnome indicated, it is going to  be subjective based on your teacher and their curriculum as well. You may want to review your notes or course material again to see if there is indication there are as to which way your instructor leans. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-11-27T01:31:45.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20601" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20605" CreationDate="2016-11-27T11:12:55.860" Score="0" ViewCount="185" Body="&lt;p&gt;I´m working as a product manager in a young startup. I'm really junior as I am currently in a working semester, pausing my studies (business major). In my role, I am managing the development of our platform, our team consists of a senior CTO, one Full Stack Dev on site and a team of 2 Senior and 2 Junior Devs that work remotely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My work looks pretty much like this: I decide, together with the CEO, on the features of the product, then create, together with the CTO, the User story backlog and split it up in sprints. For every story, I make sure that there is a detailed feature spec as a single source of truth for the development team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coming to my problem: I feel like I'm super dependent on the input of our CTO, who is really experienced in managing projects in big scale. How can I take back a bit more control over the situation? I'm familiar with a lot of aspects of the scrum method, but I don´t really know how to implement proper testing, for example. Should I do the testing, or should we develop automated testing? How does a testing spec look like?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yeah, so pretty general problems that I'm facing - it would be great to get some feedback/input!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26743" LastEditorUserId="15972" LastEditDate="2016-11-28T14:33:28.083" LastActivityDate="2016-12-02T09:43:55.343" Title="How can I improve my product manager skills in a senior-developer environment?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20596" CreationDate="2016-11-27T11:20:00.630" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do know if there is a hard and fast rule on this.  When you are doing your price build up, you need to include overhead somewhere so that your price will cover it and you don't want to double count it.  So, I assume if you are a seller of both services and products, put your overhead costs in one or the other depending on what you sell most.  In a real life example with my firm, where we sell both, our overhead is in labor; however, we have divisions that sell only products so their overhead is in materiel.  It is not double counted because it is a different division and different overhead costs.  Unless there is an accounting rule on this of which I am unaware, pick one and stick to it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I am not 100% confident in my answer since there are accounting rules outside of my area of expertise, so consider my contribution with that in mind.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-11-27T11:20:00.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20546" CreationDate="2016-11-27T21:20:15.883" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like many other thing Scrum doesn't (intentionally) tell you how to handle this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to start instilling the right mindset from the start no one on a Scrum team is &quot;assigned&quot; work. The team decides what work it can do, this includes new members of the team. They need to be encouraged to work out how they can best contribute and need to be supported by more experienced members of the team. This may include pairing up with more experienced members of the team, but needs to be a process where they are coached/mentored to participate in the self organsation of the team. They will probably be able to work out what they are capable of doing by collaborating with the other team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17409" LastActivityDate="2016-11-27T21:20:15.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20601" CreationDate="2016-11-28T11:36:10.287" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Coming to my problem: I feel like I´m super dependent on the input of our CTO, who is really experienced in managing projects in big scale. How can I take back a bit more control over the situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, he is senior, you are junior. I guess you can learn a lot from him. So instead of depending on him, try to do the work first and then consult him to correct you if necessary. Learn from the corrections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I´m familiar with a lot of aspects of the scrum method, but don´t really know how to implement proper testing, for example. Should I do the testing, should we develop automated testing? How does a testing spec look like?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not your job. Your job as a PO is making sure the feature you had a story done for is implemented so it fits the business value. In the Review meeting, you need to test &lt;em&gt;the business case&lt;/em&gt;. Or have it demoed to you. How or when the team tests their story is not your business. If they want to do it by hand or manually is their decision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2016-11-28T11:36:10.287" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16925" CreationDate="2016-11-28T15:00:51.743" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use it in power plants to hold off building scaffolding to repair a valve in the overhead. If you tie the scaffolding activity to the valve repair with ALAP, it will always lead the valve repair no matter where you move it. We do not logic tie a predecessor to the ALAP activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26751" LastActivityDate="2016-11-28T15:00:51.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20533" CreationDate="2016-11-28T21:42:53.713" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use the Task Usage or Resource usage view to manually contour the work for a resource over time.  Zoom out to show months and edit the total work per month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2016-11-28T21:42:53.713" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20611" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-29T09:44:15.360" Score="0" ViewCount="131" Body="&lt;p&gt;In MS Project, I've created a resource pool which is shared amongst several projects, can I see how much time a certain resource is allocated to a certain project?&#xA;Alternatively, is there a way to allocate a certain percentage of time for each resource to each individual project where they have a different amount of time for each project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26764" LastActivityDate="2018-03-31T05:01:55.127" Title="How to view resource allocation to specific projects" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resources&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20612" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-29T12:37:29.223" Score="5" ViewCount="108" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there differences in in-sprint Test plans for an agile model and a traditional model?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any best practices to follow for in-sprint test plans?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26765" LastActivityDate="2016-11-29T13:59:29.933" Title="Are there differences in Test plans for an agile model and a traditional model?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;testing&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;&lt;safe&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20612" CreationDate="2016-11-29T13:59:29.933" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;My in-Sprint testplans always try to cover the area's defined in &lt;a href=&quot;http://exampler.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Brian Maricks&lt;/a&gt; described &lt;a href=&quot;http://lisacrispin.com/2011/11/08/using-the-agile-testing-quadrants/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile testing quadrants&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;We look at each area at the beginning of the story and defined what effort we are going to put into it, but also if it is relavant for this story. Afterwards we create sub-tasks if needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/j2Dfm.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Focus is on test automation: &lt;a href=&quot;https://less.works/less/technical-excellence/test-automation.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://less.works/less/technical-excellence/test-automation.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And thinking about testing: &lt;a href=&quot;https://less.works/less/technical-excellence/thinking-about-testing.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://less.works/less/technical-excellence/thinking-about-testing.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Waterfall:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Focus is on release tests plans&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And often manual tested scripting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams &lt;a href=&quot;http://agiletester.ca/agile-testing/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://agiletester.ca/agile-testing/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2016-11-29T13:59:29.933" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14772" CreationDate="2016-11-29T15:56:12.010" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although I'm posting a response a year after the question is asked, but this seems to be a common question and hope my experience would help some people in taking the right decision for their respective organizations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to me, here is a mix that works best for maintenance projects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1). Define a &lt;strong&gt;sprint cycle&lt;/strong&gt; - week or 2-week cycle depending on the volume of work, time it takes to fix/test/release, the number of resources you have in your team and the client's perspective/expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2). Plan and re-plan &lt;strong&gt;sprints&lt;/strong&gt; as often as possible to be on top of the estimates v/s current status. You'll also arrive at velocity or capacity to deliver in a few weeks time, which will further help you in planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3). I would not recommend use of &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Story points&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for maintenance, as &lt;strong&gt;hourly estimate works better&lt;/strong&gt; in this case, since you exactly know what needs to be fixed and how much efforts are required, rather than going for relative-estimation techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4). Use &lt;strong&gt;Kanban Board&lt;/strong&gt; to keep a track of progress of tickets/incidents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5). Daily &lt;strong&gt;stand-up meetings&lt;/strong&gt; would help to resolve smaller or urgent bottle-necks while the &lt;strong&gt;Retrospective analysis&lt;/strong&gt; would help to gradually improve the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;6). &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Too much focus on process&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; may also lead to bottleneck at times since you tend to lose the flexibility and agility. I recommend to be &lt;strong&gt;flexible&lt;/strong&gt; enough to accommodate changes to sprint as long as nobody(other than process) is getting hurt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a nutshell, lots of wonderful tools, techniques &amp;amp; processes are available, you would want to &lt;strong&gt;choose only the ones that would really help you&lt;/strong&gt; and your business. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best,&#xA;Nitesh&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26768" LastEditorUserId="26768" LastEditDate="2016-11-29T16:05:25.523" LastActivityDate="2016-11-29T16:05:25.523" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5107" CreationDate="2016-11-29T20:19:29.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a doctorate in education.  I have served as a dissertation research chair supervisor for the last 8 years.  I would like to use my experience as a dissertation research chair as project management experience.  I currently serve as adjunct professor at a university.  I have had several of my students complete their doctoral research in education.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The dissertation has several components: Introduction and Problem Statement, Purpose, Research Questions, Theoretical Framework, Literature Review, Methodology, Data Analysis, and Conclusion, Discussion, Implication, and Recommendations. The research process also include 3 milestones which are proposal defense, IRB approval, and final research defense. I was wondering if there was a template that I could use to convert my work experience to the PMP management process groups.   Any insight in how I should approach converting my work experience would be appreciated.   I have created a chart that maybe useful for those who are professors who serve as research chairs &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6rHTsNOsLE_TEVVMEJkTm5sLVk/view?usp=sharing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6rHTsNOsLE_TEVVMEJkTm5sLVk/view?usp=sharing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26771" LastActivityDate="2016-11-29T20:19:29.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20546" CreationDate="2016-11-29T21:00:05.867" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Team members should be voluntarily selecting items (including stories) from the backlog that they can do. In my organization, we have a tech lead on every scrum team who helps junior devs get through issues they might have, explains parts of the code base that are unfamiliar to them, etc. We also sometimes practice paired programming if the team feels it would be helpful. Basically, team members should be picking up stories, they should do so balancing the idea of growing and stretching themselves as developers and also understanding what they really can't do yet, and the entire scrum team should be helping one another work through problems that come up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26292" LastActivityDate="2016-11-29T21:00:05.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20546" CreationDate="2016-11-29T21:39:46.827" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Onboarding Best Practices in Scrum&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Stories Are Never Assigned&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are they [the new team members] assigned stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, and in most agile methodologies, teams should be self-organizing. That means stories are never externally assigned, and team members should &lt;em&gt;collaboratively&lt;/em&gt; divvy up work within an iteration rather than &quot;assign&quot; work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Product Backlog Items&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If they can't directly work on customer driven stories, how are they [the new team members] involved in Scrum's story-centric process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Onboarding is a process that consumes team resources, and thus should have Product Backlog Items associated with that effort. Some common backlog items include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Setting up workstations and toolchains.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Education about the product development framework.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Training/coaching on team processes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product orientations, demos, or walkthroughs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anything else related to successful onboarding of the role.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, the Product Owner prioritizes onboarding stories so that they can be part of Sprint Planning. The Sprint Planning ceremonies should include &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; effort-driven work planned by the team, not just product features, and successful onboarding certainly requires effort!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Immersive Team-Member Integration&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;New team members should be involved from the beginning in all team ceremonies, as this is part of the normative process. They should also pair heavily with others on &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; stories, so as to gain hands-on experience with team processes, codebases, tooling, and so forth. On-the-job training (OJT) is the norm in successful agile implementations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Productivity Fudge Factors&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that onboarding will often act as a temporary drag on team capacity for delivering new features, and this is both normal and expected. Adding resources to a project is a long-term strategy, not a short-term fix (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks&amp;#39;s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Brooks' Law&lt;/a&gt;) and so any short-term reduction in team capacity should balance out over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I generally apply a fudge factor of 0.8 to velocity when onboarding stories are included in the Product Backlog, and 0.6 (and some remedial framework coaching) when the Product Owner won't prioritize the necessary stories. Your fudge factors may legitimately vary, but make sure you provide sufficient slack to avoid overcommitting the team during the transition period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2016-11-29T21:39:46.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20619" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20625" CreationDate="2016-11-29T22:22:53.367" Score="4" ViewCount="532" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When starting a team new to using kanban boards (in this case a physical board) how do you assign tasks to them and get them in the habit of checking the board for new responsibilities? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Team Background&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: The team is a few experienced engineers/techs and a handful inexperienced techs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tasks come sporadically but have a typical flow. For example, one engineer may be assigned to research a COTS product, then the manager would take care of making sure it finally gets purchased and delivered. We'd plan on having a few main lanes, something like &quot;propose&quot;, &quot;research&quot;, &quot;approve/reject&quot;, &quot;done&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My Idea&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start a sticky note and assign a users name to it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;for the first few weeks email the person responsible and mention 'check the board for status!'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a temporary lane labeled 'emailed responsible user' to denote the task has been assigned via email. this would get deleted as people got used to the board&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My concerns with this idea&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;People may become reliant on the email and forget the board&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Deleting a 'temporary lane' disrupts the momentum gained over those weeks&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The original assumption &quot;people won't jump on the board idea&quot; could be wrong and &lt;em&gt;everyone&lt;/em&gt; is looking at the board&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Assume people will look at the board and use a less formal verbal discussion &quot;hey Bob did you research that one issue with the PC? I threw it up on the board 2 days ago and sent you an email with the details&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ideas from Other SO Questions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/19881/how-to-use-a-physical-kanban-board&quot; title=&quot;this question&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/7951/physical-board-overview-for-multiple-projects-with-many-participants&quot; title=&quot;second question&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; address how to visually show who's responsible but not how to tell that person they are responsible for the task (again assuming people won't be in the habit of browsing the board)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For each team-member, use a magnet with it's name on it and put the magnet on the sticky (the task).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A yellow note represents a project and an avatar shows who or which team is working on that project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26773" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2016-11-30T19:39:17.980" Title="Assigning responsibility with physical Kanban Board" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20619" CreationDate="2016-11-30T00:50:01.730" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you considered avoiding the problem entirely by having the team self-assign tasks? Teams should know their own capabilities far better than any manager could. Top-down assignment of tasks is very command-and-control style, whilst self-assignment is better application of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_74.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Theory Y&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Alice assigns &lt;em&gt;herself&lt;/em&gt; a task, and then forgets that she has to do it, then you've got an entirely different problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-11-30T00:50:01.730" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20596" CreationDate="2016-11-30T14:16:07.097" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I searched PMBOK 5th Edition and found no clear statement on the handling of overhead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The General Services Administration (GSA) governs contracting with the US Federal government. The GSA Federal Acquisition Regulation &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.acquisition.gov/?q=browse/far/16/6&amp;amp;searchTerms=General%20and%20administrative%20expenses&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Part 16.6 Time-and-Materials, Labor-Hour, and Letter Contracts&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(b) Description. A time-and-materials contract provides for acquiring supplies or services on the basis of:&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;(1) Direct labor hours at specified fixed hourly rates that include wages, overhead, general and administrative expenses, and profit; ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overhead is applicable solely to labor costs. Overhead is not permitted for other direct costs (ODCs) which GSA's term for non-labor costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Direct materials” means those materials that enter directly into the end product, or that are used or consumed directly in connection with the furnishing of the end product or service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Materials” means—&#xA;(1) Direct materials, including supplies transferred between divisions, subsidiaries, or affiliates of the contractor under a common control;&#xA;(2) Subcontracts for supplies and incidental services for which there is not a labor category specified in the contract;&#xA;(3) Other direct costs (e.g., incidental services for which there is not a labor category specified in the contract, travel, computer usage charges, etc.); and&#xA;(4) Applicable indirect costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although the offeror is not permitted to apply overhead and G&amp;amp;A to ODCs, the offeror can apply material handling costs, as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) Material handling costs. When included as part of material costs, material handling costs shall include only costs clearly excluded from the labor-hour rate. Material handling costs may include all appropriate indirect costs allocated to direct materials in accordance with the contractor's usual accounting procedures consistent with Part 31.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8524" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2016-11-30T16:09:13.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20619" CreationDate="2016-11-30T17:06:28.323" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you might be able to solve the issue with simple but very effective processes such as a Daily Kanban Meeting (where each team member might discuss specific problems that impede their progress on tasks they are currently working on and what they might take up next after finishing their current work) and perhaps a Weekly Replenishment (or simply, a planning) Meeting where your team - and your internal or external customers/ stakeholders - can discuss and prioritize what set of work items need to be worked on next by the team overall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban boards are not only to visualize work (and assignments) but also for collaboration and discussions that you would never have if you just used non-visual tools such as the ones you mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you start to do this, you might also establish some explicit policies (which is something Kanban emphasizes) such as how people on your team pull the next work item (or get assigned to one), how many work items can they work on simultaneously (WIP Limits), etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these should help you address the problem you have described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2016-11-30T17:06:28.323" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20548" CreationDate="2016-11-30T19:24:00.240" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are already some good answers about how to cover the testing tasks by the team. I'm hoping to add something a little different with this response:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, the biggest skill a QA engineer brings to the team is not the ability to run tests (as other answers have covered, that's easy enough to automate or delegate). Rather, it's the perspective they bring from a career of looking for the edge cases, cracks in the plan, etc. If you can't bring on someone in that role, I recommend looking for and cultivating that skill in your developers or new hires.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also recommend looking into how lean recommends building quality in. Build habits of identifying common sources of problems in your code and addressing those. Building quality development practices beats trying to catch the problems on the way out every time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2016-11-30T19:24:00.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20627" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-30T20:34:24.813" Score="0" ViewCount="262" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand PMP documentation is 4500 hours with a degree and that the hours covered must not overlap. I also understand that the hours you spend studying, can only cover a 36 month period. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, does that 36 months have to be &lt;em&gt;consecutive&lt;/em&gt; or is it framed such that the time used needs only encompass 36 months &lt;em&gt;in total&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26778" LastEditorUserId="15972" LastEditDate="2016-12-05T16:34:07.703" LastActivityDate="2016-12-25T05:15:18.527" Title="PMP hours documentation" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20628" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-11-30T22:49:59.637" Score="1" ViewCount="214" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am familiar with the product vision but never used it so far since I joined once it was already done&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been appointed to a project where 2 existing products are overlapping and we need to set up an agile project to understand if is better to merge the products or seek and develop whatever other solution is better. I will be scrum master in this project and I have been asked to set up a sprint zero starting with a workshop for the stakeholders to create a product vision and product backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any practical suggestion how to structure a workshop to do that work?&#xA;stakeholders are mainly managers, is it correct that they come up with the content of the product vision in the workshop?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17509" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-12-01T15:49:37.627" LastActivityDate="2017-01-30T18:19:01.027" Title="I need practical tools or workshop tips to create product vision for an existing product" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;vision&gt;&lt;product&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20628" CreationDate="2016-12-01T04:31:10.980" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of variables in your situation that I don't know the answer to and so I'll try to keep my suggestions as high-level as I can. Either way, please use them as only a starting point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;5 Levels of Planning&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First I'd look at the 5 levels of planning. There's a lot of info to look up on this, but the short version is that they are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vision Planning&#xA;Roadmap Planning&#xA;Release Planning&#xA;Sprint Planning&#xA;Daily Planning (Scrum)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the length of your workshop, you're looking at Vision and maybe some roadmap. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Vision Planning&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product vision is just part of this. If you haven't used other product vision approaches before, I'd look at the elevator pitch format and the product box exercise (design the imaginary box your product will come in). These are great ways to get ideas flowing. The second option could easily be a workshop in itself since it'll get into things like key features and constraints. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vision planning may also include things like stakeholder maps, constraints, and personas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Roadmap Planning&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of ways to approach this. Two good options are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Lean Project Canvas to prioritize major features&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agile42.com/en/blog/2013/04/11/lean-project-canvas/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.agile42.com/en/blog/2013/04/11/lean-project-canvas/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Full disclosure, I know the author, so I'm not unbiased here, but it is a technique I like and use myself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short version of this is you brainstorm major features and use these canvases to give them a good apples-to-apples comparison for prioritization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Story Mapping&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a lot on the internet about story mapping and it would be ungainly for me to try to describe it here. Going through a full-blown story map here is probably taking it too far. The narrative aspect of a story map is what I'd focus on. How do they see a customer going through the major features? This can also act as a foundation when you bring the other teams in to start digging in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps. Start with that 5 levels of planning idea and you'll find tons of other approaches out there too. For the most part, they're all good. Just find the one that fits for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2016-12-01T04:31:10.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20630" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20633" CreationDate="2016-12-01T09:21:38.337" Score="6" ViewCount="776" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a small IT team in a startup and are composed as such:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 frontend engineers (1 senior, 1 junior)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 backend engineers (1 senior, 1 junior)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We recently (3 months ago) started to use a Scrum methodology to manage our projects. It brought us stability and better communication (thanks mainly to the daily stand up meetings). So overall, it's a good change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, one thing remains. We try to estimate our stories by complexity, and assign a certain number of points for each sprint. Our team being small and the experiences in the different aspects of our projects, we have to assign specific stories to specific people in the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can we know&lt;/strong&gt; if we estimate by complexity, &lt;strong&gt;at any given moment, if we're ahead or behind schedule&lt;/strong&gt;? Our sprints are two weeks long, we can't afford not knowing if we're late until the end of the sprint. Knowing that we missed our deadline &lt;strong&gt;at the deadline&lt;/strong&gt; is pretty useless... And we can't rely on the estimation being diluted across the team, as we are this small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing I don't really get is we select the stories, let's say 120 points, for 2 weeks. It's a mean of ~30 / person so my engineer's brain is telling me that I should, give or take, do 3 points per day. If on the third day I'm at 9, I'm good. If I'm at 6, I'm behind. But there I'm back on a time based estimation...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess I don't get the thing about complexity estimation. I understand the power behind relative estimation, as &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/14588&quot;&gt;this answer explains it&lt;/a&gt;, but I don't see how I can keep track of the well being of the project while in a sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nota bene: we do have a burndown chart, which is not that useful for my conceptual problem as it draws a chart of &lt;strong&gt;complexity over time&lt;/strong&gt;. Therefore, can I deduce that the points are time-based in the end ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26784" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2016-12-01T16:31:12.213" Title="How to get sprint progress from complexity-based estimation?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20630" CreationDate="2016-12-01T11:10:27.347" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are doing Scrum, you should have a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burn_down_chart&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;burn down chart&lt;/a&gt;. It's the tool of choice to visualize your sprint's progress and see if you are going to reach your goal. It will show you if you are ahead or behind your schedule. It's commonly updated in or after the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-up_meeting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;daily standup&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2016-12-01T11:10:27.347" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20630" CreationDate="2016-12-01T11:39:32.157" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stan, as nvoigt said we use Burndown chart in Scrum to measure the progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read about it here &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/release-burndown&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/release-burndown&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your engineering's brain is right and you can calculate as you have mentioned 3 Story points per day per person. Notice that the Burndown chart is visual and makes it much easier for you to follow the current state, but it also allows you to look at the trend in the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing to mention, in Scrum do not look at how many Story Points one developer needs to burn per day, but ALWAYS observe the entire team as a whole. Commitment is made as a group, Velocity is measured for a whole team. Some people are faster, some slower, but you all make the software together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26280" LastActivityDate="2016-12-01T11:39:32.157" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20630" CreationDate="2016-12-01T15:33:04.560" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming you've already created a &lt;strong&gt;Story based burn-down chart&lt;/strong&gt; (If not, do that now). The problem is all the value is suddenly appearing at the end? This isn't a problem with the metrics, &lt;strong&gt;you might have too much work in progress&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Too much work in progress is bad. It makes progress hard to measure. But it also has other shortcoming, like increasing the risk that a bad sprint delivers nothing (eg two stories 60% done) rather than something (eg one 100% done, one 20&amp;amp; done).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There are a number of things you can do to improve your work in progress problem&lt;/strong&gt;, here are a couple: 1) &lt;a href=&quot;http://agileforall.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Story-Splitting-Flowchart.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Make your stories small&lt;/a&gt; 2) Cooperate more. Put your 4 people on 1 or 2 stories at a time, rather than 4. Focus as a team on delivering something as soon as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;N.B.&#xA;Task based burn-down charts&lt;/strong&gt;. Might be useful sometimes. Use with caution though, they can be deceptive. Tasks aren't (and shouldn't be) estimated, may been uneven in size and more can appear as more work is discovered or as larger tasks are broken down. Also tasks don't actually represent delivered value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17705" LastEditorUserId="17705" LastEditDate="2016-12-01T15:41:09.433" LastActivityDate="2016-12-01T15:41:09.433" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19986" CreationDate="2016-12-01T17:19:57.613" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I know you can't update the columns on the task board. Just the Product Backlog board. The link below has a part where it mentions what customization you can do but it never mentions updating columns on the task board. I'm not sure if this helps. But in the past with my teams we have actually managed out work in the product backlog board as you can see all the linked tasks in the drop down on the work item. Then we would just use that board to show what state it was in for your purposes. Could be the wrong way of doing things but that is just how we did it. Also would like to note that I've really only worked with the On Prem version not nearly as much in VSO. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/docs/work/scrum/task-board&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/docs/work/scrum/task-board&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26795" LastActivityDate="2016-12-01T17:19:57.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20635" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-01T20:36:05.947" Score="4" ViewCount="247" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a company, they have been trying to implement scrum for something less than a year, and they have made some good progress. However, in the last 4-5 months and prior to the release of the software, management and PO have been adding things in the sprint &lt;strong&gt;all the time&lt;/strong&gt;, therefore altering the priority and focus of the sprint. At the end of the sprints, things are half done, or not started at all, and some are done. This seems ok though, as they will be delivered in the next sprint, or the sprint after. The PO and management know that they shouldn't be doing this, however time is very limited to go live with the new product and if there is no business, there is no team, and therefore, no scrum. The morning scrums are are report to the manager of what is going on, and a ping pong of suggestions for possible solutions. The manager insists that this is the right forum to coordinate the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the manager has advised that he wants to keep the scrum values, and progress scrum in the team, it's just that right now, time is of the essence and things have to be delivered as soon as possible before the deadline. The Scrum Master, seeing the problem, he understands that priorities will keep coming up, sprints will keep re-shifting, and has given up trying to change this; he also understands that certain pieces of the software have to come on an urgent basis in order to be delivered. Additionally, &quot;last moment additions&quot;, albeit essential, are added in the sprint or backlog, that need to be done tomorrow (sometimes the latter are, objectively speaking, non-negotiable, as they have to be delivered for the software to work).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To top all these, the company has issues in its infrastructure, such as environments not working, and development getting halted about 20% of the time due to external dependencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The company has client commitments which it is trying to meet. Therefore, on one hand they want to do scrum, on the other it just seems like a waterfall methodology labelled as &quot;scrum&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there hope in this company in terms of appreciating what needs to be done in order to start implementing scrum? How can they stop adding things in the sprint backlog, and focus on actually delivering whole sprints instead of having half-done stories at the end?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5522" LastActivityDate="2016-12-01T21:13:04.467" Title="In a scrum development environment, management keeps adding stories in the sprint" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20635" CreationDate="2016-12-01T21:13:04.467" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, whenever something is added into the Sprint, &lt;em&gt;ask the PO which story/stories should be removed.&lt;/em&gt; This is not optional. (Unless you find that you actually underestimated for that Sprint and actually have &lt;em&gt;room&lt;/em&gt; to add stuff. This shouldn't happen often, however.) If you estimated being able to complete 10 story points, and you therefore took on 10 story points, and then managers want to add another 3 story points, &lt;em&gt;you are not magically going to become able to complete 13 story points&lt;/em&gt;. Three points must be taken &lt;em&gt;out&lt;/em&gt;, thereby maintaining the sprint's estimate. Not only does this combat the problem of having many 'half-completed' stories at the end of a sprint (assuming the original estimate was appropriate), it also has the added benefit of making some of the costs of these 'last-minute additions' clearly visible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I want story G.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Okay, would you like us to remove story A, or stories B and C, to make room for it?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;No, you can't remove either of them.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Okay, we cannot complete story G, then. Please pick two to keep: either A, B and C, or G.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Fine. Remove A, then.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Time lapse)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Why isn't story A completed?!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Well, we have this email here that explains it...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it might seem like you're completing things faster, that's not really the case. Either you try to complete all stories and get nothing done sprint 1 and everything done sprint 2, or you complete stories B, C, and G done in sprint 1, then finish story A in sprint 2. That's an advantage of Scrum vs. Waterfall - you get &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To top all these, the company has issues in its infrastructure, such as environments not working, and development getting halted about 20% of the time due to external dependencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not really that unheard of, and not fundamentally incompatible with Scrum. Just treat it as having a lower focus factor; that is, it means your team is able to commit to a lower number of story points per sprint (compared to how many they could commit to without these issues).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The company has client commitments which it is trying to meet. Therefore, on one hand they want to do scrum, on the other it just seems like a waterfall methodology labelled as &amp;quot;scrum&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like I explained above, taking on more work that you cannot actually &lt;em&gt;complete&lt;/em&gt; might make it &lt;em&gt;look&lt;/em&gt; like your Team is going faster, but it isn't actually &lt;em&gt;going&lt;/em&gt; faster. Following Scrum shouldn't keep you from fulfilling client commitments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there hope in this company in terms of appreciating what needs to be done in order to start implementing scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. Adding Scrum to a Waterfall workshop is often as agonizingly slow as it is eventually-rewarding. Keep at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can they stop adding things in the sprint backlog, and focus on actually delivering whole sprints instead of having half-done stories at the end?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully, once the costs of doing this become visible, management will stop. Or else the need to do it might go away, once things settle down a bit. If neither of these happen and your project really is something that is so volatile that you cannot handle planning with two-week sprints, consider the possibility that Scrum actually won't fit. You don't have to stick with Waterfall, though - consider a different agile methodology, such as Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2016-12-01T21:13:04.467" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20601" CreationDate="2016-12-02T09:43:55.343" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I do the testing, or should we develop automated testing? How does a testing spec look like?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You role is to validate that you product works the way you specified it, not to test if it works at all. So you clearly don't have to do all the testing and bug finding, but you can help make this testing easier for your dev team by using the &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber/wiki/Gherkin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;GHERKIN syntax&lt;/a&gt; to specify your stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With Gherkin, you describes functional scenarios in a way that can be easily translated by the dev team into automated fonctional tests. Gherkin specs also makes the validation step easier, as most of your work will consist in checking if your product allow the realization of each of your scenarios.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26793" LastActivityDate="2016-12-02T09:43:55.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20639" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20799" CreationDate="2016-12-02T10:56:14.070" Score="4" ViewCount="482" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Don Reinertsen's book - &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1935401009&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Principles of Product Development Flow&lt;/a&gt; - the tradeoff between release size (number of stories) and release cost (regression test cost and release cost) is described like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/j5rF8.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/j5rF8.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Product Development Flow - Optimal Batch Size&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Ken Rubin's book - &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B008NAKA5O&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Essential Scrum&lt;/a&gt; - he talks about the benefits of smaller release sizes - being:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduced cycle time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduced flow variability&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accelerate feedback&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lower risk of failure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduced overhead&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increased motivation and urgency&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduced cost and schedule growth&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also uses the following way of describing this tradeoff:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/drGKX.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/drGKX.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They both talk about this in terms of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.innolution.com/resources/glossary/u-curve-optimization&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;U-curve optimisation problem&lt;/a&gt;. The challenge is how to quantify this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now assume:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above has the form of &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;cost = n*BS + m/BS &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;with &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;n&lt;/code&gt; = holding cost factor,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;m&lt;/code&gt; = transaction cost factor and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;BS&lt;/code&gt;= batch size.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to find the zero crossing of the first derivative for the minimum. The first derivative for the above is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;n - m/(BS^2)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When setting that to zero you find&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;min cost = sqrt(m/n)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But how do you find the cost of releasing now vs releasing in six months? What was the opportunity cost? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: &lt;strong&gt;How do you financially quantify the 'holding cost' of not releasing items until you have a big batch?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26798" LastActivityDate="2017-01-09T21:43:56.220" Title="How do you financially quantify the 'holding cost' of not releasing items until you have a big batch?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;budget&gt;&lt;business-case&gt;&lt;pricing&gt;&lt;release-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20640" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-03T05:30:14.917" Score="0" ViewCount="99" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been working as a software developer for ten years now. I was happy working in my past company for four years, but the dark side is that I had three projects dead at the very end of the job because the user reported that they were happy with the old system and didn't like the new system, which imposes more restrictions and has an inferior UI...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I moved to a new company but was fired after two months because they complained that I had just directly copied the logic from the old system being migrated, without studying the physical mechanism, and the meaning of the program, behind it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After three months of unemployment, I have found a new job and I really fear to repeat those mistakes. Therefore, I am asking for suggestions and books that can help improve my problem analyst skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21537" LastEditorUserId="15972" LastEditDate="2016-12-05T11:55:19.143" LastActivityDate="2016-12-06T04:28:06.367" Title="How can I improve my requirement analyst skill?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20642" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-03T14:44:18.093" Score="5" ViewCount="506" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I read about story points it is always mentioned that they should be used because they are a relative measure with examples like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It takes me 60 minutes to run a trail while you only take 30 minutes to run it. So time is not a good measure to communicate the effort. Miles would be a better choice because a third party could then estimate their individual time based on their own speed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However you could just as well do the same with time estimates. I say it takes me 60 minutes and you know that you are twice as fast so you can conclude that it will take you 30.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story points:&#xA;time = storypoints / individual velocity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time estimation:&#xA;time = basetime / individual velocity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what is the difference and why should I use story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also mentioned that story points are relative since they are assigned in respect to a reference story. However you can do just the same with time. I.e. Reference story A is assigned 1 base hour instead of 1 story point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the advantage of story points as I see it is simply this concept: Don't give a ballpark figure, but rather estimate in relation to a reference point. But as soon as you assign a measure to the reference it does not matter if it is points or time. The result is the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26813" LastEditorUserId="26813" LastEditDate="2016-12-03T15:59:20.343" LastActivityDate="2016-12-03T19:28:03.913" Title="Why measure in story points (being a relative measure is not an acceptable answer)" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20642" CreationDate="2016-12-03T19:28:03.913" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Scrum we do some work in a time-box and then measure how much work was completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you could estimate stories using time units. But that would make for some strange results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The team completed 10 days estimated work in 15 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably better to use a measurement that has no time units. In fact, when you think about it, the units we use are completely irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is why we use story points. They are &lt;em&gt;arbitrary&lt;/em&gt; units.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The team completed 10 story points in 15 days&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the team repeats this process for a few sprints and then calculates their velocity:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We average 12 points per sprint, so that is our velocity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as the team stays consistent with their sizing of stories, then this velocity is a useful way of predicting the capacity of future sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the team's performance may change over time. So we continually recalculate the velocity (often using a rolling average).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing to remember that we are not estimating how long it will take to do work. Instead we are sizing work and then &lt;em&gt;measuring&lt;/em&gt; how long it took to be completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-12-03T19:28:03.913" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20640" CreationDate="2016-12-03T20:58:25.873" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;No matter the role, to improve you need to practice.  You need to pick up the books on a routine basis and study not only new stuff but to restudy the old stuff.  You need to practice by doing.  You need to do your own personal lessons learned when both you had some success as well as set backs and, most importantly, learn from those lessons.  You need to seek out counsel, both on a case by case basis as well as with an established mentor.  And maybe most importantly, you need to be persistent.  Persistence wins.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Failure is a great teacher.  But when that happens, you need to truly analyze the drivers that disabled success so you can figure out a new way of doing it next time around.  We have a tendency of insulating ourselves when we fail by attributing the cause externally.  When we succeed, we attribute the success internally, of course.  That's a bias called misattribution error.  So if you really want to learn and improve as a practitioner, check that bias at the door.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stay positive and be persistent and don't be afraid to blame yourself so you can learn from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-12-03T20:58:25.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20645" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-04T13:58:58.347" Score="8" ViewCount="2245" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some Scrum add-ons allow you to enter both estimated story points and consumed story points. What are consumed story points and how do you measure/estimate them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26818" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-04-04T11:57:00.857" LastActivityDate="2018-04-04T11:57:00.857" Title="What are &quot;Consumed Story Points&quot; in Trello?" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;trello&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20645" CreationDate="2016-12-04T18:59:33.013" Score="17" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Consumed Story Points: An Agile Anti-Pattern&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Consumed points&quot; are a sort of burn-down metric that some practitioners use to track progress of a story against its original estimates. It's intended to show percentage of work completed, estimate overruns, or to reduce the need for collaborative communication about story status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my coaching practice the use of consumed points is considered a Scrum/Kanban anti-pattern. Story point estimates are invalid outside the estimation process itself, and have no utility outside Sprint Planning or Release Planning. They should be treated as ephemeral values, and should be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Created, reviewed, or revised during Sprint Planning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discussed during Sprint Retrospectives as a way of refining the team's estimation and planning process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discarded along with the time box, except as an aggregated total for use in the velocity metric.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's look at a concrete example, and discuss why people may use consumed points and what they should do instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A Worked Example&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say you're using &lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt; with the popular &lt;a href=&quot;https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/scrum-for-trello/jdbcdblgjdpmfninkoogcfpnkjmndgje&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum for Trello&lt;/a&gt; Chrome plugin. You might have a board like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/AKs5o.png&quot; alt=&quot;example Trello board showing estimated and consumed points&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Estimating Percent Complete&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Work in Progress column, the story is estimated at five story points, and the team has guesstimated that 50% of the forecasted work has been completed. Theoretically, that means the story in the second column is half-done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But wait! In Scrum, as in most successful agile frameworks, each story is either &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;not-done&lt;/em&gt;. The whole framework is designed to get away from false precision and pointless status reports claiming that 60% of something is 80% done. In Scrum, a story is either 100% done (per the Definition of Done, of course!) at the end of the Sprint, or it is simply incomplete and must be returned to the Product Backlog unfinished, where it may be rewritten, reprioritized, rescheduled, and replanned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, why does anyone use consumed points? The people who do it often have reasons, and those reasons generally fall into a couple of common categories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Their process isn't fully collaborative, so &quot;consumed points&quot; are a way to avoid more meaningful status updates. Unfortunately, &quot;I'm 50% done&quot; isn't particularly helpful, but &quot;I'm working on a story that I can't complete unless Alice is done with her story to embiggen the widget&quot; would be clear and actionable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Scrum Master, Product Owner, or an external stakeholder is trying to replace burn-down charts, daily standups, or other ceremonies and artifacts with metrics on a card. Story points are a planning tool, not a performance metric, so using them for anything else is inherently a misuse of the metric that yields unreliable information.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team and its stakeholders don't fully understand estimates or forecasting, and are trying to tie level-of-effort estimates to labor hours. Their underlying assumption is that story points have intrinsic conversion rates to time, and that each story will have a strictly linear progression from &lt;em&gt;started&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;em&gt;finished&lt;/em&gt;. Neither is the case.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When done properly, a Sprint Backlog is decomposed into done or not-done items that can be measured in the Sprint Burn-Down. This is a much more accurate view of how much work remains in the current Sprint. In contrast, percent-complete of stories is yet another subjective proxy metric, and functions as an inexact secondary forecast. For example, if you say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The work-in-progress story is 50% done, so I'm estimating that it will take me another 5 days to complete it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;all you've accomplished is adding a new time-based (and largely unsubstantiated) forecast on top of the original level-of-effort forecast. Experience shows that this is rarely accurate, and almost never worth the time to track. &quot;Done&quot; or &quot;not-done&quot; are the coins of the realm in agile frameworks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Tracking Overruns and Inaccurate Estimates&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other use case is demonstrated by the third card, located in the Done column. In that card, you can see that the team estimated the story as three story points, but later claim that it took eight story points to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there is nothing wrong with pointing out in a Sprint Retrospective that a user story was grossly underestimated and using the experience to improve the team's estimation and planning process next time around, the utility value of formally tracking the &lt;em&gt;magnitude&lt;/em&gt; of the mis-estimation is zero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a Retrospective, it's perfectly reasonable to say something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We all thought that this story was a 3 because...but it turns out we didn't think through the dependencies on &lt;em&gt;foo&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;bar&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;baz&lt;/em&gt;. Plus, we had to ensmallen the whatnot in order to complete the story, and we didn't think to create a Sprint Backlog item for that or include that in our estimates. Maybe we need to decompose stories like this better during Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, a Sprint is an &lt;em&gt;ephemeral&lt;/em&gt; time box. Once the Sprint is over, it's gone forever. Either the Sprint Goal was met, or it was not. Either a story was completed in that Sprint, or it was not. Six months later, does it matter whether a given story was easier or harder to complete than originally planned? Of course not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real reasons people use this post-hoc metric are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team is being &quot;held accountable&quot; by the organization to show how much effort they're putting in. This is especially common when Sprint Goals aren't met, and the team wants to say &quot;We didn't complete all the stories needed to meet the Sprint Goal, but look how much effort we out in on Story X!&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team is improperly treating velocity as a measure of productivity, rather than a measure of historical team capacity, and trying to game the metric to improve the optics. &quot;We estimated this story at 3 points, but it really took 8, so we really did 25 story points rather than 20 this Sprint! We're super performers; please don't fire us!&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Upper management is improperly treating velocity as a performance target rather than a forecasting tool, and driving the team to take on more work than may be sustainable. The original estimate may have been set by leadership rather than the team, or the story was pushed into the Sprint by stakeholders without sufficient decomposition. Do you really want to track separate velocity metrics to cover up a deeper process problem?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Review, Don't Track&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several schools of thought about whether teams should ever adjust story points within a Sprint. This is a complex topic outside the scope of this answer, but the overly-simplistic answer is that you're generally better off leaving your initial estimates alone if your goal is to improve your process. It's much better (from a process point of view) to say &quot;Hey, we mis-estimated! Let's fix that next time!&quot; rather than constantly moving the cheese.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity is a metric that converges towards a mean over time. As long as you continue to improve the estimation process, the accuracy of your velocity as a predictor of Sprint capacity will improve. The value of velocity is in its ability to predict capacity despite perturbations and periodicity, so there is almost never a good reason to retcon the results of an individual Sprint—and in fact, numerous reasons &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to do so!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile teams should be small enough, and Scrum Sprints short enough, that formal tracking of deviations from the planning estimate should not be necessary. As this data should never be used outside of a single Sprint time box, retaining this data beyond the time box is also unnecessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum up, it's worth &lt;em&gt;reviewing&lt;/em&gt; discrepencies in estimates, or identifying process impediments that kept a story from being 100% done. However, tracking this data as a first-class element on a story card is very much an anti-pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-04-04T01:13:19.730" LastActivityDate="2018-04-04T01:13:19.730" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20647" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-05T00:30:17.927" Score="2" ViewCount="707" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently doing a breakdown of products for a piece of software. If I have the Software as a collective grouping should documents for the software be a collective grouping and then broken down further or would documents be individual products after the software grouping?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example of what I have down so far&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1.  Software&#xA; 1. Design Documents&#xA;  i.    UI Design&#xA;  ii.   Architecture Design&#xA; 2. Technical Documents&#xA;  i.    Pseudocode&#xA; 3. Requirements Documents&#xA; 4. End User Manuals&#xA;2.  Testing&#xA; 1. System Test Cases&#xA;3.  Hardware&#xA; 4. Training Documents&#xA;  1.    Training Plan&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for the time and help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26821" LastEditorUserId="26821" LastEditDate="2016-12-05T13:41:29.130" LastActivityDate="2018-08-08T20:00:08.537" Title="Product Breakdown Structure, deliverables for Software" Tags="&lt;prince2&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;product&gt;&lt;deliverables&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20648" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20656" CreationDate="2016-12-05T05:49:49.673" Score="2" ViewCount="229" Body="&lt;p&gt;My situation is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Working for a company which is opening new office in my country&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Since the plan is to have 10 full scrum teams, at the moment all teams in the new office are partially populated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Until all positions are filled my team is working as part of an existing team which is in the original office &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the problems I see:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The existing team is well organized, working together for several years which makes it difficult from my point of view to feel as part of them. We all know that this is temporary and at the end there will be 2 teams working independently.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coming from a company where the Scrum principles where highly valued, even though I'm a developer I have strong opinion on how the things should be done and I have problems accepting some of the concepts of the team that I'm attached to&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having the two above in mind, I don't feel comfortable taking tasks which at the end is something that I get paid for and should resolve somehow&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what I need suggestions/answers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The first thing that really made me feel uncomfortable is that since the communication is not that good (actually pretty bad, because of technical issues) between the two offices, my team is not active in the refinement and planning sessions. As a result I don't feel that I have clear scope for anything, thus I don't feel comfortable to be proactive in asking for certain story/task and as it seems the other team also prefers in some way just to do our work as developers instead of spending additional time to explain us things that are a lot more clear for them and most probably the time that they have to invest in implementing a task is a lot shorter than the time that they should spend with us to explain something. Also, being developer too I can understand why they act like this so I can't really judge them. However not taking real work is starting to get a problem (at least for me personally) so I feel a compromise should be made I just don't know exactly where. As I said, not being part of the refinement meetings later on makes me uncomfortable to take something that at the moment I don't have clear scope of. However on solution is just to set this aside for the moment and just take something hoping that during the sprint the task will get clear enough for me to implement it. I think that this would be the most preferable choice for everyone but somehow I really feel uncomfortable doing this. As alternative solutions to this I see to take only bugs and technical depts until my team here is filled and we can start working on our own, but the problem here is that it's pretty unclear when this will happen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Being able to identify that the lack of understanding the scope of the stories is what makes me feel more uncomfortable in committing to tasks I've been thinking about additional sessions between the guys from the new office only and the Product Owner (the idea here is that when the number of people is lower the communication problems could be overcome) and refine several stories specifically for our team. Maybe even PO + 1 developer from the original team, but just keeping the number of people as low as possible in order to avoid the technical issues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the three approaches that I'm considering right now is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Forget about the refinement, just commit to some story/ies and hope for the best.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make it clear to anyone that at the moment working on stories is not an option and insist on taking only bugs/technical dept until the team here is ready.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to involve the PO and maybe one of the developers from the other team in additional refinement sessions where only tasks for our team will be discussed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think about this, and do you think there is other solution different from the 3 that I've listed above?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25532" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-12-05T15:48:26.530" LastActivityDate="2016-12-05T15:48:26.530" Title="Temporary working as a part of existing scrum team" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20570" CreationDate="2016-12-05T09:41:00.807" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since I read in one of your comments that you use Trello, I can weigh in here. I manage a few teams working in Scrum and Kanban on small-ish projects, and I find Trello great for this, so I stick with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While, on the front, Trello's usability is super-simple and intuitive, don't think that it isn't a more powerful beast underneath. &lt;em&gt;Any&lt;/em&gt; change to any card in Trello has a very thorough and in-depth history that can be accessed through &lt;a href=&quot;https://developers.trello.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;their API&lt;/a&gt;. What it handles is a long list, but highlights that may help you include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dates and times cards are moved from one list/board to another&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What tags are assigned to a card and when were they assigned&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who is assigned and when were they assigned&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Etc. etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if your tasks were completed 6 months ago (and I guess there's some indicator e.g. the card is in the &quot;completed&quot; column, or archived), you can query this historical information from Trello and work backwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my projects and teams, I've written a simple website that gathers this information on user stories, when they were added, who was assigned, when it was moved from the backlog, into progress, testing and complete and from that, generate the burndown, lead time and cycle time, and graph it all on the fly. So, while Trello is simple to use, it can be pretty powerful as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17177" LastActivityDate="2016-12-05T09:41:00.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20651" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20652" CreationDate="2016-12-05T12:06:42.820" Score="8" ViewCount="1864" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an average developer. I have good web development fundamentals and a CS major. I know what Object oriented programming is, MVC, server client architecture, APIs etc etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now I am in a role where I am managing various digital projects and a digital product. It is going well, we have made a lot of progress over the past year, to the point that the company strategy has changed from agency projects to the product that they are building. My boss has always wanted this to be the case, it is now happening from the product having its best year in terms of sales. I played a key role in this from assembling and guiding the teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sometimes though questioning whether I am experienced enough technically to make a career out of this, and make good money. Recently I have been completely out of my depth when it comes to dev ops. We hired a consultant in who is taking the technical lead with that aspect of the product. This worked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not keen to going back to being a developer, I enjoy project management much more and managing teams of people to work towards reaching a common goal by putting project management processes in place. I prefer working with stakeholders on the non technical side of the business helping them define their strategy as opposed to being full on the technical side. At the same time, I am aware that the more technical you are, the easier the job is - there are times where being technically minded has got me out of jams since I can help the technical team solve problems from investigating them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in short, are strong technical skills a key requirement for having a successful career as a PM?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2016-12-08T06:11:07.067" LastActivityDate="2016-12-09T19:50:09.380" Title="Can I build a strong career as a project manager without in depth technical knowledge?" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20651" CreationDate="2016-12-05T12:19:03.043" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This has been debated for decades, probably.  Technical PMs will swear you need their background while non technical PMs will swear you don't.  In reality, you see both out there with varying degrees of success to the point where having a technical background becomes quite gray as a &lt;em&gt;strong&lt;/em&gt; predictor of future success.  The knowledge, skills, and abilities of PM are different than that of a developer and, by the time one gets into that role, he will have his own sets of strengths and weaknesses to offer and will figure out how to mitigate those weaknesses.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there is also a bias in the IT space that will inhibit some and enable others to get a PM role in this industry.  There is a huge technical bias in the hiring process that non technical PMs have to overcome.  This is simply fact and plagues other industries, as well.  In healthcare, for example, there is a bias towards healthcare practitioners to PM anything in that space, even if it has nothing to do with treating ailments.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answers here will largely be opinion based because I don't think there has ever been a meta study performed on who is successful in IT projects and what their background was.  So I can only offer my observations: I have seen both types be successful and both types be horrible in my 25 years in this business.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-12-05T12:19:03.043" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20653" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20654" CreationDate="2016-12-05T12:19:28.080" Score="2" ViewCount="162" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is feasability study related to kick off meeting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My understanding is that the feasability study is done before the contracts are signed to ensure that the project is 'feasible'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But my question is that, is there a need to mention/present the feasibility report in the kickoff meeting? What is the norm?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26825" LastActivityDate="2016-12-07T09:56:49.430" Title="Feasability report and the kickoff meeting" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20653" CreationDate="2016-12-05T12:31:59.800" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're correct in that the feasibility study would be completed before the project formally begins. It's the document that evaluates whether the project can be successful and whether it should be undertaken. That definitely needs to happen before you've formally started the project with the kick-off meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could reference the feasibility study if you wanted to ensure that the project team was aware of the findings of the report. You could also make it available to them as part of the project documentation to be reviewed. It's not necessarily a requirement for a successful kick-off meeting, though. A lot of the decision would depend on who is in the room for your kick-off meeting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my organization, we tend to have two kick-off meetings -- one for the steering committee/high-level stakeholders, who may be more interested in the overall feasibility of the project, and one for the project team who needs to be formally brought into the project so they can start working. That may be something to look into for your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25755" LastActivityDate="2016-12-05T12:31:59.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20655" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-05T14:49:05.953" Score="-1" ViewCount="154" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently have two under my belt, I am Scrum Master certified, and Prince 2. I have found that obtaining Prince 2 has been pointless, I never use it whereas the Scrum master certification was well worth the money, since I am using it everyday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking towards obtaining more certifications, for heavily certified PMs on here, which ones do you recommend for digital projects? I am having a look at PMP right now but not sure if it is worth the money. Also, has being heavily certified impacted your employment prospects positively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2016-12-07T11:15:45.160" Title="What PM certifications are worthwhile acquiring?" Tags="&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2016-12-07T12:55:47.320" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20648" CreationDate="2016-12-05T14:55:25.590" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TLDR: Sit the team together.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have strong opinion on how the things should be done and I have problems accepting some of the concepts of the team that I'm attached to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally, my advice for this would be as follows: Bring it up in the retrospective. Keep in mind that Scrum is &lt;em&gt;Agile&lt;/em&gt; and thus intended to fit to the needs of the business - how company A does Scrum can and &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be different from how company B does things. That being said, it's still possible that the way company A's doing things might actually be better for company B than what B is currently doing. Hence, retrospective. However.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;communication is not that good (actually pretty bad, because of technical issues) between the two offices, my team is not active in the refinement and planning sessions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This. Is bad. I would say that this here is your core issue. Your team is not only not sat together, but has poor communication and &lt;em&gt;doesn't even fully attend all meetings&lt;/em&gt;. At that point, it's difficult to even consider your group as being part of the team at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would suggest here is one of two options. First, move in with the other team, even if only temporarily (until you become your own team). This is the most straightforward solution, and should fix most problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that is impossible, then instead consider splintering off into your own team &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt;. Do you have at least three developers? If not, hire some - maybe even siphoning one from the other team if necessary. Do you have a Scrum Master? If not, hire one - or, if you can't do that, appoint one of the developers. Do you have a Product Owner? If not, hire one. If you can't do that, get the PO of the other team to split his/her time between the two teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of these solutions are more viable than others, but I believe all of them are better than having a team that's as fragmented as you describe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I'll address your suggested solutions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Forget about the refinement, just commit to some story/ies and hope for the best.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is pretty dangerous. Worst-case, what you complete, while not understanding a story, is accepted due to poor QA and the assumption that you &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; understand the story. And then you have something in production that might &lt;em&gt;look&lt;/em&gt; like it works as intended, but &lt;em&gt;doesn't&lt;/em&gt;. More likely case, you'll just waste your own time and the time of those who have to clean up after you as you clumsily attempt to do work that you don't understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Make it clear to anyone that at the moment working on stories is not an option and insist on taking only bugs/technical dept until the team here is ready.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why are these any different than stories? Are they somehow better defined? Are they considered &lt;em&gt;less important?&lt;/em&gt; (Hint: they're not) I can't evaluate this completely without knowing your exact situation, but this seems to me to be similar to situations where junior/incompetent developers (not that I am calling you such, but without proper requirements your output will be comparable) are assigned all the bugs instead of 'important work'. Which works about as well as you'd expect a system where all bugfixes are made by novices would work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Try to involve the PO and maybe one of the developers from the other team in additional refinement sessions where only tasks for our team will be discussed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might work, though it seems less than optimally efficient. You're still going to have communication problems. What if your team finds a problem? Then those PO+1dev need to report back. And then one on the other team misunderstands. And then the PO+1dev need to go back and tell you you were wrong. At which point you spend an hour arguing before realizing there was a misunderstanding, at which point...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suffice it to say, &lt;em&gt;sit the team together.&lt;/em&gt; If you can't do that, make two teams and then &lt;em&gt;sit each team together&lt;/em&gt;, separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-12-05T14:55:25.590" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20655" CreationDate="2016-12-05T17:12:47.020" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;More important than getting the certification is the experience that brings to you when you are preparing yourself for that challenge. So it's always good to have it; and off course people would listen more to you when they know your qualifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26828" LastActivityDate="2016-12-05T17:12:47.020" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20658" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21215" CreationDate="2016-12-05T17:39:44.733" Score="7" ViewCount="2642" Body="&lt;p&gt;My development team uses &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jira Cloud&lt;/a&gt;, and I'm looking for some way within Jira to prioritize the backlog items (mainly &quot;new features&quot; and &quot;stories&quot;). I'd like to do this by manually assigning scores to each backlog item for the following criteria:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Company goal: revenue growth&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Company goal: customer satisfaction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;... a few more company goals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Level of design effort&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Level of development effort&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Level of QA effort&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd then like an overall score for the ticket to be automatically calculated using a formula that I can specify, assigning a different multiplier to each goal  and also applying a multiplier to all of the level of effort items and subtracting those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the formula to calculate the ticket's overall would be something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;21 * (Company goal: revenue growth) +&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;13 * (Company goal: customer satisfaction) +&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;8 * (Company goal: resource efficiency) +&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;5 * (Company goal: employee satisfaction) +&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 * (Company goal: responder fulfillment) +&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 * (Company goal: responder acquisition) +&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 * (Company goal: recognition as a market leader) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;-&lt;/code&gt; 5 * (Level of design effort)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;-&lt;/code&gt; 5 * (Level of development effort)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;-&lt;/code&gt; 5 * (Level of QA effort)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;= overall score&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I'd like to be able to order tickets by overall score and use that overall score, along with other criteria, to place tickets into sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like this to work very similar to this feature from another tool:  &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.aha.io/hc/en-us/articles/202000727-Prioritize-features-with-Aha-Scores&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Aha Scores&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26829" LastEditorUserId="26829" LastEditDate="2016-12-05T21:19:21.757" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T18:50:02.743" Title="Method for scoring backlog items in Jira based on impact to company goals versus level of effort" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20627" CreationDate="2016-12-05T19:32:02.240" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 36 month period is applicable to the experience requirement (must have gathered your 4500 hours of experience in a period equal to or greater than 36 months), but I don't see anywhere that specifies that the 35 hours of educational time needs to be in that same period. There's no restriction that I'm aware of as to when the contact hours can be accumulated, so if you've got 35 hours of training over the last X number of years, you should be fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, you would want to ask yourself if the time that you spent in a training course ten years ago is still relevant enough to be helpful to you today. It may be in your best interest to ensure that your training is as fresh as possible to assist you with writing the exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25755" LastActivityDate="2016-12-05T19:32:02.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20611" CreationDate="2016-12-05T20:52:50.987" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apply the Resource usage view to the resource pool file.  Add the Project field to the view.  You can them create a group to group first by Name and then group the assignments by Project.  Regarding different allocations to each project, no sorry.  The max units is for the resource - not allocation per project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2016-12-05T20:52:50.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20655" CreationDate="2016-12-05T23:44:38.170" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know the answer to your question but I can advise you how to find the answer.  Look at the advertisements for the jobs to which you are applying and see what certificates they &quot;prefer&quot; or &quot;require.&quot;  As well, if you get rejected, ask why and if they report a missing certificate as the or one of the causes, there's your answer.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thoughts on PMP: This certificate is used as a hiring filter in the space in which I work.  Though public sector--in which they are not supposed to use a commercial certificate as a filter--it is often a requirement or preferred.  As such, I value it in order to sell.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a certificate with hiring validity, I do not value it.  Anecdotally, I see no difference in performance between those who have it and those who do not.  Additionally, there have been studies, both on the PMP itself (Booz) and certificates as a predictor (Hunter &amp;amp; Hunter), that have shown very poor predictive validity, which matches my observations.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if you don't have to pay for it. why not get it?  If you do have to pay for it, then see who is asking for it so you can try to determine if you're going to have a decent return on your outlay to get it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2016-12-07T11:15:45.160" LastActivityDate="2016-12-07T11:15:45.160" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20663" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-05T23:51:00.730" Score="6" ViewCount="100" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any strict definitions regarding the difference between caution/security/safety and waste? For example, consider the following scenarios:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We just finished this. We'd better test it to make sure it actually works.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We're going live in a week. We'd better re-test this thing to make sure it still works.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We're going live tomorrow. We'd better re-test this thing.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I don't think we've actually changed anything, though.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Are you 100% sure?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;99%.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Then we'd better test it again, to be safe.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Okay, it passed. Are we done?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;No, run it one more time to be sure.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;...Why?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It's possible you made a mistake when testing it. Run it five times, to be completely certain.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which of these (if any) would be considered as waste? Which as just being cautious/safe? Is there a formal metric for determining such, or is it opinion-based?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2016-12-06T13:13:39.047" Title="Caution or Waste?" Tags="&lt;definition&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20664" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-06T00:04:23.727" Score="0" ViewCount="123" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that in Scrum there is only three role, Product Owner, Scrum Master and Development Team. As a sign of change we must be important, not only understand these roles, but also start to change the job title to an homogenic form as Developer, Scrum Master and Product Owner. Maybe this is pointless, but we try to set an identity to the team, currently there is a mixture of titles and departments for the members of the same Development Team and we wan to change it. So how does an organization work this thing?  A restructure of this is part of implement scrum or this don't care?&#xA; Thanks for your advise&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26603" LastEditorUserId="26603" LastEditDate="2016-12-06T04:51:43.750" LastActivityDate="2016-12-06T06:31:24.813" Title="Scrum job title" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20663" CreationDate="2016-12-06T01:04:26.380" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't believe that the two are mutually exclusive. Something can be wasteful to varying degrees and be cautious and be valuable. While not completely subjective, I'm not aware of a particular measurement to indicate that something is wasteful. One definition I saw for waste is: “useless consumption or expenditure; use without adequate return.” In other words, anything that does not create value is waste. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take your third example. Is there waste in doing a complete retest to go from 99% sure to 100% sure? I'm sure there is. How did we get to 99% without getting to 100%? I can't fathom that any real-life situation could get you here without being in some way wasteful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if the thing going live runs the New York stock exchange, it may be appropriately cautious to put in the extra effort to get to 100%. That doesn't mean that it isn't wasteful and that you shouldn't strive to drive out that waste, it just means that the most appropriate level of caution would be to accept that waste for this current action and look to solve the problem moving forward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2016-12-06T01:04:26.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20584" CreationDate="2016-12-06T03:39:19.043" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree to that statement. A PM is not really needed if everyone involved with the project contributes their knowledge and strengths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26839" LastEditorUserId="26839" LastEditDate="2016-12-06T04:25:38.617" LastActivityDate="2016-12-06T04:25:38.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20655" CreationDate="2016-12-06T04:21:08.500" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMP is helpful in the sense that it ensures a common lingo: that becomes important when you have a large organization with many project managers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25338" LastActivityDate="2016-12-06T04:21:08.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20640" CreationDate="2016-12-06T04:28:06.367" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Documenting the system requirements before it is built can help the key stakeholders buy-in.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A user representative should sign-off at each stage before software is crafted.  A system requirements review and system design review: each ending with signoff from the user representative will ensure the the users are engaged and invested: they MUST have 'skin in the game'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the project does not have a strong executive sponsor that will champion the new UI, Logic, I would cancel the project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25338" LastActivityDate="2016-12-06T04:28:06.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20651" CreationDate="2016-12-06T04:35:16.047" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No: communication skills are key.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, if you have a strong relevant technical chops, it positions one to better to understand what is happening, why it is happening, and how to correctly react.  It also enables one to correctly evaluate deliverables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25338" LastActivityDate="2016-12-06T04:35:16.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20664" CreationDate="2016-12-06T06:31:24.813" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Roles and job titles are distinct entities. You don't need to change job titles at all, if the jobs have not changed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, it's perfectly normal to have job titles of &quot;Java Developer&quot; or &quot;C++ Developer&quot;. It's also normal to have pay grade and experience titles like &quot;Senior Java Developer&quot;. This is what you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; in the company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Scrum, no matter what title you have, both a &quot;Junior Java Developer&quot; and a &quot;Senior C++ developer&quot; are a &quot;Developer&quot;. Their seniority has no influence on how they act on the team in regard to the Scrum process. A Senior's estimation is not worth more than a Junior's estimation. A Junior's opinion on the retrospective is not worth less than a Senior's. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So job titles can stay as they were, as long as all adhere to Scrum principles and those titles match what they actually &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt;. Obviously if you have a PM that now is the Scrum Master, this person may want to get his title changed. But because it's a different &lt;em&gt;job&lt;/em&gt;, not because Scrum dictates job titles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2016-12-06T06:31:24.813" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20663" CreationDate="2016-12-06T10:48:00.913" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming you have an established QC/testing method and reliable and valid pass or fail criteria, and you conducted the test, anything beyond that is wasteful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not to say you won't find issues if you conducted the additional testing but the cost of finding them as compared to the find and their impacts no longer make financial sense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quality controls, and any type of risk mitigation, cost resources as well as the assumption of secondary risks.  Again, assuming a well constructed testing method and pass criteria, any additional mitigation done in some sort of ad hoc manner (which is what your OP implies), chasing whatever fears you may have, will cost you resources and secondary risks that will exceed the probabilistic impact value of what you may find.  This is a quintessential definition of waste.  Remember EMV and decision analysis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The testing method and criteria are supposed to equal the level of risk mitigation cost and degree of risk you are willing to assume for that project at that time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2016-12-06T13:13:39.047" LastActivityDate="2016-12-06T13:13:39.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20663" CreationDate="2016-12-06T12:55:13.917" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your first 3 cases are nowhere near wasteful; I'd consider them as SOP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Testing early and often is the only way to ensure you don't have a bucket full of trouble when you're almost done; some fixes may require rethinking of other parts.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Testing one last time before release ensures that you are releasing the version you plan on, and nothing has accidentally been changed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Testing once again in a pre-release staging environment and then immediately after going live is sensible and I've always insisted on it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even your 4th case - test again and again - is almost SOP, as some things do break only on subsequent runs or when run quickly one after another. This is usually part of a good test plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-12-06T12:55:13.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16183" CreationDate="2016-12-06T18:03:45.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a PM and former developer working in a digital agency, here is my take on the issue based on my experience and what I've seen previously working under technical leads (as a former dev) and seeing developers previously running the projects at my current company:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There was no real structure with how the projects were delivered, so despite the technical team being technically able, this did not equate to being able to communicate efficiently. This really came though when there were multiple people working on one project, the technical team had trouble distributing work and forecasting timescales accurately. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The developers just did not have the imagination to improve existing processes to increase efficiency improving how projects were delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The technical team had trouble requirement gathering efficiently, very often the techies would look at a requirement too technically as opposed to how a user sees it and lacked the 'know how' with organising requirements based on what gives the most business value. This is more of a business analyst role as opposed to PM, but a PM should possess this skill.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The techies that were managing the projects before lacked strong interpersonal skills which is a must. Keeping people motivated sounds easy, but can be very difficult without resorting to micromanagement when a project is going badly. I have worked for technical leads who saw things so black and white (like coding), that they just did not know how to keep their teams motivated and get the best out of their colleagues leaving them disgruntled in the process. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Account management is a non technical skill but a vital one. Very often I have to communicate the project status to the end client, and when things are not going well, have to find a way to diffuse the situation so that the client remains a client. This is a completely non technical skill and more about interpersonal skills.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Budgeting, a key component of my role is making sure profit margins are high for any project I have to deliver. This means having a spreadsheet to keep track of all project costs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there you go, being technical helps but there is a lot more to PM than knowing the technicalities of a project inside out. A good PM needs to have enough technical awareness so that the developers don't put wool over their eyes, but it does not need to be in depth. A talented PM will find talented people to handle that side of the project for them, which ties in with resource management. So if anything, having a good overview of the project is arguably much more important, from stakeholder level down to the technicalities of the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is true that developers can learn to become PMs, but not every developer has the right personality to do it such as the technical lead I mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="20871" LastEditDate="2016-12-06T20:11:03.330" LastActivityDate="2016-12-06T20:11:03.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8938" CreationDate="2016-12-06T21:21:35.923" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to simplify the work in MS-Project and get real EV data as you progress through your project, add contingency into your base task using PERT and risk based analysis.  I wouldn't put a separate contingency task after each base task all through my project schedule... it can mess up your schedule reports as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26852" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-12-06T21:49:42.687" LastActivityDate="2016-12-06T21:49:42.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20653" CreationDate="2016-12-07T09:56:49.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Feasibility study gives a clear idea to all the project members the viability of going ahead with the project. Everyone involved with the project would be aware of the background of that particular project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26608" LastActivityDate="2016-12-07T09:56:49.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20651" CreationDate="2016-12-07T15:06:51.690" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can build a strong career as a project manager from any background.  As you describe yourself as being an average developer then that is plenty of experience to describe yourself as 'technical'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides articles discussing technical decay (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bennorthrop.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;for example&lt;/a&gt;) are widespread.  Technical decay is the fact that as you accumulate experience you have to dump something from memory - so even if you keep on as a developer you will find that skills that you relied on in one decade are soon useless.  The article linked suggests that your skills have a ten year half life (half your skills will decay in ten years).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To extrapolate if you stop being a developer I'd reckon that this half life would halve - so great 'technical' project managers will be half technical in five years &amp;amp; declining.  If you don't code day-to-day for ten years then there is probably no going back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So embrace the fact that if you enjoy the job you will be a good technical project manager &amp;amp; you will start as probably more 'technical' than any good developers who moved into being a technical PM a few years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="693" LastActivityDate="2016-12-07T15:06:51.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20651" CreationDate="2016-12-07T16:41:19.390" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oh yes, if you have a strong relationship and good communication skills and know how to make people do stuff then you will succeed!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26828" LastActivityDate="2016-12-07T16:41:19.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20681" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-07T16:43:44.347" Score="3" ViewCount="1381" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use Project server 2016 and I created a Project web app site. I created an enterprise project and entered the team data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I am able to assign tasks to resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I want is for the team member to be notified by email if when I assign a task to that team member.&#xA;Searching on the internet, I found, in Microsoft's site, this solution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Go to SharePoint Central administration, page click on under general application settings&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;click on PWA settings Manage, once the page is opened under operational policies click on alerts and reminders, set your SMTP mail server and email address.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, when I tried to follow these steps I have not found &quot;Alerts and Reminders&quot; in the &quot;Operational Policies&quot; section. Maybe I am missing some things at the level of Configuration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26823" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-08T22:28:55.560" LastActivityDate="2018-11-08T22:28:55.560" Title="Sending Email Notification when Assigning Task to Resources in Project Server 2016 Web App" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;&lt;project-server&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20682" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20683" CreationDate="2016-12-07T17:57:39.847" Score="0" ViewCount="2452" Body="&lt;p&gt;We want to make our Task ID's in microsoft project 1.1,1.2,1.3,1.4 and so on so it is clear which general task they fall under.&#xA;At the moment they are displayed as 1,2,3,4,5.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please help, thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26863" LastActivityDate="2016-12-07T18:22:42.620" Title="Renumbering our task IDs in Microsoft Project to a different scale?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20682" CreationDate="2016-12-07T18:22:42.620" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way to achieve this is to display the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) as a column on the sheet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By default, this will number the tasks as per your request:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Sacp6.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Sacp6.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this meets your requirement it is very easy to do. Right-click in the top bar of the sheet, at the position where you want the column, and select &quot;Insert Column&quot;. Choose the column &quot;WBS&quot; and you have the result you want. Note that the original row / task numbers will still be present in the left margin, but one way round that is to drag that column's margin so that it has zero width.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2016-12-07T18:22:42.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3284" CreationDate="2016-12-07T18:59:18.247" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not entirely sure if this answers your issue.  When I add items in my software projects, I add them into a separate level 1 roll up (Agilers might call it a &quot;Backlog&quot;).  In this way, I can see the items being discovered after the requirements were approved and of course their effort estimates.  The reason I like this is that MS Project (2016) has a canned report showing the total effort (BCWS) for the defined project and the value of items being added throughout the project.  The report shows them side by side, but I think the entire project file's EVM calculations will be thrown off from the approved requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I purposefully don't use the term baseline for &quot;approved requirements&quot; so as not to cause confusion with baseline calculations).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The easier way to account for new items is through baseline reporting.  Take the approved requirements and plan and set your baseline.  Then when you add new items, set the reporting date and a new baseline.  Don't overwrite an existing baseline, create a new one.  Then click (in MS Project 2016), Project Ribbon -&gt; Click Calculate Project (optional i think) -&gt; Then click Project Information -&amp;lt; Project statistics.  From there you can see the comparison of the initial baseline to the current plan.  EX.  Initial baseline finish was 12/10/16.  But in adding new requirements with their estimates, the project is extended to 12/15.  The Project Statistics will account for that extension if you set a new baseline and ensure your reporting date is correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26864" LastActivityDate="2016-12-07T18:59:18.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3284" CreationDate="2016-12-07T19:30:07.407" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an X:Y problem. You don't have new tasks, you've got problems in scope planning and estimation/WBS development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) The work isn't scoped correctly - the WBS &amp;amp; WBSD should explicitly address the number of legs for the cat (assuming that the cat's number of legs is important).  This is a planning problem.  When you analyze variance, you should consider the impact of this on future planning. If this happened to me, I'd revise my planning process for future project/sprints/planning efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) The work isn't estimated correctly.  Estimation of work packages has an innate high variance.  The reason we pay these people so much is because their work is complicated and includes a lot of surprises.   Bugs get discovered.  Technical debt undermines progress.   Good project managers recognize this and ask for estimation in ranges/confidence intervals, and continuously track the variance.  Some developers will consistently underestimate work packages; others will overestimate.  A good project manager will track the estimation variance and adjust estimation variance for future projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you handle changes in planned value?  (which is the way I'd phrase your original question)   First, you use a configuration management process to assess the impact of the changes on the project &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; ensure that relevant stakeholders are aware of the change and have the option to assist in managing the change and second you re-assess the rest of the project plan in the light of the change.  Scrutinize that plan to see where else the estimation and/or scoping are questionable, and adjust the confidence interval of those sections of the plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Key summary points&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Subsequent plans &amp;amp; estimation should benefit from earlier plans and estimation (that is one of the points of lessons learned and variance measurement).  Bad project managers &quot;pad&quot; the schedule; good project managers apply lessons learned from prior projects to improve the probability that the outcome will be within the estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) As the team progresses through the project, the confidence intervals will narrow.  Good project managers are constantly revising estimates, and the confidence interval can be a huge leading indicator of risk.  If a finished project requires 12 work packages, and each work package is estimated within 80%, then the confidence interval for the entire project is huge (which is why monte carlo is so powerful).  But when the first work package is delivered, the confidence interval should collapse inward - both because the confidence interval of a delivered work package is zero, and because what you learned from the variance can be applied to the confidence interval of all subsequent work packages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) I forget who said that the key skill of a project manager is setting up the conversations with the technical experts so that they automatically give you the information you need to manage the project - establishing your information needs so that sharing that information seems friction free.  A good PM is always alert to any event that might alter the quality, schedule, cost, or completion probability of the project and is constantly listening to the project team for evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-12-08T14:59:12.010" LastActivityDate="2016-12-08T14:59:12.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20686" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-08T16:19:07.723" Score="0" ViewCount="112" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have multiple projects and each project has at least 2 stages. Some of the project stages can start in parallel while others start after one stage of the project ended. More, some projects depend on stages of other projects. Beside that, I have some processes that affect some of the projects and some stages of the projects are part of a common event. Now, how can I organize all this information efficiently to show both project stages and dependencies between projects? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26873" LastActivityDate="2016-12-08T18:31:16.293" Title="How to put on one chart multiple projects to show dependencies between them?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20686" CreationDate="2016-12-08T17:14:52.010" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to build an integrated master schedule.  You need to pull in all your separate projects' schedules into one schedule and link them.  You can link the work packages from different projects directly or you can create major and minor milestones within a sub project and link those, or a combination. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on Mark's comments below, I do need to add as part of my answer here that building and maintaining an IMS is not for the faint of heart.  It requires capability and resource commitment and you need to have someone who knows what they're doing run it for you.  A large IMS can become very complex quickly and subject to error.  When that error surfaces, you will lose stakeholder confidence in the tool and that is very hard to get back.  Not only this, but even when correct, your team members will accuse it of being incorrect when it begins to exhibit bad news.  This is a lot of work but necessary work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2016-12-08T18:31:16.293" LastActivityDate="2016-12-08T18:31:16.293" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14399" CreationDate="2016-12-08T17:57:37.620" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes its true that for functional requirements the user stories and acceptance criteria (and Definition of Done) provide sufficient auditing cover for most purposes. But for non-functional requirements the situation is different, especially those that are compliance related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Non-functional requirements like &quot;meets level  of security&quot;, &quot;uses only  components&quot; won't show up in a user story's Acceptance Criteria, because they would need to be in every story and that's not practical. Usually they appear in Definition of Done, which in compliance environments can get fairly large.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The audit question then is whether your team process can demonstrate that for every story Accepted, the Definition of Done items were validated line-by-line. In a high-functioning trust environment training and occasional inspection may be sufficient to confirm. In tighter or less trustful environments, a checklist might be necessary (and that could be attached to every story). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20426" LastActivityDate="2016-12-08T17:57:37.620" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3284" CreationDate="2016-12-09T12:30:30.970" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are measuring 'earned value'.  How are you measuring 'value' ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, your milestone 'test completed' is not value.&#xA;Only working software can be value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore projects often measure 'value' as 'the time it takes to build it'.&#xA;But these are two different things. If my product delivers $1000 in sales to you, than its value is $1000. Regardless of the time it takes me to build it for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Earned Value lets you deliver high value items first. But when you use it to simply slice a project, pretending that the parts have value, it does not work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From there we can start to track interesting things. How long does it take me to deliver $1000 to you?&#xA;How accurate are my estimates per workitem?&#xA;These are the things you need to track in order to become predictable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24119" LastActivityDate="2016-12-09T12:30:30.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11083" CreationDate="2016-12-09T13:01:31.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have a small team. &#xA;Do not divide the team, thinking you can get more work done. You can't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it can be done. It is hard!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many things I can recommend but something that will really change the way you work is your comment: &quot;Can we really deliver something in 2 weeks&quot;.&#xA;Yes. &#xA;Automate absolutely everything. &#xA;Strive to be able to make multiple deployments per day.&#xA;Smaller changes. Fewer lines of code. Smaller risks. Smaller tests. Fewer bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you can deliver with that speed, your conversation with your Projects changes from: &#xA;&quot;How many weeks do we need to get everything done?&quot;&#xA;to &#xA;&quot;What would you like to have tomorrow morning?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can start managing multiple projects because your conversation changes from: &#xA;&quot;can you wait till July?&quot; &#xA;to &#xA;&quot;We can have your most important functionality running next week, is that ok?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24119" LastActivityDate="2016-12-09T13:01:31.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20651" CreationDate="2016-12-09T19:50:09.380" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can absolutely have an outstanding career as PM without strong technical skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, over time--you will find that having strong technical skills is beneficial, and it will set you apart from non-technical PM's on complex projects, especially when you are managing large &amp;amp; distributed teams of developers, analyzing timelines, product data, feasibility, and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what it's worth: I got my first job as a PM managing software projects right out of college, with a liberal arts degree (English Literature!). And I did very well, despite having no formal background in software development. Maybe that's not possible these days, but it does inform my opinion &lt;strong&gt;that strong communication skills trump being a strong programmer, when it comes to managing large teams of people.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my own experience, I later studied part time for a degree in Computer Science, because I &lt;strong&gt;wanted&lt;/strong&gt; to be highly technical, and felt like it was a weakness. However, this wasn't necessary--I did it for my own personal growth; I even changed jobs at one point, and lack of technical background was not a hindrance at all. &lt;strong&gt;So if you already have both skillsets, you are far ahead of the curve, and positioned for a good career already. Keep at it!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17925" LastActivityDate="2016-12-09T19:50:09.380" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16183" CreationDate="2016-12-09T20:22:40.010" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I've worked as a PM at 2 digital agencies, my opinion:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It depends!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What on? It depends on the agency itself, and if you actually need somebody other than an account manager &amp;amp; development lead to play some role on the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At times, I felt like my role was unnecessary -- and other times, I've felt like the project would fall apart if I wasn't holding it together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What it comes down to is division of labor. Is there actual work for the PM to do?&lt;/strong&gt; Or is s/he only there because someone in management felt it was necessary to have a project manager on the team, for whatever reason? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, there's only one way to find out. Why not try launching a project without a PM on it, and see how it goes? Figure out what tasks slip, what isn't communicated, and so on. If you find that things go smoothly without this extra person in the mix, chances are their job is redundant at your company. If everything goes wrong (and in a hurry), then you know that this team member has been playing a key role, even though it wasn't obvious at first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good PM's make their teams better, find problems, and solve them proactively, so that no one ever knows that a potential problem was avoided. &lt;strong&gt;Put another way: When you have a great PM, sometimes you don't even know s/he's there.&lt;/strong&gt; The job itself isn't supposed to be flashy. Instead, they are supposed to keep things moving smoothly, and get out of the way so that everyone can do their job as efficiently as possible, navigating the project around obstacles before anyone else is aware of them. It's like they are the captain of a ship, navigating around icebergs, while everyone is making sure that the engine is running properly. Just because you don't see all the work they do, doesn't mean they aren't playing a key role. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17925" LastActivityDate="2016-12-09T20:22:40.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16183" CreationDate="2016-12-10T03:44:36.640" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking at the list of symptoms, I would say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;bad&lt;/em&gt; PMs are redundant (at least in the sense that you could get rid of them without losing much).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;devs who show a talent for it may indeed become PMs, but this should be formally recognized and supported (and be constituted by more than &quot;I make my own schedules&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2016-12-10T03:44:36.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20695" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20699" CreationDate="2016-12-10T06:29:06.817" Score="-2" ViewCount="71" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a new-ish project manager in the IT field and constantly find myself stuck in meetings. I'm always looking for new ways to make these meetings more efficient. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have the same issue or have any input on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26889" LastActivityDate="2016-12-10T14:32:39.410" Title="Making meetings more efficient" Tags="&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-12-11T02:13:10.210" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20696" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20698" CreationDate="2016-12-10T12:22:17.540" Score="4" ViewCount="87" Body="&lt;p&gt;Question for RUP (Rational Unified Process) experts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are going to have an inception phase on the project where we will provide project management plan, software requirements specification (SRS), etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, according to the methodology, we should not start the elaboration phase until artifacts from the Inception phase are accepted by the client/stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to utilize resources as much as I can, so my idea is to provide the artifacts for acceptance, start elaboration phase right away, and then, during the Acceptance phase, do some improvements to design documents if such are needed. This lets me to save some time and not just find ways for acceptance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would that work? Or there are other approaches?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17675" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-12-12T14:17:36.387" LastActivityDate="2016-12-12T14:17:36.387" Title="Start RUP elaboration phase when Inception is not finished yet" Tags="&lt;rup&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20695" CreationDate="2016-12-10T13:15:58.333" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you notice some problem in a meeting, you have to ask a couple of 'whys' to get to its root cause. And since the team will come up with the best solutions to any problem, you should let them answer these 'whys' and define what will change in the meetings. The manager/leader job is to instigate discussions and remind people of what was agreed upon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some times, teams won't realize that its meetings have serious problems; you should ask them if it's OK is something of the following happen often:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only one person talk/give ideas;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discussions are not productive. No one builds on top of other's the ideas, but just try to get his idea the buy-in; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People start a meeting without knowing what will be discussed;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People who are relevant is not attending to it (or people irrelevant to the discussion is attending);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Meetings are scheduled without consulting the people involved. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Action items are not implemented.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0977616649&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great&lt;/a&gt; covers issues in meetings. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8w-dFrmovQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is&lt;/a&gt; a talk of the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25646" LastActivityDate="2016-12-10T13:15:58.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20696" CreationDate="2016-12-10T13:24:12.240" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a risk management question, i.e., no one answer will cover all the possible risk scenarios we face on projects jumping from one phase to the next.  The answer you are looking for lies in your risk assessment of your project at this time.  Some questions you need to answer are: 1) is this project generally high risk; 2) how involved were your customer stakeholders during the preceding phase; 3) is this environment a highly politically charged one with a high degree of internal stakeholder fighting; 4) if rejection occurs or there is a lot of changes required from the preceding phase, how much rework will be required in the successor phase or can you still eek out value no matter if you receive a rejection or a ton of changes; 5) if you wait for acceptance, how much can you spend in holding costs for project resources as they sit idle?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are likely more risk questions to ask here but maybe this can get you started.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;RUP is part of our methods we use in my firm (I work for IBM) and there is no explicit rule that I have read in our methods that dictate how we move from one phase to the next; however, we typically keep going.  Our mitigation to the risk is stakeholder involvement so that we are very confident we have approval with minimal changes at draft delivery.  This is not to say it works perfectly all the time but such is life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-12-10T13:24:12.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20695" CreationDate="2016-12-10T14:32:39.410" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My number one rule for any meeting is that it should have a purpose and a goal. Not &quot;we meet every Tuesday&quot; - that is not a goal. There could be a &quot;status review&quot; meeting every Tuesday, but each one of those meetings should have a goal. It's even possible that different attendees could have different goals for their meetings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some sample goals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I will communicate our progress and everyone will agree we are on schedule&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I will communicate our progress, describe the block we have encountered, and get more resources (or get the schedule changed, or get X to work on removing the block, or whatever it is you want) to get past it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I will get the X part of the project removed from scope&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I will get X to agree that the Y team should join my team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I will get X approved and signed off and declared finished&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number one reason meetings take up a full hour is that nobody knows what they are there to achieve, so they verbally &quot;mill around&quot; until it's time for the next meeting. If you know why you're there, you will drive the meeting towards that. It may not be possible (the people you want to approve something may decline, giving you a punch list of things you must get done before they approve, for example) but at least you're not just randomly reading a project timeline to people or bikeshedding about something that doesn't need the whole group's opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've met your goal (or have accepted you're not getting it today, and know what you need so you can get it later) there is nothing wrong with saying &quot;well, I've gone through the progress, we all agree it's on schedule (or we all agree that X is going to happen next or whatever) so I think we're done here. Enjoy an extra 20 minutes in your day!&quot; Then leave, though some people may want to hang out in the meeting room, to emphasize that it's over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's not your meeting to run, you can still say to the person who is running it that you feel the meeting has reached its goal. You just need to be a little more delicate in your wording, and leave the part about being done to the meeting runner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3023" LastActivityDate="2016-12-10T14:32:39.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20701" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-11T07:26:02.437" Score="5" ViewCount="158" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Background&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently I started to work in a new company that does not have any methodology in place, but the company does have an idea to set up a PMO to act as a central hub to gather and to run all the projects the company is about to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment I'm the only one there to take care of all the foundation work. Basically the company wants me to do is to build the processes for governance of projects and to build PM process flows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Advice Needed&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do have experience in leading a technical team and managing a project, but where I am right now is more towards the business side. I'm surrounded by people who are not technical. Many of them are marketers and also C-level people. I am experiencing a different culture here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the material / steps / knowledge required for a Scrum Master like me to run a PMO? I'm a bit overwhelmed and stressed about the term PPM, other PMP, and ITIL, etc. What will you do as an Agile person to lead the PMO?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17631" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-12-20T12:03:10.760" LastActivityDate="2017-01-04T12:33:08.760" Title="What are the material / steps / knowledge required for a Scrum Master to run a PMO?" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20701" CreationDate="2016-12-11T13:16:49.767" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My advice is this: get your company to hire the right people to build its PMO.  In my observations in IT for the past 20 or so years, I have witnessed systemic under estimation of the skills necessary to build and maintain strong PM capabilities, with an attitude that: &quot;these are just soft or non skilled functions that anyone can do.&quot;  Then the PMO seriously under performs, reinforcing that a PMO is not really necessary or is just wasted overhead.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMO processes are not enabled by just anyone.  I have found that technical folks think these processes are easy to implement, dismissing these PMO pros as not much more than spreadsheet keepers.  I think this just happens in the IT space, not in other industries.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're right to be overwhelmed.  You're not the right person to stand this up.  This is not to say you cannot be in due time; however, you don't have the knowledge now.  Your company is setting the PMO to under perform and to fail way before you have even started.  I have witnessed this over and over and have not yet been proven wrong, at least in my organization within my experience and observations.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-12-11T13:16:49.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20701" CreationDate="2016-12-12T10:19:47.037" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMO, this is more of a culture transformation than a PMO division setup or few policies. If your company can afford to hire a PMO with high experience or an Agile Coach (senior to yourself) with tremendous experience in that field, then you should recommend it. Generally, people tend to be more acceptive to someone with decades of experience in a field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If budget is an issue here, then slowly start molding their psyche towards PM practices. For example, start sharing a useful publication/article per week, which can slowly transform your peer's minds. This is long-term solution requiring lots of patience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12002" LastActivityDate="2016-12-12T10:19:47.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20704" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20709" CreationDate="2016-12-12T11:39:53.530" Score="5" ViewCount="1894" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm the Scrum Master of a 7-person team.&#xA;I've proposed and leaded Scrum implementation with open management support.&#xA;One of the reasons for proposing Scrum, was also to address the attitude of the &amp;quot;Project Manager&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He has a very bossy attitude with &amp;quot;inferiors&amp;quot;, he is very shy, fearful and flattering with the CEO, and he's used to get his own way through hiding information, insults, arrogance, machinations, and harming reputations.&#xA;I'm being kind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I write, you could probably think that I'm not the right person for the Scrum Master role... but I'm really the proposer of Scrum. At the moment, I'm the only person available to fill the role and I really believe in many values contained in the Scrum guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;given the situation described,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;considering that my point of view is shared by other members of the team (but also that I am directly affected by this kind of behaviour),&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;considering that, however, the person in question is very good at his job (outside of the team with customers) and proposing his removal would not be acceptable,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;how should I, as a Scrum Master, deal with this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I say nothing in particular and trying to address &amp;quot;real concrete problems&amp;quot; occurring during our work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I try to address the problem personally in a one-to-one conversations?&#xA;Wouldn't it be too difficult to control my emotions, avoiding myself being &amp;quot;bossy&amp;quot; and imposing rules?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I speak with him in general about respect, transparency, openness, etc? Or should I be very hard-line about unacceptable behaviour?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I speak with the CEO or senior management? Maybe in general terms, asking for support without being specific? I'm afraid that a one-to-one conversation in the above terms will lead to my destruction (&amp;quot;who are you to teach me that&amp;quot; kind of things).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've no experience in psychology or conflict management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26906" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-08-28T15:51:29.253" Title="How to deal with bad attitude in a scrum team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;conflicts&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20540" CreationDate="2016-12-12T14:41:10.803" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The status is nothing to with the Kanban board - it comes from the assigned workflow for that project, which is why you choose a project and a type first when creating a new issue - that then determines which workflow you're going down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If &lt;em&gt;Backlog&lt;/em&gt; is your first workflow status, then the issue will go there first. If you need it to go to &lt;em&gt;SFD&lt;/em&gt; on creation, then you need a new workflow where that is the first stop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as Sarov says, if everything goes into &lt;em&gt;SFD&lt;/em&gt;, then surely the selection process is being ignored?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26910" LastActivityDate="2016-12-12T14:41:10.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20704" CreationDate="2016-12-12T15:22:08.080" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;There's a lot going on here, I'll do my best to keep my answer concise.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the reasons for implementing Scrum and the CEO in the first three paragraphs of your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make sure management is &lt;em&gt;really, fully&lt;/em&gt; on board&lt;/strong&gt; with implementing Scrum and making a culture shift towards Agile values. Without this, you have no grip, no solid ground to stand on. You need a 'mandate' to act.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can do this by giving a small presentation or workshop, having a positive informal talk with the CEO on scrum adoption progress... there are many ways, search on SO and the web for many great ways to do this in a positive constructive way. Once you get that in motion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Help the company adopt Scrum&lt;/strong&gt;. Help the team to openly address the issues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that you have a foothold, help the team to learn what is and isn't Agile or Scrum practice. Use the retrospectives. Be respectful and constructive, but don't be afraid to address the elephants in the room as well. If the projectmanager is being destructive to the process, address these actions and the negative impact they're having. Make small steps, and tackle something obvious / simple first. Your team will learn to not be afraid to bring up the difficult issues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this yields no result at all:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to get a more individual method for gathering feedback.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Retrospectives and scrum events really focus on the team. This does not prohibit addressing individuals behavior, but this can get messed. The focus on teams, being constructive, improving, can make teams to polite. There are other methods for getting and giving one-on-one feedback. For instance: 360 performance feedback. If that's not possible or doesn't change the behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;4&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Involve HR or someone in a similar role when nothing helps.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is built upon teams and team-members wanting to get better, deliver the best work and maximize value. In a few cases, individuals have a really hard time with this. They can't let go of old roles, ways of thinking, existing dogma's or have really incompatible 'characteristics'. In that case, you get in the area of one-on-one talks, involving HR people. Choose the most lightweight method that exists in your company and build up from there.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17421" LastActivityDate="2016-12-12T15:22:08.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20704" CreationDate="2016-12-12T15:53:10.400" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This has nothing to do with Scrum or PM or projects really.  This is a political issue.  Confronting this PM will lead to your eventual demise.  Going around him to the CEO will lead to your eventual demise.  You have three alternatives: 1) get in the sandbox and learn how to play with him, get him to trust you, and work to make him look good to the CEO; 2) look for a way out from underneath this guy; 3) do a combination of the first two.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all cases, stay silent.  Keep your emotions to yourself.  Stay factual.  Offer up the best advice you can.  Stay super positive and can do.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2016-12-12T15:53:10.400" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20704" CreationDate="2016-12-12T17:53:39.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum or any other process won't help you solve a people problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way I read your question at the moment leaves me with the impression that you are expecting conflict and are fearful of that conflict.  It's better to come from a place of open-mindedness and neutrality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend taking a step back and understanding the PM's position and what their take on Scrum is and if he/she see's it being valuable.  You want to understand the PM's &quot;what's in it for me&quot; position and what pain points the PM sees that are driving their current behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some questions that might help start the conversation with the PM:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think of the Scrum process?&#xA;What do you think of the R&amp;amp;R on a Scrum team?&#xA;What benefits do you think us trying Scrum could provide for our Customers?&#xA;What's the worst thing that could happen if we try?&#xA;What makes trying Scrum challenging in your mind?&#xA;What's in it for you if we try Scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep the conversation focused on how Scrum can help provide more value for the customer.  Educate on the process and underlying concepts but don't force it on anyone, that will lead to failed adoption and resistance.  Only the PM can by-in and decide to try it.  Otherwise the PM needs to be removed, but that doesn't sound like an option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your management is really in support, then ask them to set expectations around trying the change as a way of improving value delivered to customers.  And if they are unwilling to, you know right away that they are just playing games.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't make it a personal/political thing like many of the other's posts point out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2016-12-12T17:53:39.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20704" CreationDate="2016-12-12T18:45:28.577" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMO, you cannot come head-on with this PM considering his practice and patience with internal politics. He also seems to be a favorite among top management, thus it will take really long to show his true face to the stakeholders. Thus for now the best course of action is to make piece with him (at least on face value). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am assuming he is directly involved in your project, hence you are so concerned to discuss it on this platform. Here are few things that you can do, even if they may go against your nature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep cordial relationship with him. He should feel that your and his goals are same. Actually, they are truly same, as he cannot consider harming the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yet, keep all your communications formal so that he doesn't get any chance to eat your pie, or play games with you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Never come in his line, he should never feel threatened by you. Keep&#xA;your paths separate as much as possible. Try to segregate your&#xA;roles/responsibilities from him.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At times even try to share your success with him. You'd never want to become enemy with him. If he sees you taking the complete pie he may plan out something against you and then your energy will be wasted in cleaning up the mess, rather than focusing on your project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Slowly and gradually come in good books of management (may be use him as an ally) and when you have gained confidence of the management then try to expose him with enough and proper proofs. But this one is a really long and bumpy road.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12002" LastActivityDate="2016-12-12T18:45:28.577" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20714" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-13T21:16:44.740" Score="1" ViewCount="457" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a Master Project with a subproject. Inside the subproject there are two tasks. If opened alone and calculated (F9) the subproject finish date will roll up correctly.  If the Master Project is opened and calculated (F9) then it will roll up differently (and incorrectly.)  Why is this the case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the Master Project (with the subproject linked) before calculation. As you can see, after the calculation it should show ID 1 to finish on 8/24/15 being the latest task date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before Calculation:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://imgur.com/aG807Qe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://imgur.com/aG807Qe&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After Calculation:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://imgur.com/BXh9O9Z&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://imgur.com/BXh9O9Z&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, after the calculation it shows the finish date of the project at 8/8/14 instead of the later date 8/24/15 but shows the correct finish date on the Project Summary task of the Master Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is going on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update * Just as an update. We believe it is a problem with the MS Project Pro 2013 updates. If we uninstall all MS Project updates it will calculate as expected. If we open in in MS Project 2016 it will calculate as expected. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is still a serious calculation problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26931" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-08T22:28:45.407" LastActivityDate="2018-11-08T22:28:45.407" Title="MS Project 2013 - SubProject Finish Date not Calculating Correctly" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18484" CreationDate="2016-12-14T08:19:45.517" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Overcommunicate. Give the stakeholder information on what will be done, when it will be done, who will do it. Give the stakeholder daily or twice daily progress of the progress. Once the tasks are finished, give the stakeholder information on the same. Information indicators, progress charts with great visuals are some of the ways to achieve this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26276" LastActivityDate="2016-12-14T08:19:45.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20717" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20719" CreationDate="2016-12-14T21:02:54.660" Score="3" ViewCount="197" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the software industry, not in all cases but true for many, you usually report to a manager who has no advanced knowledge about the underlying technology used in a software project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually this drives managers to value your work based on what they see on the screen rather than what's really required to get the project done. You're chained to &lt;em&gt;show something to them&lt;/em&gt; and forced to work on poor design decisions to just get an &lt;em&gt;ok, keep doing&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My concern is if it's actually unrealistic to think that more involved and engaged stakeholders shouldn't value you on what they see &lt;em&gt;on screen&lt;/em&gt;, but by the actual already achieved project goals, either if they might have an impact on the UI or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, when projects require not so useful demos, overall cost is increased, because preparing a project to work with quality requires testing, debugging and even last hour modifications that might be thrown away once the demo is done. Finally, there's a timing debt associated with this kind of project management that impacts on you because they delay their own timings without modifying them (wasted time is lost forever).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the other hand, I'm not arguing that we should hold them 2 years until they can see something on the UI. IMO, I would say that &lt;em&gt;agile project management&lt;/em&gt; with approaches like &lt;em&gt;Scrum&lt;/em&gt; already define the &lt;em&gt;sprint demo&lt;/em&gt;, but based on my experience, stakeholders don't want to get involved in regular project management, but they just want a global feedback with a demo that should look like a final product in terms of quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Side note&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to be sure that no one could understand that my question is arguing that I shouldn't demo the UI. Furthermore, I'm not against showing it very often. But as some have already said in their own answers, sometimes it takes time to see some change on the UI while some other details are being implemented, fixed or improved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, that's why my question is about if it's unrealistic to get reliability &lt;strong&gt;not just by&lt;/strong&gt; what you see on screen. Thus, it's implicit that UI demos are required. End-user feedback is crucial to succeed on delivering a good project, because after all the project is for the user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26944" LastEditorUserId="26944" LastEditDate="2016-12-15T20:47:26.757" LastActivityDate="2016-12-15T20:47:26.757" Title="Is it unrealistic to develop a software project and get reliability not just by what you see on screen?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20714" CreationDate="2016-12-14T21:03:10.500" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This should have been resolved by the update released on Dec 6.  Try installing the public update and see if that resolves the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2016-12-14T21:03:10.500" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20717" CreationDate="2016-12-14T22:00:30.690" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether or not expectations are 'unrealistic' is highly situational and even opinion-based, so I'm not sure you could get a useful answer to your actual stated question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, if your real concern is 'what to do when stakeholders care only about the User Interface (UI)', then an approach that may help is to simply include &lt;em&gt;functionalities&lt;/em&gt; in their entirety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, say you have a requirement that 'Must be able to save an order, and review saved orders.' This involves &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; the UI of saving and reviewing orders, &lt;em&gt;as well as&lt;/em&gt; the behind-the-scenes stuff required to make it actually &lt;em&gt;work&lt;/em&gt;. If the back-end stuff isn't done yet, then &lt;em&gt;neither is the feature&lt;/em&gt;, and as such the UI portion should not even be shown to the stakeholders at all. If they ask, then 'The feature isn't done yet.' Do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; show them a mock-up UI, unless it is &lt;em&gt;specifically noted as a mock-up&lt;/em&gt;, with everyone involved being aware that the thing is not actually &lt;em&gt;working&lt;/em&gt; yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While providing a temporary 'functional mock-up' may make it &lt;em&gt;look&lt;/em&gt; like a Team is moving quickly, in reality the overall project isn't going to go any faster - and may indeed be slowed down by the stopgap 'solution.' The best thing to do in a situation where upper management is expecting such a thing might be to explain to management the overall costs of such a strategy. While you're not going to be able to explain &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; technical debt does what it does, if you properly explain to any reasonable person its &lt;em&gt;effects&lt;/em&gt; (increasingly slower development over time, greater chance of bugs, higher difficulty in maintainability causing problems with new hires, etc.), then he or she will almost certainly take such things into account, at the very least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've done all you can to explain the costs of a stopgap mock-up to upper management, and they still don't understand, then either you haven't explained properly enough, or else you may want to consider looking for other employment, where management is willing to listen and learn. Note that this applies only if the management does not understand. &lt;em&gt;Not&lt;/em&gt; that they've understood and just decide that their other goals are more important - that is &lt;em&gt;their call&lt;/em&gt;, be it 'correct' or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2016-12-15T00:28:26.787" LastActivityDate="2016-12-15T00:28:26.787" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20717" CreationDate="2016-12-15T07:04:56.103" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me this situation looks more of a Perspective of Done than what is shown/not-shown on screen. Thus the solution lies in effective communication. IMO, your aim should not be to show something new on UI in every demo, rather should be to add value and progressing the overall product aiming at end user, may be via improved performance, better call flow, integration of some automation test cases, etc. etc. which are not really interest areas of the UI centric stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what I'd follow if I were in your place. It may not be directly relevant/applicable/acceptable in your scenario but I wanted to give you a perspective and have you derive your own solution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On those days when you do not have any substantial change on UI, start the meeting on a positive note by explaining upfront in the format - &quot;Today's demo may not show much on UI but the benefits for &lt;em&gt;User&lt;/em&gt; are as follows&quot;. Generally, this trick of benefiting end-customer, chance of beating the competitor, acquiring more audience for the product, automation, etc. entice the stakeholders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also create a one-slide PPT along with working software demo when you have made a backend centric progress during the sprint. Talk about the benefits achieved through bullet points in the PPT, and compare it with previous version of product's behavior.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to be number oriented. E.g., &quot;new call flow takes X sec lesser than the previous flow. It might not be visible on UI directly but benefits the end user.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In case the stakeholders are available locally, engage them in short, water-cooler talks and mention your overall work in informal discussions. It looks like their lack of knowledge on your technology. They are not able to understand the complexity of your overall task. These water-cooler, elevator talks will give them perspective but in digestible quantities. Next time, they will be more inclined to listen to your non-UI centric demos in the formal meetings/demos.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12002" LastActivityDate="2016-12-15T07:04:56.103" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20717" CreationDate="2016-12-15T09:07:37.157" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Agile mindset is that clients, stakeholders and users do not really know what they want until they actually see and use it. It is all about the value the product delivers, how can they measure this value if they cannot use it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and&#xA;  continuous delivery of valuable software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The demo (review) is not to show what you have until now, but to deliver a working piece of product! In my book it's not a product if it doesn't contain the final UI with styling, works end-2-end and is deployed on a product server. If enough value has been delivered. The users should start using it as soon as possible to gather even more feedback. Products evolve best by using them, not by designing them upfront. 65% of the build features are never used by users, why build them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I love &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/quick-transit-agile-part-ii-power-vertical-slice-nima-bahrehdar&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;vertical software development&lt;/a&gt; for a couple of reasons. Creating software end-2-end gives much better insights in uncertainties (e.g. what works and what doesn't on your scale). Don't postpone integration until the end, this always leads to missed deadlines. I am always amazed how users do not really need features when you continuously estimate and compare effort versus value. If you keep delivering a usable product the users will really know what the next most important feature should be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Minimal Viable &lt;strong&gt;Products&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. Question yourself what it means for something to be a product. It should be shippable to actual users, not? Now start shipping often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Deliver working software frequently, from a  couple of weeks to a&#xA;  couple of months, with a  preference to the shorter timescale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I understand that delivering a product without all the features feels like a waste, certainly when you are pretty sure you have to rewrite parts, because of known features on the roadmap. Still waiting until the end to find out your product isn't going to be used, because it lacks user- or market-fit is a lot more waste. Keep in mind a lot of products never ever see the daylight. This is one of the reasons &lt;a href=&quot;http://martinfowler.com/bliki/Yagni.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;YAGNI&lt;/a&gt; is an important Agile principle, build only what you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount  of work not done--is&#xA;  essential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To minimize waste your product needs to be maintainable, extendable and understandable for developers. I advocate &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3735293-clean-code&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Clean Code&lt;/a&gt; and any developer and project manager should watch &lt;a href=&quot;https://cleancoders.com/episode/clean-code-episode-1/show?autoplay=true&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the first episode&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;https://less.works/less/technical-excellence/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Technical excellence&lt;/a&gt; is often skipped in projects, because the developers, the managers, the project managers and Scrum Masters actually have no clue how to make software professionally, unless you're lucky. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances&#xA;  agility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2016-12-15T09:30:51.253" LastActivityDate="2016-12-15T09:30:51.253" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20717" CreationDate="2016-12-15T15:47:40.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand where the question comes from, and I see that kind of concern a lot from engineers who I work with who sometimes feel that people who don't understand the code they are writing can't appreciate what they are doing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is some merit to this, and I would suggest that any project manager who works in IT should do everything they can to understand as much of the underlying technology as possible. If not, they are neglecting the foundation upon which their entire career is based. There is another side to this though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why are you making this software? Who is using it? What are they doing with it? What are they not doing with it that you want them to do with it? If you analyze these questions, you will realize that 99% of the time, ANYTHING you are likely to be developing in the form of code is going to be used almost exclusively via a GUI. Users will interact with everything you do and every part of the system through their monitor, touchscreen, etc. Obviously there are things like embedded systems, IOT (internet of things), control systems, etc, where there is little or no user interaction with your application via a UI, but almost everything we do in the IT field boils down to something being displayed to a user VISUALLY and something being sent back to us via a GUI. Doesn't matter if it's a smartphone, a PC, or even a refrigerator, it's the same principle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, given that, a focus on being able to demo elements of your software visually to someone who wants to see something on a screen is NOT completely out of line! Ultimately, put yourself in your user's shoes. What are they going to see? What are they going to interact with? Clearly, that should be demo-able visually. I don't know what part of the project you are working on or what stage of the SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) you may be at, and there are places where the work you are doing might be partitioning a database to optimize performance and there will be no change to a UI element or user-facing functionality. Of course even in that case, you can demo it visually! Run a little demo of a &quot;before&quot; and &quot;after&quot; average load time for your analytics dashboard the way it loaded before and after your database partitions, etc etc etc. There is almost always a good way to show a non-technical customer or manager what you did visually. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you are right that working up such a demo is sometimes time consuming, and you might be more efficient without having to do it, it also focuses you back on the end user, which is sometimes extremely helpful. That's one of the foundational principles of the agile scrum process. Delivering something significant (ideally) every sprint that can be SHOWN to someone. Sometimes looking at things from the perspective of your end user is also a very helpful problem-solving exercise too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26292" LastActivityDate="2016-12-15T15:47:40.303" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20725" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-15T19:52:59.160" Score="1" ViewCount="2484" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm new MS Project user; I'm trying to sync my Ms Project 2016 calendar with Outlook 2013, I want tasks due dates give notification in Outlook. How can I do that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26953" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T20:05:42.650" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T20:05:42.650" Title="MS Project Calendar" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18147" CreationDate="2016-12-16T16:15:34.440" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm running into the same problem.  I haven't completely figured out the answer, but do check your project settings to make sure it is calculating EVM based on Physical % Complete.  There is also an option to select which baseline is used to calculate evm... not sure how that works yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go to File -&gt; Options -&gt; Advanced -&gt; Scroll Down to Earned Value options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26864" LastActivityDate="2016-12-16T16:15:34.440" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20729" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-18T10:54:06.037" Score="3" ViewCount="370" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am the co-founder of a software startup (reporting software with a lot of statistics and mathematics). There is a CEO and a &quot;project manager&quot; (actually a sales person with no experience in software project management)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I created the software and hired mostly junior programmers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm still de facto the technical leader as I'm very often needed to help with tasks and problem solving, release planning and deployment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I have proposed an Agile course to everybody included managers and started to act as Scrum Master because I want people to take more responsibility and split roles (and because we don't have resources to hire a Scrum Master full time). I hold a Scrum Master certification, but it's my first practical experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I feel like I'm everything...&#xA;- co-founder (so probably a stakeholder in the Agile methodology)&#xA;- CTO &#xA;- Scrum Master&#xA;- technical leader&#xA;- and yes, programmer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doesn't that clash a little bit with a Scrum/Agile methodology?&#xA;How should I deal with that (since personal issues from the group will probably arise)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26906" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2017-03-06T15:11:26.660" LastActivityDate="2017-03-06T15:11:26.660" Title="Is having multiple roles (Tech leader + Programmer + Scrum Master) against Scrum / Agile methodology guidelines?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20729" CreationDate="2016-12-18T13:32:36.957" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing in the Agile approach nor in the Scrum framework that says one individual can't have multiple roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are some risks in the approach you are taking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have the time to do all of these roles effectively?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In a Scrum Development Team there are no roles other than 'team member'. Having a CTO/Technical Lead in the team can limit the self-organising and empowerment benefits of the Scrum framework.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There can be a conflict of interest between the stakeholder and Scrum Master roles. The Scrum Master needs to focus on facilitation and making things run smoothly. It is difficult to do that while prioritising and explaining requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to use your retrospectives to carefully evaluate how well things are working. If you and the team identify problems, it may be necessary to adjust or drop some of the roles you have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2016-12-18T13:32:36.957" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16392" CreationDate="2016-12-18T21:43:00.420" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2kU3k.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2kU3k.png&quot; alt=&quot;ResourceAvailability&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem here seems to be that the resource availability is only available at 50% - so if the resource works an 8 hr day, then he or she is only available for 4 hours of that day.  Increase this percentage to 100% if the resource is available for 1 full day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17482" LastActivityDate="2016-12-18T21:43:00.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9063" CreationDate="2016-12-18T21:50:55.103" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team used to face this kind of issue for over a year until we managed to work out a way of cooperating with the Product Manager/Owner that ensured the team received timely info and constant feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not something straightforward to achieve. IMHO it highly depends on the maturity of the processes in place as well as the individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I had to suggest one single aspect to focus on, that would be increasing the frequency of status meetings until the situation is more or less stabilized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I currently hold weekly status meetings. A year ago I had to meet 2 or 3 times a week with the Product Owner. He is a busy person and wouldn't fully understand the need for so many meetings at the beginning, but eventually he understood our side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently the level of scope creep on projects is very low, and work on analysis/design phases is intense and gets the deserved attention by all stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21836" LastActivityDate="2016-12-18T21:50:55.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20733" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20745" CreationDate="2016-12-19T11:38:00.807" Score="0" ViewCount="161" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to change hundreds of tasks in a project from &quot;fixed work&quot; to &quot;fix duration&quot; type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When I select multiple tasks - the &quot;Information&quot; dialog changes only one if them. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have also tried to add a &quot;type&quot; column to the list of tasks and copy-paste the necessary type there. But, for some reason, it works not for all the tasks, most of them, although changeable one-by-one, remain unchanged if I try to past a value, copied from another row.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could anybody show a solution? Preferably with a screenshot from Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26987" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-12-19T12:35:05.407" LastActivityDate="2016-12-21T13:17:12.003" Title="How to edit groups of tasks in Microsoft project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20734" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20736" CreationDate="2016-12-19T11:55:03.593" Score="0" ViewCount="166" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to manage project progress; what is the best way to track and manage project progress? As the project progresses, how does one recognize, anticipate and track alternative possibilities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26986" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2016-12-19T13:11:55.840" LastActivityDate="2016-12-23T18:28:54.693" Title="How to track and manage project progress &amp; opportunities?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20733" CreationDate="2016-12-19T11:59:04.293" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I effectively solved the issue by a very simple macros: just add this text into macros Sub, save macros and then run it over selected tasks.&#xA;If necessary - change task type in the macros.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Dim ProjTasks As Tasks&#xA;Dim ProjTask As Task&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;If ActiveSelection = 0 Then&#xA;    MsgBox &quot;Choose tasks to change type&quot;&#xA;    Exit Sub&#xA;End If&#xA;&#xA;For Each ProjTask In ActiveSelection.Tasks&#xA;    If ProjTask.Summary = False Then&#xA;        ProjTask.Type = pjFixedDuration&#xA;&#xA;    End If&#xA;Next ProjTask&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I still wonder whether there is a standard solution&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26987" LastActivityDate="2016-12-19T11:59:04.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20734" CreationDate="2016-12-19T16:49:47.807" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The tools you will use depends on the level of granularity you want to track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For short periods (1-4 weeks (sprint in Scrum)), you can use &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2013/august/burn-down-chart-%E2%80%93-an-effective-planning-and-tracki&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Burndown&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clariostechnology.com/productivity/blog/whatisaburnupchart&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Burnup&lt;/a&gt; charts. The first one measures your progress against a planned scope; the second one measures your progress against the current scope in a given time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For longer times, in order to measure how well and smoothly a team is going, you can use &lt;a href=&quot;https://kanbanize.com/blog/kanban-101-tracking-progress-part-1/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cycle Time&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/velocity/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Velocity&lt;/a&gt;. For forcasting project completion and addition work added during the project impact, you can use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.caroli.org/cumulative-flow-diagram/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cumulative Flow Diagram&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25646" LastEditorUserId="25646" LastEditDate="2016-12-23T18:28:54.693" LastActivityDate="2016-12-23T18:28:54.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18147" CreationDate="2016-12-20T05:21:25.580" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;An important aspect of both BCWS and BCWP is that they are time-phased values.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their values will change based on the date values of a task's baseline start and the project status date.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This aspect was not brought out explicitly in the MS explanation of BCWP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of the pseudocode formula for BCWP and BCWS is this:&#xA;[status_date] - [baseline_start] = [&quot;time period with which to calculate baseline (cumulative) cost relative to the status date&quot;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note:  where there is no project status date, today's date is used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice this works fine if your project's performance is adhering to the baseline dates, BUT if the baseline start of a given task is LATER than the status date, and you are reporting progress on this task, the time calculation for BCWP and BCWS will be negative, and Project will resolve that to just zero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, it would appear that if your project is over-performing and you're completing work well in advance of your baseline plan, Project will calculate zero for the SPI of such tasks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, you can create a workaround for this phenomenon by creating  a custom field with your own formula to calculate SPI, aiming to avoid a divide by zero error when calculating CPI/SPI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd be interested to know why Project's EVM calculations are set up this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Andrew M.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26995" LastEditorUserId="27002" LastEditDate="2016-12-22T01:54:42.910" LastActivityDate="2016-12-22T01:54:42.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20701" CreationDate="2016-12-20T11:15:53.380" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/parwaaz/pmo-setup-strategy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This link&lt;/a&gt; consists of a presentation basically in which the same thing is taught that how can someone setup a project management office. Also it discusses the major components of a PMO and evaluation of a PMO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26073" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-01-04T12:33:08.760" LastActivityDate="2017-01-04T12:33:08.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20740" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2016-12-20T19:49:33.463" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Onboarding refers to the process through which new employees acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, and behaviors to become effective members of their new organization. Tactics used in this process include formal meetings, lectures, videos, printed materials, or computer-based orientations to introduce newcomers to their new jobs and organizations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ultimate goal of the process is to quickly integrate new employees to their role and the company, making them more productive in less time and increasing the opportunity for employee retention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25755" LastEditorUserId="25755" LastEditDate="2016-12-21T12:05:21.573" LastActivityDate="2016-12-21T12:05:21.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20741" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2016-12-20T19:49:33.463" Score="0" Body="Onboarding refers to the process through which new employees acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, and behaviors to become effective members of their new organization." OwnerUserId="25755" LastEditorUserId="25755" LastEditDate="2016-12-21T12:05:12.680" LastActivityDate="2016-12-21T12:05:12.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20734" CreationDate="2016-12-21T05:09:50.220" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;And while I wouldn't recommend using Traditional Development (Waterfall), if you do then you want to pull on the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK). Chapter 6 of the PMBoK covers Project Time Management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Earned Value is a common one used in old style projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2016-12-21T05:09:50.220" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20734" CreationDate="2016-12-21T08:51:23.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would add: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The important thing is to have a way to track &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt; the details you need, in order to get to completion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure to &lt;strong&gt;update&lt;/strong&gt; your tracking frequently (could be every day, if not every few hours, depending on your type of project). Having a tracking system doesn't help if it's not up-to-date.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have all the details tracked and up-to-date you should be able to see if you're heading towards your expected result or if you want to change anything.&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;If you're not technical enough, then have periodic meetings with key players to review the project status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't use a tool/methodology you don't understand. You cannot &quot;practice&quot; and manage at the same time. At the very least, run in parallel; use the new tool but also a system you understand, so that you can understand what is happening at any time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2016-12-21T08:51:23.753" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20744" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2016-12-21T12:58:35.647" Score="0" ViewCount="5638" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm managing a project in MS Project Pro 2013 with several phases, which I have distinguished by summary tasks. Under these summary tasks I have plenty of other tasks, several again summarized. Note that I do NOT have resources assigned to the summary tasks, only to the individual tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to generate a report in which I can see a list of resources, their hours and cost, grouped by each phase of the project. How do I setup such grouping?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a reference, the following group setting groups in the Resource Usage by closest summary task (therefore not the highest level summary task). And, in a Report, using this group definition this does not display anything.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hI8lo.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hI8lo.png&quot; alt=&quot;group by task summary name&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27013" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T20:02:20.543" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T20:02:20.543" Title="Show resources grouped by high-level summary task in MS Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;&lt;resources&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20733" CreationDate="2016-12-21T13:17:12.003" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I showed the &quot;Type&quot; column, changed the first entry to &quot;Fixed Duration&quot;, then dragged that value down through the rest of the rows, and it worked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 1:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tXdGe.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tXdGe.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KoBeQ.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KoBeQ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 3: click in the &quot;Fixed Duration&quot; field in Row 1, point to the bottom right corner and drag the field to the other rows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gcaRJ.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gcaRJ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you can hide the &quot;Type&quot; column again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2016-12-21T13:17:12.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20554" CreationDate="2016-12-24T19:38:05.927" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A different point to discuss must be the risk level of incoming requirements. &quot;Technological readiness levels&quot; can be utilized to quantify the burden and effort probability of the function that is to be added. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16715" LastActivityDate="2016-12-24T19:38:05.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20725" CreationDate="2016-12-24T21:33:42.507" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can read it :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_project-mso_other/microsoft-project-and-outlook-sync/37bbc611-8495-4487-a4f5-27a56a133658&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_project-mso_other/microsoft-project-and-outlook-sync/37bbc611-8495-4487-a4f5-27a56a133658&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use project server then :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Install-and-set-up-the-Microsoft-Office-Project-Add-in-for-Outlook-4fe87c04-c6f0-4995-bf56-e44858a5ae51?ui=en-US&amp;amp;rs=en-US&amp;amp;ad=US&amp;amp;fromAR=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Install-and-set-up-the-Microsoft-Office-Project-Add-in-for-Outlook-4fe87c04-c6f0-4995-bf56-e44858a5ae51?ui=en-US&amp;amp;rs=en-US&amp;amp;ad=US&amp;amp;fromAR=1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27039" LastActivityDate="2016-12-24T21:33:42.507" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18496" CreationDate="2016-12-25T21:44:45.090" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, Jira doesn't provide this feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The easiest way to do this would be to install a script runner addon (you can get it for free). Once you install it, you will have new JQL functions.&#xA;In the issue navigator, go to basic mode and type the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;issueFunction in linkedIssuesOf(&quot;project = FOO&quot;) and project = FOO&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do not have the access to the addon section you can do next:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go to issue navigator, switch to list view, click on &quot;columns&quot; button and search for &quot;linked issues&quot; and select it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21640" LastActivityDate="2016-12-25T21:44:45.090" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20752" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20753" CreationDate="2016-12-26T10:15:05.307" Score="9" ViewCount="6845" Body="&lt;p&gt;I noticed that Lean Kanban term appears quite frequently. I've tried to figure out what's the difference between Lean Kanban and Classic, but no success. Maybe someone dealt with both and could describe the difference and explain when to use what?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21640" LastEditorUserId="21640" LastEditDate="2016-12-26T16:23:07.287" LastActivityDate="2021-01-29T19:27:57.460" Title="What's the difference between Kanban vs Lean Kanban?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;lean&gt;&lt;frameworks&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20752" CreationDate="2016-12-26T16:31:02.263" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lean is to Kanban as agile is to Scrum. One is a concrete implementation of the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the term &quot;lean kanban&quot; is just an attempt to court favour from Google/Bing for keyword density and is the result of copywriters rather than an actual thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All Kanban is Lean... But not all Lean is Kanban...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastActivityDate="2016-12-26T16:31:02.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20752" CreationDate="2016-12-27T19:19:13.840" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kanban is a lean methodology focused on creating continuous flow of work while eliminating waste (muda) in the system.  There is no difference between Kanban and Lean Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where there are some differences however...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban for software development differs slightly from the classic Lean Kanban formulated by Toyota in the 1980's and used in manufacturing environments.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a good book that focuses on kanban for software development and gets into some of the nuances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business Paperback – April 7, 2010&#xA;by David J. Anderson  (Author), Donald G Reinertsen (Foreword)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic processes, tools, and objectives of Kanban for software development remain unchanged (WIP, JIT, Slack, Pull Model, Cycle Time, SLA, Work Classes, Flow, Eliminate Waste, Visualize all work).  However, how work is visualized on the Kanban board is a bit more flexible than in traditional kanban.  Also not all work on a software kanban board is necessarily same sized or forced to be same sized.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its also fairly common to see software teams using Kanban adopting practices from Scrum such as the daily standup, retrospective, Product Owner concept, etc.  Some people call these types of teams &quot;Scrumban&quot; teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2016-12-27T19:19:13.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20756" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-02T10:36:25.370" Score="1" ViewCount="1401" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a junior project manager in a small software house with not much experience on our market. My aim is to organise work teams work in most efficient way, work out sustainable processes, boost team productivity and prepare our company for scaling up. I would like to discuss the situation with you guys to find out about your points of view and maybe figure out a solution to problems with which we struggle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Description of company:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Small software house, developing websites and mobile apps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Team:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;5 developers (fullstack, so involved in mobile and websites projects)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PM  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;UI/UX Designer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tools:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Confluence for wiki and files storage&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;JIRA for task management &amp;amp; timetracking &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;We are busy with:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Development for new customers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ongoing development for existing&#xA;     customers &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ongoing maintenance for developed solutions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project management:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Each project for every customer is organised into its own separate project on JIRA, with its own scrum Board, own backlog etc. If we develop a&#xA;mobile app, a web app and a website for one customer, that means we&#xA;have 3 ongoing JIRA projects, 3 scrum boards etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We have 30-min weekly standup sessions with the entire team to share our work progress and to update each other on what's going to&#xA;happen next. We also meet up at 5pm everyday for a quick summary of what we&#xA;managed to do and what we are planning to do tomorrow and then we&#xA;call it a day.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Almost all developers are assigned to all projects (with different capacity). We have also few small projects with only one developer&lt;br&gt;&#xA;assigned.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;After each sprint there is a retrospective session organised during&#xA;which we go through the work done and try to make it better next&lt;br&gt;&#xA;time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problems we face&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We have many scrum boards, but we don't have a main one. It's not clear&#xA;for developers, who is working on what etc. To make myself clear, I&#xA;assign tasks to them in JIRA. I myself lose the big picture from time&#xA;to time managing so many boards and projects.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's not clear for each developer, what he should do next after&#xA;completing a task.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A lot of delays because of emerging, unexpected tasks from&#xA;maintenance part. It's not an unusual situation to drop the current&#xA;work and go fight the fire with everyone we got on deck.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does one manage scrum projects in a situation, where you have&#xA;all the team involved in every project?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a way to have one main scrum board? Is it a good approach? Or&#xA;there is other better way?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Our customers have access to their projects on our JIRA to be able to&#xA;track progress on scrum boards. What are your thoughts on this&#xA;approach?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have maybe some good tips/tricks? From my point of view it is&#xA;crystal clear how to use agile and scrum for one project and one&#xA;team, but it's getting nasty when you have a lot to do with very&#xA;limited human resources.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27091" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-01-02T14:06:57.150" LastActivityDate="2017-01-02T14:47:58.120" Title="Managing multiple agile projects in a small software house" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20756" CreationDate="2017-01-02T14:08:51.177" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TLDR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't multi-task. If that is not possible, use JIRA features to both combine the boards and keep them separate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How does one manage scrum projects in a situation, where you have all the team involved in every project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off, multi-tasking is bad. Task-switching is incredibly expensive, especially in software deelopment. Working on two (or more) projects at once will just cause them both (or all) to suffer. It is a better idea to work on one, finish the work for it (whether that means finish the project or finish the sprint), and then work on another. Or, alternately, get more developers and have them assigned to different projects. Avoiding multi-tasking would solve your first two stated problems and first question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there a way to have one main scrum board? Is it a good approach? Or there is other better way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the above is not, for some reason, possible (ie. mandated by CEO), then I see two possible solutions for this. Either you can create only a single JIRA project (which is much simpler but harms customer visibility, see below), or you can keep the projects separate but create a new board which has a filter including all projects. In JIRA, a board is just an issue filter. As such, you could, for example, create a new, empty, 'All Projects' JIRA project. By default, its board filter would be &quot;Project = 'AP'&quot;, but it would be simple enough to change that to &quot;Project = 'ABC' OR Project = 'DCE' ...&quot; Or even just all issues in your entire system. At that point, you just need to create issues on their own, separate projects, but work with them in the All Projects project. This is more work, but in my opinion the better solution, because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our customers have access to their projects on our JIRA to be able to track progress on scrum boards. What are your thoughts on this approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems like a pretty good approach, to me. Allowing the customer as much (non-secret/sensitive) information about your business with them is the best way to improve the feedback cycle. As such, this is a valid reasoning for splitting each project into its own JIRA project. Though you could also, in theory, keep a 'Requester' custom field and make new Projects/Boards based on the Requester field, that is more or less just a different approach to what I suggested above, just even more work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you have maybe some good tips/tricks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A very vague question that I cannot answer, beyond what I have already provided above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[We face] A lot of delays because of emerging, unexpected tasks from maintenance part. It's not an unusual situation to drop the current work and go fight the fire with everyone we got on deck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, unless these are &lt;em&gt;absolutely critical, stuff is on fire&lt;/em&gt; maintenance tasks, they should be vetted and prioritized by the Product Owner, rather than just stuffing them immediately into the Sprint. Second, if they &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; need to go into the Sprint &lt;em&gt;immediately&lt;/em&gt;, then something else needs to be taken &lt;em&gt;out&lt;/em&gt;. If you can take something out for the same customer, that's ideal. If you cannot and thus a different customer's work needs to be sacrificed, there is already an existing question on PMSE that deals with this issue. (Which I cannot find at the moment, so if someone could find it and add a link in a comment, that would be great)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-01-02T14:26:54.750" LastActivityDate="2017-01-02T14:26:54.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20756" CreationDate="2017-01-02T14:47:58.120" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a similar environment. The best approach we have come up with is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have people attend one, absolute max two, stand-up meetings per day. You might need to shuffle developers between projects to achieve this. It's easy for them to become frustrated with agile if they perceive that it's all about useless meetings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Group into a single kanban board all the applications that have a very low volume of work and/or are in maintenance mode, and hold a single daily stand-up for all the developers on those projects. Holding all of the scrum meetings is not effective with many tiny, slow-moving projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As much as you can (and this is not always possible), &quot;drum up&quot; work for the remaining projects so that the developers have enough in the pipeline to be able to loosely plan a few sprints ahead. You might do this by meeting with your customers to discuss new features or fixes, or internal improvement initiatives like refactoring, adding unit tests, or upgrading the frameworks you use.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As far as licensing permits, give everyone in the company and all your stakeholders at least read access to your issue tracking system. (Whether you use Jira, Agile Central, or something else is secondary.) This will increase transparency both internally and externally, and decrease onboarding time for anyone in your company who wants to join one of your projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Empower developers to decide what projects they want to work on, how they want to run the meetings, which tasks should be done and which are not valuable enough, etc. If the team is young or inexperienced in agile, you might need to make most decisions yourself while team learns to self-organize, but it is much better for all involved (including you; it will make your job a lot easier!) if they take more ownership of their work. Once they own the work, hold them accountable; if they do not formally report to you, talk with your manager so he/she holds them accountable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13325" LastActivityDate="2017-01-02T14:47:58.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20760" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-02T18:50:10.917" Score="2" ViewCount="262" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a company, after the product has gone live, somehow the development distribution email has been given to the end users (who happen to be the company's call center) who contact the development team directly for queries and questions on bugs or for high priority defects (not critical though). Also, the IT support department is raising tickets from the end users and contacts the development team directly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The company is working is doing scrum, there is a SM and PO, and the teams have their normal iteration cycles.&#xA;What is the best and most efficient way to prevent outsiders contacting the development team for the queries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5522" LastActivityDate="2017-11-13T14:31:19.920" Title="How to prevent product users from reaching directly to the developers?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20760" CreationDate="2017-01-02T19:14:36.237" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask them not to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a user attempts to contact a developer directly, simply instruct the developer to say &quot;Thank you for bringing this to us. However, as per company procedure, I am not allowed to work on anything without it going through the Product Owner first. Please contact  at [email/phone] with this issue if you wish it to be worked on.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's not really anything outsiders can do to get around &quot;I am not allowed to do that.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eventually, your users will simply stop attempting to bring requests directly to the developers, and will bring them through the Product Owner instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't to say that developers should &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; be contacted by users. Face-to-face is among the best ways to gather feedback. However, nothing should ever be &lt;em&gt;worked on&lt;/em&gt; until the work has been made visible and prioritized (the latter of which only the Product Owner is authorized to do).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-01-03T14:15:54.743" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T14:15:54.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20762" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20766" CreationDate="2017-01-03T02:42:07.507" Score="-1" ViewCount="91" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently started my first industry job as a member of a small team of data scientists at a large corporation. In daily team meetings, each team member sets a goal for the day, and if they did not achieve their goal from their previous day then the manager asks followup questions about what went wrong and sometimes offers criticism of this team member's performance -- all in the presence of the other team members. For instance, &lt;em&gt;they might say to a team member that they are being unfair to the team by not making enough progress&lt;/em&gt;. My question is this: &lt;strong&gt;How unusual is this style of management for this type of position?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand it may be difficult to find data which would be needed to give a quantitative answer to the question. But possibly there could exist references within the business or management literature which could at least provide evidence as to whether this is or is not a commonly accepted form of management. Insights from personal experience could also help to address the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit&lt;/em&gt;: I am asking this question because I am considering quitting the job on account of the fact that I find this management style to be unpleasant and ineffective. It comes across to me as heavy-handed, in setting up a situation where the manager seems to be shaming team members in front of their peers, based on their performance. I would have thought that performance concerns about individual employees would be appropriately addressed on a one-on-one basis. But in weighing the option of quitting, I would like to understand how likely it is that I may encounter a similar situation with a future employer. I am also preparing to have a discussion with my manager about my concerns, and being informed about this beforehand could be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27101" LastEditorUserId="27101" LastEditDate="2017-01-03T05:10:18.670" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T09:49:04.667" Title="Unusual management style?: Using team meetings to critically evaluate team members' performance" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20762" CreationDate="2017-01-03T04:00:44.047" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not particularly unusual at all. It sounds very similar to the daily Scrum or daily Standup in Scrum. A main difference being that the daily Scrum is intended to be by and for the Team, rather than the Team reporting to management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume that your purpose for asking this question is because you are uncertain of the validity or purpose of this management style. In which case, my suggestion would be to ask management itself why it does this. What the purpose is for which it runs this meeting, and what it gets out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T04:00:44.047" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20760" CreationDate="2017-01-03T04:30:48.977" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, you have the advantage of being in the same company. talk with the call center manager and discuss the issue. That manager knows best how to flow down an notice to those employees and enforce whatever is agreed upon (call this number, email this mailbox, etc)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, if possible, find out how to flow back to the asking users an update that it was incorporated. If the users don't feel your new system is listening to them they will revert to calling the developers. You want to encourage a culture shift with a reward!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last resort is for people who just don't get it. If your phones have caller ID have your developers discreetly report repeat offenders and flow those back to the call center manager. Don't force your developers to ask for a name and ID number from callers since it's awkward and makes people comfortable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately your goals are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) decide on the proper channels for these bug reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) collaborate with the right people who can enforce this decision and encourage culture change&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) reward those users if possible, even if it's a simple email, &quot;thanks for the suggestion, it's in the queue&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) last resort: if 90% of users are doing this right, then formally report the 10%. If 90% are not doing it right, find a new route!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26773" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T04:30:48.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20765" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-03T08:02:13.747" Score="1" ViewCount="813" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Intro&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like to setup KPIs for my engineering/QA teams. I use that to evaluate performance and help determine bonus/raise each quarter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is one KPI I set for my engineers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;% of tasks that passed QA with no bugs &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ie depending on the QA flow (per issue or per sprint), we see how many bugs were reported against all the issues that were completed by 1. the engineer that fixed the issue 2. the other engineer that peer reviewed it. &#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ie in a given sprint engineer X resolved 20 issues, which got reviewed by engineer Y. Assuming the QA does their work on a sprint basis, and that the QA found 5 bugs in those 20 issues, the tasks that passed QA with no bugs percentage is 75%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;% of tasks that functioned properly post deployment &#xA;Same idea as above, but this one will be treated for code that actually gets released live and is used by users &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is one KPI I have for my QA staff:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;number of bugs found per issue&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ie the more bugs a QA person finds in an issue the better. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Problem&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The KPIs for the engineers and QA personnel seem contradictory, or said another way: they seem like a zero sum game. Which obviously isn't good for employee morale and would cause rivalry/resentment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I change this so that both engineers and QA staff have KPIs that make them work together as opposed to against each other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;update: a concrete case&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;this is in response to &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/7559/nvoigt&quot;&gt;novigt&lt;/a&gt;'s &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/20767/23022&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt; below as well as in reference to &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/285097/is-it-good-that-testers-are-competing-to-see-who-opens-more-bugs#comment587168_285097&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; comment on a related post: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are the testers involved before a build? Meaning are they involved in&#xA;  developing the requirements or use cases or user stories, reviewing&#xA;  design documentation, or participating in code reviews?..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I figured that proper and sound documentation of scenarios is a huge part of evaluating QA personnel (keep in mind here I'm talking about non-technical QA who simply do black box testing and cannot do automated tests etc). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree that a metric that calculates total number of bugs is bogus, and i agree with the &lt;strong&gt;incidents in production&lt;/strong&gt; metric. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me explain my new metric with an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PMycn.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PMycn.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose I have a single login screen (forgot password/remember me etc not included for brevity) that I would like to build and deploy. Using &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber/wiki/Gherkin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gherkin Syntax&lt;/a&gt; the QA engineer writes the following scenarios: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scenario 1: Happy path login&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;given&lt;/code&gt; user enters correct username/pwd&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;when&lt;/code&gt; user clicks on login&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;then&lt;/code&gt; user should be directed to dashboard  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scenario 2: login failure&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;given&lt;/code&gt; user enters false username/pwd&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;when&lt;/code&gt; user clicks on login&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;then&lt;/code&gt; error message shows: &lt;em&gt;incorrect username/pwd&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;this documentation is given to the engineers (along with the designs) on &lt;strong&gt;sprint one&lt;/strong&gt; , who develop it, peer review it, send it back to QA for testing and then is deployed in version &lt;strong&gt;0.0.01&lt;/strong&gt; of the app. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once on prod, the following bug happens&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;given&lt;/code&gt; user enters correct username/pwd&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;and&lt;/code&gt; the server is down&#xA;&lt;code&gt;when&lt;/code&gt; user clicks on login&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;then&lt;/code&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;expected&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;user should get an error message: &lt;em&gt;service is currently unavailable&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;actual&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;a spinner spins for ever&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the KPIs/metrics we capture for this scenario:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;number of scenarios: &lt;strong&gt;2&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;number of incidents in production: &lt;strong&gt;1&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;metrics as a snapshot don't give the whole picture, so let's go on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so on &lt;strong&gt;sprint two&lt;/strong&gt;, the QA staff updates the documentation with scenario 3:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;scenario 3: handle login when server is down&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;given&lt;/code&gt; user enters correct username/pwd&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;and&lt;/code&gt; the server is down&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;when&lt;/code&gt; user clicks on login&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;then&lt;/code&gt; user should get an error message: &lt;em&gt;service is currently unavailable&lt;/em&gt;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the engineers fix that bug, and deploy it on release &lt;strong&gt;0.0.02&lt;/strong&gt;, on the release this bug happens:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;given&lt;/code&gt; user enters correct username/pwd&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;and&lt;/code&gt; the user is not connected to the internet&#xA;&lt;code&gt;when&lt;/code&gt; user clicks on login&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;then&lt;/code&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;expected&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;user should get an error message: &lt;em&gt;user is offline&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;actual&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;a spinner spins for ever&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the KPIs/metrics we capture for this scenario:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;number of scenarios: &lt;strong&gt;3&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;number of incidents in production: &lt;strong&gt;1&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;rate of increase of scenarios: 33%&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;rate of decrease of incidents in production: 0%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so we use the last two KPIs (increase in scenarios and decrease of incidents in production) together to evaluate the performance of a QA person. The final evaluation should use both KPIs (in addition to other metrics that can be discussed elsewhere) to evaluate an engineer. This way increasing useless case scenarios alone won't be positive alone, and also an increase in incidents in production without a corresponding increase in scenarios should be a red flag for the engineer. I know one can also achieve this by having comprehensive unit tests that have &gt;95% code coverage etc.. but let's assume we're not there yet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a problem with this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23022" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T11:44:29.067" Title="How to set properly aligned KPIs for engineers and QA staff" Tags="&lt;quality&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;&lt;performance&gt;&lt;reviews&gt;&lt;kpi&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20762" CreationDate="2017-01-03T09:49:04.667" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thanks for the edit to your question and for adding more context . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This appears to be a case of poor management style and not the best way to provide critical feedback if it is leading to you experiencing &quot;public shaming&quot; and &quot;high handiness&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are thinking about quitting your job purely due to this, I would advise you to be mindful of these two things - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is absolutely no guarantee that you would not come across an individual with such a management style in the next company . &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A lot of this time this kind of management style does not get challenged enough (especially by relatively less experienced folks) who tend to either accept the status quo or move on without challenging it. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good on you for planning to raise it with you manager but before you challenge it ensure that ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You go into that discussion having ruled out that this is not a case of right intentions but poor execution by that Manager (e.g maybe the concerned manager wants to create a culture where anyone can challenge anyone in the Team and open accountability but the way the frame their questions or their questioning technique is such that it comes across to you as toxic or abrasive to you personally ) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you start by articulating(to your Manager)  the impact that this kind of leadership style is having on you  (in terms of you thinking about quitting) rather than purely expressing your concerns about that Manager's behavior.  Personally I have framed my concerns in similar situations as ... &quot;when Person X does  ..it makes me feel  instead of  &quot; . This helps to create empathy towards your situation rather than just coming across as complaining about someone's behavior. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it goes well for you &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="879" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T09:49:04.667" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20765" CreationDate="2017-01-03T09:55:48.040" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;So right now, as an Engineer, I take a single task, mull over it for 4 weeks, make sure it contains no bugs at all and I am the best worker you ever had. Despite the fact that it took me 4 weeks to deliver such a simple task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, you have QA, who is wildly dependent on getting a crappy Engineer assigned. The crappier the engineer, the more rewards the QA will get. What happens if I have to test a product from a good Engineer? Will I be put on a performance improvement plan for not finding enough bugs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your metrics are arbitrary and less than useful. Your people are not worker drones, they use their intelligence to get their job done. So don't insult them with metrics that can easily be gamed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least start with what really matters: &lt;strong&gt;incidents in production&lt;/strong&gt;. Bugs that escaped both Engineers &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; QA. Try to minimize those and you will see that Engineers and QA are actually a team working towards the same end goal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it's debatable whether having metrics is worth it for intelligence workers. Nobody has found the right ones yet and the wrong ones can backfire easily. If you base anything on your KPIs (like praise or salary) be prepared that people will be clever enough to outsmart you on any of them. Then you are stuck with people that did their jobs, but look average on the metrics and people that gamed the system instead of doing a good job, but look great on your system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T09:55:48.040" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20760" CreationDate="2017-01-03T12:08:26.777" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could also treat this as valuable user feedback and try to channel it through the development team into the bug tracking system.&#xA; If there is a lot of issues raised, you may be bound to do this exclusively for a sprint or two. At the end you would have many smaller issues fixed and a clearer picture on the bigger ones. &#xA;Have those planned and prioritized by your PO perhaps together with the manager of your end users. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Continue development from that point with a much firmer understanding of your user's needs ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8594" LastEditorUserId="8594" LastEditDate="2017-01-03T12:14:39.850" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T12:14:39.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="77" CreationDate="2017-01-03T12:51:48.570" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Proactive - Anticipate risks, seek to resolve dependencies and risks before they derail the project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26276" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T12:51:48.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20771" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20772" CreationDate="2017-01-03T13:09:35.093" Score="1" ViewCount="409" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the differences (if any, but I assume some shall be) between the &quot;Needs Review&quot; and &quot;Review Needed&quot; issues statuses internally managed by JIRA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6Ds7o.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6Ds7o.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It increases difficulty when moving an issue between statuses to always have to remember which one is for what, so we thought to delete one of them. Will it have any negative outcomes in the future?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27104" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-01-03T14:18:21.960" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T15:26:04.043" Title="Difference between JIRA's internal &quot;Needs Review&quot; and &quot;Review Needed&quot; issues statuses?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20771" CreationDate="2017-01-03T15:26:04.043" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Tiago noted, these statuses were created by your company (note that the 'managed internally by JIRA Software' message is the default, and therefore highly misleading). As such, the answer to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] delete one of them. Will it have any negative outcomes in the future?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;becomes 'maybe.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on what your company has &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt; with the statuses. If possible, ask your JIRA admins what they have done with the statuses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that is not possible, you will have to look at all of the associated workflows of the status which you wish to delete, and check for any customized Post Functions for any transitions both going into and coming from the status-to-delete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't find any (or you find some and determine that it's still fine to delete the status), then I would suggest doing a mass-update of issues to change their status from the status-to-delete to the other status (do a search for issues via Issues-&gt;Search for Issues and then use Tools-&gt;Bulk Change).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T15:26:04.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20760" CreationDate="2017-01-03T16:50:16.873" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First you need to identify what the real problem is and help everyone understand it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Customers contacting developers directly in and of itself is not a problem.  Saying &quot;You guys shouldn't talk to each other because its not part of Scrum&quot; probably won't get you very far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it leading to too much context switching and lowering productivity?  Distracting the team?  Promoting hero mentality behaviors?  Making priorities unclear?  Those are all tangible problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the involved groups have an understanding of the problem, let them decide how to fix it.  Maybe its changing the email distro list or cancelling it, maybe its talking to the Call Center Manager like other posts suggest.  Only you and your teams will know the right answer since you are part of the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T16:50:16.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20760" CreationDate="2017-01-03T18:39:32.083" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master I coach my teams to respond to direct contact from users by saying something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;That is valuable feedback and I would be happy to work on this. If you could speak with the Product Owner and get this prioritised I'm sure we will start on it soon&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tone of this is very important. We want our customers and stakeholders to feel valued and listened to. Just telling them to &quot;go away&quot; or refusing to speak to them sends across the wrong message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is a process to follow and after hearing this response a few times they will soon realise it is quicker to speak directly to the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T18:39:32.083" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20760" CreationDate="2017-01-03T19:39:26.967" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you're right - in general, users should not be contacting developers directly. There may be some cases where it is appropriate for users to be working and communicating directly with the development team, but it's the exception rather than the rule. Generally, &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/20773/30&quot;&gt;WBW is right&lt;/a&gt; - figure out explicitly what the problem being caused by this direct contact is and be able to clearly state it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few things that need to happen here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, whoever is responsible for IT should restrict who can send things to the development distribution list. People who don't have a need to send things to the entire development team should not be able to send messages to it. This sounds like a configuration issue that should be resolved through whatever systems or services manage your distribution list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, the Scrum Master or the equivalent coach should be involved. The job of the person in this role is to understand the process that the team is following and educate all stakeholders on what the process is and why following this process is beneficial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you mention that the people sending emails are internal to the company, it is likely that they have access to internal address books or contact lists. If these people contact developers, developers should not spend significant time contacting or replying to these emails. If these communications are outside the team's process, the Product Owner and Scrum Master should be involved to (1) end these distractions and (2) take ownership of prioritizing and responding to user feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2017-11-13T14:31:19.920" LastActivityDate="2017-11-13T14:31:19.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5700" CreationDate="2017-01-05T07:50:44.713" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any field is driven with one's experience at work. Initially we all go by the books and the theoretical learning's we had, that is a stepping stone. But to achieve success one needs to be innovative, adopt techniques that work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A project manager is a &quot;Father and Mother&quot; when it comes to handling things.&#xA;Like a father injects discipline and Guidance in life and a Mother shows the light of how to achieve things and be sincere, a Project person needs to do the same, have discipline, sincerity and the vigour to close down on tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A project manager always needs to be aware of the client needs, their reactions so that internally the team is given the direction of the client requirements. &#xA;Plan the workflow for the team so that operationally there are no hickups or speed breakers.&#xA;Always be on the lookout, where things can be put on a fast track and timeline can be reduced, keeping in mind the resource load.&#xA;The biggest value add for an organization I've seen is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How fast you close projects, with how much resource utilization&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above two would help the company finance immensely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27119" LastEditorUserId="27119" LastEditDate="2017-01-10T10:47:55.913" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T10:47:55.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20777" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-05T08:26:35.977" Score="2" ViewCount="389" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a programmer using sharepoint, and I am the lead and the project manager since I do not have subordinates under me. My boss is non-technical and doesn't have much visibility in what I do and just base his review from the clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now my question is, how will I measure my efficiency against the small tasks/projects that clients give me. If these were the same compared to my previous job, wherein the projects lasts for months and divided into iterations/sprint (Agile) then I can easily have an estimate and start from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the problem now is that, there is no methodology or framework, they just give me the details of what they want and we start from there. Basically here's a flow of what I do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1. Receive request from client - create a site with this and that&#xA;2. I ask questions/clarifications&#xA;3. Client answers the question&#xA;4. I implement the requirement (most of the time it only takes a day or two) and will advise the client once it is completed.&#xA;5. Client will check if OK&#xA;6. Client may comeback after few days if there are updates/changes&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically this is the flow of what I do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how will I measure my efficiency? because what I understand is I am very efficient/productive because I complete the requests within hours or few days and we do not reach a point wherein they need to follow up the status of the requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27120" LastActivityDate="2017-02-19T14:29:48.570" Title="How to measure efficiency of tasks for a very small project" Tags="&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;&lt;measurement&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20777" CreationDate="2017-01-05T10:12:24.460" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you mentioned you are familiar with Scrum and Agile Methodologies. Let's treat the current workflow that you follow for building the websites as a Story of a Sprint. While you are in discussion with the Customer regarding a new task, see if the task could be broken into Smaller units of work. In case possible create a Trello board and use it as a discussion point with the Customer and your boss. Please take care of the following Points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Treat a individual task as a single Story Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure to give Business value and Story Point to the task (or&#xA;Story, as I would like it to be called)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure DOD (Definition of Done) is defined for the Story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would give you a data about the tasks with a total Business value done in a Months time and additionally you would be able to get your Velocity for a month. This would provide you a data to present to your management about your efficiency. It could be treated as your efficiency Matrix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, work to educate your boss, he many not be technically sound but must definitely understand the complexity of a task. This would in turn add value to you as a person and improve your reputation in the organisation as a Problem Solver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13556" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T10:12:24.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20777" CreationDate="2017-01-05T11:36:17.147" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;you've answered your own question, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;there is no methodology or framework, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is no methodology, then there is no way to measure efficiency. First impose some structure on the  task (requirements gathering), then you can measure the task, then you can optimize the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T11:36:17.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="77" CreationDate="2017-01-05T16:22:20.623" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Communication&lt;/strong&gt; : ability to communicate within &lt;em&gt;ALL levels&lt;/em&gt; of an organization. That is a skill this is not given to everybody, adapting your speech to the audience ;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Leadership&lt;/strong&gt; : PM is a leadership role, it is well known that someone with no leadership in that role will not go far. You have to be strategic, pick your battles carefully and identify the right people to go to war with you ;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Respect&lt;/strong&gt; : respect for you and everyone around you. Respect can and will lead you a long way. You don't get the buy-in from everyone around the room by yelling at them. I always say : &quot;&lt;em&gt;treat others like you'd want to be treated&lt;/em&gt;&quot; and it has always worked very well so far ;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Trust&lt;/strong&gt; : &lt;em&gt;Knowledge&lt;/em&gt; in your area helps a lot to gain &lt;em&gt;trust&lt;/em&gt;, if your technical resources know you understand their language, they will &lt;em&gt;trust&lt;/em&gt; you and therefore help you deliver the project on time and in scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12022" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T16:22:20.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20782" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20784" CreationDate="2017-01-05T16:33:49.080" Score="6" ViewCount="3159" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the values of the Agile Manifesto is &lt;em&gt;&quot;working software over comprehensive documentation&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.  And yet there is a need for requirements to be documented.  If a feature developed 6 months ago is being altered, I (as a developer) need a place to go to to reference the existing requirements.  Documented requirements are obviously important for QA resources as well.  Also, if a question arises about a particular requirement, there should be a single location one can reference for clarification rather than requiring me to parse through my code or a string of emails to see how things where built.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Agile teams I've been on have all used an online management (eg. Rally, Jira) where requirements can be defined under each user story as acceptance criteria.  While I find this to be an extremely functional solution/location for requirements documentation since you're constantly using the tool to move the story along, it seems a little informal.  On the most recent project I worked on, the project management team maintained a BRD (Business Requirements Document) which contained all system requirements in a single document.  On this particular project, the BRD was used for sign-off from the client on what was going to be developed and was also reviewed by my (consulting) company's management team to ensure everything was completed.  The issue with BRDs in my experience is that they're verbose to the point of unreadability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Agile framework does not concern itself with defining a specific means of documentation, but is there a single best practice for documenting requirements on an Agile development project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27126" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T20:36:44.993" Title="Documenting requirements on an Agile project" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20782" CreationDate="2017-01-05T20:00:08.700" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Agile thinking suggest the best practise is to document just enough. If you need to document something for a good reason, document it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In software development each project has its own needs, there is not a single definite source of truth. For some teams or projects automated test-cases are enough documentation. Some need a more formal way like user-stories in a workflow system, instead just on index-cards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BRD's do sound like over-documenting and a way to have command and control over the development team by the client, but if it works for the project and team its not perse anti-agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Agile framework does not concern itself with defining a specific&#xA;  means of documentation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most Agile frameworks do not specify anything, except to be value driven and work in iterations and of-course the other &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;principles&lt;/a&gt;. Overall its a mindset. Frameworks that do specify everything are focusing on &lt;em&gt;processes and tools&lt;/em&gt; over &lt;em&gt;individuals and interactions&lt;/em&gt;. Question how Agile that framework really is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find a way of working that fits your industry, company, project or product. Inspect and adapt continuously, this way you will find the optimal way of working eventually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T20:00:08.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20782" CreationDate="2017-01-05T20:36:44.993" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three agile principles that are at play:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Working software over comprehensive documentation&quot; from &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.&quot; This is one of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Principles behind the Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemodeling.com/essays/singleSourceInformation.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Single Source of Information&lt;/a&gt; from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilemodeling.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Modeling&lt;/a&gt;, which brings together various techniques and principles for designing and documenting software in an agile environment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maintaining requirements in a tool like Rally or JIRA in the form of user stories + acceptance criteria and simultaneously in a requirements document is inherently not agile. You are creating excess documentation, failing to maximize work not done, and you have multiple sources of information that need to be maintained (and may become out of sync with each other).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only solution is to maintain your requirements in one location. If your team is using a tool now and some stakeholders aren't comfortable with that tool, you have two options. The first option is that your team can adjust its process to make all of the stakeholders comfortable. The second option is that your ScrumMaster or Agile Coach can educate the stakeholders as to the value &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is nothing that says that an Agile project can't create and maintain a requirements document in the form of a spreadsheet or Word document and work from that. After all, good requirements (among other things) specify importance to allow prioritization, are verifiable and can be linked to the information needed to test them (even if it's not all available in one tool or document), and are traceable to other work (likely be ID). If you have a requirements specification, your team can still trace work tasks, test cases, or acceptance criteria to items in the BRD via the unique requirement identifiers, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T20:36:44.993" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5231" CreationDate="2017-01-06T07:15:24.440" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MU-fo5FlBbcz3R-Eg38lFtcAr5s_k2ynpd9ew0aButs/edit?usp=sharing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here's a great template&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://goberoi.com/on-writing-product-specs-5ca697b992fd#.5stjy3h9j&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;And a medium article based on the above template&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27127" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T07:15:24.440" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20786" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-06T19:14:58.283" Score="0" ViewCount="165" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for a bit of guidance on the best practices for using TFS as a work management system in a time-bound implementation project. Let us assume we begin with the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/docs/work/guidance/scrum-process&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum workflow&lt;/a&gt; and our project is following a hybrid Scrum/Waterfall model (for a moment, ignore the controversy that statement may create). Assume that you have full rights to customize the TFS project area as you please and that all features in TFS 2015 product suite are available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scrum workflow has work items and PBIs and familiar concepts for code deliverable creation and defect management. The first assumption I would like to vet is that these work items are most appropriate for code creation and deployment. This may be a bad assumption given that Task for example is fairly abstract, so please correct me if this is wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let us then assume that in addition to the software product there are a number of other deliverables which must be produced for the project to be a success, but that these deliverables are &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; deployable as part of the software:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Design Documentation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Standards Documentation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;'Change Requests'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Socialized &quot;Key Decisions&quot; which may dictate design patterns and strategies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each having its own logical set of steps to progress towards its own definition of done (reviews, signoffs etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When is it appropriate to put items like this into TFS as a custom work item definition&lt;/strong&gt; and what are the trade offs? Ordinarily these may be handled as line items in a MS Project plan. Naively, I am interested in putting these into TFS instead of MS Project because then TFS work items can be the single source of truth for deliverable progress, instead of having to keep a project plan in sync with TFS or vice versa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone with experience customizing TFS weigh in on the pros and cons of using TFS for managing deliverable tracking when the deliverables are not coded deployables, and creating custom work items for those deliverable types?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27137" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T19:39:58.117" Title="TFS Work Item Customization for Deliverable Tracking" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20786" CreationDate="2017-01-06T19:39:58.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't specialize the customization of TFS to this level. Even the pretty detailed CMMI template doesn't detail out to this level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can match any deliverable to a Product Backlog Item in scrum if you have to, or capture the action to update it as a Task under another Product Backlog Item. If a specific document always needs to be created or updated, capture it in the Definition of Done and if needed as a task under each product Backlog Item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A change request also translated to a Product Backlog Item. Or, if the Product Backlog Item hasn't been actioned upon before, can simply be captured by changing the original item. TFS will track history, so it can be deduced that it had a previous intent before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Key decisions would be reflected as Acceptance Criteria on the PBI, these need to be taken into account while developing and may later be converted into a task it testcase during actual implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TFS is very bad at tracking reviews and signoffs. It isn't meant for such things. It would require a lot of customization to automatically clear signoffs and reviews when changes occur. A tool like &lt;a href=&quot;https://smartbear.com/product/collaborator/overview/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SmartBear Collaborator&lt;/a&gt; can add proper review and signoff features if needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7393" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T19:39:58.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20018" CreationDate="2017-01-07T04:58:58.030" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;SeekWisdom is correct. You need to use work vs. duration to determine the dates. You will need to right click in the Heading line and add the field Work. Duration will auto calculate the work divided by your resources Working Time to sum the days (or hours depending on your calculation choice).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26391" LastActivityDate="2017-01-07T04:58:58.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20793" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20794" CreationDate="2017-01-08T11:08:25.210" Score="9" ViewCount="2124" Body="&lt;p&gt;Specifically, if we assume that the team spend a day on Sprint Planning using the 4-8 hours of planning for each week of our sprint formula then that doesn't really seem like enough time for the team to flesh out implementation details. And should the entire delivery team really be involved in that discussion? At a sprint planning meeting we will have the Product Owner, Scrum Master, Developers and Testers (Maybe even a Business Analyst or 2). Do we really want to go deep on Dev with all of these other team members burning hours? Or should this be discussed in a separate developers only meeting? It just doesn't appear that Scrum provides for this? Am I missing something? How is your team dealing with this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27142" LastActivityDate="2017-01-14T17:14:36.670" Title="Is there Scrum ceremony for planning Technical Details on an Agile Project?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20793" CreationDate="2017-01-08T12:03:43.650" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: Scrum doesn't provide for a lot of things, you need to figure out a way that works for your team and project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the planning meeting (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-planning&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Scrum guide&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Development Team &lt;strong&gt;usually&lt;/strong&gt; starts by designing the system and the&#xA;  work needed to convert the Product Backlog into a working product&#xA;  Increment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What designing the system means could be open for discussion. Personally I think the planning meeting should result in an achievable Sprint backlog. This means that each story should be clear enough to be estimated and the team pickups only so much stories that they can complete in the cycle. To let the team estimate they should have a short discussion about how to technically implement it, but not 100% of the details have to be clear at that moment, just enough to estimate it. We try to minimise waste for non-technical roles, but still discuss enough so they have an idea how to team will try to tackle the task. The goal is knowledge sharing and shared focus, not a 100% detailed Sprint plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer your first question: Yes, everyone should be involved in the discussion. Everyone who will do a part of the work should estimate the whole story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More details during the Sprint:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the Sprint our teams starts each story with an &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://less.works/less/technical-excellence/architecture-design.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;architecture and design&lt;/a&gt;&quot; task, this is a session which results in a design and technical sub-tasks. Including design, coding, but also testing tasks. This is the moment the actual detailed design becomes clear based on the higher-level acceptance criteria noted down in the Sprint planning. After this session we &lt;a href=&quot;http://brainslink.com/2013/01/agile-teams-swarm-to-greatness/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;swarm&lt;/a&gt; to complete the user story as quick as possible. The sessions length depend on complexity of the story at hand. I would say this is a dev-team group session, but sometimes if the complexity is low a single person could prepare everything with a short introduction to the rest of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now it is possible that during the Sprint in such a design session the team notices that they under-estimated. Challenge the team to build only what is really necessary, apply &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilenutshell.com/yagni&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the YAGNI principle&lt;/a&gt; and prevent over-engineering. If this happens often, inspect and adapt, maybe you need to take more time during the Sprint planning meeting. Discuss this in a retrospective and let the team decide how to experiment with improving this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More information&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the major Dutch web-shops with around 20 Scrum teams (in 2013) did experiments with the length of Sprint planning meetings to get and idea what level of detail is good enough. They told me that doing Sprint planning meetings in 15 minutes (yes just 15 minutes) lead to relative the same average estimations as 4 hours would. Now I think this will lead to a bit of more discussion during the Sprint, but it highlights that details are not the most important thing of a Sprint planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason Scrum does not detail everything for you is that there is not a single truth for process in Software development. It is different per product, team, company or industry. What the Scrum framework does is to help you inspect and adapt to find your fit the quickest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2017-01-08T13:58:27.707" LastActivityDate="2017-01-08T13:58:27.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20795" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-08T20:09:06.703" Score="-1" ViewCount="98" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a current project a lot of prototyping happens. This produces a lot of source code which I like to remove. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time I would like to be able to access this code at a later date, For explaining why things have been done a certain way or reuse in other projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also want to stay light on tools, so I'm looking for processes and templates that I can use to store this information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm storing my source code in git.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="747" LastEditorUserId="27147" LastEditDate="2017-01-11T14:44:24.713" LastActivityDate="2017-01-11T14:44:24.713" Title="How to archive source code used for prototyping" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;&lt;deliverables&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20796" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-08T23:29:55.100" Score="14" ViewCount="6263" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master for my team cancels the daily stand up if we have another meeting that day, like Backlog Refinement (formerly Backlog Grooming) or some other planning meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think it's a good idea, but can't find any precedents online. Is canceling the stand-up like this a good idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27146" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2017-01-13T21:15:19.557" LastActivityDate="2018-06-07T16:12:46.563" Title="Should we cancel the Daily Stand-Up if we have another meeting during the day?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20796" CreationDate="2017-01-08T23:58:59.790" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why would you &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to? The daily stand-up meeting should only take five to fifteen minutes, depending on the size of the Scrum Team. If it is taking longer than that, then that's a separate issue you should probably be looking into.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; only take five minutes, then are your developers really so hard-up for time in the day that the presence of a single other meeting removes their ability to spend five minutes for the stand-up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-01-08T23:58:59.790" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20795" CreationDate="2017-01-09T02:19:56.113" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just store it in git, in a separate location. You're not likely to have capacity issues because of source code required for prototyping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you do want to &lt;em&gt;exclude&lt;/em&gt; it from statistics as it may not confirm to strict coding standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27147" LastEditorUserId="27147" LastEditDate="2017-01-09T04:01:33.830" LastActivityDate="2017-01-09T04:01:33.830" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20639" CreationDate="2017-01-09T08:28:36.850" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on the type of project we use different approaches, some examples below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the project is improving internal efficiency, then it's very easy to calculate ROI. The opportunity cost will be then a function of product value and time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the project is about updating obsolete solutions, we use risk-based approach. The opportunity cost will be then a function of [growing] risk and time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the project relates to regulations compliance, we typically use a simplified approach, namely we consider the risk of being incompliant to always overweigh the release overhead cost (we work in medical industry, being incompliant there means huge direct and indirect losses) - then we release as soon as the regulation in question comes into force.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the project is related to external customers, then we can involve them in the evaluation exercise, since it's not only our cost / value, but also theirs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27144" LastActivityDate="2017-01-09T08:28:36.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20376" CreationDate="2017-01-09T09:17:47.910" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest to consider managing crews as separate resources and assigning tasks that can be performed by either crew to both crews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See below a sample project with task assignment and resource utilization (I used 5/7 schedule for the sake of simplicity).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DnJ4e.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DnJ4e.png&quot; alt=&quot;Task assignment&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Resource utilization:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OAs34.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OAs34.png&quot; alt=&quot;Resource utilization&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;[upd]: At first glance this may seem not what you want (project will try to schedule tasks so that they do not overlap =&gt; could seem that no real parallel work is done), but if you also set proper constraints you will achieve what you need.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See a small &lt;a href=&quot;https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_iohbSnQZEtU2IzdWp3UHpUTEE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt; here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27144" LastEditorUserId="27144" LastEditDate="2017-01-10T08:12:24.100" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T08:12:24.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20796" CreationDate="2017-01-09T11:46:48.433" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The stand-up in Scrum has a distinct purpose. As do the other meetings defined by Scrum. There is no overlap between their purposes, so having another meeting is not a good reason to cancel the stand-up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What could be a good idea though is to have both meeting directly following each other. In other words: shift the time of the stand-up to immediately before or after the other meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This helps in cutting down on the time &quot;wasted&quot; to change contexts: the time you need to &quot;come up&quot; from your work to go to a meeting and the time you need after the meeting to get back into the work you were doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6062" LastActivityDate="2017-01-09T11:46:48.433" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20796" CreationDate="2017-01-09T17:49:03.560" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master I have occasionally cancelled the stand-up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I only do this when the team asks me to cancel it &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; most of the day ahead is full of meetings so there is no need to synchronise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a team asked me to cancel the stand-up for just one meeting I would argue strongly against it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2017-01-09T17:49:03.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20796" CreationDate="2017-01-09T18:47:27.623" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master for my team cancels the daily stand up if we have another meeting that day...Is canceling the stand-up like this a good idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like many things, the answer is &quot;maybe.&quot; Generically, the answer should be &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt;; the daily standups should be held regardless of whatever else you may have on the calendar that day. However, there are certainly extenuating circumstances based on &lt;strong&gt;whether the &lt;em&gt;purpose&lt;/em&gt; of the ceremony has been obviated.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A list of examples and some sample decision-making criteria are provided below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Different Ceremonies; Different Purposes&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Hold Standups to Coordinate Work Increments&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The daily standup is a meeting that enables the Scrum Team to coordinate the current day's work increment. So, the utility value of the ceremony is dependent on whether or not there is a daily work increment, or whether status updates and blockers are relevant to the 24-hour period in progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, if there is work in progress or work to be done, you should &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; cancel the daily standup even if you have other ceremonies that day. However, there may be some legitimate exceptions. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have your daily standup at 9:00am every day, but your Sprint Review is at 9:00am on Fridays, then there's no point in holding the standup as there will be no work increment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have your daily standup at 10:00am every day, and your Sprint Review is at 2:00pm on Fridays, then there probably &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; value in holding the standup to discuss:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The status of the previous day's stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint Backlog items related to the current day's Sprint Review.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any tasks that must be coordinated in advance of the Sprint Review demos that day.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any blockers that affect preparing for the Sprint Review.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any tasks, blockers, or issues that should be added to the list for the Sprint Retrospective.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Don't Hijack Other Ceremonies&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you shouldn't cancel the standup just because you have other meetings. You don't want to hijack the focus of Sprint Planning, Backlog Refinement, Sprint Reviews, or Sprint Retrospectives to address things that belong in the daily standup. Doing so is usually a false economy that practitioners implement under the mistaken notion that skipping the meeting reduces overhead. In fact, it is likely to have the &lt;em&gt;opposite&lt;/em&gt; effect, as team members fail to coordinate or must reimplement the standup (badly) outside of a formal ceremony.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Guidelines for Choosing Slack Time Over &quot;Efficiency&quot;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every meeting should have a well-defined purpose and an expected outcome. The purpose of the standup is for coordinating the current day's work increment &lt;em&gt;for the whole team&lt;/em&gt;. Other meetings may focus on specific tasks, engineering issues, problem solving, and so forth, but they are not a substitute for the team-based dependency coordination that is the &lt;em&gt;raison d'être&lt;/em&gt; for the daily standup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if your Sprints are structured in such a way that there is no increment to be worked on that day, and no dependencies that need to be resolved or statused from the previous day, you should consider replacing that day's standup with the appropriate ceremony. For example, with Sprints that end on a Friday and start on a Monday:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you hold your stand-ups at 9:00am every day, you might hold the standup before Sprint Planning even though there's no work increment, allowing team members to coordinate about administrivia or intra-team action items resulting from a Sprint Retrospective.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you hold your stand-ups during core hours, you might replace the usual 11:00am standup with Sprint Planning on Mondays in order to give team members some slack time to do things like catch up on emails, update desktop tools, or other personal overhead or technical debt.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key determinant is whether there is something to be coordinated within the team or not. Don't make the mistake of trading essential slack time for the false economies of the &lt;em&gt;100% utilization fallacy&lt;/em&gt; or a &quot;savings&quot; in meeting overhead that actually reduces effective communication within the team. Those are sure-fire ways to reduce the overall effectiveness of your Scrum implementation, so just don't. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-04-23T16:28:28.740" LastActivityDate="2018-04-23T16:28:28.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20639" CreationDate="2017-01-09T21:43:56.220" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A slightly different approach would be to use Earned Value Management -  &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_value_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_value_management&lt;/a&gt; .  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While EVM has gone out of style for being unwieldy and hard to define when value is earned (especially in software), you don't have to use every formula and data point.  If you and your stakeholders can agree that value is earned when the software is shipped, then you can track the ongoing spend of building software (the Actual Cost) against the Earned Value of released software.  That will show the increasing AC against a EV that flatlines until you do a release.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also do scenarios of including the effort to perform a release, and comparing the differing release sizes versus when value has been earned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26779" LastActivityDate="2017-01-09T21:43:56.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20744" CreationDate="2017-01-10T09:44:17.130" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is possible that you are looking for the rollup functionality. This will be by default ON for your summary tasks + here's a way how to enable it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 1:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/57gPH.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/57gPH.png&quot; alt=&quot;Select task Information&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qesdF.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qesdF.png&quot; alt=&quot;Click Rollup&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the only thing left is to roll up resource names. You can use a macro from &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25889766/ms-project-2013-display-resources-on-summary-tasks&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Sub RollupResourceNames()&#xA;&#xA;    Dim tsk As Task&#xA;    Dim list As String&#xA;    Dim key As Variant&#xA;&#xA;    For Each tsk In ActiveProject.Tasks&#xA;        If tsk.Summary Then&#xA;            Dim col As New Collection&#xA;            Set col = GetChildResourceAssignments(tsk)&#xA;            list = vbNullString&#xA;            For Each key In col&#xA;                list = list &amp;amp; &quot;, &quot; &amp;amp; key&#xA;            Next&#xA;            If Len(list) &amp;gt; 2 Then&#xA;                list = Mid$(list, 3)&#xA;            End If&#xA;            tsk.Text1 = list&#xA;        End If&#xA;    Next tsk&#xA;&#xA;End Sub&#xA;&#xA;Function GetChildResourceAssignments(parent As Task) As Collection&#xA;&#xA;    Dim col As New Collection&#xA;&#xA;    Dim child As Task&#xA;    Dim asn As Assignment&#xA;    For Each child In parent.OutlineChildren&#xA;        If child.Summary Then&#xA;            Dim col2 As New Collection&#xA;            Set col2 = GetChildResourceAssignments(child)&#xA;            Dim key As Variant&#xA;            For Each key In col2&#xA;                On Error Resume Next&#xA;                col.Add key, key&#xA;            Next key&#xA;        End If&#xA;        For Each asn In child.Assignments&#xA;            On Error Resume Next&#xA;            col.Add asn.Resource.Name, asn.Resource.Name&#xA;            On Error GoTo 0&#xA;        Next asn&#xA;    Next child&#xA;&#xA;    Set GetChildResourceAssignments = col&#xA;&#xA;End Function&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27144" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:41:23.897" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T19:50:00.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20795" CreationDate="2017-01-10T10:11:51.400" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's code, so use source control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would hope that source control is being used regardless of whether it is a prototype or not. Personally I'd recommend using source control even for &quot;proof of concept&quot; and other quick test projects to figure out how to use or do something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As source control software is essentially an archive with version control, archiving your prototypes then simply becomes a matter of organization within the source control software that you use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the source control software, you could use a separate repository, a separate solution / project group, a separate folder, or any combination of these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6062" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T10:11:51.400" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5700" CreationDate="2017-01-10T13:27:48.007" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use the data you are accumulating to have numbers on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;team velocity: how much can a team commit to in a given period of time?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;team availability: how many resources do you have available in order to deliver a product? Plan ahead so you get no surprises down the line&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;be aware of how your team members usually estimate their tasks and adjust those estimates them when they over/under estimate; this means you should know the people, not just the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically all this &quot;documentation gathering&quot; is priceless in giving you the data you need to plan ahead, assess risks, estimate, get to know your people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27025" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T13:27:48.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20795" CreationDate="2017-01-10T14:43:53.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One option is to use git's branching functionality. When you run one of these prototypes, do it in a branch (like a &lt;a href=&quot;https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Branching-Branching-Workflows&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;topic branch&lt;/a&gt;). For most of these, they would then just sit in their own little branches, separate from the main/development branch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you decide to keep and integrate the prototype code into the production code, all you need to do then is to merge the topic branch into the main/development branch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T14:43:53.693" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20809" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-10T15:27:21.753" Score="1" ViewCount="343" Body="&lt;p&gt;In researching the &lt;a href=&quot;https://dzone.com/articles/100-utilization-myth&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;100% Utilization Fallacy&lt;/a&gt;, I came across the suggestion to optimize for flow efficiency (making sure the workflow for each individual customer/project/task/what have you is as quick as possible), rather than resource utilization (making sure everyone always has work to do).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, how does one actually accomplish this? What does one mandate? What does one measure? What does one avoid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-01-11T09:37:36.230" Title="How to optimize for Flow Efficiency over Resource Utilization?" Tags="&lt;resources&gt;&lt;performance&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12274" CreationDate="2017-01-11T03:46:04.167" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two issues to the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coordinating between multiple teams which can be achieved with scrum of scrums as discussed in some of the answers above. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The other one is the stand up meeting should be kept short and crisp otherwise people lose interest over time.&#xA;In the case with multiple teams or even a team with reasonably more number of people, stand ups can be effectively facilitated with the help of a tool.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Wizergos&lt;/strong&gt; is one such software which will help your team to have more &lt;a href=&quot;https://wizergos.com/blog/standout-at-standups/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;engaging short stand ups&lt;/a&gt; with following features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. It fetches the required data (mostly tasks accomplished and are scheduled for next meeting) for each person and data is visible to all attendees.&#xA;        Only human intervention is required if somebody is blocked on anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b. It creates the automated minutes at the end.&#xA;   Each attendee gets notified with the summarised minutes.&#xA;   Also the scrum master gets the list of blocked items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c. A timer to finish the meeting in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the above features , even a stand up for 15 people will take hardly 15-20 mins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.wizergos.net/static/index.html#/createaccount&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;register&lt;/a&gt; and start using it for your team for 30 day free trial period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27160" LastEditorUserId="27160" LastEditDate="2017-01-17T07:56:53.910" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T07:56:53.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20809" CreationDate="2017-01-11T09:37:36.230" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on the information you provided:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How does one actually accomplish this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In context of projects I suggest to start with optimizing the schedule for lead time (as opposed to minimum cost). Minimizing the lead time is a &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmknowledgecenter.com/dynamic_scheduling/baseline/resource-constrained-project-scheduling-regular-and-non-regular-scheduling-objectives&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;regular scheduling objective&lt;/a&gt;&quot; and as such can be scheduled using rule-based approach (simply put - easier).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmknowledgecenter.com/node/263&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;simple priority rules&lt;/a&gt; you can create resource-feasible schedules, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmknowledgecenter.com/sites/default/files/files/Animation_Serial.mov&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here is a simple video&lt;/a&gt; with &quot;boxes&quot; to illustrate the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What does one measure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the main optimization criterion is the lead time, I would measure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time between project/task/order etc. start and end - as the main metric to optimize.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Wait time&quot; vs. &quot;Work time&quot; - to get a better understanding of the optimization potential.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Depending on the nature of projects/tasks/orders I would get a more deep dive into &quot;wait&quot; and &quot;work&quot; to understand their structure, reasons etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What does one avoid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With overoptimizing for lead time, costs might get out of control. Having this risk I would make sure I establish some sort of control over costs to keep them reasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27144" LastActivityDate="2017-01-11T09:37:36.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20815" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20849" CreationDate="2017-01-11T10:04:53.887" Score="1" ViewCount="104" Body="&lt;p&gt;I managed the development of a kind of e-market place with some elements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;App for buyers (anyone): &#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Android app&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;IOS app&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Website for buyers (anyone) to sell products &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Website platform  for sellers (shop only): CMS-CRM-ERP&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;App for sellers (shop only):&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Android app&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;IOS app for sellers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Website platform for intern marketer team: CMS-CRM-ERP &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I use Scrum for so many platforms which are connected? Do I have to separate each element as a different project? How to control the connection between them? Same stories or duplicate? And so on...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27167" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-01-11T14:41:53.390" LastActivityDate="2017-01-15T14:52:43.433" Title="Use Scrum for multiple linked projects" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20816" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-11T11:21:38.820" Score="0" ViewCount="70" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Scenario&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few years ago, I managed to (pretty much) cut out any paper work from my life and all my work is digital now. I work as a contractor web developer and have several projects on the go at once. I usually work remotely for clients in London whilst travelling around the world. In order to do this more efficiently, I need to continue working to streamline my project management systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Structure&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have usually tried structuring files/tasks related to projects by priority, and by whether the asset still needs to change in any way (e.g. being ticked off on a todo list), or if it no longer needs to 'change' in which case it is 'filed' away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have usually used a system of 3 for this, e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Top: needs to be done asap&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Med: something that can wait for now&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Low: something which can be filed away&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like this works pretty well for me, as it is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.visualthinkingmagic.com/rule-of-three&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;often easier for one to think in 3s&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;However, the challenge I always face is the one presented by how dispersed digitally everything is these days.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;In the past&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the 'olden days' (before computers) I might have had one (physical) project folder for each of the projects I was working on. Using the same way of thinking, I could potentially use a system like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Top: work is kept outside any physical project folder because it needs to be right there in front of me on my 'desktop' because it is urgent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Med: work that needs to be done for the project, but isn't so urgent and can be 'out of sight', maybe slotted into a project folder at the front.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Low: Information about the project which can now be filed away in the relevant project folder.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Now&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nowadays, a project seems to looks more like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Top: Priority tasks in Google Tasks, priority project tasks in Asana/JIRA highlighted with a tag or something, priority browser 'tabs' on my bookmarks bar, priority emails starred in my inbox, priority files on my desktop, priority notes in a 'main' section in onenote.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Med: Medium project tasks in a backlog in Asana/JIRA, medium tasks in Google tasks before being moved to Asana (easy to add on the go and offline on my phone), medium priority emails in a project related folder in my inbox, medium priority files in project folders on my desktop (aliases to them actually), medium priority browser tabs in project bookmark folders. Medium priority 'notes' somewhere I just don't know anymore with them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Low: Notes filed away in onenote, files filed away in project folders, browser bookmarks filed away in project folders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This drives me mad and sometimes I lose concentration and focus because my brain just cant decide where it needs to 'look' next. It is almost like there is no 'centralised' place to look for the priorities for each project. And no good overall management system for managing how much resource should be applied to each project and in what priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Questions&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a flaw in my thinking and structuring here, or do other people have this problem too?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Am I just 'digitally hoarding' and trying to micromanage too much?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Am I trying to squeeze everything into one system which just doesn't work (the 3 rule)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does anyone have any groundbreaking suggestions or good tool recommendations?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why hasn't someone designed the 'perfect project management tool' yet (this is a joke question because I know this will look different depending on the organisation (or maybe there is a 'core' system which would work for any organisation that could have various plugins bolted in?))&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that good separation allows me to focus a lot better, e.g. I have a separate login for my personal stuff and a separate login for my work stuff, which is so so helpful for my concentration, and I would love to be able to open one 'view' and see everything needed for a selected project right in front of my at once (or at least the 'top' priorities).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, I love that there is a project management Stack Exchange site!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20502" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-03-12T19:43:04.537" Title="How to solve the problem of assets being so 'digitally dispersed' across many platforms" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;process-improvement&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20815" CreationDate="2017-01-11T14:34:33.947" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are numerous ways of slicing this answer but fundamentally you need to ask the question of yourself; &lt;strong&gt;is each of those platform elements a separate project or are they all linked to a common project which serves a common user or set of users and, crucially, how many developments teams do you have working on the things to be done?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My limited assessment is that you are discussing a single backlog of work which should be divided into Themes, Epics and User Stories.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find a more detailed explanation here:  &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/stories-epics-and-themes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/stories-epics-and-themes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;User Stories&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A user story is simply something a user wants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User stories can and often are part of a larger collection of functionality which we refer to as Epics&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Epics&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Scrum epic is a large user story.  Similar to how a single movie can be an Action movie or a Romance movie&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Themes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Finally, “theme” is a collection of user stories. We could put a rubber band around that group of stories I wrote about monthly reporting and we'd call that a “theme.”   For instance all James Bond movies are part of a theme. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Projects or Teams&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have a healthy and well understood backlog, with some detailed stories and a simple categorization system for Themes and Epics you will be in a great position to understand how many development teams you need and how they should be structured. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The beauty of having a backlog is that teams can dip in and out of the themes and epics based on business value and priority rather than having to deliver entire functional areas.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find more information here but understanding the basics of Scrum will go a long way to helping you answer your own question which is the nature of the Agile values and the iterative frameworks within which we work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Self Organisation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A key principle of the Scrum framework is that of self-organizing team which has autonomy into it's own working structure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.infoq.com/news/2015/02/establishing-self-organized-team&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.infoq.com/news/2015/02/establishing-self-organized-team&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So ask the team how they think they should be structured. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="10462" LastEditDate="2017-01-11T14:58:35.913" LastActivityDate="2017-01-11T14:58:35.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20816" CreationDate="2017-01-11T14:54:31.803" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try using the bullet journal method in Onenote. There is a good intro to the method using Evernote here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/use-evernote-bullet-journal/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/use-evernote-bullet-journal/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and a sample Onenote implementation here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.lifewire.com/use-onenote-as-a-task-manager-notepad-and-journal-2378025&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.lifewire.com/use-onenote-as-a-task-manager-notepad-and-journal-2378025&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17093" LastActivityDate="2017-01-11T14:54:31.803" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20076" CreationDate="2017-01-11T15:35:24.480" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The approach you are writing about is called Pairwise comparison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm having trouble remembering the number system and how to rate the tasks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many ways to rank the tasks. The simplest would be to just use 0-0.5-1 rank (lose-tie-win).&#xA;A more complex way would be to create a list of comparison criteria, assign them weight and then make a weighted comparison against each criterion. You can find an &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.isixsigma.com/tools-templates/templates/prioritization-matrix-made-easier-template/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;example matrix&lt;/a&gt; for this approach &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.isixsigma.com/tools-templates/templates/prioritization-matrix-made-easier-template/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to take into account that effort to make a pairwise comparison will grow as n&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;, where n is the number of tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27144" LastActivityDate="2017-01-11T15:35:24.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20816" CreationDate="2017-01-11T15:57:36.783" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The type of Project Management normally discussed in &lt;a href=&quot;http://pm.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;PM Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt; focuses more on organizational level projects that involve many stakeholders contributing to project tasks. It sounds like your question is more of a personal organizational question -- however, I can see your rationale in its relationship to Project Management (because it's how you're managing your projects).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly, you have stakeholders and contributors on your projects and communication within and between everyone involved is critical for how you deliver a satisfactory, high-value solution. This perfectly parallels organizational project management. But as an individual contractor, you have a set of challenges presented to you, such as each client may communicate requirements and participate using their own (different) in-house tools/resources (which may force you to normalize those requirements into your own system of tools). At the end, your clients will really only care about two things: did you deliver what you promised for the cost you promised and how much (subjective) value did you provide to the client along the way (i.e. how easy was it to work with you, translate their requirements into a working web solution, do the aesthetics of the work match their vision, and are their end-users happy with the provided solution). All reasonable and all match the goals of organizational project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of us, working independently or within a group, needs to develop a personal set of habits that allows us to work efficiently and matches &quot;how our minds work&quot;. The group-supplied tools usually drives &quot;how&quot; the group organizes work to facilitate &quot;how&quot; the group communicates the work flow between them. Still, each person has to use their own tricks or habits to keep their tasks flowing. It's only when the results of those tasks have to be passed along to another co-worker that the group-supplied tool becomes important. It sounds like you don't have this constraint of the group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said all that, there will never be a single tool or management system that will solve your problem (or even solve a group's PM problem) because just as &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_politics_is_local&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;all politics are local&quot;&lt;/a&gt; all workflows are personal. It's how your mind works and organizes bits of information. I've changed my own style and habits many times over the years from files/folders on the desktop to sticky-notes (real and software) to using to-do lists to flagging emails in MS Outlook to Excel spreadsheets. They all work -- to a degree. When they start getting crufty, that's when it's time to re-look at what's working for me at the time and overhaul my habits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the questions you have are a perfect example of self-examination of your habits and trying to overhaul them. I wish I had the magic solution for you (and for everyone else, because I'd make a ton of money!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21791" LastActivityDate="2017-01-11T15:57:36.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20822" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20823" CreationDate="2017-01-11T20:00:42.657" Score="0" ViewCount="279" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have project, where milestones are overlapping each other, like so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt; ---- Specifications Milestone ---- (Start: 01 Jan, End 20 Jan)&#xA;           ---- Implementations Milestone (Start: 10 Jan, End 30 Jan)----  &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;May be different PM methodologies treat milestone concept differently, if so, is there common concept of this term?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27177" LastActivityDate="2017-01-12T01:59:24.470" Title="Can milestones overlap?" Tags="&lt;milestones&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20822" CreationDate="2017-01-12T01:59:24.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL;DR answer, no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Longer answer - a milestone does not have a duration.  PMBOK defines milestones as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Milestones are similar to regular schedule activities, with the same structure and attributes, but they have zero duration because milestones represent a moment in time.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They key point of a milestone is its binary - either you have reached the key point in your project, or you haven't.  So using your example above, you'd have something like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;-- Specifications Summary -- Start 01 Jan, End 20 Jan&#xA;  -- Specification tasks - starting and finishing between 01 and 20 Jan&#xA;  -- Milestone: Specifications complete - 20 Jan&#xA;-- Implementation Summary -- Start 10 Jan, End 30 Jan&#xA;  -- Implementation tasks - starting and finishing between 10 and 30 Jan&#xA;  -- Milestone: Implementation complete - 30 Jan&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its a clear way of tracking and showing that your specifications are complete, as distinct from being 99% complete, I'm almost there.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit - there is nothing stopping multiple milestones being on the same day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26779" LastActivityDate="2017-01-12T01:59:24.470" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20824" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20837" CreationDate="2017-01-12T09:52:02.470" Score="1" ViewCount="561" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Context&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An enterprise AWS project with multiple Scrum teams building features.  Three additional stakeholder teams (Dev Ops, Operations, CISO) who send support and consultancy requests into the AWS Scrum team.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Toolset&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;JIRA / Confluence&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problem&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Senior management at C-level would like a consolidated backlog of all teams in a Master backlog.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Caveat/Complication&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each Scrum team has a Product Owner with their own prioritized backlog so a &lt;strong&gt;prioritized&lt;/strong&gt; Master backlog is not required.  Merely a planning view of everything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Solutions Considered&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Taking a JIRA extract weekly and merging all into an XLS table with filters&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using a PPT stakeholder deck with a Burn-Up slide for each Team and then a consolidated burn up as the final slide&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Creating a JIRA Kanban Board, importing all backlogs and using the first To-Do column as a &lt;em&gt;backlog-lite&lt;/em&gt; solution&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way of producing a consolidated backlog from multiple teams in JIRA without disturbing the order of those items on their native backlogs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2017-01-13T20:16:14.837" Title="Merging multiple backlogs into a Visionary/Master backlog on JIRA?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20824" CreationDate="2017-01-12T14:36:13.033" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simplest way to get all issues is to just use an empty JQL (the default when you use 'Issues-&gt;Search for Issues). If you need only &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt;, then simply use '(project = &quot;A&quot; OR project = &quot;B&quot; OR ...)'. If you need it to be ordered by anything, just add the 'Order by' clause (ie. 'Order by project').&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can then Export it however you'd like. You can also save the filter for later use, so you do not need to keep recreating it. If you need it as a board in JIRA (for example, so you can run reports), just make a new board and set its filter to the one you made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-01-12T14:36:13.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20827" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-12T22:20:16.373" Score="3" ViewCount="617" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are currently setting up a scrum team to implement a product selling application. The product itself is quite complex (an insurance product) which comes in many facets, basically some mandatory and a lot of additional, optional components. &#xA;So we have a lot of business rules that ensure that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) the only valid combinations of components are provided to the customer (Product rules) and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) all required inputs are clearly shown and only valid inputs are accepted (other Business Rules and Validation Rules).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rules depend on the components of the product, customer specifics (age, income, health status, job, etc.) and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without Scrum, we proceeded as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) sketch the UIs with the client's expert: &quot;customer&quot;, &quot;offer&quot; (which must be capable to show all product variants)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;//  ... to find out the UI-Design and the data model, i.e. the required attributes for all product's variants&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) get all the rules based on the before defined model for all product variants from an expert &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) implement the UIs and the rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As quality checks in step 3) we had typically: UIs without any function, UIs with increasing amounts of rules implemented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok, now we are going to use Scrum for the first time. &#xA;Next week will be the first Sprint Planning Meeting and I know the user stories are like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) As the client sales manager I want to sell the easiest top-selling variant X from our product in the application to get much money fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) As the client sales manager I want to sell the 2nd best selling variant Y from our product in the application to get a lot money fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c) ... guess, but we will have 10-20 of those stories and they have maximum priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is: I have no problem with this kind of user stories. They are valid slices from the users' points of view. From some point of view they are also independent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I fear and expect a lot of rework when we implement these stories sequentially in several sprints: &#xA;In story n+1 we have to extend UI from story n, extend and modify the rules from story n.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I looks like we have just add a feature, but what we really have to do is to extend and modify the previous product version, i.e. you actually also have to modify a lot of existing rules to integrate the new stories' features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel something is wrong when user stories seem to produce so much rework!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Added 2017, Jan 20th -- after reading the first anwsers&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Ok, I think, I understand what you all mean. I am not sure, but eventually my question was a little misleading. So let me ask a little different: Assume I have a backlog for a new product with 4 fat epics, each with say 10 User Stories. The Product Owner prioritised the epics 1, 2, and 3 for releaes in this year, epic 4 for next year. You know can go with application design A for epic 1, 2, 3, but you need another design B, if you also want to integrate epic 4. And you know refactoring from design A to design B is more expensive than starting with design B, which is a little more expensive than A. What would be the best Scrum approach here? Should there be something like a special Sprint for architecure/ design at the beginning (and from time to time again)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27185" LastEditorUserId="27185" LastEditDate="2017-01-20T11:36:28.373" LastActivityDate="2017-03-12T20:06:08.890" Title="Do user stories mean rework? How much is ok?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20827" CreationDate="2017-01-12T22:39:46.490" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's perfectly valid, as long as you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are able to ship each story (or a few stories together) as soon as they're ready so you can start earning money with your product.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or use the increments to receive feedback from (potential) users to make sure the rest of the application fits better to their needs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or will be able to decide some stories will not be needed at all, because you're making enough money selling the first 15 product combinations. Based on measurements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or will be able to prove that further combinations will cost more to implement and maintain in the long term, and thus will not deliver them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or find new or other unexpected opportunities that you may be able to deliver between some of the less important combinations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, if your team invests in Automated tests:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The risk of this rework is low, tests will catch issues before they are shipped&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The effort for testing will be less then when you deliver all the stories together&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The chances of finding late defects (which are much more expensive to solve) are much lower&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you'll be able to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;prove your design and architecture choices are solid, before building all 25 product variants on top of it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's lots of hidden value in iterating over the different variations of your product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7393" LastEditorUserId="7393" LastEditDate="2017-01-14T12:03:52.590" LastActivityDate="2017-01-14T12:03:52.590" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20827" CreationDate="2017-01-13T00:41:24.530" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do user stories mean rework?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is Agile, and Agile means you need to be able to respond to change. If you cannot handle having to rewrite code, you cannot possibly (honestly) call yourself Agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How much is ok?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is up to the Product Owner, who decides based on the input from the Development Team and the customers, typically during the Planning Meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To elabourate: During your Planning Meetings, the Team goes through each of the stories in the Product Backlog, starting from the highest priority and working downward. For each story, the Development Team collaboratively come up with an estimate of the relative effort they believe that story to require. The Product Owner (who represents the Product, and, by extension, the will of the customers) then decides whether to include that story, or to lower its priority (or to break it up into multiple stories, refining or rejecting the story entirely, etc.) This process continues until the Sprint is full, at which point the Planning Meeting ends and the Sprint begins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, various techniques, tools, processes, etc. will have an effect on how much impact the need to rewrite code will have on the effort required on your stories - unit testing will reduce it, for example, as will CI, while poor quality or overtime will increase it, etc. In the end, though, the entire process boils down to the Development Team deciding how much effort a story will take... and the Product Owner deciding whether or not that is 'ok'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sidenote: You noted in your question that &quot;we will have 10-20 of those stories and they have maximum priority.&quot; This is not allowed. In Scrum, each story &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; have a &lt;em&gt;distinct&lt;/em&gt; priority. No two stories can be equal in priority, or else the Planning Meeting will not work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-01-13T00:41:24.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20831" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-13T11:31:19.757" Score="1" ViewCount="428" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an issue with MS Project 2016. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a task which starts on May 9th and is estimated to 72 hrs. I have assigned a resource, which is available 4 hours per day (I assigned the resource using his own calendar where his availability is set). The task type is &lt;strong&gt;Fixed work&lt;/strong&gt; and it's effort driven. The duration is 18 days, and there are just just 3 working days marked as non-working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yet, MS Project calculates the finish date to be July 7th (40 working days after May 9th).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd appreciate any suggestions as to what may be wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27169" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-01T10:02:16.090" LastActivityDate="2018-11-01T10:02:16.090" Title="MS Project doesn't calculate task finish date correclty" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resources&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20832" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-13T14:55:42.663" Score="3" ViewCount="446" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking to get the following data for a given date range:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Release Date&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Release Version&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Number of Stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Number of Bugs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that it's easy to get this information one release at a time by using the Releases area, however in order to get the information above, you need to drill into each release.  I'm looking to get this information in the form of &quot;rows of data&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For lack of available tags:  Jira Cloud&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example Output&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;ReleaseDate,Version,Stories,Bugs&#xA;1/1/2017,4.5.0.0,6,2&#xA;1/7/2017,4.5.1.0,4,3&#xA;1/12/2017,4.5.2.0,9,0&#xA;1/13/2017,4.5.3.0,0,1&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13745" LastEditorUserId="13745" LastEditDate="2017-01-31T16:20:53.990" LastActivityDate="2017-01-31T16:20:53.990" Title="How can I get an export of stories/bugs in all releases for a date range?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20831" CreationDate="2017-01-13T19:33:39.503" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think I figured it out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the respective resource calendar -&gt; work weeks -&gt; details &#xA;the time for the allocated resource was set to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;08:00 AM - 10:00 AM &#xA;11:AM - 1:00 PM&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I changed that to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;08:00 AM - 10:00 AM &#xA;1:00 PM - 3:PM &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And project recalculated the duration correctly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no idea what was wrong with the time which was set initially. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27169" LastActivityDate="2017-01-13T19:33:39.503" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11883" CreationDate="2017-01-13T19:41:02.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some good answers on this. I have a perspective on this that goes back to my military service in addition to my time with major software development shops. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like to compare a Scrum Master to an NCO. I would compare a C level executive to an officer. In my time in the infantry, NCOs had a certain authority (more than a SM really) but they were not the same as officers. Officers were &quot;Authorities&quot; with a capital &quot;A&quot;. NCOs were enlisted men with a certain amount of power, who basically used their position to go to bat for the team when necessary. NCOs would be willing to use their experience to their advantage and even take issues up directly with officers and go head to head with them if necessary. Officers might be &quot;mission focused&quot; and lose sight of the team, NCOs were always &quot;team focused&quot; and trusted the men to get the mission accomplished. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A SM should be something of an advocate for their team members with management if they need to be, like an NCO. If you have someone be BOTH a SM and a C-level exec, that can be problematic. Certainly using the military comparison, an officer would never be trusted by the men the same way as an NCO. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26292" LastActivityDate="2017-01-13T19:41:02.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20824" CreationDate="2017-01-13T20:02:52.853" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would consider investigating plugins like Portfolio or Tempofolio which are designed exactly for higher management and provide a unified high level view to the separate backlogs. The plugins I mentioned are not free, but we were using them successfully in our organisation. I really recommend to check out the following short demo: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/portfolio/demo#&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/portfolio/demo#&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;Maybe this could help the C-level guys to have more visibility and transparency. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An alternative solution is basically to create a consolidated board. Boards in JIRA gather their issues based on JIRA filters assigned to them. Any working JIRA filter can be utilized by an Agile board. If your filter contains issues from more than one project so can the Agile board it's been assigned to. You can create the board just to see high level epics or stories and how you'll map the issue states to individual columns is up to you as well. I could imagine a simple TODO, IN PROGRESS, Released Kanban board for the high level management.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27158" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-01-13T20:16:14.837" LastActivityDate="2017-01-13T20:16:14.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20827" CreationDate="2017-01-14T13:59:28.723" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Rework&quot; is a term from implementation level. User story by definition exists on another level. User story is implementation-agnostic and the question literally is irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rework by itself is not bad. Rework which brings no value is bad. Rework which brings value when it is too late is bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rework done under iterative approach (which may have user stories as its part) is still rework. But the approach enables you to select rework which brings the most value, deliver it faster and get feedback faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also it is not forbidden for product owner to elaborate and share sensitive requirements (business rules) before writing stories. In fact without this knowledge it is not possible to manage stories backlog and cooperate with development during the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26385" LastActivityDate="2017-01-14T13:59:28.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20827" CreationDate="2017-01-14T16:24:03.577" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To start with, this isn't a user story, it's more of a project charter (Value Statement or Epic in some circles).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a) As the client sales manager I want to sell the easiest top-selling variant X from our product in the application to get much money fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A user story should be small enough to implement in a few days time and well defined enough for a developer to begin design &amp;amp; implementation. In the times before Agile, we called them Use Cases. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, to answer your question, yes. There will be &quot;rework&quot;, but it's best to stop thinking of it as rework all together. Instead, realize that your team was going to have significant &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; rework anyway. In traditional development, you'd gather requirements, implement a solution, and deliver it only to have your end user be disappointed in the result. You can either then rework it, or leave your customer dissatisfied. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With iterative development, you accept that you're unlikely to get it right the first time, so you deliver &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;as fast as possible&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. At that point you have an opportunity to find out what the requirements &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; are. You've gotten to your end goal faster and, because you've involved your customer in this discovery process, you have a happier client. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Customer Collaboration over Contract Negotiation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Reacting to change over following a plan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The primary measure of progress is working software.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;We welcome changing requirements, even late in development. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile is a mindset, not a methodology. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastEditorUserId="21039" LastEditDate="2017-01-15T01:00:17.947" LastActivityDate="2017-01-15T01:00:17.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20793" CreationDate="2017-01-14T17:14:36.670" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first half of Sprint Planning consists of selection of items from the Product Backlog that will fit within the current Sprint. Ideally, the backlog items meet &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt; criteria and are suitable for selection without a great deal of fine-grained planning during this portion of the meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The second half of Sprint Planning is decomposition of Product Backlog Items into tasks for the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/strong&gt; This is where the team is expected to do &quot;just enough&quot; planning to build a roadmap for the current Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Task-Oriented Planning&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's work an example. For instance, let's imagine a story that says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a web site user&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want to be able to maintain a user profile between visits&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I don't have to re-enter preferences each time I log in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When this story is selected from the Product Backlog, the team then needs to identify the dependencies and agree on a &lt;em&gt;general&lt;/em&gt; implementation that can be broken down into tasks. These tasks should typically be no more than ½ to two days in length to make it easier to coordinate tasks and track them as &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;not-done&lt;/em&gt; rather than as percent-complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this example, the team should probably agree on a few things, like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where will the user profile be stored?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What preferences will be stored in the profile?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How will the team test that the functionality meets the Definition of Done?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; have to over-constrain the technical implementation during Sprint Planning. Instead, Sprint Backlog items are created, and can be discussed and refined further by the development team during the course of the Sprint itself. The goal is to do &lt;em&gt;just enough&lt;/em&gt; planning to set a direction for the team, so that the work increment can begin in a coordinated and collaborative fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Iterative development is an emergent-design process. The goal is not to produce detailed up-front specifications, but rather to generate consensus on a &quot;good enough&quot; approach that the team can then collaborate on throughout the iteration. To that end, Sprint Planning (and the Sprint Backlog in particular) are about defining &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; is to be worked on, not &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; it will be implemented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By definition, any working increment that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;supports the Sprint Goal,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;meets the &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; of the Product Backlog Item, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;fulfills the Definition of Done &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is sufficient for a Sprint. Over-specification, over-engineering, and over-planning are agile process smells. Obviously some planning is needed, but the goal is always to do &lt;em&gt;just enough&lt;/em&gt; planning to deliver a working increment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always remember &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_aren&amp;#39;t_gonna_need_it&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;YAGNI&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;working software and collaboration&lt;/a&gt;. Detailed specifications and &quot;plan the plan; work the plan&quot; are your kryptonite in iterative development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Support &lt;em&gt;Just Enough&lt;/em&gt; Planning&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like lists. Maybe you do, too. Some ways to support this type of planning include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure the Product Backlog is well-maintained, and that the top of the backlog is filled with items ready for selection into a Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure the entire team participates in Backlog Refinement so that the &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; of the items are at least implicit in each selectable backlog item.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure the team only selects actionable stories that fit within a single Sprint during Sprint Planning. Decompose stories or swap out items that won't fit during the Sprint Planning process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure that the team creates a Sprint Backlog with &lt;em&gt;tasks&lt;/em&gt; during Sprint Planning. Some very mature teams don't always do this when the Product Backlog items are small and well-defined enough, but in general skipping this step is where teams miss out on just-in-time planning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Focus on &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; in Sprint Planning. Leave specific implementation details (the &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt;) up to the team members doing the work during the Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leave plenty of slack in your Sprint to allow for collaboration, exploration (e.g. micro story spikes), and small meetings focused on &lt;strong&gt;&quot;just enough&quot; planning to coordinate the current day's work increment.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find yourself in need of complex, detailed planning exercises, chances are your Product Backlog or Sprint Backlog items aren't decomposed well enough, or don't meet the INVEST criteria. It may also mean that you're over-constraining the team by limiting their opportunities to collectively collaborate on implementations. Back up, fix the process issues, and then turn the team loose to implement the functionality in the simplest way that can possibly work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-01-14T17:14:36.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20841" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-14T17:33:34.633" Score="-1" ViewCount="111" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on a template. Is there a way to turn off a task if another task has been assigned work? I am in a company that uses massive templates and it would be great to turn off those tasks automatically which won't be performed because of work type. By the way, I don't have enterprise fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27196" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-01-14T23:55:29.403" LastActivityDate="2021-02-12T08:05:30.590" Title="How do I turn off a task if another task is assigned work?" Tags="&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20842" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-14T17:44:21.277" Score="1" ViewCount="805" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new to MPP. I need to move a task (say prod deployment) to a particular weekend in MPP 2010. I am planning to do the following&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make the particular weekends as working days for the resource which is assigned to the task&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Going to change the start date and and date of the task to the particular weekend.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the following microsoft URL (At the end of the  &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Create-a-calendar-for-a-task-within-Project-3efc5d70-92b1-485a-ad99-2f4648b4c94f&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Create-a-calendar-for-a-task-within-Project-3efc5d70-92b1-485a-ad99-2f4648b4c94f&lt;/a&gt; ) gives me an impression that I can make ANOTHER calendar for which the particular weekends would be working days. And this calendar can be assigned to the particular task needs to be done in the weekend. However I didn't get any option to assign another calendar for a given task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am really confused now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I compile this question out of the above two approaches can you please help me to select right answers from the below options&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option 1:  Extend working time of the assigned resource to weekend&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Option 2: Create a base calendar where weekends would be as working days&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Option 3: Assign the weekend base calendar to the task to be performed in the weekend&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Option 4: Modify the start date and end date of the task that will be performed in the weekend.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your expert opinion would really help me to understand the matter in more details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27195" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-01T10:02:13.253" LastActivityDate="2018-11-01T10:02:13.253" Title="Move a task to weekend in MPP 2010" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20843" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20845" CreationDate="2017-01-14T17:51:43.720" Score="0" ViewCount="851" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new to MPP. I am trying to plan for a scenario where 2 part time workers are there in my project who work 4 hrs a day for Mon-Wed. I am able to plan if the part time worker works Mon-Fri then I can change max unit for the resource to 50%. As they work only for 3 days then I am really facing difficult to do this. Any help is appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27195" LastActivityDate="2017-01-14T19:31:56.643" Title="MS project plan for part time worker" Tags="&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20841" CreationDate="2017-01-14T18:18:00.313" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You haven't specified what software you are using (I assume MP). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably your best solution is to bring this to your BA (Analyst), EA (Architect), or PM superior, and have them reconsider workflow. If you have full authority, I would say what you're actually after is the creation of multiple templates. Or, the template should be re-arranged with hierarchy based on task relationship. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23543" LastActivityDate="2017-01-14T18:18:00.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20843" CreationDate="2017-01-14T19:31:56.643" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can change the working time for the resource. See MS help here:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Set-a-unique-schedule-for-a-specific-resource-ab816ff2-f39d-43b7-b143-ab36d03baaad&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Set-a-unique-schedule-for-a-specific-resource-ab816ff2-f39d-43b7-b143-ab36d03baaad&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quote from that page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Click Project &gt; Properties &gt; Change Working Time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Choose a resource from the For calendar list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Choose the right Base calendar for the resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-If the working times in the calendar aren't quite right for this resource, click the Work Weeks tab, and then click Details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to try setting your working days/time for these two resources to Mon-Wed, 9AM-1PM to get the 50% for three days. Or just set the three days and try to allocate them at 50%. One may work better than the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27199" LastActivityDate="2017-01-14T19:31:56.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20846" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-15T09:44:51.873" Score="5" ViewCount="592" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I understand &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/gwt/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Given/When/Then&lt;/a&gt; format of acceptance criteria is used when the project is going to follow &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior-driven_development&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BDD&lt;/a&gt; (Behavior Driven Development). Thus, the acceptance criteria will be used for the &lt;strong&gt;automated tests&lt;/strong&gt;, while checklists are aimed for &lt;strong&gt;manual testing&lt;/strong&gt;. The question is: &quot;When should we use the checklist format of describing User Story acceptance criteria and when should we use &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber/wiki/Gherkin&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gherkin format&lt;/a&gt;?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21640" LastEditorUserId="21640" LastEditDate="2017-01-16T09:10:03.800" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T12:57:38.220" Title="Should I specify user story acceptance criteria in Given/When/Then format or checklists?" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;testing&gt;&lt;acceptance-criteria&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20846" CreationDate="2017-01-15T11:31:02.780" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main goal of manual testing (aka exploratory testing (also called only testing, since &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.satisfice.com/blog/archives/category/testing-vs-checking&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;no machine really tests&lt;/a&gt;)) is to raise new information about the product - beside bugs, this technique raise questions about non-functional requirements, UX improvement opportunities, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This new information &lt;strong&gt;creates&lt;/strong&gt; new acceptance criteria, which should be included in the Given/When/Then scenarios, even a posteriori (remembering the agile value 'Responding to change over following a plan').&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding, the Given/When/Then scenarios has nothing to do with testing. They are the requirements of the feature. All information about the feature behavior should be included as a Given/When/Then scenario (directly or indirectly, by links to sites/files (which should be very rare)), in order to allow all team members to understand how the system should behave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a scenario can be automatically checked, great; but even if it cannot be checked by a machine, it should be included in the .feature file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25646" LastEditorUserId="25646" LastEditDate="2017-01-15T15:53:42.320" LastActivityDate="2017-01-15T15:53:42.320" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20815" CreationDate="2017-01-15T14:52:43.433" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you've reached to the point where Scrum falls short (at least in my opinion). Scrum is really tough to implement when you have many interconnected teams that depend on one another. Why? Because you care about the whole and not about what's being produced in each and every team sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would REALLY recommend looking at a Kanban portfolio implementation. You can take a look how we do this at Kanbanize by reading the &lt;a href=&quot;https://kanbanize.com/kanban-resources/case-studies/kanban-for-software-development-teams/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban for Software Development&lt;/a&gt; case study. It's a long read, but if you master it you will never ever look back to Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing that I'd like to recommend is getting yourself acquainted with the &lt;a href=&quot;https://kanbanize.com/blog/project-portfolio-management-strategy-guide-for-cios/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban Portfolio&lt;/a&gt; concept. It allows you to have one master board, where all your projects are and then many connected Kanban boards, which link to the master one. This is a great way to keep the overall work in progress under control and deliver features / projects much faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22983" LastActivityDate="2017-01-15T14:52:43.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20542" CreationDate="2017-01-15T14:59:47.820" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Allow me to ask why you consider moving to Scrum? The transition to Scrum is a much harder one, compared to a transition to &lt;a href=&quot;https://kanbanize.com/blog/kanban-101-the-kanban-board/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt;. In this article we talk about implementing a &lt;a href=&quot;https://kanbanize.com/kanban-resources/case-studies/kanban-work-breakdown-structure/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban Work Breakdown Structure&lt;/a&gt; using the Kanban method and executing the work items in the fastest way possible. In other words, we propose a transition from Waterfall (WBS is a typical waterfall approach) to Kanban, which is a lightweight agile approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach not only allows you to keep doing what you've been doing (and continuously improve) but it will speed up things ridiculously (up to 700%). I hope this doesn't sound like a sales pitch, because it's not, but Kanban can really do miracles for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22983" LastActivityDate="2017-01-15T14:59:47.820" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17745" CreationDate="2017-01-15T22:32:42.520" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never been in a agile project without a deadline. Maybe I have just been unlucky, however to get the budget in the first case you need the business case which has a deadline...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my experience working with agile, deadlines are about managing scope, team velocity and stakeholder expectations. I have been using Agile Monte Carlo forecasting and tracking with good results. First in a rather complex Excel sheet and then by creating the solution below. Take it for a spin and let me know what you think!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://agilemontecarlo.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://agilemontecarlo.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27202" LastEditorUserId="30105" LastEditDate="2018-02-24T00:53:38.620" LastActivityDate="2018-02-24T00:53:38.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20854" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-16T10:30:59.460" Score="1" ViewCount="75" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just started using &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.tutorialspoint.com/estimation_techniques/estimation_techniques_use_case_points.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Use Case Points&lt;/a&gt; recently. Apparently it looks simple to use but there are certain scenarios where it is difficult to figure out the right transaction count or actor count. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am facing similar problem where a batch job is trigger internally. Then who is going to be the actor in this case? The user group from which is batch job is triggered or the batch job scheduler. I think the batch job itself can not be the actor here because for any transaction some actor must be there right? Your opinion would really help me to understand the matter in depth&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27195" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2017-04-16T19:08:20.813" LastActivityDate="2017-09-13T22:03:05.223" Title="Unable to determine the actor in UCP estimation for a given scenario" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20854" CreationDate="2017-01-16T11:11:30.400" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If we are talking about user goal level scenario then primary actor is the system itself. Scheduler can be secondary actor starting the case or its trigger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we are talking about subfunction level scenario then it can have some part of the system like job processor as primary actor and system job engine as secondary actor starting the use case or being its trigger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26385" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T11:11:30.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20846" CreationDate="2017-01-16T12:57:38.220" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends, does it help the team in better using them as requirements and does it improve communication with stakeholders? Then yes. Just discuss with the team which they think gives the most value for the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;GTW adds a bit of extra work. Also it might make it harder to read and understand instead of &lt;em&gt;one liner high level acceptance criteria&lt;/em&gt;, since now you need to read three or more sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use BDD or automate them afterwards anyways, then it seems better to start with GWT from the beginning of a task. Personally I think GWT is about communication between developers and non-technical stakeholders. If you do not use it in this way it will be overhead, maybe use TDD instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would use &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt; and verify the requirements and acceptance criteria are clear enough for the team during estimation of units-of-work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T12:57:38.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15803" CreationDate="2017-01-16T13:04:37.583" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have good experience with Agile Monte Carlo estimation e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://agilemontecarlo.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://agilemontecarlo.com&lt;/a&gt; . Just factoring in the average velocity is not enough to get the risk profile of the project. Especially for communication with stakeholders the 25% and 75% simulated delivery date is great to know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27202" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T13:04:37.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20858" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-16T14:37:06.597" Score="3" ViewCount="843" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you plan on risks when working on the project detailed plan?&#xA;I assume you add to the plan vacation days for each resource (even though they may not have requested leave at this point), you plan sick leave days, time for meetings attendance and most probably 6.5 or 7 hours effective working time per day.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you also add in buffer time for development in case the effort required is underestimated by the developers? If yes, isn't that too risky in a sense that it may delay the project deadline unnecessarily?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27169" LastActivityDate="2017-01-20T21:20:18.133" Title="Development buffers and risk factors" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20859" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-16T15:36:43.100" Score="0" ViewCount="121" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently looking at a past paper question regarding CPA. The question concerns the following subtasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The subtasks are denoted A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and H.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Subtask B cannot start until subtasks A and C have been completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Subtask C cannot start until subtask A has been completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Subtask D cannot start until subtask B has been completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Subtask E cannot start until subtask B has been completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Subtask F cannot start until subtasks D &amp;amp; E have been completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Subtask G cannot start until subtasks F &amp;amp; H have been completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Subtask H cannot start until subtasks A &amp;amp; C have been completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question concerns A, B, C and H.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;C cannot start until A is completed. B cannot start until A and C are completed. Why does it say it has to wait for A &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; C to be completed? Likewise with subtask H?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;C can only be started when A has been completed - why doesn't it just say it has to wait for C? Is there another layer of complication here? Surely the completion of C implies the completion of A?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first part of the question is to draw the diagram of the above sub tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27208" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T19:21:10.353" Title="Critical Path Analysis" Tags="&lt;critical-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20859" CreationDate="2017-01-16T15:48:02.637" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it is an exam question, then it stands to reason that it is intentionally confusing. Simplifications such as applying the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.britannica.com/topic/transitive-law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Law of Transitivity&lt;/a&gt; are intentionally avoided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, it is not inconceivable to have (the first draft of) dependencies looking like this in the real world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Betty says she cannot start her work until Alice and Charlie are done theirs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Charlie says he cannot start his work until Alice is done hers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Daniel says he cannot start his work until Betty is done hers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though the dependencies can (and &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt;) be simplified, the people who perform the tasks may not themselves have all the necessary information to do so, and thus, if you were to get information directly from them without analyzing and transforming it, you would end up with something akin to the above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T15:48:02.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20858" CreationDate="2017-01-17T17:48:36.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do you plan on risks when working on the project detailed plan? I&#xA;  assume you add to the plan vacation days for each resource (even&#xA;  though they may not have requested leave at this point), you plan sick&#xA;  leave days, time for meetings attendance and most probably 6.5 or 7&#xA;  hours effective working time per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you look at your project plan you should always ask yourself: &quot;What could possibly go wrong?. Some people avoid that question because they believe they could solve problems when they come up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good idea would be to involve your team in this discussion and maybe have a look at reviews of previous projects, so you can see what happened to those. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have a list of all possible risks you need to assess which ones to worry about. A good way to do this is to give them scores for &lt;strong&gt;&quot;how likely?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;(0 to 5) and &lt;strong&gt;&quot;how serious?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;(0 to 5). After that you need to multiply the numbers. If the multiplied score goes into double figures than it is a risk that should be concerned about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ffor that kind of a risk you need to have a plan. There are two types of plan you can have for reducing risks: you can either make it &lt;strong&gt;less likely to happen&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;less serious&lt;/strong&gt; if it does happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What customers are interested in is &quot;Which of the risks have you not been able to handle?&quot; So, when you are showing your risk plan to a customer, it's important for them to understand that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. You've looked at risks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b. You're on top of risks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c. They're still exposed to risks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you also add in buffer time for development in case the effort required is underestimated by the developers? If yes, isn't that too risky in a sense that it may delay the project deadline unnecessarily?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now this is a bit tricky. It has to do more with an estimate. Let's assume that you need to estimate how many weeks it would take to make a feature. Keep in mind 3 numbers: minimum amount, average (based on past experience) and maximum amount. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's assume you would have: minimum 20 weeks, average 30 weeks and maximum 60 weeks. Going halfway between the average and the worst estimate would be the best choice (30+60)/2= 45 weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people start either with average or the average+10%. But adding 10% in most cases is just not enough. In our case we would have +3 weeks (30 +10%). 33 weeks would probably be not enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21640" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T17:48:36.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20862" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-17T17:57:38.570" Score="1" ViewCount="585" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a game development company with around 100 employees. Every one of them can add text for translating. There is a lot of text to translate, so keeping track of all the text is problematic. Before we send text to translators someone needs to find all text that was added or changed, and this is a huge waste of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In what ways can we simplify this process? How can we track changes in files that contain text?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27218" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2017-01-22T21:01:30.840" LastActivityDate="2017-01-22T21:01:30.840" Title="How can we keep track of changes to translations within our project?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;process-improvement&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20859" CreationDate="2017-01-17T19:21:10.353" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While recognising that this is an exam question, this type of situation is common in many projects, especially where dependencies are identified and entered into the plan at different stages in the planning process. By allowing these &quot;non-optimised&quot; relationships to exist in the plan, you can avoid a lot of manual rework and potentially breaking links that should not be broken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can also happen where the list of tasks is much longer and more complex than the list that you have been asked to consider, and where the subtlety of the inter-dependencies is less obvious. By keeping the &quot;non-optimised&quot; dependencies in your plan, you can more easily communicate to others, especially if they are in different parts of the organisation. For instance, if you have a hardware team, a software team, and a test team, the testing tasks may need to follow both the hardware deployment and the software installation. It may be obvious that the software installation can't take place until after the hardware is in place, but the hardware guys will only want to know that their work has to be completed before the testing has started. They may be completely uninterested in the software tasks, and never look at that part of the plan!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you don't need the complexity and can see that it is easy to remove redundant relationships, then do so. It will keep your plan as simple as possible. However, my advice is to make the plan work for you. You are the master of the plan - and an imperfect but workable plan may be better than a perfect plan that takes hours or days of rework to analyse and apply even a simple change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T19:21:10.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20862" CreationDate="2017-01-17T19:22:22.520" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep all bits of text together in a single file (or rather, one file per language). When you need to &lt;em&gt;use&lt;/em&gt; that text, pull it from the file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way, with all text being kept together, it is much easier to visualize all of it. It also becomes much easier to see changes to that file, especially if you are using source control - just compare the newest version of that file to the version of it X days ago, and you see all the changes anyone has made to that language's text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also makes it much easier to switch between languages - you just swap which file is being used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-01-17T20:17:45.170" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T20:17:45.170" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20862" CreationDate="2017-01-17T21:18:20.223" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Start with Source Control&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recommending specific tools is off-topic here, but from a software project management standpoint (and even from an engineering point of view) the correct answer is likely to be using effective source control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A source code management (SCM) system like Subversion or Git is built to do exactly what you're trying to do: track changes to text files within a project. Good SCMs even make it easy to list recent changes, compare files, or compare versions of the same file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Implement Internationalization and Localization&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Process&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have source control in place, you will probably want to develop processes and engineering practices for internationalization and localization. Your project management process &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalization_and_localization#Process&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;should include the following&lt;/a&gt; sub-processes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Internationalization&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Localization&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quality Assurance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Engineering&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your engineering practices should include a consistent way to manage globalized messages. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalization_and_localization#Engineering&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;According to Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The current prevailing [engineering] practice is for applications to place text in resource strings which are loaded during program execution as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specific engineering methods are outside the scope of a site focused on project management. However, this should give you a solid foundation for exploring your project's needs and developing your own engineering practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T21:18:20.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20866" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-18T00:15:44.220" Score="1" ViewCount="393" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working with a team that is maintaining case management software. We are suffering from drift between different specifications, agile artefacts, implementations and understandings. I would like to propose a solution to the team that aligns with agile methodologies that works for our team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frequently, we will get a request to &quot;show additional data X about entity Y on screen Z&quot;, where X may be an existing or new field/property, and Y and Z are almost always an existing entities / screens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There would have already been a user story that has long been closed:&#xA;&lt;code&gt;As a user ... I want to see information ABC about entity Y so that I can ...&lt;/code&gt;, which would have been used to create the screen in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically &lt;code&gt;field X&lt;/code&gt; would just be another piece of information that is not important in itself, but is important when in the context of &lt;code&gt;entity Y&lt;/code&gt;. I would find it hard to justify having a story purely to see &lt;code&gt;field X&lt;/code&gt;, and other stories typically look at collections of data, not single datums.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Create a new story &lt;code&gt;As ... I want to see X about Y so that I can ...&lt;/code&gt; - this keeps closed stories closed, and means smaller, more incremental stories, but also means that the old story is no longer current, so I can't treat it as part of the documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Re-open the old story and update the acceptance criteria &lt;code&gt;As ... I want to see ABCX about Y so that I can ...&lt;/code&gt;, and then create a task &lt;code&gt;Add field Y to Z&lt;/code&gt; - this means that stories, tasks (and other artefacts) are all up to date. Typically, the&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some other solution? Perhaps use a feature/epic/whatever to track &lt;code&gt;screen Z&lt;/code&gt;, and keep that up to date with all the fields about entities that &lt;code&gt;screen Z&lt;/code&gt; would display, and then use method 1 and reference the feature?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Something completely different?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27221" LastActivityDate="2017-01-18T19:27:15.100" Title="When making technically minor changes, should i create a new user story or update an existing (closed) story?" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20866" CreationDate="2017-01-18T12:27:25.550" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should not reopen an old story. You should create a new one and if it is in any way connected to the old one, you could put a link to the old one in the new one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;New requirements are completely new work and add new value to the Product, so definitely go with the new Story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26280" LastEditorUserId="26385" LastEditDate="2017-01-18T19:27:15.100" LastActivityDate="2017-01-18T19:27:15.100" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1470" CreationDate="2017-01-18T13:53:03.183" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An open question this is indeed.&#xA;Also, there isn't one good answer to it. All you can do is trust others' opinion on whether this will work, or try for yourself and see how it goes. I recommend the latter. Having said this, I can take role of the &quot;other&quot; and recommend a quick read on why agile methods will work for any business: &lt;a href=&quot;https://kanbantool.com/blog/bringing-agile-into-non-tech-environments&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://kanbantool.com/blog/bringing-agile-into-non-tech-environments&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;Whether you take on scrum or kanban is another question - in my experience, kanban is easier for first-starters, but scrum can bring more structure to the workflow if this is what you need, but I wouldn't start with it right away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27224" LastActivityDate="2017-01-18T13:53:03.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20869" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20870" CreationDate="2017-01-18T14:08:27.757" Score="0" ViewCount="78" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been performing Project Management for more than 5 years now. I have completed my Degree in Distance Education program. Can I use this degree to qualify for 4500 hour in last 36 months? I am asking this because my degree is completed only 2 years or 24 months back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27225" LastActivityDate="2017-06-02T10:32:00.170" Title="Degree completed 2 years back but have PM experience for more than 5 years" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20869" CreationDate="2017-01-18T14:20:36.297" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The education criterion is a yes or no test. There is no language that specifies when a candidate earned the degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avoid reading more into the criteria than what is there. Same advice applies for the test. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-01-18T14:20:36.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20796" CreationDate="2017-01-18T22:02:06.040" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Mike Cohn, an Agile thought leader, it is acceptable to cancel the daily scrum on planning days. His logic is that the purpose of the daily scrum is to synchronize effort between team members. A typical sprint planning session should result in all team members being in-sync. In certain environments, it may make sense to cancel the daily scrum on the day of, or the day after the planning meeting. Following this logic, a daily scrum should still be held on refinement or retrospective days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have experimented with this with my team, and I've come to believe that it is totally circumstantial. There is no binding rule, but remember that the daily scrum is for the team as a whole, not for any individual person. If the team prefers to have the daily scrum on planning days, the scrum master should be willing to continue to hold them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27228" LastActivityDate="2017-01-18T22:02:06.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18398" CreationDate="2017-01-18T23:55:57.003" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not see any way around doing a rough first estimate on the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On top of this you need need to factor in expected bugs as well as room for refactoring, misunderstandings, improvements. One good technique to visualize the risk and to get a understanding of the landing zone of the project is Monte Carlo simulation e.g.&lt;a href=&quot;https://agilemontecarlo.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://agilemontecarlo.com&lt;/a&gt; or via downloading a Monte Carlo simulation excel sheet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27202" LastActivityDate="2017-01-18T23:55:57.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20875" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20876" CreationDate="2017-01-19T00:04:29.380" Score="0" ViewCount="156" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our organization is a matrix organization with very little power in PM hands. PM themselves are subject matter experts who share PM roles on one projects with delivery on others. We recently started having one group of sales people interfering into the project management process. for example, they try to schedule meetings without confirming it or informing the assigned PM. The latest news is: they are selling the project, and saying to the client that an account manager will perform the project management, so the project will be &quot;cheaper&quot;. I do not get the &quot;cheaper&quot; logic, but I try to find information on why it is a very bad idea. We are not a mature organization, where everything is established and roles and responsibilities are clearly defined, so this kind of situations are hard to argue with, after it was &quot;sold&quot; this way. I will appreciate any advice or point into a right direction on who should be doing what and why in PM- sales person interaction. Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27232" LastActivityDate="2017-01-19T13:58:25.823" Title="Sales person tries to be a project manager" Tags="&lt;sales&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20875" CreationDate="2017-01-19T08:55:42.667" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I do not get the &quot;cheaper&quot; logic, but I try to find information on why it is a very bad idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;cheaper&quot; logic is obvious: if you need no PM, you don't need to &lt;em&gt;pay&lt;/em&gt; a PM and the project will be cheaper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a bad idea because managing a project is a &lt;em&gt;job&lt;/em&gt;. It's not something you take on as a hobby after hours in your sales job. That's not exactly unique to project management. Every job worth doing is worth doing properly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this is a management thing. Your company needs to set guidelines how projects are done. Does every project need a PM? Only your company can decide that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2017-01-19T08:55:42.667" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20875" CreationDate="2017-01-19T11:27:25.367" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your company is going through the maturity process and is valuing sales more than delivery. Eventually, your company will have to face its delivery metrics and likely losses and you will have the data you need to sponsor a change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep promoting your ideas but expect little progress for now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-01-19T11:27:25.367" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20858" CreationDate="2017-01-19T12:34:25.720" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do you plan on risks when working on the project detailed plan? I assume you add to the plan vacation days for each resource (even though they may not have requested leave at this point), you plan sick leave days, time for meetings attendance and most probably 6.5 or 7 hours effective working time per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first advice would be to clearly separate questions of available capacity (such as the number of working days per month / year) and risk / opportunity (events of probabilistic nature, which may or may not occur). The subject to risk management is only the second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you also add in buffer time for development in case the effort required is underestimated by the developers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to risks (and do not forget the opportunities!) you can use different approaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For &quot;large&quot; risks that have a significant probability or impact you may want to develop your approach individually. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not always your approach is going to be to add buffer time. Approaches that you will want to consider are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mitigation - this will typically result in additional scope of work aimed to reduce the risk probability of impact. Mitigation will leave a residual risk that you will have to deal with separately.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoidance - this will typically result in replanning your project in such a way that the risk is not relevant anymore, e.g. if there is a certain risk associated with a subcontractor, you may decide to select another or to bring the work in-house.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Transfer - this will typically result in having another party to be responsible for the risk, e.g. buying an insurance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acceptance - add a buffer time and/or budget (active) or do not do anything and deal with the risk if it occurs (passive).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to plan your actions you may decide to perform a quantitative analysis of your risk to understand better the probability or impact. This will in order give you a better understanding on how to build your buffer. On the other hand analysis also costs time and money, so you will want to leave it for cases where it makes a difference, otherwise limiting yourself to qualitative analysis (&quot;red&quot;, &quot;yellow&quot;, &quot;green&quot; or something of the sort).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With small risks you may want to deal in bulk to save yourself efforts of analyzing each and every one of them. For example, you can incorporate all your smaller risk impacts into one figure (&quot;velocity&quot;) and just apply this as a multiplier for future efforts, while collecting past statistics to refine it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further suggested reading: PERT, Risk management in project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27144" LastActivityDate="2017-01-19T12:34:25.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20858" CreationDate="2017-01-19T13:35:11.497" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have two types of risks you have to plan for within a project: 1) aleatory, 2) epistemic.  Both types will impact your project, and your planning values, both favorably and unfavorably.  The first type is un-mitigable as this is caused by random variables within a process or task.  The second type you try to identify as much as possible and build into the schedule and into the baseline the tasks you need to perform to mitigate those identified risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When doing an estimate, you need to find the best case, worst case, and most likely case so you can understand the probabilistic distribution for that particular task at this time for this project.  Both aleatory and epistemic risks live in that distribution.  You can use a formula or simply choose a planning value within that range that represents the amount of risk you wish to take.  And, yes, you can choose too pessimistically and unnecessarily delay a finish, or obligate too much money, than you need.  But the opposite can be true, too.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of us are optimistically biased so I would suspect you will experience planning values that are mostly too optimistic.  On top of this, if you are a seller of services, you have the threat of competition and that will further lower your planning values.  So I would not worry too much about delaying delivery as that won't happen much, I suspect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-01-19T13:35:11.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20875" CreationDate="2017-01-19T13:58:25.823" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Roles and responsibilities exist in organization regardless of its maturity level. Different games have different rules, but each game has its rules. What you encounter now is someone breaking the rules. What do you do when you see someone breaking the rules? You call the police or, speaking of company affairs, your boss. I assume that you are not a department manager (the one who actually can change the rules).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Express the situation to your manager in open and judgement-free manner. Tell about your assumptions who is responsible for what. Explain specific cases which contradicts with your assumptions. Ask to provide resolutions for each (do not make any proposals if you are emotional about the topic). If your activities depend on those resolutions - mention that you have to stop corresponding tasks until then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26385" LastActivityDate="2017-01-19T13:58:25.823" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20884" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20886" CreationDate="2017-01-19T16:14:52.573" Score="0" ViewCount="447" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a developer on a team that has just finished some web development work. It was due for a release tomorrow but, as a result of a review by management, needs reworking. This will undoubtedly add a lot of time onto the estimate for release. We can't release what we have, since that's incomplete and we must start work on the redesign tasks now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, this is a bit of a failure. We're now pushing the date back (whichever way you look at it). I believe our agile process failed us, because from my (admittedly limited) understanding of agile, such a methodology encourages iterations and I think our team is iterating wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Solutions I've already considered include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Designed up front with rigid stages of the lifecycle (i.e. &quot;sorry, designs are done now, we're working of what we received originally&quot;). However, this seems more like &quot;waterfall&quot; than agility.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We finish working on what we &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; is a design that will meet the release date, but may become immediately outdated. This seems very wasteful in terms of development effort if we're working on something that will be ripped out in the very near future.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why did our process fail, and how could we fix it in the future?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27244" LastEditorUserId="27244" LastEditDate="2017-01-25T17:15:16.380" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T17:15:16.380" Title="Why did our process cause us to miss our release date?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;&lt;process-improvement&gt;&lt;post-mortem&gt;&lt;release-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2017-01-31T12:56:38.647" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20884" CreationDate="2017-01-19T16:29:24.260" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your thinking assumes several fallacies which have been evidenced time and time again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The idea that software engineering is accurately estimable (it's not, estimates merely become more accurate as we progress towards completion).  A healthy backlog of work with some basic estimating and a maintained burn-up chart would have shown that from the start.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The idea that the business are not allowed to change their minds.  They are.  They are paying.  Theoretically if they want you to refactor the same 10 lines of code every day for a year they can ask you to do that.  Your options if you don't like the business changing their mind is to quit and find a new business who believe will not change their mind. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The idea that requirements are ever truly fixed.  (They are not except in cases of legislative compliance and possibly construction/architecture)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The idea that rework is bad (It's not if we learn from it and make a superior product in the end)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The idea that the code is what matters (It's not.  The code is what gets you to the thing you are trying to accomplish.  Code is not a sacred pet, it is cattle we sacrifice as and when we decide it is the right time to do so)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The idea that dates drive delivery.  They don't.  You need a strong individual to communicate that to the Sponsor and you also need to understand that.  Dates don't drive delivery.  The delivery drives the realistic date by demonstrating when the current scope is likely to be completed with the current resources working to the average pace they are completing engineering tasks.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile is not the problem; how can it be since it is simply a set of values and principles about working collaboratively and prioritizing working software?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are actually frustrated at is the incremental delivery without fixed requirements.  However, consider the following scenario...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Requirements and design are fixed up front and you spent 6 months in a waterfall delivery only to conduct a Big Bang release and &lt;strong&gt;then&lt;/strong&gt; the business change their mind or market conditions change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wouldn't it be more beneficial to have a fluid design and commit to some small slice of working software which is then reviewed to make sure you are on the right track?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are looking at this the wrong way round; you are seeing wasted effort instead of seeing that the review process is &lt;strong&gt;working&lt;/strong&gt; for you.  It has saved potentially many more months of developing the wrong thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any developer that ever told me I don't have the right to change my mind about the product I am executive sponsoring is one that better start looking for a new job.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="10462" LastEditDate="2017-01-19T16:33:09.700" LastActivityDate="2017-01-19T16:33:09.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20884" CreationDate="2017-01-19T17:42:26.080" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the crux of your question may actually lie in questions you posed in a comment, rather than in the question itself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you find it acceptable that release dates are not met?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is... it depends. It really depends on the situation; on the project itself. If it is a purely internal project that is a 'nice to have' or some such thing? Yes, not really a big deal to push back the release date. Certainly better to take more time getting it right than to rush out something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a time-sensitive application where your client has stated if they don't get it by (date) they are dropping your contract and going with another solution? Absolutely unacceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If (as is often the case) it's a grey area where meeting the release date is &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; but not &lt;em&gt;absolutely required&lt;/em&gt;? Then it really depends. Which brings me to the second point...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm asking how our methodology here could be tweaked to prevent pushing back release dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of each iteration, examine the project. If you see a problem such as this, examine your priorities and update the plan. Exactly what that &lt;em&gt;means&lt;/em&gt; will depend on the situation. Pushing the release back is one option. Another is to take out scope, extracting certain features to a future release (or removing them entirely). Another (more risky) is to throw more money at it. That expensive tool your developers have been asking for that they say will speed up their work by 30%? Might be worth looking into. Deciding on these priorities is the job of the Project Manager (or Product Owner in Scrum, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All Agile is doing is attempting to have these decisions made early and often, rather than putting them off to the end. While that is generally a good thing, if the decisions being made are &lt;em&gt;wrong&lt;/em&gt; (or are ignored entirely, etc.), then Agile certainly is not going to save you. But then, neither would Waterfall. With Waterfall, it'd just take you longer to realize you're not going to be saved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Worth noting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was due for a release tomorrow but, as a result of a review by management, needs reworking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you had a whole bunch of iterations that management essentially ignored, and then they only took an interest near to the release date... that's not even Agile in the first place. That's a more traditional, Waterfall approach pretending to be Agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-01-19T17:42:26.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20884" CreationDate="2017-01-19T18:24:44.340" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would encourage you to sit with your team (perhaps in the retrospective) and take a look at the values in the Agile manifesto: &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://agilemanifesto.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Customer collaboration over contract negotiation is something to consider spending some time on as a team or selling to your stakeholders. You may benefit from holding stakeholder demos more frequently. The goal is to get iterative feedback from stakeholders early and often, and respond to changing requirements as your product grows closer to an end vision. I strongly believe, and my experience has shown, that the end of the project is not the first time that your stakeholders should see your deliverable. It will very frequently be underwhelming and require rework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare the values in the manifesto to the values displayed by both external stakeholders and your team itself. Perhaps you can start a dialogue with those whose expectations have not been met. Best of luck to you and your team!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27228" LastActivityDate="2017-01-19T18:24:44.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20884" CreationDate="2017-01-19T20:13:44.247" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Both Developers and Executives Broke the Agile Contract&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was due for a release tomorrow but, as a result of a review by management, needs reworking. This will undoubtedly add a lot of time onto the estimate for release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a basic process failure if the first time your management team reviewed the product was shortly before release. In particular, your organization failed to meet two of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot;&gt;core principles behind the Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt;. Specifically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You (collectively) didn't do those things. You are now apparently surprised that the project team delivered the wrong thing, and that the release date must move to accommodate large post-hoc changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are systemic issues. The entire organization (including the project management team, the developers, and senior management) should work together to fix a clearly-broken process. At this stage, it is also likely the company needs an outside agile coach to help identify all the process problems, and help your company formulate new solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not your company fixes the underlying problems is ultimately the responsibility of senior management. Project managers and developers can only recommend; the executives must take ownership of strategic decisions for the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2017-01-20T05:04:58.210" LastActivityDate="2017-01-20T05:04:58.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18635" CreationDate="2017-01-19T20:14:03.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ironically (given my arrogant answer above), I found myself in the same situation; new job hasn't provisioned project for me, so I'm forced to develop a schedule in excel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In column A, I have a WBS number  (floating point)&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&#xA;Column B is the deliverable (text)&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Column C is the duration (integer, days)&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Column D is the dependency - floating point - this contains the WBS number of the deliverable that must be complete before this activity begins.&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Column E is the start date - &quot;=lookup(D2,A:A,F:F) - this grabs the dependency number and looks it up in the table, then returns the finish date.  The start date is the finish date of the predecessor.&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Column F is the finish date - calculated as the start date plus the duration &quot;=workdays(E7,c7)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously this fails if task X depends on tasks A and B; it can only manage single dependencies.   I have to use milestones to capture those.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2017-01-19T20:14:03.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20890" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20903" CreationDate="2017-01-20T03:56:24.620" Score="1" ViewCount="684" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new to function point(FP) estimation. I am considering the following cases would be considered as External Inquery(EQ)/ External Output(EO) in function point sizing perspective. Please correct me if I am wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lookup of hard coded country code in a master data entry screen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Master data information maintained by a system&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;lookup of a language code information that is hard coded in the application&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any notification/error message comes out of a system would be considered as External Input(EI) only because EI is maintains round trip in nature (batch job may be the exception) and the notification/error message is a part of the round trip. Is my understanding correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Non functional requirement estimation can we use FP technique or Use case estimation technique?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27195" LastEditorUserId="27195" LastEditDate="2017-01-21T09:35:51.177" LastActivityDate="2017-01-22T12:02:51.070" Title="EQ/EO determination from a functional point sizing perspective" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20842" CreationDate="2017-01-20T09:04:46.963" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However I didn't get any option to assign another calendar for a given task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please see Task Properties -&gt; Advanced -&gt; Calendar:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VWfKp.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VWfKp.png&quot; alt=&quot;Change task calendar&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that in the default project you may have a 24 Hours calendar, so there is not always a need to create another calendar for that specific deployment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27144" LastActivityDate="2017-01-20T09:04:46.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20892" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20895" CreationDate="2017-01-20T14:18:41.520" Score="9" ViewCount="1657" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a small team using Daily Scrum meetings to track progress of our mobile app development work. The developers are of varying experience range from 2+ years up to 9 years, and with different technical backgrounds like Android, Java, API Development etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As per  Agile/Scrum recommendations, the Daily Scrum meetings should be completed in &lt;code&gt;15-min.&lt;/code&gt; Although we as a team are aware of this, and also the Team is aware that they should tell only 3 things during daily scrum&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;1. what I did Yesterday,&#xA;2. what i will do today and&#xA;3. tell impediments if any,&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but since the team is still new to Scrum, while telling their daily status, some of the team members also discuss/tell about&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;1. how they fixed an issue, &#xA;2. how they found new requirement adds more value to business etc.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This results in the Daily Scrum meeting going beyond 15-min. almost daily. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My Query&lt;/strong&gt;: Is it the responsibility of the Scrum master to intervene and interrupt a team member when he/she starts telling about points beyond those 3 that I mentioned? Is this OK as per Agile?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21918" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-01-20T15:05:09.257" LastActivityDate="2019-04-11T07:12:44.977" Title="Can scrum master interrupt team member during daily Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20892" CreationDate="2017-01-20T14:30:17.907" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Development Team is responsible for conducting the Daily Scrum. The Scrum Master teaches the Development Team to keep the Daily Scrum within the 15-minute time-box.&quot; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's everyone's responsibility to make sure the Daily Scrum stays focused on coordinating people's work. As Scrum master, it's especially your responsibility, since you're coaching the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interrupt, and suggest that interested people stay after the scrum to have that tangent conversation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17705" LastEditorUserId="17705" LastEditDate="2017-01-20T14:52:24.720" LastActivityDate="2017-01-20T14:52:24.720" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20892" CreationDate="2017-01-20T14:44:14.253" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;AADTechnical, as Nathan wrote before me, it is exactly the Scrum Master who should be facilitating the meeting. It is OK and Scrum Master's job to interrupt any member of the Development Team if they start going into details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He is supposed to suggest a new meeting for that topic, including only the people to whom the topic is meant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26280" LastActivityDate="2017-01-20T14:44:14.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20892" CreationDate="2017-01-20T15:06:10.653" Score="12" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it the responsibility of the Scrum master to intervene and interrupt a team member when he/she starts telling about points beyond those 3 that I mentioned?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Technically speaking&lt;/em&gt;, no.  The &lt;em&gt;purpose&lt;/em&gt; of the Daily Scrum is to facilitate coordination between the the Team. It's not for the Team to call off those three points by rote. Many Teams don't use the 'three questions' at all, and instead take some other approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, the Daily Scrum &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; supposed to take only 5-15 minutes. While deviating from the three questions itself is fine, if the Team starts to go into in-depth discussions on details, then it is absolutely the Scrum Master's prerogative to politely request for them to 'Take it offline' or 'Discuss this after the meeting'. This is &lt;em&gt;especially&lt;/em&gt; true if not all members of the Team are involved in the meeting - there is very little that kills attention worse than being in a meeting with other people discussing things that do not pertain to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, as with basically all things in Agile, perhaps your best approach would be... ask the Team. Since you're doing Scrum, you have a sprintly Retrospective meeting. (And if you don't, consider starting to do so.) Bring it up. &quot;I feel like our Daily Scrum is too long. There are too many in-depth discussions, causing people to lose focus and energy. What do you guys think? Anyone have any suggestions?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe it works for your Team. Maybe your Team also thinks it's a problem, but has their own suggested solution for it (which may end up being far better a solution than you or I could suggest). Maybe your Team hasn't really thought about it, at which point you can suggest having in-depth discussions taken Offline, as above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only way to know is to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-01-20T15:06:10.653" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20896" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20906" CreationDate="2017-01-20T15:27:12.330" Score="-1" ViewCount="235" Body="&lt;p&gt;First time using RAID logs as part of project delivery. I have found a template where Risks is separate from Issues done in Excel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am using it the following way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) RISKS - I specify all potential project risks in the risks tab in excel&#xA;2) ISSUES - if that RISK turns into an issue, I then log it, in the issues tab in excel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) When do I mark the status of the risk and issue closed? Do I do this when the issue has been marked as closed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I mark the issue as closed, if we have put a temporary solution to solve the problem but at a later date need to fix it properly&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Is it good practice to have risks and issues in one tab, all templates I have seen they separate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="20871" LastEditDate="2017-01-20T15:59:21.957" LastActivityDate="2017-01-22T21:52:09.240" Title="RAID logs - What is the best way to organise them?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20897" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-20T16:08:31.930" Score="6" ViewCount="584" Body="&lt;p&gt;I imagine this question has been asked in various forms previously but I couldn't locate a specific answer after searching around.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently working in an independent oversight role on an outsourced software development project.  The team and vendor are currently working through the functional requirements specification and trying to elaborate and clarify the requirements.  As I sit in these meetings, I am noticing that the discussions very easily fall into what sounds like &quot;solutioning.&quot;  In other words, people are starting to draft the requirements in such a way that presupposes a correct solution to the business problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, when are these discussions appropriate?  As a business analyst I am naturally inclined to avoid jumping to conclusions about the solution until design begins and the needs are fully flushed out but is any of this appropriate towards the latter end of writing the functional requirements?  This has always been somewhat of a gray area for me.  Any help would be appreciated, thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27251" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T22:18:39.330" Title="Where do requirements end and design begin?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;design&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20897" CreationDate="2017-01-20T19:33:25.883" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on who is in the room. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, you should have a set of requirements that you develop that are complete statements about functionality with no reference to technical implementation, tools used, etc. Requirements are supposed to be like a blueprint from an architect that can be implemented differently (using slightly different materials and tools) by different builders. In reality, things are not so cut and dried. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There can be cases where requirements and design feed into one another. In fact, that inevitable likelihood is why we try to do iterative testing, prototyping, and make fun stuff like clickable wireframes for customers to play with. It is VERY common for the customer to not completely realize what they ACTUALLY need until they have something resembling real software to interact with. Design, by nature, will delineate what CAN be done (within reasonable cost/time limits) using the technology stack and tools chosen. Design, therefore, leads to some logical &quot;This could be done easily with what we have, do they want this?&quot; Kinds of conversations. That circular feedback between requirements, design, and back to the customer really continues for the entire life of the product. That's why we talk about a SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a business analyst and I have had requirements elicitation sessions where I asked my team Tech Lead to sit in with us because of his expertise with the existing functionality of the application, and I knew that would be very valuable to the customer as they worked out what, exactly, they were asking for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, when you get a few knowledgeable engineers in a room, you are going to get some talk about implementation details. That's almost always a good thing, and I always pay close attention to that kind of architectural discussion because it does help me break out functionality into logical slices that can be potentially built in one development sprint. I personally think that architecture knowledge is always a plus for a business analyst. What you want to do (in my opinion) is keep the initial stages of elicitation focused on the customer, not the software devs. What does the customer do now? What do they think they want to do? What do they really need to do? The early stages are about understanding their business processes, which are the VERY heart of delivering VALUE, not just delivering code. Clearly, early stages of requirements elicitation should avoid talk about implementation for a lot of good reasons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At some point, you will have passed a threshold where requirements HAVE been formalized but you are not complete, engineers HAVE sat down and started working through them and you (as a team) have a good idea of how you are going to approach the project. You may still be having requirements sessions, but as the design phase progresses, it will logically overtake requirements gathering. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but you have to maintain a clean requirements document (&quot;document&quot; used loosely: it totally depends on how you are organized) that allows you to maintain requirements traceability. If you need to kick the engineers out of the room a couple times to get that, then go ahead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a clear requirements document is important for testing, which is critical for modern enterprise application development practices. This should be clear of implementation details, but it can certainly use feedback gained from the understanding of what can be done with a given set of tools. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, it's not totally clear cut that implementation talk is necessarily out of place in a requirements session, but best practice is always to write requirements such that they are &quot;implementation neutral&quot;. My rule of thumb is to not stand on formal procedure too much if we are collaborating well with the customer and a lot is being accomplished, so long as we DO have a good understanding of where we are supposed to be going.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26292" LastActivityDate="2017-01-20T19:33:25.883" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20897" CreationDate="2017-01-20T20:44:58.553" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to avoid over-specifying, and to write&#xA;down the real needs of the customer, you can employ the following strategy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;start/convert every requirement with &quot;the system shall have the capability to...&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This strategy disallows the customer to enter the realm of design inadvertently. (I've read this approach in a book about systems engineering, will cite the reference if I can find). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However; I believe the customer may dictate (fairly) some design solutions if or when: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) the customer needs to define a use case (for example: user enters data using a &lt;strong&gt;touchscreen&lt;/strong&gt; with his bare fingers)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) there is some interface to some existing system &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) the design is partly defined and the customer wants to make sure it stays as is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) the customer wants to reuse some existing hardware/software as part of the solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen several contracts, some over specifying and some broadly defining, and the conclusion is as long as the parties are happy, the specs are sufficient. Although technically speaking, many are far from ideal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, the design team's best argument against over specifying is: you may forget some topics (&quot;completeness&quot;) and may result in a non working system (conflicting requirements), which may cause iterating a contract/schedule slip/cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16715" LastActivityDate="2017-01-20T20:44:58.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20858" CreationDate="2017-01-20T21:20:18.133" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been working with estimations a lot lately, and to be honest it is extremely hard to know how long is enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the techniques out there will be based on the experience. For example, if you execute same type of project with same processes over and over, you can expect to have less buffer, and considering that the people involved in the project will not change, tasks might even go faster. But our biggest problem was figuring out when each project was different from other. So we started scaling with few questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got few ahead of the frequent ones we ask ourselves before giving our own estimated times:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Size - Our biggest mistake was only to categorize the projects into Small, Medium and Large, but this is part of the learning process. IN order to have a better idea about this, try to get details from people with experience. Usually Small projects already get 10% of buffer, Medium will get 15% and Large ones can get from 30% and above.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Complexity - This item will be by itself another buffer. An Easy project can have a buffer of 0 to 5%, while a Medium complex project can range from 5 to 15% and Hard complexity can scale up to 65%.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unit of Measure - Out of experience, we found out it is easier to scale in Hours and THEN convert to $$$ but not otherwise, so choose wisely how you want to measure your project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many departments/companies/divisions are involved - Usually when we tried to have projects straight to other companies, this didn't impact the complexity of the project, but when we started having third parties involved, this caused to move a simple project to become a hard one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are not all the topics that you should consider, but some of them. Having these questions asked still helped us greatly to Improve our PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also the company I work for, we are using ROM Estimation (which is hard to have a good method out there in the internet) that has a margin of 65% of re-adjustments. We also use PERT or Three Point Estimation in order to have a better definition LATER after Requirements are gathered. Use PERT when you have historical data or you can use other projects as a base, use Three-Point if it is a brand new project - Though they might have same type of parameters, Three-Point will have a larger margin of buffer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26327" LastActivityDate="2017-01-20T21:20:18.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14214" CreationDate="2017-01-21T12:07:30.843" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Risk&lt;/strong&gt;        = a chance to lose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Opportunity&lt;/strong&gt; = a chance to earn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my understanding, PMI puts Risk &amp;amp; Opportunity together because an opportunity becomes an opportunity only if it becomes reality; until then, we have to deal with the risk of that opportunity not becoming reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: I'll emigrate to another country because I think this will give me the opportunity for a better life, but what if in doing so my life doesn't get better? So the opportunity mathematically is a risk until it becomes reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27263" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-01-21T22:22:02.317" LastActivityDate="2017-01-21T22:22:02.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20897" CreationDate="2017-01-22T08:07:07.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your problem has more than one aspect, which is also why you basically have two questions in your post:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Where do requirements end and design begin?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When are these discussions appropriate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll address these questions separately:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where do requirements end and design begin?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taken literally, the answer to this question is question is: Requirements don't end when design begins. Once you have completed your initial requirements, it is highly likely that they will change, so you need to implement a change process (e.g. a change review board in classical project managment or maintenance of the product backlog in SCRUM). Also, when your product design is completed, you need to verify it against the requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand your question though in the sense of &quot;When do inital requirements end?&quot;. The answer is: It depends on your project approach. If you are using a classical approach like waterfall or the V-model, the answer is: once the requirements specification is completed. If you are using an agile approach (such as XP or SCRUM), requirements and design run in parallel. You are preparing the requirements for the next iteration while the developers implement the current requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When are these discussions appropriate?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I admit that the first part of the answer is a bit technical, and I can see that youir real problem lies in the way requirements are drafted. To answer the question, it depends on which requirements you are working on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The high-level business requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The lower level application requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are working on the business requirements, you want less technical aspects than when working on the application requirements. The reason is quite simple: the higher your requirements level is, the further you are away from the implementation and the less these things matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice I have rarely seen this kind of distinction; you usually talk about &quot;the requirements&quot;. And how much design details you want in your requirements depends on a number of factors, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What kind of system are your building? When you build an operating system, you can not craft the requiremenst without a lot of technical details.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Company culture. A tech company will see the definition of what is a requirement differently than a retail company.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project team. Developers see requiremens differently than business analysts and depending on your team composition there will be different outputs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Especially in lower-level requirements, technical details are not always a bad thing. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a requirement says that the designed webpage should use responsive webdesign, it is probably OK. Although this is a technical term, it describes very well what is desired as an output.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the other hand, purely technical details like choice of programming language don't belong into requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To disagree on what is requirement and what is implementation detail is quite common. I though have made the opposite experience: product managers often try to limit the definitin on &quot;what is a requirement&quot; to offload the detail work to the development team (let's face it: requirements are hard).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best answer I can give you is: Address your issue openly with the team. Whether you are the only one seeing matters like this or others agree with you, you have a valid point. You should figure out some guidelines on what is a requirement (you can also write them down for reference), so that everyone is on the same page. If your team works well, you won't need any moderation, since you will be able to work it out together. Since there is a grey area, you will find a solution that probably everyone will be able to live with. If you have some friction in your team, you should nominate a moderator that everyone accepts as neutral. Or even better: try to work out your friction, since that will benefit the project in other aspects, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also make sure to include the members of your team who will use the requirements specification (developers, testers etc.) in your discussion. They will have to work with the specification, so their point of view matters. What would also be benefitial is to review the requirements document including (but not only) these stakeholders. The review serves as a corrective in case the requirements err too much into the technical implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have clearly defined what is a requirement, you should be able to draft a requirements document everyone is happy with. A review will correct any issues that remain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26637" LastEditorUserId="26637" LastEditDate="2017-01-24T22:18:39.330" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T22:18:39.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20890" CreationDate="2017-01-22T12:02:51.070" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1.Lookup of hard coded country code in a master data entry screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, 'lookup' hints that this is an outgoing data, 'hard coded' means it's maintained in an ILF, and since there is no need to change the system's state, or do any calculations this case counts as an &lt;strong&gt;EQ&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Master data information maintained by a system&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not sure what 'maintain' here means but 'master data' hints it's just an &lt;strong&gt;ILF&lt;/strong&gt;, any method changing, or updating it's state can be an EI/EO though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;lookup of a language code information that is hard coded in the application&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same as 1. but for a different DET.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Any notification/error message comes out of a system would be considered as External Input(EI) only because EI is maintains round trip in nature (batch job may be the exception) and the notification/error message is a part of the round trip. Is my understanding correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EI means system's state is changed by incoming data coming from an external source, but a notification or error message is an outgoing data and in itself does not change the system's state, so it's more likely an &lt;strong&gt;EQ&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For Non functional requirement estimation can we use FP technique or Use case estimation technique?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The name &quot;Non-functional requirement&quot; in this case is misleading. The word 'functional' in light of requirements means functionality from a user perspective. So it is actually the other way around, a non-functional requirement can mean something that the user can &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; interact with. So for these types of requirements, &lt;strong&gt;FP can be used&lt;/strong&gt; (and use case techniques not).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26623" LastActivityDate="2017-01-22T12:02:51.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20862" CreationDate="2017-01-22T17:51:15.397" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see this as a tool-based solution rather than a management based solution. You are already using resource files, and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;We have also separate files per purpose, every language have few files (like with dialogues or options). With something around 5 languages and few thousand records per language it really isn't easy to track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your problem (as I see it) is to determine when resource texts are changed, and what work must be done to fix up all the resources for the other languages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first thought was to create a program to extract all resource texts to a flat file with fields like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Source-File&#xA;Resource-Name&#xA;Resource-Language&#xA;Resource-Text&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and then sort it, and difference the current flat file with a previous version. Now you can see the changed resources and manually fix them up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, new inputs from your translators will show up in the diff's and will need to be ignored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But your situation (100 employees) strikes me as an opportunity to create a much better tool that would enhance software development in your next projects. Here is a more complex tool concept:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create a program to extract all resource texts to a database table with fields like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Source-File&#xA;Resource-Name&#xA;Resource-Language&#xA;Resource-Text&#xA;Last-Change-Date&#xA;From-Resource-File-Flag&#xA;Translator-Name&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The program would add to this table with changed resources - IE, if the language and Text is the same, the row would not be updated. If the language/text is different than the current row, add that resource as a new row.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus the table would hold all versions of the resource by date. The From-Resource-File-Flag would indicate that the source of this row is from a developer change to a resource file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the table is in SQL, you would be able to execute queries. You would be able to identify changes by developers that would need to be translated. You would also be able to locate resources that are not translated - for example, there is an English and French version but no Spanish version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the best part is that a separate tool (or website) would now be possible so that you can apportion out translation changes without too much human oversight. A translator would sign on and see a list of texts that need to be translated; the translation would be added to the database and then propagated back to the resource file with another program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said, more of a tool based solution. A management based solution might fail if people are not diligent. There would be more testing to ensure that all resources were translated (since if a resource is not translated, the resource text would be output in the wrong language).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27199" LastActivityDate="2017-01-22T17:51:15.397" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20862" CreationDate="2017-01-22T20:53:46.160" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's not possible to reduce the number of people who can change text, then finding a tool to automatically detect changes and create a translation order queue for you might be the way to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have any personal experience with enterprise translation management systems (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.transifex.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Transifex&lt;/a&gt;), but I've used startup-friendly ones like &lt;a href=&quot;https://webtranslateit.com/en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;WebTranslateIt&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.oneskyapp.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;OneSky&lt;/a&gt;. Both of these have developer tools and APIs that can be baked into your workflow in such a way that it synchronizes the latest state of your text resource files into their portals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tools like that can be accessed by translators and host the entire translation process. If a change is synchronized more recently than the latest state of a translation in a particular language, it's marked on a message by message, language by language basis. These can easily be filtered on by translators, and dashboards help managers keep track of progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's quite a wide field of services like this lately. It depends on whether you manage linguists yourself, have a relationship with a provider who you send kits to as needed, crowd-source translations, or whatever your current day-to-day may be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16138" LastActivityDate="2017-01-22T20:53:46.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20896" CreationDate="2017-01-22T21:52:09.240" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once a risk has materialised, it is no longer a risk, it is an issue. As you know. At that point the risk no longer exists and should be closed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I raise the Issue, and reference the Risk number it is derived from. Then I close the risk and reference the issue it has become within the closing comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There can be no clear definition of when an issue is closed, it is a matter for local management. However, if the issue still exists and you have just issued a workaround, then the issue still exists and should not be closed. If by providing the &quot;fix&quot; you have actually closed the issue, i.e. the observed fault/defect/impact has been removed, but has created other issues that need to be fixed in due course, then close the original issue and raise one or more new ones to reflect the current fault/defect/impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question two is somewhat off-topic as opinion-based. I have seen many systems and implementations of methods, where the Risks and the Issues are represented in the same physical location with designations of Risk or Issue; and I have worked with many that keep them physically separated (for example in two separate tabs of a spreadsheet). Personally I believe:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they are two different entities with some common attributes but many different ones&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they often have different audiences, or at least different management and mitigation processes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they have fundamentally different impacts- Risks are, by their very nature, in the future whereas Issues are impacting the project &lt;strong&gt;now&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Accordingly I will always want to manage them in two separate lists where I have a choice. Others may have other opinions and practises.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2017-01-22T21:52:09.240" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20907" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-23T05:36:37.940" Score="1" ViewCount="1963" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general who is responsible for writing UAT scripts for a typical salesforce implementation? Should the BA from Business side review the feature prototype and write scripts and should it fall on the IT side? Any suggestions how th UAT script writing looks like in an agile / waterfall environment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23354" LastActivityDate="2017-03-26T09:57:33.737" Title="Who is responsible to write UAT Test Scripts for Salesforce project?" Tags="&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20908" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-23T13:16:57.067" Score="0" ViewCount="253" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if there is any standard or basis by which to consider overhead costs in a project. Normally we practice 10-15%, but I wanted to know what others are following and what's the best practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27276" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-01-23T14:21:23.990" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T13:40:54.333" Title="Overheads calculation assumptions" Tags="&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20909" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-23T17:38:00.917" Score="3" ViewCount="4584" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum.org offers two Professional Scrum Master certifications, PSM 1 and PSM 2 (also PSM 3 which I'm not concerned with here). Both appear to have the same syllabus, and test knowledge of the same course (Professional Scrum Master). Both list their difficulty of questions as 'Intermediate'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there actually a difference in the subject matter tested, or is level 2 simply a more in depth test of the knowledge?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1056" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T07:53:24.383" Title="Is there a significant difference between PSM 1 and PSM 2" Tags="&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20897" CreationDate="2017-01-23T18:31:24.583" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is a perfect example describing one of the root problem and why many companies liking &amp;amp; switching to Agile Development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are familiar with some agile development concepts you will understand my response as is. If not try to read about scrum, product backlog, definition of done, user stories, retrospective, sprint review etc..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would ask why requirements have to end to start the design?&#xA;this about it: If we retrospect our own past experience we can say that requirements are changing element of the sw development process and hence design/development as well. What generally happen is Product owner/manager start discussing requirements and soon developer start asking questions/clarification very soon develeopers/technical person in the room starts thinking about design/development. rather focusing on what&amp;amp;why everyone starts thinking on how.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here is my quick suggestion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ask product owner to start the discussion with the sentence like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;I want to do&amp;lt;what&amp;gt; so that I can do &amp;lt;why&amp;gt;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;for example &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;I want to &amp;lt;create some default users created in the system&amp;gt; so users can &amp;lt;login to the system using their own user credentials&amp;gt;.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;now everyone in the room needs to start thinking about this what and why only and think about the questions related to what&amp;amp;why only. &#xA;for example, &#xA;why we want default users to ship in the system? isn't security a concern?&#xA;Is creating user runtime a difficult process?&#xA;who will be those default users are?&#xA;what type of permissions should be given to this default users?&#xA;what should be the default password to those users? &#xA;what should be the expiry on password?&#xA;who will communicate the default user/pass to those users?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These questions give audience ability to understand the actual usefulness of the feature the product owner is asking to implement and also everyone in the room will stay on the same page to understand the whole feature and how it supposed to be used. Try to stick to the end to end user workflow and understand the business need/value of the feature.  this type of conversations I would expect during product backlog sessions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the team understands 60-75% of &quot;what&amp;amp;why&quot; the feature is ready for the estimation. At this time if team members estimate are way off from one another one or more member can explain the whole room what was his/her thinking behind that estimate and this will lead into somewhat design/implementation discussion.&#xA;again this design explanation and discussion need to be time boxed and keep it very high level so that everyone just become comfortable with the solution as by the time team actually start working on the feature some requirements may have changed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;there are more good things beyond this explanation and I am happy to be volunteer or guide if you need more details. let me know if this information is helpful and you think that this is something you might want to try for your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7125" LastActivityDate="2017-01-23T18:31:24.583" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20892" CreationDate="2017-01-23T19:44:16.803" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before I share my view based on my experience and knowledge, few points to remeber or reminder that is relevant to this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is not a process it is tool. &#xA;Agile does not mean follow process, adopt the situation and it values more result rather than following process.&#xA;Scrum master is to serve the team in a way that team can focus on sprint and sprint related work only. Anything except the sprint work comnes  in to the way of team, it is  scrum master's job to isolate team as much as possible from that distraction/impediments or help team over come it with least disruption to the current sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now my stright feedback is YES, it is scrum master responsibility to remind team during scrum why they are doing scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here I see the few team members themselves are becoming impediments to overall teams progress. You could wait for retrospective and bring the discussion on the table as other members have suggested here but in you situation that mostky not end up good because the team is fairly new to agile. That approch works best for team who have been practicing agile for a while and not only understand most of the agile concepts but they have become self managed agile team. If you try this approch (i have done this ) mostly it ends up in blaming game and thats not we want to see in the team. I can explain why and how offline if you want to. For now i will move on to other aspect of my explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now lets focus on why and how?&#xA;Why scrum master need/should interrupt?&#xA;1)Because at this point scrum master is here to facilitate the quick communication and co-ordination between team members that help everyone to understand if team is making prigress on what tbey commited ? If not what is the blocking?&#xA;2)Because team members are fairly new to agile practice and scrum master needs to guide them what is the purpose of scrum. Its a quick update about work done and needs to be done for current sprint. Nothing more than that.&#xA;3)Because scrum master need to tackle any impediments that is blocking team making progress here clear communication is sure looks like impediment.&#xA;4)because scrum master needs to help team identify the waste and help them remove or overcome it. Over communication is waste here. &#xA;And many more I can relate but i guess you must have got my point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now &#xA;How scrum master can handle this?&#xA;Specific to this situation I think reminding team members what they shod be talking about just right before the scrum is good start. Even by doing so if few mmebers are going way off consistently stop them right in scrum and follow up with  their concerns. By thus time it should be pretty clear to scrum master that what is waste or intonational disruption and what is just lake of understanding. By doing so initially some members might feel tbey left out and not given enough info or update. But that ok. They will speak up in retrospective and mebtioned how they are feeling. Thats the time when scrum master can take their feedback and try to accomodate any valid inputs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bringing in original topic to retrospective is too late to remind and kind of recreating the issue and that why i do not think its effective for new team. For them this is hard to understand this is an actual issue or waste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are more ways we can handleand try it out.&#xA;Let us know if this make sense or if you feel positive about this approch. Happy to help offline or by any other way I can &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7125" LastActivityDate="2017-01-23T19:44:16.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20897" CreationDate="2017-01-23T21:44:24.493" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three levels of requirements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business Requirements (why we need a system).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User requirements &lt;strong&gt;to software&lt;/strong&gt; (what users need to be able to do to enable Business Requirements).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Functional/nonfunctional Requirements &lt;strong&gt;to software&lt;/strong&gt; (what developers have to implement to enable User Requirements).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only the first level relates to a business project. The second and the third levels relate to IT projects and distinctly contain the phrase &quot;to software&quot;. So Business Requirements should define a business problem and possible resolving ways like purchase of licenses of some existing product or develop software by yourself or to buy a company that owns that beautiful software etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Business Requirements are usually defined in a Vision and Scope Document (contains business opportunity, business objectives, business success metrics, business risks, limitations, scope etc.). Other names of this document: business case, project charter, market opportunity etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Software design starts from User Requirements to software because users start by imagining what they want to be able to do. Of course your designers/architects have to review requirements constantly. It is an example of continuous integration of any information in a project - no one should be surprised by the results of predecessors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27280" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-01-23T22:00:29.157" LastActivityDate="2017-01-23T22:00:29.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20832" CreationDate="2017-01-24T09:26:23.610" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The easiest way is to simply highlight the releases that you want and then open in &lt;strong&gt;Issue Navigator&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Export Method&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply export as an XLS specifying the columns that you require. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Failing that, export all columns and simply delete the redundant ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Command Method&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are seeking that information within JIRA itself without an export than you are going to require a few nifty JIRA SQL commands which you can save as a filter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will update later with the exact commands but for now you can find a wealth of information in the JQL overview by Atlassian. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/jiracore/blog/2015/07/search-jira-like-a-boss-with-jql&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://confluence.atlassian.com/jiracore/blog/2015/07/search-jira-like-a-boss-with-jql&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The commands that you require are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;project = INSERTPROJECTHERE AND issuetype in (Bug, Story) AND fixVersion = &quot;INSERTVERSIONHERE&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you can try&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;project = INSERTPROJECTHERE AND issuetype in (Bug, Story) AND status was Resolved during (INSERTSTARTDATE, INSERTENDDATE)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dashboard Method&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create a dashboard, or add to an existing dashboard the widget &lt;strong&gt;Issue Statistics&lt;/strong&gt; and then specify the date range that you require.  It will pull in all releases, bugs and stories during that period. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="10462" LastEditDate="2017-01-25T10:57:41.713" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T10:57:41.713" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20909" CreationDate="2017-01-24T10:29:23.137" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no significant difference in the subject matter tested, both assess your competence regarding scrum principles and methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference is in knowledge vs understanding &amp;amp; practice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PSM I&lt;/strong&gt; focuses on your &lt;strong&gt;knowledge&lt;/strong&gt; of the material, the test itself mainly consists of multiple-choice Q&amp;amp;A to test what you know about scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PSM II&lt;/strong&gt; on the other hand, focuses more on the &lt;strong&gt;practice&lt;/strong&gt; and real-world situations: The test itself &lt;s&gt;has multiple essay questions&lt;/s&gt;, how you would respond in such and such situations. PSM II is also considered a more advanced level exam and it is harder to take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Majaii's answers states, the essay questions were removed from PSM II (now there are some in PSM III). Nevertheless, the statement that PSM II focuses more on the practice of the principles of SCRUM is still true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26623" LastEditorUserId="26623" LastEditDate="2017-01-25T07:53:24.383" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T07:53:24.383" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20915" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20922" CreationDate="2017-01-24T12:54:21.817" Score="0" ViewCount="767" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new to estimation techniques. I am trying to compare different techniques; mainly Use Case Point (UCP), Function Point (FP) and Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). In WBS context can I say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;WBS approach is dependent of the technology being used (e.g. Java/.Net will have different estimation figure).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It helps to roll up the effort across various tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This technique would be more reliable if there are complexity guidelines that help to arrive at the individual task effort.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unlike UCP/FP WBS does not help me to arrive the application size.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these understandings correct? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27195" LastEditorUserId="27195" LastEditDate="2017-01-24T15:04:14.100" LastActivityDate="2017-01-30T13:42:13.027" Title="Accurate estimation using work break down structure (WBS)" Tags="&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20909" CreationDate="2017-01-24T16:43:19.640" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay switching this to an answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you mentioned PSM I and PSM II have the same subject matter and syllabus, and with the recent change to PSM II it does not have essay questions any longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference in the questions is PSM I has fairly straightforward questions with textbook answers, ie if you read through the material you should be able to pick the right answers out of the multiple choice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PSM II is meant to have harder, more situational questions showing you understand the application of Scrum in a real life setting, rather than just knowing the principles. From the material I read when taking PSM I ( I have not taken PSM II) they expected someone to have been a Scrum Master for a while (or take their course I suppose) to do well on PSM II. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A similar answer was given on the last post of the thread here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/Forums/aft/243&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.scrum.org/Forums/aft/243&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend taking the practice test to check what those questions are like, they should be very representative of what you can expect on the actual test. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26060" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T16:43:19.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20907" CreationDate="2017-01-24T17:10:34.390" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;UAT script writing&quot; contains from several steps. Some of them can be done by &lt;strong&gt;anyone depending on contractual agreement&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create initial list of scenarios. Any side.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write down detailed scenarios, fix and update them when needed. Any side.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Review and approve scenarios and changes. Customer only.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Execute scenarios. Any side.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen both extremes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vendor does everything, customer only approves.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vendor has no clue what UAT scenarios are and just receives bugs, customer handles entire UAT process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26385" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T17:10:34.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20920" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20924" CreationDate="2017-01-24T17:25:59.137" Score="2" ViewCount="356" Body="&lt;p&gt;My product owner wants me to show him a product roadmap based on what will be released quarterly, right now all planning is done on a week by week basis which seems to be working well but is not giving him an idea of what we are trying to achieve long term. I have explored the following options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gaant&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Release burn up charts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not satisfied with any, since they are too detailed or not visual enough. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What tools do you use to represent this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T06:01:46.177" Title="Best and easiest way to build a Product Roadmap?" Tags="&lt;roadmaps&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20920" CreationDate="2017-01-24T18:25:29.873" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My recommendation would be to create a Goal Orientated Roadmap as detailed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.romanpichler.com/tools/product-roadmap/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; by Roman Pichler. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I made some changes to mine and it has been received pretty well.  I have attached a copy of the final design below. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously you can customise your own headings but the most useful boxes are typically the &lt;strong&gt;Features&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;Stakeholders&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Milestones&lt;/strong&gt; since they align to &lt;strong&gt;who&lt;/strong&gt; is getting &lt;strong&gt;what&lt;/strong&gt; and roughly &lt;strong&gt;when&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jPo6G.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jPo6G.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T18:25:29.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20915" CreationDate="2017-01-24T21:19:16.823" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to say that it is better to replace Work Breakdown Structure with a Requirements Breakdown Structure. So you can copy and past your Requirements Breakdown Structure from Requirements Specification to MS Project without any transformations ;) Using Breakdown Structure you are going to use so called expert estimation (e.g. PERT). The idea is that for expert it is easier to estimate a little work rather then big one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As any expert effort estimation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimation is done by experts (at least two) without any guidelines. They are experts on that technology :)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For projects less then 1000 FP it is usually not important whether to use FPA or Expert estimation. But with FP it is easier to maintain your estimation due to unavoidable requirements changes. Bigger than 10000 FP - definitely use FPA. If you do not have experts in certain technology you cannot use expert estimation. If you do not have knowledge base for similar projects and unaware of velocity of your potential project team (hours per FP) you cannot convert size to effort before project start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27280" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T21:19:16.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20923" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-25T04:03:19.397" Score="-2" ViewCount="104" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new to use case base estimation technique. I have the following scenario and facing little difficult to conclude my use case point count. Suppose I need to execute 3 steps one after another. Each of these steps, by themselves does not leave the system in a consistent state. So from use case point counting should I consider 1 use case having 3 transactions? Is my understanding correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also for use case estimation along with functional document, I must require design document right? Without design document, I can still estimate with functional document but it will not be accurate right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27195" LastActivityDate="2017-01-27T14:38:05.210" Title="Scenario based Use case point estimation counting" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20920" CreationDate="2017-01-25T06:01:46.177" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Similar experience here, and I finally decided to maintain two documents:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One Micro plan using gantt to schedule tasks for the next week (so reviewed weekly)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One Macro roadmap with a simple spreadsheet document in order to have an overview of the release on a monthly/quarterly basis of each modules, which looks like this:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0odTc.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0odTc.png&quot; alt=&quot;Roadmap&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25678" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T06:01:46.177" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20908" CreationDate="2017-01-25T08:40:08.830" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use a bit more sophisticated method - basically every task in work/product (depending on the approach) is estimated with 3 values:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;minimum time (TMIN) - minimal time task will take to complete&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;maximum time (TMAX) - maximum time task will take to complete&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;risk factor in percentage (RISK) - this is basically the possibility of the fact we need to use full maximum time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All 3 values are assigned by developers. As I learned the main problem they mostly have is to specify RISK - so the explanation for that is if they know the subject, they did something like this already before and they have an idea right away how to do that - they should put 10-15% in there. If they were doing something similar before, but this one is much more customized and they do not know fully yet how to design that - they should put 20-40%. If the subject is less known for them - they should put there 50-80%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to calculate something I call real time (REAL) you need I use a bit modified PERT equation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;REAL = (TMIN + ((100%-RISK) x TMIN + RISK x TMAX) x 3 + TMAX) / 5&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In standard PERT you additionally have additional value which is realistic time - in the equation above this is that formula: ((100%-RISK) x TMIN + RISK x TMAX)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then when I have all the tasks estimated this way I use weighted average of RISK for all the tasks (with REAL as weight) to calculate overall overhead/margin for whole project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The additional overheads you would need to remember to add in scope of programming are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Documentation - I put 20-30% here depending on the documentation standard (of course as long as there are reasonable client requirements - since there are situations when documentation can even take 50-80% of whole time)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Service - if you are not adding service fee in the contract&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is actually one more overhead you should consider also in the situation when you share resources between the projects. This overhead is time needed for specialist to switch between tasks/projects. In most cases I use the 5% for switching/onboarding - however depending on the level of detail of your tasks you can also use fixed value such as 1 hour.&#xA;What is quite important in here is that this overhead should actually not be covered by the project, but by the operational costs. I find this not as a project expense, but the expense of having a specialist that is shared between the projects. And as such the cost of this 5%/1h should rather not be added to the project cost, but should be considered to project schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27302" LastEditorUserId="27302" LastEditDate="2017-01-25T09:34:07.603" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T09:34:07.603" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20907" CreationDate="2017-01-25T08:47:59.747" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way UATs are created, accepted and performed should be a part of a contract. The practice I do my bets to use and convince my customers to is that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scripts are created by delivery party at the beginning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scripts are accepted by receiving party at the beginning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;UATs are performed by receiving party at the end with active presence of delivery party&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very important that once scripts are accepted in point 2 above - these scripts describes the tests that once passed - system is accepted. If any other bugs are found during free-form tests - these bugs are part of guarantee/post-guarantee service procedure, and cannot stop acceptance process.&#xA;In scope of point 3 it is very important that delivery party will be present and control the UAT process - mainly to make sure receiving party is following scripts, not going left or right from the procedure. Even if they want to (which is extremely common) they need to be stopped and took back to scripts - with an information that free-form tests are indeed possible, but the UATs needs to be completed first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27302" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T08:47:59.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20908" CreationDate="2017-01-25T13:40:54.333" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way is to improve the accuracy of estimations :) But that's another topic. &#xA;We've been using &lt;strong&gt;20&lt;/strong&gt;% overhead value, and to be more accurate with the deadlines, consider that you have only &lt;strong&gt;80&lt;/strong&gt;% of the resource. E.g. the super-accurate-estimate is &lt;strong&gt;40&lt;/strong&gt; hours. Add &lt;strong&gt;20&lt;/strong&gt;%, this makes it &lt;strong&gt;48&lt;/strong&gt; hours. Then, assuming the developer works &lt;strong&gt;8&lt;/strong&gt; hours per day and starts on Monday, the deadline is next Wednesday. &lt;strong&gt;80&lt;/strong&gt;% of dev resource is &lt;strong&gt;6.4&lt;/strong&gt; hours per day. &lt;strong&gt;48&lt;/strong&gt;/&lt;strong&gt;6.4&lt;/strong&gt; = &lt;strong&gt;7.5&lt;/strong&gt; days. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27305" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T13:40:54.333" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20929" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-25T18:12:45.463" Score="1" ViewCount="128" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the team member accepts the meeting with an option &quot;Do not send response&quot;. When the meeting was scheduled, his calendar was open. As a PM I do not know if he is attending the meeting or not because the &quot;View Tracking Status&quot; under Outlook does not get updated and shows &quot;None&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, he puts another meeting on top of the existing meeting that he accepted earlier and very conveniently skips the meeting. This has happened in several instances. His argument is to use &quot;Scheduling Assistant&quot; to determine if I am coming or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions on how to handle this team member? As a PM it is getting difficult to get him to meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23354" LastActivityDate="2017-01-26T14:07:56.910" Title="Team Member does not send meeting response via outlook" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20929" CreationDate="2017-01-25T18:39:02.453" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your team charter should outline the rules of engagement with which your project's talent needs to comply.  Provide him your team charter and put him on notice for compliance.  If he fails, replace him.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T18:39:02.453" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20929" CreationDate="2017-01-25T18:55:48.680" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before doing anything else, I would attempt to discover &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; he is skipping these meetings. &lt;a href=&quot;https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/66378&quot;&gt;Solve for X, not for Y.&lt;/a&gt; It may be that he has a legitimate concern about these meetings, and is simply failing to properly &lt;em&gt;voice&lt;/em&gt; that concern - instead opting to stealthily avoid them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he does have a legitimate reason for avoiding the meeting, then rather than focusing on &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; he's doing, you should focus on fixing the &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt;. Of course, you should &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; look into improving his ability to bring such issues to your attention through more productive approaches. This may involve changes both in his own actions and in yours or in the process itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; have a legitimate reason (ie. &quot;I'm too lazy to walk that far.&quot; or &quot;The meeting's not helpful for me personally and I don't care about others.&quot;), then what I would do is either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A) Require him to come to the meetings. Failure to do so is to be considered dereliction of duty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B) Require him to &lt;em&gt;ensure you are notified&lt;/em&gt; whenever he discovers he is not going to be attending the meeting. Failure to do so is to be considered dereliction of duty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just make sure you approach the discussion from a perspective of open conversation, not one of blame. Otherwise you'll likely have much difficulty getting down to the crux and cause of the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-20T10:29:45.420" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T18:55:48.680" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20932" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-25T19:15:02.940" Score="1" ViewCount="1207" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have SharePoint Server 2016 and Project Server 2016.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I turned on notification sending in Central Administration and for each resources, but resources don't receive any alerts/notifications after the resource is assigned to a project task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did settings according these links, but they don't help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/14842/how-to-send-email-notification-when-assigning-task-to-resources-in-project-serve&quot;&gt;How to send email notification when assigning task to resources in project server 2013 web app&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh767487%28v=office.14%29.aspx?f=255&amp;amp;MSPPError=-2147217396&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Configuring e-mail notifications and reminders in Project Web App&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj635886.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Alerts and Reminders&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27286" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2020-03-15T10:22:36.187" Title="Project Server 2016 doesn't send task assignment alerts to resources" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20933" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-25T21:49:20.077" Score="2" ViewCount="85" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work on a team of 15 devs, 5 product managers (POs), 4 testers and 2 designers. We currently use what I'd call a project-based model. As projects materialize, we spin up project teams to tackle those projects. Then we wind them down as project needs diminish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize this isn't particularly agile for a number of reasons - chief among them (for us) is the fact that we can't possibly establish any kind of predictable velocity. Devs rotate in and out. The work becomes more about &quot;what do I need to get done this sprint&quot; vs. &quot;what does my team need to get done.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, we are exploring a more traditional model in which our 15 developers are split into 3 static teams. But that's where it gets murky, because each of those teams will need to share the other resources. For example there will be 2 teams with 2 POs each. Another team will have to have 2 testers. Meanwhile 1 team won't have a dedicated designer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The loudest concern is coming from the Product side, and it goes like this: What happens if, say, 4 devs from each team of 5 are dedicated to medium/large projects (all contained within each team) with each 5th dev chipping away at the backlog ... and then there's suddenly a new medium/large project on the horizon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our current &quot;projectized&quot; model we'd be able to spin up a NEW team consisting of the 3 floating devs who are chipping away at the backlog. But obviously this would defeat the purpose of 3 static teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thoughts are appreciated!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23177" LastActivityDate="2017-01-26T14:21:36.553" Title="Moving from project teams to static teams - advice?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20934" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-26T03:38:36.797" Score="2" ViewCount="117" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quoting an example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I have a user story which says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As an administrator I should be able to query all users (both active and inactive) from my database when in my master configuration (Admin section of application) the flag 'return inactive user' is set as true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assume, now if we need to implement we need two developers: one for creating this flag in Master configuration and another one to modify the existing search logic (which exists somewhere else and not in the Admin section) to return Inactive users based on the flag value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the question is, can we create two stories as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Creating master configuration in Admin Module and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Updating existing search mechanism to handle Inactive users.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or we stick to the above mentioned story and create sub-tasks related to Admin Module and Updating existing search?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope my question makes sense now?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Using Jira]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11515" LastEditorUserId="27343" LastEditDate="2017-01-28T20:06:14.383" LastActivityDate="2017-01-29T10:58:34.010" Title="Do we create application-level stories?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20929" CreationDate="2017-01-26T14:07:56.910" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The fact that he's not attending the meetings (and he's also not notifying you about that) is an effect, not a cause. You need to identify the cause first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the best approaches you can take is to engage into an open one-to-one discussion with him, find out what the real problem is and solve that one first. If you do that, then the issue related to the meeting attendance will also get resolved (as a consequence).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27133" LastActivityDate="2017-01-26T14:07:56.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20933" CreationDate="2017-01-26T14:21:36.553" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is anyone supervising the activity of the entire team? I'm not talking about a Project Management Office entity (the team you mentioned is too small for that) - but about a person in charge with establishing priorities among projects. If the team you described is actually a small development company, then that person would be the CEO of that company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You basically have a pool of resources (managers, developers, designers and testers) which need to be shared among the projects you have on the table. But this sharing strictly depends on the needs of each project - and it needs to be supervised by the person I mentioned above. He/she has to make sure that each project has the resources it requires, that the workload is properly distributed (nobody gets over-worked), etc. Without this kind of supervision, everything might get down to having the managers agree on the resources they use/share - but that discussion might not always be a productive one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, if you have enough projects on the table for the entire pool of resources and the new projects will keep coming - it will all become a matter of prioritizing the projects / work (a task which is also one for the supervisor I mentioned).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27133" LastActivityDate="2017-01-26T14:21:36.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20941" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20965" CreationDate="2017-01-26T19:28:47.260" Score="0" ViewCount="93" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to graduate in software engineering, &quot;I can&quot; code in Java (Android), JavaScript (jQuery, Angularjs), HTML, CSS, i know Python and Django Framework. I've never developed big projects, but some &quot;scholastic stuff&quot;, such as apps for time scheduling at school or an app about voting music in concerts. I studied some exams about IEEE and ISO, UML, GANTT, Use Case Diagrams, and all the time they teach us &quot;what they do&quot; but never &quot;how to do them&quot;... now I'd like to start a little team with my colleagues, but I've never managed true projects with these tools... where should I start? How could I truly learn this kind of managing from the scratch, while I've never done it in practice? Which books and/or experiences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for my bad English, hope I let you understand what I need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27322" LastActivityDate="2017-01-30T13:42:09.673" Title="Starting a developement team" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;startup&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2017-01-31T12:57:46.407" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10395" CreationDate="2017-01-26T20:44:52.163" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We had a team of 4 developers working on delivering new functionality to the product in iterations. At some point, when the product was introduced to the end-users, we also faced the constant flow of bugfixes and small feature requests or UX improvements. The product was in active selling phase so the client did not accept the solution to include these &quot;bugfixes&quot; to the next iterations. So we did the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;pulled out one developer from the main team and assigned all the ongoing requests to him;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;created a separate board for &quot;bugfixes&quot;, prioritized and estimated them. QA team did periodically check whether the issues are still reproduced.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;continued the new features delivery with the team of 3 people. It influenced the delivery speed, but for the client this was more acceptable than not having the bugs fixed asap.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see any reason to rotate developers between the teams, in fact, that slows down the progress. At least in our case this would have worsened the situation because of additional time to understand the new piece of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27305" LastActivityDate="2017-01-26T20:44:52.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20945" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-27T14:07:28.543" Score="-1" ViewCount="72" Body="&lt;p&gt;When my boss and I have contrasting opinions, he seems to take credit after realising that I was right despite initially acting dismissive at the time I advised him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a feeling that this could be caused by not communicating effectively, how do you communicate efficient with stakeholders when you have a difference in opinion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2017-01-30T16:47:24.627" Title="Having trouble influencing my boss first time round?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20923" CreationDate="2017-01-27T14:38:05.210" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;All right, looks like this is for school, right? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will be hard for us to answer as the answer is the book answer, not the practical answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practically speaking, trying to estimate by Use Cases is something not used in any modern agile approaches. &lt;code&gt;[Use Cases are not User Stories][1]&lt;/code&gt;Any estimates you get are going to be flawed based on trying to estimate something bigger than can be reasonably estimated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry, based on what you are showing us, I can't help you directly. It's not something I would ever use in day to day business and if I had a client using this I would work to coach them away from it. The only real advice I can offer you is if this is in your curriculum you may want to ask if this is teaching you practical job skills instead of what the school thinks is relevant. There are a lot of education &quot;bodies&quot; out there right now that are teaching &quot;agile&quot; in such a way that it will be useless to you in an actual job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-01-27T14:38:05.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20945" CreationDate="2017-01-27T14:50:07.123" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You know the old dating line, &quot;It's not you, it's me&quot;. In part, this is what's likely going on with your boss. I coach with the use of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DISC_assessment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DISC assessment system&lt;/a&gt;. I find it a useful tool to help in communication. DISC essentially boils down to &quot;When pushed, what's a person's fall back communication style&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on your limited example I'd guess your boss is a High C, with a strong High D influence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A High C can be humorously described as a person who says, &quot;Ready, aim, aim, aim, aim... more data, adjust aim, aim, aim, aim.&quot;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A High D is humorously described as a person who says, &quot;Fire!&quot;. If you miss you can try aiming. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, your boss is a data person and needs time to process. As a boss, they will have a natural High D tendency as well (Bottom Line Up Front, just the facts, interrupts). When combined this will result in the High D rising up and cutting short the conversation. Meanwhile the High C part is processing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your boss almost certainly knows the ideas are coming from you. They just don't have enough psychological safety to admit this after the fact. If you have an overall good relationship with them and don't need external credit, this is not a huge issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you can try and do is not push for decisions to quick. Try and have two meetings for these things. One meeting is where you just discuss ideas, try not to weigh in with your own opinion at first. Give your boss time to absorb. Then in the second meeting you can push your agenda. The first meeting can even be just providing your boss with offline data. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-01-27T14:50:07.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20948" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-27T15:32:43.043" Score="2" ViewCount="6594" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the main difference between user stories and functional specifications (other than the format they are in)? When should I use user stories and when specifications. Do they go hand in hand with agile and waterfall respectively? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27169" LastActivityDate="2017-01-27T17:55:22.767" Title="User stories vs Functional specifications" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20948" CreationDate="2017-01-27T16:41:33.713" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Functional specification&lt;/strong&gt; is typically a quite detailed document which describes the system, it can take weeks and months to create it. Classically it is used in Waterfall, but in my practice I had clients who came to us with this 100-page doc and asked to develop using Agile. So the functional specification is broken down into small tasks and iterations are planned out of these tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;User stories&lt;/strong&gt; and mainly used in Agile and give the possibility to start development very quickly. You don't have to know and describe all the future product functionality, only that for the first sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27305" LastActivityDate="2017-01-27T16:41:33.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20950" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-27T16:49:21.957" Score="1" ViewCount="201" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was asked to research &quot;What is the best industry standard report for Code quality control and measurement over time?&quot;. Our QA team provides weekly reports on Regression and New bugs found. I need to find out how to report to stakeholders that our code quality is stable and we do not introduce more bugs or regressions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27333" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-01-27T17:08:51.850" LastActivityDate="2017-01-30T12:08:50.903" Title="What is the best industry standard report for Code quality control and measurement over time?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20941" CreationDate="2017-01-27T16:59:48.043" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try starting not with the tools but rather with the goals and needs. Once they are clarified, it'll be much clearer for you which tools do you need. E.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Launch MVP of our product and see how it goes.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;Most likely you'll use Agile, so go on and start creating user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Agree with the client on schedule.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;A visualization will help, create Gantt Chart for the closest iteration and macro map for the whole project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Have a transparent iteration status so that the stakeholders are informed.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;Use burndown chart.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27305" LastActivityDate="2017-01-27T16:59:48.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20950" CreationDate="2017-01-27T17:12:17.060" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I need to find out how to report to stakeholders that our code quality is stable and we do not introduce more bugs or regressions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question: &lt;em&gt;Is your code quality stable and you refrain from introducing more bugs?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes? Then, follow-up question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How do you know?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you using a bug-tracking system of some sort? You track every single bug? And thus have access to a report that definitively shows your team isn't generating more bugs than it used to? Then just show that report to your boss. Simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you using a bug-tracking system but do not track every single bug? Then you'd better start tracking every single bug.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you tracking bugs as they come up, but throwing them away afterwards? Stop throwing them away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you not tracking them at all (ie. (receiving those reports from QA, dealing with them, and then tossing them)? Start tracking them. This could be via a full-blown issue tracking/project management system (JIRA, Trello, etc.), or just an excel spreadsheet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-01-27T17:12:17.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20948" CreationDate="2017-01-27T17:55:22.767" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the main difference between user stories and functional specifications (other than the format they are in)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story is a &lt;em&gt;promise&lt;/em&gt; to have a conversation about requirements. Specifications are the &lt;em&gt;record&lt;/em&gt; of this conversation. (Based on JimStandley comment &lt;a href=&quot;http://alistair.cockburn.us/A+user+story+is+to+a+use+case+as+a+gazelle+is+to+a+gazebo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26385" LastActivityDate="2017-01-27T17:55:22.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20950" CreationDate="2017-01-27T18:56:52.450" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Industry standard metric is Defects per Function Point (or per any other &lt;strong&gt;volume unit&lt;/strong&gt; you use).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example of report indicators:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Defects per function point&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Defect potential&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Defect removal efficiency&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Defects removed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Defects delivered&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cost per defect prerelease&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cost per defect postrelease&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Average cost per defect&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Recommended book:&lt;/strong&gt; The Economics of Software Quality - Capers Jones&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;International Standards:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ISO/IEC 25030 Software engineering -- Software product Quality Requirements and Evaluation (SQuaRE) -- Quality requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ISO/IEC 25010 Systems and software engineering -- Systems and software Quality Requirements and Evaluation (SQuaRE) -- System and software quality models&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;IEEE 730-2014 - IEEE Standard for Software Quality Assurance Processes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;IEEE 1061-1998 - IEEE Standard for a Software Quality Metrics Methodology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ISO 9000-9001 Quality Management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ISO/IEC 10181 Information technology -- Open Systems Interconnection -- Security frameworks for open systems: Access control framework&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ISO 17799 Information technology -- Security techniques -- Code of practice for information security management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sarbanes-Oxley&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27280" LastEditorUserId="27280" LastEditDate="2017-01-27T19:02:17.687" LastActivityDate="2017-01-27T19:02:17.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20934" CreationDate="2017-01-28T11:09:00.017" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an administrator I should be able to query all users (both active and inactive) from my database when in my master configuration (Admin section of application) the flag 'return inactive user' is set as true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not following the typical user story approach as it contains implementation details and is not focused on the value derived. A reworked version might look something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an administrator I want to retrieve a list of either all users (both active and inactive) or just the active users depending on what is the most appropriate search so that I can perform actions on the list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the user story does not contain implementation detail such as mentioning the master configuration. The implementation detail is typically covered by technical tasks. Examples of these tasks could be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create a flag in the master configuration to indicate if user searches should return inactive users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Modify the existing search logic to return inactive users based on the master configuration flag value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important part here is to distinguish between user stories (which are end-user value related) and technical tasks (which are determined by the delivery team when they are deciding on implementation). It often takes several technical tasks to deliver a single user story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-01-28T19:34:50.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20956" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20969" CreationDate="2017-01-29T00:14:48.080" Score="1" ViewCount="7275" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in a group project at school. We built a MS Project file for our group, and set durations for all tasks. Everything is Auto-Scheduled. We also set up resources for ourselves to work on the tasks. For instance we have WBS task #1.1.1. This task has a duration of 7 days and has 10 hours of resources assigned to it. We then baselined the project file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do we enter the actual resources that were spent on that WBS item? Every time I enter something, it changes the duration or completion date. I just want the project file to know that we worked overtime on it (or under time). So that we can compare that to the baseline and keep a log of everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27345" LastActivityDate="2017-01-30T19:54:46.390" Title="How to Add Actual Hours" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;&lt;resources&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18321" CreationDate="2017-01-29T08:55:16.353" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fault tree is more like hardware / software faults that may occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However failure modes and effects analysis looks at the implementation effects of those faults or design errors in systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest to take a look at these two methodologies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About using these methodologies in corporate risk management; the program risks are not solely technical in nature. It's also organizational, schedule related, money related. Many risk resources identify certain risks for project managers to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, risk management is a good topic to study, requiring mostly simple math. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16715" LastActivityDate="2017-01-29T08:55:16.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20934" CreationDate="2017-01-29T10:53:16.253" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although Barnaby's answer covers most I do want to add a little bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can we solve your problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your example user story does not explain &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; the administrator wants this, but it focuses on the &lt;strong&gt;how&lt;/strong&gt;. User stories should try focus on the why instead of the what and how. This so that the team can solve the problem in anyway they see fit. Maybe setting the flag is not the simplest way to solve this request. I have heard about a team that resolved 50% of all their request by not implementing any code at all. Most of the time they just sit with the users to teach them how to use their existing tools to resolve the stories why question for them. Leading to better focus, faster value and less (code) maintenance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;to implement we need two developers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This quote scares me. Why do you need to separate developers to fulfill this relative simple technical request? And does it matter? &lt;strong&gt;Let the &quot;cross-functional&quot; team decide how to split the task and resolve it.&lt;/strong&gt; Just make sure a single team has all the knowledge to resolve any user story in a product they are working on. If they lack the knowledge get sharing as soon as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum guides team pages&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cross-functional teams have all competencies needed to accomplish the&#xA;  work without depending on others not part of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They are self-organizing. No one (not even the Scrum Master) tells the&#xA;  Development Team how to turn Product Backlog into Increments of&#xA;  potentially releasable functionality;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question feels like it is ignore this. As it is telling how to implement the functionality and which developers should be doing it. Let the team decide how to tackle this, just explain them why someone wants what value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2017-01-29T10:58:34.010" LastActivityDate="2017-01-29T10:58:34.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20960" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-30T11:24:04.010" Score="0" ViewCount="492" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I have started documented all risk related issues in a RAID log. I am showing my stakeholder it weekly, so that he is aware of all product related risks, but not sure if there is much value in doing so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2017-04-30T17:37:40.833" Title="Do you show your RAID log to stakeholders?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20960" CreationDate="2017-01-30T11:48:17.903" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, there is certainly value in keeping a RAID log, and making it accessible for project stakeholders to view. However, I wouldn't take it to them weekly unless specifically requested to do so. At most I'd send them a link to it, or attach it in my regular project update emails, and then they can choose to view it or not if they have the time/inclination to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exception to this would be if I came across a major risk, but then I would flag it independently of the RAID log to the stakeholders, and document it in the log also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/strong&gt; Give them the choice by making it accessible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24050" LastActivityDate="2017-01-30T11:48:17.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20950" CreationDate="2017-01-30T12:08:50.903" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have a look at the OpenSource &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sonarqube.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SonarQube&lt;/a&gt; for measuring and managing code quality trends. Ranging from defects to code analysis trends. It is even possible to deny commits if it does not meet the minimal standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Code quality is more than the end-result and the number of defects. How many defects per X does not make a lot of sense anymore in a world that is moving to continuous delivery. You cannot compare one product or industry to another. Mainly because of complexity. Wonder how do you prevent defects? Make it less complex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to measure code quality with metrics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduced defects vs completed features trends&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_coverage&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;code coverage&lt;/a&gt; percentage trends&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclomatic_complexity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Code complexity&lt;/a&gt; trends&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Known &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourcemaking.com/refactoring/smells&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Code smells&lt;/a&gt; trends&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next to that I would also introduce gathering of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Root-causes of defects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think these are the most important metrics to monitor and report on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also research &lt;a href=&quot;https://cleancoders.com/episode/clean-code-episode-1/show&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Clean Code&lt;/a&gt; if you want your teams to deliver higher quality code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2017-01-30T12:08:50.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20960" CreationDate="2017-01-30T12:18:03.117" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The purpose of the log is to keep you, as the PM, and your team on the same page as to the high priority things on which you are working.  It is not a communication vehicle.  To communicate with it means you need to scrub it and make it customer/stakeholder ready.  You will end up working on the log as if it were a product of and in itself and that is not what it is supposed to be for.  Who cares if the log is ugly, with spelling errors, grammar errors, etc.  But you would care if you have to &quot;deliver&quot; it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Extracting the elements in the log and communicating it out in other communication vehicles--weekly reports, monthly reports, audit analysis, etc.--is not only a good thing but is your job.  And of course, exposing or hiding information based on the stakeholder is a political action you need to consider, too.  Be transparent but be smart about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-01-30T12:18:03.117" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20945" CreationDate="2017-01-30T13:23:09.690" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the actual question is how to persuade your boss into giving you credit for the situations where he took your advice / opinion and used it. If so, then the answer would depend on the personality type of your boss. Communicating with influent stakeholders may depend on their personality / the way they react in certain situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance - does your boss always use your ideas and take credit for them? Even when they turn up to be bad ideas (in the end) - he accepts the consequences? If so, then he might not realize that he's really using your ideas as his own. If not (i.e. he only takes credit for your good ideas), then an open 1-to-1 discussion with him might help (initially). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're a valuable member of the team and you can also help him see / understand that (and if he's a good leader) - then he will start giving you credit for your ideas. If he's not a good leader... then that's a completely different topic and what you can do regarding it is pretty limited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27133" LastActivityDate="2017-01-30T13:23:09.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20941" CreationDate="2017-01-30T13:42:09.673" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try taking a Project Management Fundamentals course (there are plenty of providers of this course - accredited by PMI - you can find them online). It won't make you an expert (only the years of practice can do that, not a course) - but it will help you understand the basics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your question, I understand that you will be the manager in the little team you're mentioning. The methodology to be used inside the team might vary from one project to another (especially due to the &lt;em&gt;unique nature&lt;/em&gt; of most projects) - but you can start with something like this and refine it on the way (especially for small / medium projects) :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1.&lt;/strong&gt; Agree with the client on a set of specifications and clarify them (again, together with the client) until a point where they could be decently estimated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2.&lt;/strong&gt; Make sure you have the right people to handle the project, based on the technologies / complexity which can be deduced when the clarification is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3.&lt;/strong&gt; Estimate - &lt;em&gt;together with your team&lt;/em&gt; - the clarified tasks. Make sure to identify the possible risks which might appear during implementation - and to reserve enough time (in the estimate) for handling them as they appear. There are multiple estimation methods you can use (this is a different topic).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4.&lt;/strong&gt; Based on the estimate, make a development plan. This involves being able to establish the order in which the tasks should be developed, their dependencies (tasks which cannot start until other tasks are completed, etc) and - having the estimates from the previous point - create a schedule. You can try using a GANTT diagram for this. A network diagram would be better (there are several tools allowing you to create this). Make sure that the risks identified during analysis / estimation are present in the schedule as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;5.&lt;/strong&gt; Obtain the customer buy-in on the estimates / schedule you created. Sign a contract. The nature of the contract (fixed price / time &amp;amp; material / etc) would depend on the nature of the project as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;6.&lt;/strong&gt; Start working according to the estimates and the schedule you created. Make sure to monitor the project closely (especially if we're talking about projects having a certain complexity) and try to foresee if there will be deviations from the estimates / schedule. If there will be deviations, figure out the cause and what you can do to stop them showing up from there on. Also, if there will be deviations from the main scope (from the initial set of specs you estimated), make sure the client understands that - estimate them separately and adjust the initial schedule as well. &lt;em&gt;And - for most projects - there will be such deviations (coming as modifications or new requests), so be prepared for that.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;7.&lt;/strong&gt; Have a clear idea about when the project ends and when the maintenance / operations work starts, because that might have to be charged / handled separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long story short, this would be it. I hope it helps. You can refine the methodology periodically and adjust it to your needs / working style. And keep in mind - not planning at all is actually planning to fail.&#xA;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27133" LastActivityDate="2017-01-30T13:42:09.673" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20915" CreationDate="2017-01-30T13:42:13.027" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Which technique to use depends on what kind of requirements/specification you have. If you have rough specification, WBS will help. If you already have the use cases written, UCP will do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The WBS itself does not depend on the technology. Decomposition can be the same both for estimating for Java and .NET, the values will differ based on developers' skill and experience. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yes, the effort will be estimated for each sub-task.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;WBS recommends a least 3 levels of decomposition. From my practice, it's better not to have tasks for more than 20 hours. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not sure if I understood you correctly, but by summing up all the sub-tasks you will receive the estimation for the whole project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27305" LastActivityDate="2017-01-30T13:42:13.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20967" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21164" CreationDate="2017-01-30T16:30:13.377" Score="4" ViewCount="863" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mike Cohn suggests &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/establishing-a-common-baseline-for-story-points#comments&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;having workshop and estimating 2 dozen stories&lt;/a&gt;.  I was thinking of adapting this idea for one team. The objective is to get the team agreeing/understanding about what 1, 2, 3 and 5 story points means to them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look at a sample of stories which were voted as 1 point stories in the past and select one as the baseline for 1 point stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Complete step 1 for 2,3 and 5 point stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any better suggestions for running this workshop?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-03-01T22:01:36.343" LastActivityDate="2017-03-01T22:01:36.343" Title="How to get team agreement about what story points mean to said team" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20945" CreationDate="2017-01-30T16:47:24.627" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really like Joel's answer, bringing in DiSC that helps explain how people act in the work place.  That said, I also think you do not have an issue here.  Let your boss take credit; somewhere in his subconscious, he knows who is influencing him and you'll get yours soon enough.  Even if he fails, he is validating your thinking, and no one can take that away from you.  You will know when it's time to move on and you'll get your rewards then.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some use this as a strategy, manipulating an idea to make them think it's theirs.  Your mission is to get the job done.  Use this to your advantage.  Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-01-30T16:47:24.627" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20956" CreationDate="2017-01-30T19:54:46.390" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want the task to remain at a constant duration no matter how much work is actually done on it, then you need to set the task to be 'Fixed Duration'. This setting is on the Advanced tab of the task information window (IIRC, I haven't got project in front of mw!). So setup the task, set the duration, then set the task to be 'Fixed Duration'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then add the 'Actual Work' column as Mark's comment suggests. Into this column put the actual work spent on the task as it accrues (i.e. you need to maintain your own total, it won't take separate blobs of time spent and add them up for you). As you add time to the task it will automatically calculate the %complete for you (based on the original effort calculated when you added the resources) but it will keep the duration of the task constant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7335" LastActivityDate="2017-01-30T19:54:46.390" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20832" CreationDate="2017-01-30T21:59:00.930" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;depending on the permission you have to access the JIRA board you should have an option  to expand more filters and select date filter (CreateDate in my case for example). notice I am also not able to access 192 hidden filters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Blockquote&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/i6S4Z.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/i6S4Z.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;you should be able to filter something like below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jDEwE.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jDEwE.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7125" LastActivityDate="2017-01-30T21:59:00.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20971" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-30T22:36:49.687" Score="2" ViewCount="956" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a school project and we are having trouble updating our MS Project 2016 file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a little background: The tasks all have fixed duration and some have dependencies on others being completed. We baselined the file the day we started the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We then completed task one about three days past the finish date listed in project. If I update the line to say it's finished three days late, it pushes all other tasks after to be started three days later, resulting in the project itself being late by three days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We compensated for the lost three days by working more resources on the following task, finishing that task in the original finish date for that task, not the new one that Project created for it because the first task was finished late. We did this because cost was not an issue, but deadline is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I correct for this in the Project file? Do I remove the dependencies so things don't auto-adjust?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27345" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T20:05:58.647" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T20:05:58.647" Title="Overrun on Duration" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20973" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-01-31T05:21:33.443" Score="1" ViewCount="259" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a sprint (#1) we decided on tasks and user stories. One of the task we thought of 6 hours turns out to be a difficult one, due to technical complexity. The complexity was such that we can't estimate it even in the middle of the sprint. All we knew that we can try to fix it with plan A, if not then plan B, if not then plan C. After each plan execution we retrospect and deviced plan D,E,F. Eventually the commited user story spilled to next sprint (#2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now under same user story, in sprint #2, in another task developer notice due to frequent requirement changes the code is NOT in good state. Thus it should be optimized as well. So developer done the optimization under same tasks, which took time obviously and user story spilled to sprint #3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In sprint #3, there were bugs for the same user story which were fixed timely and sprint #3 went fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not see any performance problem OR job not done correctly by the developers. But our 2 out of 3 sprints shows 1 user story spilled twice and thus those sprints are red.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now my questions:&#xA;Q. What went wrong in managing our sprints?&#xA;Q. What measures we should have taken to make our first two sprints green?&#xA;Q. How to handle the alert raised by the developer about the code quality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last generic question, making sprint GREEN, is the whole and sole goal of the team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27368" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-01-31T05:36:22.950" LastActivityDate="2017-08-04T03:57:52.330" Title="Making sprint GREEN" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20973" CreationDate="2017-01-31T05:51:12.673" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One last generic question, making sprint GREEN, is the whole and sole goal of the team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Absolutely not.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main (not necessarily sole, depending on who you ask) goal of the Team is to &lt;em&gt;provide value to the customer&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you describe as 'GREEN', finishing all user stories of a sprint (I assume, based on your question) is a useful &lt;em&gt;indicator&lt;/em&gt; for this, but &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a valid replacement goal. Consider the situation where you write up a bunch of nice, lovely-looking stories. They are all completed on time with wonderful, quality code. And then you show it to the customer and they ask why you bothered with &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; of that, because it's all useless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did you complete your Sprint's stories? Yes. Did you provide value to your customer? No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Q. What went wrong in managing our sprints?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've provided insufficient context to answer that, or indeed even to answer whether or not anything &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; go significantly wrong. Ask your Team. Bring it up in the Retrospective. But keep in mind that you should avoid leading questions - asking 'What do you guys think caused the Sprint to go wrong?' is not a great question to ask when your Team wasn't thinking it went wrong at all in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Q. What measures we should have taken to make our first two sprints green?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evaluate stories more thoroughly before accepting them into the Sprint. If necessary, do spikes (short, exploratory, often throw-away pieces of work) to gain further information on them. Sometimes, though, things will slip through the cracks - &lt;em&gt;and it's not the end of the world.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Q. How to handle the alert raised by the developer about the code quality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been other questions about this topic, both on here and on Programmer's Stack Exchange. Suffice to say, quality is important for later maintenance of code but value cannot be sacrificed completely in order to achieve it. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2009/09/23/the-duct-tape-programmer/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here's&lt;/a&gt; an interesting viewpoint on this topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to summarize, make sure you're measuring and striving for the right things. Meeting all your user stories every Sprint is a nice &lt;em&gt;metric&lt;/em&gt;, but it should &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; be your &lt;em&gt;main goal&lt;/em&gt;. That should always be to bring value to your customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-08-03T13:52:13.033" LastActivityDate="2017-08-03T13:52:13.033" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20971" CreationDate="2017-01-31T08:37:45.850" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, you will need to make sure your &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Change-the-task-type-for-more-accurate-scheduling-b0b969ad-45bc-4e9e-8967-435587548a72&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;task type is correct&lt;/a&gt; so that it responds in a correct way when you add resources. As far as I understood your explanation, you will likely want 'Fixed Units' for your task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, if the dependencies represent the real-life constraints, I advise against removing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead I suggest you do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 1&lt;/strong&gt;: Start with your original schedule&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/v12Sg.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/v12Sg.png&quot; alt=&quot;Original schedule&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 2&lt;/strong&gt;: Indicate the actual situation (will lead to schedule overrun):&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Bkit9.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Bkit9.png&quot; alt=&quot;Schedule overrun&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 3&lt;/strong&gt;: Add resources and indicate a way how to reflect this in the other task:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gBMsz.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gBMsz.png&quot; alt=&quot;Add resources, choose Reduce Duration&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 4&lt;/strong&gt;: Work with the new schedule without the overrun:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/G0ECJ.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/G0ECJ.png&quot; alt=&quot;New schedule&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27144" LastActivityDate="2017-01-31T08:37:45.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20971" CreationDate="2017-01-31T14:37:48.390" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No! You want your schedule to adjust!  That's how it is designed.  Based on your dependency logic, the tool will reschedule based on the actual values you enter into it, causing your finish variances to accrue, either favorably or unfavorably.  It's working exactly how it's supposed to work and you want this to occur so you can see where your schedule risks are growing.  If you &quot;recover&quot; by reducing the actual duration of a subsequent task, then the schedule will bring the dates back in accordingly.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you try to &quot;correct&quot; the file, you're actually breaking it.  Let it adjust, read the finish variances so you know where your risks are, mitigate, and then let the schedule re-adjust to show your mitigation accomplishments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-01-31T14:37:48.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20977" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20979" CreationDate="2017-01-31T18:52:09.503" Score="6" ViewCount="674" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I've been trying to push Kanban, and consequently having WIP (Work In Progress) limits, but there's one question I keep being asked that I don't have a great answer for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;What happens when we're at our WIP limit and 'do it now' work crops up?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I've considered is taking something currently in-progress &lt;em&gt;out&lt;/em&gt; of in-progress, essentially pretending it was never started in the first place. This would be rather jarring event, and much work could be lost (even with some/all of it being committed, there would be losses due to hand-offs, knowledge decay, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is to just violate the WIP limit, but that has downsides as well (possibility that the WIP itself may become irrelevant, loss due to task-switching, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a better approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-02-01T17:02:39.680" Title="What to do when WIP limits must be broken?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;work-in-progress&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20977" CreationDate="2017-01-31T20:23:21.057" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First let us consider &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; work in progress is limited. Limiting WIP is needed in order to establish a self-regulated system that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.methodsandtools.com/archive/archive.php?id=104&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;balances capacity and demand throughout the value delivery stream&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply put - if you see too much WIP, this means that somewhere down the line there is resource shortage. The most proper way is to address the resource shortage rather than piling up more work in progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Cheating&quot; to formally comply with the process, but without following the spirit of the process, reduces your efficiency and if abused too much will render the whole process useless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27144" LastActivityDate="2017-01-31T20:23:21.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20977" CreationDate="2017-01-31T21:19:54.150" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Embrace Change but Keep Costs Visible&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What happens when we're at our WIP limit and 'do it now' work crops up?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've structured your process with spare capacity, rather than striving for 100% utilization, some Kanban processes allow for a special high-priority queue (sometimes called a &quot;silver bullet&quot;) with a WIP limit of 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some slack is essential for any lean or agile process, but special high-priority queues require even more. If an organization wants to reserve extra capacity, then this represents an ongoing cost to the business. It may be an acceptable cost, but it is never free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More generally, though, the correct response is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Determine why the business &lt;em&gt;expects&lt;/em&gt; &quot;do it now&quot; work to crop up on a regular basis. &lt;strong&gt;Expecting &lt;em&gt;routine&lt;/em&gt; interruptions is a process smell&lt;/strong&gt; that indicates that not everyone is on board with a queued workflow, or that key policies and processes have not been properly defined.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When genuine emergencies do arise (and they do!), then it &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be a jarring event to handle it. The goal of Kanban (or any other agile methodology) isn't to prevent important work from being done. The intent is to &lt;strong&gt;make the cost of new or unplanned work fully visible.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The business (not individual stakeholders) should make a strategic decision about whether the opportunity cost of not doing something &lt;em&gt;right now&lt;/em&gt; is higher or lower than the costs associated with lost work, unplanned change, or disruptions to flow. &lt;strong&gt;Costs can't be swept under the rug,&lt;/strong&gt; but the business still has the ability to &lt;em&gt;pay&lt;/em&gt; for the strategic decisions they make.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When work exceeds capacity (not just an arbitrary WIP limit), then &lt;strong&gt;capacity must be shifted&lt;/strong&gt; from one work product to another. There's no free lunch here. If your team is at capacity, then adding new work to the current cycle means something else &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be removed or left undone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, you can't create capacity out of thin air. Change has a cost. Kanban, Scrum, and others make these costs visible to the organization. It is then senior leadership's responsibility to make decisions about what costs to bear, and what &quot;do it now!&quot; things aren't really emergencies after all. It's amazing how well things can be prioritized when it's clear that they cost time or money, and that they were never really &quot;free&quot; in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-01-31T21:19:54.150" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20980" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20988" CreationDate="2017-02-01T07:23:01.523" Score="3" ViewCount="1722" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently playing a scrum master role in the project. Because the PO refuses to write user stories - I have to do it myself, but this flow has led to specification breakdown and scope creep many times. Moreover, I can't focus on other important stuff. I tried to explain numerous times that writing and prioritizing User stories is specifically PO prerogative. Any suggestions for this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21640" LastEditorUserId="21640" LastEditDate="2017-02-01T14:04:17.197" LastActivityDate="2017-04-17T20:04:55.080" Title="How to deal with a Product Owner who refuses to write user stories?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20980" CreationDate="2017-02-01T08:20:22.463" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the moment the different roles of the Scrum Framework are no more respected, you can't really call it Scrum methodology anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are defining the work breakdown by yourself, organizing the work for the team and removing impediments for them, it seems to me you are closer a project manager role than a scrum master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence the added value of your PO is really questionable and actually results in endangering your project. You should try to solve amiably this issue with him, and if it fails, escale this issue to a higher authority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25678" LastActivityDate="2017-02-01T08:20:22.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20982" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-01T09:39:13.403" Score="-1" ViewCount="379" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have just recently started to use Kanboard, but still not sure how to apply our projects in the Kanboard system. We have a couple of major software projects contains sub-projects such as Delphi components, Lazarus components, Windows version, Linux version, Innosetup maker, documentation, etc.&#xA;We would like to know how to initially create the structure of the projects/swimlanes/categories in the Kanboard to start using it.&#xA;Could anyone explain the usage of and the difference between swimlane and category in Kanboard?&#xA;How should we fit the mentioned sub-projects in a project, swimlane or category?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27381" LastActivityDate="2017-07-28T11:05:44.067" Title="Swimlane, category or new project for grouping dependent projects in Kanboard" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;&lt;kanban-board&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20980" CreationDate="2017-02-01T09:47:00.970" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The very simple answer is; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short Term&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deliver the stories that are on the backlog and have been prioritized by the PO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that is 0 stories then it is 0 stories.  I have seen this situation in enterprise organisations occur and I have seen Scrum Masters stick to their principles and allow the situation to escalate.  It really depends on the environment you are working in and how Scrum is perceived. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it was me, I would let the team deliver 0 stories or simply prioritise all of the engineering tasks they wish to do and include 0 feature stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long Term&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Scrum Master you have a responsibility to educate and evangelize the Scrum framework to the business in which you are working. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The first action&lt;/strong&gt; should be raise this issue within the Community of Practice / Centre of Excellence if one exists for Agile or Scrum within your organisations.  If you have access to an Agile Coach then request support immediately to resolve the situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The next escalation&lt;/strong&gt; is to articulate your concerns regarding the Scrum implementation to the Product Owner in written format and also cc in the Programme Manager in charge of the department or delivery.  If no Programme Manager then simply escalate to the next highest authority. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outline how Scrum delivers value through the framework and the steps you would like to take to resurrect the delivery of the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lastly, start work on a syllabus&lt;/strong&gt; of workshops and training material to outline the key aspects of Scrum.  Run them on a regular cadence (weekly, fortnightly etc) and layer each workshop in a way that it builds on the principles of the one before it.  You should be in full on coach mode by this point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the business do not support you then give &lt;strong&gt;serious thought&lt;/strong&gt; to the precariousness of your position as Scrum Master in that particular organisation.  &lt;strong&gt;If you are a contractor&lt;/strong&gt;, dust of your liability insurance and begin to reach out to recruiters.  It is unlikely that this situation will be resolved without someone leaving the project or at the very least asking for evidence from you that you have done the correct things.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="10462" LastEditDate="2017-02-01T11:57:25.983" LastActivityDate="2017-02-01T11:57:25.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20980" CreationDate="2017-02-01T12:31:07.697" Score="-2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Any suggestions for this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry to be blunt but this is not a project management question, this is a workplace question. As long as &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; do it for him, he found the perfect idiot. Would you do my programming job as well, if I simply said I'm not doing it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a big fan of the soft approach of you trying to teach your PO to do his job. He's paid for it, isn't he? &lt;em&gt;You&lt;/em&gt; need to stop doing &lt;em&gt;his&lt;/em&gt; job and start asking why &lt;em&gt;he&lt;/em&gt; cannot do his job. Work with him on any issues that come up. If he has no solid explanation, have a one-on-one with the POs boss and ask him why the PO is not doing his job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2017-02-01T12:31:07.697" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20977" CreationDate="2017-02-01T17:02:39.680" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have to exceed the limits for some reason, increase the limits, get the work done and then decrease them again. It is easier to remember the rule &quot;Never exceed limits&quot; than &quot;Sometimes it's okay&quot;. Alternatively, allow &quot;Expedite&quot; lane at the top, but make sure to only expedite critical issues, not business-related stuff. If you're always expediting, then you're not doing it right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22983" LastActivityDate="2017-02-01T17:02:39.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20987" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-01T17:20:13.837" Score="2" ViewCount="175" Body="&lt;p&gt;Working on the project plan and WBS during engagement phases, sales usually want to provide features to the client so that he can pick and choose. &#xA;It is easy to do it in excel with % and so on... But in reality for example in MS Project, it is simpler to form work packages (features) based on engineers estimate but put aside project management and business analysis services (e.g. 1 BA and  50% PM for the entire project duration). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case I can still plan the schedule and the total efforts, but work packages do not include management services/ba services, hence the cost is not correct. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting management and BA into every work package is not easy as work packages may go in parallel (2 or 3 or 4), so splitting management and ba efforts between would be tedious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I want is to have work package cost with all the work included and I don't want to put management and BA into work package and then have leveling issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you usually solve such a challenge?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7644" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2017-09-04T19:02:07.893" LastActivityDate="2018-11-06T19:00:37.547" Title="Presenting the scope (include management into feature or as a separate line)" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20980" CreationDate="2017-02-01T19:19:02.910" Score="10" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're not wrong for writing the stories; it may be wrong in continuing to do so without change&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum doesn't say PO &lt;em&gt;has got to&lt;/em&gt; write product backlog items or that they be user stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Continuing serving, but do so by showing the cost of bad practice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Evidence, evidence, evidence.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For more good points, check out Venture2099's answer below for other very good things to consider.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;nvoigt: Sorry to be blunt but this is not a project management question, this is a workplace question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree, but you're right to ask it here since it impacts at least two, clearly defined SM responsibilities in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-sm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finding techniques for effective Product Backlog management; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Helping the Scrum Team understand the need for clear and concise Product Backlog items;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;nvoigt: As long as you do it for him, he found the perfect idiot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're NOT an idiot for doing it for him, you were serving him and the Dev team. If you suspect he and the Development team would be &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt; served by him writing the PBI's more often and using the user story format, reveal the reasons and the data that substantiates your claim. Call him to be accountable for choosing a less valuable, more wasteful approach that exposes the organization to unacceptable risk. Do so with evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Data you could gather would be things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Amount of rework (misinterpreted work requirement, scrapped approaches, miscommunications)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User/stakeholder satisfaction with delivered work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Defects discovered&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rate of value completed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rate of work items completed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cost of development team time (hour / day / sprint)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carefully observe and involve the effect of the PO's practices on the development team. They time is very expensive to the org, and even an hour here or there spread across a six developer team can be very costly when summed over a Sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be two difficulties here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Revealing to PO that writing user stories is a more clear, concise and ultimately valuable way to express a requirement for product change and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Forming a working agreement that finds the right balance of PBI writing between the PO, you and the Development team &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum does not mandate that the PO write the PBI's, only that he/she be responsible for it's availability, content and ordering. This PO may well be skirting his responsibilities. I encourage you to serve your team by leading empirically rather than emotionally here. Bonus: evidence tends to be more useful when going to someone's superior about their behavior, but let's hope it doesn't come to that ;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21576" LastEditorUserId="21576" LastEditDate="2017-04-17T20:04:55.080" LastActivityDate="2017-04-17T20:04:55.080" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20989" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-02T16:19:38.250" Score="3" ViewCount="2481" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work on a subproject, the timelines of most work packages we are managing are non critical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most cases, we have a scenario like this: Team A needs to work 10 days, but can do this anytime during a 3 month timeframe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I put that into MS Project in a sensible way? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I create a task that lasts 3 months:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am losing the information that they only need 10 days&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they dont start immediately, it will look like a delay&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I create a 10 day task:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I need to set it to start at a specific time. Although they are allowed to start working later, it would look like a delay.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It even gets more difficult when I consider that Team B has to work 5 days but can only start when Team A has completed their work but have to finish inside the same 3 month timeframe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27401" LastActivityDate="2018-07-10T04:21:05.287" Title="How can I display buffers in MS Project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20990" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20997" CreationDate="2017-02-02T16:39:07.360" Score="1" ViewCount="57" Body="&lt;p&gt;I has been tasked to audit a project plan by 3rd party vendor.&#xA;The vendor is gonna use Scrum and going to provide a project plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that every plan must fit to the particular project scope, but I think that there must be publicly available templates for such kind of audits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could you suggest where should I look ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7644" LastActivityDate="2017-03-05T18:33:31.610" Title="Project plan audit" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20991" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-03T04:09:25.500" Score="7" ViewCount="376" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are game developers and just began our Scrum practice. We found something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During a sprint, we have several user stories to complete, but some of our members' work is not fulfilled. At the same time, someone may work overtime to complete them. This is basically caused by role differences, like artists vs. programmers, etc. For example, we have enough artists but not enough programmers, so that when programmers are working hard to death, artists may find themselves having nothing to do. So ok, I think saying that &quot;caused by role differences&quot; is wrong. More precisely, it is caused by lack of people of certain professions. Of course we're hiring, but how to get this through now?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our solution now is to create small user stories dedicated to the people whose work is not fulfilled, like &quot;concept art for character X&quot;, but apparently it is not a normal user story for us. Why abnormal? Because usually our user story is kind of &quot;make character X&quot;, which includes concept art, animations, feature implementations, etc. &quot;concept art for character X&quot; is just too small and not on the same level of detail here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what's the best practice to deal with this kind of situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27406" LastEditorUserId="27406" LastEditDate="2017-02-03T09:22:24.093" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T16:46:52.627" Title="How to deal with the situation that some people's work is not fulfilled during a sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20991" CreationDate="2017-02-03T12:34:44.407" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your team doesn't contain the skills you need&lt;/strong&gt;. Ideally, everyone should be able to have some level of flexibility to step out of their particular specialism and take on the tasks to push the sprint forward. You may have come across the phrase &quot;T-shaped&quot; people. Scrum isn't wrong or unhelpful, it's just honestly pointing out a problem you have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fix your underlying problem:&lt;/strong&gt; Everyone doing everything isn't necessarily attainable, but it should be your idea. Train your team: help your non technical staff acquire technical skills. Not everyone needs to learn to code to help out. Programmers also do a lot of stuff that isn't coding, checking logs, deployments, even doing basic IT help for their colleagues. Hiring more programmers would help as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Deal with it in the short term:&lt;/strong&gt; It's important to remember that your job isn't to keep people busy but to deliver value. By creating art assets you may just be creating 'inventory' (lean people hate this) at a higher rate than your team can clear. it's not worthless, it's just not super valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would ask yourself this question though. &lt;strong&gt;Do you maybe have something actually valuable that could be delivered without much programming effort?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think your example, concept art, necessarily is inventory however. I do see some independent value in being able to user test, distribute and market these new characters. As well as thinking about how to deliver valuable stuff, it's also useful to think about how to get the value out of the stuff you do deliver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17705" LastEditorUserId="17705" LastEditDate="2017-02-03T12:44:40.970" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T12:44:40.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20991" CreationDate="2017-02-03T13:36:17.063" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Unpopular opinion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is not wholly suitable for game design and development due to numerous factors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Definition of Done can extend from 2 to 6 versions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/multiple-levels-of-done&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/multiple-levels-of-done&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Senior game developers like John Carmack (Doom) have rejected Agile/Scrum as a delivery method for game design and complex software engineering&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10212629&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10212629&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The aim of Scrum is to produce a valuable working product increment &lt;strong&gt;every timebox&lt;/strong&gt; that is &lt;em&gt;potentially releasable&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Game development does not work in this manner and certainly not within the smaller timeboxes that Scrum prescribes (1-4 weeks). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cannot potentially ship the product increment you cannot be doing Scrum.  You are doing something and it may be Agile but it is not Scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum was originally designed for small cross-functional teams that had absolute minimal dependencies and could deliver value incrementally; improving as they went. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Producing a game does not fit well within that framework and certainly not within arbitrary timeboxes.  The entire process has complex inter-dependencies between product, operations and technical activities including, but not exclusive to, direct customer feedback.  Narratives need decided before level design can be implemented.  Level design is required before AI and environment specific variables.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is more akin to producing a movie which cannot be accomplished in a Scrum manner.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="10462" LastEditDate="2017-02-06T16:46:52.627" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T16:46:52.627" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20991" CreationDate="2017-02-03T13:38:09.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum doesn't really work well for software with different disciplines waiting on each other. Scrum teams are expected to be cross-functional, but also should also be balanced so that the whole team can work in a sustainable pace. Working overtime is never a good idea, this will only hurt you on the long run. Tired developers have a netto negative productivity and they will just create a mess that needs to be cleaned-up in the days to come.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest using Kanban and visualising your current workflow. This to find your bottlenecks. Are you sure you need more programmers? Do you really need all that art work implemented? Maybe decrease on the artists instead. What do you really need? &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_aren&amp;#39;t_gonna_need_it&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;YAGNI&lt;/a&gt;!.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I like the roles of Scrum and also the inspect and adapt meetings. Some teams then also combine Scrum and Kanban into &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.agilealliance.org/what-is-scrumban/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ScrumBan&lt;/a&gt;. This just removes the iteration period where you forecast what work will be completed in 1-4 weeks, planning is more just-in-time. It will more be a flow of work continuously being completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might still lead to work being stuck in the development phases, but at-least it will be visible. Also you do not have the disappointment and demotivation of uncompleted sprint after sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use regular retrospectives to trigger the team to optimise their own process, maybe they can figure out something on their own. Keep experimenting until you find the correct balance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T13:38:09.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20990" CreationDate="2017-02-03T17:36:40.840" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before a thorough answer please check the PMBOK or similar for &quot;formal project plans&quot;, otherwise you might miss some of the 12 or so chapters. Some of these chapters can be not applicable for your particular case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd for sure try to get a RACI matrix of the company, be it written or not. (Who's responsible/accountable for what).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How formal you will dive for the audit depends on how formal your audit and project is. For large scale projects there are several plans, forming the Project Plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16715" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T17:36:40.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20998" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21016" CreationDate="2017-02-03T19:01:32.903" Score="9" ViewCount="5973" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a new scrum master for my company and we're trying our first few sprints. The dev team has had non-mandatory stand ups for a while which people attend infrequently at best. Now that we're doing actual sprints I've tried to get the sprint team to come to the stand ups but no one will. What do I do? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27415" LastActivityDate="2017-02-23T17:24:16.283" Title="I am a brand new scrum master, and my team almost refuses to do the stand-up, what do I do?" Tags="&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16204" CreationDate="2017-02-03T21:54:51.817" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Create a meta-task that describes the minimum duration of the phase&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would create this as the first sub-task of the summary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JJ4nq.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JJ4nq.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This expands the summary task to the planned duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VASO3.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VASO3.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you change your sub-tasks the summary will expand further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mVJ4r.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mVJ4r.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/saSx3.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/saSx3.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, by using a constraint on your summary task, you can ensure you don't go over your planned deadline:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/U9ENx.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/U9ENx.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27416" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T21:54:51.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20998" CreationDate="2017-02-04T08:59:19.263" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What do I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You tell them that the new &quot;real&quot; stand up &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; mandatory. If people don't show up, explain to them &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; it is mandatory. If they still don't show up, have their line manager talk to them. It's your job to improve the process and help them along, but it's their line managers job to make sure they do what is asked of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not showing up to a mandatory meeting is just like showing up for work late or not at all. That's not about process, it's about whether this person is willing to work there or not. And that's manager territory. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2017-02-04T08:59:19.263" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20998" CreationDate="2017-02-04T13:47:32.040" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with incentivising the adoption of any new thing – make obvious and visible the usefulness of it (go for quick wins). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make them feel that if they miss it, they will know less than the ones attending. It all depends on your team/project/business configuration really.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps introduce small agenda items to have the team share really useful information during standups. Make standups a place where some decisions are made by the team, even small ones, internal but affecting everyone?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At my company (software house) we've made Monday and Friday standups a bit longer with additional items on the agenda and it keeps up the engagement. Maybe start with that? It can be celebrating team's successes, 1minute &quot;what I've learned?&quot; type of thing, short general overview of where things are, or anything else that's short and can build up to your Retrospectives? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imo forcing it or trying to bribe the team to come doesn't do much good. You'll risk having a standup full of grumpy / joking / and/or whining people if you try that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27423" LastActivityDate="2017-02-04T13:47:32.040" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20987" CreationDate="2017-02-04T15:34:01.773" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually set one PM job on the top, before all others jobs, so it lasts as full project. Then set needed % for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7193" LastActivityDate="2017-02-04T15:34:01.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20998" CreationDate="2017-02-05T00:04:46.313" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, the most effective way to implement Agile is to focus on the people who are most excited about it. Team excitement will spread, but there will always be those that are stuck in their ways and refuse to buy in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure that the team understands that the daily scrum is a great opportunity for the team to coordinate, identify issues as early as possible, help each other, and deliver on a regular basis. This should reduce stress, and as soon as people realize this, the more excited they will be about Agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also very important to make sure that you have buy-in from management. If you don't have buy-in yet, make sure and spend some time explaining the benefits of a successful Agile implementation. There will come a time where &quot;the train will leave the station,&quot; and those who aren't willing to cooperate are detrimental to the team, and may not be a right fit for the team in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27228" LastActivityDate="2017-02-05T00:04:46.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21005" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21006" CreationDate="2017-02-05T09:54:47.127" Score="2" ViewCount="1375" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum team, we understand that daily scrum is for us to update each other with &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1. what we did y'day and 2. what we will work on today. &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beside this, we each update each other with any impediments or any dependancy due to which there is blocker in doing the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are about 8-9 developers and since we are working with other cross-functional teams, almost each one of has some kind of impediments or  dependancy that we mention in daily scrum. Since no one document these impediments, our Scrum master needs to &lt;strong&gt;remember&lt;/strong&gt; all these impediments for each developer(some of us has more than 2-3 impediments).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has started to bother us as a Scrum team, because, the Scrum Master is missing the impediments mentioned during the daily scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I searched on this site and found &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/8499/should-meeting-minutes-be-captured-during-scrums-of-scrums&quot;&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt; but it talks about Scrum of Scrum kind of meeting and not a daily scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shall we start &quot;documenting&quot; these impediments/minutes of daily scrum now as we missed quite a few of the impediments during last 2-weeks? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21918" LastActivityDate="2017-02-05T10:49:51.767" Title="Minutes of meetings of Daily SCRUM" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21005" CreationDate="2017-02-05T10:41:34.733" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, with 8-9 developers, each having 1-3 impediments, it seems like the team is not really working together towards the same goal, but working very efficiently towards several goals. (and thereby losing real productivity).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, the Daily scrum is the last responsible moment to raise an impediment, but nothing prevents the team from quickly writing the impediment on a post-it and putting up on a wall somewhere. Or talking to the Scrum master the day before or before the daily scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, the Scrum Master may be accountable for removing impediments, but the team is responsible to remove the impediments within their power. Depending on the type of impediment it may just as well be an additional Task, and extra Test or a much needed discussion with a Product owner or Stakeholder. For most of these, when the Scrum Master acts as a go-between, he just adds overhead and additional process, the team should &quot;do the work&quot; instead of treat it as something &quot;blocking them&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduce the work in progress and have people work together on the same Product Backlog item.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start stopping and stop starting. Whenever an impediment blocks progress, don't pick up something else to be able to remain busy. Start working towards removing the impediment immediately.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Distinguish clearly between &quot;unexpected work&quot; and &quot;impediments&quot;. The first just results on new tasks on the Sprint backlog and the team must self-organize to complete that work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use post-its, a whiteboard or some other medium to quickly track the real impediments. I tend to put up a big red sheet of paper somewhere and use neon-yellow post-its on it. That way the problems are very visible also to people from outside of the team. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the daily scrum to plan the upcoming day. Plan who will help remove these impediments and plan how you are going to achieve the sprint goal. Then use the time after the daily scrum to do that work. If needed sit with the Scrum master and Product owner to see how the impediments can be removed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stop &quot;managing&quot; impediments and start &quot;removing&quot; them. Removing involves changes to processes, broader responsibilities, adding other skills to the team, changing the way of working or the tools, maybe automating things as well. Use the Retrospective to go deep on the types of impediments you have and work together with the whole Scrum team to become more independent as a team. Learn to solve your own impediments and learn to prevent them from happening. Learn to work together tightly to resolve them without the need of the Scrum Master. Use the Scrum Master for impediments that are really out-of-reach for the development team, so he/she can use his/her time on those items that provide the biggest improvements to the team, but are not possible for the team to resolve (these are generally organizational issues, lack of autonomy, licensing or enterprise architecture type issues).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7393" LastEditorUserId="7393" LastEditDate="2017-02-05T10:49:51.767" LastActivityDate="2017-02-05T10:49:51.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2017" CreationDate="2017-02-05T21:29:31.867" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The method I've been using is to gather task updates (expected or actual start and finish dates + whatever commentary they want to provide) from each team member individually.  This information is then used to update a shared project plan.  The PMs then do some analysis on what has changed (looking at views of near-term tasks, selected milestones, critical paths, etc.) to create an agenda for a team meeting where we collectively agree priorities until the next meeting and what matters need to be flagged for other stakeholders attention. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report out consists of various project views (Gantt charts, milestone reports, Risk and Issues log). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a neat little piece of software that makes this whole process quite easy that has been developed by Project Success Inc.  It works nicely with Microsoft Project (2007, 2010 and 2013; not sure about 2016).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the software is far from perfect.  It has messy, imperfect GUI and is not very intuitive for either PMs or task owners.  The key success factors for this method seem to be capable PMs who are fluent with both Microsoft Project and possess enough facilitation skill and subject matter expertise to build a credible plan with input directly from the task owners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27433" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-02-06T01:45:54.903" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T01:45:54.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21010" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-06T18:18:19.637" Score="1" ViewCount="115" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a metric of software quality, we calculated the ratio in the Title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The value of this KPI should have the following meaning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;0 (0%) = no work on bug, this means that all the time spent on the project was used for new features, great!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 (100%) = working only on bug, this could be a legacy project, where there are no new features so all the time spent on that project is about bug fixing&amp;testing;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;0.5 (50%) = half of the time is spent on bug fixing&amp;amp;testing, this could be a problem in a normal project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is: in a normal project (not legacy) what could be a healty value of that KPI?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone told me 33% but I cannot find any literature about that value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25658" LastActivityDate="2017-02-07T05:50:19.983" Title="What is a healthy ratio of [time spent on bugs]/[total time spent on project]?" Tags="&lt;quality-management&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;&lt;kpi&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21011" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21249" CreationDate="2017-02-06T21:40:19.347" Score="2" ViewCount="1758" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure whether this should be on the ux.stackexchange forum or on here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As part of a Uni project, the client has given us a brief of mandatory and optional features, from which we have to build user stories. One of the mandatory requirements is that each account type should have a different UI design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you break this down into a user story and functionality before the development has begun? Could it simply be a high level user story that will be broken down later on? If so, I'm a bit confused as to what the 'so that..' would say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth noting that we have to follow the conventional user story structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27446" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-02-06T21:53:58.930" LastActivityDate="2017-03-13T08:12:11.763" Title="User Interface Requirements in User Stories" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21010" CreationDate="2017-02-07T05:50:19.983" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This really depends on the methodology you are using, the expertise, experience and the rigor of people you are working with. The time you allocate for the development matters as well, I have been working with people who tends to deliver on time even if it's not 100% completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I can relate to this KPI and based on the few hundreds small software development projects I have been involved with, this 33% metric seems quite high but plausible. We try to target a 15%-20% in my team but that required to enforce the ownership of the development team on their projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25678" LastActivityDate="2017-02-07T05:50:19.983" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21011" CreationDate="2017-02-07T14:30:35.960" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/20241/25606&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; shows well what you could do. First ask yourself these questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this story, by itself, deliver value?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any possible way to do anything less, and still deliver value?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer to the first is 'no', then you've broken it down too far... or else it's something you shouldn't be working on at all. If the answer to the second is 'yes', then you haven't broken it down &lt;em&gt;enough.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've got yourself a minimum-sized story that, by itself, provides value, all you then need to do is answer (and document in the story) the following two questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To whom does this story provide value?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does this story provide value?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cannot answer either of those questions, you may want to revisit the 'does this story, by itself, deliver value' question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-02-07T14:56:55.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20998" CreationDate="2017-02-08T10:56:10.747" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think telling people to attend meetings is a great pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Explaining to people the benefits of attending &amp;amp; then have them want to attend is a far stronger tactic&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;amp; more likely to bring the improvements in process that agile offers.  Offer insights &amp;amp; info in the meeting that are unavailable elsewhere - treat the session as special &amp;amp; attending the session is a benefit not a chore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that if the group needs the agile process to work then there is a need to explain that all the agile ceremonies are a package - attend them all or attend none - &lt;strong&gt;only people fully involved in the project can remain on the project&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you want to be involved in the project you need to attend the planning session, daily standups &amp;amp; other regular events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some people who want a task list, put their headphones on &amp;amp; want no more team involvement.  &lt;strong&gt;People with a bad attitude will degrade an agile project &amp;amp; cause it to fail.  So they either need to be assigned to other projects, retrained to get better engaged  or finally encouraged to move on &amp;amp; find a new job.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To misquote Mr Ford, if people think a project will fail or think a project will succeed then they are probably right. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="693" LastActivityDate="2017-02-08T10:56:10.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20998" CreationDate="2017-02-08T12:17:55.853" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your company really wants todo Scrum I would suggest todo &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scruminc.com/scrum-shock-therapy-how-to-change-teams/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Shock Therapy&lt;/a&gt;. Strict rules until the team has enough experience to venture on their own and start doing &lt;a href=&quot;https://kenschwaber.wordpress.com/2012/04/05/scrum-but-replaced-by-scrum-and/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ScrumAnd&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short it looks something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Everyone on the team will attend a Scrum Training session.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Sprints will be one week long.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;They will start out by using my definition of &quot;Done&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;All estimates will be exclusively in Story Points.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;We will use a physical Information Radiator.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Sprint Planning Meetings will be four hours, once per week.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The rules remain in effect until the team has met three criteria:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;A minimum of 240% increase in Velocity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;They have completed three consecutively successful Sprints&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;They have identified a good business reason to begin changing rules&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should add a rule like: &lt;em&gt;We daily synchronize the team at the Daily Scrum&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let the team decide they want to execute and commit to the Shock Therapy, if not maybe get a commit from higher-management to convince the team or let them drop Scrum altogether. Sometimes an Ad Hoc process works pretty well, wonder if you really need to change it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently I am the Scrum Master of a team that was educated this way and whom did 1 years of weekly Sprints, I joined the team just after they switched to Sprints of two weeks. They have some of the best Scrum knowledge and practises of all teams I have worked with over the years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2017-02-20T07:45:05.907" LastActivityDate="2017-02-20T07:45:05.907" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21019" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-10T11:06:05.877" Score="1" ViewCount="336" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on project management with the client-side manager. We manage the cost with cost type ressources as we only know how much we are going to pay for each task and not how many hours of work and how much material are put into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, when I use this type of ressources, why does MS Project not calculate EV, PV, etc. ? why does it only show EAC and BAC ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Microsoft Project don't automatically calculate the EV and other variables:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EH7cd.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EH7cd.png&quot; alt=&quot;EV interface&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This capture shows how my cost type resources are entered:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gEinn.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gEinn.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26896" LastEditorUserId="26896" LastEditDate="2017-02-11T17:45:39.460" LastActivityDate="2017-04-12T18:10:52.757" Title="Earned value management with ressources of type &quot;Cost&quot;" Tags="&lt;cost-management&gt;&lt;evm&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20018" CreationDate="2017-02-10T12:45:02.920" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Switch to &quot;Task Usage&quot; and &quot;Resource Usage&quot; views and check the expected work hours per day, during the problematic periods.&#xA;You can see if there are specific dates with non-working time or unavailable resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7883" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T12:45:02.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2542" CreationDate="2017-02-10T12:45:44.607" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some of the Metrics we track Sprint to Sprint&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Release Burndown ( Gives a good indication of work remaining and changes in scope and velocity)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Defect Trends ( Gives a good indication of incoming rate, outgoing rate and the backlog of defects remaining)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;% of Test Automation ( How many test cases were run and what % were automated)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;% of Code Coverage ( How may lines of code, classes etc were covered in the test cases)&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Defect MTTR ( What is the mean time to resolve a defect from the time it was reported)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;% of Escaped Defects - # of defects reported by customer for GA'd products to the total defects (Internal + Escaped Defects).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These metrics give us a holistic view of the scope, the agility and the quality of our deliverables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27490" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T12:45:44.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21022" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21028" CreationDate="2017-02-10T13:03:37.993" Score="1" ViewCount="198" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know if it's a project manager's job to help his/her team to improve their creativity and make them use it for the project. &#xA;If yes, could you recommend some methods to me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27491" LastEditorUserId="27491" LastEditDate="2018-02-25T00:49:16.750" LastActivityDate="2018-02-25T00:49:16.750" Title="How can a project manager improve his/her team's creativity? Is this job, his/her job?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10683" CreationDate="2017-02-10T13:04:01.963" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use the Subproject or Link Projects features which ever is present on your version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7883" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T13:04:01.963" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20376" CreationDate="2017-02-10T13:36:02.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can do what you ask by simply using &quot;manual schedule&quot; mode and not auto leveling.&#xA;With that answered I would like to point out the following:&#xA;Ms project cannot use resources on &quot;whoever is available&quot; basis.&#xA;A task need a certain amount of work to be finished lets say 10hrs. &#xA;If you assign 2 resources to that task then MsProject will give you 2 options: Either the resources will work %50 capacity to finish 10hr work, or it will make the work require 20 hrs and assign both resources full time to finish the task on 10 hrs.&#xA;If you want MsProject to tell you who is available to work or not, you have to create their calendar respectively, assign 1 resource to each task and see the result. If there are slack times (gaps) change the assignments or divide the tasks further in order for MsProject to optimize the resource usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7883" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T13:36:02.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20518" CreationDate="2017-02-10T14:00:51.267" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In MsProject: &#xA;First know that there is no way that you can put columns to right of gantt chart in MsP, other than that;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to indent your deliverables in order for them to rollup.&#xA;To do it first enter the deliverable name to a line,&#xA;then enter tasks related to it just below it.&#xA;Press &quot;Indent Task&quot;(Alt + Shift + Right) you can select multiple tasks excluding the deliverable and do this.&#xA;You will see that first line will change in to a roll-up task and contain sub-tasks under it. You can Expand them with + sign or collapse them with - sign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then:&#xA;Collapse all the rollups (you can use view-&gt;Outline-&gt;Level1)&#xA;Put any column you would like to show to the left. (Dates, Resource names, etc.)&#xA;Go to &quot;View&quot; and select timescale &quot;Entire Project&quot;&#xA;Print Preview and see the output.&#xA;Change the column and gantt size however you like and it will change on the print preview.&#xA;If you want to remove something from bottom of the page set them from the page settings in print preview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you can either print or export to PDF.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7883" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T14:00:51.267" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15165" CreationDate="2017-02-10T16:47:31.473" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I consider management of risks and issues to be critical to project success.  The A and D in RAID usually stand for Assumptions and Dependencies - they become increasingly important as the size and physical separation of the project team goes up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Crucial to their use is to be sure that everyone agrees to a common definition for &quot;risk&quot; and &quot;issue&quot;.  I generally stress that a &quot;risk&quot; is uncertain, while an &quot;issue&quot; is certain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trying to distinguish using other means I think runs into trouble.  Separating by tactical vs strategic response I think is not the right way to approach it, because both risks and issues can arise at both levels.  Separating by future vs present or past also runs into trouble - one can have an issue that will have certain impact in the future but hasn't happened yet, and a risk that has to do with mitigating uncertain consequences from an event in the past can also occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Defining a risk as something that has a probability less than 100% of having impact on the project gives you two handles for dealing with it: try to modify the probability (avoid or transfer) of impact, and try to modify the impact (mitigate or plan contingencies).  With an issue, all you can really do is work on mitigating impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In David Espinoza's example of a patient, the known symptoms are all issues - you can treat the symptoms but cannot change the probability of the patient having them.  Heart attack is a risk that can have the probability modified by treating the issues and for which contingency and mitigation planning are probably both appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27495" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T16:47:31.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21022" CreationDate="2017-02-10T17:02:57.527" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you may already know, the project manager is the person responsible for leading a project from its inception to execution. This includes planning, execution and managing the people, resources and scope of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now managing the people part includes working with both the team and the stakeholders, as a PM you need to be able to listen, understand, then communicate in words, writing and deeds in order to get your work done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if the project requires the team to be creative and think out of the box, then it's your responsibility to plan and help the team to make it happen. You don't have to be the person who trains the team to be creative but you need to plan according to their needs how will they acquire the required skills to execute the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the methods, it depends on the project, do you need them to be artistically creative? or technically creative? or marketing wise or ...? Unfortunately there is no sliver bullet methods to be creative, you need to define the areas you need your team to be creative at; to be able to define a set of methods/activities that will help them to reach the skill level needed to execute the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3263" LastEditorUserId="3263" LastEditDate="2017-02-23T18:24:55.453" LastActivityDate="2017-02-23T18:24:55.453" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21011" CreationDate="2017-02-11T00:32:49.910" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would probably create separate user stories to capture each unique account type and its related UI design, Acceptance Criteria and dependencies.  This way you could run each story separately and track the successful completion of each account type.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are some common code artifacts that each story can use and build upon, separate that work into its own story and run it first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This break down would allow your QA team to be able to test each unique account type UI separately and determine if the work is complete and meets the acceptance criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27498" LastActivityDate="2017-02-11T00:32:49.910" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21019" CreationDate="2017-02-11T11:17:31.247" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The two variables you say you don't know are required to calculate PV, or BCWS, the cumulative sum of which is your BAC.  Without this value, you cannot arrive at your EV, or BCWP. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question becomes, why can't you arrive at your planning values? If you have your BAC, how did you arrive at that without knowing its parts? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-02-11T11:17:31.247" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21032" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-11T13:24:11.047" Score="3" ViewCount="148" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our development team is currently facing the problem that the complexity of our software project is draining their motivation/enthusiasm/...&#xA;Since a few weeks they constantly struggle with pondering over problems for days, making little to no progress. As a result they began questioning their skills and lost motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our goal now is to improve their motivation and perhaps skills, as well as ensuring project progress... Does anybody have good advice on this matter? Perhaps a good book on conquering complexity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bit of background-info: The team consists of five developers including two senior developers. The workplace and working conditions are formidable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27496" LastActivityDate="2017-02-13T14:39:00.443" Title="Ensuring team motivation and project progress in a highly complex software project" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;skills&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21032" CreationDate="2017-02-11T17:29:27.860" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've also been working as a member of complex heterogeneous development project. Our team consists of 12 members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can make them like an XP approach. Make them as a pair, and work together to fix any code or debug issues instead of expecting to make them to show progress on a daily basis. Make the schedule flexible with buffer arrangements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Takeaways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make them as a pair&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure the schedule is flexible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not allow them to work more than 10 hours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure they have a physical sport one day in a week.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Earn their trust that the manager is always to support them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let one pair test and one pair develop , alternatively. Also ensures cross functional knowledge.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27507" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-02-11T21:57:39.447" LastActivityDate="2017-02-11T21:57:39.447" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21022" CreationDate="2017-02-11T22:36:12.967" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To the extent practical, let the team members decide what they will work on rather than assigning tasks yourself. Allow them to experiment with tools and methods that are new to them. This might be easier on a scrum team than on a more traditional project. You can actually use scrum for work that is not software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An empowered team member is more likely to be a happier team member is more likely to be a more creative team member. Just be careful that their creativity doesn't lead them to spend too much time on things that are unrelated to the project deliverables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13325" LastActivityDate="2017-02-11T22:36:12.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21035" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-12T18:46:40.767" Score="1" ViewCount="914" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently been moved to a new team. There are a lot of practices that I think are not on terms with the Scrum Guide but for now I want to discuss two strange practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;While we developers are working on tasks, the Quality Assurances people start testing them via as many scenarios they can think of; they then add any found issues as Bugs.&lt;/strong&gt; Any sane person would say that this is wrong. If you think a developer might miss a case or scenario then you can add them in the task's description or create a sub task. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I raised this point with the QAs and the Agile Coach and the reply was that Scrum allows us to change certain things as we learn from experience, so we have introduced this thing. &lt;strong&gt;I want to know if this practice is right or wrong.&lt;/strong&gt; I can't really do anything practical about it except raising the issue in the Retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Second question is about testing of completed tasks. A developer completes their tasks, let's say 4 days before the sprint's end. &lt;strong&gt;The QA finds a thing missing in implementation. Should it be reported as a Bug or the task should be reassigned to a developer&lt;/strong&gt;, with a comment or edit in description and moved back to progress?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, in our team, if QA finds a problem with task, they keep the tasks in testing but add a new Bug as sub and assign them to developer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: is this approach right? For example, there is a task to change the color of two buttons, one should now be green and other should be red. A developer works on this task, they first understand the task. How they should do this, use CSS or JavaScript (this is just a simple example, so please bear with me)? They change only one button, or forget to change other button, or change both but due to bad coding only one gets changed. Now the developer moves this task to testing, QA tests the task, and finds that only one button is changed. Now should the issue sent back to developer or a Bug should be reported?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the issue is returned, the developer already knows how to change the color, they will fix the problem, it will be quick.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a bug is reported and the bug gets assigned to a different developer, the it will be a waste of time. The new developer will have to see how to better do the task. A missing semicolon might be the reason.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Now my question is: what is the better approach for the above two cases?&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26659" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-02-12T22:49:53.243" LastActivityDate="2017-02-13T15:29:57.747" Title="Can QA test in-progress tasks? How are bugs reported for incomplete stories?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;testing&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21035" CreationDate="2017-02-13T05:18:04.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Development Team should have all of the skills necessary to turn Backlog Items into increments of working software. For that to be true they need to have the skills to complete all testing on the team, during the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Separate QA is pointless if your Development Team creates working software. It sounds like there is a gap on your team where test should be. I would bring this up at the retrospective and try to explore why you have an &amp;quot;Us vs Them&amp;quot; dynamic between the Development Team and QA individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Some guides:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cross-functional team&lt;/strong&gt; - there should be no sub teams, only a group of individuals, with all the skills necessary, held accountable for creating working software.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Backlog Items should be minimal but sufficient&lt;/strong&gt; - is there is enough information then there are less likely to be surprises. I would expect test cases to be defined as part of the Refinement process. I would also expect a Development Team to be empowered to reject items in Sprint Planning if they are not sufficient.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In sprint bugs&lt;/strong&gt;  - problems found inside the sprint should be a conversation between the Development Team members and resolved immediately. If the problem will jepordise the Sprint Goal then a conversation with the PO might be in order.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Out of Sprint Bugs&lt;/strong&gt; - if you find issues in the output of the Sprint then you should create a Bug and track it, then discuss and root cause it at the Sprint Retrospective.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;externally identified issues&lt;/strong&gt; - any work identified by a team, group, or individual from outside of the Development Team should have that work ordered and priorities by the Product Owner. Any new work coming into the Sprint is costing the Product Owner money and may not be as valuable to the business as something else.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Questions for your retro:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why is there an us vs them feel between development and test?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why is the QA team raising bugs for in sprint work when a conversation would be better?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why is there a QA team?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is our definition of done sufficient?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why is QA adding work directly to the Sprint?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-02-13T05:25:20.647" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21037" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21041" CreationDate="2017-02-13T06:37:10.930" Score="4" ViewCount="236" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a small team mostly focused on medium to large scale websites.  I am going to merge all issues for all of our projects into one backlog using Kanban with JIRA. The idea being that no one gets to pick and choose what they want to work on, but rather we can prioritize everything that the company needs to do and everyone will work on their next ticket in the que.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will lead to hundreds of tasks in my backlog.  I'm fine with this when it comes initially importing all the tasks for a project and prioritizing everything.  However my quandary is as new issues are created by the team (through testing or just new things that come up) and go into my backlog what is the most efficient way for me to handle these without loosing track of what items I need to prioritize? Do I prioritize those right away? daily prioritize new items? have them go to some pre-qualified status to help me easily see what are new issues that need be entered into the backlog? or some other method that someone far wiser than I has already developed?   thanks for any help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Backstory if it's helpful:  We are a team of 8.  In the past we have had a serious issues with handling projects separately as well as new projects separated from ongoing support for current clients.  Obviously there has been zero true project management. Thus leading to the person who is responsible for ongoing clients to yell about their tickets be priority and likewise for the person trying to coordinate our new projects to scream that developers should be working on those first.  Thankfully we are fixing that. Since I've been the most vocal about it, I get to play PM.  I don't want to just play PM though. I'm doing my best to study many methods, read on here, and learn from others.  I've chosen Kanban because I think it helps keep the flow going (there's always a flow of issues in our team), easily see what's the priority across the company, handles efficiency and resources with WIP limits, and makes sure that everyone knows what is the next thing they should be working on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27463" LastActivityDate="2017-02-14T17:32:49.560" Title="Handling New Issues in the backlog" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;kanban-board&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21032" CreationDate="2017-02-13T09:18:14.807" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Developers like to make software which solves the business problem in an elegant and generic way, such that new requirements can fit nicely into a greater system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Solving that problem, of adjusting an existing system to incorporate a new requirement in a way which makes sense within the system as a whole is what makes 'good' software and gives the satisfaction of a job well done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this will often take longer than simply 'hacking' in the functionality, &quot;if special case then do this thing&quot; so there is always a pressure from the business to take these shortcuts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BUT! If you keep on taking these shortcuts eventually the generic system behind your software is eclipsed by the hacks and special cases. At this point it becomes increasingly difficult to make a 'good' change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are then forced to add more and more hacks until the requirements of the software are lost in time. No-one can really say what it is supposed to do in any given case because of the layers on layers of special cases and modifiers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a system reaches this point it is &quot;too complicated&quot;. You can no longer get back to the 'good' path because in doing so you would be forced to modify existing functionality. Developers have no choice but to add changes which they know are as likely to cause bugs and know they they are doomed to work on this software, never achieving job satisfaction and having new developers slag off how awful it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice to developers in this position is to change jobs. My advice to business in this position is to start a 'rewrite it all from scratch' project. This project will be a big money sink. and your original software plus large teams of admin staff doing things manually will continue to roll on making money. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you MUST do the rewrite. Not to keep your bored developers, but because your new competitor is currently doing this exact thing. Copying your business model with a new sleek piece of software using all the latest stuff and unencumbered by your technical debt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2017-02-13T09:18:14.807" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21037" CreationDate="2017-02-13T13:21:27.367" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all you don't usually want tasks in your backlog but ideas that deliver value. The tasks are usually represented by the columns in the Kanban system, but if it is more of a task board then read on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if it is appropriate for you, but when I hear 100s of tasks in the backlog I wonder if you expect them to be more or less valuable than the new ideas that come from the team? Usually once we get started our idea of what needs to be done changes so I would expect many of these tasks to become obsolete. If the existing ideas are more valuable than those coming from the team, then I would suggest getting them done first, or at least until the product starts to take shape. Then just ditch the rest and allow the team to recreate the useful ones. If the team ones are more valuable, then only leave the core minimal ones in the backlog and ditch the rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to lose all the ideas now, you could cluster them to identify some epics and have those in your backlog instead of the detailed ideas. Perhaps one of the early columns after the backlog could be to flesh out the selected idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option could be to use some sort of voting tool like Tricider to allow everyone to add new ideas and vote on the existing ones. You could have a WIP limited &quot;Input Queue&quot; that is replenished by the highest scoring idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="763" LastActivityDate="2017-02-13T13:21:27.367" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21032" CreationDate="2017-02-13T14:39:00.443" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First up, the fact that you are here, asking this question, is already a large step in the right direction. Few things kill morale more than workers feeling that management does not care about their problems. The fact that you have a mindset geared towards improvement is very important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I agreed with everything Ewan said, up until the suggestion to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;rewrite everything&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need, with a problem of excessive complexity, is a solution of sufficient power and structure. This includes both the project management side of things and programming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the Project Management side of things, this involves several things: Requirements gathering and refinement. Not wasting too much time in unending meetings. Documenting all work done (ideally in a way linked to the source code) so the Team can look back and discover &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; a piece if code does what it does. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Breaking work down sufficiently&lt;/a&gt; so that, rather than being overwhelmed by a gigantic piece of work, any given developer has only a single, do-able task on his/her plate (no multi-tasking). Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the programming side of things, you'll need a system that allows the code to be maintained as easily as possible. I'd suggest looking into &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-driven_design&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Domain-driven design&lt;/a&gt;. Take note, however, that any architectural changes need not happen all at once via a wholesale rewrite. If your team implements a policy such that, whenever a developer touches the code, s/he leaves it cleaner and more structures than s/he found it, then you'll be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to dump all of these changes all at once, either; you can ease them in bit by bit. Provided you get buy-in from the team (implementing &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; change without buy-in will always reduce morale, which would be counter-productive), then over time, as your system for handling work becomes more robust, the work itself will become simpler, and morale will improve accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-02-13T14:39:00.443" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21037" CreationDate="2017-02-13T14:53:30.043" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] what is the most efficient way for me to handle these without loosing track of what items I need to prioritize?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can manage this with JIRA's JQL quick-filters. The simplest solution would be to have, say, a filter that shows everything in the backlog that was created in the past week:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;created &gt; -7d AND status = Backlog&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then go through them once a week to prioritize them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can make a more complex system if you require additional rigor (managing things by status or project, etc.), but for the beginning I would suggest you start simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-02-13T14:53:30.043" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21035" CreationDate="2017-02-13T15:29:57.747" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First there is no right way of testing in Scrum, there is only the way that works for the team. Scrum does not describe any practises when it comes to testing. If you think the way doesn't work discuss it during the retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your questions from my perspective as an Agile tester:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Test in parallel is good, creating bug-reports isn't. As a tester I would create automated tests to cover these newfound requirements so that a developer can implement them. I would discuss the findings with the team and the product owner. Scope changes should go on the backlog. Defects in existing functionality as tasks on the Scrumboard, but I would prefer an automated test.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum you never assign to a developer, since it is a pull system, the team pulls from the still to complete work to fulfill the Sprint goal. Any developer can pick the defects up if they want. I would use a physical board and put a post-it with the issue on the board. Reporting a defect in a defect tracker seems a waste of time as I rather discuss the issue with the team and the product owner first.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Prevent QA&amp;lt;-&gt;DEV ping-pong, let testers pair-program with the developers and make sure re-work is perfect after the first time. This could be something to try if this happens a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is a team approach, talk with the team, solve issues with the team. Stop single developer thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read up on swarming:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/147664/what-is-swarming&quot;&gt;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/147664/what-is-swarming&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.infoq.com/news/2013/02/swarming-agile-teams-deliver&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.infoq.com/news/2013/02/swarming-agile-teams-deliver&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:45:57.110" LastActivityDate="2017-02-13T15:29:57.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21043" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-13T16:45:56.873" Score="1" ViewCount="630" Body="&lt;p&gt;On Visual Studio Team System (VSTS), I understand that Remaining Work (Microsoft.VSTS.Scheduling.RemainingWork) should automatically roll up from tasks to PBIs (Product Backlog Items)/Bugs (of course if they're linked through Parent/Child link type). I created a new Process (from modified Scrum process), new project and assigned my new process to the new project I had created. So far so good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I create tasks either under a PBI or a Bug, the Remaining Work I enter in these tasks doesn't roll up to their parents (PBIs/Bugs). I compared the new template to an existing one (the existing one actually rolls everything up properly) and couldn't find any differences as far as this field (Microsoft.VSTS.Scheduling.RemainingWork) is concerned. Is there an additional setting that I need to check somewhere for the Roll-up to start happening?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have Microsoft.VSTS.Scheduling.RemainingWork field defined in PBI, Bug and Task templates and all of them have Formula = 'sum'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below is the screengrab of the field's definition which is exactly the same for all 3 work item types (PBI/Bug/Task)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QEnqC.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QEnqC.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27529" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2017-11-14T12:54:33.940" LastActivityDate="2019-05-06T12:02:20.410" Title="Remaining Work rollup issue" Tags="&lt;vsts&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21044" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21047" CreationDate="2017-02-13T23:59:34.610" Score="11" ViewCount="608" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprint&lt;/strong&gt;: an arbitrary length of time over which you implement and release software features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I've read &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/6354/what-are-the-benefits-of-having-fixed-length-sprints-for-agile&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and other places, it seems that the benefits of a Scrum &lt;em&gt;sprint&lt;/em&gt; are that at the end of a sprint you release the software, get feedback from the customer, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But on a web-based product, where I am the owner (the end user is the customer) and we communicate small improvements right when we make them rather than waiting for some Sprint to end, and the customer gets the new features right when they are implemented, &lt;strong&gt;what are the benefits of &quot;ending&quot; a sprint&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(other than a post mortem, which we don't do)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8942" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2019-06-10T13:03:28.703" Title="If you already release continuously, what are the benefits of a Scrum Sprint of constant length?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;lean&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21044" CreationDate="2017-02-14T01:16:24.847" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may find under your situation that a Scrum Sprint model does not fit well. It is just one way of doing things. Perhaps you are looking more of a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_(development)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt; approach&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the usefulness of a sprint itself, if a team of people are able to work together to complete a piece of functionality that meets the sprint goal then it can be quite rewarding for them to release on sprint boundaries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum does not mandate a release at every sprint, that is upto the Product Owner and team. But it is extremely important that the product is in a &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.innolution.com/resources/glossary/potentially-shippable-product-increment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;potentially shippable&lt;/a&gt;&quot; state, which means good, working quality softare is available to be released on a regular basis&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20653" LastActivityDate="2017-02-14T01:16:24.847" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21043" CreationDate="2017-02-14T03:15:49.173" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It does not roll up directly to data fields on the parent work item. Instead many of the Agile Planning Tool views show the roll up on a virtual field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3aG0H.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see ob the Backlog Item that the Remaining work has been rolled up for you. There are other views in relation to sprints where this happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If however you want to sum the work up you can, for TFS use the built in Data Warehouse to do the sum in a report, or in VSTS you can use the PowerBI Adapter for the same purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastActivityDate="2017-02-14T03:15:49.173" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21044" CreationDate="2017-02-14T03:38:33.003" Score="14" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A Sprint enshrines your empirical process by providing a maximum delivery cadence&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It increases communication and alignment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It adds some predictability to the unpredictable nature of software by evening the batch sizes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A Sprint is a container for planning!&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the Scrum Guide says that you must deliver working software at least every 30 days there is nothing to stop you doing it more frequently. Indeed continuous delivery and Scrum go together quite well in my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Sprint enshrines inspect and adapt by containing your other feedback loops:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprint Planning&lt;/strong&gt; - Inspect the Backlog and Adapt the plan for the next Sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Daily Scrum&lt;/strong&gt; - Inspect progress and adapt the plan for the next 24hours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprint Review&lt;/strong&gt; - Inspect the Increment and adapt the Backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprint Retrospective&lt;/strong&gt; - Inspect the Sprint and adapt the process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without a Sprint when would you bring all this together? It makes them mandatory efforts as they should be. If you are an awesome disciplined team then by all means do something that looks a little more like Kanban, but if you don't have the discipline to follow the rules of Scrum, how would you expect Kanban to work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Communication &amp;amp; Alignment&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An additional benefit of Sprinting is that it gives a cadence that your management, and other dependent teams, can follow easily. If you are coordinating work, then having a common frame of reference, Sprint 231, will aid in communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Creates Predictability&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since software is a creative endeavour and the standard deviation of a batch is so wide an unpredictable the addition of a fixed time container artificially created some predictability in your batches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that there is a good deal of value in a Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-06-10T13:03:28.703" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21044" CreationDate="2017-02-14T14:26:32.877" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The biggest reason for sticking to a consistent sprint length would be in order to have predictability. Since velocity is the average of the work you have accomplished in a given time period, it would be unusable if sprint lengths were inconsistent. A useful velocity can give more confidence to a team who is committing to delivering a feature in a certain time period, and it also helps the team estimate and forecast a longer-term milestone for your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reasons for sticking with consistent sprint lengths depend highly on what sort of environment you are in. Scrum does not prescribe that releases happen at the end of each sprint, and continuous delivery is certainly one of the most common reasons to forego this practice. Kanban may be something worth checking out if you are in an environment with a continuous flow of tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27228" LastEditorUserId="27228" LastEditDate="2017-02-14T17:38:59.157" LastActivityDate="2017-02-14T17:38:59.157" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21051" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-14T15:44:31.577" Score="0" ViewCount="350" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that this is a topic that has been talked about a lot but I need to export a project from MS Project to JIRA. I know that there are a few JIRA addons to make this job but they are paid and my company does not have money to pay a license for this addon. So, does anyone know if there is any script or any way to make this work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27549" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-02-14T15:53:48.783" LastActivityDate="2020-12-16T13:01:30.203" Title="From Microsoft Project to JIRA" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10647" CreationDate="2017-02-14T16:49:08.497" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Additionally the Project Management approach would alter this figure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example a Scrum Master running an Agile Scrum project may need to spend more effort per project than a Project Manager managing a 3rd party delivery from a contracted agency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've always said that 2 big, 2 medium and 2 small projects are a nice way to compose my portfolio of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However really big stuff I would expect to focus solely on. So it really is variable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27550" LastActivityDate="2017-02-14T16:49:08.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21037" CreationDate="2017-02-14T17:32:49.560" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you say issues, do you mean the Jira issue type or a real issue with your products (a bug)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you meant the issue type, I'd definitely separate them in different swimlanes. I'd put customer bugs at the top, then put internal bugs, then features at the bottom. This should be a signal to the team that they first need to tackle customer and internal bugs and only then go to new features. If you want to know more about this approach, read on here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://kanbanize.com/kanban-resources/case-studies/kanban-for-software-development-teams/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban for Software Development&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you meant bugs, I'd rather start figuring out why my team has piled up hundreds of issues. When you have that many bugs for a team of 8, this might be a manifestation of corrupt practices and/or behavior, where Kanban is not likely to help a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope I didn't misinterpret the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22983" LastActivityDate="2017-02-14T17:32:49.560" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10647" CreationDate="2017-02-15T08:15:37.717" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My view on this is it depends on how the project is managed.  I work in construction.  If I am doing all the project management,  include cost,  schedule,  quality etc.  then I can manage 3 small to medium sized jobs,  as long as the clients aren't too demanding.  Ideally they would be in different phases, one in design,  one in construction and one in defects period. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the number or size of projects increases,  my management has to change.  I will bring in specialist schedulers, cost managers,  quality managers but remain fully engaged with all aspects of the projects.  This is how I managed 50 small and very similar projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next step is to bring in assistant project managers, managing one or two projects each.  Now you are starting to work as a portfolio manager.  Rather than knowing all the details of the project,  you make sure that they are initiated and planned well,  receive regular progress reports, and only get involved to deal with exceptions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in summary,  I don't think there is a maximum number of projects a PM can manage, but for a given management style,  a ceiling will be reached. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25572" LastActivityDate="2017-02-15T08:15:37.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21055" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21057" CreationDate="2017-02-15T11:45:57.127" Score="1" ViewCount="3244" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Microsoft Project I have a task with these attributes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Duration = 0.5 days&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resources = Person A[100%]; Person B[100%]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Type = Fixed Duration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Effort driven = No (implying Level Assignments = No)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I start Resource Leveling (with &quot;Leveling can adjust individual assignments on a task&quot; = No), the duration of the task will be increased because Microsoft Project schedules the assignment the following way: Person A starts to work at 08:00 and finishes at 12:00. Person B starts to work at 13:00 and finishes at 17:00.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I actually need to have the two persons working together at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I tell Microsoft Project to schedule the assignments of the two persons to have the same time start and finish times? (When doing automatic resource leveling.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Or put generally: How to automatically level resources without increases in duration of my fixed-duration multi-resource tasks?)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27564" LastEditorUserId="27564" LastEditDate="2017-02-15T16:49:48.760" LastActivityDate="2017-06-15T18:47:12.413" Title="Microsoft Project: How to make two resources work at the same time on the same task when using automatic resource leveling?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20395" CreationDate="2017-02-15T13:01:49.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I set up a basic project with three tasks where each task is configured to be one of the basic task types:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fixed Duration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fixed Work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fixed Units&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I then copied the tasks down and grouped then into two groups: Base Plan + Modified Plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Base Setup&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XySmw.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XySmw.png&quot; alt=&quot;Base Setup of Standard Tasks&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;(click on image to zoom)&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, there is a task of each specific type and each task has a duration of 2 days and a work amount of 16 hours. I then assigned a resource RA to each task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Modifying Fixed Duration Task&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PnGZy.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PnGZy.png&quot; alt=&quot;Modifying a task of type Fixed Duration&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;(click on image to zoom)&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After modifying the &lt;strong&gt;Fixed Duration&lt;/strong&gt; task to 24 hours only the &lt;strong&gt;Work&lt;/strong&gt; column was highlighted. No error messages, just a little green triangle telling us that Project has altered something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Modifying Fixed Work Task&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/udQt6.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/udQt6.png&quot; alt=&quot;Modifying a task of type Fixed Work&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;(click on image to zoom)&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After modifying the &lt;strong&gt;Fixed Work&lt;/strong&gt; task Project highlighted the &lt;strong&gt;duration&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;end date&lt;/strong&gt; and provided the little green arrow to hint that I could alter the default behaviour of how Project handled the change.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Modifying Fixed Units Task&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aDdEx.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aDdEx.png&quot; alt=&quot;Modifying a task of type Fixed Units&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;(click on image to zoom)&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After modifying the &lt;strong&gt;Fixed Units&lt;/strong&gt; task by adding 6 hours to the &lt;strong&gt;work&lt;/strong&gt; Project highlighted the &lt;strong&gt;duration&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;work&lt;/strong&gt; columns. And again Project lets me know with the little green arrow that I could alter the default modifications to something else, by clicking on the cell and then selecting the exclamation mark symbol to the left of the cell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Automatic Planning Mode&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All these changes were conducted in automatic planning mode, so Project will adjust according to its defaults. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Resource Impact&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/udQt7.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/udQt7.png&quot; alt=&quot;Impact on Resource Allocation&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;(click on image to zoom)&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adjusting the &lt;strong&gt;Fixed Work&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Fixed Units&lt;/strong&gt; tasks resulted in a longer duration of work (3 days), which is the default handling when adjusting the work amount. However, adjusting the &lt;strong&gt;Fixed Duration&lt;/strong&gt; task resulted in a (default) adjustment of the units (resource allocation). The employee &lt;strong&gt;RA&lt;/strong&gt; now has to work 150% on two days of the week to accomplish the **Fixed Duration* task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Base Formula&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The default adjustments are all based on the following formula:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1 day duration = 8 hours per day / 100% Units per day&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we apply this formula to the &lt;strong&gt;Fixed Duration&lt;/strong&gt; task this will result in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2 d duration = 8 h work per day / 100% units per day =&gt; 16 h work / 100% units&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We add 8 hours to the work which results in 24 hours in two days, because duration can not be changed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2 d duration = 8 h work per day / 100% units per day =&gt; 24 h work / 150% units&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the value on the left side of the equation cannot be altered Project has to modify the only value on the right side of the equation that can be altered and that is the value for units (which is the equivalent of resources).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;16h / 100% = 0.16h / 1% unit  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is the same as:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;24h / 150% = 0.16h/1% unit  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;To answer your question&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your error message is not the default behaviour when modifying a &lt;strong&gt;Fixed Duration&lt;/strong&gt; task in MS Project. Project will increase the resource percentage if the task is configured as a &lt;strong&gt;Fixed Duration&lt;/strong&gt; task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The task type might have been set as &lt;strong&gt;Fixed Work&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;Fixed Units&lt;/strong&gt; type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt; &lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5156" LastActivityDate="2017-02-15T13:01:49.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21055" CreationDate="2017-02-15T13:15:38.277" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It appears that this was caused by using different calendars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a post by Project MVP Jan De Messemaeker that I found in &lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_project-mso_winother/two-resource-to-work-on-one-task-at-the-same-time/4a4d3b8e-705c-4e75-b855-a0352100ef8c&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;thread in a Microsoft Office forum&lt;/a&gt;, it was suggested to give all resources the same calendar and create manually scheduled &quot;dummy tasks&quot; that represent off-times (like individual vacations).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When doing so, automatic leveling worked like a charm in my case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27564" LastActivityDate="2017-02-15T13:15:38.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21058" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21066" CreationDate="2017-02-15T16:14:41.613" Score="5" ViewCount="4875" Body="&lt;p&gt;...is not able to help the remaining member of the team with his tasks since he is not suitable for it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, in this scenario I allocate a new item from the backlog that my scrum member is more suited to doing and leave the remaining item for the colleague who is still behind. This is with the full consent of the development team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this the correct approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="18106" LastEditDate="2017-02-15T20:20:02.333" LastActivityDate="2018-06-05T13:32:01.673" Title="Scrum: what to do if team member finishes their work early but can't help with other tasks" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="18" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21058" CreationDate="2017-02-15T16:38:39.490" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... I allocate a new item ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please be careful with doing this. Scrum (and most Agile in general) works best as a Pull system, not as a Push system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, be careful of accepting new work into an ongoing Sprint - doing so threatens to make the entire purpose of the Sprint estimation pointless. Any new work added to the Sprint should generally be agreed upon by the entire Development Team, as adding work to the Sprint is essentially the same as having the Dev Team commit to that work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While adding more work to the Sprint is sometimes a valid approach (again, assuming everyone on the Development Team agrees), other options are available as well. There are many ways to make use of slack time. Pair programming (even if he is not 'suitable' for some other work, he may be able to learn by pairing up on it). Code review. Writing documentation. Independent learning/research. Performing spikes/low-priority side-projects. Et cetera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-02-15T16:38:39.490" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21058" CreationDate="2017-02-15T16:40:52.943" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an internal problem for the Development Team and you should allow them to solve it themselves. It is absolutely not the job of the Scrum Master to allocate work, create tasks, or decide on who is best to complete work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should refer to the Scrum Guide for how this works, but here are some relevant points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Development Teams have the following characteristics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They are self-organizing. &lt;strong&gt;No one (not even the Scrum Master) tells the Development Team how&lt;/strong&gt; to turn Product Backlog into Increments of&#xA;potentially releasable functionality;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Development Teams are cross-functional, with all of the skills as a team necessary to create a product Increment;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum recognizes no titles for Development Team members other than Developer, regardless of the work being performed by the person; there&#xA;are no exceptions to this rule;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum recognizes no sub-teams in the Development Team, regardless of particular domains that need to be addressed like testing or&#xA;business analysis; there are no exceptions to this rule; and,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Individual Development Team members may have specialized skills and areas of focus, but accountability belongs to the Development Team as&#xA;a whole.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as the Development Team has the skills available within the team to do the work then you can step back and let them get on with building Working Software in the way that makes the most sense based on their composition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they don't have the skills it is the Scrum Masters job to facilitate providing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master serves the Development Team in several ways,&#xA;including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coaching the Development Team in self-organization and cross-functionality;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Helping the Development Team to create high-value products;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Removing impediments to the Development Team’s progress;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Facilitating Scrum events as requested or needed; and,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coaching the Development Team in organizational environments in which Scrum is not yet fully adopted and understood.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nowhere on here will you find that the Scrum Master assigned work to the Development Team, and indeed their job is to protect the Development Team from people trying to assign them work directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you don't have a self organising team, and that each person is held individually accountable for work. This is the biggest killer to self-organisation and a blocker to gaining high performing teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Update:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On reflection it sounds like your Product Owner is not ordering the backlog, and that your Sprint does not have a Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the Development Team forecasts the Product Backlog items it will&#xA;deliver in the Sprint, the &lt;strong&gt;Scrum Team crafts a Sprint Goal&lt;/strong&gt;. The Sprint&#xA;Goal is an objective that will be met within the Sprint through the&#xA;implementation of the Product Backlog, and it provides guidance to the&#xA;Development Team on why it is building the Increment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need a Sprint Goal to give the team both focus and some wiggle room in what is selected for the current Sprint. Always the Development Team selects the work that it is to complete, and the Sprint Goal gives them the direction they need if the Product Owner is unavailable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Questions to ask in this situation:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why don't you coach the Development Team go to the Product Owner and ask them whats next?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why is the Product Backlog in such poor shape that &amp;quot;whats next&amp;quot; is not very obvious?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have a Sprint Goal that can guide the Development Team in making these sorts of decisions?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the Scrum Master and the de facto Product Owner the same person?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-02-15T18:40:05.487" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21055" CreationDate="2017-02-15T16:45:10.147" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although resource calendars can play a role, the fundamental issue in the case described is the &quot;Leveling can adjust individual assignments on a task&quot; leveling option.  Checking the box allows resources to work independently, letting the task start as soon as logical predecessors are satisfied and the first resource is available, but extending the task's duration until the last resource finishes its work.  Leaving the box unchecked (i.e. the default option) keeps all the work within the original duration of the task during leveling, so the resources work together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2017-02-15T16:45:10.147" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21022" CreationDate="2017-02-15T17:14:25.780" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Give them 20% time like Google used to do; 1 day a week or 1 day a month to explore whatever ideas they have that are related to the product/company or not related at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27307" LastActivityDate="2017-02-15T17:14:25.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20998" CreationDate="2017-02-15T17:25:00.437" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Impressed by all the answers that lean on &lt;em&gt;authority&lt;/em&gt; and using a &lt;em&gt;stick&lt;/em&gt; instead of the carrot, just wow, that's very hostile to a team collaborative environment!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First you have to ask yourself, what is the purpose of a daily stand-up. It's to make sure that any issues encountered are taken care of and that the project is moving in the right direction. Oh wait, sorry that's the ideal for stand-ups. Usually the stand-up is used for status updates, they're made for the manager to listen to the status from each team member rather than having the stand-up being useful to the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find yourself having to &lt;em&gt;force&lt;/em&gt; the team to do a daily stand-up, then the purpose of the stand-up is for &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; and you alone, you are not being a team player. The team themselves have to discover the benefits of the daily stand-up and have their own way of doing it. Maybe this means doing a stand-up only twice a week, maybe it means having a quick one just after lunch or right at the end of the day, or maybe it means just no stand-up at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're interested in monitoring a project, the daily standup is only one tool of many. You can always revert to asking individuals about status and you can ask them directly whether there are blockers or if they need some help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your job is to be a &lt;em&gt;coach&lt;/em&gt; to the team, not to force them to eat their vegetables and do their daily stand-up. They need to see the benefits and adopt it for themselves; if they don't see the benefits for themselves and only see it as status updates for you, it will never be attended and adopted. This is true of all other SCRUM tools; remember it's made for the &lt;em&gt;team first&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27307" LastActivityDate="2017-02-15T17:25:00.437" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21058" CreationDate="2017-02-15T19:06:43.043" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;When teaching and coaching new teams I work with them to make a &quot;Decision Tree&quot; as part of the working agreements. I teach them the basics of Kanban first and over the years I've found most teams settle on a similar decision tree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as I write my Agile Coach's Cookbook, this is what I'm offering as an example of a Good Practice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, I am done with my current task, what do I do next? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We trust you, do the right thing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there some way I can help someone with a current task?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can I fix a bottleneck in the workflow (someplace where WIP or Cycle Time is high)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can I work on an unstarted task on an in-progress, user story (that I can finish in the time remaining in this sprint)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can I fix some outstanding technical debt, or make the system better?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can I start a new story in this sprint's backlog (that I can finish in the time remaining in this sprint)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can I learn something new or improve my skills?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When in doubt, see #1. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, starting something new, from the backlog, is well down the list and there should always be the caveat of &quot;in this sprint&quot;. Slack is vital to a successful organization. Tom Demarco, management consultant and author of Slack, states &quot;Innovation is what happens when there is slack.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-02-15T19:06:43.043" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="92" CreationDate="2017-02-15T19:32:30.900" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mistakes that I see often:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;not keeping a running list of Risks and not being able to manage those risks effectively&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;always saying yes and never controlling change which leads to scope creep&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;not creating small clear milestones (this is why Agile and SCRUM use sprints, to force these milestones to be created!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;no proper monitoring of a project; no idea if 100% or 50% or 0% of a milestone is completed, no idea who has knowledge of which area of a project, no idea what stakeholders are expecting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;no closing of a project; there are some tasks that have to be done at the close of a project and they're usually just not kept track of at all. Handing things off to another team means you have to document things for them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;not using time buffers to allow people to work on some necessary tasks for a limited time (think bug fixing for software with a minimum of 2 days and a potential maximum of 30 days in the schedule).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;not building holidays/training into schedules, hard to work on a project when you expect 100% of resources to be available!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of these mistakes stem from the fact that there has been no formal education in project management techniques and tools and possibly no interest in learning those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27307" LastActivityDate="2017-02-15T19:32:30.900" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2017-02-15T19:32:30.900" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21058" CreationDate="2017-02-15T19:51:01.380" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an excellent question and you will see a spectrum of answers which demonstrate the polar opposites of the Scrum community attitudes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an official answer which is supported by the Scrum Guide and will help you pass any number of Scrum exams but has little applicability in the real world of software development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me break your points down one at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your closing question.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this the correct approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always remember that &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;doing Scrum is not the thing.  Scrum is the thing that gets you to the thing&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.  It is a framework designed to help you deliver software, it is not an end in itself.  Unless you work for Scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your approach is helping to deliver working software then it is not &lt;strong&gt;wrong&lt;/strong&gt;, it could just be improved slightly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't approach Agility with a sense of right and wrong, it will just divide your stakeholders/customers/co-workers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's simply a spectrum of effectiveness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Effective short term, effective long term.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting stories done now in mini silos does not mean the team are building resilience to get stories done in the future if one of the development team leaves / goes sick etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your underlying issue&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Team member is unable to help another team member&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could be many things and is worthy of a question in it's own right. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The default response of the Scrum Community will be that cross-functional &lt;em&gt;people&lt;/em&gt; are king but that is not always viable in practice, especially in Enterprise organisations or those with strict regulatory frameworks that need sign off. It could be that the developer has en employment contract which states his/her specific role and skillset. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The aim is a cross-functional team &lt;strong&gt;as much as possible&lt;/strong&gt; but a COBOL developer does not magically become a Jenkins expert and a QA Tester does not instantly become a Java developer etc.  We have to be sensible.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master you should spend time with the Developer and probe their motivations.  Are they opposed to learning new skills?  Do they feel uncomfortable?  Does the organisation and the project allow punish failure? Do they feel pressured to work on new tasks?  Do they have a line manager they report to discouraging a new skillset?  Are they incentivised by user story completion? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will need to spin a few plates but you are paid to manage relationships. They are paid to manage the code pipeline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask the Product Owner if they see the value in cross-functional working and can they devote some Sprint time to the Development Team to train/coach/mentor the developer?  Is there capacity to have them do self-guided learning with online resources?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's important to consider that the needs of the Scrum Team may not be in line with the career aspirations of the Developer, especially in large organisations with entrenched employees and HR.  HR is on their side, no ifs, no buts. Not every Scrum Team works in a start-up environment.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My approach is to simply tell a Developer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We will be no worse off if you simply try. Does that sound like&#xA;  something we can work with?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer is no then you have some tough choices to make for your recommendations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your current approach&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I allocate a new item from the backlog that my scrum member is more suited to doing and leave the remaining item for the colleague who is still behind. This is with the full consent of the development team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, you have gained consensus from the team which is fantastic.  Your direction of travel towards a self-organizing team in underway.  Maintain that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you feel you should allocate work though?  Do it feel to you that that is the role of the Scrum Master?   If you are a former Project Manager then maybe this behavior comes easily. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, the Product Owner should be continually ordering and prioritizing the backlog so that development team members can see the highest value stories at the top.  &lt;strong&gt;If a situation arises where the team have more capacity then they can simply call a quick meeting, review the backlog and select the stories they feel are most appropriate for the Sprint &lt;em&gt;taking account of the Product Owners prioritization&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically you will find a healthy tension between engineering stories (best practice, refactoring etc) that the Development Team wish to implement and Feature stories which the PO pushes to have done.  Not always, but it's common. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having capacity in a Sprint is an excellent chance to let the Development Team focus on those engineering tasks without disrupting the Sprint Goal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, you shouldn't assign work but encourage the team to pull from the backlog in a considered manner.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, no Scrum Team member is ever behind.  They are a team.  It is a team delivery. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reinforce this.  Like a relay team, the clock stops when the last man crosses the line not the first; they are not &lt;strong&gt;behind&lt;/strong&gt;; they are simply demonstrating to the business more realistic expectations of what can be achieved.  Timelines move, developers don't work longer hours.  That's the sustainable part of Scrum.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Build a team, not a collection of individuals...and don't throw the Scrum Guide at them.  It's just a PDF written by a couple of guys no smarter than yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="10462" LastEditDate="2017-02-15T22:00:56.353" LastActivityDate="2017-02-15T22:00:56.353" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21067" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21086" CreationDate="2017-02-15T23:41:09.590" Score="0" ViewCount="68" Body="&lt;p&gt;a project developed by just one person that have all the requirements well defined upfront which is the best process model for a cms project? Im in doubt between agile or waterfall. I read that waterfall is ok for projects where the requirements are well defined and is not probably that will change, and it is the case, but also i read that are a lot of disadvantages. But also agile it seems that its more for teams with 2 or more people so maybe its not appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know more clearly which criteria should we have in account to know which is the best process model?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27575" LastActivityDate="2017-02-19T10:43:44.433" Title="software process model for one person with requirments well defined upfront" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21069" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-16T10:23:12.497" Score="1" ViewCount="179" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for best way to have possibility to find out from jira issue -who was responsible for certain stages of its lifecycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our work process on issue starts from analysis then going development and quality assurance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to find out such information is Transitions tab of issue, but if issue was hardly reopened or returned from qa to development understand responsible user from &quot;Transitions&quot; seems a little bit confusing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I wonder if there are another ways (may be some plugin) to store information about users which have been involved in work on issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a way to store them (involved users) by their roles in project (analyst, developer, qa) it would be perfect!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27585" LastActivityDate="2018-09-12T00:03:22.007" Title="Jira: Best way to setup issue for having info about responsible users (analyst, developer, qa)" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21070" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-16T11:26:31.577" Score="2" ViewCount="170" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the moment in Jira each developer has the following columns in its dashboard:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(developer dashboard)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;TO DO       IN PROGRESS     IMPEDED     QA  REVIEW      DONE&#xA;&#xA;Story 101 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------&#xA;           Development&#xA;&#xA;Story 102 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------&#xA;                                              Development&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each developer can create a certain number of tasks for each story. One task for each story is created for testing and assigned to the tester from the beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tester has the following dashboard:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;(tester dashboard)&#xA;TO DO       IN PROGRESS     IMPEDED     QA  REVIEW      DONE&#xA;&#xA;Story 101 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------&#xA;&#xA; Test&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the story is ready for testing the developer move the testing task to the QA column (although he cannot see it from its dashboard). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;(tester dashboard)&#xA;TO DO       IN PROGRESS     IMPEDED     QA  REVIEW      DONE&#xA;&#xA;Story 101 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------&#xA;&#xA;                                       Test&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The developer has to rely on notifications sent via email, when a test fail and the testing task is assigned back to &quot;in progress&quot; (the testing task is never assigned to the developer):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;(tester dashboard)&#xA;TO DO       IN PROGRESS     IMPEDED     QA  REVIEW      DONE&#xA;&#xA;Story 101 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------&#xA;&#xA;              Test&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to this, for reviews the process is not very linear, as the task is not assigned to the reviewer but just moved to the column REVIEW:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;(developer dashboard)&#xA;TO DO       IN PROGRESS     IMPEDED     QA  REVIEW      DONE&#xA;&#xA;Story 101 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------&#xA;&#xA;                                           Development&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There might be multiple reviewers and the only way to know you have to review a story is to login to Bitbucket and see if there are any pull requests. When somebody leaves comments, you have to constantly check the pull request to deal with the comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another problem here is that the tester not always waits for the review to be completed (approved by everybody in the pull request). In fact the &quot;development&quot; task can be in &quot;review&quot; state and at the same time the &quot;testing&quot; task can be in the QA state. The tester sometimes start testing before the end of the review because there are no other stories to be tested, but the consequence is that he has to test again if there are any changes to the code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see the process is quite convoluted and not linear. How can I improve the process? what are we doing wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27587" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-02-16T12:39:48.923" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T15:45:17.867" Title="How can I improve this Jira process?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2017-02-26T20:15:36.997" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21070" CreationDate="2017-02-16T13:52:19.863" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me it seems you have a lot of &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; that actually hinders your &lt;em&gt;progress&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why don't you just create a single dashboard for all and if somebody needs to do something you assign the original ticket to them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: When the developer is done he moves the ticket to the QA column. He then assigns a QA or assigns it to a QA pool where they pull from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2017-02-16T13:52:19.863" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21072" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-16T15:46:32.460" Score="4" ViewCount="171" Body="&lt;p&gt;I generally find signing off projects hard. Every time I think that I am about to sign the project off, something crops up unexpectedly with the client asking for last minute amendments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can lead to delays, or my budget going out of whack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this normal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2018-06-15T14:14:48.743" Title="Is signing off projects supposed to be hard?" Tags="&lt;scope&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;&lt;delays&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20998" CreationDate="2017-02-16T16:18:10.520" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just going to throw in another idea that may not be as popular, but has worked really well for me in my current situation. My team was good at doing stand-ups, but is mostly remote. After some discussion with the team we realized that doing the standup the way we were doing it (mandatory web meeting/call) each morning was not the most efficient, because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A large amount of time was for status &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's hard to pay attention to&#xA;statuses over the phone when you are distracted by your work which is&#xA;still right in front of you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's harder to get people to speak up on the phone to answer questions, which was were the real value of standup is.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this is a little different than your situation, but the key point here is the same as yours, &lt;strong&gt;the devs weren't seeing as much value in it.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we broke it down. Our team uses slack to communicate, so we created a standup channel, and every morning each member posts their standup status in the channel. This has to be done before 9:30 am, which is our call time. At first we held the call anyways, just so any questions from the status updates could be asked and answered. After a sprint or two we discovered this was almost never necessary, so we stopped holding the call, although I or any team member can call for it at any time if they feel it's needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why we like it:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It takes less time. It takes 2 minutes for each dev to write their&#xA;update, which they can do at their leisure instead of on the spot,&#xA;and 2 more minutes to read everyone else's.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If we do end up needing the call, it's much more efficient since all of the updates are out of the way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If anyone forgets what someone said, they can at anytime during the day go back and re-read that person's standup.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is now very clear that if we do hold the meeting (and by extension any others, because they know now that I do not like holding meetings frivolously) that it's needed, so participation and morale are better.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this may not be inherently Scrum, I feel it is very Agile and meets the core of what Scrum is trying to do. We arrived at this process by recognizing a problem, bringing it up in Retro, deciding on a solution, implementing it for a sprint, then discussing in retro and tweaking. Not only did it help with standup, as a new scrum master to this team it helped establish the purpose and value of retro. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line, talk to your team, present the problem and maybe even a possible solution, and then adopt something and go try it. Talk about it in retro, change or tweak, rinse and repeat as necessary. To me, this is the heart of Agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26060" LastActivityDate="2017-02-16T16:18:10.520" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21072" CreationDate="2017-02-16T16:58:21.133" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether or not it is 'normal' is highly subjective and contextual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is more important is whether or not it is a &lt;em&gt;problem&lt;/em&gt; (which I assume it is, otherwise why are you here asking about it?), and, if so, how to fix it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem you have is that of clients asking for last-minute amendments. This can be broken down into two sub-problems:&#xA;1) The client is asking for amendments.&#xA;2) The client's amendments are being asked in the last minute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first sub-problem is never going to go away, for the simple fact that &lt;strong&gt;users do not know what they want.&lt;/strong&gt; Users are &lt;em&gt;incapable&lt;/em&gt; of providing a complete description of what they want at the onset of a project, because they simply &lt;em&gt;do not know.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, the only viable approach is to solve the second sub-problem. Namely, that these amendments are being made in the last minute. This is the entire idea behind Agile development. By obtaining customer feedback early and often, by the time you finish the project, there is nothing &lt;em&gt;new&lt;/em&gt; for the customer to even see, and thus they (ideally) will have no further feedback for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-06-15T14:14:48.743" LastActivityDate="2018-06-15T14:14:48.743" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21072" CreationDate="2017-02-16T17:24:41.943" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That sounds like there was only an informal change request process and maybe an informal project close process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of a change request process is to make situations like this less likely. The client requests a change, they're told to give more details, and then they're informed how it will impact the budget and scope and schedule. The act of getting them to provide more details ensures they can't fire off rapid requests for change like this: &quot;Do X...no wait do Y! Wait wait and do Z too!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Telling them that the budget and schedule increase will also make them think twice about whether that &quot;small&quot; change is really worthwhile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this keeps happening, at some you may have to lean on the business contract for the project. There should be some kind of definition of done that satisfies both the client and your company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27307" LastActivityDate="2017-02-16T17:24:41.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20777" CreationDate="2017-02-16T17:33:57.380" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lean on the basics of project management. You have a list of tasks that need to get done and they vary in complexity and effort. Some of them will take a while, some will be short and fast and easy to do. Break down those tasks as far as you can to capture &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of the things that are required for the overall task to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To measure your progress and efficiency, you need this metric; the number of tasks completed. With that, you can establish a baseline and measure the variance. In a good month, you complete 30 tasks, in a bad month you complete 10. For your personal efficiency, you can time how long it took to complete the tasks (you said they're each only a few days long). Aim to reduce how long it takes to complete a task (without compromising the quality of the project of course!) and aim to increase the number of tasks completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These metrics are very basic but as there is no overall formal process, they're good enough that you can see how well things are going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to measure your progress and efficiency is by the number of new things you have learned or how much better you've gotten at certain skills. These are less quantitative and more qualitative; you feel like you're gaining more knowledge and thinking of new ways to be more efficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, you don't need agile or scrum or any methodology. You just need a list of tasks, how much of them are completed and from there you can add more metrics and information that is useful to you and your manager and clients (such as the $$ business value delivered when a task is completed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27307" LastActivityDate="2017-02-16T17:33:57.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21072" CreationDate="2017-02-16T17:35:41.453" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Defining scope is hard - service provider and service consumer are in tension - the service consumer wants maximum scope at minimum cost while the service provider wants maximum profit and minimum scope.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If scope is nailed down up front and aggressively managed, signoff is easier. If scope is not strictly defined and managed, all the ambiguity floats to the end of the engagement.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The task is hard - it can be done up front or late.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2017-02-16T17:35:41.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21072" CreationDate="2017-02-17T01:52:33.707" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It can be all too common, yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMBOK does refer to several techniques which can help the process, however;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When collecting requirements and then feeding into scope - obtain customer acceptance requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Build a work breakdown structure, containing 100% of the work required to deliver the project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When you're reporting on the project progress, always report against the key scope and work breakdown structure.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These techniques aren't foolproof, but if you continually refer to what you have agreed you are going to deliver, it makes it a lot clearer to the customer what is being delivered.  That way if the scope has honestly changed, you can instigate the agreed change control process (something else you should agree with your customer) and determine budget impacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its boring, methodical work to collate this, but that's the secret of successful project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26779" LastActivityDate="2017-02-17T01:52:33.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21080" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-17T19:41:09.727" Score="2" ViewCount="123" Body="&lt;p&gt;My company is very project-oriented and siloed.  Many business units don’t want to fight for the money thus they build their own shadow IT.  I think it's because of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/chargeback.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chargeback Accounting&lt;/a&gt;.  It’s all about finding the money or gaining approval for the money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like my last company, the money was all shared in one centralized IT budget; we could have sustainable agile teams with all business units/applications represented (each with their own backlogs). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, Big Room planning facilitated the most important things to be worked on for the organization, so the Product Owners sometimes had to concede what was worked on, but at least their concerns were on a backlog to be worked on at some point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is Chargeback Accounting going to kill any scaling of our Agile rollout?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27608" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2017-05-20T18:00:41.113" LastActivityDate="2017-08-18T19:59:40.493" Title="SAFe with Chargeback Accounting?" Tags="&lt;organizational-structure&gt;&lt;safe&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21080" CreationDate="2017-02-19T00:58:31.143" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fine-grained chargeback accounting is certainly at odds with Agile. My book, &quot;Agile IT Organization Design&quot; (Chapter 9. Finance) talks about a particular type of chargeback accounting called activity-based costing (ABC):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While ABC mechanisms may ensure fair allocation of costs, they are&#xA;  expensive to deploy and run, and they have side effects. The moment&#xA;  there is a rate card for everything, team members may find they cannot&#xA;  simply requisition resources and services as and when needed.&#xA;  Cost-conscious business unit leads may frown on requests not in the&#xA;  plan or may introduce approval gates even for small costs. Thus,&#xA;  fine-grained chargebacks tend to encourage cost-efficiency over&#xA;  responsiveness. Coarse-grained, post-facto chargebacks work better in&#xA;  this regard, even though they tend to apportion incurred costs less&#xA;  accurately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2247" LastActivityDate="2017-02-19T00:58:31.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21082" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21085" CreationDate="2017-02-19T03:45:55.097" Score="6" ViewCount="583" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose a task shows up mid sprint that is high priority. It must go into the current sprint and take top priority. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose the task is estimated by the development team to be a 3 point task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When adding this task to the current sprint should an equal number of points worth of tasks be removed from the sprint or do you only add tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27619" LastActivityDate="2017-02-27T22:33:03.730" Title="Should I trade points when adding a new story mid sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21082" CreationDate="2017-02-19T04:43:53.880" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically, yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The amount of estimated work in the Sprint represents what the Development Team believes it can accomplish during that Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If new work comes up, it's not like the Team suddenly becomes able to accomplish more work. So if you are adding work in, take work out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless, of course, for whatever reason the Team decides it &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; suddenly have the ability to complete more work than it thought it would at the beginning of the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that another option, if the new work is so invasive that it puts the likelihood of accomplishing Sprint Goal in question, then you should consider cancelling the Sprint and starting a new one, traumatic though that may be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-02-19T04:43:53.880" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21072" CreationDate="2017-02-19T05:53:41.643" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A specific answer to your question depends on a couple of factors. I see from a comment above you say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I want to minimise scope creep and get work delivered&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which would change my suggested solution, as opposed to if you were thinking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I want to deliver a useful and successful product for my client&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those two things don't necessarily go hand in hand. From the sounds of things your major frustration is changes to scope late in the project. So, if your ultimate goal was to minimise scope creep and get the solution delivered, then defining the requirements up-front and sticking to your guns will maximise your chances to finish the project and deliver it. However, it very well may annoy your customer since you seem to be inflexible and difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The alternative is to accept that people change their minds, business requirements change and being a bit flexible makes the client much happier and the product likely better. In this case, manage the changes by making it 100% clear you're okay with a few last-minute changes, but that you will charge for them and they may need to wait until you finish other work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, the question could be summarised as: do you just want to finish the work, bank the cheque and start on the next job ASAP, or do you want to give your clients a great experience and a better product?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer: I've made a ton of assumptions here since there wasn't much to go on, so apologies if I've misread the situation. Let me know and I'll delete this response if so!&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17177" LastActivityDate="2017-02-19T05:53:41.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21082" CreationDate="2017-02-19T09:55:52.727" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let the team decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just because both stories are 3 points that does not mean that the disruption and context switch is not bigger. The Development Team should desire if they are taking the story, and what the impact is on the Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2017-02-21T12:31:41.513" LastActivityDate="2017-02-21T12:31:41.513" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21067" CreationDate="2017-02-19T10:43:44.433" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have just a single person with all requirements clear, you don't need a process model at all. You grab the list of requirements and turn them into working solutions one after the other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that due to having been in at least one project, I don't believe that something like a &quot;clear upfront requirement&quot; exists. Who do you communicate with? Who is your customer? You need to find a way to communicate him the status and the current feature set, so this person can decide if the project should continue in the current direction or if more people are needed to keep the deadlines or maybe the requirements &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; change (shocking!... not). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to decide on either waterfall or agile, but you need to find out who your customer is and how to make him or her happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2017-02-19T10:43:44.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20777" CreationDate="2017-02-19T14:29:48.570" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lean on some Lean Manufacturing metrics. &lt;em&gt;(see what I did there?)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lead Time - Amount of time between customer request and delivery. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cycle Time - Amount of time between beginning implementation and delivery. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Throughput - Number of requests you can deliver in a given period of time. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customer Rejects - How many times the customer requests changes post delivery. (May or may not be useful for software. YMMV)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Value Add - How much money you've made your company /or clients. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.lnsresearch.com/blog/bid/188295/28-manufacturing-metrics-that-actually-matter-the-ones-we-rely-on&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;28 metrics that you may be able to adapt to software development&lt;/a&gt;. Not all of them apply, but some do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;P.S. Look into Kanban. It sounds well suited to your current development workflow.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastActivityDate="2017-02-19T14:29:48.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21088" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-20T06:08:33.027" Score="7" ViewCount="309" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are combining all of our projects into one Kanban board.  Since we are only ever one team, it seems to make the most sense to combine everything to one board and prioritize as we can all only work on one thing at a time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a good tool or method to calculate the completion date of a given story based purely on estimated time to complete, assigned user, given number of workable hours in a day and known blocking items? I understand that this is always going to be an estimate and we need to be ready for change, but that's exactly why I'd like to do it.  So the team can easily see that changing priority or adding other items causes certain completion dates of stories to be pushed back.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would think that there is some way for a system to know when an item will be completed. If, for example, it knows that there is a backlog of 120 hours for a given user and that our team only works on items from the board for 4 hours in a day. Of course, the final piece would be recognizing linked issues, that are blockers; so that for some items, it knows that other pieces must be completed first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it helps (or hurts, lol), we are using JIRA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27463" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-08-09T21:12:02.367" LastActivityDate="2019-02-05T15:23:48.913" Title="Estimate Item Delivery from Throughput plus blockers" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21089" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21091" CreationDate="2017-02-20T19:58:24.523" Score="2" ViewCount="977" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a WBS (Work Breakdown structure) which has milestones, outlined tasks (speaking in MS Project terms) and work packages. I want to design a PERT (Program Evaluation Review Technique) chart based on that WBS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I add milestones and outline tasks to PERT chart?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27177" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-02-21T14:17:18.713" LastActivityDate="2017-02-21T14:17:18.713" Title="WBS and PERT diagram" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;&lt;critical-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21088" CreationDate="2017-02-20T21:25:02.480" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;When using Kanban, Cycle Time is your guide. Cycle Time is the measure from one point of the cycle to another. Generally from when the item starts being worked, to when it is done. Related to this, and fairly important is Lead Time. This is how long from when a request is made to when it is done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your work items are generally similar in size, then cycle time can be all you need. You look at your average cycle times (there is a Jira report for this) and this tells you how long from when something moves to &quot;In Process&quot; to &quot;Done&quot; will normally take. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're work items are generally varying in size, then cycle time is going to need to be tweaked and can lose some accuracy. However, I've found that even on a new feature team doing both new work, rework and bug fixes, the amount of each type tends to even out. So you can get a general cycle time. Also, you can run cycle times by work items, so have a cycle time for a new feature and a cycle time for bug work. Again, Jira can filter by this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, estimates are a more measure for forecasting. If nothing else, forecasting is something management cares about and when you start using metrics directly to forecasting you can end up with the metrics getting skewed by the team as they unconsciously (or consciously) try and deliver to the forecast. I recommend heading over to &lt;a href=&quot;http://focusedobjective.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FocusedObjectives.com&lt;/a&gt;. Troy's Agile Forecasting model is an excellent tool and can create much greater accuracy than traditional agile forecasting that uses velocity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-02-20T21:25:02.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21089" CreationDate="2017-02-21T01:53:21.790" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Early versions of PERT diagrams had &quot;PERT Events&quot; that were &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; milestones or gates with task information embedded in the arrows. This has changed over the years but most PERT charts I have seen &quot;in the wild&quot; continue to show milestones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outline tasks or phases are rarely shown on PERT charts or other network diagrams, in my experience since they generally interfere with reading the diagram without providing useful information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could not find much academic/formal guides for this kind of diagramming. Lots of information on building PERT estimates but my Google-fu is coming up short on the diagramming. Considering how old PERT diagrams and methods are, I find that surprising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2017-02-21T01:53:21.790" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21088" CreationDate="2017-02-21T05:34:47.463" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your question directly - I don't think there's such a system in place. Even if there was, I wouldn't trust it too much, because it would be as accurate as your forecasting is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way I do it and the way other (smart) people that I know do it, is to use historical data to predict the future, based on Monte Carlo simulations. It does not allow you to predict exactly when a certain item will be out of the system, but it will allow you to accurately guess the number of items you can complete by a certain date. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check the Monte Carlo section here for more details: &lt;a href=&quot;https://kanbanize.com/kanban-resources/kanban-analytics/monte-carlo-simulation/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Flow Analytics with Monte Carlo simulations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22983" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2019-02-05T15:23:48.913" LastActivityDate="2019-02-05T15:23:48.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21089" CreationDate="2017-02-21T13:52:20.273" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your network diagram should show all leaf level WBS elements in the sequence as indicated in your work logic.  So milestones would be included.  You may not show the phase necessarily but if you established milestone phase starts and finishes, then your network diagram will exhibit those, too.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-02-21T13:52:20.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21094" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21097" CreationDate="2017-02-21T15:27:05.953" Score="2" ViewCount="857" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are considering creating a feature team with three frontend/UX developers and a few backend developers (no full stack developer). &lt;strong&gt;I would like to know whether putting them together in a cross-functional team makes sense if the two groups share very little knowledge and technology stacks.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My understanding is that the benefits of a cross-functional feature team lie in helping people better deliver customer value by&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;team helping each other to get things done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;keeping focus on the feature with common backlog and low total WIP&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reducing hand-offs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the frontendists have JavaScript-based stack, the backendists Java-based stack and share little knowledge and technology, it may seem the above points are not satisfied:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the two groups cannot help each so much due to little shared knowledge and unidirectional dependencies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the two groups frequently get out of sync because, e.g., designs for new features must be prepared in advance; this leads to high total WIP &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;because of the out-of-sync problem and unidirectional dependencies, there are still hand-offs, just hidden inside the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Separating the teams smells with waterfall, but does joining the two groups together in a team outweigh the cost in this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it make sense to separate the frontend team and perhaps make the backend part more cross-functional towards the core of the system instead? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have successful experience with frontend+backend teams without full-stack developers (or teams with little shared knowledge in general)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23473" LastActivityDate="2017-02-21T17:11:29.310" Title="Frontend/backend feature team with little shared knowledge" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team&gt;&lt;cross-functional&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21095" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-21T16:15:15.647" Score="2" ViewCount="145" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have experience working with web/app teams and building requirements for them. I'm now working with an api team and wanted to know the best format for communicating requirements. I've tried high level &quot;endpoints&quot; with descriptions, but it seems a little too high level. I also don't want to dictate implementation or design of the requirements (how the team fulfills the requirements). Any ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3049" LastActivityDate="2017-02-28T15:34:52.330" Title="Creating Requirements for API teams" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;distributed-team&gt;&lt;api&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21095" CreationDate="2017-02-21T16:41:16.540" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can choose to go one of two ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Detailed, up front requirements. Very precise, not flexible and required a lot of up-front work. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Goal based &quot;Stories&quot; that describe what the end user experience should be like. Remember the end user does not have to be the guy on the street. It's who will be using it day to day. Doesn't require a lot of up-front documentation, does require being available to the teams to answer questions. Allows the team to decide on &quot;How&quot; they will implement the &quot;What&quot;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm, of course, a big proponent of #2. I was a product manager in the 90's and co-wrote a #1 style document. We put a line in the middle of the document that said &quot;This is a pink elephant. If you read this, we'll pay you $20&quot;. We never paid anyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as you have already noted, option #2 can be equally difficult as you struggle with &quot;How much is just enough, so I get what I really want.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The secret to this is Acceptance Criteria. When you give a user story, you need to give testable acceptance criteria to the team. I like to describe these are &quot;Gaurd Rails&quot; for development. As long as the team stays inside them, they can do what they want. Acceptance Criteria should be &quot;Yes/No&quot; answerable. &quot;Is fast&quot; is not a good AC. &quot;Is 10% faster over the previous release&quot; is good as you can test it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also need a strong &quot;Definition of Done&quot;. This is the overall guard rails for the entire development process. What does everything you produce have to meet. This can include things like determining the coding language that will be used, source control, documentation and the like. A story is not &quot;Done&quot; until it meets the individual User Story Acceptance Criteria and the organization Definition of Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Books:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0321205685&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;User Stories Applied, Cohn&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1491904909&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;User Story Mapping, Patton&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="21576" LastEditDate="2017-02-28T14:42:27.757" LastActivityDate="2017-02-28T14:42:27.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21094" CreationDate="2017-02-21T16:45:07.933" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, put them together. There is only one way the teams will ever get shared knowledge, by sharing. It's also the only way you'll ever get to continuous integration/ deployment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: In a previous organization, we eliminated the HR job of QA. All the existing QA people were moved over to a development path. They did not share the same skills as the developers on their teams. So we setup mentoring pairs. The Dev would help the QA person learn coding and the QA person would help the Dev learn to write automated tests. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also did the same thing with our UI and API developers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pair programming is the key here. The less experience person is at the keyboard, while the more experienced person is navigating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-02-21T16:45:07.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21095" CreationDate="2017-02-21T16:55:49.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the type of project, it is difficult to go wrong by following the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST framework&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've tagged your question as Agile. Are you using user stories? Do those stories have tasks under them? Because &lt;em&gt;those&lt;/em&gt; are where the implementation details should go, and it should be the &lt;em&gt;developers&lt;/em&gt; who set those up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea behind a user story is not to immediately set up a set-in-stone, comprehensive requirement, but to initiate an interactive discussion from which the full requirements will emerge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-02-21T16:55:49.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21094" CreationDate="2017-02-21T17:11:29.310" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Joel's answer regarding:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is only one way the teams will ever get shared knowledge, by sharing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which addresses your first concern of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the two groups cannot help each so much due to little shared knowledge and unidirectional dependencies&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your remaining concerns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the two groups frequently get out of sync because, e.g., designs for new features must be prepared in advance; this leads to high total WIP &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest taking a page out of Kanban's book, and focus on swarming and increasing throughput/decreasing lead time. Implement WIP limits. If design is maxed out, have developers do what they can to help out design (again, see Joel's answer). Vice versa for development. A designer will never be a developer and a developer will never be a designer, but that doesn't mean they cannot pick up some skills with which they can help each other out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;because of the out-of-sync problem and unidirectional dependencies, there are still hand-offs, just hidden inside the team&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea behind eliminating hand-offs is because inter-team hand-offs are &lt;em&gt;slow&lt;/em&gt;. So very, very slow. If you hand something off to another team that is currently at &lt;a href=&quot;https://dzone.com/articles/100-utilization-myth&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;100% utilization&lt;/a&gt;, then they are going to take a &lt;em&gt;very long time&lt;/em&gt; to get back to you (potentially &lt;em&gt;forever&lt;/em&gt;, if you do not follow up and the request falls into the darkness of the void). If you hand something off to someone in your &lt;em&gt;own team&lt;/em&gt;, however, then you have the twin advantages of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any WIP limits can be made explicitly obvious and thus 100% utilization is easier to avoid&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can more easily follow-up, and there priority conflict is not nearly so much of an issue&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there are still hand-offs. But intra-team hand-offs are so very much &lt;em&gt;cheaper&lt;/em&gt; than inter-team hand-offs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-02-21T17:11:29.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21100" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-21T22:12:14.633" Score="1" ViewCount="308" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I see it, we have three levels:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Epic&lt;/strong&gt; - Broad view of what would be nice to do. (Usually more then a Sprint)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let pay for our service with credit cards&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Story&lt;/strong&gt; - More defined and structured view. (What can be done in a Sprint)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let people pay at website&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let people pay at mobile app&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Task&lt;/strong&gt; - story that broken down to &lt;em&gt;Components&lt;/em&gt; (Backend, DB, Frontend, iOS, etc) (What can be done in a day)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Let people pay at website&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a landing page&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create REST service for payments*&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Let people pay at mobile app&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a button in mobile app&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create REST service for payments*&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(* - same ticket)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a way to create an &lt;strong&gt;Epic&lt;/strong&gt; in Jira. And we can add &lt;strong&gt;Stories&lt;/strong&gt; to &lt;strong&gt;Epics&lt;/strong&gt;. We can't break every &lt;strong&gt;Story&lt;/strong&gt; to &lt;strong&gt;Tasks&lt;/strong&gt; to have a nice structure. But as I understand, there's a common path. It's to create sub-&lt;strong&gt;tasks&lt;/strong&gt; for &lt;strong&gt;Stories&lt;/strong&gt;. What difference will it be from &lt;strong&gt;Tasks&lt;/strong&gt; itself?&#xA;And then we can take these &lt;strong&gt;Stories&lt;/strong&gt; to our Sprint with a board's backlog spring-creating feature. BUT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the Planning, should we estimate &lt;strong&gt;Task&lt;/strong&gt; or a &lt;strong&gt;Story&lt;/strong&gt;? Every video that I've seen has estimated a &lt;strong&gt;Story&lt;/strong&gt;. But how we can estimate &lt;strong&gt;Story&lt;/strong&gt; by itself if it takes different components ie Database, Web Frontend, Mobile app? This is different people and different &lt;strong&gt;Tasks&lt;/strong&gt;. Wouldn't it be more logical to estimate &lt;strong&gt;Tasks&lt;/strong&gt; and then summarize their estimation for a &lt;strong&gt;Story&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If we creating sub-&lt;strong&gt;tasks&lt;/strong&gt; to a story and taking whole &lt;strong&gt;Stories&lt;/strong&gt; into our Sprint. What will happen if we will fail to complete whole &lt;strong&gt;Story&lt;/strong&gt; to the end of the Sprint. Meaning, &lt;strong&gt;Story&lt;/strong&gt; has 10 story point and equals three sub-&lt;strong&gt;tasks&lt;/strong&gt; with 1,3,5 points. We closed two sub-&lt;strong&gt;tasks&lt;/strong&gt; with 3 and 5. Will we be planning the next Sprint with a &lt;strong&gt;Story&lt;/strong&gt; of 10 or 1 point?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27640" LastEditorUserId="27640" LastEditDate="2017-02-21T22:17:36.720" LastActivityDate="2017-02-27T15:49:11.977" Title="Jira Sprint Structure for Software Team" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21100" CreationDate="2017-02-22T04:58:10.353" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What my team's done is use JIRA subtasks as tasks - the mechanical breakdown details of a Story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;JIRA 'Tasks', meanwhile, are on the same level as Stories, but are differentiated by the fact that they do not bring &lt;em&gt;direct&lt;/em&gt; business value to any user. For example, 'optimize the compiler', 'research [new technology]', and 'increase test coverage' might all qualify as JIRA tasks. These, too, may have subtasks of their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your questions...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The estimation is done by the Team, representing the work of the Team. Not by individuals. This is part of the purpose of a cross-functional team and shared code ownership. People do not own Stories. The entire Team does.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My team has tried it both ways. First, we tried keeping the old estimate. Our reasoning was so that 'the knowledge of the effort we put into it wouldn't be lost'. Over time we discovered that no one really &lt;em&gt;cared&lt;/em&gt; about that, and keeping around 10-point stories that had 30 minutes of work left in them was getting confusing. So in the end we decided to switch over, and it worked much better. This fits with the whole idea of Agile better, anyway; if you have more/better information regarding that estimate (the fact that it's 90% done) then why shouldn't you update it?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T04:58:10.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21102" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21793" CreationDate="2017-02-22T08:31:23.860" Score="-1" ViewCount="203" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a Project manager coming up to the two year mark and I have found that in comparison to my last role as a developer this job is a lot more stressful. With every new project there is always that expectation to deliver on time and at high quality leading to immense pressure and angry clients/stakeholders if it's not met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you fellow PMs deal with this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T20:34:26.640" Title="How do you deal with stress from PM?" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21058" CreationDate="2017-02-22T12:47:23.023" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to build a plan / road-map for this friend so he / she can, at least to some extent, contribute to other stories. In order for said plan to be successful you should align with other roles: Product Owners / Managers etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just start with some small Proof of Concept / spikes and research tasks in the domain of other colleagues. Then organize some pair programming and soon you will see first results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are various reasons for which such a strategy might not work. If this is the case, figure out which tasks outside the backlog which are beneficial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27645" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-02-22T14:08:57.450" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T14:08:57.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21095" CreationDate="2017-02-22T13:54:38.057" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good API design requires a lot of time and iterations so would not recommend to go with detailed specification upfront. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Organize small workshop to specify initial structure and then deliver first version of the API fast so other teams can adopt and consume it and of course provide feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27645" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T13:54:38.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21102" CreationDate="2017-02-22T14:05:19.033" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two parts to your question&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to deal with stress&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is largely out scope for this forum.  However, you can find various answers on other stack exchange sites including &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Workplace SE (&lt;a href=&quot;https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/14222/handling-pressure-and-stress-in-an-inescapable-position&quot;&gt;https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/14222/handling-pressure-and-stress-in-an-inescapable-position&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Personal Productivity SE (&lt;a href=&quot;https://productivity.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stress&quot;&gt;https://productivity.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stress&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;there is always that expectation to deliver on time and at high quality leading to immense pressure and angry clients/stakeholders if it's not met&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the crux of your issue - you are asking for techniques to alleviate stakeholder concerns and also to generate flexibility in planning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am going to purposefully refrain from taking this into an Agile versus Waterfall direction which is where it will inevitably end up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For now; let's break down your points logically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the Project Manager you have a responsibility to communicate a &lt;strong&gt;realistic&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;sustainable&lt;/strong&gt; delivery mechanism for the project.  If you are not well versed in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Iron Triangle&lt;/a&gt; then start here as your baseline.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially it can be summarized that if at anytime either scope or time or cost is fixed then the other parts of the triangle must flex.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile achieves this through flexing on scope and waterfall project management traditionally flexes on time &lt;em&gt;at the end of the project&lt;/em&gt; through extension and inevitably flexing on cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To cope with this you have several tools at your disposal&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cone of Uncertainty&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wideband_delphi&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wideband Delphi Method&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectmanagementguru.com/estimating.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Traditional Estimation Techniques&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your key message should be that you are communicating a &lt;strong&gt;range of estimates&lt;/strong&gt; and ensuring that stakeholders fully understand the results of their decision making. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most managers and sponsors can cope with bad news if they are presented with range of responses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, your key ally in dealing with stress as a project manager is your &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_register&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Risk Register&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is almost impossible to become stressed about a project if you have correctly identified the risks surrounding the delivery and communicated those effectively. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also ensure that your communications structure is fully understood and that all meetings are effective and relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have designed the following images for you as a prompt to put that rigour around your project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Communicating Effectively as a Project Manager&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3DW26.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3DW26.png&quot; alt=&quot;Six C&amp;#39;s to Effective Comms&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Effective meetings for a Project Manager&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yLYKH.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yLYKH.png&quot; alt=&quot;Six Types of Meeting&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My last piece of advice is simply;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You are not alone as a PM.  It may feel that way but you have a whole community of people in exactly the same &lt;em&gt;lonely&lt;/em&gt; boat doing the same job under the same constraints.  Reach out - you can blog, write, make SlideShares, capture lessons learned and work with peers.  Don't keep your stress to yourself.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the key reasons for being a PM is to exert a level of control of your career and that means achieving a healthy work-life balance.  No matter how stressed a project gets I never forget that my kids need taken to the cinema at the weekend and I am having dinner with my wife.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's just a project, simply a big to-do list.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:52:19.170" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T14:10:47.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21107" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-22T14:26:50.440" Score="3" ViewCount="96" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my plant we are scheduling a 5 week turnaround during which we will execute &gt;$10M in upgrades and repairs while the plant is down.  We will be using scheduling software to coordinate projects for execution of the turn around portfolio including building interdependencies of steps between projects (e.g. scaffold built for one project that can be used on another should not be torn down until both projects have gone past needing it).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once this schedule is built my manager would like it committed to paper as a static item and for us to use paper rather than software to track progress during execution.  My gut tells me that this creates risk but he is arguing that the administrative overhead around tracking 1000+ activities outweighs the benefits gained.  His thinking is that through good communication between trades and contractors any jobs that risk turning into critical path will be caught.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For something like this where a large portfolio is being executed simultaneously, what is the strongest argument for use of software to track completion of activities in a complex environment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11897" LastEditorUserId="11897" LastEditDate="2017-02-22T14:56:02.907" LastActivityDate="2017-03-25T02:04:11.473" Title="Scheduling Turnaround execution" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21107" CreationDate="2017-02-22T14:47:56.403" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your OP reads as if his assumption is he can maintain talent size for project controls that is consistent with the use of current technology while performing the activities of project control before we had our current technology.  I think your best argument is to show him the number of calculations that need to be made that our current tools do for us manually and, that do to this calculation in a precise and accurate way EVERY SINGLE TIME THE SCHEDULE IS UPDATED with actuals, you will need to increase staff probably five fold, maybe more.  Or, you will manage this contract without those calculations made which is not managing the project at all.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine doing the forward and backward pass calculations on thousands of lines weekly to determine the change in critical path.  Without doing that, it is impossible to really know your critical path(s).  I have only done those calculations for exams, for like seven work packages, and rarely have I not made a mistake on simple math.  For thousands of lines?  Forget it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an analogy that might help.  Before our current software that enables us to write documents, like MSWord, our grandfathers used dictation and typing pools.  His expectation of avoiding our PM technologies is exactly like asking our current workforce to produce our documents we have to produce today with the old typewriter but without those typing pools of secretaries or whatever they were called then.  Our output would grind to a halt.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T14:47:56.403" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21082" CreationDate="2017-02-22T15:13:10.383" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is no. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As there is not too much information on the background of the request and your team, I will simply come up with some if statements for a couple of cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has it been long since the sprint has started?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yes: You are close to the end of the sprint, so it will be better to include the new story in next sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No: You can abort your ongoing sprint, have proper sprint planning session including the next story at the top of the backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this an issue or a story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Issue: It's best to allocate a buffer to address issues (especially production ones) while planning the sprint. With such a slack, you should be able to include a 3 point issue in the sprint without risking sprint goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Story: The client should wait for next sprint. If it is an extremely important change/feature that is really really urgent, then it should be ok for you to abort the sprint and focus on this as the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, if the team approves the addition of the story into the sprint (considering its small size), then you should not make any other changes like removing another one. At the end of the sprint, the story with the least priority in the sprint may be incomplete, and that would be the topic to discuss in the sprint review. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8532" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T15:13:10.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21070" CreationDate="2017-02-22T15:45:17.867" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend simplifying your process and using only 3 columns: To Do, In Progress and Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to subtasks, you can extend your existing subtask list and include the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Develop (or implement)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Review&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of these will be assigned to a single person at a time and you can always synchronize verbally in the daily standups. e.g. When the developer is done with the &quot;develop&quot; subtask, he will move it to done. He will then assign the &quot;review&quot; task to the person who volunteered earlier. When that's done, the QA person can pick up &quot;test&quot; subtask and proceed with it. In case there is a bug, the &quot;test&quot; subtask will remain in progress, a separate subtask will be created for the issue and assigned to the developer. When the developer is done with the fix, he assigns the subtask for the issue to the QA person again for verification. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any point in time, the status of the story will be visible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8532" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T15:45:17.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21082" CreationDate="2017-02-22T19:40:42.050" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this case the priority of the backlog is important. Capacity and time are fixed. If you add unplanned story (something which should be done only in exceptional cases) you should remove low priority story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story size and estimation should be discussed with the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27645" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T19:40:42.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20796" CreationDate="2017-02-22T19:46:08.910" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be pragmatic and do the daily after the Backlog Refinement. Canceling daily meeting should be rare case as there are many benefits if you do the ritual daily and at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27645" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T19:46:08.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21115" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21116" CreationDate="2017-02-23T08:16:45.907" Score="1" ViewCount="1145" Body="&lt;p&gt;We recently started implementing Agile in my current organisation&#xA;We came across this interesting use-case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to understand what the group thinks of it and whether we are headed in the right direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) The development team picks up stories, which will form the Sprint Goal, in the Sprint Planning Meetings. Which is assigned to members in Jira.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Developers start working on the sprint, and deliver features to QA for testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) QA finds issues in what was given for testing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now our group seems to be divided as to whether these issues fall in the category of Bugs. Creation of bugs seems to be the source of conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal opinion is that these are bugs and depending on the criticality we can decide if these need to be picked up as part of the current sprint work or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my point of view a bug is traceable, while comments and test cases are not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bug also tells product that Stories may need to be more descriptive, and the product gets an idea about what it takes to get something done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team says that raising bugs, for current feature development and including them in the current sprint changes the scope in the burndown charts, which for some reason may be bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just want to know what this group thinks about all this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there is no question about Creation of Bugs for issues reported from &quot;Live&quot;, those bugs will continue to be created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25622" LastEditorUserId="25622" LastEditDate="2017-02-23T11:14:29.753" LastActivityDate="2019-02-22T17:52:45.553" Title="To Create a Bug in ongoing Feature development in a sprint" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21115" CreationDate="2017-02-23T08:45:38.940" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;While you did not explicetly mention that you were doing &lt;em&gt;Scrum&lt;/em&gt; you did indecate &lt;em&gt;Sprint Planning&lt;/em&gt;. The guidance in the &lt;em&gt;Professional Scrum Developer&lt;/em&gt; training, aimed at teams working on software, and derived from the &lt;em&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/em&gt; is that there are two sorts of bugs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In Sprint Bugs&lt;/strong&gt; - Any problem that is discovered during the &lt;em&gt;Sprint&lt;/em&gt; on work that is part of the current &lt;em&gt;Sprint&lt;/em&gt; is not a bug that needs tracked. We are still inside of the &lt;em&gt;Sprint&lt;/em&gt; and the work is not deemed to be complete untill the &lt;em&gt;Development Team&lt;/em&gt; calls the work as meeting your &lt;em&gt;Definition of Done&lt;/em&gt;. This is just unfinished work, and warrants nothing more than a conversation between a coder and a tester. Maybe the coder and tester pair untill the issue is resolved, that would be most effective, or they need to add a few tasks so things dont get forgotten. How they agree to do that is an issue for the Development Team and no-one should be telling them how to do that. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Out of Sprint Bugs&lt;/strong&gt; - Any problem that is identified in work that was previously marked as meeting the definition of done is considered an out-of-sprint bug. If the &lt;em&gt;Development Team&lt;/em&gt; believe that the issue is small enough that it will not endanger their ability to meet their &lt;em&gt;Sprint Goal&lt;/em&gt; then they should just fix it; Note it down and bring it up in the Sprint Retrospective so that The Scrum Team can figure out if their &lt;em&gt;Definition of Done&lt;/em&gt; is sufficient. If however it will put the &lt;em&gt;Sprint Goal&lt;/em&gt; in danger then it must be recorded and tracked as a bug. Do a root cause analysis and discuss at the &lt;em&gt;Sprint Retrospective&lt;/em&gt; what you need to add to your &lt;em&gt;Definition of Done&lt;/em&gt; to not have this sort of thing happen again.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key parts to this are minimising documentation, bugs and root cause analysis, to only the times required. The &lt;em&gt;Sprint Goal&lt;/em&gt; is the objective of the &lt;em&gt;Development Team&lt;/em&gt; while maintaining quality with the &lt;em&gt;Definition of Done&lt;/em&gt;. This provides the focus and transparency in the process that provides the &lt;em&gt;Product Owner&lt;/em&gt; with working software, the &lt;em&gt;Increment&lt;/em&gt;, at the end of the &lt;em&gt;Sprint&lt;/em&gt; that meets their expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Some Observations&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;We assign stories to developers in the Sprint Planning Meetings.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend against having Backlog Items assigned directly to Development Team members. Scrum (and Agile) works because we move from individual accountability to group, or team, accountability. This fosters self-organisation, and every time you hold an individual accountable for a piece of work you stop self-organisation dead in it's tracks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assign Backlog Items instead to the Product Owner, it is they who are accountable for the Backlog and everyone's understanding of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Developers start working on the sprint, and deliver features to QA for testing&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This statement concerns me as it implies that you have either a separate QA Testing team or sub-teams inside of your Development Team. Since we can't have working software unless it is tested, test needs to be completed as part of the Development Team. Separate QA is waste if you have a professional Development Team that produces working software. It sounds like an organisational imposed condition is preventing you removing this impediment. This demonstrates a lack of commitment from management to your agile transformation as this is a fundamental, we'll understood and documented, issue that is a common starting point. Maybe they just have not made that change yet, but untill it does you will be unlikely to get the quality of software you should. You will also continue to incur significant rework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;QA finds issues in what was given for testing&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Development Team is accountable for creating done increments of working software. If QA find any issues then this is a serious breach of trust and I would hold the Development Team to account. If you are just starting down your road to agility then raise this issue at the Sprint Retrospective and brainstorm solutions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your quality is high enough then QA will no longer be able to justify their existence. They are product of poor software quality, and are not a feature of your future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Now our group seems to be divided as to whether these issues fall in the category of Bugs. Creation of bugs seems to be the source of conflict.&#xA;My personal opinion is that these are bugs and depending on the criticality we can decide if these need to be picked up as part of the current sprint work or not.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your personal opinion does not matter, the Development Team own this process and are the only one's that decide how the work is done. Hold them accountable for done increments of working software, stand back, and let them get on with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;From my point of view a bug is traceable, while comments and test cases are not&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Proper tooling can aliviate that. In most tracking systems, i use VSTS, comments and Test Cases are just as auditable as Backlog Items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;A bug also tells product that Stories may need to be more descriptive, and the product gets an idea about what it takes to get something done.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The opposite is true, only the lack of bugs tells the Development Team what it takes to get things done. The rest is Undone work which erodes trust with both Product Management and customers. You need a tighter Definition of Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;The team says that raising bugs, for current feature development and including them in the current sprint changes the scope in the burndown charts, which for some reason may be bad.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's small, then just fix it. If it's big then it needs to go onto the Backlog and be ordered by the Product Owner. This is the only way the Product Owner can understand the u done work that is in the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;So there is no question about Creation of Bugs for issues reported from &quot;Live&quot;, those bugs will continue to be created.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are very out-of-sprint bugs and I hope the full list of them, along with their root case, is assessed at the Sprint Retrospective and the Definition of Done enhanced accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2017-02-23T09:10:37.527" LastActivityDate="2017-02-23T09:10:37.527" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10719" CreationDate="2017-02-23T08:52:28.797" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For people who don't have Microsoft Project installed on their computer, I will recommend an online project viewer as long as the files are up to 2MB. Cloud storage is also available. &#xA;Online viewer - &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.seavusprojectviewer.com/online-project-viewer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.seavusprojectviewer.com/online-project-viewer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27332" LastActivityDate="2017-02-23T08:52:28.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21115" CreationDate="2017-02-23T09:44:36.927" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The team could experiment with different ways of handling defects during an iteration, after some experiments they can pick the one they liked the most. There is not one good way, this differs per team, company and industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep the experiments small, focus on the problem. If to many bugs slip from development to the manual testing phase you could experiment with more test automation or pair-testing during development. Formalizing defect registration is the last thing that comes to mind as being effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let the team come-up with experiments they could try to improve quality during a retrospective. The team should include developers and qa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2017-02-23T10:50:25.127" LastActivityDate="2017-02-23T10:50:25.127" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21120" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-23T12:04:59.107" Score="-1" ViewCount="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a new Project Manager what techniques and tactics exist to ensure the requirements of the project are as clear as possible and consensus is achieved about the delivery outcome. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this context I am referring to a sponsor or the most senior stakeholder available. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27659" LastEditorUserId="10462" LastEditDate="2017-02-23T13:05:02.047" LastActivityDate="2017-02-27T10:14:29.150" Title="Ensuring customer requirements are clear" Tags="&lt;prince2&gt;&lt;management&gt;&lt;pmbok&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ClosedDate="2017-02-26T20:17:36.387" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21115" CreationDate="2017-02-23T15:29:18.453" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like in the case you're talking about, the story should be rejected, and recycled through the development process. Having a story rejected should leave a trace - in the comments for the story, and probably the sprint-tracking graphs (look for a story state change graph or rejections graph - burndown isn't the only graph available to you, especially if you're monitoring particular pain points). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pre-retrospective, it's good for the scrum-master to go through the cards for the sprint, ensuring they're up-to-date and looking at what comments and tasks they've accrued over the sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the code written for the story doesn't fulfil the requirements (or doesn't work!), it isn't a completed story. The card should retain its priority. There are odd corner cases where the issue might be farmed off to another card, but this would be an exception. If the card does get signed off with the fault, you're delivering defective code... which is what the process is aiming to avoid!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27665" LastActivityDate="2017-02-23T15:29:18.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20998" CreationDate="2017-02-23T17:16:31.263" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is always helpful is to talk with every team member individually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to understand why the person doesn't want to attend the meeting and try to explain to him/her why it is important to be there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are particular conflicts, fears or uncertainties, then try to resolve them or follow up with management if problems require it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal is to convince at least 60 - 70 percent of the team to be there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't hurt to invite them / remind them if they are not there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27645" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-02-23T17:24:16.283" LastActivityDate="2017-02-23T17:24:16.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21125" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-24T12:53:16.557" Score="-1" ViewCount="88" Body="&lt;p&gt;I struggle a lot with account management, I often find myself being pushed about by the client. I have been trying to improve this, but I feel as though I am not getting anywhere. I keep on caving in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can deliver work on time and in budget. I excel at this. I excel at working with internal teams to get work delivered, inspiring  and motivating them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do I need strong account management skills to excel as a PM?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="20871" LastEditDate="2017-02-27T19:20:16.677" LastActivityDate="2017-02-27T19:20:16.677" Title="Not good at account management, can I cut it as a PM long term?" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21127" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-24T17:33:05.467" Score="11" ViewCount="345" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know it's preferred that a developer on a scrum team be completely devoted to that single project, but most of our projects are smaller in scale with single developers (or at least, one Dev on the UI, one Dev on the backend/APIs), and we're implementing code review and thus want multiple developers assigned to these smaller projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The outcome of this is developers will often have to work on more than one project at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the risks of this and how can we work towards mitigating them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27677" LastActivityDate="2017-02-28T17:12:31.663" Title="Scrum - What are the downsides if a developer is not spending 100% of their time on a single project?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21127" CreationDate="2017-02-24T18:23:01.497" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are multiple parts to your question so let's group them;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The downsides&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A developer will be forced to attend all ceremonies for each project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your developer is split across multiple projects (let's assume all are Scrum) then they will be &lt;strong&gt;attending multiple stand-ups, sprint planning, retrospectives and reviews&lt;/strong&gt;.  That is not an efficient use of the time and it's unlikely the ceremonies will be in synch, they may even overlap forcing the developer to miss critical project context&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Context switching&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Miller's Law states we have the ability to hold onto 7 +- 2 items in short term memory. These memories can last for up to 18 seconds and are refreshed by the original context.  Any distraction will affect short term memory from stress, noise to music  and loud conversations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now imagine you’re a programmer, trying to solve a problem what requires you to hold multiple items critical to both understanding and solving the problem. Next Imagine a PM, running over to your desk and asking the following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“I need to show you this bug on the test environment as the client sees it and is wondering if it will be in the release next week”.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suddenly the developer is forced to operating in a different context and is to recall multiple different items to answer the question, that in truth doesn’t need to be answered anyway. Also, the more complex the question and the longer it takes to answer the more short term memory is used on this new task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a developer to return to the original state depends on its complexity. Which can require anything from 5 to 30 minutes? Now imagine multiple interruptions and you can easily see how productivity will flatline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;With two or more projects you just doubled the context switching&lt;/strong&gt;...more people, more risk of context penalties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lack of Cross-Functionality&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without being dedicated to a single Scrum it is &lt;strong&gt;unlikely the developer will have the time to cross-skill&lt;/strong&gt; into new technologies and conversely, will have almost no time to be able to cross-skill or pair program with anyone else to coach them into a cross-skilled state&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developer Confusion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The developer will &lt;strong&gt;waste valuable cycle time wondering who takes precedence&lt;/strong&gt; over their time - Product Owner A or Product Owner B.  It is likely to change from Sprint to Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Risks&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developer has a poor appraisal&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With his/her time split across multiple teams it is &lt;strong&gt;unlikely that either team will be able to give honest feedback to the developer&lt;/strong&gt; and the very real risk is that both teams feel unsupported and the &lt;strong&gt;developer is provided with negative feedback which is reflected in performance related appraisals&lt;/strong&gt;, bonuses etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not a sustainable working practice&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Working across dual teams is not sustainable&lt;/strong&gt; and is in direct contravention of the Scrum idea of &amp;quot;sustainable working.&amp;quot;  In addition it is likely to make cross-team working acceptable and will encourage further time splitting from other developers, testers and even the Product Owner.  Disastrous for an Agile transformation and indicative of organisational dysfunction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team ethos and Developer morale is destroyed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When you are a part of two teams, you are a part of no team&lt;/strong&gt;.  The Scrum teams become ever closer and the switching developer is just considered &amp;quot;that person they need to include&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Developer is increasingly stressed and pressured and tacitly encouraged to &amp;quot;find the time&amp;quot; to offer full capacity to both teams.  It takes a special character to be able to say &amp;quot;no&amp;quot; and simply leave their work at the door.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Planning becomes inconsistent and impossible&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without being able to dedicate themselves to a project the &lt;strong&gt;velocity of the team will become inconsistent as stories forecast at the start of the Sprint are left undone&lt;/strong&gt; lowering the velocity to an artificial level to cope with an absent team member&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both teams are crippled by absence&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should the &lt;strong&gt;developer leave or go absent you have now crippled two teams&lt;/strong&gt;, rather than one.  The risk is not shared; it is doubled. Especially with no cross-skilling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Developer becomes a bottleneck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;WIP limits of the teams are impaired because stories are blocked by a single developer&lt;/strong&gt; and the time they can devote back to original team to progress a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Organisation refuses to tackle a resourcing problem&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A shared resource is &lt;strong&gt;indicative of poor management not investing in cross-functional training, not hiring needed resource, not incentivising staff to remain in the company, not promoting people to the roles they are aspiring to or not accurately forecasting the book of work for the year (or possibly all five)&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to realise this symptom may be the start of a &lt;strong&gt;death spiral.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As resource bottlenecks arise, the resource/trade is piled with more and more pressure which forces them to leave making the bottleneck worse increasing the demands which means more resource leaves...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...a blight which affected the British Army for Combat Medics from 2000 until present.  As the staff left and were not replaced, the remaining medics were sent on more frequent combat tours increasing their rate of sign-off leading to even MORE frequent tours for remaining Medics until the system collapsed and economic intervention was required at massive expense to the Government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quality Control&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks to @MrHinsch for adding this as a risk.  A developer split across two teams is likely to sacrifice quality for speed leading to a poorer overall product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is closely tied to the behaviour of drive-by ticket tracking where developers are more focussed on &lt;em&gt;getting the story ticket into Done&lt;/em&gt; than they are about actually getting the story Done Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Summary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, the &lt;strong&gt;effectiveness of both teams are at risk and the developer can feel overworked&lt;/strong&gt;, isolated and professionally penalised leading to real-world economic consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-02-25T10:07:24.883" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21127" CreationDate="2017-02-24T18:28:12.530" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a word: Multi-tasking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working on multiple projects at once will encourage the situation where a Developer is working on multiple &lt;em&gt;tasks&lt;/em&gt; at once, which incurs massive losses due to task-switching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a developer works on Project A, finishes it, then works on Project B, and finishes it, s/he will be &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; more productive than if s/he starts on Project A, gets distracted by Project B, works on Project B, gets distracted with Project A, wastes 30 minutes trying to remember things about Project A, gets distracted by Project B, wastes 30 minutes trying to remember things about Project B, gets distracted by a 1-hour meeting about why no progress is being made on either Project, wastes 2 hours trying to figure out what to do...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to prioritize projects and reduce lead-time. Pick which project is the most important, and &lt;em&gt;get it done&lt;/em&gt;. Then pick which project is the &lt;em&gt;new&lt;/em&gt; most important, and then get &lt;em&gt;it&lt;/em&gt; done. Repeat ad infinitum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-02-24T18:28:12.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21130" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-24T19:12:30.947" Score="2" ViewCount="3071" Body="&lt;p&gt;Has anyone compiled a lead time report (in any format) from JIRA without the use of a plug-in?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, how did you do it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The native Control Chart tracks cycle time but not individual times for statuses or columns.  I found some documentation from JIRA but it is several years old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the only option is to export to XLS and interrogate the data then I am happy with that but would prefer a native solution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2017-03-25T19:38:39.390" Title="How to generate a lead time report in JIRA without a plugin?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21131" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-24T21:14:59.117" Score="6" ViewCount="8595" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’m running into a formatting issue that I’ve never seen before with Project.  If I have a list of tasks under a summary task and then insert a new task in the middle of the list, after I change views and come back to the Gantt view the order of the tasks is shifted such that the new, inserted task is at the bottom of the list for that Summary task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g.  If I had task numbers 70, 71, 72, 73, 74 and 75 under summary task 69 and then insert a task between 71 and 72, the new task is numbered 72 and all subsequent tasks increase in number. However, when I change views and come back (or even save the file), the list of tasks is shown as: 69, 70, 71, 73, 75, 76, 72. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’ve tracked down that by inserting the “Created” field column, the list of sub-tasks is sorted by the Created date.  But I can’t figure out how to turn off that sorting feature.  It seems you can only sort by ascending date or descending date, but not turn off the sort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My GANTT charts looks goofy because predecessor and successor tasks are scrambled up based on when the tasks were created.  The on-line help doesn’t have a solution for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27678" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-09-11T12:16:51.337" LastActivityDate="2020-12-22T05:18:56.837" Title="How to sort by task numbers?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21120" CreationDate="2017-02-25T22:04:42.507" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the PMBOK Standard, requirements are part of Scope Management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;requirements .. as clear as possible and consensus is achieved about the delivery outcome.&quot; is the activity of Requirements elicitation, which is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Elicitation is the activity of drawing out information from stakeholders and other sources to further understand the needs of the business, in order to address a problem or opportunity and identify the stakholders' preferences and conditions for the solution that will address those needs.&quot; (Requirements Management by PMI)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To achieve clarity, a range of activities should be performed. To write 'excellent requirement', Chapter 11 of [&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0735679665&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;] suggest to check if requirements are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Complete&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Correct&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feasible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Necessary&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prioritized&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unambiguous!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Verifiable!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should apply a clean writing approach, e.g. [precondition][trigger]software shall[response].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, consult IETF's RFC 2119, which contains information on requirements key words. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this can lead you to the modelling of use cases, requirements, etc. see UML etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0735679665&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Software Requirements by Wiegers &amp;amp; Beatty&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21496" LastEditorUserId="21496" LastEditDate="2017-02-27T10:14:29.150" LastActivityDate="2017-02-27T10:14:29.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21125" CreationDate="2017-02-26T19:34:41.407" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are struggling with something, part of your job is to ask for more resources. If customer or stakeholder management are problem areas for you, then asking the organization for dedicated resources to manage those things for your project is perfectly reasonable. Whether or not those resources are allocated will determine whether or not you can remain effective on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis and Recommendations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do I need strong account management skills to excel as a PM?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not necessarily, but they do help. However, you probably need them if you plan to stay at your current job, especially if leadership can't or won't assign the necessary support resources to cover any gaps in your core capabilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While skills can be learned, personality and aptitude are largely ingrained. If your current job requires that you do things that you're really bad at, and don't see yourself improving in those areas, then you should look for a role that doesn't require you to do those things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project management is no different than any other career. You can find jobs with broader scope, narrower scope, or different scope. Since you seem pretty clear about the fact that you want to manage project internals rather than stakeholder or customer management, then look for a role where that's an option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As some generic advice, smaller companies generally require people to take on more scope and wear more hats. Larger companies, especially those with a formal PMO, often have roles that are more clearly defined, and where you can get support from elsewhere in the organization to manage the things that aren't within your core capabilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-02-26T19:34:41.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21140" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21143" CreationDate="2017-02-27T10:08:10.467" Score="2" ViewCount="134" Body="&lt;h2&gt;The questions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How can we avoid ending up with contradicting requirements raised from the users? We'd appreciate process improvement suggestions that'd fit our limited resources.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Disclaimer&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven no idea if this question suits this Stack Exchange site. If not please delegate me to a better place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're basically two and a half IT guys working on a huge webssite. The website is what generates the companies revenue. Due to some limitations the company doesn't have the money to have a dedicated project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So usually sales is more or less dictating what IT has to do which can't be blocked in every case, no matter how silly and work intensive a feature is in terms of time to invest and the benefit you gain from it. Which is already a flaw I'm aware of but which I'm not in the position to fix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're using Github to mangage issues and have a git branching strategy and continuous integration for automated testing and deployment in place. That part works nice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use the Github wiki to get somewhat of a software requirements specification done which is written by a person with no IT background but who knows how the business processes in this company work. He is no project manager nor got any background and experience in writing such documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The problem&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're very often ending up with situations in which we have contradicting requirements in our ticket descriptions. Also it seems that requirements change and effect previously done work in an unintended way, not technically but the workflow / business logic of the application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example I've got a ticket to implement image upload that has two constraints: 1) Profile type can or can't upload images 2) If it can upload, then the amount of images is limited depending on the type. So far so good you might think. But now, in a follow up ticket I've discovered that the requirements contradict with the previously designed constrains and that there is a third field and the use of the third field is now in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to find a way to avoid ending up in situations like that every few weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've worked before in a bigger company but they had the same kind of trouble in larger projects. I'm a senior software developer, not a project manager and had to lead a small development team before. I can manage our development process and I'm happy with how things work in this area but I'm clearly not happy with our requirement gathering and the the contradicting requirements. I don't think the person who writes the requirements is doing that intentionally or is doing a bad job, it's just that he is not used to it. Also he is only four days a week available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27702" LastEditorUserId="27702" LastEditDate="2017-02-28T09:44:28.300" LastActivityDate="2019-05-17T22:43:38.693" Title="How to avoid recurring questions and contradictions about same or related problems?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;management&gt;&lt;specification&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21140" CreationDate="2017-02-27T15:44:52.963" Score="1" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Communicate + collaborate with the person writing the tickets&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's really nothing more to say than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a process that looks like this, &lt;em&gt;someone writes the tickets perfectly -&gt; developers interpret the tickets perfectly&lt;/em&gt;, is as asking for failure. You can't really make either of those happen, you just need to collaborate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the acceptance criteria are inconstant, get your the business person writing the tickets involved and talk it through. At this point, &lt;em&gt;&quot;...I've discovered that the requirements contradict ...use of the third field is now in question&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, what you need to do is talk it through and come up with a solution. If that person is regularly unavailable for some reason, that's a serious problem, and one that needs to be fixed rather than worked around. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't design process to avoid having to work together with business people. Although, you'll probably find the more you communicate, collaborate and share understanding, the better their initial specifications will get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17705" LastEditorUserId="17705" LastEditDate="2017-02-27T15:52:21.260" LastActivityDate="2017-02-27T15:52:21.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21100" CreationDate="2017-02-27T15:49:11.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A story should be deliverable on its own (when it's completed). It's best to stick to this as the convention all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to Jira, &lt;strong&gt;any entry should either be a story or a bug&lt;/strong&gt;. Anything that is not a bug is a story. As you pointed out, whenever other types are introduced, they only cause further confusion. We have been using this simplistic approach for quite a while and never had any issues with it. Obviously, Epics are still in use where multiple stories and/or bugs are involved that possibly span multiple sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have adapted the use of 3 levels as you said, the last one being subtasks. We create as many implementation subtasks as needed, but we also include all other actions that are included in our Definition of Done as subtasks as well. This way, when a story is closed, we are sure that DoD applies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Only estimate stories, never subtasks.&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;It is perfectly fine for the team to come up with subtasks while discussing the estimation, however, they should provide their estimates as the team for the whole story considering everything involved in completing it in a releasable state. Members can share their thoughts on what's involved in different subtasks, but it's up to the team to agree on a shared estimate. Summing up the estimates for each subtask provided by different team members will not be the same (at least at the commitment level)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use the remaining estimate.&lt;/strong&gt; We prefer to estimate the remaining work in our sprint planning session and use that (1 point in your case). If you keep the original points, you will have to keep the amount of completed work in your mind, which is unnecessary baggage. Also, the purpose is to complete each story within the planned sprint, and the team gets better at doing this as they go along a couple of sprints together.&#xA;The &quot;lost&quot; effort does not matter much as the important thing is the amount of working functionality you deliver.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8532" LastActivityDate="2017-02-27T15:49:11.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21140" CreationDate="2017-02-27T17:21:04.523" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't need a project manager to run this project. In fact, unless heavily empowered all a project manager is going to do is give the headache to someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need is to have a &quot;product owner&quot; or &quot;chief product owner&quot; for the overall Web Site. A product owner's job is to the &quot;final call&quot; on requirements. This includes prioritization, clarification, dealing with conflicts and the like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This owner should be someone who can make decisions or can work with the decision makers in a timely manner to make decisions. Based on a &quot;standard&quot; business structure I would say someone in marketing or an internal business function. The problem you are facing right now is every sales person is, quite understandably, focused on their individual client and their commissions. You need someone outside the commission process to handle the prioritization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barring this, you need to get the sales people together every couple of weeks and layout all the current requests. Note any conflicts upfront and then ask &quot;We have two open slots to start new work, what do we work on next?&quot; (This is pulled right from the first part of David Anderson's Kanban book). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Longer term I would recommend trying to setup a Kanban system for yourselves. Start with reading &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://smile.amazon.com/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Business/dp/0988262509/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1488215995&amp;amp;sr=8-1&amp;amp;keywords=the%20phoenix%20project&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Phoenix Project&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. It's a fun and light read about how an IT org became the strategic heart of a company. Then go to &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://smile.amazon.com/Kanban-Successful-Evolutionary-Technology-Business/dp/0984521402/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1488215970&amp;amp;sr=8-1&amp;amp;keywords=Kanban&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt;&quot; as referenced above. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as the other poster has mentioned, Acceptance Criteria are still very important. I'm just advocating some process above that for prioritization and conflict management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-02-27T17:21:04.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21144" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21145" CreationDate="2017-02-27T19:25:43.150" Score="-1" ViewCount="220" Body="&lt;p&gt;A colleague of mine that I am managing is very error prone. Some of the errors he makes are quite simple. To give an example, I asked him to .zip a bunch of files, when unzipping the files later on I found that files were missing. His attention to detail is just generally poor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem that I am having is where I am now being made accountable for his mistakes, my boss feels that since I am managing him and responsible for delivering the work, I should always double check his work to make sure that it is complete. I do this sometimes but at other times I do not, since I do not want to be micromanaging him, it is just not my management style. I also feel that my colleague needs to take some responsibility for the quality of work he produces, if I am micromanaging him then there is something seriously wrong with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is my boss right in saying that I should be double checking his work all of the time, and be accountable for his quality of work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2017-02-28T03:39:26.387" LastActivityDate="2017-10-05T12:53:37.107" Title="To what extent should a project manager take responsibility for the mistakes of a person assigned to the project?" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;quality&gt;&lt;responsibility&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21144" CreationDate="2017-02-27T19:38:55.503" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are the PM and he is a worker on your project, then you are 100% accountable for his work.  Quality of performance is always variable.  You need to know where in your capability you are producing lower quality than expectations and then you need to mitigate / cure it.  In this case, if you have a known quality issue with the performance of a particular individual, then you need to 1) create a control point with his work such that nothing goes out until it is checked by a peer and 2) cure his performance issues through training, counseling.  If #2 fails to produce results, then you either choose to continue his services while performing #1 at your expense and heartache or remove and replace.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the kind of PM choices we make every single day and it never stops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-02-27T19:38:55.503" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21082" CreationDate="2017-02-27T22:33:03.730" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Development team has complete control of the Sprint Backlog during a Sprint and may well swap out the work as you have suggested.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Development team may not be bullied or coerced into taking the high priority work into the Sprint under any circumstances.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Development team should try very hard to accomplish the current Sprint Goal and any work order highly by the Product Owner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Product Owner has the final say about what work is accomplished in what order in the Product Backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum provides rules that prevent wasteful context switching and visionless changes mid-Sprint. It ultimately calls for the PO and Development team to act with respect, openness, commitment, focus and courage towards one another when forming a solution to your proposed situation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is ultimately a Development Team decision but it involves potentially everyone on the Scrum team. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum guide&lt;/a&gt; specifies several rules to consider here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one [other than the Product Owner] is allowed to tell the Development Team to work from a different set of requirements, and the Development Team isn’t allowed to act on what anyone else says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is the sole person responsible for...ordering the items in the Product Backlog to best achieve goals and missions...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the Product Owner to succeed, the entire organization must respect his or her decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint Goal is an objective set for the Sprint that can be met through the implementation of Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the work turns out to be different than the Development Team expected, they collaborate with the Product Owner to negotiate the scope of Sprint Backlog within the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As new work is required, the Development Team adds it to the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Only the Development Team can change its Sprint Backlog during a Sprint.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the Sprint: &lt;strong&gt;No changes are made that would endanger the Sprint Goal&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Great flexibility exists to incorporate new work within a Sprint so long as the Sprint goal is not threatened. Ultimately, this is the choice of the Development Team as they own the Sprint Backlog and may not be told to work on things the Product Owner has not ordered as work to be taken next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should a Product Owner deem it necessary to for the Development team to work a high priority task this may certainly be incorporated into the current Sprint but only by the Development team and only with full knowledge of the request. If the Sprint goal is threatened by such work, the Development team has the obligation to push back respectfully. They are also obliged to do whatever they can to negotiate regarding the Product Backlog Items in the Sprint so long as they still accomplish the Sprint goal even while incorporating the new work; however, the Sprint goal must not be sacrificed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, it's the Development team that must provide the answer to your question as Scrum does not prescribe any answer; however, Scrum establishes the Development team as a self-organizing group of professionals which must be trusted to have as their highest aim to delight the Product Owner. Likewise, Scrum defines the Product Owner as being the final arbiter of the order of work completed who's ultimate aim is to maximize the value in the Product and of the Development team's work. The answer requires that mutually respectful and at times courageous conversations take place between the PO and Development team with the Scrum Master facilitating this conversation as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21576" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-02-27T22:33:03.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21144" CreationDate="2017-02-28T03:38:25.953" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your boss is half-right. You are responsible for ensuring your project has sensible process controls, but you personally double-checking someone's work is probably not the right process control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A project manager is responsible for ensuring that there are &lt;em&gt;process controls&lt;/em&gt; for the project. If you have a quality control issue, then it is certainly your responsibility to design or recommend a control to address it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis and Recommendations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your responsibility for process doesn't mean &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; need to double-check a team member's work. It means that your project lacks adequate quality assurance, a Definition of Done, peer review, or any number of alternative automated and manual controls that would ensure that work increments are being successfully delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That fact should receive your immediate attention. How you choose to manage the quality of the deliverables will depend on the controls you apply to your process, your organizational culture, and (quite possibly) whether you have any real authority to implement controls or replace resources when needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you have no direct or delegated authority, it is certainly your job to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communicate issues to senior management.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recommend process controls to the project sponsors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask for help from line management or senior management, especially regarding staffing issues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not doing at least &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; of these things, then you're allowing the problem to persist. That is something you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be held accountable for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you address the issues within your responsibility and limit of authority but &lt;em&gt;senior management&lt;/em&gt; refuses to act, then that's a strategic decision outside your control, and you are not at fault (although you may still ultimately take the blame).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-02-28T03:38:25.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21095" CreationDate="2017-02-28T15:34:52.330" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give them the problem to solve, tell them why it's valuable, and introduce them to the real person who has that problem&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Better requirements are only a small improvement; forming a cross-functional, self-organizing team removes a major barrier to the development team being awesome.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Requirements&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice regarding requirements writing is to write them in such a way as to introduce clearly the problems of real people that your developers get to solve in the product. Props to Joel's answer for two great book references. I've found people most commonly use &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0321205685&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;user stories&lt;/a&gt; and techniques like &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0955683645&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;impact mapping&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/1491904909&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;user story mapping&lt;/a&gt;. To augment these techniques, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilemodeling.com/artifacts/personas.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;personas&lt;/a&gt; provide a crucial path to empathy with the people for whom the problem is valuable. Such insight allows the developers to rely less and less on you writing specifications in depth. Last consider using some measure of business value to continually educate your developers on the priorities of the organization and it's business model. This post gives &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.accentient.com/measuring-the-business-value-of-a-pbi/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;one primer technique&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Team&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's something else I would add. Consider that better requirements are only a small improvement. There's a &lt;a href=&quot;https://weblogs.asp.net/alex_papadimoulis/408925&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;great article&lt;/a&gt; where advice is asked of how best to pound in nails. &amp;quot;Should I use a glass bottle or an old shoe?&amp;quot; the asker laments. One prescient responder points out that a hammer is a much better tool, regardless of any clever advice about when to use a glass bottle or an old shoe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;In your case, it's the composition of your team that provides a bigger limit to agility and effectiveness than requirement writing.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple &lt;a href=&quot;http://Simplicity--the%20art%20of%20maximizing%20the%20amount%20%20of%20work%20not%20done--is%20essential.&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;principles of agility&lt;/a&gt; provide some guidance here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You didn't tag Scrum, but consider the guidance it provides towards those principles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Development Teams are cross-functional, with all of the skills as a team necessary to create a product Increment;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider that beyond improving requirements writing or backlog management, the lack of a cross-functional team provides a system-level impediment to effectiveness. True you can use some clever mitigation strategies to optimize how the api team manages its dependencies or how it hands off it's work to other team; however the problem of queues, latency, inventory, a more complex value stream and increased communication complexity are all categories of waste allowed to exist that are greatly reduced or eliminated by having a cross-functional team. Furthermore, if a team is fully cross-functional, it is easier for them to self-organize since they do not rely upon (or are not saddled with) managing a relationship with one or more other teams. This will likely mean better architectures, requirements, and designs will come from that cross-functional, self-organizing team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21576" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-02-28T15:34:52.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3026" CreationDate="2017-02-28T16:29:22.907" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hey have you ever heard about this website called &lt;a href=&quot;https://plans-for-retrospectives.com/en/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;RetroMat&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of cool ideas here&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27720" LastActivityDate="2017-02-28T16:29:22.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21153" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-02-28T16:46:30.863" Score="-1" ViewCount="567" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whenever a client requests a change, I manage the process by leaving a comment in a trello card. The problem that I am having now with one client is where they are requesting a lot of changes to the point that it is becoming impossible to keep track. It tends to get very complicated when they backtrack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to manage change requests?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2017-08-13T07:23:26.867" Title="Best way to manage change requests?" Tags="&lt;change-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21127" CreationDate="2017-02-28T17:12:31.663" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Risk is that progress of both projects will be slower (so you should not consider splitting up 100% of the developer's time, like 50-50%, because of the overload of task switching, it will be more like 40-40%, with the remaining time wasted). It also may impact quality negatively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it can be that the developer is not best suited to this kind of work - prefers continuous, uninterrupted activity; struggles with task switching; frustrated by conflicting priorities - this may lead to burnout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Risk mitigation can be simple - avoid assigning multiple projects to the same developer, but unfortunately, this cannot always be done. If you really must do things this way, i suggest to communicate your expectations clearly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Split time between projects consistently (for example, project 1 before lunch, project 2 after lunch). This may impact rituals schedule, live with it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let the developer know that you understand that it will lower velocity, and this is OK with you&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Help them if they have any problems with priorities, resolve conflicts for them if they need - of course, they should let you know about any problem as soon as possible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the dev really hates this kind of split assignment, try to put him into a position where he can work on a single project continuously. If you don't have this kind of flexibility, prepare for him burning out&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16711" LastActivityDate="2017-02-28T17:12:31.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21144" CreationDate="2017-02-28T21:12:44.570" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;&amp;lt;&amp;lt;&lt;strong&gt;Theory&lt;/strong&gt;&gt;&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your boss is half-right, which means he is right. To answer your question, it is recommended to look at the organizational structure you, your team and your boss are in. If there is no structure, call it chaos. Your boss puts you in the seat of a full-time (not just coordinative) PM, with considerable authority (responsibility). You might be in a functional organization, where each employee has one clear superior (the PM, you)[&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pmi.org/pmbok-guide-standards/foundational/pmbok&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;], unless your team members are for example colocated and there is maybe a organizational unit, i.e. department. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&amp;lt;&amp;lt;&lt;strong&gt;Reality&lt;/strong&gt;&gt;&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You must communicate the findings you have to senior management with a pinch of warning (risk). Additional, I would suggest you come up with a contingency plan. This is expected. Meanwhile, you are still accountable (or held) for the outcome of happenings and overall project success. &#xA;Based on the situation, your boss (what is your boss, a senior pm, sponsor or director?) recommends you to double check his work. Simply put, that is what you are going to do for a week. You then report that you have double the findings and negotiate with him the next strategy...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&amp;lt;&amp;lt;&lt;strong&gt;Theory 2.0&lt;/strong&gt;&gt;&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have not, read about the so called &quot;Set-up-to-fail syndrome&quot; and double check with your current situation.&#xA;Havard released &quot;HBR's 10 MUST READS&quot; series, here &quot;On Managing People&quot;. Literally all chapters are good, but Chapter on &quot;Set-up-to-fail syndrome&quot; and &quot;Managing Your Boss&quot; can make a difference for you in the next weeks, albeit the title &quot;On Managing People&quot; is just a percentage of the PM pie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&amp;lt;&amp;lt;&lt;strong&gt;Reality 2.0&lt;/strong&gt;&gt;&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another last point. Are you sure that you reacted with a relaxed, thoughtful attitude toward your colleagues mistake? Form your description it does not look like it. A mistake is a mistake, if it was a mistake. On top of that, you have not made it. Who reported to your boss then, you? Or did your boss had the same finding? Now, how happy is your colleague with being known (and tracked)? He is going to be really scared, maybe. Overall, the fact that you wrote &quot;you manage him&quot;, call him &quot;he is error prone&quot; and &quot;errors he makes are quite simple.&quot; makes me doubt your qualities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ref&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pmi.org/pmbok-guide-standards/foundational/pmbok&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PMBOK 5th, PMI&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keywords: PMBOK, Functional organization, Matrix organization, Set-up-to-fail syndrome, Micromanagement&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21496" LastEditorUserId="21496" LastEditDate="2017-10-05T12:53:37.107" LastActivityDate="2017-10-05T12:53:37.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14524" CreationDate="2017-03-01T06:47:03.043" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To put it simply: Requirements is what the customer needs, scope is what will be done to fulfill them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27726" LastActivityDate="2017-03-01T06:47:03.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21159" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21166" CreationDate="2017-03-01T06:49:56.140" Score="4" ViewCount="1347" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you add flag to an epic task in JIRA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a normal task, you just right click it and &quot;Add flag&quot;, but when it becomes an epic you dont get that option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27727" LastActivityDate="2019-01-27T15:27:13.200" Title="JIRA - How to add flag to epic task" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20967" CreationDate="2017-03-01T14:51:12.207" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To preface: the meaning of story points and velocity will evolve over time. They're a context-sensitive planning tool, and they can mean whatever the team needs them to mean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your question: more than the meaning of any one of those numbers, it's really about what is likely to take longer to deliver than what else. You might want to shift focus away from agreeing on numbers, to achieving a common &lt;em&gt;relative&lt;/em&gt; understanding of the size of items you have recently completed and are about to work on. To &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/21039/rubberduck&quot;&gt;rubberduck&lt;/a&gt;'s point, the &quot;swimlane&quot; visualization technique can be useful for this: e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://theagilepirate.net/archives/109&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://theagilepirate.net/archives/109&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27733" LastActivityDate="2017-03-01T14:51:12.207" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21159" CreationDate="2017-03-01T14:58:59.190" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't seen any built-in solutions for flag in an epic. What you can do is create a custom field and a custom filter with that field in order to take actions on the flagged items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27734" LastActivityDate="2017-03-01T14:58:59.190" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21159" CreationDate="2017-03-01T16:08:47.680" Score="2" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Open the epic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click Admin menu&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add field&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add flagged field&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you can flag it as Impediment (which is the default flag), see my screenshot:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Itr5Q.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Itr5Q.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are using the Jira cloud version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2017-03-01T16:08:47.680" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21168" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-01T19:34:56.260" Score="3" ViewCount="263" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Kanboard (&lt;a href=&quot;https://kanboard.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://kanboard.net/&lt;/a&gt;) I can display average time all tasks spent in particular column:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/br425.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/br425.png&quot; alt=&quot;Average time tasks spend in lanes&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I need information on how much time &lt;strong&gt;particular task&lt;/strong&gt; spent in each lane.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6402" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2020-07-31T14:41:59.430" LastActivityDate="2020-07-31T14:41:59.430" Title="Tracking how much time particular task spends in a lane - Kanboard" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;kanban-board&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20967" CreationDate="2017-03-01T21:57:21.753" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often you won't have the luxury of taking a reference story in your first sprint or you're walking into a &quot;team&quot; that already is mid project and just starting to learn how to use scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In these scenarios I often take this approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During a team retro or workshop ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the story point the team can agree to use to indicate a piece of work is the least complex or easiest thing possible to get done in a sprint? (Usually is 1pt or 0.5 pts)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the story point value the team can agree to use to indicate whether a piece of work is the most complex thing they feel comfortable getting done in the sprint (regardless of how many people are working on it)? (Often is a 13 or 21 for Fibonacci teams). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All shared understanding of values in between the min and max story points then evolve over time when you teach team members to start making relative comparisons each time they estimate.  The value of story points is actually in starting the conversation about WHAT makes one story relatively more or less complex than another.  This is how you spread information across team members so they start thinking about what it takes to comprehensively get a story DONE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Defining the upper limit, while not super useful, will at least give the team a tool to say &quot;this is way too complex, we need to break it down.&quot;  Or, &quot;This is really complex, maybe we should break it down because often we end up not getting this done in the sprint.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have existing data you can also can use statistics to identify what size of story the team starts to fail on.  Does the team consistently carry-over 13 point stories?  Maybe they should agree that 8pts is their cut off and anything over should be decomposed to an understandable level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story points are a form of relative complexity estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;So we just agreed to call this story 5 pts, is the story we are estimating now relatively more or less complex than that 5 point story?  What makes you say that?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't force a team to develop a shared understanding of story points; the shared understanding develops naturally over time as the team learns how to work together.  Story point understanding also naturally shifts over time as the team becomes more productive.  The key to getting value out of story points is to apply consistent practices; not defining what each value means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13568" LastActivityDate="2017-03-01T21:57:21.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21173" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21187" CreationDate="2017-03-02T11:31:27.007" Score="1" ViewCount="124" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using the example of the proposed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-37243269&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Donald Trump Mexico-USA Border Wall&lt;/a&gt;; various figures for the estimated cost have ranged considerably.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mr Trump claims the total cost of the wall will be $10bn (£7.5bn) to $12bn. But estimates from fact checkers and engineers seem to be universally higher.&#xA;Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell estimated it will cost between $12-15bn, as he addressed reporters at a Republican conference in Philadelphia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrasted with&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study by the Washington Post estimated the cost of the president's wall would be closer to $25bn&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example might be the proposed &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;High Speed Rail 2&lt;/a&gt; in the UK.  The Department for Transport initially estimated the cost to be £30 billion; in June 2013 the projected cost rose by £10 billion to £42.6 billion. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/10249815/High-speed-rail-scheme-cost-to-double-to-80bn-economists-warn.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Institute of Economic Affairs estimates that the final cost will be over £80 billion&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How do PPO organisations estimate supra-national or excessively large infrastructure projects?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T21:47:35.983" Title="How does the public sector estimate the cost of large-scale infrastructure projects?" Tags="&lt;cost-management&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21131" CreationDate="2017-03-02T15:47:31.433" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should be able to sort by Task ID, save the file. The view should hold the sort by ID order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have done a lot of manual formatting changes to the view, it's possible it is corrupt.  You can restore the view to default - but you will lose any custom formatting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T15:47:31.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21175" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-02T15:53:21.340" Score="3" ViewCount="721" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every (software) project comes with &lt;em&gt;business&lt;/em&gt; entities: &quot;Article&quot; and &quot;Category&quot; for a blog, &quot;Product&quot;, &quot;Customer&quot; and &quot;Invoice&quot; for a shop, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These  &lt;em&gt;business&lt;/em&gt;  entities are part of many user-stories : one to describe the creation/update form, one for the detail screen, one for the back-office screen, and much more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a non-agile project, you describe all these entities in the specifications, but in Scrum there is no such thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how do you write all these users-stories ? Do you repeat all the properties and relations each time? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As an admin, I can add an &quot;Article&quot; with a title, a content, one or more Category.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a user, I can see the title, content and the Categories of an Article&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27730" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-03-02T16:10:20.933" LastActivityDate="2017-03-03T17:17:30.750" Title="How to describe the business entities in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;specification&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21176" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-02T16:38:22.150" Score="3" ViewCount="3952" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently we have a team of 2 developers in a Scrum team, one is quick, the other is slow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the slow developer falls behind in his sprint, the quick developer does some of the remaining work. The quick developer does not mind doing the work, but has made remarks such as 'the other developer should do this it was originally delegated to him'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am concerned that my slow developer might be coasting it, from knowing that the quick developer will pick up some of the slack for us to meet the sprint goal. I have mentioned to the slow developer that we needs to work on increasing his velocity during the sprint. He has said 'ok', but then goes 'oh I didn't realise that the work was so complex'. So it is hard to know what exactly is going on. The quick developer has told me that the slow developer sometimes is idle, and works in spurts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I currently track the progress of the sprint using a burndown chart which is doing a good job at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I improve the productivity of the slower developer? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am &lt;strong&gt;managing the teams's velocity&lt;/strong&gt;, but it is becoming apparent from daily stand-ups and the fact that I am sitting next to the two developers that one is much quicker than the other. I feel that it is unfair for the quick one if he keeps on being handed the slack since he ends up doing more work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="3501" LastEditDate="2017-03-12T02:59:01.590" LastActivityDate="2017-03-12T19:19:49.330" Title="How to efficiently manage a Scrum team when one member is much less productive?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21176" CreationDate="2017-03-02T16:52:48.803" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, stop measuring individual velocity. Velocity should be measured on a team level for a Sprint, and not for individuals. Your team delivers a potentially shippable software product after even Sprint, not individuals. Since Scrum is built around self-organizing, cross-functional teams, your velocity should include everything involved in creating the delivery, from grooming the requirements through test and verification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next problem is a personnel management question. If you are using Scrum, the process is built on a cross-functional team. If the development team needs additional training to be sufficiently cross-functional, they should have the necessary education and training. This could be pair programming, cross-team training sessions, lunch-and-learns, external training courses, bringing in instructors. The burden is on individuals to understand what skills they need to develop and work with management to develop those skills. Management should also be doing the same - identifying gaps in skills, providing the necessary resource to close those gaps, and encouraging staff to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have an employee who isn't performing to the needs of the business, that's a human resources management issue. It's not addressed in the Scrum framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T16:52:48.803" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21176" CreationDate="2017-03-02T16:55:56.373" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it is hard to know what exactly is going on. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I improve the productivity of the slower developer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, check your expectations. Are they &lt;em&gt;supposed&lt;/em&gt; to do the same work? Do they have the same title, do they get paid the same? Is one really slow on an absolute scale, or is the other one just really good?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you had just two of the slow kind, would you still keep them? If not, what would you do instead and why don't you do it now with just one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that questions answered for yourself, there is little you can do from the outside. Ask your developer what problems he has. Ask him if he needs anything. Help, training, better tools, maybe another working schedule. Work with him so he gets better. If he doesn't, you need to follow up with actions according to the answers you came up with before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this is not a Scrum process. It's normal management. Scrum only works with teams and your team is having problems. It consist of too few members, it measures things that should not be measured (individual velocity does not exist) and it seems 50% of your team is unhappy with the work of the other 50%. If you want to keep this &amp;quot;agile&amp;quot;, you should include the questions about how to help your slower developer work more effectively in your retrospective meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T16:55:56.373" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21175" CreationDate="2017-03-02T17:04:57.143" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing in Scrum that's keeping you from defining your business entities somewhere and then referencing them in the stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The agile approach only means you should be able to &lt;em&gt;change&lt;/em&gt; those definitions if necessary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will &lt;em&gt;still&lt;/em&gt; need to add details to your user stories, &quot;display an article&quot; is way to broad and open for interpretation, even if the whole &quot;article&quot; is specified somewhere. You probably want a different display for a shopper and an admin for example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T17:04:57.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21180" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21185" CreationDate="2017-03-02T17:40:33.097" Score="6" ViewCount="2187" Body="&lt;p&gt;Right now we use Git Hub Issues for each project an individual engineer is working on. We're are making a transition to broader stories handled in Jira. We mark each task either Cap or Exp for accounting purposes so we can figure out how much of our dev time we can capitalize for accounting reasons. How can we do this in Jira when multiple engineers might work on the same user story? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27415" LastActivityDate="2020-03-30T09:18:59.880" Title="In Jira, how do you capitalizing the dev time for each story?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21176" CreationDate="2017-03-02T17:57:30.817" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'the other developer should do this it was originally delegated to him'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum works best as a pull-model, not a push-model. No work should be delegated to anyone, ever. The Team pulls work into the Sprint. The Team Members pull work from the Sprint onto their laps. Following that model, your senior dev won't be complaining that 'I shouldn't have to do this' because work is not owned until it is actually &lt;em&gt;started&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At which point the only problem becomes individual velocity, which is a concern that should be handled within the Team itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The quick developer has told me that the slow developer sometimes is idle, and works in spurts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nothing wrong with this. In fact, it would be incredibly concerning if a developer were not &lt;em&gt;sometimes&lt;/em&gt; idle. If you're always going at full-tilt nonstop, you are going to burn out badly. Likewise, working in spurts is a personal preference; there is nothing inherently wrong with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He has said 'ok', but then goes 'oh I didn't realise that the work was so complex'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming the developer is speaking seriously and not just trying to deflect blame (which would bring up entirely new issues such as why people are more concerned with blame than with fixing problems in the first place), then this is an issue which can and should be addressed. Potentially in a Retrospective. If tasks are being underestimated due to their unseen complexity, then a possible solution is to spend more time analyzing tasks during the Planning (or Pre-Planning, if your organization has one) meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can I improve the productivity of the slower developer? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you tried asking this to him? Or even better, to the Team at large? &quot;Can any of you think of ways with which we can improve your productivity?&quot; If you don't get anything, prompt with examples. &quot;Pair programming? Training? New tools? Caffeine?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T17:57:30.817" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21182" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21184" CreationDate="2017-03-02T19:29:39.790" Score="0" ViewCount="1490" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently add header and footer via File &gt; Print &gt; Page Setup, then tabs &quot;Header&quot; and &quot;Footer&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems these header and footer settings differ, however, by the view selected. For example, if I select view &quot;Tracking Gantt&quot;, I see the header and footer I added, but if I select view &quot;Task Sheet&quot;, I see the default header and footer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does Microsoft Project allow specifying a default header and footer, for all views?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I hope to upgrade soon, from Microsoft Project Standard 2010, to Microsoft Project Professional 2013 or 2016, so any notes on whether those support this functionality would also be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25751" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T21:01:33.313" Title="Default Header and Footer, for All Microsoft Project Views?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21175" CreationDate="2017-03-02T20:35:49.857" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/user-stories&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;user story&lt;/a&gt; is an invitation to a discussion. It is not intended to be a detailed specification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the user story needs to communicate is the basics of a requirement and it is worded in such a way that it is understandable by the person who will derive value from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As an admin, I can add an &quot;Article&quot; with a title, a content, one or more Category.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not a user story. It is just a requirement written using some of the user story format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A user story would be something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user I want to see the title of an article so that I can quickly tell if it is of interest to me&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A user story does not need to contain enough information to allow a development team to build the feature. Instead, the user story is the starting point of a conversation between the Product Owner and the development team. During that conversation details will be added which might include discussion of entities and their relations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The user story is &lt;em&gt;deliberately&lt;/em&gt; made light on detail. This is done for several reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The more detailed the description of the requirement, the shorter the shelf-life will tend to be.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simple stories are usually easy to prioritise.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We do not invest too much time adding a detailed description to a story because it is not needed until we are close to the point of implementing it. This just-in-time approach makes us better able to deal with changing requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T20:35:49.857" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21182" CreationDate="2017-03-02T21:01:33.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you have discovered each view in Project can have its own header and footer.  My suggestion is to create a template (it doesn't even need tasks) and store the &quot;defaults&quot; you  want in that template.  You can add headers/footers for each view, custom calendars, custom fields, etc.  Then use that template to create your new projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The header/footers are unchanged in Project 2013 and Project 2016.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T21:01:33.313" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21180" CreationDate="2017-03-02T21:15:23.577" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;So with Agile Accounting standards (yes, it's a thing) you don't have to be focused on the individual anymore, it's the team you focus on. In a previous company, I helped management move to just this model. This model was fully blessed by the accounting and finance organization of this very large (5000+) service based software org.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First and best thing to do is separate your Capex Work from your day to day work. We set up a special Jira project for capitalization. It had Epics for teams where we tracked Capex time. Because we operated team based and not project based, this made a lot more sense and was a hell of a lot easier to manage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now as to how to get the team CapEx time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, you need to understand what is Capital Expenditure, here is a list:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coding&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Architecture &amp;amp; Design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can include work done by Product Manager such as Story Mapping,&#xA;Backlog Refinement, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testing and QA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Install to hardware&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is big as product management can now be partially capitalized as working directly with the team is considered &quot;development&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All CapEx work is equal. You don't get more credit for Coding vs. QA. It's all the same. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Team CapEx per Sprint Calculations:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multiply # of team members by hours in sprint (normally 80 hrs)&#xA;  Result = Total Potential Team Hours (TPTH)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multiply TPTH by standard Non-Productive Modifier of 0.9&#xA;  Non-Productive work is non-sprint meetings, breaks, one-on-ones, etc.&#xA;  Result = Total Available Team Hours (TATH)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multiply THAT by Team Availability %&#xA;  Result = Total CAP Hours available for Sprint (TCHS)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Divide TCHS by team size&#xA;  Result = Total CAP hours per employee for the Sprint (TCE)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the big surprises, I had, was around non-productive hours. I had the calculation originally around .6 to .7. It was our finance org that said to put it at .9. There is almost nothing a dev team does that is not capitalized expenses. Bug fixes are CapEx. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We used Tempo, a Jira plugin. Multiple teams were plugged into the same Jira CapEx Project and that's how we enabled Agile CapEx so it didn't kill the teams. I had a simple spreadsheet, that the teams used to track availability. Managers could look at these spreadsheets once a month, run the above formula and get their teams CapEx. The teams had to do nothing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also recommend Googleing &quot;Pat Reed&quot; and Agile Accounting. She has a system she developed at the Gap that is being used by many companies now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T21:15:23.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21176" CreationDate="2017-03-02T21:29:31.023" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You tagged this with #scrum and #agility, so I'll direct answers towards those two things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not a process or tooling problem, it's an individuals and interactions problem. Look to what works to motivate individuals. I'd suggest reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1594484805&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Drive&quot;&lt;/a&gt; as a primer summary of basic motivational science over the past, half century. Here's a quick summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y&amp;amp;t=93s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Drive by Dan Pink&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a manager, focus on any environmental impediments, incentives, cultural norms, etc that are de-motivating. I've found this model helpful when exploring impediments to motivation, effectiveness in Scrum teams, etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jjWbg.gif&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jjWbg.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Control and Influence&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agility&lt;/a&gt; teaches us that individuals and their interactions are typically more valuable than processes and tools. A corollary is that a problem with an individual or their interactions will not be effectively solved with processes or tools...only mitigated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last, work to create a system where this individual can self-select him/herself off the team or out of the company if things are really that bad. Alternatively, you could build a system that encourages and enables high performance culture and results from the Scrum team and give that team a recourse for it's own membership. Grow trust by treating these members with respect and require responsible behavior. Dedicate yourself to practicing Scrum or some other means of establishing transparency, inspection and adaptation as a normative practice. Transparency will expose problems, inspection will determine root causes, and adaptation will produce positive change. This may of course involve the personal improvement of this individual or his/her exodus from the team or organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21576" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T21:29:31.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21173" CreationDate="2017-03-02T21:47:35.983" Score="4" Body="&lt;h1&gt;The U.S. GAO has developed a 440 page guide for cost estimation of Capital Programs&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d093sp.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;GAO (Government Accountability Office) Cost Estimating and Assessment Guide&lt;/a&gt; - Best Practices for Developing and Managing Capital Program Costs. What they call 'Capital Programs' include infrastructure projects. According to the GAO:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We developed the Cost Guide in order to establish a consistent&#xA;methodology that is based on best practices and that can be used&#xA;across the federal government for developing, managing, and evaluating&#xA;capital program cost estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ability to generate reliable cost estimates is a critical&#xA;function, necessary to support the Office of Management and Budget’s&#xA;(OMB) capital programming process. Without this ability, agencies are&#xA;at risk of experiencing cost overruns, missed deadlines, and&#xA;performance shortfalls—all recurring problems that our program&#xA;assessments too often reveal. Furthermore, cost increases often mean&#xA;that the government cannot fund as many programs as intended or&#xA;deliver them when promised. The methodology outlined in this guide is&#xA;a compilation of best practices that federal cost estimating&#xA;organizations and industry use to develop and maintain reliable cost&#xA;estimates throughout the life of a government acquisition program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is unlikely the numbers that you cited above were arrived at following this rigorous methodology. Most likely, those are 'back-of-the-envelope' calculations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T21:47:35.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21176" CreationDate="2017-03-02T22:20:04.387" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is commonly accepted that there is a massive variation in productivity between very good developers and average ones. Read Michael Lopp &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1484221575&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Managing Humans&lt;/a&gt; for a good explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly is the slower of the two worth the money the company is paying them. If so then keep them going. Do what you can to train them and encourage their development to get better. Otherwise you need to deal with the fact that they cannot competently and productively do the job they have been employed to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly &lt;strong&gt;and more importantly&lt;/strong&gt; Ensure that your more productive developer is recognised and rewarded for his or her additional capability. If they feel resentful that their teammate is earning the same and not as productive nor working as hard then you run the risk of them feeling resentful and losing a good developer (to another employer like me who &lt;strong&gt;will&lt;/strong&gt; look after them :). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of the top developers are used to working with others who don't work as effectively as they do. It's not an issue so long as it is recognised and rewarded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27756" LastEditorUserId="27764" LastEditDate="2017-03-03T11:28:05.410" LastActivityDate="2017-03-03T11:28:05.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21189" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-02T22:35:15.907" Score="0" ViewCount="2726" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am going to build a project with several tasks and subtasks that have the same structure. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SECTION A&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;task 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;task 2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;task 3&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SECTION B&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;task 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;task 2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;task 3&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;.......&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would like to do is to place a formula in the &quot;predecessor&quot; field that would be something like &quot;([actualID-1]FS+5days)&quot; so that if I copy this formula on task 2 and task 3 line they will always refer to task 1 and task 2. In this way I can have hundreds of sections but only one formula to create the dependencies from the predecessors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it a thing that can be done maybe with some custom field/column?&#xA;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27757" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-14T13:24:16.323" LastActivityDate="2021-02-03T00:02:10.187" Title="MS Project predecessor formula" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21190" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-03T02:41:31.943" Score="0" ViewCount="143" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new to Project and, rather than spending anymore time reading the web, I thought I'd appeal to some experts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our company we often schedule tasks similar to the made-up one just below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are redesigning the blue widget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the tasks associated with this is creating a new drawing of the widget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We estimate it will take a Jr. Mechanical Engineer (ME1) 10 hours and it will take a more experienced Sr. Mechanical Engineer (ME3) 2 hours.  We assume/allow these hours to be spread out over the task's duration, which is 2 weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I do this in Project '13?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've already figured out how to enter their hourly rates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The task should be set up in such a way that I can change the duration without impacting the 10 + 2 hours they are allowed to spend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keeping the 10 + 2 fixed is important because we want to use Project to estimate the task's cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27761" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-03-21T01:06:03.347" LastActivityDate="2017-03-21T01:06:03.347" Title="Scheduling hours over a fixed duration in MS-Project 2013" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21176" CreationDate="2017-03-03T08:38:45.660" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quick vs slow developers, hard question. Quick doesn't mean good, &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/124835/how-do-quick-dirty-programmers-know-they-got-it-right&quot;&gt;quickAndDirtyTM&lt;/a&gt; solutions will always bite you in the back later. Slower solutions can be worth much more if they are very readable and maintainable. Slacking to think might also not be so bad, most developers only code 10% of their time. The rest they are reading and thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Measuring individual developer productivity is hard, but be careful of the net negative producing programmers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;There are net negative producing programmers (NNPPs) on almost all&#xA;  projects, who insert enough spoilage to exceed the value of their&#xA;  production. So, it is important to make the bold statement: Taking a&#xA;  poor performer off the team can often be more productive than adding a&#xA;  good one.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://c2.com/cgi/wikix?NetNegativeProducingProgrammer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://c2.com/cgi/wikix?NetNegativeProducingProgrammer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be harsh, but I have seen that removing the slow programmer can speed up the team significantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still I would try to see if the team can pull up their members to the same level&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_programming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pair programming&lt;/a&gt; to increase codebase and programming technique knowledge&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Retrospectives specific on finding out issues that are holding some developers back. Let them try to come up with solutions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:45:57.110" LastActivityDate="2017-03-03T08:45:14.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20729" CreationDate="2017-03-03T10:16:45.260" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum master usually spend his days facilitating (not participating in) the daily standup; helping the team maintain their burndown chart; setting up retrospectives, sprint reviews or sprint planning sessions; shielding the team from interruptions during the sprint; removing obstacles that affect the team; walking the product owner through more technical user stories and encouraging collaboration between the Scrum team and product owner. &#xA;Based on these duties a Scrum Master performs, your team may be able to get away without a dedicated individual if your product owner knows everything about the customer and is always there for the development team without guidance from the Scrum Master; your development team has such a healthy communication culture that daily standups are redundant and add to the overall process overhead; the burndown chart and other artifacts are maintained automatically and don’t create any overhead for the development team; the team operates free of distractions and can easily clear all obstructions on their own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27717" LastActivityDate="2017-03-03T10:16:45.260" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21193" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-03T10:31:16.577" Score="1" ViewCount="174" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently working for a University on their online course team. &#xA;The person that is managing the course development is struggling a bit to manage (from a high level) the workflow, which is currently a very complex Excel worksheet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically:&#xA;We have 50+ modules, each containing up to 10 units. &#xA;She has to liaise with the authors, proofreaders, content designers (me + 3), Finance, and various other parties. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, let's say units 1-2 are live, unit 3 is ready for putting online, units 4-5 are in proof-reading, unit 6 is back from proof reading and has gone back to the author for amendments, and 7-10 are awaiting writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multiply this by 50 and you'll see it gets VERY complex. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how should a situation like this be managed best? &#xA;Maybe Excel is the best option as it's visual and &quot;all there&quot; in one interface - however it's completely manual, and no way to (for example) link email correspondence or add notes easily to each module or unit...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I think it needs a custom solution (web based) - unless something exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27768" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-03-03T14:11:52.860" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T20:48:00.907" Title="Managing 50+ small projects" Tags="&lt;multi-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19872" CreationDate="2017-03-03T11:14:52.843" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master is often considered a coach for the team, helping the team do the best work it possibly can. Scrum Master as similar to a personal trainer who helps you stick with an exercise regimen and perform all exercises with the correct form. A good trainer will provide motivation while at the same time making sure you don’t cheat by skipping a hard exercise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27717" LastActivityDate="2017-03-03T11:14:52.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21193" CreationDate="2017-03-03T13:07:51.653" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;That sounds like the perfect case for a board. I'm explicitly not saying &lt;em&gt;scrum&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;kanban&lt;/em&gt; board, but a board. To visualize all the different modules as cards with their current status and additional information, maybe due dates etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I like &lt;a href=&quot;https://trello.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Trello&lt;/a&gt; a lot, it's online, the basic version is completely free of charge and you can create your board and cards as you see fit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are countless other systems, though, you need to pick the one you like best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2017-03-03T13:07:51.653" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21175" CreationDate="2017-03-03T15:37:36.913" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have said, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-po&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum guide&lt;/a&gt; doesn't define business entities, but it does speak to them in principle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the product and the work of the Development Team. How this is done may vary widely across organizations, Scrum Teams, and individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One body of techniques by which a PO does this falls generically under product management. Two product management outcomes the PO is responsible for seem to inform use of business entities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Clearly expressing Product Backlog items;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Ensuring the Development Team understands items in the Product Backlog to the level needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My guess is that discovering, defining and using business entities is a way of communicating domain knowledge. If so, I'd recommend &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-driven_design&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;domain driven design&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0321125215&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;book&lt;/a&gt; of the same name as a technique to consider as a complementary practice to Scrum. You might define these entities in wiki pages, shared docs, even the code base e.g. class, module, variable names as a way of establishing a domain specific language to enhance user empathy and efficient communication. It does seem likely to me that these entities could well be used in Product Backlog items like user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21576" LastActivityDate="2017-03-03T15:37:36.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21189" CreationDate="2017-03-03T15:38:55.050" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, MSP doesn't permit formula-based predecessor relationships.  There are two obvious ways to get what you want:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After creating your hierarchical task list in MSP, copy-paste the relevant table (containing predecessors field) to Excel.  Use text formulas to manipulate the predecessors field in Excel, then copy-paste back to MSP.  As long as the predecessors are correctly formatted, MSP will then modify the schedule logic to match.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use vba (i.e. macro) code to directly modify the predecessors string in MSP.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2017-03-03T15:38:55.050" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21175" CreationDate="2017-03-03T17:17:30.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're conflating a lot of things, and trying to convert the user story format into a new type of specification. It isn't one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, you should modify your &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; so that everyone shares a common knowledge base, and then break down user stories during Spring Planning into implementation tasks on the Sprint Backlog. You should also increase collaboration with stakeholders within the Sprint, and ensure that you hold framework ceremonies such as the Sprint Review to inspect the increment of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The power of agile practices is in leveraging an incremental inspect-and-adapt cycle, rather than in extensive upfront planning. Agility &lt;em&gt;requires&lt;/em&gt; iterative processes, and your current way of defining work is not truly incremental or iterable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Glossaries, User Stories, and Sprint Reviews&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Define a Glossary&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even terms like &quot;entities&quot; are a ambiguous outside your particular business domain. On most agile projects, I've found it's extremely helpful to create a glossary as a project artifact, and then keep it updated with terms that we define within our organization or process. For example, you might have a couple of glossary items like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Category&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A tag for a blog entry that can be used by administrators to organize content, or by users to find similar articles.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Article&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A blog entry whose Definition of Done includes having a:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Title&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Category&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Content&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This glossary must be kept updated, and is used as the canonical reference for terms in your user stories and tasks. You might even use markup (e.g. italics, quotes, underlining, or colors) to identify glossary terms in your backlog items, although I've rarely found this necessary in practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Use the Full User Story Format&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When properly done, a user story contains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A value consumer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A value increment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A context to constrain or scope the increment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your current stories don't do those things, and so you lack sufficient information to understand the story's narrative or break it down into implementation tasks. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As an article contributor,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want to have a single-page interface for adding an article&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so I can add a title, content, and one or more categories all at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This story provides a role with a point of view (the value consumer), what that person wants (leaving the implementation details to the development team), and some context that helps the development team understand the value proposition and acceptance criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This type of story is much easier to break down into tasks for the Sprint Backlog. It also serves as a great focal point for &lt;em&gt;conversations&lt;/em&gt; with the stakeholders throughout the Sprint as the team develops acceptance tests and fleshes out implementation details. A user story is a means of collaborating, not a way of tossing specifications over the wall!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Leverage Your Sprint Reviews&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is all about inspect-and-adapt. Even in cases where you have low stakeholder engagement or can't actively collaborate throughout the Sprint, a short iteration ensures that if you build the wrong thing—or build the right one, and the stakeholders realize post-facto that it doesn't really serve their needs—then the process ensures that these issues are caught relatively quickly and can be iteratively changed or improved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that even if you don't leverage user stories effectively, every week or two the stakeholders will see a potentially-shippable increment. They don't get to say &quot;You did it wrong!&quot;, but they &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; get the chance to say &quot;Well, I guess what we &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; wanted was...&quot; and create new work which the Product Owner then prioritizes for a future Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum (and agile processes in general) are about emergent design, incremental progress, and iterative improvement. So you don't have to deliver something perfect every iteration; you simply have to deliver something &quot;good enough for now,&quot; or at least &quot;good enough to solicit meaningful feedback.&quot; Either way, the Sprint Review is a useful process control when correctly implemented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-03-03T17:17:30.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21190" CreationDate="2017-03-04T16:09:42.433" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Create the task initially as a Fixed Duration task where duration = 2 weeks. I would make sure the task is not effort driven.  Using the task form, assign ME1 and enter 10 hours of work then assign ME3 and assign 2 hours of work.  Assuming the standard 8 hours per day, Project will spread ME1 work out at one hour per day for the 10 days, Peak = 13% (rounded from 12.5)  ME3 work will be spread at .2 hours per day - Peak = 3% .  If you now want to keep those hours (10 and 2) stable if you change the duration,  switch the task to Fixed work.  If you change the duration in a fixed work task type, project will recalculate the peak units.  However, be careful - Fixed Work task types are effort driven.Adding an additional resource will mean the 12 hours of work in total will be split among 3 resources and the duration will drop.  If you need to add additional resource, add them in the Task form and manually enter their work estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2017-03-04T16:09:42.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3414" CreationDate="2017-03-04T17:39:13.523" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is my take on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think SF is simply a relationship constraint that describes what shouldn't happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Second task cannot finish before first task starts&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second task needs some kind of input from the first task and can start early if that input is gotten sooner. Let's say 8 hour Task-1 has that input ready by 9am of day-1, Task-2 can start on day-0 (instead of day-2) and finish as soon as that input is available(considering task-2 require that input before it finishes), let's say by 10am day-1. There must be that overlap. Task-2 finishing before Task-1 even starts means basically Task-2 doesn't need anything from Task-1 and breaks the SF constraint. In that case, they both should run parallel and not sequential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27783" LastActivityDate="2017-03-04T17:39:13.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21168" CreationDate="2017-03-04T17:43:24.927" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your question is not specific to this tool, I'd recommend using ActionableAgile. To my knowledge this is the most powerful flow analytics software available out there. &lt;a href=&quot;https://kanbanize.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanbanize&lt;/a&gt; wraps their functionality and integrates seamlessly. For more information, check this: &lt;a href=&quot;https://kanbanize.com/kanban-resources/kanban-analytics/monte-carlo-simulation/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Flow analytics in Kanbanize&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22983" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2019-02-05T15:24:30.640" LastActivityDate="2019-02-05T15:24:30.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21202" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-05T13:44:02.093" Score="7" ViewCount="1592" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have 2 (50% distributed) scrum teams, that have been doing scrum for just over a year.&#xA;Since almost the whole time, the teams' painful point is environments instability, from all perspectives: smoke tests failing and need to be looked at, things break and need to invest time into fixing them, things are deployed from other teams (we work in a global project) that broke our code and so on. All these are not the teams' problems, though they intermittently impede our teams. Otherwise, the teams state that are very happy and constantly improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, despite our velocity been estimated correctly (say 50), and if everything goes well we can deliver that, we are often called to fix our environments, do investigation, do root cause analysis etc. Therefore we end up not delivering successful sprints. &lt;strong&gt;We cannot gauge this downtime since sometimes takes up 1 person - 1 hour, sometimes 4 persons - 2 days to investigate and fix. This is completely random.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This problem keeps being raised in retrospectives, the management is aware, and the response is that &quot;we are aware of these and agreement has been made to improve on such and such...&quot;, and that &quot;we are moving towards improving the whole process by doing X,Y,Z&quot;. In discussions between the scrum master and the development manager, the development manager almost refuses that these problems are the reason why the team is not delivering successful sprints, and that given good coordination, the team should still be delivering anything that they committed to. Committing to less &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; mean that the team is delivering everything and runs out of things to do in the sprint, whereas over-committing &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; end up not delivering everything. Also, under-committing has been proved to raise the manager's eyebrow as &quot;the team must always have things to do&quot;, and &quot;under-committing&quot; is not the solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think are possibles fixes to this process so that the team can effectively commit and deliver within this environment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5522" LastActivityDate="2017-04-25T04:24:42.150" Title="The development teams can't deliver successful sprints" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21153" CreationDate="2017-03-05T14:31:04.247" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try creating Change Request Flow(plan, protocol). Agree with the client on the steps which are going to happen each time they request a new change. E.g. if they request a new feature, the feature will be included into the next iteration/sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try to systematize their requests. If they want to add a new button to the existing page, create it as a separate card, not as a comment. If they ask for numerous copy updates, put down these requests to a separate &quot;Copy updates&quot; card. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27305" LastActivityDate="2017-03-05T14:31:04.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21204" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21206" CreationDate="2017-03-05T16:28:09.457" Score="5" ViewCount="270" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many times I've observed bugs being logged against particular stories that takes Product Owners a lot of time to triage that don't end up being important enough to fix. Either it's an acceptable behavior that wouldn't have a material client impact or simply not something Product Owners see as important as something else in the backlog. How can this phenomenon be dealt with so that teams can keep moving?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13745" LastActivityDate="2017-03-28T00:45:59.383" Title="How to deal with overhead of QA logging bugs that POs aren't interested in fixing?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;quality&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21204" CreationDate="2017-03-05T19:03:26.927" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds like a good topic to bring up at the team's retrospective. There are lots of possible approaches, but the team should decide for themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some things you might consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The QA shows bugs to the Product Owner before they log them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a bug is not viewed as important by the Product Owner, resolve it as 'won't fix'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discuss as a team the types of bugs that might not need to be logged&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2017-03-05T19:03:26.927" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21202" CreationDate="2017-03-05T19:06:45.603" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have your team commit to less work, but have a number of items at the top of the backlog ready to be brought in to the sprint if all goes well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way you set up the behaviour of consistently meeting your sprint goal &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; often exceeding expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2017-03-05T19:06:45.603" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21204" CreationDate="2017-03-05T19:17:30.193" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that you fix all issues for new stories without going to the product owner at all. If you are constantly creating bugs and not fixing them, this is a sign of a quality problem. I am sorry to say so, but if you do this long enough, you will end up in a lot of trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22983" LastActivityDate="2017-03-05T19:17:30.193" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21209" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21211" CreationDate="2017-03-06T06:54:53.470" Score="2" ViewCount="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an admin for JIRA project following SCRUM approach. I am trying to report to my direct manager when the project was started. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I went to &lt;code&gt;Settings&lt;/code&gt;and &lt;code&gt;Timesheets&lt;/code&gt;.. and many places. And I cannot find this information . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any idea where to find when the JIRA project is started exactly ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7901" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-03-06T13:13:17.873" LastActivityDate="2017-03-06T13:30:28.190" Title="How to know when the project started in JIRA?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;timeline&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21202" CreationDate="2017-03-06T10:12:03.010" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pull the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andon_(manufacturing)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Andon chord&lt;/a&gt;. Stop the line and fix the issues. Don't fix the symptoms, but the root causes of the unpredictability. 5 why your way down into the actual cause(s) of the interrupt work and fix it. Make it the goal for your upcoming iteration. Your team will know what needs done to fix the problems and I guarantee they'd be happy to do the work if it saves them some future pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, you won't deliver any new features, but it is a worthwhile investment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is always going to be unpredictable interrupt work. The trick is to ruthlessly minimize it. Be sure to take good measurements of before &amp;amp; after to make sure you've actually solved the problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastActivityDate="2017-03-06T10:12:03.010" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21209" CreationDate="2017-03-06T13:30:28.190" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Checking the first issue created (&lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;PROJECT&amp;gt;-1&lt;/code&gt;) would give you a fairly acceptable ballpark date, unless by 'project' you mean something else that's not the actual Jira project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, take into account that this information, out of context, might be just &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIKW_pyramid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;data&lt;/a&gt;, not an actual information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2017-03-06T13:30:28.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21202" CreationDate="2017-03-06T14:51:07.287" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;the team must always have things to do&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This, I think, is the crux of your problem. Look into (and have your Development Manager look into) the &lt;a href=&quot;https://dzone.com/articles/100-utilization-myth&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;100% Utilization Fallacy&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would solve your problem is integrating slack time into your estimates. You under-commit, with the now-extra time being made into slack time. Whenever things go smoothly, the slack time is used for non-scheduled, side-tasks. Researching. Spikes. Cleaning Technical Debt. Writing that documentation everyone keeps forgetting about. Any number of things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And when things &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; go smoothly and you have these &quot;environments instability&quot; problems crop up, you spend your slack time fixing them. No slack (or less slack) that sprint, but you still get done what you actually committed to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-03-08T14:35:01.813" LastActivityDate="2017-03-08T14:35:01.813" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20658" CreationDate="2017-03-06T15:28:28.450" Score="3" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Looks very objective but counterproductive&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this approach looks super objective, I don't recommend it for the following reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprint goal&lt;/strong&gt;: Selection of stories for a Sprint should be driven by the Sprint goal. While the main stories for a Sprint should be selected (explicitly or implicitly) based on high value and low effort, some other stories may be selected to make the value delivery whole. Your approach will result in a collection of assorted stories without a coherent Sprint goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product Owner&lt;/strong&gt;: This will undermine the Product Owner's authority to change priorities, as conditions change. There is no substitute for the judgement call by a Product Owner with a clear vision.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Too much work&lt;/strong&gt;: I have done a lot of Planning Poker sessions to estimate story points. Getting consensus on that one score itself is a slow process. Scoring on 10 different criteria for each story is a lot of work for the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Relative story points&lt;/strong&gt;: Overall story points can be estimated, in relative terms. Level of design effort, development effort and QA effort cannot be estimated accurately. Read this previous thread: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2765/why-use-story-points-instead-of-hours-for-estimating&quot;&gt;Why use story points instead of hours for estimating?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:29.460" LastActivityDate="2017-03-06T15:28:28.450" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20658" CreationDate="2017-03-07T14:17:54.253" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We were able to make the &lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.mumosystems.abacus/cloud/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Abacus plugin for Jira Cloud&lt;/a&gt; work for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26829" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T14:17:54.253" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20658" CreationDate="2017-03-07T18:50:02.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; do prioritization through automated formulas, don't. It's an agile anti-pattern that will generally do more harm than good to the overall management of your product delivery schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a place for formulas and ranking systems, but the product backlog or your ticketing system isn't it. Prioritization is fundamentally a set of interdependent strategic decisions, and strategic decisions (especially strategies involving complex trade-offs) are very difficult to model mathematically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the entire field of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;game theory&lt;/a&gt; and the huge volume of complex study that flows from it. You'll get a very small taste of why strategic decisions should currently be handled by people rather than static formulas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Handling Prioritization and Trade-Offs&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Complex, automated prioritization is an agile anti-pattern. While a scoring system can (and probably should) be used by the Product Owner when working with stakeholders to identify features or prioritize the Product Backlog, a complex ranking system doesn't belong inside the backlog or inside a ticketing system like JIRA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of your ticketing or backlog system, backlog items should certainly &lt;em&gt;express&lt;/em&gt; an ordinal or classed priority, but should not leave it up to ticket writers or an automated system to actually &lt;em&gt;define&lt;/em&gt; the priority. Systems that do this either become unmanageably complex, or people start gaming the system so that everything is &quot;priority one.&quot; This helps nobody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;False Precision&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real issue is that prioritizing work always requires trade-offs. Sometimes those trade-offs can be quantified, but more often than not overly-complex formulas simply lead to a false sense of precision. This is why IT work in particularly is often better-expressed in story points rather than man-hours, because &quot;five times harder than our usual work&quot; is generally more useful than the false precision that comes with saying something complex will (or should) take 23.651 man-hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did you notice? Even though I didn't say &quot;exactly 23.651 man-hours&quot; in the paragraph above, didn't the precision of the figure imply a highly-refined exactness to you? It doesn't &lt;em&gt;sound&lt;/em&gt; like an estimate, and I can assure you that most stakeholders will treat precise numbers like that as money-back guarantees rather than forecasts or rough estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T18:50:02.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21202" CreationDate="2017-03-07T19:29:32.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Similar to other answers, I suggest the team commit to fewer points. The different approach I'd suggest would be to include technical debt issues within the sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If there are any external defects, etc, you will have your slack. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If all goes well, and there is no overhead, then the team can resolve technical debt issues which will help a lot in future sprints. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick here is; issues don't have points assigned to them, so if the team is not able to complete them by the end of the sprint, there won't be any change in velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as resolved technical debt stories improve overall workload for the team, they will be pretty motivated to complete them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8532" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T19:29:32.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21202" CreationDate="2017-03-08T05:21:38.010" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We cannot gauge this downtime since sometimes takes up 1 person - 1 hour, sometimes 4 persons - 2 days to investigate and fix. This is completely random.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you tracked it and/or can you reconstruct it over the past 6 mo or so? If you aren't already tracking it, start now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a PM, you know that this is a risk. Your team knows that it is a risk. So plan for the risk. Assign points to it. You can't predict it because it is random, but look back over what it has been and pick a median value. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't the same as undercommitting. It is mitigating a known risk: you're allocating points against the likelihood that some of the sprint effort will have to be spent on this recurring problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think it will make your management feel better, you can also identify an equal number of points worth of features that are designated to be worked last if nothing goes wrong. I wouldn't do that the first time, tho; I'd only do it if I was pushed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In response to pressure on undercommitting, I would resist this with a broken record &quot;It's not undercommitting; it's risk mitigation. Look at the data. This is a known risk, so we are planning for it.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing this does for you is to put on your management's radar, every time, &quot;We can't assume that everything will work because it too frequently doesn't. We are mitigating this known risk (that you have repeatedly said would be dealt with. See how much more work we would be able to get done if you would actually fix it?).&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2017-03-08T05:21:38.010" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21219" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-08T10:47:39.930" Score="4" ViewCount="420" Body="&lt;p&gt;First: I'm trying this forum, even though this is more a test management than project management question. The test/QA exchange seems to be focused on technical, hands-on test questions and issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The core question, copied from the bottom by request:&#xA;I guess what I'm asking is suggestions on what/how to test what/where, and how to organize the testing. With regards to customer/user involvement, but also in the development team itself (with the developers and testers). I will try to clarify the question further if necessary, of course.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas and/or thoughts about a development and testing setting which I'm struggling a bit with, test- and test management-wise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I come from a more traditional setting, where we had separated System Tests and Acceptance Tests. The System Testing was done by the testers/QA engineers, while the Acceptance Testing was done&#xA;by the customer and their power users/testers. Usually the Acceptance Test had a dedicated test manager, and the System Test Manager handed their test report over to him/her and the product owners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also been a tester and test manager in Scrum(ish) teams. But this wasn't too different from how we used to do it in more waterfall-based settings. The Test Manager and/or testers created &#xA;Test Cases at the beginning of, and during, each sprint. These were created from the requirements, and run during the sprints as soon as the development tasks were finished and checked in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the sprints, especially near the end, we ran the regression test suite. This was a collection of existing tests as well as those new tests which we decided to include in the suite. Pretty standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sprints also often ended in a demo for the customer/product owners, although this wasn't always possible due to possibly poor sprint and functionality planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of X sprints we had a System Test phase, which included a large collection of tests made during the sprints, regression tests etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the Test Report was created and &quot;everything&quot; handed over to the test and project managers for the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I find myself in a development setting/team where things are a bit different, and I'm struggling a bit to find out what, how, when etc. Both when it comes to the actual testing, as well as the metrics, management etc. It's the development of a new version of a system already in production, with both new features and bug fixing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The development process is sort of scrum(ish), in that it's organized in sprints of two weeks (which I find a bit on the short side). No daily stand-ups, though - just a weekly meeting. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We're using continuous deploy and integration (to the test environments). (Release processes to prod. env. are not yet hammered in stone.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project uses TFS and the specified work flows and types of work items default to that system: EPICS, FEATURES and USER STORIES (as well as bugs and tasks, of course).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is not yet a good focus on Unit Testing among the developers. This is a work in progress.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no whole-team planning phase at the start of each sprint; The development/team manager decides which User Stories to take into each sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is how the project (at the moment) is structured:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EPICS:&#xA;I haven't figured these out fully yet, and neither has the development leads, or so it seems. A work in progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FEATURES:&#xA;This is a collection of user stories (usually no more than a handful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;USER STORIES:&#xA;These are very small and specific. Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;US1: As an X-user I am able to view a list of each tenant for a customer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;US2: As an X-user I am able to edit a tenant entry for ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The QA-team/testers are, as of now, testing the user stories. At first, I tried to implement a routine of creating test cases for each user story, organized per sprint. However, I soon saw that all test cases and user stories ended up 1-to-1, and the test case descriptions was just a repetition of the user story and its details, which are very straight-forward and not subject to debate or interpretation (see above). A bunch of test cases with one or two steps that were 100% obvious when looking at the User Story felt like a waste of time. So I/we decided to try to skip the Test Cases, and just use the comments and status of the user stories, since the test cases have proved to be nothing more than extra work so far. With only two weeks per sprint, doing double or unnecessary work/documentation is not desirable. There is also no &quot;higher authority&quot; requesting test status in a way that requires test suites and test cases with specific metrics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any thoughts on this? I'm used to PBIs in a Scrum setting, which were often complex enough that they needed a least a test case with a lot of detailed steps, and sometimes more than one. Or there were quite big Test Cases that naturally covered more than one PBI. In this case, that hasn't been the case yet. In this setting, the test cases are so very small and isolated, and quick to test.&#xA;(The quality delivered for each User Story is another story altogether, but that's a work in progress with the developers and leads.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been thinking about the need for test cases for the FEATURES, which I think is more customer-related. However, these are just a collection of user stories that are already tested. Their titles aren't more than short description either. But I would guess that this is the place for test cases, since I think they should be tested or verified by the customers/users of the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I guess what I'm asking is suggestions on what/how to test what/where, and how to organize it with regards to documentation, tracability and most of the common issues related to testing.&lt;/strong&gt; There is no real involvement of customers/users yet, but I'm thinking that this needs to be done, at least on a FEATURE or EPIC level. But this requires the time and knowledge to write test cases based on value chains and scenarios, which I think is pretty different than from a system/User Story viewpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's worth to note that this is a permanent development team working on a system permanently, and now working on version 3 of the same system. So the goal is the same system, just with more and better functionality, as well as added features requested both from external customers and internal users. But as of now there's no one to act as a product owner or requirements responsible. This is also in the pipeline.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27815" LastEditorUserId="27488" LastEditDate="2017-03-15T11:37:44.960" LastActivityDate="2017-03-16T02:49:57.523" Title="Organizing testing in a Scrum(ish) development project" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;&lt;epics&gt;&lt;features&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21220" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-08T13:25:27.890" Score="3" ViewCount="581" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm struggling with Jira and Confluence. &#xA;My Team and I are developing an application and we are not sure how to structure our JIRA environment perfectly. For our development process we use Kanban. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, for each App (Android, iOS, Web and the back-end) we have separate projects in JIRA. So we have to create each epic and story 4 times. This is not very efficient. &#xA;Is it better to create one Project in JIRA e.g. &quot;Software Project&quot; and create there several boards for each app in it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it right to start by creating a Product Requirement in Confluence, define there our User Story and create these stories in JIRA? &#xA;I mean every App has the same epics and stories but the have different Tasks. How do we manage this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the perfect structure in JIRA and the best Workflow between Confluence and JIRA for our workflow?&#xA;We are looking forward to using Portfolio. Is it recommendable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27819" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-03-15T20:24:22.623" LastActivityDate="2017-03-17T12:11:39.563" Title="What is the best workflow between Jira and Confluence?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21220" CreationDate="2017-03-08T18:10:37.167" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you might be attached to your current setup, but I'd recommend that you rethink the quadruple stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you really claiming that you can be done with the Android item but not the back-end, and you can move on to the next Android item?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, I would recommend that you have a single item on your Kanban board and that it encompass all of the layers (Android, iOS, Web, and back-end).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;I want to change my username&quot; item is only &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Done&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; when it works across all platforms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is assuming that you want your application to be the same on all platforms. If you're okay with your iOS app being three months behind the Web version, then separate items makes sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8340" LastActivityDate="2017-03-08T18:10:37.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21219" CreationDate="2017-03-08T18:40:57.183" Score="2" Body="&lt;h1&gt;There is nothing scum(ish) about this project&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team members are not involved in deciding what can be accomplished in the sprint. No sprint planning. It is top-down.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No coordination among team members in the form of a Daily Stand-up.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team is not attempting to create a potentially shippable increment at the end of the sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team is not showing the work completed at the end of each sprint to stakeholders and seeking their feedback.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Development team is not doing the effort estimates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No mention of any Scrum Master or Product Owner roles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have the right gut feel when you said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is no real involvement of customers/users yet, but I'm thinking&#xA;  that this needs to be done, at least on a FEATURE or EPIC level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest risk seems to be reaching the end of the project and the customer looking at it for the first time ever and saying, &quot;This is not what we asked for&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, follow-up on your gut feel and use the notion in the team that this is a scum(ish) project to organize Sprint Reviews with the customer at regular intervals. Based on the feedback: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You will know how well the user stories represent what the customer asked for.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can tweak when/how to test.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this will also help you to follow-up on your other gut feel:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...this requires the time and knowledge to write test cases based on&#xA;  value chains and scenarios, which I think is pretty different than&#xA;  from a system/User Story viewpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2017-03-09T03:15:02.327" LastActivityDate="2017-03-09T03:15:02.327" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21223" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-09T04:20:23.717" Score="6" ViewCount="226" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Background&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our company we demand that engineers write a brief one liner section in each ticket they work on (from jira/github/gitlab etc) that explains the &quot;business requirement&quot;.. the logic of that is explained here (text copied from our &quot;issue protocol&quot; document verbatim):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h1&gt;Business Value add&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The software projects we work on must always&#xA;  ultimately serve a business need. Simply put b/c at the end of the&#xA;  day, someone should be paying for the development of these tasks.&#xA;  Therefore, it's very important to express the value add of the task in&#xA;  a language that non-technical person can understand and appreciate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Think about it in the following scenario: we bill the client per issue&#xA;  (ie in the monthly invoice we add the issue number and description in&#xA;  a spreadsheet). For the client to know where their money is going,&#xA;  they should be able to read the issue business requirement and&#xA;  immediately understand it. This isn't the job of the PM on the&#xA;  project, this is the job of the engineer working on the issue as&#xA;  they're the one most familiar with it. If you need help expressing the&#xA;  business value of the technical work you're doing, contact your PM and&#xA;  they can give you a hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;Business Value add instructions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;Must be a one liner&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;don’t write a&#xA;  whole detailed description of the requirement and the reason behind it&#xA;  and the background etc. Simply state the business value of what the&#xA;  task is about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;Must be a parent task&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No need to write business requirements for&#xA;  subtasks. The business requirement for the subtasks can be inferred&#xA;  from the parent task&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;Must explain the business value add, not just describe a problem&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;People don’t pay engineers to report a problem. They pay them to fix&#xA;  it. That’s why the business value add section should simply state the&#xA;  value added by doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Bad example&lt;/em&gt; Users won't be able to successfully checkout using valid&#xA;  credit cards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Good Example&lt;/em&gt;  Fix bug preventing using from successfully checking out&#xA;  by using valid credit cards&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;Must use the imperative mood&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is best explained &lt;a href=&quot;https://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/#imperative&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. Similar to&#xA;  the git commit messages, business value should be written in&#xA;  imperative mood, which is “spoken or written as if giving a command or&#xA;  instruction”. A few examples: Clean your room Close the door Take out&#xA;  the trash Please see above link for more thorough explanation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have used this policy with several teams/startups with mixed results. But I was going over the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0735679665&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Software Requirements&lt;/a&gt; and it showed this image:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/#imperative&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/F1lNS.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and it shows &quot;business requirements&quot; as high level business objectives that belong in the vision and scope document, rather than &quot;functional requirements specification&quot; doc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Question&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it make sense to ask engineers to put a Business Value Add section in &lt;em&gt;each&lt;/em&gt; issue they work on? Let's assume that engineers aren't trained for that kind of documentation (from my own experience, it's a hit or miss chance that engineers will be able to properly write a business requirement section, most of the time they do it just as getting through the motions and they don't really do a good job) then the next question is: does it make sense for &lt;em&gt;anyone&lt;/em&gt; to write a business requirement section for &lt;em&gt;each&lt;/em&gt; issue.. be it a BA or a PM etc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Update&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just wanted to clarify something. Basically I guess my question makes more sense if given the context that the engineers doing the work are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; from the same organization that's paying for the work. Classic example: entrepreneur outsources software work to a software shop, and pays them. The question I get all the time from such entrepreneurs is: where is all my money going? By requiring that the outsourcing company fill in the business value add section (and this is why it doesn't have to be an engineer doing it.. it could be the PM/BA from the outsourcing company), then the client gets a lot more visibility on where they're money is going, and I think that's fair (it better be, the client can simply make that a requirement when signing the contract).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23022" LastEditorUserId="23022" LastEditDate="2017-03-09T11:42:00.503" LastActivityDate="2017-03-11T05:04:05.360" Title="Does it make sense to require developers to write a &quot;business value add&quot; section in each issue?" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;business-analyst&gt;&lt;business-process-mapping&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21223" CreationDate="2017-03-09T10:54:03.847" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Leadership 101:&lt;/strong&gt; Do not force the team to do something &lt;em&gt;for the sake of doing something&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the surface, it seems to be a very nice idea, being poorly implemented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The straight answer for the question is no - it &lt;strong&gt;does NOT&lt;/strong&gt; make sense to force engineers (coding-oriented people, who usually have collosal knowledge on programming but low communication skills) to proceed with this painful exercise (for them) for every tiny change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It &lt;strong&gt;DOES&lt;/strong&gt; make sense, however, to have this kind of feedback from them whenever 1) &lt;em&gt;engineers&lt;/em&gt; are not sure about what's being tried to achieve or 2) for the &lt;em&gt;critical, complex requests&lt;/em&gt; that could lead to confusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There'll be stories missed here and there that could've benefited from this exercise, definitely... but in general it will be a less painful process to miss that story than force the Engineers to deviate the effort from where they master into something that could add low value to most of the Stories (assuming Stories, of course, are minimally understandeable).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2017-03-09T10:54:03.847" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21223" CreationDate="2017-03-09T10:58:18.283" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does it make sense to ask engineers to put a Business Value Add section in each issue they work on? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, not really, but you may want to do it anyway. Ideally, the person who asked for the feature should be able to clearly state what value it provides. Engineers aren't necessarily the best people to say why a feature should be implemented. In fact, they'll often be the ones questing why a thing is valuable. However, it is a great exercise for us software developers. It gets us thinking about value add. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it just doesn't make sense to try to write value add statements about fixing bugs or technical debt. &lt;em&gt;Maybe&lt;/em&gt; the tech debt, but most folks prefer a culture where you don't have to justify quality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does it make sense for anyone to write a business requirement section for each issue.. be it a BA or a PM etc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. It makes complete sense for a BA to write value add statements to a feature. If you have BAs at your org, they're the folks most in touch with your users and the business value. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the general case, it makes a ton of sense to explicitly state the value of each item in your backlog. If the value can't be clearly stated, then the need to actually implement it is &lt;em&gt;highly&lt;/em&gt; questionable. This practice will prevent you from wasting time on features no one needs and help you get the ones people do need right. I've experienced dozens of times someone asked for an implementation instead of a solution to a problem and we missed the mark because of it. Explicitly asking about the value makes it more likely the implementation will solve the real problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastActivityDate="2017-03-09T10:58:18.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21223" CreationDate="2017-03-09T14:25:28.707" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;this is the job of the engineer working on the issue as they're the one most familiar with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technically, no. The engineer working on the issue is the one most familiar with the &lt;em&gt;technical details&lt;/em&gt; of said issue. The one most familiar with the &lt;em&gt;issue itself&lt;/em&gt; would be a Business Analyst (BA). Furthermore, engineers often have different priorities. I would not be overly surprised to find a 'business value add' section written by an Engineer as thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Do this stupid, messy workaround so that the lazy and/or stubborn users don't have to &lt;strike&gt;improve&lt;/strike&gt; change their workflow.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is (probably) not what you want. Even if you do want to be informed when developers are questioning the veracity of an issue, this questioning should probably not go into the &lt;em&gt;Business Added section&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a BA, get the BA to do this one-liner. If you're a small company who doesn't have a BA and the Project Manager is overworked or nonexistent, &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; you could ask Engineers to accomplish this BA-task in addition to their regular duties, but recognize that this is not ideal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-03-09T14:25:28.707" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21227" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-09T16:33:45.533" Score="4" ViewCount="341" Body="&lt;p&gt;Follow up question from here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/21176/how-to-efficiently-manage-a-scrum-team-when-one-member-is-much-less-productive&quot;&gt;How to efficiently manage a Scrum team when one member is much less productive?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my developers is having trouble estimating his work. For the past few weeks he has committed to work, and once stuck in is not able to complete it. Burn down charts then goes out of whack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My other developer in the team is also concerned that he is not performing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Approaches I have taken so far:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using daily stand ups to deal with the impediment. I have been giving the slow developer tips; get the easy tasks out of the way then do the hard ones.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have even explicitly asked him on 2 -3 occasions if he will complete the task in time. His attitude has been 'yeah I will do', but then on the day tell me he can't complete it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have asked the developer if he needs the other resource to step in and help him. He would always say no.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am now starting to run out of ideas on how to deal with the slow developer. I am starting to think that he does not care about respecting the burn down charts, and is carrying the attitude that it will be done, when it is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am encouraging the team to become more cross functional. In this instance that would not have helped anyway, because the task in question has to be completed by the person who started it. Otherwise we will have too many cooks spoiling the broth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also educated the developer about the business objectives, and the team velocity is what is being tracked etc Developers agree that this is the right way to deliver work, fast developer is thriving, slow one isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2017-03-30T01:59:26.557" Title="How can I help a member of a scrum team estimate better?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;impediment&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21227" CreationDate="2017-03-09T16:55:19.333" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;TLDR: Implement shared ownership of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of my developers is having trouble estimating his work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, there is no such thing as a single developer's work at the time of estimation. Ideally, such a concept shouldn't exist &lt;em&gt;ever&lt;/em&gt;, with proper use of the concepts of shared ownership, pair programming, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Team&lt;/em&gt; owns work, and the &lt;em&gt;Team&lt;/em&gt; estimates work. Together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your problem is not helping &lt;em&gt;a developer&lt;/em&gt; estimate better. Your problem is helping &lt;em&gt;the Team&lt;/em&gt; estimate better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first step towards that goal should probably be to &lt;em&gt;make sure the Team is actually estimating together, as a group.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have even explicitly asked him on 2 -3 occasions if he will complete the task in time. His attitude has been 'yeah I will do', but then on the day tell me he can't complete it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've come across this phenomenon a few times, and a few different things can cause it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The developer is afraid of being punished for not completing things on time, so they try to hide the fact that they're behind, instead just hoping they'll figure something out and the problem will go away.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Proposed Solution: Make sure everyone understands that the Team succeeds or fails &lt;em&gt;as a whole&lt;/em&gt;, and that no one person will be held accountable for any specific instance of failure.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The developer only cares about solving the problem right now, they don't care about schedules or conflicts or critical paths or any other of some such 'nonsense'. So they say whatever they can to make the PM go away so they can get back to 'real work'.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Proposed Solution: Educate the developer as to the business costs resulting from incorrect or insufficient estimation or information.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The developer just simply dislikes/is bad at estimation, and so tries to avoid it as much as possible.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Proposed Solution: Estimating as a team should help via social influences. Combine with training or picking up of systems designed to make estimation easier, such as estimating in story points (relative work) instead of days.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll need to talk to the developer to determine precisely why he is avoiding proper estimation, and react accordingly. People always have their reasons for what they do. Often they're good ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have asked the developer if he needs the other resource to step in and help him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The wording you are using here seems kind of condescending to me. &quot;Hey, I notice you're having trouble completing &lt;em&gt;your work&lt;/em&gt;. Do you want Mr. Senior to come in and save you?&quot; It wouldn't surprise me if he refuses, either out of annoyance or fear that he will look incompetent for accepting help on work that 'belongs to him.' Again, the solution would be to remove single-person-ownership of work. Then, the Senior isn't 'helping' with 'his work'. The Senior is just 'doing work normally.' There wouldn't even be a need to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-03-09T16:55:19.333" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21223" CreationDate="2017-03-09T17:04:28.317" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's my TL:DR answer: No! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The engineer shouldn't be working on something if the business value isn't already defined. It's the voice of the customer (product manager, product owner, business analyst) that should be defining the business value. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Said business value should be agreed to by the business before asking engineering to size the work for building and certainly before the engineer actually lays hands on the keyboard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-03-09T17:04:28.317" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21230" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21231" CreationDate="2017-03-09T18:58:23.340" Score="3" ViewCount="89" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been working for this company for about 5 months. They had very aggressive hiring policy and the result was that the development teams were build fairly quick and we started contributing to the product's code base without any formal development process in place. At the beginning most of the people were confused, not knowing what to do, since the product is fairly big, the code base is old and there is a lot of confusing code and few people with enough experience to explain what's going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During this period it was obvious that everyone is acting chaotic and back then the need from some formal approach was obvious. However time passed by and now the people have gained some confidence, some experience, knowing a little more about what is expected from them and I would say, they already started to feel comfortable as it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And now I'm given the opportunity to try and convince some of those people (the team that I am part of) to try and adopt the &lt;code&gt;BDD&lt;/code&gt;. If this had happened two months ago I would feel very confident talking to them. I imagine how I explain them how we will get together at the beginning of each sprint, writing our scenarios, making sure that we all start with the same understanding about what should be done. Then, how there will be no downtime for the QA's but instead the whole team starts working, knowing exactly what needs to be done (eliminating that feel of not knowing what you need to do) and collaborating with each other/helping each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bu this is the picture from 2 months ago. If I tell them now the same things I'm not sure if they gonna be interpreted the same way. I feel that it's most likely that now they will find irritating to spend time writing scenarios (after all now they know what should be done or at least they think so), they don't feel so lost anymore so the idea of pair programming and spending more time discussing stuff is more likely to be seen as waste of time or even sign of lack of skills. Things like living documentation or filling the communication gap won't make much sense either since we haven't hit those problems.. yet, and last but not least I myself lost my confidence that &lt;code&gt;BDD&lt;/code&gt; is actually something that will definetlybenefit the team. After all if the team members are feeling OK, if the management is feeling OK, then why bother to change something. Maybe things are going fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is where the things get very subjective and I need some advice. Do you think that given the circumstances the adoption of &lt;code&gt;BDD&lt;/code&gt; is something that worth the effort. If no - why? If yes - what arguments would you give to such a team in order to make them enthusiastic about adopting &lt;code&gt;BDD&lt;/code&gt; and willing to make the effort needed for that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25532" LastActivityDate="2017-03-10T09:57:38.293" Title="Benefits for the development team from adopting the Behavior Driven Development" Tags="&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21230" CreationDate="2017-03-10T09:57:38.293" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lets forget BDD per se and just talk about introducing a generic new process to a team that's already up and running in some existing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all you need to work out what the driver is. &quot;How much more money will the company make if you introduce the new process&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately if the company is not experiencing any problems at the moment the answer to this question is invariably that the company will make less money. processes tend to slow people down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there is no point introducing a new process unless the company is loosing money due to some identifiable reason. eg&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;new releases have bugs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;new hires need lots of training&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;deadlines are not being met&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a legal requirement is not being met&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your new process will address these reasons, then you can cost it up. But you will still have a challenge getting people to make it happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your first step can be to introduce some manual process which fixes the immediate issue. say you need to produce a data protection law report each quarter, get someone to manually check the database etc and produce the report by hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have established that the task needs to be done regardless of how hard it is, you can show that your new process makes the task easier and or more reliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2017-03-10T09:57:38.293" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21227" CreationDate="2017-03-10T11:37:21.617" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am starting to think that he does not care about respecting the&#xA;  burn down charts&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No-one respects burn down charts. it is just an indication of whether you are going to hit your deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimates in scrum are supposed to be self correcting. If you underestimate on sprint 1 by 20%, increase your estimates by 20% for sprint 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like this developer is under pressure to put in low estimates. Perhaps they are just a bit slower than the others, but their effort still burns down the total. Take the focus off giving low estimates and aim for &lt;em&gt;consistent&lt;/em&gt; estimates&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2017-03-10T11:37:21.617" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21227" CreationDate="2017-03-10T12:53:56.280" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do team estimations and swarm userstories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The idea is that you get all the developers to work (swarm) on a&#xA;  single story, instead of having each developer working on a separate&#xA;  story. The goal is to get more stories fully completed. It's better to&#xA;  have 80% of the features 100% done, instead of having 100% of the&#xA;  features 80% done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.infoq.com/news/2013/02/swarming-agile-teams-deliver&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.infoq.com/news/2013/02/swarming-agile-teams-deliver&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let the &lt;strong&gt;Team&lt;/strong&gt; find solutions to the problem during the retrospective. Instead of you finding solutions to what you think are problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ownership&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Otherwise we will have too many cooks spoiling the broth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To many cooks? It's a team, they are the cooks. Teach the team something about collective code ownership as an Agile principle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Collective Ownership encourages everyone to contribute new ideas to&#xA;  all segments of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules/collective.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules/collective.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other read about code ownership is this: &lt;a href=&quot;https://martinfowler.com/bliki/CodeOwnership.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://martinfowler.com/bliki/CodeOwnership.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Process&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;he does not care about respecting the burn down charts&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master I do not care about the burn down, it is just a signal that we are behind. A trigger to discuss how we can resolve it, not to push the developers todo more. That will only result into sloppy and buggy work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You describe as if the developer should go faster, because of the burn down. This will lead to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_march_(project_management)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;death marches&lt;/a&gt; and against the sustainable peace Agile promotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Agile processes promote sustainable development.  The sponsors,&#xA;  developers, and users should be able  to maintain a constant pace&#xA;  indefinitely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you start pushing, this developer will not make the constant pace. Development goes as fast as it goes. It is done when it's done. Some are faster than others accept it. Unless the developer is deliberately slowing down and slacking what do you expect to do about it? Demotivate him even more by publicly pointing it out at the Daily Scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Easy last:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;get the easy tasks out of the way then do the hard ones&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also seems counter intuitive. The hard tasks have the highest uncertainty and thus risks. You should focus on those first. The earlier you know possible problems or slowdowns the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The easy tasks are easy, so you can postpone them to last without to much risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T15:03:42.030" LastActivityDate="2017-03-10T15:03:42.030" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21235" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-10T13:14:10.657" Score="2" ViewCount="597" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have many projects that are in progress in JIRA with Scrum teams from User Experience (UX) and Development (dev). Is there a way to see all dev or UX tasks across all projects? I'm currently having to go into each project to view these tasks but I want view everything in one place. Is this possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27855" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T14:10:12.727" LastActivityDate="2017-03-10T17:19:43.900" Title="Tracking tasks across all Jira projects" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21235" CreationDate="2017-03-10T13:32:19.983" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclosure:&lt;/strong&gt; I work for the company that makes the Structure add-on for JIRA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have self-hosted JIRA you can install the &lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.almworks.jira.structure/server/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Structure add-on&lt;/a&gt; which will allow you to pull issues from different projects into one place, group, sort and filter them, view issuelink and Agile relations in a hierarchical tree, show aggregate progress, time, story points and other numerical values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grouping by fields such as release, sprint and assignee you will be able to track progress from as low as sub-task level across multiple projects/sprints/releases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20563" LastActivityDate="2017-03-10T13:32:19.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21235" CreationDate="2017-03-10T13:51:45.627" Score="3" Body="&lt;h1&gt;You can create a Jira Dashboard&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to keep a Dashboard with the Sprint Health Gadget for each of the project. This way I can see the summary status of all the projects in the Dashboard in one place. When I see something in the summary that warrants attention, I can always drill-down into that project to see the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trying to see &lt;strong&gt;all the tasks&lt;/strong&gt; from different projects in one place will be overwhelming and confusing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if that is what you want, see the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.atlassian.com/2013/11/7-steps-to-a-beautiful-and-useful-agile-dashboard/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;High-priority issues example in this link&lt;/a&gt;. He has used the Filter Results gadget and filtered the tasks to see only the high priority issues. Here is the JQL:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;sprint in (openSprints(), futureSprints()) AND project in (TIS) AND&#xA;  (Flagged is not EMPTY OR priority = Blocker)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you add your projects and remove the filters in the JQL, you should see all the issues in one place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T17:19:43.900" LastActivityDate="2017-03-10T17:19:43.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21223" CreationDate="2017-03-10T18:05:47.660" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not a job for the engineer or developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don' have BA's in your organization then whoever is receiving the project from the customer (project manager, account manager, sales) should be working with the client to clearly define the business case, user stories and acceptance criteria for the issue.  You may have a common business case across multiple issues, but each has user stories and acceptance criteria specific to the issue.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27862" LastActivityDate="2017-03-10T18:05:47.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21227" CreationDate="2017-03-11T04:52:02.473" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have even explicitly asked him on 2 -3 occasions if he will complete the task in time. His attitude has been 'yeah I will do', but then on the day tell me he can't complete it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't sound like an estimation problem to me, in the development sense of &quot;poor at figuring out the complexity of and effort required for a task&quot;. This sounds like it could be a very generic, &quot;poor at turning work in on time&quot; problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you asked him, on the day, why he wasn't able to complete it? What does he say?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you asked him why he routinely is unable to complete the work he has committed to? What does he say?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try asking daily for a confidence level whether he will be done on time. Ask him to give reasons for it, and emphasize that the goal is to know early that there might be a problem. Explain up front that if he is giving you 95% confidence level up until the day he doesn't turn it in on time, he'd better be able to point to an avalanche that happened since yesterday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2017-03-11T04:52:02.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21223" CreationDate="2017-03-11T05:04:05.360" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This would make sense if the engineers were deciding which issues to work on, rather than being told what to work on. If the engineers are deciding what to do, they should be able to concisely explain why. If someone else is telling them what to do, that's the person who is in the best position to explain the business value that caused them to assign that work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The instruction that the engineers should write them, and consult their PM if they aren't sure how, sounds interestingly as if part of the goal is to get the engineers to be &lt;em&gt;able&lt;/em&gt; to think in terms of business value, which is something that happens more naturally in agile development when devs are presented with user stories that include business value. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;and it shows &quot;business requirements&quot; as high level business objectives that belong in the vision and scope document, rather than &quot;functional requirements specification&quot; doc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But functional requirements should trace to business requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2017-03-11T05:04:05.360" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8879" CreationDate="2017-03-11T17:34:47.617" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm guessing you are asking whether Lean Six Sigma methodologies can be applied on services/non-physical products and services as service-oriented companies may have physical products and vice versa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surely some methodologies are more suitable for production, but you can also eliminate waste in service delivery and processes in general. Health care is one example where Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma have been used extensively, often with success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some examples on what waste that can be eliminated in services/processes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Waiting - Also immaterial processes may have prerequisites&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Over production &amp;amp; Over processing - services can also they be over delivered&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources: Own experiences as a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27870" LastActivityDate="2017-03-11T17:34:47.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21176" CreationDate="2017-03-11T21:20:24.767" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When the slow developer falls behind in his sprint, the quick developer does some of the remaining work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is how Scrum team is supposed to work. You &lt;strong&gt;don't work&lt;/strong&gt; on &lt;strong&gt;your stuff&lt;/strong&gt;, your only goal is to produce potentially shippable increment of software at the end of Sprint.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The quick developer &lt;strong&gt;does not mind&lt;/strong&gt; doing the work, &lt;strong&gt;but has made remarks&lt;/strong&gt; such as 'the other developer should do this it was originally delegated to him'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This statement contradicts itself, he doesn't mind yet he complains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am concerned that my slow developer might be coasting it, from knowing that the quick developer will pick up some of the slack for us to meet the sprint goal. I have mentioned to the slow developer that we needs to work on increasing his velocity during the sprint. He has said 'ok', but then goes 'oh I didn't realise that the work was so complex'. So it is hard to know what exactly is going on. The quick developer has told me that the slow developer sometimes is idle, and works in spurts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This shows fundamental lack of trust between you and both team members.&#xA;I don't want to defend slow guy, but that's the way it is in software: estimates are usually not met and it's just too complex to predict accurately. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that... you might be in situation where you actually have slacker/under-performer on the team and Scrum and iterations don't have anything to do with it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Let's improve developer's productivity&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can I improve the productivity of the slower developer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You don't know why he is &quot;slower&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;. The question you're asking can be compared to &quot;how can I cure sneezing?&quot; &lt;strong&gt;without asking what caused it&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your &quot;slow&quot; developer might be: &#xA; - demotivated at his role/project/team&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;lacking skillset of specific technologies&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;having some personal issues (sickness/problems at home/etc)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;not be right fit for being developer (yes, it happens)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Top of my head I can think of couple more possible reasons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Solution to your immediate performance problem&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to approach it from two avenues. First and foremost talk with him and openly ask if he's ok as you noticed that he seems to be falling behind with the work and you don't want to guess what the reason is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, if you're his manager it would be good to know what is his history in the company. How he was hired, how he ended up with his team, what is his professional experience. There are companies that are very inconsistent in hiring practices and they just hire people not qualified to be programmers, who are managed by people who have no qualifications to be managers. When you'll know more (or give us more details for that matter), you can start thinking about improving someone's performance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;You need to learn a lot&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at your post it seems you're beginner manager with very basic understanding of Scrum and missing all core values behind it (e.g. &quot;I am managing the teams's velocity&quot;). I don't mean it to be insult, but rather as knowledge assessment and opportunity to learn. If you're willing to learn - sky is the limit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0321934113&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Peopleware&lt;/a&gt; to understand what it means to be manager of software team. Then follow it by &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.joelonsoftware.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;couple articles by Joel Spolsky&lt;/a&gt; (start with TOP10 at the bottom) and then you can follow it by book with real life applications of Scrum explained like: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00JDMPOZW&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Project Management with Scrum&lt;/a&gt;. After that look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B004ISL6JY&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Management 3.0&lt;/a&gt; and get grasp of modern management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3501" LastEditorUserId="3501" LastEditDate="2017-03-12T08:27:26.670" LastActivityDate="2017-03-12T08:27:26.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21176" CreationDate="2017-03-12T19:19:49.330" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should accept that the slower developer may never reach the pace of the faster one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't specify the developer's background in the post, and I can only assume that the faster one is more experienced, and/or has been longer in the project. In both cases, the &quot;faster&quot; guy will probably always be faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still recognize this issue, and I think that you should proceed with the following recipes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) From your post, I got the feeling that tasks are assigned to the developers at the beginning of the sprint. In most cases this is bad practice - try to have an list of tasks to be done &lt;em&gt;as a team&lt;/em&gt; in the sprint, not individual lists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) When you stop assigning tasks at the beginning of the sprint, it will become much more natural for the developers to start implementing tasks together (aka. pair programming). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pair programming may sound scary for you; after all, you've hired two devs to be able to produce twice the value, and they suddenly start working on one task at a time. However, working together at one task at a time will really improve your velocity:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the communication done in pair programming can make it faster&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it enforces better focus&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is a great opportunity for the slower developer to learn, making him faster when implementing some of the tasks alone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Have retrospectives after each sprint, if you aleady don't do that. &quot;I thought it would be easier&quot;, &quot;I didn't realize it was so complex&quot; -reactions can be spoken out in retros, and the reason can be spoken out - and situation can be improved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Heck, this situation may even be a result of your faster developer writing such a hard-to-read/bad code, that it is hard to work on for other developers. This kind of situation is very hard to recognize from the outside, as the slower developer may not feel comfortable to bring up the issue. Retros &amp;amp; more effective communication is the way to figure out these things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27877" LastActivityDate="2017-03-12T19:19:49.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20283" CreationDate="2017-03-12T19:28:07.100" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there a way I can create tasks that have no time estimate? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it just depends on your Jira configuration. However, as you stated, once you have logged time on it, Jira deducts you're a time tracker... and thus, assume you are interested to know by when you &lt;em&gt;no longer need&lt;/em&gt; to log time on it (i.e. you want to know your remaining).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either you should not be logging time at all at these tasks or they should have an initial, ballpark estimation that will be decreasing every time you log time on it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;need to adjust the remaining to 0 each time I log time on a meeting or&#xA;  standup?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any &lt;strong&gt;specific purpose on logging time on a task and still keeping the remaining fixed on zero if you know that tomorrow you're likely to be logging time on it again&lt;/strong&gt;? In our project, we have such tasks just to have transparency on how much time such meetings absorbs from the team. They're never added into the iteration, but we can forecast our work more accurately and (have evidences to) say to any user that's not realistic to expect anyone to work 8h / day (sometimes, appeal to the common sense doesn't work).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having that said, the answer for your question should be &lt;strong&gt;'stop fighting something that's trying to help you'&lt;/strong&gt; (or else, make it clear in your question why it must be always zero).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2017-03-12T19:28:07.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20827" CreationDate="2017-03-12T20:06:08.890" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's just one of the reasons why the latest research is showing that agile is more expensive and takes longer than waterfall&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Up to 80% of a sprint is re-work&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One day, someone will wake up and say &quot;hey - why dont we do it right first time?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27878" LastActivityDate="2017-03-12T20:06:08.890" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21202" CreationDate="2017-03-12T20:22:23.110" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since Development Manager is refusing to acknowledge that integration might be the problem and yet, you're working in Scrum, perhaps it's time to introduce him/her to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/resources/online-nexus-guide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nexus&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Nexus from Scrum.org&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's framework built on top of Scrum to scale it and it's by far scaling framework that focuses mostly on &lt;strong&gt;dependencies and integration&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;Framework can help you holding your ground and defending that this is unavoidable and necessary investment. It might also uncover some additional underlying issues with dependencies (late integration, poor requirements and architecture, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Immediate next steps in your case&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get familiar with Nexus, discuss it with your Dev Manager. Having industry experts behind you and your opinion that integration is  painful should help you.  I wouldn't be surprised if discussion would be enough to acknowledge problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When/If you'll establish Nexus with it's &lt;strong&gt;Nexus Integration Team&lt;/strong&gt; you'll have true bandwidth and focus on working through your environment stability and resolving dependencies. It will also become evident that &lt;strong&gt;you won't get environment stability and integration issues resolved for free&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3501" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-03-12T20:22:23.110" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21011" CreationDate="2017-03-13T08:12:11.763" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There exist different kinds of requirements&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Functional requirements&lt;/strong&gt; describe features or behaviour that the system must support&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Non-functional requirements&lt;/strong&gt; describe capabilities of the system, such as performance, maintainability, security, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Constraints&lt;/strong&gt; are requirements that limit your design freedom, such as requirements which technology stack to use or that it must be a web-application.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User stories are great for capturing functional requirements. They are a lot harder to apply on non-functional requirements and downright impossible for constraints. That is because constraints and certain types of non-functional requirements affect &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; user stories. They can't be worked on on their own and you can never say that they are &quot;done.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The requirement that different types of users must have a different look-and-feel to their UI is a constraint type of requirement, because it does not describe something that benefits the user of the system (unless there are other requirements that add context to make the benefits clear), but it does restrict your freedom in designing the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As constraints don't lend themselves for user-story format, I would advise you to clearly label the requirement as a constraint and not try to re-write it as a user story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2017-03-13T08:12:11.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21251" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-13T13:41:20.560" Score="11" ViewCount="775" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a small company working in web development. I like Agile and I tend to use it within my team. The issue is: usually, clients need to get quoted with a lump sum of their project that will not adapt to their usual needs for changes. If I started charging them by change time, eventually they will think that we are over-charging them and these new requirements or changes aren't worthy to be charged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you deal with your customers regarding charging and agile?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23882" LastEditorUserId="3501" LastEditDate="2017-03-14T12:47:26.933" LastActivityDate="2017-03-15T20:22:58.783" Title="How do I convice clients that we should use Agile and how should we charge for it" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;contracts&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21251" CreationDate="2017-03-13T14:06:34.897" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Discuss it with them and get their buy-in &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile won't work very well if not everyone involved is on-board. Worst-case, you can still try to use Agile internally while working with external customers in a more Waterfall style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; try to just foist Agile on them. Inform them about the benefits and let them see why it would be a good idea. If they're not buying it, do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; just go ahead and start charging them for something that wasn't agreed upon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-03-13T14:06:34.897" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21251" CreationDate="2017-03-13T15:36:28.777" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question has two levels:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;actual problem of contracting the work for agile team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;does it really matter how the work is contracted?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;It actually doesn't matter how the contract looks&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if &lt;strong&gt;you sign fixed scope/price contract&lt;/strong&gt; with customer you still might be &lt;strong&gt;better off using agile/iterative approach&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Use it as risk minimizing factor.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nothing stops you from using e.g Scrum for fixed scope bid:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can work in iterations&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can deliver increments of working software every Sprint&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can incorporate clients feedback (it might cause change/request, formal scope adjustment)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what is more important, in the situation you run behind and you have problems with delivering 100% of scope on time/budget (which happens in most of software projects anyway)... &lt;strong&gt;you will be better off with agile approach.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have better negotiation position with your customer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, &lt;strong&gt;you will have big part of the scope done and potentially shippable&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Customer has probably seen your progress, so there is much more confidence and trust if your ability to eventually deliver, therefore it will be easier to find common ground&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Best contract for agile team&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most commonly used contract is Time &amp;amp; Material where customer pays for your team's work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen interested variation of agile contract that was proposed by Ken Schwaber in one of his books (I think Agile Project Management with Scrum):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;After initial Release Planning you agree on the scope and contract value&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If all the work is done and under budget you get 10% bonus added (not sure about exact figure)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Customer can decide to stop the work after each Sprint and pay you 20% of remaining budget as a re-compensate for the fact that you need to instantly reassign team to other teams&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you go over budget then customer is paying you much lower rate for the rest of work (you're sharing the risk of going over).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;How it all ties together&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually approached your situation initially without even proposing anything else than fixed price contract as it seemed to be lost battle without &lt;strong&gt;relationship and trust&lt;/strong&gt;. To build this relationship? Proving that you're professional and you know what you're doing is the best way :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Upon contract signing I would inform customer that you'll be using Scrum for this project and &lt;strong&gt;invite them to participate&lt;/strong&gt;. This is crucial, you want them to see for themselves how &amp;quot;their&amp;quot; software is built, you want then to have influence and see they can realize business value faster. If client stakeholders have real need for the software and you will engage them, there is good chance they will get addicted to the approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After first project, you can try agile contract described above or move strictly to time &amp;amp; material. It's matter of preference and business circumstances on both client and your company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3501" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-03-14T13:07:31.883" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21251" CreationDate="2017-03-13T16:07:04.483" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL:DR: Always use agile, change your reporting, not your contracts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like the root problem here isn't about using agile nor the kind of contract you use, it's about managing Change Management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of if you use agile or traditional development techniques any project over roughly a week is going to see changes. You need to help your client understand the costs of change and how this impacts the contract. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using agile development means you have metrics that are usually more accurate and reflective of changes. Even if you use classic velocity based burn downs with best case, worst case (a good example can be found in &lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/502ILHjX9EE?list=PLtJZU3p_QdjtGqBqx6svkwahm8akiTLEx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Henrik Kniberg's Product Owner YouTube video&lt;/a&gt;) you can show a client, &quot;Okay if you add this scope, we will either ship on X date, or need to drop Y scope to make your date.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To take it to a more advanced and highly data-driven model, I recommend Troy Magennis' forecasting model. You can find this at &lt;a href=&quot;http://focusedobjective.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FocusedObjective.com&lt;/a&gt; where he offers the models free. These spreadsheets can model single and multi-feature projects and allow you to give highly accurate, Monte Carlo simulation based, forecasts for your projects. You'll be able to easily sit with a client and go &quot;if we do this, X happens, this and Y happens and this Z happens. What do you want to do?&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-03-15T20:22:58.783" LastActivityDate="2017-03-15T20:22:58.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21256" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2017-03-14T08:43:38.240" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-14T08:43:38.240" LastActivityDate="2017-03-14T08:43:38.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21257" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2017-03-14T08:43:38.240" Score="0" Body="Project Charter provides :&#xD;&#xA;Choose one or more :&#xD;&#xA;a)	Project Plan.&#xD;&#xA;b)	Input to sales and market demands.&#xD;&#xA;c)	An obligation between the customer and project management teams to mutually work towards business objective.&#xD;&#xA;d)	Input to project plan.&#xD;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27889" LastEditorUserId="27889" LastEditDate="2017-03-14T12:47:14.697" LastActivityDate="2017-03-14T12:47:14.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21131" CreationDate="2017-03-15T04:41:52.310" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Supplementing JulieS' reply, you may want to look at your default Gantt view details (tab Task-&gt;View group-&gt; More Views...Gantt Chart -&gt; Edit) or sometimes when you just click the Gantt Chart icon you might not really seeing default Gantt Chart, make sure to select the Gantt Chart view and sort by ID (tab View -&gt; Data group -&gt; Sort -&gt; by ID)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27898" LastActivityDate="2017-03-15T04:41:52.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21251" CreationDate="2017-03-15T09:57:18.897" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;eventually they will think that we are over-charging them and these new requirements or changes aren't&#xA;  worthy to be charged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The client should decide on the order of the backlog. If they feel enough value has been achieved then they should be able to cancel the development team at anytime. So if they think it is not worthy anymore you are done, time for the next client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently I &lt;a href=&quot;https://medium.com/@NReijmersdal/the-agile-sales-pitch-6c67ef303bc9#.5ek75y3rl&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;wrote about Agile and contracts on Medium&lt;/a&gt;, my final pitch was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Don’t pay for features you do not need, minimize risk by working in&#xA;  short iterations and start monetising after the first most valuable&#xA;  features have been delivered as working software. Why settle for less?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggested you use a fixed budget and the client decides what has priority, just don't specify requirements in the contract. Jeff Sutherland wrote an example about a contract win-win for developers and clients in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scruminc.com/new-scrum-the-book/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;his latest book&lt;/a&gt;. (will try to summarize later, time for a meeting now ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2017-03-15T09:57:18.897" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21251" CreationDate="2017-03-15T11:39:22.997" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;OP&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have two problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) How to handle change requests&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Minor tweaks are fine, but at some point you will need to be firm, charge the clients for them and make them aware how the changes will impact the delivery date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest keeping a change log to track all change requests, and try and ensure that the requirement gathering is done thoroughly before work has begun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) Use Kanban, not Scrum for external clients.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is value and velocity based. The idea behind Scrum is where you only deliver x amount of work based on y velocity. So you prioritise the backlog according to what gives the most value and then omit the rest when you have run out of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many clients do not care about this, and it only works extremely well when you're working in an environment or project that adopts this approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since Kanban is based on cycle time and not velocity it is perfect for delivering work where there are fixed deadlines. It is also agile, since any new requirement goes to the bottom of the backlog where delivery is done in a conveyer belt style way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="20871" LastEditDate="2017-03-15T11:46:46.413" LastActivityDate="2017-03-15T11:46:46.413" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21220" CreationDate="2017-03-15T13:27:54.213" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you may be better off if you change your projects into epics (Android, iOS, Web and back-end) as this would give you &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/agile/delivery-vehicles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;better visibility in Kanban of a swimlane view of the tasks&lt;/a&gt; in Jira.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would also allow you to more easily identify shared functionality that only needs to be done once for the three versions of the product, like back-end processes. You would also have less duplication of stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could use more cross device epics &amp;amp; break down further before the stories (eg UI, Admin Panel, Checkout).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="693" LastActivityDate="2017-03-15T13:27:54.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21251" CreationDate="2017-03-15T13:45:51.243" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For agile to work the clients, product owners, scrum masters and team have to be trained (or should buy the concept) on agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen many projects failing scrum sprints as the client's priority and sprint priorities clash and scope of sprints changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile is not remedy for every project. Evaluate your situation and make Waterfall with fixed priced model work better for you. You can use wireframes, workflow diagrams or sequence diagrams to get the requirements clarified better so as to reduce change requests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6209" LastActivityDate="2017-03-15T13:45:51.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21219" CreationDate="2017-03-16T02:49:57.523" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My project is also in active agile development of a newly released product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The primary purpose of my tests is to ensure that we don't accidentally break something that we have already delivered, so I focus on adding test suites for features added in each sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, in your situation, I wouldn't have any qualms about adding tests that match user stories even though it is obvious, because I'm not testing whether we did this sprint right: I'm adding quality control machinery to make sure it stays right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I typically don't involve the user in testing except when they have directed us to add a new feature that breaks or changes an old feature. In this case I show them the failed tests and say &quot;this is what you expected to happen, right?&quot; and get their signoff before updating the tests to the new behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line, the tests in my project are for the development team, not the product owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2017-03-16T02:49:57.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20508" CreationDate="2017-03-16T07:34:18.990" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For Developers time Tracking you should used Eilisys Ascent Employee &lt;a href=&quot;http://eilisys.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Time Tracking Software&lt;/a&gt;. I am also using this software. This web portal software is easy to use handle, it has high security, Exception handling and many more features etc. &#xA;Also available in affordable price and having good supportive team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More details visit here : &lt;a href=&quot;http://eilisys.com/blog/tag/employee-time-tracking-software/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://eilisys.com/blog/tag/employee-time-tracking-software/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27916" LastActivityDate="2017-03-16T07:34:18.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21267" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21274" CreationDate="2017-03-16T10:55:53.540" Score="1" ViewCount="724" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I create a new project in MS Project 2013, there is no option to add the Task Name column.&#xA;I've tried clicking on &lt;em&gt;Add New Column&lt;/em&gt; but Task Name doesn't appear there:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/D4B6p.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/D4B6p.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following (from a different computer) is what I'm trying to find:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KHrkD.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KHrkD.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27921" LastActivityDate="2017-03-17T05:35:30.017" Title="Can't find the Task Name column in MS Project 2013" Tags="&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21268" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T12:13:50.593" Score="0" ViewCount="717" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am struggling with adding multiple resources to a task in MSP. &#xA;So for example, I have 2 people that I need to attend a 1 hour workshop. &#xA;Total work is 2 hours as I need both there for full duration. &#xA;When I look at the % split that each person has been allocated it shows different Person 1 - 50% and Person 2 90%. &#xA;Is this correct or should I make it 100%?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27923" LastActivityDate="2017-10-25T14:27:22.283" Title="assigning multiple people to a single task in MSP" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;multi-team&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21268" CreationDate="2017-03-16T16:02:14.407" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It should be 100% for both of them as each person will be allocated for this workshop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8532" LastActivityDate="2017-03-16T16:02:14.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21268" CreationDate="2017-03-17T05:33:53.503" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project will assign the resources at their max units as defined in the Resource sheet.  If you want to assign resources at different amounts, you'll need to enter the units manually.  What are the resources' max units?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2017-03-17T05:33:53.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21267" CreationDate="2017-03-17T05:35:30.017" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;@Mark C. Wallace is correct, the field name is &quot;Name&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2017-03-17T05:35:30.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21275" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21284" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:47:03.183" Score="3" ViewCount="400" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to define the critical path of my project by using a PERT diagram. Let's take a trivial example to show you my problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have 4 tasks defined like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task A with a duration of 1 day without any antecedent ;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task B with a duration of 2 days without any antecedent ;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task C with a duration of 2 days with tasks A and B as antecedents ;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task D with a duration of 2 days with task C as antecedent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I get this critical path: B -&gt; C -&gt; D. The problem is: what if the tasks A and B need more than all my resources? The task B will fall behind whatever it happens so the task A have to be present in the critical path, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I handle it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27933" LastActivityDate="2017-08-24T07:13:56.210" Title="How can my PERT diagram take account of my resources?" Tags="&lt;resources&gt;&lt;critical-path&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21276" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:33:37.207" Score="17" ViewCount="3288" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a company, the scrum teams are partly on-shore and partly off-shore. Usually this is 50-50 or 60-40. The teams in their current composition have been mostly going on in a scrum fashion just over a year, with minor leaves/replacements because people join or resign, and that's fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However lately, the test manager has hired two additional people at the offshore teams to help with parallel activities (sign-offs, UAT, regression testing activities) without informing the SM, PO or most people in the team. He did inform the &quot;test team&quot; though, that is all the testers from the scrum teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scrum master found out by luck, and was called to accommodate these two new people in the teams, given than they won't be 100% allocated to the teams, because of their parallel activities (managed by the test manager).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, because one of the offshore scrum team members is about to leave for a month, the dev manager decided to replace him with another one offshore, having been reassured that he has been part of another team (for argument's sake DevOps), knows the software, and will do a very good job. This was communicated via an email sent on a day saying &quot;this guy will replace that guy for one month&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scrum master doesn't like this approach for a variety of reasons, some of them being team composition, team building, skillset, team confusion etc. He highlighter this to his manager both times and the counter argument is that the business needs the resource and cannot afford to lose time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the scrum master right? Is it good/bad/neutral thing to hot swap resources (especially in a distributed team). Any similar experiences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5522" LastActivityDate="2017-03-18T13:12:27.210" Title="Hot swapping people in a scrum team" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21276" CreationDate="2017-03-17T11:29:46.017" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Teams go through a life-cycle of Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing. Whenever you change the team composition you actually go back to the forming-phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not replacing someone in the team might be more effective than adding a random new person (for a short time) who might challenge how to the team works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take into account &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks&amp;#39;s_law&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Brook's Law&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;adding manpower to a late software project makes it later&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This works the same with changing people. The new people probably will be a drag on the old people, just wasting their time. The effect of extra manpower is a long-term one. On the short-term it will just slow you down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This blog tips on these topics in combination with remote workers: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.atlassian.com/2013/07/how-atlassian-does-it-3-tips-for-remote-teamwork/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://blogs.atlassian.com/2013/07/how-atlassian-does-it-3-tips-for-remote-teamwork/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;QA should be part of the Development-Team. Part-time resources are very sub-optimal. I would assign these extra two guys dedicated on a team, not as a shared resources. Depending on people that might have time is not a solid way to finished PBI's within the team. Either you are part of the team or your not. So certainly their time should be managed by themselves or the team and not a test-manager. Self-organising teams do not need command-and-control managers, they need facilitating managers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Welcome the resources, but make sure the team utilizes them and make sure that do not become a blocking handover point. The primary measure of progress is working (and tested) software delivered to clients on a regular interval.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2017-03-17T11:29:46.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21276" CreationDate="2017-03-17T11:30:44.560" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;The situation you describe is Scrum Zombie, not Scrum. My answer will try to organize a few of the aspects you mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Software developers are not resources&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;business needs the resource and cannot afford to lose time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the perpetual problem of our industry is to &lt;strong&gt;simply assume that people are interchangeable cogs in the machine&lt;/strong&gt;. In the situation you describe the only guarantee you get with a new person on the team is that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This new person will spend time/use budget&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This person will decrease productivity of the other team members (training, setting up environment)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This new person will change the group dynamics (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuckman%27s_stages_of_group_development&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;stages of group development&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Hot swaping&amp;quot; people is going to guarantee that you'll spend your money and not get work done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Adding people to a delayed project will delay it even more&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Test manager has hired two additional people at the offshore teams to help with parallel activities (sign-offs, UAT, regression testing activities) without informing the SM, PO or most people in the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is this saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;9 women can't give birth to a child in one month&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Throwing more people at the problem means there will be more communication overhead and as described above will initially delay work. On top of this adding more people won't scale linearly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;You're probably not using Scrum - your SM is right!&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading the situation you describe:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management adding/taking people without the team knowing about it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mysterious &amp;quot;test team&amp;quot; that is partially matrixed into Scrum team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lack of basic understanding of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://guntherverheyen.com/2013/05/03/theres-value-in-the-scrum-values/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;value behind Scrum &lt;/a&gt; in management team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're facing a Cargo Cult Scrum. You're just doing some of the practices without the actual benefits and principles behind them. Probably your company just ran &amp;quot;agile transformation&amp;quot; and now it claims to be agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What to do?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Help your SM.  Assure him/her that you see and understand the all above problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then try to educate/influence this manager. Without their buy-in and basic understanding of the Agile Manifesto and Scrum Values you're doomed in your effort to run an agile team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to convince the manager to read &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0321934113&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Peopleware&lt;/a&gt; by Tom DeMarco. This book should make them aware that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;developers are PEOPLE&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;building a team is hard and you can't just interchange people without a productivity impact&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you won't &amp;quot;bring in&amp;quot; a timeline by adding more people to a delayed project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the best book for a beginner manager to understand how to build a successful team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3501" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-03-18T13:12:27.210" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20508" CreationDate="2017-03-17T11:52:38.650" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As someone earlier said, you should start with why do you need to keep tracking of developers? What is the business goal or problem you are trying to solve. There are many tools for tracking, but what is your goals. Will someone look at those tracking is another question, you should ask yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As people said tracking developer create mistrust, I'm not saying that you should not care how they spend the time on work, but is there other approach you can take?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think what are your goals, what are your problems you are solving. Most of the times implementation of solution like time tracking or screening can kill team spirit and lead to a cycle of mistrust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27859" LastActivityDate="2017-03-17T11:52:38.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21220" CreationDate="2017-03-17T12:11:39.563" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;@Fred vom Jupiter, can you share how many teams and what domain areas you have per team? I see you have 4 products:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Android App&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;iOS App&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Web&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Backend&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have single team that handle all those project. I do not see point in creating 4 projects for each. Think about projects, not only from product POV, but also from team POV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sometimes find better organizing projects by teams, that work on products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team 1 (T1) - Works on Product 1 (P1), Product (P2);&#xA;Team 2 (T2) - Works on Product 3 (P3);&#xA;Team 3 (T3) - Works on Product 4 and occasionally on P2 and P3;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will two JIRA projects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;JIRA1 - Backlog for projects P2 and P1; T1 will sprint there;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;JIRA2 - Backlog for project P3; T2 will sprint there;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;JIRA3 - Backlog for project P4; T3 will sprint there;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However if T3 need to take stories or work on stories from JIRA1, I will transfer those stories to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually use labels to track what feature is from what product, as sometimes requirements from product can be cross-project, or multiple projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that you should slice stories by the principle of the cake. You might want to rethink how teams are structured to optimize for the feature flow instead of keeping them into department/functional areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27859" LastActivityDate="2017-03-17T12:11:39.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21275" CreationDate="2017-03-17T12:27:46.943" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your critical path is a calculated result.  If a work package is not on the critical path, it simply means that package itself has float and that it can move left and right on the calendar and not affect either the start of the next package or the end result of the project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, your critical path is not static; it's dynamic.  It's constantly changing every time you update the schedule with progress.  So a package this week may not be on the path but next week it is.  Critical path analysis needs to occur continually so that you can update your schedule risk as you progress.  So, as in your example, if a package is not on the critical path but you do not have high confidence that it will progress as planned, i.e., your planning values are known to be too optimistic, you can still highlight it as a schedule risk and mitigate accordingly as you would with a package on the path.  As a PM, you're authorized to do such things.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.  If I misunderstood your question, please advise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-03-17T12:27:46.943" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3794" CreationDate="2017-03-17T12:32:35.867" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Traditionally in the UK, task and finish is the term for a way of being paid. By completed task, not by hour or by &quot;piece&quot;(unit produced). For example a refuse (garbage) collection team are contracted to work 5 days a week, 7.5 hours/day. Each day's collection route (100 streets or whatever) is known to represent 7.5 hours work on average. But if today they work extra hard and finish their route after 6 hours 10 minutes, then they can finish for the day, go home and will still be paid for 7.5 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its a good system for team working where an individual speed of work measurement is impossible or unfair (some parts of the task are more arduous than others) which encourages peer pressure among teammates to work hard, not to throw &quot;sickies&quot; (and also to share out the unpopular parts of the task fairly between themselves without the need for any management intervention).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some agreed system needs to be in place to cope with a situation where the team cannot complete the task in the stated time for reasons genuinely beyond their control (in the above example that might be extreme winter weather or road closures, for instance).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For tasks requiring accuracy the team declare the task finished after, say, 6 hrs 30 minutes.The manager/supervisor then quality checks, which takes 15 minutes, sends them home if everything is OK but makes them redo any defective work which means they all have to stay an extra 20 minutes or wwhatever. Either way everybody is paid for 7.5 hours.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27934" LastActivityDate="2017-03-17T12:32:35.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21283" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-17T13:13:47.503" Score="0" ViewCount="136" Body="&lt;p&gt;My new boss has a little programming knowledge but not much, he is not technology illiterate but I'm looking for a few suggestions on how to explain programming concepts to him at a high level. Maybe like a pluralsight or treehouse course on building your programming vocabulary. Questions like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is an API and  why should we use one?&#xA;What is responsive design?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26615" LastActivityDate="2017-03-19T13:10:04.880" Title="High level way to explain programming concepts to my boss" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2017-03-20T18:38:20.893" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21275" CreationDate="2017-03-17T13:28:48.707" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The CPM schedule as defined is not achievable due to resource&#xA;over-allocation. A &quot;critical path&quot; definition for an unrealistic schedule is fiction.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assuming you are using one of the conventional scheduling tools like MSP or P6, you have two ways to relieve the over-allocation and define a realistic schedule: a) Insert a (soft logic) link between A and B to define the preferred sequence, or b) Execute the resource leveler to selectively delay A or B based on some priority rules.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your question implies a preference for the resource-leveling option.  In MSP, either A or B (whichever one is delayed by the leveler) will be shown as &quot;Critical&quot; after leveling, depending on your leveling options and priorities. The one that is not delayed will possess &quot;phantom float&quot; and be marked non-critical.  Obviously it should be included on the &quot;Resource-Constrained Critical Path,&quot; but MSP excludes it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how can you handle it? Either use soft/preferential logic in your schedule or use a scheduling tool (or add-in) that defines the resource-constrained critical path.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2017-03-17T13:28:48.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21276" CreationDate="2017-03-17T15:05:49.833" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, Agile is not for the ordinary software developer. An Agile project requires excellent, experienced developers. No galley slaves there, all team members are captains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is that so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because Agile is all about being...agile. This might be a big (and unpleasant) surprise for all the management guys. The team needs to be agile, it needs to be able to decide, on very short short notice, how to proceed, adjust plans, adjust strategies, all according to the team's understanding on what is needed. After all, the team is at the core of the problem, spending all day working on it and having the collective experience of (probably) decades in similar projects. Can a typical management guy  grok the complete complex workings in a project in a 15 minute meeting and issue a new plan/strategy (within the same meeting)? Nope, most likely not. That's why the team decides, six or seven brilliant guys working at the core of the problem, with a deeper understanding than six or seven management guys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum adds the Scrum Master and a set of pre-defined rules, to allow an Agile team to get onto the Agile path more smoothly. Still, in Scrum the team decides - the SM is not a manager or a boss in the traditional way. This is not just a disturbing thought for upper management, it's outright alarming. The team managing themselves, totally out of control? Nope. They control themselves, because they are just THE brilliant software development team for exactly this job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your upper management is committed to Scrum, they will know that the team decides. The Scrum Master, as the spokesperson of the team, is therefore always right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In real life, however, so-called &quot;Scrum projects&quot; are getting set up wrongly by management right from the start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The team decides? We can't have that in our company culture.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Yes, we will use the best and most brilliant software developers...let's see who is available...yeah, Mr. Dumbman is available, no one else wanted him...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;We will use an IMPROVED Scrum method...based on Scrum plus our 40 years of management knowledge and experience on how to successfully manage zero-defect IT projects...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;But my Scrum book said that Agile is the new silver bullet...it didn't say anything about the need for brilliant people. The second paragraph in the foreword? No, I didn't read THAT far!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27941" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-03-17T15:22:12.180" LastActivityDate="2017-03-17T15:22:12.180" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21286" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21287" CreationDate="2017-03-17T16:27:08.843" Score="11" ViewCount="1363" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often see projects at my company that are full of part-time developers, meaning they work some % on different projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, management seems to be on the Agile hype train. I feel that the agile methodology does not work well with part-time developers. How do you best manage the project with things like tasking when at any time some members may run hot on their other project(s)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even things like making a Gantt Chart get confused in the fact that you allocate a time for a task, i.e., 4 days, but I do not know of a way to consider that those 4 man-days may be 8 calendar days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27942" LastEditorUserId="27942" LastEditDate="2017-03-17T16:41:55.430" LastActivityDate="2017-03-29T08:55:28.460" Title="Agile team full of part time developers" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21286" CreationDate="2017-03-17T16:41:44.980" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Multitasking &lt;em&gt;kills&lt;/em&gt; productivity. Task-switching costs can be deadly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would suggest is to make Management aware of the costs and risks of having developers working on multiple projects simultaneously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if for some magical reason task-switching &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; cost 0 time, why would you want to finish Project A and B in ten days, when you could instead focus on Project A exclusely, finishing it in six days and then focus on Project B exclusively, finishing it four days after that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-03-17T16:41:44.980" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21283" CreationDate="2017-03-19T13:10:04.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I succeeded at a conference explaining an autonomous system architecture in compare to PM / business processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, talking to a stakeholder requires to pick him up (or to catch up). Try to understand his demands and engage them with your explanation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't know the stakeholders demands (motivation/way of thinking), start with an assumption and ask for feedback, e.g. by applying the active listening technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I assume, it's quite important for you to ... (am I right?). An API works in a similar manner by ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2017-03-19T13:10:04.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21290" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21312" CreationDate="2017-03-21T06:38:07.367" Score="3" ViewCount="1071" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Project Manager seeking professional accreditation in Lean Six Sigma, what factors should I consider when evaluating institutions, trainers and certifications?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On top of a list of things to look for, would an employer recognize a specific institute more than another?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2968" LastEditorUserId="10462" LastEditDate="2017-03-23T10:35:18.630" LastActivityDate="2020-07-01T08:40:21.817" Title="As a Project Manager how do I evaluate a Six Sigma certification course?" Tags="&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21291" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-21T09:12:48.260" Score="1" ViewCount="490" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I've found out recently, there is a way to use elapsed days (instead of working days in MS Project). But I use german MS project and there you can't use the english words. You have to stick with german wording. But the german equivalent doesn't work out well. I've tried so far:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;edays&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vergangene Tage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Verstrichene Tage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ver t&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you know a office.com reference for all english time shortcuts (including elapsed days), it might also help, because they translate most office.com websites in other languages. But so far the only reference I've found is &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/de-de/article/Create-and-link-tasks-with-Project-2007-368ab1ee-d6de-4511-9948-888680b35d3d&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://support.office.com/de-de/article/Create-and-link-tasks-with-Project-2007-368ab1ee-d6de-4511-9948-888680b35d3d&lt;/a&gt; which is not available in german (-_-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regards&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20635" LastActivityDate="2017-03-24T13:08:42.387" Title="Use elapsed days in german ms project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21286" CreationDate="2017-03-21T09:56:17.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of people who could be involved in an agile project that can't commit 100% - I think a lot of people get too hung up on what the ideal agile scenario would look like that is based on big development teams which ahve the opportunity to be more nimble in any event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If some people cannot work 100% then they can still be a valid part of the velocity &amp;amp; team cadence. I do agree with the comments that task switching is a productivity killer. So &lt;strong&gt;if someone can commit to 50% or 60% of their time to the project it might be better if they work Monday to Wednesday exclusively on the project&lt;/strong&gt; - leaving Thursday/Friday for another project or on BAU tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like the idea of the Agile hype train - the rails haven't been laid for the second half of the journey but the train is on its way, who knows if it will change course to a different town along the way!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="693" LastActivityDate="2017-03-21T09:56:17.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21291" CreationDate="2017-03-21T11:59:59.613" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Insert the task Leveling Delay field into a table and read the unit abbreviation from there.  Leveling Delay is always in elapsed days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will give you the answer in any language.  German for elapsed days is fTage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastEditorUserId="25557" LastEditDate="2017-03-22T12:18:15.793" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T12:18:15.793" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21286" CreationDate="2017-03-21T22:27:07.413" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the key tenants of agile (and scrum in particular) is to highlight problems in your systems.  Saying a development system is agile, and people have to multitask, is a problem - so be clear in its impacts.  While its tricky giving a clear answer without knowing your development methodology, some ideas are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If using story points, sprints and velocity - be clear in your reporting of velocity when it has been impacted by other projects.  So you may report at the end of each sprint, velocity 10 -&gt; 50% utilisation on other projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When reporting on burndown, include another factor (maybe a bar chart overlaid on the back of your graph) showing other project impacts for each sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If using gantt charts, MS project is quite good at differentiating between Work for a task (eg 4 mandays) vs. actual start and actual finish and elapsed days - they can be rolled up and reported on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By rolling this data up, and supplying your management overlay, you can report to upper management your progress, and what impacts multitasking has on progress.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26779" LastActivityDate="2017-03-21T22:27:07.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21295" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21321" CreationDate="2017-03-22T05:02:39.123" Score="3" ViewCount="162" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_programming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;XP Programming&lt;/a&gt;, code refactoring is at the core - it provides outstanding &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules/refactor.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;benefits&lt;/a&gt;. However, most developers seem to fear refactoring. As the project manager of your team, you not only need to meet deadlines, but also need to provide good quality source code to client. Also, as a leader, you need to think about ways for your team to improve themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe Refactoring of code frequently is a good practice that developers should have. The problem is, some developers being too familiar with old way of working, are resistant to refactoring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can you ask your team to actually do code refactoring? What did you do? (if you have past experience)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21101" LastEditorUserId="21101" LastEditDate="2017-03-27T02:07:24.157" LastActivityDate="2017-03-27T14:35:56.417" Title="How do you get your team to participate in quality assurance practices: Refactoring" Tags="&lt;team&gt;&lt;extreme-programming&gt;&lt;refactoring&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21298" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21302" CreationDate="2017-03-22T06:55:03.080" Score="3" ViewCount="226" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Background&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to follow the lean start-up methodology of validating a product. Following the instructions in the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1449334911&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UX for Lean Startups&lt;/a&gt;, I first validated the product by conducting interviews with several people from my target market (well actually those interviews made me realize that my idea was based on a non-existent problem, and so I &quot;pivoted&quot; and planned a product that solved a problem I found that all my interviewees complained about, a real problem that is). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then second step was creating a &lt;a href=&quot;http://tivly.lobolabshq.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;landing page&lt;/a&gt;. According to the book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;OK, great. Now you’ve talked to some people, and you think you see a&#xA;  shared problem that you can solve. It’s still not really conclusive&#xA;  evidence, right? I mean, what if those were the only five people in&#xA;  the world who have that problem? Or what if lots of people have the&#xA;  problem, but nobody’s willing to pay you to help them solve it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These are valid concerns, and you can address them long before you&#xA;  write the first line of code. The trick is to sell the product before&#xA;  you build it. Well, OK, technically that’s kind of fraud, so how about&#xA;  you just advertise the product before you build it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By building a few one-page sites, you can get a ballpark figure of the&#xA;  number of people who are interested in paying you to solve their&#xA;  problem. And the great thing is, you can start doing this before you&#xA;  start building anything. This means if nobody shows any interest in&#xA;  using your product, you can keep looking for new product approaches&#xA;  very cheaply until you find something that people are interested in&#xA;  using.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To be clear, I’m not just talking about direct-to-consumer Internet&#xA;  products here. Although you’re using the Internet to advertise your&#xA;  ideas, you don’t have to be building the next Amazon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Have a concept for a premium day spa for pets? Why not build a website&#xA;  for it first and see how many people try to make reservations for&#xA;  Poodle Pedicures? It’s a hell of a lot cheaper to build a landing page&#xA;  than it is to get salon chairs designed to fit a variety of dogs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With landing-page tests, you can start to validate both your market&#xA;  and your product. By advertising a real thing (or several real things)&#xA;  that you are going to be selling, you’re getting the best kind of&#xA;  feedback that people are willing to pay you for what you’re making.&#xA;  You can also get a sense of which version of your product has the&#xA;  biggest potential market, which can be a huge advantage in deciding&#xA;  what to build first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Klein, Laura (2013-05-02). UX for Lean Startups: Faster, Smarter User&#xA;  Experience Research and Design (p. 12). O'Reilly Media. Kindle&#xA;  Edition.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Problem&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I created the landing page, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/da62n.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/da62n.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;made a Facebook and Google Ad Words ad campaign, and put a text field that prompted the users to give me their emails. The conversion rate was terrible, like let's say 0.03% of my visitors gave me their emails. Which, according to the book, is fine, b/c this is what the lean people call &quot;failing cheaply&quot; and it would be a good indication that I should probably pivot my &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zA3KQZzSNJ3VJdBFioa8pxO7RjxM_cXvvWbI_g3CIYg/edit#&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;product vision&lt;/a&gt; yet again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, once I had a 1:1 usability test on my landing page website (where my question was simply: what does this page tell you?), the subject said: I have no idea what your product is all about. Which made me realize that perhaps my lousy conversion rates wasn't about a product problem, but more of a web design/SEO problem. So following &lt;a href=&quot;https://unbounce.com/landing-pages/checklist/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;unbounce's landing page checklist&lt;/a&gt; I went ahead and hired an animator from &lt;a href=&quot;http://fiverr.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;fiverr.com&lt;/a&gt; to create an intro video.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Question&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can keep on improving my website to increase my conversion rate using SEO and stuff from unbounce's check list. I can for example replace my &quot;economy&quot; animator with a heavy duty one and pay x10 the price &quot;to get a better quality video&quot;.. I can put a lot of time into improving the design of my site etc etc. But at what point can I realize that my low conversion rate problem is a product problem, not a poor web design problem? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Discussion&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is in response to the points brought up in &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/21302/23022&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are you using the Lean Validation Board, the Business Canvas or some other quick prototyping board to crystallize your thinking?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, but I'll look into it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What acquisition channels are you using?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;facebook&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have started with facebook ads, and used this add:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OAF4U.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OAF4U.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the response rate was terrible.. My conversion rate (ie the percentage of people reached to those that actually added their email was like 0.05%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/p4FE9.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/p4FE9.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;someone advised me that google adwords was better than fb ads, so I immediately paused the FB ad campaign (I'm also running on a limited budget, that's another thing), and created an Adword campaign.. using this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/29Eja.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/29Eja.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but the results weren't that much better:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gVjXi.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gVjXi.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so I decided to freeze both ad campaigns and start working on the landing page itself by working on an intro video.. which should be released soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of now, this is my stats from google analytics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ohAV8.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ohAV8.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bounce rate calculation is not accurate I don't think, b/c This is the total people who have given me their email (I &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/42718387/how-to-make-web-form-post-directly-to-google-sheets-without-authentication-page&quot;&gt;connected the form straight to a google docs sheet&lt;/a&gt;): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eXQ0E.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eXQ0E.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so I'd say the overall bounce rate is much higher than what's reported by google analytics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are those channels optimised for conversion or are they landing on your page cold?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't understand the question. How is a channel &quot;optimized&quot; for conversion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How are you collecting positive feedback / measuring success / activating customers?&#xA;  Email sign-ups?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, a customer is &quot;activated&quot; on my system simply by giving me their email on the form. I also subsequently send them to fill another form.. but that's an auxiliary thing.. I'm not relying on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Click through tracking on a Call To Action (CTA) button?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yeah that's done.. I've specified that as my conversion trigger on both Facebook and Google Analytics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is your bounce rate from the landing page?&#xA;  What is your time on site per customer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;answered above&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What user behaviour occurs on the landing page?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well I'm glad you asked this, I neglected to see the video recordings on my hotjar account.. But apparently they are all telling me the same thing! people are clicking on the field but nothing is happening.. I reckon this is a hotjar bug because this seems to only happen in recorded sessions.. you can verify yourself by trying to fill in your email on the form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;see these vids for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://insights.hotjar.com/p?site=445583&amp;amp;recording=555089114&amp;amp;token=b3eca72a32bd25fd25f306851867fd19&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://insights.hotjar.com/p?site=445583&amp;amp;recording=555089114&amp;amp;token=b3eca72a32bd25fd25f306851867fd19&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://insights.hotjar.com/p?site=445583&amp;amp;recording=554166979&amp;amp;token=815d5871a60383a1b2549d92fa0e83df&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://insights.hotjar.com/p?site=445583&amp;amp;recording=554166979&amp;amp;token=815d5871a60383a1b2549d92fa0e83df&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;here is a vid of someone checking out the stuff, but simply not doing anything: &#xA;- &lt;a href=&quot;https://insights.hotjar.com/p?site=445583&amp;amp;recording=559108912&amp;amp;token=69836015b6c974bbb637f52242e2d90f&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://insights.hotjar.com/p?site=445583&amp;amp;recording=559108912&amp;amp;token=69836015b6c974bbb637f52242e2d90f&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;here is a vid of someone simply glaring at the screen and doing nothing for several minutes.. not sure what to make of it&#xA;- &lt;a href=&quot;https://insights.hotjar.com/p?site=445583&amp;amp;recording=565424901&amp;amp;token=d17976d16518b55e18a2bc9da49c5c3c&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://insights.hotjar.com/p?site=445583&amp;amp;recording=565424901&amp;amp;token=d17976d16518b55e18a2bc9da49c5c3c&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23022" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:41:23.897" LastActivityDate="2017-03-23T05:23:48.767" Title="What workflow optimises the use of Lean Startup, particularly when managing Landing Pages?" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;product&gt;&lt;product-manager&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21299" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21304" CreationDate="2017-03-22T07:12:14.867" Score="0" ViewCount="903" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have two tasks in ms project:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task A, start: today 03/22/2017&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Task B, predecessor: Task A FS+12eMonths&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Task A and B are both 0 days long and automatically planned.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Task B start/finish is calculated: Saturday, 03/17/2018  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question 1: Why?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Question 2: What field or project settings would I have to use to achieve the date which I would expect (03/22/2018), without setting it to a manual field? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regards&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20635" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T12:38:16.047" Title="MS Project - One year is calculated wrong" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21300" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-22T09:11:29.173" Score="1" ViewCount="118" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a weak spot in our flow. Whenever the time for acceptance testing comes, our client simply doesn't do it in time. There are 50 user stories in Jira waiting to be reviewed by him. The number is getting bigger with each iteration. Because of that bottleneck, it is very hard to work on new stories, as it often happens that he ask for a change request regarding already resolved user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21640" LastActivityDate="2017-03-29T05:57:25.587" Title="How do I get client to participate in acceptance testing?" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;testing&gt;&lt;acceptance-criteria&gt;&lt;negotiation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21301" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21306" CreationDate="2017-03-22T09:25:28.907" Score="2" ViewCount="95" Body="&lt;p&gt;My manager and I have been tasked to manage/incentize multiple IT teams in different geographical regions (with multiple time zones and different cultural understanding).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The teams are not experienced ones yet, lacking basic discipline on how to test, review and roll out.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was thinking of setting up a methodology like &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITIL&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ITIL&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;code&gt;Information Technology Infrastructure Library&lt;/code&gt; to lay the foundation for a mutual understanding, e.g you don't roll out without a test or without basic communication to the users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would ITIL be a decent framework for that? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If ITIL was not the 'thing', is there another methodology for that?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has anyone got any experiences with this and would be willing to share it, please? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13597" LastEditorUserId="13597" LastEditDate="2017-03-22T15:31:20.113" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T15:31:20.113" Title="setting ITIL as a common framework for multiple IT teams around the world" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;distributed-team&gt;&lt;multi-team&gt;&lt;customer-service&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21298" CreationDate="2017-03-22T10:37:29.000" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an excellent question and a refreshing change form the typical project management fodder we get here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a former coach for Lean Startup Machine and a previous winner of Lean Startup London so I can offer you some guidance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If customers do not click on your adverts then it is a target audience problem (Funnel Stage: Discovery) - find a new audience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If customers click on your advert but bounce from your landing page then it is a landing page issue (Funnel Stage: Consideration) - find a new landing page&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If customers click on your landing page but don't engage with you then it is a business/product trust issue (Funnel Stage: Conversion) - find a new way to engage with and activate customers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If none of these improves then pivot to a new product offering based on user feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Evaluating Your Results&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have correctly identified that there is a balance to be struck between optimising the landing page and optimising the value statement you are offering to potential customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some oustanding questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are you using the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.leanstartupmachine.com/validationboard/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lean Validation Board&lt;/a&gt;, the Business Canvas or some other quick prototyping board to crystallize your thinking?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What acquisition channels are you using?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are those channels optimised for conversion or are they landing on your page cold?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How are you collecting positive feedback / measuring success / activating customers?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Email sign-ups?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click through tracking on a Call To Action (CTA) button?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is your bounce rate from the landing page?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is your time on site per customer?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What user behaviour occurs on the landing page?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Evaluating the Funnel&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evaluating your startup value proposition varies depending on where you are in the sales funnel.  There is an excellent guide to building a conversion funnel using Google Analytics &lt;a href=&quot;https://moz.com/blog/building-your-marketing-funnel-with-google-analytics&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;https://blog.kissmetrics.com/conversion-funnel-survival-guide/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Survival Guide from Kissmetrics&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kjVc3.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kjVc3.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Define Your Target Customer&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way start-ups can start the process of identifying the target customer is through a qualitative process called a “day-in-the-life summary” for a potential customer. A day-in-the-life summary describes conditions before and after a target customer purchases your product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Before” describes the key issues/problems/pain faced by a possible end-user of your product. “After” focuses on the change in effectiveness of the end-user after purchasing and using your product. This change must affect the economic buyer’s main concern, which is normally associated with achieving one or more of the buyer’s strategic objectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This summary is also known as an application scenario. The outcome of an application scenario is a number of possible applications for specific niche market segments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Create Customer Profiles / Buyer Persona Maps&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find a &lt;a href=&quot;https://blog.kissmetrics.com/buyer-persona-map/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;detailed guide at Kissmetrics&lt;/a&gt;.  The key is to draw a picture of an individual that represents the type of person you are aiming at. If you take two very different types of prospect, you can see that they will have very different needs, wants, values and opinions. And they will respond quite differently depending on the marketing method you use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The very first step in your map is going to be the core information about your customer. Things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gender&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Age range&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Job title&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Job responsibilities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can likely get that much from the data stored in your CRM.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’d also recommend “humanizing” the persona with a name and image.&#xA;Doing so tends to bring out more of our emotional, empathetic side&#xA;rather than looking at the potential customer as a number to slot&#xA;somewhere into a sales funnel like a puzzle piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Segmenting Your Customer Base for Advertising&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am going to assume that you are generating traffic from Facebook but if you are using another paid marketing source then you can find an equivalent guide such this one &lt;a href=&quot;https://blog.bufferapp.com/facebook-ads-guide&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Complete, Always-Updated Guide to Facebook Advertising&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compartmentalizing your advertising campaign is critical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A/B Testing&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A/B testing (sometimes called split testing) is comparing two versions of a web page to see which one performs better. You compare two web pages by showing the two variants (let's call them A and B) to similar visitors at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A/B testing allows you to make more out of your existing traffic. While the cost of acquiring paid traffic can be huge, the cost of increasing your conversions is minimal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have segmented your potential customer base you should direct each segment to a different version of the landing page with different designs and value statements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will help you identify whether the value proposition needs improved, the website needs improved or your customer demographics need refined / further work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Pitfalls&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pivoting too quickly&lt;/strong&gt;. The startup ecosystem is awash with companies who lack conviction in their product and try to pivot continuously to a new business model (Quora is a prime example) without every truly maintaining conviction in the value of the service they are providing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Zombie Startup&lt;/strong&gt;.  A company unwilling to jettison it's core business model despite lack of sales, customer engagement or growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mistaking poor customer identification for poor value proposition&lt;/strong&gt;.  It's imperative thta you identify whether your business idea / revenue model is truly not scalable or simply whether you have not pitched to the right customer segment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Personal Advice&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SEO is not a great return on investment&lt;/strong&gt;.  Having your Landing Page indexed to a search engine will not help with user discovery and acquisition since you are driving them to your landing page using a Call to Action and a value hook.  You are not waiting on them organically discovering your product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make liberal use of forums / content aggregrators&lt;/strong&gt;.  Engage Reddit, HackerNews, Lobster and other technical forums frequented by your target demographic and ask for advice on your product offering.  Don't worry; no one will steal your idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Templates are your friend&lt;/strong&gt;.  You are in the business of getting shit done; not flexing your amazing design skills and hand-coding your perfect landing page.  If there is a template; take it.  If there is a plug in, use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Optimise for Mobile / Responsive&lt;/strong&gt;.  It is inconceivable that much of your traffic does not originate from mobile devices so make sure the landing page is converted for mobile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your most important metric is marketing cost&lt;/strong&gt;.  You want to validate your idea as cheaply as possibly so tracking your marketing budget and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/startup-killer/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;acquisition cost&lt;/a&gt; of every customer is extremely important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you are using Google Ad Words to drive traffic to your site, take a look at the following interactive spreadsheet. This example shows a cost per click of 50 cents, and the resulting website visitors converting to a trial at the rate of 5%. Those trials are then shown converting to paid customers at the rate of 10%. What the sheet shows is that each customer is costing you $100 in just lead generation expense. For many consumer facing web sites, it can be hard to get the consumer to pay more than $100 for the service. And this cost does not factor in the marketing staff, web site costs, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qxORE.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qxORE.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Good Luck!  I will def check out your landing page.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Results&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the page I see when I visit your landing page using Chrome  56.0.2924.87 on desktop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZZvJc.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZZvJc.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T10:50:08.717" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6659" CreationDate="2017-03-22T10:56:22.027" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did a research on reasons for stakeholders' indifference and non-cooperation in projects. It was from the perspective of a business analyst. The research was reviewed by peers at IIBA (International Institute of Business Analysis), and published on their website originally. I have republished it on my blog on LinkedIn: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/engaging-stakeholders-elicitation-collaboration-rahul-ajani&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/engaging-stakeholders-elicitation-collaboration-rahul-ajani&lt;/a&gt;. I hope you would enjoy reading it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27986" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T10:56:22.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21299" CreationDate="2017-03-22T12:38:16.047" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Microsoft seems to have hard-coded 1 emo = 30 edays.  There is no setting to achieve your expected date, which is based on the variable human interpretation of &quot;month.&quot;  For workarounds, I would definitely stay away from task mode (i.e. &quot;Manually-scheduled&quot;). You could play with task calendars and/or constraints to force the second task to the date you expect.  In the long run, users of CPM scheduling tools like MSP need to give up on such expectations altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T12:38:16.047" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21295" CreationDate="2017-03-22T13:47:55.937" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm usually in the opposite position - when developers want to do so much refactoring that it starts to encroach on delivering business value. That being said, refactoring is a process like any other, and I have had teams fearing process change. It's about convincing the team to come with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The link that you have pasted tells your team why refactoring is good in general, but it would be more helpful to be more specific. For your team, why is refactoring important? Is it about a complex code base that is difficult to extend? Does it not scale? Do features take too long? Is the ramp-up time for new developers too long? Any change to a process is supposed to fix something - so be clear about what you are trying to fix. By approaching it from fixing broken things you can also validate if there are other things apart from refactoring that should be introduced. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then when you have your team understanding what it is and why it's important, it becomes about how to actually get them to do it. First you will need to get rid of any roadblocks that stop them. That might mean allocating more time to building automated tests, or allocating more time for pair programming. Second, it's about checking that it's being done. When I introduce a coding standard change, I get one or two engineers to perform second-level code reviews across a random set of sprint work to see how many commits conform to the new standard. Then we discuss the findings in the retro so that we can talk about why the results looks a certain way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, refactoring is a process. Understand why you are implementing a new process. Help people get started. Talk about the results. Good luck :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9196" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T13:47:55.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21301" CreationDate="2017-03-22T15:20:14.230" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not all that familiar with the details of ITIL. When I've run across it, what I have usually found is the process was stagnating the origanization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would advise is flip things around, instead of laying in a large process (with all the documentation, training, ramp up, etc), start where you are and develop something from there. This falls under the loose concepts of Kaizen, start where you are, which comes from the Toyota Way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the outline I would recommend: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do absolutely nothing. You're new, you don't know how all these teams work today. Spend the first 90 days learning. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do a Gemba Walk (Google the term). It's another thing from the&#xA;Toyota Way concepts. Go to each location and observe. See how things&#xA;are running. See their challenges. Hear what they have to say.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do Value Steam Mapping: Identify the three most common things your&#xA;teams do or will do. Map out the timeline for getting from idea to&#xA;done. You are particularly looking for wait times, when you're&#xA;waiting on someone else and on &quot;throwback&quot; points where the project&#xA;can get thrown back to an earlier phase (QA, for example).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decide on your goals. Now you need to decide what you want your organization to be. Create goals based on these. These goals should be &quot;Why&quot; or &quot;What&quot;, not &quot;How&quot;. Enough guidance that the teams can then figure out the best way to get to those goals. Remember, goals need to be measurable, or you'll have confusion. &quot;Is fast&quot; is not a goal, &quot;reduce delivery time by 50%&quot; is a goal. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start. Just start. Don't create process, don't go into details. Just start. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inspect and Adapt. Now you start looking weekly or even daily at how things are going. Tweak things to work, document what works and move on. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also be prepared that different teams will end up with different &quot;How&quot; processes. If they are meeting the &quot;What&quot; goal and they've documented the working process, then that's fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T15:20:14.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21193" CreationDate="2017-03-22T20:48:00.907" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have several task types (in various workflows) and several of this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Software solutions always boil down to the people who need to enter or maintain data, timely and correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've managed document preparation process using excel, for 200-300 different documents. Good thing is, it's all there, you can easily get pivots, watch some priorities etc. bad thing is, excel sometimes crashes and sometimes people mistakenly overwrite/lose some records (fill down, copy paste, mis-delete etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind, excel can still be organized to effectively tackle the everyday problems. Instead of one huge excel, a few different excels for different flows can be used. A dashboard style excel can be a viewer of the data in those files. Especially for tracking some processes this can even help out people. Adding emails is possible in excel (either linked or embedded), I didn't use it myself but it's possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keeping status and Data (document pieces) are different things. So, basically you keep data at where it needs to be (in documents etc) and only include keywords (if necessary) in the status book keeping excel files.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a fan of JIRA, especially if it is already used by the group. Otherwise it's probably not worth the effort to set it up and try and see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Boards, as defined in the other answer, are also useful but 50 modules can be too much to keep on online or wood boards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the docs are managed at some product data management system, that system may already have/allow status reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16715" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T20:48:00.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21300" CreationDate="2017-03-22T20:52:15.050" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Ask whoever tested to write-up the steps for testing&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because this is new development, your external client will not know the exact steps for reproducing the use-case conditions. This is most likely slowing him down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We had this same problem. Our testers then wrote-up the exact steps to follow to test each story. This is not very difficult for the testers because they have gone through these steps themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the external client is not setting aside time for this, this won't solve that problem. If he is setting aside limited time, this way he will accomplish more during that time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T20:52:15.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21300" CreationDate="2017-03-22T22:23:22.777" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A viable strategy could be the following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, make him truly aware of the delay he's causing: you might produce a Cumulative Flow Diagram to point out the slowdown (quite easy given that you work with Jira).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, help him dispose the pending approvals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;as Ashok said, show him how to test the user stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;schedule a weekly UAT session (possibly attended by a team member who can support him) to fix the project workflow; after some sessions, you might update the Cumulative Flow Diagram to highlight that the bottleneck is being removed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27694" LastEditorUserId="27694" LastEditDate="2017-03-22T22:30:32.123" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T22:30:32.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21310" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-23T02:38:00.200" Score="1" ViewCount="143" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently trying to create some better systems for keeping on top of the projects which I need to manage. As part of this, I am attempting to draw up a list of core metrics that I think every project will have (so I can write a program to display data about each project). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that every project will be different, and each will have their own metrics, but surely each project will have some metrics which are always going to be the same as others. I'm trying to think more about high level stuff as oppose to individual tasks. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Outcomes - what is the outcome of this project. What will it look like when it is finished.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Goals/milestones - what are the goals or milestones of this project. This could potentially be the same as outcomes, but maybe more abstract. E.g. by the 1st of march, it should be in x state.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On track - is this project on track for completion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Budget - what is the budget for this project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe I'm trying to invent something of my own which isn't helpful, and I'd appreciate being told this if so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some similar questions on this site, but I'm not sure they really cover the metrics I have just outlined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/8723/project-metric-definitions&quot;&gt;Project metric definitions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/260/what-metrics-to-keep-through-out-the-life-of-the-project&quot;&gt;What metrics to keep through out the life of the project?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As another question, if this same question was asked on a 'departmental' (e.g. finance/HR) or 'organisational' (the whole company) level, what metrics would be good for tracking progress and keeping order?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20502" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.250" LastActivityDate="2017-10-11T16:19:44.453" Title="Recommendations for project core metrics" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;management&gt;&lt;product-manager&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16423" CreationDate="2017-03-23T08:52:21.330" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For anyone encountering this question, this is how I do it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Create an overall project file like allmyprojects.tjp&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Include all needed tji files with&#xA;&lt;em&gt;include &quot;path-to-tji&quot; {taskprefix sub1}&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;By specifying taskprefix you can have the tasks with the same ID in subprojects.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Schedule allmyprojects.tjp&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In allmyprojects.tjp you can specify reports just as in the normal tjp&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Caveats:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project duration in allmyprojects has to cover all subprojects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have overlapping bookings of a common resource in the subtasks,&#xA;scheduling will stop with an error message. So you yourself have to&#xA;take care that this does not happen, but the message tells you exactly where the conflict happens&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also, shared resources should have the same name in all projects. I have&#xA;common resource, holiday and report files for all projects that I just&#xA;include.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the subproject directories I also have a leave.tji file, where I specify leaves to other projects that I do not control.Of course, the scheduling of allprojects.tjp will look different from the individual ones as soon as they share resources and you may have to change the subprojects to get a schedule. But after all that is the reason to schedule all of them at once...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HTH   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27997" LastActivityDate="2017-03-23T08:52:21.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21290" CreationDate="2017-03-24T04:52:10.080" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some levels of Six Sigma:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Green belt - foundation level in Six sigma. I suppose you are taking first level of Six Sigma, so you are looking for Green belt certification.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Black belt&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Master black belt&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For each belt, all most all the Six sigma institute will provide you the 5-6 days classroom training and one written exam for certification. In 5-6 days training it is not possible to attain the perfection. As a result, you need to learn &amp;amp; prepare mostly by yourself. But when coming to class, &lt;strong&gt;try to learn with trainers who have real, practical experience in Six Sigma&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, here are some &lt;strong&gt;criteria to choose Institute&lt;/strong&gt; to take course: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The organization's background+ course curriculum and the capabilities for the course&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Faculty profile (&lt;strong&gt;VERY IMPORTANT&lt;/strong&gt; – I will explain below)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no point in learning a subject like Six Sigma from a person who doesn't have practical experience of implementation. Even from the very well-known service providers for Six Sigma training, some trainers are also in the &quot;learning mode&quot;. After all, these companies are also commercial organizations and they also need to train their own trainers. There is no harm in them doing this but all the time, this is done at the cost of the participants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The trainer is more important than the training company. Some criteria to choose a trainer:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Projects &amp;amp; Achievement. &lt;em&gt;If his projects are similar to yours, it’s good news.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Years of applying Six Sigma&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following are some famous Institutes that you should check out, together with price for Green belt:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://asq.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ASQ&lt;/a&gt; (Price : ASQ MEMBERS $288 | NON-MEMBERS $438 | RETAKES $238)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vskills.in/certification/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vskills&lt;/a&gt; (Govt Certification ) (Price : 4,500)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://home.kpmg.com/in/en/home/trainings/advisorytrainings/businessexcellencetrainings/sixsigmagreenbelttrainingprogram.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;KPMG&lt;/a&gt; (Price : 23,000). (KPMG provides training programs in Lean Six Sigma and recognized by 154 countries)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isid.ac.in/~sqc/gb.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Indian Statistical Institute&lt;/a&gt; (Price : 9,776 )&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.simplilearn.com/quality-management/lean-six-sigma-green-belt-training&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Simplilearn&lt;/a&gt; (Price : 12,999)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.getcertgo.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Getcertgo&lt;/a&gt;  (Price : 26,000)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.bsigroup.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BSI group&lt;/a&gt; (Price : 28,000)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;My last advice:&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Learning by doing is the best way of gaining/enhancing knowledge&lt;/strong&gt;. Merely completing the certification might not increase your career opportunities but the methodology will change the way you think and execute. It gives different perspective/view to the process you are working and instills quality mindset in you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21101" LastEditorUserId="21101" LastEditDate="2017-03-24T04:57:48.700" LastActivityDate="2017-03-24T04:57:48.700" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21290" CreationDate="2017-03-24T14:02:38.963" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the most part I don't feel like employers recognize one six sigma certification over another.  Most people who work in Quality Standards get certified through their employer and those employers usually bring in an outside firm anyway.  Half of those people aren't even sure who they got their certification through, they just say &quot;through work&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also a difference between Training and Certification. Thomas is spot-on about the training aspect.  Learning from someone who has actually performed six sigma projects is going to get you the best learning result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're just talking about the certification then you have a lot of options.  Of course &lt;a href=&quot;https://asq.org/cert/six-sigma-black-belt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ASQ&lt;/a&gt; is the certification everyone wants because they are the most recognizable, but it's also hard to get.  You can also go with companies like the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.msicertified.com/six-sigma.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Management and Strategy Institute&lt;/a&gt; or Lynda.com to get the certification directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also regarding your other comment about getting certified in-order.  I would recommend it.  Most people seem to say you don't need to get certified in all of the belts but my experience is that if you don't have the Green Belt it's not received well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28006" LastActivityDate="2017-03-24T14:02:38.963" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21314" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21315" CreationDate="2017-03-24T20:35:38.910" Score="4" ViewCount="482" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the beginning of the Sprint we assign various items to each developers. Some developers may work on more than one item at a time, however when they work on the item they typically &lt;code&gt;Start Progress&lt;/code&gt; which puts the item in the &lt;code&gt;In Progress&lt;/code&gt; state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the concept of Scrum or Kanban, does anyone know negative consequences of having more than one item in &lt;code&gt;In Progress&lt;/code&gt; state per developer? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13401" LastEditorUserId="27694" LastEditDate="2017-03-29T11:56:56.103" LastActivityDate="2017-03-29T11:56:56.103" Title="Is there any negative productivity impact on having more than one task in progress?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21314" CreationDate="2017-03-24T23:04:02.547" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having more than 1 item In Progress for a single person will &lt;em&gt;kill&lt;/em&gt; productivity. Multitasking is horrible for getting things done quickly and/or well. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/21286/agile-team-full-of-part-time-developers/21287#21287&quot;&gt;Agile team full of part time developers&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might seem like a good idea to pull in new work if something gets roadblocked, however this is, in essence, optimizing for utilization (making sure everyone always has work to do) rather than for flow (making sure lead time, the amount of time issues spend 'In Progress', is as low as possible). Which is not efficient. See the &lt;a href=&quot;https://dzone.com/articles/100-utilization-myth&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;100% Utilization Myth&lt;/a&gt; for more information. In this situation, it's better for the Team to focus on removing roadblocks as quickly as possible, rather than leaving multiple tasks partially-finished and bringing about inefficiencies from multi-tasking and busy dependencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also of note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the beginning of the Sprint we assign various JIRA items to each developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum works best as a &lt;em&gt;pull&lt;/em&gt; model, rather than as a push model. Meaning management (whether Scrum Master, Product Owner, or others) leave tasks in the 'TODO' column, and developers assign tasks to &lt;em&gt;themselves&lt;/em&gt; once they finish what they're currently working on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2017-03-24T23:39:13.433" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21107" CreationDate="2017-03-25T02:04:11.473" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For something like this where a large portfolio is being executed simultaneously, what is the strongest argument for use of software to track completion of activities in a complex environment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Risk management.&#xA;Every component of this portfolio has schedule risk (because everything has schedule risk). The cost of updating a paper schedule is much higher than the cost of updating the schedule in software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;he is arguing that the administrative overhead around tracking 1000+ activities outweighs the benefits gained. His thinking is that through good communication between trades and contractors any jobs that risk turning into critical path will be caught.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't really a software vs paper question, then. This is a &quot;track detailed progress against the schedule or don't track detailed progress against the schedule&quot; question. The paper is a tool to enforce the choice of not tracking progress against the schedule, because it would be almost impossible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So again, the best argument is risk management. Not tracking detailed progress against the schedule is a risk that escalates as the project proceeds. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder whether the software you are using would permit tracking at a less detailed level than scheduling. Could you track progress against only the rollups? It sounds as if that is what he really wants to do, but it has turned into a paper vs software argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your manager refuses to mitigate this risk by doing the detailed tracking, then push to mitigate the risk by building additional slack time into the schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2017-03-25T02:04:11.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21130" CreationDate="2017-03-25T19:38:39.390" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you mentioned, the 'out of the box' solution Jira offers is the 'Control chart'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The alternative for this would be to have &lt;a href=&quot;https://innovalog.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/JMCF/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;custom calculated fields&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2017-03-25T19:38:39.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21295" CreationDate="2017-03-26T21:39:34.517" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fear of refactoring implies unrealistic expectations in your work environment.  I would work to remove that fear first of all.  If you want an automated enforcement tool then you will probably find that a suite of unit tests, that reports code coverage, will be the most-recommended approach.  However, all that really enforces is that unit tests are being written; not real refactoring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have reusable code, I suggest packaging it as a nuget (or similar) package and re-using it.  Update your nuget and deploy to each service that uses it as part of your next update.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Packaging like this can encourage both comprehensive unit tests as well as logically factored components.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you can ask questions like &quot;why does this nuget have component-x dependencies&quot; and &quot;why didn't you use nuget-y that already has that functionality&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27826" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-03-26T22:04:11.487" LastActivityDate="2017-03-26T22:04:11.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21295" CreationDate="2017-03-27T07:57:47.310" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's good to care about the quality of your work, and refactoring (if well done) is a good way to provide quality but...&#xA;let's face some inconvenient truths:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Continuous refactoring is a learning process, simply deciding to do it it's not enough and if you're at the beginning you immediately realize it's going to take time before you get used to it (and you'll make several mistakes along the way)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Refactoring (often times) does not bring any immediately visible value to stakeholders. &quot;You know boss, I've spent the last half day trimming down that class and splitting its responsibilities to 3 different components&quot;, &quot;That's super cool, I'll give you a raise!&quot;, said no boss ever.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some developers fear their code will break if they change something, or worse they'll break other people's code, and will maybe have go through a lengthy and very painful process. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess you need to address those concerns first if you want to have your people on board. The way I usually do that is (in no particular order, and with a very opinionated pick-and-choose approach, depending on the context):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Start specific&lt;/strong&gt;: identify something that could be improved. It will probably have to be small and &quot;simple&quot; enough at the beginning. Sit together with one of your guys, don't ask to refactor but go through the process &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; him/her. Spend time discussing why option A is better than B, listen to their concerns. Do this as much as possible, especially at the beginning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Little refactoring is better than no refactoring&lt;/strong&gt;. Reassure people about the fact that they don't need to go through a lengthy and painful refactoring. Splitting one responsibility, introduce a seam, add a test. 30 mins of work per day sometimes are good enough to &quot;train&quot; people to do refactoring regularly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Show them what refactoring patterns they could use&lt;/strong&gt;. I.e. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Testing-Refactoring-Legacy-Code&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Testing-Refactoring-Legacy-Code&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Spread the word&lt;/strong&gt;: let the team have the chance to sit together to discuss problematic pieces of code, and how they were (or could be) refactored. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sell&lt;/strong&gt; (if needed) the approach to whoever manager/stakeholder could be concerned, and try to shield the team from whatever interference may happen. Too often those efforts are killed by managers who don't understand why somebody should change code that is working (&quot;I pay you to write good code. If you need to rewrite it then you did it wrong in the first place&quot;). My approach towards those situations is simply to include everything in the generic definition of &quot;development activities&quot;. That is refactoring effort is not made explicit unless necessary and it simply counts as &quot;development&quot; work, the same as automatic testing, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps, good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16362" LastActivityDate="2017-03-27T07:57:47.310" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21322" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-27T12:58:28.917" Score="5" ViewCount="646" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it worth working in 2-week sprints, and in a Scrum fashion for that matter, for a client migration project from a legacy system, to a system which is already live and with other clients (a white label software)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me to be somewhat futile to try to fit tasks into 2-week sprints, since whether they’re delivered or not, no one is going to complain (since the client is already live on a legacy software). The only effect will be to move the migration date (that has been set by a project manager) to an earlier or later date, which is reviewed every 2 weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think a Kanban style is more appropriate, as the workload is known (no surprises or areas to explore) and it’s going to take however long it’s going to take to deliver the software. There’s no added functionality as it would be with incremental releases in Scrum, because the client is still on the legacy system.&#xA;Can anyone provide any reasons for or against using Scrum for clients' migration from legacy products to new live products?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5522" LastEditorUserId="5522" LastEditDate="2017-04-04T13:37:46.897" LastActivityDate="2017-04-04T13:37:46.897" Title="Using Scrum for clients' migration on already live product" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21322" CreationDate="2017-03-27T13:47:25.773" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being an Agile evangelist, I can't believe I'm about to type this, but I'm wondering if &lt;em&gt;Agile itself&lt;/em&gt; is really needed for you. In my view, the main &lt;em&gt;purpose&lt;/em&gt; of Agile is to deal with changing requirements. If you know ahead of time that all your requirements are static, then there's... not much point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Scrum, certainly, this might be overkill. How would the Product Owner create/prioritize stories? How would you plan stories? How are you going to get a shippable product at the end of each Sprint? How would you &lt;em&gt;demo&lt;/em&gt; stories, every Sprint? To whom would you demo them? Unless you can answer all of those questions, consider the possibility that Scrum is unnecessary overhead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you might still want to go with Kanban, rather than forsaking Agile entirely. Its Work In Progress limits would still provide benefit, even in lieu of changing requirements. Likewise, if your team is used to Agile, may as well just stick with it; Kanban is pretty light, with very little overhead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-03-27T13:47:25.773" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21295" CreationDate="2017-03-27T14:35:56.417" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Refactoring is a skill, like any other skills you need to practise it often to learn it well and be confident with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what I would do to increase their refactoring skills:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Execute the 4 example TDD coding dojo sessions, which rely heavely on refactoring: &lt;a href=&quot;https://app.pluralsight.com/player?course=the-coding-dojo&amp;amp;author=emily-bache&amp;amp;name=the-coding-dojo-m4&amp;amp;clip=3&amp;amp;mode=live&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://app.pluralsight.com/player?course=the-coding-dojo&amp;amp;author=emily-bache&amp;amp;name=the-coding-dojo-m4&amp;amp;clip=3&amp;amp;mode=live&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let them read the &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0132350882&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Clean Code book&lt;/a&gt; or watch the &lt;a href=&quot;https://cleancoders.com/videos&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Clean code fundamental videos&lt;/a&gt; of Unclebob. He explains why readable code is so important for maintainability and extendability. The only way to keep your code on this level is by refactoring.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen teams gain enormous confidence in refactoring after slowly getting used to the refactoring skill in this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2017-03-27T14:35:56.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21325" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21330" CreationDate="2017-03-27T19:39:07.427" Score="3" ViewCount="143" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am really struggling with this and could use some help here.  Situation: new scope of work of application development that will be executed using Agile.  Contract has EV requirement.  I am not an Agile knowledgeable person at all but have a lot of experience with EV.  Reading some information about doing EV with Agile, it appears I need to know the total number of user stories in advance so I can assign a PV to represent the average user story.  However, my agile team is telling me that they won't know the total number of user stories in advance.  It can be 20; 50; 1,000!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is this supposed to work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-03-29T05:56:51.320" Title="Agile and Earned Value" Tags="&lt;evm&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21322" CreationDate="2017-03-27T21:02:24.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is certainly value in using the Scrum approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner would prioritise the backlog based on which features of the system are most valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Delivery would be frequent and of a working system (although not with all the features completed until the end).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The value that you get from this is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Transparency of progress. As the team delivers working features the client gains confidence.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The ability to give the client a schedule that is updated to match real world achieved progress.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The ability to do continuous testing in a production environment (including user acceptance testing to ensure the new system matches the legacy system). Helping to de-risk the delivery by avoiding leaving testing to the end of the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All the other benefits of Scrum: the self-organising team, retrospectives, cadance, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feature prioritisation moves the least valuable features to the end of the project, making it less critical.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2017-03-27T21:02:24.377" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21314" CreationDate="2017-03-28T00:27:36.300" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main downside of having more than one issue in progress is a loss of focus (which results in loss of quality and efficiency). Another problem is that when people start to claim 'their' stories, the sense of collective ownership and team responsibility can get lost. From there it's just a small step to a team where Person X always does task Y, and that's not what you'd want in Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general we strive for one story per person (and nobody is allowed to claim stories in ToDo until he can actually start), but there are circumstances when we allow (and even stimulate) someone to take up a few stories at the same time. Most of the time this happens when various stories share a common piece of code; from a technical perspective it makes sense to handle that part all at once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8935" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-03-28T01:31:05.907" LastActivityDate="2017-03-28T01:31:05.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21204" CreationDate="2017-03-28T00:45:59.383" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the QA's perspective it's very important that every bug gets recorded somewhere (either in the backlog or at a different place). While testing it's very impractical if for every finding you first need to analyze whether it's important enough or not - that slows down the testing process, and you risk missing essential bugs (because you confuse them with similar bugs with different underlying causes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our team we have had quite a few discussions with regards to this topic, and in the end this is what we decided on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure that it's clear for the testers what the stakeholders expect (requirements, things that are out of scope, level of quality, etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testing activities are guided by a product-risk assessment - the most important parts (high chance of failure, or high impact) get the most attention (this already filters out many non-essential bugs)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Every issue gets recorded while testing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After each significant testing effort, issues are clustered and analyzed. The testers prepare the meeting, the product owner decides on priority (blocking issues get the highest priority)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;High priority issues also get a high ranking on the backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Issues with priority low or lowest rarely get fixed individually; instead they are resolved when related work is done in the same area&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way the boundaries between the different priority classes are transparent for everyone (and can shift over time). Testers are able to log each and every bug, while the product owner hears a summary of their findings and can spend his time on the most important ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8935" LastActivityDate="2017-03-28T00:45:59.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21227" CreationDate="2017-03-28T01:03:45.343" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like a team problem (or maybe a scrum master's problem), not an individual developer's problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any developer's team there are differences between the team members. Some people get work done very fast, others take a bit more time. The overall team velocity should guide the estimates, not the individual developer's time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few countermeasures:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Value diversity. Make sure that everyone knows their own and their teammates strengths and weaknesses (both personality-wise and with regards to skills and knowledge). Sometimes for example the fastest developer tends to be a bit sloppy when not working on challenging problems; while the slower developer does not mind doing boring tedious tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Work on better estimates from the team as a whole, by using relative estimates instead of time estimates. (Story A was 5 story points - is story B smaller or larger?). This really increases accuracy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;More teamwork, more swarming, more pair programming, more collaboration. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8935" LastActivityDate="2017-03-28T01:03:45.343" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21325" CreationDate="2017-03-29T05:20:57.553" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; More reading on Wikipedia has thrown up this sentence that is so important I'm putting it at the top. Again, it supports my first impression of using agile and EV:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because EVM requires quantification of a project plan, it is often perceived to be inapplicable to discovery-driven or Agile software development projects&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Original post follows:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the fundamentals of agile is that you don't define the whole project at the start; you define and clarify it as you go along, which means the requirements are more up-to-date when they're needed and the project owner has the flexibility to change what is most beneficial to the project. Defining all the requirements up-front in such detail you can count every single story is &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; what agile tries to get us away from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've not calculated EV with agile before (because in and of itself it seems a little difficult to combine the two), but having a quick read on Wikipedia, it highlights what I thought:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Agile embraces change and therefore scope is considered variable (i.e. not fixed). Instead of using the INITIAL estimate in total number of Story Points, in Agile EVM calculations always the LATEST estimate in total number of Story Points is used to calculate CPI, SPI, EAC, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, as @aqwert mentioned above, you will most likely need to start listing your epics and themes, breaking them down as much as possible to get an &lt;em&gt;estimate&lt;/em&gt; of stories which you can then start using to calculate. This still feels wrong to me: defining as many items as you can up-front in agile. My gut feeling is that whoever wanted to use agile but also want up-to-date EV from the beginning of the project doesn't understand one of those two (in the nicest possible way).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last thing I'd say is that you won't know how much EV goes towards a story or story-point until you've been on the project for long enough to learn this. Each team has different velocities and effort for each story point, so you will need to update as you go and as you learn. Once you have a good understanding of velocity and correlation between stories and EV, the more accurate your future calculations will be in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck and thanks for all your input on this SE network; you insight has helped me a lot over the years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17177" LastEditorUserId="17177" LastEditDate="2017-03-29T05:56:51.320" LastActivityDate="2017-03-29T05:56:51.320" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21300" CreationDate="2017-03-29T05:57:25.587" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the question is why he's not reviewing the stories. I'd use the lean approach that Toyota developed: help the client eliminate his own bottleneck.&#xA;Possible reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;he doesn't have dedicated resources to the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;he doesn't know how to review the stories (as he's external and not involved in the development efforts, he might not know all the testing required)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;he doesn't understand he's a bottleneck&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;he doesn't understand he's losing money (in the end it goes to that) by not accepting the stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you can address the issue directly with the client. If not responsive escalate to management - use data to show how they hinder your work and potential losses because of the bottleneck. In both cases, offer your help (train, mentor, whatever is needed) to solve the problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26783" LastActivityDate="2017-03-29T05:57:25.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21314" CreationDate="2017-03-29T06:27:44.157" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's something wrong in the context of Scrum. No task is assigned to a single developer in Scrum. The Scrum guide states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They (&lt;em&gt;the development team members&lt;/em&gt;) are self-organizing. No one (not even the Scrum Master) tells the Development Team how to turn Product Backlog into Increments of potentially releasable functionality;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a pull way of work, not a push one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, and on to the specific question, it's a matter of making sure your board reflects in a consistent way the situation, so that you can take actions if something's not right. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since &quot;in progress&quot; means &quot;I'm actually working on...&quot;, and nobody is capable of working on 2 things at the same time, if you happen to have multiple tasks ongoing that means some tasks are waiting (for somebody to resume them, for external input, or are simply blocked)... so you either leave them in the &quot;to-do&quot; column, or you mark them as &quot;blocked&quot;, &quot;pending&quot;, &quot;waiting for&quot;, whatever state is suitable given your internal processes. This way the issue becomes visible and can be treated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16362" LastActivityDate="2017-03-29T06:27:44.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21286" CreationDate="2017-03-29T08:55:28.460" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, the key element is not the percentage of time involved, but rather the &lt;em&gt;stability&lt;/em&gt; of the team overall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We ran projects in which nobody in the team had 100% of his/her time committed to the project, and it worked.&#xA;It doesn't work if you have the same people available on a Monday in a week, then Wed/Thu in the following week, then not at all in another week and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aiming at a constant pace is key, and you simply can't do that if the situation keeps changing every time but, you definitely can, let's say, have a team in which everyone is involved 3 days a week, if they can work together, and focus on their sprint, and not being interrupted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.infoq.com/news/2011/10/sustainable-pace-how&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.infoq.com/news/2011/10/sustainable-pace-how&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allaboutagile.com/the-value-of-stable-teams/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.allaboutagile.com/the-value-of-stable-teams/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16362" LastActivityDate="2017-03-29T08:55:28.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21335" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-29T14:33:09.007" Score="3" ViewCount="290" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of our clients are abroad, so it's impossible to have a face-to-face conversation at the demo meeting. Are there any best practices on how to show progress and capabilities of the increment at the end of the iteration? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21640" LastActivityDate="2017-04-30T16:12:32.827" Title="How to organize effective iteration demo in outsource project?" Tags="&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;&lt;definition-of-done&gt;&lt;acceptance-criteria&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21335" CreationDate="2017-03-29T14:45:34.267" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can think of three quick possible solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Skype. Even if abroad, there's no reason they can't be involved in a demo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Actually send them your increment, along with your list of the changes you made, and have them demo it &lt;em&gt;themselves&lt;/em&gt; (sending any feedback back to you, of course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Have the client assign a local delegate, with the authority to make decisions on the client's behalf.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-03-29T14:45:34.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21335" CreationDate="2017-03-29T15:03:20.167" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;On our project, we hold virtual demos for clients at the end of releases all the time. We have a pretty standardized format for this, that usually works pretty well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, you want to make sure that everybody involved understands what technology you are using for the meeting itself. Are you using webex? Skype? Skype for business? Something else? Make sure the customer knows how to use the app. It sounds super basic, but you wouldn't believe how many issues come out of simple things like not knowing how to mute, how to un-mute, how to share a screen, etc. Communication is the lifeblood of any project and you NEED client feedback. You don't want barriers. I recommend doing a &quot;remote meetings for dummies&quot; email (obviously not titled that way!) where you literally spell out how the meeting app works and have screenshots of all the important controls you expect them to use. Never assume they know how to use something, especially with the proliferation of collaboration tools today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, an online demo has to be a little more structured than an in-person meeting. A good way to go is to literally call roll at the beginning of the meeting. Also, actively call out people for feedback that you are interested in hearing from. People jump in to a conversation FAR less over a remote connection. They are much more likely to be passive listeners who just watch your demo, stay on mute, and then hang up. You need feedback and interaction, so think about who you are most interested in hearing from about what and specifically ask them, also as I said, the roll call is not a bad idea just to be sure you have all the necessary stakeholders in the &quot;room&quot;. Nothing worse than a successful demo that later you hear someone was NOT present for and that someone is an important stakeholder who has reservations about something that was delivered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The presentation itself (in our case) tends to be a combination of powerpoint and in-app demo via screenshare. Important points on this: if you have to transition from one presenter to another, make sure both presenters are well versed in the sharing app and do a couple dry runs. It is easy to have bizarre mistakes like dropping the entire meeting with a dozen participants because somebody fat-fingered something while trying to share a screen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure that all of YOUR people are in one room. Use a desk phone for audio, it helps keep the presenting team on one page to be physically in one location together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have to set up data in a database, create a &quot;user&quot; or stage things in your app in order to demo, make sure you have that done well in advance. Also, as with any demo, always use a STABLE build, not the sandbox environment build. If your app relies on an internet connection to function properly or outside services of any kind, make sure that you create a backup powerpoint with a series of screenshots showing the demo just in case some connection flakes out in the middle of your demo. That way you just switch to a powerpoint and keep on presenting. Users generally understand and like screenshots if nothing else is available. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to keep the presentation down to one machine. As I said, transferring presenter status from one to another machine is a pain point that we have run into again and again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally; understand that not every software engineer is born to be on stage. What I mean by that is that our industry tends to have a lot of people with a certain set of skills and social skills are NOT among them. Your most brilliant developer is VERY likely to be one of your worst choices to actually give the presentation. Find the more outgoing, personable, and well spoken individual (also, obviously, in outsourcing situations, the one who speaks the same language as your customers!) Make sure that the presenter has a GOOD knowledge of the feature being demoed. Also, it always helps to have the original developer in the meeting, with the understanding that they aren't required to say anything unless they want to (which often relieves some stress). That way, if someone says something incorrect about how your app works, the developer can pipe up and correct them right then and there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, it boils down to planning, keeping things simple, and communicating in advance. &#xA;Oh, I almost forgot: Assign someone the task of CAPTURING the feedback being given by the customer! That is important. Make sure they try to document what is said, who said it, what slide or part of the live demo it was related to, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26292" LastActivityDate="2017-03-29T15:03:20.167" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21338" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-30T01:15:02.597" Score="3" ViewCount="288" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our company is starting to set quarterly goals at a more individual level.  For many engineers on the team, these goals will include product impact, automation and code coverage, new responsibilities, etc.  I am considering working with individuals to set quarterly story point goals as well.  On the surface, this makes sense: as a team quarter to quarter we're always trying to improve velocity, so it makes sense to attempt to improve velocity at an individual level as well.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have reservations (... as evidenced by the fact that I'm asking a question on Stack Exchange... :) ).  Completing stories is generally a team effort and relies on different roles within the team (engineering, design, QA, etc) coming together, so the goal isn't entirely within an individual's control.  I also wonder if setting these individual goals creates a bad culture within the team where people are optimizing for individual story point credit rather than total team accomplishments or velocity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have experience in this kind of set up, or have knowledge on whether it's a good idea or a bad idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27888" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-03-30T01:27:30.347" LastActivityDate="2017-03-30T17:26:15.017" Title="Are story points achieved a good individual quarterly goal?" Tags="&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;goals&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21227" CreationDate="2017-03-30T01:54:18.163" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stop relying on Expert Estimation and start relying on Forecasting. Expert estimation, whether done in hours or story points, should be your &lt;em&gt;last resort&lt;/em&gt; and only used when you have no historic data to base your estimates on. At least, according to Steve McConnel, author of &lt;em&gt;Software Estimation: Desmystifying the Black Art&lt;/em&gt;, and I tend to agree with him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People are &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;notoriously&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; bad at estimating. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.toddlittleweb.com/Papers/Agility,%20Uncertainty%20and%20Estimation.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The average estimate is 2x too small. In order to get 90% confidence you need to quadruple the estimate. Todd Little - Agility, Uncertainty, and Software Project Estimation&lt;/a&gt;. I've reproduced those numbers with actual data from a real team I worked on. Let me repeat, &lt;strong&gt;in order to get 90% confidence in an estimate, you have to&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;quadrupple&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;strong&gt;a developer's estimate&lt;/strong&gt; (mine included).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thankfully, there are good ways to project historic performance into the future. Personally, I prefer to average Cycle Time and extrapolate from there. I've found it gives accurate, but not precise, results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cycle Time is the amount of time from the time work is began until the work is finished. I measure this in increments no smaller than whole days. Find the average cycle time for this developer's work. Once you have this, you can reasonably estimate how much work they can actually do in an iteration. Let's say this dev averages 1 card every 4 days and you have a 2 week (10 day) sprint. That means that the dev will, &lt;em&gt;on average&lt;/em&gt;, complete 2.5 cards every sprint. The actual will likely be 2 or 3, but will be much more accurate than your current estimates, which are obviously off enough to cause both of you some serious distress. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, keep this average in mind during planning. Don't expect the dev to complete any more than their average. Stop planning for more work than your dev can accomplish. If the developer says he can do more than his average, gently remind him of what the numbers say and that you'd rather him be successful and finish early than commit to getting more done than the team can actually accomplish. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, if &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; plan for more work than your dev team can do, &lt;em&gt;that's your fault&lt;/em&gt;. You're the project manager, not them. Also keep in mind that these are averages. He won't complete &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; 2.5 cards every sprint. Sometimes more will get done, sometimes less, but &lt;em&gt;on average&lt;/em&gt; 2.5 cards will get done. It needs to be safe to fail. These are estimates, not commitments or deadlines. No amount of planning or estimation will be perfect. All estimates are wrong, some are useful. What matters is that working software is delivered on a frequent basis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastEditorUserId="21039" LastEditDate="2017-03-30T01:59:26.557" LastActivityDate="2017-03-30T01:59:26.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21340" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21362" CreationDate="2017-03-30T03:46:17.260" Score="3" ViewCount="143" Body="&lt;p&gt;I noticed (in our company) that Scrum Masters have one of the approaches:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start with metrics and work on improving the numbers: e.g. a new user story comes up during sprint, the team might reject it because it affects velocity. So the decision making process is centered around the metrics and how that action will influence the metrics and the team performance. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start with value and focus on increasing value: e.g. a new user story comes up into sprint, how important is that user story for the product (or valuable) =&gt; decision is entirely made based on this. Affected metrics are irrelevant, as long as you know why the delta happens.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start with process and focus on process improvement: e.g. a new user story comes up, putting it up during the sprint will disrupt the sprint and probably lower performance overall, so the team decides to leave it out (even if the story would increase the product value) and do it in the next sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My teams and I combine 2 &amp;amp; 3 (if value is high, we add it to the sprint). But I saw a focus on 1 a lot for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is: what do you focus on? How do you make decisions, and what do you thinks are the drawbacks of choosing only one or another?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26783" LastActivityDate="2017-03-31T18:37:49.493" Title="What is your focus: increasing metrics or improving processes?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5497" CreationDate="2017-03-30T03:53:46.670" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I suggest the team to do is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What is the objective of the original story? -&gt; a functional feature (no mention or performance). If that is delivered, the story is &lt;strong&gt;closed&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If performance was not considered (in the user story and the development of the story), then it's an &lt;strong&gt;enhancement&lt;/strong&gt; of the feature, so it becomes a new story: &quot;As a user, I'd like for the page to load in 5s&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I always like to &lt;strong&gt;create a new story&lt;/strong&gt; also to &lt;strong&gt;simplify the velocity&lt;/strong&gt; calculation. Why?&#xA;-I have a user story of 10 and I deliver it&#xA;-the feature is functional but performance is low (so let's say the team decides they delivered 7 points)&#xA;-then the remaining 3 points need to be transferred in the following sprint (re-opening the story, re-assessing and so on).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;^the process is too complex. To simplify, I just create a new story. &lt;strong&gt;It also affects the mood of the programmer&lt;/strong&gt; - because he sees his work done (even if deployed on staging only), checking up a story as done gives you a psychological boost. So you create the impression of moving forward overall. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR: create a new story, increasing performance is an enhancement of a feature, can be a new story entirely (as a user, I want my page to load in 4 seconds).&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26783" LastActivityDate="2017-03-30T03:53:46.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20752" CreationDate="2017-03-30T03:59:57.627" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kanban is a Lean tool, that's about it. There is no Kanban and Lean Kanban. The Kanban method was borrowed from Toyota's Production System (the creators of the Lean processes movement). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See below definition of Kanban:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Kanban is the Japanese word for “card,” “ticket,” or “sign” and is a tool for managing the flow and production of materials in a Toyota-style “pull” production system.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Excerpt From: by Jeffrey K. Liker. “The Toyota Way - 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer @Team LiB.” iBooks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So: Kanban + just in time + kaizen + a variety of other tools = Lean Methodology&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26783" LastActivityDate="2017-03-30T03:59:57.627" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10590" CreationDate="2017-03-30T04:25:49.553" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We broke the Scrum process a bit by keeping the titles (Senior, Mid, JR), but only for salary and compensation benchmark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To keep it on the fair side, we have a SR in each Scrum Team (also called technical lead, but not people lead, so not manager; they are supposed to lead the technical side of the product). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tools we use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;feedback 360 (in case the SR in a team is biased regarding the people in the team)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;feedback from the SRs on their technical capacity and from SM on their process knowledge (90% of the time the feedback 360 and the SR/SM feedback as similar; when discrepancies, we ask the CTO to find the facts)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;we also ask the entire team where they position themselves, where they want to be and what they need to get to the next level&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;with all the information above we have a meeting (the seniors in tech), we look at where they position themselves; if nobody disagrees and the feedback is on point, we position the dev on the level he chose for himself; if feedback or SRs say different we have a discussion, we motivate why we don't see the dev on that position and what they have to do to actually be there (with a timeline and a responsible mentor / guide for them). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The system is quite fair. The salary brackets for each level is open to everyone; where everyone is is also public to the entire team. So they kind of know their own salaries, it's all fully transparent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When we communicate the restuts to the devs, they have an occasion to contradict us (with facts). Never happened so far :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26783" LastActivityDate="2017-03-30T04:25:49.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4268" CreationDate="2017-03-30T04:29:54.030" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is how my team does it: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/21343/26783&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/21343/26783&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We broke the Scrum process a bit by keeping the titles (Senior (SR), Mid, Junior (JR)), but only for salary and compensation benchmark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To keep it on the fair side, we have a SR in each Scrum Team (also called technical lead, but not people lead, so not manager; they are supposed to lead the technical side of the product).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tools we use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;feedback 360 (in case the SR in a team is biased regarding the people&#xA;in the team) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;feedback from the SRs on their technical capacity and&#xA;from Scrummaster (SM) on their process knowledge (90% of the time the feedback 360 and the SR/SM feedback as similar; when discrepancies, we ask the CTO&#xA;to find the facts) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;we also ask the entire team where they position themselves, where they want to be and what they need to get to the next level with all the information above we have a meeting (the seniors in tech), we look at where they position themselves; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if nobody disagrees and the feedback is on point, we position the developer on&#xA;the level he chose for himself; if feedback or SRs say different we have a discussion, we motivate why we don't see the developer on that position and what they have to do to actually be there (with a timeline and a responsible mentor / guide for them).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The system is quite fair. The salary brackets for each level is open to everyone; where everyone is also public to the entire team. So they kind of know their own salaries, it's all fully transparent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When we communicate the results to the developers, they have an occasion to contradict us (with facts). Never happened so far :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26783" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2017-03-30T13:10:09.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21345" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21354" CreationDate="2017-03-30T04:31:29.920" Score="2" ViewCount="1248" Body="&lt;p&gt;In line with Scrum, a true self-managed team should be viewed and assessed only as a team. E.g. if the team is high performant, when we discuss about increasing salaries, each person in the team should get the same % increase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this is the ideal situation. In reality not everyone in the team contributes in the same way / same quality / same effort to the result. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you measure individual performance at all? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How would it work - if the case in your organisation - deciding salaries and rewards based on team performance? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anybody actually functions in the ideal situation above? Where salaries are equivalent and increases are team-based? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How we do currently: we review each dev in a review circle (made of Seniors) and salary and compensation is made based on the review. The team metrics doesn't affect in anyway this (and it seems to be quite unfair). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26783" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-07-08T12:13:51.287" LastActivityDate="2019-07-08T12:13:51.287" Title="Individual performance or team performance?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;performance&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17579" CreationDate="2017-03-30T04:54:41.213" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a SM for two teams. My approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I schedule all their events differently, so I can join &amp;amp; facilitate all of them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I've analysed the sprint size and we ended up with 1-week sprint and a 2-week sprint team. But of course, this needs to fit the team and their objective / product.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have a set schedule: check boards in the morning, approach the team with issues / questions immediately. Solve roadblocks immediately, never let them hanging.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I make sure I have catchups (1-to-1s) with each single person from each team. Mostly in case there is something happening in the team that I'm missing (team dynamics, process issues, individual dissatisfaction, conflicts, etc.) but also to make sure I know my teams well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm training the team to become facilitators and be able to do events without me. Documentation of our discussions is the key for me to be informed about everything.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We also agreed to have all communications on the team slack channel, no side / private discussions related to anything that happens in the team, product-related questions, process, issues, etc.  So, even if I miss a huddle, I can gauge what's happening by being present on the slack channel.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I push the team towards being self-sustained. I'm getting them proper Scrum training, using practices that puts the seniors into a more of a leading position (to take over the mentoring / coaching side of the SM, which I can't do for every single person in the team).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have them check and follow metrics. I have them analyse the metrics and identify the underlying cause themselves, so that I don't have to be the only person who raises a flag when stuff breaks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm close to the POs and make sure they take lead on their backlogs, develop a healthy relationship with the team (not to be seen as an outsider), and the communication between them and the team is flawless (this saves a LOT of time).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this is a summary of my actions to make sure I'm still doing my job, even if I'm spread too thin. 3 Teams is a bit much, I think you'll get burned out. Two is still manageable, if all things work well, it's quite ok and I have time to search for improvements and new experiments for the team. But there were sprints when we had issues and my attention was solely focused on one team and ignored the other. I basically spend more time on the team who's on fire (if the case).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26783" LastActivityDate="2017-03-30T04:54:41.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5585" CreationDate="2017-03-30T05:04:07.530" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I made it quite clear from the beginning that being a Scrum Master doesn't equal being the secretary / admin of the team. With this I avoided situations like, when for example there are no markers available, everyone would turn to me to put a ticket to Office Management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we agreed on is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User stories are written by the devs. There is no question there - the Scrum Master doesn't write any user story, it's not part of our job and it doesn't help the devs write good user stories. They own the Sprint Backlog afterall. I am there in case they need advice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Admin tasks are done through rotation by members of the team. The rule is though, whoever sees a needs first, tries to solve it. If I collect needs from 15 people, my job will be to run around and solve admin tasks, which is not the SM's job. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;HR stuff: hiring, induction etc. is owned by the devs - mostly Seniors. It's part of the job in the end.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anything else is discussed and agreed with the team, making sure that all roles present are considered equally (the SM role is not less important than the dev or the PO and so on).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We also have a general weekly meeting - with the entire team, all Scrum teams - where we discuss needs, challenges, issues. Here we appoint a person to solve many of the issues (rotation again). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum teams are self-managed. That means if a problem arises, it's not the SM who's meant to solve it, the SM has to help the team come up with a fair solution. If you jump in and do the work for them, solve anything that comes up, you're not a Scrum Master, but a Personal Assistant. And there is no learning for them there - to act like a true self-managed team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26783" LastActivityDate="2017-03-30T05:04:07.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9909" CreationDate="2017-03-30T05:10:18.223" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We had this situation; we also had a situation as a PO being also SM. They didn't help the teams at all and didn't bring any improvement. Nothing happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that the functional manager has an agenda. The PO has an agenda. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-The SM's agenda is different and has a different focus. Many time the SM has to argue with the functional manager to get benefits for the team or bring changes which are beneficial for the team (but maybe not so much for the manager). It's practically impossible for the functional manager to become objective enough to &quot;serve lead&quot; the team. Especially when they have performance targets to fulfil. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The SM is many times in conflict with the PO. The PO will push for estimations, more work done and will want sometimes to assign tasks to devs they know can perform best. The SM stays in the way of all that and sometimes protects the team in case the PO is abusive. So there is absolutely no way a PO can be objective enough to be a SM.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally the Scrum Master is only a Scrum Master. Can also be a Coach but that's about it. They can be in the leadership / executive board to influence decision making for the company, but always keeping the Servant Leader hat.The moment you give him/her a management function, you break the entire concept of Scrum Master, the way the team relates to the person, the way the person influences the team, the trust the team has in the person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR: no, a functional manager has a different agenda and is not objective to fulfil the role of Scrum Master, while the team doesn't trust or relates to a SM who's also the boss.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26783" LastActivityDate="2017-03-30T05:10:18.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15744" CreationDate="2017-03-30T05:12:21.480" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the SM should be in two teams:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;if there's a COO / Operations Management team, they should be there (they can also help the rest of the company on their process with agile tools and methods)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;if Tech is sort of an independent department, the SM should be part of the management / leadership of the tech team. They have the biggest knowledge of the team and need to know what the leaders are up to to represent the interests of the teams. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26783" LastActivityDate="2017-03-30T05:12:21.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21338" CreationDate="2017-03-30T13:51:59.210" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say no and I would recommend against using them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can cause a discrepancies in story points # for individual devs in a team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Someone works mostly on bugs/spikes, so no story points for them. This does not mean they don't perform.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some devs works more than others&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some devs are lazy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the above are issues in the team that should be adressed. So basically a discrepancy of story points per individual will show you if there are issues with &lt;strong&gt;how&lt;/strong&gt; the team works, which you will try to solve. So ideally the discrepancies disappear in a few months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How will this help individual performance? The devs would chase the big stories, they will avoid bugs / spikes, no matter if needed or not, not to mention that the relationships within the teams are affected. I don't think this team will work cohesively with the focus on reaching the sprint goal, as they will have to focus on gaining points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have an idea of replacement: how about # code reviews? This shows the person is focused on quality, stories are delivered faster (we used to have a lot of stories in &quot;waiting for review&quot; state), and if people fight to do more code review it's just much better for the team overall. Feels like healthy competition and it's win-win for devs - team and the product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26783" LastActivityDate="2017-03-30T13:51:59.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21338" CreationDate="2017-03-30T15:00:29.150" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question already contains a lot of answers :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, I have reservations (... as evidenced by the fact that I'm asking a question on Stack Exchange... :) ). Completing stories is generally a team effort and relies on different roles within the team (engineering, design, QA, etc) coming together, so the goal isn't entirely within an individual's control. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, and that's for a reason, you want people to work together towards a common, shared and valuable goal, not an individual goal that trumps the common one (being able to produce x story points per quarter).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I also wonder if setting these individual goals creates a bad culture&#xA;  within the team where people are optimizing for individual story point&#xA;  credit rather than total team accomplishments or velocity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yup, that might well be the case. When forced to do so, people choose themselves and their interest over the others... there's no point in helping my colleagues if this stifles my goal of reaching x story points/quarter. Since anyone will be evaluated (and maybe rewarded?) against &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; story points, &lt;em&gt;my&lt;/em&gt; story points obviously come first ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's another interesting remark in your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;as a team quarter to quarter we're always trying to improve velocity, so it makes sense to attempt to improve velocity at an individual level as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just make sure that velocity is treated for what it is: a &lt;em&gt;meta information&lt;/em&gt;, that is an indicator that helps you understanding if your team is performing (as in the &lt;em&gt;forming, storming, norming, performing&lt;/em&gt; concept), and not a goal in itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You surely do not want your team to game estimates or apply whatever other technique to show that velocity is increasing for the sake of it. In the end what really matters is the value your team is capable of delivering at the end of each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16362" LastActivityDate="2017-03-30T15:00:29.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21338" CreationDate="2017-03-30T17:26:15.017" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't specifically mention Agile, but there are hints of it in there.  Even if that is not the operational mode, the following points are still applicable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the benefits of properly embracing and executing the Agile philosophy is truly collaborative teams, not a group of individuals assigned to work &quot;together&quot; (i.e. answer each others' questions) under a single manager.  The team works toward creating quality, valuable products.  Framing thins on individuals can be an impediment to team development and maturation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The majority of the goals need to be team oriented in order to facilitate the team concept.  These are generally manifested in Sprint Goals.  Limit scope and time to ensure quality and reduce risk.  Focus on the team's short term mission.  Creating and attempting to adhere to longer range planning will lead to disappointment. (see history)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any individual goals need to be tailored to that person and not be based in what the team accomplishes.  For example, achieving X story points is bad as an individual goal; it can also be bad as a long term team goal.  (It also goes against the &quot;maintain a constant pace&quot; principle.)  Instead individual goals should focus on items such as skill or education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity is not something that needs to be continuously improved. (again see &quot;maintain a constant pace&quot;)  It is one tool option for forecasting the possible completion of future work.  It is not a measure of productivity. (see &quot;Working software is the primary measure of progress.&quot;)  Is creating pressure to essentially work faster/harder beneficial for results?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tldr; Base individual goals on the individual, not on the team.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2017-03-30T17:26:15.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4268" CreationDate="2017-03-30T17:28:57.723" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't specifically mention Agile, but there are hints of it in there.  Even if that is not the operational mode, the following points are still applicable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the benefits of properly embracing and executing the Agile philosophy is truly collaborative teams, not a group of individuals assigned to work &quot;together&quot; (i.e. answer each others' questions) under a single manager.  The team works toward creating quality, valuable products.  Framing thins on individuals can be an impediment to team development and maturation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The majority of the goals need to be team oriented in order to facilitate the team concept.  These are generally manifested in Sprint Goals.  Limit scope and time to ensure quality and reduce risk.  Focus on the team's short term mission.  Creating and attempting to adhere to longer range planning will lead to disappointment. (see history)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any individual goals need to be tailored to that person and not be based in what the team accomplishes.  For example, achieving X story points is bad as an individual goal; it can also be bad as a long term team goal.  (It also goes against the &quot;maintain a constant pace&quot; principle.)  Instead individual goals should focus on items such as skill or education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity is not something that needs to be continuously improved. (again see &quot;maintain a constant pace&quot;)  It is one tool option for forecasting the possible completion of future work.  It is not a measure of productivity. (see &quot;Working software is the primary measure of progress.&quot;)  Is creating pressure to essentially work faster/harder beneficial for results?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tldr; Base individual goals on the individual, not on the team.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2017-03-30T17:28:57.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21345" CreationDate="2017-03-30T17:51:32.167" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the benefits of properly embracing and executing the Agile philosophy is truly collaborative teams, not a group of individuals assigned to work &quot;together&quot; (i.e. answer each others' questions) under a single manager.  The team works toward creating quality, valuable products.  Framing things on individuals can be an impediment to team development and maturation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The majority of the goals need to be team oriented in order to facilitate the team concept.  These are generally manifested in Sprint Goals.  Limit scope and time to ensure quality and reduce risk.  Focus on the team's short term mission.  Creating and attempting to adhere to longer range planning will lead to disappointment. (see history)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any individual goals need to be tailored to that person and not be based in what the team accomplishes.  For example, achieving X story points is bad as an individual goal; it can also be bad as a long term team goal.  (It also goes against the &quot;maintain a constant pace&quot; principle.)  Instead individual goals should focus on items such as skill or education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Scrum framework specifically, both the Development Team and Scrum team are to be self-organizing.  Allow them to determine and address how each member contributes.  This may not come easily at first, but once the team begins to perform together, they will be able to self-manage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bonuses and base pay increases should be based primarily on the team (see &quot;Working software is the primary measure of progress.&quot;) with a splash of the individual improvement goals.  Do not create a sub-team for making such decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, you need to point me to where &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; declares your first statement and the following ergo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2017-03-30T17:51:32.167" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21340" CreationDate="2017-03-30T18:22:53.550" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a great question as it is not an uncommon concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are metrics?  A way to measure something.  Of course they need to be valuable; if not, stop collecting them.  If metrics are the basis of team decisions, then there is an opportunity for improvement.  That is a red flag that priorities are not where they need to be for the business and/or the team.  Remember the manifesto: &quot;Working software is the primary measure of progress.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is a Sprint?  A time-boxed event to create focus and limit risk.  If new work is being interjected (or even considered for injection) especially regularly, then there are concerns.  How does the Development Team focus on the forecast and Sprint Goal from the Sprint Planning event?  How does that affect risk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; say about modifying the Sprint Backlog during the Sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No changes are made that would endanger the Sprint Goal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quality goals do not decrease&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scope may be clarified and re-negotiated between the Product Owner and Development Team as more is learned&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, once the Product Backlog is set at Sprint Planning, items should only be added or removed if they pertain to the Sprint Goal and do not affect the quality of the Increment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If something is truly that critical that it warrants changing the plan, then there are factors to be considered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has the item been refined and is it understood? Can work being immediately?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does inclusion affect the current items? Are in progress items abandoned or completed with not yet started items being dropped?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there time and are there resources in the Sprint to complete the new item?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the effect of not including it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the impact on the Development Team and Scrum Team?  It is very disruptive to break (especially frequently) the Scrum framework pattern of events.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since each Sprint is less than one month in length, there is generally not a high loss of value for making it the highest item on the Product Backlog for inclusion in the next Sprint.  Perhaps there is more refinement needed in order for it to be Ready, so be sure to factor that into adjusting the current Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is the only one who can cancel a Sprint.  The Scrum Team is to be self-organizing, so have a conversation.  Understand all of the risks to both the current Sprint items and the new item.  Disruptions affect the product and the individuals. (see &quot;Agile processes promote sustainable development.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More generally, regarding the post title: Improvement (product, learning, processes) is more important than metrics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2017-03-30T18:22:53.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21345" CreationDate="2017-03-30T18:50:33.783" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe this may be the point where you have to make the distinction between self-organized and managed. In my organization the contributions of the individual to the team is as much of concern to management of the organization as it is to the members of the team. We have to make cultural assessments not just on working with the team but also with how the person works with the company. Although I do not use individual contribution metrics as a primary source of evaluation, I will look at an individual's contribution to see if they are aberrant before talking with teammates and other management when doing evaluations. Metrics can show an area of concern, such as a training need, or area excellence, such as providing an outlying level of contribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our organization believes that teams are made of individuals with individual strengths and weaknesses. When doing evaluations for something as individual as compensation we believe that the individual is the important focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, our organization does subscribe to Agile philosophies and methods, so we do look at the team as a whole when looking to make special awards. It is when we reward a group that they are all treated as equal parts of the whole team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This philosophy is founded on the belief that to provide the best support to self-organizing teams, management has to understand the people in them. It's not something covered in The Scrum Guide, but it is covered in many management books, and we have to remember that teams work for a company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7689" LastActivityDate="2017-03-30T18:50:33.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21358" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-30T20:31:08.520" Score="4" ViewCount="1275" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a company, we're trying to push more quarterly &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OKR&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;OKR's&lt;/a&gt; into the individual level.  We've had success with quarterly goals at the team level (IE code coverage, # of successful releases, up time, % crash free users, etc), and we have long term professional individual goals for career growth.  However, we're new to pushing goals down to the individual quarter to quarter.  What are the metrics you use to track engineers growth and achievement quarter to quarter?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before going any further, I should recognize some of the similar questions that have been asked on this topic, and my agreement with the negative answers - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I whole-heartedly agree that tracking lines of code is a horrible,&#xA;terrible metric.  There's probably a 100 reasons for this, a few of them included here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8970/27888&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8970/27888&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I also agree that attempting to track bugs written / solved / etc. is an anti pattern.  Good answer here that I agree with: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/5290/27888&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/5290/27888&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I asked in a different question about tracking story points achieved per engineer.  I'm still mixed on these answers, but worth calling out the conversation exists: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/21338/are-story-points-achieved-a-good-individual-quarterly-goal&quot;&gt;Are story points achieved a good individual quarterly goal?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So given all the things that are &lt;em&gt;bad&lt;/em&gt; ideas for showing / tracking individual achievement and growth quarter to quarter, what are the &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; ways to do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27888" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:30.013" LastActivityDate="2017-09-27T22:50:09.730" Title="What KPI's or OKR's do you use for individual software engineers?" Tags="&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;goals&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21345" CreationDate="2017-03-30T22:18:00.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the agile teams are never going to change then rewarding them by team makes sense, but it seems more likely that in your situation there are enough people &amp;amp; teams for movement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that case it is essential that you identify high, medium &amp;amp; low team performers within those teams. This means that when teams are reorganized there is an opportunity to push developers who help make teams perform well into situations where they can cause best effect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In development the high performers should be paid more &amp;amp; then stretched by being pushed out of their comfort zone so that they can help bring others along. So that in the end everyone is improved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a high performer seems to be consistently in low performing teams then there is a problem with how performance is measured. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a high performer who consistently raises the game for the team they are in should be rewarded handsomely. The first indicator of personal performance should be team performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="693" LastActivityDate="2017-03-30T22:18:00.880" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21358" CreationDate="2017-03-30T22:52:22.340" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL; DR- Tie individual KPIs/OKRs to developmental goals unrelated to the product/project they are working on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is based on a successful implementation one of my own agile mentors did and I hope to do someday with one of my clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They overhauled the entire HR review process and put in place a 50/50 model. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first 50% of your review is based on your team. If your team scored a 36, you get a 36. If your team scored a 2, you got a 2. Teams were measured on the delivery of value to the customer. This is a whole other answer and I've got some blogs and other writing I could share. Short form is, make sure the teams are measured on metrics they can't easily game and choose more than one so you can see if a metric is being gamed. For example, Jeff Sutherland recommends Cycle Time, Escaped Defects and Team Happiness Metric. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second 50% of your review is based on developmental, learning or growth based goals. Learning a new language, learning a new process, speaking at a conference, and so on. The key here is the individual goals are about making them a better employee, not if they shipped 1000 lines of code. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two scores are put together to form your total review. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to this is it prevents teams from falling into conflict over who gets credit for work done. The whole team is measured equally. It also helps with self-organization as it is in the team's best interest to help the team member who is falling behind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="147" LastEditDate="2017-09-27T22:50:09.730" LastActivityDate="2017-09-27T22:50:09.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21340" CreationDate="2017-03-31T10:53:27.047" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll answer this more generally because I am not an Agile guy.  You are hitting on a systemic issue with the concepts of metrics and that is you can end up rewarding and promoting the wrong behavior while extinguishing the desired behavior.  Our culture, at least in the US, is very &quot;results oriented&quot;.  When you have this onlyresultsmatter,whatyoutriedtodoisirrelevant mentality, then you end up with results type metrics and the behaviors that get you there are what will prevail, and the risk could be behavior that you described or even worse such as something illegal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my view, it is very myopic to create your metrics like this.  That's not to say that some results type metrics should exist but I think there should be other metrics that are tried to the behavior, too.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my view, process and value are linked.  So if your approach to process is one of continuous improvement, constant leaning, etc., then I think value is maximized for the product being produced for the customer.  So to answer you question, my focus would be a combination of your 2 and 3, maybe with more focus on 3 first with the assumption that value follows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-03-31T10:53:27.047" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21363" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21378" CreationDate="2017-03-31T11:51:59.607" Score="0" ViewCount="81" Body="&lt;p&gt;On MS Project, how can I set a calendar with local holiday/day off for a specifics resources located in different countries, for example, Australia and Ireland?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23293" LastActivityDate="2017-04-02T18:52:41.960" Title="MS Project - How to use global calendar to each human resource?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21364" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-31T16:31:37.763" Score="0" ViewCount="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;The company wants us to report the duration of the project in months. Based on how you calculate it, the duration can differ drastically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a simple example in which the project starts on 1/1/2017 and ends on 1/1/2021.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is easy to see how the duration is 4 years = 48 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are 1461 days in this period which is 48.7 months!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an accepted best practice on which value to report?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27668" LastActivityDate="2017-04-02T09:14:09.830" Title="Duration of a project different based on calculation?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21364" CreationDate="2017-03-31T17:29:27.500" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask, then document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If 'the company' wants it reported in months, then ask 'the company' &lt;em&gt;what that means.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then document it as a standard. This is done both so you don't have to &lt;em&gt;keep&lt;/em&gt; asking, and so that if 'the company' later complains, you can point to the documentation (which contains both the date and the name of who made the decision).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-03-31T17:29:27.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21364" CreationDate="2017-03-31T18:31:03.263" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems you have answered your own question. If the start and end dates of a project are pre-determined, then you have your answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider helping your organization by determining the &lt;strong&gt;end result&lt;/strong&gt; of the effort and help them track progress towards that end result. What is the point of this project? Breakdown the steps towards that end goal and show incremental progress toward it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your product has shifting requirements and/or shifting technology concerns then please consider an incremental approach. Instead of predicting an end result and a project deadline, consider that shifting concerns will invalidate any long-term prediction fairly quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, do the work of defining small bits of valuable delivery that you can make to the client. Added together, all these pieces would accomplish the overall goal of the project. Use frequent inspections of progress to adapt your approach to accomplishing each additional increment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21576" LastActivityDate="2017-03-31T18:31:03.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21340" CreationDate="2017-03-31T18:37:49.493" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master my focus is on helping the team to improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every team is different. Some like to focus on metrics. Others are passionate about business value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My job is to help them to achieve success with whatever tools or approach they choose. I may also offer them alternatives where appropriate, but it always comes back to the team's decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2017-03-31T18:37:49.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6223" CreationDate="2017-03-31T19:05:58.360" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a newly appointed SM, I have been put on a very lonely island within my Waterfall-based company.  While my team has been given some autonomy, none of the supporting departments have aligned to Agile (or Scrum Agile).  The following article from the Scrum Alliance site was helpful to me, while trying to align the newly imposed &amp;quot;SMART&amp;quot; goals with my new Scrum Agile role as SM.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20130822223446/http://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2013/july/scrum-master-s-performance-and-development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum master's performance and development&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28083" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-30T19:52:25.563" LastActivityDate="2020-06-30T19:52:25.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21369" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-03-31T22:09:29.453" Score="1" ViewCount="143" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a PMO of three project managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a book, a course, a blog or anything like that on the topic of managing project managers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried Quora earlier, and the main line of the answers was &quot;Project managers should manage themselves&quot;. That's true, yet I guess we can help them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, double checking projects' quality standards, incoming and outgoing payment schedule, checking that all the documents are in the place, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For now, we will go on with building our own practices, but is there a guide or a list of best practices?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26182" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-04-01T00:15:42.500" LastActivityDate="2017-04-06T05:32:14.230" Title="How to manage PMO?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21369" CreationDate="2017-03-31T23:54:23.823" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you want to manage the people or the process? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to manage the people, then The Effective Manager, by Mark Horstman is my recommendation. He also has a free podcast series with the same content at ManagerTools.com. Project Managers are no different than any other knowledge workers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to manage the process, you have to decide what kind of PMO you have first. Governance, Pool of PMs to loan out, something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Responding to the comments: If your PMO is a pool of PMs then the key is to focus on the basic blocking and tackling skills. There is no one process that is going to work with every part of a company, no matter how a company culture may want to try. In a lot of ways you're a group of internal consultants. An article I wrote on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.agileconnection.com/article/agile-cookbook-recipes-enterprise-agile-transformations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Coaching&lt;/a&gt; might be of some use for inspiration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The core concept is to focus on your core skills and how you engage with your new project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="147" LastEditDate="2017-04-05T04:44:28.100" LastActivityDate="2017-04-05T04:44:28.100" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21345" CreationDate="2017-04-01T12:34:58.763" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Individual performance should be recognised - otherwise high performing individuals may become demoralised and seek alternative employment. But recognition comes in many shapes and sizes, not just financial - so if your firm doesn't allow individual fiscal recompense, a simple verbal &quot;well done&quot; or &quot;thank you&quot; on a regular basis goes a long way to make up for it. Especially when done in public, or if followed up by an email too. Giving kudos and professional respect for someone's efforts massively boosts one's ego, and if you chat to the employee and explain the fiscal constraints you'll earn that person's respect, so it's a win-win all round.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is all in addition to recognising team performance too - otherwise the entire team may want to leave. Praise the team, whether following agile / scrum or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avoid the scenario whereby the team or individuals in it can say &quot;I didn't even get a 'thank you' and that costs nothing&quot; at all costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28089" LastActivityDate="2017-04-01T12:34:58.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21372" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21385" CreationDate="2017-04-02T01:00:55.810" Score="5" ViewCount="192" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a PM for a large matrix enterprise organization that has internal development resources as well as contracted consulting groups. Depending on the project we may need to engage an application team that is one of the consultant groups. Each department in the organization is allocated project budgets so that they can pay hours to other departments resources. Usually this means collecting estimations from the project teams and then budgeting them hours for development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have noticed a trend during our projects that the consultants seem to always wait until the last possible moment to build, test, and deliver the product. Many times issues are found very late and thus require additional hours from our budget to resolve, along with forcing timelines to slip. For example in the current project the consultants had said it would take 3 weeks for development but every time I check in on them they then bring up issues (if I didn't ask I wouldn't know about it), and ultimately they are already 2 weeks behind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know if there are any strategies either in the day-to-day management of these teams or perhaps some other method to ensure early or on-time delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not have the power to turn the team into an agile team, or anything as dramatic as that. Is there a way to add accountability to timelines since they report to a functional manager?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8716" LastEditorUserId="8716" LastEditDate="2017-04-02T19:43:40.487" LastActivityDate="2017-04-07T07:07:42.450" Title="How to manage consulting resources to deliver ahead of delivery dates?" Tags="&lt;schedule-risk&gt;&lt;contracts&gt;&lt;fixed-price&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21372" CreationDate="2017-04-02T01:08:52.230" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like working in a more Agile-structured way would be beneficial. If you require being able to see incremental versions of the software every so often (say, every two weeks), then you will not only be able to provide early feedback, this will also force issues into the open much earlier, as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-04-02T01:08:52.230" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21374" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-02T06:57:14.210" Score="3" ViewCount="111" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm required to research an industry engineering project and analyse the way the project was managed over the project life cycle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a resource where you can access real industry project's documentation involving the management of the project. such as projects plans, quality control docs, work breakdown structures, risk analysis etc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28092" LastActivityDate="2017-08-03T13:32:22.450" Title="Where can I find management documentation of industry projects?" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2017-08-04T10:35:52.430" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21375" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-02T07:28:35.830" Score="4" ViewCount="950" Body="&lt;p&gt;Situation: mobile team working with Scrumban on an app. Other products developed in the company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lead (who works on more teams), redistributed resources in the team without informing any of the POs. He decided our processes are stupid, planning and retrospective are a waste of time, as he knows best what he needs to do and doesn't need anyone to tell him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our teams are self managed, but he takes more of a managerial role. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CEO ok to give him more decision making power, but he doesn't know all the facts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can see there negative impact of allowing him complete freedom: no prioritisation company-level, no sync with strategy, team ran by a manager who is sole decision maker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question: what would be the consequences of having such a lead in the team? Negative / positive if the case. Trying to make my case for the meeting with CEO. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26783" LastActivityDate="2017-04-22T23:33:25.453" Title="How do you handle a tech lead that takes over PO/PM role? (Unwanted)" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;technical-leader&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21364" CreationDate="2017-04-02T09:14:09.830" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your calculation assumes that all months average exactly 30 days in length. This is not the case!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the example given, this issue is probably not that the calculation throws up a discrepancy of about 1.6% between two different ways of calculating the  difference between dates: my concern is that you seem to be saying that there is a hard stop to the project in 4 years time. How have you reached that conclusion? It sounds too like you have based this on an assumption rather than knowing what the deliverables are and how they all fit together into a planned set of activities and actions - unless the project is something to do with something that is happening on that specific date. In which case, the issue is not the number of months, but rather how many resources you may need to deploy (and hence the costs you need to incur) to deliver on that date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, however, the discussion is about payment for the work, then it is down to clarification of the commercial arrangements. If you are paid by the month, regardless of length, then February (28 days) is a good month, and March is less good (31 days). If you are paid by the day, then the number of months doesn't matter. Either way, get it agreed and documented, and move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="301" LastActivityDate="2017-04-02T09:14:09.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21363" CreationDate="2017-04-02T18:52:41.960" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Each resource has his/her own calendar that is, in turn, based upon a base calendar. Create a new calendar (Project &gt; Change Working Time, New) for each different company.  Enter the holidays.  Then when you create the resources, select the correct calendar from the Base Calendar drop down in the Resource Sheet view.  By creating a calendar for the different national or regional holidays, you can then apply that calendar to any number of resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastActivityDate="2017-04-02T18:52:41.960" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21375" CreationDate="2017-04-02T21:57:24.787" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL;DR You will end up with a product that does not meet your business need, unhappy employees, and self-organising teams that are dead on arrial. Innovation will also suffer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Impact on Product&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the PO has responsibility not just for making a domain decision. They are responsable and accountable for the contents of the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That has to include not just your business needs but market trends and the commercial needs of your customers. Does your Dev Lead have deep financial and market knowledge? Is he making priority decisions on what the next most important thing to build is based on the whole picture?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That he is undercutting existing PO's shows a significant lack of respect for others in the organisation. That the CEO is supporting him, probably because of his magical technical prowess, shows him to be weak and have a significant lack of understanding of the software development process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are building software products as an organisation it's your CEO's job to understand this, if you just build software to help you ... We'll... It still is...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Impact on self-organisation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your employees and people thrive in the knowledge based world on three things; autonomy, mastery, &amp;amp; purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lead developer is undermining the moral and well-being of the organisation by putting this at risk. He has removed autonomy by making decisions on how things are to be done, this undermines mastery as the developers dont own the results. You may save mastery if the engineers are allowed to build good product, but I bet that's difficult in that culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do your engineers feel that they are contributing to the overall wellbeing of the company?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Impact on empiricism&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of the Scrum events are there to implement empiricism. Without empiricism we are still following a plan driven approach which we know is not effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint Planning event allows you to inspect the backlog and adapt the most effective Sprint Plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint Retrospective allows you to inspect the happenings of the Sprint itself and adapt the way you do things. This also affects self-organisation as it is owned by the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Removing these two things removes 2 of the 5 key inspect and adapt points in Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without executive level commitment for agility and Scrum any digital transformation is doomed to failure. You need to get your CEO to understand the ramifications and significance of the changes and allow then to decide to be agile or not. It's their choice...but they should try to pick one and commit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they waver then chaos is the only winner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-04-22T23:33:25.453" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4333" CreationDate="2017-04-02T23:32:56.733" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've personally used OneNote as my goto knowledge base and recently have worked on a few teams that are using Office365, which in many cases includes Sharepoint (depending on O365 license level).  This allows for notebooks to be shared amongst both internal and external teams.  As all of my recent teams have been using Office for the other tools (i.e. Word &amp;amp; Excel) to produce documents the infrastructure is already there for them to use OneNote as a Knowledge Base.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the OneNote application you can click on any notebook page or section and obtain a link to the section.  If this is a notebook hosted on sharepoint you can then share that link with team members to access the notes via the OneNote App, OneNote desktop client or via the Web. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can help to have different note books for different projects rather than a single large notebook with multiple sections.  When you have separate notebooks on sharepoint you can control access and thus restrict who can read/edit a workbook by projecte team members. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28101" LastActivityDate="2017-04-02T23:32:56.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21381" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21382" CreationDate="2017-04-02T23:51:25.363" Score="1" ViewCount="15950" Body="&lt;p&gt;For Network Diagram, MS Project has the following fields in date format:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Early Start &lt;code&gt;ES&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Early Finish &lt;code&gt;EF&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Late Start &lt;code&gt;LS&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Late Finish &lt;code&gt;LF&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although, How can I display them in Network Diagram in numbers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26504" LastActivityDate="2017-09-30T01:30:37.357" Title="How to display ES, LS, EF, LF in numbers using MS Project, Network Diagram?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21381" CreationDate="2017-04-03T00:06:58.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, from the Gantt Chart view you need to add 4 custom columns for (ES, EF, LS, LF).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Through clicking on &lt;code&gt;Add New Column&lt;/code&gt; from the table in right pane and choose columns of type numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Right Click column's header and choose &lt;code&gt;Custom Fields&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click on formula button from Custom Attributes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;insert into formula popup the right equation, as follows:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Early Start (ES): &lt;code&gt;ProjDateDiff([Project Start],[Early Start])/[Minutes Per Day]&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Early Finish (EF): &lt;code&gt;ProjDateDiff([Project Start],[Early Finish])/[Minutes Per Day]&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Late Start (LS): &lt;code&gt;ProjDateDiff([Project Start],[Late Start])/[Minutes Per Day]&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Late Finish (LF): &lt;code&gt;(ProjDateDiff([Late Finish],[Project Start])/[Minutes Per Day])*-1&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then Click View &gt; Network Diagram.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After that, From &lt;code&gt;FORMAT&lt;/code&gt; Tab click &lt;code&gt;Boxes Styles&lt;/code&gt; &gt; More Templates &gt; Create new Template.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Choose the columns you created earlier in template's cells accordingly. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26504" LastActivityDate="2017-04-03T00:06:58.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21372" CreationDate="2017-04-03T04:40:58.470" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest we share the observation with the manager of the consultants, agree with him or her the expectation gap, brainstorm the probable motivation or ability root causes (for example, Start Late, if indeed that is agreed as a gap) and alternative solutions to bring about positive changes to close the gap and agreed on the next steps with ownership and timeline.   Set up brief check-ins to follow up the progress made on the improvement plan.  These processes worked for me in the past. Good luck.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28104" LastActivityDate="2017-04-03T04:40:58.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21375" CreationDate="2017-04-03T04:45:22.210" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If all he has done is cut out planning and retro meetings then its not going to be a huge impact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plenty of teams skip these. Also, &quot;redistribute resources in the team&quot; is a weird sentence. Your team only works on one project at a time right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be very wary about making a fuss over this. But at the same time, if the planning meeting for example was required to produce a report, say forecast project completion, them he's making his life easier by just ignoring requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest you offer this guy a PM role. But make clear that it involves more than just getting a team to work faster. He needs to take on the responsibilities (whatever they are in your company) as well as the powers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2017-04-03T04:45:22.210" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21372" CreationDate="2017-04-03T05:01:44.760" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lets assume that the consultants are working in good faith and their estimates are correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now delays must be caused by the usual things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;external task needs to be completed by someone else.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;extra requirements added during project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;missing external resources, api, servers, accounts etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enumerate and record the actual reasons for the delays. &quot;what could we have done so that we would have known about and estimated for this issue which you are telling me about&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it turns out that it is just the normal things, or the estimation is too low, then you just have to up future estimates or be stricter with your pre start procedures&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it turns out to be other things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;we didn't start when we said we did&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I was allocated to another project at the same time because its worth more to the consultancy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;we estimated low to win the contract&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;we switched the engineers working on your project out for more junior ones&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you need to look at what the contract says and change it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2017-04-03T05:01:44.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21386" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21391" CreationDate="2017-04-03T05:21:22.730" Score="0" ViewCount="323" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a project structured with the below tasks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary task A: Project Initiation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sub task A1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sub task A2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary task B: Project Design&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sub task B1 (Workstream 1)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sub task B2 (Workstream 1)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sub task B3 (Workstream 2)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sub task B4 (Workstream 2)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary task C: Project Build&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sub task C1 (Workstream 1)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sub task C2 (Workstream 1)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need to report completion percentage of Workstream 1 and Workstream 2 separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The easiest way to do this would be to structure the project plan by workstream instead of project phases (Initiate, Design etc) but I don't have that option. I tried putting summary tasks under B, for example&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary task B: Project Design&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sub summary task 1 (Workstream 1)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sub sub task B1 (WS1)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sub sub task B2 (Ws1)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this didn't work for me as this only gives me workstream 1 completion within summary B. I need the completion for workstreams overall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would appreciate if the community could help me with this, or point me in the right direction. Thanks in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28082" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-01T10:03:19.527" LastActivityDate="2018-11-01T10:03:19.527" Title="Display completion % by custom columns instead of summary tasks?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;&lt;ms-project-2007&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21372" CreationDate="2017-04-03T08:26:50.877" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since Agile is not possible I would propose another approach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You should try to decompose tasks into small chunks of work. Nearly 30-minutes - 1-hour size. Yes, it does require significant efforts investments from an architect or senior developers. And pay only for a finished task. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try to build up continuous integration/continuous delivery automation and culture. Like in EOD all increments merged and deployed to production no matter what.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then use EVM for forecasting, it is simply indispensable when dealing with fixed price.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.methodsandtools.com/archive/archive.php?id=61&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.methodsandtools.com/archive/archive.php?id=61&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a kind of marginal approach but works in a described environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21857" LastActivityDate="2017-04-03T08:26:50.877" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21388" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21390" CreationDate="2017-04-03T10:25:39.180" Score="4" ViewCount="1122" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master / Agile Coach, what is the correct approach for dealing with Engineers in a team who take longer than the rest of the team to complete their tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since we are using Kanban we aim for between 5 and 7 days average cycle time i.e. when they pick up a ticket to when they push it to done it should be between 5 and 7 working days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus far I have simply made this information available to them with dashboards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-04-03T10:40:24.247" LastActivityDate="2017-04-06T01:23:36.280" Title="How should a Scrum Master handle high cycle times from individuals on a team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21389" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-03T11:52:33.990" Score="6" ViewCount="7883" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often have the need to achieve a specified goal (e.g. deliver a piece of software functionality). At the start of the work I identify the goal and can list some tasks needed to bring about the desired outcome. For each of the identified tasks, I may be able to break these down into sub tasks. Usually though, tasks (at different levels of detail) needed to be undertaken to achieve the goal are discovered as work progresses. So for example, some research (a task in itself) may be needed to determine the best approach for a particular part of the work before the actual work tasks can be identified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the most basic form, I can represent the hierarchy of composed tasks using, say, an indented list, though there are difficulties in also representing arbitrary ordering constraints. Alternatively, I can use Microsoft Project to show the task hierarchy and the ordering of tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, both of these approaches are quite 'listy'. I was wondering what methods exist that would allow me to represent the tasks and their relationships on a diagram, perhaps with nodes shown as tasks, and relationships (e.g. composition, ordering) shown as lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28107" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T07:11:07.927" LastActivityDate="2021-03-09T02:44:53.470" Title="How to visualize and manage task dependencies?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21388" CreationDate="2017-04-03T12:03:43.863" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, look at whether you can &lt;a href=&quot;http://agileforall.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Story-Splitting-Flowchart.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;split your stories&lt;/a&gt; any more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, why aren't the engineers on your team cooperating. The way your describing your system sounds like a you've set a &lt;em&gt;minimum&lt;/em&gt; work in progress limit of one story per developer. Of course your cycle time is high (&lt;em&gt;cycle time = wip / throughput&lt;/em&gt; after all). Instead cooperate on things to reduce work in progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can tell you suspect that some of your engineers are better than others. I think the thing I've already suggested, encouraging cooperation on tasks, will go some way towards bringing the skills of the weaker engineers up. There are a lot of other people management factors however. I won't list all of them, but do people get the tools they need, the training they want, slack time to improve their skills, time to go to conferences etc etc? Are you involving your best developers as key decision makers in the hiring process? People have written books about this sort of thing, so I'll stop there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17705" LastActivityDate="2017-04-03T12:03:43.863" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21386" CreationDate="2017-04-03T15:50:20.387" Score="0" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make a custom field for Workstream, then assign your detailed tasks (NOT SUMMARY TASKS) the corresponding field values.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the Data group of the View Ribbon, create a new &quot;Group by:&quot; specification with the top level set to Group By your Workstream custom field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implement the new GroupBy specification on any view with a table that shows %Complete.  The GroupBy %Complete will be computed the same as a summary task %Complete (i.e. the duration-weighted average %Complete of the underlying tasks).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a very simple example.  Combining Group-By specifications with hierarchical outline codes allows one to view any project from many different perspectives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2017-04-03T15:50:20.387" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21388" CreationDate="2017-04-03T18:30:22.227" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, faster isn't always better. One of the engineers I've worked with finished his stories extremely fast, way faster than the rest of the team. But he'd often use quick and dirty shortcuts, and the testers explicitly gave any user stories from this engineer extra attention. He produced different bugs than the rest of the engineers, more difficult to find, but often with a lot of impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there's enough trust in the team, discuss the differences in speed with the whole team and ask them what factors they see that can explain the differences. Some possibilities include personal factors (motivation, drive, perfectionism), skills and knowledge, amount of distraction (soloists vs the people who are always helping others instead of doing their own tasks), or different views on quality/scope/definition of done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to pair the faster engineers with the slower ones (and in general, encourage cooperation) -- both of them can learn from working together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8935" LastActivityDate="2017-04-03T18:30:22.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21168" CreationDate="2017-04-04T03:24:39.873" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not have experience with the tool, but I hope the following links are useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.kanboard.org/en/latest/user_guide/tasks.html#task-transitions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;kanboard - transitions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.kanboard.org/en/latest/user_guide/time_tracking.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;kanboard - time tracking&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-07-29T14:58:36.627" LastActivityDate="2020-07-29T14:58:36.627" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21388" CreationDate="2017-04-04T09:42:39.833" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to bring your cycle Time down, then it's time to apply &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_constraints&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Theory of Constraints&lt;/a&gt;. Look for where the work is piling up, then work to remove the bottleneck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the work has to be visible enough first. A simple todo-doing-done board isn't going to cut it. You need to model the actual workflow in order to spot the bottleneck. Backlog-Ready-In Progress-Review-QA-Ready to Deploy-Done is a likely workflow. If things are piling up in QA, have some devs help. If things need reviewed faster, figure out how to make that happen. Do deployments take hours? Automate them. Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned by others, the other lever you have to pull is the WIP limit. Reduce your WIP limit and the avg. Cycle Time should fall. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, the team &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; leave enough slack in the schedule so that they can improve. It doesn't help to identify a bottleneck if no one feels they have time to address it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastActivityDate="2017-04-04T09:42:39.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21395" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-04T12:41:23.287" Score="-4" ViewCount="264" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to build a list of useful documentation that a client can find useful, both during and after use of the system built in a project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that system requirements, high level and low level design, and user manual are useful. Known bugs and not implemented features can be nice as well... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you think documents can be useful for the client? &#xA;If yes, what documents would you put in the list. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="563" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-04-04T13:10:08.787" LastActivityDate="2017-04-04T18:18:29.480" Title="What documents a client should get at the end of a project" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2017-04-05T08:43:36.383" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21395" CreationDate="2017-04-04T16:02:09.330" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whatever the clients finds useful. Ask them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we focus on requirements here the software product is leading, not the documentation as most often it is incomplete and not updated under time pressure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is why the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile manifesto&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Working software &lt;strong&gt;over&lt;/strong&gt; comprehensive documentation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As most documentation is useless and never used it is important to verify with your clients if it is useful. Let the define how they are going to use it, just to be sure they will not say: &quot;Yes, we want it.&quot;. Also charge them for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2017-04-04T16:02:09.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21395" CreationDate="2017-04-04T17:01:48.387" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Artifacts and deliverables are part of project definition. It is up to you to work with the client (contractually or collaboratively) to identify the project artifacts (including documentation) that they expect as part of your project's deliverables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one but you and the client can actually define this list accurately. That's why you have to work with them to determine what's needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-04-04T17:01:48.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21395" CreationDate="2017-04-04T18:18:29.480" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;@Niels:&#xA;You are right its all about the money and no body wants to pay for huge books that nobody will read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;yet my projects are about reverse engineering, refactoring and other type of renewing aging systems.... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile is great but not all knowledge aquired during the project can be found in the code. What about things that got out of the scope.. good ideas that cost too much, bad calls - what we did wrong, future development for things we developed quick and dirty and want to improve... is the system scalable can the db grow is there an interface for other system... are there limitation...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;when i renew an old system. all this missing information gets really valuable.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;like agile that looks for the thinest progect managemt... I look for the thinest documentation... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="563" LastActivityDate="2017-04-04T18:18:29.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21399" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-05T02:54:22.580" Score="4" ViewCount="925" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have this issue for a while now: &quot;rockstars&quot; (e.g. a contractor or freelancer, who's very good technically) tend to be quite independent and reject any form of process. Many of them don't have the patience to learn about the process, as they focus on building things and are driven by tangible results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But on the other hand, many of them don't work well in a team, as they feel restrained by the team, rules, even Agile frameworks (not even mentioning Scrum, because Scrum seems to be the devil for these guys).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: &lt;strong&gt;how do you use Agile to make sure you keep these guys in the company?&lt;/strong&gt; They are mostly very talented individuals, but how can you use the tools Agile offers to help them have their freedom but also work with others?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*I do realise this is more of a people / group dynamics question but I find that many issue come from creating an Agile team, rather than using the right practices with people that have no issue with using Agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26783" LastActivityDate="2017-04-09T14:26:03.663" Title="How does a &quot;rockstar&quot; performer integrate into an Agile team?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21400" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-05T06:27:11.850" Score="0" ViewCount="163" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new to project management and I don't know much about how to act in certain situations. If I was expecting my team lead to call a meeting but he/she did not call and one day has already been passed. Now, I want to ask, whether it is good or bad to ask for meeting from my team lead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am very much obliged for valuable suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28126" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-04-05T08:41:57.320" LastActivityDate="2017-04-06T04:49:06.810" Title="Is it good to ask for a meetting from a team lead?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21399" CreationDate="2017-04-05T07:39:41.530" Score="4" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find someone else. In agile it's all about team performance, not individual performance. Adding an individual to the team who doesn't fit in can really affect the rest of the team. If you can choose between a technical rockstar and a teamplayer (with just enough technical skills to do the job right), it's an easy choice to make.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Be very explicit about expectations. As you said, they are strongly focused on building things and tangible results, neglecting other goals. If for instance knowledge transfer is important, try to make it as SMART as possible ('your job is to make sure that within 4 weeks Sally and Isaac are able to do &lt;em&gt;technical task x&lt;/em&gt; on their own'). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Work with the whole team on team roles and team dynamics. Just any team building exercise with a focus on diversity will do. Team role tests (Belbin) or tests about personality/behavioral preferences (discovery insights) can give insight in each team member's different strengths. The key part here is that there are more ways to be valuable than just delivering lines of code.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Be aware that high performance can be high maintenance. They have plenty of job offers to choose from, know their market value and are not easily satisfied. If you want to build a good working relationship, then you need to talk with the rockstars about their own personal goals and motivations, and give them an opportunity to work on these. An example is setting aside a bit of time to work on long-term innovations, or exploring new technologies. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8935" LastActivityDate="2017-04-05T07:39:41.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21402" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-05T09:50:49.017" Score="19" ViewCount="13407" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often get asked this question in the interview, and no matter what I answer the interviewers do not seem to get satisfied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, they start with asking how to manage scope creep in Project Management?&#xA;I usually answer by telling that the requirements need to be clearly defined before the project starts, and if there is any change during the project then it has to go through a change control process which involves the change control board, etc etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the next question they ask is, &lt;strong&gt;if you prevent scope creep from happening in the project how can you say that the project is Agile? Because agile is all about making changes to the project in an efficient way&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you answer this question? Can you guys please give me some ideas on how to handle this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28128" LastActivityDate="2017-04-21T17:12:16.950" Title="Managing scope creep in Agile" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;scope&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21402" CreationDate="2017-04-05T10:32:18.533" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile manifesto&lt;/a&gt; this is described with this principle:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount  of work not done--is&#xA;  essential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product management&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scope creep in the backlog should be managed by the Product Owner. So this is any planning before the development team starts working on it. Delivering business goals, not just software features. Product Owners could practise something like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.impactmapping.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;impact mapping&lt;/a&gt; to find how new features have impact to prove that the feature is not just nice to have, e.g. scope-creep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Development team&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developers can prevent scope-creep using Test-Driven Development. Tests could be unit-tests or acceptance criteria. Think first and &quot;document&quot; about what you want to build before building it, just like your requirements, but just-in-time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One way XP’ers would keep themselves honest is to insist they write a&#xA;  failing unit test (demonstrating the need for complexity) BEFORE&#xA;  adding the extra complexity to the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilenutshell.com/yagni&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.agilenutshell.com/yagni&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then do not implement more functionality then needed to pass one of the tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short &lt;a href=&quot;https://martinfowler.com/bliki/Yagni.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;YAGNI&lt;/a&gt; (You Ain't Gonna Need It). This should work for both functional scope as limit developer tendency to over engineer a system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2017-04-05T11:30:17.220" LastActivityDate="2017-04-05T11:30:17.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21375" CreationDate="2017-04-05T11:32:40.670" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The lead developer sounds like he wants to be an old school development manager &amp;amp; have oversight &amp;amp; make a go/no go on all decisions. Rather than a functional manager who manages the people but lets teams &amp;amp; projects self organize. Self organizing teams do, by definition, dilute management control &amp;amp; aspiring managers may struggle to come to terms with the situation especially if he wants to give orders rather than become a servant-leader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading between the lines I don't think that the lead wants to be a PM or PO - he wants to remove agile &amp;amp; install himself as a more old-school development manager instead. From that position he (assumption) would act as a gatekeeper for all development as he (with the CEOs tacit backing) would vet all requests &amp;amp; therefore be able to eliminate pointless work before it got to development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think the lead doesn't like agile &amp;amp; is maneuvering to move back to a more waterfall, command-led structure. Take that to your CEO - if he is happy to abandon agile at least you know where you are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="693" LastActivityDate="2017-04-05T11:32:40.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21402" CreationDate="2017-04-05T11:58:55.497" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tldr;&lt;/strong&gt; Agile shifts the focus to the discovering and creating a solution for the customer's needs.  Agile values &quot;Responding to change over following a plan&quot; because one must &quot;Welcome changing requirements&quot; in order to &quot;harness change for the customer's competitive advantage&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can help to begin with an understanding of the classic Iron Triangle model, aka Project Management Triangle.  The basis is that there are three attributes to control (scope, cost, and time) which all affect quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's look at classic project management first.  In the beginning the scope is fixed then the PM hopes to properly estimate the cost and time.  Once all of the requirements are written, then work can begin.  As changes and issues arise, something needs to be adjusted.  One common solution is to add more people, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0201835959&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Mythical Man-Month&lt;/a&gt;, which adds cost.  Realistically, once a project begins, the other two aspects (cost and time) became fixed as well; any increase to either is considered failure.  The primary result is a lack of quality, often also over budget and late, sometimes failing meet scope agreements, very frequently not meeting the customer's need or missing the market opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now let's look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;agile philosophy&lt;/a&gt;.  Instead of creating a complete set of specifications (scope) at the beginning then attempting to predict cost and time, the core need is identified.  A backlog is created to represent the desirements: desires which may or may not be actual requirements.  This list is then ranked in order of value to the customer.  Development begins with the core items of the highest value.  One thing of importance to note here is that the focus has already been shifted to a solution (or product) mindset and approach over the classic project mentality.  The team works in small time-boxes, fixed cost and time, to deliver the solution in small, quality, usable increments.  The scope is flexible because adjustments are made as the customer and team understand more about what is actually needed; they add what was initially missing from the desirements and remove what is now realized as unnecessary or of little value.  The work can stop at the end of any iteration when the proper level of functionality (scope) is achieved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2017-04-05T11:58:55.497" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21400" CreationDate="2017-04-05T12:09:13.830" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most important aspect in any relationship is communication.  Without honest and open communication, there will be difficulties in the relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a conversation with the team lead.  Learn about each others hopes and expectations regarding the work, the relationship, and the team.  Work together to forge a working agreement to help foster a positive future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without a solid relationship built with effective communication, it is more likely that the time together will be difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2017-04-05T12:09:13.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21374" CreationDate="2017-04-05T12:22:59.757" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might be able to find some of that information in the form of white papers &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pmi.org/business-solutions/white-papers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.projectmanagement.com/white-papers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://duckduckgo.com/?q=project+management+white+papers&amp;amp;ia=web&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[3]&lt;/a&gt;.  However, as @Tob states in comment, the level of detail you seek is generally not released.  As an alternative, you may be able to partner with a project manager or three.  They should be able to describe and exemplify their documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2017-04-05T12:22:59.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21402" CreationDate="2017-04-05T13:43:27.337" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First you need to determine exactly what they &lt;em&gt;mean&lt;/em&gt; by 'scope creep', as the exact meaning may be taken as being different by different people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do they mean no scope changes, at all, whatsoever?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Difficult to call this 'Agile', really. While it &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; still be possible to change time and/or budget, the fact that you're unable to accept changing customer needs would be a massive project smell in any sort of Agile project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do they mean no scope &lt;em&gt;increases&lt;/em&gt;, but taking stuff out and putting it back is fine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is pretty straightforward; when a scope change is needed, you just need to determine what to take &lt;em&gt;out&lt;/em&gt; of the scope. Normally, another option would be to add time or cost (though, in many cases time is the only helpful one, as many ways of throwing money at a late project, whether through new team members or new technology, will only make it later due to initial sunk time costs). In this case, however, doing so would be 'scope creep', and thus your only really option is to manage the scope, both adding and removing from the scope for a net change of zero (or negative, if it turns out you really didn't need this huge feature X after all, so you can easily replace it with the smaller feature Y).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do they mean any sort of scope changes are fine, but &lt;em&gt;not too often or out of control?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is likewise straightforward, though in a different way. You simply need a rigorous change management procedure, where each and every scope change is properly/thoroughly evaluated, and responded to accordingly (whether that response is increasing time, taking something else out of the scope, finding some other solution, or just outright rejecting the scope change).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There might be another meaning they're intending when they use 'scope creep', but I think the above three are the most common. If all else fails, abandon any preconceived notions and just think about what sort of reaction, within the constraints given, would be necessary to bring &lt;em&gt;value&lt;/em&gt; to the project, to the company, and to the customer. In the end, bringing value is what Agile is all about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-04-05T14:42:07.593" LastActivityDate="2017-04-05T14:42:07.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21409" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21419" CreationDate="2017-04-05T14:08:41.110" Score="1" ViewCount="1554" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if it makes sense to always write user stories, even for issues like refactor or backup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your opinion in which of the following situations, it's better to write user stories than tasks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;features&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;bug fixes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;additional tests&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;refactor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;documentation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;continuous integration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;integration (GitHub with Slack, Jira with Slack...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;error handling&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;vulnerabilities fixes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;deployment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;performance improvement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;import of data from another system&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;appearance improvement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;portability improvement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SEO improvement - database backup&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it's fine when I can write a user story to a feature and within this US tasks like UX, backend, frontend, refactor, research, SEO...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However sometimes after completing a user story we want to refactor, improve performance, improve appearance...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28130" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-04-06T09:51:08.830" LastActivityDate="2017-04-06T09:51:08.830" Title="When should I use user stories and when just tasks?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21409" CreationDate="2017-04-05T14:37:32.920" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;we want to refactor, improve performance, improve appearance...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if these aren't 'traditional' user story fodder, the benefit (I find) in user stories is focusing on an outcome rather than just a task, and giving freedom to the development team to work collaboratively and creatively to solve a problem and meet that outcome, as opposed to 'completing a task'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the &quot;as a &lt;em&gt;role&lt;/em&gt; I can &lt;em&gt;action&lt;/em&gt; so that &lt;em&gt;outcome&lt;/em&gt;&quot; approach to writing user stories could help with this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I.E. &quot;As a site user, I want the site to perform quicker so that I can do more on it in 'X' period of time&quot;. Crap example, I know, but hopefully you catch my drift.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24050" LastActivityDate="2017-04-05T14:37:32.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21409" CreationDate="2017-04-05T14:47:58.940" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is your definition of done, and is it still accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I read &quot;However sometimes after completing a user story we want to refactor, improve performance, improve appearance...&quot;, it sounds like the user story was not completely Done the first time. To prevent this you should include performance/appearance/code quality in the DoD if it applies in general or use story-specific acceptance criteria. All of these activities could be subtasks for a user story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there might also be valid reasons why these tasks are not included in the original story. I worked on a product where for external reasons we could not ship to production for a while, and where the end users (including the product owner) needed a short feedback cycle to figure out what they wanted. In that project, we'd start with a very raw basic version of a feature (deliberately excluding lay-out, texts/translations and technical optimizations) with just enough functionality for user-testing. Follow-up requirements would then go into a follow-up user story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The different issue types we used in a particular project (after some trial and error, this scheme worked best for this particular team + product owner):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;User story&lt;/strong&gt; for features and functionality, written from an end user perspective and having immediate business value&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bugs&lt;/strong&gt; for things that should already/still work but behave incorrectly (having a separate issue type is helpful if you want to track the amount and resolution time)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Technical story&lt;/strong&gt; for everything that is necessary for the end product from a technical perspective but is too technical for the product owner to understand or prioritize &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Task&lt;/strong&gt; for anything else the team needs to do that takes a significant amount of time. Rarely used, mainly included so that the scrum board would give an accurate picture of what the team was working on at any time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8935" LastActivityDate="2017-04-05T14:47:58.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21402" CreationDate="2017-04-05T15:12:27.323" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My opinion (IANASM) is that there is no such thing as &quot;scope creep&quot;. In Agile, you should be working on the most valuable features to the business at the moment, for a short time period (the current sprint, in Scrum terms).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There should exist a backlog of work that is owned by the product owner, and they keep it in order of what will be the most valuable to work on next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If some new information comes up, the product owner is free to reorder that list of work and reprioritize certain features over other features based on what they know at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the current sprint/iteration is done, the team picks up the next set of features they feel they can complete in the next iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concept is that those iterations should be long enough to get a set of features completely &quot;done&quot; (for your team's definition of &quot;done&quot; -- ie. deployed to prod) but not so long that changes to the business do not get reacted upon fast enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum, at least, talks about being able to terminate a sprint before it is done, but it is made to be an expensive and disruptive operation, so that it should not be done on a whim. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile should balance committing to a set of work and a time period to do that work that doesn't make product owners nervous they will never get &quot;the next thing&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28135" LastActivityDate="2017-04-05T15:12:27.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21402" CreationDate="2017-04-05T15:58:33.957" Score="13" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scope_creep&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scope creep&lt;/a&gt; is a project risk, and must be controlled. However, in agile frameworks, scope is a &lt;em&gt;variable&lt;/em&gt; constraint rather than a fixed one. To be an effective agilist, one needs to understand the differences between scope and change control, and how to properly apply a given agile framework to embrace change (which is a core value) without putting the overall project at risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This generally involves collaborative agreements, iteration-based change control, transparency, and effective stakeholder communication. Agile practices don't wish scope changes into the cornfield; instead, they adjust other constraints to make the &lt;em&gt;cost&lt;/em&gt; of change visible so that the business can make informed strategic decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Managing Scope&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[I]f you prevent scope creep from happening in the project how can you say that the project is Agile?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an agile framework, scope creep is really a problem caused by injecting new or unplanned work into the middle of an iteration, rather that adding scope to the overall project. All agile frameworks solve this through formal processes and ceremonies. In Scrum, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;New work should generally only be introduced during Sprint Planning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;New work that takes priority over current work required early termination of the current Sprint, and a return to Sprint Planning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;New work &lt;em&gt;for the project&lt;/em&gt; must be prioritized by the Product Owner in collaboration with the stakeholders, so scope creep at the project level is managed through consensus that the proposed work is relevant to the project's goals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Scrum, iterations are a a fixed time-box with a relatively fixed cost (excluding capital costs), but &lt;em&gt;scope&lt;/em&gt; is a variable constraint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Scope creep&quot; in the traditional business sense of the term will extend the total run-time of the project. By adding scope to the project, you impact the schedule (generally making it longer). You manage this through &lt;em&gt;transparency&lt;/em&gt; and effective communications with stakeholders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban and Lean have similar mechanisms for managing change. The point is that there's no free lunch. Adding scope adds cost or time to the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Trade-Offs&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project management triangle is generally understood to be a set of sliders consisting of scope, schedule, and cost. (NB: There are other models, but this one is the most common.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4gONz.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4gONz.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Project Management Triangle&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point of this metaphor is that you manage quality by adjusting the sliders, but they're interdependent. You can't fix cost, schedule, &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; scope at the same time, so increased scope will generally increase a project's costs and schedule as well, while often reducing overall quality as the organization attempts to increase scope without increasing costs or extending the schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a project manager, you need to be able to articulate the trade-offs for the project. In your specific case, you need to have a deeper understanding of how those trade-offs are made within an agile context, and what tools your framework provides for managing and communicating about those trades-offs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-04-05T15:58:33.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21400" CreationDate="2017-04-05T16:22:34.340" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Initiating a meeting with your team lead is considered to be a good omen. Just kidding ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Developer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By accepting the pull-push technique, your life would be balanced. For example, pull the tasks assigned to you and start working, push the task status back to your assignor at the end of business including but not limited to your schedule, effort, and risks. This would keep you and your assignor (here, I believe it is your team leader) happy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A weekly status meeting with your team leader to understand the overall project status would boost your motivation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short to answer your question, you do have liberty to ask for a meeting with a clear agenda in place. Otherwise, a status mail would suffice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Manager (Project Manager, Program Manager, Product Manager):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, you got to apply the management by walking around (MBWA) technique. This technique can be plugged into your daily routine, irrespective to any model you use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The practice would be to drop by to your team leader's desk to enquire about the project(s). This will set the ball rolling. It is quite possible that the team leader is inhumed under ad hoc activities which might require your extensive help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question, &quot;yes&quot; you could, but more than just asking for, I would go suggest to walk around and listen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22293" LastEditorUserId="22293" LastEditDate="2017-04-06T04:49:06.810" LastActivityDate="2017-04-06T04:49:06.810" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21389" CreationDate="2017-04-05T16:43:31.057" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could pretty much build it by integrating Excel / MS Project, SharePoint, and PowerPoint. Though it is painful to build, it's worth it as it could be customized as per your requirement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it appears that there is one such tool that could bring a visual effect for the task management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://itsm360.net/task-management/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://itsm360.net/task-management/&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;Right from assignment to taking to closure, you could visualize the entire sequence. &#xA;You could find more details about this product on their website. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22293" LastActivityDate="2017-04-05T16:43:31.057" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21402" CreationDate="2017-04-05T17:40:43.520" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I usually answer by telling that the requirements need to be clearly defined before the project starts, and if there is any change during the project then it has to go through a change control process which involves the change control board, etc etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your interviewers are right — this isn't agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point of agile is that requirements change. Your understanding of the problem changes. Your understanding of the market changes. The thing you thought you needed to build in January is not the thing you know you need to build in June.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you insist on defining your requirements up front, one of two things will happen: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you’ll build to spec, and find you’ve built the wrong thing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you’ll ignore the requirements, making the requirements-definition process wasted effort and the requirements themselves a dead document&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(There are certain &lt;a href=&quot;https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20110014946&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;exceptions&lt;/a&gt;, involving extraordinarily well-understood engineering problems, extraordinary constraints, and extraordinary budgets. If they're asking you these questions you're almost certainly not on one of those projects.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now: scope creep. To a first approximation, there’s no such thing as scope creep in a smooth-running agile process. There's new &lt;em&gt;scope&lt;/em&gt; — new priorities and new requirements, which lead to new work — but there’s no &lt;em&gt;creep&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first problem with scope &lt;em&gt;creep&lt;/em&gt; in a traditional process is when the organization lies to itself. You’ve promised to deliver features &lt;em&gt;F&lt;/em&gt; by time &lt;em&gt;T&lt;/em&gt; at a certain quality level &lt;em&gt;Q&lt;/em&gt;. (&lt;em&gt;Q&lt;/em&gt; probably wasn't ever made explicit, and you probably were never going to make &lt;em&gt;T&lt;/em&gt; anyway, but never mind.) But now you’ve silently redefined &lt;em&gt;F&lt;/em&gt; to mean &lt;em&gt;F+1&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;F+2&lt;/em&gt;, all the way up to who knows, &lt;em&gt;2F&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;3F&lt;/em&gt; worth of effort, without ever explicitly making the tradeoffs to &lt;em&gt;T&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Q&lt;/em&gt;. So &lt;em&gt;T&lt;/em&gt; is going to slip, and &lt;em&gt;Q&lt;/em&gt; is going to slip, but no one’s admitting that no one outside the development organization even knows it’s happening, so somewhere after crunch time when you finally admit it to yourselves and finally give your stakeholders the bad news, they’re going to (justifiably) flip their lids.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the problem your change control board, etc., are designed to prevent—that cycle of denial and flip-out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, even with a change control process that keeps the organization honest, you have another problem. You set out to deliver &lt;em&gt;F&lt;/em&gt; by &lt;em&gt;T&lt;/em&gt;, and now you’ve increased the scope and pushed out the timeline and you’re on track to deliver &lt;em&gt;3F&lt;/em&gt; by &lt;em&gt;3T&lt;/em&gt;. From the point of view of the development team, everything’s fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The larger organization, however, is in deep trouble, because you haven’t shipped any software. You’re losing sales (or mindshare, on an open source project) to your more agile competitors who have, even if they’ve only shipped &lt;em&gt;F/2&lt;/em&gt; worth of features. You’re missing out on the opportunity to get feedback from users, so your assumptions about what features your users want aren’t being marked to reality, and if you do finally ship &lt;em&gt;3F&lt;/em&gt; you’re likely to find out it isn’t what they want; you’ve wasted &lt;em&gt;1F–2F&lt;/em&gt; worth of effort and you have another &lt;em&gt;2F–3F&lt;/em&gt; ahead of you just to catch up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; says &lt;strong&gt;Working software is the primary measure of progress.&lt;/strong&gt; Fundamentally, agile development is pretty simple:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you build a small thing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you ship it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you build the next small thing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The details are all about figuring out what the next small thing should be, and making sure that it’s built to an acceptable level of quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where agile breaks down, it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; often in the form of scope creep. That small thing becomes bigger, and the time it takes to ship it gets longer, and then it gets bigger still, and the next thing you know you haven’t shipped anything for three months and even if you’re still having daily standups (or scrums) and breaking work into iterations (or sprints) you can’t honestly call yourself agile any more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different agile practices defend against this problem in different ways. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Test-first design, test-driven development, continuous integration, and continuous delivery, when properly applied, ensure the software is always ready to ship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;High-level &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/planning-poker&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;planning poker&lt;/a&gt; and low-level &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allaboutagile.com/agile-estimating-in-scrum-why-estimate-twice/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;task estimation&lt;/a&gt; encourage developers to think features through and make sure they and the product owner have a common understanding before they start development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Iterative development (allowing new tasks to enter the work stream only at iteration boundaries) limits the rate of scope change, incentivizes product owners to think through features before asking developers to deliver them, and minimizes developer thrash — the cognitive whiplash and context-switching overhead of being pulled out of your flow to drop one task and start another. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/know-exactly-what-velocity-means-to-your-scrum-team&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Velocity tracking&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2007/10/26/evidence-based-scheduling/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;evidence-based scheduling&lt;/a&gt; keep your iterations realistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lean / kanban–type processes do away with iterations but “pull” features from the backlog only when developers are ready to work on them — which is to say, after their previous feature has moved on to QA and/or has shipped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real way to answer your interviewers is to turn the question around on them. When they say “scope creep”, what are they really worried about? Are they worried the product won’t ship on time? Are they worried quality will suffer? Are they worried about developer burnout? Are they worried about all of the above, and also that they won’t find out till it’s too late? These are related but different concerns, and a good process will address all of them in related but separate ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the lean world, they say that if you want to find the root cause of a problem, you should always &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.gembaacademy.com/2006/10/19/things_they_say_at_toyota_ask/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ask “why” five times&lt;/a&gt;. Ask your interviewers why they care about scope creep, and you’ll find your answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28138" LastActivityDate="2017-04-05T17:40:43.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21399" CreationDate="2017-04-05T18:04:28.617" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is the thing - the rockstar is rarely a good programmer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most programmers which are great technically understand the need of teamwork. It is a core part of the job, something you &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to understand if you want to have any semblance of true skill on the field. More often than not you'll find yourself working alongside other people, sharing results, teaching and learning with them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More advanced coding skills come with the need to make your code manageable by other people. Unit tests, dependency injection, correct use of patterns - good code is &lt;em&gt;easy to understand&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;easy to change as needed&lt;/em&gt;, easy to teach someone else to work on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't the code that Rockstars use. A Rockstar programmer is, more often than not, a average or below average developer with a few obscure tricks under his sleeve and good sales skills. He &lt;em&gt;appears&lt;/em&gt; to be more skilled, but he uses his charisma and his aggressiveness towards the team to keep himself above the others. He can't play with the rest of the team - if he does that, his lack of skills will show up pretty quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've worked with a lot of rockstars in the past. While they could deliver working code most of the time, most of them lacked basic understanding of what exactly they are doing. They failed to grasp some concepts that were needed for deep understanding of what they should and shouldn't do. But they did look awesome, with arcane codes that worked for some miraculous reason and bold, incisive speeches that made everyone look at them with a bit of wonder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But eh, they were just winging it. Really, any dev that goes around saying &quot;I'm the best, you guys suck, I'm the holy jewel of the team!&quot; probably is just winging it and has no real sense of what he is doing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a variant of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dunning-Kruger Effect&lt;/a&gt; that is really prevalent on IT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28140" LastEditorUserId="28140" LastEditDate="2017-04-05T18:48:47.980" LastActivityDate="2017-04-05T18:48:47.980" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21399" CreationDate="2017-04-05T18:30:49.467" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few approaches you can use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;form a clean-up crew that cleans things up after the rockstar performer gets them done &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;clearly define the limits that the rockstar performer will operate within&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;let the rockstar performer create prototypes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;emergency handler&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on your quotes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...they focus on building things and are driven by tangible results&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means they will do work that is visible and has a result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...on the other hand, many of them don't work well in a team, as they feel restrained by the team, rules&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means there may be technical debt or documentation that needs to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Clean up crew&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you can do, which is a little unfair to the junior members of the team, is to get the junior members of the team to clean up after the &quot;rockstar&quot;. They turn the tangible result into a well-engineered result that can be maintained by others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Clearly defined limits, split the work&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also split the work into modules and boundaries that have clearly defined limits. The rockstar performer can play in their sandbox without messing up the sandbox of others and they can move as fast as they want. If they get the module done quickly, then they have free time that they can use for other projects or to become more collaborative or to train themselves. These are all good outcomes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Prototypes and sales demos&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rockstar wants to create new things and deliver a visible result. That's perfect for sales demos and prototyping where the initial result is passable and can get the sale or prove that a certain approach will work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most prototypes and sales demos can be developed solo or by one developer in collaboration with sales/marketing/designers/managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Emergency Handler&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because they want to do things quickly with tangible results, they can be excellent bug hunters and emergency handlers. The process for both of those situations is simple and perfect for the rockstar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your project has an emergency and needs lots of work done, let the rockstar performer at it. If there's lots of high priority bugs, they will want to show off how good they are at fixing them. If there's a real emergency with some of the modules, the rockstar will re-create them but they will work to some degree (though they will be loaded with technical debt).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27307" LastActivityDate="2017-04-05T18:30:49.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21409" CreationDate="2017-04-05T20:34:47.363" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;All the task types you mention can basically be grouped into &lt;strong&gt;feature&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;bug&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Features&lt;/strong&gt; are planned and (unless very small) usually take the shape of a user story. Documentation and testing are definitely part of the corresponding feature, and so are research and refactoring if they are the precondition to starting the implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bugs&lt;/strong&gt;, on the other hand, crop up unexpectedly and cannot be scheduled, so I wouldn't try to force them into the backlog. However, you should take your current bug load into account when estimating how much time you'll have available at the beginning of a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dealing with &lt;strong&gt;technical debt&lt;/strong&gt; falls somewhere between these two lines. By this I mean things that are not strictly implementable features themselves but still need to be dealt with at some point: refactoring, tech upgrades, low-prio bugs, additional tests, documentation updates, but also independent research such as tool evaluation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these can be planned and thus should be treated as &lt;strong&gt;tasks&lt;/strong&gt; that, in turn, can be bundled in a &lt;strong&gt;story&lt;/strong&gt; wherever it makes sense. (For example, you could create a story to add tests for big feature BF, then add one task per class involved in BF that's still missing tests.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rules of thumb:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A story can be finished in a single Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A task can be handled by a single person in a reasonably short time frame (around 1-3 days).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a task can be easily split and worked on independently (or even consecutively) by different people, it's still too large.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a feature is expanded on after its initial completion, you can simply create a new story for the &lt;em&gt;second iteration&lt;/em&gt; of said feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UX is a good example where you'll pretty much &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; need a second (or even third) iteration to incorporate feedback. Since you know this in advance, you could already take that into account when creating your backlog: Instead of creating a single story and expecting to be done with it at the end of the sprint, you could already prepare a second (presumably smaller) story for the inevitable polishing, bug fixes etc. Worst case, you won't end up needing one of the iterations and can delete them from the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28145" LastActivityDate="2017-04-05T20:34:47.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21399" CreationDate="2017-04-06T00:23:24.363" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Summary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They are mostly very talented individuals, but how can you use the tools Agile offers to help them have their freedom but also work with others?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are conflating things which are not orthogonal. Agile frameworks are based on teamwork and collaboration, so you need to consciously select for that in your team composition even more rigorously than you select for skill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis and Recommendations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are mediocre teams that use agile frameworks like Scrum to great effect because the team-based approach enables average programmers to &lt;em&gt;collectively&lt;/em&gt; function at a reasonable (and consistent) level of performance. There are also high-functioning teams full of collaborative ninjas who work together to turn out stellar work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the middle, you have teams with a few high performers, and some middle-of-the-road folks. As long as everyone works together, the high performers can pair or mentor others in the team to improve overall performance and skills transfer, while the remainder of the team works hard to ensure that they are contributing to the overall effort without becoming &quot;help vampires&quot; or creating drag on the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile frameworks will not make inadequate developers &quot;rockstars,&quot; nor will lone wolves (rockstars or not) improve the overall performance of the team. The team succeeds or fails as a unit; that means that skills definitely matter, but teamwork, communication, and the ability to collaborate effectively matter more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you build your team, you need to make sure that you are selecting for the right mix of skills and cultural fit that make an agile team successful. That means filling your team with cross-functional (or at least &quot;T-shaped&quot;) team members who are on board with the agile framework and its processes, and who are willing to continuously improve their team collaboration skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone who can't work within the framework or collaborate with the team should be placed in a role &lt;em&gt;outside&lt;/em&gt; the team that will not impact the team's ability to deliver the project. That precludes treating them as advisors, subject-matter experts, or otherwise creating a project dependency on those people. They may or may not have a place within your company, but lone wolves have no place on an agile project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-04-06T00:23:24.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21402" CreationDate="2017-04-06T00:31:06.440" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile is all about the practices that work with continuously changing requirements. It is assumed that the requirements and the plan have a high probability of being suboptimal even three months down the road, because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The context changes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Opinions and points of view mature or change&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attempting a solution is a learning experience that sheds new insights into the problem and the possible solutions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a quote from &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0321278658&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Extreme Programming Explained&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;XP is a path of improvement to excellence for people coming together&#xA;  to develop software. It is distinguished from other methodologies by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Its short development cycles, resulting in early, concrete, and&#xA;  continuing feedback. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Its incremental planning approach, which quickly&#xA;  comes up with an overall plan that is expected to evolve through the&#xA;  life of the project. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Its ability to flexibly schedule the&#xA;  implementation of functionality, responding to changing business&#xA;  needs. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Its reliance on automated tests written by programmers,&#xA;  customers, and testers to monitor the progress of development, to&#xA;  allow the system to evolve, and to catch defects early. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Its reliance on oral communication, tests, and source code to communicate system structure and intent. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Its reliance on an evolutionary design process&#xA;  that lasts as long as the system lasts. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Its reliance on the close&#xA;  collaboration of actively engaged individuals with ordinary talent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Its reliance on practices that work with both the short-term instincts&#xA;  of the team members and the long-term interests of the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28035" LastActivityDate="2017-04-06T00:31:06.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21399" CreationDate="2017-04-06T00:41:35.137" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Inability to work in a team (including following the agreed-to processes) is a problem in itself, and it is independent of knowledge, creativity, or productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Knowledge, creativity, and productivity are not personal handicaps. Having a team with a disparity in those traits is a &lt;em&gt;management problem&lt;/em&gt;, not a problem with any particular individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If management cannot assemble a team of individuals with alike productivity (lack of budget?) it must find a way to work the disparities out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choosing to only hire among the &lt;em&gt;average&lt;/em&gt;, to avoid the disparities, seems silly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Analogies can be made to the recruiting that happens in good sports teams. The budget is never enough to have an all-star team, so coaches learn to manage teams in which less than 20% of the team members are of outstanding performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the problem is probably not with the individual, but with the coaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28035" LastActivityDate="2017-04-06T00:41:35.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21400" CreationDate="2017-04-06T01:05:52.590" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitely. I don't encourage meetings for the sake of meeting (as they might create waste), but if you discussed you should meet, by all means make the first step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just make sure that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have a clear objective&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have a clear agenda (and the objective above is stated)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You invite only the people that would contribute to the agenda, with valuable input / decision making&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You complete the meeting with actionable steps (a meeting where people talk and no decision is taken, no action plan, no follow up, is useless)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Last but not least you don't make it lengthy. Unless you need to discuss strategy, product, roadmaps, or other topics that might need more time, any meeting can be concluded in 40 minutes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Open and honest communication is one of the main tools of any agile framework, so you should enforce it as much as possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26783" LastActivityDate="2017-04-06T01:05:52.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21388" CreationDate="2017-04-06T01:23:36.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We had the same issues: the team I took over as Scrum Master was considered slow by the POs, other devs and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When looking into it, these are the problems identified (and solutions we implemented):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Backlog items were not clear. A lot of time was spent investigated stories during sprint =&gt; we split stories into Spikes (research), Stories, Tasks/Sub-tasks, Bugs. Now you could see clearly how long the research took for a story and how long the actual coding. I also worked with the PO to do more research before putting stories in backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Next problem was that the stories (after implementing previous item) were not split properly. We split a story to be as long as a sprint or shorter, if possible. I raised this issue with Mike Cohn at his recent User Stories training; his recommendation is to split stories as much as it makes sense for the devs, don't waste much time to split them in the smallest possible, but definitely shorter than a sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Next we addressed the issue you mention - are some devs slower than others? Of course, but in our case it was not because the fast ones were among shortcuts, it's caused by seniority and knowledge of business &amp;amp; product. So we went for pair programming: a senior programmer pairs with a junior to distribute knowledge and learning. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above worked very well. We increased our velocity with at least 30% in only 4 sprints. But I am aware that the increase might come from the fact that we didn't estimate stories properly to begin with so we continue working and monitoring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR it all starts in planning, how you split and estimate stories. Start from there.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26783" LastActivityDate="2017-04-06T01:23:36.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21369" CreationDate="2017-04-06T05:32:14.230" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, to what I understand from your question is that, as a PMO you would want to mentor the project managers. Is that correct? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general practice is that the project managers should be managed by the Program managers. The program managers should be managed by the Portfolio managers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PMO is a strategic unit having dotted line structure reporting to Quality / Program Portfolio Management Office (PPMO). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PMO is an evolving body that could help at all the layers of the organization suchlike HR, Sales, Administration, Finance, Delivery, etc . For example the office can question and can find the answers for the challenges the business is facing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To check on the quality standards: you will need to initiate Project Quality Assurance (PQA) task force - a subset of Software Quality Assurance Team (SQA). This is actually a big story. But to cut short, this team ensures that your project quality and your organization quality is maintained. The PQA need not be a FTE, can be assigned to your existing team members on rotation basis which will have multi-fold benefits. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;AP &amp;amp; AR schedule -  There should be a tight integration between the PMO Analyst, the accounts team, the sales team and the delivery team. As the delivery team completes the milestones and receives approval from the client, the PMO analyst would mark it complete for invoicing, the accounts team triggers the invoice(s) and submits to the Client for the processing. The sales team follows-up for the closure. I am sure by now you understand why the PMO is considered vital. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please do not overload your Project Managers, they have better things to do like communicating with stakeholders, estimation, publish reports, managing the deliverables, analyzing risks, identifying and allocating resources and much more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can keep writing at length on the PMO aspects and the good practices, as I have implemented full fledged PPMO (end-to-end) but limiting to your context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I lay hands on any books on the PMO subject, I will update here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should you have any questions on the PMO, please feel free to shoot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22293" LastActivityDate="2017-04-06T05:32:14.230" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21426" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21428" CreationDate="2017-04-06T10:12:03.733" Score="2" ViewCount="605" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a link / similarity between the delighters mentioned in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.isixsigma.com/tools-templates/kano-analysis/kano-analysis-customer-needs-are-ever-changing/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kano model&lt;/a&gt;  and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectmanagementlearning.com/what-is-gold-plating-in-project-management.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;gold plating&lt;/a&gt;? Do both these terms define the same concept? Can a delighter be a cause for a project failure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17511" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-04-06T13:29:17.450" LastActivityDate="2017-04-06T13:29:17.450" Title="Are Delighters equivalent to Gold Plating?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;scope&gt;&lt;scope-management&gt;&lt;theory&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21427" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21432" CreationDate="2017-04-06T10:15:54.613" Score="2" ViewCount="263" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following advice from here, as the product manager, I am encouraging my dev team to become more cross functional by allocating basic front end tasks to the back end developer and vice versa. I have told both developers that I do not expect them to be specialists, but be able to do basic tasks to speed up the completion of sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am experiencing the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Both developers are now complaining that they are not being played to their strengths and are losing time when the other can do it better.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Both developers are challenging me by arguing 'if you expect us to be cross-functional, why don't you join in and code as well'. My role is strictly is hands off in a delivery role.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel as though I am being undermined to some degree, at the same time can see their point. In this situation is it better to just be firm with your decision?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="20871" LastEditDate="2017-04-06T10:58:15.560" LastActivityDate="2017-04-07T11:11:41.623" Title="How do I encourage my team to become more cross functional?" Tags="&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="17" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21426" CreationDate="2017-04-06T10:40:39.593" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are two judgement labels applied to the exact same behavior, based on the outcome.  If you get it right, the customer is delighted.  If you get it wrong, you gold plated and the customer is upset.  I think the concept of gold plating in project management, and the teachings around the concept of avoidance, is based on the thought that the risk of getting it wrong is much greater than the opportunity of getting it right, and the impact of getting wrong--increased sunk costs, rework--is much greater than the customer satisfaction of getting it right.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-04-06T10:40:39.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21427" CreationDate="2017-04-06T13:27:08.937" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do I encourage my team to become more cross functional?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pair programming. Get a new desk set up, with two computers on it, side by side. The one less-experienced at the task sits at one computer, and does the actual coding ('driving'). The more-experienced one sits at the other computer, uses it only for looking things up, and helps guide the driver ('navigating'). You'll get higher quality code out of it, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just don't get rid of their normal desks. Not all tasks need to be pair-programmed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Both developers are now complaining that they are not being played to their strengths and are losing time when the other can do it better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depends what is meant by 'it.' If the only goal the company (and, more importantly, the Team) has is to get these tasks done &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, then they're correct. If, however, they care about the future at all, then the (less immediately visible) benefits to cross-functionality outweigh the immediate benefits of getting tasks done asap. Usually; some emergency tasks could obviously be an exception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Both developers are challenging me by arguing 'if you expect us to be cross-functional, why don't you join in and code as well'. My role is strictly is hands off in a delivery role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sounds like they might just be acting a bit snippy, though as pointed out in comments, you &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; try it out, just to placate them. Or, if you're not willing to actually dive into the code, at the very least you should consider putting effort into understanding what they're doing. Gain enough knowledge (both about programing in general and in what's been done with it at your company) to be able to understand what they're talking about when they talk about things like foreign keys, models/views/controllers, repositories, 'that one **** method, with the rules', etc. You don't need to understand enough to &lt;em&gt;work&lt;/em&gt; with them, but gaining an understanding of what they're &lt;em&gt;talking about&lt;/em&gt;, at least, could un-ruffle feathers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-04-06T13:27:08.937" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21427" CreationDate="2017-04-06T14:06:55.373" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself what is the real problem you are solving? Maybe do a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jamesshore.com/Agile-Book/root_cause_analysis.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;root-cause analyses&lt;/a&gt;. After you know ask the development team how they think they can solve it? (Promoting self-organisation) Forcing new idea's will give you a fight. Learning costs time in the beginning, slowing them down. What is the end in mind? What will we gain. Let them decide by themselves, but let them solve your problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once they see that becoming more cross-functional (Architecture, Design, Coding (Back/Front-end), Testing, etcs) is a possible solution to your problem they might be more open to the idea. But accept that they might have a different solution they want to try first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suggestions to become more cross-functional are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.infoq.com/news/2013/02/swarming-agile-teams-deliver&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Swarming&lt;/a&gt;, e.g. working the full team on a single story. You will have the split it smartly and work together to complete it as soon as possible, before starting something new.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/pairing/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pair-programming&lt;/a&gt;, good for knowledge sharing and learning techniques. Also non developers can pair. Also pair-testing might be a nice thing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find out if some developers already want to become &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sitepoint.com/full-stack-developer/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;full-stack&lt;/a&gt;. They can be your friend to help convince the others, slowly. Keep repeating it for a long time to change a culture. Don't give up to fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2017-04-06T14:06:55.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21427" CreationDate="2017-04-06T16:45:51.973" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two responses&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;WIFM - From the perspective of the team, why should they be more cross functional? What is in it for them?  I suspect this is an opportunity to move the incentive away from activity (played to their strength) to product.  Cross functional teams produce better (be prepared to support this with facts).  It is easy enough to play to their strength if that is what they want - you can assign them hours and hours of meaningless work.  Or they can commit to producing as a team and understanding the results of their production (Weber on Anomie). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you take pride in your product, then you want the people upstream and downstream connected to your product. You want to know that your output is used and valued - that implies understanding the downstream needs.  Likewise you want to connect to upstream work and value - is there any way to improve your relationship with upstream?  Do they deliver what you need or what they think you need.  Are the requirements clear?    Are you just a fungible link in a chain that can be replaced by anyone who can contribute N lines of code a day at X$ with Y errors?  Think carefully about that answer, because I can open monster in about 3 seconds.  Or do you want your upstream and downstream partners to argue to keep you?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third thought - the snarky reply suggests to my that you have team issues with respect.  if my team said that to me, I'd schedule a closed door meeting to discover why my team didn't perceive my contributions as valuable.  What part of my job would you like me to stop so that I can spend hours as a minimally competent coder?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2017-04-06T16:45:51.973" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21372" CreationDate="2017-04-07T07:07:42.450" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have noticed a trend during our projects that &lt;strong&gt;the&lt;/strong&gt; consultants seem to always wait until the last possible moment...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I noticed you used the plural &quot;the&quot;. The fact there's more than one group or team that is consistently delivering late indicates that it's more likely to be the management of these resources (see: the common denominator) that may need to change, rather than the resources themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm in a similar situation with one of my developers who aren't delivering on time, consistently. Admittedly we're using agile, but the problem of late delivery and lack of communication remains, regardless of methodology. Some teams need closer management than others, need more guidance and more pressure to be honest when targets are being missed. I did the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shortened the delivery dates or review dates so instead of waiting 2 months to see if something wasn't done, I'd be waiting 2 weeks or 2 days. This highlights problems earlier, which can be dealt with earlier, and with less impact to the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Made it totally clear what was expected to be delivered, no ambiguity. This is important. It's not fair to blame a resource for late delivery if the deliverable wasn't defined clearly to start with. I wrote down the deliverables and...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Made the team &lt;em&gt;accountable&lt;/em&gt; for delivering this (see: they agreed to deliver within the parameters). If they keep missing deadline after deadline with no consequence, then I found they didn't bother putting in the extra hours or effort to get it done on time. A due date or deadline isn't when something needs to be delivered, it's the point of time where consequences kick in if it's not delivered. Which one would a team pick to adhere to out of those two options?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I kept breaking tasks down smaller and smaller, and the reporting periods smaller and smaller until they started being met regularly. At this point you can start increasing the responsibility again while keeping close tabs on it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it may come across as micromanagement. But if a team or person is &lt;em&gt;incapable&lt;/em&gt; of delivering on time, or giving sensible estimates, or doesn't understand the impact of missing their deadlines, or taking responsibility for their tasks, then something needs to change to fix this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarise, I feel like these teams need closer monitoring so you have the information you need to make your decisions and ensure project success. They sound like they're incapable of sharing this information with you willingly, so go get it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17177" LastActivityDate="2017-04-07T07:07:42.450" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21427" CreationDate="2017-04-07T11:11:41.623" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Time and again you surprise me with ways how to be &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; agile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am encouraging my dev team to become more cross functional ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's great!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... by allocating basic front end tasks to the back end developer and vice versa. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wait, &lt;strong&gt;what&lt;/strong&gt;??? You do &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; allocate tasks. Any task. At all. You give tasks to your team and the team self-organizes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You give your team a &lt;em&gt;goal&lt;/em&gt; and you let the team decide and plan how to do this. Right now, they only know half the story, &lt;em&gt;literally&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a product owner, I want my team to be cross functional, to [?]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes? To do what? You are asking them to progress in a direction, without a clear goal when to stop. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of a good way to ask for becoming more cross functional would be &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a product owner, I want my team to be more cross functional, so the team can still deliver complete features (=value) at an acceptable speed even if one member takes days off&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now they know a reason why you want it, they can themselves decide when they are good enough for the goal you set and they are even self-motivated because &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; want to take those days off (that you might otherwise decline if there is work to do that the other guy cannot do on his own).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's their turn to figure out how they want to achieve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2017-04-07T11:11:41.623" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21437" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21441" CreationDate="2017-04-07T19:41:35.787" Score="2" ViewCount="9561" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's suppose there are two tasks (A and B) among others. I'd like to restrict B in such a way that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It starts 5 natural days after A starts &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It finishes 5 laborable days after A has finished&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming A has already its own predecessor, is there a way to set up B so that it respects both restrictions at the same time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could set up each restriction separately using A as predecessor of B, but not both at the same time. Is there a way?&#xA;Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: More info about the problem&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My goal is to be able to change the duration of A, and have the duration of B change automatically to honor the restrictions I described above.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The actual task is: I'm installing a pipe in a trench which is already dug. A is the task of pouring the concrete. Then we have to wait 5 calendar days to start installing the pipe (task B), but even then, more concrete will still be being poured ahead on the trench. Then we have to wait other 5 workable days to be able to finish the pipe installation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28170" LastEditorUserId="28170" LastEditDate="2017-04-08T12:44:43.267" LastActivityDate="2017-04-08T16:35:57.873" Title="Setting up two predecessors to the same task in MS Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20378" CreationDate="2017-04-07T21:40:25.467" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you mentioned, there are multiple estimation methods out there. You just have to ask your favourite web search engine fore something like &lt;em&gt;project efford estimation&lt;/em&gt;. Regarding Software Projects, you find some idea on &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_effort_estimation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my point of view, when it comes to estimation one of the biggest mistakes is a forgotten task / activity. So, I would put more effort in identifying all relevant tasks than in the effort estimation itself. And to identify the relative tasks, it's about creativity and you'll find as many methods as for estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My favourite way to deal with your question task looks like follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set up a small group (&amp;lt; 5) containing at least an expert and a novice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Collect - structure - review&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do a (silent) brainstorming to collect necessary tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Structure the identified tasks to a WBS &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Review the identified WBS w.r.t to relevance and completeness&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apply iteration using different techniques to detail your wbs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take care to identify products and their definition of done, released design documents, SW-releases, etc. to measure progress and to avoid we-are-almost-finished-solutions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimate the effort using &lt;strong&gt;planning poker&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The discussion between the cheapest and the most expensive guess will help to understand the tasks and to detail them further. Fore sure, you don't have to estimate each task. Let the team decide the level of detail they are able to estimate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2017-04-07T21:40:25.467" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21440" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-08T00:50:19.763" Score="8" ViewCount="1791" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see a number of similar links, but none seem to have a solution, mostly &quot;they shouldn't be doing that&quot;'s. I agree, but please, read on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scenario: 800K pages of documents, narrative(e.g. emails)/bank statements/legal (e.g. options agreements). We are a small team, with only 2 investigators (1 of whom is primarily responsible for production), 1 financial person, and 1 legal person (along with some admin assistants and outside specialists). We have multiple ongoing projects (think different cases in different courts in different countries). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing is, the 800K pages of docs have not been fully reviewed (at this point, maybe 50%). So, we decide on work product (Monday; person 1 will do x by Friday) but by Tuesday afternoon, we've inevitably uncovered some additional documentation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Too often, this documentation changes the whole story, changes the angle we need to come at it, changes the relationships. By Tuesday afternoon, the various legal teams (who do little investigating) request various work products in relation to this new find. My investigator/work product champion takes off on it, with a full heart, and (you guessed it) before it's done (all too often) we have even more information that changes things or causes a redirect. It's insanity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're processing, at times, 2-3K pages/day. So you can see how even a few bombshells in there cause havok like no tomorrow, and yet they are actually even less than 1% of total documents. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How are we supposed to handle this? Force through a week of finishing what we started? What if it's useless or wrong? Wait to produce until the investigation is done? More often than not, it's following one particular thread that itself leads to new revelations, AND we have statutes of limitations on filing this and that. Hire more staff? It would take months to have them gain enough traction to be useful, and guess who'd have to train them? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We tried kanban - the boards would get full of nonsense within a week or two. Having a high priority &quot;fast lane&quot; was a good idea.. until it wasn't. A burndown chart looks like a plateau, after you adjust for added tasks and how many remain unfinished... client (and product owner, really) wants someone to manage this crazy (yours truly), but doesn't really want to change their habits (which are mostly paper-based.. did I mention we're printing and manually reviewing all of these documents??)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any and all advice and perspectives on this (especially with models or examples or actual &quot;do this&quot; suggestions) are so, so appreciated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: &lt;strong&gt;Management wants&lt;/strong&gt; more control, more work product, more value per $. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Staff want&lt;/strong&gt; to avoid the constant re-work, have an idea of what the overall strategy is, see their work-product actually getting shipped&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I want&lt;/strong&gt; to show that the above two are not mutually exclusive, and that there is a way for these needs to interface nicely, without a huge brake put on the workflow, wasted meetings, etc. I can see that these three wants are reasonable and rational, but there's a serious grind between them right now..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23543" LastEditorUserId="23543" LastEditDate="2017-04-10T13:13:14.517" LastActivityDate="2018-11-19T11:40:30.123" Title="How to deal with constantly (~daily) changing requirements?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21437" CreationDate="2017-04-08T04:07:59.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is no. You are asking about two concepts neither of which works in MS Project. I want to be sure I address each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First is the idea of having two predecessor/successor links or  relationships between the same two tasks. You are looking to have both start to start plus 5 day and a finish to finish plus 5 day links from Task A to Task B. MS Project will only support one link between two tasks. It does not treat the finish to finish link as something different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second is the idea of &quot;natural&quot; -vs- &quot;workable&quot; days. I would call those calendar days and working days. These kinds of restrictions are set up by creating different calendars or just putting different periods of working days or non-working days in whatever calendar you are using. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: OP commented that we can use edays as the unit so we get elapsed days. Non working times will be ignored. I have not used this, but it is correct. Thank you for this! End edit&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then ... you can assign one calendar to a task. MS Project does not support calendar assignments to predecessor / successor links. That would be pretty complex and would require additional settings for which calendar to honor if the tasks and the links had calendars assigned. I digress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the use case my solution would be to put a tasks in for pouring,  allowing the concrete to set, and installing the pipe for each section. (I assume set time is the reason for the 5 day wait)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PNsUI.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PNsUI.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HV6bU.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HV6bU.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage of the 2nd way is you can copy/paste at the summary task level to more easily replicate many pipe sections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I prefer more detail. I've worked jobs where there is a laboratory analysis that comes back at 7 days after the pour. If the concrete is not up to strength the next tasks have to wait another seven days. So if that happened you just extend that one task and everything gets pushed out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;End Edit&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please mark this as answered if it at least tells you what you needed to know. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23027" LastEditorUserId="23027" LastEditDate="2017-04-08T16:35:57.873" LastActivityDate="2017-04-08T16:35:57.873" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21440" CreationDate="2017-04-08T04:29:06.220" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first step would be to ask how you are doing Kanban? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban is the go-to tool for rapidly changing requirements. The basic principle of &quot;Have a board, have a WIP, prioritize daily&quot;, is incredibly simple. However, Kanban is really hard to do well. It's why I almost always start new teams with Scrum first, just so they can start to get the fundamentals of agile approaches. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that sounds like is happening is a culling of the &quot;backlog&quot; or requirements. If things are changing when you discover something new, you need to ask if the existing backlog is still valid. For a normal software project I coach teams that anything over 6-12 months old should be removed. If it was important, it will be brought up again. For your project I'd say more than a month old is ripe for removal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second is clarity of your backlog, or user stories. You always need to be asking &quot;Who is this for?&quot; and &quot;Why do they care?&quot;. We very quickly fall into the trap of saying &quot;I need a drill!&quot;, when in reality what we need is a 1/2 hole in a piece of wood. A drill is just the most common way to get that hole. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would advise you go back to Kanban as a base. Keep in mind the rigorous culling of the backlog and clarity of the backlog When you encouter a problem, do a &quot;Five Why&quot; analysis of the problem and always have your user in the forefront of your mind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-04-08T04:29:06.220" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21440" CreationDate="2017-04-08T04:48:40.193" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the simple statement of your problem is that to plan you need to at least be able to count the number of things you need to do. However you have no base number right now besides the 800K &amp;amp; 50%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also think you may be trying to apply project management to what sounds like process management. Maybe it's a little of both. I'm guessing.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need more people whoever is in charge is going to ask how many and you have no idea. Totally understandable, but, you need to be able to ask for something in a rationale way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tools:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;The old stand by tools like the &quot;parking lot&quot;, or the issues list come to mind. Google spread sheets is a great tool for managing these with little investment in setting up something better. It's still a spreadsheet nightmare but collaboration works right away and it's free. You have to log issues, prioritize them, work the higher priorities. You'll need to have columns for cases, courts, and so on so you can bucket things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Option one guesstimate the base:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Given the urgency you seem to be expressing I would go with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now perhaps you have some at least anecdotal idea of how many subsequent investigations occur when you review say a 100 page case file. Don't focus on that number being perfect. Think best, middle, worst. Usually teams end up with a worst plus, BTW. Go with it. So 200 cases, 50 are best, 75 are middle, 75 are worst. That should equate to person hours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Option two - better estimate:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Have at least one person plow on through the last 50% of the documents. Read pages, log issues, and keep going. That will give you a count of the, say, &quot;tier one&quot; issues. Your team can probably more easily estimate how many subsidiary issue from each type of those will emerge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Go forward:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Every time you get a new case, if that's what the deal is, it has to be triaged so you can assign an initial work load to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in review:&#xA;a.) Structure your issue / work tracking with a super simple tool&#xA;b.) Estimate the work using a best, middle, worst case model &amp;amp; derive needed people from there&#xA;c.) Determine if you need more people and how long that will take&#xA;d.) Go forward triage everything new, add it to the work load, adjust labor, scheduling, other priorities from there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's my going in set of ideas given what you've told me. Sorry if that's a giant &quot;duh&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23027" LastActivityDate="2017-04-08T04:48:40.193" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4655" CreationDate="2017-04-09T11:01:34.593" Score="0" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cost and duration of the project; this will determine what size of design team to employ.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Nature of the project/how many task are characterised within a given project's work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Level of expertise of some project team leaders. If a team leader is very skilled, he or she will require a few helpers to work with him or her.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28177" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-04-09T19:57:44.313" LastActivityDate="2017-04-09T19:57:44.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21445" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23438" CreationDate="2017-04-09T12:00:33.703" Score="-1" ViewCount="403" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I know the PMBBOK 5th edition will be soon be replaced by a new edition. &#xA;When it is expected that the content of the 6th edition is mandatory for PMP certification?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28178" LastActivityDate="2018-02-01T22:35:09.113" Title="How long will be 5th edition of PMBOK be basis for PMP certification" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;certification&gt;&lt;pmbok&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21440" CreationDate="2017-04-09T13:22:59.327" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile methodologies are designed to cope with changing business realities. Not as commonly stated changing requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a subtle difference but one which it sounds to me is important in your case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A waterfall approach would be to collect read all the documents (make a plan) before beginning work (implementing the plan). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The risk in business with that approach which agile addresses is that during the implementation or later stages of planning, something happens in the real world which invalidates the plan. Say a deal falls through, or a new market opens up, and hence the whole project fails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile addresses this by doing small bits fast. But each bit delivers value because the state of the world is known at that time. You can clearly see if the bit of work is correct or not. If something changes later the work might lose value, but the pace of change is set by real world events. Events which can't be planned for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your situation though the changes happen at the pace at which you read and understand the documents. A known task that will be finished prior to the end of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So a small bit of work delivers no value for you if it is wrong, you won't know if it is right until the end and potentially has NEGATIVE value!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For you, Agile is a high risk approach. Essentially gambling that more bits will luckily turn out right than the time you spend fixing the wrong ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest you read all the documentation first and then do the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastEditorDisplayName="user16244" LastEditDate="2018-11-19T11:40:30.123" LastActivityDate="2018-11-19T11:40:30.123" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21399" CreationDate="2017-04-09T14:26:03.663" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;So. Lets get this out of the way. With a freelancer and to a lesser extent with a contractor you should not be managing &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; they work. Otherwise they will be an employee and you will have to pay tax. Set the task an let​ them get on with it. (I understand that in practice the task might be, complete backlog item X and check it into the company source control)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to the meat of the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum and agile methodologies are in some ways designed to turn developers into task completing machines. The PO specifics the tasks and the dev team knocks them out to minimum spec as quickly as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If min spec isn't good enough the PO adds another task with more specs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now a 'rockstar' programmer is used to taking a vague business idea and making something. They write the spec, do the work, change the spec as they go, add stuff they think is good, skip stuff they think will take too long etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you need agile (or some process) because the rockstar approach doesnt scale. But 9 times out of 10 you will lose the rockstar. Becoming a cog in a dev machine will be a massive step down in responsibility. Moving up to management is a move away from the coding they love.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can invent software architect style roles but really a small startup is the best fit for them and you are no longer a small start up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2017-04-09T14:26:03.663" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4655" CreationDate="2017-04-10T01:24:46.710" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no one fixed formula that fits all frameworks and use cases, but there are definitely rules of thumb for agile frameworks, as well as some general guidelines for more traditional methodologies. In almost all cases, managing intra- and inter-team communications turns out to be the biggest constraint on team size, regardless of framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Agile Teams&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's generally recommended that agile teams contain around 7 members, plus or minus 2.&lt;/strong&gt; Currently, the &quot;Development Team Size&quot; section of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; recommends 3-9 developers, exclusive of the Product Owner and Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You then scale the number of teams as required based on the number of related product backlogs in your project. The number of teams (and therefore team members) has more to do with how you parcel out the top-level Product Backlog than anything else, because in agile frameworks the variable constraint is scope, rather than cost or schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Non-Agile Team Size&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Non-agile projects are actually harder to answer this sort of question for, because they aren't generally structured for incremental delivery or a true team-based approach. A naive approach is to base team size on the man-hours needed to complete a project within the scheduled time frame, but as the saying goes, &quot;Nine women can't make a baby in one month.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The optimal team size will vary greatly based on your industry and project, but in general a project will base its team sizes on the following elements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Specialized skills required at various points throughout the project lifecycle.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Labor costs to deliver each defined milestone or WBS package.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The number of team members a given team needs to deliver a specific work package.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The number of separate or interdependent teams needed to deliver each work package.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Margins for shifting resources in and out of the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Expected turnover or attrition on the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Man-hours required to meet the release schedule.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because non-agile projects are usually based on a fixed schedule with a well-defined work breakdown structure, the team or teams needed are generally based on each work package and resources may roll on or off the project during the project's lifecycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, even within traditional projects where team size isn't deliberately limited, a pragmatic constraint is the number of communications channels within a team and between teams. For example, a team of 35 people has 595 duplexed communications channels, while 10 teams of 7 people each would have 2,415 channels if the teams on the project are interdependent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even with rigorous (and often stifling) communication controls in place, keeping communication channels to a manageable level is probably a bigger constraint on &lt;em&gt;effective&lt;/em&gt; team size than anything else. Project runtime, schedule, and budget will also have an impact on the ideal team size for a given project, but the communications plan becomes ever more important as the size or number of teams go up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-04-10T01:24:46.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4655" CreationDate="2017-04-10T07:29:35.193" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming you're talking about a real team, that is a group or skilled and reasonably motivated individuals willing to cooperate with each other, the idea is to have - or at least start with - a reasonably small group, the smaller the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrums, for example, suggests to keep a team between 3 to 7/9 people, Jeff Bezos refers to the same principle with the 2 Pizza rule: &quot;if a team couldn’t be fed with two pizzas, it was too big&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More people means more person-to-person connections to look after, with this number growing exponentially. 7 people means 21 potential &quot;connections&quot; to look after, while 12 means 66 connections and so on...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More people means more coordination effort&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More people means less social pressure, which could lead to less engagement (see: &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_loafing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;social loafing&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having more people makes stability harder, and that impacts predictability&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good article explaining this is: &lt;a href=&quot;https://blog.bufferapp.com/small-teams-why-startups-often-win-against-google-and-facebook-the-science-behind-why-smaller-teams-get-more-done&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://blog.bufferapp.com/small-teams-why-startups-often-win-against-google-and-facebook-the-science-behind-why-smaller-teams-get-more-done&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16362" LastActivityDate="2017-04-10T07:29:35.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21445" CreationDate="2017-04-10T08:17:26.027" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As many PM training portals say, PMBOK® Guide Sixth Edition is going to be released in Q3'17 (Jun-Aug 2017), and PMP Exam update to PMBOK® Guide 6 will happen in Q1 of 2018.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.project-management-prepcast.com/free/pmp-exam/articles/853-pmbok-6-release-date-and-timeline&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.project-management-prepcast.com/free/pmp-exam/articles/853-pmbok-6-release-date-and-timeline&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9034" LastActivityDate="2017-04-10T08:17:26.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17335" CreationDate="2017-04-10T12:04:36.643" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no universal path to become a pm. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a nutshell it might look like this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start learning hard and soft skills&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work in the field&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get a degree&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get a job&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get a certification&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Never stop developing and growing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, in a real life everything can be in an absolutely different order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might find a step-by-step process of becoming a project manager in &lt;a href=&quot;https://casual.pm/how-to/become-project-manager&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; detailed guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17127" LastActivityDate="2017-04-10T12:04:36.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17335" CreationDate="2017-04-10T12:20:53.070" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;PM was and is a job role as much as it is--if not, even more so--a titled job.  At some stage in your career, someone is going to ask you to lead something to deliver something of necessity in a finite period of time.  Recognize this as a project and document it in your experience.  And when you perform it, use PM formal rigor to manage it even if it is over kill for that project because you want to practice it, understand how it works, and make mistakes so you can learn from it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, until that time comes, read and read PM books, any of them; they're all valuable.  Focus on PM controls, like risk and quality management, cost and schedule control, change control.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you deliver these small asks and you deliver them well, eventually you'll get the label.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-04-10T12:20:53.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21453" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-10T15:15:06.683" Score="11" ViewCount="800" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a company, they have decided to adopt scrum about a year ago, and they still have BAs (Business Analysts), who are separated from the Scrum teams. How it works is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The BA will get the specs for the client (as usual) and will then&#xA;prepare documents and BRDs (Business Requirements Documents).  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The client will sign off these documents.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They will hand over to the PO (Product Owner). The PO will prepare stories and then then the typical Scrum process will take its course.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, the BAs will be quite ahead of the process, about 3-6 months ahead. These documents once they are signed-off by the client (and product) they will hibernate, until the PO has space to take them in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Albeit, this process is heavy, the company doesn't know any better. What are better ways to improve the process, move it closer to agile, and improve the heavy status quo?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Notes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PO's interactions are with the BAs, the development teams and the product.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The BAs have little to no involvement and communication to the development team, as that's &quot;low level&quot; and they &quot;don't need to be that close&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5522" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2017-04-11T05:54:45.653" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T15:36:09.717" Title="What to do with Business Analysts in a Scrum environment?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;business-analyst&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21453" CreationDate="2017-04-10T15:23:37.487" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is to get the PO involved in the process sooner. Instead of waiting 3-6 months, get the PO involved with the BAs as soon as the analysis/documentation is ready. &lt;em&gt;Before&lt;/em&gt; it is taken to the client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PO can then take them to the developers, with the understanding that the requirements are still up in the air. This could also allow early discovery of issues; such as a requirement that is simply technologically impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-04-10T15:23:37.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21440" CreationDate="2017-04-10T18:19:53.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may not be pure agile recommendation.  But, by going by your problem, here is what I would suggest for this totally dynamic environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In your entire documentation, have section number + sub-section numbers + sub-sub-section numbers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;when your legal &amp;amp; other team is analyzing particular section, mark product co-ownership as legal + whoever it is&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Track your progress based on the section and provide your guesstimate based on those sections.  When you do grooming, go by section number.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Request the product owner (whoever is changing the requirement) to highlight in each version what they have changed.  Add that change to your next release and you will be able track using section numbers + sub-section numbers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your product owner can come with MVP (or) prioritization, I don't think you will have these many issues.  But I doubt whether they would be able to do or not.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your section / sub-section has reference to your entire product backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25351" LastActivityDate="2017-04-10T18:19:53.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21453" CreationDate="2017-04-10T20:03:24.760" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TLDR&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They're a bunch of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/oxygen_thief#English&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;oxygen thieves&lt;/a&gt; who are holding you back. Either make them into useful people, get rid of them or have them &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPFoIETy0dw&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;guard the bees&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Same point with more nuance (arguably):&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The BAs are essentially doing what would the job of the product owner and the customer should be doing. Potentially the preparation of stories is too much work for your PO to handle and they need extra help. Clearly they don't need this much help, as &lt;strong&gt;you have a massive amount of inventory&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean inventory in the &lt;em&gt;lean&lt;/em&gt; sense. Work in progress that cost time to make, costs time to keep track of, and will probably have decayed into uselessness by the time you need it. This last one sounds particularly true, as I imagine your PO spends a lot of time reworking out-of-date specifications (or at least I hope they do). Additionally, this massive pile of over-worked specs kind of makes a joke out of the idea of being responsive to change, and erects a barrier (in the time) between the customer and the developer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These BAs are &lt;strong&gt;getting in the way of communication between developers and the customer&lt;/strong&gt;. Traditional software development has a lot of gatekeepers that separate the developers (and other &quot;low level&quot; minions from the customers). One of the key values of agile is a rejection of this, communication is key. I've had BAs who see themselves as owners of the communication between the customer and developers, and it just adds confusion and delays feedback. The fact that additionally your BAs won't talk to develops is just appalling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So what can you do with these people?&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;Perhaps there's something your team actually needs that the BAs are capable of, like testing or directly assisting your PO?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's easier said than done. &lt;strong&gt;How do we start being more effective within the current status quo now?&lt;/strong&gt; Here are a few of my ideas. I've had a few guesses at what problems the BAs are causing, but spend some time with your team doing this, and come up with your own solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The work is out of date and not valuable:&lt;/em&gt; There's nothing wrong with ignoring or throwing out someone's contribution if it isn't a positive one. Make your your PO + development team does rework needed in communication with the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Lack of communication with the customer:&lt;/em&gt; Circumvent the BAs during the rework and talk straight to the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Lack of &quot;agility&quot;:&lt;/em&gt; Use this communication to ensure that the customer can come straight to you guys with the stuff they actually want done urgently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17705" LastEditorUserId="17705" LastEditDate="2017-04-10T20:41:23.117" LastActivityDate="2017-04-10T20:41:23.117" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21453" CreationDate="2017-04-11T19:37:04.990" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This kind of &quot;agile&quot; development is one reason why agile developing is postulated as dead (even by those guys who came up with the Manifesto for Agile Software Development) &lt;a href=&quot;https://pragdave.me/blog/2014/03/04/time-to-kill-agile.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;(1)&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my point of view the biggest problem in your constellation is the distance to the client. Agile development is all about &lt;strong&gt;involving the client as soon as possible&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So first of all, the PO has to establish an direct/unfiltered communication channel to the client - right from the project start. At best this should be a direct communication or at least a unfiltered communication through the BAs. It will not work when the BAs organizing some meetings/workshops behind closed doors and the PO gets a (memory) protocol at best. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides that, the PO has to involve the client after/before every Sprint. He has to ask for and even kindly demand feedback from the client, discuss new or changed requirements based on the current results and decide the upcoming/recent user stories. Usually, the client doesn't have the time to get that much involved. The PO has to make him understand that his contribution is essential to achieving the defined project goals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, make sure that the client becomes interested in the project development (and not just in the final product). So make sure &lt;strong&gt;every Sprint provides a new business value&lt;/strong&gt; for the client which is up for discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the client get hooked, don't forget as PO you have to coordinate changes/requirements for example by establishing a working change management process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, don't focus that much on the heavy process your company has. &lt;strong&gt;Remember, persons/individuals are more important than every process in an agile development.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25435" LastEditorUserId="25435" LastEditDate="2017-04-14T21:48:49.150" LastActivityDate="2017-04-14T21:48:49.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21389" CreationDate="2017-04-12T06:53:13.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two classical approaches to visualize requirements/tasks and their dependencies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precedence_diagram_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Predence Diagram Method&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gantt_chart&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gantt Chart&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am pretty sure you will find some tools for you favorite technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25435" LastActivityDate="2017-04-12T06:53:13.913" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21440" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:01:03.270" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the impression that you need more structure in your project. Structure it in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;sub projects, e.g:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Development of Module A&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Development of Module B&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Development of Module C&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;project phases, e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Concept Phase&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Basic Layout&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Detailed Layout&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1st Prototye&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2nd Prototye&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Production planning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Market introduction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;different prototypes&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;milestones, eq.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Concept study finished&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Layout complete&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First Prototype produced&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First Prototype running&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start of Production&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For each sub project you need to generate a project charter which clearly defines the targets and non-targets of this part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Especially the first prototypes don't need to fullfill all requirements. You could define for example like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prototypes: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A-Sample: Basic Features but not fullfilling performance targets&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;B-Sample: Main performance targets achived, only basic legal requirements at standard conditions fullfilled, for new product&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;C-Sample: Main legal requirements fullfilled at standard and non-standard conditions fullfilled&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;D-Sample: Mandatory requirements fullfiled at standard + non-standard conditions + Durability and Reliability proven&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;E-Sample: Design optimized for production&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefit here is that for the first Samples you can work with a very limited number of basis requirements. These requirements should be rather robust an not change to much in time. You can get a running system, where you can learn more. If you can convince your sponsor that you are on the right track, you can increase your team for building the more mature prototypes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the most important step is first to generate such a structure and the development roadmap. This will be a significant planning effort. Communicate, discuss and align this plan with your team and the other stakeholders. It is critical that everybody knows what to expect at what time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit 1&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have just seen that you have taged your question with 'agile'. My suggestion is  just classical PM aproach. Maybe agile is simple not the correct tool for your demand. You could use agile elements in some of the workpakage, but I have doubts that can only rely on agile methodology for the full development path. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit 2&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some comments on the nature of requirements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;With the load of material expect that there are confilicting requirements. Especiallay if you consider stakeholders demmand. For example: you cannot build a perfect car which fullfils the requirements of all car costumers. One costumer wants a Ferarri Spider, the other wants a Volkswagen Multivan. You will have to decide which requirements to follow.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't expect that you can make the correct design from the beginning. That every line of code, every screw and every processor is choosen correctly from the beginning. Product development is often a iterative process, so you'll have to rework your design several times.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some requirements are rather robust. E.g. legal requirements. Some are more floating. Try to start with the robust requirements first. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you have the first prototypes this will influence the requirements of your stakeholders. Maybe a stakeholder has a Propblem A and therefore demands as an absolute must the solution X to be implemented. However when you you desing your product, you might come up with more elegant solution Y for Problem A, which the stakeholder was not thinking of. If the stakeholder sees Y, he might change his mind and X is no must anymore. Key is to understand to problems of the stakeholders and find solutions, instead to try to implement every feature they request.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit 3&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scanning of the material is ok for the first place. But I would not try to extract every requirement in the first run. I would try to get an idea what is roughly disucssed in the individual sections of your material. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would start to scan a part of the paper and than decide, either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;In this chapter there seem to be the major challanges for my concept. I'll investigate and implement these solutions in an early phase / prototype (Which?)&quot;, OR&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;This seems to be not to challanging requirements. I can adapt my design to these requirements in a later phase.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28178" LastEditorUserId="28178" LastEditDate="2017-04-15T13:55:32.787" LastActivityDate="2017-04-15T13:55:32.787" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21389" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:47:31.547" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Respect the time box, and do &quot;just-in-time planning.&quot; Don't do so much up-front decomposition, and rely instead on iterative delivery to provide you with an emergent design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From an agile planning viewpoint, you're doing something fundamentally wrong if your backlog requires complex dependency graphing. In particular, you're either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;not leveraging the concept of thin, vertical slices of functionality to deliver incrementally; or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you're trying to do too much decomposition up front.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile frameworks aren't designed for work that requires heavy up-front design and specification. They're meant for incremental, iterative, and emergent designs. Leverage that. You &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; embrace incremental, iterative delivery and emergent design if you want to be successful with an agile methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Recommendations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Project Methodology&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're the project manager, you need to refine your methodology. Specifically, you should rework your product backlog so that you aren't trying to do so much up-front decomposition that your entire backlog is filled with tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, your backlog will be filled with &lt;em&gt;cohesive&lt;/em&gt; epics and themes, with only work for the next few iterations decomposed into relatively independent user stories. The user stories should follow the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST mnemonic&lt;/a&gt;, so that you don't &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; a complex dependency graph to deal with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should only be defining tasks for the current iteration. While tasks can certainly have dependencies, a feature that has been properly scoped for a single iteration should not have so many tasks that a complex dependency graph is necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, you may need a time-boxed story spike to help refine, decompose, or plan the work ahead, but that work is not expected to fit into the current iteration! If you uncover new or unplanned tasks during an iteration, schedule the work for a future iteration whenever possible. Otherwise, you may need to halt the current iteration and replan. That's how iterative methodologies fundamentally work!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Dependency Graphing&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are lots of methodologies for dependency graphing. One of the more useful ones in the software development space is the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.manning.com/books/the-mikado-method&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mikado Method&lt;/a&gt;. It helps the team or developer work backwards from the goal to the current state, identifying dependencies and refactorings through a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_graph&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;directed graph&lt;/a&gt;. Ultimately, though, the graph is a means to an end, and not a goal in itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you aren't doing software, other techniques may help you resolve dependencies and order your graph. Entire books are filled with the theory and practice of how to generate such graphs, so an exhaustive list would be out of scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In agile methodologies, though, the work scheduled for the iteration rarely needs the level of graphing you seem to be asking for. While it's very useful for defining the critical path on refactorings, unscheduled work is too high-level to create such a graph, while scheduled work should be too obvious to need one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-04-12T07:47:31.547" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21462" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T09:03:03.973" Score="2" ViewCount="155" Body="&lt;p&gt;How should I structure my weekly status report in such a fashion that I can have senior management attention to the issues being reported?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being objective, how to properly and effectively report &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ongoing &lt;strong&gt;task slippage&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the schedule is slowly going off-track and if no action is taken, team won't be able to deliver the expected results&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ongoing &lt;strong&gt;scope creep&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the scope is not being restricted to the original agreements and new requirements are arriving right after the latest new requirement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inability to &lt;strong&gt;remain accountable to deadlines&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the team / management / stakeholders is not able to demonstrate committment and deadlines are at risk&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26426" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T00:02:15.523" LastActivityDate="2017-04-14T12:18:56.577" Title="Effective Status Reports - How to bring management attention?" Tags="&lt;reporting&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21463" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T17:55:09.920" Score="6" ViewCount="149" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do understand that the concept of the Work In Progress (WIP) of a column counts for both, the &quot;in progress&quot; and the &quot;done&quot;-subcolumn to keep the flow stable and force the team to identify and solve bottlenecks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have an interdisciplinary team where most people can work in most of the available columns. We have an overall WIP for the board and WIP-Limits for each column.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got a question which I could not find an answer for anywhere: Do you keep people assigned to a task when it enters the done column? If you do so, the columns WIP-Limits match the overall WIP. Sounds logical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if people stay assigned to a done task, they cannot be assigned to another column where they could potentially help while actually having time to do so. If I unassign them from a done task and assign them to another tasks while respecting the overall limit of the board, then we would have other people being idle, because less people would fill up the overall WIP-Limit than are actually available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28220" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T18:06:56.310" LastActivityDate="2017-04-12T19:59:59.923" Title="Keep User Assignment for Tasks in Done Columns?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;kanban-board&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21463" CreationDate="2017-04-12T18:03:59.577" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Kanban Work In Progress (WIP) limits are for the &lt;em&gt;Team&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not someone is &lt;em&gt;assigned&lt;/em&gt; to a task should have no bearing whatsoever as far as any WIP limits are concerned. If your WIP limit for development is 3 issues, and you have two issues in 'Dev Done' for developer A and one issue in 'Dev Started' for developer B, then no one, not even developer C, can start development work on a new issue. This does not change if the two issues in 'Dev Done' are unassigned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, to answer your question: what my team currently does is remove the assignee from issues that are 'done' (whether that's Dev Done or QA Done). This indicates that no one is currently working on that issue. If we, for whatever reason, need to find out &lt;em&gt;who&lt;/em&gt; worked on an issue, then the system we use (JIRA) allows us to look at the issue's history and view who had previously been assigned to that issue. &lt;em&gt;That&lt;/em&gt; being said, it doesn't really matter; as long as everyone understands what an assignee (or lack thereof) on a 'done' task &lt;em&gt;means&lt;/em&gt;, and everyone consistently follows that, then there shouldn't be a problem. My suggestion: ask your Team, do what they prefer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;if we remove people from done tasks, and make them work in another column, for example the design column which has still 2 free slots (so the system is not stuck yet)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all teams will have all individuals able to perform all tasks. In general, once a column (or multiple related columns) have reached their WIP limit and someone wants to put more in, rather than just automatically shifting to something else, the person wanting to put more in should look at the board to identify the roadblock and attempt to help fix it. Just because there is 'room' somewhere on the board doesn't mean you can/should ignore that you have a roadblock.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, teams should always try to work towards the right-most side of the board whenever possible. The idea is not to make sure everyone always has work to do (optimizing for utilization). The goal is to make sure issues reach 'Done' as soon as possible, or in other words, to reduce lead time (optimizing for flow).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If I deassign them from a done task and assign them to another tasks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban only works as a &lt;em&gt;Pull&lt;/em&gt; system. Not as a &lt;em&gt;Push&lt;/em&gt; system. &lt;strong&gt;You do NOT assign tasks to developers&lt;/strong&gt;, nor unassign them from developers. Developers assign tasks to &lt;em&gt;themselves&lt;/em&gt;. Removing Kanban's self-organizing team structure rips out a large part of the benefit of Kanban, and of Agile in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-04-12T19:59:59.923" LastActivityDate="2017-04-12T19:59:59.923" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20540" CreationDate="2017-04-12T19:22:53.620" Score="1" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;default issue type&lt;/strong&gt; is the type of the issue that is selected when you Create a new issue (bug/task/etc). You can set this via Administration &gt; Issues &gt; Issue type schemes &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;default status&lt;/strong&gt; an issue starts in (todo/done/etc) is set in the workflow (Administration &gt; Issues &gt; Workflow), add a transition from the start (create issue) to the desired status&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;default column&lt;/strong&gt; on the kanban board is configured in the board settings. You can choose between a kanban board with or without a backlog. In the board settings define the mapping between a status and a place on the board.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8935" LastActivityDate="2017-04-12T19:22:53.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21467" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-13T16:02:17.907" Score="3" ViewCount="871" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BACKGROUND&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Onboarded with small startup ~15 people (40% Tech, 40% Sales, 20%&#xA;Operations).  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Everyone on team is onboard to start formalizing Scrum processes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CEO drives vision of product, CTO executes on product, Operations formalizes Scrum process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;QUESTION&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you handle the relationship and responsibilities of &lt;code&gt;Product Owner&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;Scrum Master&lt;/code&gt; when the CEO drives the vision of the product, the CTO is only worried about creating/executing on sprints, and the Ops team is tasked with collecting and formalizing requirements (obtained from sales &amp;amp; customer success teams) while officiating the Scrum process?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;NOTE: The CEO specifically wants the Ops team to carry the majority of the responsibility for running the Scrum process (the CTO is in agreement). The CEO primarily wants to check in and help with User Story inputs (as the CEO is typically working with clients on partnerships and often receives feature requests).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28245" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T18:19:34.303" LastActivityDate="2017-04-17T21:20:52.493" Title="How do you handle the relationship and responsibilities of `Product Owner` and `Scrum Master`?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21467" CreationDate="2017-04-13T17:20:00.803" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not entirely sure from your question, but I'm assuming you are both the Scrum Master (SM) and the Product Owner (PM)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, that's your first problem. Those two roles often have contrasting priorities and thus should not be the same person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master is the servant/leader of the Scrum Team. They ensure everyone understands and follows the Scrum process, and the also protect the Development Team from outside influences (client, CEO, bad working conditions, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner &lt;em&gt;owns the product.&lt;/em&gt; (Groundbreaking, yes?) Any and all client requests go through the PO before reaching the Development Team. The PO has the final say about prioritization and rejection of requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These two roles should not be shared by the same person, as the PO needs to prioritize the product (we need more features!) while the SM needs to prioritize the Dev Team (we need to slow down, we've got too much technical debt!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that that's established, you (or, more broadly, your company) needs to decide which two individuals are best suited for each of those roles. And then they need to be &lt;em&gt;empowered&lt;/em&gt; to be allowed to perform those roles. If the CEO is going to override the PO's priorities, then the CEO needs to &lt;em&gt;be&lt;/em&gt; the PO, and take on all the responsibilities entailed therein. Responsibility and authority go hand-in-hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-04-13T17:20:00.803" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15744" CreationDate="2017-04-13T18:28:22.757" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just couldn't disagree more with reporting up through either the Product or Technology organizations.  At some point, there is a likelihood that the leadership of one of those organizations is going to be inclined to protect and defend their teams &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt;, rather than seeking first to understand why/how/what problems may exist.  As soon as that happens, it is no longer safe for a SM to elevate issues and we start to break down.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Operations is perhaps the most obvious structure to report into.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28248" LastActivityDate="2017-04-13T18:28:22.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21462" CreationDate="2017-04-14T12:18:56.577" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is a canonical answer to this but I understand completely what you are after in your reporting.  One problem that I see in reporting is we typically display the metrics in raw form, e.g., CPI = 0.84, versus the results of the analysis of the metrics.  We may only display in the report, for example, a process run chart, instead of explaining what the run chart is saying to us: this jump is normal cause or this jump indicates a special cause trend and requires analysis and intervention.  It's akin to your doctor showing you your xray film with no explanation of what it means.  I witness a lot of eyes glazing over when this happens.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other front around emotional responses, you are faced with different personality types and hidden agendas when trying to find trigger words.  For example, if you have any experience around the DiSC Assessments, you'd likely find different emoting words necessary for folks who are high DI low SC; high SC low DI; or high DC low IS people.  Also, people with whom we work have personal agendas and much of that could be hidden.  You would have to find that trigger word that impacts their agenda to get a response.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this is the art of communication and stakeholder engagement.  I think the heart of your question is a valid one and speaks to these two areas of project management.  The answer, however, is a complex one and one where there is no one size fits all.  You will need to really understand your audience, those who are consuming your reports, and experiment with your reporting language.  This also means you need to LISTEN for what they are asking, really listen, because many times they are asking for something different than what their verbal ask indicated.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is getting to the psychology of us, personalities, and cognitive biases.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-04-14T12:18:56.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21467" CreationDate="2017-04-14T17:45:05.103" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd advise two things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- Creation of a Day-To-Day Product Owner that is not the CEO&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2- Creation of a Product Owner Team&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dedicated Product Owner: Can a small company CEO be the product owner? Yes they can. Luke Hohmann of Conteneo is a great example. However Conteneo is not a brand new startup, it's a small 10+ year old company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even with a 15 person company, a startup CEO is not going to have enough time to be a full-time product owner. If he/she does then they are not giving enough attention to the other things that a CEO does. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CEO needs someone to drive product vision, or at the very least translate his vision and be the day to day connection to the team. The CEO becomes the &quot;Chief Product Owner&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product Owner Team: No product owner can do everything. The idea of a single, wringable neck is not only unsustainable, it's not in the spirit of agile where we collaborate towards a goal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So once you have a dedicated product owner you surround them with a team to help drive the vision. A technical expert, a customer expert, representation from the teams building and in your case, the CEO. They meet to bring things from vision down to Epic level where it gets handed off to the team (with the PO working with the team, of course). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-04-17T14:01:06.453" LastActivityDate="2017-04-17T14:01:06.453" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21473" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-14T21:10:25.797" Score="-1" ViewCount="278" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say I wanted to asses the risks in a project like the one in this link: &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/tanay-bits/baxter_skeletonteleop&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://github.com/tanay-bits/baxter_skeletonteleop&lt;/a&gt;, where I am tele-operating a robot using a vision sensor. How can I facilitate a project risk assessment?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28259" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2017-04-15T12:33:06.023" LastActivityDate="2017-04-17T01:33:53.780" Title="How do I facilitate a project risk assessment?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;risk&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21474" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2017-04-15T08:58:57.233" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Azure DevOps Services (formerly VSTS Visual Studio Team System), is an integrated development environment (IDE) developed as a software product by Microsoft Corp. to facilitate software project creation, development and management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/azure-devops&quot;&gt;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/azure-devops&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://devops.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/azure-devops&quot;&gt;https://devops.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/azure-devops&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azure_DevOps_Server&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azure_DevOps_Server&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Studio_Team_System&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Studio_Team_System&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="4157" LastEditDate="2020-09-03T10:53:21.127" LastActivityDate="2020-09-03T10:53:21.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21475" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2017-04-15T08:58:57.233" Score="0" Body="Azure DevOps Services (formerly VSTS Visual Studio Team System), is an integrated development environment (IDE) developed as a software product by Microsoft Corp. to facilitate software project creation, development and management." OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="4157" LastEditDate="2020-09-03T09:07:07.390" LastActivityDate="2020-09-03T09:07:07.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21473" CreationDate="2017-04-15T12:40:49.597" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use a Risk Breakdown Structure to help the team facilitate analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.risk-doctor.com/pdf-files/rbs1002.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Risk Breakdown Structure, Risk Doctor&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This works just like a WBS or OBS, and breaks down threat areas in a logical manner to a more discreet level of specificity, enabling you and your team to ask the types of questions that will enable you to identify the threats on your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you get the structure of your facilitated work sessions, then you need to combat the human psychology of all of this, where you need to work through a set of various biases that sort of inhibit our ability to assess threats in a cogent and objective way.  Good luck on this last part.  Very tough nut to crack.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-04-15T12:40:49.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21477" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-15T12:55:15.677" Score="8" ViewCount="235" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work as part of an eight-member agile team. When I joined the company I saw lots of problems in the team. I decided to share my past experience to help the team but the team saw me as a small person, challenging them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, if agile is about the team and the team takes responsibility for the failure of the project or sprint then why can't the QA suggest new ways of working?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you think it's unfair to hold the QA accountable when they are treated as a small person?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did fair bit of research before suggesting new ideas. I also removed any ownership claim and did not involve senior management team  but still the team saw me as a threat. It's definitely to do with my role as a QA. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Senior management recently sent another guy to help add new processes to the team and the team actually listens to him. He's doing everything the way I was doing but senior management team likes him so the team can't say or do anything to him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He said it's not QA's responsibility to add processes or suggest anything that's why the team don't like it. They see you as a challenge.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28264" LastEditorUserId="28264" LastEditDate="2017-04-16T16:31:48.940" LastActivityDate="2017-04-22T08:59:05.563" Title="Why can't QA's share expertise and suggest new ways of working" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21477" CreationDate="2017-04-15T15:33:42.870" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might be &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; you're suggesting these changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It probably has nothing to do with your &lt;em&gt;position&lt;/em&gt; (QA), per se, but more to do with the fact that some new guy is coming in, telling everyone that what they're doing is all wrong (despite not having been around long enough to understand &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; it's done that way).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, you could even be seen as a threat, especially if you are involving upper management in these decisions. You could be seen as jockeying for respect and credit for providing all these new ideas for the Team to use, which in turn would make the other Team members look worse by comparison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is to do the following two things, in order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Understand &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; the current process is the way it is. Performing this step might even make you realize that your 'improvement' is either not worth it, or perhaps even harmful. Never assume you are right before you do the sufficient research to determine if you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; right.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work with the Team to transform 'your idea' into the &lt;em&gt;Team's&lt;/em&gt; idea. You need to make sure that you remove any ownership claim you might have to the new process. That way, instead of being 'the new guy's idea', it will be 'an improvement to our process.'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-04-15T15:33:42.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18646" CreationDate="2017-04-16T04:06:00.523" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to reduce waste and build an efficient MVP, you want to attack outcome they value the most. Something that important but they aren’t satisfied yet with current solution. This is how you filter down what matters and what is not before allocate more resources to actually build the thing. There is no point to solve / test something they already satisfied with or something that they feel not important. You don't want to waste your time, budget and resource. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let’s say you want to solve a job of &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;“Get a ride to my destination”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to people and draw Customer Value model to Map their current&#xA;process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to people, analyze and define specific unit of&#xA;measurement that they value.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/W3JVb.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/W3JVb.png&quot; alt=&quot;Example of unit of measurement&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Throw survey / interview ask people to rate each&#xA;unit of measurement by importance and satisfaction using a scale 1&#xA;to 5. (1 means not important / satisfied while 5 is totally&#xA;important / satisfied.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use Opportunity Algorithm to discover the most important outcome but they are not satisfied yet.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;**&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Opportunity = importance + max (Importance-Satisfaction,0)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;**&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Result:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lML62.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lML62.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to read this result?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For outcome #1, 90% of those interviewed rated 4 or 5 on the&#xA;importance of outcome and only 40% of them are satisfied (rated 4 or 5) with current solution. Resulting in 14.0 opportunity score. Otherwise for outcome #2—they see it as something that not really important but actually already well served with current solution. You don't want to focus on #2 for now. As for #3, it has the highest opportunity score. It means, to &lt;em&gt;&quot;Minimize the chance of my ride to arrive in wrong location&quot;&lt;/em&gt; is highly important for them but they are not really satisfied with current solution. This is your opportunity—thus, you have to include solution for it in your MVP. You could have hundreds of outcome, this technique help you prioritise them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28266" LastEditorUserId="28266" LastEditDate="2017-04-16T11:20:53.340" LastActivityDate="2017-04-16T11:20:53.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21477" CreationDate="2017-04-16T09:10:26.997" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Anybody in the team can make suggestions for how the team can perform better, also new team members with a QA background. There are, however, two things working against getting your ideas accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change is hard. If ideas are not backed with authority (either formal or informal), then the team often finds it easier to dismiss the new idea than to make the suggested idea. As a new team member, you have not had the time you build up an informal authority by showing that you always have the team's best interest in you heart.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In my experience, people with a QA background are not among the forerunners in adopting agile methods/mindsets. If the team has had a bad experience with a QA member who tried to change the processes back to a more formalized, waterfall-like format, rather than a relatively free agile format, then the team might be less accepting of your improvement ideas because they fear you also want to back out of agile. That fear is completely independent of what direction your ideas actually would take the team in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2017-04-16T09:10:26.997" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21477" CreationDate="2017-04-16T19:53:55.793" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thank you for having the courage as a new team member to raise concerns and propose improvements.  There are some good thoughts in the other answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One part of your comment to Bart speaks volumes: &quot;there's one person who doesn't. She's the probject manager.&quot;  If she is operating with a classic, command-and-control mind set, then that could be the root issue.  There may be a lack of a complete agile mindset.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're frustration is understandable.  &lt;strong&gt;Continue to learn about the group.  Understand the current modus operandi and the why behind it.  Continue to build relationships with the other team members.  Share your thoughts.  Influence what you can.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things should improve.  If not, then you have a decision to make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The input of all team members should be taken seriously.  It is wrong to hold any one person or role accountable for team results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2017-04-16T20:08:12.433" LastActivityDate="2017-04-16T20:08:12.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21473" CreationDate="2017-04-17T01:11:38.337" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A bit of googling will probably give you too much information.  I'm going to take the position that you facilitate a risk assessment for your project the same way you facilitate a risk assessment for any project.  The key is to facilitate; Subject Matter Experts (SME's) will propose risks peculiar to the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number of methodologies for facilitating risk management sessions is roughly equivalent to the square of the number of people involved. I'll offer up two that I think are most useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the one which is most applicable to your project is to gather everyone for a pre-emptive post-mortem (a pre-mortem).  Put up a calendar for 1 month after the projected delivery date and announce that everyone is here to understand why the project failed.  We all acknowledge that we did our best, but the project failed and now we need to understand why.  Collect theories on why the project failed.  record all the theories, then group similar risks to discover themes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The best approach (impractical for you ) is to collect data for a year and then analyze the data to determine risks.  Data is always superior to theory; the only excuse to prioritize theory over data is when there is beer involved. Most people don't have this as an option, but beginning 5 minutes after the facilitation session you should start to gather data, and to prioritize risk analysis based on data over risk analysis based on anything other than data.  The session you're going to facilitate will help you to determine what data to collect.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've collected a set of candidate risks, you'll want to iteratively assess, analyze and document the risks, develop risk response strategies, risk indicators, triggers, monitors, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of things I would advise you to do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;explain the Godzilla clause and use it heavily. If necessary, assign someone the responsibility of invoking Godzilla.  For every concievable project someone will begin to discuss risks that are as damaging as Godzilla, but also as likely as Godzilla. When someone starts discussing risks that are like Godzilla, invoke his name and move on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Keep a parking lot - I can predict that someone in the session will begin to exhibit an obsessive fascination with elements that the rest of the group perceives as less than fully relevant.  You need to keep that person's trust by recording their obsession, but you need to stop that obsession from hijacking the discussion.  The parking lot is where we record those, and it is your obligation to research the issue and get back.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start with a calibration exercise.  A risk session without calibration is like Thanksgiving with your racist uncle; pointless and satisfying only to those with malice.  Define likelihood ( If we ran 100 projects like this one, then a rating of 1 indicates that the event would occur 10% of the time or less...) and consequence - (A rating of 1 indicates that the event would adversely affect the schedule/scope/cost/quality by a 10% variance....).  Experience indicates that many of the ferocious arguments in risk meetings are really about &quot;I thought medium meant 50%, and you thought it was 75%&quot;.  That discussion generates heat, not light.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(My boss will not permit discussion of probability - it is sufficient to merely assert that it is not 100% certain and it is not Godzilla improbable.  Subsequent analysis (based on data) can refine the value. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of things I strongly advise you never do:&#xA;* Don't solve the problem  - identify the risk.  Shut down any attempt to argue over how the risk should be addressed. It is fine to propose one possible mitigation, but don't permit discussion - move on to the next risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't permit any discussion of consequentialism, frequentism, likelihood, bayes, probability, etc.  Any time the discussion veers off into nuances that your grandmother wouldn't be able to track while preparing Thanksgiving dinner, drop the hammer.  Bayes vs frequentism is fascinating but should only be done when all participants are fortified by an unending supply of pints &amp;amp; pretzels.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have never found it productive to categorize threats into natural hazards and others.  If my data center is destroyed by a hurricane, a meteor, a terrorist, or because Godzilla has chosen to nest there, what matters is how to get the data back up and running, not isolating the cause.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Develop a threat model and decompose that threat model into categories, then collect your SME's and ask them to rank the categories on likelihood and probability.   (DOD and the US Government eat this up - they adore this kind of paralysis by analysis.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've got to stop before I write a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-04-17T01:33:53.780" LastActivityDate="2017-04-17T01:33:53.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21467" CreationDate="2017-04-17T21:20:52.493" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your CEO should &lt;em&gt;probably&lt;/em&gt; not be your PO&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your PO and SM should &lt;em&gt;probably&lt;/em&gt; not be the same person&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your PO and SM will partner closely to&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make product decisions into empirical science&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;create a clear, ordered, and available Product Backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your SM will need to be fully engaged in each Scrum event (at least)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your SM will need to be able to account to CTO for progress&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Credit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to highlight a couple prescient points made by Sarov and Joel Bancroft-Connors in their answers first:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One person should (most probably) not share the PO and Scrum Master roles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The PO should be able to interact with the Development Team &lt;em&gt;daily&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PO Availability&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree that your CEO sounds too busy to be an effective PO and that your PO and SM roles should (probably) not be shared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product Science Duo&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PO and SM will probably work closely. The SM will help the PO obtain and understand market feedback received from the releasable software developed by the Dev Team produces every Sprint. This should be #1 priority, especially for a start up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Backlog Builders&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PO and SM will probably work closely and frequently (at least at first) to construct a clear, available and ordered Product Backlog. This may take some doing and maybe even some fancy techniques like User &lt;a href=&quot;http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920033851.do&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Story Mapping&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.impactmapping.org/book.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Impact Mapping&lt;/a&gt;, and a backlog management tool (other than Excel) before it's mature. Your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum Witness&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your Scrum Master may need to account to the CTO for the practice of Scrum as your Scrum team develops. This includes being fully present in all Scrum events and probably taking copious notes. Note: you don't have to participate in the Daily Scrum, but being present is probably necessary until the Development Team learns how to conduct it well. The point of this effort is to be able to anticipate problems, react correctly to difficulties, and coach the Scrum team effectively based on real knowledge of their current maturity in Scrum practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's dangerous to go alone&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is all this and more in store for this dynamic duo. If you are indeed filling both PO and SM roll, buckle up because you're in for a ride.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21576" LastActivityDate="2017-04-17T21:20:52.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21453" CreationDate="2017-04-18T15:50:20.080" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Integrate BAs into Development Team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recruit them into a PO SWOT team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask them to evangelize the product&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Offer a role shift or a &lt;em&gt;career transition&lt;/em&gt; ;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Business Analyst is the new &lt;em&gt;Developer&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some BA's may do very well taking on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-dev&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Development Team member&lt;/a&gt; role. If they were involved in constructing/gathering a requirement they could verify/test that a solution is fit for purpose. Before that, they could &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_programming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;pair&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mob_programming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;mob&lt;/a&gt; during the actual coding to guide an implementation of a feature to be &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fit_for_purpose&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;fit for purpose&lt;/a&gt; with great efficiency. They could also help produce any artifacts e.g. documentation that are part of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#artifact-transparency-done&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Definition of &quot;Done&quot;&lt;/a&gt; for a Product Backlog item. Remember, just because you can't program (yet) doesn't mean you can't be a developer in Scrum :D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product Owner &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWOT_analysis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SWOT&lt;/a&gt; Team&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Product Owner needs support to do their job well. Consider recruiting some of those analysts into a team dedicated to finding new value for the product, constructing product experiments (read: new features that get verified scientifically), scouting out competitor threats, and in general provide marketplace analysis. A product owner well supported in this way makes decisions scientifically. Without it, the PO may be left gazing into a crystal ball for predictions. In short, you want &lt;a href=&quot;https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwU3KzSlhgZ6bVdCeW9lTnJMZzA/view?usp=sharing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Isaac Newton&lt;/a&gt; not &lt;a href=&quot;http://psychic.accentient.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nostradamus&lt;/a&gt;. Slide deck credit goes to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/user/182&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mark Noneman&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.madisonhenry.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Madison Henry Group&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Power of [Product] Compels You!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even the best products may need a bit of talking up. This is not advertising &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt; but rather advocacy. They could produce documentation artifacts e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blog.trello.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog updates&lt;/a&gt;, how to articles, &lt;a href=&quot;https://blog.bufferapp.com/video-tools&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;video demo's&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.intercom.com/live-chat&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;interact directly with customers&lt;/a&gt; who are having trouble using or understanding the product. Really any such thing that is necessary for a product or feature to be well utilized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4OvQIGDg4I&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;So What Would You Say...Ya Do Here?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's unclear that they are bringing value in their current role, calmly assure them that their &lt;em&gt;position&lt;/em&gt; is safe but their &lt;em&gt;role&lt;/em&gt; isn't. Kindly ask them to consider one of the above roles or collaborate with them to create a new way they can either assist or be part of a Scrum team. If they don't budge, it may be time to assist them with a &lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/2LCggmsCXk4?t=9s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;career transition&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; if you catch my drift.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21576" LastActivityDate="2017-04-18T15:50:20.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21491" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-19T06:59:10.847" Score="4" ViewCount="601" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMBok (page 221) mentions two formulas for estimation ETC based on previous project performance. These are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) ETC = (BAC-EV) / CPI&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) ETC = (BAC-EV) / (CPI * SPI)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While (1) is completly clear for me, I don't understand the motivation for including SPI in (2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(There are other estimations too, like assuming the remaining work procceds like planed ETC = BAC - EV, or new bottom-up analysis if boundary conditions have changed strongly. These estimations are not considered in my question.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that we can proportionaly reduce task duration by adding resources [ money / duration ] , i would expect the total remaining cost [ money / duration ] * [duration] to stay constant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the process cannot be speeded by additional resources due to its nature I don't see a point in adding resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So basically I don't see why in this case the factor time should be included in the ETC calculation. CPI = EV/AC, this definition is independent if we are ahead or behind shedule. And extrapolation should be indepentently if we increase burn rate or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit 1&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inspired by the answer of David, I did my own calculations. &#xA;Also some test estimations showed that the first formula always gives the correct results, whilest the second formula only converges to the final value at the end of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/syP62.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/syP62.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Formula (2) only seems to be correct if we would define CPI = PV / AC, which is not correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit 2&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/pmbok-guide-standards/framework/earned-value-management-2nd&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;In this PMI publication&lt;/a&gt; I have found a third formula.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) ETC = (BAC-EV) / (CPI*0.8 + SPI*0.2)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot find a mathematical justification for this. The weighting of 0.8 seems to be arbitrary. Instead of using the historic SPI, it would have more justification to include somthing like a To-complete-Scope-performance-index  TSPI = (BAC-EV)/(BAV-PV).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can only interpret it that this formulars are used in industry. They might seem to have higher accuracy in some cases, but I i expect this just due to compensation of inaccurate estimation of EV (project progress)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my most important question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are the criteria, to decide which formula to use in the PMI exam?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28178" LastEditorUserId="28178" LastEditDate="2017-04-21T16:26:50.867" LastActivityDate="2017-04-21T17:01:18.687" Title="ETC calculation including SPI" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21477" CreationDate="2017-04-19T08:44:34.427" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Software Quality Engineer (for about 10 years now) I have been giving teams advice on how to improve their process all the time, with great success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He said it's not QA's responsibility to add processes or suggest&#xA;  anything that's why the team don't like it. They see you as a&#xA;  challenge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to clear disagree with this remark, hopeful I can explain why I think it is QA's responsibility. Let's start with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.davidchappell.com/writing/white_papers/The_Three_Aspects_of_Software_Quality_v1.0-Chappell.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the three aspects of software quality&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Functional quality&lt;/strong&gt;: This is what most QA focus on, e.g. testing from a user perspective.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Structural quality&lt;/strong&gt;: This is was Agile QA should focus on if you ask me. From the Agile manifesto: &quot;Continuous attention to &lt;a href=&quot;https://less.works/de/less/technical-excellence/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;technical excellence&lt;/a&gt; and good design enhances agility.&quot;. Teach developers to build testable code and how to refactor-safely with the goal to create software that does not resist change.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Process quality&lt;/strong&gt;: Going from requirement collection to product delivery. Actually the whole &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SDLC&lt;/a&gt; should be a QA responsibility. There is so much to improve, so many risks to minimize. Focusing on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/managing-risk-on-agile-projects-with-the-risk-burndown-chart&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile risk management&lt;/a&gt; helps to get influence, as it is a clear QA task to remove risks in the process for the users and sponsors competitive advantage.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These three aspects are of equal importance. If you are only a functional tester it is hard to get respected on vision in the other quality aspects. Structural quality could be a developer responsibility, but often they lack the knowledge and urgency to improve here. Process quality could be the main responsibility of a Scrum Masters, but they often focus on project management and not product quality. Even if the Scrum Guide describes this: &quot;During each &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-retro&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sprint Retrospective&lt;/a&gt;, the Scrum Team plans ways to increase &lt;strong&gt;product quality&lt;/strong&gt; by adapting the definition of “Done” as appropriate&quot;. So YES there is a lot of overlap with other roles, but still enough room for the QA to focus on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When starting at a new company I would do one-on-one status-quo interviews and or training with all personal (CEO, Managers, Key-Users, Key-Stakeholders, Developers, Product Owners and Scrum Masters) explain them the difference between these three quality aspects, &lt;a href=&quot;https://meekrosoft.wordpress.com/2010/10/31/internal-and-external-software-quality/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;internal vs external quality&lt;/a&gt; and maybe the &lt;a href=&quot;http://lisacrispin.com/2011/11/08/using-the-agile-testing-quadrants/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile testing quadrants&lt;/a&gt; and which skills this entails. Showing you have broad knowledge of all aspects of software development. This will help accepting suggestions you make greatly, set yourself as THE quality guy or girl.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something I have learned over the years:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Act confident, but with respect. Truely believe what you advocate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Describe or visualize the problem. Let the team find a solution. Only suggest solutions when they ask you. This will make adoption of changes easier. Even better let the team do a research activity, not a single person.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Changes in culture are slow, this can take up to three or more years. The ones repeating often, but quietly tend to win this culture change race. Making a big fuss is never a good strategy for cultural change.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Being a Scrum Master gives you greater influence. Reading up on Agile and Agile testing can be the first steps into this path. I have been working in a dual role (QA + Scrum Master) since 2009. Seems to work great for me.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask the Scrum Master or Agile coach to help you implement a change in behavior. Let them describe the problems to team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use retrospectives and keep repeating serious process issues you see them. Try to not talk in solutions. Explain the WHY, not the What and How. Same as with perfect User-Stories. :)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a last resort I always like to quote &lt;a href=&quot;https://martinfowler.com/articles/xp2000.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Martin Fowler&lt;/a&gt;: &quot;If you can't change your organization, change your organization!&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2017-04-19T09:15:03.300" LastActivityDate="2017-04-19T09:15:03.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4976" CreationDate="2017-04-19T09:24:37.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project management is part of the scope and delivery of every project. Consequently, the cost for project management is part of the project cost. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But cost is not the same thing as price. Cost is defined by the resources which are required to produce the deliveries. Price is the result of negotiations with customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the policy of your organization, the project manager can be a dedicated position, or it can be added proportional to the other positions. One can also indicate only some parts of the PM in the quotation (e.g. travel expenses) and add the rest as common cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28178" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-04-21T17:36:12.570" LastActivityDate="2017-04-21T17:36:12.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21494" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-19T12:55:06.510" Score="2" ViewCount="182" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm using MS Project to manage training projects as a vendor. We are currently calculating earned value based on the hours budget for deliverables. However, we often have multiple people on the project at different billable rates, and also sell some deliverables in units instead of hours - training deliveries are a good example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for a simple way to more accurately calculate the earned value based on dollars instead of hours; any ideas? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a column I could include with costs? How would that correspond to Work, and what % Complete field would I use? If I apply a billable rate to Resources am I creating a lot of work for myself just managing the software? What else haven't I thought of yet?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28310" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-09-13T13:08:39.427" LastActivityDate="2018-07-10T22:31:43.157" Title="How can I calculate earned value in MS Project with variable costs?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;budget&gt;&lt;learning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21491" CreationDate="2017-04-19T13:18:50.320" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The issue with using formula is that it will provide an extremely precise, deterministic value that lives in a range of probabilistic values.  Although extremely precise, no single formula will give you a high degree of accuracy, i.e., all formula have varying degrees of accuracy and thus are useful.  But that means you need to use several of them so that you can visualize the range of results that will give you the total risk.  I am attaching a fake S Curve to show you the results of several different modeling approaches:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/p6QuQ.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/p6QuQ.png&quot; alt=&quot;S Curves for Fake Project&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This project is supposed to take 16 periods with BAC of 2.650.  EV is .620; PV is .663; AC is .672.  I also did an Earned Schedule calculation and that suggests it'll take 18 periods, versus 16, to finish the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The orange line is the formula that includes SPI and the light blue is the formula that excludes the CPI.  The ES trend line, the gray line, is an extrapolation from actual costs to get to period 18.  The EV trend is an extrapolation from EV to get to period 18.  You can see in this simple example that the ES trend line is closer to the formula result including the SPI.  This suggests to me that the formula with SPI is reliable and those results are within the probable values.  So if I were predicting an EAC and need to publish a single value, I'd likely choose a value between what both of those formulas are indicating.  I'd go up or down based on other variables I know to be true.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, don't reject any one formula.  They all have usefulness and will help you visualize the probabilistic range that represents more reality than any single result would ever do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If you extend the blue line to period 18, you will intersect the orange line at the y-axis.  So including SPI in the formula is consistent with what earned schedule suggests for a timeline.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT based on the updated question for the PMP exam:  Table 7-1 on page 224 of the PmBOK shows four formulas for EAC.  Those are the four you need to memorize.  If you were to get a question asking for an EAC, run those four formula.  One of the four multiple choice answers will coincide with the result of one of those four.  In practice, there are an infinite number of predictive models, or formulas, you could use.  The PMP test cannot administer a question using some obscure formula that is not resident in the PMBOK.  Notwithstanding you found a weighting formula in their earned value book, the PMBOK would be a prevailing source for the PMP test.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2017-04-21T17:01:18.687" LastActivityDate="2017-04-21T17:01:18.687" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21202" CreationDate="2017-04-19T14:14:49.130" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was in this position, I quit... unfortunately when the problems are outside the team, all that happens is the team complains to the scrum master, the scrum master complains to the manager, and nothing changes.  When higher ups don't want to improve the system as a whole, it is outside of a single teams control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While building slack into the system as others suggested will at least the team can &quot;succeed&quot; at sprints, it won't help reduce their frustrations at the crappy working environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anecdotally, the product that I left that was having this issue reduced their dev team from approximately 80 to a single scrum team of 8 to survive. It wouldn't have surprised me if that single team output more than the previous 10 teams did - it was that bad!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6825" LastActivityDate="2017-04-19T14:14:49.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21402" CreationDate="2017-04-19T14:14:57.970" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are lots of good answers here, but I thought I'd try giving a shorter answer to see if it would help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is no such thing as Scope Creep. There is only deeper understanding.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This presumes only a few things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You and your client trust each other enough to collaborate frequently&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have fixed delivery, you are able to flex on scope&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If scope is fixed, you are able to flex on delivery&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You build what you &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/166961-when-you-can-measure-what-you-are-speaking-about-and&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;know&lt;/a&gt; is valuable for your customers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You don't ship $#^!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One is required for two and three. Four and five build up number one. It's a harmonious cycle that is true to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; and one which &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt; incarnates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I expanded on this &lt;a href=&quot;http://jasontknight.com/five-prereqs-eliminating-scope-creep/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, if you would like to dig deeper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21576" LastEditorUserId="21576" LastEditDate="2017-04-21T17:12:16.950" LastActivityDate="2017-04-21T17:12:16.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14598" CreationDate="2017-04-19T20:56:20.903" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use tooling to extract text and put it under version control as code: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;MS Word: worddiff&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Latex: latexdiff &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then use a visualization tool to demonstrate the instability of the project and the impact additional changes would have to make the point clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://timotheepoisot.fr/2014/07/10/markdown-track-changes/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tracking Changes in Markdown&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ben.balter.com/2015/02/06/word-diff/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Diff (and collaborate on) Microsoft Word documents using GitHub | Ben Balter&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ghv.artzub.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;GitHub Visualizer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27065" LastEditorUserId="27065" LastEditDate="2017-04-19T21:55:56.600" LastActivityDate="2017-04-19T21:55:56.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11821" CreationDate="2017-04-19T23:28:29.130" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use a historical comparison of time/cost for features which endured scope creep versus features without scope creep for a side-by-side visualization. In addition, classify feature changes as on-the-job training:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, on-the-job training (OJT) appears to be the norm across numerous organizations. Using OJT almost certainly yields a less than optimal result in the management and leadership of Agile efforts. A number of respondents reported a significant lack of training, which results in a &amp;quot;learning as you go&amp;quot; mentality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This OJT is common across the stakeholders (contractors, DoD, and other stakeholders). A lack of understanding most often results in misallocation of resources, delays, cost overruns, and scope creep by stakeholders, all of which eat away at the efficiencies gained through the use of Agile implementations. Numerous respondents reported the efficiencies they gained were consumed and&#xA;ultimately outpaced by the client demanding new features be added, over and over again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outlining the set of features as a table of contents and categorizing each scope change as a subsection under the original feature would also help quantify the impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://resources.sei.cmu.edu/asset_files/TechnicalNote/2014_004_001_312766.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Methods in Air Force Sustainment: Status and Outlook (pdf)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gcss.army.mil/Library/TopStories/Agile.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Requirements Engineering in an Agile Software Development Environment | GCSS-Army&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://hbr.org/2005/06/the-coming-commoditization-of-processes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Coming Commoditization of Processes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27065" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-04-19T23:28:29.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18720" CreationDate="2017-04-19T23:59:19.287" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In terms of acceptance criteria for change requests, the process needs to facilitate shared accountability and customer focus. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The general wisdom for avoiding scope creep goes something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Require the scope change requester to complete a form, or otherwise formally describe the change.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Log the form (like you do everything else).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Determine the impact of the requested change.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Review the change with the client / business owner / project team, and approve or reject the request.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Update project documents and notify the team of any changes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My trick is to basically move step 3 up as a component of step 1, and include a short questionnaire about the impact of the suggested change right there on the initial request form. I also ask for the change to be mapped — quantifiably, if possible — to one of the key metrics / business goals laid out in the project's business requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/it-consultant/fight-scope-creep-with-this-change-request-trick/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fight Scope Creep with this Change Request trick&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27065" LastActivityDate="2017-04-19T23:59:19.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1748" CreationDate="2017-04-20T00:02:11.907" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scope creep is a distraction from a goal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A project manager must define the scope of the work, break it into manageable pieces, verify and control what work is being done, and make sure that the work being done is essential to the project. One of the biggest causes of Lee’s defeat was the southern cavalry soldiers' failure to do their most critical job: collect intelligence about the enemy. A week before the battle, Lee allowed his cavalry commander, General J.E.B. Stuart, to go on an ill-planned mission that crippled Lee’s ability to gather information about the Union army. They wasted valuable time capturing supplies instead of focusing solely on their primary mission of scouting. As a result of this &quot;scope creep,&quot; Lee’s cavalry failed to play the role for which it was most needed. Lee went into battle knowing very little about the strength of his opponent and made key decisions with inadequate knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scope change is a reuse of an achievement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the time, landing on the moon might have seemed achievable, but JFK had a lot going in his favor. He knew the moonshot was achievable because NASA had done a huge amount of validation down to the finest level of detail. He also had the ability to devote 5% of the GDP of the largest economy on Earth to the project. If your plan hasn’t been validated with at least one solution you’ll have no way to estimate the scope of work and resources necessary to complete it. We call that &quot;landing&quot; a plan, taking it from an abstract plan in the clouds to something that is firmly grounded in the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://medium.com/@MattPasienski/how-jfk-was-able-to-get-us-to-the-moon-2bd423bd75e2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How JFK got us to the Moon – Matt Pasienski – Medium&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://appel.nasa.gov/2008/01/01/the-project-manager-who-saved-his-country/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Project Manager Who Saved His Country | APPEL – Academy of Program/Project &amp;amp; Engineering Leadership&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27065" LastActivityDate="2017-04-20T00:02:11.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21402" CreationDate="2017-04-20T09:39:06.123" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are different answers to this question, depending on context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CodeGnome has covered &quot;out of sprint&quot; high level scope well - basically add items to the backlog and either extend the project, or drop other features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within the sprint, this question is a bit more subtle.  I think it is important to differentiate between &quot;Scope Creep&quot; and &quot;Gold Plating&quot;, and &quot;Change from learning&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scope creep and gold plating should be pushed outside the sprint&lt;/strong&gt; - and handled as above.  The team has a set goal with stories with acceptance criteria, and due to the nature of agile projects the requirements are often vague when work is pulled into a sprint.  Often during development as the work progresses lots of questions arise around &quot;should we do X as part of this?&quot; Where it is important to coach the team to follow the principles of maximising work not done, and working effectively to deliver the minimum to meet the story and sprint goal.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Scope Change&quot; however, is the essence of the value delivered by agile.&lt;/strong&gt;  Learning from a sprint might totally change the product backlog, allowing you to deliver much more value than was previously planned, in the same or potentially less time.  By getting something out early and getting feedback the huge positive gains of agile are seen, and this is a positive rather than the potentially negative element of traditional scope creep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6825" LastActivityDate="2017-04-20T09:39:06.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4976" CreationDate="2017-04-22T05:44:37.403" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, the project manager should include his cost to the project. Regardless of whether your organization subscribes to cost-accounting or activity-accounting, I believe something as crucial as project management should be included in the cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is not the case then the organization will not be able to track the financial aspect of the project properly. As it has already been said in some of the answers above, most of the time you may not have the control over budget, which is really sad because Project management is all about budget, scope and time. But then we don't live in an ideal world. Client's will only pay what they can pay. This does not mean you should not track the actual cost of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to know actual cost of an entire project and it is not just the human resource costs &amp;amp; licenses but also the depreciations &amp;amp; over times. Only when you see these data over a period you will be able to improve your pricing, if the deficit starts becoming significant then your organization's marketing &amp;amp; sales strategy needs to change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28334" LastActivityDate="2017-04-22T05:44:37.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18720" CreationDate="2017-04-22T07:12:15.880" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMHO,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Possible causes of scope creep and their indicators&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Loosely defined projects&lt;/strong&gt; - If the project is not properly defined along with its success, the team will not have anything to make their stand on.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Indicators:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;You keep getting references to other apps/sites&lt;/em&gt; - I feel that in most cases, &quot;idea&quot; is overrated. The majority of new-entrepreneurs are simply trying to create someone else's success. They will not have defined vision in their own head regarding what they are trying to achieve as a result they will always be diverging away from a track that they set out to achieve in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;You get complained at - A LOT&lt;/em&gt; - They are just trying to re-create someone else's success and they will always find their achievement behind their expectations without actually knowing what they are trying to solve. They are just sensing an opportunity without properly defining the problem and success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible solution&lt;/strong&gt; - Have a good customer facing unit (does not necessarily have to a separate entity but a group that can include people working in different capacity). Agile encourages changes and discourages contracts but that does not mean you are obiliged to give someone a full-fledged machine learning-Financial health-assessment tool when they initially set out to achieve a financial log book. It will be the unit's responsibility to keep client focused and the goal should always be to have a defined projects. You may need good negotiations and organizational skills for this to achieve. However, if you have already made the mistake of not defining the project, try to correct it in whatever capacity you can as of now. In most cases trying to define the project after it has been developed over a significant period will be incapable of producing desired effects and it will probably be for the best for both parties to seek oppurtunities elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Solution does not work for the problem&lt;/strong&gt; - A lot of project managers sometimes rely heavily on the client for requirement. When someone comes in with a project idea they are presumably trying to fix a certain problem. There needs to be a requirement analysis and proper vision regarding how the team will approach the solution. It is unfair on the client's part for a team to expect solutions from the client and clearly this never comes good. It's like going to a doctor and the patient advising how he should approach the treatment. &#xA;Broadly speaking say for eg. I want to build a software for my cafe. The problem is subjective and the statement has multiple meanings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could be trying to fix the problem with &lt;strong&gt;my employees and their payroll&lt;/strong&gt; management &lt;strong&gt;OR&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could be trying to build a software that helps me optimize my &lt;strong&gt;inventory management&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;strong&gt;OR&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could be trying to build a software that helps my customers place their orders online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the solutions, design and user experience will vary on what I am actually trying to achieve. How the results will be presented in a meaningful way could be completely different for any of the set mentioned above. So the requirement analysis has to be approached subjectively and conclusions properly defined to create a vision/directives that the team will follow. Obviously this goes without saying that it should be participative in nature, considering the most important aspects of keeping stakeholders happy and working team motivated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible indicators:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;You keep revisiting the same feature&lt;/em&gt; - Client knows that the solution does not work for the problem and keeps coming back with solution that they think might work but it actually does not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A sort of a change-cycle repeats with every sprint&lt;/em&gt; - Client could unknowingly be trying to align you back to the solution that actually works for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible solution&lt;/strong&gt; - Chances are, the client knows what his problem is and he knows the solution you provided does not address his or her core problem. They will try to come up with a solution which again may or may not work. To put things into perspective, say I am trying to track my finances, then I would probably want data visualisations with KPI's, the client may not even know what KPI is. As a solutions provider, it is upto us to actually propose ideas that can actually solve their problem. After all this is what innovation is all about. The team should at all times remain motivated to achieve success which needs to be defined. If the team understands the problem and if their solutions are aligned then both scope creep and scope change will not be expensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Properly define project and it's success. This is the most important thing, regardless of your organisation's philosophical bend, the organisation must have unified and unequivocal process of actually defining project and it's success criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28334" LastActivityDate="2017-04-22T07:12:15.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21477" CreationDate="2017-04-22T08:59:05.563" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regardless of what it is, it is not how a software organisation should be working. Success in &amp;amp; for an organisation relies on a lot of factors and one of them is participation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There also remains a possibility that - you might not be aware of a bigger picture. What you are suggesting might seem to be a solution from your perspective but may require change &amp;amp; transition management or the case of stakes not being transparent to you. I think they have taken your recommendations seriously as the action is already there. So, regardless of who does what, your input is actually paying off and you should be happy about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But anyone who has been in management capacity for more than 5 years will easily spot a fault here. Your organisation seems to be a initiative-killer. They should be embracing that people are willing to contribute for  betterment of the organisation. If it is because you are QA then you need to stop thinking and start looking for better opportunities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;QA team should have authority in at least suggesting improvements but then it really depends on how the organisation has defined quality.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28334" LastActivityDate="2017-04-22T08:59:05.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21512" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-15T08:39:26.283" Score="8" ViewCount="1573" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently working in a team with new to agile methodology programmers and few old school peeps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They seem to always, in planning meetings give hours/day estimates for a story. It really pisses me off and I try to tell them it means complexity/effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my senior asks for one example why hours/day estimates is wrong because it seems to work here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't seem to explain to them that this will mess up their velocity calculations, backlog grooming and release planning, gives an incorrect picture of teams burning capabilities to the po/pm and leads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be fair maybe I've not been able to explain it to them properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They had a question like, what do you estimate a story which would require 4-5 hours of migration. Say its migration takes 2 full days.&#xA;My response is it might be a trivial script but time is not related to story point estimation. Stop comparing apples and oranges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could anyone help me with a few convincing examples. Because the only scrum practice which is done right in here it seems is the daily standup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="yUdoDis" LastEditorDisplayName="user16244" LastEditDate="2018-11-19T10:50:35.907" LastActivityDate="2018-11-19T10:50:35.907" Title="Why are Story Points of a story not equivalent to days/hours in estimation. In Scrum [Agile]" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="13" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21513" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-22T15:47:41.560" Score="-1" ViewCount="220" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for a way to practice for PMP. A question bank for PMP would be nice. There are lots of sample questions in web. But I do not know which one to select. What can be the criteria to select? Or do you have any recommendations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26284" LastEditorUserId="26284" LastEditDate="2017-04-23T08:51:18.903" LastActivityDate="2017-04-23T08:51:18.903" Title="PMP question bank" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2017-04-24T08:08:08.830" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21512" CreationDate="2017-04-22T16:14:09.630" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's nothing in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; that says that estimation needs to be done in points. There's also nothing that says that items in the Product Backlog or Sprint Backlog must be user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your team is doing well at planning and executing their Sprints while estimating the items in the backlog in hours or days, why do you feel the need to change that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You state that this will &quot;mess up their velocity calculations, backlog grooming, release planning&quot; as well as giving an incorrect picture to the Product Owner and leads regarding current status. Let's look at this one at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First up, velocity calculations. Velocity is not a part of Scrum. The Scrum Guide makes no mention of the word &quot;velocity&quot; at all. Velocity is a common measurement, but you can still compute it with hours. Velocity is simply the amount of work completed in a specific amount of time. Often, this is Story Points per Sprint, but it doesn't have to be. It could be &quot;hours of value added effort per Sprint&quot; just as easily. If you are estimating Backlog Items in hours and know how many hours are in a Sprint (number of people * number of working days * working hours per day), you can divide &quot;task hours&quot; by &quot;total hours in a Sprint&quot; to get your velocity. In a perfect world, every working hour will be spent on value-added work. But that's not always true, so your velocity can be a predictor of how much time your team spends working on Backlog Items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second up, backlog grooming. In the Scrum Guide, this is now called &quot;refinement&quot; or &quot;Product Backlog Refinement&quot;. It is simply the act of adding details, estimates, and order to the Product Backlog. The units that you use for estimation have no bearing on the act of Refinement. After Refinement, you should have Product Backlog Items that are sufficiently detailed for the Development Team to work on with an estimate attached to them and properly ordered based on the current understanding so they can be pulled into a Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, release planning. If you have a properly ordered Product Backlog with estimates attached to each item and you know your velocity, release planning should be easy. You should be able to pull off the top n items until the total estimate equals your velocity that deliver that in the next Sprint, accounting for any variances (people taking vacations or sick time, holidays, any kind of work events not tied to the items in the Sprint, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, burn down. If you're measuring in estimated hours and are tracking hours left in the Sprint, you can still have a good idea of burn down and look at it every Daily Scrum or make it visible in your tooling. Regardless of what your estimation units are, you should be at 0 at the end of your Sprint. Burn down is just a graphical representation of how you are completing your work in your Timebox.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, just because you can use something other than points doesn't mean that it's necessarily a good idea. There are plenty of posts about the advantages to using points - see &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/182061/4&quot;&gt;this question on Software Engineering Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/2765/30&quot;&gt;this question on Project Management Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scruminc.com/story-points-why-are-they-better-than/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this post by Scrum, Inc.&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/the-main-benefit-of-story-points&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this post by Mountain Goat Software&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilebuddha.com/agile/agile-estimation-9-reasons-why-you-should-use-story-points/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this post on Agile Buddha&lt;/a&gt;. However, estimating in hours is not a problem to doing Scrum, especially if it is working for your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the principles behind the Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#values&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Scrum Values&lt;/a&gt;. If your team claims to be agile, they should be adhering to the principles behind the Agile Manifesto in whatever implementation works best for them. If your team is claiming to be following Scrum, they should be following the Scrum Guide and the Scrum Values regardless of their implementation of each of the activities. If your team is not following these principles, you can work to guide your team to them, but the team needs to figure out what their method of following these principles works best for them. You can share your thoughts, but not impose your will on the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2017-04-22T20:14:12.123" LastActivityDate="2017-04-22T20:14:12.123" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21513" CreationDate="2017-04-22T20:30:21.077" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMI does not publish its bank of questions.  So you will not find it.  Anything you find on the web, whether it is from a PMI-approved supplier or not, are their own questions and may or may not represent PMI's test.  Personally, I found the practice questions to be significantly harder than the test itself, which I induced was a marketing ploy to sell their training boot camps.  I cannot prove that, though, just my opinion.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-04-22T20:30:21.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21512" CreationDate="2017-04-23T15:44:16.887" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When the tasks are easy and and the uncertainty is low, it will be hard for some to see the benefit of story points vs. concrete units like 2 days, or 4-5 hours. The benefit of using story points becomes more clear when estimating tasks that are complex and/or doing something with a degree of uncertainty.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two short arguments that may help convince someone:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More often than not, estimates using concrete units are very inaccurate &lt;em&gt;when the degree of complexity and/or uncertainty is high&lt;/em&gt;; yet these estimates in hours &lt;strong&gt;imply certainty&lt;/strong&gt;. &#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For example:&lt;/strong&gt; An estimate of 75 hours seems to imply that one developer could do this in the course of two weeks, or two developers can easily do it in one week.  There is no indication of complexity or uncertainty. There is also no real reason to think that the task needs to be broken down or that there is any risk of overrun.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimation processes that use Story Points, (and an abstraction like the Fibonacci series  1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, 100), tend to convey both &lt;strong&gt;uncertainty&lt;/strong&gt; and complexity, in addition to effort. &#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt; &lt;strong&gt;For example:&lt;/strong&gt; There is meaning in a high number (40 story points).  40 story points implies complexity or risk in a way that 40 hours or 75 hours does not. It is also much easier to immediately see and indicate the difference between a large task that is relatively well defined (13 points) and much more uncertain ones (40 points), that may  indicate that the customer should be prepared for a delay or complication. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also important: The P.O. or Scrum master cannot pre-define the meaning of a particular story point valuation. &lt;a href=&quot;https://agilefaq.wordpress.com/2007/11/13/what-is-a-story-point/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The meaning of story point valuations will be unique to each team.&lt;/a&gt; A 13-story-point-valuation will only mean something to a particular team &lt;strong&gt;after&lt;/strong&gt; they have played a bit of planning-poker together, and after they have a few baseline stories and sprints from which to glean insights into the accuracy of their estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28345" LastActivityDate="2017-04-23T15:44:16.887" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21518" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-23T21:21:38.670" Score="1" ViewCount="903" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm scheduling weeks of work in Microsoft Project (2013) wherein each task will normally take a full day of work/duration for a crew. I'm scheduling them for 10-hour days and the duration of the work is 10 hours, and I've adjusted the default calendar as such. For the most part, only one task may be accomplished in a day (due to safety, set-up and break-down time) and for my planning purposes I won't be tracking if they finish tasks early. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all my tasks are 10h like this I haven't seen any issues, however I do have some tasks that will require more time (12 hours for instance) and some that will take less time (4h) and I've set up the predecessors to take advantage of those oddities (do 10 hours of Task A and pick it up next morning, then finish Task B). However this throws everything downstream off by X-hours and I end up with partial-tasks running over the weekend to the following workday (which as I mentioned isn't possible due to the nature of the work). I tried using &quot;1ed&quot; for my 10h tasks, however then my budget calculations will be for 24h of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I set up these tasks such that they &quot;round up&quot; to the nearest full day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28348" LastActivityDate="2017-10-19T14:07:29.763" Title="MS Project autoschedule - full days of work are bleeding into next day" Tags="&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21512" CreationDate="2017-04-24T16:24:40.963" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no guide on scrum whether you should use story points or hours for your estimations, this is completely up the team and whatever works for them. Each team is different and whatever works for one might not work for the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question about the big pro about story points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Story points are related to difficulty and not time, because not everyone will take the same time to finish the same task, for a Jr developer creating a simple screen might take 2 days, but for a Sr developer it might take 4 hours. The time estimation for these two resources will be different while the difficulty of the task is the same.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One of the bases of scrum is a self organizing team that is completely focused on completing all the tasks they committed to, as a team. One of the ways to achieve that team spirit is not assigning tasks on the sprint planning, instead letting resources take tasks when they are free. If tasks are estimated by time it might cause issues (For example the example above estimated in 4 hours and taken by the Jr developer that will take 2 days to complete it). Not assigning all tasks at the beginning of the sprint helps to avoid the usual &quot;That was not my job, I finished all my assigned tasks&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28358" LastActivityDate="2017-04-24T16:24:40.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21202" CreationDate="2017-04-25T04:24:42.150" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The situation here is an indication of lack of trust. Yes, the sprints should be delivered but the management has to ensure that the team is not distracted which is usually Scrum master's responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I often feel that agile is pretty much a buzzword. A lot of people say they are agile but in reality they ignore core values of agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This situation could have also arisen because of lack risk management plan. Regardless how Agile your organization is, procurement needs to be considered and proper plans in place. Clearly the risks were not identified early and the scrum team is being often distracted. Development is where rubber meets the road, your management should identify risks and actively monitor &amp;amp; control risks with workarounds without affecting the development. If it is crucial then this needs to be considered in sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28334" LastActivityDate="2017-04-25T04:24:42.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21524" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21534" CreationDate="2017-04-25T15:59:19.283" Score="5" ViewCount="230" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for a digital agency as an agile project manager. We have recently adopted Scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are looking at aligning all of our project work for multiple clients into all encompassing 2 week Sprints rather than have a 2 week Sprint per project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is how best can I manage the Sprint Review ceremony specifically demonstrating the work that we've completed to all of our clients in a single meeting? I don't want our clients to be hanging around waiting for us to finish with one client before moving on to the next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28365" LastEditorUserId="28365" LastEditDate="2017-04-25T16:38:59.670" LastActivityDate="2017-04-28T11:24:42.500" Title="How best to conduct a Sprint Review when the Sprint had work for multiple clients?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;clients&gt;&lt;reviews&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21524" CreationDate="2017-04-25T16:16:56.013" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first response is to ask &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt;. Why do you want to squish work for multiple different clients into a single Sprint? Do you not have enough work per-client? Consider 1-week Sprints instead. Is it a company mandate, with no valid reasoning? Consider challenging it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it because the work for those multiple clients naturally lends itself to being combined into a single Sprint goal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that is true, then simply focus on the &lt;em&gt;Sprint goal&lt;/em&gt; during the Sprint Review. Show off how your Team successfully moved forward by completing the goal, rather than focusing on each individual feature completed for each individual client. This will likely involve clients viewing work that might not be relevant to them, but the flipside of this is doing so may give them ideas for new feature requests or the like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; true that the work you intend to fit into a Sprint can be coherently mapped to a single, simple, understandable and reachable Sprint goal, then strongly consider &lt;em&gt;not doing so&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-04-25T16:16:56.013" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21526" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-26T15:48:13.977" Score="2" ViewCount="419" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on this slightly complicated project schedule in MS Project 2016. I'm not new to MS Project and have used it for several years, but not necessarily an expert either. For my project, I need to configure it such that although the custom project calendar that I'm using has an 8-hour work day for everyone, for one particular resource, I need the max work day to be 7 hours. How would I achieve this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My thought was that I open the Resource sheet, select that reviewer, and edit their Resource Information to have a max availability of 87.5% (if 8 hours is 100% max capacity). Is this the right way to approach it? Or is their a better, more direct way to achieve this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help would be very appreciated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28378" LastActivityDate="2017-07-17T07:20:46.143" Title="How to set a specific resource in MS Project to have a max work capacity of 7 hours a day?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;resources&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21527" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21560" CreationDate="2017-04-26T22:55:19.153" Score="4" ViewCount="838" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my Scrum Master Certification training, the trainer mentioned: &quot;&lt;em&gt;Even though the Sprint Burndown is being deprecated it is still used by many teams&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. The reason behind (I guess) was that it tends to produce micromanagement and going back to control based estimation and planning. &#xA;What are some alternatives?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27556" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-04-27T14:30:58.117" LastActivityDate="2017-05-05T12:55:11.723" Title="Alternatives to Sprint Burndown, is it deprecated?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;burndown-chart&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21527" CreationDate="2017-04-27T03:05:53.207" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing wrong with a Sprint Burndown. There is nothing wrong with any, team-based metrics. Just as there is nothing wrong with a car, so long as you use it as a car and not a can opener. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that team metrics, like the burndown, are often misused by management. I'll have an article on this subject going live on AgileConnections.com late next month (I'll edit in a link when it posts), which is a follow-on to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.agileconnection.com/article/4-balanced-metrics-tracking-agile-teams&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this months article&lt;/a&gt; recommending team metrics. The summary of next month's article is, &quot;With great power, comes great responsibility.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of a Sprint Burndown is for the team to review their progress towards the sprint goal and ask if they need to do anything to change it. That's it. Any other use is abuse. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are in an org where you can't use a burndown, it's not the burn down's fault, it's the organizations. A sign of deeper issues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T03:05:53.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21527" CreationDate="2017-04-27T03:13:02.910" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you do month long sprints as in the original Scrum, a sprint burn down is useful because you want to know how late you're going to be!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the trend today is to shorter, week long sprints. When your sprint is just 1 week you don't care about knowing how late you wil be in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You just work out how late you were last sprint and adjust estimates accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastEditorUserId="147" LastEditDate="2017-04-27T14:22:30.480" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T14:22:30.480" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21527" CreationDate="2017-04-27T06:05:11.797" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In two weeks Sprints my team currently uses a &lt;strong&gt;Sprint speed graph&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each day after the three questions, the team asks itself how on track they are against their Sprint goal. They have 4 options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Super: We will do more stories than estimated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint: We will finish the forecast&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Goal: We will meet the sprint goal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bad: We are behind and need to take action&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We draw this metric unto a graph on our Scrum-board. We also try to take action if we are hitting a low Goal or Bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall I think it gives a more honest feeling about what we are going to complete. It makes the whole team think about where we stand daily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do I favour this above burn downs. Most burn downs start late from the beginning as the first days you have not completed a story. Giving a continuous feeling that you are behind. Therefor I favoured burn-ups, but the Sprint speed adds even some more value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/O5JwC.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/O5JwC.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here at first we thought we would made our full sprint forecast. Then we noticed the biggest tasks was going to be a lot bigger. Now we know we will not make the last story out of 6. On Monday we start communicating with our client. Together we decided to move on and finish the complex story as it still the most important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find &lt;a href=&quot;https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9jYI3GYHtruaF8zRWYwcGxCckk/view?usp=sharing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;my Excel sheet with colours here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2017-05-05T12:55:11.723" LastActivityDate="2017-05-05T12:55:11.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21531" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-27T06:41:11.333" Score="4" ViewCount="7175" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read on Jira documentation and do some research. However, i'm still a bit confused about Components and Epics. In a sample website like Facebook, it has features like Login, Register, Write A Post and Chat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now, should I put those as an Epic? or as a Component?&#xA;How should I categorize app's pages like Login page, Register page, Home page and Timeline page? Should I also make it as an epic, or a component?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If we will put User Timeline as an epic for example, how do we classify the features like Write On Friends Timeline, Mention a Friend on timeline? Can we make it as a sub-epic? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm still new this software. I would appreciate every comment from you. It's much appreciated. Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28388" LastActivityDate="2019-10-03T22:24:30.380" Title="The difference of Jira Epics and Components" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21531" CreationDate="2017-04-27T07:33:31.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my point of view, components can span across many epics. Typical components can be 'DatabaseManager' (which may contain multiple epics) or 'GUI Layer'.   Epics are feature-level work that encompasses many user stories.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/slrWT.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/slrWT.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28386" LastEditorUserId="28386" LastEditDate="2017-04-27T07:40:33.093" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T07:40:33.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21531" CreationDate="2017-04-27T08:06:38.383" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;When approaching JIRA it is best to remember that the tool initially started life as a bug-tracking system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Components&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A component is a software/hardware component that might be shared between teams, departments or across the entire company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By tagging your stories with a component it all allows formal release management units to see exactly which components are going into a UKDT (Deployment Ticket) or a Release Registration if you are using them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Examples&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SecureSphere&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;MongoDB&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hashicorp Vault&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wordpress&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chrome 54.X&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business Objects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Oracle X&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Benefits of good component administration&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By labelling your user stories with components you can also support in depth reporting from Jira&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;project = YOURPROJECT AND status = Blocked AND component = &amp;quot;Active Directory&amp;quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This report will tell you which Active Directory stories are blocked on your project but you could theoretically expand this search query to multiple components or multiple projects to gain really insightful Portfolio/System/Programme reporting to support stakeholders, business decisions or even spot impediments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also then breakdown your product versions for release (1.0, 1.1, 2.8 etc) by component to see what is in each release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a ScrumMaster you can set a filter to show Components by Assignee and see if the same developers are grouping around the same components.  That heatmap then forms the basis of cross-skilling the team.  It is very easy to say to the Product Owner and/or the team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paul is always working on the Terraform stories.  Out of 19 stories he has done 18 of them.  I would like to suggest to the team a cross-skilling session but delivery may suffer in the short term as we lose 1/2 day.  Can you manage your stakeholders while we do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Epics&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epics are probably one of the most ambiguous terms thrown around the Agile community.  Very few teams in my experience use Themes so everything bigger than a user story simply gets lobbed under the heading Epic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The official guidance from Jira is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An epic captures a large body of work. It is essentially a large user story that can be broken down into a number of smaller stories. It may take several sprints to complete an epic. An epic can span more than one project, if multiple projects are included in the board to which the epic belongs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mike Cohn also says the following&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Scrum epic is a large user story. There's no magic threshold at which we call a particular story an epic. It just means “big user story.”  So, “epic” is just a label we apply to a large story. Calling a story an epic can sometimes convey additional meaning. Suppose you ask me if I had time yesterday to write the user stories about the monthly reporting part of the system. “Yes,” I reply, “but they are mostly epics.” That tells you that while I did write them, I didn't get the chance to break most of them down into stories that are probably small enough to implement directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Examples of Epics&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deliver the Payments API for all accepted payment methods&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build a web application firewall&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Develop the new sandbox&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anti Malware capability&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Install and Configure the IDS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Benefits of good epic administration&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although it is important to start delivering working software as soon as possible it is equally important to roadmap your product effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epics are the first building block to producing coherent and credible roadmaps.  By putting the Epic scaffolding into Jira first you can then build your Jira backlog in a logical manner and demonstrate to stakeholders which Epics are the focus for the next 4-12 weeks and which parcels of functionality are getting delivered later in the roadmap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also benefit from the accuracy of reporting articulated above.  If a stakeholder asks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When will the Web Application Firewall be done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can quickly say we estimate the the WAF to be somewhere in the region of 25 user stories of which 6 are completed.  If you consider the WAF to be the highest priority we can potentially deliver that in X amount of Sprints / weeks based on our estimates / capacity planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, if you subscribe to the average user story size for estimation (as I do) you can quickly tell people how long each epic will take (within reason) once the majority of the user stories are populated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly; if you are a ScrumMaster or BA then reviewing the Epics regularly will give your Product Owner a good steer to which areas are looking less well defined and need significant work to populate with stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T08:06:38.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21524" CreationDate="2017-04-27T14:30:22.180" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not uncommon to have multiple stakeholders for a sprint. This is true even when your output is highly focused. There are generally two ways I coach teams to handle this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- Science Fair format: Have the team (or teams) set up in a large room with multiple stations. Stakeholders can then wander around to the stations they care about and see specific demos of specific features. This lets the Stakeholder decide what they want to see. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is often used when the Stakeholders are interested in the whole product, only don't have time to go to multiple or extended demos. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2- Multi-stage demo: The first demo is focused on immediate stakeholders. The Product Owner then schedules follow up demos with other stakeholder groups.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is typically used when the stakeholders are in many time zones or have highly divergent schedules. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on your description, I'd advocate the Science Fair format. While your different clients are naturally going to be focused on &quot;What did you do for me&quot;, odds are they have some interest in what else you do as it may be something they'd like as well. &quot;Oh, that's cool, can we get something like that?&quot; Could lead to more paid work for your teams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T14:30:22.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21527" CreationDate="2017-04-27T18:13:09.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of teams are progressing into continuous flow models of development where there is not a timeboxed sprint. Teams are also moving away from projects with an end of project &quot;maintenance mode&quot; toward product development teams that are active throughout a product's life time. Burn downs are good for shorter term projects where there's a &quot;finished&quot; state, but fall a bit flat in this newer paradigm. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because you don't really need to know when the project will be done, but rather when the customer can expect a feature to be in their hands, folks are replacing the burndown with burn ups, culmulative flow charts, and lean based Lead Time metrics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll let you research those things else this answer would turn into a quite lengthy blog post. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastEditorUserId="21039" LastEditDate="2017-04-27T19:16:06.650" LastActivityDate="2017-04-27T19:16:06.650" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21526" CreationDate="2017-04-28T01:20:31.133" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, in Project, you can set a unique schedule for a specific resource (Applicable to MS Project 2007+).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 1:&lt;/strong&gt; Click Project &gt; Properties &gt; Change Working Time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/olWQ3.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/olWQ3.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 2:&lt;/strong&gt; Choose a resource from the For calendar list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ImsYX.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ImsYX.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 3:&lt;/strong&gt; Choose the right Base calendar for the resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4lsBf.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4lsBf.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 4:&lt;/strong&gt; If the working times in the calendar aren't quite right for this resource, click the Work Weeks tab, and then click Details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xvsq9.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xvsq9.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 5:&lt;/strong&gt; Select the day(s) that you want to change the working times for, and then choose whether you want them to be working or nonworking time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/IYmBd.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/IYmBd.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 6:&lt;/strong&gt; If you chose Set day(s) to these specific working times, use the From and To columns to set the working times for the selected days. ( You can set 7 Hours here)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FPI7S.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FPI7S.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 7:&lt;/strong&gt; Click OK to return to the Change Working Time dialog box, and then click OK again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Refer this Microsoft resource - &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Set-a-unique-schedule-for-a-specific-resource-ab816ff2-f39d-43b7-b143-ab36d03baaad&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Set a unique schedule for a specific resource&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28386" LastEditorUserId="28386" LastEditDate="2017-05-18T05:54:18.130" LastActivityDate="2017-05-18T05:54:18.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21537" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-28T04:57:34.097" Score="8" ViewCount="1993" Body="&lt;p&gt;I worked as a developer Team Leader, than we became Agile and I took the role of Scrum Master (SM). In the meantime, I've switched to Project Management, but remained in contact with Agile and Scrum, being also an Agile Coach and close to teams working in Scrum and especially helping the Scrum Masters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I started as SM, we were using Stories, estimated in complexity, so in Story Points. In the planning meeting, after we understood what stories the Product Owner (PO) wanted in the current sprint, we also split the Stories into sub-tasks and estimated them in hours or days. People then started taking the sub-tasks; by pulling, not by pushing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The estimation of sub-tasks in time was a double-check between our feeling that we could do a certain number of story points based on our average velocity and on the other hand the reality of the current sprint. Maybe some task needed a specific skill or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then, we were using the Sprint Burndown chart in JIRA, set to show Remaining Time instead of Remaining Story Points. By doing so, the Burndown chart was going down and was really showing progress. If we were to display the chart by Remaining Story Points, it would've been a flat line until almost the end of the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is your opinion on this estimation on sub-tasks in time? I still see it being very valuable, although as an Agile Coach I'm not pushing the Scrum Masters to use it, only recommending it and letting them decide if it is helpful or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26647" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-04-28T13:13:00.890" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T06:28:36.553" Title="Sprint Burndown chart and tasks estimation in time" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;burndown-chart&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21537" CreationDate="2017-04-28T06:57:55.860" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;If we were to display the chart by Remaining Story Points, it would've been a flat line until almost the end of the sprint.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not really a problem with story points burn-down. You just have a work in progress problem. Work together on less stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your current situation puts you at risk of delivering nothing (multiple incomplete stories == nothing) if things go badly. Also, you don't have the ability to replace a story mid-sprint if priorities change, since everything has been started. Also, if you have testers (I'm not necessarily saying you should) it also puts all their work at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't subscribe to task estimation for two reasons. It's subject to a lot of change, generally tasks are discovered or (and this is a great thing you don't want to de-incentive or make into a hassle) larger tasks are split into smaller parallel ones. It also doesn't track delivered value, which is the thing we're truly interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, use story point burndown and make it look better. The behaviors you have to engage in to do so include making stories smaller and working together more, these are things that will improve your process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17705" LastActivityDate="2017-04-28T06:57:55.860" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21539" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21725" CreationDate="2017-04-28T07:58:10.057" Score="1" ViewCount="149" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use Tempo timesheets to efficiently log work and see logged work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like the &quot;last 30 days&quot; view, as I can use it to easily log work on tasks I worked on before. The problem is, this only sets a fixed date, eg today it sets it to &lt;code&gt;March 30, 2017 - April 28, 2017&lt;/code&gt;, but when I log in tomorrow that will remain the same, thus excluding tomorrow. Which means I have to change it every day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way that I can make this &quot;last 30 days&quot; dynamic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21337" LastEditorUserId="7559" LastEditDate="2017-04-28T08:08:48.013" LastActivityDate="2017-05-31T12:25:07.273" Title="How can I always see the last 30 days in Timesheets?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21544" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21556" CreationDate="2017-04-28T11:23:34.037" Score="3" ViewCount="1507" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I googled up a bit about this but could not find a real answer, so here I am!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Microsoft Project, you have two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Current Date (Can be find in Project&gt;Project Information) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Status Date (Can be changed directly in the Project tab)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me Status date should be used to report from a certain date, and the Current date should be used to tell MSP that &quot;today&quot; is a particular day. However, I could not find the list of differences between the use of the 2 dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the main differences between the 2 of them?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does that each impact the advancement of a task? (For example&#xA;Progress lines...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28393" LastActivityDate="2017-05-01T01:19:33.250" Title="In MSP, what are the differences between &quot;Status Date&quot; and &quot;Current Date&quot;?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21524" CreationDate="2017-04-28T11:24:42.500" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can create a very organized agenda and invite them in a sequence.&#xA;But then again, why not let them all see all delivered content, maybe one client is interested in something requested by another, and they want it too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26647" LastActivityDate="2017-04-28T11:24:42.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21537" CreationDate="2017-04-28T13:24:43.283" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If we were to display the chart by Remaining Story Points, it would've been a flat line until almost the end of the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is its own problem. It sounds like you are making insufficient use of &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/147665&quot;&gt;swarming&lt;/a&gt;. If you work together on and finish Story A before you start Story B, which you finish before you start Story C, then you shouldn't have a problem with your Burndown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, I would say that right now, your Burndown is &lt;em&gt;doing its job&lt;/em&gt;, showing you a problem in your process. Changing to Time Remaining will only hide that problem from view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding estimating time for subtasks in addition to story points for Stories, I see no problem with it &lt;em&gt;if and only if&lt;/em&gt; it is being used exclusively to aid in the story point estimation (as a sanity check, as you suggest). In which case, once the Story is estimated, you should throw away the subtask estimates. There are good reasons why Stories are estimated in points instead of hours, after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-04-28T13:24:43.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21537" CreationDate="2017-04-28T18:00:27.473" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Changing your method of reporting will not actually address the underlying process issues implied by your original problem statement. Your old reporting process was actually the better one. You should go back to it, but adapt your team's &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; to optimize for achieving the Sprint Goal rather than for velocity or trend-line reporting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Remaining Time: An Often Misleading Metric&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And then, we were using the Sprint Burndown chart in JIRA, set to show Remaining Time instead of Remaining Story Points. By doing so, the Burndown chart was going down and was really showing progress. If we were to display the chart by Remaining Story Points, it would've been a flat line until almost the end of the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a tool-driven project smell. You're &quot;hours remaining&quot; is really just a variation of &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/20646/4271&quot;&gt;consumed story points&lt;/a&gt;, which is a misfeature I've discussed elsewhere. In other words, hours remaining is based on &lt;em&gt;initial time estimate - hours expended&lt;/em&gt; but there's actually no guarantee in your system that the end result will equal zero. Put another way, you have three possible states with your current process:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;initial time estimate - hours expended &amp;lt; 0&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've overestimated your story. This isn't a tragedy, but may impact the resources available for other stories/tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;initial time estimate - hours expended = 0&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You correctly estimated your story. Yay!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;initial time estimate - hours expended &amp;gt; 0&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You underestimated your story. It is likely it will be incomplete at the end of the iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only in the second case will your &quot;percentage complete&quot; calculation really be accurate. The rest of the time, you are simply creating a false impression of progress where &quot;x% of the work is y% done.&quot; Don't do that!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Work in Progress Limits and &quot;Swarming&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your problem is a &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; problem, and is likely being caused by ignoring (or simply not having) Work-in-Progress (WIP) limits. While a team &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; work on more than one story at a time if the stories meet &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST criteria&lt;/a&gt; and are independent of one another, having team members working on stories independently of one another (instead of as a team) often defeats the purpose of having a cross-functional team. It also frequently results in other queuing and integration problems, especially towards the end of a Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, team members should be actively &lt;em&gt;collaborating&lt;/em&gt; on stories, which means that as a rule of thumb your WIP limits should be around half your team size. Given a team of seven people, plus or minus two, that means your WIP limit should be roughly three stories in progress at any one time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the team only succeeds if the Sprint Goal is met, doing more stories as once doesn't actually benefit anyone. It's much better to use techniques like pairing or swarming (where the whole team &quot;swarms&quot; over a story) to maximize resources allocated to getting a story to 100% of the Definition of Done as quickly as possible. When you work this way, your burn-down chart will more accurately show user stories or story points &lt;em&gt;completed&lt;/em&gt; towards the Sprint Goal, and the chart will correctly burn down, up, or flatlined in a more sensible way throughout the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;NB: Remember, even if you don't complete 100% of the stories, you may still meet the Sprint Goal! The point of a Sprint isn't to inflate velocity, it's to deliver on the Sprint Goal. Optimize for that instead.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Decompose Stories and Tasks Further&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're dealing with user stories that span the whole Sprint, they're probably too large. However, that's a judgement call; it's certainly possible to have larger stories, so long as the story fits into a single Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tasks, however, should be roughly 1/2 to 2 days in size so that they are clearly done or not-done. If a task isn't on-track to be done within the time-box, it's worth reviewing the task to see if it needs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Re-estimation of the task or story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If there's hidden or unplanned work that wasn't accounted for.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If there are resource constraints or process bottlenecks that are impacting delivery of the task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If there are unexpected dependencies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Replanning, either within the Sprint if it's minor and won't impact the Sprint Goal, or as part of an Early Termination and a return to Sprint Planning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While stories can theoretically span an entire Sprint, tasks that require extensive periods of time are most often the result of improper granularity and a lack of task-level planning during the second half of Sprint Planning or subsequent just-in-time planning sessions within the Sprint. While implementation decisions should always be deferred as late as possible, Scrum doesn't do away with task-level planning; it just postpones it until the last responsible moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Use Metrics Properly&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, remember that &lt;strong&gt;velocity is a capacity-planning metric&lt;/strong&gt;, not a measure of productivity. Likewise, &lt;strong&gt;burn charts are tools for identifying process bottlenecks or hidden process problems&lt;/strong&gt;, not status reporting or task-level schedule estimation tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What the chart actually tells you is whether you are likely to complete all planned work within the time box, or whether your estimation or planning is out of reasonable tolerance. In other words, it's a check on your process, not a measure of productivity! In your specific case, the old burn-down chart was clearly telling you that you were not completing stories with a reliable cadence, and were likely experiencing &quot;end of Sprint integration madness&quot; as all the suddenly-completed stories were marked done and then (hopefully) integrated at the last minute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Recommendations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would strongly recommend going back to the old burn-down chart, and revising your process to incorporate WIP limits and swarming to fix the process problems, rather than using a new (and potentially misleading) reporting tool because you like the trend lines better. Fix the process, because working features are the real goal, not trend lines or pretty reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2017-05-03T06:28:36.553" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T06:28:36.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21549" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-04-29T08:34:42.217" Score="1" ViewCount="621" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please give honest feedback about whether this is a good style of acceptance criteria. Please detail what is wrong with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Given &amp;lt;source system&amp;gt; has pushed the &amp;lt;account details file&amp;gt; into the specified location&#xA;when &amp;lt;file system&amp;gt; receives this &amp;lt;account details file&amp;gt;&#xA;then &amp;lt;file system&amp;gt; should pre-process raw &amp;lt;account details file&amp;gt; and transform it into consumable data and must check the processed &amp;lt;account details file&amp;gt; against the &amp;lt;validation rules&amp;gt;&#xA;&#xA;*&amp;lt;validation rules&amp;gt;*&#xA;1. Raw &amp;lt;account details file&amp;gt; data should match with the processed &amp;lt;account details file&amp;gt; data in &amp;lt;file system&amp;gt;&#xA;&#xA;2. Record count should match between raw &amp;lt;account details file&amp;gt; and processed &amp;lt;account details file&amp;gt; for file header, footer and body.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28406" LastActivityDate="2017-05-01T19:51:53.607" Title="Is this good acceptance criteria, in a JIRA?" Tags="&lt;acceptance-criteria&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2017-05-03T06:26:23.563" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21549" CreationDate="2017-04-29T16:18:07.230" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good &lt;em&gt;Acceptance Criteria&lt;/em&gt; cannot stand alone. It has to be derived from the requirement description - e.g. &lt;em&gt;User Story&lt;/em&gt;. Therefore, a good requirement description is the starting point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, without knowing the requirement details is hard to say if your example is a good one or not. But anyway, let's take a look at the basics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Acceptance Criteria&lt;/em&gt; should include &lt;em&gt;functional&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;non-functional&lt;/em&gt; criteria which has to be fulfilled by the final product to confirm that the related requirement is realized. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, let's take a look again at your example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Given &amp;lt;source system&amp;gt; has pushed the &amp;lt;account details file&amp;gt; into the specified location&#xA;when &amp;lt;file system&amp;gt; receives this &amp;lt;account details file&amp;gt;&#xA;then &amp;lt;file system&amp;gt; should pre-process raw &amp;lt;account details file&amp;gt; and transform it into consumable data and must check the processed &amp;lt;account details file&amp;gt; against the &amp;lt;validation rules&amp;gt;&#xA;&#xA;*&amp;lt;validation rules&amp;gt;*&#xA;1. Raw &amp;lt;account details file&amp;gt; data should match with the processed &amp;lt;account details file&amp;gt; data in &amp;lt;file system&amp;gt;&#xA;&#xA;2. Record count should match between raw &amp;lt;account details file&amp;gt; and processed &amp;lt;account details file&amp;gt; for file header, footer and body.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, you are using the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/gwt/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Given-When-Then formula&lt;/a&gt; which is primarily used to define Acceptance Tests. So I don't think this is a good approach to define &lt;em&gt;Acceptance Criteria&lt;/em&gt; at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acceptance Tests should be derived from the &lt;em&gt;Acceptance Criteria&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Acceptance Criteria&lt;/em&gt; helps to make clear when a requirement is done while a acceptance test is used to verify if it's really done. Imho a good way to write &lt;em&gt;Acceptance Criteria&lt;/em&gt; is to write them as a bullet list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;File System has received pushed file ...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;File System has validated the received file by validation rules ...&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beside that your example doesn't include any non-functional criteria (Performance, Fault Management, Robustness, Comprehensibility, ...). As far as I can assess some non-functional criteria for your case might be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The file system process, transforms and validates 1000 files within ...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;If a account details file is not valid it has to be moved/deleted/marked ...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;If the file system is not available pushed files should be processed when the file system is available again ...&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The file system logs every received file ...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25435" LastEditorUserId="25435" LastEditDate="2017-05-01T19:51:53.607" LastActivityDate="2017-05-01T19:51:53.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21335" CreationDate="2017-04-30T16:12:32.827" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess a lot depends on what you are demoing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you are doing a mobile app development, or a web site development, then &quot;demo&quot; can be given by doing a screen-share. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many tools such as Skype, Google Hangout etc. Using Google Hangout communication tool or similar, , invite can be sent to all &quot;interested&quot; parties. Let them all join on Google Hangout at pre-defined time slot. Once all joined the call, you can &quot;show&quot; them all developed mobile app screens by running the mobile app on Simulator/Emulators. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar can be done by for web pages development. This way, all stakeholders can see the actual development done and importantly, can provide a Feedback about the developed screen &amp;amp; functionalities during demo. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone from your team can capture these feedbacks as you give demo so that those feedback items are not lost and addressed in future sprint/development activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have been doing this kind of &quot;demos&quot; after each sprint/milestones &amp;amp; so far it has been very much appreciated by stakeholders, who as in your case, are working abroad, in a different geography and different time zone than us. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21918" LastActivityDate="2017-04-30T16:12:32.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20960" CreationDate="2017-04-30T17:37:40.833" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on the current state of your project, the frequency of you sharing RAID Logs with your stakeholder depends, IMHO. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an average project, risks may not need review each week, but in a high-risk project the risk log may need to be reviewed more often. Each project has a different makeup, which should dictate the frequency with which each category in a RAID log needs to be considered &amp;amp; discussed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the current state of your project, and also based on how your customer is &quot;perceiving&quot; the project state, you can determine if showing RAID logs is adding any value or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your customer is asking you to discuss &quot;weekly&quot; these RAID logs, then I suggest you should properly prioritise your RAID Log items. Make sure to discuss high priority RAID Log items upfront such as High risks, important dependencies etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21918" LastActivityDate="2017-04-30T17:37:40.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18460" CreationDate="2017-04-30T18:00:16.477" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key for writing effective critical success factors, can be to fully understand the mission and objectives of your project and see which areas of the business need attention so that they can be achieved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is always better to get the inputs from key stakeholders about the mission and objectives of projects, so that CSFs can be better prepared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the mission and objectives of your project are clear and aligned with all key stakeholder, we can start brainstorming about what the Critical Success Factors might be, for each Objectives of your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Refer &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_80.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; for sample CSFs template.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21918" LastActivityDate="2017-04-30T18:00:16.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21544" CreationDate="2017-05-01T01:19:33.250" Score="0" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the main differences between the 2 of them?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want project report for last week (say Friday - 28-Apr-2017), and you are sending the report on Monday (E.g. 01-May-2017)  you set the status date to Friday, 28-Apr-2017. Here status date is 28-April-2017 and the current date is 01-May-2017. The status date is almost never the current date, so you need to set it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does that each impact the advancement of a task? (For example&#xA;Progress lines...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the project progress will be based on the date you set. If you have not set the status date, progress will be based on current date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can add the status date to Gantt Chart also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On the Gantt Chart, click Format &gt; Gridlines.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Under Line to change, pick Status Date, and then select a line style and color.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/h2MWY.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/h2MWY.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28386" LastActivityDate="2017-05-01T01:19:33.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21557" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21558" CreationDate="2017-05-01T02:14:24.370" Score="3" ViewCount="542" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a project manager in a matrix organization, I am having problems to deal with a resource, who is responsible to deliver a task, which is impacting on project schedule because the task is behind schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This scenario seems to be common in many projects with the same organization structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When faced such a situation, how did you conduct your project? Please share with us your project management strategy, what you recommend and what you did right (that we could consider to do) or wrong (that we have to avoid to do).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I decided to create this topic, in my situation at that moment, I tried to talk to both the functional manager and her resource, emphasizing the importance of the project (trying to motivate them), but, as I do not have authority over functional manager staff, the task simply has no priority to them. I shared the project status with the sponsor and it seems not to have a solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23293" LastEditorUserId="23293" LastEditDate="2017-05-02T13:30:44.457" LastActivityDate="2017-05-04T04:26:37.930" Title="Technique or good way to talk to functional manager" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21557" CreationDate="2017-05-01T10:37:59.460" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a common threat for PMs running projects in a matrix organization where your team reports to other managers.  But do not confuse that structure with the concept that the employee does not &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; report to you...as far as the project and its tasks are concerned.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It all comes down to a negotiated agreement between you and the functional manager.  Your OP reads as if this agreement either does not exist, is not explicit enough, or there is a violation to the agreement.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sit down with the functional manager again and arrive at a commitment regarding that employee's time on the project.  You need to approach this negotiation like you would others: know your BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement); focus on shared/mutual interests; develop options; understand the functional manager's constraints.  Then document this agreement in a Memorandum of Understanding.  Once you have a time commitment, that employee reports to you in every possible way during that time and then you can plan and execute those tasks within your defined constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a PM, you still have other obligations.  This should already be logged as a risk to the project and you should have already mitigation and contingency strategies documented.  What other time mitigators have you identified?  If you have identified none, then you have not done your job, either.  Do you have back-up resources available?  Do you have built-in contingency in your schedule?  Have you already communicated to stakeholders about this threat to at least put them on notice?  There are probably five more questions to ask but I cannot think of them at the moment.  This employee should not be a single point of failure unless (s)he brings something so unique to your work.  So if (s)he is, then you also need to resolve that issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-05-01T10:37:59.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21559" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-01T16:51:17.307" Score="1" ViewCount="1087" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my JIRA project, we have the following issue hierarchy:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Sub-tasks &gt; Stories &gt; Epics &gt; Initiatives&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of our estimates and tracking happen at the Story level:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Story Points are recorded on Stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time estimates are recorded on Stories or Sub-tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am hoping to run some reports aggregating up the Initiative level, to report on story points per initiative (per time frame) and actual time spent.   Would love any advice or recommendations on how to do that!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17040" LastActivityDate="2017-05-31T15:19:23.850" Title="In Jira, how do I roll up Story Points or Time expended to Initiative?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21527" CreationDate="2017-05-02T14:14:04.123" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's provide an answer that summarizes most of the comments related to the question and some answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;, the only reference to burn-like diagram is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Various projective practices upon trending have been used to forecast progress, like burn-downs, burn-ups, or cumulative flows. These have proven useful. &lt;strong&gt;However, these do not replace the importance of empiricism&lt;/strong&gt;. In complex environments, what will happen is unknown. &lt;strong&gt;Only what has happened may be used for forward-looking decision-making&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore there is not an explicit recommendation, nor is it considered an artifact of the standard. Said that because it is a tool for the team, not for any external stakeholders, if the team decides it is a good tool to communicate the progress, it is up to the team to use such kind of tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Burn-down vs burn up&lt;/strong&gt;: Both of them are equivalent if there is no change in the Sprint scope. &lt;a href=&quot;http://brodzinski.com/2012/10/burn-up-better-burn-down.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a good explanation about the difference, but if there is the expectation to have changes in the Sprint backlog, during each Sprint, it is more suitable to use Burn-up diagram. Burn-down, focus on simplicity (just work done) and Burn-up focus on information (provide information about work done and scope changes). Here is another good &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/burn-up-vs-down-chart-alaa-el-beheri-cisa-rmp-pmp-bcp-itil&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; the recommends Burn-up too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is the expectation to have too many changes, another option would be to consider using Kanban framework, that is more suitable when is likely to have changes in the sprint scope. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@JoelBancroft-Connors pointed: Nowadays the general trend is to use Sprint of shorter length such as: 1-week sprint, in such cases to use a tool to visualize the progress has less relevance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@RubberDuck, mentioned a good alternative is to use &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/docs/report/guidance/cumulative-flow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cummulative Flow Diagram&lt;/a&gt; it counts the number of items delivered after a certain period of time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@NielsVanReijmersdal suggested the use of &lt;strong&gt;Sprint speed graph&lt;/strong&gt;: Each day after the three questions, the team asks itself how on track they are against the Sprint goal. They have 4 options: Excellent, good, OK and bad. We draw this metric unto a graph on our Scrum-board. We also try to take action if we are hitting OK or Bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27556" LastEditorUserId="27556" LastEditDate="2017-05-02T14:20:52.277" LastActivityDate="2017-05-02T14:20:52.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21557" CreationDate="2017-05-03T09:00:48.137" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From your description it sounds like the Functional Manager is allocating people to a variety of projects &amp;amp; this particular person is allocated to at least one other project that the Functional Manager believes is more important than your project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Functional Manager is also the Programme Manager (looking across &amp;amp; prioritizing all the projects) then it would suggest that your project is in danger - but hopefully for good business reasons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You need to report that not getting the amount of time you anticipated from this person will delay the project.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When people have to work on several projects simultaneously there will always be a priority - whether implied or explicit. If there is someone else who can do the work then you could ask for them to allocated instead. If not then float out your anticipated completion date &amp;amp; explain that the delay is a resourcing issue. This should quickly identify whether your project is critical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your project is low priority or not hitting hard against a fixed deadline then pushing too hard may not be in the company's best interest. Equally &lt;strong&gt;this may uncover that the Functional Manager is favouring a pet project - which could immediately unlock the problem.&lt;/strong&gt; Either way make sure you are doing your job by truthfully setting out likely completion dates given all that you know &amp;amp; identifying blockers &amp;amp; workrounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="693" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T09:00:48.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21557" CreationDate="2017-05-04T04:26:37.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even in Matrix Organization, with respect to delivering projects by resource, it is responsibility of Project manager.  As PM, you must first understand what is the root cause of the problem for not achieving the deadline.  The root cause may land up with broadly into following;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project environment side (this includes knowledge sharing, enough training for the resource in project, work allocation vs resource capability, demotivated because of certain incidents, etc) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resource side - Not stretching because of some personal issue, Don't have enough knowledge, etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Functional manager side - Resource expectation not satisfactory, Demotivated because of remuneration, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your identification is on Project Management side, as PM you have to lay-down the plan to resolve this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the problem is on resource side, you and functional manager (if required) have to sit with Resource and resolve the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the problem is on Functional manager side, you have to ensure functional manager and resource connects and you get outcome of the discussion and plan going forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To take any of the above steps, you first need to talk to resource, collect enough data, analyze and come-up with Root cause of why resource is not performing.  You have to ensure that you don't have any preconceived notion about resource, park any biased comments from others and analyse the situation on ground.  This will help you to understand where you have to address the gap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the functional manager is not reacting to you, if the problem is on functional manager / resource side, it is better to draft mail with data points to Functional manager and raise it as risk to your sponsor or relevant stakeholder leadership and own the risk.  You may try to come-up with Risk mitigation plans by finding alternate resources, offloading works to others, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25351" LastActivityDate="2017-05-04T04:26:37.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8171" CreationDate="2017-05-04T12:44:49.157" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the main problems with prioritizing bugs as they're reported to you by users is you're missing a lot of information, namely, how widespread a bug is and what its impact is on your software. When you rely on bug reports from users, you are at the whims of whatever seems to be the most pressing problems based on whoever has the loudest voice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than prioritizing bugs this way, (which, you're right, does make it a challenging task), you might want to try proactively detecting bugs with an application error monitoring tool that will give you added context on every error. This will make prioritizing bugs more straightforward.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With an understanding of all the bugs that exist in your application, things that are helpful to consider are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How often is this error occurring? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many users are impacted by this bug?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have I tried to fix this bug in the past, and I'm now seeing a regression?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this bug affecting my most important/highest paying customers?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this bug happening in an important part of my application, like a signup or checkout page?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This technique isn't without its faults. Proactively detecting bugs means more noise, and alert fatigue is something to be wary of. There are things that can help you make sense of the noise: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grouping like errors together&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Intelligent alerting so you only get notified when there are new errors, error rate spikes, or error regressions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Silencing or snoozing errors that you don't need to fix immediately &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consolidating errors in one place &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further reading in &lt;a href=&quot;https://blog.bugsnag.com/bug-prioritization/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A guide for prioritizing bug fixes&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28447" LastActivityDate="2017-05-04T12:44:49.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21567" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-04T15:02:29.023" Score="0" ViewCount="1106" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you give me 3-4 SF relationship examples in real life used for construction project management?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28449" LastActivityDate="2017-05-04T18:42:46.570" Title="Start to Finish Relationship Examples for Construction Works?" Tags="&lt;relationships&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2017-05-06T07:32:29.170" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21567" CreationDate="2017-05-04T18:42:46.570" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One is tempted to do these to manipulate dates for just-in-time work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Install pump -SF-&gt; Deliver pump;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Construct platform -SF-&gt; Platform pre-construction meeting;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Commission Eqpt -SF-&gt; Energize equipment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although this gets the dates where you want them, the logic flow is reversed from reality.  This messes up critical path and other logic analyses.  Some people have pointed to the second example as an acceptable use case, though I would suggest it is just as bad as the rest.  You can accomplish the same thing with correct logic flow and a zero-free-float constraint (if you have it available in your software) or intermediate/dummy milestone (if ZFF is not available, e.g. MSP.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2017-05-04T18:42:46.570" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21569" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-04T18:44:49.277" Score="2" ViewCount="416" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm stuck with an issue with scheduling my construction project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A concrete slab pour takes only one day to complete and we pour two floors a week, every Tuesday and Saturday (3-day schedule). I set up Saturday as a workday in the settings already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 26th Floor is the first date (5/3/17) which I inputted manually because I need the rest of the floors to auto schedule from each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the example below, please help me figure out what my formula should be in the predecessors column and if I need any constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first error as you can see below is on the 30th floor slab pour. The finish date needs to say &quot;Say 5/13/17&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FRv36.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FRv36.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Rhrk1.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Rhrk1.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28456" LastActivityDate="2017-06-24T05:23:03.793" Title="Which Predecessors/Successor and constraint should I be using?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21570" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-05T01:20:37.883" Score="3" ViewCount="1344" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work as Scrum Master in a team which has developers and QAs. In the organization I work for we have a review cycle every six months. Directors do the evaluation of the Scrum team based on agile principals and team output and managers do the evaluation of individuals. But we do not have a &lt;em&gt;formal&lt;/em&gt; feedback process from the Scrum team to managers for &lt;em&gt;individual team member&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, what if a team member needs his\her working style changed and it's not happening even after multiple discussions? The reason why I think a formal process is necessary because it is my feeling that people do not think they &lt;em&gt;belong to&lt;/em&gt; the Scrum team since in appraisals\reviews, the Scrum team is not involved and all of it is still in the hands of management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if you had dealt with something of the sort. What was your solution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Little bit more information: we have mix goals - part of goals are team based which directors look at based on team's output and part of them are individual goals managers set based on their understanding of individual and expectations. There is no discussion between scrum team and managers while setting the individual goals. They can be about soft or hard skills. But the work is done in scrum team and scrum team is not aware of individual objectives. But they &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; evaluated at the end of six months nevertheless. If they were only team based goals I wouldn't worry. But if individual goals conflict with team goals, then employees would\do give preference to individual goals (or whatever manager says) because at the end of it all, it's their opinion that decides appraisals at least when it comes to individual goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the example, I gave was a general example. It can be good thing as well (someone going out of the way). Problem I see is that there is no way to recognize that. All these needs a process to funnel into. I have tried in the past to send feedback to manager since manager decides individual goals' evaluation but it was met with passing consideration if any. All this complexity leads me to believe that there has to be feedback from scrum team to management.The 360 degree feedback suggestions seem okay to me. I don't want to be elevated to manager &lt;em&gt;at all&lt;/em&gt; but I do not know how to protect the team if scrum team feedback is not part of the process of evaluation. Would it be ideal to have 360 degree feedback (do that in accordance with agile) or is it just somehow making agile work in mixture of traditional management with agile? Or would it ideal to have only team based goals or should scrum team have discussions with managers while deciding goals, individual or otherwise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28458" LastEditorUserId="28458" LastEditDate="2017-05-11T14:51:46.577" LastActivityDate="2020-10-24T09:40:24.077" Title="Feedback process for individuals in scrum team" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;management&gt;&lt;reviews&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21570" CreationDate="2017-05-05T07:21:49.157" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen the following things work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum Master bi-weekly &lt;a href=&quot;http://finding-marbles.com/2013/04/10/one-on-ones-in-agile-transitions/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;one-on-one coaching&lt;/a&gt; meetings: These might not have the mandate to really have an impact if the person does not want to change. This because the SM does not have any real power, but you could always advise management. Still this is the best start as you can find out what is really going on, maybe there is a good reason for the resistance. Coaching is key here, but reporting to management the normal review cycle.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team 360 feedback: Each person has a manager in a different team, the manager has the same discipline/role as the person he manages, but only works 50%. This manager regularly collects &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.thebalance.com/360-degree-feedback-information-1917537&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;360 feedback&lt;/a&gt; from the team members. Together with (bi-weekly) coaching talks he/she takes this information and handles the performance review. Hopefully leading to a better performance. (I think this is similar to how Spotify is doing it)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does Spotify have managers?&#xA;  “Spotify does have managers, its just a different perspective.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is another common misperception. We do have managers, it’s just a&#xA;  different perspective. Instead of having team managers, we have line&#xA;  managers, which we call Chapter Leads. They look after all those&#xA;  people with the same skillset across the squads. For example, I might&#xA;  be the Chapter Lead for all Android developers. The cool thing is&#xA;  Chapter Leads are part-time developers, they usually sit on one of the&#xA;  squads themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.honeypot.io/2015-11-13-what&amp;#39;s-it-like-to-work-at-Spotify/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;read more ...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would do both. Handle people as people and not resources. Coach them, but if the team think they are not performing and they resist change kick them off the team. Let management figure out what to-do with them. Teamwork is so important in Agile that it is more effective to work with less people than with someone who resists change. Find something to-do for them where they can be a loner :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2017-05-05T07:27:52.303" LastActivityDate="2017-05-05T07:27:52.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21570" CreationDate="2017-05-05T21:38:45.587" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What's your interpretation of a &lt;em&gt;ScrumMaster&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am asking because doing an employee evaluation is not a classical task of a &lt;em&gt;ScrumMaster&lt;/em&gt;. Regardless if the evaluation is somehow related to the agile process or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But we do not have a formal feedback process from the Scrum team to&#xA;managers for individual team member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure if this would be a fruitful process at all. Such process could raise some critical team issues. Despite that, it contradicts some principles of Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And keep in mind, in the first place the management is interested in the team performance not in individual performances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, what if a team member needs his\her working style changed&#xA;and it's not happening even after multiple discussions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a pure Scrum perspective the team has to handle the problem. That means the team has to find a way to integrate the teammate that he/she becomes valuable for the project regardless his/her own working style. As I wrote evaluating the performance of a team member is not the responsibility of a &lt;em&gt;ScrumMaster&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Update&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As raised up by JDRodger the &lt;em&gt;ScrumMaster&lt;/em&gt; is responsible to help in resolving such issues to improve the team productivity. It might be a bit off topic, but let's see what you can do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...] what if a team member needs his\her working style changed and it's not happening even after multiple discussions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The word discussions (as you used it) has a negative connotation to me. Hence, the situation you described already suggests there is a conflict and my guess you are very likely in the middle of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, you are not describing important details like who is involved, how did you recognized the problem, what is in your opinion the cause of the problem etc. (please add more details).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, as rule of thumb, try to prevent such situations, don't get involved, don't take somebodies side, try to be always as neutral as possible. I know this is not easy but it's the best position you can have (to help to solve such conflicts).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For sure, you cannot always avoid conflicting situations as &lt;em&gt;ScrumMaster&lt;/em&gt;. You have certain responsibilities which might lead to confrontations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example let's assume a team member don't show up to the Daily Scrum regular. Eventually you see the necessary that the whole development team joins the Daily (at least if it's possible).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The worst thing you can do is to confront the teammate directly and start a discussion like &amp;quot;Why are you not present at the dailies?&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;You must participate like everybody else!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Slightly better but also not perfect &amp;quot;It would be good for the project and also for your teammates if you could join the dailies. You are a important part of it.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So never try to confront someone by being bossy or by parenting and treat him as a child. The best you can do in such a situation take a deep breath and step back. See how the situation develops, see if this is really a problem for the team and the project success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it tends out to be a problem then you have to act. Raise up the problem during a Sprint Retrospective (if no other team member addresses that problem); and again, be neutral, don't take a side and listen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At best the team members find a solution. If not, try to push them in the right direction; remember, don't be bossy, no parenting. Make a neutral  statement, &amp;quot;Maybe you should discuss this at your dailies next time?&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So resolving conflicts it's not easy. And the right way how to resolve them depends on the concrete conflict. The ultima ratio is to escalate it, and go directly to the management (or indirectly by a feedback process). But such actions doesn't necessarily plays well for you or the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Individuals and interactions over processes and tools &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/why-scrum/core-scrum-values-roles#sthash.4iscaS1u.dpuf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;(1)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25435" LastEditorUserId="25435" LastEditDate="2020-10-24T09:40:24.077" LastActivityDate="2020-10-24T09:40:24.077" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21575" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21579" CreationDate="2017-05-06T06:29:57.883" Score="3" ViewCount="972" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently, we have split &quot;Sprint Planning Meeting&quot; into two parts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;SPM1 - This we do at the first day of the sprint. Product owner discusses the stories that have come into the current sprint from Backlog. All stories are already discussed in Backlog so we don't have much here. Mostly we discuss if something was pending or not clear in backlog. Post this meeting, PO makes sure that team has 100% clarity about the stories.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;SPM2 - This is a purely technical discussion. We don't include PO here. We break stories into the testable task so that team member gets broad overview what needs to be executed, what is expected of each task, facilitate parallel development. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problems we are facing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SPM1 Problem - There are fewer things to discuss. The team is not convinced on exact agenda of the meeting, they say why don't we discuss complete thing in Backlog only. (We have two backlogs in a sprint). The rest dependencies they suggested can be discussed via email etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SPM2 Problem - We struggle with creating tasks from stories. We don't have clear idea to what depth things should be discussed. Should discussion include which code layer i.e BL,DAL,UI, what code would be put OR just how different systems would connect with each other i.e. breaking of functionality and leaving rest to the developer?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some additional context:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team size: 5 developers, 1 tester, 1 Product Owner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint length: two weeks &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Average production experience of developers/tester: 2 years&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are we doing something wrong here? Should we split &quot;Sprint Planning Meeting&quot; into two parts like this, is it standard scrum practice? How should we resolve these problems?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28471" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2017-05-07T11:42:22.397" LastActivityDate="2017-05-09T06:33:32.897" Title="How can we fix Sprint Planning meetings that are unproductive?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21575" CreationDate="2017-05-06T09:19:01.710" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To split the SPM into two parts it's the classical approach. First part, agreement on sprint backlog and sprint goal (involves PO/Team). Second part, development team discuss how to realize the requirements in the sprint backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;SPM1 Problem - There are fewer things to discuss. The team is not&#xA;  convinced on exact agenda of the meeting, they say why don't we&#xA;  discuss complete thing in Backlog only. (We have two backlogs in a&#xA;  sprint). The rest dependencies they suggested can be discussed via&#xA;  email etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry, but I don't fully understand your problems. Like I wrote this part is done to get a common understanding and agreement of the sprint backlog and goal. Maybe the problem is that the requirements which should be done in the sprint are not up for discussion at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;SPM2 Problem - We struggle with creating tasks from stories. We don't&#xA;  have clear idea to what depth things should be discussed. Should&#xA;  discussion include which code layer i.e BL,DAL,UI, what code would be&#xA;  put OR just how different systems would connect with each other i.e.&#xA;  breaking of functionality and leaving rest to the developer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important think in the second part is to refine the requirements to individual tasks, get an agreement on who is responsible for a task and define when a task is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If design/technical decisions are up for discussion in this meeting or not depends on the team and the complexity of the requirements. It's also possible to wrap such decisions in individual tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess the biggest problem you have is that you haven't find a common and regular structure which everybody respects and follows. Talk to your teammates and and try to agree on a procedure which makes clear which decisions are done in SPM2 and which are out of scope.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25435" LastEditorUserId="25435" LastEditDate="2017-05-09T06:33:32.897" LastActivityDate="2017-05-09T06:33:32.897" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21575" CreationDate="2017-05-07T09:20:54.427" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that problem 2 is one of a new project or team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With an existing bit of software, or an old bedded in team, everyone will know the overall architecture of the project. Questions like 'where shall we put this business logic' or 'what tech shall we use to solve this problem' have been answered long ago and no discussion is needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a new team or project its best to sort out the basic structure before you start. ie. 'we are making a c# mvc 4 website, hosted in AWS and using a mssql database. such and such JS framework, etc etc'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get everyone on the same page architecturally so that you have a framework to discuss technical questions when they come up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2017-05-07T09:20:54.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21575" CreationDate="2017-05-07T11:37:21.577" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have several process problems. Process problems have a cost. Those costs should be visible, and the cost of &lt;em&gt;fixing&lt;/em&gt; the problems should be charged against the project to ensure transparency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can address your current set of process problems by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Making better use of Backlog Refinement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having clear Sprint Goals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing user stories (aka Product Backlog Items) that meet &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt; criteria.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improving your Sprint Planning process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Practicing continuous improvement through Sprint Retrospectives.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allocating team capacity to process improvement initiatives.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest of this really long answer explains why and how you should do these things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Secondary (Symptomatic) Problems&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have several different problems. As I see it, your &lt;em&gt;secondary&lt;/em&gt; problems flow from these statements you made in your original post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The team is not convinced on exact agenda of the meeting[.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is because Backlog Refinement and Sprint Planning are not being properly leveraged.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We struggle with creating tasks from stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is likely because stories don't meet &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt; criteria, are improperly sized or estimated, or because your team and your sprints lack cohesion. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The rest dependencies they suggested can be discussed via email etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a huge project smell. It ignores the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;agile principle&lt;/a&gt; that &quot;[t]he most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.&quot; It also indicates that the team lacks cohesion, and is failing to find value in the Planning Meeting as currently structured.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Primary Problems&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the problems above are actually X/Y problems. They are &lt;em&gt;symptoms&lt;/em&gt; of a larger process problem. Based on the information provided, I see several primary issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're not using Backlog Refinement to set a clear Sprint Goal for the upcoming Sprint Planning Meeting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're allocating too much time for Sprint Planning based on your sprint length.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your Product Owner is not &lt;em&gt;available&lt;/em&gt; for questions during Sprint Backlog development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your team needs coaching in effective decomposition and planning techniques.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, if you unpack all the problems, it basically comes down to a failure to fully leverage the Scrum process, and an inability to gel as a cohesive team rather than a collection of individuals assigned to the same project. Let's look at some possible solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Solutions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following solutions address your underlying process and teaming problems, and should therefore also address the specific follow-on issues you raised in your original post. Situations vary, though, so adapt them as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Backlog Refinement and Sprint Goals&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your entire team should be involved in Backlog Refinement. While more mature teams can sometimes get away with just the Scrum Master and Product Owner involved in the meeting, the lack of cohesion in your Sprint Planning sessions could be addressed by making sure everyone leaves Backlog Grooming with a clear goal in mind and a set agenda.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Backlog Refinement is the time for the team to huddle with the Product Owner to determine what features are &lt;em&gt;likely&lt;/em&gt; to be in scope for the upcoming Sprint, and to help the Product Owner:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify a Sprint Goal that will act as a filter for selecting stories for the upcoming Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decompose any themes or epics for Sprint Planning into high-level (not detailed) user stories, e.g. refining them until they are &lt;strong&gt;likely to be no more than one Sprint in length&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prioritize stories on the Product Backlog, answering technical questions that may affect scope, dependency ordering, or other things that impact the Product Owner's perceived value of the stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team leaves the Backlog Refinement meeting with a Sprint Goal and a pool of &lt;em&gt;potential&lt;/em&gt; user stories for the next Sprint, you have an agenda!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Sprint Planning: Story and Task Planning&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Allocate less time for your Sprint Planning sessions. As a rule of thumb, I've found that most teams need about 4 hours per week of sprint length for planning. Obviously, this will vary based on project complexity and team maturity, but if you're spending more than 6-8 hours planning a two-week sprint then you may have other process, framework, or skill deficits in play.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the very beginning of Sprint Planning, the team must estimate it's capacity for the current sprint. This is often the velocity, adjusted for current conditions (e.g. vacations, changes in team composition, or complexity of the current phase of the project). This capacity estimate is used to limit the work that will be planned for the sprint, and to shape the &lt;em&gt;forecast&lt;/em&gt; that is created through Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first half of Sprint Planning requires the whole team to review the Sprint Goal, and to work with the Product Owner to select stories from the top of the Product Backlog that will fit within a single sprint. This can involve some discussions, estimations, horse-trading, and on-the-fly reprioritization (by the PO) of the Product Backlog. Whether the team pulls one story or many, the &lt;em&gt;team&lt;/em&gt; is responsible for popping stories off the top of the Product Backlog based on the team's estimated capacity for the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second half of Sprint Planning &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; requires the whole team, including the Product Owner. This is the part where the team develops the Sprint Backlog, which are the tasks and dependencies needed to get each story to the Definition of Done. While very mature teams can often combine the two steps, most teams need this step to be explicit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal here isn't to do a traditional work breakdown structure. Instead, it's to define the &lt;em&gt;tasks&lt;/em&gt; needed to implement the story, or identify information gaps about scope or Definition of Done for a particular story. In other words, you need a rough outline of what needs to be done so that the acceptance criteria for the story is understand &lt;strong&gt;before you start working.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, imagine you had a story like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want to be able to change my username in the system&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I don't have to call technical support to fix simple typos made during account creation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good story has a value consumer (the user), a feature (changing the username), and a context to constrain the scope of the implementation. A great story is often granular enough that the story's tasks are self-evident. If they aren't, you may need to revisit the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt; criteria for story development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During Sprint Backlog definition, the team needs to collaboratively figure out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How they plan to &lt;em&gt;test&lt;/em&gt; the feature.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What meetings or planning sessions they need to have to work out implementation details.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What dependencies they may have on other stories, tasks, or resources so that the Sprint Backlog can be prioritized.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask the Product Owner any clarifying questions about scope or context that will ensure the team is planning the right tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a sanity check, whether the identified tasks can still fit within a single sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's it! If the meeting starts sliding off into detailed discussions of how a developer plans to embiggen a widget, the team has likely missed the point and the Scrum Master needs to referee the process better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Refine Your Process&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your team lacks cohesion, maturity, or experience with effective Scrum, then issues should be identified and discussed during the Sprint Retrospective. The Product Owner must then create user stories on the Product Backlog so that the team can allocate capacity to addressing the process issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if the team struggles with writing stories that meet &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt; criteria, the problems or knowledge gaps should be called out in the retrospective. The Product Owner might then create a user story like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Team Member,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want to learn how define Product Backlog Items (PBIs) that are more &lt;em&gt;independent&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that there are fewer dependencies between PBIs during Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story should then be estimated, prioritized, and allocated to a future sprint &lt;em&gt;as work&lt;/em&gt;. Process issues can't be treated as hidden work or overhead; they must be made explicit, and any tasks associated with them must be explicitly counted against the team's capacity as either estimated work or as unaddressed tech/process debt that &lt;em&gt;reduces&lt;/em&gt; available capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, process problems have a cost. Those costs should be visible, and the cost of &lt;em&gt;fixing&lt;/em&gt; the problems should be charged against the project to ensure transparency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-05-07T11:37:21.577" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21583" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-08T20:18:21.887" Score="2" ViewCount="481" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking to find some resources or best practices on how to use JIRA to manage the Business As Usual (BAU) and other projects for my team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have several major projects we are working on, and each project has several key components that various team members work on in parallel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, we have our BAU tasks as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there recommended workflows/plugins to help manage this? My initial thought:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option 1:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each project the team works on becomes a component&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option 2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each project is an Epic&#xA;Each subproject is a story under the epic&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28489" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-05-08T20:35:27.387" LastActivityDate="2017-06-30T22:15:05.047" Title="How to best manage multiple projects in JIRA for a non-development team?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21583" CreationDate="2017-05-08T20:39:31.123" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have every project be part of its own Project, but have a single shared board to visualize all tasks. A board is simply a visualization of a JQL (JIRA Query Language) filter, after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this way, whenever you &lt;em&gt;create&lt;/em&gt; a story/task/etc., it will be assigned to one specific project. However, when you want to visualize and prioritize all work, it's all in a single, shared location. If you want, you can still have individual boards for each Project (as, in a typical situation, any given developer should only be working on a single project at a time), but you'll still want a shared board for prioritization purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-05-08T20:39:31.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21586" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-09T17:35:52.960" Score="0" ViewCount="597" Body="&lt;p&gt;To give a background, We are web automobile company having a new and used cars portal, something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.autotrader.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;autotrader usa&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have lots of technical debt pending i.e. moving our pages to new backend technology, updating the versions of various open source modules we have integrated, modularizing the javascript etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is, should we give points to these or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why team wants point for chores:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is a lot of legacy code that team says should now be considered as a feature since the majority of the team members never worked at the time when this legacy code was put to production.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They say velocity measures &quot;how fast team delivers&quot;, why shouldn't we count things like exploring new technology like a unit testing framework or new UI framework like React, upgrading existing software to higher versions, moving to better technology in the team's velocity, isn't these things worthy enough in fast moving technical world?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many times PO suggest to take short cut approach rather than ideal technical approach either due to business pressure or to quickly see the results. If the experiment succeeds,the same thing needs to be done in a proper manner. This is technical debt, why shouldn't we count this in velocity?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Automating release process- this does not impact customers life, so it should be chore ideally. But it saves team's time and headache. Why we shouldn't give points to it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why it shouldn't be given points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I believe if the team is smart enough to pick right chore activities time to time, this would automatically start showing up in velocity in future sprints. For example, if they start using a unit testing framework (done as a chore with no points), in future, there would be fewer bugs and team would be able to deliver more.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a team has to deliver 300 points in next 3 months, and they ask PO for clearing technical debt in the first month, so the team would be delivering 0 points in the first month. But the team should pick stories that would clear all technical hurdles so that team now can deliver 300 points in next 2 months. This would motivate the team to pick the business aligned technical debts and not random stuff to decorate their resume.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28471" LastActivityDate="2019-09-10T15:30:02.163" Title="pivotal tracker chore: Should chores be estimated or not?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;pivotal-tracker&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21587" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21589" CreationDate="2017-05-09T18:01:18.293" Score="0" ViewCount="134" Body="&lt;p&gt;Martin is the project manager for a small new product development project at his company. After some time, audits reveal that the quality of the finished product, if it continues along its current trend, will be poor. The people on his project team are skilled and intelligent individuals who have worked on projects like this many times in the past, but the new process they are required to follow, although much better than the previous process, seems to be getting in their way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I come across the same situation in my company where the team feels that a quality process is getting in their way, should I change the process? Or do I keep the process in place and resolve the matter another way? In what way? Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28501" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-05-09T18:44:32.493" LastActivityDate="2017-05-09T18:51:39.400" Title="How to handle friction between the team and a new process" Tags="&lt;quality&gt;&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2017-05-09T22:36:22.460" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21588" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-09T18:20:23.143" Score="-1" ViewCount="94" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is ideal scrum approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To fix bandwidth i.e. 10% of every sprint to clear off the technical debt?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To dedicate one/two sprint every year to clear off these debts?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe both has its pros and cons like in &#xA;(1) we can measure things constantly i.e. if we are doing right things or are we off track? In case we are off track, next sprint we can try something else. While in (2) the continuity would lead to more work as complete team would be thinking in the same direction but with greater risk as it would be big code changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28471" LastActivityDate="2017-07-08T11:48:50.707" Title="pivotal tracker chore: Should chores be picked regularly or one complete sprint should be dedicated to it? At what rate velocity should increase" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;pivotal-tracker&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21587" CreationDate="2017-05-09T18:51:39.400" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing you need to do is determine &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; the team seems to be having difficulties adjusting to/accepting the new process. It may be that they have valid concerns that were not previously taken into account. It may be that the new process is flawed in some way. It may be that they don't understand the process or its benefits properly. It may be that they simply don't like anything new.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before making such a decision, you need to gather information. In doing so, make sure to avoid bias as much as possible. One way to do this is by challenging assumptions, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;although much better than the previous process, seems to be getting in their way&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'much better' in what way? Who decided that? If it was anyone other than the team, then I would hesitate to assume that the team sees it as a better process. You should find out what &lt;em&gt;makes&lt;/em&gt; it 'much better', and whether or not that's actually a viable concern, both in general and for your specific company and situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-05-09T18:51:39.400" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21590" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-09T19:03:16.810" Score="1" ViewCount="95" Body="&lt;p&gt;The definition of velocity is “Just like a speedometer that measures how fast you’re hurtling through space, Tracker’s velocity is a measurement of how fast your team completes stories. Instead of miles or kilometers per hour, Tracker expresses velocity as the number of points completed per iteration.” (source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pivotaltracker.com/blog/velocity-matters/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;pivtoal blog)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should be the ideal growth rate of team's velocity from one sprint to another? For example, if team is delivering 100 points in current sprint, what should be the expectation from the next sprint i.e. 102 points for 2% growth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28471" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-10-21T22:25:03.317" LastActivityDate="2019-10-21T22:25:03.317" Title="pivotal tracker chore: At what rate velocity should increase" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;pivotal-tracker&gt;&lt;velocity&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18410" CreationDate="2017-05-09T19:39:31.803" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In MS Project you can create a filter (custom view). &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Create-a-custom-filter-282de296-6e05-4d99-86c6-96be04bc00dd&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here's Microsoft web page telling how.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to do a filter on sharepoint side, Your sharepoint or project server admin most probably knows the tricks to sharepoint and ms project integration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't use project + Sharepoint setup myself, but I saw some companies using a web view of Ms Project in Sharepoint. Adding tasks and viewing them. In this case you can filter your team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have custom filters for watching out my teammates' tasks. It's quite useful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16715" LastActivityDate="2017-05-09T19:39:31.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21590" CreationDate="2017-05-09T19:46:11.557" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends vastly on several different factors, perhaps most importantly on which stage the Team is in in the '&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuckman%27s_stages_of_group_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing&lt;/a&gt;' process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Team is in the Performing stage (that is, they're already performing at their 'optimal efficiency'), then I would expect velocity to be more or less static... when ignoring fluctuations caused by external factors. At the very least, on average, it should stay more or less the same over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the first three stages, however, I would expect velocity to be highly variable (it would not be too unexpected to go from 100 to 90 to 125 to 70 to 130, etc.), with a general, &lt;em&gt;long-term&lt;/em&gt; trend towards increasing (as the Team gets closer to the Performing stage).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-05-09T19:46:11.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21590" CreationDate="2017-05-09T21:09:33.383" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In reality most teams go slower over time. This because the bigger the product becomes the higher the complexity becomes. This as more and more parts are depended on each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To keep a high velocity you need to also practise &lt;a href=&quot;https://less.works/de/less/technical-excellence/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;good engineering practises&lt;/a&gt;, combined with refactoring to keep your code (c)lean and mean. Something project management tools do not really offer insights in. Pushing for velocity on the short-term probably leads to short-cuts, hindering the velocity growth on the long-term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Expect more from your teams, but do not sacrifice quality. If you want to keep your speed high watch the &lt;a href=&quot;https://cleancoders.com/episode/clean-code-episode-1/show&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;first (free) episode of Clean Code&lt;/a&gt; it gives great insights on why teams slow-down and how-to &lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com/site/unclebobconsultingllc/going-fast&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;go fast&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2017-05-09T21:09:33.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21594" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-09T22:46:39.250" Score="1" ViewCount="990" Body="&lt;p&gt;The current issue we're having is we have several Jira boards/projects for different parts of our company. One of our users is in one board that is a Scrum board and one board that is Kanban. I tried creating a boarding to pull in all of this agent's tasks, but it will only  show the agile board OR the Kanban board (depending on which on I choose the new board to be) not both at the same time. The agent wishes to see all of their tasks on one board, and see what tasks are WIP, Done, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27415" LastActivityDate="2017-07-09T15:06:04.760" Title="How do I show all tasks assigned to a user on one Jira board?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21595" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-10T09:49:42.453" Score="4" ViewCount="628" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master for two teams within SAFe, I have the standard scheduling down pat. I can attend all regular meetings and the teams are running relatively smoothly. However, we are working in a scaled agile environment and there is one event that regularly makes me want to clone myself: PI Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the event when all Scrum teams that are developing a huge project physically come together to adjust their planning for the next two months. This includes a retrospective and a planning session. While the planning is doable (larger time window and lots of preparation), leading two teams through a common retrospective within the same time slot of thirty to sixty minutes is a challenge. Yes, the questions are the same for all 100+ participants, but we as Scrum Masters are supposed to lead and encourage our team, make sure the time limits are kept etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the past, I solved this by placing both teams physically next to each other, but found that the discussions of the two teams mutually distracted them and that I was running around like the proverbial &quot;chicken with its head cut off.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the rule of thumb seems to be &quot;Scrum Master = 1/2 full-time job&quot;, I suppose there are many SMs out there with similar issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can one person juggle two teams when sequential work is impossible?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26067" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2017-05-10T22:26:09.537" LastActivityDate="2017-05-11T19:30:48.790" Title="How can one Scrum Master do two retrospectives during SAFe PI Planning?" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;safe&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21594" CreationDate="2017-05-10T13:05:58.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe this should work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Issues-&gt;Search for Issues-&gt;JQL=&quot;Assignee = [user]&quot;-&gt;Save as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Manage Boards-&gt;Create Board-&gt;Kanban-&gt;Existing Filter-&gt;select the filter you created&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-05-10T13:05:58.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21597" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21602" CreationDate="2017-05-10T15:49:07.940" Score="6" ViewCount="3439" Body="&lt;p&gt;When talking about blockers on the Scrum board, I realized that we might have interdependent tasks. For example, database design is dependent on some activities in UX flow. Or maybe there is a later realization that one module requires some other module to be finished. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an ideal case this should not happen, but nothing is ideal. Imagine if during the Sprint developer A is working on Task 1, which is dependent on completion of Task 2. Task 2 is part of the same Sprint. So, in such a case, we basically have reduced the number of parallel tasks in the Sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such a case, how should we handle Task 1? Should I remove it right away from the Scrum board, and replace it with another task? Or should I just let it be in the Sprint, till the next Sprint starts? What if there is more than one tasks like this in the Sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23395" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2017-05-11T19:36:02.777" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T17:41:09.477" Title="How should we deal with interdependent tasks in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;dependencies&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21310" CreationDate="2017-05-10T16:09:18.940" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You've stepped into the realm of portfolio management and what you possibly require is some sort of a dashboard. One that shows your red spots and the health status of various projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be useful if you look at it once a week or month. But it will not tell you what to do daily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, data can always be misleading. So, it's wise to not keep yourself attached to the dashboard and find more verbal and wandering or reporting methods to check out the pace of the projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a few other ideas that could be worth exploring:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk metrics (a weighted average of risk values, etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No of opened and closed tasks charts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No of late tasks and backlogs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Amount of coffee consumed per person per day :)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16715" LastActivityDate="2017-05-10T16:09:18.940" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21570" CreationDate="2017-05-10T19:39:14.580" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This has already been answered and suggested but I believe 360 feedback is the right solution, given that team is mature enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give each scrum team member anonymous survey to rate other team members. Ask them top 5 questions that you think are the CORE values of your company and your expectations from that person. Try to keep questions objective and let people rate based on 1-10 scale. Give the last question as &quot;share feedback about person X you have&quot; and let people write what they want in this. (guide them to provide constructive criticism)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problem#1. &quot;Team member needs his\her working style changed and it's not happening even after multiple discussions?&quot; -  It's hard to convince people without data. If you will discuss with him/her with data like &quot;4 out of 5 team members rate your contribution to the success of the team as 4/10 while team average for this question is 8/10&quot;. This would make other people believe that if everyone thinks so, he/she better work hard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problem#2. &quot;People do not think they belong to the Scrum team since in appraisals\reviews, the Scrum team is not involved and all of it is still in the hands of management.&quot;: Use this data in appraisals as well, not completely but may be X% to start with. Now people will have the belief that appraisals/reviews are more scientific and not based on just single opinion which may be biased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28471" LastActivityDate="2017-05-10T19:39:14.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21601" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-11T01:06:50.660" Score="0" ViewCount="1165" Body="&lt;p&gt;In MS Project, is there a way to show resource usage for the current Project only? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When viewing the resource usage report, the totals by resource include allocation for all projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can it be filtered so that the totals show for the current Project only?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28518" LastEditorUserId="10462" LastEditDate="2017-05-15T10:02:24.543" LastActivityDate="2020-07-29T15:07:36.373" Title="How to show resource usage for the current project only?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resources&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21597" CreationDate="2017-05-11T14:29:47.237" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the question you're asking points more to a problem with how you split your stories/tasks/work items/whatever, and how they're written. Rather than trying to solve the symptoms of this issue, I think it makes more sense for you to try and tackle the root problem here. Of course, there are sometimes technical dependencies between stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Writing Work Items&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the most crucial parts of Scrum is writing user stories that are split &lt;em&gt;vertically&lt;/em&gt;, not &lt;em&gt;horizontally&lt;/em&gt;. In practice, this means that each user story should cover a full-stack piece of functionality, from Database through UI. Generally, you should avoid writing separate work items for different layers of the application. Having vertically split work items allows you to better estimate how many tasks you can work on in parallel (of course, while respecting your WIP limit) and gives the team a better opportunity to estimate what they can get done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Splitting Work Items&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When splitting up work items in Scrum, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mike Cohn&lt;/a&gt; suggests thinking of splitting stories in 5 ways (I've listed them here in my order of preference, rather than the order he lists them in):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paths -- Consider different paths through the application as split points for your vertical stories (e.g., pay with credit card vs. pay with PayPal.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rules -- Split out business rules from one another -- for example, if you're building an ordering system, split &quot;User can make an order&quot; from &quot;User can only order 4 items.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Data -- Split based on the data types you might be receiving or outputting. &quot;User can export data to .xlsx&quot; can be split from &quot;User can export data to .csv&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Interfaces -- Split between the various interfaces you're building for. iOS versus Android, a particularly tricky browser (like IE8 &lt;em&gt;shudder&lt;/em&gt;) versus more common browsers, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spike -- as a last resort, do a research spike to determine how best to split your story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll notice that none of these methods say &quot;separate the database work from the API-layer work from the UI work.&quot; Horizontal slicing in Scrum is an anti-pattern, and should be avoided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Technical Dependencies Between Stories&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avoiding horizontal slicing sounds, based on your original question, like it should help your team solve the problem you're facing. However, every team faces the issue of technical dependencies between stories. &quot;I need to create users before I can update or delete them,&quot; for example, if you split out the different CRUD functionalities. In this case, the most effective strategy I've found is simply letting your Product Owner know that there are technical dependencies between different User Stories, and that he or she should prioritize accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16314" LastActivityDate="2017-05-11T14:29:47.237" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21595" CreationDate="2017-05-11T19:00:44.163" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a huge fan of SAFe, so you may prefer an answer from someone who is. With that caveat out of the way, I believe the foundational error is that your ART Engineer is conflating the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/iteration-retrospective/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Iteration Retrospective&lt;/a&gt; (which should be a separate event) with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/pi-planning/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PI Planning&lt;/a&gt; event. Teams should not be doing &lt;em&gt;iteration&lt;/em&gt; retrospectives within PI Planning at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only retrospective defined within PI Planning is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/pre-and-post-pi-planning/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Planning Retrospective&lt;/a&gt;, which is run by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/release-train-engineer-and-value-stream-engineer/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Value Stream Engineer&lt;/a&gt;, not the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/scrum-master/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Master&lt;/a&gt;. Your problem can therefore be resolved by adhering to the framework as defined, rather than rolling additional retrospectives into the wrong event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;PI Planning Shouldn't Include an Iteration Retrospective&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PI Planning is similar in intent (if not practice) to Scrum's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-planning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sprint Planning&lt;/a&gt; meeting. It has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/pi-planning/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;defined agenda&lt;/a&gt;, as pictured below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/15So0.png&quot; alt=&quot;Standard PI Planning Agenda&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, note that the retrospective defined in the agenda is a &lt;em&gt;planning&lt;/em&gt; retrospective, not an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/iteration-retrospective/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Iteration Retrospective&lt;/a&gt;. There's no Iteration Retrospective in PI Planning at all!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;PI Planning Retrospective: The &quot;PI Planning&quot; Definition&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the framework, the Planning Retrospective is described under PI Planning as follows (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Planning Retrospective and Moving Forward.&lt;/strong&gt; Finally, the &lt;em&gt;RTE&lt;/em&gt; leads a &lt;em&gt;brief meeting retrospective&lt;/em&gt; to capture what went well, what didn’t, and what can be done better next time. Following this, next steps are discussed, including capturing objectives and stories in the Agile project management tools, scheduling upcoming key activities and events … and cleaning up the room!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What isn't made as clear as it should be is that this retrospective is to reflect on the PI Planning event, not on the iteration. As such, it's not a breakout session or a set of concurrent meetings, and doesn't have to be run the same way as an Iteration Retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;PI Planning Retrospective: The &quot;Post-PI Planning&quot; Definition&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the framework &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; offer a slightly better definition that is under &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/pre-and-post-pi-planning/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pre- and Post-PI Planning&lt;/a&gt;. The agenda items are given separate context within Post-PI Planning, which helps to clarify the purpose of the agenda items listed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wx6xV.png&quot; alt=&quot;Post-PI Planning Agenda&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the definition of the agenda item here uses the same section heading for the agenda item but also describes who &lt;em&gt;owns&lt;/em&gt; the agenda item as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/release-train-engineer-and-value-stream-engineer/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Value Stream Engineer (VSE)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Planning Retrospective and Moving Forward.&lt;/strong&gt; Finally, the &lt;em&gt;Value Stream Engineer&lt;/em&gt; leads a &lt;em&gt;brief meeting retrospective&lt;/em&gt; to capture what went well, what didn’t, and what could be done better next time. Following this, next steps are discussed, including capturing objectives, use of&amp;nbsp;project management tooling, and finalizing&amp;nbsp;the schedule of upcoming key activities and events.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because it provides both context and an owner for the agenda item, this description seems much more clear. However, please note that it also differs from the other definition by giving this job to the Value Stream Engineer (VSE) rather than the Release Train Engineer (RTE). &lt;strong&gt;In either case, the agenda item owner is not the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/scrum-master/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Master&lt;/a&gt;, and you are therefore not the one who has to manage the retrospective or juggle the participants.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2017-05-11T19:30:48.790" LastActivityDate="2017-05-11T19:30:48.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21597" CreationDate="2017-05-11T20:24:45.620" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your Scrum implementation suffers from a number of framework anti-patterns that are detailed below in the &lt;em&gt;Analysis&lt;/em&gt; section. These process issues can generally be resolved through:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adhering to Sprint Goals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allowing the Scrum Team to self-manage dependencies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using velocity as a forecasting tool rather a post-hoc measure of effort expended.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The recommended solutions are outlined in detail in the &lt;em&gt;Recommendations&lt;/em&gt; section that follows the analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Imagine if during the Sprint developer A is working on Task 1, which is dependent on completion of Task 2. Task 2 is part of the same Sprint. So, in such a case, we basically have reduced the number of parallel tasks in the Sprint...[S]hould I just let it [the task] be in the Sprint, till the next Sprint starts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question, when taken as a whole, exposes a number of framework-implementation smells. These anti-patterns include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Optimizing for utilization rather than completion of a cohesive Sprint Goal. &lt;em&gt;See also: &quot;the 100% utilization fallacy.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Scrum Master managing the Sprint Backlog, rather than facilitating team self-organization, swarming, or negotiations with the Product Owner.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Abusing the framework by allowing tasks and stories to be larger than a single Sprint without decomposition, or by carrying work into future Sprints without placing them back onto the Product Backlog at the end of each Sprint for re-estimation and replanning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Misuse of the velocity metric to measure productivity, rather than as a forecasting tool to determine Sprint capacity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also have Product Backlog Items that don't meet the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST criteria&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, by focusing on velocity as a measure of how well the Development Team is doing, you've created an X/Y problem where the team's ability to complete story points by working in parallel has become more important than delivering a cohesive, feature-oriented goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Recommendations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Adhere to Sprint Goals&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ensure each Sprint has an overarching Sprint Goal. This is actually a requirement of the framework. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-planning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Sprint Goal is an objective set for the Sprint that can be met through the implementation of Product Backlog. It provides guidance to the Development Team on why it is building the Increment. It is created during the Sprint Planning meeting. The Sprint Goal gives the Development Team some flexibility regarding the functionality implemented within the Sprint. The selected Product Backlog items deliver one coherent function, which can be the Sprint Goal. The Sprint Goal can be any other coherence that causes the Development Team to work together rather than on separate initiatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As the Development Team works, it keeps the Sprint Goal in mind. In order to satisfy the Sprint Goal, it implements the functionality and technology. If the work turns out to be different than the Development Team expected, they collaborate with the Product Owner to negotiate the scope of Sprint Backlog within the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Sprint that meets the Sprint Goal is a success, whether or not all stories and tasks scheduled for the Sprint are completed. Likewise, a Sprint that doesn't meet its Sprint Goal has failed, regardless of whether or not all stories and tasks are completed per the Definition of Done. &lt;strong&gt;So, the only real measure of success for a Sprint is the completion of the Sprint Goal; the rest is just advisory metrics.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Allow Team to Self-Manage Dependencies&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Scrum Team should be self-organizing, and the Sprint Planning meeting, the daily standup, and other ad hoc meetings are there to allow the team to manage dependencies! If the Scrum Master is defining dependencies and parceling out work, that's a violation of the core values and principles of Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, the team should focus on meeting the Sprint Goal. This is often done by limiting work in progress, rather than creating parallel tasks. This helps to ensure that stories are prioritized for the Sprint Goal, and that the whole team works together to get each story to the Definition of Done as quickly as possible. Since a Product Backlog Item (e.g. user story) is either done or not-done, there is no benefit to the team in completing tasks in parallel instead of swarming over stories to get them to Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Guide also says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;No changes are made that would endanger the Sprint Goal;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Quality goals do not decrease; and,  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Scope may be clarified and re-negotiated between the Product Owner and Development Team as more is learned.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So taking tasks or stories out of scope without the approval of the Product Owner is not allowed, but changes that still accomplish the Sprint Goal can be negotiated. &lt;strong&gt;If the dependencies can't be finessed within the framework guidelines, then the Product Owner may &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-sprint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cancel the Sprint&lt;/a&gt; and return the team to Sprint Planning&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Use Velocity and Sprint Planning for Forecasts&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity is a measure of team &lt;em&gt;capacity&lt;/em&gt;, not productivity. It's generally used to cap the amount of work the Development Team pulls into each Sprint during Sprint Planning. As such, drops in velocity often identify when stories aren't being sufficiently decomposed during planning meetings, when they violate INVEST criteria, or when there are other process problems involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a corollary, a single user story and its component tasks must never be larger than a single Sprint. One reason is that such stories are actually epics that lack sufficient decomposition to be accurately estimated. Another reason is that all work that's incomplete at the end of a Sprint must be placed back on the Product Backlog for prioritization by the Product Owner, and then re-estimated and replanned for a future Sprint (if it remains relevant at all).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The guidance here is to stop focusing on &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/20646/4271&quot;&gt;effort expended&lt;/a&gt;, and instead focus on features delivered. &lt;strong&gt;In agile frameworks, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;working increment&lt;/a&gt; is the primary measure of success.&lt;/strong&gt; If you're measuring it in any other way, you're violating core principles of the framework, and may need to re-educate your Scrum Team or senior management on the framework's foundational principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2017-05-12T17:41:09.477" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T17:41:09.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21605" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21606" CreationDate="2017-05-12T07:50:56.780" Score="9" ViewCount="1107" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several times I've read&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...good scrum masters make themselves superfluous...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am aware that this is not quite true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our company we work for quite a long time with the agile concept and scrum. Therefore most employees know about scrum and the process is respected. As our &lt;strong&gt;scrum masters&lt;/strong&gt; rethink their role and tasks, they name themselves &lt;strong&gt;agile coaches&lt;/strong&gt; and take more and more tasks outside the team. So there is a little hole, which we want to close by installing a &lt;strong&gt;proxi scrum master&lt;/strong&gt; (so called &lt;strong&gt;scrum guard&lt;/strong&gt;),  which is in fact a &lt;strong&gt;dev-team&lt;/strong&gt; member. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the &lt;strong&gt;scrum master&lt;/strong&gt; tasks are split up between an &lt;strong&gt;agile coach&lt;/strong&gt; and a &lt;strong&gt;scrum guard&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I've asked myself, which tasks make sense to be taken over by &lt;strong&gt;scrum guard&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28506" LastEditorUserId="28506" LastEditDate="2017-05-17T06:27:43.423" LastActivityDate="2017-05-17T06:27:43.423" Title="Split up scrum master tasks" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21605" CreationDate="2017-05-12T08:41:43.560" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the talk &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hG4LH6P8Syk&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The land that Scrum forgot&lt;/a&gt;&quot; of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cecil_Martin&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Robert C. Martin&lt;/a&gt; (one of founders of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt;) says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Scrum Master was a coach. A Scrum Master was not a manager. The&#xA;  Scrum Master was responsible for defending the process, but nothing&#xA;  else. He/she did not defend the schedule, not the budget, not the&#xA;  stories, not the backlog. Only the process and the role was supposed&#xA;  to rotate between the different team members. The idea was the role&#xA;  would slowly fade away. This was the initial concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(this quote is from around minute 20, but start &lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/hG4LH6P8Syk?t=18m12s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;at 18m12s&lt;/a&gt; to get the full story.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then he goes on about how the (project-)managers didn't like that interpretation and how these people wanted to be permanent Scrum Masters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would call your &quot;proxy&quot; just plain and simple &lt;strong&gt;Scrum Master&lt;/strong&gt; and rotate someone in the team. Let the Agile coaches focus on getting the organisation to become truly Agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we look at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://martinfowler.com/articles/agileFluency.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile fluency model&lt;/a&gt;. The Scrum Masters would focus mainly on levels 1-2 and the Agile coaches on level 3-4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which tasks that is open for discussion, but I would focus on the typical Scrum Master tasks and add &lt;a href=&quot;https://less.works/de/less/technical-excellence/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;technical excellence&lt;/a&gt; focus on top of that. So that the team stays clean and can keep going fast over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2017-05-12T08:59:22.960" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T08:59:22.960" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21605" CreationDate="2017-05-12T13:41:28.170" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just making sure I understand your situation...&#xA; Once your full-time Scrum Masters feel that they are 'done/ready', they want to graduate to 'Agile Coach', and nominate a developer as a part-time Scrum Master called 'Scrum Guard', yes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that good Scrum Masters &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; supposed to work themselves out of their jobs. As servant/leaders, they perform, at a basic, high-level, two tasks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Instruct on and enforce the Scrum process, both in the Team and organizationally. If the Scrum Master has done this successfully, then both the Team and the organization will have internalized the values of Scrum, and this step becomes no longer necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Stand up for the Team's interests. You note in a comment that &quot;a Developer shouldn't be a 'real' Scrum Master at the same time. To me this a conflict of interest&quot;. However, the Scrum Master is &lt;em&gt;supposed&lt;/em&gt; to understand and represent the Development Team's interests. Who better to do this than a developer? This is the reason many consider it a &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; idea for a developer to be a part-time Scrum Master, and a bad idea for a Scrum Master to be a part-time Product Owner. (The downside of a part-time developer Scrum Master is a full-time Scrum Master has more time to focus on Scrum Mastering). If the Scrum Master has done this successfully, then the organization should be more receptive to the Development Team's concerns, and the Development Team should be more courageous and effective in bringing their concerns to the light.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Scrum Master has not already worked him/herself into obsolescence, then I would posit that s/he is not yet &lt;em&gt;ready&lt;/em&gt; to give up the job and take up the mantle of 'Agile Coach'. If s/he &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; ready, then there would be no &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; for a 'Scrum Guard'. The Development Team will handle all of that itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T13:41:28.170" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21453" CreationDate="2017-05-12T15:36:09.717" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd argue that the role of the BA in modern scrum / agile is to &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;expose root requirements&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;police value&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. This isn't something that can happen in a vacuum; to execute, the BA needs to be a 3rd voice in the conversation between Product Owner and Developer. To elaborate: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Expose root requirements:&lt;/strong&gt; Product owners are going to want to give you &lt;strong&gt;solutions&lt;/strong&gt; when your developers need the &lt;strong&gt;problems&lt;/strong&gt; that they are to solve. Moving the PO-Dev conversation from &quot;I need this button&quot; to &quot;I need a way to solve this problem&quot; is where the BA adds value.    &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Police value:&lt;/strong&gt; When POs/Devs are in total sync about the problem and the solution, it is on the BA to trace a business need and ensure the 'juice is worth the squeeze' (often within the context of a project). This is one of the hardest parts of being an agile BA - calling out features that are out of scope or that suffer from questionable ROI. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a unique role that adds value in very different ways from a Dev, PO or PM. Of course in many development environments the responsibilities of the agile BA will be absorbed by these roles, but that in no way means that BAs are vestigial. Just because a general contractor does all the brickwork, electrical and plumbing work in a project, it does not mean that masons, electricians and plumbers are obsolete and should look to transition roles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26173" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T15:36:09.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21609" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21614" CreationDate="2017-05-12T17:44:51.773" Score="1" ViewCount="229" Body="&lt;p&gt;What elicitation technique(s) would you use for a workflow-dependent feature, where the workflow is largely unknown? Given a workshop with the primary user,the designer, the developer and the BA (me), what is the best tool for the job?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Context:&lt;/strong&gt; We are working on the first release of a large-scale agile project. During a recent sprint planning, it became clear that stakeholders are not all on the same page regarding the requirements of a specific feature. The feature is part of an interface that will allow our content managers to preview web pages in different states and across different times. Since the concept of scheduled content is new to this release, there is a question of what the workflows will look like (and by extension how content managers will use the feature). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26173" LastActivityDate="2017-09-14T13:12:53.057" Title="Requirements Elicitation Technique For Unknown Workflow" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;&lt;business-analyst&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21611" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-12T22:49:33.533" Score="2" ViewCount="426" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PMBOK® Guide recommends that when a scope change request is submitted, an impact analysis is performed to assess how the change could affect the overall project. How does this work affect the overall project budget? Is it customary for the company to bear the costs of performing the impact assessment as part of the cost of doing business, or would you include that in the customer's bill for the change request? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if it's determined that the changes cannot be actioned as part of the project? How would you prevent a project from going over-budget because of work spent on multiple impact analyses for change requests if there is no way to recoup the money from the customer for their requests?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25654" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-05-16T17:10:19.973" LastActivityDate="2017-05-17T10:13:29.887" Title="How to manage cost of change / impact analysis with no funding?" Tags="&lt;change-management&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;&lt;pmbok&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21605" CreationDate="2017-05-12T23:53:52.267" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Scrum guard role may be unnecessary, even distracting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum Master may be a much bigger role than you're are considering it to be&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The goal of a Scrum Master is not to be come superfluous (adding no more value) but to find higher order ways of adding value outside team dynamics and operation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A Scrum Master skilled in coaching may still bring great value to a Development team and Product Owner even when they can function independently of that Scrum Master.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to affirm the rightness of a Scrum Master working to ensure they are not a bottleneck for the Development Team to function. Indeed, they should work to multiply the effect of the Development Team's work without creating dependence; however, this is very different from saying that a Scrum team de-coupled from a Scrum Master could derive no more value from having say, a skilled coach dedicated to them. Be careful of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Duning-Kruger&lt;/a&gt; here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to you and your organization as &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#values&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;capable and independent people&lt;/a&gt;, I wonder if the Scrum guard role could be a distinction without a difference? If a &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-sm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Master's responsibilities&lt;/a&gt; are truly being split between two people, that would give me pause to consider the reason the distinction is being made. What value are you all getting from calling them a Scrum guard instead of a Scrum Master? Perhaps you are finding value the Scrum defender role, yet I do not see it from reading your post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal of a Scrum Master extends beyond simply spreading knowledge of Scrum and ensuring events are conducted smoothly. It extends into the audacious and worthy challenge of coaching Scrum teams and whole organizations towards radically high performance. I know this to be fully within the contextual aim of Scrum and therefore the ultimate responsibility of a Scrum Master. This does not seem to me to be a job for which one would likely ever become &lt;em&gt;superfluous.&lt;/em&gt; Unless...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...your organization is considering the Scrum Master role to be much smaller than it is intended to be. Perhaps this is why some consider &lt;em&gt;rebranding&lt;/em&gt; themselves as agile coaches, a role that seems &lt;em&gt;bigger&lt;/em&gt; to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21576" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T23:53:52.267" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21609" CreationDate="2017-05-15T14:59:44.637" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Use &quot;User Story Mapping&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To define features that depend on workflow, you first have to &lt;em&gt;map&lt;/em&gt; the workflow. One of the more modern agile techniques for defining workflow, and workflow-dependent features, is the User Story Map.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good map will contain both workflow and the stories associated with each &lt;em&gt;journey&lt;/em&gt; within the story map. For your purposes, the journeys are the most likely equivalents to the workflows you're searching for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Resources&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jpattonassociates.com/story-mapping-quick-ref/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Story Mapping Quick Reference&lt;/a&gt; in PDF format&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920033851.do&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right &#xA;Product&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Jeff Patterson&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jpattonassociates.com/the-new-backlog/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Blog post&lt;/a&gt; on User Story Mapping&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-05-15T14:59:44.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21615" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21635" CreationDate="2017-05-15T19:15:09.653" Score="1" ViewCount="133" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a system with multiple stakeholders and surrounding systems influencing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be possible to draw a dependency diagram but this would be not very easy to interpret because of the complexity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The several stakeholders raise new requirements during the definition phase. Due to the systems' high interdependency, it's hard to identify consequences with respect to existing dependencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to manage this topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a sense that there should be something from the requirements management domain or the stakeholder management domain to deal with this task but I don't understand it...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-05-15T20:54:51.973" LastActivityDate="2017-05-19T03:33:44.847" Title="Dealing with change requests while facing lots of dependencies" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;&lt;dependencies&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21617" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21618" CreationDate="2017-05-16T09:05:58.200" Score="-1" ViewCount="134" Body="&lt;p&gt;How to choose project management applications? Is it the license, is it ergonomics, wealth of features, .etc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25654" LastEditorUserId="25654" LastEditDate="2017-05-18T08:27:03.300" LastActivityDate="2017-05-18T08:27:03.300" Title="How to choose project management applications?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2017-05-19T05:26:07.113" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21617" CreationDate="2017-05-16T11:31:35.020" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The same way you would choose any tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it require licenses? Does your organisation already support one of these tools? &#xA;Does it do what you want?  Jira is webbased distributed which is a huge plus. Do you need that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24119" LastActivityDate="2017-05-16T11:31:35.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21619" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-16T14:58:36.867" Score="0" ViewCount="191" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a software developer, and I have been offered a new job opportunity : Technical Project Manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will manage a project that will be implemented by four teams (with different roles); each team has a team leader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They say that management is &lt;em&gt;the art of realizing tasks through people&lt;/em&gt;. How do I do that given the fact that I am not the manager / leader of any of the teams ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope isn't enough, &lt;em&gt;ironically&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28341" LastActivityDate="2017-05-29T04:31:13.587" Title="How do I lead / manage several teams?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;management&gt;&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3414" CreationDate="2017-05-16T23:07:17.280" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always looked at this from the perspective not of &quot;process flow&quot; but rather &quot;what's the logic that drives the scheduling?&quot;. The simple example I've seen previously is that of revision for an examination. You can say &quot;I can't sit the exam until I've done the revision&quot; (revision finish drives exam start) or &quot;I have to plan my revision such that it finishes in time for the exam&quot; (exam start drives revision finish). In this example it's quite easy to understand since in practice exams are usually fixed and it's the completion of the preparatory work that needs to be scheduled to fit in with the date of the exam. If the exam moves or the time needed for revision changes, the finish-start relationship keeps things aligned as they should be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28574" LastActivityDate="2017-05-16T23:07:17.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21623" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-17T08:51:54.957" Score="4" ViewCount="319" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been asked to estimate how long it will take for a big project to get done, and I was able to break it up into small tasks and come up with an estimate for one person do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'm now being asked to figure out how many people will be needed to finish the task and how long it will take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What methods are there to figure out how adding people to the project will reduce the amount of time needed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that the more people you add the more time that gets spent on communication and that the division is not linear. In addition, some team members will block others, some work can be done in parallel and some can't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is my first project with these teams and of this scope, so I don't have past experience to work with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28578" LastEditorUserId="28578" LastEditDate="2017-05-21T07:33:20.137" LastActivityDate="2017-05-21T12:01:36.420" Title="What methods are there to figure out how adding people to the project will reduce the amount of time needed?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21611" CreationDate="2017-05-17T10:13:29.887" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Part of every project, no matter its size or complexity or industry, there is some level of effort--hours, dollars, people, tools, etc.--allocated for the pure purpose of managing the project.  This includes planning, oversight, schedule and cost tracking and control, managing risks, communications, reporting, metrics analysis, and on and on.  This also includes managing changes to the contract.  Your dollars that you allocated to the managing the project contain the dollars you need to execute impact analysis of each and every change that hits this particular process.  It does not matter if the change is adopted or rejected; you have the dollars necessary as part of the project budget to conduct this analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course there is risk here, as there is with every other management task and every other project task.  You could estimate too low and overrun your budget but this is what PM is all about--managing your variances, estimating contingencies, deploying those contingencies when necessary, mitigating everything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the seller of services, the assumption is you included the necessary dollars for this impact analysis and your contract type has reimbursed you accordingly.  If your sold your project as a firm fixed price, you carry all the risks and hopefully you estimated well to include fat contingencies if you predicted a lot of changes.  If cost-type contract, then you need to keep your customer aware of how your costs are accruing in this area and warn them when you are starting to run hot.  It is up to them to slow down the requests or fund your overruns, in that case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you did not consider changes and doing impact analyses as part of your price, then capture this as a lesson learned and include this in your next proposal.  If you have price-to-win pressures, then welcome to the club.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-05-17T10:13:29.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21619" CreationDate="2017-05-17T10:23:36.847" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a similar job description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The team leaders are your team.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure the team leaders are on the same page. Make sure they are communicating with each other.  Make sure that each team lead is using similar libraries, frameworks, and processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meet with your team leaders and find out which teams need more assistance, or if there is any conflict between teams, you will need to resolve those conflicts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28578" LastActivityDate="2017-05-17T10:23:36.847" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4707" CreationDate="2017-05-17T12:22:16.827" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a job role that combines aspects of Project Manager &amp;amp; Scrum Master within an Agile environment. The role of &lt;strong&gt;Delivery Manager&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2012/12/12/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-delivery-manager/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2012/12/12/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-delivery-manager/&lt;/a&gt;) has been used by the UK Government Digital Services &amp;amp; other organizations for a number of years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Delivery Manager role performs the servant-leader, stand-up &amp;amp; other ceremonial aspects of the scrum master as well as the project planning aspects of the PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://itsadeliverything.com/delivery-manager-a-new-role-for-an-agile-world&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://itsadeliverything.com/delivery-manager-a-new-role-for-an-agile-world&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="693" LastActivityDate="2017-05-17T12:22:16.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21619" CreationDate="2017-05-17T22:03:56.483" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To start with, it's not always the case that a developer has the skills or wants go become a project manager. A developer likes to develop cool software, and that's what he does best. Making him a PM or a manager or sorts might not be the best option. Your case might differ though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, a leader should lead by example and make sure his team(s) are self sufficient and have all they need to deliver, and therefore to remove any obstacles. Being someone with a lot of experience on the subject helps, as the team members will have someone too look up to and respect his opinion. Also, a leader inspired and coaches the team and the people around him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What a leader should &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; do (anti-patterns)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;chase people around&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;tell people what to do&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;micromanage&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;ask constantly &quot;when is it ready?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;avoid problems&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;tolerate lack of accountability &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5522" LastActivityDate="2017-05-17T22:03:56.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21629" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21630" CreationDate="2017-05-17T23:11:03.083" Score="5" ViewCount="85" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our teams work across multiple products and will often deliver functionality for these sporadically as required by priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g. Work on Product A, then Product B, then Product C, then Product B again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a situation like this, would you number the sprints 1 to x ad infinitum, or for Prod A from 1 to x, then when starting Prod B re-set to 1 and repeat?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24240" LastActivityDate="2017-05-18T02:14:18.267" Title="Numbering Sprints across products" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21629" CreationDate="2017-05-18T02:14:18.267" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;All Sprints from a Singular Backlog Should be Ordinal&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprints should not be named or sequenced in anything &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/10446/4271&quot;&gt;except a strictly ordinal sense&lt;/a&gt;, and that's really only for release planning or burn-down purposes. A Sprint is an ephemeral time-box, and a Sprint has no life of its own once the time-box has expired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, you should have one team per Product Backlog. If you have multiple products, you should have multiple teams. If you choose not to do that, you still need the team to work from a singular Product Backlog, and each Sprint should have a cohesive Sprint Goal. If you need to communicate about the Sprint, describe it by its Sprint Goal; don't confuse the issue by trying to track Sprint A-12, Sprint C-16, Sprint B-9, and so forth. It buys you absolutely nothing from either a framework or communications point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-05-18T02:14:18.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21617" CreationDate="2017-05-18T02:50:26.150" Score="2" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8974/4271&quot;&gt;CodeGnome's Law&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Define your process, &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; automate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CodeGnome's First Corollary&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you can't do it by hand, then you can't automate it. Automation is a tool to increase consistency, but it is not in itself a substitute for a well-defined process or process control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-05-18T02:50:26.150" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3730" CreationDate="2017-05-18T09:43:08.323" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A person named Todd Waits suggested the following approach here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.toddwaits.org/bs/2014/08/15/Dynamic-software-requirements-documentation-from-fogbugz-cases/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.toddwaits.org/bs/2014/08/15/Dynamic-software-requirements-documentation-from-fogbugz-cases/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create a custom workflow with the category &quot;Requirement&quot; and the following statuses:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Active: Proposed (default) and Approved.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Resolved: Implemented, Duplicate, Removed, Void, Verify&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He suggests to set all cases that are created to track tasks related to the requirement (implementation as well as bug fixes) as children of the requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My guess is that requirements would then go through these steps:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Proposed -&gt; Verify -&gt; Approved -&gt; Implemented (-&gt; Closed?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somewhere on &quot;Joel on Software&quot; I believe Joel recommends that programmers file bugs against requirements, e. g. &quot;Req 12 contradicts req 33&quot;. The person writing the specs would then fix the requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this point of view, requirements are treated similar to source code. The source code is a set of documents used by a computer to create the program. Requirements are a set of documents used by a programmer to create the source code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28588" LastActivityDate="2017-05-18T09:43:08.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21633" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21634" CreationDate="2017-05-18T10:18:28.017" Score="1" ViewCount="147" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using TFS I would like to see the status of team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an option to write queries for tasks. But my purpose is to have a list of members that have active tasks for the current sprint &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; other members with empty list of tasks at the same time.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I achieve that in TFS?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28589" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-05-18T13:10:07.610" LastActivityDate="2017-05-18T13:53:21.937" Title="How can I see busyness of team members?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21633" CreationDate="2017-05-18T13:53:21.937" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question is tagged with &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/scrum&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;scrum&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;scrum&lt;/a&gt;. Therefore, the answer should be based on Scrum, not the tool you're choosing to use, which in this case is &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/tfs&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;tfs&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;tfs&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can fix your process problems by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Participating better in Scrum ceremonies, and sitting with your team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tracking progress towards Sprint Goals rather than focusing on utilization. &lt;em&gt;See also: 100% utilization fallacy.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Follow the Scrum pull-based queuing system, rather than assigning work. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of these solutions are discussed in more detail below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Scrum Master is a Team Member Too!&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using TFS I would like to see the status of team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a project smell. As the Scrum Master, you should be actively involved in all team ceremonies, including daily standups and planning meetings, so even if you're correctly avoiding status pulls, you should still have a fairly good idea of what the team is doing at any given point in time. If you don't, then &lt;em&gt;ask&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hYGHr.png&quot; alt=&quot;Important Tip&quot;&gt; &lt;em&gt;Good Scrum Masters can participate in two or three Scrum Teams, but &lt;strong&gt;great&lt;/strong&gt; Scrum Masters participate in only one! If you aren't an intrinsic part of the Scrum Team, then you aren't really practicing Scrum or leveraging the full power of the framework.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that Scrum doesn't forbid status pulls outside of its prescribed ceremonies. However, status pulls are often a signal that you aren't sitting &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; your team, or participating properly in their meetings, ceremonies, or other activities. If you have no idea what your team is doing, you're not participating enough, or practicing good servant-leadership. Fix that!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Track Team Performance, Not Individual Utilization&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is an option to write queries for tasks. But my purpose is to have a list of members that have active tasks for the current sprint and other members with empty list of tasks at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All work for a Scrum Team is self-organizing and pull-based. As the Scrum Master, you should have zero interest in how &lt;em&gt;busy&lt;/em&gt; team members are. Rather, you should be focused on whether or not the team is meeting the Sprint Goal, and tracking burn-down to identify process problems that might endanger the Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not a given user has stories, tasks, or chores assigned is entirely irrelevant to Scrum Team performance because queries such as the one you're after don't capture swarming, pairing, just-in-time or ad-hoc planning, or other typical agile practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Scrum Development Teams &lt;em&gt;Pull&lt;/em&gt; Work&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Development Team in Scrum is solely responsible for what work is accepted into a Sprint. Therefore, anything that smacks of &lt;em&gt;assigning&lt;/em&gt; work to the team&amp;mdash;and &lt;em&gt;especially&lt;/em&gt; to individual team members&amp;mdash;violates both the principles of the Scrum framework and the principle of self-organizing teams that underpin it. The Product Owner or Scrum Master should &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; be assigning work to individuals. If you're doing that, you're not doing Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, there are certainly cases where it's useful to know &lt;em&gt;who&lt;/em&gt; is working on a given task. Some teams use colored stickers, or write their names on the index cards of a physical story card. Electronic tools, especially those that are based on ticketing systems where each story or task has a single owner, don't really let you do that in a way that reflects agile practices. In such cases, you should either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let the team coordinate their own stories, and just ask around if you lose track of who's involved in what. As you shouldn't have to do this often, it's a low-overhead approach to a rare problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assign an &quot;owner&quot; to the story if you must, but use story/task notes to track who's actually involved in working together on it. For example, some teams allow one person to take &quot;ownership&quot; of a story to shepherd it through the Sprint, even though multiple people will be involved in getting the story to Done. While I consider this a mild anti-pattern, it can be useful in larger implementations to save on status pulls.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Switch to a tool that allows multiple team members to assign themselves to a story or task. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/blog/2178-multiple-assignees-on-issues-and-pull-requests&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;GitHub Issues allows up to 10 people to be assigned to a single issue&lt;/a&gt;, which is more than adequate for Scrum teams that follow the best practice of having around 7 people (plus or minus two) per team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-05-18T13:53:21.937" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21615" CreationDate="2017-05-19T03:33:44.847" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our ERP system functions as a key interlocking dependency (a.k.a. nightmare) for a ton of difference custom systems. The way we managed this to have an &quot;architectural committee&quot; where three top technical people act as a change-control board for changes to an identified &quot;core&quot; system. They were charged with identifying risks and controlling changed but &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; with trying to find ways to minimize interoperability problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the years, they have built &quot;pre-approved&quot; or &quot;pre-designed&quot; ways to use the ERP data (APIs, automated extracts, etc.) that other dev teams have used for their projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2017-05-19T03:33:44.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21619" CreationDate="2017-05-19T12:18:28.150" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the key here for you is to leverage on the skills you already have to understand what needs to be implemented at a technical level to gain the trust and respect of those that will be doing the work. This is what I have done moving from a developer to a Project Manager.&#xA;Once they trust you they will be more inclined to come to you with their impediments and updates as they are able to talk to you about the work.&#xA;From a project side you need to ensure proper planning is done and the work is broken down into the correct levels so that you can manage/monitor the progress of the teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28602" LastActivityDate="2017-05-19T12:18:28.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21638" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21640" CreationDate="2017-05-19T13:21:43.437" Score="5" ViewCount="2002" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a project and the Product Owner has to decide &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;how many&lt;/em&gt; new game-features implement in a SmartPhone app.&#xA;Those game-features have the goal of keep the user more active inside the app. Currently those features were explained by the Product Owner in a rough way, not detailed, but in a more generic way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We planned a session to analyse generically every feature, splitting them in &lt;strong&gt;macro areas&lt;/strong&gt; to develop (Drupal, Frontend, Middleware, ...), to estimate them, not with points, but with t-shirt sizes and the goal was to understand effort, risks, reusability of common components. At the end this estimation should output sort of a charts of features, from the most efficient to the last.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With efficiency we should consider users interest (coming from a survey) and estimation sizes.&#xA;But, how could you precisely analyse t-shirt sizes like XS, S, M, L, XL?&#xA;Would you map them with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and sum them? Or just check with gut feeling which one could be the most efficient to implement, just having a look at the sizes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27720" LastActivityDate="2017-05-19T15:24:18.607" Title="T-Shirt Size and total estimation, how to manage them?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21638" CreationDate="2017-05-19T13:56:05.373" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume the surveys will yield a score each macro area, say like from 1 to 9, 9 being very high interest.  I'd attach an ordinal scale to your t-shirt size estimates, 1 through 5.  To make things relative, I'd take the user score for each macro area and divide it by the total user scores and do the same with the size estimates.   Then I would simply divide the relative user score with the relative work size.  This will bubble up the priority of those macro areas that score high for the user and will discriminate between two high scoring macro areas with different size work estimates where the lower work estimate will bubble up higher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TmbHi.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TmbHi.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this example, you can see Macro Area D beat G and F despite a lower user score because of the lower work estimate.  H beat C because of a very low work estimate and C had a very high work estimate.  Works pretty good.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So using &quot;D&quot; as an example, my formula was (7/41)/(2/32)*100 = 273.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2017-05-19T14:26:23.260" LastActivityDate="2017-05-19T14:26:23.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21638" CreationDate="2017-05-19T15:24:18.607" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to &lt;em&gt;score&lt;/em&gt; things, you need to convert to a numerical or ordinal value to perform a comparison. However, part of the challenge is that you are using the wrong tool to compare features in multiple dimensions. Tee shirt sizing is a good relative comparison for level of effort, but isn't useful for comparing multiple criteria against each other with any granularity. You should use Theme Screening or Theme Scoring instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Theme Scoring&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, when trying to rank features you want to use &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/theme-screening&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Theme Screening&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/theme-scoring&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Theme Scoring&lt;/a&gt; in order to compare features across dimensions. Theme Scoring uses two axes, where the X-axis is a set of epics or themes, and the Y-axis is a set of criteria. You can then tweak the relative weights of the criteria based on project goals (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/project-success&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Project Success Sliders&lt;/a&gt;), or leave all the weights the same if you don't want to differentiate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, you then assign a rank of 1-5 to each criteria for each theme or epic, and a weighted score will emerge. If you have a large number of criteria, you almost always need to adjust the weightings in order to have a truly ordered set, but sometimes it's enough just to place your themes into a set of buckets (in this case, buckets #1-5) for later refinement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Example&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tWUZs.png&quot; alt=&quot;Theme Scoring Example&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this example, your Drupal, Front End, and Middleware themes are scored against effort, risk, and reusability. I used 1 as a &quot;bad&quot; score, and 5 as the best possible score; all criteria were equally weighted. Based on this example assessment of the criteria, we end up with a ranked priority of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Middleware&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Front End&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Drupal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, your assessment and rankings may differ, but this gives you a solid example of how to filter and assess different aspects of a project, assign numerical weights to the criteria, and arrive at an ordinal ranking of the themes or epics that deliver the most value to the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the example assessment, the middleware delivers the most value, and should therefore be prioritized over other components. Pragmatically, you may not be able to deliver middleware without a vertical slice that includes both front and backend functionality, but it still helps you identify what work delivers the most bang for the buck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-05-19T15:24:18.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21641" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-19T15:53:55.470" Score="4" ViewCount="142" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to know how to elaborate a stakeholder analysis (there's a lot of literature about this on internet, but I need real examples / references, something with a &quot;hands-on touch&quot;), and how can I use stakeholder analysis to understand and implement a map of conflicts / interests ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28341" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-05-22T10:09:28.693" LastActivityDate="2017-05-23T11:59:43.993" Title="How to model a map of conflicts / interests?" Tags="&lt;management&gt;&lt;relationships&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21623" CreationDate="2017-05-21T07:23:12.093" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes when we dont know exactly what is the time needed for some new tasks the best way is  just send the tasks details to more than one team member without sharing information between them ( 3 ) ask them for an estimated time ( as if you are sending RFQ ) then based on that you will get better idea about required time( you can take the average ) and the best team member to assign the task to ( the least time ) .  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28609" LastActivityDate="2017-05-21T07:23:12.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21623" CreationDate="2017-05-21T12:01:36.420" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your benchmark formula is Duration (in days) = Work (in hours) / Utilization (workers).  This assumes perfect resource elasticity.  There're few tasks with perfect resource elasticity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a reasonable estimate for the work based on one worker, then use this formula to calculate the same estimate using additional workers.  This will establish your floor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am also assuming you established your one worker estimate resulting in a range, i.e., best, worst, most likely.  If you did not, then you need to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since tasks are rarely perfectly elastic, your challenge is to arrive at a multi-worker estimate where you have little to no experience.  Since you have the floor as established above, you need to arrive at how much &quot;fat&quot; you need to put into this estimate since you are carrying a lot of risk.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to consult as many SMEs in this work area as you can find to get an idea of what the &quot;engineering estimates&quot; look like, knowing that this type of estimation has significant validity issues secondary to human biases.  You need to research historical data on similar projects if you can find them and use them where you can, understanding that this too has some validity issues such as how accurate is the data in the first place.  If you are able to uncover any parametrics with the tasks, use them where you can; however, in knowledge-type work, these don't really exist with any degree of high reliability and validity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Absent the above, you simply have a lot of risk that you are unable to reduce through knowledge.  So you are left with keeping a lot of &quot;fat&quot; in your commitment.  This means, your starting point is the worst case value in your one-worker estimate and you reduce very little as you add resources.  For example, if you found for a particular work package that it will take 8 days in duration (worst case) to finish using one worker, you may choose to commit to only one day reduction adding a second worker, maybe two day reduction adding a third.  There is no science here to back this up, no real basis.  But it provides you with reasonable insulation to protect yourself until you know better with experience.  The risk, of course, is that there are some tasks where your duration degrades (instead of 7, it climbs to 10) with adding resources.  But since your starting point is the worst case value, you have reasonable contingency built in.  You communicate high risk and inform your stakeholders early any unfavorable variances you being to accrue and ensure there is contingency in the budget (yes, even more than your fat estimate) to protect the project holistically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-05-21T12:01:36.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21644" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-22T08:01:53.303" Score="2" ViewCount="945" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was searching online for a tool which would allow me to take my PERT chart and auto generate a Critical Path Method diagram.  However, I was not able to find any google sheets or excel sheets which provided this functionality, instead, they mostly offered to generate GANT charts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All articles I found about CPM charts explained how to do it by hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This led me to wonder if CPM is still used/advocated today, or if it is only of historical interest. Are there known issues with it which would make tooling for it unpopular?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28578" LastActivityDate="2017-05-22T10:32:04.433" Title="What are the known problems with the Critical Path Method?" Tags="&lt;critical-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21644" CreationDate="2017-05-22T10:20:55.840" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you do not know or understand your critical path in your schedule, then you are not managing your schedule.  I have not seen anything else take its place so, as far as I know, CPM is still a relevant and valuable tool for non agile projects.  Perhaps CPM can be applied to agile, too, but I am not sure how.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe MS Project will color code the network diagram in red for those packages that fall on the critical path.  I do not use this feature as the table format is adequate for my analysis, so I cannot explain how to do it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this said, critical path management is 100% dependent upon a proper schedule build.  We make all kinds of scheduling mistakes in the tool that disallows it to calculate the critical path correctly, and can provide inaccurate indices.  Not only this, but I still find so called seasoned practitioners who continue to mistake the critical path with important tasks.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-05-22T10:20:55.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21644" CreationDate="2017-05-22T10:32:04.433" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;AFAIK, the leading alternative &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_chain_project_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Critical Chain Method&lt;/a&gt;, which is no simpler to calculate, and I'm not sure that I would really advance it as a full altnerative - it is a different way of managing the critical path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From memory, CCM perceives slack as a project level entity, rather than as an attribute of a work package - all slack is tracked at the end, and any work product that runs over can draw from project slack.  This leads to teams being more honest about their pessimistic estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think it is really possible to have an alternative to CP; that would be like having an alternative to prime factorization, or an alternative to mass or density.  All projects have a critical path whether you calculate or not.  Some project managers many not use the CP to manage the project, but it is there, controlling the probability that the project will run over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Microsoft project will automatically calculate Critical Path - I think it would be very helpful if other answers could reference the ability of other software packages to automatically calculate CP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2017-05-22T10:32:04.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21647" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-22T13:45:29.113" Score="3" ViewCount="639" Body="&lt;p&gt;While managing a project, what actions should a project manager or team lead do to mitigate the risk of performance degradation in the event a project worker leaves the project prior to his or her scheduled finish?  How do project managers reduce the impact of this type of threat?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28069" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2017-05-22T13:56:55.067" LastActivityDate="2017-05-22T14:20:13.680" Title="How to reduce the impact of key staff leaving a project?" Tags="&lt;risk&gt;&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21648" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21655" CreationDate="2017-05-22T13:58:32.317" Score="0" ViewCount="512" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've a question related to the NPS (net promotor score).&#xA;Its use is based on the scale that goes from 0 to 10, as the attachment shows.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ekzWq.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ekzWq.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm collecting data from users with sort of feedback libraries.&#xA;The user is invited to answer whith a smile (5 elements, from madness to love).&#xA;So, talking about NPS:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;does it make sense to you consider this chart based mapped on &lt;strong&gt;feelings&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;em&gt;the one that I personally prefer&lt;/em&gt;)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;mad [DETRACTORS]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;angry [DETRACTORS]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;neutral [PASSIVES]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;happy [PROMOTERS]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;love [PROMOTERS]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or better to use this, because it reflects more the &lt;strong&gt;percentage / weight&lt;/strong&gt; impact?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;mad [DETRACTORS]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;angry [DETRACTORS]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;neutral [DETRACTORS]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;happy [PASSIVES]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;love [PROMOTERS]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27720" LastEditorUserId="35563" LastEditDate="2019-08-30T13:20:33.533" LastActivityDate="2019-08-30T13:20:33.533" Title="Net Promoter Score approach" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;feedback&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21647" CreationDate="2017-05-22T14:20:13.680" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first question I would ask is: is this person truly considered &quot;key,&quot; does this person really possess such a unique set of skills and abilities that it would be near impossible, or very expensive, to replace?  This situation can certainly occur, especially for FOIK projects, but often times I find it is more a false perception of that individual.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, if this is the case, you have a created, or allowed to occur, a single point of failure in your project capabilities.  Not only with humans, but in all project systems and processes, a PM needs to identify when a SPOF is growing and mitigate this situation immediately by building in redundancies.  For machines, this means you have a replacement machine at the ready, parts inventories, and / or a maintenance schedule.  For humans, it means you begin training and preparing someone else to assume the duties of this key person so that, if this person becomes unavailable, you have someone on deck to continue performing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also have an aversion to people consistently performing on the outside of the performance curve, i.e., way above average.  I know this seems counter-intuitive.  But with this type of performance, you are setting yourself up for a SPOF that cannot be easily mitigated, and if truly on the outside of the curve, will not likely be mitigated.  Then you have to reset customer / stakeholder expectations and reset performance bars.  It's great to take advantage of superior, hyper performance but you need to understand your risks when / if that individual leaves or becomes otherwise unavailable or when that person's performance &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;regresses to the mean&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-05-22T14:20:13.680" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21650" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21651" CreationDate="2017-05-22T14:59:24.363" Score="1" ViewCount="139" Body="&lt;p&gt;The company I'm currently working wants to deploy a workflow tool for its factories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Issues are three-fold:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We don't have any business analysts who have the skills to create the business processes as we don't have any established business processes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The stakeholders (CEO,CFO) are pressing to start this project but we have trouble identifying someone who has enough seniority, with a 360° vision of the factory, ranging from accounting to production and who can herald this project in term of leadership and tacit agreement from every operational players.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Last but not least, we are considering to use the Scrum methodology and we are uncertain that having business analysts would help.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The questions are the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Would it make sense to train business analysts instead of hiring them externally? Considering someone from the outside may not have enough field experiences, would someone from the inside of the factory be more effective?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How can we identify that person within the organization who has enough influencing power and task that person to be the leader of this project?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Would Scrum methodology makes sense and blend well with business analysts? I read that it may stir conflict with a &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/21453/what-to-do-with-business-analysts-in-a-scrum-environment&quot;&gt;Scrum culture&lt;/a&gt; but I maybe wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance for any help you might be able to give. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question contains multiple questions that are linked together in the context of the company. However, they may be difficult to answer as a whole. If needed, I can break them into 2 distinct questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13597" LastEditorUserId="13597" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T08:35:26.007" LastActivityDate="2017-05-23T10:46:40.363" Title="How to identify leader in a transformation project and are business analysts needed in a scrum environment?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;&lt;business-analyst&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21650" CreationDate="2017-05-23T10:41:55.167" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This answer is based on the assumption that Scrum is the right framework for you. Without knowing your organization, your culture, and the details of this project, I can't say if it is for sure or not. Scrum is designed to provide &quot;a framework within which people can address complex adaptive problems, while productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have chosen Scrum, the next step is to organize the team into a Scrum Team. The teams should generally be self-organizing, to the extent possible. There are only three roles in Scrum - Product Owner, Development Team, and Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner needs to be a person who can make decisions about needs and impacts of the work being done. It's creating the requirements, then ordering them and working with the Development Team to understand them. This is a single person (although I also favor having an alternate who can step in if immediate decisions are needed). Essentially, this person gives a single voice to all of the stakeholders of the project and represents them on the Scrum Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is a project to deliver organizational processes, I'd argue that someone at the executive level is the right person for this job. They don't need a complete understanding of the details of every stakeholder. They do need the ability to be a single voice for the Development Team. They may need to meet with various other stakeholders and work to resolve conflicts in priorities between work. Ultimately, they are accountable for making the decision on what work will add the most value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have someone who is responsible for organizational processes now, you may want to considering opening a position and promoting or hiring into it. There was &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/does-your-company-need-director-getting-sht-done-ryan-holmes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an interesting post on LinkedIn recently about the &quot;Czar of Bad Systems&quot;&lt;/a&gt; that I think underscores the need for someone to be responsible for processes across the organization. If you have requirements for a process framework (think CMMI for software) or quality management system (think ISO 9000 or an industry-specific variant), this person should have expertise in that. Background in or a desire to learn process improvement methods in general (Lean, Six Sigma, TPM, TQM) would also be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Development Team is a group of three to nine individuals who have all of the skills required to deliver the work. This group is self-organizing and there are no sub-teams. There is simply one team that is responsible for taking the required work and getting it to a done state. It's likely that different people will have different sets of knowledge or skills, but the team as a whole is accountable and responsible for delivering the work at the end of every Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experiences, the best people to understand and create processes are the people who do the day-to-day work. This is true in any industry, from engineering to manufacturing to office administration. There may be requirements levied upon the work that need to be considered, but if the people who do the work also own the processes, those processes will be more likely to be accepted and more likely to be of a higher quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do think that it is a mistake to say that you &quot;don't have any established business processes&quot;. You may not have documented processes. You may not have consistent processes. You may not have robust processes. But work is getting done. People are doing something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend training the staff, at all levels - executive, management, and line staff - in &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lean&lt;/a&gt;. Depending on your industry and environment, there may be a specific tailoring of Lean done. I think that Lean pairs very well with the Agile methods - there's plenty of overlap in the underlying principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would think that training people internally to form your Development Team is the right option here. You don't need to start with an expensive formal training for the staff, either, if that isn't feasible in the time and budget. Train a few people really well and have them come back to help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the Scrum Master helps to coach the team. This individual helps with the techniques used by the team to understand the value behind the work they are doing as well as find and remove impediments and waste in the process. They serve the Product Owner, the Development Team, and the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although some people advise against it, I find it helpful to have one person on the Development Team serve as the Scrum Master. Although it does reduce their capacity to work, someone on the team is, in my opinion, in the best person to work with the Product Owner to make sure the team has what they need and the team's limits are understood, to work with the organization to ensure that all stakeholders understand what the team is doing and how the team is doing it, and with the Development Team to identify and remove impediments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be room for a temporary consultant to come in and work with the organization to train everyone on various Scrum roles and responsibilities for an extended period of time (6-12 months).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2017-05-23T10:41:55.167" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21650" CreationDate="2017-05-23T10:46:40.363" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question regarding SCRUM is putting the cart before the horse.  Secondly, it seems you are missing not only business analysts necessary for this transformation but also likely other necessary roles.  I think you are in a buy or build decision point at this stage.  SCRUM, business analysts are only clouding this decision and I'd suggest not entertaining these questions at this time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, your company needs to considering buying the talent you need to make this transformation a reality.  Buy the project management, the workflow SMEs, the business analysts, the organization change consultants, the methods whether its SCRUM or whatever else, and other intellectual capital necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Building the practice areas to manage a transformation like this is outside your core competency.  Why bother?  Buy it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-05-23T10:46:40.363" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21641" CreationDate="2017-05-23T11:04:40.267" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mapping stakeholder interests is an always-ongoing activity.  It should never be complete, merely reviewed.  Organisations revolve staff through Projects and Programmes constantly so stakeholder maps should be updated as often as required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Asking Directly&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Project Manager, you will receive very little guidance about &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; to run your project and that level of autonomy can be disconcerting at first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most direct way to understand your stakeholders is to reach out to them directly and schedule a 1-to-1 with the individual.  Frame the conversation as a coffee and simply ask the questions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can this project do to better serve your business goals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The act of engaging with people will naturally align them to your cause since the first casualty of corporate projects is always communication.  By meeting with stakeholders on an informal, friendly basis you are defusing any tension they might feel about the impact from your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Blast Maps&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A blast map is a tool used to identify who will be positively and negatively impacted by your project.  It is best to conduct this analysis in conjunction with a Business Analyst and/or the engineering team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will separate your stakeholders into 3 categories&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Those impact &lt;em&gt;directly&lt;/em&gt; by your project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Those impacted &lt;em&gt;indirectly&lt;/em&gt; by your project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Those who are not impacted but are interested in the outcome for additional reasons&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you are delivering a new sales reporting tool which will automatically generate a daily sales report from the data warehouse without manual intervention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;John W is a junior analyst who previously produced the sales report in Excel.  His job is now automated and he is directly impacted.  He is unlikely to understand the project is underway until informed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Susan T is the Line Manager for all junior analysts in the Business Intelligence Centre.  Her budget is $500K per annum to maintain 9 resources.  It is likely her budget will be cut in the future.  It is unlikely Susan will support the new project unless you can encourage her to re-skill her team into newly relevant skills since her empire will shrink.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Donna R is part of internal audit and is interested in the impact of sales data with less errors being automated directly to senior management.  She is possibly a champion of the project if engaged with correctly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This model ultimately informs your communications plan and strategy.  Who and how should you be engaging on your project progress.  Who needs advance warning of impending business change and which channels will be used to prevent your success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Example&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TMC7r.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Collaboration Canvas&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This canvas is adapted from the various derivative canvases drawn from the original Steve Blank Business Model Canvas.  It is relatively self-explanatory and can be used to quickly collect your thoughts on individuals, business units and departments engaging with your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Example&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Z1waR.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Perspective Map&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Perspective Map is quick brainstorming technique to quickly plot Executives, Managers, Teams and Entities which are more supportive and less supportive of the business change you are try to affect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It very quickly identifies your champions and detractors for engagement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Example&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CrvPN.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-05-23T11:59:43.993" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21641" CreationDate="2017-05-23T11:09:08.873" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stakeholder analysis can get as sophisticated and detailed as you want to make it.  There are practitioners that specialize in this and this effort can get quite exhaustive, time consuming, and expensive, but very valuable.  Since you are new to the PM role and do not have experience with stakeholder analysis and management, you can design an effort that is high level, simple, but still effective.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal here is to segment your stakeholders into logical groupings based on similarities.  These similarities could be based on job roles or levels in an organization but also with less obvious definitions such as &quot;pro change&quot; or &quot;anti change&quot; or even saboteurs.  To keep it at a high level segmentation, break your stakeholder community into no more than five or six segments.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your next step is to put individuals and groups of individuals into each segment.  In order to do this, if the segment is not an obvious segment like job role, you need to interview them.  You need to design your questions in such a way that you will discover into which segment they belong.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have them segmented, then you need to figure out several things: 1) what communication to they need from you; 2) what communication do you need from them; 3) how do they want to participate in the project; 4) if the segment is more on the negative side, how do you manage them or margainalize them; 5) what kind of impacts--both positive and negative--will they experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understand, too, that your segmentation is never final; you need to update and reupdate as you move along and as you learn more things about your stakeholder community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep it simple and high level and you will be effective.  You can become more sophisticated with this as you move along and as you learn about your stakeholders and you can easily modify your stakeholder management plan.  It is not about getting it right the first time but getting it right over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-05-23T11:09:08.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21648" CreationDate="2017-05-23T13:20:49.837" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the 1-5 survey is particularly prone to bias. Not only do you have the normal bias of people being surveyed wanting to please the surveyor (and thereby being more likely to, say, answer '4' instead of '3'), you also have to deal with it being a smaller scale. One person's 'happy' is another person's 'neutral', after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would probably be a better idea to go with the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Promoter#How_it_works&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;more common&lt;/a&gt; scoring method. You score from 0-10, with 9-10 being promoters, 7-8 being passive, and 0-6 being dectractors. Given the aforementioned bias, if someone, when asked 'What do you think of our product?' answers with a 5 (the numerical equivalent of a shrug and a 'meh'), that's not really a good thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, when using words, the words themselves can have subjective meanings. You obviously believe 'mad' to be worse than 'angry', but to me they're the same thing. Whereas few would argue that '3' is larger than '4'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-05-23T13:20:49.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21656" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21706" CreationDate="2017-05-23T16:37:20.780" Score="1" ViewCount="383" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am reading about COMOMO estimation and what I see is margin of error is almost always too high. Also I didn't like the &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3769716/how-bad-is-sloc-source-lines-of-code-as-a-metric&quot;&gt;idea to use lines of code to measure progress&lt;/a&gt;. So I wonder is COMOMO really a sound estimation method in today's practice. If not, is it replaced by another method?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28635" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T18:10:03.897" LastActivityDate="2017-05-27T20:58:53.770" Title="Is COCOMO 2 Estimation Sound, or is there Something Better?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21657" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-23T16:58:52.123" Score="1" ViewCount="123" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a developer on a scrum team, and a user story has been created:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The application takes a few hundred numbers in and performs a complex calculation on them, and gives one decimal number as output.  This is the whole point of the application.  The business line/product owner does not know how this number is calculated, and has created a user story for the dev team to reverse-engineer the code and determine how the calculation is performed (And subsequently, why it is wrong.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They know it is wrong because the previous vendor who built the application created a spreadsheet that would also calculate the number; over time, the spreadsheet and/or the application have been changed and now the outputs no longer match.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a valid user story?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are contractors and the contract has to be renewed every three months, so my management is reluctant to force them to uphold their responsibilities (assuming it is their responsibility to know how the thing works and how it got into a state of disrepair.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28636" LastActivityDate="2017-05-25T18:03:53.040" Title="Should the product owner (or business line) actually know how the app works?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21657" CreationDate="2017-05-23T19:03:01.803" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is a contractual dispute rather than a process problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're violating &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;core agile values&lt;/a&gt; and roles defined by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum framework&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consult your company's contracts manager or legal counsel.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, realize that the Product Owner has a problem, although it's likely not the problem he currently &lt;em&gt;thinks&lt;/em&gt; he has. Collaborate with him to find solutions that will fit within the project's scope and resources, and &lt;em&gt;negotiate&lt;/em&gt; with him to postpone or replace stories on the Product Backlog that are less vital to creating a viable product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Product Owner Has an X/Y Problem&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The business line/product owner does not know how this number is calculated, and has created a user story for the dev team to reverse-engineer the code and determine how the calculation is performed (And subsequently, why it is wrong.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner actually has two problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He doesn't know what the correct number should be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just because the spreadsheet provides a number doesn't mean that number is &lt;em&gt;correct&lt;/em&gt;. It would be more accurate to say that the Product Owner assumes that the spreadsheet's calculated value is the source of truth, and that you should be using its value as a test fixture in your development.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The proposed user story misses the point. Neither you nor the Product Owner really care about &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; the value is calculated; what you want is for the &lt;em&gt;results&lt;/em&gt; of both the spreadsheet and your product to always arrive at the same value.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, it's an X/Y problem. The PO has problem X, and has decided &lt;em&gt;a priori&lt;/em&gt; that solution Y will solve it. When you factor in the self-inflicted X/Y problem, the PO now has &lt;em&gt;three&lt;/em&gt; problems to contend with, rather than just the original two!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Possible Approaches&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner can do a few different things, alone or in combination. These include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Writing a user story that delivers a feature, rather than an implementation.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A better user story would read something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want product calculations to yield the same results as the spreadsheet&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that the &lt;em&gt;results&lt;/em&gt; are consistently identical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may still be some reverse engineering involved, but the reverse-engineering is no longer the &lt;em&gt;point&lt;/em&gt;. The goal is to have identical values, regardless of how those calculations are actually implemented.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Explicitly allocate budget, time, and resources towards reverse-engineering the spreadsheet.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, the Product Owner defines the priorities, but must live within the team's capacity and the budget constraints of the project. In other words, the PO can allocate the finite resources of a project towards any objective he likes, but this isn't &quot;free.&quot; It takes capacity away from delivering other features.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Take a greenfield approach.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another valid option is to assume that neither the spreadsheet nor the current product calculations are correct, and to work with stakeholders to identify correct inputs and outputs. You might develop a set of acceptance criteria using Cucumber, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Scenario Outline: Foo Calculations  &#xA; Given a set of inputs for the Foo Calculator &#xA; When I calculate Foo with &amp;lt;value&amp;gt; as an input  &#xA; Then I should get &amp;lt;output&amp;gt; as a valid result.  &#xA;&#xA;Examples:  &#xA;     | value | output |    &#xA;     |  12   |  6     |  &#xA;     |  16   |  8     |&#xA;     |  20   |  10    |&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This technique takes the approach of saying that &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; the values are calculated is irrelevant so long as the correct answers are computed. Because it's a behavior-driven approach, it allows the Product Owner to &lt;em&gt;collaborate&lt;/em&gt; on the solution by helping to define both valid inputs and matching results. This is the essence of BDD and ATDD, and allows additional stories to be developed from a set of &lt;strong&gt;testable criteria.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All three approaches are valid. However, if the &quot;source of truth&quot; is a set of spaghetti code, then I would certainly recommend the BDD/ATDD approach as the one that is most likely to get the PO what he really needs, rather than what he thinks he wants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Fix the Process: Re-Engage Through Active Collaboration&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A core agile value is to prefer &lt;strong&gt;collaboration over contract negotiation.&lt;/strong&gt; The team's job is to work &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; the Product Owner to find a solution to his needs. So, your goal isn't to say &quot;yes&quot; or &quot;no&quot; to his requests; it's to make costs to the project &lt;em&gt;visibile&lt;/em&gt; so the PO can make informed decisions and trade-offs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Product Owner has a problem that will take 18 months to solve, and is willing to pay for it, then you have no problem. If the Product Owner has an 18-month problem and only three months of budget with no possibility of extension, then the Product Owner must &lt;em&gt;prioritize&lt;/em&gt; the work that should be attempted within the resources of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master or a member of the Development Team, it's not your place to tell the Product Owner what the priorities should be. However, a good Product Owner relies on the rest of the team to help determine level of effort, and to work with him to identify different approaches to implementation that meet the project's goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your team needs to huddle around this &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; the Product Owner, and discuss scope, costs, and level of effort of the available solutions. You can negotiate! However, it is ultimately up to the Product Owner to set the priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a Product Owner chooses not to work &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; the team and finds himself at the end of his project resources with nothing to show for it, then that's his responsibility. Never set the PO up for failure, but realize that in the end managing the project's success through the allocation of Sprint capacity is &lt;em&gt;fundamental&lt;/em&gt; to the role of Product Owner. In short, if he breaks the process or the &quot;contract&quot; of collaboration, then he gets to keep both halves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2017-05-24T03:52:06.490" LastActivityDate="2017-05-24T03:52:06.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21659" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-23T20:38:59.263" Score="1" ViewCount="71" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently, my effort has a few Epics in flight.  One of the Epic's is servicing or enhancing a product in production.  We are starting to use the request feature in VersionOne to intake these enhancements/requests which come in fits and starts.  Most of these requests seem to consist of Business Requirements changes, some of which were found via defects.   How can we manage our business requirement change requests (mostly smaller than an feature or Epic) to a product in production, without having a representative Epic that lives forever, while still angling new stories or features to a business value?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28638" LastActivityDate="2017-07-24T10:10:36.063" Title="User's of VersionOne - How do you handle requests that impact a current Epic/Product?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;epics&gt;&lt;safe&gt;&lt;features&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21660" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-24T01:08:32.863" Score="2" ViewCount="1640" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to use my MS plan for resource calculations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I want is to put a few resources against a task based on their different % allocations and want the MS project to automatically calculate the total duration of the task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: &#xA;I have resource A available 50% and resource B available 50%. &#xA;My initial estimations say that the total amount of effort required is 30 days. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do i set it up? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28640" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2017-05-24T07:22:38.770" LastActivityDate="2017-06-23T11:07:59.053" Title="Duration vs Work" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;schedule&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21657" CreationDate="2017-05-24T06:49:08.323" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it a valid user story? Certainly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would write it something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As an application user I want to be sure the output is accurate so that I don't make decisions using invalid results&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2017-05-24T06:49:08.323" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21660" CreationDate="2017-05-24T08:14:48.910" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, define the task type as &quot;Fixed work&quot;. This is done in the &quot;Advanced&quot; tab of the task information dialog (that appears by double-clicking the task). Alternatively, you can add the &quot;Type&quot; column to any tasks table in order to define the task type directly there. This action tells MS Project to calculate either duration or resource allocation but keep the task's total work hours fixed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, you must enter the total work hours for the task. Work is usually specified in hours, so you can capture &quot;240 h&quot;, which are equivalent to 30 work-days (assuming 8-hour days). Remember to capture &lt;strong&gt;total effort&lt;/strong&gt;. Also, note that the task field &quot;Work&quot; is not included in the entry table by default, so you will need to insert the &quot;work&quot; column in the table view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, assign the resources. According to the resources' calendars and max capacity, the task's duration should be calculated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note&lt;/em&gt;: Be careful! If you modify the % capacity for the assigned resources, it is possible that MS Project distributes the work unevenly to each resource. You can fix this, however, by using the &quot;Task Usage&quot; view and adjusting manually the assigned work for each resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28645" LastActivityDate="2017-05-24T08:14:48.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21660" CreationDate="2017-05-24T10:54:12.997" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am going to answer this question in a completely different way.  My answer will not technically answer your question but may provide you with another alternative in building your schedule.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, I prefer to keep all / most of my work packages as fixed duration since in most cases we as PMs have to communicate a firm delivery date.  So managing to duration seems more intuitive to me.  Second, MSProject will calculate your duration off of work and resource availability assuming a perfect resource elasticity.  It will calculate it the exact same way no matter the work and, unfortunately, tasks have varying degrees of elasticity.  So allowing MS Project to calculate this for you will very likely give you erroneous indications of duration.  Third, your schedule will be perfectly &quot;leveled&quot; just at the time you punch your baseline; it will be perfectly unleveled thereafter.  So worrying about ensuring your resources are not over- or under-allocated is kind of a waste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, estimate using min, max, and most likely values for both work and duration with the assumptions of your talent at specific utilization levels.  In other words, in your example above, you know that talent A is 50% and talent B is 50%.  So I might arrive at 200, 450, 800 hours; 20, 40, 80 days as my estimates and choose to use 460 hours and 42 days as my planning values.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would load the schedule with this task as fixed duration, load the resources against it, and then plug manually the 460 hours and 42 days in the work and duration fields.  I would repeat this until all my work is loaded and then run an analysis to find resource over- and under-allocations.  I would then modify and fine tune as necessary to get the talent as close to their allowable work levels as possible.  I don't allow project to auto level my schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The end result is, you have the hours you want, the duration and delivery dates you want, and the resources are reasonably close to their allowed work schedule.  Once the project starts and you load actuals, the allocations of your team will go up and down constantly and you will find it is not worth it to chase it.  Their work constraints will simply be an input into your estimation of remaining work as you move along the timeline.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-05-24T10:54:12.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21664" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-24T11:51:15.347" Score="2" ViewCount="3147" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm just starting to use Scrum with a new web project and I'm having some difficulties crafting my Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a initial user story along the lines of :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a new user I want to sign-up in order to access the private section of the web portal&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the future web portal the creation of a new user account is systematically precedeed by a step-by-step questionnaire featuring 10-20 questions (mostly multiple choice). Once the questionnaire is completed the new user enters an email address and password and provided that these are valid, the user account is created and the new user redirected to a Home Page / Dashboard view. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My user story seems lacking in detail but I'm not sure how to split it up (nor whether this is appropriate)...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas/suggestions ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28648" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T16:48:12.553" Title="User Story(ies) for multi-step user sign-up" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21665" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-24T12:17:12.433" Score="2" ViewCount="648" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a way in Jira to track how long a item was flagged for( the work couldnt continue as it was blocked ) ?&#xA;I am able to quickly see all the blocked items by using Flagged = Impediment but I need a way to see how long the item was blocked for to report on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28602" LastActivityDate="2017-05-28T09:10:25.453" Title="Jira and Flagged Issues" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21666" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-24T12:23:07.933" Score="3" ViewCount="294" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a lead developer and for the last four years I've owned a code base which has steadily been improving in quality.  I worked at a fairly small company and we previously worked in small waterfall cycles.  Typically we'd do a release of our software every 3-&amp;gt;5 months.  We didn't use many formal project management methods but we had a good team and everybody was intensely collaborative.  I spent the vast majority of my time writing features, fixing bugs and improving the code base as I saw fit.  I refactored code when I thought we were starting to see too many bugs in that area and I focused on trying to make our code unit testable and of high quality.  QA would pick up our work once features became dev complete but we didn't work in sprints.  It's fair to say that things didn't always go smoothly and we did have some quality problems but productivity was very high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fast forward to now..  We've been bought by larger company who have already fully adopted agile methodologies.  We've had to adopt their processes and some in our team were very keen to move to full agile.  Initially, for a period of about 2/3 months our work ground to a halt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decisions that were previously made quickly and efficiently, ad-hoc, by groups of interested individuals became part of the grooming process and we found that design by committee took forever compared to what we did before.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A great deal of our time was taken up by grooming and planning meetings and at one point I realized that more than 50% of my time was now used for meetings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over time, during our retrospectives we've improved this process.  One of the things we did was to get individual team members to pre-groom Product Backlog Items (PBIs) so that some of the thinking had been done in advance and we didn't have to spend quite so much time just thrashing out the basics of each item during the meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, some problems still remain..  Here are the big ones for me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Generalization and group think has reduced the extent to which anyone &amp;quot;owns&amp;quot; the code base.  This has been really bad and it feels to me like the code base has been left to rot.  Nobody can do anything of any significance to it without a massive discussion first and all those little tasks that used to just happen for free no longer happen.  Instead specialists who used to do this stuff are busy doing other things which are the sprint priority even though they do them very slowly.  There's basically no time left to put serious thought into our code.  Over the longer term I think we'll pay a big price for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Developer passion has gone..  Nobody wants to spend so much time in meetings and all the decision making power has evaporated leaving the devs demotivated.  Decisions about what development tasks should be undertaken are now often taken by testers or others who don't actually understand the code and so now everybody just drudges on not really enjoying their work like they used to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Generalization is wasting our time and damaging our code.  Right now I'm trying to learn a new programming language to fix one bug and bugs that I could be fixing in a language I know are being fixed by another scrum team by a guy who I don't think knows the code in that area well enough to be able to efficiently or effectively fix it.  This kind of thing has already caused us some quality problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how can we fix this within Scrum?  We can't get rid of the process, but can we change it somehow so that we can work effectively again?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28651" LastEditorUserId="4093" LastEditDate="2020-12-16T08:16:57.750" LastActivityDate="2020-12-16T08:16:57.750" Title="How can these problems with agile be solved?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21667" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21693" CreationDate="2017-05-24T12:36:08.297" Score="4" ViewCount="601" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm working for a web development agency. I take responsibility for managing the work that the developers in our company do for our client. We're using JIRA for task management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Epics with Unlimited Scope&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile methodologies suggest using epics for user stories that can be decomposed into smaller ones. The problem is that the work with the client is probably going to be a long-lasting partnership, so there's always feature creep. My point is that that epics should be finite, but in my case they tend to never be finished because there are always new features that get added to the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of epics that I use include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Contract list&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user, I must be able to list and filter contracts, so that...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Contract editor&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user, I must be able to edit contracts, so that..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These epics seem like they'd last for years. How can we manage the scope of these epics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28652" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2017-05-26T05:18:51.530" LastActivityDate="2017-05-26T05:18:51.530" Title="How can I force an epic to have a limited/finite scope?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;scope&gt;&lt;epics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21667" CreationDate="2017-05-24T13:32:19.797" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are having too many Epic problems, I would suggest looking at your stories and examine them again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The root cause seems to be due to the fact that you are not delivering values by working on user stories but only by delivering epics. (I'm assuming this)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's the case, you need to work with your client to make valuable and small user stories, which is brutally hard to do. Otherwise, you will be in this infinite loop for on and on and on and ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20765" LastActivityDate="2017-05-24T13:32:19.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21666" CreationDate="2017-05-24T13:38:51.233" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Generalization and group think has reduced the extent to which anyone &quot;owns&quot; the code base. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's bad. The goal is &lt;em&gt;shared&lt;/em&gt; ownership, not &lt;em&gt;non&lt;/em&gt;ownership. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you using slack time? Or aiming for &lt;a href=&quot;https://dzone.com/articles/100-utilization-myth&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;100% utilization&lt;/a&gt;? If the latter, change to the former.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the slack time (one hour a day, one day a week, one week a month, whatever), developers are able to work on whatever they want - research, side projects, whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Provided no one's already working on a feature, they could just pick one up and start working on it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just make sure you implement a code review before merging that work into the main codebase. You do not want some person going off on their own, doing something, and then shoving it into production code without anyone else knowing what it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it was mentioned in comments already, but make sure the prioritization by the Product Owner is done at the &lt;em&gt;story&lt;/em&gt; level, not the task level. The Product Owner decides &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; work gets done. The Development Team decides &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; that work gets done. If they don't want to have massive design-by-committee meetings to determine the &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; for each feature, then... that's their call. The Product Owner (nor the Scrum Master, unless s/he is also a developer, and even then the Scrum Master's words should not have any more weight than any other developer's) should not have say in that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They are self-organizing. No one (not even the Scrum Master) tells the Development Team how to turn Product Backlog into Increments of potentially releasable functionality;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you don't like how you're turning items in the Product Backlog into 'Increments of potentially releasable functionality'... then just &lt;em&gt;change it&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not allowed to, then you're not really doing Scrum. Or Agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-05-24T13:38:51.233" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21664" CreationDate="2017-05-24T13:39:51.440" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good idea would be to think about the Acceptance Criteria for your user story. When writing those down, you would probably see huge numbers of them which give you hint on how to slice your user story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example &quot;as a new user&quot;, what are the acceptance criteria for that? Any new user? users on their mobile phone? on tablets? can they call in and someone helps them over the phone? a new user to the private page or a new user with no information of him/her in your system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20765" LastActivityDate="2017-05-24T13:39:51.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11352" CreationDate="2017-05-24T13:48:27.307" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest you read the responsibilities of the Scrum Master on ScrumGuides &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-sm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-sm&lt;/a&gt; (Whenever in doubt refer to this guide)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see there is no mention of a developer can not be a Scrum Master. However, with all the services the SM providing to PO, Organization and Dev Team and responsibilities, it is very hard to do both. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find a Developer that can do both, awesome! Through my whole career, I think I only know one person that can do both and is doing both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20765" LastActivityDate="2017-05-24T13:48:27.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9983" CreationDate="2017-05-24T13:51:18.940" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use FF+1 instead of FS+1 in the predecessor&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28654" LastActivityDate="2017-05-24T13:51:18.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21664" CreationDate="2017-05-24T13:55:01.313" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, I'd like to point out that I think you're going at the wrong angle with that story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you ever &lt;em&gt;wanted&lt;/em&gt; to &lt;em&gt;sign up&lt;/em&gt; for anything? Wouldn't it be better to just be able to &lt;em&gt;use&lt;/em&gt; the thing, without having to bother signing up or logging in? 'Why can't (Company X) just turn the private area public?'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First determine &lt;em&gt;who&lt;/em&gt; the requester of this story &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; is. Or, alternately, change the request.&#xA;For example, something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a system administrator, I need to make sure we aren't vulnerable to...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user, I don't want other users able to see my personal information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that these don't even have the &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; of sign-up and log-in built in. It could conceivably be accomplished through some other means. This is good, as the &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; of tasks should not be coupled to the &lt;em&gt;what and why&lt;/em&gt; of stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've properly identified a &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; business need, including &lt;em&gt;who&lt;/em&gt; wants/needs it and &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt;, then you should be in good standing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, you can start adding the &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; into tasks under that story, but that has nothing to do with defining the story &lt;em&gt;itself&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-06-05T13:11:40.303" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T13:11:40.303" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21648" CreationDate="2017-05-24T14:00:05.370" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you are comparing Apples to Oranges. A team member might be mad about something in the previous sprint. However, he promotes working in that team and a promoter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if there was a conflict at the beginning of a sprint which got resolved at the end. When you ask for their feelings, he might talk about being mad. However, this &quot;mad&quot; is not at all indicator of him being a detractor at all for that team and the environment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest asking the team NPS and the feelings separately. What is the need to translate the feelings into NPS? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I might be wrong and it might work in your case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20765" LastActivityDate="2017-05-24T14:00:05.370" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21675" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2017-05-24T16:12:38.100" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Artifacts are the by-products of a project's processes or production of deliverables. They often contain information that is produced through the life-cycle of the project. This could range from project documentation (project plans, lessons learned, meeting minutes, etc.) to functional documentation (requirements gathering, user guides, release notes, etc.). While the type of document or output may be different across projects, the common factor is that the artifact will be created specifically to meet needs within the current project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some projects, artifacts may also be referred to as the project deliverables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25755" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2017-05-24T20:29:29.680" LastActivityDate="2017-05-24T20:29:29.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21676" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2017-05-24T16:12:38.100" Score="0" Body="Artifacts are the physical or tangible by-product of a project's process or deliverables. " OwnerUserId="25755" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2017-05-24T20:27:07.183" LastActivityDate="2017-05-24T20:27:07.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9385" CreationDate="2017-05-24T17:09:45.020" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When it comes to Scrum, I believe the best (and only) reference to look at would be ScrumGuides. I would suggest you look at it &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-po&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-po&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the&#xA;  product and the work of the Development Team. How this is done may&#xA;  vary widely across organizations, Scrum Teams, and individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main responsibility of the PO is to maximize the value. Scrum is vague in many aspects. What is the value? Is it the value to end customer or the client? If you ask me, it is the PO's job to find the sweet spot to answer that question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20765" LastActivityDate="2017-05-24T17:09:45.020" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2017-05-24T17:09:45.020" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11352" CreationDate="2017-05-24T17:56:19.250" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no conflict of interest between a role of &quot;member of the Development Team&quot; and &quot;Scrum Master&quot; being shared by the same person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-sm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;specific responsibilities of a Scrum Master&lt;/a&gt; are to ensure that all stakeholders understand and enact the principles of Scrum, help the Scrum Team to understand which internal interactions are beneficial, help stakeholders outside the Scrum Team understand which interactions are beneficial, and change interactions within the Scrum Team and between the Scrum Team and external stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are specific interactions between the Scrum Master and the Product Owner, the Scrum Master and the Development Team, and the Scrum Master and the organization that is implementing Scrum. To all of these people, the Scrum Master provides a service. That is, the Scrum Master does not command or control, but collaborate, help, and facilitate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the Product Owner, the Scrum Master helps to find out techniques to manage the Product Backlog (including organization, writing good backlog items, arranging by value), gives an understanding of empirical project planning and how previous Sprints can be used to predict future Sprints work, and help in facilitating events (in my experiences, the Product Owner tends to drive the Sprint Planning, any backlog refinement or grooming activities, and the Sprint Review).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the Development Team, the Scrum Master enables them to be self-organizing and cross-functional, to deliver value, to remove impediments and road blocks, to facilitate events, to coach the team on what it means to be agile or to be following Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the Organization, the Scrum Master assists in the leadership understanding and embracing Scrum, helping to plan implementation, to help everyone understand the purpose of the various team roles and events and artifacts, and coordinate with other Scrum Masters across the various teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For each of these, I'd argue that a member of the Development Team is the best candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a member of the Development Team and a Scrum Master, I:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Participate in every event and ceremony. I am witness to most interactions between members of the Scrum Team among themselves and with external stakeholders (outside of one-on-ones with their manager or deeply technical discussions on work that I am not personally involved in) I can put on my Scrum Master hat at any time to make sure that everyone else on the Scrum Team is adhering to the practices and rules of the Agile Manifesto and the Scrum Guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have to use the Product Backlog to drive my work. I see, first-hand, any problems that may have arisen with the creation or management of Product Backlog Items. This allows me to raise issues that I experience to the Product Owner. Of course, other Development Team members also see things and can bring them up to me to raise to the Product Owner at the same time. However, cutting out the middle man is helpful sometimes in getting things corrected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By being at every event, I'm there to facilitate it. At standup, I can go to the defined location a few minutes early to make sure that screensharing and voice calling is set up if any team members are remote. I can set up to support meeting notes to capture decisions or questions. I can set up deployment of the software to facilitate myself or other members of the Development Team walking through a review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By being on the Development Team and involved in the day-to-day work, I can raise questions or concerns when I see cross-functionality not being developed. If one person is trying to take a leadership role, I can point that out. By living my working day with the team, I can ensure that they follow this Scrum principle and encourage it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am especially motivated to remove impediments. Often, impediments to one team member also affect me. For example, they may be unable to help me solve a problem or perform a peer review or pair program with me because of a pressing concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By living on the Development Team, I can give first hand reports on the impact that Scrum is having on the team's ability to deliver to the organization. I can better reason about Scrum implementation and changes knowing how it will affect the bulk of a Scrum Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there are things to watch out for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The primary concern is that the Scrum Master should not have power over the Development Team. They are a servant-leader, not a manager or director. It's important for the Development Team to remain self-organizing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next concern is that the Scrum Master responsibilities do take away from development time. The organization must consider the tradeoffs. Although there are many advantages to the Scrum Master being on the Development Team, that does mean that the Scrum Master has to take on additional work and meet all commitments or that they need to plan for less development output from the Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the Scrum Master does need to be someone who is supportive of the agile methods and the Scrum framework. Otherwise, this person may be in a position to be apathetic or even detrimental to the organization implementing Scrum. That is not to say that Scrum is the be-all-end-all process model - I regularly look toward Extreme Programming, Disciplined Agile Delivery, Kanban, and other agile methods and practices. However, one must do so in an appropriate manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These drawbacks are just that - drawbacks. Every decision has pros and cons. The fact that there are pros and cons does not make a conflict of interest between the two roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only conflict of interest in roles is between the Product Owner and Scrum Master. That is, the same person should not be performing both of these roles. The Product Owner is responsible for driving the product while the Scrum Master protects the team and the integrity of the processes against business or client demands. There is some level of negotiation between these two roles on what capabilities and commitments that the Development Team should make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2017-11-13T18:17:41.927" LastActivityDate="2017-11-13T18:17:41.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21680" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-24T22:00:16.317" Score="-2" ViewCount="1445" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to add a task to my project. The task is assigned to my customer. I want to give them 30 days to complete the task and I don't care how many hours it takes them. Other than the 30 day duration, the hours do not affect my project. How do I do this? I cannot figure it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28658" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2018-12-13T16:09:24.863" LastActivityDate="2018-12-13T16:09:24.863" Title="Task with duration and no hours" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resources&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21681" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-24T23:13:43.387" Score="2" ViewCount="829" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do I represent and make visible the work teams/staff outside of the dev team have to do e.g. setup environments for our software to be deployed into.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28660" LastActivityDate="2017-05-26T15:46:14.750" Title="Tasks that need to be done by resources outside the agile scrum dev team" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21682" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-24T23:18:28.020" Score="2" ViewCount="2248" Body="&lt;p&gt;studying the details of PERT/CPM, I'm perplexed when I read the formula of duration of an activity is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;expected time = (opt. time + 4medium + pess. time) ÷ 6&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;because it's following a Beta distribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't understand the cause.&#xA;The Beta distribution is an extension, in continuous mathematics, of a Bernoulli distribution.&#xA;This means that, in this distribution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;every event is independent by the previous and the next;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;that are only 2 possible values, yes/no or similar;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't understand how to link these properties with the estimation of activities in a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you explain to me, please?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28659" LastEditorUserId="11661" LastEditDate="2017-06-20T02:34:01.213" LastActivityDate="2017-06-20T02:45:53.733" Title="Why in PERT the activities duration follows a Beta distribution" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;critical-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21681" CreationDate="2017-05-24T23:21:10.913" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Preferably, you bring those tasks onto the team, but I understand that's not always possible. (Politically, at least, of course it's always &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt;; sometimes there's just an irrational resistance...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My team uses pink stickies tacked to our cards that are blocked by external dependencies. Believe me, that blazing hot pink is highly visible. If you have &lt;em&gt;lots&lt;/em&gt; of these, consider creating a dependency map near your work board. If you're virtual, most tools have an equivalent of our pink stickies. Jira calls it &quot;impediment&quot;. They're infinitely less visible in an electronic backlog though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another great method is to &quot;walk the board&quot; from &quot;just got done&quot; to &quot;just got started&quot; at your stand up. Be sure to talk about every card in progress. The team will get pretty sick of talking about that card blocked by external team X and take matters into their own hands quickly enough...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastActivityDate="2017-05-24T23:21:10.913" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21681" CreationDate="2017-05-25T01:35:19.023" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Make External Dependency Management a Story&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a team has external dependencies, one way of making that work visible is to create a user story around &lt;em&gt;managing&lt;/em&gt; that dependency. For example, using your example about needing a QA environment for deployments, you might create a story like the following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Team Member,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I need to create and track a JIRA ticket for the ops team to stand up a production environment&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that we can deploy our finished increment at the end of the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the responsibility for actually deploying the new environment rests outside the team, someone on the team needs to make the request, follow up with the right people, and escalate the issue if it's not being addressed in a timely manner. That's all pretty straightforward, and you can certainly color-code your story card to make it stand out as an external dependency if you like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;WIP Limits for External Dependencies&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bigger issue is how to fit this within your work-in-progress (WIP) limits. A story like this is pretty small in terms of the Development Team's level of effort&amp;mdash;not small in importance, but in terms of how much &lt;em&gt;effort&lt;/em&gt; it consumes from the team's available capacity. Since it's a low-effort item, you could assign a half-point to it, in which case it remains blocked as WIP until done without creating a major queuing problem for other stories. For example, if your WIP limit is 6, and you have 0.5 points sitting in your &quot;In Progress&quot; queue, you still have 5.5 story points you can work on without violating your WIP limits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are certainly other ways to handle it, but in my experience most of them turn this type of external dependency into &quot;invisible work.&quot; Since CodeGnome's Law of Transparency says &quot;No invisible work, ever!&quot; you can handle it any way you like, provided you don't sweep it under the rug or treat &lt;em&gt;tracking it&lt;/em&gt; as an externality even when most of the work is external.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Managing Blocked Dependencies&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the work truly becomes blocked because the external resources aren't available or won't get to it within the current Sprint, then you need to work with the Product Owner to determine if the story is essential to the Sprint Goal. If not, pop it out of WIP and move on. If it is, then the Product Owner must decide whether it's scope that can be swapped out, or whether the Sprint must be terminated and the Scrum Team returned to Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, this is really no different than what happens when stories that are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; externalities become permablocked within the current Sprint. You're simply applying the same principles of Sprint management to dependency stories, and ensuring that those dependencies remain &lt;em&gt;visible&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2017-05-26T15:46:14.750" LastActivityDate="2017-05-26T15:46:14.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21601" CreationDate="2017-05-25T03:53:15.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Add the column “Project” to the Resource Usage view, and try to filter the view with this column. This should work either if you are using Project Server or a shared resource pool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28645" LastActivityDate="2017-05-25T03:53:15.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21569" CreationDate="2017-05-25T04:22:01.840" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If those tasks should be done always on Tuesdays and Saturdays, then you can create a calendar with only Tuesday and Saturday as working days. Then, assign this calendar to these tasks, and modify the relations as “Finish-to-Start” with no lag. Just make sure that every task has a 1-day duration (task 3117 is 1-hour only).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28645" LastActivityDate="2017-05-25T04:22:01.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21659" CreationDate="2017-05-25T17:39:48.040" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Move away from Epics and trying to deliver the whole. There is always a PBI from an EPIC that is not as important as other PBIs in other Epics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So try to change your colleagues' mindsets to focus on delivering the PBIs (user stories) and not focused on Epics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find something as a result of a defect, it is a sign that something is not working properly, you need to look back into your process and see why you missed that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20765" LastActivityDate="2017-05-25T17:39:48.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21619" CreationDate="2017-05-25T17:44:35.817" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If this is an Agile environment, you can take a look at the Scaled Agile Frameworks such as LeSS, Nexus or DAD. I recommend starting with SAFe if you are not Agile and want to move from a waterfall environment to an Agile one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also need to have soft skills as well, My advice to you would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All those people are your team, make them feel that &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lead by example, sit with each and every one &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Understand them and have an honest one on ones with them &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Help them realize you are vulnerable and be proud of that&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20765" LastActivityDate="2017-05-25T17:44:35.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21657" CreationDate="2017-05-25T18:03:53.040" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;User stories are about deliveries. There are other types of activities that are needed to be done in a development team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please take a look at the quadrant below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If Dev Team and Business know how and what to build, they &lt;strong&gt;Build&lt;/strong&gt; it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If Dev Team knows how to build, but Business doesn't know what to build, they &lt;strong&gt;Experiment&lt;/strong&gt; it, meaning they build something to learn&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If Dec Team doesn't know how to build but Business knows what to build, they &lt;strong&gt;Spike&lt;/strong&gt; it, they research to learn how to build&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If both doesn't know what and how to do, they need to learn, talk to customer to educate themselves what to build and research to educate themselves on how to build it at the same time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not everything is a user story and can be described as one!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QkBV1.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QkBV1.png&quot; alt=&quot;Build v.s. Spike v.s. Experiment v.s. Learn&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20765" LastActivityDate="2017-05-25T18:03:53.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21691" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-25T18:24:41.850" Score="4" ViewCount="474" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are different aspects of a PBIs (Product Backlog Items), or generally speaking features, would you take into consideration for prioritizing the backlog? risk, ROI, time to market, cost of delay, at PO's discretion, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you consider a combination or even a weighted combination of those to prioritize the backlog? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How often is necessary to revisit the prioritization? At every sprint? on a daily basis? or at PO's discretion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20765" LastActivityDate="2019-04-07T07:23:08.870" Title="What are the different approaches and how frequent to prioritize the backlog?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;features&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2019-04-08T02:43:36.507" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21691" CreationDate="2017-05-25T18:38:25.213" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I my opinion, it depends on what is the objective of your product. According the Scrum Guide regarding Product Backlog responsibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ordering the items in the Product Backlog to best achieve goals and&#xA;  missions;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that any decision must be made together with your client, what is the product mission. In my company, usually I use ROI first to rank and Risk second, to solve any tie. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28672" LastActivityDate="2017-05-25T18:38:25.213" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21667" CreationDate="2017-05-26T05:13:49.447" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever possible, think of epics as placeholders for more detailed product backlog items, not as evergreen stories. It's better to add new stories to the Product Backlog as they are discovered or requested, rather than invite scope creep by misusing epics as permanent Product Backlog work-generators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Deliver Stories, Not Epics&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In agile methodologies, you don't deliver epics or themes; you deliver stories and tasks. In Scrum you should also be working in well-defined iterations where the work is small enough to fit into a single Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have an epic like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user, I must be able to list and filter contracts, so that...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it isn't really actionable, since it meets exactly none of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST criteria&lt;/a&gt;. Instead, you should be using your Backlog Refinement and Sprint Planning ceremonies to decompose specific features into discrete user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if your epic is an evergreen item where you're always adding new functionality to lists and filters, each &lt;em&gt;story&lt;/em&gt; within the epic should be clearly scoped and well-defined before being accepted into the Sprint. For example, during Backlog Refinement, you might look at some recent requests related to your epic and add a story like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want to list all non-expired contracts by expiration date&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I can see which ones are about to expire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want to filter out all expired contracts from the to-do list&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I only see contracts that are still valid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While both of these stories could conceivably fit within your epic, they are probably small enough to fit within a single Sprint, are likely to be testable, and describe a concrete value proposition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner should be actively involved in getting stakeholders to identify work as discrete features. The entire Scrum Team should be involved in helping to decompose the larger epics and stories so that the PO can prioritize them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on delivering small, functional slices rather than on unestimatable or open-ended work items. If you change your focus, you'll find that you're delivering features and value every Sprint instead of wearing an epic-shaped albatross around your neck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-05-26T05:13:49.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21691" CreationDate="2017-05-26T11:53:17.713" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me tackle the two parts of your question slightly separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How To Prioritize&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Guide says that &quot;The Product Owner is responsible for the Product Backlog, including its content, availability, and ordering.&quot; At the end of the day, the Product Owner has final say over which of the criteria you listed is the best way to prioritize the backlog. However, the whole team as well as stakeholders &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be involved in helping the Product Owner make judgement on the complexity, ROI, risk, etc., of a PBI. In other words, engineers, designers, business analysts, business stakeholders, QA Analysts, and others can provide valuable input to help the PO make a call on how to prioritize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, I've found a few methods that help Product Owners to come to grips with prioritization:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;MoSCoW Prioritization&lt;/em&gt; -- categorize high-level features/epics by Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, and Won't Have for an upcoming release. Working with the development team to understand timeline and risk, the PO can determine what features must make it into the next release of the product, and then two separate levels of &quot;Nice-to-Haves.&quot; Won't Have also helps specifically rule out less important features. I &lt;strong&gt;STRONGLY&lt;/strong&gt; suggest using real corkboards with sticky notes or index cards for this exercise. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;User Story Mapping&lt;/em&gt; -- Explained pretty well &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2013/august/creating-an-agile-roadmap-using-story-mapping&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, if you have specific user stories written out you can prioritize them by functionality, then draw your MMF/MVP line based on what features are absolutely necessary and which aren't. This is pretty easy to do on a whiteboard or large piece of paper with sticky notes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;The &quot;Hundred-Dollar&quot; Method&lt;/em&gt; -- The Product Owner and key stakeholders get 100 &quot;Dollars&quot; or &quot;Points&quot; to allocate to the various user stories or features on a corkboard or whiteboard. Participants can put as many of their points toward any specific feature they want. (Engineers may put a lot of points toward refactoring a legacy product, while marketing may put a lot toward a flashy new feature. The CEO may put all of his or her points toward what he or she thinks will have the biggest ROI.) The PO can then use this information to help them prioritize their backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When To Prioritize&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For high-level feature prioritization, I recommend having a Release Planning session minimally once per quarter. If multiple releases are planned for a quarter, each one should have its own Release Planning session. This is where a PO can use MoSCoW prioritization or other methods to help determine what will be in an upcoming release at a high level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During development, the priority of the Product Backlog can be changed at any time by the Product Owner, taking into account the necessity of grooming/refining items before they're put into a Sprint. In other words, teams should never commit to items that they don't consider fully groomed, even if they are at the top of the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a minimum, teams should review the near-term prioritization of items with the Product Owner at every Sprint Review and Grooming meeting to ensure that they are refining the right items for the next Sprint and working on the current highest-priority features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps -- feel free to let me know if there's anything I didn't cover here!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16314" LastActivityDate="2017-05-26T11:53:17.713" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21696" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21697" CreationDate="2017-05-26T16:20:09.620" Score="2" ViewCount="395" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was asked this question in an interview, and couldn't figure out the solution, so I thought I will come here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, I was mostly working as a developer, and had my own set of unit tests for the tasks I was finishing. But if I was a product owner or scrum master, then how will I ensure that development team has created enough unit tests, or tested the code properly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think we can have acceptance testing, or even consider the bugs as part of next sprint. There is another option of having product owner and scrum master create a set of basic tests during sprint meetings. But that will cause the sprint meeting to run for hours. These are the two possible ideas that I could suggest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any other way, a product owner can ensure the quality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23395" LastActivityDate="2017-05-27T08:41:10.363" Title="How to ensure sprint tasks are bug free before release" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21696" CreationDate="2017-05-26T17:07:06.893" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The enforcement of the &lt;em&gt;Definition of Done (DoD)&lt;/em&gt; is the Product Owner's primary mechanism for ensuring product quality. The DoD defines quality for the project. Ensuring that work that falls short of the DoD is returned to the Product Backlog is the &lt;em&gt;project control&lt;/em&gt; for preventing known defects from escaping the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;NB: Because the team's capacity is finite, the Product Owner controls quality by trading off capacity for explicit backlog items and implicit tasks associated with the DoD.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Manage Quality with &quot;Definition of Done&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In agile frameworks, the way you manage quality is through the &quot;Definition of Done.&quot; This is a formal definition of all the quality gates that a potentially-shippable increment must pass through to be considered done at the end of a Sprint. Because Scrum requires that the product always be in a potentially-releasable state at the end of every Sprint, the DoD also includes acceptance tests, regression tests, and other quality criteria to validate that the product itself (and not &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; the current work increment) meets the defined quality criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because work is either done or not-done at the end of each Sprint, work that doesn't meet the DoD is considered &quot;not done&quot; and must be returned to the Product Backlog for reprioritization and replanning. Partially-complete Product Backlog Items are never considered done, and are never automatically carried forward. This is a key control for the Scrum framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because Scrum is an iterative framework, the DoD may evolve over time. The Product Owner can fine-tune the quality of the product by working with the rest of the Scrum Team to determine the extent and granularity of the DoD based on lessons learned and information gleaned from the Sprint Retrospectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Trade-Offs in Quality&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A team with a very complex or time-consuming DoD will need to reduce its capacity forecasts accordingly, as more team capacity is directed to getting work increments to &quot;done.&quot; On the other hand, increasing feature development at the expense of an adequate DoD may result in tech debt or an increased defect rate, which can also reduce the velocity of feature development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;NB: Velocity of work is not reduced, as defect management is also work.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the Product Owner and Scrum Team need to find a DoD that is &lt;em&gt;sufficient&lt;/em&gt; but not excessive. Too much process overhead, and feature development suffers. Too little, and quality suffers. It's a balancing act, which is why there's no such thing as a universal standard for the Definition of Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-05-26T17:07:06.893" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21696" CreationDate="2017-05-26T19:18:42.583" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question does not have to be agile oriented but rather can be answered in an agnostic way because it affects all methods, products, and industries the same way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is: you cannot &lt;em&gt;ensure&lt;/em&gt; a &lt;em&gt;defect-free&lt;/em&gt; release of your product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of those italicized words imply a degree of perfection that is unavailable to us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, you mitigate the threat of defects through inspection to drive the level of defects to both a quantity and severity that are within a defined level of specification.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means the governing body needs to create that definition of specification for the product as part of the definition of the project during initiation and it means defining what inspection means based on your industry.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also means you mitigate the threat of defects proactively, by maturing your build processes and methods, using proven tools, using skilled talent, and using metrics to measure performance.  Metrics can expose an increasing threat of defects even before a defect is noticed in the product later in the process.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-05-26T19:18:42.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20401" CreationDate="2017-05-26T22:06:05.687" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can name the category field any of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;acquisition method&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;materials supplier (or supplied by)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;materials responsible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;required materials&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in MS Project you can,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;create a custom field,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or use a text field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16715" LastActivityDate="2017-05-26T22:06:05.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21701" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-05-26T23:20:12.567" Score="2" ViewCount="2845" Body="&lt;p&gt;I started a retail business from scratch. I imported ready-made garments. I was the CEO for three years, managed everything, and worked in my stores full time. I had employees as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The certificate of experience given to me is signed by me as CEO. I heard that this might be a reason for my application to be audited. Should I put the whole business as one project in the application, or divide each purchase as a project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28680" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2017-05-27T17:24:17.880" LastActivityDate="2017-06-15T23:29:22.450" Title="Can running my own business be counted towards PMI experience requirements?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;definition&gt;&lt;pmi&gt;&lt;qualifications&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21680" CreationDate="2017-05-27T00:08:07.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume you are using MS Project. These are some ways to do what you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a 30-day task but do not assign any resource. The task will be&#xA;displayed and treated like any other task but since it has no&#xA;resources assigned, it will have zero work hours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you need to assign a resource (for reporting / filtering purposes), then you can&#xA;use a material or cost resource. Neither of those resource types&#xA;require work hours. I’d prefer to use a cost resource, because that way I could&#xA;define the task’s related cost.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Since it is a task that will be    carried on by your customer, then&#xA;maybe you do not need to monitor    the task progress. In this case,&#xA;you can use a simple milestone to    indicate the task’s finish date.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the first two options use a 30-day task with no work, while the third option uses a milestone with no work and no duration. This means that in the first two options, the task will have certain weight for the percent complete calculation (“% complete” MS Project field) while the third option will not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of these options will have influence over “% work complete”, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28645" LastActivityDate="2017-05-27T00:08:07.550" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21696" CreationDate="2017-05-27T08:41:10.363" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The critical role a Product Owner has in ensuring quality is often overlooked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of factors at play, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you know the new functionality added in the sprint has been tested?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you know the tests are fit for purpose?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much regression testing has taken place?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any known gaps in test coverage?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner contributes to all these factors by doing the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Emphasising the importance of quality and of the team meeting their definition of done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Never asking the team to deliver more functionality in a sprint than they have the capacity for&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Working closely with the team to ensure there is a close relationship between requirements and tests (possibly using a technique like BDD)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Weighing up the pro's and con's of gaps in test coverage (such as the extent of cross-browser testing, or how much non-functional testing has been completed)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensuring they are sufficiently available to the team to answer any questions on the requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2017-05-27T08:41:10.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21701" CreationDate="2017-05-27T17:19:28.417" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ongoing business operations and continuous procedures such as routine sales are neither projects nor activities within the scope of project management. However, no one except PMI can tell you what is acceptable for their experience requirements; you should ask them directly for a canonical answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What's Off-Topic&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both career advice and questions about how PMI will interpret the PMP requirements are both off-topic here. In particular, the only people who can canonically &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/about/contact&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;answer your questions&lt;/a&gt; about what experience PMI will accept is PMI itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Defining a Project&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you've got a slightly different but answerable question implied in your post: &amp;quot;What exactly &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a project?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMI &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pmi.org/about/learn-about-pmi/what-is-project-management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;defines a project&lt;/a&gt; as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A project is temporary in that it has a defined beginning and end in time, and therefore defined scope and resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a project is unique in that it is not a routine operation, but a specific set of operations designed to accomplish a singular goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pmi.org/about/learn-about-pmi/what-is-project-management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;defines the field of project management&lt;/a&gt; as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project management, then, is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this, it's clear that ongoing business operations and continuous procedures such as routine sales are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; projects, nor are they activities within the field or practice of project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-05-27T17:19:28.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10683" CreationDate="2017-05-27T18:06:58.563" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is quite old. I'm adding an answer so it could help someone looking for the same solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Project Server 2007 you can do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Create a security category and include that project in the category.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Create a security group and apply the security template corresponding&#xA;to the &quot;Portfolio Managers&quot; group (that is, permissions should be the&#xA;same). However, this group should belong only to the &quot;My Projects&quot;&#xA;and &quot;My Tasks&quot; categories. Also, add the new category you created.&#xA;Finally, include the project managers to this group.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way, those project managers will have Portfolio Managers privileges but only over this particular project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it doesn't work, you can try adding the project managers to the new category and see if it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On later Project Server versions, this method only works if security is configured as &quot;Project Server Security&quot;. In Sharepoint security it's easier: just search for the security groups created for that project; one of these groups is related to Project Managers, you only have to add the users to that group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28645" LastActivityDate="2017-05-27T18:06:58.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21656" CreationDate="2017-05-27T20:42:46.613" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, the COCOMO approach is rather an estimation model than a method. Estimation models are mathematical algorithms or parametric equations to estimate the cost of a product or project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The COCOMO approach has a major drawback like all estimation models. They seem to be objective by using a mathematical formula but the quality of the result strongly depends on the (subjective chosen) input values. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case of the COCOMO model the LoC is the main input value. Hence, the main question is, how do you estimate the LoC for a Software System?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe there are a few experts who are capable to estimate the LoC, but I am pretty sure for most experts (including those) it's easier to estimate directly the effort in man days. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An other question is, in times of &lt;em&gt;Type Less Do More, Code Generation, Model Driven Development etc.&lt;/em&gt; is the LoC still (if it ever was) a good criteria to estimate the costs? So, the pure programming effort in a Software Project is much lower than it was 20 years ago and it constantly shrinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall In my opinion the COCOMO model has no relevance anymore. And I doubt if it ever has once at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If not, is it replaced by another method?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are different approaches for estimating costs. To choose the right one depends on several boundary conditions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are the requirements of the project clear? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many experts are available for estimating?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is any reliable historical data of similar projects available?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is reliable historical data about the team (members) performance available?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have some experts you can rely on an expert judgement (an interesting expert judgement method is the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wideband_delphi&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wideband Delphi Method&lt;/a&gt;). If you have reliable historical data you can estimate the cost by using analogy/relational based methods. If you have both try to combine those approaches. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, never forget, an effort estimation is only as good as the requirement analysis. If your requirement gathering process fails, is inadequate, your estimation will give you wrong results regardless which technique you choose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25435" LastEditorUserId="25435" LastEditDate="2017-05-27T20:58:53.770" LastActivityDate="2017-05-27T20:58:53.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21707" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21710" CreationDate="2017-05-28T02:15:09.520" Score="0" ViewCount="99" Body="&lt;p&gt;The project is composed of three groups of teams, each team will contribute to the project plan. The team has listed their tasks, my question is whether all tasks should have a predecessor and/or successor or it's fine is some tasks can stand alone without linking to other tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28224" LastActivityDate="2017-05-28T11:15:39.577" Title="Must every task in MS project be linked with each other?" Tags="&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21707" CreationDate="2017-05-28T03:58:49.770" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's all about logic. What triggers the work, what happens after? I can see an argument about nothing preceding a task but I question that nothing follows. If nothing is dependent on the task, then why do it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-05-28T03:58:49.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21665" CreationDate="2017-05-28T09:10:25.453" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This doesn't directly answer your question but it's important nevertheless. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Flagging an issue is only meant to give an issue maximum priority, not blocking an issue, according to JIRA: &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftwareserver071/flagging-an-issue-800706915.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftwareserver071/flagging-an-issue-800706915.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a bit strange since the way you look for a flagged issue with JQL is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Flagged = Impediment&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One option you have is using a mix of blocked status &amp;amp; last update of the issue. This approach has a caveat, as I will also explain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The JQL search would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;project = &quot;MY PROJECT&quot; AND status = Blocked ORDER BY updated ASC&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;Updated&quot; field should be visible in your filter, so you can see that info.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One potential problem with the solution is that any update to the issue would obviously update the issue, e.g. a comment on the issue, a change in the description, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wanted a solution that was totally reliable, then I would go for the ScriptRunner plugin. I could write a custom field that would show time from last issue transition, if you have the plugin and are interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23216" LastActivityDate="2017-05-28T09:10:25.453" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21707" CreationDate="2017-05-28T11:15:39.577" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.senseiprojectsolutions.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sensei project solutions&lt;/a&gt; (I'm not affiliated, I'm just impressed) has a set of quality filters that they suggest you run against every project you document.  One of those filters requires that every task except the first and last have both a predecessor and successor link.  Alas, Sensei doesn't explain their quality standards, they just assert that projects that follow these standards have fewer problems, and I've found that they're usually right - if my project violates these standards, investigation generally convinces me that the standard is right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are you trying to do with MS project? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK - mea culpa, the most frequent reason to use MS project is because the boss expects it, and the only value of MS project is to produce pretty charts that adorn the wall and convince others that we're project managers. Engineers get technical diagrams, we need something on our wall.  But let's ignore the most common reason, and assume that we're using MS project for analysis, to spot the critical path, and to analyze how to manipulate the project schedule to achieve the most efficient allocation of time and effort.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If task X is late, or delayed, what happens to all other tasks? Can I do Task y early?   Why document a task that doesn't participate in relationships?  Just put a post it note on the wall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my (limited) experience, tasks that have no predecessors, &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; depend on the start of project, the approval of the charter, or some other administrative milestone.  If not, then they depend on a resource availability that really converges with an approval milestone.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it is also possible that you're documenting tasks for resource conflicts. Again, my experience is limited, but that way lies madness. I don't think I've ever seen anyone do real resource management through MS project - I've seen people pour hours and weeks of analysis down that hole, and it seems like the analysis never ends. One of my colleagues was filing over 100 change requests a month for his project schedule.  At that velocity it is pretty certain that the workers and managers are off doing the job while the project manager is filing five change requests a day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2017-05-28T11:15:39.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21711" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21720" CreationDate="2017-05-28T16:55:19.393" Score="5" ViewCount="464" Body="&lt;p&gt;By the time a Dev-Team knows about the agile process and is able to defend it against outside influences, one might say the Scrum Master's work is done at this point and he/she is not needed anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems this might be a very individual state (depending from team to team). I wonder if there are objective signs, when the Scrum Master becomes superfluous? Or mabye this state is never really reached and the Scrum Master always has some work to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28506" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-12-09T12:23:21.950" LastActivityDate="2018-12-11T15:43:42.967" Title="When is a Scrum Master superfluous?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21711" CreationDate="2017-05-28T19:20:10.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you wrote: a Scrum Master is a role. A role has one or more tasks to do and one or more responsibilities to fulfill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if the tasks and responsibilities are not needed anymore, you should cancel it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can you assess if a role is still needed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An easy way is to play through a few use cases. For clear tasks, you can quite quickly come to an assessment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about the not so obvious tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Scrum Master often helps you as somebody that is more disconnected from the group dynamics can view the situation from a different point. This is not only useful for outside requirements but also for team internals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you want to do scrum you need the role but if you modify the setting you should definitively have somebody outside the Dev Team that can &quot;morally&quot; support the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28699" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-12-11T15:43:42.967" LastActivityDate="2018-12-11T15:43:42.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21714" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21715" CreationDate="2017-05-29T07:59:30.850" Score="3" ViewCount="2335" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to create a project management and collaboration tool for a small company. I need a strong integration with Exchange, Active Directory, and to be prepared for a future integration with Dynamics and Sharepoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We already own all the Office 2016 suite, so my first choice would naturally be Microsoft Project, attached to a MS Project Server. NOT Office 365.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is Ms Project a collaboration tool that allows to manage a complete workflow of a project in a modern way (assign tasks, schedule them, attach files to a project, chat with users, comment tasks, and so on)? Would it give full access to the project tools also via web browsers, for Mac users?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28703" LastEditorUserId="28703" LastEditDate="2017-05-29T08:15:15.650" LastActivityDate="2017-05-29T09:03:01.117" Title="Microsoft Project as collaboration tool" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21714" CreationDate="2017-05-29T09:03:01.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;MS Project is a project management tool with a high focus on Project Management, so i don't see it matching your requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To my knowledge there is no great solution for work management in the Microsoft environment. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.visualstudio.com/tfs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Microsoft Team Foundation Server&lt;/a&gt; could meet some requirements, but it is heavily focused on software development processes.&#xA;You could use the new &lt;a href=&quot;https://products.office.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/group-chat-software&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Microsoft Teams&lt;/a&gt; which is all about collaboration in terms of chatting, but is only available in O365 for the moment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By reading your requirements, I would recommend looking into Atlassian's &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/core&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jira Core&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;It allows you to work with tasks and workflows and offers a wide range of functionality in order to make the tool mirror your business processes. &#xA;You can integrate with Active Directory, and I'm sure there are plugins to connect to Sharepoint and Dynamics.&#xA;Next to that, Atlassian offers some other products which could cover some of your requirements. Most of them are focused on developers, but for example &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/software/hipchat&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;HipChat&lt;/a&gt; could meet your needs for chat functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28375" LastActivityDate="2017-05-29T09:03:01.117" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21711" CreationDate="2017-05-30T05:50:31.787" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The scrum methodology defines certain roles. Each role has certain tasks. A person may perform one or more roles. In the extreme case a person may perform all roles, although this is not efficient. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the scrum master tasks are assigned and performed adequately by other members of the team then the scrum master person (not the role), can be re-assigned in other projects. There are not any clear signs when this can be done, you have to gradually re-assign tasks from the scrum master to other members of the team, and closely monitor the successful completion of these tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although what I describe above can be done, I see two big disadvantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conflict of interests&lt;/strong&gt;. A developer that performs scrum master tasks may find himself in a position, where a scrum master decision is in conflict with his interests as a developer. So maybe in this case the task of the scrum master will not be performed correctly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Specialization&lt;/strong&gt;. A person specialized as a scrum master will perform the scrum master tasks much better than developers that occasionally perform the scrum master.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28712" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T05:50:31.787" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21711" CreationDate="2017-05-30T15:52:26.377" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no Scrum police and there is no, one right way to do Scrum. Scrum is a loose framework defined in less than 20 pages. Frameworks are a guideline, not a straight jacket. There are organizations, people, and thoughts that would have you think different. At the end of the day, remember, 20 pages is not a process, it's a guide, use your judgment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That disclaimer aside, there are good starting practices most follow: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Role vs. Job is a huge distinction in Scrum. Someone should be filling the role, that isn't always their only job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When coaching teams I generally go with this logic: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a new team, a dedicated person, as Scrum master, can handle really only one team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have one performing team and a newer team, a dedicated person, as Scrum Master, can handle two teams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you get to three teams, then even a dedicated person can't fulfill the role of Scrum Master on all three teams easily. They have become a Scrum Coach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond four teams and you're moving into Agile Coach space as you are dealing with more and more concepts outside the outside the &quot;strict&quot; confines of Scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a team no longer has a dedicated Scrum Master role (because they are a higher performing team), the role of Scrum Master typically ends up being owned by the team. It's up to the team how to own it. They may rotate the role, divvy the role or any number of solutions. Because they are self-organized, they do this themselves and decide themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And remember, always reach back to the Scrum Values and the Agile Manifesto to get a temperature check on how your decisions reflect the underlying principles and values. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T15:52:26.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21711" CreationDate="2017-05-30T19:55:37.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have asked this question in my Scrum Master Certification. The answer was if you has a team that you can't see how to improve, why this team needs a Scrum Master?&#xA;As you can notice, it can only happen in the long term, with a team that has been working together for an extended period without any changes or conflicts. In this case, the Scrum Master should look for another team inside the organization that needs his skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28672" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T19:55:37.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21723" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21730" CreationDate="2017-05-31T05:06:00.430" Score="6" ViewCount="3320" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to restructure my development teams so that they can work in a more agile way, however each of those teams needs to develop changes for multiple products in their business area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen many comments on here on how that is an &quot;anti-scrum&quot; pattern, which is fine except the solution appears to be hiring 50+ developers so I can have a team per product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how do I organise 5 teams of 4 to work on roughly 5 products each team.  Planning is not the issue, its how to put multiple products into a backlog and plan sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently I am running with 1 dev on one product for 1 sprint.  That could mean 2 devs both working on the same product for 1 sprint, and the other working on another product.  This works when there is a sprints worth of velocity, but when that comes in at less than a sprint, how best to manage this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it better to put everything into one backlog for all products and then pick them off in a more kanban way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24240" LastActivityDate="2017-07-02T11:49:26.703" Title="Best (most agile) way to develop multiple products concurrently" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21724" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21729" CreationDate="2017-05-31T10:17:15.203" Score="0" ViewCount="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider two tasks (Task 1 and Task 2), as well as two resources (Developer 1 and Developer 2). Task 1 and 2 respectively require 1 and 2 days from start to finish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to make the following resource assignment in Microsoft Project:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developer 1 allocates 50% of his time working on Task 1.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In parallel, and using any remaining time, Developer 1 helps Developer 2 to work on Task 2.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this way, once Developer 1 finished working on Task 1, he should allocate 100% of his time to work on Task 2. That is, Task 2 requires (1.5 + 2) * 8 = 28 man-hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a screenshot of what I achieved in MS Project:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KpTGK.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My question is:&lt;/strong&gt; How to allocate 50% of Developer 1 for the first day of Task 2, and 100% of him for the second day of Task 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7702" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-05-31T13:02:01.957" LastActivityDate="2017-05-31T17:47:46.780" Title="Various resource assignments for different portions of a task" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21539" CreationDate="2017-05-31T12:25:07.273" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could create a bookmark, removing the from and to dates in the URL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever you click on &quot;last 30 days&quot; on Tempo, the URL is updated with a &quot;to&quot; and &quot;from&quot; fields. Thus, if you use the generated link afterwards, it will keep those fields and re-use the dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the URL also has a parameter called &quot;span=30&quot; that marks the &quot;last 30 days&quot; span, you would only need to have the URL without those parameters (from and to dates).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creating a bookmark removing those from:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;http://myjiraserver/secure/TempoUserBoard!timesheet.jspa?userId=userxyz&amp;amp;filterIds=-1001&amp;amp;use-ISO8061-week-numbers=true&amp;amp;period=&amp;amp;periodType=FLEX&amp;amp;periodView=DATES&amp;amp;from=2017-05-02&amp;amp;to=2017-05-31&amp;amp;exact=&amp;amp;span=30&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;to this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;http://myjiraserver/secure/TempoUserBoard!timesheet.jspa?userId=userxyz&amp;amp;filterIds=-1001&amp;amp;use-ISO8061-week-numbers=true&amp;amp;period=&amp;amp;periodType=FLEX&amp;amp;periodView=DATES&amp;amp;exact=&amp;amp;span=30&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;would do the trick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23216" LastActivityDate="2017-05-31T12:25:07.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21724" CreationDate="2017-05-31T13:00:28.160" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not 100% sure this would work, but if what you want is for Dev1 and Dev2 to work in  parallel on tasks 1 and 2 until task 1 is done (so 4 hours) and then swarm until the remainder (20 hours, half of which is 10 hours) of task 2 is done, couldn't you just set Dev1 to 28.57% (4/14) task 1 and 71.43% (10/14) task 2?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-05-31T13:00:28.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21724" CreationDate="2017-05-31T15:12:03.733" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ideally, I do prefer to understand the underlying reason before providing a solution. Can you explain why you need to allocate Dev1 depending on the day? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a quick workaround, you can split Task 2 into two parts, assign 50% of Dev1 to first part, and 100% to second part together with Dev2 for both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8532" LastActivityDate="2017-05-31T15:12:03.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21559" CreationDate="2017-05-31T15:19:23.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are using story points, then you should not estimate with time (You will probably not like this answer :)).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an epic, Jira sums up the points of all stories related to it, so it's straightforward to report total points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need the time estimate at a high level for reporting purposes, you should rely on the velocity of the team. Then, you can provide roadmap kind of time estimates for your backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8532" LastActivityDate="2017-05-31T15:19:23.850" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21724" CreationDate="2017-05-31T17:47:46.780" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can adjust the hours of work for each resource by day in the Task Usage view:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/oZBIg.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/oZBIg.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gantt Chart then looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EuVp1.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EuVp1.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastActivityDate="2017-05-31T17:47:46.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21723" CreationDate="2017-05-31T18:42:02.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had the same problem in my organization, and I can share my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We had three projects running simultaneously in a six person team. I was the ScrumMaster and all projects had the same sprint length and all sprints start at same time. We had one day for Sprint Planning, Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective for all projects, Planning and Review with the respective clients and just one Retrospective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We had a collective code ownership so every team member could pull a task for any project. Our rule, no project could stop, in other words, we had the have at least one task in &quot;Doing&quot; for all projects. We had a single board with the selected backlog for each project and each team member pulls a task from the board, respecting our rule. Each project had it own product backlog on TFS and we used a physical board for our current sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has worked very well for our team, and we could deal with bugs in production software and we also have dealt with team idleness. If one project stopped, we focused our efforts on the other projects, until a new one arrives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28672" LastActivityDate="2017-05-31T18:42:02.643" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21731" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21735" CreationDate="2017-05-31T21:10:13.760" Score="6" ViewCount="749" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thing is, we are a start-up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far, I have been the only programmer taking care of our desktop app, api, mobile app...etc, but obviously we had to hire another programmer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He is quite experienced &quot;frontend developer&quot;, but when he started working on our project, it seemed to me that quality of his code is fairly poor, I mean, if you saw something like &lt;code&gt;file.name.split(&quot;.&quot;).pop().toLowerCase()...&lt;/code&gt; - and in case &lt;code&gt;.&lt;/code&gt; not being included within a string, it throws undefined error... etc.. you know this is bad, and such mistakes could be found on multiple places within the code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course we discussed that, but what would you do if you were me? How to manage such people? &#xA;Now I have to review every single line of the code he writes, I am not telling this is bad, quite the contrary, I would like to do it more often, but not from the point of view that on every single line lies a bottle-neck :/ .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It happened multiple times, that makes me sad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing is, this guy got another task, and it seems to me that I need to refactor a lot of lines from the code, sadly, that code is not usable in production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or did we just found bad people? Are there actually developers, who take their code seriously and see stuff like that? (I am very strict about code quality, since our product is used by pretty large amount of people and I want our app not to broke on undefined errors, I would rather it broken on &quot;no space left on device&quot; kind of errors :-) ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28737" LastEditorUserId="7559" LastEditDate="2017-06-01T09:06:18.917" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T14:13:24.693" Title="How to handle &quot;bad quality code&quot; by a team member" Tags="&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8547" CreationDate="2017-06-01T06:00:15.267" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hard coding your dates kills one the biggest reasons you are tracking your schedule--to monitor your finish variances. Hard coded dates are used as constraints in the schedule logic so that your finish variances read zero all the time, but your resource utilization increases to absorb schedule slips. Instead, the dates should be derived based on your schedule dependencies and sequencing and work package durations. As such, if you transfer the schedule into a new version, you only need to adjust the first milestone &quot;start&quot; date; then everything else will automatically adjust and sequence based on the logic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28738" LastActivityDate="2017-06-01T06:00:15.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21731" CreationDate="2017-06-01T09:38:01.180" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Human performance is complex but one thing is certain: we are not very reliable.  There is a lot of material out there to study regarding this topic.  There are theories around motivation, theories around the performance curve, personalities, behavior, etc.  Too much material to post here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One area I will focus on in my answer is the performance curve.  Some theorize it is not normally distributed but rather skewed positively, meaning majority are mediocre performers while few are high performers.  Some theorize it resembles a Pareto curve.  I personally think this is accurate.  This means that, as you build your team, you need to expect that, in most likelihood, you will load your team with mediocre performers.  Occasionally, you will find that stellar, hyper performer, but don't expect it and don't build your capability around him/her.  In fact, when you find that person, you have secondary risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means your build processes for whatever your product is needs to have quality enablers as part of that process, meaning you do not blindly rely on a human's output.  You check it.  You build checks into the process to find flaws and to eliminate them.  On the proactive side, you train, you measure, you incentivize, you provide feedback, sometimes you replace, and on and on.  This is nothing more than quality management, both leading and lagging controls that do nothing more than minimize defects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, remember the concept of regression to the mean.  Stellar performance is often followed by poor performance and vice versa.  As I said above, we are not that reliable.  Sometimes we perform well, other times no, but we hug our mean abilities.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-06-01T09:38:01.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21731" CreationDate="2017-06-01T17:20:30.640" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;David tackled the psychological side pretty well. I'd like to offer a couple of technical solutions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Test Driven Development: If you have to write the test, before writing the code, then you're going to have better code. It's been proven out thousands of times in the last twenty years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pair Programming/ Mob Programming: Another, proven out too many times to count, concept. Two Devs with one keyboard are more effective and productive than one Dev with two keyboards. On this one you can even leverage some of the soft skil concepts by suggesting this along the lines of &quot;No better way to learn than by doing, I'd love to pair with you so I can learn more.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Automation: At a previous company, one of the best things the VP of Development did was to lay down this law &quot;Nothing can be checked in unless it has automation tests created or updated to support it.&quot; You need to get out of the business of checking code manually. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers and good luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-06-01T17:20:30.640" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21736" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21737" CreationDate="2017-06-02T06:18:02.300" Score="3" ViewCount="178" Body="&lt;p&gt;We do Scrum - therefore we do not estimate hours or workdays, but estimate complexity (Story Points). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As our customers mostly want to know what a feature might cost, we somehow have to do a conversion from complexity to money. In a big project with several stories for one customer (it seems this is the use-case mostly described) the strength of Scrum is uncertainty and the ability to change priorities after every sprint. In our case most enterprise customers only &quot;buy&quot; on feature for an application, so there is no &quot;balancing&quot; over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, how to deal with such use-cases? How do I convert our estimations to an amount which our customers are (hopefully) willing to pay for? How do we reduce the risk of uncertainty in our estimations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28506" LastActivityDate="2017-06-02T08:38:08.123" Title="Conversion from complexity estimation to actual costs" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;enterprise&gt;&lt;fixed-price&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21736" CreationDate="2017-06-02T07:31:44.520" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need three values to forecast a cost: Speed of the team, estimate from the team and the cost of the team. Leading to a formula like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;FeatureStoryPoints * (TeamCost / AverageVelocity) = Estimated Price&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;AverageVelocity&lt;/strong&gt;: For speed you could take the average velocity (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scruminc.com/yesterdays-weather/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;yesterday's weather&lt;/a&gt;) of a team. Do calculate capacity and normalize the velocity for each sprint. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;TeamCapacity% = &#xA;  ActualHoursAvailableForThisSprint / ContractHoursOfAllTeamMembers &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;NormalizedVelocity = SprintCompletedStoryPoints * TeamCapacity%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;AverageVelocity = (NormalizedVelocitySprint1 + Sprint2 + Sprint3) / 3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;FeatureStoryPoints&lt;/strong&gt; : For the estimates you could try to make the stories really small as it reduces uncertainty. With a list of small estimated user-stories in story-point you can forecast how many Sprint it would cost to complete the stories. Practise &lt;a href=&quot;http://agileforall.com/resources/how-to-split-a-user-story/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;stories splitting&lt;/a&gt;. Let the full team estimate and discuss to get all the uncertainties on the table.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TeamCost&lt;/strong&gt;: For the cost you take the full cost of the team and calculate what the team costs per Sprint. Do take all the costs into account, not just salaries. E.g. vacation days, training, sick-days, over-head people (HR, managers, etc), building costs and materials. Know what your team costs per Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So technically you could come up with an average cost per story-point, just make sure you re-evaluate the velocity and costs as teams change this metric will change as well. Also do not re-use old estimates, clear them and use the new info from the last iterations to re-estimate continuously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For fixed prices I would always add a good margin so you do not get into trouble. Communicate this to your clients. I mean telling them that a non-fixed price would probably be cheaper most of the times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do think if you want to sell features clients think they need or how you can help them finding the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.impactmapping.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;impact or behavioural change&lt;/a&gt; they need to grow their business. &lt;a href=&quot;https://medium.com/@NReijmersdal/the-agile-sales-pitch-6c67ef303bc9&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Selling an Agile way of working&lt;/a&gt; might be more interesting long-term than just selling features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2017-06-02T08:38:08.123" LastActivityDate="2017-06-02T08:38:08.123" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21731" CreationDate="2017-06-02T08:56:21.547" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Training. I have noticed that most programmers coming out-of-school or with only 2-3 years of experience are quickAndDirty Cowboy Coders. It is shame, but schools do not focus on good programming. They focus on getting things done and working alone to prove you can do it. Not working together in larger code-bases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It starts with awareness that stuff like readability, maintainability and extensibility is more important than making it tick. What really works is good open discussions about topics like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Everyone should read &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0132350882&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the CleanCode book&lt;/a&gt; and discuss each chapter in short sessions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Watch a &lt;a href=&quot;https://cleancoders.com/episode/clean-code-episode-1/show&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CleanCode video's together&lt;/a&gt; and do a group discussion afterwards. (First episode is free and is great to create awareness, but not how to tackle it, I suggest you watch it with the whole company if you can handle Bob's style ;-)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_programming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pair programming&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_refactoring&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;refactor&lt;/a&gt; messy code to good code to learn&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Train &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TDD&lt;/a&gt; with &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/the-coding-dojo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Coding Dojo&lt;/a&gt;, these 4-5 sessions focus on readability and testability.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each iteration our teams spend like 1,5 hours on stuff like this. So we keep growing and learn how to make better software. Sometimes we disagree with stuff we learn, but this way we can decide what works for us and keep our paradigms open.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2017-06-02T09:06:34.623" LastActivityDate="2017-06-02T09:06:34.623" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21741" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21744" CreationDate="2017-06-02T10:15:17.630" Score="0" ViewCount="100" Body="&lt;p&gt;I took part in a above one year lasting project. It is website with couple additional functionalities for a rather important institution. ( in my subjective opinion ). At date 0 there was deployment of website to the public. So 22 may was website start. There were many bugs and features from a client, that at the day 19 may weren't fixed, developed. Three days before deadline i was delegated to go to a client and discuss with them and help with deployment. Client who was dozen of people told me all mistaked during three days, two meetings a day. Boss of my company went to vacation and i had to deploy website. We arranged with boss a small budget to me for helping with some bugs. And up to deadline hour i made with only my strenghts couple of fixes so final effect of website was without any mistake told by dozens of people. So in my opinion final effect to the users was ok. Because without that mistakes, as client wanted, who knows his users. &#xA;And now...&#xA;Company who delivered most of code to website is very unhappy with my changes - that are telling about maintaining code. And also are unhappy about bugs in console. I am asking, everything is working on website, final effect is ok, i did a lot of things to a deadline as much as i could. Now the final effect is ok, but around this, people in my company may seem to be unhappy about quality of fixes i made to the end. It's not Mars mission, but website - some mistaked in javascript console can be turned off. &#xA;I even don't count on extra money because i did this, it was just a matter of my abilities - i have seen i had access to code, i am experienced programmer, so i repaired this as client wanted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13378" LastActivityDate="2017-06-02T12:52:13.147" Title="Did i good to do quick fixes, couple minutes before deadline." Tags="&lt;deadline&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21741" CreationDate="2017-06-02T12:28:06.873" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no canonical answer here so this question I think is out of bounds for this site.  However, I like it.  Here are my thoughts:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of you are right.  Your story suggests that you exhibited heroics to get the job done to the satisfaction of your customer.  It appears heroics were needed for this project at this time.  So from that perspective, you should have been commended for your efforts.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, heroics are unpredictable in its outcomes.  Mature operations and projects do not need or want heroics because of this unpredictability and downstream effects.  Think about NASA.  Think about Apollo 13.  Heroics were necessary to get that craft back to the ground safely and there were many heros then; however, NASA does everything it can to avoid the need for heroics, in terms of planning, risk management, tons of controls and checks and balances, testing, and on and on.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What your company is doing wrong is looking to find blame and it appears it's you.  They should be conducting a lessons learned analysis to find out why they ended up in a situation where heroics were necessary and figure out how to avoid them in the future while thanking you for your efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is completely my opinion.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-06-02T12:28:06.873" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21741" CreationDate="2017-06-02T12:28:27.270" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is all about perspective:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You saved the day and you are a &lt;strong&gt;Hero&lt;/strong&gt; by fixing the product&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You left around messy unclean code and you are &lt;strong&gt;lousy developer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your are both right, congrats! Cleaning time...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You have a piece of functionality that you need to add to your system.&#xA;  You see two ways to do it, one is quick to do but is messy - you are&#xA;  sure that it will make further changes harder in the future. The other&#xA;  results in a cleaner design, but will take longer to put in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Technical Debt is a wonderful metaphor developed by Ward Cunningham to&#xA;  help us think about this problem. In this metaphor, doing things the&#xA;  quick and dirty way sets us up with a technical debt, which is similar&#xA;  to a financial debt. Like a financial debt, the technical debt incurs&#xA;  interest&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://martinfowler.com/bliki/TechnicalDebt.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://martinfowler.com/bliki/TechnicalDebt.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who is going to repay the technical-debt you left behind? Even if you did it to the best you could, others seem to think you rushed and left a lot of &lt;a href=&quot;https://martinfowler.com/bliki/TechnicalDebt.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;technical-debt&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every project has maintenance even non-critical websites. Therefor someone should estimate if keep cleaning is worth it. You made the call and others are challenging you on it. Don't feel bad, even if you don't 100% agree you could say it wasn't your call and you should have notified someone to make the call on leaving the errors and messy patches. Make friends, find the win-win and fix the code if needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2017-06-02T12:52:13.147" LastActivityDate="2017-06-02T12:52:13.147" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21745" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21748" CreationDate="2017-06-02T14:44:55.520" Score="3" ViewCount="1912" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are using Scrum and our user stories are estimated using the Fibonacci sequence. I understand the benefit of using the Fibonacci sequence for estimates. In all references to velocity it is mentioned it is a simple sum of all the estimates. This is a linear sum though. Two size 5 tasks do not equate to ten size 1 tasks or say five size 2 tasks. How then do you calculate velocity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28748" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-10-21T22:28:15.200" LastActivityDate="2019-10-21T22:28:15.200" Title="How to calculate velocity when using fibonacci estimates" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;velocity&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21745" CreationDate="2017-06-02T15:04:01.880" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If &lt;strong&gt;2x5&lt;/strong&gt; does not equal &lt;strong&gt;10x1&lt;/strong&gt; then your relative sizes are off. A 5 means it 5 times more complex then 1 on average. On average it will also take 5 times more time to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still velocity is defined as the number of points you achieve in a Sprint. Just sum them. Then it is wise to average velocity of the last three Sprints, something &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Sutherland&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jeff Sutherland&lt;/a&gt; calls &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scruminc.com/yesterdays-weather/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yesterday's Weather&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you can use this number to forecast how many story points the team will probably complete in the upcoming Sprint or Sprints. More detail is a waste of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2017-06-02T21:02:46.443" LastActivityDate="2017-06-02T21:02:46.443" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21745" CreationDate="2017-06-02T22:09:57.127" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calculating velocity is relatively straightforward &lt;em&gt;if and only if&lt;/em&gt; you treat it as a rough estimate for forecasting. If your metrics imply great precision, you're using velocity wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, the two most common techniques are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Trailing average.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Median with confidence intervals (e.g. &quot;a range&quot;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many variations on these techniques, but they all basically define an educated guess about how much work the team is likely to complete in the upcoming Sprint. It's a capacity planning tool for Sprint Planning, a schedule estimation tool for Release Planning, and a baseline to track within the current Sprint&amp;mdash;that's it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Trailing Average&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The easiest method is just to find the mean of a sliding window over an historical period. Pragmatically, I find that at least three Sprints are required to find a &lt;em&gt;useful&lt;/em&gt; mean. You aren't looking for perfect accuracy; you're just looking for a reasonable estimate of your team's capacity for the upcoming Sprint after applying whatever &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8826/4271&quot;&gt;fudge factors&lt;/a&gt; are relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if your last three Sprints had &lt;em&gt;delivered&lt;/em&gt; total story points of 5, 8, and 5 then you'd arrive at 6 points as your baseline velocity estimate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;# Sum of Sprints, averaged and rounded down.&#xA;((5 + 8 + 5) / 3.0).floor == 6&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After accounting for fudge factors like vacations, supply chain delays, or other temporary effects on team capacity, you arrive at a likely target for the upcoming Sprint. Based on the team's historical velocity above and assuming no significant fudge factors apply, six story points would be a reasonable forecast of the team's capacity for the upcoming Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the number of story points completed in the next Sprint, you simply adjust your average accordingly. For example, if you deliver 7 points then your next average might be based on Sprints delivering &lt;code&gt;8 + 5 + 7&lt;/code&gt;, which still yields a forecast of 6 points because it's generally better to underestimate than overcommit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can calculate your mean based on a longer time series, or make your calculations more complicated, but this often just leads to needless complexity. The trailing average method is often &quot;good enough&quot; for estimating how much work the team should accept during Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Ranges with Confidence Intervals&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't get your Scrum Team or management team to understand that velocity is an estimate, then you can make it more explicit by describing it as a range with a confidence interval. You can use a tool like Mountain Goat Software's &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/velocity-range-calculator&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Velocity Range Calculator&lt;/a&gt; to perform the following formula:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Assuming n observations, the formula for calculating a 90% confidence is given by&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;j = n/2 – 1.645 (n*0.25)0.5&#xA;k = n/2 + 1.645 (n*0.25)0.5&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;where j and k represent the velocity observations to use. Round results up to the next highest value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given five or more inputs like &lt;code&gt;5, 7, 6, 3, 5, 8, 6&lt;/code&gt;, the tool will give you both a median and a 90% confidence interval similar to the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For velocity values of 3,5,5,6,6,7,8&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You have a median velocity of 6 and there is a 90% likelihood that&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  your actual velocity will fall between 3 and 8&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outside of the tool, you can make this more complicated by adjusting the sliding window or calculating other confidence intervals if you like. However, a range basically sets people's expectations more clearly by stating that estimates and averages may have volatile swings. One way to express this range in a more narrative fashion would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We're targeting 6 story points, and will probably deliver between 3 to 8 points this Sprint.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, a range is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; inherently a better or more accurate predictor of the future than the trailing average. It can be more informative, certainly, but a given Sprint could still deliver zero story points, or a large value outside the expected range. A range is better at communicating variability, but if you haven't done a good enough job at explaining that estimation is not a money-back guarantee then folks without a statistical background are just as likely to tell you to shoot for the upper end of the range instead of the (pragmatically more accurate) geometric mean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your mileage—and the amount of aspirin you need to keep on hand—may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2017-06-06T08:33:08.227" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T08:33:08.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21749" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21752" CreationDate="2017-06-03T18:00:19.317" Score="3" ViewCount="126" Body="&lt;p&gt;As said many times before (&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/12743/how-do-we-deal-with-bugs-in-scrum-environment&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/8098/handling-bugs-in-the-scrum-process&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/5339/tracking-points-spent-on-bugs-during-sprint&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Do not estimate bugs / defects&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know in Scrum we try to minimize the defect rate, but it happens now and then. Fixing such unestimated tasks might have big effects on the actual velocity of the team. I wonder if there is some kind of proceeding or formula to make this visible to the team and to others?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it just, that an increase of defect rate (= drop of velocity) is a sign we should pay more attention to our QA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we do not estimate Bugs, this one is not a duplicate of that question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/5339/tracking-points-spent-on-bugs-during-sprint&quot;&gt;Tracking points spent on bugs during sprint&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28506" LastEditorUserId="28506" LastEditDate="2017-06-03T18:14:06.463" LastActivityDate="2017-06-04T08:04:58.820" Title="Deal with unestimated Defect-Tasks in Sprint for Veloctity calculation" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21750" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-03T18:05:17.467" Score="2" ViewCount="259" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a project that lasts 1.5 years, the project plan has over 400 tasks pulled in from different groups, currently all tasks are not linked, and are not arranged chronologically but sit together in separate groups. For example, the business group will provide their project plan that covers different phases of the project, while the engineering team will provide their plan in coding, building environment for testing, while a data group will have their plan in data cleansing, testing on the environment dev team build, etc...therefore, the time is not arranged chronologically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few issues in sequencing: 1. if I sequence the tasks with just the predecessors, the Gantt chart will be very hard to read--it's hard to read already as we have so many tasks 2. moving the tasks chronologically and sequence them would be a humongous task and very hard for each team to update later.&#xA;Any suggestions as to how to better solve the issue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28224" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T22:38:13.360" Title="Complex project schedule" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;schedule&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21750" CreationDate="2017-06-03T22:25:30.013" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are a few issues in sequencing: 1. if I sequence the tasks with just the predecessors, the Gantt chart will be very hard to read--it's hard to read already as we have so many tasks &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task links should be based on the reality of the work. Don't be concerned about how the Gantt Chart looks. If there are too many link lines showing, modify the chart to remove them (right-click in the Gantt Chart area, select Layout, select the first option).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;moving the tasks chronologically and sequence them would be a humongous task and very hard for each team to update later.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't do this. Leave related tasks together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is common for a schedule to be made up of parts from different groups. In truly complex schedules these tasks sit in their own projects and the projects are connected together in a master project. For a schedule with only a few hundred tasks, it's okay to leave them in a single file and group them together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, the schedule should reflect reality which is that different groups each have their own set of related tasks and those tasks should remain together. There will be cross-group links as one team hands off to another team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastActivityDate="2017-06-03T22:25:30.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21749" CreationDate="2017-06-04T08:04:58.820" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are measuring a long(er) running project with velocity to get an idea when features or milestones will be reached it is a good idea to not estimate defects. Defects are work that should have been completed in other points already in the past. If you have a lot of defects now, probably you will have the same amount in the future, slowing your whole project down. It would give a false sense of speed if you give non-valuable work story-points. Velocity goes down when you have defects or &lt;a href=&quot;https://martinfowler.com/bliki/TechnicalDebt.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;technical-debt&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An increase in defects or decrease in velocity should always result in a good &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jamesshore.com/Agile-Book/root_cause_analysis.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;root-cause analysis&lt;/a&gt; during a retrospective to find ways to prevent similar mistakes or improve the process. If the cause is really your QA process is something you have to find out, as it greatly depends on the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some metrics I like to use to signal issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Average velocity over time (should go up or stay stable)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Defect count vs complete features count (feature side should go up)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time spend on defects (should go down or stay stable)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These should be pretty stable or going down/up, depending on the metric.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now from experience the root-cause of most defects is most often not the lack of a QA process, but an architecture or design that has a lot of coupled dependencies, making it hard to maintain and extend the code base. Often it is hard to create test-automation for it and therefor it hard to &lt;a href=&quot;https://martinfowler.com/books/refactoring.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;refactor&lt;/a&gt; and clean it. I always suggest to watch the first episode of &lt;a href=&quot;https://cleancoders.com/episode/clean-code-episode-1/show&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Clean Code&lt;/a&gt; to get an idea of common issues with code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2017-06-04T08:04:58.820" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21731" CreationDate="2017-06-05T14:13:24.693" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like Joel's suggestions @ &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/21735/20765&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/21735/20765&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would start by doing a peer code review. You need to build a relationship with him to do so. Try to ask him to code review yours and you to code review his. Do not do this in a silo, start by sitting together. The more time you spent together, the better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you can move on easier to the TDD or Pair Programming. Start from where you are and then move higher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20765" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T14:13:24.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21664" CreationDate="2017-06-05T14:24:00.283" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers covered pretty much everything, I just want to add a couple of things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider adding a &quot;...so that...&quot; clause at the end, as this might&#xA;narrow down your scope in order to be more specific. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider&#xA;reviewing a cheat sheet as described &lt;a href=&quot;http://agileforall.com/resources/how-to-split-a-user-story/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. If need be, consult&#xA;the developers in your team to help you, or BAs around you, according&#xA;to the business needs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5522" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T14:24:00.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21756" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21758" CreationDate="2017-06-05T16:46:54.837" Score="5" ViewCount="148" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say I have a team member who is working on a story. While working on that story, s/he runs into an issue that could or could not be crucial to the completion of that original story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should the team member:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) Go down the &quot;rabbit hole&quot; and see if s/he could solve the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) Write up another ticket for the issue and place it into the current sprint and start working on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c) Write up a ticket and pass over it for now, and see how long it can be swept under the rug during this sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm leaning toward option C as it allows the developer to keep working toward the completion of the feature. But it still reports the issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any thoughts? Which option would you advise, and why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28771" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-06-05T18:00:50.373" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T19:45:45.877" Title="What to do when running into a potential rabbit hole in a story?" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21664" CreationDate="2017-06-05T16:48:12.553" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Engage Entire Team in Writing User Stories&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the future web portal the creation of a new user account is systematically precedeed by a step-by-step questionnaire featuring 10-20 questions (mostly multiple choice). Once the questionnaire is completed the new user enters an email address and password and provided that these are valid, the user account is created and the new user redirected to a Home Page / Dashboard view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Repeat after me: &quot;User stories are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; specifications!&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; You are struggling because you're trying to create a detailed specification using the standard Connextra &lt;em&gt;As a...I want...so that...&lt;/em&gt; format, but that's not how user stories are intended to be crafted or used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While a user story should follow &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST criteria&lt;/a&gt;, in this case the problem isn't so much making it more granular; it's in finding the right level of granularity to effectively create Sprint-sized chunks with the team. To do this, you need to do a couple of things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Involve the team in &lt;em&gt;creating&lt;/em&gt; the stories.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you discuss the stories and the possible implementation details with the rest of the team, you will discover how best to capture and decompose your epic. You may find you have one story or many, discover stories or dependencies you haven't considered in your role as Product Owner, and provide context to the team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ensure each story fits within a single Sprint.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A single user story must fit within a single Sprint. If it's bigger than one Sprint, it's probably a theme or epic and should be decomposed. It can be smaller, but whether it's a big story or a set of small stories should make very little difference except to your level of risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smaller stories allow you to make progress even if the Sprint Goal isn't met, while a big story trades upfront planning and decomposition for just-in-time planning by the team within the Sprint. This can increase the risk undelivered stories or a failure to achieve the Sprint Goal, but not every story has to be less than 13 points of complexity.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make sure each story is &lt;em&gt;testable.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using test-first design, rather than overwrought specifications, is generally the best way to decompose work and to ensure it meets the team's Definition of Done. Doing this collaboratively is the most effective way to define the right tests.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may find that you need to dedicate a Sprint to developing the contents of the Product Backlog and refining stories for the next one or two Sprint Planning meetings. That should be enough to prime the pump, and it's okay to allocate that to the project if necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider making the following user story your top story in the backlog:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Team,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  we want to collaboratively define the user stories for the login epic&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that we get the right level of granularity and create sufficient context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This kind of story is equally acceptable for project initiation, &quot;Sprint Zero,&quot; or Backlog Refinement. Once the whole team is actively discussing the epic or theme, the level of granularity needed should become self-evident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T16:48:12.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21756" CreationDate="2017-06-05T18:08:38.557" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Option A should just not be done; don't do any invisible work. If new work crops up in any form, &lt;em&gt;document it&lt;/em&gt;. This is assuming it's not just a two-minute thing, of course, but if so then it's probably not worth talking about in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for what &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be done...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While working on that story, s/he runs into an issue that could or could not be crucial to the completion of that original story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer depends heavily on whether that's 'could' or 'could not' - or, rather, 'does' or 'does not'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the new issue does not impact the completion of the original story, then it's just new work. Put it in the product backlog and notify the Product Owner. Option c, in this case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the new issue &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; impact the completion of the original story, then it is essentially an unexpected roadblock on the story. You obviously can't finish the original story until the roadblock is resolved, so the roadblock becomes higher priority. At that point, you can either negotiate with the Product Owner to include the new work in the Sprint while taking something else out or (much more traumatic) terminate the Sprint early and re-plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; whether or not it impacts the completion of the original story, then first order of business is finding out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T18:08:38.557" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21756" CreationDate="2017-06-05T19:45:45.877" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am assuming you are describing an edge case scenario. The way we work on edge case scenarios is by answering few questions such as : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;1. Is it easier to fix this 'Inconsequential' issue now rather than later from a development perspective ?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes fixing an issue early, however inconsequential they might be for the final solution can save you from a lot of maintenance hours, especially if they are known unknowns. If you are answer is Yes, You should raise a new ticket with priority as 'Inconsequential'(or a similar status) and talk to your product owner and negotiate its priority for the ongoing or next sprint.If your answer is No, still raise the ticket with priority type as 'Inconsequential'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;2. Will the deployment logistics support an easier upgrade during next release ?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your answer is Yes, then this will allow you to move this fix to the next scheduled upgrade. If you are answer is No, negotiate with your product owner and include the ticket in the ongoing sprint. It might push the limits in your team's capacity, however the learning from this exercise might also increase your team's capacity in future sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;3. Will not fixing this edge case impact the pillars of usability and stability of the solution ?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if the fix does not contribute to the specific problem you are trying to solve. If it hampers usability or the stability of the solution; this ticket's priority should be higher than 'Inconsequential'. Hampering architectural principles should be considered as major tickets, alike functional bugs. Hence if your answer is yes, bump up its priority and if the answer for 1 and 2 is also Yes, schedule it in current sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11982" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T19:45:45.877" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21760" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21761" CreationDate="2017-06-05T21:57:24.387" Score="4" ViewCount="137" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to derive the functional requirements from a use case but I'm with some doubts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The use case is about create a new post and it is presented below. For example looking to the pre-conditions one functional requirement could be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When a user submit his credentials and they are valid, the system&#xA;  shall initiate the session of this user&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is correct? I read that a functional requirement can be written in the user or system perspective. In the case above it is in the system perspective, in the user or both? Because it has &quot;when a user...&quot; and then &quot;the system shall...&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And for example in the step number 1 of the main flow what could be a functional requirement for this? I write this 2 options below but I don't know if it is correct, because I don't know if it should be written in the user or system perspective. For example in the user perspective:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The admin shall be able to fill and submit the information relative to&#xA;  a post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or in the system perspective:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When an admin fill and submits the post information, the system should&#xA;  store in the database that information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you help understand better how to define the functional requirements properly in the example?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;use case&lt;/strong&gt; is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Title:&lt;/strong&gt; Create Post&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ator:&lt;/strong&gt; Administrator&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pre-conditions:&lt;/strong&gt; The administrator has a session initiated in the system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Trigger:&lt;/strong&gt; The administrator indicates that he wants to create an event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Main flow:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1- The admin fill the information relative to title and message&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2- The system presents a preview of the post in the page&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3 - The admin submits the filled information, and the admin can just&#xA;  save the post information or publish the post&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4- The system validates the information inserted by the admin&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;5- If the admin just save the post the system saves the inserted&#xA;  information in the db and informs the user that the post was saved. If&#xA;  the admin publish the post, the system saves the inserted information&#xA;  in the db,publish the event, and informs the user that the post was&#xA;  publish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;6- The system redirects the admin to the admin page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Alternative flow: Invalid Data&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1- The system presents a message to inform the admin that exist fields&#xA;  that were filled in a incorrect way&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2- The admin corrects the fields&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3- The flux continues in the step 3 of the main flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Post-condition:&lt;/strong&gt; Post registered in the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28717" LastEditorDisplayName="user16244" LastEditDate="2018-11-19T11:40:54.723" LastActivityDate="2018-11-19T11:40:54.723" Title="Doubt defining functional requirements" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21760" CreationDate="2017-06-05T23:11:59.680" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every organization has its own way of defining requirements. There is no &quot;one true way&quot; to specify them. If you want to know how requirements should be written in &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; organization, you'll need to ask someone who works there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generically, though, you can pull out the behaviors of the system and specify &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; the system is supposed to do, and who the consumer of that behavior is. The specific details of how the system does these things—in other words, how the engineers implement the underlying behavior—is quite often irrelevant to the specification because functional requirements are about &lt;em&gt;behaviors and outcomes&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've identified the essential behaviors, you can write your specifications any way you like. Two common ways are &lt;em&gt;declarative specifications&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;executable specifications.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Focus on &quot;What,&quot; Not &quot;How&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Functional requirements describe &lt;em&gt;behaviors&lt;/em&gt; of a system, while non-functional requirements are about its &lt;em&gt;properties&lt;/em&gt;. To find the functional requirements, you generally want to focus on something the system &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; rather than on how it does it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Your Examples&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your examples, you're too focused on &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; the functionality is implemented. If that's required in your organization, then do that. Otherwise, specify how the system behaves rather than how the specification is implemented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Identifying Functions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, who is the consumer of the behavior? In your examples, it's the &lt;em&gt;administrator.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, identify &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; the behaviors or outcomes are for the administrator given a specific trigger or input to the function. In your example, some obvious behaviors are: authentication, validation, and redirection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The system SHALL require an administrator to be authenticated prior to creating an event.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The system SHALL validate the administrator's event before publishing it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strike&gt;The system SHALL NOT store invalid events.&lt;/strike&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The system SHALL display errors for invalid events.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The system SHALL redirect to the event form when event data is invalid.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The system SHALL redirect to the admin page when event data is published.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's pretty much it at the functional level. You'll note that #3 is crossed out. That's because I would argue that #3 is a non-functional requirement that describes a property of the system rather than a behavior, but I think it could be argued either way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Tip: However you choose to draw the distinction between functional and non-functional requirements, just be consistent about it!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Executable Specifications&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than writing specifications for each procedural step, or function, another approach is to declare what the system must do (or not do) when a given behavior is triggered. In your example, the consumer is the administrator. If you express it using Cucumber's Gherkin syntax, key elements of your use case look more like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Scenario: successfully publish a valid event&#xA;    GIVEN that the administrator is logged in,&#xA;    WHEN the administrator publishes a valid event&#xA;    THEN the system stores the event in the database&#xA;    AND THEN displays the admin page.&#xA;&#xA;Scenario: fail to publish an invalid event&#xA;    GIVEN that the administrator is logged in,&#xA;    WHEN the administrator publishes an invalid event&#xA;    THEN the system displays an error message&#xA;    AND THEN presents the event screen for corrections.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A long list of shall or shall-not statements is very hard to reason about, and very hard to test. I find this form of functional behavior a lot more readable than declarative specifications because it reads almost like natural language. Furthermore, this sort of planning is inherently more &lt;em&gt;testable&lt;/em&gt;. Wouldn't it be better to have a set of requirements where the implementation can be validated automatically instead of by hand?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Behavior Driven Development (BDD) and Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) do require thinking a little differently about how you write your specifications, but it's usually worth the extra effort. However, your organizational values may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-06-05T23:11:59.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21763" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-06T07:20:06.220" Score="0" ViewCount="157" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to set up a filter subscription for sending a list of issues that are &lt;code&gt;not in (Resolved, Closed) AND assignee is EMPTY&lt;/code&gt; to reporters and to their team leaders. So I need to find any issues for every possible reporter and send that list (if it's not empty) to said reporter and to the reporter's team leader. How can I do that (if it's possible)? If there are no options with native JIRA features, maybe there are some third-party solutions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28777" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-06-06T13:15:21.577" LastActivityDate="2020-04-20T06:00:50.053" Title="Subscription to the JIRA filter for the reporter and team leader" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2307" CreationDate="2017-06-06T15:47:16.740" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no denying that startups must be ready to pivot on the spot in order to stay afloat as industries and economies continuously change. Your gut intuition is often a great resource as well. However, when the future success of your company is riding on your actions, going with the flow may not be a risk worth taking. The fast-paced environment of the startup world does not mean all standards should be thrown out the window. In fact, by implementing processes you ensure that your startup will remain on track. Phillip Salter from Forbes notes that, &quot;Ambitious entrepreneurs need to create realistic growth targets and develop plans and concrete actions of how growth will be achieved.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With business processes already in place, you'll have a much easier time &lt;a href=&quot;https://tallyfy.com/scale-operations-consistent-business-processes/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;scaling your company&lt;/a&gt;. So when your startup goes viral, you will be ready to conquer your success in an organized manner, free of chaos. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28782" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T15:47:16.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10092" CreationDate="2017-06-06T16:17:30.783" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no ideal ratio or formula for your team that will guarantee your company success. However, it is important to &lt;a href=&quot;https://tallyfy.com/build-great-team-culture/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;build a team&lt;/a&gt; with a variety of personalities and strengths so that each person can contribute something unique. I wouldn't consider one personality type more talented than the other, however. While the free spirit with the limitless ideas may lie at the root of the company's plans, the Type-A character is vital to implementing and following through with these plans. Employees with little experience also should not be feared, as they can bring some fresh perspective while you guide them in any direction you need. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't be afraid to mix it up. You may be pleasantly surprised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28782" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T16:17:30.783" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5435" CreationDate="2017-06-06T16:53:43.647" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am impressed by your desire to go out of your way to help your company. I have some ideas for how you can start in small ways, so as not to be pushy. I think the biggest issue lies in the lack of business process used in your company. I suggest focusing on this before looking to improve issues in programming, because you are surrounded by programming experts who are capable of making these changes themselves. Instead, &lt;a href=&quot;https://tallyfy.com/benefits-business-process-management/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;implementing standardized processes&lt;/a&gt; will keep the team organized and focused. Here's some ways you can start building these processes without being upfront about it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take advantage of those &lt;a href=&quot;https://tallyfy.com/business-automation-tools/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PM tools&lt;/a&gt;. Basecamp is great for to-dos. If you are looking for better communication, consider apps like Slack for messaging. If you want to automate your workflows to improve process management, consider Tallyfy. Invite your coworkers to these apps, it won't take longer than a few minutes for them to realize what they are missing out on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There's no need to preach to your coworkers. Try approaching the manager and showing them how efficient you have become by using these apps or sketching out business process. Hopefully he or she will appreciate your passion for the growth of the business. If that doesn't work however, continue to use these tools around coworkers, without blatantly trying to sell them anything. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if only a few people follow in your footsteps, in a team of only 20 you can make an impact. Hopefully from there your business process management tools will spread company-wide once the narrow-minded start seeing results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28782" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T16:53:43.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11307" CreationDate="2017-06-06T17:53:44.233" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe it is a matter of picking better &lt;a href=&quot;https://tallyfy.com/business-automation-tools/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;tools&lt;/a&gt; so that your team will &lt;strong&gt;want&lt;/strong&gt; to use them. Implementing business process management tools will help you and your team follow through a complete process rather than your &quot;knee jerk&quot; approach. If you can create a few workflows and use the right tools to track them you will immediately see more efficient business practices around you. The page I linked to above is a great guide for picking the tools that will work for you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28782" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T17:53:44.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21750" CreationDate="2017-06-06T22:38:13.360" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the gantt chart is looking messy, in addition to Rachel's good advice, make liberal use of differing levels of tasks and subtasks - that way you can collapse down a particular area's tasks to assist in legibility of the chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26779" LastActivityDate="2017-06-06T22:38:13.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21772" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21780" CreationDate="2017-06-07T05:30:54.173" Score="2" ViewCount="517" Body="&lt;p&gt;I ask because we are looking at Pivotal Tracker, which I believe is a very popular tool for management of Scrum projects, and:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no ability to add estimates for Tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They don't seem to have a Sprint Burndown Chart, certainly not one that tracks hours remaining&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If using Tasks and updating Tasks with estimated hours remaining is Scrum best practice - why would it be left out of one of the most popular Scrum management tools and why would they not support a Sprint Burndown Chart?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21483" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T07:40:01.140" Title="Are Tasks and updating remaining hours for Tasks essential for Scrum" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21773" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21782" CreationDate="2017-06-07T06:39:39.917" Score="0" ViewCount="73" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just completed my three years in project management role. I have contributed five projects towards successful delivary and achieved targets on time. I have been told to pursue management courses for my career growth and knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you guide me through pmp prince2 agile scrum and other project management courses at beginner level ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26394" LastActivityDate="2017-06-07T14:16:13.357" Title="Project Management courses" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2017-06-07T16:53:34.343" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21774" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21776" CreationDate="2017-06-07T06:48:14.067" Score="4" ViewCount="660" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team is currently working on defining user stories with the product owner. &#xA;He supplied us with a story that is on one hand quite complex, on the other hand he says, that no part of it is independently of value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like some hint on how to do this in scrum:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our field is a register for last wills, the users are people who search for and handle last wills for deceased citizens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our stories now are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Story 1:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A User wants to enter Filter criteria to get at max 100 results from the Database at once. (business process = &quot;send inquiry&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Acceptance criteria:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;results are digitally signed according to law xY&#xA;max 100 rows at once&#xA;a button for &quot;the next 100&quot;&#xA;last Name, given Name, as possible filter criteria&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then there is a second story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Story 2:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An Auditor wants to review all &quot;inquiries&quot; sent by a defined user, to see if he entered legally correct filters, see what results were provided at the time of the inquiry,  and see if the user handled all results properly (legally).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Acceptance criteria:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;results are digitally signed according to law xY&#xA;Story 1 criteria as possible filter criteria ( action would be: &quot;give me all inquiries where the user filtered for &quot;given Name&quot;=&quot;Bob&quot;&quot;)&#xA;show the same results as the user saw at that time&#xA;results never change&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SO if my team now decided to tackle Story 1 now, but Story 2 on a seperate sprint:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How I have to handle these &quot;inquiries&quot;in Story 2  obviously influences the implementation of Story 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is even legally not allowed to deliver a final product with story 1 but not story 2 (these reviews are mandatory once a year for each user)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these one story? Does scrum encourage just implementing Story 1 with no regards to story 2 and possible having to rework Story 1's result to enable Story 2? &#xA;Do I add &quot;inquires have to be stored with filters and results&quot; as an acceptance criterion to Story 1 and reference Story 2 (that would break the &quot;independent&quot; requirement of the INVEST principle)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My main question is:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If two stories have potential(or are sure to) to influence each other, but cannot be completed in the same sprint, do I:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;disregard the second story's influence (need to redo work, but decide as late as possible)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;merge the stories (make it more complex, but delivering the full business value of the features)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plan the influence into the implementation (no need to refactor - possible time saved later, but no longer independent stories, working against the &quot;embrace change, decide late&quot; principle) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All courses i took and free videos I watched, papers I've read did not give me a satisfying answer, I really need your help here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28791" LastEditorUserId="28506" LastEditDate="2017-06-07T10:14:27.643" LastActivityDate="2017-06-07T10:14:27.643" Title="How to split Requirement into Userstories" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21774" CreationDate="2017-06-07T07:16:02.583" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answers:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) / 3) Depends on the System, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_aren%27t_gonna_need_it&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;YAGNI&lt;/a&gt; sais don't do it, but I think in some cases it might make sense to have the other story in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Dont't do it, keep your stories as short and simple as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long answer:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are right, Stories should not be dependend on each other (See &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt;), but sometimes this is not possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Release whenever appropriate&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/114999/how-often-to-release-in-scrum-sprint&quot;&gt;How often to release in Scrum sprint&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think a missunderstanding here is, that a MVP (Minimum Viable Product) after a sprint does not mean the feature must be released to public - it is potentially shippable, meaning: working as expected and it fullfills all of your QA criteria. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in my eyes, it is totally fine to implement story 1 and show it to the customer. If, for legal reasons, it can't be released, customers have to wait for story 2 to be completed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;FYI:&lt;/em&gt; I also think your Stories seems not to be ready. Story 1 misses the &quot;why&quot; part and has two requirements (filtering and paging). I would split that up. Your 2. story has some acceptance criteria in the story sentence (stop after &quot;... legally correct filters.&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28506" LastEditorUserId="28506" LastEditDate="2017-06-07T08:35:18.627" LastActivityDate="2017-06-07T08:35:18.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21774" CreationDate="2017-06-07T07:58:43.970" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum basic principles are iteration and incremental delivery. I base my answer on these principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The stories should be small, simple and describe a testable piece of functionality. The stories you describe should not be merged. If you know in advance some functionality that may be needed by other stories, you can add it as an acceptance criteria for example &quot;The criteria entered by user should be stored for auditing purposes&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If for some reason the influence of other stories is not known in advance you will simply create a new Product Backlog Item for the missing functionality once it is identified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the stories can be delivered for testing independently, but delivered to production in one batch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28712" LastActivityDate="2017-06-07T07:58:43.970" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21774" CreationDate="2017-06-07T09:10:19.647" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Referring to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_%28mnemonic%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt;, let's look at the two scenarios:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Treat Both User Stories Separately&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Combine Both User Stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's consider impact to the system which is introduced by the requireemnt that the auditor must see the exact same results as the user and be able to track the user's interaction. One might argue that this merely sounds like an additional logfile but if one needs to consider efficiency aspects, it is likely going to influence at least an assumed database's data model. It could also involve legal privacy aspects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, it has the potential to require fundamental changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then to what INVEST criteria evaluation does that lead us? I believe it's something along the lines of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Treat Both User Stories Separately&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xA;Independent (should): --&#xA;Negotiable  (should): +&#xA;Valuable      (must): +&#xA;Estimatable   (must): --&#xA;Small       (should): +&#xA;Testable      (must): +&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Combine Both User Stories&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xA;Independent (should): ++&#xA;Negotiable  (should): +&#xA;Valuable      (must): +&#xA;Estimatable   (must): o&#xA;Small       (should): +&#xA;Testable      (must): +&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reasoning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimating the effort for potentially having to modify central underlying aspects of the system &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be possible at all times.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The independence  of PBIs &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be sacrificed, but in my view, the tradeoff must be considered.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Final Remark:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the project management approach, I feel it would be best to clarify the related auditing requirements to a suitable degree before implementing functionality which may have to undergo major rework later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above comparison appears to support that point by enforcing the implementation of an auditing functionality along with related user functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27136" LastActivityDate="2017-06-07T09:10:19.647" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="75" CreationDate="2017-06-07T11:03:35.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I am concerned, there is no place for Gantt Charts in Scrum. However, if your Scrum Master is a ex-Project Manager, you are still likely to end up with one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reason to avoid Gantt charts is they are very good at managing dependencies. Having a good dependency management tool can lead to an imbalance of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deltamatrix.com/horizontal-and-vertical-user-stories-slicing-the-cake/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;horizontal vs vertical user stories&lt;/a&gt;, with too much focus on the horizontals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider alternative tools to Gantt charts that align well with Scrum like: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Backlogs (Ensure you estimate everything, including EPICS. Make sure you don't end up down a rabbit hole in the infinite minutia of estimation, remember, estimates are estimates...)&#xA;2) Burn down charts, both at a product and a sprint level&#xA;3) Story maps&#xA;4) Focus on vertical instead of horizontal user stories&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really do think you have to have A Gantt chart, then maybe you actually have an iterative or waterfall project (e.g. a big data centre move). In this instance change out your methodology (Scrum) for a more appropriate one (Iterative/Waterfall).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24298" LastActivityDate="2017-06-07T11:03:35.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21760" CreationDate="2017-06-07T11:54:14.607" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are certain aspects about requirements which will always be discussed controversially.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, some organisations prefer conditions to be mentioned at the end of requirements, not at the beginning. This may sound irritating at first, but it does have an advantage: Conditions may occasionally be a bit lengthy, and in such cases, it is nice to be able and keep the functionality in mind while working one's way through the preconditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from that, it's true that some things don't matter -- unless you have to &lt;em&gt;maintain&lt;/em&gt; requirements, in which case some styles are more handy than others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I consider the following prerequisites as a &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An explicitly well-defined and consistently applied &quot;must&quot; / &quot;should&quot; / &quot;may&quot; nomenclature / convention&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A well-defined and consistently used glossary&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting closer to your question, I &lt;strong&gt;strongly recommend watching passive and active wording in conjunction with the true actor&lt;/strong&gt;. Yes, in a use case, the administrator is the actor. But yes, the system processes the actor's input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the following requirement: &lt;em&gt;The user must be able to sort the list.&lt;/em&gt; This is clearly a requirement about the ability of the user to sort a certain list. It could indirectly mean that the system must provide a kind of the list which the user can then sort, e.g. by printing it, cutting it into pieces, and rearranging it on the wall with glue -- based on the user's knowledge which is explicitly required here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ragarding your examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When a user submit his credentials and they are valid, the system shall initiate the session of this user&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Weak points: &quot;they are valid&quot; (passive), where does the user submit the credentials to, how is a session defined, and why is the requirement limited to users submitting their own requirements when it is most likely that the system will be unable to identify that a user submits another user's credentials?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Counter proposal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Terminology&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this document, the word &quot;shall&quot; denotes mandatory requireemnts, &quot;should&quot; denotes desirable requirements, and &quot;may&quot; denotes optional requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Glossary&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xA;Credentials:  ... TBD&#xA;Login Screen: ... TBD&#xA;Session:      ... TBD&#xA;User:         ... TBD&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Requirements&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xA;#1&#xA;While there is no active -&gt; Session,&#xA;the system shall block access to all data and&#xA;instead present the -&gt; Login Screen.&#xA;&#xA;#2&#xA;When a -&gt; User submits -&gt; Credentials via the -&gt; Login Screen,&#xA;the system shall initiate a -&gt; Session for the respectice -&gt; Credentials.&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The admin shall be able to fill and submit the information relative to a post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Weak points: &quot;the admin shall be able&quot; (passive), what is &quot;the information relative&quot; to a post?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When an admin fill and submits the post information, the system should store in the database that information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Weak points: What is &quot;post information&quot;, why suddenly &quot;should&quot; instead of &quot;shall&quot;, why a database?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Counter proposal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Glossary Extensions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xA;Admin:  -&gt; Role with unlimied -&gt; Rights&#xA;Rights: -&gt; Definition of allowance of specific operations operations&#xA;Role:   -&gt; Information about -&gt; Rights, associated to -&gt; User&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Additional Requirements&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xA;#3&#xA;If the -&gt; Session -&gt; User is an -&gt; Admin,&#xA;the system shall display a form to edit post information&#xA;(see [Glossary / Reference / ...]).&#xA;&#xA;#4&#xA;If the -&gt; Session -&gt; User is an -&gt; Admin,&#xA;the system shall replace existing post information&#xA;(see [Glossary / Reference / ...]) persistently&#xA;by post information submitted as per #3.&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are just suggestions to demonstrate how mainainability, architecture and implementation details may or may not be addressed by requirements. Here, I omitted the &quot;databse&quot; easily because it was not necessary (and it's a good idea to omit unnecessary aspects). As opposed to that, I separated session management somewhat. Also, following a Model-View-Controller pattern will not be too difficult, because I introduced one requirement for the View (#3) and one for the Controller (#4). The interesting aspect here is that this explicitly requires a double check. You may or may not want to have this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, depending on your organisation, my exact suggestions may not be liked by many. Still, all these aspects &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; play a role when writing requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27136" LastEditorUserId="27136" LastEditDate="2017-06-08T06:55:12.220" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T06:55:12.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21772" CreationDate="2017-06-07T12:50:49.140" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer to your question is a disagreement with your basic premise: updating tasks with estimated hours is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; necessarily a &quot;Scrum best practice.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of the point of Scrum is to use accurate and empirical data to provide accurate estimates of the amount of work that can be accomplished. In my experience, the best practice is to use User Story Points -- at my firm we use a modified Fibonacci sequence (1/2/3/5/8/13/20/40/100) to estimate each User Story. After a few Sprints, you get a pretty good feel for the velocity of the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use Story Points because they are &lt;em&gt;accurate&lt;/em&gt; but not necessarily &lt;em&gt;precise&lt;/em&gt;, whereas estimating in hours tends to be the opposite -- teams attempt to put a precise estimate that usually ends up not being very accurate on a task. For a long while, we attempted to estimate stories with points and tasks with hours but the amount of time we spent attempting to put accurate and precise hour estimates on each task was costing us more than it ever got us. Who needs a precise hour estimate when a team can confidently say &quot;We're going to get 35 user story points done this Sprint&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regard to the Burndown chart, you have a few options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use a Story Point burndown chart which &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be provided by a good tool (not sure about Pivotal Tracker, but JIRA does this)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hand-draw an hours burndown -- we've done this in cases where clients have a very strict budget and we have to keep within a certain allocation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're really stuck on using hours, JIRA gives you the option to make time your primary estimation tool and can give you an hours burndown -- try a different tool.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My strong recommendation is to rethink how you estimate things and switch over to a story point, or relative sizing, method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best part about Story Points is, once you get a reasonable amount of time-tracking data, you can start to figure out your median and std deviation of time values for each discrete Story Point rating (e.g., the median 2-pt story takes n hours with a standard deviation of x). While I would &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; endorse using these measures as metrics or KPIs, I &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; use a method with these values to baseline estimates for Scopes of Work, in conjunction with other data and analysis of a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16314" LastActivityDate="2017-06-07T12:50:49.140" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21781" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-07T13:58:12.543" Score="-1" ViewCount="176" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a tailoring of ITIL for marketing projects: web, crm and mobile?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something a marketing expert can understand who supervises the realisation of such a project by a subcontractor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17349" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2017-06-07T19:50:58.263" LastActivityDate="2021-01-31T11:01:00.097" Title="ITIL for marketing projects" Tags="&lt;roles&gt;&lt;subcontractor&gt;&lt;frameworks&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21773" CreationDate="2017-06-07T14:16:13.357" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since your primary objective is a certificate and your objectives of knowledge acquisition and skill mastery are secondary, then the certificate dictates what you need to study.  Research the PMI website and obtain and read the PMBoK.  The PMBoK will steer you to the knowledge and process areas you need to learn and then you can find those courses, sign up, and take them.  There are many PMI-approved vendors out there that provide this education; however, many of them teach to the test.  Since your time frame is a year out, I suggest you find courses that teach the content instead of how to pass the test.  Because that will help you meet your secondary goals.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If knowledge and skill mastery were your objectives, then your two questions you need to answer are: 1) in what are you interested that you may wish to seek a specialty and 2) in what areas are you demonstrably weak?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These answers will dictate your next set of courses.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you're just beginning, I'd suggest to reverse your objectives.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-06-07T14:16:13.357" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21781" CreationDate="2017-06-07T19:49:39.307" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;ITIL is a Service Management Framework&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITIL#Changes_and_characteristics_of_the_2011_edition_of_ITIL&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ITIL&lt;/a&gt; is an IT &lt;em&gt;service management&lt;/em&gt; framework, not a complete governance framework, and certainly &lt;strong&gt;not a comprehensive project management framework or methodology&lt;/strong&gt;. ITIL covers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ITIL Service Strategy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ITIL Service Design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ITIL Service Transition&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ITIL Service Operation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ITIL Continual Service Improvement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While strategy and design sound like they're about project management because they're about aligning objectives and customer needs, it's important to remember that this is all within the context of &lt;em&gt;IT service&lt;/em&gt;, rather than project management. You might spin up a project from inside an ITIL process, but ITIL itself relegates project management to sub-processes within ITIL Service Transition, with a &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.en.it-processmaps.com/index.php/Project_Management_-_Transition_Planning_and_Support#Process_Description&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;focus on coordination and conflict resolution within ITIL&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In ITIL 2011 Project Management has been revised to highlight that its main responsibility is to coordinate the various service transition projects and resolve conflicts...Projects are initiated when Service Portfolio Management has chartered a new or substantially changed service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A better way to look at your use case is that &lt;strong&gt;you have an IT project to support a marketing initiative&lt;/strong&gt;. Select a service management framework to plan and operate your IT solutions, and a project management framework to build and deliver the solution within any governance, compliance, security, and service management frameworks that may apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-06-07T19:49:39.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21772" CreationDate="2017-06-08T07:40:01.140" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Scrum guide says nothing about tracking and updating remaining-hours, nor does it force you to use a burndown to monitor progress. Actually hour-burns is the worst indicator of progress, as it looks good, but does not show uncertainty. You think you are on track, until you miss the mark and see there is a lot of extra work and now you are behind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Various projective practices upon trending have been used to forecast&#xA;  progress, like &lt;strong&gt;burn-downs&lt;/strong&gt;, burn-ups, or cumulative flows. These have&#xA;  proven useful. However, these do not replace the importance of&#xA;  empiricism. In complex environments, what will happen is unknown. Only&#xA;  what has happened may be used for forward-looking decision-making.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the Agile evangelist day in Amsterdam some years back, Jeff Sutherland (founder of Scrum) said if he has to use a tool it would be &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pivotaltracker.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PivotalTracker&lt;/a&gt;, but better would be no tool at all. Also he dislikes tracking hours a lot, calling it &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scruminc.com/time-tracking-is-anti-scrum-what-do-you/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;time-tracking anti-scrum&lt;/a&gt;. He suggest it is the first thing to ban from a company. He suggest tracking hours costs 10% of your development-time as developers hate it, because it is used to steer the wrong signals if used at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When talking about deciding on tools for a process I always say: Build processes around (existing) tools, do not find tools for your ideal process, because you will not find it. If you try as a development shop you might even say, the tool does not exist, lets build it ourselves! And now your are in for years of trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T07:40:01.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21787" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-08T08:02:12.967" Score="2" ViewCount="1442" Body="&lt;p&gt;When managing a hybrid Agile project with both business and I.T workstreams, let's assume there is a requirement from the internal PMO to use a RAID log. However, you will also need to interface with a Scrum Team to track certain issues and actions. The organisation has a mandate to go Agile but has not implemented any agile governance before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Staying with Actions for now, I've noted in the past that nobody on a Scrum Team wants to even look at a RAID log. They do, after all, look like something from 20 years ago, whilst Scrum Teams in start ups and digital agencies are using tools that are much more non-threatening and usable, and this is a factor if we're talking about motivating people to help out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How have people tackled this kind of situation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One idea I have seen used very well is to replace an action register with a Trello board. It's a slick and usable product, you can use avatars, easily upload attachments etc, and it can be used to model a Kanban board which Scrum Teams will be familiar with from using JIRA. Suddenly talking to the dreaded delivery manager / program / project manager isn't so bad. They aren't stuck in the 1990's, and it feels more like the safe environment you're used to working with alongside your Scrum Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28483" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-06-12T13:20:21.937" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T13:20:21.937" Title="Overcoming reticence to use RAID logs" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;trello&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21788" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21792" CreationDate="2017-06-08T09:20:37.223" Score="0" ViewCount="152" Body="&lt;p&gt;Large organisations often ousource software projects. For this purpose they create tender documents, which are used by software companies to make a bid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tender documents must specify requirements so that interested companies can estimate the effort needed. What is the best format for these requirements ? Use cases, user stories, traditional functional requirements, high level features ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write detailed uses cases, you will need a lot of work up-front, and you have the risk of missing details that will be charged additionally once they are found by the contractor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you write high level features, the estimates done by the software companies will not be accurate, and you have the risk the company will underestimate a complicated software project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are your thoughts and experiences on this issue ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28712" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T13:48:17.027" Title="What is the best requirements format for tenders" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21789" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-08T09:35:25.160" Score="1" ViewCount="159" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on recommendations for how to use JIRA and Confluence together for an Agile project. Based on experience teams use Confluence for requirements, linking to JIRA for the user stories themselves. Is this true for the majority of organisations that use both tools? I strongly suspect this is the case but wanted to post out the question to get thoughts and opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To try and cram everything into JIRA would likely clog it up anyways. ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28483" LastEditorUserId="27722" LastEditDate="2018-09-07T21:32:55.713" LastActivityDate="2018-09-07T21:32:55.713" Title="Optimum usage of JIRA and Confluence" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2017-06-09T10:58:23.333" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21787" CreationDate="2017-06-08T11:46:24.767" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer is not a canonical answer but rather my observations and opinions from years of practice.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found that project teams typically detest and avoid these types of logs no matter if the project methods are agile or not.  And I opine the problem is with the governance around the logs themselves vice the concept of having a log to record things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It Becomes About The Log&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The log becomes a deliverable of and in itself.  It becomes a product that is nurtured, scrutinized, argued, manipulated, and on and on--versus a tool to track stuff.  Teams argue the language used, the message delivered, whether something should be in the log or not, whether the language is clear enough, whether something is a risk or an issue, whether there are grammar errors, whether the title of the record is compelling enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On on project as an example, a particular stakeholder thought it necessary to record every item possible and the logs ended up with hundreds of lines of actions, issues, risks, etc.  Most of the items were just normal, everyday activities but it required hours and hours and hours to maintain and to keep relevant with no return in value.  The team hated this log because they were demeaned if the language was just not right--in the sole opinion of this stakeholder--and caused rewrite after rewrite after rewrite, and meetings to work on the language before it got presented, and more meetings to address the changes.  This is an extreme example of silliness but I have witnessed this project after project, but to a lesser extreme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your logs should contain only your top five or six items.  Maybe seven.  These are the highest priority items that you need to track, the most expensive, the most impactful.  The rest fall off and are delegated to the teams, who themselves likely maintain their own logs...or should be encouraged to do so.  By doing so, the logs remain truly relevant and important and even a SCRUM team will look at them and find them useful, I suspect.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T11:46:24.767" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21789" CreationDate="2017-06-08T13:04:36.953" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our company we use Confluence for discussions, concepts and documentation. In JIRA we make issues to create a backlog and plan sprints. Doing everything in JIRA won't work in my experience, as you may look over the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a developer for Confluence and JIRA plugins I know our use cases and those of our customers. Most customers use both Confluence and JIRA and this totally makes sense as they work together great. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're doing software development, I would suggest to use more products of the Atlassian Familiy. This includes SCM &quot;Bitbucket&quot; and a build server &quot;Bamboo&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28506" LastEditorUserId="28506" LastEditDate="2017-06-08T19:37:20.600" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T19:37:20.600" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21788" CreationDate="2017-06-08T13:48:17.027" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a tender, looking at it from an external perspective, I would see a &lt;em&gt;complete Feature List&lt;/em&gt; as the center. It represents your black box perspective on the system. It can easily be accompanied (as necessary) by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A (potentially incomplete) set of Use Cases which refer to features. They have a nice visualisation potential and perspective and provicde indications for the system's environment and intended use.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A (potentially incomplete) set of Functional and Non-Functional Requirements &quot;beyond&quot; (below) the Feature List. They can specify some essential details for the system.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scribbles, sketches, drawings. They provide insights regarding the expected complexity of user interfaces, dimensions, and the like.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Potentially all of the above also for subsystems where it is necessary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A list of relevant Norms and Standards&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The organisation's standard rquirements for such a product / service&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Required maturity model&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Required development, execution, operation, cooperation approach / details&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Safety / security / social / environmental standards&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Authoring these documents can follow the general Requirements Management rules. If you arrange and link the required artefacts properly, change management and impact analysis will be straight forward. (If you're not going to disclose all you have for the tender, it's not a bad thing that you already looked a bit further.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would strongly recommend against mixing requirement levels, granularity and type. Although the supplier would have to tidy this up, maintenance on the customer side will become error prone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27136" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T13:48:17.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21102" CreationDate="2017-06-08T20:34:26.640" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are not alone when it comes to &lt;a href=&quot;https://tallyfy.com/stressed-work-manage-work-stress/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;dealing with work stress&lt;/a&gt; and pressure. I have put together a few tips to help keep stress minimal, or at least how to deal with the high stress situations you may find yourself in as a PM:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't be reactive; Take the time to sort out what you can do about that particular situation. Identify the aspects of the job issue that you can control and directly influence.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stop trying to do it all. There would always be more work, and I was never going to finish it in a single day – so stop trying.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Delegate tasks to others- it shows strength and intelligence rather than weakness.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use resources to make process management smooth like &lt;a href=&quot;https://tallyfy.com/business-automation-tools/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;business process automation tools.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take regular breaks. Tony Schwartz of the Energy Project has shown that if we have intense concentration for about 90 minutes, followed by a brief period of recover, we can clear the buildup of stress. It doesn’t take much, just a brief 10-15 minutes can greatly reduce mental fatigue and help you avoid feeling stressed at work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improve eating and sleeping habits.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Breathe.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28782" LastActivityDate="2017-06-08T20:34:26.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21794" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21797" CreationDate="2017-06-09T00:06:04.103" Score="0" ViewCount="2219" Body="&lt;p&gt;Im deriving the functional requirements from a Edit User Account use case but I dont know if Im doing this corretly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;use case&lt;/strong&gt; is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Title:&lt;/strong&gt; Edit user account&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pre-conditions&lt;/strong&gt;: The admin is authenticated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Trigger:&lt;/strong&gt; The user wants to edit his account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ator:&lt;/strong&gt; User&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Main flow:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- The system presents the saved user account data to the user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2- The user updates the data he wants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3- The system validates the form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4- The system informs the user that the information was updated with&#xA;success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5- The admin chooses a list option&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Post-condition:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Alternative Scenarios:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Empty fields&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- The system presents a message informing the user that he must fill&#xA;all mandatory fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2- The flow continues on step 2 of the main flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Invalid Email&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- The system presents a message informing the user that the email has&#xA;a invalid fomat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2 - The flow continues on step 2 of the main flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Post-condition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User account edited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;functional requirements&lt;/strong&gt; Im getting from this use case are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The system must allow the user updates his user account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The system must ensure that the user fill are mandatory fields to update his user account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The system must ensure that the user insert a valid email to update his user account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The system must ensure that the password has at least 6 characters long for the user update his user account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the system must alert the user when he tries to save is account information inserting an email in a invalid format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the system must alert the user when he tries to save is account information and dont fill are mandatory fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the system must inform the user that his account information was updated with&#xA;success if he submits the form with success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The system must inform the user that the password must be 6 characters long if he inserts a password with less than 6 characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doubts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you think this can be a way of writing functional requirements? Im with some doubts about how to write them. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- The first requirement is a functional requirement? Because it seems an obvious requirement but maybe its a functional requirement because its testable. We can test if the system allow the user to update his account right? So it should be a functional requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2 - The second requirement we should specify what are the mandtory fields? For example email, etc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28807" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T15:10:27.840" Title="Deriving functional requirements from use case" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21795" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21796" CreationDate="2017-06-09T12:24:30.973" Score="0" ViewCount="1584" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example, for a site like Ebay we can identify these requirements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Search Products&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Add product to cart&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Buy product&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Add to favorite&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Edit user account&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Add comment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Remove comment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Close session in the system&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Start session in the system&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the requirements above considered functional?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they not, then if we add to each one of these requirements a use case, can the use cases that describe each one of these requirements be considered functional requirements?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, for the edit user account requirement, the use case is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Title:&lt;/strong&gt; Edit user account&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pre-conditions&lt;/strong&gt;: The admin is authenticated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Trigger:&lt;/strong&gt; The user wants to edit his account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ator:&lt;/strong&gt; User&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Main flow:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- The system presents the saved user account data to the user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2- The user updates the data he wants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3- The system validates the form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4- The system informs the user that the information was updated with&#xA;success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5- The admin chooses a list option&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Post-condition:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Alternative Scenarios:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Empty fields&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- The system presents a message informing the user that he must fill&#xA;all mandatory fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2- The flow continues onto step 2 of the main flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Invalid Email&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- The system presents a message informing the user that the email has&#xA;an invalid format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2 - The flow continues onto step 2 of the main flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Post-condition&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User account edited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this use case, can the requirement &amp;quot;Edit user account&amp;quot; be considered a functional requirement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28807" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-06-09T14:06:28.090" Title="This use case can be considered a functional requirement?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21795" CreationDate="2017-06-09T14:06:28.090" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having followed the discussion in the context of your &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/21794/27136&quot;&gt;previous post&lt;/a&gt;, I want to make a few points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use Case vs. Functional Requirement&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bullet points in your question, intended as examples referring to eBay, are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; Functional Requirements by themselves. &quot;Add Product to Cart&quot; is not a Functional Requirement. It is, however, a potential title for a Use Case. A fully specified Use Case is a Behavioural Requirement. Functional Requirements can be derived from Behavioural Requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, one Use Case often represents &lt;em&gt;several&lt;/em&gt; requirements, and several Use Cases often share a common subset of Functional Requirements. E.g. &quot;The system shall provide an authentication mechanism for users&quot; is a Functional Requirement, and there will certainly be several Use Cases which refer to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Non-Functional Requirements&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your earlier Q, you indicated that you think that requirements which can be tested are Functional Requirements. This is not exactly true. Non-Functional Requirements can also be tested, the worst case being methodology / process audits, code reviews and the like. But there are also Non-Functional Requirements which can be observed while the system is used, and hence, they can be tested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Derivation of Requirements From Use Cases&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Functional or not, do you &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to derive requirements from your Use Cases? It depends. Do you &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to derive requirements from your Use Cases? Maybe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do your Use Cases cover all aspects of your system?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say your system has a user interface with authentication mechanism and different access rights. Would you accept a solution where rights must be set per user, or would you want groups or roles to define the rights and add users to groups? Would you be willng to accept a system where roles / groups are fixed, or would you want to be able to add roles / groups? -- Yes, you can write Use Cases for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, already here, we're touching the question: When is a specification ready?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality, it's never ready. In reality, it's inefficient to strive for a perfect specification. In reality, specifications stop at a level of &quot;common sense&quot; (with developers, suppliers etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So since role and rights models are common for decades, and since the administrator is not your valued customer to whom you want to present a flawless user interface, would you net be able to finish your specification earlier if you switched from Use Cases to Functional Requirements?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking it one step further, would you be willing to live with a system where a change of the access rights becomes valid only the next calendar day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, you're going to have a requirrement such as &quot;The system shall perform each operation applying the relevant settings which are valid at the respective point in time.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly a Functional Requirement. And now, if you have only Use Cases, you'll have to expand each of them textually. If you have UML Use Cases, you might want to cover this by an &lt;em&gt;include&lt;/em&gt;, but this requires that you place a kind of a &quot;basic operation&quot; there which starts by checking the current access rights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not what Use Cases are for. This is not their strength. You want them to be comprehensive and concise. Use Cases are not the place to describe detailed operations or functionality. And the access rights checks are very basic. You want to specify it in a single prominent place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much depends on the context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For a &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/21792/27136&quot;&gt;tender, use cases may or may not be enough&lt;/a&gt;; this also depends on the procurement proceeding.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deriving Functional Requirements from Use Cases is a standard task e.g. on the supplier side after receiving a specification: &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_requirement&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Often, though, an analyst will begin by eliciting a set of use cases, from which the analyst can derive the functional requirements that must be implemented to allow a user to perform each use case.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the supplier side, norms and standards may force you to break down top-level requirements (such as Use Cases and Features) e.g. to architectural, subsystem and safety requirements as well as e.g. FMEAs, and prove by traceability that you haven't forgotten anything. A counter example would be the customer-side specification of a web-service based app with few pages, where you can maybe live with a few Use Cases and a few meeting protocols.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27136" LastActivityDate="2017-06-09T14:06:28.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21794" CreationDate="2017-06-09T14:55:49.053" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this Q+A's comments, the Q to which this A belongs has been described as &quot;entirely based around / founded on misconceptions&quot; and &quot;not warranting an answer&quot;. Furthermore, this A has been described as &quot;wrong&quot;, &quot;furthering the Q's misconceptions&quot; and &quot;spreading poor information to people who find it&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trying to filter out professional arguments from the criticism, one might say there were two categories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deriving Functional Requirements from Behavioural Requirements (emphasis mine)...&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;seems&lt;/em&gt; wasteful&quot; because both &quot;&lt;em&gt;are generally&lt;/em&gt; equivalent&quot;,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;translating between them &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a wasteful activity&quot;, because &quot;they &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be written in a way that lets someone design, implement and [test] software against&quot;,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; makes sense&quot; because &quot;both capture the same information&quot; and a &quot;Use Case can also at least [cover / capture] some quality attributes of the system in addition to functionality&quot;,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is &quot;&lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt;&quot; done, because &quot;their only difference is their representation&quot;,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;is a waste without decomposing&quot; [them],&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;should be avoided when possible&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other methodological points of subordinate interest for my edit, e.g. about the difference between &lt;em&gt;deriving&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;decomposing&lt;/em&gt; lower level requirements from higher level requirements (and when they are &lt;em&gt;decomposed&lt;/em&gt; instead of &lt;em&gt;derived&lt;/em&gt; then that's not wasteful).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see the points under 1. as slightly inconsistent, and while I might agree to the &quot;seems&quot; and &quot;should be avoided&quot; parts under certain circumstances and regarding the docuemnt situation, I do not at all agree to the &quot;never&quot; and &quot;misconception&quot; points. Therefore, here is my introductory explanation for the, well, &lt;em&gt;people who find it&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If it were true that Functional Requirements are &quot;never&quot; derived from Behavioural Requirements (Use Cases), then the person who has to &quot;design, implement and test&quot; against these Use Cases...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;can only hope that they &quot;should be written&quot; in a suitable way for this task and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;will often (silently) derive Functional Requirmenets from the Bahavioural Requirements on-the-fly, which requires certain analytical skills, and it wouldn't hurt to train them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that was the OP's intention, as he clearly stated and which I clearly repeated in the first sentence of my answer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even if Behavioural and Functional Requirements might be &lt;em&gt;generally equivalent&lt;/em&gt;, ...&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there are roughly two ways to denote Use Cases, name as a (UML) diagram or textually, and they show different strenghts and weaknesses,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;consider Regular Expressions and Finite State Machines, which are &lt;em&gt;proven&lt;/em&gt; to be equivalent notations, but in some cases one has a representation whis is by order of magnitude more efficient than the other -- and wouldn't it be &lt;em&gt;wasteful&lt;/em&gt; to &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; use the more efficient notation, and is there no need to &lt;em&gt;consolidate&lt;/em&gt; a mixture of Behavioural and Functional Requirements before decomposing them?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In this regard, let's look at reality:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Good luck trying to force your customer to provide an unambiguous, clear, complete specification which sticks to a single notation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In some areas / indistries, you are &lt;em&gt;obliged&lt;/em&gt; to counter your (ambiguous, unclear, partially redundant and partially incomplete, layered) specification with a reworked one, and this step &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; involve consolidating all the open points, where a comprehensive, uniform notation really helps a lot, especially if it uses a slightly lower level from where a better technical understanding can be reached and which makes decomposition easier.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my view, requirements analysis can't be trained enough, and your enviroment will always provide you with specific instructions what to do how and when.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see a big value in this Q+A and its clarifying discussion. The OP did not provide any more context information than that he wanted to train how to &quot;identify and specify&quot; requirements. From my experience, I wish more people would train this -- even if Functional Requirements are not written down after &lt;em&gt;deriving&lt;/em&gt; them from use cases, I have witnessed many discussions where it would have helped if it had been done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;End of Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;Now that I know you're doing this to get some practice, and since it &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_requirement&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;makes sense in many situations to derive Functional Requirements from Use Cases&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use Case&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Align &quot;User&quot; and &quot;Admin&quot; by either using only one of the two notions or connecting them via a &quot;role&quot; or something similar.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do steps 4 and 5 of the main flow relate?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Post conditions: How about having a post condition for the main flow as well, and not calling it &quot;profile edited&quot; but &quot;profile updated with validated and minimal data&quot; or so?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;General&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use Cases should not be too detailed. Whether or not you need to mention the required data here depends on a few factors, such as redundancy, mainainability, clarity, and context. If this is for a tender, you can have the supplier present you a specification of the data model they assume for their offer. If the specification is supposed to be complete, you need to specify the data model somehow, and then again, a sketch of the user interface with mandatory fields being marked could serve two purposes at the same time...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you derive Functional Requirements, then a requirement may seem obvious, but it's not. Keep in mind that people will look at specifications from different perspectives -- if you don't specify it, you won't get it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your Functional Requirements&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Syntactically, they're better than many which I've seen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Formally:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Regarding the implementation, there is a &lt;em&gt;huge&lt;/em&gt; difference between a &quot;valid e-mail address&quot; and a &quot;valid e-mail address format&quot;. A valid e-mail address is one which is actively confirmed. Stick with one term, don't mix them, and possibly even define the term in a glossary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You distinguish between frontend and backend in a way (ensure vs alert), whcih is good, although I believe it can be simplified and made clearer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You mention the acceptance criteria for the password (6 characters) twice, which is not such a good idea. This is difficult to maintain. Imagine this has to be changed; how can you be &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; sure you updated all occurences?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You invented a password security (well... sort of...) requirement. Yes this makes sense, but where is it coming from. Now it depends on the context. If you are deriving these requirements formally for the same organisation where the Use Cases were written, there should be a kind of internal standard specification you should refer to, so formally, you're &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; deriving this requirement from the Use Cases (as you claimed) but from another standard specification for such systems. If you're working for a supplier, analyse a potential customer's Use Cases and cast this requirement into existence, it should also come from an internal standard specification, but even if not, you're going to present this to the customer and say that you added it because your organisation finds it essential. Either way, it's not derived from the Use Case.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27136" LastEditorUserId="27136" LastEditDate="2017-06-13T15:10:27.840" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T15:10:27.840" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21798" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21802" CreationDate="2017-06-09T16:26:35.447" Score="1" ViewCount="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Introduction:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My organization is embarking on a corporate asset management project. The corporation knows that it needs to do comprehensive asset management on all its assets, in a single, easy-to-use data location. The idea is that asset-inventory data from several specialized systems will be periodically exported &amp;amp; imported to a single location, for the purpose of organization-wide analysis and reporting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Situation - High-level:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Management is currently in the process of figuring out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What they want&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How they want it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why they want it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They're doing what they refer to as &quot;starting with the end in mind&quot;. While I wouldn't say they are employing any sort of project management practices, they &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; trying to 'figure their poop out' at a high-level. This makes good-enough sense to me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This is a bureaucratic organization; it will take 1-3 years for this planning to be completed.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Situation - Low-level:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Down at the worker-bee level, a few of us are working on 'getting the organization's poop together'. In other words, we're &lt;strong&gt;preparing&lt;/strong&gt;. We know that the details of the project are subject to change; heck, they haven't even been defined yet. But we have a general idea of where it's going, and we know that our data needs a lot of work to get there. And we know that we should start thinking about the framework that will be needed for this initiative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We generally have the support of our immediate management. They know that being prepared is smart, and we've been successful doing things this way in the past. But we face &lt;strong&gt;fierce criticism&lt;/strong&gt; from other stakeholders. They accuse us of putting the 'carriage before the horse', and think that the details(data) will just work themselves out, when the time comes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not that we think that they're 100% wrong (there is some sense to what they're saying), nor are we looking for help to argue with them. However, we &lt;em&gt;would&lt;/em&gt; like to make some sense of this sort of parallel-workflow that's we've come up with, so that we can &lt;strong&gt;refine it and communicate it better&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could be visualized something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Project Planning             Project is underway          Project Complete&#xA;----&amp;gt;----&amp;gt;----&amp;gt;----&amp;gt;----&amp;gt;----&amp;gt;----&amp;gt;----&amp;gt;----&amp;gt;----&amp;gt;----&amp;gt;----&amp;gt;----&amp;gt;----&amp;gt;----|&#xA;                             ^&#xA;Preparation                  |  &#xA;----&amp;gt;----&amp;gt;----&amp;gt;----&amp;gt;----&amp;gt;-----&#xA;                              \&#xA;                               Implement! Hit the ground running.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does this fit any sort of project management technique? How would it be described?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28814" LastEditorUserId="28814" LastEditDate="2017-06-10T02:50:48.483" LastActivityDate="2017-06-10T02:50:48.483" Title="Parallel workflows: Preparation at a low-level, while management sorts things out at a high-level" Tags="&lt;terminology&gt;&lt;theory&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21799" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-09T18:03:59.713" Score="0" ViewCount="77" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to mark a piece of equipment (resource) as unavailable from the start of one activity till the end of a different, and unlinked activity. For example, I clean a piece of equipment on Monday from 8 AM - 10 AM, and I use it on Tuesday from 3 PM - 11 PM. I want the resource to show as &quot;in us&quot;e from the start of the cleaning through the end of the use (including the time from Monday at 10 AM through Tuesday at 3PM), not just during the two activities (cleaning and use).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28815" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-09-08T14:40:06.517" LastActivityDate="2018-05-06T21:14:33.000" Title="How do I mark equipment as &quot;in use&quot; during maintenance?" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21800" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-09T18:34:20.863" Score="-1" ViewCount="53" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pWAdA.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pWAdA.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am trying to find the CV of Maio(May) but my question is. since the &quot;Plano Preminiar&quot; is already finished does it count for the total?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another question. &quot;Plano Global&quot; had a PV in Abril(April) of 12.000 and an AC of 13.000 and in Maio it has a AC of (24.000) but it is really 12.000 since 24.000 - 12.000 = 12.000. Am i right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28817" LastActivityDate="2017-07-10T12:11:34.487" Title="EVM Exam Question" Tags="&lt;evm&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21787" CreationDate="2017-06-09T18:54:29.767" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum teams don't dislike RAID logs because they look like something from 20 years ago. They disklike them because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Frequent releases reduces the value of tracking risks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agile values conversation over documentation - hence the sprint retrospective is the preferred place to resolve problems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Letting RAID logs be viewed by people outside the Scrum team runs the risk of misinterpretation - these people do not have the same context the Scrum team members have&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2017-06-09T18:54:29.767" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21798" CreationDate="2017-06-09T19:56:09.580" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a trade-off question.  It makes perfect sense to prepare for a project.  Take a simple project such as upgrading your kitchen.  Even if you haven't chosen what the new kitchen will look like, which may include semi major plumbing changes to move the sink from one wall to another, and so on.  You may choose to prep that area by trashing or selling items you know will not survive the upgrade, if for no other reason but to make the space ready for work and maybe drive the project costs down.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your work setting, where other stakeholders are complaining about the prep work, this may be more a function of what is being traded for those tasks, i.e., what work is being deferred and delayed so the prep work can occur by those employees.  And then it becomes a cost / lost revenue / delayed objectives analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you are at the stage of building a case for the prep work, which includes capturing the benefits of doing so which may include decreased project costs or risks.  But then you need to know what is being deferred, how that deferred work is impacting those other stakeholders, and what other opportunity costs you are paying in exchange of the prep work.  It is a business case that you need to build, show that the plus is greater than the minus, and then go sell it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-06-09T19:56:09.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21800" CreationDate="2017-06-10T11:43:35.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I won't provide you the answer but here is a clue: costs are cumulative when calculating earned value indices. This clue applies to both questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-06-10T11:43:35.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21799" CreationDate="2017-06-10T11:57:26.227" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Schedule the resource between 10 am through 3 pm and link them in between the cleaning and its use with FS dependencies.  Title it &quot;Equipment Staging&quot; or something like that.  Make this task fixed duration and load the number of days (hours in your example's case) with zero hours of work.  This will disable costs being accrued during that time but will create a lapse in time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-06-10T11:57:26.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21805" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-10T15:29:32.803" Score="3" ViewCount="550" Body="&lt;p&gt;On one hand, software development involves a lot of non-programming activities like requirements gathering (including analysis), estimating, planning, testing, tracking work, change request management, and more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, our clients don't want to pay for these activities. When a non-programming activity shows up on their invoices, they usually get angry and complain to upper-management. Of course, they always win their cause. Therefore, we (the company) don't get paid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The result of all this is that upper management is pressuring us (programmers and project managers) to not perform any of these non-programming activities. It generates all the problems that are commonly known to result for having a &quot;code &amp;amp; fix&quot; approach to software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our poorly tested software is often released with bugs, and of course, clients don't want to pay for us fixing them. Moreover, we often release, just in time, software that don't correspond to what the client's wanted or needed because we never had the chance to invest the time to understand what the client needed. The release is therefore rejected by the client who then complains to upper managment. We then have to make all the requested changes for free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know &lt;strong&gt;how other companies solve this problem&lt;/strong&gt; and I don't know where to look at to get the answer. Do they bill their clients for non-programming activities? More importantly, &lt;strong&gt;how do they get to finance these non-programming activities?&lt;/strong&gt; Do they convince their clients to pay for these activities? Do they hide instead, unlike us, the real nature of the work they are doing? Do they charge so high for programming activities that it doesn't matter if non-programming activities don't generate any income? How?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I expect agile to be suggested as an answer, but please understand that I will not accept &quot;you must do agile&quot; as an answer, because it would not explain how agile would solve the problem. In a scrum team, for example, you perform a lot of non-programming activies and you still get paid for them. I cannot begin to imagine how our clients will ever accept to pay us for doing sprint retrospectives for example. If you want to answer &quot;agile&quot;, please explain how agile solves the problem. For example, how do you finance all the non-programming activites happening during the scrum process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28822" LastActivityDate="2017-06-14T10:10:18.093" Title="How to finance non-programming activities when clients don't want to pay for these activities?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;clients&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21805" CreationDate="2017-06-10T15:52:47.410" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stop work immediately and get the work under a contract.  Get a detailed Statement of Work that clearly identifies what is getting delivered, what activities will take place, what finished looks like, how you will invoice, how they will pay, etc.  Your issue is not methods or communications or convincing them.  You have no contract or are not enforcing your contract and they're beating you up to their benefit.  You need to take a seat at the negotiating table and put YOUR requirements on it.  If they don't allow you, walk away and go find another customer who will pay you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-06-10T15:52:47.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21805" CreationDate="2017-06-10T19:31:01.567" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the &quot;upper management&quot; your management or theirs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If yours, you need to have a discussion with them that makes absolutely clear that treating all &quot;non-programming activities&quot; as non-essential &lt;em&gt;costs them money&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If theirs, with whom do you have a contract? The client or their management? Either way, you need to make clear that these non-programming tasks are absolutely still necessary to get satisfactory results. Alternatively, you could not bill the non-programming tasks at all but increase the prices so they're still covered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, the problem is that your client has been getting away with their demands, so you'll have a lot of trouble convincing them that this is going to change. You might be better off cutting your losses and find a new client, this time including planning, testing, feedback sessions etc. in the contract from the get-go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28145" LastActivityDate="2017-06-10T19:31:01.567" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21809" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-11T10:03:55.353" Score="1" ViewCount="338" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have 2 independent tasks running in parallel and need to set a task that begins when either of the first 2 ends. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I do this in MS Project, and if so, how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28825" LastEditorUserId="16715" LastEditDate="2017-06-13T05:55:22.910" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T05:55:22.910" Title="Can I set a task to start when any one of its 2 predecessor tasks end?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21809" CreationDate="2017-06-11T12:30:58.950" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Decompose the successor into two separate packages and load fifty percent of the resources in each. When one of the two predecessors finish, it'll trigger the start of one of the two successors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will overrun the task that started but will under run the other non started task but the hammock task will be accurate to measure performance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-06-11T12:30:58.950" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14752" CreationDate="2017-06-11T14:59:07.583" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It will be very valuable for deployment and other planned activities as training where you need to plan considering resources availability&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28827" LastActivityDate="2017-06-11T14:59:07.583" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21805" CreationDate="2017-06-11T15:44:27.880" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stop billing them for the activities they complain about and roll the costs into what they are willing to pay for (deliverables).  You're not cheating them--you're not burdening your clients with the details.  Your clients want the sausage, not the details of how it's made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if your client doesn't want to pay for the requirements gathering activity, then tell them you'd be happy to receive the requirements from them.  This teaches them that there are costs involves and someone has to pay them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your company needs some people who understand what a Statement of Work is, how to write contracts, etc., and some project managers.  It seems your clients and your upper management don't understand how software is properly built. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28828" LastActivityDate="2017-06-11T15:44:27.880" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21814" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-11T23:13:23.113" Score="1" ViewCount="555" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am developing and maintaining a complicated system project plan that comes from 3 different groups. Each provided manual scheduled time with start and finish dates, but they are not sequenced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering if I should change those manual scheduled tasks to auto schedule to make the plan more useful. However, I don't want to mess up with the dates those groups provided. How should I handle this to ensure the best use of MS Project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28224" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-06-12T13:07:23.877" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T13:07:23.877" Title="Manual schedule vs. Auto schedule" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21814" CreationDate="2017-06-11T23:41:35.953" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;By auto schedule I think you mean a schedule with links--predecessor/successor horizontal and vertical relationships. If so, the answer is an unequivocal yes. Without that, you would have to manually calculate your critical path as well as future finish variances (FV) and impacts as you progress, which is impossible for a complex schedule without an army of schedulers making daily calculations and analyses.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, once you establish your dependencies, you will likely find that the hard coded dates may no longer be accurate, in that the dependent relationships may cause tasks to start and finish on later dates.  That is an important thing to know now instead of being surprised later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not really an option.  You need to build the schedule properly or acknowledge that you are running a complex project without a schedule at all.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2017-06-12T09:39:07.510" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T09:39:07.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21816" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-12T13:01:14.650" Score="3" ViewCount="115" Body="&lt;p&gt;Over &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/21787/27136&quot;&gt;here, it was aksed how to overcome reticence to use RAID logs&lt;/a&gt; (with &lt;code&gt;A&lt;/code&gt; referring to actions, not assumptions). The general approach, already suggested by the OP, would be to rid the (in this case agile) team of the docuemnt formats and aspects which don't fit into their world, and let the PM take care of the coordination between the two worlds of different mindsets and docuemnts to be maintained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/21790/27136&quot;&gt;this answer to the above question&lt;/a&gt;, it was suggested to keep the PM's Risk Register short and have the agile team maintain their own, with them either finding the document useful and maintaining it by themselves, or being encouraged to do so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your logs should contain only your top five or six items. Maybe seven. These are the highest priority items that you need to track, the most expensive, the most impactful. The rest fall off and are delegated to the teams, who themselves likely maintain their own logs...or should be encouraged to do so. By doing so, the logs remain truly relevant and important and even a SCRUM team will look at them and find them useful, I suspect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my view, this suggesting triggers the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are your experiences with a distributed Risk Register regarding a) maintenance, b) presentation, c) when the event materialises?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you deal with a culture of non-risk-based thinking and widely accepted excuses to remain in that comfort zone a) in general and b) in particular when the team is supposed to maintain its own risk register?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27136" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T19:38:31.440" Title="Distributed Risk Register and Facilitation of Risk-Based / -Aware Thinking" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;skills&gt;&lt;leadership&gt;&lt;qualifications&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21817" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21819" CreationDate="2017-06-12T14:24:33.630" Score="1" ViewCount="114" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am preparing for the CAPM exam and following Rita's book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I couldn't figure out whether or not the above would be considered a Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also written:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of the thousands of students RMC has taught, very few came into our classes understanding that you must first take what you are given and organize the work into appropriate projects. The project planning process will produce schedules and budgets. Can you schedule &quot;fix it&quot; if you do not know what is wrong? Of course not, so there are at least two projects in the previous story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why would there would be two projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20422" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-06-12T18:40:54.253" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T19:22:54.747" Title="Boss came and said &quot;The system is broken&quot;. Would this be a project?" Tags="&lt;small-projects&gt;&lt;definition&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21816" CreationDate="2017-06-12T16:31:41.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;On projects that I have overseen, I have not had perfect success in delivering my vision of how a risk log should look at the project level, in that it should contain the highest six or seven threats facing the project and that lower level logs can and should be used by the various teams.  The project level log quickly grows into a highly controlled deliverable as the original RAID question conveyed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the project level, I would have an individual assigned as the project's risk manager, who will over additional risk management roles at the task level.  That person would encourage or cause the lower level risk managers to maintain their own risk logs and would &quot;audit&quot; them as necessary to ensure or facilitate compliance and reasonable efforts in this task.  If the logs are poorly maintained, that becomes an action for the teams to cure, and that action would be overseen by the PMO.  Also, based on the risk analysis at the lower levels, the project risk manager would have the authority of escalating an identified threat to the project level log and then managing that threat occurs at the highest level.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this said, the culture of non risk based thinking, or what I refer to as risk management resistance, prevails, seems to be systemic across all projects, and is terribly hard to overcome.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were to survey your teams, I would suspect 100% of them would agree risk management is an important--maybe the most important--task to do on every project.  However, we seem to want to avoid it, both folks who raise threats and those who need to hear them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People prefer guarantees; we seem to be uncomfortable with uncertainty; and our eyes glaze over when we start talking statistics, probabilistic distributions, confiden.....  Fell asleep, sorry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We don't want to raise threats on projects we're delivering because it comes across as if we are not in control, it airs our dirty laundry, it transfers ownership of its mitigation to the risk escalator when, if not raise, we can blame force majeur or other stakeholders, and on and on.  We are told there is no try but do, failure is not an option, pessimists are negative people with whom no one wants to work, etc.  All of these are risk management killers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other side, for those who need to hear the threats, we consequence those who raises them.  We tell them to fix it because &quot;this is why I hired you.&quot;  And then we end up making them report to us on this threat several times a week, micro managing every step.  And if the threat materializes, we blame the risk escalator no matter how hard and how rigorous the mitigating activities were while we reward the firefighter who made no attempts to predict and avoid rough waters ahead.  In all, there are serious consequences raising threats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a solid, mature, and capable risk process, everything above needs to be the opposite of what occurs.  Raising and mitigating risks need to be rewarded, even if mitigation fails; while surprises and the heroic fire fighting need to be &quot;punished,&quot; even after successful recovery.  The opposite seems to occur right now.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of the solutions I have tried seems to run counter to how we sort of naturally respond with threats.  I think the solution here is more about human psychology than it is around processes, tools, logs, etc.  This is more of a rant than an answer but this is really a complex issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T16:31:41.373" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21817" CreationDate="2017-06-12T18:05:25.033" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like it's just a way of teacher's teaching style. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They seem to imply, in basic terms, any non-repetitive task can be called a project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the book's case, from what the question includes, finding the cause of the problem and learning the details of the problem is the first project and solving the problem is the second one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if there is a problem somewhere. It can belong to an already existing project. And if that project is closed a new &quot;fix&quot; or &quot;maintenance&quot; can be scoped for that closed project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16715" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T18:05:25.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21817" CreationDate="2017-06-12T18:39:42.207" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A project is any amount of work which has a defined start and end.&#xA;That being said, all projects have some amount of uncertainty at the beginning. So, in theory, the scenario &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be considered as a single project: The end-point being 'when the problem goes away.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it could also just as easily be split into multiple projects; the first of which having an end-point of 'what all of the problems are has been figured out.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At which point you then have one (or more) projects that have end-points of 'Problem(s) have been fixed.' The advantage of doing it this way is that you have more knowledge at the beginning of starting the secondary project(s) and are thus better-able to plan at their beginnings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really, though, there's no difference between that and just starting with the original, vague project of 'fix all problems' and adapt/improve the plan/schedule as more information becomes available. Just because a project has an end-point doesn't mean that end-point cannot &lt;em&gt;move&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Assuming, of course, you are in an at least somewhat Agile environment.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T18:39:42.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21817" CreationDate="2017-06-12T19:22:54.747" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;All tasks are projects.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you start to plan &quot;Fix the problem&quot;, you're going to fail. If the problem is &quot;Someone has unplugged the server&quot;, the WBS is going to be short, the quality tests are clear, etc.  If on the other hand, the problem is &quot;The server uses code that relies on a windows 98 library, and the programmer who maintains that library just retired and moved to Tahiti.&quot;The project is to migrate the codebase to something maintainable.  The WBS is going to be much more complicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think the problem is wrong.  I think you need two projects, but they're different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Activate the Disaster Recovery plan; determine the impact of &quot;broke&quot; on operations and activate the portions of the plan that include work-arounds. Estimate the time to return to operations.  Brief the appropriate people. THis should all be in the disaster recovery plan.  At the same time I'd document the issue and begin the fault analysis - because that will affect how we handle the rest.   (Arguably, this is operations activity, not project activity, but in every environment in which I've worked, I've been responsible for both.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Charter a project with two deliverables.  First, a diagnosis &amp;amp; options on what needs to be fixed.  What is the root cause of the failure and what are the options to fix the failure.   Second deliverable is to produce, test &amp;amp; integrate the fix &amp;amp; turn over to operations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T19:22:54.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21816" CreationDate="2017-06-12T19:38:31.440" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As always, @DavidEspina's answer is excellent.  On the other hand, since this problem presented itself in my environment this morning, I thought I'd share.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I keep a Risk Breakdown Structure, which tracks risks at a fairly granular level - we use a different structure, but effectively I track at the L2 of the WBS (L1 is the end deliverable, L2 is the work packages needed to create that deliverable).   I produce daily charts of risk and change in risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My colleague keeps the risk registry, which is our repository of actionable risk.  We only escalate risks to the registry if:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mitigation involves cooperation by multiple coordinated actors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have no mitigation strategy and need to escalate to stakeholders for consultation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The risks in the RBS demonstrate a pattern.  (There is a cluster of risks that keep recurring over and over.  I can manage each of them, but by escalating, I can  get the stakeholders to change the inputs and thereby avoid the risk.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question is extremely perceptive.  It is an axiom of PMBOK that the PM is an autocrat able to cancel the project if everyone does not follow correct process.   That is an academic assumption to portray effective project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We all want to work on process mature projects in which everyone understands that working together leads to more successful outcomes.  But the truth is that in most of our environments WIFM is stronger than PMBOK.  The truth is that most PM's labor away in isolation working models to enable them to predict project impact and only reveal the products of the model. (After months of work, I finally got my project mature enough to work with EVM; I put up the graph and before I finished the first sentence, my boss said, &quot;You've already bored me.&quot;  EVM is a fantastic tool; the effort to impose EVM is valuable for it's own sake.  But all the boss wants to hear is, &quot;I've studied the problem; team 2 is late 80% of the time by at least 33% of their estimate; either we reschedule the project based on how they act, or we assign most of their work to another team.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Risk Management is most valuable for the discussions it generates. Nobody cares whether the risk is a 2 or a 3; the value is when somebody says, &quot;I think that will happen less often if we buy a thicker pin, or fire Ted, or involve QC earlier, or ....&quot;  Unfortunately, I know of no way to drive people up that hill of risk management maturity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my teachers in high school said that &quot;everything begins as art, becomes science then engineering, then ends as craft.&quot;  In PM, everything begins as tribal knowledge, then a private model, escalates to a badly managed project, then a skunk work, then operations.  You're at the backroom model stage.  Ain't no way but up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(WIFM- What's In It For Me?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T19:38:31.440" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21824" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-13T02:10:08.303" Score="0" ViewCount="60" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently joined a new company and am trying to make sense of their JIRA queue.  If I look at the issues under the project they vary from the issues listed under the project backlog. Why would there be a difference between the two? What is the best way to align them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28838" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-06-13T13:08:27.830" LastActivityDate="2017-06-14T02:13:48.083" Title="JIRAS: Project jiras and backlog under project do not match" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21824" CreationDate="2017-06-13T02:50:36.640" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming that your company is using Jira Agile, your project backlog is defined by a Board, defined by some criteria: typically either a project or a search query. That search query may be a subset of the project or may even incorporate issues from other projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have the appropriate permissions, you can see the query by going to Board -&gt; Configure from the top-right hand corner of the screen. On the General tab, you can find the Saved Filter configuration that defines the board. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can configure the Saved Filter to pull from the entire project, or refine the query as needed by writing your own query in Search, and saving it as a Filter. Make sure to share the filter with the project so that others can see it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28840" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T02:50:36.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21830" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-13T14:33:18.637" Score="3" ViewCount="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;More and more of our Marketing Department is breaking into Agile groups. As a fairly new Scrum Master I have struggled to adapt the fast-paced Marketing world to Agile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In researching, I found that people agree that Marketing Agile is very different from other forms of Agile, yet no one offers any suggestions or testimonies. Does anyone successfully use Agile in Marketing teams? Can you please explain how you are doing it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28849" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-06-13T16:02:29.383" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T19:41:25.043" Title="Agile for Marketing Teams" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21831" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21832" CreationDate="2017-06-13T15:40:35.920" Score="5" ViewCount="1079" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say a project has 2 or more Sprints and for each sprint you are using a burn down chart to track the Sprint progress. If at the end of the first Sprint there are tasks that have been started but are not completed and hence will go into the next sprint to be worked on how would those tasks be handled in the next sprint burn down chart - do you adjust the estimated time for the tasks to reflect the fact that some work has been done on them or use the original estimated time? Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28852" LastActivityDate="2017-06-14T00:55:36.537" Title="How to handle tasks from previous Sprint on current Sprint Burn down chart" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;burndown-chart&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21831" CreationDate="2017-06-13T16:30:44.697" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've tried both with my Team. The one we found to make more sense is to adjust the estimate. The whole idea of Agile is to update your plan based on new information. Updating your estimates to reflect the work &lt;em&gt;remaining&lt;/em&gt; for your Stories will make estimation much easier, and will better reflect what is actually happening in Sprint 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing you've really 'lost' is the overall effort that was required for that Story, but it was decided (in our case) that we didn't really even need that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T16:30:44.697" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21831" CreationDate="2017-06-13T19:33:03.623" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL:DR:&lt;/strong&gt; Use the original estimate. It keeps your data consistent, holds the team accountable and reflects the actual nature of work in a Scrum setting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This answer is based on making a living as a full-time agile coach and having experienced both the healthy and unhealthy ways to deal with unfinished work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why&lt;/strong&gt;: One of the great things about agile is its binary nature for tracking work. Work is either Done or Not Done. There is no ambiguity to this. At the end of the sprint, the story is &quot;potentially shippable&quot; or it is effectively &quot;not even started&quot;. There is never a grey area of &quot;Oh we're 90% done&quot; and then be 90% done for three sprints. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Caveat&lt;/strong&gt;: I'm going to talk about Shu level Scrum, or &quot;starting scrum&quot;. As a team gets too high performing (or Ri level) they can start experimenting with the basics. Until they do, I always recommend you start with the basics. The reason is there is 30+ years behind why those basics work. If you've got issue with this premise, I recommend Ron Jefferies &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ronjeffries.com/xprog/articles/jatbaseball/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;We Tried Baseball, it Didn't Work&lt;/a&gt;&quot; Blog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off, when you reach the end of the sprint, everything is moved from the sprint backlog to the product backlog. Planning starts all over. It's been two weeks and the Product Owner needs to prioritize the backlog based on the current reality. Even though the team just spent two weeks on something, it may no longer be a priority and the product owner may decide to drop it. This is 100% okay, it's not sunk cost. Instead, it's realizing something isn't valuable anymore and deciding not to ship it and thus incur the cost of supporting it. A company I worked for once ended up over a barrel with eBay because they'd deployed this &quot;cute&quot; feature, that didn't really work which eBay then ended up relying on for mission critical business. They ended up having to support this poor feature for over a decade. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next up, you don't re-estimate work in progress. There are a number of reasons. The top of the list is the rest of the world didn't just sit still for the last two weeks. Even if the story is &quot;90% done&quot; (see above), it hasn't been deployed and I know of very few systems that don't change over the course of two weeks. That code is likely out of date to the current system. You need to go back through the whole story and make sure it works with today's environment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Re-estimating will also completely shred you velocity metrics. This will lower the team's ability to predictably plan the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;End of the day, if you are not finishing stories in a sprint, you need to be asking why not putting a bandaid on the problem and moving forward. Make your stories smaller, plan less work, fix your release process, whatever is. Just don't re-estimate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh and don't split the story into done and not done work. That's a whole other agile anti-pattern. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T19:33:03.623" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21830" CreationDate="2017-06-13T19:41:25.043" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my current company, the marketing department has been using agile for years. I think the challenge you may be encountering is that so many people equate &quot;Agile&quot; with &quot;Scrum&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is great. Great when your organization can tolerate not changing the backlog for an entire sprint. Even with week long sprints, this can be a challenge for an organization like Marketing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enter Kanban or even ScrumBan. These flow-based models offer models that allow marketing to respond to rapidly changing backlogs while still giving a framework that provides structure in an agile-based mindset. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Funny enough, Agile coaching is a similarly difficult to fit into &quot;Agile&quot; if we think of agile as only being Scrum. I'm working with a five-person coaching team and we use ScrumBan to manage our coaching engagement with the client. We went with ScrumBan because it gives us the planning window and an ability to get an idea of our capacity and goals for a week (1-week sprints) while still being able to respond to the clients &quot;I need it now&quot; requests. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-06-13T19:41:25.043" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21831" CreationDate="2017-06-14T00:55:36.537" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Sprint burn-down chart tracks work remaining, not work completed. If you want to track work completed, use a burn-up chart instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Inspect-and-Adapt Incomplete Work&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fourth value of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; is &lt;em&gt;responding to change over following a plan.&lt;/em&gt; Carrying work forward automatically not only violates the time-boxing principle that underpins the Scrum framework, but it also reduces a team's ability to adapt to evolving requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When implemented properly, work in Scrum is never carried forward automatically from Sprint to Sprint. Increments of work, whether done or not-done, must always be inspected and adapted at time-box boundaries. Any work that is incomplete at the end of a Sprint is placed back onto the Product Backlog, where the Product Owner can reprioritize it (or even discard it altogether) based on changing business needs or the current Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next time the work is in scope for Sprint Planning, the team replans and re-estimates the work based on new information, current context, and level of effort remaining to complete the work. While lessons learned about the work from previous Sprints can inform the estimation process, &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/15753/4271&quot;&gt;historical estimates are discarded&lt;/a&gt; as irrelevant to the current time-box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;See Also&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following answers are related, although the questions they address are not necessarily exact duplicates of the one you're currently asking. They offer additional explanation and guidance about the importance of re-estimation and replanning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8569/4271&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8569/4271&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/9319/4271&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/9319/4271&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/9727/4271&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/9727/4271&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/11313/4271&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/11313/4271&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/15753/4271&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/15753/4271&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-06-14T00:55:36.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21824" CreationDate="2017-06-14T02:13:48.083" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly you need to find out from the Project Manager how JIRA has been configured for this project. You have mentioned 1) Issues under the project 2) Issues in the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) I interpret project issues as those traditionally tracked in a RAID log by a PM. Confirm with your PM if this is what project issues actually are. JIRA is highly configurable, so without knowing how it has been set up including usage of labels, you won't be able to solve your problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Issues in the backlog should be Epics or User Stories. Confirm with your scrum team if this is definitely the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;JIRA is powerful, but sometimes without standardisation of usage across an organisation you can see some real turkeys. A mess basically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have not already done so, set up your own filters and dashboards to interrogate the issues under the project. Confirm with the PM and scrum team how labels are being used. Then look out for issues that have labels which should be mutually exclusive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have gone through the above process you may be able to confirm exactly what is going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28483" LastActivityDate="2017-06-14T02:13:48.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21805" CreationDate="2017-06-14T10:10:18.093" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tricky situation. The reason that the other company &amp;amp; your upper management don't want the charge for non-programming work is almost certainly because they don't value it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other company probably see it as a way to pad out the bill &amp;amp; would probably claim that they are doing the specifying &amp;amp; much of the project management themselves (been there seen that!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your upper management are not interested in the process - they are interested in the results, so they would say that the results should be charged for, but the rest of the process should be as lean as possible. When companies like Netflix say that they can eliminate roles like Project Manager (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectmanagers.net/i/9-current-trends-and-more-in-project-management/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.projectmanagers.net/i/9-current-trends-and-more-in-project-management/&lt;/a&gt;) upper management can believe that lots of middle management roles are mere padding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What to do is simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either only charge for programming &amp;amp; risk upper management sacking the middle management tier as it is a cost that generates no revenue; or inflate the deliverable charges to cover the costs of the non-programming activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="693" LastActivityDate="2017-06-14T10:10:18.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21838" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-14T21:05:04.267" Score="4" ViewCount="572" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are organized around a Scrum process with 2 week sprints that utilize&#xA;   Project -&gt; Epics -&gt; Features -&gt; Stories -&gt; Tasks&#xA;I am assigned to an Epic expected to take 3 developers for 6 weeks.  The Epic contains 10 features with an average of 8 user-story cards per feature.  The features roughly equate to a web page.  User Stories are things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;101 get the customer info from API&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;102 display on the panel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;103 Let user pick the options they want&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;104 verify the user entered date&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;105 do not leave page until all required info provided &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question I have is: “When is the best time for developers to break Stories down into Tasks?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28867" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-06-15T13:26:49.770" LastActivityDate="2017-06-23T07:27:34.967" Title="Scrum - What and when is the best process to task a user story card in this environment" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21841" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-15T08:41:29.033" Score="0" ViewCount="398" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apologies if this sounds like an agonising 'which tool' question. It is not meant to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a client who has a global license for a tool called Workfront. They are setting up a new PMO to run primarily digital projects, carried out by scrum teams using JIRA (for the product development). My task is to evaluate Workfront for suitability. I have spent some time looking at reviews on g2crowd.com, and softwareadvice.com to gather data, and as expected (perhaps the same for any tool) there are some potentially serious problems which could arise. Some of the comments are pretty terrifying if applied to a large scale digital program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am absolutely not a fan of adopting a tool just &quot;because we already have a license&quot;. My view is that JIRA and Confluence serve the information management, tasks management, and collaborative needs of a scrum team and PMO effectively, and if the PMO wants robust and mature tool for planning then MS Project is solid if you don't try to be too clever. From what I can tell, Workfront needs yet another tool 'guru' to be about for when people get stuck, to help decipher the admin UI and let people get back to productive work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Workfront cannot work reliably alongside JIRA it will not be recommended. Any wisdom on offer? Thanks in advance :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28483" LastActivityDate="2017-06-19T18:39:33.220" Title="Can scrum teams using JIRA work alongside a PMO using a tool called Workfront?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15118" CreationDate="2017-06-15T12:45:32.673" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;WPD is raw data.  For example, if you're making widgets, WPD includes the number you've made, schedule actual start and finish dates, but also measures such their weights, size or whatever you're measuring for quality control purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WPI come from WPD.  WPI are CV, CPI, SV, etc.  WPI adds context to WPD.  For example, AC is raw data, but with no context, it doesn't mean much.  CPI, however gives context.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WPR are derived from WPI and might include pretty graphs for status reports for upper management. They might include recommendations.  WPR is intended decision-making, and for situational awareness.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28828" LastEditorUserId="28828" LastEditDate="2017-06-15T13:00:29.290" LastActivityDate="2017-06-15T13:00:29.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21838" CreationDate="2017-06-15T13:32:29.617" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am assigned to an Epic expected to take 3 developers for 6 weeks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are so very many things wrong with that statement, from a Scrum perspective. I'll go through them in order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am assigned to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum works better as a pull-model, not as a push-model. No one assigns work to developers. In the Planning Meeting, the Scrum Team accepts work from the backlog (with the Product Owner prioritizing which work is most important, and the Development Team deciding how much they can get done that Sprint). During the Sprint, developers will, on their own initiative, pull down unassigned work and start working on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Epic expected to take&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epics are not estimated. They are far too large and nebulous to estimate accurately, so attempting to do so does nothing but give a false sense of schedule-security.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3 developers for 6 weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two things wrong here. First, estimates should be done in terms of relative effort (story points), not time. Second, instead of estimating in x-points-for-y-developers, just estimate for x-points. Otherwise, you are locking yourself into how many developers will work on the Epic, which is distinctly un-Agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, to answer your actual question, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When is the best time for developers to break Stories down into Tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer depends on whether or not you are &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; doing Scrum. If you are, then the answer is during the Sprint Planning Meeting (or, as some Teams do, during the Pre-Planning Meeting).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it's looking like your company does not really do Scrum. The commonly accepted word for what you're doing is Scrumbut. So your two options are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try to convince your company to switch to actual Scrum. If the reasoning behind this particular version of Scrumbut was something along the lines of: &#xA;&quot;This Scrum thing looks nice, but we probably don't need this, and this, and this...&quot; then take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://ronjeffries.com/xprog/articles/jatbaseball/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;We Tried Baseball and It Didn't Work&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask your company how they intend to implement their particular version of Pretends-To-Be-Scrum-But-Actually-Is-Not-Even-Agile. Because we, not being part of your company, cannot really answer that question for you. Keep in mind that it's possible there might not be anything actually &lt;em&gt;wrong&lt;/em&gt; with what your company is doing, from a business-perspective... but calling it Scrum is blatantly false. As the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; notes:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;although implementing only parts of Scrum is possible, the result is not Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One final thing, you might want to look into how you're defining User Stories. A commonly-used format is &quot;As (identity), I would like to (action) in order to (reason).&quot; See the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST mnemonic&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-06-15T13:37:56.230" LastActivityDate="2017-06-15T13:37:56.230" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21841" CreationDate="2017-06-15T13:52:08.247" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only real advice I can give is to back up your position with both facts and rhetoric.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The facts part is simple. Just make sure you document everything - all those comments you've found? Copy them down. Furthermore, it's unclear from your question, but I got the impression that you haven't actually &lt;em&gt;tried&lt;/em&gt; Workfront yourself. You'll need to fix that. While you won't be able to test it for scalability or expert-usage scenarios, at the very least you cannot give an authoritative opinion on a product you have &lt;em&gt;never actually used&lt;/em&gt;. And, as always, document all your findings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the rhetoric part (which is unfortunately in many business cultures far more important than facts), you'll just have to make sure your speaking/persuasive skills are up to snuff. If they're not, then the best advice I could give is to practice. Once you've got your presentation 'ready', actually &lt;em&gt;give&lt;/em&gt; it to someone (co-worker, friend, family...) and have them critique you. Then improve and try again. A truly great presentation shouldn't even need (much) understanding of the domain in order for the persuasiveness to shine through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-06-15T13:52:08.247" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21838" CreationDate="2017-06-15T14:16:26.517" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When is the best time for developers to break Stories down into Tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum-team should be self-organising. After careful deliberate thought and experiments the team should come to a point in time that best fits their process. Therefor I suggest they experiment with different times and see which one nets the best results for the team. The retrospective could be a good meeting to discuss if the current way of breaking down stories is optimal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some common times:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;During the Sprint at the start of the user-story. My current team does a &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://less.works/less/technical-excellence/architecture-design.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Architecture &amp;amp; Design&lt;/a&gt;&quot; design discussion when someone starts on a new story. This short sessions (15-60 minutes) results in tasks so the developers can work in parallel and &lt;a href=&quot;http://unreqs.com/swarming/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;swarm&lt;/a&gt;. (I would prefer this)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;During the planning session (earlier seems a waste, since there is a chance the story is never picked up in a Sprint). Do question if you need a detailed plan to forecast. Long planning meetings suck the life out of developers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2017-06-23T07:27:34.967" LastActivityDate="2017-06-23T07:27:34.967" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3551" CreationDate="2017-06-15T15:15:38.367" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to address the &quot;appropriate structure&quot; part of the question.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either is fine.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's important is to ensure that all project deliverables are in the WBS.  That is, ensure that you follow the &quot;100% rule&quot;: All deliverables are in the WBS (each deliverable is in the WBS somewhere once and only once) and if it's not in the WBS, it's not a deliverable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28828" LastActivityDate="2017-06-15T15:15:38.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21849" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-15T15:39:52.013" Score="1" ViewCount="91" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a bunch of tasks set up to get done by a dozen teams.  The teams are in as resources that have varying sizes.  200%, 400%, 600% whatever..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I report the tasks, some have been started and are x% complete others have not been started.  I put in the priorities of the tasks, great so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I want to go to the Project and Update the project with the option of &quot;Reschedule uncompleted work to start after today&quot;  Great, Project does that.&#xA;Then when I click Level all, some of the tasks get scheduled to begin back at the beginning of the project in January.  Any idea how to stop that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28876" LastEditorUserId="28129" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T04:35:26.713" LastActivityDate="2019-01-08T08:02:10.437" Title="MS Project Update Project and Level All" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21055" CreationDate="2017-06-15T18:47:12.413" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Load the two resources as a team, i.e., you have person A, person B, and Team A which contains both persons.  Combine their rates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-06-15T18:47:12.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21849" CreationDate="2017-06-15T19:59:13.070" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Be sure to clear all leveling before implementing the Update Project dialog.   Tasks whose start dates are already beyond your &quot;reschedule uncompleted work to start after:&quot; date - including those delayed by leveling - will be ignored in the dialog.  When you re-run the leveler, the existing leveling delays will be removed, and there will be no logical constraints to keep the tasks in the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2017-06-15T19:59:13.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9338" CreationDate="2017-06-15T23:18:18.883" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like CodeGnome's response. I would add &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perform peer reviews of your documentation.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Come up with a way to organize your documents, even if you have a search engine that works.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Establish a file and title naming conventions for your documents.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure that every document is under version control.  It could be as simple as ensuring there is a table of changes in each document.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28828" LastActivityDate="2017-06-15T23:18:18.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21701" CreationDate="2017-06-15T23:29:22.450" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As has been noted in other comments, running a business is not a project in itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, anyone who has built a business from scratch has performed many projects in order to get the company off the ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order for you to import the clothing you would have needed to perform some financial planning, risk analysis, communication plan with stakeholders, provide a timeline for when shipments would be ready for resale, and so on. Once you are up and running, then yes the project is over and you are in maintenance mode, but adding a new sales line or opening up a new market would be another new project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even smaller things like setting up your store/office involved materials requisition, contracts, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only snag I see here with you claiming your experience is if you were a sole proprietor with no partners or employees. PMI will require &quot;a colleague, peer, client or sponsor who has intimate knowledge of the project verify this experience&quot; for your application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice to you is, if you haven't already, document everything you did to set up the company, and go through the PMBOK to see which domains those activities represented. You need some experience in all domains, so just managing forecast spreadsheets and sales cold calls won't cut it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20438" LastActivityDate="2017-06-15T23:29:22.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21682" CreationDate="2017-06-16T00:03:45.083" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Estimation, like a lot of things in the PM world is both an art and a science. PERT is a good rule of thumb, but it is just a place to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some projects I've seen estimates use (opt. time + medium + pess. time) ÷ 3 to show a larger possible variance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if it's a type of task that your team has done before (and maybe even has some data to show prior durations) you can more heavily weigh the medium as it is more likely that it will take that long again. (See &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2007/10/26/evidence-based-scheduling/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Evidence Based Scheduling&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20438" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T00:03:45.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21856" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21860" CreationDate="2017-06-16T13:20:12.967" Score="2" ViewCount="1182" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have a template/example of how to use Microsoft Project to manage Scrum? I need to know how to manage the backlog, handle sprints, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28883" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-06-16T13:33:06.677" LastActivityDate="2017-06-17T07:15:42.907" Title="Template Microsoft Project with Scrum" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21838" CreationDate="2017-06-16T15:10:41.057" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please allow me to answer your question as presented first, and then broaden my answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When is the best time for developers to break Stories down into Tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At sprint planning at the beginning of the sprint. This is what we would call the &quot;last responsible moment&quot;. They need concrete places to start working but they know the most about the work that needs to be done right before they start the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also recommend reading this blog post from Mike Cohn which takes the &quot;last responsible moment&quot; idea a step further:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/teams-dont-need-to-think-of-everything-during-sprint-planning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/teams-dont-need-to-think-of-everything-during-sprint-planning&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to broaden the answer: you may find this whole thing very difficult because of the nature of your product backlog items. Let me be clear, you do not have to use user stories for Scrum (in fact, they are from XP and Scrum just says &quot;Product Backlog Items&quot;) but the reason they have become so common is because of how well they work in Agile development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your backlog items are written like a Work Breakdown Structure. A WBS largely assumes a fixed end-scope, assumes complete knowledge before the beginning of the project, and focuses on labor over value. User Stories, on the other hand, focus on delivering a capability to some user of the system. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a customer, I would like to see what information is already in the system about me so that I can see if anything needs to be changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tasks from this may be something like: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;figure out API auth process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;call api&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;design panel layout&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;populate panel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;data quality check&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can, this user story cuts through a few of your user stories (though probably doesn't fully fulfill them) and also delivers a particular piece of functionality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, Scrum doesn't say you have to do this. It just makes the whole process easier for most teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T15:10:41.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21859" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-16T19:23:44.687" Score="0" ViewCount="154" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am relatively new Project Scheduling/Management. I have been using Microsoft Project for about 6 months to schedule projects for the engineering dept. The IT dept came to me for some help in scheduling their projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The engineering schedule is very linear; Do Task A, then Task B, then Task C. Dependencies and progress are clear. Whereas, the IT dept is much more sporadic; I'll work half my day on Project A, doing tasks A and B, then leave it to compute, and do %25 of Project B and then %25 of Project C. The next day might focus entirely on Project B, with only %10 on Project A and C. With multiple projects happening at the same time I typically show a lot of overallocation and I have a difficult time representing progress.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is has anyone experienced something like this and do you have any tips/resources for how to reflect this working style in MPP? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28885" LastActivityDate="2017-06-17T10:16:56.263" Title="Many Simultaneous Projects" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21856" CreationDate="2017-06-17T07:15:42.907" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Microsoft Project is generally not used for Scrum. This is because it uses the Gantt style visualisation with dependencies between work items. Scrum typically attempts to minimise dependencies and does not attempt to enforce an order of completing work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could use Project to indicate when the Scrum ceremonies take place (e.g. planning, retrospective and sprint review). You could even have a backlog in Project - just a series of work items with no associated start/finish date. Then when you plan for a sprint you could move these items under a sprint in Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it is debatable whether this would provide any value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, you may want to consider tools that are designed to work with Scrum, like JIRA or Trello.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2017-06-17T07:15:42.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21859" CreationDate="2017-06-17T10:16:56.263" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If these are true projects, decompose each project as you normally would, create intra-project dependencies as normal, and load your resources at a reduced utilization that represents your best plan, i.e., load resources around 20% to 40% each day.  Do not worry about getting so precise that you know resources A will work projects B and C on Monday and then project A on Tuesday.  Just load them equally (unless you know some type of priority) across all projects across the total duration.  Show all the projects to run simultaneously.  Each of those projects still needs to commit to completing pieces of the project by certain dates so you will know, and be able to measure, progress as each meets a completion milestone.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Load cost actuals and measure your variances for each of those projects but also at the hammock level task above all of those projects.  You can see how well you're doing at the higher level plus the variances at the lower levels.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is really not that unique.  This is a normal scheduling issue that represents complex projects within a matrix organization.  There WILL be tons of variances, tons of over and under utilized resources (on paper), and risk, but that's what PM is all about.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's my general rule on leveling: the only time it matters to remove over or under utilized resources is at the first baseline.  Thereafter, it doesn't matter because the work we do is hugely probabilistic and variable.  Chasing it, trying to constantly level it, is trying to control random variables.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-06-17T10:16:56.263" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21862" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-17T15:56:33.157" Score="1" ViewCount="776" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am interviewing for a trainee BA position and they have given me this scenario to answer. I am not sure on the correct questions to ask and how to develop a requirements spec based on what is provided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please can you guys assist me&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scenario:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Burger-24 is a Burger shop which delivers Burgers 24/7&#xA;They are asking to build a website where customers can log their orders and pay, mainly for reducing the telephone calls that are currently the only method for ordering Burgers, and are time-consuming for Burger-24 staff&#xA;You are a Business Analyst at the company that was hired to build the website. You were tasked to gather requirements for the website and create a specification / requirements page that will be clear both for the developer(s) who will build the website, as well as for Burger-24 owner to understand and approve.&#xA;1.  Describe the process of gathering the requirements you are planning to take. What kind of questions you are planning to ask? What considerations need to be taken? (from a BA point of view)&#xA;2.  Please create the specification based on the current information given &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;for part 1.. I can only think of asking the owners to give more details of the current issues and how they wish the website to look and how it will solve the problem they are having&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) I am unsure of how the specification should be based on the current information&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28888" LastActivityDate="2017-11-20T22:24:36.780" Title="What questions to ask and how to create spec based on provided information" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;business-analyst&gt;&lt;specification&gt;&lt;business-case&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21841" CreationDate="2017-06-19T18:39:33.220" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Workfront is primarily considered to be a portfolio management tool. It is used by upper management to get an overview of projects in process. Although there are project management features built into it, normal procedure would be to continue to manage the projects, themselves, in Jira, and maintaining just enough information to provide a meaningful overview in Workfront. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find yourself doing double-documentation, you are overworking the Workfront end. Instead, think of Workfront as providing a way for you to help your management look at your project in context with other projects. It substitutes for a certain amount (but not all) status reporting and updating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are getting Workfront (which will dovetail with Jira) in my current company. In a previous company, I used Clarity in concert with MS Project. Same principle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't all bad. Over time, how you use Jira, and the information that portfolio managers need/want in order to best make decisions, will both evolve. It's a good place to allow the PM or SM to make decisions and customize what needs to be represented in Workflow and how. More generally, think of how differently individual scrum teams run (the same work done at similarly consistent velocity might use entirely different story points; user stories might reflect very different teams, etc.), and then consider the need for a way to inform management of how work is progressing without giving up the ability to continue to allow your team to self-organize productively. This can be a major sanity enhancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11776" LastActivityDate="2017-06-19T18:39:33.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21864" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-19T19:01:46.637" Score="1" ViewCount="228" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a novice Jira user, part of a pilot project where none of us have notable experience. We are using hosted Jira. The site administrator has made me administrator of a couple of projects. Now I'd like to start by importing a backlog from an existing spreadsheet. I have prepared the CSV, but can nowhere find the &quot;import&quot; link mentioned in the documention, nor can I get to an Administration page such as I am seeing in YouTube videos. I am listed in &quot;users and roles&quot; as an administrator of the project in question, but I am not a site administrator, if that matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11776" LastActivityDate="2018-02-13T04:43:56.993" Title="What Jira role is required so as to have access to Jira import" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;roles&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21864" CreationDate="2017-06-20T00:10:42.160" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to be a Jira Administrator, per the documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiracloud/importing-data-from-excel-776636783.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cloud&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Importing your CSV file &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once your CSV file has been prepared, log into&#xA;  your JIRA Cloud site as a JIRA administrator to start the import&#xA;  process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver071/importing-data-from-csv-802592885.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Server&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Running the CSV file import wizard&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Before you begin, please back&#xA;  up your JIRA data. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Log in to JIRA as a user with the JIRA&#xA;  Administrators global permission. Select Administration &gt; System &gt;&#xA;  Import &amp;amp; Export &gt; External System Import &gt; Import button associated&#xA;  with the Comma-separated values (CSV) option to open the CSV File&#xA;  import page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that a Jira Administrator does not grant ALL access, as does Jira System Administrator. You can find more information about the Jira roles in the relevant documentation (&lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver071/managing-global-permissions-802592439.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;server&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiracloud/managing-global-permissions-776636359.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cloud&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28840" LastActivityDate="2017-06-20T00:10:42.160" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21682" CreationDate="2017-06-20T02:45:53.733" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is interesting. If you follow best practices for defining distinct activities to be estimated and tracked, then I think they really do meet these conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;every event is independent by the previous and the next;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A well defined task or user story is independent in terms of the work required to do it. Of course, it may have dependencies in &lt;em&gt;sequencing&lt;/em&gt;, but that's not the same thing as dependency in actually doing the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, given that Task A and Task B are started when &quot;ready&quot; (ie, when all their prerequisites are in place), then how long it takes to do one should have no bearing on how long it takes to do the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there are only 2 possible values, yes/no or similar;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The task is Done or Not Done. Best practice is not to track %complete, because there's no value delivered until it's Done. (And you don't &lt;em&gt;reaaally&lt;/em&gt; know how much work is left until the amount left is 0.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does that help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2017-06-20T02:45:53.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21867" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-20T16:09:55.300" Score="3" ViewCount="2155" Body="&lt;p&gt;My CEO has moments where he is just very difficult to work with. He has a tendency to nit pick and when he nit picks sometimes he overreacts over something minor then makes a mountain out of a molehill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A few examples:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am currently product managing a digital product, as part of the job I am responsible for grooming the product backlog and on a weekly basis plan the team's work for the week. As part of the process, I have to show my plan for the week every Monday morning to my CEO. For the past couple of weeks he has been complaining that the work is not planned how he wants it to be planned, when I have on several occasions made it clear that the whole point of reviewing this at the start of the week is so that I can define the sprint goal. The trouble I am having is that I can't anticipate exactly what he wants, until we actually sit down together and review the product roadmap and backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am in the process of delivering a client's project, the normal protocol is for the CEO to review the first draft of the design work. Since this is DESIGN, it is very difficult to get it perfect the first time due to subjectivity of what a good design is, which is why he is involved in the process. I showed him the design, my designer did 5 versions, and he just kept complaining over minor things. Eventually he just told me to not show him the design work to begin with unless it is perfect. I was left scratching my head, trying to define what 'perfect' is. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both instances, I sat down and handled the situation by being unresponsive, but deep down, it really annoys me and I am a bit concerned that he is never going to be satisfied. The question is: what is the best way to handle a stakeholder/CEO who just moans all of the time? Is there a way to reduce the moaning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-06-20T16:16:28.997" LastActivityDate="2017-06-22T10:22:45.257" Title="Best way to deal with difficult stakeholders?" Tags="&lt;stakeholders&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21867" CreationDate="2017-06-20T19:47:06.993" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stakeholder management 101: define the rules of engagement, define the two-way communication requirements, point out and resolve the inconsistencies in the stakeholder requirements--such as what you pointed out here--and whatever else you need such that you get what you need from the CEO and he gets what he needs from you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Schedule a meeting or two and work this out.  If he refuses to sit down to discuss or continues with inconsistencies, then you have a stakeholder risk and you need to develop other mitigating strategies, including a ton of documentation, ton of email CYAs, bringing others to the meeting to have witnesses, etc.  If this returns marginal results, then work a mitigating strategy for yourself, which may include departure.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remove the emotion as best you can and get creative with your mitigating strategies.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-06-20T19:47:06.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21867" CreationDate="2017-06-21T03:47:02.640" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Summary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You must leverage your framework more effectively. This includes pulling your stakeholders into Backlog Refinement and explaining the iterative/incremental nature of the project's delivery framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also need to &lt;em&gt;increase&lt;/em&gt; the level of collaboration with the CEO. Being dismissive or using emotion-laden statements like &quot;he moans all the time&quot; are 100% counter-productive, and usually a sign of ineffective communication on both sides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;NB: While you didn't tag the question with &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/agile&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;agile&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;agile&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/scrum&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;scrum&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;scrum&lt;/a&gt;, your mention of &quot;backlog grooming&quot; indicates it's some sort of Scrum-like framework. My answer will therefore be tailored for that.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Stakeholders Required for Refinement&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am responsible for grooming the product backlog and on a weekly basis plan the team's work for the week. As part of the process, I have to show my plan for the week every Monday morning to my CEO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ouch. No! If you're following Scrum, then the Product Owner should be leading the refinement ceremony, and inviting the rest of the team to participate. If you're doing Backlog Refinement all by yourself, you're Doing Scrum Wrong.™ More importantly, the input to the Product Backlog and the Backlog Refinement ceremony needs to flow &lt;em&gt;from&lt;/em&gt; the stakeholders and &lt;em&gt;through&lt;/em&gt; the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your specific case, the CEO is a key stakeholder, but he's not actively participating in defining stories or refining your Product Backlog. This is a problem, because he's waiting until Monday (which is presumably Sprint Planning or your equivalent) to weigh in, rather than getting out in front of things in Backlog Refinement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should insist that he take part in refinement. Call it a &quot;pre-planning&quot; meeting if he's not an agilist, or invest the time to explain the differing purposes of the formal ceremonies of your framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Explain Iterative Development&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[T]he normal protocol is for the CEO to review the first draft of the design work. Since this is DESIGN, it is very difficult to get it perfect the first time due to subjectivity of what a good design is, which is why he is involved in the process. I showed him the design, my designer did 5 versions, and he just kept complaining over minor things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, &quot;the normal protocol&quot; seems like a project smell. The &lt;em&gt;client&lt;/em&gt; should generally be the one reviewing design decisions, because the CEO is not the one ultimately consuming the delivered product. It's likely that the CEO doesn't trust you or the team, and that's something that needs to be addressed. Furthermore, you need to find out why the CEO doesn't want the client reviewing the design. His answer may be useful in deciding how to proceed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, regardless of who is reviewing the design, the team and the CEO are not collaborating constructively. That needs to change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an iterative delivery model like Scrum, work is done in &lt;em&gt;increments&lt;/em&gt;. Whether the increment of work is a design or a slice of functionality is irrelevant. In either case, the team should do the work and then the stakeholders (in this case, the CEO) review it and suggest changes or improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CEO is free to make an infinite number of changes. It's his company. Your job isn't to stop him from making changes. Instead, your job is to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make the &lt;em&gt;cost&lt;/em&gt; of changes visible to the organization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure that changes are introduced at framework inflection points like the Sprint Review or Sprint Planning rather than in the middle&#xA;of an iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure that everyone (including the CEO) agrees to respect the framework ceremonies, or is willing to accept the costs of&#xA;introducing change outside the normal cadence.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how do you make these things happen? Collaboration and education! Here are some key techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a conversation with the CEO about how incremental, iterative, and emergent development work together or separately, and how these techniques differ from traditional up-front planning systems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Disintermediate yourself, and have the CEO collaborate with the designers on design.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Educate the CEO on framework ceremonies. Ensure he's introducing work during Backlog Refinement or Sprint Planning, and reviewing the increment during Sprint Review.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduce Acceptance Test Driven Design/Development to encourage a more collaborative approach to product specification.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leverage testable specifications to objectively drive the designers' work, rather than trying to guess what is wanted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure that the &lt;em&gt;team&lt;/em&gt; plans the work, rather than trying to digest the requirements and plan the work on the team's behalf.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Encourage the CEO to attend the Sprint Planning meetings so that he can see firsthand how his requirements enable or impede the team, and so he can be on hand to answer questions about the work planned for the iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the CEO is not on board with your current process, then you and he either need to agree on a new process that you can both live with, or you need to resign yourself to the status quo. You can't &lt;em&gt;make&lt;/em&gt; anyone do anything, and if you can't collaborate then you can't succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-06-21T03:47:02.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21838" CreationDate="2017-06-21T06:52:11.970" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) or leSS or Dad would be a good solution for your company? What they offer is a bridge between scrum teams and monolithic structures in a big company. See this: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cio.com/article/2974436/agile-development/comparing-scaling-agile-frameworks.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.cio.com/article/2974436/agile-development/comparing-scaling-agile-frameworks.html&lt;/a&gt; and show it to your managers. For example in SAFe you work in 13 week Product Increments (divided to 2 weeks iterations) during which you are supposed to deliver an epic. The team (not a manager) plans it upfront for the whole PI and then adjusts accordingly during following iterations. It is not a pure Scrum nor a perfect solution but kind of reasonable compromise that might help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19305" LastActivityDate="2017-06-21T06:52:11.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21871" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-21T11:57:16.243" Score="5" ViewCount="1958" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am wondering how to manage this sort of issue in the best, Agile way. Let's take our current situation as an example: we have two stories that are technically &quot;complex&quot; (simply put, big), that will take some time to be finished. QA testers wait for it to be done so they can test it. The stories are big with documentation and testing being subtasks of the story. During the first Sprint, the stories got put on the back burner because of urgent production bugs that needed to be fixed. We are soon ending our second sprint and yet again, these stories won't be resolved but now because documentation and testing will not have been completed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, can we split QA testing and documentation into separate stories rather than having them as subtasks so we can get stories like these resolved during a sprint? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some background information: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have 3 week Sprints at the moment but everyone will transition to 2 week Sprints in Autumn so this sort of problem will be more prevalent. So we can't increase the length of our Sprints.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you wonder if we could split the stories smaller then no, it is already small considering. It is either done or not, implemented in our testing environment or not (we can't test a skateboard if it's still a board lying on the shelf). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We do iterations, do a demo for our client and many more at the end of each Sprint and we do have a focus on delivering benefit to the user (functional, technical, etc) at each Sprint - but the release of our product isn't until next year. So we don't have the pressure of &quot;delivering working software&quot; as in releasing the whole thing at the end of each sprint. The product does work even though QA testing hasn't been done. So it wouldn't put the project as risk if we split testing and coding to two different Sprints. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So right now I have two stories with coding getting finished, but testing and documentation as subtasks that will stop the stories being resolved. I want to split the subtasks into stories so as to plan them into a Sprint when the coding is done. Is this okay or is there a better way to handle it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27810" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-06-21T13:18:34.207" LastActivityDate="2017-06-22T10:10:10.927" Title="Scrum - splitting test from a user story to next sprint" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21871" CreationDate="2017-06-21T13:20:42.403" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stories should be the smallest possible unit of work that, by themselves, provide business value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So that's the real question - does untested, undocumented code provide any value to your business?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only the stakeholders of your Project within your business can really answer that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally... sure, non-automated testing needs to be done afterwards, but why couldn't you do documentation and automated testing &lt;em&gt;during&lt;/em&gt; development? I don't see the need for a roadblock there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-06-21T13:20:42.403" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21871" CreationDate="2017-06-21T14:55:29.323" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, splitting technical tasks off into new stories is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the answer. The idea behind delivering a &quot;potentially releasable product increment&quot; is that the stakeholders can say at the end of a sprint: &quot;We like this. Let's put this in a beta test among selected customers.&quot; or even &quot;Let's move the release date forward and beat our competition.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;When they say that during a sprint review, you put yourself in a very weak position if you then have to tell your client that the product you so proudly showed isn't finished yet, because it isn't fully tested yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you get into the habit of making separate stories for documentation and testing, then you are telling the PO (and the client) that documentation and testing can be prioritized separately from the coding, which means that inevitably they will be moved further and further down the backlog, in favor of coding more and more features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find that there are too many show-stopping interruptions that prevent you and your team from completing the regular work in a sprint, then you should first address why there are so many show-stoppers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the quality of the work you deliver really high enough? Should more effort be spent on preventing such serious issues to make it into production?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are all the reported issues really show-stoppers or could some of them actually have been postponed till the next sprint (only 3 weeks away worst case)? Has it been considered to abort the current sprint once a show-stopping bug comes in (all sprint-related work stops immediately and the entire team focuses exclusively on fixing the show-stopping issue)? If the stakeholders are not willing to abort a sprint to fix a show-stopper (and take the losses/delays that that implies), then the issue isn't really important enough to be called a show-stopper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find that the stories are actually too big to be completed in one sprint, then you need to split them into slammer stories. Not by splitting off technical work, but by splitting off functionality, regardless of how hard that may be. Or you must accept that a story drags along for multiple sprints and you have to explain several times why not all planned stories were completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a certain point, splitting stories becomes very hard because it is no longer obvious how a even smaller story can still deliver value to the stakeholders. If you get to that stage with a story that is still too large to confidently deliver in one sprint, then you need to get into a serious negotiation with the (relevant) stakeholders to discuss how to split the story further. You must not take no for an answer and you should be prepared to take steps that seem very radical, like supporting the feature only for a small sub-set of the users.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;To take your skateboard analogy, even a skateboard that doesn't have wheels yet can be tested on some important points (like board length, width, strength, flexibility, etc.). It may not be as functional as you want it in a finished product, but it would be fine for an unreleased product increment and to give the stakeholders something they can use to get a feel for the final product they will be getting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2017-06-21T14:55:29.323" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21871" CreationDate="2017-06-22T08:09:11.830" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, you can not separate QA testing and documentation into separate stories. This will violate the philosophy of Scrum which requires simple, short, autonomous sprints. According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_%28mnemonic%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt;, the stories should be self-contained and Independent. Maybe this is a sign that your stories are not simple enough and you should re-examine how you write your stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should find more creative ways to split the stories even further. Remove functionality, make them simpler. Add removed complexity andfunctionality in next sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28712" LastActivityDate="2017-06-22T08:09:11.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21877" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-22T08:46:03.597" Score="4" ViewCount="322" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been doing this now for 2 years,and whilst job hunting I have seen many jobs where they want somebody who is a hybrid; Developer/PM, Business analyst/PM (very popular), Account manager/PM as opposed to someone that is a pure PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind, is PM a stand alone profession in it's own right, or do you have to be really good at something else before becoming a PM?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2017-07-13T22:03:45.453" Title="Is project management a profession or a subset of another profession?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21871" CreationDate="2017-06-22T10:10:10.927" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer you don't want to hear: Your stories are too big.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story is 2-3 days of work for the team. Not 2-3 weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll just have to regocnize the pattern, and provide ways to break it.&#xA;It can be done. &#xA;Always.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Team:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get your team in the right frame of mind:&#xA;I sometimes explain it to my team by drawing a square on a whiteboard: The complexity in a story is the square of the time.&#xA;So a story that is 4 days instead of 2 days, has 4*4 = 16 units of complexity for bugs to hide in.  A 2 day story only has 2*2 = 4 units for bugs to hide.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Smaller stories have fewer bugs, they're simpler and easier to find and fix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also: a 50% increase in effort, due to unforseen technical problems, is only a day on a small story. It's a week on your story-size. That's just not predictable anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Testing is feedback. You want to keep the feedback-loop to your developers shorter, not longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Splitting:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think your stories can not be split; if you think you 'must' have everything before delivering:&#xA;You are focussing on the product. Focus on the customer need instead. &#xA;You are mixing the two until you think that 'customer need' is the same as 'a complete product'. &#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Learn about storymapping.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your skateboard-analogy:&#xA;Suppose my son is my customer, and he wants to ride that skateboard, and I have agreed to build him one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If &lt;em&gt;borrow&lt;/em&gt; one for him, I can fulfill his need, while I am working on the next increment of the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I test the wheels, I can provide a product ('replacement wheels') for his old, broken skateboard, while I am working on the next increment of the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I assemble the front wheels and test them, that reduces my risc. And as risc is negative value, I have reduced my negative value, and thus: risc reduction is value creation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By focussing on his need ('riding a skateboard') instead of the product ('a skateboard), I can split a single skateboard in three valuable increments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24119" LastActivityDate="2017-06-22T10:10:10.927" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21838" CreationDate="2017-06-22T10:17:07.013" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;•101 get the customer info from API&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not a good userstory. &#xA;It does not provide any customer value but focusses on a technical step in the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are better:&#xA;•103 Let user pick the options they want&#xA;•104 verify the user entered date&#xA;•105 do not leave page until all required info provided &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;because you can deliver 103 without the verification, and do the verification of 105 manually, afterwards.&#xA;You can put a single notice on the page 'make sure you always enter a date', thus satisfying 104.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learn about storymapping. Make sure you deliver the process to the user, instead of pre-defining what the process should be, slicing it into steps, and delivering these as stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read about storymapping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24119" LastActivityDate="2017-06-22T10:17:07.013" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21867" CreationDate="2017-06-22T10:22:45.257" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make sure he has something to provide input on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your pitfall is the design-first phase.  Apparently it is not an option to rethink design-issues later, so the design has to be perfect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tell him you're going to demo the desing in a working model.&#xA;Start building the product and demo it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all goes well, he will at first ask you to adjust the design - and more and more often he will ask you to deliver functionality instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way:&#xA;* he can see progress&#xA;* he is in control&#xA;* he can see the design in a working product instead of documents&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24119" LastActivityDate="2017-06-22T10:22:45.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21881" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21882" CreationDate="2017-06-22T10:57:57.770" Score="6" ViewCount="3023" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum has a number of well-defined artifacts, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Backlog &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint Backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Burn-Down Chart&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What artifacts are essential to Kanban?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28943" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-12-10T14:05:53.330" LastActivityDate="2018-12-10T14:05:53.330" Title="What are the artifacts in Kanban?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;frameworks&gt;&lt;artifacts&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21881" CreationDate="2017-06-22T14:27:33.673" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer is: &lt;strong&gt;there are no predefined artifacts in Kanban&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum has predefined roles, events, and artifacts but Kanban doesn't. Kanban just describes 4 principles and 5 practices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start with existing process;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agree to pursue incremental, evolutionary change;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Respect the current process, roles, responsibilities and titles;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Encourage acts of leadership at all levels;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Visualize the workflow;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Limit Work-in-Progress;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Monitor, measure and optimize workflow;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make Process Policies Explicit;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improve Collaboratively.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(You can read more &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.everydaykanban.com/what-is-kanban/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but nothing about roles, events, or artifacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. As I had written in a &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/21881/what-are-the-artifacts-in-kanban/21884#comment27532_21881&quot;&gt;comment&lt;/a&gt;, a Burn-Down Chart is not a Scrum artifact. You can use a Burn-Down Chart within Scrum, but it is not a part of Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-06-23T01:30:11.167" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21883" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21937" CreationDate="2017-06-22T16:10:53.823" Score="-2" ViewCount="1053" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can a project manager foster greater accountability between empowered DevOps personnel and empowered developers in an Agile environment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work in an environment where both developers and DevOps personnel have a lot of autonomy. They need to work together to ensure a stable and complian build and deployment pipeline. It seems a project manager can help create the right communication between the two. But I'm running into the situation where the project manager is having trouble getting the two groups to work well together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25654" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2017-07-03T21:52:31.270" LastActivityDate="2017-07-03T21:52:31.270" Title="What are the responsibilities of a project manager in a DevOps project?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;devops&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21881" CreationDate="2017-06-23T01:16:16.880" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Scrum Artifacts: Burn-Down Charts Aren't Mandated&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before answering your question, it's worth noting that burn-down charts are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; required artifacts within Scrum. While the use of such charts is quite common, the framework itself does not require them. They are therefore &lt;em&gt;ancillary&lt;/em&gt; artifacts generated by particular implementations, rather than artifacts generated directly by the Scrum framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Kanban Artifacts&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By definition, a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt; system has only two defined artifacts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The kanban itself, which is the board everyone thinks of when they think of Kanban-the-methodology.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The kanban cards that move around the board.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, implementing the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.djaa.com/principles-kanban-method-0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban Method&lt;/a&gt; generally results in a host of ancillary artifacts including &lt;strong&gt;backlogs, maps, policies, graphs, and reports&lt;/strong&gt;. While none of these artifacts are explicitly required by the framework, it's hard to imagine an effective Kanban implementation that doesn't at least generate some metrics and graphs to inspect cycle time, lead time, and other key performance indicators to monitor the health of the project or process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;NB: David J. Anderson's method requires that you visualize your workflow, but doesn't actually mandate the implementation of a Kanban system with boards and cards. The mechanism (and therefore the artifacts) for visualization are left up to the implementation.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize, &lt;strong&gt;anything generated during the implementation of the Kanban system or method is an artifact.&lt;/strong&gt; The typical system requires only the board and cards, while the method only requires a means to visually represent the work. Everything else is a practice or side-effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-06-23T01:16:16.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21877" CreationDate="2017-06-23T02:01:46.367" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would appear to be a per-industry, per-company, or even-per department opinion. I consider Project Management to be a profession because I have used the exact same tools and techniques in architecture/construction, IT infrastructure, and business strategy development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It gets messy, though. Even in my current company, there is a specific role called &quot;Project Management&quot; and a PM team in our custom software deployment team but there is not that same role in our development teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would guess that companies that have very specific contracts (custom dev, implementation, migrations, etc.) will treat Project Management as a profession whereas companies will more free flowing development will treat project management as an add-on/combo job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2017-06-23T02:01:46.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9167" CreationDate="2017-06-24T04:57:20.047" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To quote Dr. Goldratt's article &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.goldrattconsulting.com/webfiles/fck/files/Standing-on-the-Shoulders-of-Giants.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Standing on the Shoulders of Giants&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, as well as him mentioning this multiple times elsewhere in his videos:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... is an environment with high variability. The lesson that Shewhart brought to manufacturing from Physics, and Deming made known worldwide, is that trying to be more accurate than the noise (in our case, trying to use sophisticated algorithms that consider every possible parameter in an environment of high variability) does not improve things but makes them worse -- the results will most certainly not be an improvement but a deterioration in due-date performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then he goes on to explain the concept of &quot;buffer-management&quot; that is quite simple and answers the question fully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If less than one third of the time buffer has passed the priority color is green, if more than one-third but less than two-thirds the priority color is yellow, if more than two thirds the color is red, if the due date has passed the color is black. Blacks have higher priority than reds, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And when Critical Chain Multi-projects are concerned, then this pearl of wisdom applies as well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If two batches have the same color, to try and decide which one should be worked on first is an excellent example of trying to be more accurate than the noise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line, take the full buffer length and separate into three. First is green, second yellow, third red. Any project that passed the red zone is considered black.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Priorities for management attention on what is important go the other way - black highest priority, then red, then yellow. Green is not a priority, as everything is going on as it should.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4353" LastEditorUserId="4353" LastEditDate="2017-06-24T05:11:46.013" LastActivityDate="2017-06-24T05:11:46.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21881" CreationDate="2017-06-24T14:38:58.110" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Instead of repeating what other contributed so far (and I agree with the notion of &lt;em&gt;anything generated during the implementation/application of Kanban is an artifact&lt;/em&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/4271/codegnome&quot;&gt;CodeGenome&lt;/a&gt;), I would like to highlight the concept of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_constraints&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Theory of Constraints&lt;/a&gt;, which transcends the common usage of Kanban from visualizing flow to exploitation of bottleneck, leading to increase of throughput (or &quot;the rate of producing output or increment&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When configured correctly, &lt;em&gt;bottleneck&lt;/em&gt; becomes the artifact of the system under used (note: &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/artifact&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;artifact could also mean&lt;/a&gt; &quot;the non-true feature of the object under observation as a result of external actions&quot;). In order to reveal the bottleneck, one has to review the existing system (e.g. cycle time, WIP, etc. Gemba walk plays a very big part here), provide focus on the bottleneck, exhaust it and continuously improve it until it no longer limits the throughput of the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The throughput of the system and quality of process, are equally important as the output of your work and its quality. I will recommend you to read &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/kanban-in-action/9781617291050/kindle_split_018.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chapter 7 of Kanban in Action&lt;/a&gt; by Marcus Hammarberg and Joakim Sundén.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4257" LastActivityDate="2017-06-24T14:38:58.110" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18102" CreationDate="2017-06-26T05:47:11.203" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Risk Register Database tracks all risks (risks, issues and opportunities) for the project. The database benefits the project manager and the project team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Project Summary Risk Reports are influenced my the end users, stakeholders, project champion and the Project Management Office (PMO). All of these groups will want certain information in the reports. The PMO may set a minimum of what is included. The other three may want to know about risks that only effect the project by certain schedule shifts, cost changes or performance requirements that do not meet expectations. The threshold for what goes into the Risk Reports is set-up in project planning, and it may even go back as far as declaring project management standards from the PMO in the project charter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22787" LastActivityDate="2017-06-26T05:47:11.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21889" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21893" CreationDate="2017-06-26T09:27:14.130" Score="12" ViewCount="8102" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing user stories for a new project. One of my epics is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As a company owner I want a graphical profile so I can build my visual identity&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then there are multiple user stories linked to this epic for creating a color palette, designing a logo and so on. But I am not sure what kind of details I should add for the epic itself. What should I write in the description of it? Should the epic have acceptance criteria? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One demand is that all graphical elements are vectors; should that be an acceptance criteria for the epic? Or should it be duplicated for all user stories belonging to that epic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28976" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-06-26T18:36:28.247" LastActivityDate="2021-05-10T13:04:49.210" Title="What level of detail should I include in epics?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21889" CreationDate="2017-06-26T10:29:22.540" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is going to change when you have a visual identity? How do you measure success? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Delivering business goals, not just software features&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.impactmapping.org/delivering.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.impactmapping.org/delivering.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The epic should be about the business goal, not about what you are going to build to achieve this goal. It should explain the why and how you are going to measure the goal is reached. The implementation details are part of the user-stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When can you stop implementing stories under the epic? Do you really need to complete all of them? I think user-stories are deliverable options to reach the goal, maybe the first story delivers enough value already. Now you can stop building the options and focus on the next epic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like how &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.impactmapping.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;impact mapping&lt;/a&gt; helps you think in measurable goals and not in deliverables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer your question: &lt;strong&gt;Epics should contain measurables goals, not implementation details and or options to achieve this. Certainly it should not contain duplicate information.&lt;/strong&gt;. The epic is the mission the team is on, it is the why. Where the user-story is the what.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the ideal world the team can now decide by themselves how to best achieve this goal. Pro-active self-organizing people give the best results, certainly for creative processes like software development or designs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2017-06-27T07:21:26.180" LastActivityDate="2017-06-27T07:21:26.180" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21891" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-26T16:49:26.483" Score="-1" ViewCount="302" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to figure out if it is possible to make a project auto-predict time usage for my team but only allow each project to use a certain % of time a day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ex. I have Project 1-4 and employee 1-3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I make it do something like...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project 1 use 50% of employee 1's time every day and then project 2-4 use the rest equally out of an 8 hour day? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can not seem to find any way in which this is possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28981" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-06-26T17:48:09.617" LastActivityDate="2018-08-09T12:32:33.937" Title="MS Project time management scheduling" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21889" CreationDate="2017-06-26T18:28:38.100" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me an Epic is a large User Story, every time a requirement comes to our team and it seems very large (e.g. &amp;gt; 13SP), we consider calling it an Epic instead of a Story. A good metric is: Does it fit into one sprint? But as the requirement is complete in itself, simply breaking it into smaller Stories, would lose the context. So you might say an Epic is a Story, or better call it a container, including several other Stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Atlassian describes it this way &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/agile/delivery-vehicles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;(1)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An epic is a large body of work that can be broken down into a number of smaller stories. For example, performance-related work in a release. An epic can span more than one project, if multiple projects are included in the board to which the epic belongs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An Epic should be less technical and more focused on the customers value  compared to Stories (which should also have these element of course). Try to give your developers as much use-case information as possible. An Epic is more like a vision, the stories and tasks are the things to get there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You decide if you need acceptance criteria for your Epic and which details are important to get the whole Epic done. In your case, it might make sense to add the vector thing and it should always be considered when testing a Story. All the Stories together must meet the requirements of your Epic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe this answers are also interesting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/182158/relationship-between-user-story-feature-and-epic&quot;&gt;Relationship between user story, feature, and epic?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/16739/what-is-the-difference-between-epic-story-task&quot;&gt;What is the weighting difference between Epic/Story/Task&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talking about JIRA: creating an Epic has some nice support in JIRA and helps you planning on a high level than it would be possible with several stories (p.e. &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/agile/jira-agile-user-s-guide/using-a-board/using-reports/viewing-the-epic-report&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Viewing the Epic Report&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28506" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2021-05-10T13:04:49.210" LastActivityDate="2021-05-10T13:04:49.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21894" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21902" CreationDate="2017-06-27T06:14:58.487" Score="2" ViewCount="2205" Body="&lt;p&gt;Besides User Stories and Bugs (no estimation) we have some repeating Tasks in our sprint, which have not much insecurity and a clear scope. For example such a task is &quot;releasing our plugin&quot; (building, uploading to the marketplace, writing docu and so on). We do not release every sprint!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the sake of velocity one could think these Tasks should also have an Story Point estimation just like Stories have (which is no real estimation, as the time / complexity is known). &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/8564/should-we-track-impediments-in-our-agile-pm-tool-just-like-user-stories-and-defe&quot;&gt;Should we track Impediments in our Agile PM tool just like User Stories and Defects/Bugs?&lt;/a&gt; asks in a same way but I am not only thinking about impediments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;We have some more of these Tasks and I wonder what's a proper way to handle them?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28506" LastActivityDate="2018-10-02T00:19:02.423" Title="Should I estimate repeating tasks (besides Stories and Bugs)?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;recurring-tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21894" CreationDate="2017-06-27T07:20:35.730" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is a right answer - it's mostly opinion, but I'll share a few reasons that I would choose not to estimate these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It gets you nothing.&lt;/strong&gt; Most of the benefit of estimating stories is the conversation that happens around estimation. Since these are repeated, clear items, you probably won't even have that conversation, so you aren't getting anything out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It doesn't help with planning.&lt;/strong&gt; Maybe your normal velocity is 30, but when you do a release in a sprint you only have room for 25. You already know that from past sprints, so padding out the sprint by slapping 5 points on the release item doesn't actually do anything for you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It becomes problematic with long-term projections and burn-up charts.&lt;/strong&gt; A lot of teams use the estimated story points in a release in burn-up charts to project feature completion, release dates, etc. Constantly adding other tasks to this pool is hard to account for. It's easier just to not include these (don't add story points) and just track actual stories delivered on your burn-up charts.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There's a better way.&lt;/strong&gt; Like XP does with spikes, these tasks are often better handled with timeboxes. If your release usually takes 6-8 hours, timebox the work to that. Then if it reaches 8 hours without completing, the team regroups and looks at the situation to see what's going wrong. This often gives you a lot more value than story points for this kind of work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Police won't show up and yell at you if you estimate these backlog items and others may give you the opposite answer and have their own good reasons, but I hope this helps in your decision-making.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-06-27T07:20:35.730" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21896" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-27T08:50:48.577" Score="7" ViewCount="1257" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've created a number of tickets (user stories) and added them to the backlog, however on review the stories are now deemed out of scope. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best practice for handling these? Should they be deleted? remain in the backlog perhaps with a different status &quot;out of scope&quot; perhaps?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13727" LastEditorUserId="13727" LastEditDate="2017-06-27T12:12:17.987" LastActivityDate="2017-06-27T18:31:15.703" Title="what to do with out of scope tickets in JIRA" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;scope-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21896" CreationDate="2017-06-27T10:15:08.390" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's pretend you had a physical card wall for a moment. You've got some cards that someone thought was a good idea, but on further review, they're not actually so great. What would you do with the cards? Would you create an separate section on your wall for these worthless ideas or would you chuck them in the nearest waste-bin? Yeah, you'd toss 'em, so would I. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what makes Jira any different? Delete them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to muse on what makes Jira different from a physical wall for a moment. The difference between the two is that if you kept the physical cards, they'd be much more noticeably in your way. People have a tendency to want to keep ever half baked idea anyone has every had in an electronic system because it's &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; cheap and easy to do so. You don't notice how in your way those junk cards are &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; of the time, but they are. Every time you have to manually filter through garbage trying to find &lt;em&gt;what you really need&lt;/em&gt;, you've shot yourself in the foot. Worse, you've shot your team and company in the foot. People are &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; most expensive part of most projects (and any software project). We shouldn't waste their time by digitally keeping around something we would throw in the trash if it were a physical card. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastActivityDate="2017-06-27T10:15:08.390" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21889" CreationDate="2017-06-27T10:56:08.757" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no universally accepted definition of an Epic, so do what works for your team. They're smart people, ask them instead of strangers on the internet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somewhat controversial answer: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found epics to be most effective when they state a business objective and the metrics that will be used to determine that success. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ex:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Increase click through rate on our home page by 15%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice how there's no sign of a feature or story to be implemented in sight? There's only a valuable business objective. This leaves your team constraint free to brain storm ways they might achieve that goal for you. Each experiment generated can be tried and validated against this goal. The Epic is done when the team has achieved the goal, or have gotten close enough that the P.O. decides it's good enough and has other more important work for the team to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastActivityDate="2017-06-27T10:56:08.757" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21889" CreationDate="2017-06-27T11:49:04.767" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others pointed out, there is no universal definition of an Epic, so the following is based on my work experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What not to do with an Epic&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my practice an Epic can never be added directly to a sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is too broad, and a complexity based estimate would be way to inaccurate to even have a chance of knowing if it would fit into one sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It usually covers several User Stories, each of which need to be estimated and prioritized independently - not only against other stories as part of this Epic, but against other stories (from other epics).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just because the Epic is important, doesn't mean every story in the Epic is equally important. In reality maybe not all stories thought of as part of an Epic will even ever make it into the project, if other priorities come up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the same reason it is not wise to go into too much detail for individual stories, as at the point of drafting the Epic it is not clear yet which story will make it (when) into a sprint and thus into the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What to do with an Epic&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar to a Story an Epic should justify its existence in the Backlog, by explaining:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why we want this in our product?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who will it benefit?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can we measure its success?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an Epic might involve more then one User Role, potentially even more then one interface. Consequently it is in its nature to be too complex for writing it down as one linear Story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It ultimately has to be broken down into several user stories, as only well encapsulated user stories should make it into a sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus my favorite way of outlining an Epic is too write the epic as a drafted list of User Stories, without going into too much detail for each story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a company Owner I can upload my existing logo&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a company Owner I can define an arbitrary set of primary colors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When preparing for a next sprint and it's time to tackle the epic, User Stories can be broken out and specified in the agreed upon detail, prioritized and estimated for the sprint, and or left for the next sprint if the (expected) velocity is not sufficient to tackle all stories at once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8542" LastActivityDate="2017-06-27T11:49:04.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21896" CreationDate="2017-06-27T14:04:31.357" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;At our firm we have a few ways of tracking out-of-scope tickets, all of which have proved useful for different Product Owners depending on their style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Issue Type:&lt;/strong&gt; In addition to JIRA's normal &quot;User Story&quot; issue type, we've created a separate type (&quot;Iterative User Story,&quot; but you can call it whatever you want) that indicates an issue is outside of the scope of our original project. Whereas Agile and Scrum allow for iteration and flexibility when it comes to scope, it's perfectly acceptable for a PO to prioritize one of these over an &quot;in-scope&quot; story in the Product Backlog with the understanding that it will (1) affect what makes it into a release and (2) be more valuable than an in-scope item which it displaces. Tracking these as separate issue type makes reporting in JIRA a breeze -- we can easily tell customers how many &quot;out-of-scope&quot; user story points have made it into a version&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Icebox:&lt;/strong&gt; In every backlog we have several versions -- the version we are currently working on, the next version or versions, and an Icebox. The Icebox is a repository for ideas that someone on the team has that should make it in eventually but are not yet prioritized into a release. It's important to clean out the icebox every time you release a version, otherwise it gets too cluttered, but this can be a useful tool to say &quot;is this still something we want to do, or not?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Deferral:&lt;/strong&gt; We created a status in JIRA called &quot;Deferred&quot; for issues that we simply won't do, can't do, or otherwise won't happen. Anything that is out of scope can be deferred with a resolution of &quot;Won't Do&quot; and given a comment as to why (&quot;this item was out-of-scope and will not be put into the product any time soon.&quot;) Deferral is preferable to deletion outright, as we can still search for the issue, see that we had the idea before, and determine whether the reason we did not do it is still valid.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Deletion:&lt;/strong&gt; The final option, of course, is to just delete something if the issue is out of scope. As another poster pointed out, this is what you'd do if you had too much stuff on a classic wallboard. I think what is missed in this analogy is that JIRA does have some pretty powerful searching and filtering functionality which a classic wallboard doesn't have.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16314" LastActivityDate="2017-06-27T14:04:31.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21896" CreationDate="2017-06-27T18:31:15.703" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;With one particular client, what we did is mark those cards as &quot;Cancelled&quot; status to keep track of the reason why we considered those out of scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, to keep the backlog clean, we filtered those cards out of the actual board for the project. This way, they won't get in the way of daily work, but remain accessible for reference if needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14923" LastActivityDate="2017-06-27T18:31:15.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21894" CreationDate="2017-06-27T19:29:23.283" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;No invisible work, ever!&quot;&#xA;  — CodeGnome's Law of Transparency&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two common ways of dealing with recurring tasks in Scrum:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having &quot;evergreen&quot; items for your Sprint Backlog, which the team can reuse but should eyeball for possible re-estimation during Sprint Planning and Sprint Retrospectives.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rolling routine tasks into the Definition of Done (DoD), and ensuring the estimates made during Sprint Planning take the DoD into account when forecasting the level of effort for each backlog item.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There really isn't a &quot;best&quot; way to deal with it. It mostly comes down to whether the team considers the tasks separate work items that recur often—but not often enough to be a checklist item for the DoD—or whether the tasks are considered normal process overhead. As long as the work is clearly visible to the team and to stakeholders, you are on solid ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-06-27T19:29:23.283" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21877" CreationDate="2017-06-28T01:53:39.333" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project Management is its own profession. I don't think there is much debate on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second part of your questions is a bit more nuanced. In theory if you've got the PM skills you should be able to manage any type of project. The reality is that generally your PM work will fall into a domain which you already have some background in. This will help on the projects where you may not have subject matter experts to provide you with domain specific information and help you qualify people's estimates and risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20438" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T01:53:39.333" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21904" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-28T12:03:35.950" Score="3" ViewCount="329" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to figure out a way to split user stories in a way that we can incrementally create value upon completing them at the end of the Sprint. I'm using Mike Cohn's book, User Stories Applied as a guide. The platform I'm building has a lot of back and forth between the tasks for the end user and the site administrator actors. This makes it very tempting to split a story on technical boundaries like so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;As a Site Administrator, I should be able to configure the main category banner text and image&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;As a User, I should be able to view the banner image and text in my language on all devices&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although this seems to be a reasonable breakdown, it introduces dependencies between the tasks for the entire story to be complete. This might lead to the possibility of partially completed stories at the end of the Sprint - without a tangible value add. One possibility is consolidating the story into a single one and adding both of the above as subtasks for the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;As a ???, I should be able to configure banner text and image&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, this does not feel intuitive. Do you feel that there is a better way to approach the problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28932" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T05:14:28.783" Title="Splitting user stories" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21904" CreationDate="2017-06-28T12:43:15.490" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any time I see &quot;and&quot; in a requirement, warning bells go off. Consider splitting your requirements along that point:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a Site Administrator, I should be able to configure the main category banner text&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a Site Administrator, I should be able to configure the main category image&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a User, I should be able to view the banner image on all devices&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a User, I should be able to view the text on all devices&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are four independently testable and independently deliverable user stories. Of course, viewing the set image and text may not be as useful if it is a static value rather than something that can be configured. But you can still design it as if it was configurable (eg reading from a configuration file or database rather than hard coding it) and just not having the ability to configure it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T12:43:15.490" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21904" CreationDate="2017-06-28T13:27:27.727" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stories should not be concerned about implementation. You're missing a key part. What you should be aiming for is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;As a ???, I need to ???&lt;/code&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;code&gt;so that I can ???.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why does your site admin want to allow this? 'Because his boss told him to' is not a good reason to put into a Story - why does the boss want it? 'Because customer X needs it for Y so that they can Z.' In that case, the story should be 'As X, I need to Y, so that Z.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While X could be a site admin, in those cases Y and Z should typically be things customers don't care about - such as preventing customers being unable to see private company information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'I require to write this bit of code' is not a requirement, it's an implementation detail. 'I require my program to remind me what my name is on Tuesdays, because Mondays are so awful I often forget what it is' &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you remove any implementation details from Stories, it should become more obvious how you can split them into minimum-sized, value-providing increments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T13:27:27.727" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21907" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-28T18:46:55.077" Score="-1" ViewCount="53" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am having a recurring problem where bugs are cropping up once or twice in a build, and are reported by users but I and my team are not able to replicate them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What techniques do you use to replicate bugs that are hard to replicate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T19:08:03.747" Title="How can I isolate bugs that users are not able to replicate?" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2017-06-29T14:16:14.230" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21907" CreationDate="2017-06-28T19:08:03.747" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what sort of bugs (and users) you are talking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing you should really get set up is some sort of automatic logging tool, that will log whenever an exception occurs in your application. Whether it writes it to a logfile (on a machine &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; can access, not on your user's machine!) or sends emails directly to developers or a manager or whatever doesn't really matter - just make sure that, whenever the user gets an actual &lt;em&gt;error&lt;/em&gt;, the development team is notified (preferably with stacktrace) &lt;em&gt;without any involvement on the part of the user&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I have set up for my team is an automatic email sent to all developers with stacktrace, time the error occurred, the username of the user who got the error, the application name, and (in the case of desktop application errors) a screenshot. Include whatever information you think will be helpful and can easily be logged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, that won't help you if the 'bug' is not actually an error (&quot;The documentation doesn't make sense&quot;, etc). In these cases, if your users are &lt;em&gt;internal&lt;/em&gt; (or absurdly helpful external users), then you should set up some sort of template for them to fill out - at the very least containing a description of the bug, what they expected to occur, and what actually occurred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T19:08:03.747" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21909" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-29T01:09:36.920" Score="2" ViewCount="333" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the last 10 years with the spread of Agile, I've seen developers taking more and more responsibility in the make of the software. Usually the implementation decisions are a team job and not anymore a single person task. But... is there still space for managers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I'm starting my own company and I started putting together a small team, and it's interesting to notice that the more a developer is skilled, the more he pretends to have a say in the implementation. However, considered the investment is mine, I'd like to take important decisions about the implementation myself. Today this has become impossible without getting people upset. Is there a solution to all of this? Or should I limit my decisions to the functionality and leave all the implementation details to the team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27587" LastEditorUserId="27587" LastEditDate="2017-06-29T01:22:06.823" LastActivityDate="2017-07-02T17:06:03.330" Title="Is software development becoming some sort of anarchic system around the world?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;startup&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21909" CreationDate="2017-06-29T04:32:03.463" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The agile movement arised due to fact, that many, many software projects failed, didn't meet their deadlines or costs exploeded. All parties (customers, developers and even some managers) were dissatisfied with the way projects were run (See: &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/history.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;agilemanifesto.org/history.html&lt;/a&gt;). Working &lt;strong&gt;together as a team makes software better&lt;/strong&gt;, implementation decisions should be made by the ones doing it (as well as estimating the effort). Maybe your colleagues think of other things you might forget? 8 eyes might see more than 2, it is a advantage to disucss implmentation details - I don't think you want stupid &quot;Code Monkeys&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a manager (or product owner or however you want to call it - I know they are not quite the same), the task is to find out what the users of your software need and explain the customer's value to the team. User Stories for example may not contain implementation details and thats an important thing as they should meet the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_%28mnemonic%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt; criteria!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum there are meetings where you, let's assume you're the PO, can contribute your opinion about implementation details (at this point some might disagree), p.e. Task Breakdown. For me the key fact is, that &lt;strong&gt;you trust your team&lt;/strong&gt; enough, to let them make their own decisions and not dictate solutions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might start with a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2013/september/what-is-sprint-zero&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sprint Zero&lt;/a&gt;, where some architectural decisions are made and you can discuss with your team mates. Whereas Sprint Zero is not recommended by all Scrum organizations (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/scrum-myths-it-ok-have-sprint-0-design-sprint-hardening-sprint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Myths: It is ok to have a Sprint 0, Design Sprint, Hardening Sprint...&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the projects grows (which would be the goal I guess), you won't be able to know all the details, so you HAVE to let the team make their own decisions.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28506" LastEditorUserId="28506" LastEditDate="2017-07-01T18:53:04.757" LastActivityDate="2017-07-01T18:53:04.757" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21904" CreationDate="2017-06-29T04:38:39.770" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a common confusion and only solution is identifying different perspectives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your question, I feel you are visualising&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;adding content in the backend which ultimately displays in the&#xA;  frontend&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;as one single story which can either be broken down into &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;1. one story-two interdependent tasks&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;2. two interdependent stories&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;both of the above unable to deliver anything useful if not complete in the same sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Look at it this way...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two users involved - site admin and User(or visitor) - so it can not be a single story. It can only be a &quot;feature&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, though the &quot;feature&quot; may not be complete, for respective users the functionality can be complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Look at it this way...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a user, I don't care if the content I am seeing is hardcoded in a template, or there is a form in the backend to configure it. If I see the content in any device of my choice, the story is complete for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a content author, I just need a convenient way to add/modify the content. Once I add the content, I am assuming that programmers have done their bit to display this content in proper formatting. It is not my job to do the CSS. If formatting is not appropriate, PO will thrash the developer but not me, so my story is complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now which story should take preference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Think...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will the banner content be updated often? If no, should I just add the content in the template and prioritise the backend configuration for the banner? If yes, should I demo by end of this sprint how the backend system for the site admin look like and take up the display in next sprint? Or priority for the client(read business) is to know that their visitors can see the content in any device - I should tell them that we have made the display adaptable to all the devices and will make the content configurable in the next sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Solution?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User stories should never be created on technical boundaries. A good user story always solves a business case - either something that affects the end user directly(like displaying information through the banner), or indirectly(efficient way to update information in the banner).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is not about waterfall-like rigidity. Features can and they do overlap during early sprints. This will automatically sort as the product matures. If not, either the developers are not making the code modular enough or backlog needs grooming. Any of the case will surface in one of the retros.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Initially it is good to create feature completion projections. Inform the stakeholders by when they can see the complete feature. This will help in creating expectations and consequent sprint planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it is difficult to isolate features in independent stories due to limitations of the technology platform or business priorities. It is perfectly normal and there is no golden rule to escape it. Until the team is demonstrating improvement after each sprint, you are on the right track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;It is important to grasp AGILE as continuously evolving product-first ideology and not another way of project management that is trending in the market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29011" LastEditorUserId="29011" LastEditDate="2017-06-29T05:14:28.783" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T05:14:28.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21912" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21915" CreationDate="2017-06-29T04:53:31.360" Score="3" ViewCount="397" Body="&lt;p&gt;After reading some literature about retrospective and actions it is not clear to me what to do if team faces big variety of random and small issues during sprint, and these problems do not occur often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, there is: - a bad code region where it is hard to implement new features, but features that touch this code come 1-2 times per year(of course this is just an observation of the historical events and there is no guaranty that this will not change in a month). It will take 1 week to, refactor the code; - Or there was a rare story that requires complicated deployment process, but the same, such stories/tasks happen few times per year and it usually takes 2 days to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because actions from retrospective take teams time that can be dedicated to implement new product features it is not clear if team should pick any of such actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should team just take the biggest impactful problem despite the fact that it is rare? Or should it collect more data and don't take any action items from retro( besides data collection)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29014" LastActivityDate="2020-06-12T10:00:59.020" Title="Retrospective - too many small and random problems. Death by a thousand needles" Tags="&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21889" CreationDate="2017-06-29T05:26:45.423" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my personal experience, best Epic is the one that communicates nothing more than a broad message of what it is about. A good epic should not have any scope of making an assumption neither should it sound vague to someone who has just joined the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When making an epic, I try to keep away from numbers and deliverable. During the planning my ideal epic would invite as much discussion possible within the team which would then be documented in stories. If all the stories are completed with their expected criteria, the Epic has efficiently done its job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29011" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T05:26:45.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21912" CreationDate="2017-06-29T06:05:12.453" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should define &quot;big impact&quot; - what metrics are important to you? Which improvement gives the biggest customer value? You might apply the same measures, that are used to priorize features in the backlog (for example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://agileworld.blogspot.de/2010/06/backlog-prioritization-techniques.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Backlog Prioritization techniques&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to estimate what the impact of these improvements in a long term will be. Are you able to deliver features faster and with better quality? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are critical issues / bugs that might break the whole application, they should be fixed as soon as possible!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dealing with technical dept can be a thin line, where there is sometimes no right or wrong - but there are approaches to do so: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.projectmanagement.com/blog-post/61755/11-Strategies-for-Dealing-With-Technical-Debt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;11 Strategies for Dealing With Technical Debt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/agile/technical-debt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Escaping the black hole of technical debt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general the agile way is iterative, maybe you try to split the big problems into smaller ones and improve your process / code base in small steps (Although I know that some refactorings have to be done in one big step).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28506" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2020-06-12T10:00:59.020" LastActivityDate="2020-06-12T10:00:59.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21912" CreationDate="2017-06-29T11:49:38.947" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is risk and issue management.  I have little knowledge about Agile but I suspect handling risks and issues is no different, albeit perhaps some minor / benign technique differences.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both require prioritization and both risks and issues are prioritized based on the value created from curing the issue or mitigating the risk against the cost of doing so and secondary risks created.  The difference between a risk and issue is that, with risks, the value is calculated against its probability.  So for an issue, you can quantify your impact like a yearly loss of $50,000 in revenue.  For a risk, you bang that loss of $50,000 against its probability, say 10%, and the expected value of the loss becomes $5,000.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the rest of the analysis is exactly the same.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your challenge is to arrive at a probability of those inconvenient, small issues that may occur, the impact of those issues, the cost of fixing those issues, and secondary risks created by fixing those issues, and then compare that with the rest of your backlog and prioritize accordingly.  You could arrive at a solid business conclusion that it pays to ignore them and just deal with them as they occur or you may learn it pays to go fix them and rid yourself of those minor annoyances.  The answer is in your analysis and only you can do that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T11:49:38.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21912" CreationDate="2017-06-29T12:00:46.483" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really despise risk categorization; it is usually &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yak_shaving&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;yak shaving&lt;/a&gt; - it usually obstructs the conversation about how to address the risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case however, I think categorization and &lt;a href=&quot;http://asq.org/learn-about-quality/process-analysis-tools/overview/fmea.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FMEA&lt;/a&gt; might be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are truly a thousand needles, randomly distributed, then your project is doomed.  But in your question you hint that many of those needles are associated with a single cluster of code.  If that is true, then it makes sense to &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;begin to track risks and issues that touch on that cluster of code. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assess &amp;amp; quantify the cumulative cost of those issues against the cost of refactoring that code.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;impactful vs rare is a standard &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annualized_loss_expectancy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ALE&lt;/a&gt; calculation.  You've already done the hard part - identifying common origin of multiple issues.  Now collect data to support an ALE &amp;amp; a decision about the best approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T12:00:46.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21912" CreationDate="2017-06-29T14:46:12.820" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Technical Debt is Often Invisible&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with technical debt isn't just that it's there. The bigger problem with such debt is that it becomes a &quot;missing stair&quot; that everyone steps around and never talks about. In other words, it becomes invisible work that eventually acts as an unexplained drag on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The law of transparency says &quot;No invisible work, ever!&quot; Make the problem &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; the costs visible, and the correct approach for managing project risk will largely become self-evident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Some Ways to Address Technical Debt&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From an agile practice perspective, you have some key options based on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/characterizing-unknown-unknowns-6077&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;characterization of the risks&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take known technical debt with a clear etiology (a &quot;known known&quot;) and add it to your backlog as work to be prioritized.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the team's knowledge about the problem area to add a fudge factor to the level-of-effort estimate every time a new story touches upon a known problematic area. Depending on the work, this may be a &quot;known known&quot; or a &quot;known unknown.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have the team write a wrapper or interface for the problem areas. This leaves the landmine in place, but makes it easier to step around it almost indefinitely—until you can't because the underlying &lt;em&gt;behavior&lt;/em&gt; of that code section needs to fundamentally change.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write some better (and if necessary, duplicative) code and deprecate reliance on the old code. Don't move the old code until or unless it's in-scope during an iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point of all your options is to avoid unknown-unkowns, where you can't quantify the level of effort or the project risk involved. There are certainly other techniques you can use—whole books such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B005OYHF0A&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Working Effectively with Legacy Code&lt;/a&gt; have been written on the topic of technical debt and legacy coding techniques—but from a &lt;em&gt;project management&lt;/em&gt; perspective the issue is about balancing the team's sustainable forward progress against hidden or unexpected costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A Project Manager or Agilist's Real Goal&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a &lt;em&gt;known&lt;/em&gt; problem with the codebase that is affecting the quality of the product, the performance of the team, or the performance envelope of the project, then your obligation is to surface that issue so that the issue and its associated costs are fully visible to the team and to management. By creating transparency around the issue, you convert project drag to a known-known that management can address (or not) based on a more-informed strategic decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T14:46:12.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21920" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-29T14:52:41.277" Score="2" ViewCount="157" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nowadays the infrastructure IT team is struggling on manage their projects because urgent daily tasks (out of the project) or new projects are gaining priority over their actual projects. Due to this situation, it is difficult for them to adopt and implant project management culture and get a more organized and professional environment on that company sector.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As one of the projects' main objectives is always failing (delivery on schedule), they are exposed and thinking of not following our project management practices anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team is reduced and it is not allowed to divide the team to focus on projects separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this scenario, what would you recommend? Any tips following any project methodology are welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&#xA;One real example is having to assist an employee from another department (an internal client) in creating an e-mail account, giving a systems support, replacing printer toner, etc., instead of focusing on implanting the Active Directory (a very important project).&#xA;Day by day, some new task appears and has to be done ASAP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23293" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-06-29T16:35:40.393" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T20:51:05.537" Title="How to apply project management on IT Infrastructure sector (with daily priority tasks)" Tags="&lt;scope&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;&lt;culture&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21920" CreationDate="2017-06-29T15:55:07.583" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You own the projected schedule.  The only thing you can do is to provide honest, transparent estimates of the impact of the changes on the project schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on current priorities and labor allocations, Project X will complete in 2025, 7 years behind schedule. All other projects with lower priorities will never complete and have been shut down.  The only way to bring project X back to schedule is to reduce the amount of pre-emptive tasking or to hire resources dedicated to project x.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T15:55:07.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21922" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-29T16:01:26.293" Score="1" ViewCount="128" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not an expert in JIRA and I've stumbled upon a problem with tagging issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are working on a mobile app and I was tagging the iOS App related issues with &quot;iOS&quot;, and I've found out that my coworker is using the tag &quot;IOS&quot; (capital i). I try to correct those tags whenever I can but I was wondering if there is a way to create a tag synonym (similar to here on Stack Exchange) where &quot;IOS&quot; will also be considered as &quot;iOS&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29023" LastActivityDate="2017-06-30T16:07:02.940" Title="Is there a way to create tag synonyms in a JIRA board/project?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21920" CreationDate="2017-06-29T16:20:24.317" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is common with infrastructure projects. I'm painting with a really broad brush here, but it goes something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need someone in the datacenter to rack/decommission these servers/enclosures/etc. for the big xyz rollout and I need it done by x.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First off, if it is part of a project you need the resources to be committed to &lt;strong&gt;your&lt;/strong&gt; project. Most Ops resources are working flat out to keep the lights on and bill their time to OPEX, not CAPEX. They often don't have the cycles to fit something in. They'll want to help, but any outage or escalation will pull them from you. Your best bet here is to get a contractor for the time period to backfill the ops position of the person you need to do the job. (Most DCs I've worked with have temporary contractors available to handle vacations. YMMV.) If you get pushback about labor costs, remind your stakeholders that time is money, and you are burning money (project hours) with nothing to show for it if work is not getting done. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Did you provide the Ops team enough information to do their job correctly and efficiently?  Do they have the space, juice, and the circuits available or have you given them extra stuff to figure out. Is the circuit fiber or twisted pair? and do you have documentation stating exactly what the IP and VLAN should be? The less information you give them the more running around needs to be done to get it, or worse, something gets put in the wrong spot.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When people get overworked they try to take shortcuts, and that often leads to mistakes, which leads to rework. If you know things will take twice as long as they should pad your estimates for duration (not effort) appropriately to give them the time to do it correctly the first time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20438" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T16:20:24.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21922" CreationDate="2017-06-29T16:34:02.460" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not quite what you were asking for, but one approach would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do a JQL search for all issues having the IOS issue (labels = &quot;IOS&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go to Tools-&gt;Bulk Change-&gt;All {#} issues&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select all issues-&gt;Next&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Choose 'Edit Issues'-&gt;Next&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select Change Labels-&gt;Add to Existing-&gt;&quot;iOS&quot;-&gt;Next&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Confirm.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Repeat steps 1-4&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select Change Labels-&gt;Find and Remove These-&gt;&quot;IOS&quot;-&gt;Next&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Confirm.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tell your co-worker to stop using IOS and use iOS instead.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not 100% since I haven't tried it, but it &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T16:34:02.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21920" CreationDate="2017-06-29T16:45:06.747" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Governance.  You have no governance.  The tension between conflicting priorities, existing projects, new projects, and constrained resources is not abnormal.  In fact, it should be expected and welcomed because, absent this, your business is likely failing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are missing is the rules of engagement to create a capability where the business is negotiating and renegotiating this tension so that you create a balance between all the competing interests among the competing stakeholder groups.  This is governance.  New work comes in; everyone noodles over it to gauge its priority against other new work and work in progress; everyone understands the benefits, costs, and risks in changing the previously agreed upon priority schema; schedules and resources and expectations are shifted; everyone agrees; and then work continues.  Previously set goals aren't &quot;missed&quot; because they formally changed and new goals are set.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Governance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T16:45:06.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21926" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-06-29T20:00:18.157" Score="1" ViewCount="193" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should epics be named after big tasks/ Steps in user journey ? or Should they be just big features which can't be implemented in a Single Sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29026" LastActivityDate="2017-07-04T18:12:07.280" Title="In Agile methodology, Should epics be named after big tasks/activities encountered in user journey?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;epics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21927" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21965" CreationDate="2017-06-29T20:45:09.847" Score="1" ViewCount="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;There doesn't seem to be an easy way to &quot;un-wordwrap&quot; columns in MS Project 2013. According to the docs, if I toggle wordwrap off and then manually adjust each row, wordwrap will snap off. I was hoping for something more Excel like where I can switch back and forth--sometimes I need to read my &quot;Notes&quot; column, say; other times my focus is on project dependencies and seeing all of the elements in a WBS section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any way to get to the desired behavior?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11776" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-08T22:29:19.747" LastActivityDate="2018-11-08T22:29:19.747" Title="Un-wordwrapping columns in MS Project 2013" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21920" CreationDate="2017-06-29T20:51:05.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What other people said--you really can't address this if management isn't committed to making your task possible. But you can be proactive in making the situation visible and helping management find a solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One tool that can help is setting up a Kanban board. If you can visually show the backlog, what people are working on, then you have a good way to also show management how/why you aren't able to get resources committed long enough to elements in your project as to make progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Better, if you can get buy-in for Kanban (as opposed to starting by just using it as an information radiator), you can also at least centralize the interruptions so that people are coming to you (or to whoever controls the board) rather than directly to your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use of the Kanban board can also help you deconstruct larger tasks (sometimes) into tasks small enough to fit between the cracks of the day-to-day high priority items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other folks have discussed the management issues better than I can--this will simply provide a way to radiate out the information of what the day-to-day prioritizing is doing to your ability to get things done and help make the case for more resources or fewer interruptions--or at least, spacing some interruptions so that longer-term emergencies (infrastructure changes!) can happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11776" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T20:51:05.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21926" CreationDate="2017-06-29T20:59:05.847" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use Story Mapping is powerful and useful, but even for epics you want to think in terms of User Stories. Organizing those stories by &quot;User Journey&quot; is great. That's a way to see the flow and get a sense of what the MVP will look like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, now you might have epics that start, &quot;as a user, I need a way to set up, maintain, and change my configuration so that...&quot; as a start of one User Journey. It's just a way to help you think out the appropriate User Stories with which to provide context for what needs to be developed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really like Jeff Patton's book on the subject, &quot;User Story Mapping&quot; if you want to read more--available wherever you have access to Safari.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11776" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T20:59:05.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21922" CreationDate="2017-06-29T21:01:18.800" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could always write a JQL to lowercase all tag names (I thought they were case insensitive--shows how little I know) and then all tags that are otherwise the same, but for case, will be rendered the same. Long live &quot;ios&quot; ;-).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11776" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T21:01:18.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21922" CreationDate="2017-06-30T16:07:02.940" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Labels (or tags) in many systems (blogs, StackExchange too I suppose) are meant to be in loose form, user-generated rather than administrated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you should try using &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver073/managing-components-861253335.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Components&lt;/a&gt; in JIRA instead to get back more control over it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4257" LastActivityDate="2017-06-30T16:07:02.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21894" CreationDate="2017-07-01T08:53:39.393" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will advice you to rethink by asking some fundamental questions: &quot;why are you tracking?&quot;, &quot;what's the value of tracking more?&quot;, and &quot;who will use these numbers?&quot;. I wouldn't debate against you if tracking is a very core belief/practice of your organization as there's &quot;no best answer&quot; and it's up to one to subscribe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm more of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://ronjeffries.com/xprog/articles/the-noestimates-movement/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;#NoEstimates&lt;/a&gt; and constantly educate my teams to challenge whatever practices within the system, to eventually reduce as much as waste as possible (e.g. tracking itself can be seen as waste, not just the repeating tasks). Naturally, one would eventually ask: &quot;why are we repeating these tasks, can we automate or eliminate them?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going back to your original question, &quot;Should one estimate repeating tasks?&quot; If your team highly rely on estimation for predictability and cost calculation, sure. If you see these tasks as value-add, you might want to incorporate them into your DoD as suggested by &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/4271/codegnome&quot;&gt;CodeGenome&lt;/a&gt;, having them seen as part of the stories rather than as separate tasks. I will also recommend continuously evaluating your current end-to-end process through &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/value-streams/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;value stream mapping&lt;/a&gt;, to consider the elimination and automation of some of these repeating tasks. Repeating without automation is really bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if these tasks aren't value-add and by tracking them won't make your teams profitable, your customers happier, and process leaner, then why are you tracking?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4257" LastActivityDate="2017-07-01T08:53:39.393" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21723" CreationDate="2017-07-02T00:01:44.907" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Changing the approach may have benefits.  However it rarely solves the root problem of not having enough people.  Having the same technologists switching between projects decreases efficiency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you truly want to be agile, start with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt;.  Self-organizing teams are essential.  Have the technologists who are doing the work be a part of finding the solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2017-07-02T00:01:44.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21883" CreationDate="2017-07-02T00:56:35.407" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DevOps and project management are very separate practices and knowledge domains that can borrow from each other. Any other answer is likely an opinion about process implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;DevOps Isn't a Synonym for Agile Project Management&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DevOps is primarily a culture of collaboration between diverse roles such as requirements analysis, testing, development, deployment, operations, and maintenance. To a lesser extent, it is also a set of tools and practices for enabling rapid feedback for collaboration, and providing delivery and deployment pipelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project management as a practice or profession is the art of planning and controlling projects. To the extent that DevOps provides a framework for product delivery, and to the extent that it creates feedback loops and process controls, a project manager can leverage the framework and controls when planning, organization, or measuring the project. However, DevOps as a culture or as a tool chain has no defined role for a project manager, making the question as asked confusing and vague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can implement a project without agile frameworks or practices. Likewise, a given framework like Scrum or Kanban does not rely on DevOps culture, tools, or practices to provide process controls. Borrowing sensible tools and practices from DevOps to create feedback or processs controls within an agile framework is often wise, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though there is no defined role titled &quot;Project Manager&quot; in DevOps culture or agile frameworks, that doesn't mean a project manager can't leverage them. However, if you're going outside the formal definitions, then your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-07-02T00:56:35.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21723" CreationDate="2017-07-02T08:50:56.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of our product engineering teams (which has 4 sub teams, with 3-5 members each) have this problem. We go by (since 4 years ago) one backlog per (sub-)team (we drew our decision from &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1928232&amp;amp;amp;amp;seqNum=7&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article of K. S. Rubin&lt;/a&gt;), it reduces the cost of maintaining multiple backlogs and strengthens our focus. Take note that, Scrum advocates &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;a&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; sprint goal, not multiple. At the same time, I always encourage my teams to reduce WIP using single piece flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most difficult part, in my opinion, is to group and assign relevant products, and properly &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Production_leveling&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;leveled&lt;/a&gt;. Tools like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=coorperate+vs+operational+relatedness&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;matrix for operational/business relatedness&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.bcgperspectives.com/content/videos/corporate_strategy_portfolio_management_strategic_planning_growth_share_matrix_revisited_ted_animation/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BCG matrix&lt;/a&gt; could help you with your decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Currently I am running with 1 dev on one product for 1 sprint. That could mean 2 devs both working on the same product for 1 sprint, and the other working on another product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on how comfortable you are in &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.mjouan.fr/to-swarm-or-not-to-swarm-return-on-experience/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;swarming&lt;/a&gt;, the more focused the team is has both short and long term benefits, e.g. lower WIP leading to shorter lead time per story, and cross training. I will strongly encourage that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you are using sprints, which is some kind of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_Repeating_Schedule&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;fixed repeating schedule&lt;/a&gt;, you can also borrow some concepts from manufacturing in perfecting your flow towards single-piece flow, which is a life-long journey, so to speak:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Separate higher-risk products from teams with a larger set of products with high predictability and incremental work (aka green/red stream).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduce sprint length, focus on learning and improvement on the pipeline. A lot of waste reduction here, e.g. reduction of &quot;changeover&quot;/&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jamesshore.com/Agile-Book/ten_minute_build.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;build&lt;/a&gt;/deployment time. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allow mid-sprint scope change, and eventually build the muscle that allows you to continuously deploy (See also &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scruminc.com/scrum-evolution-type-b-and-c-sprints/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Type-C Scrum&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully my response sums up the important concepts and practices (esp. on focus, on smaller batch size) leading to &lt;em&gt;building multiple products concurrently&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4257" LastEditorUserId="4257" LastEditDate="2017-07-02T08:59:02.073" LastActivityDate="2017-07-02T08:59:02.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21723" CreationDate="2017-07-02T11:49:26.703" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;We had a team of ~8,  well over a dozen products, and 6 different product owners. I won't claim this is the best way, the best way is to staff enough people to properly support all your products, but I've had experience similar to yours and we worked out a system that worked really well for us. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We kept two Kanban boards:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Epics (1-3 month projects)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Currently played stories/backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We normally kept our Epic WIP limit to 2, but would raise it to 3 as an Epic was nearing completion. This allowed a graceful transition between epics by giving us time to groom &amp;amp; plan the next project as the last one was being polished off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Weekly, we'd meet with any product owners of active epics to have them prioritize their stories in the backlog. Monthly, we would meet with &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the product owners so they could &lt;em&gt;collectively&lt;/em&gt; prioritize the Epics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may sound like a bad idea, but we found that people generally would do what was right for the company. I heard very often, &quot;Oh. Yeah... no. My thing isn't as important as Bill's thing. Do his first.&quot; I think the huge benefit was giving everyone visibility into &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of the requested work. Our product owners could easily see how their pet projects may not be the most valuable thing for the team to work on and gave them an appreciation for just how much we were being asked to do. In the long run, they became some of our greatest advocates. We didn't &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to go begging for more staff, because our product owners were doing it on our behalf. &lt;em&gt;They&lt;/em&gt; wanted teams dedicated to their products so there would no longer be so much contention over our time. When I started at that company, there were two of us, soon after I left, there were 3 teams of 4. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, having a team of 8 soon gave way to having 2 teams of 4 working mostly under the same model, but having 2 teams (each with fewer products  to support and prioritize between) resulted in a much reduced overhead. It allowed us to specialize more. Once we had split into 2 teams, we reduced each team's Epic WIP to one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like this is a good approach because it dramatically reduces the context switching for everyone. Yes, some people will get anxious waiting for their project to be next, but if they want it done sooner, they need to convince their peers and the CEO that it &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be next. In the meantime, we were able to give a single problem our full attention, which seriously reduced our cycle times. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, the &lt;em&gt;best&lt;/em&gt; way is to have enough staff to support all your products, but I understand how hard it can be to convince a non-software company that they require that staff to support all the things they build. Just recently I had a hard conversation with a client about some scope creep. It basically amounted to &quot;To meet system parity, you need to build this tool that doesn't exist in the old system.&quot; ... uhhhh huh... Anyway, we asked them if they were prepared to spin up an entire team, Product Owner, Scrum Master, Dev team, to build and support this product indefinitely. The answer was obviously no, but they had not considered the true cost of this new product until we mentioned it. Just some food for thought. I've always found that people want want want until they see the price tag. Show them the price tag. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastActivityDate="2017-07-02T11:49:26.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21909" CreationDate="2017-07-02T12:15:35.780" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a businessman, I do not care about technical implementation unless it affects my wallet. I reserve the right to tell the team, &quot;No. I'm not paying for that. What are the other options?&quot;, but I honestly don't really care how they get the work done. All I care is that they do it in a timely and cost effective manner. I'm going to hire people to do a job and trust them to do it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I don't trust technical people to make technical decisions, then why did I hire them to begin with? It's not my job to make those decisions. It's my job to set a vision, goals, and strategies to reach them. It's their job to implement, let them implement. They're the experts, not me. I understand, regardless of the fact that I'm also a software developer and &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; do their job, that I don't understand the details as well as they do and will likely get in their way. If I get in their way, I will slow things down, demoralize the team, and lose my best developers. Will they do things differently than I would and make some mistakes? Sure, but I would make more because I'm not as intimately familiar with the problem space as they are. Getting overly involved with implementation does a disservice to myself, my team, and my company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, you're the man signing the paycheck. It's your company and it's your right to do what you like. If you want to be successful however, I would let the team do what you pay them to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastActivityDate="2017-07-02T12:15:35.780" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21909" CreationDate="2017-07-02T16:13:18.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile (and many methods proposed) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0164121212000532&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;has its root in lean thinking&lt;/a&gt;, and if we start tracing backward, you can find such relevance in TQM (including Deming's teaching) and TPS (what Womack and Jones studied).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't give you a straightforward answer what you can do, but my personal favorite to become a better manager is to read &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0071808019&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Workplace Management&lt;/a&gt; by Toyota's manufacturing genius Taiichi Ohno. His teaching puts immense amount of emphasis on leaders at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemba&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;gemba&lt;/a&gt; doing kaizen (continuous improvement). The book comes with an article by Jeffrey Liker, which in some way sums up the responsibilities of a manager: 1) learn at the gemba, 2) stay ahead of your students, 3) keep a high standard, 4) love your students, and 5) be passionate and obsessed with kaizen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, your presence as a teacher (or guru, or servant leader as some would call it) at the shop floor to learn together with the people, such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;asking the 5 Whys&lt;/a&gt;, as opposed to directing,  will build better trust and a more positive culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4257" LastEditorUserId="4257" LastEditDate="2017-07-02T16:22:40.197" LastActivityDate="2017-07-02T16:22:40.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21909" CreationDate="2017-07-02T17:06:03.330" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The golden rule is &quot;he who has the gold makes the rules.&quot; However, that doesn't mean he-who-makes-the-rules is necessarily &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; or is acting in his own best interests. You can have what you want, but it may not get you where you really need to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Control Isn't Leadership&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm starting my own company and I started putting together a small team, and it's interesting to notice that the more a developer is skilled, the more he pretends to have a say in the implementation. However, considered the investment is mine, I'd like to take important decisions about the implementation myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While your question might be a better fit for &lt;a href=&quot;https://workplace.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;The Workplace&lt;/a&gt;, there are certainly project managers (on-topic here) and business owners (off-topic here) who have similar concerns. However, the problem is more often one of role definitions and personality traits than anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without intending to be pejorative, your quoted statement above is fairly common among people who are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;relatively new to business or technology leadership.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;engineers or architects, rather than managers or leaders. &lt;em&gt;NB: Despite common usage, &quot;manager&quot; and &quot;leader&quot; aren't synonyms.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;micromanagers or technocrats, rather than strategic leaders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;controlling personalities who are unable or unwilling to delegate effectively.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;perfectionists or command-and-control types who have a hard time trusting others.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting a product or service to be salable and fit-for-purpose, but embedded in your statement is the implicit belief that others can't be relied on to implement something the way you would yourself. Rather than measuring outcomes (e.g. the software works and is it easy to maintain) you're focused on the implementation, which is &lt;em&gt;usually&lt;/em&gt; a business anti-pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main problem with being a &quot;control freak&quot; in a knowledge-based industry like I.T. is that is drives away creative and talented people. Micromanagement stifles innovation and independent thinking. The only folks who will tolerate fear-based management—an environment where an authority figure wants to control everything—are typically those who prefer a highly-directive management style because they aren't self-starters, or workers who are themselves fearful people. This typically results in a &quot;team&quot; where people do only what they're told and no more. Pragmatically, this often results in slower development and less innovation because the micromanager is really doing all the work, but at the additional cost of having to delegate it out and then verify it afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile frameworks have &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;principles&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;values&lt;/a&gt; that aim to solve many of these problems by replacing inefficient command-and-control techniques with collaborative processes, iterative development, quality control feedback loops, and self-organizing teams that value (rather than stifle) creative solutions that you may not have thought of yourself. There are definitely use cases for more directive approaches, but your original post is not really one of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Hire for Fit&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, as the project manager or business owner, you can hire for cultural fit. If you prefer to hire people who aren't agilists, or who prefer a more directive style of management, that's fine. However, &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; own the interview and selection process, and you also largely own the results of picking good or bad hires.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, if you hire people based primarily on their willingness to be managed closely then you can't complain that they aren't people who enjoy working independently. Conversely, if you hire people who are self-starters, you shouldn't complain that they bring their own perspectives to bear on a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither extreme is good for development, business, or team-building. Your job is to identify the best balance of collaboration and independence for your objectives, and then deliberately select for that in your hiring process. You'll make mistakes, because everyone does, but if you aren't attracting the talent you want or consistently making bad hires then you need to inspect-and-adapt your organizational culture and management style rather than blaming everyone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-07-02T17:06:03.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21912" CreationDate="2017-07-03T09:41:45.883" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A variety of problems may be caused by only a few root causes. You might want to dig deeper and find those root causes for the problems. Such root causes are often systematic, i.e. related to your company's culture and structure, management style, maybe even values and principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can investigate a couple of problems to see if there are common causes (in my experience there often are; the challenge is to find them and address them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are able to work on the root causes, then there will be less problems in the future. One way to find the root causes is to do a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.benlinders.com/2013/getting-to-the-root-causes-of-problems-in-a-retrospective/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;five-times-why exercise&lt;/a&gt; in your retrospective. Other ways are to use Appreciative Inquiry or to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.benlinders.com/game/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;self assess your way of working&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16919" LastEditorUserId="35563" LastEditDate="2020-03-18T09:46:10.220" LastActivityDate="2020-03-18T09:46:10.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15286" CreationDate="2017-07-03T14:31:27.707" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have to have the Fiduciary guidance while allocating a budget for a Value stream, once you get at value stream level, you can estimate the stories and size the Features and Capabilities &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29054" LastActivityDate="2017-07-03T14:31:27.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21946" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-07-03T20:21:41.620" Score="2" ViewCount="157" Body="&lt;p&gt;An Agile coach in a consulting firm has been called into a big company's transformation project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However when he got there he realised that the project had two developers, and one head of project, and it's merely a proof of concept, leading to a business transformation in the future. A month later there was some progress in the proof of concept, but the team hasn't grown due to poor hiring from the consulting firm's side. This resulted to the coach being called to do various other things in the project, along with facilitating the team and removing its impediments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this the right way for a company to use an agile coach? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5522" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2017-07-04T07:22:38.290" LastActivityDate="2017-07-07T14:18:04.770" Title="Agile coach without a team" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21947" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21949" CreationDate="2017-07-04T00:24:23.280" Score="3" ViewCount="127" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team's Business Analyst and I have written some Gherkin files describing user stories of our new project.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;As usual, a Gherkin file is composed of one feature, itself detailed through one or multiple scenarios.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The current step is to establish the different sprints (agile evolution) and their respective content. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I want those sprints to prioritise useful and tangible values for the end user.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;That's why I think to consider a scenario as the unit of those sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, we would have: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint 1 dealing with first and second scenarios of Feature 1 + first from Feature 2.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint 2 dealing with second from Feature 2 + first from Feature 3.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You get the idea: a feature implementation could not be atomically implemented, but a scenario would.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This would allow to incrementally program several features during a same sprint while letting the possibility to fully complete one feature after N sprints.        &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder how to handle Jira feeding.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Could one Kanban &quot;ticket&quot; represent an exact scenario of some feature or should it represent the whole feature instead? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29061" LastEditorUserId="29061" LastEditDate="2017-07-04T07:21:48.333" LastActivityDate="2017-07-05T10:15:29.277" Title="Could my sprint unit be a scenario instead of a feature? (Gherkin terms)" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;features&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21946" CreationDate="2017-07-04T07:19:55.553" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;An Agile coach should be a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/proactive&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;proactive&lt;/a&gt; person. If there is not enough work on the current project I would expect the coach to find gaps and work with the company on other Agile improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The coach could also be an extra hand on the team. I have seen coaches do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(Pair) Programming&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing user documentation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If their focus is the project and not the company in a whole then anything that can make the project a bigger success could be the work of the coach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even on a two person development team the coaching of &lt;a href=&quot;https://less.works/less/technical-excellence/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;technical excellence&lt;/a&gt; and creating a good clean code-base for the future growth and transformations might be enough challenge for a single coach. Certainly if the developers don't have a lot of Agile software engineering experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a last resort I would expect a proactive coach without any work on its current project to go looking for a new project, maybe even outside of the current company. You don't want to sit still, but you want to teach, learn and grow together. Being reactive and waiting does not seem the passion you want to see in your Agile coach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="20765" LastEditDate="2017-07-04T20:58:03.180" LastActivityDate="2017-07-04T20:58:03.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21947" CreationDate="2017-07-04T10:26:58.893" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First I'd like to say that this is a wonderful experiment. Please chronicle your experience and share it with the world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We are uncovering better ways of developing&#xA;  software by doing it and helping others do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Manifesto for Agile Software Development&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jira doesn't have a concept of features, but it does have Epics. You could enter your features as epics and each scenario as a user story (linked to its parent epic). The concepts map reasonably well and this should give you the traceability you need. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastActivityDate="2017-07-04T10:26:58.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21946" CreationDate="2017-07-04T17:18:58.847" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A coach needs to challenge the system and brings up the friction points in the system. A coach's job is to help elevate the current status of the system to the next level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A coach can do that by helping people at the team level, management level, and organization level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no harm in facilitating a session or doing other stuff and helping the organization, as long as it helps with the ultimate goal of the coach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it depends on what kind of coach is your organization is getting and depending on the mandate of the coach. Sometimes, if you are experiencing Agile for its first time in the organization, the understanding from the management is that it is only needed for the team and not for them. A coach is usually being asked to help with the team level and not the management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is the coach's job to bubble up all the issues to the management and realize them that they need to change as well and not only the teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20765" LastActivityDate="2017-07-04T17:18:58.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21946" CreationDate="2017-07-04T17:36:55.310" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do agree that an Agile Coach should be a proactive person but it depends on the type of facilitation and impediment management the coach is doing to determine if the company is using the coach effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my professional experience, an Agile Coach should really be focusing on &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensuring the Development SDLC process is efficient and effective&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Driving Agile best practices &amp;amp; process improvements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Completing Agile training or workshop sessions with the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Working with the team Scrum Master to facilitate Agile meetings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coaching the team and leads on effective communication and conflict resolution&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of facilitating general meetings between company leadership and stakeholders to identify requirements for building the team, budgeting, defining goals, etc. should really fall more on the shoulders of a Program/Project Manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a Scrum Alliance blog post that goes into the same clarification issues that are noted in your company's situation that may help:&#xA; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2015/september/what-really-is-an-agile-coach&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2015/september/what-really-is-an-agile-coach&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this situation, the Coach should be proactive by accessing the needs, issues or risks with the team and bringing awareness to the Leadership team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29071" LastActivityDate="2017-07-04T17:36:55.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21926" CreationDate="2017-07-04T18:12:07.280" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agree with Ari Davidow's answer that User Story Mapping and User Journey's are powerful and useful tools for the team to understand the flow and better understand the MVP goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epics/Initiatives should be defined and written at the highest User scenario possible where the Stories and tasks can then be broken down into the actionable work.&#xA;The User Mapping would be a good fit at the Epic/Initiative level and the User Journey would be a good fit within the Stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mountain Goat has a good article on the basics of User Stories: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/user-stories&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/user-stories&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29071" LastActivityDate="2017-07-04T18:12:07.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21877" CreationDate="2017-07-04T19:32:44.040" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I´ve been working as Project Manager for IT for more than 10 years. It was my profession, and I had some colleagues with the same role in my organization, and we all think that it was our profession.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So no doubt about that, I would like to add, that it´s one of the most demanded and complex professions that companies are looking for, actually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Detecting when the company is facing a project and assigning it to a PM is still a challenge to many companies, and with that, they still need to develop how to create and manage the team for the project, the budget, the timelines, etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes, it´s a profession and yes, it´s a critical one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27688" LastActivityDate="2017-07-04T19:32:44.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21947" CreationDate="2017-07-05T10:15:29.277" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, there's JIRA Epics that would fit your features and Stories could be your scenarios. You should play around with using epics, stories and sub-tasks to best suit your needs. &#xA;I think the method you are describing would be a very good experiment to do - see what happens! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29075" LastActivityDate="2017-07-05T10:15:29.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21956" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-07-05T18:42:33.197" Score="2" ViewCount="113" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our organization has just completed a large-for-us elearning development project. It totaled just under $1mm usd, and employed a team of approximately 40 people for six months. Most of our staff was on the project part-time, but about six were full time. We'll send out a questionnaire ahead of time, and convene the entire group for a single in-person session. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the part we're not sure about: some people believe that the session should be a single large group session, while others believe that it should be broken down into functional areas. In our case this would include a production team, subject matter experts, instructional designers, etc. Some team members participated in several roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both approaches have intuitive arguments, but intuition can't substitute for experience! What do you recommend?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29082" LastActivityDate="2017-07-06T13:38:37.893" Title="Our first post mortem - what's the right structure" Tags="&lt;post-mortem&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21957" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21963" CreationDate="2017-07-05T20:25:00.150" Score="3" ViewCount="121" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project description&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I have a Microsoft project file where every task has an important sequence to be followed. But the way tasks are leveled; there are small gaps of free time where workers could still be doing something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What I would like&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;What I want is to create a &quot;group&quot; or a &quot;pool&quot; of tasks where ms project can pick from and auto-assign a fraction(from 0.25 hrs to full duration) of them whenever there is available time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can this be achieved?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: &#xA;Please also note that these tasks have absolutely no precedence / successor relationship, they just need to be done at some point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29084" LastEditorUserId="29084" LastEditDate="2017-07-06T12:10:07.600" LastActivityDate="2017-07-06T14:01:58.877" Title="How can I create a &quot;pool&quot; of tasks to choose from whenener there is available time?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21956" CreationDate="2017-07-05T21:36:46.557" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Six to no more than maybe 9 people is your sweet spot for facilitating working groups.  I would predict having a single sessions with 40 people will yield nothing valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-07-05T21:36:46.557" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21959" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21960" CreationDate="2017-07-06T06:10:00.283" Score="2" ViewCount="373" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can a task under &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.projectsmart.co.uk/raci-matrix.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;RACI matrix&lt;/a&gt; be accountable by 2 resources? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g.: Both the Project Manager and the Development Team Head are accountable for the project quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17511" LastActivityDate="2017-07-06T09:38:33.527" Title="RACI Matrix - Accountability" Tags="&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;responsibility&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21959" CreationDate="2017-07-06T09:38:33.527" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it can't. In the RACI format, the Accountable person is the one ultimately answerable for the correct completion of the task.&#xA;It is also the one who delegates the work to those marked as &quot;Responsible&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, there has to be only one accountable specified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See: &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_assignment_matrix&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_assignment_matrix&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16362" LastActivityDate="2017-07-06T09:38:33.527" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21956" CreationDate="2017-07-06T13:38:37.893" Score="3" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the meeting will be just about sharing the results of the questionnaire and the next steps of the product (In other words no interaction with the attendees other than the regular Q&amp;amp;As in any meeting), then it wouldn't hurt to hold the session for the entire team, after all it'll be a way to convey how transparent are you as a management team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the meeting will involve discussions or gathering feedback from the attendees then I suggest the following format:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hold feedback sessions with each  functional area, this will help focusing on the learnings of every aspect of the business.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After processing the feedback gathered from all the teams and agreeing on the action items/next steps for the whole product with the main stakeholders, hold a clouser meeting for the activity to share the findings and the next steps with all the team, this will help them to be aligned on the vision, feel connected and trusted. It shouldn't be a long meeting, just enough time to keep everyone in the loop and answer any final questions the team may have.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3263" LastActivityDate="2017-07-06T13:38:37.893" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21962" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21964" CreationDate="2017-07-06T14:01:16.960" Score="4" ViewCount="59" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assume there is a graphically intensive visual feature in app X. It includes dimming out some part of the screen at some point in the program.&#xA;The story revolves around implementing a similar feature in our app which is of the same genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PO insists at adding an acceptance criterion, &quot;achieve the same exact effect as in the reference app&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that a valid acceptance criterion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can we know that we have achieved it in terms of the definition of done? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29091" LastActivityDate="2017-07-06T14:32:31.173" Title="Is &quot;Replicate X visual feature from Y app&quot; a valid acceptance criterion" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;definition-of-done&gt;&lt;acceptance-criteria&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21957" CreationDate="2017-07-06T14:01:58.877" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have tasks that have no link to other project tasks, then it sounds like conflating both projects tasks with operation-type tasks, i.e., your team is matrixed to both the project as well as daily operations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I interpreted this correctly, then I would argue that you would not use a scheduling tool like MSProject to capture operation tasks.  If there is an expectation that your team will be bouncing back and forth from the project to operations, then you would load them less than 100% in the schedule and then direct and schedule them to perform operational tasks separately from the project schedule, i.e., calendar with stated duty times.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you must show those operational tasks in the project schedule, then I would load them as LOE tasks--which they are--across time and load each team member to those tasks and assign some low level of utilization such as 10% and distribute those hours equally across time.  This way, you will capture costs, both planned and actual, within the same tool.  However, this will require manual assignment and I think this SHOULD require manual assignment as delegating this to a tool would not be advisable.  There are considerations that you, as the manager, must make that no tool can analyze.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-07-06T14:01:58.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21962" CreationDate="2017-07-06T14:32:31.173" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The concept is valid, which is to seek a result based on a reference. But of course it needs to be broken down into measurable points. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: the acceptance test will be like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Achieve the same exact effect as in screen x in app y in terms of:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Dimming effect hex value is #9999&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Area affected by dimmed light is 70% of the screen&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Colorful items are in black and white...etc&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main goal of any acceptance test is to help the team to mark the task or feature done. So it has to be measurable not subjected to personal opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3263" LastActivityDate="2017-07-06T14:32:31.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21927" CreationDate="2017-07-06T18:57:50.880" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To unwordwrap en masse I've used the following process:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select the column to unwordwrap&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select the rows involved (sometimes all)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On any selected row move your cursor until it becomes the row high adjustment icon, then drag upward.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should shrink all rows back to no wrap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7689" LastActivityDate="2017-07-06T18:57:50.880" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21966" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21967" CreationDate="2017-07-07T05:38:53.837" Score="3" ViewCount="2104" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my software, a lot of services expect user to be authenticated before performing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In positive scenarios, I have this kind of context: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Given I am authenticated&#xA;When I create meeting X&#xA;Then meeting X is well created &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am used to write a symmetrical scenario like this for each of my services that deals with user authentication requirement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Given I am not authenticated  //note the 'not' word&#xA;When I create meeting X&#xA;Then meeting X is not created&#xA;And an authentication error should be thrown&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It forces developer to handle check of user authentication at the top of the service implementation, to prevent any potential &quot;hacker&quot; or malicious code to call the API (in this example 'meeting creation') directly while not being authenticated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it a practice I should keep?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Am I right to consider this &quot;defensive&quot; scenario as a real business rule that I may discuss with &quot;Business&quot; team?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note that my acceptance tests do not test through the GUI part, but only directly through the use cases part (services / business rules).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29061" LastEditorUserId="29061" LastEditDate="2017-07-07T06:58:48.917" LastActivityDate="2017-11-13T07:33:51.633" Title="Should I have user stories dealing with the case where user is not authenticated?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;features&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21966" CreationDate="2017-07-07T07:58:34.983" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: yes, it is perfectly fine to account for negative cases. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm used to seeing this a bit differently. Usually a User Story is one step up &#xA; like: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user, I'd like to be able to add a meeting on the calendar so that I can track my schedule for the day&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I would have both of these as acceptance criteria on that story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This recommendation is more a matter of style though. I like this because it groups them better so that important business cases don't fall through the cracks. What you are doing is certainly not wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-07-07T07:58:34.983" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21966" CreationDate="2017-07-07T08:40:05.410" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/strong&gt; Yes, you may keep it this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long Answer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on what you are using the &lt;em&gt;scenarios&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;business rules&lt;/em&gt; for, there are several ways to write them down&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First case:&lt;/strong&gt; The scenario is used for &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.leadingagile.com/2014/09/acceptance-criteria/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;acceptance criteria&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Story&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user, I want to create meetings, to...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Acceptance criteria&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Authenticated user may create meetings over a GUI / API&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anonymous users should not be able to create meetings and get an error instead&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First case:&lt;/strong&gt; The scenario is used for &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acceptance_testing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;acceptance&lt;/a&gt; / &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_testing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;regression tests&lt;/a&gt;, which are fragmented instructions to click through the application. All these tests should pass after every story (or at least before every release).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Incomplete example:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;happy path&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;open browser -&gt; login screen appears&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;authenticate -&gt; login successful message&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;create a meeting -&gt; see meeting details&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;without authentication&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;open browser -&gt; login screen appears&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;create a meeting -&gt; see creation failed due to authentication error&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Side note&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend to do the regression tests through the GUI by a user. If they are written well, they can be implemented in code and run automatically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28506" LastEditorUserId="30440" LastEditDate="2017-11-13T07:33:51.633" LastActivityDate="2017-11-13T07:33:51.633" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21946" CreationDate="2017-07-07T14:18:04.770" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The scenario you describe makes little sense. Hiring an Agile Coach for three people working on a PoC seems a bit extreme. At best, it's an expensive way to supplement staff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure that there is a useful absolute answer. Is the coach working on issues that were explained prior to the hire, or is this a surprise. If a total surprise, the Coach has the option of choosing to adapt their duties or moving on to a role where they are doing work closer to what interests them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd worry less about the box and more about the interaction and specifics. Are they working? How can they be improved? And, of course, given the people involved, is it plausible to ground an Agile transformation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11776" LastActivityDate="2017-07-07T14:18:04.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21970" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21974" CreationDate="2017-07-07T14:36:42.413" Score="5" ViewCount="237" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team's run Scrum for 1 year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner (PO) determine the priority of tickets and Researchers/Developers (RD) develop it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there's still a discussion in the planning meeting, but only for how to achieve tickets that PO brought into the meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now... my boss wants to build a new product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My new leader wants the whole team to be closer and more involved more discussion. However, as things currently are, no one speaks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our team has 7 RD, 1 PM and 1 Designer. It's not balanced if we wanna discuss something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just feel confused, so I wanna ask PMSE. Do you have any relevant examples in your previous experiences that can be shared with me, regarding my following concerns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How to make team members more involved in the product, and keep the development process smooth?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How to determine the priority of the ticket in a way that the team is highly involved?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can any team member create a ticket? How to determine if the ticket has business value?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29104" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-07-07T15:14:08.067" LastActivityDate="2017-07-18T11:23:45.760" Title="How to make team member more involved in the product" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21972" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21976" CreationDate="2017-07-07T14:54:43.903" Score="0" ViewCount="77" Body="&lt;p&gt;Next month we will start 3 parallel projects and we hired 10 new employees to help us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For each project, I already have a Leader but they started to fight to get the best new employees for their teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I help them to divide the resources?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20652" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-07-07T15:24:57.283" LastActivityDate="2017-07-07T17:46:10.427" Title="Define who will work on each project" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;distributed-team&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21973" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-07-07T15:19:41.300" Score="0" ViewCount="27183" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our team we want to use SCRUM but for the moment we don't want to use a tool (most of them are not really free or just for limited number of project/users). Because agile is about simplicity, we think a good starting point to follow-up a SCRUM project would be to use an appropriate excel template. At the end &lt;em&gt;Agile is a pathway&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking on internet, there are some specific excel file such as: product-backlog, sprint backlog, burndown chart, etc. I am wondering about some excel with all in one together and selft-contained and simple to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most complete one I have found are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.odd-e.com/resources/template_backlogs/ph_product_sprint_backlog_0.03.xls&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one Petri Heiramo, CollabNet&lt;/a&gt; but I guess no one maintains it (probably it was the early stage of CollabNet). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is another one from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mkbsoftwareexpert.nl/download-scrum-tools/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MKB Software Expert&lt;/a&gt; that is a good one too. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking for something that includes and integrate (I know it sounds like an application, but excel is very powerful tool):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product vision&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Release Plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Backlog Burndown&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spring Backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resource Allocation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Impediment List&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here some additional resources I have found on the internet about this topic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is an example, for parking lot application, with an executive dashboard (manual update) and with Product Backlog and Sprint Backlog&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/resources/8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.scrumalliance.org/resources/8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Add-in: (I don't know how it works for Excel 2013)&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/resources/48&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.scrumalliance.org/resources/48&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seem to be provided by Petri Heiramo from Collabnet (this is the best I have found)&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.odd-e.com/resources/template_backlogs/ph_product_sprint_backlog_0.03.xls&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.odd-e.com/resources/template_backlogs/ph_product_sprint_backlog_0.03.xls&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It contents Production Vision and Impediment list&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mkbsoftwareexpert.nl/download-scrum-tools/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.mkbsoftwareexpert.nl/download-scrum-tools/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference to some good templates some from Bas Vodde collection and Petri Heiramo&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agilesoftwaredevelopment.com/tags-860/scrum/scrum-backlog-templates-and-examples/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://agilesoftwaredevelopment.com/tags-860/scrum/scrum-backlog-templates-and-examples/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other references&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.odd-e.com/home_page/html_files/bl_templates.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.odd-e.com/home_page/html_files/bl_templates.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Product Backlog with macros for updating the information (click on the link: A backlog from a company starting with a &quot;c&quot;)&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.odd-e.com/home_page/html_files/bl_example.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.odd-e.com/home_page/html_files/bl_example.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just provide a screen shot, but gives you some idea about how to document user story&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/a-sample-format-for-a-spreadsheet-based-product-backlog&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/a-sample-format-for-a-spreadsheet-based-product-backlog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simple, it generates cards&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.equinox.co.nz/blog/agile-excel-story-templates-for-backlogs-and-release-planning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.equinox.co.nz/blog/agile-excel-story-templates-for-backlogs-and-release-planning&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What would be in your opinion a good excel all-in-one for managing and monitoring SCRUM projects?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note&lt;/strong&gt;: I am aware it can be considered as typical &lt;em&gt;shopping/software question&lt;/em&gt;, the border can be diffuse because Project Management is about: Procedures, Techniques, Tools and its best practices applied to project management, therefore sometimes is impossible to talk about it without mentioning some specific technique and tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27556" LastEditorUserId="27556" LastEditDate="2017-07-14T20:11:40.627" LastActivityDate="2017-07-14T20:11:40.627" Title="Good All-in-one excel template for SCRUM framework?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2017-07-10T16:16:40.473" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21970" CreationDate="2017-07-07T15:23:55.120" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to make team members more involved in the product, and keep the development process smooth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give them some control &lt;em&gt;over&lt;/em&gt; the development process. Scrum, and Agile in general, is about self-organizing teams. It's just not going to work if you don't get buy-in from the Team, and you're not likely to &lt;em&gt;get&lt;/em&gt; that buy-in if you tell them exactly how to do things. Discuss the process itself with the Team, and come to a mutual agreement as to how to structure things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to determine the priority of the ticket in a way that the team is highly involved?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Development Team does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; determine the priority, in a typical Scrum structure. However, what often happens in a Sprint Planning Meeting is a back-and-forth, with the Product Owner bringing in the highest priority Stories, the Development Team determining how many they believe they can accomplish that Sprint (which often reveals misunderstandings on one or both sides), and the Product Owner possibly re-prioritizing or splitting up Stories in order to get what s/he really wants into the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general... The PO decides the priority. The Development Team decides the amount of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can any team member create a ticket? How to determine if the ticket has business value?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, the Product Backlog is under the purview of the Product Owner. While members of the Development Team could create Stories, they must work with the Product Owner, who is the one responsible for &lt;em&gt;prioritizing&lt;/em&gt; said Stories. Likewise, the Product Owner should be equipped to determine business value.&#xA;A possible exception is purely technical tasks, such as 'Refactor these classes', which are only understood by the Development Team. In such cases, you either need to keep them separate from normal Stories, or else work to communicate to the Product Owner the actual business advantage for accomplishing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-07-07T15:23:55.120" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21966" CreationDate="2017-07-07T16:22:49.280" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Capture Business Concepts (Not Engineering Steps) In Gherkin&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it a practice I should keep?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe. Negative test cases, like boundary conditions, are good things to test from a quality assurance perspective. However, from an engineering or product management perspective, it's worth asking why you need a narrow scenario like this rather than either a more comprehensive feature or a scenario outline. And from a business perspective, low-level details in acceptance tests are generally an anti-pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Express the Business Case&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, rather than having all sorts of odd entry points as separate use cases, a more comprehensive feature might say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Given that a user is not authenticated&#xA;When the user performs any action&#xA;Then the user is redirected to the login page.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This captures the real business case better and more clearly, although you would probably want individual steps or a scenario outline to test all the possible entry points and to be able to report individual failures more effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefit of this type of story is that it captures the business logic a lot better than an implementation-centric story does. On the other hand, a failure within one of the steps is a lot less communicative, and requires knowledge of the underlying steps to narrow down specific failures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a middle ground: senario outlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Use Scenario Outlines&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main problem with expressing only the business domain without also defining some context or targeted use cases is that you can't determine with specificity where a test group is failing. That's where Cucumber scenario outlines can help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Scenario Outline: force authentication on all pages&#xA;  Given an unauthenticated user&#xA;  When the user connected to the &amp;lt;function&amp;gt; page&#xA;  Then the user should be redirected to the login page.&#xA;&#xA;  Examples:&#xA;    | function |&#xA;    | meeting  |&#xA;    | calendar |&#xA;    | profile  |&#xA;    | launch thermonuclear warheads |&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this type of outline the business goal is clear, and you also have a set of high-level tests that can pass or fail independently of each other. The top-level reporting is both granular and cohesive, while avoiding the sort of &quot;test sprawl&quot; that you would get from adding negative scenarios for each behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Summary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Testing is more of an art form than a science, so your mileage may vary. However, agile testing should function as self-documenting behavior rather than low-level detail, and acceptance criteria should focus more on business logic or user-visible behavior than on underlying implementation details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-07-07T16:22:49.280" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21972" CreationDate="2017-07-07T16:57:32.023" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are the decision maker as to which team each new employee goes, then I would suggest to remove the team lead from the equation in this situation and here's why:  In this situation, since each was hired generically and then are to be assigned, I would remove the team lead in choosing, so as to avoid the fight you are experiencing and because their assessment of who is truly &quot;better&quot; is unreliable and based on bias.  Unless you used some type of &quot;job testing / job simulation&quot; hiring vehicle, you and your team leads have no real reliable and valid way of knowing who's going to perform and who won't.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll end up using years of experience or something on the resume that sounds interesting but both are extremely unreliable predictors.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, using your best judgment, biased notwithstanding, divide the team as you see fit and tell the leads to cope with it.  Even better, use a coin.  I'm really not kidding.  Our job predictors we generally use, unless you have a proven job testing method, are extremely weak and not much better than random choices, if better at all.  Your goal here is to stop the fighting, which is a waste of time, so pick up a coin or just you split them up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-07-07T16:57:32.023" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21972" CreationDate="2017-07-07T17:46:10.427" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are all new employees. Unless your team leads are good at sharing with each other, much better to leave them out the equation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation in which you have to assign several people you don't know well (or at all, as in this case) to different projects comes up often. You can avoid a lot of friction by making a best guess (as already suggested) yourself, and then adjusting if needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you don't want is for the Team Leads to get emotionally invested in specific choices (as in, &quot;that's the resume that makes most sense for my project&quot;) before they have a chance to work with the assigned team--that way leads to unhappiness regardless of how things work out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11776" LastActivityDate="2017-07-07T17:46:10.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21966" CreationDate="2017-07-07T19:08:53.330" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have written, accounting for negative cases is good.  However, the structure of your negative case is not, because it contains an internal contradiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that you are describing outcomes as if they were user actions.  But they are actually the action the software takes in response to the user action.  Failures have user actions, but the expected output never occurs, because the failure prevents it from actually happening, so a story predicated on the event is never satisfied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bad:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given I am authenticated&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I create meeting X&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Better:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given I am authenticated&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I submit a &amp;quot;create meeting&amp;quot; request&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is still operating at the level of the backend, it doesn't refer to specific UI elements such as menus or buttons, and covers network activity not generated by the approved frontend (covering the &amp;quot;hack&amp;quot; concern).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29108" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-07-07T19:08:53.330" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21973" CreationDate="2017-07-07T19:43:51.727" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may be one of those frustrating, &quot;easier to build it yourself&quot; questions. Excel doesn't necessarily provide great affordances for tracking a backlog, sprint, etc., but it is easy to envision lots of ways it could be used in that way, with rows for individual stories, columns for things like storypoints, etc. You can even invent ways to track (or at least display) tasks--reserve your first few columns for epic / story / task, say, and fill in the relevant columns (story points for story, for instance) as needed; tag various rows as needed, copy stories to an active sprint workbook, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason you may want to feel you way into building it yourself is that you are looking for those affordances that make it easy to fit what =you= want to track and how your team best understands things, without having to fit someone else's &quot;round peg into a square hole&quot; take on the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Modeling in Excel yourself may make it easier for you to know if, and to which to migrate your tracking at some point in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11776" LastActivityDate="2017-07-07T19:43:51.727" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17441" CreationDate="2017-07-08T11:35:26.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q: Why use one rather than the other?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its important to first understand &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; different frameworks exist to scale scrum or agile teams. In my view, the answer is &lt;strong&gt;money&lt;/strong&gt;. After the agile manifesto's publication in early 2000s and its subsequent fame, Scrum soon became the &quot;market leader&quot; in the world of agile. Scrum did not, theoritically at least, address how to deal with scaled setups. As a result, many organizations have emerged attempting to address this as well grasp the largest portion of the massive cake of agile development frameworks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum became the marker leader among agile frameworks for a number of reasons but, IMHO, &lt;strong&gt;simplicity&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;low barrier to learn and adopt&lt;/strong&gt; were the most important. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is exactly why I would encourage using Nexus. More on why Nexus below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Q: Does one cover more areas than the other?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is yes if by more areas you mean more material. However, it is important to stick to basics of Scrum (empiricism) and the underlying principles of agile development when looking at all these frameworks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is critical you do Scrum/Agile right before you scale. If you must scale, I would recommend heading to Scrum.org and looking at Nexus but only if you are comfortable with Scrum. Scaling scrum doesn't solve your problems, it scales those problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So simply put, IMHO, there is no such thing as more areas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q: What is the &quot;most popular&quot; framework as of today?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definitely SAFe. Well, at least in Europe and based on a quick search on Indeed for job vacancies for SAFe as compared to the other frameworks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q: What are their strengths or weaknesses?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a tendency to &quot;scale&quot; scrum every time things appear large. More often than not, scaling scrum is just unnecessary. For example, as you mentioned, when working on unrelated projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have almost never seen a scaled scrum setup with the appropriate number of scrum masters involved (I have been involved with Scrum for only 5 or so years). This tells me that the lone Scrum Master with a growing team decided to use scaled scrum to continue being the &quot;Scrum Manager&quot;, and not Scrum master. You cannot scale scrum when you are not even scrumming. I digress, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without attempting to compile an exhaustive, and unnessary ist, I would say the biggest strengths of Nexus are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It beautifully extends Scrum by providing what Scrum's and Nexus' leading author Ken Schwaber calls an exoskeleton.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It keeps the &quot;material&quot; at a minimum so its concise and fairly quick to learn.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It has a low barrier to learn and get certified in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its weakness would be: Lack of widespread adoption given its relatively new (although the best, IMHO) and that means if you join a scaled Scrum setup, you may need to quickly learn the terms as used in other most widespread frameworks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can swap this as strenghts and weaknesses of the other &quot;heavy on material&quot; scaled scrum frameworks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q: Moreover, certification-wise, is any of these more &quot;recognised&quot; than the other?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned above, SAFe appears to be most in demand. However, I would strongly discourage you from joining an organization insisting on SAFe or CSM certification as opposed to one of the other Scrum certifications like PMI-ACP, PSM and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is actually a good indication of an organization not truly adopting the underlying values of Scrum, Agile or Lean. Where is the Kaizen or opennes in insisting on hiring SAFe certified as opposed to Nexus certified or simply Scrum certified for that matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastActivityDate="2017-07-08T11:35:26.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21588" CreationDate="2017-07-08T11:48:50.707" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Call me a purist but I would say neither. There should be no accumulated technical debt if you are doing Scrum right. Remember:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of tool, you must inspect your team and the work being done at the different Scrum events. Something must be really wrong if in spite of daily scrums, monthly (or bi-weekly) reviews and retrospectives, you are accumulating technical debt!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have technical debt. Like a lot it and you feel you must do one of the suggested two things. Allow me to recommend a third option:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stop working on new functionality. Sort out the technical in the upcoming sprint (or two, or three or four sprints). Then, make sure you do not accumulate debt in the future like you have done so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastActivityDate="2017-07-08T11:48:50.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21984" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21985" CreationDate="2017-07-10T09:48:14.947" Score="4" ViewCount="1638" Body="&lt;p&gt;While setting up my Jira's project, I struggle to make an Epic span multiple sprints.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In other words, I expect an Epic (a complete feature) to be associated to multiple sprints. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is that I want some user stories relative to one specific epic to be postponed to some next sprints. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Epic&lt;/strong&gt;: Viewing meetings &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;US-1&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Given I'm authenticated&lt;br&gt;&#xA;And there exist some scheduled meetings&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Then I can view meetings.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;US-2&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Given I'm authenticated&lt;br&gt;&#xA;And there exist some scheduled meetings&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Then I can view meetings filtering by title. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I expect US-1 to be part of sprint 1 and US-2 (touchier) to be part of sprint 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to achieve it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29061" LastEditorUserId="29061" LastEditDate="2017-07-10T10:07:53.680" LastActivityDate="2017-07-10T15:26:01.790" Title="How to get an Epic span multiple sprints?" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;epics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21984" CreationDate="2017-07-10T10:07:16.307" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can assign the Epic's user stories to different sprints according to your needs. And when you browse the Epic you can see how its issues are distributed. Like the below example.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gxqM6.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gxqM6.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3263" LastActivityDate="2017-07-10T10:07:16.307" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21984" CreationDate="2017-07-10T15:26:01.790" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key is to assign the relevant user stories to sprints--not to assign the epic to sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11776" LastActivityDate="2017-07-10T15:26:01.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21987" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-07-10T18:40:51.713" Score="2" ViewCount="78" Body="&lt;p&gt;A project manager at our company recently supplied the team with metrics for two past projects that are wildly different from one another. Based on these metrics, the project manager would like to create a baseline for future projects however, I'm finding it difficult to grasp how that would be possible because future projects could have varying degrees of difficulty, resource availability, and other issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hard Project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Sprint 3.1 to 3.6 data - 6 sprints - 12 weeks   &#xA;Total Design Hours  41&#xA;Total Development Hours     250&#xA;Number of PBIs  46&#xA;Number of bugs  45&#xA;Estimate hours fixing bugs  90&#xA;Estimated hours new development 160&#xA;Defect injection rate &#xA;(number of hours fixing bugs / number of hours developing functions)    0.56&#xA;Average team development hours completed per sprint 42&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Easy Project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Sprint 2.3 to 3.5 data - 7 sprints - 14 weeks   &#xA;Total Design hours  12&#xA;Total Development Hours     124&#xA;Number of PBIs  20&#xA;Number of bugs  13&#xA;Estimate hours fixing bugs  26&#xA;Estimated hours new development 98&#xA;Defect injection rate &#xA;(number of hours fixing bugs / number of hours developing functions)    0.27&#xA;Average team development hours completed per sprint 18&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The primary concern here seems to be that the &lt;code&gt;Average team development hours compeleted per sprint&lt;/code&gt; is around 40-50% of actual capacity and that the &lt;code&gt;Defect injection rate&lt;/code&gt; is too high for the harder project. But these are the two fields selected to the baseline for future projects. But what does this mean exactly? How can you arbitrarily just select the metrics from one of these projects and apply them to a future project? After looking at this question &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/10294/what-is-the-best-way-to-develop-a-project-baseline&quot;&gt;What is the best way to develop a project baseline?&lt;/a&gt; it looks like we might be conflating different ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29125" LastActivityDate="2017-07-10T19:03:25.850" Title="How to set a baseline for future projects based on performance of past projects?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21987" CreationDate="2017-07-10T19:03:25.850" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends significantly on what is said baseline's &lt;em&gt;purpose&lt;/em&gt;. One approach, based on the concept of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes%27_theorem&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bayes's Theorem&lt;/a&gt; (the sun rose yesterday, and the day before, and the day before..., so it is &lt;em&gt;pretty likely&lt;/em&gt; it will rise tomorrow), would involve aggregating &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; previous projects in order to obtain a continually-improving baseline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In which case, since you currently only have two data points, your original baseline won't be very useful. After a third project, you update the baseline, and it becomes a little more useful. After the fourth, fifth, etc., the baseline continues to improve, eventually become a decent predictor for the 'average' project's success. While this is a somewhat naive method (as it ignores variance in project size and type), it is at least low in complexity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, however, your project manager just wants to throw these two data points at you and receive in return an accurate and precise predictor of project schedules for all future products... They're likely to be sorely disappointed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First try to figure out what this baseline will be &lt;em&gt;used for&lt;/em&gt;. That should help you either figure out how to create it, or figure out that it shouldn't be created in the first place (in which case your task becomes convincing said PM of your finding).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-07-10T19:03:25.850" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21970" CreationDate="2017-07-11T00:41:17.250" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to make team members more involved in the product, and keep the&#xA;  development process smooth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have informal discussions with the team. Take them out for a beer or coffee and talk about what they think of the product or the latest/upcoming feature. Discourage technical discussions and if possible share the vision of the product and rough statistics of value(monetary or otherwise) it is generating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People tend to see themselves as coders, managers or designers. They need to be exposed to the idea that they together are building something that has value in the real world. There is an owner, yes, but they too own the product in some way. There is more to it than just completing a task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a mindset change and may take time to come by. Constantly pushing them to be more vocal will not help even if you continue doing it till eternity. Initially team members may also be repulsive of the idea about talking things they don't really need to know and find these discussions time-wasting. Hence, it is SM's task to make these meetings interactive and relaxing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I normally tend to take the team by surprise shouting for an hour off and going out to parks, coffee places or bean bag room. There we just chitter chatter about the product. It is an unsaid understanding that whatever we talk, remains with us as a team talk. Nothing goes out to the management or anywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What this exercise does is, it makes team members more aware of the product(than just code), they develop a sense of attachment to what they are building and that they understand they are playing an important role in increasing the statistics(business).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have followed this experiment in my last three consecutive projects over period of 2 years. It works!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to determine the priority of the ticket in a way that the team is&#xA;  highly involved?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the team is involved in the project, it will happen automatically. Just ensure to listen to everyone and give them a convincing reason for every 'no'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can any team member create a ticket? How to determine if the ticket&#xA;  has business value?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. Let them create a ticket in the backlog. Discuss the feasibility of the ticket with the PO. If PO doesn't see any business value and wants to close the ticket, he should do so with a comment elaborating the reason for not considering the suggestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If team wants to create tickets, it is an indication that they are involving themselves beyond their primary task. They may not be as exposed to the market as business team, neither they may be business smart but the gesture deserves respect if nothing else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29011" LastActivityDate="2017-07-11T00:41:17.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18665" CreationDate="2017-07-11T15:34:59.720" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I follow the step you did under MS Project 2016, but I am sure it the same in older version. I did the following steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a new task with default configuration (taks type &lt;code&gt;Fixed Units&lt;/code&gt; with the option: &lt;code&gt;Effort Driven&lt;/code&gt; marked) with 20 days duration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Under the Resource Sheet view create two resources &lt;code&gt;ResA&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;ResB&lt;/code&gt; with the default configuration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assign one by one each resource to the task (don't assign both resources at the same time, otherwise it won't reduce the duration).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now I have the task1 with 10 duration and with &lt;code&gt;Res1&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;Res2&lt;/code&gt; assigned.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Under Task Usage View, right button for viewing Actual Work in the grid view&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assign 8 hours for W, T, F, for each resource under &lt;strong&gt;Act. Work&lt;/strong&gt; row., then automatically it will extend the work in the same way for both resources for the remaining work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the standard MS Project behavior. See the picture for more detail about the final result. The duration after assigned actual work remain the same 10 days (this is related to the task type used). If the 3 working days are instead:&#xA; M, W, F, then the start of the activity is earlier, but the duration remains the same because it is based on how duration is calculated. For more information see the following &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/169597/proj-how-work-and-duration-are-calculated-w-assignment-changes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The leveling can be customized via: &lt;code&gt;Resource -&amp;gt; Leveling Options&lt;/code&gt;, you have more information &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/Distribute-project-work-evenly-level-resource-assignments-59ee715d-4446-42c9-8756-4ea2a5a7e4a0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/C4bcL.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/C4bcL.png&quot; alt=&quot;Taks Sheet View&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27556" LastEditorUserId="27556" LastEditDate="2017-07-11T20:17:43.740" LastActivityDate="2017-07-11T20:17:43.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21992" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-07-13T14:52:59.113" Score="1" ViewCount="433" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I produce an accurate determination of hours spent on projects in the past when I didn't record the time spent at the time? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to own my own business putting on concerts in the Seattle area for 5 years. This included:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Initiating the event (event concept, date) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planning the event (choosing venue, booking artists, renting sound, renting security, contacting investors, contacting designers for marketing materials), &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Executing the event (Managing promotions team, managing production team day of show), and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Closing the event (Paying investors). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I didn't explicitly record the exact amount of hours spent on each step for every event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ORIGINAL POST: First time poster, I'm taking a family friend's advice and pursuing a career in Project management and he suggested that I go for the PMP certification first. Now I'm taking classes now on Project Management and I'm not worried about taking the test but I am concerned about the 7500 hour requirement (I currently have a 2 year AA degree). I feel like I meet the hour requirement with my previous business experience. I used to own my own business putting on concerts in the Seattle area for 5 years. My job included initiating the event (Event concept, date), Planning the event (choosing venue, booking artists, renting sound, renting security, contacting investors, contacting designers for marketing materials), Executing the event (Managing promotions team, managing production team day of show), and closing the event (Paying investors). So within the Project Management framework it should qualify however finding the exact amount of hours spent on each step for every event is impossible and if I were to be audited I wouldn't have anyone else that could verify my Project Management experience other than my business partners. Do you think this will be a problem? or should I just estimate my hours spent on each project (event) and go ahead and take the test?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29153" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-07-17T09:41:49.073" LastActivityDate="2017-07-17T09:41:49.073" Title="How to determine hours spent on a project if didn't record them at the time?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;pmp&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21992" CreationDate="2017-07-13T16:39:57.803" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;@CodeGnome is right, in that only PMI approves a candidate's application; however, I think your actual question is: should you try and submit an application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your stated experience in your business appears to meet the criteria to sit for the exam and PMI would adjudicate your application for an answer.  Your issue with the hours is not an uncommon issue, based on my experience of mentoring those in my company.  Not many log their work hours for several years to fill out the application with that degree of precision and accuracy so they have to sort of reverse engineer the hours to the best of their ability.  I suspect majority of applications are constructed this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your second issue is, if audited, you would have a huge issue substantiating your application.  It appears you cannot mitigate this so it is what it is.  I understand PMI audits about 5% or so of the application so this is your risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the downside of getting audited and then rejected?  You get audited and rejected.  No one dies.  Continue with your PM education, get work doing PM stuff, track your hours, and then try again when you think you will be able to prove your application better than you can now.  If you don't get audited, then sit for the exam and pass it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just be as honest as you can filling out your application and let PMI do its thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-07-13T16:39:57.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21877" CreationDate="2017-07-13T22:03:45.453" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project Management is without a doubt a profession, one that adapts to the needs of the organization, but still keeps many of the key characteristics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like Roberto Gimenez, I have also been in this area for over 10 years. In all this time I have noticed the professsion does have some areas of concentration, not all PMs work in the same kind of business, nor do they need to use the same business lingo. That is the reason probably you felt confused about the apparent dual roles you mention related to development, business analysis and of course management. All those areas relate to IT Project Management, arguably one of the larger areas today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project Managers are without a doubt an important middle layer of management between the top leadership, and the actual teams that make things happen. Given that they work in a variety of industries you will notice that many times they do use different titles, but the career is quite similar. The main two areas where PMs work for are in two big functional specialties: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inside of Software Development or IT. In this area the agile movement has brought different titles, and the role has also changed a bit, but in essence it is about leading teams. The most common role you will see is Agile Coach, Scrum Master or Agile Project Manager.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Outside of IT. This may be in the construction industry, professional services, movie making, the military, or just about any other area where teams of people need to build and deliver solutions. In this case by far the most common title you will see is either Project Manager or Program Manager, but on ocassion you may see especialized titles such as Director or Risk Manager. Agile in these areas is still in its infancy here, but growing steadily.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within the Agile movement the two most important Agile methods and frameworks would be Scrum and Kanban. Scrum mandates roles, and has a defined approach. Kanban is much more fluid, but also agile. I recommend you take a look at both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within traditional Project Management the Project Management Institute is the most influential organization in the world. In the UK Prince 2 is a strong competitor to PMI. Both are fine institutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would certainly recommend this profession to anyone serious about working with teams and delivering solutions. It never ceases to grow, and give you positive challenges to apply your intellect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29157" LastActivityDate="2017-07-13T22:03:45.453" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21997" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21998" CreationDate="2017-07-14T02:37:30.740" Score="5" ViewCount="1337" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should the acceptance criteria for a user story form the basis for the test cases when testing that feature?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, should there be a seperate story for testing, whose acceptance criteria is that the feature being tested passes the relevant section of the function specification?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For example:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Story:&lt;/em&gt; As a user, I want to click a 'Show Map' button which will show a Google Map with the reported address marked, so that I can visualize where the event is occurring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What might the acceptance criteria be and how would this relate to the testing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29159" LastEditorUserId="28506" LastEditDate="2017-07-14T07:23:22.687" LastActivityDate="2018-12-01T07:59:43.790" Title="Scrum: Should user story acceptance criteria be mapped to test cases?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21997" CreationDate="2017-07-14T05:30:33.443" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The acceptance criteria should be part of the feature story and be the basis for the test cases. There shouldn't be a separate test story, they might be a subtask of the story!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long answer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should the acceptance criteria for a user story form the basis for the test cases when testing that feature?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course they should be! You define which criteria have to be met, that the story fullfills its usecase. These criteria should be tested to make sure the story is done. This means you have to implement different kinds of tests (unit tests, regression tests...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Or, should there be a seperate story for testing, whose acceptance criteria is that the feature being tested passes the relevant section of the function specification?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#artifact-transparency-done&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum guide&lt;/a&gt; is really clear about that, when defining the term &quot;Done&quot;: &lt;em&gt;&quot;Each Increment is ... thoroughly tested, ensuring that all Increments work together.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; Meaning that the story is complete, when all tasks are done - including testing. So no extra story or even an extra team for that!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What might the acceptance criteria be and how would this relate to the testing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I modified your story example by removing implementation details, there should only be customer need described. The &quot;Click-part&quot; has been move to the acceptance criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Story&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a user, I want to be able to display a map with the reported address marked, so that I can visualize where the event is occurring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Acceptance critria&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is a button 'Show Map' to open the map view (Google maps)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The reported adress is marked on the map&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If there is no adress marked, the button is disabled&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These criteria should now be tested, try to think about sunshine scenarios  and common errors - don't forget the edge cases. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know your application, so I try to keep it generic. You have some kind of user tests, where a team mate clicks through the app and clicks the &quot;Show Map&quot; button (marked map appears). Another thing would be to make sure the google maps api is able to understand your adresse format (might be automated) or you tests whats happending if Google Maps is down. Furthermore you have some kind of unit tests, that might test what's happening when the adress field is empty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28506" LastActivityDate="2017-07-14T05:30:33.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21999" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-07-14T07:43:17.093" Score="-1" ViewCount="92" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are trying to figure out a workflow that our developers/PMs can follow &#xA; that gives a developer everything they need for a project. A step by step process that PMs and devs follow so that a) the project runs smoothly and b) developers get everything they need to complete a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We start by building our projects via the front-end team first and then it gets integrated further down the line. Whether that's a Wordpress/Open source CMS site, web application or larger more enterprise level CMS it all follows the same workflow. Again any input on this way of working would be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The process needs to be detailed and efficient but not so detailed and lengthy that it becomes inefficient. Could you see the below working within an agency:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PM to supply project brief and design PDF/JPGS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dev to read through project brief and report back any queries to PM&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If dev accepts/assigned to project then create slack channel and add&#xA;to team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PM to supply PSD files&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dev to review PSD files - Suggest amends (if any) and report back to PM&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PM to book in with Designer and get amended&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add dev to Bitbucket repo and JIRA kanban board&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PM to supply bitbucket access&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kick off meeting/hangout&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint planning - divide project into sub-tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assign each task to relevant people and plan accordingly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put time estimate against each task to fill up the 8 hour daily limit&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developer to development on static version. Commit code to repo each night&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Daily standup 15 minutes at 9am to review the previous and next day&#xA;task/progress&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dev to move task into JIRA ‘In Progress’ column when actively working on task&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once task is complete move to ‘UAT’ column and assign to the PM&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PM to review task and assign back to dev if any amends/changes are&#xA;required. Repeat until approved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Browserstack review in modern browsers and devices. Use browser check list. Add any findings or queries to relevant tickets/tasks within JIRA. If no tickets apply then create BUG and attach screengrabs. Notify via slack too.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All code must be W3C validated. PM to check at &lt;a href=&quot;https://validator.w3.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://validator.w3.org&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Report back any warnings/errors to relevant tickets/tasks within JIRA. If no tickets apply then create BUG and attach screengrabs. Notify via slack too.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PM to review work with client&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk through any feedback with dev. Define a list of actions and then add to relevant tickets in JIRA. Also, find out whether amends are within project scope.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once all signed off developer can start CMS integration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29160" LastActivityDate="2017-07-14T14:05:35.360" Title="Could you see this workflow in place for a development team within a digital agency?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21999" CreationDate="2017-07-14T14:05:35.360" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your workflow should be as simple as possible, that means it cannot have as many statuses as items on your list, also will help the process to run smoother.&#xA;While I cannot design the workflow for you I can give you some tips:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Statuses represent something that already happened, more specific an activity that one person or team finished, ie: &quot;reviewed with client, estimated, developed&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Transitions are the actions that take you from one status to other, after you did what needed to be done in your current status, ie: &quot;send to review, send to development&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most transitions will have associated information of why the issue transitioned, or information required in the next status.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29163" LastActivityDate="2017-07-14T14:05:35.360" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22001" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-07-14T14:45:49.597" Score="5" ViewCount="1505" Body="&lt;p&gt;We currently allocated story points the following way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;0.5 very simple (approx 0-30 mins)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 simple (approx half a day)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 Medium difficulty (couple of days) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 Hard (3 days)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This works well for us, sometimes though if we are doing infrastructural work - integrations, dev ops, we cannot use the above metric properly because the task is just too big. At which point, my approach is to try to break the user story further to make it easier to estimate it's complexity, but then find that we cannot since the story is the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you accurately apply story points to very big tasks? thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="28984" LastEditDate="2017-07-16T13:55:03.550" LastActivityDate="2021-04-26T14:03:55.077" Title="How to allocate story points on extremely complex user stories?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22001" CreationDate="2017-07-15T11:01:05.927" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to answer this and considering the comments above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Story Point to Time Mapping&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand the desire to map complexity (story points) to time / money (hours / dollars), but as &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scruminc.com/story-points-why-are-they-better-than/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jeff Sutherland&lt;/a&gt; puts it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Story points give more accurate estimates, they drastically reduce planning time, they more accurately predict release dates, and they help teams improve performance. Hours give worse estimates, introduce large amounts of waste into the system, handicap the Product Owner's release planning, and confuse the team about what process improvements really worked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meaning that time estimations are mostly wrong and gives you a false feeling of safety. As @vander-lauriano-da-silva mentions, there are tasks that are very complex (in a way you have think much about it and hard to implement) but may be done in a short time AND there are tasks that are really simple, but take a lot of time to implement. So the mapping is dangerous (@ThomasOwens). Approximate complexity should be &quot;good enough&quot; to work with (@codegnome).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What's above 3SP (Hard)?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you insist on mapping, I see no problem using 5SP (Very Hard), as @nvoigt also mentioned. But this should be something that can be made in 5 days (= 1 week = sprint duration)! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Splitting Stories&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you re-think the way you cut your stories, to make sure the &lt;em&gt;story is NOT the task&lt;/em&gt;. From my experience, Stories greater than 3 can be mostly  splitted somehow (of course that depends from team to team).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several sources how to do this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.agilistic.nl/8-useful-strategies-for-splitting-large-user-stories-and-a-cheatsheet/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;8 useful strategies for splitting large user stories (and a cheatsheet)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agileforall.com/resources/how-to-split-a-user-story/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to Split a User Story&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other ways to split&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your Story is too big, you may also convert it to an Epic and add Stories to them. That may not solve your problem in the first place, but you have Stories fitting into one sprint, without losing the context of the feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprint duration&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also think about sprint duration, why does it have to be 1 week? Most teams I know run good with 2 weeks (also reduces the number of Plannings, Reviews and Retrospectives).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;So how do you do your sprint planning for say a weekly sprint?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a look at the velocity (story points / sprint) for the last 3 sprints and estimate how many story point can be &quot;burned&quot; in the next one&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Infrastructural / DevOp work&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe these links may also help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/61529/how-does-a-scrum-team-account-for-infrastructure-tasks-in-the-planning-meeting&quot;&gt;How does a Scrum team account for infrastructure tasks in the planning meeting?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2014/april/devops-and-agile&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DevOps and Agile&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28506" LastActivityDate="2017-07-15T11:01:05.927" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22001" CreationDate="2017-07-15T15:43:34.610" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mapping story points to time is an anti-pattern. If you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; do this because your work environment requires it then you have work to do to educate and evangelize agility at your workplace. Q.E.D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be successful at agile estimation, make sure that the whole team &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; the stakeholders within the organization all agree on what your estimating techniques actually measure. Furthermore, be sure to routinely sanity-check the results of your planning techniques to ensure that the iteration time box is being respected!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Story Points Measure Effort&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what do story points measure? They measure &lt;em&gt;effort&lt;/em&gt;. To a lesser extent, they also measure complexity, risk, and uncertainty insofar as those things may influence effort, but the metric itself is only about the level of effort involved in completing a deliverable. For example, in his blog post &quot;Don't Equate Story Points to Hours,&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/dont-equate-story-points-to-hours&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mike Cohn says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Complexity influences an estimate, but only to the extent the extra complexity affects the effort involved in doing the work. Walking to the one-point building while singing “Gangnam Style” is probably more complex that walking there without singing. But the extra complexity of singing won’t affect the amount of time it takes me to walk there, so my estimate in this case would remain one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're only going through the motions of treating relative-sizing as an unanchored level-of-effort estimate, then stop doing it and just measure time directly. You won't be any more accurate in your planning activities, and in fact may be less so, but at least you won't frustrate everyone by calling a comb a &quot;dinglehopper&quot; as Princess Ariel does in &lt;em&gt;The Little Mermaid&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Measuring Time with Boundaries&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even Mike Cohn admits that &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/story-points-are-still-about-effort&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;story points indirectly measure time&lt;/a&gt;, but only indirectly. That's because in agile frameworks like Scrum, we really only care about two time boundaries:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The daily standup.&lt;/strong&gt; We care about whether coordinated tasks are on track or not, and can use the 1-2 day rule of thumb for tasks to determine whether or not a story is on track or at risk. However, the standup-to-standup timebox is a process control, not a measure of velocity or a benchmark for team accuracy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Sprint or iteration size.&lt;/strong&gt; In the final analysis, all that matters is whether the Sprint Goal can be met. If the goal can't be met within the timebox, then the the level of effort exceeded the team's capacity and the work was improperly planned.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only essential measure of time within Scrum is whether or not planned work is done or not-done at the end of the Sprint. Ideally, you use your velocity to ensure that the team doesn't take on more work than can be done in a single Sprint and to do release planning, but these measurements are about per-Sprint &lt;em&gt;capacity&lt;/em&gt; for work, not directly about time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Scrum is about using forecasts of team capacity to manage the scope of work to fit into predictable time boxes. It is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; about highly accurate task-level time estimates, or about flogging the team to work harder or faster. The key is to develop a predictable cadence!&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Sanity-Checking Workloads Using Sprint Boundaries&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, so pretend for a minute that you're actually drinking the Kool-Aid. That means that you accept the following &lt;em&gt;a priori&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Story points yield better per-Sprint estimates of capacity than &quot;accurately&quot; measuring task time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scoping work to fit team capacity yields a sustainable cadence that is successful roughly 80% of the time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Measuring success by goals met rather than number of tasks performed is the organization's measure of success.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given all that, how do you validate your relative sizing? Again, we go back to the key unit of time measurement in Scrum: the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story points are really just an intermediate value to &lt;em&gt;estimate&lt;/em&gt; capacity. They work well, but there are other estimation techniques. On of my favorites is TFB/NFC/1, which is a system where you determine if a story or set of stories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;fits into a single Sprint (1)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is too big to fit into a single Sprint and should be decomposed or refactored (TFB)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;can't be estimated as-is or with the team's current knowledge (NFC)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use this type of technique alongside traditional story points, too. By looking at the Sprint Backlog as a gestalt and determining whether the whole book of work can &lt;em&gt;reliably&lt;/em&gt; be done within a single Sprint, great! If your other estimation process yields a backlog that results in a gut check of &quot;too freakin' big&quot; for a single Sprint, or (worse yet) &quot;no frackin' clue,&quot; then you should revise the plan until the planned goal and associated work &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; fit within a single Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you use use TFB/NFC/1, a gut-check, or another estimation technique isn't what's important. They key strategy is to ensure that the team (and the rest of the organization) respect the time box. Plan only enough work to fit the iteration, and continuously refine your planning and estimation process until you can do that reliably most of the time. That's the essence of agile planning!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-07-15T15:43:34.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22007" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22008" CreationDate="2017-07-17T20:04:34.717" Score="0" ViewCount="173" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the keys to success is to start with the right foot when being introduced to senior management. How one would focus such presentation and what are the key aspects to be mentioned?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not want to talk about my personal life in a professional environment nor have had yet any major success in my career (which would be the logical items to cover on such intro) so I'm not sure on how to approach it. What would senior managers like to know from new joiners?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this specific case, I'm going to have a presentation speech at my PMI Toastmasters club, a worldwide club devoted to improve people's communication skills with learning by doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28993" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2017-07-19T07:13:15.133" LastActivityDate="2017-07-19T07:13:15.133" Title="What are the key personality traits and topics to discuss about when being introduced to senior management?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2017-07-20T11:18:01.627" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22007" CreationDate="2017-07-17T20:16:16.393" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It obviously depends on the environment, but I think you might be under a false assumption when you say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I do not want to talk about my personal life in a professional environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of the Icebreaker Toastmasters speech is just as the name implies - to break the ice. It can be about anything. I myself gave my speech (which, as well, was hosted in the company to which I was at the time employed) about pets, the clarinet, and my favourite Latin phrase. It seemed to go over well enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, like I said, it depends on the environment. The first thing you should do is ask the President of the Toastmasters group just how strongly tied to your profession the Toastmasters group (and your speech) are expected to be. That will be a better guide than anything anyone here could tell you. If you don't know who your Toastmasters President is (it changes annually, if I recall correctly), just ask the other members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-07-17T20:16:16.393" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21864" CreationDate="2017-07-18T00:49:29.520" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It turns out that Jira =does= allow regular users to import while using the hosted Jira (presumably, 7.x?). This is present as part of the &quot;issues&quot; menu. It is currently absent when beta-testing the new, allegedly improved Jira interface.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if the ability to import issues using CSV is important, and you are =not= a Jira administrator, you can do so, but you must be using the current &quot;classic&quot; interface, not beta-testing the new.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This lack may be corrected as the new beta develops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11776" LastActivityDate="2017-07-18T00:49:29.520" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22010" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-07-18T07:04:50.517" Score="2" ViewCount="335" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a Scrum Master and work with a team of 7 developers + PO (also programmer). They are experienced and many of them have been work in this place for couple of years. It is a big company in a transition to SCRUM and I am their first SM (since 2 months). They are also productive, easy to work with, eager to learn and not picky about their tasks (the product is not very exciting). The thing is the &quot;sleepy&quot; atmosphere especially during the meetings. Only the PO is active - he speaks for 90% of time. When I asked him not to speak first (he is willing to change this state) there was silence and it was really hard to end our meetings with any conclusions. The guys are simply fine with everything. How do I wake them up? Or do I let them sleep and take only little actions in search for improvements? I am also working with another team in the same company and the latter is boiling with emotions! How do you think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19305" LastEditorUserId="19305" LastEditDate="2017-07-18T08:17:00.693" LastActivityDate="2017-07-25T11:28:26.337" Title="How to wake up a team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22011" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22017" CreationDate="2017-07-18T09:00:05.730" Score="-3" ViewCount="67" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am 20 years old and together with my friend have been working on side projects since 4 years ago. This summer we finished high school and thought of taking things more seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We took a worker to help us manage the webpages, or better say an assistant.&#xA;It is not that we are lazy but we want to focus on other things too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the moment we have 2 websites where we advertise businesses: a 1e-commerce website and a Hostel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We want to put things to work and secure a monthly payment so we can continue to our next ideas. (of which we have plenty)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next week we are hiring another worker to speed up the work and to add some pressure on us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What help could you give me on organizing or managing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29189" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-07-18T13:10:59.860" LastActivityDate="2017-07-18T13:15:09.327" Title="How can I improve the team efficiency" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;&lt;strategy&gt;&lt;project-leader&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2017-07-18T18:09:56.170" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22010" CreationDate="2017-07-18T10:00:37.057" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like the team is expecting the product owner to feed them ready-to-work tasks. It may be that the PO's technical background is actually a hindrance in this case. It is important to remember that the PO should be providing clarity on which feature needs are most important to provide and which problems are the most important to solve. The team decides how to implement those features or how to solve the problems. If this distinction is not there the team can get demotivated quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-07-18T10:00:37.057" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21970" CreationDate="2017-07-18T10:55:53.643" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an issue not just for product teams but for companies in general. Engaging your employees with the company goals, methods, and culture, among other things is a growing challenge for many businesses. You should look into research on &quot;employee engagement&quot; to learn more about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, let's get down to some actual action items:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To create more engagement, which will facilitate increased discussion you'll need to first get some easy engagement wins:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Create an engagement strategy that facilitates involvement. This is similar to how community managers handle social media engagement --&gt; In order to have engagement over the topics you're concerned with you first need to generate engagement on the topics that your audience is concerned with and have a clear opinion on. Once you create a culture of engagement around &quot;fun&quot; or &quot;entertaining&quot; topics you can then introduce the topics you want to have discussion around. it's a process but it really does work. In fact, if you're able to do this successfully the community will then engage itself without the need of an admin.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once you've figured out the kind of engagement you'd like to create find the right tools for the job. &lt;a href=&quot;https://connecteam.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Employee engagement tools and apps&lt;/a&gt; can do just that. Choose the one the helps promote your goals and satisfies your needs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29191" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2017-07-18T11:23:45.760" LastActivityDate="2017-07-18T11:23:45.760" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22010" CreationDate="2017-07-18T11:48:52.627" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the best things I was taught as a project manager is that no two team members are the same. We can't treat them all as one and expect them to come out of their shells. To each their own, and as a PM it's our challenge to learn about them and find what makes them tick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Marc has made a comment about &quot;introverts&quot;, and most teams have one, but when the entire team is feeling lethargic and uninvolved then that's something different. At the very least it doesn't hurt to switch things up a bit to make the workplace more exciting, but I'd say there's a lot to benefit from by doing what you're doing. I think it's great that you're paying attention to their signals and making an effort!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I was in a similar position, I'd start learning more about them as individuals to see what really excites them. Getting out as a team together is a great way to break the ice (not the silly Team Building exercises, but something relaxed and not to do with work), and doing some personal presentations about themselves (or Q/A) gets your team members to learn about each other. This more often than not brings surprises when one learns something interesting about another, like a similar hobby, or something interesting like building space rockets in their spare time = more to talk about and more in common&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It sounds like they're a great team who is adding a lot of benefit to your company. If this is the case, use this to buy them some &quot;hack&quot; time (half a day on Fridays, or a full day a month). Time where they get to try something new, new programming languages, solving new problems, something totally out of the ordinary. This, while is a bit expensive, often adds benefit to the organisation too, so it's not a big loss&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get them to start peer programming with each other, or learning new functions that they're interested in&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are just a few ideas; I'm sure there's lots out there. It sounds like they're a great team, and them being a bit quiet is a good problem to have compared to most of what we hear about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck and feed back with what you tried/did!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17177" LastActivityDate="2017-07-18T11:48:52.627" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22010" CreationDate="2017-07-18T12:47:38.953" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a lot of untapped knowledge and ideas.  Notwithstanding individual personalities, something in your culture is rewarding this specific team to remain quiet.  As a facilitator, it's on you to figure out how to tap into this team and harness what it is they have to offer.  If your current meeting structure and facilitation methods yield nothing, then change it up.  Split the team in half, maybe in quarters, and conduct a different type of work meeting.  Maybe even consider breaking the team up and introduce new talent.  Introducing even one individual could dramatically change up the dynamic.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this were me, I would likely disband the team and rebuild it.  There's risk to this action in that you may cause some morale drop, performance drop, and some stakeholder grief; however, I opine that, after a bit of time, performance will again increase and, with the changes, you'll harness more intellectual thought and critical thinking that are now dormant.  And that win will pay for the immediate costs and risks you will assume with this dramatic change, IMHO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-07-18T12:47:38.953" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22011" CreationDate="2017-07-18T13:15:09.327" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Really broad question so it's hard to make a canonical answer, but one thing did stick out to me. It's mildly concerning that you're hiring so early. Have you already calculated hat you can afford to pay this new employee with your current growth, without going bankrupt? See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.paulgraham.com/aord.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Default Alive or Default Dead?&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-07-18T13:15:09.327" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17401" CreationDate="2017-07-18T18:55:19.210" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;An Event-based gateway can manage subprocesses with dynamic paths based on intermediate events:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Event based gateways are a special case of deferred choice pattern where the process chooses a specific sequence and branch depending on the interaction with an external environment thereby allowing for true dynamicity. This is different from the exclusive gateway in the sense that it allows a branching point where alternative paths are determined based on intermediate events coming from external systems. The message flow waits at the event based gateway waiting for a token to arrive from any of its branches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uXW2O.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uXW2O.png&quot; alt=&quot;Event-based gateway&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This allows for the main process to be initiated based on the multiple events:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whenever a cancellation event is received intermittently within a process an exclusive gateway decides whether a CustomerExperienceExecutive should make a personal call and deter the cancellation. If a resolution is reached i.e by means of changing the account type, account charges and privileges, the main process is re-initiated. Thus the process ends up having multiple start events, one that is for new applicants and one that is for re-applicants for whom the CheckCustomerSummary step may be skipped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/paas/process-cloud/cprcw/controlling-process-flow-using-gateways.html#GUID-3431CBA9-56C0-4F38-9C8F-68867A096565&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Controlling Process Flow Using Gateways&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://beatechnologies.wordpress.com/tag/event-based-gateway-pattern/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Event Based Gateway Pattern | Oracle Technologies Primer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27065" LastEditorUserId="27065" LastEditDate="2017-07-18T19:01:06.500" LastActivityDate="2017-07-18T19:01:06.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22019" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22031" CreationDate="2017-07-18T19:55:58.703" Score="0" ViewCount="107" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team is accustomed to receive tasks  by a product owner and execute them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now in my company, we want them to define tasks from user stories, so they can decide what they will do in the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a practice that helps my team members, who are not used to such a thing, to  start being self-organized and become more participatory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29112" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-07-28T13:20:49.570" LastActivityDate="2017-07-28T13:20:49.570" Title="How can I make my team to be self-organized?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;self-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22019" CreationDate="2017-07-18T20:11:53.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that (in Scrum) while the Development Team defines the tasks and decides on how much work to accept, it's the Product Owner who decides the stories and their priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure everyone is aware that the PO cares &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; the Dev Team gets done, but no one outside the Dev Team cares about &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt;, and therefore the responsibility for determining that falls on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Dev Team knows they're being held accountable for results, and are not being told how to do things, then over time they'll figure out on their own the best process for themselves. Iterate, inspect, adapt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-07-18T20:11:53.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22023" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-07-18T22:39:56.353" Score="5" ViewCount="1070" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team hates how long we spend in planning. We're currently spending about 3 hours for a 2 week sprint. I tell them that is actually less than a by the book sprint planning, but regardless they want to see what else is out there/ Are there either more engaging ways to plan a sprint (something other than sitting around a table playing with cards/shouting out t-shirt sizes), or a quicker way to do it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27415" LastActivityDate="2017-07-24T22:58:48.377" Title="My team hates planning poker (and the length of planning in general), is there a more engaging and/or quicker way to plan a sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;planning-poker&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22024" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-07-19T02:36:56.577" Score="0" ViewCount="75" Body="&lt;p&gt;I started to work on a new project ( software development) an my boss asked me: &quot;what are the next steps? I need a schedule!&quot;&#xA;We're at the beginning, doing some user tests and researches about the ux and I don't have a clear vision about the next steps because it all depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How could I present an action plan? Should I just create a timeline of how I imagine what's next?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20652" LastEditorUserId="20652" LastEditDate="2017-07-19T14:08:16.130" LastActivityDate="2017-07-19T14:08:16.130" Title="How to create a schedule for a UX process?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22026" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22039" CreationDate="2017-07-19T06:33:52.647" Score="2" ViewCount="385" Body="&lt;p&gt;My question is simple. We are hesitating whether we shall include &lt;strong&gt;Product Release&lt;/strong&gt; as a task in our sprint board. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29202" LastActivityDate="2017-07-20T18:13:54.337" Title="Release as task for Sprint" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22023" CreationDate="2017-07-19T08:22:12.323" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different teams have different approaches to estimating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some teams I have worked with like to do all of their estimating in sprint planning and as a result it often takes several hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other teams hate long meetings and so they prefer to do more estimating as a part of backlog refinement. For example, one team I worked with does 2-3 backlog refinement sessions per sprint and usually has 90% of their estimating done before the planning meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also worth questioning if you need estimates at all. Experienced Scrum teams can get very good at making their stories small and (relatively) predictable. When this is the case, a story count is often sufficient to estimate the capacity of a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One word of caution with this approach though. Estimating is a valuable process, even if the estimates themselves are not that important. The act of estimating often draws out some issues and helps the team to synchronise their efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with all things Scrum, the best thing to do is to experiment and see if things get better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2017-07-19T08:22:12.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22024" CreationDate="2017-07-19T12:34:49.723" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a lot of answers that go to your question, i.e., your question is only scratching the surface.  I'll start with a very high-level answer that I hope puts you on a path of generating a ton more questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An action plan begins with the definition of finish.  You literally work backwards from finish, right to left instead of left to right.  If you are having trouble visioning what your next steps are, it is likely due to the fact you do not have a clear vision of what finish looks like.  So that's step 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next step is to break down your definition of finish.  This is called a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) where you take your finished product and &quot;break it down&quot; into smaller, more manageable products.  Once your product is broken down to the degree you think is appropriate, you can then identify the tasks required to build that product.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next is estimating the work (in hours) and duration (in days) for each of your identified tasks.  There's a lot that goes into this and needs to include those who will be doing the work.  This should generate a lot of questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next is sequencing.  There are three types of reasons you would logically put one set of tasks before the next.  First is due to a logical sequence due to the nature of the work, e.g., you cannot paint the wall until after you finish hanging the drywall, taping it, sanding it, etc.  Second is due to the availability of resources, including people, to do the work.  If you have the same person doing task a and task b, she can only do one at a time so one of those tasks will be sequenced after the other.  And third is by choice; you simply schedule one task after the other.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you can put all of this against a timeline and dates and times.  Literally, because you have already established the logic, you identify the start date and the rest of the dates and times will simply flow from there.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a very high-level answer to a complex activity and is considered to be a waterfall type approach.  There are other approaches, such as Agile, that you could take advantage of, too, and perhaps someone can provide an answer using that method.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-07-19T12:34:49.723" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22026" CreationDate="2017-07-19T13:59:16.503" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If releasability isn't part of your Definition of Done, preparing a release needs to be treated like any other actionable set of backlog items. Except in the most trivial cases, you should strive to decompose your release tasks into done/not-done items for your Sprint Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Bake Releasability Into Each Sprint&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, your team should have a potentially-releasable product at the end of each Sprint. Your Definition of Done for each Product Backlog Item should therefore already include all the tasks needed for the work to be releasable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is foundational to Scrum. There are certainly real world cases where there's still irreducible daylight between &quot;potentially-releasable&quot; and actually shipping the product, but the goal of the framework is to minimize the distinction whenever possible. When &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; possible, then you have an obligation to surface all the effort required to ship the release and make it explicit during Sprint Planning and on your Sprint Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;No invisible work, ever!&quot; —CodeGnome's Law of Transparency&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Make Release Work Visible&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there's additional work that needs to be done to release the product, then that work should be in a story (or set of stories) on the Product Backlog, and associated stories and tasks placed onto the Sprint Backlog during Sprint Planning. &quot;Product Release&quot; is not a story—it's shorthand for a bunch of things that may or may not vary between releases—and doesn't meet &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt; criteria as written. Except in the most trivial cases, you should strive to decompose your release tasks into done/not-done items for your Sprint Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Release work is like a pre-flight checklist. How long is the checklist? What items are on it? What's the level of effort required to tick all the boxes? Does the checklist vary between releases? You have to answer this question anew for each release Sprint to ensure you allocate sufficient team capacity and that the work indeed fits completely within the current Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't do this, the work is largely invisible. Invisible work can lead to problems with forecasting or meeting the Sprint Goal because the work isn't properly accounted for during Sprint Planning. All work done by the team consumes capacity whether you track it or not, so release work must be visible and transparent to the entire team rather than wrapped up into a black box labelled &quot;Product Release.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-07-19T13:59:16.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22023" CreationDate="2017-07-19T14:38:24.540" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a concern I've heard multiple times and the trouble with it is that if it takes a long time, it needs to take a long time. What I mean by that is that the goal of estimation is less about the number in the end and more about driving out understanding. Sure, your team might be squabbling over unimportant details (if every story is a fight over a 3 or 5, pick one, move on, don't sweat the small stuff). But usually the long conversations are when someone holds up a 2 and someone else has a 13 because they have very different views of what the backlog item means or how risky it is to implement. These are the conversations that need to happen with the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't mean you can't help. Look for patterns in these conversations. Are there personal conflicts that artificially create disagreement? Are there knowledge gaps that lead to the same arguments over and over again? Are there technical pitfalls in the application or outside organizational pressures that make people fearful of touching some features? You can point these out to the team and help them clear them away so they aren't cropping up as often. But ultimately, if the reason it takes a while is because the team needs to uncover important facets of the backlog item, there is no good way to hop over that without it catching up to you as problems in the middle of the sprint (and you'll pay much more time for them then).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-07-19T14:38:24.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22019" CreationDate="2017-07-19T14:45:12.697" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is less of an answer and more of a tip: use the sentence &quot;I don't know&quot; a lot. If the team asks a product owner what the tasks are to solve a problem, they can say &quot;I don't know. I need you to help me figure that out.&quot; If the team doesn't know what all of the tasks are to complete a story, they can say &quot;I don't know. I know I'll do Task A, but I don't know what comes next.&quot; No problem, they can add them in as they go. Are these too many backlog items? &quot;I don't know, but it feels about right. Maybe one less.&quot; Knowledge and certainty are great if you have it, but if you don't, the most dangerous thing you can do is pretend like you do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-07-19T14:45:12.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22023" CreationDate="2017-07-19T21:42:13.170" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL;DR- I use an exercise that can estimate 50 stories in less than 30 minutes. You can read the blog on how to play the game or you can download my training module for how to team it &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OHBa3nI444Bt808EUNNOdeNMhriYLGxhbE8m7LRxKAE/edit?usp=sharing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I dislike planning poker for a number of reasons. I go into details on my blog post from March of 2012, &lt;a href=&quot;http://thegorillacoach.com/dont-play-planning-poker-with-the-gorilla/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Don't Play Planning Poker with the Gorilla&lt;/a&gt;. The short form is that it takes a lot longer, is less accurate and makes it easy for &quot;experts&quot; to sway the decision process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit- Per request a short, short synopsis. First off, Steve Bockman has an eBook on Amazon that goes into how to do Team Estimation. My exercise is an evolution of Steve's. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Round 1: Stack of Fruit&#xA;You start with a stack of cards. For the exercise, it's about ten cards with the name of a fruit on it. The team stands around a table and hand the stack of cards from person to person. Each person can do one of two actions, either place a card on the table, indicating if it is more or less effort than an existing card or they may move a card already on the table. When you are done you have a single row of cards from least effort to most effort (You can do this with business value as well). &#xA;Round 2: Assign Points&#xA;At this point you can break out the Fibonacci cards. The lowest effort fruit card has the 1pt card put over it. From here each person takes the next numbered card and places it down using the guidance of &quot;Is this fruit card roughly 1.5 more effort to prepare and consume than the fruit card to the left.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you are done, you have all the stories pointed in relation to the other stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also a round three, for what to do when you already have estimated stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="147" LastEditDate="2017-07-21T17:59:00.223" LastActivityDate="2017-07-21T17:59:00.223" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5342" CreationDate="2017-07-20T04:41:56.020" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Software development is tasks based and these are tagged to a deliverable schedule with Q A, Testing and UAT. All these are variables you can use to set the measurements of performance per developer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29209" LastActivityDate="2017-07-20T04:41:56.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22023" CreationDate="2017-07-20T05:19:27.333" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tried once printing out all the items to be estimated, dealing them out so everyone had an equal number, and spending 5-10 min during which people silently placed their cards in XS/S/M/L/XL columns on the table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then 5 min in which, if you disagreed about which column something was in, you put a token on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything without a token is done: take them off the table. Then have the discussions about where the rest belong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We didn't find it useful enough to repeat, but it was worth trying, and it had the engaging &quot;manipulate physical objects&quot; aspect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2017-07-20T05:19:27.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5342" CreationDate="2017-07-20T11:57:47.900" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the other answers have neglected an important part of your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;...distinguish between good and &quot;needs improvement&quot; programmers?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I concur with the other answers that there may be better ways to look at this problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;All known programmers need improvement. This isn't a binary &quot;good&quot; vs &quot;needs improvement&quot;.  The challenge here is to match the right opportunity to the right individual.  I think KPI would be a bad fit for this; KPI are impersonal and standards oriented, and what you should be seeking is something very individual.  One programmer may need to flex his skills in a new language/framework/environment. Another may need exposure to more database code. A third may need training in how to refactor their own code, while a fourth may just need some tandem time to practice coding to the team standards.  My experience is that few people are comfortable asking for what they need; you're going to have to listen to them and to their teammates over time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you're trying to distinguish between the adequate team member and the team member who may need a performance plan, KPI will not help.  (or by the time KPI reveals a result, you'll probably have dealt damage to your team that cannot be recovered.  This is a John Galt solution).  Listening to the team, spotting patterns of late delivery/quality problems, etc. will spot this.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take &quot;programming&quot; out of the mix.  If you were supervising construction workers or cooks, or circus performers or ... you'd be constantly looking at everyone's performance, looking for where they best fit on the next project, and for opportunities to improve that individual with training/coaching/whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have said better than I, KPI are designed to detect whether you need to intervene on the project, to refine your confidence that the project will be delivered on time, to measure and predict performance at a team/deliverable level.   Distinguishing between the individual who urgently needs improvement, the adequate performer who could be exceptional with intervention and the excellent programmer who you need to train to retain is a soft skill involving leadership and listening, and I'm not convinced that KPI is the ideal tool to support those activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apologies if I'm stating the obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2017-07-20T11:57:47.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6717" CreationDate="2017-07-20T13:22:05.393" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a recipe for high turnover, since the team will implicitly know:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When you finish a project with an unrealistic deadline, your reward is another project with another unrealistic deadline. &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lifehacker.com/dont-always-aim-to-meet-unrealistic-deadlines-1444834485&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://lifehacker.com/dont-always-aim-to-meet-unrealistic-deadlines-1444834485&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can also have unintended consequences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Estimates are also not usually updated once the team realizes that a task is behind. The engineer(s) will typically try to speed things up and do more faster, or work longer hours and weekends. In the first case, they can’t suddenly multiply their productivity, and there would be a significant quality loss and risk of missing requirements even if they could. In the later case, this is the fast lane to burnout and reduced overall productivity from lack of downtime, rest, etc. &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.innoarchitech.com/why-software-development-time-estimation-does-not-work-alternative-approaches/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.innoarchitech.com/why-software-development-time-estimation-does-not-work-alternative-approaches/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And produce an inferior product:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unrealistic time estimates and the subsequent perceived date commitments can also incentivize the wrong things. They incentivize speed, which often results to reduced quality, increased defects, missed requirements, rework, unhappy customers and CS staff, technical debt, and additional maintenance cost and time. &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.innoarchitech.com/why-software-development-time-estimation-does-not-work-alternative-approaches/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.innoarchitech.com/why-software-development-time-estimation-does-not-work-alternative-approaches/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no good rationale for such a metric:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The problem is that velocity and/or software development estimates rarely involve probabilities and statistics, and yet must. The resulting estimates are therefore nonsense since we try to deterministically produce the value of a stochastic random variable. This would be considered a laughable practice by any statistician. &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.innoarchitech.com/why-software-development-time-estimation-does-not-work-alternative-approaches/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.innoarchitech.com/why-software-development-time-estimation-does-not-work-alternative-approaches/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And no historical context by which a precedent can be set:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In practice, an engineer (or team) decides on an approximate lead time based on gut feel, experience, educated guess, etc. This process requires almost zero actual time. Once decided, the task is worked on and the actual lead time is recorded once complete, along with some way to categorize the relative size for the task. Over time, a data set is created that allows for statistical analysis and much more realistic estimates (lead times) and due-date performance metrics.&#xA;  &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.innoarchitech.com/why-software-development-time-estimation-does-not-work-alternative-approaches/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.innoarchitech.com/why-software-development-time-estimation-does-not-work-alternative-approaches/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is the opposite of the true goal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Remember that no one else cares and no one else matters. Most people are so wrapped up with themselves that they won’t notice any &quot;slip&quot; on your part. Let your desire to impress others go, and decouple your performance from your sense of self-worth. &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://webstandardssherpa.com/reviews/breaking-the-perfectionism-procrastination-infinite-loop/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://webstandardssherpa.com/reviews/breaking-the-perfectionism-procrastination-infinite-loop/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.innoarchitech.com/why-software-development-time-estimation-does-not-work-alternative-approaches/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why Software Development Time Estimation Doesn't Work and Alternative Approaches&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://webstandardssherpa.com/reviews/breaking-the-perfectionism-procrastination-infinite-loop/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Breaking the Perfectionism–Procrastination Infinite Loop - Web Standards Sherpa&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lifehacker.com/dont-always-aim-to-meet-unrealistic-deadlines-1444834485&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Don't Always Aim to Meet Unrealistic Deadlines&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://agilevelocity.com/scrum/5-common-story-point-estimation-mistakes/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Story Point Estimation Mistakes, 5 Common Ones Made | Agile Velocity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27065" LastEditorUserId="27065" LastEditDate="2017-10-03T18:21:15.603" LastActivityDate="2017-10-03T18:21:15.603" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22026" CreationDate="2017-07-20T14:52:27.187" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The challenge to move teams into Scrum or any other Agile process method is finding the balance between what needs to be tasked out and what should be inherent in the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the vital aspects to the Agile process is that the structure is fluid and not every part of the process framework needs to be followed to a T.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I have found works is to gather the team together, outside of a standard planning or team session, if a separate meeting is not feasible then use the teams retrospective, and decide as a team what would be best &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;for now&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; to either have the Product Release as a task or as a general mental checklist item.&#xA;The plus side of having it as a task is that it works the deliverable into the process and into the minds of the team. Once the team has refined its process then the task itself as a ticket can be eliminated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29071" LastEditorUserId="29071" LastEditDate="2017-07-20T18:13:54.337" LastActivityDate="2017-07-20T18:13:54.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22042" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22045" CreationDate="2017-07-23T09:32:44.167" Score="0" ViewCount="17489" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following figures showing the performance of a Scrum team during the first 6 sprints of a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint: 15 SP&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint:  5 SP&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint: 20 SP&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint: 15 SP&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint: 25 SP&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint. 10 SP&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 1:&lt;/strong&gt; What is the velocity of the team ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 2:&lt;/strong&gt; How many Story Points are likely to be achieved by this team in Sprint 7 ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 3:&lt;/strong&gt; Now if a have a table like below and represents the Product backlog . Which stories would you select for sprint 7 , and Why ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;+---------------+&#xA;| Story Id | SP |&#xA;+---------------+&#xA;| S1       | 3  |&#xA;| S2       | 1  |&#xA;| S3       | 3  |&#xA;| S4       | 5  |&#xA;| S5       | 8  |&#xA;| S6       | 3  |&#xA;| S7       | 1  |&#xA;| S8       | 1  |&#xA;| S9       | 5  |&#xA;+---------------+&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 4:&lt;/strong&gt; And based on above data , how many sprints are required to finish the project ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 5:&lt;/strong&gt; Draw a burndown chart for this Scrum project using the data provided in the above both of the table. What can be inferred from this burndown chart ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29235" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-10-21T22:27:24.760" LastActivityDate="2019-10-21T22:27:24.760" Title="Scrum , Velocity calculation and Sprint Calculation" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;velocity&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22042" CreationDate="2017-07-23T12:18:43.957" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the velocity of the team ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team has not yet achieved a stable velocity. I wouldn't necessarily expect the exact number of story points achieved, but a variation of 10-15 story points between each sprint seems excessive. Although this may be dependent on the story point values used - I'm most familiar with using a set of 1-3-5-8-13-20-40 where stories sized at 20 or 40 need to be reevaluated to see if they can't be decomposed into smaller stories that also add value to stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How many Story Points are likely to be achieved by this team in Sprint 7 ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would plan on approximately 10-15 story points being achieved in the Sprint. This is based on the guidance that you use the last completed Sprint as the point of reference for planning the next sprint. Once you achieve a stable velocity, you would likely be completing close to the same number of points every Sprint, Sprint-after-Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now if a have a table like below and represents the Product backlog . Which stories would you select for sprint 7 , and Why ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My initial proposal to the team would be to bring in Stories 1-4, for a total of 12 Story Points. It's slightly more than completed in Sprint 6, but most Sprints achieved more than 10 (only 2 didn't). If the Product Backlog has been appropriately prioritized, these also represent the most value-adding stories to the stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without fully understanding why the team's velocity was low in Sprint 2 and 6, it's not possible to go beyond the simple math to determine why the team was low. It also doesn't account for changes in capacity - vacations, sick leave, team members supporting other work, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And based on above data , how many sprints are required to finish the project ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's best not to try to answer this question unless you need to. The whole point of the agile methods is to support incrementally delivering software until the stakeholders funding the project decide that the features left in the backlog aren't worth the cost of one or more iterations. However, there may be cases where you need to attempt to estimate, such as a contract proposal for a long-term contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are 30 Story Points left in the backlog. Assuming no stories are removed and none are added and based on the historical data, I would estimate between 2 and 6 sprints are required to finish the work. Of course, it depends on your confidence interval. Based on historical data, it's not likely for the team to complete two consecutive Sprints of 15+ Story Points. It's more likely to take at least 3 or 4 Sprints to finish the remaining work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2017-07-23T12:18:43.957" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22042" CreationDate="2017-07-23T12:29:39.540" Score="2" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Homework Disclaimer&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's nothing wrong with asking academic or homework questions, but asking questions where you haven't put any effort into solving the questions yourself is frowned upon. Furthermore, homework questions don't always have canonical answers because the only &quot;right&quot; answer is the one your teacher is looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, the questions you're asking are worth answering for two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They're relatively common questions, and good answers will provide worked examples.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They highlight a lot of common misconceptions, and understanding why the questions have some misleading and/or incorrect assumptions is worth pointing out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My answers below will help you answer your homework questions more knowledgeably, but may or may not be the answers your teacher expected you to provide. Your mileage will therefore vary. Good luck with your assignment!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Calculating Velocity for Sprint and Release Planning&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What's Your Velocity?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For velocity values of 15, 5, 20, 15, 25, 10 you have a median velocity of 15. There is a 90% likelihood (technically, a confidence interval) that your actual velocity for your next Sprint will fall between 5 and 25.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/velocity-range-calculator&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Velocity Range Calculator&lt;/a&gt; for the math behind this calculation. You can do your own calculations with a different confidence interval if you prefer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What's Your Planning Capacity?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can select any mix of stories you like, provided the total is less than the team's expected capacity and that the stories selected all relate to the current Sprint Goal. Without any fudge factors or discussions about risk tolerance for an unmet Sprint Goal, then I'd assume 15 story points as a reliable target give or take a small story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Scrum Isn't a Knapsack Problem&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprint Planning is partly a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapsack_problem&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;knapsack problem&lt;/a&gt;, but is further complicated by the requirement to select stories in priority order from the top of the Product Backlog and to ensure that all selected stories contribute to (or at least, don't detract from) the coherence of a singular Sprint Goal. That's why the Development Team and the Product Owner are encouraged to discuss stories and do some horse trading during Backlog Refinement and Sprint Planning meetings: to allow the Product Owner to edit and reprioritize the Product Backlog on the fly to optimize stories for team selection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Story Selection Isn't Free-Form&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team can't pick stories based solely on size estimates, nor should stories be selected based primarily on trying to maximize the number of story points for the Sprint. In Scrum, stories &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be selected by the team in strict priority order from the Product Backlog until their expected capacity for the Sprint is allocated, but it's the Product Owner's job to make sure that priority order reflects a central coherence for the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Optimize for Cadence, Not Velocity&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Accepting stories based on ordinal values up to (but never beyond) the team's capacity forecast may sound counter-intuitive, but it really shouldn't. Pragmatically speaking, Scrum teams optimize for coherence and a reliable cadence rather than velocity for its own sake. Velocity is just a proxy for &lt;em&gt;capacity&lt;/em&gt; to assist with forecasting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Algorithm designers strive for optimal solutions to the knapsack problem. Scrum teams strive to deliver value at a reliable cadence. Too much focus on optimizing velocity is a distinct anti-pattern. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How Long for Entire Product Backlog?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have 30 story points remaining in your Product Backlog. Assuming you have estimated accurately and that no estimates change over the remainder of the project—teams are expected to re-estimate based on new information during Backlog Refinement and Sprint Planning—and also assuming that you don't add or remove anything from your Product Backlog over the next two Sprints, then at your present velocity it will take you &lt;em&gt;at least&lt;/em&gt; two Sprints to complete the entirety of current backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What's Your Worst-Case Scenario?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that since a Sprint provides a potentially-releasable increment at the end of each iteration, it's possible that the project can be declared sufficient and be closed out after the current Sprint. Alternatively, if your team delivers less than the median (your confidence interval has five story points as your low-end forecast) then it may take up to six Sprints to complete the entire Product Backlog as currently constituted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; worst-case scenario is always:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;no work completed per the Definition of Done, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a failed Sprint Goal, and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a velocity of zero for the current Sprint,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;based on statistical probability you have a 90% chance of getting at least five story points done in your next Sprint. You have to recalculate your probabilities each Sprint, but for forecasting purposes six Sprints is a reasonable outer bound given your data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-07-23T12:29:39.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22042" CreationDate="2017-07-23T12:31:57.733" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 1:&lt;/strong&gt; What is the velocity of the team ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You already wrote it down in your question, it's simply the number of Story Points &quot;burned&quot; in a sprint (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scruminc.com/velocity/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Velocity&lt;/a&gt;). So in Sprint 1 your velocity is 15. Please Not that only &quot;done&quot; Stories are counted. Whats more interesting is the average velocity need for question two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 2:&lt;/strong&gt; How many Story Points are likely to be achieved by this team in Sprint 7 ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;average&quot; velocity is more interesting, because this will help you forecasting the velocity for upcomming sprints. This can be simply done by adding all Story Points from past sprints and divid it by the number of sprints. In your case this may lead to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;(15 + 5 + 20 + 15 + 25 + 10) / 6 = 90 / 6 = 15&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because your Velocity changes over time (you get faster, &#xA;team composition changes, etc.), you may only take the last 3 sprints. Scrum Inc. recommends the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scruminc.com/yesterdays-weather/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yesterday's Weather&lt;/a&gt; to forecast the next Sprint, also regarding the number of team members availlable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 3:&lt;/strong&gt; Now if a have a table like below and represents the Product backlog . Which stories would you select for sprint 7 , and Why ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the table represents a priorized backlog (this is a must in Scrum!), you would take the first X Stories depending on your estimated velocity for the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The order only depends on the Product Owner, she / he is the only one who priorizes the backlog. There are several approaches to do this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/wsjf/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Weighted Shortest Job First&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoSCoW_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MoSCoW&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question 4:&lt;/strong&gt; And based on above data, how many sprints are required to finish the project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take the average velocity calculated above (15SP). Your Backlog has a total size of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;3 + 1 + 3 + 5 + 8 + 3 + 1 + 1 + 5 = 30SP&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in theory you might finish the project within two Sprints. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(!) But be beware that all of these numbers are estiamtions and NOT facts. Your lowest velocity was 5SP and your highest 25SP, so worst case you might need 6 Sprints or more to finish it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28506" LastActivityDate="2017-07-23T12:31:57.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22010" CreationDate="2017-07-23T23:53:55.800" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was in your exact position, but I was on the &quot;quiet&quot; side of the crowd. Let me explain why with time I preferred to be there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started working for a company, which had 4 or 5 years old legacy code. The code had no tests, moreover was written on a singleton-only framework, with static methods being unreasonably overused (which actually made the code untestable). Another thing, the code had different modules, which partly stopped being used with time. I mean, there was a newer module tracking products, but a couple of methods were statically called from the old one. The old developers just decided to leave it there and not rewrite it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the code was awful and it did physically hurt me to work with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when I was interviewing the company (that's right, I'm so skilled, I interview companies, not the other way around, haha!), the CTO told me they want to do heavy refactoring, rewrite the database structure (which was also a &quot;masterpiece of ...&quot;) and set up proper staging and CI. So I agreed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reality was a bit different. The product manager and the network support leader (I still don't know why in Nine Hells of Baator he was meddling in our affairs) were pushing the CEO and the CTO to develop mainly features and even though they promised to leave at least 20% of time (which is 8 hours a week per developer!), in the end the developers were working with unreadable ugly code, adding more unreadable ugly code, all 100% of the time. Yup, no refactoring, no rewriting, no nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what does it have to do with being quiet at meetings? Easy. First, I was active and innovative, trying to improve the state of affairs. But then I realized, that however hard I try to improve the situation in the company, nobody there actually wants any improvements. The people &quot;above&quot; focus on making money, the people beyond (clients, support department, etc.) just want a working application. And your IT department is between the hammer and the anvil: you can't improve things, because it means the development will slow down and everyone will be angry. And you can't develop at the moment, only type in some code and hope it works. And if there're bugs (there're always bugs), everyone's angry again. I am so glad I dropped the company shortly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice to you: look around. If your state of affairs is completely the same, then, if you really wish to change the situation and &quot;wake up&quot; the team, you should go change the perception of development of everyone else in the company. If you succeed, then you will get a very active and trusting team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22381" LastActivityDate="2017-07-23T23:53:55.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11352" CreationDate="2017-07-24T00:23:03.787" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Todd gave &lt;a href=&quot;/a/11355&quot;&gt;a very good answer&lt;/a&gt;, but I have a little to add.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think it's impossible to take on both roles at once. I actually do that myself, and having previously worked exclusively as a developer, I am seeing that I can bring about improvements both within the team, and the wider organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However it does limit the impact of the Scrum Master, and there are certainly some conflicts of interest. Development Team member and Scrum Master are separate roles. They may have the same ambition of delivering value to the business, but the ways in which they do this do not always overlap. For instance, a Development Team member might focus on the Sprint Backlog as the best way for them to deliver value; a Scrum Master may focus on systemic matters, and could, for instance, take a longer-term view.&#xA;This is most sensitive when the team are under pressure. A Scrum Master may be required to focus on protecting the team and their system of working. A Development Team member may be expected to focus on work in the Sprint Backlog.&#xA;Depending on how the Scrum Master has been empowered, this may result in them not being able to do their job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master is described as a &lt;em&gt;servant leader&lt;/em&gt;, and as such, it is a legitimate tactic of a Scrum Master to avoid interfering too early, when they notice a potential problem in the way the Development Team are working. The rationale is that it is better to let the self-organizing Development Team see the impact of this way of working, and then take responsibility for implementing their own solution.&#xA;The conflict here is that as soon as the Scrum Master has seen an issue, one member of the Development Team has too; but it doesn't necessarily mean the other members of the Development Team recognize the issue, or will be convinced of the need to make a change. Given that the Development Team's focus isn't on understanding Scrum systems as a whole, it is likely that in many cases, the Scrum Master will detect an issue before the other Development Team members.&#xA;The risk of raising the matter too soon, is it may deny the remaining members of the Development Team the opportunity to understand the problem, and fully self-organize; but waiting too long might undermine an expectation of all Development Team members to raise issues when they see them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These conflicts do not prevent one person fulfilling both roles, but in the spirit of &lt;em&gt;openness&lt;/em&gt; (one of the Scrum values), it would usually be wise to identify and discuss them with both the Scrum team and management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also likely that specific conflicts will arise over time, depending on the nature of the organization and individuals involved. If they can't be eliminated, identify and acknowledge them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20796" LastEditorUserId="35563" LastEditDate="2020-02-09T10:27:10.830" LastActivityDate="2020-02-09T10:27:10.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22010" CreationDate="2017-07-24T02:12:07.550" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some clues in your question, which &lt;strong&gt;might&lt;/strong&gt; explain why this is the case, but I will only mention them at the end of my answer, because I would say the most powerful tool at your disposal could be the Sprint Retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume if you're doing Scrum, then there is a Sprint Retrospective at the end of &lt;strong&gt;every&lt;/strong&gt; sprint. If not, start doing them straight away. It's a mandatory part of Scrum.&#xA;Set a timebox for the Sprint Retrospective. The Scrum Guide says this event should be timeboxed at a maximum of 3 hours (and usually less for Sprints of less than a month).&#xA;In the first instance, consider allowing the maximum amount of time, with the understanding that it can finish much sooner once it has achieved its intended results. Read the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-retro&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; for more information on that event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research techniques on creating a &lt;em&gt;safe&lt;/em&gt; environment in the retrospective. i.e. one where every member feels they can express their opinion, without fear of reprisals. &#xA;At least in the first instance, explain to the entire team how you will treat the retrospective, and how you expect them to treat it. This could be establishing principles of there being &quot;no right or wrong answers&quot;, and it being about &quot;improving the environment, rather than apportioning blame&quot;; ask members to be respectful of each other, and give them the chance to ask questions, before proceeding.&#xA;Whilst it is good that teams can be transparent, if necessary, ask everyone if they will agree to keep the discussions of this particular meeting between just the Scrum Team.&#xA;And of course, be honest about why you are running the retrospective in this way, whilst using language and terms that are respectful of all members of the team.&#xA;All members of the Scrum Team (Development Team + Scrum Master + Product Owner) should be present and participate. &lt;strong&gt;No-one&lt;/strong&gt; outside of the team should be present, and the meeting should be held where people are confident of not being overheard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One method of Sprint Retrospective is to ask everyone to write down post-it notes about how they experienced the Sprint that is about to end (the post-its could reference an ongoing issue, or one that only affected them in that Sprint). Try to get the team to write at least one post-it of something good, one of something bad, and one of something interesting.&#xA;Allow each team member to write their own post-its before allowing any discussion about the Sprint. This means everyone should have at least three (preferably more) opinions written down. Ask them to take turns to share one of their post-its (even if someone else already said the same thing).&#xA;Ensure there is time to discuss the post-its, so that everyone's opinion is heard.&#xA;Allow disagreements to take place, and only intervene to remind team members about the importance of making progress (i.e. keeping within the timebox), and the importance of being respectful of each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subsequently, the team can work together to come up with solutions (perhaps out loud, perhaps initially with post-its) for the issues they've raised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this doesn't deliver instant results, consider trying it for 1 or 2 more Sprints. If it still doesn't deliver a change, or at least help you identify problems, consider other techniques to encourage team members to share their feelings. Perhaps an anonymous box for team members to drop in notes about things they want to raise, but don't want to mention in a retrospective. I would consider this option less desirable, because it discourages open discussion; but it might just be necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, make it clear to the entire Scrum Team (and anyone outside the team) that you are someone they can go to in confidence about their ideas/feelings/comments (including criticism of you). Consider organising one-to-one private discussions with each team member if necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the clues I've taken from your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PO is a programmer&lt;/strong&gt;. Maybe this is the issue. It's not explicitly forbidden by Scrum, but it's not common, and represents some significant conflicts of interest that would need to be identified and managed carefully. I would be surprised if a PO can offer more to a team of that size as a programmer than as full-time PO. &#xA;The Development Team is responsible for estimates and quality, and forecasting how much work they can deliver. The PO is responsible for optimizing value. The Development Team estimates Product Backlog items, and the PO should use those estimates to prioritize the backlog (along with other considerations, such as other feedback from Development Team about risks/dependencies/etc, and stakeholder concerns).&#xA;Consider working with the Scrum Team and organization to get a full-time PO (either the current one, or a new person), and observe how things change. Change may not be immediate and if the PO ceases the role within the Development Team, ensure they don't attend the Daily Scrum (unless invited by the Development Team), and don't interfere with estimates, code, definition of &quot;Done&quot;, and other domains that are the responsibility of the Development Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Organization is new to Scrum&lt;/strong&gt;. Perhaps there's a culture (either current or recent) of &quot;industrial thinking&quot;, not treating people with respect, not allowing Development Teams to self-organize, using Scrum in name only, and not buying in to the concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not picky about tasks&lt;/strong&gt;. Even if a product is not inherently interesting, it's alarming that teams don't seem to express an opinion on which to do first. Do they understand the value of what they're doing? Is the PO being a proper PO and understanding the most valuable items in the Product Backlog and communicating that information to the Development Team. Is the opinion of the Development Team heard/respected (not the same as being agreed with) when they do give an opinion? Does the Scrum Team hold a proper Sprint Review (Note: I deliberately didn't call it a demo), where the Development Team and Product Owner engage with stakeholders, so that everyone can understand why the Product Backlog is prioritized the way it is, and so the Development Team can understand what is important to the rest of the organization (and why).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Terms like &quot;sleepy&quot; / &quot;wake up&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;. Is this your assessment, or a commonly expressed opinion within the team/organization? Either way, if the Development Team is aware of this perception. That kind of language might be interpreted as disrespectful, and may be demotivating and erode trust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your assessment that the other team is boiling with emotions&lt;/strong&gt;. Again are the Development Team(s) aware of this perception? The realization of how they're viewed may affect how they behave.&#xA;How were the teams formed? Who decided who should be in each team, and why? Perhaps the personalities don't match. Is there opportunity to rearrange the teams? Perhaps combine the two teams together, perhaps create smaller teams, or just shuffle members (once, not regularly) between the &quot;sleepy&quot; and &quot;boiling&quot; teams. Whatever is done with teams, ensure the members of the Development Team know what the priorities of the business are, and trust them to self-organize into new teams of their own preferred structure. This might have a negative effect in the short-term, but perhaps it enables them to work more effectively in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20796" LastActivityDate="2017-07-24T02:12:07.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21711" CreationDate="2017-07-24T09:37:49.503" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When is a Scrum Master superfluous?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal is to enable the team to be &lt;strong&gt;self-organizing&lt;/strong&gt; ... so once that happens then yes you could call the SM superfluous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But projects and teams are always in a state of flux, hence if you are not needed today you very well may be needed tomorrow. So there is always a need to keep an eye on the team to ensure it's working and progressing. Some days the role of the scrum master may be very quiet as the team self organizes their way through the sprint, that's OK, it means that you (and the team) are doing an excellent job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29246" LastActivityDate="2017-07-24T09:37:49.503" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22052" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22057" CreationDate="2017-07-24T09:48:30.683" Score="2" ViewCount="1022" Body="&lt;p&gt;My company is slowly adopting Scrum and I am doing my best to try to push us away from old Waterfall paradigms. However there are certain aspects I am finding quite hard to map in Team Foundation Server (TFS - visualstudio.com).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The challenges I have at the moment are as follows. I am quite new to Scrum so any advice/critique is highly appreciated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Investors require dates of high level estimates for certain milestones. For example, when should we expect a MVP (minimum viable product) to be ready. However, only tasks can be measured in hours. How can I provide the investors with a good set of proposed milestone dates in this case?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I was told that Ideally, we should &lt;strong&gt;NOT&lt;/strong&gt; use EPICS to represent a release. But since I see no other viable way of achieving this in TFS, I created an Epic called 'Minimum Viable Product' and added the features we want there. Thoughts?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finally, I got contradicting opinions on whether operational aspects of the product development should be included in TFS or not. Things such as &lt;em&gt;'decide on framework', 'set-up development environment',&lt;/em&gt; etc. One Scrum Master tells me we should NOT do this because Scrum should only list product deliverable, while the other told me told me that it is obvious that these things should be there as we need to account them in the product development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a screenshot of my backlog at this point:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uElXy.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uElXy.png&quot; alt=&quot;My TFS backlog at this point&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29247" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-07-08T12:14:09.237" LastActivityDate="2019-07-08T12:14:09.237" Title="Time estimates and epics as releases" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20542" CreationDate="2017-07-24T09:50:56.260" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;So in this case JAD is a version of requirements gathering. The PO can schedule these whenever they like in-order to bottom out their requirements and improve their epic / user story details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the Scrum team should be protected from these as much as possible. If they steal the teams development time on the current sprint then they would break the terms of scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be necessary to consult with the scrum team to clarify some aspect of the requirements ... but it should be in exceptional cases only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29246" LastActivityDate="2017-07-24T09:50:56.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21586" CreationDate="2017-07-24T09:59:26.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simple answer would be if the team is  working on an item then it should be estimated. As an example if the PO decided to run a technical debt sprint, addressing no new features, at the end of the sprint, if there was released software, why wouldn't there be a velocity for this sprint? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work is work after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only issue arises when a technical team wants to upgrade to new technology ... but the PO doesn't see the value in it. Its OK at times to run old code as long as the underlying business processes are running and generating business value. (And the maintenance of it isn't excessive) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'd size chores, it gives a better reflection of what the team is actually doing during a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29246" LastActivityDate="2017-07-24T09:59:26.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21659" CreationDate="2017-07-24T10:10:36.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Business requirements changes found via defects?&#xA;This sounds like that PO's requirement are off course from the customers expectations. &#xA;Agile is all about empirical feedback, so if your customer is telling you that there is a defect in the system, you make that a new user story and get the PO to prioritize it for the next sprint. If you add this to an epics then keep the epic focused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Epic 5: Fix product's feature XXX&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;is a better option than.&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Epic 5: General placeholder for all defects.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Which will never close. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of other grouping options available as well, if you want to remain to have a general enhancement bucket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;i.e. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epic: Servicing or enhancing a product in production&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can become &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epic: 2017 Q1 Servicing or enhancing a product in production&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epic: 2017 Q2 Servicing or enhancing a product in production&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epic: 2017 Q3 Servicing or enhancing a product in production&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epic: 2017 Q4 Servicing or enhancing a product in production&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps ... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29246" LastActivityDate="2017-07-24T10:10:36.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22052" CreationDate="2017-07-24T10:26:48.397" Score="2" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Investors require dates high level estimates for certain milestones. For example, when should we expect a MVP (minimum viable product) to be ready. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be too early to say ... are you the scrum master ? This is really a question for the PO. But at the end of the day, until some sprints are under you r belt you can't give any realistic estimates. See @WoodyZuill's twitter account to get details of the #NoEstimates movement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ideally, we should use EPICS to represent a release. But since I see no other viable way of achieving this in TFS, I created an Epic called 'Minimum Viable Product' and added the features we want there. Thoughts?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A release may include many eics or pieces of many epics ... so you re trying to balance MVP with continious delivery. The better option for your investors would be ... how do we increment what we have to be something more valuable? And thus take a shorter view of the project. its waterfall thinking to say, you'll be live with your MVP in 6 months. Its an agile view to say, in 6 months time your product will be a better product with (hopefully) many smaller increments of functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finally, I got contradicting opinions on whether operational aspects of the product development should be included in TFS or not. Things such as 'decide on framework', 'set-up development environment', etc. One scrum master tells me we should NOT do this because SCRUM should only list product deliverable, while the other told me told me that it is obvious that these things should be there as we need to account them in the product development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As these are not going to be delivered to live the No is the correct answer.&#xA;there is a clue in some of the task names e.g. &quot;Discuss&quot; &amp;amp; &quot;Evaluate&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29246" LastActivityDate="2017-07-24T10:26:48.397" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22052" CreationDate="2017-07-24T13:28:18.327" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Investors require dates of high level estimates for certain milestones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't really in the spirit of Scrum... more Waterfall. Still, it's not like you can just say &quot;Sorry, investors, no initial estimate for you', so. What's often done is you do an initial estimate of all the known stories needed for the minimum viable product (MVP), then using your established velocity (which you probably don't have, if you're just starting out with Scrum), you calculate the time needed to complete all the work. If possible, have your investors understand that this is just an initial, rough estimate, and it will be adjusted when more information becomes available. Also if possible, give a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;range of values&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was told that Ideally, we should NOT use EPICS to represent a release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's nothing in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; about Epics or the lack thereof, so just do whatever makes the most sense for your team. Don't let a tool or a convention constrain you or your Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Finally, I got contradicting opinions on whether operational aspects of the product development should be included in TFS or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If CodeGnome will forgive me purloining his Law...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;No invisible work, ever!&quot; — CodeGnome's Law of Transparency&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should be keeping track of these developer tasks. However, if possible, you should differentiate somehow between these developer tasks and normal, business-related Stories. Since, after all, people outside the Development Team should be able to see the Scrum Board, but wouldn't care about these tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-07-24T13:28:18.327" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22058" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-07-24T20:37:28.050" Score="4" ViewCount="337" Body="&lt;p&gt;We estimate the issues based on story points/planning poker. My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do we need to update original/remaining time estimates when we estimate based on the story points?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If we estimate based on story points, then we need to look at the burndown chart based on story points and not remaining time estimates?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29257" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2017-07-25T07:24:43.787" LastActivityDate="2017-07-27T11:58:54.407" Title="Do we need to update time estimates when we estimate based on story points?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;burndown-chart&gt;&lt;planning-poker&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22052" CreationDate="2017-07-24T21:25:47.977" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like @sarov's answer, and just wanted to add some TFS related bumph in realted to the Scrum bumph, maybe with a little extra Scrum bumph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Investors require dates of high level estimates for certain&#xA;  milestones. For example, when should we expect a MVP (minimum viable&#xA;  product) to be ready. However, only tasks can be measured in hours.&#xA;  How can I provide the investors with a good set of proposed milestone&#xA;  dates in this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(scrum theory)&lt;/strong&gt; This is something that is totally within the purview of the Product Owner and does not belong in TFS. TFS is an effort tracking system rather than a time tracking system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(scrum practice)&lt;/strong&gt; If you are planning in Scrum then one good practice is to have your Development Team estimate each of your backlog items in relative sizes based on numerical points. While your Development Team can use those point to help them decide how much work to forecast for the next Sprint, your Product Owner can use them to forecast multiple Sprints and when some of their milestones might be hit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(tfs/vsts)&lt;/strong&gt; I would try to get your Product Owner some training in how to monitor value. There are good training courses from both Scrum.org and the Scrum Alliance. If you are using VSTS (cloud TFS) then you get the Delivery Plan (&lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms.vss-plans&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms.vss-plans&lt;/a&gt;) extension that will allow you to easily and visually plan for future sprints, but its still not about hours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(scrum theory)&lt;/strong&gt; Ultimately if anyone is giving guarantees to your investors then you are not respecting them. It is fundamentally imposible to determine up front how long a backlog item will take to deliver and when it will be available. Make sure that you focus on forecasts, not exatimates.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was told that Ideally, we should NOT use EPICS to represent a&#xA;  release. But since I see no other viable way of achieving this in TFS,&#xA;  I created an Epic called 'Minimum Viable Product' and added the&#xA;  features we want there. Thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(scrum theory)&lt;/strong&gt; The Scrum guide does not talk about Epics or Features because they are all just Backlog Items...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(scrum practice)&lt;/strong&gt; There are many ways to organise your work and it is up to you how. However a common practice is that Epics, Features, and Backlog Items all represent the same thing just with varying degrees of granularity. Since they are all in the execution flow they all need to represent the value delivered to the customer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(tfs/vsts)&lt;/strong&gt; There are no hard rules here, however TFS has an out-of-the-box method for managing time based predictions. You will already have Sprints in the Area Path and since it is hierarchical you can add many levels. A common method is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;\Release 1\&#xA;\Release 1\Sprint 1&#xA;\Release 1\Sprint 2&#xA;\Release 1\Sprint 3&#xA;\Release 1\Sprint 4 &#xA;\Release 2\&#xA;\Release 2\Sprint 5&#xA;\Release 2\Sprint 6&#xA;\Release 2\Sprint 7&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you can point &quot;Teams&quot; at a particular set of paths you can create an additional team and point it at Releases, giving your Product Owner a high level planning feature. I created a pretty detailed post on how to configure it: &lt;a href=&quot;https://nkdagility.com/creating-nested-teams-visual-studio-alm/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://nkdagility.com/creating-nested-teams-visual-studio-alm/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Finally, I got contradicting opinions on whether operational aspects&#xA;  of the product development should be included in TFS or not. Things&#xA;  such as 'decide on framework', 'set-up development environment', etc.&#xA;  One Scrum Master tells me we should NOT do this because Scrum should&#xA;  only list product deliverable, while the other told me told me that it&#xA;  is obvious that these things should be there as we need to account&#xA;  them in the product development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(scrum theory)&lt;/strong&gt; Your Product Owner is accountable for the Product Backlog, its contents, and everyone's understanding of it. With that in mind it may, or may not make sense to have these items in the Backlog depending on your Team, your Product, or your company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(scrum practice)&lt;/strong&gt; Many Scrum Teams will put clearly marked 'architectural' or 'infrastructure' items into the Product Backlog to make sure that things are not forgotten. [this practice comes from SAFe]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(tfs/vsts)&lt;/strong&gt; From TFS 2015 there is an additional field on every execution work item (Epic, Feature, &amp;amp; Backlog Item) that is a dropdown list with the values of &quot;Business&quot; and &quot;Architectural&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(scrum practice)&lt;/strong&gt; A conflicting good practice is to never put anything that your stakeholders would not understand in the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(warning)&lt;/strong&gt; Whatever you choose make sure that you can transparently represent technical debt transparently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastActivityDate="2017-07-24T21:25:47.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22023" CreationDate="2017-07-24T22:58:48.377" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR;&lt;/strong&gt; It sounds like the value that is supposed to be gotten from Sprint Planning is being lost. Its part of the empirical process and provides inspection and adaption: You should be inspecting the Product Backlog and adapting a Forecast, Sprint Goal, &amp;amp; Sprint Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many other 'games' that can be used for estimation &amp;amp;/or planning and may can be found on &lt;a href=&quot;http://tastycupcakes.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://tastycupcakes.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Problem&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be surprised if they are engaged enough to create great software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you turn up at your Sprint Planning event and the next 2/3 Sprint worth of your Product Backlog are not in awesome shape then you are going to be in a world of hurt. You will not have time to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create estimates with share understandings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discuss choices with the Product Owner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Break down large backlog items&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The result is that the Team does not have shared understanding and awesome Product Backlog they instead fly by the seat of their pants during the Sprint. Since they don't have a shared understanding it is difficult for them to really understand what they need to do to deliver Backlog Items, and thus don't have good Estimates. Without good Estimates they don't know how much work they can Forecast...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pretty messy... but easy to fix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Refinement&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should be estimating in Refinement. This will allow you time to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Break down large backlog items when identified&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify unknowns that need to be investigated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discuss and share understandings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have up to 10% of your Sprint for Refinement. Walk into your Sprint Planning with a fully Refined Product Backlog and a shared understanding of what you will be working on next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Sprint Planning&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a shared understanding of a Refined and Ready Product Backlog then your Sprint Planning should be a breeze.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Refine any new Backlog Items added and prioritised from the Sprint Review&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Owner presents his vision for the Sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Development Team &amp;amp; The Product Owner craft a Sprint Goal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Development Team selects the Product Backlog items that it believes that it can implement to reach the Sprint Goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Development Team creates a Plan (in the form of a Sprint Backlog) to complete the forecasted Backlog Items.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you finish that in 30 min then awesome! A timebox is a maximum and not a minimum so move on to creating software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take the time to Refine up front and then you don't need to spend 3 hours in Sprint Planning. But maybe, with the new information, they will get more engaged in creating the implementation plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-07-24T22:58:48.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22058" CreationDate="2017-07-25T07:17:01.307" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do we need to update original/remaining time estimates when we estimate based on the story points?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case if you don't use time estimates, why do you need to update these fields? Just don't use them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If we estimate based on story points, then we need to look at the burndown chart based on story points and not remaining time estimates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same. If you don't use time estimates your suggestion is correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, to not fit User Stories in a Sprint is bad practice. One of the main benefit of Scrum is fast feedback from customers. That's the reason, why business want to have &quot;done&quot; functionality after each Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About your problem: we use 2 level of estimation (you can read more here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/15516/why-use-both-story-points-and-hours/15523#15523&quot;&gt;Why use both story points and hours?&lt;/a&gt;) and use both metrics within Sprint Burndown Chart:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/COM36.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/COM36.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Yes, it was not well finished Sprint for us =)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, legend:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Red line is for tasks and represents man-days versus time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blue line is for stories and represents story points versus time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in your case you can use only time-based metric (i.e. man-days) for tracking Sprint progress (yes, in that case you should start to estimate tasks). As for Story Points, use them for tracking something more high level (Release progress, for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;P.S. Another solution (and it is much better):&lt;/strong&gt; try to make your User Stories small enough to fit them to Sprints. This question &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/14627/what-we-should-do-with-tasks-which-estimated-time-bigger-than-sprint&quot;&gt;What we should do with tasks which estimated time bigger than sprint?&lt;/a&gt;&quot; may help you to do this. After that you can use story-point-based Sprint Burndown Chart without any problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2017-07-27T11:58:54.407" LastActivityDate="2017-07-27T11:58:54.407" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22058" CreationDate="2017-07-25T07:48:51.110" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do we need to update time estimates when we estimate based on story points?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The simple answer is no.&#xA;Some projects are run with both story points and hourly task estimates. But if your's isn't then there is no requirement to use the time fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29246" LastActivityDate="2017-07-25T07:48:51.110" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22058" CreationDate="2017-07-25T08:07:08.153" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do we need to update original/remaining time estimates when we estimate based on the story points?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say no. Filling time information will result in people looking at different metrics. It will defeat the purpose of using story points as an estimate technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If we estimate based on story points, then we need to look at the burndown chart based on story points and not remaining time estimates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. Stick to story points if that is your selected method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you put in the work to do planning poker sessions and size the tasks this way, then stick to it while working on those tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26880" LastEditorUserId="26880" LastEditDate="2017-07-25T13:52:40.513" LastActivityDate="2017-07-25T13:52:40.513" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22010" CreationDate="2017-07-25T08:22:20.487" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The tools and solutions and time needed depend very much on what really is going on underneath the surface. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To create an overview, to see the differences and see better which tool to use for what situation, here a description of three scenarios, from bad to good. &#xA;My estimate from your description is that &quot;good&quot; is the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bad&lt;/strong&gt; (signs: uncomfortable silence, a silence of shock and fear, &#xA;a silence of indignation and boiling fuming anger just under the surface)&#xA;+ a serious threat has visited the organization some time ago, created havoc, left the building but the behavioral results of the betrayal are still there, trust has been broken. An organization big and small loses the behavior that someone within that organization has punished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When trust is lost, it's very hard to get it back, if ever. So has speaking up been punished some time before, by someone, anyone, currently or previously or maybe several years ago?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Public humiliation is punishment too, don't expect people to take that lightly, even if it happened a decade ago and the person who did that has been out of office for five years, the issue can still be alive in the minds. It's possible to repair but it will take a lot of time. &quot;trust arrives walking and departs riding&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone has done that somewhere in the past, you'll have the unthankful job to do the repairs and can't expect gratefulness in return, these things go deep. This is the kind of &lt;em&gt;damned if you do damned if you don't&lt;/em&gt; mess somebody else has left behind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your description this is NOT the case, which means you don't need to apply the tools for that kind of situation. This is important, don't use tools for a situation that isn't there. Let's move on to a less dramatic possibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ugly but resolvable&lt;/strong&gt; ( sign: a bored silence but non-threatening )&#xA;+ the one talking has been taking up too much space for too long a time&#xA;and or has a droning voice that induces sleep, so over time people have started to politely shut up around that person, letting the oracle speak as the eyes zone out and the mind wanders away to more interesting pastures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A sudden change by making (=enforcing) the speaker to wait, creates an instant &#xA;feeling of threat, a - where is the trap- feeling. The amygdala reacts on changes in patterns, to distinguish the tiger from the grass leaves. This  instinct still applies to the streets of a modern city and to an office environment, because when such a sudden change happens, often there is some kind of danger, so people react alerted and reserved. This is natural.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A structural approach is needed and more patience and careful &#xA;do not inadvertently scare people or make people lose face with an inappropriate choice of words. What these words are is very context dependent.&#xA;However be very careful with words that associate with any kind of &quot;dumb&quot;, people generally don't like being called stupid, &quot;sleepy&quot; is already in the danger zone, even if that would be an accurate description of the situation.&#xA;Don't ever say that to them into their faces, or let it be known to them via tone of voice or through your body language. People know how to read those and will react strongly to that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The time needed depends on the exact nature and severity of the issue.&#xA;If the speaker is well respected by the team, but just has a boring droning nasal voice, then the problem can quickly be fixed. Speak for shorter times or let somebody with a better voice do the talking. If there is more going on, personal issues of any kind, it just will take a bit more time, but it will still be resolvable and the team will be thankful for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is not the case either, then this is good because it would lead to scenario three:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Good and can be improved&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;(sign: silence but the mood feels o.k. a comfortable silence )&#xA;+ differences in temperament (for example introvert vs extravert / expressive emotions vs less expressive people) If one team consists of people from Norway and Finland and the other team consists of people from Italy and Mexico, there is a high chance that you'll see differences in body language and tone of voice.&#xA;In that case there is no real problem, in which the appropriate approach is,&#xA;don't fix a problem that isn't there, because a lot of damage could be done in the process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead enjoy the positive starting point and aim for further  improvements: there are ways make the meeting more dynamic and interesting, without forcing introverts to tap-dance on the marketplace because that's awkward and mean. &#xA;You don't force extraverts to join a tour of the Italian historical archives searching in silence for ancient scrolls either, because that would be torture for extraverts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this situation quick fixes are possible and fun, it's a creative search for what fits best for the team members. If you manage that, the team will be very grateful and remember you positively for it for years to come.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My estimate and my hope is that scenario three is going on, because this can lead to many improvements in a short time with fun along the ride for everyone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(side note: an example from the world of sports of a less expressive versus a &#xA; more expressive person you can see in the video of the Fedor Emelianenko &#xA; versus Brett Rogers 2009 Strike force event, two accomplished athletes,&lt;br&gt;&#xA; different ways of facial expression, Fedor looks stoic, Brett very expressive )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps and good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29262" LastEditorUserId="12235" LastEditDate="2017-07-25T11:28:26.337" LastActivityDate="2017-07-25T11:28:26.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12179" CreationDate="2017-07-25T13:59:17.163" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A sprint backlog contains 40 story points and all are UI specialist work, and only 1 person is available to do them with another 5 being left with nothing to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have the other 5 help the 1 person in other ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Optimizing images using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.graphicsmagick.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;graphicsmagick&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dogfooding the UI for &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.uie.com/jared-live/transcripts/insecure_and_unintuitive_how_we_need_to_fix_the_ux_of_security.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;security&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/design-and-ui/ux-basics/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;feasability&lt;/a&gt; gaps&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nearly always UX, usually UI and sometimes front end development can be forerunners to development. If you wanted to follow the vertical slice strictly you'd be creating a severe bottle-neck by waiting on that work before development starts&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look to eliminate queues to solve the problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite a total development time of only two weeks, features still took two or more months to become a reality. Why was this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It happened because features spent most of their time simply waiting around in queues. The product department had a backlog of requests from biz-dev, the design team had wireframes waiting to be made beautiful, engineering had specs waiting to be made whole. Every step involved a queue and an associated delay&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And create a limit on the usage of the backlog:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suggestion: Do not allow more than a month or two of work to get into the feature backlog list. Once the backlog is full, do not allow new items to be added unless you remove an item. Do not spend any time speccing, designing, or talking about backlog items: the backlog, in fact, should be seen as a list of things you are not allowed to talk about or work on&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://peternixey.com/post/44136634965/engineering-is-not-the-bottleneck#_=_&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Peter Nixey - Engineering is not the bottleneck&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2012/07/09/software-inventory/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Software Inventory – Joel on Software&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://procrastinationoxford.org/2014/11/07/lists/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;7 Reasons Why Lists Are Slippery, Treacherous Creatures And Not Necessarily Your Friends After All – Procrastination: Cultural Explorations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.craiglarman.com/content/feature-teams/feature-teams.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Feature Teams&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://medium.com/leading-design/7-problems-growing-design-teams-face-5fd94292d405&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;7 Problems Growing Design Teams Face – Leading Design – Medium&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1674234&amp;amp;seqNum=8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Functional Teams versus Cross-Functional Teams | How to Grow Structure | InformIT&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/lean-ux-anti-pattern-cross-functional-silos-tendayi-viki-phd-mba&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Lean UX Anti-Pattern - Cross-Functional Silos | Tendayi Viki | Pulse | LinkedIn&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://conceptspring.com/break-down-silos-cross-functional-teams/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Break down silos, build cross functional teams, and run twice as fast&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27065" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-07-28T19:50:20.383" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22058" CreationDate="2017-07-25T20:58:57.320" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work with some teams that estimate in story points for stories and in time for sub-tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reasons they do this are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They find that doing time-based estimates on sub-tasks helps them with their design and analysis. The estimates themselves aren't valuable, but the process of estimating is.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They use the time estimates on sub-tasks to ensure no team members are overloaded. For example, if they have a team specialist (like a designer) then they add up the sub-tasks they are likely to work on and make sure they haven't given them too much (or too little) to do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They like to keep sub-tasks below 1 day. Hence they do a lightweight estimate on each sub-task and ensure it is a good size.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An obvious disadvantage of this approach is longer planning meetings. As such, it is important that the teams trade-off the benefits they get against the cost. Not all of the teams have found it worthwhile, but some have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2017-07-25T20:58:57.320" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9961" CreationDate="2017-07-25T23:19:36.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I fixed mine by removing the option&#xA;Leveling can adjust individual assignments on a task.&#xA;And of course, remove create splits in remaining work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the only way that work is split from over allocation is when the resource only works week days (In comparison to the other resources who work the regular calendar you have set up)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29272" LastActivityDate="2017-07-25T23:19:36.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22070" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-07-26T14:09:24.197" Score="5" ViewCount="74" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say your team decides to go with Kanban, since the evolutive, adaptive and corrective work is under constant discovery, and planning for sprints is therefore not possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Along with that, you have a customer services team by the phone hearing the user's concerns, and filing issues in a tracking tool to our specialists team once they feel they received enough info.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What would be the best course of action to handle the fixed amount of work per state column if to make sure some issue is not happening again, the team depends on the customer's feedback&lt;/strong&gt; (which sometimes takes ages to receive)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is either if customer services does not provide the team enough info to start an issue or feedback from the customer to close it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my ideas was to keep a column for &lt;em&gt;&quot;awaiting client feedback&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, which should have a fixed size, and if the client does not answer in a timely fashion, the oldest of the items there gets closed as client unresponsive after a fixed timespan. But even then, we might have a bottleneck that cannot be resolved unless we remove the self-imposed limitation, right?&#xA;... Like considering the issues on that column as items out of your bucket. But wouldn't that break with one of the best added values of the framework?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="823" LastActivityDate="2017-07-27T00:02:54.827" Title="Kanban on engineering dealing with customer services" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;customer-service&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21648" CreationDate="2017-07-26T14:48:38.720" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;in the context provided I'd suggest that this scoring system is the most appropriate&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;mad [DETRACTORS] &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;angry [DETRACTORS] &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;neutral [PASSIVES] &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;happy [PROMOTERS] &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;love [PROMOTERS]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We live in an imperfect world, we need to do the best with what is available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I've chosen this answer is it accounts for Passives which the other proposal does not. Hence it more in keeping with the original 0-10 scoring.&#xA;However the opinion to discard your 1-5 scoring system in favor of the larger scoring system is also valid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29246" LastEditorUserId="29246" LastEditDate="2017-07-27T14:02:00.830" LastActivityDate="2017-07-27T14:02:00.830" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21648" CreationDate="2017-07-26T16:01:07.440" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Only Peripherally On-Topic&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, this is an opinion-generating question about something other than project management, and would normally be off-topic on two fronts. However, the notion of satisfaction with deliverables is somewhat on topic, and so I'll confine my comments to that aspect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Don't Abuse the Net Promoter Score&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medallia.com/net-promoter-score/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Net Promoter Score (NPS) programs ask just one quantitative question:&#xA;  “How likely are you to recommend this business [or product/service] to a friend or colleague?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's an inherently subjective question, and is largely a proxy metric for quality or fitness-for-purpose. However, it also attempts to measure &quot;market buzz&quot; and other intangibles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you're trying to do here is take a subjective proxy metric and layer a second, more indirect metric on top of that: &quot;How does the product make you &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt;?&quot; Rather than talking about the likelihood of promoting (or actively impeding) uptake in the marketplace, you've replaced the scale with a measure of various emotional responses. These are proxy metrics for proxy metrics, and as such simply create indirection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, your indirect metrics are ill-defined. What's the difference between similar terms such as &quot;mad&quot; and &quot;angry&quot; from the point of view of my feelings about a product? I might be unhappy with a product, but what would it take me to be &lt;em&gt;angry&lt;/em&gt; at the product, or angry that I bought it, or mad enough that I'd want to strangle the idiot who is asking me if the product makes me &quot;feel happy&quot; rather than just asking if I'm happy with the product I purchased?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Next Steps&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's certainly a place for a more well-designed customer response study in marketing or product management, but this is not it. Furthermore, it's likely to be a supplement to a common scale like the Net Promoter Score, not a replacement for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your modified scale, you're actually asking a different set of questions than Net Promoter is actually asking. You're asking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[Explicitly] &lt;em&gt;Why&lt;/em&gt; would you (not) recommend the product to your friends?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[Implicitly] Does the product create some sort of identifiable emotional state that our marketing department can manipulate?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, you might be better off designing a follow-up survey based on valid psychometrics, rather than trying to shoe-horn your survey elements into the NPS itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2017-07-26T17:56:19.220" LastActivityDate="2017-07-26T17:56:19.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22070" CreationDate="2017-07-27T00:02:54.827" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer is there isn't a single answer so Experiment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't forget the Kaizen part of Kanban. You should continuously be looking at what is working and not working and then tweaking the system with experiments. Change one thing at a time, so you see the effects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One experiment could be to break your &quot;Task&quot; into two parts. The first task is the work up sending it off for customer feedback, the second is when the customer has given feedback. I recommend this because you have no control over the customer feedback. You don't want to limit work on a new task because you're waiting for feedback that may never come. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-07-27T00:02:54.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2730" CreationDate="2017-07-27T07:25:42.093" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends how you get the certification and what it brings you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More knowledge: it means you also take a class (for CSM this is mandatory, for PSM it is not). The reputation of the trainer is what makes or brakes it. Otherwise put, having 2 days learning in the company of a very good Agile Coach / Trainer will increase your knowledge of Scrum (and solve some of the dilemmas, questions you had on going with your teams).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reputation: the Certification is required by some companies. So I guess it looks good in your CV. But if it’s not accompanied by solid knowledge of Scrum, I find it useless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more thing - I would love to suggest that you should do the course from Koenig Solutions because it is one of the best training centers in all over India.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29291" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-07-27T13:09:11.823" LastActivityDate="2017-07-27T13:09:11.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22076" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-07-27T12:16:55.497" Score="0" ViewCount="97" Body="&lt;p&gt;At some point our project manager (PM) switched to a Kanban-like board (we have &quot;Open&quot;, &quot;In progress&quot;, &quot;Verification&quot;, &quot;Feedback&quot;, &quot;Analysis&quot; and &quot;Test&quot; fields on the board; our project follows (I think) the V-model that is we do a lot of testing along with the implementation of features and bug fixing). Since I joined the team after this was introduced it's all I know from this project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As time went by I found it more and more problematic to work with the way things are because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the client has their own ticket repository (Polarion from Siemens; no matter how many &quot;awesome&quot; features it offers it is, in my opinion, an incredibly broken/incomplete pile of junk)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;we have our own Redmine (digital tickets :)) and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;board with tickets on paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way things currently work are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Client finds an issue and creates a ticket in Polarion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Our PM (or someone from the dev team) looks through the opened tickets&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If a ticket suitable for us is found (that is, its category is &lt;em&gt;Software&lt;/em&gt;), the following needs to be done:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create Redmine ticket&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create paper ticket and hang it up on the board in &quot;Open&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition we have two members of our team who work remotely which means that they have to &quot;bother&quot; someone to create the paper version of the ticket and manage it on the board in their stead. Our PM tries to do it but it's not working so well to be honest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To add more to this we also have internal tickets that represent problems that our client hasn't found yet (might never do) that we keep away from Polarion since the client has no access to our Redmine. Posting a ticket number to a ticket that is not visible for the other party doesn't make much sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this was bothering me at the very beginning (I like taking notes on paper but not managing that paper) but it became worse when we had a couple of big waves of tickets shipped from Polarion most of which weren't reproducible (hence had to be hung up in the &quot;Feedback&quot; category on the board and in Redmine). The more tickets we had on the board the more difficult it became to find anything. Me and my colleagues sometimes spend several minutes to find the given ticket (my personal record is approx. 10 minutes), which is not only a waste of time but as you probably imagine incredibly frustrating. If you are unlucky enough the ticket might not actually be present on paper because someone forgot to do it/was not able to (like the two colleagues who work remotely).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This stacking up of tickets with status &quot;Feedback&quot; led to the creation of a new process - we now have a separate from the board pile of tickets on paper that are not reproducible and require a different type of feedback (the normal &quot;Feedback&quot; in our project is when we require more information on the specification) - &lt;em&gt;Dear client, please don't post a screenshot and say it doesn't work as expected while at the same time the screenshot is not even of our own software but of a third party tool that you use for the simulation of the system (and we don't have)&lt;/em&gt; or &quot;Dear client, please read your own specification...&quot; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course we always have to work with the paper tickets too. I always create Redmine tickets when I find a bug, document everything and basically take care of the digital side of the ticket system. However sometimes I forget to create a paper version (it's not just me, happens to many others too) which annoys the hell out of the PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in the general practice out there (I don't have much experience to be honest) when it comes to ticket management on paper. Is it suitable for big projects at all (we are 11 people and work for more than 2 years on this project; tickets on papers is something we have for a couple of months now)? When is it time to say enough with the paper and move to digital-only medium?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29293" LastEditorUserId="29293" LastEditDate="2017-07-27T15:11:00.057" LastActivityDate="2017-07-27T15:11:00.057" Title="When is using a Kanban(-like) board with paper tickets okay?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22076" CreationDate="2017-07-27T13:27:07.717" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;With (almost) any development practice whatsoever, whether or not the practice is acceptable depends on whether or not the Team finds said practice to be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider gathering the Team together (on Skype if necessary for the remote workers) for a meeting, where you ask the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the intended benefits of using the board?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the board achieving its purpose?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If not, what can we do to change that? (Note: &quot;It's impossible&quot; is not a valid answer to this - There must be &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; way to achieve just about any purpose, outlandish and expensive though it may be)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it worth implementing those changes, or would it be more cost-effective to remove the board entirely?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer to #4 is 'remove the board entirely', then your next step is to convince whoever has the power to make that decision - which, if it is your development team itself, means you're done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-07-27T13:27:07.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22076" CreationDate="2017-07-27T13:58:08.920" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes it looks like you are talking about a Kanban process rather than a &quot;Scrum Like&quot; one. But That's OK. Consider reading up on Kanban, I'd suggest &quot;Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business by David J. Anderson&quot; as its very good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have used Paper cards for a large project, so I feel your pain. Yes syncing the digital world and the physical world is a time consuming and often futile task, especially when there are lots and lots of cards in flow. So consider WIP limits, it can reduce the number of cards in flight at any given time, and thus reduce the complexity of what your team is trying to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But at the end of the day ... living in a digital world (especially one where there are 2 versions) and a physical one is very difficult. If there is no visualization element to your existing tools then perhaps the compromise is to move to a tool that visualizes the board for you. (PM's PO's &amp;amp; the like Love to see the boards as it gives them great insights into how the team is getting along). Suggestions MS VSTS, JIRA or Leankit, I've used them all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Failing that perhaps you can document as a team how much waste the current setup is causing in the hope that it might encourage the PM to rethink how they want to organize the team's workload.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps&#xA;Regards&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29246" LastActivityDate="2017-07-27T13:58:08.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22079" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-07-27T14:57:16.303" Score="2" ViewCount="1627" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to understand the differences in the &quot;process&quot; between Less and Nexus; they seem very similar in the way they scale Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; trying to understand which one to select, but what would be the difference in the execution between LeSS and Nexus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I checked this &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/17441/scaled-scrum-agile-frameworks-safe-vs-nexus-vs-less-comparison&quot;&gt;Scaled scrum/agile frameworks (SAFe vs. Nexus vs. LeSS) comparison&lt;/a&gt; but the offered comparison is on which one to select, not on &lt;strong&gt;how&lt;/strong&gt; things are done in the framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29294" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-07-27T15:00:50.473" LastActivityDate="2019-04-11T13:52:01.060" Title="Difference between Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) and Nexus Framework" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;process-scaling&gt;&lt;scaled&gt;&lt;nexus&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22080" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-07-27T20:06:01.320" Score="0" ViewCount="162" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a PM but a senior designer. My current place of work follows a traditional waterfall process and currently it's throwing up a whole host of problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm aware we need to upgrade our processes and work in a more agile fashion though I'm unsure how best to integrate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're working on a site redesign, is it a case of working in sprints to update the homepage, page x and then y? How does this sit with clients?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I appreciate this is a pretty big topic to cover and I don't want to be the one dealing with implementing it but I am curious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29300" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-07-27T20:43:22.390" LastActivityDate="2017-07-28T15:22:59.000" Title="Transition from waterfall to agile" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22082" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-07-28T08:23:24.713" Score="-1" ViewCount="542" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm new in Microsoft Project &amp;amp; in the forum, so forgive me if my comment is just imposible to manage...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a team in which some of the members get continuous interruptions due to urgent customer's additional tasks, so, their planned tasks get heavily affected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far, I add the tasks at the end (new customer task) &amp;amp; get a resource conflict indication (the red man). To solve it, I Split the task &amp;amp; accommodate the new task in the proper timing. Solved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue comes when the new task with higher priority takes longer tan expected, as I need to manually revise the planned splitted task.&#xA;This is quite repetitive &amp;amp; noisy... either for new urgent tasks &amp;amp; for delays happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; is there a way to make in the planned task 1 splitted a dependency on the new task 2 coming? So, when adding a new task 3 I can Split again the planned task 1, assign dependency of the new 'fraction' of the task to the new urgent task 3 &amp;amp; get automatically a new date for the planned task 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry if the question is complicated, my life in Project planning is...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29307" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2018-12-13T16:08:00.710" LastActivityDate="2018-12-13T16:08:00.710" Title="Split task in case of interruption: know when start, postpone finish based on interruptions" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;&lt;dependencies&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21891" CreationDate="2017-07-28T09:39:43.987" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working with Microsoft Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I'm interpreting properly your question, you want to get several projects using same resource pool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, at first, you need to create a resource pool (there's plenty of information how to do it either in the Microsoft Project web, or even in this fórum - I didn't check in deep however - ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to limit the resource usage for a Project, the only possibility I see is to assign multiple names to a single resource in time-slots (e.g. Resource_1_Slot1, Resource_1_Slot2, etc...). Each time slot can be assigned to a fraction of the resource (e,g 2h, 4h, etc...).&#xA;So, if some of the slots is already planned, a conflict (red man) will appear &amp;amp; you can  realise &amp;amp; use different slot.&#xA;Drawback is that you need to properly define time slots for a single resource in different names, &amp;amp; utilization efficiency of every resource in total is difficult to monitor. However, for the different projects, is posible to be aware of resources constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29307" LastActivityDate="2017-07-28T09:39:43.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22079" CreationDate="2017-07-28T09:54:26.633" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To understand the &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; bit you will need to study each individually. The good news is that all will talk about basically the same thing but with different terminologies. If you are familiar with Scrum, then understanding the &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; of any of the 3 should be fairly straightforward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case of Nexus, which is my favourite, you basically add additional events formal (like backlog refinement and nexus daily scrum), roles (like the nexus integration team), and artefacts (like the nexus sprint backlog). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check out the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/resources/nexus-guide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nexus Guide&lt;/a&gt; here but only if you are already well versed in Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nexus provides an &quot;exoskeleton&quot; to Scrum and I would say its the most &quot;lightweight&quot; scaled Scrum framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe others can add more on the how of SAFe and LeSS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastActivityDate="2017-07-28T09:54:26.633" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22080" CreationDate="2017-07-28T10:13:25.320" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer the main question &quot;If you're working on a site redesign, is it a case of working in sprints to update the homepage, page x and then y? How does this sit with clients?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yes your sprint goal may me to update a page at a time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or it could be to update several pages with a common update.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or it could be to update underlying technology supporting one or more&#xA;pages.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Splitting out your work into deliverable chunks takes a bit of experience, of agile, of your business, and of how your software works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the Clients, from my experience they usually love Agile, when it's done well. There can be a mind-shift required, if they are used to big bang, everything at once deliveries, it may take some time to get them used to smaller more frequent updates. However when continuous delivery kicks in they usually &quot;get-it&quot; quite quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck moving to Agile!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29246" LastActivityDate="2017-07-28T10:13:25.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22080" CreationDate="2017-07-28T10:24:06.417" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend you guys hire an Agile Coach or Scrum Master, at least for a six months period. One of the four parts of the agile manifesto is &lt;strong&gt;Individuals and interactions over processes and tools&lt;/strong&gt; so answering your question, there isn't a right or wrong way of doing thing but a way that the whole team agree on following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to get the ball rolling, let's look at your question through a tunnel. So you are redesigning a site and have decided to switch to agile, for example Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First and foremost you will need a Product Owner. This person will be someone who understands the business goals of the redesign project. Maybe it is better conversion or perhaps a CMS to allow different staff to update the pages/data without relying on the technical team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, you will need a development team. This will include yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thirdly, you will need a Scrum Master, who will ensure Scrum framework (not process) is in place and helps rest of your organization and maybe even external stakeholders understand what being agile/lean means. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that we have the team in place, let's decide how to get things done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner will need to prepare a Product Backlog. This will have the business requirements written as &quot;User Stories&quot; and prioritized by business value; i.e. the most important requirements will be on top of the list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when the homepage, page x or page y is done first really is at the discretion of the Product Owner. Who in turn must both represent the business stakeholders and the top management, as well as make decisions based on the best interest of the business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final note on this though. Although the Product Owner decides what requirements are more important, the development team and only them can decide how much work they can get done in a sprint, which is a 2 to 4 weeks period that results in a software increment. The product owner, development team and scrum master work as one team. Together, they are responsible for the codebase and the expected results. They fall together and rise together. The same is true within the development team, which is cross-functional and must work as one unit. Imagine a an army unit at battle or a football team made up of different skills but all working in synergy to achieve one thing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum as a framework is very simple to understand but is exceptionally tricky to execute, especially when an organization is used to working in the waterfall way. All change takes time and this is no different, hence the importance of hiring a qualified Scrum Master or ensure your existing project manager is excited to become a servant-leader of a self-organized team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastEditorUserId="28548" LastEditDate="2017-07-28T15:22:59.000" LastActivityDate="2017-07-28T15:22:59.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20982" CreationDate="2017-07-28T10:42:06.563" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend you make separate boards for the independent projects unless the same team is working on all the parts simultaneously, which doesn't make much sense to me based on your short post. If you are using the same board, then color code the different parts. If you are using an electronic board, then you can use tags or labels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your swim-lanes must not represent components but your progress towards output of value. Its all about staying lean and mean when using Kanban and minimizing waste, which includes spending a lot of time writing the requirements and categorizing them. Instead, let your Product Owner (Service Request Manager) move things between the swim-lanes based on the business needs and priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your swim lanes could be something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideas | Ready for Development | In Progress | In Test | In Staging | In Production&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, it sounds to me that there is a signifiant misunderstanding of Agile and Kanban so I strongly recommend you spend more time reading or hire a qualified coach. Kanban isn't something you switch on and get results. You don't need a &quot;Kanban Board&quot; to be agile or to follow Kanban. I would argue they can do more harm than good for new teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moving to agile is tough, especially since many educational institutes around world talk about SDLC and Waterfall when they discuss project management. Agile is a completely different paradigm, almost an opposite paradigm, to the traditional prescriptive paradigm of software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastEditorUserId="28548" LastEditDate="2017-07-28T11:05:44.067" LastActivityDate="2017-07-28T11:05:44.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22088" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-07-28T11:21:51.893" Score="0" ViewCount="89" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am on a software project with a project manager that seems to be doing things that are either not adding value, or that the rest of the Agile team could quite easily do themselves. It feels like they are struggling to let go of the traditional waterfall/command and control mindset. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue for me isn't so much that I don't know what the project manager should do, I think he should stop micromanaging, but my issue is I don't know how to highlight this in a constructive way without coming across as excessively critical or by hurting his ego by making him feel useless. I want to stop the conflicting approaches in a constructive way that adds value to the project itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know how I can highlight these issues in a sensible way and bring about an effective transition to a truly Agile project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23371" LastActivityDate="2017-07-28T12:23:13.380" Title="What role should a project manager play in an Agile project?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;safe&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2017-07-28T13:55:08.117" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22088" CreationDate="2017-07-28T12:23:13.380" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For him to take an appropriate role, he should be knowledgeable in the Agile area. Depending on what you work on he can try to fulfill the Scrum Master role or Product owner role. More often than not &quot;SM&quot; falls more naturally as he is the person to facilitate and help with impediments. To bring value he can talk with stakeholders, shield you from executive politics, bring subject matter experts to help and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26880" LastActivityDate="2017-07-28T12:23:13.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22082" CreationDate="2017-07-28T13:49:18.400" Score="0" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;MSP does not allow assigning logical dependencies (i.e. links/relationships) to the split parts of split tasks.  To create such links, you must first break the task into two (or more) separate pieces (e.g. &quot;Task Name - 0-50%&quot; and &quot;Task Name - 51-100%&quot;) that are linked together with FS+0 relationships.  Your question is a little unclear, so not sure this is what you want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Manually splitting tasks (or breaking and re-linking tasks) to handle resource interruptions sounds pretty inefficient to me.  I would let the resource leveler handle it. After adding and scheduling the interruption task (typically with a SNET constraint), do the following.  First make sure the &quot;Leveling can create splits in remaining work&quot; leveling option is checked.  Then point to the red man for the task you want to interrupt, right click, and choose &quot;Reschedule to Available Date.&quot; This tells the leveler to automatically edit the work assignment for the interrupted task - visually creating a split around the interruption and extending the task's finish date. Note1: this is for auto-scheduled tasks only. Note2: Any future leveling actions (e.g. the &quot;Level Resource&quot; or &quot;Level All&quot; buttons) may over-write this one-off change.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2017-07-28T13:49:18.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12441" CreationDate="2017-07-28T16:10:51.890" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To the best of my knowledge, &lt;strong&gt;this is not possible&lt;/strong&gt;. The good news is, using software is optional when it comes to agile methodologies and frameworks. If you must use a tool, try www.trello.com; its the only free agile board for unlimited users AFAIK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Side note: I don't understand why would your department buy a non-agile software and then ask you to experiment with it? It sounds like a waste of time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastActivityDate="2017-07-28T16:10:51.890" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21058" CreationDate="2017-07-29T19:50:12.497" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having idle team members work on bug prevention steps such as tweaking automation tools, reviewing tests, doing root cause analysis of recently resolved defects, and revising documentation would be more effective in the long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For future sprints, backlog estimates may need to be revised in a different way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For a two-week Sprint, five percent of the duration implies that each Sprint there is a half-day&#xA;  Product Backlog Refinement workshop. This refinement activity is not for items selected for the&#xA;  current Sprint; it is for items for the future, most likely in the next one or two Sprints. With this&#xA;  practice, Sprint Planning becomes relatively simple because the Product Owner and Scrum Team&#xA;  start the planning with a clear, well-analyzed and carefully estimated set of items. A sign that this&#xA;  refinement workshop is not being done (or not being done well) is that Sprint Planning involves &#xA;   24&#xA;  significant questions, discovery, or confusion and feels incomplete; planning work then often&#xA;  spills over into the Sprint itself, which is typically not desirable.&#xA;  Ending the Sprint&#xA;  One of the core tenets of Scrum is that the duration of the Sprint is never extended – it ends on&#xA;  the assigned date regardless of whether the Team has completed the work it committed to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Establishing a baseline for commitments based off of past experience is key:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Team typically over-commits in its first few Sprints and fails to accomplish its commitments.&#xA;  Sometimes it then overcompensates and under-commits, and finishes early (in which case it can&#xA;  ask the Product Owner for more Product Backlog items to work on). But by the third or fourth&#xA;  Sprint a Team has typically figured out what it is capable of delivering (most of the time), and&#xA;  they will meet their Sprint goals more reliably after that. Teams are encouraged to pick one&#xA;  duration for their Sprints (say, two weeks) and not change it. This helps the Team learn how&#xA;  much it can accomplish, which helps in both estimation and longer-term release planning. It also&#xA;  helps the Team achieve a rhythm for their work; this is often referred to as the “heartbeat” of the&#xA;  Team in Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Standardizing the definition of done to include code that can be measured and visualized can also help. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Documentation - attach an image of the generated documentation to the story&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Performance - attach benchmark results to the story&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accessibility - attach an accessibility report to the story&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Usability - attach a design review commentary to the story&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testing - attach test reports to the story&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, spending time to update APIs and code that use deprecated data is always a good use of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.vanharen.net/Player/eKnowledge/scrumpapers.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Papers: Nut, Bolts, and Origins of an Agile Framework (pdf)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2013/september/how-to-manage-the-7-wastes%E2%80%9D-of-agile-software-deve&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to Manage the &quot;7 Wastes&quot; of Agile Software Development - Scrum Alliance&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/blog/agile/how-to-stay-agile-and-keep-improving&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Iterate on your team: how to stay agile and keep improving - Atlassian Blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/team-playbook/plays&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Plays: the new team building | Atlassian&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.drupal.org/core/gates&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Drupal Core: Gates&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.drupal.org/core/deprecation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Drupal Core: Deprecation Policy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27065" LastEditorUserId="27065" LastEditDate="2018-06-02T22:23:26.767" LastActivityDate="2018-06-02T22:23:26.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17145" CreationDate="2017-07-30T07:01:37.640" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Handle it like Peter Parker:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vSFuh.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vSFuh.png&quot; alt=&quot;Spider-Man has made a career out of taking selfies&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and do it as part of business as usual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agiledirect.com/toolkit/glossary/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Glossary of Terms - Agiledirect&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://digitalcommunications.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/2015/11/09/the-challenges-of-resource-management-in-our-agile-team/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The challenges of resource management in our Agile team | Digital communications team blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://allankelly.blogspot.com/2013/10/noprojects-why-projects-dont-make-sense.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile and Digital Business: #NoProjects - why projects don't make sense&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2013/june/the-kanban-sandwich-a-bite-size-recipe-for-agile-w&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Kanban Sandwich: A Bite-Size Recipe for Agile Work Flows at Scale - Scrum Alliance&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spiderfan.org/comics/reviews/spiderman_amazing/004.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SpiderFan.org - Comics : Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 1) #4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27065" LastActivityDate="2017-07-30T07:01:37.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1451" CreationDate="2017-07-30T07:20:38.063" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any time you have the team members who are done early, be sure to focus them on the right hand side of the manifesto:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;processes and tools&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;comprehensive documentation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;contract negotiation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;following a plan&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since starting the transition from waterfall, I've seen these things be forgotten rather than de-emphasized, but they are critical to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.c2.com/?PeopleWare&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;integrity of the team&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And remember that the value is in the team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cost is just a function of talent (or lack thereof). I would be surprised if you are really able to get a lot of direct savings - more than 30% or so compared to USA - for teams in Slovenia or Croatia, but you might have expertise, a gelled team, or cultural knowledge that is hard to replicate elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Manifesto for Agile Software Development&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://avc.com/2010/09/outsourcing-vs-offshoring/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Outsourcing vs Offshoring – AVC&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://ndia.dtic.mil/2011/agile/2011agile.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Workshop&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27065" LastEditorUserId="27065" LastEditDate="2018-02-23T22:18:13.797" LastActivityDate="2018-02-23T22:18:13.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="30" CreationDate="2017-07-30T10:41:02.007" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no role of a Project Manager (defined by Prince2/PMI) in an Agile product delivery. This is because the traditional responsibilities of a Project Manager (termed Project Management) are split between the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product Owner&lt;/strong&gt; - Accountable for value delivery&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decides what and when to release&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Creates likely release projections&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maintains and orders the list of features desired in the product&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Development Team&lt;/strong&gt; - accountable for working software&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decides who does what and when&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decides who is on the team and not&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Selects lithe work to be done in the next iteration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Defined the quality level required for working software&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum Master&lt;/strong&gt; - accountable for the process and everyone's understanding of it.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Helps the Scrum team to be as effective as posible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Helps evangelise the process to the rest of the organisation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Removes things that are blocking the team that they can't deal with themselves.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm using the Scrum terminology as it has been adopted by more than 90% of those doing Agile. Note that the Agile Project Manager, also coined in Prince2 and PMI, is an oxymoron and should be avoided. It is a wolf dressed in sheep's clothing and is more likely to result in a negative impact to your product. (Refer to the Standish Group's Chaos Report which found an inverse relationship between PMI/Prince2 practices and value delivered to customers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To facilitate a transition from traditional software development to agile software development your organisation needs to move away from the concept of Project and towards the concept of Product. This is critical to building awesome products that meet your customers needs and is one of the hardest transitions for an organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2017-07-30T11:00:52.020" LastActivityDate="2017-07-30T11:00:52.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22096" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-07-30T23:21:13.433" Score="2" ViewCount="181" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are currently using Scrum and we are evolving into Kanban. At the same time, we are starting a migration from version 1 of our underlying framework to version 2. There is a target date of January 1 for this migration to be complete. This date is not exactly set in stone, but it's a goal that we'd like to meet in order to add new features before our busy season next Summer. Right now I'm trying to figure out how much development effort that will take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm all for the &quot;decide late and deliver early&quot; approach of agile, but I need to figure out if we'll need more developers and how much work it will take to complete this project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some metrics I can use to figure out how much development work will be required for this project? How does this work with Kanban?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29321" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-08-01T08:23:22.403" LastActivityDate="2017-08-03T09:18:01.883" Title="How many developers do we need? How much time?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22096" CreationDate="2017-07-31T07:54:33.160" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kanban is just a visualization tool, in itself it cannot provide metrics. Based on your experience to date do you have an idea of your teams velocity or capacity? That will be the only thing that will help you estimate your manpower requirements for the Jan 1st deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regards&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29246" LastActivityDate="2017-07-31T07:54:33.160" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22100" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22101" CreationDate="2017-07-31T13:42:13.690" Score="12" ViewCount="4070" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm changing the development methodology in my team. When I joined the company, there was no methodology whatsoever (basically, patch 'n' deploy) and in consequence we have 400k of spaghetti unmaintainable untested code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I proposed a look into the Agile approach, and a we're doing a (quasi-)Scrum approach. Several months passed from the day I suggested releases based on sprints (rather than 3+ releases per day full of bug fixes) to the day my manager saw the benefits of this per-cycle release approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, (since we have no tests nor QA and the whole thing is a legacy monolith, and) since we're mostly doing bug fixes (23 bug and UI-fixes, 2 User Stories last sprint) my manager feels it's weird we have to wait till the end of the sprint to release all those bug fixes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I come from a background where we're usually backed up by automatic tests, and since we barely have to deal with bugs (1 or 2 bugs per sprint), we see no harm in deploying them along with big changes (like 4 or 6 user stories). So, since that is not the case in this company, should bug fixes be deployed as soon as they're done? Or should we deploy them at the end of the sprint along with the new features to maintain a commitment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17593" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-07-08T12:13:34.857" LastActivityDate="2019-07-08T12:13:34.857" Title="Should bug fixes be deployed as soon as they're ready?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22100" CreationDate="2017-07-31T13:53:37.937" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regardless of framework used, the general idea is to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deliver value to the client as fast as possible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deliver value to the client with as few bugs as possible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile-oriented methodologies are strongly based on automated testing as you mentioned, but you shouldn't be limiting your project just because Scrum / Agile say so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, other methodologies, like Kanban, could fit better your current model - fixes being delivered as soon as they're fixed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It happens that, it seems you have other side questions here, such as the quality and coverage of testing. You can be delivering fast to the client, but at the cost of increasing the tech debt. If that's the case, then that's the key point you should focus on in your discussions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just avoid discussing 'Agile says so' and 'Kanban says that'. For end users, it simply doesn't matter much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-07-31T19:54:30.107" LastActivityDate="2017-07-31T19:54:30.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22100" CreationDate="2017-07-31T13:59:04.630" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like you might want to look into Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going strictly by Scrum, no, you should not ignore your Sprints and release bugfixes daily. But there's no reason you specifically have to use Scrum - in my experience, it works better for new development than for maintenance work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban, on the other hand, is a much lighter framework, involving simply a board with columns and Work In Progress limits for each column (with the exception of the first 'issue discovered' and last 'done' columns). It works much better for maintenance work where you're not concerned so much with estimation and you just want to get bugfixes out at a steady pace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above all, look into both &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_(development)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt;, understand their strengths and weaknesses, and bring the decision up to your Team, to allow them to decide. The best process shoved down a team's throats is often worse than a mediocre process that's fully understood and accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-07-31T13:59:04.630" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22100" CreationDate="2017-07-31T14:54:34.057" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, there's no rule in Scrum (as far as I know) about &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; releasing finished work during a Sprint; so if those items are in the sprint, you can still potentially release them during the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, a sprint consists of work on sprint backlog items to create a finished increment. If you have bugs that emerge and are fixed during the course of a sprint, that sounds more like overhead, the same way that e.g. upgrading Rails versions would be. In that case, it might possibly make sense to exclude those items from the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, being that Scrum is geared at &lt;em&gt;product development,&lt;/em&gt; and you're not doing much of that at the moment, it might make sense to turn even more focus to getting this system cleaned up and under test, and postpone adoption of Scrum until you are ready to focus on developing your product. Scrum doesn't perform well in an environment with less-than-stellar engineering practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27733" LastActivityDate="2017-07-31T14:54:34.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22104" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22121" CreationDate="2017-07-31T19:40:18.630" Score="2" ViewCount="253" Body="&lt;p&gt;When we have features, we usually break them down to tasks that take about 1-2 days.&#xA;Usually our dev tasks are not ready for QA as soon as a developer finishes developing them, but only after the whole feature is ready.&#xA;That means that a few tasks (and probably a few features) would already be finished by the time QA will start testing the version.&#xA;We usually try to decide ahead what bugs/features the next version for QA will have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, When QA open bugs they won't be directly correlated to a specific dev task but more to the feature as a whole. &#xA;Moreover, our QA usually test features based on their own test plan, which is not directly connected to our development tasks on JIRA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One possible solution&lt;/strong&gt; for this issue, is to have all tasks belonging to a specific feature, opened as subtasks under that feature.&#xA;When each subtask is finished, mark it as resolved.&#xA;When QA starts testing the feature, they will open bugs under that main feature (I can link the bugs to the main feature I guess), which will go back to the 'In development' stage, till all bugs opened on it are resolved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Another option&lt;/strong&gt;, is to have all subtasks of the main feature as resolved, but have the main feature stays in an &quot;Waiting for QA&quot; column. &#xA;I will move it to done only once all bugs on it are fixed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which solution is better ?&#xA;Do you see any downsides or ways to improve that process ?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My goal is to be able to confidently say how many tasks we manage as a team to finish in week/month time(or what is the cycle time of an issue) so I can more or less know once we break features into tasks, how long it will take the team to ship them. &#xA;As far as I'm concerned, finished also means verified by QA. I want to find the best way to handle our current process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29335" LastEditorUserId="29335" LastEditDate="2017-07-31T20:07:26.320" LastActivityDate="2017-08-03T08:38:45.937" Title="Handling bugs in Kanban (using JIRA)" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22100" CreationDate="2017-07-31T21:30:14.083" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;since we barely have to deal with bugs (1 or 2 bugs per sprint), we see no harm in deploying them along with big changes (like 4 or 6 user stories). So, since that is not the case in this company, should bug fixes be deployed as soon as they're done? Or should we deploy them at the end of the sprint along with the new features to maintain a commitment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not about proportion between bugs and features, it is about loss and benefit. Generally speaking you must do what is the most beneficial for the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Select  iteration period (cycle time) which maximizes income of the company. The smaller risks and costs of deployment are - the faster you can deliver. (Amazon famously deploys every 11.6 seconds on production.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also most likely you are not person making decision what to fix and when. Oversimplifying you are providing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Price tag and risks of each bugfix.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Price tag and risks of deployment itself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the time you are not making decision what to do from development side. You have to provide the price tags and risks as clear and explicitly as possible for persons in charge of the company profit to make a decision what to pay and what amount of risk to accept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26385" LastActivityDate="2017-07-31T21:30:14.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22100" CreationDate="2017-07-31T23:10:47.297" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum doesn't either say that you cannot release during a Sprint, nor does it say that you must release after a Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it does say that there must be a &lt;strong&gt;releasable increment&lt;/strong&gt; at the end of a Sprint, and this should be made available for inspection in the Sprint Review, so that all stakeholders can inspect the changes, and provide feedback for planning the next Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A crucial aspect of Scrum is the definition of &quot;Done&quot;.&#xA;The Development Team should set a definition of &quot;Done&quot;, which can be used to guarantee quality and ensure transparency. &#xA;For these reasons, nothing should be added to the Increment if it is not &quot;Done&quot; (otherwise it would not be releasable). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say it's vital that the Development Team are helped to understand the business requirement to release regularly (if they don't already), and they should be enabled and encouraged to find a way of working that is appropriate for the needs of the business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that all parties consider the relative merits of releasing only after a completed Sprint, and releasing more regularly. Professionalism should mean that it's possible to find a system that optimizes quality and value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The right decision will be dependent on the circumstances within your organization, but a core principle of Scrum is that regular releases allow greater inspection and adaption, and opportunities to gather feedback from customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint length should be set to match business requirements, and although opportunities to release before the Sprint end may be taken advantage of, everyone should be clear in understanding that the key responsibility of the Development Team is to produce that releasable increment at Sprint end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't be afraid to try very short Sprints (e.g. 1 week, or possibly even shorter), but be aware that 2 weeks tends to be the most common, and there will probably be some interesting challenges with very short Sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be brave, experiment, inspect, adapt. Don't decide one way or another about releasing regularly, until you have enough information to make a good decision, and then when new insights come to light, be prepared to reassess, and change your mind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum on!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20796" LastEditorUserId="20796" LastEditDate="2017-08-03T22:38:47.073" LastActivityDate="2017-08-03T22:38:47.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22107" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22115" CreationDate="2017-08-01T05:03:41.707" Score="3" ViewCount="155" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I've got familiar with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.belbin.com/about/belbin-team-roles/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Belbin Roles&lt;/a&gt; concept.&#xA;It seemed to be weird that I should let people be aware of their roles, or even about my expectations, because the Belbin roles are rather personality qualities than tasks the people will do. Say, a person took part in the Belbin questionnaire, we understood that he has propensity to behave like a Teamworker or an Implementer, and I'll say &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;OK, now we are aware of you nature, please behave like an Implementer this time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it work this way? I mean, I don't think people are conscious of their roles at any given time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also came across another source stating that it's better to not reveal the roles, so people are not bounded within them. (i haven't find it now, unfortunately)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I will appreciate any real example of working with the Belbin Roles. Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28061" LastActivityDate="2017-08-01T20:45:22.853" Title="Should I assign Belbin roles explicitly?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;roles&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22110" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-01T14:28:56.553" Score="1" ViewCount="306" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a small startup company with 2-3 project running simultaneously by 3 developers and 1 QA guy. We use Scrum and we encountered difficulties while we had a sprint with a user story, as small as we could shrink it, with more points than the sprint could hold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We didn't want to estimate the tasks because we believe a user story is the smallest resolution we should price. Another example situation would involve a smaller volume user story that we didn't finish at the end of the sprint (1 Point = 1 Day).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is best way to handle these cases in aspects of:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Counting points for planning and execution of current and next sprint.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Monitoring progress during and over sprints.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29344" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-08-01T14:36:39.990" LastActivityDate="2017-08-02T07:04:20.740" Title="How to handle unfinished user stories?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2017-08-04T10:36:18.350" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20548" CreationDate="2017-08-01T15:46:52.227" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do testing as a group:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, we do not have a dedicated tester on our team, which means that we depend on the testing capabilities of all the members of the team. That might be right according to the books, but my experience is that developers don’t have the same mindset that a tester has. We try to make up for this by organizing explicit internal test sessions where the whole team tests a finished feature. We encourage each other to plan internal test sessions as much as possible. These internal test sessions are extremely valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then do a demo:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yes; by Friday, we usually have some functionality ready to show the product owner. Therefore, I need to verify with him that the new functionality we are implementing during this sprint is doing what is expected. We write up a short scenario of how we are going to use this new functionality and add a list of questions to get any uncertainties out of the way. After the product owner sends us his answers, we can carry on with the implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and finally run a copy of production data in a dress rehearsal test environment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On Tuesday morning, our tech partner deploys our code to the UAT environment. When UAT is signed off by the product owner, the code is deployed to the Clones environment (which is a second acceptance environment that contains an exact copy of live data from the production server) on Wednesday. On the Clones environment we test to verify that the live data will not be affected by our changes and to see whether the added functionality is doing what it should do with the actual data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/java/architect-agile-2227129.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Sprint in the Life of a Scrum Master&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27065" LastActivityDate="2017-08-01T15:46:52.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22110" CreationDate="2017-08-01T17:24:13.333" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's important to know why the story couldn't be broken down to be small enough. I suspect there could still be a creative way to deliver at least some of what's wanted, but it's hard to be sure without an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In answer to your questions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1&lt;/strong&gt; Story points are a useful way to help the Development Team to provide a &lt;strong&gt;forecast&lt;/strong&gt; during the Sprint Planning. Their forecast should not be seen as a solid commitment, and it should be understood that forecasts can be wrong (although it's still valid to ask why a particular forecast was not accurate). Story points should only be assigned by the Development Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner may use estimates and other feedback from the Development Team as an indicator when prioritizing the Product Backlog, but beyond that, Story Points aren't intended for any other purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming story points are respected in this way, the Development Team shouldn't feel it needs to rely 100% on them for its forecast. It can then count the total points value of previously completed work, but use its own judgement to provide a forecast each Sprint. If more or less work is actually completed, the team can learn from this, and provide better forecasts in the future.&#xA;  So if a Development Team forecast it will complete stories of 1, 2, 3 and 5 points, but the 3 point story is not done during the Sprint, the Development Team knows it delivered (1+2+5 = 8) points of work, and can combine that knowledge with their judgement to make a forecast in the next Sprint(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2&lt;/strong&gt; The Development Team can monitor its own progress during the Sprint, and Story Points may be the way they choose to do this (but that's up to them, because Scrum says Development Teams should be self-organizing. They may, for example, use a burndown chart to track how far through their Sprint Backlog they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the rest of the business (Product Owner, stakeholders, management etc), it would be better to look at the value that's being delivered, and assess whether the end result is good, rather than the mechanics of how many points a team puts onto the things it is delivering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE based on your comment:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest when you have stories that are not Done, they go back on to the Product Backlog, where the remaining work can be re-estimated (sometimes this will go up, e.g. the Development Team realise it's more work than they previously thought).&#xA;I recommend the Development Team understand they completed stories totalling X story points, plus they did some other work which they won't measure (because it's very hard to be sure if it's 75% or 40% or 90% complete).&#xA;The team should be able to take this information, accept that the velocity isn't 100% accurate and be able to make a better forecast next time.&#xA;No-one outside of the Development Team should care about velocity - the value of what has been delivered should be the thing they measure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20796" LastEditorUserId="20796" LastEditDate="2017-08-02T07:04:20.740" LastActivityDate="2017-08-02T07:04:20.740" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22110" CreationDate="2017-08-01T18:22:57.420" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are a startup, you are starting to know how many points the team can manage in a Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it is good if you focus on whats missing so you can finish you stories and your current sprint: An action plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With all these data you will be able to know how much work your team can do in the next sprint and have a better plan, and maybe you could change your measuments (ex. 1 day = 3 points)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is difficult for you to split the stories by functionalities, try to split them by technologies, users, or something different. That will help you to do tasks that can be finnished in less than a day. The developers should identify if there could be smallest parts of the history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29112" LastActivityDate="2017-08-01T18:22:57.420" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22107" CreationDate="2017-08-01T19:07:30.283" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aleksandr, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a great question and is in fact related to project management.  I have successfully used Belbin Roles on project teams before.  The key to using them is consent.  The team needs to believe in the process and agree to using the roles to strengthen team outcomes.  If they do not consent, you will not be successful in using them.  The Belbin roles are not just for use by the Project Manager - they are for use by the entire team.  I am primarily &quot;Plant&quot; and &quot;Team Worker.&quot;  I am also a &quot;Completer Finisher,&quot; but I do not have as high a propensity for that as the other roles.  The team can decide that my &quot;Completer Finisher&quot; skills may be valuable so that the team can be more balanced.  Therefore, I would be willing to use that skill set to help the team be more balanced and therefore succeed.  I am a huge fan of the Belbin process, and I've seen it improve teams' effectiveness in multiple projects. Each member of the team knows their strengths, and the team has given them permission to utilize them in order to make the team succeed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29354" LastActivityDate="2017-08-01T19:07:30.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22107" CreationDate="2017-08-01T20:45:22.853" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.  You do not assign a person to a Belbin role.  As a leader, you facilitate the roles by identifying talent that will gravitate to a specific role through your selection process so that your team is well represented by those nine roles.  All of us, when on a team that evolves to a high performing entity, will gravitate to one or several of those roles because we are intrinsically built that way.  This means as a team lead, you need to select your talent predicting which of those roles (s)he will assume in a very natural way.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, and I don't have a source handy at the moment but will post when I find it, there are teaming theories that suggest people will gravitate to fill one of these roles when the role is absent and when the team becomes high performing.  For example, if these is a missing Completer/Finisher role on a high performing team, someone on that team will begin to assume those tasks associated with that role.  The theory suggests it is a natural byproduct of a high performing team; else, the team marginally performs or falls apart.  And if memory serves, it was based on this observed evolution Dr. Belbin arrived at his findings, but until I find a source I might be incorrect here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I disagree with Gleeful Frog's answer in that the team would not be aware of you building your team based on these roles.  This would be something you do as a manager in terms of assessing for these role behaviors and making team changes to ensure your team is well balanced.  In fact, I think the team should be blind to it so as not to skew your observations.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-08-01T20:45:22.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22116" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-02T13:02:53.883" Score="8" ViewCount="729" Body="&lt;p&gt;The title sums the question up pretty well. How do you do that? Should you even make implementing HTTPS a user story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;As a page visitor I want all communication with the service to be secure so data integrity is kept&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. Sounds pretty dumb if you ask me. The other way around would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;As a technical manager I want web page access to be secure so that information from the page visitor is secure&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. Also sounds stupid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28976" LastActivityDate="2017-10-30T07:38:28.850" Title="How to write implementing HTTPS as a user story?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22116" CreationDate="2017-08-02T13:22:36.513" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would focus on the &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt;, rather than the implementation. The user story would then simply be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;As a user, I want any personal information I give (Company) to remain private and secure.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With HTTPS then being an implementation detail of that story. After all, if you found some other means of completing the requirement (such as not &lt;em&gt;getting&lt;/em&gt; any personal information in the first place), then HTTPS would become irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also append something like &quot;even from a malicious attacker&quot;, which should make it more testable (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST mnemonic&lt;/a&gt;) - make sure all common attacks (other than social engineering, which isn't really solvable...) fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just keep in mind that the user shouldn't really &lt;em&gt;care&lt;/em&gt; whether the web page is secure. They care that their data is no compromised. You could have a (potentially very large) user story for everything necessary to secure is secured. (depending on &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; large it is, it might invalidate INVEST, though.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternately, you could bake it into your Definition of Done (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/15298/security-requirements-and-user-stories/15306#15306&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;).  Note that the DoD is not a user story, task, nor epic in and of itself - it is a part of the acceptance criteria for stories. If your DoD contains sufficient security as a requirement, and you have a story that doesn't yet have that security, then the story cannot be considered as 'Done' (and thus burned down) until it meets the DoD requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-08-03T14:03:33.870" LastActivityDate="2017-08-03T14:03:33.870" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22116" CreationDate="2017-08-02T20:23:58.713" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, you are potentially misusing user stories as a mechanism. A user story emerges from a real need, it should not be invented or changed to fit the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, it could be something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As chief security manager, I want all communication between all our applications and all clients to be done via HTTPs so that the risk of a MITM attack is lowered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a page visitor, I want to see a &quot;green lock&quot; in my browser so that I feel safe and protected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the difference between the two. For example, if you have a mobile app with client-server interaction, an API - first story forces you to cover those as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26385" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-09-25T16:18:45.623" LastActivityDate="2017-09-25T16:18:45.623" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22119" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22123" CreationDate="2017-08-03T08:05:14.770" Score="-1" ViewCount="249" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am writing a template story document and want to include as many elements as will make for useful, generic stories. Currently, this includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Story number&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Points estimate (fibonacci)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;State (to do, in dev, done, etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Priority&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blocked flag&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Author&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assignee&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Title&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Short description&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Description&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tech notes (bullet point items purely for reference)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acceptance criteria (bullet point items to be ticked off before testing)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scenarios (Given When Then for each unique use case)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User journeys (Optional variations as numbered steps which an be applied to the scenarios to provide variations on tests)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: Should I be avoiding User Journeys altogether or do they still have a place in this sort of story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, am I missing anything which might jump out at you as a developer or story author?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29374" LastActivityDate="2017-08-03T18:32:11.250" Title="Should a user journey be a part of a BDD story?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22116" CreationDate="2017-08-03T08:19:51.593" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could also just have it as a general &quot;task&quot;. Not everything needs to written in a user story format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29075" LastActivityDate="2017-08-03T08:19:51.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22104" CreationDate="2017-08-03T08:38:45.937" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would work on making the stories independently testable by working together with the testing folks. Narrow the testing scope so that you could attach bugs to stories and not to the whole feature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cannot do that or maybe save it for future, out of your solutions I like the second one best. Having the feature in &quot;Waiting for QA&quot; signals better that it is not actually done yet! Also that way you could have your Stories be completed and track the completion of the feature by the stories that are completed. As you're using JIRA you can also use Epics as a place to store information about the whole feature if you want to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our team we have epics that contain User Stories that have sub-tasks for technical documentation and planning. Bugs are linked to the User Story and also to the Epic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29075" LastActivityDate="2017-08-03T08:38:45.937" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22096" CreationDate="2017-08-03T09:18:01.883" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really think you're falling into &quot;give me a date&quot; -trap here. Basically you have no idea how long it's going to take until you start implementing and learning. So, what you should do is give an interval with some kind of confidence levels. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you start doing the work, you get your first cycle times and estimate how much time you have left and update your estimation for the whole product. The truth here is that no one knows how long it's going to take and you should communicate that clearly. &quot;It will take anything between X and Y months and we are constantly updating our estimates as we learn more&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29075" LastActivityDate="2017-08-03T09:18:01.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22119" CreationDate="2017-08-03T09:52:52.353" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the story and the team. So during sprint planning, you would discuss the high value stories with the development team, who in return ask for clarity. You should ask them whether adding a user journey going to be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A side note here:&lt;/strong&gt; do you think you can add such detail for each and every story as long as the project goes on? More importantly, is there a reason you are having to &lt;em&gt;document&lt;/em&gt; all that instead of just &lt;em&gt;interacting&lt;/em&gt; with rest of the team? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My preference on backlog refinement:&lt;/strong&gt; As far as product backlog management goes, I always like to write as little as possible and decompose the stories as late as possible, but before the sprint planning. Then, during sprint planning, you decompose further and add sub-tasks to each story along with the dev-team to make up the sprint backlog. Obviously you cannot do that for all stories so respect the time-box, and do the rest as the sprint progresses. This minimizes waste and allows the team to focus on value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastEditorUserId="28548" LastEditDate="2017-08-03T18:32:11.250" LastActivityDate="2017-08-03T18:32:11.250" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22124" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22126" CreationDate="2017-08-03T13:21:31.387" Score="1" ViewCount="149" Body="&lt;p&gt;Within Scrum/Agile, if I have a story which is 90% completed, and the sprint ends, what should be done with this story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The logical decision seems to be to move this into the next sprint, however if the story has high story points, then this will affect my burndown and capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="628" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-08-03T13:40:25.533" LastActivityDate="2017-08-04T07:21:32.853" Title="What should you do with story points which aren't completed in sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22119" CreationDate="2017-08-03T13:52:13.847" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remember that Agile manifesto emphasizes value of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Individuals and interactions over processes and tools&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks like you are trying to turn user stories into a central holder-of-everything piece of the process. They are future conversations placeholders and that's it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example you are introducing &quot;Title&quot;, &quot;Short description&quot;, &quot;Description&quot; and &quot;Scenarios&quot;. Why do you need all of this &lt;em&gt;in a user story&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I be avoiding User Journeys altogether or do they still have a place in this sort of story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should not avoid user journeys of course, they are part of reality. But do you really need to place them (and scenarios) &lt;em&gt;into&lt;/em&gt; user story? Aren't they already covered by your tests since you are doing BDD? Aren't they in your documentation afterwards?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scenarios (Given When Then for each unique use case)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Given When Then&quot; is a format of acceptance tests, better call this way to avoid confusion with use cases. Apart from that if you are writing &quot;Given When Then&quot; &lt;em&gt;for use cases&lt;/em&gt; - they should be connected to use cases, not stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26385" LastActivityDate="2017-08-03T13:52:13.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22124" CreationDate="2017-08-03T17:07:16.937" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great question Curt! &#xA;What our teams do (we're operate in SAFe) is discuss unfinished stories first in the next iteration/sprint planning ceremony. If the PO sees business value in completing the story then the team decides if the acceptance criteria and ATDD needs to be updated to reflect the remaining work. Finally, it is re-pointed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&#xA;Josh&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29383" LastActivityDate="2017-08-03T17:07:16.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22124" CreationDate="2017-08-03T21:17:30.387" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The (purist approach) short answer:&lt;/strong&gt; move it back to the backlog and let the product owner decide. How a reporting chart looks like shouldn't matter really.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long (realist approach) answer:&lt;/strong&gt; in some larger organizations with varying degrees of politics, governance requirements as well as top-down management, reporting progress matters. I have worked in projects where we could literally get penalized if we didn't hit 80% of the sprint backlog (ridiculous but that's how it is sometimes). In this case, see if you can break apart the 90% from the 10%. The former becomes part of the increment and you can adjust the user stories (with back dated impact) so your burn up/down charts look nice. The remaining 10% is moved to the backlog as let the PO decide what to do with it. Remember, with arbitrary estimation using story points, you have a lot of flexibility to manage the &quot;chickens&quot; whilst ensuring the &quot;pigs&quot; are as agile as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastActivityDate="2017-08-03T21:17:30.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22129" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-03T21:57:06.037" Score="-1" ViewCount="530" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am having an issue with working hours in my project plan with the work hours showing millions of hours even though when factoring duration and resources this is off by a huge margin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a task that has a duration of 66 days (Mon-Fri/ 8 hours per day) with 1 resource allocated and it is populating 13,144 hours when based on working hours it should only equal 528. When reviewing the task usage view, it is showing 199.15 hours per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please help in figuring out how to resolve this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29384" LastActivityDate="2018-02-05T21:14:25.727" Title="MS Project displaying work hours extremely wrong compared to duration and resource allocation" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20973" CreationDate="2017-08-04T03:57:52.330" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question is very focused on this story in these three sprints, but you haven't talked about the rest of your processes or context, eg, how much else work was in the sprint, how important the repeatedly failing story was to the customer, how you handle backlog grooming, etc. I think the answer to your question lies in that broader context, so that's the context in which I'll talk about how I might have handled it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The complexity and uncertainty encountered in the first sprint sounds sufficiently full of unknowns that I would have &lt;em&gt;failed that task out of the sprint&lt;/em&gt; &amp;amp; kicked it back to the backlog for further grooming and reprioritization, rather than continuing to spend sprint time &amp;amp; effort on something that was so uncertain. Depending on what else was planned for the sprint, maybe that means the whole sprint would have failed, or maybe it means that we'd complete the other work early and move on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Sprint green&quot; is not the only value. &quot;Fail early&quot; is another: because it frees up your resources to regroup and plan before you try again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your process, once the story is back in the backlog, maybe it gets some more careful analysis and review as part of the grooming process. EG, if you don't accept stories into sprints unless they are &quot;ready&quot;, then the experience in the first sprint demonstrated that you thought it was ready, but actually it wasn't. During that work of getting it ready, there's a good chance you also notice that the code is in bad shape (as was noticed in sprint 2) because you've taken a step back to think about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, perhaps your process is that you generate an additional story, &quot;Do a spike to figure out a viable approach&quot;, which must be completed before the original story is &quot;ready&quot; and thus would be done in a sprint on its own, with the original story done in the subsequent sprint. Or maybe that's a new task on the original story, which obviously increases the scope of the original story, so it can all be done in the same sprint but that reduces the capacity to get other work done in that sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final caveat: if my customer was telling me &quot;This is the most important story &amp;amp; you must get it done no matter the impact on anything else&quot;, then I might have failed the entire sprint immediately, and started a new one that contained only that story, so the whole team could swarm on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2017-08-04T03:57:52.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22124" CreationDate="2017-08-04T07:21:32.853" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a work item is not completed, if it doesn't meet its definition of done, then its &lt;strong&gt;not done&lt;/strong&gt;. Crediting your team with a portion of the story points is going back to old PM mindsets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The correct thing to do is to bring it forward to the next sprint (as long as the PO still believes there is business value in completing the User Story). The aim of agile is to deliver business value, and there is no value in Stories 95% done and not implemented into a production environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Failing this there is a danger of having a backlog containing lots of &lt;em&gt;nearly&lt;/em&gt; completed stories, and carrying these from sprint to sprint, clogging up your board. And worse, crediting your team with success for &lt;em&gt;nearly&lt;/em&gt; completing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best measure is done, 100% done, live and delivering value!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Luck with it ! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29246" LastActivityDate="2017-08-04T07:21:32.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22132" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-04T08:20:02.597" Score="2" ViewCount="1087" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am using Kanban for the process of etablishing a company. It may be kind of wrong since I am both the product owner and the development team. But I think it works, the user stories turns out good. But as a product owner (owner of the company) I need to do different stuff that does not fit user story format. Is the &quot;task&quot; concept for new issues only for the development team to create? Or can I as a product owner also add tasks that I as a product owner can do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I do this right? Must I create another project, board, ...?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28976" LastActivityDate="2017-08-04T14:15:01.713" Title="Who can add &quot;tasks&quot; in Scrum/Kanban?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22132" CreationDate="2017-08-04T09:11:49.517" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great question. The terms Backlog Item (PBI), User Story, and Task are often used in different ways and that can be confusing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The simple answer to your question is that on a Kanban board (especially outside of Scrum) you usually have one level of item that may be user stories, tasks, tickets, requests, or whatever your team needs. So, if you want to generalize these things to &quot;Tasks&quot; instead of trying to use user stories, there is nothing wrong with that. For that matter, you can even use a mix of different types of items - they're just all on the same level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the simple answer out of the way, here's a little more complexity:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In scrum we commonly see two levels on the board: Backlog items and tasks. The reason is that it lets us distinguish between the value-add item (the backlog item - often a user story) and the discrete small thing to be done which is just a step in delivering the larger item. This is because, in scrum, we want to use the board for the team to organize their work (tasks) but also keep an eye on how the team is progressing toward adding valuable functionality to the product and achieving the sprint goal (PBI). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a purely Kanban board, I'm just concerned about the flow of work, so there usually aren't multiple levels of tasks. In most cases, everything in a Kanban board is value-adding and the steps to deliver it come out in the columns of the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-08-04T09:11:49.517" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22132" CreationDate="2017-08-04T09:42:49.140" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When doing Kanban in my previous company, anyone could create a task or story or epic on our board. However only the PO could prioritize it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my current Scrum company only the PO creates Epics, and Features, and usually creates the User Stories. The Dev team create tasks and some &quot;technical&quot; User Stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is the &quot;task&quot; concept for new issues only for the development team to create? Or can I as a product owner also add tasks that I as a product owner can do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either situation it was always possible for a product owner to create tasks for them to do themselves. you might find in your Kanban board that the PO tasks don't follow the same process as the Dev tasks. i.e. PO tasks may have a path of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To do ___ In Progress ___ Reviewed ___ Done&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;where as the Dev tasks may be more like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Backlog ___ Review ___ Develop ___ Unit Test ___ System Test ___ Install to Prod ___ Closed&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is your case a 2nd board to map out the 2nd process is the way to go. if the process is the same then the same board is fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different coloured cards can be used as well to help visualise the tasks that are for the different roles if you like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regards&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29246" LastActivityDate="2017-08-04T09:42:49.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22132" CreationDate="2017-08-04T09:51:48.277" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Writing requirements:&lt;/strong&gt; User stories represent exceptionally high level &quot;desirements&quot; written from the end users point of view to emphasize the business value as opposed to technical details. Stories get refined as the  next sprint planning meeting gets closer. Eventually, the dev-team decomposes the stories by adding granular tasks. Keep in mind, there are other formats such as user journeys, use cases and so on. User stories don't work well non-functional requirements, for example. So why restrict yourself and your team with user stories? Having said that, majority of your backlog items should be written in story format unless you are working on a product that does not interact much with users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who does what:&lt;/strong&gt; The product owner should write the high level user stories. The dev-team would then, during backlog refinement sessions and sprint planning, add the tasks to required to complete the user story. This is the natural division of work but not a strict rule. Given you are also a developer, there is nothing stopping you from writing tasks. Similarly, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A note on Kanban and Scrum:&lt;/strong&gt; Regardless of whether you use an online tool or a board with sticky notes, it makes a lot of sense to differentiate different types of tasks. If your tool doesn't support types of tasks or adding sub-tasks, then use labelling or color coding. Even the simplest/free tools such as Trello provide this feature. So your stories would be Yellow, and all its sub-tasks orange. Other colors represent other things. This is easily do-able using sticky notes too, which come in different shapes and colors :).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastActivityDate="2017-08-04T09:51:48.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22136" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22138" CreationDate="2017-08-04T10:44:00.303" Score="-1" ViewCount="164" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it appropriate for BDD scenarios to have &quot;click here&quot; style specificity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read a lot of examples where scenarios are stated to avoid any particular user interface interaction, yet tools like SpecFlow would seemingly require this level of detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it appropriate to require the BA to write a story which contains scenarios at a high level and then work them down to a more technical (and element-specific) level during the 3 amigos phase?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, is this appropriate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Given the user is on /search&#xA;And the &quot;Jeff&quot; is entered into the field &quot;searchinput&quot;&#xA;When the &quot;Search&quot; button is clicked&#xA;Then the page displayed is /results/Jeff&#xA;And the fields displayed include &quot;Name&quot;&#xA;And the second field displayed is &quot;Post Code&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story example and tooling example on this page appear to be incompatible if we are trying to get from one to the other (ignoring the fact that they are in very different business processes):&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior-driven_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior-driven_development&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29374" LastEditorUserId="29374" LastEditDate="2017-08-04T10:54:45.107" LastActivityDate="2017-08-04T11:47:31.823" Title="What level of detail for BDD scenarios?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22137" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22139" CreationDate="2017-08-04T10:49:22.600" Score="8" ViewCount="1467" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hope this is the right place for a question like this, but I am wondering what do/should organizations look for when hiring Scrum Masters or Agile Coaches?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is only for people who have actually been involved in recruiting Scrum Masters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make this a bit more productive, let's work with a persona. Let's assume there is a guy with 5 years of project management experience, including waterfall and agile. This person has relevant degrees and a number of industry certifications such as CSM and PSM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So on paper, the person is clearly qualified to be a Scrum Master. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My specific question then is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;List 3 most important things you would look for and explain what questions you would ask to validate those 3 things.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastActivityDate="2017-08-04T16:40:48.783" Title="Hiring a Scrum Master / Agile Coach" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="5" ClosedDate="2017-08-04T20:24:46.550" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22136" CreationDate="2017-08-04T11:47:31.823" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your level of behavior is right. Most practitioners (myself included) would recommend that you phrase it in a way that is less implementation-specific. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Given the user is on the search page &#xA;When the user searches for &quot;Jeff&quot;&#xA;Then the results page is displayed&#xA;And the &quot;Name&quot; field is displayed with the value &quot;Jeff&quot;&#xA;And the &quot;Post Code&quot; field is displayed with the value &quot;80273&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is implementation-agnostic which means that you don't need to know the implementation ahead of time and you can tackle multiple implementations (web and mobile for example) more easily. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also adjusted the wording so it is easier to automate. If a PO or some other non-technical person is writing the test, I wouldn't expect them to know to make some of these changes. I'd expect the developers to recognize them and help there. Specifically, the last two lines are now the same pattern and easier to automate and the whole scenario could be run with a lot of different values plugged in for each of those items in quotes very cleanly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you asked in a comment how you bridge the gap. My recommendation is to write the test case before you know the implementation. That forces you into more of this implementation-agnostic language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-08-04T11:47:31.823" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22137" CreationDate="2017-08-04T12:20:22.667" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would ask them 3 key questions to highlight their &lt;em&gt;genuine&lt;/em&gt; knowledge over and above certifications.  These are the three questions I ask every new SM in our organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;1.  What came first, Agile or Scrum?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;90% of respondents will say Agile.  They believe that Agile is a &amp;quot;thing&amp;quot;, a framework, a methodology or an approach.  They believe Scrum and Kanban and others were a result of Agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is incorrect.  Most frameworks and tactics existed long before the Agile values were enshrined in the Agile Manifesto. If they cannot answer this correctly (and you should be able to as well) then it is not a definite blocker but it is a yellow flag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It normally means I have to coach them to see frameworks as a big bag of tools; a buffet of mental models.  Once they get that they can select most appropriate micro or macro tool to unlock delivery regardless of the official guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;2.  If I understand Systems Thinking can I understand Scrum, if so, why?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic answer is that almost every iterative framework can trace it's genesis back to Japan and Taichi Ohno in some form or another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which means that arguing about Lean Six Sigma versus Scrum is like arguing about the New Testament versus the Old.  They are all the same Genesis and all broadly seek to achieve the same aim;  continual delivery of business value through the reduction of inefficiency.  Some focus more on root cause analysis but in general if you subscribe to one framework you are really subscribing to them all. I have heard actual Scrum Masters refer to Kanban as &lt;em&gt;dumb, inferior etc&lt;/em&gt; and tout Scrum as the one true way.  That is the enemy of Agile thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;3.  Can you give me genuine examples of how the Scrum Values translate into every day life in a Feature Team&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are looking for specifics.  An easy way to identify an academic Scrum Master is to probe for how they work daily at the tactical level.   An example might be&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;I RESPECT the Scrum ceremony by not bringing my laptops and typing during Sprint Planning&lt;/strong&gt;;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Xe0BP.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Xe0BP.png&quot; alt=&quot;Example of Scrum Value Commitment&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vCoKG.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vCoKG.png&quot; alt=&quot;Example of Scrum Value Respect&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Summary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If my mind, you should not only seek to hire a Scrum Master.  You are should hire a person tasked with building great engineering teams, strong iterative ethos and frequent deliveries of value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is one way of doing that and you want to make sure that any Scrum Master you hire shares that same mindset.  A Scrum zealot will sink your organisation as fast as a 10,000 line MSP plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Amateur Scrum Teams argue about tactics.  Professionals study integration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-08-04T12:20:22.667" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22137" CreationDate="2017-08-04T12:38:52.583" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being a Scrum Master (and Scrum itself) has little to do with project management. If anything, I would &lt;em&gt;disfavor&lt;/em&gt; a strong PM background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The popular certifications are easy to obtain, and &lt;em&gt;by themselves&lt;/em&gt; hold little value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what is valuable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A solid grounding in systems and lean thinking as pertains to the domain of work (e.g. software product development)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Coaching skills&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Experience working in, and preferably exercising leadership in, a highly collaborative team (any kind of team - volunteer, whatever)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might begin by asking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What metrics do you see as valuable to software product development?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tell me about a time you coached someone, and what the outcomes were&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What's a significant impact you've had on the way your team works?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27733" LastEditorUserId="27733" LastEditDate="2017-08-04T16:40:48.783" LastActivityDate="2017-08-04T16:40:48.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22141" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-04T13:23:07.113" Score="0" ViewCount="81" Body="&lt;p&gt;The organization I'm currently working at, have no business analysis approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to that lack, all the changes/upgrades we are doing or trying to do are hellish. The technical person has trouble trying to understand our requirements, we yell at the technical person telling him almost literally that he is &quot;not smart&quot; enough to understand what we are trying to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the issue happen, again and again, I would like to improve this process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we are a small structure, we don't need yet big functional requirements yet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to start simple functional requirements that can be easily understood by a technical person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions are the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What kind of business analysis methodology, should I look at?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can I use that methodology to structure the functional approach and get it done to something more technical?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As the structure I'm working at is not big, I'm unsure if it is the right approach. However, if it is not, what approach should I try?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13597" LastActivityDate="2017-08-04T14:02:48.013" Title="Is implement business analysis in an organisation the best way?" Tags="&lt;business-analyst&gt;&lt;cross-functional&gt;&lt;business-process-mapping&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22141" CreationDate="2017-08-04T14:02:48.013" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Your biggest problem is a toxic work environment.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you note, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;we yell at the technical person telling him almost literally that he is &quot;not smart&quot; enough to understand what we are trying to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone were to do that to me, I'd immediately demand an apology. If I didn't get one, it'd clearly be time to update my resume... or perhaps even go to HR and make sure the other person updates &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; resume. A work environment where people resort not just to blaming, but to outright insulting others' capabilities, is not one that could be considered acceptable nor healthy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either your concerns are founded (he's &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; smart enough), or they're not. If they &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; founded, then just &lt;em&gt;fire him&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;get a new one.&lt;/em&gt; Don't waste time with insults. If they're &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; founded, you're burning a valuable bridge here. Sooner or later he's going to quit and, depending on the size and nature of the local talent pool, he may warn other potential hires to steer clear of your company. You'll be stuck with the bottom of the barrel - developers too desperate to avoid applying to work at your company, and also too complacent to quit despite the toxic environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;There are two main (broad) approaches to solving your requirements problem.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Broadly speaking, you can solve this in a traditional way, or an Agile way - or in some mixture of the two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to go the traditional route, then before the developer even starts working (and, consequentially, before the schedule 'starts'), the requirements need to be defined, then sent to the developer. Then the developer needs to redefine the requirements in terms that he understands; in what he plans to give the (internal) client. Then the client needs to look over the new, developer-defined requirements, and sign off on them. &lt;em&gt;Then&lt;/em&gt; the developer starts working. And then, at the end, when the client complains that they don't have what they asked for, the developer is entitled to reply &quot;Not my problem. You signed this off.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other ways to go about it, but the general goal is to ensure that there is agreement between the clients and the developer on the requirements &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; any work is done. The better that agreements is mutually understood (and the less the requirements change afterward, see below), the better off you'll be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest problem I've found with the traditional approach is changing requirements. Not only do actual requirements change over time (new technology comes out, an important contract falls through, etc.), but users never actually even &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; what they need, until that need is fulfilled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile therefore eschews rigid planning for iteration and adaptation. The developer works for a week or two (or a day or three, etc. - exact time doesn't matter much, as long as it's short), then shows what he's made to the client. At which point the client tells the developer what to change. At this point, it would be downright curmudgeonly to call the developer stupid for not getting the requirements right - not much time was spent on them upfront, and only a short amount of development time has been spent. And with the next iteration, the product becomes a little closer to what the client needs, then a little closer, then a little closer, until they're finally satisfied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As noted, there's no reason you couldn't combine the two, to a point. Start with the upfront requirements gathering/agreement, and sign it off. Then work on it for a short time, show it to the client, update the plan, and sign it off again. Then repeat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-08-04T14:02:48.013" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22132" CreationDate="2017-08-04T14:15:01.713" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is something that the team can decide together. Figure out the different types of work (new story, bug resolution, ops changes, etc.) and agree on how new pieces of work in each category is introduced into the stream and by whom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect you will find the most value in keeping all the work for a given product on the same board. Separating types of work will leave you with biased sub-views; you want to visualize the whole picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27733" LastActivityDate="2017-08-04T14:15:01.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17752" CreationDate="2017-08-04T18:35:26.490" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This worked for us: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.taskadapter.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.taskadapter.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The UI is a bit rough, but at least it can map the fields properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: To expand on the answer, it's a utility that moves tasks between issue trackers. I think it works with MS Project as well, although we only used it for JIRA&amp;lt;&gt;Redmine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29397" LastEditorUserId="29397" LastEditDate="2017-08-06T15:46:40.907" LastActivityDate="2017-08-06T15:46:40.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22145" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-06T13:04:08.527" Score="0" ViewCount="111" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a statistical modeler at a large bank in a highly regulated area.  I work in a team of about twelve people divvied up between three managers.   Right all of our statistical models are developed using a simple waterfall style methodology which where the models go from &quot;Data Collection&quot; to &quot;Methodology&quot;  and then to &quot;Specification and Testing&quot; among other milestones.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The current management keeps setting target dates that are far too aggressive for model development in this framework, as a result most of the modelers are working long hours, weekends, etc...  I'm taking a break from writing up documentation on a Sunday morning to type this.  The current set up for development came into being seven months ago and since then our turnover rate has skyrocketed. In a 12ish person team we've had five people quit or transfer out of the department in seven months.  As a result I'm the only non-manager in the group who was with the bank prior to the re-organization.  I'm also contemplating leaving the department. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I strongly suspect that the issue is that the current head of the team and his managers have no idea how to set deliverable dates for this kind of work.  All of managers come from an analytics background and seem to have no experience with model development.  I wrote a memo several months ago encouraging the team to explore an agile development style but this was largely ignored, we are not co-located which makes adoption of pure agile methods difficult in any case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I tell the managers to get it together on the project management front and either set sensible milestones for our waterfall tracking (using something like critical chain?) or move to Agile?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. for this kind of development work it's extremely difficult to forecast how long development will take until you've done at least a couple weeks of preliminary work (getting data/cleaning data/etc...) . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29409" LastActivityDate="2017-08-07T17:02:53.170" Title="How to convince others to change project management process" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22145" CreationDate="2017-08-06T21:18:00.083" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I strongly suspect that the issue is that the current head of the team and his managers have no idea how to set deliverable dates for this kind of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That isn't a suspicion, it is a hypothesis with preliminary support.  Quite frankly I suspect it is like a hypothesis that water is wet; it is a no brainer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every time the schedule is set by people &lt;strong&gt;other than&lt;/strong&gt; the people doing the work, that schedule is a work of speculative fiction.  It is  based on hopes and dreams ; it is an incarnation of everything we know about &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;bias&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your shoes, I'd leave.  But if you have a greater appetite for risk than I do, I think you have the beginning of your answer in your question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have the opportunity to present to your management a significant cost savings opportunity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a 12 person team that has had 50% turnover in less than a year (Or more - I'm not sure I'm reading the statistics right).   You'll need to refine my estimate but let's work on a 50% turnover rate projected forward.  the cost to hire and fire varies by industry and location, but it is easily in the tens of thousands of dollars (at least in my industry).  Let's assume that the average turnover is 10% and your team is 50% above that - so the cost of doing nothing is approximately 75K/year. That is a large enough impact to get the attention of most managers - &quot;What if I gave you 75K/year to spend as you like?  And what if that resulted in significant increases in long term quality of the data models?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my humble opinion, the fix is trivially simple.  Managers should never set delivery dates.  Project Managers should consult with subject matter experts; SME set the schedule and project managers report on the schedule.   Schedules that are set by the SME are going to be reliable.  SME will work the schedule because they know it is fair to them.  Turnover will decrease, the resulting data models will be higher quality and more reliable (nothing developed on nights &amp;amp; weekends is truly reliable; that kind of death march is a guarantee for errors).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a variety of techniques to improve the scheduling even further, but none of them will work when the accountability for the schedule is divorced from the responsibility for setting the schedule. That's a no brainer.  I think you can probably save the bank even more money by adopting something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://help.fogcreek.com/7676/evidence-based-scheduling-ebs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Evidence Based Scheduling&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I think you should get a % of the 75K you save. Feel free to kick back a percentage of that to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2017-08-06T21:18:00.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22145" CreationDate="2017-08-07T03:08:33.780" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From personal experience, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not a 'hey you are wrong, lets do it this way' kind of easy discussion in my experience. It could take longer. Directly sharing benefits and cost savings on following a process may not help because you probably are not the boss who can fire them, and so they probably won't give a damn about your suggestion of benefits to change. They have to be interested and participants to the change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Create a Forum&#xA;you should make a case for a project management office PMO weekly / bi-weekly / &#xA;at least a monthly call. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Create an exchange and discussion even before plating the concern you have.&#xA;Try to confirm different problems PMs have, and if they have thoughts on improvements. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Plate the concern, benefits / risks of change and ask their thoughts. Next step is to get them to agree or convince some changes are required.. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Closing - Document the changes - one of them could be a PM methodology to follow. Document the benefit/risk of the changes, Document the RACI for the change in the process.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29415" LastActivityDate="2017-08-07T03:08:33.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22145" CreationDate="2017-08-07T04:01:06.527" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple of additional points for a discussion with management:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;point out the 40% turnover rate under the current setup&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;note the time spent in replace staff (hiring campaign + training)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;observe the overtime people are working; its known or plausible correlation with turnover rate and thus risk of further turnover; point to studies on unsustainability, burnout, loss of productivity&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ask what is driving the aggressive schedules&lt;/strong&gt;: there may be something important going on that isn't filtering down to your level, and if you don't take it into account, you will have small chance of swaying them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something else I might do before this conversation is make my own estimates for one or two rounds of deliverables. I'd estimate in work hours, then compare to the actual work hours spent including nights&amp;amp;weekends to meet the deadline. If my estimates were more accurate (as I gather you expect yours to be), then I would suggest comparing estimation methods, and let them go first; then show mine, &amp;amp; convert them into more realistic deadlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2017-08-07T04:01:06.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22150" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-07T04:28:31.093" Score="0" ViewCount="90" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say for a system, there are several stories that would be repeating all throughout but in different contexts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. Search&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;As a [insert role], I want to search through a data list so that I can easily find what I am looking for.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same with logging in, filtering, editing profile, etc. All of these are stories that each role would need to perform to complete a certain epic (or are epics in themselves).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure if I should repeat all these stories for every role (and tag them as &quot;Log-in Theme&quot; or &quot;Search Theme&quot;) or do I create ONE separate &quot;Search Epic&quot; which I would refer to whenever I'd need to (which of course, contains user stories for searching).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8579" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2017-08-08T06:49:31.590" LastActivityDate="2017-08-08T12:32:10.907" Title="Should common functionalities be repeated as very similar stories within each context they're needed?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;epics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22150" CreationDate="2017-08-07T09:34:14.380" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A user of the system can have multiple roles at the same time that form a hierarchy from a very generic role to a specific role.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;For example, if a user is logged in as an Administrator, they will at that time also have the role &quot;Logged-in User&quot; and &quot;User&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a set of stories that is the same except for the role mentioned in the stories, then you should first look for a more general role that can reduce all those stories to a single one.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;You don't want to have a dozen stories &quot;As a X-role, I want to edit my profile to keep it up-to-date&quot;, when you can have a single &quot;As a logged-in user, I want to edit my profile to keep it up-to-date&quot; for about the same complexity of a single story out of the set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the stories are not similar enough to be grouped under a single user, for example because the objectives are different, then it depends on their relation with other stories in the project if and which theme or epic they belong to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2017-08-07T09:34:14.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22150" CreationDate="2017-08-07T11:58:24.127" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm dealing with something similar on a project at the moment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's not forget that at it's core, Agile is a process of iteration. As such, you shouldn't feel obliged to commit to some approach with these stories up front. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would argue that ability to search for x is the right story, and ability to search for y is another. You do not need to have a specific story for each user to conduct each search. That is a story that defines those search rules, based on user type. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, at unboxing, someone (you?) might then need to drill into this with your developers to break up the story into tasks if needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trust your instinct on this and try something different if it's not getting cadence after a couple sprints! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29360" LastEditorUserId="29360" LastEditDate="2017-08-08T09:29:00.713" LastActivityDate="2017-08-08T09:29:00.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22150" CreationDate="2017-08-07T12:58:42.927" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the only difference in the story is the role,&#xA;and if the roles don't need different search abilities or UIs,&#xA;then use a generic term meaning &quot;all roles&quot; and write one story. &#xA;(&quot;As a person interacting with the system&quot; perhaps)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If some roles need different search abilities or UIs, then write and implement the generic story first, then write one or more additional stories to cover the additional capabilities.&#xA;(&quot;As a sysadmin, I want to search hidden data so that I can..&quot; or &quot;As an advanced user, I want to search on multiple parameters so that I can find what I'm searching for more quickly&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2017-08-07T12:58:42.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22155" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22186" CreationDate="2017-08-07T14:35:26.453" Score="4" ViewCount="463" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I am a scrum master for a team consisting of a PO, team lead and 3 developers. The team lead and 3 developers are off-shore in a totally different timezone. The PO is in the same office as me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problems&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Backlog grooming meeting is not working as they want to design the solution during the meeting. They want to estimate only when they understand and have largely designed the solution&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They want to take 'breaks' to discuss things in their native language&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They don't want to create user stories themselves which is fine, but they don't agree with the way the PO splits the stories either.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do I facilitate an effective planning/grooming/refinement/triage meeting effectively given this scenario?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have taken a stab at solving my problem and this is what I came up with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The PO and I do a user story mapping session just us 2 and come up with an initial set of user stories, and activities and then using the planning meeting to ratify and estimate with the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastEditorUserId="4364" LastEditDate="2017-08-09T07:05:01.257" LastActivityDate="2017-08-15T13:02:36.083" Title="How do I facilitate an effective planning meeting with a remote team?" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;planning-poker&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22155" CreationDate="2017-08-07T15:14:35.957" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some problems as I see them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Natural language barrier&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Disagreement over appropriate slicing of work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Disagreement or ambiguity over the desired outcome of &quot;backlog grooming&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you, as the Scrum Master, now have a few responsibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Guide the team to a more detailed shared understanding of what desirable slicing looks like&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get to the bottom of what the outcome of the grooming session should be. If the team feels incapable of estimating without a detailed plan, why is that? What would happen if you didn't require an estimate at that point?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team should make its expectations about language more explicit. Maybe you need a working agreement over when to use which languages.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect that any work involving stories which you personally do alone with the PO won't lead in the right direction; the team needs to find the right balance of PO and development team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27733" LastActivityDate="2017-08-07T15:14:35.957" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22157" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22159" CreationDate="2017-08-07T15:53:01.893" Score="9" ViewCount="3311" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a ScrumMaster I've read some texts about pair programming. I want to introduce that to my team and make sure it's been done regularly. As a &amp;quot;special feature&amp;quot; we have a remote worker and I want him to be part of this movement. My goals are, as literature mentions, to improve code quality, transfer of knowledge and become &amp;quot;faster&amp;quot; at some point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;My questions are:&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to roll out pairing in a Scrum team?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are best practices for starting and executing pairing?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can I make sure pairing lasts and is no flash in the pan?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can I help the team to include the remote worker?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is slightly related to this one: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/9694/how-can-my-team-reconcile-flow-and-pair-programming&quot;&gt;How can my team reconcile flow and pair-programming?&lt;/a&gt; but I am more focused on the Scrum Master view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I got three good answers, but I only can accept one, here's a short summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All answers suggest, that the idea of pairing should come from the team itself (maybe the Scrum Master could steer towrds this direction)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pairing can be done using the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/pairing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;driver / navigator metaphor&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is not said, that paring might be necessary the whole time. &lt;strong&gt;Don't be dogmatic&lt;/strong&gt; as @Muhammad mentioned&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This can be done via screen sharing and video chat. Timezones might be a problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28506" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-08-13T12:49:06.017" Title="What's an easy and sustainable way to introduce pair programming?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;process-improvement&gt;&lt;extreme-programming&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22157" CreationDate="2017-08-07T16:08:31.803" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with practically any change to workflow, your first step is to get buy-in from the Team. If I were you, I'd bring the problems you're trying to solve up during a Retrospective meeting, and ask for suggestions. It's possible one of the Development Team members will bring it up themselves - this will make it go down much easier than a mandate. It's also possible they might suggest an alternative suggestion which could work just as well (such as, say, code review) - depends on your actual requirements. If neither happens, then you could bring it up yourself for discussion. The only two ways I know of to avoid a practice being a 'flash in the pan' are either to get team buy-in or have an executive mandate - the latter of which could end up reducing performance, rather than improving it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for best practices, I know of three. First, it's best if junior programmers are paired with senior programmers, with the junior usually being the driver and the senior usually being the navigator (note that this works only if the senior is actually more skilled/knowledgeable, not just has higher seniority on a corporate ladder). Second, both need their own computers at a single desk - while the driver is programming, the navigator should be free to look things up on their own machine. Third, you should switch the pairs up every now and then - knowledge dissemination works best if your pairs aren't static.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the remote worker, that presents a lot of problems - especially if they're in a different time zone. If you're going to have to alter people's working hours in order to even get people to be able to pair program, then my suggestion would be to just forget it and keep to code reviews instead. If you don't have to worry about that, then at the very least you'll need some sort of screen-sharing software (so the navigator can see the driver's code; ideally the driver should be able to see what the navigator looks up, as well, so you'll need to share both ways) along with voice chat at the very minimum, preferably with video as well. You might even need three monitors per person - one for the shared screen, one for video chat, and one for IDE (driver) / browser (navigator). As a disclaimer, I've never tried remote pair programming before, but I imagine the setup listed above would be the minimum necessary to get anything close to the same experience as in-person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-08-07T16:08:31.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22157" CreationDate="2017-08-07T16:14:39.397" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to roll out pairing in a Scrum team?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am afraid there is no right answer to this. It all depends on the existing team dynamics. Nevertheless, what is almost always relevant is to understand whether pair programming is something your team will benefit from? If you have good reasons for it, discuss them with your team during the retrospective meeting and let the team take it from there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are best practices for starting and executing pairing?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on how patient you can be, you can simply highlight the &quot;problems&quot; to your team and ask them to come up with solutions. If someone else comes up with pair programming as a solution, it will make things so much easier. There is nothing better than teams making good decisions on their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can i make sure pairing lasts and is no flash in the pan?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You shouldn't make sure of this. Be wary of &quot;cargo cult&quot; or being dogmatic here. No one practice is suitable for a particular team infinitely. In my experience, pairing is great for junior developers or when the goal is to increase the level of &quot;cross functionality&quot; in your team. After a while, I don't see why pairing is necessary unless two developers themselves decide they want to pair for some reason or if you can share evidence that the overall code quality is better when developers (even experienced ones) pair compared to when they do not pair?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I help the team to include the remote worker?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be very tricky but not impossible given the numerous collaboration technologies out there. However, don't ask two developers to pair remotely if they are uncomfortable with the setup. I can imagine screen-sharing apps would be a way to go?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastActivityDate="2017-08-07T16:14:39.397" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22157" CreationDate="2017-08-07T16:32:29.150" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;To pair or not to pair is a decision that the team should make and own. &quot;Rolling out&quot; any technical practice, and especially one that brings with it such strong personal preferences as pair programming, is pretty much guaranteed to backfire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To &lt;em&gt;encourage&lt;/em&gt; people to &lt;em&gt;try&lt;/em&gt; pairing, I would keep an eye out for situations which commonly breed misunderstanding, or dissent in code review, etc., and prompt people with something like, &quot;what if both/all of you worked on that together for half an hour?&quot; You may want to avoid mentioning pairing by name. Maybe in a retro, if someone brings up a situation where code or product feedback required rework, you can help them understand how real-time collaboration would have helped avoid it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My team has had success with remote pairing, though it absolutely requires a fast and stable internet connection. There are tools which specifically allow people to interact with each other's development environment at different levels (OS, shared editor, etc.), or you can just video chat while one person drives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27733" LastActivityDate="2017-08-07T16:32:29.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22145" CreationDate="2017-08-07T17:02:53.170" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nothing motivates change more than ongoing issues, so long as those who would sponsor the change attributes those issues to the right causes.  The knee-jerk, easily identified cause is to blame people, so getting your bosses to see the other drivers is key.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked about what your other interventions have been, including what risks have you escalated and documented that ended up coming true.  Aggressive targets lead to quality, cost, and morale / turn-over jeopardy but it also cures pessimistic estimating from the team and Parkinson's Law / Student Syndrome, both of which add costs but no value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not see an issue with management dictating targets so long as it is based on estimates provided by the team.  If the target is aggressive, management may be signalling something around pessimistic estimates they typically receive, are imposing a challenge to the team but have no real expectations of meeting those targets, may be resolving other issues that impact the business of which you are not privy.  But your team would need to simply and formally escalate the threats as you see them and then mitigate the best you can.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But introducing a change that would cure the threats / issues you're facing will only occur if your bosses perceive issues.  The question remains, what are their complaints?  Who is getting beat up for misses or financial impacts?  Who is paying the price of staff turnover.  You're case for change will need to be centered on the answers to these questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-08-07T17:02:53.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5624" CreationDate="2017-08-07T17:23:54.287" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a free spreadsheet here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.vertex42.com/ExcelTemplates/critical-path-method.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.vertex42.com/ExcelTemplates/critical-path-method.html&lt;/a&gt; that can do processes with up to 25 tasks with up to 6 dependencies per task. The author sells an extended version, but the free one works just fine for small projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no association with the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29428" LastActivityDate="2017-08-07T17:23:54.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22164" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-07T19:42:15.283" Score="1" ViewCount="181" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a user perspective our stories seem clear. From a engineering perspective our stories are a bit too broad and need to be broken up into sub-tasks. This is OK, but each member of the team has a specialty. They can only really deliver estimates for each specialty (eg data vs backend vs front-end). We also have a different capacity for each specialty on each team and the story points may not mean the same thing to each specialty area. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, it seems that user stories, in general, don't get completed till the end of the milestone given that everyone is working on different things and it doesn't come together until the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you define user stories that are completable by the end of sprint?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How does pointing work in team where everyone has a specialty? How can you in turn use this pointing with velocity in this case? Each specialty has a different capacity after all.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29430" LastActivityDate="2017-08-08T03:07:21.627" Title="How do you write completable &quot;stories&quot; when all members of a team have a specialty?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22164" CreationDate="2017-08-07T21:04:21.317" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...the story points may not mean the same thing to each speciality area&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a Scrum team member estimates on a story they aren't estimating only for their contribution to the story. What they are doing is listening to the entire team and deciding on the story size based on the discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, for a particular story the front-end development may be simple, but the back-end development hard. The back-end developers describe why it is hard to the team and as a result &lt;em&gt;the whole team&lt;/em&gt; would estimate a bigger story size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have had a team member say this to a colleague in a planning meeting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You just said this is really tricky, but then you estimated a 3. Shouldn't we bump up our estimate if it really that difficult?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using this approach it is possible for teams of specialists to estimate collaboratively and consistently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you do have a team of specialists then the sprint capacity is going to have to be carefully worked out. I have seen teams like this start with story point estimates, but then do time-based estimates on technical sub-tasks. This allows them to check that one particular team member is not going to be overloaded. For example, the team may have a velocity of 30 story points, but a particular selection of stories that adds up to 30 may overload one discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for stories getting completed at the end of a sprint, that is typically a sign of large stories. Try and break them down as much as possible while still keeping some business value per story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2017-08-07T21:04:21.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22164" CreationDate="2017-08-07T21:05:47.410" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really like this question because how often I have found myself dealing with teams struggling with similar problems. Your question also points to a handful of very important agile development concepts like estimating using story points, velocity and the definition of done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will answer as concisely as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do you define user stories that are completable by the end of sprint?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User stories are broad by design to encourage emergent design, in-person team collaboration and more importantly to eliminate waste, common in traditional project management where requirements documents are prepared and signed off before anything else is done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So encourage your product owner to write user stories broadly as now. However, make sure you encourage product backlog refinement throughout the sprint such that before the next sprint planning meeting, the high value user stories (that the product owner hopes would get delivered during the upcoming sprint) are decomposed with enough details to meet the team's agreed &lt;a href=&quot;https://manifesto.co.uk/the-definition-of-ready/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Definition of Ready (DoR)&lt;/a&gt;. Then, during the sprint planning, the whole team further decompose each of the user stories selected by the development team, who would obviously add the technical sub-tasks such as UI design, back-end design and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like DoR, the team must also agree on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://manifesto.co.uk/definition-done/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Definition of Done (DoD)&lt;/a&gt;. Stories that meet the definition of done by end of the sprint are considered &quot;done&quot;, everything else goes back into the product backlog, and might end up getting selected again by the product owner depending on business priorities. Obviously, each story may also have an acceptance criteria that would need to be met like the DoD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How does pointing work in team where everyone has a specialty?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, I assume by pointing you mean the &quot;estimation&quot; using story points. If not, please comment and I will update my answer accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in agile, estimation is not done using man-hours or man-days as with traditional approaches. Story points are abstract, again by design. There are lots of benefits for using this type of estimation but two of the ones I like are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Story points allow developers of different background (junior, senior, UI, back-end, architect, tester and so on) have a common unit of measurement, if you may. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Story points encourage rapid estimation, for whatever it is worth, without &lt;strong&gt;wasting&lt;/strong&gt; too much time on a non-value adding activity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, during the sprint planning, let the team collaboratively estimate. Getting this right or wrong doesn't matter. There are many techniques to allow this, with planning poker being the most common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can you in turn use this pointing with velocity in this case?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity is pretty straight forward to calculate. You take the sum of the completed story points in the last sprint (or average of the last few sprints) and that is that. Again, velocity is simply meant to provide an indicator to the team of how much work they can manage per sprint. If they do more, great. If they do less, let them discuss it among themselves. Nothing else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Additional Comments&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your goal as Scrum Master should be to encourage your team to become more and more cross functional. This is exceptionally difficult but only a team with minimal specialists become truly efficient and almost without waste. You should read about &lt;a href=&quot;http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/WaterScrumFall-water-Scrum-fall&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ScrumFall&lt;/a&gt;, a common problem in Scrum/Agile teams that you should work to keep away from your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastEditorUserId="28548" LastEditDate="2017-08-07T21:44:10.520" LastActivityDate="2017-08-07T21:44:10.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22168" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-08T02:41:45.700" Score="2" ViewCount="164" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider this scenario:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Backlog: 100 story points, project budget $100,000 (based on past team velocity/cost of delivering 1 SP per $1000 time spent). Stories are based on product development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Week 1: Budget spent $10,000, 0 SP delivered&#xA;Intensive UX design activities, refining the backlog, development setup&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Week 2: Budget spent $10,000, 10 SP delivered&#xA;Development starts, refining the backlog &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Week 3: Budget spent $7,500, 10 SP delivered&#xA;Development continues, refining the backlog &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Week 4: Budget spent $12,500, 10 SP delivered&#xA;Development continues, refining the backlog, intensive stakeholder workshop activities around later epics (approx. $5,000)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cost to date is $40,000, we've delivered 30 story points. How do you forecast the cost to deliver the remaining 70 story points?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Applying a straight calculation: current project costs $1,333 per SP delivered so 70SP x $1,333 = $93,333 to go, meaning $133,333 total cost. But this doesn't account for the fact the UX design and workshops required early in the project have completed and the development team is delivering faster than anticipated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a common, recognised method to forecast remaining cost for Scrum development projects that accounts for surrounding design and analysis activities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21483" LastActivityDate="2017-08-08T11:03:52.180" Title="Accounting for design, discovery and analysis activities in Scrum project budget forecasts" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;budget&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22164" CreationDate="2017-08-08T03:07:21.627" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Barnaby said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, if you do have a team of specialists then the sprint capacity is going to have to be carefully worked out. I have seen teams like this start with story point estimates, but then do time-based estimates on technical sub-tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is our situation, and this is what we do. Part of our sprint planning involves coordinating to make sure that everyone is working the same story at roughly the same time, and that the tasks have been broken up to make sure no one is blocking anyone else. We have an approximate sense of the capacity of each specialty during the sprint, and choose stories accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also identify system handshakes (ie, points where we can integrate individual specialist contributions) as early as possible, especially across APIs, even if that means faking out some of the innards. This helps avoid the &quot;doesn't come together till the end&quot; problem. (Your devs may not want to do this; mine didn't. I insisted &amp;amp; we all now see the value in trying to close those loops early so we can catch problems early.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They can only really deliver estimates for each specialty (eg data vs backend vs front-end). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would push back against this. My standard speech is &quot;ok, but you've seen how long it took other-team to do something similar to this before, so estimate based on that.&quot; This encourages team ownership of the whole sprint, and can be useful in estimating and knowledge transfer as well, eg:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SpecialtyA Dev, estimating SpecialtyA task: I'd call that a 4.&#xA;SpecialtyB Dev: Really? I had that as a 7, because it sounds like OtherThing you did that was a 7.&#xA;SpecialtyA Dev: Oh, hm, you're right, I forgot about some-piece.&#xA;Or:&#xA;SpecialtyA Dev: Well, it is similar, but implementing OtherThing did all the hard part for the first time. Now we can just reuse some of that machinery, that's why it's a 4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2017-08-08T03:07:21.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22168" CreationDate="2017-08-08T07:44:42.630" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with all estimates I think you should provide a range and some confidence numbers as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using your previous formula of 1000$/sp your &lt;em&gt;most probable&lt;/em&gt; remaining amount would be 70 000$. On top of that you can make the estimate that since &lt;em&gt;at the moment&lt;/em&gt; you're delivering with the cost of 1333$/sp the current &lt;em&gt;worst case scenario&lt;/em&gt; is 93 333$ to go. Then you can also provide a happy case scenario in which you will speed things up and in the future per sp cost drops to eg. 750$ and your remaining cost would be 52 500$. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given these costs you could make an estimate that you have 60% confidence on hitting the 70 000$ and maybe 15% for both ends of the budget (with some percentage for very bad or very good scenarios). Here's a picture:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;5%        15%       60%       15%      5%&#xA;&#xA;&amp;lt;52k      52 500    70 000    93 000   &amp;gt;93k&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever estimating speed, velocity, costs, etc. in the future, using &quot;yesterday's weather&quot; is a pretty good starting point. And also when you're giving estimates on something you should &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; aim for giving a range along with some probabilities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29075" LastActivityDate="2017-08-08T07:44:42.630" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22172" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-08T10:24:19.323" Score="1" ViewCount="113" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd be interested to hear how you manage dealing with project budgets when having to provide a fixed cost up front for the customer ahead of starting the work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For context, and without giving too much away, I work as a PM developing online 'software' type builds for a company where we have to provide costs up front for developments based on signed off specs, but often the development takes much longer than estimated - leading to the budget going out of the window. Obviously that's not sustainable long term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It'd be great to hear how this is dealt with in other organisations...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24050" LastActivityDate="2017-08-08T11:03:10.870" Title="Estimating and Project budgets" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;budget&gt;&lt;fixed-price&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22172" CreationDate="2017-08-08T10:48:41.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two crucial parts for making the estimation that will be met in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First, the estimation should be correct (the amount of work to be done predicted without mistakes).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Secondly, the scope will likely change. So new tasks should be evaluated in addition to the cost and time you've agreed before.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You only asked for the first part, so here is what I think based on my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask the person (or the team) that will actually perform the job to make estimations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Compare the estimation they made to the time the similar tasks took in the past.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure that the project is decomposed to a number of small tasks of 4 to 8 hours each max.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the estimation differs a lot from a similar task's estimation from your prior experience, this means you should either find out the reason, or expect the task to take longer (like it already happened before).&#xA;If the estimated tasks are expected to be done in more than 4-8 hours, it means they may be too big to be estimated properly, so you may want to ask to decompose them further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also outsource some tasks. In that case you may want to have the contractor that has already proven its/her/his ability to do the proper job for you, or start with small not important tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you should analyse the possible risks and increase time estimation accordingly, so that you promise the date that is further in the future than what you was promised by your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And one more thing, that is also important. Once you notice that somebody falls behind the schedule, you should act right now, don't let the delay to increase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26182" LastActivityDate="2017-08-08T10:48:41.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22172" CreationDate="2017-08-08T11:03:10.870" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming you've done the work before on similar engagements, you and your team's experience should be able to arrive at a probabilistic estimate for the work ahead in a range from best to worst case.  Since the work is fixed price, you would then select for your planning / target values--against which a price would be set--closer to the worst case side of your estimate.  Said a different way, you would load a ton of contingency to cover all of the unknowns.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For customers that like fixed price, they essentially remove the risk of cost growth for the project but in doing so they pay a premium for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, you would be very explicit to what is assumed, what is included, and what is excluded.  The language in your contract needs to be very clear so that, if the project bangs up against one of those criteria, then you can submit a change request and add both cost and schedule to your fixed price.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your project is new to you or even a first of its kind, then avoid a fixed price contract if you're able.  If you're unable, then agree to a fixed price for portions or stages of the project and get very very pessimistic with your targets based on your estimate curve, i.e., choose the worst case scenario and then some.  Of course, that might make your price uncompetitive but unless you can survive losing money let someone else take the loss.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-08-08T11:03:10.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22168" CreationDate="2017-08-08T11:03:52.180" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a tricky question to answer, usually the cost of a scrum team is sunk regardless of the value delivered at the end of each sprint.&#xA;i.e. if the team were to achieve nothing then you'd still incur salary &amp;amp; overhead costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you apportion costs over the sprint cycles and manage Story points separately it would make more sense.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Linking Costs to Story points would appear to be beyond Scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But this doesn't account for the fact the UX design and workshops required early in the project have completed and the development team is delivering faster than anticipated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agreed. But then you have to account for implementation costs and post implementation support too, if the dev team is delivering faster then expected, this is great, it means you'll have more time to consider and prepare for putting your software live. Again this supports the view that Story Points should not be linked directly to Costs. The PO or Project Manager (if you have one) will have to constantly monitor the teams delivery to ensure that they have completed enough work to meet the &lt;em&gt;definition of done&lt;/em&gt; in time for pre-implementation activities to be completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29246" LastActivityDate="2017-08-08T11:03:52.180" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22150" CreationDate="2017-08-08T12:32:10.907" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If only the role performing the action is different, and the actions (add, search, edit, etc) as well as the context (user profile, invoices, etc) of the actions are the same, then you are talking about just one user story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use a broader name for these roles or just  type them all if they aren't too many; e.g. As &lt;strong&gt;Staff User&lt;/strong&gt;, I want to search for ABC so I can XYZ. Or maybe As &lt;strong&gt;IT Staff or Management Staff&lt;/strong&gt;, we want to ABC so we can XYZ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Roles need not represent actual roles in your system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also helps if your stories have the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt; properties by the time they are ready for selection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastActivityDate="2017-08-08T12:32:10.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22177" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22180" CreationDate="2017-08-08T15:22:08.777" Score="5" ViewCount="225" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been lately confronted to an argument with my top level hierarchy in the deployment of a Kanban process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As my arguments was to do columns like &quot; Todo, In prog, done, so on ... &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also added lines for tasks assignement per person was a good way to &lt;strong&gt;track the activity and identify issues&lt;/strong&gt; throught the project's timeline. &#xA;Like a corridor for each people in the team in the Kanban board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But my project manager says that it was more like a &quot; bad tracking&quot; in order &lt;strong&gt;to stigmatize people and point the finger to them if tasks doesn't move&lt;/strong&gt;. If you don't explicitly assign a task to someone, you see it as a big picture and the whole team should move together to assure continuous delivery. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I'm whole new in this, can you tell me, please, &lt;strong&gt;what is the point of explicitly assign a task to someone in a Kanban board ?&lt;/strong&gt; And what are the advantages and the cons to not do so ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29449" LastActivityDate="2017-08-08T17:11:47.313" Title="Kanban : why should we monitor each person in the team?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21051" CreationDate="2017-08-08T17:04:00.987" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;you can use TaskAdapter: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.taskadapter.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.taskadapter.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it supports Atlassian JIRA and Microsoft Project integration, among other systems. it is not free, but... it's a matter of how much of your own effort you want to spend on building a tool like that vs. buying a 3rd-party tool with support and all :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29398" LastActivityDate="2017-08-08T17:04:00.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22179" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-08T17:08:57.187" Score="3" ViewCount="3022" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a way I can get a numeric quantifier for the complexity of a project? Such as something similar to a risk assessment matrix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29453" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-08-08T17:20:46.510" LastActivityDate="2017-08-14T16:17:11.053" Title="How to measure complexity of a project?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22177" CreationDate="2017-08-08T17:11:47.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I don't think your question has anything to do with Kanban in particular. The purpose of assigning tasks to developers, as it is common is prescriptive approaches where the Project Manager does this, or developers selecting their tasks on their own, as it is common in agile approaches, is to simply &lt;strong&gt;know who is working on what&lt;/strong&gt; for collaboration and progress calculation purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But my project manager says that it was more like a &quot; bad tracking&quot; in order to stigmatize people...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your project manager might have meant that agile approaches encourage empowered and self-organized teams where the whole team is responsible for results, not just individuals. I actually agree that doing this may make the developer uncomfortable and negatively affect team synergies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, your whole setup seems confusing. If you guys are moving to agile, why do you have project managers? Even more weird, why do you have &quot;project managers&quot; instructing you if you are the flow master (or service delivery manager or whatever you call the equivalent of Scrum Master in Kanban) in your Kanban team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastActivityDate="2017-08-08T17:11:47.313" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22179" CreationDate="2017-08-08T18:58:56.683" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That is quite a tricky question, usually metrics of other related past project can help you to build a complexity assessment.And the technical &amp;amp; business specificities makes it hard to find online a template. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are just fresh starting and have no past metrics: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend to take a look to this  &lt;a href=&quot;http://searchcio.techtarget.com/magazineContent/Project-Expert-Taking-the-Measure-of-Project-Complexity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://searchcio.techtarget.com/magazineContent/Project-Expert-Taking-the-Measure-of-Project-Complexity&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;introducing the technical and business parameters in order to build up this assessment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the other link answering to the question &lt;strong&gt;How the project complexity is defined ?&lt;/strong&gt; with some slight &quot;numeric quantifiers&quot; in example : &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/project-complexity-determine-rigor-9874&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/project-complexity-determine-rigor-9874&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps !  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29449" LastActivityDate="2017-08-08T18:58:56.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22155" CreationDate="2017-08-08T21:22:08.690" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMO, its quite tricky to get Agile to work unless there is a team. One team working in one room in one time zone. You cannot control the timezone but technology can help with creating a virtual one room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should definitely try ensuring you have a web cam in each office that are on during working hours and see if you can at least work 4 to 6 hours together. If this is not possible, quit Scrum and go old school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PO will have to document the requirements in detail. Try using a combination of use cases and wireframes. The current Scrum Master will revise this and ensure its detailed enough before submitting it to the offshore team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can still ensure PO is available on short notice if the dev team need clarification. You can even break the project into chunks and ask the dev team to release stuff monthly at most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This answer may be controversial but I have never seen teams that cannot work together, at least through a web cam, succeed with agile. Agile teams sre like army units or football teams. You do not have a football team or army unit if half of them are offshore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastEditorUserId="28548" LastEditDate="2017-08-09T16:52:30.273" LastActivityDate="2017-08-09T16:52:30.273" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22155" CreationDate="2017-08-09T08:43:33.067" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some say that Agile doesn't work without team being in one place, I'd say in order for Agile to work there should be a good process established. Keep in mind that Agile is unique to most of the teams, as they got different backgrounds behind them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most teams end up hybridizing the approaches, making scrumbans, or part of the workflow for reqs eliciting / stories drafting is done in iterative waterfall. Since scrum / or agile as a whole is not a silver bullet (esp. given that you'll have deadlines sometime).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also got a remote team, and came up with the following hybrid approach, where:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;BA / PO drafts the stories for preliminary analysis, since they communicate with clients&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Later on, they sit and discuss (we got 9-13 hours difference between team members) the plan for the next feature with development team. There is a moderation always, when it comes to meetings, so that noone's out of scope. That early drafting saves time, since whole story is not written out, thus if developers torpedo the idea, time was not wasted.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Decomposition is done together with devs, cause decomposed bits are done by developers. So the last word is their's (given that they are willing to collaborate). BA / PO's job is to make sure that issue is laid out clear enough&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;So after the whole team approves and estimates the decomposed bits (we don't practice story points), we move stories to Ready for Implementation and start working on them. We don't use sprints, but have a Kanban board, so not sprint planning is needed here, as well as iterations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe this will help you a little :) Lang. barrier is unsolvable, until your devs get to some english camp to speak and understand fluently, but for 90%of discussions, simple english is always enough to get the notion of the story and add notes on implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21145" LastActivityDate="2017-08-09T08:43:33.067" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22155" CreationDate="2017-08-09T11:35:28.083" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like you are moving away from agile.  Because the team isn't following your process expectations, you are proposing reducing their role to that of ratifier.  That will undercut their engagement.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would go the other way.  Ask the team how to solve the problem. If we don't groom the backlog, we will always be looking at trees not forest.  If we do design in the backlog sessions (&lt;strong&gt;instead of&lt;/strong&gt; the intended activity of the backlog session), we will drown in technical debt.  Based on that, how can we, as a team, change our behavior to resolve the problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-08-10T10:45:30.123" LastActivityDate="2017-08-10T10:45:30.123" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22155" CreationDate="2017-08-09T14:15:02.627" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TLDR: Talk to the Team.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind the four core principles of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt;, particularly the very first one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Individuals and interactions&lt;/strong&gt; over processes and tools&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of the four principles, the first is the only one that directly suffers from having a distributed team. And from your question, it seems like you're trying to solve this problem by implementing a process. If you look again at the first principle, it should become apparent why this is problematic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that thought in mind, let's walk through your three issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Backlog grooming meeting is not working as they want to design the solution during the meeting. They want to estimate only when they understand and have largely designed the solution&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best, I think, to first break this down into why this is a problem. What is the &lt;em&gt;purpose&lt;/em&gt; of your Backlog grooming meeting? And, importantly, find out what your Development Team &lt;em&gt;views&lt;/em&gt; its purpose as being, as this may be different. Is it just to follow your procedure, as mandated by... your procedure? If so, then the issues become apparent. Is it some other, actually useful purpose, for example, as @Mark C. Wallace suggested, to develop plan, priorities, and/or architecture? If so, bring your concerns to the Development Team as to how this purpose is not being met, and ask the Team for suggestions on how to fix it. Any suggestion created internally, or collaboratively, is going to be accepted &lt;em&gt;far&lt;/em&gt; more readily than one imposed on the Team from above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They want to take 'breaks' to discuss things in their native language&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than getting a new Team that speaks English, there are really only two solutions to this. Either the Team improves their English (you could, for example, send them to a class of some sort, ideally on Company dime). Or &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; could improve your (insert foreign language here). Or both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They don't want to create user stories themselves which is fine, but they don't agree with the way the PO splits the stories either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As always, &lt;em&gt;collaborate&lt;/em&gt;. Find out &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; the Team doesn't like how the Product Owner is splitting the stories. Maybe they're wrong. Maybe the PO is wrong. Maybe they're &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; wrong. The only way to find out is an open discussion, with no pre-existing bias. One goal you should probably approach is obtaining a shared understanding of how stories &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be sliced. One approach is simply to cut them as small as possible while still on their own being able to provide business value. Another approach is to follow the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt; mneumonic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-08-15T13:02:36.083" LastActivityDate="2017-08-15T13:02:36.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22187" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-09T17:18:30.853" Score="2" ViewCount="2597" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know if there is a way to measure the team members of a Scrum Team individually. All the measures I found apply over the team; this makes sense because the idea is to share all the work and responsibility for the increment of a product among the entire Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But my organization wants to have a way to measure with numbers if a person is good at his/her job beyond all the good comments of other team members' or quality of the product develop by the Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What key performance indicators (KPI) can we use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26603" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-08-09T17:56:47.903" LastActivityDate="2017-08-17T15:04:38.543" Title="How to measure individual performance in a Scrum environment?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;performance&gt;&lt;kpi&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22188" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-09T17:28:12.237" Score="-1" ViewCount="1331" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my project I have roughly 45 ongoing tasks that in themselves aren't remarkably important to track progress against and I want to set an automatic rule on these tasks to continuously update progress based on the date. Essentially, these tasks are long duration refining requirements tasks that I don't want to have to constantly manually update to prevent showing on reports. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far, I have created a custom flag and set those tasks I want to auto run as &quot;yes.&quot; Now, I need the appropriate formula to automatically update % complete based on current date for the life of the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know how the formula needs to be constructed? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29384" LastActivityDate="2018-03-08T16:09:40.940" Title="What is the formula to automatically update task progress (% Complete) based on custom flag indicator" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22129" CreationDate="2017-08-09T17:36:15.050" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just an update: The only way we were able to resolve the issue was to take the duration and work columns and copy them into excel. We then had to have excel recalculate the work based on an 8 hour day. Once complete we copy and pasted the columns back into the project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29384" LastActivityDate="2017-08-09T17:36:15.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22187" CreationDate="2017-08-09T17:48:16.613" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can definitely feel your pain on this one. Unfortunately, it seems like the organization hasn't grasped the team concept of Agile. If your role is the SM, I would encourage you to educate the managers and directors on working differently. Agile/Scrum changes everything about the way we work, even the way we manage and review individuals.&#xA; An example you might want to put together to show them a new way is a skills matrix of a development team member that aligns with the skills needed to perform the job. Including other SMs and HR in the process will help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29383" LastActivityDate="2017-08-09T17:48:16.613" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22191" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22194" CreationDate="2017-08-09T18:08:25.437" Score="0" ViewCount="99" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I'm trying to understand the following problem:&lt;/strong&gt; within a SAFe framework a development team adds user stories after commitment, even though that commitment has not been met. The justification is that if these new user stories are not completed, the larger epics/features will be endangered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note, this team spends an excessive amount of time planning during Iteration Planning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My question is:&lt;/strong&gt; Should these new user stories be counted as tasks? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My confusion is&lt;/strong&gt; around the principle of &quot;just enough to start&quot; during iteration planning. As in each story should have just enough information for team members to start working on them. If during the course of the collaboration, new dependencies or work is uncovered, does that constitute a new user story? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My thought is&lt;/strong&gt; that these should be listed as tasks, and if there is ambiguity that should be factored in the estimating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any thoughts, insights, or feedback are welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29383" LastActivityDate="2017-08-10T11:57:58.490" Title="Stories added after commitment" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;definition-of-done&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22192" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-09T19:27:47.613" Score="2" ViewCount="202" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a medium sized product org with 700 people out of which about 100 are in tech, 75 developers (leads and arch included), 15-18 QA folks, 7-8 tech product managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have some 70 line items in what they call a project bucket list but if i was to really categorise them, it would be 10-15 major projects with multiple sub-projects under each bucket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have mobile apps, websites, administrative websites, backend components and interlinked B2B and B2C platforms with several subcomponents in various different languages from Java, .Net, .Net Core, go, php etc with some projects having dependencies on external 3rd parties ranging from Banks to govt entities to telcos etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The challenge I am facing is how do I get these guys to deliver predictable , efficient and relatively bug free projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am no longer on the tech side but given my background as a developer and architect long ago i have been given the challenge to manage this and get the current chaotic and completely unpredictable overrunning and extremely bloated timelines to delivering things with speed ,agility, predictability and quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have started using Confluence where we write our complete BRD/PRDs (user stories and details) and Jira where they are further broken down into epics, user stories, issues, tasks and subtasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These guys barely follow a process, how to get everyone on the same page and how to get product managers to drive the developers and QA to deliver quality output?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give background we have 2-3 major products, but more product managers because there is just too much work on each product and hence we need a team to manage a given product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some help / guidance / magic formula would be greatly appreciated :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29471" LastActivityDate="2017-09-10T19:28:35.637" Title="How to project manage Multiple Product lines, Crossed linked projects 75 developers, 7-8 product managers in an agile manager" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22192" CreationDate="2017-08-09T21:39:33.940" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scaled Scrum frameworks should work well. You can try Nexus, LeSS or SAFe. Nexus being my favorite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, scaling a bad agile/scrum team is a bad idea. Also, IMO, you can hardly be effective without proper use of Continuous Integration pipelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastEditorUserId="28548" LastEditDate="2017-08-11T18:54:48.153" LastActivityDate="2017-08-11T18:54:48.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22191" CreationDate="2017-08-10T11:57:58.490" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question is actually quite broad and touches upon a number is issues but the good thing is its all related to backlog items in one way or another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm trying to understand the following problem: within a SAFe&#xA;  framework a development team adds user stories after commitment, even&#xA;  though that commitment has not been met. The justification is that if&#xA;  these new user stories are not completed, the larger epics/features&#xA;  will be endangered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of Framework, user stories should always be prioritized and selected by the product person/team based on business priority. User stories are broad in nature that ideally have &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt; properties. Having said that, during the planning meeting, the development team can by all means influence the product/business person/s to select some low priority requirements for technical reasons. So the question is, why did the development team not bring up this &quot;larger epic&quot; related reasoning during the planning meeting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, keep in mind that the development team is free to add, remove and edit their own technical tasks to meet the iteration's goal. Also, it is normal for the team to negotiate, during the iteration, with the product people to do changes to the stories. However, IMO, there is something wrong with your planning meetings if this happens often and affect more than a handful of the stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a side note, this team spends an excessive amount of time planning&#xA;  during Iteration Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should ensure &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/product-backlog-refinement-grooming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;product refinement&lt;/a&gt; is done and experiment with bul**** buzzer or simply a timer like the one below by putting it up on the big screen: &lt;a href=&quot;http://oss.jahed.io/agility/timer.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://oss.jahed.io/agility/timer.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My question is: Should these new user stories be counted as tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User stories are different from tasks. As mentioned above, user stories are written by or with the product people. Tasks are detailed activities that must be completed to complete a particular user story. Tasks are generally written by or with the developers. They are even written in different formats and styles. You can call user stories and tasks whatever you like, as long as you understand the difference (seriously though, don't come up with any new names for backlog items).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My confusion is around the principle of &quot;just enough to start&quot; during&#xA;  iteration planning. As in each story should have just enough&#xA;  information for team members to start working on them. If during the&#xA;  course of the collaboration, new dependencies or work is uncovered,&#xA;  does that constitute a new user story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just enough or emergent work are key agile concepts that minimize wastefulness and increase a team's focus on delivering the most valuable items first. However, this does not mean the developers start without a detailed plan. Along with  backlog refinement, also read about &lt;a href=&quot;https://manifesto.co.uk/the-definition-of-ready/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Definition of Ready (DoR)&lt;/a&gt;. The basic idea is that the backlog items that the product person/s want done during the next iteration are detailed enough and meet the DoR agreed by the team. Having said that, keep in mind that the team will not be able to decompose every single user story during the planning meeting. They should decompose enough stories for the first few days. Rest of the user stories will be decomposed regularly as the sprint progresses. Make sure the next most valuable user stories are already decomposed and ready for implementation before the current user stories are completed. Imagine mini planning meetings taking place almost everyday depending on your iteration length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastActivityDate="2017-08-10T11:57:58.490" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22188" CreationDate="2017-08-10T12:26:31.093" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can't update task status (e.g. %complete) using a custom field formula.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most straightforward way to do what you want is to run the &quot;Update Project&quot; dialog (assuming you're using the desktop client.) I.e.:&#xA; 1. Use a filter to show only the tasks with your selection flag set to&#xA;    &quot;Yes,&quot; then select all of those tasks.&#xA; 2. Click &quot;Update Project&quot; on the Status group of the Project ribbon.&#xA; 3. Choose a date for &quot;Update work as complete through:&quot; (default will be the Status Date or today if no Status Date is set.)  Then ensure that &quot;Set 0% - 100% complete&quot; is selected.&#xA; 4. IMPORTANT: Change the &quot;For:&quot; selection from Entire project to Selected tasks.  Then click OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could automate this with some vba, but the effort is not trivial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2017-08-10T12:26:31.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22192" CreationDate="2017-08-10T14:19:07.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would also add that for a change of the scale you are considering, you should think small, start with one product, and one development team, try to get them up and running and then add additional products and teams as the move gets bedded in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also consider hiring an Agile Coach to help you, as this is no small undertaking. Ensure that there is executive sponsorship for the endeavor, as dev teams can be quite resistant to changing their way of working, often they don't see that there is any issue with the status quo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly don't give up, there will be many hurdles to overcome establishing agile techniques in an existing development organisation, but if it turns chaos into order it will have many benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Luck! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29246" LastActivityDate="2017-08-10T14:19:07.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22197" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-11T17:19:37.920" Score="1" ViewCount="288" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a schedule for teams that work Thurs-Thurs. I have a base calendar for the project that has the correct working days and times and have resource calendars for the individual teams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team TS2 is supposed to work 5/26, which is normally an off day. I added that as an exception in the resource calendar:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VVjKN.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VVjKN.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I go back to the Gantt chart it shows that task skipping 5/26, 5/27-5/31 (which it's supposed to, those are non-work days), and the vacation days seen in the picture above from 6/1-6/3, and has the final day fall on 6/4. If I try to put a constraint on the finish date for 5/26 it adds it to the project calendar, not the TS2 resource calendar.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8eSwa.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8eSwa.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29485" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-08T22:29:31.527" LastActivityDate="2019-01-08T01:01:05.197" Title="Working Day in Resource Calendar Not Showing Up - MS Project 2010" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22197" CreationDate="2017-08-11T17:41:34.143" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Exceptions default to non-working. Click on the Details... button and change it to working.&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XICVk.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XICVk.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastActivityDate="2017-08-11T17:41:34.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22199" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-12T01:58:24.803" Score="0" ViewCount="130" Body="&lt;p&gt;Situation:&#xA;- there is a specific team member who is not giving all his\her contribution&#xA;- it has been communicated multiple times on the team level that we need to take initiative because we are responsible for picking up and finishing tasks. More we do, more respect (and therefore salaries eventually) is earned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the fact that giving suggestion on team level is not working, neither is 1 on 1 discussions, in a scrum team, what kind of questions are allowed and who can ask them &lt;strong&gt;directly to the person in question&lt;/strong&gt;? For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is taking so long to complete this kind of task every time?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what you are not taking initiative?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer @yitznewton comment. This person unfortunately is from other department (QA) and we have strict policy not to interfere with other departments even though we have agile and work in scrum team. I can see that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The task that would take about two hours almost every time goes to next day&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even though I have suggested to the team that if you have other tasks we do should do them as per priority. I can see that still lower priority tasks are worked on first (I have started getting answers such as &quot;I worked on other things so I didn't work on task I was supposed to.&quot; without any explanation about what &quot;other things&quot; are. but due to policy mentioned above, I cannot interfere much.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even if there are enough tasks (so that we don't have to pull anything from next backlog), many times tasks spill over but since I cannot ask pointed questions, all I do is advise team in general what we should do as per agile process.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When the task is finished, and there is free time, instead of pulling other tasks into the sprint (for example we usually have lot of studies to do), time is spent on anything but work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Every time, I need to assign work which I have explained multiple times that they can do that by themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Every time I miss to do that, it is taken as a chance not to work. While my mistakes are pointed out (and there are few) quite visibly, my help is not acknowledged at all. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I can see that (even though I don't want to) inordinate amount of time is being spent on chatting to spouse, facebook, blogs, instagram.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When this person does work, it's a quality work, that's the only reason why I have been bearing this for long time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17131" LastEditorUserId="17131" LastEditDate="2017-08-20T03:48:21.433" LastActivityDate="2017-08-20T14:16:28.113" Title="questions allowed in scrum team" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22200" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-12T03:35:26.793" Score="8" ViewCount="1702" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am studying the Scrum framework and I am trying to be ready for the Scrum Master certification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that I understand the role of the Scrum Master but there is a question that seems to pop up often and for which I found incompatible answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is Scrum Master a &quot;management&quot; position?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many people have published on the Internet the results of the Scrum certification test where the correct answer to this question seems to be &quot;Yes&quot; with the following explanation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master manages the Scrum process. If the Scrum Master is not&#xA;  a management position, he or she may not have the influence to remove&#xA;  impediments. The Scrum Master does not manage the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would have answered &quot;No&quot; because the Scrum Master is a facilitator and not necessarily the person in charge of the changes. I am not saying that the Scrum Master MUST not be a manager because I understand that the only constraint is that he/she is not a line manager for the members of the development team.&#xA;I only do not understand why it is necessary that he/she is a &quot;manager&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found the following article that confirms what I thought:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.barryovereem.com/wp-content/uploads/Age-of-Product-38-Scrum-Master-Interview-Questions-v3-2016-3-19.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Age-of-Product-38-Scrum-Master-Interview-Questions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know what is the correct answer and what are we supposed to answer in a certification test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29491" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-12-10T14:07:44.823" LastActivityDate="2020-08-25T20:26:39.150" Title="Is Scrum Master a &quot;management&quot; position?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;roles&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22201" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-12T17:29:20.693" Score="0" ViewCount="773" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there an algorithm to schedule tasks according to the resource availability? i.e. Andrew can only work on Tasks A, B, C; Betty only Tasks D, E and Cathy only Tasks F, G, H, I. All tasks A to I have different duration and dependency relationships with each other. The objective of the algorithm is to minimize the total project duration given these constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried to search for resource-based scheduling and all of them are basically resource-leveling classroom examples i.e. the objective is to keep the number of resources consistent throughout the project, assuming all resources are homogeneous/equal/inter-changeable, which is definitely not the case in reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is such an algorithm, can you please point me to the correct search terms or names of existing applications that can already do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4042" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-09-13T13:06:27.977" LastActivityDate="2017-09-19T06:16:35.597" Title="Algorithm to schedule tasks according to resource availability" Tags="&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;resources&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21153" CreationDate="2017-08-12T23:11:35.570" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need a change management system to collect, document and adjudicate change requests in a formal manner.  Part of your change management system assigns IDs to each change request.  Your change control board assesses the impacts of each change request and then votes on whether or not to accept the change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question points to a larger problem:  If you have that many change requests, it tells me that you missed a stakeholder, your stakeholder's expectation are not aligned with yours, or your requirements need work or you have missing requirements.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of your change management system, you need to find the cause of so many change requests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28828" LastActivityDate="2017-08-12T23:11:35.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22200" CreationDate="2017-08-13T01:25:12.213" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Part of the problem is that &quot;management&quot; is vague. Does it imply formal authority? A reporting relationship? Someone who is responsible for the development of others? Responsible for the success of an organization, of projects? Responsible for processes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that the work of a Scrum Master is one of &quot;meta-work,&quot; i.e. someone who does work that makes the primary work of the team better. It is also a role on a team, and doesn't necessarily translate into a job title. Managers and non-managers equally could fill the role, although &lt;em&gt;the Scrum Master role itself does not involve formal authority.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've taken CSM and PSM II, and while I can't swear to it, I don't think the question of whether a Scrum Master is a manager ever comes up in those curricula.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27733" LastEditorUserId="27733" LastEditDate="2017-08-13T01:31:15.190" LastActivityDate="2017-08-13T01:31:15.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22200" CreationDate="2017-08-13T04:30:52.263" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many schools of thought and even textbooks, the term &lt;em&gt;Manager&lt;/em&gt; is synonymous with &lt;em&gt;responsibility&lt;/em&gt; in a professional setting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Responsibility can be abstracted to something as macro as an individual tasked with providing some output with their skills and influence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A scrum master is broadly responsible for using their skill and influence to bring out the best out in their team, hence they are a manager. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29360" LastActivityDate="2017-08-13T04:30:52.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21153" CreationDate="2017-08-13T07:23:26.867" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great question! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will assume you have some process in place, where if the change is above a certain number of hrs effort, or $$ cost, a formal scope of work is required. If you don't have that, you may want to consider looking into that as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your question, I've found the best way to manage these requests is with a shared spreadsheet that outlines each request for change against that project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know we all love our cloud based, pretty looking UI tools, but there's no reason you can't host a google spreadsheet, or put a .xls file on Dropbox to share with your client. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It provides visibility for your team and the client, and you might find that items will get deprioritised more frequently when they're listed against all other changes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The minimum columns I would have, would be something like: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unique number (CR001, CR002 ect.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Type (Design, Functional, Front-end, Back-end)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Description of work required (couple of lines)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Effort in hrs / days&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Priority (1,2,3) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Status (accepted, rejected, open, blocked, complete) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number, priority and effort can really help when you're negotiating with the client about pros and cons of a certain CR and what to focus your teams effort on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a bonus, having something like this available for a post implementation or post sprint review, can help a lot when planning your next project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's always tough managing a change backlog with a client, even when you've got these processes in place, but something like this can make it a lot easier. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a look around on google for a template or just start something yourself and iterate as you need! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29360" LastActivityDate="2017-08-13T07:23:26.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22206" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22221" CreationDate="2017-08-13T07:24:54.337" Score="1" ViewCount="114" Body="&lt;p&gt;What do you do when you get X months into a project which is using Scrum and either a story, a developer, a review or planning session makes it clear that a serious architectural problem is evident, which was not evident at the start of the project? Ignoring why it is so, whose fault it is or the reason the current architecture was chosen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29374" LastActivityDate="2017-08-15T08:12:06.710" Title="Handling architectural problems down the line" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22206" CreationDate="2017-08-13T10:21:33.363" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, like most agile approaches to development, the &lt;strong&gt;whole team&lt;/strong&gt; is responsible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the 11th principle of the Agile Manifesto: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I must point out, it is very likely that the same issue would have revealed it self at a much later stage (time wise) in a BDUF approach. At least now, instead of blaming an individual, the team will own the issue, fix it, learn from it and move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastActivityDate="2017-08-13T10:21:33.363" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22199" CreationDate="2017-08-13T11:01:36.200" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Alright, to start with, Scrum has 3 roles - Scrum Master, Product Owner and Development Team. Further, it has 4 or 5 events, depending on how you treat backlog refinement. Finally, it has a handful of rules and responsibilities. I mean, if your team doesn't have these in place, how do you conclude you have a Scrum Team? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, had this QA person been part of the development team, you would have found out what is troubling him or her during the Daily Scrum and the whole team could have helped accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you do not have a Scrum Team. It seems like you have a BDUF project manager bossing the staff around. When you boss smart people around, they get demotivated, they fight back, they don't feel committed to their work and they just resist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I can see that: The task that would take about two hours almost every time goes to next day&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you are so sure it would take just 2 hours, why don't you just do the task yourself? Why send it outside the team to someone you are having so much trouble with? I mean common, 2 hours is nothing! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Every time, I need to assign work which I have explained multiple times that they can do that by themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is tell-tale sign of what you have is anything but a Scrum Team. In Scrum, you don't assign tasks. Period. Now, one could still suggest some traditional project management ways to deal with this awful situation but you don't even have real authority on a person working in a different team. Do you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I can see that (even though I don't want to) inordinate amount of time is being spent on chatting to spouse, facebook, blogs, instagram.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do you have time looking at what others are doing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, assuming you are a project manager, I would strongly recommend you get some help from an experienced agile coach or scrum master and try to put your foot down if your management is forcing you to divide the QA team out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are a developer who is supposedly acting like a Scrum Master (just a guess based on what I gathered from your question), then obviously this is not working and is creating problems between you and rest of your team. Again, maybe its better to go back to development and get help from a Scrum Master?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, something's got to change big time. I hope you find this helpful. Take it easy. Take a day off and think about it. Read more about Scrum. I hope things work out for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastActivityDate="2017-08-13T11:01:36.200" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22200" CreationDate="2017-08-13T17:27:58.430" Score="8" Body="&lt;h1&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the Scrum Master a &quot;manager&quot; in the traditional business sense of the term? No. However, the Scrum Master &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; in fact &quot;manage&quot; a number of things within the Scrum Framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you realize the original question is a definitional one, you are forced to accept that the vagaries of both the English language and the test-development process can heavily influence the &quot;correct&quot; answer to a test. What's considered correct is solely determined by the answer that the test's authors expect you to give. Truth or real-world congruence have nothing at all to do with the correctness (for scoring purposes) of the test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you will discover below, while the Scrum Master role is not meant to be managerial, the role &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; designed to manage certain things. Those in a role that manage &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; managers. QED.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Analysis&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Caveats on Test Design&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Test design is largely outside the scope of PMSE, but it's worth noting that most certification tests are normed. Regardless of how they come up with the question, the &quot;correct&quot; answer is the one where an acceptable percentage of test-question beta testers answer the question the way the test writers expect them to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trying to parse questions like this for canonically-true answers is largely a fool's errand. However, it is occasionally useful to try and understand what the test writers were fishing for even if the answer isn't &quot;true&quot; in a real-world sense. This means that 100% of the conversation is really about how other test &lt;em&gt;takers&lt;/em&gt; likely interpreted the question, rather than what the test designers actually thought. There's no way to really know the latter, so it's purely speculative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What Other People Think&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say that a lot of test takers believe the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master manages the Scrum process. If the Scrum Master is not a management position, he or she may not have the influence to remove impediments. The Scrum Master does not manage the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These individual statements are all true, so far as they go. Let's take this a piece at a time in the following sections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Managing the Scrum Process&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master manages the Scrum process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is mostly true, once you realize that the primary definition of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Amanage&amp;amp;oq=define%3Amanage&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;manage&lt;/a&gt; is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;be in charge of (a company, establishment, or undertaking); administer; run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, the Scrum Master is generally considered by many organizations as in charge of the Scrum process, and therefore (by extension) the project. This is certainly arguable, but it is most definitely &lt;em&gt;common&lt;/em&gt;. What is less arguable is that the Scrum Master is a process coach or referee, which means that the Scrum Master administers or runs the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember the caveats: you can debate the definitions if you want, or hair split to your heart's content, but the normed questions are what constitutes a &quot;correct&quot; answer on most certification exams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Handling Impediments&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the Scrum Master is not a management position, he or she may not have the influence to remove impediments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is also true. Ask any process owner whether they are more successful in removing impediments through influence or direct/delegated authority, and you will almost always be told that the latter is more effective. Scrum is really no different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dictionary provides the following secondary definition of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Amanage&amp;amp;oq=define%3Amanage&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;manage&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;succeed in dealing with or withstanding (something).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to &lt;em&gt;effectively&lt;/em&gt; clear impediments, a Scrum Master must have sufficient influence or authority within the organization to effect change, obtain resources, or otherwise affect the source of (or solution to) the impediment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's an old aphorism that says &quot;Those who can, do. Those who can't, manage.&quot; In most organizations, if you're not a doer you are (almost by definition) a manager or executive, and I don't know anyone who thinks of the Scrum Master role as an executive organizational role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All people are really saying is that a Scrum Master who is perceived by the organization as being invested with delegated authority to &quot;succeed in dealing with&quot; a project's impediments is going to be more successful in clearing those impediments than someone who is perceived as holding a purely advisory role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Teams are Self-Managing&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master does not manage the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, the sentence is likely using the term &quot;manage&quot; in the more formal sense of authority. The Scrum Master has no formal authority over team members, and so does not manage them in the traditional organizational sense of the term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The role of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-sm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Master&lt;/a&gt; is clearly spelled out in the Scrum Guide. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Team&lt;/a&gt; is self-organizing, but the Scrum Master is responsible for (e.g. manages) the Scrum &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; and enforcing adherence to Scrum's theory, practice, and rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quote about not being in charge of the team is a restatement of an implicit statement about the role of a &quot;servant-leader&quot; within Scrum. The Scrum Master is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; in charge of the people on the team, but &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; responsible for adherence to the Scrum framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why I generally say that the Scrum Master is a &lt;strong&gt;process referee&lt;/strong&gt;. In football, the referee doesn't manage the teams; the referee enforces the rules of the game. It's the same with Scrum, although Scrum Masters are usually asked to coach and evangelize too, rather than simply blowing the whistle or calling fouls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Summary&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master role is not managerial, but it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; arguably a &quot;manager&quot; role. So, the accepted answer may be technically (or at least arguably) correct, but it is still &lt;em&gt;wrong&lt;/em&gt; in a broader sense if Scrum is being implemented properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a poor-quality question. Some exams allow you to dispute such questions, or to defend alternative answers. Assuming this isn't one of those exams, just accept it as a poor-quality question and move on with your life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real-world answer is that the Scrum Master &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be a:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;servant-leader,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;process referee, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;framework coach&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but is often a traditional project manager or other middle-management resource who is simply flying the agile flag. When that happens, the question of whether the Scrum Master is a manager has more to do with the implementation than the framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When one assumes the only two choices are &quot;task performer&quot; or &quot;manager,&quot; the Scrum Master's role is likely to be misattributed. The whole &lt;em&gt;point&lt;/em&gt; of agile frameworks like Scrum is to help people think outside that very small box...if they can &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Amanage&amp;amp;oq=define%3Amanage&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;manage&lt;/a&gt; it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-08-13T17:27:58.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22210" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-14T03:18:39.080" Score="1" ViewCount="70" Body="&lt;p&gt;With a growing team size, task breakdowns and sprint planning are taking longer and longer. To increase the likelihood of hitting the velocity target, a new approach is adopted: to put team members in pairs. Every pair is assigned to be focused on the user stories in a single epic only. Task breakdowns are carried out by the pair only. It seems more efficient and faster now. Is anyone aware of any long-term impacts of this approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29496" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-08-14T13:10:12.230" LastActivityDate="2017-08-17T02:57:33.750" Title="Paired to be focused on an epic - long-term impacts?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22211" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22212" CreationDate="2017-08-14T05:48:16.977" Score="4" ViewCount="556" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have worked on scrum projects and kanban projects and until now I thought I knew the difference (!?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having read this page:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.agilealliance.org/what-is-scrumban/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.agilealliance.org/what-is-scrumban/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm now wondering if there is actually that much between them. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does scrum allow any number of WIP items at a time?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should kanban stories be assigned points or just lead estimates?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What does kanban say about INVEST? Specifically, vertical slices of functionality?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the kanban backlog have a priority order (how are the stories sequenced?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29374" LastActivityDate="2017-08-14T07:48:33.590" Title="Difference between scrum and kanban" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22211" CreationDate="2017-08-14T07:48:33.590" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum and Kanban are actually fairly different, but there has been a misconception that there are two frameworks here competing with each other, and this is wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the short answer: Scrum and Kanban attempt to solve different problems and can be used together very well. Also, the direct answers to your questions are at the bottom of this post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is a very loose framework designed for solving complex-adaptive problems (problems where you have to try things and adapt to find the answer) and its goal is to organize the team and the work in a way that helps them tackle these issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban is a method for improving your process, regardless of what that process is. Scrum isn't very explicit (intentionally) on how to complete the work in the sprint, so no conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrumban goes poorly when you take what you feel like out of each framework and drop the stuff you don't want to do. On the other hand, if you combine them, they can be great. What I've usually seen that look like is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Scrum team understands the core mechanics of scrum, but has problems with the flow of work through the sprint. Maybe a lot of work piles up at the end or sometimes key items get missed. Either way, they want to improve how they get the work on in scrum. So, instead of a basic Ready-Doing-Done board, they visualize their workflow, design a board off of it, apply WIP limits and start tracking cycle time. Thanks to the Kanban part, they find that certain types of work get stuck in an ugly back-and-forth cycle with another group and they take steps to try to improve on that problem. And there, a scrum team uses kanban to improve how they do the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to your specific questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does scrum allow any number of WIP items at a time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum uses the timebox of the sprint to limit overall WIP to whatever can be completed. Many teams find this constraint inadequate and apply additional WIP limits to steps in the development process or even team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should kanban stories be assigned points or just lead estimates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not aware of any &quot;right&quot; answer to this. Many purely Kanban teams do not use estimates, but estimates don't get in the way of Kanban either. Usually when used to improve the team's process in scrum, the points are kept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What does kanban say about INVEST? Specifically, vertical slices of&#xA;  functionality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nothing. However, as Kanban is built on Lean principles, if you are doing work without creating value, you would be violating a number of Lean principles and probably creating a lot of waste. A good practice for a Kanban team is to move deliverable items across the board, not work tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does the kanban backlog have a priority order (how are the stories&#xA;  sequenced?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, the simple answer is top-first. There are some exceptions like if the team uses emergency lanes or other classes of service, but single-column top-first is a good place to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-08-14T07:48:33.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22210" CreationDate="2017-08-14T07:58:30.660" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are probably a few things happening here. First, unless your teams are outrageously large, extremely long tasking sessions may be a sign of a different problem. I assume you are practicing scrum since you mentioned velocity. Scrum recommends a team of 5-9 people. I've never seen a good tasking session last longer than 30-60 minutes for a 2-week sprint. If you have more people than that, you may be pushing the limits of what a team can handle and might want to look at simple scaling methods with multiple teams (like Scrum-of-scrums for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would caution against what you are describing. Ultimately, it is optimizing people's time to gain you maybe 20-minutes per week while sacrificing shared code ownership, knowledge transfer, team cohesion and performance, and can ultimately cost you far more than what you're saving. It also prevents you from being able to have teams &quot;swarm&quot; on epics to complete them and instead forces your team to bring many epics into progress and take longer to complete all of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-08-14T07:58:30.660" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22214" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22220" CreationDate="2017-08-14T08:43:58.183" Score="2" ViewCount="266" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been asked what a team should do when the nature of the project precludes vertical slices in their deliverable stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The definition of 'Incremental Development' is provided here:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/incremental-development/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/incremental-development/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Near the top of that document is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;in an Agile context, this means that each successive version of the&#xA;  product is usable, and each builds upon the previous version by adding&#xA;  user-visible functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have recently had a query of the form:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What happens in an agile project when the nature of the software being&#xA;  built simply doesn't have a previous version to be built upon and thus&#xA;  cannot deliver a successive, usable version? For example, software&#xA;  layers in a mobile phone which have no 'phone' to be a part of yet and&#xA;  which most likely do not involve user input and simply provide a&#xA;  service to other units of functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, how can you implement INVEST when it appears there is not enough depth in the story to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I have previously witnessed a scrum master who enforced, on a web project, full DB-to-UI work on every story - literally - and, yes, this caused a lot of friction.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29374" LastEditorUserId="29374" LastEditDate="2017-08-14T08:52:40.093" LastActivityDate="2017-08-15T16:10:18.670" Title="Can't do 'vertical'" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22214" CreationDate="2017-08-14T11:00:32.290" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;tl;dr; Do your best. Try to always produce validated knowledge or usable functionality. Always look for user feedback. Don't sweat it when you don't see a good option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of this practice was to product increments of a product. In agile we want to get rid of the idea that we know the &quot;right&quot; solution and we just have to code it. That's almost never the case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This video explains the different types of process control and scrum firmly leverages empirical. (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-VaiB3uPdk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-VaiB3uPdk&lt;/a&gt;) In it, the goal is always to take a next small step and see how much closer that takes us to our answer. Designing a database is great if we're in defined process control because we already know for certain what all of the steps are and it's just a question of working through them. It's horrible for empirical process control because you learn little or nothing from it. You know you did work, but there is no way to tell if it's the right work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you're asking yourself what the next step is and how you'll use the next product increment to learn something about how your customer will use the product and what &quot;done&quot; really means for you, you're probably on the right track, even if you don't end up coding UI functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-08-14T11:00:32.290" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22216" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-14T11:26:55.617" Score="0" ViewCount="219" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to set a task to either be wholly complete by 1st Dec, if not then start after 1st Jan (i.e. don't start at all if it can't be completed by 1st Dec). I don't want to split the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to do that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Richard&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29501" LastActivityDate="2021-04-26T07:05:35.587" Title="MS Project - how to set a task to finish before else start after a set period" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;&lt;dependencies&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22216" CreationDate="2017-08-14T14:17:20.567" Score="0" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In MSP, there is no general-purpose way to do that using automatic scheduling with traditional logical restraints, constraints and calendars.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is easily done using targeted resource leveling. e.g. make a &quot;December Blackout&quot; task using resource &quot;DBO&quot; for the whole month of December (scheduled using constraint and no logic links).  Give the task a priority of 1000.  Also assign resource DBO for any tasks that must finish before or start after the blackout period.  In Resource Leveling options, ensure that &quot;Leveling can create splits in remaining work&quot; is un-checked, then level the resource either manually or automatically.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can always use manual-mode scheduling or leads/lags/constraints to manipulate dates as well.  Aside from the fact that such techniques are trivial for the present question, they would in general be considered bad practice.   &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastEditorUserId="25557" LastEditDate="2017-08-14T19:12:16.173" LastActivityDate="2017-08-14T19:12:16.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22179" CreationDate="2017-08-14T16:07:19.030" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many factors that must be considered to conclude if project is complex. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Size/duration of project : Any project (Software/construction/infra.) which is going beyond 18 months for its completion is good hint to indicate complex nature&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technology maturity : If project is using a niche technology with low maturity of the technology itself, then there will be lot of &quot;learning curve&quot; involved for project people. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cross functional diverse team : for sure project communication will be super complex if there 5 or more cross functional teams are involved. All of them needs to be in &quot;sync&quot; for project to succeed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risks : in case if project technology is relatively less matured, the &quot;unknown&quot; risks will be far more. Also, there will be risk of people attrition if they are not comfortable with project technology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are of course few points and there can be few more that can be added based on &quot;your&quot; project structure. Then you can give them some score.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example : if Project duration is less than 3-months, complexity is simple, 3-12 months, complexity is medium, 12-month or more - complex. Likewise you keep &quot;ranking&quot; each factor (such as risk, technology) to draw appropriate conclusion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21918" LastEditorUserId="21918" LastEditDate="2017-08-14T16:17:11.053" LastActivityDate="2017-08-14T16:17:11.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22214" CreationDate="2017-08-14T21:19:18.573" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the first couple of Sprints, a Scrum product should always be a in a potentially-releasable state. That &lt;em&gt;inherently&lt;/em&gt; means there's always something to demonstrate at a Sprint Demo, but you may need to be creative and &quot;think outside the box&quot; to find it. Treat demos as first-class work products during Sprint Planning in order to make demonstrations easier and more intuitive to develop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;APIs and Middleware Aren't Magical Unicorns&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What happens in an agile project when the nature of the software being built simply doesn't have a previous version to be built upon and thus cannot deliver a successive, usable version? For example, software layers in a mobile phone which have no 'phone' to be a part of yet and which most likely do not involve user input and simply provide a service to other units of functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a common misunderstanding of what &quot;iterative&quot; or &quot;incremental&quot; mean in an agile context. It in no way means you must have a prior version of the software; it means that &lt;em&gt;future&lt;/em&gt; versions can (and generally should) build upon the work that's gone before. Agile projects benefit greatly from emergent design, and agile frameworks optimize for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;APIs and middleware can grow and evolve in small, testable increments in the same way as any other software can, so there's nothing orthogonal to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt; in such systems. APIs and middleware can be versioned, modified, and extended in much the same way as more traditional software, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's nothing inherent to APIs or middleware that prevents them from being kept in a potentially-releasable state or being demonstrable. Such systems should still do &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt;, and if you can test it then you can demonstrate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Demonstrating Non-Graphical Whosiwhatsits&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said all that, what seems to flummox many people is the difficulty in demonstrating new functionality in a product that doesn't lend itself easily to visual presentations. Doing so often requires a bit more creativity and agile testing experience than many shops have when they start their agile journeys. Some common solutions include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Using executable tests for the demonstration.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cucumber is a great example of this. Seeing well-written tests (and hence behavior-describing documentation) go green is a perfectly valid demonstration for many types of software.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Leveraging your development or QA testing harness for demonstrations.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost any brand of TDD/BDD or continuous integration will require some level of test abstraction. Mocks, stubs, fixtures, and factories often stand in for other pieces of the &quot;real&quot; architecture, even in integration tests. There's nothing stopping you from using such techniques to stub out the functionality of API or middleware clients in your Sprint Demos.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Build a &quot;demo client.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is to show your product doing something. If you can't show it in situ, you can at least create a mock-up or simulator showing how an API or middleware client would interact with your code. Demo that interaction!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Documentation, pie charts, and other visual aids.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint Demo is intended to show progress, and to solicit stakeholder feedback to feed into future Sprints. While all abstractions are leaky, if you genuinely can't envision any other way to demonstrate your increment of work you can always leverage secondary artifacts. Walk people through code, commit history, living API documentation like Swagger, or other things which provide a valid view of the product's current state.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum mandates that work increments be demonstrated, but isn't prescriptive about &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; the demonstrations need to be done. There's no mandate that a demo must require a keyboard or a graphical interface. If it's relevant to the product, skywriting or interpretive dance could be just as legitimate for the demonstration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The framework's goal is to avoid traditional status reporting, and to give stakeholders &quot;more show, less tell.&quot; If the team can't find a way to demonstrate the work increment, I daresay they will have a very hard time testing it, too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Plan Demos During Planning&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TDD/BDD frameworks work best when you design the tests first, rather than writing your tests post facto; it makes testing easier, and ensures the product is built to be tested &lt;em&gt;ab initio&lt;/em&gt;. Sprint Demos are no different. During Sprint Planning, the team should factor how they plan to demo the work into their user stories and estimates on the front end rather than the back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes planning around demonstrations may change how you slice up stories, or how you plan or estimate the work. If so, great! That means you're leveraging the framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Treat demos as first-class work products, not afterthoughts. When you reframe the work this way, the best way to demonstrate the work increments usually becomes self-evident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2017-08-15T16:10:18.670" LastActivityDate="2017-08-15T16:10:18.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22206" CreationDate="2017-08-15T01:05:04.093" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently, I'm not working in Agile or Scrum daily so this may sound naive but couldn't you try to turn the architecture issue into a story? Support teams, DBAs, and future dev team &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; be described as a &quot;user&quot; and can have viewpoints on usability, scalability, DR/BC, etc. and you can toss them into the same evaluation process as any other user story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2017-08-15T01:05:04.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22222" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-15T02:08:17.747" Score="1" ViewCount="115" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I'm expecting the delivery of around 50 items from a contractor, each with their own forecast delivery dates and agreed need dates, what is the optimal way to track the forecast dates each time it's reported (in order to see any slippage/trends that give early warning signs)? Also, how would you best graphically represent this forecast when reporting up the chain? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for any assistance you can give! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29515" LastActivityDate="2017-09-16T13:26:26.177" Title="Milestone Reporting Format - Any ideas?" Tags="&lt;reporting&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22206" CreationDate="2017-08-15T08:12:06.710" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short Answer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may seem like an obvious or overly simple answer, but usually the right answer is to address it as soon as you see it. Simply put, it is usually better to fix it now than build a bunch more features on top of a flawed architecture before fixing it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also be open to the idea that you may need to fix some parts immediately to stop additional work from making the problem worse while other parts may be less urgent. That may help it be a little less massive of a refactoring effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PBI's Not User Stories&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum does not demand user stories. The idea that every backlog item can be a user story is a nice academic exercise, but don't get hung up on it. Put in the needed product backlog items to course correct your architecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for producing a valuable increment, if the architecture is truly problematic, there is user value. Maybe it deadlocks after 100 concurrent users or you get data mixed between sessions or, maybe the technical problem is all code-related and your ability to develop fixes and user-requested features in the future will be hindered. Either way, there is value in that increment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use Constraints&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is hard to come up with the perfect architecture from the beginning. Decades of software development has taught us this. Use architectural constraints to help keep your architecture &quot;in bounds&quot; and help alert you when you're drifting too far. Progressive web apps offer a great example of architectural constraints. Some of those rules include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;App must work offline&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;App must work on all browsers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;App structure should load and fill in content&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These loose rules let the team make better architectural decisions without having to set an architecture in stone at the start. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This, of course, won't completely prevent your situation, but when it does occur, one or more constraints can usually come out of it to bring things back on track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-08-15T08:12:06.710" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22210" CreationDate="2017-08-15T16:06:07.910" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interesting approach. However, splitting a team into such small members will most likely have negative impacts. A few of my immediate concerns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accuracy of estimations: A bigger team with more members estimating = more experience sitting around the table. When estimating the effort involved in completing a story, power comes with numbers. Discussions around the table about differing estimates gives a better picture of what needs to be done, and if some estimates are way out, a way for everyone to understand why that is and how to resolve them. Most of the effectiveness of this is lost with only two people&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Loss of problem solving solutions and ideas: Similar to above, only having two members decide on an approach to a story could have big impacts. They may decide their way is best, but it's possible another person in another isolated team could have an idea that halves the implementation time, or has a much simpler solution. You raise the risk of overcomplicating parts of the project by splitting team members up&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dropping the bus factor: If two members work in an isolated environment, then they're effectively narrowing down the knowledge on that piece of work to just themselves, meaning that, should they move to another team or leave the company altogether, that knowledge leaves with them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learning: How do team members share knowledge and learnings on a grand scale if they only work in isolated environments? What point is a retrospective of 11+ people when people only interact in pairs?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Etc. etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could continue for a while, but all of these benefits you're potentially missing out on are repeated and repeated and repeated time and again where agile is concerned (have you done any reading on this?). My gut feeling is that you're trying to fix a methodology where it's not the methodology that is causing pain, it's the &lt;em&gt;implementation&lt;/em&gt;. You say in your comment to Daniel that velocity has increased, and the team members are happy. How do you measure this? What about the &lt;em&gt;quality&lt;/em&gt; of work, or the accuracy of your estimates? How long have you been measuring these KPIs using your new ideas, and did you measure these KPIs on your old implementation? Be careful that you're not just looking at short-term positive impacts to support your decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum works successfully for a phenomenal number of teams, and I don't see anything out of the ordinary with your team that means it shouldn't work for you. My suggestion is to closely follow the fundamentals of agile and Scrum properly before hacking it to fit what you think it should be. For instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team sizes should be no bigger than nine. It says this &lt;em&gt;everywhere&lt;/em&gt;, and for good reason. Break them into two teams. It's possible for one Scrum master to manage two teams, so try it out&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Isolating team members has a ton of negative side-effects that may not be noticeable now, but in the long term could be very damaging for the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Constantly review the impact of these decisions going forward, not just once, but continuously&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17177" LastActivityDate="2017-08-15T16:06:07.910" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3582" CreationDate="2017-08-15T18:41:20.177" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually MSProject should have two fields - duration and effort. An effort takes 10 hrs but the duration is over 2 weeks. The person would work on this based on other factors up to 10 hrs over a period of 2 weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So &#xA;Effort = 10 hrs&#xA;Duration = 2 weeks starting on Aug 7 through 18 for two weeks &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29522" LastActivityDate="2017-08-15T18:41:20.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22227" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-15T21:58:15.623" Score="-3" ViewCount="442" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on the software development life cycle use the waterfall model to resolve the following project.an aeroplane has to be designed to every little detail upfronts.this is possible mostly because we have been building airplanes for a lot longer than we ve been building software.furthermore,because any two airpalnes share perhaps 80% of the DNA and any 2 software applications share perhaps 20% of their DNA&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the above information,explain the process invoved from interception of d project to its final stage to design and maintain the airplane project.state d advantages and disadvantages of suing this model to solve this project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So der is no answer to dis questions ryt?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29525" LastEditorUserId="29525" LastEditDate="2017-08-16T08:54:40.320" LastActivityDate="2017-08-16T08:54:40.320" Title="what is the advantages of using a waterfall model to solving a project on an aeroplane" Tags="&lt;waterfall&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2017-08-17T18:28:04.457" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22227" CreationDate="2017-08-16T02:19:30.930" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The waterfall model as a sequence of activities to be completed in order is not applicable to building and aeroplane.  Certainly not one of any size.  However, it does layout major activities and the order in which they are started.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any major airplane design goes through a lot of design, build (usually a model), test iterations before the real building begins.  Even when they get to full scale, there will be extensive testing of the first models, possibly leading to redesign.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Early documents on the Waterfall model, such as one by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/spring2003/cmsc838p/Process/waterfall.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr Winston W Royce,&lt;/a&gt; included feedback loops to earlier processes.  I expect project managers stripped the feedback loops so that they could indicate completed steps earlier.  Also the skills sets for the various steps can be significantly different.  There is likely pressure to release the resources required for a step once the initial work is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2017-08-16T02:19:30.930" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22200" CreationDate="2017-08-16T08:11:01.210" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If formal definitions are contradictory then I'd fall back on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_test&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Duck Test&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So does a Scrum Master discipline or sack someone if they break company rules? Do they make recruitment decisions? Do they have a budget that needs to be negotiated with the directors or finance people? Do people completely refer to the Scrum Master for all their daily work requirements?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short do they completely manage people or budgets? If they don't then they don't quack like a manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;If you want to use traditional management terminology, a Scrum Master is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervisor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;supervisor&lt;/a&gt; rather than a manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="693" LastEditorUserId="693" LastEditDate="2018-06-20T10:03:01.910" LastActivityDate="2018-06-20T10:03:01.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22197" CreationDate="2017-08-16T13:54:45.870" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I figured it out. I assigned the base calendar to each task and I guess that was somehow overriding the resource calendar. Once I removed that everything was fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29485" LastActivityDate="2017-08-16T13:54:45.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22210" CreationDate="2017-08-17T02:57:33.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Every pair is assigned to be focused on the user stories in a single epic only. Task breakdowns are carried out by the pair only. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you talking about estimation &amp;amp; task breakdown only, or also development?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming the former, then if I was experimenting with this approach, I would add a required team review of the pair-produced task breakdowns &amp;amp; estimates. Nothing in great or gory detail, just an opportunity for everyone to read the board and put their finger on anything that didn't seem quite right, and revise before proceeding. This mitigates against the first two risks that @dKen identifies, and also allows for knowledge transfer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the latter, I would be more hesitant about that. Six teams of two is a lot harder to coordinate than 2 teams of six, in addition to having the longterm negative effects mentioned in other answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2017-08-17T02:57:33.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22222" CreationDate="2017-08-17T13:04:20.763" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My preference is to use a Milestone slip chart. &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gpmfirst.com/sites/default/files/book_uploads/9780566086038/files/graphics/fig10_3.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Example chart&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The horizontal axis is the forecast date, and the vertical axis is the reporting date. The advantage of these charts is that you can annotate them to summarise why Milestones have changed, so they can tell a story of the history of the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the high number of Milestones you have, it would be better if you categorise them and only show 5 to 10 per chart. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25572" LastActivityDate="2017-08-17T13:04:20.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22187" CreationDate="2017-08-17T15:04:38.543" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;None.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any individual performance metrics should only be used for the benefit of the employee. Otherwise you're committing &lt;a href=&quot;https://lookforwardconsulting.com/2015/03/21/what-is-teamicide/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;teamicide&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you want to have your team members help each other out on problems? Coach each other on technologies? Do you want them to give you their best estimates? And just work on what is next on the list? Do you want them to identify with something more than themselves?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are all things you stand to lose if you incentivize looking out for yourself over the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2017-08-17T15:04:38.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22234" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22284" CreationDate="2017-08-17T21:08:16.363" Score="6" ViewCount="1021" Body="&lt;p&gt;So this is a question that many people have answered on their blogs and I think one person even wrote a mini book a answering this question. However, I wasn't able to relate to them so I am hoping to get some input from experienced Scrum Masters / Coaches over here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me elaborate with some scenarios:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are a SM, you saw the daily scrum take place smoothly, the team&#xA;is gone back to their desks to work. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are a SM, you have worked with the PO and the team and the Product Backlog is appropriately groomed for the upcoming Sprint, due in say 2 weeks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The organization is doing quite well in their agile journey and doesn't necessarily need any urgent coaching&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All the artefacts are up to date thanks to an online tool that automates quite a bit&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you can assume the team is in the &quot;Performing&quot; stage of team development and you are a full time employee for this one team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how do you fill the rest of your day/s?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not look for answers listing responsibilities of a SM, like removing impediments or coaching. Neither do I want a daily schedule with entries like &quot;meet with John to discuss XYZ&quot;. That doesn't take much time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, I am hoping to get some real-life examples that can be replicated. Something that is actually common for all SM of software teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in my own case, I have mostly worked on mega projects so the backlog grooming took forever in the early stages of the project and as things progressed, I would help out with end user support, training, pick up some independent technical tasks and get them done, or just do documentation. These would take from a day to a whole sprint, especially if I pick up a couple of stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about you guys? I am particularly keen to get some feedback from purists who say 1 SM, and only 1 SM, per 1 or 2 teams at most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastActivityDate="2018-05-08T20:40:53.057" Title="What do Scrum Masters do all day?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22235" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-18T03:23:03.713" Score="2" ViewCount="6643" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is one sentence at P120 5.3 Define scope (PMBOK 5th) confuse me a lot, it says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The key benefit of this process is that it describes the project, ..... by defining which of the requirements collected will be included in and excluded from the project scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is that what kind of requirements will be excluded from project scope? Can you give me an example?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one requirement was exclude from scope, should it keep staying in the requirement documentation? or should it be deleted from documentation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29546" LastEditorUserId="12235" LastEditDate="2017-08-18T10:36:56.193" LastActivityDate="2017-09-04T12:38:05.510" Title="What kind of requirements will be excluded from project scope?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;scope&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22235" CreationDate="2017-08-18T05:48:46.197" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;During the initial phases of a project, requirements are not frozen and therefore they are in fact &quot;candidates&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This allows working on requirements, and some of them can be cancelled to tailor the scope for the greater goal of the project. Also, some new requirements can be added to improve functionality, to acquire some new skills, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, not all requirements are relaxed/negotiable. There can be fixed requirements, such as the ones that the customer dictates, or the ones that come from government / industry regulations, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless the project is a small and quick one, all requirements (obligatory or negotiable) must be kept under configuration control, and decisions must be documented. if some requirements are excluded from the scope, the justifications must be in the company documentations. This would be decided and defined in the scope of the Systems Engineering Plan of the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16715" LastActivityDate="2017-08-18T05:48:46.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22235" CreationDate="2017-08-18T12:36:21.153" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Requirements will be either mandatory or optional. Optional requirements are prioritized based on approved criteria, one of which is usually cost.  Those optional requirements that rank low are candidates for deferral.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: You are building a new home in a vacant lot, the size of which can include a pool and pool house, both of which rank lower on your family's list of priorities. Due to costs, you defer both. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deferred requirements should never be removed from the documentation. They remain for historical purposes, including reasons why it was deferred. For those that are canceled, not deferred, they should remain, too, because of the reason for cancellation, and who approved it, needs to survive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2017-08-18T14:36:22.690" LastActivityDate="2017-08-18T14:36:22.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22238" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-18T12:44:47.697" Score="2" ViewCount="179" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in the large Company, where Agile is in its core. Three years ago teams received autonomy to decide on how they work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have joined the team as a Scrum Master. Engineers in the team don't accept any help, they don't want to change their routines. They want to have a traditional manager, who will be like their father: the smartest among them, designing their schedules, protecting them, telling what to do and how.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very often manager is busy and people have to wait for his decisions, directions, while doing nothing. I tried retrospectives, reviews, and people simply see it as a waste of time. They want their manager decide for them. They are not even interested in knowing the vision for their product. It looks like people are not willing to take responsibility for the value that they bring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the first thing you would do to fix such team? Not necessarily as a Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5851" LastActivityDate="2017-09-01T20:23:09.610" Title="Team Dynamics Issue" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;team&gt;&lt;culture&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22238" CreationDate="2017-08-18T12:51:07.843" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming that the you are painting an accurate picture, that the manager is aware of this, and that the bottlenecks you describe is happening and clear, then the manager is enabling the team dysfunction. Step one would probably be to ask the manager to change their behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-08-18T12:51:07.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22238" CreationDate="2017-08-18T13:38:28.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see three possible solutions to your problem, each with varying degrees of difficulty and effectiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first option is probably the hardest. You would need to convince the Team of two things. First, that the way things are currently being run is detrimental to the company; that a more Agile methodology will be much better (this is the easy part). The second, harder part is convincing the Team that they should &lt;em&gt;care&lt;/em&gt;. Convincing a Team which has been preconditioned to view a job as a nine-to-five source of income that they should instead view it as part of their own personal core values is... &lt;em&gt;difficult&lt;/em&gt;. Worse still, the method needed for each person is different... but in (nearly) all cases just throwing money at them will hurt more than help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second option is to &lt;em&gt;force&lt;/em&gt; the Team to become self-organizing, through managerial pressure. I see two obvious ways to go about this, and both require the immediate manager's buy-in and empowerment. The first is for the manager to simply &lt;em&gt;tell&lt;/em&gt; the Team that they need to solve their own issues. The second is for the manager to simply become unavailable for such things (&quot;Sorry, I'm swamped right now. Can you figure this out yourselves?&quot;) and inform the Team that if they don't get things ready &lt;em&gt;somehow&lt;/em&gt;, the project is going to be in danger... along with their jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third option is to fire them and hire employees more in line with Agile values. Simple, effective, expensive, and probably bad for morale of other Teams... but possibly not any worse than option 2. It also might simply be impossible, given your organization's culture and other constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-08-18T13:38:28.303" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22241" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22242" CreationDate="2017-08-18T14:25:44.587" Score="-1" ViewCount="931" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Context:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A large , enterprise level Programme which has many teams and a pipeline of working with both software and infrastructure including migration and decommissioning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Teams Affected&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An upstream team gathers requirements from customers about applications and ensures that customers can either self-serve or move into one of two delivery tracks.  They author user stories, ensure firm acceptance criteria and define patterns and business outcomes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A dedicated Feature Team then take those User Stories and deliver them with the upstream team attending the  Sprint Review to take custody of the delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Tools&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both teams use Jira and have mature user story processes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Requirement&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the SM for the Feature Team I want to be able to take User Stories from the Upstream Team, from their backlog, and show them in our Sprint without moving them directly between backlogs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Solutions tried&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bulk moving stories to the Feature Team backlog/project and then back to the Upstream Team upon completion (not ideal / unwieldy / loss of golden thread)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tagging stories with a manual tag showing the Feature Team Sprint (not ideal as it does not feed into the Jira reporting metrics.  It is just a tag).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Editing the &amp;quot;Sprint&amp;quot; field in the User Story to show the Sprint that the story has been pulled into&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Summary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two projects.  Two backlogs.  Team A do a portion of the stories for Team B  and pull them into their Sprint but the stories do not show up in the Jira Sprint, in the Burndown or the Sprint Report pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Caveat&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking for a Jira answer.  Please don't respond with Organizational changes or other such critiques of the Programme delivery as much as you may want to.  It is nothing that has not been debated at length in a Programme of 250+ people. Apologies if that sounds curt but this forum has a tendency to drop straight into coaching mode and skirt the actual question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-08-18T14:56:31.097" Title="How can I display another Project's issues in my current Sprint in Jira?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22241" CreationDate="2017-08-18T14:56:31.097" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to assume that both Teams are sharing a single instance of JIRA Software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is the case, then you should be able to simply &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/agile/jira-agile-user-s-guide/configuring-a-board&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;modify the filter query of your Scrum board&lt;/a&gt;. Just go to the board configuration screen (either through Board-&gt;Configure or Agile-&gt;Manage Boards-&gt;your board) then click 'Edit Filter Query', edit your query, then save it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This works because, while it &lt;em&gt;looks&lt;/em&gt; by default as if each Project has its own Board and the connection is incontrovertible, that's not actually the case. In practice, each Board represents simply a JQL issues filter, which, by default, will be something like &quot;project = SP1 ORDER BY Rank ASC&quot;, where SP1 is the code identifier for your project (let's call it Scrum Project 1).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So all you'd need to do is change the filter to incorporate both projects. The JQL would then look something akin to &quot;project = SP1 OR project = SP2 ORDER BY Rank ASC&quot;. At which point, any issues created for &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; project would show up in your Backlog (and, consequentially, would be available for inclusion in your Sprint). If you do this, one additional configuration change you may wish to make is to include 'Project' in the Card layout. This will cause the Board to show what Project each card belongs to on each card.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that, when you &lt;em&gt;create&lt;/em&gt; an issue, it will be created for your current project, even if it's set up to show on both Boards. While Boards can be created irrespective of projects, issues cannot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-08-18T14:56:31.097" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22243" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22244" CreationDate="2017-08-18T16:49:05.347" Score="2" ViewCount="2098" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do spikes need to be demoed or you kind of just describe the knowledge gathered from the spike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During a Team Demo in safe.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://v4.scaledagileframework.com/team-demo/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://v4.scaledagileframework.com/team-demo/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looks like the team could. But how do they do that. Technically the software solution did not change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29553" LastEditorUserId="29553" LastEditDate="2017-08-18T17:23:10.353" LastActivityDate="2017-09-13T20:45:48.893" Title="How do you demo a spike?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;safe&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22243" CreationDate="2017-08-18T16:59:24.730" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, at a Sprint Review, &quot;you inspect the increment and adapt the Product Backlog&quot;. Spikes (which aren't even defined in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;) are a method to capture things that your team needs to do in order to investigate, learn, and be able to deliver a Product Backlog Item in the current or future Sprint. There's no stakeholder value being delivered by completing a Spike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, there is nothing to demonstrate in a Spike. You haven't done anything to the project that you are working on. If anything, you may have completed a prototype or mockup. But you wouldn't want to demonstrate that at a Sprint Review for fear of giving the impression that there has been more work done on the design and development work for the Product Backlog Items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any completed Spikes are useful in the Sprint Review, however. Part of the purpose of the Sprint Review is to revise the Product Backlog. Based on the Spike, you have learned information about one or more other stories which may have led to additional detail being added, stories being decomposed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, no. You do not include Spikes when reviewing the work that you have accomplished in the Sprint. You may want to mention that you have done certain Spikes to better understand particular work, but that's about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: This answer was originally written against &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/revisions/22243/1&quot;&gt;Revision 1 of the question&lt;/a&gt;. This revision only contained tags referencing &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/scrum&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;scrum&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;scrum&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/agile&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;agile&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;agile&lt;/a&gt;. The information regarding SAFe was added in Revision 2. This answer is based on my experience with Scrum and Disciplined Agile Delivery and not SAFe. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/spikes/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SAFe does have guidance on Spikes that, to some extent, disagrees with this answer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2017-08-20T18:52:59.553" LastActivityDate="2017-08-20T18:52:59.553" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22245" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22247" CreationDate="2017-08-18T17:47:58.113" Score="4" ViewCount="9367" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the seventh day of a two weeks Sprint, we realize that 20 percent of the stories cannot be completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best action to take?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible/recommended to cancel the iteration on start a new iteration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29553" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-08-18T18:38:24.270" LastActivityDate="2017-08-22T21:35:39.587" Title="What to do when mid-sprint, you realize some stories won't be done?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;safe&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22245" CreationDate="2017-08-18T18:43:23.077" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether or not you should cancel the Sprint and start over depends on whether or not your lack of ability to finish those stories translates to a lack of ability to accomplish your Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the beginning of every Sprint, the Product Owner must define a Goal for that Sprint. It should generally not be simply &quot;finish stories 1 and 2 and 5 and 6 and 7 and 8&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Sprint Goal becomes untenable, then yes, you should abort the current Sprint and plan a new one (note that it should be the Product Owner to make this call). If it's still possible to achieve the Sprint Goal, then it doesn't really &lt;em&gt;matter&lt;/em&gt; that Stories 2 and 6 aren't going to be done. Just re-estimate them next Sprint (possibly choosing to defer to a later Sprint or remove them outright).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Afterwards, regardless of whether or not the PO decides to terminate the Sprint, the situation should be brought up for discussion in the Sprint Retrospective meeting. If this is a recurring issue, then you need to look into changing your expected velocity. If a one-time issue caused by extraneous events, it should be determined what (if any) measures should be taken to mitigate that same risk in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-08-18T20:23:56.990" LastActivityDate="2017-08-18T20:23:56.990" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22243" CreationDate="2017-08-19T10:46:40.630" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I disagree with the other answer given. The Scrum Guide simply says about the Sprint Review: &quot;During the Sprint Review, the Scrum Team and stakeholders collaborate about what was done in the Sprint.&quot; The goal of this event is to collaborate between the team and the stakeholders or users in order to get feedback and determine the next step forward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While some spikes may not be appropriate to share because they might make no sense to the stakeholders, many are. Here are two examples I've experienced where it was clearly valuable to review spikes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The team was evaluating two options for CMS plugins to support a feature. As a spike, they created two new throw-away screens that implemented the basic functionality of the plug-ins. They were able to share with stakeholders their recommendation based on ease of implementation and the stakeholders gave feedback on which prototype gave them the look and feel they prefered.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A team was working with a new API. We created a little script that connected to the API pulled some data. We reviewed this with stakeholders in order to validate that the information we were able to retrieve from the API was the correct information that they needed for their purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of this also comes when planning the spikes. Often time there are ways to approach the problem that offer no opportunity for stakeholder feedback and ways that offer a lot of opportunity. I personally always favor the 2nd option if the effort is similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-08-19T10:46:40.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18701" CreationDate="2017-08-20T02:24:12.780" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If what you want is to have visibility to multiple boards in one view, without having to change screens, I don't think Jira gives you this right of the bat. But you could try an add-on. Here is one I think does this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/early-bird-planner-prod/cloud/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/early-bird-planner-prod/cloud/overview&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29568" LastActivityDate="2017-08-20T02:24:12.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22199" CreationDate="2017-08-20T14:16:28.113" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You've answered your own question in a way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This person unfortunately is from other department...&#xA;   &quot;I worked on other things so I didn't work on task I was supposed to.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For all practical purposes, QA is an off team dependency for your team. This person has competing priorities and isn't really a member of your team. I am 100% positive that this person has a manager who is asking them to do work that is not related to your team or project. Put yourself in their shoes, you're &quot;on a team&quot;, but your manager comes and asks you to do some unrelated work. Which work do you do, the work for the team or the work your manager asked you to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few ways to solve this, but the &lt;em&gt;best&lt;/em&gt;, in my opinion would be to get this person, or at least &lt;em&gt;a person&lt;/em&gt;, whose time is actually dedicated to your team. Make them a part of the team. Otherwise, you'll be forced to treat QA as an external dependency to your team and your team's ability to deliver will remain at the mercy of things out of their control. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest of this is a people management problem, not a project management problem. If this person was a team member, the team should be empowered to request a &lt;em&gt;different&lt;/em&gt; team mate from management though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastActivityDate="2017-08-20T14:16:28.113" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22252" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-20T17:41:14.877" Score="1" ViewCount="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;We run a MTA (mail server) to send out large numbers of emails (newsletters...). Sometimes we have to adapt on short notice the configuration of this system, i.e. slow down the send out for one specific receiving domain like (gmail) or enable encryption (TLS) for another. We do not know in advance and cannot test it as the receiving domains may change their behavior even within minutes as part of their spam protection processes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technically we have edit configuration files using a UI and restart the mail server. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a &quot;service point of view&quot; the mail service is interrupted and needs to be fixed ASAP. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would one organize such a change in ITIL? Ideally we should not have any  lead time before we are allowed to change the configuration (as the service is interrupted and mails cannot be send out).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29576" LastEditorUserId="29576" LastEditDate="2017-08-20T17:47:00.960" LastActivityDate="2017-08-21T02:03:44.227" Title="How does ITIL handle frequent adjustments to mailserver?" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;customer-service&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22252" CreationDate="2017-08-21T02:03:44.227" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you've described sounds like a candidate for a &lt;strong&gt;Standard&lt;/strong&gt; change in ITIL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ITIL defines 4 levels of requests for change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Standard &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Normal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Emergency &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Major&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A standard change is essentially any change who's inputs and outcomes are known, has a standard way of being implemented (Script Run, Cron Job, Server Restart) and which happens regularly. This &lt;a href=&quot;http://itsmtransition.com/2014/03/name-difference-standard-normal-changes-itil/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt; goes into more detail of Std vs. Norm if you're interested. And this &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cherwell.com/products/it-service-management/itil-processes/essential-guide-to-itil-change-management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;page&lt;/a&gt; outlines all 4 types in more detail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to manage Standard changes?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CAB has made a decision at some stage that this change can be deemed standard, due to it's regularity and low likelihood of failure. Thus, standard changes do not need to be vetted by the CAB, which removes some of the time lag between request and approval. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, with any change there should be some record of the request being made. As such, these can be managed through something like a pre-defined Service Request. Once the request is submitted, it is automatically approved and can be actioned - removing the time delay completely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will need to define some business rules around parameters you need, time for changes to occur and an expected timeframe for the change to be completed in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User story: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user, I can select a Mailserver Change request from the service catalogue. Then when submitted, your team may carry out the change at the requested time. Then when the change is successful, the ticket will be closed as complete. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Managing exceptions&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At some stage this standard change will fail and cause an event or incident, or perhaps the user may ask for some change parameters to change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At either of these points, the change should be passed back to the CAB for re-assessment. Once the CAB are happy that the change's likelihood of failure, or potential impact is acceptable, they can again approve for this to become a Standard change. This may only take one CAB cycle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This caveat should also be communicated to the requesters at the implementation of the process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Assumptions:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have a CAB to approve this change to become standard&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have an ITSM system with which to track these records&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The mail server restart is an accepted outcome of the change taking place&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29360" LastActivityDate="2017-08-21T02:03:44.227" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22254" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-21T10:06:54.980" Score="3" ViewCount="787" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;The Scrum Guide&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; provides a concise, definitive guide to scrum. Is there such a guide available for Kanban?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29578" LastActivityDate="2017-08-21T17:31:16.600" Title="Definitive Kanban reference?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22254" CreationDate="2017-08-21T12:40:16.603" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never seen anything like what you're looking for. I don't think it's likely to exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban was originally developed as part of the Toyota Production System and just-in-time manufacturing. The canonical reference for TPS would probably be &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0915299143&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production&lt;/a&gt;, which was written by Taiichi Ohno, the creator of TPS. I learned about TPS mainly from &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0071392319&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer&lt;/a&gt;, and the author (Jeffrey K. Liker) has other books about TPS and Toyota as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1680500775&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Real-World Kanban: Do Less, Accomplish More with Lean Thinking&lt;/a&gt; is also easily digestible and provides theory and practice around using Kanban. I picked up a copy, but having already learned TPS and lean software development, I don't think it added a whole lot. Some of the case studies and real-world practices were interesting, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these are longer than The Scrum Guide, though. If you're looking for something that short, I'm not sure you can find anything that does it justice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2017-08-21T12:40:16.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22254" CreationDate="2017-08-21T16:11:13.620" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are looking for good guides to the application of Kanban for knowledge work, especially software and IT, then the following are the must-read books - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business&quot; by David Anderson.  Published in 2010, this is also referred to as the 'Blue book on Kanban' - where David defined the &quot;Kanban Method for knowledge work&quot; - and is one of the most comprehensive descriptions of how and why Kanban should be used in all knowledge work. You can find it &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0984521402&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Kanban from the Inside&quot; by Mike Burrows.  This book expands on the agendas and values of the Kanban Method - and also provides a great insight on how to implement Kanban using the STATIK method - Systems Thinking Approach to Implementing Kanban. You can get this &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0985305193&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Kanban and Scrum - making the most of both (Enterprise Software Development)&quot; by Henrik Kniberg and Mattias Skarin - a good guide to using Scrum and Kanban together.  Here is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0557138329&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; for it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides these, there are a number of blogs which provide some great perspectives on the evolution of Kanban especially in the last 10 years.  My company's website also includes a fairly comprehensive guide to Kanban &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.digite.com/kanban/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, with specific sections on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.digite.com/kanban/what-is-kanban/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;What is Kanban&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.digite.com/kanban/getting-started-with-kanban/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Getting Started with Kanban&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2017-08-21T16:11:13.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22254" CreationDate="2017-08-21T16:46:47.557" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Guide was designed to be a structured, portable framework that could be lightly customized for each implementation. The Kanban Method is closer to a set of principles, and doesn't even mandate a set of common artifacts—not even the uniquitious board and cards that many people consider synonymous with Kanban!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Kanban Method&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The closest you're likely to get to a succinct guide is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.djaa.com/principles-kanban-method-0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;The Principles of the Kanban Method&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, although it's more akin to the Agile Manifesto than the Scrum Guide in terms of its level of detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're looking for a set of principles for implementing the Kanban method as formulated by David J. Anderson, then that's a key resource. Books on the topic generally have implementation examples, but because the framework is even less prescriptive than Scrum (in terms of ceremonies and artifacts) and less structured (by design), you're going to be hard-pressed to find a Kanban guide that's uncoupled from its implementation details, or that provides a comprehensive implementation guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The technical aspects of most books on Lean and Kanban focus on how to visualize the workflow, and on various calculations for queues, cycles, graphs, diagrams, and WIP limits. In other words, you get a lot of &quot;how we implemented the principles for Project X&quot; rather than a generic blueprint. This makes Kanban more flexible in some regards, but also less rigorous in other aspects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your question were closer to &quot;Is there a commonly-referenced guide for implementing Kanban in industry X?&quot; then it would still be tough to answer, but certainly more answerable. Kanban (as a general framework, rather than as an implementation) lacks the formal guidance you may have come to expect from other systems. This is largely by design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;See Also&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;General Resources&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/21884/4271&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/21884/4271&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/18599/4271&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/18599/4271&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/kanban&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/kanban&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B0057H2M70&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt; by David J. Anderson&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B000SEGIVS&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Additional Bibliography&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want additional sources, look to the bibliographies and citations of other books in the field. The following is taken from the bibliography of &lt;a href=&quot;https://pragprog.com/book/mskanban/real-world-kanban&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Real-World Kanban&lt;/a&gt; by Mattias Skarin:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;David J. Anderson. Kanban. Blue Hole Press, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.e-junkie.com/129573&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.e-junkie.com/129573&lt;/a&gt;, 2010.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mike Burrows. Kanban From the Inside. Blue Hole Press, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.e-junkie.com/129573&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.e-junkie.com/129573&lt;/a&gt;, 2014.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Marcus Hammarberg and Joakim Sunden. Kanban in Action. Manning Publications Co., Greenwich, CT, 2014.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Henrik Kniberg. Lean from the Trenches. The Pragmatic Bookshelf, Raleigh, NC, and Dallas, TX, 2011.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Henrik Kniberg and Mattias Skarin. Kanban and Scrum: Making the Most of Both. InfoQueue, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.infoq.com&lt;/a&gt;, 2009.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jeffrey Liker. The Toyota Way. McGraw-Hill, Emeryville, CA, 2004. Niklas Modig and Par Ahlstrom. This is Lean. Rheologica Publishing, Stockholm, Sweden, 2012.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mary Poppendieck and Tom Poppendieck. Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit for Software Development Managers. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 2003.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mary Poppendieck and Tom Poppendieck. Leading Lean Software Development. Addison-Wesley Professional, Boston, MA, 2009.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Donald G. Reinertsen. The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development. Celeritas Publishing, Redondo Beach, CA, 2009.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2017-08-21T17:31:16.600" LastActivityDate="2017-08-21T17:31:16.600" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22259" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-21T19:07:35.640" Score="2" ViewCount="357" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have introduced, and coached Scrum/Agile methodologies, my team has now got to the point where outside of the initial sprint planning they are extremely self organised and do not need me for most days as a Scrum master since the planning is done very well at the start of the week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My role is starting to feel redundant, what now?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2017-08-22T15:34:51.997" Title="Scrum team is self organised, now what?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22259" CreationDate="2017-08-21T21:46:09.360" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master, when my team workload is light I look to coach elsewhere in the organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples might include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coaching business users on how Scrum works and their role as stakeholders&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coaching developers and testers about test automation, continuous integration, continuous delivery and other Agile engineering approaches&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coaching HR about the impact Agile and Scrum has on recruiting, appraisals, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2017-08-21T21:46:09.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21275" CreationDate="2017-08-22T09:28:12.340" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This video shows how to organize the problem with a table, and proposes a simple greedy slack based heuristic solution: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AJ73qxZtsI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AJ73qxZtsI&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This page &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmknowledgecenter.com/dynamic_scheduling/baseline/critical-path-or-critical-chain-difference-caused-resources&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.pmknowledgecenter.com/dynamic_scheduling/baseline/critical-path-or-critical-chain-difference-caused-resources&lt;/a&gt; contains an &lt;em&gt;awesome&lt;/em&gt; visualization of the problem with a single resource type:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hGXx0.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hGXx0.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I bet this problem can be reduced to an &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_programming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;integer linear programming problem&lt;/a&gt;, which is NP-hard and widely studied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another consideration is if you can speed up tasks by putting more resources on them or not. If yes, the problem becomes less constrained, and likely easier to solve optimally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29597" LastEditorUserId="29597" LastEditDate="2017-08-24T07:13:56.210" LastActivityDate="2017-08-24T07:13:56.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22259" CreationDate="2017-08-22T09:30:08.027" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What a problem, you've reached Nirvana! A Self organizing team is the ideal Scrum setup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time to coach a new team ?&#xA;spread the Agile philosophy wider throughout the organisation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also consider enhancing the team offering by introducing Kudos Boards / Cards&#xA;Additionally its worth considering “Niko-Niko” if it can help improve your team happiness &amp;amp; identify potential issues earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly ... enjoy the peace while you can ... nothing stays the same for long, your team may need you back soon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29246" LastActivityDate="2017-08-22T09:30:08.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22259" CreationDate="2017-08-22T15:34:51.997" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master's job is never &quot;done.&quot; If you think the role has become unnecessary, you're likely overlooking something you should be doing or falling prey to the 100% utilization fallacy. Don't do that!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your job is not to be busy all the time. Your job is to facilitate the process, and to be readily available and &lt;strong&gt;actively engaged with the team&lt;/strong&gt; so that you maintain full situational awareness and remain fully plugged-in to the people and processes that affect the project. Even when it seems extraneous, the Scrum Master's job is to be immediately available for those times when the role is needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's plenty to do, as you will see below. But being busy is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the same thing as providing value or being efficient!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Scrum Master Duties&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Guide devotes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-sm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an entire section&lt;/a&gt; to explaining the &lt;em&gt;ongoing&lt;/em&gt; duties of the Scrum Master. These include services provided on an ongoing basis to the Product Owner, Development Team, and the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master is a servant-leader for the Scrum Team. The Scrum Master helps those outside the Scrum Team understand which of their interactions with the Scrum Team are helpful and which aren’t. The Scrum Master helps everyone change these interactions to maximize the value created by the Scrum Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;Scrum Master Service to the Product Owner&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master serves the Product Owner in several ways, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Finding techniques for effective Product Backlog management;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Helping the Scrum Team understand the need for clear and concise Product Backlog items;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Understanding product planning in an empirical environment;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Ensuring the Product Owner knows how to arrange the Product Backlog to maximize value;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Understanding and practicing agility; and,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Facilitating Scrum events as requested or needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;Scrum Master Service to the Development Team&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master serves the Development Team in several ways, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Coaching the Development Team in self-organization and cross-functionality;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Helping the Development Team to create high-value products;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Removing impediments to the Development Team’s progress;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Facilitating Scrum events as requested or needed; and,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Coaching the Development Team in organizational environments in which Scrum is not yet fully adopted and understood.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;Scrum Master Service to the Organization&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master serves the organization in several ways, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Leading and coaching the organization in its Scrum adoption;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Planning Scrum implementations within the organization;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Helping employees and stakeholders understand and enact Scrum and&#xA;  empirical product development;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Causing change that increases the productivity of the Scrum Team; and,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Working with other Scrum Masters to increase the effectiveness of the application of Scrum in the organization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even on a smoothly-running project with a self-organized team, the chance that all meetings are self-facilitating, all present &lt;em&gt;and future&lt;/em&gt; impediments have been rendered moot, and no further information about the project remains to be inspected, adapted, or radiated is essentially nil. So the need for a Scrum Master never truly goes away if you're doing Scrum properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Additional Scrum Master Duties&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the core duties of the role, the Scrum Master has other functions as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master must work with the Product Owner, Development Team, and other involved parties to...[ensure] artifacts are completely transparent...[and] help everyone apply the most appropriate practices in the absence of complete transparency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Scrum Master... [detects] incomplete transparency by inspecting the artifacts, sensing patterns, listening closely to what is being said, and detecting differences between expected and real results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master’s job is...to increase the transparency of the artifacts. This work usually involves learning, convincing, and change. Transparency doesn’t occur overnight, but is a path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Only the Product Owner has the authority to cancel the Sprint, although he or she may do so under influence from...the Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master enforces the rule that only Development Team members participate in the Daily Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master also facilitates and enforces all the ceremonies and time boxes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Reducing Project Communications Burdens&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, while not specifically called out in the &lt;em&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/em&gt;, the Scrum Master is often the Scrum Team member responsible for radiating information about the team and the project to the rest of the organization. This includes routine tasks such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;building burn-down charts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;working the stakeholders on release planning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;writing project reports&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;monitoring or communicating project control metrics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and other things that organizations still expect from projects, even when they're agile. Since the Scrum Guide doesn't explicitly place these tasks on the shoulders of the Scrum Master it could theoretically be done by any team member, but the Scrum Master is ideally placed to handle it because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Scrum Master is not bogged down in task delivery.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Scrum Master often has the bandwidth, especially later in a project's maturity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Taking the work on relieves the rest of the team of a non-delivery burden, which is the very essence of an effective Scrum Master.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Scrum Master didn't handle many of these tasks, they would eventually fall on someone else within the team. This would ultimately reduce team capacity, so trimming the &quot;overhead&quot; of Scrum Master slack would actually be a false economy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The 100% Utilization Fallacy&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[M]y team has now got to the point where outside of the initial sprint planning they are extremely self organised and do not need me for most days as a Scrum master since the planning is done very well at the start of the week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from the fact that there's clearly plenty for a Scrum Master to do (see the voluminous lists above), this question implicitly assumes the Scrum Master must be at 100% utilization to be valuable. This is simply the wrong way to look at &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; role on a cross-functional team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master is part of the cross-functional team, providing skills of leadership, coaching, facilitation, process ownership and refereeing, problem resolution, and communications management beyond the specific activities define by the role. These skills are needed throughout the project lifecycle, and while they (hopefully) aren't needed every minute of every day, when they're needed they're often needed &lt;em&gt;right then&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Scrum Master with slack is routinely available for servant-leader and other tasks. A part-time Scrum Master, or one who is engaged in multiple parallel projects, is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; immediately available to the team when needed most. This becomes a drag on overall project performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum (and agile frameworks in general) embrace change, so the notion that because things are running smoothly now that they will always run smoothly is ridiculous. Projects change. Teams evolve. Team members leave, and new ones join. The organizational memory shifts, changes, and occasionally fails. So there's always &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; for a Scrum Master to do, and part of that job is simply to be available for those times when it's necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Being available&quot; doesn't just mean having some holes in your schedule. It means always being &lt;strong&gt;actively engaged with the Development Team, the Product Owner, and the rest of the organization&lt;/strong&gt; so that you don't have to &quot;get up to speed&quot; when challenges arise. Having to spin up for each new problem would be extremely inefficient! Remaining engaged, and maintaining the relationships and awareness necessary to resolve problems quickly is a often full-time job in itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even when you don't have enough to do to remain busy all the time, get away from the 100% utilization fallacy. You don't have to be constantly buzzing like a bee to add value. Measure your value, not your level of busyness!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if you aren't adding any perceivable value, then you (just like other members of the team) can pull in additional work that adds value to the process, the team, or the organization. Just make sure that you aren't creating make-work; the goal must always be to support the process and the team, and pulling in excess or unnecessary work only makes it harder to remain focused on that objective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-08-22T15:34:51.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22245" CreationDate="2017-08-22T21:23:47.027" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;The Goal is the &quot;Meeting the Sprint Goal,&quot; Not Percentage Complete&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the seventh day of a two weeks Sprint, we realize that 20 percent of the stories cannot be completed...Is it possible/recommended to cancel the iteration on start a new iteration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sarov already posted a great answer, but I really want to hammer home this point: iterative development is about completing a well-defined goal for the iteration, not about how many stories you complete. With Scrum in particular:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technically, you can successfully achieve your Sprint Goal even if 100% of your Sprint Backlog items are incomplete.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can fail to achieve your Sprint Goal even if 100% of your Sprint Backlog are complete.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, the fact that the stories were the wrong ones or were grossly misestimated is a process problem that you don't want to repeat, but it's irrelevant to the success or failure of the Sprint itself. That's because Scrum is about delivering a meaningful increment of work, and user stories and framework ceremonies are just a means to an end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Measure Value Delivered, Not Effort Expended&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the hardest (but most important!) transitions agile teams need to make is the transition from utilization-based resource planning to goal-based planning. This is intertwined with the need to transition from utilization-based KPIs (which are generally only proxy metrics for productivity anyway) to results-driven measures of success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teams that measure stories completed as a first-class metric are often abusing velocity as a measure of productivity. These teams are often so busy trying to achieve higher levels of team-member utilization that they focus on parallelizing work rather than collaboratively swarming over it. It's an anti-pattern that usually lends itself to individual task performance rather than delivering a cohesive feature or feature-set as a team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Review Your Framework Fit&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find that the Product Owner and the Development Team can't routinely agree on a cohesive goal (hint: &quot;finish 100% of the stories assigned to the Sprint&quot; is not a valid goal) then you need to work as a team to determine if that's because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the process needs improvement;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the iterative nature of the framework isn't being leveraged; or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the organization has made the wrong choice for what's actually a continuous-flow or repetitive process that isn't really team-based.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Handling Goal Failures&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're setting the right goals and choosing the right user stories, then it's absolutely possible for a Sprint to fail. In fact, I would estimate that many of my high-performing teams have a 5-8% failure rate, and I would accept up to about 20% on short projects or from less-mature teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that in IT, the industry average is a whopping 68% failure rate for entire projects, so the occasional failure to achieve a modest goal is just an opportunity to recalibrate. By failing &lt;em&gt;early&lt;/em&gt; when possible you turn a problematic increment into an opportunity to inspect, adapt, and reallocate team resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner makes the decision as to whether or not the Sprint Goal can still be met. Sometimes the Sprint Backlog can be adjusted to meet the goal, while other times the goal can be lightly tweaked to manage scope. However, if it turns out the goal was the &lt;em&gt;wrong&lt;/em&gt; goal (which happens more than you might think) or there were unforeseen challenges—or sometimes even just because business priorities have changed—then it's often better to throw away a few days (or even a whole Sprint's worth) of work than it is to chase sunk costs or previously-expended efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An early termination is just a way of saying that something has changed, or the plan was wrong. The Product Owner and the team back up, reassess, and replan based on what they know &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt; rather than what they knew when the previous Sprint was planned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the Scrum Master, ensure that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Every early termination is formally called for by the Product Owner, regardless of who identified the problems that resulted in the early termination.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The termination is immediately followed by a retrospective to identify what went wrong and how to address it. (NB: This is about process improvement or communication, not about blame.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Sprint Retrospective is followed by a return to Sprint Planning and a brand-new time box for the following Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The fastest way to Scrum project failure is to treat time boxes as flexible or optional.&lt;/strong&gt; The second-fastest way I know is to skimp on replanning at time box boundaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;See Also&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Events: Cancelling a Sprint&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2017-08-22T21:35:39.587" LastActivityDate="2017-08-22T21:35:39.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22269" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-23T18:11:23.143" Score="1" ViewCount="167" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have this figure of &quot;Project Control Cycle&quot; from a book, Software Project Management by Bob Hughes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2bttX.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2bttX.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It comes under a section &quot;Management Control&quot;. There seems to be less description of what is the point of view to look at this diagram.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to understand what this diagram is about just by looking at it. I can see that you are making collection of some data from real world, processing information, then &quot;implementation&quot; [?] how are you actually implementing it? and what actions are taken on real world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29621" LastEditorUserId="29442" LastEditDate="2017-08-24T10:02:02.883" LastActivityDate="2017-08-24T10:02:02.883" Title="What does this diagram mean?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22269" CreationDate="2017-08-23T23:03:29.603" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It appears that in the diagram the boxes represent steps to be taken in the process, and the text on the arrows represents what you are carrying from the previous step into the next step. This chart does not specifically explain what steps are taken in implementation, that varies greatly by project. What this chart emphasizes is the four phases, &quot;Data Collection&quot; &gt; &quot;Data Processing&quot; &gt; &quot;Making Decisions / Plans&quot; &gt; &quot;Implementation&quot;, and the fact that these four phases lead up to actions that carry over from your project plan to the &quot;Real World&quot; for the process to be continually repeated as an organization/project evolves and you continue to refine what was already put in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29623" LastActivityDate="2017-08-23T23:03:29.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22271" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-24T02:34:41.137" Score="1" ViewCount="744" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the first time I've been asked to give any &quot;indication of achievement&quot; following the (S.M.A.R.T. methodology) with predefined goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below are the predefined goals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure a Secure Platform that is Stable and High-Performing which&#xA;gives confidence and assurance to our end users and stakeholders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maintain and enhance a Fun &amp;amp; High-Performing team Culture that is&#xA;Motivated and Engaged.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attain a full Modularized Architecture &amp;amp; have Planned and&#xA;Predictable Module Characteristics (car brochure/specs).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increase our DevOps Maturity &amp;amp; Sustain a weekly Delivery Cycle for&#xA;all product areas.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pursue and grow new business/product areas like Mobile applications&#xA;(i.e. EH), Cloud Portals, IB, eShop, Vendor and Knowledge&#xA;management, SUM and SWDP IWPs,  etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you be able to help me by explaining how to go about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29624" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-08-24T13:08:47.547" LastActivityDate="2018-11-19T07:00:45.147" Title="Indicator of achievements for performance goals" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;performance&gt;&lt;goals&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22269" CreationDate="2017-08-24T04:48:37.890" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The title &quot;Project Control Cycle&quot; gives a clue: here's how I would read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point of the diagram is that it is a feedback cycle for project control. Let's start in the middle: in order to make project decisions, you need objectives (what you're trying to accomplish) and information (how you're doing so far, what your users want, what the competition is like, etc etc). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Defining what you're trying to accomplish is pretty straightforward, but you can't get information from the world - you can only get data. You collect raw data from the real world (eg, keyclicks), and then you probably process it iteratively (eg, turn it into analytics). Now it's useful information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to decide what to do in order to accomplish your goal given that information, you probably have to do some modelling, whether formal or informal. EG, &quot;People are only spending 2 min on my website, and I want them to spend 5 min. What will probably happen if I add a rotating gallery? What about an article with a comment box? What if I rearrange what's there?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That modelling process will eventually lead you to a decision: in your models, the article with a comment box was most likely to get people to spend 5 min there. So now you have an informed decision and/or plan: &quot;We will add an article with comment box to the website. This will require (assorted task breakdown and schedule).&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;Implementation&quot; stage is &quot;implement the plan&quot;. Do the thing you decided to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And now... it's done... it's deployed out in the real world.. and you start gathering data from the real world again. Are people now spending 5 min on your website? What else has changed? What's your next objective? And so forth. Lather, rinse, repeat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2017-08-24T04:48:37.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22273" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22275" CreationDate="2017-08-24T06:13:59.403" Score="7" ViewCount="4023" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe the Product Owner is an important member of the team and needs to be as accessible as any other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've recently been confronted by the idea that because the PO is part of 'the business' (i.e.: the client) they should not be considered as a member of The Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put another way: They should attend important meetings and most stand-ups but be limited in their involvement to avoid trying to control the project (as has become bad practice for BAs or project management.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should they be kept at arm's length or fully indoctrinated into the agile process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29374" LastEditorUserId="29631" LastEditDate="2017-08-25T08:15:26.530" LastActivityDate="2018-04-07T23:11:48.493" Title="How important is having the PO inside the team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22273" CreationDate="2017-08-24T06:54:53.600" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PO is not supposed to control the team but he IS the one who controls the project in the sense that he prioritizes the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see why a PO would need to attend the stand-ups. He has nothing meaningful to contribute at that point. His inclusion is most likely just a convenient (for the SM) way to keep him up to date on the progress (which isn't the goal of the stand-ups). On the contrary I could see how this could lead to attempts of the PO to control the team...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They should definitely be in well tought about scrum and in close cooperation when it comes to fleshing out backlog items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you want to count him as part of the team is secondary. If he does the things he should and doesn't do the things he shouldn't...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2017-08-24T06:54:53.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22273" CreationDate="2017-08-24T07:24:55.333" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PO is an importand member of the agile team, but should remain strictly within its role definintion, which according to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ambysoft.com/essays/agileRoles.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;product owner&lt;/strong&gt;, called on-site customer in XP and&#xA;  active stakeholder in AM, represents the stakeholders. This is the one&#xA;  person responsible on a team (or sub-team for large projects) who is&#xA;  responsible for the prioritized work item list (called a product&#xA;  backlog in Scrum), for making decisions in a timely manner, and for&#xA;  providing information in a timely manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to the nature of their role and the culture they are coming from, there may be a tendency from them to control the team, but the scrum master must make sure the product owner does not cross the boundaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28712" LastActivityDate="2017-08-24T07:24:55.333" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22276" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22278" CreationDate="2017-08-24T10:29:55.003" Score="2" ViewCount="140" Body="&lt;p&gt;So you are a Scrum Master or the equivalent of that in other agile frameworks/processes, what would be team tasks that you are allowed to help with or do on your own? Are there any tasks that you have performed without negatively affecting the team in the longer run? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, I am refering to tasks that the Scrum Guide formally assigns to either the Product Owner or the Development Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastActivityDate="2017-08-24T13:03:34.863" Title="What team tasks can the Scrum Master help with?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22273" CreationDate="2017-08-24T12:21:30.917" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say it depends on the context, is the PO the only one that knows about the business requirements, or can developers make good decisions even without the PO. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;I believe the Product Owner is an important member of the team and needs to be as accessible as any other.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;If you feel she/he is important then they probably are.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5379" LastActivityDate="2017-08-24T12:21:30.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22276" CreationDate="2017-08-24T13:03:34.863" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of risks to doing work with the team or doing the product owner's work as the scrum master. Before getting into those, let's be honest, it's a balance you have to find in your particular circumstance. If a major deal is going to be lost and you can help by stepping in and doing some testing or coding, that probably is the way to go. So, that said, the risks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Doing PO Work&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing stories, talking with stakeholders, or keeping a healthy backlog are things the PO should be doing. If they aren't and you fill in for them, you're enabling the problem. Maybe it's a problem with the PO or maybe the organization is making unreasonable demands on their time. Either way, you are helping hide the problem. Please note this is different than sitting down and helping the PO do these things when they are new to it and need a hand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Doing Team Work&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two possible risks here. First and simplest, by stepping in and doing work you are changing the view on what the team can deliver. I assume this is the exception and that means that 1) the extra capacity for work isn't sustainable and 2) you're doing work that the team will be held to later without the responsibility of you being part of the delivery team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other concern is if you are doing work because you have a skill they lack. Here, you are again allowing the team to cover a problem up that will persist. Like I said at the beginning, you have to weigh the risk. Maybe you are filling in for one sprint until a new hire starts and provides that skill. Just be aware of the risk you are adding in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Healthy Tension Between Roles&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is one final thing to consider. The Scrum Team is designed with a healthy tension between roles. The Product Owner wants the team to spend their time building more and better features. The Team wants to spend time making sure the product is built right from a technical and architectural standpoint. The Scrum Master wants everyone to spend time improving how they work. When these three are in balance, you get all of the benefits. By investing yourself in either development work or PO work, you throw off this balance because now you are no longer an impartial coach. You have a personal investment in some part of the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-08-24T13:03:34.863" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22271" CreationDate="2017-08-24T13:14:02.903" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Those are some huge and vague goals. I've been using the S.M.A.R.T. approach for years and I wouldn't know where to start with some of those. I can try to give an example of one though to see if that helps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol start=&quot;4&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Increase our DevOps Maturity &amp;amp; Sustain a weekly Delivery Cycle for all product areas.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Proposed S.M.A.R.T. Goal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the end of Q3 2017, applications X, Y, and Z will each build to the test environment through our Teamcity CI Server in the morning of each business day. Failed builds will generate an email to everyone who checked in code since the last successful build.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would be Specific because it states exactly what is being built and when. It is Measurable because I can check the build server to see that the stated actions are happening. I have to assume here that it is an achievable goal (I don't know your environment). It is Results-focused as it has an expected success and failure result. And finally it is Time-bound, with the first statement that it should be working by the end of Q3 2017.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that helps you in the right direction. It may also be important to note that the pre-defined goals are very open-ended, so it is unlikely that a SMART goal will get you all of the way there. They will just move you forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-08-24T13:14:02.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22280" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22281" CreationDate="2017-08-24T15:14:52.493" Score="-1" ViewCount="103" Body="&lt;p&gt;Imagine a scenario where numerous development teams exist. Each has a rotating Scrum Master every few sprints. Apparently the team members enjoy this as well. Obviously this is good for business too as you cut costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you experienced such a scenario? Would you argue for or against such a setup? Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are for it, how would you facilitate such teams and coach them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastActivityDate="2017-09-05T09:34:04.860" Title="Coaching &quot;Sprint Masters&quot;" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22280" CreationDate="2017-08-24T20:54:32.400" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, the standard answer would be, &quot;It depends.&quot; :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several questions I would lead with if I were coaching are, Is the team new to Scrum or have they been doing this a while? How stable is the team? What's the relationship with the product owner? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a basic level, I'd steer young teams away from this model. Being a Scrum Master is a lot of effort and when a team is younger it takes a lot more to protect the team and help them through the flow. For an advanced team, it is a natural evolution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a rough model for Scrum Master evolution. One SM for a new team. One SM for two teams with an average level of competency (one new, one experienced, two mid-journey, etc). SM with three teams moves from Scrum Master to Scrum Coach and steps back from day to day effort. The team then steps up more. After four teams you move into full Agile Coach realm. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How I would coach a team like this is to set up good overlap. Halfway through a Scrum Master cycle, the next SM is already identified. If they are brand new to the role, the coach will work closely with them and walk them through a concept of &quot;See one, Do one, Lead one.&quot; Where the watch how it's done, then they help do and then they do and get feedback after. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, pretty much the same coaching I'd give any team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-08-24T20:54:32.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22282" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22283" CreationDate="2017-08-25T07:02:21.707" Score="0" ViewCount="124" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to train someone to become a scrum master. I have read so many books and articles over the years and everything is really available online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus far I have been having regular knowledge sharing sessions with him but the client wants me to formalise these sessions in some way...which is counter the agile manifesto I believe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I am thinking of putting together a powerpoint deck which I can list these resources and then also use the agile coaching institutes competencies as a heading for each slide. e.g. teaching, coaching, facilitating etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone else got any better ideas of A) how to train a scrum master and B) how I could structure a powerpoint deck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is just so much information I could include but I don't want to overwhelm him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastActivityDate="2017-10-03T18:11:09.430" Title="What have you found is the most effective way of training a Scrum Master?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;lean&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22282" CreationDate="2017-08-25T07:41:59.300" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the Client wants formalised sessions then the best option is to go to a formal session from Scrum.org or ScrumAlliance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/courses&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.scrum.org/courses&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/courses-events/course&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.scrumalliance.org/courses-events/course&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both sites have a ton of resources for your slide deck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regards&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29246" LastActivityDate="2017-08-25T07:41:59.300" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22234" CreationDate="2017-08-25T07:48:40.697" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally I've taken on extra responsibilities that don't necessarily sit with a team, e.g. like managing the companies Software Licences . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally helping out in the smooth running of the office, helping management with non development related tasks. Researching new Agile topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally linking in with other scrum masters to ensure the scrum experience is as closely aligned as possible across the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But hey ... that's just me&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29246" LastActivityDate="2017-08-25T07:48:40.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22285" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22287" CreationDate="2017-08-25T10:23:16.303" Score="1" ViewCount="162" Body="&lt;p&gt;So there are 8/10 scrum teams in different locations in my company.&#xA;there are 4/5 Scrum masters facilitating these teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One team in particular wishes to have no scrum master &amp;amp; ideally be left alone to &quot;Do their own thing&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are your thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this a good thing?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should a scrum team be allowed to &quot;Opt Out&quot; of Scrum&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;will this introduce a risk of Silo'd working&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will it introduce a contagion that could jeopardise Scrum adoption in the company?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think its a bad idea ... how do you win them back? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Carrot &amp;amp; Stick? &#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;With an Iron Fist? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or start again on encouraging Agile adoption?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29246" LastActivityDate="2017-08-28T18:53:51.433" Title="Should Scrum be &quot;Optional&quot; for some teams" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22285" CreationDate="2017-08-25T10:34:28.913" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not an initiate of the Scrum religion, but it seems to me that Scrum &lt;em&gt;should be&lt;/em&gt; a tool to help the company achieve business objectives.  If your company's strategic business objectives include scrum, then the answer that every employee should work to support the corporate objectives or find a job where they can do so.  In the more general case, if the business objectives don't include scrum, the answer is a bit more complicated. If the team can reliably produce on schedule, on budget, on quality, then don't fix the non-problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I'd have a quick word with those employees and discuss the fact that they work on a project, and projects are by definition time limited. If they want to have a career in the company, if they want to have opportunities to get promoted, to grow, then they're going to eventually move to a scrum environment.  if 90% of the company is scrum, then the future is pretty much inevitable and it is career suicide to pursue the past.  The first moment that the team fails to deliver on time/on quality/on schedule, the pressure to fix what is now a problem will rise.  The first time that they need surge support from another team, that surge support will come in the form of someone who expects to be part of a self-organizing team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also want to listen to &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; they reject scrum.  I think there is an interesting irony in a team rejecting scrum in favor of organizing their own work.  What is it about scrum that they cannot accept?  Is it merely learning something new? (if so, I reverse my statement above - if the team doesn't want to learn, then get rid of them.  There is no place in a modern company for an employee who doesn't want to learn)  Is it that they reject the religious zealotry that accompanies scrum (anything but scrum is scrumbut!)?  Is it that they don't mind scrum, but they dislike the way scrum is practiced and evangelized in the company?  There are ample opportunities for compromise in that case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2017-08-25T10:34:28.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22285" CreationDate="2017-08-25T11:08:04.673" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One one hand SCRUM means that the teams are self-organizing and thus should largely be free to decide how they implement scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One the other hand they are a team working on a project which is managed by someone else. The scope, priorities and time line expectations will always come from outside the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best approach highly depends on what aspects of scrum they oppose and why they do so. People generally don't complain about having to use scrum/waterfall/v-model/whatever. They complain because of pathologies in the way their particular process is implemented. If they are merely opposed to the SM then this might be an indication that their SM is not treating them as he should (perhaps an ex PM clinging to his former authority?) Maybe the PO or the stakeholders don't honor the team's autonomy? There's probably some kind of interpersonal issue giving scrum a sour note. Speak to them, preferrably individually and learn why they are unhappy. Not with scrum - in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As a general answer&lt;/strong&gt; I'd say that the use of scrum in it's most barebone structure (The existance of PO and SM roles, planning/scheduling through backlog items and short implementation cycles) is probably something you can present as prerequisite for continued employment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can they work in a fashion that allows the rest of the company operate under scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can they deliver value and quality on par with the other teams?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so then they've arguably proven the validity of their scrum implementation. If not then they've demonstrated that changes(tm) need to be made. Until either conclusion can be drawn, scrum owes them that impediments are removed, be they technical or sociological.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2017-08-25T11:08:04.673" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22285" CreationDate="2017-08-25T12:25:24.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer:&#xA;Using Scrum should be optional. Use what ever feels the best for the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BUT!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to make sure that the team is evolving. That is best done by a Scrum Master/Agile Coach. So start by asking if they would be ok with having a SM facilitate their team development. The SM will say if they feel that the team is good enough to be left on their own. Even if they are (which I HIGHLY doubt) they probably need an occasional check up on how they're doing and if they need some coaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29075" LastActivityDate="2017-08-25T12:25:24.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22234" CreationDate="2017-08-25T12:29:15.280" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Learn. Read blogs, books, scientific articles or whatever you like to do to learn. Or code in new languages. Whatever you can think of that the team might benefit from later on. &#xA;One of the most important things the SM does is learning. About the team, about the organisation and always be on the lookout for new things to try out. If you're really bored you can always find some other bored Scrum Masters and try out a workshop or just talk over coffee if they have some ideas on what to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29075" LastActivityDate="2017-08-25T12:29:15.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22290" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22292" CreationDate="2017-08-25T12:39:02.477" Score="1" ViewCount="106" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a high school physics teacher in Europe and hoping to write an Erasmus+ project for High Schools to deploy their cubesat (small satelitte) in orbit. This kind of project has been run several times in US, but not in Europe although Erasmus+ funds are enough to support this kind of activity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have written several projects before in my field but this kind of project is far ahead of my knowledge. My question: How could you prepare (or motivate) yourself for writing a new project proposal with a minimal knowledge about the subject so that you overcome the obstacles holding off you start off the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29646" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-08-25T13:11:08.207" LastActivityDate="2017-08-25T14:57:56.763" Title="How could you prepare yourself for a new project proposal?" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;project-proposal&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22285" CreationDate="2017-08-25T14:43:52.440" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Leaving a team to &quot;Do Their Own Thing&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is actually the best place to start this conversation. Software isn't developed for its own sake. It is also rarely developed in a vacuum. Therefor, a team must operate in a way to provides value to the customer frequently and also in a way where they can collaborate well with other teams and the rest of the organization. Teams should always be improving how they work and looking for better ways to create value in the organization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does it have to be Scrum?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, absolutely not. In fact, sometimes Scrum is the wrong choice. Support centers are probably the easiest case to see. They are more about the flow of work and approaches like Kanban are better suited. However, even in other approaches, the focus is still on value delivery and constant improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do you need a Scrum Master or other type of team coach?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The simplest way to look at this is sports teams. Can a baseball team function without a coach? Sure. They'll be missing an important perspective and may have trouble making improvements that other teams would find easy with a coach, but they'll play the game. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Software teams are exactly the same. No Scrum Master or team coach will still get you working software. A part time coach will get you some improvement. But a full time Scrum Master or coach should pay for themselves in improvement many times over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Getting Team Buy-in&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A better way to ask this question is: Why should the team care? Why don't they now? If they aren't producing working software and no one calls them out on it, then why should they change. If the organization doesn't celebrate improvement, then why should they put the effort in? Alternately, if they are constantly improving and they are delivering value, maybe they've already solved the problem and the rest of the organization has something to learn from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-08-25T14:43:52.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22290" CreationDate="2017-08-25T14:57:56.763" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start small and embrace failure as a learning opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You said you don't have much knowledge in this area and there are some obstacles. In all likelihood, your first attempts will not work out, so don't bet everything on them succeeding. I have never written educational project proposals, so I can't give specific suggestions, but I can provide some pretty universal good practices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find the smallest action that will gain you feedback you can learn from. If you can submit the proposal many times, sometimes the easiest thing to do is do it wrong, submit it, and see what they say - or do it wrong and start floating it by colleagues to see if someone knows a person who has done this before who can give feedback on it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Look for quick wins that move you forward. If you know the tech part or the funding part, completing that successfully may help motivate you and show others you work with that you've got some of it and just need help completing the rest.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find a friend. Look in your school or professional community for people who have already been successful with part of it. Maybe someone has successfully applied for and received Erasmus+ funds before. They can at least get you moving and build momentum.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps. Completely new projects can be the most frustrating, but also the most rewarding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-08-25T14:57:56.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22293" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-25T17:20:39.997" Score="0" ViewCount="60" Body="&lt;p&gt;In ms-project I was trying to compare % complete vs. planned % complete over time. When I was looking how to do this in google, many people say it was meaningless and that I should instead use something like earned value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is this exactly a bad way for tracking the progress of a project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29648" LastActivityDate="2017-08-25T18:11:57.980" Title="Why the comparisons between % complete and % planned complete is meaningless?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22273" CreationDate="2017-08-25T18:00:42.653" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The real solution is to clearly define roles and responsibilities and having the right people fill them. Having a PO tell the developers how to do things is a big issue, but so is having a PO that feels isolated and not part of the execution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there is some art to building effective teams and attention must be given to allocating individuals with the correct skills and appropriate demeanor to key roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want effective execution everyone has to be part of the team with full transparency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29359" LastActivityDate="2017-08-25T18:00:42.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22293" CreationDate="2017-08-25T18:11:57.980" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not meaningless from a concept point of view.  It is unreliable from an operations point of view if performed poorly, which most are.  It is performed poorly for many reasons: 1) it's hard to gauge how far along you are in a task; 2) we have normal, cognitive biases that sort of skew our perceptions of our progress; 3) we lie in order to hide our dirty laundry or kick the can down the road before we have to deal with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When project status rolls around, we usually are moving so quickly getting status updates that it ends up going like: &quot;what % complete are you with task A?&quot;  &quot;Oh, about 30%.&quot;  And then we load the 30% and move on.  So those three reasons, and likely there are more, are in play and the 30% is simply meaningless.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With EV, you would still have the same problem if you do not have a reliable, objective, verifiable way of measuring work.  If you are able to segment your work in a physical way, that tends to meet the criteria of a solid method of measurement.  With physical % complete, you do not have even need to ask for an opinion; you just count.  Knowledge work is hard to segment in this way.  People work around this by assigning a physical % to portions of a product produced by knowledge work.  That's okay but still not a very high reliability.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're stuck with a duration % complete, then it comes down to how you ask the question.  For example, if task A has a planned duration of 10 days, and you're at day 3, the question you want to ask is, 'how many days do you need to finish the remaining work?'  This is not fail proof but gets the worker to look at the task in a different way then if you asked how far along are you?  Reliability climbs a little bit but you still have ambiguity in the measurement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other solutions have been to have a rule such as: 0-100; 50/50; 25/75, etc.  This means your progress is (if using 50/50) 50% complete the day you start and you do not get the other 50% until you finish.  So the task remains 50% until that time.  This works okay for predicting the finish of the hammock task but you still run blind at the lower levels.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-08-25T18:11:57.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22296" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-25T21:43:34.503" Score="1" ViewCount="684" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was trying to change the Actual Cost field (AC) for earned valued analysis, but I think I'm doing something wrong or not understanding something well enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I change the Real Cost, I think I should get the same value in the Actual Cost Field, but in this example I'm not getting the same results (cells colored in red):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Real Cost Field: $ 150.000.000&#xA;Actual Cost: $ 138.194.444&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not supposed to update to be the same as real cost?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Gv68p.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Gv68p.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29648" LastActivityDate="2017-11-24T05:37:03.487" Title="Changing Actual Cost (AC) with Real Cost Field" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;evm&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22271" CreationDate="2017-08-25T22:05:47.530" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Break each goal down further into sub categories or objectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for -&#xA;&quot;Ensure a Secure Platform that is Stable and High-Performing which gives confidence and assurance to our end users and stakeholders.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would possibly break down into the objectives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Secure Platform&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stable Platform&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Performing Platform &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Platform supports end user and stakeholder needs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next you need to get Specific [(S) in Smart] on each of these objectives. Define what each objective means. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example what does secure mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A. Secure Platform:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Authentication [detail requirement]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Authorization [detail requirement]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Role definitions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Encryption [detail requirement]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Defining the specifics will require input from stakeholders and agreement from the owner of this request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once your 'S' specifics are defined, you address and define the remaining 'MART' elements to complete your &quot;indication of Achievement&quot; list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29359" LastEditorUserId="29359" LastEditDate="2017-08-25T22:13:48.230" LastActivityDate="2017-08-25T22:13:48.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22299" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-28T14:26:37.220" Score="0" ViewCount="254" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a small team of developers(fresh graduates) who have decided to create a software to manage a store.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have just a small amount of experience in a real world environment of software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My idea was to develop this software in an agile way, to deliver it as soon as possible. But two of the developers are arguing about how to define the software's architecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developer 1 : We could use a framework like django rest or something else to speed the development of the API and focus our work on front end / mobile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developer 2 : We must use a microframework like falcon to be more versatile also we could use SAM pattern because MVC has some flaws and it sucks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this discussion will not ever end and we'll lose our chance to develop this software since they all only care about planning and documentation. &#xA;Also only Developer 2 knows about this 'SAM pattern'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you solve this impediments?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29665" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-08-28T15:13:03.113" LastActivityDate="2017-08-29T11:13:20.797" Title="As a scrum master of a small startup made by friends, How do you solve these impediments?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22299" CreationDate="2017-08-28T14:40:07.543" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not a development method question.  This is a how-to-get-to-agreement question.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The three of you, sounds like, are equal partners in this endeavor.  You need to get to an agreement, and remain in agreement, to get to your finished project.  So before you continue discussing project issues, this one and future ones, the three of you need to agree on how to play the game.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So set up some rules of engagement.  For example, your first guiding principle is to arrive at consensus on any issue.  So each of you will have an opportunity to make a case and then work to agree on an alternative.  Second guiding principle might be, in the event you cannot agree, is to vote and then majority wins.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you end up choosing as your set of rules, you should stop the project until you get this squared away and then restart your project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-08-28T14:40:07.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22299" CreationDate="2017-08-28T14:48:11.027" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;+1 on David, setup your working agreements. You don't have to reach an agreement, you need to reach consensus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When in doubt, experiment. The nice thing about using agile, for your development practices, is the ability to adapt and change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask if there is a way you could do a short experiment with both frameworks. Everyone goes all in for each experiment and at the end you can reflect on both to better decide. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-08-28T14:48:11.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20704" CreationDate="2017-08-28T15:51:29.253" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hope I'm not too late with this answer ... or hopefully things have improved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But reviewing the question ... I'm sure Scrum can help...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He has a very bossy attitude with &quot;inferiors&quot;, he is very shy, fearful and flattering with the CEO, and he's used to get his own way through hiding information, insults, arrogance, machinations, and harming reputations. I'm being kind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK ... at the start of the scrum the PO / PM has to give his vision on what your team is going to do for the next 2 weeks. once that's locked in he can't change it without canceling the scrum (too many canceled scrums are hard to hide to management)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a pre-defined definition of ready might help force him to have his prep work done in advance if he wants the stories accepted by the team (With scrum the team has the power to refuse to take on work that's not fit to be worked on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;once past planning the PO/PM will only have access to the team via the daily stand-up, i.e. public meetings where his every word is overheard ... less chance of being bossy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he's interfering with the team outside of the set meetings then its up to you to manage or curtail these additional discussions. (and sit in on them if possible to again force communication out in the open)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly via the retrospective he's open to feedback from the team (which should be limited to events during the recently closed sprint) if your team has the appropriate tact, you can suggest minor adjustments that over time may lead to more professional behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you've a lot of tools there to force open, public communication and set a bar for work product taken on by the team. So from the teams POV the'll get work, do work and deliver work, and not be dragged into politics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29246" LastActivityDate="2017-08-28T15:51:29.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22285" CreationDate="2017-08-28T18:53:51.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL:DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team must be able to account for the value of the work they produce&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team must be able to account for the effectiveness of the &lt;em&gt;way they work&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team must show &lt;em&gt;readiness&lt;/em&gt; by demonstrating they can effectively inspect and adapt even when working alongside the other Scrum teams&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ultimately, this is a business decision&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Too often individuals or teams make their choice of ways of working based on personal preferences rather than what produces the highest value product balanced with a sustainable development pace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMHO, whether or not they are trusted to &lt;em&gt;do their own thing&lt;/em&gt; comes down to an assessment of the &lt;em&gt;readiness&lt;/em&gt; of the developers and business professionals to inspect and adapt the product they produce and the way they work together. Key to this is if they have an objective way to determine the value of their work and their ways of working. Without these diagnostics in place, I would be very hesitant to trust them just do their own thing; the effects of their experiment would be difficult to measure for success or failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said all that, this is ultimately a business decision. If the individuals wanting this new arrangement can be afforded latitude to work in a new way i.e. if the business is insulated from their potential failure then it may be the right decision for other reasons. Essentially, if the business is well enough off to sanction the experiment the team is wanting to run it may be a good idea to let them try. They and others may end up learning something very valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21576" LastActivityDate="2017-08-28T18:53:51.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22304" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-28T19:11:05.837" Score="3" ViewCount="138" Body="&lt;p&gt;My current company is product based, with an application started 7 years ago but never rewritten, a lot of garbage piled up. Right now, the management decided it's time to rewrite and after a little research we decided to stick to Django and Angular. The issue is that right now there are 12+ developers with experience in PHP and jQuery 1.3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would you consider a good strategy for the whole team to switch technologies? Everyone has to learn and of course, quality is expected. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, a part of the team would have to support the old application. Which are the best criteria to choose those? Personal option?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29667" LastActivityDate="2018-01-31T00:52:18.033" Title="Strategy for whole team switching tehnologies" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;team&gt;&lt;technical-leader&gt;&lt;refactoring&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22304" CreationDate="2017-08-28T19:48:14.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is quite a sticky situation. Firstly, you say the &quot;management decided&quot;. This isn't ideal and the decision should have been made by the team, without the management's involvement whatsoever. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you mentioned Django, I am guessing the product needs to be rebuilt using a service oriented architecture. Aren't there PHP frameworks to help with this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have worked with Angular as well as jQuery knowing one won't help at well when switching to the other. Same goes for PHP and Python (Django), of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, I have been part of small teams, twice, where we went with completely new technology stacks. I was a developer the first time around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What worked really well both times are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Always insist on delivering functionality. Stick writing user stories. Developers grow in confidence when they build real stuff. Business people are happier when they see working software.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the first few sprints, do not add more than 1 or 2 user stories. This&#xA;will give the team enough room to learn on the job whilst solving&#xA;real problems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep the management at bay for the first 3 sprints at least. This means, forget about estimates whatsoever. In my second project when I was the Scrum Master, I told the management to ask about estimates and forecasts after three months as the developers are still training. Later, after 3 months, we showed them working software and exceeded all their expectations :).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Insist on a mature &quot;definition of done&quot; if your team is experience in general and only new to the technology stack. This goes hand in hand with the points above.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: The above points are from Agile/Scrum world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to the old application, I would really split the team so one works on building the new stuff, another that holds the fort. This will allow focus and minimize waste from &quot;context switching. You should handle this tactfully though; find the right persons for each time, promise the team holding the fort that they will be amply trained on the new tech once time comes, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastEditorUserId="28548" LastEditDate="2017-08-28T21:20:26.800" LastActivityDate="2017-08-28T21:20:26.800" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22304" CreationDate="2017-08-28T20:30:55.953" Score="9" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Don't do this.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking as a developer, this sounds &lt;em&gt;great&lt;/em&gt;. We get to rewrite that horrible old spaghetti code from scratch! We get to paid to learn a new language! There's a mandate for quality, so we can actually get the time needed to write &lt;em&gt;good code&lt;/em&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...Oh, and there's the fact that this project will take a year or five. Speaking from a business perspective... not so great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, in reality, there's no way management will accept a realistic timeline for such a project. Instead, they'll insist on an unrealistic timeline. Put another way, they will insist (indirectly) on lowering quality. Which will end up with your developers spending a lot of time replacing legacy, presumably working spaghetti code with shiny, new, possibly not-working spaghetti code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your comment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From what I understood was a decision made only from the perspective of choosing the most appropriate tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 'most appropriate tools' are the tools used and understood by the majority of the Team. Adding a new tool to your toolbox is admirable... but it's a non-trivial undertaking. And, consequentially, it has a chance of failure (whether you define failure as time needed to learn or quality of code developed while learning, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding a new tool for the sake of expanding horizons: Good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding a new tool as a dependency for an important project's success: Bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do really, &lt;em&gt;truly&lt;/em&gt; have no choice but to rewrite an entire system in an entirely new language, then your best chance is to hire someone already experienced in that language. Or multiple someones. And you can't just point them at the problem and say 'go', either. Their job would be two-fold: to ensure quality of the product, and to disseminate their knowledge into the rest of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless, it'll be expensive and time-consuming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also, a part of the team would have to support the old application. Which are the best criteria to choose those? Personal option?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to me like it should be a separate question, but I'll answer it here anyway. The best option is probably to do a rotation. If you rotate the people, then everyone gets some time to support/maintain the old application, so they all gain familiarity with it. If you &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; rotate the people... then you'll likely have trouble keeping the ones stuck doing nonstop maintenance from quitting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-08-28T21:10:33.607" LastActivityDate="2017-08-28T21:10:33.607" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22299" CreationDate="2017-08-28T20:41:42.527" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Due to the context, this may not seem relevant to Scrum but I have seen issues like this arise all the time in scrum teams in the industry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue here is the lack of progress because certain members waste way too much time debating technology (this can apply to other aspects of the work too). Before I share my thoughts on this, a bit on semantics. I tend to use the word &quot;impediment&quot; for issues that arise externally, not within the team. So as Scrum Master, you would remove these external issues and protect the team from them. Nevertheless, this issue also falls within the scope of the SM; you must also protect the business by minimizing waste in the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Semantics aside, I think you can indirectly solve this problem by simply enforcing Scrum rules and ceremonies (sometimes it helps to follow things strictly to build that muscle memory; after a while, it will all make more sense). So to give a few examples of Scrum indirectly helping:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have all the business requirements written in your product backlog? In other words, someone must have spent time with store owners and come up with a list of prioritized backlog items? This someone is the Product Owner, who will have the final say about what should be built. Are these backlog items written as user stories?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once you have user stories &lt;strong&gt;ready for selection&lt;/strong&gt; in the first sprint, you have 8 hours of the sprint planning meeting to kick off the sprint. Make sure the team understands the importance of these time-boxes and get them to stick to it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask the technical team members to come &lt;strong&gt;ready to the sprint planning meeting in terms of the technology stack&lt;/strong&gt; as they would have roughly 4 hours (second half of the sprint planning meeting) to decide how they would deliver the selected user stories and they would even have create granular tasks representing the team's work for the next few days.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can also suggest a &lt;a href=&quot;http://agiledictionary.com/209/spike/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;spike&lt;/a&gt; solution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So although I get your point about this being a startup, but don't most startups have co-founders with defined roles? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you are the co-founder and responsible for operations, who is the co-founder and product visionary (the Product Owner)? No harm in these people doing some development too; doing a bit of role play is more productive than just arguing over technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end, the team may have to decide which co-founder will be the CTO and thus make all the final technology decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastEditorUserId="28548" LastEditDate="2017-08-29T09:58:15.293" LastActivityDate="2017-08-29T09:58:15.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22304" CreationDate="2017-08-28T20:58:40.553" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The technology part of this question is not relevant to the problem.  If the company has decided to make a change, then change is what you need to do.  This also assumes that the case for change included a deep understanding of the gaps you have in your organization, i.e., technology knowledge and capability, and the costs and risks associated with closing these gaps.  It further assumes the benefit to the organization by going through this change exceeds all the costs and risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a change project you need to define.  You know your &quot;as is&quot; and you know the &quot;to be&quot;.  You need to identify what needs to occur in terms of training, replacing, and adopting the knowledge, skills, and abilities to change your product using the new technology, i.e., &lt;em&gt;close the gaps between the as is and the to be&lt;/em&gt;.  So the strategy you are looking for is to stand up a change project, get your funding, building your plans, define success, kick it off, and go.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the investment in this project ought to be in the way of incentives and bonuses for those who adopt this change and work hard to both learn as well as maintain the existing product.  This also means you need to get tough and remove and replace resistors to this change.  Yes, you can expect some morale issues.  Changes cause this all the time.  Mitigate it the best you can but expect issues and degraded performance for awhile.  The plus side to this is your people get to learn a new skill on the company's dime.  That's pretty huge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-08-28T20:58:40.553" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22299" CreationDate="2017-08-29T08:58:19.307" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You being a Scrum Master, I hope you have already put in place the Scrum rules and ceremonies (described by Muhammad). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To resolve the issue between two of your best guys arguing about technology, be a mediator and pull them into a room. Have them put the pros/cons (eg: scalability, security, time to market, effort to build etc.,) of their preferred technologies on a white board or a piece of paper. When you put your ideas or thoughts on white board it gives better picture of what each person thinks and gives time to reflect on your own ideas. &#xA;Weigh each of the points for pros/cons by giving numbers. Highest for Pros and lowest for cons.  Allow them to speak and discuss about. &#xA;Are they ready to come to a conclusion based on what is on the board and the weigh points?&#xA;If they still stick on their stand, then make them realize the importance of moving forward with a decision. How the delay in making a decision could impact cost and market competition (if any).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29672" LastActivityDate="2017-08-29T08:58:19.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22304" CreationDate="2017-08-29T09:06:11.943" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have also encountered to this issue especially when technologies of web / app development changes and improves much more than before. To be honest, I work on Swift 3 iOS app for project management tools while learning react + meteor anew. Split the time frame  per day into two or three sections : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Develop existing one / learning new tech. / study the business use of new tech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If learning the new tech. can reduce your current development by more than half of required time, go learn anew. Principle underlying is more or less the same.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Expect there has a time lag for teammates to master techs. anew. as well as maintaining  good progress of current development. It takes times when new tech. come across to new methodology. So fas as I know, taking react native/ angular JS as an example, the syntax and methodology is much similar to html + css + js. Good luck mates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4714" LastActivityDate="2017-08-29T09:06:11.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22299" CreationDate="2017-08-29T09:32:08.213" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to what Muhammad said. Get away from concrete positions and point the discussion to find common criteria to which the architecture decision can be evaluated against. With some spike implementation you can measure against these criteria and decide based upon the common criteria.&#xA;Bear in mind that whatever technology you will use you will learn fast (as you have no experience so far). The solution/architecture/code quality from today will not be appropriate anymore tomorrow. So better be prepared for a continually refactoring and redesign of your solution. Also try to deliver at least some functionality each Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20794" LastActivityDate="2017-08-29T09:32:08.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22304" CreationDate="2017-08-29T10:30:47.787" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Below are some suggestions you may follow:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First of all communicate to upper management the high learning curve costs involved (time and money).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Perform specialized trainings. Hire trainers that know well both technologies so that they can map concepts from old to new technologies, this will improve learning.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Parallel to step 2, assign to developers a simple project that will apply all concepts learned during training. The code will be thrown away when finished. This will reduce developers learning anxiety.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hire a temporary or permanent expert (5+ years) on the new technologies. The expert will help the team establish the architecture and the development environment. Will also promote best practices and mentor existing developers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(optional) &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_peer_review&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Peer reviews&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_programming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;pair programming&lt;/a&gt; are good tools for promoting learning in a team. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28712" LastActivityDate="2017-08-29T10:30:47.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22299" CreationDate="2017-08-29T11:13:20.797" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some great points above to review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to add to this from a Scrum POV you need to remember that Scrum is here to deliver Business Value. No customer &lt;em&gt;ever&lt;/em&gt; parted with their hard earned cash to buy an application written in django or a micro-framework or anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You guys are stuck in a mindset where you are putting the technology 1st ... if you want to survive you need to think about your customer 1st!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember you can always refactor your code if needs be later on, provided there's business value in it, but as a startup you need to drop the developer mindset and adopt a business one, and fst before you go to the wall!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck on your journey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29246" LastActivityDate="2017-08-29T11:13:20.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22315" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22316" CreationDate="2017-08-29T13:42:39.423" Score="0" ViewCount="127" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the daily scrum, is it correct to say &quot;A standup meeting is about answers, not questions&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or another statement: &quot;A standup is to talk about the What, not the How or Why&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel that the &quot;why&quot; may play a part in the daily scrum, but has to be controlled so not to take up too much time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am in a small- to medium-sized business, trying to teach daily standups.  I am trying to pull together some phrases for everyone to think about when participating in a daily scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29677" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-08-29T14:06:12.663" LastActivityDate="2017-08-29T14:06:12.663" Title="Are these questions valid for a daily scrum?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22315" CreationDate="2017-08-29T14:05:24.337" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The purpose of the Daily Scrum is to quickly get all developers on the same page.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would go so far as to say the opposite: that questions are fine, but answers not. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm having trouble decalibrating the fronkilator.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Oh, I think I know what your problem is. We'll go over it &lt;em&gt;after the meeting.&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At which point only those interested/involved need stick around after the meeting, while everyone else can get back to their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same for how/why; it's fine to bring up that you need to know how/why something is done. It's &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; fine to derail the meeting with a lengthy answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recall that as per the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;, the minimum Development Team size is 3 members, and the timebox for the Daily Scrum is 15 minutes - this means that each person should be speaking no more than 5 minutes each. For larger Teams, that number likewise goes down: 3 minutes for teams of 5, &amp;lt;2 minutes for teams of 8.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't get hung up on specific rules like &quot;you shouldn't be formatting your Daily Scrum statement like that.&quot; Instead just focus on the two goals of the Daily Scrum: to get all Development Team members on the same page, and to last no longer than 15 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-08-29T14:05:24.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22317" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22318" CreationDate="2017-08-29T16:15:20.053" Score="0" ViewCount="851" Body="&lt;p&gt;In book &quot;Software Project Management&quot; by Bob Huges on Chapter 3: Project Planning, it describes an approach called &quot;Stepwise Project Planning&quot; in contrast to PRINCE2 approach which was developed in UK as a government standard for information system projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FymPi.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FymPi.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a good history about PRINCE2 which can be read on Wikipedia or &lt;a href=&quot;https://prince2.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;prince2.com&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I am curious about is: Where did Stepwise approach come from. who developed it and how it is different? I read some articles on web but there is no clear answer to that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29621" LastActivityDate="2017-08-29T20:57:02.697" Title="Who developed Stepwise project planning?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22317" CreationDate="2017-08-29T20:57:02.697" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My academic research skills came in handy. The answer is Robert Tamblyn Hughes (also the author of the book you referred to, I believe) in 1996. He published a conference paper titled &quot;The 'Step Wise' Planning Approach to Software Projects.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check out this link: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.researchgate.net/publication/3630458_The_step_wise%27_planning_approach_to_software_projects&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.researchgate.net/publication/3630458_The_step_wise%27_planning_approach_to_software_projects&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you read that 3 page article, it clearly states how is it different to PRINCE. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please tell me this is not for a school project!?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastActivityDate="2017-08-29T20:57:02.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22319" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-29T21:02:48.123" Score="2" ViewCount="69" Body="&lt;p&gt;Control systems are like computers, but sometimes less so. For the current discussion, it can be assumed that some custom effort maybe needed to make the same code work on different platforms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that background, my problem is: how do I estimate the value of my software for a specific control system? For example, if I made the software for a car's control system, how can I go about pricing it? When someone buys a car, how can we know how much they are paying for the software vs. the hardware? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One approach is the Cost of Goods and Services (COGS) approach, where we estimate the effort that went into making that software. Are there any other approaches, that take into account the value added by the software?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;i.e. let's say this software does something better than what is currently out there. How can the value estimation process capture such value additions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29685" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-08-29T21:23:06.043" LastActivityDate="2017-08-29T22:30:03.493" Title="How to estimate the value of software for a control system?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22319" CreationDate="2017-08-29T22:30:03.493" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are a projects company, you tend to go with COGS or its variation. Value of software, or anything for that matter, is subjective. Nevertheless, as the organization developing the software, it all depends on your business model, the market, demand, etc, and common sense as well as business acumen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;how do I estimate the value of my software&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't really a project management issue. Project costing is, but how much you sell your product/code for is not, IMHO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can check this article out as a starting point: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.avangate.com/avangate-resources/article/Pricing-your-software.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.avangate.com/avangate-resources/article/Pricing-your-software.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastActivityDate="2017-08-29T22:30:03.493" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22321" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22322" CreationDate="2017-08-30T14:27:44.747" Score="2" ViewCount="857" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been asked to provide some &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior-driven_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;behavior-driven development&lt;/a&gt; documents for a project which has not yet started. This leaves me thinking, &quot;other than stories yet to be written, what documents are there?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what documents can I provide which are input to a project in order to structure it, prior to the work actually beginning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29374" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-08-30T14:51:49.863" LastActivityDate="2017-08-30T15:41:49.360" Title="What documentation is required for behavior-driven development?" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;bdd&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22321" CreationDate="2017-08-30T15:41:49.360" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Input Artifacts for Behavior-Driven Development (BDD)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For successful behavior-driven development, you need (mostly) the same documents you'd need for any other agile project, with the addition of executable tests for the business use cases. Some examples include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User stories or project backlog items that meet &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST criteria&lt;/a&gt;: Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, and Testable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A prioritized product backlog or input queue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A description of the product's expected behavior written relatively natural language using the business domain's standard glossary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Behavior that can be expressed in an executable format such as Cucumber's &lt;a href=&quot;https://cucumber.io/docs/reference#gherkin&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gherkin&lt;/a&gt; parser or similar tool.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main point of BDD is that you're expressing the expected &lt;em&gt;behavior&lt;/em&gt; of your product or application (not its implementation details!) in a way that's executable, testable, and largely self-documenting, rather than compiling a list of detailed specifications in a &quot;it shall or shall not&quot; format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;BDD is Rarely About Specifying Implementation Details&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BDD focuses on setting goals or expectations, not implementation-level details. While it can sometimes be hard to differentiate between a specification and a functional or non-functional requirement, as long as you focus on &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; the system or product should do rather than &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; is does it, then you're generally on the right track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this is a complex subject, and is somewhat of an art form. There are many books on the subject of behavior-driven development, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://pragprog.com/book/hwcuc2/the-cucumber-book-second-edition&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Cucumber Book&lt;/a&gt; is a reasonable place to start if you're focused more on how to build good BDD tests, while other books with a business-domain focus may be more useful to stakeholders and executives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your mileage will (unfortunately) vary a lot in how you come to grips with BDD, but this should definitely get you pointed in the right direction. If you have more specific questions about particular aspects of BDD from a project management standpoint, then I'd definitely encourage you to open addition questions with more context about the actual problems you're facing with implementing BDD for your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-08-30T15:41:49.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22323" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-08-30T21:52:18.503" Score="1" ViewCount="2704" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have joined a start up company as a PM/ scrum master which had 3 scrum teams with different domain specialty 1-FW/cloud, 2- machine learning, and 3- front end( UX/ UI/ dev/QA) on one backlog. The scrum teams where shaped based on their specialty not cross functionally. Each team has 6 to 9 member means the total of people on these scrum teams are 20. We can't have a one scrum team with 20 people. All these people are working on one product. I have set up the sprint planning with all 20 people together and that solved part of cross dependencies I also set up a product meeting weekly with the leads of each team to review our product milestones. During the sprint teams seem to work separately.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;How could I solve this issue? I am thinking about scrum of scrum meeting but it means more and more meeting for teams that are already executing an aggressive schedule. Any suggestion? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29257" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-08-31T10:57:35.430" LastActivityDate="2017-08-31T13:40:30.873" Title="How to better structure a big scrum team?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;&lt;program-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22323" CreationDate="2017-08-31T00:34:43.483" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a big question with a complex answer space. My favorite framework for working in multiple teams is &lt;a href=&quot;http://less.works&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LeSS&lt;/a&gt;. Their signature book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0321985710&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Large Scale Scrum&lt;/a&gt;, is the best book about Scrum (at any scale) that I've come across.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically: cross-functional teams, single product backlog, single Product Owner, separate sprint backlogs, and planning and retrospective at both the single-team and overall level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kZQVR.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kZQVR.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;diagram of LeSS&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27733" LastActivityDate="2017-08-31T00:34:43.483" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22323" CreationDate="2017-08-31T06:37:48.917" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why do you want to do a single scrum with the three teams together?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let them do their separate scrums, and afterwards do a scrum of scrums. Each team delegates one (or max 2) people for the scrum of scrums and they can discuss impediments between the teams for example. Do it also daily and it should last only 15 minutes extra&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29611" LastActivityDate="2017-08-31T06:37:48.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22326" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22332" CreationDate="2017-08-31T12:38:17.310" Score="2" ViewCount="102" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a huge proponent of smaller Project Backlog Items (PBIs).  Most of the pushback I get these days is: this will cause duplicated work for QA if we split the work into smaller PBIs.  This would usually be the case for a portion of the QA work, but splitting the PBIs gets the work into Continuous Integration (CI) faster and gets it in front of many other parts of the organization which could be affected by the changes.  What's the best way to handle large PBIs in this scenario?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29700" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-08-31T13:09:46.287" LastActivityDate="2017-08-31T16:51:56.457" Title="Smaller PBIs cause duplicated QA work in Agile" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;quality&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22326" CreationDate="2017-08-31T13:20:45.663" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One approach would be to split the PBIs into smaller PBIs, but then still attempt to work on them close to each other, so that QA can test them both if they're both development-completed within the same CI cycle. If they &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; get development-completed within the same cycle, then either QA needs to not approve the first ones (hence putting them off to the next cycle) or else QA just needs to duplicate their testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just keep in mind that you're not splitting those PBIs so small that they violate &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt;. Especially the 'V' and 'T' portions. If the PBI does not provide value on its own, rhen you went too far. If the PBI cannot be tested on its own, then you went too far (or not far enough, depending).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-08-31T13:20:45.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22323" CreationDate="2017-08-31T13:40:30.873" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on what you said, I'm guessing you all experience at least a few of the following the problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Trouble integrating each team's work on a Sprint basis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Integration related defects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communication lag between Scrum teams&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;High work in progress&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first rule of scaling Scrum is try not to scale if you don't have to. If you do start scaling development with Scrum, it's important to perform safe fail experiments. This implies you know how to measure the success or failure of whatever you try. Consider before you begin which behaviors, outcomes, or measures might be affected by whatever you try. I would start with the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cycle time (Todo -&gt; &quot;Done&quot;)(I'm considering &quot;Done&quot; to mean potentially releasable)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Defects produced by new work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum team member happiness&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work dependencies found&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work dependencies mitigated / eliminated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more great info on how to manage a system based on evidence, check out &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/evidence-based-management-ebm/agility-index-snapshot&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Evidence Based Management&quot;&gt;Evidence Based Management&lt;/a&gt; from Scrum.org as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really like Scrum.org's Nexus exoskeleton for scaling, but LeSS appeals to me as well; both have similar systems but Nexus has a few extra constructs I find useful. Caveat, I have been a Professional Scrum Trainer with Scrum.org.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YeWgw.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YeWgw.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage with Nexus is the concept of a Nexus integration team which is responsible for ensuring a potentially releasable increment of the Product is fully integrated each Sprint. That said, there are some really great tools and practices you can read about in the LeSS handbook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21576" LastActivityDate="2017-08-31T13:40:30.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22326" CreationDate="2017-08-31T13:51:34.137" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a common argument along with the corresponding development one: this will be more efficient to develop together. It should throw up a red flag, but don't dismiss it, because the team can also be right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a balance between working efficiently and delivering value quickly. Is the team still finishing the backlog items well within the sprint? One good rule of thumb is that the average backlog item should be completable in 2 - 3 days. You'll have longer and shorter, but that should be your median time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the backlog items are still too large, perhaps ask the team what the most efficient way to break it up is where they still have value. Maybe they have other ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there's test automation. In Agile development, you always have to retest things as you iterate on the functionality. That's where test automation can really help. If your team automates at least the overlapping tests, the retesting effort is minimal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-08-31T13:51:34.137" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22330" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22338" CreationDate="2017-08-31T14:57:42.280" Score="5" ViewCount="470" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am the IT manager in a company having 30 people in the IT team.&#xA;There are 3 major teams, each with 7 to 8 people, + few other smaller teams. Different locations, cultures and timezones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having progress issues with one of the projects, I am willing to improve the team efficiency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Until now, we were using OpenProject for project management. It worked well, although the layout is not the best for task presentations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, we decided to switch on Zoho, which is a paid product, offering some widgets like time tracking etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, I am asking all team members to send me a daily email report of their activities. I am making a resumee and sending a general report to the  senior management team so that they can have a general overview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we will use Zoho now, my idea was to stop asking them to send daily email reports, instead they need to report on Zoho by keeping their tasks updated on daily basis, so we can easily track what an IT did during its day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question: Is it better to ask the devs to continue sending the email by adding the amount of the working hours spent on every task, or to ask them to track hours using Zoho and rely on Zoho to assist me in tracking hours? Is the hourly base measuring applicable in IT?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality, the reporting workflow of a developer will be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Update the status of the tasks assigned to me&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Enter how many hours did I worked on that task on a specific day&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Update the completion percentage of the tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29701" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2017-09-01T18:03:29.097" LastActivityDate="2017-09-01T18:03:29.097" Title="Should I ask developers to report hours in daily reports or ask them to keep the task tracking tool we use with this level of detail?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;remote-teams&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22330" CreationDate="2017-08-31T16:48:06.517" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Start with the &quot;why&quot;. What information exactly is it that Senior Management is looking for. What are they using that information for? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could be as simple as wanting to see progress, or open to closed incidents. Until you know exactly what the information is for, you'll be doing a lot of wheel spinning. For example, I started at one company and they had a 100 slide deck that &quot;had&quot; to be updated every week. I spent time talking to all the audience of the deck and after a few weeks replaced the 100 slide deck with a single excel spreadsheet. They were more than happy with what they got.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you understand the &quot;Why&quot; you can look into the &quot;How&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Electronic tools will never beat real time communication. In addition, asking individuals to report can cause all sorts of issues, not the least of which is you no longer have a team, you have a bunch of individuals all focused on what they got done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If possible, I'd advocate each of your smaller teams meets in a daily meeting of no more than 15 minutes. Review progress, discuss blockers and then create an aggregated report for that team. If, for example, what management cares about is progress to a final project figure out how many known tasks there are and use that to create a burndown report. Every day you report how many tasks were completed to the goal and show the progress with a burndown report. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may sound like I'm advocating for an agile style. What I'm really advocating is for simple communication tools and techniques that work. They just happen to be common in agile projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-08-31T16:48:06.517" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22326" CreationDate="2017-08-31T16:51:56.457" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What Daniel said, Automation, automation, automation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;QA can never keep up with development with manual testing, it's just not possible. We've seen QA be the bottleneck on projects for over 30 years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What QA can do is take their expertise and apply it to creating automation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now QA is likely to push back on this if you just tell them to do it. Instead, approach it with questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example?: &#xA;- How do you think Amazon can make hundreds of production changes a day? &#xA;- If we management mandated daily releases, how would we change our current test practices to meet the demand? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-08-31T16:51:56.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22330" CreationDate="2017-08-31T20:05:26.977" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It looks like you're doing the right thing by moving to an automated system of sorts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing that will be most up to date will be the code and the Pull Requests or the patches that are proposed. The issues, tasks and time tracking linked to that won't always be the most up to date so if it's important, you're going to have to sit down and ping each developer and ask them for updates or you're going to have to train them to get into the habit so it doesn't feel like a chore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you can read code or keep track of what changes are being made and see the progress that way, you can ask developers for a few sentences of information and that will be enough to make sure the project is on track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your goal as PM is to make sure things go smoothly and that includes asking for updates, but it also means hiding or automating some of the administrative work so that the developers can do their jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27307" LastActivityDate="2017-08-31T20:05:26.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22334" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-09-01T02:43:14.697" Score="1" ViewCount="100" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are some specific examples that help make a daily scrum productive. I understand that in a daily Scrum meeting the basic questions reviewed are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What did you do yesterday?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are your plans today?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What obstacles do you have in your work now?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the daily Scrum dialogue what techniques have you found that are best for keeping things focused and moving toward productive work? Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29706" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2017-09-01T13:33:02.393" LastActivityDate="2017-09-01T13:33:02.393" Title="What are some specific techniques to keep the daily Stand-up productive?" Tags="&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2017-09-01T10:29:46.417" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22334" CreationDate="2017-09-01T07:42:24.083" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;--- Start of Standup ---&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hi,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;welcome to the stand-up, lets make this quick, answer these 3 questions only please.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q1, What did you do yesterday&#xA;Q2, What do you plan to do today&#xA;Q3, Are there any blockers stopping you from doing your tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK Lets start...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hey &lt;em&gt;insert name&lt;/em&gt; do you wan to give your update?&#xA;(repeat for all team members)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok any one any thing else they'd like to talk about ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok. Lets Go !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--- Ends ---&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;NB - its important not to stick to the rules too rigidly, if communication is flowing great, let it flow, &amp;amp; just keep an eye out that it doesn't side track the meeting too much.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29246" LastActivityDate="2017-09-01T07:42:24.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22330" CreationDate="2017-09-01T11:58:11.220" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd expand on Joel BC answer - '&lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt;' is the key, and being from a very similar environment (multi location / cultural place with hundreds of people reporting to a single head) I believe that understanding why such report is required is the key to define whether the proposed approaches will succeed or fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that understanding the target audience, can give you a better idea on whether your reporting will be useful or not:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Senior management:&lt;/strong&gt; what they're likely to be interested at is that the high level goals are progressing or having enough attention - so instead of a report explaining where each of the 30 members are working with, he might be interested to know that 50% is working on A, 25% on B and 25% on C and that the whole capacity is being utilized. This report can be &lt;em&gt;derived&lt;/em&gt; from the end of day updates provided by dev.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Intermediate management level&lt;/strong&gt; (your position, I assume): they're likely interested to know that the expected activities are being covered and that no blockers are in place.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Team level&lt;/strong&gt; (the team can benefit from knowing what peers are working on it, specially on a multi-location team): In this sense, the daily catch up meeting is interesting, but there's a problem if you have like us people in, let's say, US, UK and JP - there's simply no good window time these 3 teams overlaps. And for these cases, we're pretty much doing what you mention... keeping our task systems as updated as possible. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, is important to ensure that the Dev team is aware of &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; they have to do it and senior management needs to know &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; they want to use this information - taking into account that &lt;a href=&quot;https://blog.toggl.com/seven-circles-of-developer-hell/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Documentation is hated by developers&lt;/a&gt;, and logging time and tracking progress is, at some level, documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2017-09-01T11:58:11.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22330" CreationDate="2017-09-01T12:00:30.850" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well.. Your question caption states that you're wondering if you should use daily reports in your team, however as it turns out to be, you cannot decline using such the reports and the issue is actually in the reporting format. Either this would be a simple mail or a work log in Zoho.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that the last one would be the best way since:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your team should learn how to communicate their deliverables in the modern world.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You as a manager should take advantages of the dedicated management software and avoid doublework in any aspect.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Zoho supports REST API so I think that your devs will find the best way of delivering daily reports (e.g. some small cmd comman that will let put a report to a work-log to a task without any annoying web-serfing)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29674" LastActivityDate="2017-09-01T12:00:30.850" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22238" CreationDate="2017-09-01T15:34:01.343" Score="0" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First I would analyze if there are some tasks (components, streams, processes) which have some established employee to perform by (despite scrum implies cross-functioning, in real life it is hardly achievable). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Having such the mapping I would mix it up so that people are getting into the objectives they do not feel comfortable and convinient however where they can ask for advice of a team mate that used to be responsible for that. Since every developer has its own vision on the best way how to implement a task, there will be a lot of opinion collisions and disputes and this would make people to prduce more effective code since a conceit is one of the strongest motivation factors among IT-crowd.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I would set up a dashboard that I would use in scrum meetings where there would be highlighted some metrics and among those metrics (taking not the main place but nevertheless empesized among others) I would introduce a rating of the team members (like, number of fixes in a person's commits and some other depending on the project specific) that would push the person's self-conceit. I wouldn't even say a word about that rating, I'd just leave it there forever.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I would establish a monthly one-to-one meating where a person would answer a question like &quot;what would you change if you would a company owner&quot;, since people are often embarrassed to talk about problems or propose innopvations publicly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There a lot of factors that could cause such the behavior and the proposals above imply your team members are not simply lazy ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29674" LastActivityDate="2017-09-01T15:34:01.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22238" CreationDate="2017-09-01T20:23:09.610" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that Mark's comment is the key that was overlooked on the question itself and on some answers - &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; the team needs to change?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, I learned that different cultures react to rules in a different way. There are some cultures where vertical structures are the rule (not only on a professional perspective, but on a social perspective as well), and anything out of this sounds like trying to move away from the comfort zone. Have you assessed if that's what's happening? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Very often manager is busy and people have to wait for his decisions,&#xA;  directions, while doing nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It really, really looks like the kind of vertical culture where decisions are taken by some sort of leader, responsible for the success (and mainly and most importantly, for the failures). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You either have a team where &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the &lt;strong&gt;failures are strongly punished&lt;/strong&gt; (and then, don't expect the team to take them proactively) or &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you have a team that &lt;strong&gt;needs someone to call the shots&lt;/strong&gt; purely for cultural reasons&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might have three possible options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assess if a culture change on the company is possible, reducing the idea of punishment on bad decisions (unlikely IMHO, unless we're talking about a very small company)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a decision maker dedicated to the team (which may not be a bad idea, depending on how the team is structured)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll only be able to see the best answer for your scenario once you answer Mark's comment - &lt;em&gt;why the team needs to change?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2017-09-01T20:23:09.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22235" CreationDate="2017-09-03T06:08:10.140" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My question is that what kind of requirements will be excluded from&#xA;  project scope? Can you give me an example?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The decision to include or exclude a requirement is usually taken up by project manager by discussing requirements with project stakeholders. There can be different reasons as to why a requirement can be excluded, depending on the needs and priorities of project under execution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The requirement does not fit the core need of Product/service which you are developing. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Completion of requirement may exceed the project delivery dates beyond the schedule. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cost of implementing in requirement may be too much high and may cause cost variance or impact cost baseline. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Organisation may not have Human resource with appropriate skill to implement a requirement. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Implementing a requirement could introduce Risk which may adversely affect project baselines such as scope, cost, time and quality.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If one requirement was exclude from scope, should it keep staying in&#xA;  the requirement documentation? or should it be deleted from&#xA;  documentation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is always better to have all gathered requirements to be kept in requirement document. In future, some of the excluded requirement can be taken up based on feedback/discussion with project stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21918" LastEditorUserId="21918" LastEditDate="2017-09-03T10:20:52.600" LastActivityDate="2017-09-03T10:20:52.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22343" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-09-03T12:51:58.773" Score="0" ViewCount="84" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the week off and would like to get certified as a scrum master. I have run small projects but want official certification. I have recently been employed at a new employer who wants me to run a couple of small projects, and I want to do a great job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.careermatch-uk.com/management-courses/certified-scrum-master-csm.html#product_tabs_course_outline&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.careermatch-uk.com/management-courses/certified-scrum-master-csm.html#product_tabs_course_outline&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found this. Does anyone know if this is worth doing and would it be recognised as certification in Australia? There seems to be coupons to get thiss quite cheap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6367" LastActivityDate="2017-09-03T22:38:20.210" Title="SCRUM certification in UK, for Australia?" Tags="&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22344" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22351" CreationDate="2017-09-03T14:25:59.947" Score="0" ViewCount="2654" Body="&lt;p&gt;In PMBOK guide 5th Edition, tools and techniques for &quot;Collect requirements&quot; process includes  Focused group and Facilitated workshops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But their description in PMBOK guide 5th Edition to me looks similar. It says participation of stakeholders and subject matter experts to learn about their expectations and attitudes about a proposed product, service, or result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practically, What are the major differences between Focused group and Facilitated workshops?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21918" LastActivityDate="2017-09-05T11:40:17.860" Title="Difference between Focused group and Facilitated workshops" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;scope-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22343" CreationDate="2017-09-03T22:38:20.210" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK, so having been in slightly a similar situation, I would advise you go for &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/professional-scrum-certifications/professional-scrum-master-assessments&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PSM I&lt;/a&gt; and if you are up for it, maybe even PSM II or one of the other certifications offered by &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/professional-scrum-certifications&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum.org&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are all issued by Scrum.org, an organization founded by Ken Schwaber, who is scrum's co-author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I passed PSM I by simply reading the Scrum Guide, which is like 16 pages document. For PSM II, I pulled some of my old books and just freshened my memory on the parts that you don't tend to use at work. Do not aim for PSM II without having an excellent knowledge of Nexus or scaled scrum, something I knew about beforehand..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exams aren't trivial but if you have some experience with Scrum and prepare well, you should pass it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All Scrum.org certifications are recognized globally, are cheaper than all the other similar certifications and do not require that you attend an expensive course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A side note: certifications help your CV get noticed but do not guarantee a job. You will still need to be experienced enough to answer non-theory questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastActivityDate="2017-09-03T22:38:20.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22235" CreationDate="2017-09-04T12:38:05.510" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might want to look at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoSCoW_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MoSCoW model&lt;/a&gt; as an example - the W in MoSCoW stands for &quot;Will Not&quot; and represents requirements that the project will not fulfill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have written requirements of the form:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project WILL NOT require remote logon&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project WILL NOT require &lt;em&gt;specific software product&lt;/em&gt; to be installed on local systems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the product will not require the user to abandon existing procedures.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are all ways of defining the scope by limiting the scope.  I would want to maintain these requirements in the requirements trace-ability matrix to ensure that the finished product fulfills all of the requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A sculptor once said that he just looks at a stone, sees the sculpture and carves away all the stone that isn't in the sculpture - requirements can be the same way - sometimes it is as useful to know what will &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; be in the finished product as it is to know what will be in the product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2017-09-04T12:38:05.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22296" CreationDate="2017-09-04T21:32:45.543" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not familiar of &quot;Real Cost&quot; in the EVM formula. You should be able to see the formula used in the spreadsheet and it may tell you why the two are different. Given it is in Spanish, perhaps it refers to the &quot;Budget&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check out &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=2&amp;amp;ved=0ahUKEwj85s-OvYzWAhVjCMAKHWYTCgkQFggtMAE&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thinkforachange.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F04%2FEVM-Workbook.xls&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNFBCIbdiWtfdNeGZJFJkxDggxbgWA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this spreadsheet template&lt;/a&gt;, it has everything you need for EVM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastActivityDate="2017-09-04T21:32:45.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22348" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-09-05T07:58:06.517" Score="0" ViewCount="67" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you manage this scenario?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;UX and Visual design a feature.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PO and DEV decided -after design got approved- to ignore some specs of implementation, so we have something different than the design specs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where should be located this information?&#xA;Because SM ended up with a stakeholder discussion (PO is sick) and after his check of JIRA ticket he saw design and website implementation not aligned. After having created a bug a DEV told him that it was discussed with PO to be implemented like this. So the different design implementation is not reported anywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion these (ignored) specs update should stay in the design page (Zeplin, Confluence, whatever…). Do you agree? Because otherwise for anyone who losts that info, this scenario may look like a BUG. The missing part then could be turned into a new FEATURE, with again added comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you agree? What do you think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27720" LastActivityDate="2017-09-05T08:59:00.713" Title="How to manage misalignments between Design Specs and After Design Adjustments?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;design&gt;&lt;specification&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22348" CreationDate="2017-09-05T08:59:00.713" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like your organisation uses Jira tickets as their central source of information, (i.e your SM looks at Jira tickets), so the Jira tickets should contain short comments on how the implementation decisions have changed, and why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put a link in the ticket that points to the appropriate design directory. This way the ticket &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; references the most recent version of the visual design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you say, in an ideal world, the design itself should have been reworked, or at least annotated, to point out the features that would be delivered at different times....but that's seldom possible in a fast-paced workplace. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definitely turn the &quot;leftover&quot; or de-prioritised features into separate stories for the backlog. And mark them as related to the original story, for continuity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29725" LastActivityDate="2017-09-05T08:59:00.713" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22280" CreationDate="2017-09-05T09:34:04.860" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes I have heard this. Spotify has much success with this approach. They have a pool of Agile Coaches which are assigned to one team, a 'group of teams' or even virtual cross-cutting teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They move around based on where they are needed. Teams change over time and their need for a scrum master or agile coach changes over time and these coaches move where they are needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastActivityDate="2017-09-05T09:34:04.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22344" CreationDate="2017-09-05T11:40:17.860" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a caveat to my answer here, I do not know what PMI's intent was when differentiating between a focus group and a facilitated workshop.  One definition I read was that a focus group was a gathering of SMEs to discuss a single functional area while a facilitated workshop is a gathering of SMEs to discuss cross functional areas.  I don't think this definition adds a lot of value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my view, a focus group is a type of facilitated workshop.  A JAD session is another.  A risk identification meeting might be another.  I'd use the term focus group for a type of meeting where I am testing a particular hypothesis or hypotheses, a type of session to create a product of deduction.  Whereas another type of facilitated workshop is more a process of induction, where I am producing hypotheses for future work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in a standard risk meeting, the team would be escalating their identified threats for future analysis and mitigating efforts.  In a focused risk meeting, the team might be analyzing a specific risk or set of risks facing their environment to validate the threats and identify next set of actions.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-09-05T11:40:17.860" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22352" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22353" CreationDate="2017-09-05T12:58:14.460" Score="0" ViewCount="596" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to know: how could I define the &lt;code&gt;Definition of Done&lt;/code&gt; of the backlog items in my iteration in Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2015? My projects are based on &lt;code&gt;Scrum&lt;/code&gt; methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that the &lt;code&gt;Acceptance Criteria&lt;/code&gt; is different than the &lt;code&gt;DoD&lt;/code&gt; in theory. But I can't find any documentation about DoD in Scrum-based TFS. Should I add them into the &lt;code&gt;Acceptance Criteria&lt;/code&gt; of the backlog item or do I have to create a new column in &lt;code&gt;TFS&lt;/code&gt; and name it DoD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is it not available by default in TFS?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29739" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-09-05T13:09:18.017" LastActivityDate="2017-09-05T16:56:09.157" Title="How to add Definition of Done (DoD) in TFS 2015 Scrum methodology?" Tags="&lt;tfs&gt;&lt;definition-of-done&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22352" CreationDate="2017-09-05T16:56:09.157" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me preface this by saying I've never used TFS, but the functionality that you're describing seems logical to me based on what a Definition of Done is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Definition of Done is something that applies to Product Backlog Items as well as Increments. Each can have its own Definition of Done - what it means for a Product Backlog Item to be &quot;done&quot; is different than what it means for the Increment to be &quot;done&quot;. In both cases, it's simply a convention - it's not part of the backlog item itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experiences, the team's current Definition of Done is captured somewhere visible, like a wiki page. Over time, the Definition of Done for a team (or one that is shared across teams, if there are multiple teams working on the same product) will evolve as the team(s) mature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the Definition of Done is general (a single Definition of Done for all Product Backlog Items and/or a single Definition of Done for the Increment), you may choose to add specific considerations on a particular Product Backlog Item to ensure that you meet the Definition of Done if there is some non-obvious work. Likewise, if there is particular work that needs to be done to ensure the Increment meets the Definition of Done, tasks can be added to the Sprint Backlog. But in most cases, I would find this redundant and the team should strive toward simply meeting the Definition of Done in their daily work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2017-09-05T16:56:09.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22354" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22364" CreationDate="2017-09-05T22:08:19.133" Score="1" ViewCount="300" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our engineering team uses agile scrum and we are finally growing enough to be able to delegate more scrum roles to more members, including to some of the engineers like myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One role we're introducing that I have volunteered for is what we're calling the &quot;bouncer.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bouncer's role in this context is to: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;communicate and track support,  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;investigate incoming issues, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;escalate as appropriate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A work queue separate from the sprint is available for bouncers to work during downtime. This queue are small, low-priority tasks that do not impact business needs or sprint goals. These task's progress are to stop so that the bouncer may honor their role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking for more a much more formal definition of this role, and any information about it that I can get my hands on. Is there such information? Does this role go by other names that yield better search results?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29744" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-07-08T12:13:26.460" LastActivityDate="2019-07-08T12:13:26.460" Title="Sprint Bouncer role" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22354" CreationDate="2017-09-05T22:49:30.737" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum prescribes only three roles: Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Delivery (or Dev) Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, nothing stops the team from deciding how they want to tackle the challenges they face. If having someone take on these responsibilities is working for your team, cool. However, you won't find any formal definition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One question I do have though is why, when not triaging support, you wouldn't just assist other team members in sprint work. It seems like you may be artificially separating yourself from the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-09-05T22:49:30.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22354" CreationDate="2017-09-06T00:00:25.103" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum only provides three roles: Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Development Team. No other roles are defined in Scrum. Since Scrum does allow for some elements of each role to be delegated, you may choose to give a name to the role assigned to the person who is delegated certain tasks and this name would be up to your organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner role is responsible for Product Backlog management, and it sounds like most of these tasks fall squarely into that realm. Specifically, the Scrum Guide says this about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-po&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Product Owner&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is the sole person responsible for managing the&#xA;  Product Backlog. Product Backlog management includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Clearly expressing Product Backlog items;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Ordering the items in the Product Backlog to best achieve goals and missions;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Optimizing the value of the work the Development Team performs;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Ensuring that the Product Backlog is visible, transparent, and clear to all, and shows what the Scrum Team will work on next; and,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Ensuring the Development Team understands items in the Product Backlog to the level needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner may do the above work, or have the Development Team&#xA;  do it. However, the Product Owner remains accountable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If issues are being reported from outside the Scrum Team (which consists of the three roles), then those issues have an impact on the Product Backlog. Things like bug reports, changes to existing features, or new feature requests would be new or modified Product Backlog items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do note that the Product Owner may delegate some of these responsibilities to the Development Team. Of course, doing this will reduce capacity for the team. However, involving technical people sooner may lead to more well refined Product Backlog Items going into Sprint Planning sessions. This is a tradeoff that the team (or sometimes the organization) needs to make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that you mention, &quot;communicate and track support&quot; may also fall into the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-sm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;role of Scrum Master&lt;/a&gt;. The Scrum Master does provide support to not only the Development Team, but also the Product Owner and the organization. The Scrum Master should be helping the Product Owner find ways to deal with these incoming requests and methods to appropriately manage the Product Backlog, including writing good Product Backlog items. The Scrum Master is also responsible for making sure that any impediments to the Development Team are removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of that definition-of-Scrum aside, you can identify other tasks that need to be done during the course of a Sprint and who will be responsible for handling them. And it's up to you to appropriately identify these roles and find good ways to delegate them, either on a permanent or rotating basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think that the Product Owner, perhaps with support from one member of the Development Team (perhaps on a rotating basis) and the Scrum Master, should take the lead on these items. Investigating incoming issues and turning them into Product Backlog Items is definitely a Product Owner function, which may be delegated. Working to resolve impediments is definitely a Scrum Master function, which may include appropriate escalation. Tracking support may be a shared responsibility, but I would consider this to be a task that should be done by the Scrum Master to allow the Development Team to focus on development rather than tracking other people's work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2017-09-06T09:53:45.810" LastActivityDate="2017-09-06T09:53:45.810" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22357" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-09-06T04:26:53.920" Score="0" ViewCount="77" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to understand:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how teammates of a software-development team exchange their ideas about how a program's component (any part) should be designed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;when requirements of a project changes and some of the teammates get&#xA;together and discuss that what part of the program should be changed&#xA;and how? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how they do that&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;which tools to use&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if they use uml&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if they just talk about it without no picture or how&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if there is common approach&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29748" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-09-06T11:32:03.287" LastActivityDate="2017-09-06T12:26:50.330" Title="How should teammates discuss program design?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2017-09-07T08:01:02.793" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22357" CreationDate="2017-09-06T07:03:32.700" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this question is super broad. Or I can say these questions.&#xA;The first thing that comes to my mind are the guilds.&#xA;In my last companies I've been working developers have meeting (weekly? biweekly? monthly?) separated per areas (backend, frontend, qa, architect, drupal ..) and discuss new things of interest, new discoveries, particular bugs / scenarios faced during development.. and often there are demos where they show what they experiment (unit tests, new libraries...)&#xA;This is a very important moment for developers to share knowledge and business should give value to this time, even if it is not really dedicated to effective production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beside this, during the development time, developers should be independent and self organize moments of sharing knowledge, related to a specific implementation of a component, maybe involving multi teams, expertise should be explained by the owners of the knowledge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Documentation of components is also very important and it should be written in the code itself, in README files, or in appropriate spaces (as Confluence or whatever)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At last, sometimes we adopted the 20% rule. That means that 20% of developers' time (Friday can be the best day) is used to &quot;fight the debt&quot; which means to do refactoring of code, or to reduce technical debt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your other questions might be answered by you and your colleagues, I can't tell you what you have to use. You should use what fit you the best. And the best way is to test, to try, to experiment. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27720" LastEditorUserId="27720" LastEditDate="2017-09-06T07:42:20.653" LastActivityDate="2017-09-06T07:42:20.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22354" CreationDate="2017-09-06T07:55:23.403" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It looks like you are describing a classic support role outside of the Teams Sprint. &lt;strong&gt;Triaging&lt;/strong&gt; the support queue so as to leave the scrum team space to do their main work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kudos to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you should look into setting up a &lt;strong&gt;Kanban&lt;/strong&gt; board to support your triage work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to formally answer your question ,,, there is no such agile scrum role to describe the work you are doing. This is because the Scrum framework is light one that allows flexibility for teams to implement it in a way that works for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regards&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29246" LastActivityDate="2017-09-06T07:55:23.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22357" CreationDate="2017-09-06T12:26:50.330" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No matter the product--software or an outhouse--your project will generally follow these phases: requirements, design, build, test, deliver.  Some products are iterative and you go through these phases over and over and other products are delivered once and done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your first part of the question is answered in the design phase.  During this phase, your properly skilled team will do nothing but draw, analyze, problem solve, argue, draw again, analyze further, write, draw, and eventually arrive at a product design that meets most of the requirements established in the earlier phase.  The exact approach one would take depends on the type of product and is too broad of scope to be answered here, i.e., you need to ask a more specific question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your second part of the question is answered through a PM process and control capability called change management.  This process enables someone to escalate a change idea, and through governance, this idea is analyzed--which would mean a potential design--as well as assessed for cost and schedule impacts.  If approved, requirements are adjusted, the design is adjusted, and then the team continues its build.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tools are typically industry specific.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I don't think UML matters.&#xA;The design phase is when you arrive at the picture and how.&#xA;Common approaches are industry specific.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-09-06T12:26:50.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22361" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-09-06T14:30:00.743" Score="2" ViewCount="376" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was given the role of managing 5 different teams (iOS, Android, Backend, Firmware and Hardware (electronics)). All these teams consist of no more than 4-5 developers. There is also a QA team (2 engineers) and they are testing all the components, either feature or new firmware.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All teams used to work separately with their own boards, backlogs, and sprints. Last month we started working on features dividing it on stories and moved iOS, Android, and backend to one dev board. &#xA;Currently, we have 1-2 dynamic feature teams, as some features can have different lifetime and require different developer pairs (for example, iOS+Android+Backend or FW+Backend, etc.) and individuals who are working on small tasks/tech debt or other items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need to understand:&#xA;- What would be the best organization structure of the above teams? Currently, I don't have any idea but to continue working as small feature teams.&#xA;- How to estimate the productivity of each team member within one board where we are tracking either features or individual tasks. I understand that it would be better to track velocity of the TEAM, however, teams are kinda changing from feature to feature and not stable enough to trust the velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29751" LastEditorUserId="29751" LastEditDate="2017-09-06T15:45:57.447" LastActivityDate="2018-04-04T23:23:49.623" Title="Organization structure in startup" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;&lt;process-improvement&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22354" CreationDate="2017-09-06T17:23:22.823" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Anti-Pattern: Defining Non-Project Roles in Scrum&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have said, there's no role called &quot;Bouncer&quot; in Scrum. The Scrum Guide &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;defines exactly three roles within the Scrum Team&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Team consists of a Product Owner, the Development Team, and a Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because a Scrum Team is cross-functional, the team can certainly choose to perform any activities that further its Sprint Goals, and can do that in any way that makes sense for the team. However, defining additional &lt;em&gt;roles&lt;/em&gt; (rather than processes) is a Scrum anti-pattern that typically indicates an underlying process problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your team is defining a role named &quot;Bouncer&quot; to perform triage and provide support. When you say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A bouncer's role in this context is to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;communicate and track support,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  investigate incoming issues, and&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  escalate as appropriate&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you're clearly describing a &lt;em&gt;recurring support function&lt;/em&gt; rather than product development or time-boxed work, which are the domains for which Scrum was designed. That doesn't mean Scrum doesn't allow for bug fixes or support; it just means that designing a support process outside of the Scrum framework and then shoe-horning it back into Scrum is generally &lt;em&gt;The Wrong Thing to Do™.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Support Functions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, all work must be prioritized on the Product Backlog, estimated during Sprint Planning, and should be related to the current Sprint Goal. In a properly-implemented Scrum framework, bugs or defects from outside the current Sprint are placed onto the Product Backlog, discussed and prioritized during Backlog Refinement, and then planned &lt;em&gt;if and when&lt;/em&gt; they are in scope during Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes sense because Scrum is primarily a project management framework, and its goal is to manage &lt;em&gt;projects&lt;/em&gt; that have a defined scope and a limited duration. Ongoing support or repeating processes are not projects, and can be difficult to manage within a framework that is designed for time-boxes rather than procedural cycles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, bugs or defects in a project's product definitely belong to the Scrum Team, but should be handled within the Scrum framework. However, ongoing &lt;em&gt;support&lt;/em&gt; should not be part of the Scrum unless a business decision has been made to permanently reduce the team's capacity to allocate a time-box for support within each Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A better alternative is to set up a separate support &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt;, perhaps using Kanban or another cycle- or queue-driven agile methodology, which could then handle issues directly or feed them back into the Scrum's Product Backlog as appropriate. Conceptually, such a support process is outside the Scrum framework, but that doesn't mean it must be isolated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Lessons Learned About &quot;Support Scrum&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've used Scrum for administrative, support, and back-office processes that aren't project-based. It &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be done. However, the central feature of Scrum is the time-box, and support is not inherently driven by estimates or time boxes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way I've been able to make Scrum work in such non-project endeavors is to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Zealously enforce time-boxing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use one-week Sprints.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rigorously enforce Scrum ceremonies like Sprint Planning as the only valid inflection points for making changes to team goals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make it 100% clear to stakeholders that &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; change in the current Sprint for &quot;emergencies&quot; invalidates any forecasts or commitments for the current Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Understand that coherent Sprint Goals and rigorous prioritization will allow some tasks to languish in the Product Backlog for long periods of time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not okay with all of the above, then Scrum is not the right framework for your support process. Evaluate Kanban as an alternative for queue-driven work, or find another process that's more suitable for your business and political needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;See Also&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more about how to handle ongoing or recurring support tasks within Scrum, or on why Scrum is often the wrong choice for managing an ongoing  support process, see the following related answers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/6513/4271&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/6513/4271&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/14774/4271&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/14774/4271&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8542/4271&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8542/4271&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8115/4271&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8115/4271&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/21902/4271&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/21902/4271&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-09-06T17:23:22.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22361" CreationDate="2017-09-06T19:20:42.470" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on what I'm seeing I'll give you two answers. If I were in person and able to do some first-hand observations, I could probably come up with a more refined suggestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1- Best Case:&lt;/strong&gt; Your best case is to take the time, now, to move your team members towards better cross-functionality. Instead of having an iOS Dev, an Android Dev, and a QA person, you want three Agile Devs where one just happens to be stronger in iOS, one in Android, one in testing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The challenge is this usually can't happen over night, though you would be surprised how quickly you can move from functional silos to full stack developers if everyone is on board with the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2- Quick Solution:&lt;/strong&gt; Move to a Kanban workflow, with a heavy focus on Work in Progress limits. Have Team Member &quot;Icons&quot; (magnets, stickers, something like that) that they can attach to stories in the Ready queue. When all the people needed for a Ready story are on the story, and there is WIP availability in Doing, move the story over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So an iOS developer finishes up a story. She sees that the third story down will need iOS and Backend work, only no backend person is available yet. The iOS Dev then looks at the stories above and sees that an Android person is working with a Firmware Engineer. She sits in on their pairing session so she can learn more about Android while she waits for the Backend person to be free.  By doing this, you can move towards the Best Case solution over time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've got a &quot;What do I do next workflow&quot; that I often share with teams I coach. Here it is my Kanban version: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We trust you, do the right thing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there some way I can help someone with a current task?. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can I fix a bottleneck in the workflow (someplace where WIP or Cycle Time is high)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can I work on an unstarted task on an in-progress, user story?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can I fix some outstanding technical debt, or make the system better?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can I start a new story that is high in the current Ready backlog?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can I learn something new or improve my skills?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When in doubt, see #1.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-09-06T19:20:42.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18646" CreationDate="2017-09-07T01:57:05.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simplest way to determine the feature set of an MVP is by asking yourself of EVERY feature, &quot;is this required in order to provide the minimum amount of value to the end user?&quot;. The whole concept of MVP is to get something out as quickly as possible to start validating your hypotheses by learning with real user data. Therefore you should only include the MOST minimum amount of things that are required to validate those hypotheses. Anything additional you include will delay the amount of time it takes to prove or disprove your hypotheses and therefore could be wasted time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are trying to make a decision about MVP features and you don't yet know what overall hypotheses you are trying to prove or disprove with your MVP then you are already doomed to choose the MVP feature set based on personal opinion, consensus and whoever has the loudest voice. So you need to ensure you are starting with a clear idea of what are the goal learnings of the MVP before you can do anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hard to be rigorous about MVP decisions - especially with clients &amp;amp; stakeholders who are almost always going to fall on the side of &quot;yes that's required&quot; - but it's the best way to ensure you make the most of you &amp;amp; your engineers time in the long-run by building products that are based in reality rather than based on you and your teams assumptions of reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29759" LastActivityDate="2017-09-07T01:57:05.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22367" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-09-07T03:49:28.520" Score="3" ViewCount="1411" Body="&lt;p&gt;Say the product backlog has 90 stories and about 30 stories  which make part of functionality of the application is developed and delivered during previous sprints. The PO choose to release this delivered functionality and put it in production.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Currently, I am at sprint 6 and the sprint duration is 3 weeks. The sprint has started with about 5 stories as it's sprint backlog items and by now one week of the sprint has passed.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Now&lt;/strong&gt; the PO discovers a production bug or an important functionality that needs to be added on the production application on top priority. The estimate  for this fix or functionality is just few story points that can be delivered in few hours based on teams velocity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By now hopefully you see the situation the PO is in. Even if the development team (as only DT can modify the sprint backlog not the PO) is willing to take this fix/functionality in to there sprint backlog, the delivery of it will take another 2 weeks (as only one week of the 3 weeks of sprint has passed) and the PO can not wait that long.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can the PO do in this situation.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;1) Can he initiate another new Sprint that lasts only few hours or at most for a day (I would like to call this micro sprints). &lt;strong&gt;So here part of the question - Can sprints last for few hours or for a day or two at most.&lt;/strong&gt; (from what i have read any where, the shortest sprint duration's I have read or heard is of 1 week) So I have this doubt, is it possible to have short sprints of few hours or a day  and &lt;strong&gt;are they valid and acceptable in scrum.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2) &lt;strong&gt;what do you suggestion on how the PO should handle this top priority and urgent fix/functionality that needs immediate delivery.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: every thing on the project should be done through a formal scrum process only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29760" LastActivityDate="2017-09-19T13:52:01.320" Title="How to address delivery of production fixes in scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22367" CreationDate="2017-09-07T06:27:43.993" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum is vehicle to get to your destination faster and more comfortably. Not a club to beat each other over the head...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is nothing in Scrum stopping you from renegotiating the scope of this sprint or releasing a new version during the sprint. SCRUM only says that sprints should be short enough that usually this kind of thing is not necessary (Ie. the PO &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; wait for the next sprint for everything that comes up). But the whole point of agile is that you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; adapt to changing circumstances. Also Scrum doesn't say you can &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; deliver at the end of the sprint, but that you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be &lt;em&gt;able&lt;/em&gt; to release at the end of the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the impact of the bug or missing functionality is as big as the PO says then you should address this immediately and push out a new version within the sprint. You should also use your next retrospective to address how it was possible to miss this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Individuals and interactions&lt;/strong&gt; over processes and tools&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working software over comprehensive documentation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Customer collaboration over contract negotiation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Responding to change&lt;/strong&gt; over following a plan&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-09-07T06:27:43.993" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22367" CreationDate="2017-09-07T08:07:58.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen people add an emergency lane to their Kanban board - and those tickets get priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This prevents breaking the Kanban concept - but, as &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/26715/kempeth&quot;&gt;Kempeth&lt;/a&gt; already &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/22368/4384&quot;&gt;answered&lt;/a&gt; so eloquently, Project Management tools exist to facilitate (and hopefully speed up) the delivery process, in the ultimate hope of making the company rich. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Treating PjM as immutable rules is silly, though you have to be careful that you don't have an unending list of &quot;&lt;em&gt;emergencies&lt;/em&gt;&quot; that destroy the entire concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2017-09-07T08:07:58.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22367" CreationDate="2017-09-07T09:33:29.580" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great answers above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'll add ... Take some time with the PO &amp;amp; DT to discuss Production Bug fixes and try to have a policy in place so your team will have a better understanding of Scrum Vs Emergency fixes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually teams adopt a ... &quot;If it's that important ... Fix it, deploy it, return to sprint tasks&quot; methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then watch out for PO's sneaking change in as emergencies when in fact they are just missed requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29246" LastActivityDate="2017-09-07T09:33:29.580" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22367" CreationDate="2017-09-07T19:00:21.560" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many ways to deal with this but in my opinion, the following two are the most sustainable:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the team's velocity is 50 stories, go into the sprint with 35 stories. Leaving 15 for bug fixed and/or continuous improvement/learning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shorten the sprint as much as possible. There is no point in distracting the team with bugs. Majority of bugs will be able to wait for the next sprint planning to get prioritized.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, the longer term goal should be to minimize bugs by introducing practices that promote quality. If you do have a large % of effort going towards bugs, then the above will be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After doing everything, production show stoppers may still seldom appear. My approach to that is stop the whole team, fix it, move on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastActivityDate="2017-09-07T19:00:21.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22367" CreationDate="2017-09-07T19:02:17.330" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What we do at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a sprint planned which consist of 2 parts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;new development (70%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fixing bugs/incidents/production on fire&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this proposition you take into account the time to fix bugs. You don't fix them all in one sprint, but you just take a continuous approach to that. When the PO has a very high production issue, it goes into account of the bug time. That way the new development doesn't stall and you can fix the production issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a situation in where the product is live and we have a lot of bugs (bought the damn thing fixed price). It works fairly well for us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be aware of calling this little sprints or so. If this is really a problem, perhaps take a little while shorter sprints. 1 (or max 2) weeks. That way you can also deliver faster those pesky production issues&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29611" LastActivityDate="2017-09-07T19:02:17.330" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12083" CreationDate="2017-09-07T19:12:49.647" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never done this and it would be a major anti-pattern because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are discouraging change&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are excluding the PO from the team, at least indirectly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, this has happened many times. At the end, it has to be about the sprint goal's relevance to the business. If the PO has something relevant to the goal, then I encourage the  team quickly decide what changes should be made without inflating the velocity. If it is irrelevant, then I let the PO decide whether we should stop the sprint and start a new sprint. 100% of the time the PO understanding the stopping and starting of a new sprint will be far more expensive than adding making some &quot;urgent changes&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, it is not uncommon for teams to work in a traditional manner (BDUF, Waterfall, etc) while employing particular agile practices like the role, daily scrums and sprints. This is not Scrum but is still better than no intervals to &quot;inspect and adapt&quot;. I suspect this may apply to you, so establishing barriers to change to keep the project moving forward and within scope may be necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastActivityDate="2017-09-07T19:12:49.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22380" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-09-11T15:05:07.647" Score="4" ViewCount="189" Body="&lt;p&gt;Management of the (non-technical, with team members based in different locations) project I'm currently working on has a huge issue - it is extremely dynamic, with a static team-size. At any given point in time, each team member has on their plate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Certain fixed repeating tasks which need to be repeated on&#xA;daily/biweekly/weekly/fortnightly level &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implementation of 4-5 unique sub-projects which are highly dynamic - client&#xA;requirements can and do change at any minute, but there are also a few fixed&#xA;points at which certain status reports need to be created and&#xA;presented.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, new sub-projects can get added to our plate with very little warning. These new sub-projects can change the prioritization of existing work, causing timelines to always be in flux. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, we're struggling to maintain visibility into all that the team is working on at any given point, and hence have a realistic handle on what is possible for the team to handle at any given point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short-notice addition of tasks is a new challenge, and prior to this we were successfully project managing via excel, but now given that our workload has increased by a magnitude and become more dynamic to boot, excel is no longer able to help us very much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the best way to project manage the sub-projects in order to maintain feasibility of work allocation for each team member and timelines for each sub-project?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29795" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-09-11T16:38:29.650" LastActivityDate="2017-09-12T21:08:22.947" Title="What is the best way to manage dynamic sub-projects?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22380" CreationDate="2017-09-11T16:46:03.050" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had this situation come up once or twice.  I'm not happy with my solution, but it is the best I've been able to create.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I build two project management systems.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The top level (portfolio view) shows all the sub projects but only goes down to the level of the gate review. (the fixed milestones to which you refer).  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The bottom level (project view) is used to manage each sub-project and includes much more granular dates.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't need to manage work allocation (I'm lucky).  If I did, I'd track the work allocation on the project level  and report only conflicts &amp;amp; summaries at the portfolio level.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use excel, but I freely admit that the excel sheets have become so complex that I don't think anyone other than myself could manage them successfully.  Excel is not a self documenting programming language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried doing this in MS-Project several times, but the edifice became very fragile and I spent more time verifying that the tool hadn't broken than I did analyzing the real schedule data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2017-09-11T16:46:03.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22380" CreationDate="2017-09-11T18:38:49.303" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you're operating in chaos, with purposeful loose change control.  I am not sure a tool or method is the right solution but rather resetting expectations on what you are able to forecast and promise by way of delivery.  If you are in constant flux in terms of your timeline and cost accrual against specific projects, there is no way you can reliably measure progress and forecast from there, no matter the tool you try to deploy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have two utilization issues: 1) your planned utilization against the projects and 2) actual utilization.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your planned utilization should be easy to track as project demand and prioritization change.  New project comes in, simply reallocate utilization values against each resource until it equals the utilization value you want, e.g., 100% or 110% per resource.  Since you have repeating tasks, I would suspect those utilization values never change except when you true them up with actuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your actual utilization would be available for reconciliation if you are using different charge codes for each project.  Based on those charge codes, you would be able to report out activity on each of those projects, and what those actions cost for each project.  This does not tell you, however, progress made.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding progress made, since you are in a dynamic environment, you are not able to reliably forecast when tasks or projects can be completed.  No method will help you because your work can constantly be reprioritized, including work in progress.  This is the tough conversation you HAVE to have, in that you need to be relieved of any type of pressure that you are held to some sort of milestone or deadline date for delivery.  Estimating remaining work on any project will have a high degree of uncertainty with no reliable or valid numbers to back you.  You're stuck with, 'maybe we can finish by....'  So, if a chaotic input is what you're stuck with, then a chaotic output is the result.  And if you're required to some how cure this, you're set up to fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-09-11T18:38:49.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22383" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-09-12T03:06:18.293" Score="3" ViewCount="918" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a lot of good debate here about changing the scope of a sprint backlog due to normal work circumstances; PO wants a new story, a dependency didn't materialize, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our case one of the team members had a family emergency that kept them away for almost half the sprint and the rest of the team could not pick up the work they had planned on doing. Should we replan the sprint backlog and remove the items they know cannot be completed?  In planning the team fully owns the scope of upcoming sprint and we emphasize completing all Sprint items as a commitment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am curious how other teams have handled this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29801" LastActivityDate="2017-09-21T07:34:03.177" Title="Removing items from the sprint backlog due to emergency" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scope&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22383" CreationDate="2017-09-12T03:17:20.880" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the situation you've provided where the team can no longer meet their expected plan for the sprint, then adjusting the plan is preferable. In short, as the Agile Manifesto says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We value Responding to Change over Following a Plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No benefit is gained by pretending that the plan is still valid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the last thing, there's some academic debate over if completing all stories is, in fact, an indicator of a successful sprint. There are two points in particular to consider on this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Meeting the sprint goal and completing all stories are usually not the same thing. If they are, you may not be getting the most out of your sprints. If it appears that the sprint goal can not be met with the original plan, the question should be if the goal can be met another way or if a majority of the goal can be met with a new plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Your team may be over-committing and not effectively managing risk. This may be a great topic for the retrospective. Now, if you've got a team of 4 and they left at the beginning of the sprint, a 25% hit is a hard risk to plan for. You know the specifics of the situation better than I do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-09-12T03:17:20.880" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22380" CreationDate="2017-09-12T09:04:49.503" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wonder about your level of freedom to take decisions. I understand that your staff level is fixed. So you will need to be able to delay sub-projects, reduce their scope or even reject some of them if you don't have enough resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have seen similar situations in the past with an SAP department that got a lot of &quot;spontaneous&quot; projects directly by the CEO as part of new business initiatives or mergers.&#xA;In this case the &quot;solution&quot; was to show the CEO visually the level of (over-) assignment at the moment when he tried to add a new project. The department manager was able to show that there was no slack in his team, he could show the list of ongoing projects, and he could demonstrate the delay that all projects would suffer if a new one would be accepted with high priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, the CEO meetings changed, and the CEO would take decisions to delay some projects or to add freelancers to others. But most important, the CEO's decision could be communicated to the stakeholders of the delayed projects, easing the pressure on the department head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6266" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2017-09-12T10:21:58.317" LastActivityDate="2017-09-12T10:21:58.317" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22383" CreationDate="2017-09-12T11:08:10.410" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;How big is the team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one developer is absent for half a sprint, and you cannot pick up the slack of that, you have put too much into the sprint I guess. (This would be far more the case if it consist of 2 developers instead of 7 off course)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It happens a lot that in a 2-9 person team an illness occurs or unplanned holidays, so it would mean that you have this problem a lot?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29611" LastActivityDate="2017-09-12T11:08:10.410" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22380" CreationDate="2017-09-12T21:08:22.947" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you mentioned, you have two different natures of work for the same capacity, the &lt;em&gt;known&lt;/em&gt; tasks and the &lt;em&gt;unknown&lt;/em&gt; tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Known&lt;/em&gt; is anything you have some capacity to guesstimate how much it'll cost you, so you can 1) forecast the work and 2) the level of confidence when setting deadlines are acceptable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Unknown&lt;/em&gt; is anything unexpected that could cost an... unknown amount of effort&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work in a similar environment - and our current motto is &lt;em&gt;time is a matter of priority&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the &lt;em&gt;known&lt;/em&gt; activities, we have some capacity primarily dedicated to these activities, to reduce the continuous shifting of actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the &lt;em&gt;unknown&lt;/em&gt; activities, however, you need to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make sure you have clear what are the activities each person is working with (some sort of task tracking tool is highly welcome)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make sure the priorities of the work being done is according to the client demand&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make sure your client understand minimally the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.es/search?q=triple+constraints+of+project+management&amp;amp;oq=Triple+Constraint&amp;amp;aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0l5.1865j0j4&amp;amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Triple Constraints of Project Management&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It usually boils down to &lt;em&gt;&quot;Can X be done? Of course, which one of these activities (which you'll check based on the item #1) you want to park / put at risk?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A special addendum on the &quot;&lt;em&gt;we're struggling to maintain visibility into all that the team is working on at any given point&lt;/em&gt;&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have problems on tracking the new requirements, it's yet another reason to ensure all the requests are using the standardized model of task tracking. If you rely on mails or any other sort of communication to track requests, you're going to have a bad time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key here is that the task list must be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Transparent, anyone can see the worklog (and the backlog)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collaborative, anyone can add up or update items at any given time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Easy to use, this way anyone can raise requests&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, at this stage, I'd no longer rely on a single Excel to track all this work - the Excel can be used to obtain a high level view, but this view needs to be derived from the actual tasks the team is working with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2017-09-12T21:08:22.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21494" CreationDate="2017-09-13T10:53:19.730" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should assign resources to the tasks, and the resources have their rates. That should not bee too much of work for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MSP then calculates all the components. For Actual costs, you can override the calculations.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If MSP is too cumbersome to use in this context, you should revert to good old Excel (and maybe interconnect those two)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29813" LastActivityDate="2017-09-13T10:53:19.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20989" CreationDate="2017-09-13T10:57:11.820" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When there is a latest date for a work to be finished defined (as I understand from your post), I would suggest you late start the activity (Start as Late as Possible constraint). On day to day basis, you then decide when to start the activity - based on resources' availability, priorities, risks,... . But you still see the latest date when you have to start.&#xA;This approach also allows for dependecies to be tracked and honored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29813" LastActivityDate="2017-09-13T10:57:11.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22201" CreationDate="2017-09-13T11:01:29.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the examples (as you mention also), interchangeable resources with some total availability are expected. However, you can treat schedule as multiple networks of single schedule. In the algorithms, there is a step where you select next eligible activity: here you can decide not only on resource availability, but also dependencies (to activities of different resources). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you ask for keywords, try &quot;Parallel schedule generation scheme&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To quote the resource linked below, giving the gist of the method:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;A parallel schedule generation scheme iterates over the time horizon&#xA;  of the project (i.e. a time incrementation) instead of iterating over&#xA;  the priority list (i.e. an activity incrementation) and adds&#xA;  activities that are eligible to be scheduled. More precisely, the&#xA;  scheme starts at time point t = 0 and schedules activities before the&#xA;  time pointer is increased. It selects at each decision point t the&#xA;  eligible activities E and assigns a scheduling sequence of these&#xA;  eligible activities according to the priority list. At each decision&#xA;  point, the eligible activities are scheduled with a starting time&#xA;  equal to the decision point (on the condition that there is no&#xA;  resource conflict). Activities that cannot be scheduled due to a&#xA;  resource conflict are skipped and become eligible to schedule at the&#xA;  next decision point t’ &gt; t, which equals the earliest completion time&#xA;  of all activities active at the current decision point t.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmknowledgecenter.be/page/2011/52/resource-scheduling&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PM Knowledge Center page on Resource Scheduling&lt;/a&gt;, it lists couple resource-based scheduling approaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29813" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2017-09-19T06:16:35.597" LastActivityDate="2017-09-19T06:16:35.597" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12041" CreationDate="2017-09-13T17:34:57.070" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LqjaV.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LqjaV.png&quot; alt=&quot;Lean Agile&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/z1HrM.gif&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/z1HrM.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Scrum Kanban Similarities&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6j6I2.gif&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6j6I2.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Scrum Kanban Differences&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://agilepearls.wordpress.com/tag/kanban-board/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PEARL XII : Kanban : Application of Lean software development to Agile Methodologies | Pearls of Wisdom&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.slideshare.net/alimenkou/kanban-vs-scrum-2725721&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban vs Scrum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://tech.gsa.gov/guides/glossary/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Guides: Glossary - Tech at GSA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://alistair.cockburn.us/get/1885&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Software Development as a Co­-operative Game (pdf)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27065" LastEditorUserId="27065" LastEditDate="2017-09-13T19:42:29.780" LastActivityDate="2017-09-13T19:42:29.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22243" CreationDate="2017-09-13T20:45:48.893" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A spike is an experiment, so the expectations vs the results should be demonstrated, if not via a demo, via a:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a benchmark comparison&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a competitive analysis chart&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a design document&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a flow diagram&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a screencast&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a burnup chart&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a QA/QE test plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The output of a spike is demonstrable, both to the team and to any other stakeholders. This brings visibility to the research and architectural efforts and also helps build collective ownership and shared responsibility for the key decisions that are being taken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/spikes/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Guidance – Spikes – Scaled Agile Framework&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://techbeacon.com/how-clear-qa-complexity-use-spikes-feature-test-review&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to manage QA complexity: Use spikes and a feature test review&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27065" LastActivityDate="2017-09-13T20:45:48.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16361" CreationDate="2017-09-13T20:55:29.393" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The developer can work on improving both the process and the team via several actions required for the end of the sprint, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Analysis of actual vs expected velocity to improve trust&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Categorization of the root causes of defects to avoid repeat mistakes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Preparation of a list of items for the retrospective to improve collaboration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Codifying manual testing into automated scripts to improve efficiency&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/9318/&quot;&gt;Agile team missing commitments regularly and complaining about no trust&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://lostechies.com/jimmybogard/2012/09/12/why-im-done-with-scrum/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why I'm done with Scrum | Jimmy Bogard's Blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.infoq.com/articles/experience-qa-scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;My Experience as a QA in Scrum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27065" LastEditorUserId="27065" LastEditDate="2017-09-14T18:51:25.263" LastActivityDate="2017-09-14T18:51:25.263" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21609" CreationDate="2017-09-14T12:35:44.673" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This can be easily managed with a meeting with the stake holders and the technical team. At the time of requirement gathering (before finalizing the scope of the project) the technical team needs to get an A to Z picture of the project and needs to come up with the queries that they have in a document and then go for a phone call/brainstorming section with the stakeholders and prepare the modules/features list and get it approved on the same. Then stick-on with these features as final and if they ask for change/modification consider them as a new scope. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29825" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-09-14T13:12:53.057" LastActivityDate="2017-09-14T13:12:53.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20744" CreationDate="2017-09-14T14:23:26.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had the same issue and was suprised, that there were only few answers and especially not very simple solutions (like VBA mentioned above).&#xA;I've found a simple workaround for this report I'd like to share:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I also used summary tasks to model my different project-phases (how dare I?!). Which lead me to your problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then I added a custom text1 field to my tasks, telling each task in which &quot;phase&quot; it is (this is redundant information, which I dislike myself...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I assigned resources to my tasks(!) not to my summary tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the view &quot;TASK: usage&quot; (important! not &quot;Resource: Usage&quot; as one might expect):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Group the table after text1 (phase) and Name (resource-name) + check the box &quot;group aggregation, not tasks&quot; both field-types need to stay &quot;Task&quot; (not resource)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;voila: you get a phase-wise view on your resource usage...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MS Project tries REALLY really hard to hide useful and simple features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29826" LastActivityDate="2017-09-14T14:23:26.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22396" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-09-15T09:03:01.360" Score="1" ViewCount="590" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems I'm dragging you along with me in the IT field, believe me, it's not premeditated. My question - a little broad that I admit - is: when is ITIL used and when is the PMP used? and why rather the PMP and not the ITIL? and vice versa?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25654" LastEditorUserId="25654" LastEditDate="2017-09-15T12:39:10.600" LastActivityDate="2018-01-31T01:09:51.950" Title="What is the difference between ITIL and PMP?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;pmi&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22396" CreationDate="2017-09-15T16:29:57.013" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question can go in a lot of different directions, so I will attempt to be brief. &#xA; ITIL, as you're probably aware is Information Technology Infrastructure Library; and PMP is a Project Management Professional. Though one can be certified in both, normally when one uses &quot;PMP&quot; they are referencing the certification. Are you asking when would the certifications be used?&#xA; I think what you're asking is when to use the practices within each framework (ITIL or PMP). And the answer is that these are not mutually exclusive. ITIL is a standard around IT services (SLAs, Continuity Management, Security Management, etc), and PMP is a standard on how to manage projects. &#xA;The projects occur within an across an IT organization which utilizes ITIL. &#xA;I hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29383" LastActivityDate="2017-09-15T16:29:57.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21862" CreationDate="2017-09-15T17:27:36.750" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally, think in this way, what, why, when, who, how, and after the answer of the each of above, ask those 5 again to dig deeper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Describe the process of gathering the requirements you are planning to take. What kind of questions you are planning to ask? What considerations need to be taken? (from a BA point of view) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a. what kind of food Burger-24 is selling besides burger?(food&#xA;  category of the website)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;b. when customers usually order and what food they order most(home&#xA;  page food to show in different time)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;c. what payment sources does customers use?(check out use paypal or&#xA;  credit card)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;d. why customers will use website instead of calling number?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;e. what is the conversations when customers call? (form to be show&#xA;  when ordering through website)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;f. how do you deliver food? (should we show real time location of&#xA;  delivery)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Please create the specification based on the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;current information&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; given &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a. website should display food&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;b. users can select food, calculate the total, tax and sub total.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;c. users can pay through one kind of payment sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;d. and more more on website loading speed, security, theme, style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29838" LastActivityDate="2017-09-15T17:27:36.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18708" CreationDate="2017-09-15T18:53:41.687" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rather than trying to plan for unplanned meetings, training or sick days, schedule a set of hours each day for team centered activities, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pair programming&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;code review&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;integration testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;security testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;performance optimization&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;merging branches&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, create a reserve story which captures a percentage of each team members capacity each sprint to handle foreseeable action items, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;production bug fixes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;research for spikes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;build breaks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SSL renewal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Refactoring code&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Updating documentation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Integrating retrospective suggestions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planning for the next sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.owasp.org/images/5/54/Owasp_stuttgart_agile_secure_20150803.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Security at OWASP (pdf)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://smartbear.com/learn/code-review/agile-code-review-process/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Peer Code Review: An Agile Process That Works! | SmartBear Collaborator&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isye.umn.edu/labs/scorlab/pdf/WG12_1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nurse Absenteeism and Staffing Strategies for Hospital Inpatient Units (pdf)&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/surgery/education/pacc_residency/description.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Johns Hopkins Hospital Postgraduate Critical Care Residency for PAs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27065" LastEditorUserId="27065" LastEditDate="2017-09-15T19:55:27.427" LastActivityDate="2017-09-15T19:55:27.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18714" CreationDate="2017-09-15T19:25:26.707" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Merging an outdated branch to master is easier if you create a new directory structure for the new feature, then do an interactive merge rather than an automatic merge:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://git-scm.com/book/sr/v2/Git-Tools-Interactive-Staging&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Git - Interactive Staging&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.8/svn.branchmerge.advanced.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SVN - Advanced Merging&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.mit.edu/macdev/Development/Documentation/www/CVS%20Documentation/Understanding%20CVS.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Understanding CVS: A brief introduction to the concepts of CVS&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing inline assertions helps immensely for large stories. Have a code review of the assertions and generate a test report at the end of each sprint to show progress.  This avoids the need for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scope creep due to a smoke and mirrors demo&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requirement gaps due to creating APIs under pressure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Security issues due to delayed code review&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Last minute refactoring due to false assumptions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://willhamill.com/2014/04/09/agile-antipatterns&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Antipatterns and Antidotes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.npmjs.com/package/assert-report&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;assert-report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/technotes/guides/language/assert.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Programming With Assertions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.c2.com/?ShipWithAssertionsOn&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ship With Assertions On&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142532/why-not-write-all-tests-at-once-when-doing-tdd&quot;&gt;unit testing - Why not write all tests at once when doing TDD? - Software Engineering Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://beust.com/weblog/2014/05/11/the-pitfalls-of-test-driven-development/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The pitfalls of Test-Driven Development « Otaku, Cedric's blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.solutionsiq.com/resource/blog-post/acceptance-test-driven-development-are-we-flogging-a-dead-horse/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Acceptance Test-Driven Development: Are We Flogging a Dead Horse? - SolutionsIQ&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://effectivesoftwaredesign.com/2014/03/17/the-end-of-agile-death-by-over-simplification/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The End of Agile: Death by Over-Simplification | Effective Software Design&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27065" LastEditorUserId="27065" LastEditDate="2017-09-16T00:06:32.663" LastActivityDate="2017-09-16T00:06:32.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22402" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-09-17T05:03:26.763" Score="2" ViewCount="156" Body="&lt;p&gt;Management thinks that it would be lucrative to take over a fairly complex solution from a startup founder. Apparently the client has fired the tech company that had built it due to &quot;poor quality&quot;. It is already live but he desperately needs to get a few more features up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have asked my lead developer to take a look at the codebase and there's quite a few large components:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User facing Android (Java) and iOS (Swift) app&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Merchant facing Android (Java) app &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;API Backend in Laravel (PHP)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User facing website in PHP&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User and merchant facing admin interface in Laravel (PHP)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to my lead developer, the code is pretty readable, modular and clean. He does not get what is the issue with the quality of the solution. The apps themselves visually look good and seem to follow standard UI guidelines. He thinks this could be a potential red flag with the client. How can I find out if this is the case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, management has tasked me to come up with a profitable maintenance contract with the client. My developer says that we'll probably need quite a substantial effort to get up to speed with the whole thing. It will be at least a few weeks to get familiarised with the codebase and the business logic before we can even start building new features. We are also not familiar with Laravel which will add to that effort. The client does not have any technical documentation either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given all of this, it is seems that it would be a huge risk to take on this project. However, management seems to think that it's easy money. The work is &quot;already done&quot;, we just have to do &quot;a bit more&quot; for this client. A team consisting of an Android developer, an iOS developer and PHP developer is being put together to work on it because &quot;that's the technologies that the solution is built with&quot;. How do I convince management it's not just about the technologies? If management decides to go ahead with this, how do I price this responsibly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29847" LastActivityDate="2017-09-20T06:26:31.227" Title="How to explain to management that taking over an external project is a big risk?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;maintenance&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22403" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-09-17T09:52:09.003" Score="2" ViewCount="444" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are distributed development team in three locations. In each location we have between 2 to 5 developers. We conduct daily standup via Skype. However, we have not been using story points. We just assign tickets most of the time based on each developer opionion of his/her capacity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is, before I join the team as a scrum master, the team tried to use story points. They ended up (according to the rest of the team), spending more time arguing about one story points than what the entire planning session expected. Therefore, they dropped it. Now I joined the team recently, we had discussion, and we agreed we need to use story points in effort estimation, so that we can have a better picture of our commitment versus accomplishment. In addition it can help us in the future, to draw some useful conclusions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a challenge I can see from now. The developers most of the team are involved in developing their own small projects (microservices), that are most of the time are irrlevent to each other - at least at the early stages. This results in developer x knows nothing about developer y work. As a result, we all discussing story points of certain developer seems to me unfair, impractical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am thinking how to approach this situation. If allow each developer to estimate his/her story points freely, we could get for the same task 21 story points from developer x, and 3 from developer y (although both spend the same erffort/time) on that task, but their measurements are different, we do not all agree on a benchmark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What could be better approach, to use story points in a useful way, but without arguing or dictating to developers the estimates? (I also notice, when developers discuss story points, the seniors tend to have the final say although it is not their task, because they think the task is simple. For junior, there is a lot to learn and the task might take longer. I also want the juniors to have a say for their own tasks)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13766" LastActivityDate="2019-10-18T16:54:24.060" Title="What approach of story points suit our team" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;distributed-team&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22403" CreationDate="2017-09-17T14:17:22.447" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have you tried simply counting the stories/tasks/PBIs/Whatever per period of time? There have been multiple studies done that show SP estimation is only &lt;em&gt;marginally&lt;/em&gt; more accurate. The increased accuracy is arguably not worth the extra time (and aggravation) it takes to do story point estimation. &lt;a href=&quot;https://theupsyde.net/presentations/leanestimates/#1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;I've presented about leaning out your estimation process.&lt;/a&gt; (press &quot;P&quot; to see my notes). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can utilize &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little&amp;#39;s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Little's Law&lt;/a&gt; to &lt;em&gt;calculate&lt;/em&gt; your estimates, rather than guess at them. Paraphrased: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Avg. Cycle Time = Avg. WIP / Avg. Throughput&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastActivityDate="2017-09-17T14:17:22.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22405" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22420" CreationDate="2017-09-17T14:19:20.773" Score="1" ViewCount="80" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given the following scenario (as I am new to this forum please excuse my noobish style to put the question).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A customer project (lead by project manager K) buys a full time person P as agreed with a service provider executive E. Inbetween is a coordinator C.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;P does not participate full time because C &quot;does not know about agreement with E&quot; and there are other tasks in other K-related projects to do for P (as previously agreed with K).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the correct escalation/mediation way? Is this maybe a prioritization problem on customer side (K)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28945" LastActivityDate="2017-09-19T23:55:02.190" Title="Resources management and a cumbersome situation" Tags="&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22403" CreationDate="2017-09-17T22:37:08.183" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you've got a few layers of challenges. First and foremost, it doesn't sound like you have a team so much as a group of people that have been put together on an org chart. If the different team members can't support each other, then you'll lose most of the benefits of a team and team-based estimation is useless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that is the case, then your first priority is to build a team where each member has at least a few people who can support them by assisting and/or taking over work if needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have that, Planning Poker is probably the technique I'd point you toward because it'll force conversations in the team. As a good facilitator, you can cut off conversations that aren't adding value (like squabbling over small point differences without actually uncovering anything new about the work). But early on the conversations will be longer because the team hasn't shared enough knowledge or learned how each other works and they have to get through that phase before things can go quickly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, there's still a job to be done, but even if you get to estimating a few stories per sprint together as a team that'll start the ball rolling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-09-17T22:37:08.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22402" CreationDate="2017-09-18T12:59:13.257" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your OP reads a little bit like you're looking for reasons not to engage in this proposal.  I am bringing this up because if I am picking up this tone in your writing--and if I am right in my interpretation--then your management will likely also be picking up on the negativity from a business development point of view and that will inhibit your ability to raise risks in a legitimate, believable way.  Raising risks during proposal time already hits against a ton of optimism biases so you need to be viewed as a credible contributor versus a negative boat rocker; else, you'll be dismissed before you even sit down at the table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Approach this like you would with every proposal.  Build up your costs, including time to train and become more acquainted with the code.  It might also include hiring new talent.  Do a comprehensive risk analysis with this proposal; identify all the risk factors you can find, assess its impact and your exposure to this impact, and build in your costs the mitigating and contingency dollars you need to manage these risks.  Add your profit.  If the resulting price is too high to win the engagement, then you have a strong indicator that this is a no go proposal.  Present your case in an unemotional, logical way.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that being written, management is ultimately accountable for making this decision.  Your role is to make them aware of the risks you see and making a recommendation.  If they choose to go, you go.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-09-18T12:59:13.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22403" CreationDate="2017-09-18T14:11:23.943" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me like you have two issues: lack of knowledge dissemination, and lack of an estimation benchmark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Knowledge Dissemination&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently it looks like all of your developers have a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;bus factor&lt;/a&gt; of one. If any of your developers gets hit by a bus (or quits, or gets fired, or goes on a long vacation, etc.), then what happens to his/her project? S/he's the only one who knows anything about that code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a problem above and beyond estimation difficulties (though it feeds into that as well). This is a serious risk in its own right and needs to be mitigated. Off the top of my head, I can think of four possible mitigation strategies: code review, pair programming, having multiple developers work on each project (swarming), and extensive documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the nature of your work (many small projects, so swarming might be excessive) and your distributed Team (so pair programming becomes more difficult), I'd suggest &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_review&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;code review&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Estimation Benchmark&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two ways of forming story point benchmarks that I'm aware of: ideal man days and a benchmark story. The problem with ideal man days, however, is that it, like your current approach, does not take into account skill differences between developers. So let's look at the second option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea behind this is you start by taking a 'typical' story (that you have already completed). You say &quot;This story is one story point.&quot; Then, when a new story comes along needing to be estimated, you compare it to your benchmark story; if it's about the same amount of effort, 1 point. If about thrice as much effort. 3 points. If about half as much effort, 0.5 points. As more and more stories get estimated, your mental model of the benchmark will evolve (&quot;This story seems to be close to stories 34, 37, and 46, which were all 5-points.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage here is that there is no actual mapping between story points and time for an individual. A 1-point story could take a senior developer four hours, while it takes a junior developer 2 days. In which case, most 3-point stories would take a senior developer 1.5 days, or a junior 6 days. You're now mapping story points to the amount of &lt;em&gt;relative effort&lt;/em&gt; a story requires (which is irrespective of any given developer's skill level) instead of to time (which is not).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The downside is management can no longer get a direct estimate of how much actual &lt;em&gt;time&lt;/em&gt; an individual story will take... but they shouldn't even be asking that in a Scrum environment, anyway. They &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; determine how long an individual &lt;em&gt;iteration&lt;/em&gt; can take, given that that is based off of the &lt;em&gt;Team's&lt;/em&gt; velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Planning Poker&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, as mentioned already by Daniel, make sure you're using &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_poker&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Planning Poker&lt;/a&gt;. There are various free tools available online to accommodate this for a distributed Team. Make sure different estimates don't devolve into arguments over who is 'right'. Whenever a large discrepancy occurs, the Team needs to ask questions to find out &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt;. If there's a disagreement, then the Team needs to discuss the story &lt;em&gt;in order to turn up new information&lt;/em&gt;. If it starts turning into an argument, just take the average between the two and move on. Make sure the senior developers aren't leading, either - everyone needs to have an equal voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-09-18T14:11:23.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6252" CreationDate="2017-09-18T16:35:14.067" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Product managers care about the product, project managers about the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Better explained: to make a project go on, project managers have to handle people, resources, clients. Product managers, instead, are there to assure the product is good, which means they should have some tech skill affinity with the product they work on (ergonomics, design, materials if the product is a chair; programming, UI, UX if the product is an app, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product managers also make analyses about competitors and keep themselves updated about new products of the same category. Their work is 'external'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surely, a product manager also has the role of a project manager but with some other tasks and skills added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29856" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-09-18T18:48:49.000" LastActivityDate="2017-09-18T18:48:49.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6252" CreationDate="2017-09-18T18:42:20.443" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project management answer: &lt;strong&gt;when can I have the product?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product management answer: &lt;strong&gt;what should the product look like?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29838" LastActivityDate="2017-09-18T18:42:20.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22403" CreationDate="2017-09-19T01:38:24.110" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I concur with some of the other points made, specifically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; a team and sounds more like multiple teams of one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Knowledge dissemination is also an issue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No real benchmark for the estimating.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would add the focus of the question seems to be on finding a tool to overcome...something?? which makes me curious. What interactions are you trying to facilitate? What are the team and the business &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; getting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, I hope you will allow me the following. One of my favorite lines from an Agile Coach I know is: Welcome to Scrum, where the stories are made up and the points don't matter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter how many points you got done...at least not to an end-user or consumer of the product. One of the drawbacks to story points is that they can quickly turn into a way for the business to measure the team; this rarely ends well for the teams. Just a public service announcement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pair programming (or peer review) can help with the first two issues. Planning poker is a decent way to build consensus and discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I might offer something else; so, to the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Find a baseline - each Sprint&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could do something like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the beginning of each Sprint, have the team look at the prioritized backlog and pick the smallest thing that's somewhere at the top. Make that your one (1) for the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, look at the thing at the top of the backlog. How many times more is it than the other? If the team says it's smaller, then you've chosen the incorrect one for the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the question is, &quot;Do you think you can get it done given all the rest?&quot; If the answer is yes, bring it into the Sprint...then on to the next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is per Sprint relative sizing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Just in case it's not clear why.) The team is sizing things relative to a baseline selected each Sprint as opposed to comparing themselves or other things in the backlog to past information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I appreciate this approach because it doesn't tie a point to a unit of time, which tends to happen when things like velocity and number of points completed are monitored. It can also stop the business from trying to project into the future of &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; something will be &quot;done&quot;, which is its own blessing and curse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, the fact remains, the points don't ultimately matter...unless there's a clear, distinct, and embodied &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt;; without it, it's a mechanical device the team (yourself included) thinks will help with...something??&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Why?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the benefit to the universe that the team hopes using points will accomplish? When they commit to a Sprint, do they get the work done? If so, what does an estimate do (they accomplish their mission)? If not, how will an estimate help overcome overcommitting (the problem of not estimating well still exists)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the individuals aren't dependent on each other, for the most part, what does it matter if Sally estimates something as 50 points and Saim says its 10? Who's actually getting the work assigned to them? Is Saim dependent on Sally to get it done? If not, why does it matter if it's 50? Even if Saim &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; dependent, the &lt;em&gt;points&lt;/em&gt; aren't the risk...Sally not getting done is the risk (at which point Saim could offer to help; Lean practice).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a host of other questions. And, to fair, I'm not sure you've explored all this with the team yet, but it's not clear by the phrasing of the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to Agile Software Development, I always start with the values from the Manifesto. And, whenever someone comes to me with a question about something that falls in the &quot;right&quot; - I try to shift my focus to the left. In this case, the Agile Software Development value under consideration is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;individuals and interactions&lt;/strong&gt; over &lt;strong&gt;processes and tools&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimating, Planning Poker, and a &lt;a href=&quot;http://tastycupcakes.org/tag/estimation/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;host of others&lt;/a&gt; are, essentially, processes. Story Points, time estimates, and so on are tools. Which brings us to the left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What interactions are you and the team trying to facilitate? How safe does the team feel with each other? What are alternatives to story points as a means of cultivating the new type of interaction? And, what's the maturity of the team when it comes to Agile Software Development (who are the individuals on the crew and where are they in their journey)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2017-09-19T01:38:24.110" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22413" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-09-19T11:53:22.157" Score="1" ViewCount="161" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a wish to try to introduce Scrum in one of our development departments, but have a number of challenges we are not sure how to solve. If someone could point us in the right direction it would be very nice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are producing a very complex enterprise product and we have 2 product owners, 10 developers and 4 testers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have 4 releases each year which consist of 20-30 change requests ranging from 10 - 1500 hours each. We are bound by a fixed price contract which requires us to have a fixed deadline, scope and price on each of these changes. Besides the change requests we also do bugfixing. The release cycle is fixed and we have to deliver installable packages every 3 months + a number of service packs and hotfixes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of our challenges we are facing are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have many small changes which only take a short time for one person to do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have some specialized technologies that only a single person knows and can't easily be knowledge-transferred.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have a lot of urgent hotfixes that require immediate fixing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have fixed budgets on each change and have strict rules on warning and raising budget as soon as we see it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can we handle urgent hotfixes in the middle of a sprint?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do we handle the specialized technologies developers which often has tasks on a lot of different change requests - which would mean they need to be in multiple teams? Or small 1 man teams (which makes no sense)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How is the delivery manager integrated with the Scrum teams, so we can report progress, budget issues etc. with the client? Note that the product owners are not capable to do this job.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29865" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-09-19T13:11:54.867" LastActivityDate="2017-10-19T17:28:48.660" Title="Introducing scrum in a waterfall environment" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22413" CreationDate="2017-09-19T12:36:44.943" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The biggest clash you'll see is likely with the fixed scope and deadline. Locking in those two will only leave you open to modify resources and quality. Changing team compositions generally is not something you want to do often but if you have enough breathing room there's no reason you can't say use one team on the project all the time and the other only in the beginning of the release cycle until you are reasonably sure you can accomplish the commitment. But all of this would be an issue with waterfall as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can we handle urgent hotfixes in the middle of a sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not uncommon and there have been other questions about it here. In short: Keep a separate pipeline of urgent bugfixes and just do them as they come up. Your velocity in scrum will suffer temprarily but again this is nothing that wouldn't affect you in waterfall equally. If you're getting swamped with bugfixes then you can renegotiate the scope of the sprint&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do we handle the specialized technologies developers which often has tasks on alot of different change requests - which would mean they need to be in multiple teams? Or small 1 man teams (makes no sense)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally you should be working towards cross training in these disciplines. (I always bring up the 'hit by a bus' scenario for such situations) How to integrate them depends on the nature of their work and how much of their time is consumed with specialized work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your changes can easily be given to them as a whole to be completed that would favor integrating them as normal team members.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they provide their specialty only as small parts of many different items but you can assign all of those changes to one team, then again you can integrate them as normal team members.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they have a hand in pretty much every change and have almost not capacity remaining for &quot;normal&quot; development then it gets more complicated. You should probably keep them outside the normal scrum teams then and use them like you would an external resource but aim to cross train their skills with the goal of integrating them into the teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How is the delivery manager integrated with the scrum teams, so we can report progress, budget issues etc. with the client? Notice that the product owners are not capable to do this job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Officially, not at all. All the information necessary for this role should be available from the normal scrum workflow so theoretically any interested party with access to the scrum board, burn downs etc. should be able to serve as this role. The PO's would be the logical fit due to their existing relationship with the customer. Why are they not capable of this? If it's an issue of lacking insight into the project then that can be remedied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall though it seems to me you are operating inside a very tightly controlled environment. Transitioning to scrum AND keeping your existing controlling intact is probably going to cause a lot of friction and duplicate effort. This is IF you have the organisational support to pull it off in the first place. I'm not sure how much benefit you stand to gain from such a switch unless your customer is open to chaning to a less bureaucratic contract model as well (Like &quot;Money for Nothing, Changes for Free&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2017-09-19T12:36:44.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22383" CreationDate="2017-09-19T13:08:34.500" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being clear that the decision of changing the Sprint backlog should belong only to the Development Team, this is what I think would be more correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that if it is not something regular but ocasional, I would not act as if the plan is the same, but not remove items from the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might happen that any members of the Development Team discover that they are able to finish what they are working on earlier than expected and decide to make some progress about the uncompleted tasks. Other possible situations is that according to priorities the team decides to advance first in the tasks their partner is not going to be able to finish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, we should remember that the whole Sprint Backlog belongs to the whole Development Teams. There are not task owners in the tasks of the Development Team, so really it is up to them how they manage the new situation and the incomplete tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the situation should be taken into account when reviewing the sprint and their metrics or reports so the Development Team does not charge like the false responsibility of not having been able to finish a forecast made at the beginning of the sprint when the really had a change in the team members number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29867" LastEditorUserId="29867" LastEditDate="2017-09-20T12:24:34.827" LastActivityDate="2017-09-20T12:24:34.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22367" CreationDate="2017-09-19T13:52:01.320" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say there are a few different things there to address.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation is different if it's a bug or a missing functonality.&#xA;If it is a bug, look really into the scope and possible impact of it. The Product Owner should be able to really decide with common sense if this is something that can wait until the next sprint. Usually it can. And if not, the approach should probably be: fix it, go back to the sprint and take this into account when the Scrum Team inspects that sprint in the retrospective and talk about how to improve so that doesn't hapend many times in the future. For example: Did the team have a Definition of done? Did the development deployed pass the Definition of done &quot;checklist&quot;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is a missing functionality, negotiate with the Development Team. It is important not to change the scope of a Sprint because you are afecting your Sprint Goal. If it is hust a few hours of work, probably they can agree to work on it. But again, talk about this in the retrospective and try to analyze why a functionality, that seams to be some missing requirement suddenly appears in a such urgent way that can't wait for the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abou deployments, Scrum says you should have a product increment at the end of the sprint. It doesn't say you have to deploy functionality just at the end of the sprint. You can have as many deploys as you want, need or can do during a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29867" LastActivityDate="2017-09-19T13:52:01.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22417" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22418" CreationDate="2017-09-19T15:32:35.120" Score="3" ViewCount="519" Body="&lt;p&gt;My company currently uses a somewhat waterfall approach and wants to move to ScrumBan. While I have experience with Scrum and Kanban separately, I am left wondering how to merge these agile team boards into a workable ScrumBan board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The principle problem, from my perspective, is that one relies on a fixed input of stories for a given, short, period and the other relies on a flowing and mutable funnel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to have both?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Further explanation:]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am asking because we are very keen to have proper Sprints but also have the business requirement of taking on defect maintenance during a given sprint. While My preference would be for the PO to add those items to the backlog and wait for the following sprint to begin, this may not be practical in reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possibly I am simply thinking of a typical sprint in which we do not pull in our expected quota of points but leave room for defect work, to a reasonable level, and let some defect work stay on the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29374" LastEditorUserId="29374" LastEditDate="2017-09-19T15:43:35.083" LastActivityDate="2017-10-18T18:00:16.127" Title="How to manage the board in ScrumBan" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;scrumban&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22417" CreationDate="2017-09-19T15:48:47.783" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both Scrum and Kanban have well defined processes and constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ScrumBan, however, is not so clearly well-defined. It is, put loosely &quot;something in-between Scrum and Kanban&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a potential example, one approach would be to have it be the same as Kanban, except with sprints. You have a 'backlog' column on the far left, and a 'Selected for Development' column on the second-to-the-left. Every sprint, you pick X stories and move them from the first column to the second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, since the mandate is coming from your company, the best answer is that you should ask them what they want/expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-09-19T15:48:47.783" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22419" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-09-19T16:23:24.140" Score="2" ViewCount="118" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since quite a long time I ask myself why is there a commonly reported problem  (by many peers) to get adequate up to date hardware and software tooling to accomplish IT projects in a competitive way (in fact, in direct analogy to industrial automation and machine workforce)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I have found &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/354254/ram-drive-for-compiling-is-there-such-a-thing&quot;&gt;this amazing quote&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Unfortunately in many companies equipment and engineering time are&#xA;  completely different costs according to the accounting structure, and&#xA;  it often sadly makes financial sense to go cheap on the hardware even&#xA;  with the huge extra expense of the engineering time. Boss may not have&#xA;  control over it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first hypothethis has been that in a consulting project you of course push revenue on actually selling time so optimization is not a managerial hot topic (but risk of mental damage to employed engineers). But then, same has been in fixed cost projects. Maybe, because also here a fixed amount of time has been sold and other type of internal cost just diminishes the projected revenue. &#xA;But, manual work produces unneeded amount of time..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please help me understand this.&#xA;Question: what is your solution to this to stay competiteve,drive good revenue and growth and not lose best of your engineers? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think I am wrong with this question in this community: are not savvy PMs who are actually able to recognize and communicate this waste of resources?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28945" LastEditorUserId="28945" LastEditDate="2017-10-24T06:36:01.187" LastActivityDate="2018-01-22T07:34:51.397" Title="Engineering costs vs. personal time costs and enterprise value offering strategy" Tags="&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22405" CreationDate="2017-09-19T23:55:02.190" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The course of action depends on which role you are in. Reading between the lines, I believe you're interested in how C should engage / escalate in this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the relationship between the parties, I would have a quick word with K and clarify expectations for how P's time should be allocated across the various projects. C should be aware of the impact (schedule / cost) of P not being available to engage on each project so the discussion with K can come to a conclusion with clear actions to pursue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If other projects are at risk, identify possible mitigation(s) that the project manager can sign off on (e.g. replacement talent, schedule adjustments, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29873" LastActivityDate="2017-09-19T23:55:02.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22421" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-09-20T02:13:21.333" Score="1" ViewCount="838" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a software QA that has limited knowledge of the agile methodology due to my sparse time with Agile teams in the past. Currently I'm exploring using Story points for my team instead of estimated hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One question I can't wrap my head around is, how do we estimate the no. of story points to commit for the next sprint? I've read that one way we can do that is by getting the average velocity. Is that right? And if it is, what is the frequency of calculating the average velocity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprint duration: &#xA;2 weeks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Past sprints: &lt;br&gt;&#xA;Sprint 1 = 40 completed story points &lt;br&gt;&#xA;Sprint 2 = 50 completed story points &lt;br&gt;&#xA;Sprint 3 = 70 completed story points &lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's assume Sprint 4 has a rough estimate of 53 story points to commit based on the average ((40+50+70)/3). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do we then do the estimation for Sprint 5 and onwards? Surely if we keep on doing a calculation of averaging wouldn't the value converge?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29875" LastActivityDate="2017-09-20T20:09:47.780" Title="How to determine the story points to commit for the next sprint" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22403" CreationDate="2017-09-20T06:14:53.610" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;And how about not estimating at all? Just count the number of stories (each is 1) and thus discover the team's velocity. I heard promising stories based on this approach. Alternatively you could use Small (1) Medium (2) and Large (3) estimates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19305" LastActivityDate="2017-09-20T06:14:53.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22402" CreationDate="2017-09-20T06:26:31.227" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would start form risk analysis session. Invite management and developers and obviously take part in it. Ask someone unbiased to run it. I usually use this matrix: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.risk-assessments.org/risk-assessment-matrix-3x3.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.risk-assessments.org/risk-assessment-matrix-3x3.html&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;After an hour meeting you might get quite interesting results!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19305" LastActivityDate="2017-09-20T06:26:31.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22421" CreationDate="2017-09-20T08:00:34.163" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One commonly advised way to estimate how many story points to pick up in a sprint is like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For the first sprint, keep adding stories to the sprint until states that they have enough work that they think they can just about finish in the timespan of the sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For the following sprints, use the average velocity of the previous (3 to 5, if you have that many) sprints, to have an idea of how much the team can realistically achieve based on their past performance. This average is not a hard number to plan against, but mostly a guideline of what is realistic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is expected that the average velocity will start to stabilize after some sprints. This is a good thing, because it will make the team more predictable in how much they can achieve in a sprint and on a larger timeframe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a significant change to the team (new members added, members leaving) or the environment in which the team works, then it can be misleading to keep referring to velocity measures from before the change and you should seriously consider treating them as a new team on a new (but somewhat similar) project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastEditorUserId="12235" LastEditDate="2017-09-20T12:22:49.153" LastActivityDate="2017-09-20T12:22:49.153" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22425" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-09-20T08:08:12.990" Score="3" ViewCount="193" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master was created to confront traditional management processes which lead to waste; of time, of effort, of people’s lives.&#xA;Designed originally as a servant leader, the Scrum Master was supposed to protect and support the framework of Scrum and inspire collaboration, creativity and engagement, and given the wondrous task of and infusing the organisation with values like courage, focus, commitment, respect and openness. &#xA;A role truly different to any traditional management role, aimed to challenge the individual and the organisation itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over time, traditional corporate culture has undermined, crippled and even enslaved the Scrum Master role, force fitting it into the old management paradigm. Scrum Masters are now thought of as junior project managers or delivery managers responsible for little more than setting up meetings, collecting meaningless metrics and filing status reports. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is ... How do you stand up to the pressures of old school hierarchical management organisations? Or should we just work for startups and small companies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29246" LastEditorUserId="29246" LastEditDate="2017-09-21T07:40:06.757" LastActivityDate="2017-09-21T07:40:06.757" Title="How to be a Scrum Master in old school corporations?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22426" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-09-20T08:11:04.187" Score="3" ViewCount="408" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have recently been promoted to a new job in hardware development, which has two different aspects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first one is to lead a small fast prototyping team (3 people including me at the moment, expected to grow to 6-7 in  a year or two). The basic idea is that designers who want to test an idea come to me with schematics, and I am in charge of quickly building a prototype for them to test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concurrently, I am the lab manager, which means that I have to tend to a lot of small tasks, handle logistics and keep an eye on order and safety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before that I was a technician, assigned to a single project for weeks or even months, so I do not have a lot of planning experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because I know the team, I am quite confident regarding the people-management side; but the planning/project management has me confused. I have read about Prince2 and PMBOK (which are the PM solution used in my company), but those solutions seem to be quite heavy for what I am doing. Aside from that, I know next to nothing about project management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Problem&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I manage many small projects (a few man-days each), many small tasks (15 minutes each, about 5 a day) and general vigilance without forgetting something, burning out or running around like a headless chicken?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am slowly starting my new job, and work has started piling up, I would like to bring some structure to it before it gets out of hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a bonus, I would like to orient my career towards a technical PM path, so building experience in recognized PM methods, or even better, experience that would lead to PM certifications would mean a lot to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29879" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-09-20T13:10:30.577" LastActivityDate="2017-09-22T07:37:19.957" Title="How to manage many small projects?" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22425" CreationDate="2017-09-20T13:21:13.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question talks about 2 distinct ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Leadership:&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Designed originally as a servant leader, the Scrum Master was supposed to protect and support the framework of Scrum and inspire collaboration, creativity and engagement, and given the wondrous task of and infusing the organisation with the value like courage, focus, commitment, respect and openness.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Management:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;&quot;...different to any traditional management role...&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your organisation will require you to perform &lt;strong&gt;management&lt;/strong&gt; tasks - they will be prescribed from above and where they don't interfere with day-today delivery it's your job to shield your team from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they are imposing management activity that slows down and upsets the team then you have 3 roles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Leader (facing your team)&lt;/strong&gt; - Minimise bitching, improve morale and team spirit (biscuits help) and keep everyone focused on delivery.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Manager&lt;/strong&gt; - Perform the unwanted tasks, it's what you're paid for.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Leader (facing upwards)&lt;/strong&gt; - Commit to continuous improvement by feeding back (without whining) what is working and what is hindering the team.  You'll find that those trying enforce 'traditional' styles of management either:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't realise the impact they're having on the delivery teams&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't know any other way of working &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't care&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first 2 cases, your feedback might help to change things. In the 3rd case you might want to consider moving on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;You can still be an effective leader, even if the management part of the role is a turn-off.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;How to be a Scrum Master in...&quot;&#xA;I am a certified (and experienced) Scrum Master BUT I also have a few years of DSDM experience, lots of PRINCE2 flavoured waterfall experience and some completely unstructured &quot;do-your-own-thing&quot; work in the past.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;My point?  Regardless of the role title (Scrum Master, IT PM, Agile PM, Change Manager etc), the actual role will be different wherever you go based on the influence of senior leaders, type of industry (Finance vs Gaming vs Military etc), company culture, the other PMs in the wider team and , crucially, which 'consultants' have been allowed in to preach their personal version of the truth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So names aside we are essentially the person coordinating and facilitating the delivery of something.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be flexible to the needs of the organisation. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work out what will allow the team to deliver most efficiently.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where these things are within your control - change them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where these things are &lt;strong&gt;NOT&lt;/strong&gt; within your control - try to influence others to change them [with facts and logic, not &quot;But SCRUM says...&quot;].&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't be a fundamentalist.  &quot;That's not Agile&quot;, &quot;We don't do that in SCRUM&quot; just make people sound like their knowledge ends with their CSM training.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;It really comes down to what culture suits you.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you enjoy the fast paced hard drinking culture of start-ups/tech companies, look for jobs there.&#xA;If you prefer the politics and breadth of career possibilities at a corporate, look for jobs there and accept that these companies will generally be more resistant to change, slower to react and more risk averse (governance red-tape three times a day).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;The key with corporates is understanding your own limits.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If being held up by more complex governance, slower decision making and having less flexibility in how you deliver is going to drive you insane - walk away now.&#xA;  If you can cope with these things and present back fact based arguments about why they should change you stand a chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29864" LastActivityDate="2017-09-20T13:21:13.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22426" CreationDate="2017-09-20T13:41:09.553" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everything you will read as you learn about project management would be applicable to small projects but you need to scale it properly.  So whatever you picked up from the PMBOK or Prince2 or whereever else, make it smaller so it will be more consistent with your smaller, more simple project.  For example, you will want to draft a plan to answer the questions, who, what, where, when, why, and how, in terms of building whatever product you're building.  For a large, complex project, that plan might be 100+ pages.  For your project, it might be 5 pages or less.  The schedule on the larger project could be thousands of lines while your schedule might look more like a to do list.  Scale it with a little bit of common sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, don't over think this.  You've been managing projects since you were like six years old.  You do home projects likely every weekend.  And get comfortable you'll make mistakes...from which you learn so that when you get the bigger project you won't repeat.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-09-20T13:41:09.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22430" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-09-20T14:19:57.317" Score="1" ViewCount="644" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to introduce code reviews in our agile process, my developers however think that it is a waste of time since they do not code in the same languages (front and back end dev). What is the best way to introduce it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2017-09-21T08:49:33.657" Title="Code reviews in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22430" CreationDate="2017-09-20T14:43:03.117" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are (broadly) two purposes for code review: improving code quality, and disseminating knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your developers are right in that, with their current skills, they can't really do anything for the first goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is why, for now, you should focus on the second. I'm going to assume you only have two developers (putting aside that that's too small for an effective Scrum Team...). In which case, both of your developers have a current bus factor of 1. That's a significant problem, from a business perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next important point, after the actual problem has been identified, is to bring the &lt;em&gt;problem&lt;/em&gt;, not the &lt;em&gt;solution&lt;/em&gt;, to your Team. Ask &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt; if they have any ideas for solving the problem. You might find they'll come up with a different, viable solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they don't come up with a solution (or only come up with untenable ones, such as 'hire more people' when you have a tight budget), &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; you can bring up code review, and &lt;em&gt;discuss&lt;/em&gt;. The important part is to get the Team to feel involved in the decision-making process. This will vastly improve their buy-in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then, after a while, as your front/back-end developers become full stack... the purpose of the code review will start to legitimately include the quality aspect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, as I mentioned, this assumes you have a Team size of 2. If you have at least 2 front-end and 2 back-end developers (or more)... then just have them review each others' code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-09-20T14:43:03.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22425" CreationDate="2017-09-20T16:30:43.727" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order for Scrum to work in a larger organizational context, there either needs to be hands-off management from outside, or (preferably) middle and upper management that actively wants to support Scrum adoption. That probably requires those managers to understand the problems Scrum is designed to solve, and how those problems manifest in their organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without a knowledgable management sponsor, Scrum or any other initiative will (at best) quietly fail, or (more likely) add yet another layer of political and process dysfunction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in summation: agile adoption requires agile management. &lt;a href=&quot;https://less.works/less/management/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is more on agile management from the LeSS people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27733" LastActivityDate="2017-09-20T16:30:43.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22421" CreationDate="2017-09-20T18:47:04.273" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that velocity should stabilise so as you see that happening you can stop including the first couple of sprints and just use an average of the stabilised values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I always find that in the first couple of timeboxes suffer badly when things like branching, deploy and environments are handled by external teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29864" LastActivityDate="2017-09-20T18:47:04.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22434" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-09-20T18:53:36.207" Score="2" ViewCount="144" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a product owner for one of my sprits who likes to involve people outside the sprint in sprint tasks. I've attempted several times to explain how this isn't ideal, and in fact slows down the sprints and causes confusion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently saw that they invited their entire team (about 5 people) to the next sprint planning meeting. They didn't ask me about it (me being their scrum master), and I assume the reasoning behind it will be something along the lines so they can &quot;see the process&quot; or something to that effect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to explain to the product owner that having people from outside the sprint in sprint planning is a bad idea and can cause confusion. What is the best way to explain to the product owner that adding people to this meeting isn't a product idea? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27415" LastActivityDate="2017-09-21T14:18:25.053" Title="How to explain to a product owner that inviting their team to sprint planning is a bad idea?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22421" CreationDate="2017-09-20T20:09:47.780" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Go for the lowest possible estimate.  If you can pick 40 points, 50 points or 70 points, the 40 should be your choice.  You look good if you bring points into the sprint, bad if you have to take them out.  And if you're only 3 sprints in @ 2 weeks per, you're more likely to be underestimating than overestimating.  Team morale always takes a hit too if you're consistently bogging the team members down with an unrealistic set of story points, and  the sprint plan becomes meaningless.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Underpromise and overdeliver should be your slogan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4339" LastActivityDate="2017-09-20T20:09:47.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22430" CreationDate="2017-09-21T07:24:16.910" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to introduce teams to new practises is to let them find out they need them and then let them implement it themselves. Forcing practises does not really feel self-organizing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They still require mentoring and coaching, but they don't require&#xA;  &quot;command and control.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2013/january/self-organizing-teams-what-and-how&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2013/january/self-organizing-teams-what-and-how&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discussing lots of defects during a retrospective could lead to an extension of the definition of done including code-reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would propose it to signal a problem to the team, the situation you think could be solved with code-reviews. Now let the team find a solution to the problem. If they pick code-reviews great! If they don't, but they do another experiment, great! If they don't know and look at you for advice, give them some ideas they could try. Let them decide what to try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience is that the ideas of process improvements that I think are good for the team. And those that I was implementing for them. These were the improvements with the least effect. Anything they choose themselves and implemented themselves had the best effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teach them how to improve their process. Just grabbing practises that worked for others is not how you solve complex processes, it leads to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jamesshore.com/Blog/Cargo-Cult-Agile.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cargo-cult agile&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2017-09-21T08:49:33.657" LastActivityDate="2017-09-21T08:49:33.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22383" CreationDate="2017-09-21T07:34:03.177" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you should not change the Sprint backlog after it was created. Although exchanging stories is acceptable for some teams. Let the team decide if they think this is a good way to go or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;we emphasize completing all Sprint items as a &lt;strong&gt;commitment&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a huge problem. Scrum says the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-planning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sprint backlog is a &lt;strong&gt;forecast&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, not a commitment! Committing to something that has a high uncertainty is just stupid and leads to all kinds of issues. Actually the Scrum guide does not write about commitment anymore &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/resources/commitment-vs-forecast-subtle-important-change-scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;since 2013&lt;/a&gt;. It does expect team members to being committed to their own process and values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not completing a Sprint is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; a sign of &lt;strong&gt;failure&lt;/strong&gt;, but as a signal that there is something to learn, adapt and grow. It is good topic to discuss in the retrospective. The team should find a way how they want to handle people being sick, work being more complex than estimated, product owner wanting to re-prioritize mid-sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2017-09-21T07:34:03.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22438" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22449" CreationDate="2017-09-21T08:55:23.107" Score="1" ViewCount="198" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Context:&lt;/strong&gt; I work in an IT Company and have recently been promoted from developer to a management position. I am managing a team of developers with really creative minds. We hold team meetings weekly to discuss possible solutions to different development tasks. Everybody gives many ideas and it's always a very communicative session.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually think out of the box and always analyze every solution provided. Most of the unorthodox solutions always have some shortcomings. When I was a developer, pointing out issues to the management in the meeting was a habit of mine and almost everybody expected me to find some issue with every idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problem:&lt;/strong&gt; Now that I am at a senior position, I can't afford putting down every idea presented by someone, fearing people might stop speaking out confidently. I would like to know what methods can I use to decline ideas without making them lose confidence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS. Sorry if this is in the wrong stack section, I couldn't think of a better site to discuss this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29887" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-09-21T13:21:28.087" LastActivityDate="2019-05-28T17:03:55.580" Title="How to properly point out fault in others ideas?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22438" CreationDate="2017-09-21T12:34:39.453" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two sides to this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, to what degree is it still your role to do this? If you're doing it, is it giving an excuse for others not to step up and fill the spot?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need to (say the team is going to walk into a disaster and no one sees it) you can try asking questions. &quot;Will this handle the number of concurrent users we need.&quot; will obviously go over better than &quot;That approach will run terribly.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing I've found is that you should just be respectful of their decisions. Ask the questions if you have concerns, but if they say &quot;Yes, this will perform fine.&quot; then respect that and let them run with it. They may be wrong and have to change it later, but letting the team make their own mistakes and learn from them pays off in the long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is, of course, all subjective due to the nature of the question, but it's based on my experience making that same switch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-09-21T12:34:39.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22438" CreationDate="2017-09-21T13:46:08.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Developer D says that she has a solution for frobnigating the meridian widjet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y#Theory_X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Manager X&lt;/a&gt; sees a problem in that the foobar widjet will be twonkled. X decides not to allow D to frobnigate the meridian widget. D says it will be fine if the foobar widget is tweaked first, but X has already made his decision. Consciously or not, since he'd already made his decision, he'll come up with some way to explain why tweaking won't work. D, disgruntled, goes back to her desk and comes up with an ugly hack to fix the problem (or, even worse, twonkles and tweaks without her manager's agreement).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Manager Y sees the same problem. He asks D if she's considered what to do with the risk of the foobar widjet being twonkled. D replies that it should be fine if they tweak the foobar widget. Y asks if they've considered that doing so will dribble the doohickey. After a bit more back-and-forth of open discussion, a mutually-agreeable solution is found. (Or a mutually-agreed infeasibility.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't be Manager X. Also, don't jump down your Team's throats with problems (or solutions). If they haven't considered an issue yet, give them time to do so; even time to go back and research for a few hours, if necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-09-21T13:46:08.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22434" CreationDate="2017-09-21T14:18:25.053" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Invite them to the Backlog Refinement meeting instead&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see in a previous thread here, &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/16948/who-truly-prioritizes-the-product-backlog-the-product-owner-or-team&quot;&gt;&quot;in the agile community we are seeing more and more the concept of the Product Owner Team.&quot;&lt;/a&gt; It is good to factor in this reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Invite the Product Owner Team to the Backlog Refinement meeting instead. This has the following benefits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They won't feel offended by being excluded from the process. And they can &quot;see the process&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Backlog Refinement is the place where they can &quot;add extra scope to any task&quot;, if they wish to do so. If in doubt, you can ask the PO to make the final call.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Instead of wasting the time of the entire dev team, you can invite one or two representatives from the dev team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You won't get slowed down in the Spring Planning meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2017-09-21T14:18:25.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22426" CreationDate="2017-09-21T15:18:47.660" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you should start by time boxing yourself. In order to devise an effective solution, you need to know how things are getting piled on and where are you indeed investing your time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of how hard you try, you won't be able to accomplish quantity of work which is beyond your capacity and that is why I started by suggesting - Time Boxing with proper logs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have the log, it will also give you an opportunity to discuss your problem with higher authorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your description of the tasks you are responsible for does not link up. You are pretty much serving as a general manager whilst doing a task for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you might also have to make a call if you indeed want to pursue a career in management; in case you do and if you want to increase the effectiveness you will have to offload the task of prototyping to someone else and just focus on management. At the moment you are pretty much-juggling things across domains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I highly recommend you to have a discussion with higher authorities as soon as possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28334" LastActivityDate="2017-09-21T15:18:47.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22444" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22447" CreationDate="2017-09-21T16:09:31.180" Score="2" ViewCount="584" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are small team of 4 developers who manage 2 large websites + 4-5 small websites + we have a channel for customizations / development service (one time service).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With all websites on support we work by hourly rates.&#xA;With customizations (we moved them into separate project) we make estimations and sell them by fixed price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have different tasks from small (like moving a button, changing color) to large (2-8 days' length, like developing a new extension with some complex logic).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On support we have very different loads from time to time. Some days we have only a few tasks, other days they can add 1-2 big tasks and 20-50 small and mid-size tasks as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently we create such task types:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fast Task - very small tasks can be done without confirming from client,&#xA;like &amp;lt;= 1-2h&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task - usual task &gt; 1-2h&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bug - We know how to represent it at least. Sometimes we know how to fix, but sometimes we can't estimate it (need to research, research taking for example 2h and after that 5min to fix it)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Problem - something we even can't reproduce or we don't know how to deal with. Can't be estimated and planned.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Epic - used to decompose big tasks if possible. Sometimes used just to group a lot of tasks by one responsible manager from client side, adding new tasks related to one big story. As an example, UI/UX improvements with AB testing for a long time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We make estimation on all tasks where possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also we always have some tasks that can't be closed for a long time even if they are completed from our side. Client developers have no time / didn't finish code on their side (CRM, prepared products etc.) - we need to wait on such tasks for a long time and all those tasks are open in the list to not forget about them; they can be in status &quot;Customer Testing&quot; for example, but still in the list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this moment we have about 200 opened tickets/issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very often, the client is asking for something ASAP and most likely they would ask this at the same time as another client or ask for a for few tasks at the same time :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clients sometimes ask us when some future task would be finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which software can we use to deal with this and how do we need configure it for the best way to handle all of this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean, how we can plan and get real deadlines in such chaos? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also need to say - currently we use JIRA and I tried to create short sprints like 1 week, put there work for 1 week and in that case I can plan for example for 2-3 weeks ahead. But this doesn't work for the following reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sometimes our estimation is very different from reality - we are working on this + we plan a sprint for just 4 days (1 day is for such mistakes and bugfixing)/&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some tasks are finished on our side, but not tested or not prepared by the client and by the end of the sprint we need to move this task to the next sprint over and over again.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;JIRA allows to plan a sprint only by Original Estimate, but such tasks as in point 1 already are almost done but not closed. If we close them and later in 3 weeks when the customer would test it we will create another tasks - then the total time by task would be separated and we can't see how long it took. If we close the task - it is not merged yet to master - we can lose it at all and need to waste time to find the task and branch for it (we use branch names by task)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some tasks can't even be estimated as I wrote before&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What if a task is already on production, but after 1-2 weeks we found a bug in it? Reopen would have Original Estimate, Subtasks can't be included to sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought about EasyRedmine with their resource planning, but not sure if this can help to handle all of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So please, any ideas or links where to find how I can manage all of this and how to make this processes better? We are ready to change the whole process if needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29888" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-09-21T17:01:05.430" LastActivityDate="2017-09-21T20:50:58.617" Title="Small development team with big amount of tasks for different projects - how to?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22396" CreationDate="2017-09-21T16:28:56.103" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A PMP is good across all industries where a project management professional is needed. Whereas an ITIL cert is specific to the IT industry. Both are valuable certifications to have and will serve you well. If you plan on remaining in the tech industry it would be beneficial to get ITIL as well as PMP. If you are wanting to branch out into other industries then just go for the PMP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29895" LastActivityDate="2017-09-21T16:28:56.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22444" CreationDate="2017-09-21T16:52:30.483" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure that a software option will solve your problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would definitely look at Kanban as a way to improve the flow of work through your teams. You can leverage it alongside Scrum or on its own if you want. It's important to use all of the practices of Kanban, not just the board. Make sure you are limiting work in progress, measuring flow, and making small incremental improvements. This is what will really help you improve your ability to handle all that work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, be careful of overburden on the team. Many teams who are overwhelmed are actually working slower because of it. Henrik Kneiberg explains the problem well in this video: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CostXs2p6r0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CostXs2p6r0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, this is where those strict WIP limits come in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for software, JIRA's Kanban boards work fine, but if it's just a few of you, sticky notes and a whiteboard do the job really well too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For setting expectations on features, Kanban mostly uses average lead and cycle tie to calculate this. For larger projects you can also use burnup charts, but that can be difficult with a lot of competing priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-09-21T16:52:30.483" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22444" CreationDate="2017-09-21T20:50:58.617" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum as a process is a good way of delivering a project which will take several sprints to deliver. It is also very fashionable. However it is not such a good process for delivering bugfixes and small change requests with near-zero lead times. Using a Kanban board on JIRA would be the ideal solution, as Daniel mentions above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sometimes our estimation is very different from reality - we are working on this + we plan a sprint for just 4 days (1 day is for such mistakes and bugfixing)/&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without the structure of a Sprint, over-running an estimate won't have the same administrative consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some tasks are finished on our side, but not tested or not prepared by the client and by the end of the sprint we need to move this task to the next sprint over and over again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More Sprint admin that you don't need to do with Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;JIRA allows to plan a sprint only by Original Estimate, but such tasks as in point 1 already are almost done but not closed. If we close them and later in 3 weeks when the customer would test it we will create another tasks - then the total time by task would be separated and we can't see how long it took. If we close the task - it is not merged yet to master - we can lose it at all and need to waste time to find the task and branch for it (we use branch names by task)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, on the Kanban board there is no need to artificially close a task. Leave it open until it is truly done, and log the time spent on it in one ticket. Bugfixes as a result of testing should be included in the lifecycle of the original ticket. Further change requests should be separate tickets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some tasks can't even be estimated as I wrote before&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doesn't matter on the Kanban board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What if a task is already on production, but after 1-2 weeks we found a bug in it? Reopen would have Original Estimate, Subtasks can't be included to sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bugs identified in &quot;done&quot; tickets should be set up as new tickets. If this is happening often, you should take a look at the robustness of your testing processes. In general I avoid using sub-tasks in JIRA because of the limitations. Nothing to stop you from linking the new bug ticket to the original feature ticket to maintain traceability of the work you are doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of further points from me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You mention in your comments to Daniel that Kanban does not allow you to track &quot;how far through&quot; a task the developers are. You can't reliably measure how far through a task somebody is - no task will be completed in exactly the estimated time. Tracking how much time is notionally &quot;left&quot; on a task will not make a difference to the developer's ability to deliver it. Communication is the key.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;WIP limits are optional. Just because you are within a WIP limit doesn't mean you are not in trouble. Did I mention that communication is the key?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The numbers you mention sound like you have too much work. Look to address this, either by increasing your developer resource of decreasing the expectations of your clients. A software/process change will not double your capacity overnight.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Who prioritises your work? You don't mention whether this is happening or not. Prioritisation is more efficient than picking up work based on how long ago it was requested.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29898" LastActivityDate="2017-09-21T20:50:58.617" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22438" CreationDate="2017-09-21T21:16:09.087" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Poacher turned gamekeeper&quot; is the phrase that comes to mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You delighted in being &quot;that guy&quot; when you were a developer. Perhaps it even marked you out as a candidate for this managerial role. Now you have other responsibilities, and you can't be &quot;that guy&quot; any more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've identified a couple of your old skills that are still relevant to your new role. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Analysis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communication&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep doing that. But remember that your new role is to create strength out of these discussions, rather than show how good you are at finding weakness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use those same skills to get your team of developers to identify the weaknesses themselves, and more importantly, &lt;strong&gt;find solutions&lt;/strong&gt;. Guide the discussion rather than dominate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your role now is less to do with &quot;declining&quot; ideas, and more to do with &quot;choosing&quot; the &lt;strong&gt;best&lt;/strong&gt; ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29898" LastActivityDate="2017-09-21T21:16:09.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22438" CreationDate="2017-09-22T03:09:30.097" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some simple practices I use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;ask questions, don't point out problems. &quot;Hm, what will happen if X and Y, tho?&quot; rather than &quot;Yeah, but if X and Y, it will all come crashing down.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;use the first person plural, not the second person. &quot;What if we&quot;, not &quot;What if you&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;get into the fairly-frequent habit of asking &quot;ok, what are the possible pros and cons of this approach&quot;. &lt;em&gt;Don't do it only when you have already spotted a problem.&lt;/em&gt; Do it sometimes even when you are pretty sure that the possible downsides are mild and low risk. The goal is to get your team to start routinely thinking about that themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll also second a couple of suggestions that others have made, that were difficult for me when I made that transition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;don't respond quickly. Give the team time to process &amp;amp; identify things themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;don't intervene to prevent every problem. (This one was &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; hard for me.) Sometimes, you have to let things go wrong, so your people experience the consequences &amp;amp; learn from experience. Of course, as a PM you have to choose these cases wisely wrt project risk.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2017-09-22T03:09:30.097" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22426" CreationDate="2017-09-22T07:37:19.957" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may start with &lt;strong&gt;scheduling regular tasks in your Calendar&lt;/strong&gt;. I would recommend Google Calendar for this. Each day at the same time try to plan the same activity. After x3 weeks that should become a habit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Event in the calendar could be everything: from 'review plan for upcoming 2-3 days' to 'work on prototyping device X'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you should also &lt;strong&gt;have daily tasks defined&lt;/strong&gt;. It allows you to focus on critical items first. I would recommend to use Google Tasks for this (to see events and tasks on the same list on your laptop). &lt;strong&gt;Daily tasks&lt;/strong&gt; should not be abstract, they &lt;strong&gt;should reflect the actual action&lt;/strong&gt; (e.g. 'Send Followup email to Mike re Design questions', 'Update tech docs for project Y with the last findings', 'Complete navigation feature AB-437', etc)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For tracking project's activities &lt;strong&gt;create a list of tasks&lt;/strong&gt; (features/detects/technical tasks) for the whole scope of work &lt;strong&gt;and update status of the cases on a daily basis&lt;/strong&gt;. You may use Google Spreadsheets, Trello, Asana or any other tool to achieve that. Note: add daily event to your calendar to keep tracking on the tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the last thing you should do is to &lt;strong&gt;make sure that your progress is reported to stakeholders&lt;/strong&gt; (your manager, or product owner, or department's manager based on your organization's structure). It should be done at least weekly (in most cases bi-weekly is fine; if that is an active phase of development with 4+ engineers then reports can be daily. That should be a short call or standup meeting (5-15 mins usually) where you report:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what was done?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what are you working on now (and when you are going to finish it)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;open questions and blockers (if any)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28739" LastActivityDate="2017-09-22T07:37:19.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22452" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-09-23T22:26:53.067" Score="2" ViewCount="83" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm studying how distributed software is managed (Linux, Wikipedia etc) and am trying to figure out if there is any pattern for consensus and accountability. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally I could visualize the inputs and outputs of the management of the solution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure this exists, and is likely more involved than &quot;use Agile&quot; or perhaps it's not and I have more learning to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there any documentation or approach that focuses on the higher level management of a distributed software project?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If &quot;git&quot; (or any other tooling) provides this, is there a visual that describes the input and output flow of decision making, checks and balances, and trust? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Justification&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm about to open source some security software and want to be ready to handle the feedback, and plan for another group or entity to take it over... essentially a succession plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally this would involve some form of checks-and-balances, but what exactly needs to be checked or balanced? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;... Who can I delegate that to?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;... how?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29916" LastActivityDate="2017-09-25T01:45:01.930" Title="How is consensus and accountability achieved in large software development projects?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;open-source&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22453" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22456" CreationDate="2017-09-24T12:28:27.030" Score="2" ViewCount="98" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am facing a strange situation in one manufacturing company and I need help to figuring out what to do. The company has a very low PM maturity level, especially when it comes to non-manufacturing activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Global management has recently declared a strategic goal to finally release an internal hardware/software development platform for use in multiple company's manufacturing sites and start training developers to use it. It is being developed on and off for a few years and they now want it completed in 6 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am assigned as an architect of the platform - my responsibility is making and enforcing technical decisions because developers in multiple countries are unable to agree themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no project charter: project is defined by marketing material mostly and developers are to decide what to do and how to do it themselves. That is why I have my role - they can't agree. This also indicates the maturity level of the team. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no project sponsor: technical department managers (line managers, basically) are expected to spare some resources for common benefit and a strategic goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no project manager: &quot;because project managers are expensive&#xA;and busy with manufacturing projects&quot;. To some extent I try to do&#xA;manager tasks to keep development going. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are no dedicated resources: developers are allowed to work on the project on their spare time (i.e. when there is a gap between commercial projects).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even &quot;dedicated&quot; resources like me have other higher priority tasks,&#xA;in particular those that bring direct revenue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not the first iteration like this and managers are not quite happy about wasted resources and developers spending 1000s of hours without completing anything.&#xA;Platform is already in use by skilled developers, but it is in alpha stage where user/developer has to fix issues when build applications on the platform.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Previous iterations were &quot;completed&quot; when either deadline came or resources were removed from the project to do something else. Product documentation was simply declared complete and released as is, completion reported to management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how to approach this. I am not in a position to change situation myself, my expressed concerns are either politely ignored or &quot;we have heard that before&quot;. I really wish this to succeed, but am lost in how to go towards success.  Failure will harm me and will not bring the expected value to he company. What options do I have? What else is there to consider?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This company has a long success history in manufacturing, is growing and doing great from financial perspective, but development projects are treated as above and usually (if succeed) succeed only due to dedication and heroism of developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user29921" LastActivityDate="2017-09-25T14:03:57.910" Title="Global project without a charter, manager nor dedicated resources" Tags="&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;project-charter&gt;&lt;project-sponsor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22454" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-09-24T14:10:32.183" Score="-1" ViewCount="135" Body="&lt;p&gt;How would you deal with your manager if he doesn’t see the company’s cultural problems and tries to convince you to behave passive-aggressive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me explain the situation. I’m a software engineer, and we do peer code reviews in the team. Sometimes, I get nit-picking comments and refuse to make changes with constructive feedback. In reply, my colleagues insist on their nit-picks (they even admit that they are nit-picking) for very long time, about 5 hours. In the end, I become told that 5 minutes caused triggered frustration and 5 hours discussion. But, wait, I’m frustrated and have wasted an enormous amount of time as well. It even has happened with a team lead; he allowed himself to ignore my feedback and kept resisting to change anything for 5 hours. Should not he value his, my, and company’s time and stop such discussions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have talked to my manager about this situation. He mentioned that Personal Development would help me dramatically. And he advised to ignore nit-picks and keep working, saying it would help me to think positively. But I do tell reviewers explicitly why I’m not ignoring their comments and why I don’t want to take them into account. It prevents me from keeping unsaid thoughts inside and sets a barrier between me and nitpicking. I believe, nobody wants to have nit-picks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems my manager does not want to see the whole picture. He does not want to find the root of problems and fix it. He sees me “complaining” and thinks that I should be fixed instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe he is afraid of the whole picture because he himself causes a part of toxic energy floating in our company’s culture. Allowing it to exist, everyone picks up these waves and takes out on each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you explain this to your manager?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29926" LastActivityDate="2017-09-25T13:25:59.053" Title="My manager is a local copy of Dr. House" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2017-09-29T03:48:10.967" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22454" CreationDate="2017-09-24T14:23:27.943" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;So you receive comments on your work and you judge them to be &quot;nitpicking.&quot; You receive a comment from your manager and you judge him &quot;afraid of the whole picture.  And you judge the culture to be toxic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's how you should respond to your manager:  &quot;Boss, I often believe I am the smartest guy in the room.  But I believe this to be a defense for thinking I am actually the weakest.  Consequently, I am defended at the most innocent comment that attacks me and my competence and immediately attack back and look to reassign blame to others.  This is something I really need to work on.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seriously, you likely own the root cause here.  Your OP is riddled with insecurity signals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-09-24T14:23:27.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22453" CreationDate="2017-09-24T14:30:48.363" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like your company understands the need for project and operations excellence as it relates to what they manufacture but seems to have a blind spot for other non-core projects.  As we all know, change occurs with the right sponsor.  You were silent as to who politely ignored you but, if there are higher ranking people above, you need to talk with someone more senior and state your case.  Draw as many comparisons as you can with what they do well with manufacturing to other projects and bring all risks back to a financial impact, both favorable and unfavorable.  Keep climbing the organization until you have the right sponsor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you hit the top and you still cannot change their thinking, then you have two alternatives: do your work and collet your paycheck and forget about results or find a new job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-09-24T14:30:48.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22457" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22459" CreationDate="2017-09-25T01:04:31.397" Score="3" ViewCount="121" Body="&lt;p&gt;As all we know there is a significant difference between need and want. suppose our organization assigned you a project to develop a new product that will increase sale by 20%.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt; &lt;b&gt;My question is&lt;/b&gt; is it your responsibility as a project manager to search for the end user or consumer of this product and search for it's need and build requirement based on that?&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;b&gt;I think:&lt;/b&gt; it's a lot of work to do, it's the responsibility of business analyst or marketing to search for these needs&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Reason:&lt;/strong&gt; I've a lot of other managerial work to do in the project and I cannot guarantee that this product will increase sales by 20%. it's out of my specialty!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What about your opinion?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29930" LastActivityDate="2017-09-28T19:18:14.077" Title="is determining the true needs of the customer is the responsibility of project manager?" Tags="&lt;responsibility&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22452" CreationDate="2017-09-25T01:45:01.930" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Open source project management is essentially about community building&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;and plan for another group or entity to take it over... essentially a&#xA;  succession plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all you need to attract talented and motivated people to take an interest in your project, participate and contribute. Your succession plan can eventually come out of this pool of resources. Here is an excellent presentation on &lt;a href=&quot;https://speakerdeck.com/xuanxu/how-to-manage-an-open-source-project&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to manage an open source project by Juanjo Bazán&lt;/a&gt; that covers this topic well. Essentially:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have a vision and articulate it&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Build a roadmap&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Seek feedback&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make communication easy&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ideally this would involve some form of checks-and-balances, but what&#xA;  exactly needs to be checked or balanced?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This article &lt;a href=&quot;https://opensource.com/business/15/5/what-i-learned-managing-open-source-cms-project&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;What I learned managing an open source CMS project by Brian Hyder&lt;/a&gt; describes the checks and balances in some detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially you need to have a Contributor Code of Conduct and enforce it rigorously to keep rogue coders in check.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2017-09-25T01:45:01.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22457" CreationDate="2017-09-25T11:23:10.373" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is in your project charter.  It all comes down to scope.  If your scope included not only the development of the product but also the original business case of that product--which found a 20% ROI--then your project would have a PM who would have this type of expertise and that PM's project budget would include the business analysts and other experts to do this type of analysis and to reaffirm the analysis during product development.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your scope is only the product, then you are only accountable for that product's development to the required specs within the cost and time you were given plus or minus a reasonable variance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take the Cessna 162 as an example.  This is a small, two-seat trainer / light sport aircraft that Cessna gambled on to enter the LSA market.  This aircraft likely had hundreds of project managers and teams that were responsible for various components of the small, simple plane.  There was likley a product / program manager that was responsible for the plane to take it from design to prototype to certification to market to ROI.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tons of those PMs delivered a successful product, all of which created the plane, which received certification and went to market.  Many sold and are still flying today.  But the product manager failed the overall program in that the plane did not return its ROI and Cessna abandoned the line.  In no way can all those PMs and team be declared failures in meeting their scope and no way could they be accountable for the initial business case analysis, the chosen ROI, and its eventual failure.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It gets gray when the PM works as an employee instead of a contract hire for the company producing that product.  So you need to force your definition of success and ensure that everyone understands where you scope starts and stops.  You need to define separately project success, project manager success, program success, and product success.  All of these have very different definitions.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-09-25T11:23:10.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22454" CreationDate="2017-09-25T13:25:59.053" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seems more on-topic for Workplace than here, but I'll give an answer anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a &lt;em&gt;good reason&lt;/em&gt; for not doing the &amp;quot;nit pick&amp;quot; (read: &amp;quot;small improvement&amp;quot;) changes (such as the fact that it would take 5 minutes to make the change, and then 3 hours to test to make sure nothing broke, given you have no unit tests... etc.), then &lt;em&gt;explain&lt;/em&gt; the reason to your co-worker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; have a good reason... &lt;em&gt;then just make the change&lt;/em&gt;. A small improvement is still a small &lt;em&gt;improvement&lt;/em&gt;. Meaning it is better to have it than not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;You have a typo in this variable here.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Okay.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;...Aren't you going to fix it?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;No.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;...Why not?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Can't be bothered.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;It takes &lt;strong&gt;five seconds&lt;/strong&gt;.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Don't care.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;^ That is not reasonable. (Not saying this is definitely what you're doing, but it's what it comes off as.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, let's assume, for the sake of argument, that you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; have a good reason, and your co-worker &lt;em&gt;still&lt;/em&gt; insists. The first thing you need to do is find out &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt;. Make sure you &lt;em&gt;understand&lt;/em&gt; where your co-worker is coming from. Then, and only then, if and only if you can't find a solution between yourselves, you go to your manager. And if you don't get a response you want/expect there, begin by finding out &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt;. And then, again, if you understand your co-worker and manager completely, and it's still an issue, then you can take it up the chain to your boss's boss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-09-25T13:25:59.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22453" CreationDate="2017-09-25T13:47:13.357" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;David Espina's answer covers most of what I wanted to say. I just wanted to add:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Keep a paper trail.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You not that you're afraid that the project's failure will ham you. So, whenever you bring these concerns to someone, &lt;em&gt;document it&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When asked 'why did you fail your project?', the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;On Oct 5th, 2017, I went to John Doe and informed him that if we didn't get X, Y, and Z, then the chances for the project's success would be low. Receiving a negative response, I went up the chain to Jane Toe on Oct 6th, and was explicitly told to drop the issue and continue regardless of the low chance of success. Here are the transcripts of [those emails/followup emails for those discussions].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;sounds a lot better than:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I brought up my concerns about the project many times, but everyone ignored me. It's not my fault!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-09-25T14:03:57.910" LastActivityDate="2017-09-25T14:03:57.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22462" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22495" CreationDate="2017-09-26T12:19:02.460" Score="2" ViewCount="913" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently my Team and I are working on big project. It's almost done, however now  we are stuck at testing and debugging. But we received an offer for another project which is also huge, and we accepted it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That project needs to be released in 2 months, but we estimated around 6 months of work on it. So we need to get more people working, so that we can fit in that time period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My plan was to get a project manager to help us with it, and currently I'm searching for developers who could finish it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the first time that I'm facing a project of this scale, and I'm worried a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have any advice from which I could benefit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm worried about managing more people than I'm used to...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29940" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-10-05T13:42:35.573" LastActivityDate="2017-10-06T11:53:40.530" Title="How can I complete 6 months of work in less than 2 months?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;&lt;responsibility&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22463" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22467" CreationDate="2017-09-26T16:29:13.593" Score="1" ViewCount="128" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are embarking on a project where the scrum master is in one time zone and overlaps half the team by 2 hours at the start of the day, and the other half of the team by 5.5 hours at the end of the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those two halves never overlap, unless someone from one of them either has a very late day or very early day - neither of which is attractive for an on-going basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any advice pm.stex members have for handling this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29374" LastActivityDate="2017-09-28T14:48:37.327" Title="How to handle agile ceremonies for sparsely distributed team members" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;distributed-team&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22464" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-09-26T20:00:26.873" Score="3" ViewCount="165" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm new to any kind of formal PM and structure, but have been tasked with coming up with schedules task lists for a 'mom and pop' construction business that mainly operates by contract (small project, &amp;lt; 30 days completion time). We are a small business with &amp;lt; 30 employees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My issue is that priorities and project focuses are either ambiguous, uncertain, or shift from day to day. Nailing down anything with management/ownership is very difficult; project and task juggling is the norm, and nothing is on a schedule until the day of (which may change by 10AM, who knows?). We also have a lot of ambiguity coming from a construction methodology standpoint, new technology, and vendor uncertainty. The norm is &quot;fly by the seat of your pants&quot; and &quot;this is what we are going to do until we're not&quot;. Like it or not, this is what I am dealing with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is this: how best can I handle trying to schedule out projects (using a Gantt chart, I guess?) or any kind of project or resource management (I've got the PMBOK and some other books) when management/ownership shifts tasks from day to day or morning to afternoon, new priorities or focuses arise overnight, and projects can be killed or put on hold instantly? I know my situation can't be unique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(My second question is more pointed: does MS project have anything in place for such a situation, besides manually refiguring tasks?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29947" LastEditorUserId="29947" LastEditDate="2017-09-26T20:11:24.490" LastActivityDate="2017-09-28T14:32:21.757" Title="Project management and scheduling with shifting priorities and project juggling" Tags="&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22465" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23380" CreationDate="2017-09-26T20:35:06.800" Score="0" ViewCount="945" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been talking with a PM instructor and they said their PM students needed to put together a &lt;strong&gt;project book&lt;/strong&gt; as part of their assessment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've not heard of this, except referring to all the documentation needed to keep track of a project.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/enterprise-solutions/project-book-template-5101&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This template&lt;/a&gt; shows headings and indicates the information that should be in it, but otherwise my Google-Fu is failing me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I've thought about is that the project book should contain as much information as required by someone taking up the project after the incumbent PM has undergone the &lt;a href=&quot;https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/9128/how-can-i-prepare-for-getting-hit-by-a-bus&quot;&gt;bus scenario.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, is there anything more detailed / explanatory available?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="569" LastActivityDate="2018-01-26T14:36:31.967" Title="What is a project book?" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;communication-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22466" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22469" CreationDate="2017-09-27T03:13:40.350" Score="4" ViewCount="3909" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Standish Group produces the CHAOS Report, with industry research on Project Management and Business Analysis standards, but what does &quot;CHAOS&quot; stand for? &#xA;&quot;Create Havoc Around Our System&quot;? My Google searches have yielded no discernible results. Perhaps I should be looking it up on Bing instead?...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29951" LastActivityDate="2018-10-08T13:57:45.880" Title="What does &quot;CHAOS&quot; stand for in the CHAOS Report?" Tags="&lt;practices&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22463" CreationDate="2017-09-27T03:36:58.093" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Recommendation:&lt;/strong&gt; Split the team in into 2 teams&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Goal:&lt;/strong&gt; Team doesn't have to take hit of staying late / coming early&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Prerequisite:&lt;/strong&gt; Stories teams going to work should be independent as much as possible.&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Cons:&lt;/strong&gt; Scrum Master has to repeat the ceremonies for both the teams.&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Risk:&lt;/strong&gt; Team alignment on work progress / status&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Risk Mitigation:&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;Scrum Master shares the Work status / progress with both the teams.&#xA;Weekly once both team leads / entire team catch up to clear the gaps if any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29942" LastActivityDate="2017-09-27T03:36:58.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22466" CreationDate="2017-09-27T14:24:43.723" Score="-2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Standish Group's stated aim was to to make order out of chaos in software development projects&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see it from these extracts from &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.standishgroup.com/sample_research_files/chaos_report_1994.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;their first (1994) report&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Software development projects are in chaos&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A great many of these projects will fail. Software development&#xA;  projects are in chaos...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The extent of chaos&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The comment most indicative of the chaos in project development came&#xA;  from Sid, a project manager at an insurance company. &quot;The project was&#xA;  two years late and three years in development,&quot; he said. &quot;We had&#xA;  thirty people on the project. We delivered an application the user&#xA;  didn't need. They had stopped selling the product over a year before.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cause of failure in software projects are not analyzed&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When a bridge falls down, it is investigated and a report is written&#xA;  on the cause of the failure. This is not so in the computer industry&#xA;  where failures are covered up, ignored, and/or rationalized. As a&#xA;  result we keep making the same mistakes over and over again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In order to make order out of chaos, we need to examine why projects fail&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In order to make order out of chaos, we need to examine why projects&#xA;  fail. Just like bridges, each major software failure must be&#xA;  investigated, studied, reported and shared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2017-09-27T14:24:43.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22465" CreationDate="2017-09-27T14:56:50.890" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this case, the project book needs to be what your teacher thinks it should be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never created a &quot;project book&quot; in all my time working on projects. It is likely a specific term some people use and others do not. So best to ask the teacher some what questions like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the intended audience?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What should it contain?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the goal of the document?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-09-27T14:56:50.890" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22471" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22472" CreationDate="2017-09-27T15:41:06.197" Score="1" ViewCount="3394" Body="&lt;p&gt;This might seem as odd question, but moving from business to business I'm still puzzled as to whose responsibility it is to add stories to JIRA (or other issue-tracking software), as well be responsibility for the Agile board in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The person in question of course is part of all business and development (tech debts, tech improvements) talks, documenting everything and setting up Spikes, Epics, Stories etc. Making sure all developers are OK to work and have no impediments, sounds like a Scrum Master. Taking this into account what about Kanban, other Agile frameworks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience shows Business Analyst doing this too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29957" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-09-27T15:49:03.087" LastActivityDate="2017-09-27T16:39:28.187" Title="Whose responsibility is to add stories to JIRA (or other issue-tracking software)?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;responsibility&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22471" CreationDate="2017-09-27T15:51:30.603" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two main ways I know of that work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, a possible answer is 'The Product Owner' (or someone/someones with the same responsibilities). Namely, someone who knows the &lt;em&gt;customer's&lt;/em&gt; requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second option is to allow &lt;em&gt;anyone&lt;/em&gt; to add Stories, but to have the Product Owner (or equivalent) vet them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, that's only for &lt;em&gt;Stories&lt;/em&gt; (requirements that provide &lt;em&gt;direct&lt;/em&gt; value to the customer). Tasks are the domain of the developers', as they're often the only ones to understand them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first step is to differentiate between Stories and Tasks. If it's a developer Task, then non-developers don't &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to understand it. &quot;Refactor FizzRepository to be compliant with Liskov substitution principle&quot; is not going to be understood by a non-developer, and it doesn't &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories, however, are about providing direct business value to the customer, and thus must be understandable to the customer. While having available guidelines for Story creation might help (such as the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt; method) may assist, in the end they need to be vetted by someone who either &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; the customer, or whose job is to understand customers' needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-09-27T16:39:28.187" LastActivityDate="2017-09-27T16:39:28.187" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22471" CreationDate="2017-09-27T15:52:12.330" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Feeding Stories related to Business requirements is responsibility of Business Analyst / Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feeding Technical stories / Spikes to achieve the Business requirements is responsibility of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29942" LastActivityDate="2017-09-27T15:52:12.330" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22471" CreationDate="2017-09-27T16:35:21.540" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, most frameworks out there use this same approach. I'll point out the differences in Kanban and XP below. The scrum guide says: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The Product Owner is responsible for the Product Backlog, including its content, availability, and ordering.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most interpretations I've heard of this is more like &quot;accountable&quot; in RACI. The product owner makes sure it gets done and that it is ordered properly. They may or may not be the ones to write the backlog items, but they should be able to speak to them and explain to stakeholders their value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;XP&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In XP, the product owner is an actual customer. In XP teams, I see almost all items in the backlog being very focused on customer needs, and so that customer is almost always the one writing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Kanban&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is some nuance here (Kanban is not a methodology, it's a process optimization tool) so there isn't actually a right answer, but in most Kanban teams I've worked with, they either have a product owner like in Scrum or (especially in operations teams) they have some work intake funnel. In the later case, the person filing the request is often writing the backlog item themselves or working with a team member to make sure it's clear. Think of when you file a support ticket. Either you write it yourself or you call support and they write one from their conversation with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Business Analysts&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem I've seen with putting this responsibility on the Business Analyst is that there is a healthy tension between the roles of Product Owner and Delivery Team. The product owner orders the backlog, identifying what items are most valuable to do first. The team determines how to implement those items. Traditionally, many BA's are tasked with doing both. This loses that tension. I usually ask BA's to try to pick a role to focus in and most enjoy the problem solving aspects of the work and end up in the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-09-27T16:35:21.540" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22476" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-09-27T17:56:39.477" Score="0" ViewCount="92" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am finding myself in an awkward position. I am a Developer and I have been assigned the Development work for a Project that will convert a paper workflow to an electronic workflow. The small business I work for (about 200 employees) is very big on &quot;Lean Culture&quot;, encouraging input from workers at every level. I have heard mixed messages about whether input is actually gleaned below the Management level, so perhaps that is why this Project is feeling awkward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some background information: Currently, orders are sent to a certain Section of a Department on paper order forms. The Section Manager does sorting to determine priority, and assigns the orders to Operators in that section based on their qualifications, and any other details that need to be taken into consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The new process will route orders to this Department Section using a new Web application instead of having the Section Manager physically sort the paper order forms and hand them to specific users to work on. The application will contain logic to determine priority, and users will be assigned work based on their qualifications. The assignment logic will be contained in the application, and qualifications can be modified by the Section Manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am feeling apprehensive about this Project because in a way, I have been given the role of Project Manager in that I am in charge of gathering the requirements. My authority is limited, though. The Department Managers have provided most of the requirements, and told me whom to include in meetings. The Section Manager has been in on the meetings, but I feel like the Section Manager is usually shut down on any suggestions, with the Department Managers saying that they want to ensure that &quot;the 95% of cases that are straightforward and predictable are handled by the application&quot;. I do not know where the 95% of cases being straightforward came from, and I do not know how they determine that the points the Section Manager brings up fall outside that &quot;95%&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Section Manager is the only user of the application who has been engaged. None of the operators have been engaged. Getting into detailed requirements, meetings have just been with Developers and the IT Department Lead (who does have a wide knowledge of processes, but probably not enough so for most of the requirements to be coming from the IT Department Lead). Follow-up and clarification meetings have been held with Department Leads and the Section Lead for the section of the Department this will impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked the IT Department Lead if I could shadow the Section Manager and Users to understand the current process better, and he is grudgingly allowing me, but wanted to make sure that I understood and passed on the understanding to the Section Manager that we were &quot;just focused on the 95%&quot;. I get the feeling any input I get from the Section Manager and Users will be shot down, because the whole 95% thing seems very arbitrary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want this Project to be successful, and I do not want the users or the Section Manager to feel like they are being forced to use a new application that does not effectively meet their needs. How can I be most effective in convincing the Department Managers that needs indicated by the users are important enough to be included in the requirements? I also feel like I am at risk of disappointing and/or causing conflict between the Section Manager and Department Managers if I am unsuccessful in relaying the message from the IT Department Lead to the Section Manager that the shadowing is not a guarantee that the input I receive will fall into the &quot;95% of straightforward cases&quot; and make it into the Requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29946" LastActivityDate="2017-09-29T09:42:22.300" Title="Software Developer gathering requirements, Department Managers providing input and discouraging input from Users" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22477" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22635" CreationDate="2017-09-27T20:08:23.097" Score="0" ViewCount="853" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an issue with MS Project right now. We have several Gantts which we would like to see the % Allocation of a person in a separate column. In the Resource Usage view it is possible to show a field called &quot;Remaining Availability&quot; but that only shows in hours not % allocation. Could someone please explain how I can create a column in the Gantt or the Resource Usage view (preferably Resource Usage view) which then contains the information on the % allocation of that particular person to that project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29961" LastActivityDate="2018-03-19T16:29:03.237" Title="% Allocation in MS Project gantt view" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22464" CreationDate="2017-09-27T22:49:37.223" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Traditional project tracking techniques are not going to work here. You're in a dynamic and shifting environment, which does not lend to traditional, &quot;waterfall&quot;, style planning. Set the PMBoK to the side and reach for different tools. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on what you've described, a simple Kanban system is probably your better approach. The key reasons are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is a pull-based model, where work is pulled in when someone can work it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It handles interrupts well. If something is a higher priority, it moves to the top of the &quot;ready&quot; column and the next person who can work it will pull it when they are free. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Highly visible. If you set this up on a physical wall, with post-it notes and blue tape, everyone can immediately see where work is at. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Easier to set and enforce Work in Progress limits. You'll know really fast if someone is working on multiple things at once. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can learn more about Kanban from either of these two books:&#xA;Kanban - David J. Anderson&#xA;Start Stopping, Start Finishing- Arne Roock&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-09-27T22:49:37.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22479" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-09-27T22:53:41.600" Score="0" ViewCount="130" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to create a new resource that include a pay per day and quantity parameters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I have a resource &quot;Rented Car - Type 1&quot; with 60€/Day as daily cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my project, I have a task (10 Days long) that requires 5 rented cars.&#xA;I need MS project to tell me that the total cost of this task is 10*5*60=3000€.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the task duration changes, the cost will change automatically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29963" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-11-27T10:55:29.420" LastActivityDate="2018-12-22T16:02:25.540" Title="How can I add a rented resource to MS Project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resources&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22479" CreationDate="2017-09-28T02:12:55.250" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Calendar is Standard (5d x 8h)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fixed-units task w/ no task calendar.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;RentalCar Work Resource w/ Std. and OT rates of 60 EUR/day. (Since this is a rental car, the resource calendar should be 7d x 8h.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assign RentalCar to task at 500%.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assign Drivers (resource r1) to task at 500% (these guys work 5 days/wk).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Note because a 7dx8h resource is assigned, the task adopts the 7dx8h calendar.&#xA;Rental car cost @ 10d duration is 3,000 EUR.&#xA;Rental car cost @ 15d duration is 4,500 EUR.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2017-09-28T02:12:55.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22481" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-09-28T07:05:37.863" Score="0" ViewCount="63" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a MPP file with Start-to-Start relationship between tasks. But when I import to MPP in one project, I need to convert it to Finish-to-Start relationship because the system only supports finish-to-start relationships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29966" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-09-28T14:15:02.813" LastActivityDate="2017-09-28T14:15:02.813" Title="Can I convert relationships in MS Project from Start-to-Start to Finish-to-Start? Is there any equation for it?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22481" CreationDate="2017-09-28T12:09:21.107" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Display all tasks. i.e. make sure filters are clear and outline shows all tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Open the Find/Replace window from the Editing group on the Task Ribbon (Shortcut is Alt-E-E).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find what: SS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Replace with: FS [or leave blank]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look in field: Selected; &quot;Predecessors&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Replace all.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: the resulting schedule may be radically different than the one you started with.  Save before you start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2017-09-28T12:09:21.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22464" CreationDate="2017-09-28T14:32:21.757" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Joel's Kanban suggestion is a fantastic one that would enable your company to deploy employees on whatever job on demand.  However, I don't think that would relieve you of your requirement to measure performance on a specific job in order for you to credibly forecast future finish dates and report to your customer.  And you need that forecasting ability in order to ensure you will have resources on site when you need them.  If you have a special piece of equipment originally scheduled to be on some site three weeks from now, you will need as early as possible indicators to know if that date is coming in or slipping; else, you will have a piece of equipment on site on that date with possibly nothing to do and that is an expensive error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you still need to develop your schedule per construction job as you would under more normal circumstances but building it, choosing proper planning values for duration and start and finish dates, based on the chaos of your environment.  And then you need to invest in the talent and the processes to continually update and modify (not rebaseline necessarily) each schedule based on what occurred that day.  This means daily updates, likely several times a day, that will push and pull your milestones on the schedule in a very active and nauseating way.  But if your schedule is constructed properly and maintained properly, it should give you reliable indicators from which you can forecast future finish dates.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Kanban enables one to do that, that's great, but I am not aware of that possibility.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-09-28T14:32:21.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22463" CreationDate="2017-09-28T14:48:37.327" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Might I suggest recording the stand-ups if possible, record the 1st team (we use Skype for business) and play it back on for the 2nd team. Any updates can be emailed to the 1st team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Planning and Reviews / retros will be more difficult, but a similar approach can be adopted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even as I type this I'm wondering ,,, how can they be one team if they &lt;strong&gt;never&lt;/strong&gt; cross each others path? perhaps running them as separate teams is the way to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29246" LastActivityDate="2017-09-28T14:48:37.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11083" CreationDate="2017-09-28T16:37:15.903" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have practiced Scrum for a couple of years now.  I came here because I am now working with a small team (4 developers, 1 QA) responsible for a portfolio of enterprise projects, new development, enhancements and support.  I think the obvious answer is from George P.; work on one project at a time, get it to completion and move on to the next.  You will actually get the projects done faster and better.  The throughput from engagement to completion for each customer will be shorter.  I have tried running concurrent projects with Scrum and the overhead of the Scrum rituals and distraction of switching projects is wasteful.  Try it.  Once you are good at it you will astound your customers with your speed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29969" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-09-28T16:44:50.843" LastActivityDate="2017-09-28T16:44:50.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22457" CreationDate="2017-09-28T19:18:14.077" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I highly recommend reading &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/inspired-marty-cagan/1102719745?ean=2940000840139&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Inspired - How to Create Products Customers Love&lt;/a&gt;. In Part 1 Marty Cagan describes, in general terms, the typically responsibilities for Product Management, Product Marketing, Project Management and, of course, Design and Engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;product manager&lt;/strong&gt; has two key responsibilities: assessing product opportunities, and defining the product to be built. - pg 2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question, I believe identifying the &quot;true needs&quot; of the customer, as opposed to the &quot;wants&quot; or &quot;think they wants,&quot; to be an important aspect of &quot;assessing product opportunities.&quot; This is no easy task (in many cases even the &lt;em&gt;customers&lt;/em&gt; don't know their true needs), but great PMs are in touch with customers and potential customers, and constantly have their fingers on the pulse of the market. They collect as much data as possible and then use experience and judgement to determine if an opportunity exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, however, working backwards (go find a product that'll increase sales by 20%) might be a challenging mandate. For this to happen, you need to start with an idea. Again, according to Mr. Cagan:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Typically, new ideas can come from anywhere - company executives, discussions with customers, usability testing, your own product team, your sales or marketing staff, industry analysts, to name a few. - pg 2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of that is under the PM's purview, but putting the &lt;em&gt;entire&lt;/em&gt; responsibility of generating ideas for consideration onto the PM doesn't sound reasonable, nor does it seem like a good idea. I hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29755" LastActivityDate="2017-09-28T19:18:14.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22488" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-09-28T21:56:56.453" Score="-1" ViewCount="115" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have a task which we assume be completed for a while, but just now we figured out that task is incomplete. How should I deal with that reopened task ? Should I set a baseline and then clean the task progress and set the new start/finish dates ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29974" LastEditorUserId="29974" LastEditDate="2017-10-04T12:48:05.150" LastActivityDate="2018-03-03T16:06:01.260" Title="MS Project: How to deal with a reopened task" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22489" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22490" CreationDate="2017-09-29T05:39:50.587" Score="3" ViewCount="136" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a concern with regards to CR rejection / approval process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A client presents his / her requirement to the PM and PM asks them to raise a change request, but once the requirement is analyzed, it reveals out that it is not technically feasible to develop. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, can an already raised CR be rejected?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17511" LastActivityDate="2017-09-29T09:26:40.067" Title="CR Rejection / Approval based on the Technical Feasibility" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22489" CreationDate="2017-09-29T08:52:48.883" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. That's the idea of a CR.  It can be accepted, rejected, deferred, delayed, etc. In fact, a change denial before it begins the process is damaging to the overall project, though it likely happens a lot on many projects and maybe even more so in certain industries.  Similarly, a change accepted before it starts the process is scope creep by definition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's interesting that you called this a CR *rejection/*approval process and then asked if it was appropriate for it to be rejected, which is part of the process's name.  So I sense there is another, more accurate question to your concern.  I am wondering if it has to do with the costs incurred during the technical feasibility analysis, i.e., if rejected so too are all costs associated with it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2017-09-29T09:26:40.067" LastActivityDate="2017-09-29T09:26:40.067" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22476" CreationDate="2017-09-29T09:42:22.300" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not only is collecting requirements from users a requirement in and of itself to minimize the risk of building a product that does not work, but you are also increasing your risk around change resistance.  Resistance occurs secondary to a change itself, no matter whether the product works for them or not, but when the product does not work, you'll exacerbate the resistance and lose credibility for the fixes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect the lead is trying to minimize costs and delays that could occur when the users get engaged, a lot due to disagreements, infighting, politics, etc.  But this comes down to a pay now or pay later kind of thing, and the pay later will 10x the amount.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 95% thing is a red herring.  You cannot measure it and has no real effect on how the users will accept the product.  This kind of thinking is a huge risk for your success as &quot;finish&quot; is arbitrary.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation is to escalate the risks your intuition is telling you and, if you're able, stop the project until everyone can get on board with a proven method of application development.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-09-29T09:42:22.300" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11083" CreationDate="2017-09-29T14:48:50.770" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you need to step back and not worry about SCRUM and sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a small team, and multiple clients with multiple projects that they want done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Focus on one client or one project&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For each client and project, it is a good idea to do a rough estimate of the earned value. If possible, as others here have said, try to reduce the number of clients or projects to the highest value client/project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a bad business situation to be in, but if you are small and just starting this is how things will just have to be until you save enough money to hire additional developers and designers. (This is why agencies always look to develop products in the far future, to avoid being reliant only on particular clients and the client/project pipeline).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Add a buffer to time estimates&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you do plan each project, add a buffer for each phase that accounts for the context-switching that will happen. The context switch can happen in the form of maintenance or features (depending on your contractual obligations).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Focus on one tech stack or technology&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to consolidate the projects so that they are using the same codebase or the same frameworks or libraries or tools. This will reduce context-switching and it's what allows a lot of web development agencies to complete projects quickly and successfully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I worked at a place that used Python/Django/PostgreSQL for all projects. If a client wanted to use some other technology, it would increase the price of the project (to account for training or hiring new developers). Most clients were content to leave the technology choice up to the agency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At another company, we only used Drupal and Wordpress  which enabled us to get clients who wanted an enterprise-level CMS site or a small business website. The tools gave us the flexibility to work on small sites or large sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;SCRUM and project management and sprints&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your big problem with multiple projects will be context-switching. A developer and designer will have to switch their workflow. For larger tasks you will need to add a day before any &quot;real&quot; work gets done, for the largest tasks you may need to add 2-3 days for the team member to get back on track. For small tasks you might be able to get away with half a day or a few hours for the context-switch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to set expectations of when client updates/meetings can happen and when you can respond to emergencies and requests from clients. This will allow you to group of chunks of time in order to reduce context-switching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 client, 1 project: the ideal, your team is focused on getting one project done, there is no context-switching&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 client, 2 projects: almost ideal, your team can deliver updates and focus on 1 client's needs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 clients, 2 projects: going to run into trouble with timing and schedules at some point, your team will need to focus on one client and then switch focus to another. You will run into dependencies from developers to designers to clients about which days are good for meetings and when certain tasks have to be finished. You may want to hire temporary help. A good idea is to schedule 1 client/project for the first half of the week and the other client/project for the other half of the week or to alternate between weeks (1 project per week).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2+ clients, 2+ projects: you need to hire more people and split them into teams that focus on 1-2 projects or clients at most.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27307" LastActivityDate="2017-09-29T14:48:50.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3248" CreationDate="2017-09-30T00:38:32.257" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Totally do-able, but consider the maturity of Scrum in the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started exclusively as a Scrum Master and helped spin up Scrum in our other IT teams (PC\Service Desk/ systems/ network/ and worked with our GIS group too) over the past year. Our AppDev group has been practicing Scrum for about a year and a half longer than these newer teams and are a bit more mature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first, these new teams consumed a lot of my time. I worked to help solidify our PMO and create repeatable practices and consistent project delivery. While business and internal IT projects still have some maturing, I can easily manage 2-3 teams and take on work coaching other business units interested in Scrum, manage a small waterfall project (usually a vendor facilitated project) and perform work with our business process analysts. The goal, as a Scrum Master, is to teach your teams to self manage and work yourself out of a job and really only get tagged in when big impediments arise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what does one do? My self, I really enjoyed development in college and do it as a hobby. So I negotiated with my management that I want to get back into development and sharpen my technical skills but will also fill in as a SM for 1 mature team that I don't work in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They hesitated, but I was honest. Told them I felt a little bored and didn't want to leave the organization because I wasn't feeling challenged or lose technical skills. Just remember to know your limits, be coachable (just like our great teams), and spread enthusiasm and commitment to excellence and business agility. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29984" LastActivityDate="2017-09-30T00:38:32.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22462" CreationDate="2017-09-30T16:08:20.957" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oooooh boy... Where to start....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're almost finished but you're &quot;stuck&quot; on testing and debugging you are definitely doing something wrong in the first place. Waterfall much?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you, or your salespeople, have sold a 6 month project to be done in 2 months you're in the hole already. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;None of these problems are actually related to your project management per se, except if it was a PM that said you can complete 6 months of work in 2 months.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alright, let's try to get some answers.&#xA;First things first: Fix your development process. At the end of the project you shouldn't be &quot;stuck&quot; in QA. Search (and learn) these: TDD, BDD, DDD. Testing is not something you do after coding. It's an integral part of the process. Feature is not done until it's tested. Period. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the sales people (or the PM if they was responsible). Well, that's a different thing. You have to assure them somehow NOT TO DO STUPID SHIT. I have no silver bullets for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29075" LastActivityDate="2017-09-30T16:08:20.957" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22462" CreationDate="2017-09-30T16:20:00.330" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you should really do is to &lt;strong&gt;call product owner&lt;/strong&gt; immediately and discuss details of the new project to reduce as much work as you can. &lt;strong&gt;You cannot complete project in 2 months if that requires&lt;/strong&gt; 6. Have a &lt;strong&gt;long planning session&lt;/strong&gt; and check every user story to get understanding of &lt;strong&gt;what is really needed for MVP vs what can be left for version 1.1 or 2.0&lt;/strong&gt;. You should be open and fully &lt;strong&gt;transparent&lt;/strong&gt; in your plan with product owner. &lt;strong&gt;Building trust&lt;/strong&gt; at this early stage is much more important than trying to build something within impossible time frame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28739" LastActivityDate="2017-09-30T16:20:00.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16594" CreationDate="2017-10-01T14:51:56.400" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Part of Scrum Master skill profile is playing the facilitator and coach role. While the technical aspects can be learnt through books, trainings, and videos, the above aspect will require some hands on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is to strongly understand the Scrum technical foundation by opting for the excellent certificate PSM 1. Use the popular book for PSM 'Scrum Narrative and PSM Exam Guide.' &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B018JXYRNA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.amazon.com/Scrum-Narrative-Exam-Guide-All-ebook/dp/B018JXYRNA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the softer aspect, apply Scrum in whatever you do today (Scrum is not just for software dev alone. It is a framework to solve complex problems). This will provide some basic experience.&#xA;With that you are reasonably set for next opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29991" LastActivityDate="2017-10-01T14:51:56.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3794" CreationDate="2017-10-02T09:21:04.953" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Task and Finish group is a group set up as a sub group of larger project group, that specifically looks at one item that needs to be delivered... the 'Task'. Once that area of work has been completed, the group disbands... the 'Finish'... and the work is then assimilated back into the larger project group. They are usually seen in projects where items/areas of work are not running as smoothly as they should and need special intervention to bring them back on target. This group does not look at the wider aspects of the project; just that one particular area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29996" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-10-02T13:21:57.370" LastActivityDate="2017-10-02T13:21:57.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22501" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22503" CreationDate="2017-10-03T11:39:43.017" Score="0" ViewCount="312" Body="&lt;p&gt;I managed to simulate a project in MS Project 2013. I created an initial planning, assigned ressources and put this in a baseline. Then I imagined two status for my project in two different dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The EV report gave me this graph:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ssv33.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ssv33.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why does the three curves go back to zero at the end? It doesn't seem logical to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26896" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T19:56:38.313" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T19:56:38.313" Title="Why does my Earned Value curve go back to zero" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1578" CreationDate="2017-10-03T13:35:19.653" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my Univ. we use this retrospective &quot;process analysis&quot; technique at the end of first and second semester for the student group-work. It's part of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.en.aau.dk/digitalAssets/66/66555_pbl_aalborg_modellen-1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PBL&lt;/a&gt; model. You need to create a sort of matrix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rows&lt;/strong&gt; are different aspects of the project. These would differ depending on your context. E.g. we use: &lt;em&gt;project planning, group collaboration, collaboration with supervisor, learning process&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Columns&lt;/strong&gt; are the actions. These are fixed: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Description&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;What did we do and how?&lt;/em&gt; In order to get common understanding.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reflection&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Why did we do things this way? What went well and why? What went bad and why? What did we learn?&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Evaluation&lt;/strong&gt; (constructively, with the 'start-stop-continue' model), &lt;em&gt;what will we start doing from now on? What will we stop doing? What will we continue doing?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the first cell in the matrix should be the description of the project planning (&lt;em&gt;how did we plan our project?&lt;/em&gt;), and so on. &#xA;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30010" LastActivityDate="2017-10-03T13:35:19.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22501" CreationDate="2017-10-03T14:01:34.523" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is hard to know exactly why you are getting this result without looking at your file; however, based on your OP, I think it has to do with this: &quot;I imagined two status....&quot;  I interpret this that, in your imaginary project, you are progressing your project up to the third &quot;'16&quot; in your graph and the fourth and final &quot;'16&quot; you have marks the project's finish.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MSProject, I believe, does not calculate BCWS until you enter that date into the status date of the tool.  Therefore, BCWS would equal zero until that time.  ACWP and BCWP would also equal zero because you did not enter values yet for this date.  Consequently, your graph drops to zero for all three values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where I work, we extract data from MSProject into another tool that builds these graphs properly.  Therefore, our BCWS will climb to BAC and ACWP and BCWP will stop at the appropriate status date.  There might be a way to do this in MSProject but someone who is more a tool guru would have to answer here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-10-03T14:01:34.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22282" CreationDate="2017-10-03T18:11:09.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read and understand the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Manifesto for Agile Software Development&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read and understand &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Know the history and intent of the philosophy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seek further training: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.scrum.org/&lt;/a&gt; founded by Scrum author after leaving Scrum Alliance for its shortcomings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2017-10-03T18:11:09.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22488" CreationDate="2017-10-04T13:09:24.947" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume you have tasks that follow the task in question that had a false finish.  I further assume those tasks have started and have progressed to some degree.  You have to reschedule the work since you are essentially going back in time and continuing the offending task to get it to completion.  So in your schedule, you would remove the finish date of this task and, based on your estimate to complete, you would add the hours, duration, and resources necessary to bring this task to finish.  If those other tasks have to be restarted, i.e., the work performed so far has no value, then reduce progress on those tasks to 0%.  Then march on with the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question about rebaselining, however, is different.  Whether or not you can rebaseline depends on why the task was claimed not to be finished.  Did the workers on that task complete it based on the given requirements but the requirements changed?  If so, that's a rebaseline, which means you get time and money added.  If requirements were missed, then that would be a no rebaseline and you deal with your variances: late schedule, likely cost overrun.  If the subsequent tasks revealed an issue with the offending task, then that might be a negotiable item as to whether it could be rebaselined, i.e., no reasonable person could have known that the task failed to deliver what it was supposed to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-10-04T13:09:24.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22510" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22516" CreationDate="2017-10-04T14:25:09.257" Score="17" ViewCount="41761" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new in agile and Scrum, and I got confused as to what the differences are between a Sprint, a Milestone and a Release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I heard some say that the Sprint is a Milestone. Also in some software the terms Sprint and Milestone look the same. But is it really so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some others say that a Milestone is not a Sprint, but a Release. So for them Milestone and Release are the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In The Scrum Guide, there is no word regarding Milestone. Why? Why do we always hear the word milestone in the agile conversations? Is milestone just another term for release? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking for a clarification between those terms, Sprint, Milestone and Release and one example. I would like to know the exact Scrum definitions behind those terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30027" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-07-08T12:12:39.623" LastActivityDate="2020-05-28T13:05:38.097" Title="Sprint vs milestone vs release" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;" AnswerCount="10" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22510" CreationDate="2017-10-04T14:38:51.920" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The heart of Scrum is a Sprint, a time-box of one month or less during&#xA;  which a “Done”, useable, and potentially releasable product Increment&#xA;  is created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other terms are not a part of Scrum, though &quot;Release Planning&quot; used to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/revisions.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;many years ago&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Milestones are often a part of the PMI (project management) vocabulary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ADDED&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a lot to the history of software development and these terms.  Please start with &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cs.umd.edu/class/spring2003/cmsc838p/Process/waterfall.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Managing the Development of Large Software Systems&lt;/a&gt; (1970), the misunderstanding that led to the waterfall process.  The terms &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/milestone-different-planning-approach-7635&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;milestone&lt;/a&gt; and release are widely used in classic &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pmi.org/about/learn-about-pmi/what-is-project-management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;project management&lt;/a&gt;  They are similar and are often used interchangeably; they often have different meanings to different people.  The term &lt;em&gt;agile&lt;/em&gt; comes from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Manifesto for Agile Software Development&lt;/a&gt; (2001) though the groundwork for that philosophy started in the 1990s (&lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/history.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;history&lt;/a&gt;) including &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;eXtreme Programming&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt;.  The reason that release was removed from The Scrum Guide and milestone never appeared was because they are both long term planning which is contrary to the intent: short iterative and incremental cycles intended to promote agility to change direction to seize opportunities, reduce risks, and terminate an effort when the cost-benefit was no longer acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2017-10-07T01:04:02.040" LastActivityDate="2017-10-07T01:04:02.040" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22510" CreationDate="2017-10-04T14:39:27.570" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both Sprints and Releases are Milestones, as a Milestone is just &quot;an action or event marking a significant change or stage in development.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Milestone is used often in Project Management conversations in general. It's not specifically an Agile (nor Scrum) term, but its meaning is broad enough (as shown above) to be usable in Agile contexts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Sprint is a &lt;em&gt;potential&lt;/em&gt; release, but most Sprints are not Releases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Sprint is just an iteration of time, after which the product is in a stable, releasable form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Release is when you actually &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; release the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to know exact Scrum definitions, read the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The heart of Scrum is a Sprint, a time-box of one month or less during which a “Done”, useable, and potentially releasable product Increment is created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2020-05-28T13:05:38.097" LastActivityDate="2020-05-28T13:05:38.097" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22513" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-10-04T18:10:51.647" Score="0" ViewCount="145" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have done bachelors and wanted to know if getting cmp certification equals to 4500 credit hours required for pmp&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30028" LastActivityDate="2017-10-04T18:31:42.450" Title="Is cmp certification equivalent to 4500 credit hours required for PMP?" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22513" CreationDate="2017-10-04T18:31:42.450" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to answer this assuming you mean Certified Meeting Planner. If that's not the case, my apologies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR- Absolutely! In my opinion event planning is a highly specialized kind of project management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My wife was an event planner for a long time. She went through the process to become a CMP and between that and watching her plan and run large events, I know she'd be an awesome project manager and that the hours she put into doing events would apply as projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just remember, PMI doesn't care if you have a CMP. It is just that the same kind of work you did that qualified for a CMP application is also going to be usable in the PMP application. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-10-04T18:31:42.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22510" CreationDate="2017-10-04T21:36:23.027" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprint&lt;/strong&gt; is a time frame to achieve one or more goals, frequently from 1 to 4 weeks. It's related to a work performed by a team.&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Milestone&lt;/strong&gt; is an event during a project, with zero days of duration, that represents a important achievement. &#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Release&lt;/strong&gt; is a deliverable, could be a document, software module, blueprint, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.G: &#xA;Sprint 1: From October 2nd to October 20th.&#xA;Sprint 2: From October 23rd to October 27th.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Milestone ABC: Start of project.&#xA;Milestone XYZ: Start of design phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Release #1: ContactUs Web Form.&#xA;Release #2: Sales report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30032" LastActivityDate="2017-10-04T21:36:23.027" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22510" CreationDate="2017-10-05T04:48:38.197" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprint&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;In the Scrum Framework all activities needed for the implementation of entries from the Scrum Product Backlog are performed within Sprints (also called 'Iterations'). Sprints are always short: normally about 2-4 weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each Sprint follows a defined process as shown below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/oIfrP.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The heart of Scrum is a Sprint, a time-box of two weeks or one month during which a potentially releasable product increment is created. A new Sprint starts immediately after the conclusion of the previous Sprint. Sprints consist of the Sprint planning, daily scrums, the development work, the Sprint review, and the Sprint retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Sprint planning, the work to be performed in the Sprint is planned collaboratively by the Scrum Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Daily Scrum Meeting is a 15-minute time-boxed event for the Scrum Team to synchronize the activities and create a plan for that day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Sprint Review is held at the end of the Sprint to inspect the Increment and make changes to the Product Backlog, if needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint Retrospective occurs after the Sprint Review and prior to the next Sprint Planning. In this meeting, the Scrum Team is to inspect itself and create a plan for improvements to be enacted during the subsequent Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Release&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;The goal of initial release planning is to estimate roughly which features will be delivered by the release deadline (presuming the deadline is fixed), or to choose a rough delivery date for a given set of features (if scope is fixed). We use this information to decide whether or not the project will produce enough ROI to at least pay for itself, and therefore whether or not we should proceed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Milestone&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;Milestone is typically associated with reaching a certain goal, before proceeding forward or stopping altogether. Checkpoint signifies points at which the team stops and checks progress against expectations, and possibly adjust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Milestone (big granularity) means progress checking at iterative way; it is important in overall project progress and if associated goal is not fulfilled, some important analysis and decisions are needed; it is associated with phases and iterations or other important points and it could be related to formal progress tracking. As “no team is an island unto itself”, that “software development” is not a hermetically sealed universe, and that the software development efforts of one team are usually part of a bigger coordinated undertaking / organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Now an answer to your question in short:&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;&lt;br&gt;Sprint, Milestone and release are not same but at some point during project development they meet each other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be possible end of particular milestone can result into partial/final release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprints are chunks for for development plan, with iterative activities, it cannot be considered as a Milestone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28200" LastActivityDate="2017-10-05T04:48:38.197" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22462" CreationDate="2017-10-05T13:29:27.187" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That project needs to be released in 2 months, but we estimated around&#xA;  6 months of work on it. So we need to get more people working, so that&#xA;  we can fit in that time period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding more developers will &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; solve your problems. Study of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Mythical Man-Month&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Brooks&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fred Brooks&lt;/a&gt; is recommended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also Testing &amp;amp; Verification should happen alongside of the project, not at the end only. The managing of more people, and particular intelligent people, needs - as with many things in life - trust. This small word (trust) means much more and you should consider its meaning. Also you must invest into learning about management styles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your estimation of 6 months needs to be squashed into 2 months, that is my recommendation. The two methods defined by &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Management_Body_of_Knowledge&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PMBOK&lt;/a&gt; are &lt;strong&gt;Crashing&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Fast tracking&lt;/strong&gt;. Crashing means adding resources. I don't recommend this. Fast tracking means parallelizing your work. You must consider doing this with same headcount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your current people need to focus on finishing, which I find the the most difficult gate of projects.&#xA;Sit down, discuss and maybe use fish-bone analysis to identify the particular item(s) that would need additional months. Maybe one of your developers can continue on this particular issue, while the rest of you move on and you increase the number of staff at your next project accordingly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, I recommend - if you have not done already - reporting that you and your team are going to run late with high risk. If you secured the new project B, also prepare of an ugly ending with project A. You did not specify anything about the stakeholders and customer of project A and B. Is customer A more important than B on long run? If somehow project A and B continue, you half your speed for both projects and quality, etc. and your resources become toast sooner or later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21496" LastEditorUserId="21496" LastEditDate="2017-10-05T18:57:57.237" LastActivityDate="2017-10-05T18:57:57.237" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22462" CreationDate="2017-10-05T13:46:36.150" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am reading three separate and distinct issues: 1) current team is &quot;stuck&quot; in testing and debugging; 2) new project with an initial target of six months and now a commitment to a target of two months; 3) fear of a stretch role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) What does stuck mean?  If during your testing you're finding an abnormal amount of defects and defects skewed to a high severity, then I would argue you are not stuck in testing but rather not finished with development.  You should kick back the product and finish development properly.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) To analyze whether the six to two is an issue, you need to take a look at your assumptions and basis of estimate and the range of your estimate.  If you assumed your current team who was &quot;stuck&quot; in the previous project, then perhaps you padded the six months in order to finish.  Regarding the range, where did the six months fall?  If you estimated one month to six months to finish, most likely three, then a two-month duration is aggressive but not unrealistic.  If six months was already aggressive in your range, say 5 best, 9 worst, 7 most likely, then do not accept the two-month commitment.  So there are a lot of unknowns about this project for anyone here to answer but here are a few questions to answer to get you started on that analysis.  Read below on my opinion about task resource elasticity.  Crashing your schedule by loading it up with workers is CERTAINLY an available option but you MUST evaluate resource elasticity in the environment in which you are working.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3)  Get over it.  Stretch.  Lean in.  Jump in when you are not comfortable.  If you wait until you are comfortable, your peers will pass you by in growth and rank.  You will make mistakes, which is fantastic because you can learn from them.  Seek out a mentor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Original but unacceptable answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not a direct answer to this problem but a word of caution when considering the notion of the mythical man month.  This is not a valid construct across all types of tasks.  Don't just assume that adding employees would cause all tasks to increase in duration all the time.  Different tasks have different degrees of resource elasticity and will respond differently, both up and down, when adding or removing workers against that task.  Adding workers against a task can most certainly have a favorable effect on crashing your schedule in many circumstances so you need to evaluate the tasks at hand on a case by case basis.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2017-10-06T11:53:40.530" LastActivityDate="2017-10-06T11:53:40.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16594" CreationDate="2017-10-05T19:08:33.107" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I work in the tech industry managing clients and web production for&#xA;  an email platform company, so it's different than typical development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're right, managing clients is not per se project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;but I don't have any experience working in a true Scrum/Agile&#xA;  environment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is rather your benefit. You are willing to learn, which is your first step. Second, you learn about Agile and focus on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt;. But I recommend you another thing. Check if Agile will deliver the results you expect for your environment. Maybe it does, maybe not. Maybe it is alien to the environment, maybe not. Enjoy your journey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21496" LastActivityDate="2017-10-05T19:08:33.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16594" CreationDate="2017-10-05T19:48:06.993" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without Agile experience you will find it hard to get a Scrum Master role, even if you get the certification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try working in a Scrum environment first to see whether you like it. Scrum has a lot of rules. As a Scrum Master you will be expected to buy in heavily to the Scrum methodology. Be sure that you agree with the methodology before become a champion of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind also that the Scrum Master is in theory a &quot;temporary&quot; role to enable teams to become self organising and motivating. So the perfect Scrum Master is someone who makes themselves redundant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29898" LastActivityDate="2017-10-05T19:48:06.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22524" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-10-06T03:07:58.557" Score="1" ViewCount="1383" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are currently facing issue for the Daily standup reporting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are more than 70 people in the team, and some people are working at client side location as well. So in daily scrum meeting it takes more than 1 hour to just give and take updates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for the solution we decided, Only lead will attend meetings and give status reports for the individuals&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Now the current issue is, we have no centralized system or tool or way for each person to report to their respective TL in simple way.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Note : We are currently using the mail system but it is very tedious and time taking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone suggest a better way to solve this problem and save more time ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30047" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-10-06T12:27:17.977" LastActivityDate="2017-10-13T11:54:07.263" Title="What are the ways for Daily status reporting to make process more easy?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22524" CreationDate="2017-10-06T03:31:07.397" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our low-tech solution to this has been using a wiki. If the version control tool you are using has an integrated wiki, like Trac or GitHub, you can use that; otherwise you can use a standalone wiki like Confluence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Set up a parent page for the project; set up a page for each team underneath that. On the team page, put a few instructions on the top explaining that each individual is responsible for updating their status every day by X time, and set up a standard layout, maybe with example dummy text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My teams have always found this pretty painless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the meta-question is why are you using the daily standup for status reports. Classically it's not for status, precisely because the team and leads should be able to see status on the wiki, or sprint board, or other tool... which may become obvious once you start using such a tool for status. The classic standup is to identify any blockers, areas that need coordination, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, with a team of 70 people that is already composed of subteams, you might want to look for answers on &quot;Scrum of Scrums&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2017-10-06T03:31:07.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22524" CreationDate="2017-10-06T03:58:09.610" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The value of the daily scrum is for people working closely together to sync up on their short-term plan. My first recommendation would be to allow portions of your team working together to organize their own daily scrum where it is helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are just tracking progress, I'd look to artifacts that show work progress like taskboards. This way teams, PM's, managers, and so on can all see where any work item stands without bothering anyone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-10-06T03:58:09.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22530" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22531" CreationDate="2017-10-08T08:20:03.893" Score="5" ViewCount="750" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is gonna be a bit of a hard to answer question with there being too many variables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a worker. And i have missed plenty of deadlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have come to the personal opinion that a missed deadline is always the fault of poor management. This is of course not entirely true but in most cases is seems the management overscoped the project and/or made a silly deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: i think it's worth mentioning that i have only ever worked in China!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Real life example of older workspace: (You can skip the the last paragraph, I'm just venting)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was asked create a program for printing data to paper, it should be configurable and easy. I talked to him about different ways to do this, and we agreed on a WYSIWYG solution resembling Word. I sat down for a few days a created a complete project spec and specified: Beta after 3 months and an extra 2 months for test and patch. (I'd like to give 1 month but that has proven insufficient in the past, with changes and whatnot) Totaling 5 months. I gave him the document, he took the paper, i went away and after a few minutes he mailed me &quot;OK&quot; for everything (He mentioned no specifics), and i have 1 month to finish it. (I assume he skimmed it and trashed it) After 6 months the project wasn't even finished seeing as he kept coming to me with project changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking back i see many cases where this happened. Overscope, changes or impossible deadlines. I did consider that perhaps i got it backwards. That 1 month means i need to thin out the project in order to fit that time-frame. But this was not communicated. I've seen my coworkers start on projects that from the onset has overtime included.&#xA;So i have fallen to the understanding that project managers can't manage projects. If i work 8 hours a day for the entire period (not 9gag!) then a missed deadline is not my problem. And as such, I've grown to ignore deadlines altogether cause it's the responsibility of the manager that the deadline and project spec matches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok. So i do not wish to ask whether or i was wrong or not is this example. (You're welcome to talk about it)&#xA;But i would rather like to know, what are the symptoms of poor management&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And with the authority game and my competence at stake. What can i do as a worker when presented with a &quot;Death march&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30067" LastActivityDate="2017-10-13T16:54:41.250" Title="Missed deadlines. Who's responsible?" Tags="&lt;deadline&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22530" CreationDate="2017-10-08T15:48:37.283" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your story suggests three issues you are facing: 1) project management maturity, 2) an understanding of schedule variability, and 3) human performance factors and biases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You describe a work environment that has very little project management processes and capability well defined.  You describe a lack of planning processes, a lack of risk management processes, a lack of change management processes, and a lack of communications, and your title shows that your organization is not defining accountability and responsibility.  I am not sure your organization would know the difference between the two.  This is quite a large topic so I'll leave this at: start a PM 101 and go from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your second issue is around schedule variability.  Work is always variable--from the most simplest of tasks to the most complex, if you were to perform the task several hundred times, you would produce quite a range of results by way of total duration and total cost.  You have both aleatory and epistemic variables that cause the range of results and you can only mitigate the latter type.  So your estimates should be provided in this range.  Instead of &quot;5 months,&quot; you would provide a more appropriate estimate of 3 months to 8 months, most likely 5--or whatever it really is as I just made these numbers up.  So when you understand your estimated range, you can escalate the risk to your stakeholders when the targets come in at the aggressive side of your curve.  With proper processes in place--see #1--that risk would be captured and communicated out and you can continue your work as normal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third problem is human performance and biases.  As PMs, we deal with estimates coming in from the team that has bias attached to it.  Sometimes it is optimistic, others pessimistic.  Other types of biases are at play, too, such as anchoring, recency, primacy, etc.  PMs have to negotiate this in order to arrive at an aggressive, competitive, but achievable target within an estimated range while dealing with other business pressures about which you may have no idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, regarding performance, we have a tendency to procrastinate.  Two phenomena we cope with are Student Syndrome and Parkinson's Law.  Both of these are costly and inconsistent with a competitive environment.  So many times putting a challenge on the team, bringing in targets, causes those targets to be achieved WITHOUT compromise to quality.  Of course, doing this too much can wreak havoc, so it is a tool you need to smartly use.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer your question, the lack of PM processes your OP suggests would be an indicator of poor management; however, aggressive targets may not be for the reasons I indicated above. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-10-08T15:48:37.283" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22533" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22535" CreationDate="2017-10-09T20:50:06.440" Score="7" ViewCount="269" Body="&lt;p&gt;How to get started with Agile if there are some programmer in my team, there only know a specific business domain and don't want to share knowledges with other teammates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30078" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2017-10-10T07:58:35.947" LastActivityDate="2017-10-10T07:58:35.947" Title="Agile and teammates that don't want to share knowledge?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22533" CreationDate="2017-10-10T07:11:27.027" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Knowledge hoarding&lt;/strong&gt; (relactance to share knowledge) is irrelevant from the development methodology. It is a problem regardless of agile, waterfall or any other methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some knowledge hoarding reasons :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lack of time&lt;/strong&gt;. Knowledge sharing can take time, which obstraces the completion of other duties and tasks assigned.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lack of trust&lt;/strong&gt;. “The more an employee distrusted the person requesting the information, the more likely they were to hide knowledge from that person”&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lack of awareness&lt;/strong&gt;. The employee does not undestand how much value knowledge sharing can give to the whole team, which subsequently will produce success for the whole team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Job insecurity&lt;/strong&gt;. The fear that if everybody learns their knowledge, they will loose their status in the team, and may loose their job.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some ideas you may try to mitigate the problem are :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Set aside time to share information.&lt;/strong&gt; Put time explicitly in their time shcedule for knowledge sharing. This will aknowledge their effort and make it a formal task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reward sharing.&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;When sharing happens and there is a positive outcome, recognize the people involved. Give feedback on results generated because of the shared information.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Remove barriers.&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;Review your incentive programs to make sure you’re not motivating people in the wrong direction — by creating too much competition. Revise programs to reward the team when you can.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Training.&lt;/strong&gt; If employees receive knowledge through training or from other colleagues, they will look knowledge sharing as their obligation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Change awareness&lt;/strong&gt;. Change peoples beliefs about knowledge sharing, that this is not a risk for their job, and overall they get benefits directly or indirectly from it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://insights.nationalseminarstraining.com/680/knowledge-hoarding-5-ways-to-encourage-information-sharing/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://insights.nationalseminarstraining.com/680/knowledge-hoarding-5-ways-to-encourage-information-sharing/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28712" LastActivityDate="2017-10-10T07:11:27.027" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22536" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-10-10T12:24:10.937" Score="5" ViewCount="256" Body="&lt;p&gt;A more or less new trend which I observe is integration of data science processes (i.e. workflows required to setup and execute experiments) to design and delivery of user facing apps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I assume business expects this new data science capability to introduce some new features either competitive advantages as a new product element.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Companies approach machine learning, and deep learning, as if they&#xA;  are doing a software engineering project, with waterfall processes and&#xA;  gantt charts, thinking that they can somehow totally avoid the very&#xA;  difficult work necessary to design a complex and highly accurate&#xA;  machine learning solution.&quot;  (Charles Martin)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile seems be of neither help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The traditional agile/scrum methodology combined with JIRA may not&#xA;  address the nature of it being a series of hypotheses driven&#xA;  experiments. Time estimates do vary over different projects based on&#xA;  nature of business questions asked. Perhaps, a case-specific&#xA;  discussion along with Kanban style milestone based progress estimation&#xA;  may help.&quot; (Kirti Chawla)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. yet a quite clumsy formulation &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6323199889564147712/?commentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Acomment%3A(activity%3A6323199889564147712%2C6323354993290280960)&amp;amp;replyUrn=urn%3Ali%3Acomment%3A(activity%3A6323199889564147712%2C6323489007644876800)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;from a recent LinkedIN discussion&lt;/a&gt;, please if possible leave a comment to help get this straight (if possible) before just downvoting. Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So does Kanban help here? Or what is other proven process model? There is also a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/devops-pipeline-for-a-machine-learning-project?xg_source=activity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DevOps approach&lt;/a&gt; in this context, but this might be considered as &quot;too technical/low-level&quot; from PM perspective I assume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28945" LastEditorUserId="28945" LastEditDate="2017-10-10T12:52:24.163" LastActivityDate="2017-10-13T08:10:02.907" Title="Does Kanban apply well in practice to software projects with data science background?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;devops&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22536" CreationDate="2017-10-10T16:51:39.010" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can try to provide some information here. It is almost impossible to say if Scrum, Kanban, or DevOps is applicable to your exact situation, but I can see benefits of any of these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Kanban&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal of Kanban is to simply improve process. There is no process that is not potentially benefited by Kanban. The key steps here are to visualize your workflows that you mention in your question and then using a taskboard or some other mechanism, watch as work items flow through those steps. Note that you want the value-delivery item (analysis of a business question, for example) to flow through the steps, not individual tasks. This, plus the other rules Kanban puts into place, like limiting work in progress, will show you where your bottlenecks and inefficiencies are in your process. Then, try small experimental improvements to change your process for the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is great at iterating on a problem. Let's say you're trying to improve market impact with your data analysis. Scrum is going to ask you to plan a small targeted analysis inside of a sprint that changes and advances your view of the problem. Then you'll decide what the right next analysis is to take it further in the next sprint. There is a lot of potential here, but some of the common practices that have arisen in scrum are focused on product creation and you might need to leave those pieces behind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DevOps&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem that DevOps solves is that software teams were calling things &quot;Done&quot; but those things had to go through a long process before they were deployed and &quot;Accessible&quot; by the person using it. If you have this problem, that work is &quot;done&quot; but not accessible by the people who use it for some time, this might help you. Now, the tools that most people are using probably won't if you aren't building and deploying software, but the ideas and techniques around the processes in DevOps are probably applicable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-10-10T16:51:39.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22539" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-10-10T21:55:03.223" Score="-1" ViewCount="145" Body="&lt;p&gt;We set up DOMO to pull from our Jira issues. We noticed that the Velocity charts were not matching up. We realized that for issues that are rolled into more than one sprint - if they weren't complete in sprint 1, they will be rolled into sprint 2 - when closed, DOMO will count their point values for velocity against the first sprint in the list, instead of the last.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There doesn't seem to be a clean, consistent way to use JQL to find the sprint an issue transitioned to Done in. And DOMO doesn't appear to have the flexibility to sort sprints by date within an item's metadata.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone approached this before?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29811" LastEditorUserId="29811" LastEditDate="2017-10-12T16:40:19.153" LastActivityDate="2018-03-11T20:15:33.113" Title="In Jira-Domo integration, issues with more than 1 sprint show as closed in the first sprint" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22540" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-10-11T00:54:15.800" Score="4" ViewCount="1489" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're using JIRA for hardware development and have run into some issues related to the separation between the development and validation cycle. Let me explain:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have an issue type &amp;quot;Development Task&amp;quot; that has a workflow like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assigned &amp;gt; In Progress &amp;gt; Implemented &amp;gt; Build &amp;gt; Verified &amp;gt; Closed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically we create a bunch of tickets (we assign these as fix version 1), implement the changes in a design, send the design off to the manufacturer and get samples back. Once we get the samples back we have two types of work that need to be done:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) All of the tickets that we implemented prior to getting hardware -- do some sort of verification/validation (it is part of the workflow)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) Add new development tickets to implement more features (we assign these as fix version 2)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order for us to build our next iteration (fix version 2)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We expect that for (1) -- all tickets are validated and moved to &amp;quot;Closed&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We expect that for (2) -- all tickets are in &amp;quot;Implemented&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my ideal world, I can look at a filter of tickets (Fix Version = 2 and Status = !Closed) and that would show 0 results, which would be my Decision Gate that allows us to proceed to building the next round of hardware.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The problems:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If I want to see the exhaustive list of tickets that need to be finished up, I need to make a filter that captures: (Fix Version = 1 and Status = !Closed) OR (Fix Version = 2 and Status = ![Closed, Verified, Build, Implemented])&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If I want to use the burndown chart feature, I can move all of those tickets into a sprint and set an end date, however there doesn't seem to be a right state to assign &amp;quot;Resolution&amp;quot; such that it always represents the correct tickets&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Potential Solution:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remove the validation tail from the &amp;quot;Development Task&amp;quot; and instead create new tickets. That way, the only filter you need is (Fix Version = 2 and Status = !Closed). This also fixes the burndown chart issue because resolution is assigned at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any other alternatives? Are we looking at this all wrong? I'd rather not have the engineers create new validation tickets if we don't have to, they have expressed that it is nice to have the full development background in the ticket when they go to do verification/validation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5768" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-01-17T18:02:45.513" Title="Hardware Development &amp; JIRA -- How to optimize the workflow / fix version field to take advantage of burndown charts" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;burndown-chart&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22524" CreationDate="2017-10-11T01:01:01.930" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may want to consider doing a &quot;Scrum of Scrums&quot; approach. Smaller groups, limited to 10-15 people max should do their own scrums. Very likely these divisions will fall along module or component lines. Then, you may want to have some sort of &quot;Scrum of Scrums&quot; with only the leads 3 times a week, or some frequency that makes sense for the flow of your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5768" LastActivityDate="2017-10-11T01:01:01.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22524" CreationDate="2017-10-11T07:09:44.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds more like roll call in the army than a daily scrum meeting. You might not be holding your meeting for the right reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The daily scrum is not there to report progress to managers/stakeholders/etc. It's purpose is to sync the team and provide a fallback opportunity to report impedements. As such a daily scrum should be limited to a group of people who's work directly relates to one another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;70 people is way too much. If that's the size of your scrum team look into ways to divide the teams and work into multiple subunits like &quot;Scrum of Scrums&quot; or the Nexus Scrum Framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's that important to report progress to outside elements on a daily basis consider creating a software scrum board that you update during daily in parallel by multiple smaller teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2017-10-11T07:09:44.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22543" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22544" CreationDate="2017-10-11T09:19:48.557" Score="0" ViewCount="685" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using data I received, I made that table, however what does it actually mean in terms of my project. How does it help me decide which one has priority, or which one should be done first?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JB7KM.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JB7KM.png&quot; alt=&quot;Projects table&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30095" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2017-10-11T11:35:03.807" LastActivityDate="2017-10-19T10:11:41.727" Title="I created a table that shows weighted score, but what does it mean for my project?" Tags="&lt;prioritization&gt;&lt;analysis&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22543" CreationDate="2017-10-11T10:56:57.807" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to total the weighted score on each project. Assuming the non weighted score on each factor means the degree each project met that factor and the higher the number the better, then your total weighted score will reveal the priority of your projects. The higher the weighted score, the higher the priority. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT to answer question in comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The use of a tool like this really serves as an input into the next step of the prioritization analysis, which is more of a subjective set of arguments where the decision makers, using the results of this exercise as an input/guide, would promote and demote based other, more subjective criteria, sometimes even gut feel.  So scores that tie or result very close to each other would be subject to this next analytical step in order to resolve.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you choose to skip that subjective promotion/demotion exercise, then have a rule established before scoring to handle those close or tied scores, such as what @Tob indicated below.  You could use a FIFO (first in first out) rule, i.e., the project identified first gets to go.  You could use something a bit more silly such as alphabetical order of the name of the project.  You could even agree to &quot;flip a coin,&quot; if you are in a laid-back environment that would allow such a thing (I would never suggest this if you are dealing with customers/clients).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this tool appears quantitative, it was built qualitatively.  It is precise but has and will always have accuracy or validity issues.  It indicates priority or choice but does not TELL you what it is.  You still really need to apply that subjective, gut-feel thing to arrive at a rack and stack that you can defend.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2017-10-19T10:11:41.727" LastActivityDate="2017-10-19T10:11:41.727" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22539" CreationDate="2017-10-11T13:10:36.293" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Haven't used DOMO, but regarding:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There doesn't seem to be a clean, consistent way to use JQL to find the sprint an issue transitioned to Done in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can't you just get the 'Resolved' field? It holds the date at which an issue's Resolution was set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All we want is the last sprint the item was in; we can assume it was closed in that sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use the 'Sprint' field, which lists all sprints that issue was in, separated by commas. I don't believe there's a way in JQL to get &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; the last sprint, but it should be straightforward enough to write a program/macro/excel formula/whatever to split on ',' and get the last one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-10-11T16:28:50.347" LastActivityDate="2017-10-11T16:28:50.347" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22546" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-10-11T13:23:23.880" Score="1" ViewCount="62" Body="&lt;p&gt;My QA (not only QA) is performing the same work on undefined schedule. For example: a full regression test is being done with every mobile app release. This work involves not only automation test, but manual process as well and requires a ticket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For being able to digest this work better I want 'regression testing' stories to be grouped, right now these stories are linked to an Epic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How you guys deal (or approach) situations where exactly the same story is being played over again?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An Epic which is always in-play?&#xA;A story stuck in one of the lanes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any input much appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best,&#xA;r0cket&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29957" LastActivityDate="2017-10-12T13:26:46.833" Title="Container story for repeated work" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban-board&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22546" CreationDate="2017-10-11T13:32:01.657" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why not, instead of considering the regression testing to be a story of it own, bake it into the Definition of Done for every mobile app story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After all, a story, on its own, should provide business value. Does an untested story provide business value? Does testing without having any actually useful features?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-10-11T13:32:01.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21310" CreationDate="2017-10-11T16:19:44.453" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lead Time and Cycle Time are more modern metrics than worker time, number of tasks, etc. They're a kind of meta-metric that can be impacted by lots of other things, but ultimately, a process's ultimate efficiency can be boiled down to those things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lead Time: the total time it takes for an item to enter the workflow, be processed/worked on/etc, and delivered to the consumer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cycle Time: a subset of Lead Time, you can measure Cycle Time as the time that item spends between different points in your system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in a software context, Lead Time could be the time between when a User Story is entered into the backlog and its delivery to the production environment - its entire life cycle.&#xA;Cycle Time could be the time between that story's commitment to be worked on and its delivery to QA, or QA to the deployment pipeline, or any other pair of steps in the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29811" LastActivityDate="2017-10-11T16:19:44.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22549" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-10-12T01:17:12.333" Score="1" ViewCount="186" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of (read:all) project management literature and methodology focuses on knowing your budget and deadlines for when projects need to be completed and how much they should cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At my workplace, small family-owned construction business, ownership takes a /very/ active hand in almost everything that goes on, including quoting jobs and estimating time requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their approach to budget and deadlines has always seemed to be (on the surface) &quot;ever how much we need to spend&quot; and &quot;as long as it takes&quot;. However, in practice, this is actually &quot;as little as possible&quot; and &quot;as soon as possible&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deadlines and budgets are guarded/invisible except to finance and ownership. The only time that project personnel are made aware of spending and time requirements are when something is deemed &quot;costing too much&quot; and &quot;taking too long&quot;, and &quot;[our department] isn't making any money&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All attempts to talk with management/ownership about sharing budget and time constraints (for any number of PM reasons) are met with &quot;just keep doing what you're doing&quot;, &quot;you don't really need to know that&quot;, and &quot;that's what I do&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if this is a workplace issue, or if there is something I'm not getting PM wise (relatively new to PM), or if this is just how small business works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question: how can I &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A. a work around not having crucial information, or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B. explain to my boss that in order to do my job properly, I need that crucial information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(if this should be moved to workplace SE, please let me know).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29947" LastEditorUserId="17049" LastEditDate="2017-10-12T14:34:05.693" LastActivityDate="2017-10-12T14:34:05.693" Title="Project Management without access to budget or deadlines" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;budget&gt;&lt;deadline&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22550" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-10-12T07:11:40.457" Score="0" ViewCount="134" Body="&lt;p&gt;What will you do as a project manager if the programmer is asking for overtime pay due to additional hours spent to additional user stories that was not planned on the initial estimate, but when you check it, it is part of the scope?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30113" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2017-10-23T00:56:15.690" LastActivityDate="2017-10-23T00:56:15.690" Title="Problem with estimate, scope and programmer" Tags="&lt;scope&gt;&lt;pay&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2017-10-20T11:28:42.410" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22549" CreationDate="2017-10-12T07:23:48.893" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So my question: how can I a) work around not having crucial information, or b) explain to my boss that in order to do my job properly, I need that crucial information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the absence of budget and time constraints your main objective is to prioritize work by value gained and ensure that work can be completed efficiently. That puts you in the best position to satisfy whatever hidden expectations concerning budget and time exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2017-10-12T07:23:48.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22550" CreationDate="2017-10-12T08:06:10.603" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, adding new user stories after the initial plan, is a very normal agile process. Agile is about minimizing upfront planning and continuously revising and updating the product backlog until the product is finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, I do not think that connecting bad estimates or bad planning with overtime payment policy is a good idea. Rather it must be connected with the quality and quantity of the work it is produced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28712" LastActivityDate="2017-10-12T08:06:10.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22553" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22560" CreationDate="2017-10-12T09:42:00.183" Score="1" ViewCount="1768" Body="&lt;p&gt;If Gherkin is used to write regular development user stories in the Scrum process, should Gherkin be used to write a spike as well? If so, given that often there is a lot of unknown information to be filled in, how can a spike be written as BDD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29374" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2017-10-12T16:27:40.113" LastActivityDate="2017-10-12T16:27:40.113" Title="How to write a spike when using BDD?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;bdd&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22550" CreationDate="2017-10-12T11:40:37.287" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Asking for overtime suggests he is an employee and not a contractor.  Assuming that is true and that you are in the US, then he likely understands the difference between being exempt and non-exempt.  Assuming his job family is exempt, then you have three competing issues: 1) paying him overtime will bring into question whether you assigned to his job family the exempt versus non-exempt status and then you will have to change the entire job family; 2) he may look for greener pastures and, if he is a solid employee, you will need to fill the gap; and 3) when it gets out--and it will get out--he was able to get more money with a complaint, you may open the floodgates for others to knock on your door.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general rule I have seen companies institute for things like this is: No, get back to work.  It sounds harsh and cold and not very employee friendly but I think it mitigates a ton of issues you WILL cause by entertaining this.  No one is irreplaceable.  Take that risk over the other risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he is a contractor, refer to the contract and then tell him to go back to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bad estimates, poor planning, changes, agile, scrum--these are all irrelevant to the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-10-12T11:40:37.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22549" CreationDate="2017-10-12T11:46:45.647" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you do not know what your targets are to which to plan and to work, then you have zero accountability and responsibility for those targets.  None.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on doing the job and doing the job well.  When they approach you about &quot;costing too much&quot; or &quot;taking too long,&quot; you can respond professionally about mitigating those things such as examining the possibility of using cheaper resources or fast-tracking some of your schedule where you think you can but avoid taking ownership of the cost or schedule overruns.  Those metrics are not yours.  However, offering to mitigate those things may impact the quality of your scope, which IS yours, so offer to mitigate carefully without impacting what he can hold you responsible for.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-10-12T11:46:45.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22553" CreationDate="2017-10-12T13:01:35.780" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are spikes and spikes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say that if the spike is to develop a proof of concept feature or piece of software, then yes, it will have requirements and require tests. You should write those tests in whatever way you normally do and often those &quot;proof of concept&quot; spikes make it to production anyway, so you will be glad you did!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, spikes are sometimes more along the lines of. &quot;I've heard about a new software product that might be faster/better/helpful. can you go learn it and check out what it can do?&quot; In this case there aren't any requirements, at least around the end product. The spike is a learning/training exercise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you have a &quot;measure how fast this is compared to our current database&quot; requirement or a &quot;Determine if this will work on that OS&quot; requirement, but they are more one off tests which might not fit with your usual &quot;ensure the features all work as designed&quot; style of BDD tests. So it would be foolish to insist they follow the same process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2017-10-12T13:01:35.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22550" CreationDate="2017-10-12T13:16:10.560" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seems to me that this will come down to the programmers contract. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general though, Assuming overtime is in their contract, if they worked the extra hours you should pay them. Although most contracts I've seen will only allow paid overtime if it is approved first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The phrasing of your question though makes it looks like you are trying to justify not paying the developer because their estimate was incorrect or that the work might be out of scope for the project or sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would not be an advisable route to go down in my opinion. You want developers to estimate tasks without having to worry they might get paid less, or work more hours if they estimate low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly with the scope. Usually clients want a nice working product, not a legalistic exact interpretation of a potentially wrong or incomplete spec. Generally you would want to encourage developers to 'fill in the blanks' rather than working to rule. It will make your job easier in the long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously some projects have very exacting specifications and very tight budgets and you would want to make this clear to the developers when the project starts&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2017-10-12T13:16:10.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22546" CreationDate="2017-10-12T13:26:46.833" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend differentiating between the Tests and Test Runs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A test is the instructions on how to test feature X&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A test run is the work you do in (and results of) following those instructions against version Y of the code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can keep the Test as a template task in your project management software and copy it for each Test Run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This gives you both the standard set of 'stuff you need to do each release' and a history of how long it too last time, and the time before that etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also see how the Test suite grows and changes over time as features are added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2017-10-12T13:26:46.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22550" CreationDate="2017-10-12T13:27:55.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Assuming the programmer in question is an employee:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have a company policy for unrequested overtime? Are employees made to be aware of it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer to both of those is 'yes', then consult your policy. If the answer to either is 'no', then that's where you need to start. Work with HR to get a policy put in place. For this &lt;em&gt;specific&lt;/em&gt; instance, however, I'd suggest just paying the overtime. You needn't worry about it becoming a trend, as you'll be updating the company's policies specifically to avoid this. And the loss of morale of a programmer who believes s/he's been treated unfairly can be costly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Assuming the programmer is a contractor:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consult the contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this all assumes it &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; unrequested overtime, and not a situation where, for example, the Scrum Master requested overtime without informing you. That's its own problem, and you should probably double-check first, just to be safe - &quot;Did anyone ask you to perform this overtime?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-10-12T13:27:55.000" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22553" CreationDate="2017-10-12T13:46:35.570" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, no. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More to the point, you should not expect a spike to be described in Gherkin. The primary purpose of BDD is to focus coding efforts toward a clear goal. When working a spike, your goal is a sort of validated exploration of a problem, so the BDD approach is overly limiting to the point that it works against the purpose of the spike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-10-12T13:46:35.570" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22553" CreationDate="2017-10-12T16:22:15.587" Score="1" Body="&lt;h1&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spikes optimize for learning. Unless behavior-driven development is integral to what you're trying to learn, don't follow the pattern slavishly. I often follow light TDD/BDD in story spikes when exploring code because it's a good way to develop code, not because it's required or necessary. For other things where it just gets in the way, I focus on the learning rather than techniques that just get in the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below, I explain how to write a good story spike, and how to measure it. BDD isn't orthogonal to spikes, but it isn't inherent to the process either. You'll have to use your judgement!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;More About Story Spikes&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Spikes Aren't Always Executable Code&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A well-written spike has clearly-defined success or exit criteria, but is not necessarily a good candidate for executable testing. Instead, you will generally want to define a measurable goal and a time box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Defining Goals&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, on one recent project I wrote a spike that said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a DevOps engineer with a two-day time box to explore,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  identify three ways I can migrate a Docker container between pipeline stages&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that the team can reuse unmodified Docker images and reduce configuration drift.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team agreed on a suitable size for the time box, which was written into the story. The measurable outcome of success was whether the spike resulted in &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; number of options (but no more than three) for migrating Docker containers between Development, QA, Staging, and Production. The context provided some scoping for the exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Optimize Learning, Not Features&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I'm a big believer in demoing the result of spikes, TDD &amp;amp; BDD are really techniques for emergent design and iterative development. A spike isn't intended to deliver a maintainable (or even a working) feature. Instead, a spike delivers knowledge or reduces uncertainty related to some aspect of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your spike is about whether you can embiggen a widget, you may or may not choose to follow TDD/BDD development practices. In fact, for such spikes I'd actually recommend using the Mikado Method instead for this type of spike. Even with code, you're trying to answer the question &quot;can it be done?&quot; or &quot;how can we do it?&quot; rather than building something that can be immediately integrated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in a more general sense, you're trying to &lt;em&gt;learn&lt;/em&gt; something. Learning should have a goal, it should be measurable, and it should be time-boxed. It may even be demonstrable. Unfortunately, it is unlikely to be &lt;em&gt;executable&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;BDD is About Development and Behavior&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Behavior-Driven Development is about both behavior and development. If your spike's outcome can be measured through executable behavioral tests, then using BDD isn't necessarily an anti-pattern. However, BDD is also about &lt;em&gt;development&lt;/em&gt;, so if you're trying to learn something rather than build something, BDD may not be a natural fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the two following questions a spike might try to answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can our current API ensmallen a whatsit?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which JavaScript framework makes it easiest to embiggen a widget?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first example &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; benefit from a test-driven framework because you're trying to validate an idea that can be tested as executable code. However, the second question is broader, and while you &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; spend a ton of time writing test harnesses to validate each of 20 frameworks across a number of dimensions, the question is actually &lt;em&gt;qualitative&lt;/em&gt; rather than red/green. Qualitative questions are less answerable by BDD frameworks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is which, and when to use either, is more of an art form than a science. However, BDD isn't a hammer and all problems aren't nails. Determine what your spike is trying to accomplish, and then determine whether BDD or some other approach is more likely to result in validated learning. Then follow the validated learning approach!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-10-12T16:22:15.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22566" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22600" CreationDate="2017-10-12T19:07:22.460" Score="3" ViewCount="524" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a scrum master/agile coach and the team I have been assigned to is too big, 13 people!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have complete authority to change this however I want to formulate a good plan to do this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone suggest how I initiate this process. So not where the split happens but how to approach it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My rough plan was just to have 1-on-1’s with everyone and see if there is a common thread. Theming a retro around it seems like I am pushing the concept on them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastActivityDate="2017-10-16T15:29:02.857" Title="How do I split a 13 person team" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22566" CreationDate="2017-10-12T20:21:13.333" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Self-Organized teams start with self-organization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The normal advice I give to clients is to create a User Story for what is a &quot;good team&quot; with clear acceptance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you get everyone in a room. You show them to user story, tell them how many teams should exist and then let them self-organize into teams. Usually you will go through 2-3 iterations of this before you have your final set. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Simon Sinek says, &quot;Hire for attitude, you can teach skill.&quot; For teams for fit first. Skills will improve faster with a good team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-10-12T20:21:13.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22568" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22569" CreationDate="2017-10-13T04:01:44.547" Score="1" ViewCount="133" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example, there's some add-on task like marketing advertisement artwork or internal task like upgrade computer. it's not in the flow but it took WIP slot of that employees. Just sometimes that it need to be done not always for that work. What should I do about this task? It may not be directly customer value but it took WIP. At this time I just use different post-it color to visualize and when it's done, I just took it off without take it to next flow step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12230" LastActivityDate="2017-10-13T06:34:27.247" Title="In kanban, is there a way to manage add-on task that do not flow through all kanban process?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22568" CreationDate="2017-10-13T06:34:27.247" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kanban is all about visualizing your process as it is, at least to start with.  So, if your main process has some work-items that occasionally have 'sub-tasks' or add-on tasks as you say, then that is real work that should also ideally be visualized on your Kanan board, especially since it is using up your available WIP limits for specific employees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, in order to make sure you have a good handle on how long these add-on tasks take - and you manage their execution/ completion well, you can have a simple sub-lane for them to manage their cycle-time easily.  See the example below - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qY6h8.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qY6h8.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way, you are not only able to highlight to your team but also to your stakeholders that there is additional work that your team is having to do - but that it takes available capacity.  This should help you ensure that your team is not overloaded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on whether you are using a physical board or an &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.digite.com/swiftkanban&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;electronic Kanban tool&lt;/a&gt; such as the one shown below, you should be able to link the main task in the top lane to any add-on tasks it may have in the lower level lane.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a physical board, you can just use a different colored sticky on top of your main work-item and another on the add-on task and perhaps number them the same so it is clear to anyone looking that there is a dependency.  An electronic Kanban tool can give you a dependency link feature that helps you track the add-on tasks easily and track them to closure on multiple ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, Kanban helps you do 3 key things - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Visualize all the work that your team is called upon to do&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Enable you to allocate WIP limits to all streams of work and do work as per those WIP limits. So, in fact, you MUST define a WIP limit for your add-on tasks as well&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It helps you highlight your team's work and its loading effectively to everyone concerned so no undue demands are placed on the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2017-10-13T06:34:27.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22536" CreationDate="2017-10-13T08:10:02.907" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kanban is only vaguely related here but in short, yes it could be useful for all the following model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is true that many data science projects are poorly engineered in a waterfall style. They have a technical focus and take a long time to churn out defective software that doesn't meet the users needs and requires considerable and repetitive rework. Kanban can help here with shortening the feedback cycle and reducing the timeline. It can also help move to the next level by reducing the batch size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find even waterfall-style data science projects result in a DevOps style of collaboration, certainly from the &quot;test&quot; phase of the project as the end users require an operational environment within which to test the application while the developers are constantly generating fixes that have to be constantly deployed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next level is basic agile in the technical part of the process. Here we move on from doing entire technical layers one after the other, to identifying an end-to-end work package. Typically &quot;report oriented&quot;. This is related to the fact that most of the data science projects are due to legislative compliance and it is usually specified exactly which reports the organisation is expected to produce and with what content. Here it is possible to identify at least parts of reports that can be fully implemented and tested in less than 2 weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The approach described above, using hypothesis driven experiments as the work-packages is highly advanced and seldom seen even in mainstream agile software development. It does form a part of lean startup though. It requires bridging the gap between &quot;business&quot; and &quot;IT&quot;, and creating truly cross functional, market facing, product oriented teams that have all technical expertise to design, deliver and operate their business solutions. In such a data science project we would have one team perform all tasks from the whole value stream. From formulating the hypothesis and experiment, through implementing it in the technical systems, followed by interpreting the results, presenting them to stakeholders and advising in next steps. It truly is the holy grail of data science and extremely effective if you can bridge the organisational hurdles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="763" LastActivityDate="2017-10-13T08:10:02.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22572" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-10-13T08:54:11.857" Score="1" ViewCount="648" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new to Jira and I have just joined a new team that is using Jira. We have a problem with our Jira Service Desk project's workflow. It looks like some months ago when an issue was moved to Resolved status, the Jira workflow successfully set a &quot;resolved&quot; field (which also has an alias name &quot;resolutionDate&quot;) which is needed for reporting. However some months ago this field stopped updating, now it is no longer being set. It is suspected an ex-team member may have broken it while modifying the workflow. Can you guide me in how to fix this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can see from &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/jiracorecloud/advanced-searching-fields-reference-765593716.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this fields reference page&lt;/a&gt; that resolution / resolutiondate is a standard field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anywhere I can find more documentation for the field? Or how Jira workflows set their standard fields?&#xA;Should I be able to see the field being set in the out-of-the-box service desk workflow somewhere? i.e. where do I need to check?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4574" LastEditorUserId="4574" LastEditDate="2017-10-13T11:25:12.367" LastActivityDate="2017-11-22T20:53:12.777" Title="How does Jira &quot;resolved&quot; field (or its alias name &quot;resolutionDate&quot;) get set?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22573" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-10-13T09:58:25.557" Score="1" ViewCount="245" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm just setting up a risk management for a project, and I have to admit, that I'm not used to it. That's my table so far. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;--------------------------------------------------------------------------------&#xA;|Identification         |Analysis            |Prevention           |Final Risk |&#xA;--------------------------------------------------------------------        &#xA;|ID|Name |Desc |Reasons |Possibility |Impact |CounterM |Monitoring |           |   &#xA;--------------------------------------------------------------------------------&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will give scores for the &lt;code&gt;Possibility&lt;/code&gt; of an occurrence and the &lt;code&gt;Impact&lt;/code&gt; on occurrence. Placing the risk on a matrix, will show me the raw severity of the risk. I also will define &lt;code&gt;Countermeasurments&lt;/code&gt; in case of an occurrence and &lt;code&gt;Monitoring&lt;/code&gt; methods to avoid an occurrence.&#xA;Both of them, especially &lt;code&gt;Countermeasure&lt;/code&gt; will logically influence the &lt;code&gt;Total Risk&lt;/code&gt;. &#xA;I think about a formula like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QK86M.gif&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QK86M.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this reasonable? How would I calculate the Countermeasure value? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30126" LastActivityDate="2017-10-18T08:09:31.013" Title="How is a countermeasure influencing the total risk score?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;risk&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22573" CreationDate="2017-10-13T10:14:03.043" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Codegnome's law states that you should always solve the problem before you automate the solution.  You're creating a formula before you define the terms.  I recommend that you define countermeasure first, and then think about what formula you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're exploring the notion of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bwise.com/blog/assessing-risks-inherent-or-residual/obj5382859&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;inherent and residual risk&lt;/a&gt; - Inherent risk is P*I - what is the risk if you do nothing.  Residual risk is the risk that remains after you mitigate the risk.  This is, quite frankly, more sophisticated than most people's risk management practices. (as far as I can tell).  I commend you for the ambition.  I'd advise some caution - the chief value of risk management is the discussions it drives, not the sophistication of the modelling.  My first two risk programs were elegant, but died because they didn't drive discussion, decisions or actions.  I later learned to make my risk management model as simple as the corporate culture would accept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry - I got more preachy there than I intended. Let me return to your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you calculate a value for countermeasure?  The same way you calculate the values for Probability and Impact. I've done this a couple of different ways; I prefer to use the P &amp;amp; I values.  There are some risks that are best attacked by reducing the probability - by manipulating the chance that the event will occur.  There are other risks that are best attacked by manipulating the consequence - even if the event does occur, we can reduce the effect.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I estimate the inherent P &amp;amp; Inherent I and record those.  Then I consider my options for manipulating the P &amp;amp; I values and select a set of mitigations/countermeasures and record the residual P&amp;amp;I values, and the resulting residual risk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other note - Sometimes it is prudent to record the &lt;em&gt;urgency&lt;/em&gt; of a risk - a high risk that I cannot act on for 3 quarters may be less significant than a low risk that I can control this week.  I normally record the urgency of risk so that I can identify the actionable risks in the register.  I've thought about formally modelling that (P&lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt;U), but I've never implemented the notion; my corporate culture isn't ready for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fascinating comment that I will capture to reduce the potential impact of deletion.&#xA;&quot;. . .  As I understand, it theoretically is helpful if I would calculate the residual risk, but if I do this, the risk might be also easier accepted/ignored by the project contributors, due an effective countermeasure. This again would increase the probability of it and distort the analysis&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The probability of an event's occurrence should not be affected by whether the risk has been accepted or not.  I'm not entirely sure I understand a situation where acceptance affects probability.  Probability should be estimated based on whether the event will occur or not, and residual probability should be assessed on whether the event will occur &lt;em&gt;given the implemented mitigations&lt;/em&gt;.  If there is a 50% probability that team X will slip schedule by Y days, then logical mitigation is to apply a financial penalty,  which will reduce the probability to 20% - if my management is willing to accept a slippage of Y*0.20, that should not affect the behavior of team X.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm confused by how acceptance could affect probability - the only way I can imagine this is if the schedule slippage is dependent on what the team thinks they can get away with.  In such a case, the risk description should be revised, and a different countermeasure should be chosen - in this case the issue isn't really schedule risk - the risk is that the team is not engaged with the project and if the impact on schedule is controlled, it will come out in quality or cost or some other factor.  Although there are ways I &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; document that in the risk register, in truth, I'd have a private conversation with the relevant manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that is merely a conjecture formed on a puzzling case.  I think the general case is a post hoc ergo prompter hoc problem.  Study of an event should not affect the probability of that event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-10-13T10:41:36.980" LastActivityDate="2017-10-13T10:41:36.980" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22550" CreationDate="2017-10-13T11:12:04.443" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In such case, a project manager should first make sure that whether the task lies within the scope or not.If it lies, then he shouldn't be paid extra as it was a committed task. In case, the task which he performed is out of scope then he should be paid accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26073" LastActivityDate="2017-10-13T11:12:04.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22524" CreationDate="2017-10-13T11:54:07.263" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest using &lt;a href=&quot;https://goo.gl/7okLjV&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TaskQue&lt;/a&gt;. It will help you in getting rid of unuseful meetings by various features.Below are few features of TaskQue: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Discussions:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/f412Z.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/f412Z.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Discussion&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;You can create virtual discussions in real time to communicate with your teammates. You don't need to waste time in meetings all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can help you in optimizing your reporting process. In this system, there is a concept of Tasks, Project, and Workspaces. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;WorkSpace&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Workspaces are a collection of projects whereas &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project is a collection of tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, it gives a better idea about the team performance through summaries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Project SummaryThere are two types of summaries here. First is Workspace Summary and the second one is project summary.Project summary is a visual tool which gives you an idea about the overall performance of the team as well as projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Comments:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;You can add comments below every task. Comments are meant to give your replies and instructions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26073" LastActivityDate="2017-10-13T11:54:07.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22530" CreationDate="2017-10-13T12:42:55.150" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to meet deadlines, you should be proactive first. Don't wait for the last day.Finish your task before 3 days of the deadline. Moreover, try to adopt automation wherever you can. For example, use automation tools. I don't know what exactly is your job.But for meeting deadlines TaskQue is helpful. You can find &lt;a href=&quot;https://blog.taskque.com/never-miss-a-deadline-with-calendars-and-reminders/?utm_source=deadlines&amp;amp;utm_medium=community&amp;amp;utm_campaign=content%20marketing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; how it is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26073" LastActivityDate="2017-10-13T12:42:55.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22578" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22579" CreationDate="2017-10-13T13:00:19.370" Score="0" ViewCount="452" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.co.uk/Guide-Project-Management-Knowledge-Practice/dp/1628253827/ref=sr_1_1/258-7445861-0921767?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1507899162&amp;amp;sr=8-1&amp;amp;keywords=pmbok&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Project Management Body of Knowledge 5th Edition (PMBOK)&lt;/a&gt; states in the glossary&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Quality Requirement- a condition or capability that will be used to&#xA;  assess conformance by validating the acceptability of an attribute for&#xA;  the quality of a result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand the individual words, however when combined in this way I find myself lost. Can this be put simply?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30128" LastActivityDate="2017-10-13T16:50:41.563" Title="Definition of a &quot;Quality Requirement&quot; is belwildering" Tags="&lt;quality&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22578" CreationDate="2017-10-13T13:11:23.273" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand that as: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;This attribute needs to meet all defined standards of quality. To verify that it does, check this condition / that it has this capability.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, the requirement would be either: '[attribute] passes [condition]' or '[attribute] successfully implements [capability]'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-10-13T13:11:23.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22578" CreationDate="2017-10-13T13:57:07.807" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The quality of the product (result) is only as good as the sum of its parts (attributes).  A condition or capability is the predefined specification.  Conformance of the attribute is how well this attribute meets the predefined specification.  The quality of the result is the overall product assessment based on all the attributes of the product meeting, or conforming, to their predefined specs/quality requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-10-13T13:57:07.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21494" CreationDate="2017-10-13T16:48:02.560" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you estimate the value of the work package?   Then you can track the costs against the value earned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2017-10-13T16:48:02.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22578" CreationDate="2017-10-13T16:50:41.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Requirement- a condition or capability that will be used to assess conformance by validating the acceptability of an attribute &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take quality out of it to start - a requirement is something you measure (condition or capability) to determine if the product is acceptable (conforms).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quality requirement is a requirement that is measured on quality &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare that with a cost requirement - which is a requirement measured on cost.  Or a security requirement, or any other type of requirement.  They're all things you measure to determine if what was delivered is acceptable for what was promised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does that help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2017-10-13T16:50:41.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22530" CreationDate="2017-10-13T16:54:41.250" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Fault&quot; is a way of avoiding solving the problem.  &quot;Who is responsible/who is at fault&quot; is &lt;em&gt;usually&lt;/em&gt; an impediment to actually &lt;strong&gt;solving the problem&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What action do we need to take to make this right?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What action do we need to take to prevent this from happening again?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the fire department shows up to put out the burning house, they rescue the potential victims and put out the fire first.  Solve the problem.  Then if you have the luxury of time and resources worry about who to blame.  Or else just go get a drink.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2017-10-13T16:54:41.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22584" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22628" CreationDate="2017-10-13T18:13:42.723" Score="5" ViewCount="477" Body="&lt;p&gt;Current organisation wants to operate in a Kanban way but maintain the structure of sprints and burn down charts to keep track of progress. Is Scrumban the correct methodology? If so, what is the best way to implement it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-01-07T09:42:44.727" LastActivityDate="2021-01-01T19:11:36.677" Title="How do you do Scrumban" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;scrumban&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1578" CreationDate="2017-10-14T02:21:24.843" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to suggestions here and many excellent sites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://plans-for-retrospectives.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://plans-for-retrospectives.com&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://funretrospectives.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://funretrospectives.com&lt;/a&gt;, consider varying techniques to allow for introverts/extroverts: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some activities silently, some as discussion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some activities with movement (take a stand opening or closing), some sitting still (writing) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to open the room for creativity, ask participants to draw, collaboratively build something or walk through a familiar scenario with a different perspective or persona &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ask for both input regarding feelings and facts (both tell you information)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I’ve found setting ground rules, and asking participants for feedback on these and your retro plan can result in positive additions!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30133" LastEditorUserId="30133" LastEditDate="2017-10-15T23:30:04.270" LastActivityDate="2017-10-15T23:30:04.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22584" CreationDate="2017-10-14T08:55:45.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, to invent the bicycle you can use this word. The thing is it's used by different people in different ways (the word scrumban).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've practiced that, when we at SkuVault had the phantom need to preserve sprints (until jira had the Backlog Kanban feature).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We used sprints as folders more, and I've experienced the pain of migrating batch of tickets from sprint to sprint (spoiler: we've moved to Kanban fully, and happily living everafter). I've explained that in my blogpost (&lt;a href=&quot;https://kiniabulatov.com/2017/07/17/why-we-finally-ditched-scrum/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://kiniabulatov.com/2017/07/17/why-we-finally-ditched-scrum/&lt;/a&gt;), so will citate a bit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We used Scrum board as an improvized scrumban tool: we had the&#xA;sprints, which were treated as folders to fit tickets in some time&#xA; period. Classical sprints were not suitable for our workflow. So that&#xA;sprint-folder system was great, visible and allowed us to predict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, in a year period the signal that our approach (sprints as folders) doesn’t quite work appeared – there was a number of tickets migrating from sprint to sprint being rescheduled over and over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21145" LastActivityDate="2017-10-14T08:55:45.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22587" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22596" CreationDate="2017-10-14T15:45:32.160" Score="1" ViewCount="2493" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm taking a project management course in college and am completely new to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My professor asked us to create a burndown chart out of a project in Microsoft project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ieyIH.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ieyIH.png&quot; alt=&quot;Project screenshot&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The burndown chart template is this:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Sx2LH.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Sx2LH.png&quot; alt=&quot;Burndown chart template&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;How do I make them &quot;work together&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30136" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2017-10-17T14:50:30.710" LastActivityDate="2017-10-17T14:50:30.710" Title="How to create a burndown chart?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;burndown-chart&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22589" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-10-15T07:28:19.523" Score="1" ViewCount="876" Body="&lt;p&gt;We do daily scrum in which the PO does not attend. But still later PO comes and ask the status and whole team responds. So we are sort of having double daily scrums&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12195" LastActivityDate="2017-10-16T20:55:02.513" Title="Scrum PO (product owner) requesting status everyday! Help!" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22590" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-10-15T11:54:20.633" Score="0" ViewCount="210" Body="&lt;p&gt;How does this work in Kanban? I understand WIP is the maximum capacity in each swimlane but how is it estimated, is estimation done by the number of cards?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2017-10-16T21:33:13.267" Title="Kanban metrics - WIP" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22589" CreationDate="2017-10-15T11:58:25.747" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like the PO herself is creating an impediment for the team by way of inefficient meetings (i.e. unnecessarily duplicating efforts). I think it calls for a discussion where the SM, in a one on one with the PO, can explain the inefficiency and suggest options. One option being moving the meeting to a time where the PO can attend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is to understand what the PO is truly looking for. As one of the roles of the PO is to work with the business stakeholders, it's possible that she is keeping an eye out for high-level updates that impact the business. If so, the SM should be more than capable to email anything of relevance that falls into the area &lt;strong&gt;after&lt;/strong&gt; the meeting (assuming the PO cannot attend). For instance, a blocker that's specifically connected to a business aspect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But coming back to my first point: I'd like to think that almost everyone is professional and open to communication. Just discuss the issue with the PO and find the best option that suits her needs without jeopardizing the team's time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30142" LastEditorUserId="30142" LastEditDate="2017-10-16T20:55:02.513" LastActivityDate="2017-10-16T20:55:02.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15319" CreationDate="2017-10-16T09:13:25.473" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I only partly agree with the above.&#xA;I do think that tasking is something that can sometimes be dropped as a Scrum team matures.  Tasking is best used early on when it provides a means to accelerate a team's understanding of the processes, dependencies and typical workloads associated with delivering a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do it?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Because it gives you metrics (e.g. burn-down) that flag up problems within a sprint, helps the team learn and helps spot and remove impediments.  It helps you understand at a detailed level the mechanisms of delivering a story, leading to more velocity more quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why not do it?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Because it costs a lot of time.  It may seem like a small job to task out and revise hours remaining - but it can take man-days out of a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for me, it's worth doing in a new team or a new project - but you have to spot the point where you're no longer getting value for the time invested.  At that point, drop back to stories only and see how it goes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So where do I disagree with the above?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, tasks and stories are NOTHING alike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story is the &quot;What and Why&quot;, a task is just the &quot;How&quot;.  The two must never overlap, as you have to maintain the independence of requirement and solution.  The product owner has to own the story.  The team have to own the tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any overlap or confusion between the two suggests, to me, something being very wrong in the dynamics of the process - usually too much influence on the 'what and why' from the techs, and/or too much influence on the 'how' from the product owner.  And that's never good!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30148" LastActivityDate="2017-10-16T09:13:25.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22590" CreationDate="2017-10-16T10:56:56.547" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;WIP stands for Work-In-Progress, which is just the number of work-items (cards) that are in a particular state (or column on the Kanban board). WIP is not estimated, but simply calculated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to WIP, there can be WIP Limits.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;A WIP Limit is an agreement within a team that the number of cards in a particular state must not exceed a predetermined number. The WIP Limit indicates the maximum capacity of the team for a certain kind of work.&#xA;If the WIP Limit is exceeded, then the efficiency of the team will go down, because team members need to work on multiple tasks in parallel, with the associated overhead of task switching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2017-10-16T10:56:56.547" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22589" CreationDate="2017-10-16T13:53:50.420" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;John MP already has a good answer (ask the Product Owner (PO) what s/he actually needs, and then discuss options to satisfy these). However, there are two thing I'd like to add:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Daily Scrum is not a Status Meeting&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's concerning that a whole-team status update meeting is being considered redundant with the Daily Scrum. Likewise the suggestion that the PO could just attend the Daily Scrum to get such an update. The purpose of the Daily Scrum is for the Development Team to collaborate; to keep them on the same page and help each other out (or at least, discover opportunities to do so, after the meeting). The Development Team should not be &lt;em&gt;reporting&lt;/em&gt; to anyone (not the PO, not the Scrum Master, not a senior dev, etc.), and turning it into a status meeting is likely to violate this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Purpose of the Scrum Board is to provide a Status Overview&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Board &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be the ideal tool to solve this. Its purpose is to provide an overview of the status of the Sprint, both to the whole Scrum Team (including the PO) and possibly even directly to external stakeholders. I see three possibilities: either the Scrum Board is not being maintained correctly, the PO is not educated in its use, or the PO has specialized needs that cannot be completed via looking at a board. The first two are problems that need to be addressed immediately. For the third, as previously suggested, you'll need to work with the PO - there has to be a better way to fulfill the PO's needs than a daily all-hands meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-10-16T13:53:50.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22589" CreationDate="2017-10-16T13:56:05.447" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The Scrum Master enforces the rule that only Development Team members participate in the Daily Scrum.&quot; This is because &quot;The Daily Scrum is a 15-minute time-boxed event for the Development Team to synchronize activities and create a plan for the next 24 hours.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Significant aspects of the process must be visible to those responsible for the outcome. Transparency requires those aspects be defined by a common standard so observers share a common understanding of what is being seen.&quot;  In this case the Sprint Backlog artifact is the &lt;em&gt;aspect of the process&lt;/em&gt; in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing not desired is an &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.solutionsiq.com/learning/blog-post/product-owner-anti-patterns-part-1-the-absent-product-owner/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;absent Product Owner&lt;/a&gt;.  It is good for the person filling that role to be asking questions and providing input.  It is bad for that person to be seeking status updates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a good topic for the Sprint Retrospective event.  Discuss with the entire Scrum Team about the problem (not the person) and discuss options for improvement.  Scrum requires the team to inspect and adapt to provide value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2017-10-16T13:56:05.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22587" CreationDate="2017-10-16T14:16:48.173" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The S-curve is more consistent with this type of schedule.  You can build it from the schedule using dollars, such as your BCWS up to your BAC, or you can build it using % complete.  Here is an example of building it using % complete:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start with a schedule that you construct ensuring that you have established your network logic, loaded your resources, scheduled your work packages, and establish a baseline.  Once that is complete, save a second file and then establish 100% complete for all tasks, such as this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ozTvn.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ozTvn.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, open your Task Usage page and change &quot;Details&quot; to Cumulative % Complete.  (Here, you can also use BCWS or cumulative work if you want to show hours.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mJQxN.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mJQxN.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, at whatever level you want to show your S curve, capture the % completes, such as the 3%, 7%, 10% at the Project level in my sample, and transfer to a spreadsheet and build a graph, like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/AONEN.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/AONEN.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The spreadsheet has a column ready for you to enter actual % completes and you will easily see whether you are ahead, on, or behind schedule.  From this tool, you can also calculate Earned Schedule values and use those results to forecast.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is essentially the same as a burn down chart but in reverse.  Same logic and same use for forecasting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not answer your question but IMHO is the right answer for the type of schedule you have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-10-16T14:16:48.173" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22597" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22602" CreationDate="2017-10-16T14:51:02.353" Score="1" ViewCount="178" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've an ongoing project with very tight deadline. I'm allowed to extend project deadline, if required. I've implemented Scrum (sprints). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Issue is - I've some backlog since one weeks, that I couldn't arrange to complete. I must complete project backlog, before I go further with project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should be better at this stage, from following options?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Extend current/next sprint and complete backlog with it. Do sprint allows the same?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a new sprint and add between existing project flow. i.e. Upon completion of current sprint, should I add backlog sprint in between.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I add new resources to team or ask my team for overtime? (I don't think it's better way.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any other proper solution for this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28200" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-07-08T08:39:40.617" LastActivityDate="2019-07-08T08:39:40.617" Title="Sprint backlog before going further with project" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22597" CreationDate="2017-10-16T15:04:27.783" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt; is a framework for complex &lt;strong&gt;product&lt;/strong&gt; development.  Most &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pmi.org/about/learn-about-pmi/what-is-project-management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;project&lt;/strong&gt; management&lt;/a&gt; approaches are counter to the framework and the values and principles of &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;agile software development&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps &lt;a href=&quot;https://leankit.com/learn/kanban/what-is-kanban/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;kanban&lt;/a&gt; is a better fit for your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2017-10-16T15:33:25.130" LastActivityDate="2017-10-16T15:33:25.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22599" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22607" CreationDate="2017-10-16T15:15:05.583" Score="3" ViewCount="261" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several of my team members do Research&amp;amp;Development work, which by nature involves a lot of exploration and uncertainty, and requirements are not always clear since we don't know what is out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those reasons our R&amp;amp;D cards typically stay on the board for 2+ weeks, whereas our average cycle time from Priority to Done tends to be around 7 days. Those cards are also particularly vulnerable to scope creep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can we address this and make those cards flow faster?&lt;/strong&gt; I have read &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/21402/managing-scope-creep-in-agile&quot;&gt;Managing scope creep in Agile&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/18720/how-to-minimize-scope-creep&quot;&gt;How to minimize scope creep?&lt;/a&gt;, but I felt the answers to those questions didn't address contexts where uncertainty is much higher than in regular feature development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26063" LastActivityDate="2017-10-16T20:41:34.077" Title="How do you reduce card size and limit scope creep in R&amp;D tasks?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;lean&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22566" CreationDate="2017-10-16T15:29:02.857" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Theming a retro around it seems like I am pushing the concept on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do you believe that?  How is it different from the &quot;1-on-1’s&quot; approach?  What advice do the values contained in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Manifesto for Agile Software Development&lt;/a&gt; give you?  Can you apply the values and rules in &lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; to this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Self-organizing teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Transparency.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;People and interactions&lt;/strong&gt; over processes and tools.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2017-10-16T15:29:02.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22599" CreationDate="2017-10-16T15:29:24.873" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the very nature of R&amp;amp;D projects means there is no such thing as scope creep.  You are trying to control that which does not exist.  At least, not the way we define scope in other types of projects.  In R&amp;amp;D, scope is controlled by the simple mechanism of running out of time and / or money or the patience of whoever is cutting the checks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you are trying to better your seven-day average, then you have an artificial stop of work that starts to climb over that seven days or maybe 10 days, then redirect your staff to the next R&amp;amp;D task.  Then @ThomasOwens' question remains: should you try to speed things up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-10-16T15:29:24.873" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22597" CreationDate="2017-10-16T16:22:06.717" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Extend current/next sprint and complete backlog with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally a bad idea. Sprints are meant to be time-boxed. Meaning, their start and end dates are fixed. They are sometimes ended/aborted early, but they should not be extended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Create a new sprint and add between existing project flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not 100% sure but what I'm getting from that is that you've set up all of your Sprints ahead of time, and are now asking if you can add a new Sprint in the middle. &lt;em&gt;Don't set up all your Sprints ahead of time&lt;/em&gt;. You should only have two 'buckets' for stories/tasks; the product backlog or the &lt;em&gt;current&lt;/em&gt; Sprint. As new work is discovered, add it to the backlog. During the sprintly Planning Meeting, take the highest-priority stories from the task that the Development Team thinks it can complete, and move them into the next Sprint. You don't need to (and shouldn't) plan multiple Sprints in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I add new resources to team or ask my team for overtime?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, a bad idea. There are &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; situations where this can work, but it shouldn't be your first option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-10-16T16:22:06.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22584" CreationDate="2017-10-16T17:00:59.150" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read Marat Kinyabulatov’s answer and his blog post about their experience. It’s very interesting. However, it seems to me they are more into Product Management than Project Management and that could explain why Scrum or Scrumban is not suited for their needs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrumban can be used with success in some contexts. Being Agile is also to adapt the framework to your needs. Therefore, you can decide which elements of Scrum you wish to implement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have in the past created a team using Scrumban. Basically, I kept the grooming sessions, the planning sessions I and II but I dropped the sprint reviews with the clients and the retrospective with the velocity analysis. This was the right way address many rapid short-term requests from several clients throughout the year while keeping an eye on their long-term objectives. We needed planification with a lot flexibility. Scrum was too strict for this and Kanban was not precise enough. So I took what I needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope it helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29806" LastActivityDate="2017-10-16T17:00:59.150" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22419" CreationDate="2017-10-16T18:55:47.893" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to break down my response in two parts: Challenge and Suggestion, as they apply to PMs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;[1] Challenge&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do feel that this question is pretty broad for this site for 2 reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There isn't a &quot;one size fits all&quot; solution&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PMs struggle here because they may not have the authority to be the agents of change or have access to these costs.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the first reason, there are factors such as cultural, organizational, financial management that would provide to be obstacles for PMs to be able to create and deliver business cases to solve this problem. For instance, culturally, what is the general attitude of the management stakeholder team towards cost-based discussions? YMMV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the second reason, PMs may be able to account for direct costs and labour costs, but they wouldn't be able to identify the challenges with infrastructure without input from the appropriate team(s) as it's simply not within their domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;[2] Suggestion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't see any reason to decline upgrades when a proposal to improve infrastructure has the right data. Most of the time, it's been my experience that the right data/metrics aren't being collected++. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The suggestion here is to provide a &lt;strong&gt;financial management setup&lt;/strong&gt; for IT services that takes into account the expenditures for services rendered as well as labour costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can show that labour costs go down by increasing infrastructure costs (direct costs), then you have a business case that's tough to disagree with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, these are from a strategic perspective, but hope this provides some level of insight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;++ ITIL has information on Financial Management that may be of use*&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30142" LastEditorUserId="30142" LastEditDate="2017-10-16T19:07:28.790" LastActivityDate="2017-10-16T19:07:28.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22419" CreationDate="2017-10-16T19:42:53.840" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The underlying project management question is really how far your mandate goes to optimize a project's burn rate. While a project manager has some responsibility in this regard, accounting and strategic business decisions belong elsewhere in the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Longer Explanation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[W]hy is there a commonly reported problem (by many peers) to get adequate up to date hardware and software tooling to accomplish IT projects in a competitive way[?]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a project management point of view, the role of the project manager is to make the &lt;em&gt;costs&lt;/em&gt; of the project as visible and transparent as possible. However, the budget and strategic allocation of resources is typically handled at the executive level, and while a good project manager provides as much input as possible the actual decisions are based on business criteria that may not be project-focused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a business point of view, labor costs and capital costs are accounted for differently. This is generally a decision made by the CFO and/or the finance team for revenue-reporting reasons, and often has little or nothing to do with optimizing for project-based accounting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are a project manager whose project is suffering because the project's cost-structure expends labor to make up for a lack of equipment, automation, or other capital expenditures, then you should be tracking those costs, making them visible to project stakeholders (including the executive sponsor, who usually has budgetary responsibility), and offering mitigation strategies if you can. However, your job is to provide &lt;em&gt;information&lt;/em&gt; to decision-makers, not to expend project resources in a search for alternative cost structures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're expected to manage the project as best you can within your constraints, and to make those constraints visible, but you have no mandate to modify the cost structures of the organization or realign the business model. Some of the best project managers can use personal influence and hard data to make the case for budgetary changes, but the actual decisions about how (or even whether) to do so rest with upper management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-10-16T19:42:53.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22606" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22621" CreationDate="2017-10-16T20:17:26.187" Score="3" ViewCount="494" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the people on my team has no interest in Agile, does not want to work as a team and doesn’t believe Agile will provide any benefit to them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am struggling for find research which will help me deal with them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have a suggestion of how to tackle this. I am at a loss. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of things I was thinking of doing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Building their trust just through open 1 on 1 catchups and just hearing them &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inviting them to team working agreement but accept that they won’t agree with rest of the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any other ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastActivityDate="2017-10-20T17:00:25.833" Title="What to do with an Agile non-believer" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22599" CreationDate="2017-10-16T20:41:34.077" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're doing commercial R&amp;amp;D, then you should focus on directed development and manage the project around the research methodology chosen. Less directed research should simply be time boxed (financially or otherwise) so that the necessary reporting deliverables are handled appropriately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your research is directed, it should then be decomposable into manageable chunks. Whether those chunks are on Kanban cards or not, a structured methodology inherently combats story size and scope creep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research is exploratory. However, good research is &lt;em&gt;directed&lt;/em&gt; exploration. Consider some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take ice core samples from the Arctic to test for carbon levels.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mapping a portion of the sea floor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vaccine development for a new disease.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these things are experimental or exploratory in nature, but they can &lt;em&gt;still&lt;/em&gt; be decomposed into steps, phases, tasks, and time boxes. While pure research is generally less constrained to deliver &lt;em&gt;rapid&lt;/em&gt; results, research should still be designed to eventually &lt;em&gt;yield&lt;/em&gt; results, even if the result is an affirmation of the null hypothesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; use Scrum or Kanban to manage R&amp;amp;D, I think it's likely to be the wrong approach because the business goal of R&amp;amp;D is neither to improve cycle times nor throughput, but to &lt;strong&gt;identify the success or failure of a hypothesis &lt;em&gt;as rapidly as practicable&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even in areas like pure mathematics where some problems aren't well-aligned to typical project management approaches, the researchers should have a defined methodology or plan of attack for the problem. If not, then you simply can't measure progress or deviation from a plan, which is pretty much the point of project management as a discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;There's Always an Artifact&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even the most esoteric, non-results driven research is expected to produce some sort of artifact within a time box. That may be a research paper, a monograph, a scholarly article, or a symposium talk. Whatever that deliverable is, that's what you manage towards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine an endowment where an academic is given a $100,000 endowment to spend a year thinking about a math problem like &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P_versus_NP_problem&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;P versus NP&lt;/a&gt;. Assuming no formal methodology, the patron probably still expects regular updates on the process, or on how the money is being spent (unless it's simply a stipend). They are also likely expecting a report on the results or lack thereof at the end of the funding period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you truly can't manage a given set of research goals as a project, then at least manage the research as a set of artifacts and time boxes to be effectively managed. &lt;em&gt;Paid&lt;/em&gt; research always has deliverables; you might just have to work a bit harder to identify what those deliverables are, and how best to track them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-10-16T20:41:34.077" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22590" CreationDate="2017-10-16T21:33:13.267" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Bart explained, it is not WIP but the WIP Limit that helps the team and the stakeholders define the maximum capacity of any workflow or value stream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, WIP Limits are defined for each stage (column) of the swim lane as the general situation is that different functions/ people work in the different stages of a swim-lane's workflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WIP Limits work as a constraint on the channel that is represented by the swim-lane.  Thus they discourage multi-tasking and encourage Flow - the key performance metric in Lean/ Agile systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most teams might start with no WIP Limits and as they understand their system's/ team's behavior/ performance, they then start to put them in.  As described in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.digite.com/kanban/what-is-kanban/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt;, the great Don Reinertsen recommended during last year's Lean Kanban India conference that teams should initially observe the flow of work through their system.  Once they have learned enough, they can start with WIP Limits equal to half the value of the average WIP (number of items in any stage at any given time). Most teams that I have interacted with place a WIP Limit of 1 to 1.5 cards per team member working at each stage. This is to encourage a &quot;single-piece&quot; flow as much as possible, but have some additional work at hand in case something gets blocked or stuck due to any reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you could define WIP limits in units other than the number of cards (such as story points), the overall effort of WIP LImits is to reduce multi-tasking - helping team embers to work on one task at a time.  To that extent, it is easier to define and work with WIP Limits in terms of the number of cards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2017-10-16T21:33:13.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22606" CreationDate="2017-10-17T02:21:50.563" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There really isn't much context to work with. But given what's available, let's break down the problem into two parts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Does not want to work in a team&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Does not believe in Agile's benefits&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that the one of the Agile Manifesto's focuses is on individual and interactions over processes and tools, I think you only need to tackle the first problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without a deeper understanding of the context here, I see a few options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) Communication &amp;amp; Negotiation: Continue with the one on ones and find the middle ground&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) Escalation: This can be a whole essay on its own, but it assumes that all negotiation options have been exhausted (I'm not in favour of this)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c) Acceptance. By this I mean that you can still retain this person as part of your team, but their role will be that of the specialist++ (i.e. provides technical expertise).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;++ Research. Refer to Meredith Belbin's 9 roles: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.belbin.com/about/belbin-team-roles/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.belbin.com/about/belbin-team-roles/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30142" LastActivityDate="2017-10-17T02:21:50.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22606" CreationDate="2017-10-17T03:56:44.647" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The team must address the issue. If discussions do not affect the individual, that is okay; not all are willing or able to work as a collaborative team member. Then that person needs to be removed from the team. This is the function of management in an agile organization. Perhaps there is a classic, head down project where that person can be valuable; perhaps that individual is released from employment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2017-10-17T03:56:44.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22573" CreationDate="2017-10-17T06:01:37.170" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Taking your definition into account, countermeasures can not influence risk because when you use countermeasures, there is no risk anymore, it’s a new situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But activities taken to reduce the risk influence or probability influence risk (mitigations?). Therefore you usually simply show the risk impact without and with the action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Risk assessment is often based on goof judgment. Don’t put to much math in it to show science where often just a feeling gives an initial value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a look on qualitative risk assessment. I assume your question targets this (in compare to quantitative risk assessment).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2017-10-18T08:09:31.013" LastActivityDate="2017-10-18T08:09:31.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22612" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22615" CreationDate="2017-10-17T06:58:37.063" Score="1" ViewCount="501" Body="&lt;p&gt;yesterday I was trying to put in my resource sheet a part-time worker. I changed his calendar appropriately and then assigned him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At that point something strange happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I summarized everything in this screenshot from an example project I made for the occasion:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LE3Xu.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LE3Xu.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see in the second frame, I changed my calendar to a 8.00 to 12.00 part-time range. 4 hours per day, Monday to Friday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first frame, two ackward things happened:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the duration is calculated like if the resource's calendar is a Standard 8 hours per day &lt;em&gt;(Task 1&amp;amp;3 - 4 hours result in 0,5 days instead of 1; Task 2 - 8 hours result in 1 day instead of 2)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;no overallocation is detected between Task 1 and Task 2&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What am I missing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you all for your support,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oliver&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30156" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-08T22:29:25.143" LastActivityDate="2018-11-08T22:29:25.143" Title="Microsoft Project 2016 resource calendar seems to be ignored and no overallocation detected" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resources&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22573" CreationDate="2017-10-17T09:14:16.087" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are defining countermeasure as something you do after impact, which is your contingency plan, then it does nothing to your exposure of your original threat.  A spare tire is a countermeasure to a spontaneous tire failure.  It sitting in your trunk does nothing to mitigate the failure.  Rotating your tires, keeping them inflating to the proper pressure, driving gently, are mitigators that reduce your threat of a tire failure.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mitigation of a threat would reduce your exposure by either or both reducing probability and / or impact.  So it does not make sense to have a formula of P x I - M = exposure.  M would become an artificial value instead of a true value reducing either P or I or both.  Most risk programs simply reassess the exposure over time, as the mitigation plays out.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, this P and I analysis is a very simple, not very accurate way of showing exposure.  In most cases our threats are more a range of impact with a probabilistic curve that sits on top of that range.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a heart attack as an example.  The range of impact is from no heart attack to very mild, to mild, to medium, to severe, to catastrophic.  There is a probabilistic curve that sits on top of that range and it looks different for each of us based on our age, family predisposition, how well we take care of ourselves, etc.  Our mitigation does not really change the range of impact but might alter the curve a little bit, making it fatter over the zero and mild part of the impact range.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The P * I = exposure does not really get to this probabilistic analysis and subtracting mitigation from it does not help, either.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-10-17T09:14:16.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22573" CreationDate="2017-10-17T13:58:34.017" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Formal risk assessment is both a science and an art, and overly reductive models lead people astray. For example, consider this variation of a loss-expectancy &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_assessment#Concept&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;risk model&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2wU8L.png&quot; alt=&quot;Computing Total Risk&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Risk models can be arbitrarily complex, and often rely on higher math to model a large set of possible events and controls. There is an entire field of study and a career path involved with formal risk assessment; I would argue that anything beyond the basics is out of scope (except as a possible input) to project management unless there's a defined phase for formal risk assessment along with sufficient subject-matter expertise assigned to the project. Lacking that, the KISS principle applies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on risks to the budget and schedule. Other risks, unless part of your charter, are generally out of scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Invalid Modeling of Controls&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Possibility * Impact - Countermeasures&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your formula is inherently wrong. What you're looking for us something more like a modified model of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annualized_loss_expectancy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;annualized loss expectancy&lt;/a&gt; such that your mitigations reduce both your annualized rates of occurance (ARO) and your single-loss expectancy (SLE) by reducing your exposure factor (EF).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as @MarkCWallace &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/22574/4271&quot;&gt;has already pointed out&lt;/a&gt;, unless you are in a formal audit or risk-management role, the benefits of this complexity are often vastly outweighed by the project manager's core need to &lt;em&gt;document and communicate&lt;/em&gt; risks to the project. Simply identifying the risk, and perhaps adding a gut-feel score, is often sufficient (from a project management viewpoint) as an artifact. It is then up to senior management to determine what strategic actions they want to take about the identified risks, including totally ignoring them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A More Accurate &amp;amp; Comprehensible Formula&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you can craft mitigating controls that independently impact ARO, SLE, asset value (AV), and EF, a more realistic risk model looks more like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Residual ALE = Residual ARO x Residual SLE&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to think about this formula is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Residual_Risk =&#xA;    (ALE - Applicable_Controls) =&#xA;        (ARO - Applicable_Controls) *&#xA;        ((AV - Applicable Controls) * (EF * Applicable_Controls))&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, you can apply controls to almost any piece (and often more than one) of your risk model, and any risk left over is residual risk that you can choose to mitigate, accept, or transfer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Forget Everything But Costs &amp;amp; Schedules&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the project management perspective, the central benefit of identifying and capturing risks is to manage risk to the project's budget and schedule, and to hedge against the risk of delivering the wrong thing. Consider the following contrived example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a purely pragmatic basis, the risk that John Doe (who is the project's sole source of expertise on embiggening widgets, and has a heart condition) might become suddenly unavailable to the project is a much bigger risk to the schedule than the calculated annualized loss expectancy. The risk that Jane Doe (who has twenty years of experience, but through entrenched sexism is paid $0.60 on the dollar compared to her male colleagues) might leave the project to work for a company that doesn't discriminate against women is a tangible risk to your budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These sorts of risks &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be quantified, but the &lt;em&gt;qualitative&lt;/em&gt; risks are often easier to discern and much more visceral. It's still not the project manager's job to do more than hoist the risk flag so senior management can ameliorate the risks, but at least you're now focusing attention on risks that have a more tangible set of mitigations. For example, senior management can reduce risks to cost and schedule by adding resources, building cross-functional teams, or increasing the budget to pay people what they're worth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a project manager, you can (and generally should) suggest pragmatic controls when you can identify them. However, the choice to implement the controls belong to senior management. If management breaks the project, they get to keep both halves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2017-10-17T14:57:42.470" LastActivityDate="2017-10-17T14:57:42.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22612" CreationDate="2017-10-17T19:32:19.390" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are the same behaviors as in MSP 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Assuming you've created Fixed-Units or Fixed-Work tasks, then the durations of these tasks are 4 hours, 8 hours, and 4 hours - corresponding to the effective work time of the single resource assigned.  The durations are actually stored in minutes, and they are translated to &quot;days&quot; according to the &quot;hours-per-day&quot; Calendar option for the project.  With the default 8-hours/day, your task durations are as expected.  This is normal behavior with assigned resources.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The overallocation might be neglected if the Resource Leveling interval is set to Week by Week or Month by Month.  (Check in the Leveling Options on the Resource tab.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2017-10-17T19:32:19.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22597" CreationDate="2017-10-17T21:21:09.813" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Issue is - I've some backlog since two weeks, that I couldn't arrange&#xA;  to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why? Are you conducting &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2014/april/key-elements-of-sprint-retrospective&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sprint retrospective&lt;/a&gt; meeting with your team? Because in sprint retrospective, the team discusses the just-concluded sprint and determines what could be changed that might make the next sprint more productive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;May be you can bring up this issue in your sprint retrospective and discuss with the team as why the backlog items (which I am assuming were part of sprint deliverables) are not completed? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually in sprint retro, team members discuss the process that they are following and give any suggestions for improvement and discuss any other ideas that could improve their productivity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your first challenge is to identify &quot;why&quot; backlog items are not addressed and then based on your findings, you/scrum team can decide &quot;how&quot; to address it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21918" LastActivityDate="2017-10-17T21:21:09.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22617" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-10-17T21:45:51.543" Score="0" ViewCount="65" Body="&lt;p&gt;I apologize for the lengthy question! The point is that I would like to ask book recommendations for my thesis where it is described how to introduce changes in an existing software development process. For details, please read the lengthy part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to write my thesis (MBA) about how my team innovated our software development process by switching from TFVC to git and introducing more fine grained work tracking structure to be able to make more data driven decisions. It is subject of technology management science. What we did is process innovation. The main topic of my thesis is the process how to introduce new procedures, methods in an already existing process. For example: What are the steps you take? What are the parameters of your decision? How POCs can help? Where is the point of no return? Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to that the university where I study more manufacturing focused than software development, the literature I got by my teaching material is also rather manufacturing focused. And also expected from the pupil (myself) that he/she should display that by his/her thesis he/she has an understanding about the available literature of the given science. What I have now is &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hfm.4530040107/full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;An implementation model for reducing resistance to technological change&lt;/a&gt; written by Mica R. Endsley and published in 1994. It is an excellent start, but as I said it is rather manufacturing focused and written before dot com crisis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite the fact software development and software delivery took its methods (Could I say that its initial steps?) from manufacturing we don't have those restrictions (let's says, they are lightened in various extend) in software development as manufacturing has. For example, in SD you will have a failed build or dropped MVP having little cost, however the same dead end might cost significantly more in manufacturing. My point is, what is described by Endsley is a good start, but the change process in SD shall not be that rigid as it is described. As a consequence, I have to make a fine distinction between manufacturing processes and software development processes and shed on light that introducing change in software development process has similarities to that described by Endsley's and also it has differences too. In order to support the point above, I need literature from software development area about the suggested way of making changes in an already existing process. Beside that the thesis will have a conclusion where my experiences will be shown. Unfortunately, I can't recall any books about this topic because those I read are about introducing kanban, scrum and technology related stuff. Making changes in processes are driven by common sense in my world, but it is not enough in a thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might say PDCA cycle should be good. It is not applicable here because switching TFVC to git is rather a big bang thing than an iterative enhancement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many thanks for any help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17022" LastActivityDate="2017-10-19T17:14:27.537" Title="Literature for introducing changes in software development process - not agile introduction" Tags="&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;process-improvement&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2017-10-22T02:41:29.343" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9934" CreationDate="2017-10-17T21:55:33.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually Clients want to see your schedule with units in calendar days rather than working days.  The quickest way to do this is to assign 8 working hours to Saturdays and Sundays in your custom calendar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can do this if you are not using your calendar for resource scheduling.  I would recommend creating a different project file for resource scheduling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30166" LastActivityDate="2017-10-17T21:55:33.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22606" CreationDate="2017-10-18T07:22:28.073" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There may be more to this than meets the eye. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they don't want to work as a team, is something or someone else a problem? Is there stress, bullying, mental health or a home issue that makes them want to work as an individual? What is the history? Have they worked well in a team before? Maybe they suffer from &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Imposter Symdrome&lt;/a&gt; where they feel they are a fraud and being part of a team will highlight this (it is common among technical people).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a manager we need to be aware of these issues. Where you are located may have specific laws that protect people from workplace issues. Be tactful and have empathy when you speak to them. Try to discover the real problem. If it is &quot;non-work&quot; related then do you have a company health policy or HR team that could help deal with the underlying issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to not liking Agile. There is loads and loads of evidence on the wbe about how projects fail using older methologies such as waterfall. Maybe buy them the Audiobook &quot;Scrum&quot; by JJ Sutherland. It has loads of case studies that prove short iterative development. The bonus with this book is that it is short (about 5 hours) so can be listened to on a handful of commutes to and from work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="670" LastActivityDate="2017-10-18T07:22:28.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22617" CreationDate="2017-10-18T07:37:59.977" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are some that I have recently listened to. I have put links to Audiobooks. Play at 1.5-2X speed which will help get through them quicker for your MBA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Manufacturing, but applicable to Software &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Business/The-Goal-Audiobook/B00IFGIUX0/ref=a_search_c4_1_2_srTtl?qid=1508311542&amp;amp;sr=1-2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Goal&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How a disaster project is turned around by switching to Agile methodolgy &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Business/The-Phoenix-Project-Audiobook/B00VB034GK/ref=a_search_c4_1_1_srTtl?qid=1508311700&amp;amp;sr=1-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Phoenix Project&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar to The Phoenix Project &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Non-fiction/Rolling-Rocks-Downhill-Audiobook/B01DYS9V22/ref=a_search_c4_1_1_srTtl?qid=1508311731&amp;amp;sr=1-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rolling Rocks Downhill&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the books by Steve McConnell could be useful. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rapid-Development-Taming-Software-Schedules/dp/1556159005/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1508311841&amp;amp;sr=8-3&amp;amp;keywords=steve%20mcconnell&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rapid Development&lt;/a&gt; is &gt;20 years old now, but I still refer back to it even now. You can pick up secondhand copies from Amazon cheaply if your region has used copies available (for example in the UK for 0.01p + post).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Phoenix Project and Rolling Rocks may be more applicable to you as they start with a project that is in chaos (late, burned out developers, etc) and basically start adding Agile methology but chopping out requirements/wishes, starting smaller releases, starting testing earlier, things like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with your MBA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="670" LastActivityDate="2017-10-18T07:37:59.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22606" CreationDate="2017-10-18T10:15:52.783" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: Maybe a bit harsh, but get rid of him/her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most companies have a defined culture or core values. Suggested is to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rhythmsystems.com/blog/bid/114536/Use-Your-Core-Values-In-Your-Hiring-Process&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;use your core values in the hiring process&lt;/a&gt;. I think the same goes for the firing process, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rhythmsystems.com/blog/bid/87071/fire-to-protect-your-core-values&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;fire to protect your core values&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Introducing Agile is a team culture shift according to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://martinfowler.com/articles/agileFluency.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Fluency Model&lt;/a&gt;. People blocking this culture shift should eventually be removed. I would discuss this with the person for a max period of 4-6 months. Discuss this aswell with upper-management and announce that not changing the culture is not an option. Make sure that it is clear what is expected from this person. Keeping people around with the wrong attitude is not worthwhile for both parties. This person will be happier in another company probably.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is a larger company, maybe some more traditional teams exists. I would suggest to move this person there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Culture is important&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Value your culture and values highly. Showing that the company makes exceptions is the same as saying: &quot;We do not take our values seriously&quot;. Now everyone will just do whatever they want. This is not the path a company wants to walk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Continuing to tolerate this behavior will demonstrate to the rest of&#xA;  your company that core values are optional, and not truly core to&#xA;  building your company.  This would be analogous to a cancer in your&#xA;  body that you have chosen to not remove.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rhythmsystems.com/blog/bid/87071/fire-to-protect-your-core-values&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.rhythmsystems.com/blog/bid/87071/fire-to-protect-your-core-values&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Waste of time&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people are open to change, some would rather just see how it works out, but some just push back. My experience with the last group is that is just a waste of time to convince them. They will keep making stupid remarks about the process and Agile principles or ideas. Agile has proven itself over time now. I have no need for people pushing back in my teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2017-10-18T10:21:58.600" LastActivityDate="2017-10-18T10:21:58.600" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22622" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-10-18T13:55:18.023" Score="1" ViewCount="397" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a scrum team, the team has decided that they want to hold their morning standups at 10am. The team is in London, and claimed that 9:30 is marginally early, in the sense that sometimes public transport isn't working properly, high traffic etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scrum master has conveyed the message that the team has decided to hold their morning standups at 10am. The manager's answer was, &quot;no...why? so that everyone can come in at 10? No, I want the stand ups to take place at 9:30&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who's call should be at the end of the day, what time the standups take place and other such affairs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5522" LastEditorUserId="5522" LastEditDate="2017-10-18T14:20:39.717" LastActivityDate="2017-10-21T03:30:26.103" Title="Where does the scrum team's authority ends and the development manager's begins?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22622" CreationDate="2017-10-18T14:14:36.263" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Per the &lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master ensures that the Development Team has the meeting, but the Development Team is responsible for conducting the Daily Scrum. The Scrum Master teaches the Development Team to keep the Daily Scrum within the 15-minute time-box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that, according to the rules of Scrum, the Development Team should have the freedom to choose the time and the place of the Daily Scrum, while the Scrum Master teaches the Development Team the rules of the Daily Scrum (the purpose, the intent, the timebox).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality, there are likely to be some constraints on the time and place of the Daily Scrum. If there are multiple teams, the teams need to coordinate the available spaces where the meeting will be held. If there are tools required (a phone for remote team members to call in, the need for a TV to project an electronic board), then that also constrains that places how, when, and where the Daily Scrum is held.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this question borders on some subjects that are outside of the Scrum framework. One thing is the concept of &quot;core hours&quot; - this is a management decision. Management may require employees to be in the office by 0930. However, if employees are required to be in the office at 0930, it may not be conducive to hold the Daily Scrum immediately at that time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The responsibilities of Scrum Master is to help the organization adopt an agile approach and implement the Scrum framework. When management decisions start to push up against the rules of the Scrum framework, then the Scrum Master should get involved and help management and the team(s) reach a good state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2017-10-19T14:26:26.113" LastActivityDate="2017-10-19T14:26:26.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22622" CreationDate="2017-10-18T14:25:11.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not a matter of authority, it's what helps the team get work done for the sprint. Two suggestions depending on the manager's attendance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the manager is a part of the meeting, servant-leadership suggests you work keeping the overall team's benefit in mind. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If they're  not part of the meeting, this is micro-management and sounds like they enjoy the &quot;command and conquer&quot; style approach. Negotiate and find out what they're looking to get; it could be a simple status (which the SM should be communicating anyway) to ensure that the work is on track.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30142" LastActivityDate="2017-10-18T14:25:11.063" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22622" CreationDate="2017-10-18T14:52:10.197" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Things wrong with this picture:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum doesn't have a &quot;development manager&quot;. This sounds like a company who's unwilling to let go of the past. Admittedly this can be a difficult and long process. So this role might be a concession that was necessary to get scrum off the ground in the first place. But the role shouldn't be needed. (Maybe that's the reason for this conflict - the sense of impending obsolescence)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nobody except the team needs to be at the stand up. Optional participants are possible but their scheduling preferences should not outweigh those of the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The scrum team is supposed to be self-organizing. This is one of the things that falls under that category.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The agile manifesto puts &quot;individuals and interactions over processes and tools&quot;. Consensus should be perferred over staking claim to authority.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The response of the manager suggests that he operates on the premise that his viewpoint is more important than that of the team. This attitude is detrimental to building a cohesive and healthy team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So from an ideological and practical point of view this is the team's decision. Realistically this is not about where the authority should be, but about where the authority actually is. If the manager has the clout to reprimand the team for not showing up to the meeting at 9:30 then that's the time the meeting will take place. In that case the best you can do is try to find out why 10 is a problem for him and negotiate a way to satisfy his needs in a way that is more convenient for the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2017-10-18T14:52:10.197" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22584" CreationDate="2017-10-18T17:03:59.453" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrumban is really just the application of the principles of the Kanban method on your Scrum processes.  Kanban's fundamental principles are - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Visualize your current process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implement WIP Limits and the Pull method; and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improve Flow by addressing any process bottlenecks and evolve gradually&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the fact that the team wants to retain the tenets of Scrum and &quot;work in a Kanban way&quot; is perfectly fine.  Start by defining the Kanban board that visualizes the process your scrum team uses to develop, test and deliver/ deploy the user stories. Instead of just the Ready-Doing-Done board, expand the Doing column into each step the user story goes through.  Once you get used to that, implement WIP Limits on each stage/ step - to reflect the maximum amount of work that should be there in each step at a time.  Kanban reinforces the principle of reducing multi-tasking and finishing what you've already started before taking up anything new. (STop Starting. Start Finishing!).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your Kanban Board might look like the one below - of course you'd model your actual process:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/U6ukx.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/U6ukx.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main swim lane tracks your user stories.  If you like, you can have a separate lane to track the tasks associated with each user story - though that is optional. The user story swim lane is the one that visualizes the actual process that your user stories go through - and will help you identify bottlenecks or problem areas where your stories tend to slow down and pile up due to reasons such as hand-off delays, external dependencies (waiting for a customer confirmation, or an infra team to complete some provisioning task, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the meantime, you should continue to use various aspects of Scrum such as the 2 or 3-week time buckets, metrics such as burndown or velocity charts and other Scrum-related ceremonies that are working well for your team.  As you use Kanban effectively, especially WIP Limits and other concepts such as Class of Service for prioritizing work and committing to SLAs, you might decide to make changes to your overall process that could include dropping some Scrum related concepts such as the time buckets of 2 or 3 weeks, estimation, etc. as Kanban will help you deploy more continuously and give you the ability to make forecasts of what you can complete in a given amount of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also choose to adopt additional metrics such as the Cumulative Flow Diagram, Lead Time and Flow Efficiency while dropping the Burndown chart since you might no longer be doing estimation or tracking hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To learn more about Scrumban, you can look here - &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.digite.com/kanban/scrumban/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;What is Scrumban?&lt;/a&gt; - which provides some more details and also references other experts on the topic of Scrumban, such as Core Ladas and others, that you might enjoy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps. If you need more help on how to implement Scrumban, you can reach out to me separately - I'd be happy to help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastEditorUserId="8132" LastEditDate="2017-10-18T17:12:29.250" LastActivityDate="2017-10-18T17:12:29.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22417" CreationDate="2017-10-18T18:00:16.127" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;FWIW, let me add another response here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would have answered the question slightly differently from Sarov in that I'd say &quot;...one approach would be to have it same as Scrum, except with a Kanban style visualization board, and Kanban concepts of WIP Limits and Pull.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban is not a software or project management methodology by itself. It is a visualization and improvement method that can only be applied to an existing method, be it waterfall or Scrum or others, including non-software, non-IT processes. So you might even consider simply applying Kanban to your current waterfall process to get the benefits of Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just responded to a similar question so I will post that link here - hopefully, that is OK with the StackExchange powers that be :)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/22628/8132&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/22628/8132&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, just to share with you our own story - we are a software house that now uses Kanban for all our product development. We were a 'waterfallish' company earlier - we never adopted Scru and moved directly to Kanban. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also made changes to our Engineering practices where we adopted a TDD approach to development and adopted Test Automation and now, increasingly, Continuous Integration/ Continuous Deployment practices.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has taken us 3-4 years to evolve - and our Kanban board - which has gone thru multiple revisions - looks like this - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/oGkf4.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/oGkf4.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, from being a 2 minor and 1 major release a year back in 2009, we are now a &quot;monthly release like clockwork&quot; organization.  We deploy both on SaaS as well as to out on-prem customers, so it is possible to support both. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have experienced significant business benefits as our customers see us to be very responsive to their needs (due to frequent releases based on customer feedback and suggestions), our CEO is happy as we deliver regularly so the fear of &quot;missing a major release or release date&quot; is no longer there, and employees are happy as no one is pushing them to do too many things at a time (Kanban's focus on reducing multi-tasking) and holding them accountable for estimates, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure I fully understand your keenness to have sprints not only due to the desire to deliver to the market more frequently or but because you also want to plan defect fixes properly.  However, that IS an important consideration whether you do sprints or not.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban helps you reflect this reality that many software teams face - of working on both &quot;value demand&quot; (new features/ user stories) and &quot;failure demand&quot; (defects), by either visualizing them with different colors or in different swim-lanes (as you see on the image above, altho' we use swim lanes for different products; for us the card colors are the way to distinguish between work items of different types). The interesting thing is that while our user stories come from an upstream separate Kanban board we use for our roadmap planning (so that is our backlog), the defects (both customer-reported and internally found) are directly added to the Ready column of the swim lane and typically get a higher priority than everything else. As soon as a developer who can work on a defect is free, they will pull the defect and work on it first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We do releases roughly on a monthly cadence, but we also have a 'soft'policy of making a release when we have enough of value done and ready to deploy (say, 15-20 users stories and defect-fixes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the basic Kanban tools above, we also religiously follow some of Kanban's practices - the bi-weekly Replenishment Meeting to prioritize what will go next in our upcoming releases, and a Month Retrospective for lessons learned and a Quarterly Strategy Review meeting to make sure all stakeholders are aligned to what the product team is doing. Of course, the Daily Standup is the basic team-level meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps - not sure you will get prompted about this response as you have already marked another answer as the right answer :-)  You can read more about &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.digite.com/kanban/scrumban/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrumban here&lt;/a&gt;.  And if you need, I will be happy to answer any questions you have about your transition - good luck with that!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2017-10-18T18:00:16.127" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22606" CreationDate="2017-10-18T18:25:44.857" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’ll throw a log on this fire, but it won’t be about them per se, it will be more about you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is Agile to you? What is Agile to him/her? What is Agile to the team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One cannot be a non-believer in something unless everyone agrees to what they’re assessing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I worked with a non-believer, so to speak. After talking with them, they were actually a firm believer in what I consider to be Agile. Not because of anything I did beyond dispelling what I consider to be misconceptions the person was introduced to by others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“We don’t have to do documentation,” they said. “Not true I responded. It’s just that, at the end of the day a user can’t live in a blueprint the way they can a house.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“It’s just a marketing scam, we’ve been doing iterative development forever,” they said. “There’s some truth to that. But, it gives us a common vernacular to differentiate the mindset from others. Even Pragmatic Dave Thomas, one of the drafters of the Manifesto has a talk decrying this part of things. That’s other people and not us though.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a while they stopped talking about how terrible Agile is and started talking about the way development &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be. At the end I said, “You do realize you almost quoted the Manifesto verbatim and outlined the Kanban framework?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, if the person honestly doesn’t want to work with other humans and the product or team demand that you do...they might not be right for that product or team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2017-10-18T18:25:44.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22632" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-10-19T08:54:52.153" Score="0" ViewCount="450" Body="&lt;p&gt;new to the site and to Project so please bear with me.&#xA;I'm tinkering with Project and have set up a simple schedule, 4 auto schedule tasks, all effort driven and linked FS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task 2 has a duration of 2 days assigned to it and is due to finish let's say 9th August.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I update on the 9th and find that after 2 days the task is only 50% complete yet it has had labour there for 2 days.&#xA;I go to Project Update and ask it to re-schedule from the 9th August but it doesn't move Task3 start date onwards. The delay is reflected in the Gantt chart but not in the entry table view.&#xA;Do I need to manually alter the start date for task 3 so it shuffles things forwards?&#xA;Also, if I look at task usage  the task has been spread across 3 days instead of 2 but it has put 0.5 hrs into the second day and 7.5 hrs into the third.&#xA;Do I need to manually re-assign the hours for the three days from 16 to 24?&#xA;Hope someone can steer me straight on this one.&#xA;Many thanks, Laurence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30179" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-08T22:29:39.587" LastActivityDate="2019-01-07T23:02:30.550" Title="Project 2016 update task start dates - am I asking too much?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6178" CreationDate="2017-10-19T10:52:16.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is now a Power-Up which lets you track Story Points on your cards without having to use a Chrome plugin or store data in card titles as the Scrum for Trello plugin does. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can check it out here &lt;a href=&quot;https://getcorrello.com/AgileTools&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;getcorrello.com/AgileTools&lt;/a&gt; At time of writing it supports story points on cards and importing those points from the Scrum for Trello plugin. In future there should be WIP limits support and other features :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20707" LastActivityDate="2017-10-19T10:52:16.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22632" CreationDate="2017-10-19T13:44:39.007" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;MS Project works not only with full days but also with hours and minutes. Let's say Task2 had 7.5 hours of work left, and you reschedule this remaining work on the next day. Instead of finishing on Wednesday 9th of August 17:00 as initially planned, it now finishes on Thursday 10th of August 16:30. MS Project assumes Task3 will follow immediately after Task2 is finished, and since days have 8 working hours, Task3 will start on Thursday 10th of August 16:30. It will plan 0.5 hours on that day from 16:30 to 17:00, and the remaining 7.5 hrs on the following day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To find out if this is happening, change your options to display time. Go to File / Options and change the date format. There is no really pretty way to correct this behavior while using Task dependencies and automated rescheduling. You either reassign the work manually in Task3, or you tweak the duration of Task2 so it ends at 17:00 (It ends up with a duration of 2.125 days instead of 2 days. If you're assigning resources to your task, make sure you set &quot;Task Type to Fixed Work before making this change).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also check the columns Actual Start Date, Actual Work and Actual Duration for Task3. If there is any progress information it could explain why the start date will not move. MS Project will not recalculate progress information and will only delay remaining work. Even if there is a dependency between tasks, information in the &quot;Actual&quot; columns will not change, and only the remaining work will follow the dependency. This can look pretty confusing when you're not used to it. In order for your Task3 to be delayed properly, its Actual Start Date should be &quot;NV&quot; (empty).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope I was helpful. It can be difficult to find the answer without looking at the actual project plan, because the behavior of MS Project can depend on lots of tiny details. If this does not fit what is happening in your project plan, it would be helpful to see a screenshot of the task usage view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30194" LastActivityDate="2017-10-19T13:44:39.007" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22477" CreationDate="2017-10-19T13:57:44.783" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a field called &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Percent-Allocation-fields-b8d25634-1bf4-4d29-b568-7f637f37a46f&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Percent Allocation&quot;&gt;Percent Allocation&lt;/a&gt;, but it is a timephased field. You can display it in the timephased grid on the right of the resource usage view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30194" LastActivityDate="2017-10-19T13:57:44.783" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21518" CreationDate="2017-10-19T14:07:29.763" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can set the Task Type to &quot;Fixed Work&quot;, then manually adjust the duration of the task so it ends at the end of the day. The &quot;Fixed Work&quot; setting will ensure the amount of work is not recalculated when you lengthen the duration of the task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately there is no way of doing this automatically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30194" LastActivityDate="2017-10-19T14:07:29.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22637" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22638" CreationDate="2017-10-19T14:13:11.187" Score="0" ViewCount="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know what is the best way to handle cost adjustment to the baseline in MS project. Do you save the baseline when you adjust the cost when you get new estimate or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30198" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-08T22:29:34.870" LastActivityDate="2018-11-08T22:29:34.870" Title="MS Project 2013 cost adjustment" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22637" CreationDate="2017-10-19T14:21:32.183" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should save the baseline when you have an approved plan (that includes schedule, resources and costs). So if a change request is approved you should save the corresponding plan to the baseline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a new estimate that is not an approved budget Change request, you should track this as a forecast values, in the Cost fields, not in Baseline Cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30194" LastActivityDate="2017-10-19T14:21:32.183" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22617" CreationDate="2017-10-19T17:14:27.537" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/9462410038&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Commitment&lt;/a&gt; by Olav Maassen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Via Rose Randall, the main character of this unique graphic business&#xA;  novel, the reader is introduced to the challenges a project manager&#xA;  faces. Rose Randall is the archetypal reluctant project manager.&#xA;  Following a painful project failure years ago, Rose's life is cast&#xA;  into chaos when she is once again thrown into the role against her&#xA;  wishes. Faced with a struggling project, help comes from an unexpected&#xA;  source guiding Rose in the direction of Real Options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2017-10-19T17:14:27.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22413" CreationDate="2017-10-19T17:28:48.660" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can we handle urgent hotfixes in the middle of a sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By adding them to the Sprint Backlog.  Realize that this is an impediment to the value of &lt;strong&gt;Focus&lt;/strong&gt; and can result in inefficiencies due to context switching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do we handle the specialized technologies developers which often has tasks on a lot of different change requests - which would mean they need to be in multiple teams? Or small 1 man teams (which makes no sense)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not everyone can be be an expert in everything, nor should they be expected to be.  However there needs to be overlap in knowledge. (Related: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/notes/kent-beck/paint-drip-people/1226700000696195&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Paint Drip People&lt;/a&gt;)  What happens if that sole &quot;expert&quot; is hit by a bus?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How is the delivery manager integrated with the scrum teams, so we can report progress, budget issues etc. with the client? Notice that the product owners are not capable to do this job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The delivery manager would be updated via transparency, the Product Owner, Sprint Review, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read &lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; and understand the framework; I do not believe this is the best solution for your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a process perspective, &lt;a href=&quot;https://leankit.com/learn/kanban/what-is-kanban/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt; would probably be a better choice based on the information provided.  Hot fixes can easily be prioritized to the top of the queue to be pulled.  Different application functional areas may be able to be addressed through separate Kanban boards.  The delivery manager is minimally affected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a technology perspective, break the monolith into many smaller, focused applications which interact through APIs.  This also has the advantage of modular solutions that sales can exploit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2017-10-19T17:28:48.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22641" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-10-20T03:06:58.630" Score="2" ViewCount="78" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking for something process oriented, practical. Just some examples (as detailed as you care to provide) to have on hand. I'm having trouble differentiating between this example and, say, a small business. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would appreciate your insights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The wiki on community engagement: &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_engagement&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_engagement&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23543" LastActivityDate="2017-10-20T13:10:50.947" Title="How could someone use Kanban or a similar method for community engagement?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;communication-management&gt;&lt;facilitation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2017-10-24T21:09:27.333" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22641" CreationDate="2017-10-20T05:41:36.900" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think an adapted Scrum methodology is a good methodology for community engagement. Kanban orients on the workflow to discover bottlenecks, which is usually not the biggest problem in community engagement, but helps to stay focused and keep track of progress:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using the backlog you can list all the stuff you want to do&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In regular meetings (&lt;em&gt;dailies&lt;/em&gt;) you report progress, discover impediments, and might re-assign work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;During planning sessions you can put priorities on the backlog, identify &lt;em&gt;value&lt;/em&gt;, and identify &lt;em&gt;effort&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-10-20T13:10:50.947" LastActivityDate="2017-10-20T13:10:50.947" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22641" CreationDate="2017-10-20T12:44:15.033" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simply using any free kanban board account shared across the community might help visualise the tasks to be done and progress made in doing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try LeanKit free for 30 days to see if it works and if it doesn't then try something else! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29246" LastActivityDate="2017-10-20T12:44:15.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22641" CreationDate="2017-10-20T12:58:05.507" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the question is quite broad and the concepts of Kanban and community engagement are not related to each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The methodology you are going to use to implement your work is something specific depending on the project itself. There might be many reasons to choose Kanban, instead of Scrum, of XP, or whatever. This represents the &lt;strong&gt;HOW&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another subject is the goal you want to achieve. Community engagement might be one of the target of your business. In my opinion this represents one of the possible &lt;strong&gt;WHAT&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27720" LastActivityDate="2017-10-20T12:58:05.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22645" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22651" CreationDate="2017-10-20T13:56:48.130" Score="7" ViewCount="1891" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the job description of a Scrum Master, it seems to me that soft skills, such as the ability to coach and manage others, is much more important than technical skills. However I wonder if it's realistic for a non-developer to act as a Scrum Master. A non-developer would perhaps understand too little of what the other team members are doing to fulfill his role efficiently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own knowledge of Scrum is purely theoretical and I don't know enough about what a Scrum Master does in practice to decide how much technical knowledge is needed. Should the person in that role be a software developer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30194" LastActivityDate="2018-01-27T02:55:31.253" Title="Must the Scrum Master be a software developer?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22606" CreationDate="2017-10-20T16:09:47.510" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that management and driving change can often want to label rather than understand their people-impediments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's interesting that we promote case studies on &quot;red&quot; and &quot;blue&quot; workers but do not step into the weeds of subgroups enough. In the end, they are there because they either want to contribute or not. If they want to contribute and have skills, it's in the interest of the whole project to take the time to understand what road blocks those folks have. Or you can simply label in the name of &quot;the ends justify the means&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, my vote is to communicate with them; if you are failing to do so, ask someone else to take a turn on it. You are maybe not selling it properly in finding the objections that need to be overcome. Don't get me wrong, some folks will have objections that are not logic-based and thus can't be overcome. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30207" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-10-20T17:00:25.833" LastActivityDate="2017-10-20T17:00:25.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22645" CreationDate="2017-10-20T16:51:14.160" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It certainly must not but it would be reasonable for the team to have Srum Master from dev people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more one knows about and understand the subject they're trying to control the more effective (and fast) decisions they can take to tune the team's performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This becomes crucial in Agile teams where the vector of team effort can frequently change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29674" LastActivityDate="2017-10-20T16:51:14.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22645" CreationDate="2017-10-20T18:35:41.403" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it is not required. If you are going to be a scrum master, having a development background does help you understand what's happening in the team better, but it also carries the risk of becoming too involved in team decisions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scrum master is a coaching role, not a coding role or business analysis role, there are a whole other set of skills that become far more important for a good scrum master. They will leverage their past skills but over time they'll be less and less important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-10-20T18:35:41.403" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22645" CreationDate="2017-10-20T20:37:52.560" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To be effective and well trained at engagement, optimizing decision-making, negotiation, and all of the other skills that come into being a &lt;em&gt;really good&lt;/em&gt; Scrum master takes a significant amount of time. While it's possible to be really good at both, typically I don't see this (Also has to do with the types of personalities that generally are interested in these subjects - there is overlap but not as much as you might think). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also depends on the scale of the project, or if the scrum master has multiple projects they are involved with (or are also tasked with seeking out new opportunities or new ways to remove impediments for the team). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably the classic burn-the-ship example I encounter regularly is someone taking their best developer and making them a manager. The unfortunate bit is that managers will often have a higher salary, and that this drives the incentive for developers to &quot;go up the rung on the ladder&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the tl;dr is I'd focus on someone who is excellent at managing people, setting expectations, is knowledgeable in decision-making models and measuring and building a response to a complex system, and then put them through a coding training program or similar - not to be your best coder, but to have them understand the trials and tribulations that the devs will face. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23543" LastActivityDate="2017-10-20T20:37:52.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22622" CreationDate="2017-10-21T03:30:26.103" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The manager's answer was, &quot;no...why? so that everyone can come in at 10? No, I want the stand ups to take place at 9:30&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To touch on this specific point rather than the general question asked, I would point out that the team determined that the meetings would be most efficiently held at this time, and there's no prescription that daily standups should happen first thing. There are often things it is useful to clear up or review in the morning before diving into the standup, and it also allows time for people to work uninterrupted for an hour or so before taking a meeting break.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But good grief, micromanagement! Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2017-10-21T03:30:26.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18331" CreationDate="2017-10-21T08:37:34.110" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most risk methods shall help the applicant to not forget any aspects. Risk management is about achieving awareness and identifying corresponding and supporting activities (IMHO).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I go with PMI: Perform a &lt;em&gt;qualitative risk analysis&lt;/em&gt; regarding risk probability and impact using values like high, medium, and low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Afterwards, perform a &lt;em&gt;quantitative risk analysis&lt;/em&gt;, e.g. by FMEA or other tools in order to get „real“ (and provable) numbers (e.g. cost in case of risk occursnce).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2017-10-21T08:37:34.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18331" CreationDate="2017-10-21T14:13:18.733" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Tob has provided, I find PMI's framework easier to apply. Depending on the complexity, and to answer your question, you can certainly apply FMEA as well. If you need a reference, you can use NASA's criteria definitions and charts (see Fig 1-2):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://rsdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/documents/rapid-iii-documents/mar-reference/gsfc-fap-322-208-fmea-draft.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://rsdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/documents/rapid-iii-documents/mar-reference/gsfc-fap-322-208-fmea-draft.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It boils down to documenting and ranking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;risks and causes of failure(s)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;occurrence and severity rankings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;mitigation factors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These will help you come up with the associated Risk Priority Number (RPN). This data, as the name suggests, will allow you to come up with mitigation/action plans based on the priority and tackle the identified risks accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30142" LastEditorUserId="30142" LastEditDate="2017-10-21T14:29:15.863" LastActivityDate="2017-10-21T14:29:15.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20725" CreationDate="2017-10-21T19:34:36.360" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently there is no way out of the box to directly import Microsoft Project tasks into Outlook. There used to be an Outlook Add-in for Project Server 2007 and an Exchange Sync for Project Server 2010/2013. All of those have been deprecated since.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some third-party add-ons that can do what you want, the only one I have implemented is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.allocatus.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Allocatus&quot;&gt;Allocatus&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From personal experience, I can tell you that everyone wants a Project/Outlook integration, until they actually get it. Project and Outlook don't work on the same level, Outlook tasks and appointments are usually more detailed and have more accurate scheduling than tasks in Project. Tasks in Project are linked to each other while tasks in Outlook are not. Those two tools don't have compatible logic. This leads to intense frustration when you move something in Outlook, and this in return wreaks complete havoc in your Project plan, for example. Or if you only import tasks from Project, but don't sync back, you have accurate information for a day and a half until you don't know which date is valid anymore. If there is a product on the market that handles all these issues gracefully, I haven't encountered it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30194" LastActivityDate="2017-10-21T19:34:36.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22656" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22658" CreationDate="2017-10-21T22:57:35.213" Score="0" ViewCount="3702" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uzFH1.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uzFH1.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is my first ms-project. I want to plan the production and external operations of our plant.&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Production of reference #1&lt;/em&gt; is something that will likely happen every 4 to 6 weeks (every time I receive a purchasing order).&#xA;Is there any way I can group and save all these tasks together?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I want is, instead of creating all tasks everytime I receive a PO, to select something like &quot;Production of reference #1&quot; and have all the tasks automatically created, and I will only need to decide when first task starts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30216" LastActivityDate="2017-10-22T17:15:42.707" Title="How do I group tasks in MS-Project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22657" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22659" CreationDate="2017-10-22T00:07:11.247" Score="0" ViewCount="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;Starting with my first ms-project:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to plan the production of our machines at work. I only know the time it takes to produce one part (example: reference #1 takes 20 seconds). Now, I can calculate how many days it will take to produce 55.000 parts and input that in &quot;duration&quot; (which will be ~12 days). Can I upadte the duration manually depending on production? Something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Starting date: 1/1/2010 Total parts needed: 55.000 Cycle time: 20'' Initial estimated production time: 12 days Finish date: 12/1/2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Delay of production due to mechanical problems -&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Parts already produced after 3 days: 8000 (instead of ~12000)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, finish date should be moved one day because instead of 12.000 I have produced 8000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know I can do this using days, but the only information I have from machines is how many parts we have already produced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I do the calculations in different cells and update duration accordingly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What will happen if a resource had to be used on the 12-1-10 and instead, it's still not available due to the delay? Will it move it further?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you very much and apologies for the noob questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30216" LastActivityDate="2017-10-22T14:01:30.247" Title="Make duration dependant or update it based on a cell" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22656" CreationDate="2017-10-22T12:20:39.080" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can group tasks by clicking on &lt;em&gt;summary task&lt;/em&gt; under a headline task as @самиJ.D. pointed out. The corresponding option should be at the &lt;em&gt;task&lt;/em&gt; menu. It might be possible to copy &amp;amp; paste the headline task (incl. the subtasks) and set a start date / relationship for the headline task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2017-10-22T17:15:42.707" LastActivityDate="2017-10-22T17:15:42.707" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22657" CreationDate="2017-10-22T14:01:30.247" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you are asking how to forecast remaining work and a new finish date based on progress to date.  Should you let the schedule predict a new finish date based on the actual data you load?  Should you use a formula such as with Earned Schedule or Earned Value or another method to predict a new finish -date?  Should you estimate remaining work using both a top-down, bottom-up estimates?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are multiple forecasting models you can use and each of those has varying degrees of reliability and validity making them all useful while also producing inaccurate results to some degree.  Over time doing the same work, you might notice a forecasting model that is producing more accurate results than the others and you can begin putting more weight on that particular model's results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you predicted that you need to increase your duration by one day due to finishing 8,000 versus a planned 12,000.  I am not sure how you arrived at one day; however, using Earned Schedule analysis on the data you provided, I arrive at the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Earned Schedule = 1.75 days (this means that instead of earning 3 days of work you only earned 1.75 days of work based on producing 8,000)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SPIt = 58% (this means you are operating at 58% efficiency based on plan)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;iEACt = 21 days (this means that, assuming your 58% efficiency prevails, you will finish 55,000 units on day 21 instead of day 12, or 13 using your prediction).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So between these two models, your forecast ranges from being one day to as much as eight days late.  Using more models will help you visualize your cone of uncertainty and then allow you to predict where you will finish with more credibility.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking another reading at day 5, you may learn your performance has improved, stayed the same, or further degraded and then you can use those models again to reforecast when you are finishing those 55,000 things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-10-22T14:01:30.247" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22661" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-10-22T14:46:27.473" Score="1" ViewCount="4447" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both &lt;em&gt;Cost Plus Award Fee&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Cost Plus Incentive Fee&lt;/em&gt; contract types are Cost Reimbursable contracts in which  the seller is reimbursed for completed work plus a fee representing profit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the PMBOK guide, for &lt;strong&gt;Cost Plus Award Fee&lt;/strong&gt; contract below point is mentioned, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The determination of fee is based solely on the subjective&#xA;  determination of seller performance by the buyer, and is generally not&#xA;  subject to appeals&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And for the &lt;strong&gt;Cost Plus Incentive Fee&lt;/strong&gt; contract below explanation, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The seller is reimbursed for all allowable costs for performing the&#xA;  contract work and receives a predetermined incentive fee based upon&#xA;  achieving certain performance objectives as set forth in the contract&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any other differences between these 2 types of contract?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21918" LastActivityDate="2017-10-25T21:46:32.520" Title="What are differences between Cost Plus Award Fee and Cost Plus Incentive Fee Contract?" Tags="&lt;cost-management&gt;&lt;contracts&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22661" CreationDate="2017-10-22T17:45:13.047" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://farsite.hill.af.mil/reghtml/regs/far2afmcfars/fardfars/far/16.htm#P242_38861&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FAR Definition of Incentive and Award Fees&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scroll down to Section 16.4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These two types of fee structures are essentially the same thing except for the criteria of the fee.  The FAR differentiates between the two based on the specificity of the criteria where, for incentive, it is both feasible and effective to arrive at very specific, objective criteria.  Where and when not, then it is an award fee.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-10-22T17:45:13.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22663" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22665" CreationDate="2017-10-22T19:49:38.373" Score="1" ViewCount="161" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wanted to find a set of rules related to how task links work. As example, Task D (sucessor task) may have 3 predecesssor links into that are FS, SS,FF, and all with various dates. How should Task D move based on these links and when their dates change. From what I can trell, a task will allways move to its latest finish date, but wanted to see a set of rules to validate.&#xA;I checked general MS Project Support pages, and they talk about 1 to 1 links, but not multiple&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-ie/article/How-Project-schedules-tasks-Behind-the-scenes-df3431ab-8d8a-4047-afc6-a87b547dbac0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MS Project Links Behind the Scenes&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Thnaks&#xA;Tom&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30224" LastActivityDate="2017-10-22T23:42:59.353" Title="Rules for Task Links in MS Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22663" CreationDate="2017-10-22T21:36:31.897" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The task will be scheduled at the earliest possible date that complies with all dependencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task dependencies don't dictate a fixed date at which the task must start or finish, but a condition that must be met before the task can start / finish. For example in the link you posted, the Start-to-Finish dependency is described as &quot;The dependent task (B) cannot begin until the task that it depends on (A) is complete.&quot; So task B can't start before task A is finished, but it can start later. If there are additional dependencies, task B will wait for a date at which all dependencies are verified before starting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30194" LastActivityDate="2017-10-22T21:36:31.897" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22663" CreationDate="2017-10-22T23:18:09.073" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Task D can only begin or end after all 3 dependencies have met the set criteria. &#xA;For example, assume tasks A &amp;amp; D are linked as FS;&#xA;Tasks B &amp;amp; D are linked as SS;&#xA;Tasks C &amp;amp; D are linked as FF,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then task D cannot start until A is completed || Task B must start also before D or both can start at thesame time ||  Task C must finish before D finishes or at same time as D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If tasks A &amp;amp; B meet deadlines satisfactorily &amp;amp; C delays, the project will slip.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's really no set rules, just common sense actually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if D is a milestone then this could be a &lt;strong&gt;critical path&lt;/strong&gt;. More resources may be needed to ensure deadlines are met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28444" LastEditorUserId="28444" LastEditDate="2017-10-22T23:42:59.353" LastActivityDate="2017-10-22T23:42:59.353" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22666" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22668" CreationDate="2017-10-23T10:32:15.840" Score="8" ViewCount="2148" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hi all, I am an experienced SM but I thought I would crowdsource a solution to this from peers. The project is an enterprise scale migration to the cloud with over 500 customers representing 300+ applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The backlog is run by a single Product Owner (also a Cloud Technical Architect) who is supported by a BA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Three teams&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each team has their own stand-ups, sprint planning and retrospectives&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have a shared Review with customers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When dealing with a single backlog which feeds multiple autonomous feature teams, what is the best way to approach Backlog Refinement or &amp;quot;Play Ready workshops&amp;quot; or [insert generic name for looking ahead activity]?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At present the BA invites &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt; developers from all teams into a single Refinement session to start discussing stories in detail.  The devs have, rightly, balked and 19 of the 21 devs just opened their laptops and started coding again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have requested an approach where the BA spends time understanding the story in detail through 1-2-1 sessions with devs and only bring those stories to the Refinement session to see if they are ready for Sprint Planning the next week.  The BA has balked at this approach since it would be 3 Refinement sessions, also predicting which team takes which stories from the backlog etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is swamped conducting technical assessments/communications for the app migrations and has devolved story preparation to the BA's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are at an impasse and morale has dropped off a cliff.  As the most experienced SM, the other SM's have handed this hospital pass to me to solve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Out of scope&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have solved a lot of issues in this delivery including operational handover, definition of done etc so I don't want to rehash those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-10-25T22:23:01.507" Title="Single backlog. Multiple teams. How to handle Backlog Refinement?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;&lt;analysis&gt;&lt;refinement&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22666" CreationDate="2017-10-23T12:32:30.383" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, I will assume that this migration is the only project that any of the teams have to work on currently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to maintain a Scrum mentality, you need to find &quot;Epics&quot; that can be dealt with in their entirety by a single Scrum team, and allocate the Epics evenly around the teams until the project has been delivered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is absolutely no way that the migration stories can be split into &quot;Epics&quot;, then the only reasonable option is to get all the teams working together from the same board with the same schedule. Otherwise you are going to drown the business in Sprint administration. I would drop Scrum and work from a Kanban board, with each developer picking off a task at a time until the project is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, your business may not approve of dropping the Scrum methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also think you have not allocated enough BA resource to the project. One BA cannot support three Scrum teams at the same time, and the BA will become the limiting factor on the project. 1-2-1 sessions with the BA might suit the devs but will be even more time consuming than the single grooming session. There is no need for every dev to be in the grooming session, a couple of representatives from each team should be enough, who can them pass on their knowledge to the rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29898" LastActivityDate="2017-10-23T12:32:30.383" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22666" CreationDate="2017-10-23T12:42:19.630" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can see why the devs have balked, as the current approach doesn't sound constructive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also don't see an issue with their request as they are basically asking to refine the stories with the right team members or subsets of the overall dev group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a BA perspective, and having played the role myself, I do understand the challenges of holding multiple refinement meetings as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two suggestions to offer++:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider when you're holding the backlog grooming sessions. The BA is pushing back because the current setup probably doesn't allow for &lt;em&gt;sufficient refinement time&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Treat the refinement as a continuous process; there shouldn't be a need to wait until the designated meeting time if there's something that could be straightened out earlier (this calls for working in conjunction with the scrum master, so interruptions to the current sprint are minimized)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;++ The suggestions are from this article, see Options 3 and 4.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/when-should-product-backlog-grooming-take-place/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/when-should-product-backlog-grooming-take-place/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30142" LastActivityDate="2017-10-23T12:42:19.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22666" CreationDate="2017-10-23T13:02:58.553" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who Owns the Solutions?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, the team owns the solution. You mention in the question that the PO is doing a lot of technical assessment. I expect that the BA is then doing some more as they prepare the backlog items. If the team is expecting to just receive ready-to-go solutions, then it should be no surprise that they don't see value in spending time in backlog refinement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So first thing to solving the problem should be putting the solution back in the dev team's hands - let them to do the technical analysis and plan the migrations. The PO should be focused on the business value and prioritization of efforts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So Back to Backlog Refinement&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you do this, the whole conversation becomes much easier. I've worked on some cloud migration efforts before and they're usually fairly complex. Those teams are probably going to need to talk to each other - a lot. If they own the solution, I expect they'll do at least part of their backlog refinement together, then take some of their work back to their individual teams to refine further. LeSS provides one possible solution in this case (&lt;a href=&quot;https://less.works/less/framework/product-backlog-refinement.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://less.works/less/framework/product-backlog-refinement.html&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-10-23T13:02:58.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22670" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-10-23T16:15:59.500" Score="1" ViewCount="449" Body="&lt;p&gt;Working on a project right now that is using Scrum, the company is doing the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Working out the availability of the team based on resources available and number of hours they can commit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if we have 5 resources available, the total number of hours they can all commit is added up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Create a sprint backlog based on the total number of hours they can commit&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Expect resources to deliver in that amount of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have suggested this is anti scrum agile since the capacity is based on the average amount of time completed in x time. i.e. only because you have 37 hours worth of resources available does not mean you can get 37 hours worth of work done. Am I correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-03-26T20:52:18.807" LastActivityDate="2018-03-26T20:52:18.807" Title="Is an anti-Agile pattern to commit to the total hours of capacity available during iteration?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22670" CreationDate="2017-10-23T16:33:18.120" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not as it is meant to be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Story Points shall represent the effort necessary to fullfill a User Story. This might relate to time available but must not. Compare the Story Points with Bottles of Sweat the developer producers while finishing the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2017-10-23T16:33:18.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22670" CreationDate="2017-10-23T17:28:53.703" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are correct, that violates many aspects of both agile and scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the commenter mentioned, you should look to the scrum guide at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and the agile manifesto:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://agilemanifesto.org/&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, I'd look at the scrum guide ideas on sprint planning and the principles about sustainable development and self-organizing teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most spectacularly though, this violates the value of Customer Collaboration over Contract Negotiation. It forces both the team and stakeholders into a number of rigid contracts that reduce collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-10-23T17:28:53.703" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22670" CreationDate="2017-10-23T19:47:47.510" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not think this is against Agile principles, nor do I think it is against Scrum principles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not aware of any broad rules that say you should not estimate in time, although I am sure that some frameworks have an alternative preferred method of estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem here seems to be that the team has consistent problems in delivering what they have estimated they will be able to deliver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, they need to improve their estimation skills, and fill their sprint with the amount of work they can actually deliver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29898" LastActivityDate="2017-10-23T19:47:47.510" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22675" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-10-23T23:38:04.723" Score="1" ViewCount="235" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have had a lot of success using JIRA for our risks, issues, decisions and milestones. What I want to do, though, is to have these queried and represented on a dashboard with Gantt charts, issue severity etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to extract these from JIRA's on-premise instance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30165" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-05-14T13:27:05.083" LastActivityDate="2018-06-13T16:40:14.233" Title="Can you extract issues from Jira on premise for reporting to management?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22676" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-10-24T07:25:33.787" Score="-1" ViewCount="79" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can API driven project management methodolgy for SAAS applications can involve user centered design? I mean in which state User Scenarios, Personas (thus focusing on the UX) can be involved?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26284" LastActivityDate="2017-10-26T11:43:26.680" Title="SAAS Project Management Methodology with API driven and User Centered Design focuses" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;user-experience-design&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22678" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22687" CreationDate="2017-10-25T06:07:49.993" Score="4" ViewCount="383" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a commonly used term to describe the organisational phenomena whereby procedures and processes become increasingly complicated and arduous?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19372" LastActivityDate="2017-11-06T08:26:30.150" Title="What do you call the phenomena of process creep?" Tags="&lt;process-improvement&gt;&lt;process-engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22678" CreationDate="2017-10-25T10:03:04.533" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's just called waste.  I never heard of a specific term other than waste being used.  Look for &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.isixsigma.com/dictionary/8-wastes-of-lean/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TIM WOODS&lt;/a&gt; in your organization:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;T: Transport&#xA;I: Inventory&#xA;M: Motion&#xA;W: Waiting&#xA;O: Over producing&#xA;O: Over processing&#xA;D: Defects&#xA;S: Skills&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the eight areas where you can lean your process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-10-25T10:03:04.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22680" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-10-25T11:23:32.633" Score="1" ViewCount="2257" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have just started using TFS (Team Foundation Server) 2017. The team project we created uses the Scrum template. There are only Epics, Features and PBIs (Product Backlog Items) in this template. How to create requirements? We don't want to use a CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) template.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the question is: how are requirements created/managed/manifested in the Scrum template?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30246" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-16T14:05:02.083" LastActivityDate="2018-12-16T16:02:40.530" Title="How requirements are handled in TFS with Scrum template" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22666" CreationDate="2017-10-25T12:14:03.897" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume company is in transformation process. Partially implemented Scrum but haven't delegated responisbilities and product knowledge to Scrum teams. What more this is obviously not possible immediately. This means we have developers who are able to handle technical tasks but they need BA to understand requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What was already said here BA is bottle neck and one need more BAs. If we can't have more BAs maybe we can do something with 1on1 sessions. They are very efficient because we're not loosing time of multiple people but they are blocking knowledge sharing. BA has 1on1 sessions and this means later on grooming only that person knows what is story about. I'd recommend replacing 1on1s with small groups working on related issues to improve knowledge sharing. If each group has at least one person from each Scrum team it should improve understanding of functional requirements in teams. If teams have better understanding and know what they are working on they should be more engaged. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29851" LastActivityDate="2017-10-25T12:14:03.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22680" CreationDate="2017-10-25T13:24:33.477" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not intimately familiar with TFS, but in Scrum terminology, a requirement is one thing that may be a Product Backlog Item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the following from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Backlog lists all features, functions, requirements, enhancements, and fixes that constitute the changes to be made to the product in future releases. Product Backlog items have the attributes of a description, order, estimate and value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Product Backlog contains only Product Backlog Items, then a requirement is one type of Product Backlog Item. A bug report would be another. A refactoring task could be another. Technical debt paydown would be yet another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Epics&quot; and &quot;Features&quot; aren't a part of Scrum, as defined in the Scrum Guide. An Epic (and sometimes a Theme) are ways to group User Stories. The Scrum Guide doesn't require User Stories (it's mostly silent on how to format Product Backlog Items), but many teams have found success with them. If a Product Backlog Item is a User Story, it may be part of a larger Theme or Epic that describes a particular flow through the system. However, a Theme or Epic may not be something that is reasonably deliverable within an iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, requirements would be captured as Product Backlog Items. You may or may not want to group Product Backlog Items into Features or Epics - it depends specifically on the way you and your team decide to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2017-10-25T13:35:13.270" LastActivityDate="2017-10-25T13:35:13.270" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22680" CreationDate="2017-10-25T13:28:05.197" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no requirements, in the traditional project management sense, in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt; framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that TFS Scrum template the big ideas, or groups of possible features, are usually recorded in &lt;em&gt;Epics&lt;/em&gt;.  Those will be broken down into more specific &lt;em&gt;Features&lt;/em&gt; of functionality.  The Scrum Team will break those down even further into &lt;em&gt;PBI&lt;/em&gt;s, well defined slices of functionality that have been refined to a level of shared understanding so they can be implemented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of &lt;a href=&quot;https://ronjeffries.com/xprog/articles/expcardconversationconfirmation/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;user stories&lt;/a&gt; can play a role in using these objects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2017-10-25T13:28:05.197" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22678" CreationDate="2017-10-25T13:38:24.440" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Excessive complexity in processes is called &quot;Red Tape&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/red%20tape&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;You can see the Merriam Webster definition of red tape here&lt;/a&gt;: Official routine or procedure marked by excessive complexity which results in delay or inaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term originates from the red tape formerly used to bind legal documents in England.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_tape&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;You can see the Wikipedia definition of red tape here&lt;/a&gt;: Red tape is an idiom that refers to excessive regulation or rigid conformity to formal rules that is considered redundant or bureaucratic and hinders or prevents action or decision-making. It is usually applied to governments, corporations, and other large organizations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2017-10-25T13:38:24.440" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21763" CreationDate="2017-10-25T15:41:29.387" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Save the filter @lnjuanj proposed and share to all, show this on a public dashboard, each team member can have a tab open with the dashboard &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get each team to create an equivalent search with assignee the team lead, show this Filter Result on a team dashboard&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6067" LastActivityDate="2017-10-25T15:41:29.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22678" CreationDate="2017-10-25T20:00:36.983" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bureaucratization&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tendency to manage an organization by adding more controls, adherence to rigid procedures, and attention to every detail for its own sake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Red tape is about right, but it refers to the outcome not the process. I found Bureaucratization &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/bureaucratization.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. This is the correct meaning but the word is a mouthful and certainly not commonly used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19372" LastActivityDate="2017-10-25T20:00:36.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22661" CreationDate="2017-10-25T21:46:32.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cost Plus &lt;strong&gt;Award&lt;/strong&gt; Fee: It depends on the opinion of the buyer (subjective) according to the seller's performance, it's a recognition or prize. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cost Plus &lt;strong&gt;Incentive&lt;/strong&gt; Fee: As PMBOK states, it's predetermined, according to the achieving of specific and measureble objectives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The incentive is set in the contract, the award is not set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30032" LastActivityDate="2017-10-25T21:46:32.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22666" CreationDate="2017-10-25T22:23:01.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At present the BA invites all developers from all teams into a single Refinement session to start discussing stories in detail. The devs have, rightly, balked and 19 of the 21 devs just opened their laptops and started coding again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a couple of mid sized scrum teams, this may work. With larger teams, this becomes very tricky to manage, even by experienced scrum masters. I am assuming these meetings go on forever as well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that out of the way, I can recommend the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let each team decide who will attend the refinement meetings from their team. This can and should change from time to time. This way, you will have fewer attendees and a far more focused meeting. Be wary of the teams nominating a newbie just to fill in the blank.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure these meetings do not take more than 10% of the teams' time during the sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get creative and make the meetings with many attendees fun (only in cases where most developers have to attend to provide feedback). Maybe use &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mitchlacey.com/blog/the-big-wall-prioritizing-and-estimating-large-backlogs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Big Wall&lt;/a&gt;. This is used for estimation but I don't see why it cannot be used during refinements where for example you group dependent items together in different corners of the wall? This can increase participation. Remember, the main purposes of refinement meeting is to reduce cross-team dependency. You can group unclear/super-large issue into another corner so they can be refined.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastActivityDate="2017-10-25T22:23:01.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22690" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-10-26T01:20:54.973" Score="3" ViewCount="504" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to use MS Project to analyse aircraft maintenance work force requirements for the next 18-24 months.  The maintenance is a combination of repetitive and one-off servicings.  I have task requirements for each servicing in Access, along with dependencies. Planners manage which servicings are performed during which maintenance events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given a high level schedule for maintenance events, I'd like to import the servicings and sub-tasks attached to each maintenance event, including task dependencies.  Conceptually I can see where most of the data goes, and that I will have to be careful with task identification, but what I can't see is where the task dependency type (SF/FS/FF/SS) and lag are in the import/export maps?&#xA;Is it possible to import these parameters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30257" LastActivityDate="2017-10-28T11:45:33.147" Title="MS Project 2010 - How to import tasks with dependencies" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;&lt;dependencies&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22690" CreationDate="2017-10-26T06:28:47.287" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The task dependency type and lag are all contained in the &quot;Predecessors&quot; and &quot;Successors&quot; columns. Importing data in one of those two is sufficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The data in the column is written like this:[TaskId][DependencyType][Lag] with a separator between each dependency. FS is the default type and need not be specified, all other dependency types are listed as SF, FF, SS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example if Task C has a Finish-Start predecessor Task A (with id 1), and a Start-Start predecessor Task B (with id 2), this would be written '1,2SS'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a lag, it is added like this '1+5Days,2SS+10Days' (This is an example and will vary depending on the local language settings of MS Project).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30194" LastEditorUserId="13635" LastEditDate="2017-10-28T11:45:33.147" LastActivityDate="2017-10-28T11:45:33.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22676" CreationDate="2017-10-26T11:43:26.680" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In traditional project management, most UX activities occur during the early (Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) phases.  Personas and scenarios would be created as requirements are gathered and analyzed.  Application flow and style guides would be created during the design phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In modern &lt;em&gt;product&lt;/em&gt; management, the user is an active participant throughout the process, providing feedback on each increment if the effort as it is being created or modified.  The UX designer would be involved in facilitating those conversations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2017-10-26T11:43:26.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22693" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-10-27T15:55:15.667" Score="3" ViewCount="2347" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the difference between &lt;strong&gt;Product Backlog and Sprint Backlog?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30279" LastActivityDate="2017-10-31T09:36:31.577" Title="What is the difference between Product Backlog and Sprint Backlog" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22693" CreationDate="2017-10-27T16:35:14.427" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product Backlog&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; says a lot about the Product Backlog, but here's a short piece that's a good start:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Backlog lists all features, functions, requirements,&#xA;  enhancements, and fixes that constitute the changes to be made to the&#xA;  product in future releases. Product Backlog items have the attributes&#xA;  of a description, order, estimate and value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an important point to be made here though. It is not a &quot;scope document&quot;. Anything that could be worked on for the product goes into the backlog, but there is no assumption of permanence to it. The backlog will constantly change and items will be refined, removed, and added. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of the product backlog is to provide a single, ordered list of work so at any time, anyone (on the team or off) can see what may be worked on and where its likely priority is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll also find that teams spend a lot of time focusing on the top of the Backlog and not worrying much about what's lower down until it works its way up. As the Scrum Guide puts it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Higher ordered Product Backlog items are usually clearer and more&#xA;  detailed than lower ordered ones. More precise estimates are made&#xA;  based on the greater clarity and increased detail; the lower the&#xA;  order, the less detail. Product Backlog items that will occupy the&#xA;  Development Team for the upcoming Sprint are refined so that any one&#xA;  item can reasonably be “Done” within the Sprint time-box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprint Backlog&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During Sprint Planning, the Scrum Team determines a Sprint Goal and identifies the associated items from the Product Backlog. These items are added to the Sprint Backlog, but that isn't everything. The Development Team will then decide how they want to do the work and that will most often result in tasks being created to complete each backlog item in the sprint backlog. (I'm giving Sprint Planning a light treatment here. You can read more details in the Scrum Guide)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Sprint Backlog is the set of Product Backlog items selected for&#xA;  the Sprint, plus a plan for delivering the product Increment and&#xA;  realizing the Sprint Goal. The Sprint Backlog is a forecast by the&#xA;  Development Team about what functionality will be in the next&#xA;  Increment and the work needed to deliver that functionality into a&#xA;  “Done” Increment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-10-27T16:35:14.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22695" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-10-28T08:37:23.830" Score="0" ViewCount="304" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm slowly learning Project but can't seem to find the answer especially to the different uses or meanings for the Current and Actual buttons on the Task&gt;Details form.&#xA;Could someone explain them to me please?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;many thanks, Laurence&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30179" LastActivityDate="2017-10-28T17:44:21.760" Title="Task Details Form - Use for Current, Actual and Baseline radio buttons" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17767" CreationDate="2017-10-28T12:51:50.247" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Note Rachel and Marv's solutions do not work with Summary Tasks: Duration1 column shows 0 duration for the Summary Task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2WLcn.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2WLcn.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To resolve this, you could: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perform Rachel's solution above&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hide summary tasks (Gantt Chart Format tab -&gt; Show/Hide -&gt; uncheck&#xA;    Summary Tasks)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Copy the custom column Duration1 &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paste into Duration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unhide Summary Tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now all the summary tasks, including Summary Tasks, have the new units. From there you could hide the Duration1 custom-column, and even delete it.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Di3sy.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Di3sy.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note if you copy / paste without first hiding summary tasks, this pastes the 0 value from Duration1 into Duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Groal.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Groal.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also note that changing the setting in Options (File -&gt; Options -&gt; Schedule -&gt; Scheduling Options for this Project -&gt; Duration is Entered In) will modify units in Summary Tasks and the custom-column Duration1 but not the built-in column Duration. I tried saving / redoing as Chloe suggests above but I don't see that it fixes the built-in column Duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yrraw.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yrraw.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29066" LastActivityDate="2017-10-28T12:51:50.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22695" CreationDate="2017-10-28T17:44:21.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Those three radio buttons determine which start and finish dates are being depicted on the Task Details Form.&#xA;When you first schedule a project, all dates in the &quot;Start&quot; and &quot;Finish&quot; columns are Current Dates.  Assuming automatic scheduling, these dates are computed according to logic and other constraints.  Before starting execution, you should save a snapshot of these dates as a Baseline for future comparison.  During project execution, Actual dates are entered.  These may be different then the logic-driven (Current) dates and will over-write the Current dates when entered.  Actual dates are interlocked with schedule progress (i.e. %complete).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2017-10-28T17:44:21.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22698" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22701" CreationDate="2017-10-29T03:57:28.657" Score="4" ViewCount="856" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a newbie question. Let's suppose that for a sprint backlog we choose one user story from product backlog: &quot;As a photography junky I want to be able to make a collection of favorite photos&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then we want to add some more in-detail tasks, for instance &quot;making a mockup&quot; for UX-designers, &quot;making changes to model&quot; for backend developers and doing front-end implementation of design ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what is the best practice for that? Do we add these sub-tasks to sprint backlog, or we create separate &quot;detailed to-do&quot; backlog? Do we add story points to each sub-task? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With stories points it's an especially interesting problem, because if we add sub-tasks to sprint backlog we are counting tasks twice: first for user-story in general and second for it's parts in form of subtasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30288" LastActivityDate="2017-10-29T21:14:05.903" Title="How to deal with tasks detalization in sprint planning?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22698" CreationDate="2017-10-29T13:18:12.787" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;User stories must meet INVEST criteria&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST criteria&lt;/a&gt; to decide what constitutes a user story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Independent: The story should be self-contained. It should not be dependent on another story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Negotiable: Stories should leave space for discussion with the Product Owner.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Valuable: A story must deliver value to the end-users.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimable: You must be able to estimate the size.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Small: Stories should be small enough that a few of them can fit in a sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testable: The story (and its acceptance criteria) must provide the necessary information to make test development possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The examples you gave, &quot;making a mockup&quot; and &quot;making changes to model&quot; do not deliver value to the end-user. So, they are not stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have difficulty how to split a story, you can use &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogs.itemis.com/en/spidr-five-simple-techniques-for-a-perfectly-split-user-story&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mike Cohn's SPIDR techniques&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spikes: Build a prototype.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paths: If there are several alternative paths in a user story, create separate user stories from these paths.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Interface: in this context can for example be desktop, mobile...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Data: Another technique for splitting user stories can be used when the initial stories refer only to a sub-range of the full data.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rules: Business rules or technological standards can be another splitting factor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2017-10-29T13:18:12.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22698" CreationDate="2017-10-29T13:29:30.870" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The extra detail (and the tasks associated with it) should be elucidated before Sprint Planning, during regular backlog grooming sessions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wait until Sprint Planning or later to define what you will actually do to deliver a story you will be on the back foot already - what if you realise after you have started the Sprint that it is too much work to complete, or that there is a significant blocker to progress?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your team should only work from one backlog otherwise prioritisation becomes an issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could capture story points at either the broader story level or the smaller &quot;sub-task&quot; level. I would avoid adding story points at the sub-task level if they have already been allocated to a parent task, simply because of the risk of double-counting. If your parent story is large, the team (and the business as a whole) will not appear to be making progress until the very end - smaller deliverables make it easier to show progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will also find that the software you use to manage stories will influence how you structure them as there are certain approaches that will suit the software better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29898" LastActivityDate="2017-10-29T13:29:30.870" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22698" CreationDate="2017-10-29T17:21:26.330" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To capture the technical work that is needed to complete a story, tasks are created that are underneath or a part of the story.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If your tooling doesn't support creating sub-tasks for a story, you can just write those tasks as a bullet list in the description of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, these technical tasks are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; backlog-items and thus they are not added to either the product or the sprint backlog. When a story is added to a sprint, the tasks of that story come automatically with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regard to estimation, some teams do an estimation in hours of the tasks of the stories that were added to the sprint during the planning to check that no discipline within the team is overloaded with work. This kind of estimation is completely optional and is independent of the story-point estimations of the stories themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2017-10-29T17:21:26.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22698" CreationDate="2017-10-29T21:14:05.903" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint Backlog is the set of Product Backlog items selected for the Sprint, plus a plan for delivering the product Increment and realizing the Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User Stories is one possible technique, not a requirement, for expressing Product Backlog Items (PBI).  If using story points then they are generally not attached to anything below the PBI.  The selected PBIs are forecast (not promised or committed) by the Development Team and the plan needs only be as granular as needed by the Development Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work planned for the first days of the Sprint by the Development Team is decomposed by the end of this meeting. (Sprint Planning)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Development Team modifies the Sprint Backlog throughout the Sprint, and the Sprint Backlog emerges during the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint Backlog ... belongs solely to the Development Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to how the work is broken down is something for the Development Team to determine: self-organization.  Creating tasks is one possible technique, not a requirement, for decomposing the work.  Not all of the selected PBIs should be decomposed at Sprint Planning, just the first few days of work: responding to change over following a plan (&lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Manifesto for Agile Software Development&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum recognizes no titles for Development Team members other than Developer, regardless of the work being performed by the person; there are no exceptions to this rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thinking and executing in terms of front-end developer, back-end developer, tester, technical writer, etc. is an indicator of an opportunity for improvement.  (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/notes/kent-beck/paint-drip-people/1226700000696195&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Paint Drip People&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-10-29T21:14:05.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22703" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22708" CreationDate="2017-10-29T21:58:52.703" Score="1" ViewCount="1853" Body="&lt;p&gt;I notice a strange behavior of ms project when I use leveling resource.&#xA;  For example, I split the work of my team into two main activity (main task1, main task2); I added 6 task each of a duration of 3 days each.&#xA; Then I add the project start date, for example, October 8, I assign a resource to the tasks, and I level my resource.&#xA;  The only constraint I put is &quot;main task2&quot; must start after &quot;main task1&quot;. The project looks like the following:&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rIwgu.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rIwgu.png&quot; alt=&quot;plan overview&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I would like to report the status at 16 October, so I set status date 16/10 and then I received input from HD1 he worked 16h on task1 and 8h on task3. The remaining work for task1 and task3 remain the same as estimated at the beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After updating the plan with &quot;Update project&quot; button, look like the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SwWsl.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SwWsl.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I would like to level HD1 and what I got is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qK2wX.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qK2wX.png&quot; alt=&quot;after level all&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task4 and Task5 are set before status day!!!&#xA;But I would expect that all task are level after the status date not before?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which are the right settings to enable such kind of behaviour?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More in general I have a plan where resource are shared with other higher prio activities on other projects and I would like to track how much time they are working on my project and how much time they spend on a single task. Have you think a different approach is better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks a lot for your help&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30299" LastActivityDate="2017-10-30T01:19:38.347" Title="How to avoid ms project schedule task before status day" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22703" CreationDate="2017-10-29T22:45:59.173" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no way that I know of to always only level from the status date. But in the leveling options, you can set the date range in which you want to level your project. The default is &quot;entire project&quot;, with this option the leveling will spread the tasks over the complete project duration. Pick a fixed date range to avoid tasks being moved in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding time tracking, it depends whether or not you are working with Project Server. If you use Project Server, it can be configured so that resources enter how much time they spent on each assignment. You can then approve it and import the data in your project plan. Without Project Server, you can still enter this data but you have to do it manually which can be very time consuming depending on project size and number of resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two main ways to do it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You track a total number of hours spent on the task. You enter this&#xA;total in the &quot;Actual Work&quot; column in the Gantt Chart. You use the&#xA;&quot;Remaining Work&quot; column to track remaining work estimates. You track&#xA;the number of worked hours per time period. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You enter this in a time phased view like Resource Usage or Task Usage. Add the &quot;Actual Work&quot; field to the time phased part of the view and enter the hours there. Use the &quot;Remaining Work&quot; field in the left part of the view to enter remaining hours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30194" LastActivityDate="2017-10-29T22:45:59.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22705" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-10-29T23:45:40.933" Score="5" ViewCount="1741" Body="&lt;p&gt;So at my workplace we're following scrum and we've started to have backlog refinement meetings periodically. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of us in the Development team feel like this meetings are not very productive and are just a waste of time. It does not help that the team is distributed between Madrid, Spain and Mexico City, Mexico but we've barely started to work this way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of this some of us feel like not everybody should go to this meeting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you think that everybody should go to every refinement meeting? Should it be a rotationary thing? Is there any literature about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30296" LastActivityDate="2017-10-31T10:36:34.113" Title="Who should go to a Scrum Backlog refinement meeting?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;refinement&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22706" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-10-30T00:12:39.420" Score="0" ViewCount="133" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a task with fixed duration that must finish by a certain date.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It has several predecessors.&#xA;If I schedule it manually (start and finish date) it obviously works OK, but I would rather schedule it with just a finish date and ask to schedule ALAP.  (That way if the constraint date changes, the start date and all predecessors will update accordingly, without me having to remember to also change the start date.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried setting with a deadline and ALAP, but it schedules the task to finish two weeks before the deadline (even if I delete all predecessors).  Why?  Does the deadline not affect scheduling at all? &#xA;Is there any way I can schedule it to finish on my deadline?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30257" LastActivityDate="2017-11-10T05:53:07.973" Title="Project 2010 schedule a task ALAP using a deadline" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;&lt;deadline&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22705" CreationDate="2017-10-30T00:18:17.773" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The definitive literature is &lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product Backlog refinement is the act of adding detail, estimates, and order to items in the Product Backlog. This is an ongoing process in which the Product Owner and the Development Team collaborate on the details of Product Backlog items. During Product Backlog refinement, items are reviewed and revised. The Scrum Team decides how and when refinement is done. Refinement usually consumes no more than 10% of the capacity of the Development Team. However, Product Backlog items can be updated at any time by the Product Owner or at the Product Owner’s discretion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product Backlog items that will occupy the Development Team for the upcoming Sprint are refined so that any one item can reasonably be “Done” within the Sprint time-box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the Scrum Master I would have several questions.  What is occurring during Product Backlog refinement?  What about the refinement is unproductive?  What suggestions do the Development Team members have to address the frustration?  What issues arise during the Sprint that may be addressed via improved refinement?  What benefits or risks are possible if the entire Development Team does not participate?  How are the Product Backlog Items represented?  Is the Development Team working collaboratively or does each member take a Product Backlog Item and work in isolation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The distributed team is and will continue to be an impediment.  Technology can assist with collaboration, but there is nothing like sitting in close proximity to the rest of the team and conversing throughout the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-10-30T00:18:17.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22703" CreationDate="2017-10-30T01:19:38.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Things to remember:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a.  Status Date is not a Data Date.  It NEVER enters directly into the scheduling or leveling calculations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b.  In MSP, the only way to force un-started tasks to start after the Status Date, if it is not otherwise delayed by logic or leveling, is to impose a constraint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c.  By default, when updating status using task %complete, actual duration, or actual work, MSP will assume the task starts on its scheduled start date (even if it’s after the Status Date).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;i.  Rigorous status updating requires manual entry of actual dates (using the task tracking table) and manual entry of actual work using one of the Usage tables (if not a timesheet program.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ii. Alternately, the default behavior can be modified using the first four checkboxes in the bottom section of the Advanced Project Options – i.e. “Move end of completed parts after status date back to status date….”  You should test these out to confirm their exact behaviors in your projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Issues with your initial schedule:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a.  Each task should have a unique name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b.  Logical ties between summary tasks can cause a LOT of problems.  I would suggest avoiding them if you are not an expert scheduler (in MSP).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Issues with your update:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a.  You’ve entered actual work (and a corresponding Actual Start) for the first Task3 (ID4) after the Status Date.  That’s invalid.  The first checkbox mentioned above would have automatically advanced this work to one day before the Status Date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b.  As a consequence, HD1 is not available on the first day after the Status Date.  Invalid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c.  It is beneficial to remove leveling before using the “Reschedule uncompleted work…” part of the Update Project tool.  That will impose constraints to keep tasks from being moved before the Status Date upon re-leveling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2017-10-30T01:19:38.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22706" CreationDate="2017-10-30T01:56:47.633" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your auto-scheduled task with ALAP constraint AND a deadline is being scheduled to finish two weeks before the deadline, then it has successors that are preventing it from being delayed further.  That is, further delay of the task will cause one of the following to occur: a later constraint or deadline will be violated; or a relationship to a manual task will be violated; or the project completion will be delayed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2017-10-30T01:56:47.633" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22116" CreationDate="2017-10-30T07:26:59.537" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Would recommend “Implement HTTPS” as the task title. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User stories are great for describing a problem, particularly from a customer point of view (or in the shoes of a customer). They also help customers structure their problems so that they less likely to put forward what they think is a solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you need to be practical, that’s part of the agile manifesto. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There’s no misunderstanding of the problem here; there’s no great interpretation and there’s no “open-mindedness” required. A user story could actually muddy an otherwise clear outcome in this instance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do yourself and your team a favour by keeping this simple. But definitely log, track and create a definition of done, so it can be tested and sized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30302" LastEditorUserId="30302" LastEditDate="2017-10-30T07:38:28.850" LastActivityDate="2017-10-30T07:38:28.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22712" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22733" CreationDate="2017-10-30T08:16:50.393" Score="3" ViewCount="252" Body="&lt;p&gt;My agile team has no team lead (which I actually think is a great opportunity) they have me their scrum master and product owner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have noticed the product owner is not very experienced and has been trying to get involved in too much stuff: team lead stuff, workflow and process stuff and even some scrum master stuff and neglecting PO stuff which is so in need for this team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have advice about how to broach this subject with him. I don’t want to dampen their fire, I want to focus their fire in the right direction if that makes sense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want him to focus on PO stuff. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastActivityDate="2017-10-31T14:06:44.257" Title="How to focus a Product Owner’s efforts" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22705" CreationDate="2017-10-30T10:05:56.263" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've dealt with a similar problem and backlog refinement remotely can feel like a drag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to speed things up a lot is to make parts of it asynchronous AND time boxed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We would do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Every team member gets to pick the items that they think are necessary for the coming sprint. Product owner picks the items that they think need to be in there. Suspend call for 15 minutes and let everybody do that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Come back and have a look at what has happened. Quickly run over the list and see whether that is reasonable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then go async again for 15 minutes and let everybody add subtasks to the items that are relevant to them with rough estimations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Come back and discuss.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What this does with the asynchronicity and the hard deadlines is that it keeps things moving and keeps everybody busy and cuts back on most of the waiting time people experience. That alone should make things feel snappier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another benefit is that it staggers and forces preparation on the team. Ideally everybody would do this stuff before the meeting, but if they haven't you give them a couple of rounds where they &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to go through the list and deliver their input. The people that have done their preparation will have an easier time during these rounds anyway (so it still pays to prepare).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30304" LastActivityDate="2017-10-30T10:05:56.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22670" CreationDate="2017-10-30T10:15:34.063" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can totally do this but it will mess with your estimations (which people will sandbag to be on the safe side) and despite that things will not be delivered on time anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they really want to do things this way, one way to make things better is to do it in critical chain fashion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do aggressive estimates (i.e. ones that are at the 50th percentile)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add a sizeable project buffer (a rough recommended first buffer would be 50% of the time so in your case: 18 hours)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pick tasks to fill the remaining 18 hours&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way maybe this approach would be realistic but given their not very enlightened approach asking them to set aside 50% of the weekly budget seems a stretch. You could bookkeep this method on the inside of the team and sandbag your estimates to the rest of the organization to make them match the numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30304" LastActivityDate="2017-10-30T10:15:34.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22716" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22718" CreationDate="2017-10-30T11:39:43.570" Score="1" ViewCount="773" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have recently started splitting a big monolith to individual microservices. Now the point of discussion is that under scrum methodology, &lt;strong&gt;building microservices should be a feature or chore?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As per the scrum protocols, anything that doesn't provide direct value to users should not be a feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30305" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-10-30T11:42:13.353" LastActivityDate="2017-10-31T02:38:26.543" Title="Should building microservices be a chore or a feature in scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17923" CreationDate="2017-10-30T12:06:37.243" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would put the two on separate kanban boards but try to keep the linkages between the cards intact. That will fix a lot of the problems and the confusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do encourage everybody to regularly look at both boards so you don't lose that integration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30304" LastActivityDate="2017-10-30T12:06:37.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22716" CreationDate="2017-10-30T13:41:54.180" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is only one definition of Scrum: &lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;.  The word &quot;feature&quot; appears only once and &quot;chore&quot; not at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Backlog lists all features, functions, requirements, enhancements, and fixes that constitute the changes to be made to the product in future releases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea that &quot;anything that doesn't provide direct value to users should not be a feature&quot; (or Product Backlog Item) is a Scrum mandate is a common misconception.  It is a valid question to ask, &quot;Should there be more focus on user value versus technical tasks?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the effort is purely a technical one and not providing new value, perhaps Scrum is not the best approach.  Perhaps a &lt;a href=&quot;https://leankit.com/learn/kanban/what-is-kanban/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt; model is more appropriate.  Exposing services can be an opportunity for new integrations and sales (i.e. value) to existing or new users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Scrum is used, then it is up to the Scrum Team to determine how to best organize and manage the effort.  It's a framework, put the processes and techniques in place that best support the needs of the team.  Just keep it all within the roles, events, artifacts, and the rules or don't call it Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum’s roles, artifacts, events, and rules are immutable and although implementing only parts of Scrum is possible, the result is not Scrum. Scrum exists only in its entirety and functions well as a container for other techniques, methodologies, and practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2017-10-30T13:41:54.180" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22712" CreationDate="2017-10-30T14:11:50.487" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My agile team has no team lead (which I actually think is a great opportunity)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Absolutely! &quot;Scrum recognizes no titles for Development Team members other than Developer, regardless of the work being performed by the person; there are no exceptions to this rule&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does anyone have advice about how to broach this subject with him. I don’t want to dampen their fire, I want to focus their fire in the right direction if that makes sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reviewing &lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; with the &lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-po&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Product Owner&lt;/a&gt; (even the entire Scrum Team) is an option.  Utilizing the &lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-retro&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sprint Retrospective&lt;/a&gt; to self-organize is probably a better option.  There may a valid reason for a Product Owner to be involved with some of those items, especially &quot;workflow and process stuff&quot;, so having an open, candid, collaborative, and constructive conversation is extremely important.  Keeping the division of roles is important, but not at the expense of dysfunction within the Scrum Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2017-10-30T14:11:50.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22712" CreationDate="2017-10-30T15:32:12.817" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I am sure there is formal guidance available in various Scrum and PO guides, I am not sure this is an issue of your PO not knowing what their role is, but rather their enthusiasm (fire, as you said) or ambition in other aspects as well.  A common team and organizational issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think a great way would be to not focus on all the extra stuff your PO is working on, but only on solving the problems you are facing because of the lack of PO stuff that they should be working on. It would make sense to schedule a one-on-one session as well as a session with your full team where you could highlight specific challenges you might be facing - such as lack of sufficient user stories, lack of proper prioritization, ineffective Sprint planning sessions due to these reasons, loss of face with customer if applicable, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two observations I have made about software teams - irrespective of whether they follow Scrum or Kanban or other methods - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The biggest issue Dev teams have is not knowing what exactly is the priority of work they should take up. This is because the PO (or product manager) have a tough job on their hands about getting stakeholder agreement on what the next set of features or user stories need to be worked on next.  Depending on your context, these could be external customers, internal customers such as Sales or Support or Marketing, or business users in a corporate IT context.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There isn’t enough focus or visibility for the work a PO needs to do in order to ensure a regular and timely availability of the right work for the Dev team to work on.  The process of defining and managing a product/ application roadmap, and prioritizng a specific set of features or enhancements release after release, is often not understood either by the PO or the rest of the stakeholders and the Dev team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consequently, there is always friction between the PO/ PM group and the Dev team, with missed features/ release dates due to communication failure between the two groups.  As a product manager for my company, I have faced this challenge and have spoken about it in several events.  Here's one of my presentations that might be of help - &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.slideshare.net/maheshsingh01/visual-requirements-management-with-kanban-v2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.slideshare.net/maheshsingh01/visual-requirements-management-with-kanban-v2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We solved this problem with our transition to Kanban - and specifically when we set up an &quot;upstream&quot; Kanban board for our PM team, supported by a couple of meetings - a bi-weekly Replenishment Meeting and a Monthly/ Quarterly Planning/ Strategy Review meeting.  The latter helped all stakeholders - including the Dev Team - understand overall priority for the organization and the team, as well as specifically identifying the high-level themes and epics for the quarter/ month.  The replenishment meeting serves as a Release planning and a mid-release course-correction meeting, and they ensure that each release is by and large delivering the stuff we need to deliver, and everyone is in agreement on that.  Our release schedule is roughly 4-6 weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's how our Kanban boards look - a Roadmap Planning board and a Dev Board - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PO (PM for us) is responsible for this board - and making sure that user stories flow to the Dev board in a timely manner - &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EAE0j.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EAE0j.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Dev manager owns this board - &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZnRau.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZnRau.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the idea is not to dump a Kanban board at your situation, I suspect helping your PO might be done either by specifically discussing your Dev team's challenges or by trying to get the PO to understand their own process, so they can better focus on doing all the PO stuff they need to be doing (using the Kanban board above as an example). Or you can do both!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully, this will help you get their efforts focused with better outcomes for your Dev team.  At the same time, the PO will have got a few tools to manage their own work better - and also highlight challenges they face in their own processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2017-10-30T15:32:12.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22721" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22723" CreationDate="2017-10-30T18:22:09.763" Score="1" ViewCount="241" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simple question&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should the focus of a retrospective only be internal to the team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30234" LastActivityDate="2017-11-14T11:26:07.823" Title="Retrospectives only internal to the team?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22721" CreationDate="2017-10-30T18:31:05.393" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A retrospective is a chance for the team to review and reflect on their way of working - the things that went well, the things that didn't go well, and potential improvements. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Principles Behind the Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; says that teams reflect on &quot;how to become more effective&quot; and then &quot;tune and adjust its behavior accordingly&quot; &quot;at regular intervals&quot;. In Scrum, this is embodied in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-retro&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sprint Retrospective&lt;/a&gt; and is held by the Scrum Team (the Development Team, the Scrum Master, and the Product Owner).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is preferable that the team participates without too much outside influence. The team should have a good deal of trust and respect, and keeping the event to the team encourages openness and more free discussion. However, there may be instances where it's beneficial to bring in people from outside the team. However, this should generally be done with the team's consent beforehand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The four main components are people, process, tools, and relationships. These aren't restricted to things that are internal to the team - if the team had big successes or had to overcome problems with working with people outside the team, that should come up at a retrospective. However, not every problem is solvable by the team - some are broader, strategic or organizational problems. The team can identify these as problems, work on mitigation strategies, but should generally escalate these to be solved at a higher level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2017-10-31T00:50:20.830" LastActivityDate="2017-10-31T00:50:20.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22721" CreationDate="2017-10-30T18:33:54.763" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should constrain your retrospective if you need to limit the lessons to be learned.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-10-30T18:33:54.763" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22721" CreationDate="2017-10-30T23:09:31.407" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Principles behind the Manifesto for Agile Software Development&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-retro&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Sprint Retrospective is an opportunity for the Scrum Team to inspect itself and create a plan for improvements to be enacted during the next Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The participants in the Sprint Retrospective event is at a minimum the Scrum Team (Product Owner, Development Team, and Scrum Master).  There is nothing in the rules of the framework the prohibits additional participants.  However, most interpret the section as limiting the event to the Scrum Team members only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ADDITIONALLY&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any issues that affect the ability of the team to efficiently and effectively deliver quality, working software should be open for discussion.  For example, if there is a business silo or resource dependency impediment then it should be expressed.  Of course these issues should be raised at any time.  The Sprint Retrospective is simply an official event to inspect and adapt.  If a team desired to hold a separate meeting to address these issues, that is also their prerogative.  The ability to make these decisions come from understanding the agile philosophy and desire for self-organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2017-10-31T11:59:16.047" LastActivityDate="2017-10-31T11:59:16.047" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22716" CreationDate="2017-10-31T02:15:06.193" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I imagine following scenarios:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customers / Users / Stakeholders complained about performance / experience &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deliver changes quickly / frequently to customers / market &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical Debt / Lets do something because there's no work or its boring&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case of #1 and #2 above, you'd have proper elicitation with stakeholders / product owner and initiate a project. Product Owner will specify why and what which becomes a project. A project will have start date, end date and outcome. You'll map out deliverable which becomes epic / story / feature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case of #3, customers don't care much. So, product owner or sponsor would be either your tech lead or development manager or CIO or anyone who is heads tech team. Still, in this case as well, you'd first specify Why, What and then how - which becomes feature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, if something is started without setting start/ end/ agenda / outcome, its a chore - doesn't really get anywhere and is probably a WaterScrumFall. If you've done the proper project management, set goals and outcomes, then whatever you do can be set as features. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could be wrong but I get an impression you're searching for value in work you've already started. Shouldn't you be first looking for value and then start work? Also I'd ask What was the motivation ? Who is the sponsor / Stakeholder?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30309" LastActivityDate="2017-10-31T02:15:06.193" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22716" CreationDate="2017-10-31T02:38:26.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a long-time sysadmin, I lobby all agile teams to include the internal &quot;run&quot;, &quot;ops&quot;, or &quot;devops&quot; team as a customer - somebody has to keep this thing running and you can't just ignore them. If breaking the monolith helps this &quot;ops&quot; team, then you can still count it as a feature, just a feature for customer with a different priority. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2017-10-31T02:38:26.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22693" CreationDate="2017-10-31T03:02:34.443" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Product Backlog is the list of all tasks and ideas that relate to the product. It could be infinitely long, but organised and prioritised constantly - the ultimate wish list. It represents the total potential product, some of which may never make it to development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprint Backlog refers the the batch of items you pull in for one sprint - the items you actually plan to develop within a period of time (e.g 2 weeks). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30302" LastActivityDate="2017-10-31T03:02:34.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22728" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23458" CreationDate="2017-10-31T07:28:44.907" Score="2" ViewCount="297" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a software developer and I don't have deep knowledge of the best practices around Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), so I base my question mostly on how they are used in my company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every quarter we have an OKR week where we add personal OKRs based on what we plan to finish this quarter. My OKRs are mostly epics from issue tracker, so there's a little bit of duplication that bothers me. But that's a small thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What really bothers me is that I get a waterfallish vibe from the whole idea of planning things for 3 months in advance (and then the first line of real code makes this plan outdated). It might work well for stable, old companies but for us as a startup it doesn't seem to provide much value as things tend to change very fast (ironically, this time it happened the next day after OKRs for a quarter have been finished).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to know if I'm correct in my attitude or may be I'm just missing something?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30310" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-10-31T13:23:06.507" LastActivityDate="2018-02-04T22:37:51.670" Title="OKRs as a new Waterfall" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22693" CreationDate="2017-10-31T09:36:31.577" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product Backlog&lt;/strong&gt; is simply a list of all things that needs to be done within the project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprint Backlog&lt;/strong&gt; is a list of tasks identified by the Scrum team to be completed during the Scrum sprint&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/usal1.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/usal1.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30305" LastActivityDate="2017-10-31T09:36:31.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22730" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-10-31T09:47:05.573" Score="0" ViewCount="95" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are using PivotalTracker as agile project management tool. There are some reports build around &lt;strong&gt;Story Cycle Time&lt;/strong&gt;. What can be the effective use of it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30305" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2017-11-07T21:20:11.613" LastActivityDate="2017-11-07T21:20:11.613" Title="What can be the effective use of &quot;story cycle time&quot; in PivotalTracker" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;pivotal-tracker&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22705" CreationDate="2017-10-31T10:36:34.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Entire &lt;strong&gt;Scrum Team(Product Owner, Development Team, Scrum Master)&lt;/strong&gt; has to be there during backlog refinement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30305" LastActivityDate="2017-10-31T10:36:34.113" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22730" CreationDate="2017-10-31T12:10:46.337" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cqh2J.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cqh2J.png&quot; alt=&quot;Lead Time and Cycle Time&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be used to identify long feedback cycles to shorten, impediments to be addressed, need for more shared understanding of items, large scope items that could be sliced more thinly, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pivotaltracker.com/help/articles/analytics_cycle_time/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cycle Time Report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2017-10-31T12:10:46.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22712" CreationDate="2017-10-31T14:06:44.257" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not, per se, a problem that the Product Owner is doing other work. I remember I was once on a Scrum Team which had a superwoman who was the PO... as well as a Project Manager, Business Analyst, Quality Assurance personnel, Salesforce expert and boss's personal secretary. Not at all optimal, but necessary given the circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that the PO is not getting actual PO work done. If the following is not being done:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clearly expressing Product Backlog items;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ordering the items in the Product Backlog to best achieve goals and missions;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Optimizing the value of the work the Development Team performs;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensuring that the Product Backlog is visible, transparent, and clear to all, and shows what the Scrum Team will work on next; and,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensuring the Development Team understands items in the Product Backlog to the level needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you don't really &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; a PO in the first place. Which could be the start of the conversation in the Retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Hey guys, I think we need to have a Product Owner on this Team. Should we hire someone new, or does one of us think we could do it?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Uh, I already &lt;em&gt;am&lt;/em&gt; the PO.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Oh, great! Then, can you make sure this (show the list of the PO duties in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;, as above) gets done?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I don't have time for that.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Then we don't really have a PO. Which brings me back to my question: Do we hire someone else to be a PO, or can you find the time to complete the PO duties?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, that's just one way that conversation could go. It's possible he really &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; find the time to do the PO job while still working on other things (or perhaps only &lt;em&gt;thinks&lt;/em&gt; he can, which would prompt another conversation later on, but give him a chance first). It's possible he'd really rather be a BA, and so hiring a dedicated PO may be a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-10-31T14:06:44.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22734" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-10-31T14:47:30.667" Score="3" ViewCount="812" Body="&lt;p&gt;Running quite a few short term projects at the moment, and I am not sure how to plan them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project set up is the following&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;few resources&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;timeframe of 2-3 weeks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum does not work well from being capacity based planning, where the data is collected over a series of sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban works slightly better but often I find myself in scenarios where devs are not able to estimate properly forcing me to deliver the project using a waterfall approach given fixed deadline/scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to deliver a project with a quick turn around that has a tight deadline?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2017-11-02T10:35:47.900" Title="The best agile methodology for short term projects?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22721" CreationDate="2017-10-31T17:51:18.930" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The purpose of the retrospective is for teams to improve. If there are external issues which hinder the team then I prefer that they are discussed in the retrospective. Even if they need to involve people outside the team to address them. Such issues probably won't go away unless handled, attention is needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16919" LastActivityDate="2017-10-31T17:51:18.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22737" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-10-31T18:35:13.337" Score="0" ViewCount="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an existing project schedule with 4 Phases. Phases 1-3 are complete and Phase 4 just started. I have built a new separate schedule for Phase 4 due to changes, but was not sure of the best way to &quot;Update or Implement&quot; this into the existing 4 Phase Project Schedule schedule. So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I Update Phase 4 by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pasting new into existing (leaving current Phase 4 in place, making old  inactive, for easy reference)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pasting new Phase 4 into existing - over Phase 4 current items?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or update the dates and make changes to tasks that changed?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know the best scenario for maintaining the full scope of Existing Project with the new implemented Phase 4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30319" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-10-31T18:54:47.067" LastActivityDate="2017-11-03T07:15:01.043" Title="MS Project - Best Update Solution" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;progress-monitor&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22734" CreationDate="2017-10-31T19:20:37.127" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It will be difficult to provide you a comprehensive answer, there are just so many potential variables. Let me see if I can address a couple of things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban and estimating: Don't. Kanban's value is in setting up a continuous flow of work. Prioritize the backlog, break work into the smallest valuable pieces and have the team pull the work from the top of the backlog. Limit work in progress to focus on getting things done. Once you get into a flow you will start to see cycle time trends which can be used to figure out what can get done by a given date. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprints and data over time: If each project is truly unique I can see some issues. I'm betting, though, that project to project have similarities (same code base, same general application, etc). If so, you can use past sprint data of a different project to plan for sprints for a new project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fixed Scope/ Fixed Deadline: This is your key issue. As long as the business thinks this is possible, then you'll never progress out of fire fighting project work. The only thing that happens in an FS/FD project is quality suffers. Then, over time, you will end up spending more and more time on fixing and less on building. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, we will never get away from Fixed Deadline. It's just not in human nature to not latch on to a date as &quot;ship&quot;. So you have to focus on getting the development org to predictability (cycle time, stable velocities) with similar sized stories. By doing this, the team can reliably say &quot;We can do X work by the release date&quot; and have the data to back it up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-10-31T19:20:37.127" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22740" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22747" CreationDate="2017-11-01T10:47:08.423" Score="0" ViewCount="84" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are dealing with the split of work which, in the old process, would have all been one big task; Now, (under Scrum) that work is split into stories and refined. We are using BDD to define those stories...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For one particular set of stories - those involved with a particular system - the changes to the system have always been defined in a particular manner. The team members are familiar with it and I am finding it difficult to convert those definitions into BDD. (Also, I do not understand the work they do as it is not in &quot;my wheelhouse&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have discussed the BDD approach which the project is now taking with the person (as it happens, a technical BA) responsible for writing/refining those stories and while they are happy with BDD for most of our stories, informs me that it is difficult to do what I am asking; Converting to BDD for this particular system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The task definitions, generally, involve defining the storage of database-like data and schemas, the nature of requests and responses into and out of the system to get that data and changes to the existing setup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be fair, if this were work defining changes to an existing MS T-SQL database I would also find it difficult to provide BDD stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/strong&gt; How should one define BDD stories which specify technical changes to systems such as databases using gherkin? Is this even the appropriate approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29374" LastActivityDate="2019-04-25T06:01:46.947" Title="BDD Gherkin definition of un-gherkin-like work" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;devops&gt;&lt;bdd&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22741" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-01T12:53:16.757" Score="3" ViewCount="370" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently doing a research study in Risk Management for Agile project development. As we know, there are a few steps involved in Risk Management in Agile project development, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agile Risk Identification&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agile Risk Analysis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agile Risk Prioritisation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agile Risk Responses&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agile Risk Resolution&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agile Risk Monitoring&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But my question is: are there any specific techniques or tools used by the organizations to mitigate risks? If yes, can anyone share with me the available tools or techniques that can be used to mitigate the risks? Currently, I am still trying to understand the differences between Agile Risk Management and Traditional Risk Management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30332" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-11-20T14:49:38.277" LastActivityDate="2017-11-20T14:49:38.277" Title="Risk Management techniques in Agile project development" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22741" CreationDate="2017-11-01T13:40:59.553" Score="-2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...is [sic] there any specific techniques or tools used by the organizations to mitigate risks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If yes, anyone [sic] can share with me the available tools or techniques that can be used to mitigate the risks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likely yes; however, tools and techniques are dependent on the threat being mitigated.  You will need to identify a few risks in order for anyone to share mitigating methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Currently, i [sic] am still trying to understand the differences between agile risk management and traditional risk management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are none.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-11-01T13:40:59.553" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="983" CreationDate="2017-11-01T14:28:11.010" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I ask people who'd like to volunteer to take notes provided all team members are capable of doing so. In the rush to take notes, it's normal to make mistakes, so after the meeting, I edit to polish the wording, but not the idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30335" LastActivityDate="2017-11-01T14:28:11.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22741" CreationDate="2017-11-01T14:36:52.597" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many of the same techniques are used.  The agile philosophy and associated approaches directly address risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In traditional project management (PM) and software development life cycle (SDLC) much time and, therefore, cost are sunk into the Analysis, Requirements, Planning, and Design steps before any realizable value is created.  If, for whatever reason, the project is terminated then all of that is lost.  Testing is traditionally executed after Development is complete.  The longer the gap between the activities, the greater the impact: this ping-ponging of effort results in development having to revisit those items and delays planned work.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://static.aminer.org/pdf/PDF/000/361/405/software_requirements_are_they_really_a_problem.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Misunderstandings and miscommunications related to requirements&lt;/a&gt; are compounded by the layers and time between initial gathering and the delivery of the product; users express desires and wait for delivery.  Weekly status calls where workers report against a project plan are usually the only insight into progress.  postmortem conducted for &lt;em&gt;Lessons Learned&lt;/em&gt; to be applied in the future is the only input for process improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With an agile approach, once the purpose and vision is established, the work is done in incremental iterations that include all applicable aspects of the SDLC including testing.  Test first approaches also promote less waste by avoiding unnecessary work and helping to ensure needs are met.  When the organization needs to change priorities, i.e. seize a market opportunity, the completed work is releasable; there is little to no sunk cost to be lost.  User involvement and the expectation of change due to increased learning throughout the effort results in a more useful solution.  The continuous involvement of business people results in less delays and greater understanding of progress.  Having the work available ensure a more empirical measurement of effort and outcomes.  Regular inspection and retrospection for improving the way work is done is a key aspect of being agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2017-11-01T14:43:54.283" LastActivityDate="2017-11-01T14:43:54.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22737" CreationDate="2017-11-01T22:13:16.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is related to Configuration Management Plan (according to the PMBOK), in other words you should know how to versioning changes. For example, if the first version of your schedule is named &quot;ProjectXXX - Schedule - v1.0.mpp&quot; now you can create a copy of that file and named &quot;ProjectXXX - Schedule - v1.1.mpp&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you have a reference schedule and a current schedule, thus you can check your baseline variances for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30032" LastActivityDate="2017-11-01T22:13:16.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22740" CreationDate="2017-11-02T02:44:18.977" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you are using Gherkin while missing some of the BDD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Behavior-Driven Development should express application behavior - preferably that the customer can see. This will inherently cut across different technical areas. You shouldn't need technical expertise to write those scenarios and they shouldn't be implementation specific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you had something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given I'm a registered user&lt;br&gt;&#xA;And I'm on the user info page&lt;br&gt;&#xA;When I change the address field&lt;br&gt;&#xA;And I Save Changes&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Then I should see the new address in my user info&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need DB changes to make that happen, then you make the DB changes - that's the team's concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2019-04-23T15:13:40.107" LastActivityDate="2019-04-23T15:13:40.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1497" CreationDate="2017-11-02T08:24:36.407" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check PMBOK. Knowing the proces makes you a project leader. Knowing the skillsets and being able to apply the correct skills at the appropriate time makes you a project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30340" LastActivityDate="2017-11-02T08:24:36.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22734" CreationDate="2017-11-02T10:35:47.900" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few things I've found to work in similar situations: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;prioritise work and use Kanban to do as much as the prioritised work as possible in the fixed timeframe&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;don't use estimates at all but try and get developers to break tasks down into the level of detail required (by setting rules such as no ticket should take longer than a week for example)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;don't give a specific ship date, but focus on a date range (use w/c for example and that gives you a fair amount of wiggle room for such a short project cycle)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;use daily standups but also keep a close eye on the board yourself, if something is not moving ask why early&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30341" LastActivityDate="2017-11-02T10:35:47.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22721" CreationDate="2017-11-02T10:44:29.853" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually prefer to keep the retrospective to the project team as we tend to get more focused and honest discussion, without worrying about what you say or how it's presented. However, if there is an issue involving another department, or something they can add to the discussion then we bring them in on an ad-hoc basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually if we do add anyone else it's someone from our Customer Support team, as they have great 'on-the-ground' feedback.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30341" LastEditorUserId="30341" LastEditDate="2017-11-14T10:31:24.967" LastActivityDate="2017-11-14T10:31:24.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22751" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22752" CreationDate="2017-11-02T11:58:40.757" Score="0" ViewCount="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our company relies on an independent 3rd party (basically contractors) for a vital phase of our project. More often than not this phase goes off without a hitch, but recently we've been running into issues where these contractors haven't been doing their job, quite literally. All escalation to their management as well as all repeated requests for compliance have resulted in no headway being made, or the old runaround. The clincher is, we can't avoid using them-- they are the only resource for this project phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a situation where stakeholders simply won't (not can't) perform, what is a novice PM to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29947" LastActivityDate="2017-11-02T12:29:50.183" Title="Ensuring project progress with non-performance from 3rd party" Tags="&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22751" CreationDate="2017-11-02T12:12:49.390" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PM owns the schedule, and evaluates all events through impact on schedule, cost, and quality.  (events include both issues such as this and risks - if you suspect that the contractor won't complete on schedule.  The process is the same.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is an event that affects the schedule, then the PM should prepare a revised schedule with the best estimate and inform the relevant stakeholders of the change.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your job is:&#xA;1. Get a revised estimate for task completion and adjust the schedule based on that estimate - ensure that you propagate the change forward through the critical path.  I would work with the person in your company who &quot;owns&quot; the contract - the Contracting Officer's Representative in my field, but your company may structure things differently to get that revised estimate.  That ensures that any relevant contract penalties and/or legal action for noncompliance/nonperformance are applied and that the COR is aware of the potential need to write contract penalties into the future contracts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Examine the project schedule for opportunities to re-sequence other activities to minimize the effect on the ultimate finish date. Based on the information you provide, I think there will be no such opportunities, but this is one of those things that should be done even if it is fruitless.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What impact will this have on the projects cost?  Will you have to keep teams on the bench while waiting for your contractor?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Document the lesson learned so that you can include this in future project plans. You indicate that these contractors are a regular part of your process; the next time you execute a similar project, you'll want to document this issue so that you can adjust the estimated variance, and potentially adjust the contract.  (This is issue/risk management as well as lessons learned).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Brief the project sponsor and any other relevant stakeholders - your communications plan should indicates which stakeholders are interested in information on schedule delays/variance.  They may choose to take legal action, they may choose to cancel the project, they may choose to accept the fact that this contractor has them over a barrel.  The key is that you own the project and your responsibility is to inform them of the impact of the event on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2017-11-02T12:29:50.183" LastActivityDate="2017-11-02T12:29:50.183" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22753" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-02T13:02:42.623" Score="2" ViewCount="317" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that if PBI's cannot be completed within a sprint they can be re negotiated with the product owner &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now again a sprint &lt;strong&gt;cannot be shorted or lengthened&lt;/strong&gt; then the agreed time box unless the sprint &lt;strong&gt;goal is obsolete.&lt;/strong&gt; So how does the situation play out when the agreed &lt;strong&gt;definition of done is met before the time box expires?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30285" LastActivityDate="2017-11-05T10:44:18.723" Title="What happens when the PBI in a sprint are done but the sprint timebox hasn't expired?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22753" CreationDate="2017-11-02T13:20:53.357" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few options. However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; is silent on what to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the Development Team can begin work on the next item from the Product Backlog. Ideally, there are more items that have been fully refined in the backlog. The Product Owner should be ensuring that the Product Backlog is always in a good priority order and that the top items have been sufficiently refined to work in an upcoming Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, the Development Team can hone their skills. Use this as an opportunity for cross-training. This can also extend, to some extent, to the Scrum Master and Product Owner. Consider not only technical skills needed by each role to do their day-to-day job, but improving the understanding of the work done by the other roles on the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, pay down technical debt. Improve automated test coverage, improve manual test coverage (if you have manual testing), convert manual tests to automated tests, build tools to facilitate the development process, refactor parts of the application, gain expertise in other parts of the code that the team may not have been exposed to recently. Do things to make the next Sprint easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be other options, too, depending on your organization. Helping out other teams meet commitments, code reviews, additional testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, the Development Team and Product Owner should work together to determine the best alternative. Perhaps the organization management can also look toward things that need to be done. This is also something that should be discussed at the Sprint Retrospective to determine how to better be more accurate in capacity planning in upcoming Sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2017-11-02T13:20:53.357" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22753" CreationDate="2017-11-02T13:21:02.510" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being a framework and not a strict process or method, Scrum does not dictate what should happen.  The Product Owner and Development Team should work together to determine the best course of action.  This is much like a situation where the it appears that completing the selected items is in danger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several possible options in no particular order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add an additional Product Backlog Item that the Development Team believes it can complete before the end of the Sprint&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Applies to Sprint Goal (or not)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Augments an existing feature (or not)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the time for Team activities&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Celebrate achievements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learning and training&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team building&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Address any technical debt&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Additional exploratory testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Backlog refinement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTE: The Definition of &quot;Done&quot; applies to each Product Backlog Item forecast by the Development Team that has been added to the Sprint Backlog as well as the Increment as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2017-11-02T13:21:02.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22753" CreationDate="2017-11-02T13:21:05.883" Score="0" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A) Renegotiate the scope. If you've got enough capacity remaining and ready backlog items available then why not do another one?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;B) Refinement. Work some more on preparing the back log for future sprints.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;C) Housekeeping. Address technological debt, improve tests, do a code review, do a static code analysis, evaluate ways to improve your scrum process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;D) Exploration: Learn something, coach each other, try an idea for an upcoming task&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;E) &quot;Slack off&quot;. You probably hat tight sprints as well. Sprints where you put in additional hours to get everything done. Consider this the flipside.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2017-11-02T13:21:05.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22753" CreationDate="2017-11-02T13:24:53.137" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would argue, &lt;em&gt;assuming that completing all the Stories has accomplished the Sprint Goal&lt;/em&gt; (which is likely but not guaranteed), that the Sprint Goal &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; now obsolete. Generally, when deciding a Sprint Goal, it should not be something that was already accomplished. By that same vein, once a Goal is achieved, it is then obsolete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so, as per the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When a Sprint is cancelled, any completed and “Done” Product Backlog items are reviewed. If part of the work is potentially releasable, the Product Owner typically accepts it. All incomplete Product Backlog Items are re-estimated and put back on the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, review all the work in the Sprint (the Sprint Review), then return... nothing to the Backlog, since there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; no incomplete work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then have your Retrospective, where you discuss your success (in achieving the Goal) and failure (in properly estimating the work).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...Of course, as mentioned, this is only if you actually completed the Sprint Goal. If not, figure out what you need to do so, then do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; assuming that your organization is not depending on those timeboxes. If it makes more sense &lt;em&gt;in your specific case&lt;/em&gt; to just pull in more work (whether typical &quot;feature&quot; work or reducing technical debt or doing research or...), then do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-11-02T13:24:53.137" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22758" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-02T14:01:03.860" Score="2" ViewCount="130" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading a &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/22753/what-happens-when-the-pbi-in-a-sprint-are-done-but-the-sprint-timebox-hasnt-exp/22757?noredirect=1#comment28648_22754&quot;&gt;comment&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It affects empiricism of [the Scrum Team receiving aid] because both the outputs and outcomes of that Sprint have been affected. [...] The professionalism of knowledge sharing is certainly desired, and assisting another Scrum Team is not prohibited by the framework, there are probably more effective ways to achieve the desired outcomes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that got me thinking - &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; it make sense for different Scrum Teams in the same organization to assist each other with their work, or would the loss of stable throughput outweigh the gains in knowledge sharing? If one &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; refrain, then how &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; knowledge sharing be facilitated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2017-11-03T13:16:50.577" LastActivityDate="2017-11-03T13:16:50.577" Title="Different Scrum Teams Assisting Each Other - Good or Bad?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team-capacity&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22759" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22761" CreationDate="2017-11-02T14:12:18.430" Score="5" ViewCount="154" Body="&lt;p&gt;my goal is to have a list of the JIRA tickets that are not moving from one lane to another so that I can intervene on those tickets and check if impediments, difficulties or issues are up in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So basically I would like a query to create a JIRA &lt;strong&gt;filter&lt;/strong&gt; that sort tickets depending on some ticket information, for example&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sort the amount of time since &lt;em&gt;last date status changed&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sort the amount of time spent in the &lt;em&gt;status &quot;IN PROGRESS&quot;, in &quot;REVIEW&quot; or in &quot;TESTING&quot;&lt;/em&gt; (where IN PROGRESS, REVIEW, TESTING are status within my JIRA project)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is not possible to create a specific query/filter, which could be the other solutions? I am already aware of the grey-gradient-coloured-dots in the bottom part of the ticket within the Active Sprint view. But I prefer to visualize this information out of a query, for example for a dashboard widget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27720" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2017-11-03T05:03:46.197" LastActivityDate="2017-11-03T11:13:16.917" Title="Which is the best way to list tickets that do not change lane / status in JIRA?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;process-controls&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22758" CreationDate="2017-11-02T14:32:21.460" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a lot to unpack in there. The way I read the answer and associated comments, I  interpret it as one team helping another gives the team the false impression that they can do more work than they truly can. He isn't wrong, but I would expect the teams and the Scrum Master to mitigate this. So if the team tried to commit to a same-sized or bigger goal next sprint, I'd expect the Scrum Master to step in and say &quot;Woah! You guys needed help from another team last sprint, is this really reasonable?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The commentor didn't say this, but one could also argue that it would throw off numbers for both teams. While not wrong, I would reject the argument for two reasons: first, other factors have a far greater impact (holidays, prod support, outtages, etc) and handle those fine; second, and more importantly, you should never do service to the metrics over service to the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, our goal is to deliver a great product, empiricism is a tool that helps us do that. Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-11-02T14:32:21.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22759" CreationDate="2017-11-02T17:19:44.297" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't believe it is possible to &lt;em&gt;sort&lt;/em&gt; by status changed date. However, given that your requirement is &quot;to have a list of the JIRA tickets that are not moving from one lane to another so that I can intervene on those tickets&quot;, you can find all tickets that have not moved in X days. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(status = &quot;In Progress&quot; AND status changed to &quot;In Progress&quot; before &quot;-7d&quot;) OR (status = &quot;To Do&quot; AND status changed to &quot;To Do&quot; before &quot;-7d&quot;) OR ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just add one (status = &quot;STATUSNAME&quot; AND status changed to &quot;STATUSNAME&quot; before &quot;-7d&quot;) for each status you want to track and change the 7 to the number of days you want an issue to sit idle before it shows up on the filter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-11-02T17:26:12.323" LastActivityDate="2017-11-02T17:26:12.323" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22758" CreationDate="2017-11-03T01:20:15.577" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/22754/30&quot;&gt;My answer&lt;/a&gt; and some associated comments (&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/22753/what-happens-when-the-pbi-in-a-sprint-are-done-but-the-sprint-timebox-hasnt-exp/22757?noredirect=1#comment28644_22754&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/22753/what-happens-when-the-pbi-in-a-sprint-are-done-but-the-sprint-timebox-hasnt-exp/22757?noredirect=1#comment28645_22754&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/22753/what-happens-when-the-pbi-in-a-sprint-are-done-but-the-sprint-timebox-hasnt-exp/22757?noredirect=1#comment28648_22754&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/22753/what-happens-when-the-pbi-in-a-sprint-are-done-but-the-sprint-timebox-hasnt-exp/22757?noredirect=1#comment28652_22754&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;) appear to have sparked this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/22753/30&quot;&gt;The original question&lt;/a&gt; presented a very specific case - a Scrum team has met their Sprint Goals before the timebox for the Sprint has elapsed. All of the forecast work has been completed and meets the team's Definition of Done. The team is now wondering what they should do between this particular point in time and the conclusion of the Sprint (the Sprint Review and Retrospective).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This situation is not discussed in the current (July 2016) version of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;. For the case of multi-team environments, this particular case is also not discussed in the current (August 2015) version of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/resources/online-nexus-guide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Nexus Guide&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe the next place to turn to would be &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Manifesto for Agile Software Development&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the principles behind the Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What these guides, manifestos, and principles say to me is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The primary goal of an organization that is agile is to satisfy customers and users by delivering valuable software frequently. Scrum realizes these two principles through Sprints, each of which produces a Potentially Releasable Increment. When you have multiple teams coordinating, you integrate the work of all the teams and ensure it is releasable at the end of every Sprint (Nexus gives us more specific guidance and advice, but there are also other frameworks to scale Scrum specifically or agile methods generally).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By overforecasting, one team has put themselves in a position that is not sustainable in the long term. However, sustainability is much lower on the list of principles customer satisfaction, delivery, collaboration, and support and trust. I'm not sure if the list of principles is an ordered list or not, but it seems plausible that it is. Because of the emphasis on delivery of software and customer satisfaction, those need to be the immediate concern of all of the teams involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another agile principle is about giving the development team the support they need and trust to get the job done. That support may come from management or it may come from another team. However, help cannot be forced upon the team - it must be offered and accepted. It may be too risky to add new developers to the mix. They may not have the right knowledge, skills, personality or temperament, and so on to provide valuable help. The team that has overforecast should be aware that one or more members of another team are available and then be trusted to make the right decision that allows for the successful completion of a Potentially Releasable Increment at the end of the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the immediate concerns have been addressed - either getting help to complete the Sprint Goals or not - the Scrum teams can turn to reflecting and adjusting. Again, Scrum has the Sprint Retrospective to do this. The Scrum Master role should also be involved to ensure that the teams learn from the events and adjust their upcoming behavior (how they plan and execute future Sprints). This is the point at which the team that overforecast and the team that underforecast adjust and try to return to a sustainable development pace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, a lot of this does center on an assumption - the Scrum Teams are working on a single product. What if they aren't? Even so, the teams are part of a common organization. This isn't just about satisfying one particular customer or user base. It's about the organization being customer-centric and the individuals and teams that are in the organization responding to changes in the environment around them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One team providing resources to help another team is only one option. There are others that may also be valuable, but cross-team help is in line with agile principles and should be on the table. So...yes, it may make sense for one Scrum team to provide resources to assist with another Scrum team. This shouldn't be considered the only way to share knowledge across teams, though. Also, since Sprints are projects, adding &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;more people to a late project may make the project later&lt;/a&gt;. It's about balancing risks with rewards to meet the desired objectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2017-11-03T01:20:15.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22737" CreationDate="2017-11-03T07:15:01.043" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't copy paste over the existing tasks. Copy pasting is akin to deleting and recreating the tasks, so any information you might like to keep (like baseline data) will be lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to do this is to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Save a baseline for your old phase 4&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Update the tasks with the correct dates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way you have your old schedule reference in the baseline, making it much easier to do comparisons between the old and the new schedule. But it's also a lot of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Versioning in a separate file like JCM recommended above is also a possibility, as you can use the &quot;compare project&quot; feature to compare both files if needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deactivating the old phase and pasting the new one separately is only an option if you're sure you won't need to do a detailed comparison of the old schedule with the new one (That would be considerably harder with two separate sets of tasks).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30194" LastActivityDate="2017-11-03T07:15:01.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22759" CreationDate="2017-11-03T11:13:16.917" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can sort by time in status in an issue filter. The query would look like:&#xA;project = My project and status = &quot;tracked status&quot; order by &quot;[CHART] Time in Status&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will show the list of issues in the right project and status, with the one that has spent the most time in that status at the top of the list. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30341" LastActivityDate="2017-11-03T11:13:16.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22758" CreationDate="2017-11-03T12:04:36.570" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum teams should definitely help each other out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Add the suggested support as a backlog item and have it prioritised in the usual way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Product Owner sees value in the support then I'm sure they will prioritise the work and make it happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of Scrum is to deliver business value. Restricting them to delivering value for just one product would be arbitrary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2017-11-03T12:04:36.570" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22766" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-03T12:05:23.273" Score="2" ViewCount="202" Body="&lt;p&gt;Running a team where I am asking individuals to update/move their JIRA tickets, one keeps saying he will do it but never does. This is becoming very frustrating since I have a lack of visibility of his work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I get him to do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-11-03T16:18:23.340" LastActivityDate="2017-11-06T02:45:48.387" Title="Individuals in team keep ignoring my advice" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22766" CreationDate="2017-11-03T12:14:51.410" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What level of authority do you have over your employees?  Are they matrixed to you in a dotted line but have another boss somewhere in the organization?  Or do they report to you directly?  Do you have sponsorship in your organization to apply consequences?  Whatever the answers are to these questions, it appears your project team does not perceive you as an authoritative figure, either via as a named leader or one that is a perceived leader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to find ways to grow the trust and respect of your team and to manage and lead them in a very positive way.  However, you also have to identify the point when you need to turn the machine off, remove the offending cog, replace it with a shiny new one, and turn the machine back on.  If you do not have the authority to do that, then get it...or you are not really &quot;running the team.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interesting you used the word &quot;advice.&quot;  If you are a native English speaker in the US, that word signals something in your management approach.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-11-03T12:14:51.410" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22766" CreationDate="2017-11-03T16:57:59.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is related to PM of course, specifically to Human Resource Management. First question you should answer to yourself is what kind your organization's structure is (Functional?, Projectized? or Matrix?), and then, what's your power's level?.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, you can:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Escalate the issue to the functional manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Escalate the issue to the project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Escalate  the issue to the project sponsor (last resort).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are the PM use the following powers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Formal (Legitimate):&lt;/strong&gt; Lead (persuade) the goals you want to achieve, use your soft skills (ask to an expert how to handle this if you aren't ready).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reward:&lt;/strong&gt; Giving rewards (this time won't be helpful).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Penalty (Coercive):&lt;/strong&gt; Penalize team members, period. (you should try to avoid this).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Expert:&lt;/strong&gt; Are you an technical or project management expert? Again, use your soft skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Referent:&lt;/strong&gt; Use your charisma and fame (or someone's else).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if people don't respect you, think about why is this happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30032" LastActivityDate="2017-11-03T16:57:59.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22769" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-03T17:30:39.570" Score="0" ViewCount="934" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem: there's a shop which also sells its products online. A client must be logged in in order to buy online, but first he must be registered by a salesman on the shop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My &lt;strong&gt;question&lt;/strong&gt; is whether the user story for &lt;em&gt;register client&lt;/em&gt; should be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a &lt;em&gt;client&lt;/em&gt; I want to be registered so that I can buy online.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a &lt;em&gt;salesman&lt;/em&gt; I want to register a client so that he can buy online.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know the one who gets the benefit is the client, but the one who has the power to do this registration is the salesman.&#xA;To sum up, who should be my actor in this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30354" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2017-11-07T17:10:20.890" LastActivityDate="2017-11-07T17:10:20.890" Title="Define actor/role in user stories" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22766" CreationDate="2017-11-03T17:32:56.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that it's likely the developer does not see you as an authority figure. However, while appealing to authority could probably get the job done, I don't think &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;argumentum ad verecundiam&lt;/a&gt; is really the best approach to use, here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is plausible that the developer simply doesn't understand nor care about &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; you need him to update his JIRA issues. About why you need visibility into his work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, instead of just going &quot;Please update your JIRA issues&quot;, consider bringing the following, either to the developer in question (making it an issue for him to solve), or to the Team in general (making it a general issue that needs to be solved). &quot;The business needs me to do X. In order to do X, I need visibility into your work. The best way I can think of is for you to manually update your JIRA issues whenever you Y. However, if [you have/anyone has] any other suggestions, I'm happy to hear them. How can we meet this business need?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who knows? You might just be surprised with a better solution. Maybe (for example) there is (or could be designed) a JIRA plugin that automatically moves JIRA issues when Y happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you don't receive a better suggestion, if you make an effort to have the developer involved in the process, you should see improved buy-in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-11-03T17:52:36.030" LastActivityDate="2017-11-03T17:52:36.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22769" CreationDate="2017-11-03T17:49:08.013" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends why the registration is even necessary. I've never met anyone who &lt;em&gt;enjoyed&lt;/em&gt; registering for services. Start by asking &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; users need to register. The actual registration is an implementation detail, not a need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's stopping users from being able to order without registering? If the answer is 'nothing', consider scrapping the story or making it optional. If 'X', then your story is 'As Y, I want X' or 'As Y, I want users to register so that X.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a client, I don't want to have to enter my address and credit card every time I place an order. (In which case, best to make registration optional)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a marketing manager, I want to be able to track which people are ordering which items.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-11-03T17:49:08.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22766" CreationDate="2017-11-03T19:16:03.837" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two options to offer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Option 1 (Escalation)&lt;/strong&gt;: Our policy with JIRA is this, &quot;If it's not in the ticket, it didn't happen&quot;. Add a comment indicating that this ticket needs to be moved if ready for the next steps/done. Escalate to the functional/direct manager if this has not happened after 3-4 requests via the comments, just so it's clear that you've done your part.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Option 2 (Transparency)&lt;/strong&gt;: As a PM, you must have some reporting or communication statuses to send to your business/management team, no? In my case, my status reports tend to include work that was done. Make it clear to your team that their involvement within JIRA is vital to successful reporting of work done to date, i.e. increase the level of transparency. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case, this communication to update tickets hasn't been necessary as the team is included in my weekly reports, so they have full visibility into the overall progress of a delivery initiative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's been my experience that when you're transparent with the team about business operations, you'll find the level of cooperation that much higher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These options are not mutually exclusive, so use these suggestions based on your needs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30142" LastActivityDate="2017-11-03T19:16:03.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22773" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22778" CreationDate="2017-11-03T19:25:23.653" Score="0" ViewCount="192" Body="&lt;p&gt;It appears that a resource with the same name in the master and in an external subproject are considered two (2) separate resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Sue has a task on ProjectA and Sue has a task on ProjectB and both are shown to be done on the same date, Project does not seem to recognize that the one person resource Sue cannot work on both tasks in a single day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I get Project to recognize that Sue is allocated on the same day as Sue from the subproject?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30356" LastActivityDate="2017-11-04T20:13:37.107" Title="Allocating a single resource with multiple subprojects" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22774" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22775" CreationDate="2017-11-04T01:57:43.207" Score="1" ViewCount="140" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a project manager who's managing a sizable project (8 developers, duration over 6 months) with rapidly and constantly changing requirements. The PM has started dumping hundreds of tickets into the 2-week sprint a couple of sprints back, and given that it's impossible to finish that much work, he just adds new tickets on top of the existing ones, and moves everything to the next sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I demanded that clean up the sprint board, and move anything not being worked on to the backlog, but he started arguing that although that sounds nice, he and his team don't have time to move things in and out, as the requirements change daily. He said that they know how to prioritize the tickets in the system without moving them in and out of the sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I convince him to change his ways? I told him that with the current setup, it's almost impossible to track velocity and for devs to track what they've worked on, and he claims that they know exactly what they're working on and if we wanted to find out the velocity we can generate a report based on the finished tickets at the end of the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas for/against are welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30358" LastActivityDate="2017-11-04T03:05:45.553" Title="Project manager dumps all tickets in sprint" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22774" CreationDate="2017-11-04T03:05:45.553" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The PM has started dumping hundreds of tickets into the 2-week sprint a couple of sprints back&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, no one other than the Development Team is authorized to accept work into a Sprint. Assuming your company is committed to using Scrum, tell him to stop putting work into the Sprint Backlog. Instead, the Product Owner puts work into the Product Backlog, which is then (during the Sprint Planning Meeting) moved into the Sprint by the Development Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;he and his team don't have time to move things in and out, as the requirements change daily.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's actually true, then you should seriously consider switching from Scrum to Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-11-04T03:05:45.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22769" CreationDate="2017-11-04T09:53:47.623" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The story format is just a guidelines. The persona's help the team to step into their shoes a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you can combine both into a single story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As &lt;strong&gt;CHANTAL the cafe owner&lt;/strong&gt;, when I am at the wholesale business, I want &lt;strong&gt;JIM the SALESPERSON&lt;/strong&gt; to register me&#xA;  into the ordering system, so that I can order stuff online when I am not in the&#xA;  wholesale-shop, because this saves me a lot of travel time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make it real persons, clients says nothing. It is hard to relate to. Preferable real clients or users that you sometimes speak to.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add the change in behaviour, ordering online is not the reason this client wants to be registered. Have a look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.impactmapping.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;impact mapping&lt;/a&gt; to improve the value of your stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't be limited by a single Actor/Persona and feel free to add less or more information. Certainly don't try to push data into the format when for example a short description and some bullet points would also suffice. I have seen Product Owners write user stories just to change the text of a label. Use common sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User Story Mapping with Jeff Patton: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AorAgSrHjKM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AorAgSrHjKM&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pragmatic Personas: Putting the user back in stories. By Jeff Patton &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.infoq.com/presentations/pragmatic-personas&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.infoq.com/presentations/pragmatic-personas&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jeff Patton will shift your paradigms when it comes to the use of user stories. I think it is worth to invest some time in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2017-11-04T09:53:47.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22777" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22779" CreationDate="2017-11-04T17:54:31.073" Score="0" ViewCount="460" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I add a subproject to a master project, it always becomes a part of the project just above it. It is indented one more level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Must I only create subprojects on the top row of the project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the Outdent Task icon and Ctrl-Shift-Left have no effect. How can I outdent the subproject?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30356" LastActivityDate="2017-11-05T00:05:06.447" Title="Adding a subproject at top level" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22773" CreationDate="2017-11-04T20:13:37.107" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you using a resource pool? (I.e. a separate .mpp file holding all the resources, which are then shared with the various project schedules.) If not, then the resources in different projects, including master and subs, are considered unique for each project. The resource name has nothing to do with it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2017-11-04T20:13:37.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22777" CreationDate="2017-11-05T00:05:06.447" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Collapse all summary tasks before inserting subprojects and they will be inserted at outline level 1. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: only the project summary task is at level 0.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastActivityDate="2017-11-05T00:05:06.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22753" CreationDate="2017-11-05T10:44:18.723" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Discuss with the Scrum team to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create more (automated) test coverage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remove technical-debt&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Execute actions resulting from retrospectives, if not already planned&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pull&lt;/strong&gt; in the most important item next on the backlog, if refined.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any other idea the team has&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just use common sense and let the team decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The list I gave is the order my current team does it, most of the time it results in pulling in some more work after they cleaned the code-base a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2017-11-05T10:44:18.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22766" CreationDate="2017-11-06T02:45:48.387" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the first question to ask is, &quot;Why is he resistant to doing it?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I might actually ask that question of him, one on one. &quot;I've noticed that I keep asking you to update your tickets, but it keeps not getting done. What's up with that? Is it something I can help with?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is always important to presume good will when first addressing something like this. It might be something simple like not having a system to get it done, and you could help suggest things like &quot;always do it at this stage&quot;, &quot;put up a sticky note to remind you&quot;, &quot;make it the last thing you do before lunch &amp;amp; before leaving&quot;, stuff like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer is more along the lines of &quot;it's stupid and a waste of time&quot;, I would go with the transparency approach: &quot;I can't do my job effectively if you don't do this part of your job. Part of my job is to be aware of the status of the work, so that I can communicate accurately to our stakeholders and make them aware of any issues, so that they continue to trust our team. It's good for all of us when our stakeholders trust us, because that builds up a balance of good will that will help us out when there are problems - it means they are more likely to give us the benefit of the doubt and work with us.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; also present an alternative: &lt;em&gt;I rely on devs updating tickets as they do the work because that's the least labor-intensive way for me to get the info. If you'd rather write me a daily report with a status update, I suppose we could do that...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2017-11-06T02:45:48.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22783" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22791" CreationDate="2017-11-06T08:39:03.793" Score="2" ViewCount="401" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are developing a software based on various modules. Each module is considered an Epic in JIRA. When the module is accepted by the client, the PM closes the Epic. After some time the client demands a new feature in the module. &#xA;Do you &#xA;a) reopen the Epic (which is not a out of the box step in JIRA) or &#xA;b) create a new epic with the same name (or a similar one) or &#xA;c) don't treat it as an epic at all (given that this is a small feature request that it may be treated in one sprint) or&#xA;d) any other idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21801" LastActivityDate="2017-11-06T19:01:12.577" Title="Reopen an epic after a feature request?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;epics&gt;&lt;features&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9127" CreationDate="2017-11-06T11:09:51.660" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.techno-pm.com/2015/03/project-coordinator-roles-and-duties.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Project Coordinator's&lt;/a&gt; role is very similar to a Project Manager but not the same. There is a very thin line between a project coordinator and a project manager.  &lt;strong&gt;A project coordinator will do most of the things that a project manager would do but does not have (or does not need ) the authority to make decisions.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;The picture below describes roles and tasks of project coordinator. Once You understand it you can get answers to your question.&#xA;Project coordinator is one step way from project managers in some organizations where they have both or in some company project coordinator does it all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dsJgx.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dsJgx.png&quot; alt=&quot;Project coordinator tasks&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Image source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techno-pm.com/2015/03/project-coordinator-roles-and-duties.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Techno-PM&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30037" LastEditorUserId="30037" LastEditDate="2018-08-14T11:57:43.287" LastActivityDate="2018-08-14T11:57:43.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22786" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22787" CreationDate="2017-11-06T11:29:49.397" Score="2" ViewCount="111" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my understanding there are two kinds of bugs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bugs that are identified before an acceptance by the client&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bugs that are identified afterwards&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In JIRA I think it is necessary to associate bug type 1 with an Epic as they are a condition for completing the Epic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But how do you treat bug type 2? As far as I understand it the epic should already be closed (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/22783/reopen-an-epic-after-a-feature-request&quot;&gt;my related question&lt;/a&gt;). Do you associate no epic at all? Do you use a &amp;quot;bugs&amp;quot; epic? Anything else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21801" LastEditorUserId="21801" LastEditDate="2021-02-16T08:53:02.063" LastActivityDate="2021-02-16T08:53:02.063" Title="How do you associate a bug identified after customer acceptance with the relevant epic?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;&lt;epics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22786" CreationDate="2017-11-06T14:05:51.113" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This kind of traceability can become difficult and problematic as one backlog item or even epics modify the behavior of a previous one, but if you do want to link them, you can still use JIRA's &quot;relates to&quot; functionality even if an issue is closed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/jiracorecloud/linking-issues-779296002.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://confluence.atlassian.com/jiracorecloud/linking-issues-779296002.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-11-06T14:05:51.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22788" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-06T15:03:25.243" Score="1" ViewCount="948" Body="&lt;p&gt;Am new to Agile and need some help in identifies user stories for a given feature. The feature is &quot;application should generate a delimiter space file which the fields given in the field specification document. First file will be a full feed, followed by incremental feed on weekly basis. each file has a file naming format&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;for this requirement, how do i come up with user stories? I want to split user stories in a way that each story is either 3 or 5 storypoints which is a testable entry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;plz help me with high level user stories that i should come up with?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30376" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2017-11-07T21:20:20.837" LastActivityDate="2017-11-07T21:20:20.837" Title="User story for a requirement which generates files and sends to external system" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;epics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22788" CreationDate="2017-11-06T15:50:03.557" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two questions here: how can we represent this in a user story and how do I break it up? Because nothing in agile or scrum forces us to use user stories (unless you're practicing XP specifically) let's start with the second question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Splitting Backlog Items&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We always want to try to deliver either customer value or at least proven knowledge value with each increment of the product. I don't know anything about your system, but at first glance, it seems like the weekly report is the full report with some extra filtering and care to make sure nothing gets missed, so there would be the first split. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that the full report is too big, we can focus on validating knowledge in two ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) if this file needs to be imported somewhere, have it build a fake file that the importing system successfully accepts. This proves out that you've got the structure right and then you just have to plug data in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Look for subsets of fields that can be added to the file with the other fields either blank or hard-coded, again to show that the pieces you are adding are working fine. You probably won't release this to production, but you can show users these pieces of data to make sure it's what they are looking for and you may catch data quality and integration problems in the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the circumstances of your system, you may have backlog items around performance as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;User Stories&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A user story expresses a need or a problem that a real user is having. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a front-desk clerk, I need warehouse inventory levels to refresh to&#xA;  my local store at least once per week so that I know what is available&#xA;  to sell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That could be a comma-delimited file, a web service, or a dozen other perfectly reasonable solutions. The potential advantage this gives me is that I can more easily deliver pieces of the need. For example, maybe I've got 20 data sources that need to flow into this update, but two of them contain our fastest-selling products. Well, I now know that there is huge value in delivering an update with just those two data sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It isn't impossible to go from having a detailed solution in place to a user story - you just have to pretend you don't have a solution in mind, write a user story that speaks to the need, then don't tell anyone the solution you were thinking of so you don't anchor them. Of course, I've never seen someone actually do that, so my recommendation in this situation is usually to keep using what you have already - it isn't a user story, but don't worry too much about that, then practice with user stories on the next thing before coming up with the solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-11-06T15:50:03.557" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22783" CreationDate="2017-11-06T19:01:12.577" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You create a new Epic with a similar name&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key point here is this: &lt;code&gt;after some time&lt;/code&gt; - if the customer already signed off on the original feature, it was right to close the Epic. If they've essentially now got new requirements and wish to enhance the feature, by all means track it in a new Epic named something like 'Feature v2'. I recommend you find out their other requirements as it may be that the enhancement to the existing feature is just one of many forming a Feature Set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="101" LastActivityDate="2017-11-06T19:01:12.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22792" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-07T08:56:54.520" Score="0" ViewCount="133" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just changed over to MS Project 2016 Pro from 2010 and have noticed that the Gantt Style is different. The better aesthetic look of the rounded bars and shading in 2010 has gone in 2016.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know how I can get them in 2016.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Michael Childs &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30379" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-14T09:45:09.360" LastActivityDate="2019-01-14T09:45:09.360" Title="Gantt Chart Style Change for 2016" Tags="&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22793" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-07T13:17:32.163" Score="-1" ViewCount="123" Body="&lt;p&gt;I started working in a stock broker that hired me and more two developers to build a software to help them. I am the newest member of the development team. My friend, another developer in the team, asked me to create a software engineering model to apply in the project, because the way they are doing now is not working. They do not have a specific model to follow, they just decide what to do verbally, the two owners of the stock broker (which are in this case, the clients) ask them to develop a feature so the developers just stop what they were doing and start working on it, they do not have a specific list of requisites or features that the product should have...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My idea was originally to try to implement and adapt Scrum in the following terms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create a product backlog ASAP.&#xA;The product owner role would be filled by the owners of the company.&#xA;Me and the other developer would be the Scrum Team.&#xA;One of the developers would be the Scrum Master.&#xA;We would have one sprint per week.&#xA;Meetings every friday to review the last sprint and plan the next one. (Sprint Review, Retrospective and Planning)&#xA;I do not see the necessity of a daily review meeting. I thought we could do sporadic meetings during sprints when one of the members feel necessary.&#xA;Is it possible that this is going to work? What can I do to make it better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30385" LastActivityDate="2017-11-07T16:07:45.583" Title="How can I organize 3 developers to work together with 2 clients?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22793" CreationDate="2017-11-07T13:34:01.740" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't use Scrum - it doesn't seem appropriate for this situation. &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/359674/4&quot;&gt;I wrote an answer on Software Engineering Stack Exchange about the minimum number of people to implement Scrum.&lt;/a&gt; Right now, you describe the bare minimum number of people to form a Scrum Team (a company owner as Product Owner, 3 developers with one being the Scrum Master).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can see a few hiccups with this plan. First, the Scrum Master needs to be able to be a coach to the Product Owner as well as the organization - can the person that you select to fill this role have the necessary influence with the owner who is acting as Product Owner and the rest of the organization? Second, do the people that you've identified have the necessary time, knowledge, and experience to function as Product Owner and Scrum Master?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of Scrum, I'd start by looking at an approach modeled after Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, create a board to contain work items. Work with the team and the people managing the product to determine what information is necessary for the team to be able to do work. This is sometimes called a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scruminc.com/definition-of-ready/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Definition of Ready&lt;/a&gt;. Instead of having the owners interrupt work, they begin to formulate a work item that meets the Definition of Ready. They may need help from the team to do this, though - set aside time on a regular basis to manage this. You can take some guidance from &quot;grooming&quot; or &quot;backlog refinement&quot; sessions from Scrum on how to manage Definition of Ready and ensuring work is in a good state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, prioritize the work items. I'd try to make sure that one person has the final say in priority ordering. The ordering of the work items determines the order that the developers do work. As soon as a developer finishes a work item, they look at the top of the backlog and choose the top-most item that they are capable of doing, progressing that from &quot;to-do&quot; to a done state. It is important to have work-in-progress (WIP) limits set and enforced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, the principles from &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_software_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lean Software Development&lt;/a&gt; should be helpful. Your planning, review, and retrospective activities should happen appropriately. You may choose an approach more like Scrum where these happen on a regular cadence. Or you may choose an approach where they happen as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a decent backlog, good definitions of &quot;ready&quot; and &quot;done&quot; for stories, and good habits around planning, review, and retrospective, you should be able to scale your process. If your team grows, you can consider adopting a framework such as Scrum. If you start growing to multiple teams, you can look at other frameworks such as Nexus or LeSS for scaling Scrum. You can also learn from Disciplined Agile Delivery with respect to tailoring and growing your process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2017-11-07T13:34:01.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22795" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-07T13:49:57.160" Score="1" ViewCount="72" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently joined a small software development team that has 1 product with multiple external customers. There is no specific project management methodology or framework being used, so development is rather ad-hoc. From what I understand, there is an ongoing challenge in that there has been a pattern of each release exposing bugs that were not caught during development and the release must then be rolled back to fix the bugs before reissuing the release again. As a result, the team distrusts its own releases, and delays its releases to avoid this pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, there is no dedicated QA or Testing person, but I think that is not necessarily a critical problem as while it would be ideal to have a primary tester, Agile teams should strive to be cross-functional. However the developers have been testing and approving their own code (I know...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to create a prioritised list of quality practices that should be implemented to improve this situation. In priority order, what are the most important quality practices to address, can you give a prioritised list of what you would address first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most immediate thing on my mind is to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stop Developers from approving the testing of their own code.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduce Lean-Agile Scrum practices (I am a scrum master), particularly a Definition of Done (DoD) to include quality criteria, Sprint Reviews to demo and inspect completed code, and Retrospectives to plan quality improvements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start introducing TDD and practices from &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/122014/what-are-the-key-points-of-working-effectively-with-legacy-code&quot;&gt;Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would you implement as a priority?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4574" LastActivityDate="2017-11-07T16:43:40.427" Title="What are the priority quality practices?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;quality&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22792" CreationDate="2017-11-07T13:50:16.510" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can't.  The 3d bars went away with the introduction of MSP 2013; it's not an option.  If 3d bars are really important to you, then you could &quot;downgrade&quot; back to MSP 2010, or try to make pretty charts in Visio.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2017-11-07T13:50:16.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22793" CreationDate="2017-11-07T14:39:38.503" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it possible that this is going to work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is pretty opinion-based. If you want my opinion, the answer is &quot;maybe&quot;. Thomas raises good points about potential difficulties, but depending on the Team, these may be easily surmountable. Which leads me to...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What can I do to make it better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I don't know, try it and see.&quot; The single most valuable tool in Scrum (and arguably all of Agile) is the Retrospective. Try something. Inspect how well it worked. Adapt. The precepts of Agile don't have to just apply to the product. They can (and should) apply to the process, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, don't spend &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; long worrying about what to try. Just pick a process and try it. Then (as a whole Team) refine it - or outright scrap it and try something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-11-07T16:07:45.583" LastActivityDate="2017-11-07T16:07:45.583" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22795" CreationDate="2017-11-07T14:57:48.327" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Ask the development team to suggest steps to improve quality&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your idea of introducing Retrospectives is good. As the Scrum Master you should be doing that (and Sprint Reviews) anyway. In the Retrospective, nudge the team to talk about quality issues. I am sure they are as much frustrated about poor quality as you are. They will also have ideas about what should be done to fix it. Extract those suggestions and help implement them. This approach has the following benefits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You have recently joined while the dev team has been there longer. They will know more about the root cause of the quality problems and what should be done to fix them. As the new person you do bring a fresh perspective. But use that to guide the discussion to avoid finger pointing and towards productive lines.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you work with the dev team and help implement their ideas there will be better buy-in for the ideas and less resistance to change.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As the Scrum Master you want to be a servant-leader rather than imposing your ideas on the team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2017-11-07T14:57:48.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22795" CreationDate="2017-11-07T16:43:40.427" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll try to raise various points in a few separate departments in the order I'd address them. Depending on what resources and support you have the effort vs benefit situation might dictate a different order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Specifications&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need clear, complete current and correct specifications. It doesn't matter too much how many people are involved in getting business speak requirements turned into developer speak specification. Imporant is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It get's done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It get's done properly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The responsibilities are clear&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have a single channel (if you have N devs all talking to M clients, stop)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things that can help here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A product owner (mainly because of point 4 above)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A definition of ready (to help with points 1 &amp;amp; 2)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Tests&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need reliable, repeatable and rigorous tests. I've worked as a tester in an environment that focused exclusively on manual testing. It's just not sustainable. As your feature set grows the testing needs grow exponentially. If you don't automate at least some of it you're screwed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things that help here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a dedicated tester. I know it's chic to talk about how devs should be able to test their own code. And it's certainly useful. But I've been a dev responsible for my own testing, I've been a dev with an assigned tester and I've been a tester assigned to a dev. There's something extremely liberating in being able to test someone else's code. Similarly having a good tester on your side is a lot more fun than juggling hatsyourself. We do separation of concerns in our code for a reason. So if you have a choice between pushing devs to test more and getting a dedicated tester this is not even a contest...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Automated tests. As I've said above, if you're working on anything more than a one shot project you're only punishing yourself if you don't do this. Doesn't matter if you embrace TDD or do it waterfall-style after development. Your testers should have to find every bug exactly once. If there is only one situation where you write a test, this is it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Automated builds. As a prerequisite for continuous testing and as a way to save time. I've seen a 30 step manual build process in the .NET world. Don't do that&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Continuous Testing. The tighter your feedback loop the faster you can fix bugs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Definition of Done. This doesn't do much on its own for quality. But it is helpful to raise awareness of what level of quality you are operating at and create a better mutual understanding what it means when each person says &quot;this is done&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Organisation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Early user feedback. No matter how diligent your tester and product owner are, some things will fall through the cracks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shorter iterations / less scope per iteration. The smaller your increment the less interactions you have to test at once. This can help make testing feel less of a chore.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2017-11-07T16:43:40.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22800" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-07T19:22:21.800" Score="1" ViewCount="218" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a team of 3 developers, 2 QA, a project manager, and me as stake holder (acting Chief Technical Officer in our small company). We have been working on developing a medium software product for a while, following Scrum process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We do 2 weeks sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM is dividing User Interface (UI) tasks into user stories and each user story has a backend and a front end task. We use JIRA for assigning tasks, writing requirements, preparing scenarios and logging work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use Gherkin to write requirements/user stories to make them clear. Each user story is an epic which contains subtasks of function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are facing a few problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The developers do NOT follow the requirements of the subtasks; they just depend on sprint planning memories and the UI ( add, edit, delete etc. )&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The devs depend on QA to actually test their code and do not do that themselves&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This lead to having buggy/missing functionality software delivered to the QA. Thus missing deadlines and affecting the overall quality, and the morale of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some suggestions to handle such issues?  I do not like to threaten or use warnings. I tend to keep things positive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30390" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-11-07T20:33:00.637" LastActivityDate="2017-11-11T17:46:15.253" Title="Make Sure Developers Follow Requirements &amp; Test Their Code" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22800" CreationDate="2017-11-08T08:53:26.180" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see the following potential problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Overcommitting. If your quality is still lacking after testing and fixing then you've obviously taken on more than your team can handle.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Definition of Done. You seem to either not have a sufficiently strong definition of done or you seem to be ignoring it and moving on to new tasks without actually completing the current ones.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lacking testing. Some quick research indicates that your 3:2 ratio is already pretty generous on the testing side. Is your QA using mostly manual tests? Are you using Gherkin just for specification or are you running tests with it as well? What's the division of responsibilities regarding testing between your QA and your devs? Or to ask in a different way: If your devs were to deliver software to QA in the quality you expect them to. What would QA still have to do? And what are they doing now in addition to that?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without knowing more details it's pretty hard to suggest concrete steps. The best you can do is talk with your team and find out why things are running the way they are. What does the scrum master have to say? What does the team say in the retrospectives? There are most likely sociological problems going in your team / department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2017-11-08T08:53:26.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16764" CreationDate="2017-11-08T18:40:56.183" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A VBA macro will do the trick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get personalized views, export to pdf and send by email to each one, with just a button click on your personalized toolbar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30405" LastActivityDate="2017-11-08T18:40:56.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22807" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-09T06:03:24.377" Score="0" ViewCount="99" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are doing 2-week sprint. As per scrum guideline, 2-week sprint should not take more than 2 hours to complete. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, sometimes we take more than 8 hours to complete SPM2. I'm sure something is going wrong here. Below are aspects we cover during SPM2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical Analysis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sometimes we also refer code to bring better clarity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Breaking stories in to tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the time consumed in step 1 &amp;amp; 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30305" LastActivityDate="2017-11-10T11:58:58.383" Title="How to optimise SPM2(Sprint Planning Meeting 2)?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22808" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22810" CreationDate="2017-11-09T07:49:41.050" Score="2" ViewCount="763" Body="&lt;p&gt;Which scrum meeting is suitable to perform technical analysis/architecture design on a story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30305" LastActivityDate="2017-11-09T14:25:45.147" Title="Which scrum meeting is suitable to perform technical analysis/architecture design on a story?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22807" CreationDate="2017-11-09T08:31:07.950" Score="2" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As per &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-planning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;scrum guide&lt;/a&gt; the sprint planning for a 2 week sprint should be timeboxed to about 4 hours. There's no mention of a second meeting but I've read that it used to be split into two meetings. So you shouldn't feel bad if you take more than 2 hours for your sprint planning. But the whole spring planning together still shouldn't take 8-10 hours...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improve your refinement. Depending on what exactly you do in step 1 and 2 you might want to transfer some of that work into the refinement process. Do you have a definition of ready? Could your backlog items be vertically subdivided further? (Ie. splitting &quot;Account deletion&quot; from &quot;account management&quot; to be done later is ok. But splitting &quot;account deletion&quot; into &quot;UI design&quot; and &quot;backend implementation&quot; is less so)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Limit depth of SPM. You might be planning your backlog items in more details than necessary. Difficult to say without further information.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increase focus. Are you using time discussing topics that are not necessary for sprint planning?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improve documentation. Are your requirements and specifications up to scratch? Is your architecture self explanatory or documented well enough to give you a sufficient overview for planning?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technically refinement can use up to 10% of your capacity. For two week sprints thats up to a full day. There's no specification when this is supposed to be done. So it's possible part of this has simply merged into your sprint planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2017-11-09T08:31:07.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22808" CreationDate="2017-11-09T09:00:07.943" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There are no special events for that kind of activities.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technical analysis or architecture design may be a part of backlog refinement or story implementation itself (or both).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, despite the fact that the Scrum Guide does not describe any special events, there are no obstacles to hold a special meeting for these purposes. Scrum is a framework and it can be configured flexibly. Everything which is not forbidden is allowed ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastActivityDate="2017-11-09T09:00:07.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22811" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-09T10:20:59.763" Score="-2" ViewCount="1565" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a Scrum Team with the following roles: developer, tester and product owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We want to create a 360 peer feedback form and need a set question-answer format for that. What could be the best set of questions and response choices for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few example questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is person punctual in Scrum meetings?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does he/she participate well in Scrum meetings e.g. share new ideas?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is he/she helpful? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28471" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-11-10T15:20:56.640" LastActivityDate="2019-03-02T16:22:54.827" Title="What should be asked in 360 feedback from Scrum Team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;feedback&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2019-03-02T20:04:36.843" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22812" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-09T11:11:03.697" Score="2" ViewCount="588" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an agile coach, what are first steps that you take when going to a company to ensure they adopt agile? Let's assume that this company has only heard of agile, they are working on a very traditional waterfall method, and have a large team of 10 devs, 5 qa, 1 pm. For example, do you start with a presentation and team formation? Or do you sit back doing some due diligence on how the company works?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5522" LastActivityDate="2017-11-10T11:40:56.403" Title="What are the steps for an agile coach when he starts with a new team?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22812" CreationDate="2017-11-09T13:24:31.590" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If language and expectations have not already been discusses, then do that first.  This is important throughout the organization for all impacted by the change.  There is a lot to the history of software development and the term &lt;em&gt;agile&lt;/em&gt;.  Start with &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cs.umd.edu/class/spring2003/cmsc838p/Process/waterfall.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Managing the Development of Large Software Systems&lt;/a&gt; (1970), the misunderstanding that led to the waterfall process and traditional &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pmi.org/about/learn-about-pmi/what-is-project-management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;project management&lt;/a&gt;.  Ensure that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Manifesto for Agile Software Development&lt;/a&gt; (2001) with its four values and twelve &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;principles&lt;/a&gt; is fully understood.  Share the groundwork for that philosophy which began in the 1990s (&lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/history.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;history&lt;/a&gt;) including &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;eXtreme Programming&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt;.  Promote agility to change direction to seize opportunities and terminate an effort when the cost-benefit is no longer acceptable along with its inherent &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/22741/risk-management-techniques-in-agile-project-development/22744#22744&quot;&gt;risk management&lt;/a&gt;.  Comparing and contrasting the benefits and challenges is often helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2017-11-09T13:24:31.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22814" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-09T14:07:44.680" Score="2" ViewCount="382" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a project file with a project calendar that shows up in the &lt;strong&gt;Change Working Time&lt;/strong&gt; dialog box's &lt;strong&gt;For Calendar&lt;/strong&gt; dropbox that is not being using in the project file. I've looked in the Calendar tab in Organizer, but cannot find the calendar in either the project specific or Global list of calendars. How can I find and delete this calendar from the project file?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7689" LastEditorUserId="7689" LastEditDate="2017-11-09T14:14:51.323" LastActivityDate="2019-08-31T23:02:25.293" Title="Looking for a way to remove an errant calendar from MS Project Professional 2013" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22808" CreationDate="2017-11-09T14:25:45.147" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt; promotes self-organization and the team implementing processes within the framework to support the contextual needs of those performing the effort.  Therefore there is no specific event designated for such needs.  All aspects of the work should be discussed as necessary throughout the effort.  Often these topics are discussed during Product Backlog refinement, Sprint Planning, and while creating the Increment within the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product Backlog refinement usually includes adding estimates to high priority items which may be implemented in the very near future.  In order to estimate the effort, the Development Team might need to perform initial or additional analysis and discuss how such a feature might affect the architecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the Sprint Planning event, the first few days of work is decomposed which almost always includes design and may require additional analysis or architectural discussions.  This is often the most explicit opportunity for these discussions to occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the work is underway during the Sprint, new information could be uncovered that requires the current plan to be revisited.  If the emerging work affects the Development Team's forecast for the Sprint then a discussion with the Product Owner should occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2017-11-09T14:25:45.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22814" CreationDate="2017-11-09T14:35:30.863" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's not a Resource calendar, your project may be corrupted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use VBA to delete calendars. Go to the VB Editor (Alt+F11), show the Immediate Window (Ctrl+G) and type this, replacing  with the appropriate calendar name and press Enter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;ActiveProject.BaseCalendars(&quot;&amp;lt;bad calendar&amp;gt;&quot;).Delete&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastActivityDate="2017-11-09T14:35:30.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22807" CreationDate="2017-11-09T15:23:31.827" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint Planning meeting has two topics, not two separate events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprint Planning is time-boxed to a maximum of eight hours for a one-month Sprint. For shorter Sprints, the event is &lt;strong&gt;usually&lt;/strong&gt; shorter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The event is not &lt;strong&gt;required&lt;/strong&gt; to be shorter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work planned for the first days of the Sprint by the Development Team is decomposed by the end of this meeting, often to units of one day or less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This emergence occurs as the Development Team works through the plan and learns more about the work needed to achieve the Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The effort of the Sprint should not be overly planned: the work emerges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;any one item can reasonably be &amp;quot;Done&amp;quot; within the Sprint time-box. Product Backlog items that can be &amp;quot;Done&amp;quot; by the Development Team within one Sprint are deemed &amp;quot;Ready&amp;quot; for selection in a Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be certain the the item is sufficiently understood by the Development Team prior to Sprint Planning. (See &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/22815/20712&quot;&gt;my answer&lt;/a&gt; to your other question.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vertical slicing(&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogs.adobe.com/agile/2013/09/27/splitting-stories-into-small-vertical-slices/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deltamatrix.com/horizontal-and-vertical-user-stories-slicing-the-cake/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://simpleprogrammer.com/2011/11/21/understanding-the-vertical-slice/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;) is an important technique for doing just enough of a feature to provide value.  When the scope of the item is smaller it is more easily understood, decomposed, implemented, tested, and (ultimately) delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tasking is often a sign of an opportunity to improve collaboration.  Individual pieces of work being determined and being addressed by individuals (especially in a development versus testing versus documentation manner) invites bugs and technical debt among other issues.  Try pair programming in order to provide code review as work occurs and enable shared knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-11-09T15:23:31.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22800" CreationDate="2017-11-09T15:40:14.207" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds like a team maturity issue regarding software development in general and Agile Software Development specifically; yourself included. I’m not saying this as a harsh criticism, just an observation based on the following evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The description of the problem is very tool- and process-centric (JIRA, Gherkin, etc.); whereas the Agile Software Development mindset tends to favor talking humans. (First Agile value.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It sounds like there is no Scrum Master or Coach (someone like me to help guide and condition the team), just a PM (and yourself...maybe you’re the coach??); and PMs don’t actually exist in Scrum (or any Agile framework I’m aware of; the responsibilities typically performed by a PM are divided across the team as a whole).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There seems to be a desire to avoid conflict on your part, which is pretty normal for technology people. Having said that...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the end of the day, we create potentially shippable increments every Sprint, if we (the team as a whole, you, the PM, QA, the developers) didn’t manage to put together a potentially shippable increment, then we failed. It’s not dev, or QA, or the PM, or whoever who are to blame. &lt;em&gt;We&lt;/em&gt;, as a team, failed. Why didn’t the team follow the requirements? Why didn’t the team write better requirements? Why is QA a separate team and viewed as a step in a process (Scrum is not a process)? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It seems like your team is most likely in the “shu” phase, so to speak. There’s nothing wrong with that, we all fluctuate; the hard part is realizing it. The problem/question uses “Agile” terms, but seems to involve blending different understandings of those terms...not everyone uses the term “epic” in the same way, for example. So, saying each user story is an epic, doesn’t really say anything.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get a coach; either for yourself or on your crew. Preferably not someone new to coaching. (I tend to think pairing newer coaches with seasoned teams, and vice versa can work out better...but I could be wrong, there’s always exceptions.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simplify your terminology within your team, and understand that people outside of your team may not have the same understanding. For example, I recommend using the term feature, and only feature, to describe the thing that describes something a user can do with the product (no epic, no user story, forget bananas)...everything else is just a layer of complexity and abstraction that annoys my fragile mind. “I don’t have to think, oh we’re talking about an epic, that means a feature that has &lt;em&gt;these qualities&lt;/em&gt;”; instead, it’s “we’re talking about a feature...something a user wants to do” (how long it takes, level of effort, doesn’t matter). But that’s me. That may not work for other people. Which brings us to...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did we create a potentially shippable increment? If not, why not? And how’s the team responding? These questions are my mantra going into the Sprint Retrospective. No, we did not; the developers say it’s QA’s fault for not being fast enough; QA says it’s the developer’s fault for not following the requirements; the developers say that specific complaint is because the PO didn’t write good requirements in the first place; the PO says the developers never asked any questions about the requirements so I thought they understood; and, someone who’s in the position your in is stuck asking, “Who do I believe?” (But it sounds like from the problem description your siding more with QA and the PO than the developers, why is that? Or, you could be totally on point regarding why the developers can’t deliver, at which point, run an experiment to see if that’s really the case, could be an expensive experiment though.) And, this type of interaction demonstrates a lack of trust and presence of defensiveness, fear, and so on within the team. The extreme alternative being the developers asking QA, “How can we make your job easier?” (More of a Lean mindset.) And QA asking the same things of the developers. (Less who’s to blame and more how can I help). Again, question of team maturity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get a coach. Just to repeat. Someone trained and skilled in observing humans, game theory, and business (it seems like technology isn’t really a concern for you, so having someone like me - developer with a UX background- would reenforce the gap...but you might be running low on business perspective and pressure). Again, could just be a coach for yourself to help with &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; continuous improvement journey...preferably the team though.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuhari&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuhari&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastEditorUserId="5788" LastEditDate="2017-11-11T17:46:15.253" LastActivityDate="2017-11-11T17:46:15.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22812" CreationDate="2017-11-09T21:42:50.627" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've spent a lot of time on this subject. I've been in a year-long collaboration with the online magazine AgileConnection.com on rolling out agile transformations. If you go to their website and search for &quot;Joel Bancroft&quot; you'll find my articles. Start with the one in Jan 2017. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nutshell framework is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start with Observation: Ask lots of questions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Education is key: Everyone gets the same training, regardless of&#xA;experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Setup good measures: Both for the project and for the agile transformation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inspect and Adapt at all levels: Really do something about the&#xA;impediments raised&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-11-09T21:42:50.627" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22706" CreationDate="2017-11-10T05:53:07.973" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The deadline does not affect schedule at all. It only marks a date that the task should finish at. If the tasks is delayed and its finish date is later than the deadline, a red sign appears in the info column indicating that the task did not meet the deadline, but that's it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding an ALAP constraint will move the task as late as possible, WITHOUT AFFECTING THE CURRENT PROJECT FINISH DATE. The task will move until its finish date is the same as the project's finish date. If this is the last task of the project, it will not move at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to force the task to finish in a certain date, you need to set a &quot;Finish no earlier than...&quot; constraint with the finish date you want. Actually, you can achieve exactly the same result by modifying the task's finish date manually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28645" LastActivityDate="2017-11-10T05:53:07.973" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22811" CreationDate="2017-11-10T10:50:27.147" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In theory there should not be a preset of standard questions - and I don't get, would you like also a set of predefined answers? - because the feedback should be given in a form of a statement from person A to person B. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal is to list a set of information through all the team and be focus on the less positive aspects, trying to get the best out of it. Watch out, level of maturity of a team requires more or less assistance. A new and not mature team can have issues if asked to give also negative feedback and if the balance is broken at the beginning, it is more difficult to fix it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do you need sets of questions-answers and which is the goal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27720" LastActivityDate="2017-11-10T10:50:27.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22812" CreationDate="2017-11-10T11:40:56.403" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would start with explaining Agile to the executive and coaching them until they fully understand the significance of an Agile transformation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once they have acknowledged what they are taking on I would be looking for them to identify the reasons they are adopting Agile. This will then provide the foundations for what is to come. For example, if they are looking to improve the companies ability to handle change then I would want them to identify how this will be measured and tracked. To me this is the key to a successful transformation as without a concrete indication of progress it is easy for the company to slip back into their old ways or adopt practices that are counter-productive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next I would be looking to work with both the delivery teams and the executive on a plan. Some organisations will be more tolerant of disruption than others and so can go at a faster pace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure they know what they are getting in to&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure they have a clear definition of what success is (and how to measure it)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build a plan (which will inevitably get continually adapted)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2017-11-10T11:40:56.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22807" CreationDate="2017-11-10T11:58:58.383" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a general rule, if sprint planning is taking too long then it is likely you are not doing enough backlog refinement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that teams should be spending something like 10% of their time in a sprint preparing for the next sprint. That means reviewing the backlog, discussing designs, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, don't feel like you need to plan everything in a sprint during sprint planning. The intention is to draw out the key information, but you should also leave room in the sprint for unplanned or unexpected work. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/teams-dont-need-to-think-of-everything-during-sprint-planning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mike Cohn describes this well here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2017-11-10T11:58:58.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22825" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22827" CreationDate="2017-11-10T13:06:51.443" Score="2" ViewCount="81" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a PM for a small development team. We have a mix of large transformation projects and small improvement projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're not good at estimating in man hours (and in fact I'm yet to meet a team of people that can do this consistently in any role). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result we've agreed within the team to use story points to estimate complexity, and over the next few sprints we'll figure out what the right amount of story points per sprint looks like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, how can I guide the rest of the business away from using time as a measure? How do we translate story points to allow them to make priority decisions? What's the best way to represent progress on projects (both inside and outside of a sprint? Points done vs Points remaining? Points per person? Something else? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30341" LastActivityDate="2017-11-13T16:48:22.747" Title="Stakeholder view of projects without time?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22826" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-10T14:11:14.993" Score="2" ViewCount="2016" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to make Scrum successful if any team member or team lead or product owner plays a role of scrum master?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30305" LastActivityDate="2020-06-12T09:58:49.133" Title="Can team lead or product owner act as a scrum master?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22825" CreationDate="2017-11-10T14:21:03.797" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea is that, once a team has stabilized, there are two things which become more or less constant:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The amount of story points in a sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;em&gt;average&lt;/em&gt; amount of time for a story point for the &lt;em&gt;team&lt;/em&gt; (not per person).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you want to get time estimates/project progress, just use those two. For example, to get remaining time for project, multiply the number of story points left by the amount of time per story point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing you should &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; do is focus on the amount of time a story point translates into &lt;em&gt;per person&lt;/em&gt;. As I mention &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/20090/kanban-scrum-what-to-do-if-team-cant-be-made-cross-functional/20092#20092&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, a cross-functional team doesn't mean everyone is equally good at everything. So a front-end developer would have a much higher points-per-time ratio for front-end tasks than back-end tasks. Averaged among the entire team, however, the points-per-time should remain constant regardless of the type of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-11-10T14:21:03.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22826" CreationDate="2017-11-10T14:27:10.617" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question about combining the Product Owner and Scrum Master is a frequent one. It's been asked &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/4707/why-cant-the-scrummaster-and-the-project-manager-be-the-same-person&quot;&gt;here on Project Management Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/106966/in-scrum-why-shouldnt-the-product-owner-and-scrummaster-roles-be-combined&quot;&gt;here (by me) on Software Engineering Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/avast-combining-the-scrummaster-and-product-owner-matey&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mike Cohn also wrote a blog post on the subject&lt;/a&gt;. Although the things done by the Product Owner and Scrum Master are typically done by someone in a Project Management role in other process frameworks, there are advantages to splitting up the role. I think that a very skilled person may be able to be a Product Owner and Scrum Master, it's easier to ensure that all of the functions are being done at their peak by splitting them up to be done by two people. The Product Owner can focus on optimizing the product while the Scrum Master can concentrate on optimizing the team and process used to make the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as combining the Scrum Master and a manager role, I think that can be done. If you look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pmi.org/disciplined-agile&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Disciplined Agile Delivery&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pmi.org/disciplined-agile/people/roles-on-dad-teams&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;role of Team Lead&lt;/a&gt; encompasses the things usually done by a Scrum Master. This is a case where Scrum doesn't necessarily address organizational needs. Organizations often need managers and leads to grow teams (by being involved in recruiting and hiring efforts), perform strategic planning and roadmapping, and support career development of team members, and so on. Scrum does not address these concerns. As long as the team lead or manager is supporting a self-organized team and facilitates these things rather than taking on all of these themselves (except for maybe career development and 1:1s), I don't see this as a contradiction of the Scrum principles. However, if the team lead tries to direct the way the team works and doesn't facilitate learning and self-organization, that would go against the Scrum principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases, your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Until your organization and team understands the underpinnings of the agile methods (the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Manifesto for Agile Software Development&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;12 Principles of Agile Software&lt;/a&gt;) and Scrum, I would want to stick as close as possible to a framework and then explore the things that are and aren't working. I want the Product Owner to be someone focused on the product, the Scrum Master to focus on the process, and the Team Lead to focus on the people (and, to be more faithful to Scrum, a member of the Development Team). The people in these roles should work together to maximize the effectiveness of the team, especially over time as the team and product change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2020-06-12T09:58:49.133" LastActivityDate="2020-06-12T09:58:49.133" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22826" CreationDate="2017-11-11T04:16:30.123" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a fine, and important line between can and should. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-po&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Product Owner&lt;/a&gt; is the sole responsible individual for the product. They can delegate every responsibility and activity assigned to them; except the responsibility for the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-sm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Master&lt;/a&gt; is responsible for knowing Scrum, facilitating meetings when needed, making sure those participating and interacting with the Scrum Team understand Scrum and the impact their interactions are having on the team, while protecting the team from reprisal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my estimation and experience, part of the job of both also includes getting the &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-dev&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Development Team&lt;/a&gt; (those responsible for the manufacture of the product) eventually become so independent that both roles become obsolete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no such thing as a &quot;Team Lead&quot; according to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; (as of this writing). Therefore, you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; have one but, from a purely Scrum Guide perspective, they would be a Development Team member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anything is possible to be successful depending on the people involved. The question is whether it is Scrum or not. And then whether that is a good or bad thing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum is free and offered in this Guide. Scrum’s roles, events,&#xA;  artifacts, and rules are immutable and although implementing only&#xA;  parts of Scrum is possible, the result is not Scrum. Scrum exists only&#xA;  in its entirety and functions well as a container for other&#xA;  techniques, methodologies, and practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said all that. If you hear what is the &quot;ideal&quot;...no, you would not do that. Context switching between roles can become quite problematic. When I was the technical lead, the architect, and the Scrum Master for a team, we made an agreement that I would say from which perspective I was speaking whenever I spoke. I would even change my position in rooms based on the role I was embodying at the time. Scrum Master: Standing at the whiteboard, asking questions to help facilitate discussion. Tech lead or architect: I would sit at the table with the rest of the team. Eventually, the team picked up on this change without me having to make it explicit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concept of context/role switching is why we took the roles and responsibilities traditionally held by an individual and spread them across one PO, one SM, and roughly 7 other people. The PO is typically out and in (they come from the outside, the business and user world, into the Scrum Team). The SM is typically in and out (they from inside the Scrum Team to the outside world, to remove impediments, inform others on the impacts they are having on the team, and so on).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the problems you can find in teams is when the PO and SM are looked &lt;em&gt;as&lt;/em&gt; managers. Because then the Development Team can begin to just give in to them. The way the practitioners with my organization talk about it is that SMs have influence but no authority. POs, ideally (from our experience) also have accountability but no autority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we mean by authority is that no one has a stick. They don't do employee appraisals. They don't have the ability to get anyone fired. None of that. So, from an organizational structure perspective, what you might end up with are functional managers (who are not on the Scrum Team); these would be things like the BA Functional Manager, they hold the &quot;purse strings&quot; to a vertical slice of the organization. The Scrum Team is a horizontal slice &lt;em&gt;across&lt;/em&gt; the organization aggregating human resources in order to build a team with the skills and knowledge necessary to complete the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastActivityDate="2017-11-11T04:16:30.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22811" CreationDate="2017-11-11T04:57:56.123" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like your ideal feedback form would consist of your team's standards for &quot;being a good team member&quot; in the form of Y/N questions. I suggest that you take that question to your team directly, either as a form of retrospective or in a separate meeting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the standards to which each of us should aspire as a team&#xA;member?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are examples of team member behavior that you find particularly helpful?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...that you think contributes well to the success of the team / increases team velocity?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are examples that you find particularly unhelpful?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...that you think creates obstacles for the team / slows team velocity?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I might have people submit answers to these questions, &amp;amp; perhaps others that the team suggested, anonymously on slips of paper, then read &amp;amp; discuss. I would do it anonymously in case some of the unhelpful examples were particularly pointed, which could happen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The end product would be a bullet list of Do's &amp;amp; Don'ts, or some other formulation, that you could then use in 360 feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The strengths of this approach are:&#xA;  - it is initially presented in the context of &quot;how do we strive for excellence&quot;, rather than anything touchy like constructive feedback&#xA;  - it is created transparently by your team&#xA;  - it is specific to your team's context&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding that last point... it's not like there's an objective, context-invariant answer to the question &quot;what makes a good team member&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could also be that after such a discussion, and the formulation of a &quot;team member standards of excellence&quot; that was adopted and posted, you might find less need for the 360 feedback to address issues with individuals. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2017-11-11T04:57:56.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9127" CreationDate="2017-11-11T16:45:59.630" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my organization, someone was promoted from Project Coordinator to Project Manager this year, so yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the book Fast Forward MBA in Project Management (by Eric Verzuh) a typical career progression for project management is Project Expediter -&gt; Project Coordinator -&gt; Project Manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29639" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2017-11-11T17:14:32.673" LastActivityDate="2017-11-11T17:14:32.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22826" CreationDate="2017-11-11T22:13:21.897" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience this role shouldn't be combined. There should be a person who looks over the team and their workload and a person who looks at what is the best for the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also combining a productive lead, like a lead programmer, with a scrum master role takes away from both. That person will not have enough time to look after how the team is doing and how the code base is doing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastActivityDate="2017-11-11T22:13:21.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22825" CreationDate="2017-11-11T22:32:26.560" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on my experience, I would translate different story point to a date or time when something is ready for either QA or shipping. When a person is not part of the development team they will have very hard time to understanding story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you have a feature that is estimated at 8 story points inside the team, give your business team an estimate in the range of: &quot;Usually it takes the team 2 weeks to complete this size of a task&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be the translator between your team and the business team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16155" LastActivityDate="2017-11-11T22:32:26.560" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22835" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22836" CreationDate="2017-11-12T15:30:54.900" Score="3" ViewCount="306" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am the Agile Coach for a team which comprises of 4 completely different platforms (iOS, Android, Javascript, Windows) each with 1 or 2 engineers. There are 2 automated/manual testers in total and 1 PO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All 4 platforms work from precisely the same backlog of user stories (we have separate identical user stories for each platform.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently we have a single kanban board in Jira pulling data from 4 different projects. We have a swimlane for each platform but share WIP limits, standups, retro's and demos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Current problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Different platforms switch off during stand-ups since they only care &#xA;about their platform &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Different platforms don't work with other&#xA;platform team members since they only care about their own platform&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no team cohesion across platforms just silos &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team members don't help team members on other platforms  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no technical leadership across all the platforms&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is, should these platforms bit split into 3 different teams or what technique could I use to fix this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastActivityDate="2019-04-17T13:54:06.433" Title="How to make an Agile team comprised of 4 platforms work?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22835" CreationDate="2017-11-12T21:20:01.073" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless you can provide a single Sprint Goal that allows all of the engineers to focus on  a single outcome that is relevant for everyone there is little value in having a single team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you only have 2 people in a team then the overhead of Scrum and other agile practices are a little redundant. Just have them split into teams of two and figure out how to fulfill the backlog from their platform/product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If however if you can have a single unified goal then they should care about each other's work at the Daily Scrum. This will give them back focus, and allow them to work together, rather than separate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastActivityDate="2017-11-12T21:20:01.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22835" CreationDate="2017-11-13T00:15:51.483" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like the team has far too much pull and the PO not enough. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team having 4 identical backlog items is a big red flag. If you are starting with one and then splitting it for them, it's just enabling the behavior. Leave it as one and the team as a whole either finishes it or doesn't. Sometimes at first the teams can stay silo'd and move forward on collective backlog items effectively, but it's an almost impossible set of coincidences needed to keep that equilibrium. As soon as someone goes on vacation or one platform hits a snag, the need for cross-discipline team members becomes readily apparently. From here, you can coach the team on whatever path forward (and there are many) works for them to resolve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A word of warning as you venture into this though: I've run into a lot of developers who resist this because they don't want to be a jack-of-all-trades and that is a completely reasonable opinion. As much as it is unreasonable of the developers to think they can learn one skill and make the company cater to that silo, it is equally unreasonable for the company to think everyone should develop all skills. You want enough overlap that the team isn't skills-fragile. Exactly how much overlap that is will be different for every team and the scrum master should help them find it, not force them into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-11-13T00:15:51.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22835" CreationDate="2017-11-13T04:21:11.240" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't talk about boring technical stuff in the daily. Talk about the process and the blockers and the product etc. Demand that team members respect each other for 15 minutes each day by actively listening to each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its still all the same product right, and the same organisation, and the same process, you are still using the same backend or API, so 90% of what is discussed in the daily should be interesting for everyone. Platform specific stuff can be mentioned and should still be listened to but this should only be 10%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And because you want these UIs to be working in a similar way across platforms that should be discussed as well, so more like 95% common stuff, 5% platform specific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It makes sense that specialists dont work that closely with each other if they are developing separate front ends so dont expect to much of that though. Actually scratch that they should be working closely together to make sure the UIs dont diverge too much and work roughly the same across platforms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try and be a bit more product focused than platform focused. Include the back-end and business guys in the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="763" LastActivityDate="2017-11-13T04:21:11.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22840" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22843" CreationDate="2017-11-13T09:57:47.740" Score="1" ViewCount="1377" Body="&lt;p&gt;Performance appraisals are a single most challenge we have to crack yet. We still try to gauge individual performance in a team, which I feel is not the right way to appraise agile teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30305" LastEditorUserId="30305" LastEditDate="2017-11-13T11:40:34.080" LastActivityDate="2017-11-13T16:41:56.380" Title="How to do performance appraisals for agile teams" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;performance&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22840" CreationDate="2017-11-13T15:07:11.533" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because it isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can either have a team that performs at the cost of individual goals or individuals that perform at the cost of common goals. You cannot have both. Individual goals will always supercede common goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea behind self-organizing teams is that they know best what needs to be done, what goals need to be achieved and can/will tell you if a member is not carrying his weight. Many aspects of what makes a good team are incredibly hard to track on an individual level. And a mismatch between what you need and what you are appraising by can have a significant negative impact on your results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information I strongly suggest reading &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&amp;amp;field-keywords=peopleware&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Peopleware&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2017-11-13T15:07:11.533" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22840" CreationDate="2017-11-13T16:41:56.380" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The model I've seen successfully used is a 50/50 model. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first 50% of a person's review is based on the overall team performance. Everyone in the team gets the same percentage and this is based on the team's ability to deliver working, defect-free, product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second 50% is based on the individual and their meeting development goals. These are not work product related. Instead, they are goals that will lead to them improving as an employee. Learning a new software language, developing public speaking skills, taking leadership training, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By doing this, it promotes the team helping the team to improve as everyone on the team gets the same score for 50% of their overall review. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-11-13T16:41:56.380" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22825" CreationDate="2017-11-13T16:48:22.747" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I voted up Sarov's post. I'm going to just add some nuance to it. I've found that team estimating, even when you get away from hours, still isn't super accurate. It is great for helping the team figure out how much they can do in the next sprint. It's not so great for determining how long the overall project will work. We are constantly learning, so our estimates are constantly changing. Something that was a 13 this sprint may well be a 5 six sprints from now. It's also really easy to game estimates to give what management wants to see. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For forecasting I've moved to Troy Magennis' Cycle Time model. This takes the average cycle time (time from when work starts to when work is done) and plugs it into sophisticated Monte Carlo simulations to generate high probability date or &quot;work we can get done&quot; forecasts. You can find his open source materials via his website, &lt;a href=&quot;http://focusedobjective.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://focusedobjective.com/&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-11-13T16:48:22.747" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22721" CreationDate="2017-11-14T11:26:07.823" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Agile retrospective can be called as a &quot;lessons learned&quot; meeting. The team reflects on how was everything in the previous sprint and then discuss the changes they want to make in the next iteration. The attendees should be limited to the project development team and the ScrumMaster. The ScrumMaster generally act as moderator of this meeting and should listen to his team member carefully. The PO and other managers should only join the meeting if invited by the team to discuss specific issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team members can discuss the process which's been followed and give any suggestions for improvement.  The team members discuss any idea that could improve their productivity.  The ScrumMaster prioritizes actions and lessons learned based on team direction.  The retrospective helps build the team's sense of ownership and its self-management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8318" LastActivityDate="2017-11-14T11:26:07.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22849" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22850" CreationDate="2017-11-14T13:41:34.843" Score="2" ViewCount="469" Body="&lt;p&gt;When we have a story which can pass but produces a defect to be fixed, the PO or BA involved will usually write a new story and immediately insert it into the sprint on the basis that it is important enough because it is a business priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this proper for scrum? If not, what should be done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29374" LastActivityDate="2017-11-14T19:37:29.360" Title="Creating defect stories and inserting them immediately" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22849" CreationDate="2017-11-14T13:49:02.407" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;only the Development Team can change its Sprint Backlog during a Sprint&quot;. This means that it is wrong for anyone other than a member of the Development Team to add an item to the Sprint Backlog. The Product Owner should be adding items to the Product Backlog, prioritizing them, and working with the Development Team to refine them so they can be worked on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I see a broader issue. If you are working on a Product Backlog Item and, in the course of testing the work, find that the work is not complete, it may be necessary to fix the defect to ensure that there is a Potentially Releasable Increment at the completion of the Sprint. The Development Team should work with the Product Owner to figure out if the issue would prevent the Increment from being released. You may also need to consider other process requirements before simply fixing the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2017-11-14T13:49:02.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22849" CreationDate="2017-11-14T17:05:44.060" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I work with teams I help them to differentiate between &quot;a task to complete a story&quot; and a &quot;defect&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team has not reached the Definition of Done, then there is no defect. The story is just &quot;not done&quot;. If they find an issue, before reaching Done, I coach teams to just create another task (sub-task in Jira) for the story. Until all your tasks are complete, the story isn't done. It puts the focus on completion, not on tracking defects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, after a story has reached Done and has been demoed, a defect is found, then it's a new Product Backlog Increment. The product owner decides it's priority and asks the team to take it into a sprint through the normal planning process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-11-14T17:05:44.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22849" CreationDate="2017-11-14T19:37:29.360" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you're describing isn't technically Scrum; it violates several key Scrum and agile principles. If your Scrum-like process allows for changes in scope or level of effort within an iteration in ways that routinely impact the Sprint Goal, then you will have to reduce your forecast for each Sprint to account for the defects and uncertainty introduced by your process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You appear to be conflating bugs/defects with new work, because the following is an agile oxymoron (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When we have &lt;strong&gt;a story which can pass but produces a defect to be fixed&lt;/strong&gt;, the PO or BA involved will usually write a new story and immediately insert it into the sprint on the basis that it is important enough because it is a business priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By definition, you can't have a story that meets a reasonable Definition of Done (DoD) but is also &quot;defective.&quot; Depending on the DoD agreed upon between the Development Team and the Product Owner, a story could possibly be &quot;Done&quot; while generating technical debt or iterative improvements that need to be addressed in a future Sprint, but &lt;em&gt;cannot&lt;/em&gt; result in an unreleasable increment because of serious bugs, defects, or regressions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, if the issues identified are serious enough that they must be resolved &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the increment can be released, the increment can't be considered &quot;done.&quot; On the other hand, if the issues don't prevent the increment from being considered as releasable by the Development Team or the Product Owner (or according to the agreed-upon Definition of Done), then the issue is &lt;em&gt;new work&lt;/em&gt; that must be placed onto the Product Backlog and scheduled for a future iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Recommendations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team should undertake the following action items as part of the framework's ongoing inspect-and-adapt cycle:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ensure that each Sprint has a cohesive Sprint Goal that ties the work together with a clear scope and a focused objective.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ensure that only the Development Team is able to add work directly to the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ensure that any reviews performed by the business analysts or Product Owner as part of the acceptance criteria for stories are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Part of the formal Definition of Done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Included in the estimation of each story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Create a project definition that distinguishes clearly between bugs/defects and new work in order to prevent scope creep.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reframe your Sprint process as a way to plan and scope work in cycles, as opposed to treating is as a way to task the team with work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What all of these items have in common is that they work together to ensure that each Sprint is treated as a time box in which the team can develop a potentially-releasable increment. Because Scrum is an &lt;em&gt;iterative&lt;/em&gt; development methodology, the underlying principle is that all work must be scoped for, planned, and delivered in tightly-bound time boxes. &lt;strong&gt;Any practice that puts Sprint Goals in jeopardy or that doesn't respect the time box is an anti-pattern, and should be dealt with in the team's Sprint Retrospectives and other inspect-and-adapt ceremonies.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-11-14T19:37:29.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22853" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-15T04:30:15.913" Score="5" ViewCount="240" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can waterfall method and agile method be used in a single project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30474" LastActivityDate="2019-09-24T19:41:18.650" Title="software development through collaboration of waterfall and agile methods" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22853" CreationDate="2017-11-15T08:28:25.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Waterfall is based on the premise that catching errors early - before much is invested - is cheaper than catching errors late. Thus you plan more upfront to avoid surprises later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile is based on the premise that the above is a good step to preventing errors but will not protect you from changes and complications. So operating iteratively and on a smaller scope accomplishes the same as waterfall and more on top of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could try and argue something like &quot;Scrum really just is iterative, overlapping waterfall&quot; or &quot;Agile simply advocates doing much shorter waterfall subprojects, one after another&quot; and depending on who asks and what they want you might be successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can incorporate several agile principles like close collaboration, prioritisation, customer involvement, continuous testing, values like openness, courage and respect into waterfall project and consider this mission accomplished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that both waterfall and agile tend to come with certain expectations. It's generally more the expectation that clash with each other than the practices advocated by the &quot;models&quot;. And it's generally the expectations that tend to go with waterfall that make waterfall problematic. Like the expectation that the waterfall gantt chart has prophetic qualities. Or the expectation that because you've added some buffer time at the end you can easily squeeze in a few more features or &quot;clarifications&quot; of features. Where as agile rigorously opposes these...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; do successful projects with waterfall just as with agile. Trying to shove both into the same project is generally a sign that not everyone in your group understands the point of agile. And you're trying to solve disfunctionalities that people aren't willing to let go of yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2017-11-15T08:28:25.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22855" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-15T08:51:10.250" Score="2" ViewCount="299" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a member of Scrum Team. However, I'd like to get a sense of the health of a Scrum Team. What is the best way to understand a Scrum Team's performance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be more specific, things I would like to know:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the team running at maximum efficiency?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the team improving over the time?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the team motivated enough?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the team meeting their commitments?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the team meeting coding standards?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30305" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-11-15T14:14:20.943" LastActivityDate="2017-11-16T09:15:03.603" Title="As an outsider, how would I know overall health of a Scrum Team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22853" CreationDate="2017-11-15T09:04:22.807" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's impossible.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All agile methodologies should be iterative. Otherwise, they will not correspond to the first and third &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;principles of the manifesto&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and&#xA;  continuous delivery of valuable software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Deliver working software frequently, from a  couple of weeks to a&#xA;  couple of months, with a  preference to the shorter timescale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Waterfall is non-iterative approach by it &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;definition&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The waterfall model is a linear sequential (non-iterative) design&#xA;  approach for software development, in which progress flows in one&#xA;  direction downwards (like a waterfall) through the phases of&#xA;  conception, initiation, analysis, design, construction, testing,&#xA;  deployment and maintenance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you can't use iterative and non-iterative approaches at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: There are several methodologies that are neither a classical waterfall nor agile (RUP or Spiral model, for example). They can take something from both approaches, but they are neither the one nor the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2017-11-15T17:56:51.597" LastActivityDate="2017-11-15T17:56:51.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22855" CreationDate="2017-11-15T14:20:57.187" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm not a member of scrum team. However, I'd like to get a sense of&#xA;  the health of a scrum team. What is the best way to understand a scrum&#xA;  team's performance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK the 1st main indicator is ... are you getting code  produced after every sprint.&#xA;Signs of problems include User Stories being carried over from sprint to sprint.&#xA;Other signs would include a team that is not having fun &amp;amp; getting along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is the team running at maximum efficiency? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team should be working at a speed that can be kept up indefinable .. so &quot;Maximum efficiency&quot; is not an indicator that most of us would use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is the team improving over the time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check the number of Bugs that the team gets ... It should be going down in an ideal world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also check with the team that they are happy. That's a sign that issues are being resolved and the team is maturing. Perhaps attending the sprint retrospectives would be helpful&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is the team motivated enough?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to ask them really, attend some stand-ups or retrospectives to gauge the mood of the team&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is the team meeting their commitments?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should see this in the sprint review or in any outputs your company has from the sprint reviews&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is the team meeting coding standards?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who cares? a fully functioning scrum team will work to effective standards, you don't need to chase them up on it. if they are breaking basic rules ... you'll see it in the rise in the number of Bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29246" LastActivityDate="2017-11-15T14:20:57.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22855" CreationDate="2017-11-15T14:23:52.100" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There aren't really any differences between Scrum and other approaches, for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is the team running at maximum efficiency?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no real way to tell if they're at their 'maximum' (and what does that even mean? If a Team goes insanely overworked for a week and gets lots of work done, and then all die from stress-induced issues, is that 'maximum efficiency'?), however you can gauge efficiency by just measuring their output and comparing it to some standard (previous efficiency, other Teams', etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is the team improving over the time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very straightforward... just measure output over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is the team motivated enough?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Highly dependent on your role in relation to the Team. If you're their manager, I'd suggest regular 1-1s where you encourage them to bring up any issues. Attending Retrospectives can also be invaluable, especially if 1-1s are infeasible. Just make sure you're only &lt;em&gt;attending&lt;/em&gt;, not participating. You're not part of the Team, so don't take over their Retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is the team meeting their commitments?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, straightforward... The Team makes a commitment every Sprint. Do they meet it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is the team meeting coding standards?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, straightforward. Look at their code. Does it meet the company's standards?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-11-15T14:23:52.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22855" CreationDate="2017-11-15T15:25:20.033" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is the team running at maximum efficiency? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The word maximum is problematic. I would look at things like predictability in completing sprint goals and frequency of interruptions to start. Also, what is their cycle time on backlog items? Or lead time on feature delivery? Kanban is all about efficient flow - the team can try applying Kanban techniques to their Scrum to get more visibility into their process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is the team improving over the time? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask the team or Scrum Master what improvements they've tried that have worked - and haven't. Watch from sprint to sprint to see if their retro takeaways result in actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is the team meeting their commitments? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should be self-evident. Don't stop here though. Meeting commitments is the beginner's game. It's a fair measure for teams starting out with Scrum, but once they can consistently deliver software and are in better control of their work and environment, they should be moving to collaboratively solve problems with the business. The &quot;commitment&quot; aspect should fade away as both groups get more inline with their efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is the team meeting coding standards?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Great question actually. Are they using some sort of static code analysis tool? Are they consistently using code reviews or some form of pairing? Perhaps even more importantly, are their coding standards improving over time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-11-15T15:25:20.033" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22861" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22863" CreationDate="2017-11-15T19:58:11.247" Score="2" ViewCount="1273" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really wanted to find out what people out there think about Scrum for a SQL Server Production DBA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen one article (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sqlservercentral.com/blogs/sqlsandwiches/2011/05/29/can-scrum-work-for-the-dba/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.sqlservercentral.com/blogs/sqlsandwiches/2011/05/29/can-scrum-work-for-the-dba/&lt;/a&gt;) that talks about this, but this is from 2011. &#xA;There might be things and perspective changes that happened since 2011 to the present 2017 situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's something that could help you provide you some insight to the type of situations that the production DBA deals with on a usual basis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.Schema/Data Promotions from Test Servers to production servers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.Monitoring Servers/Databases continuously throughout the day(Checking the server for space, Memory,CPU etc)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3.Backups/Restores/Disaster Recovery Planning and Implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4.Installation/Management/Monitoring/Usage of DBA Tools like Idera, Redgate, Different versions of Visual Studio's/SSMS's etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5.Creating/Scheduling/Monitoring Jobs/SSIS packages, SQL Scripts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;6.Sometimes Creation/Deployment of SSIS packages/SSRS reports/SSAS Cubes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;7.Maintenance/Patch Management/Upgrades/Migrations of SQL Servers etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does all of this fall into Scrum and how to deal with it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is being implemented as a new thing from the management side and points are being assigned for everything that is being done.&#xA;1 point is being equated to 1 hour, 1/2 point is 1/2 hour and so on.&#xA;So everyday the DBA is being asked what is being done in the daily scrum and lets say a Database is being backed up, the manager(who is also a scrum master) says: All you are doing is setting up the script and letting the backup go. You aren't doing a thing until the backup is done. What should the DBA do?&#xA;So no points for monitoring the servers/databases since they are a 24*7 job or rather a full 8 hour job for the DBA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In scrum/sprint, is time really associated with Fibonacci series(0,1,2,3,5,8,13,21 and so on) points associated with time in someway or the other?&#xA;From what i have learned this is something to do with complexity and never to equate with time, but is that what management does anyway?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what really is happening in the name of scrum is that, we are being asked to provide the story, estimated/actual points/time for the story, time started, time completed, and details as to what was done to complete the story.&#xA;Almost the same as this!! (&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/6653/is-scrum-a-status-report-meeting-or-a-developer-meeting/6657#6657&quot;&gt;Is Scrum a status report meeting or a developer meeting?&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this Agile/Scrum. What is it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How Does scrum fit in for the production DBA in this way? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are you a DBA that uses&#xA;scrum?If so, how do you make it work? If not, how do you get around&#xA;the manager who loves scrum and insists that you be a part of it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30484" LastEditorUserId="30484" LastEditDate="2017-11-15T20:41:16.830" LastActivityDate="2017-11-16T09:03:22.820" Title="Scrum for the DBA?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22861" CreationDate="2017-11-15T20:17:52.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like a lot of red flags for me. As Professional Scrum Trainer I read quite a few scary bits.  To start:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Yes, Scrum and DBA work can go well together.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;One, estimation.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the Sprint planning work is planned and optionally estimated. Not something you do during the daily scrum. And while relative estimation techniques are useful for forecasting, they're kind of useless to plan actual work, especially if you clearly have an idea of the amount of time taken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at recurring tasks and making sure they're part of the sprint's plan is something which fits in Scrum, it would be done during the sprint planning. For these things, especially when the work is well known, I'd just subtract it from your capacity for more challenging tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hourly estimation directly related to story points is a clear no-go area, especially if there is a direct correlation from 1 point = 1 hour. There's lots of documentation on Story points, so I'll leave it at that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Two, daily scrum&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The daily scrum is for tracking progress towards the goal of the sprint and for planning the day to come. Not for &quot;scoring point&quot;, I wouldn't care how many points something is worth. If your work for the next day is planned, there is nothing in the way of achieving the Sprint goal and you feel you are productive, that would be the most important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also a moment for the team to work together to come up with a plan for the next 24h. Not for a moment to report status to a manager. The manager can track the progress of the work through visualizing it and through tthe sprint review at which point in time the work is demonstrated and reviewed. In your case you'd rarely directly demo your work, it should be evident as part of other things landing on the environment or through the solution of problems that impacted users of the environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Three, the nature of the work&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way your role as a DBA is described above is quite traditional. Promoting schemas between environments is something that can be automated quite well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lots of monitoring can be configured to trigger alerts, not requiring a lot of manpower to actually perform the task of monitoring. The time required to expand drives and allocate resources can be automated or making sure you more space allocated when you expand is an easy way to reduce the overhead of these kinds of jobs by reducing their frequency and optionally limiting their impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The act of backing up and restoring is something which can be configured on a schedule. Manual acts of backing up or restoring are something which can often be delegated to other members of the team as well and may not require the work of a DBA.  Same applies to rolling out new tool versions, putting the installer on a share and either signalling team members to upgrade when convenient or using remote distribution techniques can easily distribute these things to desktops, server etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How to proceed&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try critically looking at the work that can be automated or can be delegated. Spend your time on the work that is actually complex and requires your specific skills. Work with other members of the Scrum team to ensure they are able to perform many of the less complex work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use the retrospective to analyze your work and the work others perform and see where optimization is possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work with the team to get rid of the need to &quot;score points&quot;, scrum isn't about doing as many tasks as possible, it's doing as little as possible to get the most work done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Tricks to combine operational work with development&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teams that have more operational work on their backlog often keep a Product Backlog and an Operational Calendar. The product backlog contains work that occurs because new features are deployed or changes are made to the environment, issues detected from recurring inspections may end up on the product backlog for investigation and solving. The operational calendar contains all the work that occurs on a schedule and can be planned way in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other teams combine Scrum and Kanban. New feature development and larger changes are planned through the product backlog. Recurring work is mostly automated and incidents are treated through a &quot;priority lane&quot; which uses kanban and isn't planned at the start of every sprint. Over time the team will learn how much time needs to be reserved for ad-hoc work. This way of working steps away from recurring tasks and calendar based long-term plans, it takes on the work as it happens for some of the work. Other work is ordered throught the product backlog and the team's velocity can be used to forecast likely points in time when this work is taken on (in which sprint).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7393" LastEditorUserId="7393" LastEditDate="2017-11-15T20:23:53.060" LastActivityDate="2017-11-15T20:23:53.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22861" CreationDate="2017-11-16T09:03:22.820" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this Agile/Scrum. What is it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. This is Command and Control dressed up as Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How Does scrum fit in for the production DBA in this way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is for work that's difficult to estimate but shares a common goal that can be worked towards. What you describe is more of a collection of distinct tasks that are either scheduled or completely ad-hoc. Something like Kanban would be a much better fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Also sooooo many scrum mistakes:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;points are being assigned for everything that is being done. 1 point is being equated to 1 hour, 1/2 point is 1/2 hour and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Points in scrum are not assigned by management but by those who do the tasks. Also points have no translation to hours. Ideally they'll end up having something of a correlation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So everyday the DBA is being asked what is being done in the daily scrum&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not a daily scrum this is a status report. A daily scrum is for the team to sync up and decide/determine/share what is going to be done. It is for the team to communicate problems to the scrum master. It is for the benefit of the team, not anyone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the manager (who is also a scrum master &lt;strong&gt;(no he is not)&lt;/strong&gt;) says: All you are doing is setting up the script and letting the backup go. You aren't doing a thing until the backup is done. What should the DBA do? So no points for monitoring the servers/databases since they are a 24*7 job or rather a full 8 hour job for the DBA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He's not entirely wrong on that. Much of this work can be automated. Still you have to schedule tasks by the effort required in your current situation not the effort required given maximum automation. Also a certain amount of time needs to be calculated for context switching and whatever manual steps do remain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In scrum/sprint, is time really associated with Fibonacci series(0,1,2,3,5,8,13,21 and so on) points associated with time in someway or the other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are describing is an &lt;em&gt;aid&lt;/em&gt; to help estimate backlog item points. The idea of using Fibonacci numbers is that they help demonstrate the larger uncertainty inherent in estimating larger tasks. It is not necessary to do it like this IF you understand that higher level estimates are less reliable and that a large task of X points most likely will not break down into N subtasks with a total of X points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But again. These are points not hours! Estimating in hours conveys a false accuracy to the uninformed. People are generally bad in estimating absolute values like hours, but management is really good grabbing onto them. People however are much better at estimating relative values (ie. is cleaning your apartment more or less work than cleaning your car?). The predictive power of scrum does not stem from accurate estimates but from consistent estimates and the ability to compare past estimates with actual outcomes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2017-11-16T09:03:22.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22864" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-16T09:11:52.960" Score="0" ViewCount="1565" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is varying &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pivotaltracker.com/blog/updated-dashboard-now-with-volatility/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;volatility&lt;/a&gt; across Scrum teams. I understand that volatility can be caused by many variable factors. The table below shows how much it's varying across teams:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xA;        Velocity    Volatility&#xA;Team 1  47          11%&#xA;Team 2  68          6%&#xA;Team 3  24          2%&#xA;Team 4  71          14%&#xA;Team 5  34          3%&#xA;Team 6  21          27%&#xA;Team 7  28          7%&#xA;Team 8  32          22%&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much volatility should be acceptable? I understand that it can't be zero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30305" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2017-11-17T12:52:31.793" LastActivityDate="2017-11-18T18:20:11.773" Title="How much volatility should be acceptable among Scrum teams?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22855" CreationDate="2017-11-16T09:15:03.603" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;All these questions sound management BS. These questions are very much what the team should &lt;strong&gt;handle internally&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;In my opinion, the only useful question for a stakeholder is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Is the team delivering value to me each sprint?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer is &quot;No&quot;, &lt;strong&gt;you should give this feedback to the team in Sprint Review&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer is &quot;Yes&quot;, &lt;strong&gt;you should give this feedback to the team in Sprint Review&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2859" LastActivityDate="2017-11-16T09:15:03.603" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22853" CreationDate="2017-11-16T09:20:54.067" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a term for such a thing, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagile_software_development?oldformat=true&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wagile&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wagile software development is a group of software development&#xA;  methodologies that result from slipping from agile back into&#xA;  waterfall, doing a lot of short waterfalls and thinking it is agile,&#xA;  Waterfall model masquerading as Agile software development, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it is as bad as it sounds...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Found a nice &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.blueprintsys.com/blog/10_signs_that_you_are_really_wagile/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; for this kind of process...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2859" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2017-11-16T12:29:37.243" LastActivityDate="2017-11-16T12:29:37.243" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22867" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-16T09:34:32.440" Score="1" ViewCount="1834" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to link one task as successor to multiple task in MS project. How it can be done quickly? There is one successor and 50 predecessors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30491" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2017-11-16T12:18:44.070" LastActivityDate="2017-11-16T20:41:26.510" Title="I want to link one task as successor to multiple task in MS project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22864" CreationDate="2017-11-16T10:15:28.150" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've only just read up on &quot;volatility&quot; but to my understanding I don't see much wrong with it. It is a measure how fluid your project is. &lt;em&gt;This is what scrum was designed to handle.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say the underlying reasons for that volatility are far more important than its scope. As such I wouldn't put a hard limit on it but something like a &quot;warning limit&quot; where you start to investigate why this is happening. Maybe use the retrospective to determine if it has a detrimental effect on the team and use those answers to guide you to a adequate threshold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2017-11-16T10:15:28.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22869" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-16T13:59:03.243" Score="1" ViewCount="290" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are looking into a zero bug policy, but I wondered how best to represent this in sprint planning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should we be planning some 'empty' story points to cover this work? Does anyone else do this? If so how does it work for you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30341" LastActivityDate="2017-11-16T23:35:39.427" Title="Zero bug software development?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22870" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22872" CreationDate="2017-11-16T14:14:29.557" Score="4" ViewCount="479" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in an agile team, with some developers, a designer and a ux guy. Sometimes we split some user stories into tasks when we think they are too big.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When doing this, I've always read that we should split user stories into small features (so we can have a potentially shippable product after each task). However most of my team members insist in splitting tasks into work type (e.g. a task for wireframes for this user story, then another for design, and another for implementation). I understand that is a bad way, since we're not getting potentially shippable products, but I can't seem to make it clear for them that we need to change this. How could I do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11653" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2017-11-19T09:58:42.137" LastActivityDate="2017-11-19T09:58:42.137" Title="Convincing my team that we need to split tasks by feature, not by work type" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22864" CreationDate="2017-11-16T14:17:23.007" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a Lean point of view, I'd say the important thing is not how much it is, but that the team is able to fulfill its mission, and perhaps that the volatility doesn't increase. Rather than choosing a metric like volatility to track, I would focus on understanding the current flow of the team (e.g. using a Kanban board) and fixing any problems. As you understand and improve flow, other things often straighten themselves out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27733" LastActivityDate="2017-11-16T14:17:23.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22870" CreationDate="2017-11-16T14:48:53.030" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're both right. (Or wrong, depending on perspective).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;When possible/necessary, split Stories into smaller Stories.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One possible guideline for defining Stories is that they should be 'the smallest possible amount of work that, by itself, provides business value'. Another is the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST method&lt;/a&gt;. Note the 'Small' requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So feel free to break down Stories into smaller Stories. However...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Once defined, let the Development Team split Stories into Tasks however they like.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's perfectly fine (and common) for the Dev Team to split Stories into Tasks by work type. Keep in mind that just because a &lt;em&gt;Task&lt;/em&gt; is done, does not mean the &lt;em&gt;Story&lt;/em&gt; is ready. The work for a Story should not be included in the main branch of the product until &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of its Tasks are complete. Just because a Story is half-done does not mean your increment is not shippable - just don't ship that Story!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-11-16T14:48:53.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22867" CreationDate="2017-11-16T15:30:22.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Organize/filter your schedule so that all 50 predecessors are&#xA;located together. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add the Successors column to your task table.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Enter the ID of the desired successor into the successors list of the first of the 50 predecessors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select the cell you just entered, then use the autofill cursor (black square at lower right corner of cell) to pull the successor ID into each of the remaining 49 predecessors.  (If predecessors are not adjacent, then use copy/paste, though you'll need to paste 49 times.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This won't work if your predecessors already have other successors and your intent is to add a new one.  In that case dump the successors column to Excel, manipulate by concatenating strings, then copy/paste back to MSP. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2017-11-16T15:30:22.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22867" CreationDate="2017-11-16T20:41:26.510" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;All predecessors can be added at once by entering into the Predecessor field a comma separated list of IDs of the predecessor tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, enter &quot;2,3,4,6,7,8&quot; to make those 6 tasks predecessors to the current task with the default finish-to-start relationships. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Predecessors-task-field-5a5ea9c2-14e6-4be7-9a3d-d8b6cba10cab&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Predecessors (task field)&lt;/a&gt; for more details about link types.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastActivityDate="2017-11-16T20:41:26.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22869" CreationDate="2017-11-16T21:02:28.453" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Focus on your Definition of Done and work to it. The key to Zero-Bugs is not in a wicked triage and fix process, the key is to not introducing them in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This starts with having a good definition of done, which includes all the technical steps to ensure the best code quality. For example, code reviews, automated tests, writing tests first and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/22849/creating-defect-stories-and-inserting-them-immediately/22851#22851&quot;&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt; for the difference between a defect and &quot;not done yet&quot;. A story isn't done until all tasks are complete, including tasks found while creating the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get to a &quot;bug zero goal&quot; (which as CodeGnome points out, is a goal, not a reality) you then need to start looking into Continuous Integration/ Delivery. The shorter the time from code complete to deployed, the faster you can get feedback to fix things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for how to estimate/ account for it. Don't leave empty points. Instead, recognize that as you move into using a formal DoD you will probably need to spend more time on stories. So if you think something is a 5, maybe make it an 8 to represent the additional work to truly get it done. As you get better, you're estimates will get better as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-11-16T21:02:28.453" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22869" CreationDate="2017-11-16T23:35:39.427" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum certainly supports workflows that prioritize bug-fixing, but to be &quot;Scrum&quot; you must still adhere to the framework, especially as it relates to scope management and time boxing. Leverage the Definition of Done, rigorously inspect-and-adapt your estimation process, and add necessary items to the Product Backlog to cover development of a defect-reducing delivery pipeline to the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Who Doesn't Love Lists?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should we be planning some 'empty' story points to cover this work? Does anyone else do this? If so how does it work for you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While some teams do in fact leave spare capacity for unplanned work, this is not terribly Scrum-like. Instead, teams generally:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Add &quot;zero bugs&quot; to the project glossary.&lt;/strong&gt; Define it however you like, but ensure that everyone on the project and within the organization agrees on what that really means to &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; company.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ensure that QA, UAT, regression testing, and other quality processes are baked into the Definition of Done (DoD).&lt;/strong&gt; No work can be counted as &quot;done&quot; without meeting the quality goals of the DoD.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Automate testing&lt;/strong&gt;. Better yet, incorporate test-first practices into your CI/CD tool chain to ensure that no &lt;em&gt;known&lt;/em&gt; bugs are deliberately shipped.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Respect the time box.&lt;/strong&gt; Any work that's incomplete at the end of the Sprint, including work with known defects or stories that haven't been fully tested per the DoD yet, must be placed back onto the Product Backlog, re-prioritized, and replanned in a following iteration. Work is never blindly carried forward, but the Product Owner can keep backlog items related to bugs at the top of the Product Backlog until they're resolved. &lt;em&gt;NB: This ensures that the cost of bugs and the trade-offs in capacity for bug management vs. feature development are fully visible to everyone involved.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Inspect-and-adapt the estimation process&lt;/strong&gt;. Ensure that you are including the level of effort to get to &quot;zero known bugs&quot; in your Sprint Planning. You may over- or underestimate this level of effort, especially at first, but 80% accuracy of your Sprint forecasts is generally a reasonable expectation of a mature Scrum Team even with a rigorous Definition of Done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the list above won't guarantee that you have no bugs, it &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; provide a reasonable framework within Scrum to implement your zero-bug policies. The rest is up to your policies, processes, and controls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-11-16T23:35:39.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22864" CreationDate="2017-11-17T02:36:46.227" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't get too focused on volatility.  I am just a concerned by the teams with the lowest volatility (that may be gaming the system) as those with high volatility (that may be overcommitting/underestimating.)  You may want to understand how the teams at each end are getting to their rating.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are likely multiple factors applying to any one team's volatility.  Volatility can come from a number of causes such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Poorly defined or understood use cases. (Teams may have better business knowledge and get better clarification.  Teams may be getting use cases for with an unclear solution or using new technologies.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teams may be working on use case with differing levels of uncertainty.  (Requirements without a certain solution can require experimentation to find a solution.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Uneven skill levels between or within teams. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teams may be assigned use cases for which the team does not already have the required skills. (This is good for team growth, but increases volatility.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team location may invite more or less interruptions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teams cohesion and effectiveness may differ.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teams may have different estimation skills.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teams may fill time working on technical debt and/or learning new skill. (This will reduce measured volatility.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On average people in IT tend not to have the best interpersonal skills.  I certainly have far less skill than my wife.  Forming an effective team involves interacting on many levels.  How well a team functions is likely to impact its volatility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try looking at your data:&#xA; - Sorted by velocity&#xA; - Sorted by volatility&#xA; - Calculate velocity/volatility&#xA; - Calculate volatility/velocity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears you may have two teams that are having difficulties.  This could be for any number of reasons, some of which may be outside the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may have four teams that are gaming your measure.  They may be making good use of time made available when they overestimate a sprint.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't have trend data which may also provide good information.  Generally you would expect velocity to increase and volatility to decrease (to a point).  Changing assignments can break trends. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2017-11-17T02:36:46.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22853" CreationDate="2017-11-17T03:59:10.390" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/22857/29755&quot;&gt;Sergey Kudryavtsev&lt;/a&gt; is correct, &lt;strong&gt;it's not possible.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fundamental principal behind &lt;code&gt;waterfall&lt;/code&gt; is that the Product Management work is done upfront: the marketplace is researched, the concept is generated, the customers are interviewed, the entire product is designed and then a comprehensive and exhaustive PRD is passed to Engineering which then develops the product, tests it and then deploys it. All of the progress flows in a single direction and the PRD represents a directive &lt;em&gt;from&lt;/em&gt; Product &lt;em&gt;to&lt;/em&gt; Engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With &lt;code&gt;agile&lt;/code&gt;, Product will still research the marketplace, generate a concept and interview customers, but the entire product will not be specced before development begins. A PRD, or multiple PRDs, will be &lt;em&gt;shared with&lt;/em&gt; Engineering, but these will be smaller, &lt;em&gt;living&lt;/em&gt; documents. Engineering will respond with their feedback and concerns, and the PRD will be updated accordingly. The same occurs when feedback and concerns are received from customers. The process is iterative and these documents represent an understanding of the customer that is &lt;em&gt;shared&lt;/em&gt; between Product and Engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looked at another way, the &lt;code&gt;agile&lt;/code&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/agile/requirements&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;anti-patterns&lt;/a&gt; are almost the definition of &lt;code&gt;waterfall&lt;/code&gt; requirements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Anti-patterns to watch for&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The entire project is already spec'd out in great detail before any    engineering work begins&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Thorough review and iron-clad sign-off from all teams are required before work even starts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Designers and developers don't know when requirements have been updated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Requirements are never updated in the first place (because everyone signed off on them, remember?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The product owner writes requirements without the participation of the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem will be felt particularly acutely when one part of the organization is implementing &lt;code&gt;agile&lt;/code&gt; while the other &lt;code&gt;waterfall&lt;/code&gt;. If Product is using &lt;code&gt;agile&lt;/code&gt; and Engineering &lt;code&gt;waterfall&lt;/code&gt;, then Product will be wondering why things are taking so long and Engineering will complain about the PRDs being &quot;half baked.&quot; If it's the other way around, Engineering will be wondering what they're supposed to work on and Product will be complaining that Engineering needs to wait. Hurt feeling will ensue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;: Steve Blank just published some thoughts on the topic in &lt;a href=&quot;https://steveblank.com/2019/09/17/agilefall-when-waterfall-sneaks-back-into-agile/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;AgileFall – When Waterfall Sneaks Back Into Agile&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;AgileFall&lt;/em&gt; is an ironic term for program management where you try to be&#xA;  agile and lean, but you keep using waterfall development techniques.&#xA;  It often produces a result that’s like combining a floor wax and&#xA;  dessert topping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He goes on to describe how the process can be tweaked to get back on track&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29755" LastEditorUserId="29755" LastEditDate="2019-09-24T19:41:18.650" LastActivityDate="2019-09-24T19:41:18.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22870" CreationDate="2017-11-17T07:10:50.087" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A user story should be implemented within one sprint (usually 1-3 weeks). The spint itself can be organized in any way, actually the agile manifesto recommends a self-organized structure among the team. If this is the case, your team mates are wright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the user story is too big and cannot fit within one sprint then it should be broken into smaller stories that fit. If this is the case, your team mates are wrong. And any other organization will not be within the agile methodology, and this should be your biggest argument against them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28712" LastActivityDate="2017-11-17T07:10:50.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22880" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-17T14:17:15.173" Score="1" ViewCount="108" Body="&lt;p&gt;What could be the downside of having dedicated tester in Scrum team? The team is composed of 4(developers) + 1(tester).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30305" LastActivityDate="2017-11-17T20:42:03.687" Title="What could be the down side of having dedicated tester in Scrum team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22882" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22887" CreationDate="2017-11-17T16:22:37.800" Score="0" ViewCount="91" Body="&lt;p&gt;Under Scrum, we have a story which was estimated to be quite short. Once the story was picked up by a developer, it turned out that a significant amount of technical preparation is required, and this is dragging hugely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The business has agreed that the preparation work can be left as it is once we reach the end of the sprint, so that the developer can continue to pick up other (more important) work - meaning that the story cannot be done. This is an explicit agreement with the business that the current story will be picked up later (after a particular deadline has passed.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should this problematic story be moved to Done, marked as cancelled and then resurrected in a later sprint or should we simply mark it as blocked and leave it where it is until some (possibly much) later sprint has capacity to pick it up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A third option is that we dissect the story into two: one for the preparation work and one for the actual work. But with that the question remains: What should be done with the actual story, given agile guidelines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29374" LastActivityDate="2017-11-17T22:44:23.913" Title="Small story got bigger, what to do with the big bit?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;&lt;blocker&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22870" CreationDate="2017-11-17T19:28:33.090" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think @Sarov made some good points in his answer, and the most important part is the distinction between &lt;em&gt;stories&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;tasks&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Splitting stories should never happen based on what level of the tech stack you're working with, unless you can build a complete feature entirely on the front- or back-end. The article &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogs.itemis.com/en/spidr-five-simple-techniques-for-a-perfectly-split-user-story&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; describes Mike Cohn's SPIDR technique for splitting User Stories. Note that none of these are split by &quot;level of the technology stack.&quot; Splitting &lt;em&gt;stories&lt;/em&gt; should always be vertical, not horizontal. If you're having a hard time convincing your team of this, a strategy that I've used is reminding developers that by splitting vertically we can always display business value to stakeholders, which usually keeps them off of the engineering team's back!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Splitting tasks can be horizontal, especially if most of your engineers are not full-stack engineers. If you have dedicated front- and back-end teams, there's no problem with having tasks for each story that involve different members of the team on different parts of the stack. Just remember that Scrum encourages cross-functionality, and team members should always desire to learn more about different parts of the stack you use. The more cross-functional your team is, the less you'll have to worry about an issue like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16314" LastActivityDate="2017-11-17T19:28:33.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22882" CreationDate="2017-11-17T20:34:13.103" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt; defines three roles.  When it comes to the work in the Sprint, it is forecast by the Development Team and aligned with a Sprint Goal determined by the Scrum Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the work turns out to be different than the Development Team expected, they collaborate with the Product Owner to negotiate the scope of Sprint Backlog within the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How the Scrum Team manages that work is up to the them as they remain transparent about the effort, issues, and outcomes.  Is the team attempting to eat the elephant all at once instead of in small bites?  Can the item be broken into smaller functional units?  Are multiple learning spikes (research, prototype, proof of concept, or safe to fail experiments) needed to determine the best approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are &quot;agile guidelines&quot; and how do you feel they are applicable?  (See the definition of &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;agile&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2017-11-17T20:34:13.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22880" CreationDate="2017-11-17T20:42:03.687" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question can be interpreted two ways, but they're both good, so I'll answer both:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the downside of isolating testing into one person on a Scrum Team?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Delivering a high-quality product is the whole team's responsibility. Isolating testing into one person is likely to create situations where developers throw work over to testing in the last few days and then try to claim that work is &quot;dev done&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, it assumes that a waterfall style &quot;write code and solve quality later in testing&quot; is the best approach to creating a high-quality product. It's become largely accepted in the industry that this is not true and that taking steps to build quality in as the code is written - even going as far as to write your tests first and build to them - is a far superior approach. This is much more difficult with a separate &quot;testing&quot; team member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the downside to having a professional tester join a Scrum team?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None. Great idea. While developers can certainly write tests, professional testers have spent years refining their ability to spot problem areas and risks in applications. This will be a huge benefit to the team. Just remember that they may be asked to help with non-QA tasks and other team members will be a part of the testing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-11-17T20:42:03.687" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22882" CreationDate="2017-11-17T20:47:41.817" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know of any official agile guidelines around this. There are a few things that common practice would dictate though:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) It sounds like your team and business had exactly the right conversation about what to do when they discovered it was much bigger. Great Job!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) The story was started and you stopped working on it. I would not move it to done - rather just move it back to the backlog to be picked up later. It doesn't actually sound like it's blocked, just that you've de-prioritized it, so the PO should move it wherever they think it goes in priority. This is one of the few exceptions where I'd actually recommend resizing the story to represent the new size, just because it will actually drive decisions later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Cleanup: If the team did some work on the story, they may not want to leave half-done code hanging around. Whether the right way to clean up is to roll it back or just tidy up the code so it can be easily picked up later without causing problems, your team will have to decide, but create some space for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-11-17T20:47:41.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22882" CreationDate="2017-11-17T22:44:23.913" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assess the impact on the Sprint Goal, and then allow the Product Owner to fulfill her function accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Scrum Process for Handling Incomplete/Uncompletable PBIs&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[T]he story cannot be done...Should this problematic story be moved to Done, marked as cancelled and then resurrected in a later sprint[,] or should we simply mark it as blocked and leave it where it is until some (possibly much) later sprint has capacity to pick it up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of the above. You can't treat an incomplete story or unshippable feature as &quot;done.&quot; Work also cannot be automatically carried forward from Sprint to Sprint without violating core framework principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bigger question, unanswered in the original post, is whether or not this story is essential to meeting the current Sprint Goal. If it is, and if it can't be completed within the current Sprint, then the Product Owner must decide whether to work with the team to re-scope the goal or declare an early termination of the Sprint and a return to Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of whether the Sprint is terminated early or not, unfinished work is &quot;not done,&quot; and is returned to the Product Backlog at the end of the Sprint. The Product Owner can then decide whether to re-prioritize the work for a future Sprint, de-prioritize, discard it altogether, or refactor/edit/decompose the story in whatever way she sees fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-11-17T22:44:23.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22888" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-18T04:06:41.273" Score="1" ViewCount="430" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose we have two tasks T1 and T2 taking respectively 3 days and 10 days to complete, and two resources R1 and his best friend, R2. T1 starts on Nov 1rst and is supposed to finish on Nov 3rd, while T2 starts 5 days later on Nov 8th and finishes on Nov 18th. For the sake of simplicity, we assume the workers (R1 and R2) really love their job and work full time every day, including weekends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This situation is pretty simple to model in MS Project (create the tasks and the ressources and assign R1 to T1 and R2 to T2 with 100% Max Unit)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now suppose that R2 wins a contest which prize is a free trip to the country of his choice, including all the expenses. The only constraint is that the trip must take place between Nov 10th to 15th.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the PM, I asked R1 if he wanted to replace R2 for the period of the trip, and be paid 50% more than usual. He accepted!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am now trying to model that situation in MS Project but can't find a way to do it properly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the moment, I changed the Working time of R2 and added an exception that I named &quot;Vacation&quot; taking effect from Nov 10th to 15th. Doing this delayed the completion date of T2 by 5 days (makes sense). However, I want to assign R1 to the task T2 only from Nov 10th to 15th, but not for the full duration of the task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking for the following end result:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;R2 will work on T2 from Nov 8th to 9th&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;R1 will work on T2 from Nov 10th to 15th (while R2 is on his trip)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;R2 will work on T2 from Nov 16th to 18th&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That way, T2 will not be delayed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry if this kind of question has already been posted and answered. I searched but couldn't find what I was looking for. The closest post I could find was one where the OP wanted to assign multiple resources to the same task spread the work evenly during the whole duration of the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for you help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30507" LastActivityDate="2019-04-12T21:50:30.250" Title="Ms Project - Assign resource for fixed duration" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22888" CreationDate="2017-11-18T11:42:50.267" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use the Resource Usage page and adjust the hours for each resource manually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-11-18T11:42:50.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22864" CreationDate="2017-11-18T18:20:11.773" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How much volatility should be acceptable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd answer it with another question... &lt;strong&gt;why are you concerned about volatility at all?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Any tentative of answering the former without thinking on the latter could be considered management BS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Knowing how &lt;strong&gt;volatility is important (or not) in &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; context&lt;/strong&gt;, then you can define what's &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; volatility limit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is like saying 'how many defects a story is supposed to have? It's a nice question, so long you want to use this information to improve. Maybe having zero defects, the team is wasting a huge effort on silly defects... maybe having 10 defects out of each story is way too much - but again, &lt;strong&gt;it'll depend on &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; context&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2017-11-18T18:20:11.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22892" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22896" CreationDate="2017-11-19T11:44:50.133" Score="-2" ViewCount="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Google trends shows well that that &quot;fullstack developer&quot; trend has evolved over some time, now it has slowed down a little bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why would you hire a full stack developer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28945" LastActivityDate="2017-11-19T22:09:40.253" Title="Value and dynamics of the full stack developer role" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2017-11-22T20:52:38.053" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22895" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-19T21:54:50.610" Score="0" ViewCount="1220" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to assign a resource -Excavator- to a task -Task#1 : duration = 4 month- :&#xA;2 units in first 2 months and 5 units in second 2 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30518" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-14T13:22:47.260" LastActivityDate="2021-02-02T21:04:10.410" Title="How to assign a resource with two units to the task?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resources&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22892" CreationDate="2017-11-19T22:09:40.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer to the question &quot;What is the Economic decision to have a fullstack developer?&quot; is this: A more flexible team is able to have have better flow-through of valuable work and therefor creates for value per day/week/sprint than a less flexible team. A fullstack developer is more flexible than a specialist and therefor makes his team more flexible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give an example, let's say we have an application that has a web interface and a mobile interface with a set of web services and some back-end interface to a database and another interface to a vendor's API. I have two teams. One is a group of specialists - 1 mobile dev, 1 web service dev, 1 back-end dev, and one DBA. The other team, each of the 4 team members has 3 of the 4 skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprint 1 we take on a feature that requires an even distribution of skills and both teams complete the work just fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now in Sprint 2, our vendor gives us this new feature and implementing it this sprint would be huge for that tech show we're featuring our project at in 3 weeks. Implementing it is just a button on each interface and a passthrough action trigger, so it's almost no work in most areas, but the vendor API is a giant mess and it's way more than one person can get done in a sprint. Team 1 is toast. They only have one person who can do that work, so the other members will have to keep busy with less-valuable work that is in their skillset and they miss the tech show. Team 2, on the other hand, has more flexibility in their skills, so while one team member takes care of the interfaces and web services, the rest swarm on the vendor API and are able to complete it in the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those are fairly extreme examples to illustrate the point. There isn't one &quot;right&quot; way to build your team. The team should be modified and crafted to fit the type of work they field. However, in general, more flexibility results in higher value generated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The exception that proves the rule:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The flexibility comes at a cost - in mastery. Someone who specializes on one thing can become much more proficient at it than someone who broadens their skills. I like to use 5 levels of mastery when discussing this subject:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1 - Beginner: basic skills you can learn from youtube&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2 - Practiced: can tackle most normal tasks in this skill&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3 - Professional: can tackle tasks that people who don't do this for a living can't&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4 - Expert: this person tackles the kinds of problems that need deep experience and analytical skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5 - Industry leader: This person literally sets the industry standard and solves problems no one in the industry has ever tried before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now think about the work you do, where do the tasks fall? If you work for a company like Tesla's R&amp;amp;D many of your tasks are 4's and 5's. If you are working for a digital marketing agency, your development work probably never tops a 3. If you are doing cutting edge development work, then there is financial benefit to having a few teams of specialists. But they are the exception that proves the rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-11-19T22:09:40.253" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22898" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-20T10:05:30.963" Score="0" ViewCount="761" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have added a work resource entry &quot;Laborers&quot; with Max. Units 10000% in the Resource Sheet. The resource calendar for this resource is standard and all the units are available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I want the work of Activity A (350h during 30 working days) is distributed equally between three general laborers from resource &quot;Laborers&quot;. Show me the way resource definition and assignment should be for this purpose using Microsoft Project 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30460" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-14T13:22:31.777" LastActivityDate="2021-02-02T22:03:40.387" Title="how to distribute the work of an activity between specific number of individuals of a kind from a work resource" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22898" CreationDate="2017-11-20T10:58:48.967" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;SOLVED.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In &quot;Task Sheet&quot;, select the activity, and enter &quot;Laborers [300%]&quot; in cell for &quot;Resource Names&quot;. As my schedule is effort-driven, MSP keep the activity work unchanged but reduces the activity duration. In &quot;Task Usage&quot;, you can see three laborers working the total of 24h every working day during the activity duration. In the next step, I fix the work distribution to be done over the planned activity duration.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In activity duration field, enter 30d. After that, an action button is displayed next to the field. From that, choose &quot;Decrease the hours resources work per day (units) but keep the same amount of work&quot;. Check &quot;Task Usage&quot; and you should see 3.89h as daily work for &quot;Laborers&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SWEET&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30460" LastActivityDate="2017-11-20T10:58:48.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22900" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22904" CreationDate="2017-11-20T13:04:21.163" Score="-1" ViewCount="140" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can anyone recommend a format for facilitating a definition of done meeting ie, a meeting to define the teams definition of done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was thinking of first looking at artefacts and then associated a checklist with each eg epic, story, release and then definition of done for each of those. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastEditorUserId="4364" LastEditDate="2017-11-20T14:58:25.710" LastActivityDate="2017-11-20T15:36:37.993" Title="Meeting format for defining our definition of done" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;definition-of-done&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9454" CreationDate="2017-11-20T15:02:34.390" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Product owner can never be the boss of the team. If he/she directs individuals or team as a boss then that scrum team will break soon. That's absolutely against agile principle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30528" LastActivityDate="2017-11-20T15:02:34.390" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22900" CreationDate="2017-11-20T15:05:55.257" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Build it incrementally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile isn't just about completing work incrementally; your process itself should evolve as you learn more about yourselves and the business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, don't stress too much about the initial Definition of Done, as it should change. Just have a simple meeting to get &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; out and ready. If anything, I would err on the side of simplicity, as, psychologically speaking, it is easier to add than to remove. Just keep it to the bare essentials at first (e.g. needs to run properly in Production environment, needs to be code reviewed, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Expand from there as needed, &lt;em&gt;once&lt;/em&gt; needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-11-20T15:05:55.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22900" CreationDate="2017-11-20T15:29:35.017" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the approaches I've used in the past that works pretty well, especially with multiple teams:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Set up a flip chart for each team and put a dotted line about 1/3 of the way up (so the top section is 2/3 of the chart). Explain definition of done (I also provide examples like &quot;X% test coverage with all tests passing&quot; and &quot;merged to trunk&quot;) and ask them to brainstorm what they want on their DoD with sticky notes. The top section is for the things that they can do for each backlog item every sprint. The items in this section will be the team's Definition of Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom section is for items that they would like to do but can't commit to each sprint. I often see things like full regression test runs and deploy to production down there. This is important because it gets these limitations out in the open. It creates opportunities for the team and organization to improve in the future and calls out the technical debt and risk that is building with each backlog item that doesn't do those things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if you have multiple teams, have them walk around and look at the other teams' DoDs to see if they came up with something that they like and want to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can do the same thing for Definition of Ready if you're using one. (In my experience, you don't need to make two sections for the definition of ready chart)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course, this is a living artifact, so this is just to get you started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastEditorUserId="7944" LastEditDate="2017-11-20T15:36:37.993" LastActivityDate="2017-11-20T15:36:37.993" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22905" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22906" CreationDate="2017-11-20T18:13:35.467" Score="2" ViewCount="714" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the sprint review meeting mandatory to have? We do all scrum meetings religiously except “Sprint Review”. Actually we never felt need of having this meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30305" LastActivityDate="2017-11-25T20:14:43.290" Title="Is the sprint review meeting mandatory to have?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22905" CreationDate="2017-11-20T18:34:59.457" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR-&lt;/strong&gt; Highly recommended. If you don't have it, then you are losing your inspect and adapt loop with your stakeholders. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The longer answer&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Nothing in Scrum is required (Though by the technical writing of the Scrum guide if you don't use all the events and artifacts it's not technically scrum). Scrum and agile are based on the concept of inspect and adapt. Figure out what works for the team and organization and keep doing that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that being said, the five events (Sprint, Planning, Standup, Review, Retrospective) are based on decades of experience and use. Sutherland and Schwaber just updated the Scrum guide and they haven't magically removed any events. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So then we come back to the specific team and organization and ask why an event might not be seen as useful. In my years of coaching, I've seen all the events challenged as &quot;not needed&quot;. In all that time I've rarely found the root cause to actually support out not having that specific event. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint Review's primary purpose is to &quot;inspect the Increment and adapt the Product Backlog if needed&quot;. It's your GPS on if you are building the right thing, in the right way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main reasons I've seen for not having a Review:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The product owner has already seen the stories and approved them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The stakeholders are not available.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the first one is a great thing to have. In fact, if the PO isn't seeing stories until the Review, then you have a problem. The Review is led by the PO, so they should know what's being demoed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second is a constant challenge. However, without the stakeholder feedback, you can easily fall back into the Waterfall trap of &quot;That's not what I asked for&quot; when they finally see the product. Instead of not holding the meeting, try adjusting when and how you hold it. Maybe go for every other sprint or try a science fair type model. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a Scrum Event is not working, start with asking why. They exist because of decades of experience that they work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And just read this excellent and timely blog on the Sprint Review. Some good pointers.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/sprint-review-tips-for-product-owners/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/sprint-review-tips-for-product-owners/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastEditorUserId="147" LastEditDate="2017-11-20T22:24:13.650" LastActivityDate="2017-11-20T22:24:13.650" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22905" CreationDate="2017-11-20T18:54:39.513" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't have to follow Scrum to be agile, but you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; have to follow the Scrum framework and implement all of its ceremonies to claim that you're practicing Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Sprint Review is Mandatory in Scrum&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is the sprint review meeting mandatory to have?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. It's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-review&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;defined ceremony&lt;/a&gt; within the Scrum framework, and must be adhered to in order for what you're doing to be considered &quot;Scrum.&quot; In fact, the end note of the Scrum Guide says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum’s roles, events, artifacts, and rules are immutable and although implementing only parts of Scrum is possible, the result is not Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can extend Scrum, or use additional practices within it, but you can't choose to implement only some of Scrum and still claim to be following Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Options&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, if you don't see the point of the Sprint Review, the team &lt;em&gt;and the organization&lt;/em&gt; are &lt;em&gt;Doing Scrum Wrong&amp;trade;.&lt;/em&gt; For whatever reason, you're not seeing value in collaborating with stakeholders, demoing completed increments, or feeding additional data into the product ownership or Sprint Planning functions of the process. All of these things (and more) are spelled out in the Scrum Guide's description of the Sprint Review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you have two basic choices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can review the actual purpose of the Sprint Review, educate your team and stakeholders about the need for a properly-performed Sprint Review, and then work with the Scrum Team and the stakeholders to integrate the review into your Sprints and take full advantage of all the process goodness that comes along with proper performance of the Sprint Review.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can choose to be a &lt;em&gt;Scrum-But&lt;/em&gt; team by saying: &quot;We're' not actually doing Scrum. We're working on being agile, though. What we're doing is Scrum-like, but...&quot; Then just list all the ways you're not actually doing Scrum, along with your business justifications, if any.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Danger, Will Robinson!&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two types of people who commonly implement Scrum-But. The first is extremely experienced practitioners who have truly mastered both the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;four values&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;twelve principles&lt;/a&gt; of agile software development, and are working to adapt Scrum to a use case outside the usual target. For example, using Scrum for support work or administrative workflows rather than for product development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second, and much more common, group of people are teams that are new to agile, haven't truly mastered the values and principles, and who simply don't like one or more of the ceremonies or practices. This second group is much more likely to experience failed Scrum implementations, and to then &lt;a href=&quot;https://ronjeffries.com/xprog/articles/jatbaseball/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;blame the framework&lt;/a&gt; rather than their incomplete implementation for any failures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Real mastery allows you to leverage the framework without allowing it to become a straitjacket, but if you're changing core tenets of a framework without a thorough understanding of why those things are part of the framework in the first place, then that shows a probable knowledge gap rather than insight into a unique use case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your original post certainly doesn't contain enough information for me to pass judgement on your process, but statistics and Occam's Razor certainly suggest that your team is more likely to be misunderstanding the need for, and utility of, the Sprint Retrospective than it is to be making a masterful and well-considered change to a non-Scrum (but possibly Scrum-like) framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum doesn't fit every use case, and agile practices aren't a panacea. However, if you haven't implemented the full framework, it's hard to defend the notion that it doesn't work properly in your case when it hasn't been properly leveraged in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your mileage on your journey towards agility may vary. In the meantime, following well-traveled roads on your journey is a lot easier and more productive than off-roading in the agile equivalent of a Ford Fiesta.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2017-11-25T20:14:43.290" LastActivityDate="2017-11-25T20:14:43.290" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22909" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22910" CreationDate="2017-11-20T19:44:24.443" Score="0" ViewCount="56" Body="&lt;p&gt;For about a year I had a team of three people (including myself) working on one project who is made essentially of two components, written in two different programming languages. Both of the software engineers were knowledgeable about both codebases, but each one of them was also slightly more focused on one component than another. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I have two new engineers joining the team, but also two additional (green-field) projects. All engineers have technical skills that make them able to contribute to all projects, albeit some a bit more than others.&#xA;Having all engineers being able to switch from one project to another has certainly some benefits, but I’m also worried of the context-switching and that there won’t be any feeling of ownership, and without that, a vision on how to evolve the projects in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’d like some advice on whether it is feasible (and recommended) to have 4 engineers contributing on several different projects at the same time, or if it’s better to distribute resources so that they can only work on one, or at best two, projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30532" LastActivityDate="2017-11-20T20:07:45.020" Title="Distribution of resources in a team with multiple projects" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22909" CreationDate="2017-11-20T20:07:45.020" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I’d like some advice on whether it is feasible (and recommended) to have 4 engineers contributing on several different projects at the same time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether it's feasible/recommended will depend highly on your own organization's situation. Consider the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do these projects &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to be worked on concurrently?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If 'No', then consider swarming them. Put the entire team focused on project 1 until it's done. Then put the entire team on project 2 until it's done. Etc. In &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; cases, I would say this is the best approach, but your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If 'Yes': do the advantages of having a team work on a project (such as knowledge sharing, shared ownership, and improved efficiency of allowing workers to work on their specialties) outweigh the costs of workers working on multiple projects (primarily context switching, which is a &lt;em&gt;large&lt;/em&gt; cost). In &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; cases, I would say 'No', but your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can tell you what I would do, in my situation. But in your situation, you need to find out what the best course of action is (and, ideally, also understand &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-11-20T20:07:45.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21862" CreationDate="2017-11-20T22:24:36.780" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As noted in the comments you are really looking for the approach and thought processes of your candidate. Essentially you are looking for quality analysis (you are hiring a business &lt;strong&gt;analyst&lt;/strong&gt;) and strong clear communication skills to engage positively with other people and communicate accurately and clearly. So the three areas are &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Analytical Investigation&lt;/strong&gt;. I look for 3 main strengths in their analytical questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Holistic Understanding&lt;/strong&gt;. Understanding of the business scenario. Do they ask questions targetted at ensuring the understand the overall business objective of the requirements. &quot;Are we picking from a set list of burgers or can people construct their own?&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Breadth&lt;/strong&gt;. Understanding the full scope of the solution. Do they ask questions targetted at understanding the full scale of functionality required. &quot;Do users require account and profile management? Do they need to reset passwords? Do we need their email address?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Depth&lt;/strong&gt;. Understanding the specifics of individual requirements. Are they asking questions to get a the details of what a particular requirement means. &quot;Does burgers 24 mean the site has to up and running 24 by seven 365 days a year?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Requirements Documentation&lt;/strong&gt;  I want to ensure they know how to express technical systems requirements so I look for to see two main skill areas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Data&lt;/strong&gt;. In my opinion you cannot efficiently work in systems analysis, requirements gathering or solution design without understanding the fundamentals of data structures and how to represent real world entities and processes in a datamodel. Are they expressing the requirements for storing information in a logical organised fashion. &quot;Burgers have the following attributes: type of bun, price..&quot; Do they understand and express the basics of cardinal relationships between entities? &quot;Each burger can have multiple of the following ingredients.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Featurizing&lt;/strong&gt;. Do they understand how to break the requirements out into a logical list of individual features required? If they cannot do this then someone else has to  &quot;Feature A: Users will have the ability to log in. Feature B: Users will have the ability to reset their password.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Communication and Interpersonal Skills&lt;/strong&gt;. I want to ensure they are a good clear communicator and easy to talk to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Clarity&lt;/strong&gt;. Is what they are saying clear and easy to understand. It's not enough that they themselves understand the problem they need to be able to efficiently ensure everyone else does. You need to be careful here as if you only have interviewers who already understand the business problem and are senior they may assume that because they understand it was well explained. It's often better to ask them to describe something they are an expert on and you are not. I try to get candidates to explain the details from a previous project or system they have worked on that we (the interview panel do not know).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Interpersonal Skills&lt;/strong&gt;. Are they easy to get on with? Is it pleasant and fun talking to them? Aside from the obvious bias I personally have that I want to work with nice fun people, there is a  core need for business analysts that the user community happily talk to and engage with. I've seen too many projects get into trouble because the delivery teams failed to establish trust and rapport with their customers and Business Analysts are often needed to be the friendly face of a technical delivery team. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27764" LastActivityDate="2017-11-20T22:24:36.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22913" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-21T07:50:24.657" Score="0" ViewCount="80" Body="&lt;p&gt;By Fred Brooks, a programmer's productivity can vary factor 20 (he referenced scientific studies), &lt;strong&gt;which does not necessarily correlate with years of experience.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;That was 1975, but I'd confirm this is quite possible today as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question: as programmers' rates obviously (AFAIK) do not vary on such large scale, are industry's best workers heavily underpaid, or the market demand/pressure is just too low?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPD. Relation to project management is that if this question is clarified, we could discuss which impact this can have on project management by bringing project business priority in relationship with this efficiency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28945" LastEditorUserId="28945" LastEditDate="2017-11-22T10:09:50.920" LastActivityDate="2017-11-22T10:49:39.907" Title="Programmer efficiency vs demand" Tags="&lt;performance&gt;&lt;personal-skills&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22914" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-21T08:31:46.467" Score="3" ViewCount="2639" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sprint 1 starts November 5th and is supposed to end on November 16th, but there is a government holiday November 13-15. Can I change the Sprint 1 schedule to be November 5th to November 21st?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30113" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2017-11-22T18:31:55.577" LastActivityDate="2017-11-28T12:50:44.923" Title="For a two-week Sprint, can I adjust the meeting dates when there is a holiday in our country?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22914" CreationDate="2017-11-21T11:20:38.130" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sprints can be of variable length, although I would advise on trying to keep the sprint length as constant as possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, you can schedule the sprint to be however long you see fit, but I wouldn't go changing it all the time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29075" LastActivityDate="2017-11-21T11:20:38.130" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22916" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-21T11:26:47.847" Score="-1" ViewCount="298" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've added an Enterprise Custom Field to tasks in Project Web Access (under Sharepoint 2013) but when I open an existing project published on PWA in Project Pro 2013 I don't see the new field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't appear in the Project &gt; Custom Fields Dialog, nor does it appear when I right-click the header of a task list column and choose Insert Column.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30540" LastActivityDate="2018-03-21T13:32:27.110" Title="Add a PWA Enterprise Custom Field to Project Pro" Tags="&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22916" CreationDate="2017-11-21T11:26:47.847" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;After adding the custom field in PWA you need to close Project Pro completely. It is not enough to just close the project you are working on. When you then re-open Project Pro, re-open the project in question and check it out the additional field should appear in both places. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should publish and check in the project to keep this new field in the instance of the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30540" LastActivityDate="2017-11-21T11:26:47.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22914" CreationDate="2017-11-21T13:13:13.513" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is very much advised to have a constant length for your sprints and to have the major ceremonies (sprint planning, sprint review, retrospective) each time on the same day of the week.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This creates an easily predictable rhythm to the sprints and makes it easy to remember for everybody when they need to be available for those ceremonies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only reason for moving the sprint start/end to a different date should be because the normal date is a day where the majority of the participants is unavailable (national holiday, company closed, etc.).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Holidays that fall within the sprint should be accounted for with a lower availability of the development team (and as a result, less work that is predicted/planned to be finished).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2017-11-21T13:13:13.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11176" CreationDate="2017-11-21T16:29:06.617" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why documenting the Sprint Retrospective? What value does it bring?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the things happening during the Sprint Retrospective are sacred for the Scrum Team. I would highly recommend &lt;strong&gt;NOT&lt;/strong&gt; to document it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Documenting the Sprint Retrospective destroys more than creates anything. All team members will understand that the discussions happening there are not safe if they are recorded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Documenting it is not mentioned in The Scrum Guide™. And I think that's on purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, all the things that happened at Sprint X and were discussed during its Sprint Retrospective brings NO value in a later Sprint. Everything is linked with the &lt;strong&gt;context&lt;/strong&gt; around it, and the precise context of this Sprint and this Sprint Retrospective is unique. Comparing or coming back to it just makes no sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone asks you for a Sprint Retrospective report, just answer that the things happening there are the sole property of the Scrum Team, and no one else. To make the Sprint Retrospective work, bring &lt;strong&gt;safety&lt;/strong&gt; and an open stage for all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master, you are responsible to be the memory of the team in that regard, so if you collect the post-its, put them in a safe place and tell the team you keep them secret (same for the photos).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only output of the Sprint Retrospective could be the action items discovered there, and if there are made public, it must be clearly agreed by the whole Scrum Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8656" LastActivityDate="2017-11-21T16:29:06.617" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22914" CreationDate="2017-11-21T17:08:43.913" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bart is correct, Sprints are supposed to be fixed length and not vary from sprint to sprint. If you are constantly changing durations, you can't get into a good cadence and that's key to effective Scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have a holiday in a sprint instead of extending the sprint, you just recognize that you do not have as much capacity in this sprint. You take this into account when doing sprint planning. For example, if you're average velocity is 100 and you have two days of holiday in your ten-day sprint, then you only have 80% of your days. So you would multiply your velocity by 80% for a sprint capacity of 80 points. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only area where holidays cause issues is if you Sprint start or sprint end fall on a holiday. If they do, just move the appropriate events to another day without changing the sprint duration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Holidays is one of the main reason many coaches, including myself, recommend starting Sprints on Thursdays or Wednesdays. Most holidays fall on Mondays or Fridays so you limit the chances your major events will fall on a holiday. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-11-21T17:08:43.913" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11176" CreationDate="2017-11-22T09:45:37.643" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are good tools:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://plans-for-retrospectives.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://plans-for-retrospectives.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lots of retrospective meeting format ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://funretro.github.io/distributed/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://funretro.github.io/distributed/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shared tool for collecting input from team members during a retro.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29374" LastActivityDate="2017-11-22T09:45:37.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22913" CreationDate="2017-11-22T10:49:39.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you need to do some research on the range of pay for a programmer.  You seem to be assuming the range is small but I do not think your assumption is valid.  Also, you are conflating a judgment--&quot;too low&quot;--with your observations of a programmer's pay.  Everyone is entitled to their opinion of such a judgment so, if you think the pay is too low, then it is too low.  But that is a very different discussion then if you suspect there is some arbitrary, non supply and demand economic forces at play that pressure the wage to be low.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you were a government employee, like the police, then you can argue there are other forces at play that dictate that wage.  Another example would be a physician's pay, where there are third party payments that make the demand side of the equation price inelastic.  That is a force that arbitrarily increases (likely) the pay then what the market might actually support if third party payments were not involved.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, experience is a very weak predictor of performance, for every job family.  It has some validity but far weaker than what most of us like to believe in terms of how we use it to determine wage and whom we hire (Hunter &amp;amp; Hunter, and many other sources).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-11-22T10:49:39.907" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22925" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22927" CreationDate="2017-11-22T15:08:52.317" Score="0" ViewCount="321" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team is not interested in following the principle of Jira tickets only flow forward on the board and rework happens in whatever column the problem was found. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don’t share this method with the team but I don’t want to cause resentment &lt;em&gt;but&lt;/em&gt; I believe it distorts the board and hides bottlenecks and disfunction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I be democratic and allow them to move tickets back and forth and persist with making them understand why tickets should move forward only? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-01-27T02:46:36.917" LastActivityDate="2018-01-27T02:46:36.917" Title="How to handle a Kanban team that wants to move jira tickets back?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;&lt;kanban-board&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22914" CreationDate="2017-11-22T15:50:37.367" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, a reliable cadence is always more important than a fixed level of productivity. Scrum is really about sustainable delivery over time, so handling perturbations in capacity is a feature of the framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Holidays, vacations, sick days, and early terminations are to be expected in any long-running project. These can and should be handled as minor variances in &lt;em&gt;team capacity&lt;/em&gt; rather than as things that can derail the project's ongoing cadence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Best Practices&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example Sprint 1 is November 5 and supposed to end on November 16 but our government announced that it will be holiday on November 13, 14, 15 so can I change the sprint schedule into November 5 to November 21?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having 12-day Sprints is odd, but certainly allowable. If you have a three-day holiday inside the Sprint, then you should not change the length of the Sprint (because a Sprint should have a constant-sized calendar duration). However, you should certainly lower your expected &lt;em&gt;capacity&lt;/em&gt; for the Sprint to account for the three less working days that you will have to product work within the Sprint. This is typically done during Sprint Planning so that it's handled appropriately throughout the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the first or last day of your Sprint is not a holiday, you should keep your Sprint Review and Retrospective on the standard end-of-Sprint day of November 16th. However, you can certainly shift other ceremonies such as Backlog Refinement &lt;em&gt;within&lt;/em&gt; the Sprint to accommodate the holiday if necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the event that a holiday will impact the end of your Sprint (not the case here, but it happens), you should generally:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduce your forecast to reflect the limited capacity available for the Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Move the Sprint Review and Retrospective up within the current Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain the impact of the holidays on capacity to your stakeholders during the Sprint Review.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start your next Sprint as a normal-length Sprint immediately after the shortened Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Rules of Thumb&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, a holiday during a Sprint will obviously impact the amount of work that can be done within the Sprint, but it need not have a major impact on the cycle of time boxes. The best practice is to encapsulate any deviation within the current time box. That means moving ceremonies within the current Sprint whenever possible, rather than extending the Sprint or moving ceremonies or work into a subsequent time box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Joel pointed out in a separate answer, scheduling Sprints to avoid common holidays is wise. That's not always possible, though, so simply treat holidays as reduced capacity in the same way that you would handle team members being out sick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you reduce forecasts to reduce work planned for the iteration whether you move ceremonies within or outside the time box is a trade-off. In the former case, you're simply making the impact of the holiday on your process transparent; in the latter case, you're impacting two Sprints, but possibly spreading the cost of the missed work as slightly-reduced capacity across two Sprints instead of one. I certainly recommend the former, but teams can (and sometimes do) make an argument for the latter if it's done with transparency and buy-in across the whole organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The amount of work done within a Sprint isn't a constant value. The &lt;em&gt;time box&lt;/em&gt; should be as close to constant as possible, though. Over a long project, it's much better to have low-capacity or shortened Sprints due to holidays, sick team members, or early terminations that start and stop on the same days each Sprint because that supports long-term scheduling and release planning better than frequently moving the ceremonies around. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following this advice may result in Sprints with significantly-reduced capacity, or the occasional Sprint with excessive slack or even &quot;dead air.&quot; In general, though, the value of a reliable iteration cadence vastly outweighs the occasional bobble in capacity or productivity, and containing the variance &lt;em&gt;within&lt;/em&gt; a single Sprint makes this variance both visible and transparent to all stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Caveats for Philosophunculists&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-sprint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; devotes two whole sentences to the issue of non-standard Sprints:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sprints have consistent durations throughout a development effort. A new Sprint starts immediately after the conclusion of the previous Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One is forced to read into this a bit. Pragmatically, &quot;duration&quot; refers to calendar length, not working days or days at full capacity, because otherwise there could be no reliable cadence for use in release planning. The advice to start a new Sprint immediately after the past Sprint is based on standard iterations; the guide is silent on the issue of whether to start a foreshortened Sprint immediately after an aborted Sprint, whether to allow &quot;dead air&quot; or tech debt service until the next Sprint starts, or how to handle holidays or unforeseeable changes in available personnel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People who want to appeal to authority on this issue will leave empty-handed. The best solutions to these kinds of issues are an admixture of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Following common practices learned through trial-and-error by experienced practitioners.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leveraging your own inspect-and-adapt process to find what works best for your organization's unique circumstances.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as your don't violate basic framework principles, anything you do that's successful for the team is, &lt;em&gt;ipso facto&lt;/em&gt;, the right thing to do. Your mileage will therefore vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-11-22T15:50:37.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22925" CreationDate="2017-11-22T17:49:01.430" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it working? Then don't stress it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some schools of Kanban that adhere to what you are saying. It is not, however, a hard and fast rule. I tend to teach and use a two-way Kanban board as I've found it more effective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to a two-way board is WIP limit. If you move something from test, back to development, then you may have to remove something from development back to the backlog queue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check out the slide 11, Using WIP limits, in my &lt;a href=&quot;https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9TL7Qqg5VQ0S2dFQmo5bmVHclU/view?usp=sharing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Requirements to Done Flow&lt;/a&gt; presentation for a visual example of this. It's animated so go into presentation mode. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-11-22T17:49:01.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22914" CreationDate="2017-11-22T18:36:15.733" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is no. You should be able able to know about these holidays in advance and adjust the sprint backlog accordingly during sprint planning. If your average velocity is X, you can adjust it to X - (Y * number of holidays), where Y is your average daily velocity. You cannot change sprint dates because of holidays, someone falling sick or anything else. If a large chunk of committed work cannot be delivered, inform the Product Owner and I am sure the stakeholders will understand during the sprint review meeting. You achieve nothing by changing the sprint length! By extending the length, you create confusion (especially in large scale setups) and complicate velocity calculations among other things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastActivityDate="2017-11-22T18:36:15.733" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22572" CreationDate="2017-11-22T20:53:12.777" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to have admin access. Go to the admin section for the project in question and find the workflow on the left navigation bar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may have different workflows for different issue types. Nevertheless, the workflows should have a mapping of the arbitrary states (to do, parked, in progress, testing, etc) two 3 standard jira states: To Do, In Progress, Done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AFAIK, moving any issue to a done state sets the resolution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To edit the resolution fields, go to Resolution in the left pane. This article come might in handy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver073/defining-resolution-field-values-861253253.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver073/defining-resolution-field-values-861253253.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastActivityDate="2017-11-22T20:53:12.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22930" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-23T05:01:36.077" Score="1" ViewCount="64" Body="&lt;p&gt;How to set Undo Level of MS project 2010 by the help of Visual Basic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I set by option&gt; Advanced&gt;Undo Level but it's not working properly. &#xA;How to find VB code window for set the undo level in MS project 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30559" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-01T10:02:23.987" LastActivityDate="2018-11-01T10:02:23.987" Title="Set Undo Level by the use of VBA in MS Project 2010" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22931" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-23T08:13:26.260" Score="2" ViewCount="708" Body="&lt;p&gt;How should be the pricing using agile?&#xA;Is it fixed per sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30113" LastActivityDate="2017-11-26T10:55:19.633" Title="How should be the pricing using agile?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;pricing&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22931" CreationDate="2017-11-23T08:50:17.267" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend you to set it per sprint. That way, you can make sure the customer doesn't expect more than what is agreed in the sprint planning, and you can set the price based on the expected amount of work from known tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not an axiom, so of course you can negotiate any alternatives that you are OK with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11653" LastActivityDate="2017-11-23T08:50:17.267" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22933" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-23T11:05:32.767" Score="2" ViewCount="566" Body="&lt;p&gt;How to calculate Deviation of work and cost of each task on MS project 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is any option for finding the report of Standard deviation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to find &quot;Cost Deviation&quot; in MS project 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to calculate &quot;Cost Deviation&quot; of single task or machine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30559" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T19:50:46.803" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T19:50:46.803" Title="Calculate Cost Deviation" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22931" CreationDate="2017-11-23T12:20:22.613" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A common way would be T&amp;amp;M (time and material), basicly the customer knows how many people are involved in one sprint and how many hours they will work in one sprint. And Development just stops, when the budget is done at the end of a sprint. As you strive in agile to create the most value to the customer first, his project should be usable then already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30563" LastActivityDate="2017-11-23T12:20:22.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1965" CreationDate="2017-11-23T17:31:43.190" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, first, I would prioritize what are the real needs that enable the customer to succeed vs what is the product vision enclosed in the company strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe indeed an API would help and is a superb technological advance, but does it really provide value today?.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many &quot;frameworks&quot; of prioritization or filtering, like WSJF proposed in SAFe. Moscow is another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to gain &quot;approval&quot; to do the technical functionalities, embed that into the &quot;functional&quot;. Make sure that the functional is the goal, where the technical is the means to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28785" LastActivityDate="2017-11-23T17:31:43.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22931" CreationDate="2017-11-23T20:08:00.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Pricing is only one aspect of the contract&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.twobirds.com/~/media/pdfs/brochures/contracting-for-agile-software-development-projects.pdf?la=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is a good document that covers the contractual aspects of agile software development projects comprehensively.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How should be the pricing using agile? Is it fixed per sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see in the Pricing section, fixed price per sprint (iteration) is one option. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the contract, you also need to cover other aspects such as Composition of the Development Team, Warranties and Indemnities, Termination, Intellectual Property Rights... and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2017-11-23T20:08:00.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22933" CreationDate="2017-11-24T04:55:50.437" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;MS Project automatically calculates those values in the &quot;Work Variance&quot; and &quot;Cost Variance&quot; fields, as far as your project has a saved baseline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To save a baseline, use the command located in the &quot;Project&quot; tab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have a baseline, the mentioned fields will calculate automatically when a task is updated and some values are different from the baseline ones (for example, a longer task).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The calculation is made at task level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this help. Greetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28645" LastActivityDate="2017-11-24T04:55:50.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22296" CreationDate="2017-11-24T05:37:03.487" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actual Cost (there is no &quot;Real Cost&quot; field in the english version of MS Project) is NOT the same as ACWP (Earned value &quot;AC (CRTR)&quot;). The difference is that &quot;Actual Cost&quot; is a single field and &quot;ACWP&quot; is a TIMEPHASED field (like all the earned value fields). This means that &quot;ACWP&quot; is calculated considering the project's &quot;Status Date&quot; (or the current date if &quot;Status Date&quot; has no value).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: suppose we have a 2-week, $1,000 task that starts on Monday, Nov. 6th, and finishes on Friday, Nov. 17th. Now suppose I update the project at Monday, Nov. 13th, marking the task as complete (100%) and changing &quot;Actual Cost&quot; to $1,500.00, but I do not update the finish date and let it with its original value (Nov. 17th).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since today is Nov. 13th, the task SHOULD have a 50% advance, so &quot;ACWP&quot; will be $750.00!! Yes, even if the task is already at 100% and actual cost is $1,500.00!! (Oh, and &quot;Cost Variance&quot; will be $250.00 since &quot;Planned Value&quot; at Nov. 13th should be $500.00).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, let's play a little. If I change &quot;Status Date&quot; to a value later than Nov. 17th, then the task should be finished (according to the captured info). &quot;ACWP&quot; will be $1,500.00. If I change &quot;Status Date&quot; to a value earlier than Nov. 6th, then the task should not have started, and &quot;AWCP&quot; will be $0.00.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, Earned Value fields are calculated considering the project's status date, and reflect the value those fields should have that day. This way, you can change the status date and get the EV values corresponding to the selected date. This is really, really useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I bet that, in your file, the status date (or the current date, if you haven't changed status date value) is a few days before the actual finish date of the task, so &quot;AC&quot; reflects a value that is a little lower than Actual Cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps. Greetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28645" LastActivityDate="2017-11-24T05:37:03.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22895" CreationDate="2017-11-24T06:04:47.103" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two ways of doing it. But first, make sure Excavator is a work resource (not a material resource) and its max. availability is 500% (to represent five available units).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;First way (easy one)&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add two 2-month subtasks to Task 1: Task 2 and Task 3. Make Task 2&#xA;the predecessor of Task 3.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assign Excavator to Task 2 at 200%.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assign Excavator to Task 3 at 500%.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Second way (a little harder). Use this if you want to have only one task&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assign Excavator to Task 1.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use an assignment view (either &quot;Task Usage&quot; or &quot;Resource Usage&quot;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the right pane, modify daily work from 8 hours to 16 hours. Do this for the first two months (yes, it will be somewhat tedious).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then, modify daily work from 8 hours to 40 hours the remaining two months.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, I have found a third way to do it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create five resources (Excavator 1, Excavator 2, etc).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assign the five excavators to Task 1.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use an assignment view (&quot;Task Usage&quot; or &quot;Resource Usage&quot;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change the Excavator 3 assignment (by double-clicking its row) and set the start date of the assignment two months after the Task 1 start date (maybe you should also have to change the assignment total work hours to half its value).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Repeat for Excavator 4 and Excavator 5.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end, Excavator 1 and 2 should work the full task duration, and Excavator 3, 4, and 5 should work only during the second half of the Task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps. Greetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28645" LastActivityDate="2017-11-24T06:04:47.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22930" CreationDate="2017-11-24T20:15:35.873" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The property is &lt;code&gt;UndoLevels&lt;/code&gt;. For example: &lt;code&gt;Application.UndoLevels = 10&lt;/code&gt; set the number of undo levels to 10.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastActivityDate="2017-11-24T20:15:35.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22942" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22943" CreationDate="2017-11-24T21:54:20.720" Score="0" ViewCount="142" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two issues on the backlog that I want to solve this weekend, that are not part of the current sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to me it is fine to work on this issues as I solve them in my spare time and my work time, i.e. 80 hours will be spent on the issues in the sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it correct that it is fine that I solve two issues that reside on the backlog as it is not conflicting with the time spent in the office and two when I have solved these ticket I could close them as solved and the backlog will get smaller?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27036" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2017-11-25T16:39:01.600" LastActivityDate="2017-11-26T16:47:00.223" Title="How to handle issues that are part of the backlog, solved in the weekend and are not part of current Sprint in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22942" CreationDate="2017-11-25T00:24:00.420" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a lot wrong with this idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, everything from Sprint Planning through the Sprint Retrospective is part of a Sprint. Also, a new Sprint starts immediately when a Sprint ends (although, in my experiences, I've typically seen the Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective in the afternoon and then Sprint Planning the next morning, with a handful of working hours between them). All time, including weekend and holidays, is part of the current Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint Backlog is something that has been agreed upon by the Development Team. A Sprint tends to be defined by the Sprint Backlog and the Sprint Goal. During Sprint Planning, the team should have looked at the ordered Product Backlog, determined what items could be done this Sprint, made some kind of plan for getting it done, and then defined objectives that guide the Sprint and help focus the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given this, I would have concerns about just working extra hours without telling anyone (preferably in advance), even if it was on planned Sprint work. If the plan was built around a specific capacity and people work additional hours, that's going to throw off planning for future Sprints unless it's accounted for. There could also be other downstream implications with respect to testing, deployments, change management, customer needs or expectations, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that working outside of working hours is a violation of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;principles of Agile Software Development&lt;/a&gt;. One of the principles is about sustainable development - the pace that the team is working should be maintainable indefinitely. Working weekends on unplanned work is not sustainable in the long-term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't work more than you've planned for a Sprint. Even if you are falling behind, work with the rest of the team and the Product Owner to decide what the best thing to do is.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't work outside of the Sprint Backlog. All of your planned capacity and effort should be to realizing the Sprint Goals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep the underlying principles of Agile in mind. Sustainable pace is necessary. Not only does it prevent you from burning out, but it leads to better estimates and plans.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2017-11-25T00:24:00.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22942" CreationDate="2017-11-25T14:03:40.367" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's how my team deals with &quot;off-hours&quot; work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We recognize that several members of our team, but not all members of our team, like to program during their free time on weekends and evenings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We believe that, since it's the developer's free time, they are free to choose issues that are interesting to them, even if they are not the highest priority issues for the business.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We recognize that neither the individual developer, nor the team, should be on the hook for needing to complete regular sprint work during their off hours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We recognize that all work, regardless of whether or not it's done on-or-off hours needs to meet our Definition of Done and be held to our team's quality and standards.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We do not allow off-hours work to be a developer's way of claiming all of the interesting issues from the backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Dealing with points/development time&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't mention what sort of velocity-tracking system your team uses. One key issue with off-hours work is that you don't want you or your team to be on-the-hook for always needing to work weekends in order to meet the sprint's obligations. Here's how we deal with this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We use points to track our velocity through the sprint. Since we don't want any of our developers to be obligated to work during their off-hours, any work that is done outside of the workday is considered to be 0-points, even if it has been estimated much higher.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Completing the Issues&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also don't mention what 'additional' work, beyond development, needs to be completed in order to call an issue complete. Again, my team's example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In order to meet our Definition of Done, off-hours work will need to be peer reviewed, tested, etc. These things, since we require them to be completed by other developers, will be added to a later sprint with only a point estimate for the amount of work remaining.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business prioritizes the remaining work on the issues, just as they prioritize the rest of the backlog. Often, because much of the work has already been done, they'll move the remainder into the next sprint. Sometimes they will not.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, developers like to develop. Telling them &quot;no, we don't want you to do any development work that you're interested in during your free time&quot; is a losing proposition--especially if they're not allowed to contribute to open source or other projects because of their position in your company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at your sprint process, you may be able to find a way, like we have, to allow your developers to work on the more interesting issues without negatively impacting regular workload and quality. The keys are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To ensure that a developer's weekend work doesn't obligate that developer, nor anyone else, to regularly work weekends, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To ensure that even weekend work is held to the same standards as the rest of your software.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29975" LastActivityDate="2017-11-25T14:03:40.367" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22946" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-26T08:04:05.907" Score="1" ViewCount="3442" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hi I am bit confused with the term project. Right now i am working as a project Manager in a startup firm where we have one prime client with a full time dedicated work and our product is an online event management website. This website is a huge product in itself and spans across multiple components/modules like search, payments, profiles etc. So now i have just started using Jira and i want to know should i consider each component/module as an individual project? Or there should be one project and those modules should be considered as an epic. Another point to consider here is that many of those modules are already build and tasks/features keep coming into them. So should I consider them as components in JIRA? If I consider them as Epic then there might be a situation where I won't be able to close that epic ever. But the plus side I can manage it from my single project. And can I say this hierarchy is correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product--&gt;Project--&gt;Epics--&gt;Story&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And can we have a single backlog for multiple projects if we opt for that option? Please help me I am very confused. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30580" LastActivityDate="2017-11-29T14:16:38.627" Title="Jira Project vs Epics vs Categories" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;epics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22946" CreationDate="2017-11-26T10:20:26.883" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hierarchy in your question is correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should use it the way it best suits you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Theres nothing wrong with being unable to close an epic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ive always seen Jira as a Agile work tool however like you I have also used it for traditional project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trial an error will help you find your feet. Dont let anyone tell you there is prescribed way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Caution Jira can be a maze and you will quickly learn its not hard to mess up a setup or lose data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry I have no specific answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30234" LastActivityDate="2017-11-26T10:20:26.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22946" CreationDate="2017-11-26T10:27:25.440" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I see a mashup of terms from traditional and Agile worlds. The answer below assumes you are using Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product = Project&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;For your project, create a project in JIRA. Everything related to your project will live here. The developers will be given access to this project, you will create workflows for the different issue types, etc. You should have only one product backlog, which will include the 'desirements' (high-level requirements) for your project. In this context, your project will result in your product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Epics&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;Epics are created for features that are quite large and would take multiple iterations/sprints to complete fully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Components&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;You can use this to represent the architectural elements of your solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Remarks&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;You don't have to use epics, components, labels or other JIRA features. I suggest you start by reading up on Scrum and JIRA Agile. Grasp the basic understanding of the framework. Many of the best agile teams don't use any tools like JIRA. Be wary that the tool doesn't influence how you work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So create a project, add the stories and just follow the Scrum rules and ceremonies, creating the necessary artefacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-11-29T14:16:38.627" LastActivityDate="2017-11-29T14:16:38.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22931" CreationDate="2017-11-26T10:55:19.633" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Option 1&#xA;Educate the client that they will be buying sprints as opposed to products. They will be given full visibility of work done in a sprint via reviews, sprint boards, and regular releases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cost of an agile sprint will be priced similarly to traditional projects. The catch is that the client buys a sprint at a time. The idea is that a strong client supplier relationship is built up through transparency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option 2&#xA;Price up what a sprint costs you, have a story mapping workshop to get a high-level view of the project and tender accordingly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may work out the price of a sprint and calculate how many sprints. Any changes from the original plan must be tracked and billed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope these high level answers act as starting point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30234" LastActivityDate="2017-11-26T10:55:19.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22952" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22957" CreationDate="2017-11-26T14:22:06.260" Score="3" ViewCount="293" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently in our project the situation is that we can have several goals. And it works fine for us to make a team member responsible for acheiving a particular goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But recently I tried to pass &quot;Scrum Open&quot; test and saw a statement in one of the questions that put me in doubt. It was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Sprint Backlog and all of its items are collectively owned by the Development Team. No individual team member can claim ownership over an item as this would block communication and collaboration.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I wonder: is it ok to make a developer responsible for a goal in Scrum? Does it break any of Scrum rules? What disadvantages could be there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28318" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-07-08T09:33:15.490" LastActivityDate="2019-07-08T09:33:15.490" Title="Is it ok to make developer responsible for one of sprint goals?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;goals&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22952" CreationDate="2017-11-26T15:55:16.927" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrum-institute.org/Scrum_Roles_The_Scrum_Team.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum institute&lt;/a&gt; definition of &lt;strong&gt;Accountability&lt;/strong&gt; in a team is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Team as a whole is responsible to deliver the committed&#xA;  delivery in time and with the defined quality. A good result or a&#xA;  failure is never attributed to a single team member but always the&#xA;  result of the Scrum Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my personal opinion, if the whole team agrees to assign a goal to a specific developer and have them accountable for it, then the team must study the risk carefully, and make a plan B in case something went wrong and the developer couldn't deliver on time to avoid failing the sprint goals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is about having a self-organized team, so in concept it's OK to assign a goal to a specific developer but the team must be prepared to the risks of the decision if any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3263" LastActivityDate="2017-11-26T15:55:16.927" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22942" CreationDate="2017-11-26T16:47:00.223" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wether or not coding in your own time is appriciated, the problem isn't the coding per sé. The issue is that the developer may not see the whole picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does the change get tested, promoted, approved, released, supported? Is testing the change also done by the same developer, in his/her own time, or is that effort added to the team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastActivityDate="2017-11-26T16:47:00.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22955" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-27T02:23:21.443" Score="2" ViewCount="87" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a software development organization doing contracting work, where there are typically only a handful of developers working for any one customer and there is a fairly large number of customers, what are good ways of building a common culture and developing the skills of the individual developers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work practices within each project are typically largely set by the customer (though it might be possible to exert some influence) and the projects tend to be full time and long term. This means developers have more attachment to the customer than to their own organization and each learn idiosyncratic ways rather than a common culture. Many of them are rather junior and will therefore be easily influenced by what they see in a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An obvious idea would be to have team meetings where teams can exchange experiences and discuss best practice, but I'm not sure how to keep these productive. Team members will also tend to be reluctant to bring up problems in their projects at such meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas or experiences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30584" LastEditorUserId="30584" LastEditDate="2017-11-27T02:29:46.510" LastActivityDate="2017-11-29T10:40:49.663" Title="Building common culture in a contracting organization?" Tags="&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;culture&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22956" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-27T07:27:58.330" Score="3" ViewCount="18618" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm new to Agile methodology and I have some very basic questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprint -&gt; It is the iterative process (One development life cycle from Requirement to user acceptance testing) in Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, while doing delivery to the client, we say that Sprint 1 and Sprint 2 etc. would deliver?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where would we use the term Scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the delivery time of one Scrum? &#xA;Please clarify to me the exact difference between Scrum and Sprint in an easy way to understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30588" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-12-10T14:14:33.980" LastActivityDate="2021-01-20T15:04:29.423" Title="Scrum vs. Sprint" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22952" CreationDate="2017-11-27T08:00:26.293" Score="4" Body="&lt;h1&gt;No&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum upholds the following principles and recommendations that go against this practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team responsibility - The team commits to the sprint goal, the individual members commit to the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Swarming - The team should work together on tasks when possible and sensible. Having 3 out of 4 tasks complete is preferable to having all tasks 3/4 complete.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further concerns about assigning responsibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This can erode team cohesion by making it feel more like working in their own little corner than like contributing to a common goal. There's nothing wrong with &quot;assigning&quot; work - not all tasks can be sensibly swarmed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It can lead to specialization. Some specialization can be unavoidable in areas where you need particular talent or excellence but you should always strive for cross functionality. Having a team where everyone can do everything makes you more flexible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It can suppress cooperation and coaching. Lets say two of your devs are struggling with their goals. One is reasonably sure he can do it, albeit just barely. The other one realizes he needs advice and guidance by the former. If they are personally responsible for their goals then the former is going to be less inclined to risk his own goal to help the other achieve his.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It can lead to jealousy and resentment when one dev consistently gets the &quot;sexy&quot; goals that are rewared with praise. It can then also lead to fighting over who gets which goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously these are only dangers not prophecies. But what are you gaining for your risk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2017-11-27T08:00:26.293" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22956" CreationDate="2017-11-27T08:14:06.330" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum is like the &lt;em&gt;&amp;lt; insert holy book here &gt;&lt;/em&gt;. It tells you how you should behave, what principles you should follow and what special ceremonies occur in a cycle of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A sprint is like the year. You try your best to live by that codex while you solve the problems that are thrown at you. You observe the ceremonies of sprint planning, review and retrospection as laid out by Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2017-11-27T08:14:06.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22956" CreationDate="2017-11-27T08:51:26.697" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt; is the Framework in which a sprint takes place. A Sprint is a defined time period for developing features for a product. The maximum time for a sprint is 30 days (can be shorter but not longer). During a sprint the development team develops new features for the product. When the sprint is finished a new version of the product is available. This product could be shipped to the customer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30589" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2017-11-30T14:25:54.840" LastActivityDate="2017-11-30T14:25:54.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22960" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22971" CreationDate="2017-11-27T11:27:58.943" Score="1" ViewCount="6096" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Team, we are committed to deliver Product Backlog items per the Product Owner's priority. The team doesn't understand why we should define Sprint Goals. How does that help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30305" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2017-11-28T05:37:29.483" LastActivityDate="2017-11-28T10:37:54.833" Title="Why must we define a Sprint Goal for each Sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22960" CreationDate="2017-11-27T12:33:01.470" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;A sprint goal is a short description of what the team plans to achieve during the sprint. It is written collaboratively by the team and the product owner. So it helps the PO and the team to choose the right set of tasks to work on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example the sprint goal is to enhance the application response rate to be one minute instead of five minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So by knowing this you'll know as a team which tasks to work on to deliver the required goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3263" LastEditorUserId="30596" LastEditDate="2017-11-27T18:34:33.430" LastActivityDate="2017-11-27T18:34:33.430" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22960" CreationDate="2017-11-27T13:01:38.163" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Also the sprint goal is essential to be able to say that the sprint is done. Is the sprint goal not achieved the sprint is not done and therefore the sprint failed. In addition to that the sprint goal id necessary to be able to determine if the sprint has to be stopped. When the sprint goal becomes obsolete the sprint can be terminated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30589" LastActivityDate="2017-11-27T13:01:38.163" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22955" CreationDate="2017-11-27T13:20:27.340" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no silver bullet for this (either). And much of the answers that people are going to give are contextual to their organizations. I'm going to offer one viewpoint since we're in kind of a similar situation with most of our people doing sub-contracting and thus working very closely with our client organizations and not spending time with our own people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The simple answer is this: You have to lower your expectations on how many hours they can charge the customer for in order for them to spend more time together. We have a policy that we aim for maximum 80% chargeable work - so we can spend the rest 20% spending time together and work our organizations culture. That means at least on day per week. We're also aiming for people to rotate out of sub-contracting and into our own projects on regular intervals so people can actually work together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I've seen from other companies is that they arrange lunches for their people working at client's offices etc. and some even organize regular evening activities for people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you do the key is to get people together. You don't have to have a set agenda for those meetings. Just arrange a hack day or whatever and just let people talk and get to know each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29075" LastActivityDate="2017-11-27T13:20:27.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22956" CreationDate="2017-11-27T15:55:29.077" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum is a meeting. The term comes from the name for the huddle in Rugby. In AGILE it is the same as a daily stand-up. Essentially it is a small meeting of the team on a daily basis to make sure everyone is on the same page, and to identify risks to delivery early. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#daily-scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Daily Scrum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Sprint is a window of time. It is usually 2-4 weeks long, decided before the project starts. The Sprint is used to set goals and measure team productivity, as well as any fluctuation to the overall progress and health of a project. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#the-sprint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Sprint&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30598" LastEditorUserId="30598" LastEditDate="2021-01-20T15:04:29.423" LastActivityDate="2021-01-20T15:04:29.423" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22966" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22970" CreationDate="2017-11-27T16:22:07.860" Score="1" ViewCount="1454" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team is using Kanban board but they seem to prefer to collate a couple of tickets then 'do a release' as appose to releasing each ticket. i.e. they move tickets through the workflow and then put them in a waiting column for days on end and then they do sporadic releases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This obviously seems sub-optimal but then again its just another queue column so maybe its not the end of the world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any suggestions about this and also any guidelines about the WIP of this queue column 'Waiting for release'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastActivityDate="2017-12-03T03:26:49.247" Title="Team using Waiting for Release column on their kanban board" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;&lt;kanban-board&gt;&lt;release-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22955" CreationDate="2017-11-27T16:27:00.463" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should take some time to read through the blog at Trello. They post fairly regularly on the topic as they are a very remote-heavy employer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read an interesting &lt;a href=&quot;https://blog.trello.com/how-to-host-a-remote-team-offsite-budget&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt; from Trello recently on how they manage to have off site team building days on a budget that had some interesting ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key seems to be getting people together, and making sure they have time to do so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be sure to pay close attention to that second part: making sure they have time to do so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As my own anecdote, I worked for a contracting firm that would regularly have team-building events for its employees, but they still expected 100% billable to the client. This resulted in the billable employees being chained to their desks while the rest of the company took a half-day to barbecue. Not surprisingly, this led to resentment among the billable employees since the rest of the company was &quot;getting paid to party&quot; from the money the billable employees were earning. Overlooking the need to allow time resulted in the events doing more to harm the culture and camaraderie than it did to help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30598" LastActivityDate="2017-11-27T16:27:00.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22966" CreationDate="2017-11-27T18:13:15.257" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First thing is first: Kanban has no queue columns. This is an anti-pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To elaborate, a Kanban board is a visual representation of a workflow. In workflow mapping, we do not represent wait states as steps in a process, rather as notes in the transition from one step to another. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, this indicates work being pushed to the next step instead of being pulled (since no one can pull into a wait state). This also leads us to the solution. If you assume that someone doing the next step must pull the work from the previous column then we see that there should be a WIP limit on the last step (probably dev or test in most teams) and items only go into release when someone is releasing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, a team using Kanban should always be trying to reduce their cycle and lead time. That is usually the primary driver to break up those batches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;On Common Visualization of Queues&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may have seen something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5zRhb.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5zRhb.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a common misconception about what this is showing. Here, both Dev and Ready for Test are the same column and have the same WIP. If the WIP is 4, there should be a max of 4 items in the whole column. The dotted line is just a visual indicator that items are ready to pull. It says the same as if you just had the dev column and put a green checkmark on cards that you finished writing code for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-11-27T18:13:15.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22960" CreationDate="2017-11-27T21:49:45.730" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The concept of &quot;sprint goal&quot; in scrum is relatively new to me, but it sounds like it's there to help the stakeholders and product owner conceptualize the work they want to see in the sprint, and to communicate that concept to the engineering team. &#xA;My team does not use this concept, but it sounds like it's more useful in larger organizations with smaller teams that can be devoted to a single-minded pursuit over a given sprint. For a team that is responsible for all of the organization's engineering work (like my team), this concept is probably not helpful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30600" LastActivityDate="2017-11-27T21:49:45.730" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22966" CreationDate="2017-11-27T22:35:40.660" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not clear if your team is doing production support or software/ app dev.  Assuming it is app dev, there are a few questions to consider - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What is the customer's need for the releases your team is making?  If there is no pressure from customer to do a release or if the pressure is sporadic or infrequent, then there is nothing much your team can do about it.  However, over longer periods of time, across multiple customers, if your team is - or becomes - challenged with having to maintain multiple versions of your product, there is a cost to that.  It is then up to them - or some business function like sales or support - to have the conversation with your customers that they need to accept new releases at a certain frequency or they may be at a risk of not getting the support they might need on an old version of the product.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there an internal stakeholder - such as Product Owner or Sales or Management - who anyway needs to see what work the team has competed - and done so satisfactorily - at least from a quality and market requirements perspective? If yes, it might be worthwhile for them to deploy new or updated code to an internal staging/ demo server so they can do demos to your stakeholders - or let them get their hands dirty and help validate the new/ updated features of the product.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is a production support environment, there may be some SLA (service level agreement) goals to be met (response time, resolution time, etc.) - which would again need some pre-defined frequency of releases in order to meet those SLAs. Again, without more information, it would appear your team is not facing SLA violation issues and unhappy customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on these, there certainly are guidelines for you to follow about how to model your Kanban board so it matches your current business processes - and helps you improve, as Daniel pointed out above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;WIP Limits are meant to encourage people to finish work at hand before taking up new stuff.  If these are not implemented, you might have a situation where half-done tickets lie around in intermediate in-progress or done stages waiting for some external dependency (customer input, shared resources, etc.) and the team, instead of resolving them, takes up new tickets.  Pretty soon, you can have a slow-moving Kanban board with low flow and throughput and high lead times.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Instead of calling the last column &quot;waiting for release&quot;, it could simply be better named - either &quot;Deployed to Staging&quot; or just &quot;Completed&quot; - so it is clear to everyone concerned that no more work is pending other than putting it out in a release.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, just to be clear - Kanban is not prescriptive in nature - and it simply asks you to start with what you have - and look for improvement opportunities.  If your unpredictable release schedule is a (perceived) problem, it can be easily fixed by defining an explicit policy to do releases every 1, 2 or 4 or 6 weeks, whatever is acceptable in the business context. If it is not, and everyone knows what &quot;Waiting for Release&quot; means, there's no need to change anything!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to share the example of our own Dev team (we are a Kanban product developer - &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.digite.com/swiftkanban/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SwiftKanban&lt;/a&gt;), which has a somewhat similar situation.  We have both SaaS and on-prem customers.  We do SaaS releases every 4-6 weeks - that cadence is well established. But, our on-prem customers may take new releases as late as once in 3 months only - and we have little control over that - it is really based on their own cost of deploying a new release from a vendor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, we follow a process similar to what I described above - and this is what our Kanban board looks like - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cUWu1.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cUWu1.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you might be able to tell, our internal staging server (just to the left of the green Production column) is Ganesha - and we deploy new features, bug-fixes and other enhancements on a fairly continuous basis.  This server is used as an &quot;internal production&quot; server where we run our company operations - such as Marketing, HR, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, cards sitting in the Ganesha column are cards that are done and deployed.  We have no WIP Limit here - but our policy is to deploy a new release to production when we have approximately 20 items completed.  All other columns on the board have WIP limits as needed - based on the number of people working on each stage.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like I said, we deploy to our SaaS production regularly every 4-6 weeks.  Our customers can take up new releases every 1-3 months whenever they are ready.  So you could easily set a WIP limit on a similar column and use that limit to ensure that the team deploys to production when the WIP Limit has been reached.  It is really up to your team and your customers as to what makes sense!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2017-11-27T22:35:40.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22960" CreationDate="2017-11-28T05:23:57.453" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You must define a Sprint Goal for each Sprint for two primary reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's &lt;em&gt;required&lt;/em&gt; by the framework for both philosophical and pragmatic reasons as described in the subsequent sections.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It provides a focus for limited resources within Scrum's iterative methodology.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is possible to be agile without a central coherence as provided by the Sprint Goal, the result isn't Scrum. Furthermore, Scrum (or other coherence-based methodologies) may not be the right fit for your organization or project if Sprint Goals can't be constructed or honored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Why the Sprint Goal is Needed&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint Goal is an essential element of Scrum, which is primarily (although not exclusively) a &lt;em&gt;product development&lt;/em&gt; framework. As such, it is intended to iteratively deliver features, as opposed to other frameworks which focus on other mechanics such as throughput or cycle time. Because of this development-centric focus, work is intended to be batched into cohesive themes for each iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are &amp;quot;doing Scrum&amp;quot; without setting well-defined Sprint Goals, then you can't actually claim to be following the Scrum model. This isn't just a philosophical distinction. The Sprint Goal is essential to a properly-implemented Scrum framework. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-planning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; defines the Sprint Goal as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Sprint Goal&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint Goal is an objective set for the Sprint that can be met through the implementation of Product Backlog. It provides guidance to the Development Team on why it is building the Increment. It is created during the Sprint Planning meeting. The Sprint Goal gives the Development Team some flexibility regarding the functionality implemented within the Sprint. The selected Product Backlog items deliver one coherent function, which can be the Sprint Goal. The Sprint Goal can be any other coherence that causes the Development Team to work together rather than on separate initiatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the Development Team works, it keeps the Sprint Goal in mind. In order to satisfy the Sprint Goal, it implements functionality and technology. If the work turns out to be different than the Development Team expected, they collaborate with the Product Owner to negotiate the scope of Sprint Backlog within the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the Scrum Goal provides:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A measurable objective for the time box.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Context (and therefore scope) for the Product Backlog Items developed within the time box.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Context for the daily Scrum, without which it typically devolves into status reporting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A baseline expectation for measuring variance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The essential criterion for &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-sprint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cancelling a Sprint&lt;/a&gt; due to superseded business goals, adaptive learning, or as an escape hatch for errors in Sprint Planning or delivery.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my professional experience, without the Sprint Goal as a core element, Scrum often fails to provide expected gains in productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Reasons People Try to Skip Sprint Goals&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teams that don't implement Scrum Goals often do this for some common reasons, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;They aren't really doing iterative time boxing.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you aren't respecting the time box, or the team is doing demand-based work rather than building features within a time box, then having an over-arching goal probably doesn't make sense. However, that's often a &amp;quot;project smell&amp;quot; that Scrum is the wrong framework for managing the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The team, and especially the Product Owner, isn't leveraging the framework.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is meant to deliver a product in thin, preferably-vertical slices of functionality. However, there's a lot of effort that goes into prioritizing Product Backlog into features and related stories that fit within a single time box. It's hard, so skipping the Sprint Goal is essentially a cop-out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The 100% utilization fallacy and lack of prioritization.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some teams, when under pressure to deliver more work in less time, discard the Sprint Goal in order to work on multiple objectives at the same time or to avoid slack in the process. However, deliberate disconnection of a central coherence and multiple priorities competing for limited resources are sure-fire ways to torpedo any possible efficiencies from an iterative methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure there are other reasons, too. The point here is that, unless you're using Scrum for something other than product development (e.g. administrative or service-oriented programs), failing to define &lt;em&gt;and defend&lt;/em&gt; a central coherence is not only canonically-wrong from a framework perspective, but frequently detrimental to the project's allocation of focused resources. This notion of &lt;em&gt;focused (but limited) resources&lt;/em&gt; is absolutely essential to the iterative paradigm, and underlies virtually all agile and traditional methodologies. Scrum just makes it much more explicit through the use of the Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What Next?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a team is struggling to define coherent Sprint Goals for each iteration, the Scrum Master can and should educate the team (and the organization!) on the importance of setting and adhering to the goals. This should be done not only because it's important to the Scrum framework, but because it is ultimately important to the product development effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Scrum Master isn't able to provide this level of guidance, or doesn't have sufficient influence within the organization to enforce the framework's essential components, then hiring an Agile Coach to advise the team would be the logical next step. The coach can help the team improve the implementation of Scrum, or suggest alternative frameworks that can succeed without an explicit central coherence for each time box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-11-28T05:23:57.453" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12343" CreationDate="2017-11-28T10:23:03.217" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few things I learned about &lt;a href=&quot;https://tapptitude.com/blog/code-remote-work-with-remote-app-development-team/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;working with a remote development team&lt;/a&gt; by being part of one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Transparency&lt;/strong&gt; is the best policy&#xA;For every new mobile app project we take up, we work up a document containing all of the info we have on the client’s product and business. This way, all of the requirements are clear to both us and the client, while we can always get back to this document to clarify things in the future.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A product specifications document consists of, but is not limited to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project overview&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project objectives&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technology used for the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project architecture&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User flows&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User stories (which include acceptance criteria for every user story)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wireframes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We work within the &lt;strong&gt;scrum framework&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some of the &lt;strong&gt;tools&lt;/strong&gt; we use: &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Trello&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jira&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Slack&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Skype&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;and BitBucket and GitHub as code repositories (we're a mobile app development agency)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;4&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;Lean Canvas&lt;/strong&gt; of the client's business can come in handy. The Lean Canvas, proposed by Ash Maurya in his book Running Lean, is a business model hypothesis testing and validation tool. It’s also a simple, yet powerful tool, which can be used by the remote team to get a lot of valuable info about your product and your business, at a single glance. A user persona sheet can also be of use.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leading a remote development team doesn’t mean micro-managing the hell out of those people. Your collaboration with a remote team will be a lot more successful if you lead those people by inspiring them. Be there to answer their questions, be it product or business wise, be open about the strengths and weaknesses of the project; be clear about the expectations and the vision. Be like an open book, but also give your remote co-workers space to come up with solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30616" LastActivityDate="2017-11-28T10:23:03.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22960" CreationDate="2017-11-28T10:37:54.833" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;setting a sprint goal for each sprint is especially important when &lt;a href=&quot;https://tapptitude.com/blog/code-remote-work-with-remote-app-development-team/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;working with a remote development team&lt;/a&gt;; this way, everyone involved will have a better understanding of what has to be done and when, making it easier to assess if the team is progressing on track or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30616" LastActivityDate="2017-11-28T10:37:54.833" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22955" CreationDate="2017-11-28T10:57:54.277" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for a &lt;a href=&quot;https://tapptitude.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;mobile app development agency&lt;/a&gt; working as the &quot;remote software development team&quot; for about 75% of its clients. And although the majority of us work together 5 days a week in the same office building, it's just a couple of us working on the same project. So I get what you're saying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to ensure people connecting throughout the agency, we organized 2 weekend escapades this year alone. The first one was a full on &lt;a href=&quot;https://tapptitude.com/blog/team-building-activities-fun-effective-team-approved/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;team building weekend&lt;/a&gt;, while the second one, one from which we just got back, was the agency's 4 year anniversary weekend. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no idea how much money the company spent for these two escapades, but what I can tell you is that it was totally worth it. We also go out at least once a month as a team, just out for a drink, and we organize movie nights at the office; and we have Secret Santa and a Christmas Dinner coming up. Building personal relationships will definitely improve the work the team does. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30616" LastActivityDate="2017-11-28T10:57:54.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22956" CreationDate="2017-11-28T12:47:07.020" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprint&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;In product development, a sprint is a set period of time during which specific work has to be completed and made ready for review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each sprint begins with a planning meeting. During the meeting, the product owner (the person requesting the work) and the development team agree upon exactly what work will be accomplished during the sprint. The development team has the final say when it comes to determining how much work can realistically be accomplished during the sprint, and the product owner has the final say on what criteria need to be met for the work to be approved and accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Scrum, the most popular agile framework in software development, is an iterative approach that has at its core the sprint — the scrum term for iteration. Scrum teams use inspection throughout an agile project to ensure that the team meets the goals of each part of the process.&#xA;The scrum approach includes assembling the project’s requirements and using them to define the project. You then plan the necessary sprints, and divide each sprint into its own list of requirements. Daily scrum meetings help keep the project on target as do regular inspections and reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30618" LastActivityDate="2017-11-28T12:47:07.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22914" CreationDate="2017-11-28T12:50:44.923" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, Holidays can be included. But the Customer/Client must be intimated about the holidays in prior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30618" LastActivityDate="2017-11-28T12:50:44.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22977" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-29T07:30:23.690" Score="2" ViewCount="485" Body="&lt;p&gt;When looking around for examples of how five levels of defect severity are named it turned out that almost everybody seem to use four levels of severety (they name them differently though).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a rational reason for this? Any fact that says that this is actually the best thing to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it just that everybody does this because everybody else does it? Which means that it's a reasonable idea to (go against the flow and) use five levels instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I mentioned I've got no great idea what to call these five levels (perhaps critical, major, medium, minor, trivial or something). The idea is that the highest of course is catastrophic/critical/blocker (ie something that we simply can't stand or nearly so) then the lower would be geometrically smaller in expected impact. Where it ends is when the expected impact is too low to bother about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30635" LastEditorUserId="30635" LastEditDate="2017-11-29T08:53:37.953" LastActivityDate="2017-12-03T02:58:59.290" Title="Why four levels of defect severity?" Tags="&lt;task-management&gt;&lt;defect-fixing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22955" CreationDate="2017-11-29T10:40:49.663" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can try some of the following :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Checklists&lt;/strong&gt;. Create checklist for frequent and important tasks. Make sure everybody applies them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Standard procedures&lt;/strong&gt;. Create and document standard workflows for the main services offered by your company.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sme methodology.&lt;/strong&gt; For example use the same flavour of agile development for all projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Guidelines&lt;/strong&gt;. Document, train and enforce guidelines.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Common tools&lt;/strong&gt;. Whenever possible use for all customers the same tools. For example use the same bug tracking software.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rotation of employees&lt;/strong&gt;. Relocate senior employees to a different project for 2-3 weeks per year, to promote knowledge sharing and bonding.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28712" LastActivityDate="2017-11-29T10:40:49.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22979" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22995" CreationDate="2017-11-29T12:21:19.227" Score="0" ViewCount="438" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a Super Product Owner, who cannot possibly be involved in writing or refining every story - they simply set the overall priority on the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have Subject Matter Experts, whose day job is to be involved with work completely unrelated to our team and, mostly, unrelated to the technology we are building. They have knowledge which can be used to drive individual stories but otherwise have a light touch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have Business Analysts who are few and far between and, due to pressures outside of our team, cannot be as dedicated to our team to be ideal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also have the DevOps team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the left, our scrum board currently includes the following columns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[New] For drafting stories (added to by the SPO, BAs and SMEs)&#xA;[Backlog] For refining and 3-Amigo'ing stories&#xA;[To Do] As usual (the board is normal from here...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that we do not have a definitive Product Owner; The SMEs will either write the stories or provide input from the business to a story. The SPO might right a story. However, neither of those has the time or the knowledge (and certain not the business priority) to be the product owner for any given story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What this means, is that a story will get to a certain level of detail and moved from the [New] column into the [Backlog] column. We, as the DevOps team, are then expected to take ownership of each and every story, push for the 3 Amigos and do the legwork to find out who is requesting the work, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One acceptance made is that the author of the story is putting their name on it (something which, believe it or not, Service Now doesn't enforce) and so we have someone to go to (often, not always) to question. If not, we go to the Super Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Direct question for SO: How can this be improved and is it acceptable to 'Agile' in general? Is there a particular element which could be tweaked, given the constraints outlined above, which would allow us to name a definite PO more often?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Less direct question: Have you ever worked in this sort of setup and how did you handle it? Is there a way to make it work when the 'PO' is a disparate group, rather than any single person?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29374" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-01-29T23:34:06.517" LastActivityDate="2018-01-29T23:34:06.517" Title="Lacking a dedicated Product Owner" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;devops&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22979" CreationDate="2017-11-29T18:16:25.337" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt; team has a single and dedicated Product Owner. That person has responsibility for the product backlog, though doesn't have to be the person doing the work. As the Scrum Guide puts it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is the sole person responsible for managing the&#xA;Product Backlog. Product Backlog management includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clearly expressing Product Backlog items;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ordering the items in the Product Backlog to best achieve goals and missions;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Optimizing the value of the work the Development Team performs;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensuring that the Product Backlog is visible, transparent, and clear to all, and shows what the Scrum Team will work on next;&#xA;and, Ensuring the Development Team understands items in the Product Backlog to the level needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner may do the above work, or have the Development Team do&#xA;it. However, the Product Owner remains accountable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have one of those, you aren't practicing Scrum. This isn't a condemnation, but it is useful to acknowledge that if you are not practicing Scrum, you should be looking for other ways to solve your problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without a person who owns the backlog, the another option is to create policies around how work is prioritized in the backlog and what constitutes an proper request. This must be applied consistently to be effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you say &amp;quot;All tickets are worked first-come, first-serve and must have a clear problem statement and a call-back number. Tickets without a call-back will not be worked.&amp;quot; then you don't need a product owner to organize them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you won't have any other benefits from a Product Owner either like overarching vision of product development and a local person to talk with. If you are communicating with your customers though, it's not necessarily un-agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your organization decides that it wants to practice Scrum or it wants the benefits that come along with a good product owner, then they need to pick a person that has the time, knowledge, and authority to fill that role. Half-doing it will only get you half-done results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-11-30T07:46:23.637" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22983" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22986" CreationDate="2017-11-29T19:46:38.673" Score="0" ViewCount="519" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a software developer and I'm asked to log my time in Atlassian Jira for each of the subtasks we have in all the open stories. Sometimes we are in rush and I forget to log some time in the many subtasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if there is any Jira utility I can use to get the overall number of logged time in a day, or maybe a query to run in the &lt;em&gt;search bar&lt;/em&gt; (see image below) to find all the sub-tasks in which I logged some time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5ZLd1.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5ZLd1.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30647" LastEditorUserId="30647" LastEditDate="2017-12-01T16:52:24.147" LastActivityDate="2020-05-12T18:54:38.440" Title="Personal Time Tracking report using Atlassian Jira" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;timekeeping&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22984" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-11-30T03:34:52.207" Score="1" ViewCount="106" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are 2 major systems operated in an organization (an ERP and another major operational application) which are handled by 2 project managers. Data flows from the operational application to ERP. A new major request comes from client end to the project manager who manages the operational application to develop a module which will require an integration to transfer data from the operational application to ERP and once data is passed, there are certain changes that will need to be modifed from ERP end in order to complete the requirement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, should both project managers be responsible / accountable for the entire project where the operational application project manager handles until the completion of data transferring from operational application to ERP and the ERP project manager has to take care of the ERP end modification? Or else, should the operational application project manager be solely responsible for the entire project? And if it's the first scenario where both project managers are responsible, should the client be informed about the project authority level or does it need to be handled internally? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Extremely sorry if the question is too long or complex&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17511" LastActivityDate="2017-12-03T02:29:16.600" Title="Project authority level" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;authority&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22983" CreationDate="2017-11-30T06:11:22.963" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can use &lt;strong&gt;worklogAuthor&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;worklogDate&lt;/strong&gt; parameters for your needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your query will be like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;project = &quot;My Project&quot; AND worklogAuthor = currentUser() AND worklogDate = now()&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will get all issues in which you logged some time today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastActivityDate="2017-11-30T06:11:22.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22987" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22996" CreationDate="2017-11-30T07:33:16.527" Score="2" ViewCount="509" Body="&lt;p&gt;Question is pretty simple, I've a Kanban project, with a personal workflow that provides different statuses, as Resolved.&#xA;When I drag and drop to this last one through the lanes, or when I set it manually to Resolved status, the Resolution fields is still Unresolved, and one of my widget - &lt;em&gt;Created VS Resolved chart&lt;/em&gt; - is not working properly.&#xA;Any idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hh7Ec.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hh7Ec.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27720" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2017-12-01T15:34:09.400" LastActivityDate="2017-12-01T15:34:09.400" Title="Why in JIRA my field Resolution is labeled as Unresolved, when status is Resolved?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22987" CreationDate="2017-11-30T08:57:59.310" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dragging from the DONE lane to the RESOLVED let you chose from options RESOLVE or RESOLVE ISSUE. RESOLVE ISSUE is the option to chose for having the label Resolution in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27720" LastActivityDate="2017-11-30T08:57:59.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22952" CreationDate="2017-11-30T19:30:47.153" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;is it ok to make a developer responsible for a goal in Scrum? Does it break any of Scrum rules? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rules are defined in &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;They are self-organizing. No one (not even the Scrum Master) tells the Development Team how to turn Product Backlog into Increments of potentially releasable functionality&quot;  Therefore a single Development Team member could be responsible for a single Product Backlog Item in the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is only one Sprint Goal.  &quot;The Sprint Goal is an objective that will be met within the Sprint through the implementation of the Product Backlog, and it provides guidance to the Development Team on why it is building the Increment.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What disadvantages could be there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Isolation silos, by function or even individuals, results in a disjointed effort, complexities in coordination, and waste through hand offs.  &quot;Individual Development Team members may have specialized skills and areas of focus, but accountability belongs to the Development Team as a whole.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2017-11-30T19:30:47.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22977" CreationDate="2017-11-30T23:20:36.277" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The norm of following four levels of Severity and Priority comes from consensus and is driven by social psychology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 category does not exist.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 categories is too broad. (Major, Minor)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 categories leads to debates. (Critical, Major, Minor)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;4 categories is just right. (Critical, Major, Minor, Cosmetic)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;5 categories is enough. (Blocker, Critical, Major, Minor, Cosmetic)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;6 categories is overkill. (Blocker, Critical, Major, Significant, Minor, Cosmetic)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;7 categories! (What are you doing? Creating a rainbow?!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A major debate is usually between 3, 4 and 5 categories. Depending on the size and spread of the application and it's functionalities; the categorization can and should vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe 4 is just the right number of levels for majority of the applications and the 5th level should be added when there is slight overlap between critical &amp;amp; major defects. For example; large social media websites can implement a feature for a global audience but unfortunately it does not work for a particular geographical area/cell phone vendor/mobile device/version of the app. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such defects even though they result in data/experience/reach loss, do not impact the majority audience and the impact is &lt;strong&gt;comparatively&lt;/strong&gt; / &lt;strong&gt;relatively&lt;/strong&gt; less than what is considered as blocker &lt;strong&gt;within&lt;/strong&gt; the organization or for the application. However it needs to be addressed immediately to avoid any bad feedback/outrage, etc. and hence is &lt;strong&gt;critical&lt;/strong&gt;. Categorizing such defects into a new level of impact enables better prioritizing/scheduling/manageability. After all enabling efficient management is primary purpose of categorization into priority &amp;amp; severity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So in a nutshell, in my opinion from my experience, the size and reach of the organization / application should decide if you should switch from 4 levels to 5 levels of defect severity.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29308" LastActivityDate="2017-11-30T23:20:36.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22992" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22993" CreationDate="2017-12-01T02:46:23.380" Score="2" ViewCount="91" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are implementing an epic. While refining this epic, we discovered that a lot of our current functionality will be impacted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that when splitting up user stories, we should vertically split stories for various reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few of the techniques to do this is to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;split by workflow&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;split by happy path/sad path&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;split by roles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, upon splitting up our stories this way, we discover that upon delivering some user stories, other existing functionality will be left non functional. How do we handle this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently thinking of 3 options&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;disable all the existing functionality related to the epic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;let them be and them being non functional is out of scope (known issue, will be fixed in future release)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;let the features exist in parallel, and disable the old one once new one is complete&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should we go about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30690" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2017-12-03T15:46:03.987" LastActivityDate="2017-12-03T15:46:03.987" Title="Splitting up user stories that are enhancements that may destroy other functionality?" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22992" CreationDate="2017-12-01T03:20:35.770" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Very interesting problem. All three of those are potentially options, but the third seems the most likely. I could see the first if for some reason there was business benefit to stopping people using a set of features for a while (for example, if some regulation made the use of those old features unacceptable). The second might fall into the &quot;no harm no foul&quot; category if you aren't going to production, but then you don't have an increment of releasable code. I would only do this if the cost to #3 was so high that it was the only sensible business option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So on to #3: this is basically a feature toggle. You send your app down the old path unless this feature is toggled on with a config setting or some attribute sent in the browser. When you're ready to completely switch over, you permanently toggle the new feature on and clean out the old stuff after. A good feature toggle will allow both paths to work successfully. However, there is extra effort that goes into doing this. That effort might be small (like if you already use this approach and have everything built with this option) or very expensive (like if you have a complex 30-year-old mainframe app). I've never seen a case where it was impossible, but I have seen it be prohibitively expensive and that's where #2 comes in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-12-01T03:20:35.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22992" CreationDate="2017-12-01T03:43:07.030" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no pure right answer to this. It depends on your business/schedule/PO constraints and priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;disable all the existing functionality related to the epic &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is good if either a) you're confident you don't have to release an increment until the epic is done, or b) there is no substantial loss of business value in temporarily disabling the functionality&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;let them be and them being non functional is out of scope (known issue, will&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  be fixed in future release) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is good if you're confident you won't have to release an increment until the epic is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;let the features exist in parallel, and disable the old one once new one is complete&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the least risky course, if you use a flag to select the code path. That way you can disable the old one for development, and disable the new one if you have to release before you're done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possibility would be to revisit splitting up the epic to see if you can avoid this problem. Especially since you say that you didn't realize until after you had done the split that the existing features would be affected, it might be worth spending more time to look for a better solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However at this point I would consult with my stakeholders, especially those who make decisions about schedule. If they're cool with one of the three options you laid out, great; if they want you to try another split, ask them how much more time you should spend trying to do that before concluding there is no way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2017-12-01T03:43:07.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22979" CreationDate="2017-12-01T03:59:44.083" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What this means, is that a story will get to a certain level of detail and moved from the [New] column into the [Backlog] column. We, as the DevOps team, are then expected to take ownership of each and every story, push for the 3 Amigos and do the legwork to find out who is requesting the work, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds untenable to me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, your SPO should delegate someone to be an Effective Product Owner, and act as coordinator for the (subject matter experts + business analysts) participation. The Effective Product Owner would then do all the usual PO things, plus legwork as needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Failing that, I would go to my management and/or the product stakeholders, and say something like, &quot;You're paying the DevOps team to do development. It's not the best use of our time, nor the best match for our skillset, for us to have to do this level of non-development overhead work every time. Can you hire or reassign somebody whose job is specifically to do that part?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If neither of those will work given the reality of your workplace, then at least improve the process so that New items don't get moved into the Backlog column unless they include all necessary stakeholder contact info (along with a backup contact, if your workplace is volatile or your stakeholders tend to be overworked.) In that case, you may still have to work with a different person every time, but at least you will know who it is, because you'll reject it from Backlog until it has that info included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2017-12-01T03:59:44.083" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22987" CreationDate="2017-12-01T08:06:08.143" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In JIRA, an issue is only considered resolved if it has a value in the RESOLUTION field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The status of the issue doesn't actually matter. For example, it could have a status of RESOLVED or CLOSED but would still be considered as unresolved by JIRA if the RESOLUTION field was empty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the trick to resolving issues is to ensure that you have setup your workflow correctly. Make sure that the final &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver071/working-with-workflows-802592661.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;transition&lt;/a&gt; in your workflow includes the &lt;em&gt;resolve issue screen&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This screen is where you set the RESOLUTION. For example, you might have a RESOLUTION of &quot;done&quot;, &quot;duplicate&quot;, &quot;won't fix&quot;, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2017-12-01T08:06:08.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22998" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23000" CreationDate="2017-12-01T23:45:20.037" Score="0" ViewCount="124" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not sure if this is the right forum for this question. Let me know if there is any other better place and I will post it there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what happened at work. Dev architect came up with new guidelines about coding practices, patterns etc. She presented it to the team. It's noteworthy that most of the team members are seasoned developers. She then also presented the process in case someone doesn't follow those guidelines which includes escalating issue to appropriate manager who will take corrective action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have any issue taking appropriate action(s) if someone is not following defined guidelines but this should happen on individual basis. My view is that one should set the guidelines so everyone in the team knows very well which are the expectations. But I don't see any need of going into details of consequences if some individuals &quot;may&quot; not follow those. I am very upset about why she went into details of consequences when most of team members follow all the processes. Not only its offensive to me but also disrespectful. I reported my concerns to the development director and manager but they didn't do anything about it. They even didn't respond to my email on this topic. Is my way of thinking out of reality Or am I too sensitive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21001" LastEditorUserId="27720" LastEditDate="2017-12-06T19:49:04.417" LastActivityDate="2017-12-10T00:30:11.420" Title="Is it a good idea to talk about consequences in a meeting about dev processes?" Tags="&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;conflicts&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22999" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-02T01:15:51.297" Score="-1" ViewCount="209" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say I have a task that I've know is going to take 12 hours to do.  But when I schedule resources, I only scheduled 6 hours of resources.  How could I show that the resources are under-scheduled?  Perhaps a field that (or what calculations would I use on a custom field) that I can show &lt;em&gt;[Work - Allocated Work]&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30710" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-14T13:29:55.900" LastActivityDate="2019-01-14T13:29:55.900" Title="Scheduling: Remaining Work" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22998" CreationDate="2017-12-02T01:37:27.093" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Within the bounds of project management, it is not generally good practices to bring out the stick with the carrot. Even when not using agile, project teams are expected to be professional adults who know how to get their job done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Listing punitive consequences, as part of an opening design discussion, speaks of unprofessionalism. It also tells me the organization is unlikely to be using any of the progressive development techniques like Agile and Lean. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone I was mentoring was seeing this as a trend in their organization, I'd be advising them to look for a new job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2017-12-02T01:37:27.093" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23001" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-02T11:26:49.227" Score="1" ViewCount="2169" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a beginner and looking for a best way to create user stories for my project and I need an advice. It's about a money transfer project where I have to create a transfer flow: Configure Transfer, Add Receiver, Summary, and Finalize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these just four user stories for this process, where all details should be specified in the details section in a JIRA user story, or should I split the first one? For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a user I want to add a transfer amount.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a user I want to choose the type of a transfer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a user I want to see the total cost of a transfer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and so on, or it should be just:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a user I want to configure my transfer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a user I want to add a receiver.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30718" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-01-12T18:06:07.870" LastActivityDate="2018-01-12T18:06:07.870" Title="How can I split user stories about money transfers?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;granularity&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22998" CreationDate="2017-12-02T12:46:22.030" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Poor interpersonal skills, likely driven by insecurity for that person in that role.  There are a time and place for such language but it should be minimally used, only for exceptional circumstances and after other interventions have failed and when you are positive the people are broken and not the processes, tools, and other environmental drivers of poor performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also unlikely that you expressing your views to a person like this would have any impact, unless you have an existing strong, trusting relationship.  The insecurity drivers for this person would cause him or her to be very defensive of you and then likely label you as the &quot;enemy.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were in this role, I would do be my best to block and tackle this person away from the rest of the team, i.e., build motivation and encouragement in other venues and get the work done.  It can feel like swimming against the tides, however.  And, at some stage, looking for greener pastures is always an alternative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-12-02T12:46:22.030" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23003" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23014" CreationDate="2017-12-02T15:41:06.017" Score="-1" ViewCount="58" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does any one have any methods for enabling a team to deliver better demo’s?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am an Agile Coach working with a team of junior inexperienced cross platform developers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have delivered a training session about what good demos look like. I have also sat with them while they do dry runs and offered suggestions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They usually don’t want to take onboard any advise and I don’t want to manage them and force them to do stuff. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastActivityDate="2017-12-03T15:17:54.057" Title="How to enable better demos" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;reviews&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22999" CreationDate="2017-12-02T15:53:42.670" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your work variance column should indicate the gap between your actual hours accrued plus forecast and the baseline number hours.  So if you had 12 hours of work remaining per baseline but only forecast six hours to complete the work, you'll have a six-hour favorable WV in that column.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-12-02T15:53:42.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23005" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-02T18:21:55.930" Score="1" ViewCount="745" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tried File -&gt; option -&gt; Schedule -&gt; Calculation after edit -&gt; Off&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And Task mode -&gt; manual scheduled&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to set start date at 12/01/09 and end date at 03/03/09 but I want to set the duration to be 182 hours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30723" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-01T10:02:34.713" LastActivityDate="2018-11-01T10:02:34.713" Title="How to turn off auto duration calculation is MS project 2010?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;&lt;schedule&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22998" CreationDate="2017-12-02T19:54:42.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Policies&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't provide sufficient &lt;em&gt;business&lt;/em&gt; context here. Policies, as a general rule, should be clear not only about expectations, but also about consequences. For example, any sensible HR policy that talks about core hours might say something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Employees are expected to be present during core hours from 10:00am - 4:00pm unless excused. A pattern of unauthorized absences can result in disciplinary action up to and including...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A policy with no teeth is a &lt;em&gt;guideline&lt;/em&gt;. So, if a development &lt;em&gt;policy&lt;/em&gt; with official backing is being communicated, it is likely to have an &quot;or else&quot; statement in there somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Agility and Collaboration&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your post isn't tagged with &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/agile&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;agile&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;agile&lt;/a&gt; or any other context that would imply that top-down policies are inappropriate. Even so, an architect is rarely the line manager for a group of senior developers. As such, it's probably not appropriate for a engineering or architect level person to be making &quot;or else&quot; statements &lt;em&gt;unless they've been directed to do so by senior management.&lt;/em&gt; Whether or not that's the case isn't clearly articulated in your post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Digging Deeper&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may very well be a need for this command-and-control style of communication at your job. Without making personal assumptions about you as a person, when a team member says something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am very upset...Not only its offensive to me but also disrespectful. I reported my concerns to the development director and manager but they didn't do anything about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your statements suggest a number of things, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The level of emotional maturity and business experience of the person making this statement may be lower than it should be. While I respect your feelings, getting deeply offended at something that happens often enough to be typical in a corporate setting isn't a sign of career or personal maturity. (Note: I make this as an observation based on what you posted, not as a personal criticism. Take it as the observation it's meant to be.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Raising concerns to management is often a legitimate thing to do, but their non-reaction tells you that they either support the architect's statements (in which case the architect was articulating a policy that management fully supports) or that they think you're overreacting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's also possible that you approached the conversation with your management team with an inappropriate emotional pitch, rather than a genuine wish to understand the context and purpose of the architect's communications. Complaints, anger, or &quot;freaking out&quot; rarely get treated as the opening to a constructive dialog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the underlying reasons, you should consider your options as outlined below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Options&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a pragmatic perspective, the analysis of the current situation may help with understanding, but it's unlikely to significantly change what you can do about it. In all cases, you have two primary choices now:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it's possible you're overreacting, and if the &quot;or else&quot; is unlikely to matter to a team that's doing all the right things anyway, then just let it go. Tilting at windmills is not a career-enhancing skill for most people.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; issue is that the development team is untrusted, and the organization has a command-and-control orientation rather than an interest in developing agile, self-directed teams, then you can work within the system to provide guidance on how to improve productivity through agile principles, organizational trust, and team empowerment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find yourself unable to do either of those things, then the environment is probably a poor fit for you. Whether the problem is the organization or you is irrelevant; you will not do well in an organization that is a poor cultural fit for you, regardless of the reasons. If that's the case, dust off your resume and start looking for a new role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2017-12-10T00:30:11.420" LastActivityDate="2017-12-10T00:30:11.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22984" CreationDate="2017-12-03T02:29:16.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;CLIENT ?!? This isn't rocket science...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The client should have one major contact in your company through which all issues could be addressed. That contact would have authority over both project managers and that contact should decide how your company is going to support the client. You may for instance need a third project manager over the other two. You absolutely cannot have two different project managers passing the buck between themselves. The client should absolutely not see any internal squabbles. Your are to solve the client's problems, the client isn't suppose to referee your internal teams.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise your company should have one major point of contact in the client's company to handle issues. So if two different folks in the client's company want the opposite result, then your company has someone to whom they can escalate the problem.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30726" LastActivityDate="2017-12-03T02:29:16.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22977" CreationDate="2017-12-03T02:58:59.290" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I doubt there is any absolute rational. However let's look at it from a different perspective. Let's agree that there are showstopper defects which must be corrected before the current version of the product can be released. On the other end of the spectrum there are trivial defects which don't really impact the product and may never get fixed, such as a verb tense being wrong in some text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we are left with how many types of defects are left in the middle. Well there are those that we should fix in the next version, and those which which might fix in some unknown future version. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So pragmatically (whatever you call them...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Severity 1 - Must be fixed before this version is ready.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Severity 2 - Should be fixed in next version&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Severity 3 - Should/Could be fixed in some future undetermined version&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Severity 4 - Trivial defect which may never get fixed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now depending on the product and how many versions are planned you might want  severities for current version, 2nd version, and the 3rd version as well as unknown version. So you'd need 5 severities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It obviously doesn't help to have 500 severities because you'll waste an inordinate amount of time twiddling severity numbers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30726" LastActivityDate="2017-12-03T02:58:59.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22966" CreationDate="2017-12-03T03:26:49.247" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know anything about a Kanban board. But I do know software development having been a project manager for IBM on an outsourcing contract. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the particular customer site there were really two types of development happening. Most of the teams were supporting legacy systems which need only sporadic changes made by a lone programmer. My team, with a dozen programmers, was the only one actively developing new features with multiple releases in the pipeline. We also did a major new release yearly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;One size&quot; did not fit both types of workflow. Putting a new release of software into production for us required coordination between the team of developers working on different parts of the application. There was testing for the release. We had to develop a checklist of how the various jobs were going to be run on the production server to implement the new release. Sometimes releases had database updates which would run longer than overnight so we had to coordinate downtime with the customer.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My biggest contribution by far was to stop the whack a fix by my team and to have formal release cycles. After starting to use formal release cycles we never put the wrong code into the production system. The releases were not always bug free, but we did know what code was in the production system  for any given release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The gist is that depending on the overall scope of the software development effort, a release per software change may not be practical. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30726" LastActivityDate="2017-12-03T03:26:49.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23001" CreationDate="2017-12-03T04:29:56.043" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know what methodology &lt;em&gt;User Stories&lt;/em&gt; comes from. I'm familar with what are called &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_case&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Use Cases&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for the Use Case you break each case into the steps that a user would make and what the system needs to do to support that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User to transfer funds between accounts&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;System displays login screen&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User logs in with user ID and PW &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;System displays &quot;Main Menu&quot; Dialog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User selects &quot;Accounts &gt; Transfer Funds&quot; from the menu &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;System displays &quot;Select From Account Dialog&quot; with list of user accounts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User selects from account &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;System displays &quot;Select to which Account Dialog&quot; (From account displayed, but&#xA;disabled for selection)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;and so on...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of this is that this captures the actors in this interaction. So it may be important to differentiate if the customer is using an ATM or his home computer. The displays would almost certainly be different.  But in both of those cases communication is happening with some background system. So one type of cases has user, atm, and system, and the other type of case has user, home computer, and system. Also note that home computer uses ID &amp;amp; PW, while ATM uses ATM card and PIN. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30726" LastActivityDate="2017-12-03T04:29:56.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23005" CreationDate="2017-12-03T11:44:34.040" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Change your task to 'fixed duration.'  Load the number of days you need in the duration column.  Because you made your task fixed duration, those days will remain fixed.  (In your example, one of the resources you will need to make this work is a time machine.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, load 182 hours in the work column.  Since the task is fixed duration and you hardcoded 182 hours, then resource utilization will auto calculate.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-12-03T11:44:34.040" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23001" CreationDate="2017-12-03T12:06:14.460" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A rule of thumb I'm used to use is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;will my user be happy to receive the functionality X?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in your context, 'will your user be happy if he can (only) &lt;em&gt;configure&lt;/em&gt; a transfer?' I'd say he won't. So maybe, in your context, the 'Story' is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user, I want to transfer money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's it. Simple. You might want to enrich it to help in your definition of done, like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user, I want to transfer money, having a review before confirmation and having the possibility of using a favourites deliver list&#xA;  Any breakdown can be considered 'tasks' you have to do to deliver the user Story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As more details you have in your story, as more accurate your product will be. On the first story 'I want to transfer money' it doesn't mention if users can double check before confirmation nor having a favourites list (two very common functionalities) so you can deliver the first without them and still discuss with your user that 'you delivered as per requirements' (don't do it, it'll just generate frustration). Better to understand user needs and reach to a point where the story is clear for both sides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2017-12-03T12:06:14.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23003" CreationDate="2017-12-03T13:56:56.997" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the &lt;strong&gt;purpose&lt;/strong&gt; understood?  The questions doesn't mention a specific framework or process (i.e. &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;eXtreme Programming&lt;/a&gt;) which have some intents for such an event.  &lt;strong&gt;Why&lt;/strong&gt; things are done is very important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the problem?  You just don't like the way they are doing it (i.e. what does &quot;better&quot; mean and why is it important)?  There is no involvement by other attendees (i.e. stakeholders and customers)?  The information has already been shared via other methods?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may also be coaching needed for the other participants.  If there is to be a conversation regarding the features developed, then the onus should not be entirely on the technical team to elicit discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2017-12-03T13:56:56.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23003" CreationDate="2017-12-03T15:17:54.057" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience reluctance to do demo's or lack of engagement with demo's results from a misunderstanding of what the demo is for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is easy for developers (particularly inexperienced developers) to think that a demo is a progress meeting. This happens when the focus is showing how much work has been done and proving the 'worth' of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Demo's work best when the team sees them as an opportunity to get feedback rather than demonstrate progress. One way to achieve this is to encourage the team to phrase their demonstration as a series of questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is how we built the sign-in page, what do you think of it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The search box could have been in the menu bar, but instead we put it in the page body. Does that make sense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team talked a lot about the best way to display this table. What do you think of our solution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This only works if the team values feedback and has the opportunity to act on it (i.e. the scope is not locked down).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-12-03T15:17:54.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23001" CreationDate="2017-12-04T08:17:00.690" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't forget the 'so that' part of the user story. It is important that a user story includes a description of the value delivered to the end user. This helps non-technical people to understand the reason why a user story is being worked on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The larger story you mentioned could be something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user I want to configure my transfer and add a receiver so that I can complete a transfer successfully&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now it is possible that this story will be quite large, possibly taking more than a sprint to deliver. In which case it could be described as an &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/stories-epics-and-themes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;epic&lt;/a&gt; and then broken down in to smaller stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good approach to writing stories is to follow the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt; mnemonic. This includes ensuring that stories are &lt;em&gt;small&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2017-12-04T08:17:00.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23017" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-04T10:35:34.330" Score="0" ViewCount="2152" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should you be able to lay the two side by side and they will talk to each other item for item?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30745" LastActivityDate="2017-12-04T13:11:35.150" Title="Risk management plan vs risk register" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23017" CreationDate="2017-12-04T10:41:26.003" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No-  I'm not sure that I understand your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The risk management plan is a plan - how you will manage risk. It should contain nothing that is ephemeral.  Generally it contains sections that describe how you will identify risk, how you will analyze risk, calibration standards (what does a likelihood of 4 mean?  What is an impact of 2?).  The plan should outline who is involved in managing risks, what roles, what responsibilities.  How will risk reporting be done? etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The risk registry is a list of risks (usually with some analysis).  Everything it contains is ephemeral.  Often the registry is a spreadsheet with columns for risk, Likelihood, Impact, mitigation, and owner.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what you mean by talk to each other item for item... the sections of the risk management plan are similar to the sections for all other planning documents. The items in the risk registry are risks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2017-12-04T10:41:26.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23019" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-04T12:13:49.723" Score="0" ViewCount="4611" Body="&lt;p&gt;I run a small business and I have to take on an additional resource to handle an increased workload from one of my clients. How do I calculate my project management fee?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I estimate I will spend about 25% of time on project management. So, do I add 25%? on top of the hourly rate or the total of my rate + resource rate? I've heard varying different methods...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30749" LastEditorUserId="30749" LastEditDate="2017-12-08T09:25:00.850" LastActivityDate="2017-12-08T09:25:00.850" Title="How do I calculate a project management fee on my design projects?" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22999" CreationDate="2017-12-04T12:20:30.320" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can see this in the Resource Usage view. If you right click on the fields in the details column, you'll see a field &quot;Remaining availability&quot;, which gives the information that you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30751" LastActivityDate="2017-12-04T12:20:30.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23017" CreationDate="2017-12-04T13:11:35.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The risk management plan describes the who, what, where, when, how, and why as it relates to managing threats against your project.  It should point to the risk register as one of several tools that would be used to manage risks. The plan would indicate who owns it, who can update it, where it is maintained, how often it might get updated, and how it feeds into whatever reports you plan on publishing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your register should be in a constant state of flux while your plan is relatively stable, only updating it as necessary.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-12-04T13:11:35.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23019" CreationDate="2017-12-04T13:26:06.297" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The cost of managing a project is typically a range of the total cost of the project and is very industry dependent.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, your industry may suggest that PM and PM control costs will be 15% to 20% of the total cost of the project.  This would suggest that, adding a resource at an assumed 1,800 hours a year, the project would require 270 to 360 hours of PM resources.  So you would price the resource for the 1,800 hours and then price some PM resources somewhere between the 270 to 360 hours.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the PM and PM control area is not necessarily linear with the cost of the project.  As your project may grow in scope, you do not necessarily need to add the PM resources in an equivalent way.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example, it sounds like you are only devoting yourself to the increase of managing an additional resource.  If you intend to only decrease your designing time and replacing it with managing time but your overall hours do not increase, then I would suspect you would not &quot;charge&quot; for the PM part of this scope change.  Or, if you expect to be consistently working overtime to manage, then you would increase the costs of PM in this change.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-12-04T13:26:06.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23023" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-04T18:39:17.793" Score="-1" ViewCount="96" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a requirement where we need to analyze all the analytics placed on our website. We have total 4 pages on our website where we need to do this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story is simple:&#xA;As a developer, I want to list down all the events being tracked in pageA, pageB, pageC, pageD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are maintaining same version of these pages on mobile and on the desktop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should we break the stories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Smallest possible manner, keeping all things independent: There would be 8 stories in total i.e. list down all events being tracked in pageA on mobile (same for pageB, pageC, pageD) AND 4 similar stories for desktop.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keeping them independent but not breaking them to smallest possible manner: In this approach, we can create two stories i.e. one for mobile and another for desktop.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any views by experienced people?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28471" LastEditorUserId="28471" LastEditDate="2017-12-04T20:09:18.490" LastActivityDate="2017-12-05T16:19:44.507" Title="Should we break each smallest possible thing as a separate story?" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23023" CreationDate="2017-12-05T08:35:02.503" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've some considerations about this question.&#xA;I would try not to explicitly define in the Story the complete list of pages, one by one. Guess the pages are forty, instead of four.&#xA;So my approach would be something more generic&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;As a Sales,&#xA;&#xA;I want to analyse the customer behaviour on the [X] pages&#xA;&#xA;So that I can sell more ads to specific customers&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviusoly this is just an example. It looks weird the use of &lt;em&gt;As a Developer&lt;/em&gt;, I would suggest these links to read about it &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.industriallogic.com/blog/as-a-developer-is-not-a-user-story/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.industriallogic.com/blog/as-a-developer-is-not-a-user-story/&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.crisp.se/2014/09/25/david-evans/as-a-i-want-so-that-considered-harmful&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://blog.crisp.se/2014/09/25/david-evans/as-a-i-want-so-that-considered-harmful&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then once the Story is written according to a Definition of Ready, and all acceptance criteria are defined, then Developers can write technical tasks. For sure I wouldn't adopt your solution 1, it is too redundant. I'm not sure if it is the case to split into two stories for Desktop and Mobile, those can be part of the acceptance criteria. I simply would create the Story simpler, then Developers can split up into Tasks, according to their best approach to the development of this story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27720" LastActivityDate="2017-12-05T08:35:02.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23001" CreationDate="2017-12-05T10:50:02.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some basic guidelines to split stories into smaller stories. This mantra almost always works. However, it takes little time to get used to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Follow &lt;strong&gt;I N V E S T&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I&lt;/strong&gt;ndependent - Stories should be independent of all other stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;N&lt;/strong&gt;egotiable - Story should be negotiable between development team and PO&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;V&lt;/strong&gt;aluable -  A story should contain a value for the customer. It also helps PO to prioritize based on value.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;E&lt;/strong&gt;stimable - A story has to be able to be estimated or sized so it can be properly prioritized &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;S&lt;/strong&gt;mall - Small stories always have better clarity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;T&lt;/strong&gt;estable - Every story needs to be testable in order to be “done.”  In fact, I like to think of testable meaning acceptance criteria can be written immediately&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also love these &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agileforall.com/patterns-for-splitting-user-stories/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;story split patterns&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. However, understanding these patterns and selecting the right one for your story type could be little challenging initially.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30305" LastActivityDate="2017-12-05T10:50:02.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23023" CreationDate="2017-12-05T10:54:48.970" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes! You should split them into as small stories as possible ensuring that each story following &lt;strong&gt;I N V E S T&lt;/strong&gt; strictly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend you this article if want to explore &lt;a href=&quot;http://agileforall.com/new-to-agile-invest-in-good-user-stories/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30305" LastActivityDate="2017-12-05T10:54:48.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23023" CreationDate="2017-12-05T16:19:44.507" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on the size of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is &amp;lt; 2 h per page than you should be pragmatic and merge them based on different criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is more than a day then separated stories makes sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27645" LastActivityDate="2017-12-05T16:19:44.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23029" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23037" CreationDate="2017-12-05T17:37:23.460" Score="0" ViewCount="1602" Body="&lt;p&gt;We moved to VSTS recently, I wonder if there any Widget or a query to get the hours logged by an individual for each day in the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30780" LastActivityDate="2018-09-19T11:56:42.097" Title="In VSTS, get the hours logged by an individual for each day in the sprint" Tags="&lt;tfs&gt;&lt;vsts&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23029" CreationDate="2017-12-05T19:38:46.873" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no default widget or feature in the product and only the CMMI template has enough fidelity data to get something even close to the data you're after.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7393" LastActivityDate="2017-12-05T19:38:46.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23035" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23042" CreationDate="2017-12-06T14:41:26.787" Score="0" ViewCount="112" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're currently working on our documentation and we sort of followed Scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which diagrams, charts, figures, and etc should I include in our documentation? Also, what are the best practices in documenting the &quot;just right&quot; amount of documentation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30806" LastActivityDate="2017-12-07T15:54:25.680" Title="Where to start in agile-based documentations and what are the best practices to start with?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23035" CreationDate="2017-12-06T15:22:16.687" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Code is your most useful documentation because it's the only document that's always up to date. Ensure your code is easy to read: well structured, well named and commented where necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, create what documents you feel are necessary. There's no hard rule like &quot;class diagrams are a must have&quot; or &quot;sequence diagrams aren't worth your time&quot;. Just consider the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The time you spend creating a document is not free&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your product will continue to evolve, eventually invalidating that document (There's nothing inherently wrong with creating documentation with a limited shelf life. IF its immediate usefulness outweighs its total cost)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The time necessary to update and manage your document is also not free&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The document is only useful if it is read.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Without need the above effort is wasted&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the same information could be gathered faster by reading the code the above effort is also wasted (Classic example: API-docs that simply restate the function name)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your documentation cannot be found then your effort is also wasted (I've seen too much documentation languish somewhere deep in a confusing folder forest on a non-indexed network drive where noone who doesn't already know the contents will ever find it)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not to say, documentation is never useful. Create documentation for the things that were really hard to figure out or nail down. Go through your notepads. Chances are you already have numerous notes on these topics from when you were wrapping your head around them the first time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one exception in my mind are requirements: You should always have a detailed and clear document explaining your requirements. No matter how murky the waters are where you are now you should always know where you are (supposed to be) heading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2017-12-06T15:22:16.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23029" CreationDate="2017-12-07T03:28:35.363" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stop micromanaging and focusing on low value metrics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Manifesto for Agile Software Development&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional: Attempting to use &lt;em&gt;how many hours each person worked&lt;/em&gt; as a tool for issue analysis is dysfunctional.  (It is also a metric that can be easily gamed.)  In order to investigate and address any possible issues, the team needs to have a candid discussion during the Sprint Retrospective (&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt;) or similar &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;agile principled reflection&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2017-12-07T20:47:22.623" LastActivityDate="2017-12-07T20:47:22.623" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23035" CreationDate="2017-12-07T10:29:42.610" Score="0" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Document your processes, include all the things that really matter to you. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep it up to date - always.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then make sure people see it, and use it. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30341" LastActivityDate="2017-12-07T10:29:42.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23041" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23043" CreationDate="2017-12-07T12:37:37.110" Score="0" ViewCount="149" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a DevOps team which includes a BA, .NET developers and SAP developers. The .NET and SAP developers can and will only work on their particular discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of our stories involve only .NET work; These are easy to write. Likewise for the SAP stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some work involves effort which spans right from the user interface (.NET) down to the data store (SAP).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a latter story is encountered, is the best practice to have one story with discipline-specific tasks (on the basis that a story should be a full vertical slice) or two separate stories (on the basis that each piece is independently worked on)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The complexity here is that we can't rely on one of each developer being available to work on the story at the same time; Since those two tasks must be done as separate efforts of work (no matter how inter-dependent) it would seem unreasonable/unwise (in this case) to block the whole story because of one task being unable to be completed. (We could forever be waiting for both developers to become available. It is this race condition we want to avoid.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29374" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2017-12-08T10:21:26.717" LastActivityDate="2017-12-08T10:21:26.717" Title="Vertical slices with split disciplines" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23035" CreationDate="2017-12-07T15:54:25.680" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an anti-pattern in many agile shops where they devalue useful documentation, likely due to a belief that &quot;just read the code&quot; is a reasonable answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cognitive load for reading a few lines of code is significantly greater than the cognitive load for reading a few paragraphs of words; and as the saying goes, a picture paints a thousand words. As a programmer, I'm sure you've ran into situations where you spent hours spelunking through a code base only to finally ask someone who is able to illustrate the problem you're trying to solve with a few boxes and arrows on a whiteboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;premature&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; documentation, like &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;premature&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; abstraction can be an anti-pattern. Instead, here's the process I go through when leading product and engineering teams:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Documentation is the first step towards automation. If you can't write down the words or draw a picture of a thing, it's going to be very difficult to automate it. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tests &lt;em&gt;may be&lt;/em&gt; documentation but tests are not &lt;em&gt;documentation by default&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;code&gt;it { is_expected.to return 200 }&lt;/code&gt; tells you nothing about what the expected endpoint is, what it is supposed to accept, nor what it's supposed to return. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Documentation is best when it &lt;em&gt;supplements the invisible&lt;/em&gt;. In JavaScript and Ruby, for instance, I use documentation as a replacement for Java/C#'s explicit input and output return types. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Optimize your documentation for &lt;em&gt;onboarding new team members and users&lt;/em&gt;. You may not get a new team member every day, but the information that's most useful for people who are just opening the code base/feature/module/library for the first time is also the most useful documentation when you wind up coming back to it in a few months and can't quite remember what the motivation was for the library in the first place.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When it gets out of date, delete it! Just like you delete dead code. Better to stumble due to missing rather than misleading documentation!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In that vein, disposable diagrams are sometimes better than editable ones. Disposable diagrams are often lower fidelity and distilled to their essence while editable ones get out of date due to over-specificity. One of my colleagues draws diagrams on A3 paper and takes a picture of them. I prefer to use my iPad to sketch things using a drawing app. In each of these cases the goal is to get things out of our heads into the world that can be recreated without significant cost.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30816" LastActivityDate="2017-12-07T15:54:25.680" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23041" CreationDate="2017-12-07T16:30:39.990" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It needs to be one &lt;em&gt;user&lt;/em&gt; story. The user does not care about your resources. A user story needs to provide value and a backend on it's own or a frontend with no functionality is of &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; use to your user. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously it's two tasks. And your team should commit on doing it... or not doing it. There is no race condition here. Either the two guys can do it, or they cannot. If you are &lt;em&gt;waiting&lt;/em&gt; for them to become &lt;em&gt;available&lt;/em&gt; I suggest you check if you are actually doing &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt;. Because that can only happen if there is somebody messing with your resources while they are sprinting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2017-12-08T06:07:59.503" LastActivityDate="2017-12-08T06:07:59.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23046" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-07T19:47:20.830" Score="0" ViewCount="51" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm PMing our team of 4 engineers (myself included) but am pretty new to process. In attempting to plan out our work for the next year (and we have lots) I'm looking for the right way to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;List projects (essentially buckets of work) with expected cost in person-days&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;List available engineers (resources)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set deadlines on some projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set priorities on projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the key things I'm hoping to achieve is to use the above to assign work to engineers and figure out our hiring needs. I'm imagining something like a slider where I can increase or reduce available engineers to model when projects can be completed, potentially highlighting those with deadlines that won't make it in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm currently attempting to use Excel/Google Sheets with some formulae, but I'm not quite sure how to handle the &quot;modeling&quot; part. Any help/pointers are appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30820" LastActivityDate="2017-12-08T16:01:52.693" Title="How best to model project completion by adjusting available resources?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10364" CreationDate="2017-12-07T22:37:29.473" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you change the max for employees it will create issues by extending your timeline.  For example, if you have a project with 8 hours, and an 50% max employee working on it, it will say it will take 16 hours to complete, because it will take a 50% employee twice as much time.  If you want the hours/days you specified to stay the same, but still increase your timeline, then that won't work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What i found works is to create a separate calendar and set the employee's schedule to the new calendar.  For example, i have employees that can only work 15 hours a week.  So i created a calendar with default work weeks from only 9:00-12:00.  I assigned this calendar to each part time employee.  When i assign the employee to a 30 hour task, it still says it is 30 hours, but shows that it will take 2 weeks to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30821" LastActivityDate="2017-12-07T22:37:29.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23048" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23060" CreationDate="2017-12-08T09:14:18.397" Score="3" ViewCount="129" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have finished a story which is no longer required by the Product Owner (PO) or Management. The completed story is not going to add any business value. What should we do in this case? Should we count the effort in our velocity or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30305" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-10-21T22:33:12.107" LastActivityDate="2019-10-21T22:33:12.107" Title="Should we count a story that is no longer required by Client/PO/Management in our velocity?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;velocity&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1772" CreationDate="2017-12-08T12:37:57.480" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a big fan of LEAN philosophy. In your special case I beleave, that a daily report from each team member is some kind of micro-management that can and should be &lt;a href=&quot;https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muda&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;avoided&lt;/a&gt;. You should trust your team members, that they do their best to get the work done and also show them your respect and your trustfulness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But of cause, you would like to have a overview over the done work, so here is my suggestion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your teams should use the &lt;strong&gt;same instance&lt;/strong&gt; of some kind of project management tool (Jira, TFS etc.), where their work and it's state is documented. Software Developers HATE writing anything but the code, but they (normally) LOVE moving features from &quot;in progress&quot; to &quot;done&quot;. These tools provide have a dashboard, where you can see a current state of the project whenever you like.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let your team managers do a daily meetings with their team members (max. 15 min) and provide you with daily summary (if needed).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4657" LastActivityDate="2017-12-08T12:37:57.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23048" CreationDate="2017-12-08T15:06:14.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Great learning opportunity&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the work was done based on the PO prioritizing the work, yes you should count it in velocity. It is possible market conditions changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the dev team went ahead on their own, then you cannot count it in velocity. Key takeaway is to tighten up your process and take up work only if prioritized by the PO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there was a misunderstanding between the PO and dev team, then you should tighten up your communication and feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless, this is a great learning opportunity. It is time for a retrospective to identify the root cause and come up with ways to avoid a similar debacle again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2017-12-08T16:16:04.413" LastActivityDate="2017-12-08T16:16:04.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23046" CreationDate="2017-12-08T16:01:52.693" Score="2" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Your modeling approach appears to be too simplistic&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You did say that you are new to process, so it is understandable :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You seem to be assuming that any engineer can do any project&lt;/strong&gt;: This is rarely the case. There will be specific skill requirements for specific projects that precludes you from doing that.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You seem to be trying to model schedule, which is much harder than modeling workload&lt;/strong&gt;: For example, let us say you only have enough workload for 4 engineers. And yet you may have hot spots where you will miss deadlines, while at other times you may have idle engineers. Hiring more engineers will reduce the hot spots, but you will also increase overall idle time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;On the positive side&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You seem to have full visibility into the workload and deadlines for the entire year (Are you not going to accept any new work during the year?)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You seem to have effort estimates for the work (How reliable are these?)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;I would go about modeling it like this&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Take the overall workload for the year and divide it by the hours available per engineer&lt;/strong&gt;: This will give you an initial headcount number. If this shows a shortfall of engineers, you can make firm hiring decisions on this number right away. Even if the schedules are totally flexible you need this additional headcount to handle the extra workload.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do a detailed schedule for the first quarter&lt;/strong&gt;: If you find hotspots, see what flexibility you have in the contracts to even out the workload. After trying to even the workload, if you still find you need additional staffing, you will have to make the hard decision of hiring additional engineers knowing that you are increasing idle time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do a similar analysis for the second, third and fourth quarters well in advance of that quarter&lt;/strong&gt;: However, this has to be done for each quarter early enough to give adequate lead time to hire/induct/train them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2017-12-08T16:01:52.693" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23054" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-08T16:18:19.547" Score="2" ViewCount="66" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any advice on working with implementations when all your devs and QA are on another timezone and not able to communicate too much online? This is my first experience being in a remote silo situation. There is an internal PM team at their location who gets a lot of their face time and easy access to information. From remote, it's hard as we only use Jira tickets but are stuck with waiting for responses, there is slack to connect but response time is slow as they are always busy and also two hours behind (they often suggest to stick to Jira). I just find it's easier for PMs to work with ops when we have the opportunity to build relationships and have direct contact, but it's feeling very difficult to do this as the only PM who is in another location. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30826" LastActivityDate="2018-01-09T17:50:33.373" Title="How to work in Implementations when your technical operations is in another time zone?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;remote-teams&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23054" CreationDate="2017-12-08T18:56:27.327" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don’t have huge travel budget to build solid relation with remote team, then good option is to build proxy PM there to represent you. This will be a good opportunity for someone there to grow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good hits can be found in the book&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practices for Scaling Lean &amp;amp; Agile Development: Large, Multisite, and Offshore Product Development with Large-Scale Scrum by Larman and Vodde&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27645" LastActivityDate="2017-12-08T18:56:27.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23056" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-09T12:09:31.587" Score="5" ViewCount="366" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am taking control of a small project for the first time, and want to tell if we can deliver our scope on schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most teams I have worked in have used story-based estimations. My experience of these as a developer has so far been rather poor:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sessions were long, inefficient and unfocused, making them both expensive and demoralising&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they haven't worked well when the technology or the domain were unfamiliar&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;teams I've been in haven't improved estimates with time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;many teams have social incentives to over or under estimate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they are easy to turn into a stick, waved menacingly at developers. This too promotes over-estimation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they were, ultimately, guesses. They were rarely data-driven.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These experiences have been consistent across five companies I've worked in, including ten person startups and a thousand-strong megacorp. I don't think they're just anomalies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any alternatives worth trying? I am interested in Kanban and wonder if we could use historical measurements to continually hone our planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if estimation sessions are simply a necessary evil - how can I make them suck less?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25700" LastEditorUserId="25700" LastEditDate="2017-12-09T12:19:56.360" LastActivityDate="2017-12-10T15:24:40.673" Title="Are there alternatives to estimation? (Software development)" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23056" CreationDate="2017-12-09T16:22:43.887" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;For software development projects, fixed scope and firm estimations are a bad idea&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am afraid you are looking at this from the wrong angle. You said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am taking control of a small project for the first time, and want to tell if we can deliver our scope on schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a failed approach. In software development, there are two inherent limitations to trying to arrive at a good estimate from a fixed scope:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requirements (scope) cannot be laid down in advance. They emerge during the project. This is very well established (known as scope creep). Don't try to fight it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All software development work is part R&amp;amp;D. You cannot estimate it precisely. There will be trial and error. Even if the domain is familiar, technology changes all the time (e.g., it is Angular one day and React the next) and vendors get acquired or go out of business. Again you cannot fight factors out of your control.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go with one of the agile processes. Scrum is the most popular one. Work closely with your stakeholders. Show them working code every few weeks and get their feedback. Working together you can make it a success. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Additional clarifications based on good points made by @DavidEspina:&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Arms length contracts fail&lt;/strong&gt;: I am not saying that you don't estimate/plan at all. I am saying that you cannot do arms length contracts on the lines of: &quot;You give me the scope, I will give you a firm estimate. You approve it. I go away and build the software and come back to deliver it when ready.&quot; That model is known to fail big time for software. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dev team should get embedded with the client Product Management&lt;/strong&gt;: The only way to build software is for the vendor to partner with the client. The dev team should function as a single team with the client's product management team who have the vision. This requires the client PM team to commit resources and time for the duration of the project. This is very hard to secure, but absolutely critical to the success of the project. Structure the project this way and then you can do the planning/estimation to meet financial (ROI) needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2017-12-10T15:24:40.673" LastActivityDate="2017-12-10T15:24:40.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23056" CreationDate="2017-12-09T17:28:42.010" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While @AshokRamachandran is on target with the reasons why estimating SW projects is difficult, you still gotta do it.  Notwithstanding the value of agile in helping to mitigate this difficulty, business people need to have some type of cost target with which ROI can be established so that project prioritization and investments are sound.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The primary issue I have witnessed is inadequate risk management, i.e., understanding the limitations of estimating this type of work as compared to more discreet, concrete, less ambiguous type of work like hanging drywall or laying carpet and similar.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One contributing problem, of many, is this tendency of estimating using discrete values instead of probabilistic values.  If we don't understand the range of possible outcomes, then we failed at risk management.  With probabilistic values, then we have a better under of what it might cost if things just don't go our way.  Even with aggressive planning values, a discrete number on the left side of the probabilistic estimate, you then can fund your contingencies adequately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of it sucking, you are after all trying to predict the future.  Even with more concrete type tasks, this is not done with the accuracy we all desire.  Not even our daily commute can we predict with a high degree of accuracy and precision.  So the suck is more about what people expect with an estimate...in terms of a guarantee.  And this is on you, as a seller of services, to teach your stakeholders there is no such thing and to communicate early and often how you're progressing and what contingencies you're going to need.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-12-09T17:28:42.010" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23056" CreationDate="2017-12-09T22:47:44.753" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the other two responses have addressed other aspects of your question, I will respond to your interest in Kanban. I come from a company that builds a Kanban product (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.digite.com/swiftkanban&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SwiftKanban&lt;/a&gt;).  We use Kanban in all our product development and we have seen the benefits of data-driven forecasting rather than estimation, which we have dropped altogether! Also, I am personally a Kanban coach/ trainer.  I have worked with a number of our customers helping them with Kanban implementation, usually in software and IT.  So, I am very familiar with your challenge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have historical cycle time and workflow data for this project - for all the different types of work your team may be performing, you might very well be very easily able to forecast with different levels of confidence when your team will be able to complete the project, assuming the requirements are reasonably stable - and there won't be too much of a scope creep.  Using your Cumulative Flow Diagram (CFD) and your cycle time data, you can either do simple linear projection to see when the remaining scope might get done; or you can do more sophisticated modeling using Monte Carlo simulation (which is what we do) or other techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using just the CFD on your project's existing data, you can easily get a projection like the one shown below for our current backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2N9Iw.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2N9Iw.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, simply based on the historical throughput of the team, we can project when the remaining amount of work in the backlog (the grey band's vertical jump) is likely to get done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also do something as basic as look at your recent throughput - and get an approximate picture of when you are likely to deliver the rest of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/40KVw.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/40KVw.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use modeling using Monte Carlo simulation, you can do different analyses.  For example, you can look at how much work you can get done in the next 30 days given the past performance, at different levels of probability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/n7XYq.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/n7XYq.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you can define the exact amount of remaining work (number of user stories, change requests, defect fixes, etc.) and get the probability curve of the likely completion dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DZ6WP.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DZ6WP.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here you see, for a given scope on the left, the distribution curve on the right for the likely completion times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a more zoomed in look at the probability distribution curve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NkA2v.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NkA2v.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on how you can get the historical data, you can do this in a spreadsheet or use a sophisticated Kanban software - such as ours or others in the market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The overall premise, of course, is that the team remains stable and the work mix continues to be similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.  I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2017-12-09T22:47:44.753" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23048" CreationDate="2017-12-10T02:34:51.400" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have finished a story which is no more required by PO/Management. Surely this story is not going to add any business value. What to do in this case? Should we count the effort in velocity or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity is primarily (and most effectively) a metric for estimating a team's capacity to do future work within a Sprint or series of Sprints, and is not intended to be a measure of productivity or business value. Because it estimates future capacity based on historical performance, you should take that into account when determining how to track your velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your specific case, which is rather sparse on detail, I would suggest the following rules of thumb:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the story was taken on at the &lt;em&gt;start&lt;/em&gt; of the Sprint during Sprint Planning, and if the work was delivered at the end of the Sprint in accordance with the Definition of Done, then the work is legitimately counted towards velocity because it correctly expresses work planned/completed during the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, if the story lost its value during the Sprint for some reason, but the Product Owner chose not to take it out of scope or terminate the Sprint early as a result, then the work still properly measures the team's capacity to deliver work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the story was not completed in accordance with the Definition of Done, then the work can &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; be counted towards the team's velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the Sprint Goal was achieved, whether or not the Product Owner asked for it to be removed from the Sprint, then whether or not to count the work towards velocity basically comes down to how you wish to communicate about the velocity metric: as planned/completed work, or as a value or opportunity cost. Obviously, I lean towards the former, but some practitioners may legitimately disagree.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the one hand, counting work towards velocity reflects &lt;strong&gt;planned work completed.&lt;/strong&gt; On the other hand, not counting it makes &lt;strong&gt;invalidated work visible as a drag on velocity.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you aren't making the fundamental error of trying to make velocity reflect effort or time expended, and are consistent in your use of the velocity metric to communicate about the status of the project, then how the team deals with a one-off situation like this shouldn't have much impact on a &lt;strong&gt;velocity metric expressed as a range or trailing average.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are certainly exceptions, such as very short projects or framework implementation failures, but in general this should be a non-event that's addressed in the Sprint Retrospective. However, your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-12-10T02:34:51.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23061" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-10T06:39:55.963" Score="0" ViewCount="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my recent project , we have to build a complete system which will work as a client for their system &quot;server&quot; which will consume their API.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;our system also have back end and front end to communicatie with their API &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so customer demand about our technology Stack on which we will build this system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;now for that we also requirement for the informatiom of their tech stack  so choose the better tool to collaborate while their API consumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So My question is how to ask the customer fir their technology Stack in a manner which will describe why we need this but the language I have used is not proper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;kindly suggest me how to ask &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;here is my version &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have one request for * team*.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We also need your technology stacks information used to build the your&#xA;  system , such as which java version, web-socket library , database&#xA;  version and typeand other information which will be pre-requisites and&#xA;  API signature or any other constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It would help us to choose the right tool and packages to make better&#xA;  compatibility with their API.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1355" LastEditorUserId="1355" LastEditDate="2017-12-10T08:37:17.470" LastActivityDate="2017-12-10T12:13:20.793" Title="How to justify to ask for the technologies stack of the customer application in precise manner?" Tags="&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;project-proposal&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23061" CreationDate="2017-12-10T12:13:20.793" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can create a checklist for building your client (Requirement list) and have the customer fill it instead of an open question. This will help you focus on the points you need to know and will help the customer to give the right answers. So for example, you'd say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Currently we're building the technical requirements for the client system we're buildng and we need your help by filling the attached checklist so that we avoid having a client that's not compatible with the current server.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it would be nice to have the checklist categorized in a manner that maps to how you design your system. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Security Management&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you use any authentication to access the server? If so what type and would the API need authentication or will have full access?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you use any open source framework for user management like keyclock or similar?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Data Management&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the database your using?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any kind of data cashing used?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you intend to use Nosql database in the future?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Technology Stack&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any constraints to use Node.JS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What's the libraries used to build the server?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you prefer REST or Web services architecture? and why?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Deployment Flow&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and so on...etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3263" LastActivityDate="2017-12-10T12:13:20.793" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23054" CreationDate="2017-12-10T14:18:09.677" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Increasing Communications and Collaboration&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of ways to improve communications and collaboration, but they all require political capital and active cooperation between teams. At the level of direct influence, you should:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get buy-in from the internal PM on the need for increased communication and collaboration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work with the remote team to set up meetings, communications channels, and other workflows to increase the level of active cooperation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Raise the visibility of project costs and delays attributable to insufficient collaboration and ticket-based communication.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if this is a more systemic problem, you will need organizational support to fix it. That means retargeting all the advice above towards senior management, as they are ultimately responsible for the success or failure of the project, as well as being the only people who can mandate and finance cross-team collaboration at a governance level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-12-10T14:18:09.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23054" CreationDate="2017-12-10T17:16:27.600" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, what's the difference between 'remote' and 'local' PM? Where these two roles differ? As the question stands, it looks like just you have a redundant position on the main office while the offshore team does the job. If that's the case, then I'd say the problem is likely to be at company level... after all, what's the reason on having two identical roles in two different locations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before trying to foster more communication and interaction with the team (doing the same the 'local' pm already does) I'd suggest to clarify how your specific position (far from the team) can help. An easy example: the team works off-shore but you work at the same place as the end user (or the directors, for the matter). How could you help? Being the focal point for all the escalations the team need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd avoid working towards duplicate the same actions the local pm is already doing; instead, try to identify how your differences can be used in your benefit. If there's no benefit... then, your role is redundant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2017-12-10T17:16:27.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23066" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-11T05:19:57.293" Score="0" ViewCount="263" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_Case_Points&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;User Case Points&lt;/a&gt; estimation technique &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-down_and_bottom-up_design&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TOP-DOWN&lt;/a&gt;&quot; approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30661" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2017-12-11T07:48:02.647" LastActivityDate="2017-12-19T15:15:05.080" Title="Use Case point estimation technique - TOP DOWN" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23067" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-11T13:52:25.910" Score="-1" ViewCount="151" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have two questions for the experts on MS Project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have heard that Microsoft will now be releasing updates (from Sept 2018) for O365 without testing them for MS Project 2010. Is this True? Also, will they stop testing for MS Project 2013 too?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can we connect MS Project 2013 to Project server 2010?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30840" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-12-11T14:13:10.100" LastActivityDate="2017-12-13T07:19:04.087" Title="MS Project compatibility and Office 365" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23068" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-11T14:59:58.787" Score="0" ViewCount="997" Body="&lt;p&gt;My project is 75% complete and I have no problem getting a nice view in MS Project showing the remaining critical path.  However, I want a view that shows how we got to this point, in other words I want to see the full critical path of the project, including tasks that have already been completed at this point.  Is there a way to clearly show this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20845" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-08T22:28:51.830" LastActivityDate="2018-11-08T22:28:51.830" Title="How to show critical path INCLUDING completed tasks (in MS Project 2010)" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;&lt;critical-path&gt;&lt;critical-chain&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23069" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-11T16:40:31.557" Score="1" ViewCount="243" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am using Project 2007 to perform the calculation related to the EVA methodology. Everything works as expected, and when I generate the earned value over time graphical report I have the correct values of BCWP, BCWS and ACWP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I would like to get the VALUE of CVI and SVI in the same pivot graph, but I am not able to find a way to add these two values, which actually are just the rations of the other ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to plot SVI and CVI similarly to BCWP, BCWS and ACWP?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30311" LastActivityDate="2018-06-11T11:01:18.260" Title="Plot CVI and SVI in EVA graphical report" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2007&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23070" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-11T17:52:15.847" Score="0" ViewCount="192" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been tasked to use Microsoft project in a group assignment to help manage it, but I'm having trouble getting the durations and dates to not auto update.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I basically would like to have the whole week to be able to enter start and finish dates as well as the duration to show the exact time between them.&#xA;I have changed the calendar work week to 24/7 for the project as well as for all the people in my group but still get the duration changing start and finish dates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help is appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30843" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2018-11-08T11:17:05.317" LastActivityDate="2021-04-27T00:06:15.690" Title="How to get Project to _not_ auto-update" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23068" CreationDate="2017-12-11T18:14:16.863" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are describing something like an as-built critical path, which is not easily created even in the best of circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;MSP sets the Critical flag based on total slack, but total slack becomes meaningless for completed tasks.  Thus, completed tasks are never “Critical.”&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conceivably, you could implement some very rigorous status-and-update procedures to memorialize the (future) critical path based on total slack at each update window – i.e. just before marking the task complete.  Then at some future time you would be able to look back through your marks to “remember” which tasks were critical at the time of their completion.  I don’t know of anyone who does this.  Obviously, you can’t do this after the fact.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can also use a macro or an add-in to trace driving logic backward from a project completion milestone to the project start, including completed tasks if you like.  I routinely use this approach, and it yields good insight, subject to the accuracy of the logic and the Actual Start and Actual Finish dates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2017-12-11T18:14:16.863" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23072" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-11T19:26:00.033" Score="1" ViewCount="51" Body="&lt;p&gt;In MS Project 2013 I am attempting to get a particular column to show time unit in Days but leave the default Project Time Unit as minutes for all of the other columns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can set the Project default but am looking for a way to change just a single columns time unit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30844" LastEditorUserId="28129" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T04:35:22.217" LastActivityDate="2019-01-08T09:02:45.653" Title="MS Project Column Time different from Project Time" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1497" CreationDate="2017-12-11T20:29:26.853" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, &lt;strong&gt;project leader&lt;/strong&gt; is usually focusing on people and trying to simplify tasks to assign them to the right individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, &lt;strong&gt;project manager&lt;/strong&gt; is not people centric, usually focusing on systems and tries to deal with complex tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer can be expanded more than this to cover taking risk and other areas, but I tried to make the answer simple and clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30845" LastActivityDate="2017-12-11T20:29:26.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23074" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-11T20:38:53.670" Score="0" ViewCount="197" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Quantitative Forecasting, there are different methods to predict the future. How Regression Analysis is more special than:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Simple moving average&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Weighted moving average&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;exponential smoothing &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and what is its advantages ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30845" LastActivityDate="2018-02-10T20:35:15.113" Title="What are the special advantages of regression method of forecasting over others" Tags="&lt;analysis&gt;&lt;strategy&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23075" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-12T08:52:41.773" Score="1" ViewCount="1124" Body="&lt;p&gt;We currently have 3 swimlanes (&lt;code&gt;To Do&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;In Progress&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;Done&lt;/code&gt;), but in our first swimlane, we have both issues that are &lt;code&gt;To Do&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;Ready&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the beginning of the sprint, this is easy to know, everything in the sprint is &lt;code&gt;Ready&lt;/code&gt;, but as the sprint goes on, some issues get moved to &lt;code&gt;To Do&lt;/code&gt;, as they might be missing some information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to distinguish from &lt;code&gt;To Do&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;Ready&lt;/code&gt; in the same swimlane? Like a division of some sort?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21337" LastActivityDate="2017-12-12T15:09:17.117" Title="How can I divide a swimlane in 3 in JIRA?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23074" CreationDate="2017-12-12T11:12:59.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally do not believe there is an answer to this question.  All predictive models have a predictive validity of something less than perfect.  Certainly, some models or techniques are better than others but of those indicated in the OP (original post) I am not sure that is the case.  In PM, I run several models because each would provide a datum that, together, gives me the range of possible future results.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is completely my opinion and it works for me and, since no one else tried to answer, I thought I would put it out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2017-12-12T19:24:36.713" LastActivityDate="2017-12-12T19:24:36.713" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23072" CreationDate="2017-12-12T13:27:50.740" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a given task the units of duration-type fields are fixed/constant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To display a duration-type field in units other than the defined units for the task, use a custom text field with a formula like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Round([Duration]/[Minutes Per Day],2) &amp;amp; &quot; days&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Replace Duration with whatever other duration-type field you are trying to display.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2017-12-12T13:27:50.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23070" CreationDate="2017-12-12T14:06:20.660" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You will not get Project not to update the dates based on task duration. For each task, the end date is calculated as the result of the start date + the duration (non-working days are ignored).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why exactly do you need independant values for date and duration? Are you maybe trying to enter man-days as duration (So if three people work all day, that would make 3 days total)? If yes, then the column &quot;Work&quot; is the one you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30194" LastActivityDate="2017-12-12T14:06:20.660" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23075" CreationDate="2017-12-12T14:58:46.603" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any reason why you can't add an extra swimlane to cover the 'Ready' items, as the first comment says? If for some reason you can't, depending on the technology/physical kit you're using to record your swimlanes, you could distinguish between To Do/Ready by temporarily changing the colour of your items, or adding a mark to those that are in a particular state, that is then removed/updated once it moves on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30594" LastActivityDate="2017-12-12T14:58:46.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23075" CreationDate="2017-12-12T15:07:36.640" Score="0" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If an item turns again in a &lt;em&gt;not Ready&lt;/em&gt; status, I would remove it from the Sprint, maybe adding something else (same Points) to keep the balance, or maybe not if some time was already spent for something related to the not Ready ticket. The reason is simply that Sprints must include Ready tickets. Consequence is that Velocity might be affected &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you want to keep it within the Sprint, you can flag the ticket and write a small motivation why the ticket in &lt;em&gt;To Do&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Ready&lt;/em&gt; status is blocked. Consequence is that you keep in the Sprint a ticket that you can't finish.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27720" LastActivityDate="2017-12-12T15:07:36.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23075" CreationDate="2017-12-12T15:09:17.117" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume you're using JIRA Software (or JIRA Agile). The below works for JIRA Agile (and I assume JIRA Software as well).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned, the most obvious solution is to add  another column. Go to Board-&gt;Configure-&gt;Columns. Click on Add Column, name it 'Ready', and drag the 'Ready' box into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, for whatever reason, you can't/don't want to add another column, then instead go to Board-&gt;Configure-&gt;Card layout, and then select 'Status' and press Add. This will add the status onto each card on the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2017-12-12T15:09:17.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23067" CreationDate="2017-12-13T07:19:04.087" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can't connect Microsoft Project 2013 to Project Server 2010, no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how O365 updates are planned, but Microsoft Project Server 2010 and Microsoft Project Professional 2010 are both no longer eligible for mainstream support since 2015 (meaning only security updates are released for these products, unless you pay Microsoft for a hotfix). Extended Support will end in 2020, after that point no support will be available. Since these things can sometimes take a while to be approved and budgeted, I would advise you to start planning for a migration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/search?alpha=Microsoft%20Project%202010&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/search?alpha=Microsoft%20Project%202010&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30194" LastActivityDate="2017-12-13T07:19:04.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23069" CreationDate="2017-12-13T07:28:54.637" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I no longer have access to a 2007 version, so I can't check if this works, but have you tried editing the template of your visual report? Each template has a restricted set of fields available, but this can be extended manually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the Report menu, click Visual Reports.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the All tab, click the report that you want to edit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you know which category contains the report, you can click that&#xA;category's tab to view a shorter list of reports.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click Edit Template.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the Visual Reports - Field Picker dialog box, click the fields&#xA;that you want to add or remove from the report, and then click Add,&#xA;Remove, or Remove All to move fields between the Available Fields and&#xA;Selected Fields boxes, or between the Available Custom Fields and&#xA;Selected Custom Fields boxes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fields in the Selected Fields and Selected Custom Fields boxes are&#xA;included in the report.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click Edit Template to create the report with the modified list of&#xA;fields.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Create-a-visual-report-6e2d08a8-3f84-4af5-a457-d5f83403adbc#bm3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Create-a-visual-report-6e2d08a8-3f84-4af5-a457-d5f83403adbc#bm3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30194" LastActivityDate="2017-12-13T07:28:54.637" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23084" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-13T15:45:05.350" Score="0" ViewCount="141" Body="&lt;p&gt;The objective is to pre-seed the user-project allocation matrix in HR system using the data pulled from Jira.  This allocation does not need to be 100% precise as it will then get reviewed, and subsequently managed inside the workforce planner part of HRM. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The challenge is, how to identify from the data in Jira, which people are working on which projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we have tried so far: Simply see which issues in that project have been worked by which people within the last x days (such as 30 days).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to give an ok working snapshot of user-project allocation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a better heuristic to consider?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7019" LastActivityDate="2020-12-15T07:01:20.803" Title="Within Jira, how to identify current team allocations?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23086" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-16T00:22:27.863" Score="3" ViewCount="163" Body="&lt;p&gt;During a sprint in scrum, the scope of the sprint should not change. However, I often find that after the sprint starts and I begin working on a story, I discover new stories that must be done. For example, I encounter a bug in the code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, I usually create a new bug issue and start working on that as it's blocking my main story. However, this expands the scope of the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also sometimes find that when I start working on story, I break the story down into smaller parts, create stories for each of these. Then I link these stories to the original story. However, this again expands the scope of the sprint, and also it sometimes duplicates some of the story points, because some work is accounted for in the smaller stories which are related to the bigger story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, my question is how do I account for new work that I discover while working on stories in scrum without affecting the scope of the sprint? Or is it acceptable to expand the scope of the sprint in this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't usually add the new work items to the backlog because they often block the main story I'm working on, so I just start implementing them straight away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2057" LastActivityDate="2017-12-19T17:31:37.040" Title="How to account for new work items while implementing a story without affecting the sprint scope?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23088" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-16T16:10:56.170" Score="2" ViewCount="927" Body="&lt;p&gt;How to use agile methodology for Infrastructure projects where the Scope is known upfront?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project examples&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Data Center migration/relocation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SAN Migration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For Cisco's Telepresence Solution&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Telephony Projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scope is not changing, most of the project will run from Runbook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not possible, does that mean infrastructure projects are mostly done using Waterfall? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30889" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-01-22T18:48:42.673" LastActivityDate="2019-01-25T15:14:02.960" Title="Is it possible to use agile on infrastructure projects where scope is known upfront?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;&lt;infrastructure&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23086" CreationDate="2017-12-16T16:41:10.867" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Problem&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You aren't properly differentiating between stories (or, more canonically, Product Backlog Items), tasks, and chores. You are also failing to differentiate between bugs, defects, and incomplete work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of these things gets handled slightly differently, and not all of them actually belong within the current scope. In short, your problem is that you haven't correctly defined the goal of Sprint, the scope of the story you're working on, or the Definition of Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Solutions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team needs to do a better job of scoping and planning the work during Sprint Planning. If you're regularly finding unexpected work of significant scope during each iteration, then the team is not spending enough time thinking through the level of effort and developing the work breakdowns for the Sprint Backlog during the Sprint Planning exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because iterative methodologies often leverage emergent design, a certain amount of refactoring, rework, and unplanned tasks are not unexpected. In fact, they should inform your level-of-effort planning throughout the process. This includes selecting PBIs, decomposing stories into tasks for the Sprint Backlog, and estimating available capacity for the current Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, triage the problems properly. In practical terms, that means:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stories that have been improperly scoped or planned should be reviewed against the Sprint Goal to see if an Early Termination is called for.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If new &lt;strong&gt;tasks&lt;/strong&gt; are required, they should go on the Sprint Backlog and discussed as a potential blocker or dependency during the daily standup.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If new &lt;strong&gt;stories&lt;/strong&gt; are uncovered, they should go onto the Product Backlog for a future Sprint. If they are blockers, see #1 &amp;amp; #2.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If in-Sprint defects are uncovered, see #1 &amp;amp; #2.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If defects or bugs from a previous Sprint are uncovered, that was a failure of the Definition of Done. Bring it up to the Product Owner and review the DoD with the team. Then follow steps 1-3.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anything else that's new work goes onto the Product Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anything essential for the current Sprint Goal should be a task on the Sprint Backlog, not a story. If the task puts your Sprint Goal in jeopardy: go to #1, do not pass GO, and do not collect $200.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask your teammates, your Scrum Master, and your Product Owner for advice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum and iterative methodologies in general rely heavily on time boxing and careful scoping. If you aren't doing enough scoping work during Sprint Planning, and if the team isn't rigorous about managing the work within the time box, then that's an implementation failure that will eventually derail the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not that surprises aren't routinely uncovered in Scrum; they are, and the framework allows for that. It's just that treating all work as in-scope for the &lt;em&gt;current&lt;/em&gt; iteration is a fundamental no-no for effective Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;See Also&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/22852/4271&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/22852/4271&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/20521/4271&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/20521/4271&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/20536/4271&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/20536/4271&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-12-16T16:41:10.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23090" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-17T00:14:44.023" Score="1" ViewCount="1053" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am running a kanban project, I am collecting cycle time data via control chart, what is the best way to use it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2017-12-21T16:03:47.533" Title="What to do with control chart data?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;control-chart&gt;&lt;cycle-time&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23091" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-17T00:58:51.850" Score="0" ViewCount="324" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a lot of situations where there is a small project that is, let's say, 50 percent done.   Then it's completely put on hold, and restarted a month later.   How is it best to accurately reference it in MS Project without splitting it up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30893" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-02-17T16:51:47.810" LastActivityDate="2018-02-17T16:51:47.810" Title="Start and stop in MS Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23088" CreationDate="2017-12-17T03:40:25.207" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Agile/Scrum is not suitable for predictable work&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please see &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/14808/disadvantages-of-agile-approach/14811#14811&quot;&gt;my answer to a similar question earlier&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile methodologies and frameworks are better suited where requirements either cannot be stated fully upfront or tend to change often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you yourself pointed out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the scope is not changing, most of the project will run from Runbook&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of your examples are predictive projects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Data Center migration/relocation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;SAN Migration &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;For Cisco's Telepresence Solution &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Telephony Projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not about whether agile is possible:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If not possible, does that mean infrastructure project mostly done by&#xA;  Waterfall ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a question of which process is best suited. If you can create a WBS (Work Breakdown Structure), identify dependencies, assign resources and get them to follow the plan, Waterfall process is best suited for that type of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2017-12-17T03:40:25.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23090" CreationDate="2017-12-17T10:30:54.287" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The cycle time gives you feedback on the efficiency of your work process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try and tune the process, using this feedback to guide you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you could try:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tweaking the work in progress limits&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spending more time on peer review and code pairing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Changing the amount of time spent refining the backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically you first come up with a hypothesis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We keep bottlenecking on testing, so let's get more team members involved in testing and see if that improves throughput&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try it for a defined amount of time (say 3 weeks) and check the impact on the control chart. If the hypothesis is proven correct and cycle time reduces, proceed, else revert back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2017-12-17T10:30:54.287" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23086" CreationDate="2017-12-17T11:16:58.273" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Discovery is a natural part of the software development process. It can be disconcerting when stories end up being more involved than you expected, but it is not something you should be concerned about unless it is happing all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reserve some capacity in your sprints for discovery. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/teams-dont-need-to-think-of-everything-during-sprint-planning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mike Cohn talks about the importance of leaving space for unplanned work&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you wouldn't expect every story to grow in size. If that is happening it may be worth considering doing the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduce the size of your stories, so that there is less room for uncertainty&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spend a little more time on backlog refinement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider using &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/spikes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;spikes&lt;/a&gt; to collapse unknowns&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt; &#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2017-12-17T11:16:58.273" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23091" CreationDate="2017-12-17T14:26:15.043" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suggestion: document and get approval by the project's management committee that adds a milestone at the date where the project is due to start again. Then set upcoming tasks to depend on the milestone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16927" LastActivityDate="2017-12-17T14:26:15.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23086" CreationDate="2017-12-17T17:29:18.810" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three reasons your sprint estimate might turn out to be wrong. ie you dont finish everything you planned to do in the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your estimate was wrong.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is normal. just adjust the expected velocity accordingly and it should work out over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You increased the scope of the sprint. ie. you added more features during the sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should be avoided. Don't fix that unrelated bug, don't add that extra polish etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You increase the estimate during the sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like this is the one you are doing. You add more detail to your existing scope but the estimates for the detail all up to more than the original estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is to either do the break down in sprint planning, so that you get the higher estimate before starting. Or, if that is not possible don't use the increased estimate in your planning, stick with the original and treat it as an incorrect estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your tools, this could be done by simply putting 0 hours against sub tasks, or configuring the burn down to just look at stories or certain types of task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2017-12-17T17:29:18.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23099" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-19T11:41:00.930" Score="3" ViewCount="453" Body="&lt;p&gt;In PMI's &quot;The Standard for Program Management&quot; I have read following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Other organizations refer to large projects as programs. These&#xA;  &quot;programs&quot; include large individual projects or a single large project&#xA;  that is broken into more easily managed subordinate projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some programs deliver benefits only after all of the component&#xA;  projects have been completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a little bit confused now. &lt;strong&gt;Are there any criteria by which we can choose a representation of a work: project with sub projects or program?&lt;/strong&gt; I thought before that projects within program are related with each other but have value itself (not so big, of course, in case if there are completed together).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. Definition of program by PMI:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A group of related projects, subprograms, and program activities that&#xA;  are managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits not available from&#xA;  managing them individually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastActivityDate="2017-12-21T10:27:21.363" Title="What a difference between large Project and Program" Tags="&lt;terminology&gt;&lt;program-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23099" CreationDate="2017-12-19T11:59:46.140" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Program consist of projects that are somehow related or orchestrated to a common target.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in my company we have a customized SAP solution. We implement this solution to every country and cover that country' processes within this customized solution. Each roll-out project including tasks and developments for that roll-out is called a project. And all countries' roll-in target is managed by a single program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach is parallel with the 3rd definition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly the first definition is also related with the sample Program I've given.&#xA;Big projects (covering all company countries) can be divided into smaller projects (each country itself) and managed in smaller chunks, although a program manager can coordinate all projects' efforts under a single program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30911" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-12-19T14:19:44.900" LastActivityDate="2017-12-19T14:19:44.900" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23099" CreationDate="2017-12-19T13:31:27.550" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My definition is far simpler.  A project has a defined start, defined scope, and defined finish.  A program has an indefinite time and indefinite quantity.  It differs from an operations in that operations are intended to be an ongoing concern in perpetuity while a program is intended to end but not known when or to what degree value and quantity are delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen all kinds of definitions being used in practice and, at the end of the day, I don't think it much matters.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-12-19T13:31:27.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23091" CreationDate="2017-12-19T13:33:25.000" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You do not have a choice but to split it up.  Schedule is based on time.  If you stopped the work and have some degree of time in between the stop and when it is restarted, you have a split in the schedule.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-12-19T13:33:25.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23066" CreationDate="2017-12-19T15:15:05.080" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;UCP estimation is not necessarily a TOP DOWN approach, because use cases are not always detailed from top to bottom. In fact, use cases are related to UML and RUP, trying to document the customer's requirements in technical and natural language. So the answer is no, it can be, but not always.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check this: &lt;a href=&quot;http://modelmeld.com/Usecases-topdownandbottomup.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://modelmeld.com/Usecases-topdownandbottomup.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30032" LastActivityDate="2017-12-19T15:15:05.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23099" CreationDate="2017-12-19T15:44:34.753" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key is here....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;...to obtain benefits not available from managing them individually&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Project is the smallest element that has self-contained benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Programme aggregates those benefits into a strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Building a hotel is a project. It has a benefit. You can create 'sub-projects' out of each floor but their benefit is not realised until the hotel is complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Building a chain of hotels is a programme as you have a 'brand', a referral and discount system to encourage return custom, economies of scale during both project execution and during operation etc. Benefits which are not achievable from any single element of the programme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;After-Thoughts&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering further on this, the definition of a Project is highly contextual, e.g. the completion of a module of code may or may not be considered a project:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it is an upgrade for insertion into an existing framework then its benefit is realised when it is inserted and functional.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the rest of the framework has not been written yet then it isn't a project because it does nothing without the context. Although if the context is &lt;strong&gt;only&lt;/strong&gt; to code to an interface then the framework is the interface and you are back in item 1 above.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose the simplest way to consider this is just to ask the question &quot;if I stop here, do I have something that can be &lt;strong&gt;delivered&lt;/strong&gt; to the key stakeholder/client or just a pile of physical/digital/intellectual stuff that just sits there?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my field (construction contracts) this concept is called 'beneficial use', where Works are considered complete when the Employer has put them into operation for the intended purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, don't get confused by non-PM's using words which have specific meaning to our profession in a colloquial way, and be prepared to speak 'non-PM' when communicating outside your team. Something which may be called a &quot;project&quot; by the Employer, your own company, or even your boss can in fact be a programme (the &quot;build a chain of hotels&quot; example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Art, of course provides it's own, rather eclectic and opinion based, context where analytical thinking breaks down completely and it is best to just go for a beer or other beverage of your choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30555" LastEditorUserId="30555" LastEditDate="2017-12-21T10:27:21.363" LastActivityDate="2017-12-21T10:27:21.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23090" CreationDate="2017-12-19T15:56:38.567" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Control Charts Primarily Visualize Process Variability&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While they show you some nice things like lead time and cycle time, the most beneficial metric that can come out of using a control chart is variability, and from that, the predictability of your process to produce value for your customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teams can better understand their variability by inspecting 'outliers,' these are items that are either extremely high on the chart or extremely low.  What happened to these items and why?  What can we do to normalize them?  Sometimes you can catch user stories created and instantaneously closed, what happened there?  Did the development team just instantly implement something?  No, perhaps it was something that was entered improperly or previously completed.  What about some of the items that took extremely long to complete? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are stories behind each one of those data points, and good teams use this kind of information to improve their process going forward.  The idea isn't to get all of your items completed within a day or an hour, it's to get all of your items flowing through your board in a predictable and sustainable manner.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With more predictability, you can actually go back to your customers and tell them, accurately, when a feature may be ready for production +/- days or hours, etc.  All depends on the project, but that is how you should be thinking about using a control chart. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16148" LastActivityDate="2017-12-19T15:56:38.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23086" CreationDate="2017-12-19T17:31:37.040" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please read &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;.  The Sprint Goal as an objective is the key.  If it becomes obsolete then the Sprint should be canceled.  Details will emerge during the Sprint as the effort and learning are ongoing.  The Sprint Backlog is a &lt;strong&gt;forecast&lt;/strong&gt; of what will be delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scope may be clarified and re-negotiated between the Product Owner and Development Team as more is learned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2017-12-19T17:31:37.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23090" CreationDate="2017-12-19T19:36:06.990" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 4 Cycle-time related charts that you should ideally be using in conjunction are the Cycle Time trend, Cycle Time (or Lead Time) Distribution chart, the Cycle Time Control chart and lastly the Flow Efficiency chart (the ratio of work time to total cycle time).  Together, these give you a good measure of your team's performance and feedback on how and where you need to focus your improvement efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given below is a screenshot from our product &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.digite.com/swiftkanban/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SwiftKanban&lt;/a&gt; - which gives you all of these charts - there are other tools that do it too - and you can also compute these in a spreadsheet if you have the data.  This is for one of the projects being managed in my company - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vMJzo.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vMJzo.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might already know about all of them, so I won't go into details of each - but if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the control chart - here is a close up of the chart above - pls forgive my horrible annotation of it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rMenK.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rMenK.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what the control chart helps you do - it helps you look at the cycle time performance of your team that you are currently observing. It shows you the average cycle time as well as the spread of the observed cycle time data points around the average.  It also highlights the &quot;outliers&quot; in your data set.  (The average cycle time trend chart in the previous picture fails to do that - but is useful to study overall cycle time trend.) Based on this chart's analysis, you can make predictions or commitments about the normally expected (or expectable) performance of your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the chart above, section A tells you what are the Mean or Average Cycle time for the period under study (the date range of the chart), the Upper Control Limit (UCL) and the Lower Control Limit LCL). The UCL and LCL are calculated as the +/- 3-sigma (standard deviation) range on the two sides of the mean. Anything outside of this range is considered an outlier (items marked with B above) - something of an anomaly in your data set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What the control chart tells you is what is your +/- 3-sigma spread (the range marked C in the chart above).  &lt;em&gt;The purpose of Kanban systems is to help you improve your predictability of delivery.  The higher the spread, the higher the variation in your team's cycle time performance - and so the lower its predictability.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you ideally want to try and do is to reduce that spread.  As you study the individual data points, you and the team can figure out what went right for the items in the -3 sigma range (items between the Mean and the 0 lines), and what may have gone wrong in the +3 sigma range (between Mean and UCL lines), and especially those that are the outliers (above the UCL line).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you start to fix those issues, you should start to see a narrowing of the spread (C) and hopefully a reduction in the number of outliers (B) as also a reduction in the Mean value as overall system performance improves. Using the control chart, you should be able to see a chart like the one shown in this blog post - &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.digite.com/blog/kanban-in-it-operations/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Implementing Kanban in IT Operations&lt;/a&gt; - which looks like this - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eiCqz.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eiCqz.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the control chart can help you track your performance improvement as you introduce process changes or other improvement initiatives, as also simply internalizing the principles of Kanban that gradually help you reduce WIP, improve Flow and Throughput - and ideally, both the cycle time and the cycle time variations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2017-12-19T19:36:06.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23108" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23112" CreationDate="2017-12-19T20:50:21.553" Score="4" ViewCount="312" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my weaknesses as a PM is not being able to delegate and manage work assigned to others. What are ways you can tackle this? Granted I have high expectations of others, but sometimes they just don't meet the basic requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&#xA;I asked someone to do a task for me, and 2 hours before the deadline they present it to me clearly showing no effort was put into it. I had to scramble and re-do it myself. In this scenario, how do you deal with this person? Is there a better way of asking them to do it? How can I enforce it so they do it better next time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27570" LastActivityDate="2017-12-24T02:44:34.180" Title="Delegating Work and Dealing with Poor Results?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23109" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-19T21:24:00.437" Score="5" ViewCount="266" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have recently started with “Developer of the month” across scrum teams. We announce name of the top performer along with each monthly celebration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What could be the potential down side of doing it as Scrum encourages team performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30305" LastActivityDate="2017-12-23T17:12:54.257" Title="Is it fine to recognise individual performance in Scrum" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23109" CreationDate="2017-12-19T22:02:36.977" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There isn't anything inherently wrong with the idea, but there are some places that you may find problematic. This isn't really a scrum problem, but Scrum can exacerbate the problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some problems include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What am I measuring? Any measurement will tell people that you value that thing over others, but is that the message you want to send? Things like collaboration, mentoring, architectural maintainability, and quality are notoriously difficult to measure, so metrics almost always favor short-changing these areas.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Who am I measuring? Scrum encourages teams to succeed or fail together and often times calls for multiple people to swarm on work. How do you measure this work separately? Will you be separating work that should be together just to gain a measurement?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do you measure value and learning? Scrum puts a lot of emphasis on driving out risk through learning and creating value. Even if you were to measure on the team level, how will you compare the amount one team learned against another? In short, what is performance?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is not to say that nothing like this can work. I worked in one department where the teams nominated an MVP each month and in the course of the month, there was usually someone who stood out as having really pulled more than their weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also important to remember how much Agile stresses sustainable pace. People working nights and weekends has a massive cost to it that is often hidden. You don't want to accidentally encourage cowboy heroics for a monthly reward by sacrificing the long-term health of your teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastEditorUserId="7944" LastEditDate="2017-12-19T22:10:08.050" LastActivityDate="2017-12-19T22:10:08.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23111" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-20T01:54:37.593" Score="5" ViewCount="189" Body="&lt;p&gt;My background is 6 years in managing &quot;normal&quot; projects in an outsourcing company. Recently I've joined a Scrum project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here I see people not doing any documentation, no SRS (Software Requirement Specification), no Detailed Design, almost no documents of any sort. They only create some user stories, then start to code. They don’t even create a database design but do “code-first” and generate the database from code. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the question is, how can you maintain such a codebase after the project is “done”, say 3–5 year later, when all the current team members have moved on or can’t remember what they did today?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1945" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-12-20T15:17:05.017" LastActivityDate="2017-12-21T10:45:09.373" Title="How do you plan for maintainence after a Scrum project" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;maintenance&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23108" CreationDate="2017-12-20T05:12:30.260" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't delegate &amp;amp; disappear until the deadline. Check in with them once or twice, just informally to ask how it's going, do they need any clarification from you, are they having any problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be sure everyone is clear on what the priority of the delegated task is, especially if the people you've delegated to have other usual tasks, and possibly other people that are setting their priorities or depending on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And when things do go wrong, don't think &quot;enforce&quot;. Think &quot;ask.&quot; Ask them about it (after you've calmed down from having had to scramble to do it yourself, and after putting any thoughts of what &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; think happened firmly out of your mind), in a non-judgmental, non-authoritarian, curious way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in the situation you describe, I might say something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;So, I appreciate that you turned the thing in on time, and that it had (something else I can remotely find to praise about it), but I was surprised that it didn't include (specific things that you had expected it to include). Was I not clear about that, or ...?&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I'm leading with the assumption that the fault might have been mine. I will do this even if I am 99.999% sure that it was not, partly because I have learned that communications problems usually have fault on both sides, but mostly because it is the least accusatory framing I can provide, so it is least likely to provoke a defensive, self-justifying response, and most likely to elicit an open, productive response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully, the response identifies what the other person thought the problem was, and the conversation can then proceed collaboratively to figure out how we can avoid a similar problem next time. Sometimes I will offer a solution (eg, &quot;would it be helpful if I checked in with you halfway thru?&quot;) and sometimes (usually not the first time) I will assert a solution I want to try (eg, &quot;OK, well, next time I would like to see your design/prelim draft so we can make sure we're on the same page earlier&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Communications problems are SO common. It is SO easy to think that everything made it out of your head and into your words when really only half of it did -- and this is true on both sides. It's often helpful to point that out (eg, &quot;Oh I see, I said X and what I meant was X+Z, but I wasn't explicit about the Z part so you assumed I wanted X+Y&quot;) as it can become an area for continuously working towards improvement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hard to move from &quot;I asked you to do this thing and I ended up redoing it myself, dammit&quot; to &quot;OK, well &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; didn't work out how I expected. What do you think happened?&quot; And it can take a few hours or a day or two to get there, especially at first. But I have found it well worth it: both in terms of fostering a collaborative, productive team, and in terms of lowering my stress level. :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2017-12-20T05:12:30.260" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23108" CreationDate="2017-12-20T07:08:06.670" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/11661/vicki-laidler&quot;&gt;Vicki&lt;/a&gt;'s great  &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/23112/4384&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you &lt;em&gt;train&lt;/em&gt; people that you will redo sloppy work and fill in for them, they will rely on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general rule, a PM never does any work, a PM does PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to do this? See &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/11661/vicki-laidler&quot;&gt;Vicki&lt;/a&gt;'s detailed &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/23112/4384&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2017-12-20T07:08:06.670" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23114" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-20T12:02:03.787" Score="1" ViewCount="90" Body="&lt;p&gt;What techniques are available to calculate the accuracy of ranged estimates, on units of work that may be irregularly re-estimated? The evaluation should account for estimates made on behalf of another, and count those toward the estimator's rating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our tooling allows and encourages us to enter ranged estimates at the 80% confidence level, but critically we can't get the feedback that tells us we're estimating too high/low/wide/narrow etc. Without which, we cannot improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22614" LastActivityDate="2017-12-20T13:36:24.210" Title="Advanced estimation accuracy techniques" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;process-improvement&gt;&lt;feedback&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23114" CreationDate="2017-12-20T13:26:01.793" Score="1" Body="&lt;h1&gt;A) Include more aspects into estimation&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that might help you estimate each task for effort (sheer amount of work), difficulty (amount of thinking) and risk/uncertainty (how much can go wrong). Then let those assessments guide your estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;B) Keep your estimates but adjust them&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The FogBugz approach. Estimate normally, record how long it actually took you and let a computer program use that information to auto-translate all your future estimates. I was incredibly taken with this idea when I first heard about it. Unfortunately logging all those estimates AND actual times is laborious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;C) Have more experienced estimators do all the estimating&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read of experiments where they've found that more experienced developers tend to create more accurate estimates even when they are not the ones doing the actual work. This has the downside of putting your best workers doing most of the chores. And those who are not good at estimating have no way of getting better at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;D) Estimate in relative values&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People tend to better at comparing tasks relative to each other than at predicting absolute time required. You still need to track how long it actually took you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;E) Simplify feedback&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For B and D, tracking actual time only for batches of tasks greatly eases the administrative burden and still gives you some information of &quot;when I estimate X points/hours that tends to equal around Y hours&quot;. If you don't end up comparing estimates with outcomes you will never get better. So a process that produces data with less precision is preferable to a process that produces no data because it's too inconvenient and people don't follow it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you put all of it together you get something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you estimate your tasks, do it together. That way more experienced team members can steer the rest towards more accurate estimates and less experience team members can still practice this skill and get feedback&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cultivate a more conscious awareness of the scope, complexity and risk&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use relative values to break free from the thinking &quot;If I say X hours I need to be done by Y!&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you did a bunch of stuff, sum up their respective estimates and relate them to the time it actually took you. Do this regularly to get empirical data on how your estimates tend to correlate to hours/days. Ensure that your blocks are large enough to buffer outliers short but enough to get a good body of data.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastEditorUserId="26715" LastEditDate="2017-12-20T13:36:24.210" LastActivityDate="2017-12-20T13:36:24.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23108" CreationDate="2017-12-20T13:56:48.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are only looking at the individual as a possible root cause of the mediocre performance.  This is not unusual, unfortunately, but it is also not very effective.  You need to look at the entire system: processes--including the supporting processes such as QA (@VickiLaidler's suggestion) and risk--tooling; knowledge--both tacit and explicit--and your talent.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you need to monitor performance over time.  The human talent is the least reliable; there is quite a variance in all of our performance.  Even the best pilot will bounce one in every now and again.  So you need to measure and monitor your talent's performance over time to find his/her modal performance level.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most cases, the human is not what's broken.  There are other drivers that disable human performance no matter who (s)he is.  You need to take a more sophisticated approach on this very complex topic of performance than what you are seeking here.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2017-12-20T13:56:48.537" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23111" CreationDate="2017-12-20T15:16:43.987" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lots to parse here. TLDR; Focus on what's important (maintainable code), rather than jumping to an assumed/unverified root cause (lack of documentation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Perspective&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, and perhaps most important, is your perspective. From the tone of your Question, it appears to me as if you're not only unfamiliar with Scrum, but disparaging of it. If you come at a Scrum project with the mentality of &quot;How can I work around this nasty Scrum thing?&quot;, then you &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; fail. Do not be overly concerned with what Scrum doesn't do, and instead focus on learning how Scrum is supposed to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Documentation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the Agile Manifesto:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Working software&lt;/strong&gt; over comprehensive documentation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means, essentially, two things. First, that documentation &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; important (more on that below). Second, that working software is &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You point out the lack of a Software Requirement Specification or Detailed Design. To me, this lack is a &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; thing. Expending too much effort into upfront design has two side-effects. Firstly, it puts more time and effort into design and documentation instead of writing code. Secondly, it locks the Team into a particular mindset, which in nearly all cases will either be wrong, will &lt;em&gt;become&lt;/em&gt; wrong as requirements change, or both - thereby making the Team less able to respond to change and update their code. They will always, in the back of their minds, be trying to 'stick to the plan'. Both of these will harm the Team's ability to create working software - which, again, as per the Agile Manifesto, is more important than documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Code-first&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the code-first approach (versus a database-first approach, or an approach where both are designed separately and then connected somehow), that is a completely separate Question that is out of scope of PMSE. Suffice it to say, there are, at the least, many people who consider it to be a valid approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;User Stories&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They only create some user stories&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which seems to me as if either you don't understand the purpose of User Stories, or else your Team is not using them correctly. User Stories &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; a form of (living) documentation. Years later, when trying to figure out why a piece of code was written, you should be able to go from the code to its corresponding User Story, and see it there. If you cannot, then &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; is an issue that needs to be addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One approach that I've seen work well is to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Save all User Stories, each with a unique key for easy future lookup.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Include that unique key on the commit message of any code relating to that User Story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How to maintain the code later?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to be able to maintain code in the future is to &lt;em&gt;write maintainable code&lt;/em&gt;. That seems like a tautology, but there are other approaches (such as comprehensive documentation) that some (in my opinion, erroneously) consider to be most important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are various ways to accomplish this - code review, pair programming, better hiring, training and culture to obtain/raise/retain better programmers, technological assistance (such as a StyleCop of some kind).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, make sure you're focusing on the right problems. Rather than focusing on Scrum's lack of documentation, instead focus on the goals of Scrum and Agile. These include improving quality of individuals and their interactions, writing working software, improving customer collaboration, responding to change, as well as the various goals of Scrum - see the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;. If these goals are not being met, focus on &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt;, including first trying to &lt;em&gt;find&lt;/em&gt; the cause, rather than automatically assuming you know the cause (e.g. lack of documentation). If you have a goal that does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; line up with the goals of Agile and Scrum, first ask yourself the the project really &lt;em&gt;needs&lt;/em&gt; it. In some cases, it does (and therefore Agile/Scrum are unsuitable for that project). In many cases, it does not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-12-20T15:41:27.010" LastActivityDate="2017-12-20T15:41:27.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23111" CreationDate="2017-12-20T15:28:51.930" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some of the things you expect them to do might not be as essential as you think&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are operating under a different paradigm now. Without knowing more details it's hard to judge how much your reaction is due to a completely different approch and how much is due to actually unsustainable practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Specifications&lt;/em&gt; - Shared understanding is more important than extensive specifications. I've run into this problem at my last project. Very detailed specifications that were diligently refined from user requirements down to design specs. But eventually, late in the project we realized that the PO understood A, the PM understood B and the Dev implemented C. If your team manages to avoid this then the level of specification your team creates with their user stories is probably sufficient. Clear, testable acceptance criteria for a story can be beneficial but the ultimate judge of your program will be the customer. Nothing tops that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;design&lt;/em&gt; - Upfront design often fails to honor YAGNI and plans for features that might never come (especially in an agile environment). But again your post is unclear whether they have no concern for design and structure or whether they are just creating it as it becomes necessary. Are designs ever talked about? Are people refactoring design when new features are implemented?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;documentation&lt;/em&gt; - Source code should not have to rely on external documentation to be understandable. Does your team have code complexity in mind? Are variables and function names expressive? Do you have automated tests? If you do then they probably aren't reckless in their approach.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;database design&lt;/em&gt; - If your database can be generated from your code then your code arguably IS the database design. The database in this scenario is likely no more than a dumb persistence layer. If you had decided to serialize all data to xml files instead using your framework's default mechanisms you probably wouldn't expect a detailed file format documentation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More attention to maintainability might be good for them&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your concerns are healthy and valuable. If you are uncertain about the long term maintainability of your source code then you should investigate. Since you're coming from a very different mindset you should first learn the mindset that exist in your current team. Ask your coworkers how they are adressing maintainability and tech debt. But approach this conversation from a position of &quot;I want to learn how your way works&quot; and not &quot;you are doing it different/wrong&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, if - after understanding their approach - you are still not convinced their way is safe, then suggest improvements (the retrospective would be a good place)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastEditorUserId="26715" LastEditDate="2017-12-20T15:41:04.017" LastActivityDate="2017-12-20T15:41:04.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23120" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-20T19:42:08.773" Score="1" ViewCount="1282" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to track time spent by each agent on each task on a &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/agile/glossary/kanban-board&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;JIRA Kanban board&lt;/a&gt;. If an agent was assigned a task and he assigns it back to me, I want to track the time he spent assigned to the ticket. Is there a way to do that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30926" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2017-12-20T20:47:36.407" LastActivityDate="2018-10-05T17:10:47.280" Title="How can I track time spent by assignees on each ticket in JIRA?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;kanban-board&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23120" CreationDate="2017-12-20T20:16:39.633" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Tracking Workflow Transitions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tracking ticket assignments between people is generally considered a workflow or state transition. According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/jira/tracking-the-time-taken-for-each-workflow-transition-126910724.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an Atlassian Confluence document&lt;/a&gt;, there are some recommended ways for tracking workflow transitions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;Tracking the Time Taken for Each Workflow Transition&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Below are 3 solutions which may fulfill your time tracking requirements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/jira/displaying-search-results-as-a-chart-185729486.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;JIRA Charts&lt;/a&gt; can report 'Average Time in Status' as a chart&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.googlecode.jira-suite-utilities/server/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;JIRA Suite Utilities&lt;/a&gt; has a 'Transitions Summary' tab panel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.obss.plugin.time-in-status&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Time in Status app&lt;/a&gt; provides automated time tracking for statuses or assignees&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You can also visit the Atlassian Marketplace to review hundreds of time tracking apps and integrations to help you track, plan, and optimize with ease.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If none of the recommended approaches work for you, then Atlassian recommends reviewing your options from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Atlassian Marketplace&lt;/a&gt;. You might also want to look at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.atlassian.com/software/jira/docs/api/REST/1000.1609.0/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cloud&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://developer.atlassian.com/jiradev/jira-apis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;developer&lt;/a&gt; APIs if you decide to &quot;roll your own.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-12-20T20:16:39.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23099" CreationDate="2017-12-21T05:32:51.093" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Their is many specialized software/computer programs to help with &quot;large project&quot; management based on the critical path technique. The critical path technique is a graph that show you the most profitable/shortest way to achieve your goals : deadlines and budget. Each step of your project is shown on the graph. When their is a technical side in what you start and manage we talk about a &quot;project&quot;. When their is more a social services side we talk about &quot;programs&quot;. So, if you develop a phone, you will start a project establishing first its critical path. If some of your employees need a social service for their wellbeing, you will register them into a program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user30807" LastActivityDate="2017-12-21T05:32:51.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23099" CreationDate="2017-12-21T08:35:13.097" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, consider you as an IT service provider signed a deal (~size of USD 10 Million) with your esteemed telecommunication client. Assume this deal includes all the operations pertaining to Information Technology (IT) and Information Technology Enabled Services (ITeS). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, how will you as a &quot;service provider&quot; identify this deal? Will you consider this deal as a Portfolio? or as a Program? or as a Project? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends is the answer. Right? But, it depends on what? It depends on your internal policies defined by your own organization. It could be for various reasons such as easier tracking, easier accounting cycle, etc. Let us look at each of the scenarios separately. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As-a-PROJECT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might consider the entire deal as a project and create sub-projects based on activities or by domain - for example, you would name the main project as 'Fictitious Telecommunication Company, Norway'. And create many sub-projects under the main project like 'FTC - Adaptive Maintenance', 'FTC- Corrective Maintenance', 'FTC - Billing', etc. You see, these are sub-projects now. It does offer value to your Customer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As-a-PROGRAM&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your company would need to manage it as a program rather than projects. Why? That's your way of handling the business. Okay, so you create a Portfolio by named 'Fictitious Telecommunication Company, Norway'. Later, create programs under the portfolio and name it as 'FTC - Adaptive Maintenance', 'FTC- Corrective Maintenance', FTC - Billing', etc. Under these programs you will further create the projects that would possibly say 'FTC - Data Warehousing', 'FTC - Open Systems', etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you see, they are further decomposed for further tracking and monitoring.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At times, you might mirror your organization setup as per your Client's requirements. This is because your Client would want you to mirror it exactly as-is. You cannot say NO and no businessman would say so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kindly understand, whether it is a portfolio, or a program or a project, the plain objective of these segregation is to provide value to your esteemed Customer. Nothing else. All these segregation is all virtual and can be applied in various ways to achieve the results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps you understand the context better. Should you need more information, do not worry, just shoot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22293" LastActivityDate="2017-12-21T08:35:13.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23111" CreationDate="2017-12-21T10:45:09.373" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Leaving supportable code is just as important for an Agile team as for a traditional development team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is simpler to describe what an Agile team would try to avoid:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't write documentation just because it is the 'done' thing - i.e. only write documentation that you &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; will be valuable to people supporting the code in the future.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid documentation that is difficult to maintain or that may quickly become out of date.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep the code (and database) design as simple and readable as possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also want to consider using self-documenting techniques, such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior-driven_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Behaviour Driven Development (BDD)&lt;/a&gt;. This is a great way to embed the requirements design into the code base.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another important approach is to maintain a high level of automated regression test coverage. This is important as it will give developers working on the code in the future the confidence to make changes, while knowing they haven't broken any existing functionality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2017-12-21T10:45:09.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23108" CreationDate="2017-12-21T14:35:46.437" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It appears that you tend to be a perfectionist. Aren't you? Well, that's one of the challenge you got to face if you are a perfectionist. In adverse situations, the team members might also play games. That's natural in a highly political environment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is being perfectionist your problem? No. Then, how will you overcome the situation. There are ways and means to control the situation and it's purely in your hands. It's only you. Does it sound like a self-help cliché? Yes, it is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it hold true for all those perfectionists? Quite naturally. Let us analyze the situation further. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider you assign a task to your team member. You would assume that by assigning a task to your teammate, the individual would take the ownership and revert to you when complete. If this is the case, then, your expectation is very much correct. That's how your team members would need to function. But you need to understand that they are not &quot;YOU&quot;. They are different and have their own characteristics. You will need to accept this and change your mindset. This is the first step to success. Do you agree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Okay, I have changed / ready to change my mindset. Now, What?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, there are umpteen ways to attack this problem. Instead of enlisting a huge set of possible solutions, let us narrow down to only two areas. What would it be? It would be: a) hard-way, b) soft-way. These two &quot;ways&quot; shall be your highway to your success. Crap, is what you will think. No, it is not. There is no other option other than to keep reading. Please bear with me.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hard-way&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;Okay, so what is that hard-way? It is all about preparing the hard deliverables. What else, it would be your &quot;task sheet&quot; also known as Work-breakdown-structure (WBS) that spells out who does what and when. But then, you would ask, I have the task sheet prepared. Now, what? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to this question would be: If you have prepared this WBS all alone thinking that your team members will need to go by your schedule, than I am sorry. You are at fault. You are preparing to blow your own trumpet. Trust me, that happens. I have committed that mistake and have burned my fingers and toes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should possibly involve your team members, brainstorm (yup, that's the buzz word), and then arrive at the WBS. The next activity shall be to communicate. But to whom? To the stakeholders. Communication is key. Please note. The moment you broadcast, your team will feel the heat. They will get to know that the tasks are getting noticed from top to bottom. Use the communication tool wisely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next set of activity shall be to keep monitoring and tracking. This is very essential. Publish the status religiously - rain or shine. This means you will need to over-communicate regularly until you gain traction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Figure out the results. You will be surprised to believe the story. You can create history. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Soft-way&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the soft part. This is very essential. You know that &quot;give respect to take respect&quot; is a  famous adage. But then, that's what everyone expect. Please look at your team members as equal. Never indulge into any gossip. At times, just by using the magical words (please, thank you, etc), you could sense where your project is moving to. Always, be calm. Never vent. Your behavior at work depends on your project and your professional success. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Soft skills are very important to delegate and to get the work done. You might sometimes need to keep prodding. That happens, but then, as a PM, you got to see yourself as a guide. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22293" LastActivityDate="2017-12-21T14:35:46.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23090" CreationDate="2017-12-21T16:03:47.533" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main purpose of the control chart is to see how much variability you have in your work.  Pay close attention to spikes/dips and put some time into investigating what caused those items to take longer/shorter.  The control chart can help you become predictable (you will know that any piece of work will on average take X days)  One item you should avoid is getting concerned when something dips/spikes but remains inside your lower limit.  You don't want to have an average of 1 week and start asking questions about what happened on day 8. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30480" LastActivityDate="2017-12-21T16:03:47.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23109" CreationDate="2017-12-21T23:46:33.577" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don’t think there’s a particular issue with giving praise to individual members, you just need to make sure it’s focused on how that action has benefited the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Great time to do this is in retrospectives when you discuss what went well. It’s healthier when people in the team feel comfortable giving praise, as opposed to it always coming from one person &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30938" LastActivityDate="2017-12-21T23:46:33.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23131" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-22T00:56:47.447" Score="2" ViewCount="77" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a little embarrassing, but I cannot figure out how to do this.  I have added Text Style formatting, but I need to change the priority of the formatting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have Critical Path tasks formatted to Red, and Milestones to Blue, however, if a task is a milestone &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; on the critical path, I want it Red.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this possible?  Am I missing something really obvious?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30939" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-12-22T14:18:47.017" LastActivityDate="2018-09-20T17:00:52.083" Title="How to Specify how Text Colours Should Override Each Other in MS Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23108" CreationDate="2017-12-23T01:15:22.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Couple of comments for you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Granted I have high expectations of others, but sometimes they just&#xA;  don't meet the basic requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spend more time thinking about your hiring / selection process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid becoming a policeman &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Read and think about &lt;a href=&quot;https://hbr.org/1998/03/the-set-up-to-fail-syndrome&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Setup to Fail&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Immediately show that you care and work on the right outcomes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;we had a meeting about the requirements and had everyone agree before&#xA;  any work was done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you procure services, make sure you understand this subject&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Two weeks you say without communication would be foolish&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;no effort was put into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Effort is too subjective. Either the work fulfills the requirements or not.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21496" LastActivityDate="2017-12-23T01:15:22.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23136" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23147" CreationDate="2017-12-23T10:47:00.690" Score="0" ViewCount="2133" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are currently having multiple scrum teams with 3 to 6 developers and 1 dedicated tester in each team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should we have scrum team like this OR  have all the developers and they can share testing responsibility mutually?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28471" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-07-08T12:14:16.387" LastActivityDate="2019-07-09T02:40:14.310" Title="Should we have dedicated tester in team or testing is mutual responsibility of development team" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;testing&gt;&lt;quality&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23137" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-23T11:07:22.797" Score="-1" ViewCount="124" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read this in &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/173294/208533&quot;&gt;an answer on SoftwareEngineering.se&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Don't forget to distinguish between size and complexity in your estimating. You should estimate on size only, not complexity or difficulty. For example - adding a button to a screen should always be a '1', in that as far as the user is concerned, they are getting a button - size is very low. It doesn't matter if you actually implement it in C# (low complexity, very easy) or Assembly (high complexity, very difficult); the user story has the same size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28471" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2017-12-30T15:02:33.667" LastActivityDate="2017-12-30T15:02:33.667" Title="Should user stories be estimated by efforts or by value it added?" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23138" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23148" CreationDate="2017-12-23T14:32:51.193" Score="0" ViewCount="518" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a scrum team. The developers demand clear guidelines for promotions. AFAIK, there's nothing like defined developer roles for a scrum team but people feel:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;People who contribute more should be promoted faster:&lt;/strong&gt; If someone is moving a fast pace and started contributing to architecture designing, he/she should be promoted to SDE2. Is it good to keep such segregation in a scrum team?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Recognition from outside world:&lt;/strong&gt; Many developers believe that promoted title would help them when they switch job/move to higher studies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hike with each promotion:&lt;/strong&gt; Most of them look for zoomed increments along with promotions. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone faced similar challenge? Any suggestions, how should we deal with this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28471" LastActivityDate="2018-01-09T17:18:17.207" Title="Scrum: How should developer promotions be handled in a scrum team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23136" CreationDate="2017-12-23T16:59:48.253" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While sharing testing responsibility across the team is important, Agile teams still need dedicated testers, especially now with broader focuses on automation.  Not having a dedicated person solely focused on quality could spell disaster for your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16148" LastActivityDate="2017-12-23T16:59:48.253" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23137" CreationDate="2017-12-23T17:06:33.480" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The purpose of story points are to give the team the capability to forecast and provide projections in regards to their ability to deliver software in a given time frame.  Many things are factored into a story point, such has effort, complexity, uncertainty, and risk. E.g., something might be easy to do but may rely on another team, etc.,  but they are not a measure of business value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for typos I'm on mobile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16148" LastActivityDate="2017-12-23T17:06:33.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23109" CreationDate="2017-12-23T17:12:54.257" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good agile teams don't need carrots and they don't need sticks.  Whoever came up with that idea is probably the problem.  Instead of trying to create a hero culture where people continuously burn out and leave, think more about how to provide resources and enable teams to solve complicated engineering problems.  Do that and you don't need sticks or carrots :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16148" LastActivityDate="2017-12-23T17:12:54.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23137" CreationDate="2017-12-23T19:58:44.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Estimate on size.&lt;/strong&gt; Because size is independent of executor, and implementation approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Order by value.&lt;/strong&gt; Because we want to do most valuable items first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27280" LastActivityDate="2017-12-23T19:58:44.047" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22271" CreationDate="2017-12-24T02:02:11.477" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Action Plan Missing; Collaborate Within Your Company's Context&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As written, your question is likely to be closed as too opinion-driven because there's no objective way to turn the vague corporate objectives you've listed into SMART goals outside the context of your specific organization. The objectives that you say have been predefined for you (rather than collaboratively agreed-upon &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; you) are not very specific, inherently measurable, or time boxed, and no one outside of your organization can tell if the goals you eventually derive from those objectives are realistic or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria#History&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;history of SMART criteria&lt;/a&gt; defines SMART goals as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ideally speaking, each corporate, department, and section objective should be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Specific – target a specific area for improvement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Measurable – quantify or at least suggest an indicator of progress.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Assignable – specify who will do it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Realistic – state what results can realistically be achieved, given available resources.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Time-related – specify when the result(s) can be achieved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] It is the combination of the objective and its action plan that is really important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;— George T. Doran, &lt;em&gt;Management Review&lt;/em&gt;, &quot;There's a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management's goals and objectives&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, note the author's requirement that SMART goals express an &lt;em&gt;action plan&lt;/em&gt;. In this case, it looks like you're being asked to develop action plans that meet the five SMART criteria, with one or more plans to be developed for each business objective listed. How you and your management team decide to implement those action plans is a collaborative exercise (or maybe they're incorrectly pushing it off on you; there's no way for us to know) and any agreed-upon plan that meets the five SMART criteria will do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-12-24T02:02:11.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23137" CreationDate="2017-12-24T02:24:15.743" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Effort and value are not correlated. Story points measure the former.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Effort vs. Value&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The effort needed to implement a story may not have a direct relationship to its perceived value. A feature that unlocks a ton of value but is super easy to implement might only be a 1-point story, while a 13-point story that requires days of effort by the whole team might be of limited customer or business value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A core feature of story points is that it allows the team and the Product Owner to determine if the value of a story is &lt;strong&gt;worth the effort&lt;/strong&gt;, and if the story can &lt;strong&gt;fit within &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; iterations&lt;/strong&gt;. If story points measured value, you wouldn't be able to use the proxy metric of &lt;em&gt;effort&lt;/em&gt; to compare stories by project run-time, cost, or scheduling, or to estimate a time-based release plan based on team capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Measuring value is certainly important, but it isn't part of the definition of a story point. In most agile systems, the value of a story (to the project; not necessarily to the business or its customers) is expressed through its ordinal position in the Product Backlog, or as an ancillary metric tracked within the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Story Points Measure Effort, Not Value&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story points should &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; be a measure of &lt;strong&gt;relative effort&lt;/strong&gt;, not of value. However, practitioners can and do disagree on how much issues such as complexity, difficulty, or risk should impact those estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/what-are-story-points&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;What Are Story Points?&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, Mike Cohn says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because story points represent the effort to develop a story, a team’s estimate must include everything that can affect the effort. That could include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The amount of work to do&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The complexity of the work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Any risk or uncertainty in doing the work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When estimating with story points, be sure to consider each of these factors. Let’s see how each impacts the effort estimate given by story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Importance of Consistency in Estimation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I consider Cohn's explanation above to be fairly dispositive, and in my professional experience the combinatorial approach to effort-based estimation he describes generally results in the most consistent and reliable metrics over time. However, almost any approach to estimation &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; work, provided that the &lt;strong&gt;estimation criteria are well understood&lt;/strong&gt; by both the team and the organization, and given that the same &lt;strong&gt;methodology is consistently applied&lt;/strong&gt; throughout the life cycle of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2017-12-30T01:30:24.663" LastActivityDate="2017-12-30T01:30:24.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23108" CreationDate="2017-12-24T02:44:34.180" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Work environments changed a lot since the apparition of emails and voice messaging, not so long ago. I remember a time when people had only the choice to answer the phone or not. More recently appeared &quot;gaming&quot; in work places, gaming like in video games, people choosing their avatar and playing it along the days, the weeks and even the months. Now a days, everybody want to manage and managing is seen by many as &quot;making it do by others&quot;, blaming others in case of problems. My stereotyped answer is not very far from the truth. People game their job when they don't have the competence to do it: to take the eat and face difficulties. Gaming in work places is a true cancer. If a boss has to delegate to look competent, employees have to blame an other employee to look competent. Happily, is it just a phase we are going through. The law of profit is implacable. No company has the luxury of having gaming employees always focusing on blaming others than to do what they are legally obliged to do. Usually when an employee does not want to do a job he or she is paid for, the employer can fire him or her. Many public companies are stuck with that cancer because the budget comes from a government and seems to be eternal. My solution in my studies and in the work places I was in, was always to do my work alone if it was my responsibility to do so. I prefer to talk to my boss and establish an agreement with him or her on who does the job, when and at what salary. I assured the success of my studies like that in which there was a lot of team works to do. Frank discussions are avoided more and more. Face to face discussions too. When will the bell of profit ring to bring back people in reality? A work place it not a gaming lounge and success is not always blaming others to get the promotion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user30807" LastActivityDate="2017-12-24T02:44:34.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23136" CreationDate="2017-12-24T05:31:58.610" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only solution is to hire a one-armed project manager. That way he can't say &quot;on the other hand...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously having &quot;developers&quot; also being &quot;testers&quot; leads to a conflict of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, let's assume a big release has now finished coding. The &quot;developers&quot; have no work and the &quot;testers&quot; are overloaded. So should the developers play solitaire on their computers until the testers are done? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there just isn't absolute solution to the dilemma. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30726" LastActivityDate="2017-12-24T05:31:58.610" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23136" CreationDate="2017-12-24T10:03:34.880" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a Scrum team it is best to distinguish between &lt;em&gt;roles&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;capabilities&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every Scrum team needs a testing &lt;em&gt;capability&lt;/em&gt;, but it does not necessarily need tester roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole Scrum team takes responsibility for quality. This means more than just testing, it also means:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Automated regression tests&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maintaining code quality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use of continuous integration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Exploratory testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt; &#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are undoubted skills to being a good tester and some will be better at it than others. However, we can look to share this knowledge around the Scrum team using mentoring and training. This is why we talk about having &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumexpert.com/knowledge/t-shaped-skills-and-swarming-make-for-flexible-scrum-and-agile-teams/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;t-shaped skill profiles&lt;/a&gt; in a Scrum team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2017-12-24T10:03:34.880" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23138" CreationDate="2017-12-24T10:43:18.320" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a common problem with traditional development teams that have started to adopt &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of traditional development teams use job titles and commendations (such as bonuses) to differentiate seniority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum there are just three recognised roles: Product Owner, Scrum Master and Development Team member. This can be problematic for organisations who are used to much greater differentiation using job titles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure there are any easy answers, but I think the best approach is to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recognise and reward success primarily at the team level&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where recognition is given to individuals, reward them for collaboration and showing leadership by example&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the organisation uses job titles to recognise seniority, try and avoid titles that suggest management such as &lt;em&gt;Development Lead&lt;/em&gt;. Instead, use titles that recognise capability, such as &lt;em&gt;Principle Developer&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make it clear to people that the job titles are to satisfy the needs of the organisation and that they do not impact on the principles of Scrum&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2018-01-05T08:42:45.637" LastActivityDate="2018-01-05T08:42:45.637" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23137" CreationDate="2017-12-24T19:39:54.693" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Product Backlog items have the attributes of a description, order, estimate, and value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, regardless of approach, the items need both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2017-12-29T21:12:26.923" LastActivityDate="2017-12-29T21:12:26.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23150" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23152" CreationDate="2017-12-26T04:48:46.603" Score="2" ViewCount="129" Body="&lt;p&gt;As per the &lt;strong&gt;'I'**NVEST philosophy, user stories should be&#xA; I&lt;/strong&gt;ndependent as it allows for true prioritization of each and every story.  When dependencies come into play it may not be possible to implement a valuable story without implementing other much less valuable stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now as part of my Project we are building a profile page for the user as part of this epic, we have stories for UX design, Front end development(which depends on UX) and then the back-end development(which depends on front-end) creating a dependency in the stories&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do we resolve this issue of &lt;strong&gt;Independent&lt;/strong&gt;  stories in UI based applications where the UX design always informs the development team ??&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29026" LastActivityDate="2017-12-26T15:24:21.003" Title="How to apply the 'I' of INVEST in UI based development" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;user-experience-design&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23151" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-26T06:31:18.150" Score="0" ViewCount="603" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scenario:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E-commerce platform implemented by following teams:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DevOps / ERP devs / web devs / native iOS devs (hybrid App) / native Android devs (hybrid App)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;we are using Scrum like (not scaled) / Scrumban, each team has its own backlog and there is not a defined role to handle dependencies between teams. This scheme doesn‘t work as very often we have blockers between teams and not a clear responsible to handle them. I would like to know which scheme / methodology / framework is recommended in this context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30959" LastActivityDate="2017-12-27T12:04:40.847" Title="Multiple teams dependencies handling" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;scrum-of-scrums&gt;&lt;scaled&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23150" CreationDate="2017-12-26T14:48:56.150" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Vertical slices minimize dependencies between stories&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are attempting to horizontally slice the larger epic (by architecture) into user stories: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;we have stories for UX design, Front end development(which depends on&#xA;  UX) and then the back-end development(which depends on front-end)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, try to create vertical slices of the larger epic. This will minimize dependencies between stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.adobe.com/agile/2013/09/27/splitting-stories-into-small-vertical-slices/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Peter Green suggests four approaches to vertical slicing&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Vague terms&lt;/strong&gt; provide opportunities to slice by using an incremental approach.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conjunctions&lt;/strong&gt; provide opportunities to slice by using an incremental approach.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each &lt;strong&gt;acceptance criteria&lt;/strong&gt; could become its own vertical slice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One little piece of the &lt;strong&gt;user's workflow&lt;/strong&gt; at a time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NaHSk.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NaHSk.png&quot; alt=&quot;Vertically sliced stories&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following links in the above post may provide additional help for vertical slicing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilelearninglabs.com/2013/04/introduction-user-stories/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chris Sims blogged about a similar four step approach&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.christiaanverwijs.nl/post/2013/05/17/8-useful-strategies-for-splitting-large-user-stories-(and-a-cheatsheet).aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Christiaan Verwijs uses eight ways to split&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.richardlawrence.info/2009/10/28/patterns-for-splitting-user-stories/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Richard Lawrence has nine strategies for splitting stories&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2017-12-26T15:24:21.003" LastActivityDate="2017-12-26T15:24:21.003" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23151" CreationDate="2017-12-26T15:14:04.157" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Scrum of Scrums (SoS) is a lightweight scaling approach&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike some of the other scaling approaches, in the Scrum of Scrums you don't need dedicated resources for coordination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/roles/team&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mike Cohn sites following experiences using Scrum of Scrums&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In this way, we have worked on projects with more than 500 people and have consulted on projects with more than 1,000.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;each team identifies one person who attends the Scrum of Scrums meeting to coordinate the work of multiple Scrum teams&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In many organizations, having a Scrum of Scrums meeting two or three times a week is sufficient.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have used Scrum of Scrums to coordinate across 4 teams. In our case, we met twice a week and had more than one person (Architect, Product Owner, Scrum Master) represent each team. Some of these people handled multiple projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our SoS meeting agenda typically consisted of two main items:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cross-team dependencies: Where one team is building, say a component, which will be used by another team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resource contention: We had some shared resources. We negotiated the priorities and what % of time of the shared resource will be available for each team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2017-12-26T15:14:04.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23154" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-27T11:12:38.333" Score="0" ViewCount="82" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Since there is not other SE-community on management I ask this here, but I am happy to be guided somewhere else.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though there a different definitions of what a project is, they all have in common that projects have a &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;start&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; and an &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;ending&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. But for example working in or managing retail does not necessarily fit into this description (since it is a continuous process).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an equally organised community of managers who do not work as project managers? How do the good practices differ from project management?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the umbrella term for non-project management?&#xA;Does there exist a PMBOK-syle reference guide for this kind of management?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16890" LastEditorUserId="16890" LastEditDate="2017-12-30T10:53:29.640" LastActivityDate="2018-01-10T05:01:51.997" Title="What are the alternatives to Project Management? Is it Operations Management?" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;practices&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23151" CreationDate="2017-12-27T12:04:40.847" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The cross-team dependency is a known problem on large scale projects. We're running a project with four teams sharing the same platform, and the solution boils down to communicate... a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specific actions to take into account on how to manage these dependencies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Avoid cross-dependency&lt;/strong&gt; as much as possible; it's a no brainer, but sometimes you need someone with a pair of fresh eyes to review the way the platform is built to propose some decoupling &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;when decoupling is not possible, try to &lt;strong&gt;have clear interfaces&lt;/strong&gt; between applications (technologies, as it seems in your cases); This way, one implementation will be valid for all applications so long they adhere to this common interface&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;During sprint plan, assess &lt;strong&gt;which tasks are dependent by more than one user story&lt;/strong&gt;; one one story that depends on this task is prioritize, make sure the other stories are aware of it (if you use a software to track stories and tasks, a simple way is using links between them)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once a task that will impact more than one story becomes priority on the backlog, ensure the &lt;strong&gt;broader aspect of solution proposed is considered&lt;/strong&gt;, to avoid situations where the task delivered only fits one story but not all of them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once the task is completed, &lt;strong&gt;ensure the other teams are aware of it&lt;/strong&gt;. Running a scrum of scrums is a way of doing this, but there are plenty... it'll all depend on your team structure. We use for instance a Confluence board showing the latest 'core' changes built&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the best!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2017-12-27T12:04:40.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23120" CreationDate="2017-12-27T13:20:41.107" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stop micromanaging and focusing on low value metrics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Manifesto for Agile Software Development&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Attempting to use how many hours each person worked as a tool for issue analysis is dysfunctional. (It is also a metric that can be easily gamed.) In order to investigate and address any possible issues, the team needs to have a candid discussion during the Sprint Retrospective (&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt;) or similar &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;agile principled&lt;/a&gt; reflection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(From my &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/23029/in-vsts-get-the-hours-logged-by-an-individual-for-each-day-in-the-sprint/23037#23037&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt;  for the same regarding VSTS.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2017-12-27T13:20:41.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23157" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-28T03:14:33.730" Score="2" ViewCount="1407" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am really new to prioritizing requirements in agile projects. What are the different aspects of prioritizing requirements in a traditional approach vs. an agile one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30332" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-01-01T17:11:16.123" LastActivityDate="2019-05-25T17:09:58.570" Title="Prioritizing requirements in traditional vs. agile projects" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23158" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-28T06:33:02.150" Score="-1" ViewCount="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm new to project management, among other tasks our company has decided to post messages to social media regularly. Say we want to post every week, how would you write these tasks in MS-Project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Post to Facebook &#xA; - write&#xA; - design graphics&#xA; - post&#xA; - analyze &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is more like a 'to do list'. How do I just write this group of tasks as recurring task (say every Monday)? And is this the best way to do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6QpNW.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6QpNW.png&quot; alt=&quot;A group of tasks (no recurring)&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30970" LastActivityDate="2021-01-30T17:03:35.610" Title="How to put regular &quot;post to facebook&quot; tasks in MS-Project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23159" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23162" CreationDate="2017-12-28T08:03:36.313" Score="2" ViewCount="746" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team estimates task which is easier for someone who already knows &lt;a href=&quot;https://swagger.io/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Swagger&lt;/a&gt; but harder for someone who doesn't. The person who knows Swagger will likely have other tasks to do so this one may fall to someone who needs to educate himself on the topic before he can do any work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read Mike Cohn's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/its-effort-not-complexity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;It's Effort, Not Complexity&lt;/a&gt; that supposedly deals with this problem, but I'm not convinced. In my example, less knowledge requires more effort and we obviously cannot estimate &quot;X points if Tim will do it, but Y points if Brad will&quot;. What is correct way to estimate in such a case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30974" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2017-12-30T15:02:53.903" LastActivityDate="2018-01-02T17:45:15.950" Title="How to estimate when knowledge varies between team members?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23160" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23176" CreationDate="2017-12-28T08:05:11.883" Score="0" ViewCount="52" Body="&lt;p&gt;We run a sale of second hand goods from clients. We would set a target say 200 items this season and start contacting people we know who have items they want to sell. We would spend about 2 months doing this, then for each item we bring back to office, we need to check, research and photograph it. Then we would design and publish a sale catalogue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you model this in MS-Project? Should I have a summary task that's 2 month long? But then there is no point creating 200 sub-tasks for each item. How could this be represented in MS-Project in a meaningful and useful way to track my team's progress?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30970" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-01T10:03:13.607" LastActivityDate="2018-11-01T10:03:13.607" Title="How to model extended period of 'searching for product' tasks in MS-Project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23161" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23165" CreationDate="2017-12-28T08:21:02.647" Score="0" ViewCount="156" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am relatively new to the Scrum way of working and was wondering what to do with small tasks. Besides the main User Stories, we always end up with additional requirements or small changes after the main User Stories are 'finished', e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change the title of the application&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The font of the main page should be bigger&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Removed column X in table Y&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, our Project Manager creates one big &quot;User Story&quot; for these and copy/pastes all these small tasks into it. What is the best practice for handling these kind of tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30976" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-12-28T14:33:05.747" LastActivityDate="2017-12-30T15:02:43.150" Title="Best practice to register additional tasks" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;practices&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23159" CreationDate="2017-12-28T09:59:32.540" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Mike Cohn's example about the surgeon and the kid, I'd go through the following approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Estimate with the brain surgeon estimation, but making explicit that the brain surgeon will be training the kid during the process.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main issue you'll have will be the planning, as you still have the constrain of your Swagger hero, having to train the other guys. As Mike says, brain surgery can be done only by brain surgeons, but you may train quickly more brain surgeons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think about this: you don't want a team in which only one of your guys is the hero (you'll have a bus factor of 1, and that's never good), you want A TEAM of people being able of working in the different technologies you use. Of course, you'll have issues whilst the training, as you explicitly have a constrain of one developer having to do so, but if the tasks are done by two developers, one of them actively doing knowledge transfer, you'll reduce that knowledge gap quickly, you'll build a better and cohesive team (having team members helping each others is a good way of doing that), and at the end you won't have neither big differences nor bus factor of 1, being able to deliver much more and with less risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29048" LastActivityDate="2017-12-28T09:59:32.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23161" CreationDate="2017-12-28T14:31:39.803" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never been fond of the 'all-in-one' approach. What if, a year later, that small change is found to somehow have major ramifications? You trace the code back to the Story and... it's clumped together with a bunch of others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I've done is create each requirement into its own Story. Not necessarily each task - each Story should, by itself, provide business value. My Team then assigned a story point value of 0.1 to the Story. We used this number for anything estimated to take less than an hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2017-12-28T14:38:08.183" LastActivityDate="2017-12-28T14:38:08.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23161" CreationDate="2017-12-28T15:01:33.883" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;The dev team can add small tasks needed to accomplish the Sprint Goal to the Sprint Backlog&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what &lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; has to say on this topic: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Development Team modifies the Sprint Backlog throughout the&#xA;  Sprint, and the Sprint Backlog emerges during the Sprint. This&#xA;  emergence occurs as the Development Team works through the plan and&#xA;  learns more about the work needed to achieve the Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As new work is required, the Development Team adds it to the Sprint&#xA;  Backlog. As work is performed or completed, the estimated remaining&#xA;  work is updated. When elements of the plan are deemed unnecessary,&#xA;  they are removed. Only the Development Team can change its Sprint&#xA;  Backlog during a Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If these small tasks are needed to accomplish the Sprint Goal, the dev team can add either sub-tasks or separate stories to the Sprint Backlog and complete them during the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if they are not strictly required to accomplish the Sprint Goal or new larger stories are discovered, write them up as separate stories and park them in the Product Backlog for the PO to prioritize. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2017-12-30T15:02:43.150" LastActivityDate="2017-12-30T15:02:43.150" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23166" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-28T19:29:23.443" Score="0" ViewCount="92" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently our team has decided to give points to the chores. They had an argument that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Velocity defines team's capacity to deliver the work and if chores are not counted in velocity it won't reflect the true capacity of the team. As teams pick chores as per the business priorities/urgency i.e. in some sprint 1 or 2, in other up to 5 chores so, they feel the more chores they have the lesser would be velocity/capacity of the team in that sprint which might not be true.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They feel chores also add value to the product i.e. if we have some duplicate logic and we plan to remove it as a chore. In long run, it would help us deliver and test things faster and hence, it delivers value indirectly to the user.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What could be downside of this approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28471" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-01-03T18:35:37.577" LastActivityDate="2018-01-03T18:35:37.577" Title="What could be potential harm of giving points to chores or technical debts?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;pivotal-tracker&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23167" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-28T19:34:39.590" Score="-1" ViewCount="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a page with the same content at 2 places. Since we are running with legacy code and due to some previously made bad decisions, we have duplicated the logic twice for the same thing. Both the pages are running on different technologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now if some changes/enhancement come to this, should we create two stories for this OR just one? And should we estimate it considering it would require duplicate effort OR it should be estimated as if its a code at just one common place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28471" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2017-12-30T15:02:22.867" LastActivityDate="2017-12-30T15:02:22.867" Title="Should we create multiple stories for same thing to be replicated at code level?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;pivotal-tracker&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23167" CreationDate="2017-12-28T20:17:28.867" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you've created is technical debt, and it needs to be refactored. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not create duplicate stories, and try not to duplicate code as you just end up paying for things multiple times.  A user story should capture the functionality and business value for a users perspective, if it has to be implemented on both legacy and next gen systems, then you could argue for two, depending on how difficult it is to code/build/test/deploy on the legacy system and whether the user story has to be deployed simultaneously on both. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend having a follow-on task in a subsequent sprint to refactor and clean-up any code duplication that couldn't be done in the existing sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16148" LastEditorUserId="16148" LastEditDate="2017-12-29T01:23:23.033" LastActivityDate="2017-12-29T01:23:23.033" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23166" CreationDate="2017-12-28T20:24:46.200" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not see an issue accounting for all tasks/user stories, bugs, technical spikes, refactors, etc., as over time it allows the team to better understand capacity, and you can do a bit more analysis into where points are being spent to further optimize the teams workload and focus.  If you do not have a tracking mechanism for these kinds of things then it's nothing you can ever have an honest conversation about, e.g., lack of focus on reducing technical debt each iteration, growth / increase in time spent on defects/defect density.  It also helps teams build a case for refactoring if you have data to back up capacity allotment, increase in time spent on defects, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16148" LastActivityDate="2017-12-28T20:24:46.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23161" CreationDate="2017-12-28T20:32:59.003" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, you can reduce the occurrence of such late feedback by encouraging early and often review of material work-in-progress by using a live staging environment, e.g., an area where your PO can go each day to review any upcoming stories.  If your PO is only looking once a sprint, that's a problem that you all need to address, what if the issue was something bigger than just the font type or page title?  Try to get your developers and your PO (and business analysts) talking, reviewing, and collaborating everyday. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16148" LastActivityDate="2017-12-28T20:32:59.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20542" CreationDate="2017-12-28T20:58:16.550" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;On Agile teams, you typically have 5 layers of planning: &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/raUj1.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/raUj1.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These layers are usually tied to a timebox, or what is often referred to as a 'planning horizon,' e.g., the amount of detail we will go into at this moment is based on the timeline of our goals and expectations.  The fidelity of our discussions go from a mile wide and a foot deep for the product vision, to 100ft wide and 1000ft deep for each iteration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, requirements discussions occur at all levels of planning and happen on a daily basis.  Cadence-based ceremonies set clear expectations for when the larger discussions happen.  In Scrum, you typically have a release planning event every few months, with sprint planning every 2-3 weeks, and backlog refinement sessions ~ 2 or more times a sprint, and then daily standups. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most Scrum teams start with an iteration 0, which is not a sprint, and during which the team continues to flesh out the product vision, product roadmap, and release planning activities for the first sprint.  This is usually done through workshops and activities, over the course of a few days.  I recommend checking on Jonathan Rasmusson's The Agile Samurai, as it entails a lot of great material in setting up an Agile team using an 'Inception Deck.' &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1934356581&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.amazon.com/Agile-Samurai-Software-Pragmatic-Programmers/dp/1934356581/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1514494663&amp;amp;sr=8-1&amp;amp;keywords=the+agile+samurai&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16148" LastActivityDate="2017-12-28T20:58:16.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23166" CreationDate="2017-12-28T21:11:31.947" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll share some potential downsides, but I'd be hard-pressed to say this approach is wrong if it's working for you. There are some reasons that I wouldn't do it, but that's different than wrong. So here are a few potential downsides:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It sounds an awful lot like &quot;getting credit&quot;. Only you and your team know if you're in that mindset, but I see a lot of teams that give points to work that is tech debt, refactoring, or otherwise not building out the product because they want that work to count on a report to a superior and that runs counter to the values of Agile and Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's better to tie technical debt and refactoring to the value it produces. If I had to refactor a database and data access layer to support the inclusion of new customer data, I'd rather wrap that work into the user story for that customer data so that the true cost of the delivering that value is clear rather than hiding part of that cost deferred or hidden. There are two edge cases with this to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There will be a period of time where you have refactoring and technical debt whose value is long-since delivered and you can't reconnect it. That's normal. If you connect new technical debt and refactoring, this will become less and less common.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There will be times you miss it. Even the best teams do. It's a great topic for a retro, but nothing for the team to beat themselves up about.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It can hide the impact of overhead. If I get 25 points completed on average because I've got a bunch of overhead to deal with, but then I give that overhead points and now I get 33 done on average, now it looks like I'm getting more value produced, but I'm not. Personally, I feel like this takes the focus off of value and just accepts certain inefficiencies in how we're writing software.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It can make forecasting difficult. A lot of stakeholders and product owners use average velocity and burnup charts to forecast progress on a release. If some of the velocity moves the product forward and some of the velocity is just overhead, it can become almost impossible to make that forecast.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastEditorUserId="7944" LastEditDate="2017-12-29T17:46:15.080" LastActivityDate="2017-12-29T17:46:15.080" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23167" CreationDate="2017-12-28T22:34:26.397" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have to do it in 2 places, I see 2 tasks. Remember that what you estimate and track is the time a task takes, not how much value is got by the client. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And... yes, that duplicity is a problem you have to handle. You are consuming effort that is not translated in value for the client and PO should address it as soon as possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30961" LastActivityDate="2017-12-28T22:34:26.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23166" CreationDate="2017-12-28T22:40:45.237" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Small refactorings&lt;/strong&gt; are encouraged (and not tracked) during development. If you have to add a feature in a class, try to leave it cleaner than when you entered into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Big refactorings&lt;/strong&gt; must be estimated, valued and tracked, since it's a big effort. Obviously, you don't want to get there ever. That's why we try to make small refactorings everytime we can. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30961" LastActivityDate="2017-12-28T22:40:45.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23161" CreationDate="2017-12-28T22:47:27.053" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once the task is done according to its description, the task is done. If the description changes because the requirements weren't right... that's another task (it can be a subtask or a related/linked task) that have to be measured as any new task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the task is In Progress or Created (and estimated): if the change is small, I add it... if the change is big, it's a new task. We finish Task #1 and once the Sprint is done, we will measure Task #101, with the rest of new tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30961" LastActivityDate="2017-12-28T22:47:27.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23160" CreationDate="2017-12-29T13:28:58.917" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Have a single task &quot;Acquire 200 items&quot; with a 2-month duration&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can have a single task named &quot;Acquire 200 items&quot; with a 2-month duration. If, for example, at the end of one month you have acquired only 80 items, you can show the task 40% complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if I were you. I will try to break-up that 2-month task into smaller ones. Let us say, that you estimate your team has to make about 1000 cold calls in the first 2-weeks in order to find people that have items to sell, I will track that as a separate task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2017-12-29T13:28:58.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23154" CreationDate="2017-12-29T16:07:09.783" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The beauty of Project Management is that it could either be at the Top level or can be plugged-in to any other Management domain to streamline its process seamlessly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Retail management as you rightly highlighted involves higher level of Customer management and Sales Management and not just Project Management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, you are looking at a book that could help you acquire the &quot;general management&quot; principles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had an opportunity reading this highly popular book on &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0029182301&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;General Management&lt;/a&gt;  by John P. Kotter, that could provide insights on how an individual can learn and build the right mindset to be on the top of the things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could very well consider this as the Book of Knowledge for General Management. Hope this helps you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22293" LastActivityDate="2017-12-29T16:07:09.783" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23158" CreationDate="2017-12-29T16:12:27.827" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you could very well decompose the activities that your team will be performing prior posting the details to Social Media. These would be your tasks to perform. You will need to set the tasks as recurring task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The details about how to set a task as recurring is available &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Create-recurring-tasks-88a4d903-38c3-4665-870e-4810b752f2c4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22293" LastActivityDate="2017-12-29T16:12:27.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23154" CreationDate="2017-12-29T21:03:13.293" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://leankit.com/learn/kanban/what-is-kanban/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;kanban&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanvlog.com/7-wastes/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;lean&lt;/a&gt; from manufacturing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2017-12-29T21:03:13.293" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7904" CreationDate="2017-12-29T22:41:02.587" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you'll find that this is a structural problem and not related to individual attitudes or understanding of scrum. Whenever I have encountered devs who won't do testing, testers who want the code handed to them on a platter, and so on, it is because they are doing what they are told or what is implied by the circumstances of their employment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If devs don't want to test, it may be their manager or the company culture. &quot;Devs cost more than testers so they should be developing not testing.&quot; I have heard this said by the devs themselves, by their manager, by project managers, and by senior executives. &quot;QA is ultimately responsible for quality.&quot; I have heard this said by testers, by their manager, by project managers, and by senior executives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Until your development organization's senior leadership (and higher) can commit to a team-oriented organization, you will be fighting this battle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, the staff managers seem to be sympathetic. In that case, I'd suggest testing their support... ask them to reset expectations of all staff towards more team-oriented collaboration rather than individual role-fulfillment. You get to itemize the expectations, and they sell it. Or if not, you gotten closer to the source of the problem and may have other resources available for addressing it there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google tests the way they do because their culture reinforces agility from the top down. Most shops I've worked in or coached don't have that luxury -- we wind up pushing agility up the organization. It's slow but sometimes it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As my own coach Richard Lawrence, has said: first try to reach the milestone where the team consistently delivers what it commits to. Then build on it. I will add that it can take quite a while to get even there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20426" LastActivityDate="2017-12-29T22:41:02.587" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23137" CreationDate="2017-12-29T22:47:30.677" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In agile you estimate the size of the story. The size is measured by story points. The story which has 4 story points has double complexity than the story which has 2 story points.&#xA;We measure the complexity not the efforts and not the value.&#xA;In release planning we estimate the time needed ton implement that story and then again estimate the story in sprint planning.&#xA;In agile we use the term &quot;last responsible moment&quot; which means, do not give a commitment till the last date possible because something may change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30995" LastActivityDate="2017-12-29T22:47:30.677" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23154" CreationDate="2017-12-30T01:36:18.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there an equally organised community of managers who do not work as&#xA;  project managers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure. Try &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_operations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Business operations&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project Management means different things to different people and industries in fact. I recommend the definition by PMBOK:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project Management takes care of the intent. Project Leadership takes care about the people of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the umbrella term for non-project management?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Program Management&lt;/a&gt; governs Project Management, but for Non-project Management, I recommend you search for Business Administration, Organizational topics, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21496" LastEditorUserId="21496" LastEditDate="2017-12-30T11:25:54.080" LastActivityDate="2017-12-30T11:25:54.080" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23183" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2017-12-30T02:03:14.127" Score="1" ViewCount="1363" Body="&lt;p&gt;If i have been provided with the information of six sprints having story points like 20,21,22,23,24,25,26 then what should be the velocity of the team ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30996" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-10-21T22:23:48.563" LastActivityDate="2019-10-21T22:23:48.563" Title="Velocity of the team" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;velocity&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23183" CreationDate="2017-12-30T02:25:19.790" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually when people talk about velocity, they actually mean average velocity, so you could just average all of those. Now, teams change and improve over time, so often times we'll use a rolling average of the last 3 - 4 sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I like to use the last three excluding any oddities (like sprints over Christmas). The reason I ignore these oddity sprints is because including them in the average throws off the number without telling me anything useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2017-12-30T02:25:19.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23183" CreationDate="2017-12-30T05:14:50.610" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The calculation part of velocity is straight forward as you can just sum up the story points completed in each sprint and divide it by number of iterations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will be 23 in your case for the data that you posted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the whole point of Why to &quot;calculate&quot; velocity is worth mention here...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, velocity is how much product backlog effort a team can handle in one sprint. Now, you have vision of last 7 sprints and you know your team on Avg. can handle around 23 story points per sprint. This data should help you  to plan projects and forecast release and product completion dates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also note that this is just a indication of team's overall output over a span of certain period. Velocity, however, is not forever fixed. It varies from team to team and from project to project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once established, velocity can be used for &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2013/2013-april/how-should-we-use-velocity&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;release planning&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21918" LastActivityDate="2017-12-30T05:14:50.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23159" CreationDate="2017-12-30T11:10:55.423" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If Swagger is on the critical path for your team, then try strategies like pair programing to ensure that over the time knowledge is distributed in the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need estimates use techniques like planning poker and get opinion of different team members until you have agreement in the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27645" LastActivityDate="2017-12-30T11:10:55.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19828" CreationDate="2017-12-30T13:29:50.547" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Am I late for the party? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, there are many ways to arrive at the metrics and it depends on how you would want to prepare yourself for the future. For example, an in-depth analysis requires every data point to be captured - for example, if you consider the chain from the ticket assigned to your team to ticket closure by your Client, you will have various links to unearth. But, if you keep tracking all those links, you will end-up only tracking without arriving at an action item(s) that could possibly create value-add to your esteemed Client and to your Organization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What to do?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First and foremost, glance through your contract to understand what your SLA's are?, As of date, are you working on all those SLA's mentioned in the Contract?, How you do you flare?, What are the outliers?, What are the action-items you have in your plate to work upon?, Does your Client need more information about your tickets other than whatever has been mentioned in the Contract? If you are good until here, then it means, you are good go with your Client as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What next?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next activity shall be to see how you would want to create value-add to your organization. Ask questions internally to understand how would you want to manage your resources? - Is it hourly? or by total tickets addressed per day? or tickets with billing hours/rate ratio? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All these variables would determine on how you would want to drive your employees and your project internally. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will always need to reverse engineer to arrive at the metrics by answering various questions that would lead to you to the next level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22293" LastActivityDate="2017-12-30T13:29:50.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23183" CreationDate="2017-12-30T20:46:32.850" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Velocity is not something that you can calculate, it is merely the result of summing the points for the PBI completed during the sprint. It is an outcome.  Calculating the average (or mean) velocity is largely pointless as it will almost never reflect a future velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;TL;DR;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't rely on velocity, it can fluctuate wildly with little or know warning, and that is normal. Let the PO figure out what they want to do for forcasting, and let the Development Team figure out how much work to take on for the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The nuts and bolts&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think about the mean, mean of the worst 3, and the last outcome you can get an idea of your cone of uncertainty at this point of time. Based on your fictitious data your cone is about 6 points wide. In 3 sprints that's 18... That's why you can't rely on velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Velocity for the Product Owner&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity is useful for the PO to help you create a forecast for future work. I would be really careful with how far out you forecast, 3 sprints max.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Velocity for the Development Team&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity can be a guide for the development team to help them select backlog for the next Sprint. However its just a guide and just because your mean is 23 does not mean that the team takes 23. Maybe 30 works for this sprint, maybe 10... It depends on the plan that they come up with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Velocity for Refinement&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use the past velocity to get an idea of how much work you need to refine during your Sprint Refinement. Make sure that you have 2-3 sprints of work refined. This is a buffer for changes, both in tactical direction and in Team capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2017-12-30T20:46:32.850" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23183" CreationDate="2017-12-30T21:03:19.340" Score="3" Body="&lt;h1&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can express velocity in a number of ways. The two most common are the &lt;em&gt;sliding average&lt;/em&gt; and the &lt;em&gt;range&lt;/em&gt;. A sliding average is generally easier to calculate, and often provides &quot;good enough&quot; data for agile planning. On the other hand, a range can be more effective at setting stakeholder expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Using a Trailing Average&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calculating a standard average (by which most people really the &quot;statistical mean&quot;) is easy, so I won't cover that except to say that you only count the story points from &lt;em&gt;completed&lt;/em&gt; stories that fully met the Definition of Done. Incomplete or partial stories are simply &lt;em&gt;not done&lt;/em&gt;, and always count as zero when calculating velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You provided the result of seven Sprints, but said you wanted to count six. Assuming that what you really want is the trailing average of the last six Sprints, you would discard historical values not in your window and then find the mean of the remaining values. For example, in Ruby:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;# Find the trailing average of points delivered each Sprint&#xA;# per the Definition of Done, rounded down to the nearest&#xA;# whole number.&#xA;def average_velocity points_per_sprint, num_sprints&#xA;    window = points_per_sprint.last num_sprints&#xA;    total_points_completed = window.reduce :+&#xA;    avg_pts_completed      = total_points_completed.to_f / window.count&#xA;    avg_pts_completed.floor&#xA;end&#xA;&#xA;points_delivered   = [20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26]&#xA;sprints_to_average = 6&#xA;average_velocity points_delivered, sprints_to_average&#xA;#=&amp;gt; 23&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You certainly don't need to use Ruby, but this shows how you can find the trailing average for any arbitrary window to find your average velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Expressing a Range and Confidence Interval&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also express velocity as a range, usually with a confidence interval that statistically describes how likely future values are to fall within the given range.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to calculate a 90% confidence interval can be calculated as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Assuming n observations, the formula for calculating a 90% confidence is given by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;j = n/2 – 1.645 (n*0.25)0.5&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  k = n/2 + 1.645 (n*0.25)0.5&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;where j and k represent the velocity observations to use. Round results up to the next highest value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find the math, as well as an online calculator for this method, in Mike Cohn's &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/velocity-range-calculator&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Velocity Range Calculator&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given all your inputs—I'd recommend against the notion of using a sliding window for this methodology, even with statistical outliers—you would end up with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For velocity values of &lt;strong&gt;21,22,23,24,25,26&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You have a median velocity of &lt;strong&gt;23.5&lt;/strong&gt; and there is a 90% likelihood that your actual velocity will fall between &lt;strong&gt;21&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;26&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-01-02T23:54:45.243" LastActivityDate="2018-01-02T23:54:45.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23157" CreationDate="2017-12-31T15:40:33.483" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;No &lt;em&gt;Canonical&lt;/em&gt; Answer&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no truly canonical answer to this question. In general, how work is prioritized is specific to the business goals of the organization, mapping of work products to targeted release dates, and the dependencies of work packages. This is usually true whether the methodology is agile or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Pragmatic View&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pragmatically, agile methodologies generally follow a queue-based or ordinal prioritization scheme where any given work stream has one (and only one) &quot;priority #1&quot; at any given time. This is in contrast to many traditional methodologies where strict ordering of priorities isn't enforced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Non-agile projects typically use a schedule-based system based on management-defined delivery targets, and the schedules are frequently based on earned-value or net present value calculations. In the real world, this often results in many competing requirements all being undifferentiated &quot;top priorities&quot; for the business. However, your mileage may certainly vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Sample Techniques&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of methodology, prioritization can use any number of techniques, largely limited by your organizational imagination. Some examples include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/relative-weighting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Relative Weighting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_path_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Critical Path&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vanhoucke, M. &amp;amp; Demeulemeester, E. L. (2003). &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/project-scheduling-techniques-real-life-5516&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The application of project scheduling techniques in a real-life environment.&lt;/a&gt; Project Management Journal, 34(1), 30–42.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many techniques aren't inherently agile or non-agile. Some work well when used together, and most are designed to support the project planning process rather than serve in lieu of it. Again, your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2017-12-31T15:40:33.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23157" CreationDate="2018-01-01T03:58:03.917" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Differences in prioritizing requirements between Waterfall and Scrum&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The predominant software development process before Agile appeared on the scene was the Waterfall process. Scrum is the most popular Agile process. I will try to list some key differences between Waterfall and Scrum, as I see them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cost vs benefit trade off is a key aspect of Agile&lt;/strong&gt;: In the agile process, the teams estimate story size in story points and this gives the Product Owner an opportunity to prioritize them knowing their relative cost. In Waterfall, rarely if ever, individual requirements are estimated. In any case, there is hardly any opportunity for a cost vs benefit trade off discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In Agile the requirements keep changing&lt;/strong&gt;: In Waterfall, it is very hard to change requirements - you need to go through a painful change control process. Agile embraces changing requirements. As you can see in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#artifacts-productbacklog&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Backlog is dynamic; it constantly changes to identify what&#xA;  the product needs to be appropriate, competitive, and useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In Waterfall the requirements are typically grouped into 3 or 4 buckets&lt;/strong&gt;: Some people group them into High, Medium and Low, some others use the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoSCoW_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MoSCoW method&lt;/a&gt;. But in Agile all stories are listed in serial order. This helps the dev team to work their way down the list.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Agile has a single authority for prioritizing&lt;/strong&gt;: Agile names the Product Owner as the single authority for prioritizing. In Waterfall there is no such designated authority. It is often decision by committee.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Many Agile teams use the notion of an MVP&lt;/strong&gt;: Many Agile teams carve out a sub-set of requirements into an MVP (Minimum Viable Product). The MVP is often deployed to a sample user population to get early feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2018-01-01T03:58:03.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23157" CreationDate="2018-01-01T15:18:58.073" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to prioritize tasks you need to know some techniques:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;MoSCoW&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Which are Must, Should, Could and Won't &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Minimal Marketable Features&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Features are decomposed into the smallest marketable units of useful deliverable business value, in order to fit within short iterations and ensure critical functionality which is implemented first&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Return on investment (ROI)&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Demonstrates how much return an organization makes by investing in percentage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Internal Rate of Return&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;A way of expressing profit as an interest rate earned.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there are many others, but I think these are the most important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the customer usually does the prioritization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference between Agile and the traditional approach is that in Agile the customer does the prioritization as he must see the result very soon, but in the traditional projects he sees the result at the end, so you do not need to care about the sequence of the tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31007" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-01-02T14:26:28.763" LastActivityDate="2018-01-02T14:26:28.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23196" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-01-02T05:11:05.290" Score="-2" ViewCount="202" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can someone list down all documents required for project management like planning document, risk management, time plan etc....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30877" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2018-01-02T14:23:04.333" LastActivityDate="2018-01-02T16:53:13.703" Title="list of all project documents?" Tags="&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2018-01-02T16:24:41.700" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23197" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23199" CreationDate="2018-01-02T10:39:14.440" Score="1" ViewCount="1467" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a Agile Coach for a cross-platform team of developers. It was announced that the team would be acquiring 2 new members. These 2 new members will be spending 1 week with the team in person and then going back offshore to work remotely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What activities would be beneficial for introducing new team members to an Agile team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-01-10T16:14:25.600" LastActivityDate="2018-01-10T16:14:25.600" Title="Activities to introduce new team members" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2018-01-03T19:41:26.193" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23197" CreationDate="2018-01-02T10:58:30.160" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any activity could be ok. I don't think it is necessary something extraordinary, simple events can be a good solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably the best would be, even before they start to work with the team, to invite the entire team (basic + 2 new members) for some drink and/or food. A relaxed and relaxing environment might help chats, some initial knowledge, some interests sharing, maybe also work / dev related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I saw it working pretty well as an ice-breaker with new members for some of my teams. I would go this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27720" LastActivityDate="2018-01-02T10:58:30.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23197" CreationDate="2018-01-02T14:09:01.357" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three areas I'd consider when introducing new team members. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) The Work: A week is not much time to get used to working together. Pairing or group/mob programming could be a great way to bring them up to speed on the way the team works and code practices. It may slow the team down a bit for the week, but not nearly as much as trying to onboard onto a codebase from offshore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) The Team: If your team has a working agreement around how they communicate, definition of ready and done, code review, etc, you could share this with the new members ahead of time and then do a small recap in person. Again, this is just to avoid confusion and get conversations around that to be face-to-face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Personal Connections: Like Axel's answer, give them time to create a personal connections. If your team and the new members are all ok with drinking, happy hour can be a great option. Potluck lunches can be good too - whatever fits the team's and new team members' culture. This will really pay off when conflicts arise later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-01-02T14:09:01.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23196" CreationDate="2018-01-02T14:20:31.097" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is a &quot;right&quot; answer, but here are some things that you will almost always want with any approach. Note that if your organization has a PMO, they might have a list of required documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Project Vision: Some sort of document with the high-level vision of the project/product, what the key value deliveries are, key measures of success, etc. This is the sort of executive summary of why the project is occurring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Communications Plan: Who are the key stakeholders and how will you communicate with them? The how will often vary between approaches. For example, a PMBoK approach will probably be upward status reports while a Scrum team will have a scheduled review session every few weeks for stakeholders, but the plan still exists. Also keep in mind communications with dependencies. How does the team put in requests for the hardware the new system will run on? Any vendor connections?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Scope (and I use this term very loosely): Again, this will look very different based on approach. Building an industrial park will probably have a pretty set scope and Work Breakdown Structure. On the other hand, an Agile team will have an evolving backlog. An operations team using Kanban will have a structure and a queue with maybe a few starting service tickets. Whether a Gantt chart or a ticket queue, the current state of this information should always be easily accessible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is by no means comprehensive, but these are some of the key things you'll probably always want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-01-02T14:20:31.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23197" CreationDate="2018-01-02T14:38:37.190" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Making the best use of the presence of offshore team members&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @axel said an informal get together with the team is, of course, the best way to start. In addition, the following will help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Setting up the dev environment&lt;/strong&gt;: Get them to set up the dev environment in their laptop and let them get started with some checking in/out code while they are in the office. Also, let them try out the VPN from their Hotel room. This will avoid needing to troubleshoot any permission issues when they are remote.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum ceremonies&lt;/strong&gt;: It will be good if they can participate in person in all the Scrum ceremonies (Backlog Refinement, Sprint Review, Retrospective and Planning) while they are there in person.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Story point estimation&lt;/strong&gt;: In my experience, story point estimation has been a sticky issue for new team members, even if they are already familiar with Scrum. This is because story points are relative and what one team calls a 3 may not be the same for another team. Also, things like whether you use 0 point stories and what it means.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;White-boarding&lt;/strong&gt;: It is well established that the most effective communication channel for dev teams is discussion with the help of a white-board. This is the hardest to do while offshore. So, take advantage of their presence and arrange for some white-boarding of existing / proposed architecture / roadmap... etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2018-01-02T14:38:37.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23196" CreationDate="2018-01-02T15:36:07.217" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Along with Daniel's answers above of vision, comms and scope, I'd also add the basic docs that you'll need day to day: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;resource tracker (team availability eg holidays - could be a spreadsheet)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;schedule (could be in MS Project)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;work breakdown (eg could be held in jira)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;risk tracker (again, could be a spreadsheet)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;change control&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30594" LastActivityDate="2018-01-02T15:36:07.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23196" CreationDate="2018-01-02T16:53:13.703" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As @Daniel mentioned, there is no direct / right answer as it totally depends on the framework defined by your organization or by your PMO (if you have an Office for the PM!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The documents can be created from inception to retirement of a project. Though the list can be very very exhaustive, here is my recommendation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Project Due-diligence Report: This document would summarize the details about the project in-terms of vision, mission, size, complexity, viability, and profitability. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Project Charter: This document shall contain the details such as project goals, objectives, statement of work, outcome expected from the project, who the stakeholders are, the authority level of a project manager, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Project Tailoring: This document shall contain the details about the tailoring process based on the size of the project. For a complex project, most of the documents become mandatory, for a small project, you might need all the documents rather only the nuts and bolts to keep the project going. Hence, this document is required. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Project Management Plan: This will include many of the sub-plans like Requirement Management Plan (including the traceability), Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) Plan, Risk Management, Communication Management, Change Management, Procurement Management, Quality Management, Estimation Management, Implementation Management, Knowledge Management, etc&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reports: Reports that could help the stakeholders monitor and control the project shall be published. For example, the project status, Risk-Issue-Assumptions log, etc, Project status, Risk-Issue-Assumption report, Phase gating and containment report, etc&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Operations and Maintenance document: This document will highlight on how the project shall sustain during maintenance mode. How will the project team support during peak hours, seasonal period, etc and will include many other metrics that could show the value-add&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Induction plan: This document will highlight on how the team members shall be equipped to work on the project - the kind of training, techniques to enable a smoother learning curve&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Knowledge Management: All the tacit knowledge learned during the project would be recorded for the future. Normally, this activity shall be performed during phase gating and during closure of the project. Irrespective of project failure or success, the PM will need to record the findings to share it with the project stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The list can become exhaustive. These documents are very well used in the waterfall, v-process kind of model. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22293" LastActivityDate="2018-01-02T16:53:13.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3978" CreationDate="2018-01-03T02:21:10.920" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In essence, high-level specification can produce only high-level estimates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of it from the developer's perspective. You are asking them to estimate and commit to a big unknown. It is like asking how much is to buy a nice car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several approaches suggested already. Mine would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Try to get +/- 50% estimate, and re-estimate as you get more info about the scope. Make sure that you explain the process to the developers, because if you hard-press them for estimates they will over-estimate to protect themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use parametric estimations. How much did a similar piece of work cost, or take time? Take into account seniority of developers involved, their availability, are they spread across several projects, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, whatever approach you take, you'll have to re-estimate the project on a regular basis and all stakeholders should be aware of the approach and the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another issue here is the fact that the team is reluctant to provide any kind of estimates. It is usually because there is no trust in the team, or between the teams. Potentially it could be a huge issue and it should be addressed promptly but carefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31016" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-01-03T14:07:06.437" LastActivityDate="2018-01-03T14:07:06.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23197" CreationDate="2018-01-03T07:20:52.410" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a 1-week window when new members will be working together with team is a good enough time frame to inform new team members about &quot;Ground rules&quot; about project and project team.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can discuss multiple diverse topics such as  1. acceptable code of conduct, 2. inter team-communication channels and protocols, 3. meeting etiquette 4. overview of project scope, schedule, quality and risks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ground rules establish clear expectations regarding acceptable behaviour by project team members. Early&#xA;commitment to clear guidelines decreases misunderstandings and increases overall productivity of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This clarity on ground rules of project and team allows team members to&#xA;discover values that are important to one another. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21918" LastActivityDate="2018-01-03T07:20:52.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23197" CreationDate="2018-01-03T16:18:24.417" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apart from socialising/team building I've found pair-programming to be the best way to get new team members up to speed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's better to ask questions looking at the live codebase, and it means that the person working with them can quickly get a feel for how they prefer to work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30341" LastActivityDate="2018-01-03T16:18:24.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23001" CreationDate="2018-01-04T15:23:03.667" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Specifications Are Not User Stories&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've confused the specifications of an implementation with a user story. User stories are not about &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; something is accomplished; instead, a good user story focuses on providing sufficient context about the user's goal to guide the development team's implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you provide the following specifications:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;As a user I want to add transfer amount&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;As a user I want to choose the type of a transfer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;As a user I want to see the total cost of a transfer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are clearly implementation details of your system. The user is unlikely to be thinking in these terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;User Stories Provide Goals and Context&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it's hard for someone not involved in the process to know for sure what your users may want to do or how they think—you &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; ask them, right?!—it's probably safe to say that the bullets above don't capture the actual user perspective. Consider the following alternative:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a bank member at an automated teller machine,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I would like to transfer money from my savings to my checking account&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so I can be sure there's enough money in that account to cover a check I'm writing today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who?&lt;/strong&gt; Note how the first line provides a detailed portrait of the value consumer for this story. It's not just a &quot;user,&quot; it's a user with clearly defined characteristics that provide context for the rest of the story. This provides essential context that may differentiate the story from a user who is using online banking, visiting a teller, or an armed bank robber, each of whom is unlikely to want to value the same elemets of the process.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What?&lt;/strong&gt; The second line defines the goal, and provides further context. From the user's point of view, the feature isn't just &quot;transfer money&quot; after all; the user has a specific goal in mind. Perhaps it's doing wire transfers, ACH, intra-bank account transfers, teller bribes, or Nigerian 419 scam payments.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why?&lt;/strong&gt; Your current bullets don't describe &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; a user might want to transfer money. How a feature is implemented may vary based on context. By adding a why-statement to your story, you help to guide and constrain the implementation to best serve the user. In this case, the context may suggest that showing the account balances before and after the transfer should be part of the implementation because &lt;em&gt;transferring the money isn't really the point&lt;/em&gt;. The user's &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; goal is to &lt;strong&gt;cover an outstanding check&lt;/strong&gt;, and that purpose may or may not be served if you focus too narrowly on just the transfer function.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, a great user story describes the actions a user is taking towards a concrete goal, and the value that the user expects to receive from completing the activity. While it's certainly possible to write other types of user stories, if the bulk of your user stories don't provide a value statement for a value consumer then you're probably just writing technical specifications in a less succinct format. Don't do that!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-01-04T15:23:03.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23214" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23249" CreationDate="2018-01-04T21:52:42.923" Score="0" ViewCount="153" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a member of a small team that does custom websites for pretty much anything. We have the work split into 3 categories, back end and database, JavaScript functionality, and front end design. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now our workflow has a lot of room for improvement. We do use source control, we've tried using TFS, but were unsuccessful in scoping our tasks correctly. They were either too large, or too small, or just ignored because they were in the wrong category. We are currently using &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.zoho.com/projects/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Zoho&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Zoho seems a little easier for our setup, but we're running into the same problem of not having a good order of work. We believe the trouble originates from not having a source of work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a business report might be hard to design without having the data. Our front end person cannot properly style a page without knowing what the elements will look like. They will then wait for the data to be known before creating the page. Our JavaScript person will not create the page because there is no styling or places to inject the JavaScript. The back end will not be created because there is no request for data coming from JavaScript. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can cause some work to be redone if the report is styled, and expects an order number &lt;code&gt;1234&lt;/code&gt; but instead gets &lt;code&gt;ORDER_1234+123456789&lt;/code&gt; the report ends up looking funny and needs to be restyled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We've seen some really good results from this, but our process is not very efficient and occasionally causes work to be redone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I ask, how can a small team of varying skills create and distribute work efficiently?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS. None of us are project manager types, so I'm not entirely sure what to tag this as.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29986" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-01-05T14:18:26.690" LastActivityDate="2018-01-09T22:41:12.120" Title="How can a small web team maximize efficient use of time and prevent redoing work" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23183" CreationDate="2018-01-04T21:56:10.443" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Velocity is calculated as average output from sprints so far. Personally, I adjust velocity calculation with the following:&#xA;- remove min and max values (values can be affected by holidays, vacations, etc.)&#xA;- I take velocity as a range, usually in the neighbourhood of +/- 10%.&#xA;- team members are often spread across projects, their performance within your project will fluctuate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also believe that velocity calculation and approach is groomed throughout the project:&#xA;- periodically adjust user story weights examples&#xA;- plan velocity targets for the next sprint (taking into account resource availability, leaves, work on other projects, etc.)&#xA;- any spikes in the velocity should be investigated and lessons learned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31034" LastActivityDate="2018-01-04T21:56:10.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23216" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-01-05T03:09:13.877" Score="-1" ViewCount="67" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know how to plan one resource in Project 2010 when the touch time for that resource for the task such as reviewing something is only 5 hours, but I am obligated to have the object in a review cycle for 5 days?  Review cycles may have multiple reviewers and will never total the 5 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31039" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-14T13:29:24.317" LastActivityDate="2019-01-14T13:29:24.317" Title="Resource Planning Question" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22680" CreationDate="2018-01-05T11:10:01.787" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Scrum process in VSTS/TFS a &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;Requirement&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot; would be represented as a &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;Product Backlog Item&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;General wisdom in the TFS/VSTS world asserts that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product Backlog Item&lt;/strong&gt; - A desire that can fit into a single Sprint, ideally more than one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Feature&lt;/strong&gt; - A desire that can not fit in a single Sprint, but that can fit into a single Release&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Epic&lt;/strong&gt; - A desire that can not fit in a single release&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also add to that &lt;strong&gt;Themes&lt;/strong&gt;, or cross-cutting concerns, that would be best suited to Tags in TFS/VSTS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Scrum Process in TFS/VSTS&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the &lt;strong&gt;Process&lt;/strong&gt; in VSTS/TFS whos terminology most relates to Scrum and Agile. It uses the terms &amp;quot;Product Backlog Item&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Feature&amp;quot;, and &amp;quot;Epic&amp;quot; for execution flow &lt;strong&gt;Work Items&lt;/strong&gt;, and has a State Model of &amp;quot;New&amp;quot; -&amp;gt; &amp;quot;Approved&amp;quot; -&amp;gt; &amp;quot;Committed&amp;quot; -&amp;gt; &amp;quot;Done&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do not need to be following the &lt;strong&gt;Scrum Framework&lt;/strong&gt; to use the &lt;strong&gt;Scrum Process&lt;/strong&gt;. In general, if you are following some flavour of Agile then this is the best choice in &lt;strong&gt;Process&lt;/strong&gt;. Since you did not mention that you were following the &lt;strong&gt;Scrum Framework&lt;/strong&gt; I did not make that assumption in the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Terminology&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Work Item&lt;/strong&gt; - This is the generic term for an entry in the TFS/VSTS database. It is a list item with a name and fields. Different &amp;quot;Processes&amp;quot; in TFS/VSTS have different definitions of what each one is.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Process&lt;/strong&gt; - This is the &amp;quot;Process&amp;quot; (VSTS) or &amp;quot;Process Template&amp;quot; (TFS) that is used by TFS/VSTS to define what the Work Items are called and what fields they have.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum Framework&lt;/strong&gt; - When the term Scrum Framework is used I will be referring to Scrum as defined in &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://scrumguides.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum Process&lt;/strong&gt; - This references the &lt;strong&gt;Process&lt;/strong&gt; in TFS/VSTS that is called &lt;strong&gt;Scrum&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-06-17T08:48:17.543" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23220" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-01-06T07:21:20.287" Score="1" ViewCount="457" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read somewhere that team's velocity, burn-up chart, and other scrum indicators are only for team's internal purpose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should anyone outside the team i.e. from management review the team's chart and analyze why they failed/succeeded in the last sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What could be pros and cons of such management review of scrum metrics by management?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28471" LastActivityDate="2018-01-08T12:13:48.737" Title="Should management review the scrum metrics of scrum teams?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23220" CreationDate="2018-01-06T11:43:34.200" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like many things in the world of project management; &lt;em&gt;it depends&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The organizations implementing Scrum (or a variation of Scrum which they have adapted) are numerous and all have different hierarchies, aims, reporting chains and personalities. I am guessing you really mean&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should management review &lt;em&gt;my&lt;/em&gt; Scrum team's metrics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only you can answer that and to help you it is worth mapping where your team sits within the organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are you working for a Government company that must demonstrate value to the tax payer?  (if so metrics are likely to be audited)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are you working for a public-listed company that must demonstrate value to the shareholder and display fiduciary responsibility?  (as above)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are you working on a project that sits within a Programme that sits within a Portfolio?  (It is likely the Portfolio Manager must report the metrics in aggregrate to Directors)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is your project funded from a centralised budget that must compete with other projects for continued funding?  (Metrics then become a yardstick for further funding and are likley to be gamed)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does your project report to a Steering Committee?  (Metrics will be a quick fire way of showing progress to dozens of customers)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the Sponsor understand Scrum and business value or do they come from a different background?  (Accountants promoted to Directors like metrics)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is your project liable for audit from internal or external sources? (Metrics will be requested)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does your project fall under PMO for any kind of governance or oversight? (Metrics are one pillar of governance)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does your company have Agile Coaches who provide support and advise on feature team maturity? (Metrics are used as a temperature check across the company of Agile maturity)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you, or the team, or the department have a track record of failure with low business value? (Metrics are an early warning system)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you work in manufacturing?  (Metrics are critical to production flow)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can list dozens more considerations that help determine a mature response to whether your metrics should be reviewed by &lt;em&gt;management&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What if I have concerns?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, we advocate that the only true metric for a Scrum team is working software.  However, that sentiment is an aspiration and is not a mature response to the organisation funding your project which must be balanced alongside dozens or potentially hundreds of other initiatives competing for the budget allocated to your Scrum Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should really consider, if you are uneasy, why you are uneasy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you fear transparency?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you feel the metrics are sub-par?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you feel management will gamify the metrics or force teams to compete?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are the metrics fabricated?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are your metrics continually &lt;em&gt;well they would have been higher but X, Y or Z happened&lt;/em&gt; every Sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't fear delivering metrics to any level of the organisation because it gives me a chance to evangelize the Agile values and re-focus management to concentrate on the metrics that truly matter and explain why they matter.  Your job is to advocate the system you are implementing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Should Management provide advice?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possibly.  &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Probably not&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; but possibly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum Masters &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; become blinded to the fact that Scrum is only one framework of many and Scrum has several drawbacks that do not make it suitable for every project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Management might be able to refer you to previous projects that had success, or they might query things that were not picked up in the Retrospective (why did you over-commit to us in this Sprint, we didn't pressure you) or they may be able to remove institutional blockers or support the hiring and firing of resource since Scrum does not make mediocre team members suddenly effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is to use the managers effectively as the next level of blockage removal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;What metrics should they be interested in?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, this is subjective but the bare minimum should&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Predictability (this shows the team can estimate effectively, don't over commit and can demonstrate regular progress)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Velocity and Burn Up (this demonstrates the team can give a ballpark figure for completion since we are not funding Feature Teams indefinitely)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Escaped defects to Production  (this demonstrates the quality of the deliverable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, I have a list of around 70 metrics (from code coverage to cycle times) I can track for a Feature Team but management should only be interested in a few that give stakeholder confidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Never forget that Agile does not mean &lt;strong&gt;don't plan&lt;/strong&gt;, plans are crucial, it &lt;strong&gt;simply means respond to change&lt;/strong&gt; on a regular basis due to empirical information.  Scrum timeboxes allow us to do that but metrics and working software are two sides of the same coin that allow us to demonstrate confidence to the people ultimately paying the team's salary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your challenge as an Agile Coach, Scrum Master or &lt;em&gt;insert term here&lt;/em&gt; is to manage the relationship pipeline with those managers and let your development team manage the code pipeline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Are there any counterexamples of Agile teams working to strict deadlines and being tracked mercilessly?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure.  The entire Toyota Production System which underpins many of the systems we consider Agile is based on exceptionally detailed metrics tracking.  Kanban lives and dies by it's metrics.  The Tesla and SpaceX teams, lauded by the Agile community, work to exceptionally strict 100 day product roadmaps with detailed metrics provided to management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-01-08T12:13:48.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23222" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23224" CreationDate="2018-01-06T13:01:08.053" Score="-1" ViewCount="290" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently preparing a proposal to a client for a large web application development. My environment is outsourced software development. I need to budget QA time for the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, from practice, I used a mix of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Base case scenario: &lt;strong&gt;QA estimated at 15% of the development team time&lt;/strong&gt;. With some percentage point changes based on the mix of juniors and seniors as well as back-end to front-end tasks. Usually front-end and junior - make more QA needs. Whereas back-end and seniors - make less. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Commercial considerations. There are more often than not, very down-to-earth considerations in terms of time utilization.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is QA budgeted 15% of dev time an industry standard? &lt;/strong&gt; I always had the impression it was. But recently someone challenged this in a discussion putting the number higher.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Is there a smarter way?&lt;/strong&gt; Some more sophisticated drivers than the ones I use. Any article to link on the matter?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31053" LastActivityDate="2018-01-08T22:45:04.047" Title="QA time budgetting" Tags="&lt;testing&gt;&lt;budget&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23214" CreationDate="2018-01-06T14:37:52.083" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I joined some workstreams with such issues. &lt;strong&gt; Generally things improve by making  sure that there is proper task ownership.&lt;/strong&gt; The teams I encountered with these issues I enforced a Kanban board with clear task ownership such as the ones you can find using Trello or JIRA. I cannot comment on Zoho never used it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With simple rules &lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt; once a task is assigned to anyone, the person has 36h to send it back to the project manager or the right colleague asking for additional information. Otherwise the dev implicitly recognize that he has all he needs to complete the task. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt; project manager or product owner should not &quot;spoon-feed&quot; requirements but should proactively ask &quot;is everything clear?&quot; &quot;when can you start?&quot; &quot;what is your level of comfort&quot;? I usually do this every two days for each team members when  project is on a rough patch. Otherwise once a week is enough. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt; When starting a project you take a big risk of stalling if front-end does not have style book/guidelines, QA not have a written down list of requirements/user stories and ready to be systematic about it, back-end does not talk to both front end and dev ops, dev ops does not know the timing of the releases and the general performance parameters. In my humble experience, these require a few meetings in the beginning of the project to be tackled immediately.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does that help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that does not work, consider a part-time project manager or someone to help on delivery. Will cost some money in the short term but long terms it should be very beneficial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31053" LastEditorUserId="31053" LastEditDate="2018-01-06T15:31:03.273" LastActivityDate="2018-01-06T15:31:03.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23222" CreationDate="2018-01-06T15:04:10.297" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;AFAIK, there is no such thing as accepted industry standards for QA estimation. This is because it would vary based on the parameters such as complexity, understanding of functionality, technical landscape, scope, resources, team composition, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are on manual testing, then you will need to consider the challenges on a different track. If you are on automation testing, by applying continuous integration (CI), the game plan changes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you just go blindly by 15% of your development effort, you might need to change your strategy. It might not help you provide a shippable product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question:&#xA;1. There is no accepted industry standard, but people do leaf out a certain percentage of distribution for the phases based upon the total budget. You could very well go by the standards accepted by your organization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The smarter way: Is to understand the scope, challenge, critical success factors of the application and embrace continuous integration (CI). This will help you to identify various streams of cases / scenarios and automate thereby helping you reduce the manual effort - earlier we would call it as reusable test cases. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2a. You could very well bank upon this Book as it would help you explore on how to improve your QA efficiently. &lt;a href=&quot;https://martinfowler.com/books/continuousDelivery.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Continuous Delivery&lt;/a&gt;,  &lt;a href=&quot;https://martinfowler.com/books/duvall.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Continuous Integration&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22293" LastActivityDate="2018-01-06T15:04:10.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23222" CreationDate="2018-01-07T14:30:40.943" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What do you regard as &lt;em&gt;QA time&lt;/em&gt;? If a bug is found and a developer needs to fix it, do you count the fix time as QA time? What about re-testing to confirm the bug is fixed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about if it is unclear whether it is a real bug or a misunderstanding of the requirements? Perhaps a business person is required to clarify the requirement, is that also QA time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there is the question of what do you regard as an acceptable level of quality. If you don't mind shipping bugs then that impacts on QA time. How about if you test on one browser, but don't test on other browsers? Won't that impact on the QA time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about unit tests? How about Continuous Integration? Are they QA time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is that there is not a clear distinction between what is development and what is QA. The development process should be seen as a whole, not as a series of individually estimated elements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest the best approach is to quote an overall &lt;em&gt;development time&lt;/em&gt; that incorporates the time required to ensure quality is maintained to an agreed standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-01-07T14:30:40.943" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23220" CreationDate="2018-01-07T14:46:10.890" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum favours transparency. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#artifact-transparency&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; points out that the defined Scrum artifacts (product backlog, sprint backlog and the results of each iteration) should be transparent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, burn-up charts and velocity are not a part of the Scrum definition and so are not necessarily regarded as artifacts requiring transparency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master, my approach is to only make this kind of artifact transparent if there is a clear understanding of what the information means and how it is to be used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if a manager wanted to see a team's velocity I would first explain to them that velocity is purely a measure of capacity and is not a performance measure. If the manager understood and was happy to view the velocity in that context then I would be happy to make it available. The same goes for burn-up charts, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-01-07T14:46:10.890" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23183" CreationDate="2018-01-07T20:52:45.867" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually Velocity is measured after 4 sprints (in the normal cases), as the team needs some time to go through the team building phases (Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing and Adjourning), and so, we measure the velocity after the team reaches the performing phase to make things more accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in your case, I would measure the velocity as &quot;25&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31007" LastActivityDate="2018-01-07T20:52:45.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23220" CreationDate="2018-01-07T21:05:56.640" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Burn-up, burn-down, backlog and the other Agile tools are called information radiators, they are very important to minimize project reporting. They allow whoever passes by to know the status of the project, this technique helps in many things; to show the progress of the project, to show the achievements of the team, to make the team committed to the results (as they are self managed), and so many other benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can never be considered as a disadvantage, as the team will have a recognition after they achieve their goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31007" LastActivityDate="2018-01-07T21:05:56.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23214" CreationDate="2018-01-07T21:22:49.940" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, it seems that you have issues with the requirements (they are not clear, lack of understanding, lack of commitment,... etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case you need to:-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure that the team understands the requirements before starting the work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Daily Stand up meeting (10-15 minute) to know three things:- what was done yesterday, what will be done today and what are the blockers (if any).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After every iteration do a retrospective meeting, to know what went well and what needs improvement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that you need to improve the development process gradually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31007" LastEditorUserId="31007" LastEditDate="2018-01-08T21:20:13.973" LastActivityDate="2018-01-08T21:20:13.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23232" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-01-08T01:18:41.120" Score="-1" ViewCount="341" Body="&lt;p&gt;Current organisation wants to become more agile, but there is a lot of task switching amongst employees who cannot commit a full working week on a project. It is impossible for me to run Scrum effectively since the burn down chart goes out of whack as soon as task switching takes place, hence preferred method is kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What approaches would you recommend to implement agile taking this into account, I have so far factored this into my time scales by adding padding but it feels very waterfall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2018-01-08T05:51:56.027" Title="Implementing agile with part time employees?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23220" CreationDate="2018-01-08T03:16:23.227" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hmmmm...I appreciate some points brought up by the other answers; others I'm not so sure about. Quotes are mainly from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; as of this writing (any quote from other sources will be noted).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Three pillars uphold every implementation of empirical process control: transparency, inspection, and adaptation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Transparency means being able to see something (making the implicit explicit), inspecting what is seen, and adapting. The thermostat concept is used a lot in Scrum training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You set your thermostat to a temperature. The thermostat has visibility into the temperature of the room (metric and feedback). For heating, when the temperature goes below the mark by a certain amount, the countermeasure of turning on the furnace kicks in. When the temperature goes above the mark by a certain amount, the countermeasures are stopped. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if we covered the thermostat and didn't let it sense the temperature in the room? (Probably gonna wonder why it's not getting warmer in your house.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I tend to err on the side of transparency for everything. And I mean everything. Then, as a coach (no matter the formal role I have - even developers can say, “That’s really not what those data measure.”), I coach and train everyone involved on what's going on. What are the data being collected? Why that data? What does the data mean? What do the data indicate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At any point in time, the total work remaining to reach a goal can be summed. The Product Owner tracks this total work remaining at least every Sprint Review. The Product Owner compares this amount with work remaining at previous Sprint Reviews to assess progress toward completing projected work by the desired time for the goal. This information is made transparent to all stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Various projective practices upon trending have been used to forecast progress, like burn-downs, burn-ups, or cumulative flows. These have proven useful. However, these do not replace the importance of empiricism. In complex environments, what will happen is unknown. Only what has already happened may be used for forward-looking decision-making.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, the endnote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum is free and offered in this Guide. Scrum’s roles, events, artifacts, and rules are immutable and although implementing only parts of Scrum is possible, the result is not Scrum. Scrum exists only in its entirety and functions well as a container for other techniques, methodologies, and practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity as it is typically practiced is not part of the definition of Scrum - it is an add-on we use to accomplish some form of inspection and adaptation. The definition of total work remaining is something agreed to by the Scrum Team (and the organization as a whole). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could be a measure of the total number of feature requests (user stories - also not part of Scrum).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some teams and organizations do not feel that the feature request count is detailed enough; therefore, they turn to story points (not part of Scrum) for more granular detail in measuring work remaining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that to say, Scrum, as defined, does not have metrics. Organizations and teams have a desire for data to inspect and adapt. If we're looking at the &quot;wrong&quot; data for the &quot;wrong&quot; reasons, bad things happen. Hence the education and explanation piece being important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A trainer and consultant I know actually put together a wonderful dashboard to help one of his clients. There are data received from external stakeholders - about the state of the product increment (the only measure of progress - users using something). There are data received from, and which matter primarily to, internal stakeholders. There are data received from individual teams (if you're a multi-team organization), which may matter to internal or external stakeholders...this is usually velocity, burn-ups, and so-on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that last one is the only one the organization really focuses on when measuring the success of their organization then I would say they might not be embracing empiricism and transparency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;External feedback measures may include: Product revenue generation versus cost (return on investment) and customer satisfaction. (The teams might find this information useful and motivating as well.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Internal feedback measures may include: Project cost per iteration, time to market, the ratio of new features versus repair and maintenance per iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team-level feedback measures: Last, and certainly least, progress - scope, defects, ideal, velocity, and velocity trend.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is a team (or organization) that goes really fast to deliver a product increment users don't like (customer satisfaction) and aren't willing to pay for (ROI) successful? (Does &quot;velocity&quot; and &quot;burn-ups&quot; measure those things? No. No they don't.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is a team (or organization) who burns through money like it's water at a marathon, while taking forever to create a potentially shippable increment, that has no new features successful? (Does &quot;velocity&quot; and &quot;burn-ups&quot; measure those things? Kind of, maybe.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is a team (or organization) who completes their forecasted work every Sprint to the level of their definition of done successful? (Does &quot;velocity&quot; and &quot;burn-ups&quot; measure those things? Absolutely. And I have no idea if the team and organization are successful, because we're not measuring - or making transparent - the data necessary to get the whole picture.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5788" LastEditorUserId="5788" LastEditDate="2018-01-08T06:00:40.970" LastActivityDate="2018-01-08T06:00:40.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23232" CreationDate="2018-01-08T05:51:56.027" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From your statement, it is clear that you are working on a &lt;code&gt;hybrid model&lt;/code&gt; of so called 'Agile' model. Please note that the process(es) does not carry any discrimination between the domain, technical stack and the resources. This hybrid model of working is the key challenge you are facing. Expecting returns from a hybrid-agile model shall remain as a far cry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is not for generating reports rather to ensure you have effective inputs to perform thereby helping you to achieve the desirable results - consider it as a defensive project management tool. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Agile model is meant to be implemented from the buyer's perspective by-default.&lt;/code&gt;  I hope you are able to catch this point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question for you:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;code&gt;When you say, employees cannot commit a full working week, does that mean that their priorities keep changing? Is it because your business goal is a service-desk?&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am guessing service-desk because you mentioned you have adapted 'Kanban' as your approach. Kanban when not implemented without understanding the requirements will again lead to failure. Ideally, Kanban can be very well implemented for UX development, Service or Business layer development, etc.It would be immensely helpful for the team to tighten up the nuts and bolts and would avoid wastage in the long run. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scenario analysis:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, prior accepting the process-framework or the model, you might need to understand your current scenario. For example, you could pull-out your historical data (the more the better), and analyze the situation using tools such as Pareto, and fish-bone. This would help you understand the gap - where exactly do you want to fit in, How would you want to take it further and many such more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Adapting Agile&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile is fine. That could be your organization mandate. That's okay. But you, your team, your organization and your Customer have to be highly committed and should have the mindset to change the thinking towards Agile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will help you to advance further as only you and your team would know what exactly your Customer's objectives are. Do you, agree? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Agility - What's the approach?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a service based approach, the ideal way is to apply ITSM/ITIL. Oh yes, not to worry, you could very well apply Agile with ITIL as well. You will still be on track. The new jargons that are used following the Cloud Computing model is 'DevOps'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;DevOps&lt;/code&gt; is nothing but Development and Operations; meaning you will get to manage both the development track and the IT operations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please do remember that these are just techno-management tools to empower you and your Team. However, you will need to work with your Customer (could be an Internal or an External), to understand what their wants are. However (ah, again!), you will need to do your homework to gain a thorough understanding on the pattern of your current scenario. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should you have any questions, please shoot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22293" LastActivityDate="2018-01-08T05:51:56.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23084" CreationDate="2018-01-08T20:38:30.917" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One possible option is to create a JIRA filter based on your project(s). Once you have created the filter, you can create a JIRA dashboard and add a piechart gadget incorporating the filter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;JIRA filters  are easily exported in excel format, providing the snapshot you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30882" LastEditorUserId="30882" LastEditDate="2018-01-08T20:50:41.643" LastActivityDate="2018-01-08T20:50:41.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23222" CreationDate="2018-01-08T22:45:04.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always found the historical information the most valuable when I estimate QA and support costs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the project, if you are re-using a lot of code, you'll probably need less time for QA. On the other hand, if you are building the application from scratch, you'll probably need more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you are building a large application, you could break down scope of the work to modules similar to ones you did in the past and go from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31034" LastActivityDate="2018-01-08T22:45:04.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23237" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-01-08T23:31:26.970" Score="1" ViewCount="53" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've created a task calendar for certain transports that can only occur on Wednesdays, with only Wednesdays marked as working time. But when I apply that calendar to the transport milestone items, MS Project is ignoring the task calendar and scheduling the item immediately after its predecessor instead of waiting until the next possible Wednesday. For example, one is showing as scheduled for Tues Jan 30th, another for Mon March 20th. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem persists even if I change them from milestones to 1-day tasks, and also when I created a new task calendar (new base calendar) and applied it to the items. I need to be able to change predecessor durations and leveling delay on the fly and show the true schedule impact without messing around with constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31068" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-08T22:29:09.837" LastActivityDate="2018-11-08T22:29:09.837" Title="MS Project 2010 task calendar not working" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23216" CreationDate="2018-01-08T23:57:09.977" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Separate out the effort (work) from the cycle time (duration). In the Gantt chart view you can add separate columns for those, and enter 5h for work and 5d for duration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scheduling engine calculates based on work and % allocation of the resource. If the resource is allocated at 100% or 1 FTE on that task, the scheduler will front-load the 5h on the first day of the review cycle. If you want to change that, go to the Resource Usage view, double-click on the assignment (italicized task name), and change the Units (% allocation) and Work Contour until you get the result you're looking for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I'm leveling a resource in this way I use the Resource Allocation view, which shows the Resource Usage on the top half of the screen and the Levelling Gantt on the bottom. Remember that the line items in italics on any Usage view are assignment objects, not tasks or resources, and they have their own attributes; so changes to duration &amp;amp; dates of assignments may not carry through to the task item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31068" LastActivityDate="2018-01-08T23:57:09.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23239" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23252" CreationDate="2018-01-09T05:57:45.217" Score="0" ViewCount="112" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a little new company that works with robotics, machine vision and natural language processing. But for some projects, we need to write some Android/iOS applications. In our company we don't have smartphone programming experience! So I don't know how to calculate how much time is needed for an Android program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you say you can ask for that from many developers and find the average time, but the problem is that I don't know which developer really has enough experience or if he/she lied to get the job!&#xA;Are there any rules or guides to do that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general I want to know, if I hire a programmer, how fast should I expect him/her to work? How much work should I expect he/she does in a day or week?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31069" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-01-09T14:14:04.290" LastActivityDate="2018-01-10T03:35:10.197" Title="How to estimate time for a project needing skills only a new hire has?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23214" CreationDate="2018-01-09T15:13:02.140" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Learn about modern software development.  Work collaboratively to design, implement, and verify each complete (all layers) piece of functionality.  Working horizontally (within a layer) leads to imperfect stacks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Manifesto for Agile Software Development&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aptude.com/blog/entry/understanding-software-development-with-vertical-slices-vs-horizontal-slices&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vertical Slicing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/evheB0C-J2Y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Nature of Software Development&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2018-01-09T15:13:02.140" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23239" CreationDate="2018-01-09T16:47:55.397" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Knowledge Work Isn't an Assembly-Line&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[I]f I hire a programmer, how fast should I expect him/her to work? How much work should I expect he/she does in a day or week?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; the wrong set of questions, because it is based on the outdated notion that knowledge work is similar to assembly line production. It isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, you should be evaluating people based on their ability to deliver business value and meet objectives within their own skill envelope. You can do this with target-based assessments, individualized assessments, or a combination of the two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Outcome-Based Evaluations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only real way to evaluate knowledge workers is outcome-based measurements. In my experience, there are two types of outcome-based metrics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Target-Based Assessments&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this usage, a (management) target is a goal or deadline set by fiat. If you have three months to deliver a product or feature, then you should staff your project with people who are confident they can deliver within your target time-frame, and who &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; believe can get the job done when you need it. Both sides need to maintain transparency for this to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, that means that you can't hire mediocre people to meet aggressive time frames. It also means you need to remain aware of the distinction between &quot;confidence&quot; and a guaranteed outcome. In knowledge work you will &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; have the latter, even if it's contractually stipulated. Ask a separate question if you're not clear on why this is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Target-based assessments and estimates also require exceptional communications, clear specifications, well-delineated scope, effective work breakdowns, and deep domain expertise. This costs time and money. In my experience, the more target-driven a project, the more it will cost you; however, your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Individualized Assessments&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than comparing people to other people, you measure people against their own skills and experience. A job that might take a domain expert 30 days might take a novice or journeyman months, so you have to rely on the trend lines for each person rather than estimating based on someone else's knowledge and experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You get what you pay for, so you can't necessarily hire the cheapest labor pool possible and expect a stellar outcome. While price doesn't guarantee results, there is certainly a correlation between skills/experience and labor costs, so your budget must reflect the &lt;em&gt;level&lt;/em&gt; of abilities that you want to staff for on your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With individualized assessments, you need to get the estimates directly from the task performers. No one else can estimate how long it will take that person to do a task, because it is based on &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; knowledge and experience. Your management levers are limited to holding task performers accountable for their estimates, and choosing staff (or replacing them) based on whether or not &lt;em&gt;reasonable&lt;/em&gt; results can be obtained from a given skill set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Continuous feedback and open communications are not levers, but they can certainly optimize the process. For this model, think &quot;planning effectiveness&quot; rather than delivery speed. That will deliver the best possible results from the resources you have, and is often a more sustainable approach from a cost perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In more pragmatic terms, you can either staff your project to meet pre-set deadlines, or schedule your project to deliver based on the skills and abilities of the people you have. Both can work, but the latter is generally more reliable over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Management Owns the Risk&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all cases, management owns the risk. If a plan is created without input from the task performers, there is inherent risk that the project will be mis-estimated. Alternatively, if targets are unreasonable or sufficient budget/skill is not brought to bear on the objectives, management owns that risk too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, you can &lt;em&gt;set&lt;/em&gt; expectations through effective two-way communication (or by diktat, if you're so inclined), but you can't flog the programmers to work faster. If you don't currently have the skill set in-house to accurately estimate the project's scope and schedule, then you will have to hire resources you trust to deliver at &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; best possible speed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-01-09T17:14:01.167" LastActivityDate="2018-01-09T17:14:01.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23138" CreationDate="2018-01-09T17:18:17.207" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Regarding your point 1.&lt;/strong&gt; I think there's no controversy there: if someone contributes more this person should be recognized, it's not segregation, it's meritocracy. However it could be wise to find some recognition system also for those who just started contributting more, or had a better performance in a short term, as a motivation. Otherwise the trend is that those who perform better will be the only ones capable of receiving promotions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Regarding the point 2.&lt;/strong&gt;, I think there's a line there between the &lt;em&gt;Scrum team structure&lt;/em&gt; and the &lt;em&gt;company structure&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Scrum team can be built with Developers (from different seniorities &lt;strong&gt;and titles&lt;/strong&gt;), QAs, UX Designers, etc, all of them being part of the Development Team. You don't need to have them all titled &quot;Developers&quot;, but in the Scrum team they need to work collaborativelly as one, towards the iteration goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other side, as a company, I have that senior QA that knows the product from upside-down, and the Junior QA, their experience is different and it doesn't seem offensive or anything to have a higher title for those who know more. Even that I agree with @Barnaby Golden that Lead/Manager titles aren't the best titles from the Scrum perspective, I guess having them aren't a sin for the methodology :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: In a preparation course for an Agile certification that I participated this topic was approached, there was a common sense that this is something that is still not defined (and probably won't in a short term), as companies have different opinions on what could be right or better when promoting people in a lean environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31044" LastActivityDate="2018-01-09T17:18:17.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23239" CreationDate="2018-01-09T17:26:44.623" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Here is a partial checklist of pre-requisites for estimation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to arrive at an estimate of developer output or cost of a mobile app, you need to sit down and try to answer some questions first:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Articulate your business goals&lt;/strong&gt;: What is the criteria to declare that the app is a success? Are you going to sell the app and generate revenue or use it for support...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Type of app&lt;/strong&gt;: What type of app do you need? You can build a web app (mobile version of a website), a native app or a hybrid. If you build separate iOS and Android native apps, these are the most expensive. You will likely need to hire separate Android and iOS developers and you need to maintain two code bases. There are some cross-platform frameworks/tools available that will let you write a single codebase and deploy to iOS,  Android and other mobile platforms.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Features needed&lt;/strong&gt;: Have you figured out the list of features that you need in the app? If you need a lot of bells and whistles, obviously, it will take more time. People often carve out the set of features needed in a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), build and launch this MVP and then add other features, as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other roles&lt;/strong&gt;: For the developer to be productive, you need someone with the product vision to work with the developer to describe what features need to be built and lay down acceptance criteria. You also need UX/UI designs, wireframes, graphics... You also need someone to test the features as they are getting built and provide feedback. Some of these roles can be combined, of course, depending on the size of the team. But you need to designate people for these roles and free-up their time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully, this checklist gives you the basic idea that it is more than hiring a developer and letting them loose on a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2018-01-09T17:26:44.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23245" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23260" CreationDate="2018-01-09T17:52:01.313" Score="2" ViewCount="947" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently joined a company and to one of the projects that I'm engaged we have this Scrum team that has a &lt;strong&gt;mixed backlog (USs and Bugs)&lt;/strong&gt;. &#xA;This team's goal is to be fixing urgent bugs and when they aren't (doesn't happen that often :)) they should work on the product increment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However this team doesn't work properly and I'm willing to change this team structure (believing that this &lt;strong&gt;mixed attributions&lt;/strong&gt; aren't helping the team's performance + aren't matching the Scrum iterations), making the team to work exclusively on bug fixing, and leaving the product increment to another team (that already does that but in a higher proportion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: &#xA;Am I missing something that could make this team to work better and to keep this structure of application support + product increment while using Scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not then I believe I will turn this team into a exclusive application support team and use Kanban instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31044" LastEditorUserId="31044" LastEditDate="2018-01-09T18:43:27.080" LastActivityDate="2018-01-10T19:06:59.000" Title="Scrum for (kind of) Application Support team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23246" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-01-09T18:25:01.563" Score="3" ViewCount="342" Body="&lt;p&gt;An agile coach was called to promote agile in a big bank. In one of his teams, half of the team is external consultants who have been there for 3-4 years. They currently implement Sales Force.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the words of the Team's Certified Scrum Master, their Software Development Lifecyle is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do a high level analysis for about 1.5 months In this phase everyone&#xA;is creating user stories, since the Product Owner (PO) is too busy to write all of the user stories coming from all the workshops that are currently happening to lock down the system's specs. They claimed that this 1.5 month of discovery and design is necessary, since there is massive inter-connection amongst the pieces in Sales Force, and that they have to  decide upfront what they can implement and what not (based on external dependencies).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a Backlog with all the user stories that will be prioritized during the sprints by the PO, and run sprint planning sessions. Deliver in an &quot;sprint&quot; - iterative fashion for 3 months &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Last 3 months, back end / integration testing with the rest of the existing systems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The consultant even mentioned that comprehensive documentation is needed in case something goes wrong, and they need to refer back to who's fault is it, so that the consultancy is in the clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They currently do stand ups (?) to report what they did yesterday, and what they will do today, but no planning meeting or retrospective, as they are in the &quot;designing phase&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The agile coach raised this with a couple of other managers and they said in an eye rolling fashion &quot;yeah, these (consultancy name here) do it their own way and have their own agenda.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PO is clearly biased to follow the consultant's approach, since they have been working together for a while, and she has been a program manager for a while, and then converted to a PO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you had experience similarly with external consultants who claim to have figured it out, but have got it all wrong, but are strongly positioned within a company?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should the agile coach enforce a practice and claim that everything they do is agile, or should he let them fail and feel the pain before he intervenes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5522" LastEditorUserId="5522" LastEditDate="2018-01-09T18:46:21.040" LastActivityDate="2018-04-30T08:13:12.557" Title="Big 4 scrum consultant giving bad advice - correct or let fail?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;&lt;sdlc&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23246" CreationDate="2018-01-09T18:37:24.797" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;agile&lt;/a&gt; about the consultant's approach and certainly not use of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt; framework.  That is waterfall with some modern software development terms being misused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Allowing an internal team to learn through controlled experimentation is a good mentality; permitting a consultant to waste money for any length of time is ludicrous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2018-01-09T18:37:24.797" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23246" CreationDate="2018-01-09T19:48:12.190" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Try to identify the biggest pain point and articulate the Agile practices that will mitigate that&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looks like you are convinced that the existing approach will certainly fail:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...or should he let them fail and feel the pain before he intervenes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you didn't say which aspect of their current practice you think is likely to cause problems, other than a general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...no planning meeting or retrospective&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You seem to have higher Management support, because they hired you and are paying for your services. However, your first attempt should be to try to articulate to the team what is the main weakness in their current process and how Scrum/Agile will overcome that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, waiting till the last stage of the project to do back end / integration testing you might identify as a big risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talk to the PO and also the consultants. At a minimum, you may be able to convince the PO. Even then if you run into resistance to change, then you can talk to senior Management and try to enforce the &quot;everything should be agile&quot; mandate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2018-01-09T19:48:12.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23214" CreationDate="2018-01-09T22:41:12.120" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like this is a breakdown not of technical approach or project management approach, but rather of conversation. Here is what I would expect to happen in the scenario you present:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, I'd expect to see a type of conversation in which team members with all of the needed skillsets and knowledge (Javascript, Front-end, Back-end). These conversations almost always have to be face-to-face because they will usually need something like a white-board to facilitate a concrete design discussion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My guess is that since you're talking about a report, they'd start with what information the user expects to get and how they'll use it. This will probably be at a high level at first and whoever has knowledge of what's in the DB can fill in detail where they have it off the top of their head. The participants should be very open about what they know and what they don't. They could then leave this conversation with a better idea of how each will approach the work and where they'll need to stay flexible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, I would expect them to write their code in a way that is easy to modify as details come in. For example, if I need the order number, I'd probably just assume I'm getting 1234, then if it turns out I get something complex like your example, I'd add code to parse it afterward. Which brings us to the next important point: treating code like a factory line almost always leads to poor results and poor efficiency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If three people have to work together, they need to be constantly talking and sharing their progress. Unless it is a very small feature, the team should be adding a new chunk of the report from back end all the way through at least once per day. I wouldn't try to daisy-chain the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-01-09T22:41:12.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23245" CreationDate="2018-01-09T22:51:40.557" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some benefits of teams working production support in addition to product development as well as benefits to separating responsibilities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Case for a team doing both&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This centers around the idea of ownership by the team. When a team is asked to address production support issues in the code it builds, it encourages a higher level of quality. In addition, theoretically, that team is the best qualified to solve the support problem quickly, which means less downtime for the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Case for separation of responsibilities&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By having application development work interrupted by production support, we are creating what lean would call Mura - a form of waste. This is because they need to create slack in their process to allow room for the interruptions and overhead in management and context-switching. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Personal Opinion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most cases, I would fall on the side of better quality and faster fixes over process efficiency. The value creation in the former is usually greater than the cost savings of the later. However, you know your circumstances best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-01-09T22:51:40.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23251" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23259" CreationDate="2018-01-10T02:11:06.760" Score="5" ViewCount="168" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work at a research center that is now going through changes in its administration. The new board of directors calls for a more aggressive and more practical approach to project management and performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to use this opportunity to bring new perspectives on how to manage research projects to my team. We work with large-scale stochastic optimization in projects that have been evolving for more than 30 years. Virtually all projects we work on have outlived at least one of their members. That goes to show the scale I am talking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in learning about management techniques, performance metrics, and sustainable upkeep of scientific projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for &lt;strong&gt;material - papers or case studies - with either theory of management applied to research projects or real-life examples of successful management in science. Preferably, both.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you went through some like this or similar and are willing to share the story of how your company managed this change with details of which &lt;strong&gt;methods and techniques adopted&lt;/strong&gt;, I'd be downright grateful. I will use your answer as a pointer to scientific literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31078" LastActivityDate="2018-01-10T16:08:37.437" Title="How to manage large-scale research projects in a research center and measure performance?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23239" CreationDate="2018-01-10T03:12:20.580" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In regard to obtaining an average project timeline, I would ask your potential new hires how long they think it will take. Since they'll be working on the project, their judgement would be the best metric. If one potential hire says it will take them 2 weeks and another says 1 month, you'll need to consider the reasoning in their responses. Ask them to justify it by asking them why and how they determined the timeline. Additionally, do not be afraid to challenge them by asking them if they could complete it in a shorter timeframe. Some people are perfectionists and would therefore spend countless hours toiling away at something that didn't need to be &quot;perfected&quot; in the first place. It's important for one to remember, especially as a project leader or manager, that you'll simply just need to &quot;make do&quot; with what you have. What if the deadline were more stringent or there was pressure to complete the project by a certain date? How would the new hire perform then? Consider that some people work better under pressure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the answer to your question about timeline is solely case-by-case; however, there are methods you could employ to determine a range. Try breaking down the project for the new hire into the smallest actionable pieces. Perhaps this would be a task for the project lead or project manager. List all possible steps of the project in a detailed fashion so that the programmer can fully visualize the extent of it. Create the list so that it is results based meaning that the programmer should have a strong idea or vision of the goal you're trying to achieve. If they are competent in coding for Android/iOS, then they should be able to give you a strong time estimate for each task or group of tasks. Have them complete a small group of tasks, then evaluate whether or not they met their estimate taking note of their margin of error. Were they on time? Did they complete the tasks within minutes of their estimates or within hours? Within days? Find out the reasons behind their completion time. Why and how did they finish on time, late, or early? Identify strengths and weaknesses in their abilities, having this knowledge is important when managing them on subsequent projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then again, Steve Jobs never asked someone how long it would take...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31079" LastActivityDate="2018-01-10T03:12:20.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23239" CreationDate="2018-01-10T03:35:10.197" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Maybe you say you can ask for that from many developers and find the average time, but the problem is that I don't know which developer really has enough experience or if he/she lied to get the job! Are there any rules or guides to do that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest something like a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_poker&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;planning poker&lt;/a&gt; session that includes you and all the developers you are thinking of to work on the app. Planning poker is great for clarifying scope, and can also help give you a feel for who is speaking from more or less technical knowledge when they explain their estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In general I want to know, if I hire a programmer, how fast should I expect him/her to work? How much work should I expect he/she does in a day or week?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think that's going to be a helpful question, because it will depend a great deal on the type of work and will also vary to some extent from person to person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2018-01-10T03:35:10.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23154" CreationDate="2018-01-10T05:01:51.997" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally the counterparts to Project Managers are 'Functional' Managers. 'Project' Managers deal with one-off, temporary projects, and generally cross functional lines. Sort of 'jack of all trades, masters of none.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Functional Managers deal with that - business functions (HR, Ops, Finance, Logistics, etc.). These are 'specialist' managers, generally being VERY knowledgeable about their particular function, but not as well versed in others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="921" LastActivityDate="2018-01-10T05:01:51.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11540" CreationDate="2018-01-10T07:54:41.507" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What we do is to have a go at the number of iterations, based on existing experience, and look at the size of work involved in each iteration, based on existing experience.  Look how the job differs in scale or size from other existing jobs.  Make a good guess on the number and scale of iterations, and then multiply that by 150-200% - for an itemised quote, this may mean adding 'phantom' iterations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An important thing to remember is that no-one is unhappy when you come under a quote, but everyone is unhappy when you come over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31083" LastActivityDate="2018-01-10T07:54:41.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23256" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-01-10T10:57:49.530" Score="1" ViewCount="1201" Body="&lt;p&gt;I inserted the actual start for updating a task and then inserted the %comp and reschedule and resource leveling for the plan with ms project 2013. The problem is that the task has been split in several parts without any reason, or the split parts reschedule too late whereas the predecessor has been finished and the constraint type is as soon as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know the rules of splitting in the calculation option and resource leveling and consider them all and even if I clear the leveling, the split parts of tasks aren't be corrected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I solve this issue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31082" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-05T13:55:06.680" LastActivityDate="2019-01-04T15:02:10.510" Title="Why are tasks split while updating plan?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23246" CreationDate="2018-01-10T12:26:16.257" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been in a similar situation (in a retail bank), with consultants offering what they call 'enterprise Agile'. The result was waterfall and highly problematic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The consultancies are typically very good at lobbying support (especially with the executive). So it can be a challenge to call them out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend to your Agile coach that they do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First agree on what metrics you are trying to improve with Agile (e.g. time to market)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Suggest running some projects/teams using a genuine Agile approach and some using the approach suggested by the consultants&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time box the evaluation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the end of the time box, see which approach has had the most positive impact on the metrics you are trying to improve&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-01-10T12:26:16.257" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23245" CreationDate="2018-01-10T14:41:08.187" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you do separate bug fixing from development then the question is: Will there always be just the right balance of work for both teams?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What happens when there are no bugs for a while? Will the team sit idol? How about if there is some really critical project work and the development team is flat out while the bug-fix team is on tickover?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal opinion is that you are better off sticking to the mixed backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An approach I've seen used in this situation is to nominate one or two Scrum team members as being 'on point' for bug fixing in each sprint. That means that they are given lower priority and smaller development tasks to work on so that they can easily switch across to fixing a critical bug. Rotate who is in this point role (say every sprint, or every couple of sprints).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also worth considering how quickly you need to fix urgent bugs. If they can wait a week, why not switch to a 1-week sprint cycle? That way you can cover all the work in sprint planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-01-10T14:41:08.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23251" CreationDate="2018-01-10T16:08:37.437" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had an opportunity to work on a similar kind of initiative - during due diligence phase to be precise. Later, it was handed over to my peers to take over. However, to my knowledge more than 90% of my recommendation(s) presented in the due diligence report were considered. Hence, here is my insight on streamlining the project management capabilities for a Research &amp;amp; Development facility. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Existing case&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider capturing the historical summary information from your Research and Development Information System (RDIS - if you have the information as a system) data (the more the better; but three years should be fine) in a spreadsheet to analyze the current scenario. Otherwise, you will have an opportunity to create the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary Information:&lt;/strong&gt; You could segment the information into four phases such as Conceptualization, Planning, Implementation and Completion. Within each phase, you could include the key constraints such as Funding, Schedule, Cost, Risks, Time, Resources, ROI, and many such columns as you require. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under each constraint(s) you will need to further decompose into various columns such as budget, planned, actual, variance. At times, you might not know the budget and planned information, you will need to find out from your colleagues or from the respective department heads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To visualize the information, it could be something like this:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aFabh.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aFabh.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Situation Analysis&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the information you have gathered in the spreadsheet, you will need to analyze every data point. For example, you might have a line-item having good funding but did not yield as expected. Here is where the meat is. You will need to further your understanding on the &quot;why&quot; part; you could use parametric or could brainstorm with the stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep updating the spreadsheet as you move ahead. You see now, you will have a full view on what's working and what's not and why is it working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Proposed Goal&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understand the proposed goal and reinforce to arrive at the stakeholders input quantitatively. This means, when they say, ' more aggressive and more practical approach', capture it quantitatively. Capture the goal very succinctly - mostly in-line with the summary spreadsheet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next step shall be to discuss with your department users or with the research assistants to arrive at the work breakdown structure (WBS). By creating a responsibility assignment matrix (RAM), you will further gain a proper understanding on who the owners are and whom to approach if you face challenge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This WBS along with RAM shall remain as your key input and  template for any of your R&amp;amp;D projects you plan to kickoff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Understanding EVM&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gain understanding on Earned Value Management (EVM) if you do not have. Otherwise, if you have the exposure or experience in using EVM, then almost all the key metrics can be arrived at using this wonderful tool. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will help you immensely for reporting; you could use it for all kinds of reports - status, performance, forecasting, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Management&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you will have sufficient understanding on the business process. This will help you to decide on whether you will need to apply traditional project management or Agile for the goals you set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next step shall be to apply the right framework and follow the rulebook. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, please ensure you will need to keep monitoring and controlling and tweaking to ensure you achieve the R&amp;amp;D goal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps you to proceed further. Should you need more information, please feel free to shoot your questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22293" LastActivityDate="2018-01-10T16:08:37.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23245" CreationDate="2018-01-10T19:06:59.000" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you say &quot;this team doesn't work properly&quot;, I am afraid you might not have identified the exact source of the problem. Is it because the team members have problems multitasking between user stories and defects? Is it because their manager isn't setting the right priority frequently enough? Are there explicit policies defined on how they shall select the work they do on a day to day basis? Do they understand the impact of not servicing enough value demand (user stories or new features) while spending all their time on failure demand (defects)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another aspect is - why are there so many defects in the first place? What engineering practices and automation need to be put in place to reduce the overall number of bugs and improve code quality? If you are not doing test-driven development and insisting on automation of all test cases, including all defects found, perhaps that is something you need to implement that first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are some high-level issues that need to be addressed in order for the team to work properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a co-founder of a software company - and over the last 15 years, we have tried multiple approaches to keep teams motivated, take ownership of their products and deliver on a consistently predictable basis - both from a schedule and quality perspective.  Our belief is that it is not only not fair to make a team work only on defects while another team gets to work on all the new, cool stuff, it is also bad management/ engineering practice.  A team needs to own the product (or some part of it depending on overall size) and work on it fully - both new features and defects.  This gives them full ownership of the product - and they swim or sink with it.  It gives them much better knowledge of the code to understand why and where defects are occurring and what might be causing them. And managed well, it makes them take far greater pride in their work and workmanship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of trying to decide &quot;Kanban or Scrum?&quot;, I would, in fact, recommend that you apply Kanban on top of your current Scrum practices.  That is the fundamental definition of Kanban.  It is not a replacement for Scrum, rather it is a way to improve almost any process you may be using.  In the case of Scrum, many folks call the resulting mix Scrumban.  Apply it to your current processes to identify bottlenecks and problems - and resolve those problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to share our approach, we have a somewhat similar situation as yours. We have 3 different products, and we have product teams that own each and do all the work - new features and defect-fixes - for their products. We are not a Scrum shop, but we have a reasonably well-defined time-bucket of 4-5 weeks in which we make new releases.  We use our own &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.digite.com/swiftkanban&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;product&lt;/a&gt; to manage our roadmap and dev work.  The Roadmap is managed in an 'upstream' Kanban board, where we do our themes --&gt; epics --&gt; user story breakdown and then transfer the user stories to the &quot;downstream&quot; Dev board.  All defects either reported by Support/ Customers OR found internally during code reviews, automation runs or manual validation are directly logged in the Ready column of the Dev board.  The diagram below hopefully gives you a full picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0zUbb.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0zUbb.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As team members finish what they are currently working on (Kanban discourages multitasking), they pick up new work from the Ready queue based on priority that is discussed in the Daily Standup every day. Of course, critical or high priority defects get priority over everything else. However, we try and make sure there is always a good mix of new features getting worked on as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We try to balance between a predictable release schedule and overall batch-size to keep things manageable.  All new features and bug-fixes are deployed on an internal staging server continually - and that is our 'internal production server' where we run all our other functions including support and marketing etc. - which is a great way to identify any bugs that might slip thru (almost zero) and any usability issues. And like I said, we deploy a SaaS release every 4-5 weeks with all work completed fully in that time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend you try this out to analyze your overall situation and use Kanban effectively to discover all your process bottlenecks for a gradual overall improvement in your operation. It would be great for your team morale and productivity.  It might mean doing the following - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Studying the overall pattern of demand on your team and deciding whether you work with one Dev board - or you also use an upstream board for dealing with the incoming work better with your stakeholders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Defining a workflow that reflects the way your team works and mapping all the steps in the value stream, so you can fully study which of these might be bottlenecks, and why your team is spending so much time on defects.  Kanban's Flow Efficiency metric highlight just how much wait times are built in all our workflows - whether between handoffs or waiting for external input or other such issues!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Defining WIP Limits in your Ready queue for different type of work (user stories vs. defects) so that certain capacity is always dedicated to new features.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look at your dev processes and automation options to reduce overall defect levels.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are just starting points - you, of course, have a much more detailed picture of your situation! As the team starts to analyze its process on a regular basis, different solutions will emerge that you will need to try out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps; all the best!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2018-01-10T19:06:59.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23261" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23263" CreationDate="2018-01-11T06:34:01.660" Score="2" ViewCount="679" Body="&lt;p&gt;First question, so here goes!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Between two programmers on the same team, one has produced more code but more defects, whilst the other has produced around 20% less code but significantly less defects by KLOC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does established convention (and academic agreement) dictate that the more productive programmer is the first individual? - Defined by his raw output, or can a case be made for the higher quality code?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31098" LastActivityDate="2018-01-15T16:30:09.383" Title="Measuring code productivity between team members" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;measurement&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23261" CreationDate="2018-01-11T08:37:36.307" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is essentially impossible to answer. Consider that...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the second dev - through more careful work or personal testing and fixing - ends up with less defects. But without knowing how much effort it is to fix all the remaining defects it's hard to compare the two measurements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you might not care about the defects at all. Your situation might call for getting &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; delivered asap.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you might not care about &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the defects. Some of them might not be severe enough to warrant spending time to fix them (just yet) when there are still features left to implement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;even less severe bugs can have a detrimental effect on the codebase that collectively outweighs their face value. They can lead to a broken window syndrome where devs end up caring less about bug-freeness.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;higher defect ratio &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; go hand in hand with less readable and maintainable code which will make working on the code base more difficult in the future.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;KLOCs are a poor measurement of work accomplished. Different coding styles, can lead to noticeably more or less lines of code. Different type of tasks might require many lines of code that are easy to write where as others require few lines which are very compact and difficult.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;one dev might end up with more complex tasks simply because they prefer that sort of work or are more experienced in particular areas which are more ripe with heavier tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;KLOCs don't capture other desireable activities like coaching, learning, knowledge transfer, documentation, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a 20% difference is &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt; in the grand scheme of things. &lt;a href=&quot;https://blog.codinghorror.com/skill-disparities-in-programming/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Skill disparities in programming&lt;/a&gt; can take on FACTORS of 20.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even setting aside all the difficulties with this metric, what do you use if for? Understand that any Metric that is known to matter tends to produce strategies that games it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2018-01-11T08:37:36.307" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23261" CreationDate="2018-01-11T09:01:56.943" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand where you are coming from. However, I am unable to understand what you are trying to achieve from this kind of measurement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This practice of capturing productivity per programmer / developer based on defects and KLOC has reached its dead end. The practice of measuring was only during the Mainframe days (extended until Procedural programming days) and it was considered as the yardstick for measurement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means, you assign the same module to each of the developers in a team. Now, if you try measuring their productivity by individual, it would make sense to some extent. This is because the complexity, dependency, etc. would all remain same. Now, only the intellectual capacity has to be applied. Apart, all other constraints remain the same. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, Developer 'A' would have been assigned with a complex module as compared to Developer 'B'. This could be one of the reason for the increased defect density. For the Developer 'B' the defect density would have been lower today, but it might carry technical debt which could have been overlooked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, it all becomes subjective when you grade Developer 'B' as the best. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of such reasons, the productivity measure by defects and KLOC are now not considered as the primary measure. Demotivation is another parameter that was seen between the Developers due such measurement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is because every individual is unique, their intelligence and approach towards addressing the problem is different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, the times have changed exponentially by means of innovating in all the phases of SDLC. Adapting and embracing in new ways to produce software (read value) is the recommended procedure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What makes the developer shine is by following the SDLC patterns and produce value to the Customer as a Team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would further want to listen and learn from the Process experts on their perspective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22293" LastActivityDate="2018-01-11T09:01:56.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23264" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-01-11T09:39:57.893" Score="0" ViewCount="51" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a beginner. In my project, I added some resource into 2 tasks. The tasks' combined duration changed from 6 weeks to 2 weeks, but there was no impact on the overall duration of the project. Is there anyone who can explain the reason behind this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31101" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-01-11T14:22:00.143" LastActivityDate="2018-01-11T14:22:00.143" Title="Allocating more resource into task no impact on overall duration of project, Why?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2018-01-13T20:31:12.600" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23261" CreationDate="2018-01-11T11:44:08.083" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on your overall value proposition.  Albeit simplified, consider two different types of home builders: one that produces a bulk of homes in a new development, largely the same, a ton of pre-built pieces, where speed to build, minimizing costs due to thin margins, and higher volume sales prevail; the other a custom builder, hired by a discriminating homeowner, larger margins, lower volume, and where lack of quality will put you out of business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These two different but both valuable missions create two different needs from a quality spec perspective, time perspective, and skill perspective from labor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time, cost, and quality: pick two.  Depending on what you pick will determine the type of talent you need and how you consider this idea of &quot;productive.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-01-11T11:44:08.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23264" CreationDate="2018-01-11T11:54:10.290" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the risk of answering a homework question, the answer is your network path and the way tasks are sequenced.  Reducing the duration of a single task may or may not affect the total project duration depending on the degree of slack between that task's predecessor and successor.  If, at the time you reduced the duration, that task is on the critical path, then you will see a reduction in total duration assuming your network logic is sound.  If not, then you are just playing with slack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another cause might be a date constraint you have on a successor task.  For example, if your reduced duration task is on the critical path, however a successor task has a &quot;must start on&quot; constraint date, then your total duration will not decrease because you will create an arbitrary lag before that offending successor task.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-01-11T11:54:10.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23268" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23271" CreationDate="2018-01-11T16:22:23.273" Score="4" ViewCount="261" Body="&lt;p&gt;A new PO was hired to the company, he has some experience in the role but he doesn't have experience in the product's area (financial). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can he owns the product and make definitions to it if he knows less about his product's intentions/customers/stakeholders than the people involved around him?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31044" LastActivityDate="2018-01-15T13:25:57.433" Title="How a newcomer PO could own the product if he does not have enough field knowledge yet?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23261" CreationDate="2018-01-11T16:36:33.550" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is your question, and there is a question under that which deserves to be addressed. First, your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Productivity is actually easy to measure. How many useful discrete units are produced. If you're measuring lines of code, then how many lines of code have a bug in it? The person with the higher number of bug-free lines is more productive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;https://hbr.org/1983/09/product-defects-and-productivity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; from Harvard Business Review all the way back in 1983 addresses some statistical ways to look at defects and productivity. Nothing has really changed since then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the question under the question: does it matter? It is likely that it doesn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I gave you a file with 10000 lines of code, would it help you? Probably not. It has to be the right code that does the right things. Even to the point of quality, does a bug exist in a single line of code? Sometimes, but often it stems from how multiple lines of code interact. Or, to be almost silly about it, would you rather have this code:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xA; if (a &gt; b) &#xA; {&#xA;   return a; &#xA; } &#xA; else &#xA; {   &#xA;    return b; &#xA; }&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;than this code:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xA;return (a &gt; b) ? a : b;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't happen to code, those two snippets do exactly the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, it can help us to think less in terms of productivity and more in terms of effectiveness. When a business problem arises, how long does it take for us to solve that problem? How effective are we at prioritizing the most important work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I encourage teams to do is to look at how their users measure the value of the development team. One team I worked with automated process, so the primary value driver was the amount of time their users took to successfully complete a particular transaction. This could be achieved through fewer steps in the automated process, reduced user error, and many other things. Measuring how effective the team is at serving their users is almost always more useful than measuring how many artifacts they produce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it's almost impossible to separate who did what at an individual level, but that's probably fine. As Yves Morieux elegantly shares in his &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ted.com/talks/yves_morieux_how_too_many_rules_at_work_keep_you_from_getting_things_done&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TED talk&lt;/a&gt;, when we demand individual accountability, what we often get is a situation where we may never succeed, but we'll always know who to blame when we fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-01-15T16:30:09.383" LastActivityDate="2018-01-15T16:30:09.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23268" CreationDate="2018-01-11T17:47:18.823" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three key things that a PO should have to be successful: Authority, Time, and Knowledge. So, to your point, without having domain knowledge, the Product Owner's job becomes very difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've worked with some very good Product Owners who are great at connecting to people with the knowledge and asking the right questions. This can bridge the knowledge gap while they learn for themselves. Half of this is they having the skills to do that. The other half is making people with the knowledge available to the product owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-01-11T17:47:18.823" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23272" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23291" CreationDate="2018-01-11T19:49:30.360" Score="2" ViewCount="2260" Body="&lt;p&gt;Trying to figure out what this represents? If standard deviation is high, does this represent inconsistent productivity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2018-01-15T02:35:43.060" Title="Standard deviation in JIRA control chart what does it represent?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;control-chart&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23272" CreationDate="2018-01-11T20:20:32.847" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Standard deviation is a measure of the spread of the data&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on Standard Deviation&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A low standard deviation indicates that the data points tend to be&#xA;  close to the mean of the set, while a high standard deviation&#xA;  indicates that the data points are spread out over a wider range of&#xA;  values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, higher standard deviation does not necessarily &quot;represent inconsistent productivity&quot;. It might just be the nature of the domain. Ken Schwaber noted in his books that complexity in software projects is influenced by requirements, technology and people. If we jump to the conclusion that higher standard deviation (arising from higher complexity) is entirely due to inconsistent productivity (relating to people), we may be overlooking the other two factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, newly formed teams take time to gel together and arrive at a steady pace of output. See the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuckman%27s_stages_of_group_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on stages of group development&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2018-01-11T20:20:32.847" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23272" CreationDate="2018-01-12T06:33:55.093" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general terms, the standard deviation means deviating from any of the standards defined by Industry standards, or by organization standards, or by your Customer standards and/or by your Project standards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These standards when set quantitatively is easier to measure. The visual presentation that could help everyone understand is by using the Charts. One of the charts that could represent data statistically is known as &lt;code&gt;Control charts&lt;/code&gt; . Control charts help to represent the data pretty clearly. However, there are set of rules that need to followed and to be understood prior presenting the data in the Control chart. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now your question would be what should I Control? If you unable to comprehend or understand the pattern that is causing the failure, control charts will not help. Rather tools like Fish bone, Pareto, etc. will guide you understand the variables that you need to monitor and control. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the Control charts, the variables that you could monitor for improving (read as continuous improvement) could be defects, fix cycle, scope creep, design issues, or any other data point that is part of your critical success factors identified by your Customer and by your Project team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, let us move on to the next question:  Why would you need so many standards and how would you measure it in the Control chart? This where the crux is. The Control chart clearly segments the standards into two groups: 1) Specification, 2) Control. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specification is the limit set by the Industry, your organization, by your Customer. Consider the specification as the guideline. Control is the limit you set for your Project. This could be because you would have tailored many variables based on your project requirement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certain organization(s) begin by baselining the data with the Industry specification.  While others will not and will tailor based on their comfort level. There are many such rules here which I will not step into. However, I have been recommending my Clientèle to arrive at the control limit after brainstorming with their team.  Later, baselining the limit after couple of deliverables shall enhance the comfort level of the Project team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The specification has the min and max level set (boundaries) known as &lt;code&gt;Upper Specification Limit (USL) and Lower Specification Limit (LSL)&lt;/code&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the Control limit (boundaries) set by the Project it is known as &lt;code&gt;Upper Control Limit (UCL) and Lower Control Limit (LCL)&lt;/code&gt;. Now, you see, it does make sense, right? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the data gets plotted into the Control chart, it would clearly show the &lt;code&gt;yellow-line&lt;/code&gt; and the data points to answer whether the data points are in control or are there any outliers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope you are able to catch the information up until now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are three different ways to calculate the standard deviation. I will not get into that. Just keep this in mind. Depending on the software other than the statistically enabled ones (Minitab, SPC, etc), most the product would use average of range. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, to your question about Jira Control Charts. Jira follows Agile workflow. The details mentioned above are all meant to be for traditional purists like me who would still bend on these items purely to prove the point. However, I am forced to follow the Agile way (that’s where the moolah is…), and the agile purists do not believe in using the Control charts as the manifesto does not recommend to go by Industry standards rather follow the standards of your Client. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what does Jira use and how is it used in Jira? Agile follows the Sprint model – the more the releases the better the confidence level (early feedback) of your Client and better profitability for your organization. That’s the mantra. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the key variables in Jira shall be the &lt;code&gt;Cycle time&lt;/code&gt;. This variable tracks the time taken to close the ticket from the time it is assigned to. Please do remember that if the ticket is reopened, the cycle time increases. This makes sense in terms of Agile. Because Agile talks about only Value and nothing else. Just look at from the Client’s perspective. The only question they would ask is what’s your time to market? Ah, the cycle time again. You see, the point here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next metric used is to produce in the Control chart is Rolling average. The rolling average is based on the average cycle time at every key point; wait time . This also makes sense. Because this will highlight on how long does an issue waits to get resolved. Wow! It is easier to monitor and track the outliers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next is your data point – standard deviation. This just paints the picture to show how much the project deviates from the rolling average. Do you understand now? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means, never worry about standard deviation when using it in Agile as productivity measure, rather understand the cycle time, understand how the rolling average is. Later apply the techniques to control these measures. As simple as that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this measure (standard deviation) can also be used to predict your teams confidence in producing the shippable software - not productivity. Never get into productivity here, it will not answer your question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long story short, Standard deviation = Confidence level and not Productivity. How confident is your team to produce shippable software? How much X times will it deviate from normal cycle time? Questions such as these and many such more can have a clear answer. Not productivity. Nope, not productivity. Period. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You got to bear with me for such a long explanation for one-line question. The reason is to help you and others who do not come from Process compliance understand the picture better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22293" LastActivityDate="2018-01-12T06:33:55.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23275" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-01-12T09:07:07.157" Score="-1" ViewCount="866" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just taken over a Project Management role and have found that I need to produce a correspondence register from Outlook.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of any add-ons, software or methods which I can use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31114" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2018-01-15T01:02:03.423" LastActivityDate="2018-03-17T09:20:45.183" Title="Correspondence register in Outlook" Tags="&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23276" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23278" CreationDate="2018-01-12T11:46:51.630" Score="4" ViewCount="2023" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are looking to change our approach on estimates. Now we estimate in hours/days, but we would like to change this and make our process more flexible.&#xA;We are working based on Scrum, where stories are planned based on an initial estimate and after the technical analysis, a new estimate can be used (which is more refined).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because we noticed that our estimation process can be improved, we are looking for alternatives. I already found documentation online about using story points and velocity to indicate the effort required to implement something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any alternatives besides story points / velocity? I have been looking online, but I fail to find good sources with alternatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31119" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-01-15T09:06:05.210" LastActivityDate="2018-01-20T18:27:14.907" Title="Alternatives to estimating in hours/story points" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23276" CreationDate="2018-01-12T14:21:18.143" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;To the best of my knowledge, 'no'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time estimates are the intuitive method of estimation. Managers want to know how long X will take. Intuitive solution? Ask how long X will take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are, however, problems with this approach. For one thing, the time needed to accomplish X will vary depending on who completes X. For another, humans are &lt;em&gt;bad&lt;/em&gt; at estimating in time. So story points, a form of estimating in relative effort, came about. They have since been found to be far for accurate. They can be converted to time via applying the Team's velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't believe there is another method, primarily because I don't see what else &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be reliably used. I also don't see the need. If you need to define a process quickly and don't want to/can't spend time to think it over, estimate in time. If you want a more accurate method, use story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: At the time of writing I'd forgotten about the 'no estimates' method. Though technically one could say that such a method is the same as story points, only every task is given the same effort. There could even be a continuum, with approaches such as where every task is estimated the same except for rare outliers. This is the approach my last Team evolved into - nearly every Story was 1 point, with the occasional 0.1- or 3-point Story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-01-15T14:32:11.610" LastActivityDate="2018-01-15T14:32:11.610" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23276" CreationDate="2018-01-12T15:12:54.173" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me it sounds like you want to improve your estimation accuracy - not making you more flexible. So here are a few pointers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Cone of Uncertainty&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The earlier in the project you are the less accurate your estimate is going to be. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-mysterious-cone-of-uncertainty/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cone of uncertainty&lt;/a&gt; illustrates this by starting at a spread of 0.25x to 4x and slowly converging to the factor of 1. This is the maximum accuracy you can expect from your estimates. Ie. when you first start out you &lt;em&gt;cannot&lt;/em&gt; be more accurate with your estimate - you can only be more lucky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I bring this up because your questions sounds to me like you are prioritizing stories based on the initial estimate, without taking into account any refinement. I might be wrong about this though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Ranges trump single guesses&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of providing single point estimates, offer ranges. Start by estimating the absolute worst case scenario for your upper bound. Then estimate the &quot;likely&quot; scenario for your lower bound. Try to set both estimates so that you have have 90% confidence of being right. This does two things: Considering the worst case first puts your mind on the track of what can go wrong and keeps you from ingoring too many risks. Second by forcing yourself to expand your estimates to an extreme 90% confidence range you'll at least getting something of a 30% chance of being right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Relative estimates&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever possible try to avoid making absolute estimates and try to estimate items in relation to each other. Then use velocity to put the amount of completed stuff per sprint in relation to the estimates you put on it. You CAN do this with hours if you want. It just comes more naturally if you do it with points. Also in order to retain any degree of reliability you must refrain from changing your relative weights. If you estimate your first sprint on the basis that Task X is Y hours/points and then after the sprint look at your velocity and say &quot;Aha! We were off by a factor of 2.375 let's keep this in mind for future estimating&quot; you're shooting yourself in the foot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Just answer the question already!&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are essentially three approaches you can take when you need to move a pile of rocks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimate the true weight of every stone and accept that you suck at those guesses. Also accept that people have silly tendencies such as expecting they should be able to carry a stone of a certain size, or not wanting to look weak by estimating a stone at too high a weight to argue that the can't carry it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimate your stones relative to each other. Accept that your estimates are not much of an indicator of how much work it is to clear the entire pile until you've started to work on it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't estimate the weight of the stones. Since everything above means that you're so unlikely to be anywhere close to the real number you instead focus on breaking every rock down to handy sizes (as you have to anyway) and realize that as your stones become more homogenous in size the less difference there is between estimating each of them and simply counting them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2018-01-12T15:12:54.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23276" CreationDate="2018-01-12T16:18:02.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Decide What You're Measuring&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are there any alternatives besides story points / velocity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can estimate in any unit you plan to measure. Common measurements include time, effort, money, and calendar-based targets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Hours&quot; are a form of time-based estimation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Story points&quot; are a form of effort-based estimation focused on relative sizing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Velocity&quot; is a form of trend-based tracking &amp;amp; estimation, and is primarily an aid to release planning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The three vertices of the iconic project management &quot;iron triangle&quot; are scope, schedule, and resources. All project controls and estimation techniques ought to express one or more of these items, or the relationships between them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Alternatives to Time/Effort&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most projects estimate all three vertices, but the basic theory of modern project management is that you can only control for any two of the three. You can't fix scope, schedule, and resources simultaneously; at least one of the three needs to flex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you could estimate a project in resources and schedule in order to arrive at scope. You could also estimate scope and schedule to arrive at resources. In general, though, business is most often concerned with &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; a project can be delivered, so time and effort often make the most sense as primary estimation techniques. That doesn't mean they're the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; approach, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some queue- or cycle-based methodologies don't entail unit-based estimation at all. For example, while Kanban often provides many metrics that can be useful for tracking, release planning, and process improvement, individual work items are never explicitly estimated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Various types of work (e.g. support or maintenance) are often unestimated at the unit level as well. You might express such work as a queue, a circular buffer, or a bucket, but ultimately these are all just ways to plan or budget work at the macro level rather than at the unit-of-work level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Parting Thoughts&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to avoid estimates altogether, you might look at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://ronjeffries.com/xprog/articles/the-noestimates-movement/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;#NoEstimates movement&lt;/a&gt;. However, Ron Jeffries has some interesting thoughts on that, which I think are required reading before you jump on that particular bandwagon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to evaluate and control your project within &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; basic parameters, and time &amp;amp; effort are two of the most common. If you want to move away from estimating man-hours or level-of-effort, you certainly can. However, I'd spend some time carefully evaluating your business case for doing so. That might help you discover a better metric, or help you uncover an X/Y problem that is driving the search for an alternative. Either way, taking the time to introspect your assumptions and your process is generally time well spent!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-01-12T16:18:02.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23276" CreationDate="2018-01-12T16:18:12.563" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Function Points (FP) is a good unit of measure for software output&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are practicing Scrum, you should go with story points. The reasons are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time-based estimates (such as hours) give a false impression of accuracy and predictability to people outside of the team, especially senior management.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People are better at relative estimation (story points) than at absolute estimation (such as hours).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, let me try to answer your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now we estimate in hours/days, but we would like to change this...&#xA;  Are there any alternatives besides story points / velocity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In mature industries, high-level estimates are made based on output:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can get an estimate for how much an office building will cost per square foot.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can get an estimate for how much a unit of energy will cost for a power utility.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though Scrum Guide doesn't mention story points, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scruminc.com/story-points-why-are-they-better-than/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jeff Sutherland, the co-founder of Scrum is a big proponent of story points&lt;/a&gt;. One of the biggest weaknesses of Scrum is that there are some unit of measures for the effort input, but there isn't a unit of measure for the result output.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are well established organizations, standards, tools and certifications for Function Point, which is a measure of the output:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Organizations&lt;/strong&gt;: in the US, it is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ifpug.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;IFPUG International Function Point Users Group&lt;/a&gt; and in Europe &lt;a href=&quot;https://nesma.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NESMA&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fisma.fi/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FISMA Finnish Software Measurement Association&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Standards&lt;/strong&gt;: You can see the ISO/IEC standards listed in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Function_point&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia Function Point page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tools&lt;/strong&gt;: There are some tools available to automate FP counting to some extent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Certification&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ifpug.org/certification/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;IFPUG offers Certified Function Point Practitioner (CFPP) / Certified Function Point Specialist (CFPS)&lt;/a&gt;, for example and there are others. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2018-01-19T14:55:26.090" LastActivityDate="2018-01-19T14:55:26.090" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23276" CreationDate="2018-01-12T17:16:18.337" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No Estimates&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a fairly strong movements against the creation of estimates. Contrary to the name, this doesn't mean no estimating, just that you don't create and publish estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How It Works&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the team should settle on an &quot;averaged&quot; sized story. You'd use a guideline like &quot;We should be able to do 5 - 8 of these stories in a sprint.&quot; It helps to have 2 or 3 examples of past items that are around this size. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that you have a rough target size, you break down items that are bigger than that until they match near the size. The idea here is that this processes of estimating to size will drive out the beneficial conversations in the team that creating estimates does, but since there are no resulting estimate numbers, it avoids many of the dysfunctions and problems than can come from publishing estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The good news for Product Owners and stakeholders is that forecasting is still easy. If the team is completing 5 - 8 backlog items per sprint on average, you can take a good guess at how many sprints it will take to get to a certain spot in the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-01-12T17:16:18.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23282" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2018-01-12T18:09:54.973" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Granularity&quot; in project management typically refers to the scale or level of detail used for planning or work products, including work breakdown structures (WBS), user stories, or specifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-01-12T18:09:54.973" LastActivityDate="2018-01-12T18:09:54.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23283" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2018-01-12T18:09:54.973" Score="0" Body="For questions about the aggregation or decomposition of planning &amp; work artifacts." OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-01-12T18:09:54.973" LastActivityDate="2018-01-12T18:09:54.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23275" CreationDate="2018-01-13T03:56:27.513" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Outlook Journal can be used for  time management and project tracking&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a good article on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/track-emails-phonecalls-and-tasks-with-outlook-journal/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;how to use Outlook Journal for time tracking&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;From inside the journal entry, you can also quickly kick off any other Outlook app like an email message, an appointment, a new task and more.  In other words, this actually makes the Journal tool the best project management center for each of the projects you might be working on at your job. What better way to keep track of the overall hours you’ve spent on each project, plus have the ability to tie all of your activities like tasks, email messages and more, directly to the project record?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Just share out the Journal to your boss, and he or she can quickly monitor your progress and how much time you’re devoting to the project, without the need to keep pestering you about what you’re working on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And another article &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.itworld.com/article/2714516/consumerization/use-outlook-as-an-automatic-time-tracking-tool.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;describing other features of Outlook Journal&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can set it to automatically log all task requests, emails, and meeting requests--from specific contacts or all of them. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you enable tracking on Office documents, you'll get a log of every time you work on Word, Excel, and/or PowerPoint documents--with the times and names of the docs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looks like &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Where-is-Journal-cf2a758b-8a9b-494a-a063-36254c428335&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Microsoft made it harder to find this feature in Outlook 2013 and 2016&lt;/a&gt;. In order to find it, here is what you have to do: &quot;On the Navigation Bar, click  Navigation Bar ellipses &gt; Folders &gt; Journal. (Or just press Ctrl+8).&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2018-01-13T03:56:27.513" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23275" CreationDate="2018-01-13T20:07:52.257" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the explanation given in comments, the request is for a simple list of project related emails with the following info&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Subject&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Date&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this purpose, firstly there must be a way to select which emails are to be reported, and which not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That can be done in at least two ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Categories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Folder(s)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Categories are useful if you do not want to move emails to a different folder every time, and it can be a matter of select and click. Or it can be automated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the emails are designated using category assignment or folder, a VBA macro can be written to get specific fields and write them to a file. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is how I would do it, if a ready to use add-on is not readily available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’d also try to learn How the other project managers in your company/organization deal with this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here’s a link to VBA related site: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.outlookcode.com/article.aspx?id=40&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16715" LastActivityDate="2018-01-13T20:07:52.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18100" CreationDate="2018-01-14T13:42:27.003" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would rephrase your question like this: &quot;we are few people in a ship and none of us is qualified to be a captain. How should we navigate the ship - let the kitchen staff do it or have us all participate by majority vote?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the right answer lies outside the two options you're suggesting. You must either hire an external expert or train (one of) yourselves in that job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4551" LastActivityDate="2018-01-14T13:42:27.003" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18646" CreationDate="2018-01-14T14:35:12.497" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quite tricky question given that MVP depends on what users might like or not in a product which does not exist yet. We are playing with the future, that is, we do not have hard data at the moment to base our decision on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that case, we could research case studies of the past, closest to your value proposition intentions. Let's say you are after an MVP for a flying car. You must ask yourself: what similar product developments have we seen in the past in terms of target audience, industry, projected price, positioning, presumed innovation adoption curve, etc? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you come up with a few suggestions, you can start thinking about them &quot;back in time&quot; - if you were to develop them back in time (with your present knowledge about them), what would you strip away so as to reach the basic stage of an MVP?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such speculations would not give you a straightforward answer, but they might inspire your creativity on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, strive to make your MVP as flexible to modify as possible. This would allow you to respond to market feedback. Mind you this is counter-intuitive - usually by MVP we understand a stripped-down version (which also means cheapest one) and not most flexible one (which may come quite expensive).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4551" LastActivityDate="2018-01-14T14:35:12.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18100" CreationDate="2018-01-14T16:04:20.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;&quot;Final Say&quot; is a Business Decision; Consult the Framework or Charter&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is is better for product or the engineers to have the final say for UX/design decisions? Or should it be a majority vote?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is: &quot;Neither. Both. It depends.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your underlying assumption seems to be that authority for making decisions rests on expertise in UX or product design, but it doesn't! Decision-making authority is delegated &lt;em&gt;by the business&lt;/em&gt;, and the way this authority is delegated is usually spelled out in the project charter, corporate governance documents, or inherent in the project methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in a Scrum project the Product Owner (PO) would define an objective such as a login screen as a Product Backlog Item (PBI), and the Scrum Team would then collaboratively decide on how to implement it. In Scrum, this would be true whether or not there was a dedicated UX resource on the team. Other frameworks will delegate responsibility differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our team doesn't have a dedicated UX/design employee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may or may not need one. There's nothing wrong with having cross-functional teams with shared responsibilities, and formal UX may not even be part of your project's critical path. However, if specific expertise needed to successfully delivery the project is lacking, then this is a process issue that should be made visible to senior management so that they can address it or accept the associated project risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-01-14T16:04:20.063" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23272" CreationDate="2018-01-15T01:58:47.267" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer: &lt;strong&gt;smaller &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/agile/jira-agile-user-s-guide/using-a-board/using-reports/viewing-the-control-chart&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;blue area on a control chart&lt;/a&gt; means easier forecasting on that project&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;blue area in the JIRA control chart, is the standard deviation&lt;/strong&gt;. Standard deviation is a key concept in statistics.  JIRA calculates the standard deviation itself, among a few methodologies that can have been used, JIRA decided that an &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftwarecloud/comparing-different-methods-of-calculating-the-rolling-average-on-the-control-chart-777002680.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;approach derived from tasks is better&lt;/a&gt; than methodologies derived from time. To put it simply, it is calculated by using groupings of 20 tasks. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;lower the standard deviation&lt;/strong&gt;, the less the team deviates from its &quot;rolling average&quot;, and the &lt;strong&gt;more predictable team performance&lt;/strong&gt; on that point of time. This means accurate forecasts while standard deviation/blue area is low/small. While the opposite, high and/or inconsistent standard deviation from its rolling average means that any forecast should be deemed unreliable, a stretched goal at best. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A large standard deviation to the rolling average - could represent inconsistent productivity but this is not necessarily the case. The methodology that JIRA uses to calculate it (see my first point) could be grouping &quot;pears and apples&quot; that would make productivity analysis void.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31053" LastEditorUserId="31053" LastEditDate="2018-01-15T02:35:43.060" LastActivityDate="2018-01-15T02:35:43.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23292" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-01-15T12:21:08.967" Score="0" ViewCount="134" Body="&lt;p&gt;Situation: My company is using external developers. These developers are working in a Scrum setting with a delivery manager to manage the communication with us. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team is very satisfied with the use of Jira. All estimates and hours spent are tracked which makes the (outsourcing) scenario very transparent. What isn't transparent are the hours spent on (scrum) meetings, hours of the delivery manager and other related activities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best practice to keep track of these kind of activities? I can imagine a situation where we possibly create separate 'user stories' to track these hours, but looking for a better solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30976" LastEditorUserId="30976" LastEditDate="2018-01-15T16:40:20.647" LastActivityDate="2018-01-17T23:46:21.553" Title="Best practice for tracking management activities" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;timekeeping&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23268" CreationDate="2018-01-15T13:25:57.433" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;, especially the expectations for the role of &lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-po&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Product Owner&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the product resulting from work of the Development Team. How this is done may vary widely across organizations, Scrum Teams, and individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; a Product Owner who does not have domain or market knowledge and experience is key.  Who is responsible for assisting the Product Owner?  For one, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-sm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Master&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master serves the Product Owner in several ways, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensuring the Product Owner knows how to arrange the Product Backlog to maximize value&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not, and should not, exclude the Development Team and others from assisting.  However, the effort cannot grind to a halt.  The &lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#values&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;value&lt;/a&gt; of Focus should be kept in mind: the Development Team should continue to provide valuable increments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just as when any other Scrum Team member is added, work together to integrate them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-01-15T13:25:57.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23294" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23297" CreationDate="2018-01-15T13:47:26.333" Score="-1" ViewCount="829" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/strong&gt; We use rule-oriented and scenario-oriented acceptance criteria for test definition and clarity. Is this OK?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am seeing more and more descriptions of stories where the user scenarios or bullet pointed acceptance criteria are used, but not both. E.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://medium.freecodecamp.org/the-acceptance-criteria-for-writing-acceptance-criteria-6eae9d497814&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://medium.freecodecamp.org/the-acceptance-criteria-for-writing-acceptance-criteria-6eae9d497814&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://rubygarage.org/blog/clear-acceptance-criteria-and-why-its-important&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://rubygarage.org/blog/clear-acceptance-criteria-and-why-its-important&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use the scenarios to define what is required as functional change and for automated test definitions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use bullet pointed acceptance criteria to define yes/no human pass/fail conditions in as concise terminology as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having read &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/20846/should-i-specify-user-story-acceptance-criteria-in-given-when-then-format-or-che&quot;&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt; I would like to know if it is appropriate to use both acceptance criteria and Scenarios in the same Behaviour-Driven Development stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do it this way (as the Scrum Master) because it is how I was raised (in Agile) though I admit to finding difficulty in describing 'how to write bullet acceptance criteria' for my team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29374" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-01-15T21:04:19.913" LastActivityDate="2018-01-15T21:04:19.913" Title="Using acceptance criteria and scenarios with BDD" Tags="&lt;acceptance-criteria&gt;&lt;bdd&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23292" CreationDate="2018-01-15T16:56:39.133" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum, &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;by definition&lt;/a&gt; should afford full transparency into the amount of time participants spend in meetings.  Meetings or &quot;rituals&quot; are practiced once per Sprint; time-bound; and ideally scheduled to occur at the same time each Sprint.  A major benefit of Scrum is that it removes the need for meetings beyond the Scrum process.  Make sure the Scrum process accounts for ALL (100%) of the time your team spends meeting about your project or account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to inspect the productivity of the meetings is to attend them yourself.  If some of the activities practiced there are wasteful, suggest a change to the delivery manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Measure the performance of the delivery manager separately from the engineering team.  Hold this manager accountable to demonstrate improvements in efficiency, velocity, and software quality.  This manager should present you with a strategy for how these improvements are being sequenced, and should summarize risks or limitations putting a ceiling on their ability to enact productivity improvements.  It may help to focus on results achieved, rather than number of hours worked, or tasks performed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31150" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-01-15T17:04:28.527" LastActivityDate="2018-01-15T17:04:28.527" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18100" CreationDate="2018-01-15T17:57:06.940" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some open variables in here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How big is the product value based on its design/UX attributions?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How &quot;sexy&quot; is the product? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general (specially if the answer is &quot;low&quot; for the previous questions) I would say the PO/PM should make these definitions. Some of these definitions will even be easy to make as some business requirements rely on UX/Design definitions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, a wise PO would &lt;strong&gt;ask for inputs of his teammates&lt;/strong&gt; who have a deeper (or even some) knowledge/experience with UX. &#xA;Also, the company and/or the team should definitely find some qualification on that skill as this need probably won't disappear :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31044" LastActivityDate="2018-01-15T17:57:06.940" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23294" CreationDate="2018-01-15T20:58:51.563" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL;DR; Use what gives you value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many approaches including Acceptance Test-Driven Development (ATDD), Behavior-driven Development (BDD), and more broadly, Spec by Example, all use types of executable scenarios to address the same problem as Acceptance Criteria. (There's some academic debate on if calling these scenarios AC is appropriate, but I don't think it matters much practically). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, most teams using one of these approaches find that all necessary details can be expressed by a scenario. However, I have seen plenty of times where a particular need is in the scenarios but is unclear and so expressly stating it in a short statement adds clarity. Nothing about user stories counters this practice. In fact, I'd say it is well within the intent of User Stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only word of caution I'd give is this: User Stories are intended to facilitate a conversation. If scenarios or acceptance criteria are being used to make sure that the &quot;requirements&quot; are perfectly clear so they can be passed off to the team without further conversation, this would be a pretty strong anti-pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-01-15T20:58:51.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23298" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-01-16T00:14:30.437" Score="-2" ViewCount="66" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been in project management in IT for the last 10 years and I came from industry experience as a domain/subject matter expert. I did PMP and Agile Certification but of late I am experiencing comments from my team and recruiters that I am not technical Project Manager.  I do not have any technical qualification as such other than domain certifications with an academic doctorate.  I am in mid forties and not sure what technology to learn now to keep up in the job market for 10 more years. I understand the importance of technical knowledge in project management, client interaction, issue resolution and team communication in estimations but not sure where to start.  Please suggest some specific course/training to increase my chances of employment.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31154" LastActivityDate="2018-01-16T06:51:46.420" Title="What specific technology should I learn?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2018-01-16T16:22:37.953" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23298" CreationDate="2018-01-16T06:51:46.420" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can understand your situation. I would suggest you to understand the technical stack that is being implemented in your current project. As a technical project manager, the management and the team would expect you to help the team during the Design, Estimation, and during the Support phase. This is because this is where your technical expertise would be of help to them. However, when you receive comments from your team, understand their expectation. Do not fret. It happens. They would not know many things that you know. So, be happy.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the reason why I am suggesting you to enlist the entire technical stack of your current project and arrive at the distribution of technology. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next step is to find the best resource(s) available in the public domain that would help you gear up. There are lot many tutorial websites or boot-camps that either free or commercial that could help you achieve your goal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not lose your confidence and at the same time, apply all your interpersonal skills to keep going. It will help you in the long run. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen many project managers sail smoothly only by applying their interpersonal skills. Sharpen your soft skills. Remember, never lose your confidence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22293" LastActivityDate="2018-01-16T06:51:46.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23275" CreationDate="2018-01-16T08:09:05.327" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming you need to generate list of who, when, subject line, etc. I would recommend that you start playing the View options in Outlook. There are a lot of ways to approximate a spreadsheet view and then export that list to another format. It's a menu that is easily overlooked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2018-01-16T08:09:05.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23301" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-01-16T12:21:46.167" Score="1" ViewCount="127" Body="&lt;p&gt;A large organisation is undertaking an agile transformation. There is good engagement from the senior management team and external agile coaches were hired to support the adoption of agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One agile coach, whilst taking a few teams to coach, realized that the consistency of the team is 80% (consultancy name here) employees and 20% permanent employees. The consultancy has been called to roll out a SalesForce implementation, they have their own waterfall agenda (resources, cross team dependencies, status reporting meetings etc) with no interest in embracing transformation themselves, and maybe fairly so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think these teams can't go very far as far as agile adoption/coaching goes, and they wouldn't need to anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does one circumvent the fact that the teams he opted to coach consist mostly of external consultants?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5522" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-01-17T17:11:27.017" LastActivityDate="2018-01-17T18:13:03.027" Title="How to avoid training external consultants who hold a different agenda?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;&lt;external-project-members&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23303" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-01-16T23:57:07.703" Score="0" ViewCount="1369" Body="&lt;p&gt;So in an interview recently I had a company ask me to estimate how many user stories my team used per project on average. I had no idea how to answer this. Is there an average out there or an answer? Technically couldn't the answer be anywhere from 1 - infinite? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27415" LastActivityDate="2018-01-18T18:43:29.263" Title="How many user stories per project?" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23301" CreationDate="2018-01-17T09:41:46.900" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile is a team-based approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't believe there is any way you can selectively coach or in any way differentiate between team members and still have a successful Agile working environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is important that the rules of engagement of the consultancy are set correctly. There needs to be a clear understanding that every team member is expected to follow the Agile approach and to work in a collaborative fashion with the Agile Coaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation would be to get the consultancy management into a meeting with the Agile Coaches and your organisation's senior management. Get a the terms of engagement clearly defined so that nobody is in doubt of what behaviour is expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2018-01-17T18:13:03.027" LastActivityDate="2018-01-17T18:13:03.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23301" CreationDate="2018-01-17T14:12:54.883" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it matters how the consultants are contracted for work.  If they are contracted as time and materials and are more staff extension, then a team is a team is a team.  If they are contracted to deliver a scope of work under a proposed and purchased method, then training them in anything is inconsistent with that kind of set up.  Moreover, if their methods are inconsistent with the transformation you are seeking, then you have a change management obstacle that will inhibit or even disrupt your success.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-01-17T14:12:54.883" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23303" CreationDate="2018-01-17T14:47:41.560" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The interviewer was asking &lt;strong&gt;for your experience&lt;/strong&gt;. There is no correct answer. A pretty normal answer might be &quot;oh, I never calculated averages, but I think the smallest project was about 10 while the largest had a few hundred&quot;. Maybe sprinkle in some anecdotes about the 10 turned out to be too few and the hundreds turned out unmanageable. Or anything indicating you have &lt;em&gt;experience&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But again: there is no correct answer. There is only one &lt;em&gt;wrong&lt;/em&gt; answer, and that is &quot;I don't know, I have to ask others.&quot; I mean, were you &lt;em&gt;there&lt;/em&gt; in the projects you supposedly did? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would you think of a car salesman that when asked what the average price of cars he sold up to now was, then turned to the internet community asking &quot;hey guys, what do cars normally go for?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would prepare for more interviews and make sure you indicate very clearly how much experience you have. And if you indicate you have any, make sure you can back it up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry, there is no direct answer to your question here, because we cannot possibly know what &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; average is and there is no target you could go for. Just tell it like it is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2018-01-17T14:47:41.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23301" CreationDate="2018-01-17T14:48:07.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This shouldn't be a coaching question. The real focus should be on how to effectively collaborate with your vendor as a business entity and with their people. It's likely that some critical step was missed when chartering this project, and those initial assumptions should be carefully reviewed to ensure that the project itself is operating as intended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How to Proceed&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How does one circumvent the fact that the teams he opted to coach consist mostly of external consultants?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is likely to be a problem with the way your company is composing or managing &quot;teams.&quot; Teams aren't just gaggles of people thrown together; a team must be composed of people with common goals and a compatible working style. Just because you have both internal and external resources allocated towards the same objective doesn't make them a team; on the other hand, using outside resources doesn't inherently &lt;em&gt;prevent&lt;/em&gt; teaming, either!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The underlying X/Y problem isn't about agility, or the lack of it. The primary questions should be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who is &lt;em&gt;managing&lt;/em&gt; the outside consultants or the engagement within your organization?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who is &lt;em&gt;responsible&lt;/em&gt; for meeting the project's key objectives?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are the goals of the consultancy and your company's management team contractually or pragmatically &lt;em&gt;aligned&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Embedding your internal resources onto a vendor's team is fine, but doesn't give your organization any control over day-to-day processes. Likewise, bringing in a consultancy to deliver a service doesn't obligate them to follow your internal processes unless it's specified in the contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your company isn't powerless. The golden rule is &quot;He who has the gold makes the rules.&quot; If you want a different process or a different organizational or contractual structure with your vendors, you can do that. That's not a question of training or not training them, though; it's a much more complex issue of &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; you engage with a vendor, and what &lt;em&gt;controls&lt;/em&gt; you put in place to manage the processes and outcomes for a particular project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you spin your collective wheels on the training issue, step back and ask &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; you want these teams to be agile. If they're supposed to be internally-managed teams supported by embedded resources, and if &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; the project integrates within the overall organization intrinsically matters, then by all means inspect-and-adapt your team management and process framework. Otherwise, you're probably &lt;strong&gt;focusing too much on process and not enough on goals or outcomes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-01-17T14:53:31.690" LastActivityDate="2018-01-17T14:53:31.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23303" CreationDate="2018-01-17T15:55:22.267" Score="-1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I had a company ask me to estimate how many user stories my team used per project on average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that the interviewer wasn't clueless or looking for some oddball answer that &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; thought was canonical, the question was a Bad Interview Question&amp;trade;, and probably asked poorly without sufficient context. However, as a project manager, one often has to deal with X/Y problems like this and dig down to the real underlying questions to ensure a project succeeds. That indicates that this was (deliberately or not) a &quot;thought process&quot; question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, any question based on past data has an answer that can be calculated. While there's no right answer to how many stories a project &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; have, it's possible to answer how many stories a project (or set of projects) &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; have. If if asked for a historical data you might use the following formulae:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;iterations * velocity = completed story count per project&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  sum(story counts) / projects = mean of stories completed per project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See the Recommendations section for how you might use the formula within the interview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;General Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The generally-accepted definition of a project contains no universal minimum or maximum for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;run-times,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;features,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;milestones, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;work packages.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A company &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; create its own definitions to differentiate internally between routine operations, projects, programs, and initiatives, but there's certainly no universal benchmark metric for how many iterations will be required to meet an arbitrary objective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, the pragmatic answer is &quot;it depends.&quot; A project should take as much time, effort, and resources as needed to meet it's objectives, and no more. But until you &lt;em&gt;define&lt;/em&gt; the objectives, and estimate what's required to meet the objectives, you can't answer such questions without digging deeper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;User Story Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User stories aren't specifications; pragmatically, you should think of them as collaborative shorthand for additional conversations. Even if you know what the goals of a project are, and what resources are available to the project, the user stories required to deliver the project will be idiosyncratic to the people working together on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How many epics, themes, stories, or tasks are needed to deliver a project? It depends. The only possible answer here is that a user story should be granular enough to fit within a single iteration. You might have one user story per iteration, or many. You may be able to roll up related user stories to themes, or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a truly agile perspective, the total number of stories for a project is actually irrelevant. The point of the project is to deliver a product. The point of an iteration is to deliver an increment of work. The point of a user story is to help a team collaborate on an aspect of the increment of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST mnemonic&lt;/a&gt; helps a team to decompose work into the proper level of granularity to form an effective user story, but in no way constrains the number of stories. The granularity of stories certainly has an impact on how many stories there are, but granularity too is all about right-sizing. A story should be as small as it needs to be to fit within a single iteration, but as big as it can be to carry maximum utility to the project or team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Recommendations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When asked this sort of question, treat it as an opportunity to exhibit critical thinking skills or to share your professional experience. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain why the question can't be answered the way it was asked, and suggest alternative ways to look at the problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask questions that add context and detail sufficient to answer the question in a more useful way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define your own set of assumptions, make them explicit, and then provide your answer within that context.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide a working definition from your past professional experience, and then walk them through how it applied.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a concrete example, you might try to answer the question asked by saying something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The typical project when I worked at Company X averaged &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; iterations per project, with a typical velocity of &lt;em&gt;V&lt;/em&gt;. I managed &lt;em&gt;P&lt;/em&gt; projects, so that means my average project had an average of &lt;code&gt;SUM(I*V) / P&lt;/code&gt; user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, you might point out that the number of user stories planned or completed has nothing to do with the eventual outcome of the project, and suggest some better metrics or ask more questions about what the interviewer is really trying to learn from your answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, an interview is either a conversation (which is good) or a thoroughly subjective essay test (which is less good). If it's the former, show your skills by having the conversation the way you would on the job. If the latter, do your best to influence the outcome, but realize that in the end you can't guess what's in someone's mind, nor can you truly control whether you and the interviewer are fully aligned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-01-18T18:43:29.263" LastActivityDate="2018-01-18T18:43:29.263" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23309" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23326" CreationDate="2018-01-17T21:30:35.123" Score="4" ViewCount="1969" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tend to think they do as long as the scope is variable and not fixed where the idea is to deliver value based on the time you have. Am I correct in my assumption?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2018-01-20T18:40:55.560" Title="Do deadlines exist in agile projects?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23309" CreationDate="2018-01-17T21:46:21.987" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sure.  Deadlines are simply one type of finish line.  With agile software development there are many possible finish lines: scope, time, money, value, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://agilemanifesto.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31177" LastActivityDate="2018-01-17T21:46:21.987" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23309" CreationDate="2018-01-17T22:40:42.573" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do deadlines exist in agile projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes and no. A lot depends on your framework, and on your team's accepted definition of &lt;em&gt;deadline&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What is a Deadline?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Historically, the term &quot;deadline&quot; was literally a line beyond which prisoners would be shot. In business, a deadline is both an expected delivery date and the point at which Bad Things™ are expected to happen if that delivery date hasn't been met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hard deadlines (as opposed to arbitrary targets) often result in lost business, lost revenue, lost jobs, or other unhappy results. However, a generic deadline is any time or date by which something is supposed to be completed. The problem is really when a process doesn't differentiate between the two uses of the term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Deadlines as Delivery Targets&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum uses time boxing, and you could certainly consider the end of each Sprint a deadline by which something ought to be done. Dependencies within a Sprint and between tasks also generate deadlines. While a team may miss its forecast or fail to meet a Sprint Goal, this should be considered more of a learning experience and an opportunity for process improvement than a traditional Bad Thing™.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other agile frameworks such as Kanban aren't driven by time boxes. An incomplete task in Kanban is either waiting, running, or paused; while people certainly have expectations about how long a typical job may take, this is usually a schedule forecast based on past performance rather than using the targeted delivery dates often referred to as &quot;deadlines.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general agile practice of decomposing stories into tasks of 1/2 to 2 days in length can also create deadlines, but this is more of a guideline than a hard requirement of any particular framework. I'd call that completion target more of an expectation than a hard deadline, but others might argue with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Semantics Matter&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a reason practitioners of frameworks like Scrum use terms like &lt;em&gt;time box&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;iteration&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;forecast&lt;/em&gt; rather than loaded (and often overloaded) terms like &lt;em&gt;deadline&lt;/em&gt;. While the word deadline isn't wrong, it often carries a connotation of &quot;or else&quot; that isn't really aligned with agile principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find yourself using the term &lt;em&gt;deadline&lt;/em&gt; in an agile context to identify expectations or consequences for the project, you may want to take a closer look at how you're communicating about the process. From a purely definitional point of view, though, some agile frameworks like Scrum do have firm deadlines (primarily at iteration boundaries), while others like Kanban do not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-01-18T18:40:47.420" LastActivityDate="2018-01-18T18:40:47.420" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23292" CreationDate="2018-01-17T23:46:21.553" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the methodology or project management approach you use, you always tailor processes to the needs of organisation and project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tracking time spent on meetings, communication and a thousand little things is most often a mission impossible. In these cases, I usually asked teams to keep a log of their activities throughout the day. This way I could balance the need for time tracking vs time lost on tracking the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31034" LastActivityDate="2018-01-17T23:46:21.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23315" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-01-18T15:57:52.977" Score="2" ViewCount="113" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr I'm looking for an agile project management methodology for largely single developer hardware engineering&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some background:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm currently finishing up my degree in Electrical Engineering, and will be doing a project for my thesis. The uni is very strict about proper project management, though you are free to use any methodology of your choosing as long as it's well-documented/structured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The company I work at and will be graduating at is very agile-oriented and works heavily using iterative methods. Normally Scrum would be the way to go, but for my final thesis I'm expected by the university to work largely on my own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most agile methods are very heavily dependent on teamwork, and don't seem to function well for teams under 3, let alone 1. The few I can find are very heavily software-oriented and don't appear to apply well to hardware development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of any hardware project management methods that cater well to smaller teams?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31186" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-01-18T17:31:07.263" LastActivityDate="2018-01-18T18:20:49.137" Title="Agile methods for single person hardware development" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23309" CreationDate="2018-01-18T16:44:47.210" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, not necessarily. The scope is fixed for almost all of the software development projects. Only in certain cases it might change due to regulatory requirements. Otherwise it is fixed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note, not capturing the relevant user story during the session (thinking it can be done later) is a different issue altogether. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the industrial and research and development related projects, the scope can be variable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Irrespective, the schedule deadline is either 30 days or two weeks known as Sprint cycle. This means, decomposing into units and working towards the deadline is the key. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22293" LastActivityDate="2018-01-18T16:44:47.210" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23315" CreationDate="2018-01-18T17:20:43.143" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you say is certainly true for Scrum. It would not be possible to use the Scrum framework without a team and many practices in Scrum primarily deliver value when the whole framework is in place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is not to say, however, that you couldn't use many practices from Scrum. For example, you could put work items in a backlog, work in sprints at the end of which you have a shippable product iteration, and even conduct sprint reviews with some stakeholder if your professor will help on that front. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;XP&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like Scrum, this is not effective without a team. However, also like Scrum, there are many practices that come from XP that you may find useful. Some of those practices include User Stories, Test-first approaches, and continuous integration. On the other hand, pair programming is a required practice that you couldn't fulfill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Kanban&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While not strictly a method or strictly agile, Kanban puts structure around your existing process to enable effective improvement and creates a high level of visibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not clear from your question if you must use a well-established methodology or framework exactly as it is documented - I'm not sure how you'd even use PMI's approach to the letter with only one person - but if they are simply asking that are clear and document how you approach the project, then there is a lot to be leveraged in these different approaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastEditorUserId="7944" LastEditDate="2018-01-18T18:20:49.137" LastActivityDate="2018-01-18T18:20:49.137" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23309" CreationDate="2018-01-19T00:36:33.577" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/23312/21039&quot;&gt;Todd Jacobs wrote an excellent answer&lt;/a&gt;, but I feel he missed an important type of Agile project where deadlines definitely exist. The ones where there is a deadline, but the scope is variable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is common on research projects that are being drip funded. For example, I joined a team at the beginning of November. We had exactly two months to accomplish as much as we could. At the end of that time, our progress was evaluated. If it looked like the project would be feasible, we would be extended for another few months. If the team, and the check writers, felt it was worth while to continue, we would. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We were extended another 3 months and will repeat the evaluation at the end of March. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, the idea is to set a fixed budget and accomplish as much as possible with that budget. When the budget is gone, the project is done. (Unless someone decides it’s worthwhile to allocate more budget.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastActivityDate="2018-01-19T00:36:33.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23322" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-01-20T07:46:07.787" Score="0" ViewCount="52" Body="&lt;p&gt;There was an interesting quote I read a long time ago that went something like this (It was more like a rule, let's call it the X rule):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The X rule: everyone will underestimate the task assigned to them, even if they are aware of the X rule. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the X rule: A task will always take longer than you think it will take, even if you are aware of the X rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any idea what the exact quote is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23022" LastActivityDate="2018-01-20T07:49:14.240" Title="A recursive quote/rule about underestimating tasks" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23322" CreationDate="2018-01-20T07:49:14.240" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;ah got it, it's &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstadter%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hofstadter's law&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23022" LastActivityDate="2018-01-20T07:49:14.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14524" CreationDate="2018-01-20T18:13:54.730" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think our answer must consider the chronology of a project, and how these concepts relate (in particular how they feed into one another). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By my understanding there are 3 important concepts that need to be developed in sequence: the mandate, the specific targets, and finally the work we will do to achieve them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;My take on Mark C Wallace's Smithsonian example:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Charter - High-level concept, mandate, mission statement, broad boundaries&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;&lt;em&gt;Example: Preserve, maintain, and display artifacts&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Requirements - The specific targets to be fulfilled&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Example: Photosensitive materials must be protected; Environmental humidity must be maintained &amp;amp; monitored; Maintenance costs shall be minimised&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scope - The work we plan to do to fulfil the requirements.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Example: Develop cleaning processes; Build workshop; Procure protective cases; Perform preventative maintenance&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23971" LastActivityDate="2018-01-20T18:13:54.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23276" CreationDate="2018-01-20T18:18:02.027" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Montecarlo simulations&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea's pretty simple. Your stories over the previous weeks will have some kind of distribution as to how long they each took. Let's say that the stories took this number of days each until the next story was finished:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;3, 2, 5, 4, 1, 2, 3, 10, ...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These often follow something called a &lt;em&gt;Weibull&lt;/em&gt; distribution, which is skewed towards a big, fat tail since most discoveries slow you down more than they speed you up. (Human intuition tends to assume a normal distribution, which is one of the reasons we're usually optimistic.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes though these distributions are bimodal (there's some legacy system that slows down every story that touches it, for instance) or just plain messy (nobody checks in on a Friday because they don't want to break the build). The good thing about Montecarlo simulations is... it doesn't matter! It works regardless of what your distribution is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way you do it is to calculate a random journey through the stories you have left, and find when that journey finishes. So let's say I reckon I have 60 stories left. For each story, I'm going to pick how long it took between stories  &lt;em&gt;randomly&lt;/em&gt; from your distribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1, 5, 4, 10, 3, 2, 10, 2, 5...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you keep doing this until all 60 stories are done. Now add the number of days it took to the starting date...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and then do it again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do it 1000 times or more (yes, you'll need software for this, or a specialized spreadsheet). It doesn't matter if that weird &quot;10&quot; gets picked twice because that won't happen for every journey; some will be strangely slow, but most will be faster. Record the end-dates for each journey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you have something more than an estimate. You have a &lt;em&gt;probabalistic forecast&lt;/em&gt;. So if I start on 1st January 2018, I might get something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;100%    10-04-2018&#xA;95%     03-04-2018&#xA;90%     29-03-2018&#xA;85%     25-03-2018&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each one of those dates shows what percentage of the journeys you took finished by that date. This gives you an idea of the &lt;em&gt;probability&lt;/em&gt; of hitting any given date with all the stories. Alternatively, you can see how many stories you get done by a given date, just counting until the date is reached.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people are really optimistic when they estimate, and you're lucky if you even hit 50% of journeys finishing by that date! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Troy Magennis of Focused Objective has &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/focusedobjective&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;free spreadsheets&lt;/a&gt; for things like this, and Dan Vacanti at &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.actionableagile.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Actionable Agile's&lt;/a&gt; tool is cheap enough and IMO excellent. Both of them also have numerous videos talking about the technique. I also have &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/lunivore/montecarluni&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an open source project&lt;/a&gt; that has no validation yet but works well enough for importing Excel spreadsheets, including exports from Jira.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Troy recommends between 7 and 25 weeks' worth of data to get this to work; more than that is usually out-of-date. Do bear seasonal patterns in mind, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Probabalistic Estimates&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to go through the hassle of Montecarlo, but you do want the probability distribution, a technique I learned from Douglas Hubbard, author of &quot;How to measure anything&quot;, might help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask the team to give me an idea of when they think they'll ship. Usually they'll be really optimistic, so if it's early January they'll say &quot;End of April&quot;, or something like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I ask them how likely they are to ship then. &quot;Oh, 70%,&quot; they tell me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I offer them a hypothetical prize of £10,000 and two different ways to win it. They can either choose a red marble from a bag containing 7 red and 3 white marbles, or they can ship by the end of April.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They usually go for the marbles; despite saying they're 70% certain to ship, they prefer the chances of drawing 7 out of 10 marbles!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we reduce the number of marbles in our hypothetical bag until they prefer to ship. That tells us what their real confidence levels are. By doing this with different numbers of marbles, we can get a range of different confidence levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to use these&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're dependent on the shipping date in any way, don't use anything less than 85% confidence. That's usually way out compared to most people's estimates. As the date gets closer you'll be able to see if you're going to make it or not, and you will still have a chance to expedite things or shift other dependencies if required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the business will &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; be happy... until they start seeing the time saved by not estimating in easily-gameable story points, and by not having to redo a ton of plans based on something that was never going to happen anyway. You might need to do a bit of education or navigate tricky politics until they accept reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2018-01-20T18:27:14.907" LastActivityDate="2018-01-20T18:27:14.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23309" CreationDate="2018-01-20T18:40:55.560" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think of a deadline as a date for which, if you miss it, an opportunity (or a person, or a project, or an organization) dies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, we once had to get a newspaper site's galleries ready in time for the Oscars. Failure to do so would have meant we missed our opportunity to put up pictures of the stars in their beautiful clothes. The Oscars wasn't moving for us! Similar deadlines I've encountered are Christmas, summer sales, and the end of the academic year / exam marking deadlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In these situations, scope needs to be flexible; whatever is ready in time gets shipped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, a lot of companies seem to also have something I call &lt;em&gt;sadlines&lt;/em&gt;. These have often been created around estimated scope, with or without development team involvement. Nothing and nobody will die, but if you miss them, someone will be &lt;em&gt;sad&lt;/em&gt;. Their reputation is at stake, or dependencies within the organization have been managed around them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bizarrely, people tend to behave very pragmatically around deadlines in a way that they don't around sadlines. The appearance of meeting a sadline is often more important to sponsors and stakeholders than actually shipping something valuable or high-quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At that point you'll find you have fixed scope and fixed deadlines, no matter what kind of methodology the team says it's using.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a common pattern I see in projects where Agile's been adopted at a team level, but the organization itself is still transforming, and it's not yet safe for middle managers to say &quot;no&quot; to requests or to adapt their plans based on new information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this is an &lt;em&gt;anti-pattern&lt;/em&gt;. It shouldn't happen on Agile projects, which have plenty of ways of dealing with it... but it often does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scaling and transformation methods are intended to help solve this, amongst other issues. It's usually outside of the influence of an individual project manager's ability to effect change, though telling the stories and providing evidence to those who can make change happen can help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2018-01-20T18:40:55.560" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23327" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-01-21T13:24:33.253" Score="0" ViewCount="608" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, when sizing user stories, the team says &quot;but in order to do this, we need to ask this guy, and we don't know how long it will take for them to answer&quot;, or &quot;we need to raise a ticket to (A) and (B), after we have done this, and then wait for them to proceed, in order to complete our job&quot;. I am talking about dependencies, sometimes in the form of communication, some others in the form of an action from an external team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that a user story should be INVEST, in this case, independent.&#xA;What is your suggestion to such user stories though? Should we define in the DoD that if it has dependencies, then we try to break them first, and then size it? Or sizer it, factoring in the external dependencies / impediments?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5522" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-01-25T11:28:31.613" LastActivityDate="2018-01-25T11:28:31.613" Title="Sizing user stories that need external input" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23328" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-01-21T19:51:52.267" Score="2" ViewCount="1891" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reviewing the agile manifesto and this is one of the core principles of it. What does it mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel that people need processes to work efficiently, especially in large scaled matrix organisations. I have seen projects run where there were none and devs had free reign only to turn into a chaotic mess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2018-01-22T17:45:43.513" Title="Agile manifesto: People over processes?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23327" CreationDate="2018-01-21T19:58:22.290" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum doesn't require user stories, and since the Product Backlog is intrinsically ordered, 100% independence between items is not required. However, the underlying issue of how to estimate external dependencies is a valid one that is easier to resolve once you focus on level-of-effort rather than elapsed time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Definition of Done is not the same as your team's working agreement. It is how you know stories are &lt;em&gt;complete&lt;/em&gt;. Regardless of how you handle external dependencies, it is more of a framework estimation/planning issue than a done/not-done issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimate only the level of effort required within the team to &lt;em&gt;manage&lt;/em&gt; the external dependency. Everything else is a process issue, and will be covered below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Scrum Doesn't Mandate User Stories or Complete PBI Independence&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Tasks Needn't Be Stories&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum doesn't mandate use of the user story format. The Scrum Guide mentiones &lt;em&gt;Product Backlog item(s)&lt;/em&gt; 25 times, but &quot;user story&quot; is not mentioned even once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if the Scrum Team adopts the user story format for its Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog items don't have to be in the same format. In fact, most tasks on the Sprint Backlog should be decomposed from a related Product Backlog Item, and trying to coerce each task into a user story instead of a bullet point or checklist item may be overkill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Independence&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While user stories should be as independent as possible, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)#Independent&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;independent&quot; INVEST mnemonic&lt;/a&gt; is a best practice &lt;em&gt;for the user story format&lt;/em&gt; rather than a specific framework requirement of Scrum. In a Scrum context, the goal of story independence is to maximize the ability of the Product Owner to reprioritize Product Backlog Items (PBIs), and to optimize the Development Team's ability to meet the Sprint Goal even if some items from the Sprint Backlog (SBIs or tasks) are blocked or incomplete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In real-world Scrum implementations, tasks on the Sprint Backlog will often have dependencies and sequencing requirements. More specifically, reducing the dependencies &lt;em&gt;between&lt;/em&gt; PBIs doesn't necessarily reduce dependencies &lt;em&gt;within&lt;/em&gt; a user story. Furthermore, Scrum requires some level of central coherence, which is why the framework doesn't mandate a backlog free of all story dependencies. Scrum is, in part, the art of finding the &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; level of coupling between backlog items to create a coherent Sprint Goal while still allowing the backlog to be reordered between Sprints to adapt to changing requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Handling Wait Tasks&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An important aspect of story points, and of Scrum estimation in general, is that &lt;strong&gt;the primary metric is &lt;em&gt;effort&lt;/em&gt;, not time&lt;/strong&gt;. Therefore, I always coach that wait tasks (or stories that contain wait tasks) discount externalities outside the team provided the dependency will fit within a single iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a practical example, let's consider this user story about embiggening a widget taken from the Product Backlog:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a widget consumer&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want an embiggened widget two orders of magnitude larger&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I can more easily frobnicate the whatchamacallit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the Development Team selects this user story during Sprint Planning, the embiggening story is decomposed and the team does &quot;just enough&quot; planning to ensure the story is likely to fit within the current Sprint, and to add key tasks and dependencies to the Sprint Backlog. This story's tasks include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask Bob in Procurement to order a baker's dozen of standard widgets.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Borrow a widget stretcher from Sally in Supply.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stretch the widget.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Insert the newly-stretched widget in the whatchamacallit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Run the frobnication regression tests.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the procurement process and the supply requisition are prerequisites for completing the story, the &lt;em&gt;effort&lt;/em&gt; required for those tasks is essentially that of making a request. This likely a phone call or a bit of paperwork, and possibly a follow-up or two. Even though the Scrum Team should make those external dependencies visible, and the Development Team should track them within the Sprint, the &lt;strong&gt;Development Team's internal level of effort for those tasks is minimal.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if a team member must chase after Bob and Sally for days or weeks, the story should be estimating &lt;em&gt;team effort&lt;/em&gt;, not time elapsed. If the story would be estimated at three points if the materials were on-hand, having to call or email someone outside the team to order equipment doesn't really add a measurable level of effort within the team, and is therefore a probably still a 3-point story. On the other hand, if someone on the team must prepare a 24-page business case before Bob or Sally will agree to make the necessary equipment available for the team, then that level of effort might turn a 3-point story into an 8- or 13-point story to &lt;strong&gt;reflect that the effort is &lt;em&gt;internal&lt;/em&gt; to the team.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;When to Isolate External Dependencies&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, external dependencies can be written as low-effort tasks, and don't change estimates much. However, when the internal level of effort is large, or when the team isn't confident that an external dependency will fit within a single iteration, then the stories/tasks should be split and made as independent as possible. For example, the Scrum Team might develop a new user story for the Product Backlog that should be done a Sprint or two ahead of the embiggening story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a Development Team member,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I need to requisition a widget stretcher from Sally&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that we can embiggen a frobnicating widget in the whatchamacallit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the stories are &lt;em&gt;related&lt;/em&gt;, this story can be delivered independently of the embiggening story. If they can be consolidated, great! But if not, isolating the requisition from the embiggening reduces uncertainty and makes it easier for the team to forecast when the work will be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Recommendations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering all the foregoing, I recommend the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimate only the level of effort required by the Scrum Team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The expected time to complete an external task is only relevant if it puts the Sprint Goal at risk, or if the externality is likely to cross Sprint boundaries.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Split all stories and tasks that will cross Sprint boundaries.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Split off all stories and tasks that are &quot;known unknowns&quot; so that unavoidable dependencies can be re-evaluated at Sprint boundaries.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should a Sprint Goal be unavoidably reliant on an external dependency, then that should be a visible risk for the Sprint. Scrum doesn't &lt;em&gt;guarantee&lt;/em&gt; success of the Sprint; it simply makes the process and its artifacts &lt;em&gt;transparent&lt;/em&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-01-21T20:44:16.790" LastActivityDate="2018-01-21T20:44:16.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23328" CreationDate="2018-01-21T21:29:57.293" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is how I always look at it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The items on the right should serve the items on the left. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Individuals and Interactions&lt;/strong&gt; over &lt;strong&gt;Processes and Tools&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have all known processes or tools that help us do our job better. We've also all known processes or tools that may have once served a purpose, but now just get in the way. As long as the process or tool helps individuals with their interactions with others, they're good. When they hinder interactions, we should look at more effective processes and tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Working Software&lt;/strong&gt; over &lt;strong&gt;Comprehensive Documentation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is documentation that helps us build great software. There is documentation that helps us maintain the software after it is done. Then there is documentation that sits in a drawer, never to be read. We should write a sufficient amount of the type of documentation that we need, not more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Customer Collaboration&lt;/strong&gt; over &lt;strong&gt;Contract Negotiation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many contracts are about protecting parties from each other, not improving how the team and their customers interact. A good contract can form the basis for a great, collaborative interaction between the two parties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Respond to Change&lt;/strong&gt; over &lt;strong&gt;Following the Plan&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plans change all the time. When we invest too heavily in a plan, we become attached and it feels safe to follow, even if we know we're following it off a cliff. If a plan is built by a committee of smart, high-payed people and it fails, it's their fault, not mine. But if I see it failing and I change, I take responsibility. This is why there are so many examples of massive failures where the people following the plan kept following it long after it was clear it wasn't working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't mean planning is bad though. With emergent just-in-time planning approaches, we can gain enough context to make educated guesses about how the future will unfold while at the same time we can be ready to pivot as soon as the need is apparent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastEditorUserId="7944" LastEditDate="2018-01-22T17:45:43.513" LastActivityDate="2018-01-22T17:45:43.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23331" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23334" CreationDate="2018-01-22T02:09:16.657" Score="3" ViewCount="3162" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are trying to organize our epics in a better way. In the past, the epics remained indefinitely open on Jira. Every production support/bug ticket will be added to the exsiting epic. However, since we use epics to track our roadmap (basically we have plugin that shows the epics timeline and what is active right now. It is very useful to give a big picture, since we have many epics), the indefinitely open epics render this roadmap useless. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We decided to close the epic, once all issues in that epic are closed. The problem now is, where to place production bugs/support tickets if the relevant epic is closed? If we add them to their respective epic, we will be back to keep th epic always open, which we do not want. If we do not assign them under any epic, it will be hard to track the support effort that resulted from certain epics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone faced such a problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13766" LastActivityDate="2018-01-22T13:02:53.427" Title="Production bugs and epics in Jira" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;&lt;epics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23331" CreationDate="2018-01-22T11:27:00.890" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Outside of the Jira context, an Epic represents some kind of deliverable business value. An Epic is usually made up of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;good Stories&lt;/a&gt;, the full value is realized to the client and users after all of the stories are completed and delivered. Not all Stories need to be part of an Epic. I would also say that other types of backlog items, such as items that represent technical debt or bugs, would not be part of an Epic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to use Epics to represent work that spans multiple iterations, although I can also see value in grouping related Stories per the definition of an Epic. It's also tied to a release - although in most cases, the stories could be released independently, I tend to release an Epic into production environments at once while deploying work into test and demonstration environments far more regularly. The Epic makes the work visible as it progresses through states. For example, states include Open, In Progress, Review, Test, Released. Stories move from Open through Released to mean that they are in the Epic's test/demo environment and have been coded, code reviewed, and tested. The Epic does the same, but enters Review when it's being merged into the main development branch and Test as final regression testing is happening, and finally Released to indicate all of its stories are live.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would look at why you are continuously adding new bugs and stories to Epics. It seems like you're trying to use the Jira Epic as a Release or Tag, both of which also exist in Jira. Instead of trying to track maintenance and support effort by Epic, track it by things like component or assigned to a particular release. If you need to, Root Cause Analysis techniques can be applied to trace future work back to particular epics and you can again use tags or maybe some kind of custom fields to link support work back to the work that caused it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2018-01-22T13:02:53.427" LastActivityDate="2018-01-22T13:02:53.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23328" CreationDate="2018-01-22T12:28:29.977" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Processes are really important and people do really need processes to perform task effectively, but this is relevant to a kind of standard tasks. There could be however some tasks which would take much more time to resolve using the established process rather than a simple conversation between two persons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would rephrase this statement to &quot;Processes are for the people but not vice versa&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29674" LastActivityDate="2018-01-22T12:28:29.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23328" CreationDate="2018-01-22T12:53:04.347" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The phrase means that interactions have &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; value than static processes/tools, but that processes and tools have value as well. It's really no different than my repeated calls for people to define and agree on their processes, and &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; find tools to support or automate the things they want to do. Valuing tools and processes more than people or interactions doesn't lead to rigor; it leads to rigidity, which is the opposite of embracing change; but note that a complete lack of rigor is bad, too!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The phrase &lt;code&gt;[i]ndividuals and interactions over processes and tools&lt;/code&gt; from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Manifesto for Agile Software Development&lt;/a&gt; is often abused as permission for teams or individuals to do whatever they like and call it agile. However, this type of &quot;cowboy agile&quot; is definitely not what is meant by the phrase. See Ron Jeffries' excellent &lt;a href=&quot;https://ronjeffries.com/xprog/articles/jatbaseball/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;We Tried Baseball and It Didn't Work&lt;/a&gt; for a great example of how this phrase can be used as an excuse for lack of framework rigor, and how disastrous that can be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The four values of the manifesto are carefully structured. The manifesto also says: &lt;code&gt;[W]hile there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.&lt;/code&gt; So, the manifesto isn't saying processes and tools have no value; it's just saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;(people + interactions) &amp;gt; (processes &amp;amp; tools)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, user stories aren't specifications. They are placeholders for &lt;em&gt;conversations&lt;/em&gt; with stakeholders or end users, and act as a sort of shorthand to aid communications. So, on the one hand, user stories are a tool; on the other hand, they are simply there to &lt;strong&gt;facilitate interactions with people!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;See Also&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The values of the manifesto are further clarified by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Principles Behind the Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt;. For example, you are expected to understand individuals/interactions over processes/tools through the lens of the people-centric principles such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of these things say formal process is irrelevant, or that tools are verboten. It just says people and interactions &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt;; then mix in the right amount of tools and processes to support those people and interactions, and to help the project run sustainably.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agilists don't let tools drive the project! &lt;em&gt;People&lt;/em&gt; drive, and then tools and processes are deliberately selected (and continuously re-evaluated and adapted) to help the team reach its ever-evolving destination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-01-22T12:53:04.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23337" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-01-22T13:01:53.750" Score="0" ViewCount="372" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our product doesn't have a defined and written roadmap, which is causing the devteam to receive last-minute requests from some managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We will be implementing a roadmap to let all people involved on the product be aware of what's expected of the project, so that they start &lt;strong&gt;trading&lt;/strong&gt; requirements instead of &lt;strong&gt;pushing&lt;/strong&gt; new ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can we avoid CEOs and other stakeholders demanding requirements in a way that constantly breaks the devteam's Scrum routines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31044" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2018-01-25T14:46:48.880" LastActivityDate="2018-01-25T14:49:36.867" Title="How to deal with scope creep overloading Dev Team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;scope&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;&lt;roadmaps&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23328" CreationDate="2018-01-22T14:49:32.127" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Individuals and interactions over processes and tools means that where possible we &lt;em&gt;favour&lt;/em&gt; people talking to each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I encounter an impediment that is stopping my team making progress, my preference is to talk to people and collaborate to finding a resolution. In some organisations there may be a more rigid process in place or you may be required to use a particular tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples might be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I want to use a new Java library but my organisation requires that I fill out an online form and await a committee sitting to discuss my request. My preference would be to talk to somebody to explain what the library is used for and quickly find a resolution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have an urgent need to reboot the continuous integration server, but the administrators require that a request is put in to JIRA before proceeding. My preference is to talk to the administrator, explain the problem and get a quick resolution. Perhaps we can agree a better way to work that speeds up the resolution of this kind of request?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Our team could do with some help from a DBA, but the process in place means that DBA's cannot work directly with the teams. My preference is to talk with the DBA and explain my problem. If they have the time, they can offer some help and we quickly move on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-01-22T14:49:32.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23327" CreationDate="2018-01-22T15:01:57.690" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My preference with stories that have an external dependency is to say that the story will not be taken into a sprint until the dependency is resolved. This is not always possible, but where possible it is worth doing, even if it feels like an unnecessary delay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is not possible to resolve the external dependency prior to starting the sprint then I often recommend the team increases their sizing estimates to allow for the impact of dealing with the dependency. For example, a story that would normally have been a 3 pointer, now becomes an 8 pointer as the team needs to facilitate and coordinate an external dependency delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The long-term goal should be to eliminate this kind of story. A good way to do this is to discuss any stories with external dependencies at planning and at retrospectives and see if there is an adaption possible. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perhaps there is a skill set the team lacks? Could there be some training or a change in the membership of the team so that there is no longer a need to rely on external assistance?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a technical approach that avoids the dependency? Perhaps mocking a particular service means we don't need to coordinate with the team that provides that service?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Possibly there is a permissions problem that stops the team doing all of the story themselves? Maybe it is worth bringing together all the parties concerned and trying to find a way that avoids waiting for a ticket to be actioned?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-01-22T15:01:57.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23340" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-01-22T18:19:41.260" Score="0" ViewCount="119" Body="&lt;p&gt;Playing around with Tempo in JIRA at the moment, how can I set the total number of hours that a resource can commit, it seems by default it sets 8 hours per resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2018-01-22T18:22:54.223" Title="JIRA - tempo how to set total number of hours a resource can commit?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23340" CreationDate="2018-01-22T18:22:54.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For general time tracking config you go to administration/issues/time tracking, there you can define amount of working hours per day and working days per week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you create a team in tempo, you can define the dedication or availability of each member on the team in x%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29163" LastActivityDate="2018-01-22T18:22:54.223" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16739" CreationDate="2018-01-23T06:45:36.553" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yqYFA.gif&quot; alt=&quot;1]&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epics – Large projects that entail many people over a long time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories –  Smaller projects within an Epic that must be completed before the Epic can be considered ‘Done’.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tasks – The day-to-day things you must do to complete a Story. Tasks are individual work items that can be done with relatively little effort, like making phone calls, writing an email or having a meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://leankit.com/blog/2013/12/breaking-work-epics-stories-tasks/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://leankit.com/blog/2013/12/breaking-work-epics-stories-tasks/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31233" LastActivityDate="2018-01-23T06:45:36.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23343" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23344" CreationDate="2018-01-23T16:29:51.687" Score="-1" ViewCount="616" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently have 2 identical projects beginning at different times (will be adding more).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The manager has a number of &quot;Review&quot; tasks spread out in the project as well as some of his own work. The Reviews take priority over his own work and I don't mind delays to his work because of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I have a resource pause their current task, carry out another task and then go back to their previous task once complete?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31237" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-01T12:18:33.730" LastActivityDate="2018-11-01T12:18:33.730" Title="How to pause task to complete another task" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23343" CreationDate="2018-01-23T18:12:41.493" Score="0" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start with a well developed, logic driven schedule network.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assign the manager as a resource to the required tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assign the &quot;Review&quot; tasks a higher priority than other competing tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In leveling options, select Leveling order: Priority, Standard.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check &quot;Leveling can create splits in remaining work.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Execute &quot;Level Resource.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2018-01-23T18:12:41.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23345" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-01-23T21:44:32.130" Score="1" ViewCount="7540" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a schedule broken down by building number (bldg. 1-39); I have inputted the tasks for bldg. 1 (approx. 200) and need to copy and paste this to the other 39 buildings. I can't seem to do this without everything shifting (losing a bldg. etc.) Any advice would be appreciated, thanks! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31239" LastActivityDate="2019-07-18T11:00:14.900" Title="How to copy and paste a large number of tasks in the same project file?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23345" CreationDate="2018-01-24T01:10:00.990" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a common task in scheduling as projects often have similar blocks of tasks. With MS Project, the key is to collapse the tasks to a summary level before you copy/paste them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Steps for duplicating blocks of tasks:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a summary task and name is something like &quot;Building 1&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Move all the tasks for this building under the summary task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collapse the summary task so all you see is the one summary row.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select that row and copy it (Ctrl+C).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select the next blank row and paste (Ctrl+V).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collapse the new summary task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Repeat steps 5 &amp;amp; 6 until you have a summary task for each building.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rename the new summary tasks as appropriate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastActivityDate="2018-01-24T01:10:00.990" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23348" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-01-24T13:47:42.287" Score="-1" ViewCount="1568" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should bugs be estimated in story points according to the &lt;strong&gt;Scrum&lt;/strong&gt; methodology?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, what if a bug appears to be a quite complicated task, which in fact is a some missed functionality which has to be added, but it is formally still a bug from the client's point of view?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31243" LastEditorUserId="31243" LastEditDate="2018-01-24T16:17:01.000" LastActivityDate="2018-01-24T16:25:54.070" Title="Should bugs be estimated in story points?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23349" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-01-24T13:51:38.973" Score="1" ViewCount="1794" Body="&lt;p&gt;In JIRA, it is possible to ask JQL queries based on the current values of fields, such as date created, date modified, etc. With the ScriptRunner plugin, even more fun date-based queries are possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;strong&gt;is there a way to obtain, for a given query AND a given date, the result of that query as if run on that date?&lt;/strong&gt; JIRA keeps full history of changes, so in principle that should be possible, but after perusing all documentation for JIRA and Scriptrunner, I haven't found a way to build such a query.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The immediate application for me is to construct release burndowns for arbitrary scopes (which are represented as a query). A good proxy for what I want would be also to find out by which date an item was assigned to a fixVersion (thus entering the scope).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose more approaches could be considered - if not JQL, then maybe querying the REST interface? Or is the only method to query the JIRA DB itself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will be grateful for any help from experienced JIRA power-users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17749" LastActivityDate="2018-03-01T10:43:09.487" Title="Historical query results &amp; date by which items entered scope (or fixVersion)" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23348" CreationDate="2018-01-24T14:11:44.207" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, when a bug is first logged (or estimated), it fits into one of two types:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Trivial. e.g. &quot;The background should be beige, not maroon.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Of unknown complexity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What my Team does is estimate 0 (or 0.1) points for 1., and for 2. we use the same estimate every time. In our case 0.5, but you should use historical data to determine the average complexity of bugs for your Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-01-24T14:11:44.207" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23348" CreationDate="2018-01-24T15:33:02.417" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe this largely depends on the source of the bug. In my experience bugs are picked up in one of two ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bugs in the work which is currently being developed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A bug which escaped the in initial QA net and has been either found in a regression test, some exploratory testing, or reported by a customer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the bugs you're talking about fall into the first category then they should already be covered in the User Story estimate - how long a piece of work will take to complete includes its estimation of complexity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if we're talking about bugs which have been detected outside the current sprint then there are a couple of different ways of doing this. If they're P1 issues then they're likely to interrupt the current sprint and any estimation is most likely an overhead you don't need (and will be to be looked at immediately regardless of whether they're 1SP or 10SPs). However bugs which can be added to the backlog should be treated as any other backlog item (priorised and estimated alongside any other items). It's also worth mentioning that not all issues raised by customers are bugs, some are scripts/data fixes which should be treated in the same way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately any bug will take time time out of your sprint, but a low priority bug which will take a long time to fix will have a much lower business value than an urgent User Story. Estimating the effort involved in fixing it makes this a lot clearer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, estimating bugs for active User Stories and P1 support issues gives little value but there are definite advantages of estimating anything which can be scheduled to be fixed in future sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11768" LastActivityDate="2018-01-24T15:33:02.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23348" CreationDate="2018-01-24T16:16:55.673" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;some missed functionality which has to be added&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not a bug; it is additional functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the client still wants to classify it as a bug, that's fine.  For the team doing the work it is a new effort.  Therefore it should be treated as such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a &lt;strong&gt;framework&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt; does not specify specifics of process.  There are no requirements to use &lt;em&gt;user stories&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;story points&lt;/em&gt;, or even &lt;em&gt;bugs&lt;/em&gt;.  There are some common &quot;best practices&quot; out there.  The team must determine what and how to use metrics, processes, etc. to the benefit of the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-01-24T16:25:54.070" LastActivityDate="2018-01-24T16:25:54.070" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23353" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-01-24T17:03:40.167" Score="-1" ViewCount="73" Body="&lt;p&gt;We kick started an Agile development team with a Sprint 0, that had some architectural runway tasks in it (like setting up the environment, etc.).  We planned a Sprint 1 with 2-3 user stories (there are 4 devs on the team).  At the end of Sprint 1, none of the stories were closed.  Some of the arch. tasks from Sprint 0 were dragged in, and they weren't closed either.  We started Sprint 2 with some user stories, and we're mid-way through it, and no stories have been closed.  I'm at a loss at what's happening, and would like to identify the problem of why we're not producing any value.  Obviously the team is working on something, and claims there are no blockers during standup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be an effective way to problem solve this issue with the team?  When I asked them during Sprint 1 retrospective on what we can do to improve, they didn't really have any ideas.  I would like to tease out some ideas from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31244" LastActivityDate="2018-02-01T23:57:16.283" Title="Project team is on Sprint 2, and no features/user stories have been done" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23353" CreationDate="2018-01-24T17:15:27.000" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like you need to ask the team. They aren't yet sufficiently reflexive to be able to diagnose what is happening, so be more indirect:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;We estimated this story as being X storypoints, which we thought meant that it could be done in our first sprint. It's still not done. Let's unpack it a bit and see where we went wrong.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That will surface some issues that hadn't been considered, or provide an entry into a conversation about the =details= of what is going wrong. People can usually grapple with the trees--if you find the right trees. That conversation can also help you get the team to begin to reflect a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The attitude you want is not, &quot;we said this would be done, but it's not done, so get on it/what went wrong,&quot; but &quot;we said this would be done. It's not. Clearly there is more to it--let's take a look and see if we can understand what is happening here.&quot; No blame, no guilt, just getting better at working together, collaboration: &quot;what is blocking us/taking more time/what did we miss accounting for.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's a start, at least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11776" LastActivityDate="2018-01-24T17:15:27.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23355" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-01-24T17:22:12.540" Score="2" ViewCount="1248" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a few user stories that, in the process of our work, have become irrelevant. E.g., in order to enable customers to xx, we need to yy so as to. But, then it turned out that there was another approach to xx and yy was irrelevant. (Granted, this is likelier when we do overly specific user stories--another topic.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I delete the story, there is nothing obvious in place to communicate, &quot;nothing to see here, we've moved on.&quot; But, neither is there a usual column, tag, or category for, &quot;we thought we were going to address this question, but it turned out not to be useful/relevant/whatever.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking of adding a tag, &quot;not done - obsolete&quot; and dragging the story into the &quot;done&quot; column (e.g., no further work to be done, but if you want to know what happened, read the comments).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do other people do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11776" LastActivityDate="2018-01-25T06:38:39.600" Title="How do you handle user stories that become obsolete/irrelevant?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23355" CreationDate="2018-01-24T19:11:35.250" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work-not-done isn’t really &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt; per the Definition of Done, and therefore has no business being placed into the “Done” column of a kanban board. It should either be discarded or returned to the stakeholders for refinement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Digging deeper, you may have two related issues to examine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Specifications masquerading as user stories, thereby generating waste.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A political or process issue leading to a desire to track work-not-done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of these are anti-patterns that I address in more detail below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;User Stories Aren’t Specifications&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first issue is that your user stories are probably specifications in disguise. A well-written user story isn’t prescriptive. For example, you say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[I]n order to enable customers to xx, we need to yy so as to...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it appears like a traditional (if inverted) user story, this is really more of a specification because it’s prescriptive and deterministic. Consider your posted format with some values plugged in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In order to enable customers to withdraw money, we need to have a PIN pad so the user can enter a PIN value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more flexible user story format is one where you describe &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; the customer wants to do, but leave the implementation up to the team to determine during the iteration. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a bank customer,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want to be able to withdraw my money at any ATM&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  in a way that’s easy for me, but ensures other people can’t withdraw my money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first example is a specification that predefines what’s to be built. The second example lists a goal and provides some context for the user experience, but leaves the implementation details up to the development team. Could the solution be a PIN pad? Sure! But it could also be a retinal scan, a fingerprint reader, or something else that no one outside the team has thought of yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By focusing on the value to be delivered rather than specifying an implementation, your team is much less likely to experience the type of work-item invalidation you’re describing. Agility is about embracing change, but work should not be routinely invalidated within an iteration through overspecification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;When Bad PBIs Happen to Good People&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even when a user story is well written, business goals change, new information is discovered, or planned work becomes unnecessary. Each framework has its own way of differentiating minor changes from critical-path changes, but in general all agile frameworks treat this as a opportunity to maximize “work not done.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the most under-quoted &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;principles of the Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While iterative development generally entails some amount of continuous rework, being able to avoid known misfeatures or unnecessary effort that would otherwise sap a team’s capacity to work on value-generating activities is a critical practice. In this case, the fact that you haven’t already done some unit of work that turned out to be unnecessary is a win!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Kanban or Scrum, if you find &lt;em&gt;muda&lt;/em&gt; (waste) then you should collaboratively discard it. In Scrum, this means checking in with the Product Owner to ensure that discarding the story doesn’t impact the Sprint Goal. In Kanban, you may have to evaluate whether the kanban card really represents an expected unit of output that someone is waiting on, or whether it’s irrelevant to the product or value stream, and then act accordingly. However, since the goal of most frameworks is to deliver work, not to track the quantity of work-not-done, explicitly tracking irrelevant or obsolete tasks is a framework implementation smell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-01-25T00:13:40.427" LastActivityDate="2018-01-25T00:13:40.427" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23353" CreationDate="2018-01-24T22:16:45.053" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you have a coach experienced in modern software development?  If not, one is needed.  If so, they aren't doing their job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a multitude of possibilities creating the outcomes you are seeing and various possible remedies.  Context is king when it comes to identifying, analyzing, choosing a solution, and evaluating the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a more practical note for the team, learn about techniques such as vertical slicing, pair and mob programming, test-first mentality, etc.  Some quick links: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deltamatrix.com/horizontal-and-vertical-user-stories-slicing-the-cake/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vertical Slicing&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_programming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pair Programming&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://ronjeffries.com/articles/2015-03-29-increment-culture/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Increment&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/9Z7eyQHZMek&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Test Driven Development&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2018-01-24T22:16:45.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23355" CreationDate="2018-01-25T06:38:39.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is completely normal. In a true end to end agile process, the way it has always been envisioned, there hasn’t been waterfall style requirements analysis and complete breakdown of specifications into user stories. Or as the trendy people call it these days, the process should include both discovery and delivery. In pharmaceuticals we might start to develop 10 products before we decide that 9 of them are not worth developing to completion so we throw them away and work on the winner. Don Reinertsen says the optimum failure rate is 50%. If we are completing 100% of the user stories that enter our process, then we are either doing pure “delivery”, or we are not innovating. I prefer to just delete them, but it could be interesting to have different “bins” at the bottom of each process stage so you can collect statistics on how many and where do items of each type actually leave the system. You can use this to decide if you are innovating enough, i.e. if you aren’t throwing enough away half way through the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I really have to emphasize, if you end up throwing away stories rather than delivering them this DOES NOT mean something is going wrong with the “user story writing” or that something needs to be fixed. On the contrary. If you AREN’T throwing away enough user stories THEN I would have a close look at what’s going on. You don’t need an agile team to slog through a backlog and type in a bunch of user stories that have already been practically developed by “the business team” or “in the discovery phase”. In such cases its typically these business guys or the discovery process that is in need of agile. The source code typists can simply pull tickets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="763" LastActivityDate="2018-01-25T06:38:39.600" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23359" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23370" CreationDate="2018-01-25T08:32:05.873" Score="-2" ViewCount="124" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's interesting for me to know the differences between a project manager and an entrepreneur? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whet does an entrepreneur has that a project manager hasn't and why should a project manager work under an entrepreneur in the organization chart?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: If someone explains the key tasks of each one and the key differences i will get my answer!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31252" LastEditorUserId="31252" LastEditDate="2018-01-25T16:14:22.590" LastActivityDate="2018-01-25T21:51:22.850" Title="Why a project manager isn't an entrepreneur?" Tags="&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2018-01-26T01:44:33.170" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23359" CreationDate="2018-01-25T08:58:45.037" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The entrepreneur risks his already made investments (sometimes - all his property), the project manager risks most often only by his position in the company. The entrepreneur also determines the strategic goals for which his investments should work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The entrepreneur hires a manager (and not vice versa) because, often, a person, possessing capital, does not always possess the necessary skills to organize the movement towards certain goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29674" LastActivityDate="2018-01-25T08:58:45.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23337" CreationDate="2018-01-25T14:40:59.690" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like you are not actually working within the &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum framework&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Backlog is an ordered list of everything that is known to be needed in the product. It is the single source of requirements for any changes to be made to the product. The Product Owner is responsible for the Product Backlog, including its content, availability, and ordering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not to say that it is complete or detailed like a traditional &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pmi.org/about/learn-about-pmi/what-is-project-management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;project&lt;/a&gt; plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For the Product Owner to succeed, the entire organization must respect his or her decisions. The Product Owner’s decisions are visible in the content and ordering of the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This replaces the road map.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No one can force the Development Team to work from a different set of requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The direct answer to your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2018-01-25T14:40:59.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23362" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-01-25T14:43:33.053" Score="1" ViewCount="87" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not to get too meta, but I was just about to write up a story to add &quot;require priority justification when changed&quot; to our company's Scrum software. And I was thinking, as a Scrummaster, that's not one of the two things that we need spelled out to get things done (i.e. the user story and acceptance criteria).  But I'd like to add it to some stories so that the PO can know why &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; think it might be a higher priority even though I'm not the one doing the final prioritization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is it useful information in Scrum for the person writing the story to say why they think they need it sooner than later or does this information just get lost in the weeds usually?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16260" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2018-01-25T15:04:16.303" LastActivityDate="2018-01-25T15:04:16.303" Title="Is it useful to require a priority justification in scrum user stories?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23337" CreationDate="2018-01-25T14:49:36.867" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Product Owner role in Scrum is meant to handle conflicting priorities&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...causing the devteam to receive last-minute requests from some&#xA;  managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Traditional approaches, such as waterfall, assumed that requirements can be written down at the beginning of the project and any changes to that handled through a change management process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile accepted that change is inevitable because of complexities of technology and emerging requirements during the development process. See one of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile principles regarding that here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Welcome changing requirements, even late in  development. Agile&#xA;  processes harness change for  the customer's competitive advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner role was created in Scrum to solve this very problem. Here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-po&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the quote from the Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is one person, not a committee. The Product Owner&#xA;  may represent the desires of a committee in the Product Backlog, but&#xA;  those wanting to change a Product Backlog item’s priority must address&#xA;  the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can we avoid CEOs and other stakeholders demanding requirements in&#xA;  a way that constantly breaks the devteam's Scrum routines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assign a Product Owner (PO), if you don't have one already. Empower the PO to receive all such requests for change, discuss with all stakeholders to resolve any conflicts and feed a single priority list to the dev team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2018-01-25T14:49:36.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23362" CreationDate="2018-01-25T14:58:23.617" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to your question lies in the &quot;3 C's of User Stories&quot;. The first C of the user story is the card (the thing you're writing) which acts as a sort of reminder and a placeholder for the second C, the conversation. Many of the people who introduced and popularized user stories have called out that the reason they used index cards was because there was specifically not enough space to write everything needed on the card and it forced you to have the conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to your questions specifically, the &quot;so that&quot; part of the canonical user story on the card may hint at the need, but a bulk of the explanation for why it should be prioritized comes in the conversation with the product owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-01-25T14:58:23.617" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23362" CreationDate="2018-01-25T15:00:52.440" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's consult &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is responsible for the Product Backlog, including its content, availability, and ordering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the Product Owner to succeed, the entire organization must respect his or her decisions. The Product Owner’s decisions are visible in the content and ordering of the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The desire to &amp;quot;require priority justification when changed&amp;quot; violates the Scrum framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's also look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;principles&lt;/a&gt; from the Manifesto for Agile Software Development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though specifying &lt;em&gt;development team&lt;/em&gt; it would also apply to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to add it to some stories so that the PO can know why &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; think it might be a higher priority&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recording the &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; of changing the order (not priority) might be something that the Product Owner would want to track, but should probably not be a requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also note that, although commonly used, &lt;em&gt;user story&lt;/em&gt; is not an aspect of the Scrum framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-01-25T15:00:52.440" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11" CreationDate="2018-01-25T15:13:23.150" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look at the official reference for Scrum, &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; and the comprehensive site for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;eXtreme Programming&lt;/a&gt; (XP).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A framework within which people can address complex adaptive problems, while productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;eXtreme Programming&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A software development methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2018-01-25T15:13:23.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23367" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23372" CreationDate="2018-01-25T15:22:54.450" Score="2" ViewCount="712" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR: Genuinely long running story drags from sprint to sprint. What to do?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a story which is taking a long time to complete because of the various external factors involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each sprint does gain some progress on the story but it is clear that it will not get far in a reasonably short period of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point estimate on the story is average for our team and the story is not blocked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the external factors can only make practical progress on the story every few days the story is stuck in the Development column somewhat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should be done with this story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have considered converting the work into a RAID item. I am not sure that this is appropriate. Assume that it is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;For those interested...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story is genuinely taking a long time because it involves code being developed for an environment in a far-off country. The required process to dev-test the code involves a round-the-house trip through multiple time zones and slow-to-respond resources. Very much a human thing, but also impacted by needing some evidence gathering of values which take days to collect. (Like if the task were physically measuring continental drift.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29374" LastEditorUserId="29374" LastEditDate="2018-01-25T15:33:46.360" LastActivityDate="2018-01-26T14:48:01.857" Title="Long running story" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;technical-debt&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23367" CreationDate="2018-01-25T15:29:21.363" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Traditionally the team carries the story through the sprints until it meets your Definition of Done (whether that's release to live, passes acceptance tests, whatever). Don't try to assign some of the points to one sprint and some of another, keep it simple and make sure that when it's done all the points are added to that iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason this works from a velocity point of view is because velocity is based on the average velocity of a number of sprints. Your achievements in the preceding sprints will look unimpressive but when you assign the points to the sprint in which the story was completed in, the average will ensure the numbers work themselves out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am extremely dubious that this story can't be split down, in my experience most stories can be split into components which are 5 days' or less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally the team should complete everything they agree to in the sprint planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some things to consider when looking at why this story is taking so many sprints to complete?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the team pulling in too much work?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there too much unplanned work coming in?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the story too big and needs to be split down?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the story unimportant (and everyone knows it and therefore is quietly ignoring it) and should actually be abandoned?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if as you say it genuinely is impossible then don't worry too much about it and simply claim the points when it is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TLDR&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The numbers should work themselves out, put your effort into working out why why the story isn't being completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11768" LastEditorUserId="11768" LastEditDate="2018-01-25T15:46:36.770" LastActivityDate="2018-01-25T15:46:36.770" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23367" CreationDate="2018-01-25T15:52:35.137" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;because of the various external factors&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is the cause.  That's what needs to be treated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Team consists of a Product Owner, the Development Team, and a Scrum Master. Scrum Teams are self-organizing and cross-functional. Cross-functional teams have all competencies needed to accomplish the work without depending on others not part of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Context is king, so without knowing specific details, a quick idea (with a reference that I can think of at the moment) is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deltamatrix.com/horizontal-and-vertical-user-stories-slicing-the-cake/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Slicing&lt;/a&gt; to isolate the external dependencies that cannot be entirely removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2018-01-25T15:52:35.137" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23359" CreationDate="2018-01-25T16:36:59.353" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider the definitions of each role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dictionary.com/browse/entrepreneur?s=t&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Entrepreneur:&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_manager&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Project Manager:&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;em&gt;[has] the responsibility of the planning, procurement and execution of a project, in any undertaking that has a defined scope, defined start and a defined finish.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An entrepreneur can be a project manager, but not vice versa because the project manager is typically only risking assets of the company. Entrepreneurs will risk personal assets e.g., money, property, relationships, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's difficult to define the key tasks of each role because they differ depending on the industry and organization. I have had the experience of being both, and in both roles I've been required to have knowledge and skills of every position in the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will say that the defining factor for me is this: &lt;em&gt;time&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an entrepreneur, I spent every waking hour consumed by my business and obsessed with exceeding the venture's goals. When I was project manager, I clocked in and clocked out with occasional after-hours work here and there. I took days off without any concern for how the company or business was functioning without me. I can't say this is the same for everyone, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31079" LastActivityDate="2018-01-25T16:36:59.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23367" CreationDate="2018-01-25T19:00:27.977" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A blocked item is supposed to be inspected and addressed; it’s not intended to be a perpetually immovable stumbling block. If you decompose your story into effort-based tasks, the “negotiable” element of INVEST criteria allows you to swap small dependencies in and out of your flow to make room for more actionable work-in-progress (WIP).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Breaking Up Time-Dependent Stories Into Effort-Driven Tasks&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As the external factors can only make practical progress on the story every few days the story is stuck in the Development column somewhat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, the estimation is based on level of effort, not time. There are a number of other questions and answers on this topic, so I won’t belabor it except to say that long-running tasks aren’t inherently high-effort tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is based on time boxing, so dragging a single story from Sprint to Sprint is always a framework anti-pattern. There are certainly cases where an effort started in one iteration won’t pay off until a future iteration, but that doesn’t remove the obligation to time box your stories or limit work-in-progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a pragmatic approach, consider breaking your user story up into stories or tasks that treat kicking off a process as distinct from collecting the results or iterating on the work item. While vertical slices are a general agile goal, in Scrum time boxing tends to yield more consistent results because of queue theory: smaller batch sizes, WIP limits, and shorter queues are simply more efficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, rather than a “story” like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Embiggen the whatchamacallit over 4 Sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;consider breaking down the parent story into Sprint Backlog stories like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;# Kick-Off Story&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  As a team member,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want to launch the embiggening script as a background job&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that it can continue to run until completion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;# Follow-Up Story&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  As a team member,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want to check the embiggening log periodically&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I know when the script is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;# Collection Story&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  As a team member,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want to capture the results of the embiggening script&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that it is available for other stories that have embiggening data as a dependency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this example, each story likely has a very low level of effort. Kicking off a script, looking at a log file, or gathering up completed results are all small tasks or chores that are probably 0 or 1/2 point in size, individually or collectively. This means that, while the stories/tasks have a linear dependency (e.g. you can’t inspect or use the data before it’s gathered), each backlog item can fit within a single iteration. Furthermore, because it’s not sitting in the “in-progress” state indefinitely, you avoid abusing your WIP limits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Swapping and Reordering Backlog Items&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many cases, such stories/tasks can sit in your Sprint or Kanban “Ready” queue until someone hauls them out. They can then be handled quickly and either moved to “Done” or returned a little lower down in the “Ready” column to make room for other active tasks in the Sprint. As long as your current Sprint Goal is not jeopardized by moving a task back to “Ready,” or by leaving it undone altogether, this is a perfectly legitimate approach. The results of your task chain aren’t actually needed until your Sprint Goal depends on them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither Kanban nor Scrum prevents a work item from being removed from in-progress swim lanes. While the Product Backlog is ordered, a Sprint Backlog or Kanban board more accurately represents a coherent process flow, not a strict FIFO queue. So, while the rule is that you shouldn’t exceed your WIP limit, there’s nothing preventing you from modifying your WIP limits or removing items from the flow rather than simply blocking indefinitely. A blocked item is supposed to be addressed; it’s not intended to be a perpetually immovable stumbling block throughout the Sprint or across the project’s lifecycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-01-26T14:48:01.857" LastActivityDate="2018-01-26T14:48:01.857" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23359" CreationDate="2018-01-25T21:51:22.850" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;The entrepreneur originates the project and the Project Manager implements the project&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What does an entrepreneur has that a project manager hasn't and why&#xA;  should a project manager work under an entrepreneur in the&#xA;  organization chart?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The entrepreneur originates the project and makes the investment decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The function of an entrepreneur in an organization may be performed by a start-up founder, a CEO, CXOs, EVPs, VPs and other senior leaders in large organizations with a variety of designations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An entrepreneur may be involved in these type of broad activities that spawn one or more projects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start a business: This may spawn projects such as building a product or service.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Run a business: This may spawn projects to reduce cost, improve service and so on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grow a business: This may spawn projects such as increasing capacity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The entrepreneur may often have a gut feel for why they want to do a particular project - namely the investment needed and the returns expected. So, the entrepreneur originates a project, and hires or assigns a Project Manager (PM) to execute the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM comes in to execute such projects efficiently and effectively. Of course, it does not mean that the PM blindly implements the project. One of the major contributions of the PM may be to quantify the gut feel of the entrepreneur in the form of an ROI (Return on investment) calculation with explicit assumptions. When these numbers and assumptions are studied critically, it may or may not justify the entrepreneur's gut feel. At a minimum, it may throw a spotlight on the specific assumptions and risks and start a productive conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2018-01-25T21:51:22.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23376" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23377" CreationDate="2018-01-25T23:01:40.573" Score="2" ViewCount="272" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an ongoing argument - our delivery manager tried to introduce a &quot;release after 3 sprints&quot; pattern into our teams.  Unfortunately, like many businesses, the actual work can be x number of sprints, often more than 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I argue, just because the scope is fixed up-front, that is just our DoD.  We release to Live when we complete the scope and we are Done.  Nothing in there breaks agile principles - we just acknowledge that although in theory we &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; release to live at the end of a given sprint, in reality we never would until we are Done and then we have a true release candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He argues, agile can only be agile if you work a sprint at a time and have a release candidate every sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which version is correct, or are we both right/wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24240" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-01-25T23:41:22.990" LastActivityDate="2018-01-26T10:22:43.657" Title="Can Fixed Scope/Variable Timescale be Agile?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;scope&gt;&lt;release-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23376" CreationDate="2018-01-26T00:28:53.670" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any agile framework, if you want to estimate based on fixed scope, your estimated release dates will vary. If you opt instead for a fixed release date or routine release cadence, then it's scope that varies. Both are legitimate options, but in this case your delivery manager is more right than you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;All Sprints are Potentially Releasable&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your delivery manager is &lt;em&gt;mostly&lt;/em&gt; right. Whether you're following Scrum or some other framework that just happens to use the term &quot;Sprint,&quot; an agile iteration should always result in a potentially-releasable product. Scrum in particular makes it very clear that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#artifacts-increment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;each increment must be releasable&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the end of a Sprint, the new Increment must be &quot;Done,&quot; which means it must be in useable condition and meet the Scrum Team’s definition of &quot;Done&quot;...The increment must be in useable condition regardless of whether the Product Owner decides to release it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While most agile frameworks don't define a fixed release cadence, neither do they prohibit it. Since each Sprint results in a potentially-shippable increment, there's no reason &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to target a three-month release cadence for the project if that adds business value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A Release Cadence is an Agile Timebox&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's more traditional to see &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/16376/4271&quot;&gt;agile release planning&lt;/a&gt; estimating a release date based on how many iterations it will likely take to complete a given &lt;em&gt;set&lt;/em&gt; of features. However, Lean flow, DevOps culture, and an industry shift towards continuous delivery and continuous deployment have resulted in some projects moving towards a routine release cadence such as the one your delivery manager wants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As one example, Ubuntu has a &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReleaseCadence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;biennial release cadence&lt;/a&gt; for long-term support releases, and a &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReleaseCadence/SixMonthInterimRelease&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;six month cadence&lt;/a&gt; for interim releases. In contrast, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://debian-handbook.info/browse/stable/sect.release-lifecycle.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Debian release cycle&lt;/a&gt; follows a more traditional model that isn't inherently timeboxed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Should Releases Follow a Cadence?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A reliable cadence is generally a good thing in a project management framework. However, an iterative delivery cadence and a product release cadence are really two different things. Whether releases should follow a cadence or not is a product-specific business decision, and there's no &quot;one size fits all&quot; answer to that question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-01-26T00:28:53.670" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23376" CreationDate="2018-01-26T10:22:43.657" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Releases are a hugely significant aspect of Agile. There are many reasons for their importance, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We value feedback and a released product gives us an opportunity to receive feedback from the end users.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doing a release collapses a lot of unknowns, such as &quot;Will it work on the production server?&quot; and &quot;What will be the impact on production performance?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Releases also focus the minds of the development team. It makes them think about dotting the i's and crossing the t's. &quot;Is the documentation up to date?&quot; &quot;Have we cleared out the tech debt we discussed last week?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the reason why Agile frameworks like Scrum emphasise the need to have a potentially shippable increment at the end of each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be tempting to say that you don't want to release the product until the finished development work is feature rich and 'complete' from the product marketing point of view. However, this misses out on two of the three points mentioned above. If you wait until the product is feature rich before releasing then you delay collapsing the uncertainty of the release and you let your developers get in to the mindset of delaying work that is only important for a release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth noting that a lot of Agile organisations will release frequently, but will not immediately make their changes available to the users. For example, some teams use &lt;a href=&quot;https://martinfowler.com/articles/feature-toggles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;feature toggles&lt;/a&gt;. This gives the best of both worlds, you get the value of frequent releases but can also let your business and marketing people control how and when features become available to the users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-01-26T10:22:43.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18098" CreationDate="2018-01-26T14:26:14.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;do you use any tools for that? &#xA;I`m using &lt;a href=&quot;https://craft.io/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Craft&lt;/a&gt; and it is a really good solution for Agile product management designed by product manager!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With Craft you can create visual roadmaps, which you can view by&#xA;single roadmap (in a variety of displays) and multi-product roadmap&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best part is that everything in Craft connects to form a whole product management process. So you can assign personas to story maps, connect tasks and items to sprints and versions at roadmap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31271" LastActivityDate="2018-01-26T14:26:14.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22465" CreationDate="2018-01-26T14:36:31.967" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The definition we eventually went with was that used by Brooks in chapter 7, &lt;strong&gt;Why Did The Tower of Babel Fail&lt;/strong&gt;, of his &lt;em&gt;The Mythical Man-Month&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0yJRH.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0yJRH.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="569" LastActivityDate="2018-01-26T14:36:31.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23381" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23406" CreationDate="2018-01-26T16:10:42.400" Score="1" ViewCount="192" Body="&lt;p&gt;Which actions could be done in the Retros (- or, how could I guide the Retro) to turn the ceremony more attractive to the Dev Team?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Lately we've been just collecting what should be improved + what went well in the previous sprints, and this seems to easily turn the ceremony boring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you have inputs on what could be done to turn this moment into something that could make the team more open/focused to give deeper/better inputs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31044" LastEditorUserId="31044" LastEditDate="2018-01-26T16:48:16.707" LastActivityDate="2018-02-01T13:02:55.080" Title="Actions to improve Scrum Restrospective" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;&lt;morale&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23381" CreationDate="2018-01-26T17:42:28.213" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first step is to talk to the team. This is their time to reflect and improve. It's also an opportunity to look toward the future to find opportunities for change (and hopefully improvement). Make sure that the team understands the purpose and value of having this time, and see how they would like to use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of just looking at things that went well and things that didn't go well, you can look at different types of retrospectives. When I facilitate a retrospective, I set aside about an hour. For the first 15-20 minutes, we go over past successes, pain points, and any other thoughts or comments. The last 40-45 minutes is more wide open, and may have a number of different activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of just looking at a historical focus (what went well or poorly in the past Sprint), you can look at the future and identify some changes that the team feels comfortable making and introducing something new, or focus on one particular problem or success and try to fully understand it to either avoid or repeat it in the future, or invest the time to learn something new that can help the team's performance in upcoming Sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2018-01-26T17:42:28.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23381" CreationDate="2018-01-26T18:02:58.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd look at the 5-stage retrospective approach. &lt;a href=&quot;https://plans-for-retrospectives.com/en/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Retromat&lt;/a&gt; provides a lot of different activities that you can use for each stage. Also, there should be experimental changes (usually limited to 1 or 2) that come out of the retro with a clear idea of what should improve. These should also be reviewed at the beginning of the next retro. As long as they are seeing valuable improvement coming out of the meeting, you should be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-01-26T18:02:58.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23381" CreationDate="2018-01-26T21:18:41.527" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simply, all what you needed to have is the actions to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do not have actions associated with time then there is no need to have the retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not forget the time to be bound with the actions and the team members responsible for these actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31007" LastActivityDate="2018-01-26T21:18:41.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22645" CreationDate="2018-01-27T02:55:31.253" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The job description for a &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-sm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Master&lt;/a&gt; is in &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;.  What part of it do you believe results in &lt;code&gt;understand too little of what the other team members are doing to fulfill his role efficiently&lt;/code&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2018-01-27T02:55:31.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23388" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23398" CreationDate="2018-01-27T10:56:55.807" Score="0" ViewCount="71" Body="&lt;p&gt;Background: A small tech company has just grown from a flat startup team of 8 developers with no real structure to ca. 40 people (roughly 20 devs + 20 various business and management positions), who need to work in teams and have clearly defined resources and priorities. The company uses agile terms (like a Product Owner and Backlog), but few people have read more about it than the Agile Manifesto. A position of Agile Coach is open, but nobody is hired for it yet.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Situation: The CTO pushes forward a product-oriented structure for the whole company. While the devs had no problem defining what their 3 Products are and how to deliver them, the management used a literal approach: &quot;If a Product is anything with a backlog and features, and a backlog is a list of my tasks, then my tasks are my Product.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;As a result, the marketing team has a product &quot;Company webpage&quot; and a product &quot;Brand development&quot;, while the office manager has 3 products: &quot;Office management in City A&quot;,  &quot;Office management in City B&quot;, and &quot;Travel Booking.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question: Are there any dangers or side effects of defining company management as a set of products?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If no, how to organize this work in the most effective way? And if yes, how to define what could and could not be a product? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31280" LastActivityDate="2018-01-28T17:50:05.613" Title="How would company management work as a set of products?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23388" CreationDate="2018-01-27T17:07:03.863" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually what you're describing is very similar to SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) or LeSS (Large-Scale Scrum) but with its own flavor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend that the management team or the CTO go through the structure of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SAFe&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://less.works/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LeSS&lt;/a&gt;, then decide how they want to structure the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://blue-agility.com/scaling-agile-less-vs-safe/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;comparison&lt;/a&gt; between both of them, it may help them identify the needs of the company and what's the best process to follow to meet those needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the risks, there will always be risks, you just need to know how &amp;amp; when to define them to be able to set a plan to mitigate or accept them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And since this way of working will be new addition, it's better to have a community of practice or a team (not necessarily new hires)  who'll be responsible of monitoring, coaching the other teams and improving the process until it's stabilized. The community of practice can dedicate to rolling out the process 30% of their time for example, and  meet on weekly or Biweekly basis to track the progress of the implementation and anticipate risks before they happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3263" LastActivityDate="2018-01-27T17:07:03.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23391" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-01-27T21:18:03.737" Score="0" ViewCount="1235" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’m a Scrum Master on a relatively new scrum team. Management is wanting Scrum Masters to handle all client communications surrounding the actual release process: compiling the list of issues at the end of the sprint to send to the client for validation (along with client friendly summaries and screenshots), updating user stories with client notes, getting sign off on the list of features / fixes going up, etc. I’ve yet to find anything that supports the notion that this should be done by the SM. Should this not fall to the Product Owner? If I’m missing something, please set me straight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31283" LastActivityDate="2018-01-29T23:17:52.297" Title="Who manages client communications for releases on Scrum team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;release-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23393" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23422" CreationDate="2018-01-27T23:52:45.627" Score="3" ViewCount="214" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a team of 15 that implements scrum (as well as we can). Each person in the team has multiple products, that only they work on, and each of those products are unrelated to any other product on the team. However, put everything into one backlog to facilitate scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a scrum master that leads the team, but no product owner (because there are so many products all unrelated, each member is responsible for their own backlogs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have noticed in daily stand ups that while it's good to catch up, whenever you are not speaking, the products you are hearing about from other members have nothing to do with your own work, and there isn't a single product that has more than one member working on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to ask if it sounds like we should even be using scrum? If so - are there any ways we can make our standups and sprints more relevant for each member?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30247" LastActivityDate="2018-01-31T18:37:17.097" Title="Scrum when each member has their own product" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23381" CreationDate="2018-01-28T15:59:40.580" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Which actions could be done in the Retros (- or, how could I guide the Retro) to turn the ceremony more attractive to the Dev Team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some ideas you can try out: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Search online for fun retrospective ideas and pick up things from there &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Play a game &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go to an escape room &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go bowling and have some beverages &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask the team what is not attractive to them and stop doing that &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep the retrospective outside, for example in a park &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't even mention &quot;improvement&quot; during the discussion, only focus on what went well and what you want to keep on doing (better/more) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask people to write their ideas on a whiteboard, so they are not just sitting around &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask the team to draw a road, which describes the Sprint journey from start to finish &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would you have inputs on what could be done to turn this moment into something that could make the team more open/focused to give deeper/better inputs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to approach this is to ask better/deeper questions from them. Instead of &quot;what would you like to improve&quot;, one could ask &quot;what causes the most pain&quot;. Ask them what is the bottleneck in the current system (from receiving a feature request, for example, until it's used in production). Once they have cast their opinions, ask how you could find it out together and let them figure out how the metrics will be gathered. Ask them what's the most important thing they learned during the Sprint (not only at work) and request them explain it to the team. Draw some smileys on a whiteboard (e.g. sad, uninterested, and jolly faces) and first ask everyone to put their feeling of the Sprint there. When that's done, ask them how we could get more faces to the wide smiling direction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31213" LastActivityDate="2018-01-28T15:59:40.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23391" CreationDate="2018-01-28T17:33:12.817" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; is intentionally sparse on detailed responsibilities. There are some delineations that are important for Scrum to work properly and it calls those out - all others it leaves up to the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The things you mentioned are not things that are expressly called out, so I would say it's up to the team to decide who will do the work. There are two things worth calling out though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) While the Scrum Guide says anyone can do the work of managing the backlog and setting expectations to stakeholders, the Product Owner is ultimately accountable for it. I've seen too many teams who delegate this responsibility down from the Product Owner and they lose touch with it completely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) The one thing I see in your description that the Scrum Guide does have clear guidance on is the point about your management telling you who should do it. It says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Self-organizing teams choose how best to accomplish their work, rather&#xA;  than being directed by others outside the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are definitely team decisions in Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-01-29T14:27:44.877" LastActivityDate="2018-01-29T14:27:44.877" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23393" CreationDate="2018-01-28T17:43:56.923" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like there are a few things at play here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product vs applications vs Project&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That many products sounds abnormal - certainly difficult to maintain. Usually when I see people say they have so many products, they really mean applications or projects. There are two things I usually find helpful in discussing a product: first, what does the customer think? Would your customer say that your product is data analysis, or cardiovascular data analysis? And second, it your approach similar between the different types of data analysis. They don't have to be the exact same, but similarities in approach mean that improvements in one area can carry over to others if you treat them as  1 (or fewer) products). Think of Microsoft Office. Word, Excel, and Powerpoint all work very differently, but there are all ways to create documents of some sort or another and treating them like one product has huge advantages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Benefit of Teams&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you describe doesn't sound like a team. It sounds like a group of people who happen to share an office. A proper team can benefit from more flexibility as well as increased productivity. For example, if more work comes in for one type of work than another, a team can pivot their attention to field that work, but the setup you describe must force those projects to wait. Also, most work that a team takes on has some forms of repeat work between tasks. Often times teams working together can handle this work more efficiently so they gain higher productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where Teams Don't Work&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the work is radically divergent, it may be that each type of work requires complete attention and all of a person's time to keep up with developments in that type of work. This is very rare - usually only effecting bleeding edge research, but I don't know what kind of work you're in, so maybe this applies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Using Scrum&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is designed to help teams solve complex problems and iteratively develop products. It isn't that Scrum won't work for other things, but this is what it really excels at. If this isn't what you are doing, there may be better approaches for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-01-28T17:43:56.923" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23388" CreationDate="2018-01-28T17:50:05.613" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your company may be watering down the idea of products to its own detriment. A product should be able to be successful in its own right. Marketing material for another product or organizational overhead that supports the creation of a product cannot, by definition, be its own product, as it can only succeed if the product it supports succeeds. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are too many possible solutions to enumerate here, but a question that might lead you to some good answers is: how would it change your approach if management and marketing specifically worked on things prioritized by the PO for one of the products that your dev teams support?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-01-28T17:50:05.613" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23399" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-01-29T11:22:13.607" Score="0" ViewCount="93" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is this an example of extreme programming? Currently we try to write all tests before development is done, but at times it is done afterwards when there are time constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2018-01-29T11:56:10.203" LastActivityDate="2018-02-11T22:46:01.550" Title="Is writing tests after development an example of extreme programming?" Tags="&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23399" CreationDate="2018-01-29T11:52:42.077" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ah, no it's not an example of XP. Delivering untested code is just sloppy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different practices have different opinions about &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; test are to be written. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But they all agree on one thing: &lt;em&gt;After release&lt;/em&gt; is &lt;strong&gt;too late&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2018-01-29T11:52:42.077" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23391" CreationDate="2018-01-29T13:16:19.967" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;By the book is as @Daniel mentioned, the team decides who will own this responsibility.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However there are other variables that could help on defining this, for example, who's your client (marketing area, app user, other internal areas of the company)? Is your client aware of release communications?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If the client is prepared and used to the process (and the process is mature) anyone in the team that has communication skills can be defined responsible for this need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general the Product Owner could be the one to communicate, as he (should) know everything about the product release he could give the best approaches on explaining what came new on the product for any client: the ones not used to receive such information, or the ones that are experts in the product and will request more details about it. But this is &lt;strong&gt;not a rule&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31044" LastActivityDate="2018-01-29T13:16:19.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23399" CreationDate="2018-01-29T13:56:54.730" Score="1" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test Driven Development is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules/testfirst.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;rule&lt;/a&gt; in eXtreme Programming.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test Driven Development requires that tests must be written first.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Therefore, the answer is, &quot;NO.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-02-11T22:46:01.550" LastActivityDate="2018-02-11T22:46:01.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23393" CreationDate="2018-01-29T14:24:58.177" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That is not working within the &lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt; framework, but Scrum In Name Only (&lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/a9PY7yEj-Z4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SINO&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum is a framework for developing, delivering, and sustaining complex products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When choosing to share people across multiple projects, efforts, products while calling it a &lt;em&gt;team&lt;/em&gt;, the Scrum framework would be an improper force-fit.  One way that ineffectiveness and inefficiency is being exposed is what you call the daily stand up, probably really a traditional status report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This classical mismanagement may continue with its costs ignored.  A better alternative is working toward changing the approach to a more dedicated personnel model, and change can be very challenging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2018-01-29T14:24:58.177" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23391" CreationDate="2018-01-29T23:17:52.297" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Stakeholder Management is &lt;em&gt;Mostly&lt;/em&gt; the Product Owner&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Guide is largely silent on issues of stakeholder management per se, although the Product Owner's role of managing the Product Backlog strongly implies that the Product Owner (PO) is primarily responsible for managing stakeholder requirements. Managing stakeholder &lt;em&gt;expectations&lt;/em&gt;, on the other hand, is definitely spelled out as a PO responsibility, especially during the Sprint Review. In addition to working with the stakeholders to develop the Product Backlog, the Product Owner is responsible for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inviting key stakeholders to the Sprint Review.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explaining what Product Backlog items are &quot;Done&quot; or &quot;Not Done.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discussing the Product Backlog as it stands.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Projecting likely target and delivery dates based on progress to date.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the Scrum Guide also says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner may do the above work, or have the Development Team do it. However, the Product Owner remains accountable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrariwise, while the Scrum Guide says that the Scrum Master is to help &quot;employees and stakeholders understand and enact Scrum and empirical product development&quot;, the responsibility for stakeholder communications and management are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; explicitly assigned to the Scrum Master role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, stakeholder management is usually a Product Owner responsibility, but there's nothing &lt;em&gt;prohibiting&lt;/em&gt; a team from reallocating the work (as opposed to the accountabilities for each role). However, I'd consider a Product Owner that abdicates personal responsibility for stakeholder communication to be a framework implementation smell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Your Process Lacks Adequate Customer Collaboration&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The values and principles of the Agile Manifesto argue strongly against your current implementation. The Sprint Review is meant to be a collaborative exercise that &lt;em&gt;includes&lt;/em&gt; the stakeholders, not a meeting that results in an indirect report to be forwarded to stakeholders. The Scrum Guide says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the Sprint Review, the Scrum Team and stakeholders collaborate about what was done in the Sprint. Based on that and any changes to the Product Backlog during the Sprint, attendees collaborate on the next things that could be done to optimize value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, the Agile Manifesto and its principles include the following items:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to...a development team is face-to-face conversation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Client notes, post-Sprint validations and sign-offs, and &quot;summaries and screenshots&quot; instead of Sprint Demos are all giant red flags that your process is not adhering to either the Scrum framework, or to the agile values and principles. Your team, your organization, and your stakeholders should all carefully re-evaluate whether you really want to commit to an agile process based on real collaboration, or whether someone just wants to cloak a more traditional project framework with a few loosely-applied Scrum ceremonies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it the substance that truly matters, or just the appearance? Based on your description I'd bet good money on the latter, but your mileage may vary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-01-29T23:17:52.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23381" CreationDate="2018-01-30T10:07:44.380" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Indeed &lt;a href=&quot;http://plans-for-retrospectives.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Retromat&lt;/a&gt; is very inspirational for spicing up the Retrospectives for your developers. But at some point I faced the same issue of minor effectiveness in my team -after one year of working together, after 20 retros .. - so I started as well to think about some solutions to get higher again the attention level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discussion was going not really somewhere so I thought to point out a Retrospective Topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I prepare the team, before the Retro, with a couple of Topics to discuss, maybe some issues we had, or some improvements that I see that are needed, but also the team can come up with topics. Plus I also leave the total freedom to improvise topics directly during Retro. That helped a lot to give new energies to the people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27720" LastActivityDate="2018-01-30T10:07:44.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23407" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23412" CreationDate="2018-01-30T12:28:37.180" Score="1" ViewCount="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;the question is very simple. Scenario is a Scrum Project.&#xA;I would need to be able to sort tickets in the Reports are of a Scrum Project. Currently those tickets are separated per area, as &lt;strong&gt;Completed&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;Not Completed&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;Completed out of the Sprint&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would help the readability of the report. Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27720" LastActivityDate="2018-01-30T17:25:16.533" Title="Is it possible to sort JIRA tickets in the Reports area?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23381" CreationDate="2018-01-30T13:16:36.773" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are few suggestions, which you can bring together or one-by-one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;SUGGESTION 1&lt;/em&gt;:&#xA;Bring awarding best team member of the sprint in your Retro:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask the team to vote during Retro &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collect vote in room by raising hands&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use vote box to vote for best developer / tester of the Sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Before Retro, run a survey to collect &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Instead of asking for a single rating from each team-member, go with ranking approach.  Ask team to rank for everyone's choices as 1.2.3 and mark them with values 5, 3, 1 respectively.  Use sum of values of all team members to determine The Developer of the Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;SUGGESTION 2&lt;/em&gt;:&#xA;Things that were identified in previous Retros (whether practices or procedures), try to gauge their improvement paths - Identify maturity level on a scale of 5 and make team to discuss it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This helps to know what they discussed earlier (as a refresher), as well as if they are sticking to it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;SUGGESTION 3&lt;/em&gt;:&#xA;Identify wastes in the previous Sprint - This helps to understand why something is not necessary and make the Team to qualify it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;SUGGESTION 4&lt;/em&gt;:&#xA;Discuss Customer Satisfaction Index/Factor from previous deliverables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;SUGGESTION 5&lt;/em&gt;:&#xA;Bring innovation - Any change to an existing approach - Determine if there any new way of trying to do something, and implement them - Brainstorm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;SUGGESTION 6&lt;/em&gt;:&#xA;Every 3-4 Sprints, show a 5 minute demo of the product before the 3-4 Sprints' and show the current one. (Maybe record a video of the product every Sprint-end).  This actually gives great motivation to the Team as, with the speed in which things are delivered, people get less time to look at the path traveled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25351" LastEditorUserId="25351" LastEditDate="2018-01-31T05:13:34.667" LastActivityDate="2018-01-31T05:13:34.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4251" CreationDate="2018-01-30T14:45:40.607" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mike Cohn (November 2005), &quot;Agile Estimating and Planning&quot; says: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Studies have shown that we are best at estimating things that fall&#xA;  within one order of magnitude (Miranda 2001; Saaty 1996)&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Miranda (2001): &quot;Improving Subjective Estimates Using Paired Comparisons&quot; says: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I conducted an informal survey among colleagues; 30 people from&#xA;  different countries and from both industry and academia provided input&#xA;  for the scale. The results suggest that the correspondence between&#xA;  size and verbal description in the software domain is closer to the&#xA;  one shown in Table 3 than to Saaty’s.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in this table we see that something is called &quot;slightly bigger&quot; if it is 125% of the base size and it is called &quot;bigger&quot;, if it is 175% of the base size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next Fibonacci number is 161% of the former Fibonacci number, so this fits in between &quot;slightly bigger&quot; and &quot;bigger&quot; in Mirandas table. It seem this informal survey is the root of why we use Fibonacci numbers, because their ratio is closer to what we mean if we say something is bigger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This answer is based on my comments to a similar question on Stackoverflow &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9362286/why-is-the-fibonacci-series-used-in-agile-planning-poker/9362509?noredirect=1#comment46066860_9362509%20here.&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8693" LastActivityDate="2018-01-30T14:45:40.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23410" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-01-30T16:34:29.140" Score="0" ViewCount="196" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background &amp;amp; Objectives&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Atlassian JIRA is really just a ticketing system at heart. While there are a number of agile-ish workflows and plugins available to the system, the fundamental design of the tool is to enforce assignment of tickets to individuals rather than groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From an agile perspective (and specifically from a SAFe 4.5 perspective), I would much rather see issues assigned to affinity groups than individuals. Actually, I’d rather see them assigned to product queues rather than teams, but that may be a step too far for the tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Atlassian offers &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/jira060/how-do-i-assign-issues-to-multiple-users-370705091.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;several kludges&lt;/a&gt; for trying to work around this issue, but they all feel a bit...well, suboptimal.&lt;/strong&gt; Even the “Unassigned” queue or the custom group picker option seem to require bypassing a large number of built-in reporting and tracking capabilities of JIRA, and I don’t want to recommend a workaround that results in reduced value from other standard features of the tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I most effectively use JIRA to communicate the values of collective team ownership, pairing, and swarming within JIRA without making it impossible to use the standard dashboards and reports?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Caveats&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tool selection was a business decision above my pay grade. I can’t enforce &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/21631/4271&quot;&gt;CodeGnome’s Law or First Corollary&lt;/a&gt;, and have to do my best to work within the tool’s constraints.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I’m really looking for a process answer, but workflows, practices, JIRA plugins, or custom reporting are certainly within scope.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I want to be crystal clear that I’m looking for a framework-centric solution that takes the tool limitations into account, rather than seeking software recommendations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-01-30T18:00:58.277" LastActivityDate="2018-02-01T17:31:10.297" Title="How can I leverage JIRA ticket assignments to encourage group ownership, pairing, and swarming without bypassing other core functions?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;&lt;safe&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23410" CreationDate="2018-01-30T16:45:41.147" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would avoid using ticket assignment for this purpose. Typically, I've seen the Assignee is unassigned until a development team member picks up the story/task in sprint. This may differ at the feature/epic level as the product management team refines the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very common to use the Labels field and add a team name when the feature/epic/story is assigned to a team. It's then quite easy to create team-oriented Boards that filter on the team name. This filter carries through to the Backlog and Reporting tabs so you can plan or analyze by team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31313" LastActivityDate="2018-01-30T16:45:41.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23407" CreationDate="2018-01-30T17:25:16.533" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Looks like sorting of Jira tickets in the Reports area is not possible now&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see that &lt;a href=&quot;https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWSERVER-10236&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;requests to be able to sort are logged as a user suggestion but in 'Unresolved' status since 2014&lt;/a&gt;. You can add your request as a comment and also vote for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2018-01-30T17:25:16.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23410" CreationDate="2018-01-30T19:49:15.410" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What value of the &quot;standard dashboards and reports&quot; is impeded?  Is, or why is, not assigning the object to an individual an option?  (What is the root issue/concern/motivator?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When dictated to use tools, or even when using selected tools, promoting the team mentality is easily supported by simply removing the requirement for that field to be populated.  (I haven't used Jira in a while, so maybe it is not possible; it is possible in VSTS, for example.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2018-01-30T19:49:15.410" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23393" CreationDate="2018-01-31T00:00:23.353" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the &quot;products&quot; (you can name it projects or whatever is suitable for you) are not related then there is no need to have a stand up together because the status is not important to the others, and in your case, you actually are not one team. One stand up meeting will distract the ones who are not interested in the information being shared in the stand up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is better to have the stand up with the related team members only to keep focusing on the project and the status of that project (milestones, issues, achievement... etc.) rather than to involve everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31007" LastActivityDate="2018-01-31T00:00:23.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23415" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-01-31T00:10:46.360" Score="0" ViewCount="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to have a Grandmaster of a complex project - that is one that is has subprojects which themselves are made up of subprojects.  Will that work in MSProj10&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31317" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-01T10:02:37.517" LastActivityDate="2018-11-01T10:02:37.517" Title="Is it possible to have a Master &quot;master project&quot; in MSProj10- that is to have a subproject that has its own subprojects?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22304" CreationDate="2018-01-31T00:52:18.033" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the architecture point of view, if you have a legacy project then you have to do one of three choices, either to refactor the code, reuse some components or rewrite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From business point of view, the technology does not matter as long as the project achieves the expected goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way is to do a smart rewrite; this means to rewrite module by module in php in the same application. You have an expert team in php and they are doing well, then what makes you change the language?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will create many risks in terms of time, quality, security and many other things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have to do the change then smart rewrite is your best option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31007" LastActivityDate="2018-01-31T00:52:18.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22396" CreationDate="2018-01-31T01:09:51.950" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In simple words you need PMP to survive during project creation and ITIL to make it survive after delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need more details then you need to spend some time looking for the answer to know the processes for each framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31007" LastActivityDate="2018-01-31T01:09:51.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20249" CreationDate="2018-01-31T01:16:59.270" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMBOK tells you how to manage projects in general and PMI-ACP tells you how to manage Agile projects and teaches you about Agile methodologies which are not used in constructions for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is like comparing fruit to apple; in other words, Agile is specific and PMBOK is generic. But both lead you to the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMBOK encourages you if you have a changeable culture then device your project into phases and make the phases as small as possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31007" LastEditorUserId="31007" LastEditDate="2018-02-09T22:47:04.480" LastActivityDate="2018-02-09T22:47:04.480" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23415" CreationDate="2018-01-31T04:36:14.887" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.  (All subject to the same caveats that cover individual linked sub-projects.)  I have successfully manipulated 4-tier multi-projects for testing purposes - (not in Project Server.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Successful implementation of multiple linked sub-projects in the real world will demand rigorous procedural controls to avoid a tangled mess of invalid links.  In my experience, it is easier to either 1) Implement a single integrated project schedule with many internal links and shared access (with procedural controls) or 2)Implement multiple independent projects that can be merged into a single (unlinked) master project periodically for integrated reporting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2018-01-31T04:36:14.887" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23410" CreationDate="2018-01-31T09:00:07.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could create JIRA users that represent groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key bit of information in a JIRA user is the email address, so all you would need is email aliases that represent mailing lists for each group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would mean that an issue could move through its life cycle and never be assigned to an individual. Notification would still work as all members of an assigned group (or product queue) would receive email updates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The down side with this approach is that you would need to ensure you kept the membership of the various mailing lists up to date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-01-31T09:00:07.907" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23393" CreationDate="2018-01-31T18:37:17.097" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems that you're using some Scrum characteristics but not the Framework. There are some gaps in your description that I'm curious about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who manages the backlog and sets priorities?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you do plannings, reviews and retrospectives?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's really hard for me to imagine how it would be a planning meeting for a group of people where each person works in a different product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, answering your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;it sounds like we should even be using scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't. You could ask your managers why are you &quot;using Scrum&quot;, if it's just because it's a trend then you could try something else. Also, I think it would be easier for you guys to filter the backlog based on each one's product, and start using a Kanban board to follow-up progress. It's simpler and it fits for teams and &quot;solo teams&quot; :D&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;are there any ways we can make our standups and sprints more relevant&#xA;  for each member?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can define time-boxes for releasing your increments and call it a Sprint, it won't be in the Scrum perspective but it's a way to organize deliveries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would keep the standup meetings as you have some relation between what you call &quot;different products&quot;, mostly because if they are pragmatic the team can always benefit from it, but I would try to see which products would be really involved in each of the standup meetings to avoid taking people time to listen to things they aren't involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31044" LastActivityDate="2018-01-31T18:37:17.097" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23423" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-01-31T22:34:09.130" Score="1" ViewCount="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I add in the subprojects to the Master Project, the date ranges are unaffected UNTIL I expand the subproject - at which point - the dates all shift to the right.  Can I prevent this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31317" LastActivityDate="2021-04-22T05:06:31.257" Title="Master Project in MSProj10 moves the dates in the subprojects" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12668" CreationDate="2018-02-01T09:16:34.783" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pick any issue on the Kanban board and edit it&#xA;Click 'Configure Fields' in the top right corner&#xA;The field you need will not be shown. Click 'Where Is My Field'&#xA;At this point, you will need to &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; the name of the field, which is 'Time Tracking'.&#xA;Type the field name and presss enter.&#xA;You will be presented with some instructions and a link. Follow the link to the Configure Field Screen.&#xA;Scroll down to the bottom of the page to the Add section. Again, you will need to know the name of the field you are adding.&#xA;Type in the name of the field and click 'Add'&#xA;The time tracking fields will then appear on the issue screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31327" LastActivityDate="2018-02-01T09:16:34.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23426" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-02-01T09:37:24.880" Score="2" ViewCount="735" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do Agile projects have Charters, project plans and baselines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to obtain the classical artifacts (which are necessary to report back to the business) in an Agile environment which focuses on delivery?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31328" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-02-01T14:09:31.887" LastActivityDate="2018-02-06T09:12:32.630" Title="Agile Artifacts" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;artifacts&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23381" CreationDate="2018-02-01T10:10:37.007" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first question you and the team should ask,&#xA;&quot;What's the purpose of the Retrospective?&quot;&#xA;In Scrum, every &lt;strong&gt;event&lt;/strong&gt; has a purpose. If there is no purpose, the event would turn into another boring &lt;strong&gt;meeting&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Retrospective need not be fun and surely need not be boring. &#xA;In general, following are the stages of a Retrospective&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set the stage &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collect the data&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Develop an insight&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Evolve a plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/resources/scrum-guide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Scrum Guide&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Sprint Retrospective is an opportunity for the Scrum Team to&#xA;  inspect itself and create a plan for improvements to be enacted during&#xA;  the next Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend for the Scrum Master to read through the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.de/Agile-Retrospectives-Making-Pragmatic-Programmers-ebook/dp/B00B03SRJW/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&amp;amp;ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1517479657&amp;amp;sr=1-1&amp;amp;keywords=Agile%20Retrospectives%3A%20Making%20Good%20Teams%20Great%20%28Pragmatic%20Programmers%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Agile Retrospectives Book&quot;&gt;Agile Retrospectives Book&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2859" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-02-01T13:02:55.080" LastActivityDate="2018-02-01T13:02:55.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23426" CreationDate="2018-02-01T16:29:48.330" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Project plans and baselines for Agile is like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic premise of agile is that you cannot make a project plan and baseline it - because requirements change and technology changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make a project plan, you need to know all of the requirements in advance, create a work breakdown structure (WBS) that accounts for all of the tasks needed to be done to accomplish those frozen requirements. Agile says that you cannot know all of the requirements in advance, that they emerge during the project. This is the reason &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scruminc.com/story-points-why-are-they-better-than/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jeff Sutherland, co-founder of Scrum, says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The venture capitalists I work with say they have never seen a&#xA;  correct GANTT chart in a board meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also see this &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cio.com/article/2434560/project-management/common-project-management-metrics-doom-it-departments-to-failure.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;report from Forrester Research, &quot;Common Project Management Metrics Doom IT Departments to Failure&quot;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The metrics organizations commonly use to determine whether an IT&#xA;  project is a success or a failure—whether the project is completed on&#xA;  time, on budget, and delivered the initial requirements—do more harm&#xA;  than good for IT departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Project requirements change for a variety of reasons, and schedules&#xA;  and budgets change during the lifetime of the project based on better&#xA;  information as to effort, complexity and interdependencies.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to answer your second question first:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to obtain the classical artifacts (which are necessary to report&#xA;  back to the business) in an Agile environment which focuses on&#xA;  delivery?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't try to obtain classical artifacts in an Agile environment. They will show successful projects as failures and vice versa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And to answer your first question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do Agile projects have Charters, project plans and baselines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile projects do not have project plans in the traditional sense and certainly not baselines. But Agile is not anarchy. As a business, you do need to know what the ROI is before making an investment decision. You can certainly have a Charter. But instead of project plans and baselines, you can have a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.romanpichler.com/blog/10-tips-creating-agile-product-roadmap/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;roadmap with specific business goals you are trying to accomplish in each sprint/release&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2018-02-05T14:12:32.600" LastActivityDate="2018-02-05T14:12:32.600" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23410" CreationDate="2018-02-01T17:31:10.297" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe the problem is (as Alex notes) the tool itself was not designed to specifically address SAFe.   Built-in's and workarounds added try to make up for it.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Have you looked at integrating other tools into JIRA to give you what you need?  Not saying to replace JIRA, but add value.  Tools like SwiftEASe from Digite provide a tool that can be used as a standalone SAFe implementation tool or fully integrated into JIRA resolving many of the problems you noted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem you are having in a nut shell - lipstick on a pig.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31334" LastActivityDate="2018-02-01T17:31:10.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3279" CreationDate="2018-02-01T19:16:48.757" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;agile coach here. I know we’ve got some answers from managers below that fellow managers love. However, I think we also need an answer from someone with experience implementing full agile, which is what I’ll try to do below.&#xA;First and foremost, the team is responsible for the work, not individuals. The team must be able to work in an environment without fear. That means, no managers who can fire, or otherwise penalize someone for not working hard enough. Finally, we want to reward teams, not individuals. I mean, the reason we want to have individual accountability is to focus on rewards, and not punishments, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The philosophy here is two-fold: trust, and an environment where fast-failure is encouraged.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Trust:&lt;/strong&gt; We want teams to know they can be completely honest about their progress to sprint/increment goals. We want full transparency, we won’t get that if the team-members don’t trust they can be honest about failures. We trust them to be honest with us, and they trust us to not penalize them for failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fast-Failure:&lt;/strong&gt; We want teams that are working on a chunk of work that is failing to note the failure, stop the work, figure out the problem, LEARN why they failed, and then proceed. An environment of fear where failure is not tolerated is an environment where failure will continue and  not be corrected quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Identifying problem team-members:&lt;/strong&gt; So, the real focus for the higher-ups here is probably that whole fire-the-lowest-10%-every-year or some such nonsense. If you allow the team to operate in an environment without fear, they will come to you when someone isn’t contributing. I’ve seen this happen quite a bit where one or more members of a team will march to my office and say “X person really doesn’t know what they’re doing, and they are impairing our ability to progress to sprint/iteration goals”. Then you can start the paperwork process to improve performance or replace them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do I report to managers?&lt;/strong&gt; This is simple, report progress to iteration/sprint goals and do it weekly. Focus on business value met, and not individual performance. It is the team that is producing the work, not the individual contributors.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What if the managers insist?&lt;/strong&gt; Then they’re not an agile executive, and probably need someone with gravitas to help them understand. If they refuse to change their mindset, you will not become agile. Go back to waterfall, and don’t pretend you’re agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12038" LastActivityDate="2018-02-01T19:16:48.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23437" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23450" CreationDate="2018-02-01T21:20:50.500" Score="2" ViewCount="6686" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a particular diagram established for the mapping of projects that are related? The goal here would be to find a way to make ties between related projects either based on dependencies or requirements. I've found some things on brain mapping a single project but nothing that would show relationships of several projects. Any ideas would be helpful!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31336" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-02-01T21:58:54.677" LastActivityDate="2018-02-02T15:59:21.963" Title="Diagram for mapping project dependencies or relationships" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;dependencies&gt;&lt;visualization&gt;&lt;business-process-mapping&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21445" CreationDate="2018-02-01T22:35:09.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The switching date will be March 26th 2018&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31007" LastActivityDate="2018-02-01T22:35:09.113" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23353" CreationDate="2018-02-01T23:57:16.283" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems that the tasks are too big to be done. I would suggest that you think about the &quot;INVEST&quot; term (independent, negotiable, valuable, estimable, small, testable).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the teams miss the &quot;small&quot; word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more thing you need to consider while practicing retrospective is the actions; it is not only what went wrong or what needs to be improved, you need to produce an action list and link them with resources and time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you practice these two points, things can move smoothly and by time you can add more practices such as kanban board, burn up/burn down charts and others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31007" LastActivityDate="2018-02-01T23:57:16.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12185" CreationDate="2018-02-02T00:13:28.417" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMBOK tries to add all of the possibilities in the details. However, not all of them are required to be included. This is one thing, second thing, if you notice the PMP exam tests the process groups not the management areas, which makes them less important  (but still important).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, how many project managers does procurement? I think less than 10% maybe more but not much more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some types of projects you may find quality manager, cost control manager and so on, in this case you cannot say that the project manager is not doing project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31007" LastActivityDate="2018-02-02T00:13:28.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23441" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23449" CreationDate="2018-02-02T02:18:45.560" Score="3" ViewCount="1124" Body="&lt;p&gt;On my Team, we do a Retrospective after every Sprint. Usually it's very productive, and the Team discusses what went well, what could improve, and what action items we want to take from the meeting. We use a board for these items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lately, for the last couple program increments, one of our Team members has been passive-aggressively launching personal attacks on members by not merely filling out what didn't go well, but also creating action items before the meeting even begins. How do you best approach the situation? From reading a few Scrum articles on this, it doesn't seem like a great way for a Retrospective to be run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31339" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-02-02T14:09:06.950" LastActivityDate="2018-02-06T09:37:59.970" Title="Toxic Retrospective in Agile Development" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23441" CreationDate="2018-02-02T03:49:00.273" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Scrum master needs to play a critical role here to handle the scrum retrospective meetings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2014/april/key-elements-of-sprint-retrospective&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sprint retrospective&lt;/a&gt; is a meeting facilitated by the Scrum Master at which the team discusses the just-concluded sprint and determines what could be changed that might make the next sprint more productive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So those action items must be captured and used as inputs to make next sprint more productive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important that everyone, including the team, product owner, and ScrumMaster, get a chance to air their opinions in an open, honest, yet constructive atmosphere. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one of the team member is doing personal attack during retrospective the best approach is to educate this person about the objectives of retrospective meetings which is to discuss,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What went well during the sprint cycle?&#xA;What went wrong during the sprint cycle?&#xA;What could we do differently to improve?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once a person understands the motives, and since he is part of &quot;self managed&quot; SCRUM team, hopefully (S)he would participate with right approach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21918" LastActivityDate="2018-02-02T03:49:00.273" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23441" CreationDate="2018-02-02T05:20:46.483" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I have done is, at the beginning of every Retro I repeat the rules of retrospectives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Whatever we uncover, we do not blame people.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Whatever decision was made, it was the best the people could do within the context, with information they had and they did their best.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We can discuss about FACTS and FEELINGS and ACTIONS we are going to take.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's not the people, it's the system.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: After you have established these rules you really have to call out people when they're breaking them. Not blaming the people outright, but approaching from a different angle. Try rephrasing their passive-aggressive remarks and get to the facts and feelings part. Or you can get there by asking &quot;why did you say that&quot; or something similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29075" LastActivityDate="2018-02-02T05:20:46.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23437" CreationDate="2018-02-02T05:30:50.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's the materials:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A board where you can stick pins&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Index cards for stories&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;String &amp;amp; pins&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Process:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Break down your requirements to user stories (vertical slices through your tech stack that DELIVER VALUE TO YOUR USERS) and add these to your board.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find out which ones have dependencies outside your team/project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use pins and string to draw a line to another project where the dependency is.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you're ready, take a picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29075" LastActivityDate="2018-02-02T05:30:50.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23441" CreationDate="2018-02-02T07:17:18.823" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If toxic behavior is happening in the retrospective I want to find out why it's happening. For me, this behavior would then become the main topic of the agile retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to dig deeper is by doing a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.benlinders.com/2013/feelings-matter-in-agile-retrospectives/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;One Word retrospective exercise&lt;/a&gt;. It can help the team to understand why this is happening and get insight into the causes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Main reason for digging deeper is that such toxic behavior is often not only happening in the retrospectives, and it's hurting the team and the people personally, probably on a daily base. As a Scrum Master you need to deal with this to prevent things becoming worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16919" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-02-02T14:29:41.653" LastActivityDate="2018-02-02T14:29:41.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23441" CreationDate="2018-02-02T11:07:27.290" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems like this is a people management issue, not a restrospective problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's first think from the Scrum perspective: as others mentioned, the Scrum Master could avoid the ceremony to go for aggressive or non-value-adding topics. Not only the Scrum Master as a facilitator, but also &lt;strong&gt;the team itself can help on that&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, thinking on future ceremonies and team sinergy, this should be addressed for this team-member manager to check what is happening with this collaborator. The manager could schedule an 1:1 to get deeper on what could be disappointing this collaborator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31044" LastEditorUserId="31044" LastEditDate="2018-02-02T14:47:05.173" LastActivityDate="2018-02-02T14:47:05.173" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23426" CreationDate="2018-02-02T11:24:16.500" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When using the Scrum framework reporting is different to traditional development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The four main reporting mechanisms are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Product Owner - As the PO is typically the business person who is most interested in the outcome of product development, their heavy involvement with the Scrum team provides a very direct form of reporting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Sprint Review - Happening at the end of each sprint, this ceremony is a window in to the progress of the Scrum team. Anyone in the business interested in the product can (and should) attend the Sprint Review to see how things are going.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Information radiators - As Agile emphasises transparency, Scrum makes public the product backlog and sprint backlogs. These give a clear indication of progress and a good idea of what is to come next.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Frequent releases - By releasing frequently (ideally every sprint) the business gets to see exactly what has been achieved and how much is still left to do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given these forms of reporting, there should be no need for traditional development artifacts like project plans, milestones and baselines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've described Scrum here, but other Agile frameworks also typically avoid the need for traditional development artifacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-02-02T11:24:16.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23448" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-02-02T12:34:25.010" Score="2" ViewCount="134" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Handling Incipient Failures in SAFe&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, there is the notion of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-sprint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cancelling a Sprint&lt;/a&gt; and returning to Sprint Planning if the Sprint Goal becomes obsolete, or if the iteration plan is so far off base that scope can't be renegotiated without obviating the current Sprint Goal. However, I can find no parallel mechanism in SAFe 4.x that provides a similar escape hatch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/program-increment/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Program Increment (PI)&lt;/a&gt; with goals that teams discover can't be met during the course of the PI, or Sprints/iterations within a PI that need to be replanned (not just re-scoped), what is the framework mechanism for doing so? While you're allowed to renegotiate scope in SAFe, sometimes that isn't enough to actually meet a goal; sometimes objectives or plans need to change, too!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously teams can replan at iteration boundaries within a PI. There are also opportunities to introspect issues and improve planning in the future during the Inspect and Adapt (I&amp;amp;A) or Innovation and Planning (IP) cycles in SAFe. However, the notion that the Agile Release Train (ART) just keeps chugging along, even once it's discovered that the train is headed full-steam down the wrong track, seems fundamentally wrong to me. What have I missed or misunderstood about this aspect of the framework?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-05-23T10:10:46.093" Title="What is the framework &quot;escape hatch&quot; for a SAFe ART that is running down the wrong track?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;safe&gt;&lt;failure&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23441" CreationDate="2018-02-02T14:27:11.160" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Getting a little meta (no not &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.meta.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;that&lt;/a&gt; meta) here, but...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should be discussed in the Retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;one of our Team members has been passive-aggressively launching personal attacks on members by [...] creating action items before the meeting even begins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There could be &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; reasons for this. Maybe some/all of the other Team members have been bullying this one, and s/he is lashing out in the only way s/he knows how. Maybe s/he's legitimately trying to &lt;em&gt;help&lt;/em&gt; the meeting go faster by filling stuff out beforehand, and you're picking up passive-aggression erroneously. Maybe s/he's just a jerk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Retrospective is not intended to be a status meeting where everyone runs through the '3 questions' like robots. It is meant to be an open, honest and constructive discussion on the system and the Team. It sounds like you need to do two things (become aware of this person's feelings, and make this person aware of how his/her actions affect the Team's feelings), and a Retrospective should be a good place to accomplish this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that, depending on the environment, you may wish to speak privately with the person &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt;. If s/he &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; (for example) being bullied, then ambushing him/her in front of everyone could end badly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, before you act, you must first learn (what's really going on and everyone's feelings about it) and inform (the Team of your findings).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-02-02T14:27:11.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23437" CreationDate="2018-02-02T15:59:21.963" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;What you are looking for is a Visual Portfolio Map&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a good article that describes what a Visual Portfolio Map is and why you need one: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-manage-interdependencies-project-portfolio-don-siler&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to Manage Interdependencies in a Project Portfolio&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But first, what are these interdependencies and why do they matter to&#xA;  us? They can take a number of forms including (but not limited to) ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Resources: Two projects require the same subject matter expert&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Functionality: One project depends on functionality delivered by another project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you can see links to some research here how a visual map helps the quality of decision making substantially compared to lists and matrices: &lt;a href=&quot;http://governanceandnetworks.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-evidence-is-here-visual-portfolio.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The evidence is here: Visual portfolio mapping delivers better decisions&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Map shows the project interdependencies as a social network map. Each project is represented as a circle, color-coded by 'strategic&#xA;  fit', and sized by budget&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;List shows the same information, but in a tabular form&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Matrix also shows that same information, but as a matrix&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The research found that the use of the map was correlated with the&#xA;  highest levels of decision quality. Not just to a small degree, but&#xA;  nearly 3 times better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.slideshare.net/Optimice/faster-and-better-project-portfolio-decisions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;example of a Visual Portfolio Map&lt;/a&gt;:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TY9V8.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TY9V8.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most PPM (Project Portfolio Management) software will have the capability to create some variation of this diagram.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2018-02-02T15:59:21.963" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23426" CreationDate="2018-02-02T22:04:43.077" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There =are= useful artifacts from Agile projects. At some point, for instance, you will want to be maintaining &quot;built as&quot; diagrams, showing what you built, how it all fits together, etc., so that the people maintaining the software and/or the network, or whatever you built have some reference. These docs can also contain information about things that aren't easily abstracted from the code later--the callbacks or callouts (and who maintains them; where credentials, roles, whatever are stored, etc.) You will know what is useful to maintain for your team--what will help people a year from now when some pieces of the project want to be refactored, and when it may take more than exploring the comments in individual bits of code to figure things out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, it is very useful to start an initiative--an epic or larger--off with a week spent doing User Story Mapping or other work to get a sense of what is being built. That may be stored as simply as pictures of stickies on the wall, but that effort will help give a sense of milestones (at least as perceived from the beginning of the initiative) and other critical pieces that will help resource planning further up the organization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working code is more important that documentation, but there will always be points where some documentation--in a Sharepoint or a wiki or other context-maintaining environment--is valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And note, that as other people have already written, traditional artifacts like charters and work breakdown structures are usually irrelevant and counterproductive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11776" LastActivityDate="2018-02-02T22:04:43.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23452" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-02-03T10:12:15.350" Score="0" ViewCount="545" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you are expected to commit to a date to deliver a project, how do you do this efficiently? My process is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;UI/UX&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimate with dev team - commit&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implementation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the devs do not know what they are building from requirement being an epic, they can't estimate and therefore cannot commit to a timeframe. In addition, if requirements are not properly agreed at the start, I've seen it lead to endless scope creep where the project drags on from Change requests. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2018-02-07T22:10:55.073" Title="Requirement gathering in agile" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23452" CreationDate="2018-02-03T14:54:08.253" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Agile values responding to change over following a plan&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umsl.edu/~sauterv/analysis/Fall2010Papers/Isserman/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Requirements gathering is hard&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Analysts and clients often speak in different general languages, with&#xA;  analysts often being more technical in nature, while clients will&#xA;  often speak more from a business perspective. This makes common&#xA;  understanding difficult. Tagbo also identified several other general&#xA;  challenges in requirements elicitation, including conflicting&#xA;  requirements, unspoken or assumed requirements, difficulty in meeting&#xA;  with relevant stakeholders, stakeholder resistance to change, and not&#xA;  enough time set for meeting with all stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Even if you do it well, there are downsides&lt;/strong&gt;: Many organizations try to prevent changes by making it very difficult, if not impossible, to inject changes after the initial planning phase. This resistance drives many teams to add everything, including the proverbial kitchen sink, to their initial requirements to avoid the pain of adding changes later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;These are some of the main sources of changes to requirements (scope creep)&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allowing change is imperative for companies that must compete in a fast paced, cut throat, rapidly changing marketplace. Project teams that can respond quickly to customers, product users, and the market in general are able to develop relevant, helpful products that people want to use.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As the team dives deep into the project and understands the problem space better and starts developing a solution, they get a better understanding of the domain and it becomes clear that some of the requirements are superfluous and new ones are discovered.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;UI/UX is especially hard to pin down at the requirements stage. Best practice is to try out various options, run it by typical users and make (often drastic) changes based on their feedback.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; values responding to change over following a plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2018-02-03T14:54:08.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23452" CreationDate="2018-02-04T16:02:51.910" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Overview&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project chartering should include enough &quot;planning in the large&quot; to roughly estimate a project, but an agile project doesn't generally contain a detailed project plan up front. Unless your project is very simple or extremely short, such planning won't benefit from the iterative process and emergent design that agility is meant to deliver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your project is so simple or short that you don't &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; iterative development or emergent design, you may not need a full-scale agile implementation at all. This is always a point worth considering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile projects leverage release planning and iteration planning to handle vertical slices of planning. The goal is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; &quot;efficiency&quot; per se, although an agile framework can (pragmatically speaking) be more efficient than other methodologies. Instead, the goal is sustainable pacing and continuous feedback. Also, as &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6361539225887735808&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;I have said&lt;/a&gt; elsewhere:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The goal of #Scrum (and other #agile methods) isn't to work faster; it's to apply a team's limited capacity more effectively, and to maximize the amount of work &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Release Planning&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have two choices for agile release planning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set a fixed target date, and continuously modify scope to fit within it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define a fixed scope, and forecast (and continually update) a release date based on when the team can complete the scope.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The initial backlog is a set of features and epics gathered from the stakeholders, then ranked by the Product Owner with or without help from others. The Scrum Team must then do just-in-time planning each iteration to deliver a complete increment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Iteration Planning&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each iteration, the team will develop a small vertical slice that includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Functional and non-functional requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;UI/UX criteria.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An implementation plan for the current Product Backlog Items.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acceptance criteria.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testing plans.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Et cetera.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;for &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; the current iteration. Anything more may change before the next iteration, and violates the agile principle of &quot;maximizing work not done.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-02-04T16:02:51.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23452" CreationDate="2018-02-04T16:35:17.223" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the scale of the project, however, one approach you can try in the following areas would be: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Requirements&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ensure that you've identified and agreed with relevant stakeholders what the mandatory requirements are. If you didn't complete this your project simply wouldn't be functional and/or is unlikely to meet the business case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This gives you a skeleton that you can start to build upon. This can help influencers feel confident and also give you the scope to prioritise the other features. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UI/UX&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's important that you've thought out (and tested) the potential user flows and actions at each step in the journey of your project. You can then progress detailed UI/UX &quot;just in time&quot; (i.e. before the start of a sprint or a time frame your developers are comfortable with) whilst still making sure the overall experience is on the right track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is best if you can embed your UX/UI person(s) into your team. The devs should see the designs early at a wireframe stage to help feedback and understand the technical implications of what is being proposed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Estimate and commit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimations can be tricky. You need to understand at a good level the implication of a story from both a dev and test point of view, alongside this, if your team hasn't been together for long, story points are subjective and therefore it will take you a few sprints to translate them into anything plannable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I try to look at it at an epic level, running the devs through the proposed journeys at a high level and then get them to guestimate. It could be in sprints or t-shirt sizes (e.g. it's similar to project X, which was a large, so it will probably be Y months).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll get a sense from there if your expected timeline is unreasonable or at risk. It's important to manage stakeholder expectations, one easy way of doing this is explaining that you can't provide detailed estimations at this stage, so it's likely to be + / - XX% tolerance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you start to do regular refinement and planning sessions, you'll get a better sense of how much time it will take you to get through your project backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Implementation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a demo session at the end of every sprint or at the completion of an epic with your relevant stakeholders. Take them through what the team has accomplished and also share the challenges you've faced. Doing this frequently prevent big surprises later on down the road. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31354" LastActivityDate="2018-02-04T16:35:17.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22728" CreationDate="2018-02-04T16:49:44.273" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My understanding of OKRs is that they are designed to focus on making people clear on the expected outcomes, not necessarily how you get there (i.e. completing a specific epic).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Objective:&lt;/strong&gt; Increase monthly recurring revenue &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduce churn by 3% &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Migrate 5% of freemium customer base to tier 1 subscription product&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reach net average 1,000 additional subscription users per month&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So perhaps the epic you're required to complete helps solve 1 or all 3 of those key results, it's not a key result in itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's fine to have an individual objective of completing that epic in a set period of time, perhaps OKRs just aren't the right framework or process for that on an individual level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31354" LastEditorUserId="31354" LastEditDate="2018-02-04T22:37:51.670" LastActivityDate="2018-02-04T22:37:51.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23459" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-02-05T09:04:45.260" Score="0" ViewCount="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was asked to prepare an overview of an existing IT architechture and provide a document that consists of weaknesses analysis and suggestions on how each of the weak spots can be improved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to make this document simple to read, not overloaded and specific at the same time? Is there a template I can use for this kind of documentation?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, should I provide a description of how a specific segment in the system currently works before I put explanation about what should be changed? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25740" LastActivityDate="2018-02-05T10:46:40.417" Title="How to write recommendation documentation?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;&lt;specification&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2018-02-05T14:30:22.733" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23459" CreationDate="2018-02-05T10:46:40.417" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This depends on what the target audience is for your propositions. More details to more technically-oriented people, less details for the people who controls budgeting. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Architecture is always a high-level thing. So if you analyse the weaknesses on architectural level there is no need to get into details. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You should rather concentrate on the value of the changes you propose. What risks are covered, what are the costs, what might happen if the thing will remain as is.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use info-graphics approach&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Provide the summary page at the end&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29674" LastActivityDate="2018-02-05T10:46:40.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23461" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-02-05T20:17:06.897" Score="-2" ViewCount="1231" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I want to use Agile, and use a Scrum implementation, will TFS do all I need?  Or do I need something else?  I have MS Project 2016 (not using Project Server), and it has an Agile template, but most people frown on MS Project for anything Agile or Scrum.  On the other hand, most of the answers I saw concerning Project and Scrum were years old.  I don't know if any of that changed in 2016-2018.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read these (and others), &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/14246/how-to-use-scrum-with-tfs-and-also-microsoft-project&quot;&gt;How to use Scrum with TFS and also MIcrosoft Project&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/10462/what-tools-do-i-need-to-manage-an-agile-project&quot;&gt;What tools do I need to manage an agile project?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/4004/using-microsoft-project-for-managing-a-scrum-project&quot;&gt;Using Microsoft Project for managing a Scrum project&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/75/are-gantt-diagrams-compatible-with-agile-methods&quot;&gt;Are Gantt diagrams compatible with Agile methods?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure these answer my question.  Can I use both?  No need?  TFS only?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31370" LastActivityDate="2018-02-08T20:00:43.290" Title="Does Microsoft TFS have all I need for Agile Project Management?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23462" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-02-05T22:20:00.533" Score="0" ViewCount="115" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my company I'm responsible for several software development teams. Lately our managers asked me to establish a time tracking system for our developers to have better overview over the actual costs of specific projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I get the intention and of course I see that there not only needs to be a mechanism to calculate prices for our customers, but also to understand and interpret the performance of our company and its optimization potentials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since there a lots of companies out there selling tools for time tracking and pretty much everybody is used to do time tracking, I only find information on how to do time tracking, but nearly nothing about how to handle the situation based on other metrics than time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I'm searching for this alternative is, that I feel our recently pretty successful Scrum process is in danger. In contrast to other teams in my company, we deliver on time, have less software defects and significantly increased our velocity multiple times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We did not need time tracking to achieve this and to me it seems that things, which would be judged as &quot;waste of time&quot;, were not possible anymore. Just to mention some examples, for me it is ok to have the developers to take breaks whenever they feel it is a good idea. Sometimes my impression is, that some types of breaks are even increasing productivity. If this means somebody is working less hours than paid by contract, I'm ok with this as long as the total team results are over average. The current environment encourages team mates to help each others or even other developers which are not part of the team, making the team and the whole organization generally better (= higher return of investment).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time tracking would reduce this kind of time and IMHO it could kill an environment that is actually based on motivation, trust and the developers inherent will to succeed. I think, a lot of creativity and the strive for innovation could be inhibited. The need to increase not only the own velocity but also the need to increase others productivity could get lost. Not to mention the unnecessary overhead of time tracking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will agree that developers are not able to think 8 hours a day without burning out at a certain point. Especially if there is a constant pressure of deadlines or exhausting pair programming sessions, to me it would be a bad long term decision to &quot;make sure&quot;, that developers &quot;worked&quot; all their hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I even think, that time tracking is misleading. It will not provide actual costs, but estimates or approximations. There are lots of reasons for me to find an alternative. Since the time tracking approach is mostly driven by our &quot;non-technical&quot; management, to a certain degree, it seems to be a request to have at least something™ which enables them to handle the situation, because they simply do not know about software development processes and the impact of command and control structures on Scrum. They would be happy if I could simply provide a mechanism which fits their needs and provides all the necessary information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My intuitive idea was to ask the developers to check and possibly correct their story point estimates when closing an issue. Then I could use the teams sprint velocity, the teams total amount of costs per sprint and calculate project costs proportionally. (I know, this does not provide the actual cost but neither is time tracking.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that is my question. Is this the common way to calculate costs? Do you have better ideas? How do you do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26883" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-02-06T12:59:08.367" LastActivityDate="2018-02-06T14:34:49.077" Title="Cost management without time tracking in Scrum" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;&lt;timekeeping&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23461" CreationDate="2018-02-05T22:21:07.787" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;We used TFS with the Agile template at one of my previous employers&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, you don't need MS Project. In fact, using it may be counter-productive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum doesn't require much by way of tool features. In fact, if the entire team is colocated, some people have practiced scrum by using sticky notes on a board. The use of a tool helps speed up things like the burndown chart and show the historic velocity of the team. Of course, if the team is not colocated, you do need a tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am listing below a quick checklist of features that may help you to decide whether a given tool will help you run scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Must haves&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be able to maintain an ordered Product Backlog (of epics and stories).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be able to add acceptance criteria, estimated size and also attach diagrams and files to a story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a sprint (with a start date and an end date) to maintain a Sprint Backlog (by assigning stories to it).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mark a story in the Sprint Backlog as 'Done'.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Nice to haves&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mark which epic a story belongs to (so that you can see all the stories from one epic at a glance).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add threaded 'Comments' to a story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;View the status of stories in the current Sprint in a Kanban style board.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Break up a story into a set of tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mark (or link) related stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be able to see the velocity of previous sprints.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be able to see the burndown chart of current and previous sprints.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at your questions, it appears to me that you will be well advised to take some time to understand the essentials of scrum before jumping into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2018-02-05T22:21:07.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23461" CreationDate="2018-02-05T22:22:04.457" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR; TFS moves virtual index cards across a virtual taskboard as well as any other app.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Longer Answer:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TFS Has Everything You Need to Start and Then Some&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The truth is, you don't need any tools at all to start with Scrum, but at a minimum, some sticky notes, a few markers, and some masking tape definitely help. This isn't meant in a snarky way either - I've seen really advanced teams that never needed more than this. TFS supplies a way to build a task board and track work on it (replacing the need for sticky notes and tape), so there is no reason you can't get started with TFS and you might never need more than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But You Might&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile is not a methodology. In the strict sense, Scrum isn't one either (it's a framework). This is important to understand because there is an assumption that each team will find their own precise methodology within the framework. Through this, you may find that other tools benefit you and there is no good way to be sure which ones your team will need before-hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But I Know a Guy Who Always Uses....&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, that happens. We're creatures of habit and, all other things being equal, we're rather use the tools we always used before. And to a degree, this is harmless. Just be careful - are you using a tool because it is a close enough fit that you get more benefit from your experience as you would from other tool that is a slightly better fit? Or are you trying to will your current circumstances into aligning with your comfort zone, even if they clearly don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;All The Other Stuff TFS Does&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TFS has a lot of other features. Burn-up and burn-down charts are tools that teams often find useful. Many teams package work into releases. Tying work to your version control, code reviews, and even your CI/CD process can be really helpful, and TFS can make all of these easier if you need it to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-02-05T22:22:04.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23465" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23473" CreationDate="2018-02-06T06:03:46.173" Score="2" ViewCount="961" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are using ZenHub for Scrum and doing point-based estimations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When there is a issue to estimate can't we do hour based estimations with GitHub? As I can see, only point-based estimation is available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, is there a way to specify the completed hours/remaining hours there? Because any progress on the burn down chart is not indicated until we close the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31376" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-02-06T14:41:12.327" LastActivityDate="2018-02-06T14:53:00.647" Title="Tracking Time Remaining with GitHub (ZenHub)" Tags="&lt;burndown-chart&gt;&lt;github-issues&gt;&lt;zenhub&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23462" CreationDate="2018-02-06T08:21:30.253" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you need to track costs, track it at the Scrum Team level rather than at the individual level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A simple way to do this is to take a blended cost per person and multiply it by the number of people in the team and the duration of sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Average cost of staff is £600 per day and Scrum Team 1 has 7 people in it and do a two week sprint. 600 x 7 x 10 = £42,000 per sprint&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working with Scrum you can now justify this cost with the value released in each sprint. All you need to do is answer the following question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is the team delivering value equal to or greater than the cost per sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How you determine value is up to you. An example might incorporate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Revenue generated by the sale of the team's work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cost savings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Regulatory compliance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Following strategic objectives&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now there is no need to waste time tracking story points or time estimates. Simply focus on value delivered and sprint cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How the team goes about delivery is up to them (taking breaks, collaborating, knowledge sharing, etc.). It is the end result that is measured, not the details of how they do their jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-02-06T08:21:30.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23426" CreationDate="2018-02-06T09:12:32.630" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, not really. &#xA;Agile principle #1 is : &quot;&lt;em&gt;Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software&lt;/em&gt;&quot; and the principle #7 is: &quot;&lt;em&gt;Working software is the primary measure of progress&lt;/em&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Forget the classic artefacts for reporting: every stakeholder will be more than happy to see a working product adding or improving regularly functionalities instead of a gantt chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If indeed is not the case, then the project / environment / culture are not suitable for an Agile approach. Agile is not a silver bullet for every project / everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14922" LastActivityDate="2018-02-06T09:12:32.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23441" CreationDate="2018-02-06T09:37:59.970" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Retrospective is meant exactly to address this kind of issues around team dynamics (for the product feedbacks you have the Sprint Demo/Review).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team member persists in his/her behaviour, even after having being reminded of the Prime Directive (&quot;&lt;em&gt;Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could&lt;/em&gt;&quot;) then the team’s scrum master needs to take action. Blaming games cannot be ignored nor tolerated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mentioned that it was not always the same, so probably something happened to ignite this behaviour and the team member does not feel comfortable to speak about it in public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scrum master should start by addressing the team member privately to discuss their concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possibly it was about private issues or only with another specific team member and could be solved individually or in a smaller group. Sometimes it helps a lot just to listen and acknowledge the concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only following private discussion and if the team member’s reservations ARE a topic of discussion for the entire team, then the team can be involved by discussing them during the next retrospective. This allows the team to offer their support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is still no change in the team member’s attitude, then this needs to be escalated to his/her direct manager. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If still no change can be achieved, then the team member could be assigned to another team, with different members or possibly a non-agile team/project if the concerns were about this team member feeling to be forced out of his/her comfort zone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14922" LastActivityDate="2018-02-06T09:37:59.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23465" CreationDate="2018-02-06T13:01:18.280" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story point based burndown chart doesn't measure time remaining. It measures work-effort remaining, and you must use additional metrics to forecast your schedule based on current scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Story Points, ZenHub, and Burndowns&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story point based burndown chart doesn't measure time, it measures work remaining. I won't belabor the fact that &lt;em&gt;canonically&lt;/em&gt; there is no 1:1 mapping of story points to man hours, although some people and frameworks do misuse the metric that way. In fact, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.zenhub.com/guides/what-are-software-estimates#story-points-time-estimates&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ZenHub itself&lt;/a&gt; addresses the topic as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That's the basis of story points. They're unitless scales of measurement which are sized in relation to other tasks. Unlike hours, which are based on consistent values, story points are based on arbitrary measurements. Their only purpose is to compare a task in relation to the sizes of your other tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, if you continuously update your estimates and &quot;burn down&quot; work completed, you will be able to tell at any point in time how much work remains. In ZenHub, and with user stories in general, this work is a relative measure of level-of-effort, not time. &lt;strong&gt;You will then need to use your timeboxing methodology and historical measures such as velocity to &lt;em&gt;forecast&lt;/em&gt; when remaining work for the iteration or release is likely to be completed.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-02-06T13:01:18.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21666" CreationDate="2018-02-06T14:18:18.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We always include a Feature &quot;Technical Debt&quot; in every release. The developers make user stories under the feature regarding code refactoring, code cleanup, framework updates, increasing code coverage etc. The Product Owner is made to understand that these catching up on our Technical Debt stories have to be done first and then we should build functionality on top of the existing code base. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, our releases also take 3-5 months. At the end of Release-1, the workload is more on Testing while at the beginning of Release-2, the workload is more on the Product OWner/BA side. These 2-3 weeks between Release-1 closure and Release-2 Dev/Test Iterations beginning, that's when this Technical Debt work kicks off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31382" LastActivityDate="2018-02-06T14:18:18.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23462" CreationDate="2018-02-06T14:34:49.077" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I agree with Barnaby that tracking time (or, really, tracking almost &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt;) at the Team level is better than at the individual level, I agree with you that tracking Time &lt;em&gt;at all&lt;/em&gt; is not ideal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best course of action is to convince upper management that this is a bad idea. The most effective way to do that, as you've already realized, is to have an alternative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing I suggest you do is to ask the &lt;em&gt;Teams&lt;/em&gt; themselves for ideas. If the number of Team members is small enough, this could be done all at once. If not, go one Team at a time, aggregate all the results, then send out in an email afterwards (as one Team may think of something new after hearing the idea of another Team).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only would this potentially bring about good ideas (and from people far more knowledgeable about your situation than Strangers on the Internet™ could be), it will also increase Team buy-in. Even in the worst case of not being able to come up with something, the Team will at least be glad to have been consulted, which could mitigate one of the worst drawbacks of time-tracking - lowered morale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One possible approach (though this &lt;em&gt;strongly&lt;/em&gt; depends on your organizational environment, so Your Mileage may Vary), is to point out to upper management how much better your Teams have been doing than other teams (make sure you have metrics!). You can then suggest that, rather than introduce time-tracking, which you and your Teams anticipate will, by itself, &lt;em&gt;lower&lt;/em&gt; their productivity, the business could instead focus on converting those other teams to work more similarly to your Teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-02-06T14:34:49.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23472" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23474" CreationDate="2018-02-06T14:46:46.067" Score="31" ViewCount="13325" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read over and over that in order for Scrum to work, &quot;Management has to buy into Scrum.&quot;  Can you tell me why that is?  What management are they talking about, the company stakeholders that have paid you to build it, but are not on the development team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What happens when Scrum is used, but Management hasn’t bought into it? Why does it matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is it that Management doesn't see that they don't like not seeing?  You don't have deadlines and budgets using Scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me the bottom line is trust the dev team and give them what they need and they'll do you right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31370" LastEditorUserId="774" LastEditDate="2019-10-09T05:49:49.973" LastActivityDate="2019-10-09T05:49:49.973" Title="Why does management have to &quot;buy into&quot; Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;&lt;project-sponsor&gt;&lt;project-governance&gt;" AnswerCount="14" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23465" CreationDate="2018-02-06T14:53:00.647" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with everything Todd said, and want to add a few points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You note that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because any progress on the burn down chart is not indicated until we close the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is by design. The idea behind Scrum is that if you have a Story that you've been working on for 3 days, and it isn't done yet, then that Story &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;is 0% done.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; The reasoning behind this is that, given that a not-completed Story provides zero (or negative!) business value, by treating them as 0% done, you avoid the Team having many '90% done' Stories in play.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We are [...] doing point-based estimations. [...] can't we do hour based estimations with GitHub?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something, but if your Teams are estimating in Story Points, then... why are you trying to get a tool to allow estimating in time? What is your reasoning behind wanting to do estimation in time? On the assumption that the answer is 'because we need to forecast when certain features will be complete', then what you can do is take the amount of points estimated and divide it by the average velocity (of the &lt;em&gt;Team&lt;/em&gt;). Likewise, if it is for some other reason, first consider if you really &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to be tracking time in the first place, or if you can solve your problem another way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-02-06T14:53:00.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23472" CreationDate="2018-02-06T15:20:55.410" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;Speaking from experience...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I once attempted to bring Scrum into a situation where:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We currently had little-to-no defined process for development - people just got assigned work, did it, then got more work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Our direct manager was indifferent/mildly hostile (think &quot;I don't like this new-fangled way of doing things, but I'll let you work how you want. Just keep me out of it.&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Team was relatively enthusiastic but used to a non-Agile mindset&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The CEO was very waterfall-oriented (and communicated only with other executives, who were also waterfall-minded).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I, someone who had 3 months' experience as a developer in Scrum, was chosen as the Scrum Master (as no one else knew anything about it), with no budget for training or hiring an Agile Coach.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, while this might sound like a disaster, it wasn't... terrible. We completed our big, 2-year project only about half a year late, and having completed all features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, we could have done better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We tried to keep the manager aware of our process and status, but he grew increasingly uncomfortable (due to how strange he found it), and eventually simply wanted no part of it... and was later upset at being blind-sided by a certain delay in the project that, had he been involved, he could have mitigated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I noted, we completed all features... because once a feature was accepted, it &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; be included... even if the users never really wanted it in the first place. There were some features that, years later, had never been used once. Had we started by developing a Minimum Viable Product and &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; soliciting further requirements, those features would have shriveled up and died. But we were forbidden from showing the incomplete product to the users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless, both my Team and I felt, at the end, that our mangled, half-Scrum approach &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; better than what we'd had before. We didn't regret attempting it, even without stakeholder buy-in. It just could have been so much &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You added:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is it that Management doesn't see that they don't like not seeing? You don't have deadlines and budgets using Scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in response to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many traditional managers are accustomed to &quot;knowing&quot; Scope, Budget and Deadline upon committing to a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is that in a Waterfall mindset, the idea is to plan enough that you are capable of divining the future, and therefore, once development has started, you get &lt;em&gt;fixed&lt;/em&gt; scope and &lt;em&gt;fixed&lt;/em&gt; cost and &lt;em&gt;fixed&lt;/em&gt; schedule. Because they won't change, because you planned perfectly and the future never changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an Agile mindset, you can only ever have, at most, 2 of those being fixed. Because you can't ever accurately predict the future, because the future &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; change. So there must be room to adapt. If all three &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;iron triangle&lt;/a&gt; constraints are fixed, then there is no room to adapt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yeah, but you can't put them off forever. What do you say, &quot;Oh, btw, this will change and we can't know when it will be complete?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have fixed cost and fixed scope, then yes, you cannot know when a feature will be complete - until it is. As you get closer to that point, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cone of uncertainty&lt;/a&gt; narrows, but it only becomes a point once the feature is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anything else is blinding yourself to reality by &lt;em&gt;pretending&lt;/em&gt; you know when something will be done, &lt;em&gt;when you actually don't&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-02-06T16:43:23.463" LastActivityDate="2018-02-06T16:43:23.463" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23472" CreationDate="2018-02-06T15:24:37.787" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/buy-into-sth&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cambridge dictionary&lt;/a&gt; &lt;strong&gt;&quot;buy into&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; is a phrasal verb meaning &lt;strong&gt;&quot;to believe in a set of ideas&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It often happens that when a company or a team migrates the processes to scrum the overall performance or results might not look good especially in the very beginning. This declaration means that the management should believe in scrum and be ready to wait for results even if there is no instant value demonstrated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29674" LastEditorUserId="29674" LastEditDate="2018-02-06T15:34:32.800" LastActivityDate="2018-02-06T15:34:32.800" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23472" CreationDate="2018-02-06T15:27:30.787" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many traditional managers are accustomed to &quot;knowing&quot; Scope, Budget and Deadline upon committing to a project. Scrum takes all that away and promises to do its best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you get one of these outcomes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management says: In that case you are not doing Scrum. Outcome: No Scrum.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management says: Sure you do Scrum, we do waterfall and what we do counts. Outcome: Twice the administrative effort and no Scrum.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management says: OK but we'll remodel Scrum so we still get fixed Scope, Budget and Timelines. Outcome: Perverted Scrum.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management says: We see the benefits and agree to support this approach. Outcome: Eventually, hopefully Scrum.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Scrum does not concern itself with budgets. That's the job of the stakeholders/customers/management to determine if the progress being made is worth the funding invested. Deadlines are similarly meaningless in Scrum. In principle you can ship or shelve the project after any iteration and simply walk away. The argument of Scrum is that while it can't predict how far it will come by date X or when feature level Y will be done, it can tell you that at any point in time you will have the best product that can be had for the investment you have made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastEditorUserId="26715" LastEditDate="2018-02-06T16:14:50.583" LastActivityDate="2018-02-06T16:14:50.583" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21666" CreationDate="2018-02-06T16:03:46.377" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Decisions became part of the grooming process and we found that design by committee took forever ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;50% of my time was now used for meetings.&#xA;  Nobody wants to spend so much time in meetings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should not be spending such an excessive amount of time in meetings. You are likely not timeboxing them. Ideally under Scrum these decisions should STILL be going on ad-hoc between the team members responsible for the corresponding tasks. Backlog grooming is not a design meeting. Its goal is to break items down into a size that can be sheduled a on what should be done (will we have user avatars? will we have multiplayer?) not how (Fidget-Architecture powered by Gadget-engine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Group think has reduced the extent to which anyone &quot;owns&quot; the code base. Nobody can do anything without a massive discussion first.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Developer passion has gone. All the decision making power has evaporated leaving the devs demotivated. Right now I'm trying to fix one bug and bugs that I could be fixing are being fixed by another guy who don't knows the code in that area well enough.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SHTAP! You are seriously missing the point of crosstraining in a scrum team. The goal is that &lt;em&gt;eventually&lt;/em&gt; every team member should be able to pick up any task with decent proficiency. But even then it would be insanity to &quot;assign&quot; a task to a team member who can barely do it when a specialist is available. Someone is trying to forcefully turn your team into interchangeable gears instead of allowing a natural cross-training to take place. That person needs to stop immediately!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shared code ownership does not mean everyone must negotiate every decision with the whole team but that you consult with coworkers who know a piece of code better than you but you don't need their permission to touch it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2018-02-06T16:03:46.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23479" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-02-06T16:56:57.623" Score="2" ViewCount="11169" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read various questions and answers and I'm really struggling to setup up a Project/Sprint/Story/SubTask to get what we think we need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of long term planning I've sold my team on the idea of Stories, estimates in Story Points, then measuring Velocity in Story Points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The stories, however, can easily be quite big; taking a week or more to complete.  This is because a lot of the work is essentially &quot;Research something, then document it and output some options and recommendations (with relative merits, etc)&quot;.  That nicely fits with a break-down into various sub-tasks; different topics to research being separate sub-tasks, documentation of each topic also being separate sub-tasks, final options and recommendations being another sub-task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where we're becoming stuck is that a burn-down chart in story points is next to useless for us.  We see nothing happen for a week or more, then suddenly a massive percentage of the work is completed.  So, we read about using Story Points for estimation and then adding time-tracking.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/agile067/jira-agile-user-s-guide/configuring-a-board/configuring-estimation-and-tracking&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://confluence.atlassian.com/agile067/jira-agile-user-s-guide/configuring-a-board/configuring-estimation-and-tracking&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as we understand it, and we may be wrong, we want the following process:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add a Story to the back-log, with a Story Point estimate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When we move that Story in to a Sprint, create sub-tasks and estimate them in days/hours (but don't change the Story's Story Point estimate)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As we work the Sprint, we log changes to Estimated Time Remaining on each Sub-Task&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use a Burn-Down chart to track progress, the target being 0 hours remaining by the end of the sprint?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use Velocity based on Story Points to estimate capacity for future sprints&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far we have the Stories estimated in Story Points, and the configuration below for Time Tracking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But we can't figure out how to set an Initial Time Estimate of the Sub-Tasks...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2yM3J.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2yM3J.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31386" LastEditorUserId="31386" LastEditDate="2018-02-06T17:21:03.227" LastActivityDate="2020-05-27T15:28:50.630" Title="JIRA - Story Points &amp; Time Tracking" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23479" CreationDate="2018-02-06T17:16:25.800" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We see nothing happen for a week or more, then suddenly a massive percentage of the work is completed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a look at my related answer, here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/20367/25606&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/20367/25606&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, you note...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The stories, however, can easily be quite big&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, the obvious solution is to break up your current 'Stories' (&quot;Research this big thing&quot;) into multiple Stories (one per research topic). That way, your burn-down will be more consistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm reluctant to break a story down in to smaller stories where those fake stories offer no business value in themselves [...] What we want here is information on how this sprint is progressing. Acting as an early warning to a failure to deliver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A fair point. In that case, however, if all you need is insight into the status of the Sprint, I question the need for the overhead of dual-estimation. Many Teams choose to estimate merely by number of Stories, rather than Story Points. Have you considered doing the same here, for SubTasks? Simply burn down the &lt;em&gt;number&lt;/em&gt; of SubTasks, rather than their estimation. Provided your SubTasks have a relatively even distribution, this should work well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-02-07T14:39:30.427" LastActivityDate="2018-02-07T14:39:30.427" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23472" CreationDate="2018-02-06T17:38:15.200" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a huge misconception (or difference of perception) of managers of programming teams.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;What they think: &quot;We set the project, features and timeline, and it will be done in that time&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;What programmers think: &quot;We have a certain pace that we can work at, work will not get done any faster regardless of what management is doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In waterfall management sets the specs and timeline. In scrum management asks for features and programmers give an estimate of when a feature is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Managers think that going from waterfall to scrum gives them less power over when and how things get done. Again, though, just giving a programmer a deadline on when things need to be done doesn't make the programmer be done with the feature within the deadline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When management doesn't buy into scrum they're not involved in the process. They don't give the necessary feedback, they might dictate deadlines. All this might lead to more overhead, more meetings and unnecessary features. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31388" LastActivityDate="2018-02-06T17:38:15.200" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23472" CreationDate="2018-02-06T18:58:49.173" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum can deliver software faster, better, and cheaper. But to realize the potential time and cost savings, stakeholders have to understand the process and be committed to fulfilling their role in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understanding the process means letting go of the idea that everything can be planned up front. Business people are accustomed to having detailed plans and contracts set in stone at the beginning of a project. In my experience, the main obstacle to non-developer managers accepting Scrum is that only minimal planning is done up front, and the plan is not only allowed, but &lt;em&gt;expected&lt;/em&gt; to evolve over time. This idea is central to Scrum. A detailed plan takes significant time and effort to produce, yet is inevitably inferior to a dynamic plan because even someone intimately familiar with the domain cannot envision how everything should work or anticipate every opportunity for improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management likes detailed and inflexible plans.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're following a detailed and inflexible plan, you're not doing Scrum.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31390" LastActivityDate="2018-02-06T18:58:49.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23479" CreationDate="2018-02-06T19:32:59.493" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;When you create a sub-task, you can enter an initial estimate&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Where we're becoming stuck is that a burn-down chart in story points&#xA;  is next to useless for us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, we read about using Story Points for estimation and then adding&#xA;  time-tracking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But we can't figure out how to set an Initial Time Estimate of the&#xA;  Sub-Tasks...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the Create Sub-Task dialog you should see a field named 'Estimate'. Here you can enter your initial time estimate in hours for each sub-task. If you don't see the 'Estimate' field, you may be able to turn it on by clicking on the 'Configure Fields' dropdown at the top right corner.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once the Sprint starts, ask team members to enter the number of hours they 'Worked' on each task and the 'Remaining estimate' (regardless of the original estimate) in the Log Work dialog (see screenshot) for each Sub-Task.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6wkHN.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6wkHN.png&quot; alt=&quot;Jira Log Work for Subt-Tasks&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go To Reports, click on 'Switch Report' and select 'Burndown Chart'. Select 'Original Time Estimate' for the vertical scale. Now you should see a Burndown chart in hours, using the Original Time Estimate as the baseline.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2018-02-06T19:51:27.710" LastActivityDate="2018-02-06T19:51:27.710" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23479" CreationDate="2018-02-06T19:42:04.973" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;So first to answer your simple question: Why not set the initial time as a function of the story points of the task? Story points are meant to measure complexity, which often ends up matching somewhat with time. That will give you a comparable result sprint after sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However in my experience as a consultant I found that you want to do as little manual tracking as possible. So instead of doing manual tracking to reflect on some board, focus more on the standup. The standup is supposed to be a mini sprint planning. A look at whether the current direction is going to take us to the sprint goal. So in that it makes sense to ask people if they're stuck(the classic &quot;any impediments&quot;-question). A subtask staying in the same status for a &quot;long&quot; time will be a very clear indicator that someone is stuck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31139" LastActivityDate="2018-02-06T19:42:04.973" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23472" CreationDate="2018-02-06T21:11:42.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is very much similar to the fact that the Project Sponsor/Executive should be part of the 'plan how to plan' workshop at the beginning of the project. In essence, you have to set up their expectations and they have to agree on the deliverables and project approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile is a very different mindset than waterfall. It is not easy to translate an Agile approach into firm deadlines and budget terms, and management (and contracts) are all about deadlines, scope and budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31034" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-02-06T21:54:13.023" LastActivityDate="2018-02-06T21:54:13.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23488" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23491" CreationDate="2018-02-06T23:07:29.973" Score="1" ViewCount="213" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I am not wrong, Scrum groups user stories into sprints so the team focuses its resources to complete as much user stories as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How flexible is the sprint planning according to Scrum ?, in theory a sprint should not allow to add new user stories to a running sprint, right ?, but what happens when an organization is doing both, implementing the product and developing the product's concept at the same time ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if business teams need to do experiments, which require the addition of new user stories to be implemented in a middle of a sprint, and such tasks should be released as soon as possible, for example if it is possible on the same day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the experiments do not compromise sprint planning from resources point of view, in fact there could be a &quot;free developer&quot; just focused on these business experiments, the integration of the experiment results could be merged into the project as tasks for the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, back to the question. Does Scrum consider situations like these or are there any other agile methodology that consider these and provides approaches to manage them ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31396" LastEditorUserId="31396" LastEditDate="2018-02-06T23:20:18.123" LastActivityDate="2018-02-07T23:34:59.233" Title="Allowing additions to a running sprint in Scrum" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23472" CreationDate="2018-02-06T23:14:01.613" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;All project management softwares are at the service of the project manager. They were created to help the manager lower the cost, increase the revenues and make a profit in a product development. That looks simple written like that but it is not. Many managers follow their instinct on the ratio cost/revenues, but in complex projects it is not enough. It is the deadline of each step of product development that is important to control. A deadline not respected in phase 1 has repercussions on phase 2 and so long, limiting or making disappear the profit. The project management softwares are used to limit the human errors; but you have to know them well and use them properly and it takes time and time is money. If I understood well your question, some managers have for that reason be buy into using Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user30807" LastActivityDate="2018-02-06T23:14:01.613" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23488" CreationDate="2018-02-07T00:17:30.317" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please read &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum (n): A framework within which people can address complex adaptive problems, while productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The framework is about leveraging agility to learn while creating and delivering a quality product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The heart of Scrum is a Sprint, a time-box of one month or less during which a &quot;Done&quot;, useable, and potentially releasable product Increment is created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprints are a time-box in which the team can Focus on delivering value.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://ronjeffries.com/xprog/blog/how-should-user-stories-be-written/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;User stories&lt;/a&gt; are not a requirement of the Scrum framework though they are often used and misused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scope may be clarified and re-negotiated between the Product Owner and Development Team as more is learned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum absolutely supports the notion of experimentation and adjusting based on what has been discovered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As new work is required, the Development Team adds it to the Sprint Backlog. As work is performed or completed, the estimated remaining work is updated. When elements of the plan are deemed unnecessary, they are removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a framework, Scrum allows teams to self-organize in order to accomplish the goals.  However, having a &quot;free developer&quot; working in isolation would be no less than an anti-pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-02-07T00:54:26.123" LastActivityDate="2018-02-07T00:54:26.123" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23488" CreationDate="2018-02-07T01:36:44.853" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;IT can depend on the sprint goal. Sprint goal is usually a business value and user stories could be added/removed as they are re/prioritised (as we gather more information or situation changes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, if an user story would contribute to the sprint goal, it should be assessed and prioritised, which could result in changes to the sprint backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31034" LastActivityDate="2018-02-07T01:36:44.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6603" CreationDate="2018-02-07T04:16:11.920" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The exam tests all of the required to be a Project Manager. However, you are not required to have an experience in all of the management areas, but you need to know about them in order to pass the exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, you need to study well and have some confidence that you are able to pass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the experienced Project Managers did not know about procurement but they are now PMP certifieds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31007" LastActivityDate="2018-02-07T04:16:11.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23488" CreationDate="2018-02-07T06:00:08.150" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum does not allow making any kind of change in a sprint. As the &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; describes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the Sprint: No changes are made that would endanger the Sprint&#xA;  Goal&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although it is not described on the question, chances are that the changes required in those experiments may endanger the Sprint Goal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, the answer to the original question would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Every change made in the sprint has to be carefully check to not endanger the sprint goal or if that happens, cancel the sprint and plan a new one.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Look for another methodology that allows changes in a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the second option, a way to go would be &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/agile/kanban&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.agilealliance.org/what-is-scrumban/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrumban&lt;/a&gt;. Scrumban considers defining sprints as in Scrum but it allow changes as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31396" LastEditorUserId="31396" LastEditDate="2018-02-07T23:29:15.820" LastActivityDate="2018-02-07T23:29:15.820" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23494" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23497" CreationDate="2018-02-07T13:20:03.643" Score="1" ViewCount="81" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm designing my first Android App, and I find it very hard to actually understand what my system should actually do. I have a general Idea but when I try to tell it to others I fail to communicate what is it that the system will do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've written specs and created three different scenarios for different potential users and it helped me understand the main purpose of this app. I've also found that creating mock-ups gave me a better perspective of the system's objective. I've also noticed that while creating these mock-ups I focus mainly on how the app should look rather than what it should do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to now if it is a good idea to rely on GUI (Graphical User Interface) mock-ups as a way to start building a system from scratch. Will doing so help me identify classes/objects/interfaces? Will it help (when unclear) to better define the scope of the system? Is mock up building a good tool to rely on when trying to understand a new project's scope? Are there any other, better tools or steps to take when the overall goal is unclear? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31409" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-02-07T14:33:40.443" LastActivityDate="2018-02-07T14:33:40.443" Title="Is creating mock-ups a good idea when starting to develop a new project?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;&lt;design&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23494" CreationDate="2018-02-07T13:38:36.027" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always liked to sketch systems parts or components, it helps people to have a clearer understanding on what is being approached when talking about software solutions, specially if your ideas are complex/hard to understand.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if using it for development teams I would recommend to agree with the team the level of fidelity that the mockups have regarding the expected product, otherwise it could be implyed that drawns are exact system designs and you might have abstract parts of your mockups developed exactly as they were drawn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google &quot;Visual Project Management&quot; for more info, also this could be helpful: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thinkforachange.com/blog/vpmdrawingsketching/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.thinkforachange.com/blog/vpmdrawingsketching/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31044" LastActivityDate="2018-02-07T13:38:36.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23472" CreationDate="2018-02-07T13:41:57.113" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to existing answers, using my girlfriend's experience of her current place of work...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile development hinges on sprints.  A key feature of a sprint is that you decide at the start of it what you'll be delivering, and that's &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; you deliver.  The delivery date and the deliverable content are locked down at the start, everyone knows what they are, and they're set to be achievable.  If new requirements come up, they go in the next sprint.  Sure, you can cancel a sprint if it turns out to be fundamentally wrong, but otherwise the point is to deliver work in small chunks.  Sprints are intentionally short because requirements are &lt;em&gt;intended&lt;/em&gt; to change, so holding back changes until the next sprint is not a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you don't do as a manager when a customer asks for a change is to say &quot;hey guys, I've got a new requirement here, add this to the sprint&quot;.  And you make sure that none of your team members independently accept new requirements during the sprint, from anyone, or invent new requirements themselves.  The Scrum Master is supposed to make sure this doesn't happen.  If the Scrum Master doesn't have the authority to tell the manager to follow the process though, or to escalate if the manager refuses to, then you have a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best case when you screw up agile like that, is that you overwork team members who suddenly have extra work to do, or you set them up to fail, because the planned achieveable work may no longer be achievable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Worst case, the team as a whole no longer know what the deliverables are.  Coders may add features which testers are not aware of, or omit or change previously-defined features.  Tests will fail, and figuring out why failures happened as a result can be incredibly time-consuming.  Worse than that, new features may not be tested, so they may be released without anyone checking that they actually work correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31410" LastActivityDate="2018-02-07T13:41:57.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23494" CreationDate="2018-02-07T14:03:41.550" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The old saying &quot;a picture is worth more than thousand words&quot; is also true when it comes to software specifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can write multiple pages of text to describe your user interface and its functionality. The result is that the reader takes an hour to read it and still has just a vague and abstract idea in their head about how the end result will look and feel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or you can give them a screenshot of a mockup, with a few keywords and arrows pointing at things next to it. It only takes seconds for the viewer to get a first impression. It only takes a minute to read all the keywords and get an idea of how your UI is going to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So a mockup is often a way to communicate your UI design ideas which takes far less time for your audience and far less technical writing skills from you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25328" LastActivityDate="2018-02-07T14:03:41.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23494" CreationDate="2018-02-07T14:31:22.037" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It varies based on the team and the customer. Some like GUI mock-ups (barely functional appearance-only application). Some like a quick sketch. Some like technical documentation (many others revile it). Some like brief face-to-face conversations, followed by the development of a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;minimum viable product&lt;/a&gt; then iterating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try stuff. See what works best for you. Then keep using it until you find something that works better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-02-07T14:31:22.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23500" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-02-07T20:11:35.287" Score="2" ViewCount="456" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am Product Owner of a Scrum Team which has to develop features for multiple business units. All these features are translated in user stories. Of course, some features are developed for multiple business units.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To explain it very plainly: for Project X we made a business case and got the budget to develop a feature. In the business case, we stated that it would cost an X amount of money to make sure we can earn Y dollars. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, a user story in our backlog will lead to the development of a feature which will be responsible for a certain Return on Investment for that project (or others as well).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can we best track this business value and make a direct link to the business cases for reporting purposes? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31420" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-02-07T22:35:42.267" LastActivityDate="2018-02-08T05:46:56.233" Title="What is the best way to link the Business Cases to the user stories in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;business-case&gt;&lt;value&gt;&lt;business-process-mapping&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23500" CreationDate="2018-02-07T21:32:07.310" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Estimating the cost of development of a feature by Scrum teams&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You asked:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can we best track this business value and make a direct link to&#xA;  the business cases for reporting purposes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will try to outline the steps to track the cost of developing a feature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Estimate the cost of one sprint&lt;/strong&gt;: If, for example, you have 5 people in the dev team and share a Scrum Master and Product Owner among two teams, you can add up the cost of the total headcount of 5 + .5 + .5 = 6. Let us say the cost per sprint is $25,000.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Estimate the velocity of the team in story points&lt;/strong&gt;: You can arrive at an initial estimate after 3 sprints empirically and refine it further as you run more sprints. Let us say the velocity is 25 story points per sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Track the total number of story points to develop a feature&lt;/strong&gt;: You can do this using the tool you use for Scrum (such as Jira, TFS...) by creating an epic for the feature. Make sure all the stories required to complete this feature, are marked as children of this one epic. The tool should let you see the total number of story points for the epic in one place. Let us say that, after your team has done all the estimations, the epic shows a total of 40 points. Note that this is an initial estimate. The team may make changes to this estimate in the Backlog Refinement meetings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your cost per story point is $25,000 / 25 = $1000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cost of the feature = Total story points for this epic * Cost per story point, namely, 40 * $1000 = $40,000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will have to find a way to track the $ earned by implementing the feature, which is outside of Scrum and typically involves many business assumptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2018-02-07T21:32:07.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23452" CreationDate="2018-02-07T22:10:55.073" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One option is to think of the number of functionality modules the application will have and then rough estimate them. Bear in mind, that the next module will incure changes on the already build ones, so that re-work time should be accounted for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the endless scope creep. It is up to the customer to choose between features. You have a limited resource time which means that the work must be prioritised and this should be clearly communicated to the customer/product owner. Basically I ask them, &quot;sure, we could do that, but in order to add this to the scope, what do we take out?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31034" LastActivityDate="2018-02-07T22:10:55.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23488" CreationDate="2018-02-07T23:34:59.233" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are countless variations to SCRUM, so it is hard to make a definitive statement.  For example, I have worked on SCRUMs where the rule is that developers can elect to add new tasks to the sprint, but management cannot force new items into the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For situations like this, I would look into the reasons &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; SCRUM does what it does.  The purpose of a Sprint is to provide a manageable sized chunk of work where developers are not getting pulled off in many different directions.  You want the developers focused on the sprint goal for the entire duration.  If you are adding spontaneous tasks, then you risk derailing the sprint as developer have to shift gears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find there is a need for a large quantity of rapid &quot;experimental&quot; code development, then that might, itself, be a budgetable task to be included in the sprint.  Doing so would force you to meet the Done rules for tasks in a sprint, which would be considered to be a good thing.  There would be a &quot;releasable product&quot; which needs to be factored in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find that you have to modify SCRUM from any of its &quot;vanilla&quot; variants, then that should be a sign that your business model has some behaviors that are known to be problematic enough that the makers of SCRUM explicitly wrote those behaviors out.  You should be ready for them to cause problems.  It's better to find ways to work them into the paradigm, rather than inventing a new paradigm to handle them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer: I have worked on projects where we had exactly the situation you described.  We actually built an entire development model around how to make it happen.  It was actually successful, but I could see enough issues with it to recommend not following the same path.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21960" LastActivityDate="2018-02-07T23:34:59.233" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23500" CreationDate="2018-02-08T05:41:58.667" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/AlignmentMap.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Alignment Maps&lt;/a&gt; could be used to link user stories to business cases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Alignment maps are organizational information radiators that help&#xA;  visualize the alignment of ongoing work with business outcomes. The&#xA;  work may be regular functionality addition or technical work such as&#xA;  re-architecting or repaying technical debt or improving the build and&#xA;  deployment pipeline. Team members use alignment maps to understand&#xA;  what business outcomes their day-to-day work is meant to improve.&#xA;  Business and IT sponsors use them to understand how ongoing work&#xA;  relates to the business outcomes they care about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2247" LastActivityDate="2018-02-08T05:41:58.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23500" CreationDate="2018-02-08T05:46:56.233" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A simple solution is to number your business cases i.e. BC1, BC2 etc. For each story you can write the business cases number that produced the story. Furthermore you can number your user stories as well. For example :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;BC1 : Some business case&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(BC1) US1 : some user story&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28712" LastActivityDate="2018-02-08T05:46:56.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23507" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-02-08T10:49:17.753" Score="3" ViewCount="3300" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm just beginning, and despite my search, I cannot find any simple formula that would return a number between 0 and 100%, i.e. I do not care whether there was over or underestimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The simplest thing I could think of would be:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Actual Effort - |Estimation Delta| / Actual Effort.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, using simply Estimation Effort / Actual Effort can give more than 100% in case of overestimation, and an Accuracy of 125% sounds weird.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31434" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-10-15T16:06:55.060" LastActivityDate="2019-10-23T10:45:12.033" Title="A simple estimation accuracy formula that always yields 0-100?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23507" CreationDate="2018-02-08T11:02:35.327" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're looking for any function that return the value inside 0-100 it makes sense to check &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmoid_function&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sigmoid function&lt;/a&gt;. It produces values from 0 to 1, which are easily converted to 0 - 100; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is my example on how to use Sigmoid approach.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the normal Sigmoid function:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NxFyx.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NxFyx.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to choose the acceptance range start point starting from which you consider your accuracy value equal to &lt;code&gt;100%&lt;/code&gt;. Let it be &lt;code&gt;4&lt;/code&gt;. Zero value would be &lt;code&gt;-4&lt;/code&gt;. However your estimation &lt;strong&gt;is not&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;code&gt;4&lt;/code&gt; but &lt;code&gt;10&lt;/code&gt; &lt;strong&gt;as you point out in your comment below&lt;/strong&gt;. Thus you need to convert the coordinates where your &lt;code&gt;10&lt;/code&gt; would become &lt;code&gt;4&lt;/code&gt; for &lt;strong&gt;Sigmoid&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;code&gt;0&lt;/code&gt; would become &lt;code&gt;-4&lt;/code&gt;. This is the &lt;strong&gt;simple linear expression&lt;/strong&gt;. It would look like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;d(x) = 4/5 * x - 4&lt;/code&gt;, where &lt;code&gt;x&lt;/code&gt; - your estimation. Here is it on the chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/IImgv.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/IImgv.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now what you only need is the absolute value of deviation from the estimated value. Say it would be &lt;strong&gt;diff&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;according to your comment below the actual work is measured as 200&lt;/strong&gt; units of whatever. Then you calculate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Accuracy = Sigmoid(d(10 - |diff|)) * 100&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;hence if your &lt;code&gt;diff = +/-5&lt;/code&gt;, your accuracy would be &lt;code&gt;50%&lt;/code&gt;, if your &lt;code&gt;diff = +/-190&lt;/code&gt;, your accuracy would be zero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here is the resulting graph for your case:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4y3aM.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4y3aM.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29674" LastEditorUserId="29674" LastEditDate="2018-02-09T11:53:54.243" LastActivityDate="2018-02-09T11:53:54.243" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23472" CreationDate="2018-02-08T11:42:09.127" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum or agility is about &lt;em&gt;reverse accountability&lt;/em&gt; when it comes to management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A traditional manager tells what, how, when. The team is accountable. If it fails, it's the team's fault.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A modern manager tells why and what, then supports its team in whatever way possible. The manager is accountable. If it fails, it's his fault.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When introducing Scrum (or agility), your traditional managers need to give up command and control and move to modern managers &quot;trust and support&quot;. Usually, they don't want to give up command and control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they don't, then whatever you ask the team &quot;hey, this is our objective&quot;, then you ask the team &quot;hey we need you to be efficient&quot;, the team comes back to you &quot;ok we need A, B and C&quot;, and you tell them &quot;sorry not possible, you will have to do without&quot; (usually because it threatens their position/politics/objectives, or simply because they think those employees should simply work harder instead of asking for support) and then complain about efficiency anyway because they need to justify why it's so expensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's why they should buy in, because a team gets efficient if the organization is shaped around its efficiency, and who can shape the organization ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the even more interesting question pops-up: how is it possible to make management buy-in ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;sidenote: about deadlines and budget: yes Scrum has those, and Scrum is dead-serious about it, much more than &quot;traditional style&quot;, because it's actually &lt;em&gt;centered&lt;/em&gt; around making sure something will be delivered and it should be so as efficiently as possible (meaning cost-effective), unlike &quot;traditional style&quot; which is not much more than a naive oversimplification that wants to convince itself that &quot;complex things are not my problem&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31439" LastActivityDate="2018-02-08T11:42:09.127" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23507" CreationDate="2018-02-08T14:29:31.967" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Estimation accuracy formula&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I cannot find any simple (estimation accuracy) formula that would&#xA;  return a number between 0 and 100%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When the actual is the same as estimation, we want the estimation accuracy to be 100%.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When the actual is 0 we want the estimation accuracy to be 0%.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When the actual is twice the estimation (or more) we want the estimation accuracy to be 0%.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given these, the formula would be:&#xA;(Estimated - ABS(Estimated - Actual or 2*Estimated whichever is less)) / Estimated&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2018-02-08T15:11:07.963" LastActivityDate="2018-02-08T15:11:07.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23512" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23556" CreationDate="2018-02-08T15:17:23.400" Score="0" ViewCount="1523" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have this big backlog in which the previous owners* were using its Stack Rank just as a criteria to put the &quot;urgent&quot; items in the top of the list. Whenever something was added and it was urgent or critical they used to set &lt;code&gt;Stack Rank = 1&lt;/code&gt;, no extra care was given to this attribute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can imagine the backlog order started having no criteria (several Stack Rank 1 in the list), then they started putting minor numbers, and now we have a backlog of items like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Item A | 0,00001&#xA;Item B | 0,0001&#xA;Item C | 0,001&#xA;Item D | 0,01&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now we are organizing all the backlogs that we have and setting proper priorities to them.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Is there a template/advice/good practice that sets which values defines the criticality level of the items?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Scrum wasn't being implemented at the time, that's why several owners&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31044" LastActivityDate="2018-02-15T14:31:49.567" Title="Is there a good practice for TFS Stack Rank levels usage?" Tags="&lt;backlog&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23513" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23514" CreationDate="2018-02-08T15:23:24.437" Score="5" ViewCount="1048" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I just started to read into Scrum and did the (free) online assessment. Somehow I can't stop thinking that Scrum is a contradiction in itself. Even though the Scrum Guide never uses the word &lt;em&gt;agile&lt;/em&gt;, it is often referred to as such:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum is an iterative and incremental agile software development framework for managing product development (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28software_development%29#Key_ideas&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, solely the term &lt;em&gt;agile&lt;/em&gt; to me at least has a very flexible and adaptive tone. Adapting to the situation, getting rid of fixed structures and rules. Scrum however has very rigid rules on how to work (&lt;em&gt;Daily Scrum&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Scrum Review&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Team size&lt;/em&gt; etc.). Isn't that somehow a contradiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31445" LastEditorUserId="31445" LastEditDate="2018-02-13T08:36:59.617" LastActivityDate="2018-03-27T11:51:04.500" Title="How can Scrum be *agile* if it enforces strict rules?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23513" CreationDate="2018-02-08T15:50:36.680" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum works well as a starting point. From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;although implementing only parts of Scrum is possible, the result is not Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few takeaways from this. Notably:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum itself is immutable. If you're being fully Agile, you likely cannot do (true) Scrum (all the time).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is possible (and frequently a good idea) to only implement parts of Scrum. &quot;Scrumban&quot; is a common example of this. Just because this is 'not Scrum' does not mean it is &lt;em&gt;bad&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is a framework. Like any framework, it is a tool. And like any tool, its worth comes from knowing how, when, and &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; to employ it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rigidly following Scrum, no matter what, &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; antithetical to Agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using it as appropriate based on the situation is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I should note that the above is from a theoretical viewpoint (which is what I believe the OP was asking for) and therefore is working under the assumption that the Team has already matured and is otherwise being productive with Agile practices. An &quot;ideal&quot;, if you will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An approach I've frequently seen suggested is for a Team just starting out with Agile/Scrum to begin by following everything by the book, strictly to the letter. Then, as the Team grows used to the process (and begins to &lt;em&gt;understand&lt;/em&gt; it), they start to take more and more ownership of the process. Until, finally, once the Team fully understands the 'why's behind the process, they are given free reign to modify it as needed to fit their organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what can happen if this 'customization' stage is attempted too &lt;em&gt;early&lt;/em&gt;, see &lt;a href=&quot;https://ronjeffries.com/xprog/articles/jatbaseball/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;We Tried Baseball and It Didn't Work&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-02-14T15:13:28.277" LastActivityDate="2018-02-14T15:13:28.277" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23515" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-02-08T16:30:10.763" Score="2" ViewCount="139" Body="&lt;p&gt;I started to learn the Nexus framework and found one interesting sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All members of the Scrum Teams should participate to minimize communication issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this mean that someone should conduct a Planning meeting for 81 people? Or maybe I got it wrong and only Team representatives should be involved? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29251" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-02-08T17:44:36.740" LastActivityDate="2018-02-08T17:44:36.740" Title="Who should attend Nexus Sprint Planning?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;nexus&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23515" CreationDate="2018-02-08T17:39:45.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Alas, the Nexus Guide is still a bit unclear from some parts. The chapter called Nexus Process Flow contains this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Nexus Sprint Planning&lt;/b&gt;: Appropriate representatives from each Scrum Team meet to discuss and review the refined Product Backlog. They select Product Backlog items for each team. Each Scrum Team then plans its own Sprint, interacting with other teams as appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nexus Sprint Planning chapter tells:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During Nexus Sprint Planning, appropriate representatives from each Scrum Team validate and make adjustments to the ordering of the work as created during Refinement events. All members of the Scrum Teams should participate to minimize communication issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means, everyone is present and should listen, but not everyone needs to communicate with the rest of the teams, just with their own. The purpose is coordinating the activities between the teams, instead of having a &quot;town hall meeting&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31213" LastActivityDate="2018-02-08T17:39:45.463" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23517" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-02-08T18:54:55.027" Score="0" ViewCount="233" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read that eXtreme Programming isn't XP, if there's no Pair Programming.  But is there something inherit in XP that requires Pair Programming other than philosophy, if other types of quality engineering guideline are followed (maybe TDD, for example.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand what Pair Programming is, read lots on it, no never tried it, and I'm not trying to knock Paired Programming, nor trying to get convinced for it.  I only wanted to know if XP can be useful without it.  There was much I liked about XP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31370" LastEditorUserId="31370" LastEditDate="2018-02-08T19:39:13.653" LastActivityDate="2018-02-08T21:42:48.603" Title="Can XP be done correctly without Pair Programming?" Tags="&lt;extreme-programming&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23472" CreationDate="2018-02-08T19:23:24.550" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum is designed to operate as &lt;strong&gt;&quot;self-organizing teams&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For many conventional managers who assign work to employees, this is a colossal change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This requires the management to trust the team to select their own work, and to get it done without the help of the manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The new role of a manager in a Scrum based environment is that of a &lt;strong&gt;leader&lt;/strong&gt;, making sure their employee has the proper skills and training to help the team perform to its highest level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31452" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-02-08T19:41:52.930" LastActivityDate="2018-02-08T19:41:52.930" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23461" CreationDate="2018-02-08T20:00:43.290" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend evaluating all of the most popular tools for tracking agile and scrum projects and pick one that meets your needs the most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jira &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(CA Agile) Rally&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Version One&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More info can be found here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://stateofagile.versionone.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://stateofagile.versionone.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31452" LastActivityDate="2018-02-08T20:00:43.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23517" CreationDate="2018-02-08T20:10:04.120" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me answer you in a different way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile, PMP, TOGAF, COBIT and all of the frameworks must be tailored according to the company's culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no rule says that you need to follow the book 100%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that this is what you needed to know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31007" LastActivityDate="2018-02-08T20:10:04.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23513" CreationDate="2018-02-08T20:23:05.150" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a great question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will try to make my answer short.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need to have a successful project then you need to have these meetings or to have all of the documents that substitute these meeting (and do not forget the communication part to distribute the documents).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note:-  documents include.&#xA;Status reports and consolidating them, also sharing them&#xA;Requirements and updating them and sharing.&#xA;Management reporting.&#xA;And many more documents and other practices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31007" LastActivityDate="2018-02-08T20:23:05.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23472" CreationDate="2018-02-08T20:38:46.773" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Answer&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Management has to buy into Scrum.&amp;quot; Can you tell me why that is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing (real) Scrum means that management is giving up a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of control. Managements needs to know that, accept that, and &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; live that spirit. This is very, very hard, especially as experienced project managers tend to be more of a aggressive/controlling character, and this tends to be more so the higher up you go (at least in my experience, and at least usually - exceptions nonwithstanding).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the biggest parts you will notice if you look real hard at Scrum is that Scrum has only three roles: Product Owner, Scrum Master, Team Member. &lt;em&gt;There is no project leader/manager!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the core, Management has to buy into Scrum because they have to trust the process a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt;, without being in control &lt;em&gt;at all&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What management are they talking about,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Literally everybody in your own company and the customer's company that is not either the Product Owner, Scrum Master, or a Team Member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What happens when Scrum is used, but Management hasn’t bought into it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what happens all the time: The project starts, for the first few sprints everything seems fine. Then management gets impatient, and asks for long-term timelines, guaranteed feature sets and prices/budget (all of which are absent in the Scrum process). From there on, mistrust, unhappiness, failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for this is, usually, in my experience, that management simply does not know enough about the process, and (not being a Dev, a Scrum Master or  a P.O. themselves) has not really experienced it. This is a real conundrum and not just a blame on management. It's easy to say &amp;quot;sure, I'll give up control&amp;quot;, but it is very hard to see what that actually means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Scrum people say that you don't know and don't care what happens after the current sprint, they &lt;em&gt;mean it&lt;/em&gt;. Many managers (I knew) somehow thought that all of this was just a happy charade to make devs feel empowered. Many sat down with the P.O. or the S.M. right away and started to draw up monthly or yearly milestone plans, setting up expectations that, by design, just cannot be met by Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why does it matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because classical management focused on time, budget and quality is managing actively &lt;em&gt;against&lt;/em&gt; the Scrum principles, for example that only the current sprint has a fixed feature set and everything beyond that is up to the P.O. to prioritize; or that the time=budget required to complete work items beyond the current sprint are not planned out in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is it that Management doesn't see that they don't like not seeing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are missing dependable, guaranteed promises on long-term milestones, budget forecasts and feature-sets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, a large point of Scrum is shielding the dev team (during a sprint) from willy-nilly management decisions. As nice as this is for the dev team, you are also taking away power from management =&amp;gt; not nice for them, at least psychologically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this is a late edit, but it seems to me the bottom line is trust the dev team and give them what they need and they'll do you right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kind of. If you are talking about management's trust, you really have to include the Product Owner, which has some parts of the responsibilities that a Project Manager has in a classical project. Management has to trust the P.O. and the Scrum process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Outlook&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is easy to fall into the trap of either thinking that management is just dumb (Dilbert's &amp;quot;pointy haired boss&amp;quot;), or that Scrum people are trying to live on a Pony Farm. The answer is in the middle. There has to be a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of education going on. Or, if the company (or the customers, or the particular software) is just not that suited to a strict Scrum approach, mixtures have to be found (and &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be found) which give &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; amount of control and long-term transparency back to management. As long as everybody knows exactly what's going on, there are plenty of variables to tweak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Hints&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some Scrum Masters like to introduce Scrum to new teams and management by doing a very visible approach - i.e., skip Jira et al and go to whiteboard/paper based approach. It is quite educating when people actually stand up and move sticky notes on a wall around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I prefer to not start with Scrum at all (in environments where people are not used to any Agile method, or where it is not clear that Scrum is the exact right thing, necessarily). Instead, a very light Kanban. This means picking a few instruments (board, lanes, concept of WIP, introspection etc.) which are transferable to Scrum later, but where the lanes can be adjusted to be have any titles you might like, and changed around more freely than in strict Scrum, but you skip the sprints for the first time (introspection etc. should be regular, of course). This gets everyone used to the general &amp;quot;instruments&amp;quot;, and you can gradually make the process more rigorous if you so wish. This also does not take anything away from management, they can even put a real project plan on top of everything; it mainly focuses on making tasks and especially WIP visible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26382" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-02-08T21:57:34.697" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23517" CreationDate="2018-02-08T21:09:15.943" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many tools can be useful without utilizing all the facets; however, the price is often reductions in benefits such as effectiveness, efficiency, and quality or an increase in costs and risks.  One should not call something what it isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one removes the handle from a hammer, it may still &lt;em&gt;work&lt;/em&gt; for nailing; however it certainly won't be as effective or efficient, and will probably result in lower quality with a higher possibility of injury.  Anyone calling it a hammer would be misleading others which would result in further misunderstandings and complications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules/pair.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pair Programming&lt;/a&gt; is a rule in eXtreme Programming. By excluding that facet the benefits are reduced and risks are increased.  Calling it is XP would be dishonesty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-02-08T21:42:48.603" LastActivityDate="2018-02-08T21:42:48.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23513" CreationDate="2018-02-08T21:36:46.060" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;(bold emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, solely the term &lt;em&gt;Agile&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;to me&lt;/strong&gt; at least has a very flexible and adaptive tone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are taking a specific term and applying your subjective definition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no &lt;strong&gt;A&lt;/strong&gt;gile(tm)&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt; methodology or framework since it is a philosophy of 4 values and 12 principles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not having any structure is known as &quot;cowboy&quot; coding/agile and results in many of the same issues as traditional, Taylor-ist, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pmi.org/about/learn-about-pmi/what-is-project-management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;project management&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt; framework is one of the foundations for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Manifesto for Agile Software Development&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Misunderstandings and ignorance continually propagate such misinformation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I just started to read into Scrum and did the (free) online assessment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What source?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps a &lt;a href=&quot;https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/72894/scrum-framework&quot;&gt;chat&lt;/a&gt; would be beneficial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;Although Sarov changed the casing, the point remains valid and exemplifies a common misunderstanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;ADDITIONALLY&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a framework and not a highly defined method, Scrum is very flexible and adaptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum ... functions well as a container for other techniques, methodologies, and practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focusing on self-organization allows the Scrum Team and Development Team to choose the techniques, tools, approaches, etc. that empower them to create a product of high value and quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-03-27T11:51:04.500" LastActivityDate="2018-03-27T11:51:04.500" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23472" CreationDate="2018-02-09T15:14:58.633" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If management doesn't &quot;buy in&quot; to scrum then management will ask for changes to a project during the QA testing of the project the day before it goes into production. These changes delay the project going into production. This gives management more time to think up more changes. These additional changes cause additional delays in the project going into production. Eventually, upper management looks at how long the project has been going in and that nothing has gone into production yet and cancels the entire project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31469" LastActivityDate="2018-02-09T15:14:58.633" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23526" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23529" CreationDate="2018-02-09T16:13:47.660" Score="0" ViewCount="1316" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a difference between the terms phase and sprint and can we say that the sprint is a phase?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In waterfall methodology they use the term phase and in agile they use the sprint term so is there a difference or they are only terms used in each methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31471" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2018-02-09T17:45:42.157" LastActivityDate="2018-02-09T18:14:26.183" Title="Is there a difference between the terms phase and sprint" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23526" CreationDate="2018-02-09T18:10:07.967" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Phase and sprint mean very different things&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The waterfall process&lt;/a&gt;, as the name signifies, has sequential phases that flow from the previous one just like in a waterfall. This means that the next phase can start only after the previous phase has been completed. For example, you complete the Requirements phase, get sign-off from the stakeholders and then only can start the Design phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During a given 'phase' you only focus on that one thing and nothing else. So, for example, at the end of the Requirement and Design phases, the only deliverable is a document. No code will be delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast, one of the 12 principles behind &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and&#xA;  continuous delivery of valuable software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to accomplish this, Agile tries to combine all the waterfall phases (Requirement, Design, Development, Testing and Deployment) into a short time box called a sprint (also called an iteration). At the end of this sprint a potentially shippable increment of code should be ready. Meaning it must be ready, tested and ready to be deployed. Some people do not actually deploy to production at the end of each sprint. However, it should be potentially deployable at the end of each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In waterfall methodology they use the term phase and in agile they use&#xA;  the sprint term so is there a difference or they are only terms used&#xA;  in each methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, they mean different things. Yes, these are terms used in each methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2018-02-09T18:10:07.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23526" CreationDate="2018-02-09T18:14:26.183" Score="4" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Phase&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK) provides a section for the term &lt;em&gt;phase&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Organizations performing projects will usually divide each project into several &lt;em&gt;project phases&lt;/em&gt; to improve management control and provide links to the ongoing operations of the performing organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each phase creates a set of deliverables which are then handed off to another group for additional work.  The product is not complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Sprint&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term &lt;em&gt;Sprint&lt;/em&gt; has a specific definition from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt; framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The heart of Scrum is a Sprint, a time-box of one month or less during which a &quot;Done&quot;, useable, and potentially releasable product Increment is created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the Sprint the product is stable.  Although there may be more features requested, the effort could be terminated and still be marketable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Each Sprint may be considered a project with no more than a one-month horizon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that any necessary &lt;em&gt;phases&lt;/em&gt; of work must be completed at the end of the Sprint's time-box.  Please note that working in phases within the framework is an anti-pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is that they are different and the differences are very important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2018-02-09T18:14:26.183" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23531" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-02-10T12:33:59.287" Score="1" ViewCount="68" Body="&lt;p&gt;A bank decided that it wants to implement agile, so it hired a few agile coaches to help throughout the journey. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the bank has fixed deadlines (in the next 6-12 months) that aren't going anywhere, because if they do, they could jeopardize the bank's position, and it would cost a lot of money from failing to meet contracts all over the place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When managers were highlighted of this risk, their reply was that they want both: agile transformation and achieved deadlines, slowly but surely, and that they don't want to do either full agile in one go or drop the transformation and just meet the deadlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would you consult the management team of this bank to do? And what would you consult the coaches to do when facing such a situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5522" LastActivityDate="2018-02-11T13:30:24.950" Title="Imposed deadlines in tandem with Agile transformation" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2018-02-11T09:50:03.133" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23513" CreationDate="2018-02-10T13:51:57.380" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rigidly following Scrum &lt;em&gt;indefinitely&lt;/em&gt; is a bad idea and as you rightly point out, would not be Agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, rigidly following Scrum &lt;em&gt;until you understand it&lt;/em&gt; is a very good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of concepts in Scrum that take a while to understand and it is easy to fall in to the trap of adapting that which you are not used to or do not recognise the value of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect that part of the reason the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; is written in such an inflexible way is that organisations often adapt Scrum from day one and if things go badly state that &quot;Scrum has failed&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-02-10T13:51:57.380" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23531" CreationDate="2018-02-10T20:50:57.507" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Agile is not incompatible with deadlines&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is unrealistic to expect any business, not just this bank, to put everything on hold in order to implement Agile transformation. Think of this as fixing a problem in the USS Enterprise while on an interstellar mission. There is no place nearby to land, fix-it and then continue the journey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And what would you consult the coaches to do when facing such a situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Collect additional information&lt;/strong&gt;: Fixed deadlines are not problems for Agile, but fixed requirements are. So, find out whether there are contractual commitments to deliver fixed requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reset expectations&lt;/strong&gt;: If there are fixed requirements, see if they can be renegotiated. Even if these are projects for internal customers, expectations have to be renegotiated and reset.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Identify one (or more) medium sized project as the pilot&lt;/strong&gt;: If the project is too big, the risk may be unacceptably high. If the project is too small, it may be too trivial to convince others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Secure stakeholder time and involvement&lt;/strong&gt;: Agile requires stakeholders to be closely involved. At a minimum, stakeholders must set aside time to participate in the Sprint Review and provide critical feedback. Often they may also need to provide in-depth feedback for UI/UX design and do some User Acceptance Testing as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Prepare an Agile Roadmap&lt;/strong&gt;: Don't fly blind. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.romanpichler.com/blog/10-tips-creating-agile-product-roadmap/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A roadmap like this&lt;/a&gt; should help guide the team and set expectations with Management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would you consult the management team of this bank to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Leadership support is critical during a time of change&lt;/strong&gt;: Change brings uncertainty. The leadership should be fully convinced about the reasons for switching to Agile and be prepared to back it up with strong support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be ready to roll-out a MVP (Minimum Viable Product) to end users early and get feedback&lt;/strong&gt;: Even though there may be some pain of extra work, this reduces risk of big failures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-02-11T13:30:24.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23472" CreationDate="2018-02-10T21:10:56.437" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most traditional project management mindsets, people are more concerned with their budgets and schedules for a project than turning out a usable product.  They want to know what something is going to cost, how long it will take, and what they will get for their investment, all before any actual work gets done.  It also assumes that the people asking for the product actually know what they want before they have anything to see or try.  This leads to lots of documentation, no or minimal feedback mid process, and a lack of flexibility.  There is an over emphasis on status reports and making sure everything matches the plan as originally laid out, and insufficient allowances for uncertainties and ambiguities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum, and agile in general, recognizes that the real world isn’t that structured and ridged, and that the people drawing up requirements won’t know what they really want until it is in their hands.  It takes the approach of focusing on the most urgent thing of the moment, get it done, and move onto the next thing.  It also relies on showing completed work to the stakeholders and end users as soon as possible, soliciting their feedback, and adjusting the plan accordingly.  The overall goal is to always have the most useful product for the effort invested to date. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not play well with the traditional mindset because we do not have fixed timelines and rarely have a firm plan for anything that is more than a couple weeks out.   We can report on the things that have been completed, what we are currently working on, and what we plan to start on next.  But we can’t tell you when the project will be finished, what order features will come out in, or even guarantee that our “what is next” plan won’t change before we get to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give a bit of a long-winded example, I once worked for a government agency, first as a developer, later as a team lead and manager.  I am also a Certified Scrum Maser and Agile Coach, and I have worn BA and PM hats a fair amount in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a phase where we were trying to “do agile” without any real support from our administration or stakeholders.  Essentially the developers adopted some “agile” ceremonies, but everyone else was still turning out 30+ page requirements documents without involving the developers, demanding estimates for projects months in advance of when we would actually work on them, expecting us to adhere to timelines that were set without our input, pointing back to the documentation when we raised questions, and throwing fits anytime the project outcomes deviated from the requirements, timeline, or budget, regardless of the reason. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At its worst, what should have been a six month project took almost 2 years, and had to be rewritten twice because stakeholders changed, which changed the requirements, and even after the first rewrite, what made it into the requirements documents was still not what the end users actually needed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shortly after I took over as manager, I convinced people to let me run a project without interference.  At first I was handed was one of those 30 page documents, with an expectation that we give an upfront estimate for cost and completion time so that it could go through the approval process.  Normally this would have involved the manager(me) and possibly a team lead or senior dev going through the document in a day or so, and handing back some numbers that were 2 or 3 times what we thought they should be to account for the things we didn’t know and didn’t have time to figure out.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead I pulled the entire team in to review the document, break it down into features of a size that we could give meaningful estimates on, and plug it into our tracking system.  I had to fight our PMO and other management repeatedly because we were taking too long and using too many resources to come up with said estimate (several 1-2 hour meetings over a couple weeks).   However, in the end, we had a rough map of the work that was needed, every developer was in the loop on the direction and decisions we had made, and all had the opportunity to give input on the estimates.  When we were done we presented a timeline of about 10 months with a cost that was calculated based on which developers and other resources we expected to work on it, and for what percentage of their time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When said project was greenlighted a few months later (there was never any real question that we would do it) the first thing we did was dust off our previous breakdown, decide where we need to start to have anything to show for it, verify our estimates for that block of work, and toss the requirements document aside.  I then set the team up with a near scrum approach, we ran 1 week sprints, with a release every 4 weeks.  We had a stakeholder meeting every 2 weeks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the stakeholder meeting aligned with our release, we presented the new features, solicited initial feedback, and laid out our objectives for the next release.  For the off cycle meetings, we were soliciting and discussing bug reports, and adjusting the release plan based on feedback from the end user testing.  Again I made a point of having no less than three developers in the room for each stakeholder meeting, with the expectation that they would ask and answer questions as needed, but primarily so the team had more than one perspective on what was said.  And again I got flack for it because I was “wasting” the budget by having developers sit in on meetings instead of coding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first it was a bit of a struggle to get the stakeholders to actually show up to our meetings, to the point where we suggested that the project be shelved since it apparently was not important enough to demand their attention.  But after we got them into three or four meetings, where they could see the progress being made, and see their feedback being incorporated, they started being more willing to block out time for us.  After about the second time where someone came out saying “this is cool, but what we really need is” about a feature, and saw the issue corrected in the next release or so, they were sold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the entire project I also was fighting a constant battle with the PMO over my status reports.  They wanted to see the same types of project schedules and reports they were accustomed to, with features being checked off in a preset order and on schedule, and be able to match our expenditures to their budget projections.  Instead I was giving them a report on story points that had been completed and accepted, estimates on points in progress and when they should be done, and revisions on the original estimates and timelines based on issues that had come up during development or testing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They would throw a fit every time we re-estimated a story based on new information, added stories to track bugs, or broke things down into more granular work segments, especially if the change ended up changing the number of points in the project, complaining that we were changing scope.  They also hated that my estimates were in points rather than hours, and wanted to know how to translate between the two.  Eventually I put together a tool that linked task hours to stories to releases, and gave them a running average for points per release and hours per point, but they still didn’t like that it was not a fixed number and we refused to commit to a hard completion date until we were entering our last couple of release cycles, and it was obvious when things were going to wrap up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end we finished the project in 11 months, were about 20% over our original budget, and had people actively using the product on release day, without a huge list of defects to delay the roll out.  It was by far the most successful project ever completed for that agency in terms of meeting timeline, budget and usable features.  To give some perspective, the norm for that department prior to this project was to be over on time by as much as 50%, at least double the budget, and have low initial adoption because the end product didn’t meet the actual needs of the organization or users.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, I as the direct manager had bought in, and had enough pull and support from my supervisory chain to shelter my team and get away with bullying people from other silos into playing along, but the organization as a whole was not on board.  Over the course of the project we brought most of our business side stakeholders around to supporting the methodology, but the PMO still only tolerated us as opposed to appreciating what we were doing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31488" LastActivityDate="2018-02-10T21:10:56.437" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23535" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-02-10T22:12:09.070" Score="0" ViewCount="95" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a client who has an &quot;idea&quot; of his project &quot;that is in his mind&quot;. He said he is not going to share any details, knowledge, and ideas until we have a contract because as he's saying &quot;he's worried about someone stealing his ideas&quot;. However, in our first meeting on the client side, I think I got a global overview what he wants to have (generally). Now he's awaiting my offer and that's where I stack on to prepare it to him including price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I just prepare an offer on the knowledge I have? For instance I know he wants an application to create an article/edit it, associate with some elements blabla... However, we haven't talked about details, how this information should be inserted by users etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I propose just my view generally and prepare an offer with price how I see this and how this could be done giving general information on an offer and final price? However what about details, should them be on this offer or just general list and later on we should talk about this? I am bit confused. Please of your advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S If that's wrong place to ask please advice where shall it be opened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31493" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2018-02-11T15:41:57.343" LastActivityDate="2018-02-14T02:14:02.360" Title="Project costing &amp; preparation" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23535" CreationDate="2018-02-10T23:21:45.293" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;With this kind of situation, the only quote I would provide is an hourly cost, my weekly availability, and maybe my total duration I'd be willing to commit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, time and materials. If unacceptable, walk away. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-02-10T23:21:45.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23535" CreationDate="2018-02-11T11:41:16.343" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could spec out what you propose to do, and extras will be priced once you know what their scope is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;X screens that do 1, 2, and 3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Extra screens will be priced after they are spec'd out&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;X database fields and queries that do A, B and C&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Extra fields and more queried to be priced after spec'd out&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2018-02-11T11:41:16.343" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23538" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-02-11T19:42:05.397" Score="0" ViewCount="98" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm seeking project-management software tools (be they online/cloud or installed software) that support automatic synchronizing between &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowchart&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Flowcharts&lt;/a&gt; (a form of PERT charts) and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gantt_chart&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gantt charts&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which solutions provide this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Details&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Gantt support needs to support auto-dependency &quot;links&quot; between tasks. (There are tools that support a Gantt layout but with no auto-task-dependency management--eg: &lt;a href=&quot;https://monday.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;monday.com&lt;/a&gt;--but that's insufficient for my requirements.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My initial research has not yet found anything. I've looked at several tools, but I'm far from completing a comprehensive search. Microsoft Project appears to support PERT charts, but to what extent it can do the above is currently unclear.  At this point, I'm not optimistic I'll find anything, but I'm early in my search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhF8ZfUajpw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;WBS Schedule Pro&lt;/a&gt; shows some initial promise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31498" LastEditorUserId="31498" LastEditDate="2019-04-04T18:44:51.440" LastActivityDate="2019-04-04T18:44:51.440" Title="Automatically synchronize between Flowcharts (form of PERT charts) and Gantt charts?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2018-02-12T10:49:14.610" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23539" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-02-12T02:52:26.963" Score="1" ViewCount="103" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to receive thoughts and possible feedback on anyone's previous experience of allocating a dedicated day to support jobs within a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our percentage of support jobs per sprint is around 10% and are investigated randomly throughout a sprint depending on priority. Thus throughout a 2 week sprint, we would expect a day is spent on support issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of our support issues require resources across the full stack to investigate. As some resources are currently midway through another feature, interrupting the resource is either not an option or disruptive to their current activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, I would like to trial a dedicated day for everyone on the team to focus on support work. Obviously this won't be perfect for when there are scenarios of &quot;drop everything, we need to fix this&quot; but when can that be perfect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking to achieve a sense of competition in the team and that everyone is involved in support issues, not just the usual minority. The whole team will learn how to investigate issues, minimise the issues, and gel together to resolve the problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would love to hear feedback, and any tips if anyone has any available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31499" LastActivityDate="2018-02-12T14:43:50.663" Title="Dedicating one day for support work per sprint" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23535" CreationDate="2018-02-12T06:01:28.447" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One option is to give a list price, the actual total value will be calculated based on those prices when the project is completed. For example :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;simple maintainance form = X&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;complex maintainance form = 2*X&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;very complex maintainance form = 4*X&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Simple report = Y&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Complex report = 2*Y&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28712" LastActivityDate="2018-02-12T06:01:28.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23538" CreationDate="2018-02-12T08:28:46.100" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.project-open.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;]project-open[&lt;/a&gt; is an open-source project management server. The latest V5.0 version from CVS supports scheduling with end-to-start dependencies in the JavaScript client. In order to build a solution to your problem you would have to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Import activities from your flowchart into the ]po[ PostgreSQL database&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create the end-to-start dependencies in the ]po[ DB&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Run the ]po[ GanttEditor for scheduling&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclosure: I'm a member of the ]po[ team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6266" LastActivityDate="2018-02-12T08:28:46.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23539" CreationDate="2018-02-12T08:45:05.207" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see two (potential) problems with this approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are your users willing to wait potentially up to two weeks for someone to fix their problem?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are your support cases parallelizable enough to spread it over the whole team AND do the same amount of work in just one day?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you and your team feel that both of these should be ok and this other approach would be better then why not try it for a few sprints? One of the main points of Scrum is that you can change things and find out what works for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some more considerations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your description it seems that your team is either not large or crossfunctional enough to dispatch support cases as resources become available. Do you never have issues with scheduling normal tasks? Would it be useful to encourage some more cross-training?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention that bug fixing seems to always fall to the same developers. This implies a caste system among your devs, which certainly isn't healthy for a team. Have you attempted to address this in retrospectives? To me it seems your idea is at least in part an attempt to force change on this issue. If so then your devs might sense it and become unwilling to go along with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2018-02-12T08:45:05.207" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20518" CreationDate="2018-02-12T10:07:24.180" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I was reviewing this posting I created in 2016 when I was stuck on a Project Management software issue, and wanted to weigh in and let people know what I had to do to get it to work in the end. This isn't the step-by-step I'd want it to be, but if I don't put something now, I'll forget and then 10 years will have passed before I realize it. So, here you go:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create timeline in the MS Project or use freeware program &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/projects/ganttproject/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;GanttProject&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Import MS Project .mpp file into Visio&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add the right column in Visio manually&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Export your new Visio document to .png file, or save a screenshot.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even using this process, it wasn't easy and things had to be manually added and subtracted painstakingly in Visio to get them to line up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26519" LastActivityDate="2018-02-12T10:07:24.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23544" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23548" CreationDate="2018-02-12T13:06:25.010" Score="1" ViewCount="190" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am reading a book from Steve McConnell dealing with software project estimations and I do not understand the following statement (my translation, I got the book in German):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An effective organization postpones its commitments until the work to&#xA;  narrow the cone has been done. .. Reasonable commitments can be given&#xA;  in the initial part of the middle phase (approx. in 30% of project&#xA;  progress).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How this can be ever achieved in reality? I mean, in the company, we cannot start working on the project until the contract is in place. The contact is signed with an effort estimated and price, therefore we are already committed to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is this applicable in practice then?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31435" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2018-02-12T21:11:47.840" LastActivityDate="2018-02-12T21:11:47.840" Title="Cone of uncertainty - how could we delay commitment to estimates in real life?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;software&gt;&lt;contracts&gt;&lt;initiation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23544" CreationDate="2018-02-12T13:42:58.017" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dealing with probabilistic results well in any organization requires a high degree of project maturity within that organization.  I believe it is very hard to get to a high degree of maturity and then to sustain it once you're there.  In my experience, and even with my company that has an intense focus on PM, I have witnessed few, really mature PM capabilities in a company.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, you have normal human biases at play that drive us to sort of dismiss or downplay risk in our world, where we end up very optimistic about our future and where we believe we have far more control over the infinite number of work variables that affect outcomes than we really do.  So even with a very mature PM organization, these biases never go away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, in a buyer-seller arrangement, we have other business drivers at play that dictate firm commitments being agreed upon even though it is inconsistent with good PM practices.  After all, schedule slips and project overruns typically benefit the seller's revenue, except when you have the right contract to prevent that.  That typically means, commitments long before a project starts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-02-12T13:42:58.017" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23539" CreationDate="2018-02-12T14:43:50.663" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's an &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/15784/25606&quot;&gt;existing Answer&lt;/a&gt; that I think would apply quite well here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, every Sprint, one Developer is designated as the Batman. The Batman does not work on development tasks in that Sprint. Instead, they work on anything that can be dropped at a moment's notice - refactoring old code, research, online training seminars, documentation, whatever makes sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;interrupting the resource is either not an option or disruptive to their current activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a support task comes in, the Batman &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; drop everything and work on it. That's Batman's job, and not overly harmful to whatever non-urgent non-support task that was in progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm looking to achieve a sense of competition in the team and that everyone is involved in support issues, not just the usual minority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure why you'd want to create a sense of competition within the Team (that strikes me as a very bad idea), but the latter goal can (and should) be implemented by changing who the Batman is each Sprint. Put it on a rotating roster, so everyone gets an equal turn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our percentage of support jobs per sprint is around 10%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this Answer assumes you have a relatively small Development Team. If your Team's size approaches (or exceeds) 10, you may want to include a second Batman. Or a Robin; someone who does some development work but expects to be called upon by the Batman. Remember, the idea is to include slack time for the Batman. You don't want Batman so busy dealing with support tasks A, B and C that crisis D gets overlooked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-02-12T14:43:50.663" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23544" CreationDate="2018-02-12T14:49:18.443" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I speculate that &quot;commitment&quot; is being used in an indeterminate/ambiguous sense.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can't postpone commitment - but we can control the resources committed. Most organizations have some gateways that projects have to pass, and those gateways are highly dependent on the &quot;cone of uncertainty&quot;.  In my organization there is a gateway at the end of the requirements process and a second gateway at the end of the design process.  Each of these serves to control how much uncertainty remains in the project. We don't commit full resources until the third gateway; up to that point we've only made tentative commitment. (Our numbers suggest that 2/3 of the cost is after that third gateway). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also has the effect of &quot;postponing work&quot; until the cone of uncertainty is narrower.  We don't begin production until we've completed development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taken in that light, the statement is ... kind of obvious...  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our projects are internal; we're not working to a contract, but to an internal stakeholder/obligation.  That said, I believe some organizations do similar things - e.g. contract to complete design, with the expectation of a development contract if the design contract is successful, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2018-02-12T15:40:34.510" LastActivityDate="2018-02-12T15:40:34.510" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23544" CreationDate="2018-02-12T17:33:34.637" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The cone of uncertainty has a few uses, but is most useful when used in conjunction with some other practices. So let's start with the uses in the circumstances you describe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cone of Uncertainty when a Commitment is Made&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, you can't delay a commitment that is already made, that's a simple matter of physics (time). Most organizations I've worked with that work in the fixed scope and deadline model who are successful do two things. First, they pad their estimates severely.They are always promising the tail end of the cone of uncertainty. Secondly, they retain some control over the effort they can apply, adding teams and people to the team. It's this second part where the cone of uncertainty comes in helpful for them. You may have heard the adage &quot;adding people to a late project makes it later&quot;. This comes from ramp-up time. Adding people to a team or teams to a project slows the project down for a while before it speeds it up, so in traditional project management you usually don't know a project is late until you're too close to the deadline to overcome that slow down. Effectively leveraging burn-up charts and a cone of uncertainty allows you to see that your project is late much sooner - maybe in time to effectively add people or teams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also worth noting that I've never known a successful organization go into a project (and estimate) cold. They either invest a fair amount of Architecture and Design time (I don't know if it's 30%, but it's usually substantial), or they're selling an out-of-the-box solution where they're leveraging past work for this same purpose. In other words, they're investing time and money they hope to recoup later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cone of Uncertainty Without a Fixed Scope / Fixed Deadline&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is probably the most common approach I've seen with companies that do contract work. Instead of one big commitment, there are a series of small commitments, like working for 2 - 3 sprints, or, if you aren't using Scrum, maybe a month at a time. I've worked with a number of real companies that do this. The plan might be for an 8 month project, but there are regular checkins and the customer can pull out whenever they like because the teams are delivering usable working software, so it's never a matter of cutting losses. Here, the Cone of Uncertainty sees huge value as you can make forcasts about when certain work might be done and also use those forcasts to pivot on which work is more important. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cone of Uncertainty with No Commitments&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach is far more common where the team doing the work is internal to the organization, but I have worked with groups where they are basically on retainer to the client and can use this model. In this approach, the teams have a few measures of success like uptime, reduced manual work, etc that they use to prioritize work. They work with the client to move the needle on those measures. This completely abandons the project model and therefor you don't see burn-up charts and cones of uncertainty coming into conversations as much. However, they do pop up from time to time especially on long-term efforts. For example, I might think that a platform upgrade is going to boost all of those measures a lot, but it will take a few months. Three weeks in, I can use this cone of uncertainty to see if that three months is panning out the way I thought. Maybe it'll take a lot longer because the new version of the platform is just a mess, and choosing to table it while the vendor works the bugs out is a better business decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Finally, Your Circumstance&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, I don't know what your circumstances are, the type of work you do, or how you write your contracts. These are ways other companies have leveraged this model, but different markets in different countries are more or less open. Further, even if the market runs a certain way, different customers in that market will be all over the place on their tolerance for commitment. When companies try to shift to this approach, I see the most success when they find a customer who is open to try it rather than force it onto a customer and look for a team that volunteers to work this way rather than force the team into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-02-12T17:33:34.637" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23544" CreationDate="2018-02-12T20:38:07.973" Score="0" Body="&lt;h3&gt;BLUF&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Bottom Line Up Front&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;how could we delay commitment to estimates in real life?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If an end-to-end estimate up front is &lt;em&gt;required&lt;/em&gt;, then one can't delay.  If the approach can be changed to an iterative and collaborative way of working, then each iteration is a delay and more estimable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How is this applicable in practice then?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's value is in understanding that the less one knows, especially about complex work, the less certain one can be about the future; certainty increases as the work nears completion.  Its application varies by approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;History&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Traditional &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pmi.org/about/learn-about-pmi/what-is-project-management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;project management&lt;/a&gt; is rooted in manufacturing procedures based on Fredrick Taylor and his disciple Gantt.  The idea is that by working in phases, where one group of specialists creates deliverables to pass to the next group of specialists, various aspects of the project (especially cost, scope, schedule) can be controlled more effectively.  It is very successful in simple domains and has had success in complicated domains. (For domain definitions see &lt;a href=&quot;http://cognitive-edge.com/videos/cynefin-framework-introduction/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cynefin&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These ideas have been misapplied to software development resulting in the advent of &lt;em&gt;waterfall&lt;/em&gt; due to the misread of Royce's paper &lt;a href=&quot;https://drive.google.com/open?id=12Ia-r6ZRib33roLNJGekXMNBvaL4S-mv&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Managing the Development of Large Software Systems&lt;/a&gt;.  Many of the issues have been documented including Fred Brooks' candid retrospective book &lt;em&gt;The Mythical Man-Month&lt;/em&gt;, the complexity of a single phase is highlighted in &lt;a href=&quot;https://drive.google.com/open?id=1DW5P7lJ7EfE-g2pnAM4jz-1iUHNSO_lX&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Software Requirements: Are They Really A Problem&lt;/a&gt; by Bell &amp;amp; Thayer, and the annual &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.infoq.com/articles/standish-chaos-2015#&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CHAOS Report&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several approaches were developed in the 1990s to attempt to address these issues: &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;eXtreme Prgramming&lt;/a&gt; being two of the most recognized.  Seventeen people behind these approaches gathered in 2001 to discuss what they were learning and doing.  They result was the creation of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Manifesto for Agile Software Development&lt;/a&gt;.  That resulting philosophy of four values and twelve principles is a summation and general guideline for success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Traditional versus Modern&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When applied in the traditional manufacturing model, the cone of uncertainty acknowledges reality: any initial estimates are very inaccurate.  This is why &lt;em&gt;estimate padding&lt;/em&gt; is so commonly used; ranged estimates would be more honest and be supported by the cone, but are not seen often as they are not concrete enough for most project management systems or traditional business contracts.  Once accepted, emphasis is placed on attempting to document and design everything completely in order to attempt to meet the now contracted expectation or validate the initial estimates.  As the project approaches the deadline, projections are usually more accurate as described by the cone.  Staffing may be added, requirement (scope) change processes are enforced, and addendum for additional time might be negotiated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When using modern software product development approaches, each iteration can be viewed as its own &lt;em&gt;project&lt;/em&gt; with more predictability.  Having a vision and not a rigid plan, the customer and producer working together daily, creating small increments of high-quality and usable software, and continuously reevaluating the customer needs and the effectiveness of the solution are fundamental.  These practices result in risks being reduced and estimation becoming more accurate and precise because the cone of uncertainty remains narrow for each short iteration of effort.  The cone of uncertainty then becomes a forecasting tool once a relatively consistent pace has been established.  The further forward one looks, the less accurate and precise that estimate is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2018-02-12T20:38:07.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23550" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23554" CreationDate="2018-02-12T21:28:00.010" Score="1" ViewCount="1651" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a new to project management, and I have started working on a European project proposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't figure out what &quot;overhead&quot; actually is. Can anyone explain to me, or provide me with sources from which I can draw, about the concept of &quot;overhead&quot; in a research project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30698" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-02-12T21:36:08.930" LastActivityDate="2018-02-13T13:49:51.457" Title="What is 'overhead' in a research project budget?" Tags="&lt;cost-management&gt;&lt;management&gt;&lt;budget&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22466" CreationDate="2018-02-13T02:36:56.463" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/007352333X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Object Oriented Software Engineering&lt;/a&gt; (Schach p. 46)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The term CHAOS is an acronym. For some unknown reason, The Standish&#xA;  Group keeps the acronym top secret. They state [Standish, 2003]: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Only a few people at The Standish Group, and any one of the 360 people who&#xA;  received and saved the T-shirts we gave out after they completed the&#xA;  first survey in 1994, know what the CHAOS letters represent.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31509" LastActivityDate="2018-02-13T02:36:56.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23552" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-02-13T03:43:06.443" Score="1" ViewCount="194" Body="&lt;p&gt;As physical % complete does not roll-up summary tasks, I created a column called 'physical percent complete'. I think I need to link this column to Budgeted Cost of Work Performed (BCWP), just so I can have a more accurate Equivalent Annual Cost (EAC) based on the physical percent complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried creating a new column and adding the formula:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;baseline cost * physical percent complete&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;though it does not want to work. My plan was to then create another column for 'estimated at completion' based on the result from previous formula.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have an idea on how I can achieve a more accurate EAC based on the customised column for physical percent complete?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31511" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2018-03-16T12:39:48.183" LastActivityDate="2021-03-30T23:03:05.310" Title="How to link BCWP to a customized column I created for physical percent complete" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23550" CreationDate="2018-02-13T07:50:00.457" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will try myself at this answer.&#xA;Basically, &quot;overhead&quot; can have two meanings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Negatively connoted: When negatively connoted, overhead describes excess and UNNECCESARY effort or costs, that incure because the project is managed poorly and through this, effort will be redundant, mistakes will be repeated, information imbalance will affect quality of results etc.&#xA;Usually, within my workplace, overhead refers to this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Neutrally connoted: When neutrally connoted, it describes the effort or costs that dont lead directly to the creation of value/results but are still NECESSARY to support the value creating actions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A short description that supports this view can be found here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.accountingtools.com/articles/what-is-overhead.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.accountingtools.com/articles/what-is-overhead.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is definitely more extensive literature regarding this, but to give you a first impression i hope it helps :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31513" LastActivityDate="2018-02-13T07:50:00.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23550" CreationDate="2018-02-13T13:49:51.457" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Overhead is any shared cost that is not directly identifiable with the project&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let us say that you have 5 researchers and 1 analyst assigned to the project full time. And you have bought some material for use in the project. In accounting, these are all known as direct costs for your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you are also using some office space, you have people in the Finance and Human Resources Department who are necessary for running the organization. Those costs are shared across many projects and so they are indirect costs. For accounting purposes, they are allocated to your project based on something like headcount ( $ per direct person) or payroll (% per direct payroll $)...etc. These are known as overheads. You can read more about it in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/overhead.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Investopedia Overhead page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2018-02-13T13:49:51.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23552" CreationDate="2018-02-13T17:16:22.797" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;BCWP&lt;/code&gt; is a non-customizable field in MS Project. However, you can use a customizable field, such as &lt;code&gt;Cost1&lt;/code&gt; to add a formula that uses your other customized field, 'physical percent complete'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Presuming you used &lt;code&gt;Number1&lt;/code&gt; for that field, enter this as the formula in &lt;code&gt;Cost1&lt;/code&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;[Baseline Cost]*[Number1]&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that even if you override the label for &lt;code&gt;Number1&lt;/code&gt; to say 'physical percent complete', the formula still references the underlying field name, &lt;code&gt;Number1&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastActivityDate="2018-02-13T17:16:22.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23512" CreationDate="2018-02-13T19:05:24.077" Score="-1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Order them by business value&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Business value can take any number of forms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increases revenue - new features often belong here.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduces churn - retains revenue. Bug fixes may belong in this category.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improves profits - reduces cost. Labor saving automation may belong here.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduces risk - for example, a security fix. &lt;a href=&quot;https://prooncall.com/3-companies-went-business-due-security-breach/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Companies have gone out of business due to a security leak.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Compliance issues - may not improve your bottom line or top line but may have to be done to avoid adverse regulatory action.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ranking is debatable. There is no shortcut but to apply your judgement. This is why Scrum specified a single Product Owner for this purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given your existing scenario, If I were you, I will approach the people who put those low numbers (should be in the ticket) and record the reasons why they thought these tickets were urgent or critical. Then see how to use that insight to prioritize based on that. You may also have to combine some tickets to deliver full business value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2018-02-15T14:31:49.567" LastActivityDate="2018-02-15T14:31:49.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23535" CreationDate="2018-02-13T20:59:21.777" Score="-1" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Propose a per sprint price&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Fixed price is out&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You seem to have a high-level understanding of the work to be done. What you don't know is what bells and whistles he will want. Depending on that, the project cost can vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Establish your project management credibility&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;MVP&lt;/strong&gt;: Recommend building an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and putting it in the hand of selected end-users to get early feedback. Any idea is just a hypothesis. It needs to be validated. He will thank you for this later.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Indicate roughly how many sprints an MVP might take&lt;/strong&gt;: This is for discussion purposes. It can be more or less depending on what features he wants in the MVP.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Indicate roughly how many sprints the final product might take&lt;/strong&gt;: This is for discussion purposes. It can be more or less depending on what features he wants in the final product.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Client can stop the project at the end of any sprint&lt;/strong&gt;: You will produce a shippable increment at the end of each sprint. Client can call off further work at the end of any sprint. You deploy the work done in that sprint and wrap-up the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Similar projects you have done before&lt;/strong&gt;: List similar projects you have done before to support your rough estimates in 2 and 3.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Client will need to set aside time&lt;/strong&gt;: To remain heavily engaged with the team for the duration of the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Establish your technical capabilities&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Recommend the technology stack&lt;/strong&gt;: And why you think this stack is best suited for this type of work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Propose key team members&lt;/strong&gt;: At least a technical architect and their experience in this line.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2018-02-14T02:14:02.360" LastActivityDate="2018-02-14T02:14:02.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23558" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23563" CreationDate="2018-02-14T13:27:26.407" Score="0" ViewCount="59" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have had two bad experiences with freelancers on different websites which ended up in bad terms&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first freelancer refused to complete the job saying that he has been doing work for more than the agreed amount, which is not true as we had to refuse his work 5-6 times due to issues with it, we had to pay him 50% of the amount after the first time he submitted his final update which was still broken&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second freelancer convinced us to pay in advanced 15% of the amount and then we got nothing back, he claims that he complete most of the work and wants another payment but wont show us the work at all&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a novice when it comes to making sure everything is going to the plan as I am too busy to even check with the developer, what is the right way to make sure that I get a work that would satisfy my managers and assures us that if the work is not satisfying, we would get our money back&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31531" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-02-14T15:02:59.203" LastActivityDate="2018-02-14T16:02:15.907" Title="Working with Freelancers" Tags="&lt;small-projects&gt;&lt;contracts&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2018-02-15T11:26:40.087" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23559" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-02-14T13:50:27.570" Score="0" ViewCount="208" Body="&lt;p&gt;Curious if there is a way to avoid Microsoft Project auto-adjusting the assignment units, when I add a resource in the Resource name column.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the project settings all resources are set to 100% availability and all tasks are set to fixed units.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, I'd like to have a resource always enter with 100% assignment, even for tasks that are less than 8hrs, as it currently auto-adjusts the assignment based on the percentage of the workday, that the work estimate is - see below example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can manually adjust the assignment back to 100%, but for huge projects, this is really annoying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any way to override this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KO1oh.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KO1oh.png&quot; alt=&quot;assignment units&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31532" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T19:53:52.603" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T19:53:52.603" Title="MS Project 2013: Can I avoid MSP auto-changing my assignment units to less than 100%?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;&lt;resources&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23512" CreationDate="2018-02-14T13:58:47.113" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/vsts/work/track/planning-ranking-priorities&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Microsoft Docs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;System Managed&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These fields should not be modified manually.  The items should always be in an ordered list with the indexes managed by the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Backlog Priority&lt;/strong&gt;: A number usually assigned by a background process used to track the list order of items on a backlog or board in the web portal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bug, Epic, Feature, Product backlog item, Task (Scrum)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stack Rank&lt;/strong&gt;: A number, usually assigned by a background process, used to track the list order of items on a backlog or board in the web portal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bug, Epic, Feature, Requirement (CMMI), Risk (CMMI), Task, User Story (Agile)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;User Managed&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tracking the business desires should be tracked separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Priority&lt;/strong&gt;: A subjective rating of the bug, issue, task, or test case as it relates to the business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bug, Change Request, Epic, Feature, Impediment, Issue, Product backlog item, Requirement, Risk, Shared Step, Task, Test Case, User Story&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Time Criticality&lt;/strong&gt;: A subjective unit of measure that captures the how the business value decreases over time. Higher values indicate that the epic or feature is inherently more time critical than those items with lower values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epic, Feature&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other fields are also available; see the linked documentation.  Shared understanding of the values used in these fields is critical.  This is a part of Transparency in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt; framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-02-14T13:58:47.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23558" CreationDate="2018-02-14T13:59:48.323" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem is not your freelancers.  Did you obtain references on their performance by previous buyers?  Did you validate their solvency?  If not, those are two things you can do prior to a contract to ensure that you filter out lower performers.  Next issue is your contract for performance.  Many high performing freelancers may not be as solvent as necessary to work for long periods of time without receiving some payment.  So you have some risk here but you can mitigate this to a decent degree by putting into the contract lower level deliverables, reports, schedule, and milestone payments that enable you to monitor progress.  If you cannot verify and validate a deliverable / milestone, you don't pay.  You can also load incentives in that payment, such as an increased fee or a penalty, if certain criteria are not met at one of those lower milestones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the biggest issue to fix is in your last paragraph, that you're too busy to even check....  The couple of mitigators I wrote above will do you no good if you can't do your part in it.  If you're too busy to check up on progress and they failed you, it is 100% your fault.  Sorry to be harsh but, as far as PMing is concerned, this is the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-02-14T13:59:48.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23562" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-02-14T14:16:16.713" Score="-1" ViewCount="65" Body="&lt;p&gt;How should one use branches to be able to test:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;on local environment (during development),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;on a branch for testing with real environment (QA-testing),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;testing by customers on pre-production branch,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and finally merging to production?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have the following branches: prod (customer production branch), dev(pre-production branch), staging(for QA), and local developers' branches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For our current workflow, we have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For development and local testing, done in developers' branches.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After code review, merge those local developers' branches to QA's branch.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After QA tested, merge changes to pre-production customer branch (customer will test)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customer merges to production branch.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problems appear on the second step. For example, we have some major tasks and some tasks that can wait. And developers already have done some major tasks and those tasks are already on step 2, but suddenly customers decide that some of the &quot;can wait&quot; tasks need to be done now and those changes should be merged right in pre-production branch so QA and customers could test it right away. Now customer liked all changes and he merges changes to production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After all this we have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;prod and pre-production are the same.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;staging branch is behind &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;developers always start new tasks from the production branch&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a developer tested his task and wants to merge to staging (QA's branch)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;also some other developers finish some &quot;can wait&quot; tasks and QA is already testing them, so they are in staging branch&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;But because branches are different he might have conflicts with other developers' work. But his work is a major task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now he needs to fix conflicts. That means to update some changes from staging in his branch and merge to staging for testing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It results in a branch which started from production and has some chunks of code from staging (that have probably not been tested yet).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we should do in such cases? What should a normal workflow look like?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31533" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-02-14T15:00:01.907" LastActivityDate="2018-02-15T00:47:47.290" Title="Developer - QA - customer - production branching workflow" Tags="&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23558" CreationDate="2018-02-14T14:43:34.703" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see two broad approaches to solving this issue. One Agile, one not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;non-Agile&quot; approach is to hire a lawyer and have your contracts drafted in such a way that the burden of miscommunicated requirements falls on the vendor (freelancer) instead of the customer (you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The downside of this approach is that few experienced freelancers will bother to accept such a contract, leaving you only with those who are either down on their luck or don't know any better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more Agile approach would be to draft a contract that included iterations; say, one week. At the end of every week, you will meet with the vendor, spending an hour going over the product. At this time, you can clarify requirements (because, trust me, the vendor didn't understand what you really needed the first time. It's doubtful &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; understood them). You can also choose at this time to either continue the project/contract, or terminate it (and have the vendor hand over what they currently have).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One risk of this approach is the risk of shoddy work, as you're currently facing. However, this risk is mitigated by only being 1 week of work at most. It can be further mitigated by vetting the vendor beforehand, as David Espina suggests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A cost is the time you must spend (1 hour per week). However, if you're unable to allocate even that amount of time to the project, then it must not be very important in the first place. So don't bother pursuing it until your workload has cleared some and the project has moved up in priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-02-14T14:43:34.703" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23558" CreationDate="2018-02-14T16:02:15.907" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, when you buy a service, you're always at risk of getting not what you expected and not being able to get the things back. This problem is relevant not only to freelancing relationships, but for regular employment as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this is a question of risk management. If not to be verbose I would say: &quot;The less you invest, the more risks you have&quot;. Do not try to save costs on cheap employees with low rating. Rather pay more to the people who value their reputation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29674" LastActivityDate="2018-02-14T16:02:15.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23565" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-02-14T17:51:54.220" Score="-2" ViewCount="98" Body="&lt;p&gt;My colleagues (2 friends of mine (Financial &amp;amp; International Management students) and I (Full stack JEE Developer) &#xA;developed a prototype of a project we want to pitch soon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Background&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Initially we splitted the Project (Me the tech geek, programming and stuff) and they had the Ideas and were like my customers giving me tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Situation&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I'm very unsatisfied with the profit sharing. Their suggestion was everybody would receive 1/3 of the profit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in the end I was the one developing it 100%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They haven't assisted me in programming (they also have no experience).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Question(s)&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How would you guys react to that? Am I overreacting?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any other possible solutions than this 1/3 share?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Edit&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was a personal project, no company involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31537" LastActivityDate="2018-02-14T18:07:05.470" Title="Splitting profit into members" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2018-02-15T01:29:55.390" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23565" CreationDate="2018-02-14T18:07:05.470" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hope your two partners never see this post.  There's so much more to make a product successful in a fickle market than building product...especially a prototype.  There are a host of other knowledge and skill sets required to move a product through its natural lifecycle and to yield a profit, that you likely do not have or that they have more than you or that maybe three of you don't have and you'll need to hire.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My best advice to you is to temper your grandiose view of your talents and give more credence to your partners' contributions to the success of your product, even if they won't step in until later in the lifecycle.  In fact, they'll likely think the same of your contribution when their tempo skyrockets and you slow down.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And lastly, and most importantly, you guys are supposed to be friends.  That's far more valuable than an increase in profit share.  If you don't recognize that, then your two friends need a new friend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-02-14T18:07:05.470" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23562" CreationDate="2018-02-14T18:41:29.570" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the comments mentioned, questions about testing or branching strategy may not fit here, but to me it sounds like those are just symptoms. What I read from this is that you have a process and work takes N days to get through that process. However, your customer is looking to make more rapid changes. In other words, your decision cycle for pivoting to new work is longer than your customer will tolerate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some branching strategies and testing strategies may reduce the impact of this. For example, parallel feature branches can allow for concurrent work to impact other work less, but it doesn't fix the problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Lean, we would call this a problem with batch size. To illustrate a simple example, let's say a factory makes widgets in batches of 1000. With prep and manufacturing, it takes 1 week to complete 1000 widgets. But what if the customer wants to change the widget type every 2 days. If I try to do this parallel in the same line, disaster will almost certainly be the result. So I either have to tell them no or shrink my batch size to, say, 200. If I can get 200 done in two days, new I can change widget types when my customer wants or, if they don't change their mind, just do another 200 of the same type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work like programming isn't exactly like manufacturing, but the same thing applies. If your batch size is too big, and therefor cycle time is too long, you need to shrink batch size of work to become more adaptive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-02-14T18:41:29.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23568" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-02-14T20:05:05.733" Score="3" ViewCount="855" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a tech company, a few weeks ago we moved from traditional project management to Scrum multidisciplinary Teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our sprints' length is two weeks and the experiment is not working well for now, for some reason we don't achieve the goal at the end of the Sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We consider that a user story can be started when the problem is defined and concrete acceptation criteria is defined as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We consider that a user story is finished when a version, potentially deployable to production with that feature, is created (no further phases needed, only physical deployment).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our work phases are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Demo, retrospective, planning (meeting day) -&gt; 1 day&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team talks about the solutions we are going to implement -&gt; Usually 1 day to review possibilities, see how others are doing...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When the Team agrees with the solution, the developers may spend 1 day or two investigating some new technology we are going to use -&gt; 1 or 2 days&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When we know the implementation details of the new technology, we start the implementation knowing the final flows and architectural details -&gt; 3 - 5 days.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When implementation is done, we start writing the unit tests, user interface (UI) tests, integration tests... -&gt; 2 - 3 days.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When tests are done and new code is covered, we start the code review phase...a reviewer from another Team must be available to check, then we solve any reviewed problems... -&gt; ideally 1 day&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;OK now implementation is done, code review passed, tests written...new feature is sent to a Team QA member to perform final tests and verifications -&gt; 1-2 days.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When test passes, the feature is delivered to the Product Owner who performs a User Validation Test -&gt; 1/2 day&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;OK now the feature is ready to merge with the develop branch and a new version is created (and maybe released to production) -&gt; 1 day&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you count, in the best scenario (completing the feature in 3 days and doing tests in 2 days) we spend 11 days to complete the user story...in the worst case we can spend 16 days or more depending on the complexity of the user story...&lt;strong&gt;in both cases we exceed the length of the sprint&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We could remove phases...but we give importance to quality so writing tests, doing code review, doing a final test phase is relevant to us.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We will never be able to complete user stories which need more than 4 or 5 days of 'active development'...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are we doing wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31538" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-02-14T20:20:46.663" LastActivityDate="2018-02-15T08:17:15.270" Title="How to complete many development phases within 2-week Sprints" Tags="&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23568" CreationDate="2018-02-14T23:36:39.760" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a great question and a common problem when teams first make the switch. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a rule of thumb, you probably want to target any given backlog item taking no more than half the sprint length. This is by no means a hard and fast rule, it's just a helpful guideline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two sides to addressing this. The first is to shrink the size of backlog items. Everything can be broken down smaller. I've worked with teams who finish any given user story in a few hours (from start to deployment). It takes time to get there, so if you don't get it at first, that's ok. &lt;a href=&quot;https://vimeo.com/43601248&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This video&lt;/a&gt; is a bit long, but I still feel like it's one of the best at describing user stories. In my experience, it is far easier to break down an item from the point of view of solving user needs than it is to break down an implementation-focused backlog item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other is the team breaking up the traditional cycle. Is the whole team sitting together? I'd look at XP at some practices that might help break down those phases. Pair programming or even small-group development with developers, testers, and even stakeholders can take away late time and break down artificial barriers. ATDD and TDD puts testing first, which will inherently disrupt the normal process and force the team to organize a new way of working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-02-14T23:36:39.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23562" CreationDate="2018-02-15T00:47:47.290" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is definitely a process issue.  The separation of parties is causing complexities which is resulting in long cycle times.  With more collaboration and modern techniques, these cycle times will decrease.  With improved collaboration, they will decrease more.  The way the internal members work is probably more simply addressed.  Of course simple does not necessarily mean easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By adopting a test first mentality, the hand offs will be decreased and work will be less error prone.  Collaboration is required for this to be successful.  Before any work begins (feature, enhancement, bug fix, etc.), the developers and quality assurance need to design together.  Begin with use cases and test scenarios; this sets common understanding and expectations.  From there the solution can be designed while creating a plan for what type of tests (unit, integration, functional, etc.) are needed and how they will be provided.  Practices such as Test Driven, Behavior Driven, and Acceptance Driven development can be helpful.  Pair and mob programming can reduce the need for code reviews and improve shared knowledge.  Sometimes more formal code reviews will still be beneficial.  Don't pass &lt;em&gt;tickets&lt;/em&gt; back and forth: sit down together and talk when issues arise.  All of this also reduces the need for as many branches since development and testing are occurring simultaneously.  Another internal gain can come from Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD).  Merges don't create conflicts, they reveal them.  Mo' branches, mo' problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having the &lt;em&gt;customer&lt;/em&gt; involved is also a great complexity reducer.  They can be involved with ensuring the need is understood before each bit of work begins.  Requirements&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://drive.google.com/open?id=1DW5P7lJ7EfE-g2pnAM4jz-1iUHNSO_lX&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; are often not enough and sometimes the enemy.  The sooner the customer can review the work, the better.  Context switching is a productivity killer.  It can be very time consuming and frustrating to go back to code that was completed weeks or months ago, especially if technical practices for clean code are not utilized.  It's best to deliver small increments frequently so that the customer remains engaged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2018-02-15T00:47:47.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23568" CreationDate="2018-02-15T03:30:11.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To directly address the branching question: Keep the number minimal.  One master/trunk/main that is the production code base, and one development/edge that is used by all developers with Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) may be enough.  Mo' branches, mo' problems; reduce the number of branches, reduce the merge maintenance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a framework, &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt; is not prescriptive about the details for creating the product.  Due to contextual differences, each Scrum Team and Development Team have to find the techniques and practices that help them to be effective and efficient in serving the customer with a highly valuable product of great quality.  As Daniel discussed, making the transition can be challenging.  He also mentioned several common practices, many from eXtreme Programming (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;XP&lt;/a&gt;), that have been successful for many over the years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Collaboration is key.  The first value and several principles of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Manifesto for Agile Software Development&lt;/a&gt; highlight that aspect.  Quality is also a high priority.  Silos and walls between development, quality assurance, design, infrastructure, etc. are great impediments.  A test-first mentality can be helpful in making that transition.  By working together from the onset, quality will improve and cycle times will be reduced.  As you have noticed, the ScrumWaterFail that you are currently executing is not working; it is a common pattern for groups new to the agile philosophy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product Backlog Refinement&lt;/strong&gt; (~8 hours throughout the Sprint as needed) is not an official Scrum event.  However it is a foundation for each Sprint's effort.  The various skills that each member brings to  the team are invaluable for examining the top Product Backlog Items from different perspectives in order to create a holistic understanding.  The result is less noise and confusion which reduces the need for hashing out basics during the Sprint when bringing the forecast PBIs to 'Done' is the Focus.  This is a great opportunity for applying &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deltamatrix.com/horizontal-and-vertical-user-stories-slicing-the-cake/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;vertical slicing&lt;/a&gt; techniques.  How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprint Planning&lt;/strong&gt; (~4 hours to begin the Sprint) utilizes the shared understanding of the top Product Backlog Items achieved during refinement when the Development Team forecasts what they believe they can accomplish.  Collaboratively a &lt;em&gt;sketch&lt;/em&gt; is created for how the effort will be approached.  The first items to be addressed should be planned with greater detail with the quality strategy as a priority.  This is a good time to outline test scenarios.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the &lt;strong&gt;Sprint&lt;/strong&gt;, two or more individuals with mixed skills should work together collaboratively on completing a PBI using pair and mob programming reducing the need for code reviews.&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blog.codinghorror.com/pair-programming-vs-code-reviews/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;  The number of PBIs being worked on concurrently should be kept to a minimum: A Development Team is 3-9 people, so only 1 or 2 (&lt;em&gt;maybe 3&lt;/em&gt;) in progress items.  New tests for the item should be developed locally, executed often, then added to the shared suite.  Code should be committed frequently to avoid merge hell; merges don't create conflicts, they reveal them.  Ideally tests should be executed by automation in the Continuous Integration and Deployment pipeline.  Issues will be discovered sooner and should be addressed quickly.  There are no hand offs between people or groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As collaboration increases, the &lt;strong&gt;Daily Scrum&lt;/strong&gt; ( &amp;lt; 15 minutes daily) will become less about sharing progress of work, because people are having discussions throughout the day's activities, and will become more about validating the forecast from Planning.  Because &lt;code&gt;Quality goals do not decrease&lt;/code&gt; it should be more acceptable to reduce scope over cramming to complete all items.  The only failed Sprint is one that doesn't produce a 'Done' Increment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Demonstrating that Increment is only part of the &lt;strong&gt;Sprint Review&lt;/strong&gt; (~2 hours near the end of the Sprint) which also provides feedback on quality and value.  This is a great opportunity to connect with users and stakeholders.  This is not a Pass/Fail phase gate.  As a an important aspect of quality, the Product Owner should be available to answer questions and review 'Done' work throughout the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprint Retrospective&lt;/strong&gt; (~2 hours to close the Sprint) will provide an opportunity to inspect and adapt the collaborative effort of the Scrum Team.  It is also the event where the Definition of 'Done', usually the expression of quality, is improved for future Sprints.  It is important to &lt;code&gt;Inspect how the last Sprint went with regards to people, relationships, process, and tools&lt;/code&gt; because each is a factor in providing quality, and working effectively and efficiently.  Create a safe environment for candid discussion throughout the Sprint, and especially during the Retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;All times based on the stated two-week Sprint time-box.  Feel free to &lt;a href=&quot;https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/72894/scrum-framework&quot;&gt;chat&lt;/a&gt;.  HTH&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2018-02-15T03:30:11.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23568" CreationDate="2018-02-15T08:17:15.270" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are we doing wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You are tackling backlog items that are too big for your sprint length and you are wasting resources by working in traditional phases.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to break down your backlog items even further than you are now. Your situation is the prime example why this is so important. Imagine you were to break down everything into items roughly a third the current size. Then you would know for sure that you should at least be able to finish 2 of them in one sprint. Instead of finishing 1 maybe, maybe not...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agileforall.com/patterns-for-splitting-user-stories/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a good article on strategies to break down backlog items. The gist of it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vertical slices are still king&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;But sometimes that vertical slice has a heavy bulge somewhere in the middle (multiple ways to do the same thing / less common scenarios). You can split that bulge if you need to divide it further.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you can, split less important aspects away from more important aspects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All else being equal favor splitting into similar sizes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also seem to have adopted something of a design-by-committee approach and it is eating time. You don't need consensus on how to solve a problem. Whoever picks up a task has the authority to decide how it is done and responsibility to do it right. If they feel they need or would benefit from someone elses insight then they can consult with that team member ad hoc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have significant uncertainty behind a backlog item (like a new technology or unclear strategy), consider planning a research spike instead of putting a lot of time into researching possible paths during the actual backlog item. This may not always be visible beforehand but this is one more way to break the item down. You will always have to look up a few new/unfamilliar things but those should be highly specific details not 101 tutorials because you've never touched that library before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to your step 7 your QA team members only seem to get utilized late in the sprint. If so this wastes much of their capacity. If so you need to integrate them earlier. They should cooperate with the more development oriented teammembers from the beginning. A good way to do that is to have them start writing unit tests as the code is taking shape. Another way to reduce this problem is again, to reduce backlog item size. The smaller the items the earlier QA gets their first candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly your step 8 looks like another potential bottleneck, depending on one person to move everything forward. Again this would be helped by smaller items and by distributing the work over the whole team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Merging would also be simpler if it could be distributed throughout the sprint instead of everyone scrambling to get their changes in on the last day. Smaller items will help with that. Using smaller items would also lessen the need to run dedicated branches instead of just using the local repo as a soft branch (I assume a DVCS is in use).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly a build script/server could help reduce the time needed to create the final version. Though this benefit doesn't come for free unlike several of the others here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's several days you can outright scrap or interweave with other concurrent work. The rest you'll have to do with smaller items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2018-02-15T08:17:15.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23559" CreationDate="2018-02-15T20:01:26.573" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The screen shot does not show the field names, but it appears that you have a task &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Duration&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; of 1 day (e.g. 8 hours), but &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Work&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; set to 4 hrs (e.g. half a day). In order for resources to only work 4 hours on an 8 hour task, they must be set at 50%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastActivityDate="2018-02-15T20:01:26.573" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23578" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-02-17T17:15:06.937" Score="2" ViewCount="189" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SAFe says you don't need to recalibrate estimation, but requires estimates and other metrics to be normalized across one or more Agile Release Trains. Context, question rationale, and the question itself (stated in a more answerable form) are below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Context of the Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the core practices of SAFe appears to be the use of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/story/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;normalized story points&lt;/a&gt; on which to base planning and costing decisions within the framework. Version 4.5 of the framework says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;SAFe uses a starting baseline where one story point is defined roughly the same across all teams. This means that work can be prioritized based on converting story points to cost...In this way, story points are somewhat comparable to an ideal developer day, and all teams estimate using a common method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Functionally, this results in estimations being done in ideal working days rather than strictly relative level-of-effort scaling. No aspect of the framework appears to offer any alternative to ideal-days estimation, or define a point at which estimation is ever unmoored from man-hours. Furthermore, in &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20151217033610/http://www.scaledagileframework.com/safe-sound-and-fud/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the comments section&lt;/a&gt; of a now-deleted post, Dean Leffingwell has directly stated that normalized estimates are not a one-time thing. Specifically, he said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Velocities are NOT normalized across teams. Estimating is. If you don’t normalize estimating, then there is no meaningful economics; you can’t figure ROI if you don’t know that the “I” is. If you want to scale agile, and there is no meaningful way to bid work across teams, and within a program, you will be blocked before you even try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Why Ask This Question?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point of the question isn't to debate whether or not this is an anti-pattern, but rather to understand this rather vague note on the page which says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Note: There is no need to recalibrate team estimation or velocity after that point. It is just a starting baseline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Authorial intent here seems unclear. Does it mean no recalibration within a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scaledagileframework.com/pi-planning/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PI Planning&lt;/a&gt; increment, or at any point within the process? Given the preceding context, it seems like normalizing of the estimation process (and therefore SAFe-specific application of measures like story points, load, velocity, and cumulative flow) is foundational to the framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any mechanism within SAFe to estimate in level-of-effort rather than ideal days? In either case, how does the admonition that recalibration is unnecessary fit in with the framework's ongoing requirement to normalize metrics across teams?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-04-29T12:57:19.927" Title="If SAFe must be continuously calibrated and measured in ideal days, why does the framework say recalibration is unnecessary?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;safe&gt;&lt;frameworks&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8897" CreationDate="2018-02-18T16:40:05.303" Score="2" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Project Management Answer&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The critical path is, by definition, the longest path between two nodes. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_path_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia says&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis and italics mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CPM calculates the longest path of planned activities to &lt;strong&gt;logical end points &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; to the end of the project&lt;/strong&gt;, and the earliest and latest that each activity can start and finish without making the project longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To complicate your question further, it also says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A project can have several, parallel, near critical paths; and some or all of the tasks could have 'free float' and/or 'total float'. An additional parallel path through the network with the total durations shorter than the critical path is called a sub-critical or non-critical path. Activities on sub-critical paths have no drag, as they are not extending the project's duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In common usage, an activity-on-node diagram is generally expected to define real or virtual nodes for the starting and ending states. These nodes often represent project initiation and project closing, but integration or delivery (or even other terminal activities) might be the right endpoints for certain diagrams. In any case, you can certainly add &quot;start&quot; and &quot;end&quot; nodes when needed. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ValUe.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Activity-on-Node Diagram with Start and End Points&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if used as an activity diagram with multiple end points and parallel or near-critical paths, you can still use CPM to measure the longest distance between any two nodes in the diagram, so it's not inherently necessary that all paths converge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Recommendations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not possible to know what the test or teacher considers the &quot;correct&quot; answer to be, but here are two possible solutions to your problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add real or virtual nodes to represent the start and end of your project. The critical path is then the longest distance between the root node and the terminal node of your diagram.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify the root and terminal nodes for a given activity. The critical path is then the longest distance between the start and end of the activity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the real world, I would generally opt for the first method, but the second one could certainly be valid for some use cases. Your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: Stop reading here unless you're a programmer!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Programming the Answer&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Diagramming the Recommended Solution&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given your input data, and given my recommendations above, I'd suggest the following solution using Graphviz. Most people can skip this section of the answer, but it's here to document how to create such a graph by mapping the tasks and predecessors from the source table into code, which then generates your critical path diagram.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;DOT Input File&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following contents should be stored in a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.graphviz.org/doc/info/lang.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DOT&lt;/a&gt; file named &lt;code&gt;cpm.dot&lt;/code&gt; for compatibility with the subsequent examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;digraph cpm {&#xA;    // predecessor -&amp;gt; task [label=duration]&#xA;    A -&amp;gt; C [label=&quot;5&quot;];&#xA;    B -&amp;gt; D [label=&quot;1&quot;];&#xA;    B -&amp;gt; E [label=&quot;1&quot;];&#xA;    D -&amp;gt; F [label=&quot;6&quot;];&#xA;    E -&amp;gt; G [label=&quot;4&quot;];&#xA;    F -&amp;gt; H [label=&quot;2&quot;];&#xA;    G -&amp;gt; I [label=&quot;1&quot;];&#xA;    G -&amp;gt; J [label=&quot;1&quot;];&#xA;    I -&amp;gt; K [label=&quot;3&quot;];&#xA;    J -&amp;gt; L [label=&quot;3&quot;];&#xA;    C -&amp;gt; M [label=&quot;1&quot;];&#xA;    M -&amp;gt; N [label=&quot;1&quot;];&#xA;&#xA;    // virtual start &amp;amp; end nodes&#xA;    Start -&amp;gt; A, B;&#xA;    H, K, L, N -&amp;gt; End;&#xA;}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Create Graph from Input File&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generate &lt;code&gt;cpm.png&lt;/code&gt; from the DOT file using &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.graphviz.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Graphviz&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;dot -Grankdir=LR -Tpng cpm.dot &amp;gt; cpm.png&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Resulting Activity-on-Node Digraph&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eTuSf.png&quot; alt=&quot;Recommended Critical Path Diagram&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-02-18T23:28:46.607" LastActivityDate="2018-02-18T23:28:46.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23513" CreationDate="2018-02-19T10:01:37.893" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; software development methodology be &quot;agile&quot;, if the compiler/interpreter has strict rules about acceptable syntax? Since we live in a universe governed by pretty laws of physics, we have to accept that there will always be rules that we're stuck with. We cannot do &quot;whatever we want&quot;, we innately accept certain restrictions to our abilities, and work within those restrictions to accomplish our goals and desires.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal is understanding what is most important and then putting focus on that. The Agile manifesto intentionally says that the items on the left are &lt;em&gt;more important&lt;/em&gt; than those on the right; not that the items on the right are undesirable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum, likewise, has a strong focus on what is important. Through experience, its creators have written down what they think is most important when developing certain types of products, and left the rest open for their users to fill in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to using Scrum is to start by asking: &quot;Is what I am trying to accomplish the same as what the creators of Scrum meant for it to accomplish, and do I value the same things they do?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer to both is yes, then you will find that Scrum isn't all that restrictive. It might have rigid rules (though not &lt;em&gt;nearly&lt;/em&gt; as rigid as your compiler/interpreter), but those will not bother you much, because they happen to be rules that you should &lt;strong&gt;want&lt;/strong&gt; to follow if you want to focus on what is important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; yes to both, you shouldn't be using Scrum, because you feel constricted. You will be focusing on different things as your rules are, which will lead to conflicts and confusion. This isn't a problem with Scrum not being Agile, but a problem of you using the wrong tool for the job at hand. Remember: people are more important than processes. I'm sure the creators of Scrum would agree with you that you shouldn't use a process that isn't helping you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's like cooking. Are you more Agile for throwing some random things in a pot and claiming it's food, or if you find the proper recipe for what you are trying to make and follow it? Only one of the two focuses on what is &lt;em&gt;important&lt;/em&gt;. You can claim recipes aren't Agile because they are rigid, but if you focus on what matters, you'll learn soon enough that they are  useful regardless. Even if, through experience, you realize the perfect cake requires &lt;em&gt;two&lt;/em&gt; spoons of cinnamon instead of one. It's not like the writers are going to bust down your door to force you to follow it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31393" LastActivityDate="2018-02-19T10:01:37.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23581" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-02-19T15:51:10.167" Score="1" ViewCount="159" Body="&lt;p&gt;in the attachment you can see JIRA, an active Scrum Board.&#xA;I've a very simple question, is it possible to have on top of the lane a number representing the Estimated Points that are the sum of that specific lane?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kQPSs.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kQPSs.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27720" LastActivityDate="2018-02-19T15:51:10.167" Title="Is it possible to display Estimation Points for lanes in Active Sprint in JIRA?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23582" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-02-19T17:39:06.220" Score="4" ViewCount="181" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simply put, I have a client who does not respect PM practices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a large, high value, multi-stakeholder, multi-variable project. I estimate that if we are not 50% complete by end of February, we need to make some serious decisions (dedicate more resources, cut requirements, etc.). Otherwise what we have is &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; unlikely to get done. My current forecast is that this is basically impossible if we don't run 20 hour days and not slip up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have alerted her to this several times (at 10%, 20%, 30% marks), and she retorts &quot;that's not how it works, this is too complex for estimates.&quot; (I'm simplifying here). I can see her point (because there are tasks within tasks within tasks, all changing regularly). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an ongoing issue that has taken shape in various forms (2 years, 6 months). I've tried agile (doesn't believe in velocity the way some don't believe in science), scrum, kanban (tore that one off the wall, threw it in the garbage during all-staff meeting, but it was working well until then). She simply refuses to put any time into planning, scheduling, strategy, or similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ironically, she often refers to me as her most trusted asset (also uncomfortable for me, I don't think it's appropriate to do this in front of staff). Meanwhile, I've felt totally hamstrung for this entire contract. I want to walk away from this knowing I've tried my best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would the experienced PM handle this? I'm up for hail-marys at this point.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23543" LastActivityDate="2018-02-20T13:55:06.880" Title="How to deal with a client who does not respect PM practices, yet wants a PM?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;&lt;constraints&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23582" CreationDate="2018-02-19T19:02:58.610" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Due to the history, it does not sound like you will ever convince her of the need for a more sophisticated PM approach.  At this stage, if I were in your shoes, document and publish to as many stakeholders as you're able, politics in check, the threat you see, the likelihood of impact, where you'll be impacted, and your recommendations.  Do so in writing so there is a history.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2nd, depending on how my team is contracted, I'd do whatever is necessary to protect my position on the project financially and reputationally.  Not knowing how you're contracted, it's hard to provide some advice here.  But you need to circle the wagons here.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-02-19T19:02:58.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23582" CreationDate="2018-02-19T21:38:54.817" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There must be an official agreement, that establishes your position and responsibilities during the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. The best scenario is for you to find the way to protect your position, the project and your team&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) Find some analytics that will help you in the future why metrics and planification matter (In long term they will show that you have your reasons).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) Find some clauses on the contract for support your arguments. There are many polite ways to make your client to understand the importance of management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c) Do an analysis of risks and show it to her and stakeholders in the project. Even your boss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Try to adapt things, but make things change:&lt;/strong&gt; If she really is a complicated person, try to talk to her and make an arrangement with her. I remember once I had to make a presentation to my client, where I explained to him &quot;&lt;em&gt;what is a project management?&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, &quot;&lt;em&gt;Why is PM important in a SW project?&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, &quot;What we can take from a standard process to your project?&quot; (In this one you should have a proposal for her and convince her). You've got to touch base and ask your boss for help with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29112" LastActivityDate="2018-02-19T21:38:54.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23585" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23586" CreationDate="2018-02-20T04:11:04.063" Score="5" ViewCount="508" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum Guide tells us to inspect people at retrospectives: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-retro&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-retro&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Inspect how the last Sprint went with regards to &lt;strong&gt;people&lt;/strong&gt;, relationships, process, and tools&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of inspection is later adaptation to what was discovered. But regarding people you can not just say: &quot;John was not performing well during this sprint&quot;. You will get a lot of excuses instead of something constructive, which is natural for people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Needless to say that blaming people in front of other people is not psychologically comfortable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what does it mean to &quot;inspect people&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28318" LastActivityDate="2018-02-27T13:08:55.120" Title="What is meant by &quot;inspect people&quot; in Scrum retrospective guide?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23585" CreationDate="2018-02-20T08:37:33.697" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So what does it mean to &quot;inspect people&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have always seen it as asking people how the sprint went for &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt;. Performance is one perspective, but it's a company-centric one not the only one that matters. Performance will determine how this sprint went, but &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; personal goals will determine how the next sprints will go (worst case scenario: &lt;em&gt;without them&lt;/em&gt; because they went to work for a competitor hating your company). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask them what the sprint meant to them, how they felt, what they think can be improved that is not tools or processes. Maybe they want A/C? Maybe they don't like the fact that half the team eats their meals at the desk and the room smells like fish soup all day? Maybe they don't like the technology the current project uses? Maybe they are unhappy with the fire drill last week? Maybe they are unhappy that they were &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; included in the fire drill last week? You will never know what comes up until you ask them and that is the place ant time to do just that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2018-02-20T08:37:33.697" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23585" CreationDate="2018-02-20T08:50:52.143" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sprint retrospectives are more helpful when team members also do a &lt;em&gt;self-inspection&lt;/em&gt;. 3 pillars of Scrum are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Transparency&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inspection&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adaptation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being true to my Scrum team, I should be open and transparent about my strength and weakness during the past Sprint. One should reflect back on the performance and find ways to improve upon the weak areas. Discussing those in the retrospectives can bring some better ideas from other team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inspecting people would mean discussing the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Values (such as commitment, focus, openness)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Behaviors (for example a personal habit of mine hampers the team productivity)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mood&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team culture&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Individual skillset&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;The list may include more points which are not mentioned above.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blaming or criticizing team members during a retrospective meeting would be counter productive and should be avoided. However, as a team which should share a common vision and commitment, people should take feedback positively and extract action item out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2018-02-20T08:50:52.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23585" CreationDate="2018-02-20T09:45:40.750" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key with retrospectives is to focus on potential improvements, not on problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you rightly say, &quot;John was not performing well during the sprint&quot; is not great language. However, the team might be saying things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;We noticed that John got blocked on that first story. Is there some training we can give John to help him out in future sprints?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;John is having trouble with bugs in the API code. Should we be considering more test automation in this area?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;We sensed that John was getting frustrated by the Product Owner in this sprint. John, would you like to talk about this, so that we can better understand the source of this frustration?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the tone of the meeting is set correctly, John will see this as positive and feel that the team is supporting them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This emphasises why a retrospective should be a &lt;em&gt;safe environment&lt;/em&gt; and why you should not have managers and people from outside the Scrum team present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-02-20T09:45:40.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23582" CreationDate="2018-02-20T10:07:41.623" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My experience has been that when the client refuses to accept your advice, the best approach is to focus on &lt;em&gt;highlighting the pain&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By that, I mean you use information radiators and reporting to make it clear the impact of decisions that are being made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This helps in two ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The client no longer feels you are telling them what to do and may become less defensive.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They start to make (hopefully sensible) decisions themselves based on the information available.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try and make the language of your reporting very neutral and factual. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The work we did this week discovered some problems with the requirements and we will spend more time on design to alleviate the problem. The absence of detailed planning makes it challenging to work out the impact this has on the project, but we will endeavour to do our best.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-02-20T10:07:41.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23582" CreationDate="2018-02-20T13:55:06.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I take a slightly different stance with my answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;that's not how it works, this is too complex for estimates.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;she often refers to me as her most trusted asset (also uncomfortable&#xA;  for me, I don't think it's appropriate to do this in front of staff)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your sponsor likes you and that is good news. She actually enjoys that you are so seriously concerned about dead lines, estimates, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I want to walk away from this knowing I've tried my best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not what she wants. She wants you to accept it as it is, not necessarily without trying your best, but with being who you are.&#xA;The experienced PM, compared with a novice, has an effective choice of leadership, people and creative skills and tools to change, influence and direct situations, especially for the most difficult situation of all, which is yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21496" LastActivityDate="2018-02-20T13:55:06.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22540" CreationDate="2018-02-20T15:02:17.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use two projects instead of one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Design Project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is the existing project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sample Project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is the new project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When issues are closed in the existing project, issues are created here&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In my ideal world, I can look at a filter of tickets (Fix Version = 2 and Status = !Closed) and that would show 0 results&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use a separate board to generate this report:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When you create a Board, it will ask if you want to create a board based off of a pre-existing project or projects, select this option, and select all of the projects that you want to have represented in the Board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Create a filter containing the different projects you wish to be included in your board and share it if desired. Then go into the configuration menu of your existing board. Select the filter you've just created as the main filter utilized by the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, create two projects and as many boards as necessary. Each board will encapsulate the filters required for the report which will facilitate the decision making process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/agile/jira-agile-resources/jira-agile-faq/how-do-i-get-a-board-to-point-to-multiple-projects&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;JIRA Agile FAQ: How do I get a board to point to multiple projects&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://issues.apache.org/jira/projects/CB?selectedItem=com.atlassian.jira.jira-projects-plugin:components-page&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Apache Cordova - ASF JIRA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27065" LastActivityDate="2018-02-20T15:02:17.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23592" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23604" CreationDate="2018-02-20T17:12:28.947" Score="0" ViewCount="85" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read in many business books that KPIs should be only those metrics that directly relate to organizational strategic goals. Also that C-level people look at them and can act on them. According to those books, many people confuse KPIs with simple PIs.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;So I am wondering, if I want to define some performance indicators for my processes in my department, I assume I should not call them KPIs?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Then how should I call metrics that are important for me (or people in my department?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31435" LastActivityDate="2018-02-25T23:29:26.677" Title="Is using of the term &quot;KPI&quot; correct at process level?" Tags="&lt;terminology&gt;&lt;kpi&gt;&lt;theory&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23592" CreationDate="2018-02-20T18:22:55.180" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use the term at any level you desire.  If you need to discriminate one KPI from another, then simply name them: Process Alpha KPIs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you own a process, let's say the F-35 assembly line, I'm pretty sure you'd have quite a few KPIs to monitor the health of your line, and if anyone else at LM would complain, you could tell them where to put their KPIs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-02-20T18:22:55.180" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23585" CreationDate="2018-02-21T06:17:01.623" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Reference&lt;/em&gt; - Norm Kerth, Project Retrospectives: A Handbook for Team Review&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum master monitors sprint retrospective meeting, he ensure that the meeting is positive and productive and that everyone contributes with respect to each other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone should be open and honest to reveal their own weaknesses or fails. With help of the team, everyone should identify ways to fix the failures and avoid those going forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being humans, naturally we don't feel comfortable discussing our failures within a group, so some types of the questions can be discussed personally with scrum master during 1-to-1 meetings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29251" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2018-02-21T06:44:22.430" LastActivityDate="2018-02-21T06:44:22.430" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23585" CreationDate="2018-02-21T14:25:47.293" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mildly surprised none of the other Answers have touched on this yet, but...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are people who exist &lt;em&gt;outside&lt;/em&gt; the Scrum Team, too.  Consider the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Alice from Accounting keeps coming by trying to get us to insert new work mid-Sprint. We should take her aside and explain the Scrum process and values to her.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bob, the Scrum Master of Team B, just came back from an Agile seminar and has been raving about new approaches he wants to try. Should we touch base with him to share what he's learned?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Our client, Charlie, expressed concerns that we're not going to meet his company's deadline. How can we reassure him?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I heard that Diana, from our branch in City D, has been thinking of moving over here. We do need a web designer - should we approach her about joining our Team?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All other Answers about remaining positive and respectful still apply, of course. A person not being in front of you does not give you license to be rude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-02-21T14:25:47.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14793" CreationDate="2018-02-22T19:16:47.550" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Creating a template or finding an example of well-written requirements to share with team members helps to establish minimum quality and consistency across the board. In addition, creating a glossary can provide the ability to reject poorly written stories based on a shared vocabulary. If all else fails, paper prototyping an implementation based on the requirements can demonstrate the gaps and motivate the team to help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scruminc.com/definition-of-ready/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Definition of Ready&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_prototyping&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Paper Prototyping&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.patrikvarga.com/storyquality/readme.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Story Quality Add-On for JIRA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://agileforall.com/new-to-agile-invest-in-good-user-stories/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;New to agile? INVEST in good user stories - Agile For All&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.slideshare.net/nbatsios/understanding-scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Understanding Scrum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://help.rallydev.com/writing-great-user-story&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Writing a Great User Story&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pronofoot35.info/user-story-template.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;User Story Template Images - Templates Design Ideas&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27065" LastEditorUserId="27065" LastEditDate="2018-08-21T18:31:20.560" LastActivityDate="2018-08-21T18:31:20.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19806" CreationDate="2018-02-23T07:05:53.847" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, KPIs handle Strategic while metrics handle Tactical. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;KPIs are for quantifiable or measurable value that how reflects a business goal or objective (strategic) &amp;amp; growth of the business in the goal or objective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Metrics are also for quantifiable or measurable value but they how reflect success in the activities taking place (tactical) to support the accomplishment of KPIs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you still are confused about what Metrics are, I would like to say that they're nothing more than measurement you record to track some activity and measure success or failure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same for KPI (Key Performance Indicator); they are also measurements. Like metrics. KPIs are easily defined and also quantifiable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31588" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-02-23T14:05:36.943" LastActivityDate="2018-02-23T14:05:36.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14793" CreationDate="2018-02-23T09:20:29.597" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The thing is: Nobody can tell me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's called innovation. Change your angle of attack. You seem driven to identify use-cases etc., however quite often, all this arrives in the flow of the project. This is also the territory of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TDD, test-driven development&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you should do, is this. You must keep all stakeholders informed and try to bring them to a round table from time to time if possible. Maintain a health schedule and documentation of your work, but don't over-work it. Understand how your sponsor sees your role and acting. She needs to understand risks and impacts from unclear and false requirements, etc. Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Highly recommended reading the materials by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.processimpact.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Karl Wiegers&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21496" LastEditorUserId="21496" LastEditDate="2018-03-19T14:58:23.897" LastActivityDate="2018-03-19T14:58:23.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23592" CreationDate="2018-02-23T18:01:18.143" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the source! Business books aimed at the C-suite or at the executive level probably only care about metrics that should roll up, but other levels will have other indicators that matter too. What makes a great indicator will therefore be very context-dependent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Explanation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) should focus on the word &lt;em&gt;key&lt;/em&gt;. It’s any metric that helps you quickly visualize the status of whatever you’re measuring, with a bias towards being an easy-to-read &lt;em&gt;indicator&lt;/em&gt; of whether things are good or bad. With that said, what makes a KPI useful will vary tremendously between organizations, projects, and even the people viewing it. While the metric should be an objective measure, the &lt;em&gt;value&lt;/em&gt; of the KPI is in how accurately it indicates what matters to the people who can do something about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the executive level, KPIs are often strategic or financial in nature. For example, “Are we within 10% of our initial $20M budget?” might be a great strategic indicator of whether an initiative is financially on track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At lower levels, “Are the widgets coming off the embiggening assembly line more than 25% larger than the ensmallened widgets?” might be a great indicator of how well a process or control is operating. This type of metric is key to monitoring process health, even if it’s not immediately visible in higher-level dashboards. So, while a C-level executive might not care about this particular metric, it doesn’t mean it isn’t a key indicator at the right level, nor that it can’t roll up into a higher-level indicator when necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, KPIs can (and probably should) exist at multiple levels, but the selection and implementation of the indicators will vary based on what’s important to track at any given level. Understand the context and the control objectives, and the right KPIs may become self-evident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-02-25T23:29:26.677" LastActivityDate="2018-02-25T23:29:26.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23605" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-02-24T21:06:38.960" Score="-1" ViewCount="127" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Brief Background&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our company uses Agile/Scrum as our development methodology, with Microsoft's VSTS (Visual Studio Team Services) being our tool of choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have several teams, including Android, IOS/iPhone, and backend/server teams, all working on our company's flagship product.  For historical reasons, the IOS product lags behind the Android product feature-wise, and the IOS team works hard to &quot;catch up&quot; and bring their product up-to-date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;How does the Agile/Scrum process work for us?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the Product Owner, I typically author a new PBI (&quot;P&quot;) for a feature we want to implement in an upcoming sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the Sprint Planning meeting, the Android and iPhone teams propose the child tasks needed to implement PBI &quot;P&quot;.  By the meeting's end, this PBI will have one or more child tasks associated with both Android and iPhone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;What's the problem?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the iPhone team needs to catch up on older feature still unimplemented in the product, they frequently do not have the time during the sprint to implement their tasks in PBI &quot;P&quot;.  Alternatively, the state of the IOS product precludes their working on PBI &quot;P&quot; because some other functionality is not yet implemented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, there is an unrealistic coupling of the two teams together through a common PBI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the sprint I have a dilemma: the IOS team's inability to complete their tasks together with the Android team prevents me from marking the PBI as &quot;done&quot;.  I have the unenviable choice of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;splitting the PBI, moving the undone tasks to a new PBI&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;leaving the PBI as undone for a later sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;I'd like to split the PBI by platform&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've come to the conclusion that the only solution to tracking the Android and IOS teams without running into the problems mentioned above is to split (or clone) the PBI into two PBIs: one for tracking Android, the other for IOS.  Whatever the solution is, it should support a single source of requirements and encourage details reuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Possible Methods for Splitting the PBI (none are satisfactory)&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two methods I can think of for implementing splitting a PBI by platform.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;First Method: Make two copies of the PBI, one each for Android and IOS&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this method, the Product Owner authors the PBI, complete with a full description of the user story, to be used to track the Android team.  Once completed, an identical PBI is created for tracking the IOS team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The obvious drawback here is &lt;strong&gt;data redundancy&lt;/strong&gt;: If the user story is updated in one, it must be updated in the other.  In addition, any discussion thread that grows in one PBI might not be seen by the other team working on theirs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Second Method: Use the Epic / Feature / PBI hierarchy&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This method takes advantage of VSTS's addition of two 'portfolio backlog' types: 'epic' and 'feature'.  An 'epic' is the highest-level backlog, and can contain one or more 'features', which in turn can contain one or more PBIs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My idea is for the Product Owner to write his/her user stories in a 'feature' rather than in a PBI.  This 'feature' will contain the entire user story &lt;strong&gt;in a platform-agnostic fashion&lt;/strong&gt;.  This feature should not deal at all with anything platform-specific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This 'feature' will contain within (below) it two &lt;strong&gt;platform-specific&lt;/strong&gt; PBIs for Android and IOS, as the following diagram illustrates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jpu5L.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jpu5L.png&quot; alt=&quot;Scheme to use features and PBIs for splitting by platform&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantages here are that any changes to the original user story will be made in the feature, not within a PBI.  In this way, both platforms have only to look at their parent to see the latest-and-greatest user story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any platform-specific comments or additions to the user story should be made in the PBI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the even that a PBI does &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; need to be implemented by different platforms (e.g., it is a PBI for the backend/server group) the user story can be written in a PBI, without making use of a feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Questions&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this scheme an acceptable one?  Does it violate the Agile/Scrum methodology in any way?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does anyone have an alternative solution to track a PBI across multiple platforms without major disadvantages?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31636" LastActivityDate="2018-02-25T01:54:22.060" Title="How to track identical Agile/Scrum PBIs for multiple platforms not in sync?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23606" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23609" CreationDate="2018-02-25T01:16:03.340" Score="0" ViewCount="207" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new to this forum, I will try to explain the best I can what I am facing. I recently entered a new software development company, and I am the coordinator of a team of Product Owners (POs) who (each of them) are in charge of 5 different products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing is that none of them document anything. The business sends requests on a daily basis and they write each requirement just in a simple JIRA issue, so they are not so easy to understand and cannot be properly documented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On one hand, I am trying to educate the business regarding these practices (but they are very demanding so I don't think I will have luck on that). On the other hand, and here comes my question: given the rush of daily activities, I don't want to be pushing the POs to document every single request that comes in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, when would it be appropriate to formally document requirements? I mean, should we only keep track of requirements when they are long ones, and write daily, short ones is just an issue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31638" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-02-26T14:19:18.887" LastActivityDate="2018-02-26T14:19:18.887" Title="Agile requirements tracking" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23605" CreationDate="2018-02-25T01:54:22.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does it violate the Agile/Scrum methodology in any way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no &lt;strong&gt;A&lt;/strong&gt;gile&lt;sup&gt;(tm)&lt;/sup&gt; methodology.  There is an agile philosophy, described in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Manifesto for Agile Software Development&lt;/a&gt;, based on several frameworks and methodologies such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt;.  The first value of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development is &quot;Individuals and interactions over processes and tools&quot; which encourages conversations.  As a framework, Scrum does not highly prescribe how one represents or executes the work to be done; see the section on Artifacts, especially the Product Backlog and Sprint Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this scheme an acceptable one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on those definitions and understanding, the answer is that it could be.  It is &lt;em&gt;acceptable&lt;/em&gt; by the values and principles of the agile philosophy, and the rules of the Scrum framework.  More importantly, as a self-organizing team, experiments to discover effective and efficient ways of working are important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does anyone have an alternative solution to track a PBI across multiple platforms without major disadvantages?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you are asking the wrong question.  Perhaps it would make sense to treat the various platforms as separate products.  Perhaps something a solution to re-synchronize the teams; not forgetting about The Mythical Man-Month, as slowing the other team may be an option.  &quot;Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discuss the &lt;em&gt;problem&lt;/em&gt;, including the value that finding a solution can provide, with the people/teams involved.  Don't allow tools to limit the possibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2018-02-25T01:54:22.060" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23606" CreationDate="2018-02-25T21:40:37.220" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Some steps to improve requirements communication&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @ToddA.Jacobs pointed out, Agile values &quot;Working software over comprehensive documentation&quot;. So, you need to back off from asking for extensive formal documentation. However, if the dev teams say that the requirements are not clear, that is a real problem. I recommend the following steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask the POs to follow the recommended user story format like this: As a &amp;lt; type of user &gt;, I want &amp;lt; some goal &gt; so that &amp;lt; some reason &gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/user-stories&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;You can find more details and examples here.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;See whether the user stories (also known as Product Backlog Item or PBI) follow &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the INVEST criteria&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://ronjeffries.com/xprog/articles/expcardconversationconfirmation/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;User stories are considered an aid to a good dialog between the dev team and the business stakeholders.&lt;/a&gt; Backlog refinement sessions are a good place to have this dialog. This dialog should result in the development of good acceptance tests. These acceptance tests should be captured in the Jira ticket.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;P.S:&lt;/strong&gt; Product Owners should have a vision of what is the business problem they are trying to solve and why this particular solution gives the best ROI (Return on Investment). But the way you describe it, they seem to be serving as a post office to communicate piecemeal information from the business to the dev team. This feels like a more important issue for you to look into.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2018-02-25T21:40:37.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23606" CreationDate="2018-02-25T23:52:56.263" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hear a couple of things in here. First, a PO is not a rebranded BA from waterfall. The Product Owner owns the health and priority of the backlog, but is not a gatekeeper between the business and the team. Rather, the PO should facilitate more effective communications. If the team is saying that the requirements are bad, that is as much on them as it is on the PO. Either can reach out to the business to get more information. If they are using User Stories, one or two sentences is all they should start with. (Fun fact: the reason that User Stories were originally written on 3x5 cards was because there wasn't enough space to write all of the requirements down, making a direct conversation necessary).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, regardless of who has the conversation, documentation traditionally served two purposes: one is to understand the ask, the other is to make it clear how the application behaves after the fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Understanding the Need&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many teams find that 1-2 sentence user stories with bullet-point acceptance criteria is enough. Other teams may add some sketches for UI or spreadsheets for financial functions. Really, whatever the team needs, they should ask for - again, they can ask the PO, but a lot of times they need to ask the user. If you want to take it further, I'd suggest looking at options like Behavior-Driven Development, in which the PO, Dev Team, and User can all collaboratively write up scenarios that the new functionality will fulfill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Documenting the Behavior&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In waterfall, you used to just look back at the requirements specs, but in agile there is usually a bunch of different documentation, all used when it is the most appropriate. Automated test cases (like the BDD ones) make create documentation because it not only describes how the application should behave, but when you run them it tells you if it really works that way. Of course, end users probably don't want to look at those, so WIKI's and user manuals are still common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Making Time&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading into your question and comment a bit, it sounds like there is a time constraint. It's important to remember that Scrum asks the team to do everything needed to call a backlog item done at once. In other words, documentation, testing, and other non-development work is grouped in with the development. This is intended to be non-negotiable. This keeps the team from building up technical debt. This even includes documentation. If they team doesn't spend the time to update the documentation that they need to keep track of how the system works, soon every new feature will need an impact analysis and extensive design cycles, making it very expensive to add even the smallest feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-02-25T23:52:56.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23611" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-02-26T03:42:56.207" Score="1" ViewCount="78" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new to current company. After reviewed the old project history, I found all projects have L1 project start date, L1 project end date, L2 project start date ... etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After talk with a senior PM, he said L1 is referring to &quot;planned date&quot; before charter submit. L2 refer to the date in charter. L3 refer to the actual date (update after project close).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I never heard L1,L2,L3 in my project management study. Is this concept come from some well-known PM regulation or just this company's policy? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8621" LastActivityDate="2018-02-26T13:55:19.907" Title="Do you know what Level 1,2,3 start dates end dates refer to?" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23612" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-02-26T09:09:21.840" Score="0" ViewCount="89" Body="&lt;p&gt;My company has subcontracted a project and the subcontractor is using their own instance of JIRA to manage their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because we use a different tool I opted to let them use the tools they know and work instead of giving them access to our tool and asked to spend some time &quot;learning&quot; and adapting their workflow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have visibility of the project because I can track their project board, but I want to bring some visibility to the rest of my organization as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I don't want to do is duplicate all of the stories in JIRA to our own PM tool, so what is the alternative? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What have you guys done when you want to give visibility to the progress of a project that is being subcontracted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers,&#xA;André&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31645" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-02-26T18:24:03.687" LastActivityDate="2018-03-01T14:41:09.893" Title="Give visibility to work being done by a subcontractor" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;subcontractor&gt;&lt;visualization&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23611" CreationDate="2018-02-26T13:42:50.010" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is probably Company Policy.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For project schedules, Levels L1 to ~L6 normally refer to the levels of detail of contemporaneous schedules.  These are defined (with some variations) in a few different sources.  The only &quot;PM Regulation&quot; that springs to mind is the AACE International Recommended Practice (though it's not a formal standard).  L1 may be a short table of milestones corresponding to &quot;Top Management Summary,&quot; while L2 may be a 1-page Gantt chart &quot;Project Management Summary.&quot;  A level of detail of at least L3/L4 is normally required to obtain a valid critical path (i.e. logic-driven schedule), while L6 may correspond to a detailed deliverable register of a particular contractor during contract execution.  Progressive development of project scope leads to the development of additional schedule detail levels after project initiation, though ALL levels are normally updated for use by different stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears this company has taken to leaving the higher levels behind (not updated, frozen like a baseline) as progressive levels of detail are defined.  There are worse practices.           &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2018-02-26T13:42:50.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23611" CreationDate="2018-02-26T13:55:19.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never heard of L1, L2, L3... convention, and I suspect it is peculiar to that company - it is the kind of thing that ought to show up in the company's &lt;a href=&quot;https://magoosh.com/pmp/organizational-process-assets-enterprise-environmental-factors/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Organizational Process Assets&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The closest thing that come to my mind is that in the capital investment control system (ECPIC), the US Government records three dates for every event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planned - the originally planned date for the event&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Projected - the current best estimate for the event&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Actual - The actual date of the event&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, ECPIC largely ignores charters, while the system you're describing (L1, L2,...) seems oddly rooted on charter date. Given that the charter is at the open end of the cone of uncertainty, I'm not convinced of the value of tracking schedule variance at that granularity that early in the project. I'm not skeptical - I've seen some studies that assert that you have a 60% confidence in project success at roughly the charter milestone, and that might align with the system you describe.  But I'm not yet convinced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2018-02-26T13:55:19.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23615" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-02-26T14:30:25.100" Score="1" ViewCount="1639" Body="&lt;p&gt;I took a Certified Scrum Master (CSM) course and certification in 2007. Back then, the Sprint Planning, Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective and Daily Scrum were called &lt;em&gt;Scrum ceremonies&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading the current Scrum Guide, I see that these are now called &lt;em&gt;Scrum events&lt;/em&gt;. When was this changed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30105" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-12-11T12:37:28.300" LastActivityDate="2018-12-11T12:37:28.300" Title="When were Scrum &quot;ceremonies&quot; renamed &quot;events&quot;?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23615" CreationDate="2018-02-26T14:40:38.073" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have copies of all of the Scrum Guides. The 2010 version does not use the term &quot;event&quot; or &quot;ceremony&quot;, but rather calls them &quot;meetings&quot; and uses the phrase &quot;time-boxes&quot; to refer to any of the things. The 2011 version of the Scrum Guide does use the term &quot;events&quot;. Ceremony is a general term that isn't specific to Scrum - without a standard term, it's one that is likely to be familiar to people being trained in Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2018-02-26T14:40:38.073" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23617" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23620" CreationDate="2018-02-26T16:20:13.610" Score="2" ViewCount="1822" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why do &quot;Water-Scrum-Fall&quot; - what does the Scrum in the middle of &quot;Water-Scrum-Fall&quot; offer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25961" LastEditorUserId="25961" LastEditDate="2018-05-16T17:20:52.173" LastActivityDate="2018-05-16T17:20:52.173" Title="Why do Water-Scrum-Fall. What does it offer over Waterfall?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23618" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-02-26T18:18:40.060" Score="-1" ViewCount="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have an existing system in production, developed using a &quot;chaotic&quot; development process. I'm trying to introduce Scrum for all new development: new features, improvements, and bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For new features, I believe the &quot;As a &amp;lt;user&amp;gt;, I want &amp;lt;something&amp;gt; so that &amp;lt;goal&amp;gt;&quot; user story template is the best option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For bugs, &quot;What I did&quot;, &quot;What happened&quot;, &quot;What I expected to happen&quot; is the best format IMHO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: What format should I use for Product Backlog Items (PBIs) representing improvements to existing features? &lt;sub&gt;(edited for clarification)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30105" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-02-27T20:55:31.527" LastActivityDate="2018-02-27T21:18:09.353" Title="What format should I use for Product Backlog Items (PBIs) representing improvements to existing features?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23618" CreationDate="2018-02-26T18:32:41.187" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer has two parts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One - for improvements suggested by the team mid-sprint, they should be added to the kanban board as stories and executed as part of the iteration assuming they are part of the current scope of improvements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Two - for improvement requests from outside the team, they should be routed to the product owner, or the product owner team. Then the product owner can determine what to do with the idea (file away, work with the team to write stories for, rank in the backlog for an upcoming sprint).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31452" LastActivityDate="2018-02-26T18:32:41.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23617" CreationDate="2018-02-26T18:50:34.470" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is tricky because there is no such thing as Water-Scrum-Fall. I spent some time looking around online and I find two uses. The first, which I was aware of already, is a derogatory term for scrum-in-name-only. The second is reference to leveraging certain communications techniques in waterfall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum Communication in Waterfall&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply put, you'll talk to each other more. That's really it. There is less chance of two people reading the same thing differently and not finding out for months because you'll talk to each other. I've seen people apply the 2-week reviews, but since you're still following the project plan, there is very little room to pivot if you realize that you're off the mark on what you're building. You can also implement retrospectives and there is a big benefit here. The Retrospective is a chance for the team to evaluate how it works and make small improvements. Personally, I leverage Lean and Kanban's techniques even in Scrum retrospectives, so I'd just look there to get this benefit if you aren't practicing the rest of Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why You Shouldn't Half-Practice Scrum&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is a framework designed to iterate through and solve complex, adaptive problems - problems without a clear answer with a proven implementation path. Most software falls into this category, so Scrum often works well for software. That said, it works when you use all of the pieces together. The more you strip away, the less it works. For a simple metaphor, if you want to screw in a screw, you wouldn't tape a philips-head bit onto a hammer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Struggling with Agile and Switching to Back to Waterfall&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know why your organization struggled with Agile or Scrum. In my experience though, many organizations (not all) who struggle implementing Scrum have found that they face the same problems in Scrum as they did in Waterfall. A good saying is that Scrum and Agile don't solve your problems for you, they just shine a big spotlight on them - solving them is up to you. If this sounds familiar, your organization may want to look at those practices its struggling with and look into their internal workings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-02-26T18:50:34.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23617" CreationDate="2018-02-26T18:55:41.833" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;&quot;Water-Scrum-Fall&quot; is counter-productive&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looks like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.forrester.com/report/WaterScrumFall+Is+The+Reality+Of+Agile+For+Most+Organizations+Today/-/E-RES60109&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Water-Scrum-Fall&quot; is a name coined by analyst firm Forrester Research&lt;/a&gt; to describe the reality of Agile found in many organizations. I would say they are referring to large and medium enterprises, because that is where they do most of their work. They could have called it &quot;Hybrid&quot;, but I guess they wanted to identify a specific type of hybrid. &lt;a href=&quot;https://sdtimes.com/agile/analyst-watch-water-scrum-fall-is-the-reality-of-agile/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is how they define &quot;Water-Scrum-Fall&quot;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...project planning and release management, continue to follow&#xA;  more-traditional approaches, meaning that Scrum adoption is limited to&#xA;  the development team. That team is presented with a detailed project&#xA;  plan and a set of requirements that it then works through,&#xA;  incrementally delivering software (but not to production) as the&#xA;  production release process runs at a different cadence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you have the Scrum team in the middle of the process practicing Agile/Scrum while the upstream process of formulating the project is traditional:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have to spend time upfront with the business building the&#xA;  requirements and plans to ensure that we know what they want, and they&#xA;  know how long it is going to take and how much it is going to cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the downstream process of releasing the code to production is also traditional:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, most organizations do not have the architecture required to&#xA;  support dynamic, flexible releases; instead, they do infrequent&#xA;  releases backed by heavy processes and governance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in the background, I will try to answer your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My question is why do &quot;Water-Scrum-Fall&quot; - what does the Scrum in the&#xA;  middle of &quot;Water-Scrum-Fall&quot; offer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is &quot;It is counter-productive&quot;! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;team is presented with a detailed project plan and a set of requirements&quot;. If the requirements and the timeline are pre-determined, you can't do any agile. It is counter to the Agile Manifesto value &quot;Responding to change over following a plan&quot;. Releasing infrequently also goes against the agile principle of putting working code in the hands of the end-users soonest and getting feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2018-02-26T18:55:41.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16561" CreationDate="2018-02-27T03:06:39.770" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to user stories, create a requirements document:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would have been challenging and risky for us to estimate work based solely on these user stories and then to commit to a fixed price contract. We needed more information, which we could get through conversations with our customer. But we also needed to document some key assumptions and decisions that would result from those conversations. What we did was identify a small number of high level acceptance criteria for each user story. Today I refer to these as conditions of satisfaction for the story. We then produced a requirements documents that included each user story along with its conditions of satisfaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, use specific wording about how post-production work will be done in the Assumptions section of the RFP:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We assume that any enhancement/change request communicated after the product/&#xA;release backlog sign-off that is the focal point of this agreement will be treated as a project change request (PCR). Management of a PCR will be outlined in the change management plan.&#xA;A change request should require removal of scope (i.e., a like-for-like or equal-size story) from the “would like to have” 40% scope section of this contract of equally valued items, or it becomes a re-pricing consideration.&#xA;If new scope is added, it will increase the stated scope in the scope section of&#xA;this agreement. Either way, the changes to scope will be handled as a project change request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds like an agilefall project:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a product backlog with priorities, but we start working on a release with a long list of features already committed to the business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We know our product release dates several months in advance. There's a long list of target dates that must be met before the release date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We demo our software in development to customers, but only after we're happy with it. By the time we get around to having a demo, it might be too late to change much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agile-fall.blogspot.com/2010/03/what-is-agilefall.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;AgileFall: What is AgileFall?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cognizant.com/InsightsWhitepapers/An-Agile-Twist-Fixed-Bid-Pricing.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;An Agile Twist: Fixed-Bid Pricing (pdf)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/articles/writing-contracts-for-agile-development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Writing Contracts for Agile Development&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27065" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-02-27T03:14:25.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23624" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-02-27T08:59:40.587" Score="0" ViewCount="462" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before production release we make few intermediate versions to help managing test-fix iterations, like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1.0-alpha1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1.0-alpha2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1.0-beta1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1.0&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[edit] Basically those intermediate steps help us relate to specific phases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;with comments like &quot;it worked in alpha1 but it doesn't in alpha2&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it's helpful to filter issues that changed in specific iteration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After some time it gets messy to deal with so many versions and it seems good idea to merge all those versions into one (say: 1.0), but that would mean losing some historic details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[edit] Is it correct to create those intermediate versions? Should they be merged after final release?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31597" LastEditorUserId="31597" LastEditDate="2018-02-27T12:54:09.470" LastActivityDate="2018-11-26T07:02:35.503" Title="Is it correct to create pre-release versions in Jira?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;release-plan&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23624" CreationDate="2018-02-27T12:50:29.637" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;After changing perspective I got to the answer I sought:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;fixVersion field is for externally visible version and it should reflect public releases only&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pre-releases (alpha, beta, RC) are just internal pieces of information - if you need to relate to it or use it for searching then labels are a better choice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks to @ToddA.Jacobs and @ThomasOwens for helping me sort this out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[edit] I found that Jira allows defining custom fields - I created fields &quot;Affects pre-version/s&quot; and &quot;Fix pre-version/s&quot; and it proved to be right thing to do. We may search using those fields and standard &quot;Fix version/s&quot; field remains clean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31597" LastEditorUserId="31597" LastEditDate="2018-08-28T06:44:15.227" LastActivityDate="2018-08-28T06:44:15.227" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23585" CreationDate="2018-02-27T13:08:55.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not really meant to inspect people but to inspect &lt;strong&gt;the last iteration with regards to people&lt;/strong&gt;. It's a subtle but significant difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The retrospective is one of the tools - probably the most useful - to regularly &lt;strong&gt;inspect and adapt&lt;/strong&gt; the current process application and the current mindset.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But note that the retrospective targets specifically the team and the process, it is not about the product or the iteration outcomes (for that you have the demo review).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;So, it's used &lt;strong&gt;by teams to deliberately improve&lt;/strong&gt;, to make a good team a great team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The discussion shall focus on the team rather than individuals (and not the entire organisation) and shall output a list of actionable improvements of the team as a whole.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The team itself should come out with insights and suggestions. To kick the discussion off, one possibility could be to ask questions such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;was there any event of interest that you want to discuss? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;did the result met your expectations?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what did surprise you? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;are you happy working with your teammates? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how satisfied are you and why?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure to get the opinion of every team member, including the more introvert ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14922" LastActivityDate="2018-02-27T13:08:55.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23612" CreationDate="2018-02-27T13:21:17.477" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is communication and stakeholder management.  You need to figure out which stakeholder requires what information at what time and then how to deliver it to them.  Access to the tool for the raw data is not necessary and, for many (likely most) types of stakeholders, the wrong vehicle for information delivery.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are looking for is a report.  This report can be built in many different ways but must be built in the the right way for a specific stakeholder segment, which means the right information synthesized the right way and displayed the right way.  And you can expect, or should expect, multiple different types of reports to meet the differing needs of your stakeholder segments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your issue is not atypical and it appears you need to bone up on communications and stakeholder management principles.  Or, you need to hire these skills as there are professionals that do nothing but this type of work.  There is a lot of minimization bias with a lot of these PM-type processes and capabilities with the assumption that &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; technical resource could easily do this work.  This is rarely if ever true.  So if you're having issues here, you're missing key roles and skill sets on your gig.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-02-27T13:21:17.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16561" CreationDate="2018-02-27T19:29:32.377" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Charge for preparing the estimation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...no one has time at contract stage to create stories and decide on&#xA;  story points?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I call a vendor for a home improvement project, their approach goes like this. A representative will visit my home to go over these things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain the various product options and let me pick the ones I want.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain what obligations I have, while they do the work, such as moving furniture or not have access to the kitchen for a day.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take measurements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The vendor will charge me for preparing this estimation. Though they will typically offer to take this estimation charge off from the final contract price, if I place the order with them. Some contractors give free estimates, but often I find the reliable experienced contractors don't give free estimates. The newcomers who are trying to make an entry into the market are the ones offering free estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You asked:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there some other way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. Charge for the estimate and do a proper job. That is the practice in mature industries working successfully for a long time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2018-02-27T19:35:57.257" LastActivityDate="2018-02-27T19:35:57.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23618" CreationDate="2018-02-27T21:18:09.353" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Embrace the self-organizing requirement of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumguides.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt; framework and the communication focus of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;agile principles&lt;/a&gt; by having a discussion with the Scrum Team to determine what format(s) might be most effective.  If the business is also creating or reading these PBIs, then involve them as well.  Value focus is extremely important, and the common user story format can help with that, but can be of low value if it is ritualistic in nature.  See the &lt;a href=&quot;https://ronjeffries.com/xprog/articles/expcardconversationconfirmation/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;original intent&lt;/a&gt; of user stories from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;eXtreme Programming&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mr. Todd A. Jacobs' comment is great advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;work is work. How do you think “new features” are different from “improvements to existing features”?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2018-02-27T21:18:09.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23578" CreationDate="2018-02-28T04:58:26.757" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Starting with the basics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We all know that relative estimation is more accurate than absolute estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We all know that effort based estimation is gamed! It creates multiple ill-effects of comparison of between teams, comparison between team members, etc. No matter how much one tries to keep managements from doing this, this comparison is inevitable. As managements practice these undesirable practices, teams game them even more.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to answer your first question &quot;Is there any mechanism within SAFe to estimate in level-of-effort rather than ideal days&quot;, I would strongly recommend that one stays away from that temptation! It has been the bane for many of our ills in the domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SAFe's current guidance is: There is no need to re-calibrate team estimation or velocity after that point&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we stick to these basics, then my interpretation of the above SAFe guidance is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use normalized SP to begin with in the absence of any data! It gives you a starting point. Further, since we have the same logic for all teams across ARTs, the starting point is common. It does help to associate a cost number for each SP (to begin with).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SAFe is making a debatable observation in that &quot;While teams will tend to increase their velocity over time—and that’s a good thing— in reality, the number tends to remain stable. A team’s velocity is far more affected by changing team size and technical context than by productivity variations.&quot; IMHO, many managements would question this assumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team productivity does change dependent on whole number of factors - from team member profile to team dynamics to technology changes, etc. Hence, in reality, it becomes important to keep doing planning and costing based on your most recent (2-3 PI) data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, my second point below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once you have velocity data for a 2-3 PIs, you would use that for all future planning and costing. Instead of thinking of team capacity in terms of &quot;ideal developer days&quot;, one would use the recent average velocity achieved to plan the same. Since you know the cost incurred in an ART per unit time (quarter/year), you would also be able to compute cost per SP delivered for that ART. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps explain why one must not recalibrate but base your planning on recent data that the system is telling you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29620" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-02-28T11:21:47.637" LastActivityDate="2018-02-28T11:21:47.637" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23634" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-02-28T11:47:25.730" Score="0" ViewCount="2964" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to ask you for advice with my problem with one team member in an agile team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm the Scrum Master and team leader for a project for one of my company client's (a big corporation). My team consists of developers from the company I'm working at and the client's developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problem&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a problem with one of the client's developer, who is an old-school developer who has been working for the client for quite a long time. Both the team and I have a hard time persuading him to follow clean code and other software development practices that team agreed to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He has a background in a different technology stack (.NET, whereas we're using Java with quite modern frameworks in the project) and is trying to reinvent wheel every time. Every attempt to show him how something should be done in a simpler way ends up with a long emotional discussion (he behaves like he has been attacked).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He is also raising numerous ideas (including architectural) and tries to force them through. Unfortunately when it comes to validating, these ideas appear to be something that is against widely-used practices and patterns. For example, we have had a discussion why 100% code coverage is not a very good idea (he pressed to do that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has also happened that he was implementing changes out of the scope of his task. For example, he refactored some part of the application without consulting with the team, because he thought his code would be better. He tried to defend his code when the team tried to explain to him why that part of the code was implemented in that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My impression is that as he is the oldest developer with the most experience, he wants to be the project hero by all means. Unfortunately, he seems to be not up-to-date with modern frameworks and coding guidelines. I think one of the reasons for his behavior might also be a cultural factor (that guy is from the UK, some part of the team and I are from Eastern Europe). The problem is also that the client's management seems to not see the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I'm not very experienced in leading teams, I'm curious what could be the best way to fix team relations (two people already left because of that). I really appreciate the engagement of that developer, but would like him to be in-line with the team and look critically on his work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could you please advise what you would do in that situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I know I can always quit my job, but that would be escaping the problem :))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31662" LastEditorUserId="31662" LastEditDate="2018-02-28T16:29:00.230" LastActivityDate="2021-05-11T19:49:50.270" Title="How to deal with difficult developer" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23634" CreationDate="2018-02-28T13:22:59.203" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try managing him by objectives - or every sprint the team has targets. Since he is senior most (oldest) developer on the team ask him to make sure that the targets are met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I my organisation I have power to move developers who are pain for the team. I usually create shadow resources and anybody who tries to show bad attitude or be hindrance in the project activities I replace them. I try to warn them or try to explain why the framework is important and if I don't see any improvement I replace them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes telling them that if they keep on being difficult you will give lower rating or fire them, will set the attitude right. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6209" LastActivityDate="2018-02-28T13:22:59.203" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23634" CreationDate="2018-02-28T14:39:31.640" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;TLDR: Rather than treating him as a problem, one perspective is to view his actions as an opportunity to improve your process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Code Reviews&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;he refactored some part of the application without consulting with the team&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is a developer &lt;em&gt;capable&lt;/em&gt; of a large-scale refactoring without the knowledge and consent of the Team? My suggestion is to implement mandatory code reviews (often accomplished via pull requests) on all accepted code. This is not just a benefit when dealing with this one developer. &lt;em&gt;All&lt;/em&gt; code is improved by a second pair of eyes. It's also a good way to facilitate knowledge sharing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Architecture Discussions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He is also raising numerous ideas (including architectural) and tries to force them through. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I'm not seeing the problem here. One of the things I learned from a Professor back in university that really stuck with me is the idea that &quot;No topic should be taboo.&quot; In an ideal environment, any topic whatsoever should be able to be put on the table. Sufficiently &lt;em&gt;bad&lt;/em&gt; ideas will soon enough, through discussion and investigation, be revealed to be such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there is &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; a chance that a &lt;em&gt;seemingly&lt;/em&gt; bad idea only &lt;em&gt;appears&lt;/em&gt; so because of pre-existing biases, and, when closely and rationally examined, holds up well. Furthermore, the very act of such scrutiny fosters a culture of learning. If one must be able to &lt;em&gt;back up&lt;/em&gt; one's stances, then they must be thoroughly understood. This helps avoid &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cargo cults&lt;/a&gt;. New knowledge must be discovered to properly scrutinize ideas, and must be disseminated in order to reach consensus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than view such discussions as a threat, view them as a chance to learn, and to teach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you're on a strict deadline and one developer keeps trying to push through hour-long discussions involving the whole Team. Even then, though, you shouldn't just say &quot;No, you're wrong&quot;, but rather &quot;We don't have time to discuss right now. For now, we'll do X, and we can revisit next week.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Professional Detachment&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Every attempt to show him how something should be done in a simpler way ends up with a long, emotional discussion (he behaves like he has been attacked).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the most valuable lessons any developer can learn is &quot;I am not my code.&quot; An attack on code written by a developer should &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; be construed as an attack on the developer. It sounds like your 'problem' developer hasn't learned this yet. Have the other developers? Have you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should foster a safe environment where this kind of mindset is encouraged. Various ways to do this, but one of the most effective is by example. Ask someone else to review your code. Have them point out all the defects. Then simply fix them, in good humour, without getting defensive. Thank your reviewer for anything new you learn during the process. Encourage other developers to do the same. Eventually, your business's culture will evolve into one where this is the expected norm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is, of course, complicated by the fact that he's not &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; company's employee. That doesn't change the goal of creating an environment where developers  feel they are safe from being negatively affected by a bad code review, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-03-02T14:17:48.217" LastActivityDate="2018-03-02T14:17:48.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23634" CreationDate="2018-02-28T15:03:52.617" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your OP, you have some biases at play here that I think you need to take a look at.  I have no idea how these biases are playing into your observations but I do know they are, simply because our biases always play into the situation and you were very kind to expose them:  age, culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, you introduced him as a client developer.  So this is not a person whom you &quot;control&quot; vis-a-vis as a PM.  Instead, he is a client stakeholder.  Which means you have to treat him like a client stakeholder, with both favorable and unfavorable impacts on your scope, your costs, and your schedule.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is stakeholder management 101.  How is he involved?  What are his tasks?  What information do you need from him?  What information does he need from you?  What project risks are caused by him and what actions do I need to mitigate them?  And so on.  You're not going to get him out of the sandbox so you need to figure out how to play with him.  There are no easy answers here but the first thing I would do is bring him in as a partner.  Get him involved, part of the discussion, and diffuse the likely alienation he is feeling and to which he is responding.  It's manipulation but you can build favorable outcomes from it versus trying to fight it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-02-28T15:03:52.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23638" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23642" CreationDate="2018-02-28T15:20:24.270" Score="2" ViewCount="270" Body="&lt;p&gt;I gathered some project management experience (I consider myself an advanced beginner) and some time ago I attended  the PRINCE2 courses successfully. Now I'd like to conduct my next project using PRINCE2. In PRINCE2 terms it is a normal project with medium risk, commercial supplier-customer relations and multiple locations. &#xA;Now that I am planning the project in more detail I see an overwhelming lot of activities to be done and my boss and I fear using PRINCE2 will introduce a lot of unneeded organisational overhead. &#xA;How do you, experienced practitioners, handle this and keep your projects lean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25585" LastActivityDate="2018-02-28T23:45:27.557" Title="How to keep a PRINCE2 project lean?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23634" CreationDate="2018-02-28T15:50:28.677" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Manage him out, sooner rather than later.  The short term pain of his loss will lead the rest of the team to learn what the indispensable man knew and inspire fewer indispensable men in the future.  See &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/eric_brechner/2018/02/01/good-engineers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/eric_brechner/2018/02/01/good-engineers/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27826" LastActivityDate="2018-02-28T15:50:28.677" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23634" CreationDate="2018-02-28T16:34:26.363" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dealt with these types of developers before and they are always a nightmare to work with for the reasons you are experiencing. What has worked for me in the past:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Keep a RAID log where all project related risks are logged. This will act as an audit trail. &#xA;2) Every time a risk or issue occurs due to x character, escalate to senior management by showing them the RAID log and how it has impacted the RAG status of the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master you cannot get this person fired since you are not managing people but supporting the team, at best you can make management aware of the disruption x person is causing. They will then handle individual accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="20871" LastEditDate="2018-02-28T16:43:04.303" LastActivityDate="2018-02-28T16:43:04.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23349" CreationDate="2018-02-28T20:49:53.433" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In case you want to search for all the issues updated after 9AM previous day until today at 9AM, please try: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;updated &amp;gt;= startOfDay(-15h) and updated &amp;lt;= startOfDay(9h). (explanation: 9AM - 24h/day = -15h)&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For reporting purposes there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arsenalesystems.com/docs/display/dataplane/Reports+Guide?ref=marketplace&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a plugin&lt;/a&gt; which generates the following reports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Issue Values Snapshots by Date&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This report is a combination of the Sum Numeric Field by Date report and the Issue Values Snapshots by Date reports. This report sums the historical value of a specific field, based on the values that the field had at specific points in history, sampled on the first day of each interval in the selected time period. The results are filtered to include only those issues whose statuses were in one of the selected Statuses to Include values on each sampled date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Issue Values by Date Report&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This report shows you the state of your issues over time. Unlike the Issue Values Snapshots by Date Report, this report evaluates the state of your issues at all points in time over an entire report interval, rather than picking the issue state at a specific point in time. This allows you to quickly find and report on issues that had issue values for only a short period in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftwarecloud/advanced-searching-functions-reference-764478342.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Advanced Searching&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/q/2713770/1113772&quot;&gt;JIRA JQL searching by date - is there a way of getting Today() (Date) instead of Now() (DateTime)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-questions/Is-there-a-SIMPLE-way-to-create-a-report-that-shows-the-number/qaq-p/39333&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Is there a SIMPLE way to create a report that shows the number of tickets created per month for a specified time period?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27065" LastActivityDate="2018-02-28T20:49:53.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23638" CreationDate="2018-02-28T23:28:49.637" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I qualified in PRINCE2 long before I moved into the Agile arena and became a ScrumMaster / Agile Coach so I have seen both sides of the coin and understand how hard it can be to;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gain a PRINCE2 based answer from the PM SE community&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Divorce the the actual intent of PRINCE2 from the &lt;em&gt;taught syllabus&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will be brief and simply say that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Remember exactly what the PRINCE2 guide calls for...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You colleagues and stakeholders will consider meetings, reports and paperwork as evidence of progress however PRINCE2 does not mandate these things in the Principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It calls for&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Continued Business Justification&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means to review your product offering frequently.  Agile practitioners would immediately recognize this as periodic reviews.  The easiest way is to physically demo the product.  Not show the plans, not show the intent of the product but physically demo the product.  That lets you show stakeholders that a &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;working product is the priority&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; they should expect that any artifact they request (logs, reports etc) should be to support the idea of a working product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Demonstrate progress in your product so that you can...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Manage By Exception&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that you have to have the courage to sit back and shepherd the process rather than control every aspect.  Depending on your delivery that can be challenging because stakeholders have differing ideas of what a project manager does.  Agile practitioners would recognize this as the daily standup or huddle or check-in which is limited to 15 minutes normally.  The project team comes together to &lt;em&gt;verbally&lt;/em&gt; confirm what they are working on today, what they focussed on yesterday and what impediments they need you to remove.  More than 30 minutes is a complete waste of people's time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You shepherd rather than control so that you can...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Learn from Experience&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By conducting frequent post-mortems of your progress you can take action to correct poor working practices, remove impediments and support the team with addiitional resource or materials they might need.  In Agile terminology we would refer to this as the Retrospective which is conducted weekly, fortnightly or monthly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this helps you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Manage a Stage&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agilists would recognize this trough such mantra's as &lt;em&gt;Managing WIP (Work in Progress)&lt;/em&gt;, reducing bottlenecks, improving flow etc.  Your job, ultimately is to try and protect your project resource and given them an environment set up for success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very rarely does an environment benefit from &lt;em&gt;additional ceremonies&lt;/em&gt; or increased paper artifacts.  You will get just as much information from buying a coffee for a team member and asking him/her what is going on as you would from calling an &amp;quot;update meeting&amp;quot;.  Except you saved 8 other people from having their diaries crashed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember always that PRINCE2 does not call for meetings and reports; it calls for &lt;em&gt;information&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;updates&lt;/em&gt; and these can take many forms which you decide in such a way as to not burden your team with heavy process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it enough for a project engineer to simply confirm to you verbally they are progressing with a task?  That is an update.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Miscellaneous advice&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice to you, given your environment, would be that your stakeholders are going to expect certain artifacts that are likely to be unavoidable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk Log&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gantt Chart&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These things are anathema to Agile because we account for risk management in a different way and our plan is contained in the priority of the backlog and possibly, a roadmap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Gantt Chart&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you must do a Gantt chart, do one.  But brush up on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilenutshell.com/cone_of_uncertainty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cone of uncertainty&lt;/a&gt; and ensure that it is only granular out to 6 weeks.  Anything beyond that should be big building blocks otherwise you are setting yourself up to fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Risk Logs&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As someone who completed 10 years in the intelligence community conducting Risk Management around the globe; trust me when I say the easiest most effective way of running is a risk log is the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mha-it.com/2013/03/the-four-ts-process/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;four T's model&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For every risk you identify, write a short description and label it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Treat  (take mediating action to stop the risk)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Terminate  (remove the risk entirely)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tolerate (simply live with it and react if it occurs)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Transfer (tell a higher authority it is their risk now - the best one!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's it.  Decide what you want to do and keep it up to date to show auditors and or the Steering Commitee / Gatekeepers.  To maintain the validity, simply ask the project team&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this was going to be delayed in any way, what might delay it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever they say, write it on the risk log and give it an appropriate T.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;In summary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remember the principles and live by them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decide if you need reports/meetings or simply information/updates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep your risk log lightweight&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don#t hang yourself or devote too much time to a Gantt chart.  It will be redundant as soon as you publish it so keep your time on it to less than 5% of your effort.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remove impediments for your team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are constantly busy it indicates the project has problems or you are being micro-managed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Final Thoughts&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you get to the gate checkpoint for more funding; push strongly on why the gate needs &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of the evidence they are asking for.  But don't push &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; strongly; a fired Project Manager cannot help anyone including themself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;If you have any pointed questions; you can always come back to this community.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-02-28T23:45:27.557" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23349" CreationDate="2018-03-01T10:43:09.487" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found a way to partially get what I want. Using the operator WAS... ON..., I can query based on historical values of some fields. This is an example query:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;project = &quot;CNT&quot;  AND fixVersion WAS IN (18.2) ON &quot;2018-02-01 23:59&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are 2 severe limitations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not all fields support the historical search WAS...ON operator, in fact, it looks like a minority of the available fields support this operator&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I cannot &lt;em&gt;display&lt;/em&gt; the values (rather than use them as a query condition) on a given day. So I cannot get a query showing me e.g. what was the Story Point value of items on a given day - they may have since been resized.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17749" LastActivityDate="2018-03-01T10:43:09.487" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23612" CreationDate="2018-03-01T14:41:09.893" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;To get early visibility into upcoming problems, you must participate&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not enough for you to have access to Jira. Here is why:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developers are notorious for not keeping statuses updated. Impediments that are reported by developers rarely, if ever, show-up on Jira.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jira may show history of what happened. You want to know problems before they become critical, or at the least, as they happen. Otherwise you will be left with picking up the pieces after a disaster.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The biggest bottleneck for a subcontractor is most likely your own organization. You must feed them requirements, give clarifications, provide feedback on UX design, do user acceptance testing...and so on. This won't be in Jira. You don't want to find out after a sprint ends with many incomplete stories that you guys were responsible for it. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my suggestion is for you or another person from your side, to attend the relevant subcontractor meetings. Jira access is a supplement to this, not a substitute. The person attending the meetings can then send out status and action items list to the people concerned in your organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2018-03-01T14:41:09.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23647" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23650" CreationDate="2018-03-01T23:23:04.067" Score="0" ViewCount="120" Body="&lt;p&gt;The team I manage has been in the final pre-production push / bug-fixes stage at the end of the project for over a month now, while we allotted one week for these fixes (total project time was 2 months, are now at 3 months).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to external pressures, I have twice pushed for deployment with the outlook that this first iteration of the product doesn't need to be perfect, and both times deployment has failed and we had to rollback due to bugs and not being ready for the actual launch (which requires downtime and complicated database migrations).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am &quot;defending&quot; my hurrying deployment (to my team) by explaining that I am OK with taking risks and &quot;breaking things&quot; in favor of relevance and ontime delivery, but they are not buying this. I feel that after two failed launches, I am losing/have lost credibility with my team, and they are not confident in my ability to decide to move forward, which is further slowing down the end of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the right thing to do here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31681" LastEditorUserId="31681" LastEditDate="2018-03-01T23:34:10.290" LastActivityDate="2018-03-02T15:09:35.020" Title="How to speed up a passed-the-deadline project while maintaining credibility?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23649" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23658" CreationDate="2018-03-02T05:07:03.160" Score="1" ViewCount="318" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know if there are any suitable &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_effort_estimation#Estimation_approaches&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;estimation approaches&lt;/a&gt; for &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.webopedia.com/TERM/E/ETL.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ETL (Extract, Transform, Load)&lt;/a&gt; projects&lt;/em&gt;. In my case I will be using Logstash for an elastic stack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the amount of work (coding, testing, etc.) heavily depends on &lt;strong&gt;volume&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;variation&lt;/strong&gt; of data, the labor cost is difficult to predict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I appreciate if anyone can share one's ideas for how to estimate such projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31683" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-03-02T14:10:47.093" LastActivityDate="2018-03-03T13:00:03.693" Title="Any suitable cost estimation approaches for ETL projects?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23647" CreationDate="2018-03-02T08:52:57.453" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not entirely clear to me what your situation is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do your deployments succeed and get rejected by the stakeholders or do they fail in the first place?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Either way you seem to be surprised by the outcome every time. This suggests that you have a poor understanding of either what is expected of your product or of what is required on a technical level to deploy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Potential issue 1: Deployment is a crapshoot&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should have a sandbox environment where you can test deploy to your hearts content. You should be absolutely sure that when you deploy for real that it's going to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Potential issue 2: deal breaker bugs&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should be testing your product throughly enough that there shouldn't be any new major issue popping up when you present to the stakeholders. This could indicate that your code quality and maintainability is too poor or that you rely too much on manual tests and don't have the resources to fully run them. (I've worked in such a situation where we had several man-days worth of manual tests to run for each new release candidate). Neither of these issues is something you can fix without siginificant time investment but they are also not things you can afford to ignore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also have a clear enough understanding of what your stakeholders consider deal breakers. In that case you need to have an honest and direct discussion about what they are willing to accept and how much time this is likely to require. It might be necessary to consider dropping some features that continue to give you troubles. It's a somewhat desperate solution and not in all cases easier than fixing it but I've had such a situation myself once. There was this one feature that I just couldn't get to work properly. So at some point we just postponed it to the next version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Potential issue 3: inability to launch&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't describe in what way you are unable to launch but whatever it is you need to get a handle on this. If you and your team don't understand what it takes to actually &quot;ship&quot; your product you need to stop and figure this out right now. It doesn't matter if the product itself is completely broken. A turd that you can ship is worth more than a jewel that you can't get to the customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Credibility&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think the most important thing is that you step away from your risk-taking attitude. Project management is about managing risks not taking them. The attitude of &quot;it doesn't have to be perfect let's just git r done&quot; is usually a cop out that stems from the unwillingness to acknowledge risks and have tough discussions about what is realistic. You said you allotted one week for bug fixing. You don't allot time. Things are done when they are done. All you can do is be observant, sound the alarm bells early enough and sit down saying &quot;this is not going well, what are our options&quot;. At this point the best thing you can do is admit you've been too optimistic and find some place where the expectations of your stakeholders overlap with what your team considers doable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2018-03-02T08:52:57.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23647" CreationDate="2018-03-02T12:44:37.190" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the immediate, stop pushing then ask the team how you can best enable them to improve quality to an acceptable level while doing whatever else is necessary for a successful deployment . . . then act accordingly.  It may be that the team needs some trust, empowerment, and space to do their jobs.  It may be that the team is lacking the knowledge, skills, etc needed.  It may be that there was pushing throughout the effort and that cost of correcting the shortcuts that were taken has now been revealed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Accept that you have failed and learn that treating quality as a result and not as the first-class citizen it needs to be will very frequently lead to this type of result.  All involved should be educated regarding having an &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scruminc.com/iterative-vs-incremental-development/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;incremental&lt;/a&gt; process, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;agile philosophy&lt;/a&gt; (it is not &lt;strong&gt;A&lt;/strong&gt;gile&lt;sup&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tm&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;), having a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.versionone.com/agile-101/agile-software-programming-best-practices/test-first-programming/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;test-first&lt;/a&gt; mentality to improve quality, and other proven software product development and management techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be the result if one imposed deadlines on Monet or Vivaldi to create an &lt;em&gt;unreasonable&lt;/em&gt; number of pieces within an &lt;em&gt;unrealistic&lt;/em&gt; amount of time? What about the same for Einstein or Pasteur?  Creative, cognitive, and complex work require time for experimentation, mistakes, and learning; creating software attempting to solve a problem or fulfill a desirement is creative, cognitive, and complex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is the &lt;code&gt;first iteration of the product&lt;/code&gt; then why is it that rolling back &lt;code&gt;requires downtime and complicated database migrations&lt;/code&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am &quot;defending&quot; my hurrying deployment (to my team) by explaining that I am OK with taking risks and &quot;breaking things&quot; in favor of relevance and ontime delivery, but they are not buying this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The deadline is often the main focus instead of the craftsmanship of the product.  Good craftsmen want to feel proud of what they have created and accomplished.  That is possibly weighing on the team; it should be weighing on you as well.  It may also be, or at least appear to be, that &lt;em&gt;saving face&lt;/em&gt; for yourself (first via deadline, now via rushing) is more important than the the team and its values, concerns, and the result of how others perceive them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2018-03-02T12:44:37.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23647" CreationDate="2018-03-02T13:13:35.857" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Putting out a product before its ready will always kill your reputation more than reporting a delay in that product's delivery.  Both are hits to your reputation but a product you have to bring back in is far worse.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are your go / no go criteria?  The way you describe your decision to go seemed very ad hoc, like, &quot;let's just do it now.&quot;  If you never have established your go criteria, your checklist to deploy, then you did indeed fail and your loss in reputation is warranted.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get it back, you and your team need to define what constitutes a go (your customer should also be involved in that), then you need to plan and execute the tasks, e.g., testing, to get the product to meet its criteria.  Conduct your go / no go examination (with the customer), and based on that, decide to deliver or hold it back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not rocket science but standard practice for thousands and thousands of products that are introduced to the market place daily.  All products go out with some risk, some known, others unknown.  But they all &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; have past their go criteria test.  We do know that at times companies release a product with known no go deficiencies, but that usually leads to deaths, payouts, and expensive recalls.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-03-02T13:13:35.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23653" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-03-02T13:21:53.623" Score="0" ViewCount="123" Body="&lt;p&gt;Working in outsourcing model I wonder what are your experiences with fluctuation on vendor's team level. &#xA;Assuming smaller teams (up to 20 people) when team rotation on vendor's side reaches e.g. 30% or more over a year or two customer will feel dissatisfaction caused by changes in the team and need to introduce new people to both domain and technical knowledge. This generates costs on both sides.&#xA;On one hand from customers perspective it seems safe to put such information/requirements into contract but on the other hand IT market shows that team changes on vendor side are happening and it is a challenge to keep the same team for a couple of years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand - rotation on team level has it's benefits for both vendor and end customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you deal with this on vendor level? How do you deal with formal contracts with end customers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3914" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2018-03-02T15:09:27.797" LastActivityDate="2018-05-24T13:37:13.730" Title="How to deal with customer (dis)satisfaction and formal agreements amidst large rotation in small teams?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;contracts&gt;&lt;customer-satisfaction&gt;&lt;outsourcing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23647" CreationDate="2018-03-02T15:09:35.020" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with other Answers posted on this Question, but none of them have answered the actual question in your title - namely, how to speed up the project (without harming your personal credibility). While this does seem somewhat of an XY problem, for this Answer I will take in good faith that this (and your personal credibility) really are your #1 (and #2) concerns - above such 'petty' concerns as quality or delivering value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can think of only one possible approach for this. Cut out scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you familiar with the concept of a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;minimum viable product (MVP)&lt;/a&gt;? Have you created one for your first iteration? Are you sure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On an earlier project for which I was a Scrum Master/Developer, there were these two particular features. One was requested by a single user, and pushed forward by the boss as a 'must have'. The other was, as far as I can tell, requested by &lt;em&gt;no one&lt;/em&gt;, but was &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; pushed through by the boss as a 'must have'. Both of these were also extremely complex, especially together, and interacted with the entire system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even after the features were coded in, we &lt;em&gt;still&lt;/em&gt; pushed to remove them, purely because doing so would vastly simplify the system, thereby making any other work much easier/faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But instead, we went live with both features. And, years later, still no one actually uses them. Users actually &lt;em&gt;complained&lt;/em&gt; about how one of these 'must have' features made the product too complicated and provided no value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Removing functionalities that have already been coded has an initial cost, but &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; save you time in the long run simply due to reducing complexity. The only way to determine if you actually have such a feature, though, is to ask your developers. Essentially, ask them, 'are there any features that, including the extra time to take out and the reduced time to test, removing them would speed up the project?'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You then need to decide, for each feature the developers bring up, whether or not that feature is part of your MVP. If it's &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; - if it can be included in a later iteration (or never) and still have the first iteration be deemed acceptable - then cut the feature out of your first release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-03-02T15:09:35.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23634" CreationDate="2018-03-03T10:08:58.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sounds like this is really burdening the team and should be solved as soon as possible so that you can focus on the important things. Your developer sounds motivated in the end and that's a very good thing in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general every developer should be treated the same and I would not make any exception as a scrum master, be it your special developer or any other person in the team. The team should properly define a working agreement &lt;strong&gt;together&lt;/strong&gt; and in the worst case you get to a decision via a majority in the team. People need to  understand &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; the team wants to work the way they want to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe your developer does not use the latest and greatest stuff thats out there, but if he has a lot of experience he might be able to either persaude you not to rebuild and rethink everything because it is new, or he might see the benefits and stick to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31644" LastActivityDate="2018-03-03T10:08:58.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23649" CreationDate="2018-03-03T13:00:03.693" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Here are some ways to mitigate potential increase in scope of work&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since the amount of work (coding, testing, etc.) heavily depends on&#xA;  volume and variation of data, the labor cost is difficult to predict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest 3 options, in descending order of priority:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Propose initial estimation work at about 5% of the cost of the project&lt;/strong&gt;: When you complete this work, your deliverable will be a firm quote for the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask for size (volume) and sample data from the client&lt;/strong&gt;: The client can give you rough volume information such as number of records, size of the index, size of the data in disk...and so on. Also they can give you a very small extract from the data that helps you assess the variation. You can compare this size with other similar work you have done before. After seeing the variation in the sample, you can add a padding of some % based on your experience in other similar work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Give a quote stating your assumption of volume and variation&lt;/strong&gt;: Tell them if the actual volume and variation are more, you will charge extra by providing proper data to support the justification for the extra charge.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2018-03-03T13:00:03.693" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23659" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23660" CreationDate="2018-03-04T15:05:42.687" Score="0" ViewCount="368" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just started as PMO Coordinator of several teams. All teams add sub-tasks to stories/requirements, and they do all this in Jira (create requirements/stories + DEV team add sub-tasks), and all of them do that their own way, without following any specific format for user story creation, with in many cases lead to confusion as requirements aro not clearly exposed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I wanted to use Confluence as a home for our stories. But my question is, how can I add sub-tasks to this stories? Is it possible to do so in Confluence? Or do you have any other ideas regarding how to unify requirements/stories creation across all teams? I just thought of confluence since in my previous jobs I used it and it is a good way of creating clear stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31638" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-03-04T23:11:59.380" LastActivityDate="2018-03-04T23:11:59.380" Title="Adding sub-tasks to stories in Confluence?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23659" CreationDate="2018-03-04T19:57:48.710" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Sub-tasks in Jira are typically used for the 'how'&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;how can I add sub-tasks to this stories? Is it possible to do so in Confluence? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Requirements should focus on 'what' the business needs and 'why'. Sub-tasks in Jira are meant for the Dev Team (as you yourself noted) to organize the work to be done into bite sized chunks - the 'how'. This is not part of the requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Or do you have any other ideas regarding how to unify&#xA;  requirements/stories creation across all teams?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To unify requirements/stories creation across all teams, read my earlier answer here:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/23606/agile-requirements-tracking/23609#23609&quot;&gt;Some steps to improve requirements communication&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need a hierarchical story structure, you can use Epics as the parent level and User Stories as children. Acceptance criteria developed in the discussion between dev team and PO/Stakeholders is a key part of the requirements. Not sure how keeping all this in Confluence will help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2018-03-04T19:57:48.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23661" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-03-05T05:29:40.257" Score="1" ViewCount="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;For in-house development projects, it is straight forward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a IT project that requires vendor involvement, would you : &#xA;1) manage the Procurement process separately from the actual System Implementation in 2 IPEC cycles? &#xA;Or &#xA;2) would you combine the 2 processes and manage them as only 1 PM cycle? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which would be a better option ? &#xA;If #1, how can the 2 project cycles be managed effectively as a full project implementation from the organizatio persepective? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice is appreciated. &#xA;Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31701" LastActivityDate="2018-03-05T16:37:00.470" Title="For a IT project that requires vendor involvement, would you manage the Procurement process separately from the actual System Implementation?" Tags="&lt;procurement&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23661" CreationDate="2018-03-05T16:37:00.470" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Combine procurement and implementation as a single project&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need a detailed analysis. A project is not a project unless it delivers an ROI. Procurement just incurs a cost. Only when it is implemented, you will start to earn the return. However, here are some additional points to justify why this is the right approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some of the implementation steps have to be taken prior to closing the procurement project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is counter-productive to close the procurement project, declaring success and paying off the vendor, when the implementation will need heavy vendor involvement and commitment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coordination among the team members and resolving resource contention is easier, if you don't have two PMs who are trying to accomplish different things.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you resolve vendor problems discovered in the implementation phase? Unless you have a magic wand, scaling and performance problems will only be fully discovered in the implementation phase.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2018-03-05T16:37:00.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23663" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23665" CreationDate="2018-03-05T16:48:41.440" Score="1" ViewCount="1671" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team is using VSTS with the Agile process. When creating a User Story, there is a Risk field with options High, Medium and Low. We've searched through both the Agile and Scrum processes VSTS documentation to get an explanation as to what risk this represent, but found nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We tried to reach consensus as to what &quot;risk&quot; the field is referring to but ended up undecided between these three definitions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk (as in chance) of the actual outcome (the resulting feature/implementation) not being the desired outcome (in the sense of the actual outcome not being approved by stakeholders)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk (as in chance) of impediments/issues appearing that blocks development (such as having to research and buy a new tool/framework (such as a zip-code database) in order to implement the user story)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk (as in &quot;severity of the consequence&quot;) of getting the implementation wrong (such as having a bug in a operation that may involve a lot of money)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does the field mean? Does this affect in any way other metrics in VSTS (such as Stack Rank)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31616" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-03-05T18:59:00.313" LastActivityDate="2018-03-05T22:16:23.140" Title="What does the Risk field mean in a User Story?" Tags="&lt;vsts&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23663" CreationDate="2018-03-05T17:24:19.953" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Risk field for a User Story is not relevant&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not used VSTS. However, I have used TFS, which is a close in-premise version of the Microsoft cloud service VSTS. At least I would think they are pretty close for the Agile process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the User Story level, I think it refers to your second bullet:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Risk (as in chance) of impediments/issues appearing that blocks development...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you should focus on reducing the risk in User Stories, rather than putting a lot of effort in tracking it as a property of the User Story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the Backlog Refinement meeting, focus on getting clarifications from the PO/stakeholders, adding more detail, adding acceptance criteria and estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you still feel there is risk, take up a time-boxed research story, also known as a spike. In this research story, a team member can build a proof-of-concept, which helps to minimize the risk and firm up the estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-sm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the designated responsibility of the Scrum Master to remove impediments in the way of the Development Team accomplishing the stories in the Sprint Backlog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2018-03-05T21:56:00.433" LastActivityDate="2018-03-05T21:56:00.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23663" CreationDate="2018-03-05T22:05:27.313" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If truly working within the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;agile&lt;/a&gt; philosophy, as there is no &lt;strong&gt;A&lt;/strong&gt;gile&lt;sup&gt;&lt;sup&gt;tm&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; process, then look at the first value: &lt;code&gt;Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.&lt;/code&gt;  The tools are there for the people.  How does this field, and others, best make sense for your context?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://ronjeffries.com/xprog/articles/expcardconversationconfirmation/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;original intent&lt;/a&gt; of a user story was for recording the general idea.  As its use has grown over the years, so has its information bloat.  It is important for a product team to understand the intended value and potential risk, so many tools have added fields for these values.  Much like the Severity and Priority fields for bugs, one's specific context should drive their meanings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of these fields are independent: Microsoft Docs &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/vsts/work/track/planning-ranking-priorities&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/vsts/work/work-items/guidance/agile-process-workflow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A subjective rating of the relative uncertainty around the successful completion of a user story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Defined allowed values are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1 - High&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2 - Medium&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3 - Low&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-03-05T22:16:23.140" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23666" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23668" CreationDate="2018-03-06T08:44:36.020" Score="4" ViewCount="377" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know there are millions of articles on this topic and they all talk about: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Iterative (Iterative Waterfall) Dev - delivers an improving product at the end of each iteration&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incremental Dev - delivers a section of the final product at the end of each increment (a core feature of value)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I (think I) can understand Incremental. What I don't get is, what is actually delivered at the end of an Iteration of an Iterative development? Is it a basic version of the full product?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's talk about development of a car as an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incremental Dev would split the car into core sections, like so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First increment: A car that moves by pushing (bad example I know) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Second increment: adds engine to the car&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Third: adds brakes....&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And so on...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Iterative Dev &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would iterative development try to make a version of the full car in one iteration (albeit with very basic features?) So the car would have brakes, engine etc after the first iteration. But they might be buggy etc? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31714" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-03-06T14:32:42.100" LastActivityDate="2018-03-06T14:32:42.100" Title="Difference between Incremental and Iterative development (Not Agile)" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9066" CreationDate="2018-03-06T10:04:40.717" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion or according to experience, both the roles should be different. Again, it really depends on the organisation and the level of projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The role of a &lt;strong&gt;Project Manager&lt;/strong&gt; is very high level: managing the project according to the budget and resources available as well as scoping the project request. They work on a high level, managing multiple projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the &lt;strong&gt;Business Analyst&lt;/strong&gt; works on a product. Products run longer, projects finish off and close. A BA works on technical details, documentations, and requirements gathering from a business team and then works with developers and analysts to help them in implementations, then carry out User acceptance testing (UAT), testings and then delivery and deployment. &lt;strong&gt;Business Analysts&lt;/strong&gt; will not have time to analyze the budget and scope out projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So having both as separate roles and having both together working closely in an organization is the best combo to have smoother project execution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27259" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-03-06T14:10:53.360" LastActivityDate="2018-03-06T14:10:53.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23666" CreationDate="2018-03-06T13:03:00.890" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A great &lt;a href=&quot;https://availagility.co.uk/2009/12/22/fidelity-the-lost-dimension-of-the-iron-triangle/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt;, with charts, describing the differences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Incremental&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purely incremental approach builds each feature, across all components, to full fidelity, one by one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Iterative&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purely iterative approach builds all the features, across all components, to the lowest fidelity, and then increases the fidelity to the highest level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Incremental and Iterative&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A modern approach combines the incremental and iterative approaches by building each feature, one by one, at a low fidelity, and then both gradually adding features and increasing their fidelity until the right combination is achieved. Full fidelity is not always necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-03-06T14:30:23.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23669" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-03-06T22:41:11.293" Score="-1" ViewCount="71" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking for a way to create a project timeline that: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shows what needs to be done when (theoretically)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Easily shareable with client&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that the client wants: &quot;I need to know where we are at on the project&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31665" LastActivityDate="2018-03-08T16:11:20.197" Title="Timeline for Project" Tags="&lt;timeline&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23670" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-03-06T23:09:10.420" Score="5" ViewCount="479" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a Jira project which contains all issues for a single website.  The website has several different components, such as the theme and several lambda functions.  Each component has their own repository and is deployed separately from the others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Confusion sets in when trying to figure out how to name each Jira release/version.  We will be using semantic versioning, however, do we create a different version for each component?  For example, should a history of releases for a project look like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Theme-Release-2.3.0&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;LabmdaFuncA-Release-1.9.0&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;LambdaFuncB-Hotfix-1.6.1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Theme-Release-2.4.0&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;LambdaFuncB-Release-1.7.0&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or should all of the components share the same release version?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Release-1.4.0     (contains updates for Lambda Function A)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Release-1.5.0     (contains updates for Lambda Function B)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Release-1.6.0     (contains updates for the Theme)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, a related question: Should the repository version match the Jira version?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31718" LastActivityDate="2018-03-13T20:44:37.857" Title="Jira - How to name a Jira release" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;release-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23671" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23673" CreationDate="2018-03-07T01:05:24.017" Score="3" ViewCount="284" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you respond to customer demanding too much to be done in not enough time? This is in an IT environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Responding by &quot;We can not do it&quot; as true as it is, put the focus on us that we are not capable in delivering. But how to make them realise what is being asked in not feasible in the given amount of time and resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="981" LastActivityDate="2018-03-14T01:04:42.900" Title="How to respond to too much work in too little time from the customer?" Tags="&lt;resources&gt;&lt;negotiation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23671" CreationDate="2018-03-07T03:38:27.517" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Looks like a growth opportunity to me!&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The customer cannot know how much effort each piece of work takes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The customer cannot know how much work you have already committed and how much bandwidth is left.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, stop looking at it as someone is trying to slam you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make an estimate of each work item. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any low priority work that you have committed? Can you negotiate to get some of that deferred?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;See what productivity improvements you can make through process improvements, automation...etc. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be sensitive to the customer's need for urgent work and priorities. Be prepared to add resources to bring the timeline in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go back with a proposal of when you can realistically deliver each work item. If the timeline is not acceptable, propose additional funding to add resources and what timeline improvement that can get. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2018-03-14T01:04:42.900" LastActivityDate="2018-03-14T01:04:42.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23671" CreationDate="2018-03-07T09:05:14.873" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To effectively justify your estimations it is always better to have the project plan. What you're asking actually can have different answers depending on the current phase of the project. But the general solution is to operate with the plan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on what is the level of awareness in your processes and IT industry in general your customer has you should demonstrate the plan of different level of details. Basically the more items your plan demonstrates the more options to negotiate you have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can start from low-level detail plan and break it down and down showing up what low-level tasks and timings compose your feature scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29674" LastActivityDate="2018-03-07T09:05:14.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23670" CreationDate="2018-03-07T09:27:21.647" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been placed to the same circumstances for years. And the approach of having the versions for each particular component showed poor efficiency (at least in my project) due to Jira specific. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jira versioning is well-designed when you version the project as a whole and does not support component versioning. So the best solution is to consider migrating to some other task management systems or consider managing the components each in its separate project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your approach would be okay unless you have more-or-less large release history. The more releases you will complete the more difficulties you will face when you will need to analyse the things done on some rather large extent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Repository versions should match the jira versions. This will let you easily refer to a proper build in repo having the version of an item from Jira and vise versa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29674" LastActivityDate="2018-03-07T09:27:21.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17430" CreationDate="2018-03-07T12:19:43.800" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just came across this (rather old) post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm managing a team of dedicated frontenders and backenders. It'll be a cold day in Hell, when they start doing each other's work :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My concern with the community score, is that it gives a false velocity for the team, in the case of having dedicated Front- and Backend developers respectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EXAMPLE:&#xA;Say a story ends up at 20 story points, after a healthy discussion in Refinement.&#xA;Of these 20 points, it was clearly the backend developers stressing the complexity of building their part, whereas the frontenders needed only implement a new form. &#xA;So the backenders account for 80% of the story points (so to speak, they are the ones who raised the score).&#xA;Now, let's say the team has 4 backenders and 2 frontenders. And they make the above story in the sprint. All is well, and velocity could be said to be 20 story points per sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next refinement, tables are turned, frontend is a nightmare, backend a breeze, but it still adds up to 20 story points.&#xA;Given that frontenders now have to do 80% of a 20-point story, with only 2 frontenders to do it, how does that affect velocity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the sake of predictability and getting a trustworthy velocity, I think the community score has some major flaws. Unfortunately, I have yet to find the fix for them :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31725" LastActivityDate="2018-03-07T12:19:43.800" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23671" CreationDate="2018-03-07T12:27:47.040" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't sign the contract. Say no. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look around at other industries. No other industry, EXCEPT IT, will you see this phenomena to this degree. Try it. Hire a builder and tell them they need to complete the house in three months instead of the six they told you. They'll walk away laughing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some reason, in IT, we say yes... and then fail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say no. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-03-07T12:27:47.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23677" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23680" CreationDate="2018-03-07T13:05:45.990" Score="2" ViewCount="120" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a software developer who suffers from the regular hotfixes that are required to an application I've developed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The application I've developed didn't had many infrastructure requirements from the start but over time those requirements became more and more. This is only one part of the problem because when such an new requirement comes it is expected for me to make a hotfix outside of other planed work. Because the project managers already promised a working application. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to reduce the amount of hotfixes I have to make, as this would let me concentrate on the task I'm currently working on and the project managers won't have to apologize when the product isn't working from the start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of those infrastructure requirements have to do with authentication and authorization (active directory, support cross domain, impersonation, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think neither the product owner nor the project managers nor I know enough about the technical specifics to build a requirement catalog from the start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The product is developed with Scrum as the project management ideology. (I'm also part of other Scrum Teams.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can a small business without this knowledge prevent such hotfixes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that not promising a working solution and having reserved time for tests and corrections would solve this. But is there another way this could be prevented? Or should I try to have a talk to the project managers and try to change their way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31726" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-03-07T14:11:49.493" LastActivityDate="2018-03-07T16:34:23.537" Title="Reduce amount of required hotfixes without technical knowledge" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;testing&gt;&lt;product-manager&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23677" CreationDate="2018-03-07T14:19:14.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know you say you're following Scrum, but are you doing so &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;by the book&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are you creating a potentially releasable product at the end of every Sprint?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are you reviewing the product &lt;em&gt;with the stakeholders&lt;/em&gt; at the end of every Sprint during the Sprint Review meeting?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are you incorporating feedback you receive in the Review into the product?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, that would, I think, be a good place to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-03-07T14:19:14.543" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16339" CreationDate="2018-03-07T14:58:30.620" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally have a column titled Daily Actions, which has two sub-columns, &quot;ToDo Today&quot; and &quot;Done Today&quot;.  Those actions that I do daily have their own cards, and I move them back and forth as part of my daily workflow.  For example, let's say I check StackExchange daily. I would have a card that reads &quot;Check StackExchange&quot;.  Once I have completed that work, I would move it to &quot;Done Today&quot; from &quot;ToDo Today&quot;.  Then, when I complete my work day, I move it back to &quot;ToDo Today&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31727" LastActivityDate="2018-03-07T14:58:30.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23677" CreationDate="2018-03-07T16:34:23.537" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I've understood you correctly your goal is to have a more steady development experience. Less &quot;drop everything and get X to work&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your problem stems from several factors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customers are promised your product can do something it cannot&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You (personally and the company) don't know well enough what requirements are  expected&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You sales people or managers are not willing to wait for these features&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are not shielded from these shortcomings to a sufficient degree&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What would help?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acquire the necessary domain knowledge. Either through a developer, product manager, power users or if necessary consultants. Having someone who knows what kind of expectations your product will face would allow you to work on these features preemtively.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stop sales from claiming your product already does everything. This is very difficult because right now what they are doing is working just fine from their perspective. You either have to convince them that not doing so is better of have someone with enough political clout put his foot down for you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get sales people and your PO to build a stronger partnership with your customers and to better understand their needs. Transition to a more open approach where you are honest about what your product can do right now and how long it will likely take to add any given addition.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get your PO, SC and yourself to put your foot down against these rush jobs. You said you're doing Scrum. You don't do rush jobs in Scrum. This is risky as refusing to do these tasks on the side might cost you your job if your organization is not comitted to doing Scrum. And from everything I've read they don't seem to be. You might be able to negotiate this &quot;freedom&quot; by offering shorter sprints (ie. less waiting before a new task gets picked up) Your ability to offer shorter sprints is however limited by how long you as apparently a single developer needs for any given feature. One alternative would be to abandon Scrum and do Kanban instead. You have ONE active task that you are working on until it is done. Then you do whatever they think is the next most important task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quit or get moved to a different product. It seems like you are a single developer working only part of the time on this product. This would indicate that there's not a lot of investment into the product and the company treats it with the attitude &quot;get as much money out of this thing as you can with minimal effort.&quot; If so that's not a position you want to be in long term&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2018-03-07T16:34:23.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23681" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23690" CreationDate="2018-03-07T23:10:18.740" Score="2" ViewCount="108" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking into use cases and user stories topics, and I have difficulties to properly define those for a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although it's quick and straightforward on user goals such as 'perform this', 'perform that' etc... I have a screen where the user does not have any transactional activity, but instead reporting or read-only screens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take an example: I have a dashboard with numbers to get the amount of rent achieved this months, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be a great use case for this? At first, I was asking 'why would the user need to access this screen?', in order to understand where it fits to adjust the strategy. So a possible use case could be: Assess rental achievable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last, in this screen, a user can filter data, like seeing its amount for a particular country state. Is this part of a use case? Or part of the previous use case? If the latter option, what would it be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31734" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-03-08T14:10:08.017" LastActivityDate="2018-03-09T09:45:22.590" Title="Use cases for read-only screen" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23669" CreationDate="2018-03-08T09:30:14.223" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gantt_chart&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;GANTT&lt;/a&gt; charts are the most effective ways to communicate project schedule. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31431" LastActivityDate="2018-03-08T09:30:14.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16715" CreationDate="2018-03-08T13:19:09.090" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You made one mistake in organizing with the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, you need this stuff:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;have to break down the requirements, create task, estimate and distribute them. In other words, this means that you have to&#xA;create the Sprint Backlog.( with the product owner and investor)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;have to &lt;strong&gt;perform the short&lt;/strong&gt; Daily Sprint Meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;have to ensure that at the end of the Sprint potentially shippable functionality is delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;have to update the status and the remaining efforts for their tasks to allow the creation of a Sprint Burndown Diagram (A Sprint Burndown Diagram is very important)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31737" LastActivityDate="2018-03-08T13:19:09.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23685" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-03-08T16:05:48.033" Score="-1" ViewCount="61" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a PM I constantly struggle to shuffle information about used-up and remaining time budgets between customer and development team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After receiving a job from the customer, and after detailing it with the customer, I ask the team for a more or less rough estimate of how long this will take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I there an existing online (preferrably self-hosted) solution, which allows me to enter a new task, assign a time budget to this task, then have each team member book his or her time spent on the budget &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; allowing a customer &quot;view only&quot; access? Basically, a &lt;em&gt;water level meter&lt;/em&gt; view for the remaining time on a task so I (and everyone else involved) can get an early warning system for tasks that are going over-time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit 1:&#xA;I meant it to look kind of like this for the client / me, the PM:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BXFQY.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BXFQY.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit 2:&#xA;Sometimes, making a clean visualization for oneself is half the task done.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jsfiddle.net/8c5p73L4/6/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This is the idea I just got making the above drawing, using the Google Charts javascript&lt;/a&gt;:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4Urqe.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4Urqe.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if only I'd know enough javascript to make this more user friendly, eg. have a place for the team to enter a value, add it, then re-generate the chart. Sigh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31745" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2018-03-09T18:44:29.667" LastActivityDate="2018-03-09T18:44:29.667" Title="Time-budget tracking monitoring for PM and client" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;budget&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23669" CreationDate="2018-03-08T16:11:20.197" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If he (client) wants to basically know where you are at on the project you can make one &lt;strong&gt;weekly&lt;/strong&gt; product burndown chart. I will give you one template &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/34sbl.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/34sbl.png&quot; alt=&quot;You need to have a good backlog and deadline for a project.&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31737" LastActivityDate="2018-03-08T16:11:20.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23685" CreationDate="2018-03-08T18:32:03.597" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you want to use the Earned Value Management technique in order to keep updated the budget. See the wiki &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_value_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; to understand why I refer to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5626" LastActivityDate="2018-03-08T18:32:03.597" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23688" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-03-09T06:47:43.583" Score="3" ViewCount="241" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, the problem, from the management perspective is that a Scrum Team delivers only the simplest stories within the whole Sprint. Literally, changing a button takes two weeks. The Team estimates within a stable velocity, and mostly delivers everything that they commit to successfully. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I (a Scrum Master) have many suspicions why that is so, however I'd like to hear these problems directly from the Development Team. Do you have any tips on how to tackle this problem? What retrospective activities should I prepare for the Team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clarify: I'm more than sure that the problem lies within the development process rather than an overall unwillingness to work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31746" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-03-14T13:14:28.017" LastActivityDate="2018-03-15T03:20:00.533" Title="Team needs a lot of time to deliver even the simplest stories- how to know why?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23688" CreationDate="2018-03-09T09:24:16.367" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that you are right &amp;amp; you need to ask the development team for advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could be that what is delivered is all the team is capable of - but I guess that is not what you think. So for some reason you think the team velocity is too low &amp;amp; you could be right but before anyone blow's a fuse I'll put a quote at the end to demonstrate why velocity can be wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To solve the problem, firstly, you could have the next sprint(s) solely focused on this question. You will need to speak to the product owner but I'm sure they will be keen to get more work delivered so this approach may quickly pay for itself. So have the next sprint focused on improving velocity &amp;amp; ask the developers how this can be achieved. &lt;strong&gt;Don't try to tell the developers what to do, ask them what can be done&lt;/strong&gt;. You may be surprised at the outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could be that the continuous integration/deployment processes take too long or that QA has a backlog or the team were once told that velocity when it settles down should always be the same - any number of reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Mike Cohn's book on 'Agile Estimating &amp;amp; Planning' he makes the following point to illustrate why &lt;strong&gt;if you plan too far in advance &amp;amp; use ideal days you could be measuring velocity wrongly&lt;/strong&gt; in the chapter 'Choosing between story points &amp;amp; ideal days' (don't know your setup so this is for information):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;An estimate in ideal days can change based on the team's experience&#xA;  with the technology, the domain, and themselves, among other factors.&#xA;  To see why, suppose a programmer is learning a new language and is&#xA;  asked how long it will take to program a small application. His answer&#xA;  may be five days. Now jump forward a few months and ask the same&#xA;  programmer how long it will take to develop an application that is&#xA;  exactly the same size and complexity. His answer may be one day&#xA;  because he has become more skilled in the language. We have a&#xA;  [relative] problem now ... we would like to think that measuring velocity over time would correct or account for this problem. It won't. &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask the developers they will have the answer.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="693" LastActivityDate="2018-03-09T09:24:16.367" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23681" CreationDate="2018-03-09T09:45:22.590" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In terms of use cases your 'assess rental achievement' seems fine (perhaps monitor rather than assess?) - I guess the acceptance criteria is where you will flesh out your KPIs for this screen so that you can logically keep all your detail about this screen in one use case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Detailing this seems to logically fall into acceptance criterias so &lt;strong&gt;I would suggest acceptance criteria like 'test that user can see all rents achieved', 'test that user can filter by country state', 'test that user can sort information up/down by clicking on column headers' and so on.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be that these acceptance criteria then naturally pan out as user stories: 'as an administrator I can see all rents achieved', as an administrator I can filter by country state so that I can focus on problem areas' and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="693" LastActivityDate="2018-03-09T09:45:22.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23691" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-03-09T17:45:21.793" Score="0" ViewCount="630" Body="&lt;p&gt;A resource is assigned to an automatically scheduled task with start date: 2/12 and finish date:2/22.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The baselined, saved and published project is scheduled to finish 2/23. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The resource does not start work on the task until 2/15 and submits a timesheet on 2/16 reflecting the hours worked only on 2/15. (&lt;em&gt;for example 0h was not entered for 2/12-2/14, if that matters&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The task update is approved by the Project Manager in PWA (project web app), and publishes the timesheet.  But later notices in MS project professional that the scheduled finish date of the project has automatically changed to 2/28, because the duration of the task automatically increased; causing re-work to readjust the schedule, tasks, predecessors, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please, How can this be prevented? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31753" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-14T13:19:57.663" LastActivityDate="2020-10-05T17:03:45.487" Title="Task update approvals on a PWA Timesheet automatically changes MS Project duration on task and overall finish date for Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23688" CreationDate="2018-03-10T15:12:40.500" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...a lot of time to deliver even the simplest stories&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only the development team knows what constitutes a simple story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The time it takes to deliver a story depends on a lot of factors, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The quality of the existing codebase&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Operational constraints, such as organisation standards, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How high the quality target is&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Non-functional requirements such as performance, responsiveness, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much control the team has over design and architecture&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master I would be &lt;em&gt;very careful&lt;/em&gt; about second-guessing the capacity of the delivery team. Instead I would be looking for issues to be raised by the team in retrospectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they are not raising impediments then it may be they are not constrained. Alternatively, they may feel that some impediments are not solvable or there are other reasons why impediments can't be discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion would be to organise a retrospective where the team categorises all impediments according to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If we had infinite amount of time, what impediments would we resolve?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If we had better skills or capability, what impediments would we address?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If we could tell the organisation outside the team to fix something, what would it be?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make it clear that absolutely everything is in scope for the discussion. Also, make it fun by talking about an 'dream scenario' where they have the power to do whatever they want to make things better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Do not set the scene by talking about the team under-delivering&lt;/em&gt;. This is likely to make them defensive. Instead, focus on making the retrospective positive and empowering for the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-03-10T15:12:40.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23694" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24217" CreationDate="2018-03-10T16:36:00.293" Score="3" ViewCount="102" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if this is the right stackexchange-side to ask this question but lets see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is what measurement-methods are there in the Lean-Startup-Method? Unfortunately I haven't really found anything useful by googling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this question is too broad, could you please send me some links to some good sides which have some posts about this topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31757" LastActivityDate="2018-06-12T16:01:49.960" Title="Lean Startup - Which measurement-methods are there?" Tags="&lt;startup&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23694" CreationDate="2018-03-12T15:45:36.480" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There isn't really a set of measurements for Lean Startup. In general, it stresses that good metrics are ones that help you learn something and &quot;vanity metrics&quot; should be avoided at all costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What those measures are exactly depends on your business. &lt;a href=&quot;https://tim.blog/2009/05/19/vanity-metrics-vs-actionable-metrics/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt;, however, can give some guidance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-03-12T15:45:36.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23688" CreationDate="2018-03-13T16:01:20.210" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've worked with some complex systems and workflows which required multiple levels of sign-off for even adding the simplest of features - e.g. a Refresh button within the application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having some understanding of the complexity will allow you to see where the delays or inefficiencies are - if indeed there are any. It's quite possible that the teams' work is being broken down along silo boundaries and getting sign-off for each silo is what is slow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some questions I'd ask the team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;How&lt;/em&gt; could we break down User Stories in a way which means that we can deliver more value per Story for a similar cost?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What changes could we make to our work style or team setup to expedite/optimise the slowest parts of the process?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="101" LastActivityDate="2018-03-13T16:01:20.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23670" CreationDate="2018-03-13T16:08:35.693" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Release is of a Product that is used by Users. If the Components in your Release are individually releasable, consider multiple releases. Otherwise, it's a release of a single product with details of a number of changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Releases have costs associated; release too frequently and your users will disengage as they get overwhelmed with all the noise about releases. Not releasing frequently enough will risk disengagement due to perceived lack of progress. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Product Owner should have usage metrics and/or hypotheses that can gauge user engagement over time; releases will show deltas in user engagement - increases overall, shifts from older features to new features or reduced overall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work with the Product Owner to determine the right cadence for release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've got an understanding of the frequency and type of releases, it'll be clear what to call them. In the mean time, Product-Major-Minor is sufficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="101" LastActivityDate="2018-03-13T16:08:35.693" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23671" CreationDate="2018-03-13T16:20:04.487" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One technique is to estimate the cost/effort/time to deliver on each piece of work. Let say you use units of person-days where 1 person day is $1000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some pieces of work can be worked on by more than one person - &quot;build a new training room&quot; could be the whole team working together, &quot;design a new logo&quot; is probably one or two people maximum. For each piece of work, note the likely number of people that would be effective to get that work done, between 1 and number of team members minus 1 (see below).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could give them your capacity - let's say your team is 5 people and you're all in at least 4 days a week (average subtracting vacation time, sickness, training, travel, interruptions, etc). So that's 5 x 4 = $20,000 budget per week. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, they want a new website set up and the last one took 12 person weeks, you can put a dollar value of 12 x 4 x $1000 = $48,000. If 2 people can work on it, it'll take half the time, but the cost is the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask the customer to prioritise the work once they've seen the 'cost' of each piece of work and how quickly it could be delivered. As they get to understand that some types of work cost more than others, they'll begin to focus on what yields better business value to them, trim the irrelevant stuff and are more likely work with you to make the best use of everyone's time and money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="101" LastActivityDate="2018-03-13T16:20:04.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23670" CreationDate="2018-03-13T20:44:37.857" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer for this question is, at the end, dependent on how you'll use this information. So, why do you have versions at all? You have to think about this before asking how to manage versions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think a bit longer. Get the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Got it? Ok. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Disclaimer... this answer may NOT fit your need)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a project management perspective, what you &lt;em&gt;usually&lt;/em&gt; want to know is &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; has been released &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt;. Understanding a 'release' as &lt;em&gt;what versions your application had at a specific point in time&lt;/em&gt;, it makes sense to have releases component-agnostic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my project, we have around 90+ components and UAT releases every week - after a few cycles, they go to PROD. How do we track them? There's a weekly release ID, and we have (yes, I know, it'll sound cumbersome) Confluence entry where we list all the &lt;em&gt;component-specific versions&lt;/em&gt; present on this release... and in this point, our approach diverge from the one proposed by Alexey, as each component has a specific build number regardless of the release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our Confluence would look like this (in bold, the component changes at each iteration):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Release 1.0.0:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Theme-Release-2.3.0&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;LabmdaFuncA-Release-1.9.0&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;NewComponentA-Release-1.0.0&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Release 1.0.1:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Theme-Release-2.4.0&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;LabmdaFuncA-Release-1.9.0&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;NewComponentA-Release-1.0.0&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;NewComponentB-Release-1.0.0&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Release 1.0.2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Theme-Release-2.5.0&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;LabmdaFuncA-Release-2.0.0&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;NewComponentA-Release-1.0.0&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NewComponentB-Release-1.1.0&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2018-03-13T20:44:37.857" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23671" CreationDate="2018-03-13T20:56:43.770" Score="1" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Time is a matter of priority.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; do everything the client needs... you just need to negotiate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As per the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Project Management Triange&lt;/a&gt;, if you fix two variables, you'll vary the other. You just need to negotiate where the client wants to compromise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The client should either rely on your opinion or dive into the details... and are hard the clients interested to know why a class needs to be refactored just to add a new button on the screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, maybe the client is asking what need to be done to start delivering more - &lt;strong&gt;use this as an opportunity!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ehIkw.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ehIkw.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Too busy to work&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-03-13T20:56:43.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23704" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-03-14T00:43:26.957" Score="0" ViewCount="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, our development team had a discussion about the conversion of one of our oldest applications. The application is one of the core systems of the company but there are modules that are irrelevant and are no longer in used. We are planning to convert the application by using a new framework and, at the same time, remove all unneeded modules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We don't have a project manager that will lead us on how we are going to start. Just hearing suggestions from anyone in the team makes me worried about the direction of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to take the initiative to lead but I don't have a solid idea and experience to make the project move on. So here I am seeking for your help. Any suggestions, comments, or links that will direct me to handling the project. Is there any template or guidelines that I can use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31789" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-03-14T13:09:21.123" LastActivityDate="2018-03-14T13:09:21.123" Title="Application Conversion" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23705" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-03-14T07:17:14.137" Score="5" ViewCount="253" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are currently doing Scrum in a trading environment, our sprints are a week long, the problem is that due to Change requests from trading activity during the sprint it is impossible to have a sprint backlog that is protected. The sprint backlog often gets changed mid week leading to it becoming a waterfall timeboxed sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am now not sure if Scrum is the right approach but keen to set this project up so that it is run in an agile way, what would you recommend? Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2018-03-14T12:30:59.480" Title="Agile in a volatile environment?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23705" CreationDate="2018-03-14T09:30:43.617" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not enough information to make a clear recommendation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In principle it's possible that your environment runs on a faster beat than a week. If your tasks are all a matter of hours then yes, you might be better served with something like Kanban.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another way to look at it is that a Sprint should be terminated if its goal no longer makes sense. If the changes in the business situation have truly invalidated the course you've selected for your sprint then it should be terminated. However if this continues to happen then that again indicates that your environment is too short lived for Scrum to work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Far more common however is the case that your stakeholders simply don't &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to wait. With one week sprints I'd expect your stories to fall into the range of one to a few weeks in length most of the time. In such a scenario pushing such a story into development a few days early makes little difference in time to completion and is nothing more than a power demonstration. In this case it falls to the PO and the SM to put their foot down for the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2018-03-14T09:30:43.617" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23705" CreationDate="2018-03-14T12:30:59.480" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your sprint is only one week already and even that is frequently interrupted by high-priority changes, you aren't running a project business where you implement planned features, you are running a reactive, support/helpdesk style team (that maybe once in a while is able to finish a planned feature if business is slow otherwise). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is indeed not the best option. Look into Kanban instead. It's similar in some regards, but a better fit if your team is &lt;em&gt;reacting&lt;/em&gt; instead of &lt;em&gt;acting&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2018-03-14T12:30:59.480" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23704" CreationDate="2018-03-14T13:08:44.777" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Completely rewriting an application is a bad idea&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Spolsky&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Joel Spolsky&lt;/a&gt; founder of Stack Overflow, Stack Exchange and Trello in his blog post titled &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Things You Should Never Do&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;deciding to rewrite the code from scratch... is the single worst strategic mistake that any software company can make&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He goes on to give the reasons why:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There’s a subtle reason that programmers always want to throw away the&#xA;  code and start over. The reason is that they think the old code is a&#xA;  mess. And here is the interesting observation: they are probably&#xA;  wrong. The reason that they think the old code is a mess is because of&#xA;  a cardinal, fundamental law of programming:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It’s harder to read code than to write it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The idea that new code is better than old is patently absurd. Old code&#xA;  has been used. It has been tested. Lots of bugs have been found, and&#xA;  they’ve been fixed. There’s nothing wrong with it. It doesn’t acquire&#xA;  bugs just by sitting around on your hard drive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When you throw away code and start from scratch, you are throwing away&#xA;  all that knowledge. All those collected bug fixes. Years of&#xA;  programming work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead he recommends rewriting parts of the application to make specific improvements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even fairly major architectural changes can be done without throwing&#xA;  away the code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A second reason programmers think that their code is a mess is that it&#xA;  is inefficient... But this only affects a small part of the project,&#xA;  which you can optimize or even rewrite. You don’t have to rewrite the&#xA;  whole thing. When optimizing for speed, 1% of the work gets you 99% of&#xA;  the bang.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2018-03-14T13:08:44.777" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23688" CreationDate="2018-03-14T15:17:19.690" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My initial thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The product owner should be working with the team to put highest value items at the top of the backlog. Is this happening? If not, the scrum master (you) should be coaching the product owner to manage the backlog so the team does the most important work first.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As the scrum master, you should focus a retrospective meeting around the topic of how to deliver more over the long run. I would suggest a brainstorming meeting, perhaps a lean coffee format, and ask them to brainstorm two things. a. what they can change that's within the teams control. What they would change if they could change anything in the company or organization. If you ask the team, they will most likely tell you. Just be prepared to help them act upon the recommendations and get support from &quot;the management&quot; ahead of time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31452" LastActivityDate="2018-03-14T15:17:19.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23688" CreationDate="2018-03-15T03:20:00.533" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with &quot;ask the development team&quot;, but I would ask &quot;Do you think we can increase our velocity? If so, how?&quot; rather than &quot;why does it take so long to deliver a simple story&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, this is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.targetprocess.com/articles/speed-in-software-development/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a good article with a fabulous diagram&lt;/a&gt; that could frame a discussion about increasing velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2018-03-15T03:20:00.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23711" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23716" CreationDate="2018-03-15T05:45:29.903" Score="0" ViewCount="509" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can a single developer work on two different projects/backlogs completely independent in two Sprints (One Sprint is for one project/one sprint for the other) in the same timeline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31805" LastActivityDate="2018-03-15T11:55:10.877" Title="Can one developer work on two different projects (and in effect, two different backlogs) in a single Sprint? Any Agile recommendations on this?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23711" CreationDate="2018-03-15T05:55:07.550" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, a developer could work on two sprints at the same time in an agile project, each sprint being for different projects with different backlogs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your environment, this may not be the most efficient use of the developers time though. Often, working on one project at a time allows faster development due to focus. It then shortens your feedback cycle, allowing you to iterate. If you are juggling two different projects, giving a sprint on, followed by a sprint off may allow your product owner to get the feedback they need from live users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also not uncommon for a single developer to integrate two projects into a single backlog, making it in effect one sprint. That allows you to prioritize the work across the two projects (because it is in a single backlog.) The main requirement to do that would be that both projects share the same product owner to prevent distraction from setting priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11976" LastActivityDate="2018-03-15T05:55:07.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23711" CreationDate="2018-03-15T07:16:11.050" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several problems with a developer working on more than one sprint. These include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What happens if Team A needs the developer desperately, but they are busy with Team B? There will need to be a mechanism to prioritise the developers time across the two teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Capacity planning becomes more complicated for both Scrum teams. How much of this developers time will they have? Will it always be consistent?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A lot of Scrum is based on the concept of being a &lt;em&gt;fully committed team member&lt;/em&gt;. If one Scrum Team is having trouble, the developer can simply say &quot;it's not my fault, I was busy working for the other team&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may also be some advantages; for example the developer may help to spread knowledge across the two teams. However, generally it is seen as a bad idea because of the concerns mentioned above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-03-15T07:16:11.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23714" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23717" CreationDate="2018-03-15T07:33:01.443" Score="0" ViewCount="731" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new to MS Project and already asked a question here that revealed my incomplete knowledge of the scheduling process. After reading &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/setting-tasks-expected-finish-clumsy-hammock-project-farrelle/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;some articles&lt;/a&gt; and watching &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmNoWjF-I6Y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;videos like this one&lt;/a&gt;, I think of myself as being a few steps closer to get the grasp of the scheduling in MS Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I am still not sure how to go about the following example: A supplier sends an email confirming my inquiry and includes a date of delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do I incorporate the delivery date into the schedule, but make the task automatically planned?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this is a little unspecific, but I feel like an example would help me a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: The following works, I am not sure if this is OK though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Setting the task as manually planned (duration stays estimated)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Link the start date (duration stays estimated, end date is adjusted)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Enter the scheduled end date (duration changes value and from estimated to fixed)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Turn the task into automatically planned (duration stays fixed)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31785" LastEditorUserId="31785" LastEditDate="2018-03-15T12:50:27.473" LastActivityDate="2018-03-15T13:20:30.837" Title="How to work with estimated end dates in MS Project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23711" CreationDate="2018-03-15T11:55:10.877" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing specifically stated against it in &lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;; the closest statement to barring it would be &lt;code&gt;Cross-functional teams have all competencies needed to accomplish the work without depending on others not part of the team.&lt;/code&gt;.  It would definitely violate two of the five values: Commitment and Focus.  It could also increase difficulties with empiricism: Transparency, Inspection, and Adaptation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2018-03-15T11:55:10.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23714" CreationDate="2018-03-15T13:20:30.837" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For an external task that you are not managing and not collecting cost or progress data, you can use a milestone to reflect receipt of the product from the external vendor.  A milestone has a zero duration.  If it were my schedule, I would capture the milestone description as &quot;Receipt of product A from vendor X&quot; and hard code a date as agreed upon between me and the vendor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That hard coded date will be baselined so the baseline date will not change unless through the change process.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That milestone would be a predecessor to whatever subsequent work packages I have that is dependent upon that product from that vendor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we progress towards that date, I would request status updates from the vendor to validate that the promised delivery date still holds.  Since I would not be validating progress in anyway, then I have inherent risk to the delivery date and would have contingency plans ready in the event that date comes and goes and no delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If during a progress update the vendor tells me he is slipping delivery by five days, I would hard code the new delivery date into the schedule (baseline remains the same so the FV (finish variance) will show the slip) and all the successor packages will move to the right accordingly, based on my schedule network, and the schedule will reveal the new start and end dates of all the packages and the final milestone.  Then, I would mitigate the finish variances where I can, communicate the slippage to all my stakeholders, and continue executing my project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may not be the most glamorous way of handling it but it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-03-15T13:20:30.837" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23718" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-03-15T15:46:27.727" Score="2" ViewCount="573" Body="&lt;p&gt;I noticed that Scrum boards have the following columns, the one I am asking about is the 1st column &quot;Stories&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before a Sprint begins, you take stories from the Product Backlog that you will work on and complete during the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When exactly do you break the tasks out for each story?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does everyone break stories out into tasks?  Is this specific to Scrum and not say kanban?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pBqwG.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pBqwG.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31816" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2018-03-15T20:30:41.690" LastActivityDate="2018-03-16T16:12:46.833" Title="How are user stories and tasks managed in Scrum" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23718" CreationDate="2018-03-15T16:04:11.330" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is just one way to lay out a board in Scrum, but it is a common way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, they do not say that you have to use tasks. However, Part 2 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-planning&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sprint Planning&lt;/a&gt; is where the team comes up with the plan on how they will deliver on the sprint backlog, so I would expect the tasks to emerge there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does everyone break stories out into tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you mean &quot;Do all teams break stories into tasks?&quot; the answer is no. Some teams do not use tasks and that is fine. When I coach teams that don't, I do keep a close eye on how well they are able to plan to deliver stories without them. Some teams do this fine, some don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you mean &quot;Are all dev team members involved in task breakdown&quot; the answer is yes. This promotes shared code ownership. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this specific to scrum and not say kanban?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not specific to Scrum. I see XP teams do this as well as other non-scrum frameworks. That said, I would not expect to see this in Kanban. Kanban has a lot of focus on the flow of the backlog item (story in this picture) through the process. I'm sure there is some team out there effectively using tasks in Kanban, but when I've seen teams try it they usually find it is more confusing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-03-15T16:04:11.330" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23718" CreationDate="2018-03-15T20:30:42.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've setup quite a few scrum teams using kanban boards. We typically use a column for stories that aren't started. Then a column for in progress, in test, and done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every story should have a description about &quot;what&quot; is being requested with a clear definition of done listed on the card. Typically tasks are details about &quot;how&quot; the work will be done. I've had best luck with leaving the tasking up to the team. Many teams write (non-value adding) tasks like &quot;do the work&quot; or &quot;test the feature&quot;. If your definition of done is a checklist of things to be done for acceptance of the story, then you can eliminate the extra management of separate cards for tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/sZXkN.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/sZXkN.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31452" LastActivityDate="2018-03-15T20:30:42.000" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23718" CreationDate="2018-03-16T11:45:13.527" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regardless of how the effort is organized, approached, and executed within the framework, Scrum helps to expose the opportunities for improvement.  If/How/When a team decides to use tasks, user stories, and other techniques is at the core of self-organization which is a Scrum requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum makes clear the relative efficacy of your product management and work techniques so that you can continuously improve the product, the team, and the working environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take some time to read and understand &lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; and its &lt;a href=&quot;https://drive.google.com/open?id=1QlKHX0aZ7IulpN2nHWouQyimtBmv6KFN&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;history&lt;/a&gt;.  There are many sources out there providing information as &quot;&lt;em&gt;Scrum&lt;/em&gt;&quot; that present common practices as rule; some information is entirely inaccurate.  As a framework, Scrum does not prescribe many details; it provides a structure within and upon teams can execute complex work using their choice of tools and processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User Stories are a concept from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;eXtreme Programming&lt;/a&gt;.  They have lost their &lt;a href=&quot;https://ronjeffries.com/xprog/articles/expcardconversationconfirmation/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;original intent&lt;/a&gt; and often become traditional requirements.  Product Backlog items can be represented in any format with the &quot;As a, I need, So that&quot; User Story or the &lt;a href=&quot;https://jtbd.info/replacing-the-user-story-with-the-job-story-af7cdee10c27&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Job Story&lt;/a&gt; formats being common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concept and use of a &quot;Scrum Board&quot; is common, yet not a requirement.  It comes from kanban in manufacturing.  A kanban board is used for tracking progress through many steps in a process in order to locate and address inefficiencies.  Continuous Flow Diagrams (&lt;a href=&quot;http://brodzinski.com/2013/07/cumulative-flow-diagram.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CFD&lt;/a&gt;) are a common tool to discover such inefficiencies.  Within the Scrum framework a Product Backlog item is either 'Done' or not.  Ideally only three kanban columns are needed and used: To Do, In Progress, Done.  Additional columns may indicate processes that are still based in separate sub-teams&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; or not using best practice techniques such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules/testfirst.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;test-first&lt;/a&gt; including unit and or acceptance test driven development.  CFDs can help identify such opportunities for improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tasks are another common practice from traditional project management&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; where work items were often still somewhat relatively large efforts.  The details, tasks, were left to those executing those specific activities within the line item.  Creating Product Backlog items that are thin, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deltamatrix.com/horizontal-and-vertical-user-stories-slicing-the-cake/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;vertical slices&lt;/a&gt; of functionality is often preferred to tasks.  Tasks can once again be an indicator of sub-teams.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;code&gt;Scrum recognizes no sub-teams in the Development Team, regardless of domains that need to be addressed like testing, architecture, operations, or business analysis;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;Project Management being based upon and often still rooted in manufacturing.  Thus Scrum's pro&lt;strong&gt;du&lt;/strong&gt;ct focus.  (Yes, Scrum was based on lessons from Toyata so it's not completely divorced from manufacturing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Join me in &lt;a href=&quot;https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/72894/scrum-framework&quot;&gt;chat&lt;/a&gt; if you are interested in learning more.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-03-16T16:12:46.833" LastActivityDate="2018-03-16T16:12:46.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23722" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23728" CreationDate="2018-03-16T23:22:35.133" Score="-1" ViewCount="376" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are working with two main branches in our project, a development branch and a production branch. All production fixes get their own hotfix branch, which is then merged back into the development branch when all tests pass and the customer/client validates the ticket is correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, sometimes the merging step doesn't happen until later. The consequence of this is that at times the merging step is forgotten. Right now we track the hotfix ticket in JIRA but nothing really tracks the merging part of the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be a good way to track the merging step for a hotfix? We could do a sub-task in the original ticket but that would mean that ticket can't be closed till the merging happens. Would a new ticket just to track this merging step be the right way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31827" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-03-19T13:21:30.293" LastActivityDate="2018-03-19T13:21:30.293" Title="Best practice for tracking merging hotfixes" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23723" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-03-17T12:55:13.660" Score="0" ViewCount="850" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am having a tough time trying to solve the question given below&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Uq3DM.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Uq3DM.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am supposed to find the critical path but not able to draw the network diagram.&#xA;Any help would be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31832" LastActivityDate="2018-03-19T12:31:21.627" Title="How to solve the project network diagram" Tags="&lt;critical-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23724" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23725" CreationDate="2018-03-17T17:03:04.877" Score="0" ViewCount="165" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is having a “definition of done” required in Scrum, or is it optional? According to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.crisp.se/gratis-material-och-guider/scrum-checklist&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Checklist&lt;/a&gt;, it is required and we can't call our methodology &quot;Scrum&quot; without one. I would like to know if that is true according to primary sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31835" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-03-19T17:50:17.533" LastActivityDate="2018-03-19T17:50:17.533" Title="Is the “definition of done” required in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;definition-of-done&gt;&lt;frameworks&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23724" CreationDate="2018-03-17T17:23:46.057" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, the official Scrum framework requires a Definition of Done. You cannot claim to be using the official Scrum framework without defining and using one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Framework Sources&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; is the definition resource describing the formal framework. While Scrum is quite flexible, elements such as the Definition of Done are not optional. The guide's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#endnote&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;End Note&lt;/a&gt; specifically says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum’s roles, events, artifacts, and rules are immutable and although implementing only parts of Scrum is possible, the result is not Scrum. Scrum exists only in its entirety[.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&quot;Definition of Done&quot; is a Required Artifact&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the section on artifacts, the Scrum Guide clearly articulates that an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#artifacts-increment&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;increment&lt;/a&gt; must meet the team's definition of done:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the end of a Sprint, the new Increment must be &quot;Done,&quot; which means it must be in useable condition and meet the Scrum Team’s definition of &quot;Done&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The guide further devotes an entire section about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#artifact-transparency&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;artifact transparency&lt;/a&gt; to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#artifact-transparency-done&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Definition of Done&lt;/a&gt;. That section says, in part:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When a Product Backlog item or an Increment is described as &quot;Done&quot;, everyone must understand what &quot;Done&quot; means. Although this may vary significantly per Scrum Team, members must have a shared understanding of what it means for work to be complete, to ensure transparency. This is the definition of &quot;Done&quot; for the Scrum Team and is used to assess when work is complete on the product Increment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-03-17T17:23:46.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23723" CreationDate="2018-03-19T12:31:21.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Why Test Questions and Homework Questions Like This Are Bad&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, the only &quot;correct&quot; answer is the one that your teacher (or the test designer) says is correct. Your question is a great example of why: the activity-on-node diagram that results is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; an acyclic digraph, and is therefore ambiguous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the &quot;correct&quot; answer for the question was not provided in your class materials or lectures, one has to make the assumption that Activity 3 is actually the terminal node to avoid a loop. This may or may not be correct, but ringing an answer with assumptions is often part of the project management process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A Reasonable Solution&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given your data, you should come up with the following diagram:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dQdJC.png&quot; alt=&quot;Activity-on-Node Diagram&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because more activities point to &quot;3&quot; than &quot;4&quot;, we're going to assume that's the terminal node and that the loop at the end resolves as &lt;code&gt;4 -&amp;gt; 3&lt;/code&gt; rather than continuing to cycle. If you want to make other assumptions, go right ahead; just recalculate your path accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the assumptions stated, the longest path from 1..3 is &lt;code&gt;1 -&amp;gt; 2 -&amp;gt; 3 -&amp;gt; 4 -&amp;gt; 3&lt;/code&gt;, which yields a total duration of 46. No path (other than a continuous loop) that leads to 4 as the terminal activity is longer, so this is as reasonable an answer as any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's the answer a professional like me would give if the ambiguity couldn't be resolved beforehand. However, as noted above, its &quot;correctness&quot; for test purposes will be entirely at the whim of your professor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-03-19T12:31:21.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23722" CreationDate="2018-03-19T13:17:03.133" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What my Team does is we have a status (and a column) for both 'Waiting for Merge' and 'Merged'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We could do a sub-task in the original ticket but that would mean that ticket can't be closed till the merging happens&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see why you would &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; the issue to be 'Done' before all the work needed for it to go live is &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt;. Do you have a Definition of Done? If not, your Team should develop one, and consider putting 'Merged to Production Branch' as part of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-03-19T13:17:03.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23731" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-03-20T10:51:17.310" Score="0" ViewCount="117" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Senior Manager (SM) has 3 Leads in his team. Person A commits to any work given at any time and is so dedicated that he does overtime as necessary get the work done. Person B &amp;amp; Person C do their work well but are very systematic and procedural. Hence, B &amp;amp; C accept work based on their load and deliver as agreed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the SM expects B &amp;amp; C to work the same as A. Is this expectation correct? If so,  who has to change? A, or B and C?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31861" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-03-20T13:13:14.153" LastActivityDate="2018-03-20T15:13:03.380" Title="Should all team members be expected to do the same amount of overtime?" Tags="&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23731" CreationDate="2018-03-20T13:37:02.350" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;who has to change?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Manager...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;B&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;C&lt;/em&gt; have all been hired for X hours per week. From your description they are all doing that. &lt;em&gt;A&lt;/em&gt; just does more on top of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few considerations that go beyond what is apparent from your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is not unreasonable to expect employees to put in additional work, to help the team/company out of a tight spot.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;But the ability of each individual worker to do that differs. Not everyone is in place socially, mentally, health-wise where they can keep up with the load your manager would prefer them to take on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your description also does not specify whether they would be compensated for this additional work or would have the opportunity to take time off later to compensate. If neither of these applies you are effectively short changing your employees on the deal you've made when you hired them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Overtime tends to not be sustainable for most people. Overtime is like a loan. It gets you a substantial increase in funds right now but eventually you'll have to start paying it back. I think most people have - after a while in the workforce - seen someone who exemplifies the difference between working longer and accomplishing more.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your description does not address how much work &lt;em&gt;A&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;B&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;C&lt;/em&gt; actually get done. It focusses entirely on the fact that &lt;em&gt;A&lt;/em&gt; never says no to more work but &lt;em&gt;B&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;C&lt;/em&gt; do. Which might be a poor evaluation of actual performance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2018-03-20T13:37:02.350" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23733" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-03-20T14:38:08.753" Score="1" ViewCount="139" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a team that consists from consultants and permanent staff. The consultants have an idea of what scrum is, but they do zombie scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The agile coach has identified that this team really needs help but they are very distant and do not include him in their meetings. Also, this is a water-scrum-fall team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other teams around the agile coach have benefited from his advice and have made advancements in their agile implementation, but this one resists, because they do things their own way. Since there is a collaboration amongst other teams, this team is impeding further advancements in the whole area, such as going end to end and complete autonomy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should the agile coach wait for the to ask for help, and just point out the things he thinks could help (even if they never do for the next few months), or should he be more authoritative and dictate the way they should work, in order to facilitate a broader agile adoption?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5522" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2018-03-20T16:27:31.023" LastActivityDate="2018-03-20T17:03:15.643" Title="Team refusing the help of the agile coach" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11888" CreationDate="2018-03-20T14:47:33.277" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any metric which is related to code like LOC, code quality(sonar cube), bugs, and etc is very bad. Either if you find some metric system which is working in one team it will be not working in a different team.&#xA;Also, Developers always want to hack/crack performance metrics (because it will part of their work - to solve complex tasks).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From technology part I can suggest only SOLID principles - Does team really write good code which is easy to maintain(80-90% of time developers are maintain code).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there is a good approach from google:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;google measure performance based on self-training and educational tasks. Every developer should choose which area he/she will improve in next 6 months. And after that manager/team lead will check on one on one meeting which progress was made.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Calculate contribution of each developer in improving technology process. Like CI/CD, training for a team and etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.quora.com/How-do-tech-companies-like-Google-measure-the-performance-of-their-engineers-or-software-developers-Are-they-measured-by-their-coding-skills-productivity-feedback-from-customers-etc-What-kind-of-people-can-likely-get-promoted&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.quora.com/How-do-tech-companies-like-Google-measure-the-performance-of-their-engineers-or-software-developers-Are-they-measured-by-their-coding-skills-productivity-feedback-from-customers-etc-What-kind-of-people-can-likely-get-promoted&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But still, this very depends on the type of task. If you are working as an outsourcer - probably you can try to find something measurable. If you working in product company with a long-life product better to measure long-time improving a whole team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31523" LastActivityDate="2018-03-20T14:47:33.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23731" CreationDate="2018-03-20T15:07:22.223" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Managers seem to gravitate towards heroic performance because of our collective, albeit unreliable, attachment we have placed on it with superior outcomes.  It looks fantastic, so it must follow that fantastic things will come of it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is heroic performance does not lead to heroic results all the time.  It can be costly, risky, and is rarely to never sustainable, predictable, repeatable, and replaceable.  Heroic performance is served best when applied to chaos, the heat of the battle kind of thing, but chaos is not a working environment that we want.  It happens, we cope, and we hopefully return to normal conditions as quickly as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we need, in both operations and projects, from our enabling resources--including human talent--is reliable, repeatable, predictable, sustainable, replaceable, transferable and very average performance that yields outcomes consistent with predetermined specifications of performance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the limited OP write-up, I am not going to pass judgment that either A, B, or C is operating in this manner.  There are a lot of variables that have to be understood to understand the benefits and costs of how each person is operating.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I think the underlying issue here is a psychological one, in terms of the sweet gravitational pull of heroic behavior.  What has to change is more about an organizational understanding of what constitutes a mature operation or project and what employee behaviors would be consistent with that maturity.  Heroic behaviors of a few signal an immature project construct, chaos, high risk, and low confidence of delivery.  I would not attack the heroic behavior per se but would look at all the rest of the capability drivers at play, e.g., tools, processes and procedures, training, skill sets, staff size, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2018-03-20T15:13:03.380" LastActivityDate="2018-03-20T15:13:03.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23733" CreationDate="2018-03-20T16:39:50.983" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Senior management is in need of your coaching the most&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You described the process in this organization as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;this is a water-scrum-fall team&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means the upstream processes namely requirements gathering and related processes are traditional. The downstream processes are also traditional, namely code is released to production at infrequent intervals. Just the in-between development process is Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since there is a collaboration amongst other teams, this team is&#xA;  impeding further advancements in the whole area&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Isn't it surprising to you that senior management has not stepped in when one team is impeding the rest of the organization?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given this setup, it seems to me that senior management needs to understand the value and need for Agile/Scrum. Once you get the senior management buy-in, you may be able to persuade the teams to follow suit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the meantime, it is better not to bad mouth the existing processes as &quot;zombie scrum&quot; and so on. That is not a great way to start building trust with the team. The team most likely has organizational constraints that they cannot get past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2018-03-20T16:39:50.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23733" CreationDate="2018-03-20T17:03:15.643" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why does the team need to be converted to scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your question you've mentioned that they use water-scrum-fall and that your observation is that they're following their processes blindly. However you've not explained the challenges which the team are currently facing, where they're currently falling down, or the nature of the work they're doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step back from scrum and think about Agile, specifically the first of the four values:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Individuals and Interactions Over Processes and Tools&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PEOPLE and the teams' outputs matter more than the processes they're following. Don't try and force a scrum process onto a team, you may end up trying to fit a square peg into a round hole (not to mention the fact that they'll almost certainly reject them). You may of course be correct and that scrum would suit them perfectly but this reads to me like you've got a solution before a problem. It may be that Kanban works better, Scrumban, or XP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask your consultant to shadow the team, create an informal retrospective meeting and ask the team members what stops them from doing a good job. Ask them what they'd change if they had the proverbial magic wand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you understand the challenges work with the team to build processes which help the team overcome them (these solutions of course may be inspired by scrum/other teams but they may not be).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11768" LastActivityDate="2018-03-20T17:03:15.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23738" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-03-20T17:17:02.940" Score="-1" ViewCount="64" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I assign a resource in Project, it lists the resource in the resource column and creates a new line listing only the resource.  How do I turn this off?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31867" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-03-20T17:27:51.150" LastActivityDate="2019-09-01T10:43:03.577" Title="Problem adding resources in MS Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10336" CreationDate="2018-03-20T17:19:06.603" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One issue with bootstrap, is, it doesn't provide a pretty backend WYSIWYG editor (like wordpress does) for the client to use &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a few WYSIWYG editors for Bootstrap:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pingendo.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pingendo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://bootstrapstudio.io&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bootstrap Studio&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.layoutit.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Layoutit! Bootstrap Builder&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://ckeditor.com/cke4/addon/bootstrap-editor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CkEditor: Bootstrap Editor&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/Frontwise/grid-editor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Visual JavaScript editor for the Bootstrap grid system&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.bootply.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bootply&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://js.plus/products/bootstrap-editor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;JS+ Bootstrap Editor&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://mashable.com/2013/10/20/bootstrap-editors/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;18 Essential Bootstrap UI Editors&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.doncio.navy.mil/CHIPS/ArticleDetails.aspx?ID=4690&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Best Practices for Negotiating Cloud-Based Software Contracts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.slideshare.net/TimLashua/kpmg-leeyo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;KPMG Leeyo Subscribed 2015 - Adoption of the New Revenue Standard&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://proformative.com/questions/deferred-revenue&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Deferred Revenue&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27065" LastEditorUserId="27065" LastEditDate="2018-05-22T20:15:36.207" LastActivityDate="2018-05-22T20:15:36.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23740" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-03-21T08:57:40.737" Score="2" ViewCount="149" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can find overdue issues that are not closed using filter: &lt;code&gt;date due&lt;/code&gt; less than today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But is there a possibility to list only issues that were closed after their respective due dates?&#xA;I cannot set &lt;code&gt;date-due&lt;/code&gt; to less than &lt;code&gt;close-date&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31875" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2018-03-22T18:55:52.690" LastActivityDate="2019-08-15T08:02:50.400" Title="Searching for issues closed after their respective due dates" Tags="&lt;redmine&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23740" CreationDate="2018-03-23T03:22:52.773" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Create a new custom field &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Name: &quot;Overdue&quot; &#xA;Type: &quot;Number&quot; &#xA;Formula: IIf(DateDiff(&quot;d&quot;,[Finish],Date(),1,1)&gt;0,DateDiff(&quot;d&quot;,[Finish],Date(),1,1),0)&#xA;Rollup: Maximum (for group summary rows)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now create a new filter and use it &#xA;[Overdue] &gt; 0&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also this custom field as a new column, and set is as graphic indicator like Red Yellow Green based on your requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31594" LastActivityDate="2018-03-23T03:22:52.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23744" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23745" CreationDate="2018-03-23T07:36:03.257" Score="3" ViewCount="221" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm Technical Leader for a software project dedicated to manage the &quot;VIP people&quot;-yearOfWork of a big company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, to make it simple for this post, the project is a mix of a social network (between those VIP people) and a meeting network, where any one of them could be aware and participate to their respective yearly meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My Product Owner is, oddly, not one of those VIP people but one who remotely manages them (creating meetings etc, establishing their profile etc.).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;He's part of the Secretariat Team.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;He argues that he knows their jobs and therefore thinks mastering their needs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project is supposed to evolve through agile principles, to receive feedbacks early, but:                   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Owner puts focus on features that is viewable, usable and focus on the management team, HIS team.          &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Owner argues that his team (secretariat) should benefit of this product to spent less times on redundant tasks like creating meeting for VIP people. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problem is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The backlog is full of Secretariat-oriented features and I can't see any VIP people-oriented features.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No workshop with customers to study deeply THEIR needs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We got some feedback that VIP people find the software very light but interesting, but the product owner can't bear of the word &quot;light&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Customers are not aware of the amount of tasks under the hood dealing dedicated to the Secretariat Team; I'm sensitive to their &quot;appointment&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product Owner thinks wrongly that the sofware is for HIS team more than VIP people and he's wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to make the Product Owner realize that he doesn't put focus on the right customer and that it is a huge risk regarding the project's lifetime since whole project budget is almost fully spent?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to make the Product Owner realize that receiving a feedback like &quot;pretty good project; but lacks some promised features after 5 months of work&quot; is not like &quot;Wow amazing!&quot; feedback?&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was very disappointed as a technical leader when the customer said: &quot;5 months for that ?!&quot;; indeed they just see a very very short number of features they can &quot;play&quot; with.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Rest is hidden from them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29061" LastEditorUserId="29061" LastEditDate="2018-03-23T13:30:23.600" LastActivityDate="2018-04-01T13:58:51.270" Title="How to make the Product Owner realize that he doesn't put focus on the right customer at all?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;technical-leader&gt;&lt;customer-satisfaction&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23744" CreationDate="2018-03-23T08:17:06.007" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will assume what the &quot;VIP&quot; want fall somewhere between what you think and what the PO believes. I'll add some facts to that assumption: the VIP do not truly know what they want - not granulary anyway. Also, they will surely change the minds about some of the details?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum and other iterative approaches, the feedback from Sprint Review will make it transparent what the VIP want. How often do you demo the work done in one increment and iteration to the VIP? Why is it that 5 months have passed and the PO is allowed to make these decisions if he is so wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have objective evidence that PO is wrong, speak to her or escalate it. Else, you may want to question the process manager (aka Scrum Master, PM) about effectiveness of the sprint review meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to hand over quick happy face, neutral face and sad face survey to attendees of the sprint review meeting. It provided a neutral and objective base for proposing change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck and be wary of predispositions and cognitive biases :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28548" LastActivityDate="2018-03-23T08:17:06.007" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23744" CreationDate="2018-03-23T11:56:28.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would try to use the instruments Scrum provides out of the box: Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How Sprint Review can help:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since VIP People are the stakeholders of the software you develop, they should participate in Iteration Demo. Having those people on Demo you can ask them for the immediate feedback on whether the consider the delivered feature valuable or assess the value in some scale. You also can give them a view on which features in a backlog currently and which they think are the best candidates to include in the next release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How Sprint Retrospective can help:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can operate with the numbers. Gather the statistics of the story points or other measure of the effort you use in your team for the tasks which deliver the value for &quot;Secretariat-oriented features&quot; and for &quot;VIP-oriented features&quot;. Each iteration ask your Product Owner to justify the values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also open the question against the stakeholders to consider splitting the team into two sub-teams which would have each its own Product Owner. As the justification I would provide the fact that tending to deliver &quot;Secretariat-oriented&quot; code and ignoring &quot;VIP-oriented&quot; code makes the latter gain the technical debt which makes the delivery more expensive with the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29674" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-04-01T13:58:51.270" LastActivityDate="2018-04-01T13:58:51.270" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23747" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-03-23T15:32:16.860" Score="1" ViewCount="379" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use the usual &quot;to do&quot; &quot;doing&quot; &quot;done&quot; and &quot;blocked&quot; columns for our internal organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to know how I should handle tickets that are in &quot;to do&quot; but are not immediately actionable because the ticket will be done during a scheduled meeting. Does it go in &quot;blocked&quot; because it's not immediately actionable or does it stay in &quot;to do&quot; because it's not really blocked (there is no problem to solve about this ticket) ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31908" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-03-26T01:24:12.803" LastActivityDate="2019-09-30T07:17:24.333" Title="On Scrum, should tasks waiting for a specific criteria to be met considered 'to do' or 'blocked'?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23747" CreationDate="2018-03-23T19:21:07.020" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My Team did two separate approaches; one for Scrum (as you have tagged your question), one not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Scrum, all we had to do was never accept an issue into the Sprint unless we were sure it was immediately actionable. Thus, anything in the Sprint Backlog 'TODO' column was immediately actionable. Anything not immediately actionable was kept in the Product Backlog (which did not have columns).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For non-Scrum, we simply added a 'Ready for Development' column between 'TODO' and 'Development Started'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-03-23T19:21:07.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23749" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23751" CreationDate="2018-03-23T19:59:48.013" Score="3" ViewCount="1126" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my understanding, in non-agile settings, the project manager is responsible for assigning work to individual team members, but in a (self-organized) Kanban team, team members do this when they have slack, in accordance with the team's capacity (WIP limit).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Context&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our product/tech team doesn't have much experience in an agile environment, it is cross-functional, and we have a variety of projects, which may require input from the specialists (UI/UX designer, front-end developer, GIS specialist) that are on the team. Sometimes, entire projects can only be worked on by specific team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hence the following questions (really 2 ways of looking at the same issue, IMHO):&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) As a PO, while planning the work, should I take into consideration who can&#xA;    work on the product backlog items (thereby &quot;pre-assigning&quot; work), or should I just sort them by&#xA;    priority (business value and other factors)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) As a team member, what should I do if I don't have the technical expertise to pull what's at the top of the &quot;Ready to work&quot; column&#xA;    into build if...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) ... we haven't reached our WIP limit yet&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) ... we have reached our WIP limit&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26063" LastEditorUserId="26063" LastEditDate="2018-03-24T14:23:01.510" LastActivityDate="2018-03-25T17:35:05.277" Title="Should we assign work to individual team members in Kanban?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23749" CreationDate="2018-03-23T21:44:50.170" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kanban should be a pull system, so you should not assign work. However, one of the core principles of Kanban is to start with what you do today and make small incremental improvements. If today people pull the work they can do, then ok, start with that. However, another thing Kanban requires is that we manage and measure flow. This is what I commonly see teams discover almost immediately:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you pull work based on what you can do rather than what needs to be done, you increase the lead time for valuable work you can't start on. Many teams also immediately discover that there is a pile of important work waiting on one or two people who know how to do it. If you see this and do not acknowledge it and make small moves to improve this area, then you aren't practicing Kanban. A lot of teams will skip this step and just start sorting the backlog by priority. In fact, almost all teams I've coached at least tried to do this. It is bending the rules a bit, but the benefit usually outweighs the damage and I've never once known of a team who got more benefit out of keeping their silos where there was more valuable work to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-03-23T21:44:50.170" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23749" CreationDate="2018-03-23T23:14:36.570" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As @Daniel has already said, Kanban is not prescriptive - it asks you to start with what you today - and make incremental changes to your process to improve flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a slightly different note, Agile teams with not too much experience initially have this issue of team members not being able to pull - or self-assign - work, because they are too used to being told what to do.  Even in longer running Kanban teams, young/ new team members not used to Kanban have the same problem.  In most cases, at least for some initial period of time, the team - the PO, the Scrum Master or the Engineering Manager - and the team member themselves will jointly decide in a standup meeting what work can be taken up by that team member. This can continue until such team members feel confident enough or empowered enough to pull work whenever they are ready to start on the next one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, it is the reality for many small and medium teams that specific people become experts in specific modules of a software they have built and maintain - or have specific technology skills such as front-end, backend database or some such skills. The PO and the team have no alternative but to wait for the right set of people to be available to work on tasks that need those skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Kanban-based dev shop, we do what you have outlined.  We populate the Ready column with the next set of the highest priority/ business value items - and whenever the team members who are to (and can) work on those items become available, they will pull those items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the team members who don't have skills to do the next set of items sitting in the Ready queue, whether your WIP Limit has been reached or not is a moot point.  They just can't work on those tasks because they don't have the skills.  They can either work on some intangible (class of service) work - such as some refactoring of code, perhaps documentation, or some such work - or ask the PO to identify something new they CAN do, since sitting idle is usually not an option. Here's a board design by class-of-service that you might consider - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GCrcX.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GCrcX.png&quot; alt=&quot;Kanban Board by Class of Service&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the meantime, as a team, as @Daniel suggested, you have to work on cross-training of team members so you reduce your people-dependency to some extent, and enable more people to take on more kinds of work that they would typically not consider to be &quot;their work&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastEditorUserId="8132" LastEditDate="2018-03-25T17:35:05.277" LastActivityDate="2018-03-25T17:35:05.277" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23753" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23754" CreationDate="2018-03-24T22:14:19.230" Score="3" ViewCount="166" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Tech Lead within a &quot;Scrum&quot; team, I am annoying regarding some laid rules. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is established that only Product Owner, Business Analyst and Scrum Master (and eventually Product Manager) take part of the user stories prioritization process (backlog prioritization). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are sorting US based on story points, without any further software-oriented facts and knowledge.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Worth noting that those story points emerged from a quick and probably &quot;blind&quot; macro-estimation process, not a deep one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They judge &lt;strong&gt;which&lt;/strong&gt; valuable US could be delivered and &lt;strong&gt;when&lt;/strong&gt; through those macro-estimations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I notice that their decision is often based on wrong assumptions and false hypothesis; leading to a sorting readjustment, therefore wasting anybody's time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you consider a Tech Lead (or any other qualified developer) should be part of this prioritization process to aid to prioritize based on programming knowledge?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Like a guarantor of feasibility. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29061" LastEditorUserId="29061" LastEditDate="2018-03-25T09:46:48.607" LastActivityDate="2018-03-25T15:43:02.093" Title="Should a technical person take part of the user stories prioritization process?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;&lt;technical-leader&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23753" CreationDate="2018-03-25T00:59:06.607" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Product Owner and the Development Team collaborate&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; is very clear on these aspects&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Owner and the Development Team collaborate on Backlog refinement:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Product Backlog refinement is the act of adding detail, estimates, and&#xA;  order to items in the Product Backlog. This is an ongoing process in&#xA;  which the Product Owner and the Development Team collaborate on the&#xA;  details of Product Backlog items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Owner's decision is final on ordering the items. However, dev team gets an opportunity to present their point of view.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Product Backlog management includes... Ordering the&#xA;  items in the Product Backlog to best achieve goals and missions;&#xA;  ...those wanting to change a Product Backlog item’s priority must&#xA;  address the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dev team's decision is final on estimate. However, Product Owner gets an opportunity to present their point of view.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Development Team is responsible for all estimates. The Product&#xA;  Owner may influence the Development Team by helping it understand and&#xA;  select trade-offs, but the people who will perform the work make the&#xA;  final estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However, the Scrum Guide is silent on technical debt.&lt;/strong&gt; There is no mention of technical debt or anything remotely like it in the Scrum Guide. When the dev team strongly feels that a technical debt needs to be prioritized, otherwise there will be bigger problems down the road (&quot;A stitch in time saves nine&quot;), they are powerless to get that prioritized. If the PO refuses to give enough attention to the views of the dev team on this aspect, I advise my dev teams to include the technical debt in their estimation of related features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer to your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you consider a Tech Lead (or any other qualified developer) should&#xA;  be part of this prioritization process...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is &lt;strong&gt;YES&lt;/strong&gt;, you have a right to participate. The Scrum Guide says so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2018-03-25T13:51:23.390" LastActivityDate="2018-03-25T13:51:23.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23753" CreationDate="2018-03-25T11:19:57.900" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like there's a whole lot going wrong with your Scrum process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's important to realize that a product backlog is not prioritized. It is ordered. There is no reference to a prioritized or priority-ordered Product Backlog anywhere in the Scrum Guide. In the section of the Scrum Guide about a Product Owner, it's implied that individual Product Backlog Items have a priority. However, the required attributes of a Product Backlog Item are a description, order, estimate, and value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is the person responsible for managing the Product Backlog. Two of the Product Backlog management activities are &quot;ordering the items in the Product Backlog to best achieve goals and missions&quot; and &quot;optimizing the value of the work the Development Team performs&quot;. Simply ordering the work based on priority to someone is not likely to put the items in the order that can accomplish these two activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The act of refining (or grooming) the Product Backlog is a collaboration between the Product Owner and the Development Team. This is a time for the Product Owner to explain the intentions behind the Product Backlog Items to the Development Team and review and revise them. This is also a good opportunity for the Development Team to highlight technical dependencies between Product Backlog Items. The discussions during refinement activities should inform the Product Owner to be able to make better decisions when ordering the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the description of the process, I also have other concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There appear to be three product-related roles mentioned - Product Owner, Business Analyst, and Product Manager. It's important that there is one Product Owner for the Product Backlog. It's OK for this person to have a team backing them up. In a scaled environment with multiple teams working on a single Product Backlog, you may also want to embed someone on each team. But no matter what, there is one person with the role of Product Owner as described in Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master also appears heavily involved in doing work. The Scrum Master is a coach. You don't say what their role is in managing the Product Backlog, but that they are allowing the Product Backlog to be ordered without input from the development team, they are not establishing and teaching good refinement or grooming activities that is inclusive of the whole team, and they are not teaching the Product Owner about optimizing for value and achieving goals is problematic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also potential pitfalls around having a lead position on a Scrum Team, but these can generally be overcome by keeping the whole team involved at the right point in time and can be valuable to long-term success of a team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2018-03-25T11:19:57.900" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23753" CreationDate="2018-03-25T15:43:02.093" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both previous answers from Thomas and Ashok are right on point (+1!) and I just wanted to throw a slightly different perspective not to the answer itself, but to the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should a technical person take part of the user stories prioritization&#xA;process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is &lt;em&gt;established&lt;/em&gt; that only Product Owner, Business Analyst and Scrum&#xA;Master (and eventually Product Manager) take part of the user stories&#xA;prioritization process (backlog prioritization).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, people tends to get stuck to methodologies, guidelines, rules... and when it happens, I suggest to take a step back and ask again &lt;em&gt;why methodologies exist&lt;/em&gt;. Well... they are not the &lt;em&gt;goal&lt;/em&gt;, they are &lt;em&gt;the path to a given goal&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, thinking about goals, &lt;em&gt;what's the goal of the backlog prioritization&lt;/em&gt;? To deliver as much value as possible, optimising time and capacity. That's (potentially) applicable if the team is a Scrum, a &amp;quot;Scrum&amp;quot;, an Agile, a &amp;quot;Fragile&amp;quot; or a completely chaotic team... they all want to deliver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind, can one justify that a presence of a technical people could help to &lt;em&gt;achieve the goal&lt;/em&gt;? If your answer is &amp;quot;yes&amp;quot;, you won't need to justify that a technical people needs to attend &amp;quot;because Scrum says so&amp;quot;. Depending on the environment you work, there might be more or less resistance to jargons like Scrum, but I doubt no one would be against a proposal that could add value to the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-03-25T15:43:02.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23758" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-03-25T19:19:15.757" Score="0" ViewCount="113" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I have Task A,B,C, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task B is based on CSF-5, (needs to have finish date 5 days prior to C date), but I want the task to kick off as soon as Task A is completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to set that? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, it needs A and C to be completed, because they are both under predecessors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31920" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-04T12:40:14.613" LastActivityDate="2019-01-03T13:03:00.640" Title="How to Kick off a Task with just 1 predecessor complete" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23747" CreationDate="2018-03-26T01:47:11.790" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe it's hard to get a canonical answer for this question. In this case, the best answer would be something like &lt;em&gt;whatever works better for you and your team&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to assess this? Well, maybe doing some experiments, the good ol' trial and error. Before going into them, some assumptions could be made that might be helpful on the empirical testing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Considering blockers&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pros&lt;/strong&gt;: Segregate items that cannot be started now, leaving a 'clean' to-do list&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cons&lt;/strong&gt;: Doing so could be a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/articles/toward-a-catalog-of-scrum-smells&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Smell&lt;/a&gt;, as an item that's not ready to be implemented should not be considered to the current iteration (and I second Liaths comment - you should have a good &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/forum/scrum-forum/6090/marking-tasks-blocked&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DofR&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Considering ToDo&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pros&lt;/strong&gt;: You'll ensure Scrum Master will be dealing with actual blockers rather than raising potential false alarms - the Scrum Master might have enough on his plate dealing with actual blockers to be concerned about a (assumed) controlled dependency to make it to the sprint goals&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cons&lt;/strong&gt;: Depending on the nature of the project and the expectations the Product Owner has, if it may become a blocker then the PO might come with the complain that 'he should have been warned before'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several other factors to consider, but all in all, you need to find what works better for you and your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bottomline:&lt;/strong&gt; My gut feeling says that your &lt;em&gt;blocker ratio is very likely to be inversely proportional to the maturity level of the team&lt;/em&gt;, so if you're running a senior team with seasoned PO, having these items on 'ToDo' shouldn't be a problem. Likewise, if you live on a challenging environment with scary POs, having items highlighted as 'blockers' could improve transparency in case plans go wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-03-26T13:07:18.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23747" CreationDate="2018-03-26T03:27:06.547" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does it go in &quot;blocked&quot; because it's not immediately actionable or does it stay in &quot;to do&quot; because it's not really blocked (there is no problem to solve about this ticket) ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you're describing a difference between &quot;unavailable for immediate work&quot; and &quot;impediment exists&quot;. You might want to use something like &quot;on hold&quot; for the former and &quot;blocked&quot; (or &quot;impediment&quot;) for the latter. Or, for the case where the task is on hold because you've already planned when it will be worked, just call that &quot;Doing&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree this is one of those &quot;whatever works best for your team&quot; situations, which means it depends on how your team uses those columns. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2018-03-26T03:27:06.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23762" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23763" CreationDate="2018-03-26T08:33:59.617" Score="1" ViewCount="248" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read the following about the Iron trinagle:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To add features to a product (scope), you could extend the deadline to&#xA;  make time for the new work (time) or add people to get it done faster&#xA;  (cost). You could also do both!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, if I extend the deadline, I will need to pay for the resources working in this extended timeline, so how can I &quot;only&quot; extend the deadline?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean, it is said you have to adjust at least one other constraint..but to me it seems it is never just one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31435" LastActivityDate="2018-03-26T16:44:12.717" Title="Iron triangle question..how could extended scope only be mitigated by time?" Tags="&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;constraints&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23762" CreationDate="2018-03-26T13:04:59.710" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The project management &quot;iron&quot; triangle is problematic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It does not realistically represent the relationship between the three chosen aspects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It does not consider quality (except, perhaps, as a result) or value provided (does it meet the needs).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It has been &quot;improved&quot; with other variations including, but not limited to, &#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Diamond which adds quality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PMBOK 4 double triangle which added a second triangle: risk, quality, resources&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pick two: fast, cheap, good&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a formula: Scope = Cost x Time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Well, if I extend the deadline, I will need to pay for the resources working in this extended timeline, so how can I &quot;only&quot; extend the deadline?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exactly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-03-26T13:12:47.533" LastActivityDate="2018-03-26T13:12:47.533" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23762" CreationDate="2018-03-26T15:23:54.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Projects often spend extra to make a deadline&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alan gave a good answer pointing out the limitations of the project management &quot;iron&quot; triangle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your specific question, you need to consider that projects (not necessarily software projects) often plan to spend extra money to make a tight deadline. Examples of such extra spending to make a deadline are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Overtime&lt;/strong&gt;: You may be planning to pay double time (for extra hours during week days) or triple time (weekend hours).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Expedite fee&lt;/strong&gt;: You may be planning to pay expedited fees to vendors to do rush jobs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Air freight&lt;/strong&gt;: You may be planning to pay for air freight to get supplies from vendors earlier than if you shipped by surface freight.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have contract resources to whom you need to pay only for the hours actually worked, it may be possible to save money by extending the deadline. So, to answer your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Well, if I extend the deadline, I will need to pay for the resources&#xA;  working in this extended timeline, so how can I &quot;only&quot; extend the&#xA;  deadline?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As seen in the example above, if you had more time, you can avoid paying double and triple time and get increased scope of work done at same cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2018-03-26T15:23:54.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23767" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23770" CreationDate="2018-03-26T15:44:15.770" Score="0" ViewCount="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have created an Android app which I think works &quot;good enough&quot; but I have not a large amount of users and not done much user testing. I did the first alpha release last week. Everything works, can I promote the app to beta or production or is there a series of &quot;must&quot; that I should consider?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The app is supposed to do online classified ads against a google appengine back-end. It works to register a new user, login and get a jwt (JSON Web Token), stay logged in, view your profile page (not yet update it), place a new advertisement through the form and submit a picture file with it, and view and search classified ads. I have all this functionality working, so should I promote my app to beta release? Or should I wait until I get a thorough review?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason that I am eager is to get more users by promoting the app to beta and/or production so that I can follow my users and know what to improve in the app. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2107" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2018-03-27T01:13:25.577" LastActivityDate="2018-03-27T01:27:19.923" Title="How can I know if my app is ready for beta release?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;release-plan&gt;&lt;release-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23762" CreationDate="2018-03-26T16:44:12.717" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lQMcK.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lQMcK.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, this is a more accurate picture of the so called iron triangle.  The three sides are related to each other but not in a finite, discreet way.  The triangle is fluid, where each side affects the other two sides but, as well, other variables, including stochastic ones, impact each side or multiples sides at the same time.  Imagine the lines on each side to grow and shrink in a fluid, probabilistic way.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the definition you posted is PM 101 and valuable to teach those just learning about this practice area, but it is far more complex than that definition, far more fluid, far less &quot;controllable.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-03-26T16:44:12.717" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23769" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-03-26T22:05:01.067" Score="3" ViewCount="145" Body="&lt;p&gt;My development team and I have been using release dates (or fixVersions as they are called in JIRA) to keep track of all tickets for our iterative development schedule. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as our team grows this is becoming increasingly complicated. &lt;em&gt;Some tickets need to have code deployed to be considered &quot;done&quot; whereas others (mockups, plugin changes etc.) do not&lt;/em&gt;. When attempting to deploy a fixVersion we only want our deployment specialist to see tickets with deployable code. However, we do not want to lose track of tickets completed from the same sprint that do not have code to be deployed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone else struggled to make this organizational distinction in JIRA? What is the best way to approach this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31932" LastActivityDate="2018-03-27T22:44:50.513" Title="How to keep track of finished tasks vs deployed tasks in JIRA?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;release-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23767" CreationDate="2018-03-27T01:27:19.923" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;If it is stable, release it for beta testing&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only reason not to release it for beta testing is if it is not stable enough. Especially, if there is possibility for data loss. You run the risk of losing some users for good, if they get frustrated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, the earlier you release it for beta testing the better. Of course, be transparent with your users and share any known issues and missing features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_startup#Minimum_viable_product&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Lean Startup methodology&lt;/a&gt; recommends sending a minimum viable product (MVP) to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also important to provide proper tools for beta users to report bugs. Some recommendations for bug reporting tools are in this &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.quora.com/When-is-an-app-ready-for-beta-testing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Quora link&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2018-03-27T01:27:19.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23771" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-03-27T12:23:13.903" Score="1" ViewCount="574" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to measure the cycle time of my team. The problem is that the issues (tasks or stories) have very different sizes. Sometimes someone just creates a task like: &quot;Create a backend api&quot;, that doesn't deliver value for the final customer and is very small. And sometimes the Product Owner creates tasks like &quot;Implement anti fraud system&quot; which are very large.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should we measure the cycle time? One convention that we have been using is to only measure stories' cycle time, not tasks' nor subtasks'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should this be done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31938" LastEditorUserId="29674" LastEditDate="2018-03-27T14:07:38.023" LastActivityDate="2018-06-25T19:43:18.060" Title="Cycle Time - Story vs Task?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;kpi&gt;&lt;cycle-time&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23772" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-03-27T12:35:28.223" Score="3" ViewCount="340" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work within a small team of developers. We don't track our time so we have no data to work off when we give estimates. Basically, I'm wondering if it's possible to have a successful plan and give accurate estimates when developers or others don't track their time for tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Difficulties we're facing are being able to accurately plan when not knowing how much time people have available (more difficult now that we're working multiple projects simultaneously), convincing people to track time when they haven't been required to for years, and how to best accomplish it without interfering with work and &quot;flow&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been thinking of inadvertent ways to track time, such as using a tool like Jira and using the time in each work lane to do reporting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31939" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-10-29T12:20:27.277" LastActivityDate="2018-11-28T14:00:38.327" Title="Is it possible to give accurate estimates and planning without tracking time for tasks?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23771" CreationDate="2018-03-27T13:16:17.087" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing you need to ask yourself is for what &lt;em&gt;reason&lt;/em&gt; your Team is tracking cycle time. If you're not currently tracking cycle time for tasks/subtasks, and you don't have any &lt;em&gt;problems&lt;/em&gt; with doing so, then I see no reason for you start now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; need to track them for whatever reason, then I suggest using a rolling average - you take the average of all recent tasks/subtasks finished in the past defined time frame (possibly weighting more recent results more heavily). With a long enough time frame, the opposing outliers should more or less balance each other out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One final note: The Product Owner should not be creating Tasks. That is the purview of the Development Team solely. Rather than a Task for &quot;Implement anti fraud system&quot;, what should have been made was a Story for &quot;Avoid damage from fraud&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-03-27T13:16:17.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23772" CreationDate="2018-03-27T13:31:53.867" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As it seems to me, accurate estimation without having formal stats is possible when you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;act in the circumstances of stable risk factors (which impact your team with some stable risk measure).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have stable core of your team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First point means that there could be hidden risk factors that are not obviouse when you do a subjective estimation. However looking retrospectively at the &quot;estimated vs actual&quot; or just &quot;actual&quot; logged time for stories having relatively similar complexity you can detect (using statistical methods) impact of the risk which has not been accounted before&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second point means that having the team core changing frequently the new members might not have the full picture of the environment and might not account certain specific of that environment. Thus having the work stats they would apply it to their personal subjective estimations mitigating the risks of introduced by their environmental knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29674" LastActivityDate="2018-03-27T13:31:53.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23772" CreationDate="2018-03-27T16:38:06.417" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on your definition of accuracy.  Historical information is an important input into the estimating process, whether it is your own historical data or that of industry.  Obviously, your own historical data that comes from the type of work you do would be more valuable than industry data.  So, if you're not tracking it, then you are doing without a valuable piece of information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good estimate is one that provides the probabilistic range, not just a discreet value.  If you're not tracking historical data, then your cone of uncertainty will be naturally greater.  With history, you could arrive at a tighter estimate for a piece of work that might look like: best case -- $1,200,000; worst case -- $4,000,000; most likely -- $2,300,000.  Without history, you may end up with an estimate of best case -- $1,000,000; worst case -- $6,000,000; most likely -- $3,000,000.  This makes it harder to choose a planning value to price and against which to track.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer explicitly: you can get away with it but you are carrying more risk, risk of a ton of loss on any given project or even risk of losing a competitive bid.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-03-27T16:38:06.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23771" CreationDate="2018-03-27T18:20:15.697" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simple answer: you want to measure cycle time against your backlog items, not the tasks under those. The goal is to measure how long it is taking to deliver a unit of work. Tasks are just things you do, not units of work being delivered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your cycle time will vary by the size of the item, that isn't a problem. You want to look at your cycle time on a scatter plot like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4EPQD.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4EPQD.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Image borrowed from &lt;a href=&quot;https://kanbanize.com/kanban-resources/kanban-analytics/cycle-time-scatter-plot/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://kanbanize.com/kanban-resources/kanban-analytics/cycle-time-scatter-plot/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll want to look for patterns in the outliers. Why do the long backlog items take longer? Is it because they are vague and you discover problems that you never expected once you dig in? If so, maybe that means you need to get a little more specific with your backlog refinement. Maybe you notice that many of the long ones are changes to a certain application. What can you do to correct that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the fact that they are very different sizes shouldn't matter much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-03-27T18:20:15.697" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23777" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-03-27T20:00:32.063" Score="1" ViewCount="193" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the different between the following project management certifications Professional Scrum Master (PSM) Certified ScrumMaster® (CSM)? Which one is better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16576" LastActivityDate="2018-03-28T04:04:59.173" Title="Professional Scrum Master vs Certified ScrumMaster® (CSM)" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23769" CreationDate="2018-03-27T22:44:50.513" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is normally addressed with &lt;strong&gt;resolutions&lt;/strong&gt;. In your case you need to have the following resolutions configured:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Released - Deploy Required.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Released - Deploy Not Required.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the person who is going to handle the tasks will use the filter like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;project    = &quot;Sample Project&quot; &#xA;  and &#xA;fixVersion = &quot;Release.2018.03&quot; &#xA;  and &#xA;resolution = &quot;Released - Deploy Required&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29674" LastActivityDate="2018-03-27T22:44:50.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23777" CreationDate="2018-03-27T23:49:18.333" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ken Schwaber founded and chaired &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Alliance&lt;/a&gt; and left to form &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum.org&lt;/a&gt; due to differences in values especially regarding certification.&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/about&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://1pn8a8ult4o2bls5f2jxuel1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Improving-Agility-Agile-Certifications-sample.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.thescrummaster.co.uk/scrum/psm-vs-csm/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CSM (Scrum Alliance)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;16 hour course, plus exam&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;35 question, 68% to pass, no time limit&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Course content varies by instructor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PSM (Scrum.org)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Optional course, plus exam&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;80 questions, 85% to pass, 60 minute time limit&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Standardized course content&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastActivityDate="2018-03-27T23:49:18.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23777" CreationDate="2018-03-28T04:04:59.173" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I feel CSM is better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CSM (Scrum Alliance)&lt;/strong&gt; puts more weight-age on training the candidate. The training is hands-on with lot of real life situation. The stress in on making you learn through doing it. So, at the end of the training, the concepts goes into your head and you are already ready to apply Scrum in to your daily work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exam is fairly easy and is taken just to ensure that the candidate pays attention during the entire training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PSM (Scrum.org)&lt;/strong&gt; on the other hand puts more weight-age on exam. So at the end of the day if you pass the exam you are Scrum Master. Are you clear on the concepts or you are a lot confused in terms of how to apply those concepts? is left up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31635" LastActivityDate="2018-03-28T04:04:59.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23782" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23783" CreationDate="2018-03-28T13:33:05.577" Score="6" ViewCount="1758" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my University of Applied Science we got taught that user stories are a part of Scrum, and when reading things on the internet it seems that everyone indeed uses User Stories when using Scrum. The accepted answer at &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/9175/how-to-handle-confusion-of-user-stories-term-in-agile-methodology&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; for even speaks of &quot;Scrum User Stories&quot;, and the accepted answer of &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/15298/security-requirements-and-user-stories&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; also mentions user stories are part of Scrum. Also, everyone I speak to at my internship company thinks User Stories are part of Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I can't find any mention of User Stories in the Scrum Guide. Only of &quot;backlog items&quot; which could be anything. Even &quot;Design a logo&quot; could be a backlog item, if I understand the Guide correctly, but that's absolutely not a User Story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To what framework do User Stories belong, if they don't belong to Scrum? And what caused them to be regarded as a core part of Scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31949" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-12-10T14:16:27.673" LastActivityDate="2018-12-10T14:16:27.673" Title="To what framework do &quot;User Stories&quot; belong?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;frameworks&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23782" CreationDate="2018-03-28T13:41:13.990" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The earliest reference that I could find were that &lt;a href=&quot;http://alistair.cockburn.us/Origin+of+user+story+is+a+promise+for+a+conversation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the terms 'story card' and 'user story' were used when Alistair Cockburn visited the Chrysler C3 project&lt;/a&gt;. Kent Beck and Ron Jeffries were responsible for this project, and this is an early instantiation of what would become Extreme Programming (XP).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many people pair Scrum with the Extreme Programming practices. Scrum tells you what to do, while XP gives you methods for doing those things that pair well with it. The Planning Game from XP pairs well with backlog refinement and Sprint Planning from Scrum. Continuous Integration and an emphasis on testing (from XP, TDD) enable Scrum's delivery of a potentially shippable increment at the end of every Sprint. XP's idea of the customer always being available pairs well with Scrum's Product Owner, who is given the authority to speak on behalf of the stakeholders. While Scrum provides a framework for Project Management, XP provides a set of principles and practices to deliver software that can (pretty easily) fit into this framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you are correct. Scrum only speaks of &quot;Product Backlog Items&quot;, which may be user stories. Extreme Programming is what gives us User Stories. But because of the synergies between XP and Scrum, you often see XP practices (including User Stories) in implementations of Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2018-03-28T15:20:54.033" LastActivityDate="2018-03-28T15:20:54.033" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23782" CreationDate="2018-03-29T07:54:27.407" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As to what caused User Stories to be considered part of core Scrum:&#xA;Scrum has a focus on delivering value each sprint. It requires the development team to produce a potentially shippable product increment at least once per Sprint and (implicitly) to ensure that this new increment provides higher value to the user than the previous one. This can be achieved well through the use of User Stories, because if your PBIs are User Stories, each one of them will add value for the user to your product. Whereas more technical PBIs may lead to an increment that has no added value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31960" LastActivityDate="2018-03-29T07:54:27.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22510" CreationDate="2018-03-29T12:40:04.247" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Re question: &quot;differences are between a Sprint, a Milestone and a Release.&quot;&#xA;In PM best practice, a milestone is a point in time that does not consume resources.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a PM plan that incorporates the Scrum framework's software delivery, you could state some simple milestones in your overall Work Breakdown Structure/plan to address the Scrum Sprints, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Produce Backlog for Sprint 1  (a PM Summary line) (this is a Scrum framework activity)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plan Sprint 1 (a PM Summary line) (this is a Scrum framework activity)&#xA;Start Sprint 1  (a PM milestone)&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(a PM Summary line) (List the Scrum framework activities here)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum Increment delivered (a milestone)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finish Sprint 1 ( a milestone)    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Repeat the above for each Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Re the term Release: first, the definition of an Increment - &quot;a piece of working software that adds to previously created Increments, where the sum of all Increments - as a whole - form a product.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be careful to agree on what the scope of the term Release will mean. For example, in the Scrum framework, each Sprint delivers an Increment but the Increment might not yet be put into service by the user; this is a decision made by the Scrum Product owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31965" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-03-29T13:06:23.180" LastActivityDate="2018-03-29T13:06:23.180" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14956" CreationDate="2018-03-29T14:36:06.733" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This mostly calls for VBA Macro -&gt; you can recursively traverse from selected task and mark (e.g. using Flag1 field) if a task is predecessor. Then you can setup custom filter to show only fields with Flag1 (or you can filter from header, as you might be used from Excel)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29813" LastActivityDate="2018-03-29T14:36:06.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22510" CreationDate="2018-03-30T13:08:21.533" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Milestone is an achievement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Release is a fact of releasing a software to users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Sprint is a period of work in which a particular added value is created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31158" LastActivityDate="2018-03-30T13:08:21.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23792" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-04-01T10:37:38.810" Score="4" ViewCount="257" Body="&lt;p&gt;He needs to do reporting to his higher-ups both on an organizational level and team level (one GIS org consisting of five teams w/ different GIS specialties).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He'd prefer to do one Kanban board for easier reporting. Additionally, a small portion of our org's work items need to be re-assigned/collaborated on between the different teams; another reason we might favor one cross-functional Kanban board. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is one Jira Kanban board feasible or will it compromise visualizing work items by team which is what most of us will be doing day-to-day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31988" LastEditorUserId="31988" LastEditDate="2018-04-01T10:42:47.933" LastActivityDate="2018-04-09T14:04:37.990" Title="One Kaban or five Kanbans? My manager would like to implement Kanban to get better visibility on what his five teams do" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;kanban-board&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23792" CreationDate="2018-04-03T06:43:32.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no right or wrong answer, it depends, upon how closely these teams are related, number of team members in each team, are they working to deliver a single product or different unrelated products and so on. Also, take in to account the consideration of limit on the maximum number of work items in progress per team or group of teams. And more importantly on your preference and level of comfort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In JIRA both can be easily set-up, and you can one JIRA dashboard to monitor progress either way. I would like to run these separate and let the team have healthy competition, by keeping these separate in the first place you will be able to monitor CFD and Burndown of each team, while monitoring the aggregate in JIRA dashboard and/or JIRA portfolio add-in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31594" LastActivityDate="2018-04-03T06:43:32.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23792" CreationDate="2018-04-03T08:19:39.510" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In your situation I think a single kanban board is probably better based on the few indicators you have mentioned:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Initiative comes from the PM who wants a joint overview of all teams&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Need for reassigning tasks to other teams is small but not negligible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most kanban software (including Jira based on cursory research) offers a swimlane functionality. You could use that to structure the board for the different teams while keeping it a single board. This would however prevent you from using swimlanes for anything else (like priorities).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've not worked with Jira so I don't know the extent of its customization options for tasks. In Kanbanize for example you could color each task and we used that to visualize responsibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2018-04-03T08:19:39.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23797" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-04-03T14:05:07.903" Score="1" ViewCount="75" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was trying to create a simple workflow diagram to visualize a process in our business that relies very heavily on how much time has elapsed. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;if an order is placed, and the order is made for a partner store, and 5 minutes has elapsed without the ops manager approving it, then highlight the order row as yellow and set the status as &quot;needs approval&quot;, if another 3 minutes passes, highlight the order row as red, and set the status as &quot;late&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found the diagram I created (part of which is depicted below) as extremely verbose and lacking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tJk83.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tJk83.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I went through the &lt;em&gt;Modelling the Requirment&lt;/em&gt; section of the book&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0735679665&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Software  Requirements&lt;/a&gt; and found a large set of modeling diagram&#xA;types including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Visual requirements models described in this book include:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  - Data flow diagrams (DFDs)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  - Process flow diagrams such as swimlane diagrams&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  - State-transition diagrams (STDs) and state tables&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  - Dialog maps&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  - Decision tables and decision trees&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  - Event-response tables&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  - Feature trees&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  - Use case diagrams&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  - Activity diagrams&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  - Entity-relationship diagrams&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wiegers, Karl; Beatty, Joy. Software Requirements (Developer Best&#xA;  Practices) (Kindle Locations 6268-6276). Pearson Education. Kindle&#xA;  Edition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But also none of them were really suitable for what I'm looking for.. Any ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23022" LastActivityDate="2018-04-04T12:33:14.770" Title="What's a good diagram time to model systems that are time dependant" Tags="&lt;visualization&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23797" CreationDate="2018-04-03T15:23:32.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interesting question; a very good fit for Project Management Stack Exchange.  It might take a little while for good answers to filter through since this requires some serious thought and you have done a lot of research yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I fear any answer will simply be a rehash of those methods you have already tried.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could try some additional methods which you have not listed in your questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Red Routing or Top Tasks&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Red Routes must possess 5 characteristics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be complete end to end activities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Must imply an obvious measure of accomplishment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Must be portable to competitor sites&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Must be goal orientated, not focused on procedural steps&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Must be accurate and realistic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These will allow you to map times and deviations whilst articulating the importance of the customer journey.  As always, you can adapt it to your needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find more &lt;a href=&quot;https://bordercrossingmedia.com/2016/03/ux-techniques-red-routing-top-tasks/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/redroutes.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; on how to accomplish these activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Gemba Walk Critical Path&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You chatted a little about the Process Flow diagrams you have explored, and any way you slice it, this will ultimately be a process flow of some description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could marry up the modelling requirements of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_path_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Critical Path Method&lt;/a&gt; with the observations of a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.isixsigma.com/methodology/lean-methodology/many-sides-gemba-walk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gemba Walk&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A gemba (and sometimes genba) walk is the term used to describe personal observation of work – where the work is happening. The original Japanese term comes from gembutsu, which means “real thing.”1 It also sometimes refers to the “real place.” This concept stresses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Observation: In-person observation, the core principle of the tool&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Value-add location: Observing where the work is being done (as opposed to discussing a warehouse problem in a conference room)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, you could record/observe a user using the system and quite literally time the activities that they take and then produce a Critical Path chart showing the relationships and times between action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Summary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are four additional techniques which can be experimented with and remixed together to try and achieve the aims you are seeking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gemba&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Critical Path&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Red Routing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Top Tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-04-03T15:23:32.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23792" CreationDate="2018-04-03T17:02:28.620" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really depends on how similar is the work that the different teams are doing; and also how large is each team and the volume of work they handle on an ongoing basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most implementations that we have seen, most teams (not temporary project teams but long-running functional teams such as Dev, test or Design or Documentation or marketing) prefer to have their own boards for two reasons - one, they can have their own customized workflow(s) for the different type or priority of work they handle; and two, for better visibility, control of flow - and measurement of flow metrics such as CFD, Cycle Time and Flow Efficiency - the typical measures most teams implementing Kanban are interested in.  If you have a Kanban board where multiple teams are working, you need to have the capability to let them define swim lanes with their own specific workflows - which I don't believe JIRA supports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, ideally, and depending on the response to the questions I asked earlier about the nature of your teams, each team should have their own Kanban boards - and the manager could have a &quot;department-level&quot; board where they can track the status of the work by teams based on some card-hierarchy that links cards on the manager's board to cards on the team boards. If that is not possible, then each team should at least have their own swim lane on a common board so that visualization, tracking, and measurement of metrics can be done cleanly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2018-04-03T17:02:28.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23800" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-04-03T20:01:08.127" Score="0" ViewCount="138" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am implementing Scrum throughout (from business development to engineering to marketing) my six-person organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My company consists of three engineers and three Business Development personnel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a startup, we have many (25+) simultaneous projects (e.g. close deals, create new marketing material, implement new features, etc...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any best practices on how to implement and organize Scrum in such a &quot;multifaceted&quot; environment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything I've read so far seems to be restrained to teams that have a single cohesive objective. Any ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32013" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-04-03T20:10:31.793" LastActivityDate="2018-04-18T14:54:41.813" Title="How do I implement Scrum Organization-wide in a lightweight Startup?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23801" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23804" CreationDate="2018-04-04T07:07:22.397" Score="5" ViewCount="1990" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was having a discussion in the team to create an &lt;code&gt;Epic&lt;/code&gt; for all the &lt;code&gt;technical-debts&lt;/code&gt; in the project. The problem is, as per definition Epic should not spawn more than a quarter, but, if we create an Epic for technical-debt it may run for the duration of the project. I surfed on Internet but could not find anything. Please help with right Agile guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32023" LastEditorUserId="32023" LastEditDate="2018-04-04T07:12:43.960" LastActivityDate="2018-04-16T17:06:44.397" Title="Should we create an Epic for tech-debts" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23801" CreationDate="2018-04-04T07:36:02.517" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The right agile guideline is that you should do what works best for you and your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no right or wrong with using an Epic to label the technical debt in the project. But there is also no requirement to have all stories associated with an Epic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2018-04-04T07:36:02.517" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23800" CreationDate="2018-04-04T09:47:31.300" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum does not operate on projects but on products. &quot;Implementing features&quot; is not a product but an activity that will lead to an improved product. Your idea of a subdivision into the projects you mentioned is far too low level. A more fitting perspective would be to think of whatever product your startup is developing as - well - a product for scrum. Then maybe the whole of your marketing materials could be another &quot;product&quot; with an attached scrum process containing tasks that will expand and improve them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum operates in areas where complexity is high and predictability is low. If you apply Scrum to a project where it is easy to produce reliable estimates you're only getting partial benefits from it. If you apply it to work where there already exists a close, successful cooperation betwen customer and company you're only getting partial benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is not without overhead. If you're not getting the full benefits of Scrum you should consider hard whether there isn't a simpler/leaner process you can use that will give you more bang for your buck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum requires a certain level of interchangeability (cross-functionality). To ensure you can sensibly plan and execute a sprint for most of your tasks it should not matter much who does them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally you're working with only 6 people. That is barely enough for maybe two scrum teams. Running &quot;25+ simultaneous projects&quot; with only 2 teams is going to be nothing but a logistical nightmare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What should you do?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming you have the necessary basic level cross-funcionality then put all three devs into one scrum team. Group the things you need them to do into as few products as makes sense. For each resulting product assign one of your business people as PO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the business side. Closely evaluate if Scrum &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; makes sense considering you'll have less than 3 full worker quotas available to form a second team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2018-04-04T09:47:31.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23801" CreationDate="2018-04-04T10:24:26.177" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/stories-epics-and-themes&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;An epic is a large story&lt;/a&gt;. One that needs to be broken down into stories that fit comfortably within sprints. It isn't really meant to be used as a way of grouping stories together in a category.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, do what is best for your team. If you find grouping technical debt tasks under an epic helps you to track them, then that is fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My preferred approach in JIRA is to use a &quot;technical debt&quot; label on stories/tasks that relate to technical debt work. That way you can filter in/out technical debt work items if you need to.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-04-04T10:24:26.177" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23797" CreationDate="2018-04-04T12:33:14.770" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I ended up being inspired by this graph from the mentioned book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zNHlV.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zNHlV.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so although in the book the swimlane is categorized by &quot;actors&quot;, i substituted that by time frame, ie 0..5 mins, 6..10 mins etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/W5Lgg.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/W5Lgg.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;notes&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;used &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sketchapp.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sketchapp&lt;/a&gt; for mac for basic rendering&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;used &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/tadija/AEFlowchart&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;AEFlowChart&lt;/a&gt; plugin ontop of sketch for flow charting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;uploaded doc to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.invisionapp.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;invision&lt;/a&gt; to collaborate with a wider team remotely (same functionality offered by google draw out of the box, including inline comments)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23022" LastActivityDate="2018-04-04T12:33:14.770" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22510" CreationDate="2018-04-04T17:56:19.147" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to add to the confusion, a &quot;milestone&quot; is also a term used in ticket tracking tools such as Trac and GitHub. In this usage, a milestone is a thing that has a due date and a set of tickets associated with it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, it could be that some teams use this type of milestone to organize and track progress on tickets for a sprint, and/or for a release. I wonder if this is contributing to the OP's confusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2018-04-04T17:56:19.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23807" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-04-04T18:52:00.113" Score="0" ViewCount="2022" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the difference Between a project manager and a principal agent in construction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a difference in the challenges experienced on construction projects (eg cost and time overruns) by a PA or a PM? Thus a comparison of how the two professions fare when it comes to running successful projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32026" LastActivityDate="2018-10-07T17:00:36.430" Title="What is the difference between a project manager and a principal agent in construction" Tags="&lt;pmbok&gt;&lt;responsibility&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22273" CreationDate="2018-04-05T00:41:25.667" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess the Product Owner (PO), as important as s/he is, does not have to be within a specific team. S/he could manage a couple of teams/projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, the PO can also be the project manager and even another role. It really depends on the size of the team, the project and the 'spirit' of the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32030" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-04-05T13:03:25.577" LastActivityDate="2018-04-05T13:03:25.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23809" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-04-05T13:11:22.290" Score="0" ViewCount="64" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our shop is going to continue maintenance of a system in production already. Our next update consists of fixing a bug and creating documentation so that new members joining our team may understand the system. I don't know what the work items should be since we have a brand new Team Foundation Server (with Scrum template) and the higher-ups want all work tracked in it. Would something like this work?:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Epic: Customer relationship management &quot;Echo&quot; System Support and Updates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feature: System Updates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PBI: 1. As a system admin, I want to understand the system completely so I can provide innovation and support.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bug: 2. No role validation during approval of a product.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task: 1. Create documentation with workflow process of &quot;Echo&quot; system.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task: 2. Refactor code so that approval action will validate if role is correct for validation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32038" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-04-06T12:20:31.087" LastActivityDate="2018-04-06T12:20:31.087" Title="What work items would look like related to support for a solution in production already?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23810" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-04-05T13:43:44.887" Score="-1" ViewCount="86" Body="&lt;p&gt;From this question:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/11266/how-to-factor-in-story-points-tasks-for-non-sprint-related-items?rq=1&quot;&gt;How to factor in story points/tasks for non sprint related items?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I gather you would reduce the capacity to a new employee to probably 0 for a while untile they are up to speed after training, pc set up, etc. in order to maintain the velocity of burn down charts accurately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However would you track their activities through work items in Team Foundation Server or would you just leave their capacity at 0 without any work items?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32038" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-04-06T12:19:21.197" LastActivityDate="2018-04-06T12:19:21.197" Title="How to track a new employee's activities in scrum template on TFS?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;&lt;burndown-chart&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23809" CreationDate="2018-04-05T14:14:58.100" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You haven't said how long your sprint is, and with only a couple tasks the burndown chart is not going to give you or the stakeholders a lot of information.  If you can do this in a couple days as a part of a technical debt cleanup sprint, I think it's probably fine.  If not, see if you can break the tasks down into 8 hour or less work packages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20438" LastActivityDate="2018-04-05T14:14:58.100" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23810" CreationDate="2018-04-05T16:16:44.747" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an aside, I don't think you want to reduce their capacity to 0. You know what you mean by that, and I know what you mean by that, but a senior stakeholder may not. Project Management is as much to do with managing your stakeholders, and their expectations, as anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest keeping the capacity to 25-50% of whatever normal capacity it, and book the rest of the time to training, if you have an account for that. Remember that every action should be tracked, even your noob scratching their head trying to make sense of the codebase. I'm not sure if you can track that in TFS, but if so go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20438" LastActivityDate="2018-04-05T16:16:44.747" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23813" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23816" CreationDate="2018-04-06T01:24:53.387" Score="0" ViewCount="84" Body="&lt;p&gt;If an unanticipated problem occurs (unknown-unknown), should the devised workaround need to pass by the Perform Integrated Change Control process before it is allowed to be implemented?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29799" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-04-06T13:06:50.827" LastActivityDate="2018-04-06T13:22:18.043" Title="Should workarounds pass by the Perform Integrated Change Control process?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23809" CreationDate="2018-04-06T09:01:15.053" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Scrum a common approach is to wrap everything around user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking your examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a system admin, I want to understand the system completely so I can provide innovation and support&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't a user story, it is a task that could be incorporated into a story that delivers business value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more Scrum approach would be to have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a user I want the approval action to validate if I have the correctly validated role so that I can complete all required approvals&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There could be several sub-tasks under this story, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gain an understanding of the system&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create documentation for the system&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is to focus your backlog on delivering business value, but that does not mean you ignore the tasks required to deliver that work. You simply wrap it in to the user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-04-06T09:01:15.053" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23815" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23817" CreationDate="2018-04-06T10:40:59.017" Score="2" ViewCount="522" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience I always worked at companies in which the Sprints started on Mondays and ended on Fridays (regardless of the sprint size, obviously). Is there any good practice that says this is the best period to work on a sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that having the last day of a sprint on a Friday makes things harder, as people in general are already thinking on their weekend plans and the sprint is in its last steps to be delivered successfully, which could ask for some extra focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31044" LastActivityDate="2018-04-14T07:14:10.453" Title="Regarding best practices of Scrum are there any &quot;best weekday&quot; to start/end Sprints?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;performance&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23813" CreationDate="2018-04-06T13:22:18.043" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.  The workaround created a change in something, whether it is a process change, a procedure change, a role change in terms of task assignment, a possible change in a needed piece of data, a possible change in output.  The point of change control is to understand what changed, who was impacted, agreement on the change, agreement on a change in costs and risks, etc.  The trigger of the change is a bit irrelevant, though needs to be communicated to those who would eventually approve the change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-04-06T13:22:18.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23815" CreationDate="2018-04-06T13:24:03.933" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen almost any day &lt;em&gt;but&lt;/em&gt; Monday and Friday, because people want to leave early on Friday (assuming you have flex time) and might come in unpredictably late on Monday if they are contractors that went home over the weekend and only arrive in your city on Monday morning. Those days are also prime targets for single days off to have a long weekend and in some countries (US for example) Mondays are more likely to be off due to public holidays. So for our team and our sister teams in the organization, having review/retro/planning meetings on Tuesday/Wednesday or Wednesday/Thursday worked really well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as always, the best practice in Scrum is &quot;ask your team, work together and find a solution&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2018-04-06T13:24:03.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23818" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-04-06T14:58:59.750" Score="3" ViewCount="2455" Body="&lt;p&gt;As of 2018, are there any documented approaches to delivering software that are not classed as Agile? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of these approaches, are any supported by or adopted by FTSE100, Fortune500 or flagship software companies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Caveat&lt;/strong&gt;:  When using the term Agile software development I am referring to the widely accepted frameworks (Kanban, Scrum, XP etc). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32049" LastEditorUserId="10462" LastEditDate="2018-04-10T15:01:06.683" LastActivityDate="2018-04-10T15:01:06.683" Title="Are there any alternatives to Agile Software Development?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2018-04-11T13:31:30.750" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23818" CreationDate="2018-04-06T15:12:42.260" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I noted above, this seems largely opinion-based. The only way I can think of to possibly have an objective viewpoint on &quot;Is Agile more efficient than Traditional?&quot; is to look at statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Luckily, we have the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.infoq.com/articles/standish-chaos-2015&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CHAOS Report by the Standish Group&lt;/a&gt; for that. Going by those numbers...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. Traditional is, on average, less efficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, however, that that only applies to the &lt;em&gt;average&lt;/em&gt;. Situational modifiers must also be taken into account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-04-06T15:12:42.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23815" CreationDate="2018-04-06T16:04:39.543" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Trying not to be facetious, but sounds like an &quot;any day ending in 'Y'&quot; type answer. You take your pick! My experience is not too early in the day, to allow for latecomers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32050" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-04-06T16:40:46.123" LastActivityDate="2018-04-06T16:40:46.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23758" CreationDate="2018-04-07T17:57:18.683" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no way to make Project do what you want.&#xA;Project will always move the task around to meet dependencies. It will change the Start Date, but not lengthen the task or shorten it. &#xA;A FS dependency does not mean &quot;start Task B exactly when Task A is finished&quot; but &quot;don't start Task B before Task A is finished&quot;. So Task B must wait until Task A is finished, but can also start later.&#xA;If you have two or more dependencies, the latest start date will apply and all dependencies will be considered respected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30194" LastActivityDate="2018-04-07T17:57:18.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23738" CreationDate="2018-04-07T18:13:32.753" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This would normally happen in the Task Usage view. The purpose of this view is to list each resource assignment below the relevant task. Check if you're using the Task Usage view and if yes, try switching to another view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30194" LastActivityDate="2018-04-07T18:13:32.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23423" CreationDate="2018-04-07T18:17:26.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, unfortunately you can't prevent that because the data from the subprojects is only loaded when you expand them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30194" LastActivityDate="2018-04-07T18:17:26.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23256" CreationDate="2018-04-07T18:29:23.467" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two possibilities come to mind: predecessor dependencies and resource calendars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You said you added &quot;actual start date&quot; for the task and &quot;% completed&quot;. When you do that, Project will move all the completed work of the task to the start date you set. However, the remaining work of the task will still follow task dependencies. You said the predecessor is completed, but to make sure check the &quot;actual finish date&quot; of the predecessor and see if it fits with the time of the split.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other possibility is if you have any resources assigned to the task. If the resource calendar states that the resource cannot work on specific days (because of holidays for example), Project will interrupt the task when the resource isn't available and start again when the resource is available again. Open the resource and check its calendar to see if any non-working days are configured during that time period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30194" LastActivityDate="2018-04-07T18:29:23.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23691" CreationDate="2018-04-07T19:00:00.530" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can prevent the task duration from changing by setting the task type to &quot;Fixed Duration&quot;. Project will then stack up the remaining work in the available days, and the resource assignment units will increase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there's another problem in this scenario, and it's the task start date. The first time a task update is approved, the date the resource started to work becomes the &quot;actual start date&quot; and the new start date of the task. Even if the duration does not change, the task will start later, and therefore end later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a work around to prevent this from happening, and it's to set the &quot;actual start date&quot; of the task manually to the scheduled start date. This must be done before the first update is approved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, be aware that Project will then stack all the remaining work in whatever time remains. If your resource needs to work 50 hours in a day to complete the work, it won't work in reality even if the plan looks good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30194" LastActivityDate="2018-04-07T19:00:00.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23815" CreationDate="2018-04-07T22:56:06.663" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I didn't see any difference so far. But when having sprints end on Thursday, some complain that Fridays becomes less productive because a) they worked very hard on Thursday to prepare for the demo(which follows the completion of each sprint), so they're exhausted and want to relax next day b) weekend follows&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27305" LastActivityDate="2018-04-07T22:56:06.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22273" CreationDate="2018-04-07T23:11:48.493" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If there is a gap in how the team understands the priorities and business needs, then the more PO is involved, the better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27305" LastActivityDate="2018-04-07T23:11:48.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23829" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-04-08T01:26:36.457" Score="2" ViewCount="108" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Let me start by explaining the big, unfixable problem here:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A new Technology Director has been brought in above my team, and he insists on deciding how Jira is configured, affecting people who don't report to him. Despite his insistence to the contrary, he doesn't seem to have the slightest idea how agile or Scrum works, but the rest of the team is very comfortable with these things. He doesn't understand what goes into a standup, and when we forced a retrospective recently, he stared at his laptop the 90 percent of time. This (and his apparent confusing of waterfall and agile) is causing very real problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He's a talented programmer, but also kind of a jerk and an inscrutable communicator. He leads by fiat, not by example. It's so bad that I've already decided that I'm leaving (I'm expecting an offer in the next two days), and our senior front-end developer quit right after we hired a very junior front-ender who really needed his mentoring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Now, to my more narrowly-scoped question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should someone in this role have a major say in this sort of thing? The way he wants to configure Jira makes no sense to anybody else. How can I push back and advocate for agile and Scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to fix as much of this as possible before I leave because I do like the company and I really care about the team and I want to see them succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice on how to help me help my team before I leave would be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32061" LastActivityDate="2018-04-09T08:07:54.843" Title="Dev team's role in configuring Jira" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23829" CreationDate="2018-04-08T04:36:01.023" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For your first question: JIRA is a stand-in for the taskboard, which is a tool for the team to visualize and organize their work and for stakeholders to quickly see how things are progressing. For the most part, that means it is for the team to decide how it is used. The big exception I'd see to this would be that it is not unreasonable for a stakeholder to make a request about the configuration for them to get better visibility into the status of the sprint and the work if it doesn't impact the team too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your second question, that's a tough one. It really comes down to why they are doing it. For many people, the intent is good - they think they're helping. Maybe what they are doing worked somewhere else and they assume it'll work there. Or, maybe he actually does have a better way of doing things, but since he's just forcing it, you get all of the disruption of the change, but can't see any benefit. For these people you can usually show them the impact they're having and ask them to slow down and go through some experimental changes with the team, asking them to offer suggestions to problems the team is struggling with and you can try those suggestions before making them permanent. The changes that actually are better will make sense and the changes that don't fit will fall by the wayside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On rare occasions, I run into people that do this without good intentions. They've somehow learned along their career that they should control other people's actions and that's how they know they're an important leader. These people can change, but it's a long road. Usually, it's easier just to get out of their damage area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-04-08T04:36:01.023" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23831" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23843" CreationDate="2018-04-08T10:26:27.797" Score="0" ViewCount="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have designated as Mobile Team Lead in a small company. But I feel that I have huge to learn apart from the daily activities I am doing . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most Important thing I want to learn is how to communicate with client effectively and how to manage people effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will doing PGDPM(Post Graduate Diploma in Project Management) in Distance Education help me improve my skills?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31275" LastEditorUserId="31275" LastEditDate="2018-04-08T10:32:56.990" LastActivityDate="2018-04-09T16:39:28.467" Title="Is it worth for a Team Lead to study PGDPM in distance Education?" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23829" CreationDate="2018-04-08T14:35:15.263" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Target the goal(s), not the path.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jira is a tool like any other. Way too often I see people concerned about keeping Jira organized, forgetting that, as any other tool, Jira should be a mean to a proper goal or result. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Take a step back:&lt;/strong&gt; think &lt;em&gt;why are you guy using Jira at all&lt;/em&gt;? List the top 3 reasons. As him (or even better, &lt;em&gt;everyone&lt;/em&gt; using Jira if you want to have a more consistent view). Are the answers the same? Are the &lt;em&gt;goals&lt;/em&gt; of Jira usage the same? Maybe your manager is asking for a specific usage because he envisage some specific reports that cannot be obtained using Jira as-is. Maybe he has a waterfall-oriented view and is expecting to have Due Dates from Jira. The bottomline here is that, if there's a conflict on Jira usage, is because people have different expectations on Jira. When discussing about it, try to avoid naming Jira at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Examples:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;as a developer, I need to know what are the top priority work we have&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;as a developer, I need to know how many activities I have depending on me&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;as a manager, I need to know how much work accumulated (yeah, I avoided using the word 'backlog' on purpose) my team has&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;as a manager, I need to know where most of the team's effort is going&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;as a manager, I need to know how much work we'll be delivering next year (spoiler alert: unless your company is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; mature, Jira won't answer that!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;as a user, I need to know when my request is going to be completed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;as a tester, I need to know the developers I have to talk to when questions arise&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Now, setup the plan to reach the goals:&lt;/strong&gt; So long everyone is on the same page on what Jira can (and most importantly, can &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt;!), propose some plans on how to reach the objectives. If there are clashes on objectives, then priorities need to be set (and alternatives discussed). Let's say, if the manager needs to know the 1y delivery plan, saying &quot;Jira won't have it, suck it up&quot; won't help. Alternatives should be discussed. Likewise, if the agreed approach doesn't help the team, the team needs to agree how to address the goals (up to have 'layers' of Jira usage, for instance... for Example managers using Epics as they want and the team using Task / Stories).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2018-04-08T14:35:15.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23834" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-04-09T06:29:06.050" Score="-1" ViewCount="102" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have received a requirement to customize our Project Server 2013 implementation as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Several project managers can add tasks to the same project plan&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A centralized focal point is  responsible of auditing and validating added tasks&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When a project manager adds new tasks, the focal point gets notified by email.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The focal point has to approve or reject the added tasks. If he / she approves them, the tasks are published. If he / she rejects them, the tasks are removed from the plan.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any recommendations on the best way to implement these requirements? I have looked into Project Server workflow but they does not seem to support such requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32066" LastActivityDate="2018-04-15T07:33:17.823" Title="Task Approval before Publishing" Tags="&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;&lt;project-server&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23829" CreationDate="2018-04-09T08:07:54.843" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simple point to take away is that if you are leaving then &lt;strong&gt;the best thing you can do for your team is almost certainly nothing&lt;/strong&gt;. By trying to 'fix' stuff all you can achieve is upsetting your colleagues who don't like the implicit conflict that will arise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm trying to fix as much of this as possible before I leave because I&#xA;  do like the company and I really care about the team and I want to see&#xA;  them succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;New people rarely do things out of some kind of Hollywood-villain enjoyment of evil. Perhaps the new tech director has been promoted out of his comfort zone, maybe he has &lt;em&gt;shock&lt;/em&gt; exaggerated his experience. It doesn't matter, you are moving on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Focus on making sure that your tasks are complete &amp;amp; that your projects are running smoothly when you come to leave&lt;/strong&gt;. That's how you can best serve your team.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="693" LastActivityDate="2018-04-09T08:07:54.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23836" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-04-09T11:39:28.353" Score="2" ViewCount="149" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile focuses on delivering the highest business value to the interested parts of a project.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;However, (at least in my scenario) it seems that the client/stakeholders are always focused on having more and better features, while avoiding to even glance to technical gaps and performance improvements (except when they become too obvious, or the problem is already too big to be easily fixed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How could the PO (or the development team) show to the people in charge the business value of these needs, considering that to do them it will take some time from the features-development resources?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31044" LastActivityDate="2018-04-18T13:25:40.570" Title="How to improve (or to call attention to) the business value of technical needs?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;&lt;scope-management&gt;" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23836" CreationDate="2018-04-09T11:59:03.473" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That depends on either the product you're working at is assumed to have long or shord lifespan. Since it is clearly a problem of technical debt. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As any debt has its cost to be addressed and each new &quot;release&quot; that cost grows up, the stakeholders (those ones who control budgeting) are interested in keeping the long-term budget in originally estimated bounds (they are actually interested in short-term budget predictability as well, however the latter is much easier to achieve).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would use the planning to demonstrate over time that new code integration into the existing code base costs more that it would having the existing code more well-designed, well-structured and well-developed in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your debt is big enough, then the costs growth should start looking representative in a few months so that the technical aspects become more sensible to business-oriented people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29674" LastActivityDate="2018-04-09T11:59:03.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23792" CreationDate="2018-04-09T13:47:31.493" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It isn't hard in JIRA to set up swimlanes, so you could fairly easily track five teams on one board. Others have already noted where this won't always be useful, but JIRA is flexible--let your use of the tool evolve so that it best reflects how the teams evolve in their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11776" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-04-09T14:04:37.990" LastActivityDate="2018-04-09T14:04:37.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23836" CreationDate="2018-04-09T14:15:45.833" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Schedule a meeting with them to talk about the technical debt and the development process in general. Create an interesting presentation with images and figures to support you. Cover the following topics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the 'invisible' part of development. Not all dev activities result in a customer-facing feature. There is backend stuff, refactoring, research, maintenance. Give few examples from your project. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;if you work iteratively, explain that the first version(s) although already implemented and tangible, require further bugfixing and 'invisible' work, otherwise the feature may not be stable enough to be used in the real world. Again, show examples and list the reals risks of avoiding this work. E.g. 'The number of sign-ups will decrease by 7.5% because we have a critical bug in FireFox. 15% of our visitors use FireFox and we have 50% conversion rate'&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the concept of technical debt as &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;'Implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing an easy solution now instead of using a better approach that would take longer'&lt;/a&gt;. That it's a common part of each project and that there will always be some debt, but it's also a common practice to reduce this debt. It's important to outline here the risks for the business side. 'Code will be hard to support' won't convince, but 'The budget to add the list of the latest user's activities to the Dashboard will increase by 200% if we don't refactor the user's module right now' may. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27305" LastActivityDate="2018-04-09T14:15:45.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23836" CreationDate="2018-04-09T14:20:59.720" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two parts to this depending on what you mean by technical gaps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, is building the feature right. Any feature should have enough time given to be built in the technical constraints of the system. Because each increment should be a shippable product (I'm leveraging a Scrum assumption here), that means that for a feature to be done, it must meet the technical standard for a finished product. This means fully tested, performing at an appropriate level, maintainable, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are exceptions - for example you could build out a version of a feature for a select beta group to use knowing there are performance changes needed to roll it out to everyone, but this should be the odd case where the payoff in knowledge value is worth it and it's the least wasteful way to approach the problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of agile practices that support this. Definition of Done helps the team push back against pressure to cut corners. BDD and TDD both build refactoring into every development cycle to spread it out and make time for it instead of letting it pile up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second part is features that have no apparent business value because when they are done right, the user can't see them. The trick here is that they have incredibly high business value, the team and PO just need to learn how to express it. The example I always give is that I would have loved to see more security stories on Experian's backlog. Another example may be that the current architecture won't scale and with your current growth numbers the system will become noticeably slow in the next 6 months. It'll take you 3 months to refactor the underlying architecture, so you better start soon. See, lots of business value - you just need to express it. You also need a strong PO for this with the authority to set direction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-04-09T14:20:59.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23836" CreationDate="2018-04-09T14:29:56.043" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend learning about &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Six Sigma&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It seeks to improve the quality of the output of a process by&#xA;  identifying and removing the causes of defects and minimizing&#xA;  variability in manufacturing and business processes. It uses a set of&#xA;  quality management methods, mainly empirical, statistical methods, and&#xA;  creates a special infrastructure of people within the organization who&#xA;  are experts in these methods. Each Six Sigma project carried out&#xA;  within an organization follows a defined sequence of steps and has&#xA;  specific value targets, for example: reduce process cycle time, reduce&#xA;  pollution, reduce costs, increase customer satisfaction, and increase&#xA;  profits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put it more plainly.  There are several methods identified by the Six Sigma process that allow you to project cost savings through process improvement, and then track the actual savings.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was doing this for a Major Manufacturer based in Central Illinois, we often found that we could project savings that were so great, that management would not believe the potential.  We several times had to sharply reduce our projections, not because they were wrong just because they we too big.  But the actual savings would many time bear out our projections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first step(yellow belt) is usually a 2-3 hour class followed by applied learning through participation in a real world project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second step(green belt) is usually  8-16 hours of classroom plus applied learning through leading a project under the supervision of a trained leader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third step(black belt) usually consists of approximately 2-3 weeks of intensive training, followed up by applying the knowledge in projects, and regular continuing education, as well as supervision of green, and yellow belt projects.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final step(master black belt) varies by business, but mostly consists of managing the Six Sigma Process, for the business, and mentoring other members on Six Sigma, including performing training for the lower level steps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I am explaining the steps because there are literally volumes of information that would be required to answer this question more directly&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3095" LastActivityDate="2018-04-09T14:29:56.043" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="873" CreationDate="2018-04-09T14:40:47.070" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find that the biggest impediment to the adaptation of any software is training.  The more familiar a tool is to the user the more likely they are to use that tool not only when it is appropriate but also when it is inappropriate.  I think the biggest demonstration of this is Excel.  It is a powerful tool, with a robust set of features, that almost everyone knows how to use.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to combat misuse, is by training using tools that are more appropriate to the task, followed by practical real world application of the tool.  Getting people to try the tool to do their jobs is key to reinforcing that initial training, and for their ability to learn to productively utilize the tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So first, get the team involved in interactive, group training sessions.  If the whole group is involved they will help reinforce the training through questions and applications of the tool.  Second be prepared with one or more tasks that are designed to both test the tool in your environment, and get the entire team active with the tool.  This will help build confidence in the tool for the team, and to reinforce the training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3095" LastActivityDate="2018-04-09T14:40:47.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23831" CreationDate="2018-04-09T16:39:28.467" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As per my opinion doing PGDPM in distance will help you in improving your skills for sure, I do agree in full time education there will be people to follow and correct you. with some extra efforts like watching respective youtube(or educational) videos and with help of your like-minded colleagues we can fill that gap.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32078" LastActivityDate="2018-04-09T16:39:28.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23818" CreationDate="2018-04-09T16:57:34.637" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile or non-Agile: As per my opinion the project type derives it, for example Scrum meeting- our project is on going development project with 5 to 10 people then agile scrum meeting is very good, if same is with more then 100 people team &#xA; then it becomes bit difficult; if our team with 4 members and handles 4 different tools then everyday meeting might not useful etc. so we need to analyze, then adopt and evolve.     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32078" LastActivityDate="2018-04-09T16:57:34.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23782" CreationDate="2018-04-09T18:05:30.397" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;User Stories are part of several Agile methodologies, including Scrum and XP.  Agile software development derives from the Agile manifesto and related writing (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://agilemanifesto.org&lt;/a&gt;). Detailed methodologies such as Scrum or Chrystal or XP are based on those principles (and on what the methodology developers, and its practitioners, find useful). They are like screwdrivers--vital parts of most toolkits, but not necessary for having a toolkit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11776" LastActivityDate="2018-04-09T18:05:30.397" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23836" CreationDate="2018-04-10T03:21:05.130" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This kind of &quot;invisible&quot;, non-user-facing, &quot;infrastructure&quot; work &lt;em&gt;reduces the cost of future work&lt;/em&gt; (eg, spend time now making code more maintainable so that spiffy feature you're going to ask for in 6 months will cost less to implement) and &lt;em&gt;reduces risk&lt;/em&gt; (eg, if you don't keep the infrastructure up to date, including updates for compatibility with new versions of libraries, you run the risk that some critical security fix is going to come out but you'll be 5 versions behind and it will take weeks to upgrade).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2018-04-10T03:21:05.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18002" CreationDate="2018-04-10T06:55:33.283" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2UaM4.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2UaM4.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;This is the activity on Arrow diagram for the above WBS&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32083" LastActivityDate="2018-04-10T06:55:33.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23818" CreationDate="2018-04-10T08:19:56.030" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is considerable evidence to suggest that massive enterprise software installations including SAP and NASA reject most of the frameworks we class as Agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is due to the scale of such deliveries requiring considerable amounts of up-front planning, even if the design is not finalized.  The costs are traditionally extremely high and it is unlikely the system will &lt;em&gt;work&lt;/em&gt; until the whole thing has been assembled although it might pass lots of testing suites and simulations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;What Do We Mean By Agile?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whilst Agile advocates might gnash their teeth at this, we need to separate tactical software-delivery patterns from the overall frameworks used for delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Agile can, at the latest point, be distilled into a handful of practices, patterns, guides, techniques, tactics or approaches.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/AgZ2P.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/AgZ2P.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Or it could be a few dozen...&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0lg4E.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0lg4E.png&quot; alt=&quot;https://www.agilealliance.org/agile101/subway-map-to-agile-practices/&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Or it could be argued that Agile is actually over 100 different approaches and intersecting patterns.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/r6YW5.gif&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/r6YW5.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, someone might be working within a waterfall organization using some Agile patterns.  Or, the organization might be largely Agile but one department has adopted some waterfall type planning despite being huge Agile advocates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;What Do We Mean by Not-Agile?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It becomes very hard to argue any organization is &lt;em&gt;not doing Agile&lt;/em&gt; if they have adopted some or all of the patterns listed above in any phase of their delivery.  As an aside, it should be &lt;em&gt;being Agile&lt;/em&gt; not &lt;em&gt;doing Agile&lt;/em&gt; but it is almost impossible to reverse the way the word Agile is being used.  You are onto a loser with that argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;What Alternative Exists?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a bridge between the traditional waterfall world and the Agile landscape; we call this technique &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_model&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Spiral Development&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.  It can use waterfall type planning and discovery up front to provide the level of certainty required in dangerous installations but allows for rapid iteration once certain variables are known.  Of course, like all things, even Spiral Development has it's purists and detractors and is plagued with its own bikeshedding debates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Example 1&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20050209905.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;peer-reviewed paper from NASA&lt;/a&gt; arguing for The Business Case for Spiral Development in Heavy-Lift Launch Vehicle Systems&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Spiral Development process is now being widely used for large Government program acquisitions and lends itself to the project described here. The main advantage of this concept is that it builds on existing capabilities and assets, as opposed to starting up a “new sheet” vehicle program from scratch. Spiral Development designs recombine existing assets in new configurations to function in extrapolated operating conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Example 2&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SAP has published official guidance for Projecting Managing the delivery of an SAP installation (typically multiple years of work) via the weighty guidebook which outlines the 16 sequnential steps required for a successful SAP project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is also the officially supported Accelerated SAP (ASAP) which can be viewed at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogs.sap.com/2013/11/15/basic-understanding-on-asap-methodology-for-beginners/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SAP Blog&lt;/a&gt;.  You can find a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.slideshare.net/rangabashyamsrinivasan/asap-methodology-1st-phase-project-preparation-46613531&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;nice overview&lt;/a&gt; on SlideShare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also detailed guidance for individual SAP components such as the Hana in-Memory Databse.  You can find those project management guidelines &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sap-press.com/implementing-sap-hana_3703/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Counter-Example 1&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like all things Project related, you can find examples and refutations galore.  SpaceX have successfully challenged the incumbent NASA delivery timelines by aggressively adopting more Agile methods for prototyping, manufacturing and testing of components; however they, like Tesla, remain the exception to the rule for lots of reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are interested in how SpaceX are leveraging Agile frameworks then I would suggest a critical reading of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00SIDCSWY/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&amp;amp;btkr=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future&lt;/a&gt;.  Ignoring the title, the book has huge amounts of Agile and delivery related insights from the engineering teams.  FOr instance, the first Tesla MVP was created in an Excel document before it went anywhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Summary&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most companies have adopted 1 or more software patterns that we would recognise as Agile&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That does not mean they support entire Agile frameworks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is a bridge between traditional waterfall and Agile; it is called Spiral&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Certain organisations still require up front planning due to the sheer scale of their deliveries&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-04-10T08:26:30.097" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23834" CreationDate="2018-04-10T09:53:53.307" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like David, I find your process questionable for a number of reasons. From the way you formulated your question, however, I assume you weren't the one who defined the process that way, so here is the answer you can give to the person who gave you those requirements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You cannot configure Project Server to do that the way you want to do it. A project manager has control of his project plan. There is no workflow to add an audit, and approve each task individually before publishing it. You can't even track who added which task or made which changes, so if you have several project managers working in a single plan, PM1 could change or delete the task created by PM2. Nobody could find out that PM1 was the one who deleted the task, because that information isn't saved anywhere in the database, and nobody would get an email informing them that such a change happened. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't work like that with Project Server. From a technical standpoint, it will not work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30194" LastActivityDate="2018-04-10T09:53:53.307" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18002" CreationDate="2018-04-10T11:51:50.247" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_diagramming_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Arrow diagramming method&lt;/a&gt; and your source information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tVGZl.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tVGZl.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AoA Diagram:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LHLWq.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LHLWq.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28200" LastActivityDate="2018-04-10T11:51:50.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23851" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-04-10T14:29:20.577" Score="0" ViewCount="117" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scenario:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1 online shop running on multiple platforms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;desktop&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;mobile web&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;mobile app iOS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;mobile app Android&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;there are common functionalities but platform specific too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is the recommended approach to handle this scenario? Can be a backlog for common functionalities and sub-backlogs for platform specific features? &#xA;Do we have 1 or 4 products?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30959" LastActivityDate="2019-03-03T13:59:35.653" Title="Product backlog/s definition" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23852" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23853" CreationDate="2018-04-10T15:01:15.950" Score="1" ViewCount="78" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently joined a new software development company and they currently use TFS to create PBI's and Bugs and they do not include tasks. I want to be able to utilise the scrum tools available in TFS (2013) so as I can see burndown charts and metrics etc. Is there any way to tap into these tools without using tasks? I want to see if this is possible before I start changing their process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32089" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-04-13T15:54:34.883" LastActivityDate="2018-04-13T15:54:34.883" Title="See TFS Scrum Tools using only PBI and Bugs only?" Tags="&lt;tfs&gt;&lt;vsts&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23852" CreationDate="2018-04-10T15:42:17.383" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems like your TFS project is using the &quot;Scrum&quot; process template.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could create another project (or modify the current one - which is harder depending on the TFS version that you have) and use the &quot;Agile&quot; process template that has User Stories (instead of PBI), burndown chart in the Iteration overview, and other definitions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to: &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/vsts/work/customize/update-customized-process-template?view=vsts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/vsts/work/customize/update-customized-process-template?view=vsts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31044" LastActivityDate="2018-04-10T15:42:17.383" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23851" CreationDate="2018-04-10T17:57:26.570" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me it's one and the same backlog and one and the same product and I assume you have all the items in the same roadmap. There should be also backend part, which is shared by apps, e.g. API. To clearly see the dependencies(e.g. 'need this endpoint to update email from the app') it makes sense too keep all the issues under one roof. Also most likely you'll release one and the same feature simultaneously(or with a short interval) for all the platforms, which makes Business Analyst work by a feature, and not by a platform. &#xA;But sure it' mandatory to tag or to label or to somehow mark to which platform each issue is related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27305" LastActivityDate="2018-04-10T17:57:26.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23855" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23864" CreationDate="2018-04-11T08:27:29.673" Score="2" ViewCount="194" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know if anyone is in a similar situation working as part of a SCRUM team - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The majority of our team are R&amp;amp;D staff, or academic research staff. We work in what might be called &quot;bleeding edge&quot; research areas, across multiple disciplines. Various (maybe all) members at some point have struggled with creating backlogs. The reason being is that because so much of what they do is unknown in advance, they generally end up doing a small piece of work, in which what must come next becomes clearer (multiple new stories per exploratory work), in which it makes sense to work on &quot;what comes next&quot; almost immediately i.e. not wait for the next 2 week sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give that the work our team undertake is not repetative, with iterations of unknown work that are required to be worked on &quot;as they come&quot;, does anyone have any tips on how to plan a backlog multiple sprints in advance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give an example - one day a member of staff might run an experiment in a lab on some the effects of some radioactive material on a tissue sample, of which the results need to be intepretated. These stories can generally be written in advance no problem. But depending on the analysis, some theoretical work might need to be done to rethink the problem, further experiments might need to be done to confirm a finding (an easy win in terms of generating new stories), or altering the experiment format is necessary. It is often the case that new variables / methods / software / hardware / even the fundamental problem may change upon the initial anaylsis - which yes the intitial phase can happen over a mere few days so I'd say one fifth of the stories could be planned per sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's beginning to get really tough committing to even a one week sprint as we can't commit a week's worth of user stories. Any suggestions would be great. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30247" LastActivityDate="2018-04-11T20:58:07.133" Title="How to plan 2 week sprints, when each story completed will generate multiple stories" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23836" CreationDate="2018-04-11T09:30:53.460" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two things spring to mind about your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, the Product Owner is the person responsible for the product. They prioritise requirements and work closely with the development team to understand the technical solution (quality, non-functional requirements, etc.). Of course the Product Owner will listen to the opinions of stakeholders, but it is they that make the final decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is one of the great strengths of Scrum. It means that decisions on the backlog are taken by somebody who spends a great deal of time with the development team and &lt;em&gt;gets&lt;/em&gt; what is really going on. It is much easier to convince the Product Owner of a technical requirement than to convince a stakeholder who has limited exposure to the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, agile depends on trust. The development team trusts the Product Owner to make the right decisions about backlog priorities and the Product Owner trusts the development team to make the right decisions about delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, my preferred way to work is to wrap all technical requirements in to user stories. For example, if the development team recognises that they need to do some re-architecting to improve performance then they would wrap that into the delivery of a business feature. Of course this means that the amount of work necessary to deliver the business feature is a lot more than some people will expect. But as the Product Owner works so closely with the team they understand why this is being done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I'm assuming you are using Scrum as you mention the Product Owner role, even though you haven't used the Scrum label.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-04-11T09:30:53.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23834" CreationDate="2018-04-11T11:01:59.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll answer this question with an answer that does not answer your question.  I think you are looking for a solution that is looking for a problem that, if you found one, will create a lot of problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A PM must be authorized and enabled to add and delete tasks and move around resources as necessary to deliver the project scope.  By adding a layer of control on this normal PM action, then your PM is not really the PM.  This signals to me that either you are under hiring your PM and need to raise the requirements for this role or you have a PM maturity capability issue or a cultural one or both.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So long as the added tasks are not associated to scope creep--e.g., your scope is to paint the bathroom but you are adding tasks to paint the living room--then the PM should be able to add additional coats of paint to the bathroom, and commit the paint, the painter, money, whatever else, to complete the painted wall.  In this case, the baseline schedule--including its planned value duration and money and hours--do not change; thus, you now have a variance that you must manage.  Variances are normal.  Trying to eliminate them by control points is futile and will very likely exacerbate variances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the PM wants to add the living room to be painted, then this is where your change control process comes in to play, a proper control point.  Upon approval, you get a new schedule, new money, new time, and a new baseline and the work continues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my recommendation would be to change your requirements and remove this need for a control point under this scenario.  Find out why they are requiring it and go fix it.  Fixing the root will be much more beneficial than a band aid control point that will likely cause adverse effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-04-11T11:01:59.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23858" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23860" CreationDate="2018-04-11T11:58:08.217" Score="5" ViewCount="509" Body="&lt;p&gt;When something needs to be done, be it a new task or getting help with an existing one, a knee-jerk reaction I've often seen in the wild is &lt;em&gt;finding a person to do it&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some random examples of this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;I need to see the logs, who do I talk to?&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;I want this patch to be merged, who can help me?&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;I want that button to behave differently, who's available to work on this?&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes people would assume that a single actor is always available and waiting to perform a particular task (&quot;&lt;em&gt;if I want to see the logs, I go to Josh, he'd always help me with that&lt;/em&gt;&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other times people would assume that a single router is always available (&quot;&lt;em&gt;if I want something implemented, this manager, Bob, can always help me finding the right person for the job&lt;/em&gt;&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the tasks will be assigned at random (&quot;&lt;em&gt;I get assigned to tasks randomly (kind of)&lt;/em&gt;&quot; - &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/10307/32103&quot;&gt;Best way to divide &amp;amp; assign development work on projects?&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that this is colloquially known as &quot;push&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, some development methodologies (Lean, Scrum, Kanban) seem to prefer the &quot;pull&quot; approach, when instead of being handed to a particular person (and sometimes through a routing person) the tasks are queued somewhere (on a Kanban board, in a Scrum backlog, etc) to be picked up by the team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder, what are the benefits of the &quot;pull&quot; approach?&#xA;It might be useful to enumerate them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32103" LastActivityDate="2020-12-09T16:02:57.197" Title="What are the benefits of queuing tasks as opposed to assigning them?" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23858" CreationDate="2018-04-11T13:28:41.653" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pull approaches optimize for flow (how quickly tasks move from 'in progress' to 'done'), while push approaches optimize for 100% utilization (making sure everyone is doing something at all times).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's look at an example. We have two developers, A and B, and 8 tasks, 1-8, ordered by priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Push model:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We assign 1, 3 and 5 to A as well as 2, 4 and 6 to B, leaving 7 and 8 in the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A completes 1.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;B completes 2.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A completes 3. We assign 7 to A.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A completes 5. Note that 5 was completed before 4. We assign 8 to A.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;B completes 4.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;B completes 6. B now has no work to do and is idle, so we dredge up low-priority task 9 and assign it to B.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A completes 7.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;B completes 9. Gets assigned 10, the real bottom-of-the-barrel.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;B completes 10. After getting burned out working on tasks 9 and 10 which B knows no one ever actually wanted in the first place, B decides to not inform the assigner and instead sit idle.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A completes 8.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Pull model:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We start with A working on 1, B working on 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A completes 1, starts 3.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;B completes 2, starts 4.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A completes 3, starts 5.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A completes 5, starts 6.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;B completes 4, starts 7.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A completes 6, starts 8.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A completes 8. At this point, the only task among the first 8 being worked on is 7, by B. Ideally, A now works alongside B to get 7 finished asap.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A completes 8.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-04-11T13:28:41.653" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23858" CreationDate="2018-04-11T15:19:50.807" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will assume that the &amp;quot;push&amp;quot; approach is not only direct, but also &lt;em&gt;immediate&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;(Like when someone comes up to you and says &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;hey, Joe, can we roll this later today?&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;pull&amp;quot;, on the other hand, is not only &lt;em&gt;indirect&lt;/em&gt;, providing the &lt;em&gt;queue&lt;/em&gt; as the go-between, but also &lt;em&gt;delayed&lt;/em&gt;. Tasks might &lt;em&gt;accumulate&lt;/em&gt; in the queue, waiting to be picked during the day, or waiting for a planning meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Effective use of working memory&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We humans have a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_memory#Capacity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;limited&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-04-heavy-memory-brainwave-synch.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;working memory&lt;/a&gt;. Whenever someone comes up to us with a task, we have to load a bunch of stuff into our working memory, switching to the different problem domain. This takes time and brain power (I remember reading a study on how for some programmers task switching is a limited resource, they can only suffer a handful of such switches a day).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We need the working memory to think, the less of it we have for the task at hand, the worse our performance will be (&lt;a href=&quot;https://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-brain-tasks.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cf&lt;/a&gt;), so lending some of it to discuss a &lt;em&gt;different&lt;/em&gt; task is detrimental to whatever we have been working on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plus if a person managed to &lt;em&gt;surprise&lt;/em&gt; us with the question, then we'll likely &lt;a href=&quot;https://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-04-derailed-thought-brain-fault.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;loose the current state altogether&lt;/a&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And trying to hold two things at once, the task we've been working on and the task we've been approached with, we're likely to botch the second one too. We might give inadequate attention and working memory to it, failing to estimate its complexity properly, to judge our aptitude, to grasp the context and the the whole picture, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the &amp;quot;pull&amp;quot; approach allows us to schedule our work better, accepting new tasks and task-related questions when our working memory is ready to hold them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. cf. &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.ninlabs.com/2013/01/programmer-interrupted/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://blog.ninlabs.com/2013/01/programmer-interrupted/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Remaining in the Flow&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of us can enter a state of hyperfocus called the Flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that Flow is about keeping a right balance between our cognitive and emotional parts. It's a tight loop where what we do will also make us excited, feeding into our creativity, a sense of discovery, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Processing_fluency&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;fluency&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://theangrygm.com/gaming-for-fun-part-1-eight-kinds-of-fun/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;whatever else motivates us&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That balance is very effective but also precarious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task assignment might be stressful. It forces a switch from the creative to the planning and managing brain. It breaks the Flow easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might be why Schaffer lists the &amp;quot;Freedom from distractions&amp;quot; as one of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)#Conditions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;requirements&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the benefit of the &amp;quot;pull&amp;quot; approach is that we don't have to break anyone's Flow with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Easy going, less stressfull&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task assignment taps often into uncertainty. &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;Can I do this? Do I have the time? Will I want to work on this tomorrow? Are there consequences if I pass?&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot; These and a lot of other questions might pop into someone's mind unbidden when one is asked to take a task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Uncertainty is stressful. Some studies show that it's &lt;a href=&quot;https://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-03-uncertainty-stress-inevitable-pain.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;worse than pain&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly enough, subtle assignment (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agileadvice.com/2015/07/22/referenceinformation/pitfall-of-scrum-assigning-tasks/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;Would you consider working on this with me?&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;) can invite even more uncertainty into the picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even stronger stressor is the lack of transparency. We are wired to survey the social environment around us. Whether consciously or not, we're gauging were we stand, how useful we are to the team and whether our relationships are secure. Some people are more anxious about it by default than others (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_in_adults#Working_models&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cf&lt;/a&gt;), but security in relationships is one of our fundamental needs, along with food and procreation (&lt;a href=&quot;https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-04-loneliness-britain-lethal-condition.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cf&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;pull&amp;quot; approach brings transparency into the team. We know what's going on, who's working on what tasks, what's being done and what's being delayed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Direct task assignment, on the other hand, often happens under the carpet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. More on that psychological safety aspect in &lt;a href=&quot;https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&amp;amp;as_sdt=0%2C5&amp;amp;q=Charles+Duhigg+what+Google+learned+from+its+quest+to+build+perfect+team&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Duhigg, What Google learned from its quest to build perfect team&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Separation of concerns&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_concerns#Origin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;As Dijkstra put it&lt;/a&gt;, it's worth &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;focusing one's attention upon some aspect&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Picking the tasks is definitely a separate aspect. Or rather a group of aspects. We should clarify and discuss the goals of the task, see if the task is really needed, gauge it's priority, draw some complexity estimates, analyze different ways of achieving the goal (Cialdini cites a study showing the companies methodically assessing the options and thinking about the risks of each are on average more successful that companies whose process consists of jumping into the fray).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The distribution of tasks during development is important, certainly worth the &amp;quot;intelligent thinking&amp;quot; that Dijkstra talks about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;pull&amp;quot; approach allows us to focus on these important concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Catering to the workflow&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our brains are tuned by time and environment, as well as other cues. More often than not we would develop patterns of behavior to be triggered by these cues (cf. &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273311869_Berne%27s_Theory_of_Cathexis_and_Its_Links_to_Modern_Neuroscience&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cathexis&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;). You can think of it as &lt;em&gt;prefetching&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This facilitates our activities.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;The classic Scrum requires the daily meetings to happen at the same time. That not only helps people to be there, but also plays to the time and place cues, allowing our mind to optimize for the kind of activities that planning and task distribution entails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;More informed decisions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;Assigning tasks to people is an implicit claim that you (the assigner) know better than them (the assignees).  Even if this is true, it is still easy for a person to take offence.  However, most of the time it is not true.  People know themselves best.  People are best at assigning tasks to themselves.  And therefore, having one person assigning tasks to other people almost always leads to sub-optimal work distribution among the members of a team.&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agileadvice.com/2015/07/22/referenceinformation/pitfall-of-scrum-assigning-tasks/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pitfall of Scrum: Assigning Tasks by Mishkin Berteig&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything is simple when we have just one developer. But as soon as we have two or more of them, we'll start making mistakes while assigning the tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose we have a developer who always worked on problem X, and we simply assign the X-related tasks to her. What could possibly go wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Except, this developer might be suddenly busy, she might be no longer interested in problem X and facing a burn-out, you might be missing an opportunity for other developers to learn the system better, other developers might feel excluded, there might be less incentive to verify design decisions and cross-pollinate, there will be less interest in what's going on with X and thus less motivation coming from Fellowship, etc. A lot of pitfalls for a simple no-brainer, eh?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developers aren't simplified robots, they really do know best when it comes to picking their tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Escape from dominance and submission (TA)&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;push&amp;quot; approach usually assumes and needs an authority. It stratificates the team into assigners and assignees. This configuration will often bring into play the related patterns of the human psychology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The assigners might grow close to the Parent ego-state of Transactional Analysis, which is &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;...essentially nonperceptive and noncognitive. It is simply a constant and sometimes arbitrary basis for decisions... It operates validly when adequate information for an Adult decision is not available, but in certain people, it operates in spite of adequate Adult information&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot; (Claude Steiner).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the assigners might grow to expect to be followed, regardless of how arbitrary their decisions are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The assignees might similarly assume the submissive outlook, or other configurations that are compatible with the Parent ego-state of the assigner. (cf. Robert C. Ginnett - Crews as Groups: Their Formation and their Leadership)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Attempts to break from this scheme might result in sudden conflict and confusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;pull&amp;quot; approach is less risky in this regard, it tends to gravitate the team towards the conscious Adult ego-state instead of tapping into authority interplay bound to the Parent and Child ego-states.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Self-documenting&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to present the tasks in the queue we often need to prepare them. Write a user story, create a tracker entry, pin a sticker onto a Kanban board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This piece, even if short, might serve as a basis for task documentation. We can reference the tracker issue from the code, or add details to the task card on a board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Prioritizing&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was researching the effective time management, I found in some of the authors the thought that the most important part is having a way to rake out the unnecessary stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remove things you don't really need from your to-do lists and you'll suddenly find that there is indeed time for the stuff that's important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A similar idea can be found when it comes to project management and prioritization. It might be critical, for the healthy project design and development, to have the WON'T priority. Saying no to the feature creep. Separating chaff from the wheat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, this is very hard to do with the &amp;quot;push&amp;quot; approach. It's hard to say no when being assigned a task. If it's being assigned, we &lt;em&gt;expect&lt;/em&gt; that it must be important (due to the very social interaction invested in the assignment). The tasks pile up in developer queues. Developers become perpetually busy and/or forgetful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the &amp;quot;pull&amp;quot; approach, the iterative planning in particular, the trimming comes naturally. The queued tasks &lt;em&gt;compete against each other&lt;/em&gt; for the iteration. By being put against one another they develop a natural priority. Only a handful of the most important tasks are picked, in accordance with the iteration capacity constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Built-in feedback&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Lean production there's a &amp;quot;stop the line&amp;quot; principle (&lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/ypEMdjslEOI?t=31m23s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cf&lt;/a&gt;): if something is wrong with your development pipeline, you better figure it out and fix it rather than blundering on and trying to ignore the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the &amp;quot;push&amp;quot; approach some problems are hard to discover. The task might lack sensemaking information, people might have no idea whatsoever why it's important, there might be little to go on with regarding the motivation, the task might be too large or too complex, etc etc, yet when the task is &lt;em&gt;assigned&lt;/em&gt;, most developers will grind through it despite the obstacles. This might be a good thing. But when we want to improve the management, to remove the obstacles and &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.agilealliance.org/agile101/12-principles-behind-the-agile-manifesto/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Build projects around motivated individuals&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;, the stoic toil might work kind of backwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the &amp;quot;pull&amp;quot; approach the essential feedback is built-in into the system. When you announce a task and nobody takes it, you know you have a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe the goal behind the task isn't clear, maybe it doesn't really needs to be implemented, maybe you've lost contact with the team, etc etc. Whatever it is, you have to &amp;quot;stop the line&amp;quot; and fix it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Less micro-management&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People tend to simplify. It's an essential coping mechanism (&lt;a href=&quot;https://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-12-simple-complex-world-recipe-disaster.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cf&lt;/a&gt;). &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;System 1 is prone to substituting a difficult question with a simpler one&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow#Heuristics_and_biases&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Thinking, Fast and Slow&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of such simplifications is establishing whether in a given context we need to think for ourselves or whether we can simply follow somebody else decisions. We can't expect a developer to always choose between the two (because making that choice again and again is slow and not effective). It is more likely that she will assume either the self-organizing or the follower approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“&lt;em&gt;The advantage which a commander thinks he can attain through continued personal intervention is largely illusory. By engaging in it he assumes a task that really belongs to others, whose effectiveness he thus destroys. He also multiplies his own tasks to a point where he can no longer fulfill the whole of them.&lt;/em&gt;” - &lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/ypEMdjslEOI?t=8m32s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Helmut von Moltke&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“The decisive factor, despite technology and weaponry, is the value of the individual soldier. … The battlefield requires soldiers who can think and act independently, who can make calculated, decisive and daring use of every situation and who understand that victory depends on each individual.&lt;/em&gt;” - &lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/ypEMdjslEOI?t=17m59s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Truppenführung&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truppenf%C3%BChrung&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;push&amp;quot; approach pushes developers towards being followers. If the management takes important decisions, handles important communication and time slicing, then most developers would start delegating these cognitive functions to the management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus we see in practice that the &amp;quot;push&amp;quot; approach often leads to managers being swamped with various degrees of micro-management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;pull&amp;quot; approach, on the other hand, invites the team members to think for themselves. It is usually mentioned as a path towards the self-organizing teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mind you, a self-organizing team still needs the leadership and management, but leadership time is spent on worthy subjects (motivation, sensemaking, establishing the goals and deadlines, clearing the path from the roadblocks, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. It must be noted that &amp;quot;pull&amp;quot; is not for everybody. It will only work if the team is compatible with it on the cultural level, if there is a great deal of trust and humility among its members and if the people are willing to take responsibility into their hands. As &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Valve's Handbook for new employees&lt;/a&gt; mentions, &amp;quot;pull&amp;quot; might need courage and knowledge &amp;quot;not to freak out&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32103" LastEditorUserId="32103" LastEditDate="2020-12-09T16:02:57.197" LastActivityDate="2020-12-09T16:02:57.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23836" CreationDate="2018-04-11T15:37:52.853" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is hard to have a meaningful conversation in a vacuum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Begin reporting Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that show the time and money spent as a result of non-strategic infrastructure. It is best if these are concrete, objective metrics pulled automatically from your operations systems. If statistics of this sort are not easily discoverable, a custom analysis may be required or you may need to begin capturing additional information. Some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tech debt related incidents / total incidents&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tech debt related defects / total defects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planned task effort assuming strategic infrastructure / current infrastructure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Monthly waste associated with non-strategic infrastructure in dollars&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tech debt velocity penalty&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Code churn attributable to tech debt / total code churn&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, A risk analysis on potential failures resulting from your technical debt could cause unplanned expenses. Indicate the cost should a failure occur along with an estimate of likelihood of such a failure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A third potential consideration is the integrity of the technology team. Morale of the team may be adversely affected by excessive maintenance activities and/or antiquated technologies. The cost and likelihood of a leaver associated with irritant can be presented as a risk above. In my experience, most stakeholders are not greatly affected by this line of argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have the data to make your case, then you can begin building consensus within the stakeholder community by attacking each individual stakeholder's specific concerns be it cost, delivery timetable, reliability, or whatever one by one. In an individual conversation, you can find which points land and which fail to make your argument stronger for the next stakehoder. When you've built up critical mass among the staeholder community, then have the prioritization meeting to divide activities between functional and debt-servicing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't convince stakeholders using data, you should at least consider the possibility that they are right. Potential performance or reliability improvements may not be justified by the cost required to fix them. On the other hand, a Product Owner has the responsibility to prioritize re-engineering if warranted. A PO that feels strongly enough has got to do it even without buy-in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32106" LastActivityDate="2018-04-11T15:37:52.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23858" CreationDate="2018-04-11T16:36:51.300" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is that we pay a high cost for interrupting people (context switching). If you want people to work efficiently, and to feel good about their work environment, then it is up to the PM, or the Agile equivalent (depending on the methodology--Scrum Master, whomever) to protect developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't always politically possible. It is always preferred if productivity and good work are valued. And, sometimes emergencies occur and that interruption is essential. But, to repeat, pull is associated with significantly higher productivity and satisfaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addendum: It is really bad for developers to be at the mercy of any stakeholder who has their contact info. Interruptions are disruptive (see longer answer above, or consider context switching), even when a new task doesn't result. Regardless of push or pull, the PM (or whomever) wants to be in a position to be the sole contact with stakeholders outside the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11776" LastActivityDate="2018-04-11T16:36:51.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23855" CreationDate="2018-04-11T16:39:45.737" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum, and fixed length sprints may not be the answer. Maybe the focus should be on the ability to groom stories and develop a backlog (when feasible) and to limit work in progress, so that the team members aren't overwhelmed. In such a case, Kanban might be a better solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's important to make the methodology fit people. It is sort of the antithesis of Agile to value process over people :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11776" LastActivityDate="2018-04-11T16:39:45.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23865" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-04-11T17:18:03.397" Score="0" ViewCount="99" Body="&lt;p&gt;We follow Agile Scrum. We had identified a baseline story for story point estimation and used it for many sprints. We had a velocity calculated. After sometime, the team found that the baseline is not correct and a simpler story should be the new baseline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, do we lose the velocity accumulated up until then? Or, is there a way to adjust the velocity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32110" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-04-12T11:53:52.397" LastActivityDate="2018-04-16T13:19:29.950" Title="How handle the change in baseline story" Tags="&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23865" CreationDate="2018-04-11T17:30:46.737" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Estimation and simple math.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let vOld = old velocity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let bOld = effort of old baseline&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let bNew = effort of new baseline&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let vNew = new velocity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;vNew = vOld * bOld / bNew&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that if measuring in new points, bNew = 1. Therefore:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;vNew = vOld * bOld&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example. Let's say your old velocity is 50 points/sprint.&#xA;Let's also say your Team estimates your old baseline story to be worth 2.5 story points using your new definition of points.&#xA;Thus, your new velocity is 50 * 2.5 = 125 points/Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick will be accurately and precisely estimating bOld in new points. Note, however, that assuming that the conditions are similar (same developer worked on both stories, no obvious modifiers to performance like interruptions, sleep deprivation, no large gain from improved knowledge etc.), then this estimation will be relatively easy, as all you need to do is look at the difference between the &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; time both stories took. For example, if bOld took 5 mandays and bNew took 3, then bOld is 0.6). You should therefore try to pick stories that had as similar conditions as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-04-16T13:19:29.950" LastActivityDate="2018-04-16T13:19:29.950" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23865" CreationDate="2018-04-11T17:40:23.747" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum is silent on exactly what methodology to use to determine how much work to bring into a Sprint. Basing it on past velocity is one option, but there are many. If your team feels comfortable using velocity, consider only looking at the past few Sprints. In Extreme Programming, the term is &lt;a href=&quot;https://martinfowler.com/bliki/YesterdaysWeather.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yesterday's Weather&lt;/a&gt;. Look at the average velocity of the past 3 or so Sprints and use that to plan your next Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you've changed your point values. You can bring it what feels right, and in 3 sprints, your velocity will have recalibrated itself. Be sure to focus on the most important work first, and perhaps have some extra backlog items refined and ready should you underplan what is brought in and be ready to engage the Product Owner on the right course of action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no need for overthinking this. I'm sure your team has a good feeling for what can go into a Sprint. If you're adhering to Scrum's recommendations, in a few weeks, your velocity can once again be used to effectively plan a Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2018-04-11T17:40:23.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23858" CreationDate="2018-04-11T20:06:50.017" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’m assuming you are talking about small tasks. In that case, one advantage is that people who found themselves looking for work can take a task right away. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like you are also requesting guidance on how to handle these requests:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you to have a well-defined process around how to make these requests and when to accept them. The easiest way to help you decide is having a “request template” that the requester needs to fill in in order for the request to be accepted. Some fields can be: what, why, description, suggested deadline, and any particular thing related to your domain problem. This helps them think if their request makes sense!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Monitoring and logging of these tasks is important to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Understand clearly what can be actually done by the business&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What impact they are having on the current deadlines&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are working with a client, how much it’s costing them. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much they are costing your company to see if there’s an adjustment necessary on the bill for the client&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Last but not least: if the task is turning into a recurrent one, maybe it’s time to plan for automation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All non urgent requests should be analysed during the next sprint planning. Then you can assign it to someone depending on how busy they are going to be and then come back with a deadline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-04-11T20:37:05.207" LastActivityDate="2018-04-11T20:37:05.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23869" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-04-11T20:27:09.950" Score="0" ViewCount="262" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have searched and searched online for an answer to my specific question, but haven't found it yet. Can't find the solution on PMI.org either. Maybe you can help.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have more than 4,500 hours for experience leading and managing project work and more than 36 months of experience... but the hourly experience is spread out over more than 36 months.  This is because some of my full-time work was spent doing non-PM work and I have taken some time off between assignments.  Based on what the Project Management Institute (PMI) is looking for... must the 4,500 hours of experience be attained within the specified 36 month period window? Hence, requiring full-time PM work for 36 months straight?  Effectively, I would satisfy both the hourly and monthly requirements, but not together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the actual Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) 6th Edition-based Project Management Professional Certification (PMP) application, how is the monthly requirement inputted ...or... is it determined by a calculation based on the inputted project dates and hours?  If the later, how is that done? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32112" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-04-11T20:32:03.857" LastActivityDate="2019-02-16T11:15:49.977" Title="A PMI/PMP Requirements Questions" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2019-02-17T16:46:58.880" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23836" CreationDate="2018-04-11T20:29:19.013" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to convince individuals is speaking their own language. In this case, building a business case around the importance of technical needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Show them clear numbers of the actual cost. Some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hosting. When I was tasked to analyse the systems of a company, they literally reduced 10 times their hosting bill after some &quot;simple&quot; changes that improved performance. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Development workforce. Tasks in well structured systems take a lot less, literally 2-3 times less. Also as the system grows, the complexity that it can take to develop something grows exponentially.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From the previous point, it's inferred that they are actually going at 1/3 of the pace that they could do if they had a well structured software, and they seem to love to go fast :)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On-boarding new developers / The cost of loosing one. Filling developer position will be very complicated. In fact, good developers might question wether it makes sense to join a company who didn't care about technicalities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-04-11T20:29:19.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23855" CreationDate="2018-04-11T20:58:07.133" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I imagine that even though you &lt;em&gt;can't really plan two week sprints&lt;/em&gt; you do have &lt;em&gt;milestones/epics&lt;/em&gt; and they probably have deadlines. So I suggest to link tasks, work and backlog around those and trial different options. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like having a good description of the tasks will be very helpful. Every-time someone needs to do a new task, they should log it and add the relevant data to it (experiment? second iteration of the results of another? new research? time that it took, project, etc). Be as specific as possible. Once you have enough data, you would be able to understand what's your team spending their time on, how much time on average on each type of task, and then you can think about the best planning strategy and also the pace of your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-04-11T20:58:07.133" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23865" CreationDate="2018-04-11T22:41:53.253" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't adjust anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't really matter.  Your calibration/baseline story is likely to only be 1-3 pts (at most), so recalibration will make little difference (and never revisit old points, just learn).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do we estimate in scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We estimate&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To ensure the team don't take too much on in a sprint (but we can do that via story counts just as well)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To ensure the PO has just enough work ready for the next sprint at planning (but story counts again)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To allow the PO to do longer term planning (but this is better done via real metrics like cycle time and wip)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To ensure the team don't take a too large story into a sprint (but a mature team should be able to gauge without looking at points)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any other use of velocity is trying to get back to PMO project management, so is in conflict with Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any velocity should be an average, so it'll work out on its own in the longer run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity measures the value in doing the story in precisely no way, so don't sweat it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember Ron Jeffries who invented story points now advocates against them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3336" LastEditorUserId="3336" LastEditDate="2018-04-11T22:55:28.880" LastActivityDate="2018-04-11T22:55:28.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23772" CreationDate="2018-04-12T09:04:04.040" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Keith said, it’s possible, in fact some big companies I’ve worked for, don’t log times and yet they are productive and get things done! It all depends on use cases and being very aware of what’s bringing value and what’s not. (Just to clarify, in general I do believe in the value of logging times for several reasons like the ones found in your comments and in other's people's posts). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, going through your post, I want to mention that the fact that they didn’t track their time for years, wether it was right or not, it’s not an argument to say that they shouldn’t log it now. Projects evolved and processes (“flow”) need to adapt in order to work effectively. Once suggestion to convince them is taking a “baby steps” approach, maybe they are thinking that logging will require a lot of their time, but you can always start simple and dedicate say, 20 minutes a week to estimate high level, what tasks you worked on and how much time they took (before sprint planning perhaps?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create a nice presentation explaining why you believe it’s now necessary. Show how the project has evolved and maybe add some numbers to quantify how difficult it has been lately to do planning, remember to mention that in the end is to improve the ways of working and that they’ll ultimately benefit from doing it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a side note, I feel that you need to make sure that you actually understand what’s the problem, what’s the root cause and how can you solve it, maybe it’s also better to chat with some members of your team and figure out what’s the best approach to solve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-04-12T09:04:04.040" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23874" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-04-12T12:29:47.527" Score="1" ViewCount="53" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am managing a team which is delivering product A. There are other teams who are respectively delivering product B and C, managed by different managers. Each team has a mix of technology skills - mobile, JavaScript, infrastructure, .NET and java.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to delivering product A, my responsibility is also with technology deliverables. I am responsible to ensure that nothing wrong happens with the technology that I own (say, .NET).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For leading this team who are under different managers but work on the technology for which I am responsible, I am trying to figure out what model/framework would fit the most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32120" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-04-12T13:07:00.207" LastActivityDate="2019-01-14T13:13:17.857" Title="Modelling a virtual team who is part of different products" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23869" CreationDate="2018-04-12T17:46:36.927" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This can be found in the PMBOK and on the PMI web site. Details may change so I will provide the link.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pmi.org/certifications/process&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.pmi.org/certifications/process&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are spreadsheet tools on the web to help collate your experience to help with the application process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the time of writing, you need to have the hours in a project within the last 8 years. You do not need to have been a PM, just performed something that falls into one of the knowledge domains. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20438" LastActivityDate="2018-04-12T17:46:36.927" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23876" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-04-12T21:07:19.480" Score="0" ViewCount="189" Body="&lt;p&gt;The project I am working on is given by the government organization to two private companies (A1 and A2) through a bidding process. The government is their client and the companies are vendors. I am actually an outsourced employee of government, working for them and overseeing the projects lead by these two companies (A1 &amp;amp; A2) but in reality I am employee of Company A1. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project is worth US$ 80 million and nothing is done on schedule, no correct penalties are applied to the vendors in reality and no body from my government company raises fingers at them since they are now friends with the PM of companies A1 &amp;amp; A2. Vendors take them on foreign tours and dinners etc., buy them cars and do personal favors for them. The PM of these vendors is also responsible for giving me salary, bonuses, an experience letter, etc. But at the end of the day, I am working for the government company who is corrupt and dishonest, just like the vendors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever I send an escalation email regarding the issues of the project, suddenly I am the bad guy. When in reality, I am only doing my job. What should I do? I am just so tired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32126" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-04-12T21:16:31.867" LastActivityDate="2018-04-22T19:08:37.290" Title="How to be an honest and good project coordinator in a corrupt and dishonest work environment?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;management&gt;&lt;politics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23877" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23978" CreationDate="2018-04-13T00:02:23.893" Score="1" ViewCount="132" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I am defining FRs for my use case say (Place order) &quot;to place order the user has to be logged in&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The login process is a NFR but the FRs depend on this NFR, so how do I list that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SFRs for Use case: Place order &lt;br&gt;&#xA;SFR1 - User wants to place order&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Fit criteria: Order page is displaced&lt;br&gt;&#xA; - -- - - At this point the system shall check if the user is signed in or not. How should I show this Non-FR?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31714" LastActivityDate="2018-07-01T22:47:37.883" Title="How to list Non-functional requirments when listing functional requirements" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23876" CreationDate="2018-04-13T08:15:50.497" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;The time is always right to do what is right&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to fix the problem first, have a very serious chat with the relevant people and explain the situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But honestly it looks like what you should do is leave. I don't see the situation improving, It's very unlikely that they'll change for the good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-04-13T08:15:50.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23876" CreationDate="2018-04-13T10:32:56.273" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If this is the US Federal government, you are in the middle of some serious fraud. This isn't something you fix, this is something you report. Call the whistleblowers hotline and look for a new job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think each department has its own process how to do this so you'll need to look that up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-04-13T10:32:56.273" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23815" CreationDate="2018-04-14T07:14:10.453" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We avoid the Monday/Friday combo for various reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A Monday start means the sprint planning happens a few days ago leading to a cold start where people clamor to remember their commitments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A Friday end is equally bad - there’s a huge sense of rush. You may finish the work but you don’t leave any room for error or demos&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No time for retrospectives i.e. they’ll either happen on Friday or Monday (when folks struggle to remember)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One may work over the weekends and still feel they made the sprint - it can become a bad habit to think one has 2 extra days, leading to an unhealthy work environment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the contrary Tuesdays-Thursdays is the most preferred. Some just arbitrarily pick Wednesdays to avoid the problems above and keep the cadence smooth. After years of experiencing the above I’ve come to agree to this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1119" LastActivityDate="2018-04-14T07:14:10.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23801" CreationDate="2018-04-15T22:51:23.300" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, we need to discuss &lt;strong&gt;Technical Debt&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You accumulate technical debt when you make a strategic compromise (to meet a date, or ship something), but this is a &lt;strong&gt;short term&lt;/strong&gt; thing, you are supposed to fix it &lt;strong&gt;ASAP&lt;/strong&gt;, possibly by adding a new story in the next sprint (likely as part of the original epic) to fix it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a large accumulation of compromised items which have not been worked on for some time, this &lt;strong&gt;isn't technical debt, it's poor design or bad development practices&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to create new stories to fix these and prioritise them. You likely need to prioritise some time/velocity per sprint to deal with them (instead of new work) . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't add them to an epic, they will end up being deprioritised and never done.  You may also reward yourself with velocity for dealing with things that should have been right the first time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to block time to show that compromising deliverables like this reduces velocity so should avoided. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3336" LastEditorUserId="3336" LastEditDate="2018-04-16T00:36:25.593" LastActivityDate="2018-04-16T00:36:25.593" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23801" CreationDate="2018-04-16T17:06:44.397" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As already said, this is not agile issue, but rather a question how to groups certain issues in JIRA. I've been using JIRA's sprints for that. There is no auto-grouping by label or by epic in the backlog, so it's hard to see all the 'technical debt' issues in one place, unless you sort them manually. So I add such issues to a 'Technical Debt' sprint, which is not a sprint per se, but a way to group them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27305" LastActivityDate="2018-04-16T17:06:44.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23885" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23890" CreationDate="2018-04-16T17:21:40.463" Score="3" ViewCount="606" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if this question is a duplicate but couldn't find anything of the sort even though it seems to be a common issue, so if it is a duplicate, excuse me for my inefficiency at searching keywords outside my knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a software developer in a small team and I'm trying to help my Project Manager review our deploy process to make it better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our product is made of multiple components with different update cycles, hard to manage and where features often have hidden side effects in other parts of the code. After features are developed, they are left untouched until tested either by our QA in full regression tests that can last a week or more, or by our customer herself. Months can pass until a feature is ready to be deployed. We can have many features &quot;on hold&quot; at the same time, at different development or testing stages, and the biggest features can wait even years of refinement before being deployed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, when features are deployed they are merged together and the mixture can often be... explosive. This leads to bugs in the customer's production environment, which in turn raises suspicion about quality of code and incites &quot;more testing time&quot;, which actually means more waiting time and more features to be deployed next...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Continuous Deployment seems to be unfeasible because our customer (with good reason) wants to oversee deploys and her deploy times are long. How can we reduce the risk of interferences and side-effects from multiple merges? I think this is too basic an issue not to have been addressed before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32155" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-04-16T19:36:21.537" LastActivityDate="2018-04-17T12:59:14.900" Title="How to deal with delay beween development and deploy" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23885" CreationDate="2018-04-16T18:51:06.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see two ways out that may help. Let's say you have 4 features(A, B, C, D) planned and the ETA for them is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A&lt;/strong&gt; May-01&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;B&lt;/strong&gt; May-15&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;C&lt;/strong&gt; May-25&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;D&lt;/strong&gt; Jun-01&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each feature is developed in its own branch. Each branch starts from master. Production server has the code of your master branch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I. Plan builds in advance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your customer decides that she wants to have features A and C in the next release. So once C is ready, on May-25 you merge and deploy A and C to the build server and QA tests the build. After the build is tested, bugfixed and reviewed by the customer it goes live. A and C are now in the master branch. The production server has the same code as the build server had. So you won't have any surprises.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;II. Plan the builds from what's ready&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once each feature is finished, it's tested at its own feature server. A is tested and ready to go live. B is tested, needs some bugfixes or goes to the kingdom of 'on hold'. C is tested and ready. D is in progress. The customer makes a decision whether she's okay to push A and C live or she wants to wait for D. If she's okay to deploy A and C then you also merge them and deploy to some pre-release server where QA runs smoke tests or checks the basic functionality and the customer reviews the release. And then you go live, also without surprises created by merges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second scheme is more flexible as you don't block QA and release schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27305" LastActivityDate="2018-04-16T18:51:06.880" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23885" CreationDate="2018-04-16T23:26:43.453" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After features are developed, they are left untouched until tested&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;full regression tests that can last a week or more&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the biggest features can wait even years of refinement before being deployed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Months can pass until a feature is ready to be deployed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears there are a lot of technical and process inefficiencies beyond deployment management.  Although analyzing and improving the deployment process might provide some benefit, addressing other shortfalls may be more valuable.  Look into Lean Software waste (TIM WOOD).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Continuous Deployment&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt; does not have to be to a production environment.  Usually frequent merges, Continuous Integration (CI), and Continuous Deployment (CD) processes are used to promote code to a non-production environment so that automated testing can be performed.  It will take time investment to improving the technical practices and infrastructure and in doing so there will be less waste, improved quality, and increased confidence to deploy to production for the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can we reduce the risk of interferences and side-effects from multiple merges?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Merges do not create conflicts, they only reveal them.  Merging more frequently reduces the complication of those conflicts, thus they are more easily addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;Deployment used here as delivery of software to any endpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-04-17T12:03:41.040" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23888" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-04-17T10:56:23.220" Score="-1" ViewCount="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;The team struggles with making their tickets ready for development. Mostly because the DoR requires a lot of work (designs, multiple translations, tracking, documentation, etc.). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally the team expected to get all of these from the PO. However this mostly does not work - it's really hard to get all of the DoR data and get them correctly. This is an issue, because developers are fed up with taking unprepared tasks to the sprint.&#xA;It's also hard to refine tasks that aren't prepared, because without full DoR developers can't tell how hard is the given story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My idea is to add tasks preparation as a part of the upcoming sprint. So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprint #1 - implementation and DoR for Sprint #2&#xA;Sprint #2 - implementing things prepared in Sprint #1 and DoR for Sprint #3. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of these things may be prepared by the PO, but this would also involve the developers in this process (in case PO isn't able to prepare these).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid that this is some kind of anti-pattern, because &quot;work preparation&quot; isn't a product increment, but I may be wrong. What do you thing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31746" LastActivityDate="2018-04-17T21:16:39.513" Title="Work preparation as a task for upcoming sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;refinement&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23888" CreationDate="2018-04-17T12:17:32.553" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This would codify a bad practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't get enough tasks &quot;ready&quot; to fill a whole sprint you're either not investing enough time into backlog grooming or have too ambitious criteria for &quot;ready&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without more information your particlar situation sounds like it definitely contains some of the later. What do you need translations for to start a task? How much design are you doing up front? This sounds like you might be doing more like iterative waterfall than scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would happen if for one sprint you'd simply refuse to schedule any tasks that aren't ready? Your PO would probably be shocked at how little he gets. You could then use that shock to demonstrate the importance of getting tasks ready. As a side effect you should have significant slack which you can then use to do more backlog grooming with the PO. Then the sprint after that you should have enough tasks for your capacity. Repeat and fine tune until you've reached a steady middle ground where you get about as many tasks ready as you are capable of implementing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2018-04-17T12:17:32.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23885" CreationDate="2018-04-17T12:59:14.900" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understand you correctly, you have only one team and the only/main reason why you operate this way is because QA takes so long and you don't want to &quot;twiddle your thumbs&quot; while waiting for their feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that is the case then your first priority is investing heavily in automating as many of your tests as possible. You might not be able to get rid of the week long manual testing. Some companies are quite anal about that (cough GMP cough). But your problem is not that there is this weeklong voodoo ritual in your deploy pipeline. Your problem is that currently you get most of your bug feed back from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Especially with just one team working on a product you'll want continuous integration. You want to hear about your problems as quickly as possible. And that means automated tests. You want to stamp out a feature, polish it until everything works and then be able to forget about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means you need to write automated tests for the bugs your testers find. What is killing you now is having to wait for those &quot;explosions&quot; 2 months down the line when two features are merged. If you had the ability to mix those two ingredients as soon as both are finished and get immediate results then you could start fixing immediately too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you have multiple teams, if you are able to merge and &quot;pre-test&quot; your feature with the most recent fully tested version you should encounter far fewer situation where you need to revisit a feature after the &quot;real testing&quot; is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you can stamp out features that are essentially iron clad it no longer matters if the QA needs another week to bless your new version or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2018-04-17T12:59:14.900" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23888" CreationDate="2018-04-17T18:30:45.670" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Response is based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; by the creators of the Scrum framework for product development and later contributors to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Manifesto for Agile Software Development&lt;/a&gt; as a general philosophy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;tl;dr&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some anti-patterns and room for improvement.  &lt;code&gt;Scrum Teams are self-organizing and cross-functional. Self-organizing teams choose how best to accomplish their work, rather than being directed by others outside the team.&lt;/code&gt; Discuss the concerns and issues as a team in order to work toward improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Definition of Ready (DoR)&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definition of Ready (DoR) is a debated&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/why-isnt-definition-ready-described-scrum-guide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scruminc.com/definition-of-ready/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; practice but is not a part of the Scrum framework beyond one statement: &lt;code&gt;Product Backlog items that can be &amp;quot;Done&amp;quot; by the Development Team within one Sprint are deemed &amp;quot;Ready&amp;quot; for selection in a Sprint Planning.&lt;/code&gt;  One of the issues is that a detailed DoR is often treated as a phase gate for the hand off of deliverables which is rooted in traditional project management.  Instead the entire Scrum Team is encouraged to work together collaboratively knowing that not all of the details are available to be planned in detail before work begins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Product Backlog item refinement&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product Backlog refinement is &lt;code&gt;an ongoing process in which the Product Owner and the Development Team collaborate on the details of Product Backlog items.&lt;/code&gt;  Product Backlog items can be, but do not need to be (and are often coached not to be), expressed as traditional, fully detailed specifications. &lt;code&gt;Higher ordered Product Backlog items are usually clearer and more detailed than lower ordered ones.&lt;/code&gt;  To embrace change and maximize the amount of work not done, details and decisions are delayed until they are likely to be realized in the very near term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Estimates&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimation is just that: not an absolute and not a promise.  Scrum and other agile approaches are &lt;strong&gt;value&lt;/strong&gt; driven through delivering Increments of a high quality product to the customer; they are not plan driven as with traditional, project management processes.  &lt;code&gt;More precise estimates are made based on the greater clarity and increased detail.&lt;/code&gt;  This occurs with refinement through knowledge of completed work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Sprint effort&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If thought is that &amp;quot;only work that is directly visible via the Increment is permitted&amp;quot;, then this exposes another misunderstanding of the Scrum framework.  Addressing technical debt, improving infrastructure, improving practices, optimizing processes, refinement of expected next Sprint's items, etc. are all valuable efforts for the product.  Many of the &lt;em&gt;tasks&lt;/em&gt; presented within this specific DoR may be better addressed as part of the effort during the Sprint; i.e. Documentation can be created along with the functional product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Sprint Retrospective&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Candidly discussing and addressing concerns is an activity for the Sprint Retrospective: &lt;code&gt;Create a plan for implementing improvements to the way the Scrum Team does its work.&lt;/code&gt;  Whether the Product Owner is overwhelmed, the Development Team is frustrated, the customer is not seeing value, etc. the five values of &lt;code&gt;commitment, courage, focus, openness and respect&lt;/code&gt; are most needed during this event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Scrum Master&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of these issues should be apparent to the Scrum Master and they should be attempting to foster improvement.  Where is this individual?  Do they have the means (knowledge, ability, etc.) necessary to fulfill this role?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-04-17T18:30:45.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23888" CreationDate="2018-04-17T21:16:39.513" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm guessing that it takes that long because there is not dedicated time /plan for figuring out definition of done with all the stake holders. For that purpose I suggest two actions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Create a regular plan to get this sorted. Would it be easier to have one hour meeting weekly with all of them, for example? would you have to meet them in groups? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Help them help you. For example, could you figure out what's the structure for completing the definition of done and just work on some template? are there some&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More concrete help would be followed if you help us understand more about your problem :D&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-04-17T21:16:39.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23893" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-04-18T09:34:52.360" Score="4" ViewCount="4861" Body="&lt;p&gt;When doing Scrum, I use story points based on the total number of points completed in a sprint. When doing Kanban, I am not sure how to work out capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-04-18T15:56:11.843" LastActivityDate="2018-04-18T15:56:11.843" Title="How can I measure team capacity in Kanban?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;team-capacity&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23893" CreationDate="2018-04-18T09:48:42.627" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have several options. None of them are exclusive to Kanban though. They all work perfectly fine with Scrum too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Story Points (start where you are!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avg. Number of Cards Done / time unit (avg throughput)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cycle Time &amp;amp; Lead Time &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, Kanban isn’t a project management methodology. It’s a &lt;em&gt;continuous improvement&lt;/em&gt; methodology. Change things as needed, but do so empirically. Run small experiments and measure the outcome. I’d start by continuing to use story points while simultaneously collecting the other measurements. This allows you to compare the two and be confident in your new metrics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastEditorUserId="21039" LastEditDate="2018-04-18T10:00:52.783" LastActivityDate="2018-04-18T10:00:52.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23876" CreationDate="2018-04-18T13:08:03.077" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen something like this before.  The most important thing is to maintain your professionalism and integrity.  Be calm and use facts and numbers wherever possible.  Don't let it become personal.  Whistleblowing may be the right thing to do, but be prepared for the personal consequences, like being fired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32170" LastActivityDate="2018-04-18T13:08:03.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23836" CreationDate="2018-04-18T13:25:40.570" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My suggestions to your challenge are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a client who is focussed on &quot;features&quot; and &quot;functions&quot;, try to shift the conversation towards &quot;&lt;strong&gt;outcomes&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; and &quot;&lt;strong&gt;capabilities&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;.  It's a subtle shift, they may not even notice it, but it will help you considerably.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technical debt is a concept invented to communicate the size and implication of known quality shortcuts that have been taken.  Again you can focus on the words &quot;&lt;strong&gt;quality&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; and &quot;&lt;strong&gt;risk&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;. Technical debt usually means risk of functionality not working as intended, or some non-functional risk, like cost to maintain, poor security or poor performance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Change the language you use and you can more readily guide the outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32170" LastActivityDate="2018-04-18T13:25:40.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23800" CreationDate="2018-04-18T14:54:41.813" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum was originally designed to help development teams co-ordinate and get some work done without being continually interrupted and asked to switch tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a start-up, it's highly likely that some of your tasks will involve waiting around for things. Some will be experimental and have to be thrown away. Urgent developments may necessitate interruption, quite rightly. Feedback from a wide audience is essential; two-weekly showcases probably won't cut it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, Scrum (especially as it's typically done, with story point estimation and velocity*) isn't usually a good fit for small start-ups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few principles which I've taken from Scrum, Kanban and Agile generally which I think are worth following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Visualize upcoming work, work in progress, and work done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Visualize the different types of work (by colour or swimlane, perhaps; look at visualizing the source, and maybe also &lt;a href=&quot;https://xprocess.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/cost-of-delay-profiles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cost of delay&lt;/a&gt; - some people just draw a little graph for that; put a date if there's a deadline)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Limit the amount of things started but not finished (so if you can help someone else, go do that before picking up something new)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check in regularly with each other (daily stand-ups are good)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're doing something new, find a way to try it out safely - spikes, prototypes, dry runs, models, etc. - &quot;done&quot; means sharing what you learned&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Favour delivering small things to small audiences and amplifying what works - see above&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Retrospect regularly and improve your process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep your process lightweight and evolve it as required; don't guess at what you need. It might not be Scrum.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the start-up grows, you'll need to start introducing more formality to the process just to help people co-ordinate. For now, though, lighter is better. You're only six people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(*And none of that stuff is actually in the Scrum Guide anyway.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="790" LastActivityDate="2018-04-18T14:54:41.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23899" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-04-18T15:27:42.460" Score="4" ViewCount="229" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master is the &quot;owner&quot; of the framework execution, as the Scrum Guide quotes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master is responsible for promoting and supporting Scrum as defined in the Scrum Guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other side (as the title itself shows), the &lt;strong&gt;Agile&lt;/strong&gt; Coach should not be only about Scrum... However, companies tend to use this professional mostly to help and support Scrum implementation, that's why I see that there's a thin line of practical difference here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in which points do Agile Coaches help companies that differs from what Scrum Masters do on their daily basis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31044" LastEditorUserId="31044" LastEditDate="2018-04-18T15:36:38.210" LastActivityDate="2018-06-05T11:52:07.280" Title="In which skills a Agile Coach differs from a Scrum Master?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23893" CreationDate="2018-04-18T15:55:06.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Kanban, you generally aren't measuring &quot;team capacity&quot; because kanbans track queues, not people. The closest you are likely to come to a direct capacity measurement in Kanban in the WIP limit, which sets a capacity limit on each queue within the system. While similar, this isn't interchangeable with the notion of team capacity as used by time boxing systems like Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; use Kanban-native measurements to approximate iterative capacity measurements. However, doing so is probably an anti-pattern, as Kanban optimizes for flow rather than fixed-capacity scheduling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Measuring Queues and Flows&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In systems like Scrum, where you're working in iterations, measuring capacity makes sense. However, when you're working with flow systems like Kanban, you generally measure how long things are enqueued or how long they take to process. Typical Kanban measurements include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;throughput&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cycle time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;lead time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;takt time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cumulative flow&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;queue length&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;number of queues&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;wait times&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;batch sizes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;drain time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While all of these metrics have some bearing on how much &quot;capacity&quot; a team has and provide the ability forecast the run rate of a project, they are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; direct measurements of capacity. Instead, they are generally used to forecast the time to complete similarly-sized batch items, or to estimate the total runtime to empty a backlog queue of a given size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can certainly extrapolate capacity from Kanban-type metrics by measuring average cycles within a sliding time window. This is similar to velocity, but it's important to understand that Kanban is a flow system, &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a time boxing system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-04-18T15:55:06.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23899" CreationDate="2018-04-19T02:20:52.220" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The skillsets are exactly the same. It's the focus that is different. The Scrum master is a coaching and facilitating role. However, the scrum master is usually focused on and around their team. The agile coach takes a higher and more outside view. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For new teams, a scrum master will be much more hands-on guiding them, but in time that part of their job should shrink and they more more toward coaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are a scrum master and want to experience the difference, reach out to another scrum master and agree to attend each others' events and offer some light coaching (probably mostly observation to start). You'll see how the outside person gains a different perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-04-19T02:20:52.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23899" CreationDate="2018-04-19T07:51:40.393" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;tl;dr: a Scrum Master takes care for daily business, an Agile Coach works more on a meta level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you said, the Agile Coach is not limited to Scrum. Then again a Scrum Master shouldn't be limited to Scrum either (don't tell this to some Scrum teachers...). But the role of a Scrum Master is pretty clear defined (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/scrum-glossary&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;scrum.org&lt;/a&gt;). So her/his main business is the daily work with her/his team(s). And most important: we are mainly talking about project management here.&#xA;On the other hand an Agile Coach has the task to teach agile values and principles (&lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;agilemanifesto.org&lt;/a&gt;) to an organization and to live these values. You could compare it to an Evangelist. This includes but is not limited to project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17009" LastActivityDate="2018-04-19T07:51:40.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10442" CreationDate="2018-04-19T09:40:04.123" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I advise not to fret over such small details. The idea of SCRUM is to &lt;strong&gt;reduce waste&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;be agile&lt;/strong&gt;. Find a simpler way and stick to it.&#xA;I use the following format so that I do not have to think about naming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sprint &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; - &lt;em&gt;From&lt;/em&gt; to &lt;em&gt;To&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;where&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; - Sprint number (e.g. 15)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;From&lt;/em&gt; - Short start date (e.g. 19 Mar)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;To&lt;/em&gt; - Short end date (e.g. 2 May)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2859" LastActivityDate="2018-04-19T09:40:04.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23904" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-04-19T10:54:01.270" Score="3" ViewCount="1473" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my software development project, the type of contract is fixed and the client gave the requirements. In the requirements, there are detailed specifications The client then asked for additional work that is related to the scope of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these additional tasks considered as out of scope?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30113" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2018-06-18T10:47:55.667" LastActivityDate="2018-06-19T18:12:36.063" Title="How do you respond to Out of Scope requests?" Tags="&lt;scope&gt;&lt;scope-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11712" CreationDate="2018-04-19T12:48:08.303" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally think there is not an issue if the quality assurance (QA) department and the project management office (PMO) are reporting to a single manager, as long as they have very clear job responsibilities. For value streaming, both the roles can fit into that without disturbing the reporting lines again as long as their job responsibilities are very clear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, let's look at it from a different perspective. By doing so, is there any chance of creating a conflict of interest? The answer is 'no'. Both the roles are quite different and you need to have clear goals and objectives for both QA and the PMO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32184" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-04-19T13:13:49.687" LastActivityDate="2018-04-19T13:13:49.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23906" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-04-19T15:07:04.113" Score="2" ViewCount="142" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a software developer and I have this project I am working on with a student (an internship). I don't know how to organize the tasks and how to assign them. At first, it was clear. But now we have a lot of work on this project and we lack a lot of organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are working on 3 modules in an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) project (Odoo 10).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to work with a small team of 2 individuals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to implement Scrum methods in our project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to manage tasks and bugs that take more than the expected time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32187" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-08-22T13:05:46.690" LastActivityDate="2018-08-22T13:05:46.690" Title="How to implement Scrum method in a 2-individuals team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23906" CreationDate="2018-04-19T16:43:17.483" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you only have two developers, you probably shouldn't be using Scrum without very carefully thinking about the intent of each ceremony and artifact and what it brings to your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-dev&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Scrum Guide's definition of the Development Team&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fewer than three Development Team members decrease interaction and results in smaller productivity gains. Smaller Development Teams may encounter skill constraints during the Sprint, causing the Development Team to be unable to deliver a potentially releasable Increment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Scrum calls for a Development Team of between 3 and 9 people and you have fewer than 3 or more than 9, you shouldn't be calling what you are doing Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you can take advantage of some principles of Scrum: timeboxes, potentially releasable increments, a daily regroup and replan, planning for a given timebox, demonstrating functionality at the end of the timebox. Extreme Programming also offers some good ideas such as pair programming. You can also look at strategies such as Kanban for organizing and limiting work in progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most defined methodologies are designed around solving problems that come with larger teams. In a group of 2, you may not be encountering those issues. But that doesn't mean you can't follow good practices that make sense for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2018-04-20T00:41:20.403" LastActivityDate="2018-04-20T00:41:20.403" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23899" CreationDate="2018-04-19T17:49:57.183" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr&lt;/strong&gt;  The titles used may or may not reflect any specific skills or differentiation of skills in the services provided to an organization. High quality Scrum Masters are more well rounded than just knowing the Scrum framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the most common failures of agile product development efforts is a lack of understanding of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;philosophy&lt;/a&gt;.  Misunderstandings result in impediments and loss of value: organizations do not properly support self-organizing teams; customers do not collaboratively engage in the process;  long term, plan driven mentalities remain over using emergent, value driven approaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile Coach should not be only about Scrum&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the Scrum framework requires the role of Scrum Master, it can be a specific position to be filled.  Others require or recommend different or additional positions.  The position of Agile Coach is not, AFIAK, required or defined in any.  The use of an &lt;em&gt;Agile Coach&lt;/em&gt; to implement Scrum can be a differentiator of an experienced Scrum Master to help train and coordinate multiple teams each with their own Scrum Masters; sometimes it is due to &lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/a9PY7yEj-Z4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum In Name Only&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However that does not also mean that a Scrum Master should &lt;em&gt;only be about the Scrum framework&lt;/em&gt;.  Having knowledge of and experience in multiple systems, frameworks, methods, and processes results in a more valuable and effective Scrum Master.  &lt;code&gt;Scrum ... functions well as a container for other techniques, methodologies, and practices.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum Masters cannot and should not be solely focused internally at their Scrum Teams.  Looking at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-sm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Master section of The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;, three of the five opening sentences are about everyone and not just the Scrum Team; the first sentence being the one that you quoted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master is responsible for promoting and supporting Scrum as defined in the Scrum Guide. Scrum Masters do this by &lt;strong&gt;helping everyone&lt;/strong&gt; understand Scrum theory, practices, rules, and values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master is a servant-leader for the Scrum Team. The Scrum Master &lt;strong&gt;helps those outside the Scrum Team&lt;/strong&gt; understand which of their interactions with the Scrum Team are helpful and which aren’t. The Scrum Master &lt;strong&gt;helps everyone&lt;/strong&gt; change these interactions to maximize the value created by the Scrum Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest of the section is divided into three subsections of servicing three separate areas of concerns: the two additional Scrum Team roles plus one for the &lt;strong&gt;organization&lt;/strong&gt; at large.  Based on the five bullets for supporting the organization, there should be little to no difference in &lt;strong&gt;how&lt;/strong&gt; either role would provide valuable service to the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-04-19T17:49:57.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23906" CreationDate="2018-04-19T18:25:57.110" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the best way to work with a small team of 2 individuals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With cognitive and creative efforts, there is no silver bullet best way.  Since you mentioned Scrum, refer to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Manifesto for Agile Software Development&lt;/a&gt; for a general philosophy on efficient collaboration to deliver valuable software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to implement Scrum methods in our project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumguides.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt; is a framework (not method) for product (not project) development. While the artifacts, values, and events may be of value it may not be the best choice with only two developers.  Scrum neither requires nor restricts having three to nine members of the Development Team, it acknowledges the possible inefficiency and effectiveness with a team not within that size.  It also requires a Product Owner and Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to manage tasks and bugs that take more than the expected time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a question that relies heavily on context.  In the agile software development philosophy, the effort is value driven and not plan driven.  It's most important to deliver a quality, valuable, working product and for both the creators and the consumers to respond to such changes than to follow a rigidly predefined schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20712" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-04-20T12:11:05.383" LastActivityDate="2018-04-20T12:11:05.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1279" CreationDate="2018-04-20T13:55:56.290" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most of MNC , we had experienced a trend  giving software architect role to project manager who have completed a good tenure ( 5 year ) with a company . This happened at that instance when tech architect switched company with providing appropriate KT to his reporting manager who will take his architect role in parallel to hiring a new architect . This goes to company management persuasion . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31074" LastActivityDate="2018-04-20T13:55:56.290" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23914" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23917" CreationDate="2018-04-20T19:52:47.897" Score="-1" ViewCount="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you display cost estimates, when it comes to ranges, what words do you use to convey: Lower End of the Range, and higher End of the range. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The terms I chose (Min/Max) were not liked , so I was wondering if anyone else had any suggestions. Also, what I consider &quot;min&quot; is actually a reasonable cost and I believe it should cost that much. I'm only putting in the max to avoid potential trouble down the road. So it's really, a TARGET cost and a MAX possible cost. Any help is much appreciated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research done: &#xA;I did a lot of research on this and the best article that has the info is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.smartsheet.com/ultimate-guide-project-cost-estimating&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. It recommends saying &quot;best/worst case&quot;. Again, management did not like the use of this term either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31013" LastActivityDate="2018-04-20T21:25:29.430" Title="How to communicate/word cost ranges?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23915" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23916" CreationDate="2018-04-20T20:26:31.777" Score="1" ViewCount="77" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm an engineer on a small engineering team at a small business-to-business company. We're looking to transition from a &quot;big bang&quot; release model to a more iterative release style with smaller changes going out in more frequent batches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is some concern that this could have a negative impact on other departments such as Customer Support, Sales, and Marketing because it would require more frequent updates to their documentation etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can we make sure that a more iterative development process does not harm (or maybe helps) departments such as Customer Support, Sales, and Marketing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32202" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-04-30T13:17:28.543" LastActivityDate="2018-04-30T13:17:28.543" Title="Dealing with external departments when changing to continous delivery / smaller feature scope" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;process-engineering&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23915" CreationDate="2018-04-20T21:17:31.733" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;By making sure you have cross functional teams. If there are sales or marketing actions that need to happen before release, then you need representatives &lt;em&gt;on the team&lt;/em&gt; to make sure they happen on the right cadence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make a list of &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the things that need to occur in order to release a feature. This is your “definition of done”. Do you have all the people and skills on the team to get them all done? If you don’t, you really need to work to bring those skills on board. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is in direct opposition to how companies are traditionally organized, but it really is easier to ship product increments &lt;em&gt;sooner&lt;/em&gt; if you can organize teams around products instead of by role function. The hierarchy doesn’t have to change, just what makes up a team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastActivityDate="2018-04-20T21:17:31.733" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23914" CreationDate="2018-04-20T21:25:29.430" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pessimistic, optimistic.  Favorable, unfavorable.  Conservative, liberal. &#xA; Plus what you wrote in your OP. I think that's about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-04-20T21:25:29.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23918" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23962" CreationDate="2018-04-21T13:57:17.210" Score="4" ViewCount="267" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I read &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/23915/dealing-with-external-departments-continous-delivery-smaller-feature-scope&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;strong&gt;Dealing with external departments continuous delivery / smaller feature scope&lt;/strong&gt;), it made me think of our situation at work. The major difference, though, is that the resistance to continuous delivery is mainly coming from our clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Context&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work in a small b2b2c company that caters to large online real estate platforms. My role (similar to that of a scrum master) is to help our (cross-functional) dev team become more agile by simplifying/optimizing workflows, facilitating collaboration and learning, and encouraging incremental value creation. We're using a loose kanban framework, but I think this issue would apply even if we were using Scrum or XP (hence the tags). No one on the team has experience with Agile/Lean, but I've seen steady progress in that regard over the last year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Issue&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Strangely enough, the main problem I'm facing as I'm trying to suggest more &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumandkanban.co.uk/slicing-stories-vertically/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;vertical slicing&lt;/a&gt; to create value faster (e.g. releasing one feature in less than a week instead of waiting three to four weeks to release five) and shorten the feedback loop, is that clients would rather we release updates less often. From my understanding, it's because our products are embedded on our their website, so they use the same (slow and heavy) processes that they use for their own website and products, for both QA and marketing purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that it would still make sense to ship small increments internally, and then bundle them in a release to our clients, but given the team's lack of experience with Agile practices, they'd rather do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do the &quot;full flow&quot; (from design to deployment on our testing server) for one feature&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;for the rest, use vertical slicing, i.e. create one card (task) for data collection, one card for data processing, and so on up until the front-end integration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team's point is that given that we can't ship before the full release is done, it's more efficient to do all the processing at once. Since they're not used to Agile practices, this is also more consistent with the way they've always worked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my perspective, this adds a lot of pressure to the person at the end of the process (i.e. front-end integration) and it removes flexibility in that if we're running out of time we can't just drop features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are good approaches to dealing with these kinds of clients? Even if the client didn't want to change, should I nudge the team to ship smaller increments internally?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26063" LastEditorUserId="26063" LastEditDate="2018-04-23T11:58:48.207" LastActivityDate="2018-04-30T13:29:14.160" Title="How to deal with clients' resistance to smaller deliveries?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23918" CreationDate="2018-04-22T08:56:17.860" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may want to consider using &lt;a href=&quot;https://martinfowler.com/articles/feature-toggles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;feature toggles&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will allow you to do frequent production releases, but give your clients the option to only make features live when they are happy with their functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the long-term, it might be worth working with your clients to improve their delivery processes. &lt;a href=&quot;https://martinfowler.com/bliki/ContinuousDelivery.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Continuous delivery&lt;/a&gt; works best when it is end-to-end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-04-22T08:56:17.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22983" CreationDate="2018-04-22T10:30:27.683" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the free option available is to use the browser extension named Jira Assistant available in below url. This extension has lot more useful features which not only helps to generate report, but also help to log your work on daily basis with notifications, calendar integrations and lot more cool features which helps both managers and team members in their daily activity:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Chrome users: &lt;a href=&quot;https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jira-assistant/momjbjbjpbcbnepbgkkiaofkgimihbii?src=sof&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jira-assistant/momjbjbjpbcbnepbgkkiaofkgimihbii?src=sof&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Firefox users: &lt;a href=&quot;https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/jira-assistant/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/jira-assistant/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32209" LastActivityDate="2018-04-22T10:30:27.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23876" CreationDate="2018-04-22T14:03:45.603" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would leave this job as soon as possible. Be careful they don't use you, so they have someone to blame for any failure later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if there is any protection program for people telling about corruption. But be careful anyway, you never know who you can trust in this kind of cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32212" LastEditorDisplayName="user16244" LastEditDate="2018-04-22T19:08:37.290" LastActivityDate="2018-04-22T19:08:37.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23448" CreationDate="2018-04-23T09:22:37.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion these frameworks (SAFe, LESS, etc.) are very young and sometimes still half-baked. So until now teams have to figure out ways of how to handle unusual situations.&lt;br&gt;But you shouldn't miss the crucial point through all that smoke of uncertainty: it's about being agile. Literally. And yes, it's helpful to have a solid step-by-step guide when struggling with the more complex parts of daily project management (I'm looking at you, PMBOK), but agile projects are usually located in the outer regions of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.growingagile.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/stacey.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stacey matrix&lt;/a&gt;. So to me when being in these situations it's more about following the Agile Principles than following some rule book (and by the way, a rule book that's providing for all contingencies when sailing in unknown waters would be quite heavy).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;So: if your team votes for an abnormal termination and if nothing speaks against it, abnormal termination it shall be.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Reverse the ART, reset the course and there it goes again full-steam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17009" LastActivityDate="2018-04-23T09:22:37.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23131" CreationDate="2018-04-23T12:44:21.790" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your first question: As far as I know, there's no way to control the way conditional formatting is prioritized in MS Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your last question: Indeed, you do miss something here. &lt;strong&gt;A task can't be a milestone.&lt;/strong&gt; Well, it can be in MS Project. But in my eyes this is plain wrong. When you are using a scheduling methodology (PERT, or - like you do - CPM), a milestone is a mark to emphasize a specific point along your timeline to help you to easily see whether or not your project is on schedule.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;One can argue that a milestone in fact can have some kind of &quot;duration&quot; (e.g. when waiting for some tests). But it definitely can't be a task. A task is an activity, a milestone is a marker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as MS Project handles milestones as tasks and regarding to answer one: I'd try fiddling around with the conditional formatting (first blue, then red and vice versa). That always helps with my issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17009" LastActivityDate="2018-04-23T12:44:21.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23653" CreationDate="2018-04-23T13:52:04.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As someone who has worked years on both sides of the counter, my experiences and two cents:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;From the vendor's view&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid fixed-price contracts at any cost (sorry for the pun). But seriously, they can break your neck when your costs are galloping off and you can't make prices spiral up.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build and keep a small core of experienced developers. They can train new team members and if the shit should hit the fan they can absorb the biggest troubles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a solid training plan for new team members that will help them learning the subject matter easily and quick.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And on the long term: aim at slowing down your rotation. I know that sounds easy peasy and I know that some companies avoid investing into their workers at any cost (there's that pun again), but on the long run the investment is more than worth the money.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;From the buyer's view&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even if you don't intend making one, but you should at least talk about concluding a fixed-price contract. If the vendor is blocking your request immediately and he has no good reason for this (company policy e.g.), this can be a hint that he's going to have trouble with delivery.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask your vendor to bring a developer to the next meeting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check the vendor on company rating sites like Glassdoor or Kununu. This will give you tons of information about its reliability.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And on the long term: try building longstanding business relations with reliable partners. I know that sounds easy peasy and I know that some companies avoid investing into their vendors at any cost (say hello to our old friend, the pun), but on the long run the investment is more than worth the money.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17009" LastActivityDate="2018-04-23T13:52:04.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23925" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23926" CreationDate="2018-04-23T14:23:32.493" Score="2" ViewCount="1043" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've done my homework and searched on the website, and I could find a similar question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/20796/should-we-cancel-the-daily-stand-up-if-we-have-another-meeting-during-the-day&quot;&gt;Should we cancel the Daily Stand-Up if we have another meeting during the day?&lt;/a&gt; but my case is different: my Project Manager is cancelling (or changing the time of the stand-up meeting the same day), not if we have another scrum related meeting, but rather if he (only him) has a call with a client or if he is busy with something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this is &lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; wrong but I'm asking some help from the community to give him constructive feedback, ideally based on sources or articles that I can share with him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should also mention that I work in a global digital agency with clients across the world. In other words our PM cannot &quot;afford&quot; to ignore or move a client call as he likes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27504" LastEditorUserId="20712" LastEditDate="2018-04-24T12:04:28.297" LastActivityDate="2018-04-24T12:04:28.297" Title="Project Manager cancel or move daily stand-up without notice if he has conflicting meetings" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23925" CreationDate="2018-04-23T14:37:14.157" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the most useful advice can actually be found in &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/20796/should-we-cancel-the-daily-stand-up-if-we-have-another-meeting-during-the-day#comment25869_20796&quot;&gt;the comment&lt;/a&gt; on your linked Question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My manager was absolutely shocked to find out that we still had our stand up when he canceled it (a regular occurrence). My response to him was &quot;The stand up isn't for you. It's for us. Whether you're here or not, we still need to sync up as a team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Daily Scrum is not for the Project Manager. It is not for the Product Owner. It is not for the Scrum Master. It is for the &lt;em&gt;Team&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You seem to have two problems here. First, your Daily Scrum is being cancelled. Second, your Project Manager is the one cancelling your Daily Scrums.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first is solved easily - have them anyway. The second will hopefully be fixed once your Scrum Master discovers you are still holding the Daily Scrums. If not, the Scrum framework provides an opportunity to address concerns such as these - the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-retro&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sprint Retrospective&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-04-23T16:34:00.200" LastActivityDate="2018-04-23T16:34:00.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23925" CreationDate="2018-04-23T14:39:13.913" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is short and simple: he or she doesn't have to participate in your daily stand-up.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I know that many Scrum Masters are having a hard time with this because they are afraid that they might miss something (and in my eyes the problem lies another level deeper - missing trust; but that's another story).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't have those cancelled daily stand-ups anyway. This is just generating conflict (there's that missing trust again). So if I was you I'd ask him or her straightforward why he or her has the feeling that it's vital that he or she is participating in your daily scrum. Maybe it's enough to make sure it happens and to get some short summary. This will help you both - a classic win-win.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17009" LastActivityDate="2018-04-23T14:39:13.913" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23925" CreationDate="2018-04-23T18:47:46.447" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know who &quot;owns&quot; the meeting at your work, but it should be the ScrumMaster (if you have one). If not, I would suggest having one of the developers own the meeting instead of any project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where I work, I actually &quot;kicked&quot; my manager out of our standup, because we spent the entire time talking to him. He and I have a good relationship, so he readily agreed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, this is an issue that should be explored at retro. Have the entire team discuss the value of the standup to them, and why your PM isn't the most important person in the meeting. Your PM needs to arrange his schedule around everyone else, not vice versa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32224" LastActivityDate="2018-04-23T18:47:46.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23653" CreationDate="2018-04-24T00:17:57.617" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've also worked at both sides and frankly speaking I don't see any benefit neither from the vendor's, nor from the customer's perspective. In terms of the contracts, usually it's:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;N hours of development per feature/project (fixed price);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;N hours of development monthly (usually it's a 'support' contract type);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pay as you go, or 'time&amp;amp;material'. You'll be billed at the end of the month depending on how much time the team spent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I saw, nobody specified the rotation degree. But some contracts include the seniority of the developers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing is a dedicated team, where as a customer you work with the developers directly and may  interview them before signing the contract. Here the customer can refuse to work with a replacement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case of a fixed price, the cost of the rotation is covered by the vendor as they normally don't bill additionally for onboarding a new team member. The client has a risk of the deadlines not being met though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case of support or time&amp;amp;material contracts, the onboarding is payed by the customer, because they basically pay for the hours worked. However this varies from vendor to vendor. I've seen cases when a customer is billed for 100% of overhead, also with no discounts if a senior guy was replaced by a middle guy. Some offer discounts, some don't include overhead hours into the invoice. And some provide juniors for free until the junior is ready to deliver something valuable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the dedicated teams, if you're a customer and you're fine with the replacement, it's usually your responsibility and money to cover the learning curve of a new guy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the only benefit of rotation is when the replacement is much better than the previous guy(s), but this is a rare case and might mean that something was already wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, sure, try to keep the rotation degree as low as possible, but even with the rotation in place if the team still delivers, there won't be dissatisfaction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27305" LastActivityDate="2018-04-24T00:17:57.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23772" CreationDate="2018-04-24T11:29:21.030" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tracking time for tasks is required for estimation, recorded by handwriting or soft copy, just as you like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Re &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/25606/sarov&quot;&gt;Sarov&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/em&gt; &#xA;We need figures for estimation of task time, some people like timesheet to record task time and some like for example Excel worksheet to record task time.&#xA;Some people like using averages/ minimums/ maximums, you can choose as appropriate.&#xA;Estimation of task time is for task/ project management.&#xA;If you think it is not important, you may not do this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32229" LastEditorUserId="32229" LastEditDate="2018-04-25T11:57:05.077" LastActivityDate="2018-04-25T11:57:05.077" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23932" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-04-25T09:25:18.053" Score="0" ViewCount="517" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have two effort driven tasks with a work of 8h for each of them. If I delete the duration of task 5, Project fills the field with &lt;code&gt;1 day?&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DPpii.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DPpii.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I need to do is update the work for this task, for example I update to 9 hrs then modifies it back to 8 hrs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LoAI0.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LoAI0.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case it automatically updates the Duration as expected because John Doe works on this task at 20%. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that if I delete the duration (mistake), it goes back to &lt;code&gt;1 day?&lt;/code&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I be sure my Durations are correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32239" LastActivityDate="2018-12-22T19:01:55.407" Title="How to get a correct duration in MS Project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23933" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23944" CreationDate="2018-04-25T19:42:27.000" Score="1" ViewCount="310" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a discussion about the project plan with my team we collected activities, brought them into order and defined end dates. When we came to defining start dates and durations one of the elder team members (with some PM experience) told me, that it wouldn't make sense to define start dates because we only need the end dates of each action and it is in the duty of each member to start his own action at the right time. Other team members chimed in telling me that each estimation would be a lie. &#xA;In my opinion this is plain wrong. I agree that estimations of effort are always inaccurate to a certain degree, but this is life and one could try to handle it by time buffers. Otherwise these team members are just telling me that they don't know much about their job or are just too lazy to think about their work. Leaving out the start date and durations for these silly reasons makes it just impossible for me to control the project and ask for a status before actions are delayed.&#xA;Am I missing something that old practitioners know? Otherwise - how do you get such team members to reliably provide the desired information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25585" LastEditorUserId="25585" LastEditDate="2018-04-26T10:46:47.753" LastActivityDate="2018-04-27T21:35:48.583" Title="Is it possible to control a project without start date and durations?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;process&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23933" CreationDate="2018-04-26T00:48:03.987" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Notwithstanding what agile practitioners might think using agile as a method, your thinking is spot in. Without planning values, you cannot measure performance and forecast where you're headed. That's great for your workers so they don't have to answer to any unfavorable variances and can report all is great until it's not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stick to your guns. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-04-26T00:48:03.987" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23933" CreationDate="2018-04-26T08:05:18.683" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Otherwise these team members are just telling me that they don't know much about their job or are just too lazy to think about their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know about you and your company, but I haven't seen a single project where the project manager provided enough information to actually make a guess worth calling an estimate. I have seen plenty where the best guess would have been &quot;somewhere between 2-3 and 300+ days&quot;. People are told that such an estimate is not acceptable and they are bad at their job for not knowing better, but then are not given better grounds to guess on, so after a while, they resort to saying it cannot be estimated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your people &lt;em&gt;tell you&lt;/em&gt; they cannot estimate, they are not bad at their job. If they were bad at their job, they'd give you a horribly wrong estimation, because they did not see the uncertainties. They &lt;em&gt;see&lt;/em&gt; what is wrong with the data they &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt;. You need to fix that by giving them better information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they tell you they &lt;em&gt;cannot&lt;/em&gt; estimate, ask them what they &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to estimate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have an estimate (and this might require work on your part first to gather better requirements), the start dates are nothing to discuss in a meeting. Any program worth starting will give you a chart with start dates when you feed it end dates and durations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2018-04-26T08:05:18.683" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23932" CreationDate="2018-04-26T16:48:44.493" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Im guessing you want to change the default duration:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Project 2010, the default task duration unit is days, but you can change it to be minutes, hours, weeks, or months:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Click the File tab, and then click Options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Project Options dialog box, click Schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under Scheduling options in this project, in the Duration is entered in list, select a duration unit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To use the same setting automatically in all future projects, select All New Projects in the Scheduling options in this project list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32255" LastActivityDate="2018-04-26T16:48:44.493" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23938" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23940" CreationDate="2018-04-27T05:31:40.087" Score="2" ViewCount="86" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a graduate student in a Computer Science Laboratory since a few years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the past years I have designed and implemented a fairly cutting-edged complex piece of software along a team of people (over 10).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first, I was given the tech lead and the authority to manage the team to certain level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For that purpose, I tried to introduce some systems and workflows to get everyone on the same page, remain focused and visualize our performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concretely, I pushed for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Peer reviews, unit testing and continuous integration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collective ownership of code.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collective Kamban style management with a backlog of user stories and tasks and WIP limits.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adoption of Git Branches and PRs. Before people will not even use VCS software.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only Git was naturally adopted, other practices were eventually abandoned by the team since:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most students are dedicated to a project in a part-time manner.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students normally work for 6 months or so aiming to make a meaningful progress during that time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Students lacks experience and ignores the benefits of those practices.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Professor viewed the system as a burden. So he will normally ignore whatever system we had a would reassign people to different tasks on demand without noticing others resulting in a mess of management. Also setting a precedent. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For all those reasons I gave up enforcing the adoption of those practices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this moment is just the professor who vaguely assign us some tasks time to time and we just informally try to finish those tasks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since we stop using those practices, the quality of code has greatly diminished. We have a sense of individual and competitive work where sometimes two or three people work on the same tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want change this situation again and I want to pitch a better and more adapted practices to improve our workflow and team management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would you suggest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22806" LastActivityDate="2018-04-27T09:01:52.913" Title="How to improve the workflow in laboratory" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;failure&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23938" CreationDate="2018-04-27T09:01:52.913" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a first step, you need to get a buy-in from those that decide how work is done. That means &lt;em&gt;at least&lt;/em&gt; you professor. If that person does not see the need for change, there is nothing you can do that would last. So build a case, show them how improving the system can improve &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; life. What does it make easier &lt;em&gt;for them&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next step, do the same for the students. They come and go, they are not dependent on this as much, so their input is not as important as the professors, but you will have a hard time to &lt;em&gt;force&lt;/em&gt; a system on them. Build a case for them, &lt;em&gt;show them&lt;/em&gt; how those changes will have a positive effect on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That might seem simple, but it's really the core of it. You may know what best practices are, but until you can &lt;em&gt;demonstrate&lt;/em&gt; to people how &lt;em&gt;their personal life&lt;/em&gt; will be changed &lt;em&gt;for the better&lt;/em&gt; if they follow them, they will only see the costs. Because those are glaringly obvious to everybody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So start by making a plan on how to demonstrate and prove that the changes you would like to make benefit everybody. And not an abstract &quot;everybody&quot; but actually &lt;em&gt;everybody&lt;/em&gt; in the room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2018-04-27T09:01:52.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23933" CreationDate="2018-04-27T11:03:23.183" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Plannings and estimations on project (or project phases duration) are valuable in both more and less deterministic environments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;more deterministic&lt;/strong&gt; environments you will let your company allocate the precise volume of the resources and hence do not waste or freezing ones for actually addressing unnecessary risk buffer of your project but rather put them to support the activities which do really require them. In other words that will help to make the &lt;strong&gt;resource balancing more efficient&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;less deterministic&lt;/strong&gt; environment the value of the estimations which are &lt;em&gt;almost always a lie&lt;/em&gt; is to provide some sort the &lt;strong&gt;initial approximation&lt;/strong&gt; for certain types of tasks in certain circumstances of a particular project specific. Having ones a manager works to re-mediate the factors impacting the deviations to minimize the deviation and hence make the environment more deterministic (see above paragraph)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29674" LastActivityDate="2018-04-27T11:03:23.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23942" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-04-27T12:31:19.060" Score="1" ViewCount="46" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a large organization, they recently shaped 4 end to end scrum teams, meaning they can take a user story, and deliver front end, back end, test it and push the code to the main line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However it has been said that a special team is needed to liaise with the business and stakeholders, in order to do a first pass of the requirements for the system to be built. Therefore, 2 people formed a mini team, one being a tech specialist and the other a business person (ex-PO), in order to do this first pass and agree on requirements. Thereafter, the information, or &quot;big&quot; user stories will be fed down to the other POs via one or more meetings, and each team will decide what they'll do and what not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, it is said that it would be inefficient for all PO to do the job that this initial mini team does, because they will most likely step on each other toes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know whether this is sustainable in the long term. Most likely it will highlight a bottleneck in the whole approach, however people support that this is the best solution in the short term.&#xA;Ultimately, we want the POs to be responsible to deliver one piece of functionality of the CRM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you achieve this from the current situation, if at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5522" LastActivityDate="2018-06-07T12:40:16.730" Title="CRM development by multiple teams" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23943" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-04-27T14:03:51.787" Score="0" ViewCount="1032" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had already defined a bunch of tasks, and assigned resources 1 and 2.  The durations of the tasks were calculated on the resources Max Units availability at the time of assignment.  Later I went back and changed the resource Max Units based on a recalculation of the resources availability.  I expected project to automatically change the duration of the tasks accordingly, but it didn't.  I had to go and manually change the Units field for the assigned resource on the task to get it to change the duration.  Is there any way that MS Project will automatically recalculate the durations of tasks when I change the max unit % at the resource level?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32262" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-10-29T12:21:06.607" LastActivityDate="2019-04-27T14:02:20.460" Title="In Microsoft Project how to get change in resource max units to cascade to tasks automatically" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;resources&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23933" CreationDate="2018-04-27T21:35:48.583" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There might be lots of reasons why your team doesn't want to give you estimations. Let's discard the ones that imply that your teammates are bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're right when you said: &lt;em&gt;&quot;estimations of effort are always inaccurate to a certain degree&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would add that the degree of uncertainty depends on the nature of the project you have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UyZxe.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UyZxe.png&quot; alt=&quot;Image taken from: https://www.pinterest.de/pin/232990980699736881/&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Image taken from: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pinterest.de/pin/232990980699736881/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.pinterest.de/pin/232990980699736881/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're project's requirements are really clear and your team has the knowledge on how to do it, try breaking down your requirements  and finding out what they need to estimate and then &lt;strong&gt;push them to give you an estimation&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, if the requirements are not clear or your team doesn't have the knowledge or both, then estimations are useless. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second case I would use an agile approach, break down the project in small milestones, prioritize them to deliver value ASAP to the customer and set &quot;expected&quot; delivery dates to your team to use them as motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck with your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26068" LastActivityDate="2018-04-27T21:35:48.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23946" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23948" CreationDate="2018-04-28T08:08:38.493" Score="1" ViewCount="263" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3U4LR.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3U4LR.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we can see from the link above, i assume the development in the waterfall model will never end. As it reach the maintenance phase, the team will be need to re-analys the system or improve the system again. And what i to ask is it true that the waterfall cycle will never end (not have the point when the development will be end) as i assume before? Thank you in advance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32265" LastActivityDate="2018-05-02T06:22:33.057" Title="When will waterfall development model cycle phase end?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;&lt;sdlc&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23942" CreationDate="2018-04-28T09:28:07.403" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the big differences between Scrum and traditional development is the Product Owner role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner becomes the single source of truth for the team in all matters relating to requirements. They distil the stakeholders ideas down to a coherent backlog of requirements and work closely with the development team to ensure their understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However it has been said that a special team is needed to liaise with the business and stakeholders, in order to do a first pass of the requirements for the system to be built&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a traditional development approach. Creating a 'special team' between the business and the development teams has a number of disadvantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It creates ambiguity around requirements decisions. Who has the final say, the special team or the Product Owner?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It undermines the Product Owner role such that they no longer &lt;em&gt;own&lt;/em&gt; the product.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is easy for misunderstanding to arise as information is passed through intermediary teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The key aspect of continuous feedback from the stakeholders is undermined.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;it is said that it would be inefficient for all PO to do the job that this initial mini team does, because they will most likely step on each other toes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a peculiar statement. Are the Product Owners incapable of talking to each other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-04-28T09:28:07.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23946" CreationDate="2018-04-28T10:28:30.137" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The waterfall model is linear, so there's no cycling involved. When the product is built, the project is done.&#xA;Your graph looks more like the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Systems Development Live Cycle&lt;/a&gt; (SDLC) to me. The SDLC is used in process management to build, maintain and grow an IT system. So it has no defined ending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17009" LastEditorUserId="17009" LastEditDate="2018-05-02T06:22:33.057" LastActivityDate="2018-05-02T06:22:33.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23949" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23960" CreationDate="2018-04-29T08:54:52.377" Score="2" ViewCount="1296" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been in several projects before as a frontend developer when the requirements of the project change in the middle of the sprint. I want to be like &quot;agile&quot; and accommodating to change and flexbile, but I think this can be very hard on a front end developer and also extremely unfair because the front end developer is the last point in the process of developing a product because they are making things look right, and also connect it to the backend so the product will actually work. I think this is confusing for project leaders and customers, because often seemingly large changes are actually the most easy changes to get done, but then the seemingly minor ones takes days if not weeks to implement fully. Anyway because of the nature of agile projects and also the reality of working as a front end developer. I am wondering. Is it ok and normal for a project to make changes in the middle of the sprint and expect the same deadlines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32269" LastActivityDate="2018-04-30T09:41:21.863" Title="In an agile project is it ok to change the requirements of the sprint in the middle of the sprint?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23950" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-04-29T13:22:37.527" Score="0" ViewCount="53" Body="&lt;p&gt;An organization (bank) is procuring a software from a foreign company and at the same time they are also taking a major upgrade for another software (core banking system). A team has been formed as a Project Management Office to operate this project with different tracks like lending, forex, general banking, MIS and Quality Assurance (QA).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the above scenario, &lt;strong&gt;in a software procurement, implementation and upgrade project&lt;/strong&gt;, what would be the jobs, tasks, duties and the job description that the QA track should have?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32232" LastEditorUserId="32232" LastEditDate="2018-04-30T09:04:03.773" LastActivityDate="2018-07-29T11:01:05.173" Title="What are the tasks of a Quality Assurance track in a software procurement, implementation and upgrade project" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;quality&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;&lt;procurement&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23951" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23955" CreationDate="2018-04-29T14:35:20.137" Score="3" ViewCount="75" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I googled &quot;best practices peer code review rate&quot;, I found lots of hits that provide best practices for how to conduct a peer code review, but nothing came up for determining a good peer code review rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our team has neither required nor consistently implemented peer code reviews in the past. We're trying to rectify that. However, we don't want to create a process that creates a bottleneck, so I'm assuming that declaring a code review is required for 100% of final commits is a bad idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Question:&lt;/strong&gt; Is there a best practice or generally accepted percentage of final commits (or other metric) that is used for selecting commits for peer code review?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32266" LastActivityDate="2018-05-02T00:56:49.237" Title="What is a good target peer code review rate?" Tags="&lt;sdlc&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23949" CreationDate="2018-04-29T14:54:27.557" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I realize that the answer below may not have directly answered your question. I'm going to leave it because, well, I'm a dummy, and there's no sense in hiding that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is, &quot;Yes, requirements can change in the middle of a sprint, and they frequently will.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the industry in which I currently work, requirements often change mid-sprint due to natural disasters, regulatory changes, vendor changes, system outages, and all sorts of weird goings-on. These things are outside your control (external factors) and you cannot predict when they will occur. But you have to handle them as they arise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The requirements will change, tasks will be deprioritized in favor of other tasks and your sprint and product backlogs will change. This is where Agile beats the pants off of Waterfall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, your developers will pull their hair out. So will you. But you'll save money on haircuts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile expects constantly changing requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, having said that, the team leadership can push back against the customer and make it clear that some of their expectations are unreasonable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the start of the sprint, the expectations were clear, and the team presumably negotiated with the customer for a fixed set of deliverables. Barring an extraordinary set of circumstances (natural disaster, regulatory changes, legal obligations, etc.), they committed to those deliverables and anything else should go into a future sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talk to the customer. Negotiate. Communication is key. In a worst case scenario, and they insist on the new functionality, they'll have to move other items on the sprint backlog into a future sprint to make room for the desired features. It's all about priorities at that point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With any luck, you'll have a retrospective, and you can include this as a pain point and learn from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32266" LastEditorUserId="32266" LastEditDate="2018-04-29T15:08:08.090" LastActivityDate="2018-04-29T15:08:08.090" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23950" CreationDate="2018-04-29T17:56:59.583" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding to the PMBOK-Guide, QA has to plan, manage and controll quality throughout the project. So QA will have to identify all standards and requirements and plan how they can be met. This can only be successful when it happens hand in glove with the other teams.&#xA;Same goes with quality management while the project is worked on. QA has to make sure that the quality management plan and the processes are followed. And the finished deliverables have to be controlled. So if this actually has to be a separate team (I prefer multidisciplinary  teams), make sure that it works deeply embedded into the other teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17009" LastActivityDate="2018-04-29T17:56:59.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23949" CreationDate="2018-04-29T18:18:37.050" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me that's one of the many points in Scrum where it's more about instinct and balance than about rules. On the one hand the customer value is important and you don't want to waste time following a wrong path. On the other hand one want to shield the team from distractions and disturbance. So I'd have a look at four factors: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this an exception or is this happening every sprint? If this is common, your Scrum Master should have a long talk with your Product Owner.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are we talking about small change requests? Or are we talking about changing acceptance critereas? A big change will alter the goal of a user story and thus should result in a new user story. My two cents.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a policy in your organisation how change requests should be handled?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And finally: in my experience it depends a lot on the length of your sprints. Are we talking about two weeks each? Then maybe ask your Product Owner to write a new user story. Are we talking about eight weeks? Then small changes should be acceptable. But again, for me this is a lot about tact. Talk with the team, your Scrum Master and/or your Product Owner if you feel uncomfortable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17009" LastEditorUserId="17009" LastEditDate="2018-04-30T05:35:22.893" LastActivityDate="2018-04-30T05:35:22.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23951" CreationDate="2018-04-29T18:25:48.397" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just can tell how the teams I worked with did best: when a developer finished a part of code he or she considered important, they brought it with them to the next review to show to and discuss it with the other team members.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Rotating pair programming-pairs also helps a lot in communicating the current state of a repository.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In my eyes, having a &quot;target peer code review rate&quot; will cause the opposite effect - clutching to a number won't buy the team in but will just add bureaucracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17009" LastEditorUserId="17009" LastEditDate="2018-04-30T09:34:32.503" LastActivityDate="2018-04-30T09:34:32.503" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23956" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-04-30T05:58:01.483" Score="3" ViewCount="144" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I had a colleague that implemented a feature without being in the plan or discussed in detail but on his own time during the weekend.&#xA;The feature was discussed briefly, it is a technical improvement, that is not complicated but requires a big number of changes and it does change the way of work in that area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I appreciate his dedication to the project and he is a fairly good developer, even if that feature is not a state of the art is still good, and it will be reviewed by peers before adding it, but it feels wrong to appraise extra work time (can lead to burnout) for a feature that wasn't discussed in-deep technically (step required by our way of work agreement).&#xA;On the other hand, I am afraid that a bad comment would cut out his enthusiasm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So should we encourage, welcome or prevent these situations? How would a good approach look like?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29667" LastEditorUserId="29667" LastEditDate="2018-05-01T15:00:18.497" LastActivityDate="2018-05-02T10:46:36.587" Title="Should we encourage a team member adding a feature on his own?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;features&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23956" CreationDate="2018-04-30T06:31:14.950" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Puh, I've been through this several times. Some lone-wolf-developers can be hard nuts to crack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's have a look how Scrum handles this: team members should be encouraged to write user stories - especially technical ones. And agile PM-methodologies also know the concept of a Story Owner. Plus thinking above the own tellerrand is in the vibe of DevOps. So I appreciate this kind of thinking in &quot;traditional&quot; PM too.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;But seeing a potential improvement and to add this to the planning is a completely different thing than to implement new code in a cloak-and-dagger operation. This is against the team, against the software architecture, against the quality plan (at least I hope your quality plan says so) and against the PM. Plus chances are high it is gold plating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if I was you, I'd try to channel his enthusiasm. Give him the feeling that you trust him and that you trust his experience and skills. But also show him that there are guidelines that have to be followed. Make sure, there's a routine of how to add new features. And talk about such things openly and honest. If those lone-wolfs feel save and understood, they can become your most valuable team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17009" LastEditorUserId="17009" LastEditDate="2018-05-02T10:46:36.587" LastActivityDate="2018-05-02T10:46:36.587" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23946" CreationDate="2018-04-30T07:41:47.300" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Waterfall is done when the project is delivered into a Business-As-Usual (BAU) state. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the defining characteristics of a project is that it is &lt;strong&gt;Temporary&lt;/strong&gt;.  The other four are &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Causes change&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Uses a cross-functional team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The deliverable is unique&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It causes uncertaintity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you subscribe to this model then the project is technically done once a maintenance team takes custody of the deliverable to maintain it on an ongoing basis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this method and definition are being challenged strongly by the rise of Development-Operations (DevOps) where the team that builds something also run that something using automation wherever possible. DevOps and Cloud and/or Microservices typically go hand in hand but it is not a rule. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be noted though that, despite the overwhelming number of posts on PM.SE, not all projects are IT or software related and thus, the waterfall model is still used worldwide and still requires a good grasp of its principles and techniques. There is no DevOps for building a railway or an Aircraft Carrier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2018-04-30T07:41:47.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23949" CreationDate="2018-04-30T09:41:21.863" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-sprint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the Sprint:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No changes are made that would endanger the Sprint Goal&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quality goals do not decrease&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scope may be clarified and re-negotiated between the Product Owner and Development Team as more is learned&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What this is saying is that &lt;em&gt;reasonable&lt;/em&gt; changes may be made. If excessive changes are introduced then it is up to the Product Owner to decide if the sprint should continue or be ended early.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth noting that excessive changes mid-sprint have a number of disadvantages including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They make forecasting difficult&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They can introduce waste as a result of the team having to re-plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They may create confusion and reduce &lt;em&gt;transparency&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt; &#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-04-30T09:41:21.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23943" CreationDate="2018-04-30T11:08:21.530" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, MS Project will never recalculate the duration of tasks based on the resource max units value. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most project managers assign the resources for a different value of % unit than the resource's max % unit value. A resource might be working on two tasks in parallel, or in several different projects. A resource may also be assigned to more than its max % unit value on purpose. So changing this automatically would wreak havoc with many project plans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid there is no better way than to change the tasks manually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30194" LastActivityDate="2018-04-30T11:08:21.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23918" CreationDate="2018-04-30T11:10:13.317" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would focus on changing the customers' processes to integrate your releases more easily. But there are many details to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You talked about QA. Does your customers' QA influence your product release/development?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are customers directly involved in your development process?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you develop your customers' requests and your customers' product?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If not&lt;/strong&gt;, I would not care about their processes. They get the release whenever they want. If they skip releases and take every 5th release, it's on them. You need to make sure that they can skip.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If so&lt;/strong&gt;, since you develop your customers' product, try to understand completely why your customers are not willing/able to release faster. Check out what the benefits for them could be if they would change. Check out how they would need to change, to gain these benefits. Consult them to optimize their release processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But anyway, small incremental releases should be preferred internally. I don't know the exact relation you're in with your customers, but if it's unrealistic to change anything with your customers, try to encapsulate your release process from the rest. You stay effective, flexible, and transparent, and your customers check in whenever they're ready. They always get a finished piece of software. The benefits of incremental development are known.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32272" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-04-30T13:29:14.160" LastActivityDate="2018-04-30T13:29:14.160" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23963" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-04-30T15:43:17.617" Score="0" ViewCount="523" Body="&lt;p&gt;An Amendment has significant changes throughout the Scope of Work and Schedule of Deliverables. Majority of the Tasks have either been edited or completely deleted. Should you consider possibly writing a new Contract if such changes alter the scope of the Contract?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32274" LastActivityDate="2018-04-30T16:37:23.943" Title="Changes to SOW through Amendments" Tags="&lt;process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23963" CreationDate="2018-04-30T16:03:54.760" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you are following the PMBOK. So what does your Change Management Plan say?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;And besides the CMP: I would definitely consider a new or an updated contract. Of course it depends a bit on the relationship between you and your contract partner. But I would address the topic and see their reaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17009" LastEditorUserId="17009" LastEditDate="2018-04-30T16:14:55.017" LastActivityDate="2018-04-30T16:14:55.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23963" CreationDate="2018-04-30T16:37:23.943" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's a hard and fast rule on this.  In my experience only, there seems to be a general consensus that says if the contract is materially change to negotiate a new contract.  I think the reason behind this is to minimize ambiguity, remove possible contradicting language, thus mitigating future disputes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, opening up the contract threatens favorable terms to you that are not necessarily impacted by the changes but are up for renegotiation anyway since you are essentially starting over.  So as always, trade offs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-04-30T16:37:23.943" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23956" CreationDate="2018-04-30T18:26:57.073" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If lone wolf programmers can add features without review, then you have the possibility to save some serious money by firing everyone in your configuration control team. Seriously, there is no point to doing configuration management if you're not going to manage the configuration.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And while they are at it, they can save money by canning that developers management.  Apparently that manager feels that it is OK for programmers to devote time to coding and installing whatever they feel like.  Most companies are under the illusion that the company and the customer choose what will be deployed.  But apparently  this particular programmer's whim is more important than the priority of features chosen by the system owner/product owner.  SO we can pink slip the product owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if people can bypass your QA team, why pay them? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Objectively speaking, he is not a good developer - he is a rogue developer with no respect for his team, his management, or the long term health and welfare of the product.  If he were my programmer, I'd call him into the office and shut the door an explain that either he works on the team, with the team and for the team, or he doesn't work on the team. - I'm happy to provide him the number of the unemployment office with his termination for cause letter and the legal paperwork that the company is preparing to file against the damage done to reputation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, I'm a jerk; most people would probably take a more constructive approach.  &lt;em&gt;I was trying to convey that this is largely tongue in cheek; this is not a constructive approach and will not solve the problem.  I do think that the employee needs to understand the full implications of these actions, but this is not realistic or constructive.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2018-05-01T08:12:29.997" LastActivityDate="2018-05-01T08:12:29.997" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23956" CreationDate="2018-04-30T19:42:38.077" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;His dedication, enthusiasm, or skills is not relevant. The only thing relevant is that a change was introduced without approvals. Controlling change and configuration are leading practices and changes out of control is an undesired practice. You don't have to analyze impacts because they are already well known. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just teach your guy about change management. When he becomes a PM he'll be glad you did. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  I misread a couple of points in the OP, pointed out by @Rubberduck.  In this case, I think while I like my original answer for a scope creep issue my answer for this specific OP needs to be different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This developer chose to invest his own time for the betterment of your project.  You must encourage this kind of behavior!  This is how innovation works.  You cannot plan for it, you cannot forecast it, you cannot predict it.  When it happens, exploit it!  Do not worry about burnout.  We have a lot more bandwith than forty hours a week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for my original answer.  It was wholly incorrect for this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2018-05-01T17:04:02.123" LastActivityDate="2018-05-01T17:04:02.123" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23968" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-04-30T23:27:56.580" Score="1" ViewCount="60" Body="&lt;p&gt;Back of the envelope calculations are not meant to be very accurate - but they are meant to be better than random guesses. The process of making one usually helps remove bias from your answer, and should converge to a general ballpark which is close to the answer you're looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several PMs I've spoken with so far tell me that, when interviewing, while they don't expect a very accurate answer from a back of the envelope calculation for the interviewee, they do expect that the number won't be off by too much - that is, not more than one order of magnitude in either direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was surprised to hear an answer so consistent - multiple PMs from multiple industries, citing exactly the one order of magnitude margin of error. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I'm wondering where that one order of magnitude number came from - is it some sort of industry-wide standard? Is there a methodology book or course that introduced it? Or is it just accidental anecdotal evidence from my social circle, and not spread much farther than that? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="71" LastActivityDate="2018-05-01T04:00:00.613" Title="When faced with a back of the envelope type question in a PM interview, is there a standard of accuracy that is expected?" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23968" CreationDate="2018-05-01T03:51:05.650" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PMBOK-Guide knows five types of estimates. One of them is the Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM). It has a range of -50% to +50%. As it is literally the roughest estimate, I guess your colleagues are referring to it as the minimum criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And just in case you are curious, the other four types are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Preliminary Estimate: -15% to + 50%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Budget Estimate: -10% to +25%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Definitive Estimate: -5% to +10%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Final Estimate: 0%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17009" LastEditorUserId="17009" LastEditDate="2018-05-01T04:00:00.613" LastActivityDate="2018-05-01T04:00:00.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23951" CreationDate="2018-05-02T00:56:49.237" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Contrary to what you believe, it is not unreasonable to have had &lt;em&gt;at least&lt;/em&gt; two sets of eyes on 100% every code change. Every team I’ve worked on for the last five years has had at least one other set of eyes on every change. Sometimes it’s a tool assisted review, sometimes it’s an informal “can you look at this quick”, sometimes it’s a second set of eyes &lt;em&gt;while&lt;/em&gt; it’s developed (pairing), but there’s always at least two people familiar with the code. I’ve even worked with teams where one pair would review another pair’s work. That’s four people who are familiar with it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing is though, you can’t just force a review process on a team. That’s a waste of money because they’ll half ass it just to check the box. Review’s are only effective if the dev team voluntarily makes it part of their process because they’re trying to solve a problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21039" LastActivityDate="2018-05-02T00:56:49.237" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23971" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23975" CreationDate="2018-05-02T06:41:05.407" Score="9" ViewCount="4267" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are in the healthcare industry, where bugs can have an impact on people health. As a result, we started having a code freeze on the staging environment to have the QA test each build.  In addition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We don't deploy on Fridays so developers will not have to fix urgent bugs over the weekend&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We do 2 weeks sprints&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The QA asked to have the code on Thursday morning on staging for testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, code that wasn't completed by Thursday morning is not being released in that release. In other words, all the code developer code over Thursday-Friday isn't being delivered in the current sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of that, I proposed to the stakeholders to consider separating the engineering sprint and the code delivery, setting the expected sprint delivery to a few days after the sprint ends. As expected, I got a lot of pushback from the stakeholders, telling me that they never heard of anything like it and that I break the Scrum process. Trouble is that I agree with them, but I can't think of any other way, apart from committing to less each sprint and having developers work on other things (support, next sprint tickets) in the last couple of days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone with a similar setup - how did you resolve it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14806" LastEditorUserId="14806" LastEditDate="2018-05-08T14:53:27.033" LastActivityDate="2020-04-11T12:14:03.170" Title="QA Code freeze and setting the expected delivery timeline" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;quality&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23971" CreationDate="2018-05-02T08:39:36.733" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way I see it your problem comes down to the &lt;strong&gt;definition of done&lt;/strong&gt;. Does your DoD contain the requirement that your code has passed QA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, then however long your QA needs to vet the latest build automatically becomes slack time for your devs at the end of the sprint. That's not necessarily a bad thing. You can do backlog refinement, research, learning, refactoring, etc in that time (if no bugs turn up). You just can't push out new builds. You can still deploy on the friday in the middle of the sprint. Bugs would simply get fixed when the devs are back in on monday. If this is how you want to roll you should however do minimize the time QA needs for their work. Your feedback cycle should be as short as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your DoD does not contain the requirement for QA testing then your proposed solution is the correct one: Your team will push out new builds whenever they have them. The last build occuring in the last days of the sprint whenever you are done. Whatever issues QA finds are then treated like new backlog items. They will be included into sprints according to their priority just like any other task. If QA finds a particularly critical bug then the PO can renegotiate the scope of your current sprint to include that issue (generally at the expense of something else).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2018-05-02T08:39:36.733" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23973" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23977" CreationDate="2018-05-02T08:48:03.563" Score="4" ViewCount="805" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given a case where an organization has both dozens of scrum teams and a global Change Management program, does it make sense to feed information available through the Scrum Retrospectives to the Change Management process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms, if there are external impediments which are outside of scrum team power to work around meaningfully, Change Management [&quot;&lt;em&gt;a program dedicated to managing organisational change and supporting staff to deal with changes in the business&lt;/em&gt;&quot;] &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; help, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28945" LastEditorUserId="28945" LastEditDate="2018-05-02T13:34:04.517" LastActivityDate="2018-12-13T12:07:11.740" Title="Is alignment of scrum retrospectives with Change Management possible?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23971" CreationDate="2018-05-02T09:16:13.477" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can't QA be integrated in your scrum team? This not only means you integrate one person that does QA, but you spread the QA knowledge in your team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main goal building a scrum team, is that the team is able to build (or even better deploy) a product increment on its own. Further there are no other roles in the team than developer. So your team can have a QA specialist, but all other developers should be able to support in QA. The other way around your QA specialist should be able to support development. Perhaps, to accomplish this, you have to manage the knowledge transfer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way you could integrate QA tasks completely in your sprint planning. Anyone in your team could handle or at least support any type of task, development and QA. At any time in the sprint you can do QA for finished features. At any time in the sprint you can react on QAs feedback on development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps its also worthy to define what you mean by QA. Is it really quality assurance or more like user/stakeholder acceptance testing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32272" LastActivityDate="2018-05-02T09:16:13.477" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23971" CreationDate="2018-05-02T09:40:16.713" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having worked in two regulated environments (aerospace and pharmaceutical/healthcare), I've seen the problem of needing independent quality assurance in a deliverable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few things to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Build QA time into your Sprint. My current organization used to run two-week Sprints. We began on a Wednesday afternoon (some teams begin on Thursday morning) with Sprint Planning and have development through the next week's Friday. Code freeze was Friday afternoon. QA has at least 2.5 days (Monday after code freeze until Wednesday afternoon) of testing exclusively on a release candidate. We recently modified this to begin Sprints with Sprint Planning on Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning (depending on the team). For a given release, code freeze occurs with the Sprint Review on Wednesday. If there is a scheduled release (we don't release after every Sprint), this is planned as part of Sprint Planning with the fact that QA staff will be running manual test cases or ad hoc testing and automation team members will be reviewing and documenting automated acceptance and performance test cases. Any necessary capacity and support from the team is known going into the Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Involve QA in every step of the process. When your product management team is starting to develop ideas and requirements (stories, backlog items), get QA involved so they can provide feedback on testability. When you refine these requirements, get QA involved to review. If you are using acceptance criteria, have QA help to write them to make sure they are complete. When you are doing estimation, including QA effort in the estimation. When you plan your work, include QA to ensure that they are confident that the planned work can be done (developed, tested appropriately by development, and go through an appropriate QA process) within the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Involve developers in quality. In an environment where developers cannot test their work, they can still do valuable work after a code freeze. Bugs (or questions) may come up - the developers need to work with QA to fix issues and address concerns. Otherwise, they can improve automated test coverage to prevent regressions in future changes or improve developer tooling and infrastructure. If there's not much in improving quality, the developers can focus on risk reduction for upcoming work by learning and improving the skills or prototyping upcoming functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do have to make changes to Scrum to make it work in a regulated environment, but I would not break Scrum. Ensure that your increment is done (by development and quality assurance) at the end of the Sprint. Ensure that your Development Team includes all of the skills needed to deliver the work and everyone's estimation and effort are being considered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2020-04-11T12:14:03.170" LastActivityDate="2020-04-11T12:14:03.170" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23973" CreationDate="2018-05-02T09:42:52.677" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-retro&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Retrospectives&lt;/a&gt; are a meeting for the Scrum Team and are &lt;em&gt;internally focused&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sharing information from a retrospective with a wider audience has to be done very carefully. A couple of reasons for this are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People will tend to speak less freely if they know information is going to be shared outside of the retrospective meeting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People outside of the Scrum Team will not have the context that is needed to properly understand comments made in a retrospective&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One approach I have used as a Scrum Master is to ask the team if they want a particular retrospective topic to be shared more widely. If the team thinks there is value in sharing a topic and has no concerns over misinterpretation, then I will go ahead and produce a retrospective report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-05-02T09:42:52.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23973" CreationDate="2018-05-02T12:12:53.500" Score="9" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As Barnaby Golden has stated, it is not a good idea to share the content of a retro. It is very important for teams to know that the retro is a &quot;safe place&quot;. What happens there, stays there - unless the team wants you to volunteer information about. But I wouldn't push them.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Also note that not all teams are talking about impediments during their retros. Most teams I've worked with are talking about a) how they felt during certain situations and b) how to reach technical excellence. But the impediments are (also) talked about during the daily stand-ups. And it's the Scrum Master's job to solve those impediments. So...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change Management could definitely help. You could cut through red tape and arrange a short line of communication between Scrum Masters and CM. So impediments can be turned into change requests without generating additional overhead. And this helps all persons involved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17009" LastEditorUserId="17009" LastEditDate="2018-12-08T10:19:14.410" LastActivityDate="2018-12-08T10:19:14.410" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23877" CreationDate="2018-05-02T22:01:12.790" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What's included in the FRs is dependent on the purpose of your task, but it's acceptable to have permissions defined in your use cases, given users need different types of access and functionality based on their roles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30882" LastActivityDate="2018-05-02T22:01:12.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23979" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-05-03T03:16:33.560" Score="1" ViewCount="301" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a fully automated deploy process but as we now sometimes we break things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When this happens the developer just apply a hot fix in (branch, fix and opens a PR) the trunk development. As you could imagine in this situation we lost the bug incidence metric.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So at the moment we are not capable of see if we are fixing too many bugs instead of delivering new features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is a good practice to avoid loosing bug incidence tracking? &#xA;One of the options is to link Jira (Issue tracking tool) with Git hub. So to deploy software to production we must have a opened ticket on Jira.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how do u guys manage those kind of metrics? Do u just rely on process and advocate users to create bug/issues?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31938" LastActivityDate="2018-05-06T06:21:45.517" Title="How to measure bug incidence in Production?" Tags="&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;&lt;devops&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23979" CreationDate="2018-05-03T03:56:41.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To me the answer is one word: transparency.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;But there's a lot more behind this. It's about creating an atmosphere where team members don't feel embarrased when a bug pops up. And I don't know about the situation in your team. But often there's some naming and blaming involved. In my experience, managing to avoid this and to create some trust and openess will lead to more transparency and this will bring your developers to follow the guidelines self-motivated. And then you won't have big issues with incident metrics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the company culture is not so open (I'm facing this pretty often), it helps to stress the necessity of metrics. In the end it helps the developers to see where they are standing. And it is a lot about controlling. It is not pleasant but helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17009" LastActivityDate="2018-05-03T03:56:41.520" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23979" CreationDate="2018-05-03T15:46:55.463" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The good practice is &lt;strong&gt;change management&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;four-eyes check&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;segregation of duty&lt;/strong&gt; concepts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the change is being delivered to production it should be classified (e.g. Regular Release, Hot-Fix, etc.). There should be the role that makes sure there is a &lt;strong&gt;proper track&lt;/strong&gt; that each release type leaves. For example a hot-fix should be initiated by an incident, have the proper defect raised including the properties like &quot;Detected in phase&quot; or &quot;Is prod issue&quot;, etc. Having all those things the role gives a sign-off for deployment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There should also be some technical harness for supporting the process like hooks in VCS, and orivilege management systems like Power Broker that will minimize the risk of unauthorized actions. Having Reviewer role will also make sense to audit the process from the beginning to the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29674" LastActivityDate="2018-05-03T15:46:55.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23984" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23986" CreationDate="2018-05-04T06:23:19.517" Score="3" ViewCount="375" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being new to MS Project, I am wondering if I can create a project based on a defined template modified by some variables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am dealing with several (20+) projects I have to manage parallel. The projects themselves are almost identical in structure, i.e. they all have six sequential work packages that have a defined ratio of effort (e.g package 1 is 45% of the total project effort, package 2 is 5% and so on). They basically only differ in the following variables:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start date&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;End date&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Total hours available&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assignment of the six fixed, sequential work packages to authors (aka resources)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible in MS Project to define a project template and generate a project plan just from entering the variables listed above and have the rest (like start/end dates and hours for the individual work packages) be filled in automatically? If so, how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32313" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-08T22:30:16.683" LastActivityDate="2018-11-08T22:30:16.683" Title="MS Project 2010 - Create project from a set of variables" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23984" CreationDate="2018-05-04T06:52:07.953" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's easy to save a project as a template in MS Project. You can find this feature at &lt;code&gt;File &amp;gt; Export &amp;gt; File Types &amp;gt; Save Project as File&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Choose &lt;code&gt;Project Template&lt;/code&gt; and save. This will lead you to a dialog where you can remove non-generic data from your project (costs, etc.) and save the template.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;To load a template, click &lt;code&gt;File &amp;gt; New&lt;/code&gt;, select your template and click &lt;code&gt;Create&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To fill in data automatically, I'd recommend importing via Excel (&lt;code&gt;File &amp;gt; New &amp;gt; New from Excel workbook&lt;/code&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17009" LastActivityDate="2018-05-04T06:52:07.953" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23987" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-05-04T09:06:58.853" Score="1" ViewCount="218" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to make an AOA diagram in which the following situation occurs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;+---+----------------+--------------+&#xA;| # |  Description   | Predecessors |&#xA;+---+----------------+--------------+&#xA;| C | Welding        | B            |&#xA;| D | Removing slack | C            |&#xA;| E | Filling tank   | C, D         |&#xA;+---+----------------+--------------+&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since C is a predecessor of both D and E, but E is also dependant on D, can I simplify the diagram to just a sequence of C-&gt;D-&gt;E ? If not, would the diagram be as following: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/krMAU.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/krMAU.png&quot; alt=&quot;No simplification&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or am I allowed to simplify in this case, so the result is as following:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7Uzjb.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7Uzjb.png&quot; alt=&quot;With simplification&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me it seems weird both to have a node with just two incoming dummies, but also to just to fully drop a predecessor relationship like nothing happened. Am I missing something?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32317" LastActivityDate="2018-05-04T13:19:41.193" Title="Activity on Arrow diagram: simplification allowed when sequence is predecessor of next node" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;critical-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23987" CreationDate="2018-05-04T09:54:19.987" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First I'd adjust the length of the arrows to the length of the task. At least that's &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_diagramming_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the way I'm using it&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ad your question: You are not required to use dummy activities. But I'd chose to do so. Simply, because they can help to reduce complexity. So in your case I'd vote for the first diagram. I can understand it at a glance without having to read and think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17009" LastActivityDate="2018-05-04T09:54:19.987" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23869" CreationDate="2018-05-04T12:26:36.370" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am PMP certified and will try to explain. You would need 4500 hours of experience leading or managing projects. This could span across more than 36 months and the projects can overlap. The information about the projects and activities and work hours have to mentioned on the application. The dates rather start and end month timeframes have to be specified. Once you reach the application submission page it gives you a brief idea what needs to be added. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32304" LastActivityDate="2018-05-04T12:26:36.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23987" CreationDate="2018-05-04T13:19:41.193" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to go the other route from the existing Answer and ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What &lt;em&gt;useful information&lt;/em&gt; does the first diagram have that the second does not?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going by the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.britannica.com/topic/transitive-law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;law of transitivity&lt;/a&gt;, if C implies D and D implies E, then C implies E. Thus, I would argue that your first diagram is stating that 'C implies E' &lt;strong&gt;twice&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only scenario &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; can think of for this to be useful is if you &lt;em&gt;really, REALLY&lt;/em&gt; need to check that C is done before starting E, regardless of whether or not D has been done yet. Which, in turn, implies both that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;'C-&gt;D' is a 'soft requirement', in that it is possible it might not be upheld. That is, we can't trust that C was done even if we know that D was.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We care more about C-&gt;E than we do about any of the other predecessor dependencies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think either of those apply in your situation. Perhaps you can think of some other reason for which stating 'C-&gt;E' twice is useful. If you cannot, I would suggest for you to simplify the diagram.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-05-04T13:19:41.193" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23993" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-05-04T13:55:37.200" Score="0" ViewCount="472" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am totally new to Agile methodology and learning it. I have seen lots of tutorials and videos and they've all been very helpful. However, I have one unanswered question from my existing study. The situation is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the beginning, there were a total of 100 story points. As part of Sprint 1, 10 were completed. 90 points were still remaining but 10 additional points were added. This makes, again, 100 story points in total.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In sprint 2, 20 story points were completed but none were added, so total points became 80.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Sprint 3, 15 story points were completed. Total story points come down to 65. The cycle goes on. By the burndown chart, we can estimate some values like:-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team's average velocity is 15.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 8 sprints total, 120 story points will be covered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To complete the work it will take around 7 sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unanswered question&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;4&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Backlog changing rate (My answer is 65 but I am not sure)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone can answer this and explain the way to calculate that, it will be very helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32320" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-05-04T14:11:01.143" LastActivityDate="2018-05-04T15:04:02.110" Title="Calculate Sprint Backlog Changing Rate" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23993" CreationDate="2018-05-04T14:38:08.997" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A product backlog is a living thing. This is due to one of the core ideas behind agile PM: the product is never finished. It evolves. So there will be an everlasting stream of new user stories - at least in theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are measuring the team's velocity. That's a good idea because it helps the team to pull the right amount of workload. I'd recommend to additionally track the average velocity of the last four sprints. So you have a historical view to see changes and the current status for planning.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;And the combination of those two numbers will help you to make an educated guess when the work will be done. But keep in mind that agile PM is change-driven. So it is harder to make schedule estimates than with a plan-driven approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17009" LastActivityDate="2018-05-04T14:38:08.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23993" CreationDate="2018-05-04T15:04:02.110" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you might be mixing up the interaction between Product Backlog and Sprint Backlog. The Product Backlog is all of the items the team knows about that might need to be done. My guess is that this is what started at 100 points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each Sprint, the team identifies the items from the top of the backlog they think they can get done in that sprint and that becomes the Sprint Backlog. Because your team's average velocity over the last three sprints has been 15, their Sprint Backlog each sprint is probably going to be around 15 points in size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SKvMq.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SKvMq.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the sprint is planned, we don't want to change the work in the Sprint Backlog. Doing so is disruptive and often unnecessary. Most work can simply be prioritized into the next sprint if it's important. The exception would be emergency work. So, this is why we measure Sprint Backlog volatility. If the team brought 15 points into the Sprint from the Product Backlog, then had to take on three points of emergency work, we could say that they had a 20% volatility in their Sprint Backlog (15 divided by 3). This will happen at times - I've never known a team to avoid it entirely, but emergency work is expensive and almost never represents a good thing for the business or the team (it's usually something like a critical bug or an outage) so we want to keep an eye on how often it happens and how it is impacting our work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that I used points for the emergency work for convenience. I've also seen teams track hours of this type of work or just a count of occurrences. Also, if you do use points for emergency work, do not count this toward your velocity - it seems logical too, but it results in a bunch of unintended negative side-effects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice that this focuses entirely on your Sprint Backlog. Items can be added or removed from your Product Backlog without concern. There may be some cases where changes to the Product Backlog may be so volatile that they are problematic, but these are more extreme and hard to miss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-05-04T15:04:02.110" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23996" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24000" CreationDate="2018-05-04T23:55:25.420" Score="1" ViewCount="1146" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a charter to build a product in 6 months. I'll preface this by saying that my manager wants us to use waterfall, even though our development process is agile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, I have been asked to create a 6 month project plan that outlines milestone dates and a list of tasks &amp;amp; dates to monitor project progress. I've never done a detailed project plan for more than 2 months in Agile, so I need everyone's help :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My thoughts:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Approach 1:&lt;/strong&gt; List out all the project tasks and use guesstimates on work effort per task and present a linear path to completion. This is obviously risky since our estimates can be completely off and risk the timeline. I suppose we can de-risk by doubling our estimate #s?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Approach 2:&lt;/strong&gt; Group tasks into sprints, and follow an 'x' week sprint cadence. Each sprint will have a breakdown of all the tasks we have to do until we get to 6 months. Unfortunately this still suffers risk of missing the deadline if our estimates our off...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32323" LastActivityDate="2018-05-05T09:36:29.207" Title="How to organize a 6-month project plan for agile?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23997" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23999" CreationDate="2018-05-05T02:16:16.403" Score="1" ViewCount="94" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a startup and it is our first experience. We want to create a mobile application and its website implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have 3 main parts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mobile application&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Website application&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A server that can work with both of them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are 4 people and one extra man can be added if needed. 2 people will work on the mobile app and 2 will work on the website, the server and graphic designs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: How can I manage this team to work parallel together? I mean how to control work progress? How long should the deadlines be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's consider we want to create a UI for Android and I think it takes 5 days. Can I say &quot;Jack, go to your home and write this part of the project and I'll meet you next week with Android UI?&quot;? Or must I break it up into 5 mini-projects (first day: design layers, second day: write menus, third day: write tabs, etc.) and say &quot;Come here everyday and we can check the work progress together.&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry if they are stupid questions, but maybe you had them in your first project!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30123" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-05-07T13:14:15.770" LastActivityDate="2018-05-07T13:21:03.293" Title="How should I control a programming project's progress?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;deadline&gt;&lt;features&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23996" CreationDate="2018-05-05T07:02:12.503" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both approaches are far off being agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can have a plan-driven big picture with an agile framework like Scrum for daily work. So you'll have a charter and a plan and baselines and a WBS with a dictionary. And when it comes to the activity-level, you are working with user stories. But again: this is not agile, this is plan-driven.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And an additional thought: in my eyes there's nothing wrong with choosing Waterfall as the weapon of choice when your project is in the lower left area of the Stacey matrix (and with a six months-schedule I asume it is).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17009" LastActivityDate="2018-05-05T07:02:12.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23997" CreationDate="2018-05-05T07:43:30.050" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oh the memories, first project. Due to your small group size and the high uncertainty of your project, I'd chose an agile approach, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/resources/what-is-scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So form a cross-functional team that is covering every aspect of development. And decide what rules are irrevocable when the shit hits the fan (and it is going to hit it real hard, trust me). You need a solid rule set to guide you as a team through rough weather.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reflect about the product vision. What are you going to build? What are the core functionalities? What has the greatest value?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then cast user stories out of these thoughts (&quot;As a customer I want to see the sum of my order at a glance so I'm not surprised when checking out.&quot;) and fill your backlog with them.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Order your product backlog so that you can produce the highest value.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://softwaredevelopmenttoday.com/2015/09/how-to-explain-agile-and-incremental-delivery-to-anyone/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Think in increments&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start producing value as soon as possible. And be a team. Communicate, communicate, communicate. Try pair-programming if possible. I hate stale quotes, but the whole is more than the sum of its parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And for the big picture always have &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/agile/agile-at-scale/agile-iron-triangle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the turned iron triangle&lt;/a&gt; in mind. Agile PM is often misunderstood as &quot;It doesn't matter how long it takes or how much it is going to cost; we are agile.&quot; Agile PM is about producing the highest possible customer value within a given time and a fixed cost baseline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17009" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-05-07T13:21:03.293" LastActivityDate="2018-05-07T13:21:03.293" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23996" CreationDate="2018-05-05T09:36:29.207" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter how you organize the 6-month plan, if you are working in an agile way then it will inevitably be wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reasons for this are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agile is about responding to change and responding to feedback. Any plan that details 6-months ahead cannot anticipate the feedback that will be received.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All development projects include an element of discovery. This is typically a mixture of technical discovery and requirements discovery. Locking yourself into a 6-month plan ignores this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agile teams typically work on a backlog that is in priority order. It is very unusual for priorities not to change over a 6-month period.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teams often struggle to estimate accurately for a two-week sprint, let alone for 6 months.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to generate a roadmap rather than a plan and use vague references to timelines rather than specific days/weeks. Also, make it clear that the roadmap is subject to change based on the knowledge that will be gained as the project progresses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-05-05T09:36:29.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5997" CreationDate="2018-05-06T03:21:06.943" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know this post is very old. But this could help someone else looking for the solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the free option available is to use the browser extension named Jira Assistant developed by me available in below url. This extension has lot more useful features which not only helps to generate report, but also help to log your work on daily basis with notifications, calendar integrations and lot more cool features which helps both managers and team members in their daily activity:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Chrome users:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jira-assistant/momjbjbjpbcbnepbgkkiaofkgimihbii?src=sof&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jira-assistant/momjbjbjpbcbnepbgkkiaofkgimihbii?src=sof&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Firefox users:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/jira-assistant/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/jira-assistant/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read more about it: &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/shridhar-tl/jira-assistant&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://github.com/shridhar-tl/jira-assistant&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32209" LastActivityDate="2018-05-06T03:21:06.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23979" CreationDate="2018-05-06T06:21:45.517" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to release fewer potential bugs, redefine your development, testing, and deployment pipelines to provide comprehensive test coverage and integration testing. That's largely an engineering matter, though. The real answer to your posted question is for the &lt;em&gt;business&lt;/em&gt; to do a better job of capturing the impact of bugs discovered in production, and then identifying process controls that mitigate the impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Measure Defect Impact&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to measure defects is to capture their effects, and to sum the attendant costs associated with those effects. In other words, bugs that cause problems in production can be toted up by tracking the number of problems users experience in production, by how much time or money it costs to remediate them, or some other measure of actual business impact. A &quot;bug&quot; that doesn't destroy data, bothers no one, and largely goes unnoticed would make it hard to justify a heavy-weight process to prevent or track it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, there is certainly an implicit problem, but it's not primarily in the way that bugs are making their way into production or the lack of metrics around how they're patched. The core gap appears to be that the business is &lt;strong&gt;neither monitoring its production infrastructure, nor tracking customer/user issues.&lt;/strong&gt; Without tracking the &lt;em&gt;effects&lt;/em&gt; that might then be tied back to the development or maintenance process, any purely development-based metrics you devise are essentially worthless from a business point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Business &amp;amp; User Repsonsibilities&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In comments, you mention that you think it's the &lt;em&gt;developers' responsibility&lt;/em&gt; to track bugs. Aside from the fact that modern source code management systems are certainly able to report when patches are applied, and to differentiate between development and maintenance branches when tags, branches, or other useful engineering practices are consistently applied, ultimately the sources for identifying &quot;unprevented&quot; bugs are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;system monitoring&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;user-generated problem reports&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;post-mortem log/dump analysis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is the responsibility of the business to ensure that adequate resources are expended on monitoring, ticketing, log aggregation, and so forth. It is also the business' responsibility to allocate resources for developing more mature development practices that can avoid certain classes of defect, but that will never guarantee a complete lack of bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Users also share some responsibility. If a user experiences a bug, the &lt;em&gt;user&lt;/em&gt; should open a bug within whatever tracking system you use. If bug tracking isn't important enough to bother users about, why would you imagine it's important for the developers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The implicit bias in your question is that the developers are responsible for both the lack of rigor in your process and at fault for releasing buggy code. It would be more accurate to say that the entire business process shares ownership of the bugs and lack of tracking metrics. You need to ensure that management and users participate appropriately in crafting whatever processes and controls may be missing, because a great deal of the responsibility is theirs, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-05-06T06:21:45.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23971" CreationDate="2018-05-06T06:55:56.380" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to managing the release cadence, a business really only has three choices, regardless of industry or framework:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fully integrate QA with development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accept that either developers or testers will be idle some part of each Sprint when practicing Scrummerfall.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decouple releases from delivery or deployment (more on that below).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While high-compliance environments aren't orthogonal to agility, the demands of the compliance requirements can sometimes force a business to face the fact that you can't have disparate processes that move at different speeds run in lockstep. High-compliance environments also tend to fall prey to the 100% utilization fallacy, so the idea of having sufficient slack in the process to allow disparate processes to deploy on the same cadence is unrealistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Decoupling, when supported by the right engineering and process controls, is usually the sanity-preserving way out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Differentiate &quot;Delivery&quot; from Deployments and Releases&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it's generally best to integrate QA directly into your Sprints, a lot of businesses overlook the value of &lt;a href=&quot;https://hackernoon.com/decouple-deployment-from-release-b4b9182b6a46&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;decoupling delivery and deployment from release&lt;/a&gt;. While Scrum mandates that the output of a Sprint is a potentially-shippable increment, it doesn't actually require that the increment be released to end-users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a regulated environment, agile teams are still responsible for delivering increments that meet the Definition of Done. However, downstream processes such as third-party testing or production releases do not have to move in lock-step with the development team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main issues you are likely to face with decoupling deliveries from your other processes are: the need to negotiate bug-fixing with the business, and the assignment of responsibility for releases outside of the Scrum team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In canonical Scrum, bugs found outside the development cycle must re-enter the Product Backlog. The business contracts with the Scrum team not to bypass the backlog and estimation process, although early terminations (costly as they are) certainly remain an option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, a truly decoupled release plan means QA or some other team will own the release. Whether the business tries (and likely fails) to have every delivered increment tested and released, or whether they more sensibly give the release teams the authority to batch up deliveries and set their own cadence for tagging and deploying releases is strictly a management decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are certainly variations on these themes, but the core tenet is that each Sprint must maintain its integrity against unplanned work, and that any work moved outside the team must abide by that. So long as that's true, decoupling releases is the approach I advocate in healthcare and government settings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-05-08T21:01:33.940" LastActivityDate="2018-05-08T21:01:33.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18771" CreationDate="2018-05-06T10:22:58.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The bugs are symptoms. Not the programmers are bad but the management and technical system. Someone with are very mechanical, inhuman thinking must have invented or decided over this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The developers will not learn how to improve but how to hide their bugs and not getting caught. This is simple psychology and even children, cats and dogs behave so. In the long run they will create a messy code hell. Find the reason why they make bugs and solve the underlying problems. As the PM work with the devs and not against them. Give them time, education, chances to learn and share their knowledge. Care for documentation as a source of knowledge. Such a complex system requires a profound understanding. Think of refactoring to make the system less error prone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25585" LastActivityDate="2018-05-06T10:22:58.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24005" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24007" CreationDate="2018-05-06T20:13:36.183" Score="3" ViewCount="70" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a new scrum master in an organisation which has many other permanent and contract scrum masters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am in an odd and never before experienced predicament where my team is actually very mature in agile and scrum, it’s principles and practices but the scrum master cop is massively dysfunctional. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The perm  scrum masters sit in a room lambasting the engineering management and the senior leader and the company in general constantly. They seem frustrated and unhappy and over all very negative. They also very combative and any suggestion I make is shot down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastActivityDate="2018-05-07T05:30:35.143" Title="How to bring to the surface dysfunction in a scrum master cop" Tags="&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;communication-management&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16103" CreationDate="2018-05-07T02:16:35.597" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0EFFY.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0EFFY.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These graphics are often found at the beginning of PM Network, a magazine put out by the Project Management Institute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32334" LastEditorUserId="14" LastEditDate="2018-05-09T10:38:51.843" LastActivityDate="2018-05-09T10:38:51.843" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24005" CreationDate="2018-05-07T04:04:42.160" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's something I have seen a lot. It happens when the dust settles and the teams are grown up and everything is save and sound. And even the most &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuckman%27s_stages_of_group_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;performing&lt;/a&gt; team needs to be evolved and facilitated and is going through changes constantly - but this is taken care of in half the workday. And now you have a bunch of Scrum Masters that feel redundant and blatant. And this leads to boredom and finally resignation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my eyes there's an easy way to avoid this scenario: every Scrum Master handles two teams. This gives you enough occupation to not try to create issues out of the blue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also the organization can help a lot through adding structures. Because a Scrum Master is spending a lot of time with facilitating and motivating and evolving and supporting others. But in the end of the day there is nobody that is facilitating and motivating and evolving and supporting the Scrum Master. An Agile Center that is actively taking care of the Scrum Masters can work miracles here. Give them career opportunities, organize speeches for them, don't let them alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17009" LastEditorUserId="17009" LastEditDate="2018-05-07T05:30:35.143" LastActivityDate="2018-05-07T05:30:35.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24009" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24015" CreationDate="2018-05-08T03:26:38.457" Score="5" ViewCount="380" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently encountered the Stacey matrix in an &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/23448/what-is-the-framework-escape-hatch-for-a-safe-art-that-is-running-down-the-wro/23922#23922&quot; title=&quot;answer&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt; by&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/17009/stephan-weinhold&quot; title=&quot;stephan weinhold&quot;&gt;Stephan Weinhold&lt;/a&gt;. After looking at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.growingagile.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/stacey.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;linked image&lt;/a&gt; provided &amp;amp; doing &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gp-training.net/training/communication_skills/consultation/equipoise/complexity/stacey.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a bit more reading&lt;/a&gt; that describes it as a way to characterize complexity, I thought of two specific use cases for agile software projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Case 1. Definition of ready &amp;amp; backlog grooming&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of my definition of ready is &quot;defined well enough to be scoped.&quot; A story with too much uncertainty, vagueness, or disagreement isn't ready because it is then unlikely to be successfully completed within a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus if we plot our backlog on a Stacey chart, we could use a defined area in the lower leftish as part of the definition of ready. (EDITED to clarify: I'm thinking of a region roughtly the size of the entire lower left quadrant here, not just the lower left corner. I imagine the boundary would be wide, and might well be asymmetric.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, a story's location outside this area indicates what kind of grooming needs to be done in order to get it into the ready state. Items that are vague or not agreed as to &quot;what&quot; require mostly stakeholder work to get more clarity or agreement. Items that are uncertain or not agreed as to &quot;how&quot; could benefit from more research or an exploratory spike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Case 2. Complexity metric in place of story points&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best practice for story points, t shirt sizes, or similar relies on having a standard unit story so your team can do relative sizing. But that can be difficult for various reasons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since story points have also been described as a measure of complexity, and the Stacey matrix is about measuring complexity, why not define a scalar based on Stacey coordinates instead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could be a simple sqrt(x&lt;strong&gt;2 + y&lt;/strong&gt;2), or a less rectilinear version that gives more weight to the &quot;how&quot; uncertainty than the &quot;what&quot;, which is what I'm leaning towards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So my questions are:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A. Has anyone done anything like this? How has it worked?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;B. What problems might arise from this approach, either for case 1 or case 2?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one thing that concerns me about case 2 (using a Stacey metric instead of story points) is that, although it captures complexity, it doesn't capture &lt;em&gt;size&lt;/em&gt;. I'm thinking maybe an INVESTed story is already within a reasonable size range, though?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDITED TO UPDATE: I've concluded that size needs to be its own metric, and am working with my team to define an objective, similarly ten point scale. I plan to record the three scores separately, and will then play with various combinations to see which seems to be the most consistent across sprints. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for any comments, feedback, or further reading!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vicki&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastEditorUserId="11661" LastEditDate="2018-05-26T23:07:04.950" LastActivityDate="2018-05-26T23:07:04.950" Title="Using the Stacey matrix to capture agile metrics" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24010" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-05-08T10:47:47.367" Score="3" ViewCount="112" Body="&lt;p&gt;The literature is full of suggestions to break down silos which build over time within large organizations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering why they form in the first place. &#xA;Is there maybe a benefit or a psychological reason for this tendency?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16890" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2018-05-08T12:52:10.970" LastActivityDate="2018-05-09T10:08:52.720" Title="What are the reasons that silos emerge within large corporations?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24011" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24013" CreationDate="2018-05-08T12:04:37.900" Score="0" ViewCount="597" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to calculate the current date in relation to the start and end dates of a task and would expect to see a field that shows the completion percentage.&#xA;Something like &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/q/27968064/1509853&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; Question or &lt;a href=&quot;https://chandoo.org/forum/threads/perentage-calculation-between-two-dates.4502/#post-23538&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; explanation &lt;code&gt;(today - start date)/(End date- Start date)&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32280" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-05-08T13:09:47.520" LastActivityDate="2018-05-09T16:59:53.610" Title="How to calculate the completion percentage relation by start and finish dates" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12623" CreationDate="2018-05-08T15:25:25.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have mentioned there are some very good reasons for having sprints which start and finish mid-week. There is another reason however which I believe is the biggest motivator and I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your sprint ends on a Wednesday and your sprint goal is to release to live (a good goal for many reasons) then you're doing your deployments on a Tuesday or Wednesday - not a Friday when your entire time is exhausted and ready for the weekend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Friday deployments are to be avoided but end of sprint deployments generally a good idea. Logically then your sprints shouldn't finish on Friday!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shuffling things around means you can use the days at the end of the week (and therefore the start of the new sprint) to gather feedback and plan your new sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11768" LastActivityDate="2018-05-08T15:25:25.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24011" CreationDate="2018-05-08T17:39:05.023" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To calculate the percentage of a task that should be done based on the current date and working time (e.g. the project calendar), customize a number field with this formula:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;IIf( [Start] &amp;gt; Date(), 0, IIf( [Finish] &amp;lt; Date(), 1, ProjDateDiff( [Start], Date()) / [Duration]))&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: answer was updated to reflect OP's correction to handle future tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastEditorUserId="13635" LastEditDate="2018-05-09T16:59:53.610" LastActivityDate="2018-05-09T16:59:53.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24010" CreationDate="2018-05-08T18:18:34.317" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Silo's form due to local optimization of team or department goals over the goals of the whole organization. For a stark example, let's pretend I have a database team who is measured on database performance, up-time, and data integrity. Allowing others to make changes to the database can put all of these at risk, even if it means faster delivery of features or a more effective application overall. The team starts walling off their work and only focusing on their work - some time passes and you get silos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't have to be technical concerns that create local optimization. I worked one place where a manager's bonus was based off of headcount, which in turn was based off of how much work a particular team had, so as a manager, I would be financially motivated to not let anyone do any of &quot;our&quot; work. This also led to extreme silo'ing. In all cases, it is reenforced by local optimization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-05-08T18:18:34.317" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24009" CreationDate="2018-05-08T18:39:02.223" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen this model used to drive these conversations in the past with a lot of success - especially if you are working with a team of people who like models. Like all models, this one helps us make sense of the reality we're seeing - it does not change that reality, so I'll take a minute to point out some pitfalls I've seen, but please don't let that discourage you from using this model - it is a good one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Case 1 - Backlog Refinement&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen teams take this too far and decide that all items must be pushed to the lower-left in a simple state before they are ready. This can result in deadlock. Because a problem is complicated or complex does not mean it can't be done in a sprint. Further, some problems are unlikely to ever be moved from complex to complicated or complicated to simple - or it may not be beneficial to. In general, I see this being really helpful in backlog refinement in the same ways that you mention as long as the team doesn't get deadlocked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, let's say there is a problem with different solutions depending on the answer to a certain question by the users. I have two options here - do nothing until that question is answered or move forward assuming we'll get the question answered in the sprint. How big of a risk this is depends on how accessible the user is. I also have an assumption here that there is one answer. If different users give different answers, I will probably never leave the complicated realm and will simply have to implement it with multiple paths - waiting to get an answer in this case could result in deadlock.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Case 2 - Estimation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you already point out, complexity is not size. It may be a component or influencer on size, but they are, in fact, two different things. My recommendation would be to start with noting the complexity before sizing as either the calculated number you mention or even a 2-part (3/6 would be 3 on the what and 6 on the how) and then use this as a factor in size. Maybe try it for a few weeks and then look back and decide:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is it useful?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is there a direct correlation between complexity and size for your team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have worked with many teams where the answer to #2 is definitely no and they could not replace size with complexity, but depending on what work your team does, maybe they can. It's important to call out that this doesn't mean this has replaced story points as a size measurement - instead it would mean that you get more value out of measuring complexity than size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cynefin Framework&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd encourage you too to look at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7oz366X0-8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cynefin Framework&lt;/a&gt;. It is very similar but also a different angle - stressing more how problems move through these states than categorizing which one they are in at a moment. It may give you a broader perspective when you look back at the Stacey model. It also suggests how to approach problems that are in the complicated and complex domain without having to first move them to simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-05-08T18:39:02.223" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22234" CreationDate="2018-05-08T20:40:53.057" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've worked as a project manager for 15 years and have been working as a scrum master part-time (of the 15 years of PM work) for 3 years and full-time as a scrum master for 3 years. Here is what I typically do, but in the end my job is to help teams be as productive, effective and efficient as possible to deliver the highest business value as they possibly can in each release:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1 - Facilitate retrospectives, sprint and release planning sessions. This involves all the up front planning needed to make the meetings effective. For retros, I will look at how the team has been doing and choose a retro plan that is a good match for the team's needs at the time. For planning, I'll be reviewing all of the metrics I've been capturing for the sprint or the release (sprint and release velocities, throughput, cycle times of story and feature completion, and WIP). I try not to run daily standups (aka daily scrums). I let the team do that, as it is their meeting. I will intervene only when I need to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2 - Track story and feature metrics. I use this to track the performance of the team. I use velocity, cycle time, WIP, throughput, and Cumulative Flow Diagrams. I will use this information to provide to the team before all retros so we have facts to back up our conversation instead of guesswork. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3 - I am a scrum master for two teams, so my time is broken up between the two. Still, I do have some downtime in between. So, what else do I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4 - I have 1-on-1's with team members (usually a few times during the sprint) to see how things are going for them and what I can do to help them as a team member and in their professional growth. I'll work with their functional manager to support the team members achieve their goals by trying to get them exposed to new modules of the application or manage team capacity to get them training where needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5 - I work on side projects like process improvement initiatives. I've worked with QA groups to help build a QA Community of Practice for instance. I have mentored and coached other scrum masters and Product Owners. I also usually facilitate release retrospectives, which requires weeks of preparation and collaboration with other scrum masters and management to make sure it is a good use of everyone's time. I will then follow up with any action items that come out of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;6 - I work with scrum masters from other products to share ideas and collaborate on new tools, techniques and such. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;7 - I do training sessions with teams on how to conduct presentations (internal / external), and teach them about different agile topics (scrum, lean, kanban, navigating conflict, etc.). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32349" LastActivityDate="2018-05-08T20:40:53.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24010" CreationDate="2018-05-09T10:08:52.720" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Daniel's answer is a great description of things that reinforce or exacerbate silos. The ultimate root cause has go to do with a group's sense of identity. Tribes are silos. So are countries (and they jostle to protect/further their own interests).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2247" LastActivityDate="2018-05-09T10:08:52.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24018" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24019" CreationDate="2018-05-09T11:22:29.667" Score="9" ViewCount="1979" Body="&lt;p&gt;My Team's Daily Scrum needs improvement and I was wondering if anyone has a workshop idea/method on how to improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The current issues that my team face are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They tend to go off topic, instead of focusing on what I did, what I am going to do and impediments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Product Owner talks and asks them for 'updates' during or directly after the Daily Scrum&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They often don't know what they are going to do... i.e. they can't answer the question during the Daily Scrum, so they say they are going to decide after the Daily Scrum what to do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-05-09T13:08:06.323" LastActivityDate="2018-05-16T12:22:16.800" Title="Methods to improve daily scrum / standup" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24018" CreationDate="2018-05-09T12:46:30.020" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have neglected to say whether your team are face to face or working distributed and communicating via Lync etc so for the sake of this answer I will assume distributed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Stage 1: Basic Discipline&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take a hard line with the Product Owner and tell him that you will facilitate the session and ensure that it is productive.  Sharing the duty is confusing to the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the PO requires an update he can speak to developers individually after the stand-up but the ticket tracker (Jira, physical board) should be enough of a steer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have the Board with the tickets visible (on screen or in person) and link the tickets back to the developer so everyone can see it and commit to their teammates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep it conversational but focussed (for example)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hi Dave, how was your day yesterday.  Is there anything you can update the team on?  You worked on Ticket 267 right?  How did it go?  Fantastic.  Are you continuing with that today or are you being pulled into anything else?  OK. Good stuff.  Lastly; is there anything that you need from me or the rest of the team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although lengthy this type of interaction will flow a lot more smoothly once the team get into the habit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Stage 2: Keeping it accessible&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that your aim is to create a self-organizing team not chair ceremonies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have developers nominate the next developer to speak and get them to ask what they worked on yesterday&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't make people actually stand-up.  People have back problems, injuries, hip replacements and all sorts. One of my team members for 62 and hated standing.  Of course we sat down with a coffee the whole time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure the developers are calling out supportive behaviour (Oh Dave helped you on that did he Karen?  Awesome. Thanks for letting us know.  Great teamwork guys; thanks for doing that Gatekeeping task so quick etc etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't be &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; stringent about the timebox.  The 15 minute time limit was imposed to stop 40 minute meetings.  It was not designed to aggressively cut people off at 16 minutes and disband.  You already have everyone on the call, simply dismiss those that are not needed and continue it using your judgement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a ScrumMaster; confirm to your team what &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; will be doing that day as well&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure that at the end or the beginning you open the meeting with a small rapport builder (Hey team - everyone enjoying the great weather?  Anyone do anything great the weekend?  No?  OK let's get started)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure you update the team on comms during the stand-up (Hey team, just for everyone's awareness, the back-end guys might be upgrading XYZ today so check your inboxes or Slack for the notices&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finish the meeting with the PO (Hi PO, any big stakeholder messages or changes to inform the team about before we break?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key part is always to remember that your coders manage the code pipeline; you manage the relationship pipeline.  Forget Scrum and the Stand-up and just talk to your team like they are human beings working on something valuable; because that is exactly what they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Other hints and tips for building a team&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Genuinely care about their diaries; ask how many meetings they have that day.  Are they feeling pressured or burdened.  Ask if you need to get involved to push back on anything&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Every few stand-ups throw in a personal anecdote about you or a team member to build the bond.  (Hey did you know Alice just completed her AWS exam?  That's awesome.  We should pick it up at the Review to tell stakeholders but for now; well done)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use humour to make meetings bearable.  I see so many teams being death marched into a delivery.  Agile is about flexibility but the traditional project management rapport building is not gone.  Really connect with people during your sessions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Focus on building a team identity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are face to face then make the ceremony a genuine gathering; tell people to stop work 5 minutes before and go and get a drink/coffee etc ready for the standup (As an aside I also break up my Sprint planning with a 10 minute break uing this pattern as well)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure your teams have the psychological safety to speak up (I typically do this by focussing on the shyest member of the team 25% of the time using the sentence &amp;quot;I don't mind what you say, genuinely, just tell us what you think. Be bold.&amp;quot;  Once they have reached a level of confidence I shift focus to another team member for a few timeboxes.  This has led to programmes giving me under-confident developers to bring out of their shell&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-05-09T12:54:09.910" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24018" CreationDate="2018-05-09T12:59:51.110" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you've tagged the question with &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/scrum&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;scrum&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;scrum&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/scrum-master&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;scrum-master&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;scrum-master&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/daily-scrum&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;daily-scrum&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;daily-scrum&lt;/a&gt;, I'm going to assume that you are following Scrum as defined in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the Scrum Master attending the Daily Scrum? Although not a required participant, one of the Scrum Master's services is to &quot;facilitate Scrum events as requested or needed&quot;. I would expect that a good Scrum Master would occasionally observe the Daily Scrums and, when any of the rules of the event are broken, would speak up and get the event back on track. I would also expect that the Scrum Master would follow up with the Development Team during Sprint Retrospectives to help come up with ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Guide also says that one of the responsibilities of the Scrum Master is to ensure that anyone from outside the Development Team that attends the Daily Scrum does not disrupt the meeting. If the Scrum Master is attending the Daily Scrum as an observer or following up with the Development Team on the effectiveness of the Daily Scrum at Sprint Retrospectives, the Scrum Master should learn of any disruptions. Does the team have a 15 minute timebox within which to carry out the Daily Scrum? Does the team find the Product Owner's questions disruptive? If the team is finishing their Daily Scrum in a 15 minute timebox, there is nothing wrong with additional time spent after the event. In fact, the Scrum Guide says that it is common for team members (referring to the entire Scrum Team, not just the Development Team) to &quot;meet immediately after the Daily Scrum for detailed discussions, or to adapt, or replan, the rest of the Sprint's work&quot;. If the team does not consider the Product Owner's questions disruptive, or perhaps even considers them helpful in achieving the objectives of the Daily Scrum, why should that change?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also important to realize that the Daily Scrum does not need to be in the &quot;three questions&quot; format. The Scrum Guide even says that &quot;some Development Teams will use questions, some will be more discussion based&quot;. However, regardless of the format, the purpose is to, on short intervals, inspect how progress is competing toward achieving the Sprint Goals, adjust to increase the likelihood that the Sprint Goals will be met, and raise concerns to the Product Owner if the Sprint Goals are in danger to work to come up with any changes to ensure that a value-adding potentially releasable Increment is available at the end of the Sprint. The Scrum Master can coach the Development Team on different methods, but the Development Team should ultimately drive the execution of the Daily Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only point that isn't addressed by the Scrum Master's facilitation of the event and the coaching of the rules of Scrum is the members of the Development Team not knowing what they are going to do next. The priorities of the work should be driven by the Sprint Goal and the attributes of value and order assigned to the Product Backlog Items brought into the Sprint. The Sprint Backlog contains decomposed Product Backlog Items, but all of the decomposed work should be tied to one or more Product Backlog Items (with a value and an order) and maybe have a technical dependency. It should be trivial for the team to determine, once they finish one item from the Sprint Backlog, what the next thing to work on should be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2018-05-09T12:59:51.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24018" CreationDate="2018-05-09T13:10:20.283" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Negative behavior generally has various reasons. While as a scrum master your job is to moderate the scrum ceremonies, your goal should be getting the team into a position where you're essentially obsolete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;1. Understand&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Determine the cause for these behaviours. It can be lazyness/convenience (why set up another meeting when you can discuss your issue right now?). It could be a need that is otherwise not met (unsatisfactory progress visibility, real or perceived difficulty of discussing issues with others). It could be habit (PO used to be a PM and asking for status is what he's used to doing. Or the team used to have regular monolithic meetings where everything was hashed out together).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;2. Support&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See what you can do to help with problems you discovered. Maybe someone needs to get more comfortable approaching other teammembers for help/feedback. Maybe moving the standup to a later time would allow everyone to get their bearings in the morning. etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;3. Educate&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Politely ask your team mates to keep their contributions short and hash out anything beyond the essentials afterwards with whoever it concerns. Point out to the PO that he can see the progress on the board after the meeting. Try to get the team to solve the problems themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;4. Guide&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all this fails the scrum master should step in and direct the ceremonies more closely until the new pattern becomes ingrained. Cut off tangents by leading them more closely through the three questions. Cut off the PO if he interferes or even uninvite him if the behaviour persists. Institute small fines for team members who arrive unprepared. My scrum coach told me he once had a team with a severe mobile phone problem. So he took some painters tape and drew parking spaces on a table. Everyone could place their phones on their freely. But anyone caught using the phone or having his phone go off had to put 5 bucks into the coffee jar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2018-05-09T13:10:20.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8221" CreationDate="2018-05-09T13:13:56.267" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it is true that Daniel Pink's Drive says that monetary bonuses don't work for creative workers, it is not so simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are ways to create &quot;bonus&quot; system that increases motivation while minimizing drawbacks. Jurgen Appelo's Management 3.0 and Management for Happiness attempts this through &lt;a href=&quot;https://management30.com/practice/merit-money/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Merit money&lt;/a&gt; practice. It achieves this by sticking to these rules:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't promise rewards in advance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep anticipated rewards small&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reward continuously, not once&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reward publicly, not privately&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reward behavior, not outcome&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reward peers, not subordinates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jurgen developed base practice that follows those rules like this :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At beginning of every month, each person gets some tokens&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;During the month, they can give those tokens to other people, as form of reward&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At end of month, money is added to &quot;bonus&quot; pool, based on companie's success&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the same time, it is randomly (maybe through dice) decided if accumulated tokens could be converted into money from this bonus pool&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this is not exact practice and it can be fine-tuned. But it has many good properties and follows the above rules. If you imagine yourself, you are getting rewarded by your peers who like your behavior. You get small &quot;rewards&quot; continously, instead of big one once or twice a year. It is done publicly. And most critically, you don't know when and how much actual money you will get, which is what disrupts your expectations that result in reduced productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4634" LastActivityDate="2018-05-09T13:13:56.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24018" CreationDate="2018-05-09T13:31:13.983" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll address your concerns in order. I see several possible underlying problems here. As always, &lt;strong&gt;discuss with the Team in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-retro&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Retrospective&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; to determine the underlying causes and &lt;em&gt;agree upon&lt;/em&gt; solutions!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They tend to go off topic, instead of focusing on what I did, what I am going to do and impediments&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have said, the Daily Scrum does not &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to be in the three-questions format. The purpose of the meeting is to serve the Team. If the Team doesn't feel they need that format, then don't bother with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a problem if the meeting goes off-topic, &lt;em&gt;providing the 'off-topic' discussions are not useful to the whole Team&lt;/em&gt;. A common occurrence I've encountered is to have 2-4 developers engaged in a side-topic while everyone else there sits disinterested, but not wanting to interrupt. One approach I'm fond of is to have someone raise their hand when they feel a topic being discussed is not relevant to them. Once you reach 2 hands up (or 1, or 3, etc., depending on your Team), the discussion is halted and resumed after the meeting only amongst those involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner talks and asks them for 'updates' during or directly after the Daily Scrum&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not the purpose of the Daily Scrum. The Scrum Master (SM) needs to educate the Product Owner (PO) about this. However, this could have several underlying causes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The PO simply is unaware that this is harmful. Solution: educate the PO.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The information the PO needs is not available in an information-radiator, such as the Sprint Board. Solution: Make sure you have an information-radiator, make sure the PO has access to it, and make sure it contains the info the PO needs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The PO is not aware the information s/he needs is on the information-radiator. Solution: educate the PO.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The PO's information needs are so complex/unique that they &lt;em&gt;cannot&lt;/em&gt; go on the information-radiator. Solution: find a less-disruptive (to the Team) means of handing that info the the PO. Maybe the PO speaks privately only with those from whom s/he needs information?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They often don't know what they are going to do... i.e. they can't answer the question during the Daily Scrum, so they say they are going to decide after the Daily Scrum what to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that the Team doesn't know what they're going to do before the meeting but does &lt;em&gt;immediately after&lt;/em&gt; is indicative to me of several possible problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Team doesn't have enough time before the Daily Scrum to get their bearings. Solution: move the meeting later in the day.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Team just doesn't feel like doing it. Solution: Inform the Team the risks of the rest of the Team not knowing what each Team member is doing. Note: first make sure there &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; risks for your situation! If there aren't, then the problem is:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The question itself is not useful to the Team. Solution: stop asking it!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Team is afraid. They do not feel safe enough to answer the question. This is the most dangerous problem, and the hardest to get the Team to admit. Maybe they're afraid that, should they start working on task A, and something comes up with task A, they'll get penalized somehow. Better to just hide the fact that they're working on task A in the first place... Solution: find out why the Team feels unsafe, and fix it. This is a significant undertaking in itself, but crucially important.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are just the possible causes I thought of off the top of my head. It's entirely possible the causes in your situation are different. This is why it's important to bring up your concerns in the Retrospective. That's what it's for!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-05-09T13:36:14.023" LastActivityDate="2018-05-09T13:36:14.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24024" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-05-09T16:14:14.947" Score="6" ViewCount="165" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was discussing moving our process to become more agile with our (mostly traditional) Chief Information Officer (CIO).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CIO's stance was that &gt;=80% of the requirements need to be defined (and set in stone) up-front, before work on the project can begin. Essentially, fixed scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I argued that frequent feedback and fixed schedule would result in better products, and would not need such a large percentage of the scope to be fixed at the onset. That when new scope came up, either other scope should be removed or the schedule be renegotiated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CIO then posed to me a question which I was unsure how to answer - namely, how to then justify the original project schedule/cost to the CEO at the beginning to the project. The CEO expects gap and cost analyses before a project begins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could argue that agile development processes would overall provide more value to the business, but, given the biases involved (on both sides), I don't think that would be sufficient justification to change if the CIO doesn't continue to provide the analyses that the CEO expects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can sufficient upfront analysis be done to satisfy a traditional CEO without locking down a project's scope from the beginning, thereby hobbling much of agile's benefits? Is it impossible? Or am I simply on the wrong track here, and I'm missing something?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-05-11T20:08:05.140" LastActivityDate="2018-05-14T10:21:05.520" Title="How to provide traditional upper management early analyses in an agile project?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;&lt;analysis&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24025" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-05-10T00:35:11.163" Score="1" ViewCount="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few companies talk about 'information change' as part of their analytics group, for example here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://graduates.westpacgroup.com.au/graddetails/business-performance-analytics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://graduates.westpacgroup.com.au/graddetails/business-performance-analytics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does this mean? I have read about change management but I don't think it would be that. Is information change similar to change management, i.e., is it a structured approach to how information is used? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anyone could give me a clear description of what this is, and how it benefits a business I would appreciate it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32366" LastActivityDate="2018-11-06T17:00:46.727" Title="What exactly is information change?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24026" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-05-10T03:11:23.780" Score="1" ViewCount="340" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Business Analyst was asked to write a user story for a script change. The Dev and DBA were changing two letters in the script. I told the BA to put it on the Backlog as a task. He insisted on writing a story like, As a developer, ....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How are you other BA's handling technical request/changes to scripts that have no effects on the end user?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32367" LastActivityDate="2018-09-27T16:53:56.497" Title="Do you write a user story for a development task?" Tags="&lt;business-analyst&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24026" CreationDate="2018-05-10T03:21:07.190" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you are probably using Scrum. Assuming that is true, Scrum refers to items in the backlog generically as product backlog items. User stories are one type of product backlog item but not the only kind. Furthermore, user stories are a specific technique that extends far beyond the canonical &quot;As a, I want, so that&quot;. If they really wanted to create a user story, I suppose that's fine, but it should have expressed the user need. For example, &quot;As a user with two accounts, I want to see my payments from both accounts on the same list so I don't have to switch back and forth.&quot; and maybe the implementation for this is just a 2 character change, but at least that would be a user story. If you're adding a backlog item to say &quot;change these two letters&quot;, then it should probably read just like that. Doing an &quot;As a Developer&quot; is both wasteful and builds bad habits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-05-10T03:21:07.190" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24026" CreationDate="2018-05-10T03:39:18.380" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I likely wouldn't bother for a trivial change like this one (tho I would file a ticket: no invisible work), but I would for stories that added business value, eg,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;as a developer&#xA;I want to see more logging from the app&#xA;so that it is easier to debug problems&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;as a developer&#xA;I want to upgrade to the latest version of package X&#xA;so that the code is more maintainable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's particularly important to do this when you need to make the case to spend resources on such non-user-facing things which basically add business value that is invisible to most stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2018-05-10T03:39:18.380" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24032" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-05-10T15:10:32.427" Score="2" ViewCount="151" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to identify team members' weak and strong points, in order to work on the team's (and individuals') signature. Are there known techniques for building team members' profiles (maybe similar to Roleplaying Game character sheets) and refining them over time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32382" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-05-10T15:21:57.927" LastActivityDate="2018-08-18T06:02:29.553" Title="Team members profile" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20647" CreationDate="2018-05-10T18:14:59.960" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Documents live and die by organization and relationship, so the hierarchical approach scales better. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Earlier this year we made the AWS SDK developer guides available as GitHub repos (all found within the awsdocs organization) and invited interested parties to contribute changes and improvements in the form of pull requests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today we are adding over 138 additional developer and user guides to the organization, and we are looking forward to receiving your requests. You can fix bugs, improve code samples (or submit new ones), add detail, and rewrite sentences and paragraphs in the interest of accuracy or clarity. You can also look at the commit history in order to learn more about new feature and service launches and to track improvements to the documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mind mapping would help as well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A mind map is a visual representation of information. Now, that’s a very general definition and could encompass many different formats. With a mind map, you're diagramming related information. This graphic is a generic example of a mind map that shows how information is represented visually and how it branches. Using a mind map, you can move a main point into sub-points or vice versa, before you've written a word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nZeID.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nZeID.png&quot; alt=&quot;Mind Map Diagram Example&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-documentation-is-now-open-source-and-on-github/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;AWS Documentation is Now Open Source and on GitHub | AWS News Blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://developer.salesforce.com/blogs/dianne-siebold/2014/01/better-documentation-through-mind-mapping.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Better Documentation through Mind Mapping | Developer Force Blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Developer Documentation | Salesforce Developers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27065" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-05-10T18:14:59.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24026" CreationDate="2018-05-10T19:13:31.580" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, this change absolutely deserves to be in the Backlog. Second, if a BA has a good reason why it shall be created in a story format, then you can put it down as &quot;As a server, I want to recognize one transaction service client from the other so that...&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I'm fine if such requirements are not formatted as a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27305" LastActivityDate="2018-05-10T19:13:31.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18771" CreationDate="2018-05-10T22:09:23.307" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem you describe seems to be going on for some time in your work team. Are your engineers paid 1 1/2 their salary in off time or more? It is time to act right now not to enter a pattern in your work team that will be more difficult to correct in the next few years. Management studies show that it is not the salary that is the No 1 factor influencing the motivation of employees/workers. It is the quality of their work environment. People prefer to have a job where they can accomplish themselves before wanting an higher salary. You describe your tasks in the development of your products as complex causing more bugs that you would wish. Programming in 2018 is not the same thing as in the early 1980s when I took a course of Basic programming language before doing my studies in Business Administration till I got my MBA. Bugs in computer programs have less reasons to exist now than before because we have reached a degree of technology never seen before. Solving bugs is not the task the most interesting for an engineer to do. Maybe you could select or hire a few people that do only debugging; people that likes that. That move can frustrate your team of engineers. It would not be a bad thing. You have to send a clear message that you are not satisfied at all with what is going on before it's too late. Most people in North America spend more than what they earn. You can have a serious negative reaction from your engineers if they absolutely need the extra money. Also, sometimes, the members of a team sabotage their own work to get rid of their manager. Do not wait till you get there. Today, you have simulators to see if your programs work; what I understand is that certain members of your team leave unsolved the bugs they find or create. Project management, working as a team with a budget and tight deadlines need constant control of the procedures. Business administration is to plan, to organize, to direct and to evaluate/control. Since the past two decades some heresies entered management. Some people do not tolerate that their work is evaluated and controlled. My point is that you must act quickly before an exceptional procedure like working off hours become the norm in your enterprise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user30807" LastActivityDate="2018-05-10T22:09:23.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20989" CreationDate="2018-05-11T03:24:16.367" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Displaying the slack for the task (as suggested by Polymath) is a great method. You can even display it on the Gantt chart, if that helps tell your story visually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your final sentence tells me that you either need to decompose your tasks a bit more, or you are missing a task definition. If there are task dependencies that cannot be modeled with Project, then you haven't broken them down far enough. If Team B's task is not modeled at all, then add it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your hypothetical project lasts 90 days. If there is truly a dependency that Team B cannot start until Team A finishes (Finish-to-Start dependency), and Team B needs five days, then the latest that you can start Team A's work is Day 76. This mean Team B's work would complete on Day 90.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the screen capture below, please note how the slack has been displayed, and Team B's work has been modeled as a separate task that must complete at the same time as the Other Project Work task. If you modify the Start date for Team A Work, the bottom two tasks will simply slide to the right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kFXlG.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kFXlG.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16535" LastActivityDate="2018-05-11T03:24:16.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21069" CreationDate="2018-05-11T06:52:39.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If people leave comments when changing the status, then you can setup an issue which is simply a link to the comments feed of a JQL query for a set of issues. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qX1up.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qX1up.png&quot; alt=&quot;ASF JIRA Comments Feed for Cordova Issues&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://issues.apache.org/jira/sr/jira.issueviews:searchrequest-comments-rss/temp/SearchRequest.xml?jqlQuery=project+%3D+&amp;quot;Apache+Cordova&amp;quot;+and+status+was+in+%28&amp;quot;In+Implementation&amp;quot;%2C+&amp;quot;In+Progress&amp;quot;%29+after+startOfYear%28%29++and+assignee+was+not+EMPTY&amp;amp;tempMax=1000&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ASF JIRA Apache Cordova Comments Feed&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://issues.apache.org/jira/sr/jira.issueviews:searchrequest-comments-rss/temp/SearchRequest.xml?jqlQuery=project+%3D+&amp;quot;CouchDB&amp;quot;+and+status+was+in+%28&amp;quot;In+Implementation&amp;quot;%2C+&amp;quot;In+Progress&amp;quot;%29+before+startOfYear%28%29++and+assignee+was+not+EMPTY&amp;amp;tempMax=1000&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Apache CouchDB Comments Feed&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/jira062/receiving-search-results-as-an-rss-feed-588581779.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Receiving Search Results as an RSS Feed - Atlassian Documentation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27065" LastEditorUserId="27065" LastEditDate="2018-05-16T00:42:02.590" LastActivityDate="2018-05-16T00:42:02.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22675" CreationDate="2018-05-11T07:13:31.577" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;JIRA can export data in the following formats:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As an XML dump&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, here are the steps to export to Wordpress:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1. Install the [RSS Widget](https://en.support.wordpress.com/widgets/rss-widget/) in WordPress&#xA;&#xA;2. Create a filter in JIRA and share it&#xA;&#xA;3. In the filter screen Export&amp;gt;RSS (issues) and right click to copy the URL&#xA;&#xA;4. Go to the WordPress RSS Widget and add the RSS URL and the username and password:&#xA;&#xA;https://jirainstance.com/sr/jira.issueviews:searchrequest-rss/XXXXX/SearchRequest-XXXXX.xml?tempMax=10&amp;amp;os_username=uxwpuser&amp;amp;os_password=uxwppassword&#xA;&#xA;Where:&#xA;&#xA;tempMax = n -&amp;gt; n is the total issues you want to display in the widget&#xA;&#xA;&amp;amp;os_username=uxwpuser&amp;amp;os_password=uxwppassword is the section you need to add at the end of the URL's&#xA;&#xA;XXXXX is the filter ID in JIRA&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Export to Excel:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TJ1h6.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TJ1h6.png&quot; alt=&quot;JIRA Export to Excel link&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-questions/How-can-one-post-JIRA-reports-in-WordPress-instance/qaq-p/46035&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Solved: How can one post JIRA reports in WordPress instances&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://mraddon.blog/2016/04/14/export-more-than-1000-issues-to-excel-from-issue-navigator-in-jira/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Export More than 1000 Issues to Excel from Issue Navigator in JIRA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Answers-Developer-Questions/How-to-do-pagination-on-JIRA-Rest-api/qaq-p/516052&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Atlassian Community - Solved: How to do pagination on JIRA Rest api?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27065" LastEditorUserId="27065" LastEditDate="2018-05-14T13:19:03.683" LastActivityDate="2018-05-14T13:19:03.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24024" CreationDate="2018-05-11T08:05:31.550" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a similar problem here. Our IT department has too many masters who don't understand that if we have to work on EVERYONES projects it's going to take longer than if we only needed to THEIR project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically it wasn't sufficiently visible for them what the schedule impact of additional work is. I think the same applies to your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who decides what gets done?&lt;/strong&gt; Do you have a single product owner? Or is the responsibility for scope a hot potato that nobody wants to deal with? If diffusion of responsibility is the name of the game then your only option might be to do exactly what your CEO expects. Build precicely what you originally estimated. CYA mode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How closely are updates given?&lt;/strong&gt; Nobody wants to build something they know will not meet demands. Hence your push towards Agile. But it seems to me that the CEO only ever receives the initial analysis and then sees the project as a black box that just never meets the deadline. Every scope change/creep needs to be passed along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are you prioritizing tasks?&lt;/strong&gt; Even if you don't officially have &quot;permission&quot; to skip part of the original scope to accommodate new more pressing features, you should still work on things according to priority. Once a project is nearing or past its deadline and you can demonstrate that everything important is done, attitudes can change more easily and less important scope can often be cut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the CEO or CIO has the comfortable positon of only having to approve the original estimate and never having to approve the inevitable scope creep then he has no reason to support any change. It's easy to say &quot;Of course foo department needs the bar widget, make it so!&quot; It's harder to say &quot;I authorize your estimated N weeks for the implementation of the bar widget&quot; and to deal with the whole influx of new demands. Change always needs sufficient pain before it can happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL/DR:&lt;/strong&gt; Find out who has the authority. Inform them closely about the consequences of any change. Offer choices. Nail them on their decisions. Document everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2018-05-11T08:05:31.550" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="55" CreationDate="2018-05-11T12:02:33.207" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A while ago I asked one of the senior developers working on a project with me what would he rather have; a PM with zero techical knowledge, or a PM that &lt;strong&gt;used&lt;/strong&gt; to be a developer a long time ago, who &lt;strong&gt;thought&lt;/strong&gt; they knew everything about code and how much effort goes to each task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Granted, my question only gave bad decisions IMHO, but I wanted to know which was considered a worse choice by a good developer (IMHO again).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His answer was that the second choice is the worst PM imaginable, and that some time ago he actually had had that type of &quot;technical know-it-all&quot; PM in a project, which ultimately caused him and a few other developers to leave the project and the project failed miserably.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I guess if you want to have technical knowledge that you can use to aid you in managing a project, it should be as up-to-date as possible, and used in good intentions in the right situations. And it is always smart to not step on any toes (of developers and why not others as well) and respect the entire team and their skills while working on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if I gave any new content to the other good answers out there, just wanted to share the story that happened to me related to this question :o)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32397" LastActivityDate="2018-05-11T12:02:33.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24043" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24044" CreationDate="2018-05-11T14:09:24.373" Score="1" ViewCount="78" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a small company for 4 years now. My goal was to develop a geographic information system (GIS) website from scratch, which I gradually fulfilled. Today the page is online, with traffic, we are getting offers and challenges what to develop there next, and I have a small team of junior developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that the work is stacking (because our salesman likes to promise everything to everybody) and at the same time I have to coordinate or even teach my team members about the existing system. It's very hard to keep focused on the most complex parts of development, when you hear your name every five minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does somebody know this pattern? What would you suggest to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32398" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-05-11T14:18:25.757" LastActivityDate="2018-05-14T03:23:49.053" Title="I need to adapt some kind of system to my work and work of my team" Tags="&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24043" CreationDate="2018-05-11T14:30:42.293" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see two problems here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;our salesman likes to promise everything to everybody&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a clear example of siloing. The salesman is putting the Sales department's goals before the business's goals. That needs to stop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are various ways you could approach this. The simplest (and what I would suggest trying first) being simply approaching the salesman and having an open discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that doesn't work, consider having a developer on the Sales team. This developer's job would be two-fold. First, to be the on-hand technical expert. Second, to rein in the salesman should he start promising the sun and the moon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternately, have the salesman start experiencing the pain that he causes. When he's promised too much and something needs to be cut, make sure &lt;em&gt;he's&lt;/em&gt; the one to inform the customer that the expected delivery date for that new feature is 2 years from now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's very hard to keep focused on the most complex parts of development, when you hear your name every five minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you need a better change management process. Also a closed door (or, failing that, headphones) to show &lt;em&gt;I'm working right now, don't bother me unless something's on fire&lt;/em&gt;. Are most of the requests that come in fires that need to be dealt with &lt;em&gt;immediately&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, then you should set up a process for dealing with them. One possible approach to this is for requests to be put into a ticketing system (e.g. JIRA) and to then review them on a time that makes sense (1/day, 1/week, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, then you should consider splitting your team in two. Half will deal with fires, while the other will deal with the 'slower'/'more complex' development. Those designated as fire-fighters are standing-by to deal with the fires, while the others are focused and do not get disturbed. I recommend shifting these roles over time (e.g. 1/week), so that no one gets burnt out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="790" LastEditDate="2018-05-13T10:27:11.623" LastActivityDate="2018-05-13T10:27:11.623" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24024" CreationDate="2018-05-11T15:42:34.533" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In agile we aim to &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;deliver working software frequently&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This changes the whole dynamic of development reporting because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is much simpler to end a project early if there is insufficient value being delivered&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is frequent feedback from users/customers so that it is easier to adjust priorities and expectations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The up-front investment is reduced (ideally the initial investment is that which gets you through the first iteration)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk is reduced as there is less investment before value is returned&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are lots of things you can do to provide your boss with the metrics they are asking for, such as using release burn-down charts, estimating based on sprint costs, etc. However, to do these things ignores the reasons we are adopting agile in the first place, which is to respond quickly to change and to deliver value frequently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-05-11T15:42:34.533" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24043" CreationDate="2018-05-14T03:23:49.053" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very common problem. The first thing I would consider is to establish a sustainable pace - find the number of features you can consistently deliver in a month (or quarter or whatever works for you). Then you need to know what the most important features to develop are. Your sales person can be really helpful here, but if they start telling you that the most important thing is whatever the person on the phone is asking for, you might need a middle-man to manage the priorities. In Scrum, they'd call this the Product Owner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Henrik Kniberg describes this really well in his video: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=502ILHjX9EE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Product Ownership in a Nutshell&lt;/a&gt;. I share this particular video because he is not speaking about Scrum specifically, but more the underlying concepts, so it is applicable with or without Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is always important to find your sustainable pace before trying to modify it. Once you've found it and can deliver on the most important items, then you can start looking at what your biggest slowing factors are and start addressing them. For example, it sounds like your team is very inexperienced and lacks the domain knowledge that you have, so getting them improved as fast as possible may be the most important thing to do. Practices like pair programming or even &lt;a href=&quot;http://mobprogramming.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;mob programming&lt;/a&gt; might be good things to look at. These practices forego utilization in favor of knowledge sharing. Fully utilizing programmers who don't have the skills needed to independently do the work is pretty useless, so this focus may pay off really well for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-05-14T03:23:49.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5289" CreationDate="2018-05-14T10:13:21.840" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Late to the party but this is what I'd do in your place:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;base a &lt;strong&gt;metric on desired outcome&lt;/strong&gt;. I'd prefer more frequent releases. The shorter the time interval between releases, the higher the KPI.  The side-effects are smaller releases (meaning fewer bugs), continuous delivery, automated testing and an environment where bugs can be fixed in minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make it a team metric. If you do reward persons, ask each of the team members to distribute 10 points over their collegues, ranging by who attributes the most to the performance of the team.  Distribute rewards accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask the team&lt;/strong&gt; what they would consider a good KPI, considering that you care about the performance of the whole (the value you deliver to your customers), not internal personal performance. Ask them how to reward total optimization instead of sub-optimization.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24119" LastActivityDate="2018-05-14T10:13:21.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24024" CreationDate="2018-05-14T10:21:05.520" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read up on Storymapping. &#xA;Do a workshop with your team, requirements people, CIO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Storymapping addresses ALL the requirements and features people think the system needs. &#xA;Each requirement is addressed, it's not a matter of yes-or-no.&#xA;Some requirements simply end up lower in the storymap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can start to argue about how to deliver value (save money / make money) before the final feature is delivered.&#xA;Most organizations are not averse to making money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24119" LastActivityDate="2018-05-14T10:21:05.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24051" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24052" CreationDate="2018-05-14T15:15:01.480" Score="3" ViewCount="1414" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a scrum master for a team of developers and testers. One of the developers is never at his desk. He spends maybe an hour or two hours at his desk while the rest of the team are at their desks usual times. Of course they have breaks and lunch etc but usual times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no team lead or anything like that for the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He is not attending meetings or training when he is not at his desk, he is usually visiting friends in the company or outside smoking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have suggestions for a how I, as a Scrum Master can handle this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: I meant they are not away from desk due to training or other meetings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastEditorUserId="4364" LastEditDate="2018-05-15T14:12:03.297" LastActivityDate="2018-06-07T10:45:53.433" Title="How to handle scrum team member that is never at his desk" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24051" CreationDate="2018-05-14T15:30:45.193" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the Scrum Master, you should not be handling this situation. You should be coaching and facilitating the Development Team to solve this problem, and removing any impediments to their ability to solve this problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First - does the Development Team consider this a problem? If not, there is nothing to do. If it is a problem, the Development Team should have an open and honest discussion about the problem at a Sprint Retrospective to try to come to solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum team should embrace the concepts of courage, openness, and respect. If one or more people have a concern about the way the team or a member of the team is working, there should be open communication among the team members and everyone should respect their thoughts and opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second - become a coach to the individual. It may be OK that he is not at his desk, if he is contributing work. However, if he's missing Scrum ceremonies (such as the Sprint Planning, the Daily Scrum, the Sprint Review, or the Sprint Retrospective) or not completing work from the Sprint Backlog, then he's hurting the whole team. Try to understand why he's not participating and explain the importance of being there and engaging with the rest of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every individual on a Scrum team should demonstrate, among others, the Scrum values of commitment to the team and effort, focus on the goals and objectives, and respect for the rest of the team and for stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, the problem should be solved within the Development Team. However, this isn't always possible. If you need to go outside the team, you can, and as Scrum Master, you should be the facilitating this. You can involve the individual's direct supervisor or HR, as appropriate for your organization. But your first step should be to help coach the team on how to resolve interpersonal conflicts between members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2018-05-15T00:26:02.990" LastActivityDate="2018-05-15T00:26:02.990" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24051" CreationDate="2018-05-14T17:20:44.003" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have an employee that appears not to be doing work.  You describe only the optics of his performance but make no mention of measurable output.  Appearance of busy can be deceiving.  And making it an expectation to look busy will get you just that but does not necessarily mean more production or better production.  And doing so could also jeopardize an employee's feeling of professionalism, independence, mastery, etc., which could then jeopardize morale and then productivity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, you, like the rest of us, are biased and your observations of this person's behavior could be the output of a biased assessment.  In other words, you expect this guy not to be at his desk and make notice when he is not as his desk and ignore or dismiss when he is at his desk.  The question becomes, is he really away from his desk significantly more than others?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So before doing any coaching or behavior changing or whatever else, take a look at output, at assigned tasks finished on time, quality of performance, etc.  Then, if those metrics truly show a gap between him and others, then you have concrete objectives for him to close...which will NOT include sitting at your desk.  And then if after a reasonable period of time he does not close those gaps, then replace due to cause.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it turns out his productivity is the same or better, then you a bunch of developers not pulling their weight...a bigger problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-05-14T17:20:44.003" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24051" CreationDate="2018-05-15T11:53:27.153" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming his output is appropriate (i.e. he's getting his work done in a sensible amount of time) and that the direct &quot;come to a meeting&quot; approach can't work, for whatever reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When why not approach him and ask him if he could join the more important meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe ask him what times work best for him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the very least, get his input to the meetings beforehand and appraise him of the results, decisions and action items afterwards. Best to do this verbally - emails are too easy to glance at and ignore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once he sees that he's anyways &lt;em&gt;attending in absentia&lt;/em&gt;, maybe he'll decide to join. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The less time he &lt;em&gt;saves&lt;/em&gt; by not coming (i.e. the longer your pre- and post-meetings are with him) the higher the chances of him attending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(But make him feel that you enjoy those meetings with him; otherwise, he'll figure out that you'll give up before he does.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2018-05-15T11:53:27.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24056" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-05-15T12:22:15.357" Score="0" ViewCount="107" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a high tech software engineering in a small RnD group which is a part of a group of about 50 people of different functions. In our small team we tried multiple project management software for documentation, tracking, knowledge base etc. None of them survived mainly because others are averse to using them. Outlook is de facto our replacement of Slack/JIRA/wiki etc. We use it for both internal and external communications in conjunction with Webex for meetings and PowerPoint for docs. We have a tracking system for bugs, but the life isn't happening there, they are just to mark state of the issue and to have a list of issues, without real info about implementation, discussion and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is - this is not an ideal collaboration way per any of modern methodologies. We tried to fight against it for years but without success. I start to think that it is because Outlook is &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; sufficiently good. Please assess this statement based on your experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31158" LastActivityDate="2018-05-31T09:29:13.293" Title="Is it really always bad to have MS Outlook as primary collab system?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;collaboration&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2018-05-31T21:01:18.633" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24051" CreationDate="2018-05-15T14:50:43.573" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He is usually visiting friends in the company or outside smoking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think it's your personal responsibility to talk to that guy about it, as long as he attends the mandatory meetings and follows the Scrum process. It is your responsibility to support the development team to talk about improvements in the retrospective though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the retrospective, I don't think it's very productive to talk about this in abstract terms. If you tell somebody that in theory, if they were at their desk more, they could get more work done, all they have to do to prove you wrong is to sit at their desk and be even lazier than the sprint before. Next sprint, your argument has been disproven and you are even worse off than before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are at least two very real problems that pop up. We used those two to focus on real issues to fix. It's a little bit like Stack Exchange: you need a real problem to get a real solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first problem we had as a team was that people would come by and ask for him and we had no idea where he was or when he'd be back. That made us look stupid, like we did not know what the other people on the team do. So we brought that up, we said &quot;Hey, listen, when people come in and ask for you and we don't know where you are or how long you'll be gone, that makes us look really bad, like we are not a team or don't care. How can we fix that?&quot; We agreed that &lt;em&gt;anybody&lt;/em&gt; leaving the room for more than a short toilet or coffee break would simply say where they went. &quot;Hey team, Bob from Beta Team called, he needs help with a database problem, I'll be downstairs for a while.&quot; Should be enough. No red tape, no procedure or system, just plain communication. That fixed a real problem for us and it raised the awareness for people not being &quot;there&quot;. Nobody objected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second real problem we had was too many tasks outside the team. That's more of a PO's problem, because inside the organisation he got the budget for a X people team, but only (X-?) people work on his tasks, with ? people working basically on tasks of other teams. We fixed that by using more &lt;em&gt;transparency&lt;/em&gt;, posting a little post-it to a wall with a note saying what we did and for how long. After a sprint we would collect them and decide what to do about it. Maybe other teams need education, maybe we are missing a task in our team or maybe somebody needs to be told &quot;no&quot; once in a while. Whatever the solution is, make sure people write down what they do for others. That guy that is constantly away should produce a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of those. Remind him if he forgets. Work on reducing that number of &quot;out-of-scope&quot; work. Don't target him specifically, target the problem: work done for others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to summarize: the &lt;em&gt;team&lt;/em&gt; should improve and go tackle the real problems that exist. The person in question is a &lt;em&gt;part&lt;/em&gt; of the team and should have a say in this. This is not about him, or his behavior, it's about solving the problems. His absence will sooner or later be reduced automatically when the problems get solved. Your job as a Scrum Master is to help the team do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2018-05-15T14:50:43.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17234" CreationDate="2018-05-16T01:24:13.357" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is where you see the power of Kanban. No matter the tool used, it's all about the methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the best way to do so would be to have a system to switch between the category or sorting you want to make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could, for instance, keep the columns there and change just the label. One solution among others...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to dig deeper into this subject, may I suggest an article about swimlanes, written by our team at Zenkit? Hope it helps!&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blog.zenkit.com/dive-into-better-task-management-with-kanban-swimlanes-8a190a65471a&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://blog.zenkit.com/dive-into-better-task-management-with-kanban-swimlanes-8a190a65471a&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32426" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-05-16T13:20:53.303" LastActivityDate="2018-05-16T13:20:53.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24061" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-05-16T03:19:20.600" Score="5" ViewCount="1293" Body="&lt;p&gt;I watched &lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/nI5VdsVl0FM?t=226&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://youtu.be/nI5VdsVl0FM?t=226&lt;/a&gt; about how to manage issues with labels, milestones and Projects, but that seems specific to &lt;em&gt;each&lt;/em&gt; Github repository.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say we have a feature push that requires tracking issues from both a &quot;frontend&quot; &amp;amp; a &quot;backend&quot; repository in a single organisation for simplicity sake. How do you collate, prioritize and track progress with Github issues that span several repositories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, one possible solution requires me to manually synchronize labels across repositories which seems rather tedious and lacks ordering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions here please? I did have a quick look at Zenhub, but that seems again repository bound and it doesn't seem to write back labels if you actually bothered to sort the issues or tasks into backlog/in-progress etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32429" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-16T16:10:41.860" LastActivityDate="2018-11-16T16:10:41.860" Title="How to track milestones shared between several repositories?" Tags="&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;github-issues&gt;&lt;zenhub&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24051" CreationDate="2018-05-16T10:35:57.580" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master the first thing I would try to understand is the motivation for this behaviour. Why do they not want to spend time at their desk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly I would focus on the problems caused by the behaviour, not the behaviour itself. If they behave like this but the team is still highly productive then there is no issue. However, perhaps there are problems such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Delays when team members are waiting for this individual to return to their desk&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Misunderstandings as the person was not available to answer questions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If these kinds of issues are happening, then they should be raised at the retrospective. Something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That last release was painful because we didn't realise the database hadn't been refreshed. Is there something we can do as a team to make this information more readily available?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By focusing on improvement you can make this a positive conversation rather than criticism of somebodies behaviour. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-05-16T10:35:57.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24051" CreationDate="2018-05-16T11:21:37.013" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Determine if you have a problem:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;If the team member's work is good then let it be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Talk to the person:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;If there is a problem with quantity or quality of work then talk to the person with the aim of improving output. Discover what motivates them. Find out if they actually enjoy the work or if they would be happier in some other role. Ask questions to get to the root of what is happening in their work life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Improve the situation:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;If appropriate pick out someone who does produce good work (maybe yourself) and use their behaviours as examples of good practice. Perhaps link the two together into some kind of mentoring relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user32434" LastActivityDate="2018-05-16T11:21:37.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24056" CreationDate="2018-05-16T11:43:37.377" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Q: &quot;... Outlook is actually sufficiently good.&quot; Please assess this statement based on your experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A: In terms of communication about the project on a team member level, Outlook is fine. But in terms of project team manager being able to keep tabs on what is happening, when it will happen, whether the project is on track, which team members have too much (not enough) work etc. then Outlook is clearly not sufficient. So, if communication is enough - stick with Outlook. If you need more - then you need issue tracking software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user32434" LastActivityDate="2018-05-16T11:43:37.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24061" CreationDate="2018-05-16T21:11:43.570" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pablo from ZenHub here (answering the question since ZenHub was specifically mentioned).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most ZenHub features are multi-repository; you can add repositories to an existing Board so both backend and front-end issues will be in the same place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the Board, you can &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.zenhub.com/guides/managing-cross-repo-milestones&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;create a multi-repo milestone&lt;/a&gt;, which creates matching milestones across all the repositories in a given Board, and then group them for the Velocity and Burndown reports, as well as for filtering in the Board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For creating labels across multiple repositories, you can &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.zenhub.com/guides/setup-my-zenhub-boards#perform-bulk-actions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;select issues from multiple repositories in the Board&lt;/a&gt;, and then add an existing label; if the label doesn't exist in one of the repositories ZenHub will create it for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20932" LastActivityDate="2018-05-16T21:11:43.570" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24072" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-05-17T13:49:17.673" Score="0" ViewCount="96" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a uni assignment that has the following requirement&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;include in your baseline document how the project will include the&#xA;  project management lifecycle and the software development lifecycle&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have the project baseline but I´m not sure how to align this or put this baseline in any relationship with the project management lifecycle or with the software development lifecycle (in my case waterfall).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I misunderstanding the question or how is the relationship between these?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16326" LastActivityDate="2018-10-14T20:00:22.617" Title="Project baseline and software development lifecycle" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24072" CreationDate="2018-05-17T14:35:38.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe you are misunderstanding the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A baseline document is the point at which you start tracking changes. It's the first version of a document that all of the necessary stakeholders agree to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The assignment is asking you to create a baseline document (which sounds like some kind of project plan). In the baseline document, you need to include information about the project management lifecycle and the software development lifecycle. This means that you cannot produce a baseline document without this information. It also means that if you decide to make changes to the project management lifecycle or software development lifecycle as the project progresses, you will have an original lifecycle to compare the changes against.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2018-05-17T14:35:38.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24074" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24076" CreationDate="2018-05-18T08:31:38.290" Score="2" ViewCount="140" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an application form on a website to apply for something. It's been tested thoroughly and passes. However my client found that if you entered an emoji in one the fields that does an address search, the form breaks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And my answer is &quot;well, yeah.&quot; It's an unreasonable action. No user would actually do this, and I think it's silly the client is coming to me about this. I mean, what do they expect if they do unrealistic things to the form that an ordinary user would not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I handle/deal with this? Do I tell the client that they're being ridiculous, or do I humor them and fix it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't the first time they've done this. They'll find all sorts of ways to break the website, such as enter this value, then delete and enter this invalid character, then enter a number, then delete and repeat, separate the red sea and move my house 6 inches to the left and you get an error. And I just feel like puling my hair out. What do they expect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who's the unreasonable one here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32458" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-05-18T14:11:44.757" LastActivityDate="2018-05-18T14:56:37.753" Title="How to handle client's unrealistic testing results" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;testing&gt;&lt;clients&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24074" CreationDate="2018-05-18T10:10:40.297" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It can be a real challenge to differentiate between what is a bug and what is a new requirement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to make this more explicit is to produce a test report that includes both the testing performed and the &lt;em&gt;scope&lt;/em&gt; of the testing. If the client accepts the scope then any future out-of-scope work will be chargeable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the test report could say something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The address field has been tested for field length. No other text validation is performed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is approved by the client and they then report a problem with emoji's breaking the field it would be considered a change request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-05-18T10:10:40.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24074" CreationDate="2018-05-18T10:18:54.600" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a secuirty point of view, input should never be trusted. What's to say that next time it's not an emojji but some kind of textual exploit such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion_laughs_attack&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;billion laughs attack&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end the day, if it is a public facing site you're going to have script kiddies pointing their tools at it that will send all kinds of data at it. If the page breaks it is your BUG, it should be fixed, and could imply that there is inherent risk (will it accept and execute XSS such as alert('hello') )?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The input should be validated on the client AND the server. Only process data you're expecting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Checkout Troy Hunt's very useful Owasp Top 10 guide which you can download for free &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.troyhunt.com/free-ebook-owasp-top-10-for-net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Owasp Top 10 developer Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="670" LastActivityDate="2018-05-18T10:18:54.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24074" CreationDate="2018-05-18T13:16:55.877" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You didn't mention that this was part of some client-beta testing process, so I will assume it's not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, I assume that this issue came up when an &lt;em&gt;actual client&lt;/em&gt; was actually &lt;em&gt;using&lt;/em&gt; the application, and it displayed behaviour that the &lt;em&gt;client did not expect&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my eyes, &lt;strong&gt;that is a bug&lt;/strong&gt;. However!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do I tell the client that they're being ridiculous, or do I humor them and fix it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are displaying remarkably polarized thinking, there. &lt;em&gt;Never&lt;/em&gt; tell a client they are ridiculous! Even if you want to fire a client, you'd be better served by doing so in a way that &lt;em&gt;won't&lt;/em&gt; give them cause to harbor significant ill will to your company, potentially causing them to then go out of their way to cause you harm (such as publicly posting your ill treatment of them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And even if it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a bug, there's nothing saying you need to drop everything and fix it &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt;. Have you considered responding with the following?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Thank you for your feedback! We have received your bug report, and have entered it into our system. Once it's been prioritized, we will begin processing it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then give the bug an appropriate (read: low) priority, and get around to fixing it when you eventually have time (possibly never, but going through low-risk, low-reward bug reports seems to me like a valid use of slack time. Your mileage may vary).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Make sure you thank them&lt;/strong&gt;, because &lt;em&gt;they are doing you a favour&lt;/em&gt;. I would &lt;em&gt;love&lt;/em&gt; to have clients as dedicated and helpful as this one. S/he is doing in-depth, quality-assurance testing &lt;em&gt;for free&lt;/em&gt;. Likely simply because s/he likes your product and wants it to be the best it can be (or possibly just because s/he enjoys finding other people's problems, but either way, the result is the same).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-05-18T13:24:36.537" LastActivityDate="2018-05-18T13:24:36.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24074" CreationDate="2018-05-18T14:56:37.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Your Question, Clarified&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The core of your issue seems to boil down to this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's been tested thoroughly and passes. However my client found that if you entered an emoji in one the fields that does an address search, the form breaks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis and Recommendations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a project management standpoint, one can extract the following take-aways just from the two sentences quoted above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The project's Definition of Done has not been formally defined.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you and the client have different definitions of &quot;thoroughly tested&quot; that weren't agreed upon up-front, then you have a problem. It may be a communications problem, a planning problem, or a contractual problem, but in all cases it's a problem at the project level and needs to be dealt with constructively.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You say the form &quot;breaks,&quot; but don't define the level of impact.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your client is performing extensive QA testing (as &lt;em&gt;someone&lt;/em&gt; should on the project), and finding issues. However, &quot;the form breaks&quot; is pretty non-specific. It it puts unsanitized data into a database, causes the application to terminate, or otherwise does something besides raising a recoverable error, then it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a bug. If your application can break when someone's cat walks across the keyboard, it is unlikely to be fit for purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, again, the issue is about defining a level of quality. You have defined it as &quot;the form works when users follow the happy path.&quot; The client has likely defined it as &quot;the system is robust in the face of unsanitized input.&quot; However, the &lt;em&gt;project&lt;/em&gt; has not adopted an agreed-upon level of quality that both the developers and the client agree on. Fix that!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The project is not integrating QA or acceptance testing into the development cycle.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of your frustration is that you are getting post facto feedback about the work increment. However, if QA and UAT were truly integrated with the development cycle, there would be no surprises for anyone. Both the developers and the testers would know ahead of time what tests had to pass, and whether or not each increment of work met those goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moving to a test-first mindset is hard, but doing anything else is setting your project up for failure. This is where project management experience, including process management and communications-oriented leadership, can really help.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You and the customer are not &lt;em&gt;collaborating&lt;/em&gt; with one another.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the four core values of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; is &lt;em&gt;customer collaboration over contract negotiation&lt;/em&gt;. Even if you aren't following an agile methodology (which would certainly explain some of your pain), the point is that working side-by-side with your customer rather than relying on hand-offs and round-trip feedback is generally more effective and avoids exactly the type of communications and expectational challenges you're experiencing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work on creating collaboration through a well-defined Definition of Done, implementation of test-driven development, and inclusion of client testers and UAT specialists &lt;em&gt;within&lt;/em&gt; each development cycle. Collaboration will almost always be more effective in resolving the challenges you're experience, especially when compared to contract disputes or lawyering up.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-05-18T14:56:37.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24080" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24084" CreationDate="2018-05-19T10:53:12.537" Score="2" ViewCount="99" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should I raise risks immediately when I see one or should I try to resolve the risk first and then raise it. How long should I try before raising one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30261" LastActivityDate="2018-05-21T13:54:26.487" Title="When should I raise risk with stakeholder" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2018-05-21T13:57:35.223" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24080" CreationDate="2018-05-19T12:20:57.177" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing you should know is that, as a project manager, one of your main goals is &lt;strong&gt;to raise, mitigate or resolve risks&lt;/strong&gt;. But you must definitely differentiate between the &lt;em&gt;risks that concern your board&lt;/em&gt; (thus you should not keep it for yourself nor deal with them alone), and the &lt;em&gt;risks that concern you&lt;/em&gt; (kind of risks that only need your position and abilities). So make the balance, and if you believe that the risk is of the &lt;strong&gt;first type&lt;/strong&gt;, don't hesitate and raise it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32463" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-05-21T13:54:26.487" LastActivityDate="2018-05-21T13:54:26.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24056" CreationDate="2018-05-19T13:06:14.380" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I could suggest you &lt;a href=&quot;https://todoist.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TodoIst tool&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;I use it for 3 years already and it's the perfect tool for collaborative work involving sharing, commenting, tracking almost everything (from the task assignment to files and media). I used it for teams of less than 50, but i'm sure it will fit your desires.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32463" LastActivityDate="2018-05-19T13:06:14.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24080" CreationDate="2018-05-19T13:19:36.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Communication and transparency are key principles in managing a project so stakeholders know what is going on and you maintain trust with them.  So early and often communication messages to stakeholders should be a critical success factor for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there is a very real psychological component when it comes to risks that you need to manage.  What people want to hear and what they need to hear are often times--too often--not the same thing.  Intellectually, stakeholders know they need to know and understand the threats jeopardizing their project for which they are spending money.  Emotionally, they want to hear that everything is running perfectly, success is a guarantee, issues are few and uneventful, and risks don't exist.  In a very real way, we all thrive in this illusion.  We reward our employees who maintain that illusion for us, by calling them 'can-do', positive employees and discriminating them against the alwaysnegativeboatrockingtroublemakers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the PM, you likely want the same thing when you're dealing with your team, and your team wants to come across like optimistic, can-do people so they will naturally hide their threats.  So your challenge is to break through your own desires of wanting that illusion with your team and then communicating that to your stakeholders while you desperately want to hide those threats.  And then you need to manage their adverse reaction of bringing up what they need to but don't want to hear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, their reaction is very real and can materially affect how they engage in your project in a negative way.  Raising your risks--the right thing to do--can cause you more trouble, exacerbating your impacts, more than the risk itself.  Therefore, there are benefits, real benefits, in choosing not to disclose and mitigating under the radar.  That choice is not free of costs and risks so it becomes a trade-off analysis you need to do but you need to do it and it will result in some of those risks being treated stealthily.  Perhaps it's an 80/20 rule, where only 20% going hidden.  I don't really know.  That's for you to decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-05-19T13:19:36.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24085" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-05-19T17:57:47.553" Score="2" ViewCount="159" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a small team (~5 people) and I am trying to encourage the team to adopt a more robust project management process. To date, our process has been rather 'ad hoc' and we have had failed attempts at Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the biggest problems I face (whether in Scrum or not) is that roles are not clearly defined, and I cannot get the support from the team to do this. Whereas I want a single person (the product owner) to be responsible for setting priorities (taking input from the rest of the team), the product owner is keen to make the entire team responsible for priorities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried to make the argument that this 'dilution of responsibility' undermines his role and has a negative effect on the project. As it is, no team member has a clear idea of the priorities over the next week, and team members are often taken off tasks randomly as 'priorities change'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I best tackle dilution of responsibility?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32467" LastActivityDate="2018-05-20T22:22:53.707" Title="How to avoid dilution of responsibility?" Tags="&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;responsibility&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24085" CreationDate="2018-05-20T10:01:37.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you could suggest an experiment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Run for 4 weeks with only the Product Owner making priority decisions and see if that makes things better or worse. If things don't get better then you can revert to the existing approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-05-20T10:01:37.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24087" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-05-20T17:19:53.933" Score="2" ViewCount="164" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am using Microsoft Project 2003 for an historic timeline, this means historical dates that go back 1000s of years. I realize using ms-project may be overkill, but it is actually the same as a project, but with pre-modern start dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried doing this in Excel and got it to work after a fashion using my first date as a minus (for ex. -4026). Then I set up a custom format so that it appears as 4026 B.C.E. (B.C.E. represent &quot;anno mundi&quot; or &quot;BC&quot;). I tried adding a spinner control but it's values cannot go below 0, so I can't highlight columns until I get to a positive date. Solved that by adding another row starting from 0.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, it's cumbersome, so I'd prefer to use MS-Project if possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this possible? Are there any alternatives?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32470" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T19:20:40.740" LastActivityDate="2020-04-04T23:01:50.197" Title="MS-Project historical timeline" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2003&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24085" CreationDate="2018-05-20T22:22:53.707" Score="-1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of the biggest problems I face&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try changing your attitude. You want to face bigger problems after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am trying to encourage the team&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have tried to make the argument&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't make an argument if you encourage someone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;rather 'ad hoc'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How well do you know process maturity topics, e.g. CMM? This would be total overload to your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which stage is the project?&#xA;Ask yourself: do I interrupt the team by not getting out the way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can I best tackle dilution of responsibility?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Change management you understand? Also work on your listening skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21496" LastActivityDate="2018-05-20T22:22:53.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24090" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-05-21T08:56:19.273" Score="0" ViewCount="215" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use time to draw gantt chart.But if we have been given effort in person months,then how can we draw gantt chart for it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32473" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2018-05-21T12:27:10.920" LastActivityDate="2018-05-21T12:27:10.920" Title="How to draw gantt chart if we have been given activities and effort in person-months?" Tags="&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24090" CreationDate="2018-05-21T12:22:25.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to turn the person-month into an planned month based on the number of people you have working the task.  If a task is 10 person-months and you have five people, then the task would be two planned months.  If you have 10, it would be one.  If you have two, it would be five.  Person-months/number of people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality, doing this type of calculation would yield unreliable values.  Each task has varying degrees of resource elasticity.  Some tasks may have perfect elasticity where the above calculation would yield a good result and other tasks are perfectly inelastic where adding resources would have no effect on duration or might have an adverse effect and exacerbate the duration.  And there are an infinite number of tasks with some degree between those two extremes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to answer your homework question, I suppose you would need to assume a perfectly elastic set of tasks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-05-21T12:22:25.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24092" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24098" CreationDate="2018-05-21T14:26:22.943" Score="3" ViewCount="302" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working with a team that had a P.O. that micro-manages the team, has a very directional approach to working with the team. Often asking them 'when things are finished' etc. I am obviously coaching him on how to behave as a P.O. and that this approach will hurt the team in the long run. So this is part of my role as Scrum Master is to remove this impediment to the teams success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have an opportunity to do a retro without the P.O. (they are away) and I wondered if anyone has any retro format approaches that would allow this dysfunction to surface from the team. So a way of getting the team to express any challenges or concerns (if any) they have with the PO's approach? Perhaps they don't have any issues with their approach, but it would be good to surface they opinion about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastActivityDate="2018-05-23T06:58:26.227" Title="How to surface P.O. dysfunction in a retro" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24092" CreationDate="2018-05-21T14:47:54.500" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not know what kind of political hot bed your organization may be in but I would avoid trying to uncover the teams' opinion of an individual member of the team in an open group.  I think asking for such a thing would jeopardize overall team trust.  After all, what would the team be saying about me when I am absent on a retro?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are hypothesizing that this PO's behavior is adversely affecting performance, investigate this behind closed doors where anonymity can be assured.  And be sure NOT to ask questions in a leading way so as not to inadvertently confirming your hypothesis in a biased way.  So avoid doing this in a retro entirely and conduct one-offs privately.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-05-21T14:47:54.500" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24094" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-05-21T15:39:04.493" Score="0" ViewCount="131" Body="&lt;p&gt;Completion % captures the current progress.. I understand that. Is there a way to come up with completion % if all work (hypothetically) was completed on time as of today?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g., Assume the total duration is 400 hrs. Today, the total duration scheduled to be completed was 200 hrs, however only 50% of the work was done. Therefore, %complete is 25% and, if the task was completed on time, then the %complete should be 50%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do we capture the latter completion %?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32477" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-05-21T23:57:04.230" LastActivityDate="2021-04-06T07:00:30.063" Title="Dashboard question on microsoft project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24087" CreationDate="2018-05-21T16:15:40.957" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To get something that looks like this:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/b3dEk.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/b3dEk.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a new Project and set the project calendar to 24 Hours and a start date of 1/1/2018.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customize the Start1 field with this formula: &lt;code&gt;(4200+[Number1])+DateSerial(2018,1,1)&lt;/code&gt; (where 4200 is bigger than your largest BCE date)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customize the Text1 field to format the dates as needed; e.g. &lt;code&gt;IIf([Number1]=0,&quot;0&quot;,IIf([Number1]&amp;lt;0,[Number1] &amp;amp; &quot; B.C.E&quot;,[Number1] &amp;amp; &quot; A.D&quot;))&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Enter the tasks like this, where the Start1 calculated date is manually copied to the Start field:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dcM9a.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dcM9a.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;5. Format the Gantt Timescale like this:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/I5i6u.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/I5i6u.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;6. Format the Gantt Bar Styles like this:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6AbCi.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6AbCi.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastActivityDate="2018-05-21T16:15:40.957" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24094" CreationDate="2018-05-21T21:03:32.003" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's the right way to do it:  Load resources and set a Baseline before you start recognizing progress. Then recognize progress and update the schedule (delaying incomplete work to after the Status Date) at each periodic &quot;Status Date.&quot;  At each Status Date, planned %Complete is BCWS/Cost.  (BCWS is &quot;budgeted cost of work scheduled.&quot;)  The actual (performance) %Complete is BCWP/Cost.  (BCWP is &quot;budgeted cost of work performed,&quot; aka &quot;Earned Value.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the wrong (but not uncommon) way to do it: Don't load resources; don't set a baseline; and don't update the schedule at the Status Date.  Apply formulas to 3 custom fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;RolledUpDur&quot; (Duration1): = [Duration].  {Calculate summary rows as Rollup-Sum}.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;ShouldBeDur&quot; (Duration2): = IIf([Current Date]&gt;=[Finish],[Duration],IIf([Current Date]&amp;lt;=[Start],0,(ProjDateDiff([Start],[Current Date])))).  {Calculate summary rows as Rollup-Sum}.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;ShouldBe%&quot; (Text1): = [Duration2]/[Duration1]*100 &amp;amp; &quot;%&quot;.  {Calculate summary rows as Use formula}.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Alternately, if a Baseline HAS been set, then use Baseline Start, Baseline Finish, and Baseline Duration in the custom duration formulas.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could be simpler (i.e. a single custom text field) if one doesn't care about including summary tasks in the mix.  In Project, %Complete is simply [Actual Duration]/[Duration], and for summaries it's Ʃ(Actual Durations)/Ʃ(Durations).  These custom fields are set up to compute the summary &quot;ShouldBe%&quot; the same way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is this the &quot;wrong way&quot;?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a)Schedules should ALWAYS be updated.  Incomplete work is never in the past; instead, whatever you didn't get done last week will pile up in front of you, and what you had planned to do this week will be delayed.  And&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b)Duration %Complete is simply not a valid measure of the value of the work performed nor of the time expended.  Its continued use breeds misunderstanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2018-05-21T21:03:32.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24097" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-05-22T08:21:15.533" Score="1" ViewCount="703" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good day, everyone!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering are there any good practices and tools for resource planning and monitoring between multiple teams and multiple projects running at the same time by different project managers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;E.g.&lt;/strong&gt; in our organization at the moment we have about 6 Project Managers leading about 20-25 projects, and all of that projects using  even biger amount of teams and individual resources ( vendor activity included ). &#xA;All of the teams have different frameworks for managing their work ( I mean SCRUM, Waterfall, etc. ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, i want some simple and handy solution that can bring together all the resources we have and allow us to achieve transparency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;P.S.&lt;/strong&gt; Currently we're using excel for that matter, though it is not &quot;simple and handy&quot;. &#xA;Inside our organization we also have &quot;jira&quot;,&quot;confluence&quot;, maybe you know any good addons or customized views that can be made for such purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32482" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2018-05-22T19:26:57.870" LastActivityDate="2018-06-26T13:21:30.947" Title="Resource planning and monitoring for multiple projects and teams" Tags="&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;&lt;multi-team&gt;&lt;portfolio-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24092" CreationDate="2018-05-22T12:40:56.460" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Waiting for the Product Owner to be away before having the conversation is not a good Scrum approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is better to have an open discussion as a team and resolve the problem with everyone present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team will not speak openly in front of the Product Owner then &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; is the problem that needs to be solved, not the Product Owner's behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-05-22T12:40:56.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24097" CreationDate="2018-05-22T13:29:54.190" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;What you are looking for is Project Portfolio Management (PPM)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all your projects are related and are managed in a coordinated manner, that is what the PMI calls Program Management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it looks to me what you have are possibly unrelated projects. So, I would say you should look into &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_portfolio_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Project Portfolio Management (PPM)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;i want some simple and handy solution&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am afraid with such a large number of projects, it is not realistic to expect any simple and handy solution for 'resource planning and monitoring'. It is going to involve significant amount of coordinated effort across all the teams to make it happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2018-05-22T13:45:06.707" LastActivityDate="2018-05-22T13:45:06.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24100" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-05-23T01:23:50.367" Score="1" ViewCount="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have 2 doubts about the WBS and project management and the ongoing progress of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WBS is decomposition of a project into deliverables.&#xA;The lowest level or unit of work within a deliverable is a work package.&#xA;In a work package we can define the activities involved to produce that deliverable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we talk about a project like CAR, the WBS would be like (only work packages):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;CAR&#xA;+ Engine&#xA;  + Cylinder&#xA;  + Piston&#xA;     + Head&#xA;     + Body&#xA;     + Oil ring&#xA;  + Shaft&#xA;+ Body&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then we can work on the activities of the HEAD work package as follows  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;- design head&#xA;- get a prototype&#xA;- manufacture head&#xA;- test head&#xA;- etc.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First doubt&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a IT project context or even the car, is it correct to include project management as a deliverable that include multiple management processes like this? (I am combining the WBS with the activities in the work package)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;MY PROJECT&#xA;+ Project Management (Supposed to do this in a fast tracking)&#xA;  + Scope management (work package)&#xA;    + Create scope statement &#xA;    + Create WBS &#xA;    + Create WBS dictionnary&#xA;    + Scope baseline (MILESTONE)&#xA;  + Resources management (work package)&#xA;    + Get resources calendar&#xA;    + Assign resources to project&#xA;    + Resources matrix (MILESTONE)&#xA;+ Deployment (Deliverable)&#xA;  + Database (Work package)&#xA;    + Create database &#xA;    + Execute scripts&#xA;    + Created database (MILESTONE)&#xA;  + Website (Work package)&#xA;...&#xA;...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Second doubt&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where can I place the ongoing progress activities of the project. Let's say that you already defined all the planned activities in a work package, but it is suppossed that you can add activities from coordinations with your client as soon as don't change your scope. It should be great to schedule these activities from coordinations to track time, progress and cost within the budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will you include a deliverable Analysis or Execution as deliverable and decompose it until a work package where I could include ongoing activities with the client? Do you have a link to share of a WBS of a real IT project as model?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Analysis and Execution would look like phases of my project, that's why I getting confused about how to structure my schedule that harmonizes my WBS. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32495" LastActivityDate="2018-05-23T01:23:50.367" Title="WBS and Project management" Tags="&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;&lt;schedule&gt;&lt;deliverables&gt;&lt;work-in-progress&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2018-05-23T22:04:09.517" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24092" CreationDate="2018-05-23T06:58:26.227" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Overview&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/24098/4271&quot;&gt;Barnaby Golden&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/24092/how-to-surface-p-o-dysfunction-in-a-retro#comment30359_24092&quot;&gt;Thomas Owens&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/24093/4271&quot;&gt;David Espina&lt;/a&gt; have all given good answers, but I want to address your core question in a different way. You ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I wondered if anyone has any retro format approaches that would allow this dysfunction to surface from the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the Scrum Master, it is your responsibility to &lt;em&gt;facilitate&lt;/em&gt; respectful, courageous, and sometimes difficult discussions within the retrospective. Team working agreements, roles and responsibilities, and team communications are all topics that are well within the mandate of a typical retrospective, but it's your job to ensure that it's done &lt;em&gt;constructively&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that you're looking for a simple format for addressing the topic, and while I provide one below I feel like that aspect of your question is actually part of the problem. The general tenor of your original post already implies a strong judgment about the situation and the participants, and that is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; conducive to holding a healthy retrospective because it sets up a Team-vs-PO dynamic that is likely to devolve into defensiveness and finger pointing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, if people are raising the issue with you in you role as Scrum Master or Team Member, then as a member of the team you're well within your rights to call out the issues that have been brought to your attention within the retrospective. Then, be sure to facilitate the discussion to keep it on track and constructive, and keep the team focused on walking away with a concrete plan or action item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A Worked Example&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master's goal isn't to assign blame; it's to facilitate continuous process improvement. With that in mind, an experienced Scrum Master might use the following format to uncover, address, and resolve a role- or communication-based process problem within a Sprint Retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;Scrum Master Mini-Script&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This Sprint a number of people have raised concerns about status reporting to the Product Owner reducing Development Team productivity as measured by...To address these concerns, I'd like us all to examine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Whether it's actually a problem for the team as a whole or for individual members.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;If so, what's wrong with our process, communications, or transparency that's triggering these what feels to them like excessive status pulls?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Now that we've identified the issue, what are our action items as a team?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also use techniques like &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;5 Whys&lt;/a&gt; to identify a root cause, and make sure you step in firmly to prevent &lt;em&gt;ad hominems&lt;/em&gt; or any attempt to ascribe evil intent rather than uncover a reason. Remember that the goal is to identify &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; problems, and then identify process-oriented solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Okay, Then What?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a further practical example, it seems likely that in this case the 5 Whys might identify a lack of Product Owner confidence in the Development Team's ability to meet the Sprint Goal, or uncover a less-than-transparent development process where the Sprint Backlog, Kanban Board, or other information radiators aren't reliable or aren't being used to best effect. Whatever the problem turns out to be, think of it as a process problem and find a process-oriented solution &lt;em&gt;as a team&lt;/em&gt; that the whole team can get behind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adapting the team's working agreements and practices to solve process problems is at the very heart of Scrum, Kanban, and the Agile Manifesto. The roles, ceremonies, and processes that form Scrum are meant to facilitate effective negotiation of sustainable working agreements, and not to affix blame. Always make sure the entire team (and especially the Scrum Master) maintains a relentless focus on the process problems, not on finding individual fault!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-05-23T06:58:26.227" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23653" CreationDate="2018-05-24T13:37:13.730" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An extraordinarily high attrition rate should be a concern for both the buyer and the seller.  Since it is an outsourcing type of arrangement, which should be reimbursed on a time and material basis, both parties have skin in the game and should jointly uncover root causes and jointly arrive at solutions.  It is likely predictable that the buyer would simply push responsibility to the seller but this is a significant mistake and will likely exacerbate the situation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer the specific two questions: both parties need to engage the other party and begin a joint investigation and solutions effort.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-05-24T13:37:13.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24104" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24105" CreationDate="2018-05-24T17:09:53.100" Score="1" ViewCount="71" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've recently acquired a new developer who's working remotely with occasional visits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The initial period of friction has passed, but they're still very reluctant to ask for help and would spend hours fighting a problem themselves before reaching out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're using Slack for quick communications and I've let them know multiple times that I'm available for questions night and day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32523" LastActivityDate="2018-05-24T17:31:28.370" Title="How can I encourage remote employees to ask for help?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;remote-teams&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24104" CreationDate="2018-05-24T17:31:28.370" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're asking a subjective question - we don't have nearly enough information to provide an answer, but the inference I would draw is that the individual is reluctant to ask for help.  You don't describe the efforts you've made to communicate that help is a desired &amp;amp; expected transaction, but I'm going to assume that you've done everything in your power to communicate that concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd infer that this individual is one of the people whose resume includes phrases like &quot;self-starter&quot;.  Someone who believes that by figuring out the problem on their own, they'll learn and be more valuable to the company. That learning leads to deeper understanding.  You probably don't want to undermine these segments of their self-image - those are valuable traits and if they can be merged with the situation, both sides will benefit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If encouraging the to ask for help were going to be effective, it would have been effective before this. If you keep encouraging them, then you're not learning from reality, you're trying to bend reality to your will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are your options?  What incentive structures can you build that will lower the friction of asking for help?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You're going to have to reach out past that gap.  Schedule a periodic call with the individual and ask probing questions like, &quot;What are some obstacles that I could help clear? When do you expect to finish this task and is there anything we can do to accellerate that?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Listen carefully (I believe the Chinese word is &lt;strong&gt;Ti fong&lt;/strong&gt;, but explaining why that is relevant would be an essay in and of itself).  You're going to have to listen past what the individual is saying and inuit what they are feeling/thinking about the costs and benefits of &quot;help&quot;.  Sometimes it will involve directly asking, &quot;Amy is an expert on that - want me to set up a 20 minute phone call for her to walk through that with you?&quot; - but that probably won't work; there is a significant risk that the individual will hear, &quot;Your performance is sub-par and I have to assign another employee to intervene.&quot; - that will cause them to double down on their self-image.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find a way to introduce &quot;asking for help&quot; in a win-win context.  But this has to be based on deep listening.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Re-allocate the time/tasks/work package estimates for this individual to account for this behavior.  If you're good, you're going to be able to shift their behavior somewhat.  But even if you're excellent it is going to take some time.  Do this in communication with the developer - &quot;I'm going to allocate an extra two weeks on each of these task since you need to teach yourself the skill. Please make use of the stack and of your peers who are doing this now. Next time we talk, let's discuss whether an extra two weeks/task is the right timeframe for you to figure it out on your own.  If you think that I'm overestimating the time for you to learn it, or if the resources help you to deliver faster, that would look great for both of us.  But I'm only going to adjust that delivery date based on actual deliverable - it would be really disastrous for both of us if the estimated delivery date fluctuated - neither of us would have any credibility going forward.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Listen.  Reward every movement in the right direction.  Listen carefully to every indication that &quot;figure it out&quot; is triumphing over &quot;team player&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2018-05-24T17:31:28.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24108" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24163" CreationDate="2018-05-26T09:54:56.507" Score="-1" ViewCount="127" Body="&lt;p&gt;Somebody told me the open source projects go ahead without project managers and it was interesting for me to know is this really true? If so, how does it happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30123" LastActivityDate="2018-06-04T13:16:10.243" Title="How open source projects work without project manager?" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;open-source&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24109" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-05-26T13:37:52.930" Score="0" ViewCount="75" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I have an AdWords campaign with the following numbers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Total Sales through Ads: 630000&#xA;Cost of the goods: 590000&#xA;Cost of Advertising: 22500&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I follow AdWords ROI formula, I have a ROI of 2.85%: (Sales – Total Cost)/Total Costs = (630000 – 612500)/612500. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I understood that ROI was Profit / Investment and that’s how I saw it in many places. Which would be a ROI of 77%: (Profit – Cost of Ads) / Cost of Ads = (40000 – 22500) / 22500&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I even saw a formula stating ROI which would be a crazy 2522%: (Revenue – Cost of Ads) / Cost of Ads.: (630000 - 22500)/22500 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if someone asks me for my PPC ROI in AdWords… what should I say? Really confused here. I would like to be the most accurate possible in my answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32533" LastActivityDate="2018-07-25T19:00:23.320" Title="What can I say is the ROI of this AdWords account?" Tags="&lt;return-on-investment&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24109" CreationDate="2018-05-26T18:00:13.967" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Don't Conflate &lt;em&gt;Profit&lt;/em&gt; with &lt;em&gt;Return on Investment&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, &lt;code&gt;Profit = Revenue - Expenses&lt;/code&gt;, but there are &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/profit.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;various kinds of profit&lt;/a&gt;, and accounting practices are (for the most part) outside the scope of this site. However, since a given advertising campaign could technically be a project that a project manager would need to report on, it may be useful to understand what's actually being reported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's happening here is that you're apparently conflating &quot;profit&quot; with return on investment (ROI) for your advertising dollars. They aren't the same thing at all. What &lt;code&gt;(Profit – Cost of Ads) / Cost of Ads&lt;/code&gt; tells you is the &lt;strong&gt;return on investment in advertising&lt;/strong&gt;, nothing else. It doesn't calculate your business profit, nor your overall return on investment. It's just a data point for evaluating your advertising program, that's all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an advertising channel, Google isn't really telling you how to value or model your business. Adwords is just offering various models for expressing the utility value of their platform on your overall business, on ad dollars, on clicks, and so forth. In other words, they're making suggestions about how they'd like you to value the money spent with them. It's up to you to determine if a specific ROI calculation makes sense in your case, and if it fits the information you're trying to convey to the target audience for your advertising campaign's project report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-05-26T18:06:19.800" LastActivityDate="2018-05-26T18:06:19.800" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24108" CreationDate="2018-05-27T08:52:37.040" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Open-Source projects [most of the time] always have a leader! The leader manages all code submissions and decides which ones to add to the software!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to bring to your attention &lt;strong&gt;LINUX&lt;/strong&gt; which was a revolution at the time. But it was &lt;strong&gt;Linus Torvalds&lt;/strong&gt; who managed everything! The leader is the guy in charge of a project, but has zero hiring and firing authority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an open-source project to work out, you should have a set of rules to stick by. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do whatever it takes to make people feel welcome so that they continue working with you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Code of Conduct - provides an interesting point you can refer to as soon as you need to.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vision is necessary - No vision, no future!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be Thankful - recognize contributions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ship, Ship, Ship - don't try to build the perfect infrastructure!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user32539" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-06-04T13:16:10.243" LastActivityDate="2018-06-04T13:16:10.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24113" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24118" CreationDate="2018-05-27T17:29:15.020" Score="3" ViewCount="984" Body="&lt;p&gt;From reading discussions here the general consensus seems to be that you should have a ratio of &lt;em&gt;one kanban board&lt;/em&gt; for &lt;em&gt;one team&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you model multiple workflows in the team on one board? &#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Specifically, I suppose, how do you represent processes with discrete sub-tasks that require coorindation between people, while still being able to implement a policy to limit work in progress, and being able to see the &quot;capacity&quot; and &quot;backlog&quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give a real example, our team has multiple kanban boards:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Board 1&lt;/strong&gt;: Regular one-off team tasks, such as &quot;check help desk&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Board 2&lt;/strong&gt;: Article-creation workflow, which involves stages of:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contacting people, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Interviewing them, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Passing the content to an editor, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and scheduling the content to be published&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Board 3&lt;/strong&gt;: Video-creation workflow, which involves stages of:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decide on topic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Record the video&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Produce the video&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Upload the video&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pass the content to an editor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and scheduling the content to be published&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It works well to have multiple kanban boards describing specific proecesses. However, this also means the &quot;capacity&quot; of the team is not represented in any one place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13762" LastEditorUserId="13762" LastEditDate="2018-05-28T05:01:22.930" LastActivityDate="2018-05-28T19:43:01.407" Title="Different workflows on one kanban board" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;kanban-board&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24115" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-05-28T03:31:43.600" Score="1" ViewCount="110" Body="&lt;p&gt;In work breakdown structure, how do I represent a common work that is being used by multiple higher-level-work/module? For example, in my development, I have multiple modules in my IT system, and two of them are Customer and Sales Order. These two modules require additional development whereby I need to synchronise the data (replication) to another server. How do I show it in WBS?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have put up two examples as in the image, but both seems wrong to me. &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kT3H9.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kT3H9.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32547" LastActivityDate="2019-04-09T01:02:25.540" Title="WBS Common Work/Deliverable" Tags="&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24116" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-05-28T08:56:28.973" Score="2" ViewCount="92" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main idea behind using story points is to take away focus on the absolute time/cost of a task and look at the relative sizing vs the other tasks you have in front of you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has worked well in all the other companies I have worked in. Here the typical setup is that you have a software team, working on a product, and a product owner which can use the story point estimations to prioritize one feature over another for the next sprint and/or release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in my current position it's a bit different. We develop software for a hardware platform we sell to customers. However, all sales requires us to tweak our software to match the customers' needs[1], and this tweaking is often a significant cost for the company when selling a product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore sales/management always needs an estimate of how time-consuming various customer-related tasks are, so they can factor this number into their offers when they bid on jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We spend roughly 50% of our time integrating our base software into customer specific solutions, and 50% of the time on improving our base system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;In this case. Does it even make sense to try to abstract away time/money from the development using story points, since numbers are always so close anyway?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When sales comes and asks: &quot;[The customer is willing to pay $1 million extra for feature X,] how expensive is feature X to develop?&quot; It's impossible to not look at the number $1 million then the amount of story points for the task, and make a direct transformation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could argue that you should not tell the developers about the actual number, but I don't like this for two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't know what you actually gain from it here. You still need a direct story point-&gt;time-&gt;cost transformation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We are only around 20 people in total, 8 in software. A sale is a huge thing, and I think taking away information of how everything is going would stress people more than giving them peace of mind to &quot;just work on development&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Either to make it integrate into their current system(s) or give them an edge in their market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32527" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-06-07T13:11:33.490" LastActivityDate="2018-06-07T13:11:33.490" Title="When working closely with sales, does storypoints still make sense vs time estimations" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24113" CreationDate="2018-05-28T10:44:23.930" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I disagree with your consensus. I would say the Kanban community in general assumes a decoupling between teams and Kanban systems and that a Kanban board should probably visualize a Kanban system. Multiple workflows should be different boards. Unless they have the same or mostly overlapping steps, in which case they could be on the same board and optionally separated by swim-lanes, or card colors or something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the issue that total team capacity is not represented in one place, that is true I guess, but it might be ok, in the end you have statistics like &quot;over the last year we delivered 100 one-off tasks, created 40 articles and 20 videos&quot;, having fluid capacity across systems mean pull decisions can be supported by a checklist or some heuristics (based on e.g. cost of delay or something) so help the team member decide which board to pull from. If you need to, you could set up a sort of portfolio thing one level above the &quot;team board&quot; to set up wip limits across accounts or products (it probably makes more sense to split team capacity along a business oriented dimension rather than something arbitrary like item type). Setting up a portfolio probably makes more sense once you have at least 3 teams to manage though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="763" LastActivityDate="2018-05-28T10:44:23.930" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24116" CreationDate="2018-05-28T10:49:30.497" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Scrum you have a very useful cost measurement point: the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that you have a dedicated team and time-boxed sprints then estimating the cost per sprint is relatively simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there is nothing to stop you from using story points to estimate your sprint capacity and using sprints to estimate your costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as you are following the agile approach then the usual caveats must apply:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If responding to feedback is important to you, then it is likely that scope will change over time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are adapting to change, cost estimates will also be subject to change&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The further ahead you estimate, the less likely it is to be accurate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-05-28T10:49:30.497" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24113" CreationDate="2018-05-28T10:58:45.923" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you have hit on a fundamental point: when teams work with several different workflows at the same time it becomes difficult to measure their capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess the best solution will depend on what is more important to your organisation, an accurate knowledge of your capacity or an efficient workflow process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to experiment with both approaches and see which provides the best results for your particular circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-05-28T10:58:45.923" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24113" CreationDate="2018-05-28T19:43:01.407" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, it helps to have one team be on a single Kanban board.  Not only does it help them with capacity management (avoiding overloading, prioritization of work) but also managing dependencies between tasks and team members for overall better collaboration.  It should be perfectly possible to define multiple swim lanes to define multiple workflows of the kind that you have defined.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example of that - its a product team example, with separate lanes for product development (upstream) and product support (downstream).  You can easily design a similar board with your own workflows - and a 3rd lane for the one-off tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0vayY.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0vayY.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two workflows that you have described in your board 2 and board 3 examples are a classic upstream and downstream workflow example.  Typically, the upstream work might be done by people who have more 'upstream roles' - such as designers, analysts, marketing folks - who are gathering market feedback, understanding customer requirements, etc. while the downstream workflow is done by people with downstream activity such as development, execution, production, testing, review and feedback and finally delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like in your case, your whole team is involved in all of the upstream and downstream activities.  If this is not the case, you might consider a &quot;sub-team&quot; board - where each sub-team has their own board if they prefer that.  However, just having swim lanes is equally effective - just depends on who clear are the team boundaries - and how much they need their own &quot;space&quot; to manage all of their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our case (we are a product company with a Kanban tool - &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.digite.com/swiftkanban&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SwiftKanban&lt;/a&gt;), we have an upstream board where our product management team does the kind of activities that you described in your board 2.  As work gets defined better and prioritized, it is planned in one of our upcoming product releases - and when that release starts, the work moves to a separate dev board, where it is fully delivered and deployed on our cloud servers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1U1xm.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1U1xm.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, in our marketing team, we simply have different swim lanes for themes, campaigns and deliverables (as well as a separate Events lane) and all of the team uses this one board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A single board helps with overall capacity management.  However, technology gives you more options. If you are using an electronic tool, some tools (like ours) also help you define the WIP limits per person - so that irrespective of whether they are assigned to one or multiple boards, you always have an idea of whether they are overburdened or not - which is one of Kanban's key tenet - to reduce overburdening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, here is a white paper that may give you some ideas on how to design your boards - &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.digite.com/resources/10-factors-for-kanban-board-design/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;10 Factors to Consider for your Kanban Board design&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2018-05-28T19:43:01.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6555" CreationDate="2018-05-28T21:30:47.370" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Coding Exercises:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll hear 'coding exercises' a lot as the answer to this question.  And while these exercises certainly have some value (they certainly test a person's desire for the position as they have to do up to 20 hours of unpaid work!) you should use them carefully. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One problem is that, more often than not, these exercises are not related to the project/roll. Which seems crazy to me. If you do use exercises with a candidate, make sure they are designed to test their ability to do the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many other ways to discover if a programmer is a good candidate - without looking at a single line of code!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get some Face Time:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can tell so much from just talking to someone. From the inflection and tone of their voice to their body language. Restricting yourself to an audio or email exchange denies you of that valuable character insight. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many freelancer platforms attempt to protect themselves from being disintermediated by heavily discouraging direct phone contact. Instead, they rely on simple online tests and gameable peer rating systems. While there is nothing wrong with either of the methods, they need to be combined with more personal techniques to build a more complete accurate picture of a candidate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask for their Opinion:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask them about their favorite programming language and why. The way they answer will reveal a lot. If someone has a strong opinion about a topic it’s a good indicator they are passionate about it &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Check them out on GitHub:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much do they contribute to the industry at large and open source projects? As well as giving you an insight into their coding this gives you a great insight into their mindset and passion. Open source projects are a way people give back to the industry by helping to fix things for a greater good. Now that sounds like someone I would want on my team&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How often do they deliver what they code?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tinkering with code is one thing. Being able to ship a complete product is another. Find out about projects they have finished, which they haven't and what happened&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How well spoken are they?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are they good communicators? If they behave like a black box then you will struggle to work with them and hire a team around them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How well do they write?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is similar to the above point but distinct enough to matter. A great writer will often be better at their job, whether that be marketing or programming. My advice is simple here: when stuck between similar looking candidates, always hire the better writer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use a trial period:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a safe and fair way to test them on a project without not paying them for their time. At Scalable Path, we give clients a month to evaluate a developer.  If it’s a good or bad fit, it will be obvious. And if not, both sides save themselves a lot of trouble and risk by testing out the situation first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from the coding exercises, these methods can be used by non-programmers and so are very useful for PM's when interviewing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32556" LastActivityDate="2018-05-28T21:30:47.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24124" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24126" CreationDate="2018-05-29T07:23:21.107" Score="3" ViewCount="228" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on project as manual tester with 2 years of experience. In my company there is 1 BA, 1 project manager and 2 marketing guys. However nobody wants to gather requirements from the client; they are asking me to do so and create a scope document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not have any experience doing this. I asked my BA and PM to do so; they said &quot;this is your job, not ours&quot;. Is this correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know who is typically the correct person/position to do the requirement gathering from clients and convert them into a scope document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if any team member asks any question to the BA/PM/the person who gathered the requirements, should the person asked resolve these queries or reply &quot;talk to client directly&quot;? When a team member asks the question to a client which he has already cleared to the person who gathered the requirement, the client gets frustrated. What should a person do in this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32558" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2019-04-15T19:19:45.390" LastActivityDate="2019-04-16T18:17:13.657" Title="Is it a testers responsibility to gather requirements from the client &amp; create a scope document?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24116" CreationDate="2018-05-29T07:46:04.637" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The advantage of using story points is that they free the mind from the pressures of schedules and external expectations. By only having to weigh tasks against each other you generally achieve more reliable estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That does not mean you can't offer your sales team a translated version. You can and you should. You can use your team's velocity history to project how long an set of task is likely going to take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's important to note that such a calculation needs two things to be accurate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;consistent velocity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;low level estimates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have consistent velocity you can still use your known range of velocities to give a range of estimates which is better than no estimate or one pulled from thin air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you need these time based estimates before you have reliable low level story point estimates the same empirical principles can be applied. Make sure you save your original estimates and when you complete a project sum up all the refined estimates. Over time this will give you an idea how your refinement is affecting your story point count. You can then use the histories of velocities an refinement conversions to calculate a likely range of translation values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can do a simple &lt;code&gt;(average velocity) * (average sp conversion) * (high level sp estimate) = (estimated time)&lt;/code&gt; or you could go and run a monte carlo simulation on the whole histories to get confidence intervals and everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, this is all getting more and more complicated. So as Todd commented on your question, you should &lt;strong&gt;go with the simplest solution that works for you&lt;/strong&gt;. Every layer you add on top is going to cost you time to gather and maintain it. Don't do it if it doesn't add appropriate value...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2018-05-29T07:46:04.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24124" CreationDate="2018-05-29T10:07:35.990" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Right, you've got a couple of problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first challenge that I see is that no one considers it their role to talk to the client and understand the requirement. This is typically the role of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/resources/what-is-a-product-owner&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Product Owner&lt;/a&gt; (or PO), which you don't have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's the PO's role to engage with stakeholders and ensure that what you're working on is always the most valuable piece of work. If your team doesn't have anyone fulfilling this role then how does the entire team have confidence that their efforts are not going to be wasted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming for a minute that your company isn't about to hire new people or retask existing ones then you've got a gap. It's not unbridgeable...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a QA you actually have quite a good position here. It's your job to ensure that whatever is built not only works, but that it's fit for purpose and meets your clients' requirements. If the requirements are unclear then that's going to be very hard for you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creating huge upfront requirement documents is often a wasted effort, there's no way that you're going to be able to cover every scenario and even if you can it's highly likely that the client will make a mistake or change their mind once they see it. The key is to demonstrate the work in progress as much as possible and collaborate as you go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ad-hoc communication with the client isn't a bad thing, in fact it's a very good thing! However it sounds like it's a little unstructured. I would suggest a couple of things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Demoing your work to the client every couple of weeks (I'm deliberately avoiding the word sprint here as it doesn't sound like you're a particularly agile time). This will give the client the chance to give feedback and you a chance to ask any question&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Encourage EVERYONE to talk to the client, I'm not talking formal emails - I'm talking about building a relationship and chatting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To avoid asking the same things over and over again make sure queries are circulated internally first and the questions/answers logged are added to the documentation (or just a question log).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See this as an opportunity to improve your team and client collaboration, don't see it as a &quot;your job&quot; or &quot;my job&quot; thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11768" LastActivityDate="2018-05-29T10:07:35.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24127" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-05-29T12:05:08.850" Score="0" ViewCount="60" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PMBOK (A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, 5th edition) states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The PMBOK Guide contains the globally recognized standard and guide&#xA;  for the project management profession.&#xA;  [...]&#xA;  the knowledge contained in this standard has evolved from the recognized good practices of project management practitioners who have contributed to the development of this standard&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, what is the scientific evidence supporting the practices recommended by the PMBOK? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32561" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2018-05-29T20:30:37.473" LastActivityDate="2018-06-04T12:16:34.500" Title="What is the evidence supporting the PMBOK practices?" Tags="&lt;resources&gt;&lt;practices&gt;&lt;engineering-practices&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24124" CreationDate="2018-05-29T12:10:08.900" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally, there are four criteria for resource allocation:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Possession of the &lt;em&gt;proper knowledge, skills, and ability to do the work&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Available time&lt;/em&gt; to do the work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;No conflict of interest&lt;/em&gt; between the various roles one could assume and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Assigned&lt;/em&gt; by the person in charge&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears you failed only one criterion.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the person in charge wishes to assume the risk of having someone do work they do not know how to do, then that's on him/her. They have the ultimate accountability for a successful delivery. Let him or her know you have no idea what you're doing but are willing to learn, raise the risk of less than stellar performance, and then get to work and learn a new skill set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-04-16T18:17:13.657" LastActivityDate="2019-04-16T18:17:13.657" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24127" CreationDate="2018-05-29T12:44:43.493" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are trying to assess the scientific validity of the PMBoK, you will not get too far.  The PMBoK is a body of knowledge and not even the complete body of knowledge.  It is not prescriptive but rather descriptive.  There is nothing to measure.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you dig deeper into the practices, such as EV for cost control or critical path management of schedule control or Monte Carlo for estimation, you'll likely find varying degree of science behind their efficacy but you will find some support and validity.  In other cases, I suspect you will find some practices to be more tribal in nature with anecdotal support but no science behind them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-05-29T12:44:43.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24124" CreationDate="2018-05-29T13:33:13.917" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That depends entirely on the situation. Is it correct in all situations? No. Is it correct in &lt;em&gt;yours&lt;/em&gt;? Maybe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There &lt;em&gt;is some&lt;/em&gt; overlap between Business Analyst (BA) and a Quality Assurance personnel (QA). I was once on a team where one person was officially a BA and unofficially a QA; it worked well enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not it makes sense in &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; situation depends on a few factors. Importantly, what does your hierarchy look like?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the PM/BA your direct superior? If so, David Espina's Answer of raising risks to them then accepting their decision is a solid approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you share a direct superior? If so, you should consider going to this superior and asking for clarification of roles. Right now, each of you is thinking that it is the others' responsibility to gather requirements. This disagreement is causing confusion, and thus needs to be cleared up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also if any team member asks [...] the client gets frustrated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems like a separate question to me (in fact, I'm not sure how 'the BA/PM won't gather requirements' fits with 'what to do when the BA/PM asks me to gather requirements after already having gathered them him/herself'...), but I'll answer it here anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First thing you need to find out is &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; this is happening. Why does the BA/PM want you to go to the client directly - again? Does s/he not &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; get that requirement before, just something that's &lt;em&gt;similar&lt;/em&gt;? Did s/he forget? Is s/he just lazy? Does s/he believe QAs need more direct involvement with the client? Was s/he instructed by a superior to operate this way? Did the client request this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to find out the &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; before you can decide what is the right approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-05-29T13:33:13.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24131" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-05-29T20:22:16.823" Score="1" ViewCount="206" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a need to create a template checklist for our workflow and at a past job we had a template checklist that had various tabs for each process of the workshare that needed to be complete. For instance, that job was GIS related and each tab of the checklist contained what &quot;theme&quot; (ie, layer of the map) of the production mapping process needed to be complete before starting on the next theme. Each theme of the checklist was a tab that contained rows of things that needed to be complete for that theme and contributed to an overall percent complete that was tracked throughout each tab in the checklist. When a task was completed for that tab, we initialed a box, the percentage was updated, and we moved on to the next task. The first tab was always the same and would shape how the rest of the checklist was formatted based off of answers given to yes and no questions or from a series of dropdown menus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm really asking here is can all of this be completed through what is available in regular excel without needing to download other extensions? Can I make a look up table or a flow chart of some sort to model out the rest of the checklist? If so, where and how can this be completed within excel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32565" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-10-15T19:41:20.710" LastActivityDate="2018-11-14T20:02:35.493" Title="How to create a &quot;smart&quot; checklist in excel or google sheets?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24132" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24138" CreationDate="2018-05-29T20:51:42.260" Score="0" ViewCount="70" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my company, we often have meetings where we brainstorm / plan for next steps for our projects. After the meetings, I feel like I have a bunch of stories to write, and creating thorough and descriptive stories with good acceptance criteria takes a long time. Is it appropriate to create a user story that just says &quot;write stories for X project&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32566" LastActivityDate="2018-06-06T19:04:48.750" Title="Is creating a task to write many stories appropriate?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24133" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24134" CreationDate="2018-05-29T22:19:44.910" Score="18" ViewCount="11684" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the difference between the terms &quot;grooming&quot; and &quot;refinement&quot; of the product backlog in scrum methodology?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not able to find an accurate answer to this question. Are they the same?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32567" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2020-02-26T08:13:24.280" LastActivityDate="2020-05-06T19:21:49.580" Title="Difference between grooming and refinement" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;product-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24133" CreationDate="2018-05-30T01:27:35.583" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;The phrase &amp;quot;backlog grooming&amp;quot; was &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/revisions.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;officially replaced&lt;/a&gt; with &amp;quot;backlog refinement&amp;quot; in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/resources/scrum-guide&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; back in 2013. The change was largely done for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Clarity of semantics.&lt;/strong&gt; Arguably, the word &lt;em&gt;refinement&lt;/em&gt; expresses the idea of continuous improvement a little better than &lt;em&gt;grooming&lt;/em&gt;. The latter denotes removing defects or straightening out. Grooming also holds a connotation of a focus on appearances, as the &lt;a href=&quot;https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/grooming&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cambridge Dictionary's primary definition of grooming&lt;/a&gt; is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the things that you do to make your appearance clean and neat, for example brushing your hair, or the things that you do to keep an animal's hair or fur clean and neat&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Increased acceptance of framework terms.&lt;/strong&gt; In British English, the same dictionary also defines grooming as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the criminal activity of becoming friends with a child, especially over the internet, in order to try to persuade the child to have a sexual relationship&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Words matter, and the change to a term that provides better clarity about the purpose of the ceremony while also avoiding negative connotations is a net positive. However, you may still find early adopters of Scrum occasionally referring to &amp;quot;backlog grooming&amp;quot; out of habit, even though the term &lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt; officially been changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-05-30T01:27:35.583" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24135" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-05-30T06:06:28.660" Score="0" ViewCount="98" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is Cost Management (Estimation and Control) part of Project Mangement? &#xA;Are cost management techniques (COCOMO, Function Point, etc) part of PM? Or only Software Project Management?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask this because whenever I open a book about Project Management, I don't find these topics covered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32540" LastActivityDate="2018-06-03T02:02:17.683" Title="Is cost management part of Project Management?" Tags="&lt;cost-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24135" CreationDate="2018-05-30T10:14:15.000" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unequivocal yes.  I do not think I've ever picked up a PM book without a cost management topic.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-05-30T10:14:15.000" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24132" CreationDate="2018-05-30T11:03:24.370" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea in Scrum is that we refine the requirements as we go along. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#artifacts-productbacklog&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; talks about up to 10% of the team's time being spent on backlog refinement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You shouldn't need to create a task to write stories as it is an ongoing background task that is accounted for in the velocity of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I feel like I have a bunch of stories to write, and creating thorough and descriptive stories with good acceptance criteria takes a long time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may well be appropriate in your particular circumstances, but do remember that the idea is to add detail to a user story as late as possible. The reason we do this is that it allows us to adapt to changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we commit too much detail up front then that risks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Creating a reluctance to accept feedback and adapt our solution as we learn more about the product&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wasted effort if priorities change and we switch to working on other stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-05-30T11:03:24.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24135" CreationDate="2018-05-30T11:03:50.150" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project cost management is one of the very important aspects of project management that you need to master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30037" LastActivityDate="2018-05-30T11:03:50.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24132" CreationDate="2018-05-30T15:20:33.363" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As much as possible, stories (and tasks) on the board should reflect value being added to the project from the customer's perspective. Avoid adding things that are of the &quot;to-do&quot; variety for yourself or the team. Doing so adds clutter to the board and makes it that much more difficult to stay focused on value-add work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I have set up additional Kanban boards for teams that wish to keep track of these types of activities. Tools like Jira and Trello can be used for this purpose. And then there is the tried and true sticky notes on a spare wall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16486" LastActivityDate="2018-05-30T15:20:33.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24142" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24143" CreationDate="2018-05-30T15:24:24.257" Score="0" ViewCount="4788" Body="&lt;p&gt;Risk documents normally are documents in possession of the Project Manager with the discretion to show only to Project Team and Sponsor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Risk register is a document that contains all the work involved in the identification, quantification, qualification and evaluation of risks in matrix/table. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Questions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk report, is it a narrative document in summary of all the risks from the risk register?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it addressed exclusively to Sponsor? Other than him?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are both deliverables? (Guess: Yes as they are output from Processes from PMI methodology)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If both are deliverables they should be in the WBS?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32495" LastActivityDate="2018-05-30T15:45:23.307" Title="Risk register vs risk report" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;pmi&gt;&lt;deliverables&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24142" CreationDate="2018-05-30T15:45:23.307" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Question 1: Yes and no.  The report is a summary message instrument but only contains the risks and work thereof necessary for THAT communication event, summarized at the appropriate decomposition for the intended audience.  In other words, the report is whatever it needs to be to successfully communicate whatever message you need to deliver to that particular audience.  It can be verbal, summarizing one threat, delivered to one particular stakeholder.  Or it can be something entirely different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question 2:  No.  Your stakeholders will dictate what it is you need to communicate, when, how often, with what mechanism, and at what detail.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question 3:  Depends on your contract statement of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question 4:  Up to you.  For me, these are outputs of a level of effort WBS item.  My WBS would include the LOE task but may or may not include the specific outputs, depending on complexity, frequency, stakeholder desire, cost tracking need, etc.  More likely, I would exclude it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-05-30T15:45:23.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24144" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24404" CreationDate="2018-05-30T16:06:26.550" Score="1" ViewCount="182" Body="&lt;p&gt;It can look like repetitive, but I come again with the same &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/24100/wbs-and-project-management&quot;&gt;question from here&lt;/a&gt; about WBS and planning deliverables. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was &quot;advised&quot; in a meeting recently to include a planning deliverable leg. And  a WBS deliverable at n-level if I want to measure time, cost, tasks and resources later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, WBS is equals to &lt;em&gt;Scope of the project&lt;/em&gt;. Schedule are the activities to produce a deliverable, thus there is a strong relation between both. A block of activities that are not related to a deliverable it may be wrong and should be included in or update the WBS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as we are in the planning phase of the project, there is no problem to update the WBS. In the contrary, if WBS got approved, the only way to update it is through a formal change process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I include a WBS deliverable at n-level within my Planning leg of my global WBS in the early stages of the project? (Let's say when the project team is building it with post-it notes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that it is an error to include SO MUCH DETAILS in the WBS or activities as long as we can measure progress and fulfill with the objective of the deliverable and get the success of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am curious about what would be your suggestions to include the WBS deliverable within the WBS &quot;graphically&quot;. How do you deal with this. Any examples?&#xA;Or your deliverable would be scope statement directly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; Scope baseline = Scope statement + WBS + WBS dictionnary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32495" LastEditorUserId="32495" LastEditDate="2018-05-30T21:08:33.303" LastActivityDate="2019-09-11T06:11:38.343" Title="WBS and Project Planning" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;&lt;deliverables&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16315" CreationDate="2018-05-30T16:15:49.420" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kanban uses Stand Ups but the format is different than Scrum. Kanban's Stand Up focuses on the board! An effective framework for us has been discussing 4 buckets (in order of importance) for 5-15 minutes total:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;BLOCKERS?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;EMERGENCIES? Anything we need to address over other &quot;normal / higher prioritized&quot; work?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;NON-MOVERS? Why are these things stagnant?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;OTHER? Pick a class or category of items and walk down it (most important first, then a different one the next day).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember: Scrum limits work with time boxes. Kanban flows continuously and limits work by capping the amount of Work In Progress. They are different frameworks. The square peg will not fit the round hole. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32578" LastActivityDate="2018-05-30T16:15:49.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24135" CreationDate="2018-05-31T08:10:48.307" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. it is definitely a core part of project management. in fact, it is part of the project management triangle. different industries, and different organisations would have different preferred method to manage cost. however, it is also noted that there are different sizes of projects, and some PM do not really need to manage cost a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32547" LastActivityDate="2018-05-31T08:10:48.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24124" CreationDate="2018-05-31T08:40:35.240" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;the scope of work during an employment is very much a prerogative of the company and superior, and the title really doesn't mean much as different company may use different titles to refer to the same role, not to mention for small and/or agile team whereby each task member is covering many different scope of works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;for me, i think no, it is not a junior QA responsibility to elicit requirement. it should be the BA, and for PM to firm up the scope with stakeholders. Getting the requirement and analysing it require very distinct good skills. Like what David Espina mentioned, they are taking the risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, there is already a lot of things on the QA plate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32547" LastActivityDate="2018-05-31T08:40:35.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24149" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-06-01T10:55:41.827" Score="0" ViewCount="122" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our company, we have projects following from Customer Requirement with meeting up to Product delivery with training and documents as the full life cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But for some projects, we are doing 'Task-Based works'. That is, the customer asks us to do only part of the life-cycle ... the remaining work is taken care of by them. For example, Product development has done by them but they send the result to us for Testing. As another example, we will do only Functional design specification and initial configuration. Like this, we are having some projects mostly billing as per the time sheets rather than a lump-sum price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, under which method do such kind of projects fall? Some referred to this as the Agile methodology. Is that correct? If not, then what is the correct terminology for such works? Currently, we are referring to them as 'Task-Based Projects'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32592" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-06-01T13:20:15.720" LastActivityDate="2019-08-29T21:34:51.603" Title="Name of the Project lifecycle without full lifecycle" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24150" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-06-01T12:42:55.830" Score="0" ViewCount="273" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work as a QA/test engineer in a small software company.  I was assigned on Multiple(7 different) projects by my superiors in which i do testing, requirement gathering, client updates, resolving developers/clients queries &amp;amp; etc.I mostly do functional/black-box testing. Before the production release or showing it to client, I tested many good scenarios and found lots of  defects in the code. Most of them got fixed. I did my analysis and sent it to client for his approval. I had a good test strategy. Now, this module went live in production servers and client have encountered  few bugs which appears on specific conditions which he reported to me.Then i checked them &amp;amp; sent to Developer so that they can fix it but in response i got a mail from senior saying that &quot;how did you missed this bugs you are not taking your job seriously this should not happen once you release it to client it has to be 100% bug free client should never encounter any bug, developer is  not responsible for it only you is responsible for Quality &amp;amp; this mistake should never happen again&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a junior tester here,My seniors and the stakeholders don't trust my work as a tester, as how dare I say that it PASS the QA. They think that I'm careless, not worthy of working, and risky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it really possible to make any software bug free? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;QA is the only person responsible for Bugs? even if he is testing several different projects at the same time &amp;amp; updating multiple clients &amp;amp; trying to complete the projects in deadline(Where time for testing &amp;amp; resolving bugs is not mentioned in the project scope &amp;amp; not even charging the client for same)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just want to know how to deal with this situation. can anyone suggest me what to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32558" LastActivityDate="2018-06-02T22:26:50.273" Title="How should a Software Tester deal with missed Defects/bugs in Production?" Tags="&lt;quality&gt;&lt;clients&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24150" CreationDate="2018-06-01T13:09:25.690" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're describing an immature organization, seemingly political, low performing team, hostile work culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no such thing as a 100% defect free product or service of any type.  And a mature organization with high performing processes and capabilities know this and have a process of continual improvement while they also have contingencies to deal with post production care to deal with both known and unknown defects found by end users.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a QA role, your mission would be to have a constantly improving QA testing procedures, including scripts in your case, that would allow improved defect identification but your goal should never be 100% defect free.  Your post production goals should have some numbers against high to low severity defect finds that ought to be normally distributed or skews to the low side.  And as long as defects found post production are within that distribution, your testing is working as designed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What to do?  It is clear your organization thrives on finding scapegoats in its human talent versus a focus on improving processes and capabilities and having realistic goals.  The likelihood of you changing this is near zero, and by that I mean zero.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you have the option of just shrugging it off and keep working and do the best you can or go look for a better job and organization.  This is not to say that you did stellar work.  I have no idea if you did or not but do know they all of our work can be improved every day.  Do take a look at your processes and see if there was something you could have done better but do not take all the ownership here.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-06-01T13:09:25.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24150" CreationDate="2018-06-01T19:45:39.210" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with all management difficulties the real problem is communication not your skill level!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your seniors make you feel uncomfortable, misjudge your role or undervalue your skill level you should talk to them.As  a product manager,I put a lot of value into communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However by discovering defects early in the development cycle, QA testing will save time, money and frustration.&#xA;The longer a bug goes undetected, the more costly it is to fix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to do what you can to make yourself useful, as quickly as possible while causing as little overhead as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that your current job needs to be not only beneficial for the company, but to be beneficial to you, too. If you don't feel happy anymore about who you are becoming or the work that you are producing, you are not benefitting your job nor yourself to stay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user32539" LastActivityDate="2018-06-01T19:45:39.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21180" CreationDate="2018-06-01T20:23:24.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is another Jira add-on for &lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1218809/quantify&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;accounting Capex/Opex&lt;/a&gt; that helps with calculation and classification of software development work with a key difference -- there is no need to manually track time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32597" LastEditorUserId="32557" LastEditDate="2020-03-30T09:18:59.880" LastActivityDate="2020-03-30T09:18:59.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16946" CreationDate="2018-06-01T20:36:15.767" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Measuring productivity with timesheets doesn't work in software development in my opinion. Try implementing Scrum or other Agile minded process where team delivery is in focus and nobody falls into micromanagement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also try &lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1218809/quantify-ai&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Quantify&lt;/a&gt; add-on that is similar to Automated Log Work but more aligned with Scrum/Kanban methodologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32597" LastActivityDate="2018-06-01T20:36:15.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24155" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24156" CreationDate="2018-06-01T23:44:56.220" Score="5" ViewCount="541" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are using Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) to manage work items. VSTS uses a hierarchy of Epic -- Feature -- User Story -- Task. It is clear that the individual software engineer owns a 'user story'. Currently, our team is also assigning the 'feature' to a software engineer as well. The feature is a container or parent for several user stories and the different user stories could be assigned to different engineers. Should the software engineer be responsible for the 'feature' or should it be the product owner (PO)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32599" LastActivityDate="2018-06-06T15:41:34.887" Title="Should the Product Owner (PO) or Software Engineer Own the Feature Item?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;features&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24155" CreationDate="2018-06-02T06:59:15.427" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is clear that the individual software engineer owns a 'user story'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me be clear, we are not talking about Scrum here. We are talking about how to best squeeze Scrum into the ticket management system with templates that VSTS is. In Scrum, if anybody, &lt;em&gt;the development team&lt;/em&gt; &quot;owns&quot; a PBI (for example User Story) in the sprint backlog. Multiple individuals can work on the item at the same time and the whole team owns it collectively. VSTS cannot do this, but the field is mandatory, so you need a workaround. Don't assume your workaround is the norm or Scrum, it's not, it's a legacy from command&amp;amp;control project management that VSTS cannot hide. Many other systems have that problem, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what is the best workaround for items higher up the hierarchy? I'd say it's the product owner, because only they can influence the status. A feature or epic is done when all stories are done, so there is nothing the team can do about that. The PO decides when those come into a sprint to be worked on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2018-06-02T06:59:15.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24157" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-06-02T19:25:07.577" Score="5" ViewCount="355" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our company is migrating to Scrum. I've been thrust into the role of Scrum Master (with no formal training--but I'm working on that). Our team doesn't have a product owner due to the structure of our company and because we service all the other teams in the company. Instead, the team leads within our department liaise with the other product owners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Up to now, I've centralized all all backlog management to myself. I create the PBIs and tasks, with input from the team and team leads, in an effort to clear their plates of the minutia of ticket management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I read this in &lt;em&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/em&gt; today:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As new work is required, the Development Team adds it to the Sprint&#xA;  Backlog. As work is performed or completed, the estimated remaining&#xA;  work is updated. When elements of the plan are deemed unnecessary,&#xA;  they are removed. &lt;strong&gt;Only the Development Team can change its Sprint&#xA;  Backlog during a Sprint.&lt;/strong&gt; The Sprint Backlog is a highly visible,&#xA;  real-time picture of the work that the Development Team plans to&#xA;  accomplish during the Sprint, and &lt;strong&gt;it belongs solely to the&#xA;  Development Team.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not entirely clear, from &lt;em&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/em&gt;, whether or not the Scrum Master is considered part of the Development Team. In other courses, I believe the term Scrum Team refers to the Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Development Team, and the term Development Team refers simply to the product development staff (developers, testers, designers, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, should I be hands-off when it comes to the Sprint Backlog? Should the developers be creating tasks on the Sprint Backlog as necessary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a sneaking suspicion I'm doing this all wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32266" LastActivityDate="2018-06-06T12:56:12.633" Title="Can the Scrum Master groom the Sprint Backlog?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24157" CreationDate="2018-06-02T20:12:54.373" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Essentially this rule is trying to balance two things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Prevent addition or changes to the scoped work for the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Prevent additional or changes to work that happens anyway from being un-recorded&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the dev team could literally only do exactly what was on the sprint backlog any mistake in planning or missed detail would be a massive problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They need to be able to tweak the plan and those tweaks need to be recorded and show on the burndown etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But on the other hand changes to the agreed work undermines the whole point of having sprints. You need to push POs to put the effort in at the planning stage and not rely on being able to change their minds as work is in progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2018-06-02T20:12:54.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24157" CreationDate="2018-06-02T20:42:46.520" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master is not part of the Development Team. Your assessment is correct - the term &quot;Scrum Team&quot; refers to the Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Development Team. The Development Team includes all of the people who are doing the work to transform Product Backlog Items into a potentially releasable Increment at least at the end of a Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Scrum Master is doing work toward the potentially releasable Increment, then the Scrum Master is also on the Development Team. The person with the role of Scrum Master also has a role of Development Team member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like part of the confusion is between the Product Backlog and the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Backlog is a list of &quot;all features, functions, requirements, enhancements, and fixes that constitute the changes to be made to the product in future releases&quot; (from the Scrum Guide). Each of these individual items on the list are Product Backlog Items. The Product Owner is responsible for the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product Backlog Items are refined by the Scrum Team. The Product Owner and Development Team collaborate on the process of refinement. The Development Team makes sure that each Product Backlog Item has enough information to implement and any details or questions are addressed. The Development Team also provides an estimate to aid the Product Owner in ordering the Product Backlog and understanding when work may be completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Sprint Planning, one of the outputs is the Sprint Backlog. The Sprint Backlog starts as a set of Product Backlog Items that were planned for the Sprint. However, there may be discrete elements of work that the Development Team identifies in planning. These items are also added, by the Development Team, to the Sprint Backlog. Throughout the Sprint, the Development Team is responsible for maintaining the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These Sprint Backlog Items (my term - not something found in the Scrum Guide) aren't estimated. They are simply things to support transparency. By breaking down the work into more fine grained elements, the Development Team gives the Product Owner and themselves more visibility into the work being done in the Sprint. The idea of putting these work items into the Sprint Backlog is to ensure that the team knows what work is required, help people to focus on work that needs to be done, and to identify if there are threats to achieving the Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Development Team should be the one creating Sprint Backlog Items, at least at a conceptual level. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that the Development Team will create the Sprint Backlog Items in a ticket tracking tool. Perhaps the Scrum Master will do that. Just like how the Product Owner can delegate some work, the Development Team can also. Perhaps it makes sense that, if a ticket tracking tool is used, the Scrum Master may be asked to enter the work there. One of the responsibilities of the Scrum Master is to facilitate Scrum events, and ensuring that work is appropriately entered into the ticket tracking tool facilitates the refinement of Product Backlog Items as well as Sprint Planning and perhaps Sprint Review and Retrospective as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A question for you: As Scrum Master, are you facilitating the team by removing the concern of entering work into a tracking tool? Or are you entering work with the intent of instructing the team on how to turn Product Backlog Items into a potentially releasable Increment? One is consistent with the principles of Scrum. The other is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2018-06-02T20:42:46.520" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24150" CreationDate="2018-06-02T22:26:50.273" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes it is possible to be 100% defect free and Yes it is QA's responsibility not to say its 100% defect free when it isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to this of course is in the definition of 'defect'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A defect must be defined as functionality which doesn't match the specifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each specification must have an agreed test, which if passed defines the specification as met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;QA &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; run all the tests and record the passes and fails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way QA can do their job badly is by skipping tests by testing the wrong version or something or lying about the results. Everything else, defining the spec and the tests etc is shared responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the tests all pass then any problems the customer finds are either because the test wasn't good enough (get sign off and agreement that the test design matches the spec) or the spec was wrong (customer should sign off on the spec)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously in the real world the spec is rarely detailed enough that the tests are obvious or even possible. So getting sign off on the test design is &lt;em&gt;THE&lt;/em&gt; most important step. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always bring a few edge case questions to raise after agreement, (really just prior to) so that your boss realises its harder than it seems and accepts that even they can make mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it looks like they are putting the whole responsibility on you, then you know there are going to be problems in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they are the ones suggesting extra tests then you know you should have put more work in and so do they! But at least its early enough in the process not to cause disaster&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2018-06-02T22:26:50.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24149" CreationDate="2018-06-02T22:33:56.293" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like a good name to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose really both types of project follow the full lifecycle. The 'Task Based' ones have 'agree tests to be run' or whatever as their 'gather requirements' step and 'hand over test report' as their 'product delivery' step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need a name which differentiates effectively the products your company is selling. Its more of a marketing question really&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2018-06-02T22:33:56.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24135" CreationDate="2018-06-03T02:02:17.683" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cost is part of the triple constraint: schedule, budget (cost), and scope. The triple constraint is as fundamental as you can get in project management, regardless of the specific industry. So even if you don't see a section explicitly labeled &quot;Cost Management&quot; in a textbook, it is something you need to know about for any aspect of the project that requires spending money: procurement, hiring and paying resources, travel, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13325" LastActivityDate="2018-06-03T02:02:17.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24108" CreationDate="2018-06-03T19:13:33.010" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Open-source projects are often associated with agile methodologies, but you shouldn't confuse the 2 concepts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The agile manifesto calls upon self-organising teams - in that sense, there is no project manager in the traditional sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are 3 roles in scrum&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the product owner - essentially the stakeholder's advocate &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the scrum master: providing methodology and structure, but not deciding on the contents. The scrum master can also act as a moderator, facilator and coach.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the team members: there is no leader, the team is supposed to&#xA;be self-organising.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28673" LastActivityDate="2018-06-03T19:13:33.010" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21058" CreationDate="2018-06-04T10:06:10.740" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would have simply switched him to pair programming or pair him in any other task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you should check out &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_programming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Wikipedia article on pair programming&lt;/a&gt;. The Question asked is not unique but happens in many teams... two people working together will not only be more efficient but also gives an opportunity to brain storm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6688" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-06-05T13:32:01.673" LastActivityDate="2018-06-05T13:32:01.673" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24127" CreationDate="2018-06-04T12:16:34.500" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In fact, the Project Management Institute has two monograph about the evidence associated to Project Management practices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://marketplace.pmi.org/Pages/ProductDetail.aspx?GMProduct=00100020701&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Quantifying the Value of Project Management&lt;/a&gt;. The monographs shows that Project Management practices improve schedule and cost predictability.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://marketplace.pmi.org/Pages/ProductDetail.aspx?GMProduct=00101065301&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Researching the Value of Project Management&lt;/a&gt;. The monograph establishes a research program for the subject and provides some qualitative evidence about the benefits of the practices.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the monographs has not gone through the typical journal peer-review process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32561" LastActivityDate="2018-06-04T12:16:34.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24167" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24174" CreationDate="2018-06-04T14:59:23.207" Score="5" ViewCount="1283" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been a SM now for about 3 years and I enjoy many elements of the role and so far I have had really positive feedback from my stakeholders. The PO says I have good influence over them in making improvements and engineering managers say they are getting what they want from me as a scrum master so it seems to be good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I do find however is that I go from being very busy during sprint end/start weeks to be very bored. I literally am not sure how to fill my day and its quite demotivating. I have started have 1-2-1’s with all my team members as I think it important for they evolution to agile greatness but I still have huge gaps of my day when I have nothing to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have regular workshops with the team, but I don’t want to take them away from their desks too much during the sprint because then they can’t deliver on their commitments. I facilitate all their ceremonies and I do participate in the agile community in the organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find however that if I am not doing what I mentioned above I have not much to actually do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any suggestions of things I am maybe not doing that I should be doing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastEditorUserId="4364" LastEditDate="2018-06-06T08:59:26.150" LastActivityDate="2018-06-06T10:35:18.553" Title="How to fill my day as a Scrum Master?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24167" CreationDate="2018-06-04T15:24:57.793" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a common question. One helpful resource as a starting point is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrummasterchecklist.org/pdf/ScrumMaster_Checklist_12_unbranded.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrummaster Checklist&lt;/a&gt;. It's not meant to be literally a checklist of things to do each day, but rather a list of things that a Scrummaster could be doing that can give you ideas of where to fill things in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You didn't happen to mention working with the PO or stakeholders in your question. There might be more effective ways to approach the backlog or meet use needs than the current approach that you can look at. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Past that, look at what the team's biggest pain points are. Are they something inside the team or outside of the team? Maybe there are organizational impediments that you can be working on. Nothing says you have to limit your coaching to the members of the Scrum team if coaching someone else in the organization would ultimately help your team be more effective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, don't forget self-improvement. Reading blogs and publications, attending Scrum community meetings, taking new courses, and upping your skills will have huge payoff for the team in the long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-06-04T15:24:57.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24167" CreationDate="2018-06-05T11:31:55.323" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master I totally sympathise with your question. The Scrum Master role is very peaky and troughy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The worst thing you can do is create meetings or other distractions for the team just to keep yourself busy. There will inevitably be times when you should slip in to the background and let the team get on with things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to best fill your time? Well some options are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider taking on more than one team. This has to be done with great care though as you should revert back to one team if you find yourself over-stretched.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are technical, then perhaps pick up some low priority tasks from the backlog. Examples of what I have done include: resolving code quality metric warnings (like checkstyle, findbugs), fixing minor technical debt items, improving the quality of logging/error codes, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coaching people outside the team. I have found it bother interesting and useful to coach non-technical people on agile. Spreading the knowledge of agile widely will benefit your team in the long-term.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you chose to do though, be sure that you can quickly and easily revert back to supporting your team if they need you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-06-05T11:31:55.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23899" CreationDate="2018-06-05T11:52:07.280" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Esther Derby has done some interesting analysis on the skills and qualities that Agile Coaches and ScrumMasters have which might be a way to answer your question: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.estherderby.com/2011/11/scrummasters-and-agile-coaches-more-than-a-title.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.estherderby.com/2011/11/scrummasters-and-agile-coaches-more-than-a-title.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I found in the UK, which may be different to Portugal, is that the term Scrum Master is used by recruiters as a general term for a change agent that works at team level, regardless of the method. I have been hired as a &quot;Scrum Master&quot; but the whole organisation uses Kanban. I agree with this interpretation as well. So I see a Scrum Master more focused on the team level and day to day activities team activities. This does involve Agile Coaching, but at a team level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An Agile Coach would generally be hired in the U.K. for an Agile Transformation. So they would for example take a whole product and engineering department and introduce them to the values, practices and disciplines and mobilise this with help from rep's from each team whether it be scrum masters or team leads etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some organisations call all their change agents &quot;Agile Coaches&quot; e.g. Spotify but they are in fact more like Scrum Masters. They probably use this term because the teams use Kanban or Scrum or whatever they want. So its like a blanket term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastActivityDate="2018-06-05T11:52:07.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24172" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24173" CreationDate="2018-06-06T05:59:05.850" Score="2" ViewCount="108" Body="&lt;p&gt;I manage an online product, which has a lot of customers. However I feel the adoption rate is not high enough and want to investigate who don’t like it and why not. I believe there are 4 types of customers, and their reasons of not liking the product vary. But I don’t know the distribution of the types of the customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to design a questionnaire and randomly pick 1000 customers to send out the questionnaire to ask which type of customers they are and why they don’t like the product. The problem is some customers might just not respond to the questionnaire. This could skew the results as maybe one particular type of customer would not respond, leaving me to conclude that this type of customer doesn’t have issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you guys know how to do this type of investigation to get more accurate results?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32631" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-06-06T13:23:08.027" LastActivityDate="2019-05-02T19:00:38.800" Title="How to investigate who don’t like my product and why not like it?" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;customer&gt;&lt;customer-satisfaction&gt;&lt;product-manager&gt;&lt;customer-experience&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2019-05-02T19:26:20.703" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24172" CreationDate="2018-06-06T08:57:36.373" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you are discussing is a &lt;strong&gt;funnel&lt;/strong&gt; for a &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;customer feedback loop&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; to &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;iterate on your product&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The good news is that lots of &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;lean startup&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; advice exists to help and guide you solve this problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an in-depth view of &lt;a href=&quot;https://amzn.to/2JlCOI0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Lean Startup&lt;/a&gt; and the measurements and metrics you should track to improve your product you can start with the Eric Reis book, &lt;a href=&quot;https://amzn.to/2JlCOI0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lean Startup&lt;/a&gt; but a better and more pragmatic explanation can be found in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://amzn.to/2xMErx2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lean Series&lt;/a&gt; by O'Reilly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Pirate Metrics&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dave McClure popularised the idea of &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats/startup-metrics-for-pirates-long-version&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pirate Metrics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, named because they folow the acronym AARRR!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A cquisition&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A ctivation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;R etention&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;R evenue&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;R eferall&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EnQnr.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EnQnr.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to decide which aspect of the customer funnel you feel is being impacted by the sub-optimal product.   Are customers rejecting it early?  Are they refusing to refer it?  Are they unwilling to pay for it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's important to understand about AARRR, because only when you understand all the metrics, you will understand where exactly is wrong with your product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have linked the Dave McClure SlideShare above.  It is where you should immediately spend your time before progressing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Customer Personas&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have already identified that you think you have four different types of customer and that is great.  If you didn't know it already these are customer personas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hubspot has a great primer on how to format and use &lt;a href=&quot;https://knowledge.hubspot.com/contacts-user-guide-v2/how-to-create-personas&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;customer personas here&lt;/a&gt; and they also have &lt;a href=&quot;https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/buyer-persona-questions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;20 Customer Persona Questions You Should Be Asking&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Creating the Funnel&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Segment your customer personas into the 4 personalities you have identified&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Send your survey to an equal number of each persona&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Record the response rate of each segment to identified your most engaged customer group&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plan remedial actions for the customer segments that are not engaged&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Analyse the survey data responses and separate the answers into bug fixes, performance improvements, feature requests, customer support and customer engagement  (For instance making the Amazon webpage more responsive is different from Amazon increasing the number of email touchpoints after I purchase a product (6 email touchpoints)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify your super-user community&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contact them directly inviting them to participate in improving the prduct directly through a focus group, screen sharing etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask the super-users what problems they are facing and how much pain they are facing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Triage the painkiller features from the vitamin features (See &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/230736&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Painkiller versus Vitamin&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sit down with the Development Team and decide which Feature requests can/should be prioritised using &lt;strong&gt;MoSCoW&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;strong&gt;Must&lt;/strong&gt; have, &lt;strong&gt;Should&lt;/strong&gt; Have, &lt;strong&gt;Could&lt;/strong&gt; have if we have more time, &lt;strong&gt;Would&lt;/strong&gt; have if resources were unlimited&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implement the features iteratively and then use the feature release as a new customer engagement launch pad (Email &amp;quot;You asked for, we listened!) asking for users to try the new feature and engage via social media what they think&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Repeat ad inifitum until product-market fit is achieved&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Caveat&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whilst I have massively simmplified the process, there are  lots of areas of expertise in this workflow and it requires considerable amounts of research and planning from the Product Manager.  You are aiming for a data-driven approach to iteration with a human touch.  Good luck :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-06-06T09:05:53.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24167" CreationDate="2018-06-06T10:35:18.553" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Now, it could be that you have worked to create a hyper-performing team and there is no further room for improvement. A measure of this is that velocity (or similar metric) has increased by an order of magnitude in the last year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the most likely scenario is that you and your team have become 'comfortable' and velocity has not increased significantly in the last few Sprints and/or there is a high variance in velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend you take a look at the Scrum pattern &lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com/a/scrumplop.org/published-patterns/product-organization-pattern-language/kaizen-pulse&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;'Kaizen Pulse'&lt;/a&gt;, summarized as, &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Alternate periods of controlled velocity with spikes of process improvement&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot; If your team have plateaued then it is up to you as Scrum Master to recognize the next major improvement (transparency), instigate a period of change to implement it and measure its success or otherwise (inspect and adapt).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For general inspiration on how as a Scrum Master should avoid comfort zones, I recommend &lt;a href=&quot;https://medium.com/@adiyakydyrbekova/job-title-troublemaker-5e12a508ec07&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;'Job Title: Troublemaker' by Adiya Mohr&lt;/a&gt; - read time = 3 minutes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Go out and ask the uncomfortable questions. People will hate it. And that is fine. Some people might actually hate the questions so much that they will want to go into discussions about it. When the ugliness has been made painfully obvious — people cannot sugarcoat it anymore... That is my actual day-to-day-work: seeing the ugly things and talking about them. A lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a demonstration about how a Scrum Master coaches a team to improve incrementally towards hyper-performance to achieve an 'impossible goal', try &lt;a href=&quot;https://vimeo.com/42772592#t=5500s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this video of Jim Coplien&lt;/a&gt;. Video starts at 1:31:40, watch for approx 9 minutes, ensuring you continue watching after the team demo ends to hear the learning outcomes (until 1:40:05).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29315" LastActivityDate="2018-06-06T10:35:18.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24172" CreationDate="2018-06-06T11:36:08.247" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reliability and validity of testing instruments are extremely hard to create.  Even those created by true experts in this field have reliability and validity issues.  And then you have the challenge of administering the instrument in way to minimize self-selection bias and other types of skewing biases, including confirmation and experimenter's biases. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although @Venture2099's answer is quite reasonable, you won't find your answer on this site to the degree where you can build the instrument and administer.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, buy it.  There are firms that specialize in this, firms that are staffed by masters and PhD level social scientists and statisticians.  Likely very expensive but the results could yield a product change that will enhance revenue that will eventually pay for it, i.e., a favorable ROI.  And even using these types of firms you will still have threats of receiving inaccurate findings but doing this on your own will most certainly yield results that are not credible.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-06-06T11:36:08.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24157" CreationDate="2018-06-06T12:56:12.633" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the key phrase from the Scrum Guide that applies here is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By the end of the Sprint Planning, the Development Team should be able to explain to the Product Owner and Scrum Master how it intends to work as a self-organizing team to accomplish the Sprint Goal and create the anticipated Increment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note it is the Development Team doing the explaining to the SM (and PO). A Sprint Backlog of items (tasks, artefacts, outcomes, whatever is needed) that focus on the Product Backlog items and the Sprint Goal is a great way for the Development Team to explaing how they forecast the Increment will me created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also consider the wording for the Daily Scrum that (not unconicidentally) uses much of the same language:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Every day, the Development Team should understand how it intends to work together as a self-organizing team to accomplish the Sprint Goal and create the anticipated Increment by the end of the Sprint...  the Development Team is responsible for conducting the Daily Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Daily Scrum is one of the inspect and adapt events during the Sprint. The Sprint Backlog is insepcted: are we on track to complete the increment, will it meet the Sprint Goal? If not, then the Sprint Backlog needs to be adapted to best ensure a successful Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the above concerns the Development Team, you as Scrum Master still have a role to play. You have to help the team do what is needed without actually doing it for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think the Development Team are have not sufficiently explained how they intend to deliver the increment then you need to decide whether to directly intervene. While it is OK to facilitate experiments for the Developers to learn from even when they fail, it is probably not OK to allow Sprint Planning to end when a failed Sprint will almost certainly result. And be conscious of the time-box expiring!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, you should be observing Daily Scrums and deciding to intervene early enough in the Sprint to best ensure success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29315" LastActivityDate="2018-06-06T12:56:12.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24155" CreationDate="2018-06-06T15:41:34.887" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The presence of the 'Assignee' field in Jira lowers velocity by completely destroying teamwork -Jim Coplien&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This reflects my own experience! Team assigns an item to a person, person becomes accountable for that item. Feels a lot like favoring tools and individuals over interactions!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole Team is accountable for delivering the Increment and achieving the Sprint Goal. If a Developer doesn't know which pair/swarm/person is working on an item then they probably weren't paying proper attention at the Daily Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice would be to leave it blank. If it is mandatory in your tool then create a dummy user (e.g. Jerry Gergich); if it must be a real person then pick the most unlikely person. But alwasy use the same person so that no one gets the idea that a single person can be accountable for an item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29315" LastActivityDate="2018-06-06T15:41:34.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24132" CreationDate="2018-06-06T16:27:14.940" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Product Owner (PO) has product vision, PO creates Product Backlog items (PBIs) a.k.a. 'promises' to have conversations, having those conversations with the whole Scrum Team creates enabling specifications, and the Product PBIs near the top of the Product Backlog become product Increments in waiting. It seems you are having conversations, which is certainly the most important element here, but without other elements of the framework your approach lacks structure. If your PBIs aren't driven by an empowered PO with a vision, who is accountable for building the right product? Having a PBI to write PBIs it a bit 'meta' and is probably a symptom of a deeper problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29315" LastActivityDate="2018-06-06T16:27:14.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24132" CreationDate="2018-06-06T19:04:48.750" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum only cares about a few artifacts - the Product Backlog (and the Product Backlog Items that are contained within it), the Sprint Backlog, and the Increment that is delivered at least at the end of the Sprint. The definition of the Product Backlog is &quot;an ordered list of everything that is known to be needed in the product&quot;. The work to put in more work is not something that is needed in the product. By this definition, I would be able to argue against putting the work into the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, we should also consider the principles of Transparency and Openness. It may be beneficial for all, both inside the team and outside, to have a good idea of what work the team is doing. Some work is regular and ongoing, while other tasks and work is more defined and has deadlines or explicit outputs that people are depending on. Tracking this work may be helpful to the team to see what everyone is working on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, I would recommend asking the team. It also depends on the tool(s) that you are using. However, I would try to figure out ways to make the work of the team visible to the appropriate stakeholders in an appropriate manner. That may be using the same tool as you use for the backlog, but applying filters to ensure that these items don't interfere with the way the other users interact with it. Or it may be using an alternative tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2018-06-06T19:04:48.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24051" CreationDate="2018-06-07T10:45:53.433" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Developer who has time to chat to friends and smoke outside is the ideal &lt;s&gt;victim&lt;/s&gt; Team member to be first responder for unplanned work e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an urgent BAU item that must be done right now&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a Developer is blocked and would like to pair/swarm for a while&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the PO wants a status update&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...or anything else that could distruct Team members who are actively working on the Increment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if &quot;is never at his desk&quot; means this Developer is not &lt;em&gt;available&lt;/em&gt; to the Team then his spare capacity cannot be used effectively or at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have pointed out, there may not be a problem here. I think we can draw a parallel with the PO; that is, the PO is normally physically absent from the Team for periods of time but if they are fulfilling their role (Scrum Events etc) and maintain reasonable availability to the Team to clarify, give feedback, etc then there should be few issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One positive aspect is it's (presumably) very apparent when this Developer is not actively working on the Increment. Their empty chair is very &lt;em&gt;transparent&lt;/em&gt; to the Team. Personally, I favour sitting in the chair and putting my feet up on the desk when no one is giving me anything to do (when I rather think they should be), it sends a really clear message! As SM, I'd much rather see an empty chair than learn after the fact that a Developer had been sitting at their desk 'refining'  items in the Product Backlog in isolation. I'd also ask questions to ensure everyone else in the Team was genuinely happy with the whole 'empty chair' thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible dysfunctions to reflect on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team members failing holding each other to account.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Individuals solving Impediments as they arise (rather than raising them to the Team).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Impediments only being raised in Daily Scrum/Retro.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I-shaped people (rather than T-Shaped people).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Individuals working on tasks (rather than the Team working to deliver the Increment)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint Backlog Items being 'owned' by individuals (rather than the Team).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other Developers similarly have frequent 'slack' time but are not being transparent about it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29315" LastActivityDate="2018-06-07T10:45:53.433" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23942" CreationDate="2018-06-07T12:40:16.730" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do the four Scrum Teams &quot;take&quot; from the same 'backlog'? Does the &quot;main line&quot; describe a single Product?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you answered 'yes' then I'd be wondering, who is the 'real' PO for this product?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The default position should be one PO per Product Backlog. Often this results in too much work for one person, so consider &lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com/a/scrumplop.org/published-patterns/product-organization-pattern-language/product-owner-team&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Product Owner team pattern&lt;/a&gt; i.e. one PO her helpers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another suggestion I have is to take a look at scrum.org's &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/resources/scaling-scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nexus&lt;/a&gt;, with a view to it structure rather than suggesting you install it 'as is'. Of course, a scaling framework should only be considered when the costs of handling multiple Scrum Teams exceeds the inherent costs of the scaling framework. I would recommend trying the the Product Owner team pattern first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29315" LastActivityDate="2018-06-07T12:40:16.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23906" CreationDate="2018-06-07T14:48:19.497" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suspect Scrum involves too much overhead for a pair of Devs, possibly why it is contraindicated in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;. Having no meaningful Product Owner makes Scrum unworkable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I was in that situation, I'd be tempted to experiment with &lt;a href=&quot;https://hackernoon.com/one-day-sprints-1ce1f53a08b2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;one day Sprints&lt;/a&gt;, being sure to include a brief daily Review / demo / sharing with stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29315" LastActivityDate="2018-06-07T14:48:19.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20796" CreationDate="2018-06-07T16:12:46.563" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your SM cancels the Daily Scrum they had previously scheduled, citing the Refinement meeting that day as justification, then I suspect they are testing you! The correct response is for the Development Team to self organise to schedule their own Daily Scrum and hold it in a location where the SM cannot help but observe. You will make the SM proud by demonstrating you have attained a new level of Scrum understanding and they will be privately pleased that their experiment worked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it might be the case that the SM is letting you down. The Daily Scrum is the Development Team's main 'insoect and adapt' event, their daily replanning opportunity (not that these activities should necessarily be limited to once per day!) Why would the SM deny you this? Why would you let the SM deny you this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something to make the SM aware of is someone else in the organisation wanting to book a meeting in the Development Team's regular Daily Scrum time-slot, to ensure they protect the team by working with the person to reschedule their where possible (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;The Daily Scrum is held at the same time and place each day to reduce complexity&quot;&lt;/a&gt;). Remember the SM is a servant leader, they work for you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29315" LastActivityDate="2018-06-07T16:12:46.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24187" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24188" CreationDate="2018-06-07T22:06:10.713" Score="2" ViewCount="207" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read some common &quot;good practices&quot; out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does scrum specify the metrics or the team must determine what and how to use metrics, processes, etc. to the benefit of the product?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32567" LastActivityDate="2018-06-08T10:20:27.067" Title="Product backlog items must be estimated in story points?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24187" CreationDate="2018-06-08T00:24:12.440" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The definition of Scrum, maintained by its creators, Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum goes not require any particular techniques or processes for estimation or prioritization of work. The metrics and techniques used are driven by the environment in which the team is working and what helps the team to succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2018-06-08T00:24:12.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24189" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-06-08T06:30:38.683" Score="0" ViewCount="4714" Body="&lt;p&gt;Probably a noddy question, but need to ask.  I'd like to be able to demonstrate real time slippage on my plan, for remodeling impact purposes.  I have both original baseline dates and current dates added to my plan.  Is there a way of linking these to show a separate column with real time, total days slippage&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32646" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-01T10:03:10.993" LastActivityDate="2018-11-01T10:03:10.993" Title="How to show slippage in MS Project 2016?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24190" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-06-08T09:06:08.693" Score="4" ViewCount="151" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do scrum have a method for handling tasks which can not be estimated in any meaningful way? I'm going to give an example we faced recently. We sell some hardware devices and recently found out that after we upgraded our compiler the new compiler introduced a (subtle) bug on some of our older devices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is still unclear if the bug is in the old chip or the compiler but it doesn't really matter to us since we need to fix the problem - and the only way we can fix it is to locate the part of our code which is causing the problem and write it in a way so it compiles into a binary which runs as expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From our point of view it's a very black box problem. My initial gut feeling was that it would take 3 man weeks, but it ended up taking closer to 3 man months. If the developer had been lucky and started looking at the part of the code which turned our to be problematic from the start he could have solved it in 2-3 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We don't really know how to handle these problems. It is completely impossible to break down, and while working on it there is very little progression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like to compare it to making a mathematical proof. When you have the right idea it is fast and straight forward (or can be), but until then it can be extremely hard/impossible to say if you are close to solving it. You can sit for hours or days, and when the right idea suddenly pops into your head it's solved in 20 minutes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32527" LastActivityDate="2018-06-24T21:14:54.850" Title="Handle stories which can not be estimated" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18537" CreationDate="2018-06-08T09:28:18.507" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;@Barnaby Golden says they find it &quot;difficult to see any conflict of interest between the Scrum Master role and any other development team role.&quot; I can see (and have seen) plenty!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider an architect that has a Developer role on two teams: can each Team respectively hold the architect fully accountable to their Team? I can imagine a scenario where 'urgent unplanned work' arises on one Team, the architect jumps in on that Team and the other Team is left high and dry resulting in a failed Sprint for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now consider a single Team where the architect has both a Developer role and the SM role: when some 'urgent unplanned work' arises for the Team, how does the architect react? Does the architect jump into full SM mode to ensure psychological safety is maintained, the Development Team is does not over-commit, protect from outside meddling (mandatory overtime etc)? Or do they dive into full Developer mode and start 'facilitating' whiteboard sessions, writing and reviewing code, helping test, actively removing Impediments, etc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have worked on multiple Scrum Teams which had a Developer+SM person and they always reverted to Developer mode and the first thing to go out the window was psychological safety i.e. just when we needed a SM most of all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course in &lt;em&gt;theory&lt;/em&gt; there is no reason why the architect cannot continue to do both roles to their full. But can you imagine these conversations happening?:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The architect as SM holds the Development Team to account for not&#xA;holding the SM to account for not being an SM when they need one?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Architect: &quot;...so we forecast we will narrowly miss being done by the end of Sprint with the amount of work and six FTEs.&quot;&#xA;Project manager: &quot;But you have 6.5 FTEs?&quot;&#xA;Architect: &quot;No, under these circumstances I've reverted to full SM mode. I won't be contributing further to the Increment.&quot;&#xA;Project manager: &quot;Ah yes, of course. I totally get that.&quot;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK, I'm being a little facetious but you get my point. There can be real conflicts of interest and, for whatever reason, it is the SM role that suffers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@Barnaby Golden mentions services to the Team but not the other two: services to the PO and to the organisation respectively. In my experience, I've not seen a Developer+SM person who has provided these services effectively -- and usually not at all -- because they are too focused on their own Team. There usually aren't enough hours in the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line for me is this: those of us who have worked on a Team where the SM is a career SM/agile coach, is full time and fully dedicated to the SM role, knows the value that such a person brings to the Team and, given the choice, would opt for this scenario every time. I feel that, if someone thinks a Developer+SM does not in some way compromise the SM role, then they have yet to work with a really good SM person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29315" LastActivityDate="2018-06-08T09:28:18.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24190" CreationDate="2018-06-08T10:06:17.077" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my recent practice, when we had an item the Development Team could not split nor estimate, we played a 'spike' i.e. an investigative piece of work with a time-box and agreed outcome (further items that can be estimated). If such an investigation came back with enormous estimate such as the OP alludes to, we would have a major problem and exceptional situation that has a high risk of disrupting or blocking short term Product development. Scrum wouldn't help us much, we'd be looking outside the box for a resolution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can we get a contractor?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can we steal someone from elsewhere in the org?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can we compensate the customer?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can we defer and risk being sued?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing Scrum doesn't mean you can forget about all those traditional/boring things like riak management, business continuity, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developers on Scrum Teams can suddenly resign or require long term leave at short notice to leave you in a similar situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At face value, I would identify the pair of Developers with the experience to best deal with the bug, take them out of the Scrum Team at the first opportunity (right now if it is urgent enough) and plan to continue without them for a reasonable number of Sprints (you may have metrics if this kind of thing has happened before!). The current Sprint may fail but probably doesn't meet the conditions for stopping the Sprint; that's for the PO to decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, velocity will take a hit and your ability to forecast will be hampered. But I'd prefer this situation to one where the the bug and the bug hunters are kept &quot;within Scrum&quot; with an open-ended forecast as regards fixing the bug within a Sprint (when everyone expects the Sprint to fail).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29315" LastActivityDate="2018-06-08T10:06:17.077" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24187" CreationDate="2018-06-08T10:20:27.067" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could write a whole book answering this question! Happily, Mike Cohen has:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/books/agile-estimating-and-planning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Estimating and Planning by Mike Cohen&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I strongly advise you to try &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/planning-poker&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;planning poker&lt;/a&gt; with your Team. Hopefully you will discover the value of esitmation lies in the process -- the conversations -- and not the output (story points, gummy bears, dog breeds, time granules, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also consider the &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/hashtag/noestimates&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;#NoEstimates&lt;/a&gt; movement. The idea is to split items down into further items &lt;a href=&quot;https://hackernoon.com/work-small-even-if-it-makes-no-sense-6bd1f401fc3a&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;small&lt;/a&gt; enough so that the meed to estimate each of them goes away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note to self: need to buy a three-card &lt;a href=&quot;https://estimation.lunarlogic.io/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1 / TFB / NFC&lt;/a&gt; planning poker deck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29315" LastActivityDate="2018-06-08T10:20:27.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16372" CreationDate="2018-06-08T12:09:26.897" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe it is this kind of historical situation that led to the Agile value&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;customer collaboration over contract negotiation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also take of note of &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;responding to change over following a plan&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PO has a customer engagement problem which they need to solve before work can start to avoid an expensive mess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Father of Scrum &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scruminc.com/agile-contracts-money-for-nothing-and/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jeff Sutherland&lt;/a&gt; devised a Scrum pattern, &lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com/a/scrumplop.org/published-patterns/value-stream/product-backlog/change-for-free&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;'Change For Free&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com/a/scrumplop.org/published-patterns/value-stream/product-backlog/money-for-nothing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Money for Nothing'&lt;/a&gt;. While it is unlikely your organisation or customers are ready to sign up to such Agile contracts, it is worth reviewing these to understand how the PO should be engaging with customer optimse value and ROI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29315" LastActivityDate="2018-06-08T12:09:26.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24189" CreationDate="2018-06-08T12:09:37.177" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Open up your Finish Variance column.  It calculates gap between Finish Date and Baseline Finish Date.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-06-08T12:09:37.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16315" CreationDate="2018-06-08T13:07:54.353" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;@Todd A. Jacobs has provided an excellent overview. I want to expand on one aspect:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a stand-up is intended to provide a mini-planning meeting for the current day's work&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this slightly misses the point as regards Scrum. I rather think it should be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the Daily Scrum is a re-planning meeting for the current Sprint&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a great fan of the standard 'three questions' format (other than as a possible starting point for a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuhari&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;shu&lt;/a&gt; Team). My favourite question for the Daily Scrum is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How confident are you that we will create the Increment as planned and meet the Sprint Goal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a significant number of Developers express low confidence -- perhaps gleaned via &lt;a href=&quot;http://jakecalabrese.com/learning-with-fist-of-five-voting/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;fist of five voting&lt;/a&gt; -- then what everyone had planned for today when they came into the meeting is of little consequence - we need to do some re-planning as a Team!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Daily Scrum is only 'mini' in that it is time-boxed for 15 minutes but its implications can be much larger. In the above scenario, I would expect the Daily Scrum to wrap-up quickly to be swiftly followed by a Team meeting around a whiteboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29315" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-08-05T08:06:39.867" LastActivityDate="2020-08-05T08:06:39.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24190" CreationDate="2018-06-08T13:26:55.390" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not unusual in Scrum and a common approach is to use a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/spikes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;spike&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of a spike is to spend some time investigating an unknown with the intention of learning enough to be able to estimate it. Typically spikes are time-boxed so that they don't impact too much on the capacity estimates of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to remember that a spike does not need to solve everything. It just needs to do enough, such that the team has a lot more confidence in estimating. Once you are at this point the work can be treated like any other backlog item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2018-06-24T20:32:07.343" LastActivityDate="2018-06-24T20:32:07.343" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12623" CreationDate="2018-06-08T14:11:13.853" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Q. What do British monarchs and Sprints have in common?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A. Upon the demise of the current one the next one starts without interregnum. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_king_is_dead,_long_live_the_king!&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Sprint is dead, long live the Sprint!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the current Sprint ends on Friday then the next Sprint will by definition start on the same Friday**.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Full disclosure: I've only had experience of Scrum Sprints where the Review and Retro was scheduled on the Friday, Planning was scheduled on the Following Monday and the Sprints ended and started somewhere between the two (not knowing or caring exactly when). In these situations it seemed to me there was a lot of 'slack' time imposed on the around these three events. Now, I'm all for 'slack' time, I'd rather it was not imposed at certain times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if I was King of the Team, them Sprint Review would be on Wednesday morning, immediately followed by Sprint Planning (I lay on a lavish lunch, naturally). After Planning, Developers could start working on the Increment, time allowing. (I'd have a different cadence entirely for the Retro but that's another matter...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way, the weekends could be utilised more effectively. We may be unique (and rubbish) here but often we have some very long process that can take hours and sometimes days to run; it is best to have them finished well before the end of the Sprint. And if it looks like it will be a 'sprint-finish' (no pun intended) to the end of the Sprint then I'd rather we do it at the start of the working week when everyone is fresh off the weekend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd love to hear feedback from anyone who has experimented with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;** For the pedants: this assumes &lt;a href=&quot;http://mathworld.wolfram.com/OpenInterval.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;intervals with open endpoints&lt;/a&gt;. With closed endpoints, the next Sprint could end just before the last time granule on Friday, in which case the next Sprint would start at midnight on Saturday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29315" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-06-08T14:29:59.337" LastActivityDate="2018-06-08T14:29:59.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24200" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-06-08T18:24:54.203" Score="0" ViewCount="193" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm new at ms project and I have some questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's suppose that I have a human resource named &quot;T1&quot; that works from 2 pm to 11 pm, and that we have a machine named &quot;m1&quot; that can be working all day.  If I assign both of the resources to a task, supposing that the machine is available to start the task at 10 am, ms project tells me that the test can start at 10 am. But that is not true because my human resource isn't in the company yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every time I try to assign a human resource and a machine to a task, ms project schedules the task to an hour that the machine is &quot;free&quot; even if the human resource has another task for the same hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am using ms project 2017 and I want to know if there is any option that allows me to schedule tasks for compatible hours to all the resources that I want to use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32651" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-06-08T18:37:23.290" LastActivityDate="2021-05-28T14:00:40.090" Title="Ms project - assign different resources with different schedules to a task" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;schedule&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24201" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-06-08T19:11:33.313" Score="2" ViewCount="116" Body="&lt;p&gt;Something that occurs quite often in outsourced software projects is the vendor underestimates the complexity or learning curve associated with an agreed-upon statement of work, and wants to increase the cost halfway through the project when they realize they underestimated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is - Is there a fair way of deciding when the vendor should &quot;eat&quot; the unforeseen level of effort and when the customer should, indeed, pay more?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5810" LastActivityDate="2018-06-10T17:38:51.043" Title="Under what circumstances should a software vendor be allowed to increase charges due to unforeseen complexity?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;&lt;outsourcing&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24201" CreationDate="2018-06-08T19:41:44.123" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I infer from your question that the contract type in this context is a firm fixed price model.  If so, the seller is on the hook for completion of the contracted scope no matter the financial loss the seller experiences, except when explicit stop loss criteria in the contract have been met.  If stop loss language was poorly written or absent, then there is no trigger a seller can use to have the buyer come back to the table.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the reality is that if the seller is in a serious loss situation, the work or its quality is in jeopardy and no one really wins.  It is in the buyer's best interest to sit back down with the seller and work out a more reasonable deal in order to keep the project going so everyone wins.  The risk here is that the buyer can lose confidence and stop the work for cause, possibly litigate for damages, and ruin the seller's reputation in the industry.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the best solution is, when estimating work that is quite unknown or with heavy risks or a FoAK (first of a kind), to use a different type of contract model, such as Time and Materials or Cost Plus Fee.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-06-08T19:41:44.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24201" CreationDate="2018-06-09T05:13:16.967" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This usually happens when Project &lt;strong&gt;Scope&lt;/strong&gt; document is not prepared well.&#xA;As a software engineer, we sometimes miss to put important functionalities and they come up as unforseen. And it comes very necessary to work on sub-routines/functions which are underlying the given software specifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask the vendor to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Raise a documented change request&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain the need to put additional efforts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After all this, you pay more only if it makes sense to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You shouldn't pay if it there is any mistake or delay in delivery previously  &lt;strong&gt;documented&lt;/strong&gt; functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13671" LastActivityDate="2018-06-09T05:13:16.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24201" CreationDate="2018-06-09T15:37:33.167" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contract disputes are a way to manage &lt;em&gt;financial&lt;/em&gt; risk to the company, not schedule risk. As a purely practical matter, you can't really transfer schedule risk away through contractual means, no matter what the contract may say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the short term, your immediate options will be based on a business analysis of your company's needs and alternatives. Also, keep in mind that the selected option is more likely to be based on political decisions by senior management than anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Identify the options and associated costs, and present them to management for a decision. Then focus on fixing your processes for the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Brooks' Law Applies Here&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there a fair way of deciding when the vendor should &quot;eat&quot; the unforeseen level of effort and when the customer should, indeed, pay more?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While some answers may address this legalistically, or discuss the benefits of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;agile principle&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;em&gt;customer collaboration over contract negotiation&lt;/em&gt;, at heart you're simply asking the wrong question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;pragmatic&lt;/em&gt; question in any such dispute should be: &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Do I need the outcome more than I need the original agreement or payment terms?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; At the end of the day, while both sides can assign blame, affix responsibility, or lawyer up, none of these things actually get work done. Even if you're willing to walk away from your relationship with the vendor, you are then faced with hard choices about who will do the work, how soon they can actually deliver it, or whether you can get the end result you need at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Brooks' Law&lt;/a&gt; often applies here, because your project is likely already late. Disputing contracts, switching vendors, or seeking alternative solutions at this point may make your project even later. Whether or not this is &lt;em&gt;acceptable&lt;/em&gt; from a business point of view is ultimately a strategic or risk management decision, rather than strictly a contractual one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Fix Your Process and Controls&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't really undo the damage at this point, because all your options will either cost more, reduce scope or quality, or delay your product delivery. Maybe all of the above. However, you can analyze the process failure, and aim to do better next time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most such cases, the problem isn't actually contractual. The real issue is that &lt;strong&gt;the business didn't learn about a problem until it was too late.&lt;/strong&gt; Agile processes address this through continuous collaboration, transparency, and tight inspect-and-adapt cycles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's generally much better to implement &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fail-fast&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;fail-fast&lt;/a&gt; project controls so that you can either adjust the project or terminate it early before incurring excessive &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sunk costs&lt;/a&gt; or finding yourself facing the dilemma of whether or not to chase sunk costs. Whatever process or control failure allowed the project to reach this juncture without lots of forewarning that your budget or target dates were at risk is flawed, and should be adjusted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, even if the company &quot;outsourced&quot; the work on its software project, someone internal to the company is still responsible for the delivery of that project. Pragmatically speaking, if that person breaks the project, they get to keep both halves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-06-09T15:37:33.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24190" CreationDate="2018-06-09T16:34:44.967" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Unestimable Bugs are a Scrum Implementation Smell&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your Scrum implementation exhibits a number of anti-patterns that are likely contributing to your estimation problem. These include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Treating &lt;em&gt;tasks&lt;/em&gt; as user stories.&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;Find the bug&quot; is a task, not a story. It doesn't meet &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST criteria&lt;/a&gt;, and is not inherently estimable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Estimating &lt;em&gt;time&lt;/em&gt; instead of &lt;em&gt;effort&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt; You can't estimate how long something will take if you have no constraints on scope, complexity, or effort. A time box is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; an estimate!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Automatically carrying stories and estimates forward.&lt;/strong&gt; Each Sprint is a time box, and stories that can't be completed within a single iteration should always be reprioritized, re-estimated, and (most importantly) &lt;em&gt;reformulated&lt;/em&gt; if the team learns that the story presents a problem in scope or delivery.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typical solutions include, but are certainly not limited to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implementing TDD/BDD practices to reduce the frequency and complexity of &#xA;released bugs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing bug-related stories that are small and testable, e.g. &quot;As a developer, I want to debug the Foo module so that I can learn if it's the source of bug #12345.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Creating a time-box for scoping or root cause analysis, which can then be used to help estimate the level of effort to find or fix an issue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using methodologies like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.methodsandtools.com/archive/mikado.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mikado Method&lt;/a&gt; to identify scope and complexity, and to provide some rigor and interim deliverables to your bug-stomping process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Re-evaluating &quot;failed&quot; stories at the end of each Sprint, and during Sprint Planning, to ensure the right level of effort, resource allocation, and business value is assigned to each deliverable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Swarming over stories &lt;em&gt;as a team&lt;/em&gt; when the stories are important, or when not completing them threatens the Sprint Goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://leanbuilds.wordpress.com/tag/stop-the-line/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stop the line&lt;/a&gt; and refocus 100% of team effort on addressing critical issues, rather than attempting to continue development on top of breaking issues or foundational process problems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Continually adjust your delivery schedule based on the real-world status of the product. Scrum estimates are there to help you plan iterations and milestones, and the framework will not magically solve scheduling issues, process issues, or &quot;unestimable&quot; bugs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also worth noting that Scrum is primarily a &lt;em&gt;development&lt;/em&gt; framework, rather than a product support methodology. While mature Scrum adoptions with strong agile practices can manage maintenance issues quite successfully, not all business problems are well-suited to time boxed iterations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the business will not invest the time, money, or training in implementing a more robust Scrum process, it might consider adding a second, Kanban-based support team—or even spinning up one-off processes outside the Scrum team—to work on bugs in your delivered products instead. I would consider that an anti-pattern as well, and don't recommend it in your case, but it's certainly an option that's available to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-06-09T16:34:44.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5376" CreationDate="2018-06-09T18:16:14.940" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are very often in this situation in our company. But that's just how we work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our strength is not requiring details from customers, but to create proposal ourselves -- what we will provide for the customer by his money. Using Agile approach -- even on Fixed Price contracts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we essentially do is following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Figure out customer's main problem business goals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create PERT estimate for all project goals (split on high-level deliverables).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure there is &lt;strong&gt;some&lt;/strong&gt; solution that meets customer's budget. Simplify any deliverable you need to meet the budget -- for example, downloading CSV instead of comprehensive reporting. Be sure it can still satisfy your customer -- if it still solves his business-problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide as much assumptions together with deliverables as you can -- i.e. describe what you are going to deliver. It will help you to negotiate scope change during course of the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create schedule which will have approximate dates for delivery of the deliverables. Specify detailed requirements only for a couple of first ones.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Important thing:&lt;/strong&gt; when you come close to starting of the next deliverable -- start specifying its details and negotiate them with customer. If you discover that customer wants something bigger than you budgeted, then tell him: you considered less budget for it, so now there are two options:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To stick to original version of the deliverable, or &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make it bigger, but to simplify further deliverables even more -- to meet the same total cost in the end of the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some other tricks you use, but these are essentials to both avoid making expensive upfront planning, but still be able to solve customer's problem in Fixed Price manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32641" LastActivityDate="2018-06-09T18:16:14.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16372" CreationDate="2018-06-10T07:44:40.203" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two methods of forecasting delivery dates for your backlog:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://reliable-scrum.de/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reliable Scrum&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Throughput Forecasting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Reliable Scrum&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is very similar to &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/16376/32641&quot;&gt;what Todd is describing&lt;/a&gt; in his answer, but more accurate, because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it forecasts your end-date not just by average historical velocity, but takes into account its deviance -- because velocity will jump up-down from one sprint to another.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it similarly takes into account statistics of how many new User Stories are added to your backlog by Product Owner -- and it can dramatically affect your delivery dates!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, go by the link below, watch the video and download Excel file which does the math for you -- all you need is just to put your backlog items in it, their estimates and in which sprint they are completed or added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Throughput Forecasting&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is a technique, when you even don't need estimates for items in your backlog -- you just put &quot;1&quot; as estimates in your Reliable Scrum file for all User Stories in it, and then you get accurate forecast of when your backlog will be completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like magic, but actually works very well, because it, in fact, takes into account fact time needed to complete your work items. I.e. it is not affected by noise from non-accurate expert estimates of your backlog items!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I compared both methods on 5 projects, it shown that both methods work very well, and the last one produces even more accurate results than the first one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information, please, see &lt;a href=&quot;https://vimeo.com/80351675&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Troy Magennis video&lt;/a&gt;. You don't need to understand the theory behind -- just know, that using Reliable Scrum with &quot;1&quot; as estimates for your backlog items works very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32641" LastEditorUserId="11982" LastEditDate="2018-07-10T09:35:35.040" LastActivityDate="2018-07-10T09:35:35.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8509" CreationDate="2018-06-10T09:37:21.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use following rule-of-thumb ratio in our company: PM needs about 10% of total team hours per week. For example, if you have 6 developers and 4 QA in your team (10 team members total), then PM will need (6 + 4) * 40 * 0.1 = 40 hrs/week on average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please, take into account that it's average -- PM should spend much more in the beginning of his project, when he needs to setup all agreements &quot;on shore&quot;. And in the end of project, when he needs to &quot;close&quot; all the agreements and make sure everyone is happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the time amount depends very much on complexity of your project. I distinguish 3 types of projects (from PM complexity point of view):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-price_contract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fixed Price&lt;/a&gt; projects -- most complex, the ratio of 10% is ok for it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_and_materials&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;T&amp;amp;M&lt;/a&gt; projects -- less complex, because you are not committing on whole scope in the beginning of project. Ratio should be less here -- about 5% is usually pretty enough.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_shopping&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Staff Augmentation&lt;/a&gt; projects (body shop) -- least complex, because customer just &quot;buys hours&quot; of team member, and most of project management is on his side. Such projects usually need about 2-4% of the ratio just to keep team built and perform people-management.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32641" LastActivityDate="2018-06-10T09:37:21.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24201" CreationDate="2018-06-10T17:28:28.697" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to fix price really, and there is low &lt;strong&gt;trust&lt;/strong&gt; among you and vendor yet, then you need to &lt;strong&gt;document&lt;/strong&gt; your Scope and its price together with your vendor -- as detailed as possible. In such case, it will be much easier to judge whether everything bought is delivered or not in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, good approach is to have some short &lt;strong&gt;Elaboration phase&lt;/strong&gt; (aka &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.infoq.com/news/2008/09/sprint_zero&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sprint Zero&lt;/a&gt;) during which your vendor (or your company) can specify requirements and also mitigate main Technical &lt;strong&gt;Risks&lt;/strong&gt; (results of the mitigation should be also delivered to you in form of Prototype or analysis documentation). For $100k project $10-20k Elaboration is pretty enough ($100k total).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;strong&gt;during the phase&lt;/strong&gt; you should be ready to work very much with the team every day (because it's short) -- clarify requirements and help resolving risks (finding compromises on technical solutions and Scope options, for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;strong&gt;during project&lt;/strong&gt; you should ask for often demos (every 2 weeks at least), where you should check what guys deliver. Not only quickly looking on their screenshare, but also go to the server where it's installed and check thoroughly&#xA;that everything is fine and progress is good. And refining rest of scope -- but trying not to add new functionality in Scope (what always happens), but finding Minimal Viable Product features really.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Drawbacks of Elaboration phase&lt;/strong&gt; approach are following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It costs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is very difficult to think over all design solutions for the whole project so early for you and vendor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There will always be conflicting things, or things specified not precisely enough in the spec.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it's not silver bullet. But still useful instrument to get initial agreements in written format. Also, it allows vendor to relax a bit and produce more accurate estimate -- i.e. take responsibility and commit on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the first project is successful, and vendor gains your trust, then for its future phases the Discovery can be even cheaper, or you can move to T&amp;amp;M model to lower bureaucracy and your own costs for the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About risk mitigation see also &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0321166094&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;The Rational Unified Process Made Easy&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; -- great book about balance of Waterfall and Agile approaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;When you should allow vendor to increase project price (or ask you to remove low-priority features):&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When a truly unexpected risk strikes. For example, some integration problems with 3rd party you provide.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you change your requirements a lot.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When he should update your legacy code -- often developers need 1-2 months to get familiar with legacy good enough to provide accurate estimates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is more matter of negotiations ofcourse -- there should be constructive communication around costs and scope -- try to understand vendor's points of view, make sure he understands yours, try to learn from him, don't try to implement everything during the project -- be ready to big cuts of functionality. And everything should be fine in the end!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32641" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-06-10T17:38:51.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24210" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24213" CreationDate="2018-06-11T02:03:27.377" Score="1" ViewCount="414" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm using MS Project for my project management works. Would like to know how do I identify the critical path of the project and the dependencies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32662" LastActivityDate="2018-06-11T14:29:31.347" Title="How do I identify critical path in MS Project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;critical-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24210" CreationDate="2018-06-11T13:18:24.273" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The red line in the Gantt chart usually identifies the critical path. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2018-06-11T13:18:24.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24212" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24214" CreationDate="2018-06-11T14:08:55.943" Score="1" ViewCount="1061" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been walking an Agile path since the days of XP - as a software developer, tech lead, IT manager, and scrum master/product owner/agile coach. Recently, I started work at a company that holds what they call &quot;reflections.&quot; It's the first I've encountered this type of ceremony and searching the Internet serves up an abundance of links about retrospectives, but nothing that describes a &quot;reflection&quot; ceremony.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The distinction at this company seems to be that a retrospective is as one would expect - an end-of-sprint conversation focused on improving the team's process. A &quot;reflection&quot; occurs at less frequent intervals and, for this company, focuses on the interpersonal issues around communication and rapport. It's also distinct from what I've also encountered elsewhere as a &quot;project retrospective,&quot; which also focuses on the teams processes and practices over an extended time frame. Up until now I have not separated out the interpersonal issues from the traditional retrospective conversations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone else encountered the practice of &quot;reflections&quot; or know the origins of the practice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16486" LastActivityDate="2018-06-11T15:01:30.563" Title="What is an Agile &quot;Reflection?&quot;" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24210" CreationDate="2018-06-11T14:29:31.347" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Standard Answer:&#xA;1. Check the &quot;Critical Tasks&quot; box in the Bar Styles group of the Format ribbon.  That will enable the red bars on the bar chart.&#xA;OR&#xA;2. Apply the built-in &quot;Critical&quot; filter in the Data group of the View ribbon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases, the Critical flag is assigned for tasks whose Total Slack is less than the threshold specified at the bottom of the Advanced Options dialog.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2018-06-11T14:29:31.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24212" CreationDate="2018-06-11T15:01:30.563" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would imagine it is related to the 12th agile principle:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reflecting is essential to agile, a retrospective is one way to do it. I've also seen teams that use Kaizen, blameless post mortems, lessons learned, and other practices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16919" LastActivityDate="2018-06-11T15:01:30.563" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2018-06-11T15:01:30.563" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24200" CreationDate="2018-06-11T16:19:39.670" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, unfortunately there isn't such an option. When you assign several resources to a task, Project will assume the work assigned to the resource can be done independently from work assigned to other resources. What you can do is define a calendar for each machine instead of having the machine as a resource. Then you assign the proper calendar as a task calendar. Then define a calendar for your human resource and assign the resource to the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's only a workaround, because you will lack other features associated with resources for your machines, but maybe it will be enough for your use case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30194" LastActivityDate="2018-06-11T16:19:39.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20725" CreationDate="2018-06-12T10:43:35.557" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Look at this software as it should do what you are trying to achieve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.allocatus.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.allocatus.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It synchronizes MS Project with a calendar or to-do list and automatically sends updates.&#xA;I hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32670" LastActivityDate="2018-06-12T10:43:35.557" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23694" CreationDate="2018-06-12T16:01:49.960" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to assume here that you've read &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lean-Startup-Innovation-Successful-Businesses/dp/0670921602/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1528818427&amp;amp;sr=8-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Lean Startup&lt;/a&gt; by Eric Reis and are looking for what to measure to prove you're moving in the right direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Daniel mentions in his answer one of the key messages from the book is to avoid Vanity Metrics, that is to say metrics which look good but don't actually measure the success of your product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the sake of this answer let's say you have a website selling a piece of software which users pay monthly for. For me the obvious vanity metrics you should &lt;strong&gt;avoid&lt;/strong&gt; at all costs are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Number of visits to the website&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Number of inquiries about the software&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also suggest that number of downloads and even number users who sign up for a month is fairly poor as what you want are engaged and active users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.co.uk/Goal-Process-Ongoing-Improvement/dp/0566086654&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Goal&lt;/a&gt; is worth a read. There's a similar theme in there about the main character measuring the machine efficiencies rather than money made by the company. The book is a little out of date but the message is still powerful, this is a question about scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The short version, what you measure depends on what your goals are!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, let's say we want to add a Free Month feature to our website which lets users download the software and use it for free without handing over money. We want to measure whether this improves the uptake of our software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion measuring whether the number of downloads increases is a fairly poor metric. Of course you're going to get more people downloading it, it's free! What you really want is more paying users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A better metric would be how many paying users you have at any one time. If that number goes down after your free trial offer (and there are no other impacts) then the free trail clearly isn't improving sales and should be removed (ok, really what you should do in this scenario is find out WHY people didn't buy but stick with the example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are trying to do is find a metric which represents happy, contented, and sticky customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TLDR&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your metrics come down to ultimately what you're trying to achieve but I suggest you stay practical and think big to include the scope. Think about what is the goal of your product from a business point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Number of user accounts is poor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Number of Active user accounts is better&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Number of Paying user accounts is best&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As ultimately your goal is (most likely) to convert free users into profit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11768" LastActivityDate="2018-06-12T16:01:49.960" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24218" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24222" CreationDate="2018-06-12T16:09:44.653" Score="1" ViewCount="75" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am newbie to project management. I am looking for a certification to pursue an international project management career in Europe. Any advice? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30698" LastEditorUserId="30698" LastEditDate="2018-06-14T07:44:29.357" LastActivityDate="2018-06-14T07:44:29.357" Title="Best Project Management certification for international career" Tags="&lt;career&gt;&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2018-06-14T09:53:00.330" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24220" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-06-13T04:03:50.957" Score="0" ViewCount="276" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using Confluence I put together a series of PRDs for a future release. Each PRD describes a functional 'unit' of the application, such as 'editor', 'user management', 'customer management', etc. Using the built-in Product Requirements Document, I set the Target Release (e.g. &quot;v1&quot;) for each PRD. Following the MoSCoW method I then set the Importance for each Requirement. All of this follows pretty closely the &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/blog/2015/08/how-to-document-product-requirements-in-confluence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;very helpful guide&lt;/a&gt; provided by Confluence Support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem then becomes, how does one set a list of requirements for the next release (e.g. &quot;v2&quot;)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the PRD descibes a functional unit, it will invariably contain requirements for different releases (it won't be 'done' when that version ships), so it's odd that there's a Target Release for the entire PRD. It seems like it would make more sense to target versions for each requirement in the PRD, which the MoSCow method emulates in a way, but it's not the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One way to address this might be to have a different PRD for each funtional unit + version, such as 'editor v1' and 'editor v2'. The problem here is that there's likely duplication of requirements: something with is &quot;could have&quot; for v1 might be &quot;should have&quot; for v2 and &quot;must have&quot; for v3. This feels messy. Also, it seems to run counter to the notion of a Target Release for the PRD. The Confluence Support guide linked to above has a PRD called &quot;Android App v1 Requirements&quot; with a Target Release of... wait for it... &quot;1.0&quot;. This seems at best redundant and at worst confusing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another way to address this might be to leave the PRDs the way they are, and when the version is released, update the Target Release and the Importance for each of the remaining Requirements for each PRD. So, once v1 is out the door, change the 'editor' Target Release to &quot;v2&quot;, remove the requirements that shipped and bump up the Importance of the requirements that are still there. The problem here is that visibility is limited to the next release. Perhaps this is fine, but if you're doing any sort of &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/roadmap-planner-macro-704578202.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Roadmap&lt;/a&gt; it might be nice to offer guidance around requirements for a number of different versions comming down the pipe.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yet a third option might be to have separate documents for each version and list the requirements for each, perhaps even linking back to the PRDs. So there could be a &quot;v1 requirements&quot; page with a 'editor' section that lists all the &quot;must haves&quot; for this release, and then a &quot;v2 requirements&quot; page, etc. The problem here is that this seems like a lot of duplication which could potentially become messy. Not only do you have to keep track of each requirements on the PRD, but you have to have track them all on each version requirements page.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems like there should be a straight-forward way to do this, but I've looked off and on for weeks and can't seem to find anything that outlines a procedure for handling this sort of thing while using Confluence's Product Requirements Docs. I like my third option the best because it seems most consistent with the tools provided by Confluence, but I'd like to hear other opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29755" LastEditorUserId="29755" LastEditDate="2018-06-13T04:14:47.443" LastActivityDate="2018-06-28T21:31:02.523" Title="Managing product versions in Confluence with PRDs" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24221" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-06-13T04:45:11.637" Score="2" ViewCount="78" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work on a project development where there are multiple project managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One manager gives requirements, another manager gives approach, one more manager resolves external dependencies required for project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each manager invloves in many other projects also, so they are forgetting things in this project, and causing confustion in meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like I have something in my mind, each manager have different things in their brain about the project. How to handle projects where multiple managers and single developer project to make all managers inline with the progress in project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have scrum meetings also but out of an hour, they will spend just 5 minutes on my project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very clear for other project developers who are nearer to me. One manager gives requirement to another manager, that another manager gives requirement to developer but in my case, multiple managers giving inputs to single developer. If one manger gives input, all other managers forgets about that, and when meetings happen, they will confuse me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32679" LastActivityDate="2018-06-13T22:35:07.757" Title="How to handle issues with multiple project managers giving inputs to single developer?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24218" CreationDate="2018-06-13T05:23:58.167" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PMI.org certs are the most portable, in my experience. The organization has a lot of history and has most of their materials available in multiple languages. The exact certification to pursue would depend on your background, though. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pmi.org/certifications/types&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.pmi.org/certifications/types&lt;/a&gt; has the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="150" LastActivityDate="2018-06-13T05:23:58.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24223" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-06-13T06:36:15.523" Score="1" ViewCount="575" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a difference and if ‘yes’ does there exist a definition of their scopes? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was asking aunt Google but got the impression from job descriptions that the scope or responsibilities overlap greatly. Is this the case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16890" LastActivityDate="2018-06-13T14:46:59.757" Title="What are the differences between a project assistant, manager, and secretary?" Tags="&lt;roles&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24221" CreationDate="2018-06-13T09:28:46.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The developers should be protected from people just random people giving them work by some kind of development manager or lead. They should triage the work so there is one source of work for the developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mentioned scrum meetings, do you have some kind of backlog where work is set and prioritized? Do you really use scrum, because it doens't sound like it? If so, it sounds like the way you use scrum needs looking at and refining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be inclined to gently challenge whats going on. Has it always been done that way, or are these people's egos driving them, or are they just ignoring proper procedures? As a developer  myself, being pulling in multiple directions is a recipe for a disaster. Maybe you need to speak to someone more senior then these managers (who may not know what is going on) to back you up. Learn from mistakes and improve your processes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, it sounds like these three managers just need talking to about how their way of working is destructive and to work out a better way for everyone to work together. Communication is key. They may not realize it's a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="670" LastActivityDate="2018-06-13T09:28:46.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15589" CreationDate="2018-06-13T11:08:22.683" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;McConnell in his &quot;Software Estimation&quot; book Chapter 20 saying that scale factor dramatically impacts total project cost: &lt;em&gt;&quot;If you try to shorten timeline just -15% from nominal, then it increases cost 100%. If you increase timeline +30% from nominal, then it decreases cost -65%.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, obviously we should include some additional costs, because of bigger team. But McConnell doesn't provide easy way to calculate the &quot;nominal&quot; size of the team to be able to use numbers % above in any kind of estimating formulas...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32641" LastActivityDate="2018-06-13T11:08:22.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24218" CreationDate="2018-06-13T11:42:34.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my view &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pmi.org/certifications/types/project-management-pmp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Project Management Professional, PMP&lt;/a&gt;  is the one you should go for &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11970" LastActivityDate="2018-06-13T11:42:34.980" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24221" CreationDate="2018-06-13T11:43:51.823" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this kind of situation I like to focus on &lt;em&gt;reflecting the pain&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you could produce a short status report on progress and detail the issues that have slowed you down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Progress on the project has been a little slow this week. I started on requirement X on Monday but on Tuesday it was requested that I use a different approach. That took half a day to adapt to and so my output was reduced. On Wednesday I was asked to return to the original approach and once again that reduced my productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick is to do this in a non-confrontational, reporting tone. If it is perceived as an attack then people will get defensive. But if they see it as the highlighting of inefficiency then they may well do something about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another useful trick is to use &lt;em&gt;information radiators&lt;/em&gt;. An example is to have a list of tasks you are assigned in priority order visible on a wall near your desk. That way, when people speak to you they have more context. When they ask you to do something, they must take in to account the other things that you are already being asked to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-06-13T11:43:51.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24228" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-06-13T14:37:20.477" Score="1" ViewCount="74" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Context&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multinational enterprise organisation working with business process automation.  Fairly new team and new to Agile values and iterative working. The development team are effective and receiving a workable pipeline of user stories &lt;em&gt;as of this week when I took over&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Challenge&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The organisation has a full portfolio of programmes and projects.  A current NDA initiative has the task of halving all current projects due to a restructuring.  To prevent this, each waterfall project has submitted a (likely inflated) benefits case and a Gantt chart extending out to 12 months.  We have been asked to provide a strong benefits case to support our project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Problem&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our backlog only extends out, in detail, for the next 2 weeks.  The previous Agile Coach considered automation to be too hard to turn into user stories so the dozen or so stories that were produced is stuff like &amp;quot;Finish the whole process&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Do a code review&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outside of that we have identified 26 epics to be delivered.  Each Epic is linked back to one of 5 business areas that has dozens of &lt;em&gt;potential&lt;/em&gt; processes we can automate.  I hope that makes sense.  So a business unit says &amp;quot;You have carte blanche&amp;quot; and we go in.  For every process we can develop against we raise an Epic.  We have 26 concrete processes so far we can develop but there are potentially hundreds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What the Exec have asked for&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quickly triage every single process in every single business area and produce an Epic for each&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Produce a benefits analysis for each Epic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tell us how many Epics can be completed in the next 12 months&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add up the Benefits case and if it is greater than X then your project survives the cull&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Empirical Data&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a very little.  The previous Agile Coach did not ask the team to record metrics and allowed all delivery artifacts to exist on post-it notes or C:drives so I don't have a data source like Jira with which to interrogate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What Have I tried so far&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have asked the Exec for time to break the previous deliveries down into Epics and user stories then backtest and backestimate that to provide empirical data with which to apply to future Epics of relative/similar complexity (They said no. Current deliveries must continue)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have asked for 8 weeks (4 Sprints) in which to capture delivery metrics from the team for everything they deliver from &lt;em&gt;today&lt;/em&gt;.  Some of the exec said yes, some said no and cried foul.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What I am seeking&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cited sources I can use to evangelize why a fully formed backlog is less valuable than delivering software and adjusting while we go (3 months backlog good...12 months bad)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Senior anecdotes of how individuals would/could/have handle this&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Concrete coaching techniques I can use to demonstrate value to the NDA project-culling team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You are all my peoples - help please!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;  Extremely demoralised Product Owner and Team looking at me...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-06-14T13:14:37.880" Title="How to report potential benefits in an Agile delivery to a PMO expecting a fully realised benefits report for the year?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24223" CreationDate="2018-06-13T14:46:59.757" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends on the organization. Larger organizations tend to have more defined job roles. Smaller organizations often have people who wear many hats on a project, and the person who &quot;gets things done&quot; will be tasked with things, regardless of their role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've worked as most of those roles one time or another within the same company, so I think I can give an apples to apples view, mind the small sample size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Project Coordinator, most of the work was related to scheduling project deliverables within a part of the project, scheduling meetings, and minor procurement. I would also do meeting notes. I found this similar to secretarial, but that does a disservice to secretarial skills, as I have no formal training in document management which is huge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Project Assistant / Junior PM, I did everything I was doing as a coordinator, but I also did more work communicating with clients and other stakeholders, having more input on the project plan, and doing project financials. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20438" LastActivityDate="2018-06-13T14:46:59.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24231" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-06-13T16:23:37.437" Score="3" ViewCount="276" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a small team, and most of us are part-time. We have been managing the project using JIRA's simplified software template. We have started using Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) for continuous integration and we like it. I would like to attempt to use VSTS to replace JIRA, but I am struggling with the differences between the tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the workflow which has worked well for our small (non-full-time) team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I pull a handful of stories out of the backlog, which we want to deliver.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assign them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Optionally break some into subtasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developers work on them and move them to todo/done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tag each task with prod-fix or next-release (JIRA releases feature)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I may pull a few more tasks onto the board as needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We do a deployment/release.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By marking a 'release' as done, they automatically get removed from the board.  I actually do 2 releases in JIRA: one for fixes and one for the new release. This helps keep track of what was done where.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Repeat.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to duplicate something like this in VSTS. But it seems that it is built around rigid Scrum practice, rather than our semi ad-hoc approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I created a new 'Agile' project in VSTS to try and duplicate our process. I have the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I see Features and Stories have separate backlogs.... why? Is there a    way to see them together? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I can see how I would use Iterations similarly to how I am using Releases in JIRA. But why do iterations have a backlog? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I figured out how to rename board columns on Features/Stories, but how do I rename the columns on the Iterations boards? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the 'Work Items' just a flat list of tasks? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why do I need to go into Backlogs to a see the Current iteration? I have to explain to the Team that to see the board, they have to go under Work -&gt; Backlogs -&gt; Click the current Iteration -&gt; Click Board? That is not going to go over well. Is there a quick way to get to the board for the current iteration? 99% of the team will only ever need that. It seems that Work -&gt; Backlogs defaults to the board view of the current iteration. The the main issue is the odd naming, telling them to Backlogs to see their 'Current' tasks&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If I want to simplify things and Make Epics and Issues go away, can I do that? I foresee wasted time on people debating the difference between an epic and feature, and issue and bug, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a way to get rid of the Capacity tab? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can I rename priorities low/normal/high? I don't want debates of when 1 is     a higher priority than 4. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In some of the forms certain letters of words are underlined, such as the 'e' in State, and 'A' in Area, and 'r' in Iteration. What is the point of that? I can't find mention of it in shortcuts help. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you log work against task? Or do the Effort (hours) have to be manually recorded? (we rarely use this features, so not a big deal)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are areas equivalent to components in JIRA? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do I complete an iteration? Start another?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you mark a task as Resolved? It only lets me set it to New/Active/Closed? What is the diff between resolved and closed?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any answers and thoughts appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32684" LastEditorUserId="7393" LastEditDate="2019-06-12T13:01:42.420" LastActivityDate="2019-07-12T13:02:35.320" Title="Questions about moving from JIRA to VSTS Agile" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;&lt;vsts&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24228" CreationDate="2018-06-13T20:44:08.153" Score="1" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cited sources I can use to evangelize why a fully formed backlog is less valuable than delivering software and adjusting while we go (3 months backlog good...12 months bad)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can compare the “Fully formed backlog” to a situation that happened inside Google, have a look at the book “How Google works”. There’s a part where they are explaining how a product manager created a very specific document to describe a plan of action and how they decided to not go with it and have a “High level plan” and change it dynamically as priorities changed (can’t remember the section unfortunately and I only got the audio book so can’t search).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But references are everywhere, look at the Agile manifesto for example (Responding to change over following a plan). Agile has been used everywhere and it has proven its value. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Senior anecdotes of how individuals would/could/have handle this&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would go with mentioning the value of your team first, rather than the value of the project itself. A people deliver A results even with B ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Concrete coaching techniques I can use to demonstrate value to the NDA project-culling team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first argument is that they have tried for ages to follow the waterfall approach and apparently it hasn’t given them enough good results. My second argument is in my first point; agile works and it has been adopted because of that reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-06-13T20:57:06.310" LastActivityDate="2018-06-13T20:57:06.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15589" CreationDate="2018-06-13T20:57:46.770" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like everyone said, there's no magical number, it all depends on your particular situation. At best, for each individual, it'll add a little overhead in administration, at worst, you'll find yourself rewriting completely the plan so it is suitable for multiple individuals (and cof cof, 10-20% of the time is arguably dedicated to planning...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-06-13T20:57:46.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24221" CreationDate="2018-06-13T22:35:07.757" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My recommendation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a spec document where all the parties contribute and come to an agreement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have regular but laser focus meetings with all the parties involved &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your issue is not about getting input from many people, that happens in many cases, but they have to understand everyone’s perspective and decide together what’s best for the project based on everyone’s input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-06-13T22:35:07.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24236" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24238" CreationDate="2018-06-13T23:39:43.273" Score="3" ViewCount="205" Body="&lt;p&gt;Background: my team is only two years old, and up until this point, project management has been almost completely decentralized and, to a certain extent, non-existent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My team consists of 14 people (including one intern and one guy on his way to retirement) doing mostly laboratory work and analysis, along with research and development. For the tasks that our team is capable of doing, there are at least two people that are capable of performing every task, but no single person is qualified to do everything that our group does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;RE: the nature of our work: we have &quot;customers&quot; that are inside the company in other divisions as well as customers from outside the organization. A project may last anywhere from a couple of weeks to a couple of years. Very rarely does any single project require the work/input of every member of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been recently added to the team that is working on developing a project management approach. The team has decided to recommend to the manager that we adopt Scrum, or as close to Scrum as we can get. In the event that the manager decides that Scrum doesn't work for our application, what methodology is most well-suited for coordinating work on multiple projects from multiple customers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I apologize in advance if the question is too subjective. Also, I will add details as necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32687" LastEditorUserId="32687" LastEditDate="2018-06-14T02:30:10.110" LastActivityDate="2018-06-14T14:43:51.237" Title="Does Scrum (or something Scrumish) make sense to manage projects for my team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;theory&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24236" CreationDate="2018-06-14T00:59:47.027" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum is designed to let skilled workers tackle complex adaptive problems. If that describes your team, Scrum probably has a lot to offer. Before I go further, let me explain the &quot;Complex adaptive&quot; thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Complex&lt;/em&gt;: specifically referring to problems with a lot of interacting parts that would either be very difficult to analyze simply with theory or completely impossible. Scrum has a bias towards &quot;try something and see what happens&quot; analysis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Adaptive&lt;/em&gt;: discovering what happens with one thing in a problem may change how I approach the next thing, making predicting how the solution will unfold difficult or impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because you said you deal with lab work, analysis, research, and development, I would expect that your work almost certainly fits this profile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to your team, scrum encourages cross-functional teams. This does mean that you should have all of the skills needed to do the work somewhere on your team, but it does not mean that everyone needs all of the skills or that everyone has to work on every item. A certain amount of overlap provides more flexibility in how your team takes on work. Scrum also asks the team to own the plan for getting the work done. Many teams bristle a bit at this if they are used to being handed tasks, but most find they greatly prefer this approach once they get used to it. Finally, you do have a bigger team than Scrum recommends (the heuristic is 5 - 9). If you have a project management background, you've probably learned at some point that the number of communications channels on the team is equal to (n * (n-1))/2; so exponential growth with the number of people. 5 - 9 is the sweet spot where you get benefits of working as a team without too many communications channels. That isn't to say you can't have a 14-person team. I've seen it work. Just watch out for this problem. Then again, since communication is communication, you probably already see this regardless of which methodology you use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if you're not writing software, some of the best practices out there won't quite fit, or you'll have to interpret them differently. For example, one Agile principle says &quot;Working software is the primary measure of progress.&quot; We can replace the word software with &quot;product&quot;, but what does product mean for you? For these kinds of problems, finding someone else in your industry (or a similar one) can help you learn from other people who've already figured it out. You can also work with an Agile coach to help you find the answers faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know I didn't give you a straight yes/no answer. From what little I read here, it does sound like your team can benefit, but I don't know enough to say that with any certainty. I hope I've given you enough information to at least make a call on if it's worth trying out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-06-14T00:59:47.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24239" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26731" CreationDate="2018-06-14T02:08:29.147" Score="5" ViewCount="5930" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been reading 3 books about Agile Project Management and in all of them there is no concept about WBS even in the book of the agile practice from agile alliance that comes with the PMBOK 6th edition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, in one of those books, the WBS is only displayed in a picture to compare the waterfall project management vs agile project management. Even the EV management is slightly different with other formulas that differ from PMI methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are some PMI techniques still used in agile approach, but it is not structured like in the processes groups&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, when you are initiating a project in an agile approach the WBS it is OUTDATED, OBSOLETE, DEPRECATED, USELESS?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tought that I could represent my features in sprints with deliverables in my WBS, but I am confused now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32495" LastActivityDate="2020-10-04T02:15:23.347" Title="WBS and agile approach" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;&lt;pmi&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24239" CreationDate="2018-06-14T04:58:17.263" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on how you construct your WBS, that might be possible, but traditionally WBS's break down into tasks. This assumes I know all (or at least most) of the work that needs to be done up-front. This approach is impossible when solving complex problems where I need to do some work to discover what other work needs to be done. Therefor, since Scrum was particularly designed for this type of work (most product development is actually this type of work), Scrum uses an emergent backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was learning Scrum, I looked at the backlog as a sort of WBS. There are a few reasons why this comparison is inaccurate, but for me, it worked as a transitioning approach. Only, instead of breaking down the work to be done, I broke down what I wanted the product to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-06-14T04:58:17.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24239" CreationDate="2018-06-14T06:11:07.450" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can split your customer business goals -&gt; on Epics, Epics -&gt; on User Stories or Features. And think about it as about WBS. But there are significantly important things to take into account:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can create backlog of Epics and Features early in the project, but better to use &lt;a href=&quot;http://vertabase.com/and-because-a-developer-is-not-a-doctor/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rolling Wave&lt;/a&gt; approach, when you create detailed decomposition for first 2-4 weeks of work, semi-detailed for next 2-4 weeks and only high-level (Epics list) for the rest of the project. And then detail work when you come closer to the next chunk of Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Epics are not deliverables -- they can grow throughout your project (with needed simplifications of other Epics if you are in Fixed Price contract). Epics are more &lt;strong&gt;intention&lt;/strong&gt; to improve some functionality or achieve some goals, not specific part of work to be completed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lnbogen.com/2010/07/10/feature-user-story-and-task/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Features are not tasks&lt;/a&gt; -- i.e. you should split functionality in business terms, not technical terms. Main criteria and benefit of this -- your customer should be able to prioritize features independently.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32641" LastActivityDate="2018-06-14T06:11:07.450" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24243" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24253" CreationDate="2018-06-14T08:41:22.993" Score="0" ViewCount="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a small team of developers. We have created a product in text messaging field. Now we have hired few guys for increasing seo of our product website. We have created a list of tasks (approximately 20) which seo guys will need to do everday. Seo guys will tell following things about each task everyday-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much time they spent on task?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Breif description of task which they did&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A special parameter only belonging to a particular task (e.g. Parameter &quot;How many backlinks they added&quot; for task &quot;Add backlinks&quot; )&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are looking for a todo app , which can help us accomplish something similar to this. Also we should be able to see the reports to track the performance of a particular employee or a particular task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32690" LastActivityDate="2018-06-14T17:25:31.370" Title="Finding a to-do app to track a particular set of daily tasks given to the team" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2018-07-02T17:24:25.630" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24244" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-06-14T09:03:00.570" Score="0" ViewCount="100" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a newbie to Project Management and I was not able, not yet at least, to attend a proper course and get a certification. Let's say I am learning on the &quot;field&quot;. I am facing the managing of an EU project, which involves companies and universities, and Gantt chart is one of the many difficulties I am dealing with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will describe how am I approaching the problem so that you can hopefully tell me what I am doing wrong and how to fix it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- starting from the project idea, I discuss with all the partners to figure out who does what and how much money each partner need to complete the task complying with the overall project budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2- each partner is also supposed to tell me the amount of work they put in (persons month) in each task to complete it, which basically gives me two degrees of freedom (more workers on the WP (or task) ---&gt; less duration of the WP (or task) and vice versa, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3- Once we have defined 1) and 2) I have to prepare a Gantt chart, and that's the rub!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I guess how to spread the WP, and then the tasks, duration within the whole project? Should my partners tell me that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now guessing I have the months on the x-axis of the chart, this is what I figured out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each university is basically looking to found a PhD/researcher position, this means one person &quot;fully-employed&quot; in the project. Then I should spread the months duration of the tasks in such a way that the researcher is fully employed each month, e.g. if one task require 10 person months it should last 10 months, is it right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The partner companies can basically &quot;book&quot; hours, so they do not have to fulfill this requirement. Does it have to do with the way people?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could you also suggest me any reference, books, articles and so on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30698" LastEditorUserId="31132" LastEditDate="2018-06-19T08:10:49.057" LastActivityDate="2018-06-19T08:10:49.057" Title="How to build up a Gantt chart?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24244" CreationDate="2018-06-14T10:42:02.400" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lots of advice on the web covers this question - but I think there is an assumption that complicates things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Each university is basically looking to found a PhD/researcher position, this means one person &quot;fully-employed&quot; in the project. Then I should spread the months duration of the tasks in such a way that the researcher is fully employed each month, e.g. if one task require 10 person months it should last 10 months, is it right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That tells me you're not working on a project - you're working on operations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A project is a collection of effort to produce a distinct outcome.  You build the Gantt chart by recursively dividing the work into smaller, subordinate work packages.  Continuing decomposing the work until (a) all the work needed to produce the outcome is represented by work packages, (b) minimal work not needed to produce the outcome is included in work packages and (c) the work packages are either inherently atomic, or represent &amp;lt; 40 hours effort.  There are multiple resources on the web that will describe how to do this - I'm particularly fond of Sensei Solutions guidance, but the US DOD and DHS each have good standards for creating and documenting work packages and Gantt charts. This decomposition should (IMHO) be done in close cooperation with the Subject Matter Experts - part of the goal should be to understand and share the understanding of the real effort involved.  But the critical point is that all the work is focused on producing a single, discrete, valuable outcome. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you describe seems to be a problem in operations research - how to ensure that the researchers are fully employed.  This isn't a problem in project management; you may find some resources related to portfolio management useful, and you may be describing an efficient horizon problem.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is overlap between what you're describing and project management; but I'm concerned that you're using the wrong tool for the job.  Sometimes we consciously choose to use the tool we have rather than the tool we want... I've used knife blades to turn screws... but I think it is important to make that choice consciously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2018-06-14T10:42:02.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24228" CreationDate="2018-06-14T12:33:56.667" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a typical problem in many work places. A skilled agile practitioner must be able to tackle this problem from multiple angles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My preferred approach would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Identify 1 or 2 high value area of the business. Identify 2 or 3 processes where value of improvement can be translated into savings/efficiency-gains (i.e. Dollar Value, money talks). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Build your case around... if our work on this couple of processes saves you so much money, you can only imagine what you could do for the business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good Luck, hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32694" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-06-14T13:09:35.503" LastActivityDate="2018-06-14T13:09:35.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24228" CreationDate="2018-06-14T13:14:37.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The NDA team do not need (nor want) a detailed planning of what you are going to accomplish in the next year. What they want is a forecast of how much money your team is going to make for the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that you use the term &quot;epic&quot; in a conventional way, meaning a piece of work that takes multiple sprints to complete, the 26 epics that are currently identified already give you more than a year worth of work on the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you should do, for each epic that is currently identified, is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make a forecast of the business value of the epic (how much does the revenue increase or the costs decrease)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make a high-level estimate of the epic (how many sprints would it take to implement this). Do this estimation with the whole team and you could also first do it in t-shirt sizes (S, M, L, XL, etc.) and later convert those to time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, in the report to the NDA team, order your epics such that you get the most value out of the year and add a small footnote that the order is not committed to and is subject to change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2018-06-14T13:14:37.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24236" CreationDate="2018-06-14T14:43:51.237" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like your team satisfies many of the condition for Scrum: autonomous, self-organizing, cross-functional. But do you have a Product Owner? i.e. a single person, empowered to make on-the-spot decisions on behalf of the organisation, responsible for optimizing the value of product increments, able to say 'no' to customer requests? The PO is a key role in Scrum, arguably the most important one. It is hard for me to imagine Scrum succeeding without one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29315" LastActivityDate="2018-06-14T14:43:51.237" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24250" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-06-14T15:19:35.497" Score="4" ViewCount="1095" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question in short: how should we handle a scrum retrospective when the capacity of the team has been very low?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a team of 6 people: 1 PO, 4 developers (of whom 1 part-time on Monday and Friday) and 1 developer/SM (me). We have 1-week sprint starting on Monday and ending on Friday 9am, with the retrospective also being on Friday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to varying summer holidays, tomorrow our sprint retrospective would be with one developer who worked Tuesday through Friday, the part-time developer (who did not work this Monday) and myself, having worked the full week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm in favor of not skipping the retrospective, because I find inspection and adapting important. However, I fear we won't get much value from it, because only half the team will be there and only two of them have actually worked in the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be wise to still hold a retrospective for this sprint? If so, what kind of activities would be useful for this kind of low-capacity retrospective? If not, should we skip it altogether or try to move it to another moment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23122" LastActivityDate="2018-06-19T19:17:53.360" Title="Scrum Retrospective during holiday season" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24250" CreationDate="2018-06-14T16:46:39.830" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask the people participating in the retro if it is required. (Or even better, ask if they've thought about anything for the retro).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-06-14T16:46:39.830" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24250" CreationDate="2018-06-14T17:05:22.303" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given that the holiday season will bring special challenges for the team (like an incomplete team as you are dealing with right now) it might be good to make that the topic of the next couple of retrospectives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the exercise to use, try to keep it simple. A start, stop, continue (or my variant &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.benlinders.com/2017/3s-retrospective-exercise-start-spice-up-stop/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;start, spice up, stop&lt;/a&gt;) might be a suitable one. Or a constellation, where you could bring in people who are absent with something with their picture attached.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the retrospective meeting, do a sanity check on the actions and ask the participant how they feel about the meeting. Use their feedback to adjust the format and topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your thoughts on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16919" LastActivityDate="2018-06-14T17:05:22.303" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24243" CreationDate="2018-06-14T17:25:31.370" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First two items can be closed by any task tracker, which has feature of time tracking: Redmine (open source), JIRA (commercial), Kaiten (commercial), etc. See comparison of time-tracking software &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_time-tracking_software&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About item #3 -- you can try to configure so-called &lt;strong&gt;custom field&lt;/strong&gt; in a time-tracker. For example, in Redmine you can add free text or numeric custom field to Task and log there any parameter you want. If set of the tasks is very stable, you can even create a different type of ticket for every task and configure specific customer fields for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32641" LastActivityDate="2018-06-14T17:25:31.370" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24255" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24256" CreationDate="2018-06-14T19:21:59.770" Score="1" ViewCount="71" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a case with limited &lt;em&gt;people&lt;/em&gt; like 5, you need to go through an iterative process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you weight, distribute and assign the stories to be developed in a way that everyone is orchestrated well and you go in a 2-week sprint and normally you go through the following &quot;steps&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprint #1&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Story #N&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Code&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unit Test&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;After unit tests, one of your resources finished the last story from sprint while others don't and for some reason there is 1 day or 2 days left. This idle resource what is suppossed to do?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In traditional approaches as everything is sequential mostly everyone finishes at the specific date or late than planned. Also in traditional, you risk to do rework and re-plan again, but how to manage that idle resource in a sprint. How do you track or do with those excellent story makers who finished before time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32495" LastEditorUserId="32495" LastEditDate="2018-06-15T00:39:16.717" LastActivityDate="2018-06-20T13:00:53.360" Title="How do you manage resources in an agile approach with PMI" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;resources&gt;&lt;pmi&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24255" CreationDate="2018-06-14T21:07:53.423" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, there is always &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; for people to do. They can help a colleague with their tasks, learn a new trick, write some documentation, clean up some code, talk with some other team, prepare a presentation on some useful topic, get people coffee, talk to a product owner or stakeholder about goals, learn about some existing piece of product, clean the office, or do any other of the things that are on the &quot;We really should fix that when get the time&quot; list that every team has.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the key goals of being a self-organizing team is that people who have some left over time, will find something productive for themselves to do. If you don't see that happening, you might want to point them to some thing that can be done, but just let them pick something so they can learn to be proactive about these things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31393" LastActivityDate="2018-06-14T21:07:53.423" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24257" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-06-14T23:06:28.140" Score="1" ViewCount="171" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an agile development team of 20-25, and we use GitHub (Enterprise) for repo, backlog etc and ZenHub for enhanced Kanban boards. I would like all members to be able to easily set their allocations per project, easily, and as often as it changes. If there was an add-on for GitHub that would allow that type of tracking that would perfect, but am open to any tools. Thanks! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27677" LastEditorUserId="32641" LastEditDate="2018-07-02T17:22:49.823" LastActivityDate="2018-12-12T23:18:11.073" Title="Tracking resource allocation across multiple projects - GitHub?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;distributed-team&gt;&lt;github-issues&gt;&lt;zenhub&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24258" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-06-15T01:29:15.607" Score="2" ViewCount="110" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an agile approach we can use tools like kanban to plan, measure and monitor sprints. But when we need to use schedule systems like MS Project or any other online collaboration tool that works like MS Project to show reports or gantt diagrams to our customers (because some of them work like this yet), &lt;strong&gt;how do you represent a recursive agile sprint execution within your classic schedule system?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In traditional PM:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You create your WBS.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You reach the work package level.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You define your tasks for that work package in your schedule system.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You set up a baseline.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You update progress. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine that you are still going from classic to agile and you need to build a classic schedule management purposes. Normally you cannot add activities that are not aligned with your work package and are going over your triple constraint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do you normally add blocks of tasks with feature 1 version 1 and later feature 1 version 2 within the same deliverable and so on? How can you know how many iterations can be run in advance for same feature?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32495" LastEditorUserId="32495" LastEditDate="2018-06-15T13:05:40.390" LastActivityDate="2018-09-29T15:00:34.560" Title="How to represent an iterative sprint within your schedule list" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;scope&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;&lt;schedule&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24259" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24262" CreationDate="2018-06-15T02:11:11.680" Score="2" ViewCount="544" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are starting an agile project. As a scrum master you are facilitator and you assist the product owner with the backlog in creation as also in its maintance. You also coordinate with external customer communications to report progress on the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your self-organized team is ready to start the sprints for the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything is set up, but imagine that those clients that are not used to this agile approach and are not aware of the iterations in testing sprints and they are only waiting for the final deliverable to test everything like in the classical approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you train or deal with your clients who are not aware yet of an agile approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say that you once you already started your project and got your initial scope/objectives, you build your 2-week sprints for all the features to be built with dates and what is to be tested and how each feature fulfills the objective (Expecting to be used later as an input to a new iteration).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as I said, customer does not have &quot;resources&quot; to test and give many feedback about the deliverables, because they are used to the classical approach where you expect to gather all the information from conception and refine data slightly through execution then later they want to perform testing effort later (This could fail and could drive to rework) As a scrum master, explain the benefits of the approach, you explain them about the whole process, but still they are not convinced. 2 risks here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They would believe they can ask anything infinitely, which you need to make clear that if it's not.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customer reacts negatively because as I said they don't have resources. You can escalate or negotiate with stakeholders or whatever is the authority to report progress nicely. But in this 2nd point you react, to me, as typical PM.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As your team is already agile, they are self-organized and empowered to manage their sprints with the product owner. You don't have the &lt;em&gt;&quot;control&quot;&lt;/em&gt; as a regular PM. Don't misunderstand me, I think the agile approach is great to create motivated teams and spread creativity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are your strategies from experience to deal with customers with no experience in agile approaches?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32495" LastEditorUserId="32495" LastEditDate="2018-06-15T10:48:25.370" LastActivityDate="2018-07-29T06:25:26.433" Title="How do you deal with external customers in agile projects" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24260" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-06-15T10:58:04.120" Score="4" ViewCount="631" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Given:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;A team of 1 Backend Developer, 2 Front End Developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definition of Done&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;US acceptance criteria have to be met&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All subtasks in terms of the user story should be completed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Back End subtask should be covered with Unit tests&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;US are OK'ed by the Product Owner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User Story&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an Admin &#xA;I want to be able to View the list of users so that I can know how many users are using the service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subtasks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create API endpoint (Back End)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create the view for the user list (Front End)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create API calls (Front End)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problem:&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;When we finish the sprint all front-end related sub-tasks are made and only 60-80% of Backend sub-tasks are completed. Because of that our velocity is low, as we complete less User Stories, but in reality, a lot of work was made. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the correct way to distribute User Stories/Sub-tasks between devs so that we can see the real velocity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21640" LastActivityDate="2018-06-23T16:14:00.117" Title="Should I assign user stories per team or per team member?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24260" CreationDate="2018-06-15T11:39:29.113" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You &lt;strong&gt;are&lt;/strong&gt; seeing the real velocity. Stories that aren't done don't count. If people keep working on new stories while old stories aren't moved to done yet, that means your team isn't working like a team and some level of process improvement is needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that velocity is about delivering &lt;strong&gt;value&lt;/strong&gt;, not &lt;strong&gt;code.&lt;/strong&gt; If it isn't ready to go into production, then it is providing 0 value, so it should not be counted in the velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your team is unable to attain higher velocity because they are lacking in certain skills, the team needs to try and find a solution for that problem, whether that means training someone else to help them, expanding the team, or changing the division of work within the team so that the person working on the tasks that aren't complete has more time available to complete his tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Artificially inflating the velocity by including things that aren't delivering value is just going to hide the real problem you have: stuff isn't delivering value because parts of the work aren't being completed quickly enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your title question, the only valid way to distribute stories within Scrum is to give all the stories to the team, and hold the entire team responsible for their completion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31393" LastActivityDate="2018-06-15T11:39:29.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24259" CreationDate="2018-06-15T11:45:56.677" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a complex question because it assumes two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) you've acknowledged that part of the problem with most software development efforts is that you can get to the end and realize that though you've built exactly what was asked for, it wasn't what was needed, hence moving to Scrum; and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) your customer has decided that, despite this, he's going to wait until the end to tell you if it's right anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your first risk, I don't know that this has anything to do with agile. The problem with fixed-cost software projects has always been that they can create runaway expense. Even if there is a fixed scope, most companies won't ever say &quot;you got the scope, take it or leave it&quot; - it does too much damage to their reputation, meaning that you'll just eat the cost. I can't count the number of companies I've watched go under because of this over the years, regardless of the project management approach. What Scrum brings to this conversation is actually making it safe for the customer to agree to a time-and-materials contract because they get to see stead progress, they can cut it off at any time, and they get to keep whatever progress has been made up until that point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the second risk, I suspect that they may not understand the ask. They don't have to do hours of UAT testing. They need show up for an 2-hour review every two weeks. If someone is willing to pay the cost of your company to develop software, but won't either give 2 hours of their own time or appoint someone to represent them, that would raise some major red flags for me. Again though, this isn't really an agile problem. Projects have crashed and burned for this reason for decades. Many of the Agile and Scrum practices came about to mitigate this existing problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-06-15T11:45:56.677" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24263" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24264" CreationDate="2018-06-15T13:19:14.710" Score="4" ViewCount="202" Body="&lt;p&gt;More than communications skills, lean techniques to discard useless features with no value, more than ask &lt;em&gt;&quot;what do you want?&quot;&lt;/em&gt; or &quot;is there anything else?&quot; to the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading the book Agile Project Management of James A. Crowder, it says: &lt;em&gt;&quot;Organizations must strive to provide an environment where budget is not centered on time and motion, but must be centered on the perceived values of the objectives of the project.... In classical EV change is bad and uncertainty is worse&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the book Brilliant Agile Project Management of Rob Colle &amp;amp; Edward Scotcher: &lt;em&gt;&quot;Agile embraces change and even encourages it. Change is not seen as the enemy, it's seen as an important part of the evolution of any good idea.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an agile approach everything is speculative and scope never is closed until customer is satisfied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks like to me that these statements are for internal projects in software companies like Facebook, Uber, Airbnb, or even in in-house projects where there is an initiative to improve processes continously. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a context that you handle projects with external customers and projects with ad-hoc development, we are limited by the &lt;em&gt;triple constraint&lt;/em&gt; all the time. What are the techniques you use to set up scope and minimize the number of iterations if we are in time-restricted contract?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Triple constraint is the name that PMI uses to describe restrictions on any project in Time + Cost + Scope (+ Quality in 6th version of the PMBOK) Any change on any of this restrictions will affect the other. A change in time, it will affect your cost, any change in scope affects time and cost and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is so restrictive, fixed and old in terms of agile. Once you have your baseline, you cannot change it, but through a formal change process.  With external projects based on classic perspective, you manage contracts to deliver a product or service in a specific &lt;em&gt;time&lt;/em&gt; and in a &lt;em&gt;budget&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's why in classic approach change is bad. If you change your baseline (time or cost or scope) it will drive you into a rework or reschedule. Nevertheless in agile, change is accepted all the time. Kind of 2 philosophies conflicting each other in change management, but we need to limit changes in a way to fulfill with deadlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32495" LastEditorUserId="32641" LastEditDate="2018-07-02T10:56:39.353" LastActivityDate="2018-07-02T10:56:39.353" Title="What techniques do you use to establish scope in agile" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;scope&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24263" CreationDate="2018-06-15T14:07:05.207" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understand your Question correctly, you're asking how best to approach agile development in a situation where there is a hard cap on time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The obvious answer is to constrain the scope. And a good technique to do &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; is to first develop towards a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;minimum viable product (MVP)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You start out by getting from the customer a list of the absolutely &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoSCoW_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; have&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; requirements. The requirements such that, if the product is otherwise 100% complete &lt;em&gt;except&lt;/em&gt; that one requirement, and there's no way to add it - then the only option is to throw the product out. The collection of those requirements is your MVP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You then estimate how long you think it will take to develop that MVP - you now have your minimum schedule. At that point, you add padding to the schedule. The padding serves two purposes. First, a safety net for if you underestimated. Second, room to iterate improvements - the more padding you have, the more 'should have' and 'could have' requirements you can fit in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Importantly, though, once you've completed the MVP, &lt;em&gt;show it to the customer&lt;/em&gt;. Requirements practically always change once customers have a working product in front of them. At this point, you can renegotiate any of the 'padding requirements' you added before, in exchange for adding new requirements. Either remove some of the old ones, or increase the time/cost of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal is collaboration. As per the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;manifesto&lt;/a&gt;, '&lt;strong&gt;Customer collaboration&lt;/strong&gt; over contract negotiation'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-06-15T14:07:05.207" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24260" CreationDate="2018-06-15T15:10:01.890" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think what you're calling out is that you have a distribution of skills on the team that 66% of the team can do front-end work and 33% can do backend work. However, the work needs something like a 60/40 skills distribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what you are seeing is that there is a potential for an increase in velocity if the skills of the team matched the work a little more closely. Especially in this case, because they are so close, cross-training is almost certainly the best way to accomplish this for your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-06-15T15:10:01.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24260" CreationDate="2018-06-15T15:38:33.273" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, Scrum is a 'pull system'. In Sprint Planning, a self-organizing Scrum Team &lt;strong&gt;pulls&lt;/strong&gt; items from the Product Backlog into the Sprint Backlog and formulate a Sprint Goal. There is no 'tasks assignment' event/role in Scrum. If you are a Scrum Master then it's time to allow your Scrum Team to self-organize around this. If you are a manager, get the Team's Scrum Master to coach you on appropriate interactions with their Team :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, there may be many reasons why you have failed Sprints:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Developers work as individuals or silos and not as a Team e.g. front end devs do front end tasks then hand-off to back end developers etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Developers are over-committing to work they cannot complete, perhaps due to external influences.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developers feel they need to be busy at all times e.g. towards the end of the Sprint the front end developers are bored so they pull more items into the Sprint, merely hoping others will have time to finish 'their' tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developers are being assigned tasks by someone outside the Team :)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think your first priority is to get to the point where you have completed a number of Sprints where all the work forecast in Sprint gets done. Do all you can to ensure the Devs pull in a vastly reduced number of Product Backlog items. Don't allow new items to be added during the Sprint. I expect the front end developers will complain of having nothing to do: observe their behavior when you tell them to help get the in-progress items finished. Strongly encourage them to either pair with the back end developers in getting items to done or work with the Product Owner on preparing Backlog Items for the next Sprint; strongly discourage them from starting active front end development work on items still in the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get the Team accustomed to finishing all forecast work in a Sprint **as a Team ** before allowing them to increment the amount of work they pull in each time. Only increment again after a stable period at the new increased velocity (say, three Sprints).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29315" LastActivityDate="2018-06-15T15:38:33.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24250" CreationDate="2018-06-15T15:54:57.733" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obviously, it is best to have the whole Scrum Team present at every Retro. I would encourage always hold the Retro with as many people who are available. I joke I'm playing 'Scrum Team bingo' where I score a point for each unique combination of Scrum Team members I've had in a Retro. But seriously, each combination of Scrum Team members creates a unique dynamic and almost always reveals new insights. Something to avoid is 'talking behind someone's back', of course; though if this did happen it would be a good opportunity to discuss fear of conflict or avoidance of accountability (two of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Dysfunctions_of_a_Team&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Five Dysfunctions of a Team&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29315" LastActivityDate="2018-06-15T15:54:57.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24269" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24283" CreationDate="2018-06-15T15:55:03.847" Score="3" ViewCount="224" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a scrum master for a team of 6 developers and testers. There is also a product owner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Management wants me to do certain things which a traditional manager would do eg. get the team to complete their time sheets. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don’t believe this is my remit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should I do?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2018-06-19T19:30:00.677" Title="Scrum Master being made to manage" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24270" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-06-15T15:56:18.507" Score="1" ViewCount="330" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was given a task of presenting management with a dashboard for multiple projects. Please suggest to me a suitable template. What are the main parameters that should be showcased on this dashboard?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32662" LastEditorUserId="32641" LastEditDate="2018-07-02T10:56:02.417" LastActivityDate="2019-12-29T22:04:12.007" Title="Multi Project Management Dashboard" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;portfolio-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2019-12-30T01:32:14.253" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24270" CreationDate="2018-06-15T16:19:14.903" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Ask them.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no possible way for us, strangers on the internet, to be able to know with certainty what information your management needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, ask &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt;. I suggest compiling a list of &lt;em&gt;all possible&lt;/em&gt; types of information you could provide them (just the types (e.g. estimated time, actual time, team members, process, etc.), not the data themselves (5 weeks, 3 weeks, 4 members, 7 members, etc.)). Then ask them which information they're interested in seeing on the dashboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-06-15T16:19:14.903" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24269" CreationDate="2018-06-15T16:24:06.937" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should inform management that as a Scrum Master you have NO 'executive' (for the lack of a better word) power over your team nor are  you responsible for your team's performance. You and your team are ONE in front of the management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The person responsible for the team is the team lead or direct manager (probably a mid-level manager) and only that person can 'get' the team to do something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master, you can facilitate and plan these activities with your team. E.g. as a team, you agree that no Story is considered 'Done' unless all story-related activities have been logged into a timesheet. You can be responsible to check that. (My experience is that timesheets are done at the end of the week and are not entered per story but per project).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, create an awkward story &quot;As manager I need all my team members to complete timesheets&quot;, create subtasks for each member and plan it in the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These can be in the scope of your role. You can be responsible to &lt;em&gt;remind&lt;/em&gt; your team members to complete their timesheets(e.g. on the deadline day's stand-up meeting).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a team member keeps failing to enter these as you as a team agreed, you can bring that up in the Retrospective meeting with your team. And, if that doesn't help, escalate to his/her manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what you can propose to your management as a solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner, in it's pure scrum role should not be managing the team. It does have full responsibility to manage the product, the sprint and team's effort. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32710" LastEditorUserId="32710" LastEditDate="2018-06-15T21:25:02.087" LastActivityDate="2018-06-15T21:25:02.087" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21069" CreationDate="2018-06-15T16:40:42.730" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;So your question is how to setup JIRA in order to facilitate this process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my team we &lt;strong&gt;simply used sub-tasks&lt;/strong&gt;. Each issue / story is split into sub-tasks some that can run in parallel (coding, design, documentation, ) or in sequence. &#xA;This way each sub-task is assigned to a team member responsible to carry out that activity and on stand-up meetings they can 'move' their task to in-progress once preceding tasks are moved to 'Done'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having to find out who worked on story is easy as finding all sub-tasks of a task..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32710" LastActivityDate="2018-06-15T16:40:42.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24260" CreationDate="2018-06-15T16:54:28.097" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try making your stories 'smaller' - let your team define a story that they as a team can work on and finish in a 'day-or-two' &#xA;Also, keep in mind that the team &lt;em&gt;should &quot;swarm&quot; on stories together&lt;/em&gt;, one story at a time! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32710" LastActivityDate="2018-06-15T16:54:28.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24255" CreationDate="2018-06-16T11:01:19.210" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;@Erik's answer is perfect when the situation is that the entire team has finished the sprint goals early. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If only a few of the team members have finished early, their top priority should be helping other team members finish their sprint work.  You want team members to be thinking &lt;em&gt;team first&lt;/em&gt; not just about their individual accomplishments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That having been said, I frequently observe developers saying they're &quot;done&quot; when in fact they're only code complete.  Are there automated tests in place?  Is the documentation done?  Have you updated any relevant user guides?  Do sales and marketing have what they need for the new feature?  These things might be outside your &quot;definition of done,&quot; but they are still important and will boost the quality of your team's deliverable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2018-06-16T11:01:19.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24277" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24281" CreationDate="2018-06-16T15:47:13.267" Score="4" ViewCount="492" Body="&lt;p&gt;While there's way too much wisdom and anecdotal evidence accumulated over the years that throwing new people into a project to magically close a scope-gap or a schedule-gap is a bad idea, I've noticed that seasoned leaders continue to try this, especially in the software development world (which gestates release babies faster than the typical 9 pregnant women).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asking if there's a narrow set of conditions where this act of insanity ( adding new lines of communication and enduring the burden of ramp-up, training, having too many chefs in the kitchen, etc.) ACTUALLY ever helps a project succeed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can think of try-to-break-the-software usability testing where NOT knowing how a web application even works can possibly invite bug-bounties and having people show up as a mob to test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any other scenario that could work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7032" LastEditorUserId="32641" LastEditDate="2018-07-01T14:49:55.380" LastActivityDate="2018-07-01T16:38:19.497" Title="When does throwing in people to meet a Project's Scope or Time constraints ever work?" Tags="&lt;resources&gt;&lt;constraints&gt;&lt;team-size&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24270" CreationDate="2018-06-16T16:29:10.877" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although I agree with Sarov, I think that the process should be as follows: you shoud first understand what they want and then create a scope based on your experience and what you think it's valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's similar to what Henry Ford said: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, having a big overview is always helpful. With &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.axosoft.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ontime &lt;/a&gt; it's possible to create custom views and show: average number of tasks per sprint, milestones to be completed, tasks in the backlog, along with other metrics and plots. This allowed the board to do informed decisions about priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastEditorUserId="32111" LastEditDate="2018-06-16T16:36:12.993" LastActivityDate="2018-06-16T16:36:12.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24269" CreationDate="2018-06-16T16:55:34.107" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No one should really be &quot;telling them to do the time sheets&quot; (and it's clearly not your responsibility). People needs to understand the value of administrative tasks and organically do them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the previous, I see two issues that need to get sorted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why filling time sheets turned into a problem (is the current tool too difficult use for example?)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Explain people why it's valuable for the company to fill them &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-06-16T16:55:34.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24277" CreationDate="2018-06-16T17:49:09.220" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In certain cases &lt;em&gt;it is possible&lt;/em&gt; to get more work done if you introduce more people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most usual scenario is when teams take time to do detailed scoping and when the project itself allows low coupling among the components.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience this has rarely happened. Communication grows a lot by adding a single member and administrative tasks requiere more time than usual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.co.uk/Managing-Unmanageable-Insights-Software-People/dp/032182203X/ref=mp_s_a_1_1/260-0758081-1361865?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1529171279&amp;amp;sr=1-1&amp;amp;pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&amp;amp;keywords=managing%20the%20unmanageable&amp;amp;dpPl=1&amp;amp;dpID=51IFb8%2Bq2QL&amp;amp;ref=plSrch&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Managing the unmanageable&lt;/a&gt; explains in more detail how small teams tend to get more work done in less time. Have a look if you're interested :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-06-16T17:49:09.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24277" CreationDate="2018-06-16T19:15:50.703" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different tasks have different degrees of resources elasticity. And a task in itself can have different degrees of elasticity depending on other present variables like the environment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine ten patients needing surgery with one surgeon. Then, add four more surgeons. Would anyone argue that the duration to complete those surgeries worsened? Hope not.  What if there were only two surgery theatres? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having hard fast rules is for the intellectually lazy. You need to assess each task and the environment and other factors to gauge the elasticity you may observe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-06-16T19:15:50.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24277" CreationDate="2018-06-16T22:21:16.957" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way to think about it is to consider if the task would be marked &quot;Effort Driven&quot; if you were creating an MS Project Plan for it.  Effort driven tasks &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; actually expedited by adding people (at least up to a point).  The &lt;em&gt;Mythical Man Month&lt;/em&gt; idea that adding more people to a late software project will make it later is true for knowledge workers on a project which is adequately staffed - but not for tasks which can benefit from brute force (the bug bounty, in your example), or for tasks which are simply understaffed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1752" LastActivityDate="2018-06-16T22:21:16.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24269" CreationDate="2018-06-17T09:01:45.847" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Teach the team to self-organise around topics you get from upper management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We had a similar issue with time-sheets recently. The Scrum Master brought the issue to the team. The team wanted to understand the value better of the time-sheets and once they understood implemented a measure to complete them daily. They added a question to the stand-up: &quot;Did we complete our time-sheets of yesterday?&quot;. Which worked, and when they forgot they where reminded. The good thing here is they choose todo it, they where not forced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Scrum Master should teach the organisation how to self-organise. This goes two ways, the team, but also upper management. Bring them together let them truly understand each side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think it is fine to ask a Scrum Master to assist with traditional management type of stuff, but execute it in a way that facilitates the team in self-organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2018-06-17T09:01:45.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24277" CreationDate="2018-06-17T12:17:39.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there any other scenario that could work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you are approaching this from an angle of what works functionally. You already know it does not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at it from another angle: as a project manager, who do you want to be? The active, try-your-best guy who pours more manpower into a late project that then fails anyway despite all your best efforts? Or the defeatist guy who tells their boss that this project will fail anyway and then stand by with their hands in their pockets doing nothing while the project fails?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pouring manpower into a late project is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; an effort by an intelligent, educated person trying to save the project. It's the move of somebody who needs to look worthwhile in the eyes of their bosses, who probably know nothing about whether adding manpower is a good move or not. All they know is their PM requested more money when the project was late, which seems the smart thing to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2018-06-17T12:17:39.223" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24269" CreationDate="2018-06-17T12:45:53.493" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that you sit down with the management team and agree a clear definition of what your role is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask them whether they want you to focus on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-sm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Master role as defined by the Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;, or if they want some kind of hybrid role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Offer to explain to them how the Scrum Master role is meant to work and the benefits this provides to the team and the organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they insist on a hybrid role then note that there will be an impact, which may include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A reduction in the time you get to spend supporting Scrum and removing impediments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A change in the relationship between you and your team from one of servant leader to one of manager/administrator&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The disempowering of the team which will impact on their ability to self-manage and adapt&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-06-17T12:45:53.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24131" CreationDate="2018-06-17T15:47:31.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are you looking for formula which counts percentage of checked items on all tabs? If yes, then &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZAn4vJ3psMN7p-QTu78DvKiEZ8H0ew9hzMsmACnyzWc/edit?usp=drivesdk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here is an exemplar google spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt; for you. You can add new tabs and just modify formula correspondingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32641" LastActivityDate="2018-06-17T15:47:31.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24115" CreationDate="2018-06-17T15:52:18.823" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not guru of WBS, but I usually put the common works right under Dev node. Or create so-called &quot;Common&quot; node under the Dev node, and put common things under Common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32641" LastActivityDate="2018-06-17T15:52:18.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24032" CreationDate="2018-06-17T16:01:18.577" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually create something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://sijinjoseph.com/programmer-competency-matrix/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Programmer Competency Matrix&lt;/a&gt; and modify as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32641" LastActivityDate="2018-06-17T16:01:18.577" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23904" CreationDate="2018-06-17T21:52:45.817" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's &quot;required&quot; to allow the project to work as it was functionally described in the specification, &lt;em&gt;but&lt;/em&gt; it came out as you were working on the project, then it's both parties fault and you need to negotiate the terms with the client (costs/timelines).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be good for you to give further details for a better answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-06-17T21:52:45.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23904" CreationDate="2018-06-18T10:24:20.827" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Staring at a 20-page SOW and contract in the IT world, it sometimes is very hard to determine if a request is out of scope, so looking at your three-line description is even more difficult.  It would depend on what you mean by &quot;detailed&quot; and how the additional work related to those details.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you commingled terms: specifications describe what will be finished and work describes (for many) the action to derive what will be completed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it is unclear if by work you mean they are asking to you for three additional coats of paint to the two you already completed (in scope) or asking for another wall to be painted (out of scope) or to hang fifteen paintings and pictures on your completed wall (out of scope) or to replace the electric outlet and light switches plates (iffy but likely in scope--this would depend on your assumptions, exclusions, etc., clearly articulated in your contract).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this question is difficult to answer, I hope the wall analogy would help you derive additional questions that would help you yield your answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-06-18T10:24:20.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24115" CreationDate="2018-06-18T14:16:26.273" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There isn't a lot of information in your question, so I'm having to make some assumptions, but I think your second diagram is correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deliver Customer processing module depends on &quot;develop common library&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deliver Sales Order module depends on &quot;develop common library&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then the answer is fairly simple - define a new work package &quot;Develop common library&quot;, and make both of the other modules antecedents/dependents. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are two separate applications, then diagram 1 is ok - but if the application is the same, then this diagram will create problems - the diagram should represent all the work to do the task - if the same work is represented twice then the diagram will mis-represent the amount of work to be done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2018-06-18T14:16:26.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24292" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24295" CreationDate="2018-06-18T15:43:41.193" Score="2" ViewCount="251" Body="&lt;p&gt;Would you consider is it good approach to group different user stories from different projects into one sprint? Have you ever detected pros/cons?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1. Project A (Start 2017-01-05 Estimate End 2017-05-30)&#xA;   US_A1&#xA;   US_A2&#xA;   US_A3&#xA;   US_A4&#xA;2. Project B (Start 2017-03-01 Estimate End 2017-07-30)&#xA;   US_B1&#xA;   US_B2&#xA;   US_B3&#xA;   US_B4&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprint of 2 weeks when dates of projects overlap and you have the same number of people for all your projects, but you have multiple Scrum masters (one per project) and one team&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;**Sprint 8 (Prj A &amp;amp; Prj B)**&#xA;US_A2&#xA;US_A4&#xA;US_B2&#xA;US_B3&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last update Jul 25, 2019&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Forgot to mention that company performs multiple incremental iterations to improve a software/suite. Each project represents clients' requirements from different business units. That is why there is only one group of devs for the software, but many project managers with different goals, with different stories that can overlap in time and maybe in objectives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32495" LastEditorUserId="32495" LastEditDate="2019-07-26T01:55:28.570" LastActivityDate="2019-07-26T01:55:28.570" Title="Good approach to group different project stories in same sprints" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24292" CreationDate="2018-06-18T15:57:31.137" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can have multiple projects. You can have multiple teams. &lt;strong&gt;But:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One person can only be in exactly one team &lt;sup&gt;(1)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A Scrum master is &lt;em&gt;per Team&lt;/em&gt; not per project. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With those constraints, your plan will not work either way. The best option might be to form one team, put both projects into the backlog and work on them. You can drag work items of multiple different projects into one sprint just as you said. But you will have &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; Scrum master and &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; product owner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, if you want two teams, forms two teams, two Scrum masters, two product owners and two backlogs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(1)&lt;/sup&gt; (my experience tells me that any way to cheat around this rule will fail badly, because there can be neither &lt;em&gt;focus&lt;/em&gt; nor &lt;em&gt;commitment&lt;/em&gt;, two of the five core values, if somebody is on multiple teams).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2018-06-18T15:57:31.137" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24032" CreationDate="2018-06-18T17:59:45.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to identify:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What skills are needed for your current team to be successful?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What skills does every individual wants to improve on?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then find a common ground to figure out the right skills,levels and how to proceed. A good idea as Liath pointed out is to let the team build this matrix together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I looked at Anton suggestion, a competency matrix is a great idea, but you also need to include soft skills on them because they tend to be equally valuable for a great team to succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another point, be very wary of creating diverse skills that are not easy to game, and that ideally evolve /change a bit overtime, otherwise people might just rapidly lean towards improving the skills you consider useful and then forget about improving themselves. More information on this topic can be found in the book: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.co.uk/Drive-Daniel-H-Pink/dp/184767769X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1529350341&amp;amp;sr=8-1&amp;amp;keywords=drive+book&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Drive&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastEditorUserId="32111" LastEditDate="2018-06-18T19:33:13.623" LastActivityDate="2018-06-18T19:33:13.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24292" CreationDate="2018-06-18T18:55:29.443" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having worked like this, with a single team working on multiple projects at the same time, on multiple occasions, I have identified numerous reasons to not do this and exactly none at all to work like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, it will strain or fracture the team, drain motivation, reduce productivity and leave you with two failed projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Various companies tried doing this in various different ways, but not of them really worked out in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We tried tackling problems from two backlogs with the whole team. The main downsides there were constantly switching between context, which caused huge overhead, and the inevitable fights with the PO over which project's stories needed to be dropped when we wouldn't make the sprint. Doing one project first and the second after made the fights worse in intensity; doing a story from each in turn made them more common as the overhead reduced velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also tried assigning some people to work primarily on one project, some people on the other, and some shared, with the idea that both sides would help out if one or the other project would slip. This one fractured the whole team in weeks, with each side just working on a single project and not really caring about the other anymore, losing track of the domain expertise and progress needed for the other project and then just getting annoyed about having to join on meeting for a project they weren't a part of. The team basically ended up being split in two teams, one for each project, but that caused a lot of pain and lost productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then also we tried working on one project for a sprint, then the other project for a sprint, etc. This worked &lt;em&gt;somewhat&lt;/em&gt;. It has less of the issues of the first approach because each project is in a clear timebox, but it will cost you a lot of flexibility when something important happens on Project A but you've just started a sprint for Project B, and then you end up with the same priority fight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My best advice: don't do it. One person, one team, one project, one goal. Anything other than that is going to cost you tons of morale and productivity, for no gain. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/02/12/human-task-switches-considered-harmful/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Obligatory reading.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, as a final note, ask yourself &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; you want to do this. There is literally no reason to ever consider this; you can just do both projects in series. Complete project A and then complete B once A is done; if you could successfully complete both in parallel then you will &lt;strong&gt;always&lt;/strong&gt; be able to complete them faster in series. Any reasons for starting both at once, are likely rooted in already admitting to yourself that you're going to fail at both projects anyway, and are trying to mitigate the damages by having &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; to show at the deadline to convince people you need more time/money without them pulling out. Invest your time fixing &lt;strong&gt;that&lt;/strong&gt; problem and leave your people to focus on one thing at a time, that's how they'll work best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31393" LastActivityDate="2018-06-18T18:55:29.443" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24292" CreationDate="2018-06-19T08:44:21.523" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's a terrible idea&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is only one scrum master per team. The scrum master isn't tied to the project because he is not a project manager. Your setup suggests that your company does not understand or respect scrum or the people working under it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no advantage of mixing projects like this. This is clearly just management pushing arbitrary deadlines with no regards to practicality. There is no reason why anyone would suggest this over doing project A properly then doing project B propery unless they are trying to trick the developers into committing to more work than is feasible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Switching between jobs is ineffective. People need time to get up to speed when they start something new. This is even more the case when switching between completely different projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you get around the previous point by splitting the team, then you're still no better off as you lose a lot of the team's synergies by having them work on different projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're bound to run into conflicts as soon as you mix the projects. What is a &quot;fair&quot; split of sprint capacity? Which tasks take priority if you can't finish everything? Project A will push for more attention to get it done. Project B will push back. It will be nothing but drama.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have no guarantee that you will be done with project A on the estimated date. What are you going to do then? Cut it off? If your managers were willing to do that you could just as well move that deadline up a month and avoid this mixing. Are you going to continue to run in parallel? For how long? Because that will delay project B and someone up the ladder is not going to be happy about that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a textbook &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_bind&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;double bind&lt;/a&gt; scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2018-06-19T08:44:21.523" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23904" CreationDate="2018-06-19T11:17:02.970" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First acknowledge the clients' great idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then confirm that you are going to add it to the backlog for consideration once the team has delivered the agreed functionality, &lt;strong&gt;as you agreed in the contract&lt;/strong&gt; in the section covering this eventuality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally make it clear you don't want to distract the team from delivering the project as agreed and that you will commit to reviewing all of the additional work identified by the client for a second project. Make it clear that the customer would be wise to run the delivered software for a while to gain an understanding of how it works in production and how it can be improved in the light of experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23918" LastActivityDate="2018-06-19T11:17:02.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24292" CreationDate="2018-06-19T13:18:18.553" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Advantages of having stories from multiple projects in each sprint:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You will see progress in more than one project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The developers may enjoy the variety&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disadvantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Context switching is expensive and reduces the output of your team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You lose the clarity of having just one project to focus on, which may also reduce productivity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is often more difficult to define the relative priorities for tasks from different projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience the most common reason for having multiple projects in each sprint is that the organisation is unable (or unwilling) to prioritise and they do not appreciate the productivity loss that comes from multi-tasking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;but you have multiple Scrum masters (one per project) and one team&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you aren't doing Scrum and shouldn't really be calling them Scrum Masters. One of the reasons for the existence of Scrum is that it was recognised that consistency of team members really helps a team to work effectively. When a team works together they learn to adapt to each others strengths and weaknesses. If you are changing team members (especially a key role like the Scrum Master) then you are going to have reduced productivity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-06-19T13:18:18.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24220" CreationDate="2018-06-19T14:38:39.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Context: I am working on an online product (website) with a rather fast release cycle (minor releases every month, major releases every 6-9 months)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My practice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;create the original PRD containing the requirements, prioritised using MoSCoW, and with links to Jira epics &amp;amp; stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;at a certain time/milestone (usually whenever we start planning a new major version), that page gets renamed to v1 and a copy is created, v2.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the v1 version is moved to be a child of the v2 version (kept for historical purposes)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;going forward I clean up v2 (removing what is already completed/scheduled for v1), add new stories and reprioritise &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like keeping stories in 1 PRD (even if they are Cs or Ws) so that people would get the big picture when reading the PRD (and not just focus on the current version's goals).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ms are a must for that release. Cs are a stretch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I try not to do release planning in Confluence for anything less than a major version (minor version release planning is done in Jira) - and based on my experience 1 major version planning is good enough (you actually don't know what the next 6 months will bring but your PRD should capture the future in the Cs and Ws). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32731" LastActivityDate="2018-06-19T14:38:39.717" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24302" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24308" CreationDate="2018-06-19T16:26:53.360" Score="3" ViewCount="81" Body="&lt;p&gt;We want to track user activity on this screen (attached image) i.e. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;close button click (top-right)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User's tap on textbox (Type your city)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User's click on Detect my location&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we follow INVEST criteria, each of the above 3 is an independent story. As a rule, we give minimum 1 point to each story. Our team feels that these three are trivial tasks and it's not worth to give three points combined to these, it's just 1 point effort to execute all 3. We have following choices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create 3 separate stories and give 1 point to each: This would go with the INVEST criteria but the execution is not complex enough for 3 points. This might show increased velocity which is not actually the case here.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create 1 story for above 3 things and give 1 point in total: We are combining multiple stories here but estimation is as per the complexity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: This is a simple example and it's not just about 3 stories of 1 point, there might be 15 such stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question is - how should we break the stories and estimate them in such cases?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xouQS.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xouQS.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28471" LastEditorUserId="28471" LastEditDate="2018-06-19T16:55:12.150" LastActivityDate="2018-06-20T11:20:09.067" Title="how to estimate multiple stories with less complexity?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24302" CreationDate="2018-06-19T16:49:30.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;code&gt;1&lt;/code&gt; is the smallest possible change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For us for example, that means &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;clone the repository&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;set an attribute from &lt;code&gt;true&lt;/code&gt; to &lt;code&gt;false&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;start the app&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;check that it worked&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;commit the changes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;push the changes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;close the ticket. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a hard time believing, that entering a city and detecting location is that simple. You'd need a geo location service, you'd need a key for that, you need to test it for multiple values (what happens when you enter an ambiguous value? For example if I enter &quot;Hanover&quot; while being located in &lt;code&gt;Hannover, Germany&lt;/code&gt;, I get &lt;code&gt;Hannover, Germany&lt;/code&gt;, even though there exists a &lt;code&gt;Hanover, PA&lt;/code&gt; that would surely be a better match for what I entered. What happens if I press it when I have not entered anything? Error message?) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if that all is &lt;em&gt;too easy for a 1&lt;/em&gt;, you need to check back with your developers if they are actually on the same page with you. If that story is a &lt;code&gt;1&lt;/code&gt;, the smallest possible amount of work, your scale is off, simple as that. Because there obviously is &lt;em&gt;less&lt;/em&gt; work possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming a different example: lets say it &lt;em&gt;were&lt;/em&gt; that easy. Just build a story that says &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;As a user I want to select my city to filter (whatever)&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Done. Then note the details (needs to be it's own dialog, needs close button, needs input, needs auto-detection) as additional information for the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2018-06-19T16:49:30.640" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23904" CreationDate="2018-06-19T18:12:36.063" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This will be managed with communication skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you produced a scope statement that was approved by them and you really know that the scope was like 1+1=2 and now is like 1*2=2, try to evaluate if the goal of the feature produce same results and if they are willing to accept it if this does not change all the process. It will depend on how your product or service is delivered. (easy to fix?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you believe, after an analysis, that your on track with the project and it does not represent a huge impact or rework, try to evaluate if you can assume it with disclosure that this will be handled as an exception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is completely risky, try to make reason the customer and try to deliver a release v1 and then v2 on a later phase with another scope and budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the change was produced by a huge reengineering by the customer then there is no choice that they should assume this change with the impact in time and cost. If you maybe can prioritize some features and you can still deliver basic functions, you may produce an outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to negotiate first before to make a change or go up in hierarchy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is no chance to close a deal then produce a formal change request since your baseline was modified and make validate by customer formally specifying how much time and money will cost. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there was not scope declared even if these come from fixed contract, you jeopardized your project. It will cost you money and time. You should have stated the limits/scope for each requirement that customer requested from SOW. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32495" LastActivityDate="2018-06-19T18:12:36.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24305" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-06-19T18:55:04.940" Score="4" ViewCount="211" Body="&lt;p&gt;A typical company that worked with project management with PMI methodology and resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assume a specific business unit like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 projects with different external companies (contract)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 project managers. They normally are linked to a customer accounts which in this case they have their 2 projects respectively.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 senior lead developer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A dev team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Want to go over agile and you are transitioning progresively. Using a framework like Scrum we would need 1 Scrum master, 1 product owner and a Scrum team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to arrange roles for your 2 projects, your dev team would behave as the scrum team and you will empower them to be self-organizing and you will give all resources they need to accomplish their objectives. As I've been advised they should be only focused on one project at a time and not developing features from different projects in a sprint even if the product is the same. The final product is a platform and each project is for a procurement and accounting module. We will split the current team to be specialist on each module. We will have 2 scrum teams now, one per project/account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would you give the role of product owner to the senior lead developer?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who will be the Scrum master? Will you encourage a lead developer from your teams to be the scrum master or the existing project managers since there will be 2 teams to communicate?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would you limit your project managers to customer negotiation and project direction?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32495" LastActivityDate="2018-06-26T12:00:46.657" Title="Where is the place for project managers in agile" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24250" CreationDate="2018-06-19T19:17:53.360" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Skipping the retro would be an anti-pattern.&#xA;When capacity is limited due to &quot;OOO&quot; it's a good time to assess the team's cross-functionality limits. What skills gaps do we have? &#xA;What could we do about that in the future?&#xA;Good stuff to uncover!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32578" LastActivityDate="2018-06-19T19:17:53.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24269" CreationDate="2018-06-19T19:30:00.677" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd define your SM role, how the SM impacts value &amp;amp; then talk about being a team player.&#xA;Time sheets are probably necessary to the business but are out of the scrum master's scope. Being a team player, you can educate the stakeholders as to how this extra duty impacts the framework. Are they ready for that?&#xA;Time sheets &amp;amp; TPS reports can be done in their slack time.&#xA;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32578" LastActivityDate="2018-06-19T19:30:00.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24302" CreationDate="2018-06-19T21:11:28.637" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure in what way combining them would violate INVEST. The I (Independent) generally refers to if it is inextricably tied to another backlog item. For example, if I have a backlog item to make a database change and one to publish the change, they are inextricably tied to each other, so they are really the same backlog item. I would think doing all three together is fine. Now, there is an argument to be made that you may want to prioritize them separately (or some not at all) and then an argument could be made for keeping them separate, but if you definitely want to do all three, grouping them should be fine if your team wants to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-06-19T21:11:28.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24302" CreationDate="2018-06-19T23:08:34.010" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Daniel, it doesn't violate INVEST.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to add that although you can manage it as a single story, if it's relevant for your project, you should still record this effort in the bigger component that this tasks are linked to (they seem to belong to a different component?) so that they can be used in the future to fully understand how much effort has been invested in such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-06-19T23:08:34.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24302" CreationDate="2018-06-20T11:20:09.067" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;'Independent' is not the same as 'small' (the 'S' in 'INVEST') of course. A product Backlog item (PBI) should be as small as possible but no smaller. It &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; possible to go too far and split into subatomic parts that would be more usefully kept together. Anyone remember last year's deconstructed avocado toast scandal? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would urge you to consider whether these items are too small. Could they be grouped and still be indepedent from all other PBIs and &quot;small enough&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note there may be dependecies between your PBIs. I view 'independent' as an ideal that is not always attainable/desireable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To demonstrate, let's say there was just one PBI to track user activity on the whole screen and the estimate comes out at 20 Points - too big! Devs look at splitting it and come up with four items: one to implement user activity logging (5 Points) and three for each UI element (3 points each). That's no good because none of the there is a dependency in that the 'implement' item must be played first and in itself delivers no value. One approach is to combine the 'implement' item with one of the 'element' items to make one 8 Point item that delivers (limited) value. Now the remaining two 'element' items will still be dependent on the first but should retain a lower estimate (3 Points) because they can be written as, &quot;Assuming user activity logging has been implemented...&quot; then the cost at the margin (i.e. the cost to get your established factory to produce one more widget).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29315" LastActivityDate="2018-06-20T11:20:09.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24311" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24320" CreationDate="2018-06-20T11:47:20.693" Score="10" ViewCount="4698" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our team is consist of 12 people who work on one product. While Scrum says team size should be 3-9 people. So, should we not use Scrum only because of team size? We probably can't split the team, because we are mostly working on different tasks or stories related to one product. So although those stories and tasks are inter-connected in some way, they are not that all tasks are belonging to one story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem right now is that our Daily Scrum is not 10 minutes meeting but it takes around 30-35 minutes which I don't think is efficient use of everyone's time. And not every detail is related to every member of team. But sometimes it is useful in a way that everyone member has an idea of what is going on in the team and if there is dependency then everyone is there to resolve it, as different stories are sometime inter-connected or probably someone on other irrelevant story can answer some question to resolve dependency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what do you suggest? Should we keep the Daily Scrum as it is? Or should we make smaller teams in some way? I don't know how we can split it. There are mobile developers, back-end developers, QA, Devops guy, and BI guy. So how should we split it? Or we should keep doing it in the same way but with some changes you can suggest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21514" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-06-20T13:06:57.027" LastActivityDate="2018-06-20T21:57:06.770" Title="Does Scrum makes sense for 12 members in a Development Team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;&lt;team-size&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24311" CreationDate="2018-06-20T12:19:41.937" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's important to recognize that Scrum does not say that a team must be between 3 and 9 individuals. The Scrum Guide says that Scrum is most effective with a Development Team size of between 3 and 9 people. A Scrum Team (including the Product Owner and Scrum Master) would have an ideal size of 4-11. Development Teams that are smaller than 3 people or larger than 9 people may experience some issues with the rules that Scrum has laid out - for smaller teams, it may add unnecessary overhead in the way the events and artifacts are managed; for larger teams, you may not have sufficient time within the timeboxes and the additional communication channels may slow the team down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that doesn't address the issue - you have a team of 12, which is larger than what Scrum suggests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, you would split the team. Because Scrum teams are self-organizing, the team would determine how to best split the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two guides that take Scrum and scale it - &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/resources/nexus-guide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nexus (from Ken Schwaber and Scrum.org)&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumatscale.com/scrum-at-scale-guide/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum@Scale (from Jeff Sutherland and Scrum, Inc.)&lt;/a&gt;. There are also a number of other scaled agile frameworks, but those may be a bit heavyweight at this point in time. Even Nexus and Scrum@Scale are designed for cases of 3 or more teams, but some of the concepts are still relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point in time, you really only need to split the Development Team. The common guidance is that you have one Product Owner for each Product Backlog and there is only one Product Backlog for a particular product. Since you only have one Product, you only need one Product Backlog and therefore one Product Owner. The Scrum Master can, in theory, also facilitate both teams but that would almost certainly make the Scrum Master a full-time role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How you split the team is up to the team, although the business should probably have input. Scrum does have some rules about the makeup of the team, primarily that each Development Team needs to have all of the skills necessary to create a Product Increment. That is, a team should be able to take a Product Backlog Item and get it to Done without needing to go outside of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you split the team, the result of each Sprint should be a fully integrated and Done Increment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But let's say that you can't split the team. There are still some other things that you can do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, try to better enforce the timeboxes of events. A Daily Scrum is not a status meeting - people don't need to get into the details of their work. Focus on things of interest to the group (for example, finishing something that was impeding someone else) or on current impediments that will prevent the team from achieving the goal. The same holds true for the other events - focus on their intents and be disciplined about getting to the purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, work on dependency management when ordering the Product Backlog and in Sprint Planning. Try to keep everyone active and engaged. Don't have individuals begin work that is blocked because other people are working on other things. This is wasteful (in the Lean sense of the word). At the same time, keep trying to deliver visible value to the stakeholders at the end of every Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, reduce the size of the people involved in the different Scrum Events. For example, limit the attendees of the Daily Scrum to the Development Team only. If there are people in supporting roles, you can invite them as silent observers (and enforce the silent observer rules) and ask them to leave if they interfere with the event. For events like Sprint Planning and Backlog Grooming, invite only the people who are required. Some good examples would be that roles like UX Designer and Business Analyst would be supporting the Product Owner - only the Product Owner would need to attend the events with the team (and can delegate if unavailable for any reason). This may help reduce the number of people and make meetings and events flow more smoothly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, begin to cross-train. If your organization continues to grow, you will almost certainly have to either change your process as Scrum will be unsuitable for such a large team or split your team. If you go down the path of splitting the team, you're going to want to make sure that teams have the right skills on that future. Also consider this if you hire new people into the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2018-06-20T15:06:04.333" LastActivityDate="2018-06-20T15:06:04.333" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24255" CreationDate="2018-06-20T13:00:53.360" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;During the sprint process, Sprint goal is the team goal. In my case we start every story using following sequence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developer and QA and Prod Owner (or BA) have a quick meeting to&#xA;ensure they are on same page on with the story/acceptance criteria.&#xA;(Saves us lot of rework)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developer starts coding. QA person starts writing test cases&#xA;(automated and manual) same time. They keep each other in loop&#xA;through the sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If they finish a story they move together to different story. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If anyone has idle time there is always plenty of activities like&#xA;code review, test script review, build process optimizations, update&#xA;documentation etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If there is still spare time, we look to pull in new stories OR we&#xA;work in pairs (Pair programming)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32694" LastActivityDate="2018-06-20T13:00:53.360" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24305" CreationDate="2018-06-20T13:27:29.147" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would you give the role of product owner to the senior lead developer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/roles/product-owner&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Product Owner&lt;/a&gt; is your key stakeholder. They need to have the authority to prioritise the product backlog and enough domain knowledge to explain requirements to the development team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems unlikely that your senior lead developer would be a good fit for this role. Is the senior lead developer's main focus the functionality of the product? Do they spend a lot of time talking with stakeholders (people from the business, including sales, marketing, etc.)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To do the Product Owner role you do not need any technical knowledge, you just need to understand the product requirements. So you might want to consider a non-technical person such as an account manager or product manager in this role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Who will be the Scrum master? Will you encourage a lead developer from your teams to be the scrum master or the existing project managers since there will be 2 teams to communicate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The requirements for a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/roles/scrummaster&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Master&lt;/a&gt; are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A good understanding of Scrum&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sufficient time to do the Scrum Master role&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Able to work in a collaborative way&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen many different people transition to become Scrum Masters. This includes developers, project managers, BAs and many more. I would suggest that whoever is chosen to do this role should already be experienced with Scrum or should get Scrum training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master is not the only person that communicates between teams. It is a good idea for members of the development teams to also share knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of organisations that use Scrum will have a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum/roles/team&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum of Scrums&lt;/a&gt; which is a regular opportunity for members of Scrum teams to meet and share knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would you limit your project managers to customer negotiation and project direction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Project Manager role does not fit well within a Scrum organisation. However, the activities that a Project Manager performs (dealing with budgets, contracts, etc.) may still be required. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is best to think of these activities as just another skill set that the development team needs to deliver the product. It would be useful for the development team to have one or more individuals that can do these activities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One approach I have seen is to have the Project Manager join the development team. This is a good temporary approach to use while an organisation transitions to working with Scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-06-20T13:27:29.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24311" CreationDate="2018-06-20T13:28:35.007" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thomas Owens has a good Answer, and I just wanted to expand upon it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal of the Scrum Master is to inform the Scrum Team of how Scrum works, and then to get out of the way. You (I am assuming &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; are the Scrum Master) should make sure the Team is well-educated about the &lt;em&gt;whys&lt;/em&gt; for the problems (and, if you like, you can propose potential solutions) you foresee, but then ultimately leave not only &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt;, but also &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; to solve those problems up to the Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Problem: The Daily Scrum is taking too long.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Potential solution: Add a smaller time-box.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Problem: The Daily Scrum is not time-boxed. By not setting a hard time limit on the duration of the Daily Scrum, the business is exposed to the risk of the time inflating to the point of waste.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Potential solution:Add a time-box. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Problem: During the Daily Scrum, not all members are engaged in every discussion.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Potential solution: When a Team member is not engaged with the current discussion, s/he will raise her hand. Once X people have raised their hands, the discussion is tabled for further discussion after the meeting amongst only those involved/interested.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Problem: The Team size is too large.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Potential solution: Split the Team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Problem: It is difficult to split the Team because there is only one product and many of the stories are interdependent&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Potential solution: Better prioritization/grooming of the backlog (as Thomas suggests) to reduce dependencies of concurrent stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Problem: It is difficult to split the Team as there is only one QA and only one Devops and only one BI expert. /this inhibits the split Teams from becoming cross-functional.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Potential solution: Cross-training, as Thomas suggests.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Potential solution: Hire more staff.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Potential solution: Have the underrepresented positions belonging to both Teams, sharing their time between the two.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Team may also come up with more problems, solutions, or problems &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; solutions than presented here, once discussion begins. Bring it up in the Retrospective meeting and then let the Team come to an agreed-upon solution themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-06-20T13:28:35.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17600" CreationDate="2018-06-20T13:44:21.767" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a common misconception. People think that a cross-functional team is one on which each person possesses every skill necessary to complete the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A cross-functional team has members with a variety of skills, but that does not mean each member has all of the skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mike Cohn once said: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If my team includes the world’s greatest database developer, I want that person doing amazing things with our database. I don’t need the world’s greatest database developer to learn JavaScript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My team usually contains 2 BE devs, 2 FE devs, and 2 QA. Every team member is involved in the estimation process. We do scrum poker altogether. &#xA;Everyone participates and gives input, and we decide on the final points as a team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing that you need to keep in mind is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if you have a balanced amount of FE and BE work, then you'll be able&#xA;to accomplish more story points&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the work to be done is weighted towards one layer over another,&#xA;then you'll be able to accomplish fewer story points&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21640" LastActivityDate="2018-06-20T13:44:21.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24305" CreationDate="2018-06-20T15:19:55.167" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Where is the place for project managers in scrum&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a different role or different company...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would you give the role of product owner to the senior lead developer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Barnaby Golden already explained the product owner does not need to have detailed technical understanding of the product. The core requirement of that role is to understand the needs of the customer and to be able to prioritize work to achieve the maximum value for that customer. If your project managers are already doing a lot of work with customers, requirements and specifications then I would offer them this role. If you've already got a product manager then that would be a good candidate as well. Otherwise I would recommend looking for people outside the development team to fill this role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Who will be the Scrum master? Will you encourage a lead developer from your teams to be the scrum master or the existing project managers since there will be 2 teams to communicate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the information from your previous question your Scrum Master will most likely have a full time job managing those two teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With an organization that is only just starting to move towards agile and scrum, you should really consider getting someone on board who's passionate and experienced in scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can repurpose and train a developer if you and him are ok with him no longer doing any developing. But it might pay to look for a new person to fill this position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would you limit your project managers to customer negotiation and project direction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again. &quot;Project Manager&quot; doesn't fit in the picture. If they do customer negotiation then their role is more like Sales. If they do requirements gathering and represent the customer inhouse then they can function as the product owner. If they try to direct the project then the Scrum Master should hit them on the back of the hand with a ruler. ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26715" LastActivityDate="2018-06-20T15:19:55.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24318" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-06-20T16:19:37.843" Score="2" ViewCount="250" Body="&lt;p&gt;What should the CPI be after a project was closed (the project was not canceled)? &#xA;Must the CPI always move to 1 at project closure or could it remain at the last indicated value (example 0.85) before the project was closed? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We had a project and the week before the project was closed the CPI was 0.85. The project is now done and there will be no more work or costs. Should the CPI remain at 0.85?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32748" LastEditorUserId="32641" LastEditDate="2018-07-02T10:56:07.777" LastActivityDate="2018-07-02T10:56:07.777" Title="CPI value at project closure" Tags="&lt;budget&gt;&lt;evm&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24318" CreationDate="2018-06-20T16:44:49.003" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;At completion, your BCWP or EV will equal your BAC.  So your CPI formula will be BAC / CAC (cost at completion).  So, unless your CAC = your BAC, meaning you neither over- nor under-ran your budget, then your CPI will not be 1.00.  Your SPI, however, will be 1.00, which is why is it a useless indicator after the project crosses around the 70% complete threshold.  SPIt, the calculation used in Earned Schedule, is far more accurate and will not yield a 1.00 indication if you are either early or late in delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-06-20T16:44:49.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24311" CreationDate="2018-06-20T17:25:15.330" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your standup is taking 30-35 minutes, even with 12 people, the problem isn't the number of people, but what you're using the standup for. Standup is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; for status updates. It is for &lt;em&gt;blocker identification.&lt;/em&gt; Let's go over the traditional flow of someone's standup pitch:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What I did yesterday - I say this so you are aware of changes that were made that might cause you conflict. People with experience in this area can say &quot;People tend to get blocked by ___ so watch out or ask for help if needed.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What I'm going to do today - I say this so we can identify ahead of time that we're going to have a conflict. And again, experienced people can pre-identify blockers in that area.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My blockers are - This is the most important area of the standup, and yet I find people use it the least. They almost always say &quot;No blockers&quot; and then proceed to accidentally leak out that they're being blocked.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if people are taking 3 minutes to go over that on &lt;em&gt;average&lt;/em&gt; then either they're super blocked by a ton of stuff and you should sit down with them and hammer it out offline, or you're just doing it wrong. If there's more than one or two followup questions, tell them to take it offline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2040" LastActivityDate="2018-06-20T17:25:15.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24311" CreationDate="2018-06-20T17:42:20.803" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The last Scrum team I was a part of was easily 20 members, and our daily standups rarely exceeded 15 minutes. The scrum was for a quick status. What did I work on / finish yeasterday, what am I working on today, what roadblocks do I have. Anything that the whole team wasn't interested in was tabled for a side discussion after the standup. This worked well. We all found out where we were, what people were working on, and what the problems were. Solutions to problems were not discussed at the standup unless it was on the order of &quot;Joe, can you take care of that&quot;. Frequently we uncovered things that needed to be discussed further. These things generated more focused discussions for interested parties after the standup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32750" LastActivityDate="2018-06-20T17:42:20.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24311" CreationDate="2018-06-20T18:56:16.357" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quick answer is the team size is not the main problem here.&#xA;The problem is what people are doing at the stand up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should not split the team just to get the &quot;right&quot; headcount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team should focus on the main objectives of stand up which is to ensure the team knows what to do and can do it effectively (no blockers, etc). The means to that are the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What have I done yesterday (actually least important)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What I will do today&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are problems (the most important part)&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;here it is also important to keep the problem solving out of the&#xA;meeting if it takes too much time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum Master should be addressing this as definitely this is an impediment for the team and I assume there are might be some other related problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32752" LastEditorUserId="32752" LastEditDate="2018-06-20T21:57:06.770" LastActivityDate="2018-06-20T21:57:06.770" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17169" CreationDate="2018-06-20T19:04:43.447" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kanban seems much better suited to what you're doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can call it 1 day Scrum sprints if your management insists on using Scrum but that's just a workaround.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to keep in mind is that the tasks need to be broken down to the size that is feasible to be delivered in 1 day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32752" LastActivityDate="2018-06-20T19:04:43.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24324" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-06-20T19:05:23.723" Score="3" ViewCount="130" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to create a timeline for server migration. Typically when it comes to testing our developers spend about 25% of their time supporting the testing. (Running batch processes, answering questions, etc) so I want to have a task for the two developers that run alongside the task for the testing. Each developer should be on the task at 25% and be able to be scheduled for other tasks while the testing is happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I want auto-scheduling because the entire point is to get Project to calculate the schedule for me. Basically things will change based on when we get the servers, so I need to be able to put in the date of each server environment and have Project calculate everything out from there. But devs can be configuring one environment while the prior is being tested while spending a portion of their time supporting the testing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for example of what I'd &lt;em&gt;like&lt;/em&gt; to see:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Testing 120h? 7/15-7/30 Kathy&#xA;Support 60h?  7/15-7/30 Mike[25%], Tim[25%]&#xA;Other   8h?   7/18-7/20 Mike&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried every combination of Task Type/Effort Driven I can think of but it never quite works. The closest I got was using Fixed Work, which sets the &quot;Support&quot; task to the right dates but the &quot;Other&quot; task ends up being pushed out until after &quot;Support.&quot; Also, it has a duration of 120h? making it harder for me to read the hours from for an estimate...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So any idea how I can get it to do what I want?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I just found out you can set the amount of &quot;Work&quot; in the Task Details Form (yay for hidden fields!) but it isn't really helping anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32708" LastEditorUserId="33837" LastEditDate="2019-12-09T18:17:37.947" LastActivityDate="2020-07-08T12:15:03.503" Title="How can I create a task for two developers to support testing?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24318" CreationDate="2018-06-21T11:00:35.833" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As @David Espina said, CPI is always derived from the same formula EV/AC. This is true whether the project is closed or not.  What should the CPI be? What is your EV? What is your AC?  The CPI is the ratio of EV to AC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2018-06-21T11:00:35.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24326" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24327" CreationDate="2018-06-21T11:56:13.593" Score="3" ViewCount="315" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm fairly new to Scrum and its sprint planning/retro (etc), our team today was trying to calculate velocity, capacity and forecast for the following sprint, but we just realised that no one actually knew how to do this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could someone please explain to me (like if I were 5) - and/or point me somewhere - on how to go about doing this? I have googled, and I'm about to start reading the Scrum Guide, but I'm still at a loss. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Caveats:&lt;/em&gt; Since I'm still new to this I do not have too much data (1 sprint completed) and there was no velocity, capacity, etc, taken there, I understand that perhaps what I'm trying to accomplish will not be 100% accurate, but ny help will be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Previous Sprint:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Team members:&lt;/strong&gt; 4&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Previous sprint(s) completed:&lt;/strong&gt; 1 (2 weeks)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Previous sprint points Taken:&lt;/strong&gt; 34&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Previous sprint points completed:&lt;/strong&gt; 13&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;New Sprint&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Points wanting to take:&lt;/strong&gt; 21&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprint duration:&lt;/strong&gt; 2 weeks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Working Days of each team member:&lt;/strong&gt; (9 + 9 + 9 + 4.5) = 31.5 days&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32763" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-10-21T22:32:52.420" LastActivityDate="2019-10-21T22:32:52.420" Title="Sprint planning, review: velocity,capacity, forecast and how this values relate?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;velocity&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24326" CreationDate="2018-06-21T12:15:38.473" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Velocity is not something that is calculated, it is measured. Velocity is the amount of work that is completed in a Sprint. In this particular case, since you estimate work in Story Points, you will have a Velocity in Story Points. At the end of a Sprint, you can look at all of the work that is Done (per the Definition of Done), sum up the Story Points and that is your Velocity for the previous Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Capacity is how much work a team can take on. In Scrum, I prefer to represent this as a percentage and only consider the members of the Development Team. If all members of the team are working for the entire Sprint, the capacity is 100%. In a 2 week Sprint with a Development Team of 5 people, if there is a company holiday and no other time off, the Capacity of the team would be 90%. I keep Capacity very high level and approximate keeping it at full days (someone taking the morning off is computed as them taking a full day off), but there are people who prefer more fine-grained capacity. When thinking about Capacity, it's also useful to consider any specialized skills that individuals have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concept of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilenutshell.com/yesterdays_weather&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yesterday's Weather&lt;/a&gt; can be helpful to you for forecasting and planning a Sprint. Yesterday's Weather says that your next Sprint's forecast is very likely to be closely related to the actual results of your most recently completed Sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example, you have completed one Sprint and have a known Velocity of 13. You should plan on a Velocity of close to 13 for your next Sprint. Once you have a few Sprints completed, you can take a look at the Velocity of the previous few Sprints and use a sliding-window average. A common recommendation is to use the 3 most recent completed Sprints. However, you should also adjust for capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that Velocity, Capacity, and Yesterday's Weather are not a part of Scrum as defined in the Scrum Guide. Scrum is silent on the methods used to plan a Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also recommend that you try to have more Product Backlog Items refined and ready for development work than you can bring into the Sprint. Should your team increase their performance (or perhaps the work was over estimated), you probably don't want people to be idle. They should have something to do, such as investigating and defining upcoming work or being able to get a start on the next highest priority item in the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2018-06-21T13:27:19.363" LastActivityDate="2018-06-21T13:27:19.363" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24328" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-06-21T16:12:16.333" Score="4" ViewCount="433" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to manage this project on JIRA. I want to invite my client to create issues, modify them, and change their status, but all this in only his project. He can't see my projects list, he can't create issues in other projects. All he can see in his window is nothing but and only one project. His.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I followed many tutorials but they seem so difficult. Can you help me? Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32187" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-06-22T13:15:46.607" LastActivityDate="2018-10-26T22:59:24.860" Title="How to allow a user to access one project in JIRA?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24277" CreationDate="2018-06-21T17:21:23.297" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adding extra people to a project can work quite well if you have planned it out in advance. In my team, we have a few external people who are up to date with our systems and can help us out if needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One is a former employee who took a year off to go travelling and is available to do some temporary work to fund her travels. She knows the codebase and the people so she can join a project on short notice with minimum overhead. We also have a few contractors we use who are familiar with different parts of our system and can add extra capacity without too much extra co-ordination needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32764" LastActivityDate="2018-06-21T17:21:23.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24260" CreationDate="2018-06-21T17:34:03.390" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A task only counts as 'done' when it is deployed or ready for deploy. You don't get half the velocity points for completing the frontend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The velocity of your team is dictated by the velocity of your backend development. It doesn't matter how fast the frontend developers work if the backend parts of a task are not complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your situation, I would bring in a rule that frontend development on a story can only begin when the backend part is complete. This way, your frontend developers can't race ahead of their backend counterpart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing this will expose how much spare capacity you have in your team. Your job will be to deploy this capacity to speed up your backend development. For example, if your frontend developers are waiting for a backend task to be completed, could they help by writing the unit tests?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32764" LastActivityDate="2018-06-21T17:34:03.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24328" CreationDate="2018-06-21T22:03:58.320" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First you have to make sure his JIRA user has the Browse Projects permission in the permission scheme of the projects he´s allowed to see. Then make sure he has the Create Issues and Edit Issues permissions in that same scheme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32768" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-06-22T13:37:54.197" LastActivityDate="2018-06-22T13:37:54.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24333" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-06-22T08:41:30.163" Score="4" ViewCount="343" Body="&lt;p&gt;During Sprints' executions, I used to encounter a problem: the planned Sprint would not be able to finish as forecasted. Then in that case, who is responsible to review and adjust the Sprint work selected?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is always a confusion in role model, either will it be done by by Product Owner or the Scrum Master?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32704" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-06-22T13:50:31.460" LastActivityDate="2018-06-26T14:22:24.633" Title="During a Sprint, a DevTeam determines that it will not be able to finish the complete forecast. Who should review and adjust the Sprint work selected?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24333" CreationDate="2018-06-22T08:46:13.317" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The same people who made the initial forecast should get together and figure out how much can still be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is to say: the Development Team should talk with their Product Owner and they should decide together what to do. Only the combination of those two is able to make an accurate idea of what is both doable in the remaining time and most valuable to the end-users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31393" LastActivityDate="2018-06-22T08:46:13.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22933" CreationDate="2018-06-22T09:28:57.563" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Francesco stated, you have specific fields for that. You need a baseline of course but I would add, even if it sounds stupid or obvious, that you also need all your ressources rated to allow calculation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32770" LastActivityDate="2018-06-22T09:28:57.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24328" CreationDate="2018-06-22T13:34:03.333" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, you need to be a JIRA administrator (or possibly just an admin of that one Project; I'm not sure). Also, the client must have a JIRA account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go to the JIRA Project in question (the one to which you wish to give the client permission).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Press the cog in the bottom left to go to 'Project Administration'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Press 'Permissions Schemes' in the left sidebar&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select 'Add Permission Scheme' button at the bottom&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give it a name then press the 'Add' button&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Back at the Permissions Schemes section, find your new scheme and press the 'Permissions' link to its right.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Press the 'Grant permission' link near the top&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select the permissions which you wish to add (ctrl-click to select multiple). If unsure what a particular permission does, explanations are shown in the previous screen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select the 'Single User' radio button&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Input your client user in the box next to that radio button&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Press Add&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go to the administration for your client's JIRA project (from its JIRA page, press the cog in the bottom-left in the sidebar).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go to 'Permissions' in the left sidebar&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go to the 'Actions' (containing a cog) dropdown on the right&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select 'Use a different scheme'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select your new scheme and press the 'Associate' button.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you're done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: The good part about this is that if your client later needs access to a second Project, you only need to perform steps 12-15 for that project; they will share the same scheme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-06-22T13:39:51.717" LastActivityDate="2018-06-22T13:39:51.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24333" CreationDate="2018-06-22T13:49:44.297" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;@Todd A. Jacob's comment is particularly important, here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is your &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-planning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sprint Goal&lt;/a&gt; in danger of not being completed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During Sprint Planning the Scrum Team also crafts a Sprint Goal. The Sprint Goal is an objective that will be met within the Sprint through the implementation of the Product Backlog, and it provides guidance to the Development Team on why it is building the Increment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Yes, the Sprint Goal is in danger&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, determine the feasibility of being able to complete the Sprint Goal. If sufficiently likely (either as-is or perhaps after making changes to the Sprint), then proceed to the 'No, the Sprint Goal is not in danger' section. Otherwise, abort the Sprint. Then discuss in the Retrospective how/why this happened, and then start a new Sprint with the Sprint Planning process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Granted, there's some subjectivity on just how to measure 'in danger' and 'sufficiently likely' - these should be defined by the Scrum Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;No, the Sprint Goal is not in danger&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you're fine. Focus in the work that &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; needed to accomplish the Sprint Goal. If there's other included work that never gets completed, it's not a big deal - just a topic for discussion in the Retrospective. Maybe take on less work next time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;We don't have a Sprint Goal&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That needs to change, going forward. Not only does the Sprint Goal provide a background to the Team to inform &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; they're doing what they're doing, it also provides a useful measure to determine the health/usefulness of a Sprint... such as in this very situation you're in now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for this &lt;em&gt;particular&lt;/em&gt; Sprint, opinions may vary, but in my opinion you should treat a no-Goal Sprint as if it has a Sprint Goal that cannot be completed - and therefore abort the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-06-25T13:34:59.050" LastActivityDate="2018-06-25T13:34:59.050" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24338" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24340" CreationDate="2018-06-22T22:43:08.243" Score="2" ViewCount="96" Body="&lt;p&gt;My group is working on implementing Scrum as a project management paradigm. Our manager is on board with the decision, but on at least two separate occasions has expressed concern that, if other organizations learn that we are implementing Scrum, that there will be confusion and friction within the greater organization because we are not a software team. To answer this, he wants us to not call it Scrum and think up other names for all of the Scrum roles and artifacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I immediately think that this is not a good idea and will create more problems than it solves; however, I'm also ready to concede that it might have that much of an effect. Is it really not as big of a deal as I think it is? If y'all foresee problems, how can I qualitatively and/or quantitatively convince him that this is a bad idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32687" LastActivityDate="2018-06-23T21:56:01.970" Title="What evidence can I provide to my manager that changing the names of Scrum roles and artifacts is a bad idea?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24338" CreationDate="2018-06-23T05:59:36.323" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Slightly changing the premise, but Scrum isn't a &quot;software thing&quot;. If you check the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; (which is the only thing that really matters in terms of defining what Scrum is and is not) then you will notice that the word &quot;software&quot; only appears twice, and both occurrences are in the list of examples of the kinds of projects scrum works for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that you're going to use it for your project already shows that you think it's going to work for your non-software project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any confusion that arises over you using Scrum while not building software is a chance for your team's Scrum-master to educate the confused people about what Scrum is for, and that confusion should be welcomed as it gives you a chance to talk with other teams and learn from each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31393" LastActivityDate="2018-06-23T05:59:36.323" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24338" CreationDate="2018-06-23T16:00:19.950" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it helps adoption renaming Scrum and the roles into something new is fine, but keep the values. I suggest not to map it to existing or traditional roles. Make up some new words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know a Dutch company which changed terminology of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.holacracy.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Holacracy&lt;/a&gt; (a complete system for self-organisation) in to &lt;a href=&quot;https://energized.org/experimenteren-pionieren-bolcom-holacracy-spark/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Spark&lt;/a&gt;, because they got resistance with the wording and decided it would work better in their company. They say now hundreds of people are using it, so seems it could work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The value is not in the naming, but in the framework or system itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other methods call the Daily Scrum the &lt;a href=&quot;https://blog.sandglaz.com/how-to-run-a-morning-huddle-with-your-team/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Huddle&lt;/a&gt; for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2018-06-23T16:05:26.170" LastActivityDate="2018-06-23T16:05:26.170" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24260" CreationDate="2018-06-23T16:14:00.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, you never ever assign work in Scrum, ever, never!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Help them to self-organise. How does the team think they can solve this problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe let them try a work-in-progress limit of 1 for a while. That should shake their world and force them to adapt into helping each other out to complete a user story together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2018-06-23T16:14:00.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24338" CreationDate="2018-06-23T21:56:01.970" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your organisation wants to become agile then openess and transparency are critical. I think that having to conceal the agile framework you are using is a really bad start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile is not just about doing ceremonies and following the Scrum Guide. It is about a cultural change that leads to a better, more productive way of working. A great place to start is for your team to get out and talk to the wider organisation to explain what you are doing and why you think it will be of benefit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-06-23T21:56:01.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24343" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24354" CreationDate="2018-06-24T03:59:12.020" Score="0" ViewCount="1109" Body="&lt;p&gt;What's the exact definition of this concept? Is it about a &lt;strong&gt;forum&lt;/strong&gt; where &lt;strong&gt;multiple scrum masters&lt;/strong&gt; working on &lt;strong&gt;a large product&lt;/strong&gt; sync up their status or is it a &lt;strong&gt;brainstorming like session&lt;/strong&gt; where &lt;strong&gt;multiple scrum masters&lt;/strong&gt; working on &lt;strong&gt;multiple projects / products&lt;/strong&gt; gather and share their process improvements, etc... ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17511" LastActivityDate="2018-07-10T14:29:40.610" Title="Scrum of Scrum of Scrums" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-of-scrums&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2018-07-02T17:25:50.133" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24097" CreationDate="2018-06-24T08:45:38.070" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you use Microsoft Excel and want to have an easy transition to a tool that allows you to aggregate data and display them in dashboards, then I suggest you try Smartsheet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smartsheet looks like Excel and has some (but not all) of Excel's functionalities. What it adds is that you share the sheets, and you can easily display data in dashboards. With Smartsheet you can, as well, create simple plans with Gantt charts, and add resource tracking. Therefore I expect you may have a sort of plug and play situation. You can try the software for free, so there is no cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you transfer the level 1 plans for each Project (just the stages) to Smartsheet, assign a PM to each Project, and then you can display in a dashboard the number of Project by PM, aggregate the Projects by the stage they are at (keep it simple at the beginning; like initiated, execution, close out - or something similar), and display this in a bar chart or pie chart, as well as showing the mix of Project methodology you have in another chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep it simple at the beginning, i.e. build a Minimum Viable Product and then you can improve it based on PMs' and Stakeholders' feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to Smartsheet, &lt;strong&gt;I shall clarify&lt;/strong&gt; that I am currently using it with a payed licence as tool to deploy some of the PM processes and techniques. The software was already in use in the Company, and I am now actively using it to support PM processes, my answer is based on this my recent experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32779" LastEditorUserId="32779" LastEditDate="2018-06-26T12:36:11.127" LastActivityDate="2018-06-26T12:36:11.127" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24345" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24349" CreationDate="2018-06-24T09:02:01.657" Score="0" ViewCount="57" Body="&lt;p&gt;As part of the Project Management journey I have started with my Company I am planning to grow Project Management capability within the Company Functions by creating a training program for future Project Managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my current strategy I am including formal PRINCE2 foundation training, attendance to 3 1hr webinars I'll develop with Function Leaders focused on Company knowledge to give the trainee an exhaustive view of the business, and a mandatory requirement to execute a real Project, either as PM or Project Support. On top I will set up a bi-monthly Community of Practice call where the trainees will be able to share their Projects and learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How you do it in your Company? Any lesson to share on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32779" LastEditorUserId="32779" LastEditDate="2018-06-24T16:27:30.877" LastActivityDate="2018-06-24T20:53:04.413" Title="Any good lesson on how to grow Project Managers?" Tags="&lt;prince2&gt;&lt;training&gt;&lt;learning&gt;&lt;pmo&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2018-06-28T16:48:43.340" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24347" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24378" CreationDate="2018-06-24T12:39:20.860" Score="5" ViewCount="87" Body="&lt;p&gt;As per Kanban, estimations are considered as waste but from the business perspective we need estimation and there is no way to keep features similarly sized. S, M, L sizing does not work as well because executives want to have duration estimates, some variance is acceptable (3 days for example). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this moment we use task count as buckets of durations:&#xA;0 task = less than a day of implementation duration.&#xA;1 task = 1-3 man-days of implementation duration.&#xA;2 task = 4-6 man-days of implementation duration.&#xA;3 task = 7-9 man-days of implementation duration.&#xA;4 task = 10-12 man-days of implementation duration.&#xA;5 task = 13-15 man-days of implementation duration.&#xA;6 task = 16-18 man-days of implementation duration.&#xA;7 task = 19-21 man-days of implementation duration.&#xA;8 task = 22-24 man-days of implementation duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cycle time is used based on buckets (task counts) and it works fine but I would like to easier the process as much as possible.&#xA;Is there any suggestion to move towards better and easier estimation techniques?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32781" LastActivityDate="2018-07-01T16:10:28.593" Title="What type of estimation is applicable if work items can't be similarly sized because they will violate MMF" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;lean&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24345" CreationDate="2018-06-24T20:53:04.413" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can recommend you two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't just give them exhaustive view of the business, also establish clear goals and expectations for the area that each future project manager will manage. This will be very useful in the future when evaluating performance as well.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Invest time in creating suitable company wide documentation (core processes, manuals, best practices for project managers -do's and don'ts for example-) along with this training sessions. People needs to communicate this processes anyway, so it's better to have them documented formally. The other reason to do this is that you then will know better what is actually important to put into the training sessions you are preparing, I would expect that part of this documentation is &quot;self-learning&quot; so it'll not be required to be part of your training sessions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't dedicate huge amounts of time trying to get it perfect. Do a &quot;good&quot; first iteration of the process and get feedback from your program managers, and of course keep iterating. This is particularly important because this new practices seem new to your company, so I would ship early and then iterate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the book: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hard-Thing-About-Things-Building/dp/0062273205/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1529873153&amp;amp;sr=8-1&amp;amp;keywords=the%20hard%20things%20about%20hard%20things&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers&lt;/a&gt;, they explain in more detail why is important to make employees understand the expectations of their work and give some guidance about the good or bad practices that project managers get into. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-06-24T20:53:04.413" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24190" CreationDate="2018-06-24T21:14:54.850" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This doesn't answer your question, but I feel that your root problem might be that you need to have more robust testing -and in general better codebase to identify problems quickly-. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, this errors should be detected before deploying or at least once found, there should be a mechanism that would make it easy to identify what part of the code is causing the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The big smell that I see to conclude the above is that you mentioned the bug would've taken 3 days instead of 3 months if the dev knew where to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going to your original question. I think it's sensible to start documenting the occurrences of this situations, how they evolved, how they are being solved to try to implement a proper solution for future situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-06-24T21:14:54.850" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24343" CreationDate="2018-06-25T09:16:11.173" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumatscale.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum@Scale&lt;/a&gt; guide it is more about sync and impediment removement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The SoS holds a Scaled Daily Scrum (SDS). The SDS event mirrors the&#xA;  Daily Scrum in that it optimizes the collaboration and performance of&#xA;  the network of teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Read more in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumatscale.com/wp-content/uploads/Scrum@Scale-Guide.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum@Scale Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next it suggests a Scrum Master Cycle and a Product Owner Cycle, which would facilitate the organisational improvement cycles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/yC133rb7nbw?t=34m39s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this Scrum@Scale video Jeff Sutherland suggest (at 34:39)&lt;/a&gt; another responsibility of the Scrum of Scrums, namely: &quot;Responsible for deployments of all teams together&quot;. So, it is also about keep delivering the product! Why have a meeting of Scrum Masters if they cannot deliver, faster and faster, that is their job, not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other scaling frameworks have a slightly different view, but I think it still focused on sync and impediment removal. This is how &lt;a href=&quot;https://less.works/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LeSS&lt;/a&gt; (Large-Scale Scrum) puts it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Scrum of Scrums meeting is a Daily-Scrum-like meeting between teams,&#xA;  typically held two or three times per week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum of Scrums isn’t a part of LeSS and as a more formal centralized coordination technique, it is also not recommended. That said, if it is working, please don’t stop doing it… yet don’t feel you must do it because of adopting LeSS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://less.works/less/framework/coordination-and-integration.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://less.works/less/framework/coordination-and-integration.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2018-07-10T14:29:40.610" LastActivityDate="2018-07-10T14:29:40.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24343" CreationDate="2018-06-25T14:14:55.937" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not aware of any authoritative answer to this question. In fact, I've seen many. Everywhere I've worked that uses a Scrum of Scrums, it has always been selected as a lightweight approach for teams to synchronize without putting a more robust scaling framework into place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, given the fact that the Daily Scrum is not a status meeting, but rather a chance for team members to synchronize and plan their day, I would treat the Scrum of Scrums the same, but at a broader scale. In the most successful Scrum of Scrums implementations I've been a part of, these were short, 15-minute meetings held every few days where representatives from the teams would synchronize on needs between teams and plan how to move forward together. The focus was usually how each team's work may be technically impacting other teams or what dependencies may be emerging or resolving. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to who attends, the Scrum Master is rarely the best person to attend, since they are not one of the people doing the work. (Not that the Scrum Master can't attend, they just shouldn't be substituted for a dev team member) The approach I liked the most was actually that each team sent two representatives and those representatives rotated. But I've seen everything ranging from one consistent representative to even all team members attending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-06-25T14:14:55.937" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24347" CreationDate="2018-06-25T14:21:10.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your business will eventually get much better results from measurements and &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/16372/how-do-you-schedule-delivery-dates-in-scrum/24207#24207&quot;&gt;statistical forecasting&lt;/a&gt; than by estimates. Using estimates for business purposes has never really worked well or been recommended by even the mainstream agile community. But if the business wants estimates, kanban doesn’t say you aren’t allowed to do so. By all means estimate however you like until you develop the maturity to move to measurements or statistical forecasting. “Better estimation techniques” is a dangerous red herring. Estimates should always be rough, and should be used as part of an approach where rough estimates work. I.e. when a team decides to use relative estimates to plan a sprint in Scrum. But it all depends on what you are doing and why. If cycle time on individual items is interesting I guess people want to know turnaround times on individual service tickets, (rather than e.g. trying to price a software development project). In such a case, surely your actual cycle time measurements are going to be better predictors of future cycle times than estimates? Maybe try both techniques in parallel and show the boss the results of each and he will decide to drop estimation for himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="763" LastEditorUserId="32641" LastEditDate="2018-07-01T16:10:28.593" LastActivityDate="2018-07-01T16:10:28.593" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24097" CreationDate="2018-06-26T01:32:07.007" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following the Project management community since 2012, it is the first time I have read a question that describes many teams and many projects in such a scale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In project management, what is the most important to my own opinion is to respect the deadlines and the budget. I take into account that every team you manage has a deadline and a budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I did my BAA courses in project management in the late 1980s, project management tools have evolved a lot. However, they seem related mainly to the IT industry and the construction world. Managers who have a degree in business administration learn other skills to manage a project team than how to use project management software. Even if many project managers don't like it and see that as over controlling, once a week you can call the project managers to see if they are going over budget and if their deadlines will be respected. If not, you can have a meeting with them to put them on track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds easy, but in IT and in the construction world, communication on those issues is a sensible point. The reputation of the project manager and of the contractor is at stake. So, having studied in business administration helps to manage susceptibilities; to increase the motivation of the manager and of their team members and it develops the quality of life at work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use a word processor to do a weekly report that you submit to your own boss. When a manager demonstrates that he or she can provide those kinds of information without creating tensions or resentment, the teams he or she supervises will grow in innovation and determination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I old fashioned, to believe that a telephone, emails and a word processor are sufficient to enable a manager to know really what is going on in his or her work teams? I don't think so. Since email appeared, many managers hide behind them, don't follow the budget spent and don't monitor the deadlines. So, the work environment is transformed into a competitive environment where some teams win and some teams lose; the usual blaming game starts when nobody is able to explain the failures that happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Too many times in my career, I've seen employees blamed for things they didn't do, just to protect the job and reputation of another. In a few years, that phase will be over and giving a phone call to all project managers will be perceived as normal work that builds a fun work environment to work in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those are general principles of management, but picking up the phone, sending an email, and writing a global report is the real test of competence in management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user30807" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-06-26T13:21:30.947" LastActivityDate="2018-06-26T13:21:30.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24305" CreationDate="2018-06-26T08:10:22.540" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I would give the role of Product Owner to a project manager and the Scrum Master role to one of the QA people in the team&lt;/strong&gt; (hopefully you have a cross-functional team, not only developers). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The roles of Product Owner (PO) and especially of Scrum Master (SM) can be quite difficult to define when you are first approaching Agile and assigning this position or searching someone for the role.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Especially converting Project Managers (PjM) to Scrum Masters is filled with problems. They are all different roles, are not even superficially similar and they all require different skills but notably different mindsets; as such any “automatic conversion” will not always work.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Converting PjM to PO might be easier than PjM to SM, there is more overlap between the former two than between the latter two.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;PjM can become PO if they have domain knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Product Owner role&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally in Agile the PO is intended as the customer proxy for the team: express the work to be done to achieve a goal, order and organise it into a Product Backlog and ensure that is visible and understood by everyone in the team.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;According to the Scrum guide: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is responsible for maximising the value of the&#xA;  product resulting from work of the Development Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PO is the coordinator, or the glue, that pulls the team together to get them to buy into the underlying tradeoffs. The crux of coordination and resolving conflict across areas lies in developing a shared understanding of the business model.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This need for influence is why business-facing Project Managers can often make good POs&lt;/strong&gt;. Again, far from automatic. PjMs want to get rid of problems whereas POs have to think about the product, quality, reputation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Scrum Master role&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On an Agile team there is no traditional command and control model.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Unlike a traditional project manager role, the scrum master has no direct authority; does not assign tasks (the team pulls them) and is not tracking the tasks to detect divergences (the team is self organising, if someone tracks progress against a product release then is the Product Owner).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the SM has many other responsibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum team is self-organising but the Scrum Master is responsible for the process and enforcing adherence to Scrum’s theory, practice, and rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why I like to say that the Scrum Master &lt;em&gt;is a process referee&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In football, the referee doesn’t manage the teams; the referee &lt;strong&gt;enforces the rules of the game&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;It’s the same with Scrum, although Scrum Masters are usually asked to coach and evangelise too, rather than simply blowing the whistle or calling fouls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ken Schwaber said once, in a coaching session at Google, that the best people for Scrum Master are the Quality Assurance guys that are normally responsible for the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14922" LastActivityDate="2018-06-26T08:10:22.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24333" CreationDate="2018-06-26T10:21:01.093" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In their answer here, Sarov says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When achieving the Sprint Goal is unlikely then the Sprint should be cancelled&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me offer a revised formula&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When the Sprint Goal is in danger then invoke your &lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com/a/scrumplop.org/published-patterns/product-organization-pattern-language/emergency-procedure&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;emergency procedure&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change the way the team does the work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do something different.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get help, usually by offloading backlog to someone else.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduce scope.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Abort the Sprint and replan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inform management how the emergency affects release dates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while cancelling the Sprint is an option, it should be considered only as a last resort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cancelling a Sprint when the Sprint Goal is looking unlikely to be met is an extreme position to take. It may ensure you never have a failed Sprint but I don't consider it a formula for success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a bit like saying&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When the airliner is in danger of not reaching its destination then immediately conduct a forced landing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my naive understanding of aviation, it would seem better to&#xA; - request air traffic control to find an alternative destination&#xA; - invoke the emergency procedure&#xA; - etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; offers a different formula:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Sprint would be cancelled if the Sprint Goal becomes obsolete...&#xA;  In general, a Sprint should be cancelled if it no longer makes sense given the circumstances. &lt;em&gt;- Official Scrum Guide&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The examples in the Scrum Guide makes it clear the circumstances the authors have in mind are those external to the team. They also make it clear that Sprint cancellation is far from routine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;due to the short duration of Sprints, cancellation rarely makes sense. &lt;em&gt;- Official Scrum Guide&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Product Owner, I would joke to my Scrum Team that I had a personal goal to one day have the chance to cancel a Sprint, a light-herated way of communicating the idea that a cancelled Sprint is rarely seen in the wild.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, once (and only once) have the circumstances actually arisen for me. My Scrum Team was halfway through a Sprint whose  Sprint Goal related to a compliance project. I was in a meeting with Stakeholders when someone mentioned, almost as an aside, that they cancelled the project that morning because legal counsel had concluded the project's outcomes were unnecessary. But even in these circumstances, we decided as a team to not cancel the Sprint. As is often the case, there were Sprint Backlog items that did not directly relate to the Sprint Goal but everyone still wanted to be completed. Taking out the compliance project items ply left a three days' 'capacity' in the Sprint, and some spikes were played instead, to everyone's satisfaction. A major consideration was not upsetting the Sprint cadence (Mon-Fri etc)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29315" LastEditorUserId="29315" LastEditDate="2018-06-26T14:22:24.633" LastActivityDate="2018-06-26T14:22:24.633" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24305" CreationDate="2018-06-26T12:00:46.657" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have already received a lot of good advices on Product Owner and Scrum Master therefore I will focus my answer on &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Would you limit your project managers to customer negotiation and project direction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not use the word limit here, the Project Managers will have a key role in ensuring the Scrum Teams can freely work in their sand box without Senior Management (or any other internal stakeholder with a negative attitude towards your change process) challenging their ability to self organise and implement changes at product level. Moreover you still have to look after the Project Board and the PM shall ensure the Project has clear tolerances defined and act within these. Continue Business Justification is as well on the PM shoulders.&#xA;There are a lot of ‘traditional’ Project Management activities that the PMs will have to look after and that will enable your Product Teams to best perform. If the Project Governance is defined and managed correctly your PMs will be very busy people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32779" LastActivityDate="2018-06-26T12:00:46.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22933" CreationDate="2018-06-26T13:47:37.417" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do it manually with a calculator. The formula is: Real costs - calculated cost = Cost deviation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine uses MS Project and says it's no good. He works in a small company and he says that it costs quite a lot and it just complicates things. He said it would be more efficient if they wrote Post-It notes and exchanged them instead of clogging the workflow with MS project. But maybe that's just him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user32793" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-06-26T14:17:45.027" LastActivityDate="2018-06-26T14:17:45.027" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24362" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24369" CreationDate="2018-06-26T18:42:22.547" Score="3" ViewCount="144" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a small software team with 4 members:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;one Software Architect that gathers requirements and writes Requirements document and Specifications document&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;one Designer that designs visual wireframes and prototypes for websites&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;one Front-End Developer that implements the client sides of websites using HTML, CSS, and Javascript&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;one Back-End Developer that builds applications using use server-side languages/technology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our problem is that when the Software Architect starts design the whole project, other team members are idle and their time wasted.&#xA;Also, everything becomes complicated if we have 2 or 3 project under development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am searching for a good development process to manage my team members and avoid wasting their time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30020" LastEditorUserId="32641" LastEditDate="2018-07-01T03:42:47.427" LastActivityDate="2018-07-01T03:42:47.427" Title="How to sync work in small software team" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24363" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-06-27T09:58:43.957" Score="1" ViewCount="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a development team and we use a Kanban board (Jira) with different swimlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have some tasks who are code related and other task who are not code related like investigations, query, improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The different tasks go in different status (Done or Completed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we are looking for is to be able to release the two different swimlines in different times. Or maybe we are just not doing a correct use of our Kanban board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions is more than appreciate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32804" LastEditorUserId="32804" LastEditDate="2018-06-27T12:26:44.190" LastActivityDate="2018-06-27T14:58:39.980" Title="Different Releases in the same Jira Kanban board?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;kanban-board&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24362" CreationDate="2018-06-27T10:12:00.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is simple. Just breakdown all the pieces of the software and create task related to them. When the designer complete the design of a piece, the developer take that piece and start the implementation. My recomendation it's to use an agile methodology and establish a good communication channel beetwen all of you, communication is the main thing in a project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27549" LastActivityDate="2018-06-27T10:12:00.710" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24365" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-06-27T10:38:28.710" Score="1" ViewCount="2769" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have been doing 1 week Sprints and the development team is quite reluctant to go ahead with continuing 1 week sprints. various reasons include&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team is feeling stressed in getting things done in a week&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team has just 3 days focused working frame where they can completely dedicate their time. Half of Monday and friday being utilized for planning and review/retro&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thus thinking of shifting it to 10 days sprint instead of 2 weeks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would be good to know if anyone had tried 10 days sprint and would like to know the schedule template for the same. Thanks a ton&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32805" LastActivityDate="2018-06-28T22:46:58.000" Title="Schedule for a 10 day Sprint in Scrum" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20725" CreationDate="2018-06-27T10:54:03.780" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.allocatus.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Allocatus&lt;/a&gt; at a previous company I worked at and thought it would be helpful. As I mentioned in my comments, it automatically updates your calendar to a to-do list form in MS Project. I believe it can also do this in the reverse direction but we didn't use that feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32807" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-06-27T13:13:23.383" LastActivityDate="2018-06-27T13:13:23.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24368" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24370" CreationDate="2018-06-27T11:34:55.383" Score="0" ViewCount="1543" Body="&lt;p&gt;Which role is the equivalent to the Product Owner in DSDM's Agile Project Management? Would the Business Ambassador play a similar role?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4xMVJ.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4xMVJ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32809" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-06-27T12:32:14.473" LastActivityDate="2018-06-27T13:11:03.883" Title="Which role is the equivalent to the Product Owner in DSDM AgilePM?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;roles&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;dsdm&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24362" CreationDate="2018-06-27T12:55:53.750" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;One suggestion is that you shouldn't have a long requirements phase, followed by a long design phase and then a long development phase. Pick the most valuable part of the project and build this first. That will reduce the length of time your team is waiting on the initial requirements. After this, requirements gathering for the next iteration can proceed in parallel with building the current iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing is that you shouldn't look at the team as four people with four different jobs. They should all take responsibility for the whole project. You should encourage them to find overlaps in their skill sets so that they can help out when one of their colleagues is busy. I've picked out some possible areas where your 'idle' team members could help out their colleagues. Your team should be able to pick out oppertunities like these for themselves:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your designer should be involved in gathering requirements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Showing wireframes and prototypes to your customers should be a part of the requirements gathering. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your frontend developer is almost certainly able to produce prototype websites. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, you shouldn't look on idle time as wasted. Your team can use this time for refactoring or for improving their own skills. The general rule is that you need to dedicate about 20% of your time to refactoring and other improvements to maintain a good quality of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32764" LastActivityDate="2018-06-27T12:55:53.750" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24368" CreationDate="2018-06-27T13:11:03.883" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Business Visionary role comes closest. However, there is no 1:1 mapping between DSDM roles and a typical Product Owner role, especially as &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-po&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;defined by the Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The DSDM Agile Project Framework contains a &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.agilebusiness.org/content/roles-and-responsibilities&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Roles and Responsibilities Handbook&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. In contrast to popular agile frameworks such as Scrum that assign product ownership to a single individual, DSDM spreads a number of product owner responsibilities out among several different roles at both the Project and Solution Development levels. There is no single person who encompasses the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-po&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Product Owner (PO) role as defined in Scrum&lt;/a&gt;, but the Business Visionary role probably comes closest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The DSDM &lt;em&gt;Roles and Responsibilities Handbook&lt;/em&gt; defines the Business Visionary role in Section 7.4. This section says (in part):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is a senior project-level business role that should be held by a single individual, since a project needs a single clear vision to avoid confusion and misdirection. More actively involved than the Business Sponsor, the Business Visionary is responsible for interpreting the needs of the Business Sponsor, communicating these to the team and, where appropriate, ensuring they are properly represented in the Business Case. The Business Visionary remains involved throughout the project, providing the team with strategic direction and ensuring that the solution delivered will enable the benefits described in the Business Case to be achieved. At the end of the project, the Business Visionary will own the Deployed Solution and will be responsible for the realisation of any benefits associated with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among all the roles within DSDM, this is probably the closest to what most agilists would consider a typical Product Owner role. However, the full functionality of a Scrum Product Owner is really spread throughout the project-level business roles of Business Sponsor, Business Visionary, Technical Coordinator, Project Manager, and Business Analyst (see § 7.2.2.1).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Consolidating &quot;Product Owner&quot; Responsibilities within DSDM&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also worth noting that § 7.16 of the Handbook explicitly says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On a DSDM project, one role may be fulfilled by several people, or one person may fulfil (sic) several roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether one person could really encompass the totality of a typical Product Owner role within the DSDM framework is questionable, but the framework technically allows for it. Your mileage will therefore vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Caveats and Assumptions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original question didn't really define its terms. Because roles can and do vary by framework, I chose to compare the DSDM roles to the Product Owner role in Scrum. Other agile frameworks may or may not use the term &quot;Product Owner,&quot; but it's useful to have a baseline for analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-06-27T13:11:03.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24365" CreationDate="2018-06-27T14:05:22.950" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Team is feeling stressed in getting things done in a week&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are struggling to complete stories in a week then you could consider trying to make the user stories smaller. If that is not practical then a shift to a 2 week sprint makes sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The team has just 3 days focused working frame where they can completely dedicate their time. Half of Monday and friday being utilized for planning and review/retro&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; recommends the length of ceremonies is reduced based on the sprint length. For example, sprint planning is time-boxed to 8 hours for a 4 week sprint, so we would expect it to be around 2 hours for a 1 week sprint. I would also expect the retrospective to be around 45 minutes and the sprint review around 1 hour when doing 1 week sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you decide to go for a 2 week sprint then typical ceremony lengths might be time boxed to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint planning 4 hours&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Retrospective 1.5 hours&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint review 2 hours&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that the time-box is a &lt;em&gt;top limit&lt;/em&gt; to the time you should spend. You can spend less time than this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found that some teams like to spread out the Scrum ceremonies over a couple of days while other teams prefer to compress them in to one day. You may want to consider doing your review and retrospective in the morning and then sprint planning after lunch on the same day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also recommend you consider moving your sprint start/finish away from Monday/Friday. There are a number of disadvantages of holding Scrum ceremonies on those days:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People are often tired by Friday and find it more difficult to focus&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mon/Fri are the most common days to take holiday&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Monday is statistically the most common day that people are off sick&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mon/Fri are common days to work from home&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-06-27T14:05:22.950" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24363" CreationDate="2018-06-27T14:58:39.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not something I have tried, but you may be able to do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create two new Kanban boards and point them at the same project as you are currently using&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add a filter to one new board so that only code related tasks are shown&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add a filter to the other new board so that only not code related tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use your current board for day-to-day activities, but do releases from the new boards&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This takes advantage of the fact you can have many Kanban boards all pointing at the same project in JIRA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would need some way of differentiating between code related and not code related tasks though (possible a custom field or label).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-06-27T14:58:39.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24373" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-06-27T18:40:59.230" Score="1" ViewCount="96" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am technical lead/architect of an internal product in my company. The team used to be 2 members initially including me, the other guy doing both software and hardware design. The customer (another internal team) of our product hired a candidate to work on our product which looked very unusual to me. It should be us who should be hiring to support them... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, customers have heard of Scrum and are very eager to implement this starting in a week. Since their team member is working on our product, he nominated himself to be Scrum Master as he took a course recently. The hardware guy in our team nominated himself to be Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make it clear, there was no evaluation done to see if Scrum fits or not... All their argument was Scrum supports transparency. I am not against it, but I would like to see if it really fits or not. At the moment, we do daily catch-ups to see who is doing what and hold customer meetings every week. We have a release cycle of 2 weeks, but we don't have a fully automated continuous integration system (CI) yet. I take care of making builds and releases manually. It takes half a day for me at the moment including verification of releases. Although we do bits and pieces of Scrum, I am not convinced that we have to do Scrum...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I understand, for Scrum to be effective, having CI is very much essential including running some integration testing... Is my understand correct? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do the roles work in this case? Is the Scrum Master part of the customer team itself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And what is my role in the case of a technical architect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32813" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-06-27T19:51:12.943" LastActivityDate="2018-06-28T13:16:54.350" Title="Would Scrum work for us, even without fully automated CI?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24373" CreationDate="2018-06-27T20:02:32.847" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see several points of concern, but, ironically, the one you seem most concerned with, I am not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As I understand, for Scrum to be effective, having CI is very much essential including running some integration testing... Is my understand correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's certainly &lt;em&gt;helpful&lt;/em&gt;, but there's nothing in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; that says having continuous integration is &lt;em&gt;necessary&lt;/em&gt;. If that were your only concern, I'd say 'Go for it.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The customer (another internal team) of our product hired a candidate to work on our product [...] he nominated himself to be Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Opinions may differ, but), there's nothing inherently wrong with the Scrum Master(SM) being a developer. What &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; strange is for that developer to not be a part of a &lt;em&gt;single&lt;/em&gt; Development Team. Having two Development Teams, one with 2 developers and one with one developer/SM, is not going to work. You'd need to consolidate into one Team, ideally with co-location. It's not 100% necessary to be co-located or for all members to work for the same company (or, 'internal team', in your case), but these assist in the Team viewing itself as a cohesive whole, which &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The hardware guy in our team nominated himself to be Product Owner&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. Unlike the Scrum Master, the Product Owner (PO) &lt;em&gt;should not&lt;/em&gt; be a developer. The job of the PO is to represent the needs of the customer. The customer team should probably be providing a PO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, assuming you can work out those two issues (the 'customer developer' needs to be consolidated into your team, and you need a PO who is authorized by the customer team), I see no reason why you cannot at least &lt;em&gt;attempt&lt;/em&gt; Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't forget to Scrum the Scrum - during the Retrospective, inspect the Scrum process and try to find ways to improve it - and, if there are none, &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; consider aborting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After every sprint (sprint review), scrum says that demo the work and receive feedback. We mostly work on bugs and very rarely develop features [...] What feedback are we expecting from the customer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a look at the &quot;Dealing with 'undemonstratable' stuff&quot; section of &lt;a href=&quot;http://wwwis.win.tue.nl/2R690/doc/ScrumAndXpFromTheTrenchesonline07-31.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum And XP from the Trenches&lt;/a&gt;. The gist is that if you can't demo something, then you can't even know if it's &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt; (because how can you check if it's done?). Contraversely, if you have somehow verified that something is done, then you can demo it in the same way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If we do Scrum, all the requirements should come from PO and no personal talk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum doesn't really say one way or the other. What worked well for me was talking to the PO 85% of the time, talking to &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; the PO and the customer 10% of the time, and talking to just the customer directly 5% of the time (and radiating the results to the PO). We had an exceptional PO who almost always fully understood the customers and was almost always available, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-06-28T13:16:54.350" LastActivityDate="2018-06-28T13:16:54.350" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24373" CreationDate="2018-06-28T10:43:58.320" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your understanding about CI is broadly correct. You can certainly do software Scrum without automation but you will not accelerate and you will not enjoy the benefits of Scrum (a hyper-performing team). Dedicate a percentage of effort towards creating the infrastructure you need while delivering product increments that deliver business value every Sprint. Map out the architecture you need then iterate towards it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a similar situation with the Scrum roles. The people in your org who have self-selected the roles are OK but the Team will soon stagnate. The PO should be a business person. The SM should ideally be an experienced Scrum coach. The people in these roles will need to develop these skills or accept they are 'holding the place' for the eventual candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find these 'The Evolution of...' articles at Scrum.org extremely useful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/evolution-product-owner&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Evolution of the Product Owner&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/evolution-scrum-master&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Evolution of the Scrum Master&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29315" LastActivityDate="2018-06-28T10:43:58.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24376" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-06-28T19:22:53.327" Score="3" ViewCount="156" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of our scrum teams is giving it a try to create a canned story around end-of-sprint wrap up. It's just a holder wrapping up several tasks that are done at the end of every sprint. The part that is new is that they've started including story points that for that story. The points don't change from sprint to sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Arguments were made for and against doing it this way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Con:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's already built into velocity, so it's not adding anything&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's &quot;getting credit&quot; for story points that aren't for real stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pro:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is an added measure of precision that should help with forecasting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It gets the team credit for work that was done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this practice of capturing story points for sprint overhead work a positive, negative, or neutral? (Maybe there's a better way to ask that question.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3924" LastActivityDate="2018-07-02T13:18:15.820" Title="Story points for &quot;end-of-sprint task&quot; items?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24220" CreationDate="2018-06-28T21:31:02.523" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A clever and relatively simple 'workaround' was suggested to me by a colleague. If the Target Release for a PRD is, for example, v1 and yet there are intermediate milestones (e.g. alpha, beta) then multiple status macros may be used in the Importance column to reflect the priorities of different requirements at each milestone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The image below should make things clear quickly, but unless otherwise specified, the Importance is for the Target Release. Should the Importance vary for the intermediate milestones, this can be indicated with additional status macros.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yOtfD.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yOtfD.png&quot; alt=&quot;Importance column in Confluence PRD&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the Target Release is achieved, or planning begins on a subsequent release, I like the idea proposed by &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/24301/29755&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/24301/29755&lt;/a&gt; to create a copy of the PRD to move to the child position before updating all the information on the original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29755" LastActivityDate="2018-06-28T21:31:02.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24347" CreationDate="2018-06-28T22:35:40.707" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;By tracking the difference between estimated delivery &amp;amp; actual delivery by item size as well as total items in a rolling average. You'll see the team's forecasting strengths/weaknesses/progression over time. The greater the variation in size among items the more difficult it will be to gather actionable data; consider breaking those big ones down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32578" LastActivityDate="2018-06-28T22:35:40.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24365" CreationDate="2018-06-28T22:46:58.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Monday &amp;amp; Friday are not ideal days for ceremonies. Spread them or cluster them on whatever days you like and iterate as needed. 2 week (10 work days) sprints are frequently viewed as the default for a reason - it works for many organizations. The overhead (meeting time) is manageable and gives the team room to work. Also, address things that could reduce work time: interruptions, unplanned work, PTO, etc. Make sure the organization understands and values the team's framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32578" LastActivityDate="2018-06-28T22:46:58.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24376" CreationDate="2018-06-28T23:26:06.753" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you look at your pros and cons, you don't actually have pros and cons. The first point in each actually contradict each other - in con is says it adds nothing and in pro is says it adds precision. The second point is literally the exact same thing case as a pro and a con.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would opt to not put story points on it because I think your con on the first point was right. It adds nothing. Worse, I think it actually reduces precision and hurts forecasting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story points are a valuable measure of product delivered, not simply of work done. If it was work done, we'd get story points for meetings, designs, etc. So completing 30 story points really means you've delivered 30 story points worth of product. I assume these end-of-sprint tasks are some sort housekeeping. Ultimately, the way I know it isn't product is that it accrues every sprint. If it is a 5 point backlog item, every sprint would just push my target 5 points further away. Also, if it was product, I could choose not to do it, substituting some other backlog item instead. I think putting points on these items actually hurts my forecasting and adds nothing, unless you're trying to &quot;get credit&quot; and then we have a completely different conversation on our hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-06-28T23:26:06.753" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9255" CreationDate="2018-06-29T11:26:03.380" Score="4" Body="&lt;h1&gt;On Scrum.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can &lt;strong&gt;NOT&lt;/strong&gt; do a sprint of design, one of coding, one of testing.&#xA;Every sprint must do everything to deliver some working functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;On V-model&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That link is not to an image of the V-model. However it is popular misconception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The V-model has &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt; arrow of time. It does have dependency arrows. You can not do this until you have done that. Scrum does not violate the V-model. However while V-model says that you can not test, until you have written the code. Agile states that you can, and should write the tests before writing the code. Agile also says that you don't have to do all of this before you do that. (Don't do all of the design, then all of the coding, then all of the tests)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For agile (the basics):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do as much design as is needed to be able to write the next test that will fail.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write a test that will fail, but no more.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write as much code as is needed to get the code to pass.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Refacter code, and re-run tests.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start the process again.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You see there is an order, it is the same as the V-model, except the original V-Model does not recognise that we can write tests before production code. It also does not recognise coding as design. (code is the biggest part of the design)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;On what your company is doing.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no nice way to say this, it is waterfall. The only good thing about waterfall, is that if you are a contractor, you can keep the project going for a very long time, without the customers/managers realising that there is anything wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3424" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-07-02T10:52:15.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24277" CreationDate="2018-06-29T11:48:22.003" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of the other answer, cover the case where there is a lot of independence. But what if there is no space on the team to add anyone, then is it ever possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hire a specialist in an area that you are stuck (on critical path).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Introduce pair programming, each pair made up of one old-timer, and one newbie. Rotate the pairs each day, so that the newbies get experience in each aria. This takes a while to get up to speed, to don't add to close to end of project. It will probably take at least two weeks for a pair to be as fast as if working separately, so you may expect 4 weeks to pay off (this figures are not researched, just a guess).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use surgical teams. This is a bit like pair programming. But with a team of 10. Also in mythical man month. see &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/355203/what-happened-to-the-surgical-team-pattern-from-the-mythical-man-month&quot;&gt;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/355203/what-happened-to-the-surgical-team-pattern-from-the-mythical-man-month&lt;/a&gt; It will need updating, and is a bit more complex that pair programming.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hire problem solvers: that is for every 2 or 3 workers, give them a manager. The manager works for the workers, if the workers have a problem, the manager finds a solution (the manager must &lt;strong&gt;Not&lt;/strong&gt; out rank the workers).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3424" LastActivityDate="2018-06-29T11:48:22.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24384" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-06-29T12:01:54.793" Score="0" ViewCount="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's consider we want to create a complete robot like Nao(or even ASIMO), that has intelligence(machine vision, speech recognition), and robust electronics/mechanics parts. And we know each of these fields are a special expertise. Even I think in AI field for example, machine vision and speech recognition are two separate professions!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, maybe it's impossible to consider someone is expert in all of them! It seems a person can only be an expert in only one of them(maybe two?!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MY MAIN QUESTION: Considering what I said above, WHO CAN BECOME A LEADER OF A TEAM/STARTUP TO BUILD SUCH GREAT ROBOT? I mean what knowledge/skills should he/she has?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, what is the least team member requirements to create such product? I mean what people with what knowledge/skills are needed to become a part of that team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30123" LastActivityDate="2018-06-29T15:19:04.680" Title="What is needed to become a robotic team/startup leader?" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;technical-leader&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24376" CreationDate="2018-06-29T13:23:04.617" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Story points and velocity exist for one reason only, to allow teams to estimate the capacity of future sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If story points are being seen as 'credit' for work completed then you have some deeper issues to worry about, such as how your organisation is definining the success of a sprint. If a team does lots of work and delivers loads of story points in a sprint but there is little business value generated should they be receiving 'credit'?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, what are the tasks that need to be done to wrap up a sprint? If they repeat every sprint then I would be asking the team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are they really necessary?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why have we not automated them?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-06-29T13:23:04.617" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24384" CreationDate="2018-06-29T15:19:04.680" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a company doing AI, I can share with you some of the books that are influential for the work we do, but I think the best recommendation is to get real world experience on into this environment even by joining events, attending talks, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Knowledge and skills:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Understand very well AI and it’s implications in the future. (Some good books are &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0262527804&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The technological singularity&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0465097537&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future&lt;/a&gt; )&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical expertise in coding. Someone who has decent coding skills and general knowledge about the implications of software related projects. &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/032182203X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Managing the unmanageable&lt;/a&gt; explains a bit more why this is important, but basically it’s going to be very hard for a skilled creative team to be influenced by a leader who doesn’t understands high level how things work and why certain technical aspects are important&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business skills and knowledge about how organisations work (&lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0307887898&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The lean startup&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0062273205&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The hard thing about hard things&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1455582328&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How Google works&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Negotiation skills (I like the book &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.co.uk/Getting-More-Youre-always-negotiating/dp/0141049944&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Getting more&lt;/a&gt; and in general soft skills… they explain the importance also in How Google works and managing the unmanageable)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the team required, is really hard to tell without a longer description of what you are trying to achieve. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-06-29T15:19:04.680" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24387" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24391" CreationDate="2018-06-29T15:23:55.347" Score="3" ViewCount="121" Body="&lt;p&gt;How important is it for a Scrum/Agile Team to understand the role of a Scrum Master?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of one of my usual 1-on-1's with my developers, I asked for feedback about my approach as I usually do, and she said she doesn't really understand my role so it would be difficult to give feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-06-29T15:28:27.377" LastActivityDate="2018-07-10T19:43:06.717" Title="How important is it for a Scrum/Agile Team to understand the role of their Scrum Master" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24387" CreationDate="2018-06-29T15:27:30.420" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends how mature the Team is. It's the Scrum Master's job to inform the Team about Scrum - including the details of the Scrum Master role. But it doesn't need to happen all at once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When just starting out, I wouldn't expect everyone to know much about every role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eventually, though, the Team should mature enough such that any member of the Team would be capable of taking on the role his/herself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-06-29T15:27:30.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24376" CreationDate="2018-06-29T20:23:26.540" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Strictly speaking, the stories on a scrum or Kanban board should describe work that adds value to the product the customer is expecting. I work to prevent &quot;to do&quot; items from appearing on the board. It clutters the board needlessly and makes it difficult for the team to say focused on the actual work. This challenge can be particularly acute with remote teams who are relying on an electronic version of the board to help organize their work and communication. It slows down the stand-ups and, in extreme cases, causes team members to ignore the board because most of what's on there doesn't apply to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From previous comments it also sounds like these tasks rightfully belong as acceptance criteria or definitions of done for various stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for points, the intent and purpose behind their use is to establish a measure for the effort needed to complete a story. In the simplest of terms, this would be everything except time. How complex is the work? Does it involve new technology? What are the dependencies on other stories? How does the story fit within the product vision and customer expectations? What are the risks (time, cost, complexity, etc.)? There are many, many questions that could be asked to determine the position on the backlog for a story and the story points to capture the effort to complete the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, find a way to either incorporate the &quot;end-of-sprint&quot; tasks into appropriate stories or keep an off-the-board checklist to run through at the end of each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2¢&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16486" LastActivityDate="2018-06-29T20:23:26.540" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24387" CreationDate="2018-06-30T13:03:35.220" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the keys to implementing Scrum successfully is to educate the team and the wider organisation &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; starting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is not intuitive and roles like the Scrum Master and Product Owner can easily be misunderstood. This is particularly true when people equate these roles to traditional development roles like Project Managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you haven't done it already, I would suggest that you organise some sessions to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain how Scrum works&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain why your organisation is adopting Scrum&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain the roles and responsibilities of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-sm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Master&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-po&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Product Owner&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-dev&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Development Team&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-06-30T13:03:35.220" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24376" CreationDate="2018-06-30T15:37:01.593" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with others that you should not put story points on the tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can also propose you to put the tasks as a column in the end of your board with Explicit Process Policy that features should be collected in the column while not all features are complete and the end-of-sprint tasks are complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32641" LastActivityDate="2018-06-30T15:37:01.593" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24394" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-06-30T15:37:31.520" Score="0" ViewCount="519" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently started as manager of a team of 10 developers that did manage itself before. I noticed that they do not act that well as a team but rather everybody fights for his own. There are a lot of arguments and even screaming at each other. The last few weeks I tried to find out what is the cause for this and will now start trying to improve the situation. I am unsure, however, how to measure if there is any improvement. Are there any metrics to measure a team's cohesion to use here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32834" LastActivityDate="2018-07-02T10:26:24.613" Title="Metrics to measure teamwork / team spirit" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;measurement&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24362" CreationDate="2018-06-30T16:32:37.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Problem you are describing is exactly field of Kanban and Theory of Constraints. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, you should map your workflow as columns on board and then see where are most of work items sit waiting. It will help your team to know well they should help to improve their performance as a team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can explore some other ideas searching by Kanban Method and Theory of constraints terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32641" LastEditorUserId="32641" LastEditDate="2018-07-01T01:59:34.250" LastActivityDate="2018-07-01T01:59:34.250" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24396" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-06-30T16:38:32.337" Score="4" ViewCount="595" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are team of 3 people. We are adapting scrum methodologies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything is based on kanban (trello) where we do daily, retrospectives and sprint planning (the tasks being forecasted by working hours).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thing is that I have fast developer and slow developer. The fast developer always needs to &quot;make-up&quot; on the slow one. I can spot the slow one because I am at the office, but of course when we grow bigger, it will be hard to spot. We want to spot slow developers in order to improve and take actions. How can we do that the scrum way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32836" LastEditorUserId="11768" LastEditDate="2018-07-02T17:23:14.797" LastActivityDate="2018-07-02T19:25:18.120" Title="How to spot low/high performers within team" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;performance&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24396" CreationDate="2018-06-30T19:11:59.207" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You seem to have already identified the 'slow' developer. Your team should have a version control system and be tracking work including backlog; much of your concern could be addressed by looking at features completed or at the data after the fact on a daily basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Identifying slow developers is either a performance issue where the individual is not skilled enough with the tools and developer tasks, and you should find a new developer or give them time an training to assist them in improving or the reference to &quot;slow developers&quot; is a misdirection and you should consider the management is asking the developer to perform tasks and that management is failing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rough order of magnitude estimates are a useful brainstorming tool when trying to gauge overall efforts by the same person that are similar in scope and technologies, can help in maturing the skill set of developers who manage, but not always beneficial to the bottom line. If your 'slow' developer is involved in management, planning, scheduling and queuing of work, then they are not developing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may benefit from reading and sharing &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://images.itrevolution.com/images/kanbans/From_Worst_to_Best_in_9_Months_Final_1_3-aw.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;From Worst to Best in 9 Months:&#xA;Implementing a Drum-Buffer-Rope Solution in Microsoft’s IT Department&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; with your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this is in the Project Management stack, note your loosely defined issue is not specific to (scrum) agile, project management in software generally can be said to have team members complete work within specific time-frame. Learning to estimate time until completion is a skill. Whether as a developer in estimating how long a new feature will take to implement or as a project manager to determine if the number of people times hours will fit within budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project managers are not typically personnel managers or supervisors. If the focus is on delivery of features by the individual or subcontractor, that may impact project schedule and costs. If the focus is on performance of the individual, that is a personnel issue that should be considered in context of a position description and expectations in hiring contract, along with ability to document when expectations are not met, to allow them to improve or replace them to meet deliverables within budget and time constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simple measures of number of features independently implemented at each sprint, perhaps with attributes for complexity (e.g., story points), by person can show you speed. It takes context to know of that is &quot;slow&quot; or acceptable to the overall project plans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3910" LastActivityDate="2018-06-30T19:11:59.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24396" CreationDate="2018-06-30T23:31:49.423" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read this answer with enthusiasm and an open heart :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll answer the question “how to ensure that developers voice slow developers -or. In general any issue-“ instead of “how to detect slow developers” as I think that's not the underlying issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way to accomplish this in a nutshell is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a safe environment. Everyone should feel safe about voicing their concerns and making suggestions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Train people on soft skills. Sounds obvious, but, people often don't train themselves in aspects such as communication, ways of working, time management, intra-personal skills (knowing when you need to level up or get help!) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure that everyone understands the objectives of the project (this is part of communication but I feel it required a separate bullet point)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The major reason for my suggestion is because I think that in the long run this will generate much more value for your team. The second reason is because I think it’s way more easy to detect problems through ensuring that you work with people who will be proactive about issues and solutions than what it is by putting metrics, KPI’s, or in general mechanical systems to review performance (this can only detect what the things they are created for, not new problems that arise as a result of &quot;human-based&quot; issues).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last note: ensure that retrospectives are done properly. This particular issue with the “slow developer” should’ve been raised during retrospectives and you should’ve spoke about it in an open and transparent way with your colleagues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you to have a look at one of my favourite books that expands a lot about working on safe environments and how to increase productivity: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.co.uk/Creativity-Inc-Overcoming-Unseen-Inspiration/dp/0593070097/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1530399766&amp;amp;sr=8-1&amp;amp;keywords=creativity%20inc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Creativity Inc&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastEditorUserId="32111" LastEditDate="2018-07-02T15:42:35.627" LastActivityDate="2018-07-02T15:42:35.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24394" CreationDate="2018-07-01T02:46:54.413" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our company we just periodically send survey to people asking how they feel. Main point here is to clarify for them, that nobody will punish them for setting low marks. Maybe make it anonymous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is obviously very unreliable method, but only metric we found good enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Better method is to talk with people 1-on-1 about how they feel in the team, in the company, with you as a manager. Try to get their trust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32641" LastActivityDate="2018-07-01T02:46:54.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24396" CreationDate="2018-07-01T07:19:31.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Traditionally, you would have a DevLead, who is responsible for spotting low performers, doing it naturally just by looking how quickly tasks are closed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, is low performance a problem? If the person complete tasks twice slower and gets twice lower salary, then everything seems ok, right?..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In scrum we should ideally have self-organizing team, where people should assess each other performance. And if low performers damage team velocity, or quality or something and get too much money, then the team will raise it - nobody wants to work with low performers. But if this is just matter of different skill level and experience, then it should be compensated by lower salaries, and they should learn how to do things to raise it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's not compensated by salary, then you should ask your team: we need to complete the project till certain date. If the guy moves us forward, even with low velocity, and there is no alternative person to hire, then it can be better than missing delivery dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32641" LastActivityDate="2018-07-01T07:19:31.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24277" CreationDate="2018-07-01T08:13:13.587" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Elasticity also depends on size of codebase. If you have a huge product with thousands of LOC, and your project is upgrading it on a new level here and there, then you can have a team with tens of people working effectively. I managed such a project during 2 years and it was very successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you can find more in a very similar question &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1395/adding-new-team-members-to-a-late-project&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32641" LastActivityDate="2018-07-01T08:13:13.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24270" CreationDate="2018-07-01T09:01:58.980" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Usually top management want to see such main project parameters like being on time and on budget, and some evidence around that. Especially for Fixed Price projects or similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To represent the params you can have a couple of charts similar to &lt;a href=&quot;http://focusandleverage.blogspot.com/2014/03/focus-and-leverage-part-330.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fever Portfolio Chart&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7JuYw.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7JuYw.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Portfolio Fever Chart&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but representing both remaining schedule and budget buffer. This is extremely visual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You dont need to implement Theory Of Constraints for that fully. Just have some estimates and actual spent time for your tickets. Then cut the estimates, say, on 30% and call them &quot;project buffer&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For T&amp;amp;M projects top management is usually interested in following: do we spend all dedicated budget or not? And you can provide some info on how much you have already spent, how much you should have spent on the moment, and forecasting of the things for the end of the contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32641" LastEditorUserId="32641" LastEditDate="2018-07-01T09:08:12.350" LastActivityDate="2018-07-01T09:08:12.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24263" CreationDate="2018-07-01T09:47:11.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our company we face this situation every time we take Fixed Price contract. Please, look into our approach description &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/24206/32641&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32641" LastActivityDate="2018-07-01T09:47:11.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24144" CreationDate="2018-07-01T10:15:52.910" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even Agile can have some initial planning and artifacts produced. I described it &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/24209/32641&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. So, it's totally ok, if your roadmap starts with &quot;Onboarding and initial backlog creation&quot; phase/sprint/milestone. And it is very helpful to avoid impression from your customer that you start working on features on 1st week of your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in regular PM you can also have such deliverable in your WBS, certainly. PM duties are also part of project scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32641" LastActivityDate="2018-07-01T10:15:52.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24394" CreationDate="2018-07-01T10:40:49.063" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a “human’s” problem, hence you can only track progress by asking people questions about how they think the issue is improving (as Anton already suggested). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that you should have many integration sessions in order to allow the team to work together better. If you haven’t done that, this is a good time to start from scratch :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, can I suggest that instead of tracking progress around this issue, you observe productivity and other general “metrics” as they will improve as a secondary effect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I agree with Anton that &lt;em&gt;at the moment&lt;/em&gt; anonymity will allow more sincere responses, you should aim to create a &lt;em&gt;safe environment&lt;/em&gt; where people voice their concerns openly and transparently to everyone. Perhaps one of the first steps and this might sound silly, but I think you should speak privately with everyone and made them aware that it is a problem and that it has a lot of negative consequences as well as getting their perspectives on what’s going on and how to improve the situation (doing this is part of following one of the basic principles of agile: Valuing individuals and interactions over processes and tools). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to mention another hint that might help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is everyone clear on their responsibilities / roles / expectations ? (who works on what, who owns what part of the project...) &lt;em&gt;This allows everyone to focus on what they should as well as discussing only when they own part of that process or when it's relevant for them&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have &lt;em&gt;ways of working&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;work standards&lt;/em&gt; such as coding standards, release processes, discussion policies, etc.? &lt;em&gt;You need everyone to agree on this points as it'll create frameworks for sorting disagreements as well as taking focus on what really matters for the team&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1455554790&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Work Rules!&lt;/a&gt; as a guide on taking further steps to create an amazing team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-07-01T10:40:49.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24277" CreationDate="2018-07-01T16:38:19.497" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I definitely agree on what Roberto Anzaldua posted. From what I observed: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you give a tightly coupled codebase to someone new to the project, he/she will need to dissect which parts he needs to work on. There might be some higher learning curve, since the new engineer needs to learn how his work will interact with the existing codebase and may need to study the other section of the codebase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While giving a highly decoupled codebase to someone new to the project, the new person can just think on the interface perspective of the design and he can concentrate on the section that needs to be worked on. The lead software engineer usually takes care of the interaction of that section to the existing codebase using abstractions or interfaces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While making a software work is expected, I believe a good software lead knows how to write a highly decoupled software which is crucial for any project especially for projects with large codebase. I observed the those who are knowledgeable in design patterns and solid principles have the ability to write highly decoupled software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8980" LastActivityDate="2018-07-01T16:38:19.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24258" CreationDate="2018-07-01T22:54:11.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I had to use a project management system like MS Project to manage an agile project, then I would simply represent each iteration as a work package, and if necessary, add the analysis, design, development, testing and release tasks to every iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I would do all of this with teeth gritted and fists clenched because using a traditional scheduling tool to manage an agile project is the wrong tool for the wrong job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd be concerned that whoever is asking for a classic schedule doesn't understand agile estimating and planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32838" LastActivityDate="2018-07-01T22:54:11.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24408" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-07-02T00:29:02.237" Score="1" ViewCount="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to represent a task which only takes place at specific days on MS Project: for example, on 01/01/2018 between 9:00 and 11:00, on 03/03/2018 between 10:00 and 12:00 and on 12/03/2018 between 11:00 and 12:00. I tried creating a custom calendar but the line on the Gantt diagram is continuous, and I want it to be discontinuous between the days when the task takes place (imagine a meeting for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I do that?&#xA;Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32840" LastActivityDate="2019-01-05T09:15:39.017" Title="How can you represent a task which only takes place at specific days on MS Project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24394" CreationDate="2018-07-02T10:26:24.613" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of the teams I worked with, had this issue. I have had a good degree of success by tackling this problem from multiple angles. Here is some of the Metrics/techniques you can use, how to get them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Periodic (once every sprint) retrospective. Facilitated well, to bring out real problems &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implement (or make best efforts) on list of actions from retrospective&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1-2-1 meetings with team members and setting objectives which require collaboration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Re-enforcing the message that as a manager, you can see this is not happening and you would like to see a change and you are actively monitoring and reporting on the situation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;RACI - Create a clear RACI matrix for team members. Everyone should ideally have 1 clear responsibility.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team goals. Create achievable micro goals for teams. If delivered, these must demonstrate improvement in team work. Example: Improve CI process by using a tool OR Improve static code analysis reports OR improve execution time for automated tests etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32694" LastActivityDate="2018-07-02T10:26:24.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24396" CreationDate="2018-07-02T11:26:26.530" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hope this is obvious but speed to perform a task is not the only criterion against which you would want to rate a practitioner.  In many cases, speed may not even be a consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also interesting the OP points out only the performance extremes: high, low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Except for extremely small teams, for mid- to large-sized teams, that dichotomy does not exist.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there are three facets that need to be understood when rating your team: 1) the criteria to use; 2) the performance distribution; and 3) the dynamics of having varying strengths and weaknesses that, cumulatively, create a high performing team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1: Too often we narrow the definition of high performance to one or two criteria while minimizing or ignoring other metrics, similar to this OP's question.  Focusing too narrowly on one criterion at the expense of others will cause the label of high performance to be administered to an otherwise mediocre performer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2:  What does the distribution of performance really look like on any team in any domain?  Is it normally distributed?  Skewed?  Most current thinking is that performance is severely &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.peoplematters.in/article/performance-management/bell-curve-or-an-l-curve-performance-management-once-again-14481?utm_source=peoplematters&amp;amp;utm_medium=interstitial&amp;amp;utm_campaign=learnings-of-the-day&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;positively skewed&lt;/a&gt;, where most of your team are mediocre and very few are hyper performers.  So perhaps in reality, assuming your criteria are sound, you are really only identifying the hyper performer who might simply stand out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3)  If you only look at your team in a single dimension, you could easily lose sight of other strengths that exist with an individual who may appear mediocre against your criteria, but whose value contributes to the overall team's performance.  A slow performer--looking only at speed as a criterion--may offer a high degree of precision in his/her work that could be exploited from a teaming perspective to enable quality in the team's process.  So grooming that type of person in that particular team role will enhance the overall team's performance, which is far more important than the individual's performance itself.  And remember the concept of &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.teamtechnology.co.uk/tt/t-articl/apollo.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Apollo Effect&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my practice, I don't bother looking at an individual per se.  I look for key strengths to exploit to fill the team's requirements and help the team evolve holistically with those roles.  Hyper performers are rare and will simply present themselves over time.  Extreme and quite rare low performers will also present themselves and are naturally or unnaturally selected off the team over time.  Overall, the most important metric to measure is the team's performance with the underlying assumption that your team will be filled with mediocre to average performers, statically speaking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2018-07-02T13:40:08.720" LastActivityDate="2018-07-02T13:40:08.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24396" CreationDate="2018-07-02T11:49:22.410" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with other answers here about the slower person. But why is other person person faster?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I once had someone on my Scrum Team who was so much faster than anyone else:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They wasted no time validating their ideas with colleagues (e.g. testers).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They were unemcumbered by team agreements e.g. test-driven development (TDD) approach is much to be slower than simply retro-fitting tests.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They got ahead of the game by writing code for items still in the Product Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They took sole ownership of several vital processes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They were loved by end users because they would just fix things (no need to bother the Product Owner!).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They rapidly re-worked their code whenever testers found a missed use case.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They didn't distract colleagues in knowledge-sharing exercises.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They didn't dominate Scrum ceremonies (by never actually speaking).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, they were a terrible team player. We eventually realised we did not want the kind of speed they offered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29315" LastActivityDate="2018-07-02T11:49:22.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25" CreationDate="2018-07-02T12:48:24.583" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Planning poker is often used to generate discussion and bring in different viewpoints. The discussion will eventually lead to an estimate comparative to a previous work done, which can then be translated into man hours or similar by the project manager. Note that it should be the team doing the actual work, not the project managers, that participate in the planning poker. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_poker&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_poker&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32844" LastActivityDate="2018-07-02T12:48:24.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24376" CreationDate="2018-07-02T13:18:15.820" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, as described in the Scrum Guide, you should not have a separate product backlog item for wrap up activities, as this work should be included in the product backlog items that is part of the sprint's increment (it is not &quot;Done&quot; if there are remaining wrap up work). Therefore the wrap up should not have story points of its own, if story points is your way of estimating the product backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could (and should) have Sprint Backlog Items for these type of activities and if you're estimating the sprint backlog items these activities could have its own estimate as part of the sprint backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32844" LastActivityDate="2018-07-02T13:18:15.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24396" CreationDate="2018-07-02T13:30:27.990" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just because a developer is slow does not mean they need improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am, and have been for a number of years one of the least code productive members of the development team in which I work. Why? Because I am a team lead, I have many other responsibilities which include mentorship, training, stakeholder communication, assisting live issues, and company community development. None of these show up on our kanban board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, at the end of the project &lt;strong&gt;the only velocity which actually matters is your team's velocity&lt;/strong&gt;. Your &quot;slow developer&quot; may be working behind the scenes to help the team and as @OneDayWhen points out your &quot;fast developer&quot; may be sitting in a silo and hording knowledge. They may be skipping unit testing which your &quot;slow developer&quot; conscientiously doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You asked what the Scrum response to this is. The answer is to use your daily standups to focus on tasks. Your board contains all the tasks which your team has agreed need to be completed to meet the sprint goal. If you're to make it then all the tasks need to be completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a task/story/feature/bug is falling behind and it's looking like it's in jeopardy then raise it at the standup. This could be because your &quot;slow developer&quot; is distracted, or they may be struggling with it. It could also be because someone has been sick or was called into a live incident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a scrum team member don't worry about personal performance, that's the manager's job and should be handled in 1:1s. As a scrum master look at tasks which are at risk and ask the team what can be done to catch them back up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11768" LastActivityDate="2018-07-02T13:30:27.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24415" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-07-02T14:33:37.527" Score="0" ViewCount="69" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been using SVN for a long time and now I am moving to git just to be &quot;in fashion&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My trouble is how git project managers/software developers manage the versions of a program: not from the code's perspective, but instead from the customer's perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a few projects that each belong to a customer. Each customer under a separate folder has a &quot;projects&quot; folder and possibly a &quot;support&quot; folder. The code of the project exists under each &quot;projects&quot; folder. Under &quot;support&quot; is some supportive documentation/scripts etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also the case where some clients share a product. Each of those are versions in terms of code or configuration. But it is of the same product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, just trying to do that on the hard disk, I am stuck in that I have the .git under each project. Not under a customer folder. I don't like it, as I guess that this means I need to have a wiki (or a text file?) to remember(!) where the git repositories belong (for example, if a laptop goes busted... and I need to get all the git repositories. I have to have somehow get the repositories back on the disk).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand would it be better to have the git repository under the customer folder?&#xA;But in that case, if I need to do &quot;stash/branch/merge&quot; would this &quot;harm&quot; the rest of the projects under the same &quot;customer-umbrella-git&quot; directory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can not imagine what would be stashed/merged/branched if one customer needs feature X for product Y and at the same time I need to fix a bug for project B. Having the git repositories under the customer's folder scares me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is there a way to put a git property perhaps somewhere and eclipse/idea/windows explorer ( yeah sure...) would read this and give me a quick acknowledgement of what projects I have under what customer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you manage this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2289" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-07-03T17:18:26.930" LastActivityDate="2018-07-04T05:12:35.157" Title="Git &quot;trunk&quot;/&quot;releases&quot; by customer by product" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;engineering-practices&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24396" CreationDate="2018-07-02T19:25:18.120" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Transparency and communication are the backbone of agile practices, and when done right they scale very well. Scrum is based on &lt;em&gt;team&lt;/em&gt; performance, and works poorly when you structure the Scrum process as a competition, or attempt to measure individual achievements rather than sportsmanship or teamwork.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Measure the Right Things&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I can spot the slow one because I am at the office, but of course when we grow bigger, it will be hard to spot. We want to spot slow developers in order to improve and take actions. How can we do that the scrum way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of other answers have touched on some great points, but I want to hammer some things home here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From an agile perspective, the &lt;em&gt;effectiveness&lt;/em&gt; of the team is what counts, not the relative speeds of individual developers on the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Measuring &lt;em&gt;coding speed&lt;/em&gt; as a primary metric is close to the &lt;em&gt;100% utilization fallacy&lt;/em&gt; in being a Scrum implementation smell.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You get what you pay for, so if there's a truly significant skill gap that's impacting your project, you either need to budget for more training to close the gap, budget more in wages for a higher-performing workforce, or both.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile in general, and Scrum in particular, are about measuring the ability of a team to deliver business value. A cross-functional team will often have people with varying skill sets, and different abilities and levels of expertise. &lt;strong&gt;A good agilist measures the effectiveness of the team &lt;em&gt;as a whole&lt;/em&gt; in terms of its ability to deliver value, rather than contrasting members of the team against one another.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Examine Your Assumptions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general rule, you want to measure project outcomes, not individual task speed. Instead of assuming you have a personnel problem, examine your initial assumptions. Ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are we collectively meeting our project goals on time and on budget?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the team working at a sustainable pace?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the team delivering business value without incurring excessive technical debt?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the development team satisfied with their working agreements and with their fellow team members?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is anyone actually raising an issue, or are you simply assuming a problem exists?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If items 1-4 are &quot;yes&quot; and no one else is raising an issue, it seems likely that you're chasing a false economy of some sort. Measure the right things, ensure you have an effective process, and consistently elicit honest feedback from your team and your stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-07-02T19:25:18.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24415" CreationDate="2018-07-03T05:05:53.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think, you should change your vision. It is not customer having versions and branches, but product does. Especially, if some products are shared across customers. So, you should have your &quot;.git&quot; folders under product folders. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need to have different product configurations for customers, then create &quot;configurations&quot; folder under your product folder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such case you will be able to add new features to product and to configurations, and fix bugs in parallel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/comparing-workflows/gitflow-workflow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Git Flow&lt;/a&gt; versioning design model which can be helpful for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32641" LastEditorUserId="32641" LastEditDate="2018-07-04T05:12:35.157" LastActivityDate="2018-07-04T05:12:35.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24418" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24423" CreationDate="2018-07-03T05:45:44.570" Score="2" ViewCount="63" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have subcontractors doing work for our company, and all of the information is exchanged between e-mails. I found out that every time someone asks for info, we need to look back at our e-mail, then copy-paste the info.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is not good is that some of the info is outdated, as people may refer to older emails and there are some corrections on later emails. In summary, all the information is scattered in our emails and some of the deliverables are sent via email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have JIRA and a git repository but I don't think management will be ready to expose and give access to external subcontractors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you effectively manage the information and change requests for subcontractor work? I am planning to have a centralized system (like a wiki or shared google docs for the information and a version control system for the  deliverables) specifically for outside work from subcontractors wherein the access will be restricted to every subcontractor we are dealing with. But I am not sure if that is the right path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8980" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-07-03T13:29:07.810" LastActivityDate="2018-07-03T20:12:07.617" Title="Strategy to manage and organize Contractor's Work and change requests" Tags="&lt;change-management&gt;&lt;subcontractor&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1395" CreationDate="2018-07-03T07:37:49.407" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to best push back on the proposal to just add people to a late&#xA;  project, or are there times when it is acceptable to do so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In corporation world, decisions are made. If decisions are made and there is no influence from your side, the best thing is to i) accept it and ii) write it down because otherwise, it never happened. You basically disagree (find ways of saying 'no') and point out risks of delays, productivity, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have encountered this a hundred times, adding people (shall I say 'throwing in people') however the decision reasons were of different nature like 'person A is available, s/he can help'. Here the solution was for management to give person A work irrelevant of the project (scope, problems, etc.) person A joining. A line-project scenario (matrix).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21496" LastActivityDate="2018-07-03T07:37:49.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24422" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24665" CreationDate="2018-07-03T10:39:05.673" Score="1" ViewCount="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, what does benchmarking robotic systems include?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because, while searching the internet, I came across 2 different definitions. The first one included the state and comparison of different systems on the market. The second included defining a set of tests, measures and tasks to qualify the system's performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is the right definition? To start a successful benchmarking, what steps should be followed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice or reference should be a great help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32756" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-07-03T13:13:29.147" LastActivityDate="2018-08-08T14:12:40.010" Title="Benchmarking robotic systems" Tags="&lt;performance&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24418" CreationDate="2018-07-03T13:26:22.520" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you said you're using JIRA but are leery about giving access to external subcontractors...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For simplicity, I will assume you have only one subcontractor and one JIRA Project; if not, this Answer can be scaled up. I also assume you have a free license to create an account for your subcontractor; if not, depending on your setup, you may be able to use anonymous access instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you may wish to consider is creating a second JIRA Project and then give your subcontractor full read (and possibly write, if you wish) authority &lt;em&gt;to that Project only&lt;/em&gt;. What you then do is create a filter that includes both Projects (private and public), and then create a board associated with that filter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way, internally, you will be able to see all issues (both those created internally and externally) in one place. The subcontractor, however, will only be able to see issues belonging to the public Project. This way, any information you wish to be shared with the subcontractor may be put in the public Project, while any confidential information may be kept private.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also wish to configure the board to display to which Project each issue belongs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I've only ever used JIRA Agile, but I assume this would work for JIRA Software as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-07-03T20:12:07.617" LastActivityDate="2018-07-03T20:12:07.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24415" CreationDate="2018-07-03T19:24:50.330" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure where you got the idea that &quot;git project managers/software developers manage the versions of a program [...] from the customer's perspective&quot;. I use git and I certainly don't have a separate repo for each customer...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, the following works well for my Team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;For products that have variations, but will eventually be merged&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use git's branching system for this; have a separate branch for each. One approach to this is to use the following branching system:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One master branch that represents the single 'Live' version of the code&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One Beta branch per customer. Once a feature has been approved by that customer, it is merged into the master branch and other Beta branches are rebased onto master to obtain the change.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One feature branch per feature. Once the feature is ready for Beta, it it merged into the correct Beta branch(es).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;For different products that are similar but will never be merged&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have three repositories. One for customer/product A. One for customer/product B. And one submodule/subtree (Disclaimer: I've never used subtrees) for the shared code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way, the two &quot;variations on the same product&quot; are &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; treated as separate products/repositories entirely; they just share code between them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;For products used only by a single customer&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Straightforward. One product, one customer, one repo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this way, every product always has one and only one non-submodule repository.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-07-03T19:24:50.330" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6100" CreationDate="2018-07-03T21:53:26.037" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Team Lead&lt;/strong&gt; is a management position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Responsible for one or more departments and people&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hires People&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Distributes People across projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Annual Reviews&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Defines Department Development Process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Lead&lt;/strong&gt; is a leadership position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Responsible for one project or more projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coordinates project members day to day work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32854" LastActivityDate="2018-07-03T21:53:26.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24433" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-07-05T14:38:46.327" Score="5" ViewCount="188" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a user story for a login screen. It is in the active sprint. Part of it (andriod platform) cannot be done any time soon. The Sprint is almost over. What can I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I divide the user story? Like ui, integration and all other functions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32866" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-07-05T16:50:15.063" LastActivityDate="2018-07-06T14:09:50.280" Title="Should User Stories be divided if they're not Done and the Sprint is almost over?" Tags="&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24433" CreationDate="2018-07-05T18:34:52.590" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; split that story, but probably not along the lines you are thinking of. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can split the user story in two independent stories, then great. Go ahead. Learn from it and do it from the start next time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the parts you mentioned are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a user story. &quot;UI is done but backend is not&quot; is simply a story that is not done. Because &quot;UI is done&quot; is no user story. The user does not care what part is technically done, the user only cares for &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt;. And if the UI does nothing when the user clicks the button, it's not &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt;. A UI without functionality has no value to a user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like your user story is simply not done. That's not a bad thing. Just note what is left to do, redo your planning method on the rest and plan it for a later sprint (or scrap the story if no longer needed). There is no special need to do anything with it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2018-07-05T18:34:52.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24433" CreationDate="2018-07-05T21:32:22.757" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are facing several problems here which are bleeding over into each other.  Let's separate them out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Story is not done.  What to do now?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's assume your user story was perfect and you have simply run out of timebox.  What do we do with &lt;em&gt;not-done&lt;/em&gt; user stories is a bit of a divisive debate in the Agile community, largely concerned with re-estimation.  You can find flavours of that question here on PM StackExchange. For example; &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/15707/in-scrum-should-incomplete-stories-be-re-estimated-or-does-the-original-estimate&quot;&gt;In scrum should incomplete stories be re-estimated or does the original estimate get burned down when it&amp;#39;s finally completed?&lt;/a&gt;.  You can also refer to this guide by Mike Cohn which represents &lt;strong&gt;one&lt;/strong&gt; side of the Agile debate (not re-estimating).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Story not done. Root cause: it was not a suitable story.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is harder to solve without granular detail of your project and technologies and organisational structure.  We know what the technical guidance says (&amp;quot;User stories should be a complete slice of functionality&amp;quot;) but sometimes in some teams that is simply not feasible.  Salesforce did an excellent series of blog posts about where UX sits in the Scrum framework.  Like most things in Agile, it is up for discussion and YMMV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note:  This is where @Nvoigt and I would probably respectfully disagree.  UX &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be a user story.  It depends on the delivery.  I have been part of teams that consider wireframes, click paths and PoC's to be valid user stories representing team effort.  It all depends on the context; are you making UX stories to avoid harder levels of integration or are you making UX stories to achieve arbitrary timeboxes or do your UX stories genuinely make sense etc etc..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How to tackle this &lt;em&gt;right now&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is, don't sweat it.  It is one story.  Simply mark it not done. It goes to the top of the backlog and you bring it into the next Sprint and it is picked up almost immediately by the devs.  No trouble.  100% predictability is an aspiration but not a reason to crucify your team with debates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How to handle this &lt;em&gt;moving forward&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dedicate a portion of your retro to this particular story.  How did it end being mis-estimated?  Was a developer absent and they were a bottleneck?  What specifically happened to this story?  Use that to drive further questions about your story authoring, splitting and refinement patterns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-07-05T21:38:10.087" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24436" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24440" CreationDate="2018-07-06T09:46:00.843" Score="18" ViewCount="3531" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team works with scrum methodology. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, during some sprints we have &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/288935/difference-between-hotfix-and-bugfix&quot;&gt;hotfixes&lt;/a&gt; that have to be developed as soon as possible, so we treat them in the current sprint, and consequently we have an impact on the sprint goal in which we are engaged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/288935/difference-between-hotfix-and-bugfix&quot;&gt;hotfixes&lt;/a&gt; have to be corrected quickly, without time to create a task in the backlog or without previous refinement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which would be a good way to keep the scrum methodology, while we add constantly these hotfixes to the sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32567" LastActivityDate="2018-07-06T19:18:14.343" Title="How to deal with hotfixes keeping the scrum methodology" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24436" CreationDate="2018-07-06T10:20:35.467" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have no choice other than fixing them -- it's just required by business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, best you can do is to count statistics of how many such bugs-per-sprint you usually have, and include special timebox for such bugfixes on your sprint planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a sprint when you don't have any issues, and you don't know how to spend the timebox better, then you have following options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have so-called &lt;strong&gt;&quot;stretch features&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; -- i.e. features which we include to sprint backlog, but don't commit to complete them in this sprint -- we include them just to not sit idle waiting for next sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spend the time on non-features such as refactoring, automatic tests, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which one to choose should be decided by your team and customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, ofcourse, try improving your quality so that there would be less hotfixes :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And Niels is correct -- it seems like a specific case of &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/12611/how-do-handle-adhoc-work-during-a-sprint-from-pressing-customers&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32641" LastActivityDate="2018-07-06T10:20:35.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="64" CreationDate="2018-07-06T10:24:39.977" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;IT manager usually has a larger scope than Project Manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Project Manager is just for a Project but an IT manager is responsible for completing operations, development and projects. In most cases, a project manager reports to an IT Manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32873" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-07-06T13:11:05.590" LastActivityDate="2018-07-06T13:11:05.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24436" CreationDate="2018-07-06T11:04:29.900" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Sutherland&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jeff Sutherland&lt;/a&gt;, the inventor of Scrum, developed a pattern called 'Illegitimus Non Interruptus':&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Explicitly allot time for interrupts and do not allow more work than fits within the allotment. If work exceeds the allotment, abort the Sprint. - &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com/a/scrumplop.org/published-patterns/product-organization-pattern-language/illegitimus-non-interruptus&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Patterns Group&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will likely have historical data on how much time you should allot. Look at frequency of hotfixes per Sprint and the time it takes to produce a hotfix. If producing a hotfix can cause a Sprint to fail (Sprint Goal not met) then consider creating a new (smaller) Scrum Team that can be protected from hotfix demands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When no interrupts occur there will be temptation to pull more Product Backlog items into the Sprint. Don't. Instead, enjoy the very real benefits from finishing early:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;after analyzing data from dozens of sprints with multiple teams. The teams that finished their Sprint early accelerated faster.  This was the root cause: finishing early. It allowed teams to think more clearly about what they were doing — to remove impediments; to pull forward backlog from the next Sprint; to develop a winning attitude - &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com/a/scrumplop.org/published-patterns/retrospective-pattern-language/teams-that-finish-early-accelerate-faster&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Patterns Group&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you may want to take a deep dive into your technical debt and your quality in general, to determine whether you can work on reducing or eliminating to the need for hotfixes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29315" LastActivityDate="2018-07-06T11:04:29.900" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24433" CreationDate="2018-07-06T14:09:50.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do as much as you can on the story and if it is incomplete at the end of the sprint return it to the backlog for consideration in the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discuss what happened in your retrospective. Things to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did you commit too much to the sprint?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was there a problem with this particular story?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the team's velocity accurately predicting your capacity for a sprint?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any other lessons you may learn&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Occasionally failing to complete a story is not a problem. It is an opportunity to learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-07-06T14:09:50.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24444" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24445" CreationDate="2018-07-06T14:42:33.523" Score="1" ViewCount="273" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to see a list of all tasks that satisfy one of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The task has no predecessors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Every predecessor that the task has is marked as 100% complete.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can add simple filters from &lt;strong&gt;View &gt; Filter &gt; New Filter&lt;/strong&gt;, but I can't figure out how to test every predecessor of a task.  Is there a way to use some advanced filtering functionality to accomplish this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32880" LastActivityDate="2018-07-06T16:11:27.440" Title="How can I show a list of all tasks without incomplete predecessors in Microsoft Project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24444" CreationDate="2018-07-06T16:11:27.440" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Step 1: Use VBA to populate a custom flag field matching your conditions. Something like this should get you close:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Sub ShouldStart()&#xA;Dim t As Task&#xA;Dim tp As Task&#xA;&#xA;For Each t In ActiveProject.Tasks&#xA;    If Not t Is Nothing Then&#xA;        t.Flag5 = False&#xA;        If t.PercentComplete &amp;lt; 100 Then&#xA;            If t.PredecessorTasks.Count = 0 Then&#xA;                t.Flag5 = True&#xA;                GoTo NextTask&#xA;            Else&#xA;                For Each tp In t.PredecessorTasks&#xA;                    If tp.PercentComplete &amp;lt; 100 Then GoTo NextTask&#xA;                Next tp&#xA;                t.Flag5 = True&#xA;            End If&#xA;        End If&#xA;&#xA;    End If&#xA;NextTask:&#xA;Next t&#xA;&#xA;End Sub&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 2: Make a filter based on the custom flag field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2018-07-06T16:11:27.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24436" CreationDate="2018-07-06T16:55:21.907" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understand you correctly, I feel like there are other two questions that you need to answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why hotfixes happen so often?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can you create a plan to address the root cause instead?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seems to be a smell of some missing tests (or in general, as onedaywhen already mentioned some technical debt).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you figure out the root cause and plan to mitigate it, it might be good to separate the process for addressing hot fixes from the actual tasks of the sprint or at least decide on the tasks &lt;em&gt;that you are definitely going to deliver&lt;/em&gt; and rotate people every sprint that will address the hot fixes. This helps to keep at least one part of the team focused on the &quot;key&quot; sprint tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comment about this part:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These hotfixes have to be corrected quickly, without time to create a task in the backlog or without previous refinement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to log them along with the relevant details to solve the problem. They seem recurrent and the negative impact on your project seems significant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A proper log will help you understand:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What's the actual problem&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much impact is having?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who can help you solve it? (is it only technical debt? perhaps there's some requirements miscommunication with the other departments for example)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-07-06T16:55:21.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24436" CreationDate="2018-07-06T19:18:14.343" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simply plan them in as you would with any other methodology. Reserve a certain amount of time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you tend to have significantly more hotfixes than normal work over a longer period, it may just well be that SCRUM is not the correct choice. If that is the case, a more generic (Kanban) methodology might be more appropriate. Kanban can be very similar to SCRUM in practice, basically you just skip the fixed sprint cycle (you still have a cycle, for example for retrospections and such, if you so wish, you just do not assign tasks to cycles).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26382" LastActivityDate="2018-07-06T19:18:14.343" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24448" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-07-09T12:56:46.860" Score="1" ViewCount="384" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been inspired by Daniel Vacanti's talk (&lt;a href=&quot;https://vimeo.com/146545310&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;) about using cycle time to forecast project completion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I collected the following user stories metric in the course of four sprints:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Average cycle times [7.6, 2.48, 3.66, 7.09] &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;85% percentile cycle times [10.2, 6, 5.8, 12]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I am faced with the following question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Using this data, how can I forecast when a project with 56 user stories will be done starting today?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would appreciate any insights on how to answer that question using cycle time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5484" LastActivityDate="2018-07-09T15:09:05.183" Title="How to use historical cycle time to forecast project completion" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;cycle-time&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24448" CreationDate="2018-07-09T15:09:05.183" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't want to argue the talk - he actually does a great job in my opinion of making the case for a more empirical process of prediction. However, he sort of throws out a false message in that he poses the question of project completion forecasting at the beginning then focuses on cycle time without ever answering the original question. From my own Kanban knowledge, I can tell you that there are some steps left out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Throughput&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you actually want to measure is throughput. How many items are done in a given period of time. If you are practicing Scrum, that period will often be a Sprint, but it doesn't have to be. It can be a month or week or quarter. So, for your case, if you completed 6 items per sprint and have 56 (assuming that total number holds) you will finish in about 10 sprints. Of course, that number might just be an average, so let's say you complete between 5 and 7, then your pessimistic forecast would be 12 sprints and your optimistic would be 8 sprints. You may notice that we've just described a burn-up chart using story count instead of story points. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: This is the answer to your question, the rest is just supporting info.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cycle Time&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what is cycle time for? When he was showing the scatter plot diagrams, you may have noticed that the &quot;incredible predictable&quot; scrum team's 50th percentile line was at 13 days. Now, since a lot of teams have a 2-week sprint, this should raise an interesting observation - namely, that they were completing very few backlog items within their sprint and a lot of work was spilling over. In his example, by being mindful, the team got their 85th down to 13 days, which is nice, but that still means that only items started on day 1 of the Sprint could ever finish in the sprint. So, next thing to do would be to look at why the cycle time is that long, and through this sort of introspection, we can reduce it further. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your Dataset&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are breaking up cycle time into sprints - don't. Look at scatter plots across sprints unless there is a specific thing you're trying to learn by doing it. Taking the average of your 85th each sprint will often get you a very different number than the 85th of all items across those 4 sprint and can lead you astray.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Little's Law&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, why can't we just take our 85th cycle time and multiply it by the number of backlog items for a pretty good estimate? Because of WIP. He mentioned Little's Law, which says that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avg Cycle Time = Avg WIP / Avg Throughput&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which tells us that the average cycle time will always be lowest when WIP is 1. For some teams, this is great, but it focuses on responsiveness. You want your Fire Department to never exceed a WIP of 1 so they put your house out as fast as possible. Most of us aren't in a job that focuses on responsiveness first though. We usually want throughput, so we want to refactor that equation to look like this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avg Throughput = Avg WIP / Avg Cycle Time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In real situations, this creates a bell curve showing that most teams, for their highest throughput, should have a WIP greater than one but that after a point the throughput will shrink because of too much split focus. How do we find that point? Mostly by experimenting, but that ideal for most software teams sits around 2 - 4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Sprint&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then there is the Sprint. Closing everything up at the end of a sprint actually disrupts flow. Your throughput will almost always be lower with sprints than without because you artificially force a wrap-up every few weeks. This isn't necessarily bad. That wrap-up gets us stable product increments that make it easy to absorb feedback, pivot, and drop items out of our backlog we've discovered we don't need. For most software teams, the payoff for this more than makes up for the throughput ding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that went way past your question, but I'm afraid your question as it was phrased was largely unanswerable. I hope this helps. Definitely look more into Kanban metrics, they are awesome, even for Scrum teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-07-09T15:09:05.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24450" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-07-09T15:32:52.137" Score="3" ViewCount="808" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few of the managers at my company have decided that the stack of stories is too high, so they're going to truncate the backlog and the number of people who can write stories.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal being, only approved story submitters can create feature requests.  Is this antithetical to Scrum?  Doesn't it just mean the Product Owners are being too lazy to vet cruddy stories?  Our backlog is at about 1400, I recently went through the backlog and figured, on my own as a scrummaster/developer that I could shrink it to about 600.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What advice should I give the Product Owners around this idea?  Should I vehemently oppose this idea as a Scrum Master?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the long term plan for this project? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;these are multiple projects that usually have a 6-12 month of development work until they're done and then continuously improved until they're retired.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Will there be some release point after which development will pretty much stop, or will it have continuous development for an indeterminate time with many releases? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Development probably will only stop when feature requests stop being submitted by customers and other stakeholders&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You said you found a large number of stories that you could remove--are these duplicate stories, useful but poorly written stories, or stories that could be useful but you don't see the development team ever getting around to them? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a few duplicates, many potentially contradictory stories.  Lots are ones that none of us see the dev team getting to as written, but they may be the seeds for things that need to be done.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And who exactly has been entering the stories you think could be chopped (developers, product owner, other customers)?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developers and users of the platform (our guys, not paying customers) maybe 3% are customer requests.  Most come from end users,  we mainly develop in-house utilities that are used to support many customers - some of the tools produce reports and things that customers see, but those customers don't enter stories. Product Owners, for the most part, don't write the stories, although they may rewrite 'em. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16260" LastEditorUserId="16260" LastEditDate="2018-07-10T13:32:07.390" LastActivityDate="2018-07-19T15:59:44.167" Title="Should we limit who can submit stories in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24450" CreationDate="2018-07-09T16:00:41.957" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is the sole person responsible for managing the Product Backlog. Product Backlog management includes: [...] The Product Owner may do the above work, or have the Development Team do it. However, the Product Owner remains accountable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meaning... it's the Product Owner (PO)'s call. As you ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I vehemently oppose this idea as a Scrum Master?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, from the Guide:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master is responsible for promoting and supporting Scrum as defined in the Scrum Guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, going strictly by the Guide, your job as Scrum Master is to make sure the Team is following the Guide. And the Guide says it's the PO's call.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, you can certainly give advice, if you wish. I recommend that this would be a good topic to bring up at the next Retrospective. Discuss with the whole Team, but first make it clear that the ultimate decision lies with the PO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also of concern:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is one person, not a committee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This responsibility needs to be given to &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; person, whom is &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; PO. There should never be multiple POs for one project. While the PO may delegate to other, pseudo-POs, there must be only one &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; PO who remains accountable for the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, my advice: Start a Sprintly Backlog Refinement meeting where either you or the whole Development Team meet with the PO and refine the backlog. As you mentioned:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our backlog is at about 1400, I recently went through the backlog and figured, on my own as a scrummaster/developer that I could shrink it to about 600.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should be doing this alongside the PO (assuming the PO is unwilling/unable to do it by him/herself). Again, the PO remains responsible for the Product Backlog - don't go overhauling it on your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-07-09T17:40:14.333" LastActivityDate="2018-07-09T17:40:14.333" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24450" CreationDate="2018-07-09T16:04:28.190" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should we limit who can submit stories in Scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, but you should ensure that individuals are educated enough to know &lt;em&gt;when is a good idea to add stories&lt;/em&gt; as well as having &lt;em&gt;solid processes&lt;/em&gt; to do it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Great ideas can come from everyone and it's well known that giving freedom to people to work on what they have passion for makes them do a better job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Elaborating on the two points what I'm suggesting (based also in the fact that I think you need to investigate why you can shrink that much the backlog):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Focus on educating individuals to understand when is advisable to add stories&lt;/em&gt;. This will include sessions to make sure that everyone understand what are the goals of the project, what are the priorities, what are the problems, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Create a structured and organised process to add items to the backlog&lt;/em&gt;. Perhaps you can have sessions organised by department every &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; weeks. Everyone should be able to provide ideas, discuss them, and decide which ones actually go into the backlog. Creating an &quot;etiquette&quot; or &quot;template&quot; for when/how stories should be added, might also be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if there's no turning back, I want to mention that &quot;completely&quot; removing their privilege seems like a very strong decision. Incremental steps work much better in this cases, as you can have a very negative effect on some people and in turn reduction of productivity, creativity, enthusiasm, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastEditorUserId="32111" LastEditDate="2018-07-09T21:16:41.960" LastActivityDate="2018-07-09T21:16:41.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15345" CreationDate="2018-07-10T07:52:03.867" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;**DEAR ALL &#xA;In the  Ms project, suppose the task is completed 100 percent .then I don't want to calculate the duration.it is possible in the MS project or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;note:&#xA;@ predecessors and successors already linked to so many activities.so I cannot delete. if any option is there .let I know &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32909" LastActivityDate="2018-07-10T07:52:03.867" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24454" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-07-10T12:58:13.907" Score="1" ViewCount="173" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to exclude non working hours in my cycle time, how can I configure the Control charts to do that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2020-02-04T14:50:37.103" LastActivityDate="2020-03-05T15:03:15.447" Title="Agile control charts in JIRA - exclude non-working hours" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;control-chart&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24450" CreationDate="2018-07-10T13:34:56.800" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Excellent answers already, but I will add a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should we limit who can submit stories in Scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Anyone&lt;/em&gt; can propose a story is added to the backlog, but the process is typically as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The person who is suggesting the story explains it to the Product Owner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the Product Owner agrees it is a valid story and makes sense for the product they tell them to proceed in adding it to the backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our backlog is at about 1400&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth remembering that the aim of Scrum is to respond quickly to change. An overly long product backlog can:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create resistance to change: &quot;We don't want to accept feedback on the product as the backlog is already very full&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Disappoint stakeholders: &quot;My story has been on the backlog for a year and it is still nowhere near the top!&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create clutter: It is difficult to read/review a very long backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good approach I have seen teams take is to put a &lt;em&gt;time limit&lt;/em&gt; on the backlog. For example, some teams say that the backlog should not have more stories than they can complete in the next 3 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-07-10T13:34:56.800" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24456" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24458" CreationDate="2018-07-10T15:58:58.147" Score="7" ViewCount="196" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember I once read in Wikipedia about a law stating that the actual delivering time will always be 4 times less to 4 times more from the estimated time, even when you aware that law and know every detail in the project. What is that concept so I can look it up again?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27043" LastActivityDate="2019-02-01T17:08:50.003" Title="What is the term for actual delivery time will be varied by 4 times from estimation?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24456" CreationDate="2018-07-10T17:10:04.823" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Cone of Uncertainty&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research in the software industry on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cone of Uncertainty&lt;/a&gt; stated that in the beginning of the project life cycle (i.e. before gathering of requirements) estimates have in general an uncertainty of factor 4 on both the high side and the low side (Boehm 1981). This means that the actual effort or scope can be 4 times or 1/4 of the first estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2018-07-10T17:10:04.823" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24456" CreationDate="2018-07-10T17:13:42.973" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cone of Uncertainty&lt;/a&gt;. The idea is that at the beginning of a project or effort, there is enough uncertainty that estimates are generally in the range of being 4x over or 1/4 of the time it will take to complete. As the project progresses, these uncertainties begin to be resolved or better understood and the range of estimation becomes better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Steve McConnell writes about this concept in &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1556159005&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rapid Development&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1572316217&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Software Project Survival Guide&lt;/a&gt;. It's also discussed on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.construx.com/Thought_Leadership/Books/The_Cone_of_Uncertainty/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Construx (McConnell's company) website&lt;/a&gt;. The idea in software development, however, originated with &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0138221227&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Barry Boehm in Software Engineering Economics&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2018-07-10T17:13:42.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24460" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-07-10T18:49:44.963" Score="1" ViewCount="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there a way to show minute-long tasks for event choreography on a Gantt chart?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;ProjectLibre&lt;/em&gt; is my preferred Gantt tool, and I've not discovered a way to change the display to minutes, but tasks appear with the smallest measurement of &quot;hours&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Alternative #1&lt;/strong&gt; is to create 2 Gantt displays, one to show the complete timeframe (planning, practice &amp;amp; publicity), and the other which isolates the event (e.g. performance of school play).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Alternative #2&lt;/strong&gt; would be something like a logarithmic Gantt, compressing the far distant items, and expanding the critical hour at the end. Think of a wedding...planned for months, and focused on the day, or even hour (ceremony &amp;amp; reception).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5397" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-07T02:09:03.853" LastActivityDate="2018-11-07T02:09:03.853" Title="Displaying logarithmic Gantt or Minute-long tasks for event coordination" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24387" CreationDate="2018-07-10T19:43:06.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a buzzword like &lt;strong&gt;Scrum&lt;/strong&gt; comes into picture, it is obvious for the teams to get overwhelmed. In your case, I believe you need to get in conversation with team as a whole and ask them to question you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is indeed a challenging thing to do, but it has its own benefits. Unless the team comes into terms with why you are trying to implement Scrum, they will never participate fully in the scrum events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ScrumMaster is the servant-leader of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you have this open communication channel established with the team, you will neither be able to serve nor lead the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32915" LastActivityDate="2018-07-10T19:43:06.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24450" CreationDate="2018-07-10T19:54:54.027" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think it will be a good idea to limit adding the user stories to specific individuals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your explanation, I get that the intention is to reduce the count from 1400 to some number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering Product Owner is &lt;strong&gt;accountable&lt;/strong&gt; to keep Product Backlog in check, this decision might look like no-brainer. &#xA;As a ScrumMaster, you may want to understand Product Owner's point of view in the matter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There can be a group of product managers, but in the end, voice should be one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can talk on the lines of creating some kind of delegation to vet user stories and Product Owner will be responsible to come up with a consensus and order the product backlog properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32915" LastActivityDate="2018-07-10T19:54:54.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24463" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24474" CreationDate="2018-07-11T13:39:30.733" Score="3" ViewCount="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Change Management representative recently attended a Scrum workshop for a separate business area &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; under traditional ITIL Change Management.  He asked for a some guidance and resources on how his department could better integrate with teams working towards the Agile values particularly Scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does the idea of a Standard, Emergency and Normal change work with the Scrum cadence which seeks working products every timebox?   I know that Scrum is a framework to which we can add patterns and techniques as required but ITIL processes like the CAB are relatively fixed and Change Management can be laborious for Agile teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there some detailed white papers or guidance or case studies about companies making this transition?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found dozens of blog posts but they are piecemeal and very aspirational.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T15:31:33.823" Title="How can ITIL Change Management adapt to work with iterative frameworks and the Agile values?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;&lt;itil&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24464" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-07-11T15:28:44.240" Score="0" ViewCount="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I'm editing start or finish dates, Project moves the other based on the duration. How do I make it change the duration instead so I don't have to keep moving the start and finish dates back?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32914" LastActivityDate="2018-07-11T16:14:34.937" Title="Calc days based on Start and Finish date - MS project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24465" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-07-11T16:05:23.437" Score="2" ViewCount="97" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have spent the last few days searching for an answer on how to use MS Project (2010 in my case) to estimate a project's cost via milestones that are split along a long program (2.5 years). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The client wants to pay us via monthly milestones on a fixed price contract, i.e., we deliver X at some month, be it a report or a piece of equipment, and they pay us project costs for that time period. These milestones are staggered, such as some may be 1 month apart, while others may be 3 months. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To date, I have the project laid out, loaded with resources, and can generate an estimated cost of the project as a whole or grouped tasks. What I would like to do is calculate the cost by &quot;simply&quot; dropping a milestones, i.e., at month 3, 5, and 12, and have MS Project spit out the costs of those time periods, i.e., all work performed in between those dates. In my example above, months 0-3, 3-5, and 5-12 respectively. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried adding a lookup column with a milestone listed and then using GROUP BY and the Cost column, but it is difficult to use due to some tasks that span several milestones. Due the the high number of milestones and tasks, breaking each long task to individual milestones is unwieldy in both time to do it (especially when the schedule shifts) and makes it very difficult to read (some long tasks will need to be split amongst 10 or more milestones).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help is appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32922" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-07-11T17:09:44.000" LastActivityDate="2019-06-07T23:02:02.920" Title="Estimating Fixed Price Project Cost Payments via Monthly Milestones" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;&lt;milestones&gt;&lt;fixed-price&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24464" CreationDate="2018-07-11T16:14:34.937" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should never / rarely hard code a date in.  Open up the duration column and enter a new duration there.  Then let your schedule logic calculate the start and finish dates based on your schedule network.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-07-11T16:14:34.937" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24467" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-07-11T16:52:13.683" Score="4" ViewCount="69" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did any company measure profits after implementing &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scaledagileframework.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SAFe&lt;/a&gt;?&#xA;How can we know that total costs of implementing SAFe are less than profits?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22676" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2018-08-16T16:42:56.503" LastActivityDate="2018-08-16T16:42:56.503" Title="How can we know that implementing SAFe results in profits for the company?" Tags="&lt;cost-management&gt;&lt;safe&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24465" CreationDate="2018-07-11T17:13:00.883" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course, you post a question and then you immediately find the answer. I tried some new word combinations and found this that solved my problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have costs by task and resource in your project, here's how to see them by month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Switch to the Task usage view (Utilisaton des Tâches&amp;quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right-Click on the timescale, select Timescale&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Middle Tier, choose Quarters or Years&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AS BOTTOM TIER SELECT MONTHS (that is essential)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the Formt ribbon check (cocher) Project summary task&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_project-mso_winother-mso_2013_release/create-cost-monthly-report-in-ms-project-2013/1699b2b3-0852-45dd-93f5-cfd60dd52e00&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32922" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-01-08T22:12:26.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1587" CreationDate="2018-07-11T20:18:44.247" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Under the assumption that you work with &lt;em&gt;emotionally intelligent&lt;/em&gt; individuals, I actually think that transparent salaries is a good practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pay secrecy leads to decreased performance, whereas pay transparency increases performance as explained &lt;a href=&quot;https://hbr.org/2016/03/why-keeping-salaries-a-secret-may-hurt-your-company&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More on transparent salaries on this  &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ted.com/talks/david_burkus_why_you_should_know_how_much_your_coworkers_get_paid?utm_campaign=tedspread--a&amp;amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;amp;utm_source=tedcomshare&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ted talk&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-07-11T20:18:44.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24471" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-07-11T23:36:43.883" Score="0" ViewCount="191" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be similar to &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/18128&quot;&gt;At what level should the Product Owner prioritize work?&lt;/a&gt;. However, I ask questions based on specific use cases that is not addressed there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our team is reviewing our Agile process while we look at moving to Kanban style flow instead of Sprints. One question we are having a hard time answering is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At what level (what type of &lt;code&gt;Work Item&lt;/code&gt;) should the &lt;strong&gt;Product Owner&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  be prioritizing at?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our mind, it comes down to either &lt;code&gt;Feature&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;User Story (Bug)&lt;/code&gt;. However, no matter which one we choose, we are seeing scenarios where it would cause problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;User Story&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our understanding is that the developers &lt;strong&gt;always&lt;/strong&gt; work at the &lt;code&gt;User Story&lt;/code&gt; level. (Yes...they also can work at the Task level but the highest point is Story.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That implies that the &lt;strong&gt;Product Owner&lt;/strong&gt; is &lt;strong&gt;submitting and prioritizing&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;code&gt;User Stories&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;Bugs&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is possible that a develop would &lt;strong&gt;break up&lt;/strong&gt; a User Story into &lt;strong&gt;multiple stories&lt;/strong&gt; due to scheduling, division of work with other developers, or some other reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, the &lt;strong&gt;Product Owner&lt;/strong&gt; may not care or even become confused with the appearance of these &lt;em&gt;seemingly&lt;/em&gt; unrelated Stories on the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Feature&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, we could have the &lt;strong&gt;Product Owner&lt;/strong&gt; work at the &lt;code&gt;Feature&lt;/code&gt; level, while letting the developers continue working with &lt;code&gt;User Stories&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that the PO is submitting and prioritizing &lt;code&gt;Features&lt;/code&gt;. It would also allow the developer to create more than one &lt;code&gt;User Story&lt;/code&gt; without the PO potentially getting confused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with this approach is handling &lt;code&gt;Bugs&lt;/code&gt;. Since bugs appear at the User Story level, how would the PO properly prioritize on the &lt;strong&gt;two different&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;code&gt;Boards&lt;/code&gt;? I guess the bug could be entered as a &lt;code&gt;Feature&lt;/code&gt; (with a child &lt;code&gt;Bug&lt;/code&gt; also existing) but that seems wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Functionality Group&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This section could probably be submitted as a separate question but I have added it because my 2nd approach exposes the problem...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe &quot;Feature&quot; is the &lt;strong&gt;wrong word&lt;/strong&gt; used in TFS, but in my mind a &lt;code&gt;Work Item Feature&lt;/code&gt; would be &quot;particular functionality in an application&quot;. For example, a Feature titled &quot;&lt;strong&gt;The ability to sort search results&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;. Example, User Stories under that could be &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Sort by Id field&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; and &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Sort by Last Modified field&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assume that this piece of functionality is rolled out and then some time later, an enhancement titled &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Sort by Name&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; is submitted. Should that be submitted as a new &lt;code&gt;Feature&lt;/code&gt;? If so, how (and should it) be related to the original &lt;code&gt;Feature&lt;/code&gt;? Or should it be submitted as a &lt;code&gt;User Story&lt;/code&gt; related to the original &lt;code&gt;Feature&lt;/code&gt; causing the now closed &lt;code&gt;Feature&lt;/code&gt; to be reopened?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does this affect bugs? Should a &lt;code&gt;Bug&lt;/code&gt; be associated with the original &lt;code&gt;Feature&lt;/code&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would &lt;code&gt;Epics&lt;/code&gt; come into play in any of this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32924" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T15:18:57.887" Title="At what Work Item level does the Product Owner prioritize in TFS?" Tags="&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;&lt;kanban-board&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24472" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-07-12T00:16:58.130" Score="1" ViewCount="188" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I try to print my Gantt schedule, it hides a bunch of my information rows. How can I fix this? See the comparison between actual Gantt and print preview below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Pxc1M.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Pxc1M.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;screenshot&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32925" LastEditorUserId="31132" LastEditDate="2018-08-23T17:57:07.633" LastActivityDate="2019-04-20T20:02:55.623" Title="Printing Gantt charts" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24471" CreationDate="2018-07-12T15:18:57.887" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there may be some confusion between what is a feature, what is a story and what is a task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using your example, I would expect something like this...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is working on the search &lt;em&gt;feature&lt;/em&gt;. They add several &lt;em&gt;user stories&lt;/em&gt; to the backlog:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a standard user I want to be able to sort search results by Last Modified Date so that I can tell which results are recent&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an admin user I want to be able to sort search results by ID, so that I can complete the resupply list&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team might take these user stories and break them down in to a number of technical implementation &lt;em&gt;tasks&lt;/em&gt;, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Add last modified date to the database and index it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create a web page that presents results&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create some dummy data for testing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner does not care about tasks, but they do care about user stories as they provide a clear benefit to the users of the product. They want to report on the progress of user stories to their stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not unusual for the Product Owner and the development team to work together in breaking user stories down. The development team might prefer smaller stories as it helps them with scheduling and division of work. However, you would not expect the development team to be creating user stories without the involvement of the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A summary might be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feature: A grouping of one or more user stories that are associated with a particular feature in the product&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User story: Something that provides end user benefit and written from the point of view of the end user&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tasks: Technical implementation activities that come together to deliver stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T15:18:57.887" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24463" CreationDate="2018-07-12T15:31:33.823" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is difficult to see how a traditional ITIL Change Management process would work with Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the reasons for this include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Scrum we look to have a potentially releasable increment at the end of each sprint and we typically &lt;em&gt;release frequently&lt;/em&gt;. It is hard to see how this can be done in combination with an ITIL process unless it has been streamlined and made very responsive.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Scrum the Product Owner is responsible for prioritising the product backlog and often decides when releases will happen. This responsibility will typically clash with the roles and responsibilities of the ITIL process (such as the CAB).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Scrum we look to have everyone required to deliver a release in the Scrum Team. If there are dependencies on people outside the team that are involved in the change management process then this disrupts one of the core aspects of Scrum.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T15:31:33.823" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24475" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24490" CreationDate="2018-07-12T17:27:07.067" Score="10" ViewCount="173" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work on an very small software development team of 3 (remote 'full' timer, a full-time developer on-site, and myself as 'lead' on-site)  in a &quot;small&quot; aerospace manufacturing plant of about 300 employees &amp;amp; 150 machines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Our Situation:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have been given an &lt;em&gt;incredibly&lt;/em&gt; large chunk of projects to research, design, and develop: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a live WIP-Quality-Inspection-Hub for our machine operators;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;designing and creating a few automated inspection machines;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a reporting view within the hub for our inspectors and quality&#xA;supervisors;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an auto-blueprint-reader/marker;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a program that digitizes our contract review process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a &quot;request module&quot; for our machine operators and eventually for any department that has a request of another department;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a 3D &quot;shop floor metrics&quot; display for our high end customers...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and about a dozen other smaller projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was tempted to say that one of the bad things is that our team is small and inexperienced, but we work well together and are all very quick learners and have already tackled some projects that engineers before us couldn't (the automated machine is 'half-automated' currently and has been a huge boon to some of our 'value-stream' parts, a project engineer before us was never able to get that  off the ground).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the 'difficulties' (not necessarily bad or good in my eyes) is our shop is in high demand. So our manager, who is also the engineering manager, is &lt;em&gt;super&lt;/em&gt; busy and sometimes won't even check in on us for 1 or 2 days (on rare occasions it can feel like 3 or 4), and usually when he checks in it is just to see what we are working on, usually not to change our direction and never micromanages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, because our work is starting to bear fruit, and so many departments &amp;amp; processes need to all be brought into the 21st century in parallel to avoid bottle-necks, our priorities &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; sometimes change suddenly (usually after a big development 'release'-cycle).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nice thing is that because our company is large and profitable enough (and our team is small enough), and has been around for 50 years... we sort of don't have deadlines, as long as we continue to show improvements because the company has been quite successful before us anyways, we are in good standing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But of course my manager has multiple people above him who want more accurate reporting on our tasks completed, and projects in progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary of needs&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Priority viewing/changing across &lt;strong&gt;all projects&lt;/strong&gt; in one view, so&#xA;   that our manager can say &quot;this is everything they have on their list&#xA;   to eventually tackle&quot;, and also change priorities of tasks &amp;amp;&#xA;   projects on the fly (i.e. &lt;em&gt;They have completed a few milestones on this project and we can start testing it out on the shop floor... in the meantime they should switch to 'Project X' for now&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Standard project management things such as tasks, sub-tasks, tags, assignees, status (open, in progress, closed), deadlines, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time recording&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reporting of tasks complete and time spent on a task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;ideal&lt;/strong&gt; package would allow us to design whatever hierarchy we want, but as long as the hierarchy can go from &quot;all&quot; to &quot;granular&quot; easily... well that would be sweet.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time estimates, and 'milestones/sprints' &lt;em&gt;are not&lt;/em&gt; our focus currently.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What we have tried so far, or I have done short testing on&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We have been running off priorities given directly from our manager&#xA;in person. It has worked well for about 12 months but we need to&#xA;upgrade for reasons listed above.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Running a shared file on Excel; but Excel often feels too clunky for this, and shared excel files seem to be ticking time-bombs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;EDIT:&lt;/em&gt; - A handful of project management software including many pure Kanban sites/software such as Trello and Tiaga.io (which always&#xA;seem to lack hierarchical-prioritizing views and often lack time&#xA;recording). We have also tried software built upon more&#xA;unconventional or 'less popular' ideologies such as priority&#xA;matrices.  It seems that our best software solution (so far) focuses&#xA;on a hierarchy of containers and lists that can be prioritized on a&#xA;granular scale or at the macro level, and levels in between those two&#xA;extremes (ClickUp).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We recently hired a project manager to work under the engineering manager and help us balance our priorities. But she is brand new this week, and has a lot to learn before I think she will start being able to really help us on this front.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We have also discussed designing our own priority manager &lt;em&gt;within&lt;/em&gt; our &quot;request module&quot; (project item 6.) but of course this will take time and we need this functionality to help us even get the request module done. I imagine we would fashion it to work more or less exactly how ClickUp works, but with some minor design changes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My manager has also discussed the idea of outsourcing any projects we want expedited... but unless he is getting impatient I would like for us to eventually tackle everything ourselves. We are kind of building a reputation as a small powerhouse team and I would like that reputation to grow.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where we stand now:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Ultimately my manager has given me the power over this decision, and whatever I feel works best he is willing to work with.  My current plan is to suggest we use ClickUp until we can create our own internal version... but I am eager to find a better solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32932" LastEditorUserId="32641" LastEditDate="2018-07-19T08:35:44.650" LastActivityDate="2018-07-19T14:41:58.450" Title="Software Dev Team; Managing Task Across Multiple Projects in a Manufacturing Plant with no Deadlines or Set Features?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24476" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-07-12T20:26:29.507" Score="1" ViewCount="271" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do I enter 'or' logic into the predecessor field? For instance, task 4 can start when task 1, 2, or 3 ends. We don't know which of 1, 2, or 3 will begin or end first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32914" LastActivityDate="2019-03-11T16:43:51.423" Title="MS Project - Predecessor 'or'" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24115" CreationDate="2018-07-12T22:08:48.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;B is definitely not correct, because Replication has two parent nodes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I modified your diagram a bit, calling it A'.  The assumption here is that the Replication for one module is independent of the other.  If it's not, then the diagram doesn't apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To complete the Customer module, you must complete Development (I used that term because you refer to &quot;These two modules require additional development... &quot;) and Replication.  Those two activities are 100% of the work needed to complete the Customer module.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EwhU2.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EwhU2.png&quot; alt=&quot;Updated image of A&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar logic applies to Sales Order module, which I &quot;left as an exercise for the reader&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28828" LastEditorUserId="28828" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T22:33:04.823" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T22:33:04.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24115" CreationDate="2018-07-12T23:22:55.017" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Either works.  &quot;A&quot; looks more logical and would likely be easier for other stakeholders to consume but &quot;B&quot; is fine, too.  In &quot;B&quot;, your dev task is acting like a hammock activity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is most important here is that YOU understand the logic and can manage the work.  The whole idea behind a WBS is to break your work down into manageable pieces, the key word being manageable.  So use the structure that you can understand, analyze, defend, predict, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you had trouble because a work package has the same name.  Consider the work being done to overhaul a house.  It is likely you would have two different accounts for the kitchen and a bathroom.  Both rooms have walls and those walls need to be painted.  I will guarantee you in that WBS you would have &quot;paint walls&quot; under both accounts.  You'd have others, too: &quot;install fixtures.&quot;  One might be a dishwasher and the other might be a toilet.  Duplicate activities under different accounts is a non issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T23:22:55.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24476" CreationDate="2018-07-13T01:05:54.480" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can't.  &quot;Or&quot; relationships aren't supported in MSP (nor in any other mainstream project scheduling tool that I know of.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2018-07-13T01:05:54.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24480" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-07-13T01:56:14.847" Score="-1" ViewCount="75" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been requested to attend 'some' technical test while I applying a job for PM position which is unusual in Singapore. This is fuzz. Am I hired to do coding like a developer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29899" LastActivityDate="2018-07-16T09:56:47.083" Title="Is it common to conduct technical test for project manager (IT projects) interview?" Tags="&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2018-07-17T21:02:34.177" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24480" CreationDate="2018-07-13T05:08:20.703" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know companies like Microsoft, Google and Apple who do this assessments. Other companies I've worked for also do it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't think of it as &quot;I'm going to be coding&quot; but rather... &quot;I'll be managing coding projects hence I need to understand them&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally think it's useful to have technical knowledge for two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It helps you understand deadlines, difficulties or even provide a helping hand for proposing solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It facilitates trust building around your decisions because they can be considered well founded.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare with PM:SE question &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/55/32641&quot;&gt;How technical should a Project Manager be?&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2018-07-16T09:56:47.083" LastActivityDate="2018-07-16T09:56:47.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24482" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24483" CreationDate="2018-07-13T09:11:37.157" Score="3" ViewCount="545" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to move closer to self-organization in my team. And we have no problem making decisions on our meetings -- we have good agreement on the decisions. But then we have problem with assigning implementation of the decision to specific members -- who should go and just do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, my question is: how to choose responsible for implementing decision in self-organizing team?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. The question appeared while I've been getting familiar with so-called &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teal_organisation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Teal Organizations&lt;/a&gt; and particularly &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reinventingorganizationswiki.com/Decision_Making&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Advice Process&lt;/a&gt;. But it doesn't matter very much, because the question relates to any self-organizing team, I think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32641" LastActivityDate="2018-07-14T09:54:14.590" Title="How to choose responsible for implementing decision in self-organizing team?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;self-organizing&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24482" CreationDate="2018-07-13T09:11:37.157" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think, there are following options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Seek for volunteer -- but there are some decisions with no volunteer, because some people are not interested very much, and others are just busy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Responsible should be person, who is most interested in implementing the decision -- there is always existing one. But problem is: the person can be very busy with his current work, or it's difficult for him to do it, because he is remote.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Choose responsible by team's decision -- i.e. decision making should include also decision about who should do it. But I'm afraid, chosen person can refuse doing it saying he is just busy, or just because -- why he?! =)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I incline to use the options just in this order. Also, I think, I should talk about it with my team about it and see what they think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32641" LastActivityDate="2018-07-13T09:11:37.157" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24482" CreationDate="2018-07-13T10:02:21.513" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;answering your own questions huh? :D&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my organisation we let that happen &lt;em&gt;organically&lt;/em&gt; as part of the decision process. In order for this to happen we have worked hard on certain conditions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have a sound understanding of everyone's skills and preferences and do our best to maximise their usage accordingly (we even include this as part of our resource planning)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We make sure that they want to do it (although yes, sometimes &lt;em&gt;they might not love it&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They have the skills to do it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;3&lt;/em&gt; is a bit tricky to do. In my opinion it's not healthy to &lt;em&gt;force&lt;/em&gt; people to do stuff, but you can work in a culture where everyone understand that it's important to have a balanced work and that everyone should work occasionally do stuff that they &lt;em&gt;don't like&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastEditorUserId="32111" LastEditDate="2018-07-13T10:27:03.073" LastActivityDate="2018-07-13T10:27:03.073" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24482" CreationDate="2018-07-14T03:27:36.613" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short version is that you don't. Work that must get done is picked up by someone - or it wasn't important to get done. You mention teal organizations. If you look at the example organizations in the book Reinventing Organizations, people decide the work they want to take on. This is different than volunteering to be assigned. No assignment ever happens, the work is just taken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may sound like a fantasy, but those organizations succeed in doing it and are more successful for it. One important trait of those organizations though is that the team members have true ownership. They own the successes or failures. If their product doesn't succeed, then they're done. That's very different than a boss yelling at them if they don't get their work done. That's what is really is to have self-organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that said, some organizations are far away enough that they can't make that kind of jump. The three ideas you mention are perfectly valid stepping stones to use when getting there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also mention business a lot. This has nothing to do with self-organizing teams, but you always want to focus on purpose before utilization. If you need to start a task and people are busy, they are either working on something more important and should be left to it or the organization is pressuring the team to be busy rather than maximize value. Henrik Kneiberg illustrates this really well in his video &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CostXs2p6r0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Utilization Trap&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-07-14T03:27:36.613" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24486" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-07-14T06:58:46.760" Score="8" ViewCount="1192" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a software company and our team is ten people and the number of projects we have is two. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can one person be the Scrum Master inside two projects at the same time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32943" LastEditorUserId="32641" LastEditDate="2018-07-15T03:31:58.283" LastActivityDate="2018-07-17T10:47:02.380" Title="Can one person be Scrum Master inside two project at the same time?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;team-size&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24486" CreationDate="2018-07-14T07:32:30.647" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends a bit on the situation, but from experience I've seen that a full-time, experienced Scrum Master is usually capable of handling two teams. Maybe three if the teams themselves are also highly experienced with Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note though that a Scrum Master is in no way attached to a &lt;em&gt;project&lt;/em&gt;, but is always attached to a &lt;em&gt;team&lt;/em&gt;. If your 10 people are in a single team, then they have a single Scrum Master and they'd be able to handle a dozen projects with their team if that's how many projects the team is working on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no &quot;projects&quot; in Scrum as such, so the guide is pretty much silent on them; it's all about the team. If your Scrum Master has project-based responsibilities instead of team-based responsibilities, your &quot;Scrum Master&quot; doesn't have Scrum Master responsibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31393" LastActivityDate="2018-07-14T07:32:30.647" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24486" CreationDate="2018-07-14T07:59:01.153" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Probably, but my experience being the Scrum Master of two teams with greatly different context for nearly half a year was overwhelming. While having two teams on the same context wasn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Constantly switching systems and context is not something everyone can handle. So I would recommend it to be sub-optimal and not something for the long-term. Trying to help two different organisational needs and understanding different domain knowledge for two projects can be quite challenging. Certainly if you don't just want to be the Scrum event facilitator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having two relative similar projects might work out just fine, but still coaching two teams to become hyper-productive at the same time might not result in the effect that would be possible if you would focus on a single team. Although serving two teams struggling in the same organisation might speed up removing &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumexpert.com/knowledge/organizational-debt/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;organisational-debt&lt;/a&gt; quicker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2018-07-14T07:59:01.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24482" CreationDate="2018-07-14T09:54:14.590" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To help the team find out consensus and who might want to act on actions I like to use &lt;a href=&quot;https://agileforall.com/learning-with-fist-of-five-voting/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;fist-of-five voting&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;0 fingers (a fist): No way, terrible choice, I will not go along with&#xA;  it. A way to block consensus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1 finger: I have serious reservations&#xA;  with this idea, but I vote to move forward, but I’d prefer to resolve&#xA;  the concerns before supporting it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2 fingers: I have some concerns,&#xA;  but I’ll go along and try it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3 fingers: I will support the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4&#xA;  fingers: I like this idea, sounds good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;5 fingers: Absolutely, best&#xA;  idea ever! &lt;strong&gt;I’ll champion it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://agileforall.com/learning-with-fist-of-five-voting/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://agileforall.com/learning-with-fist-of-five-voting/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If no-one gives a 5 (or 4), maybe the idea is not so good, maybe it can be improved so someone will champion it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It helps to give the team insights on who would like to act on it and or if concerns are still alive, because acting on it wont succeed if half the team has serious concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also you don't choose in self-organisation, but let people pull the work in. If it is not being pulled, maybe wonder and ask why not. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2018-07-14T09:54:14.590" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24475" CreationDate="2018-07-14T10:17:02.290" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, it looks like, you have two problems: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clear priorities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Delivering various projects in parallel.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First one can be addressed by &lt;strong&gt;creating a clear list of all features&lt;/strong&gt; (not tasks!) from different projects you work on -- so called &lt;strong&gt;Backlog&lt;/strong&gt;. And this Backlog is &lt;strong&gt;common&lt;/strong&gt; for all projects. And you set policy that you work on this list from top to bottom no matter what is in it. And it's not your problem what is in it - you don't care. If any stakeholder wants you to work on his project, he should put features from it to the list, shifting other ones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This list must be shared across company, and have names of those who &quot;orders&quot; every feature. So, if another stakeholder finds that his features are too low in this list, he should communicate it to others. In such case it becomes not yours, but problem of the stakeholders as group, to set right priorities, and they can set any process they like for this: weekly meeting where they meet and &lt;strong&gt;groom it&lt;/strong&gt;, I think, one of the best choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can actually help with second problem too, because it will make them &lt;strong&gt;split their requests to smallest features&lt;/strong&gt;, so that their projects would move &quot;in parallel&quot;. Ofcourse, you will need to setup Continuous Integration system for it and write unit tests to be able to release small chunks quickly. Also, in our company we do our best to help our customers to determine MVP for every feature/epic, so that they get 80% value for 20% of our efforts. It is always difficult, but pays back, when your customer see that you are his partner, not just pair of hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From methodology and software point of view, &lt;strong&gt;Kanban should be perfect&lt;/strong&gt;: it allows you to have clear queue of work, also limiting Work In Progress visually, to let everyone know, that you can not do everything simultaneously. LeanKit or Kaiten are very good for it. JIRA is also ok.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32641" LastActivityDate="2018-07-14T10:17:02.290" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24486" CreationDate="2018-07-14T17:21:29.300" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends also on following factors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which functions you have? Actual functions of scrum master are very different in organizations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it a new team - new one requires much more time to be built effective&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it a new project - every project needs its own process, so you need some time to find and configure appropriate one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does environment change quickly - you will need to adapt.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much trust you have within your team and customer - lack of trust makes improvements requiring much more efforts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How difficult communication is with your customer and team - remote work is much more difficult.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not complete list, but gives you some clues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is also &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/8509/32641&quot;&gt;similar question&lt;/a&gt; with good answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32641" LastActivityDate="2018-07-14T17:21:29.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24492" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-07-15T19:13:56.363" Score="5" ViewCount="156" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently managing a work package on a large research grant. I am a qualified Prince2 practitioner (although I did the training some time ago and the system is not widely used in my field, so I may be doing it wrong) and had been following the management-by-exception principle, but a few months ago we had an issue with a partner not mentioning an issue until it was in danger of causing us to miss a milestone. I am a complete newcomer to Agile but I have heard of the daily 'scrum' meeting and it sounds like it would be effective at addressing the problems we are having - and I remember our trainer mentioning dire consequences of failing to follow the management-by-exception principle, but crucially not what they were...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be the potential pitfalls of adopting a similar process within a Prince2 PM framework? And if they are serious, what would be an alternative to avoid a repeat of the situation above?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32947" LastActivityDate="2018-10-17T18:33:20.447" Title="Can Prince2 include a scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24493" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24496" CreationDate="2018-07-16T01:36:35.083" Score="12" ViewCount="2333" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Background&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Scenario&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of a project, there aren't enough story points to fill a two-week Sprint based on the velocity of the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Capacity &amp;amp; Backlog&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The average velocity of the Development Team is actually 40 points per Sprint. In the Product Backlog there are just 20 points remaining to be completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Question&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should we start this final Sprint as a standard two-week Sprint, no matter the amount of points remaining, or should we use a quick one-week Sprint in this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32948" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-07-19T12:01:45.643" LastActivityDate="2018-07-19T12:01:45.643" Title="What should we do if there are not enough PBIs to fill a final Sprint in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;sprint-planning&gt;&lt;product-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24493" CreationDate="2018-07-16T06:02:21.747" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quite simply, start the Sprint with what you have.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, your Product Owner (and the business) must learn the lesson that the pipeline of work is never finished.  Run an ad-hoc retrospective to discuss how you ended up in a situation woth redundant cycle times.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are stories not play ready?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has the backlog been exhausted?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are no further requirements known?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where are the stories represent refactoring work?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have a bucket of &quot;engineering stuff&quot; that has value to developers but not necessarily to customers directly?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have defects to be fixed?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work out your average story completion per Sprint (prob somewhere between 8 and 14).  Now you know what the PO/BA has to produce every timebox just to &lt;strong&gt;maintain&lt;/strong&gt; velocity.  In order to increase the backlog they need to be producing at least 14-18 stories per Sprint plus bugs and refactoring or tehnical debt artifacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Adjust your figures to suit).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum did not eradicate the pipeline of work; requirements must still be gathered mercilessly, we just learn from the Sprint Reviews and collect them as late as possible to improve the chances of success and relevance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2018-07-16T06:02:21.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24480" CreationDate="2018-07-16T08:36:57.167" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want a good PM, some kind of technical test should be included in the assessment. Knowledge of and feeling for technology makes an immense difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30304" LastActivityDate="2018-07-16T08:36:57.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24493" CreationDate="2018-07-16T10:00:21.307" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my team, if the backlog was exhausted, we always had the following to fall back on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team can invest time and create a prioritized backlog of technical / architectural debt in your systems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work on technical debt items created using point 1 (above).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improve the automated continuous integration and continuous process. In the world of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrastructure_as_code&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;infrastructure as code&lt;/a&gt; (IAC), there is always more to aim for. This again is a technical task where the team can write and update the backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technology upgrades. There is always the next version of Visual Studio or database server or JavaScript library you could be upgrading.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical proof of concepts. Talk to business and identify areas which could benefit from technical brains.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Organize a hackathon or personal coding time whenever people are free, so they can deliver pet projects which help your company or community.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improve the unit testing process. There is always untested areas of code in the current sprint and past sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create or improve automated functional, regression, and integration tests.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask your team for ideas. Usually teams have ideas on what's the best way to tackle a problem (including backlog deficit problems)...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32694" LastEditorUserId="8313" LastEditDate="2018-07-19T08:35:33.377" LastActivityDate="2018-07-19T08:35:33.377" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24492" CreationDate="2018-07-16T10:06:11.050" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A daily meeting to discuss status is employed by people in all kinds of contexts and project management environments because it is generally very useful to avoid things like you mention above (and lots of other things).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I know about Prince2 is that it is absurdly adaptable and can accommodate more or less anything. So it can probably also house a daily meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30304" LastActivityDate="2018-07-16T10:06:11.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24498" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24500" CreationDate="2018-07-16T13:07:33.817" Score="13" ViewCount="3222" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum emphasizes that all members of the team must know the technical debt of the product. But sometimes, this debt is not tangible as a simple to-do list. Should we register it as another task in the product backlog to review in another sprint? Or should we put it in some document related to this product, so the team can actually know what tasks should be treated later in the development?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not seeing a good way to keep this debt in developers' minds; it can be forgotten later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32948" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-07-17T13:06:23.877" LastActivityDate="2018-07-17T20:25:44.443" Title="How can we register the technical debt in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;technical-debt&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24498" CreationDate="2018-07-16T13:31:30.380" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The standard Scrum answer would be to ask the team what they think. Scrum Teams are supposed to be self-organizing, which means that they can choose how to best complete their work. The team should be able to identify the management of technical debt as a problem and then come up with ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in the real world, sometimes, the team may not be experienced or savvy enough to see these problems before they are too late. Good coaching from someone who has experienced these problems before can help with guiding the team to ask the right questions and think about certain problems before they become problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would have no objections if the team would want to keep technical debt work tracked in the Product Backlog. I think that this is probably the right thing to do - it can be reviewed with the rest of the Product Backlog. If there are dependencies between technical debt and features (such as resolving the technical debt would lead to a higher quality feature being delivered in less time), these can be identified and managed by the Product Owner and Development Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2018-07-16T13:31:30.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24498" CreationDate="2018-07-16T13:41:52.423" Score="16" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Scrum Exposes Technical Debt Through Forecasts &amp;amp; Estimates&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general rule, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;technical debt&lt;/a&gt; increases the cost of future work on the product. So, even if you don't explicitly keep track of the debt, it will typically show as a drag on metrics such as the team's velocity over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technical debt will probably also impact your team's estimates of Product Backlog Items (PBIs) during Sprint Planning, as crufty code (and debt-ridden products in general) are intuitively higher-effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Making Technical Debt Explicit&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though Scrum implicitly exposes technical debt through velocity, and also reflects it within PBI estimations, it's often better to track the debt explicitly on the Product Backlog. Some reasons to do this include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clarifying what work needs to be done within the project to pay down the debt.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Enabling the Product Owner to make trade-offs in prioritization between technical debt and new features.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Providing stakeholders transparency into the hidden costs of the product's development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keeping the project honest by treating work as work. Technical debt is just another kind of work that remains to be done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Honoring CodeGnome's Law of Transparency: &quot;No invisible work, ever!&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you treat technical debt simply as work to be prioritized, as opposed to some special kind of non-work work, then the Product Backlog it certainly the right place for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How to Write PBIs for Technical Debt&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create PBIs for the technical debt the same way you would for any other type of work. The PBIs should be written at whatever level of granularity would be appropriate for the work's level of prioritization within the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you might keep some valuable but non-essential refactorings as an epic for &quot;someday.&quot; In contrast, essential patches or rework should be written as individual user stories when the team is ready to decompose the work during Sprint Planning, or during Backlog Refinement when the work is likely to be in scope for an upcoming Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-07-16T18:44:14.340" LastActivityDate="2018-07-16T18:44:14.340" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24493" CreationDate="2018-07-16T14:19:23.423" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question is phrased in a way that may lead to good answers that aren't quite on target for your specific use case. You say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[A]t the ending of a project there aren't enough story points to fill a 2 weeks sprint based on the velocity of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, your question is really about how to handle the planning and Sprint length for the terminal Sprint in a project. The short version of my answer is to &lt;strong&gt;favor predictable cadence over utilization or potential cost savings&lt;/strong&gt;, and I explain why in more detail below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Plan Around Goals, Not Velocity&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, the goal of a Sprint is to meet the Sprint Goal, not to operate at some target velocity. So, the canonically correct answer is to put as many Product Backlog Items (PBIs) into the Sprint as required to meet the current Sprint Goal without exceeding your team’s sustainable capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Cadence for Terminal Sprints&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, your question is really asking about the last &lt;em&gt;expected&lt;/em&gt; Sprint of a project. Unless there are overriding business reasons, I typically recommend keeping the Sprint cadence intact for the following reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A key goal of Scrum is &lt;em&gt;predictable&lt;/em&gt; delivery and labor-cost planning, so keeping the delivery cadence has inherent value.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Setting stakeholder expectations of a shorter Sprint might backfire if unexpected work is uncovered within the iteration, or if the team mis-estimates during Sprint Planning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rescheduling stakeholders for the Sprint Review outside of the normal cadence is often more trouble than it's worth, especially with a large pool of stakeholders who also have other demands on their time. &lt;em&gt;NB: This type of last-minute rescheduling can be a significant cost to the business that a predictable cadence is inherently designed to solve. Trying to shave a few days of already-scheduled labor from being charged to the project is frequently a &lt;strong&gt;false economy for the business&lt;/strong&gt;, and may indicate project-centric (rather than business-centric) thinking.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;New work might get placed onto the Product Backlog as a result of the inspect-and-adapt cycle embodied by the Sprint Review, or as bugs or technical debt are uncovered.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, the project isn't done when the Product Backlog is empty. It is complete when the Product Owner declares the product &quot;good enough&quot; that no further resources need to be expended. If necessary, the Product Owner can always declare an Early Termination and close out the project outside the normal cadence. This ensures that any deviation from cadence is seen as a framework escape hatch with visible costs or savings for the business, rather than reducing predictability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-07-17T02:55:28.493" LastActivityDate="2018-07-17T02:55:28.493" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24493" CreationDate="2018-07-16T15:01:05.570" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Something is not right here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Backlog is an ordered list of everything that is known to be needed in the product. - &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#artifacts-productbacklog&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The official Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is almost inconceivable that everything that is needed only amounts to half a Sprint's worth of effort!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you meant that of all the many items comprising the Product Backlog, only half a Sprint's worth meet the team's definition of ready? In this case, the Product Owner is not doing their job properly and the Development Team and Scrum Master are failing to hold the PO accountable for their failing here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a story in Scrum, possibly apocryphal, of a company where, if the PO had not done their job properly and there were not enough work ready to play, the development team were allowed to go to the beach, and made sure they nosily passed the CEO's office on the way. Certainly a the rule of a Scrum Team I worked on was that if there was no ready work then we were to sit with our feet up on our desks. Although this sounds silly, the idea in Scrum is to make impediments visible and sitting around with feet up on desks sends out a very clear message, as does stampeding outside the CEO's office, I imagine. Of course, developers should be aware of their own responsibility as regards preparing Product Backlog items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A practical approach might be to take all the ready work into the Sprint Backlog, with the aim to finish it all well before then end of the Sprint, and plan to use the remaining time in assisting the PO in getting more items ready for the next few Sprints. There should ideally be three or four Sprint's worth of PBIs that are ready at all times (and this should be achievable after a few iterations where Sprints are purposely finished early). Any more than this would probably amount to waste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29315" LastActivityDate="2018-07-16T15:01:05.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24498" CreationDate="2018-07-16T15:57:49.233" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, technical debt will, at the end of the day, end up in your task tracking system in one way or another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An obvious way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Joe implements feature X, and notices that there is problem Y in component Z.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Joe proceeds, as planned in the sprint planning, to do what he must do, but immediately registers a new task &quot;fix Y in Z&quot; in the backlog. Maybe he marks it with a tag &quot;technical debt&quot; if you have such a mechanism in your system.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;During the next sprint planning, Joe either recalls that issue and asks the Product Owner to include it into the comming sprint; arguing why it is good etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Alternatively/additionally, the team + Product Owner could come to the conclusion that each sprint will invest some amount of time into fixing such &quot;debt&quot; issues, so Joe does not need to argue as much.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, over time, it usually becomes pretty obvious to team members, even in the planning phase, where the actual debt is. Sure, there some insidious debt which increases very slowly, but some things are pretty obvious. These, also, should end up in the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you can do pro-active debt-management, for example by regularly making sure that all 3rd party components are updated regularly; that deprecated components (which have no new versions for X months/years) are phased out, and such. All of this, again, are simply more backlog entries marked &quot;technical debt&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26382" LastActivityDate="2018-07-16T15:57:49.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24504" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24510" CreationDate="2018-07-16T22:41:29.047" Score="4" ViewCount="372" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have the most of our PBI in user story format:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a [user], I need [requirement], so that [reason].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need to write some requirements affecting directly to the product but not exactly to any user, but necessary to achieve the product. In this case, could be the product owner as another user in user stories? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32948" LastEditorUserId="26063" LastEditDate="2018-08-03T16:44:15.750" LastActivityDate="2018-08-03T16:44:15.750" Title="Could the Product Owner be a user of a user story in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24504" CreationDate="2018-07-16T23:22:24.873" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two things come to mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, if you can't trace the need to a stakeholder impacted by the system, is it actually a requirement? Unnecessary features and gold-plating is a waste, in the Lean sense. However, just because you can't trace it to a known user class doesn't mean it's not valid - it could be hard to express some non-functional requirements, infrastructure related tasks, or regulatory/compliance requirements in the User Story format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, if it is a valid requirement on the system, does it need to be expressed as a User Story? For non-functional requirements, consider using the Definition of Done to assert how the system should be after implementing any story. Security requirements, performance requirements, usability requirements, and others may be best expressed in this way. In other cases, it may simply be something that needs to be done to enable other work - don't unnecessarily constrain yourself to the User Story format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, without seeing the specific requirement that you want to express (and perhaps a deeper understanding of the system under development), it's not possible to say which category your requirement falls into - an unnecessary requirement or one that should simply be expressed in a different way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2018-07-16T23:22:24.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24504" CreationDate="2018-07-17T01:11:37.317" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sure, the Product Owner can be a legitimate role in a user story. So can a Developer, or a Sys Admin, or so forth. The key thing is to identify the role who will benefit from the business value delivered by the goal. In other words, don't just default to the PO as an alternative to &quot;user&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it's easier to go up a level to find the appropriate role. So maybe you have an epic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a (role),&#xA;I want the product to be archivable&#xA;so that (business value).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That story might be completable in various ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a sysadmin,&#xA;I want the product to be archivable&#xA;so that I can make backups and restore them in case of catastrophe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a contract officer,&#xA;I want the product to be archivable&#xA;so that I can hand over an archive of it to comply with a contract deliverable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you clarify the business value of making the archive, the role should become clearer. If the conversation with the PO is difficult, I might try &quot;can you tell me what you are going to do with the archived product once you have it?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2018-07-17T01:11:37.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18693" CreationDate="2018-07-17T09:16:33.230" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I appreciate this is a few years old, but it's worth adding a couple of points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The notion of project governance is built into scrum, but it's treated quite differently. The classical model of project governance is the &quot;iron triangle&quot;: scope, schedule/time, and cost/resources (these are the three criteria used in the CHAOS Reports). When you initiate a waterfall project, you define and fix the scope, estimate schedule and cost. You then use the various project governance techniques to measure against these standards. If scope changes, then you need to revisit schedule and cost (a change request process). The CHAOS reports show that most projects fail - with about 10% actually succeeding under Waterfall and about a third completely failing (the rest are challenged - typically going over budget or not to scope).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile - Scrum in particular - takes a different approach. In Agile, you shorten the planning cycle, you fix time and resources, then estimate scope. The features should be prioritised in terms of value - delivering working software quickly. Feature governance is provided by the product owner; process governance is provided by the scrum master - but these look very different to project governance. If we go back to the original iron triangle, then you find that agile projects actually do better against these three criteria - with about a third being successful and 10% failing outright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile does well where it focuses on measurable value rather than process measures. There are process measures: velocity, epic forecasts and the like. But these are secondary to delivering working software. Used well, these are tools that help increase efficiency. But they are not the ultimate measures of the process; this is measured by the value delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The challenge lies in working with customers. Managing their expectations and communicating the progress as we go. Ideally, this is done through less reporting and more tangible delivery. This should be supported by well defined measures of success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting traditional project governance like project plans and Gantt charts around an agile process at best consumes resources and at worst leads you towards a waterscrumfall process and the worst of both worlds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32973" LastEditorUserId="32973" LastEditDate="2018-07-17T10:16:19.553" LastActivityDate="2018-07-17T10:16:19.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24486" CreationDate="2018-07-17T10:47:02.380" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really depends on the context. If everything's going for you, then one scrum master can handle multiple teams (3 or more). The key things that would make this possible are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All teams working on one product (i.e. one backlog)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Working to a common set of practices/norms (e.g. the same DoD)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Working with the same technology space&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No scheduling conflicts for the ceremonies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An experienced Scrum development team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An experienced Product owner - meaning a well managed backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An organisation that is 'bought in' to scrum&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're unlikely to have all of these, but the further away you are from all the items on this list, the more work the scrum master will have to do to support the scrum team making it harder to support multiple teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth mentioning (riffing on a comment above - but something of an aside) that according to the guide, scrum doesn't have projects, it has products (and each product has one backlog but may be worked on by multiple teams). Depending on how the business operates, products and projects can be the same or different. For scrum to work, one way or another, the things you need to do for a project will need to make their way into a product backlog. Again, the way this actually happens can vary widely depending on the business. The first point refers to the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32973" LastActivityDate="2018-07-17T10:47:02.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11560" CreationDate="2018-07-17T10:50:20.493" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Very late answer. It won't help you, but maybe someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Product A team (Consisting of 12 developers) And Product B team&#xA;  (Consisting of 3 developers)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team A is too large for effective communication. Team B could work in theory but it's very small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;because one developer is always working on the core features and on an&#xA;  operating system level&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You shouldn't have a 'core feature'. &#xA;Your features should deliver value for the end-user.   Any 'core feature' that needs 'UI features' to be actually used, is not delivering value. It is a technical task, not a feature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally your developers would work together on the same feature, and usually from their own perspective (core. UI.)  But with the same user-value in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case I would mix the teams. &#xA;First, the backlog must contain user-stories (deliver value to the user); not 'build this UI feature which still requires X-Y-Z to be built before it works'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would call them together (all 15); tell them the backlog; and ask them to organise around the work. &#xA;* Form teams yourselves&#xA;* No one left behind&#xA;* No team smaller than 4 or larger than 7&#xA;* Each team must have the capabilities to do the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll end up with 3 teams and each may have a different focus area. Team 1 may focus on Product A, and teams 2&amp;amp;3 may work on product A + B both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I want to know how they plan to divide the work over the teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24119" LastActivityDate="2018-07-17T10:50:20.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24504" CreationDate="2018-07-17T14:34:38.617" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only time the Product Owner would be named in a user story is if you are building a product that is designed for Product Owners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need to write some requirements affecting directly to the product but not exactly to any user, but necessary to achieve the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will users of the product really see no value at all from the requirement? If that is true, why are you wasting time on it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even non-functional requirements can be written in the sense of a user:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a user of the product I want it to be responsive even under heavy load so that I get a good experience&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a user of the product I want to be sure that in the event of a hardware failure I do not lose any of my data so that I do not have to waste time re-entering it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a marketing executive I want to see statistics on the use of the product so that I can quickly make decisions about marketing campaigns&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try and avoid making technical tasks in to user stories. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Product Owner I want a database to be created so that we can build the product&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, wrap these requirements into a &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; user requirement as sub-tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a user I want to be able to login to the product so that I can access its features&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the first story the team is doing and to achieve it they might have sub-tasks that include: create database schema, build database, setup database server, setup application server, create authentication framework etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-07-17T14:34:38.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24498" CreationDate="2018-07-17T20:25:44.443" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should we register it as another task in the product backlog to review in another sprint? Or should we put it in some document related to this product, so the team can actually know what tasks should be treated later in the development?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you should actually have a well structured plan on how to tackle technical debt. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a technical debt backlog plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start with the items that are more &quot;critical&quot;. I would personally start with the ones that would make it clear for the team &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; it is so important to get rid of technical debt, some ideas to find this task in my last point&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Include each sprint tasks dedicated to reduce technical debt&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Find metrics to capture the importance of doing this tasks for the overall health of the project. Some examples are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can you finish more tasks per week? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it possible to make more accurate estimates? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has there been an improvement on the time for on-boarding (and off-boarding) individuals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-07-17T20:25:44.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24513" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24518" CreationDate="2018-07-17T22:19:49.083" Score="4" ViewCount="148" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are team of a 7 developers, 2 interns, one user experience specialist and a Quality Assurance member. The team is usually dealing with new clients. Not all members are involved in the same project; usually there are two parallel clients with 3 or 4 Full-time equivalents assigned. Few members are involved in both projects at the same time and one or two are taking care of the interns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For each project we have separated backlogs and ceremonies scheduled at different times. We try not to overlap these meetings so that the common members can attend both. This is going well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the entire team is doing the daily meeting (DM) together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we start with Project A, the members involved with the Project A present their progress, impediments and what they intend to do for the rest of the day and once this is finished we get to Project B. Then the interns will present their progress to us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several problems with this. The members involved solely in one project have no context about the other project, because they don't participate in the other meetings, nor in the development. They recognize some terms, ideas and verbs, but still couldn't really comprehend what the other members are talking about. Visible signs of boredom start to appear, like checking the phone, impatiently stepping from one heel to another, sudden eye-rolls or not very polite smiles. This puts pressure on the other team to hurry up their DM and thus they are not really focusing on the actual impediments or on the synchronization between the devs that are working on a certain story/task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The DMs don't take more than 10-14 minutes for both projects together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On top of that, Project A has a different meeting with the Product Owner (PO) half an hour after this meeting on certain days of the week (M, W, F). This meeting is nothing more than a status update to the PO, but it doesn't really help the project. We agreed today that at least in these days not to have both and to have only the one with the PO and discuss here the usual DM. The PO gets more context thus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The arguments for keeping the DM with the entire team are twofold. First, the fact that, well, we are a team and this is the only moment when we are all together so we use it to bind the team. The other is so that everyone knows what's happening, on what each person is working, what the other project is about or what support items appear from older projects (not too often though).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have only 1.5 years experience with Scrum and am not sure how we should proceed with this. I just feel like having a DM per project is better, but I get a strong 'NO' against it from key members, some believing that I want to try to split the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should we deal with this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27375" LastEditorUserId="26063" LastEditDate="2018-07-31T14:14:38.857" LastActivityDate="2018-07-31T14:14:38.857" Title="Two clients, one team, should we still have the standups together?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24514" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24516" CreationDate="2018-07-17T22:25:55.823" Score="3" ViewCount="143" Body="&lt;p&gt;We know in Scrum, the responsible for make estimations is solely responsibility of the development team, but in long term planning, for example a release planning, we'd to have some kind of estimation about all of PBI in order to feed planning burn up or estimates the amount of sprints needed to complete the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is resonsible the Product Owner to make this estimations, and how the PO could &#xA;perform this in order to make a realistic long term planning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32948" LastEditorUserId="32641" LastEditDate="2018-07-24T17:15:10.300" LastActivityDate="2018-07-24T17:15:10.300" Title="Is the product owner responsible to make long-term estimations about PBI in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;product-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24514" CreationDate="2018-07-18T00:37:31.463" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just like your short-term planning, the team is asked to make any long-term estimates as well. If you are using story points, they can account for unknowns and risks as well as effort, so the team should be able to make long-term estimates without all of the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-07-18T00:37:31.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24514" CreationDate="2018-07-18T02:49:13.140" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only people who an accurately estimate is the people doing the work. The product owner doesn't generally code and even when they do, their job is to ask for the team to do as much as possible. The team's job is to set their limit and say no. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work with enterprise organizations and help them with longer term forecasting. The first thing is to move away from story points and look at cycle time. Google Troy Magennis and focusedobjective.com/. He's got a tool for doing cycle time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I can't get an organization to measure cycle time, then I use past work estimates. I have them look at the work they've done in previous releases and use relative estimating (not planning poker) to create estimates on their old work. Then I use this as a tool for estimating future work. You can use this method, easily, for larger items (features, epics, etc.) as it doesn't require a lot of data, just past reference of &quot;done&quot; work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="147" LastActivityDate="2018-07-18T02:49:13.140" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24513" CreationDate="2018-07-18T05:37:04.097" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is breaking one of the fundamental rules of Scrum, which would be &quot;one team, one goal, one responsibility&quot;. It's incredibly difficult for a team to work on two things at the same time, I've seen it attempted on multiple occasions, but I've never seen it work out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(In fact, the last time I saw I tried was earlier this year, with my team, and the end result was the team fractured and we had to make new teams.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My honest suggestion would be: &lt;strong&gt;split up into two teams.&lt;/strong&gt; You've got enough people to run two smaller teams, and any time spent on a meeting for a project that you don't actually work on is basically a colossal waste of time. You've already noticed this for all the other ceremonies, but it applies to the daily as well. Your team is on the &quot;too large&quot; side of a scrum team anyway, so it shouldn't hurt much to split up anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, as long as you're one team that also means that, according to Scrum, your &lt;em&gt;whole&lt;/em&gt; team is responsible for &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; projects, which means that if either of them is lagging, the whole team should work on the most important one. I'm guessing you're not doing that either, which means that effectively you've already got two teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But &lt;strong&gt;if you want to keep it as one big team&lt;/strong&gt;, split out the daily scrum anyway. If people get bored during the daily, something is going wrong, and in this case it's simply that an update for a project that is not yours is not useful. Let people work. In general, in any meeting, if you feel your presence isn't contributing anything, leave that meeting. That goes for the daily as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my previous team, the last ditch effort to keep the team together despite working on two different projects was to hold a short happiness meeting before lunch, where both project groups got together to share how they were feeling and celebrate any successes together. That at least kept &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; team spirit, but ultimately, breaking up the team and forming new teams for each project was by far the best choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31393" LastActivityDate="2018-07-18T05:37:04.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24513" CreationDate="2018-07-18T08:01:39.580" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two things need to happen:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You have to let go of the daily meeting with both teams. In my experience it doesn’t generates much value for all the points you and Erik mentioned. You should instead adapt your ceremonies depending on the following point&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One of this suggestions depending on your situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Separate in &lt;em&gt;two teams&lt;/em&gt; and have independent ceremonies for each one. Although I think it’s important for team building to keep some &lt;em&gt;perhaps&lt;/em&gt; monthly catch-ups to know what is everyone up to&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you really need to have &lt;em&gt;some members in both projects&lt;/em&gt;, then I think you need to do laser-focused meetings each week minutes to keep everyone up to date on both projects. Perhaps do backlog review each week with the two teams together. The reasons are:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some members might need to do trade-offs between tasks and it’s important for everyone to understand why&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deciding on deadlines and tasks to take might require both teams to agree on them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It helps the team to continue being “a team” and that’s very important if you have to move members between projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-07-18T08:01:39.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24514" CreationDate="2018-07-18T08:13:59.257" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, individuals doing the work decide on deadlines for the individual items in the backlog, &lt;em&gt;but&lt;/em&gt; the product owner ultimately decides what trade-offs are needed in order to meet the deadlines required for the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if the product owner finds that launching the product in two months is absolutely needed because they want to get ahead of the competition, but the plan accounts for 2.5 months, she will have to remove some features from the backlog or find ways to get the job done in 2 months, obviously negotiating everything with the development team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-07-18T08:13:59.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24492" CreationDate="2018-07-18T13:27:22.830" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What would be the potential pitfalls of adopting a similar process&#xA;  within a Prince2 PM framework?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No pitfalls at all! Having stands up meeting in front of your Project Board is a tailoring of your PRINCE2 Checkpoint report and Highlight report. The key element to remember is that the stands up are not there to report, but to plan the work ahead (to simplify!), therefore the reporting shall be done by the PM (if we think about the Checkpoint report) and the Project Board (Highlight report) by going to the Project board and pulling the information by themselves by looking at what is displayed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am a complete newcomer to Agile but I have heard of the daily 'scrum' meeting and it sounds like it would be effective at addressing the problems we are having&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On this point I would like to clarify one element. What you are looking for is an Agile principle, but it is not the Scrum, that is a concept more complex that can not be limited to a stand up meeting, but is the use of face to face communication, to create a collaborative environment where people is encouraged to speak out to get the job done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I would suggest you look at the PRINCE2 AGILE certification, Axelos has formally gone through the effort of demonstrating how to tailor PRINCE2 to include Agile principles, but still maintaining the &quot;rigour&quot; of a structured Project Management framework as PRINCE2 is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32779" LastEditorUserId="32779" LastEditDate="2018-07-18T13:37:09.827" LastActivityDate="2018-07-18T13:37:09.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24513" CreationDate="2018-07-18T13:49:04.363" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TLDR: ask the Team.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum Teams are self-organizing [...] Self-organizing teams choose how best to accomplish their work, rather than being directed by others outside the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum Teams are &lt;em&gt;self-organizing&lt;/em&gt;. If your Scrum Team's process is being held hostage by external stakeholders, then you're not really doing Scrum, nor realizing all of the benefits Scrum has to offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your first step is to &lt;strong&gt;ask the Team&lt;/strong&gt;. You could do this by combining their Sprint Retrospective meeting into one (more on that below) and asking there, or just in an impromptu meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your Question gives the impression that the Team doesn't want to combine the Daily Scrum, but have you actually &lt;em&gt;asked&lt;/em&gt; them? Your Question doesn't specify whom gave the 'reasons to not split', but implies it was &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the Team. So get their opinion first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, your task is to convince the stakeholders that you should start having the Team be self-organizing. If you can convince them, great. If not, make sure they're aware that what they are doing is not Scrum, and carries costs (such as lowered developer morale, lowered productivity, lack of innovation, etc.) After that, just make sure these costs are as visible as possible to the stakeholders. It's their responsibility to make decisions. It's your responsibility to make sure they feel the pain from bad decisions, so that they can realize bad decisions were made and act accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want my subjective opinion (which is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; as relevant as the opinions of your Team, but may be good as a starting/talking point to get them discussing the issue), then you should split the Daily Scrums but combine the Sprint Retrospective and (with optional attendance to the other Team's half) the Sprint Review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Sprint Retrospective is an opportunity for the Scrum Team to inspect itself and create a plan for improvements to be enacted during the next Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many improvements are process-related, rather than project-related, and as such would benefit both Teams. Personally, I consider this worth the overhead of listening to unrelated project-related improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint Review is a little trickier. I suggest it be combined because of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the Sprint Review, the Scrum Team and stakeholders collaborate about what was done in the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, that is complicated by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on that and any changes to the Product Backlog during the Sprint, attendees collaborate on the next things that could be done to optimize value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I think the former could be useful is because I think performing the Demo as a full Team can help bind the Team together well. The Project B Team would be treated as external stakeholders of Project A (and vice versa). They would be able to view the state of the product (from a business point of view, not a technical one). They also get to join in the celebration of the Sprint completion (assuming your Sprint Review generally has a celebratory vibe, which in my subjective opinion it should).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I'm leery about this is because the second part of the Sprint Review, the planning portion, is not really relevant to both Teams. You could, perhaps, suggest Team members wander off during the other Team's planning portion of the Review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As always, &lt;strong&gt;ask the Team.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-07-18T13:49:04.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24450" CreationDate="2018-07-18T15:25:37.957" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to answer with questions!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First question: what's the problem? A long product backlog, in and of itself, isn't necessarily a problem. It's really over to the PO to manage the product backlog as they see fit (and to decide if an issue will or won't get done).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This becomes a bigger problem if the long backlog makes it hard to generate the sprint backlog. If happens then, as a scrum master, you're quite right to hold the PO to account. But this doesn't amount to limiting the backlog, but you might help understand what a 'good' story looks like (I tend to push back on acceptance criteria; if these aren't defined, then the story is probably in bad shape).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your more detailed answers, it sounds like there's a process that's conflated user suggestions with user stories. You don't want to discard/prevent suggestions being captured - but there is a question as to whether the product backlog is the right place to do this. That decision is on the PO - but subject to producing a sprint backlog. As a scrum master, you can offer to help (the techniques here are more around value mapping - I've used impact mapping recently, which is very helpful).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32973" LastActivityDate="2018-07-18T15:25:37.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8509" CreationDate="2018-07-18T22:41:16.910" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Project Management Institute published a report that equates PM time vs project size. In this the smallest projects are defined as having a total installed cost (TIC) of $100, 000 or less; medium-sized projects range from $100,000 to $1 million; and the largest projects are in the range of $1- $10 million TIC. Generally speaking, the larger the project is, the smaller the project management costs will be as a percentage of the total. Based on the size estimates given, the article notes that project management costs for all phases of a project generally total somewhere between 7-11 percent of the project’s TIC. If project controls support is added, project management costs will be in the 9-15 percent range--estimates that fall in line with noted authorities such as Kerzner (Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling. 1998). . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32994" LastActivityDate="2018-07-18T22:41:16.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24032" CreationDate="2018-07-19T05:55:05.337" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have a look at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com/site/agileskillsprojectwiki/skill-levels/charts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Skills Project&lt;/a&gt;. It touches on all skills which Agile development team members might need. You can do a self or peer assessment. After the assessment they can look for gaps and the Scrum Master can coach them to get deeper skills in those topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It works similar to a more typical &lt;a href=&quot;https://co-learning.be/blog/the-four-levels-of-the-skill-matrix/13042016&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;skill matrix&lt;/a&gt;, but it helps you get started with a broad set of Agile skills, in the following areas: Business Value, Collaboration, Confidence, Product, Self Improvement, Supportive Culture, Technical Excellence&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2018-07-19T05:55:05.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24526" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24554" CreationDate="2018-07-19T10:09:49.937" Score="3" ViewCount="146" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumatscale.com/scrum-at-scale-guide/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum@Scale guide&lt;/a&gt; documents a Customer Relations team as a separate entity, but does not specify what it entails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Customer Relations&lt;/strong&gt;, Legal / Compliance, and People Operations are&#xA;  included here since they are necessary parts of organizations and will&#xA;  exist as independent Scrum teams on their own, which all of the others&#xA;  may rely upon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumatscale.com/wp-content/uploads/Scrum@Scale-Guide.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.scrumatscale.com/wp-content/uploads/Scrum@Scale-Guide.pdf&lt;/a&gt; @Page 16&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ek2vg.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ek2vg.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the common roles/responsibilities of a CR team in Scrum@Scale? e.g. would CR also contain a sales like activity?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why is this team not near the pentagon they relate to? As an independent Support/Implementation/Sales/Customer team, with a PO which feeds its local MetaScrum.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess my question really is why is it specially named and not part of the normal scaling organisation? It makes me feel you can handle it with a small team 3-9 people and does not need to scale ever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2018-07-19T11:43:12.893" LastActivityDate="2018-07-23T11:32:35.503" Title="What is part of the Customer Relations team in Scrum@Scale" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;process-scaling&gt;&lt;scrum-at-scale&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24527" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24531" CreationDate="2018-07-19T10:16:23.663" Score="3" ViewCount="475" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a ScrumMaster for a team of 7 devs/qa's. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am struggling to coach my PO / get through to my PO. On one hand he is very keen to be a PO and work in the way a PO works but he just doesn't really get that his behaviours are not helping the team become more autonomous and self-managing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the behaviours which I believe is hurting the team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Relentless interruptions during the day. He is a very extroverted lovely outgoing guy, but all day he is coming up to developers just to say how are you doing all very positive, but very disrupting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Relentless asking for updates. When will this be done, when will this finish&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Joining standup's and always talking during the stand-up's, always chipping in&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Getting involved in every facet of the team, from handovers when team members leaves, solution design, QA approach you name it everything&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does not write acceptance criteria, when people ask for requirements, he says don't worry about the requirements. QA's ask for requirements, but he says not to worry. The requirements are in his head and he likes to verbalise them not capture them in jira.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Directing the team, managing the team, micromanaging the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He gets very aggressive if he is not allowed to do this&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my career I would say he is the furthest away from being a Product Manager and more like a command and control manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I have tried:&#xA;+ 1-on-1's, explaining the role and coaching&#xA;+ Using retrospectives which cause the team to call out the lack of acceptance criteria&#xA;+ Workshops getting the team and PO to understand the PO, SM and Team's roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nothing seems to work&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2018-07-19T15:07:38.413" Title="What to do with a PO who manages, directs and controls the team" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24527" CreationDate="2018-07-19T13:16:38.420" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suggestion: pick the dysfunctions that the Development Team considers non-negotiable e.g. I would personally pick interrupting the Daily Scrum and interrupting the Developers  during the working day. Then set out to firmly enforce them, while ensuring the dignity of everyone. But make it very transparent e.g. change then venue of the Daily Scrum, get  some 'POLICE DO NOT CROSS' tape and delete 'LICE', etc. Make it fun for all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note these are impediments. The role of management in Agile is to remove impediments, so ensure you have their support. Aggressive behaviour is completely unacceptable and you should seek specific help on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But also come from a place of understanding. Why is the PO behaving this way? If the PO doesn't enjoy safety in their environment, can you help with their impediments?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29315" LastActivityDate="2018-07-19T13:16:38.420" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24527" CreationDate="2018-07-19T14:38:23.627" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have two comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Address one/two issues at a time (be incremental)&lt;/em&gt;. This will require all your negotiation power! I suggest you to create a prioritisation list ordered on &lt;em&gt;what you think&lt;/em&gt; it will be easier &lt;em&gt;for him&lt;/em&gt; to let go and address each list one or two every time. I would start with what it's easier for him, because as soon as you prove your point, you'll create &lt;em&gt;trust&lt;/em&gt; and he'll be able to budge on other more difficult things&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What I have tried: + 1-on-1's, explaining the role and coaching + Using retrospectives which cause the team to call out the lack of acceptance criteria + Workshops getting the team and PO to understand the PO, SM and Team's roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here you are only exploring why &lt;em&gt;you and your team&lt;/em&gt; think what he's doing is &quot;wrong&quot;. You also need to also ask him and understand deeply why &lt;em&gt;he thinks&lt;/em&gt; that what he's doing is valuable for the team(maybe combine it with one?). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-07-19T14:38:23.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24475" CreationDate="2018-07-19T14:41:58.450" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It’s already answered, but you need to just use normal RoI or cost of delay analysis to identify the most valuable project. Throw the rest away for now.  Split that into the most valuable 20%, and throw the other 80% away. Split that 20% into chunks that can be done in a week. Take the most valuable chunk and split it into 5 „daily chunks“. Develop and put into production the first daily chunk. Then thexsecovd, then the third, then the fourth and on Friday put the fifth most valuable chunk in production. On Monday reasses. Should you start the next chunk in that project? Or start another one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="763" LastActivityDate="2018-07-19T14:41:58.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24527" CreationDate="2018-07-19T15:07:38.413" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using retrospectives which cause the team to call out the lack of acceptance criteria&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The behaviours you have mentioned are all valid topics for retrospectives, not just the lack of acceptance criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the idea of retrospectives is not just to raise issues, but also to monitor progress towards their resolution. If the team takes actions away from a retro then it is often a good idea to review them at the next retrospective. This way it becomes obvious if progress is not being made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What I have tried: + 1-on-1's, explaining the role and coaching&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't just coach the Product Owner, also look to coach the team. Teach them that it is OK to push back on the Product Owner and to raise their concerns at retrospectives. It is not the Scrum Master's responsibility to solve all the problems of the team but it is the role of the Scrum Master to &lt;em&gt;facilitate&lt;/em&gt; resolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is likely that this situation will only be resolved with the whole team pulling together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Relentless asking for updates. When will this be done, when will this finish&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This behaviour and others mentioned has an impact on the output and effectiveness of the team. Report it as a part of your Sprint Reviews. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Sprint 7 we delivered lots of good value, but our effectiveness was reduced by constant interruptions of the team. It is likely that the team's output would be increased if we could improve this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep the tone positive and emphasise that you just want to improve the team's performance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-07-19T15:07:38.413" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24450" CreationDate="2018-07-19T15:59:44.167" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have sympathy for the POs approach because it sounds like the PO is trying to get at the root of the problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The root of the problem being that a backlog of 1400 issues is not manageable. I'm guessing that the PO is concerned that some people are adding poorly thought through issues that are never going to be looked at &amp;amp; so are just adding to the bloat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to the SMs point if he can identify 800 duplicate/rubbish issues then that suggests that poor quality issues are being pumped into the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Solution&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Create a new project to dump the entire backlog into&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Limit the access to the original project to the PO/SM&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Leave the access to this new project open&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have the PO/SM selectively move issues from this new project backlog back in to the original project backlog to feed the upcoming sprints&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The PO/SM can then ruthlessly prune the issues in this new project&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there remains concerns about people adding stories run a query &amp;amp; identify who are the main culprits adding issues that are subsequently flagged as duplicate or rubbish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="693" LastActivityDate="2018-07-19T15:59:44.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24533" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24534" CreationDate="2018-07-19T18:18:38.897" Score="2" ViewCount="79" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team is working on improving performance for our web application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a general idea that we want to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lower the number of &quot;bad&quot; API calls by focusing on driving down the number of requests that take longer than X seconds (focusing on particular endpoints).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improve overall performance as measured by e.g. Apxex.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, it is difficult to estimate how long each performance optimization will take as we're not sure of what's causing some of the individual bottlenecks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can we take the information we have now and turn it into relaistic quarterly goals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32202" LastActivityDate="2018-07-20T17:23:35.083" Title="How to set quarterly goals for an unknown amount of work?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;goals&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24533" CreationDate="2018-07-20T07:35:01.770" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend holding one or two rounds of diagnosis before finalizing the quarterly goals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So basically you can dedicate two or four weeks to just diagnose the source of the performance issues you want to enhance then you may end up with a list of the things you need to do or the fact you need more research/troubleshooting to know more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you have a the reasons list, then it'll be more realistic to set quarterly goals. So the initial goals can be something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Troubleshoot the source of the issues (time boxed)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define the solutions if possible for the cause of the problems or what needs more research &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set the quarterly goals and estimate the effort/time needed to finish them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3263" LastActivityDate="2018-07-20T07:35:01.770" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24535" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24544" CreationDate="2018-07-20T09:59:23.883" Score="4" ViewCount="625" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our team has a wide variety of work item types.  Some of the work we do is related to projects, some is operational, some we generate internally ourselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to be reactive to the needs of the business and other teams, we chose Kanban over Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some larger projects are still managed in a waterfall manner. This is out of our control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In these cases we start development and the stories related to the project transition through various states on the board, finally ending up in a UAT/QA column, where they stay before they get released to production at the end of the project.  A project may last up to 12 months (or sometimes a bit longer).  The result is we end up with a large number of tasks piling up in that column and they all get closed off/moved to Done in one go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do we need to alter our definition of Done to allow us to close these&#xA;stories to prevent them piling up?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do we alter the board, adding a&#xA;new column to show a status of &quot;Ready to Release&quot;.  Not sure if this&#xA;fixes the problem, or just moves it.  If this is the answer, should&#xA;this column be included in the cycle time?  The project go-live date&#xA;is out of our hands.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33001" LastActivityDate="2018-08-09T13:25:36.070" Title="How do you combine Waterfall with Kanban?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;&lt;kanban-board&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24536" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-07-20T12:44:43.173" Score="1" ViewCount="84" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am kind of puzzled as various sources give either of those formulas to calculate ROI:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cost of Benefits /Cost of Investments&lt;br&gt;&#xA;or  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(Gains - Investment) / Investment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The obvious problem that if I invest 1000 EUR and gained 1000 EUR, the first formula will yield ROI=100% while the second ROI=0%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, the latter seems more natural as the investment did not bring anything, just paid for itself. But how people understand that, which way is more common?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A real life example:&#xA;Test automation. Initial investment is high, about 18 000 USD. In the first release, it only brings modest saving (12 320 USD).&#xA;The first formula gives ROI=68,5%, the second then ROI= -31,5%,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33003" LastEditorUserId="33003" LastEditDate="2018-07-20T13:41:09.747" LastActivityDate="2021-04-06T00:07:45.810" Title="Should I calculate ROI as Benefits/Costs or Gains-Investment/Investment? Which is rather correct?" Tags="&lt;cost-management&gt;&lt;return-on-investment&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24537" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-07-20T13:10:38.363" Score="3" ViewCount="293" Body="&lt;p&gt;How much time should a developer spend on investigating bugs/user stories for sizing in a sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently we have 2 sizing sessions and a developer has time (time-boxed at 5min) to investigate and tell the team in the sizing session what needs to be done/looked at/remember etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how long should a developer spend on that investigation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32448" LastEditorUserId="32641" LastEditDate="2018-07-24T22:16:32.623" LastActivityDate="2018-07-24T22:16:32.623" Title="How much time should be given for investigating bugs/user stories for a sizing session" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;timeboxing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24537" CreationDate="2018-07-20T13:54:28.877" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A big plus of a team sizing stories is that different people will have different perspectives on the problem and solution. Those need to be discussed to find the best option. One developer doing that work and presenting it sounds kind of self-defeating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team should have enough knowledge to size most if not all stories without extended preparation. If they need to &quot;look things up&quot; it's either too technical and detailed, or the product is not well understood. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team does not understand the product well enough, it certainly is important to get them up to speed, but there is no time frame. You will have to decide how fast you need the team to get to that level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So from my personal experience, there should be no dedicated preparation and no presentation by a single person per story. &lt;em&gt;Everybody&lt;/em&gt; should know the product well enough to estimate based on requirements and if not, at least &lt;em&gt;somebody&lt;/em&gt; should be able to explain. If &lt;em&gt;nobody&lt;/em&gt; in that meeting can do that spontaneously, you have a problem that cannot and should not be solved by changing that meeting, but rather by investing more time in getting to know the existing product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bugs are a different beast. The problem is, &lt;em&gt;investigating&lt;/em&gt; is already the work to be done. Basically investigating would find the error and then somebody would be like &quot;yeah, that's 0 points/SM/small, because I only need to commit my fix&quot;. But that's not really what needs to be estimated. The point is that you cannot estimate a bug-hunt properly, because you have no idea and getting the idea is what is supposed to be estimated. Personally, we just used two fixed sizes to say &quot;this is unknown but sounds easy&quot; (for example button text wrong) or &quot;uh, this could be complicated&quot; (for example report numbers not adding up). The estimation is always wrong, but over time it will be statistically correct, and I think that's the best you can get with bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2018-07-20T13:54:28.877" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24537" CreationDate="2018-07-20T14:05:21.737" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, this type of work is considered Product Backlog Refinement. Per the Scrum Guide, it &quot;usually consumes no more than 10% of the capacity of the Development Team&quot;, but this isn't a hard time box like other Scrum events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also no guidance to how to use this time - I've seen cases where the entire team books time to review Product Backlog Items and investigate them together and other cases where individual members of the team take different Product Backlog Items and do sufficient work to understand them and be able to explain them to the rest of the Development Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would count your sizing sessions against this 10% of capacity. But do consider that Product Backlog Refinement isn't considered an event in Scrum, like Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, and Sprint Retrospective. It doesn't necessarily need to involve a meeting, but I've found a set time to review the Product Backlog, get a high level overview, and then determine what (if any) further investigation is needed is helpful. This same meeting can be used to look at items that required investigation to get everyone back up to speed to be able to estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2018-07-20T14:05:21.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24536" CreationDate="2018-07-20T15:13:31.473" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;You need to recoup the investment and then earn more&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For any investment to be worthwhile, you need to recoup the investment and then earn more. Here is the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/returnoninvestment.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ROI (Return On Investment) formula from Investopedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ROI = (Gain from Investment - Cost of Investment) / Cost of Investment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, typically, your investments will be one time while the returns will be recurring, such as in the Test Automation example you cited. So, you should estimate the benefits for 3 to 5 years, based on your assessment of how long the benefits will flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2018-07-20T15:13:31.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1003" CreationDate="2018-07-20T15:59:36.930" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;That is a very good and interesting question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you mean by &quot;functional&quot; manager? From the word &quot;functional&quot; comes the word &quot;function&quot;. You can have a &quot;function&quot; in a software; a human being can have a &quot;function&quot; in a work place; or any kind of machine or process can have &quot;functions&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A project is not a function and vice versa. A project is not necessary for the development of an app or of software. You can have a project in any kind of work environment and in any kind of work place; but a project has a starting date and an ending date, a budget and a responsible/manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need a degree in business administration to become a manager. Many evolve from a technical job to a management job over the years when they reach a certain degree of expertise and experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In business administration, you have four main &quot;dimensions&quot;: to plan, to organize, to direct and to control. You find those dimensions in all kinds of businesses. When an organization is big enough, those dimensions evolve into departments: marketing, accounting, finance, etc. And when a business is even bigger, those dimensions evolve in directions: you have the director of marketing, of accounting, of finance, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &quot;function&quot; is a kind of job in those departments. It is a task done by the employees of those departments. So, not all kinds of department experience will help you to become a project manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, accounting is an individual job that includes a lot of verification and control. Accounting is not right away a path to become a manager of a team and to develop a product; but it can be long-term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, I can say that a &quot;functional&quot; manager can become a project manager, but some will succeed faster than others depending on the &quot;function&quot; they do in their department or direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user30807" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-07-20T17:16:20.310" LastActivityDate="2018-07-20T17:16:20.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24537" CreationDate="2018-07-20T15:59:45.897" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;How to Sequence Spikes&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, how long should a developer spend on that investigation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team can't estimate a user story&amp;mdash;more canonically, a Product Backlog Item (PBI) in Scrum&amp;mdash;with &quot;close enough&quot; accuracy within about 5 minutes during Sprint Planning or Backlog Refinement, the story either needs to be decomposed or replaced with a story spike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If members of the Development Team need to go off and do discovery for a spike, you estimate the time and effort needed for the spike (usually less than two days, but I've seen Sprint-length story spikes in my professiona practice) and ensure that the spike is prioritized for the upcoming Sprint. Also make sure its estimate is part of the team's capacity planning for that Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the spike is completed, you would use what you've learned from the spike to decompose or estimate the story itself for acceptance into a future Sprint. As a general rule of thumb, it's unwise to have a spike and its dependent story within the same Sprint. There are exceptions for narrowly-scoped spikes, but don't put your Sprint Goal at risk by taking on work of unknown size or scope!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A Note on Spike Length&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned above, an ideal spike is about the average size of a user story. In a typical two-week Sprint, the ideal time box for a spike is about one-half to two days in length. However, the spike should be as big as needed, but must never exceed the length of a single Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point of a spike is to perform scoped learning. However, the scope should be &lt;em&gt;just enough&lt;/em&gt; to make the stories or epics its related to estimable. Anything more than that, such as in-depth research or a product bake-off, really ought to be a set of PBIs in their own right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, remember that story spikes aren't &quot;free.&quot; They consume team capacity, and need to be tracked as work on the Product Backlog when they are known ahead of time, or created as extremely short time boxes on the Sprint Backlog if the need for a spike is uncovered for work-in-progress on a PBI within the current Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-07-20T15:59:45.897" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24533" CreationDate="2018-07-20T17:23:35.083" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since I couldn't accurately forecast the amount of work involved in making the performance improvements I focused my goals primarily around the &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; of making performance improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, even if we can't control (or know) the amount of work needed to make improvements right now if we accomplish our goal we should be able to make these performance improvements more quickly due to having a better process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32202" LastActivityDate="2018-07-20T17:23:35.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24535" CreationDate="2018-07-20T19:11:48.933" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The kanban system should cover the part of the process that you and your team have control over. In your case, it sounds like it would start with the whole project's worth of work in the 'To Do' stage. You would pull individual tasks through the process over the lifetime of the project. It also sounds like you should have a stage after UAT/QA called 'Done'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you set a good WIP limit then, at any given time, most of your tasks will be in either 'To Do' or 'Done'. Only a small proportion of the work will be in progress. The advantage of this is that you can start encouraging a more agile approach onto your clients. If you let them review the tasks in the 'Done' stage as they're completed, the final handover won't contain any surprises. This will also give the client good visibility into the progress of the project. You should also let them make changes to the work which is still in 'To Do'. If they get into the habit of reviewing small pieces of work and then adjusting their plans, you're most of the way to convincing them to give up the waterfall approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32764" LastActivityDate="2018-07-20T19:11:48.933" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24547" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24548" CreationDate="2018-07-21T00:37:51.433" Score="5" ViewCount="276" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a starting team using scrum and we understand the value of establish a clear &quot;definition of done&quot; in our development. We have selected the set of things or processes a task must have to consider &quot;done&quot;, but actually we have no clear way how to address it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Must we put the definition of done in in all task's acceptance criteria; set as sub-task that we must complete or just address it as a some documentation related to this product that everyone have to know?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32948" LastActivityDate="2018-08-09T13:15:12.583" Title="How to address the &quot;definition of done&quot; in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;definition-of-done&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24547" CreationDate="2018-07-21T01:26:05.783" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The traditional Scrum solution would be to ask the team. Since the Scrum Team is self-organizing, much of the specific methods to do things should be left up to the team, with the Scrum Master coaching the team to ensure that the values, principles, and intents of the Scrum Guide are maintained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, I would favor some kind of lightweight documentation over assigning it to every task or Product Backlog Item in a ticket tracking tool. Unless you can automate the process a good deal, it seems like putting your Definition of Done in a task or ticket tracking tool would add a lot of overhead and end up making tracking work more difficult. A wiki page, or something similar, can get the information down so that way the whole team can refer to it, and can be changed over time as the team enhances their Definition of Done over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2018-07-21T01:26:05.783" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24547" CreationDate="2018-07-21T09:26:32.087" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adding one of the representatives of the clients to know the progress and validate the task done can increase the transparency and refine definition of Done task.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4714" LastActivityDate="2018-07-21T09:26:32.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24535" CreationDate="2018-07-21T14:33:55.383" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately both of your proposed solutions suffer from the same problem: You never really know how much work is remaining on the 'done' items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What happens if when you get to release some major issues are found? How long will it take to fix these issues? What about if a complete re-architecting of the code is necessary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You talk about measuring the cycle time, but without knowing the &lt;em&gt;work remaining&lt;/em&gt; on items the cycle time has little value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, say the team makes some changes to the way it works and the cycle time improves. The team is happy that the changes are positive. Then, several months later during the final integration and release you uncover some problems relating to the changes you made. Now it becomes clear that the changes were negative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can tweak the columns on the Kanban board as much as you want, but with releases happening so infrequently it is going to be difficult to adopt a genuinely agile approach. Agile works best when there is a frequent inspect and adapt cycle that allows you to improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion would be to investigate if there are ways of doing &lt;em&gt;interim releases&lt;/em&gt; or some kind of beta delivery. This at least gives you an opportunity to receive regular feedback and adapt your working practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-07-21T14:33:55.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24551" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24561" CreationDate="2018-07-22T14:08:21.650" Score="5" ViewCount="2096" Body="&lt;p&gt;Imagine you are a Product Owner. And you have planned a sprint, prepared every detail, broken down the epics into&#xA;stories and already presented your roadmap to management and promised the releases&#xA;ahead. In the sprint planning you also give 10 features to your engineering team. The&#xA;developers tell you that they are not willing to work on two of your requirements at this&#xA;time and give you some technical talk which is hard for you to follow and tell you that&#xA;they want to actually have two additional requirements of their own for the sprint. How do&#xA;you respond?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33014" LastEditorUserId="32641" LastEditDate="2018-07-25T11:55:42.330" LastActivityDate="2018-07-25T11:55:42.330" Title="How to manage technical conflict between Product Owner and developers?" Tags="&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;sprint-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24551" CreationDate="2018-07-22T15:51:08.997" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It isn't clear from your question if you are following the Scrum framework, but if you are then the Scrum Master should be pointing out the following from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is the sole person responsible for managing the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team can &lt;em&gt;ask&lt;/em&gt; the Product Owner to add items to the backlog. It is up to the team to create a convincing argument and the Product Owner is under no obligation to follow their advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No one (not even the Scrum Master) tells the Development Team how to turn Product Backlog into Increments of potentially releasable functionality&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The development team &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; own what goes in to sprints. However, in your question you say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;some technical talk which is hard for you to follow&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The development team should be making a huge effort to make their technical decisions clear. The Product Owner has to talk to stakeholders who are often non-technical and needs to understand what is going on to do their job properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than dealing with this particular incident I would recommend you look for a long-term solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sit down with the whole team and thrash out ways of working. Create a working agreement that describes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The role and responsibility of the Product Owner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The role and responsibility of the development team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What behaviour is acceptable and what behaviour is not acceptable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is much better to have this explicitly stated than to continually deal with disagreement on a case-by-case basis. If you have an Agile Coach in your organisation, now would be a good time to get them involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-07-22T15:51:08.997" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24526" CreationDate="2018-07-23T09:32:27.073" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Customer relations typically includes everything needed to maintain relationships with existing customers and reach new customers. It tends to be focused on communication - answering questions, resolving issues or complaints, and similar types of work. It may includes sales and marketing, as well as social media and others. The exact definition varies by organization, but the Scrum @ Scale guide is showing how common functions integrate with the product development Scrum Teams at the Executive Meta Scrum / EAT level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum @ Scale, Customer Relations (along with Legal / Compliance and HR / People Ops) are their own Scrum Teams. If you are scaling your product development teams with Scrum @ Scale, then you will likely also scale these other teams with Scrum @ Scale. All of the different team types (Product Development, Customer Relations, Legal / Compliance, and HR / People Ops) all converge at the Executive Meta Scrum and EAT levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within these teams, you would continue to have a Scrum Master, a Product Owner (who wouldn't be managing a Product, but the Services provided by these organizations - perhaps it should be called a Service Owner), and a Development Team that carries out the work. If necessary, they would have Scrum of Scrums and Meta Scrum and Scrum of Scrum of Scrums and so on. However, all aspects of the organization come together at the Executive Meta Scrum and EAT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2018-07-23T11:32:35.503" LastActivityDate="2018-07-23T11:32:35.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24551" CreationDate="2018-07-23T10:18:46.137" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You’ll have to negotiate the scope with both parties (your team and the stakeholders) because it looks like you forgot to understand the technical implications of your plan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's important to mention three important aspects of a product owner:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They don't set deadlines, only those working on the tasks can do it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They often make trade offs in order to meet deadlines &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Understanding what is the effort required to accomplish certain tasks is crucial to develop a plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Barnaby suggested, solve the root cause of the problem by having a talk on ways of working and responsibilities ;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I don't fully agree with him in the development team making a &quot;huge effort&quot; to explain technical decisions, &lt;em&gt;on ocassion&lt;/em&gt; it's just not possible to explain clearly &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; and stake holders sometimes don't care, I would rather focus on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Trusting the team timelines&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For the product owner to present clearly to the team the vision and requirements of the product, so that the development team can in turn give a sound understanding of what's needed to accomplish the plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, what you'll be discussing with everyone is: these are the tasks, these are the deadlines, and hence this is the plan I'm making out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-07-23T10:18:46.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24556" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24582" CreationDate="2018-07-23T12:19:27.490" Score="5" ViewCount="474" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any proven ideas/methods/workshops for increasing autonomy and accountability in a Scrum/Agile team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have used the following thus far:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Definition of done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Working agreements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Roles &amp;amp; Responsibilities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think more work is needed to get the team to really take ownership, accountability and in turn be autonomous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update: Examples of team not being autonomous&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team doesn't think ahead. If there is a story on the board that perhaps needs a technical meeting arranged, they won't pre-arrange, they will only try and arrange when they pick up the story&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If there is a story which is close to meeting DoD, they won't necessarily think to look at it first&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they lose a team member, they won't arrange handovers themselves&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they have 2 days left of a sprint, they won't necessarily try and get the story closest one to done done first&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastEditorUserId="32641" LastEditDate="2018-07-24T22:16:02.507" LastActivityDate="2018-07-26T21:34:21.870" Title="Workshops/methods for increasing team autonomy?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;&lt;self-organizing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24556" CreationDate="2018-07-23T15:13:49.517" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Helping a team to be more autonomous is one of the most difficult things to do because you achieve it by &lt;em&gt;doing less&lt;/em&gt; rather than doing more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master, I sometimes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attend a ceremony/meeting and say nothing. There is often some initial confusion but after an awkward silence typically somebody steps up and starts to drive the meeting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hold back, even when I know the solution to a problem. I may gently prod the team but I let them arrive at the solution even though it may take a while.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attend the daily Scrum, but stand a distance away or behind a pillar or some other obstruction. Don't make eye contact with anyone in the team and let them initiate all conversations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said all that a team is unlikely to develop autonomy if they have no real &lt;em&gt;authority&lt;/em&gt;. Ensure that the team is empowered to make decisions. Having a hierarchy that exists outside the team that can veto decisions is particularly problematic. Negotiate with your organisation until the team is genuinely empowered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-07-23T15:13:49.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24558" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-07-23T16:09:13.163" Score="2" ViewCount="208" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for a basic book for 'Program Monitoring and Evaluation'. I searched the internet and could find the UNDP reports. But they are too comprehensive. Can anyone point me to some basic books to start off with?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33022" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2018-12-04T14:16:10.777" LastActivityDate="2019-01-03T15:01:15.283" Title="Beginner's book for Program Monitoring and Evaluation" Tags="&lt;progress-monitor&gt;&lt;evaluation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24559" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24572" CreationDate="2018-07-23T16:49:50.473" Score="1" ViewCount="82" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for resources on how to learn to be a better Project Manager. I started as a 'PM' ( my title doesn't reflect this) at my company about a year a half ago. There isn't a PMO, or a process really, and I have 10+ projects that I'm assigned to when they are already underway with no documentation. I don't have anyone to copy or shadow or get training from, so I'm asking for classes, or videos, or articles, or anything that might help me learn to be a better PM and getting a hold on my projects better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Thank you  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32914" LastActivityDate="2018-07-25T13:03:10.133" Title="Beginner Resources" Tags="&lt;training&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24551" CreationDate="2018-07-24T03:28:43.147" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Imagine you have planned a sprint, prepared every detail, broken down&#xA;  the epics into stories and already presented your roadmap to&#xA;  management and promised the releases ahead. In the sprint planning you&#xA;  also give 10 features to your engineering team. The developers tell&#xA;  you...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were the PO who had done this, I would first of all own that I had messed up, in so many words, rather than &quot;it happened&quot; which makes it sound like it was a thunderstorm or something. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would go back to the development team and say, OK, I messed up. Here's what I already told management. Can you explain to me, in terms that they will understand, what is blocking the development of those 2 features? Is there any way we can get any of them into this schedule?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the 2 requirements they want to add: it is entirely common for development teams to identify non-user-facing requirements that will improve quality, reduce risk, decrease technical debt, or increase productivity. Investing 20-30% of the development effort towards these items is perfectly reasonable, especially if the product has a lot of complexity under the hood. I would ask whether their 2 requirements fall into any of these categories, and ask about the risk of deferring them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, in talking to the dev team, I would admit we had a problem that I had created, and look for help or wiggle room in getting out of it. If I'm lucky, they'll see me, the PO, as part of the team, and my problem as our problem, and they'll help me out if they can for the sake of the team's rep. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But whether I get any help or not, eventually I have to go back to management, and say to them something like, &quot;That detailed schedule I gave you was premature.  After further consultation with the development team (which I'll do before I talk to you next time, to reduce the chance of this happening again), it turns out that we need to give up either scope or schedule, etc  etc.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which, if they understand and have bought into agile, should not be a big shock, because agile plans are forecasts not promises. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck. Trust your team, &amp;amp; work more closely with them next time. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2018-07-24T03:28:43.147" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22510" CreationDate="2018-07-24T06:59:43.393" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Milestone is a flag of group of requirements if done, then you have achieved a one goal in project's goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprint is a - big enough - fixed time frame in which you deliver a stable and working group of features (user stories).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in Release you ship a deliverable features (the smallest time box ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Milestone &gt;= Sprint (You may need multiple sprints to reach a milestone)&#xA;Sprint &gt;= Release (You may need multiple releases to close a sprint)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33031" LastActivityDate="2018-07-24T06:59:43.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24547" CreationDate="2018-07-24T09:10:55.157" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Something I would add to support the other answers here is that it may be the case that the Definition of &quot;Done&quot; (DoD) is not wholly 'owned' by the Scrum Team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When a Product Backlog item or an Increment is described as &quot;Done&quot;, everyone must understand what &quot;Done&quot; means... If the definition of &quot;Done&quot; for an increment is part of the conventions, standards or guidelines of the development organization, all Scrum Teams must follow it as a minimum...  If there are multiple Scrum Teams working on the system or product release, the Development Teams on all the Scrum Teams must mutually define the definition of &quot;Done&quot;. - &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#artifact-transparency-done&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The official Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest &quot;everyone&quot; who is interested in quality encompasses not only the development org but additionally the stakeholders. Therefore, it is probably necessary to make the DoD accessible to all parties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a practical note, I've found a DoD in the form of a checklist most useful. This way, the DoD items can be checked-off when a Scrum Team member verifies a Sprint Backlog item as being &quot;Done&quot;. Therefore, have the DoD in a format where it can be easily shown on a screen or printed to a sheet of paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29315" LastActivityDate="2018-07-24T09:10:55.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24556" CreationDate="2018-07-24T17:35:42.870" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are also some best practices of self-organizing teams exist. You should teach your team how to work without managers. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ultimate transparency&lt;/strong&gt; on all information by the project -- if there is one who knows more then anyone else, then team members are not equal what prevents self-organizing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Advice process&lt;/strong&gt; -- anybody can make any decision, but he must get advice of those who are experts and impacted by the decision.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conflict resolution&lt;/strong&gt; -- if two members have a conflicting decisions, they should a) try to resolve the conflict themselves, looking for win-win solution; b) involve an arbitrator to help then resolving it; c) involve arbitrating group.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And other practices. There are some established methodologies and approaches exist, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.holacracy.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.holacracy.org/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reinventingorganizations.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.reinventingorganizations.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://sociocracy30.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://sociocracy30.org/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32641" LastActivityDate="2018-07-24T17:35:42.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24566" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24569" CreationDate="2018-07-24T17:41:28.717" Score="9" ViewCount="14521" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the difference between a Scrum Master and Agile Delivery Manager and how can I bridge the gaps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you could recommend books, courses or podcasts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2019-09-12T00:36:17.110" Title="Difference between Scrum Master and Agile Delivery Manager" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24547" CreationDate="2018-07-24T17:50:41.680" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First I agree with what others are saying about the team setting the defintion of done. You need to get that buy-in and shared understanding if you are going to be successful in implementing DOD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two ways we are addressing the definition of done. One is from a workflow perspective (a la Jira boards). We initially started as code complete was Done, but as out CI deployment capabilities improved, we moved that to In Production. This works for 90% of our work which is based on coding against an existing product where we are modifying something that is already functioning  in production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For SPIKES or Stories that are progressing to MVP, but not production ready, we spend more time on documenting Conditions of Acceptance (COA) as these tasks aren't going to meeting the workflow definition of Done in Production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples would be:&#xA;Document research findings on Wiki page&#xA;Diagram future state architecture and document approval from CTO&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they are observable, concrete deliverables, then there should be very little ambiguity in whether or not the task meets the criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24110" LastActivityDate="2018-07-24T17:50:41.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24568" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24571" CreationDate="2018-07-24T20:04:41.130" Score="5" ViewCount="86" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have one user story that is dependent on a technical story: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User story: A user can add a product from the database to his profile&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technical story: Products need to be entered in the database by the &#xA;                  developers so that it can serve other stories&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to follow the INVEST model, so I'm searching for a way to make these two stories independent. However, it seems to me that is not possible. Am I missing something or is it totally fine that the 2 stories above stay dependent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33039" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2018-07-25T13:02:40.477" LastActivityDate="2018-07-25T13:02:40.477" Title="Could stories be always independent?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24566" CreationDate="2018-07-24T20:22:02.280" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &quot;Agile delivery manager&quot; seems to be an undefined/undocumented role, and from what I read in the job openings is mostly a combination of a Project Manager, a Product Owner and a Scrum Master. Sounds like utter bullshit to me. A made up title to map existing roles to a probably fake-Agile implementation, while using a lot of buzzwords.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Jeff Sutherland, the Scrum Master and Scrum of Scrum Master is responsible for delivery:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Because why would you have a group of Scrum Masters if they can't&#xA;  deliver? Not only deliver, but actually make delivery go faster and faster. That is&#xA;  their job right.&quot; -- &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/yC133rb7nbw?t=34m55s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jeff Sutherland&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there is not real factual definition of the &quot;Agile delivery manager&quot;, except for &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.indeed.com/q-Agile-Delivery-Manager-jobs.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;open vacancies&lt;/a&gt; (13k open jobs). The Scrum Master is responsible for making sure the team delivers working software Sprint after sprint, as working software is the primary measure in Agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leading me to think that the Agile delivery manager is not something that should exist and should be covered by the Scrum Master if you're doing Scrum. Maybe if you're not doing Scrum, it could be alternative title for the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe someone can prove me wrong and point us to documented proof of the &quot;Agile delivery manager&quot;, hopefully showing it is truly Agile, but from my research it seems to be a sort of Scrum Master or a something which would fit in an Agile anti-pattern book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="35563" LastEditDate="2019-08-13T16:46:43.173" LastActivityDate="2019-08-13T16:46:43.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24566" CreationDate="2018-07-24T22:28:39.773" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I second Niels opinion on &quot;there is not real factual definition of the &lt;em&gt;Agile delivery manager&lt;/em&gt;&quot; (+1!), however it doesn't mean that some companies haven't faced a need to name a delivery manager role for Agile projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long story short:&lt;/strong&gt; That's likely to be a managerial role, responsible for aligning different agile teams (not necessarily scrum). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aspects to be considered:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Undefined roles&lt;/strong&gt; (and even the ones clearly defined!) &lt;strong&gt;are strongly dependent on the environment and the company considered.&lt;/strong&gt; If I'd earn a dollar for each &quot;&lt;em&gt;Scrum Master&lt;/em&gt;&quot; I saw assigning tasks directly to each team member or for each &lt;em&gt;Scrum team&lt;/em&gt; composed of analysts, development and testing, I probably wouldn't be rich, but would have a very nice vacations. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some roles are inherited from waterfall oriented projects moving towards an agile mindset.&lt;/strong&gt; There was this delivery manager. He was working coordinating all the different silos and responsible for making sure the delivery is on time. The project moves towards an &quot;Agile&quot; methodology, but without changing roles night to day. On these cases, it's natural to have &quot;an entity&quot; responsible for coordinating the different &quot;agile&quot; teams. Thus, &lt;em&gt;Agile&lt;/em&gt; because the methodology is lending towards Agile mindset and &lt;em&gt;Delivery Manager&lt;/em&gt; because... he's doing the same role (potentially with reorganized teams).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bottomline:&lt;/strong&gt; Understand the context where this role is required. If that's a job offer, see what's being expected. It's likely to change from place to place, anyways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2018-07-24T22:28:39.773" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24568" CreationDate="2018-07-24T23:56:23.263" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Independence in stories is a bit confusing because of how we think of dependency in programming. Independence in the INVEST model means you can do them separately. In your case, you can add products to the database and then when that is finished, create an interaction where users add products to their profile. Less intuitively, you could do it the other way around, creating the interaction with maybe only one product available in the data, but then later adding a bunch of products which would then be available to add to profiles. These are, in fact, independent. Dependent stories are ones that must move forward together - when one starts, the other start. When one goes to test, the other does too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Technical Stories&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a lot of debate on the idea of technical stories, but from my experience, please don't do this. Scrum does not require that we use user stories. In many situations, User Stories offer a great tool. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a verified purchaser, I want to add products to my profile so that&#xA;  I can get messages when new versions are available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This user story helps the Product Owner express what user he's talking about, how he imagines the functionality to work, and shares why the user may want to do this. If it's a technical task (or in this case, just some extra work) you can have a generic item like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Data Entry: Add Products&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, if you really want to use User Stories because you are practicing the habit (which is perfectly fine and commendable), really make it a user. Why does the user want this? For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a verified purchaser, I want to be able to look through a list of&#xA;  all products the company offers and add them to my profile so I don't&#xA;  miss any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When we dress up non-user stories in the trappings of them, we lose sight of what makes a user story effective. Which leads to the next point:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Wrong and Missing Information in User Stories&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please excuse me for being directly critical here, but since you seem to be working to get the most out of User Stories, this seems worth bringing up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are different ways to construct user stories, but as a rule, they should have three pieces of information in them: who, what, and why. You have the what, but the who is really vague and the why is missing. I'd encourage you to include what type of user most benefits from this and why they would want to do this in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, and this may feel nit-picking, but you don't usually want implementation details in your User Stories. At best, it is erroneous (if your team doesn't know to pull data from the database, you have bigger problems) and it could cause confusion (for example, if the company recently switched to a sales system with web services that you should pull the products from).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-07-24T23:56:23.263" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24559" CreationDate="2018-07-25T04:04:59.943" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I propose you to read following books in order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Peopleware&quot; by DeMarko and Lister.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Scrum Guide&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Extreme Programming Explained&quot; by Kent Beck.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;5 Steps To Kanban&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Goal&quot; by Eliyahu M. Goldratt&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art&quot; by Steve McConnell&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Death March&quot; by by Edward Yourdon&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Waltzing with bears&quot; by DeMarko.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many others very good ones, but these provided most significant impact on my PM career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any soft skills training is also very helpful: communications, general management, people motivation, facilitation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32641" LastEditorUserId="32641" LastEditDate="2018-07-25T13:03:10.133" LastActivityDate="2018-07-25T13:03:10.133" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24573" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-07-25T07:27:22.023" Score="3" ViewCount="195" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our team breaks down user stories in sub-tasks, then estimate their sizes in hours using the planning poker technique. The numbers we use are 2, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16, 24, 32 and it goes just like story points estimation using the Fibonacci sequence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there techniques/games exclusive to hours estimation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32382" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2018-07-30T09:32:10.683" LastActivityDate="2018-07-30T09:32:10.683" Title="Are there techniques for gamification of hours estimation?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;gamification&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24573" CreationDate="2018-07-25T09:19:27.313" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many &quot;games&quot; (strategies) to make estimation, One that I like is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Order all tasks by &lt;em&gt;estimated time&lt;/em&gt; (historical tasks might be helpful here)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any new task can be introduced &quot;more easily&quot; by looking at similar tasks in the current list and then it would make it easier to know the time it would take and how it affects the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was shown by the authors of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.co.uk/Managing-Unmanageable-Insights-Software-People/dp/032182203X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1532510166&amp;amp;sr=8-1&amp;amp;keywords=managing%20the%20unmanageable&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Managing the Unmanageable&lt;/a&gt; when we requested a work-shop from them to improve our processes. I think they might have further suggestions in their website ;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-07-25T09:19:27.313" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24575" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-07-25T18:43:22.183" Score="5" ViewCount="563" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our Product/Tech team has been transitioning towards Agile project management in the last year or so, and we hold daily standups, weekly planning meetings and biweekly retrospective meetings. We also use a Kanban board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the team's Scrum Master, I've been trying to make the retrospectives more actionable, as some team members have pointed out that we often end up discussing the same issues that don't get solved. I'm worried about the impact of this on team members' morale and desire to participate, so I've tried several approaches to make things more concrete, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.liberatingstructures.com/7-15-solutions/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;15% solutions&lt;/a&gt;, and limiting the number of action items that we commit to doing to the bare minimum (i.e. 1-2). We've also been adding those items to our Sprint board to give them visibility. This has helped quite a bit with ad hoc, concrete action items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm struggling with right now is what I call &quot;intangible&quot; action items, i.e. items that are linked to habits or behavioural change and/or are recurring in nature. Here are some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When pulling a PBI into &lt;strong&gt;Building&lt;/strong&gt;, take some time to think about how it will be reviewed so that it doesn't create bottlenecks in the &lt;strong&gt;Ready to Review&lt;/strong&gt; column&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When estimating roadmap items, multiply by 2 so that we provide more realistic estimates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;During the scoping phase, map out dependencies so that we can plan the work better&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could of course put all of these in a document and share it, but it would probably end up on the proverbial shelf and never get implemented. From my experience, even when these solutions emerge from the team to tackle very real problems, because of their intangible nature, they quickly fall by the wayside when things get busy. Hence my question: &lt;strong&gt;How do you make sure those action items get implemented? How do you keep track of them?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26063" LastActivityDate="2018-07-31T18:41:08.200" Title="How should we implement and keep track of recurring or intangible retrospective action items?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24575" CreationDate="2018-07-25T20:20:31.333" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I find an effective way to keep those kinds of &quot;behaviour change&quot; actions under the attention of the team is to hang them next to the kanban board, large enough that they can be read from a distance. And once in a while remind the team about those actions when you think they might have lapsed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2018-07-25T20:20:31.333" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24575" CreationDate="2018-07-26T03:53:07.163" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is also term &quot;&lt;strong&gt;built-in quality&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;. It means, that the process policies you describe, should be as closer to place where they are needed, as possible. For example, set WIP limits on your board, like in Kanban. Or call columns correspondingly, or put a short note with oncoming rules on it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32641" LastActivityDate="2018-07-26T03:53:07.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24575" CreationDate="2018-07-26T09:15:37.953" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This are my two suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Action items derived from a retro need to find it’s way into a document &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can add a task into the current sprint to address issues raised in the retro and it should be marked as completed only if you found a true way to get rid of the issue forever&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like you don't think that getting this into documents would work, but I believe that you need to convince your team that documents represent agreements. They are not &lt;em&gt;meant&lt;/em&gt; to be static, they are expected to change in order to respond to the needs of your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-07-26T09:15:37.953" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24580" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24584" CreationDate="2018-07-26T09:22:13.493" Score="6" ViewCount="3470" Body="&lt;p&gt;During the current Sprint, my Team is doing mostly front-end tasks, I don't have any tasks, because I do back-end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My Scrum Master says that I have to pick up tasks from another Team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question: Is that possible in Scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think we have awful business analysts that don't write adequate specifications. I think that is the reason why I am left without any tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33057" LastEditorUserId="33057" LastEditDate="2018-07-26T16:12:18.420" LastActivityDate="2018-07-31T18:35:11.917" Title="Is Team member sharing possible in Scrum during a Sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24580" CreationDate="2018-07-26T10:54:35.517" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am hearing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;inadequate specifications&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I-shaped (rather than T-shaped) people&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;working in silos (business analysts, front-end, back-end)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;hand-offs (Waste)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum Master telling Developers what to do (rather than self-organizing)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developers working on tasks (rather than working as a team to deliver the Sprint Goal)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are impediments. As a member of a self-organizing team, you have a responsibility to ensure the team makes them visible and works with the Scrum Master to resolve them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't agree you have nothing to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29315" LastActivityDate="2018-07-26T10:54:35.517" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24556" CreationDate="2018-07-26T11:52:08.637" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm the Scrum Master on a cross-functional team that initially had little to no experience with Agile. I think Barnaby's answer is great and definitely something to strive for. From what I've observed, though, if the team doesn't have a certain level of maturity (Agile-wise), they won't necessarily learn if you leave them to their own devices. If in their career, a team member has never had the space to take initiative, they won't naturally decide to do that when you leave them space. Teams need to define what self-organization mean from them, but providing some structure and nudging them in the &quot;right&quot; direction goes a long way, especially early on in the process. It's always hard to figure out what the right balance of guidance vs. freedom is to get the team to a point where they're a model of self-organization, but I think Mike Cohn's &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/the-career-path-of-a-scrum-master#modal-situational-scrum-mastering&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Situational Scrum Mastering&lt;/a&gt; explains this well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've encountered all of the issues you've mentioned, and the two things that I've found work well to address them are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) Using retrospectives as an opportunity for team members to become aware of those issues.&lt;/strong&gt; Ideally, wait for them to flag them, but if they don't have that reflex yet and you think they're missing the boat, come up with a set of questions that will lead them in that direction. You can even dedicate the whole retro to a single topic if you feel it'd be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) Showing short (5- to 10-minute) videos related to agile principles and values and facilitating a discussion afterwards.&lt;/strong&gt; In the last few months, I've been dedicating 15 minutes to that in our weekly meetings, and it's worked wonders. I've noticed team members referencing concepts they've seen in the videos, and slowly but surely applying them in their work. I've found &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxTb_ZC4kmrSpjDE2IkRjSRAkfIsLYfP9&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Scrum Life series&lt;/a&gt; to be particularly helpful in that regard (slow down the pace and use English subtitles if necessary).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26063" LastEditorUserId="26063" LastEditDate="2018-07-26T21:34:21.870" LastActivityDate="2018-07-26T21:34:21.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24580" CreationDate="2018-07-26T13:14:33.117" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Normal, probably not. Lots of folks have the &quot;it's not my job&quot; syndrome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I (as their Scrum Master) motivate our teams to get better at swarming:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Swarming&lt;/strong&gt;: A behavior whereby team members with available capacity and appropriate skills collectively work (swarm) on an item to finish&#xA;  what has already been started &lt;strong&gt;before&lt;/strong&gt; moving ahead to begin work on new&#xA;  items&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.innolution.com/resources/glossary/swarming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.innolution.com/resources/glossary/swarming&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do not have the appropriate skills you could pair with someone to start getting them, leading to T-shaped people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;T-shaped&lt;/strong&gt; skills: A metaphor used to describe a person with deep&#xA;  vertical skills in a specialized area (such as UX design) as well as&#xA;  broad but not necessarily very deep skills in other relevant areas&#xA;  (such as testing and documentation). Team members with T-shaped skills&#xA;  better enable swarming behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.innolution.com/resources/glossary/t-shaped-skills&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.innolution.com/resources/glossary/t-shaped-skills&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Swarming means keeping a low work in progress limit, preferable one or two. Helping other team members to get work really done (also known as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jamesshore.com/Agile-Book/done_done.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DoneDone&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have awful business analysts that don't write adequate&#xA;  specifications. That's why I am left without tasks..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Help him/her? Get some skills in writing specs and do the work together. Be proactive, instead of reactively saying it is their fault.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think being an Software Engineer means that you can go from ideas to full-fledged solutions. This means breaking down an idea to smaller tasks that result into a working software product that is adaptable over time. This is your job, not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not solve your question about doing work for other teams, but just how to help your own team finishing their work. Which I think should be your first priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My Scrum Master says that I will have to do the &lt;strong&gt;other Team's&lt;/strong&gt; tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the only good reason to work for other teams during a Sprint is if you can assist them with something they are stuck on. Helping them complete their goals, while not jeopardising your team's goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Picking up work from another teams Sprint backlog seems very uncommon, as you missed their planning session and context. Pulling in full stories into your Backlog seems acceptable if your team can work on it independently. You could start on it the next Sprint or when the current Sprint goal has been achieved earlier. The Scrum Master should not change your workload during the Sprint, only the Product Owner can renegotiate the scope with the team, according to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-sprint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other things that come to mind are: Cost of context switching and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuckman%27s_stages_of_group_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stages of group development&lt;/a&gt;. Working on a single area of a codebase and with a stable team is way more effective in the long run compared to switching teams and code of of other teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2018-07-26T16:10:32.890" LastActivityDate="2018-07-26T16:10:32.890" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24580" CreationDate="2018-07-26T13:35:32.190" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;TLDR: Beware the &lt;a href=&quot;https://dzone.com/articles/100-utilization-myth&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;100% utilization fallacy&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to ignore your stated question ('is this normal?') and instead attempt to answer the underlying question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Swarming is possible&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As per the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cross-functional teams have all competencies needed to accomplish the work without depending on others not part of the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a corollary to this, as long as there is sufficient work for a Team, then there should be sufficient work for Team Members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it's not necessary for every Team member to be an expert in every functionality, a well-functioning Team should be sufficiently well-bonded, with enough opportunities for knowledge sharing, that &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/147664/what-is-swarming&quot;&gt;swarming&lt;/a&gt; should at least be feasible for any given story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you know absolutely &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt; of back-end development, you &lt;em&gt;still&lt;/em&gt; should be able to swarm. You could, for example, sit alongside a back-end developer as s/he works, thereby increasing your cross-functional competency, which will help swarm more effectively in the future. Or, especially since your Team is working on bugs, you could spend your time as a QA - both confirming the found bugs are being fixed properly, and hammering at the product to find more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Other value-adding activities are possible&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you don't want to work directly alongside your Team members, there are other activities you can perform to benefit the Team. You can do research or spikes to improve your own knowledge, and then disseminate it to the Team. You can go through the existing codebase and clean it up. You mention there being poor specifications - so perhaps you should work to improve them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;100% Utilization is a Fallacy&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that your Scrum Master is seeing you as idle as you have no tasks (or perhaps because you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; idle, In which case, for the solution, see the section above).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the thinking that this is a problem is itself a fallacy. You need to work with your Scrum Master to clarify expectations. It's the Scrum Master's job to be a servant-leader to the Team, as well as to ensure that Scrum is being followed properly. Nowhere in there is the duty of making sure all Team members are being 100% utilized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-07-26T15:43:02.480" LastActivityDate="2018-07-26T15:43:02.480" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24585" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-07-26T13:44:06.493" Score="4" ViewCount="422" Body="&lt;p&gt;During our daily standup we examine our Sprint Burndown to look at how we're getting on against the goal line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I often struggle for constructive things to say about the graph and tend to resort to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That's not looking so good&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We're on track&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel that this often means that the burndown isn't given the weight it could be as a forecasting and planning tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't believe that we should idly watch as a team falls behind. I want to take the progress information we've got and use it to rescue the sprint while there's still an opportunity to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what can I say while I show the burndown chart in a way such that it constructively aids our planning while we're discussing our tasks for the day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11768" LastEditorUserId="11768" LastEditDate="2018-07-26T14:33:59.090" LastActivityDate="2018-08-02T09:47:28.637" Title="What can I constructively say when looking at the Sprint Burndown" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;&lt;burndown-chart&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24585" CreationDate="2018-07-26T14:51:51.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't have to say constructive things about the burndown; it's just a factual display and you don't hurt its feelings by saying it's not looking so good today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, you need to ask the team the question &quot;how are we going to fix this?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That basically means that if people agree that the burndown is failing, it's time to sit down with everyone and talk about what &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; still be done this sprint, what isn't as important and can be dropped, whether there's a more efficient way to complete the tasks that still need doing, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, talk about the reason things aren't going as fast as intended. While an in-depth &quot;how did this go wrong&quot; is more a retrospective thing, a quick &quot;will whatever went wrong cause more trouble for us during the rest of the sprint&quot; is important, otherwise you'll be having the same discussion the next morning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember also to keep your eyes on the goal. While it's common to select an amount of work that seems doable at the start of the sprint, you also pick a goal of &quot;what do we want to accomplish&quot;, and it's fine to remove some items or change some plans to reach the goal in a different way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31393" LastActivityDate="2018-07-26T14:51:51.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24580" CreationDate="2018-07-26T14:54:01.417" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that picking up other work when otherwise idle has been a standard expected feature of just about EVERY job I have ever held, I mean why would you not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I might take the view that the lack of spec is a problem, and iff I have any real task domain skills in the area where this product lives, I would probably take writing some spec and getting it signed off to be the most valuable thing I could do to remove the block on the backend work, but your team, your team dynamics.... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frontend/Backend is pretty much an artificial split at least during prototyping, and if you don't have a pretty good spec, you ARE prototyping. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real question is, do you have good enough skills in whatever the frontend needs to actually contribute without being net negative work? I am a pretty good low level hard realtime guy, (Assembler, C, C++ on small cores and DSPs), but I know that if I tried to pick up some of our website stuff our web team would be cursing me, be sure of the reality of your skills before stepping outside your core competence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see anything particularly unique to Scrum methodologies here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33063" LastActivityDate="2018-07-26T14:54:01.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24585" CreationDate="2018-07-26T15:03:44.070" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, never &quot;walk the board&quot; or huddle around a chart for your daily stand-up. The meeting is for dependency coordination, not reporting or trend analysis. Staring at a burn-down doesn't help the team coordinate!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, &lt;strong&gt;the goal of a Sprint is to meet the Sprint Goal&lt;/strong&gt;. If you routinely meet your Sprint Goals with a choppy burn-down, or even if you meet your goals without completing the burn-down, your Sprints are still successful! Less-than-ideal trend lines present opportunities for process improvement, but having an ideal trendline for your burn-down is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the point of Scrum!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Optimize for Flow&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're using the wrong tool for the job. While burn-down charts can be useful for projecting trends for longer Sprints, or provide transparency to stakeholders, it sounds like you're abusing the metric as a way to &lt;em&gt;hold the team accountable&lt;/em&gt; to some original forecast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The daily stand-up isn't really designed as a ceremony to huddle around a burn-down chart. It's really a dependency coordination meeting, and a mini-meeting for the team to plan the day's work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of focusing on the burn-down chart as your primary metric, try focusing on team coordination instead, which often smoothes the burn-down trend line as a byproduct of improved flow. The general guidance is that a Sprint Backlog Item should be 1/2 to 2 days of effort. Did the team complete the work they expected to complete yesterday? Is the work planned for today blocked by dependencies that weren't completed yesterday? Is there newly-discovered work that needs to be planned, or unplanned work that's eating away at team capacity? Let the team call out those things during the daily stand-up, and try to have everyone walk out of the stand-up with a plan for addressing them during the workday ahead!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;When to Address Trend Lines&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general rule of thumb, a burn-down chart is not generally useful for the Development Team within a Sprint. However, it is often a great trailing metric to identify problems with story sizing, dependency management, and flow. From a Development Team perspective, the best time to talk about burn-downs is probably the Sprint Retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work comes in all sizes. However, since work is either &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;not-done&lt;/em&gt;, a burn-down that flatlines until the end of a Sprint is often an indicator of &lt;strong&gt;work items that are too large&lt;/strong&gt; (e.g. more than 4-16 wall-clock hours each) or &lt;strong&gt;a poor (or even missing) continuous integration process&lt;/strong&gt;. It may also indicate hidden blockers or process problems that aren't being raised in the daily stand-ups or reflected in the team's working agreements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have &lt;em&gt;historically&lt;/em&gt; had a smoother burn-down, then the chart can be a useful warning signal of hidden problems. However, if your burn-down has always been late to converge, then it's grist for the mill when the team addresses its planning/estimation or dependency-management processes during the Sprint Retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-07-26T15:03:44.070" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24585" CreationDate="2018-07-26T15:06:19.870" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;All graphs of this type are, in my opinion, designed to assist you to plan and prioritize. These are not the kinds of activities that &lt;em&gt;I think&lt;/em&gt; should occur during a normal daily standup; these are management activities, not control activities.  Having said that,  I work with a chart that isn't precisely a burndown chart, but is analogous.  My chart has &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the current burndown line, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a reference line for the worst case scenario, and; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;series of escalation thresholds. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the burndown curve is &lt;em&gt;approaching&lt;/em&gt; the threshold, the team can take action  swarming or stretching, and I can take action to prepare proposed plans for when the curve crosses the threshold.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first threshold is actually just an &quot;inform&quot; threshold - if the curve crosses the threshold then I inform a (defined) set of stakeholders that we have a problem and that we're preparing alternative courses of action. That way nobody is surprised if we need to replan, and the stakeholders have an opportunity to assist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the curve crosses the escalation threshold then the stakeholders &amp;amp; I have to replan.  In my projects that usually involves deferring some work to a future &quot;sprint-analogue&quot; - we readjust the scope of the remaining work to bring the burndown curve back inside the control threshold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said, I work in &quot;scrumbut&quot;, so I don't have some of the constraints of scrum.  That said, I submit that scrum is a method for controlling work. If the burndown curve crosses a threshold, then the Sprint is out of control, and needs exception management.  If for example the work required to complete on time significantly exceeds the team's maximum historical  velocity, then I think the problem cannot be solved by scrum.  ( As I said, I am not a scrum member, so I could be wrong, and will be happy for correction.). But the goal of the burndown chart is to avoid that situation.  The goal &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be to take action when the work exceeds some lower threshold- perhaps the average velocity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2018-08-02T09:47:28.637" LastActivityDate="2018-08-02T09:47:28.637" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24575" CreationDate="2018-07-26T20:07:52.403" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's behavior change, then my experience is that shouldn't take more than a couple of sprints/weeks before the new behavior becomes a habit. My suggestion is to treat them as any other action, put them on your task board and follow up regularly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If after some time they still need a lot of attention, then there's a deeper problem. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.benlinders.com/2018/retrospective-smells-recurring-actions/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;recurring action might be a retrospective smell&lt;/a&gt; that needs attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this make sense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16919" LastActivityDate="2018-07-26T20:07:52.403" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10647" CreationDate="2018-07-26T20:19:28.510" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can tell you that 12 is too many. That is what the owner of the constructions subcontractor expects of me and has assigned to me. So to even have a chance at not completely screwing everything up I've had to work longer hours, which as a salaried employee I do not get paid extra for which hurts. I will quickly admit, I am a brand new project manager and have taken courses towards my PMP, but haven't taken the exam yet. Currently I am managing 12 construction projects and the smallest, by far, is 6 uber-high end townhomes in DC within a stone's throw of the Capital and my largest job is a high end 44 story apartment complex in Baltimore. With the rest falling in between that, but more towards the Baltimore job than the townhomes. So I would say that easily 80% are fairly complex jobs. I am running them with no project team and little to no assistance from anyone else in the office. When I started here as a PM I felt overwhelmed managing 7 projects of similar sizes, but now I miss those days. Trying to explain the reality that there is only so much time in a workday falls on deaf ears. Don't even get me started on the fact that we have absolutely no systems, standards, or project management software to assist. I'm forced to plug away at everything with excel templates that I have to develop in a system so full of viruses and malware that I'm not sure if it is someone inside the company deleting my files and changing the formulas in my spreadsheets or some hacker. So in the construction field as a subcontractor I would say an experience project manger shouldn't go over 7 projects if he has similar conditions as I do and have any chance of producing a product of any quality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33065" LastActivityDate="2018-07-26T20:19:28.510" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24580" CreationDate="2018-07-26T23:06:00.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From your question and your comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are not doing Scrum. Your Scrum Master (arguably the most important role in Scrum) has not understood their job. They are there to protect the Scrum team. Scrum has no mechanism to protect a team from a bad Scrum Master. That your Product Owner is not keeping the backlog filled enough does not help either, but is of secondary importance as far as I'm concerned. If yours were a smoothly running Scrum team, you would simply jump in and help the analysts produce requirements when you are running out of those, but it seems that's not possible due to silo'ed analysts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not worry so much about all of this. This happens all the time; Scrum is, in my experience, one of the most misunderstood aspects of modern IT. It's healthy on a personal level to accept this and not get too hung up about it. Yes, it is bad for the project and the company, but on the other hand plenty of projects like this survived just fine in the past, before there was Scrum or Agile around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, I would focus on your actual job of creating software, and start relaxing about the process. Sure, keep following the Scrum rules as far as you can, within the confines of your particular environment, but don't let a Scrum-gone-wrong (A.K.A. Zombie-Scrum, Scrum-But...) destroy your good mood. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, sure, if your main &quot;Scrum&quot; team/project is not able to produce work for you, there is nothing keeping you from doing work from/for other teams. If this repeats, maybe you can naturally migrate into another, presumably better-working Scrum team in your company, over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum aside, in any company, there is still &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; person who has the final say about what you do, and that's your direct boss. Put them into the picture with a small status email (&quot;FYI, my main project didn't turn up tasks for me this sprint, I'll support team XYZ with their project for these two weeks - give me a head's up if you wish me to do something else&quot;) and then go find interesting IT work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you should have real downtime, sit down and optimize &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt; you can find. Be it something in your main project; researching a new framework; trying again to sit down with the requirements engineers to help them,  etc.; or even just polishing up your CV...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26382" LastActivityDate="2018-07-26T23:06:00.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24593" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-07-27T06:22:54.810" Score="3" ViewCount="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a junior PM in small software development company. I'm managing the development of an e-commerce platform for a customer (a big company) for which we make new developments every month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem I'm encountering with this customer is that he is absolutely unable (because of the nature of his business/activities) to give us a roadmap of the next month's features he will ask us to develop. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, leveraging our resources is becoming really difficult. He basically asks us for a quotation at the last moment. This of course impacts other projects we are doing with other customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any approach or methodology I could try in order to manage this kind of customer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33071" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-07-27T14:46:12.003" LastActivityDate="2018-07-28T21:48:40.007" Title="Customer is unable to plan his next month requests" Tags="&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;management&gt;&lt;roadmaps&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24594" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2018-07-27T07:13:01.947" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2018-07-27T07:13:01.947" LastActivityDate="2018-07-27T07:13:01.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24595" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2018-07-27T07:13:01.947" Score="0" Body="Questions about self-organizing teams and companies." OwnerUserId="32641" LastEditorUserId="32641" LastEditDate="2018-07-29T20:29:54.900" LastActivityDate="2018-07-29T20:29:54.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24593" CreationDate="2018-07-27T07:26:31.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If scope amount is not very different from month to month, then maybe you should just have some &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-functional_team&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cross-functional team&lt;/a&gt; with average or higher-than-average capacity needed. If scope of critical tasks for a month is small, then they can work on low-priority fixes -- there is always plenty of such tasks in every product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If scope amount is very different every month, then you can do following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teach your team and customer to prioritize scope and choose &lt;strong&gt;most valuable features&lt;/strong&gt; for next release -- i.e. adjust scope to capacity you have. Usually, there is high possibility of prioritizing existing for every release -- when you can deliver most valuable at first, and then rest of things in the upcoming releases (BTW, when you will get feedback from your market on really needed features).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tell customer that changing team members every month requires additional costs -- because you need to ramp-up them and maybe keep someone on bench. He should pay for this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Involve subcontractors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32641" LastActivityDate="2018-07-27T07:26:31.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24585" CreationDate="2018-07-27T15:47:22.650" Score="-1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't believe that we should idly watch as a team falls behind. I&#xA;  want to take the progress information we've got and use it to rescue&#xA;  the sprint while there's still an opportunity to do so&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The burn down chart is primarily a measure of how well the team estimated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They aren't falling behind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There probably is nothing you can do to 'rescue' the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Assuming its a nice constant line and not going to curve down towards the end of the sprint) What you can do, is manage the stake holders expectations and tell them its going to be late before they are surprised by getting it late.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17049" LastActivityDate="2018-07-27T15:47:22.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24575" CreationDate="2018-07-27T19:44:12.953" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best way to implement such changes is directly in the system itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For point 1: You could modify the DoD for the column before building to include &quot;prepare review criteria&quot; or even make it an extra column before Building.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2: (Aside from the fact that I am sure there are better alternatives to estimating) I would modify the system that uses the estimate. For example if you multiply it by 1000 to get a price, start multiplying it by 2000 instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3: This too is either an addition to the DoD of the Scoping column, or an extra column before or after it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="763" LastActivityDate="2018-07-27T19:44:12.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24593" CreationDate="2018-07-28T21:48:40.007" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wonder if you could ask him to give you a longer term view of the kinds of features that are likely to come up over, say, the next 6-9 months. That would let your team do some prep for quotations, so that when he comes back to you and gives you next month's list, odds are good that at least some of them will be picked from the larger list you've already seen &amp;amp; been thinking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2018-07-28T21:48:40.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24259" CreationDate="2018-07-29T06:25:26.433" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The very first thing, in my view, to consider here is this :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is your project requirements are fixed/frozen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer to above is yes, then perhaps the risk of final deliverables not matching the customer expectations is low. I am assuming that the project team has understood the scope, exact product requirements and has the right skills, tools and sufficient schedule/time to deliver as per customer's expectations of quality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here the classical approach of making a final deliverable to customer for their UAT is less risky. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile approach is of course recommended when project is experiencing a high degree of changes. If this is true with your project, then active engagement and participation with project stakeholders/customers is must. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now if customer is having less resource/bandwidth, often, development team and customer can exchange information and project status updates in a dynamic &amp;amp; co-creative process such as quick demo of 20-min. with customer showcasing important modules/components of project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These kind of regular interactions with customer gives them the sense of &quot;where we stand&quot; in project, build trust, and also gives a project team a chance to do any adjustments(if needed) in project deliverables.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21918" LastActivityDate="2018-07-29T06:25:26.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24573" CreationDate="2018-07-29T06:57:21.557" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Beside planning poker, 1 of the other estimation techniques we used in our team is 3-Point estimation technique, which is well known in project management world, specially while estimating the activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like Planning poker game, this 3 point estimation can be done like below &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;we can invite the project development team into room&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;product owner explains the user stories and sub-tasks or activities to be done to complete the user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;each team member provide his/her 3-point estimate (Optimistic, Most likely and Pessimistic) for each sub-task&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;scrum master then make a note of these estimates and facilitates its display on visual/drawing boards&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;team discuss the estimates and agreed to final estimates after further discussion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After team agreed on what is right Optimistic, Most likely and Pessimistic estimations are, triangular distribution formula can be used for activity/sub-task estimation as follows,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;tE = (tO + tM + tP)/3, where tO = Optimistic , tM = Most likely , tP = Pessimistic estimate, on which team had a consensus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is bit harder than planning poker, but also gave us more accurate estimates too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We found it useful to use when not much historical data is available for similar user stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21918" LastActivityDate="2018-07-29T06:57:21.557" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24603" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-07-29T19:39:09.203" Score="3" ViewCount="441" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am already read a ton of referencing about feature teams, squads and growth hacking structure.. but imo, there is still a lack of concrete examples and how to break down a product/organization in feature teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give an example of a traditional website e-commerce, how we should break down the teams?&#xA;I could have a feature team for example:&#xA;- home page (value proposition)&#xA;- showcase ( product, categories and search)&#xA;- cart management&#xA;- sign up&#xA;- checkout &#xA;- customer account (order history, order status)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think in that way we are customer focused. We are dividing our team in business flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31938" LastEditorUserId="26063" LastEditDate="2018-08-06T10:05:43.560" LastActivityDate="2018-08-06T13:33:43.567" Title="How to break down a product or organization in feature teams" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24603" CreationDate="2018-07-30T09:54:00.880" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I thought a feature team is a team that can fully complete features to production without dependencies on other teams. What you describe sounds like area teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here the &lt;a href=&quot;https://less.works/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LeSS&lt;/a&gt; (Large Scale Scrum) perspective on feature teams and requirement areas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A feature team, is a long-lived, cross-functional, cross-component&#xA;  team that completes many end-to-end customer features—one by one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://less.works/less/structure/feature-teams.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://less.works/less/structure/feature-teams.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have a lot of feature teams it might make sense to group them in areas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Feature teams scale nicely, but when their number goes &lt;strong&gt;above eight&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  teams additional structure is needed. Requirement areas provide this&#xA;  structure and complement the concepts behind feature teams. A&#xA;  requirement area is a categorization of the requirements leading to&#xA;  different views of the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://less.works/less/less-huge/requirement-areas.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://less.works/less/less-huge/requirement-areas.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do not have a lot of feature teams, it could backfire if the teams think their area is their only job. What if you have some key features in a single area that are the most important now. Why would some feature teams work on a un-important area? I think you want to be able to refactor your feature teams to be able to shift easily to a different area when needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keeping the same area context for a team helps a lot to keep the team stable (and or hyperproductive), so do not refactor continuously. I do think there is a need for each team to understand that we could need multiple teams on a single area. For example to beat a competitor to market, or to be a fast follower. Thus they need to be prepared for this mentally, organisational, technology- and skill-wise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion would be to experiment with a smaller scale, e.g. two-three teams and then scale up to all the teams. Creating a sort of reference model to learn from. There is no silver bullet, but experimenting with ideas from LeSS, Scrum@Scale or the &quot;Spotify Model&quot; might learn what works for your company or industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2018-07-30T09:54:00.880" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1279" CreationDate="2018-07-30T12:59:22.273" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Technical Architect (TA), the following is your role and responsibility: Holding a Design, Build, Testing point of view along with providing high-level design-, low-level design-, and test-driven development- related documents updates as per the business requirements. Take major roles for decision making.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, all of the actions above should, as a consequence, lead the team and the project to a successful end, bearing in mind that, for the customer, the most important thing is the successful delivery of the project. Therefore, it is crucial for the architect to know the release plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the technical side, in addition to proper design, it is also important to take care of operational and infrastructure aspects; without consistently configured environments, a code repository, bug-tracking system, project-tailored continuous integration &amp;amp; deployment flow, the project delivery may be at risk. Obviously, as in previous cases, the TA does not have to do the work associated with the implementation of these aspects with his own hands; he rather collaborates with the Project Manager and Release Manager to ensure them that everything is fine and to deliver upon the team’s requests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technical Architects who work within development projects are ultimately responsible for the technical solution, ensuring that the technical architecture is suitable within the context of the client’s technology stack and that it is aligned with the skills and profile of the development team. The architect must ensure that the development infrastructure meets the needs of the team. This is the TA's responsibilities: for the technical quality, for successful delivery, and for a good relationship with the client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33090" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-07-30T13:17:21.803" LastActivityDate="2018-07-30T13:17:21.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24606" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24607" CreationDate="2018-07-30T13:48:38.000" Score="4" ViewCount="53" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a few core team members who also look after daily support. It’s not uncommon for them to get stuck in some firefighting for a day or two which completely throws off a project schedule. How can I keep my stakeholders from getting frustrated every time the date pushes back?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33092" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-07-30T14:22:52.363" LastActivityDate="2018-07-31T12:54:24.430" Title="Scheduling for Calendar Time when availability is variable?" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24606" CreationDate="2018-07-30T14:29:17.717" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When possible, make it visible to the stakeholders &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; the release date is being pushed back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's in order to fix their own products, then they should naturally be less frustrated. It's even possible (if unlikely) that they could decide that the new development is a higher priority than the 'fire', thereby changing your priorities - it's good to give them both this ability and priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's in order to fix another client's products, then a skilled communicator may be able to spin the situation in such a way that the stakeholders become impressed with how seriously your team treats maintenance/support for existing customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this is mitigated if you're &lt;em&gt;constantly&lt;/em&gt; pushing everything back because everything is always on fire. In which case, you need to start being more realistic; stretch your project schedules more from the start, and allocate more time to baking quality into the products (e.g. in the case of software, reducing technical debt).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-07-30T14:29:17.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24606" CreationDate="2018-07-30T16:45:22.897" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are using a tool to keep the tasks such a Jira, try to setup your project in a way that stakeholders understand the capacity and the type of activities that your team is working on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if possible make an estimate of how much &quot;firefighting&quot; is costing, include not only the time invested on doing the tasks, but the cost of the delays of this tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It’s not uncommon for them to get stuck in some firefighting for a day or two which completely throws off a project schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This shouldn't be common, this is a smell of a bigger problem happening, while you figure out, I suggest that if possible you should:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimate firefighting for each sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assign a team specifically dedicated to tasks that are not firefighting and other team that'll need to work on firefighting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-07-30T16:45:22.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24606" CreationDate="2018-07-30T20:17:35.080" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the above; make a guess of how much firefighting is being done (in &quot;time lost firefighting per time unit&quot;) and take it into consideration when determining when things are done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If on average you lose 3 of your 15 man-days per week due to firefighting, that means you can extend all your deadlines by 25% and you should have a more accurate idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to account for all your (roughly) expected activities during the time working on a project when setting a deadline, not just a hopeful &quot;each person equals 40 hours of work per week&quot;, or all your deadlines will be unrealistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31393" LastActivityDate="2018-07-30T20:17:35.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24606" CreationDate="2018-07-31T12:54:24.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;On my team, we resolved this problem by assigning 1 volunteer (rotate each sprint, so everyone on sprint team has to play this role sooner or later) from sprint team as support-go-to-person for the sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any sprint story-points (i.e., work) delivered by this volunteer was considered a sprint bonus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This person may or may not have all the skills required to solve all the problems. The person we expected to co-ordinate and request help as and when necessary. Team was encouraged to develop an ability to deliver support by learning from each problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32694" LastActivityDate="2018-07-31T12:54:24.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24580" CreationDate="2018-07-31T18:35:11.917" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider asking to take this opportunity to swarm/pair with another teammate. This will give you insight into new areas and build the cross-functionality of your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working outside of the team is (at best) an edge case scenario. It may be an OTO instance (sometimes crazy stuff happens) but asking you to work outside the team is not an agile practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32578" LastActivityDate="2018-07-31T18:35:11.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24575" CreationDate="2018-07-31T18:41:08.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &quot;Shu&quot; suggestion: Make these issues visible on a dedicated Retro Issues Backlog. When the issue re-surfaces put a red dot on it or when it persists put a yellow dot on it. When a new dot appears, ask the team to brainstorm reasons or conditions that allow new dots. Ask other teams if they have the same situation or how they deal with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32578" LastActivityDate="2018-07-31T18:41:08.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24618" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-07-31T20:13:19.237" Score="0" ViewCount="220" Body="&lt;p&gt;at my work we use MS Project 2010 to run our Monday morning scheduling meeting, from Resource Usage view. In the version I inherited on my work computer, I can change the number of hours or add a new assignment and add hours to it without leaving Resource Usage view. We view it at the resolution of one week per column. This way we can quickly got through the list of employees, change the number of hours assigned to existing tasks or add new tasks on the fly to keep them each close to 40 hours of assigned work per week. Without this ability to edit the assigned hours per week in resource Usage view, we would have to run our meetings very differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have several discs for MS Project 2010, but if I install on other computers, I cannot add hours right in Resource Usage view. I don't know what is special about the version of MS Project 2010 that I am using that I cannot get this function from other identical software. When I try to add or change hours in the columns, nothing happens, like my number lock key is off or something. I have also demoed MS Project 2016, Standard, and Pro, but I still cannot add hours directly into Resource Usage. Does anyone know if there is a setting to change that I don't recognize?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33113" LastActivityDate="2018-08-01T10:41:51.007" Title="MS Project, add hours directly in resource usage" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24619" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-07-31T23:48:46.287" Score="0" ViewCount="121" Body="&lt;p&gt;When working on a software project as an independent team of freelance developers, is it legally advisable or inadvisable to give a copy of the Project Plan and Systems Design documentation to the stakeholder(s) that details the schematics and inner-workings (not necessarily the hard code) of the created software?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copyright and Intellectual Property laws in Canada state that developers who create the software acquire automatic copyrights to the software and can prevent others from making or distributing copies but I'm not quite sure if that extends to the stakeholders who the software is developed for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33030" LastActivityDate="2019-11-06T13:02:15.287" Title="Legally Advisable to Give Copy of Project Plan and Systems Design to Stakeholders? Software Copyright Laws" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;&lt;sdlc&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2019-11-19T20:46:51.420" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24618" CreationDate="2018-08-01T10:41:51.007" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not really sure I totally understood the problem; however, I am pretty sure that it's not a version or application problem. &#xA;I would give it a try and go to Project -&gt; Change working Calendar and compare the settings between the version that you got on your working computer and a new installed version that you have on another computer.&#xA;I guess you need to setup a calendar or add some rules so that you get direct access on the Resource View. Which was already done on your inherited computer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33118" LastActivityDate="2018-08-01T10:41:51.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24619" CreationDate="2018-08-01T13:07:31.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Capture Legal Issues, Then Delegate&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While your question about copyright is largely off-topic, and can't be properly answered on a site about project management, knowing how to deal with legal issues is certainly a project management topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a project management perspective, &lt;em&gt;making&lt;/em&gt; legal decisions is out of scope other than as a tracking item for the project. Typically, legal issues such as contract language, or business questions about property ownership, would be captured in the charter, project plan, or other documents as work items and then delegated to a responsible person for further action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More broadly, if your company has not defined a standing policy about what documents or deliverables a client should typically receive during an engagement, then business leaders or the legal department should be involved in reviewing anything where there's a potential impact to the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Information Controls in Project Management&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer: Specific legal advice is something you ask a lawyer, not strangers on the Internet.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copyright, and intellectual property (IP) in general, are complex areas of the law. In Canada, for example, there is a default assignment of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights_in_Canadian_copyright_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;moral rights&lt;/a&gt; in a work that is separate from economic rights. In contrast, the United States doesn't explicitly provide for moral rights, and many businesses address the economic rights through work-for-hire and non-disclosure agreements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a project management perspective, your company should have policies and standards about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;employment, contracting, and confidentiality agreements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;information classification&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;trade secrets&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;company property, including IP&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your job as a project management professional is to include those policies and standards in your project planning, or to refer them back to the business if questions arise during the project. For example, your project controls may include gathering any necessary contracts or client agreements as a project dependency to beginning work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, your &lt;em&gt;definition of done&lt;/em&gt; should adhere to any company policies for confidentiality and information classification. That may mean marking deliverables with the appropriate classification, or enforcing other controls as part of the delivery process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If no policies, standards, or controls for any of these things exist in your company, it's not the project manager's job to invent them. Instead, you should document the issues, and raise them to stakeholders and business leadership for disposition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-10-07T12:44:08.560" LastActivityDate="2019-10-07T12:44:08.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24619" CreationDate="2018-08-01T14:31:20.283" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;(In most cases) They shouldn't even need to &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When asked:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are you hoping to accomplish by giving this document to them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You answered:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Say, in the case of the client wanting to know the project specifications and planning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given any random client and scenario, I am 97% sure that, when a client asks for the project spec/plan, &lt;em&gt;they do not need nor even want a detailed analysis of how the code looks and behaves behind the scenes&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather, what they want to know is how he product will &lt;em&gt;behave&lt;/em&gt;. Most clients will not care one whit whether their data is stored on an external server's database or an external server's flat files. What they &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; care about is if that data is secure, if the data can be accessed in a timely manner, if the data is correct, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in order to determine that, you have no need to provide implementation details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to work on separating implementation details (we'll use these classes and this framework and this architecture...) from product behavioural details (the client needs a CRUD interface to maintain information regarding...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The former is under the sole purview of developers; few other needs or even &lt;em&gt;care&lt;/em&gt; to know about them. The latter is mostly under the purview of the client, so clearly they &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to know about them - in most cases, the client will be the one &lt;em&gt;supplying&lt;/em&gt; such information (though often not without assistance from the vendor).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-08-01T14:31:20.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24626" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-08-01T14:50:10.047" Score="0" ViewCount="71" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working as a technical PM on a software project. The decision making and technical demands are such that day-to-day tasks (such as communicating properly with the customer) are suffering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We want to bring in someone in order to unburden me of some admin responsibilities such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Organising meetings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Taking and distributing minutes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Formalising action points and chasing people to do them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, leaving me to manage the internal side of the project and discuss with the client, with them responsible to keep all parties (me, project owner, client) informed and accountable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is such a role widely understood to exist? Would we describe them as a Project Administrator? PM Assistant? Junior PM? Or is this basically a PM and I need to redefine &lt;em&gt;my&lt;/em&gt; job title? We need to advertise and as such ensure we describe the title and role correctly to attract the right people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33121" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-08-01T15:28:01.203" LastActivityDate="2018-08-02T04:14:00.700" Title="Is there a standard job title for someone who does project admin without making important decisions?" Tags="&lt;roles&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24626" CreationDate="2018-08-01T17:59:35.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion it should be PM Assistant only as the decision power is not with him/her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33123" LastActivityDate="2018-08-01T17:59:35.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24626" CreationDate="2018-08-02T04:14:00.700" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;The &quot;Project Coordinator&quot; Role&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Titles can and do vary widely in the industry and around the world, so you are unlikely to find a canonical answer. However, in the US industries I've worked in, the role you're describing is often termed a &lt;em&gt;Project Coordinator.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One source &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.thebalancecareers.com/what-are-project-coordinators-2779611&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;describes the role&lt;/a&gt; of Project Coordinator as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While the specific role of the project coordinator will vary somewhat from company to company, the following are tasks that project coordinators are typically expected to accomplish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Organize meetings, team celebrations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Arrange for meetings between team members, and between team members and clients&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Record minutes at meetings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Keep detailed project notes and records&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Develop project strategies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Create project schedules&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Create task lists for team members&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Monitor project progress, budget, hours, etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Track and manage incoming paperwork&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Keep all members of the team up-to-date with current information and paperwork&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Communicate with team members to ensure optimal strategy and maximum efficiency&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-08-02T04:14:00.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24631" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-08-02T10:28:14.713" Score="3" ViewCount="86" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are shifting our startup to a data-driven culture, and prioritising what to start testing [UPDATE: i.e. what goes in the product plan]. We have a reasonable number of users, and a working product, and a large backlog of bugs and ideas :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, we're struggling with one thing: how should we decide which changes we should &lt;strong&gt;just do&lt;/strong&gt;, rather than including them in A/B tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It seems fairly clear that bug fixes should just be deployed, and don't need to be A/B tested. Correct?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What about documentation improvements? Should we be A/B testing those, or should we deploy them?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What about UX changes that we have strong qualitative evidence (support requests, user testing) are barriers for users, and that just take an hour or two to fix?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What about UX changes / new features that a paying customer has asked for, but that we don't have any other qual evidence for?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're having a debate internally about whether it's OK to &quot;just do&quot; some stuff, especially where it's &quot;obviously an improvement&quot; like a bug fix, or whether the time taken to do it is small. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or whether that's dangerous, and we need to test &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trade-off is that running multiple A/B tests at once gets complex, and clearly sometimes the opportunity cost of adding a new test, waiting for the results, and doing the work to understand the results (which means we can't do other things) is more than the potential benefit/downside of shipping the change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read &quot;The Lean Startup&quot;, and &quot;Lean Analytics&quot;, but both are pretty vague on this. Both say you should be using design intuition and qualitiative testing at times, but don't give advice on when you should rely on those vs quant testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do other startups handle this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33131" LastEditorUserId="33131" LastEditDate="2018-08-02T16:54:04.057" LastActivityDate="2018-08-04T22:21:39.907" Title="In a data-driven startup, what should we *not* A/B test?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;testing&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;&lt;lean&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24631" CreationDate="2018-08-02T13:04:09.193" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's true there is a very real risk that you can get too caught up in experimentation and move away from &quot;doing work&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think back to your school science experiments. Measure, change one thing, and then measure again. In other words you should adjust one variable and record the impact it has against your goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words (a huge generalisation here) you should test one thing at once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how do you decide what to test?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The recommendation in &lt;a href=&quot;https://thesprintbook.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sprint&lt;/a&gt; is that you should try to hone in on the biggest risk to your future vision. Small experiments may help drive small improvements but in a start up environment you have a much bigger risk - will you still be in business in 6 months!?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lean-Startup-Innovation-Successful-Businesses/dp/0670921602/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1528818427&amp;amp;sr=8-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Lean Startup&lt;/a&gt; puts this quite nicely as trying to fit in enough course pivots before you run out of runway. In other words, any start up has a period of time (be it financially driven or motivation driven) before it runs out of runway. What you need to do is answer the biggest questions as soon as possible so that you're as high in the air as soon as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what are the biggest assumptions you are basing your business on and how do you change them from assumptions to known facts? That's the experiment you want to run!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TLDR&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should run one experiment at a time, each to test the biggest current risk or assumption to your vision!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11768" LastActivityDate="2018-08-02T13:04:09.193" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24633" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24636" CreationDate="2018-08-02T19:38:28.607" Score="9" ViewCount="551" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in government and our department has a communication problem. I'm trying to use a kanban board to solve this. I went ahead and started using a kanban board for just myself so I could figure out what to do about certain unique problems we face that programmers don't - my office does things related to programming, but there's very little programming going on by design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A major issue I'm running into is that most of what I do is just waiting for other people so I can get past blocks and finish up my stuff. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I be handling this in kanban? I've tried raising my work in progress, but that's just lead to more waiting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user32952" LastActivityDate="2018-08-06T13:47:34.373" Title="How do you use kanban in an environment that requires a ton of waiting?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;lean&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8250" CreationDate="2018-08-02T20:46:36.660" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is much better suited for the workplace stackexchange as mentioned above. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point I'd probably lead with getting out of the uncontrollable dumpster fire first, and then I'd think about how I could have tested the company during the interview process. This would a) save me time and b) spare me this nonsensical project organization in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for what to say in your resume/cv, simply either be honest about the company being far less organized and inflexible than it should have been or just don't mention it; tell your employer that this behavior is unacceptable before you get to the job; be honest about climbing out of a dumpster fire. Make sure you document how far out of scope everything was and how little work was actually done. Go ahead and include what you tried to do to fix it and how it was shut down. Then just leave. What they're asking you to do isn't work the money and overtime. Don't sell yourself short.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user32952" LastActivityDate="2018-08-02T20:46:36.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24633" CreationDate="2018-08-02T21:15:53.030" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A kanban board is only a tool to visualize work. What’s missing is a continual improvement process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Kanban Board Isn’t a Process&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A kanban board is a useful tool for visualizing work, but it will not &lt;em&gt;inherently&lt;/em&gt; solve a process problem for you. However, it may surface the dysfunction, and often helps stakeholders to identify &lt;em&gt;where&lt;/em&gt; work is getting stuck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A mature kanban &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; then looks at the waste and disruptions to flow, and feeds them into a continuous improvement process such as a review of the organization’s working agreements or a team retrospective. The outcome of that process is expected to be an evolutionary (not revolutionary) change to the existing process that attempts to reduce waste and improve flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-08-02T21:15:53.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24633" CreationDate="2018-08-02T22:36:18.900" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It looks like you have a process for doing your work that has intermediate stages where other people need to work on each work-item or card. And you have no control over how long they might take to get them done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is typical of a &quot;multi-team&quot; Kanban boards where intermediate wait states between teams can take too long and essentially behave like infinite queues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Todd said above, all you can do is ensure you have a Kanan board that visualizes your process and work - and helps highlights where the bottlenecks - something like the one below - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ygneQ.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ygneQ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, using a Kanban lool or even a spreadsheet, you can get some additional analysis done to see the patterns of your hold-ups - like who or which team/ type of work is causing the most delays, amount of time lost to different wait stages, and it's root cause analysis which could be captured based on some standard reason codes being captured, etc. You can treat the cards as 'blocked cards' for example and an analysis such as the one that our tool &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.digite.com/swiftkanban/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SwiftKanban&lt;/a&gt; provides - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1Jogz.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1Jogz.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of using Kanban is to visualize the bottlenecks and get everyone involved in helping you resolve them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HTH.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2018-08-02T22:36:18.900" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24631" CreationDate="2018-08-03T17:19:26.430" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you are a data driven start-up, I think the criteria to decide wether you should do A/B testing should be data driven.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Avoid at all costs&lt;/em&gt; to rely solely on the time it takes to develop a change as even the smallest changes can have a huge impact on user experience and ultimately in the engagement with your product (I'm mentioning this as your post suggest that you want to use the time it takes to develop as part of the criteria).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some ideas to decide if a task require A/B testing are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What percentage of the users are affected by the new feature?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you don't have data on a &quot;suggested feature&quot;, is there a way to relate it to any other data you are collecting?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What's the historical impact on changing something for this part of the product?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What's the historical engagement changes expected when changing this part of the product?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I want to mention that since it's also important to have a good criteria on &quot;things that you just decide to do&quot; it's imperative to monitor and keep a log of what was the reaction to those changes to use it as a feature indicator for future decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-08-03T17:19:26.430" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24639" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-08-03T18:17:10.497" Score="0" ViewCount="362" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to create a highlevel task that will summarize all the subordinate tasks without indenting the subtasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33145" LastEditorUserId="5438" LastEditDate="2018-08-09T14:39:31.130" LastActivityDate="2019-04-07T20:40:50.533" Title="I want to create a summary task without indenting the subtasks" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;open-source&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24641" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24643" CreationDate="2018-08-04T14:47:38.553" Score="5" ViewCount="1175" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team and I are struggling with breaking down a user story that we have estimated to be 8 points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The user story is : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;A user can sign up to the app using a registration form so that he is&#xA;  granted access&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason why we estimated 8 points is that there are many acceptance tests involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am trying to follow the INVEST model which suggests that stories should be small in order to fit in a Sprint. I can't figure out how to divide this &quot;sign up&quot; story into smaller stories that have value to users.  Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33039" LastActivityDate="2018-08-06T09:51:18.787" Title="How to break down an 8 point story into smaller stories in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24641" CreationDate="2018-08-04T15:18:30.590" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many ways to break down user stories, but since you mentioned a lot of acceptance tests, my first guess would be to break apart the acceptance criteria in to separately deliverable segments. For example, do you have address validation in your acceptance criteria? That can be its own story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As an app admit, I want the registration process to validate addresses&#xA;  to reduce the number of fraudulent account requests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also look to see what the minimum information from the form necessary to register is. It always raises a bit of a red flag for me when a form or screen is provided ahead of time. Usually, this means we're grouping a lot of related functionality into one backlog item because we've anchored on that artifact. It's possible that you could start with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;As a new customer, I can register to use the app so that I can access&#xA;  locked features&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this might ask for a username, password, and email. Then:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;As a new customer, I can include my full name in the registration&#xA;  process so that I don't have to go to another screen and add it&#xA;  later.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from breaking down the story further, it'll force the PO and team to really understand why a user would want to have that feature. I rewrote the so-that for the last one 3 times trying to figure out why the user would actually want to provide that info at registration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-08-04T15:18:30.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24641" CreationDate="2018-08-04T19:59:38.240" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would walk the team through the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agileforall.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Story-Splitting-Flowchart.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Story splitting flowchart&lt;/a&gt;. Often someone has an idea how to split it, utilising the full team to split is often better than just trying to split it by yourself. Split during the planning or refinement sessions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An split here could be something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Login with manual user creation, value is that you can test with real users. (We have some applications where we never built the registration form, user management is done by email. I like that in splits, something you can not built.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Registration form, value is that the users can pre register.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User management to assign access.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is to get feedback, from users, but also feasibility learnings, e.g. can the team built it. I think the suggest splits here will surely get user feedback and or learnings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If an 8 is less than 33% of your sprint, maybe don't worry to much about it. Sure 1/6 or smaller stories is ideal, but a 1/3 sized story once in a while is not to bad. Just make sure it is your first story of the sprint, so that your not left with a half finished story at the end of the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last note, don't prematurely try to split, wait as long as possible. Splitting stories you might never going to pick up is a major waste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2018-08-06T09:51:18.787" LastActivityDate="2018-08-06T09:51:18.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24641" CreationDate="2018-08-04T20:18:47.207" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally we try to avoid implementation details in a user story, so instead of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A user can sign up to the app using a registration form so that he is granted access&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest your original story is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user I would like to sign up to the application so that I can get access&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With something like registration I would often break it down based on bare essentials and nice-to-haves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user I want to sign up to the application so that I can get access&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic story, that is a bare essentials sign up, maybe just capturing their name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user I want the system to store my details so I don't have to re-enter them&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A building block story that means we capture more of the user's details during registration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user I want to have my data entry validated so that I don't accidentally use incorrect values&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use this one to add in validation, like checking post codes, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user I want to be sure my password is difficult to crack so that my account is safe&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use this one to add in password difficulty checks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will often find that acceptance criteria can be turned in to smaller stories if you think of the value they provide from the point of view of the user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-08-04T20:18:47.207" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24641" CreationDate="2018-08-04T23:03:41.740" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As mentioned in a comment, I'd need more details what makes this so difficult - this would give us ideas where to split. But apart from that, there is one way: separate the presentation from the backend operation. I.e., if you cannot complete this task in a sprint, then implement the backend first - so a user could, in theory, log in using a simple POST request; don't implement any GUI, no detailed error messages, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concentrate on making that API call secure as it should be, with features like enforcing HTTPS, storing/checking passwords in a safe manner (i.e., using a good hash, not plaintext), delivering your cookies in a good way, and so on. Decide what kind of session management you want to do (server-side in a DB, or just client-side in a sufficiently encrypted cookie). If you cannot manage the more complicated version in your sprint, then decide to do the easier one instead, and come back to it later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; ship a version that misses essential security features. If you cannot even do &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; in one sprint, then it will be hard to find anything to improve, and you will have to take a good, hard look at your sprint length...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the next sprint, add the GUI part; from that point onward you can more easily deliver only small increments. For example, in the first login GUI release, you may only implement the &quot;positive&quot; path, and skip all fluff regarding error feedback. There might only be generic error messages in case of trouble (or, even, no error messages, just a redirect to the empty form if you so wish).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26382" LastActivityDate="2018-08-04T23:03:41.740" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24648" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25198" CreationDate="2018-08-06T04:47:34.017" Score="0" ViewCount="1255" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is &lt;em&gt;Expected Outcome&lt;/em&gt; interchangeable with &lt;em&gt;Postcondition&lt;/em&gt; depending on your use case structure?   &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Should &lt;em&gt;Expected Outcome&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Postcondition&lt;/em&gt; be explicitly differentiated from each other?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say I have a snippet of the use case of withdrawing money from an ATM (agrees to issue receipt):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Description:&lt;/strong&gt; This use case describes how a Bank Customer uses an ATM to withdraw money from their bank account&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Basic Flow:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Customer inserts their bank card into the card reader of the ATM&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  System ejects the Customer's bank card; the Customer takes the bank card from the machine  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should the &lt;em&gt;Expected Outcome&lt;/em&gt; be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Expected Outcome:&lt;/strong&gt; The ATM dispenses the requested amount of the Customer  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Expected Outcome:&lt;/strong&gt; The Customer obtains cash from the machine  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;with the Postcondition having  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Postcondition: The Customer obtains the receipt from the machine; the system records a transaction log entry for the withdrawal  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was thinking that the &lt;em&gt;Expected Outcome&lt;/em&gt; should be the latter since it agrees with the &lt;em&gt;Description&lt;/em&gt; while the &lt;em&gt;Postcondition&lt;/em&gt; enumerates the activities/conditions that the system will perform upon successful execution of the use case. Am I in the right logic here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33152" LastEditorUserId="33152" LastEditDate="2018-08-06T04:57:47.023" LastActivityDate="2018-11-10T02:38:35.727" Title="Use Case: Postcondition vs Expected Outcome" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;business-case&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24648" CreationDate="2018-08-06T12:08:20.637" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a case like this I would expect a pre-condition like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The customer has a sufficient available funds to cover the withdrawal amount.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would result in a post-condition like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The transaction is recorded and the customer's balance reduced by the withdrawal amount. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The expected result would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The cash is dispensed. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The insertion, validation and return of the card and printing of the receipt could be part of a separate use cases.  These are generally reusable actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="529" LastActivityDate="2018-08-06T12:08:20.637" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24603" CreationDate="2018-08-06T13:33:43.567" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea of a feature team is that it is a cross-functional team with all of the skills needed to deliver any given feature. To build one of these teams, you need to start with identifying what skills are used to create features. I'd usually recommend asking the teams. For a web product, the list would probably look something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;graphic design, html/css, java/python/c#/whatever language, database&#xA;administration, [other domain knowledge areas for your company]&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From here, you want to ask team members to rank themselves in each of these skills. Usually I use a scale something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;0 - no knowledge/experience &#xA;1 - beginner - someone should look over my work &#xA;2 - proficient - able to effectively work alone on most tasks &#xA;3 - expert - can take hard tasks and mentor others&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you can take any team and see if they have gaps (nobody with a 2+ in a skill) or bottlenecks (only 1 person with a 2+ in a skill). If you want to reform your people into feature teams, just ask them to self-organize into groups that have no gaps or bottlenecks (you may decide some bottlenecks are ok for infrequently used skills). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Congratulations. Now you have teams that can all work on any given feature as needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth noting that something it makes sense to break your product down into areas and then the teams may work in one or two product areas, but this is usually reserved for incredibly large products (like Microsoft Office) or products where different areas have radically different skill sets (as an example, I worked in a datacenter company where some teams were building a web application and other teams were building customer storage hardware).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-08-06T13:33:43.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24633" CreationDate="2018-08-06T13:47:34.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kanban by definition &quot;is an approach to incremental, evolutionary process and systems change for knowledge work organizations.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of the problem you are trying to solve is outside your control. Increasing Work in progress limit may not be the only option. My suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Influence and persuasion swim-lane. Influence others to complete their tasks OR if you like, do it for them. This does not require a change the Work in progress  limit.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(Maybe) Blocked = Done. You could potentially mark your blocked card as done. Any further work you deliver can be new Kanban card.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make Kanban board highly visible to stakeholders and peers. Social pressure could help you influence and get things moving.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32694" LastActivityDate="2018-08-06T13:47:34.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24656" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24657" CreationDate="2018-08-07T06:51:36.920" Score="2" ViewCount="708" Body="&lt;p&gt;On Jira's homepage, it displays all tasks assigned to me, including tasks that are &quot;closed&quot;, &quot;obsolete&quot;, or &quot;won't fix&quot;. I tried searching for tasks and filtering by status, but it doesn't display all of the open tasks assigned to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's my search query:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0nCKX.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0nCKX.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a task assigned to me with the status &quot;todo&quot;, but it isn't showing up in this search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I displayed a list of all tasks assigned to me, except tasks with status &quot;closed&quot;, &quot;done&quot;, &quot;obsolete&quot;, or &quot;won't fix&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33170" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2018-08-07T07:50:58.033" LastActivityDate="2018-08-08T16:35:18.200" Title="Viewing all of my open tasks in Jira" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24656" CreationDate="2018-08-07T07:42:21.857" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just build your own query, excluding issues which have a certain status. Click the advanced button on the right to use JQL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PZH3T.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PZH3T.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your query would like something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;assignee = currentUser() and (status not in (Closed, Done, Obsolete))&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;assignee = currentUser() and resolved is EMPTY&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learn to use JQL:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;JQL stands for JIRA Query Language (not to be confused with Java Query&#xA;  Language). It’s the most flexible way to search for issues in JIRA and&#xA;  is for everyone&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/jiracore/blog/2015/07/search-jira-like-a-boss-with-jql&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://confluence.atlassian.com/jiracore/blog/2015/07/search-jira-like-a-boss-with-jql&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2018-08-08T16:35:18.200" LastActivityDate="2018-08-08T16:35:18.200" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24661" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-08-08T12:40:40.577" Score="0" ViewCount="5828" Body="&lt;p&gt;I met a business/management consultant 2 months ago working in one of the top business consulting firms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He explained to us that he, as a Business Consultant, can successfully manage projects more effectively and efficiently than a Project Manager. According to him, a Project Manager is a focused person, while a Business Management Consultant is a multi-focus expert. It helps him to do better planning, decision making, and long-term goal achievements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always thought a Project Manager is better than a Business Management Consultant. But now, after understanding what a Business Management Consultant can do, my opinion has changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read &lt;a href=&quot;https://targetjobs.co.uk/career-sectors/management-and-business/advice/312783-what-is-the-difference-between-a-management-consultancy-role-and-management-in&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; and it seems like a Management Business Consultant is better than a Project Manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though, not all Management Consultants are not better; only the right one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who is better at managing projects? A Project Manager or a Business/Management Consultant?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33181" LastEditorUserId="7559" LastEditDate="2018-08-08T14:45:14.177" LastActivityDate="2020-10-08T09:18:21.443" Title="What is the difference between Business/Management Consultant and Project Manager?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;business-analyst&gt;&lt;business-improvement&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24661" CreationDate="2018-08-08T13:29:10.010" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;A title is just a name.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the first jobs I applied for just out of university was a position called &quot;Superstar Programmer&quot;. Another was &quot;Junior Programmer&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Had I taken the first job, would I suddenly be a &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt; programmer than had I taken the second? No. Of course not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You know what the job title was of the best Project Manager with whom I've ever worked? &quot;Business Analyst&quot;. Project Management wasn't even in her official job description - she just did it because she had to, and she happened to be quite skilled at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, if you ask a 'Business Management Consultant' which is better at Project Management, 9 times out of 10 s/he'll say a Business Management Consultant. And if you ask a Project Manager, 9 times out of 10, s/he'll say a Project Manager. But if you ask me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;It doesn't matter.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't put any weight on what people call themselves (other than as a convenient pre-filter label; you likely don't want to go looking for a 'Senior Burger Flipper' to be your Project Manager. Likely) and instead focus on the individuals' skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-08-08T13:29:10.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23807" CreationDate="2018-08-08T13:49:34.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.projectmanagement.org.za/page/PrincipalAgency/The-role-of-the-Principal-Agent-across-the-Built-Environment-Professio.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt;, the Principal Agent is the person appointed by the client and who has full authority and obligation to act in terms of the construction contracts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Project Manager is the person who ensures everything runs according to plan. A Project Manager may not have any or much authority when it comes to changing anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would seem that it's the Project Manager's responsibility to keep the project on schedule, and the Principal Agent's responsibility to authorize any changes needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2018-08-08T13:49:34.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24460" CreationDate="2018-08-08T13:58:09.633" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would depend on the product you use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.projectlibre.com/blog/timeline-minuteshours&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ProjectLibre blog&lt;/a&gt; says it's not possible in ProjectLibre:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the Task View you can zoom into an hourly format.  It is actually 2-hour increments.  Project Management to the hourly level in tasks is pretty granular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OTOH in &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/change-a-task-duration-0c551218-e543-4a5a-80f5-363c5c7c4e49&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MS Project&lt;/a&gt; you can choose between minutes (m), hours (h), days (d), weeks (w), or months (mo).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2018-08-08T13:58:09.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24422" CreationDate="2018-08-08T14:12:40.010" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you've discovered, there are 2 classic definitions of benchmarking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Comparing to others in the market&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Comparing to oneself over time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there's a 3rd. according to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.dictionary.com/browse/benchmark?s=t&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dictionary&lt;/a&gt;, related more to computing: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;comparing to a defined imaginary reference&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or as the dictionary says: an established point of reference against which computers or programs can be measured in tests comparing their performance, reliability, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related to robotics, &lt;a href=&quot;https://blog.robotiq.com/what-is-robot-benchmarking&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this blog&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;claims Technical industries often have well-established benchmarks, &lt;strong&gt;but not robotics&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It then goes on to inform us that &lt;em&gt;a team of &lt;a href=&quot;https://phys.org/news/2016-11-standard-robotics.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;researchers at Yale announced&lt;/a&gt; their proposal for a suite of task-based benchmarks for robotic manipulation. The test suite contains of 77 objects and can fit in a suitcase&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you read that &lt;a href=&quot;https://blog.robotiq.com/what-is-robot-benchmarking&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog entry&lt;/a&gt; to become familiar with the latest trends in robotics benchmarking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to answer our question: Neither definition may be correct. The task may require a newly developed Robotics benchmarking suite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2018-08-08T14:12:40.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24025" CreationDate="2018-08-08T14:36:27.840" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you suspected, Information Change is not synonymous with Change Management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Change Management is a defined process for changing the scope of a project: the forms to fill in, the people to inform, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Information Change seems to be the field of studying the impact of changing certain parts of a data set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concepts that you can get a peek at in the abstract about &lt;a href=&quot;https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1008222603071&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reasoning about Information Change&lt;/a&gt; like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You know the meaning of a&#xA;  sentence if you know the change it brings about in the information state of anyone&#xA;  who accepts the news conveyed by it&quot;, the meaning of a sentence is associated with&#xA;  a function on information states. We will discuss Veltman’s update semantics as&#xA;  a simple example to illustrate the main notions involved. The language of update&#xA;  semantics is a standard propositional modal language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An update of an information state ᵅ with a sentence p results in a state containing&#xA;  all and only the worlds in ᵅ in which p is true. The result of updating a state ᵅ&#xA;  with a negated sentence is a state containing all worlds in ᵅ that do not survive in&#xA;  ᵅ updated with δ. Conjunction is defined as intersection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another glimpse can be seen from the description of this workshop on &lt;a href=&quot;http://events.illc.uva.nl/LogiCIC14/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Correlated Information Change&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of interest to project managers would be the domino-effect that changing one datum can have on the entire set - and this is where Information Change would meet Change Management and Scheduling. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2018-08-08T14:36:27.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24661" CreationDate="2018-08-08T14:55:22.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any kind of &lt;em&gt;consultant&lt;/em&gt; is in the business of telling you that they are the best for the job (regardless of what that job might be) and you should hire them for a metric-manure-ton of $$$. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that that specific individual you met is good at their job in that regard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please keep in mind that a project manager is somebody the company hires. The management of the project is their first priority. A consultant is somebody rented to you, &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; first priority is making &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; company happy, &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; company's project and its management is a secondary objective at best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, in my experience, personal skill trumps any kind of job title or experience in a job that ends in &lt;em&gt;manager&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-09-06T20:10:37.063" LastActivityDate="2018-09-06T20:10:37.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20987" CreationDate="2018-08-08T17:59:17.200" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I price the base project with the management oversight needed.  Then if the customer wants an added feature, the added management oversight is included in the price of the added feature.  If you are truly confident that no added management oversight is needed for a particular added feature, then leave it off that particular feature's cost.  This approach gives you the flexibility to add the cost only where you believe it is applicable. This might produce some PM overlap if the customer wants all the available features. However, if you get it all done and come in under budget, the customer will be happy.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33048" LastActivityDate="2018-08-08T17:59:17.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24669" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-08-08T18:52:51.453" Score="9" ViewCount="644" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen a scrum team trying to hire a product owner. They advertise for scrum skills, and experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it make sense to hire a product owner from outside the company?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I do what skills should they have?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3424" LastEditorUserId="26063" LastEditDate="2018-08-09T08:50:45.813" LastActivityDate="2018-08-14T09:43:04.670" Title="In scrum, does it ever make sense to hire a product owner?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24661" CreationDate="2018-08-08T19:47:59.620" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a certified PM and there is no &quot;better than&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone compares roles (people) you should be very cautious. What else did he talk about? Himself? Time to optimize your warning systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to Consulting, to quote Bertrand Meyer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The role of a trainer or consultant is to empower the customer, not to&#xA;  make himself indispensable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consultants can be anything, from engineering to medical doctor. There is one lesson to learn here: Forget titles, instead focus on certification, degrees, acumen and more over, the personality, character, attitude of persons. Pretending to be even goes to CEO level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21496" LastActivityDate="2018-08-08T19:47:59.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24669" CreationDate="2018-08-08T21:09:27.667" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt;: Probably not, unless they bring some key expertise you did not already have in your company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends, most product owners I have seen on teams are what I would call a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/what-proxy-product-owner-why-it-found-so-often&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;proxy product owner&lt;/a&gt;. Translating business needs into stories and helping stakeholder prioritise between them. Shielding the team while understanding what technical debt means, and gathering enough business knowledge to fulfil the daily needs of the Scrum team. Still I would prefer someone from inside the company even for this role, because they bring domain knowledge and maybe can grow into a real product owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An entrepreneurial product owner. Someone who owns the product. Someone who sets strategy and vision. This probably isn't someone which you can hire into the company. Unless this person brings in expert domain knowledge which you need for the product otherwise not yet found in your company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also depends on your scale. You might have an &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/the-chief-product-owner-on-large-agile-projects&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chief Product Owner&lt;/a&gt; and a couple of &lt;a href=&quot;https://less.works/less/less-huge/area-product-owner.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;area product owners&lt;/a&gt;. They should own their area or they are also just proxies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for proxy and area product owners you could hire a quick learner with experience in being the Scrum product owner for a single Scrum team. This could get them onto speed quickly. This might make sense if you have a lot of teams, lets say three or more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are looking for someone to grow your business and OWN the product I couldn't careless about their current Scrum skills, those we can teach. Business sense, expert domain knowledge and a good feeling for long term strategy in your industry is a bit harder to train.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definite NO if it is your first product owner, unless they bring something really special beside the Scrum skills: a sales network, in-depth industry knowledge, funding, etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen Waterfall-Agile companies in Germany hiring product owners to split ideas into long lists of Epics and Stories. These are more business requirements analysts. Sort of proxy product owner but worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it depends on the type of product owner your looking for, but for a true product owner as Scrum intended it. No, it does not make sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2018-08-09T08:56:58.673" LastActivityDate="2018-08-09T08:56:58.673" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24172" CreationDate="2018-08-09T09:22:42.090" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;@Venture2099 has already answered better than I can, so I will answer from a different angle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a company (I do not remember who), that did a survey to see what people thought of a potential future product. They got 10% loved it, thought it was the best thing they had ever seen. and 90% hated it. This seemed like a disaster, normally they would not go to market unless they got over 80% liking it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But someone pointed out that, that was 80% liking (not loving), and that this would translate into sales to 2% of the population (of the correct age etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They took a gamble and ended up selling it to all of the 10% of people that loved it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However whichever way you go, you need good, un-bias, data. And remember that data and statistics can only disprove your hypothesis, it can never prove it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3424" LastActivityDate="2018-08-09T09:22:42.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24669" CreationDate="2018-08-09T10:33:46.433" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/strong&gt; Sure, where &lt;em&gt;else&lt;/em&gt; would you hire one? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does it make sense to hire a product owner from outside the company?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, why not. You hire all your other staff from outside the company, product owners don't grow on magical trees in the basement. It's a &lt;em&gt;job&lt;/em&gt; just like Scrum Master or Member of the Development Team. You need one, you hire one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If I do what skills should they have?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They should know Scrum (obviously) and have experience in their subject. You would not hire just &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; developer to develop your product either. If for example a medical company hires, I would expect to see optional medical requirements, a manufacturer for embedded car parts may want to have experience in that part. But in the end, that goes for all roles. Every product owner is building a product for others, the customers. Understanding what the customer wants is a key part and the PO needs to stay on top of that and put that into new user stories all the time. Assuming the PO could come with that knowledge already existent is dangerous. Sure, people with experience have a head start, but learning and adapting is a key part of their job, so each potential PO should be able to start from zero. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2018-08-09T10:33:46.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24547" CreationDate="2018-08-09T13:15:12.583" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Doing it, and getting it done, are not separate tasks (or subtasks).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A backlog can consist of nothing more than definition-of-dones.&#xA;Often is is vaguer, and this definition is created in the sprint, then it is done. These two activities should not however appear as two tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may have disagreement of what done looks like. I may argue for Test-Driven-Development, the rest of the team may argue for something less rigorous. Shouting loudly will not work. Therefore I will accept the teams definition, but will track to so if features are revisited. If we are revisiting features too frequently, I will show the team that our definition-of-done is not working. (There may be other reasons to re-evaluate definition-of-done. E.g. Increasing technical debt, and fear of refactoring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3424" LastActivityDate="2018-08-09T13:15:12.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24456" CreationDate="2018-08-09T13:24:05.590" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is also a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstadter%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;more generic law&lt;/a&gt; which emphasizes &lt;code&gt;even when you aware that law&lt;/code&gt; part:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26385" LastActivityDate="2018-08-09T13:24:05.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24535" CreationDate="2018-08-09T13:25:36.070" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A feature is done, when it could potentially be released to a customer. There may be good business reasons not to release it to the customer, but this does not change whether it is done or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if it is ready to be released mark it as done. Track to see your revisit rate, if this is high, then re-evaluate definition-of-done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a separate project the business can look at inventory levels (done work, that is not being sold). Don't get involved with this, at this time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3424" LastActivityDate="2018-08-09T13:25:36.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24639" CreationDate="2018-08-09T14:38:17.083" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;This approach is not recommended because it will inflate the total work content&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question can apply to MS Project and open source Project Management tools such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectlibre.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ProjectLibre&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.openproject.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;OpenProject&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let us assume that you can do what you are asking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a way to create a highlevel task that will summarize all the&#xA;  subordinate tasks without indenting the subtasks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, in the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) of the project, you will have the individual tasks counted once and the summary task counted again as a duplicate, thereby inflating the overall work content of the project. So, this is not recommended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2018-08-09T14:38:17.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24648" CreationDate="2018-08-09T15:41:03.243" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess you are looking for a difference between &lt;code&gt;Minimal Guarantee&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;Success Guarantee&lt;/code&gt; as &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_case#Fully_dressed&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;defined&lt;/a&gt; by Cockburn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the system records a transaction log entry for the withdrawal&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is a requirement from some stakeholder to this use case. Regardless of how withdrawal went our security chief requires detailed logs of the operation. It's a &lt;code&gt;Minimal Guarantee&lt;/code&gt;: must be fulfilled &lt;strong&gt;as long as use case execution started&lt;/strong&gt; and regardless of which alternate and especially exceptional flow it went.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ATM dispenses the requested amount of the Customer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;System ejects the Customer's bank card&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are again requirements from some stakeholder to this use case. If not met then something went wrong and user goal is not achieved. It's a &lt;code&gt;Success Guarantee&lt;/code&gt;: must be fulfilled when &lt;strong&gt;the use case completes successfully&lt;/strong&gt; regardless if it went through its main success scenario or any alternative path(s). Typically not fulfilled if an exceptional flow is reached (ATM has no cash for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Customer obtains the receipt from the machine&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could be a &lt;code&gt;Success Guarantee&lt;/code&gt; of the same use case only if there is a requirement that user must always receive a receipt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Customer obtains cash from the machine&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the Customer takes the bank card from the machine&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are neither, you don't have any control over user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26385" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-08-09T15:41:03.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24680" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-08-09T17:45:12.187" Score="1" ViewCount="178" Body="&lt;p&gt;With MS-Project 2016 (version up-to-date) I have created a custom report (showing filtered tasks). I want to sort it ascending by Finish date (soonest finish on the top). But it does not work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sorts but it keeps the initial structure. When I sort in the normal table view, it works.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found other references to that but no answer that works for me&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mpug.com/forums/topic/project-2013-sorting-by-date-duration-etc-not-working-in-custom-report/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.mpug.com/forums/topic/project-2013-sorting-by-date-duration-etc-not-working-in-custom-report/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It must be something very simple that I have to setup in the report. But I cannot find it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help?  Many thanks &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33197" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-01T10:03:07.977" LastActivityDate="2018-11-01T10:03:07.977" Title="MS-Project 2016: Sort does not work" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20186" CreationDate="2018-08-09T20:34:42.087" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Accordingly to McConnell (&quot;Software Estimation&quot;), T-shirt sizing is helpful to help product team to prioritize things in backlog, because the sizing let them understand priority of a feature basing on its size and value relation. So, you can use it for this purpose. And you can create a custom field for it, and even hide it from developers after it's moved across workflow, if you will (though, IMHO, it will not &quot;anchor&quot; developers so much as you are afraid of).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to produce numeric estimates in order to forecast completing dates, you need to have numeric estimates given by developers indeed, like guys are advising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32641" LastActivityDate="2018-08-09T20:34:42.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24669" CreationDate="2018-08-09T21:41:08.867" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Summary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does it make sense to hire a product owner from outside the company? If I do what skills should they have?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Maybe.&lt;/strong&gt; A better question is whether someone from inside the company or outside the company will have a better vision for a given product. I've personally been successful as an outside Product Owner, and have seen inside Product Owners both succeed and fail. So the answer is, as usual, &quot;it depends.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Guide &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-po&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;describes the Product Owner role&lt;/a&gt; as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the product resulting from work of the Development Team. How this is done may vary widely across organizations, Scrum Teams, and individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is the sole person responsible for managing the Product Backlog. Product Backlog management includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Clearly expressing Product Backlog items;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Ordering the items in the Product Backlog to best achieve goals and missions;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Optimizing the value of the work the Development Team performs;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Ensuring that the Product Backlog is visible, transparent, and clear to all, and shows what the Scrum Team will work on next; and,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Ensuring the Development Team understands items in the Product Backlog to the level needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pragmatically speaking, in order to manage the Product Backlog and optimize value, a Product Owner needs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a strong and well-communicated &lt;em&gt;vision&lt;/em&gt; for the product; and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sufficient knowledge of the product, its features, and its value proposition to be able to prioritize features and define iterative goals for the Scrum Team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, this means that the best Product Owners have experience in the product's domain, and the &lt;em&gt;ideal&lt;/em&gt; Product Owner also has experience with the company, its stakeholders, and its customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of these things are, strictly speaking, upfront requirements for someone assigned to the role. A Product Owner can grow into the role, and can gain the essential knowledge over the lifecycle of the project. However, a person lacking these things is likely to start out as a proxy Product Owner, rather than the real decision-maker for the project. This is contrary to the spirit of Scrum, which says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is one person, not a committee. The Product Owner may represent the desires of a committee in the Product Backlog, but those wanting to change a Product Backlog item’s priority must address the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some respects, the Product Owner &lt;em&gt;defines&lt;/em&gt; the product. So having a Product Owner without sufficient vision or knowledge to drive the project is unlikely to succeed in the role. Furthermore, a project that lacks a strong Product Owner role is unlikely to function smoothly, or to deliver peak value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While all this may point to the notion that a Product Owner should come from inside a company, that's not necessarily true. Sometimes, an outside perspective from someone who has deep knowledge of a market or experience delivering similar products can be exceptionally valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is a team sport, and it's hard to succeed when if the team is short a strong player in a key role. In the end, &quot;inside&quot; or &quot;outside&quot; are less important than ensuring that the person filling the role is the right person with the right mix of knowledge and skills, as well as being the right fit for the company and the Scrum Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-08-09T21:41:08.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24683" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-08-10T07:51:57.213" Score="0" ViewCount="91" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to change the start date of a specific section in my project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I do that, it automatically changes the mode of this section from auto to manually schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to change the date and still remain on auto-schedule mode?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33202" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-08-10T13:05:08.773" LastActivityDate="2018-08-10T13:05:08.773" Title="Change manually to auto schedule" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24683" CreationDate="2018-08-10T12:57:44.897" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From MSP 2010, typing a date directly into the Start column of a &lt;em&gt;Summary&lt;/em&gt; task automatically converts it to manual mode.  Instead, double-click on the task and enter a &quot;Start No Earlier Than&quot; constraint on the Advanced tab of the Summary Task Information dialog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2018-08-10T12:57:44.897" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24685" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24686" CreationDate="2018-08-10T19:07:34.027" Score="7" ViewCount="1428" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are used to create multiple &lt;em&gt;sub-tasks&lt;/em&gt; for each &lt;em&gt;user story&lt;/em&gt; and provide each &lt;em&gt;sub-task&lt;/em&gt; with an &lt;strong&gt;estimate&lt;/strong&gt; in hours and assignee (&lt;strong&gt;back&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;front-end&lt;/strong&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the following outcome:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Total &lt;strong&gt;estimated&lt;/strong&gt; time needed in hours for &lt;em&gt;user story&lt;/em&gt; divided over &lt;strong&gt;back&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;front-end&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The availability of both &lt;strong&gt;back&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;front-end&lt;/strong&gt; developers can be taken into account when user stories are placed in sprints&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developers are scheduled accordingly in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.getharvest.com/forecast/harvest-and-forecast&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Harvest Forecast&lt;/a&gt; based on their availability and &lt;strong&gt;back&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;front-end&lt;/strong&gt; role&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite, we are unable to provide an accurate estimated time. That is why we want to adjust our project management:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/the-main-benefit-of-story-points&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Estimate&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;user stories&lt;/em&gt; based on story points instead of hours&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/sCCUEtjCpCs?t=1m26s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Estimate&lt;/strong&gt; no more &lt;em&gt;sub-tasks&lt;/em&gt;, only the &lt;em&gt;user story&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Switch to Trello or Jira instead of Redmine&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planning to do more Scrum activities&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Daily stand-up&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint review&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Estimate&lt;/strong&gt; story points for &lt;em&gt;user stories&lt;/em&gt; with entire team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When we apply all this, we will most probably achieve a more accurate total &lt;strong&gt;estimate&lt;/strong&gt; for a sprint and plan a feasible amount of work in a sprint based on the velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We only have one problem. If we no longer use &lt;em&gt;sub-tasks&lt;/em&gt; for the &lt;strong&gt;estimation&lt;/strong&gt;, we also do not know how many hours a &lt;strong&gt;back&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;front-end&lt;/strong&gt; developer needs to be scheduled in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.getharvest.com/forecast/harvest-and-forecast&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Harvest Forecast&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence the question: how to schedule &lt;strong&gt;back&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;front-end&lt;/strong&gt; developers based on story points?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2765/why-use-story-points-instead-of-hours-for-estimating&quot;&gt;Why use story points instead of hours for estimating?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/15516/why-use-both-story-points-and-hours&quot;&gt;Why use both story points and hours?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/17600/best-measurable-units-for-non-cross-functional-team-estimation&quot;&gt;Best measurable units for non cross-functional team estimation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/8819/how-to-estimate-accurate-velocity-when-team-members-are-on-leave/17262#17262&quot;&gt;How to estimate accurate velocity when team members are on leave&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33205" LastEditorUserId="33205" LastEditDate="2018-08-10T20:26:13.173" LastActivityDate="2018-12-14T22:18:36.697" Title="How to schedule back and front-end developers based on story points?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24685" CreationDate="2018-08-10T19:36:38.730" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I've interpreted correctly, your Question is how to convert Story Point estimations for User Stories into time-estimations for each individual developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My answer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only possible reason I can think for why you would &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; individual estimates is for individual KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Which, in my experience, are themselves harmful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, you should estimate for the &lt;em&gt;Team&lt;/em&gt;. Treat the Team as a cohesive whole. Rather than taking Developer F 1 day and Developer B 2 days, the story takes the Team 2 story points. (Which you can then convert to time estimates for the Team, as I believe has been answered here before).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your comment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But what if it turns out that it is 70% back and 30% front-end?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This smells to me of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://dzone.com/articles/100-utilization-myth&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;100% Utilization Fallacy&lt;/a&gt;. So it turns out to take 70% back-end and 30% front-end... so what? That means the front-end developer(s) can spend more effective use of their slack time that Sprint. Maybe they can pair up with the back-end developer(s) in order to become &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-shaped_skills&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;T-shaped&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-12-14T22:18:36.697" LastActivityDate="2018-12-14T22:18:36.697" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24685" CreationDate="2018-08-10T21:21:52.380" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;An approach I have seen done successfully is as follows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team estimates each backlog item in story points. The whole team estimates and they agree on the story points figure based on relative sizing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story points &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt; in previous sprints is used to calculate the velocity of the team. This provides a guide to the capacity of future sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the planning meeting the team pulls stories from the product backlog until they have reached their capacity. For example, if the team's velocity is 30 story points, they would add stories to the sprint backlog until they reach close to 30 story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, the team looks at the highest priority story in the sprint backlog and breaks it down in to technical tasks. They do hour-based estimates on the technical tasks and note if they require a specialisation (e.g. front-end developer or back-end developer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team then uses the same approach on each of the remaining stories on the sprint backlog. As they are doing this, the Scrum Master tracks the hours for each specialisation. If they notice that one specialisation is getting overloaded, they tell the team. At this point the team can either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remove any stories from the sprint backlog that have not yet been broken down in to technical tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look at the top of the product backlog and see if there are stories they can swap in to the sprint that creates a better balance of work for the various specialisations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This ensures that no specialisation becomes overloaded in the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth noting that a better long-term approach is to ensure that team members have &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-shaped_skills&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;T shaped skills&lt;/a&gt;. If team members can do &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; front-end and back-end development work then they can:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be much more flexible with the types of stories they bring in to sprints&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Worry less about team members being under or over worked&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spend less time estimating&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-08-10T21:21:52.380" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24688" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24689" CreationDate="2018-08-11T22:16:29.543" Score="4" ViewCount="256" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have new teams working on scrum and they estimates all the points of a several ammount of stories. But, at the beggining, they have no reference of how ammount of points could be delivered in two-week sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We see at the end of the sprints that not all the points are being completed. Near to the end, the team is overhelming, and the quality is being sacrified just for deliver on time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know if this kind of KPI makes sence in scrum environment, and if not, how  can we assure the team are being as productive as they normally are?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32948" LastActivityDate="2018-08-13T14:01:03.120" Title="Is a good Scrum practice to meassure the developer team by the story points completed at the end of the sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;kpi&gt;&lt;measurement&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24688" CreationDate="2018-08-11T23:53:12.483" Score="10" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is not intrinsically about doing more work faster, although high-performing teams often do. Like most agile frameworks, Scrum is about doing &lt;em&gt;just enough&lt;/em&gt; of the &lt;strong&gt;right&lt;/strong&gt; work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Measuring the team against a target velocity is a Scrum anti-pattern, as is measuring productivity from the number of backlog items or story points completed. Instead, you should measure the Scrum Team's effectiveness (including the effectiveness of the Product Owner!) in meeting the Sprint Goal each iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Sprint Goals&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal of a Sprint is never to do lots of work, complete &lt;em&gt;N&lt;/em&gt; stories, match historical or projected velocities, or achieve 100% utilization of resources. If you're managing to these sorts of metrics, you're violating core agile and Scrum principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, the Sprint is an ephemeral time box that is filled with Product Backlog Items that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;collectively express a coherent Sprint Goal, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;all fit within a single iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This focus on a central coherence is not discretionary. It is a foundational element of formal Scrum. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-planning&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide's Sprint Planning section&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprint Goal&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Sprint Goal is an objective set for the Sprint that can be met through the implementation of Product Backlog. It provides guidance to the Development Team on why it is building the Increment. It is created during the Sprint Planning meeting. The Sprint Goal gives the Development Team some flexibility regarding the functionality implemented within the Sprint. The selected Product Backlog items deliver one coherent function, which can be the Sprint Goal. The Sprint Goal can be any other coherence that causes the Development Team to work together rather than on separate initiatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As the Development Team works, it keeps the Sprint Goal in mind. In order to satisfy the Sprint Goal, it implements functionality and technology. If the work turns out to be different than the Development Team expected, they collaborate with the Product Owner to negotiate the scope of Sprint Backlog within the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Velocity's a Forecast, Not a Target&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity is a commonly-used metric in agile frameworks, but is not formally a part of Scrum. Furthermore, the correct use of velocity is &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; as a management target or as a measure of productivity. When used properly, velocity should be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Expressed as a &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/23190/4271&quot;&gt;range or trailing average&lt;/a&gt; rather than a single value.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Used to &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/23060/4271&quot;&gt;estimate team capacity&lt;/a&gt; for upcoming iterations based on historical averages.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A sanity check about how much work is &lt;em&gt;too much&lt;/em&gt; to be accepted into an upcoming Sprint, rather than setting a goal for how much work the team should take on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, planned work should never exceed the length of a single iteration. &lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com/a/scrumplop.org/published-patterns/retrospective-pattern-language/teams-that-finish-early-accelerate-faster&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Finishing early&lt;/a&gt; is great, while &lt;a href=&quot;https://dzone.com/articles/100-utilization-myth&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;insufficient slack&lt;/a&gt; will typically reduce flow and throughput.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Don't Measure Productivity with Velocity&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While velocity can be helpful in &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/18400/4271&quot;&gt;initial backlog estimation&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/16372/how-do-you-schedule-delivery-dates-in-scrum/16376#16376&quot;&gt;agile release planning&lt;/a&gt;, forecasting capacity for the current Sprint, or identifying hidden process problems through &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/24585/what-can-i-constructively-say-when-looking-at-the-sprint-burndown/24588#24588&quot;&gt;trendline analysis&lt;/a&gt;, it's most definitely &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; an accurate measure of productivity at the individual or even team level. It's a planning value, and (to a lesser extent) a detective control for the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity is often misused as a management target, and a way to &quot;hold developers accountable.&quot; If you're doing this, you're doing agile wrong!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/15753/4271&quot;&gt;proxy metric for capacity&lt;/a&gt;, and perturbations in flow are more often attributable to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;process problems such as scope creep, ill-defined user stories, an incoherent Sprint Goal, or a lack of rigor in the Definition of Done;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;outside or external dependencies such as out-of-band testing or vendor delays; and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;technical debt accumulated through the project life cycle.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming your team has reached a &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/17701/should-velocity-increase-with-time/17705#17705&quot;&gt;stable velocity&lt;/a&gt;, if velocity suddenly drops then you should certainly work with the team (and especially the Product Owner) to identify the underlying process problems. Once identified, issues can be addressed in a variety of ways including scope negotiation, early Sprint termination, and inspect-and-adapt events such as Sprint Retrospectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;See Also&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/22245/what-to-do-when-mid-sprint-you-realize-some-stories-wont-be-done/22266#22266&quot;&gt;What to do when mid-sprint, you realize some stories won&amp;#39;t be done?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/8433/what-are-the-right-conclusions-to-draw-from-the-success-or-failure-of-a-sprint/8440#8440&quot;&gt;What are the right conclusions to draw from the success or failure of a Sprint?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-08-11T23:53:12.483" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24690" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24693" CreationDate="2018-08-12T15:05:59.820" Score="2" ViewCount="140" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Scenario&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases, we cannot complete all the task in the 4 hour that scrum specify by a 2-week sprint. This may be caused by a bad previous refinery, uncertain work or just big changes reveal in the scrum review that force the PO to re-investigate and re-doing things in a short period of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Question&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what can we do when the timebox of sprint planning is exhausted, Should we start with the well defined stories, wait more hours to start the sprint or just define it while sprint is up and running?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32948" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-08-12T21:11:49.770" Title="What Scrum especify when the time of the sprint planning is exhausted before you finish with all task?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;timeboxing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24691" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-08-12T15:52:17.717" Score="1" ViewCount="146" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going through the PMI training videos for a CAPM. In one of them, the presenter states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If a business analyst is assigned to a project, that individual is&#xA;  responsible for defining requirements activities, taking over your&#xA;  role as project manager. You may collaborate with business analysts to&#xA;  obtain, document, and manage stakeholder requirements to meet business&#xA;  and project objectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My take-away from this is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a business analyst is assigned to the project, that individual is responsible for all requirements-gathering and definition work, including the development of the traceability matrix.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a business anlyist is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; assigned to the project, all responsibility for gathering and documenting requirements falls on the project manager.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this correct? Or am I misunderstanding something fundamental here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if a business analyst is assigned to a project, what is the role of the project manager in reviewing and recommending corrections or changes to the requirements (in the event that the PM or team discover that they are incomplete, out of scope, or inaccurate)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32266" LastEditorUserId="32266" LastEditDate="2018-08-20T10:12:10.203" LastActivityDate="2018-08-20T17:22:27.807" Title="PMI: Responsibility for Scope Management" Tags="&lt;pmi&gt;&lt;scope-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24690" CreationDate="2018-08-12T17:01:59.570" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: You start the sprint with what you have at the end of the planning session. During the retrospective, you evaluate why the planning overran the timebox and what can be done to reduce the likelihood that it happens again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2018-08-12T17:01:59.570" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24690" CreationDate="2018-08-12T18:17:02.470" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; defines it as a timebox, meaning the outside time is the maximum time to spend. That being said, if you're going to just continue sprint planning without calling it that anyway, you're just hiding the disfunction. I would be inclined to make what seems like the best call in the moment and then reflect as a team about why it occurred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if it's taking long because the team is new and they are learning about how to run Sprint Planning while they are doing it, then the problem will resolve itself. On the other hand, if you have a bunch of items ready to work, you may decide to just start with what you have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's important to keep in mind that the structure given in the Scrum Guide should help alleviate this problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Topic One of planning is what can be done in the sprint from the product backlog. This is where the PO sets their preferred direction and the team weighs in on what items seem reasonable. After this topic, you have a proposed Sprint Backlog and Sprint Goal. This can be enough to go on, though it'll be rocky. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Topic Two is for the team to put together a preliminary plan on how to do the work, starting with the backlog items at the top of the list. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that Topic One doesn't include planning or tasking out work. It's just selection. This keeps deep dive discussions one one or two items from dragging out and keeping sprint planning from effectively getting done in the timebox. When you move on to Topic Two, you get as far as you get. The first things to be worked on are the first to be talked about, so wherever you get to is fine to start the sprint.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-08-12T18:17:02.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24690" CreationDate="2018-08-12T21:11:49.770" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing to note is that you don't have to plan everything before you start the sprint. Mike Cohn has a really good post on why &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/teams-dont-need-to-think-of-everything-during-sprint-planning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;teams don't need to think of everything in sprint planning&lt;/a&gt;. Don't be afraid to make a start on the sprint and then get the team together every now and then to do additional planning. This allows the team to adapt during the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, if sprint planning is uncomfortable that is usually an indication that you are not doing enough product backlog refinement. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#artifacts-productbacklog&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide suggests up to 10% of the sprint should be spent refining the backlog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, this is just the kind of topic that should be raised and discussed during the team's retrospectives. Perhaps the team already knows why this is happening and just needs the time to discuss it and find a solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-08-12T21:11:49.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24695" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24697" CreationDate="2018-08-13T09:25:48.000" Score="8" ViewCount="1424" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for project management techniques and tools to help with the following situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(P.S. I know this question is technically off-topic but I felt &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/556/revisiting-tool-recommendation-questions&quot;&gt;Revisiting Tool Recommendation Questions&lt;/a&gt; expressed a degree of leeway. I am new to project management. I'm sure the community has a lot of useful advice for me.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are doing a software development project for a client which has a fixed budget (about USD 100k) and fixed time (about 6 months). I have a team of developers working on it. The requirements are clear (and I've worked with this client many times before so I don't predict big problems there.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, how can I keep this project on track in terms of time and budget? (If I go over budget then that'll be very frustrating, despite all the work we're going to put into the project, it would make more sense for me to fire everyone and just sit in Starbucks all day... I really want to avoid that!!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking, you can't change the past, but you can change the future. So I need to keep a track on the costs that have happened, and the predicted costs and effort in the future. And keep a constant eye on whether we're predicted to hit the time and budget constraints, and if not, try to take action. The sooner I know the more chance there is of being able to correct course; if I find out the night before the deadline we're not going to make it, it's too late to correct it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what I've considered:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum.&lt;/strong&gt; Dividing the project up into sprints. But, because I know what all the sprints are going to contain ahead of time, it's not really &quot;agile&quot;. Is this a good/useful option?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use a tool such as MS Project Online, LiquidPlanner or similar,&lt;/strong&gt; to enter all tasks and estimates. Team knows what to do, team updates estimates and tasks as soon as things change. I keep a constant eye on spent budget, predicted budget, predicted delivery date. Which tools should I look at there?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use an offline tool such as Excel or MS Project (offline).&lt;/strong&gt; And have weekly status meetings where everyone has to update me. I have the worry that then I'll be a week behind (e.g. I've literally seen such situations; have the meeting Monday morning, on Monday afternoon a big problem is discovered, the plan is out-of-date until the next Monday, a week is lost during which preventive action could be taken). Plus nobody likes those big status meetings. Plus they cost a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bonus features I'd love:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Handling uncertainty somehow,&lt;/strong&gt; e.g. a screen in the framework we already know can be predicted reasonably accurately, a piece of research less so. Ideally &quot;min 0.5 days, expected 1 day, max 5 days&quot; or something.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Real world estimates&lt;/strong&gt; such as &quot;1 day of effort&quot; as opposed to &quot;7 story points&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I don't have to spend ages moving Gantt bar charts around the place.&lt;/strong&gt; Ideally I say &quot;this takes 1 week of effort, and can't be started before this other task finishes, and this person is on holiday on those weeks&quot; and the tool tells me if it'll be done by the deadline or not.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dependencies, critical path analysis&lt;/strong&gt;, so I know which work to look at in case we're not going to meet the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Display of how long people have got work for&lt;/strong&gt; e.g. &quot;Bob runs out of work in 2 weeks, Joe in 3 months&quot;, so I can decide who should take on new tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;what if analysis&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; like &quot;if I add another developer to the team, will it help the deadline, assuming we have to train them, and maybe development isn't on the critical path&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ideally web based.&lt;/strong&gt; Not PC/Mac based; so it's cross-platform for my team, and ideally not paper-based to support people who aren't always working from the office.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Generate reports&lt;/strong&gt; with nice KPIs such as what % of the project we're through to present to the client. (Nice to have)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tool is not slow and difficult to use and annoying.&lt;/strong&gt; (Nice to have)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't mind about cost, if I can avoid a financial disaster with this project then I'm happy to pay for it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;EDIT/ADDITION:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks to Erik for the question &quot;What kind of action are you going to try and take, if the project has fixed budget, fixed time, and fixed scope?&quot; Here's what I was thinking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I can ask the client for more time.&lt;/strong&gt; It might be OK for the client or it might not be but it's worth asking. It's never ideal to ask for more time, but if I have a 6 month project and I ask for 2 extra weeks in the middle, I think it sounds more professional than if I ask for those 2 extra weeks the night before the deadline. And if the client is doing marketing activities based around the deadline, it might really be no problem to postpone them 4 months before the deadline, but be a real problem to postpone them if you let them know a few weeks before the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I can ask the client for more budget, or to reduce scope.&lt;/strong&gt; Again, far from ideal! But I've done it, and it does sometimes work. Again, doing it with months still to go allows for a better conversation with the client than the night before the deadline, where some of the features the client might offer to drop have already been developed (so dropping them would now no longer help).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reduce exploratory work.&lt;/strong&gt; Maybe the team is spending time exploring new technologies (e.g. new software frameworks or whatever). Such things can help the project, or not, one doesn't know at the start, if they're time they're definitely worth investigating. I can terminate such activity and assert we'll use technologies we already know. (This example comes from my actual experience.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Potentially put other people on the project,&lt;/strong&gt; if it's just a question of time and not cost. Always a risky move. But, at least it's an option if there are months still to go. It's not an option if there's only two weeks to go. Better to know about the problem sooner than later.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discovering risks as soon as possible seems to make sense to me. You're going to make better decisions the more information you have (i.e. it's better to know it's going wrong 2 weeks in, than not to know.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26128" LastEditorUserId="26128" LastEditDate="2018-08-13T14:18:26.333" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T14:19:10.913" Title="PM techniques/tools for fixed-price 6 month client project" Tags="&lt;deadline&gt;&lt;fixed-price&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24695" CreationDate="2018-08-13T09:54:52.270" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no tool or technique that will guarantee you will come in on time and within budget. Work is probabilistic.  If you need more certainty, such as you don't have the funds to pay for overruns, then your only option is to bid a lot of fat. Bid in the 80th or 90th percentile of your estimate for both time and money. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You won't win the work but, if you did, it is pretty unlikely you'd overrun except for some pretty significant malpractice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or bid another contact like T&amp;amp;M or CP. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-08-13T09:54:52.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24695" CreationDate="2018-08-13T11:51:53.617" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;@DavidEspina has it right - I'd like to add a few thoughts&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This question illustrates one of the reasons tool recommendations are out of scope - CodeGnome's law says you need to decide how to solve the problem before you look for a tool.  You haven't yet defined your problem, so no tool can help; tools are more likely to obfuscate the problem by providing illusory solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You're looking for a way to manage a project without risk.  Risk management is project management.  If you bid the project such that you cannot accommodate variations in production speed, unexpected problems, etc, then &lt;strong&gt;that&lt;/strong&gt; is the definition of your problem, and no tool can help.  The normal practice is to bid the project with a management reserve to help you to deal with risk.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do you keep the project on track? The traditional way is Earned Value Management, but EVM requires some advance planning to define the work you're going to expect to get done. You can avoid the status meetings by designing your work packages with good metrics that are objective, but don't require a prolonged status meeting.  Software development is difficult in EVM.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don't know whether you intend it, but the subtext of all of your bullets is, &quot;I want simple methods to manage a complex problem&quot;. That makes me somewhat suspicious of the whole situation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2018-08-13T11:51:53.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24695" CreationDate="2018-08-13T13:49:06.963" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with everything David and Mark have said. Further, I'd just like to comment on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But, because I know what all the sprints are going to contain ahead of time, it's not really &quot;agile&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can you possibly be &lt;em&gt;sure&lt;/em&gt; that you know what it is ahead of time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you &lt;strong&gt;100% certain&lt;/strong&gt; that you have made absolutely zero mistakes gathering the requirements? That the client made zero mistakes presenting the requirements? That the client won't change his/her/its mind? That the requirements have been documented/articulated such that they can be interpreted perfectly correctly? That there's no chance a developer or analyst will discover a better approach that the client prefers? That there is absolutely no chance of the market changing during the project? What about new technologies? Internal process improvements? Just about any other environment variables?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;em&gt;really are&lt;/em&gt; 100% certain of the above, then why not just outsource some cheap labour? It's not like building such a product should require much thinking or communication, anyway. Just show them your stone-tablet containing the project spec and let them work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, however, there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; uncertainty, then agile becomes a viable method after all. Whether or not it's the &lt;em&gt;best&lt;/em&gt; method is a matter for debate and outside the scope of this Answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-08-13T13:49:06.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24699" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24705" CreationDate="2018-08-13T13:52:50.270" Score="3" ViewCount="347" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two months back I was asked this question in an Amazon interview:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How will you motivate the High performer in your project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My answer, which I follow on the ground level:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are different motivations for different people. The top motivations for high performers I can think of are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. For some, challenging tasks will be a high motivation or giving more responsibility is a high motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b. For some, constant appreciation/reward is motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c. For some, travel is motivation. For some, appraisal/promotion is motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;d. For some, team leading or role change is motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e. For some, getting training to keep his/her knowledge up-to-date is motivation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I will identify what does motivate him/her based on the above criteria and will try to align that activity to him/her after having a word with my seniors, if it is doable.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If not, see when it can be done in the future and let him/her know.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He told me it is a generic answer. I tried to search more what Amazon expects and how they motivate the high performers but I did not get any pointers here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33236" LastEditorUserId="33236" LastEditDate="2018-08-15T15:49:58.733" LastActivityDate="2018-08-15T15:49:58.733" Title="How to motivate high performers in team?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;leadership&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24688" CreationDate="2018-08-13T14:01:03.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We see at the end of the sprints that not all the points are being completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yeah, this should not happen. Do everything you can to make this scenario very unlikely. For example, pull into the Sprint what would seem to be a ridiculously unambitious number of Product Backlog items (PBIs), with the aim of giving the team the experience of completing a Sprint early: what do they choose to do with this 'slack' time?. A really interesting experiment is to pull just one PBI into the Sprint, with the aim of giving the development team the opportunity to experiment with self-organization: will they 'swarm' to complete the work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Near to the end, the team is overhelming, and the quality is being sacrified just for deliver on time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yeah, this should not happen either. In addition to the above suggestion, get the teams to review their Definition of Done (they likely may share one). Is it rigorous enough? Is it being applied? Can any of be automated? Quality is non-negotiable and zero bugs is achievable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29315" LastActivityDate="2018-08-13T14:01:03.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24701" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24702" CreationDate="2018-08-13T14:03:22.783" Score="14" ViewCount="2122" Body="&lt;p&gt;We know the &lt;em&gt;daily meeting&lt;/em&gt; and the &lt;em&gt;backlog refinement&lt;/em&gt; is inevitable to have out from in the sprint timebox, but we don't know, for example in a two-week sprint, if the &lt;em&gt;sprint planning&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;review&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;retrospective&lt;/em&gt; are included too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in a two-week sprint, are include all ceremonies or just a few of them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32948" LastActivityDate="2019-08-26T20:41:49.157" Title="Are all the scrum ceremonies included in the sprint timebox in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;timeboxing&gt;&lt;scrum-ceremonies&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24701" CreationDate="2018-08-13T14:08:02.797" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sprints contain and consist of the Sprint Planning, Daily Scrums, the development work, the Sprint Review, and the Sprint Retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of the events are included in your Sprint timebox.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2019-08-26T20:41:49.157" LastActivityDate="2019-08-26T20:41:49.157" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24695" CreationDate="2018-08-13T14:09:45.947" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Basically if anything does not go according to plan you are screwed. The problem is that you promised to deliver fixed features (scope) for a fixed budget (resources) before a fixed deadline (schedule).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scope, resources and schedule define what is called the &lt;strong&gt;iron triangle&lt;/strong&gt; of software development. The idea is that if you change one side of the triangle, the other sides have to give.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if a feature that was agreed on is more complicated to develop than originally estimated, you can either remove another feature to make up for it, or push back the deadline, or add more resources (developers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you are not allowed to change any of scope, resources and schedule, you have no way to compensate (other than delivering sub-par quality) and the project will fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do not adjust one of the three sides, the only thing left to adjust is the quality of the resulting product. Low quality will show up as shortcuts (&quot;quick 'n dirty&quot;) that have been taken and technical debt that has accumulated. The concentration of your developers will also suffer if they work to much overtime, causing bugs. Any technical debt will make maintenance and implementing new features harder and more time consuming further down the road, and should be factored into future estimates. Also note that fixing a bug that is already deployed to production is &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; more expensive to fix than during development, so taking shortcuts in quality assurance is a bad/expensive idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would recommend is to work with the customer to prioritize the features into &quot;must have&quot; and &quot;nice to have&quot;, with the understanding that you are allowed to move the &quot;nice to haves&quot; to a later release if you are running out of time. The reasoning here is that it is better to have a working software with satisfying quality, albeit less features, than no software at all. Be careful here, many customers do not really known what they want. A good requirements engineer should be able to tease out which features actually provide added value for the daily work of the employees of the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” - Henry Ford&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt; can be your friend here, if you are able to get the customer on your side. The advantage is that the customer gets regular feedback (maybe even a working prototype) after every sprint, so he will be less surprised if a deadline can not be met. Prioritizing the features can also be handled in a transparent way (let the customer suggest which features are the most important ones by setting the business value of the backlog items).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further reading: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ambysoft.com/essays/brokenTriangle.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The &quot;Broken Iron Triangle&quot; Software Development Anti-pattern&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33234" LastEditorUserId="33234" LastEditDate="2019-02-15T14:19:10.913" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T14:19:10.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24701" CreationDate="2018-08-13T14:19:57.063" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer from Thomas Owens is correct. However, I would like to add that depending on the team organization, I think it's acceptable to do some of the ceremonies outside of the 2 weeks considered as being the sprint (or whatever length your sprint is).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I've encountered teams preferring to do the planification for  sprint &lt;em&gt;N&lt;/em&gt; on the last day of sprint &lt;em&gt;N-1&lt;/em&gt; (review in the morning, planning in the afternoon) or the sprint review for sprint N on the very first day of sprint N+1 (honnestly this one I'm not too fond of as it makes you look backwards to the previous sprint rather than forward, when you already psychologically shifted to the new sprint and should rather be looking forward).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, basically this is still some time taken for specific ceremonies in a sprint, it doesn't really matter if the ceremonies belong to the previous one, the current one or the next one as long as you keep the same rythm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that in order to get the full benefit of sprint review it should happen before the sprint planning so that the input from the stakeholders have a chance to be taken into account in the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, as you should theoritically always be in SOME sprint, I'm not sure when you would expect to do these ceremonies outside of any sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33235" LastEditorUserId="33235" LastEditDate="2018-08-14T08:43:46.017" LastActivityDate="2018-08-14T08:43:46.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24699" CreationDate="2018-08-13T14:26:51.897" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many interview questions are less about the answer you give and more about your thought process. I didn't do your interview, so I don't know what the interviewer was looking for, but I could guess that they wanted to hear more about your management style. Your answer is sort of the standard safe answer. Boiled down, it sounds like &quot;People have many motivations, I'll ask them.&quot; What they were probably hoping to hear was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what models of team performance do you subscribe to?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how familiar are you with intrinsic and extrinsic motivators and how they play on each other?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what are your personal views on what motivates you?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how will you engage people to find out what they do and do not want in their job?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a small example, if I was interviewing you and you mentioned creating opportunities for autonomy, mastery, and purpose in their work and then gave an example or two of how you'd done that in the past (or might do it in the future) then I would interpret that as: you've read Drive or at least watched the 10-minute video version and tried incorporating it into your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-08-13T14:26:51.897" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24695" CreationDate="2018-08-13T16:30:10.833" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This will not be a full answer to your question, but it contains one important piece of the puzzle if you ask me. Getting projects out of the door is very much about risk management. In my experience risk management is about two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finding the important risks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mitigating where possible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if the project has too large scope, too little resources and too short time schedule then right now is the time to find out about that. But if you still believe that it is possible to deliver within the limitations, now is the time to find the largest risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One simple technique is to do a risk calculation every week. Include a group of people, spend at maximum an hour. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What can happen?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How large of an effect will it have on the desired outcome?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How large is the probability that it will happen?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assign arbitrary levels 1-5 on effect and 1-5 on probability. Multiply risk x probability and you know which risks to start to work with. Put the result up on the project whiteboard and talk briefly about it during the morning stand-up meeting. Hopefully, next week the list will be different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to look for is to remove the tail-end risks early. Things like &quot;performance will not be sufficient&quot; when found at the end of the project will cost a lot more to fix than if found in the beginning. If you are uncertain, do a quick-and-dirty simulation testing exactly this area. (But only if it is an important risk).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck! Sounds like you will need a bit of that as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33241" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-08-13T16:52:57.530" LastActivityDate="2018-08-13T16:52:57.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24695" CreationDate="2018-08-14T06:53:49.420" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As some other answers already pointed out no PM tool will guarantee success. Anyway, let’s take a look of your options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you mentioned Scrum, it seems that your not only looking for PM tool more you are also looking for a (development) framework/process. First of all if your team doesn’t have already established a well working process then introducing a new one to a project with short/fixed time/budget is a huge risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, basically there are two models of (development) processes: &lt;strong&gt;waterfall&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;iterative and incremental / agile&lt;/strong&gt;. Both have there pros and cons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Waterfall&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;If your project is a no-brainer, your requirements are clear and will not change over the time, the overall risk of unexpected things is very low, your team is functional orientated (analyst, designer, developer, tester, ...) then this model might be a solution. &#xA;As I wrote, this model is only recommended for no-brainers because it has some serious drawbacks when your requirements are changing or something not expected is happening (as in most projects). In such cases this model leads to higher costs,  late deliveries and customer displeasure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Iterative and Incremental / Agile&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;If your project is complex, the requirements are unclear, your team is cross-functional, the risk of unexpected things to happen is high then this model might be an option.&#xA;Although this model is more suitable for most (software) projects it has an higher complexity, demands higher expectations from all team members (and stakeholders) and might produces more overhead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mentioned you are considering to use Scrum. It is a complex agile model with certain roles and events which leads to a lot of overhead. I don’t think that you have the time to establish and to work by Scrum especially if your time frame is fixed. Of course there is always the possibility of tailoring Scrum (adapt it to your needs) but if your are not experienced and this project is your pilot then this will be another huge risk. Also Scrum is a framework which is perfectly suited for product development (on-going), for projects which are very unclear and where the time to market is crucial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beside Scrum there are a lot of other incremental and iterative / agile frameworks/processes like Kanban, Lean, XP. Some of them produces less overhead, are less complex and less strict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So before you decide which PM tool you have to decide which working process you want to establish. And this depends on your project, requirements, team, experience, company etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some final thoughts, at the end it really doesn’t matter if you are using Excel, MSProject, Trello, JIRA etc. you should take care first about your process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25435" LastEditorUserId="25435" LastEditDate="2018-08-15T03:57:39.843" LastActivityDate="2018-08-15T03:57:39.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24701" CreationDate="2018-08-14T08:29:31.027" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Anyone who has studied for any of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/professional-scrum-certifications&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum.org&lt;/a&gt; certifications knows the answer to this question because it frequently appears in the practice assessment [paraphrasing]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q. When does the next Sprint begin?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A. Immediately after the current Sprint ends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore the Sprint time-box encompasses all the other time-boxed events. The Daily Scrum occurs every day, including the first and last days of the Sprint. Operational practicalities dictate that the Sprint Planning meeting occurs very near the start of the Sprint and the Sprint Review meeting occurs towards the end of the Sprint. The Sprint Retrospective meeting can occur at any time as the Scrum Team chooses but again operational realities tend to mean it occurs towards the end of the Sprint. My personal preference is after the Sprint Review meeting so that the Scrum Team can privately and collectively reflect on input and feedback from stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29315" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-08-14T08:35:42.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24669" CreationDate="2018-08-14T09:43:04.670" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Todd A. Jacobs and Niels van Reijmersdal have provided truly excellent answers to a good question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's my twist:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If I had to choose between&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a) an experienced PO from another industry&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;b) a subject matter expert with not the slightest idea about product ownership&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;which would I choose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think a) is necessarily the wrong choice. An experienced PO who is prepared to switch domains will already know that they will need to get up to speed very quickly facing as they are a very steep learning curve. I have worked with one person who did this very successfully, the rest failed fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my choice would be b) but only on condition they are fully committed to learning product ownership, which can be considered a sub-domain in its own right. I think there are products that require domain knowledge that cannot be learned on the job as a PO. For example a product used by surgeons needs a product owner who is a surgeon (or equivalent domain expert, assuming that is possible) and there is no fast track to becoming a surgeon (we hope!). But can you find a surgeon who is interested the world of Scrum and Agile?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My 'test' is conference season. There is an upcoming conference for surgeons: can your 'career-PO' appreciate what the speakers are saying enough to impact their decisions about the product? There is a scheduling clash between the premier conference for surgeons and the best Agile conference of the season: will your 'surgeon-PO' choose the Agile conference to support their learning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29315" LastActivityDate="2018-08-14T09:43:04.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24712" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-08-14T11:28:03.613" Score="5" ViewCount="2369" Body="&lt;p&gt;A developer had to take unplanned days off in the middle of the Sprint, causing an impact of less hours in the original capacity. It is possible to measure this in hours (e.g. 2 days = 16 hours).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, where and how can I use this figure to improve my insights about the sprint progress? How can I identify the likelihood of the sprint being still completed using this new information? Should I add this to the burndown, like when there is change of scope by adding tasks in the middle of the Sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32382" LastActivityDate="2018-08-20T15:42:55.150" Title="What to do when capacity is reduced in the middle of the Sprint? (e.g. Sick Leave)" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team-capacity&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24701" CreationDate="2018-08-14T12:39:41.417" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, per the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;, all the Scrum Events (Sprint, Planning, Daily, Review, Retrospective) are completed within the Sprint timebox.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I prefer to start the Sprint on Wednesday and complete the Sprint on Tuesday. By starting and closing in mid-week, the team avoids competing w/ 3 day weekends &amp;amp; for the US, the Monday holidays.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ttTtG.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ttTtG.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Events &amp;amp; Roles&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33252" LastActivityDate="2018-08-14T12:39:41.417" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24712" CreationDate="2018-08-14T12:55:03.450" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If unplanned days (6hrs = 1 day) are taken during the Sprint:&#xA; - SM determines with the Dev Team the impact of the loss of the member.&#xA; - SM determines with the Dev team if someone else can help complete the work. &#xA; - Inform the PO of the impact (who should already know because they&#xA;   attend the daily scrum).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I identify the likelihood of the sprint being still completed using this new information? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;unless the Dev Team agrees to absorb the work,&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the work will not be completed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;inform the PO &amp;amp; other interested parties of the impact&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I add this to the burndown, like when there is change of scope by adding tasks in the middle of the Sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once the Sprint is started, new work should not be added or removed from the Sprint. The Dev Team has committed to delivery.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33252" LastActivityDate="2018-08-14T12:55:03.450" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24712" CreationDate="2018-08-14T14:03:38.190" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can I identify the likelihood of the sprint being still completed&#xA;  using this new information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team should handle this during the first stand-up, or a soon as they notice someone is sick, but let them self-organise. Maybe assist them with questions like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can we complete the work partially finished by this developer?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will we make the Sprint goal, if not do we need to adapt to maximize value delivery with the new capacity?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do we need to communicate which stories of the forecast we won't finish, if so to whom? (e.g. clients, product owners, other teams depending on stories, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is always a good idea to make the Sprint smaller than the full Sprint forecast, so the team does not need to worry less about finishing the last couple of stories of the Sprint backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I add this to the burndown, like when there is change of scope&#xA;  by adding tasks in the middle of the Sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it help the team? If not don't do it. Don't administrate things for the sake of administration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2018-08-14T14:03:38.190" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24712" CreationDate="2018-08-14T14:04:10.147" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;How to Plan for Unplanned Absences&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People get sick, scope changes, and stuff happens. That's why velocity should always be measured as &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/23190/4271&quot;&gt;an average or a range&lt;/a&gt;, and primarily used as an &lt;em&gt;upper bound&lt;/em&gt; on work selected for a Sprint rather than a target.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have sufficient slack in your Sprint Planning, a couple of sick days will not put your Sprint at risk. However, if you've stuffed your Sprint to the gills with work, you may or may not have a problem depending on whether the team has sufficient remaining capacity to meet the Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Focus on the Sprint Goal&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always remember that the goal of a Sprint isn't to complete lots of backlog items. &lt;strong&gt;The goal of a Sprint is to &lt;em&gt;deliver the Sprint Goal.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is whether the team can still meet the Sprint Goal. The only way to find out is to ask them, and then track progress toward the Sprint Goal in your burn-down chart, Kanban board, Sprint Backlog, or other artifacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With sufficient slack and a cross-functional team, a well-planned Sprint will still be able to reach the Sprint Goal. However, if the team is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; confident about reaching the goal with an absent team mate, then the Product Owner should be consulted. The Product Owner &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-sprint&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;has the ability&lt;/a&gt; to renegotiate scope for the Sprint, or to cancel the Sprint and return to Sprint Planning, whenever the current Sprint Goal is at risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How This is Reflected in a Burn-Down Chart&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your burn-down shouldn't change, because the &lt;em&gt;Sprint Goal&lt;/em&gt; doesn't change just because the team's capacity does. What will change is your burn-down's trend line, which is as it should be. This is transparency in action!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only change your burn-down chart to reflect Sprint Backlog Items added or removed from the Sprint Backlog. If the team determines that Sprint Backlog Items can be removed from the Sprint without endangering the Sprint Goal, then the work remaining in the Sprint will change accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, you don't revise the entire burn-down chart. The removed work shows as a sudden drop in the x-axis at the time the work is removed from the backlog, but you wouldn't retcon the chart. Changes in the x-axis are &lt;em&gt;normal&lt;/em&gt; in Sprints, as work may be added or removed from the Sprint Backlog throughout the iteration as tasks are uncovered through just-in-time planning, or as efficiencies are discovered or implemented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-08-14T14:19:36.793" LastActivityDate="2018-08-14T14:19:36.793" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24717" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-08-15T01:03:53.137" Score="3" ViewCount="99" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good Afternoon All,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My name is Edriss and I have acquired my certificate in Project Management from UC Berkeley on July 2017. I have been looking around the web to find an entry level role in project management but discovered that there are no such things as &quot;entry level&quot; roles in project management as all roles require a varying degree of experiences (ie. varying years of experiences). I have also looked into unpaid internships but have also been unsuccessful thus far. All entry level roles literally ask for at least 3 years of experience as a project manager in my area. So my only question to this community of project managers is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I acquire valuable project management experience without an official role (job)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could anyone help me out here as I am a newcomer in the world of PM?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Edriss&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30153" LastActivityDate="2018-08-16T17:50:29.160" Title="I need project management experience to get into a project management role but no one will hire me. Can anyone help?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2018-08-16T17:52:28.347" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24717" CreationDate="2018-08-15T06:04:02.937" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, past experience should not block you. You've got a degree and probably a bit of experience or practice related to workshops you did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been involved in &quot;ABC Gestion de projet&quot; community. There is also an &lt;a href=&quot;https://projectmanagementcourse.pm/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;English speaking community&lt;/a&gt;. Maybe you should apply there and get a bit more practice on a team during the MOOC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your colleagues and coworkers could also recommend you, and empower you with self-confidence in your own skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27596" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-08-16T17:50:29.160" LastActivityDate="2018-08-16T17:50:29.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24699" CreationDate="2018-08-15T08:48:10.273" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive:_The_Surprising_Truth_About_What_Motivates_Us&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Daniel Pink&lt;/a&gt; talks about motivation by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mastery: The urge to get better skills.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Autonomy: Our desire to be self directed. It increases engagement over compliance. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Purpose: The desire to do something that has meaning and is important.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use the mnemonic &lt;strong&gt;MAP&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33252" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2018-08-15T09:00:40.727" LastActivityDate="2018-08-15T09:00:40.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24699" CreationDate="2018-08-15T10:50:42.633" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Daniel about it being more about the thought process. And the above answers talk about what is established in the book Drive, however, you are ultimately working with &lt;em&gt;individuals&lt;/em&gt; so categories help only to have a &quot;high level&quot; understanding of the major influential aspects that drive performance. The actual key element to motivate &lt;em&gt;anyone&lt;/em&gt; is to put best practices into work that allow managers to understand their employees and employees to understand what motivates them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-08-15T10:50:42.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24699" CreationDate="2018-08-15T11:49:26.853" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A generic question would yield a generic answer. This question and the interviewers response show just how poor the predictive validity of interviews are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were asked this question, I would have answered it similarly as you but would have referenced leading motivation theorists and summaries of the theories. And that's because theories should be driving our work behaviors. Then I may ask additional questions about this specific individual to show how I may apply the theories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another interview would have accepted your answer as perfectly reasonable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-08-15T11:49:26.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24699" CreationDate="2018-08-15T12:11:50.563" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.&quot;  All people, not just high performers thrive, when they know their management chains knows and understands them as a person first, then as a worker.  It is a fine line to keeping just short of being friends with your subordinates but that doesn't mean you still can't know their kids/spouse names, hobbies, background, interests, plans, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Public praise, private admonition&quot; again applies to all people.  When your people know there are no buses coming by that they'll be thrown under they will work even harder for you.  Better they'll tell their friends &quot;You should have a manager like mine&quot; and the high performers will come to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not an overnight process.  This is not an Amazon process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a human process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's one reason why we have HR departments -- so HR can teach this to managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27826" LastActivityDate="2018-08-15T12:11:50.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24717" CreationDate="2018-08-15T13:09:01.890" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, just because a job lists needed experience, doesn't mean you shouldn't apply. My first job out of school listed 3-5 years of C# web experience. I had 3 months of C# desktop. I applied anyway, and got the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, have you looked into volunteer work? Depending on your location, that may be easier to get into than paid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if not, why not get together a large (3-10) group of friends and take on a large hobby project (building a log cabin, creating a new software product, climbing a mountain...), and manage that project yourself? Or perhaps multiple smaller projects (building a shed, developing a mod for a game or a fork of an open-source product, climbing a... smaller mountain? Okay, I'm bad at examples). It might not be as relevant as managing a project for an organization, but it does demonstrate your interest in the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-08-15T13:09:01.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24717" CreationDate="2018-08-15T14:05:11.467" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You do not need the title of PM to be a PM or to do the work of a PM.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project management is a job function that spans every job role, job family, and industry.  You build experience, and more importantly knowledge and skill, by performing the role and the tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter the job you have, you will do projects in them. Manage them well and then cite them as your experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-08-15T14:05:11.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24726" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24728" CreationDate="2018-08-15T16:36:23.887" Score="0" ViewCount="138" Body="&lt;p&gt;Product team is the team which owns the requirement. They write the Functional requirements. Based on which, the engineering team makes the low level design. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But down the line during development, the engineering team finds there is a big impact necessitating a requirement change. Now Engineering makes the Product team/person responsible for not doing thorough impact analysis before writing down the requirement. At the same time, the product team tries to make the engineering team accountable stating why Engineering did not catch it during during design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel it's the primary responsibility of the product team to have thorough knowledge of the system and if there is any impact of new requirements on the existing system. It would have been good if the Engineering team could have caught it during during or earlier in development but ownership of the requirement and any impact should lie with product team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question is who(Product or Engineering) is primarily responsible for not catching the impact earlier?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33236" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-08-15T17:42:15.203" LastActivityDate="2018-08-15T17:48:45.250" Title="Requirement conflict b/w Product and Engineering team?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;responsibility&gt;&lt;conflicts&gt;&lt;engineering-practices&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24726" CreationDate="2018-08-15T17:48:45.250" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Your premise is toxic.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both teams are putting too much emphasis on &lt;em&gt;who is to blame&lt;/em&gt; and too little emphasis on &lt;em&gt;fixing the recurring problem.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, your two teams are in an antagonistic relationship with each other. For one to succeed, the other needs to fail. &lt;em&gt;That&lt;/em&gt; is the root of your problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to get your two teams to work more closely together. Whether through representatives in meetings, co-locating the teams, doing shorter iterations of design with faster and more extensive communication, or whatever makes sense for your teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above all, though, make sure that the two teams succeed - or fail - as &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-08-15T17:48:45.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15626" CreationDate="2018-08-15T21:32:54.047" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it takes specialized software to run an effective remote retrospective. We found Google Docs, Trello, or real-time canvases to be too clunky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our company is fully-distributed, with no central office. We became so frustrated running our retrospective meetings using a hodge-podge of tools  we decided to build our own. We think a good online retrospective:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Guides the team through the process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keeps reflections anonymous until its grouped into themes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allows for the entire remote team to participate in grouping&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let's the team vote on what to spend its time discussing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Captures the actions/process updates into a clear plan of action&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check it out: it's called Parabol, and it's free: &lt;a href=&quot;https://parabol.co&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://parabol.co&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33278" LastActivityDate="2018-08-15T21:32:54.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24733" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-08-16T13:20:43.903" Score="1" ViewCount="441" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like many in this forum, I am working in an enterprise organisation that subscribes largely to the ITIL model of service management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A discrete team that provide guidance and &lt;em&gt;sign-off&lt;/em&gt; for service acceptance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A set of criteria used for service acceptance testing to ensure that an IT service meets its functionality and quality requirements and that the service provider is ready to operate the new service when it has been deployed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a wrapper that envelopes the entirety of the product (normally near the end of the delivery) that dictates such things as &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Documented processes (who is getting called out on a Sunday if it goes down etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SLA's&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;OLA's &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;BAU team &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a common constraint when attempting to deliver a Product within the Scrum Framework using the User Story pattern.  It is closely linked to the idea that, in a user story, it is often hard to articulate NFR's.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most Service Acceptance Checklist's can run to 100-150 line items.  Is there a best practice for how to incorporate this list into the backlog of a Scrum Team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any answer that involves disbanding the ITIL Service Team is considered off topic for this question since Organisational Change is not possible at this time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2018-08-18T03:30:38.390" Title="Best practice for Service Acceptance criteria in User Story format?" Tags="&lt;acceptance-criteria&gt;&lt;itil&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15626" CreationDate="2018-08-16T13:31:58.547" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, since retros are happening at the end of the sprint and it's &lt;em&gt;crucial&lt;/em&gt; that everyone taking part feels &lt;em&gt;comfortable&lt;/em&gt; (it's a long topic connected to workers feeling) it's often good to start having an &quot;energizer&quot; or &quot;icebreaker&quot; so people can feel connected and relaxed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to elaborate on the &quot;where&quot; stated by Zsolt talking about each element of the retro: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should they go into a task in your project management tool?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it necessary to change a process document? (e.g. GitHub workflows, onboarding process, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who's is responsible to make sure that the issue gets addressed?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-08-16T13:31:58.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24467" CreationDate="2018-08-16T15:55:47.383" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you'll find it difficult to explicitly attribute a rise in profit to an implementation of SAFe. Rather you should look at &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; SAFe is being implemented in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improve cross-team dependency management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improve forward planning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improve estimation accuracy for large projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you know the &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; you can then design metrics that you can capture before/after, which will tell you whether SAFe had a measurable impact on your development process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33285" LastActivityDate="2018-08-16T15:55:47.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19922" CreationDate="2018-08-16T18:18:18.933" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jira has recently released real-time notifications natively in the Jira UI. I only use Cloud so I can't speak for Server, but it's there now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29811" LastActivityDate="2018-08-16T18:18:18.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10798" CreationDate="2018-08-16T20:24:36.460" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know this is a necro thread but just in case anyone (like me) stumbles across it.&#xA;The issue here is not how we describe the story, but how we understand and analyze the requirement, in other words the business analysis activity is missing.  If we are not skilled in business analysis, then we are going to have problems writing good stories, irrespective of whether they have clear 'users' or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example the case given in one of the responses &quot;&quot;As a Solutions Architect, I want Entity X's CRUD events to be recorded in a Message Queue, so that EventPublisher can publish them asynchronously&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question to ask is 'Why does the systems architect want that to happen?&quot; and keep asking why until we reach a point of value,  not a feature. Publishing asynchronously is a feature, not a point of value (i.e. benefit).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So why is it that the architect wants asynch publishing from a message queue? I'll make a guess, for purposes of resilience, maybe.  So the story can be re-written as something like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;As a Solutions Architect, I want Entity X's CRUD events to be recorded in a Message Queue, providing the ability for EventPublisher to publish them asynchronously so that we can be sure that in the event of a system failure we will have automatic recovery on startup, enabling the business to immediately function correctly with no need to manually reset consistency in business systems&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or something like that. Note the benefit statement as written provides the meat for additional acceptance criteria to better inform the testing effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality if we are specifying entirety X out it is probably feasible to tie the whole story back to a business user or customer since entity X is likely to relate to some business function or another, which could be detailed in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33287" LastActivityDate="2018-08-16T20:24:36.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24740" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24742" CreationDate="2018-08-17T10:21:49.730" Score="4" ViewCount="75" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have one large project running at the company where I work as a developer. We have developers from different teams involved (different companies even), testers, analysts and whatnot. This large project has its own Scrum board in JIRA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own team consists of 2 testers and 1 developer (there used to be 2 of us) and we have our own Scrum board. Our sprints run asynchronously to the main project but we do take stories from the main project. Often I will break them down into smaller stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other stories on our backlog are about maintenance: upgrading existing software, removing old software, migrating to new hardware and so on. And some other stories that are not, or only loosely, tied to the main project.&#xA;I should stress that the maintenance part is linked (often blocks or is blocked by) the stories from the main project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This setup works but we do have problems because of the replication of stories from the main project's board to our team's board. I hardly ever look at the main project board and the analysts and product owner from the main project never look at ours, this has caused some unpleasant surprises in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: &#xA;Are we doing something inherently wrong here? If so, what would be a better approach? If not, how to fix the problems from story duplication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33293" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-08-17T13:01:10.430" LastActivityDate="2018-08-17T13:09:53.173" Title="Small team in large team, using two boards in JIRA" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5264" CreationDate="2018-08-17T11:02:13.080" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no &quot;silver bullet&quot; framework for software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you focused on the team to build a high performing team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the team building exercises that I have successfully used are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3kKechcwYM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lyssa Adkins&lt;/a&gt;  (Coaching Agile Teams) has a great team building exercise – high performance tree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;o    Uses  the Scrum Values: Commitment, Courage, Focus, Openness (transparency) &amp;amp; Respect for team building.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;o    Team identifies characteristics of a high performance team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Facilitate Retrospective meetings for continuous improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;o    What is going well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;o    What needs improvement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;o    Let the team commitment to implementing 2-3 improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use a “WaterCooler” meeting to build the team in a casual sitting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;o    Casual meeting to play. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use Persona for team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;o    Helps people know the team members.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For distributed teams, I use the on-line tools Conteneo &amp;amp; Trello for meetings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Example of a High Performance Tree:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Hbp9M.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Hbp9M.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33252" LastActivityDate="2018-08-17T11:02:13.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24740" CreationDate="2018-08-17T13:09:53.173" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Though the default, Projects and filters (boards) do not have to remain 1-1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would suggest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create/use separate Issue  Types for Stories (Story) and maintenance (Task).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create and use an epic in LargeProject for use with Stories that are for the SmallProject.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For your team, use the following filter for your board: 'Project = &quot;SmallProject&quot; OR (Project = &quot;LargeProject&quot; AND &quot;Epic Link&quot; = LP-2693)' (Where LP-2693 is the key for the Epic mentioned above)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For the larger team, use the following filter for your board: 'Project = &quot;LargeProject&quot; OR (Project = &quot;SmallProject&quot; AND type = Story)'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For both boards, go Board-&gt;Configure-&gt;Card Layout; then add 'Project' so that each card displays to which Project it belongs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I'm still using an older version of JIRA Agile, but I assume this works for JIRA Software as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-08-17T13:09:53.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24743" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-08-17T20:22:39.387" Score="2" ViewCount="2172" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can someone please help me with the difference between &lt;code&gt;Product-oriented Deliverables&lt;/code&gt;and &lt;code&gt;Project Oriented-Deliverable&lt;/code&gt; in Software Project Management. I found it all-over but didn't find any suitable answers. Forgive me if my question is naive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33298" LastActivityDate="2018-12-16T15:01:05.377" Title="Difference between project-oriented deliverable and product oriented deliverable" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24733" CreationDate="2018-08-18T03:30:38.390" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A user-story is a description of a Requirement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think what you are concerned with is about describing a Specification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifications are not rendered as user-stories; they can (and should) be rendered as acceptance criteria attached to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if a ORR checklist says things like:&#xA;- Have all new logging functions had a archiving and alerting strategy implemented?&#xA;- Has performance load on a production-like system been carried out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can render these as acceptance criteria attached to your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given we are implementing a new logging function&#xA;When the log file exceeds one gigabyte&#xA;Then the oldest 200 MB is archived to ...[destination]...&#xA;and alert SMS messages are sent to ...[numbers or group]...&#xA;and email alert messages are sent to ....[addresses]...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given we must handle processing of 10,000 transactions per minute&#xA;When the system is running at this load&#xA;Then transaction processing time does not exceed 100 ms&#xA;and CPU load on a production-like server does not exceed 50%&#xA;and RAM consumption does not exceed 8 GB&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are testable acceptance criteria - you don't need your checklist because the testing out turns prove the quality has been built-in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have standard things that need to apply to all stories then they can be created as a standards document or as a standard set of acceptance criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is analysis - it has nothing to do with whether you are running agile or waterfall, it has to do with the quality of the analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason why we run checklists (The ambulance at the bottom of the cliff) is precisely because we don't do enough analysis before we implement things.  Agile/devOps thinking makes this better not worse.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to build your understanding in this area I recommend you read up on Behavioural-Driven-Development and the concept of shifting-left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also if you haven't got it already, get your hands on a copy of the DevOps handbook by Gene Kim &amp;amp; Co.  This is a book that is worth reading a few times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33299" LastActivityDate="2018-08-18T03:30:38.390" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18430" CreationDate="2018-08-18T03:46:10.293" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two cars on a production line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The definition of done is that each car must be fully built, meets its respective specification, is ready to drive away and has passed all tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The acceptance criteria (specification) for the first car (mini) includes polyester seat covers, plastic dashboard and manual windows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The acceptance criteria of the second car (Roller) includes bar, leather seats, seat warmer, bulletproof glass, ejection seat and charming companion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q.E.D&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33299" LastActivityDate="2018-08-18T03:46:10.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24743" CreationDate="2018-08-18T12:41:44.607" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Product-oriented deliverables are components of the product that you want to create, which is the reason for the project.  Project-oriented deliverables are products you need to run the project in a healthy, efficient manner in order to build the ultimate product within a reasonable variance of the budget, time, and specs for which you planned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product deliverables remain in perpetuity or for its intended mission. Project deliverables are archived or discarded when the project finishes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-08-18T12:41:44.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24748" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24749" CreationDate="2018-08-18T13:07:47.543" Score="7" ViewCount="617" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team and I are implementing Scrum in our project. We are at the phase of dividing user stories into tasks to assign to each developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand the concept of &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Slicing the Cake&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; where a user story represents a vertical slice that crosses all the technological layers (i.e starting from user interface to middleware to database). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, when I divide my vertical user story into tasks, it gets divided into horizontal layers. So I end up assigning a horizontal layer task for each developer: one developer would work on the user interface part of the story, another one on the middleware and a third on the database. Thus, in doing so, I feel I am breaking the concept of vertical slicing..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33039" LastActivityDate="2018-08-23T00:18:10.840" Title="Can I break down a vertical story into horizontal tasks?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24748" CreationDate="2018-08-18T17:36:37.220" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: the tasks are for the team to organize their work however they see best to do it. If that means dividing it up into front-end, middleware, and database, that's fine. This is actually a normal part of the progression for cross-functional teams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just because we've put people with all of the skills into the same team doesn't mean they suddenly know those other skills. So they start with a horizontal breakdown like this and probably still isolate certain types of tasks with the individual most skilled at that thing. Usually pretty early in working this way, the team will find itself in a situation where there are too many of X task type for the team member who usually does that to do and someone else will have to step in and help out - usually with some of the easier tasks. Over time, people will gain a broader skillset and will start seeing places where breaking down the tasks into horizontal layers doesn't look like the best way anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The big pitfall to watch out for is if the team ends up in that situation and instead of stepping in to help each other out, the rest of the team moves on to new backlog items and you end up with a pile of backlog items that just has one task type on it. I see this most commonly with testing tasks, but occasionally it also shows up in other types too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-08-18T17:36:37.220" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24691" CreationDate="2018-08-19T05:45:54.527" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The accountability resides always with the project manager, the responsibility can be delegated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at page 25 of PMBOK v 6, table 1.4 Process 5.2 Collect Requirements is specified as a PM accountability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33299" LastActivityDate="2018-08-19T05:45:54.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15668" CreationDate="2018-08-19T18:26:48.203" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just launched a new video that attempts to do just this: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsG3OWTDAFY&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A New Introduction to Jira &amp;amp; Agile Project Management&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also features Jira's new interface so you're not stuck with old screenshots that are no longer relevant.  I do discuss a small amount of the differences between Scrum &amp;amp; Kanban, but I hope that you'll find that it doesn't get too much into the weeds there.  It just gives you enough to figure out what board type to use and how to get Sprints started (if you choose Scrum).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps! Please let me know if there are things that are still unclear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33306" LastActivityDate="2018-08-19T18:26:48.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24472" CreationDate="2018-08-20T03:36:49.737" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try selecting &lt;strong&gt;Print Entire Project&lt;/strong&gt; and in &lt;strong&gt;Page Setup&lt;/strong&gt; select &lt;strong&gt;Fit to:&lt;/strong&gt; x number of pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JCzj2.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JCzj2.png&quot; alt=&quot;screenshot&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31132" LastEditorUserId="31132" LastEditDate="2018-08-20T03:42:11.837" LastActivityDate="2018-08-20T03:42:11.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24691" CreationDate="2018-08-20T13:12:14.977" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a PM's responsibility to overlook and own a particular project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As per my understanding BA function is a subset of PM function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33231" LastActivityDate="2018-08-20T13:12:14.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24691" CreationDate="2018-08-20T13:30:57.430" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The issue with this statement is that it is making a determination of PM responsibility and accountability based on roles that are or are not present.  The presence of a BA role--or more precisely the presence of another individual with a BA title--is immaterial in determining whether or not the PM has any degree of responsibility or accountability in the development of business requirements.  What matter is &lt;em&gt;what is in scope&lt;/em&gt; for this project as should be indicated in the project charter, scope statement and description, and work breakdown structure.  If requirements development is within scope, then the PM has responsibility / accountability for its development to specs.  If there is another human on the project with the title BA, then that person has responsibility for its development, too, but the PM retains his/her degree of responsibility and overall accountability for this product as the BA would report--either matrixed or directly--to this PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only caveat to the above is if the contract--assuming a seller and buyer arrangement--explicitly carves out this particular product from the PM's scope of work.  Thus, the product is still in scope for the project but excluded via contract for the PM.  In this case, the PM has a dependency for its development, and corresponding risks.  Therefore, while not directly responsible for it, (s)he has skin in the game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR:  The presence of a BA is immaterial in the determination of PM responsibility and accountability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having done a bit more research here, I see what PMI has &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/project-manager-business-analyst-roles-6612&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;done&lt;/a&gt;.  They have a newish (I have no idea when this certificate was created) BA certificate and, apparently, a BABoK.  So in PMI parlance, there is a distinct swim lane between the BA and the PM.  So in the business case flow chart, it appears that the problem identification leads to the requirements product which leads to the project charter and then to the PM.  So, if you're studying for the CAPM or PMP, you need to learn it the way PMI has set it up.  However, this is one of those areas that, in the real world, you'll experience something quite different in many cases.  It's not that PMI is wrong here, it's that it is overly simplified.  In many cases, the project charter can include the development of the business case and then the requirements.  So just be aware of that as you progress in your career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2018-08-20T17:22:27.807" LastActivityDate="2018-08-20T17:22:27.807" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24748" CreationDate="2018-08-20T15:28:38.163" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found with my teams that the hard part is actually getting the stories split correctly not the tasks, and I find this resource invaluable:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://agileforall.com/resources/how-to-split-a-user-story/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://agileforall.com/resources/how-to-split-a-user-story/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prepare the input story: Is it independent, negotiable, valuable, estimable, small, testable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apply one of the splitting patterns: e.g. interface variations, business rule variations etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Evaluate the split: are they similar size&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have great small and independent stories, breaking these stories into technical tasks is totally optional and some developers like doing it and others don't need to do it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point I am trying to make is rather get the stories small and worry less about the technical tasks. You certainly do not need to assign technical tasks to different developers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developers should be pulling 'stories' individually or as pairs and then figuring out what needs to be done and if they want to capture things things as tasks go ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2018-08-20T15:28:38.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24712" CreationDate="2018-08-20T15:42:55.150" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When the whole team is planning their next sprint, slack should be built in for sick leave, meetings, fixing live incidents etc. Over the course of a year, assume most people will take around half of their sick leave, do meetings and have to work on unplanned incidents. Your velocity should tell you how much the team can achieve in a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not try to quantify sickness as it might create a negative feeling within the team, like they are been punished for being ill etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would make known is planned time away. So in planning meetings ask the team who is on holiday, who is on training and who has planned absences from the sprint. The team should then take this information into account when committing to the sprint backlog i.e. selecting how many of the stories in the Product Backlog will be pulled into the next sprint and delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can certainly keep a history of notable events for each sprint and how it may or may not have impacted the velocity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2018-08-20T15:42:55.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24759" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-08-20T16:31:31.493" Score="2" ViewCount="143" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing a small project. Users can only provide a part of requirements. The period of user requirement gathering has lasted for two months. But it seems we will receive no information for the rest of the requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should the project be separated into two phases? One phase to launch the system for the existing requirement. The second phase could be the &quot;reset requirement&quot; and start the second requirement when user thinks the &quot;reset requirement&quot; is ready. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a common practice if requirements cannot be collected for a certain period?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33316" LastEditorUserId="27722" LastEditDate="2018-08-31T13:51:33.353" LastActivityDate="2018-08-31T13:51:33.353" Title="Requirement gathering cut off when the time for requirement collection is too long" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;&lt;business-analyst&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24759" CreationDate="2018-08-20T17:39:25.260" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether you're doing a big or a small project your approach should be something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Discover what the users want (go talk to them, for example)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Build a smallest version of that (for example no user management, only with dummy data etc.) and ask for their opinion&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If they liked it, start working on improving the functionality (add whatever you need to make it production ready)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If they didn't ask them why and what could make it better&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Repeat until &quot;project&quot; is done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S You will never have complete requirements before you have shown something for your users several times. That's why it's generally a bad idea to have &quot;requirements phase&quot; anything longer than a week or two before you start building. And at least 50% of the requirements you get from users at the start will change. The percentage might be over 100 as well (meaning that even the changed requirements will change)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29075" LastActivityDate="2018-08-20T17:39:25.260" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12287" CreationDate="2018-08-21T18:58:14.283" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What should developers do and what is right within scrum: If you are truly following scrum you should find out what the priority of the request is, discuss the request and come to an agreement about what you will do and estimate it, commit to doing the things you agree to do and then follow through and get them done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some things to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When talking about QA you are describing many possible things.  For example, QA might be manual testing of the software in a production-like environment (we don't all get to do full CI/CD with 100% automated testing even if some of our peers are doing that).  It might also mean something as close to the development effort itself as writing good unit tests.  The place where programmers can work most effectively is nearer the code.  We often do not feel as comfortable testing &quot;the whole system&quot; for any number of reasons.  Those reasons might even include that we can get caught up in the process of trying to perfect the overall product when we should be focused on the change we are making.  Sometimes this is a good thing and sometimes it is disastrous.  Consider the case where you are a developer on a small team within an organization that has hundreds of developers working on a really large system for example.  Getting your developers' hands dirty sounds like a good idea and might be, but it might also mean getting no code written during an iteration because they are spending time trying to reproduce scenarios they are unfamiliar with or configuring environments that they don't fully understand or even just trying to obtain needed credentials for parts of your system that they do not normally have access to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working closer to the implementation is a more likely success as far as good use of developer time.  Your developers can easily (very possibly MOST easily) build automated tests of small units of the code.  They understand the individual classes, functions or modules in your codebase and the details of how an individual part that they are working on SHOULD be well understood by them.  Small-scale automated tests like unit tests probably don't require special permissions or access and should be something your build can include so that the smaller parts of the code are know to be high quality already.  I would recommend that automated testing be something your developers work on from the inception of any enhancement to the codebase.  They are useful even when fixing bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I never want my developers working on manual testing of the UI or even running batch jobs manually for that matter.  I certainly don't want them testing their own work if they are the &quot;last line of defense&quot; before the customer finds a problem.  QA experts are much better at that and a good QA team member will be more focused on the right kinds of details and simple know how to build a good test plan and execute it.  So in cases where we mean those kinds of testing it is my opinion that developers are a bad choice for the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We almost all take pride in producing high quality software but we should take advantage of the skills of different experts in ways that make sense.  The scrum guidelines say you should have a cross functional team, but they do not generally say that a developer is a tester.  They generally say that everyone on the team should be skilled enough to do any of the jobs that the team does.  Maybe it would be better if you considered one of two obvious ways of composing a team to fit that description.  You could either make all testers and developers the same (and require a person with the skill and interesting in doing all of it).  You could also make two different teams, one that focuses on writing code and another team that makes sure the code works.  The second option sounds &quot;bad&quot; to many managers but in the few cases where I have seen this done it works WAY better than the first option.  I think of it like this: if you were building a car you would probably not have the same guy welding the frame together as the guy connecting the wiring or the guy doing painting.  They all work together.  If they don't the car sucks.  It has nothing to do with throwing things over the wall because they are on different teams or not and everything to do with realizing that everyone on the line is building a car and if they do a bad job the car will suck.  That also means they have to care about it.  If your team doesn't care then no amount of togetherness or team building or co-location or open work areas will help you build a better car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Final point: Even if they find some bugs and even if you manage to check the QA boxes, you still run the risk of losing a talented developer by pushing them into a manual QA position.  I'm not saying I would ever quit a job for that but I will say this:  I know many highly skilled developers who have left over just this issue and I know that my teams have regretted every one of those losses.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18102" LastEditorUserId="18102" LastEditDate="2018-08-21T22:15:44.560" LastActivityDate="2018-08-21T22:15:44.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24767" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-08-22T07:11:10.207" Score="1" ViewCount="69" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing a project which have defined required functions for delivery assuming Function A. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the requirement collection, it is found that the function depends on Function B which should be well developed. And Function B is critical to the whole function delivery. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I define the Function B is out of my scope?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33316" LastActivityDate="2018-08-22T21:13:02.340" Title="How to define out of scope for dependent function?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;scope&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24768" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24770" CreationDate="2018-08-22T10:28:08.687" Score="9" ViewCount="2740" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a low-pointed story which was dev-complete but, during testing, revealed a problem. In investigating the problem it was discovered that an external party will be required to deliver a fix. The external party will not deliver that fix before the end of the Sprint. Our Story is therefore blocked until the external party delivers their fix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should the Story remain where it is on the Scrum board at the next Sprint Planning or should it be dropped back into the Product Backlog?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If neither option in #1 is a good approach, what should be done?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29374" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-11-12T00:18:17.243" LastActivityDate="2018-11-12T19:08:46.203" Title="What to do with unexpectedly blocked story in scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24767" CreationDate="2018-08-22T10:44:14.493" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The determination of in or out of scope depends on how explicit your supporting documents are, including your requirements baseline, spec sheets, architecture designs, engineering designs, etc., as well as how your contract is written.  It is impossible for participants on this exchange to make this determination for you unless you want to upload all of these documents for us to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this becomes about process...the change process specifically.  Your team needs to come together and discuss this function B and review your supporting documents and then arrive at a position.  Then sit down with your customer / product owner and discuss your case and uncover their position.  If everyone agrees it is out of scope, and everyone agrees it is required, then trigger your change process and get it approved, paid for, scheduled, etc.  Then carry on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they disagree and believes it is in scope, then you have a contract dispute.  This triggers your escalation / issue process.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-08-22T10:44:14.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24768" CreationDate="2018-08-22T15:04:54.850" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;With the required third party fix, you now effectively have a precondition for your story (that you assumed would be present from the start, but it turned out it wasn't).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should put the story back into the backlog at the end of the sprint. It's not done. Whether you put it into a next sprint depends on your team's rules, but I would not do it unless the precondition is checked and validated &lt;em&gt;before the start of the sprint&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A sprint should be filled with items so that the team thinks it can deliver that amount at the end of the sprint. If it's unclear whether a precondition can be fulfilled during the sprint, it should not even be a topic in the planning meeting, other than saying &quot;preconditions not available? Okay, NEXT&quot;. A sprint should only be filled with items &lt;em&gt;the team&lt;/em&gt; can deliver. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As always, exceptions may apply. A new backlog item for the next sprint might be &quot;check out if the bug is still not fixed in their 1.2.3 release that comes out on tuesday&quot;. That &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be done, even though the &quot;done&quot; result of the story might be &quot;it's still buggy, we cannot proceed with the original story next sprint&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2018-08-22T15:04:54.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24759" CreationDate="2018-08-22T18:39:06.997" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this a common practice if requirements cannot be collected for a certain period?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could happen, however, if you don't know something, you will guess or ignore it. If this thing is important to the user, chances are they are not going to be happy unless your guess was correct! People who know a particular business well can sometimes guess minor details based on previous experience. Even this may not always work. For example, each bank has its own policy when it evaluates a new customer for a loan. If you skip on the rules or use another bank's criteria, this does not help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't get all the requirements, it's either because the users don't know how to answer your questions or because your team is not able to ask the correct questions. In either case, the project would be at risk. Certain requirements may be phased into a future version as you suggested. However, this may be risky in some cases. For example, in a project using a Relational Database, missing a many-to-many relation between two tables, requires work on the database and may require a change in the GUI. A practical approach is to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify what is missing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify why it has not been finalized.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the problem is in your team, fix it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the problem is the user team, clearly identify the risk and possible associated cost. Maybe ask for a change in the user team. Use escalation procedures to make the big fish aware.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you make assumptions, document these assumptions carefully.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get a sign-off on the entire analysis effort - The good parts and the bad parts of the analysis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Always remember that incomplete or bad analysis could easily kill any project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may be relevant: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/14793/how-to-deal-with-unclear-requirements&quot;&gt;Dealing with incomplete requirements&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2595" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-08-23T13:06:28.733" LastActivityDate="2018-08-23T13:06:28.733" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24767" CreationDate="2018-08-22T21:13:02.340" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Scope, Assumptions, and Responsibilities Aren’t Synonyms&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you’re describing an &lt;em&gt;assumption&lt;/em&gt;. Your project is assuming that Function B, which is an important dependency, is available and operates as expected. This assumption should be made explicit in your project planning documents and communications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, your use of the word “scope” sounds like it’s more a statement about &lt;em&gt;responsibility&lt;/em&gt;. If Function B isn’t available, or isn’t operating as expected, to what extent is addressing this out of scope for your project? Just because you may not be responsible for the successful delivery of Function B, sourcing and integrating true dependencies likely &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be in scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For something to be truly “out of scope,” it should either be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;irrelevant to the success of your project, or &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;so fundamental to the project that any false assumptions about it should trigger an immediate re-evaluation of the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be worth thinking about what your objective is in describing this dependency as out-of-scope, and making sure that you are effectively communicating that objective to the project stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-08-22T21:13:02.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15000" CreationDate="2018-08-22T23:20:53.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;These definitions are good general guidelines, but your individual team may have a different interpretation and that's okay. It is more important that your team has its own agreed upon definitions:&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;A &lt;strong&gt;Feature&lt;/strong&gt; is a chunk of functionality that delivers Business Value (revenue, engagement, etc.) that probably contains multiple User Stories and/or Themes.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;A &lt;strong&gt;Theme&lt;/strong&gt; is a group of User Stories with similar characteristics. &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;An &lt;strong&gt;Epic&lt;/strong&gt; is a User Story that takes more than one Sprint to complete. &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;A &lt;strong&gt;User Story&lt;/strong&gt; is a tool used to create a conversation between the Dev Team and everyone else so the developers can estimate how much effort will be needed to deliver a specific outcome. It is usually:  &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;- A high-level description of a desired outcome/result&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;- Completed in one Sprint (generally) &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;- Broken down into a series of &lt;strong&gt;Tasks&lt;/strong&gt; (measured by # hours or half days)  &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32578" LastEditorUserId="11970" LastEditDate="2018-12-11T15:55:03.417" LastActivityDate="2018-12-11T15:55:03.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24748" CreationDate="2018-08-23T00:18:10.840" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Vertical Slices&lt;/strong&gt; are decomposed into &lt;strong&gt;Tasks&lt;/strong&gt; which are specific to each domain and naturally horizontal. You are using this agile concept correctly--BOOM!&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;The only thing I'd suggest would be consider letting the team choose which tasks they work on. This will help your team become more knowledgeable, more effective, more fulfilled and definitely more agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32578" LastActivityDate="2018-08-23T00:18:10.840" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24768" CreationDate="2018-08-23T00:48:07.913" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a great question and opportunity to learn! Yes, put the &lt;strong&gt;Blocked Story&lt;/strong&gt; into the &lt;strong&gt;Product Backlog&lt;/strong&gt; if you have a similar sized replacement and at the next &lt;strong&gt;Retrospective&lt;/strong&gt; discuss: &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;What does this say about our &lt;strong&gt;Estimation&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Definition of Ready&lt;/strong&gt;?&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;If this story becomes unblocked before the end of the Sprint can it and/or should it be completed before the replacement story?&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Also, with Kanban, you can insert a &quot;blocked box&quot; in your each WIP column (the blocked item should not count towards your WIP #'s) and this story would automatically be the highest priority item when it becomes unblocked.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32578" LastEditorUserId="32578" LastEditDate="2018-08-24T13:41:17.727" LastActivityDate="2018-08-24T13:41:17.727" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24759" CreationDate="2018-08-23T01:13:39.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You will never have all the info for requirements so...&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;For this small project you can propose to build the best solution you can with the resources (info, budget &amp;amp; time) available. When the situation evolves so will your options. &lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;If that is not an option you may be being set up for failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32578" LastActivityDate="2018-08-23T01:13:39.600" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24777" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24779" CreationDate="2018-08-24T03:20:52.370" Score="1" ViewCount="84" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I show the main (resource with maximum hours) for Summary tasks.&#xA;I suspect I would need to set a custom text field to show this, but how would I structure this?&#xA;thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33136" LastActivityDate="2018-08-24T07:25:06.993" Title="MSProject show main resource on Summary tasks" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24777" CreationDate="2018-08-24T07:25:06.993" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The below function does what I was after.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Public Sub showMainResource()&#xA;&#xA;    Dim i As Long, j As Long&#xA;&#xA;    Dim tsk As Task&#xA;    Dim rsc As Resource&#xA;    Dim ass As Assignment&#xA;&#xA;    Dim dataArr() As Double&#xA;    Dim dataArrCount As Long&#xA;    dataArrCount = -1&#xA;&#xA;    Dim resourceCount As Long&#xA;    resourceCount = ActiveProject.Resources.Count&#xA;&#xA;    Dim taskCount As Long&#xA;    taskCount = ActiveProject.Tasks.Count&#xA;&#xA;    ReDim dataArr(taskCount, resourceCount)&#xA;&#xA;    Dim iMax As Long&#xA;    Dim iID As Long&#xA;&#xA;    'walk the tasks backwards&#xA;    For i = taskCount To 1 Step -1&#xA;        Set tsk = ActiveProject.Tasks.Item(i)&#xA;&#xA;        'loop through resource assignments and add hours&#xA;        For Each ass In tsk.Assignments&#xA;            'log the value&#xA;            dataArr(tsk.ID, ass.Resource.ID) = dataArr(tsk.ID, ass.Resource.ID) + ass.Work&#xA;        Next ass&#xA;&#xA;        'add the values to the parent&#xA;        For j = 1 To resourceCount&#xA;            'log the value to its parent as well&#xA;            dataArr(tsk.OutlineParent.ID, j) = dataArr(tsk.OutlineParent.ID, j) + dataArr(tsk.ID, j)&#xA;        Next j&#xA;&#xA;        'code to do something with the results,&#xA;        'below takes the resource with highest work and shows it in Text2 for Summary tasks only&#xA;        If tsk.Summary Then&#xA;            iMax = 0&#xA;            iID = 0&#xA;            For j = 1 To resourceCount&#xA;                'find the reource with max work&#xA;                If dataArr(tsk.ID, j) &amp;gt; iMax Then&#xA;                    iMax = dataArr(tsk.ID, j)&#xA;                    iID = j&#xA;                End If&#xA;            Next j&#xA;            If iID &amp;gt; 0 Then&#xA;                'write the value&#xA;                tsk.Text2 = ActiveProject.Resources.Item(iID).Name&#xA;            Else&#xA;                tsk.Text2 = vbNullString&#xA;            End If&#xA;        End If&#xA;    Next i&#xA;End Sub&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33136" LastActivityDate="2018-08-24T07:25:06.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1" CreationDate="2018-08-24T09:57:54.497" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I define a 'risk' in terms of the 'cause' of an adverse 'impact' to your objective (which may be a project objective or measure of success) which has not happened yet.  I can only manage down the scale or likelihood of the 'impact' by 'action' on the 'cause' = mitigating action or mitigation plan. &#xA;People 'buy in' when they understand - so keep it simple and clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33357" LastActivityDate="2018-08-24T09:57:54.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24781" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25121" CreationDate="2018-08-26T16:47:53.193" Score="1" ViewCount="689" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently studying Prince2 and am working through the business case theme.  My question is about the business options in the detailed business case document, and how the contents of the business case document relate to each option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it necessary to &quot;branch&quot; the business case document for each option? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. For each option, should the document then proceed with going through the expected benefits, dis-benefits, timescales, costs, investment appraisal and major risks for the &quot;do nothing&quot;, &quot;do the minimum&quot;, and &quot;do something&quot; options?  If not, which option should these contents be based upon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in both the &quot;theoretical answer&quot; and what community members consider to be most practical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all documentation I have seen so far, the contents after the options just refer to &quot;the project&quot;, but the options present different project alternatives so these contents are inherently different and refer to different projects, but the study material I've seen doesn't ever &quot;nest&quot; these contents under the different business options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help is much appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33372" LastEditorUserId="33372" LastEditDate="2018-10-23T17:58:50.257" LastActivityDate="2018-10-24T10:21:24.690" Title="Prince2 Business Options and the Contents of a Detailed Business Case" Tags="&lt;prince2&gt;&lt;business-case&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23624" CreationDate="2018-08-26T23:31:14.683" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently asked this in person at a training, and was told that it is in fact good practice to use JIRA versions for alpha, beta, et cetera, because it means you can use the AffectsVersion and FixVersion fields to manage issues that are filed against these pre-release versions &amp;amp; make sure you get them all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2018-08-26T23:31:14.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24783" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-08-27T08:12:17.437" Score="5" ViewCount="506" Body="&lt;p&gt;During execution of sprint, should team allowed to change estimation of a story in following scenarios.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;During execution&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When a story is finished&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Re-estimate in absence of Product Owner(PO)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30305" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-02T14:32:23.377" LastActivityDate="2018-11-02T14:32:23.377" Title="Is it fine to correct an estimation of a story during execution?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24783" CreationDate="2018-08-27T08:27:01.317" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During execution&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not ideal, but in the real world this happens. And what is the alternative? Not communicate that it might take longer? That's no option. So yes, a story estimation may change during execution. If that happens often, a retrospective why that happens might be in order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When a story is finished&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's pretty pointless. An estimation is for when the story is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; finished. It does have some value to go back to all your finished stories and check whether your estimations were good or where you need to improve, but changing the estimation itself... has no value at that point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Re-estimate in absence of Product Owner(PO)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;. The whole point of a user-story is communication between the PO and the development team. Doing this communication &lt;em&gt;in absence&lt;/em&gt; of one part is simply wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2018-08-27T08:27:01.317" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24783" CreationDate="2018-08-27T12:41:16.740" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once a Sprint is locked down - the estimates are locked, so it is not OK to change an estimate after Sprint Planning is done and the Sprint is locked down.  There are a couple of purposes of estimates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Based on historical trends - allow the Sprint Planning to hit a desired number of points/hours&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tracking the accuracy of the estimators, and constantly providing feedback on their estimates in order to improve the estimates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically - do the work upfront on estimates and hold the estimators accountable to improve over time. Or fire them from estimating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33378" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-08-27T13:25:27.327" LastActivityDate="2018-08-27T13:25:27.327" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24783" CreationDate="2018-08-27T16:52:18.463" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, It's always important to communicate with the relevant part of the team that a task will take longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you have some actions when an estimation has changed. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the sprint goal still achievable?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should the team focus on other tasks given that the current stream of work depended on this one?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inform everyone affected by this (not just the internal team, for example, if it was part of a deliverable for the stakeholders, there should be a way to communicate this changes to them as well.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it makes sense to do so: log the details of why you needed to change the estimation so it can be used to do better estimates in the future&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-08-27T16:52:18.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24788" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24789" CreationDate="2018-08-27T19:34:20.783" Score="6" ViewCount="246" Body="&lt;p&gt;When engaging with a client on a project that will be developed using agile methodologies, what is being promised in the delivery of the project? How do you know if that promise is objectively met?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Context:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a typical client/service-provider interaction, a transaction takes place where the client asks, &amp;quot;can I have a solution that helps me do X?&amp;quot; Then, the provider responds with, &amp;quot;yes, we can build that for you!&amp;quot; The next thing the client says is, &amp;quot;awesome, how much will it cost and when will I have it?&amp;quot; Finally, the provider gives an answer, or a promise, to deliver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the traditional waterfall-managed project, as the provider, we can easily see if we've met our promise by comparing our &amp;quot;committed&amp;quot; timeline, budget, and scope to the actual timeline, budget, and scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the agile world, where there is inherent recognition that the plan of what is going to be delivered changes, what are we actually promising when the project starts? Can it be measured?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Waterfall: &amp;quot;I promise to deliver &lt;strong&gt;X&lt;/strong&gt; scope in &lt;strong&gt;Y&lt;/strong&gt; timeline with &lt;strong&gt;Z&lt;/strong&gt; budget.&amp;quot; &lt;em&gt;(In the hopes of solving &lt;strong&gt;W&lt;/strong&gt; business need.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile: ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were to take a stab at it, I'd probably say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I promise to help solve &lt;strong&gt;W&lt;/strong&gt; business need by iteratively developing and adapting &lt;strong&gt;X&lt;/strong&gt; scope within the confines of &lt;strong&gt;Y&lt;/strong&gt; timeline and &lt;strong&gt;Z&lt;/strong&gt; budget.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with this answer is I'm having trouble understanding how I can objectively measure whether or not this promise is met. How can I reasonably compare committed vs. actual &lt;strong&gt;Y&lt;/strong&gt; timeline and &lt;strong&gt;Z&lt;/strong&gt; budget if I know that &lt;strong&gt;X&lt;/strong&gt; scope will change. How can I measure whether or not &lt;strong&gt;X'&lt;/strong&gt; scope actually solved &lt;strong&gt;W&lt;/strong&gt; business need?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33380" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-08-27T20:13:48.110" Title="What Does &quot;Commitment&quot; Look Like with Agile Projects?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24788" CreationDate="2018-08-27T20:13:48.110" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;What You're Offering&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a good question, because it highlights a common misunderstanding of agile principles and contracting. In practice, you &lt;em&gt;aren't&lt;/em&gt; promising to deliver something with a fixed scope, budget, or timeline. What you're offering to do is to &lt;em&gt;collaborate&lt;/em&gt; with the customer in iterative increments, and using framework features to manage scope to fit the budget or schedule on an ongoing basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using Scrum as an example, a typical agile approach is to say something along the lines of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each team costs &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; dollars per Sprint. (You don't have to do this, but I find it adds predictability and averages out for all involved.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We will collaborate with you to deliver a potentially-shippable increment at the end of each Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can adjust the project's priorities at each Sprint boundary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can terminate the project at the end of any Sprint where you've achieved enough value or decide that the project won't meet your expectations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest is contractual fine-tuning. The point is that you are working together with the customer to build a product, rather than creating an externality for them. The agile framework that you choose provides some rigor and visibility, but is almost never bounded by fixed scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-08-27T20:13:48.110" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3414" CreationDate="2018-08-27T20:15:44.287" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My understanding of a S-F relationship is that the &quot;predecessor cannot finish until the successor starts.&quot;  Much like the &quot;guard shifts&quot; example many people use: The finish of the predecessor (Shift 1) is driven by the amount of delay in the successor (Shift 2) starting.  My example is: a contractor must provide preventative maintenance (predecessor) for an aircraft until the customer takes possession to do their acceptance testing (successor).  If the customer delays acceptance testing, the predecessor preventative maintenance by the contractor must continue - which can drive up the cost of that predecessor activity.  &lt;strong&gt;[Can have the opposite effect: The start of preventative maintenance is receipt from Final Assembly Test; so if the customer decides to do acceptance testing immediately after the contractor's Final Assembly Test, the finish date of preventative maintenance is still driven by the start of customer acceptance testing.  In this case, however, the preventative maintenance start date (driven (F-S)by Final Assembly Test) and finish date (driven by the start of customer acceptance testing), would be the same date - in this case making the cost of preventative maintenance virtually &quot;0&quot;]&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33382" LastActivityDate="2018-08-27T20:15:44.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24454" CreationDate="2018-08-28T01:21:07.553" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer is based on JIRA server v7.10.1 . Control charts usually do not include working hours. There is an option to include non-working days in calculation. &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rxVYo.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rxVYo.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, please ensure that if you are using Tempo for Timesheets, Your workload Schemes and Holiday Schemes are set according to your business hours.( Tempo --&gt; Administration --&gt; Workload schemes) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11982" LastActivityDate="2018-08-28T01:21:07.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24783" CreationDate="2018-08-28T09:39:10.153" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;All development work includes an element of discovery. A good Scrum team will allow some spare capacity for this, rather than packing a sprint so full that there is no contingency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you need to re-estimate? Well that depends on the circumstances and how much impact the change is likely to have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team discovers that some work is taking longer (or shorter) than expected then there are usually two ways to react:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the impact is small then the team may just carry on as usual.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the impact is significant then the team might need to re-plan and in an extreme situation may need to abort the sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, it may be useful for the team to consider what happened with the estimate at their next retrospective. If there is a consistent problem with estimates (for example, underestimating the time it takes for dependencies) then the team may want to think of ways to address this problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-08-28T09:39:10.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24793" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-08-28T10:18:21.997" Score="1" ViewCount="160" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does project manager(PM) have any role to play in large scale projects developed under Scrum framework? Consider that multiple scrum teams will be executing the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30305" LastActivityDate="2018-08-28T16:14:32.527" Title="Does project manager(PM) have any role to play in large-scale projects developed under Scrum framework?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24793" CreationDate="2018-08-28T12:18:11.083" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;No &quot;Project Managers&quot; in Scrum&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no &quot;project manager&quot; role defined by the Scrum framework. The only three roles are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Owner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum Master&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Development Team member&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any other roles your organization may have exist outside the Scrum Team. If you add or remove roles from a Scrum implementation, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#endnote&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the result is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; Scrum.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-08-28T12:18:11.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24793" CreationDate="2018-08-28T12:19:22.993" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, there is no single mechanism to scale Scrum. But most popular frameworks, being it &quot;LeSS&quot; or &quot;SAFe&quot; or &quot;Nexus&quot; don't have a project manager role, because that role is not in Scrum and does not follow the Scrum mindset. The scaling frameworks try to transport agile to a higher level, not cut it off and replace it with traditional styles at a certain level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So no, in a real agile company there is no place for a project manager because that is not how agile works. If they are willing to adopt to the agile style however, I'm sure there are positions that might be a good fit for former project managers. But it should be seen as a job change, because it is.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2018-08-28T12:19:22.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24793" CreationDate="2018-08-28T14:41:57.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although there are no PMs in SAFe it's also fair to say the project manager role is sometimes shoe horned into the Product owner or Release Train Engineer roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastActivityDate="2018-08-28T14:41:57.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24793" CreationDate="2018-08-28T16:14:32.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to answer a little differently by pointing out some examples of Agile working at scale (not necessarily Scrum).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Microsoft&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Microsoft put out a really good video on how they implement Agile for their on-going development of the Visual Studio product.  It might be worth the ~45 minutes of your time to watch, because you can pick up on a lot of practical things that they do to coordinate this massive product across many feature set teams (800 people total). &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/learn/devops-at-microsoft/agile-principles-in-practice&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Agile in Visual Studio Product Development&quot;&gt;Microsoft Visual Studio Product Development Video&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Eric Brechner&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example is Eric Brechner talking about XBox and Agile project management on the XBOX team for a talk at Google: &lt;a href=&quot;https://talksat.withgoogle.com/talk/agile-project-management-with-kanban&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Agile Project Management with Kanban&quot;&gt;Google Talks: Agile Project Management with Kanban&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Google&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google has a lot of examples over time - going back to 2011 and 2012 at a minimum. Example: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntzB9pGsD3E&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Google PM on Product Management&quot;&gt;Google PM on Software Product Management&lt;/a&gt;  NOTE: Also the Objectives and Key Results (OKR) literature from Google gives you a really visceral feel for how Google manages from the CEO on down&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically - my recommendation is to read it all, but then find case studies of companies and teams that have implemented at scale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33378" LastActivityDate="2018-08-28T16:14:32.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24799" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-08-29T06:00:02.227" Score="1" ViewCount="101" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a product based company. Which is a best suitable agile methodology for ongoing products? Its like we have to keep improving our products to stay competitive. Looks like its never-ending thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30305" LastActivityDate="2018-08-30T20:18:05.683" Title="Which is a best suitable agile methodology for ongoing products?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2018-08-30T21:10:37.510" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24799" CreationDate="2018-08-29T09:40:42.180" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Microsoft Solutions Framework is a set of principles, models, disciplines, concepts, and guidelines for delivering information technology services from Microsoft. MSF is not limited to developing applications only; it is also applicable to other IT projects like deployment, networking or infrastructure projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33398" LastActivityDate="2018-08-29T09:40:42.180" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24801" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-08-29T09:55:21.417" Score="0" ViewCount="193" Body="&lt;p&gt;My company (western Europe) needs to outsource a project, and I received an offer from a eastern Europe software company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proposal consists of a main part and an optional part.&#xA;The work is detailed in term of effort/day,  roles (software developer, architect etc) and phases (analysis, dev).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hourly rate per role is given and the final budget is calculate accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What margin do I have to negotiate the offer and how do I do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I checked around hourly rates for eastern Europe, they look in line,  maybe slightly above than average&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The main dev effort is roughly split in 100 day dev, 30 days testing/QA and 10 days management/analyst. Spread over 4 months (80 days). Difficult for me to evaluate. From scratch? maybe realistic. Maybe they will use an off the shelf open source solution and will be few weeks work, I don't know, we don't have that kind of expertise in house.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could invent some reason and write a polite email and get maybe 10% discount. Should I do that? Should I ask more detail about technical work and ask a re-estimation of effort? Will be unwise to just accept it like it is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I instead focus on understanding deliverables and maybe &quot;asking for more&quot; at the same price?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anybody can give me suggestions about evaluation criteria and negotiation strategy, thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33397" LastActivityDate="2018-09-28T13:01:38.710" Title="How to negotiate a software proposal?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;budget&gt;&lt;negotiation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24801" CreationDate="2018-08-29T10:21:06.713" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have no leverage and have already lost your position. Negotiation is about information: an independent estimate of cost and price (best and worst case), mutual objectives, a list of alternative choices and benefits and costs thereof, including other vendor proposals. If you had this and other necessary information, you would have a basis for approaching this vendor with questions, counter proposals, request for BAFO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of now you want to negotiate for appearance with no basis. Don't bother. Instead, collect the missing information and increase your knowledge and then you will be able to formulate your basis and position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-08-29T10:21:06.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24799" CreationDate="2018-08-29T10:57:58.903" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good starting point is Scrum and then adapt from there onwards. As long as you hold good retrospectives and follow through on issues raised you will find your feet. Don't be afraid to adapt change and research. Make sure you become or have an Agile champion. Things will go wrong, just learn from them, keep people informed that this is the plan, improve, improvise and get better. (focus on keeping the stakeholder (everyone) informed and engaged)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30234" LastActivityDate="2018-08-29T10:57:58.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24801" CreationDate="2018-08-29T12:38:24.600" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's the first time reviewing the proposal, there's &lt;em&gt;usually&lt;/em&gt; room for negotiation. Having said that, if the price looks about right, you better resort on the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As you mentioned: suggest more deliverables under the same price&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask for a reduction on the basis of this being the start of a &quot;big&quot; stream of work if certain conditions are met&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there something you could offer them in exchange for more work? For example, advertising that they developed this product for your company after X amount of time? consultancy based on your company's skills, knowledge share, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are able to productise it, it's often wise to go for a partnership for a much cheaper price (pointing it out, although it doesn't looks sensible in your situation)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I want to mention that it's always good to &lt;em&gt;engage and invest in longer relationships were parties can be mutually benefited&lt;/em&gt; if things go right. It makes much easier to negotiate once you build a good relationship with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-08-29T12:38:24.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24799" CreationDate="2018-08-29T13:15:01.070" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are producing a never-ending SaaS product that actually started life in 2006. We use Scrum and have done for around 5 years. It has increased our productivity immeasurably and in my opinion is ideal for this type of development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other advantage is that if a product carries on year after year, your staff will change, however a well disciplined Scrum team makes it easier for new members to slot in fairly quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33399" LastActivityDate="2018-08-29T13:15:01.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24807" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24810" CreationDate="2018-08-29T13:33:49.490" Score="5" ViewCount="1565" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ideally we commit to work being completed and releasable by the time the sprint finishes. However sometimes things happen or estimating is a little bit out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we are approaching the end date of a sprint and a user story is not quite finished - maybe another day will see it completed - is it ok to change the end date e.g make the sprint 11 working days instead of 10?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or should we strictly abide by the end date and move the unfinished story into the next sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or something else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33399" LastActivityDate="2018-08-30T13:46:17.207" Title="Can you change the end date of a sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24807" CreationDate="2018-08-29T14:57:19.743" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't change the date since the process should be established including established sprint duration. Having such things constant will help you to improve you process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You didn't manage to accomplish all the tasks within a single sprint. So you failed the sprint. This is the subject to investigate within the retrospective to find what was the reason. Probably you have issues with your estimation process or with technical debt or you produce to buggy code or you have problems with having your tasks well-defined. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words moving sprint end dates won't let you define and address the procedural issues. It also makes your stackeholders less trust you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29674" LastActivityDate="2018-08-29T14:57:19.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24807" CreationDate="2018-08-29T15:17:50.507" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to have to agree with half of what Alexey R. said (do not extend), and disagree with the other half (you failed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Do not extend the Sprint.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprints are time-boxed. Part of the reason for this is so that the Team can notice when they over/under commit, and therefore know to commit less/more in the future. By fudging the Sprint dates, you are destroying this ability to learn and improve estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;It's plausible that it's not even a problem.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of a Sprint &lt;em&gt;is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; to complete all the Stories in the Sprint.&lt;/em&gt; It is to complete the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#theory&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sprint Goal&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is your Sprint Goal dependent on that one Story being completed? If so, you have failed the Sprint. This must be addressed in the Retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, then you have not failed the Sprint. Just take note of the fact that you did not complete all of the estimated work, and reduce your estimates accordingly. No big deal, move along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and if you do not have a Sprint Goal? Then, in my view, you did not accomplish your Sprint Goal. Therefore, you failed the Sprint; you would have failed the Sprint even if you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; complete all the Stories. Not having a Sprint Goal is a larger issue than one Story taking one more day to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-08-29T15:17:50.507" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24807" CreationDate="2018-08-29T16:09:08.853" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Sprint end date should not be extended. By extending the end date, the Team may be completing what was planned in the Sprint. But they will lose the discipline and dedication of completing what was committed within the Sprint. It will also impact the Team's velocity, as the size of Sprints will vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13556" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-08-29T16:22:01.333" LastActivityDate="2018-08-29T16:22:01.333" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24812" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24813" CreationDate="2018-08-29T16:15:06.127" Score="4" ViewCount="521" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it acceptable to swap out stories from the current sprint to the backlog and replace them with stories of the same estimate size from the backlog, because of changing priorities in the business?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My opinion/experience tells me that this is an absolute no-no and that if the business needs to change, let's say, 70% of the work in the current sprint then we should abort the sprint early and start a new one - with a new commitment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29374" LastActivityDate="2018-08-29T16:32:30.350" Title="Hot swapping stories" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;sprint-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24812" CreationDate="2018-08-29T16:32:30.350" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the official answer, I'd take a read in the Scrum Guide under The Sprint, including Cancelling the Sprint. (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-sprint&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-sprint&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum does allow for clarifying or renegotiating the Scope of the Sprint, as long as it doesn't put the Sprint Goal at risk. That said, I can't imagine that you can switch 70% of the sprint backlog without putting it at risk. I would expect that this indicates a change of direction, which is precisely what the Scrum Guide lists as the reason to cancel a Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-08-29T16:32:30.350" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16860" CreationDate="2018-08-29T19:55:57.793" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is primarily for tracking purposes in managing the percent complete of a project. It would not make sense to manage segments of work less than a day. Segments of work more than 80 hours are then too large to effectively track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33404" LastActivityDate="2018-08-29T19:55:57.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24815" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24817" CreationDate="2018-08-29T23:16:46.463" Score="1" ViewCount="258" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Scenario&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases, specially at the beginning of a new product, we have a sprint entirely with architectural user stories with no business value but necesary to the product to be sucessful. We usually do task as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Creating skeleton proyect&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set up environment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set up continous integration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Install common libraries&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Organizing project architecture&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and so on, but setting metings with stakeholders, with see no value of any of this, they feel is a loose of time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Question&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sprint review ceremony should be carried out or just make an internal sprint review with internal stakeholders?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32948" LastActivityDate="2018-08-30T22:56:34.143" Title="Should we start a sprint review with no business value stories in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;sprint-review&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24815" CreationDate="2018-08-30T00:36:45.257" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes! My recommendation would actually be to have a really small goal that is easy to see, but doesn't add much work (or maybe value). It's more of a talking piece than anything. That first review is a great time to set the stage for the project and get people introduced. You don't have to fill the time box, but it's a great no-stress way to start things off on the right foot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-08-30T00:36:45.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24815" CreationDate="2018-08-30T02:07:43.833" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum requires that the event be held at the end of &lt;em&gt;each&lt;/em&gt; iteration, even at the beginning of a project. While you might consider shortening it, or shifting the focus slightly towards process rather than deliverables, the event should still be held.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Events Build Cadence&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Formally, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-review&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sprint Review&lt;/a&gt; is a required event in Scrum. While it's certainly reasonable to keep it short if you have little to demonstrate, it's important to set the tone for &lt;em&gt;reliable cadence&lt;/em&gt; early on. This cadence creates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Predictability. Stakeholders can rely on having an inspection point available every iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Transparency. Stakeholders can be confident that they will have clear visibility into the project at &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; inspection point, not just when there's good news to share.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So even if you have nothing to show for your efforts (and you do, so keep reading) it's worth holding the event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Additional Value&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even when you don't have something to demonstrate, a short Sprint Review is useful to invite collaboration with stakeholders. The Scrum Guide provides some clear examples of what a Sprint Review should contain aside from demonstrating deliverables:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The Product Owner discusses the Product Backlog as it stands. He or she projects likely target and delivery dates based on progress to date (if needed);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The entire group collaborates on what to do next, so that the Sprint Review provides valuable input to subsequent Sprint Planning;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Review of how the marketplace or potential use of the product might have changed what is the most valuable thing to do next; and,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Review of the timeline, budget, potential capabilities, and marketplace for the next anticipated releases of functionality or capability of the product.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in addition to establishing a cadence, and instilling a sense of confidence in the stakeholders through predictability and transparency, the Sprint Review invites structured collaboration with the Scrum Team!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Things You Can Demo&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Granted, you may not be able to demo a &lt;em&gt;product&lt;/em&gt; increment. But if you think about it, you can still demo value to the project, especially if you've adopted a test-first agile mindset!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, setting up a developer environment or a continuous integration server is demonstrable. Do your developers use an IDE? Grab a projector and demo the heck out of the Intellisense features (or whatever) that will presumably add value to the project through developer efficiency. Keep it short, but &lt;em&gt;explain&lt;/em&gt; why it matters!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did you get continuous integration up and running? I'll bet the team members that did it tested it somehow. Even if they're not pumping product increments through it yet, they must have done &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; to ensure it's working as expected. Make a visual demo out of that, and explain how this team-facing feature will help deliver the product the stakeholders ultimately care about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Confessions from the Real World&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll admit to having cancelled a Sprint Review from time to time, especially at the beginning or end of a project. However, I've always seen doing this as a failure of imagination, or the result of an overly specification-driven (rather than test-driven) approach to the project and its product development methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you truly can't demonstrate anything, and have nothing that the stakeholders might want to collaborate on, then you certainly don't want to waste everyone's time. In such circumstances, limiting the Sprint Review to just the Scrum Team (including the Product Owner) might make sense. Just be sure to set reasonable expectations about when Sprint Reviews will begin in earnest, and make sure to communicate whatever value your Sprint has delivered to the Product Owner and the stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the front end of a project, even when I haven't held a formal Sprint Review, I've usually still held an informal event to discuss the project's scope, methodology, or approach. This has typically been well-received.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Towards the tail end, there's usually more to show product-wise. However, sometimes stakeholders are less interested in the small, incremental changes at that stage of the project. In those cases, I've sometimes substituted shorter stakeholder meetings for the formal Sprint Review. There, we often talk about schedules, shipping dates, or project close-out topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't claim that it's a best practice, and certainly don't claim that it's Scrum. However, it's certainly an option if strict framework adherence isn't desired, or when process immaturity or stakeholder apathy make starting (or maintaining) the cadence is impractical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My real-world experience is that shortening the event, or shifting the focus slightly towards process, can be beneficial in some circumstances. Skipping the event entirely has almost always been a project smell for me, though. I don't recommend it, but your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-08-30T02:07:43.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24807" CreationDate="2018-08-30T08:16:30.133" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Positives:&#xA;- You get the work done a day or two earlier&#xA;- Burn down looks good&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Negatives:&#xA;- Your velocity means nothing, due to the timescales being variable&#xA;- Your team have not met there commitment and you will never know why&#xA;- Its ok to do the same thing next time, so planning means nothing, may as well go Kanban&#xA;- You will have to move all ceremonies to adapt to the change&#xA;- Product are no longer able to estimate based on velocity and larger roadmap is no longer valid as sprints are not a fixed time period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would avoid changing the sprint end date at all costs, there may be small exceptions to this, example &quot;if we deliver this a day late then the company shuts down and we lose our jobs&quot; and it really will have to be as dramatic as this for me to extend a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30234" LastActivityDate="2018-08-30T08:16:30.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24820" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-08-30T09:35:31.597" Score="3" ViewCount="129" Body="&lt;p&gt;So - I'm a SM - my Product Owner likes to organise refinements in the morning. His logic is that such meetings at the beginning of the day don't collide with a thought process when a developer is in the middle of something during the day. This makes sense for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, such meetings sometimes collide with the Daily Scrum. Not often enough to actually change the daily time (or place), but often enough for me, because many times people tend to forget about this and miss one or another meeting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I confronted the PO about this, and my argument about reducing the complexity, was deflected with &quot;people&gt;process&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to tackle this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31746" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-08-30T13:42:55.493" LastActivityDate="2018-12-05T14:19:43.117" Title="PO likes to organise refinements during the Daily Scrum - therefore hanging the time/place of the daily" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24820" CreationDate="2018-08-30T13:41:32.827" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bring it up in the Retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While your Product Owner's initial axiom is correct from an Agile standpoint, I would argue that his logic following from it is flawed.&#xA;Here is how I interpret your situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is a problem with the processes/tools.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We do not know whether or not there is a problem with the people/interactions. We also do not know if there would be a problem if those interactions changed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, meet in the Retrospective to clarify that second point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Individuals and interactions over processes and tools [...] That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If problem is detrimental to interactions, &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt; address the problem. If addressing the problem would be detrimental to interactions, &lt;strong&gt;do not&lt;/strong&gt; address the problem. If addressing the problem would be irrelevant to interactions, then &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt; address the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After all; there &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; value to the items on the right. The only time those goals should not be pursued is when doing so would be &lt;strong&gt;actively harmful&lt;/strong&gt; to the goals of the items on the left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bring it up in the Retrospective, then react accordingly. This would also be a great place to brainstorm possible &lt;strong&gt;solutions&lt;/strong&gt;, if it is determined to be a problem that should be addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-12-05T14:19:43.117" LastActivityDate="2018-12-05T14:19:43.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24807" CreationDate="2018-08-30T13:46:17.207" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the real world, people &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; change the end-date for Sprints. However, &lt;strong&gt;your question is really about whether you can &lt;em&gt;extend&lt;/em&gt; a Sprint to complete unfinished work.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's acceptable to plan a reduced-capacity Sprint to accommodate holidays or other business factors. It's &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; acceptable to treat Sprint boundaries as advisory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint length should remain predictable. In the real world, it's occasionally necessary to make a Sprint shorter, move end-of-Sprint events up, or reduce the volume of work planned for the iteration. However, you should never extend a Sprint in order to &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/18228/4271&quot;&gt;accomplish more work&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Maintain a Predictable Cadence&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/9141/4271&quot;&gt;dynamic Sprint length&lt;/a&gt; is often a project smell. It's important that the time box for each Sprint is respected. Well-defined Sprint boundaries accomplish a number of things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They provides a predictable cadence for the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hard boundaries encourage smaller batch sizes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They regulate the work queue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Firm boundaries increase transparency.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Predictability often increases stakeholder confidence and engagement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that moving the Sprint Review doesn't just affect the Development Team. If affects the stakeholders too, and often impacts multiple events besides the Sprint Review such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Backlog Refinement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the Sprint Retrospective&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the subsequent Sprint Planning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; move the boundaries to accommodate significant events such as holidays, there's a cost to doing so. You need to make that cost visbile to the project, and to the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Adjust Cadence for the Right Reasons&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adjusting a Sprint's length can make sense if you're accommodating a major holiday, or if you have a significant capacity or scheduling problem. However, this has costs, which should be made extremely visible and &lt;em&gt;paid as early as possible&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reducing the capacity for the current Sprint meets that criteria, while &lt;em&gt;extending&lt;/em&gt; the Sprint creates knock-on effects and pushes project debt into subsequent time boxes. Perhaps most importantly, extending a Sprint reduces visibility by hiding capacity, process, or estimation issues behind a utilization fallacy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/24716/4271&quot;&gt;mentioned this&lt;/a&gt; before:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Always remember that the goal of a Sprint isn't to complete lots of backlog items.&lt;/strong&gt; The goal of a Sprint is to deliver the Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you extend a Sprint to do more work, you're preventing the team from facing up to (potentially systematic) errors in planning, estimation, goal-setting, backlog coherence, dependency management, story decomposition, and other related issues. This loss of visibility and transparency creates project debt that becomes evermore burdensome every time you do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What to Do Instead&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, determine whether or not your &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/18228/4271&quot;&gt;Sprint Goal is at risk&lt;/a&gt;. Rather than extending your Sprint, talk with the Product Owner to determine whether &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/22971/4271&quot;&gt;the Sprint Goal&lt;/a&gt; can still be met if the work item remains undone or is &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/17202/4271&quot;&gt;re-scoped to fit&lt;/a&gt; within the current time box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Sprint Goal &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8440/4271&quot;&gt;can't be met&lt;/a&gt;, then the Product Owner should call for an &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/22266/4271&quot;&gt;early termination&lt;/a&gt;. The team should then hold a retrospective, immediately followed by a return to Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that a Sprint can succeed without 100% of planned work being done, and it can also fail even if every planned backlog item is completed. It's the Sprint Goal that matters, and if the Sprint Goal can't be met within the time box then the cost should be paid immediately and very visibly, rather than hidden by &quot;framework adjustments.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;See Also&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Events: Cancelling a Sprint&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-08-30T13:46:17.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24799" CreationDate="2018-08-30T20:18:05.683" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have said, Scrum is a good starting point. Scrum gives a good structure if teams are new to Agile. Having a designated Scrum Master is pretty essential to getting going. In time, teams can become more self-sufficient, running their own ceremonies, and keeping the backlog in good shape during the sprint (so, outside of a planning session).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a team matures, it may be worth looking at Kanban too. I've found this works best for teams who are proactive at writing tickets (via just in time planning) and keeping them to roughly the same size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One approach I've used is to have Scrum for projects, and Kanban for ongoing BAU-type work. There are pros and cons to these and other methodologies. Whatever you do, make sure you have retrospectives so the team has the opportunity to inspect and adapt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16330" LastActivityDate="2018-08-30T20:18:05.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24815" CreationDate="2018-08-30T22:56:34.143" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;architectural user stories with no business value&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I encourage teams to create a very simple 'hello world' style first user story that offers limited but non-zero business value. Then do all the technical setup tasks under that user story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefit of this approach is that it gets the team in to the mindset of always focusing on the delivery of business value and makes it clear that technical tasks are just a means to an end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, a Business Intelligence team I worked with created a first story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a Marketing Manager I want to see the date of the registration report so that I know when it was produced&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the team did all the setup tasks and produces a very simple online report that included the current date and nothing else. This first story took the whole of a two-week sprint because of all the setup work it included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-08-30T22:56:34.143" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24828" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24830" CreationDate="2018-08-31T05:09:20.193" Score="4" ViewCount="222" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently been assigned project manager of a project which requires moderate-high degree of technical skills in machine learning that are above my level. Originally a programmer, I have previously PM'ed projects that were less technical thus allowing me to contribute a fair amount. In my progress reports, most of my team members would praise the fact that I wasn't afraid to get my hands dirty and was able to help the rest of the team when they needed it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, however, I feel like I'll be the kind of manager who doesn't understand the technical side of things and just does &quot;manager/business work&quot;, which is very important but seems to get a negative rap in the engineering community (presumably because PM's seem to have more prestige and higher salary for &quot;easier&quot; work). I'm worried that I will lose the respect of this newly formed team that I was assigned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I earn their respect, if possible at all? On one hand I feel I should I talk to my (non-technical) manager so they can replace me with a more technical PM who will be able to guide the team better, but on the other hand I want to take this as an opportunity to learn how to manage and more importantly earn the respect of teams where I am the least knowledgeable person in the room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33418" LastActivityDate="2018-08-31T13:46:37.540" Title="Earning Respect of Team Members When I Know Very Little About the Topic?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24820" CreationDate="2018-08-31T09:53:40.040" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you might be tackling this from the wrong point of view. The big elephant in the room is that people &quot;forget&quot; meetings. That is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; acceptable. Being at a specified place at a specified time is &lt;em&gt;their job&lt;/em&gt;. They get paid for it. If they &quot;forget&quot; to do their job, their disciplinary superior needs to have a stern talk with them. Assuming the meeting they scheduled is inside the normal working hours, it is certainly not the PO's fault if people forget to do their job, nor is it your job to be their minder constantly. The Scrum process expects everyone to have a basic level of professionalism, and &lt;em&gt;being there to actually do Scrum&lt;/em&gt; would be a bare minimum that you cannot enforce inside the Scrum framework, but only outside (normally by paying people in exchange for their time and work).   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once everybody actually &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; on time, and may find it exceptionally hard to do so, it's absolutely fair to talk about the scheduling of meetings in the retrospective. However, it's your job to prepare a platform where people can openly talk. It's whoever has a hard time making it, to step forward and say &quot;hey, I have a problem with this meeting, can we change the scheduling?&quot;. Your job is to moderate this exchange, and help bring up a solution, not to speak for people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, it seems you are the only one uncomfortable with their sloppiness and you are the one trying to find a solution that accommodates it. Don't. Those people can speak for themselves and they &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; speak up, once you hold them accountable for &quot;forgetting&quot; to do their job properly. Because then their unprofessional behavior will be &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; problem. And &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; will want to solve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2018-08-31T09:53:40.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24828" CreationDate="2018-08-31T09:54:58.970" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a manager of a software development team who was a designer. I started with almost no prior knowledge of writing code, other than simple html and CSS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My initial view was that they are the experts in their field and I am an expert in mine. I am just using my PM expertise to help them become more efficient and better organised, so that their skills can shine. I take away all the noise so that they can concentrate on what they are good at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first I just did a lot of listening and only interjected when I could share my expertise about how to gain a work advantage or take away the distractions. If they see you can help them to work more efficiently without 'interfering' in their day to day work, I think you will win them over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've got to prove your value in organising and structuring their work, without seeming like a bully or the boss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over time you will learn some of what they do, especially given your technical background, and can then start to add to the technical conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can now hold my own in the technical conversations with my team, even though I couldn't write a line of code if my life depended on it. However, I still always listen lots and value their technical insight above mine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33399" LastActivityDate="2018-08-31T09:54:58.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24828" CreationDate="2018-08-31T09:57:31.477" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;this is a very important question. Books like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.co.uk/Managing-Unmanageable-Insights-Software-People/dp/032182203X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Managing the Unmanageable&lt;/a&gt; suggest that it's important to have &quot;some hard skills&quot; and perhaps even help them solve a technical issue to earn the respect of your team. If you were a programmer, I think you could get a decent understanding of machine learning by taking an online course such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://developers.google.com/machine-learning/crash-course/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one from Google&lt;/a&gt;, that will give you some insight on what they are talking about. In the end, this project requires programming skills, perhaps there's something technical you could help them do? or if you are a skilled programmer, even suggest some best coding practices? (Not all machine learning programmers have in-depth knowledge of best-coding practices)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I personally think that the value of a project manager is crucial and it allows the technical individuals to focus on what's important for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would try to &quot;win&quot; the team members one by one by having individual informal sessions and explaining your role, your skills (maybe they could see how your skills will bring value to the team) demonstrating an interest in their work and very important: &lt;em&gt;what are they expecting from you?&lt;/em&gt; (a similar question is: what problems they currently face?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-08-31T09:57:31.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24828" CreationDate="2018-08-31T13:46:37.540" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Define Your Terms&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you analyze any problem, you need to define your terms. What do &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; mean by &quot;respect?&quot; What do you believe is &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; actual role on the team as a &quot;project manager?&quot; What do &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; think you're &quot;managing?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Validate Your Beliefs&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you've defined all the things &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; believe, you need to perform some sort of external validation. Do each of those things mean the same thing to other members of your team, to the organization, or to the person (or people) you report to? Chances are there's some overlap and some discrepancies. You need to surface those differences!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Respect Must Be Mutual&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of how you ultimately define all your terms, these are the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=respect&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;primary definitions&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;em&gt;respect&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;the state of being admired or respected.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;due regard for the feelings, wishes, rights, or traditions of others.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;a person's polite greetings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These things are largely &lt;em&gt;earned&lt;/em&gt;, not simply given out of reverence or deference for your position. By respecting the other members of the team, and by working to understand &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; roles, contributions, and efforts, you can earn their respect in turn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be willing to learn what they're able to teach you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How to Respect Your Team&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Agile Manifesto provides a number of related &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;values&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;principles&lt;/a&gt;. Of particular note are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Individuals and interactions over processes and tools...while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Build projects around motivated individuals. &#xA;  Give them the environment and support they need, &#xA;  and trust them to get the job done.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount &#xA;  of work not done--is essential.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The best architectures, requirements, and designs &#xA;  emerge from self-organizing teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, by taking on the roles of coach, cheerleader, facilitator, and process referee, you are supporting your team! If you are doing this in a visible and transparent way, you are more likely to be appreciated for your role in enabling the team to succeed, rather than being seen as a necessary evil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, respect the professionalism of your teammates (or help less-mature teams cultivate it) and &lt;strong&gt;respect their personhood&lt;/strong&gt;. If you can't do these two things, nothing else you do will have a positive interpersonal impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-08-31T13:46:37.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24833" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24835" CreationDate="2018-08-31T17:36:12.080" Score="3" ViewCount="2279" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Scenario&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our organization, we use velocity to forecast the amount of possible work in a Sprint. Sometimes, based on the Team's average velocity, we add extra features not related to the Sprint Goal, just to add more value if the Sprint Goal's tasks are not enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, these extra features couldn't be completed, and we have to end the Sprint as a failed Sprint because we couldn't completed the stakeholders' expectation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Question&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to remove Stories, even in a running Sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32948" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-09-04T13:02:20.777" LastActivityDate="2018-09-04T13:02:20.777" Title="Is it possible to remove Stories during a Sprint in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24833" CreationDate="2018-08-31T18:08:36.163" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your question at a basic level, if you want to change sprint scope while the sprint is running, the backlog items you change need to be an equivalent size. For instance, if you need to add a 5 point story to the sprint, you could remove a 5 point story from the sprint. Or, you could remove one 2 point story and one 3 point story. The sprint commitment therefore stays the same - you're not doing extra work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You didn't say if you were doing this or not, but don't remove anything from the sprint if it's marked as in progress, as this will disrupt the team's work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Achieving the sprint goal should be your aim. If there are additional things that you'd like the team to do if they get through the sprint backlog faster than expected, consider having those as stretch goals. With this method, you don't need to add them directly to the sprint and you don't need to take anything out. If the team completes the sprint backlog early, they could take the highest priority item from the list of stretch goals and bring this into the sprint. It needs to be something that can be completed within the sprint - so be careful with adding large items towards the end of the sprint. If the stretch goals are not completed, the sprint has not failed. Stretch goals are additional work - they are not your sprint goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Failing a sprint can be very demoralising for the team, and seems like it could be prevented if it is happening because of items added to the sprint that do not relate to the sprint goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If stakeholders ask for more work while the sprint is running, all you need to do is say that the work can be considered for a future sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be helpful to know what your role is, as you didn't say. That might be another question though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16330" LastActivityDate="2018-08-31T18:08:36.163" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24833" CreationDate="2018-08-31T20:51:19.563" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By defining success as &quot;doing &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the things,&quot; rather than &quot;doing the &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; things,&quot; your process inherently sets the team up for failure. Instead, leverage the framework (especially the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-planning&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sprint Goal&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#artifact-transparency-done&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Definition of Done&lt;/a&gt;) to correctly the measure the value the team is delivering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Setting the Team Up for Failure&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sometimes, this extra features couldn't be completed, and we have to end the sprint as failed sprint because we couldn't completed the stakeholders spectation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is wrong. Setting aside the question of whether you should accept work into a Sprint that isn't related to the Sprint Goal, not completing &quot;extra work&quot; doesn't mean you have a failed Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CodeGnome's Scrum Tautology says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Always remember that the goal of a Sprint isn't to complete lots of backlog items. &lt;strong&gt;The goal of a Sprint is to deliver the Sprint Goal.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ignoring the tautology is an aspect of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://dzone.com/articles/100-utilization-myth&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;100% utilization fallacy&lt;/a&gt;. Focusing on how much work the team does, rather than how predictably they deliver working product increments, is a very whiffy framework implementation smell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A successful Sprint is one that meets the defined Sprint Goal and delivers a potentially-shippable increment per the Definition of Done. Any other definition is self-sabotage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Scrum Theory&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Guide's section on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#theory&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Theory&lt;/a&gt; doesn't even acknowledge the concept of a &quot;failed Sprint.&quot; Instead, it treats process or delivery issues as inspect-and-adapt opportunities. It says: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If an inspector determines that one or more aspects of a process deviate outside acceptable limits, and that the resulting product will be unacceptable, the process or the material being processed must be adjusted. An adjustment must be made as soon as possible to minimize further deviation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In principle, this means the only &quot;failure&quot; is a failure to apply Scrum principles such as setting a coherent Sprint Goal, renegotiating scope with the Product Owner as needed, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cancelling a Sprint&lt;/a&gt; when required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;See Also&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/18212/4271&quot;&gt;Sprint Goal and Failure of a Sprint&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/8433/4271&quot;&gt;What are the right conclusions to draw from the success or failure of a Sprint?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/22245/4271&quot;&gt;What to do when mid-sprint, you realize some stories won&amp;#39;t be done?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/22960/4271&quot;&gt;Why must we define a Sprint Goal for each Sprint?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/12536/4271&quot;&gt;What can we do with a &amp;quot;mispointed&amp;quot; story in Scrum?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8846/4271&quot;&gt;When Scope Changes Mid-Sprint&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-08-31T20:51:19.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24838" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24839" CreationDate="2018-09-05T12:54:50.687" Score="-1" ViewCount="268" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Scenario&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we know, a Sprint Retrospective is a meeting held at the end of an iteration to evaluate the Scrum Team's performance, what happened in the iteration and identify actions for improvement going forward. Suppose we are working on a minimum viable product (MVP) to be launched shortly. The product is not launched in the market and is awaiting customer feedback. So it is very essential to evaluate the Sprint items rigorously in a meeting. Basically, I want to conduct the best and most efficient retro meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33461" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-09-05T13:13:38.387" LastActivityDate="2018-09-05T22:03:28.680" Title="Best method to conduct retrospective meeting for a MVP?" Tags="&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;&lt;business-analyst&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2018-09-10T00:49:11.157" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24838" CreationDate="2018-09-05T13:24:41.547" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The described context does give much specifics for the retrospective. As you don't have customer feedback, the retrospective should probably focus on the team interworking. It can be any format from &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.benlinders.com/exercises&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;benlinders.com/exercises&lt;/a&gt;. If you give me more info, then I can pinpoint you to specific exercises that might be suitable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16919" LastEditorUserId="16919" LastEditDate="2018-09-05T22:03:28.680" LastActivityDate="2018-09-05T22:03:28.680" CommentCount="4" CommunityOwnedDate="2018-09-05T13:24:41.547" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24838" CreationDate="2018-09-05T14:07:41.377" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;MVP is to bring product to customer's table quicker to bring more understanding of what customer has conceptualized and to get the alignment of feels &amp;amp; thoughts against the product.  In sprint retrospection, you can discuss what went good and what can be improved to bring more stories to the delivery.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Post customer feedback, one can fine tune definitions of 'what' needs to be delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, sprint retrospection can help in fine tuning 'how' part of delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25351" LastActivityDate="2018-09-05T14:07:41.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24841" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24842" CreationDate="2018-09-05T15:50:20.220" Score="3" ViewCount="247" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Scenario&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before changing to Scrum, we usually performed some type of review with the Project Manager (now Product Owner), the Project Lead of the development team and the stakeholders. Our development teams are composed of 3 developers and a QA. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-review&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; specifies the participation of the Development Team but does not mention if it is the whole Team or just some representatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Question&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it necessary for all members of the Development Team to participate in the Sprint Review, or could it be done with just a few of them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32948" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-09-05T20:11:40.980" LastActivityDate="2018-09-05T20:11:40.980" Title="Is it necessary for the whole team to participate in the Sprint Review in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;sprint-review&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24841" CreationDate="2018-09-05T16:11:10.897" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, +1 for checking the Scrum Guide!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book answer would be that it says the attendees include The Scrum Team and with no extra qualifiers, it can be assumed that it means the whole scrum team (Dev team, PO, SM). But I'd hate to just give you the book answer, so in my time practicing Scrum, here are some of the benefits I've seen to including everyone:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) No whisper-down-the-alley. If you ever played that game in school, you probably know that for every person a message has to go through, it loses details and gets distorted, regardless of how hard you try to get it right. The Sprint Review is an opportunity to close that gap between stakeholders and developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) It creates ownership. When developers have to show their own work, they value it more. They also get more exposure to the effect their work and other team members work have on the overall product and fulfilling stakeholder needs. When they aren't there it sends a subtle message that it isn't their product to show, even if you don't mean to send that message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) It makes it important. Telling a developer that the review isn't worth spending at most an hour per week on diminishes the value of the review and other people notice (and let's face it, it's usually far less).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Questions get answered quickly. If either developers or stakeholders have questions, you can answer them on the spot and account for them in the backlog. In my experience, most teams I see not having effective reviews actually spend more time chasing answers down than they would have spent if they just all went to the review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure there are many more benefits - those are just the ones that sprint to mind. Maybe other people can add some in the comments that I missed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-09-05T16:11:10.897" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24844" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-09-06T03:15:16.787" Score="6" ViewCount="536" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Current status:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;We have the term of (service owner), where all microservices distributed among developers, and each service has a developer as (service owner). In the sprint, each developer is working on his microservice(s). Hence, we have smaller chunks of development streams run in parallel. Although we tried to add what so-called (back up service owner), more often than not, only the service owner ends up working on his microservices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have the feeling this is not scrum, as we lack the concept of team. However, it is also challenging to bring the entire team to work on one microservice at the same time (maybe if more than 2 developers, it will get crowded). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are a team of 10. 5 core developers (service owners), and the other 5 from external vendor but they are part of the same scrum team. The external developers rely heavily on the internal ones in terms of specifications, code review, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question, how to organize scrum team around microservices?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13766" LastEditorUserId="13766" LastEditDate="2018-09-06T05:22:54.377" LastActivityDate="2018-09-07T13:29:01.853" Title="Organizing Scrum team around microservices" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24845" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24846" CreationDate="2018-09-06T12:14:51.330" Score="3" ViewCount="1326" Body="&lt;p&gt;Or phrased differently: Why is the role called Product &lt;strong&gt;Owner&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I spent some hours researching the term's etymology, but I haven't been particularly successful, which is why this question came to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am explicitly &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; asking about the definition of the role here. There are plenty of articles explaining that e.g. in the context of Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, I am interested in the historical reasoning that has led to denoting it as an &quot;owner&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might also make sense to share some context with you to explain why this question came up in the first place: My experience is that teams unfamiliar with agile methodologies tend to replace the term &quot;owner&quot; in their minds with some variation of a role they already know from traditional hierarchies. This often leads to an interpretation that puts the Product Owner into some kind of principal or even boss position, which may be in stark contrast to what one wants to achieve when implementing agile processes. To be specific, what people intuitively interpret might yield views contrary to servant leadership, self-organizing teams and evolving situational hierarchies. That is why it might be necessary to better explain the context in which e.g. the Scrum definition of the &quot;Product Owner&quot; role should be seen with respect to the goals of the company where it is being implemented. Getting an idea about the intentions of naming it &quot;owner&quot; in the first place might help with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33468" LastEditorUserId="33468" LastEditDate="2018-09-06T15:01:13.373" LastActivityDate="2020-03-16T15:23:40.383" Title="What is the origin of the term &quot;Product Owner&quot; in Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24845" CreationDate="2018-09-06T13:16:51.743" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always interpreted it as being because the Product Owner (PO)... &lt;em&gt;owns the product&lt;/em&gt;. S/he is the stand-in representative for the end-customers whom will be the ones &lt;em&gt;literally owning&lt;/em&gt; the product in the future. As such, his/her responsibilities are somewhat similar to what the on-site customer's would be in eXtreme Programming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And while the Customer is Always Right™, the Customer is Not Your Boss. Your boss is your boss. Hypothetically one individual &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; fulfill both roles of PO and manager, but I would personally advise against it - they are distinct roles with distinct responsibilities and goals. Just as the customer and the boss would be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-po&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;, the PO is responsible for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Clearly expressing Product Backlog items;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Ordering the items in the Product Backlog to best achieve goals and missions;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Optimizing the value of the work the Development Team performs;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Ensuring that the Product Backlog is visible, transparent, and clear to all, and shows what the Scrum Team will work on next; and,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Ensuring the Development Team understands items in the Product Backlog to the level needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's nothing in there even about servant-leadership, let alone 'normal' leadership. The Scrum Master is the servant-leader of the Scrum Team. The PO is just another member with different responsibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their responsibility is to pretend as if they own the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-09-06T13:16:51.743" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24847" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-09-06T13:28:40.117" Score="2" ViewCount="1136" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to our regular software development tasks we have some large R&amp;amp;D tasks which we find difficult to fit into our scrum framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main issue is that there is absolutely no user value before the entire project is done, and it is very difficult to break it down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say I want to create an algorithm which can tell cats from dogs. We might already have one with a performance of 98%, but we need a new one (from scratch) which can deliver 99%. The main steps will look something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do a literature study &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acquire some pictures of cats and dogs. Perhaps also some code to handle the images.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Train a algorithm based on the data and test the accuracy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make some final validation of the results&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implement the working prototype into a product.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 1,2,4 and 5 are easy and can be broken further down if needed.&#xA;However, step 3 is way to big and way to uncertain to just be a story by itself. Experience shows that the progress will be something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Train the algorithm using the de facto method found in the literature study&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Realize that you need better performance, but might be able to get it by incorporating some special information in this specific use case.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apply tweak #1 which turns out to improve the performance by x%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apply tweak #2 .....&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;.....&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;n tweaks later you have reached the goal of 99% corrected predictions.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, since adaptation/tweaking is the main part of the work and it's often impossible to predict the number of tweaks needed, the effect of a tweak and the type of tweaks in advance. We think planning a project like this is very difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We understand that a big (of not the biggest) goals of agile development is that you can adapt and change direction as needed - and that is great. But how to you plan/estimate a story like this, were we find it very difficult to asses the workload in advance, and equally hard to break the problem down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any feedback is welcome&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32527" LastActivityDate="2018-09-06T14:59:43.170" Title="How to handle large R&amp;D projects using Scrum (or any other agile framework)" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24847" CreationDate="2018-09-06T14:07:31.973" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I also work in a similar environment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Set a maximum number of tweaks&lt;/em&gt; (or time box it) and document the possible &quot;tweaks&quot; and the time they are taking &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work on understanding your team's speed and similar to the previous point, try to create groups of tasks and review the time they are taking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This two Points will help you in understanding how much they can take when similar tasks or tweaks are required you'll be able to have a more accurate picture of how long you'll require.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-09-06T14:07:31.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24851" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-09-06T14:59:39.103" Score="4" ViewCount="68" Body="&lt;p&gt;If we start a sprint with a specific goal and the user stories to support that goal, then the business changes their immediate requirements during that sprint. This may be because of a client requirement or an internal 'emergency'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, we start a 2 week sprint with a number of planned tickets to reach the sprint goal. After 3 days, the business approach us with a need for some functionality not in the current sprint. This is needed to appease a dissatisfied client. There is a requirement to abandon the current goal and set this urgent work as a new one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do we handle this? Do we fail the sprint and start planning again? Do we insist on finishing the current sprint and do this urgent work in the next one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33399" LastActivityDate="2018-09-06T16:53:19.153" Title="Change of business focus after a sprint has started" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24847" CreationDate="2018-09-06T14:59:43.170" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile Software development process encourages relative sizing. ie. How big is a piece of work vis a vis another piece of work. In this case, it sounds like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have nothing to compare against. So relative sizing cannot really be done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The incremental improvement (scope of next tweak) cannot be quantified.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you need a reference for relative sizing. For example if you have some numbers from a past project where you compare birds and fishes. That could help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, consider using waterfall or Kanban. This kind of work sounds roughly-right to be planned as a waterfall project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32694" LastActivityDate="2018-09-06T14:59:43.170" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24851" CreationDate="2018-09-06T15:10:57.143" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The product owner should decide when the objective of the sprint becomes &lt;em&gt;obsolete&lt;/em&gt; and hence cancel the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is a recurrent situation, there's a need to diagnose why it is happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Details from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-sprint&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;scrum guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Cancelling a Sprint&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Sprint can be cancelled before the Sprint time-box is over. Only the Product Owner has the authority to cancel the Sprint, although he or she may do so under influence from the stakeholders, the Development Team, or the Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Sprint would be cancelled if the Sprint Goal becomes obsolete. This might occur if the company changes direction or if market or technology conditions change. In general, a Sprint should be cancelled if it no longer makes sense given the circumstances. But, due to the short duration of Sprints, cancellation rarely makes sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a Sprint is cancelled, any completed and &amp;quot;Done&amp;quot; Product Backlog items are reviewed. If part of the work is potentially releasable, the Product Owner typically accepts it. All incomplete Product Backlog Items are re-estimated and put back on the Product Backlog. The work done on them depreciates quickly and must be frequently re-estimated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprint cancellations consume resources, since everyone regroups in another Sprint Planning to start another Sprint. Sprint cancellations are often traumatic to the Scrum Team, and are very uncommon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-09-06T16:53:19.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24844" CreationDate="2018-09-06T17:09:00.837" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having worked in a similar environment and also having faced similar problems I would suggest the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No single person owns any of the microservices. All of the servies are owned by the &lt;em&gt;TEAM&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will be hard, since people have vested interest in only developing &quot;their&quot; services, but it is pretty much the only way to start transforming your group of people to anything that resembles an actual team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to figure out a way (perhaps through incentives) for people to work on other services in the team as well. Until then you really do have several different work streams that are grouped together in a &quot;team&quot; for convenience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After your people are working as a team you can start applying prioritization to team's work etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29075" LastActivityDate="2018-09-06T17:09:00.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24856" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24860" CreationDate="2018-09-07T07:30:53.910" Score="2" ViewCount="1953" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the optimal seating arrangement for a scrum/agile/kanban team other than next to each other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a bank of 4 desks face to face another 4 desks and have the opportunity to move the team around as some have asked if they can. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a tech lead, devs and QA’s and a scrum master. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2018-09-08T00:27:52.560" Title="Optimal seating arrangements for scrum team" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2018-09-09T13:39:46.963" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24857" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24859" CreationDate="2018-09-07T08:55:11.873" Score="14" ViewCount="2456" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're in a quite complex software engineering project with lots of unknowns due to new technologies involved that the Team has never applied nor have comparable experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to these risks the Product Owner (PO) requested a &quot;&lt;strong&gt;confidence&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;strong&gt;check&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; of if the Team will reach the minimum viable product (MVP) by a certain deadline this year. Since &quot;deadline&quot; and doing Scrum clash quite a bit, the Team was really hesitating to give the PO an answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PO required to have this indication for a CEO's report; thus, all had to rate it; there was no way around. So I took the rating as part of a Retrospective. We're in Sprint 2 of 8; the real velocity is not clear to the Team yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He asked the Team to vote 1 - 5 regarding these phrases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;5 - Yes, I'm confident. There is a clear and transparent path forward&#xA;to achieve the MVP. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;4 - Yes, I'm confident but the path forward is not fully transparent to me. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 - Yes, I'm fairly confident that we can make it happen but I see some risks.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 - No, I'm not confident anymore. There are too many obstacles. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 - No, I'm already convinced that there will be a delay.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the result I'd like to share. The Dev Team is quite large, since we have multiple streams - some votes are also from people of an extended Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/N5l1k.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/N5l1k.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;confidence check in retrospective&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to get your opinions on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you see this situation? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this a valid way to get feedback from the Team as a means to report to the CEO under the circumstances of facing risks that could risk feasibility of the MVP? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a better and more agile-friendly way to get feedback from the Team? How would you facilitate such a decision?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33477" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-01T14:43:44.953" LastActivityDate="2018-11-01T15:35:36.457" Title="Product Owner is requesting a &quot;confidence check&quot; for reaching the MVP - How to in a Scrum project?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24857" CreationDate="2018-09-07T10:01:38.737" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;While such a confidence check is nothing that you'd read about in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/resources/scrum-guide&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; I don't see it as something that violates Scrum in any way. It is, in fact, answering a different question: the one about confidence of people, not the one about forecast end date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The native method to answer a question about expected end date in Scrum would be based on Velocity and backlog size. I would argue that simply counting throughput (a number of features completed) is &lt;a href=&quot;http://brodzinski.com/2015/02/story-points-velocity-the-good-bits.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;simpler and yields similar outcomes&lt;/a&gt;. No matter which method you use it can inform people about their confidence. For example: throughput / velocity measured so far suggests that we need 9 more iterations to finish the backlog, but we are in sprint 2 of 8 thus we only have 6 iterations left; thus my confidence for making it on time is low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another bit that can inform confidence would be scope creep: how many features are being added to MVP backlog over time. The fact, that you have e.g. 25 features in the backlog for the remaining time means little if you can expect that each iteration adds 3-4 new features to the backlog. In such was the case you would need to take into account that the real backlog size may be more like 43-49 features than current 25. This, as well, would inform confidence of people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the validity of the method, I don't see it much of a problem as long as there is a common understanding between the PO and CEO what the measurement actually means, and possibly all the caveats to the quality of the measurement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few observation that one could draw looking at the picture:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Majority of voices in the &quot;sphere of uncertainty&quot; which is the middle of the scale. If I have no opinion, or I have one but I'm uncertain about it, I would likely put my voice in the middle. It doesn't matter what the label of &quot;3&quot; says actually. One improvement I see for this activity would be to add an explicit &quot;I don't know&quot; option to choose from. That would sort out uncertain voices from those that are &quot;fairly confident&quot; on making it on the deadline.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People are &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_fallacy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;overly optimistic&lt;/a&gt; in estimation. Their expertise doesn't matter. The fact that they've been exposed to their own overly optimistic past estimates doesn't matter either. This begs for conclusion that in reality the chances of making the project on time is lower than what this confidence exercise suggests.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As long as people who took part in the exercise may be confident that its outcome won't be used &lt;em&gt;in any way&lt;/em&gt; against them you could count on the reliable data. The picture suggests it was anonymous voting, which is good. However, I could still imagine CEO undertaking the action after the MVP missed its deadline. After all the team was &quot;fairly confident&quot; that you'd make it. In any case it is important for the team to know that the pure goal of the exercise is to inform decision-makers and there is no downside &lt;em&gt;for the team&lt;/em&gt; in taking part in the activity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above remarks also suggest how the activity could have been improved: make 100% sure that the team feels safe about the gathered measurement, make sure the CEO understand the caveats and the team knows that too, give space to &quot;have no idea&quot; about own confidence, make sure it's anonymous, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2018-09-07T10:01:38.737" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24856" CreationDate="2018-09-07T10:33:36.840" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There can't be a universal answer for such a question. The fact, that a team is a Scrum team or Kanban team or Agile team is negligible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I go with an assumption that one (probably not the only) thing you want to optimize for is collaboration. Co-location improves collaboration / communication opportunities, but I reckon for the question it's given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you may want to consider all sorts of aspects that boil down to individual needs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do they need more or less personal space?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do they need more quiet space, which happens to be important (e.g. for some people in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/autism-spectrum-disorders-asd/index.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;autism spectrum&lt;/a&gt;)? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What about their expectations for temperature (e.g. who is exposed to a direct blow from air-conditioning)? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What about light (e.g. glow on a monitor screen is unhealthy for eyes)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the patterns and frequencies of different people moving around?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How people feel about having no wall behind their back? It is our primal instinct that we feel safer in a place where no once can approach us from the back unseen, thus wall behind the back is preferred than a door, a window, or an &#xA;empty space.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For people in front of each other: is the awkwardness of accidental kicking each other under the desks is fine or not?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once these has been taken care of you can think of simple collaboration issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether people sitting in front of each other would actually be possible to see themselves or they would be isolated by a wall of LCD screens?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a space for a discussion near a whiteboard?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there an option for pairing when the situation calls for it? And how often it may happen?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the most common communication paths and are they easiest to exploit? Note: they don't have to rely on the roles of people that much but on their character types.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case I would be far from overdoing it. Ultimately you could spend hours carefully considering each of the points above, but as much as people are respectful to each other and open enough to talk about their needs they should be fine to self-organize the desk setup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case people feeling comfortable would yield a better result than theoretically &quot;ideal&quot; setup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the final thought, the sitting arrangement isn't written in the stone. You can rearrange it if it doesn't work for a team member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="89" LastActivityDate="2018-09-07T10:33:36.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24844" CreationDate="2018-09-07T10:36:16.083" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please use (any books on Scrum) to help your team understand they are not really a Scrum team. Scrum team works together and sign  up to Sprint goal. In-fact good scrum teams do not differentiate between developers and Qa teams, everyone is an engineer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile Alliance &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;online reference&lt;/a&gt; states &quot;The Scrum Team consists of a Product Owner, the Development Team, and a Scrum Master. Scrum Teams are self-organizing and cross-functional.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a team where people only work on service they own, team is diluting a core principles of cross functional and self-organizing team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To help drive this mindset, perhaps a good scrum master can cause team to be more self-organizing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32694" LastActivityDate="2018-09-07T10:36:16.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24857" CreationDate="2018-09-07T13:03:48.343" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think that it's a massive problem to ask for a confidence vote. I often do this with raising hands as a yes and no or we use fingers instead of a scale like you have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as the team doesn't think that a confidence vote is taken as a commitment or like a signed agreement that they will deliver on a fixed date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most organisations put in fixed dates and this is often a sign that the people that define these fixed dates need coaching to understand that on Agile projects we use landing zones, velocity and scope as our levers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A better way of doing this is to get the team to estimate 2 sprints worth of ready for dev work and then estimate the rest of the backlog at epic level. Plug all this data into a burn-up chart using their average velocity of the last 2 sprints and then constantly update it as their velocity figures come in every sprint (Jira does this automatically). This burn-up chart will give you a landing zone i.e. a date range. If its completely off, then you need to have a hard look at your MVP, remove distractions and other work the team might still be responsible for, if its still completely off, you would need to discuss any architectural bells and whistles which may need to be removed. The worse case scenario is you would need to have a difficult discussion with the CEO and PO coaching them on and showing them these charts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastEditorUserId="32613" LastEditDate="2018-09-07T14:46:40.477" LastActivityDate="2018-09-07T14:46:40.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24844" CreationDate="2018-09-07T13:29:01.853" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with YoMan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good Scrum Master should be able to help out with this as this is not was intended with Scrum. The team should work together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the first things that I would do is I would create a matrix of all the Microservices the team owns and each individual on the team and challenge the team to complete the matrix i.e. each individual must at some point work on every micro service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also have a pair programming matrix so that every team member pairs with every other developer at least once every sprint or every release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the full 10 person team co-located? If not I would setup a large screen and permanent video link between the 2 locations with a big mute/unmute button to allow them to comm. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2018-09-07T13:29:01.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24857" CreationDate="2018-09-07T14:38:55.407" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Andre welcome to the forum!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduce the number of &quot;levels&quot;. You don't need 5, it makes it less actionable, 3 levels is probably better&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't ask for &lt;em&gt;likelihood&lt;/em&gt; the answer of your team might be very dependent on how optimistic they are. I believe it is far better to construct quantifiable/objective questions that would discover the likelihood of the project. For example, the level of specific skills/requirements and have people evaluate themselves on those, that would give you a much clearer picture than one simple question alone. To elaborate on this, if, for example you need everyone to be comfortable using tool X that no one knows how to use it, then two good questions are: &lt;em&gt;how comfortable are you at learning tool X in this amount of time?&lt;/em&gt; and the second one, &lt;em&gt;how long did it took you before to learn a similar tool?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-09-07T14:38:55.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24865" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-09-07T15:07:56.037" Score="4" ViewCount="75" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our current client sent us several hundred pages of documentation about the context and goals of his company. In these documents (there are multiple files) they use a lot of acronyms and very specific terms (SICA, UNB, ...). The client also works with foreign governements, adding to the already long list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only one of the documents has a lexicon, the rest only uses the terms without explaination, sometimes there is a reminder, sometimes not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never encountered that problem and I am looking for something that could help our team. It would be some kind of big lexicon where we could match the acronyms/terms with a small definition. It should be online and everyone could add to it when encountering a new one. So everyone in the (relatively small) team could refer to it when reading new documents or for future meetings with the client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT :&#xA;I was unclear. There is always an explaination of the acronym, but not always on the document that uses it. Since there are a lot of documents I think they assume that every acronym written after the first mention is already known, but they did not provide any order to the documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33485" LastEditorUserId="33485" LastEditDate="2018-09-07T22:40:31.303" LastActivityDate="2018-09-07T22:40:31.303" Title="Managing large lists of acronyms and terms" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;clients&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24866" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24867" CreationDate="2018-09-07T15:24:03.640" Score="4" ViewCount="125" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any suggestions for the following scenario:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a Scrum Team and the organisation has decided to work in this fashion. Some of the team members report to different managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We recently had a live issue and the different managers 'scolded' individuals on the team in the background... without the rest of the team knowing about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was going to arrange a mini-retro with the team about it and then also coach the managers to rather approach the whole team not individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you suggest we handle this moving forward?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-09-07T16:21:39.117" LastActivityDate="2018-09-07T18:12:50.997" Title="Managers pulling up team members individually" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24866" CreationDate="2018-09-07T15:35:49.077" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would add one step to your process. Just to make sure we are thinking about the same, these are the 3 steps I have in mind: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do the internal retro with your team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agree on a process with the managers to approach members of the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Speak to each manager &lt;em&gt;individually&lt;/em&gt; about the importance of addressing this situation and the process you create&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastEditorUserId="32111" LastEditDate="2018-09-07T18:12:50.997" LastActivityDate="2018-09-07T18:12:50.997" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24865" CreationDate="2018-09-07T16:46:32.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Welcome to PM Stack exchange!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question isn't really specific to the PM domain, so I'm going to call this a risk management issue. There are many acronyms which mean different things depending on context, and making an assumption that turns out to be incorrect could be catastrophic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any document full of industry jargon should have a glossary in the appendix. Obviously your client isn't doing that, or at least has not provided it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before rolling your own solution, I think you need to communicate to the client that in order to be able to provide the best solution in the shortest period of time you both need to be on the same page, and they should provide you with what the terms mean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is an expectation for some reason that your team already had this subject matter expertise (i.e. someone lied to get a contract) and you are a PMI member, you are ethically bound to declare that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20438" LastEditorUserId="20438" LastEditDate="2018-09-07T16:58:50.133" LastActivityDate="2018-09-07T16:58:50.133" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24856" CreationDate="2018-09-07T17:24:46.017" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Remote&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum lends itself particularly well to distributed/remote teams. On average, working remotely increases productivity. Therefore, the optimal &amp;quot;seating arrangement&amp;quot; for a Scrum team is wherever they feel like working from that day: home, a coffee shop, a mountain top, the ISS (if they can get wifi up there...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's just one of many articles you can find on the subject:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.inc.com/scott-mautz/a-2-year-stanford-study-shows-astonishing-productivity-boost-of-working-from-home.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A 2-Year Stanford Study Shows the Astonishing Productivity Boost of Working From Home&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, the robust, nearly two-year study showed an astounding productivity boost among the telecommuters equivalent to a full day's work [per week]. Turns out work-from-home employees work a true full-shift (or more) versus being late to the office or leaving early multiple times a week and found it less distracting and easier to concentrate at home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally (and incredibly), employee attrition decreased by 50 percent among the telecommuters, they took shorter breaks, had fewer sick days, and took less time off. Not to mention the reduced carbon emissions from fewer autos clogging up the morning commute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and by the way, the company saved almost $2,000 per employee on rent by reducing the amount of HQ office space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's exactly my experience. My personal suspicion is that a minority of workers experience gigantic performance gains (in my case, double or more) while a majority see smaller losses, and it averages out to a small gain. The Stanford study aligns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More than half the volunteer group changed their minds about working from home 100 percent of the time--they felt too much isolation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this study, working from home increased productivity by 13% overall, and 24% among those who chose to continue working from home. Other studies have produced similar results. At the other extreme, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.inc.com/suzanne-lucas/if-you-want-people-to-collaborate-get-rid-of-this-office-plan.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;another study&lt;/a&gt; found that open floor plan offices &lt;em&gt;decrease&lt;/em&gt; productivity by a similar amount. The bank of face to face desks you describe is the worst possible working arrangement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remote is also a good way to attract top talent. From the &lt;a href=&quot;https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017#work&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SO 2017 Developer Survey&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When we asked respondents what they valued most when considering a new job, 53.3% said remote options were a top priority. A majority of developers, 63.9%, reported working remotely at least one day a month, and 11.1% say they’re full-time remote or almost all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suspicion again: those 11% are disproportionately rock stars with a lot of negotiating power. For them, opportunity to work remotely may substitute for astronomical salary requirements. (Compare the prices of an acre of land in the middle of nowhere, Montana vs. downtown San Francisco.) In addition to increasing productivity and saving money on rent, going remote may allow you to hire more and/or better developers for the same salary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31390" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-09-08T00:27:52.560" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24870" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25089" CreationDate="2018-09-09T07:57:03.373" Score="1" ViewCount="65" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am struggling to bridge my PMBOK knowledge with a colleague that follows PRINCE2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if someone could help me understand whether PRINCE2 has the concept of &quot;rolling-wave planning&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From:&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling-wave_planning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rolling-wave planning is the process of project planning in waves as the project proceeds and later details become clearer; similar to the techniques used in agile software development approaches like Scrum. (...) The concepts of rolling-wave planning and progressive elaboration are techniques covered in the Project Management Body of Knowledge&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling-wave_planning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling-wave_planning&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5484" LastActivityDate="2018-10-17T18:52:38.050" Title="Is &quot;rolling-wave planning&quot; catered for in PRINCE2?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;prince2&gt;&lt;pmbok&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24872" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-09-10T03:13:31.247" Score="0" ViewCount="216" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why for milestone task, the graphic indicator did not show?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The formula to consider is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;IIf(CDbl([Baseline Finish]&amp;gt;60000),&quot; Not Baseline&quot;,IIf(([Baseline Duration]=0 Or [Duration]=0),Switch([% Complete]=100,&quot; Completed&quot;,[Status Date]&amp;lt;[Start],&quot; Not Start Yet&quot;,[Status Date]&amp;gt;[Start],&quot;Late&quot;),Switch([Status Date]&amp;lt;[Start],&quot; Not Start Yet&quot;,[% Complete]=100,&quot;Completed&quot;,(ProjDateDiff([Start],[Status Date])/480)/Val(ProjDurConv(Duration,pjDays))*100&amp;lt;=[% Complete],&quot;Ahead Schedule&quot;,(ProjDateDiff([Start],[Status Date])/480)/Val(ProjDurConv(Duration,pjDays))*100&amp;gt;[% Complete],&quot;Late&quot;)))&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33505" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-01-14T14:09:40.547" LastActivityDate="2019-01-14T14:09:40.547" Title="Why does the graphic indicator not show for milestone task?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24873" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24874" CreationDate="2018-09-10T05:03:26.780" Score="3" ViewCount="67" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can organizational trainings on Project Management (Classroom and Web-based) be considered for Continuing Certification Requirements (CCR) of PMP?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example I recently attended a few trainings on Leadership (classroom training), Agile Methods (classroom training), Organization specific Processes for Project Management  (classroom training), Estimation techniques (web-based training).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I report these as PDU's for PMI’s CCR? If yes, should these be reported under &quot;Course or Training&quot; or &quot;Informal Learning&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I read through the CCR handbook at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pmi.org/-/media/pmi/documents/public/pdf/certifications/ccr-certification-requirements-handbook.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.pmi.org/-/media/pmi/documents/public/pdf/certifications/ccr-certification-requirements-handbook.pdf&lt;/a&gt; however it was not clearly mentioned whether organizational trainings can be considered or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31345" LastActivityDate="2020-08-25T15:06:40.837" Title="Can organizational trainings (Classroom and Web-based) be considered for Continuing Certification Requirements (CCR) of PMP?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;certification&gt;&lt;pmi&gt;&lt;pdu&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24873" CreationDate="2018-09-10T13:10:49.747" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should load any and all types of training you receive during your three years as it relates to project management and be as descriptive as you can in the tool.  For example, I believe the tools asks you for the provider of the training and you would enter the organization's name.  Allow PMI to either accept or reject the credit hours and go on from there.  You will either receive an immediate acceptance or rejection or it will tell you the credits are pending.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-09-10T13:10:49.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24875" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24877" CreationDate="2018-09-11T06:33:33.247" Score="3" ViewCount="312" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have implemented a feature as per the discussion with product manager. But there is a requirement change from the customer. So how will handle this request ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example : I have created a user story to build a new report - performance report and list in the reports module. However, the customer wants to move and list in different location - say performance reports. So the requirement is to move the performance reports from reports module to performance reports. &#xA;Do we have to create separate user story for this change?&#xA;What are the additional steps to be captured when creating user stories ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33461" LastActivityDate="2018-09-11T10:03:59.523" Title="How will handle the user story as part of change request ?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24876" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24879" CreationDate="2018-09-11T07:26:34.673" Score="4" ViewCount="119" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a separate Scrum (front-end) Team to handle UI requirements. Sometimes, due to urgency, we end up picking stories in the current Sprint which depend on the front-end Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever dependencies are not resolved in a timely manner, our execution gets impacted.&#xA;What could be the solution in this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30305" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-11-02T13:15:57.640" LastActivityDate="2018-11-02T13:15:57.640" Title="Is it fine to pick stories in the current sprint which have external dependency?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;dependencies&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24875" CreationDate="2018-09-11T07:56:26.143" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are using User Stories to describe features, then you should certainly continue be using User Stories to describe change requests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the User Story in this case is pretty clear - you know the user, you know the action, you have a reason...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;As a&lt;/strong&gt; user of the reporting tool &lt;strong&gt;I want&lt;/strong&gt; performance reports to be in a dedicated location &lt;strong&gt;so that&lt;/strong&gt; I can segregate them from other reports&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then do whatever is the convention in your team in terms of supporting documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I won't touch on how to draw the line between change requests, bugs and missed requirements here - let's just assume it is a clear change request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29898" LastActivityDate="2018-09-11T07:56:26.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24875" CreationDate="2018-09-11T10:03:59.523" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's only a matter of changing the location of the report. It should be a separate story(requirement) assuming the report you build is still useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the story will be something like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As a user, I want all performance reports at one dedicated location.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30305" LastActivityDate="2018-09-11T10:03:59.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24876" CreationDate="2018-09-11T12:31:37.527" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Scrum we look to create product increments each Sprint, not simply to do work. The direct solution to your question from the Scrum Guide is that you should have cross-functional team. That is, all skills needed to deliver a full product increment should be on the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are circumstances where this may not be possible and you are stuck in the constraint. In that situation, you have to coordinate the efforts between the teams to manage the dependencies. However, in every case I've seen with front-end / back-end teams, there are far too many dependencies between them and it is far easier to just reform the teams to be cross-functional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-09-11T12:31:37.527" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24872" CreationDate="2018-09-11T17:02:59.483" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;With a slight modification to the formula it works without error for the milestones. Be sure to check the graphical indicators set up to be sure the text matches--your formula has a space before two of the values: &quot; Completed&quot;, &quot; Not Start Yet&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the updated formula which changes a &amp;lt; to &amp;lt;= in the first Switch statement ([Status Date]&amp;lt;=[Start])&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;IIf(CDbl([Baseline Finish]&amp;gt;60000),&quot; Not Baseline&quot;,IIf(([Baseline Duration]=0 Or [Duration]=0),&#xA;Switch([% Complete]=100,&quot; Completed&quot;,[Status Date]&amp;lt;=[Start],&quot; Not Start Yet&quot;,[Status Date]&amp;gt;[Start],&quot;Late&quot;),&#xA;Switch([Status Date]&amp;lt;[Start],&quot; Not Start Yet&quot;,[% Complete]=100,&quot;Completed&quot;,(ProjDateDiff([Start],[Status Date])/480)/Val(ProjDurConv(Duration,pjDays))*100&amp;lt;=[% Complete],&quot;Ahead Schedule&quot;,(ProjDateDiff([Start],[Status Date])/480)/Val(ProjDurConv(Duration,pjDays))*100&amp;gt;[% Complete],&quot;Late&quot;)))&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastActivityDate="2018-09-11T17:02:59.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24882" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24884" CreationDate="2018-09-11T18:09:33.470" Score="5" ViewCount="184" Body="&lt;p&gt;Acting as a team lead I feel the engagement in our sprint planning session is low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people are very comfortable to talk and share ideas/knowledge in order to help the team to define tasks for our stories, but some people (usually more then half of the team) simply left the meeting without even speak out once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team have about 10 members and they are working under the Disciplined Agile Delivery guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33519" LastActivityDate="2018-09-12T00:21:24.710" Title="Agile - How to increase engagement of team members in the planning meeting?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24857" CreationDate="2018-09-11T19:09:03.953" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a great topic!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimating confidence on a regular basis (at Retrospectives) will be useful in gauging team health and professional growth as everyone works in this new territory. The Scrum Master should direct the process:   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master surveys the team with an anonymous vote (1-5), insert the data into a histogram &amp;amp; discuss the results as a team immediately.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Discuss the individual week's &quot;score&quot; and then trend.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ideally the confidence #'s move left (4's &amp;amp; 5's get bigger) as User Stories are worked through/revised and knowledge is gained.   &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Good results start with well defined User Stories (not hopes).  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Agile development yields product and knowledge (both are valuable).  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Dev Team &amp;amp; Stakeholders should talk directly regularly at Sprint Reviews.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stakeholders' needs can change as information/situations evolve. Be transparent and communicate fearlessly. Good luck &amp;amp; go get 'em!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32578" LastEditorUserId="32578" LastEditDate="2018-09-11T19:36:58.193" LastActivityDate="2018-09-11T19:36:58.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24882" CreationDate="2018-09-11T19:29:46.217" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It could be many things and it's unlikely that the 5+ out of 10 have the same reason for not speaking.  With such a small team you can get to know their personalities and how they behave outside the meeting. This will help guide you to a solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lack of Motivation / Team Spirit&lt;/strong&gt; - There could be a lack of team spirit or maybe your team isn't motivated. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the lack of motivation is macro (the team is affected all the time, not just during this meeting), it will also be the hardest to solve. Causes can be wide ranging, but consider adding side projects, reward systems and acknowledgements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the lack of motivation is micro (only related to this meeting) you may need to 'shock the system' by scrapping your meeting. Don't just reschedule the same recurring meeting in Outlook. Cancel it. Create a new one. Change the day, call it something else and change how you run it. Oh, and keep it short. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Intimidation/Inadequacy&lt;/strong&gt; - If you have team members that are loud/aggressive/opinionated (not even in a negative way) others may not speak up.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create a process where everybody gets a turn. Go Round-Robin or Alphabetical or simply call out names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also pre-meet with a smaller group before meeting with the full group. You can then &quot;contribute on their behalf&quot; by referencing back to the smaller group meeting. &quot;I talked with Bob earlier and...&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Shyness&lt;/strong&gt; - If outside of this meeting these team members do not talk casually with the group they may simply be shy. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before the meeting, give a specific task to a specific member. This will give them something specific to contribute and make them the 'expert' for answering questions. This works good when you already know the answer because you can guide them as they answer questions. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;We need some options for logging exceptions. Take 30-min and look into X, Y and Z and see if you think they'd work. See how much they cost and if we can log errors to a central location.&quot;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, during the meeting you can ask them direct questions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Do any of those allow central logging? Are any of them expensive?&quot;&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33522" LastActivityDate="2018-09-11T19:29:46.217" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24882" CreationDate="2018-09-11T20:13:06.587" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simply start by an ice-breaker (one site proposing a few : &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.icebreakers.ws/good-icebreakers-by-name&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.icebreakers.ws/good-icebreakers-by-name&lt;/a&gt; ), people will start to interact with each others, so you will understand who is shy, and who is just uninterested.&#xA;One ice breaker that you can repeat each time and that I really like and that motivate with just one sentence is : &quot;ok for this meeting what super power are you bringing&quot; (requesting to change it each meeting).&#xA;Good luck, and just publish feed back if you tryed the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33523" LastActivityDate="2018-09-11T20:13:06.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24882" CreationDate="2018-09-12T00:21:24.710" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ten is a large group. Have you thought about spending part of the meeting working in smaller groups? For example, you could divide the team into pairs and hand out tickets to do initial planning, then combine into 2 groups of 5 to review&amp;amp;revise the initial plans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Techniques that pull input from each team member silently might also help. For example, if you started the meeting by handing out tickets and packs of sticky notes, and had each person silently do the task breakdown on stickies in a short timebox. Then go round the room &amp;amp; have each person present the initial plan for that ticket, explaining their reasoning as they put the stickies up on the board, and updating as the group discusses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pay attention also to interpersonal and personality issues. Among the many possible issues are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;differences in culture around interrupting. Are the talkers comfortable interrupting each other as part of the normal flow of conversation? If so, maybe check in with some of the non-talkers as to what their expectations are. Or, try one meeting that uses a &quot;talking stick&quot; or other mechanism to avoid interruptions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;differences in expertise/skill level. Are the non-talkers all more junior developers? If so, they may not see what the point is for them to contribute, if the talkers seem to have everything covered. If so, check in with your team's values about knowledge sharing, mentoring, questions, and learning by doing. Be sure to point out that it's often questions from people who are less knowledgeable about the topic that move the conversation to expose unexamined assumptions and discover new complications.\&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck! (And welcome to pm.stackexchange!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2018-09-12T00:21:24.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24889" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24891" CreationDate="2018-09-12T08:49:20.203" Score="2" ViewCount="1452" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our team is new to agile. We are in the phase of defining the rules for sprint planning. To start, we are keeping our Sprints at 2 weeks (10 business days). Let's say there is a public holiday in a week: then we are left with 9 business days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should the Sprint duration be kept to 10 business days, which means two weeks and 1 more business day? Or should the user stories be chosen in a manner to fit in the 9 business days?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33526" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-02T14:01:30.497" LastActivityDate="2018-11-02T14:01:30.497" Title="Business days calculation for the sprint" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24889" CreationDate="2018-09-12T09:28:42.347" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's usually easier to keep the Sprint aligned with the weeks, so that one can have the weekly reviews on the same days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It then becomes the Sprint Master's job to check ahead and suggest to the team that they reduce the expected output when the 2-weeks are shorter than 10 business days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also keep in mind that the day before and after a weekend are often &lt;em&gt;lazy days&lt;/em&gt; with not everybody working a full day; some may leave early the day before and some may come in late after their hangover. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is true in your company then the Sprint needs an additional adjustment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do decide that a Sprint length is always a perfect &lt;em&gt;10-business day Sprint&lt;/em&gt; then make sure all the stakeholder are aware that the &lt;em&gt;deadline&lt;/em&gt; has moved by a day or 2, or however long. And also figure out how to handle the not-full-days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't assume everybody knows the rules, or remembers them or paid attention when it was mentioned &lt;em&gt;by-the-way&lt;/em&gt; at some meeting. That's another reason I prefer to keep it aligned with the week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2018-09-16T13:29:57.133" LastActivityDate="2018-09-16T13:29:57.133" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24892" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-09-12T14:44:38.887" Score="8" ViewCount="396" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a small (4-6) team on a project that involves creating a machine learning model to predict the outcome of sports matches real-time. This also involves scraping the data and storing it in a database so we can make real-time predictions. We also will be building a simple website to display this data. The client currently has their own popular sports blog, so they plan for the site we're creating to either be an addition (likely just another tab) to their website or a separate site entirely - the client did not specify which, since it likely depends on the quality of our predictions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ignoring the user-facing website aspect for the moment (since the website can definitely be done agile-y), the technical aspect alone could take months. Given a deeply technical task like this, is it possible to use agile? It doesn't seem like demoing the technical work done every sprint would be useful to the stakeholder or users, and I don't know what/if requirements could change. Is this task better suited for waterfall, or is there a way to be agile?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33418" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2018-09-13T10:03:47.857" LastActivityDate="2018-10-09T19:59:27.600" Title="Is it possible to be agile with a highly technical project?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24894" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-09-12T17:13:42.650" Score="-1" ViewCount="152" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that majority of the business analysts needs to learn about new products, features, functionalities and domain. There may not be any major support from colleagues to explore more in a new product. So the ultimate solution is self learning. &#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Scenario&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have joined as a product owner in a credit risk management team. i don't have any much idea about the domain and the product. They informed to learn the product within 1 month period. I have tried the below options&#xA;1. Analyses the product documentations&#xA;2. Peer level demos&#xA;But i am still struggling to get the logic behind calculations and usability &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know the best methods and tips to gain knowledge without the help of others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33461" LastEditorUserId="33461" LastEditDate="2018-09-17T12:19:51.250" LastActivityDate="2018-09-17T12:19:51.250" Title="What are the best ways to gain knowledge and become a subject matter expert in a new product" Tags="&lt;knowledge-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2018-09-13T13:36:53.243" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24892" CreationDate="2018-09-12T17:22:20.150" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everything in your question suggests that you are exploring a new problem, not simply creating something you already know exactly how to build. Because waterfall asks you to create your design completely before you start building it, using waterfall would be inherently problematic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Agile, and Scrum specifically, the goal of making a product increment and putting it in front of users is to learn if you are making the right thing. It is a framework designed for complex adaptive problems and that seems to fit your situation perfectly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know much about your project, but it sounds like the primary measure of success will be the quality of the predictions. So, for you, I would ask who will judge that and who has interest in that and that person is the most important stakeholder in your review (or people). I would expect your sprint goals and your backlog items to be less &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a [user], I want to be able to click X and see Y&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and more &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a [user], I want the algorithm to consider the player's past&#xA;  receiving statistics by quarter so that it accounts for late-game&#xA;  fatigue in the prediction&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each sprint, you would want to look at how you've improved the quality of the predictions and what is the right next work to do in order to make them better. I wouldn't worry too much about the user interface. My personal approach would be to get a basic interface out of the way right away in the first sprint that's backed with a dumb algorithm (it can be a coin-flip for all it matters at first) and then that interface just produces better and better info as you go. That said, an argument could be made that the interface is so unimportant that your user doesn't care about it and you don't even bother with it for the forseeable future. My guess is that if you can make predictions with a high level of accuracy, it can output to a text file for all your user cares.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-09-12T17:22:20.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24894" CreationDate="2018-09-13T10:37:04.000" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the best way to learn something about your product is to &lt;em&gt;use&lt;/em&gt; it. Not in an artificial testing situation or powerpoint presentation, but really &lt;em&gt;use it&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Walk a mile in your user's shoes. Literally. Go where they work, and do their work for a day using your product. If you need to explain why you are there to external customers (so the people that are serviced by your customers with the help of your product) you can always just say you are new or an intern. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only will you better understand your users and product, you might come up with idea how to improve your product that your user's could not think about or formulate properly because they don't know what options exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(As an example that I always use in those situations, I always thought the interface design of one of our apps was really badly thought out and implemented by a sloppy 5th grader, because it broke every single standard of color and size. Until I actually worked in the warehouse where they wore clumsy, protective gloves in shady lighting conditions and orange lights blinking in the background and instead of pulling of the gloves every time they used the computer, they just kept them on and needed a less sophisticated interface because it's hard to hit a normal button with the mouse when you have protective gloves on. From that point on, that user interface was pure genius in my eyes because it really worked for that situation.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2018-09-13T10:37:04.000" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24897" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-09-13T13:14:22.793" Score="1" ViewCount="89" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile project management prevents coding for the future. Our client asks some reports which can be coded withing the schema of existing database structure, but the best practices strongly suggest that the client really aims for some kind of  data warehousing solution. Neither our company nor our client is ready for upfront investments and additional work that will bring rewards in future only. What to do? 1) Be satisfied with the present status quo and go with suboptimal design of reports with low maintainability? 2) strongly press for warehousing solution. Who makes such decisions? Developers see the problem, client and management does not see the problem and don't understand the concerns of developers. What should be done in this situation, what behaviour are expected by the best practices of project management methodologies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22925" LastEditorUserId="22925" LastEditDate="2018-09-13T13:28:50.787" LastActivityDate="2018-09-13T18:56:59.837" Title="How to start Data Warehouse project in agile projects when client ask just some reports?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24897" CreationDate="2018-09-13T13:22:29.773" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you see the problem, but someone else does not, the only thing you can do is keep trying to make them understand the problem. This isn't just related to Agile; in general it's your job to make other (non-tech) people understand the consequences of their choices as best as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep making the reports, keep being honest about the time required to make them, the maintenance costs that are being paid (and I mean &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; paid, not potentially down the line) and keep trying to explain that if the client expects to be doing more of this in the future, it might help to move over to to better architecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that Agile is a big fan of being &lt;em&gt;transparent&lt;/em&gt; towards your client and &lt;em&gt;collaborating&lt;/em&gt; with them. So don't try to secretly build things they're not asking for, and don't hide the truth from them. If you are right, then one of two things will happen:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A) they will learn of and accept your concerns after a while and think about the future and the investments they need to make&#xA;B) they ignore you and they will suffer the pain of doing so&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the exact same outcomes that would happen with any other methodology, by the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31393" LastActivityDate="2018-09-13T13:22:29.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24897" CreationDate="2018-09-13T13:22:49.920" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Because we're agile, we want to do a large up-front investment that won't bring immediate results.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Umm... does not compute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;point&lt;/em&gt; of agile is to get &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; working in front of the client &lt;em&gt;asap&lt;/em&gt;, in order to get feedback so you can change that previous something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clients don't know what they need until you first give them what they ask for and they realize it's not what they want. And, sometimes (rarely, in my experience, but it &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; happen), clients actually &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; know what they want - at least, more than the developers do. Maybe they expect this report to only be used for a few months? That would make a large up-front investment a poor choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way you can know is by getting feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So. Go for the quick solution that gets early feedback. But build it in such a way that's easy to change in the future. Take a look at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://deviq.com/repository-pattern/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Repository Pattern&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-driven_design&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Domain-Driven Design&lt;/a&gt; that facilitates the &lt;a href=&quot;https://martinfowler.com/articles/dipInTheWild.html#SolutionAbstractedButThatsNotMyProblem&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dependency Inversion Principle&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-09-13T13:22:49.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24892" CreationDate="2018-09-13T14:29:53.053" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Validated Learning&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile approaches involve &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Validated_learning&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;validated learning&lt;/a&gt;. Wikipedia defines the steps of validated learning as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Specify a goal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Specify a metric that represents the goal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Act to achieve the goal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Analyze the metric – did you get closer to the goal?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improve and try again&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This actually maps extremely well to an iterative development model such as Scrum, and is incorporated within the standard events of the framework such as Sprint Planning and the Sprint Review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Why You're Struggling&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is likely that you are struggling because your team is not doing &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;decomposing tasks sufficiently,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;defining discrete goals for each iteration,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;defining concrete metrics and a Definition of Done to measure each increment, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;leveraging a well-defined inspect-and-adapt cycle at the end of each iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; lays out a solid framework for doing these things, and modern practices regarding backlog refinement are covered in books like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/books/user-stories-applied&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;User Stories Applied&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, and the use of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) are covered in books such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B004J4XGN6&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Lean Startup&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Caveats and Next Steps&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No single book will give you all the answers you need, and this site is not a book recommendation service. Nevertheless, this should get you pointed in the right direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the meantime, if you have concrete questions about how to split up or decompose a given user story, you are certainly welcome to post that as a separate (and detailed!) question if you need a more pragmatic answer for a specific aspect of your team's challenge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-09-13T14:29:53.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24897" CreationDate="2018-09-13T18:56:59.837" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Over-Engineering is an Agile Anti-Pattern&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our client asks some reports which can be coded withing the schema of existing database structure, but the best practices strongly suggest that the client really aims for some kind of data warehousing solution. Neither our company nor our client is ready for upfront investments and additional work that will bring rewards in future only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several agile principles you need to follow:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CodeGnome's Law of Transparency: &quot;No invisible work, ever!&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;YAGNI: &quot;You Ain't Gonna Need It&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Visualize the work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Surface technical debt.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, agile frameworks are not a silver bullet that make work magically easier or more efficient. When done right, agile principles &lt;strong&gt;make business choices and their associated costs &lt;em&gt;visible&lt;/em&gt; to the organization&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By making the &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; that the team is following to generate reports transparent, and by making the &lt;em&gt;costs&lt;/em&gt; of that work visible, you empower clients and management to make informed choices. That does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; mean that implementing a forward-looking solution is the right thing, either. In some cases, the business cost of a sub-optimal technical solution may be the better choice if:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The labor costs for the sub-optimal solution are lower than the replacement costs of a newer system.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The current solution is &quot;good enough&quot; for the expected lifetime of the product or solution in the marketplace.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business priorities or market conditions make the current solution a better strategic choice than investing in a different long-term solution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anything else that causes the senior executives, when fully informed, to decide that limited resources or budgets should be expended elsewhere.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your job as a project manager, Scrum Master, Product Owner, or agile practitioner is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to make business decisions for the organization. &lt;strong&gt;Your job is to provide viable options for incremental/iterative delivery within the Definition of Done, and to make all work and all project costs visible.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest is up to senior management. If they break the process, they get to keep both halves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-09-13T18:56:59.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24061" CreationDate="2018-09-14T02:40:29.257" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Limited Native Options; Flexible API&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Full-fledged, multi-project and multi-repository project management is not really what GitHub does best. You may want to explore third-party solutions for your bug tracking and milestone management if the native options aren't enough for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;GitHub has recently gained the notion of &lt;a href=&quot;https://help.github.com/articles/adding-issues-and-pull-requests-to-a-project-board/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;projects that span several repositories&lt;/a&gt;. However, this is somewhat limited, and may not actually support the full functionality you're looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you can't natively create labels and milestones across all your various repositories, you can certainly leverage the API to do so programmatically. For example, by using the following calls:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://developer.github.com/v3/issues/labels/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://developer.github.com/v3/issues/labels/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://developer.github.com/v3/issues/milestones/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://developer.github.com/v3/issues/milestones/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you could iterate over each repository to add the labels and milestones you want. A quick search even turned up some &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/Xiphe/github-sync-labels-milestones&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NodeJS code&lt;/a&gt; that might work for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, it looks like your options are to go with a third-party solution with GitHub integration, or to roll your own via the API. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-09-14T02:40:29.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24889" CreationDate="2018-09-14T14:54:01.153" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calendar-based Sprint lengths are the norm. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; does not explicitly prohibit capacity-based durations, but says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sprints have consistent durations throughout a development effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum employs an iterative, incremental approach to optimize predictability and control risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sprints enable predictability by ensuring inspection and adaptation of progress toward a Sprint Goal at least every calendar month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calendar-based predictability is strongly implied, but not specifically called out as a framework requirement. However, any attempt to use capacity-based Sprint lengths with variable start/stop scheduling runs the risk of violating key objectives for predictability, reliable cadence, and long-term forecasting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Predictable Cadence Trumps Fixed Capacity&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A key goal for Scrum (and other agile methodologies) is to create organizational confidence through &lt;em&gt;predictability&lt;/em&gt;. This includes predictability in event scheduling, as well as long-term predictability about when increments of work will be delivered and inspected. Calendar-based planning is also fundamental to &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/16376/4271&quot;&gt;predictable release planning&lt;/a&gt; in Scrum!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no rule that says you can't maintain a 10-day cadence rather than a two calendar-week cadence, but in pragmatic terms this results in less predictability for standard events. Is the Sprint Review on Thursday this week, or Friday? Or possibly next Monday? And how can stakeholders reliably clear their calendars for a repeating event for the next six months in advance, especially when the dates are likely to change?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, as with many agile frameworks, you are optimizing for a predictable cadence, and &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; for a fixed capacity each Sprint. Team size changes Sprint-to-Sprint as people get sick, take vacation, or join/leave the team. If you take the fixed-capacity approach, you will find yourself forever moving the core Scrum events around in a vain attempt to maintain a stable capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, you should strive to maintain a &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/24822/4271&quot;&gt;predictable cadence with variable capacity&lt;/a&gt;. This gives the team and stakeholders confidence that the time box is stable, and that the framework events will happen on a reliable schedule even when there are scope or capacity changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't mean you can't shift things for a major holiday or other business reasons. But in practice, you should handle such things by &lt;em&gt;shortening the Sprint&lt;/em&gt; to reduce capacity. This makes the reduced capacity visible, creates process transparency, and pays the technical debt of reduced capacity &lt;em&gt;right now&lt;/em&gt; rather than hiding it within a variable schedule or &quot;kicking the can down the road.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-09-14T14:54:01.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24904" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-09-15T06:23:28.397" Score="0" ViewCount="63" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nowadays companies go into devops practices to boost productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our case we (3rd party outsourcing vendor) developed a first version of the product for our client  , it’s cloud based platform. &#xA;We do have tests, the deployment is semi-automated since there are fashion manual steps (like AD requests) . We don’t have continuous delivery and deployment yet, though.&#xA;During development, we cooperated with client IT ops so they contributed to the product development (they built images, deployed to pre-prod, prod, fixed issues related to client infrastructure)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now it’s time to go-live and client wants to formalize support but still follow devops practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me it’s quite hard to understand how this can be built. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&#xA;If we keep on implementing new features and have a team working on the product, we can spend % of development time on support requests (2 and 3rd level of support), so that devs are integrated into ops, and understand the pain of users or ops, can not only fix issues but also bring some improvements to deployment, monitoring etc. to make product more reliable, faster and deliver value to business quicker. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what if there is no new features development and just support (with 2nd and 3rd level) that either configuration and standard operations according to runbook (2nd level) or defects fixing on 3rd level.  Since those are OPEX for clients they don’t tend to invest in this – hence there is no real opportunity (in terms of efforts spent) to follow and foster good devops practices during just support with no active development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think ?&#xA;Is it possible to run support in devops mode with no active product development ?  how this can be done ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17675" LastActivityDate="2018-09-18T00:41:46.967" Title="DevOps and support organization" Tags="&lt;devops&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14869" CreationDate="2018-09-15T06:33:39.967" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe these links would be of some help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.altexsoft.com/whitepapers/agile-project-management-best-practices-and-methodologies/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.altexsoft.com/whitepapers/agile-project-management-best-practices-and-methodologies/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://tenderspage.com/everything-need-know-rfp-process/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://tenderspage.com/everything-need-know-rfp-process/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The below link is an excellent place to decide what documents you would need for an agile process or a quick prototype development:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.infoq.com/articles/roadmap-agile-documentation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.infoq.com/articles/roadmap-agile-documentation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28987" LastEditorUserId="28987" LastEditDate="2018-09-15T06:48:13.617" LastActivityDate="2018-09-15T06:48:13.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24906" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24916" CreationDate="2018-09-15T07:41:20.573" Score="4" ViewCount="364" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stakeholders who are new to agile are expecting thin slices of value per each release, so when we start new projects they are confused when we need large infrastructure costs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We minimise the infrastructure costs to those enabling that first customer feature, but in some large enterprise projects, the infrastructure costs are significantly larger than the first feature.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zUd9u.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zUd9u.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stakeholders will usually go through the same thought process, along the lines of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is not a thin slice, so its not agile.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can we start with the second feature? (&lt;em&gt;nice try&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can you make it smaller? (&lt;em&gt;let's assume we cannot go smaller, for the sake of this question&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read about classifying the infrastructure costs as &lt;strong&gt;business value&lt;/strong&gt; rather than &lt;strong&gt;customer value&lt;/strong&gt;, but this question is more related to the initial (large) cost of the business value and how we can describe that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an industry agile-friendly term to describe this initial cost?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33554" LastActivityDate="2018-09-22T19:51:15.420" Title="In Agile, what do you call the costs of building infrastructure for the first release?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;release-planning&gt;&lt;value&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24906" CreationDate="2018-09-16T08:01:50.560" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile is all about (sometimes brutal) transparency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the initial feature release requires a lot of expense and effort then that is what should be reflected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The release of Customer Facing Feature 1 has involved a lot of time, effort and cost&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good agile organisation will question this. Perhaps they will ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this really the minimum viable release?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there anything we can do to reduce setup costs (automation, provisioning, cloud computing, etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be they conclude that it is worth a large investment to create a rapid infrastructure bootstrap process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-09-16T08:01:50.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24909" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-09-16T09:40:30.307" Score="4" ViewCount="183" Body="&lt;p&gt;Now we are using Agile and hardly create BRD\FRD, we create user stories, and all this is good for everyone working in the same department. Including the stakeholders. However, if I would like to share the requirements with a person in any other department, who has not heard of Agile. How can convey what the product will do? I can give a demo; however, I can tell the rules and however, they might not remember all, and won’t be able to refer to something substantial. If I write on a document and read it to them with details. Here, I don’t like the idea of reading from a document because it gets boring. Also, I could add pictures to it and make it little interesting. However, for this I will need to go through user stories and create a document, this I don’t think is the best way. So, please guide me how can I solve the problem of sharing the details of a project(Requirements, limitations, etc) to a non-technical person. Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33560" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T23:11:11.840" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T23:11:11.840" Title="Need help- Documentation for non-technical people using Agile" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24906" CreationDate="2018-09-16T22:35:13.720" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few points to consider on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Scrum uses PBIs. Product Backlog Items are all the things that make up the product backlog. Any item that you have to do can be an item in the product backlog. You can use user stories and spikes, and all kinds of other special techniques in doing your work, but there is nothing that says &quot;Walk the dog&quot; isn't a perfectly valid PBI (or more realistically, deploy &quot;35 application servers&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Minimum Viable Product, Minimum Marketable Feature, Prototyping, User Stories, and about a dozen other techniques commonly used in Agile practices encourage you to wrap this work into other work that either produces customer value or creates validated learning. This idea actually comes from Lean and is mostly about eliminating waste. Let's say I want to deploy an robust infrastructure environment with load balancing, mirrored database servers spread out across the country, multiple domain controllers, etc, etc, etc. Now, I'm just starting development and I have a small customer team who uses the application and maybe I need two servers to support that. Well building and maintaining the rest of those servers is just waste, so by only doing the &quot;back-end&quot; work I have to do in order to deliver on the value, then add in the mirroring, load balancing, and the rest of it as I need it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Ironically, only delivering the back-end work you need is sometimes exactly what creates the need for PBIs that read &quot;deploy the other 14 servers&quot;. C'est la vie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Please, let's not make up new terms just to sound more agile. I've seen a lot of this over the past decade (I'm looking at you &quot;Technical User Stories&quot;). There are some practices like User Stories and Spikes where you are doing something distinctly different. Those deserve their own term because it helps indicate that you are using that specific technique. If you are doing the exact same thing as you have in the past, feel free to use the same name you always have. It doesn't make you any less agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-09-16T22:35:13.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24912" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-09-17T07:23:37.097" Score="5" ViewCount="279" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree on an idea of making teams cross-functional. However, I doubt that resources may not utilize effectively when the nature of the work varying sprint to sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, There are database and UI experts in the team while there is not a single story in the sprint depends on UI/database. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How will these resources contribute to the sprint? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30305" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-02T14:31:27.813" LastActivityDate="2018-11-02T14:31:27.813" Title="How to utilize resources effectively in cross-functional scrum teams?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;resources&gt;&lt;cross-functional&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24912" CreationDate="2018-09-17T10:57:48.963" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;They will do other work that needs doing. Keep in mind that &quot;being in the sprint&quot; means that the story is &lt;strong&gt;important&lt;/strong&gt;. Not being in the sprint means the story is &lt;strong&gt;not that important.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking for something that falls in line with a person's specialty is nice, and making sure that over the long term your team's capabilities align with the kind of work requires is a good practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in the short term, if in this sprint there happens to be no work that relates to someone's specialty, it means you need to make a choice. You've basically got two options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A) let them work on something that is &lt;strong&gt;important&lt;/strong&gt; but they cannot do as fast as their specialty&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B) let them work on something that is &lt;strong&gt;not important&lt;/strong&gt; but they can do full speed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, the solution here is to focus on what matters. Remember that being agile is about delivering the most value, not doing the most work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that means your database expert spends a few days building forms, or your UI specialist is building some test data, that's probably more valuable than having them make things that aren't important right now. It means you'll be able to deliver the big and important features at the end of your sprint. It means your team will be focused entirely on one thing and everyone will be working together, towards a common goal. And it means still having the expertise of these people available when it is needed, because they are not assigned &quot;non-sprint-goal&quot; tasks that they are expected to complete, thus making it more difficult for them to drop what they are doing to help out with what is &lt;strong&gt;important&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CostXs2p6r0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Resource utilization trap&lt;/a&gt;. What matters at the end of your sprint is not how efficiently people work, or how code was written. You need to measure &lt;strong&gt;throughput&lt;/strong&gt;, not effort. And you maximize throughput by doing what is &lt;strong&gt;important&lt;/strong&gt;, not by doing what you're best at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31393" LastActivityDate="2018-09-17T10:57:48.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24914" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-09-17T15:46:17.783" Score="2" ViewCount="434" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is the scenario:  You are the PM of a new T&amp;amp;M contract that has a $800,000 budget at completion (BAC) and a price of $1,000,000 and a one-year period of performance (POP).  Scope is fluid, consistent with a T&amp;amp;M-type contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Approximately 30% in the POP, about three and half months in duration, you are overrunning your revenue and underrunning your costs, producing a 28% margin at that time and a 30% margin estimated at completion.  At the current burn rate, you are projecting that you will hit the $1,000,000 funding level early, at the 80% mark of the period of performance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So with two and half months remaining for which you will not have any more available funds to bill the client, and with the additional 10% in margin that you are accruing, and with fluid scope, what would be your course of action with the client?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the client was private sector?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the client was public sector?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think, in reality, there is a canonical answer to this question but, as well, there are likely many different practices out there to handle this type of scenario.  I am hoping this generates a few common practices out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2019-01-25T15:31:31.813" Title="How to Handle a Funding Overrun on a Time and Materials (T&amp;M) Contract" Tags="&lt;cost-management&gt;&lt;clients&gt;&lt;schedule-risk&gt;&lt;contracts&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24909" CreationDate="2018-09-17T23:48:21.577" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no silver bullet. However, it is likely that your organization needs to adopt a more comprehensive set of agile tools and practices to reduce unnecessary or burdensome documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Agile Practices Often Deliver &lt;em&gt;Better&lt;/em&gt; Documentation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question is possibly too broad to answer, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that your organization has recently transitioned to &quot;Agile&quot; (whatever the organization thinks that means) without having actually adopted the complete framework, or without implementing common agile practices like Test-Driven Design (TDD) or Behavior-Driven Development (BDD). This is likely the source of your problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile frameworks value working products over extensive documentation. The Agile Manifesto says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Working software over comprehensive documentation...[T]here is value in the items on the right, [but] we value the items on the left more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't mean agile teams don't document anything. In fact, high-performing agile and DevOps teams often produce &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; useful documentation than they did before adopting agile practices. This is generally because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Living documentation,&quot; like well-commented and frequently refactored code, is often more accurate than dead-tree hieroglyphics from the misty dawn of time when the initial requirements were most likely generated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When properly-written, TDD/BDD/ATDD tests read like natural-language documentation, and often incorporate terms and concepts from the the product's business domain and a user's point of view.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Continuous integration using good tests ensures that your documentation remains both &lt;em&gt;current&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;accurate&lt;/em&gt;, which is something that most traditional projects fail miserably at.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;End-user or system documentation (if and when actually needed) is often compiled programmatically from code comments, executable tests, API signatures, and so forth. &lt;em&gt;Note: This requires both good practices and good tools.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any &lt;em&gt;necessary&lt;/em&gt; documentation that isn't self-generating should be part of the Definition of Done for each Product Backlog Item (PBI) and the iteration's Increment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, you should have demonstrable increments of work every iteration. This is often more valuable than dead trees, because it represents a potentially-shippable increment and something the stakeholders can see (and often touch).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maximize the amount of work &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; done by eliminating unnecessary documentation, and focus on implementing the practices that reduce truly essential documentation tasks to manageable proportions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-09-17T23:48:21.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24906" CreationDate="2018-09-18T00:17:18.953" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some frameworks have a distinct name for the type of work you're asking about, but some don't. To understand why, a short preface is in order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Work is work.&lt;/strong&gt; While it's sometimes necessary to differentiate different types of work for cost-accounting or political reasons, treat this as an opportunity to educate your organization and your stakeholders that there's no such thing as a free lunch. In agile frameworks, &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; work should be fully visible as a cost to the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may also be a more fundamental concern than differentiating types of work. The &lt;em&gt;scale&lt;/em&gt; of upfront architectural and infrastructure work in your diagram suggests that you may be violating a core &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;agile principle&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your team and your organization should certainly evaluate the minimum amount of planning, infrastructure, and engineering (collectively &lt;em&gt;resources&lt;/em&gt;) necessary to carry out the near-term increments. In a successful agile implementation, your infrastructure and design will evolve iteratively along with your product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Don't Overly Constraint Your Definition of &quot;Value&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, effective agile implementations don't separate out user-facing value from work that's valuable (and frequently essential) to the process as a whole. The idea that all &quot;value&quot; must be customer-facing value is not correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the most commonly-used user story format, the &lt;em&gt;who&lt;/em&gt; in the story is a consumer of value, but that viewpoint character need not be an end user or customer, and the value may be anything that the Product Owner, sponsor, or stakeholders are willing to spend project resources on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the goal is to avoid &quot;big, upfront design.&quot; So, a logical question to ask during each planning session is: &lt;em&gt;What are the mininum resources or architectural/technical choices necessary to deliver a slice of value &lt;strong&gt;this&lt;/strong&gt; iteration?&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;SAFe, Architectural Runway, and Enablers&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SAFe calls this minimum necessary infrastructure the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scaledagileframework.com/architectural-runway/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;architectural runway&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Architectural Runway consists of the existing code, components, and technical infrastructure needed to implement near-term features without excessive redesign and delay....Since the development of new features and capabilities consumes the architectural runway, continual investment must be made to extend it by implementing Enablers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It further &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scaledagileframework.com/enablers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;explains Enablers&lt;/a&gt; this way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Enablers support the activities needed to extend the Architectural Runway to provide future business functionality. These include exploration, infrastructure, compliance, and architecture development...Primarily, enablers are used for exploration, evolving the architecture, Compliance, and to improve the infrastructure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this is not permission to dive into big, upfront design and infrastructure investment. SAFe, like most agile frameworks, is based on principles of emergent design and just-in-time architecture, and delays investment in infrastructure until the last responsible moment. This is sometimes referred to as &lt;a href=&quot;https://martinfowler.com/bliki/Yagni.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;YAGNI&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But Enablers aren't really a special kind of work, even though SAFe insists on giving it a special name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Since Enablers] reflect the real work (and sometimes plenty of it), they cannot remain invisible. Rather, they’re treated like all other value-added development activities—subject to estimating, visibility and tracking, Work in Process (WIP) limits, feedback, and presentation of results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, such tasks are value-added work that should be treated just like any other work necessary to develop the increment during an iteration. SAFe spills a lot of ink unpacking this concept, while other frameworks tuck it away in the notion of &quot;vertical slices&quot; or just-in-time resource planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-09-18T00:17:18.953" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24904" CreationDate="2018-09-18T00:41:46.967" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;DevOps for Lifecycle Management&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Support, maintenance, and other aspects of service management don't generally seem like ideal candidates for DevOps practices. Service management in general is often more about defining service level agreements than about iterative processes or validated learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, continuous process improvement, automation (especially infrastructure-as-code), and practices that improve your break/fix and patch cycles are all useful DevOps practices with calculable business value. Without sufficient DevOps infrastructure, tools, principles, and practices, companies generally find that supporting a system gets harder over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every non-DevOps patch or tweak adds cruft and drift to your system, and the technical debt &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; pile up. Whether it makes business sense to allocate resources to improving long-term sustainability of your systems is a decision your senior management must make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a practical matter, and from a real-world engineering and program management viewpoint, the answer is generally that it &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; make sense to follow DevOps principles throughout the system lifecycle. However, circumstances may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-09-18T00:41:46.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24918" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24920" CreationDate="2018-09-18T10:33:22.160" Score="0" ViewCount="337" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am very new to the agile software development and trying to understand the size rule to be followed when writing a valuable user stories&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scenario&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently involved in a portfolio data import projects. This involves setting a import and export functionality between the application and adapters. However the import/export functionality is implemented for couple of adapters. How will handle the user story of a new adapter - import/export setting. the functionality is same for all the adapters. I would like to clarify the below doubts&#xA;1. should we repeat the content of the user stories if the functionality is same&#xA;2. should we write more detailed stories or shorter one&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33461" LastActivityDate="2018-09-20T19:18:54.100" Title="should we repeat the details in user story of similar feature?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24919" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-09-18T14:00:48.760" Score="0" ViewCount="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;We currently have &quot;N&quot; Business Requirement Documents that need to have functional requirements checked off as we progress through a large project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These aren't particularly granular and, in some cases, only scratch the surface of expected or intended functionality. So, we've defined the actual solution to build in a JIRA backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have a process or tool or even a little advice on how to bridge the gap between these very different but intrinsically linked groups?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apologies if this question isn't specific enough, and thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33573" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-09-18T16:45:18.507" LastActivityDate="2018-09-18T16:48:32.110" Title="Referencing Business Requirements Document (high level reqs) with Build Backlog (low level reqs)" Tags="&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24918" CreationDate="2018-09-18T15:16:30.273" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There isn't a &quot;right&quot; answer. However, there are a few points about user stories that you may find helpful in guiding your decision:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) User stories were originally written on 3x5 cards. This was intentionally selected specifically because it was impossible to fit all of the details on a card that size so developers would have to talk to the user or PO and write their own notes from the conversation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) User stories should express the need being resolved, not the implementation. That means that for something like import, the start of your user story is probably as simple as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a new user, I want to import my data from a flat file so that I don't have to type it all in by hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and maybe include a copy of an import file as example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-09-18T15:16:30.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24919" CreationDate="2018-09-18T16:48:32.110" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Epics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epics are designed to be higher-level that Stories. JIRA automatically displays which Epic a given Story belongs to, and can list all Stories within a given Epic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-09-18T16:48:32.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24906" CreationDate="2018-09-18T19:40:37.847" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The plain answer to your question is: No, there is no scrum term for initial costs. Those costs are table stakes required regardless of methodology. &lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;Some scrum orgs do this work for the customer (the business) in a Sprint Zero, which sets the table for all future work.  Size Sprint Zero investments (time/$/people/etc) as you see fit. Work for additional customers, based on Sprint Zero's output, is delivered starting in Sprint 1.  &lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;Maybe framing your situation this way would satisfy your stakeholders?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32578" LastEditorUserId="32578" LastEditDate="2018-09-22T19:51:15.420" LastActivityDate="2018-09-22T19:51:15.420" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24918" CreationDate="2018-09-18T19:56:33.080" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally a &lt;strong&gt;User Story&lt;/strong&gt; is work that can be finished in one Sprint. &lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;If yours will take longer it would be considered to be an &lt;strong&gt;Epic&lt;/strong&gt;, which will contain additional &lt;strong&gt;User Stories&lt;/strong&gt; within it. If those additional Stories appear to be similar but have different &lt;strong&gt;Acceptance Criteria&lt;/strong&gt; they should be written as separate &lt;strong&gt;User Stories&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA; &lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;From this side of the screen it feels like you should break that story up. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32578" LastActivityDate="2018-09-18T19:56:33.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24909" CreationDate="2018-09-18T20:33:34.053" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Right off the bat I can think of 3 ways to communicate outcomes and requirements: &lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Invite &lt;strong&gt;Stakeholders&lt;/strong&gt; to &lt;strong&gt;Sprint Review&lt;/strong&gt; or maybe &lt;strong&gt;Daily Stand Up&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Show &lt;strong&gt;Stakeholders&lt;/strong&gt; your product's &lt;strong&gt;Information Radiators&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Update the &lt;strong&gt;Product&lt;/strong&gt;'s wiki/Slack channel:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have an overview of the &lt;strong&gt;Product&lt;/strong&gt;'s outcomes/KPI/requirements known from the start (with slides or any other documentation)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Focus overviews on delivering &lt;strong&gt;Value&lt;/strong&gt; (gaining: $/user info/etc and reducing: costs) and share as needed&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have &lt;strong&gt;Team Members&lt;/strong&gt; add additional detail and overviews of &lt;strong&gt;Features&lt;/strong&gt; as the &lt;strong&gt;Product&lt;/strong&gt; evolves and new info emerges&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Agile is new to your culture make sure that &lt;strong&gt;Stakeholder&lt;/strong&gt; communication goes through the &lt;strong&gt;Product Owner&lt;/strong&gt; and/or the &lt;strong&gt;Scrum Master&lt;/strong&gt;. Those 2 roles will ensure the &lt;strong&gt;Dev Team&lt;/strong&gt; is not derailed by outsiders.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32578" LastEditorUserId="32578" LastEditDate="2018-09-24T15:52:15.033" LastActivityDate="2018-09-24T15:52:15.033" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24927" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-09-19T15:17:10.053" Score="3" ViewCount="124" Body="&lt;p&gt;The setting is &gt;500 people IT services. You can think of it as a staffing agency, we only do T&amp;amp;M, although we hire our consultants (we have a bench). We do not really mange projects, what delivery managers focus on is making sure a client is happy and people are filling their timesheets. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are struggling with the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Information about availability of people for projects is restricted to the resource management team. This includes peoples’ profiles, too (who is available, since when, skillset, etc.). This hampers planning and transparency for delivery managers, who are in charge of keeping their projects staffed, because all information is centralized and resource manager is a &quot;global gatekeeper&quot;. He is the only person able to answer resourcing questions and provide people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have tried to open information on availability and profiles of people to delivery managers, but it ended up in contention, managers effectively skipping resource planning, fighting for best resources, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to address this? Is there a way to avoid contention whilst maintaining resource availability information available to managers? Any best practices?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have ability to &quot;influence&quot; this process, but I feel that without strong &quot;proof&quot; or meritocratic approach I will not be able execute on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14855" LastEditorUserId="14855" LastEditDate="2018-09-20T08:43:56.383" LastActivityDate="2018-11-12T15:44:20.007" Title="How to avoid contention in resource management when delivery managers can access availability?" Tags="&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="531" CreationDate="2018-09-20T08:03:35.573" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Guys I am sure that if this feature is available then there must be reasons behind it ... Also there is an option to send read receipt without asking so I think that people who are annoyed by the extra click can be happy by setting this. This is a win-win situation as now the sender is also happy has he has got the read receipt and receiver is also happy as he not even comes to know if the read receipt has been sent or not to be precise no additional burden on him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33593" LastActivityDate="2018-09-20T08:03:35.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24929" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24932" CreationDate="2018-09-20T10:10:07.500" Score="5" ViewCount="368" Body="&lt;p&gt;How to align an Agile team's working agreements within the boundaries (&quot;rules&quot;) set by the organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g. manager says you have to be at work at 10am and can only leave after 5pm.&#xA;     you have to email the manager before working from home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone got experience with this type of 'rules' based organisation which still considers their teams agile?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My objective here is two fold:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work with the organisation to improve their approach. Should they be setting rules? Is there a better way of setting these boundaries for the team?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Understand what is best for an agile team. Should they define when and where they work? etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update:&#xA;I guess what I am trying to figure out is how can a team be autonomous if you are telling them where to work and when to work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google, for example, lets the developers work wherever and whenever as long as they deliver. So I guess I am trying to achieve too much, but I want to know: is it possible to make delivery of working software the expected output without being super rigid about when and where the team works?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-09-20T13:59:32.357" LastActivityDate="2018-09-20T20:44:56.310" Title="How to run an effective agile team within a rules based organisation" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24929" CreationDate="2018-09-20T13:29:57.140" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should [the organization] be setting rules?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course they should be setting rules. &quot;Don't embezzle&quot; and &quot;Don't punch clients in the face&quot; are both rules. You're not &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; asking if organizations should set rules (I hope). You're asking where the line should lie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there a better way of setting these boundaries for the team? [...] Should [the team] define when and where they work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you asked the organization the &lt;em&gt;reasoning&lt;/em&gt; behind this particular rule? Maybe your job is expected to include call support, so hours are non-optional. Maybe they expect you to slack off if no one's around to monitor you. Maybe they have a certain process (good or bad) in HR that necessitates this. Maybe they've been doing this for 50 years and no one remembers why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of these reasons are valid, and thus you should accept them. Others are less so, so you should work on convincing the organization to improve them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To do so, you'll need to convince them how and why making such a change is in &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; best interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-09-20T13:29:57.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24931" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-09-20T13:36:47.067" Score="0" ViewCount="977" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on MS Project 2013. The summary task No. 6 is not showing the duration correctly. Refer to the picture below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aokB4.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aokB4.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33597" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-14T09:40:29.220" LastActivityDate="2019-01-14T09:40:29.220" Title="MS Project 2013: Summary task not showing duration correctly" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24929" CreationDate="2018-09-20T16:50:37.387" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think I can provide a better answer if I rephrase your questions a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q. First, is it necessary or beneficial to have rules that apply across multiple (or all) teams?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A. Yes. While consistency across all rules and practices is not necessary, there will be plenty of rules that work best if there is a common agreement. The work hours is a common example. It's hard to have face-to-face communication if you never see people. There are other common examples like code and architecture standards that are only really effective if all teams follow them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q. Do those rules have to be set by management.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A. No. Many organizations allow teams to negotiate and create those rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q. Is it healthy for management to set those rules.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A. It is not inherently dysfunctional. However, the problem you run into is that the further up the chain you go, the further away from the work you get and the rules can become detached from the needs. It's also important to remember as you go up the hierarchy, the rule is often applied with a broader brush - sometimes much broader than needed. We've probably all worked someplace where rules applied to us that were important for some other team, but were either irrelevant or detrimental to us. Those are usually rules made far up the hierarchy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q. Are all teams able to handle that autonomy?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A. Short answer is yes. There's no research to indicate that any team can't potentially be autonomous. However, some teams need help getting there. David Marquet has a concept called The Ladder of Leadership that is all about helping teams effectively transition from kicking all decisions to their manager to being fully autonomous. There's a neat guide in the form of a printable leadership exercise &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.davidmarquet.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/LadderGuide.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q. If we have organizational rules made by managers and other leaders, are we not Agile?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A. Every environment has its constraints. If you have a core working hours rule in your company, then you work with that. There are many ways you can become more agile within almost any ruleset. Challenge those rules when they pose real obstacles for improvement. I wouldn't try to challenge them all just on principle. Even in Scrum, where it does have some things to say about the team, there's nothing in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; that says they have to be 100% autonomous with no outside rules applied upon them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-09-20T16:50:37.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24929" CreationDate="2018-09-20T18:27:19.913" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this example, when you say Agile, that can mean a lot of things. If you're using an Agile framework such as Scrum, these constraints can be addressed rather effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, if a team must work within the constraints of existing organizational structure, including these constraints in a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.arrkgroup.com/thought-leadership/work-agreements-for-a-scrum-team/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;team work agreement&lt;/a&gt; is a good place to start. If there are technical constraints that require work items to meet a certain standard, including those standards in your &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scruminc.com/definition-of-done/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;team's definition of done&lt;/a&gt; is advisable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile teams (Scrum Teams to be specific) advise co-location to increase visibility and transparency into their work, so this constraint sounds like it may be helpful for that purpose. Co-location is a proven method for collaboration and team problem solving as it encourages a team to tackle problems together in the same workspace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If/when these constraints come up in a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/resources/what-is-a-sprint-retrospective&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sprint retrospective&lt;/a&gt;, I advise in gathering feedback for the purpose of promoting them throughout the organization for review and negotiation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Agile Manifesto does value Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools. Keep that in mind when approaching work in an environment that has embraced Agile values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33598" LastEditorUserId="33598" LastEditDate="2018-09-20T18:32:41.597" LastActivityDate="2018-09-20T18:32:41.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24912" CreationDate="2018-09-20T18:48:43.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's worth noting that a team is not only cross-functional, but also self-organizing. The team is empowered to use their skill constraints as a means to address work that is deemed valuable for the sprint goal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means the team can, and should, reach out to subject matter experts to help them understand their gaps in order to achieve the sprint goal. These gaps should be addressed during Sprint Planning, when the team works together to plan HOW they will manage their work during a sprint. Development Teams should be empowered by the organization to organize and manage their own work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Changing Development Team members is not a advised mid-sprint, but if the Development Team believes that re-organization would help them to meet the Sprint Goal, they should be empowered to introduce other team members to the sprint, preferably before work begins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33598" LastActivityDate="2018-09-20T18:48:43.120" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12179" CreationDate="2018-09-20T19:11:05.237" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's worth noting that a team is not only cross-functional, but also self-organizing. This means specialists should be open and honest about whether their skills can help achieve a sprint goal set during Sprint Planning. The team is empowered to use their skill constraints as a means to address work that is deemed valuable for the sprint goal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means the team can, and should, reach out to subject matter experts to help them understand their gaps in order to achieve the sprint goal. Value is higher priority than readily-available skillsets, and the Scrum Master should coach both Product Owner and Development Team on keeping this in mind. These gaps should be addressed during Sprint Planning, when the team works together to plan HOW they will manage their work during a sprint. Development Teams should be empowered by the organization to organize and manage their own work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Changing Development Team members is not advised mid-sprint, but if the Development Team believes that re-organization would help them to meet the Sprint Goal, they should be empowered to introduce other team members to the sprint, preferably before work begins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33598" LastActivityDate="2018-09-20T19:11:05.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24918" CreationDate="2018-09-20T19:18:54.100" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Development Team and Product Owner should work together to summarize &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.seguetech.com/what-characteristics-make-good-agile-acceptance-criteria/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;acceptance criteria&lt;/a&gt; for each piece of new functionality. If there is crossover in value delivered from other pieces of done work, that completed work can be referenced in all new work items being generated for the product. This provides context and a framework for approaching new work while keeping existing functionality in mind. If the new work being generated is large enough in scope, the Development Team should be empowered to manage/break up the work as they see fit before bringing it into their sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33598" LastActivityDate="2018-09-20T19:18:54.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12179" CreationDate="2018-09-20T19:32:57.090" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you've probably seen from the diverse answers, there is no silver bullet. The answers I see are about how to organize the way you approach UI/UX now in a better way to improve flow or work distribution. Those are all awesome places to start. You will hit a ceiling on that improvement pretty fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UI/UX is a lot like DBA work and Testing work in that the way we used to do it won't scale well - it's a solution designed for a different way of working. When we talk about testing, teams move to a style where testing is done throughout the development process and sometimes it's done by the tester, sometimes by developers. They use new approaches like BDD and TDD to approach the whole discipline of quality assurance in a more agile way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sooner or later, you'll need to do the same with UI/UX. The approach of creating a design that other people implement has too many predictive assumptions built in. The problem you end up needing to solve instead is &quot;How do I ensure that anything we create is easy to use, intuitive, and meets our desired aesthetic. I am an amateur graphic designer at best, so I can't tell you exactly how to do that. However, just a few things I've seen teams use to enable this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Style Guides: If you help your developers get used to style guides, a lot of the most menial design work goes away, freeing you up to focus on the harder problems.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Paper prototypes: this is a great way to quickly discuss the experience with the developers and the users (even at the same time). I've seen UX experts use this tool to go through a dozen design iterations in under an hour. It's also worth noting that there are some great software tools for doing this that make it easier to take those prototypes and turn them into a finished product, but paper is always a great place to start.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hesitate to try to give any more &quot;answers&quot; than that - you're the UI/UX expert. But this is the direction you'll need to go after the improvements in the answers give you all of their value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-09-20T19:32:57.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24929" CreationDate="2018-09-20T20:44:56.310" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I guess what I am trying to figure out is how can a team be autonomous if you are telling them where to work and when to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Autonomous always means &quot;autonomous within constraints&quot;. &#xA;Agile doesn't mean &quot;developers get to do whatever they want.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Let[ting] developers work wherever and whenever as long as they deliver&quot; sounds more like Wild West individualism than team-oriented Agile, to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are opportunities for developer movement within the org, or requirements for coordinated work, then abiding by the org's expectations for work hours &amp;amp; locations is in the best interest of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If my team were very unhappy with the situation, AND believed that they could increase their velocity if they were granted an exception from these rules (which, don't forget, there's a potential social downside within the org to being the &quot;special team&quot; that doesn't have to play by the rules), then I would do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;work 4-6 sprints abiding by the rules. Be sure to track your velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;quietly take note of any relevant issues that come up during the retros, both positive and negative. (I say &quot;quietly&quot; because you do not want to contaminate your data.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;at the end of this period, review the results with the team. Show the velocity. Share the related items that came up during the retros. Ask whether, given all that data, the team still feels they could increase their velocity if they were exempted from these rules. Ask for a &lt;a href=&quot;https://agileforall.com/learning-with-fist-of-five-voting/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;fist or five&quot;&gt;fist or five&lt;/a&gt; vote.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;don't forget the Product Owner or equivalent is part of the team for all these purposes. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you get a strong consensus, then I'd go to management, present my data (including related retro items), explain that the team felt we could increase the velocity if we were exempted from these rules, and ask for a 3-4 sprint period during which to do the experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They might say no. Then you gave it your best shot, and the team has to live with it or go find other jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They might say yes. Then you get to do the experiment, and see if it proves your team's hypothesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They might give you a conditional yes: eg, you still have to comply with some of the rules, but you get more flexibility to do the experiment. Then you can go back to the team &amp;amp; see if they still think they can increase velocity under those circs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, make sure nobody's gaming the system. IE no slacking off during the control period, or heroics during the experimental period. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then you'll see what happens, instead of being caught up in trying to prove that management is wrong. ;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2018-09-20T20:44:56.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24906" CreationDate="2018-09-20T21:12:29.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of that initial infrastructure can be demo'd to customers at sprint reviews to help educate them on why and how it is delivering things that are of value to them. For example, CI/CD:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Look, my tests will run every time I commit/merge something! And if I commit something wrong... (do so)... look, it tells me right away! This buys us both quality and efficiency in developer time. Wooohoo!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Look, the entire deployment process is automated. With just one command (or whatever), the whole system rolls off the repository and into production. Woohoo! This will let us do releases quickly and cheaply, and save expensive developer time for adding features.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You get the idea. Basically, break that giant initial infrastructure block into small pieces, and show them off as you do each one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't have to (and probably shouldn't) go into technical detail, but bringing the customer &quot;behind the curtain&quot; with your team as you're doing this initial investment work will help them understand going forward that not all work is visible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edited to add: I did not answer your question as posed, but the underlying question seems to be &quot;how do I communicate about the initial infrastructure to my customers so that they won't be confused&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastEditorUserId="11661" LastEditDate="2018-09-22T02:18:54.897" LastActivityDate="2018-09-22T02:18:54.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24906" CreationDate="2018-09-21T13:22:36.533" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's worth noting that architecture and requirements emerge throughout a project. Emergence of requirements is a focal point of empiricism. Architecture should be negotiated and designed during planning and refinement based upon what you can build this sprint that will provide value to your stakeholders. If you need all of this in order to meet your sprint goal, then that should be conveyed to stakeholders in a transparent manner. Using your product and sprint backlogs to drive the conversation and convey these dependencies is a good place to start as they are clear visualizations of what you need to meet your goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question: those are simply dependencies your team needs to meet their sprint goal, assuming your sprint goal is to be ready for release 1 by the end of the sprint. If your sprint goal is something other than to be ready for release 1, then it's possible the work can be broken up, thus breaking up the need for all those upfront dependencies until they're needed to meet a sprint goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33598" LastEditorUserId="33598" LastEditDate="2018-09-21T13:33:57.340" LastActivityDate="2018-09-21T13:33:57.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5342" CreationDate="2018-09-21T15:15:47.633" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Over the course of a year, how many times did another team member ask this person for help, get it, and still was not afraid to come back and ask for help again?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the course of a year, how many features did this team member ship, to customers, that are used and were relatively free of bugs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the last live site incident, how did this person respond?  Whether or not this person was the cause of the incident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of your current team size, if you had a team of three, would you want this person to be one of them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every year when I'm asked for input on my peers, this is my personal checklist for completing that open-ended space on the form for &quot;any other comments.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27826" LastActivityDate="2018-09-21T15:15:47.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24931" CreationDate="2018-09-22T14:59:48.697" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Summary task 6, Building Town planning, contains three unlinked subtasks of durations 200d, 300d, and 476d - all of which start concurrently.  The duration of the summary task, at 476d, is exactly as expected - i.e. the difference between its start and finish dates according to the applicable calendar.  Summary start and finish dates are rolled up from the subtasks.  Since all the subtasks start at the same time, the summary's finish date and duration are both determined by the longest subtask - 476d.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2018-09-22T14:59:48.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20932" CreationDate="2018-09-23T05:21:17.983" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;Project Server 2016&lt;/strong&gt;, the steps to configure &lt;a href=&quot;https://spgeeks.devoworx.com/missing-alerts-and-reminders-in-project-server-2016/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Alerts and Reminders&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; have been changed and the &lt;a href=&quot;https://spgeeks.devoworx.com/missing-alerts-and-reminders-in-project-server-2016/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Alerts and Reminders&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; option is now not located in &lt;code&gt;Central Administration&lt;/code&gt; below &lt;code&gt;Operational Policies&lt;/code&gt; as it was in Project Server 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To configure Alerts and Reminders, you should&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Configure outgoing e-mail settings in SharePoint Server 2016.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Configure Email Settings in Project Server 2016: Turn on notifications.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manage My Alerts and Reminders in Personal Settings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the detail steps, check &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://spgeeks.devoworx.com/missing-alerts-and-reminders-in-project-server-2016/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Project Server 2016: Missing Alerts and Reminders Settings.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28984" LastEditorUserId="28984" LastEditDate="2020-03-15T10:22:36.187" LastActivityDate="2020-03-15T10:22:36.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24026" CreationDate="2018-09-24T05:51:34.417" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that the main responsibility of a BA is to capture the functional requirements which will add value to the customer. It is better to follow the '&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt;' philosophy when writing user stories. In this case, we need to segregate this as a non-functional requirement. It is better to handle as tech task in sprint.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33461" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-09-24T13:08:33.053" LastActivityDate="2018-09-24T13:08:33.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3427" CreationDate="2018-09-24T16:00:55.810" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am one of the developers of &lt;a href=&quot;https://pollunit.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;PollUnit&quot;&gt;PollUnit&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With our tool you can quickly prioritize tasks or find decisions with the least rejection (or highest acceptance).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Users can vote without account or can login with their google account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are two examples (Dot Voting and Systemic Consensus):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hXIyv.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hXIyv.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jAsCe.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jAsCe.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33611" LastActivityDate="2018-09-24T16:00:55.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4576" CreationDate="2018-09-24T19:02:28.673" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What I'm asking is, is there a trick to gathering good requirements that are based upon business rules? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a single trick, it is to ensure you first have a sufficient understanding of who the project is intended to help. Who (or indeed what) benefits from a successful outcome of your project? This is sometimes known as stakeholder analysis or &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.stakeholdermap.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;stakeholder mapping&lt;/a&gt;.  In my experience, a typical IT project has between 20 to 40 stakeholders, all of whom have some kind of interest, direct or indirect, in the project. But of course some are more important than others to the project to keep happy! Hint: direct &quot;users&quot; of the software are but one of these, and almost certainly not the most important (e.g. their bosses?).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have built up a model of the stakeholders, you can start to focus on each in turn and ask: &quot;What is it they do?&quot; and, crucially &quot;What is it about what they do that they need made better?&quot;.  Document &quot;how they do what they do now&quot; for background information, and definitely capture any ideas they may have on how to improve things.   BUT keep these separate and segregated in your specifications.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can I get the BAs to do this, when they aren't already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A proven technique to ensure sufficient quality in project artifacts in non-software engineering disciplines is to use inspection techniques coupled with entry / exit criteria.  You cannot give an airplane wing technical drawing to the fabrication unit unless you know it has a sufficient level of objective &quot;correctness&quot; (e.g. less than one potential major defect per drawing page). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some practitioners applied these techniques to software from the 1960's onward (for example, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.co.uk/Software-Inspection-Industry-Practice-Detection/dp/0818673400&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;see this book&lt;/a&gt; for a collection of previous work).  I recommend Gilb's &lt;a href=&quot;http://concepts.gilb.com/dl57&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Agile SQC&quot;&lt;/a&gt; sampling - based measurement technique.  It will tell you, cheaply and objectively, how many &quot;major defects&quot; (aka &quot;potential bugs&quot;) there might be per specification page produced by your BAs.  You can then agree as an organisation that it is economically unacceptable to pass requirements specifications to a development team that exceed a given level of defects (e.g. say &quot;10 per page of 300 words&quot;).  It really can help to take egos and emotions out of the process.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can I educate, and improve their abilities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A wonderful side-effect of using Agile SQC over time, if done correctly, is that it becomes self-improving. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the Gilb &lt;a href=&quot;http://concepts.gilb.com/dl57&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile SQC paper&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Long term, the most effective practical solution is to adopt Agile SQC as part of the corporate process, and most importantly, make sure each individual specification writer takes the defect density criteria (and its 'no exit' consequence) seriously. They will then learn to follow the rules; and as a result will reduce their personal defect injection rate. On average, a personal defect injection rate should fall&#xA;by about 50% after each experience of using the (Agile) SQC process.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33626" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-09-24T19:14:38.737" LastActivityDate="2018-09-24T19:14:38.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16739" CreationDate="2018-09-25T23:19:06.223" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A shorthand answer: &lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Epic&lt;/strong&gt;: Generally takes more than one iteration to complete, contains more than one &lt;strong&gt;User Story&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;amp; is written in a &lt;strong&gt;User Story&lt;/strong&gt; format.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;User Story&lt;/strong&gt;: Generally is completed in one iteration, contains multiple  &lt;strong&gt;Tasks&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;amp; is written in a &lt;strong&gt;User Story&lt;/strong&gt; format.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Task&lt;/strong&gt;: Generally a work item/action needed to complete a &lt;strong&gt;User Story&lt;/strong&gt; that are created by the Dev Team &amp;amp; take between a few minutes to a few days to complete. Appears in a checklist.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;User Story Format:&lt;/strong&gt; the form &lt;strong&gt;the Product Owner &amp;amp; Dev Team&lt;/strong&gt; use together to define/understand what needs to be done. It generally includes at least:&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Summary: &quot;As a __ I want to (or a) __ so I can __.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Meets INVEST criteria: (&lt;strong&gt;I&lt;/strong&gt;ndependent, &lt;strong&gt;N&lt;/strong&gt;egotiable, &lt;strong&gt;V&lt;/strong&gt;aluable, &lt;strong&gt;E&lt;/strong&gt;stimable, &lt;strong&gt;S&lt;/strong&gt;mall, &lt;strong&gt;T&lt;/strong&gt;estable)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acceptance Criteria: One to a few Boolean conditions&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a ton of resources to further this conversation. Pick one to start your team's process. After a while inspect &amp;amp; adapt as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32578" LastActivityDate="2018-09-25T23:19:06.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24952" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24985" CreationDate="2018-09-26T16:19:59.627" Score="1" ViewCount="158" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have multiple small plans (managed by PMs) embedded in a master plan file which I manage. The PMs can add tasks to the sub plans as necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After receiving each sub plan and refreshing the master plan I want to be able to update the Project level Priority field via a lookup to a table (&quot;tblPriorityScores&quot;) in an Excel file.  The lookup field common to both the plan and excel table will be the project file name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The aim is to then resource level the master plan using these plan level priority scores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need to do this after receiving the plans back from the PMs so they are not tempted to alter the priority score for their project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have now figured out how to loop through the sub plans in turn and update their Priorities via ActiveProject.ProjectSummaryTask.Priority but now need to figure out how to open the relevant Excel file, lookup the table and return the relevant value for the current active project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33645" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-09-26T16:26:27.677" LastActivityDate="2018-10-03T19:36:46.693" Title="Auto populate project level Priority field based on lookup to Excel file table" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24952" CreationDate="2018-09-26T17:26:36.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;You can use MS Project's Import Wizard to merge data from an Excel file into the active project.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the target project open, do File Open and search for your Excel file. Opening an Excel file within MS Project will launch the Import Wizard and walk you through the steps of building a map (e.g. what fields are in your Excel file), setting a merge key (e.g. how to match up Excel data with Project data; hint: use the task Unique ID), and previewing the data. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Import Wizard can be used in three ways: creating a new project, appending to the active project, or merging with the active project. Be sure to select the third option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you could also do this with VBA, but the Import Wizard is incredibly fast and powerful and specifically designed to do this task. At the end of the wizard you can save the map to skip all the setup next time you import the data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information see the &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/export-wizard-and-import-wizard-dfcf64ad-af40-422e-94f2-d034596aaa9a&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;msdn page&lt;/a&gt; (not great) or &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mpug.com/articles/ask-expert-import-excel-data-project-tips-troubleshooting/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt; (much better).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastActivityDate="2018-09-26T17:26:36.627" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24954" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-09-26T21:17:25.270" Score="1" ViewCount="170" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have no experience in scoping things. The projects I've worked on since I've started have been scoped and I just do what is asked in the stories and features. My current task is scoping an upcoming project. This is a 16 year old, 500k+ line app.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I begin scoping a project I have little knowledge of? I do not have much experience in the multiple apps it will affect. I'm overwhelmed and would just like a general process/tips on how to effectively scope something without missing major parts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have one expert engineer on our team but he really is busy and very begrudgingly responds when asked things. I try to keep my questions to 1 every 3 days, so I group them. When I asked how to scope this, or in general where to start he just said open the code base and determine the hours for the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33648" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2018-09-27T13:24:05.590" LastActivityDate="2018-09-27T20:20:05.833" Title="How do I begin scoping a project I have little knowledge of?" Tags="&lt;scope&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2018-09-28T13:00:41.323" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24026" CreationDate="2018-09-27T08:53:34.287" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to add a new concept I've found mentioned elsewhere: developer experience.&#xA;If a development task involves how &quot;hidden system&quot; works (most of the time), a good explanation with a clear statement that involves how systems will be improved, could help developer too.&#xA;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;As developer I want to improve continous integrations scripts to fully, so when deploy component X fails, dev team receive an email of errors&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is something not related to end user experience, but improve how developers works and in particular dev (and devops in the example) process in general &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24221" LastActivityDate="2018-09-27T08:53:34.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24954" CreationDate="2018-09-27T11:55:58.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest scoping your project with any early validated learning you may have going into the project. Basically, just get started and use empirical evidence you gain from users to incrementally build out requirements as they emerge. A prototype will be more helpful than an entire project that was built to spec without any feedback to serve as catalysts for additional features. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trying to scope out too much too early is a big risk. if there’s a vision and/or existing codebase for the project, taking those pieces to create hypotheses to test with users is a valid route. Requirements will emerge over time and being able to plan just-in-time work based on feedback will serve you, your project, and your clients well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33598" LastActivityDate="2018-09-27T11:55:58.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24954" CreationDate="2018-09-27T13:22:58.660" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to clarify expectations of you. Both from the senior dev, and, more importantly, from your (presumably shared) boss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have one expert engineer on our team but he really is busy and very begrudgingly responds when asked things. [...] When I asked how to scope this [he told me a way that's almost guaranteed to fail].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should speak with your boss, and clarify which of the following is true:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The senior dev is expected to spend more time than he currently is mentoring you. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6G8f9pZZRM&amp;amp;t=6m25s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;It's also possible that you're reading more into the senior dev's reluctance than he intends to convey.&lt;/a&gt; You should consider talking to the senior dev first.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You're &lt;em&gt;expected&lt;/em&gt; to fail. They want you to go out, flounder, fail, and learn, so that you do better next time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You're expected to succeed without sufficient guidance. In this case, I would suggest polishing up your resume so that you're ready to leave (ideally before things hit fans).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-09-27T13:22:58.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23772" CreationDate="2018-09-27T14:38:05.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your question, yes: it is possible to provide relative estimates without tracking time. Estimates should provide context into the amount of effort that goes into a work item, not the amount of time it'll take to perform the work. Remember, these estimates are effort forecasts, not commitments. The team should use the acceptance criteria and goal for each piece of work to estimate the amount of effort will go into the work. This can be done a number of ways, but most teams use a point system or T-shirt sizing method to provide relative context across various items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimating based on effort has two main artifacts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, it allows a development team and its product owner to make longer term forecasts about how much can be delivered by a certain date. It allows teams to answers questions regarding how much can be expected to be delivered by a certain date and at what point in time will the product see 'x' amount of work completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, it aides product owners in prioritizing work. Priorities should be set based on the expected benefits and opportunity costs of the estimated work items relative to one another. If there is a quick, value add win that has a low estimated effort, that may take precedence over a piece of high-effort work that does not provide as much value. Knowing relative-sizing is critical in prioritizing value before development work even begins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, in the event you want to begin using time as a means to provide transparency, I recommend reading the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/resources/kanban-guide-scrum-teams&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams&lt;/a&gt; to glean some ideas. This guide will show you reasons to use things like cycle times, work item age, throughput, SLEs, and WIP limits to provide hyperfocus into how to inspect and adapt your development practices as you move through a project. I've found these metrics also help with the estimating portion of our work as it provides empirical context into past estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33598" LastEditorUserId="33598" LastEditDate="2018-09-27T14:43:15.483" LastActivityDate="2018-09-27T14:43:15.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24026" CreationDate="2018-09-27T16:48:11.790" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How are you other BA's handling technical request/changes to scripts that have no effects on the end user?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is something that often pops up in the real work that boils down to the similarities and differences between what're known as user requirements and system requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/T2SHt.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/T2SHt.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, system requirements can be broken down into functional and non-functional requirements themselves. That said, even system requirements should have acceptance criteria (just like user requirements) to denote what the work should ultimately result in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User stories can, in theory, be used to capture acceptance criteria for both functional and non-functional system requirements. Capturing these requirements in the backlog provides transparency into what's being worked on, the value it's projected to provide, and the level of effort the team has forecasted for the work relative to other work items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So long as the acceptance criteria is present, the team has a goal to test against and build for in order to provide value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, use what makes sense but make sure the goals for the new requirements are captured so the team has something to shoot for before calling it &quot;done&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33598" LastEditorUserId="33598" LastEditDate="2018-09-27T16:53:56.497" LastActivityDate="2018-09-27T16:53:56.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24954" CreationDate="2018-09-27T20:20:05.833" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you &quot;scope&quot; a project, when you evaluate what needs to be done, who will do it and what is going wrong; it is important to separate the technical side from the management side of what you have to do. First, you must be aware of the trap of solving technical problems one after another, without having a plan; and arrive, at the end of your project, facing the same dissatisfaction as in the beginning. I would begin by reading complaints done by the users of the app and their suggestions of improvement. I mean all of them. After, I would talk to my boss to know what he or she find wrong with the app: what are the complaints he or she received from users, clients and employees, your co-workers. I would discuss the budget you can have to correct the problems and to hire new employees if needed. I would ask for the deadlines: how many weeks of months do you have to fix things or to propose an innovation. That's what I call the management part of your situation. In our community, questions have to be technically oriented. Some moderators don't appreciate management lessons, even given by a MBA like I. But, if you do those simple steps, you will be well equipped when you will face the wall of silence of those who don't want to help you or of those who feel they could lose their job or their influence in the company you are in if the app is modified or even deleted. When your boss knows what is going on and what you are trying to do; when he or she has a fair ideas on how long it will take and how much it will cost; you are more backed than arriving at the end of you project with a lot of unwanted surprised to your boss. You will earn the respect of you employees/team members when you will prove to them that you master the technical side of your project too. In our community, the moderators want technical questions about the usage of project management software programs. You can asked new questions when you will me at the step of modifying the app you are talking about. I am not very well liked in this community when I give answers like that, because I give the true secrets of a successful project management. The technical side is secondary. You need employees in your team that are not afraid to put all their cards on the table and to tell you honestly what is going wrong and were are the bugs, without fearing for their reputation and their career. I am in this community since 2012 on and off. In Silicon Valley, every body want to be the next big thing and they steal you happily stuff; but they rarely help you, even if it is their job to answer the question of their boss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user30807" LastActivityDate="2018-09-27T20:20:05.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6100" CreationDate="2018-09-27T20:32:15.283" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You use the word &quot;team&quot; when you talk about human beings and you use the word &quot;project&quot; when you add to the equation the software programs, the budget, the deadlines, your boss, the users, etc. Managing a team is not the same thing as managing a project. A project manager can have a team manager. When you manage a team, you make sure that everybody arrive on time and that they do what is requested. You manage their sick leaves for example; you evaluate their performance; you manage the rewards and the salaries. When you manage the project or the team, you make sure that you have sufficient budget and time to do what your boss agreed on. Managing the team, you make sure that everybody understand the problem to solve. You can also have many different work teams in the same project, separating people depending on the task they do to be more efficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user30807" LastActivityDate="2018-09-27T20:32:15.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2905" CreationDate="2018-09-27T20:43:18.697" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The word &quot;engagement&quot; or &quot;engaging&quot; is used, for example, for football players to &quot;engage&quot; with their fans. Football teams have to sell a lot of tickets every single game. The &quot;engagement&quot; action is done by players and members of the organization toward the clients/fans. In the science of marketing, there is a part responsible of making your clients long term customers. You give them rebates on the cost of the tickets; you give them a gift when they arrive at the stadium; you give them free tickets. You make their experience better for them to adopt your team and to sell more tickets, especially season tickets. But that is not engaging. When a football player &quot;engage&quot; he creates a closer relationship with a fan or a group of fans. It is all about the image of the team. Football players can &quot;engage&quot; in their community, for example, when they visit an hospital with sick children. They create a bound with the community. Football players are chosen especially when they have a talent in &quot;engaging&quot; with fans and with a community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user30807" LastActivityDate="2018-09-27T20:43:18.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24965" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-09-27T22:00:29.770" Score="0" ViewCount="69" Body="&lt;p&gt;My technical team proposed new features than the initial requirements. How do I communicate the same to my sponsor ensuring he is kept satisfied?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33662" LastActivityDate="2018-09-28T12:11:27.750" Title="How to tell my project sponsor that few of the requirements cannot be met" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2018-09-28T12:57:51.270" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24965" CreationDate="2018-09-28T12:11:27.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You communicate honestly.  It's obvious telling your sponsor and other stakeholders good news keeps them happy but you can get the same results with honest, early, and transparent communications when you report bad news.  Set up a meeting, inform your sponsor your findings in a factual, non-emotional way, explain your findings around causes, report various alternatives including the features offered up by your team, explain the plus and minuses of these alternatives to your sponsor's business, and ask for a decision.  Nothing is certain about projects except this: change.  If the first requirements are not working, change them and keep going.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-09-28T12:11:27.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24969" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24971" CreationDate="2018-09-28T15:03:56.747" Score="3" ViewCount="1199" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am the ScrumMaster of an engineering team. My opinion is that 2 of the team members are not performing at a level which I would expect. This opinion is formed with the following information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Daily stand-ups: they are generally not progressing through tasks and getting involved in sprint work like the others are.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They are very pessimistic and constantly telling the other team members that it will be impossible to deliver on their sprint commitments. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They truly find almost everything a joke and the constant failure to deliver on sprint commitments a failure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The other team members are active and productive, constantly raising their views, speaking up, picking up new work and keeping the team moving forward&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They don't appear to be interacting, pairing and being productive for most of the day.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, when (if ever) is it appropriate for a Scrum Master to bring these views to the attention of management or do I just continue trying to get the team to evolve and deal with this on their own?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-02T15:24:37.600" LastActivityDate="2018-11-05T18:08:14.130" Title="When is it appropriate for a Scrum Master to raise low performance of team members to management?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24970" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24976" CreationDate="2018-09-28T15:08:49.530" Score="2" ViewCount="94" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about to create a master plan that will contain over 200 small sub project files.  Each sub project file will have common elements such as standard Custom fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have created a template for the sub projects and will now replicate it for each of the 200+ projects and them distribute them to the relevant Project Managers.  My worry is that after creating these 200+ project files I will realise I need to make an identical change to all of them.  EG Add a new custom field to each file, or modify a drop down list in each file, or add a new filter to each file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way, presumably using VBA, that will allow me to apply the change to all the sub project files via one instruction?  EG if I want to show custom field Date1 (renamed to TargetDate) in each sub project file, what is the best way to do this other than modifying each file manually one after the other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eric&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33645" LastActivityDate="2018-09-29T15:07:11.953" Title="How to make identical changes to multiple sub project files" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24969" CreationDate="2018-09-28T19:04:53.373" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master, one of the main responsibilities is to identify and remove impediments in the team.  Scrum masters don't manage people and their tasks.  Need to coach and train people to become cross functional and truly agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope in the Standup, people answer the 3 Questions.  If no impediments are reported, discuss with the two team members individually and find out what is stopping them from being productive and / or make progress in the assigned stories / tasks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If there are technical issues that they are not able to solve, pull other technical folks to pair with them and resolve.  Need to stress to these two folks and  also  to the others that AGILE is all about team commitment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For personal issues, as a Senior folk help them out where you could motivate them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Need more details on how many sprints the team have successfully completed on their committed stories and on the times they fell behind the target; reasons for that and the resources productivity in the previous sprints. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many factors to look into before raising flags against anyone.  If you have supporting data, work with the resources and their managers and help each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33671" LastActivityDate="2018-09-28T19:04:53.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24969" CreationDate="2018-09-29T07:39:38.273" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is appropriate for the Scrum Master to raise this issue with management &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; if they have been asked to do so by the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you speak with management without first being asked to by the team then you run the risk of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Being seen as a 'spy' for management in the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Losing the trust of this particular team member and possibly other team members as well&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having management see you as a source of information on individual performance in the Scrum team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master I would typically wait until this issue is raised at a retrospective. If the issue is never raised at a retrospective then I would ask myself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this really a problem? Or am I just perceiving it as one?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the team feel confident enough to speak out about this kind of matter at retrospectives?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the second option seemed most likely then I would speak with the team about the way self-organising teams solve their own problems and about how best to use retrospectives to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2018-09-29T07:51:10.943" LastActivityDate="2018-09-29T07:51:10.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24970" CreationDate="2018-09-29T15:07:11.953" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following code will add the field Date1 (which I have renamed as &quot;PSR Finish&quot;) to all the sub project files in the Master file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Dim mProj As Project, sProj As Project&#xA;Dim mProjName As String, sProjName As String&#xA;&#xA;Set mProj = ActiveProject&#xA;mProjName = mProj.Name&#xA;&#xA;For Each Subproject In mProj.Subprojects&#xA;    FileOpen (Subproject.Path)&#xA;    Set sProj = ActiveProject&#xA;&#xA;    sProjName = sProj.Name&#xA;    OrganizerMoveItem Type:=9, FileName:=mProjName, ToFileName:=sProjName, Name:=&quot;PSR Finish (Date1)&quot;&#xA;&#xA;Next Subproject&#xA;mProj.Activate&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this the best way to do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33645" LastActivityDate="2018-09-29T15:07:11.953" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24978" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-09-30T21:01:04.560" Score="5" ViewCount="190" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a technical (software deployment) project manager. I regularly have clients request 15+ minute check-in calls, which I am happy to take. The calls are pre-scheduled and have no set agenda.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I take fairly robust notes in Microsoft OneNote, but they are not written for the client as much as for myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sending follow-up emails that list action items for both the client and PM is critical, so I am wondering if any of you have best practices for putting together unambigious and actionable follow-up emails that can be sent within 20 minutes of a check-in call's conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20927" LastActivityDate="2018-10-01T14:21:49.557" Title="Writing Better Milestone/Touchpoint Follow-Up Emails" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;clients&gt;&lt;milestones&gt;&lt;email&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10133" CreationDate="2018-10-01T05:53:59.357" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use work-based estimating on the resource assignment.  In other words, change the task type to Fixed Work and enter the effort estimate as 24h.  Otherwise, keep it simple, leave the resource's working time in their calendar as 5d per week and only assign them with 60% units (i.e. 24/40h).  The duration of the task will be 5d, but the effort will be 24h, and the associated cost will be correct.  There is no need to micro-manage the hours per day for the person, because the task duration and work estimates are correct.  Whether they work 24h in 3d and take 2d off, or they work 24h in 5d and take a couple of hours off each day is irrelevant.  The amount of effort required is determined, and the duration will be 5d.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33686" LastActivityDate="2018-10-01T05:53:59.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24978" CreationDate="2018-10-01T14:21:49.557" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My technique to tackle this is fairly straight forward. I add an agenda item &quot;Meeting summary and actions&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When meeting summary is talked about, I also type up a few bullet points and actions and send it out before closing the meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once meeting finishes, usually another meeting starts or get pulled into tasks. So doing this during the meeting could be an approach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32694" LastActivityDate="2018-10-01T14:21:49.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21894" CreationDate="2018-10-02T00:19:02.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For velocity, I like to only estimate issues that give direct customer value. I can't think of a repeating task that provide direct customer value and if I could, I'd probably be on an operations team rather than a project team. Repeating tasks tend to be the cost of doing business, and they must be done no matter what. If you get really efficient at it, you'd notice a rise in your velocity because the team would have more time to do the work that delivers customer value.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I avoid even tracking repeating tasks as a story, task or bug and try to get those into DoD (for sprint, or release), or other checklists.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, fixing bugs contributes to customer value, and we estimate that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33692" LastActivityDate="2018-10-02T00:19:02.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24982" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-10-02T07:29:49.050" Score="4" ViewCount="790" Body="&lt;p&gt;My PRINCE2 training manual says that the Project Manager and Executive role cannot be combined. These roles are also non-optional, and so presumably create a minimum team size of 2 for any PRINCE2 project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the reasons (official and non-official) why these roles cannot be combined?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33694" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-10-31T13:14:30.877" LastActivityDate="2020-03-12T13:14:12.863" Title="Why does PRINCE2 specify that the project manager and executive roles cannot be combined?" Tags="&lt;roles&gt;&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24983" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24986" CreationDate="2018-10-02T08:06:33.647" Score="0" ViewCount="301" Body="&lt;p&gt;If possible I want to avoid using Resource Pools and embedded project files as I have had problems with these in a Sharepoint environment, so I am exploring using the ConsolidateProjects Method to create a schedule that consolidates all my sub projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using this code&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Application.ConsolidateProjects Filenames:=strFiles, AttachToSources:=False, NewWindow:=True&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can populate my project file with the data from all the sub project files that reside in the nominated folder.  The only problem is that it does not import the contents of custom fields that relate to the sub project SUMMARY task.  It DOES import the value from the standard Priority field, but does NOT import the value in the Custom field Text1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It works fine (and very quickly) for sub project tasks (and their summary tasks) but not for the sub project Summary task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I import the contents of custom fields that relate to the sub project Summary task?  Will I need to open each file individually and extract it somehow?  That will really slow the process down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eric &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33645" LastActivityDate="2018-11-19T17:36:44.033" Title="ConsolidateProjects Method: how can I import Sub Project Summary task Custom field contents?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24952" CreationDate="2018-10-03T19:36:46.693" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What Rachel suggested did work, but I wanted more transparency in my solution than using the import map process offered, and I enjoy playing with VBA.  So this is the VBA code I came up with (largely copied from other sources), which seems to work ok (the variables are all declared as Public in a separate module)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Sub RefreshPriorityScore()&#xA;' Populate all the tasks for each sub project with the appropriate Priority score  taken from the ResourceReports file&#xA;&#xA;On Error Resume Next&#xA;Set xlApp = GetObject(, &quot;Excel.Application&quot;)&#xA;&#xA;If xlApp Is Nothing Then&#xA;    Set xlApp = CreateObject(&quot;Excel.Application&quot;)&#xA;Else&#xA;End If&#xA;&#xA;xlApp.Visible = True&#xA;&#xA;' Open the excel file&#xA;    Set xlWB = xlApp.Workbooks.Open(ResourceReportsFolderPath &amp;amp; ResourceReportsFilename) ' Name of Report file&#xA;    Set xlWS = xlWB.Worksheets(&quot;MSPdataProjects&quot;)&#xA;&#xA;    xlWS.Activate&#xA;    Set tbl = xlWS.ListObjects(&quot;tblMSPdataProjects&quot;)&#xA;&#xA;    TableRowsCount = tbl.ListRows.Count&#xA;&#xA;' Capture the Priority Score from Excel and insert into the Master plan file&#xA;    For Each Tsk In ActiveProject.Tasks&#xA;        PID = Tsk.Text30&#xA;        PriorityScore = xlApp.SumIfs(tbl.ListColumns(&quot;PriorityScore&quot;).DataBodyRange, tbl.ListColumns(&quot;ProjectID&quot;).DataBodyRange, PID)&#xA;        Tsk.Priority = PriorityScore&#xA;    Next Tsk&#xA;&#xA;' To tidy up&#xA;    xlApp.UserControl = True&#xA;    Set xlApp = Nothing&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This updates my Master file (the ActiveProject) that contains all the sub projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33645" LastActivityDate="2018-10-03T19:36:46.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24983" CreationDate="2018-10-03T19:48:22.893" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is probably not the most efficient solution, but it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following code will consolidate my sub projects into a pre-formatted master file.  It uses some array variables to capture the required data from each file in turn.  All variables are publicly declared in a separate module.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question: is it necessary to open the sub project files to do this, as this slows the process down somewhat?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Sub Consolidate()&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;Application.DisplayAlerts = False&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DeleteTasks:&#xA;    ' Delete current contents of Master File&#xA;    For Each Tsk In ActiveProject.Tasks&#xA;        Tsk.Delete&#xA;        GoTo DeleteTasks ' Necessary as once the Task is deleted the variable Tsk is set to Nothing and the loop fails&#xA;    Next&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;' make sure you've added a reference (Tools&amp;gt;References)&#xA;' to &quot;Microsoft Scripting Runtime&quot;&#xA;Set fso = New FileSystemObject&#xA;Set SourceFolder = fso.GetFolder(SubProjFolderPath)&#xA;&#xA;i = 1 ' count of files in source folder&#xA;&#xA;'build a list of file names&#xA;For Each SourceFile In SourceFolder.Files&#xA;    If Right(SourceFile.Name, 3) = &quot;mpp&quot; Then&#xA;        strFiles = strFiles &amp;amp; SubProjFolderPath &amp;amp; SourceFile.Name &amp;amp; ListSeparator&#xA;&#xA;        ' Open each file to capture key data in array variables&#xA;        FileOpen SourceFile&#xA;        ReDim Preserve arrPID(i)&#xA;        ReDim Preserve arrSubNames(i)&#xA;&#xA;        arrPID(i) = ActiveProject.ProjectSummaryTask.Text30&#xA;        arrSubNames(i) = ActiveProject.ProjectSummaryTask.Name&#xA;&#xA;        For Each Tsk In ActiveProject.Tasks&#xA;            Tsk.Text30 = ActiveProject.ProjectSummaryTask.Text30&#xA;        Next Tsk&#xA;&#xA;        FileClose pjSave&#xA;        iMax = i ' equals the number of files in source folder to be added to master plan&#xA;        i = i + 1&#xA;&#xA;    End If&#xA;Next SourceFile&#xA;&#xA;If Len(strFiles) &amp;lt;&amp;gt; 0 Then&#xA;    'ConsolidateProjects with the file list&#xA;    strFiles = Left(strFiles, Len(strFiles) - 1)&#xA;    Application.ConsolidateProjects Filenames:=strFiles, AttachToSources:=False, NewWindow:=False&#xA;End If&#xA;&#xA;Application.DisplayAlerts = True&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I use this code to apply the values to each task in the newly populated Master plan file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Sub RefreshCustomFields()&#xA;&#xA;' Assign the Project ID from the Sub Project file to the relevant sub project summary task in the new MasterPlan&#xA;i = 1&#xA;For Each Tsk In ActiveProject.Tasks&#xA;&#xA;    TaskName = Tsk.Name&#xA;    If i &amp;gt; iMax Then End ' to stop the loop after the final Source file name has been matched&#xA;&#xA;    If TaskName = arrSubNames(i) Then&#xA;        Tsk.Text30 = arrPID(i) ' Text30 is set to be the PID&#xA;&#xA;        i = i + 1&#xA;    End If&#xA;Next Tsk&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33645" LastActivityDate="2018-10-03T19:48:22.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24987" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-10-04T09:20:54.447" Score="2" ViewCount="115" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a number of generic resources, eg Engineers, where each individual is treated as interchangeable with all the other Engineers.  I want to show their availability as for instance 100% in October (equating to 1 engineer) and 200% in November (ie 2 engineers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know how to do this manually in Project via the Resource Information dialog, but I want to import this data from a table in Excel where these values are calculated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using this table as an example&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Name     Max_Units  Available_From  Available_To&#xA;Engineer     100    01/10/2018      31/10/2018&#xA;Engineer     200    01/11/2018&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I import this data I was hoping to see one Engineer resource in the Resource Sheet with 2 entries in the Resource Information dialog under Resource Availabioity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead I get 2 resources called Engineer in the Resource Sheet.  If I double click on the first entry (the one with 100 units) to see the Resource Information dialog I see the data for the first line in the above table.  But if I look at the second entry (the one with 200 units) I see this.  Note it shows the wrong dates for Availability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6UymS.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6UymS.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I want is 1 resource in the Resource Sheet called Engineer but with his Availability in the Resource Information dialog showing as 100 in October and 200 from 1 November onwards.  I know this can be done manually, but how can I import the data to achieve this result?  Do I need VBA code?  If so any suggestions are welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eric&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33645" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T23:11:29.363" LastActivityDate="2020-10-22T12:59:43.940" Title="How to Import Resource Availability from Excel when it varies by month" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24987" CreationDate="2018-10-04T10:46:27.077" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's funny how often articulating a question can lead you to finding the answer your self.  The following codes does the job in a few seconds and will save me many hours of boring data input.  I am very happy!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Sub ImportSupply()&#xA;&#xA;    ' This will open the Excel file containing the Supply profiles and import the data into the Availability table in MS Project for each Resource Type&#xA;&#xA;    On Error Resume Next&#xA;    Set xlApp = GetObject(, &quot;Excel.Application&quot;)&#xA;&#xA;    If xlApp Is Nothing Then&#xA;        Set xlApp = CreateObject(&quot;Excel.Application&quot;)&#xA;    Else&#xA;    End If&#xA;&#xA;    xlApp.Visible = True&#xA;&#xA;    ' Open the excel file&#xA;        Set xlWB = xlApp.Workbooks.Open(ResourceReportsFolderPath &amp;amp; ResourceReportsFilename) ' Name of Report file&#xA;        Set xlWS = xlWB.Worksheets(&quot;MSPdataSupply&quot;)&#xA;&#xA;        xlWS.Activate&#xA;        Set tbl = xlWS.ListObjects(&quot;tblMSPdataSupply&quot;)&#xA;&#xA;        TableRowsCount = tbl.ListRows.Count&#xA;&#xA;    ' Capture the the relevant data from each row of tblSupply from Excel and insert into the Master plan file&#xA;        For TableRow = 1 To TableRowsCount&#xA;            ResourceName = tbl.DataBodyRange(TableRow, 2)&#xA;            MaxUnits = tbl.DataBodyRange(TableRow, 4)&#xA;            AvailableFrom = tbl.DataBodyRange(TableRow, 5)&#xA;            AvailableTo = tbl.DataBodyRange(TableRow, 6)&#xA;&#xA;            ActiveProject.Resources(ResourceName).Availabilities.Add AvailableFrom, AvailableTo, MaxUnits&#xA;        Next TableRow&#xA;&#xA;    ' To tidy up&#xA;        xlApp.UserControl = True&#xA;        Set xlApp = Nothing&#xA;&#xA;End Sub&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33645" LastActivityDate="2018-10-04T10:46:27.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24989" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-10-04T13:36:50.803" Score="5" ViewCount="1515" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working with an organisation that has a continuously evolving product. Although original product is in production, business is regularly giving new requirements or change requests. The teams are following agile methodology. While new requirements are clear, it is not clear how the change requests to a delivered User Story should be handled. Some times the change request impacts multiple business stories. Should such change requests be tracked as a specialised work item type and linked to impacted user stories and should the original user stories be updated to reflect the new functionality (single source of truth for product definition) or should the change request itself is enough to handle and let the User Stories be kept as is as they are already marked as done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Please note we are managing work items in products like TFS or Jira (depending on the project) but the process is similar.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;[Update after response by Todd as the comment field was too short to fit]&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My concern is also about the &lt;strong&gt;single source of truth&lt;/strong&gt;. As we get past initial releases, &lt;strong&gt;the design of the software tends to degrade due to local fixes in absence of a complete view&lt;/strong&gt;. Many times the change request user stories only focus on local aspects and developers loose the big picture. This can be avoided by the CR updating the original US and then the US being part of the work rather than the CR. CR would simply be linked to impacting US. &lt;strong&gt;CR can still be considered for work item tracking. But the acceptance tests would still be from the US.&lt;/strong&gt; Does this sound practical? This should also help new team members joining. &lt;strong&gt;People change is common&lt;/strong&gt; and in larger projects, there is also a practice of rotating team members. &lt;em&gt;In absence of updated US, new developers need to depend on BA maintaining the documents outside the ALM systems like TFS/Jira.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33719" LastEditorUserId="33719" LastEditDate="2018-10-04T15:36:34.367" LastActivityDate="2018-10-09T20:24:25.407" Title="Should a change request impact original user story?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24989" CreationDate="2018-10-04T14:44:10.977" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Work is work.&lt;/strong&gt; Truly agile frameworks embrace change, and don't track change requests. Instead, all work of any kind required to iteratively or incrementally evolve your product should be made visible as &lt;em&gt;new work&lt;/em&gt; that consumes project resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &quot;delivered&quot; user story is not a thing you should be tracking outside of the iteration in which it was delivered. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;second principle&lt;/a&gt; defined by the Agile Manifesto says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Welcome changing requirements, even late in &#xA;  development. Agile processes harness change for &#xA;  the customer's competitive advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you decide to track product or story deltas for some reason, an agile methodology operates at the &lt;em&gt;product&lt;/em&gt; level. The focus should always be on evolving the product, not on change-tracking individual user stories. The latter is an anti-pattern based on waterfall thinking, where the goal is often to &quot;hold someone accountable&quot; for change, or for failing to forecast a future need. Don't do that!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what does that mean in practical terms? It means that you shouldn't be filing change requests against existing user stories. Instead, you should be writing &lt;em&gt;new&lt;/em&gt; user stories that reflect work that needs to be done to &lt;strong&gt;evolve the product.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User stories or Product Backlog Items (PBIs) should only be tracked on the Product Backlog as future work, or within an iteration as current work. Once delivered, they are reflected in the team's velocity or other metrics to help improve future estimation practices, but are otherwise ephemeral artifacts that should be &lt;em&gt;discarded&lt;/em&gt; once their usefulness is over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Ticketing Systems&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you're using a ticketing system like JIRA, tracing a user story or task to a parent object should only be done for visualization of current or future work. Keeping information local in the current ticket reduces cognitive load when compared to chasing down information in linked tickets. For example, it's okay to say something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user, I want the widget ensmallened so it will fit in my pocket. &lt;em&gt;NB: In ticket &lt;strong&gt;foo&lt;/strong&gt; we embiggened the widget. Perhaps we can just back out that change.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even better yet would be to copy the information about the previous change to the local ticket, saving your team or stakeholders a lookup every time they want to see what needs to be done &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt; to meet the current objective. Spelunking into historical tickets is &lt;em&gt;muda&lt;/em&gt; from a systems-thinking viewpoint, and definitely an anti-pattern for most agile methodologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Delivered tickets are a sunk cost. They are simply not relevant to work that needs to be done &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt; to converge the existing product to a desired state. By treating new tickets as change requests on old tickets, your process is mistakenly valuing the amount of work previously done more highly than the amount of effort required to deliver on a current requirement. This is one of the many reasons that frameworks like Scrum require backlog items that aren't completed within the time box of a single Sprint be re-estimated and re-prioritized before being pulled into another iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, if the business is requiring you to do this, stakeholder agility training may be in order. If it's just something you thought was a good idea, please don't do it anymore. Either way it's an anti-pattern, and the process needs to evolve to be more agile and more open to embracing change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-10-04T14:44:10.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24991" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25090" CreationDate="2018-10-05T05:03:38.263" Score="3" ViewCount="282" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an external project manager. The internal staff at a clients business have started making comments to the effect that &quot;this requirement will be easy to deliver&quot;. Such comments are damaging our relationship with the client. The comments are completely unfounded as the people making them have no expertise in the relevant areas. Nonetheless the comments are creating unrealistic expectations in the client's mind regarding the speed of development. I don't want to make an enemy of the staff saying the things are wrong but also want to stop the staff creating unrealistic expectations. I have told the people that such comments are unhelpful and wrong but they still persist. Do you have any suggestions on how to manage this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16004" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-10-21T19:39:25.087" LastActivityDate="2018-10-23T12:10:43.627" Title="How to deal with client's staff that says &quot;this will be easy&quot;" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;clients&gt;&lt;relationships&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24992" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24995" CreationDate="2018-10-05T07:50:37.287" Score="8" ViewCount="1274" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a ScrumMaster for a team of developers and QA's with a Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried unsuccessfully for the last year to get the PO to understand what the role of the PO entails and he just does not seem to get it. He tries my suggestions for a few weeks and then he slips into his old mode of working especially when deadlines loom:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Micromanages team members&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manages the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attempts to plan the teams day, during standups&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leers at them when they are sitting in a group chatting and asks why they are not working&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Constantly asks for updates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attempts to design the solution&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Relentless in his pursuit of understanding the solution design at a low level&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dominates almost every team meeting and ceremony including technical solution design meetings even though they clearly don't have solution design experience or development experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is constantly involved in team management related work e.g. resourcing of the team etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does not write/is not able to write user stories and acceptance criteria at a level of detail for the team to design and code effectively&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spends more time on the first points than actually doing requirements elicitation &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What have the team said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They have raised the need for acceptance criteria and scenarios on numerous occasions &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They have said that the requirements are not clear and do not provide enough to 'go on' &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They have said they do feel 'managed' by the PO (during 1on1's with me)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is where should I go from here. I am at the end of my tether. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was thinking my next step should be to talk to his manager and explain that I think he would make a very good traditional manager or project manager but I cannot see any qualities useful for a Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2018-10-09T19:47:22.133" Title="What to do with a Product Owner who is not able to understand the role" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24991" CreationDate="2018-10-05T11:38:37.273" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you need to uncover is the driver behind the 'this will be easy' rhetoric.  Is it innocent optimism?  Is it designed to keep sponsors interested in funding this project?  Or is it designed to insulate themselves against a risky project such that they can point to another group or individual--such as you--when and if the project goes south?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter the drive, communication is your ally here and what and how you communicate will depend on the driver of this statement.  If optimism, use it to your advantage.  Optimism has a lot of benefits.  Frame your risks and issues you are facing in such a way that keeps this optimism a live.  If they have a sponsor issue, then you need to frame the risks and issues you face in such a way that sponsors do not get scared and back off the project.  You need to support your client with messages that the team can weather these storms.  And if it is the latter, then you need to communicate early, often, very clearly, and non emotionally the facts of what's going on, the risks you are predicting, the issues you are experiencing, and your plans to mitigate and recover.  And you need to document everything so as to insulate yourself if fingers start pointing in your direction.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-10-05T11:38:37.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24992" CreationDate="2018-10-05T16:11:07.380" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few areas I would want to dig further into.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First: Why does the team tolerate this from the PO. The PO, SM, and Team should all have about equal authority on the scrum team, though in different areas. I assume there are some other factors at play that grant the PO more authority. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I often look at the Scrum Team like a game of tug of war. As long as the roles are pulling about the same, there's a natural tension and we all have fun. If any of the roles are too strong or too weak, everyone falls over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second: What are the pressures on the PO? We all have expectations on us at work, but the if the company is expecting X scope by Y delivery date and making the PO responsible for that, you have a situation that is impossible for the PO to deliver on and unhealthy for the whole Scrum team. In most teams I work with, we identify the purpose of the team and the measures of success. As soon as the we see the measure is &quot;get work done&quot; we know that we have a problem. Measures should be focused on profitability, cost reduction, user satisfaction, etc. Then the PO's job is to maximize those with whatever work the team can get done. Usually in situations like you describe, the asks on the PO by others in the company are the wrong expectation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suspicion would be that you have an alignment and balance problem and that the practices problem is secondary, especially since you say the PO tries suggestions and then falls back to old habits under pressure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-10-05T16:11:07.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20681" CreationDate="2018-10-05T17:06:46.153" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This way has been changed in SharePoint 2016 and it now depends on the &lt;code&gt;outgoing e-mail settings&lt;/code&gt; in &lt;code&gt;Central Administration&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the detail steps, check &lt;a href=&quot;https://blog.devoworx.net/2018/09/23/missing-alerts-and-reminders-in-project-server-2016/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Project Server 2016: Missing Alerts and Reminders Settings.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28984" LastActivityDate="2018-10-05T17:06:46.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23120" CreationDate="2018-10-05T17:10:47.280" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a new app on the Marketplace, &lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1219213/clockwork-automated-timesheets?hosting=cloud&amp;amp;tab=overview&amp;amp;utm_source=pm.stackexchange&amp;amp;utm_medium=website&amp;amp;utm_campaign=clockwork-comments-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Clockwork Automated Timesheets&lt;/a&gt;, that makes time tracking automatic. It integrates with Jira's workflow so that the time logged corresponds to how much time an issue was In Progress or had any other active status. If necessary, the timers can always be started or stopped manually. There are also reports available. The one thing you mentioned and the app can't currently do is to reassign the logged time to another user. Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33733" LastActivityDate="2018-10-05T17:10:47.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24991" CreationDate="2018-10-06T09:06:58.617" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What's easier? To eat an elephant or a hamburger?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't really matter, as you eat both one bite at a time. The difference is &lt;em&gt;how many bites&lt;/em&gt; you have to take to accomplish each task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, break down your project into specific tasks, identifying the parts of the work that will be more complex that the client might have overlooked. Stress the external dependencies you might have and the pitfalls that could convert silly tasks into weeks long work. The client may be requesting an Iceberg implementation, make sure he's aware of what's down the water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bottomline:&lt;/strong&gt; A single task has different points of view. Put yourself where the client stands and explain the work in the background he's not seeing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2018-10-06T09:06:58.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15319" CreationDate="2018-10-06T14:27:25.560" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A great deal of dangerous confusion exists around this subject. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As one author noted even the term 'task' means different things to different people, so make sure you're talking about the right thing in your context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you read &quot;User Story Mapping&quot;, Patton, you'll see a definition of Tasks as the things people want to do in a Story, not about the &quot;things to do work-breakdown structure&quot;. It is the latter definition that I am referring to in this answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tasking as a management imperative, to track the work being done, is extremely dangerous. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the worst practice of all the other agile anti-patterns combined. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Parkinson's law. Work will expand to fill the estimate. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time spent in bookkeeping that isn't adding value&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discourages the advancement of cross-functional teams. We'll see tasks decomposed by the &quot;experts&quot; in that subject on the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Difficulty knowing where actual story progress is during the sprint (90% of task completion but the last 10% takes triple the whole-time). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Busy-ness&quot; becomes the primary measure of progress&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management looks to optimize utilization of &quot;resources&quot; which will, predictably, cause utter collapse in flow of valuea&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Utterly duplicative. If the teams know the tasks to do than just do them. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Output is not the same thing Outcome. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is rife with abuse&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Delaying one task delays another task - just like it always has&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The focus is on the task and the plan - this crushes any possibility of innovation along the way&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tons of extra work by the developers that adds no value&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As an excuse to not decompose stories into small vertical slices&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Demoralizing order-taker mindlessness&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The list goes on...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, &quot;tasks&quot; aren't bad, per se. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I routinely use them. All the time. At work, at home...just about everywhere. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I use them in an agile way. I scribble the list on paper and delete it when a better idea comes along. I don't agonize over how long the task is going to take because the task will take what the task will take. What's funny is I regularly achieve the &quot;value&quot; from the thing while many unfinished, or different, tasks remain on the list. I use them to guide me but they are never &quot;the thing of value&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are my heuristics for the use if tasking as work-breakdown structure: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tasking can be useful on many levels when used as an 'emerging dynamic checklist' &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Therefore, the approach must &quot;support changing tasks, even late changing tasks&quot; as new information is obtained to allow for a better plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not record tasks in an ALM. It's pure waste&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not use tasks to measure progress (working software is the primary measure of progress)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you must put tasks in the ALM do not put time on them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teach leadership to trust the teams &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some better ways: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make your stories smaller and constantly work on the abstractions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;use User Story Mapping and BDD to create a shared understanding&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pair on all stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;communicate in person as a team, not through the ALM task &quot;work breakdown structure&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do burn-up story points &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do let the teams decide for themselves if and how tasking is useful &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33740" LastEditorUserId="33740" LastEditDate="2018-10-06T14:39:41.897" LastActivityDate="2018-10-06T14:39:41.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24991" CreationDate="2018-10-06T16:09:58.567" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;on agile scrum , having easy/moderate/difficult sort user stories is indica-tion from clients on regular meetings. A product owner will having quick answer for these sort queries with onshore stakeholders . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31074" LastActivityDate="2018-10-06T16:09:58.567" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25002" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-10-07T16:19:42.637" Score="0" ViewCount="2136" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I do L1, L2, and L3 effort estimation for Applications Support?  I am naive and don't have any experience. Can anyone tell me, from very basic fundamentals, with an example? It will be great help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33747" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-10-09T13:17:52.123" LastActivityDate="2018-10-09T13:17:52.123" Title="How to do L1, L2, L3 effort estimation for Applications Support" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24189" CreationDate="2018-10-08T06:58:36.877" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the ribbon, open the &quot;Baseline&quot; drop-down menu and click on Baseline. You will be able to make visual comparisons--for each task--between the Gantt bars for the current plan versus the baseline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33749" LastActivityDate="2018-10-08T06:58:36.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20167" CreationDate="2018-10-08T07:34:49.330" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see maintenance and development as fluid phases that occur in an iteration. I don't think it makes sense to define an unknown bug as maintenance six months after a project has been delivered. I see it as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deploy new version of software --&gt; X weeks afterwards we have a maintenance window.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bugs after that should be considered as new development unless they are related to production incidents that can be fixed through log checking, restart of servers and the like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33750" LastActivityDate="2018-10-08T07:34:49.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25005" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-10-08T12:12:02.660" Score="4" ViewCount="204" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Context&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a scrum master in a small (15 FTEs) organization that's about one year into a slow agile transformation. So far the shift towards agile has been limited to the Development team, but the other teams are also wanting to move in that direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, the leadership (4 people) has expressed an opening to integrate the whole team in setting objectives for the quarter (we use &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OKR&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;OKRs&lt;/a&gt;) in order to increase visibility on goals and increase team engagement and buy-in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The issue&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We did a test, which went relatively well, but the time people had to come up with objectives was minimal, and the team had neither sufficient access to most of the important information, nor enough time to really understand that information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The leadership is aware of the limitations of this exercise, but they also want to keep going and improve, which is encouraging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Proposed solution&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking of planning a one-day off-site for the whole team about a month before the start of the next quarter, where we would&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Review previous OKR results and do a retrospective to learn from what we did&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set new OKRs together&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have other important meta conversations (e.g. values, psychological safety, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do some informal team building&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The OKRs would then be used to fuel the roadmapping process and spur initiatives. The hope is that the team would have a shared understanding of what needs doing and feel more engaged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Question&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What approaches do you recommend to make this process engaging and fruitful?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Workshop ideas would be useful, but I especially need help on how to give the team access to the information they need to set meaningful objectives without asking them to read for a whole week. One solution that was proposed would be for each team to write an input paper on their context and share it with others one week before the retreat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26063" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-01-07T18:02:36.017" Title="How to involve the whole team in setting quarterly objectives (OKRs)?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;goals&gt;&lt;strategy&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22466" CreationDate="2018-10-08T13:57:45.880" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Standish Group actually explains the acronym in their 2018 report.&#xA;CHAOS - the &lt;strong&gt;Comprehensive Human Appraisal for Originating Software&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;Basically all about the human factor and how it influences project success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33754" LastActivityDate="2018-10-08T13:57:45.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25005" CreationDate="2018-10-08T14:27:52.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all: great idea with the workshop! And thumbs up for OKRs!&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Ad your question: I've made good experiences with having the people who have the needed information plus your team in one room for some time. If your board supports you, this should be possible for at least half a day. So your team and the special department can develop the base for the OKRs together. This won't waste time with reading papers over papers, will prevent misinformation and will give you buy-in from everyone involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17009" LastActivityDate="2018-10-08T14:27:52.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25002" CreationDate="2018-10-09T11:12:28.787" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;In theory&lt;/em&gt;, estimates for support activities are easier to provide for a single reason: &lt;strong&gt;historic evidences&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working myself with PROD support for years, I know that some tasks are unpredictable, and that's part of the game. But it's also true that some support activities are similar to already solved issues. The key is to identify these patterns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, back to the original question: &lt;em&gt;how to estimate application support actions&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Identify patterns.&lt;/strong&gt; It's like a puzzle (and can be as entertaining as such!). You have to group support tasks into buckets. You start with two buckets, the &quot;common&quot;/&quot;already occurred&quot; and the &quot;new&quot;/&quot;I have no idea what's this about&quot; issues (like the borders and insiders of a puzzle). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dig a bit further into the common tasks.&lt;/strong&gt; Creating a map where people could understand where the problem is could be helpful. Accept you won't be able to estimate all issues from scratch.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Define very high level complexity level for the common tasks.&lt;/strong&gt; Nothing too hard to swallow, just measure the complexity in &quot;high / med / low&quot; (relative to each other) or any other measure the team prefers. It's key to have the team onboarded, otherwise just forget about the whole stuff.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Evaluate how long each of them takes in average&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Average&lt;/em&gt; is key. Remember not the same person will be dealing with the same problem (and if that's the case, your project is at risk).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rinse and repeat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As your team evolves, more patterns will be identified and better estimates, provided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2018-10-09T11:12:28.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25010" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25047" CreationDate="2018-10-09T15:28:44.180" Score="0" ViewCount="274" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to measure requirement volatility but the problem is that our specification is not consistent in size of requirements. Sometimes, one requirement describes a whole workflow. Sometimes it just states X=10.&#xA;Would it make sense to still count them and track changes? Actually with those big requirements, the volatility will be higher (5 changes to 1 large requirement, which could be 5 changes to 5 requirements). So maybe it could help to visualize lack of granularity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31435" LastActivityDate="2018-10-13T02:25:36.273" Title="If you measure requirement volatility, how do you handle inconsistent requirement size?" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25010" CreationDate="2018-10-09T15:38:32.853" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Break the requirements down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;5 changes to 1 large requirement, which could be 5 changes to 5 requirements&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You specify yourself an example of a big requirement made of 5 smaller requirements... so why not just treat it as 5 requirements?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to follow the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt; mnemonic when creating/tracking requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-10-09T15:38:32.853" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25005" CreationDate="2018-10-09T15:45:14.413" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great question, and congrats on the transition to a more agile-way of delivering value. I'm going to assume your organization is using the Scrum framework if you're a Scrum Master, so my answer is scoped with that in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creating and promoting transparency is a key function of the Scrum Master role, and it's encouraging to see you feel strongly about this. I've been in a similar situation before, and a great start is to work with your management team to prioritize team OKRs. This is important as it helps the team focus on providing detailed plans re: the most valuable OKR, with lesser detail given to less-prioritized OKRs. Continue to work with management to make sure OKR value priority is up-to-date. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will also help with information transfer so the team doesn't have to ingest and deliver on the details for everything all at once. Just the prioritized OKR first. Other OKR details can be refined as empirical evidence, knowledge and requirements emerge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once a prioritized OKR is accomplished or &quot;done&quot;, the team should have an understanding/head start on incrementally building towards the next, providing details along the way as to how they plan on accomplishing the goal. This in turn can be delivered to management/visualized for transparency's sake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also use the Scrum events to promote and coach the team towards their OKRs. Coach the team on discussing how their daily work progresses towards OKRs during the Daily Scrum (where applicable). Are they on track? Blocked? Off track? That's helpful information to know as a Scrum Master. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Review how the increment moves the team closer to their OKRs at Sprint Review. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Help bake OKRs into refined work items and help the team find the balance in selected work during Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have the team inspect themselves and their progress towards their OKRs during their Sprint Retrospective. Refining/discussing their definition of done to help meet an OKR would make sense here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could also help to infuse OKRs into each sprint goal/team work agreements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With all this in mind, your team can incrementally and iteratively inspect and adapt progress towards those OKRs without having to ingest and act upon them all at once. But the crux of this revolves around prioritizing OKRs first. This may also involve coaching your management team on the value of prioritization to maximize empirical process control theory and Scrum Values (thinking of Focus, mainly). Then, if for some reason an OKR shifts in priority, the team can adapt their plans to meet new priorities without wasted effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33598" LastEditorUserId="33598" LastEditDate="2018-10-09T17:01:40.827" LastActivityDate="2018-10-09T17:01:40.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25013" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25014" CreationDate="2018-10-09T16:19:50.753" Score="0" ViewCount="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have noticed that in almost every app project for iOS and Android, there are two different projects, one for Android, one for iOS. This is good to track progress separately and assign tasks to different developers BUT leads to the duplication of user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I was thinking about is still to have separate iOS and Android projects but have user stories in Confluence. There would still be story tickets in JIRA (for platform progress tracking purposes), but they would link to Confluence for their content. Platform specific content could still be attached to / linked from the tickets (e.g attach a design or link to Zeplin).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefit would be to have user stories in one place only. Also, ATLASSIAN provides &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/use-jira-applications-and-confluence-together-427623543.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;integration between JIRA and Confluence&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are your thoughts ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33768" LastActivityDate="2018-10-09T16:53:13.057" Title="iOS / Android project organization to avoid duplicates" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25013" CreationDate="2018-10-09T16:25:30.437" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just make a shared board instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By default, JIRA Projects and boards are 1-1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there's no requirement to keep that default.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every board is a filter. Instead of having one board with filter 'Project = &quot;A&quot;' and another with 'Project = &quot;B&quot;', have a single filter (and board) with 'Project = &quot;A&quot; OR Project = &quot;B&quot;'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then all user stories may be visualized on a single board, with separate subtasks for iOS and Android. You can use Quick Filters to allow your developers to hide irrelevant issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-10-09T16:25:30.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24992" CreationDate="2018-10-09T16:32:18.667" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;An answer here really depends on how enabled the team is to utilize Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see a few things here that may be worth unpacking with your PO:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the Daily Scrum is for the Development team to replan their day in an effort to meet a sprint goal. If the PO is being disruptive, they should not be in attendance as this distracts from the purpose of the Daily Scrum. An effort to coach the PO on the utility of the Daily Scrum should be taken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the PO is responsible for maximizing/optimizing the value of delivered work, NOT the implementation of said work. Development Teams are structured and empowered by the organization to organize and manage their own work. Again, this sounds like a coaching opportunity with your PO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the PO should be available to provide clarity into work items. If they are unable to do so, the Scrum Master should coach them on how to become better at this. If things do not improve, external training opportunities should be discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, this sounds like a conversation that needs to be had during a sprint retrospective, not 1-on-1 where transparency is limited. Coaching the team to embody the Scrum Values during this event, specifically Openness and Courage, is easier said than done, but essential to unroot causality and promote transparency both internally and externally to the team. Tough conversations move a team forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a plan for remedy stems from this open conversation, and no progress is made, then it makes sense to escalate beyond the team. Removing impediments to the team's progress and helping organizational stakeholders understand and enact Scrum and empirical product development are key elements of being a Scrum Master. Tough task, but an essential part of the role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33598" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-10-09T16:42:32.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25013" CreationDate="2018-10-09T16:53:13.057" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should use components to resolve this issue, if you already use them to model your project specific components maybe you can distinct the OS,there may be components only available in just one OS.&#xA;For example if you have&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;UI&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Services&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;DB&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can Have&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ANDROID UI,IOS-UI &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Services, IOS-Specific services&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;DB&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then in your issues for example user stories, you can set which components are affected.&#xA;If this has to be developed twice you can clone issues to track each one of them apart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29163" LastActivityDate="2018-10-09T16:53:13.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20321" CreationDate="2018-10-09T17:07:16.967" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, there is no need to apply pressure when doing Scrum. Agile is all about constant feedback. For example, with the Sprint Review every two weeks, developers know they will have to show something, so they will push themselves to deliver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33768" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-10-09T17:31:59.380" LastActivityDate="2018-10-09T17:31:59.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20321" CreationDate="2018-10-09T17:53:21.860" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having a self organizing team doesn't mean you cannot measure their performance (as a team or individually). Scrum solves the part of how to handle the work to be done, but you still need to manage your team somehow, in this case not assigning them tasks and pressuring them to finish quicker, but letting them self organize and then analyse whether the bad performance (if goals are met then you don't have anything to worry about) is because an individual, bad coordination or external factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29163" LastActivityDate="2018-10-09T17:53:21.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25019" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-10-09T19:33:15.113" Score="1" ViewCount="107" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am managing a 3 year project in a country where the average annual inflation rate is 12%.   Instead of going through every item and entering &quot;+12%&quot; into the cost rate table for each item, is there a way  the rate increasing automatically for all resources over the 3 years in MS Project Professional 2016? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33756" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T23:14:43.110" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T23:14:43.110" Title="MS Project - Multi-year Inflation" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24989" CreationDate="2018-10-09T19:39:35.817" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest to track and keep a complete end user documentation somewhere else (e.g. wiki, confluence - not a single document), perfectly versioned together with the system. A new user story needs a change in the code, test cases and docs. You can link it back but better link it to the docs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Initial docs are copy-pasted from the initial stories and then updated.&#xA;Issue tracker gives you a history of what, when and why it changed but it's not realistic to be a source of truth of current status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perfectly make your Behaviour-Driven-Development tests a runnable documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33769" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-10-09T20:24:25.407" LastActivityDate="2018-10-09T20:24:25.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24992" CreationDate="2018-10-09T19:47:22.133" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answers above are all valid. I'd just like to mention that the only &quot;weapon&quot; a team can use is a carefully tracked and categorized waste  log. Track wait, re-work, debt servicing, overdesign etc and report the time (i.e money) wasted due to insufficient process. Then suggest action points. That is the only way I found really working when common sense arguments didn't.&#xA;Work is work, so tracking the time spent on work is pointless. Track the time spent on blockers. Check &lt;a href=&quot;https://dzone.com/articles/90-sprints-for-capital-markets-part-4-of-4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://dzone.com/articles/90-sprints-for-capital-markets-part-4-of-4&lt;/a&gt; (disclaimer - I'm the author)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33769" LastActivityDate="2018-10-09T19:47:22.133" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24892" CreationDate="2018-10-09T19:59:27.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found Kanban approach significantly easier to use than Scrum in a R&amp;amp;D kind of a project (were sucessfully using Scrum for 5 years before in other projects). And it works when we also have no single piece of UI. You can demo what you can, the way you can (you can use BDD test report or other reports) whenever you have a produxt increment (milestone). When most of your work are tech spikes (at least in the begining this is going to be the case in an ML project) focus on goals, limiting work in progress and timeboxing the spikes (e.g. review the approach after 2 days of analysis and initial effort not to dive into a rabbit hole)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33769" LastActivityDate="2018-10-09T19:59:27.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24783" CreationDate="2018-10-09T20:37:19.847" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Estimate in Agile is a measure of complexity and uncertainity (a 5 is somewhere between 3 and 8). Changing the estimate in flight is harmful - your historical estimates should have the same factor of uncertainity and error that current estimates. Comparing estimated backlog size to velocity based on &quot;accurates&quot; is apples to oranges. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it takes more time just tell - &quot;It takes more time, need to break it down&quot; or something. This is why you have standups. Then next time don't be over optimistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the sprint you should check the estimation accuracy on Sprint level and rhe learn. And underestimating is as bad as overestimating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33769" LastActivityDate="2018-10-09T20:37:19.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25024" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25026" CreationDate="2018-10-10T07:21:20.123" Score="8" ViewCount="1853" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have seven people team and their running velocity is ~50 points(2 weeks sprint). Now due to change in business focus, we have to reduce team size from 7 to 4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do we plan current sprint? According to running velocity or let the team guess how much they can deliver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30305" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-10-31T06:37:46.647" LastActivityDate="2018-10-31T06:37:46.647" Title="Planning a sprint after reduced team strength" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;sprint-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10442" CreationDate="2018-10-10T08:21:08.940" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work with diferent teams and we have parallel sprints for different apps. &#xA;It turned really hard to differentiate several Sprints with differents numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we implemented the following structure to our Sprint names:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&amp;lt; Sprint &gt; &amp;lt; Year &gt; &amp;lt; Month &gt; &amp;lt; (Version) &gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;&quot;(Version)&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; is optional because even if we do monthly sprints we do a Release every 3 Months. In this case 3 Sprints might belong to one Release. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it would help, you could also use the &lt;strong&gt;Sprint Goal&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;product name&lt;/strong&gt;. &#xA;I don't use the goal or product name because my Sprints belong to a product and that's already mapped in the system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33773" LastActivityDate="2018-10-10T08:21:08.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25024" CreationDate="2018-10-10T09:24:09.303" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you reduce a team from 7 to 4, especially if the reason is something outside the team, the best course of action is probably to treat this as a completely new team. People will need to change into new roles, find a new way of working together, cover fresh weaknesses caused by those leaving, find out who is in charge of what, and all the other problems that a new team runs in to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cutting a team in half shouldn't be handled in a &quot;business as usual&quot; type of way; it's a pretty traumatic experience for the team, especially if they've been working together for a while. You could go all the way and run a new team introduction, but at the very least you should give them some time to reform and whatever velocity you have from the previous team can probably go out the window.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing whatever it is you normally do when planning with a new team will likely give the most reliable results. (The most reliable possible, that is. They probably won't be very reliable regardless.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31393" LastActivityDate="2018-10-10T09:24:09.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25024" CreationDate="2018-10-10T13:00:31.110" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's important to understand that a change in team dynamic should result in lost productivity, whether that change is a reduction or increase in team size. Requirements, knowledge share, and artifacts of each sprint are dependencies that need to be accounted for when a team change is made. The team should forecast their own sprint based on what they know today. If there's a large need for knowledge transfer, domain expertise, requirements gathering, and artifact inspection, the team should take these factors into account when planning the next sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using lagging indicators such as velocity are nice for planning purposes, but it's only part of the picture. Planning the first few days of the sprint at Sprint Planning and using the Daily Scrum to re-plan towards the sprint goal is your best course of action.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33598" LastActivityDate="2018-10-10T13:00:31.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25028" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-10-10T13:59:29.183" Score="2" ViewCount="138" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am helping my team transition to lean and agile, and before a new person joined last month, no one had any experience whatsoever with this approach. Team members have between 1-10 years of experience with software development and other related fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the most effective ways I've found to bring the team up to speed on this is to do short educational presentations in our weekly meetings. I usually show a short (5-10 mins) video and then facilitate a discussion. We do in-depth workshops on specific topics as the need arises.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some of the topics I've covered:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agile values and principles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User stories (INVEST, splitting)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The resource utilization trap&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;T-shaped individuals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, I don't have a detailed plan as to which concepts I should introduce to the team. Up until now, it hadn't been necessary because the team is pretty much starting from scratch, but I'm starting to reach the limits of this ad hoc approach. I'm also considering doing some knowledge transfer with other (non-technical, e.g. marketing, sales, ops, etc.) teams, so a clear structure would help me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been doing some research to build a kind of &quot;lean/agile curriculum&quot;, and I've found &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.agilealliance.org/agile101/subway-map-to-agile-practices/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Alliance's Subway Map to Agile Practices&lt;/a&gt; quite useful in that regard, but I'm wondering if there are other (possibly more &quot;meta&quot;) concepts that are missing from there. I'm also wondering about the order those should be presented in. Hence my question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q: What should a lean/agile curriculum contain? In what order should lean/agile concepts, practices and tools be introduced to the team? Have you come across such curricula?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NB:&lt;/strong&gt; I'm looking for advice on &quot;small a agile&quot; that applies regardless of the framework (e.g. Scrum) that is used. As well, to be consistent with the approach, each mini-workshop/presentation should deliver value in that team members would be able to apply it to their day-to-day work, and see a change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26063" LastActivityDate="2018-10-10T23:13:19.610" Title="What should a lean/agile curriculum contain?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;lean&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;&lt;education&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25028" CreationDate="2018-10-10T14:40:34.303" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a really broad question and open to a lot of subjectivity, so I can provide what would be at the top of my list from a few years of teaching these topics to teams, but others may have completely different and perfectly valid opinions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, everything on your list looks great. Obviously testing is massive. My personal focus with testing is the XP view of testing, which is really just based out of the lean principle of &quot;Building Quality In&quot; instead of only checking for quality later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, on User Stories, a lot of people over-focus on the mechanics of User Stories and don't focus on the purpose and theory behind them. Mike Cohn has an awesome (though hour-long) video that you can distill down and then people can follow up and watch the whole thing if interested: &lt;a href=&quot;https://vimeo.com/97516290&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://vimeo.com/97516290&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other topics I find valuable are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Empirical Process Control&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Value Streams&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Iterative, Incremental, and Adaptive product development&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps! Good Luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-10-10T14:40:34.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25019" CreationDate="2018-10-10T15:16:12.307" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simplest and most repeatable way to do this is with a macro/vba procedure. Here's some code that John - Project created and shared on msdn some years ago (&lt;a href=&quot;https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/office/en-US/9ca80a49-6e2d-4ac4-9333-6cab03c428ef/vba-macro-help-cost-rate-tables?forum=project2010custprog&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;VBA Macro Help - Cost Rate Tables&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option Compare Text&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sub NOVA_Rates()&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dim r As Resource&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Each r In ActiveProject.Resources&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;'jump around blank lines on Resource Sheet&#xA;&#xA;If Not r Is Nothing Then&#xA;&#xA;    'only do this if resource is labor type&#xA;&#xA;    If r.Type = pjResourceTypeWork Then&#xA;&#xA;        'first clear all pay rate data&#xA;&#xA;        'Note: this is necessary if the macro is run a 2nd time with&#xA;&#xA;        'the same data. Additional code is necessary to add new data&#xA;&#xA;        'to existing pay rate tables and clearing may not be necessary.&#xA;&#xA;        For i = 1 To 5&#xA;&#xA;            'cycle through each of the 5 rate tables&#xA;&#xA;            Set pr = r.CostRateTables(i).PayRates&#xA;&#xA;            pr(1).StandardRate = 0&#xA;&#xA;            pr(1).OvertimeRate = 0&#xA;&#xA;            pr(1).CostPerUse = 0&#xA;&#xA;            'clearing must be done in reverse order&#xA;&#xA;            If pr.Count &amp;gt; 1 Then&#xA;&#xA;                For j = pr.Count To 2 Step -1&#xA;&#xA;                    pr(j).Delete&#xA;&#xA;                Next j&#xA;&#xA;            End If&#xA;&#xA;        Next i&#xA;&#xA;        'set new object for &quot;B&quot; table only&#xA;&#xA;        Set pr = r.CostRateTables(&quot;B&quot;).PayRates&#xA;&#xA;        'add new rate data based on Resource Text1 field&#xA;&#xA;        If InStr(1, r.Text1, &quot;Proj&quot;) &amp;gt; 0 Then&#xA;&#xA;            pr.Add &quot;7/2/2011&quot;, &quot;$1/h&quot;, &quot;$5/h&quot;, &quot;$0&quot;&#xA;&#xA;        ElseIf InStr(1, r.Text1, &quot;elec&quot;) &amp;gt; 0 Then&#xA;&#xA;            pr.Add &quot;7/2/2011&quot;, &quot;$2/h&quot;, &quot;$6/h&quot;, &quot;$0&quot;&#xA;&#xA;        ElseIf InStr(1, r.Text1, &quot;mech&quot;) &amp;gt; 0 Then&#xA;&#xA;            pr.Add &quot;7/2/2011&quot;, &quot;$3/h&quot;, &quot;$7/h&quot;, &quot;$0&quot;&#xA;&#xA;        End If&#xA;&#xA;    End If&#xA;&#xA;End If&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next r  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;End Sub&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2018-10-10T15:16:12.307" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25028" CreationDate="2018-10-10T23:13:19.610" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because you are all new to Agile approaches, I recommend including the following (in addition to what you have already covered):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Intro to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrumguides.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Framework&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Intro to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://leankanban.com/guide/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban Method&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Intro to a third less-known system such as Crystal, OpenAgile, or the like&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lean thinking about types of waste&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Retrospectives purpose and techniques&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teamwork and agility (e.g. summary of &quot;The Wisdom of Teams&quot; by Katzenbach and Smith&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collaboration techniques such as pairing, mobbing, brainstorming, Innovation Games etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management topics such as planning, estimation and budgeting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical practices such as Test-Driven Development, Architectural Spikes, Continuous Integration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Common challenges and obstacles (might require getting help from outside since without experience this might not be obvious)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agility beyond the team including management, operations, product-orientation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many other topics as well if you wanted to go more in-depth, but this would be a good survey introduction.  If you want to go beyond just facts and concepts, you need to introduce things using exercises and simulations.  Most people delivering training on agility will include their own proprietary exercises.  I teach Scrum quite regularly and I use a simulation where a team builds a comic book over three Sprints.  One of my colleagues teaches Kanban using the &quot;Get Kanban&quot; game.  There are folks out there who use fun exercises with Lego pieces.  In all cases, the exercises and simulations help a group bridge the &quot;knowing-doing&quot; gap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also recommend a short reading list and maybe forming a book club that includes the following in no particular order (assuming you are in a software/IT environment):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agile Software Development by Alistair Cockburn&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lean Software Development by Mary and Tom Poppendieck&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Succeeding with Agile by Mike Cohn&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agile Retrospectives by Esther Derby&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Wisdom of Teams by Katzenbach and Smith (not specific to Agile and Lean, but good)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are lots more, but that's a good starting place!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33785" LastActivityDate="2018-10-10T23:13:19.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25024" CreationDate="2018-10-10T23:57:15.660" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Initially, it would be productive and ideal to go as per your current teams delivering capacity rather than your previous team running velocity of ~50 points(Bi-weekly sprints(every 2 weeks)) because the team is smaller now and considering the same workload as it was earlier. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;50 points running velocity for 7 members would come down to 7 or 8 story points per team member and to expect the same dynamics from 4 members in the current team would be definitely overloading your current team with additional work which in general is not easy to be completed unless the current 4 member team will be working overtime(extra hours) and also are at an expert skill level which is on par with the 3 members who are no more now in the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, try to conduct sprint planning meetings and sprint retrospection meetings for every sprint for the current 4 member team so that you can have an understanding of the delivering capacity, feedback about opinions on the tasks to be done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33790" LastActivityDate="2018-10-10T23:57:15.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25024" CreationDate="2018-10-11T10:55:39.973" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you coach upwards and make them (management, portfolio, product, the powers that be) understand how changing the chemistry, even by removing or adding one individual could affect the teams ability to deliver at the same velocity as previously, not to mention basically halving the team. Coach them for the worst case scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of the team, I would have a backlog refinement session whereby they re-fresh their baseline estimates e.g. they re-estimate a past 1 point, 2 point and 3 point story given the smaller team. Once they have done this I would get the team refine around 20-30 SP's of stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then when they go into the planning meeting they have a nice batch of stories which are ready for the next sprint and then I would just ask them what do they think they can deliver. As you say it would be a guestimate. Just tell them what do they feel comfortable committing to. If they say 10 SP's accept that. If they say more accept that. Do what the team feels comfortable with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2018-10-11T10:55:39.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25035" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25045" CreationDate="2018-10-11T11:32:51.733" Score="4" ViewCount="1926" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to understand the role of multiple users in a user story. There is a chance that a particular feature will behave differently depends on the role of users. &#xA;Let me try to clarify the question with an example&#xA;we are planning an implementation of validation messages when creating a trade order. But these messages will be applicable depends on each user roles, say trader, administrator, advisor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a trader, i will get a warning message when adding invalid orders so that the invalid order can be reviewed and edited by trader in trade depository&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As an advisor, i will not be able to add invalid orders with a warning message so that the advisor is not able to commit any invalid orders to trade depository&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is &#xA;Should we create separate user stories for each user roles or can we accommodate this in one story ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33461" LastEditorUserId="33461" LastEditDate="2018-10-15T07:52:37.553" LastActivityDate="2018-10-15T07:52:37.553" Title="How will handle multiple users in a user story" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25035" CreationDate="2018-10-11T12:57:22.170" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer hinges on why those roles need different validation messages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that is because actually different validations are performed, consistent with different objectives that each role has, then it makes most sense to create a separate user story for each role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is to rephrase the same validation error in different terms that are best understood by each role, then there is something to say for having it all in one story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When in doubt, I would start out with multiple stories and then see if the similarities are big enough (and the differences small enough) to justify merging them. The worst that can happen is that after implementing the first story, the developers tell you that doing the others is only five minutes of work (while doing it properly according to the Definition of Done).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastEditorUserId="12235" LastEditDate="2018-10-12T13:27:26.930" LastActivityDate="2018-10-12T13:27:26.930" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25035" CreationDate="2018-10-11T15:08:06.087" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If that's really the only difference, I would write two stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd pick the highest priority role &amp;amp; write the story for that role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I'd write another story that said,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  As a non-ROLE1 user,&#xA;  I want to see an error message in (the situation) that is tuned for my role&#xA;  so that (whatever the reason is).&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2018-10-11T15:08:06.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25038" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-10-11T21:21:47.510" Score="8" ViewCount="5039" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have used Gitlab for 4 years now in our organization, and are growing to the point where we are implementing Agile and trying to follow Epics, Features, User Stories, and Tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are struggling to find a way to implement this in the Gitlab Free Edition, since there is no mechanism to associate issues with other issues (other than having a &quot;mention&quot; or &quot;reference&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could create a label called &quot;Epic&quot; and create Epics as issues, just assigning them that label.  Does anyone then know of a good way to associate issues to that particular Epic?  I can list them out as a bullet point.  Even if I do that, I have no nice way to see them on an issue board unless I create a label for that particular epic as well (e.g., &quot;Epic001&quot;) and label them all with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd love Enterprise Edition, but it's insanely expensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33804" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-10-22T10:39:47.677" LastActivityDate="2019-12-04T16:23:41.190" Title="How to implement Epics on Gitlab without Enterprise Edition?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;epics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25039" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-10-12T01:00:50.663" Score="1" ViewCount="183" Body="&lt;p&gt;What Agile principals can be extended to classical volunteer Open Source Project Management?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Challenges compared to a traditional workspace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Managing burnout / over-commitment of volunteers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Enforcing accountability, without shaming or otherwise making organization members (or outside contributors) feeling isolated or abandoned.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Getting accurate estimates for releases, how to deal with deadlines without a consistent base workforce.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Handling the public / users who are demanding, because being 'whiny' often gets them the attention they need, at the risk of long-term dev burnout.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Keeping interest in your project / community by developers (rather then users)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you would be able to do scoping, and estimation pretty easily, you could track velocity, which could help point out signs to burnout early, as opposed to meeting a future release (keeping the 'when it's done it's done' attitude).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33805" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-10-31T06:48:45.837" LastActivityDate="2018-10-31T06:48:45.837" Title="Applying Agile Methodologies to Open Source Volunteer projects?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;open-source&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25041" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25042" CreationDate="2018-10-12T10:54:59.843" Score="6" ViewCount="772" Body="&lt;p&gt;Over the years, I have heard many times that adding more developers to a team does not make things faster. My opinion is that it's a question of management. If you can allocate one complex screen of a mobile app per developer, and you have 8 such screens, it might be beneficial to have 8 developers (e.g 4 permanents and 4 contractors) on it if a deadline looms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are your thoughts / experiences on that ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33768" LastActivityDate="2018-10-15T13:25:49.037" Title="About the claim that adding more developers to a team does not make delivery faster" Tags="&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;deadline&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25041" CreationDate="2018-10-12T12:32:42.093" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is about task resource elasticity and the law of diminishing returns.  Some tasks of outstanding resource elasticity, in that adding labor input produces additional output, including a reduction in duration.  Others tasks do not.  And this assumes that the environment, technology, tooling, and other work enablers are fixed.  If those things are not fixed and can be moved, then so too the elasticity moves as well as the point at which output begins to diminish.  All of these things on a project requires analysis before you conclude that adding labor input would have adverse consequences.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-10-12T12:32:42.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25041" CreationDate="2018-10-12T13:10:19.240" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always heard (and experienced) it as &quot;Adding more developers to a &lt;strong&gt;late project&lt;/strong&gt; will make it later.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every new developer requires ramp-up time to be familiarized with the project's architecture, domain, etc. This requires time not only of the new developer, but of a mentor as well. So, your initial velocity will be slowed down. Eventually, though, it (might) speed up compared to before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-10-12T13:10:19.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25035" CreationDate="2018-10-12T13:18:48.810" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great question, and an answer really depends on business value context. That being said, it's more often than not a good idea to break a piece of functionality into manageable pieces for a development team to understand and implement for a few reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.) You may find that by breaking the work item down by user, the business value may be different for each user type, which in turn will help understand what pieces of this functionality are more valuable, thus leading to better transparency into which pieces are prioritized first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.) Ultimately, the Development Team is responsible for all estimates. Business stakeholders (Product Owners, in Scrum) may influence the Development Team by helping the team understand and select trade-offs, but the people who will perform the work make the final estimate. By breaking down work items, you give your development team a better chance of an accurate estimate, which will help with planning purposes down the line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33598" LastActivityDate="2018-10-12T13:18:48.810" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25035" CreationDate="2018-10-12T13:48:19.883" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others are pointing out - there are multiple ways to handle something this.  My personal approach is to create a business level user story like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- Begin User Story&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;User Story:&lt;/strong&gt; As a trader or adviser invalid orders are handled&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Acceptance Criteria:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Given that I am a trader when I make an invalid order then I am presented a warning message&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that I am an adviser when want to make an invalid order then I am prevented from doing so&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that I am the Trader System [or whatever name you choose for the 'computer actions'] when an invalid trade is attempted then I log the action&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--- End User Story&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially - if there is truly one one thing that rises to a user story level ('invalid trades' in this case) then I will have multiple acceptance criteria across roles.  The challenge with this approach is that it would potentially make something like story mapping and shuffling user stories a little bit more difficult - since you will likely want to group roles together. So - moving this particular story around as part of a story mapping exercise could be hindered if you are looking to separate the roles in the overall story mapping exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally - I would point out that while the user story that I presented here was a 'business level' user story, the dev team may choose to create individual tasks to accomplish that story. In this case, one approach could be to create one task for the trader role and one for the analyst. And - those tasks could potentially implemented by separate folks in separate sprints. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33378" LastActivityDate="2018-10-12T13:48:19.883" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25041" CreationDate="2018-10-12T14:22:11.360" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like the idea you're concerned about is a rather over-simplified version of the point raised by Fred Brooks in the (rightly) famous essay &lt;em&gt;The Mythical Man-Month&lt;/em&gt;.  What Brooks pointed out is that you cannot just treat developer man-months as an infinitely elastic resource -- so doubling the number of developers does not halve delivery time.&#xA;There are two main reasons for that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some tasks cannot be divided up between developers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adding more people to a team (or more teams to a project) increases communications overheads and complexity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(In addition the point raised by @Sarov about ramp-up time is relevant but I do not believe it is significant except on very short timescales - unless, as noted by @Erik, we are talking about inexperienced developers being added to a team.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that it is the second reason that is the main factor. Communications overhead and the difficulty of keeping everyone clear about what they are meant to be doing, how parts communicate with each other, who is responsible for what, repeating mistakes because lessons have not been learned -- all these things and more mean that teams tend to become less efficient as they get bigger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note however that neither Brooks nor I are saying that adding more developers will always make a delivery later: that is stretching the point too far. What we are saying is that the relationship is not linear. Doubling the number of developers will not halve the development time - it might reduce it by 30%, for example, but you can &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; assume that it will reduce by 50%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19165" LastEditorUserId="19165" LastEditDate="2018-10-13T09:46:49.217" LastActivityDate="2018-10-13T09:46:49.217" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25010" CreationDate="2018-10-12T15:05:13.427" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Right now I guess you know nothing (but perhaps have some hunch that there is a lot of volatility) - so any measurements you make will be an improvement. Unless you have lots of capacity to do a complex data capture / analysis, just do something simple -- and you will learn something, even if it is not 100% accurate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get started quickly and cheaply, I would recommend just counting changes per requirement, even if they do not all match in size. After a reasonable period of time if it turns out that the largest requirements have the most changes (which would not be a surprise) and you are struggling to infer anything from the data then you can think about whether it is worth putting a bit more refinement into it: the next refinement step might be to &quot;T-shirt size&quot; requirements, then you can look at stats for (say) the L and XL requirements and compare that to overall stats or for the M and S requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could then create some sort of &quot;requirement volatility index&quot; where you multiply number of changes by the requirement &quot;size&quot; (1, 2, 5, 10 for S, M, L, XL perhaps) and sum the products -- it won't be 100% spot-on but it will give you some visibility of the issue and it will be cheap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19165" LastActivityDate="2018-10-12T15:05:13.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25039" CreationDate="2018-10-12T15:33:32.480" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Open source projects inherently embody one of the Agile Manifesto's main principles: &lt;strong&gt;The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Making sure you create an environment for motivated individuals that supports their needs and empowers trust to get the job done is easier said than done, but essential for creating valuable software that satisfies customers. This is the highest priority of any Agile undertaking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More often than not, accountability is an artifact of transparency. If team members have the courage and openness to be transparent about what's going well/not-so-well, accountability and teamwork naturally occur. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Burnout can be mitigated by releasing valuable, working software on a regular, sustainable basis. Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More often than not, developers want to work on interesting projects that show progress. Working software is the primary measure of progress, thus should be a focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My source for this feedback is the Agile Manifesto principle page, &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;which can be found here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend using these principles as a benchmark for your purposes. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33598" LastEditorUserId="33598" LastEditDate="2018-10-12T15:39:26.197" LastActivityDate="2018-10-12T15:39:26.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25039" CreationDate="2018-10-12T15:37:11.410" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend looking into the Kanban Method.  This method focuses on the flow of work rather than the more common agile &quot;iterative and incremental&quot; approach.  Kanban starts with just a few basic ideas, all of which would be applicable to open source volunteer projects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make the work visible as tasks on common visual board with at least the following categories: &lt;strong&gt;Options&lt;/strong&gt; (also sometimes called Backlog), &lt;strong&gt;Committed&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;In Progress&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Done&lt;/strong&gt;.  In this case, using an electronic tool such as Trello or LeanKit.  Each piece of work becomes a virtual &quot;card&quot; on a virtual &quot;board&quot;.  All volunteers would need to access this board.  Making the work visible allows volunteers to self-organize around the work to do.  In other words, if I am a volunteer, I can look at the board and choose a task that has not been started, select it and start working on it without needing to coordinate with anyone else.  If I want to work on a task that is already started by someone else, I can find out who that is and contact them to coordinate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Limit Work-In-Progress (WIP) by setting simple policies about how people volunteer for work.  This is where Kanban differs from Scrum in some important ways.  Basically, on the &quot;board&quot; the &lt;strong&gt;Committed&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;In Progress&lt;/strong&gt; categories of work get limits on how many tasks can be in-flight in those categories.  For example, if you observe that the board has 25 items in the In Progress category, you might ask the community to agree to a maximum of 20 items (always lower than the current amount).  If the community agrees, then a policy is set in place that work can only be brought into In Progress if there are 19 or fewer items currently In Progress.  This changes your work to a &lt;a href=&quot;https://kanbanize.com/lean-management/pull/what-is-pull-system/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;pull system&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Establish a regular cadence for community discussion on how to improve the work system.  With a volunteer group, this will often be every several weeks or few months.  This is roughly equivalent to Scrum's Sprint Retrospective meeting.  The participants look at the work and decide if there are any experiments that can be run to help make things more efficient, effective, higher quality, more productive, etc.  Typically, this will include simple ideas such as breaking the &lt;strong&gt;In Progress&lt;/strong&gt; category into different stages such as &lt;strong&gt;Design&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;Develop&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;Validate&lt;/strong&gt;, changing WIP limits, or deciding on how to document tasks more effectively.  It might also include more sophisticated things such as community policies around asking for help, collaboration, choosing tasks, types of tasks based on risk profiles, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many more aspects to the Kanban Method that would help.  I recommend reading the ebook &lt;a href=&quot;https://leankanban.com/guide/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Essential Kanban Condensed&lt;/a&gt; and consider taking a Kanban Method training class from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://leankanban.com/project/alternative-path/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lean Kanban University&lt;/a&gt; (note, some of my colleagues teach these courses in the Toronto area).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest challenge with a volunteer open source initiative and other agile methods such as Scrum is that the methods tend to enforce some rules that would be difficult or in appropriate for such a community.  As a simple example, Scrum requires daily meetings with the whole team to do status reports.  With a volunteer community with many people spread around the world, this is extremely difficult to do properly - and not worth it!  I'm a Certified Scrum Trainer and I would never recommend using Scrum for a volunteer open source project.  If you are interested in reading about Scrum, I recommend the &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumguides.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; as it is the official definition maintained by the creators of Scrum, Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other advantage to applying Kanban in your situation is that it is possible to introduce it gradually and in a very gentle manner.  Most other agile methods tend to require disruptive changes to the way that a group works together and so can incite resistance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33785" LastActivityDate="2018-10-12T15:37:11.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25050" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25052" CreationDate="2018-10-12T17:08:01.307" Score="6" ViewCount="721" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master, I have been tasked with helping the team understand its capacity for an upcoming sprint. This capacity, along with the product backlog, the latest increment, and past team performance are all artifacts I need before we dive into Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of today, I use the following to calculate team capacity:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Known outages (vacation, training, company holidays, conferences, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a conservative 10% of full sprint length time for refinement&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum events (Planning time itself, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, and Sprint Retro)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question: &lt;strong&gt;what am I missing?&lt;/strong&gt; What else should I be taking into account to help my team understand its capacity for forecasting future work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33598" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-10-22T10:39:57.947" Title="Measuring team capacity for upcoming sprint on a Scrum Team" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team-capacity&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14723" CreationDate="2018-10-12T17:25:28.240" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To extend Daniel's point, a timebox is not a prescription for how long an event should last. Rather a timebox is simply a max amount of time an event can take before the Scrum Master coaches the team to keep the event within its timebox. If the goal of the event is met before the timebox, all the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33598" LastActivityDate="2018-10-12T17:25:28.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25050" CreationDate="2018-10-12T17:29:01.743" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One other thing you could look at is past sprint variability. If, in the last 5 sprints (assuming nothing like a holiday is really skewing your numbers) you have an average of 35 points and your high and low are 39 and 33, you're probably fine with the things you mentioned. On the other hand, if you have that same average and your high and low are 45 and 20, anything over 20 for next sprint carries more and more significant risk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, remember that these estimate are good-enough numbers. They are intentionally somewhat inaccurate and imprecise. The reason we want to look at our past capacity is not to fill it, but to pick a target product increment (sprint goal) that seems to reasonably fit in that capacity. If you find the team or organization putting too much effort into &quot;correct&quot; estimates or capacity measures, this has probably gotten flipped around and you lose much of the value of the Scrum framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-10-12T17:29:01.743" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25038" CreationDate="2018-10-12T18:02:03.223" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, Epics were introduced in GitLab Ultimate 10.2 and are not a part of the free tier. That said, our team has used the label feature in free rather effectively, much as you've described above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In congruency with effective labeling, depending on how your work is structured, you can create a list that'll dynamically keep tabs of your labels directly on your board for easy tracking. No need for bullet points or manual tracking. Cards with these labels will dynamically show up on that list on your board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vG53T.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vG53T.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33598" LastActivityDate="2018-10-12T18:02:03.223" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25050" CreationDate="2018-10-12T18:27:41.933" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two obvious missing items from your list of considerations: the definition of &quot;done&quot; and the team's own opinion itself of its capacity.  There is a simple exercise you can use to help the team with this that I have called &quot;commitment based Sprint planning&quot;.  It goes as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, present the team with the other information you mentioned in your question so that everyone is aware of that data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, visually establish/update the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agileadvice.com/2008/04/09/scrumxplean/three-ways-of-expanding-the-scrum-definition-of-done/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;definition of &quot;done&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.  This may take quite a long time if the team has not previously made this explicit.  Examples of things in the definition of &quot;done&quot; include technical quality, bureaucratic activities, release activities, user and business quality, security, documentation, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, repeat the following steps until any member of the team shows uncertainty either by voice or by facial expression:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Present the team with the &lt;strong&gt;next&lt;/strong&gt; Product Backlog Item (PBI).  If this is the first round through these steps then this is the PBI that is at the top of the backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give the team a short time (usually 5 minutes max) to discuss the meaning and implementation of the PBI and ask the Product Owner clarifying questions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask the team: can you commit to completing this item (and any already agreed) in the current Sprint?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If every member agrees, then the item is added to the list of items in the team's capacity for the Sprint.  If any member disagrees or shows significant uncertainty, then stop.  NOTE: team members should not be pressured to agree - the decision to accept a PBI must be unanimous!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, look at the PBIs that are put into the agreed pile and do a sanity check with the team: given the definition of &quot;done&quot;, can the team unanimously agree that all of these items can be completed by the end of the Sprint?  If the answer is still &quot;yes&quot; then this is the capacity of the team.  If there is uncertainty, then the team works to split some of the larger PBIs into smaller ones and removes small amounts of work until there is unanimous agreement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTE: At no point in the discussion should individual team members be volunteering for specific pieces of work, nor should estimating be done based on individual availability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The word &quot;capacity&quot; is often thought of as person-hours.  This is a false understanding of capacity when one is working in a complex problem environment.  Instead, capacity can be thought of as the team's ability to apply its expertise to specific problems.  The framework I have described above does not give you a &quot;person-hours&quot; measurement.  Instead, it gives you a direct measure of the team's ability to apply its expertise to a specific set of problems (the PBIs) in a specific amount of time (the Sprint).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33785" LastActivityDate="2018-10-12T18:27:41.933" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25010" CreationDate="2018-10-13T02:25:36.273" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would start with a visual analysis. Bin the requirements by size (tshirt or similar), then plot (x=size, y=Nchanges) for each requirement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The resulting plot will convey any interesting or surprising trends, and you can figure out how to reduce it to scalars if you need to do a more quantitative analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2018-10-13T02:25:36.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24982" CreationDate="2018-10-13T09:42:21.727" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's one angle on it. The Executive (&amp;amp; Project Board) has responsibility to the rest of the business for the project deliverables, and to ensure that they deliver value. The Project Manager has responsibility for execution of the project, as it is approved by the Project Board. The Project Manager may identify possible changes to scope, or question whether the Business Case still justifies pursuing the project: but he cannot make a decision to significantly alter the project scope, or to stop the project -- the Executive (&amp;amp; Project Board) need to be the ones to make those calls. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Combining the two roles removes a check and introduces the possibility of the Project Manager making decisions which suit him/herself and the project team but do not deliver value to the Organisation / Customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19165" LastActivityDate="2018-10-13T09:42:21.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25058" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25059" CreationDate="2018-10-13T20:26:55.343" Score="7" ViewCount="152" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll try to be concise so as to not make this into a blog post. If there are specific questions, let me know and I'll do my best to answer them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, I'm interested in what methodologies people have come up with, and what benefits and short-falls they experienced, for managing the transition of a project from one framework (or one programming language, or one technology stack) to another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Setup&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose you had a simple web application written in a once-popular back-end framework that ran on a single Apache/Nginx/whatever server and delivered server-side rendered pages. Each time a user clicks a link to perform an action, the request is sent to the server, the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; server handles the request, connects to the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; database, makes the changes, then delivers a new page with the results of their action visible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now suppose 10 years down the line your app has grown into a widely popular behemoth and you're running into scaling concerns, you're having performance issues, you can't create features very quickly because all of the code is tightly coupled, some big names have started depending on your service being &quot;Always Available&quot; ™, or for some other reason you now need to change the engine underlying your app.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After weeks of research you may have made one small decisions like &quot;Let's use React and offload a lot of the processing and display logic to the client's CPU&quot;, or you may have made multiple decisions involving splitting out your app into several micro-services and re-inventing the database using a map-reduce algorithm and a splash of machine learning. Whatever the final decision was, you need to retain feature parity with your old app and get it moved over to the new framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question isn't about the technical details of this decision (e.g. &quot;How do you do that&quot;) -- this is about the managerial details of this decision. How do you &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;manage&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; such a change?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you treat it like you're building a new app from scratch and every feature in the old app is just a user story in the new one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or do you treat it as a new feature for the existing app?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should you branch off of the old code and begin the rework on a new branch of the old repository?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or should you start a new repository for the new framework, since merge conflicts are not only expected but almost a roadblock as your underlying models and assumptions could be entirely different?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What becomes of the old app during the transitional period? Should you feature-freeze it to make parity easier? Or should you continue to develop in parallel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen a &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; of methodologies for managing projects and I've picked and chosen my favorite tools from everything I've seen. But I've never seen someone manage to change frameworks well. Even something supposedly simple like moving from ReactJS to Vue (they serve the same purpose, they're both written in JavaScript, and many of the underlying assumptions and mental models are identical) can lead to months of development and wasted time before the change is scrapped because it just wasn't worth the effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Tags&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I literally had no idea what tags to choose. Please help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33818" LastEditorUserId="11970" LastEditDate="2018-12-07T14:36:58.830" LastActivityDate="2018-12-08T05:11:57.397" Title="How to manage framework changes?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;frameworks&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25058" CreationDate="2018-10-14T03:04:14.047" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've done this a couple times, tho it wasn't always a webapp &amp;amp; wasn't for scaling reasons. Here's what we did:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Treat it like a new app. In our case, we renamed the app when we did that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put it in its own repo.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Freeze development on the old one except for critical bugfixes, so all resources can be devoted to the migration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pare the feature set if possible, at least for the first release. EG if you have features that are rarely if ever used, don't commit to them. Obviously do this in consultation with stakeholders, explaining that you're trying to manage scope to keep the schedule reasonable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define acceptance criteria very clearly. Help your stakeholders understand why the behavior, appearance, or results may not be identical, because of under-the-hood stuff they don't normally think about and/or because the new framework has different things built in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anticipate that you will find bugs in the existing code, that should be corrected in the new code. However, bear in mind that you may need to patch the new code to reproduce the old code's bad behavior for ease of acceptance testing, with the understanding that after acceptance, you'll remove those patches and get the new behavior approved. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resist the temptation to make changes or improvements in behavior during the migration. File tickets for them; maybe leave architectural hooks for them, or comments in the code; but don't try to &quot;migrate to new framework&quot; and &quot;change existing behavior&quot; at the same time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plan to write a commissioning report at the end, that explains how you vetted the new code against the old code and addresses any changes that were made, including an appendix with any relevant test reports. Write it as you go, it'll save you grief later.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allow yourself a generous amount of slack in your schedule, because you WILL likely run into unanticipated technical difficulties. It's always better to underpromise and overdeliver.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure your stakeholders are aware of that schedule, &amp;amp; buy into it up front. This manages expectations &amp;amp; gives you something to point to when they get impatient that it's taking so long.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of technical points: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We already had a large set of regression tests &amp;amp; the concern was mostly about numerical results. We put all our patches-to-reproduce-bugs into the same module with an obvious name, and kept the correct code present in comments, so that it would be easy to remove the patches when done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a tension between doing the easy things first so you can prove the concept and get a subset up and running and under review as soon as possible, and doing the most complicated things first so that you don't end up having to re-architect halfway through. The usual agile assumption to do the simplest thing that works &amp;amp; refactor as necessary as you go along is a bit of a mismatch to this situation, in my opinion, because in this case you DO know &quot;you're gonna need it&quot;. I might suggest having part of the team investing in analysis of the most complicated bits while the initial infrastructure, technology selection/learning curve, etc is going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mention this because this was the reason one of my migration projects ran significantly over the planned schedule: we did the easy things first, and then had to shoehorn complexity in under time pressure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps! I'll be interested in other answers as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastEditorUserId="11661" LastEditDate="2018-12-08T05:11:57.397" LastActivityDate="2018-12-08T05:11:57.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24061" CreationDate="2018-10-14T04:36:33.263" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Inelegant solution: declare one repo (perhaps a new one) to be the one where tickets will be managed. Connect to them from commits/PRs in the other repos via explicit links rather than relying on the magic syntax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2018-10-14T04:36:33.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25061" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-10-14T11:13:15.150" Score="2" ViewCount="212" Body="&lt;p&gt;I manage a few development teams at the moment. Each team develops different projects for different clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now I'm trying to let team leads work with clients directly without me, but the problem is that none of them has good experience designing UI. I do. We have a designer, who I'm trying to teach how to create UI the way I do. The problem is that she is neither into business nor into development, so her designs are quite typical: as beautiful as useless and/or difficult to implement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what do I do with designs? It consumes a significant portion of my time each week...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's summarize:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The designer creates interfaces that are difficult to develop. Okay, I've handled to her my own sketch design system and introduced to main UI frameworks that we use. She is getting better at this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The designer isn't into business. She doesn't know when it makes sense to spend money on more complex things and when we should just make it simple and improve when needed. Okay, I may be able to put this responsibility on the Product Owner.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The designer doesn't know all the intricacies of a product, PO's vision and user feedback. What do I do about it? If I'll ask her to consume all this information, then she'll be spending more time learning the product, than actually designing it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33819" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2018-10-14T18:26:08.280" LastActivityDate="2018-10-14T18:26:08.280" Title="What should a UI designer know and how to deliver this knowledge to him?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;design&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25061" CreationDate="2018-10-14T15:35:40.917" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To be blunt about the answer, it sounds like the designer has a lot of crutches. If you want them to step own design (I'll assume you do or you wouldn't have hired a designer), you need to take those away. Now, before I get into the ones I see in your description, I should add that if you take them all away at once, you may just overwhelm them - you have to use your judgement on how quickly they can be self-sufficient or, better yet, discuss it with them and let them tell you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, it is not ok for a designer to not understand how those designs are implemented in an application. Painters have to understand the intricacies of paint and canvas, the graphic designer has to understand how to design for applications. You mention PO, so I'm guessing your teams are practicing Scrum. If so, the designer is contributing to the product and is therefor a development team member. They should be in there each day making the product happen. There are many ways for people to share knowledge, but I've never seen one as good as pairing or group programming. This will not only let the designer feel when the designs are hard to implement, but will also help them learn the medium they are working in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, the team is solving a need for the business. No member of the Scrum team should be apathetic as to the needs of the business. They are only making an application to solve those needs. I don't know to what degree your team (including the designer) directly interact with the users and business, but I know when I was on a development team, having to own that solution when interacting with customers really changed my perspective and made me consider the business much more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the designer, there's an extra thing that can really drive this home - rapid prototyping. In rapid prototyping (which can be as easy as building paper mock-ups), the team quickly puts designs in front of real users to start interacting with. This can let them get honest feedback before they get too attached to their chosen implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thirdly, you may need to look at your own actions and try to see if you are accidentally introducing a crutch. When we make decisions or own a piece of the work for the team, they have a safety net. If they don't do it, they know you will. For this, I often point people to David Marquet's &lt;a href=&quot;https://nzdunic.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/the-ladder-of-leadership-e28093-capt-marquet.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ladder of Leadership&lt;/a&gt;. Working your way up this is a great way to shift ownership over to them and get those hours of your week back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-10-14T15:35:40.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25058" CreationDate="2018-10-14T15:51:33.353" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's a &quot;right&quot; answer to this. Vicki's answer is perfectly valid. I'm going to give another answer that I think is also right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start with making a list of the biggest problems your application has now. Maybe that is database redundancy, load time, architectural fragility, test coverage, whatever. Now sort that list into an improvement backlog. Now start at the top and work your way down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Easy, right? Well, there are a few things to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) is your application's code loosely coupled or, better yet, decoupled? How many pieces can you separate out? If you have a lot of tightly-coupled components, you're probably stuck in a full-replace approach like Vicki suggests or you have to put in some effort in improving the architecture and maintainability of your application before you can do anything else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Small partial fixes or big fixes? Let's take your React example. Let's assume for a moment that your existing UI communicates with web services for business logic. You could just replace the whole UI side and let react communicate with the web services. That may also mean some adjusting of the web services for REST if you used SOAP or the Microsoft web service protocol before. This is a big fix for the problem of resources. On the other hand, a small fix might be as simple as adding hardware or a load-balancing solution. Doing that may not permanently fix the problem, but may drive the problem much lower on the backlog. For the cost of a server or three you just bought yourself a year of in your application and you can focus on other problems that are harder to solve than buying some extra CPUs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Focus on solving problems, not implementing designs. For each of those items, the goal is to improve load speed X amount or reduce errors to Y threshold. If you are just implementing a predefined solution bit-by-bit, you may be better off taking a full replacement approach, because you're basically doing that anyway. This approach only pays off if you're getting the benefits of solving each problem as you go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said, there isn't necessarily a &quot;right&quot; answer, in which of these approaches to pic or how you'd go through this approach. In this approach, you iteratively make the best choices at the time and get benefits as you go. In the other approach, you get to start from a clean slate with no constraints, but you only find out at the end if your new approach solves the problem. You have to look at your situation and decide which is right. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-12-07T14:11:52.183" LastActivityDate="2018-12-07T14:11:52.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25061" CreationDate="2018-10-14T17:54:51.317" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have a designer, who I'm trying to teach how to create UI the way I do. The problem is that she isn't into business neither in development, so her designs are quite typical: as beautiful as useless and/or difficult to implement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem here is actually quite simple: you are &lt;em&gt;creating&lt;/em&gt; a single point of failure, and loading up a single person (your designer) with cross-domain responsibilities that properly belong to a &lt;em&gt;team&lt;/em&gt; of people. This is exactly why agile frameworks like Scrum involve the &lt;em&gt;entire&lt;/em&gt; team in planning and estimating work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What to Do Next&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of expecting your designer to be an expert in UI design, engineering, and business, a more pragmatic approach is to ensure that &lt;strong&gt;designs are created collaboratively&lt;/strong&gt;. Planning a new interface element should include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A Product Owner and/or business analyst to speak on behalf of the business functionality the design should address.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A designer who can offer suggestions about ways to visually represent that functionality, or the various workflows around it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The engineering team, who can ask clarifying questions and ensure that ideas that are impractical or difficult to implement are redesigned or refined until they fit within the team's capabilities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, design should be a ping-pong exercise between the visual/workflow people and the engineers who are expected to do the actual implementation. Furthermore, the Product Owner must participate so that he or she can make sensible decisions about what features are most important to focus on, and which work items make the most economic sense to allocate resources towards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter how cross-functional your team members are—and it certainly sounds like they are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; fully cross-functional—the entire team must work together to contribute their individual expertise towards building the product collaboratively. Treating design, engineering, and resource management as independent steps or activities is a recipe for failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Rules of Engagement&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to collaborate, the entire team must contribute their collective knowledge and experience to each step in the development lifecycle. Most agile frameworks lay out some variation of the following rules of engagement to help with this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The entire team takes part in the estimation or planning process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work is never generated somewhere upstream of the whole-team process, and then &quot;tossed over the wall&quot; to become someone else's problem to deliver.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only the engineering team can estimate how much effort a proposed feature will require to product.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only the Product Owner can prioritize the Product Backlog, and thereby control the amount of available project resources to allocate to a given feature.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, stop treating UI design as an independent, upstream process. Treat UI design as a whole-team effort where there is ongoing collaboration rather than hand-offs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally, if you're the Product Owner, understand that while you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; delegate role-related tasks, the responsibility and accountability of the Product Owner role still remains with you. Scrum is particularly adamant about the fact that the Product Owner is a unitary role, and while that role &lt;em&gt;collaborates&lt;/em&gt; with the team it cannot &lt;em&gt;distribute&lt;/em&gt; the Product Owner role across multiple people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Inspect and Adapt&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you aren't following Scrum or some other agile framework, these rules of engagement address the pain points you're experiencing. If you choose not to follow these widely-accepted best practices, at least take the time to carefully inspect your current process, make changes to continuously improve that process, and be sure to measure your expected outcomes so that you can continue the inspect-and-adapt cycle until you achieve the results you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An organizational culture of teamwork, and a process for continuous improvement, it is essential for solving most project-related problems. Put aside the inclination to &quot;hold individuals accountable&quot; and focus on systems-thinking to achieve the best results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-10-14T17:54:51.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25041" CreationDate="2018-10-15T13:25:49.037" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a manager, but I've had a lot of experience both transitioning to new software teams myself, and watching others transition to teams that I've been a part of. There are a lot of factors that go into whether or not adding developers will speed up a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There will &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; be some ramp-up time for a new developer. It's important to minimize this time. If you don't actively work to minimize ramp-up time, I conjecture this is where we run into the case where adding a new developer will (permanently) slow down the project.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Minimizing Ramp-Up Time for a Software Project&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of these items are management related, some of them are not. Here's the list in order of importance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;1) &lt;strong&gt;Have an automated test suite that you can run with a single command, and use continuous integration (CI).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is by far the most important item on this list, and there are so many pros to doing it that I haven't even written about all of them here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;From a developers perspective, joining a project that already has a test suite and continuous integration rolling is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; easy.&lt;/strong&gt; The reason is, I can make a code change with impunity (if a dev isn't make code changes, then they aren't very useful). If I make a &lt;em&gt;bad change&lt;/em&gt;, then the test suite will break when I run it. When a test suite breaks in a dev's local environment, that's actually a good thing. We just caught a bug early, fast, and no one was involved with the bug hunting &lt;em&gt;except&lt;/em&gt; the new developer who tried to commit a breaking change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at any Github project that has 1000+ contributors. Almost all of them have run-able test suites (I actually can't find one that doesn't and has 1000+ contributors), and are typically using some form of CI. If your corporate software has a test suite and is using CI, you can add developers and have them all working harmoniously and have them be productive. CI is the only sane way I know of where you can have 100s of developers contributing to the same baseline. If you don't have CI, you simply can't effectively scale past 2-5 developers (well, you can, but then each developer will just cost you more time than they save you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you ever seen 20 million lines of code and you're &lt;em&gt;not even sure how to run it or where the main entry point is&lt;/em&gt;? Then when you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; finally figure out how to compile it, and make an executable, (which might have taken you &lt;em&gt;weeks&lt;/em&gt;) it keeps &lt;em&gt;seg faulting&lt;/em&gt; on very reasonable input? Been there, done that, and it's a huge waste of time. A test suite also avoids this particular problem. A simple test suite (even with only a handful of tests) can go a &lt;em&gt;long&lt;/em&gt; way on a legacy project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some teams like to keep wiki's that state how to run their code and list some simple test cases. &lt;strong&gt;DO NOT DO THIS.&lt;/strong&gt; Wiki's &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; rot, and sometimes lie. A running, live test suite &lt;em&gt;will not rot&lt;/em&gt; if you run it often and fix failing tests. If you use CI, the test suite &lt;em&gt;can't&lt;/em&gt; rot. If it &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; rotting, then the tests would be failing, and builds would get kicked back from your CI server.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, lack of docstrings or documentation? &lt;em&gt;Who cares.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Documentation lies all the time: code never lies though.&lt;/strong&gt; A test suite is much more valuable than ANY documentation you're ever going to find, hands down. A test suite is &lt;em&gt;living, runnable, documentation&lt;/em&gt;. I'm not saying don't write comprehensive docstrings/documentation, but given the choice between a test suite and documentation, I'll take the test suite every time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The catch here is that you have to have relatively skilled programmers, and they have to be willing to write tests when they submit a change.&lt;/strong&gt; Writing high quality tests is not something that you can teach someone how to do overnight. It takes practice, patience, effort, trial/error, and time. Sometimes this means a culture change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) (Ping-pong) Paired Programming&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ideally, you have a test suite and CI, since it's the best way to help devs spin up on your project. If you don't, &lt;em&gt;start building one&lt;/em&gt;. I recommend reading Working Effectively With Legacy Code by Michael Feathers.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have a test suite, like it or not, &lt;em&gt;you have legacy code, even if it was written yesterday&lt;/em&gt;. That is Michael Feathers' definition of legacy code, and it's the best definition you'll find on the subject. Read his book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Given you already have CI/test suite:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;New dev pairs with senior/experience dev. New dev writes a unit test for a task on your board (yes, write the test &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt;). Senior dev writes code to implement said test. Now senior dev writes a unit test for the task. New dev implements production code to satisfy said test. Rinse and repeat until the task is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This allows both a new dev to get some guidance with the baseline, how to build/run the test suite, how to write solid tests, and also gets to know the senior dev on a more personal level and fosters that communication and boding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Senior dev also gets a (small) glimpse into potential strengths/weakenesses of their new dev and can plan accordingly. For instance, if new dev Johnny is a very strong with filesystems and networking/socket coding, but weaker with linear algebra, maybe don't have Johnny implement the code that calculates the pairwise cosign similarity over a set of vectors (at least not without a partner). And, maybe let Johnny teach the team a thing or two about filesystems and networking by assigning him tasks where he can shine in those areas (i.e. pair him with people who are weak in networking/filesystems). Easiest organic knowledge transfer you'll come across. Ping pong paired programming can also help with ramping up on esoteric domain knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Given you &lt;em&gt;are now building&lt;/em&gt; your CI/test suite:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See the above. The best way to &lt;em&gt;start&lt;/em&gt; a test suite also happens to be using this strategy. It might be best if two senior devs start a test suite this way, however, instead of the new dev and a senior dev. It provides sanity checks between two parties where both parties are probably new to automated testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3) Maintain a wiki with &quot;static&quot; documentation, or environment documentation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wiki's are most useful when storing information that is relatively static (i.e. not code) and unlikely to change. Examples include (but are not limited to):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to use relevant software development tools for your particular team (BitBucket, Gitlab, TravisCI, Jenkins, Bamboo, git/svn/mercurial/version-control, etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to log in to the test/prod environment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What the development workflow looks like (one-flow, gitflow, etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to create accounts a dev might need&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4) Getting the environment in order &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the new dev joins the project&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This one is simple and often overlooked. If you're hiring a new developer or developer(s), then please have the items ready that they'd need to he productive. When they show up, the first day, they should be able to log in, clone the baseline, and at least start looking at what tasks they'll be doing soon. If you don't have a laptop or machine ready for them, then they can't do that. If you didn't provision them an account or the right SQL grants, then they can't do that. Just put in some time for this simple prep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also just &lt;em&gt;feels&lt;/em&gt; bad when your manager/team didn't take the time to get you set up. When you show up for your first day of work and you don't have your laptop and can't login, that &lt;em&gt;really sucks&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HTH!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33821" LastActivityDate="2018-10-15T13:25:49.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24783" CreationDate="2018-10-15T13:41:05.693" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it's during your sprint, you &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; want to change it if new information comes up. Ideally you bump it and replan, though, if possible, and pull in a story you're more comfortable with the estimate on. If it's not possible: then yes, do it live. Agile is about what works for your team and your customer. If you want to re-estimate in the middle of the sprint and use the new estimate: then go for it. Typically customers are concerned with the work actually getting done, not the estimate, though. If it takes longer than you anticipated: well that's life, but changing the estimate to reflect that doesn't really do much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;probably&lt;/em&gt; wouldn't want to change it after the story has been completed. It's kind of like saying &quot;Well, I guess this task will take 100 hours&quot;. Then, if it turns out the task takes &lt;em&gt;200&lt;/em&gt; hours, you don't go back and say &quot;Oh look, we guessed the task took 200 hours...and it took 200 hours! We're perfect!&quot;. No, you guessed it would take &lt;em&gt;100&lt;/em&gt; hours, and in fact it took double that amount of time. Learn from that mistake, don't pretend it never happened. Your estimates can never get better if you always fudge them to be &quot;perfect&quot; estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33821" LastActivityDate="2018-10-15T13:41:05.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25068" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-10-15T15:05:34.213" Score="2" ViewCount="592" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_fallacy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;planning fallacy&lt;/a&gt; appears especially frequently when estimating tasks in software development. However agile estimation methods like &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_poker&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;planning poker&lt;/a&gt; etc. don't seem to be designed to avoid this problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what do you do to avoid the planning fallacy when estimating tasks or tickets in IT projects? Are there any product management methodologies or best practices which are designed to avoid this common fallacy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8693" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-10-21T19:40:24.237" LastActivityDate="2018-10-21T19:40:24.237" Title="How to avoid the planning fallacy?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25068" CreationDate="2018-10-15T15:59:06.903" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Planning Poker is designed to use (or at least can be used so that it involves) a form of Reference Class Forecasting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When estimating with planning poker, you can pick a sort of 'baseline' ticket that represents about 1 point of work, and then estimate all other tickets as being &quot;about twice as hard&quot; for 2 story points, or &quot;probably 10 times as hard&quot; for  13 story points, or &quot;a lot easier&quot; for 1/2 story point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By estimating from a baseline ticket and only ever planning based on comparison to that one, all estimates become relative. This should eliminate a fairly large amount of bias; you aren't thinking in &lt;em&gt;time&lt;/em&gt; but &lt;em&gt;comparative size&lt;/em&gt;, which is something humans are much better at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, to decide how far you can get, you look at the team's track record for &quot;story points per sprint&quot; and fill up to something comparable. If the team gets better, they keep estimating the same way, but the &quot;story points per sprint&quot; goes up, so the amount of work they take on grows as well, without ever having to re-calibrate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This method works as long as you keep reminding people that story points are &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; measures of time, but of complexity to a reference point, and that they're not allowed to make the conversion between the two at any time. It stops working the moment you decide that a story point is an hour, or a day, or any other measure of time, as you'll immediately fall back into all the estimation traps that you (and the article) mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31393" LastActivityDate="2018-10-15T15:59:06.903" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25068" CreationDate="2018-10-15T16:18:06.210" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You cannot &quot;avoid&quot; bias.  It's always there.  You can only minimize it by estimating a task using multiple different methods and focusing on probabilistic estimates versus deterministic estimates.  And, even then, you will only know how well you worked through the biases when you are able to compare your actuals with your planned values and you have a reasonably large number of comparison observations.  This assumes you have a highly reliable method in tracking and controlling your actual values, and that is a huge assumption that is likely not very true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As is true with all human biases, the more you think you have it under control, the more biased you are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-10-15T16:18:06.210" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25071" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25075" CreationDate="2018-10-15T16:39:58.217" Score="2" ViewCount="244" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently at our company, the management decided to implement SAFe. Things have changed quite a bit since then for better or worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the major changes we have noticed as a developer is the burden of doing requirements gathering. While we are not against asking questions, clarifying items in the acceptance criteria, but are expected to gather all requirements for a feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a feature is broken into several user stories and each user story is picked up by developers, the requirements at that point is very fuzzy and creates a lot of confusion among developers. One developer comes up with one solution, another with a different solution and so on. For about half the sprint, we get dogged on trying to figure out how the process really works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have Scrum Masters (previously known as Business Analysts). With the new title change, scrum masters say they do not assist with requirements gathering anymore. Previously, Business Analysts used to identify how the process worked, create flowcharts where necessary and developers used to assist them on technical side to make sure things would work out fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are we doing wrong here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33825" LastEditorUserId="33825" LastEditDate="2018-10-15T17:35:57.943" LastActivityDate="2018-10-16T03:06:36.213" Title="SAFe, are developers required to gather their own requirements?" Tags="&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;safe&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25071" CreationDate="2018-10-15T17:07:54.307" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The functional requirement needs to be provided by the Product Owner or Product Manager. The developers are only responsible for designing the functionality technically in collaboration with the PO/PM on the functional and usability perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26816" LastActivityDate="2018-10-15T17:07:54.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25071" CreationDate="2018-10-15T17:08:56.000" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to assume that you don't have any Product Owners (POs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going from Business Analyst (BA) to Scrum Master (SM) is a bit of a weird change. The job of BA is much more similar to the job of PO than it is to the job of SM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is some debate out there as to whether or not it's a good idea to have a dedicated SM or a developer/SM. However, to me, it makes much more sense to pick some developers, teach them Scrum, and make them SMs than to pick some developers and try to make them POs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the former-BAs want to remain as SMs, then you'll need to hire some POs (or train some devs to switch to being POs then hire new devs). If the business just doesn't want developers being SMs, then they need to hire some dedicated POs (or change the SMs to be POs and hire dedicated SMs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-10-15T17:15:57.180" LastActivityDate="2018-10-15T17:15:57.180" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25071" CreationDate="2018-10-15T20:12:02.630" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are we doing wrong here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, in SAFe, your development teams are running some combination of Scrum, XP, and Kanban. There's no real requirements as to the specific methodology, though. However, the idea of iterations and increments feed into the overall SAFe approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Requirements tend to flow down - Strategic Themes come from the strategy of the Enterprise; Solution Management is working at the Large Program level on Capabilities and Enablers; Product Management is working on Increment Objectives, Features, and Enablers; Product Owners are working on Stories and Enablers. Of course, these people aren't working on requirements in isolation, but with some technical support. Solution Architects support Solution Management, System Architects support Product Management, and the Dev Team supports Product Owners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not everything needs to explicitly flow down from the top. Some things may be technical work that becomes apparent at one level, but is too in the weeds for the level above it. But this decomposed and enabling work can be detected as the work to be done is fleshed out at every level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, it sounds like the Product Managers and Product Owners are not developing strong &lt;a href=&quot;https://v46.scaledagileframework.com/pi-objectives/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Program Increments&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://v46.scaledagileframework.com/enablers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Enablers&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://v46.scaledagileframework.com/features-and-capabilities&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Features&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://v46.scaledagileframework.com/story/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stories&lt;/a&gt;. There should be refinement activities at each level that are addressing these vague and unclear requirements and to ensure that there's enough information for everyone to be on the same page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that Business Analysts became Scrum Masters is also slightly concerning. In my experience, BAs (which may have a number of other names in different organizations) typically support a product management organization, and not a development organization. On a team, the Scrum Master role is, in some ways, directly opposed to the Product Owner - the Product Owner seeks to optimize the value delivered by the Development Team while the Scrum Master helps to team to optimize their own performance. Sometimes, optimizing the team means slowing down the delivery of a product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2018-10-15T20:12:02.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25071" CreationDate="2018-10-15T21:20:55.743" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your company has not implemented SAFe; they have implemented Buzzword Management™. In this case, the interplay between roles has been applied incorrectly. Core responsibility for requirements management is a product ownership function, but the development team has a collaborative role to play, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scaledagileframework.com/scrum-master/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Master's role&lt;/a&gt; is to be the process referee for the framework, and to make sure that everyone else on the Agile Team is able to effectively implement &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; roles. This isn't currently being done, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Product Ownership Roles in SAFe&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While SAFe development teams are primarily involved in decomposing Features into User Stories or other types of actionable backlog items, the core responsibility for requirements gathering is split between the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scaledagileframework.com/product-and-solution-management/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Product Management and Solution Management functions&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Product Management has content authority for the Program Backlog. They are &#xA;  responsible for identifying Customer needs, prioritizing Features, guiding the work through the Program Kanban and developing the program Vision and Roadmap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Solution Management has content authority for the Solution Backlog.&#xA;  They work with customers to understand their needs, prioritize&#xA;  Capabilities, create the Solution vision and roadmap, define&#xA;  requirements, and guide work through the Solution Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scaledagileframework.com/safe-requirements-model/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SAFe Requirements Model&lt;/a&gt;, that says that &quot;Agile Teams primarily employ user stories, story acceptance tests, and NFRs [Non-Functional Requirements]&quot; which puts &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; of the responsibility for product ownership and requirements management into the hands of Product Management and Solutions Management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, consider the varying &lt;em&gt;levels&lt;/em&gt; of product management roles within SAFe:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;SAFe offers a chain of content authority that spans three levels:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Team&lt;/strong&gt; – Product Owners make fast, local content decisions on behalf of the Agile Team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Program&lt;/strong&gt; – Product Management is accountable for content decisions for the Agile Release Trains (ARTs)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Large Solution&lt;/strong&gt; – Solution Management has content authority for Solution Trains&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means each Agile Team's Product Owner is responsible for managing that team's portion of the overall Product Backlog. This includes gathering requirements from stakeholders/customers, and prioritizing backlog items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;And Yet SAFe is a Team Sport&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With all of the above said, that doesn't mean the Agile Team developers aren't involved in understanding or gathering requirements. User stories and Product Backlog Items are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; specifications. They are &lt;em&gt;placeholders&lt;/em&gt; for collaboration with other elements of the Agile Release Train.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner may be the primary point of contact, but the team as a whole should be actively engaged with the stakeholders who are called out as value consumers in a user story. If the Product Owner is not facilitating this, or is placing the responsibility solely on the team, that is a role failure. Likewise, if the team is sitting back and waiting for full-fledged specifications from the Product Owner, the Agile Team isn't fulfilling its proper role either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile frameworks, especially Scrum (on which a number of SAFe practices are based), require &lt;em&gt;active&lt;/em&gt; collaboration between roles. If the roles are in conflict, or individuals are seeking to &quot;toss work over the wall&quot; to someone else, then the framework has not been fully adopted or properly applied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-10-16T03:06:36.213" LastActivityDate="2018-10-16T03:06:36.213" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25076" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25080" CreationDate="2018-10-16T06:24:57.237" Score="0" ViewCount="470" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a question regarding the incomplete acceptance criteria in a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A user story is said to be completed if all the acceptance criteria are satisfied. There can be multiple acceptance criteria for each user story. Some acceptance criteria may not be able to be completed, due to incomplete development or late development. Usually, we clone the user story and move it to the next sprint for tracking. However, there is a chance of some acceptance criteria being completed while some are not. So this process is difficult to track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have any workaround to track the incomplete tasks in the next sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33461" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-10-29T13:58:58.193" LastActivityDate="2018-10-29T13:58:58.193" Title="How to track Incomplete acceptance criteria in JIRA" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;acceptance-criteria&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25076" CreationDate="2018-10-16T06:54:29.123" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you are referring to sprints and user stories, I will assume you are using the Scrum framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within Scrum, there is no such thing as a partially complete user story. A user story can either be done, in which case &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; acceptance criteria and the definition-of-done have been fulfilled, or the user story is not done.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;When, at the end of a sprint, some stories are not done then those stories should be moved in their entirety to the product backlog to be re-planned along with the rest of the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the team thinks that a user story is done, that is when it must be verified that &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; acceptance criteria have been met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is a frequent occurrence that you have user stories with partially completed acceptance criteria &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; that partial set of acceptance criteria by itself provides value to the business (i.e., you have a better product to show to your stakeholders), then it might be that your stories can be decomposed further into smaller stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is the case, I would recommend you to try to split those stories until it is no longer possible to add value with only a subset of the acceptance criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2018-10-16T06:54:29.123" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25076" CreationDate="2018-10-16T13:23:08.227" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend establishing a function to denote done acceptance criteria from undone acceptance criteria in each card. This can be done by simply using italics, boldening, coloring, checkboxes, etc. to help separate what acceptance criteria is done from acceptance criteria that is incomplete. Once a piece of the acceptance criteria is met, someone on the team should update the card to somehow visualize that the piece has been satisfied. This information can and should be visualized and inspected at the daily scrum to see what work needs to be considered as your team moves towards its sprint goal(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33598" LastActivityDate="2018-10-16T13:23:08.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25076" CreationDate="2018-10-16T14:29:16.887" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Usually, we clone the user story and move it to the next sprint for tracking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Don't do that.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story &lt;em&gt;isn't done&lt;/em&gt;. If you put it to Done and clone it, your velocity will be messed up. It will look as if you completed work, when you didn't. This will cause you to overestimate in the future, because velocity reports mistakenly show you being able to complete more work than you really can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;there is a chance of some acceptance criteria being completed while some are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So add columns/statuses representing the acceptance criteria. Only move it to the rightmost Done column once all criteria have passed. If the Sprint ends while the story isn't yet Done, &lt;em&gt;just leave it&lt;/em&gt;. JIRA should move it to your Product Backlog automatically upon ending the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Afterwards, you should evaluate the story as normal in the Sprint Planning Meeting. Re-estimate/re-prioritize it as normal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should we move the incomplete stories to product backlog[?]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This will underestimate the points in [the sprint where the stories were not completed].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nope. You did not complete the work. You accomplished 0 story points for that story. So your burndown chart will show that story having not been burned down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This is correct.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as Scrum is concerned, a story that is 90% done provides 0 business value, and is therefore treated the same as 0% done. Your velocity should only take into account the amount of &lt;em&gt;Done&lt;/em&gt; story points you can complete in a Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just make sure you re-estimate the story before including it in a new Sprint. If an originally 13-point story is 90% done, it should only be 1 point for the new Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-10-16T16:35:37.653" LastActivityDate="2018-10-16T16:35:37.653" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25068" CreationDate="2018-10-16T14:29:39.913" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Per &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_fallacy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the “planning fallacy” Wikipedia entry&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The planning fallacy...is a phenomenon in which predictions about how much time will be needed to complete a future task display an optimism bias and underestimate the time needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different agile frameworks use different metrics, but the commonly-used &lt;em&gt;velocity&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;cumulatative flow&lt;/em&gt; metrics are the typical guardrails for mitigating planning bias. There are certainly other metrics, but I'll talk briefly about velocity because I think it most closely addresses the concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How Velocity Mitigates Planning Bias&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity is a metric that looks at historical rates of delivery, and uses a moving average or other statistical functions to smooth perturbations. The velocity metric is probabilistic, and while it often works best with a baseline reference class to anchor the metric, in pragmatic usage it's actually less sensitive to that than one might think. The real determinant of how reliable velocity is as a predictive metric is the consistency of the estimation process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to velocity's widely-accepted success in agile planning is a &lt;em&gt;consistent&lt;/em&gt; estimation process. It actually matters very little whether the estimation process is optimistic, pessimistic, or ignores the reference class altogether, so long as the estimation process is applied similarly across iterations. Over a sufficient time window, &lt;strong&gt;a consistent estimation process will trend towards the sustainable rate of delivery.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Inspect-and-Adapt Caveats&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While a consistent estimation process is essential to reliable forecasting, that doesn't mean your project's estimation process can't change or improve. The notable caveat here is that iterative or incremental improvements to the estimation process will create small perturbations in delivery rates, but will generally be small enough to be swallowed by the smoothing function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a related caveat, it's also possible to make radical changes (hopefully improvements!) to the estimation process. When that happens, you either need to discard historical data or apply a &quot;fudge factor&quot; to account for the changes in the methodology. This may lead to less forecasting reliability from the metric in the short term, but can often be worthwhile if it leads to higher &lt;em&gt;sustained&lt;/em&gt; reliability in meeting forecasts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-10-16T17:43:02.660" LastActivityDate="2018-10-16T17:43:02.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25082" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-10-16T19:58:22.630" Score="1" ViewCount="279" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our team would like to use incoming emails (from Outlook) to create support tickets. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've figured out how to successfully get this working, however, the formatting is awful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the ticket is created, it includes all the mail headers in the description. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's even worse: JIRA will create a comment that contains the entire email chain every time someone replies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The behavior that I want:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Description of the ticket = The body of the first email&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comments = The body of any email after the first&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried a bunch of JQL filters, but it is getting highly complicated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33832" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-10-29T12:20:37.407" LastActivityDate="2018-10-29T17:50:30.407" Title="JIRA - Use incoming emails to create tickets" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25076" CreationDate="2018-10-17T10:09:26.630" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Totally agree with Sarov's response re: don't mark Stories as done if they are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider also whether your Stories are too big. Are all those acceptance criteria required for the minimum delivery of that Story? Maybe consider making the Stories a little smaller. You will get more &quot;done&quot; in each Sprint timebox and still be delivering a valuable product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29898" LastActivityDate="2018-10-17T10:09:26.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25084" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25085" CreationDate="2018-10-17T12:38:10.900" Score="1" ViewCount="68" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to discuss about a business requirement from the client. The requirement is to allow the user to select a huge amount of data. &#xA;Let me try to explain with an example. &#xA;&lt;strong&gt;As a portfolio manager, I should be able to select a list of models from the list, so that I can create a portfolio.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, there can be 20000+ models in the market. So the application will be jammed if we allow the user to select all the models when creating a portfolio. The client might not use more than 10 models when creating a portfolio in real scenario. But there is a requirement to select all the models available in the system. &#xA;How should I handle this scenario? Do you have any alternate ways to fulfill this requirement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33461" LastEditorUserId="33837" LastEditDate="2018-10-21T19:39:33.273" LastActivityDate="2018-10-21T19:39:33.273" Title="How to deal with huge data selection requirement" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;process-improvement&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25084" CreationDate="2018-10-17T13:40:50.083" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Don't Just &quot;Work the Story.&quot; Work the &lt;em&gt;Right&lt;/em&gt; Story!&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your current user story reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a portfolio manager,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I should be able to select list of models from the list,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I can create a portfolio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the one hand, this story doesn't define a need to select &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the models, just &quot;a list&quot; of them. In that case, how many they can select is left as an implementation detail that should be negotiated between the Development Team and the end users. The feature can then be improved or refined over time as needs change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if selection of all models as a functional requirement for the product, then your stories may need to be rewritten to capture the actual needs of the user and the non-functional requirements this imposes on the current system. While I have no way of extrapolating your actual use case from the original question, consider the following example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a portfolio manager,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want to be able to select 2,000+ models all at once&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I can run complex data analytics on exported data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a more useful story in that it provides a more accurate sense of the &lt;em&gt;size&lt;/em&gt; of the selection the user wants. It also improves on the original by providing a &lt;em&gt;context&lt;/em&gt; for the story, so that the team can more accurately plan and estimate the effort to meet the need. It also provides a baseline for collaboration with stakeholders, as there might be reasonable trade-offs that can be made in either the use case or the implementation of the feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you are sure you have the right story from the portfolio manager perspective, you might need some additional stories that capture the engineering or administrative perspective. These may be functional or non-functional requirements, but in any case represent features of the product that should be managed like any other. For example, assuming this is a web interface to a typical database:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a site administrator,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want to allow users to export &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; models in the data set &lt;strong&gt;without a large performance penalty&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that complex analytics can be offloaded from the the application itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By forming a &lt;em&gt;theme&lt;/em&gt; around these related stories, you can work iteratively on the functional and non-functional requirements over more than one Sprint while keeping stories small and negotiable per &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST criteria&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, by capturing the &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; level of detail about what the product's users really want and why, you enable the Development Team to validate assumptions (e.g. does a user &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; need to select 2,000+ models within a web UI?) or offer alternative implementations (e.g. data exports) that wouldn't necessarily occur to a non-technical person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always remember that user stories are conversation placeholders, not specifications. Write user stories to capture the essential perspective and context of each story, and then &lt;strong&gt;turn the creativity of the Development Team loose to collaborate on the implementation details&lt;/strong&gt; so that you don't over-constrain the solution space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the &quot;secret sauce&quot; that makes agile frameworks so effective: an open-minded, collaborative approach to crowd-sourcing solutions; optimizing for work &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; done; and searching for the simplest solution that meets the &lt;em&gt;immediate&lt;/em&gt; need, leaving future refinements to the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-10-17T19:22:04.867" LastActivityDate="2018-10-17T19:22:04.867" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24743" CreationDate="2018-10-17T14:20:22.247" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Intensional Definitions and Examples&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find a canonical source with formal definitions, but in practice the distinction is between potentially-shippable deliverables and project artifacts. In other words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Product-Oriented Deliverable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A feature, function, component, or milestone that is intended for direct delivery to the customer as part of the product.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Project-Oriented Deliverable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anything else required by the project itself, but not intended for direct delivery to the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some things will be clearly one or the other, but some things may not. For example, building a continuous integration server would be a project-oriented deliverable, while designing a foo-embiggening widget for the product's interface would be product-oriented. Meanwhile, a foo-embiggening calibrator could be either. Your mileage will vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-10-17T14:20:22.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25087" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-10-17T16:22:45.887" Score="6" ViewCount="3039" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have an organization within Azure DevOps and many projects within.  I have started to tag projects.  I'd like to be able to search tags and list the projects that have that specific tag in the project details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found how to search for all the work items with a specific tag, but is there a way to search for projects specifically?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33838" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-10-18T11:55:51.020" LastActivityDate="2019-08-01T15:43:08.177" Title="Is there a way to search Project tags in Azure DevOps" Tags="&lt;devops&gt;&lt;vsts&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24492" CreationDate="2018-10-17T18:33:20.447" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The frequency of the communication is covered by Prince2. Have a look at the Communication Strategy &lt;a href=&quot;https://mplaza.pm/prince2-communication-management-strategy-template/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://mplaza.pm/prince2-communication-management-strategy-template/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copy pasted from the link:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Purpose   A PRINCE2 Communication Management Strategy Template contains&#xA;  a description of the means and frequency of communication to parties&#xA;  both internal and external to the project. It facilitates engagement&#xA;  with stakeholders through the establishment of a controlled and&#xA;  bi-directional flow of information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But for your original question. Yes, scrum can be used (it can fit in inside the managing product delivery stage of Prince2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8980" LastActivityDate="2018-10-17T18:33:20.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24870" CreationDate="2018-10-17T18:52:38.050" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Prince2, project are divided into stages. At the end of the stage, there is Managing a Stage Boundary.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://prince2.wiki/Managing_a_Stage_Boundary&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://prince2.wiki/Managing_a_Stage_Boundary&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;from the link:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Purpose&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The purpose of Managing a Stage Boundary process has two parts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Project Manager has to provide the Project Board with an overview&#xA;  of the performance of the current stage, update the Project Plan and&#xA;  Business Case, and create a Stage Plan for the next stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This information will enable the Project Board to review the current&#xA;  stage, approve the next stage, review the updated Project Plan, and&#xA;  confirm Continued Business Justification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, this is the time where you will assess the current stage as you may discover some details that will require some update to the previous document which may make things clearer and will use those details on the next stage. (e.g. in the previous document, it was specified that the estimated timings to acquire data should be from 50msec to 100msec, but you found out from the last stage that 50msec is not enough and may need to be around 1msec to be able to get good readings).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8980" LastActivityDate="2018-10-17T18:52:38.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24991" CreationDate="2018-10-18T04:31:32.040" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first counter to 'this requirement will be easy to deliver' should always be ask politely to list down the risks involved. Such unfounded claims are done by people who want to boast or want to challenge the team off a cliff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;art of war&lt;/em&gt; in such situation is to transfer/overload ownership by asking counter specific (not open-ended) questions to the point where they have no answers. The point is to ask questions that will test their knowledge and not questions that have generic answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It seems you are well aware of the design as well as low level&#xA;  implementation involved to achieve this requirement. Can you please&#xA;  list out the design considerations we need to make so that it can be&#xA;  achieved as easily as you mention?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;So what are the risks involved in implementing this?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;So you're saying there is no risk involved since it's fairly easy to&#xA;  implement? In our current system/application can you show us a similar&#xA;  risk-free implementation?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;How closely have you worked on functionalities that deal with the&#xA;  integration part of this requirement?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Can you please guide/elaborate on the integration/testing effort&#xA;  involved and how you propose to overcome the challenge of ___________&#xA;  ?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What are the architectural components that will be impacted by this&#xA;  implementation?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they counter with a question, simply be surprised and say &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;WE&lt;/strong&gt; were hoping you would answer that since you found the requirement to be easily implementable.&quot; ...or... &quot;&lt;strong&gt;WE&lt;/strong&gt; thought your expertise was in such implementations and you would guide us all.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then immediately, steer the discussion or conclude with that statement that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;I&lt;/strong&gt; believe there are still few unanswered questions and risks to&#xA;  identify, so this requirement estimate needs to be reconsidered. I'm&#xA;  not saying it's easy or difficult or impossible, all &lt;strong&gt;I'm&lt;/strong&gt; suggesting is&#xA;  that &lt;strong&gt;we&lt;/strong&gt; take a measured approach to understand the risks involved, have discussions necessary, get X, Y and Z involved and then proceed.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By saying so, you set yourself at a neutral mature position, establish control over defining the estimates and the direction of the conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The aim is to deter future claims and by counter questioning detailed level aspects of implementation, you corner individuals who make baseless claims. Continue to relentlessly question them until they back down from making such claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29308" LastActivityDate="2018-10-18T04:31:32.040" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18074" CreationDate="2018-10-18T06:40:27.313" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Daily Scrum meeting should be finished in 15 mins - max 20 mins. If the Product Owner (PO) joins the Daily Scrum, it damages the Team's autonomy and most of the time the PO might jump in and say &quot;hey don't do this&quot; or &quot;that like this&quot; and then things can turn into long debates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PO should not be involved in the Daily Scrum. Let developers do their best based on user stories' descriptions. If there are any blockers, the Scrum Master has to facilitate discussion and can pull the PO into  the Daily Scrum if required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33841" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-10-18T13:05:37.903" LastActivityDate="2018-10-18T13:05:37.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25093" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-10-18T09:15:54.143" Score="3" ViewCount="465" Body="&lt;p&gt;A company is trying to adopt the Spotify model, with tribes, squads, chapters etc. They came up with around 6-7 tribes. However they have a part of it, UX/UI that is needed on an ad-hoc basis from each tribe's squads i.e. they so some work for them, and then go away.&#xA;These guys are regarded as a shared resource. It's been said that there would not be enough work for them if they decided to put the people in the UI/UX team to tribes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you agree with this approach of the &quot;shared resource&quot;? Any lessons learned from using the same pattern? Or reasons to avoid it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5522" LastActivityDate="2018-12-04T16:17:37.023" Title="Shared resources in the Spotify model" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25093" CreationDate="2018-10-18T12:02:17.077" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even if there is not enough work &quot;on average&quot; to have a UX resource in every team/tribe/whatever, there will always come a point when the shared resource is required by more than one team at the same time, and the shared resource can't meet every team's needs in a timely fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good communication and oversight can help (i.e. before teams embark on a UX-heavy feature, collaborate with other teams and the UX-resource to manage time allocation), but fundamentally any time a &quot;team&quot; is dependent on an &quot;external&quot; resource, there is scope for work to be blocked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally you would have UX-skills within the team - and you don't necessarily need a dedicated UX professional to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29898" LastActivityDate="2018-10-18T12:02:17.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25068" CreationDate="2018-10-18T14:23:39.700" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not the estimating together part of planning poker that helps that much (although that can reduce individual biases). It's the velocity tracking part which lets you apply &lt;strong&gt;historical&lt;/strong&gt; data to help with future estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g., if in the previous sprint we tried to complete 50 points worth of work, but only finished 40, then our rate is probably closer to 40 than to 50.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence-based_scheduling&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;another&lt;/a&gt; example of using historical data to improve the accuracy of estimates (more complex in terms of data collection; also, it uses probability distributions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other methods that I've seen work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decomposition (breaking down large tasks and estimating the smaller tasks)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Training (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumandkanban.co.uk/calibration-tests/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;calibrating estimators&lt;/a&gt;, a method of using training data to improve people's estimating abilities)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't forget about the idea of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.construx.com/software-thought-leadership/books/the-cone-of-uncertainty/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;estimate convergence&lt;/a&gt; (early estimates are way off, and they'll improve more and more as work progresses).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3750" LastEditorUserId="3750" LastEditDate="2018-10-18T21:12:34.463" LastActivityDate="2018-10-18T21:12:34.463" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25093" CreationDate="2018-10-18T15:35:08.743" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few things I see here to consider. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Is the problem that you don't have enough people or that they are too narrowly skilled? Both result in the &quot;shared resource&quot; problem, but require very different solutions. For example, not having enough people can be solved by either hiring more people, cross-training many of the basic skills in that discipline, and providing coaching and mentoring from the expert (the designer). On the other hand, if the problem is that all they are capable of doing is a narrow set of design tasks then they may need some cross-training to be able to effectively integrate into the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Why don't you want &quot;shared resources&quot;? This isn't the end of the world. If you have it for a while, that may just be life, but it can create problems so you don't want to force this or let it linger too long. There are two main problems with &quot;shared resources&quot;. The first is that these skills are usually important and you lose a lot of time to overhead with this model, so you get less and less of an important skill as you spread them across more squads. Second, what happens the when two squads need the same person's time to move forward? Now someone has to lose. This will probably result in holding up a whole squad or making them work on something less valuable while they wait. In the worst-case scenarios, I've seen this result in critical missed deadlines that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Those circumstances aren't common, so don't panic, but that's why you don't let it linger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Do you need extreme depth in this skill. Are you doing something bleeding edge in the industry. Companies like Tesla or Boston Dynamics (electric self-driving cars and walking autonomous robots respectively) need people who are very narrowly focused in their skillset because they need all of their time dedicated to a deep understanding of a specific skill. 99.9% of companies don't need that. If you're in that 0.1%, the value added by narrow, deep skills is way more than the value lost or risk added by the &quot;resource sharing&quot; model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Where are you at now? There's a big difference between acknowledging that this is where you are at now and deciding to stay there. If having shared UI/UX designers is where you are at, don't beat yourself up over it. If it's not where you want to be in a year, talk about your plan to grow on to a different circumstance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps - this is really a situation best suiting to coaching and I tried to turn a coaching conversation into a post, which is always messy at best. At the very least, I tried to give you some angles to look at your situation from to make the most effective decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-10-18T15:35:08.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25087" CreationDate="2018-10-18T16:26:48.857" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Navigate to the home screen of VSTS (https://&lt;em&gt;your-organization&lt;/em&gt;.visualstudio.com/_projects)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From there, type in the tag you'd like to search in the &quot;Search code in this organization&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will be redirected to a page with three tabs: code, tags, and wiki&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Click on the tags tab and every work item, regardless of project, will show up in a list for you to view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From there, you should see a drop down on the far left with all the projects that include that tag, with the ability to toggle view on/off based on which projects you'd like to see in view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33598" LastActivityDate="2018-10-18T16:26:48.857" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25099" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-10-19T08:22:02.950" Score="3" ViewCount="1148" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not understand why the burndown is looking like it is. Remaining work is higher than capacity - but in the details remaining work is lower than remaining capacity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EorRe.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EorRe.png&quot; alt=&quot;Burndown&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cUMhv.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cUMhv.png&quot; alt=&quot;Work details&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31813" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-10-21T19:40:07.453" LastActivityDate="2021-04-05T08:04:30.443" Title="Understanding Azure devops burndown" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;burndown-chart&gt;&lt;devops&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25099" CreationDate="2018-10-19T21:47:07.380" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure where this data is coming from, so this is only an educated guess. However, it looks like your burn-down is &lt;em&gt;correctly&lt;/em&gt; showing that you have more development work than originally planned. Depending on your system, this can happen if:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;New work is discovered during the iteration, and added to the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're tracking hours spent rather than tasks/stories done, and hours spent exceed the original estimate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, it looks like the latter. Your team estimated 39 hours for &quot;development&quot; (whatever that means to them), but has &lt;em&gt;expended&lt;/em&gt; 41 hours on those activities so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Potential Next Steps&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, this may or may not be a problem. If your implementation provides sufficient slack to handle minor perturbations, then a few hours one way or another won't really matter. However, if enough work is being added that the Sprint Goal is in jeopardy, or if the projection shows that essential work will no longer fit within the current iteration, then a discussion with the team (including the Product Owner) should take place as soon as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also consider that tracking task time consumed may be an anti-pattern, especially if it's not yielding useful information for your team. A related answer discusses the use of Trello to track &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/20646/4271&quot;&gt;story points consumed&lt;/a&gt;, which looks quite similar to your current time-based approach. Another answer provides a different take on why &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/21547/4271&quot;&gt;time-based tracking&lt;/a&gt; may be a poor measure of work remaining, and some options for addressing that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, remember that your goal in Scrum is not to make pretty graphs that follow an ideal trendline. The burn-down chart is an information-gathering and information-radiating tool, not a core deliverable. Instead, the team should use the burn-down data as a means to surface unexpected impediments within the current process, and as a conversation-starter for the whole team (including developers, Scrum Master, and Product Owner) to communicate more effectively with each other about what's really going on within the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-10-19T21:47:07.380" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25093" CreationDate="2018-10-20T11:32:05.830" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, there's a few things in this question. First, the use of shared resources and secondly, the Spotify &quot;model&quot;. Let's take the second one first since it's going to be a lot shorter: There is no Spotify model. The Spotify model is a place in time where Spotify was some 5-6 years ago. They got there by &lt;em&gt;doing their own thinking on how to structure their organisation&lt;/em&gt; and if you want to be as good as Spotify you really need to do your own thinking as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alright, onto the actual question: Used of shared &quot;resources&quot;. My firm belief is that using shared &quot;resources&quot; is a bad idea. And let's drop the resources work altogether, let's talk about shared &lt;em&gt;people&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why don't I like people working in several teams at the same time? (because that is what the shared resource situation is like) Mostly because it will drive up your lead and cycle time, ie. how long it takes to get stuff done. It also creates a lot of context switching which again drives cycle times and focus down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With shared team members sooner or later you will run into a situation where their expertise is needed but they're not available. This can have catastrophic consequences. Also, they actual people suffer from the situation as well: They might not have clear priorities, they do not have a community (team) around them that they can jell with (except the UX/UI community which is not getting enough cross pollination from other communities) etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in short: Even though from a traditional resource utilisation viewpoint shared resources are a good idea in the real world they're a bad idea because a) people are not machines b) resource utilisation is not a useful thing, lead and cycle times are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29075" LastActivityDate="2018-10-20T11:32:05.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24909" CreationDate="2018-10-20T19:56:30.143" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;FRD is a way to document (in a waterfall way) what the &lt;em&gt;intended&lt;/em&gt; functional requirements are. This doesn't usually document &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; implementation. Using agile methods, you can better communicate to non-technical staff what is actually being delivered. Here are some suggestions to allow for comprehensive documentation while staying agile and productive:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have the technical writers be a part of the project team, creating&#xA;technical and non-technical product documentation iteratively. You&#xA;can add &quot;product documentation completed&quot; as acceptance criteria for your user&#xA;stories. The official product documentation can be your living document.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hold a pre-launch high level demo (via your product manager). This high level demo can help marketing, sales, and department managers understand what is being delivered. You could add this to your sprint review processes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add more in-depth internal training considerations to your launch&#xA;delivery checklist so you can consider it for each sprint or release. You can flag epics or stories as requiring internal training and who should be responsible for performing the training.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hold more detailed internal trainings (i.e., train the trainer) for interested&#xA;internal stakeholders (such as customer support and trainers).&#xA;Record these and have the video available for those who are&#xA;interested to reference. Add a link of the video to your project reference&#xA;documentation. The internal training can be very helpful to identify trends in questions that you may want to answer within the official product documentation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33866" LastActivityDate="2018-10-20T19:56:30.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25105" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25106" CreationDate="2018-10-20T21:30:38.873" Score="0" ViewCount="87" Body="&lt;p&gt;We coded something which works but is quite terrible. We have planned the refactoring of that piece of code in this sprint but since it doesn't really fit in a user story, how do we add or represent this? Nothing will change at front-end, just back-end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33870" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-10-22T10:39:37.477" LastActivityDate="2018-10-22T10:39:37.477" Title="What is the proper way to add/represent development tasks (like refacturing) to a sprint?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;kanban-board&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25105" CreationDate="2018-10-21T13:05:47.493" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have several options, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add a task to the backlog that covers this (perhaps labelling it as technical debt)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add a technical sub-task to a story that is already in your backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second option, what you are saying is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To complete this story and deliver a quality product to our team's definition of done we should include refactoring this piece of code&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, I worked with a team that wanted to replace a JavaScript library with a better version. They added the refactoring work as technical sub-tasks on a number of stories, each of which touched on different pages on a website. Once all of the stories had been completed they had also completed the library upgrade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I like about this approach is that it demonstrates that code quality is &lt;em&gt;built-in&lt;/em&gt; to your delivery of functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-10-21T13:05:47.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24991" CreationDate="2018-10-22T04:34:47.623" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of these clients might not be having any intent of challenging you or your decisions. It might be just because they are actually ignorant and genuinely think that it is possible to get it done quickly. I have faced this situation a lot. &#xA;A project manager also need to be a good people manger. In these kind of situations give your client representative the benefit of doubt. Here is what has always worked for me positively. &#xA;&lt;strong&gt;I usually subdivide the task at hand into multiple sub tasks and assume the hours needed for each sub task and share it with the client.&lt;/strong&gt; If at that point of time i am not aware of what goes into it, i politely tell them &lt;strong&gt;&quot;I will look into it and get back to you with the specifics..Lets hope we can easily wrap it up&quot;.&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;Client are humans who pay us, which gives them the feeling of superiority. Lets let them keep their ego high and milk the cow slowly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33837" LastActivityDate="2018-10-22T04:34:47.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25082" CreationDate="2018-10-22T15:14:43.480" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, there is no practical way of doing that in Jira. After using the email-Jira integration for supporting a system for some time, we were fed up with all the long emails that include replies and also the images in screenshots that are attached to the Jira report over and over again. We gave up on email based ticket creation and started using ServiceDesk which integrates well with Jira.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8532" LastActivityDate="2018-10-22T15:14:43.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25109" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25116" CreationDate="2018-10-22T18:47:21.997" Score="0" ViewCount="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a book, Six Sigma for Dummies, the authors define DPO as number of defects per number of opportunities but they do not multiply that by number of units.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So basically they say that if you have 14550 opportunities to defect and you find 153 defects, the DPO is 0,011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it does not make sense. What if I have a paperclip with one opportunity and the one I have is faulty, thus DPO=1 and DPMO=1000000?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31435" LastActivityDate="2018-10-23T18:22:02.310" Title="DPO without multiplying by number of units?" Tags="&lt;6-sigma&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24781" CreationDate="2018-10-23T07:54:52.337" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you look at the &lt;strong&gt;Prince2 principle that underpins the Business Case its the &quot;Continued Business Justification&quot; principle&lt;/strong&gt;. So your business case needs to cover enough ground to get the project started &amp;amp; at each stage boundary or other review steps it needs to be detailed enough to be a reference for the stakeholders/project board can refer to &amp;amp; be assured that the project being undertaken is the one that was signed off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously all Prince2 projects should be tailored to the project specifics - so the theory is all you can base the actual project on without more detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a multi-product project I would look at building a Business Case for the project that contains broad benefits, dis-benefits, costs risks etc &amp;amp; then if you have a number of products to be delivered within the project put detail in for each product. &lt;strong&gt;Focus your metrics on the products so that you have a solid document to refer back to that can be compared to actual things being delivered&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you are fitting out 5 rooms in a building you want the detail to be at room level (product) in the Business Case. Adding all the rooms up gives you the project level overview that also sits in the Business Case. But the stage boundaries are more likely to fit more comfortably with the products (rooms) so you really need thorough detail at room (product) level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="693" LastActivityDate="2018-10-23T07:54:52.337" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24991" CreationDate="2018-10-23T12:10:43.627" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first and foremost way to handle this situation is to explain the development effort in a proper way. &lt;strong&gt;Nothing is easy unless a brilliant effort is put into development&lt;/strong&gt;. My thought is to share the development effort involved with highlighted QA , analysis and development costs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33461" LastActivityDate="2018-10-23T12:10:43.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25113" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25114" CreationDate="2018-10-23T13:09:51.467" Score="6" ViewCount="201" Body="&lt;p&gt;I currently work in the IT dept of a small company.&#xA;Our team consists of 5-7 people.&#xA;We do not have business analysts &amp;amp; our projects are all reverse engineered &amp;amp; started without requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of that, we accept many kinds of projects from different fields &amp;amp; I am currently facing a huge issue where our client wants us to build an Accounting Software. So in this case our project manager gives us a sample Accounting Software &amp;amp; we are tasked to study the behavior &amp;amp; gather requirements ourselves in order for us to develop such software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue is that I don't know accounting at all. I have to spend a lot of time learning &amp;amp; guessing how the given software works. I don't think I can even make the deadline at this rate. I don't know if this is the right way to do things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our past projects weren't successful at all &amp;amp; I'm beginning to doubt whether I'm a capable developer myself after spending more than 3 years in this particular company &amp;amp; experiencing such project failures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as the title says, do many companies do things this way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33890" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-10-23T13:13:37.483" LastActivityDate="2019-01-03T14:36:39.367" Title="Do companies normally develop projects solely through reverse engineering?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25113" CreationDate="2018-10-23T13:19:20.537" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it's not uncommon at all to involve reverse engineering as &lt;em&gt;part&lt;/em&gt; of the requirements gathering process, having it be the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; step (or, one of the only two steps with the other being 'let the developers guess') is almost certainly doomed to failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your responsibility in such a situation is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to be a hero, miraculously learn accounting in a week, and develop what the client needs before the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your responsibility in such a situation &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; to inform your manager of the risk to the project. If you do not believe the deadline can be reached, inform the manager. If you believe you will miss or misinterpret key features the client needs, inform the manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then step back, let your manager make the decisions, and accept that if things continue without change then the project will fail, and it won't be your fault.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-10-23T13:19:20.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25109" CreationDate="2018-10-23T18:15:28.363" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.isixsigma.com/dictionary/dpo/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This reference&lt;/a&gt; defines the DPO as &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;DPO = N_defects / (Number of units * Number of opportunities per unit).&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll base my answer on this definition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number of opportunities by itself already contains information about the number of units, since &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;N_opportunities = Number of units * Number of opportunities per unit.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example, one paperclip (one unit) has a certain probability of containing a defect. There may be, say, 3 kinds of defects (bent, broken, brittle), so &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;N_opportunities = 1 unit * 3 defects per unit = 3 opportunities&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you found your one paperclip was bent then the DPO would be&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;DPO = 1 defect / 3 opportunities = 0.33 (2 decimal places)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this metric is only useful for considering samples which are sufficiently large that the probabilities of the defects manifest in a meaningful way e.g. so that expectation values start to become useful quantities.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, consider 2 samples (A and B), each of 10000 paperclips.  If sample A had 20 bent paperclips, 3 broken paperclips, and 7 brittle paperclips from a sample of 10000 then&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;DPO_A = 30 defects / (10000 units * 3 opportunities per unit) = 0.001&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;whereas, if sample B had 10 bent paperclips, 2 broken paperclips, and 3 brittle paperclips&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;DPO_B = 15 defects / (10000 units * 3 opportunities per unit) = 0.0005&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The DPO now tells you something interesting about the samples and, perhaps, the way in which the samples were created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33372" LastEditorUserId="33372" LastEditDate="2018-10-23T18:22:02.310" LastActivityDate="2018-10-23T18:22:02.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25117" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25125" CreationDate="2018-10-24T01:30:46.717" Score="5" ViewCount="325" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should you let others call out a team member that isn't living up to commitments in front of the team. i.e. during the stand up how do you properly address a team member that calls out another team member for not committing to timelines? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33896" LastEditorUserId="33896" LastEditDate="2019-02-26T08:57:49.407" LastActivityDate="2019-02-26T08:57:49.407" Title="Non-Committal Team Member" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25117" CreationDate="2018-10-24T08:03:19.520" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regardless of what kind of effort is missing, I'd talk with the team member first. You need to figure out his motivation. Why is he non-committing? A fishbone-diagram or the Five-Whys-technique are perfectly suited for this. I always try to dig deeper. Did his behavior change in the last weeks? Is he facing personal issues? Is he tired and overworked? How is his behavior effecting the team?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;And if personal coaching/motivation/facilitating isn't working, you'll need the help of management to resolve this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17009" LastActivityDate="2018-10-24T08:03:19.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25117" CreationDate="2018-10-24T09:05:01.770" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If possible, avoid calling out the individual. Instead, call out the impact you believe they are having.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We didn't manage to complete the three web stories we brought in to the last sprint. Can we discuss as a team the reasons why? Perhaps the stories need to be broken down more or maybe we should be pairing to work on them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally this kind of conversation takes place during the sprint retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is to focus on the team's performance rather than on one individuals behaviour. Perhaps a team member appears problematic because they haven't got the right training? Maybe there is a way of shifting them on to work that motivates them more?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focusing on ways to improve the team will keep the team positive and will avoid tension that may adversely affect the team's performance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-10-24T09:05:01.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24781" CreationDate="2018-10-24T10:21:24.690" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;After looking at numerous example detailed business cases, I have to come to the conclusion that the remainder of the document should not branch for each business option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The examples I have seen have the following characteristics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They give a brief summary of the costs, benefits, dis-benefits etc. of each business option in that the business options section of the detailed business case.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They recommended a business option and justify it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The remainder of the document then refers the recommended business option.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it seems that the most usual way to do this is to make a recommendation and describe that instead of giving a totally &quot;free&quot; choice for each business  option.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes sense to me now since I would expect it's more useful to the corporate management to have a single detailed recommendation, with brief reference to other options, rather than several free choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33372" LastActivityDate="2018-10-24T10:21:24.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25122" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-10-24T11:51:17.207" Score="0" ViewCount="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team have come up with a product and we are wondering what’s the right person to call to talk about the product being placed in their store.&#xA;It’s somewhat a big chain of a tech shop (e.g. Public)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it’s a special department how is it called and how can I find it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My apologies if this is the wrong stackexchange to ask my question; I’d appreciate if someone pointed me in the right direction where I can find this info.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33903" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-10-24T13:16:22.973" LastActivityDate="2018-10-24T13:32:01.023" Title="Who to pitch my product for placement in their store?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;process&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2018-10-24T13:52:46.297" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25117" CreationDate="2018-10-24T12:03:29.393" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Answering the question as is:  you have already applied judgment in terms of ownership of the behavior you are observing.  Work not getting done is &quot;lack of this person's effort;&quot; tasks not start is due to &quot;this person's unwillingness to start;&quot; and lack of collaboration is due to &quot;this person not wanting to collaborate.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you have already drawn conclusions to root cause, there would be no reason to bring this up in front of others unless you intent is humiliation.  There would be no right strategy for humiliation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your conclusions are not yet firm and you are trying to understand the drivers of the observed behavior you're seeing, then bringing this up in the team could be appropriate if you used the right words, which is another way of saying don't accuse him of being at fault.  &quot;What are the blockers we are experiencing in finishing a task by deadline?&quot;  &quot;What are the blockers we are experiencing in getting tasks initiated?&quot;  &quot;Are we collaborating the best we can?&quot;  More general-type questions where &quot;we&quot; is used to show that the team is still a team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your conclusions are firm, then you have a personnel issue and the best strategy is to hand said personnel issue in private.  Bring up your observations emotion free and based on fact, iron out a tactical and measurable plan, measure against the plan, take appropriate action.  And all of this is private and confidential.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-10-24T12:03:29.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25122" CreationDate="2018-10-24T13:32:01.023" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you can read &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/24661/what-is-the-difference-between-business-management-consultant-and-project-manage/24662#24662&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, the actual &lt;em&gt;title&lt;/em&gt; of the department/individual is just a name. It doesn't matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does matter is the abilities and desires of the person making the call.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The person needs to be personable, polite, and persuasive. S/he also must &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to sell the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you still want an actual name, I'd imagine in most places it's the Sales Department that handles this (it is where I've worked).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-10-24T13:32:01.023" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25117" CreationDate="2018-10-24T15:05:56.253" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A coach is not a manager, and is not even formally a member of the team in &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; agile framework that I'm familiar with. Your job is to help the team be self-actualizing, empower them through knowledge of their chosen framework, and then let them learn through experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; attempt to manage them! That is a role failure, and will result in lost trust and an inability to function as the team's (and possibly the organization's) trusted advisor on how to implement a truly agile framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis and Recommendations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should you call out a team member that isn't living up to commitments in front of the team. i.e. during the stand up how do you properly address a team member that does not make any effort to get work done, start a task, or collaborate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Calling someone out&quot; is a power play, and an attempt at public shaming. This has no place at all within a framework that embraces agile principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, your question is predicated on a subjective assessment rather than a team-based retrospective. You have made a personal judgment rather than coaching your team to identify &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; problems. Even if your personal judgments are correct in attributing whatever process problems you see to a single individual (which I find a dubious proposition at best), the &lt;em&gt;coaching&lt;/em&gt; opportunity is to help the &lt;em&gt;team&lt;/em&gt; inspect-and-adapt in order to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify whether there are any actual problems that are impacting the project or the team itself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; problems that are measurably impacting the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify root causes of any identified process problems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Empower the team to crowd-source solutions within their scope of control.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most cases, a good coach will help the team &lt;em&gt;as a whole&lt;/em&gt; learn to take ownership of their own processes, and empower them to inspect-and-adapt to create their own solutions and route around problems. It's actually &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; your job as a coach to fix problems; instead, &lt;strong&gt;it's your job to teach the team how to fix their &lt;em&gt;own&lt;/em&gt; problems!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the rare cases where the root problem really &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a poorly-performing individual who cannot be rehabilitated within the team, and if the &lt;em&gt;team&lt;/em&gt; (not you) can't successfully manage the problem internally, then it is the responsibility of the &lt;em&gt;team&lt;/em&gt; (again, not you) to raise the issue with line management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Don't Overlook Teachable Moments for Leadership&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the only possible solution is to &quot;vote a team member off the island.&quot; However, this should be a last resort, and is typically a whiffy smell that indicates that team selection, formation, and ongoing self-organization are coaching opportunities that you've missed, either with the team or with the organization's leadership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good agile coach must coach the team &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; the organization in the proper application of the chosen framework. Throwing a bunch of people together and calling them a team isn't agile, and don't create an insta-team. While coaching has to begin with wherever the organization is when you start there, and with whatever resources the team has on hand at the time, truly great coaches go beyond the here-and-now to inspect and adapt the deeper organizational processes at work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, I deeply suspect that the team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;was not self-selected, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is not mature enough to identify and manage internal problems, and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is not &lt;em&gt;empowered&lt;/em&gt; to deal with process problems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Management has attempted to solve the second problem by hiring a coach, but management alone is responsible for the first and last items in that list. As uncomfortable as it may be, your job as a coach is to explain &lt;em&gt;management's&lt;/em&gt; role in the process, and coach them towards more agile management styles that provide for real team empowerment and self-organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-10-24T15:05:56.253" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25126" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25127" CreationDate="2018-10-25T06:29:59.630" Score="2" ViewCount="1144" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to schedule a few tasks in ProjectLibre and I'm also fairly new to PM&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The problem&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose we have &lt;code&gt;Person1&lt;/code&gt;, and he'scheduled on two tasks (100%):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Install device (duration=1hr)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Test Operation (duration=1hr)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ProjectLibre keeps both tasks starting at the time (i.e 0930) and ending at the same time. Should it not know that one person would be doing 1 thing at a time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33914" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-11-01T06:26:21.593" Title="ProjectLibre: One person two tasks at the same time" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;resources&gt;&lt;projectlibre&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25126" CreationDate="2018-10-25T10:29:12.733" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your program cannot possibly know that those tasks are connected, nor does it know whether they can be handled by a single person at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After all, it's only a matter of naming. It could be &quot;wait for the wash to finish&quot; and &quot;watch TV&quot;. You can do that at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to connect those two tasks and signal your program that one cannot be done if the other is not done first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know your language version. The easiest way is dragging from the first task to the second to connect them. Menu items and columns exist to do the same without drag&amp;amp;drop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastEditorUserId="7559" LastEditDate="2018-10-25T10:36:16.873" LastActivityDate="2018-10-25T10:36:16.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25128" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2018-10-25T11:22:47.867" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;code&gt;projectlibre&lt;/code&gt; tag is for questions about how to use ProjectLibre (an open-source project management software system) to manage or track projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-10-25T13:10:58.463" LastActivityDate="2018-10-25T13:10:58.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25129" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2018-10-25T11:22:47.867" Score="0" Body="This tag is for all questions that involve ProjectLibre." OwnerUserId="8417" LastEditorUserId="8417" LastEditDate="2018-10-29T11:03:15.213" LastActivityDate="2018-10-29T11:03:15.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25130" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-10-25T14:51:18.120" Score="2" ViewCount="249" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have some experience in IT myself, but in a different type of projects, so I would love to pick your brains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The context is that during conversations with some friends I had the impression that delays are completely normal during IT implementations. My experience of it is a bit different. We had some delays, but they were never more than 20-30% of the time planned for the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, imagine an IT project (implementation of an online platform). It started in mid-2017. The launch was planned for Jan. 2018. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then it got delayed. First, just 3 months, then 1 additional month, 1 month... We are approaching Nov. 2018, the launch hasn't taken place yet. (No external, unpredictable factors contributed to the delay).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it normal in IT? Of course I understand that &quot;normal&quot; is a word that's difficult to define. But I imagine there are a lot of consultants and project managers among you, so you probably experienced some projects and can estimate what happens a lot and what doesn't. What is a typical delay (in %) on an IT-implementation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33918" LastEditorUserId="33918" LastEditDate="2018-10-25T15:40:32.600" LastActivityDate="2020-04-08T07:39:36.177" Title="Delays in projects - what is normal on IT implementations?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;delays&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25130" CreationDate="2018-10-25T15:19:46.253" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer is based on my observations of IT work in the public sector.  YMMV.  What I have observed is quite a bit of project overruns, both cost and schedule, on IT projects in the space where I worked.  The drivers in my view begin with initial proposals being far too optimistic--on the verge of totally fake--driven by some sense of price-to-win.  In a scenario like that, it is nearly or totally impossible to meet initial targets in schedule or cost unless some significant compromises are made in terms of what actually gets delivered and the quality of what got delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would argue that is probably the leading driver.  The next driver is scope creep.  There seems to be a perception, I have noticed, that even with approved changes, results are compared with the original baseline.  This is exacerbated, obviously, when you have a legitimate scope change but fail to pursue a proper change request that alters the baseline.  The result is being late and more expensive.  I think this is a secondary leading driver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, and I'll take heat for this opinion on this exchange, but project management in, say, capital type projects is very very different than project management in IT, with one of them being far far superior.  Flame suit on.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding what is typical, in my experience, I've seen projects come in on time with some quality issues to maybe a year out with most being around 3 to 6 months late.  But a lot of that &quot;lateness&quot; was secondary to a choice being made NOT to pursue a CR.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-10-25T15:19:46.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25130" CreationDate="2018-10-26T08:26:12.677" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with David, there’s no canonical answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience (I've worked mainly in the private sector), it depends a lot on the context of how this happens:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the team fully able to work together? Have they worked for a long time together?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the project something &lt;em&gt;innovative&lt;/em&gt;?  Or Do you have a clear understanding of what you want to do?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are most dependencies under &lt;em&gt;the team’s control?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did you have enough time for planning?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How experienced is the team?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Innovative” projects by definition bring something that was not done before, hence they will meet with the unexpected and might imply delays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“More normal” projects might be easier to estimate even when they are complex as long as you take enough time for planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time estimates should improve when the team gets used to work together and also when they gain a better understanding of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Personally&lt;/em&gt; I find constant delays a sign of bad planning/team issues. Even when there’s a delay, I think “everyone” see it coming and can act upon it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-10-26T08:26:12.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24328" CreationDate="2018-10-26T22:43:09.193" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Go to &lt;code&gt;Settings&lt;/code&gt; &gt; &lt;code&gt;User management&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JFfXG.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JFfXG.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all you need to create the users in the system&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WGb4M.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WGb4M.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enter the information for the user:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you do not enter a password, one will be generated automatically.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can send an email to the user you have just created, wich will allow them to set up their password (if applicable).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qHnkQ.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qHnkQ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the user was created then you can manage user groups that has different access and permissions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WbbNu.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WbbNu.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CKlGp.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CKlGp.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to invite clients, consider to add a group for this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WFmzp.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WFmzp.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and then add the members that were previously registered in the system:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fOLJX.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fOLJX.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can too invite a bulk of users via email:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mWLxK.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mWLxK.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you can add the email addresses to be registered in Jira:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1VjMG.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1VjMG.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find more info here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver073/creating-a-project-906395716.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Creating a project&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver073/adding-new-users-906395718.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Adding new users&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver073/managing-permissions-906395721.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Managing permissions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver073/managing-project-permissions-861253293.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Managing project permissions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/crowd031/specifying-which-groups-can-access-an-application-949753201.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Specifying which Groups can access an Application&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20710" LastEditorUserId="20710" LastEditDate="2018-10-26T22:59:24.860" LastActivityDate="2018-10-26T22:59:24.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16948" CreationDate="2018-10-27T20:53:01.763" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It does not really matter who prioritizes the backlog. What really matters is how that is being done: by analyzing risk, benefit and impact of each enhancement. The actual role of the person doing this analysis is of secondary importance in the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33935" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-04-06T18:17:13.260" LastActivityDate="2019-04-06T18:17:13.260" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25141" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-10-28T02:42:40.600" Score="0" ViewCount="84" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on creating a burndown graph for a large project that I'm trying to schedule, but I don't want the sub-tasks to be counted as a remaining actual task for the burndowns. Is there a method to mark tasks as 'non-countable' or something for this field?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33934" LastEditorUserId="33934" LastEditDate="2018-10-28T17:13:36.697" LastActivityDate="2018-10-29T11:42:09.137" Title="MS Project burndown for outline level" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;&lt;burndown-chart&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25142" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-10-28T21:12:53.367" Score="1" ViewCount="118" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're discussing how project budgets will be set and tracked. My view is that the budget should be set for the duration and tracked that way. Our finance team have a preference for the budget to be for the financial year with what happens in the next year covered in future financial planning. I can see where our finance colleagues are coming from but have concerns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if we pro-rata or estimate per financial year:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What happens if we exceed budget this year as we are ahead of schedule (great for project but will cause a finance problem)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What happens if our spend is below budget? How will that work for the next year (carry over unspent amount?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the problem for the finance team if we set the budget for the entire project and do not pro-rata it or estimate per year? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Appreciate the guidance here; getting polarized opinions and need to know if there are pragmatic approaches out there that work ....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33939" LastActivityDate="2018-11-05T19:03:56.453" Title="Project budgeting by financial year vs lifetime?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;budget&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25142" CreationDate="2018-10-28T23:43:04.517" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your business is an operations that make money performing projects.  Your business is based on its fiscal year and, if public, to the fiscal quarter.  The project's year is irrelevant to the business.  As a PM, you manage your budget against the project year's budget as you deliver the scope.  Then, you become an operations manager and you report your investment's performance against your business' fiscal year.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you need to do both.  You need to build your project budget and then calculate the revenue and profit you're going to deliver to your business against the fiscal year.  Every seller of service is like this.  Every single one.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-10-28T23:43:04.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25144" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25147" CreationDate="2018-10-29T10:25:27.483" Score="4" ViewCount="787" Body="&lt;p&gt;When we started our agile project we were doing everything by the book. Over time, this has somewhat slipped into a more relaxed style. We still get the information we need, share what needs sharing and communicate effectively. I am now wondering if we should pull on their reigns a little and get more formal again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the time spent as a team getting to know each other and more comfortable in the meetings conducive to ineffective group work and something to be controlled or (assuming the stories are progressing well) is it ok to let formality slide a little?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29374" LastActivityDate="2018-12-07T14:17:09.813" Title="Sprint ceremonies getting faster - should we revert?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;self-organizing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25141" CreationDate="2018-10-29T11:42:09.137" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I may have found a work around for my issue, in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/remaining-actual-tasks-field-7db366e1-021c-4bbe-8138-874f8b385d6b&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;post here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a tip at the bottom claiming: &quot;assigned actual work that is equal to the Work field.&quot; This seems to fix things from a reporting stand point on the task usage screen and the burn-down graph. I have to test to see if it marks the task 100% complete though, which is not what I want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33934" LastActivityDate="2018-10-29T11:42:09.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25146" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25150" CreationDate="2018-10-29T12:27:37.583" Score="2" ViewCount="1273" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're struggling to break Product Backlog Items (PBIs)/User Stories into Sprint-sized chunks as we have multiple steps that need to be completed in a linear fashion.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each release goes through several steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Development (Dev Environment) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testing (Test Environment) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Staging Testing (Staging/Pre-Prod Environment)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User acceptance testing (UAT) (Staging/Pre-Prod Environment)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deployment to Production&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can generally get the development and testing finished in a Sprint and the UAT gets completed the following Sprint.  It makes sense to have the UAT tasks under the same PBIs that are used for Development and Testing to prevent duplicating the PBI/User Story.  The problem is having PBIs always open for more than one Sprint means that our Sprint backlog becomes too big, hard to manage and difficult to get metrics from.  It also sets a precedent where we start saying Testing can be in a different Sprint to development, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I understand it we have the following options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Continue as we are.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a separate, duplicate PBI for UAT tasks.  The PBI would be copied from the main PBI.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a general UAT PBI that includes all tasks required for UAT for that release.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to other processes which we can't change UAT cannot be in the same Sprint as development and testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We currently use Visual Studio Team Services/Azure Dev Ops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would would be the best practice for this?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Are there any other options that I've missed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33941" LastEditorUserId="33941" LastEditDate="2018-10-29T15:21:52.977" LastActivityDate="2018-10-29T15:27:12.720" Title="How to split or manage a PBI/User Story in multiple sprints for different task types" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;&lt;product-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25144" CreationDate="2018-10-29T13:33:49.083" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is a bit difficult to answer without knowing your team's dynamics. That said, it's always good to understand and verbalize the goals of each event and to make sure those goals are met throughout the ceremony, even if things are running smoothly. Timeboxes are only there to ensure you don't go over the allotted time. In the event you hit the goal of a ceremony early, all the better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work in an environment with a mature team that is really gelling at the moment and I always remind myself: &lt;strong&gt;Individuals and interactions over processes and tools&lt;/strong&gt;. Process takes a backseat to human connection and collaboration. Once the team's effective communication is in good shape, we can focus on the processes that give our team the framework they need to excel. The Scrum framework thrives when the values are embraced. Once those values are embraced, the process and tools become that much more effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33598" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-12-07T14:17:09.813" LastActivityDate="2018-12-07T14:17:09.813" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25146" CreationDate="2018-10-29T13:45:47.787" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have one (or both) of the following two problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your stories are too big. Split them further! Try to follow the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST method&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your Sprints are too short. Make them longer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would prefer the first solution. But, if you've already split your stories as much as you can, then it would be preferable to have longer Sprints than to always be carrying &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; over two Sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;when we push to the staging environment for UAT we need to push the whole release in one go. [...]  This means that the UAT can't be the same sprint as Development, no matter how long we make the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One approach I read recently was to have two separate Definitions of Done (DoD). The first (up to but not including UAT) would cause the story to burn down, but on the Sprint board it would remain in a 'waiting for UAT' column. The second DoD would be for when it's deployed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-10-29T15:25:31.073" LastActivityDate="2018-10-29T15:25:31.073" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25146" CreationDate="2018-10-29T14:03:39.950" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great question. It sounds like your backlog has a bottleneck at the UAT state of development. Scrum.org has addressed the bottleneck issue by infusing Kanban practices into Scrum to provide hyper-transparency into scenarios like the one you've described. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having an ever-growing Sprint Backlog is an artifact of this kind of bottleneck, resulting in a sprint backlog that is hard to manage because the list of work items continues to grow. This is addressed by &lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumorg-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/drupal/2018-05/Little%E2%80%99s%20Law%20for%20Professional%20Scrum%20with%20Kanban.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Little's Law&lt;/a&gt;. In essence, the fundamental result of Little’s Law is that for a given process, in general, the more things that you work on at any given time (on average) the longer it is going to take for each of those things to finish (on average).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Limiting Work In Progress (WIP) and having your team understand its own definition of workflow can unearth the reasons behind this bottleneck without the need to duplicate efforts from sprint-to-sprint. It sounds odd, but slowing down the workflow by limiting WIP is effective in understanding why items stall in certain states (in your case, UAT), giving you the opportunity to address those issues while also providing a mechanism to efficiently complete work. Blockers and inefficiencies become qualifiable when using these techniques, thus making them easier to address.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this can be found in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumorg-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/drupal/2018-04/2018%20Kanban%20Guide%20for%20Scrum%20Teams_0.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2018 Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams&lt;/a&gt;. Hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33598" LastEditorUserId="33598" LastEditDate="2018-10-29T14:09:11.493" LastActivityDate="2018-10-29T14:09:11.493" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25146" CreationDate="2018-10-29T15:27:12.720" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your UAT process is currently external to your development team, and your delivery and deployment are tightly coupled. Without changing your underlying process or business assumptions, there is no way to make what you’re &lt;em&gt;currently&lt;/em&gt; doing “agile.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you can:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;select a more approrpiate agile framework, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;improve your agile practices,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;redesign your development and delivery processes, or &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;accept the costs of doing business with your current implementation as-is.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While different answers may provide you with various potential solutions, they will typically fall within one of these four buckets. Which of the available options you choose will largely be a &lt;em&gt;business&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;political&lt;/em&gt; decision, so be sure to factor that into your decsion-making process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thanks but when we push to the staging environment for UAT we need to push the whole release in one go. This allows us to treat it like a dry run testing our production deployment. This means that the UAT can't be the same sprint as Development, no matter how long we make the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite the original question, the real problems, &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/25146/how-to-split-or-manage-a-pbi-user-story-in-multiple-sprints-for-different-task-t#comment31582_25148&quot;&gt;as described in comments&lt;/a&gt;, are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;UAT is an external process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The UAT team and process are not internal to the development team, and therefore outside the span of control.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Delivery and release of each increment are tightly coupled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By equating delivery with release, especially with an external dependency, your process can’t meet the Definition of Done within a single iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you acknowledge these two built-in process problems, you can begin evaluating solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Potential Solutions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a large potential pool of possible solutions to your problems. Which ones are politically palatable, and which ones make business sense to your organization, are going to vary greatly from company to company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In no particular order, some of your options include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do Lean or Kanban, not Scrum.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though the question wasn’t tagged Scrum, the notion of “Sprints” is generally a sign that a team is trying to follow Scrum. However, if you are routinely unable to meet your Sprint Goals within a single iteration for institutionalized reasons that will not change, then Scrum may not be the right framework for you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Internalize UAT.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If UAT is outside the team, it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; possible to bring it into the team. Whether or not that’s something your company wants to do is a completely separate issue. It’s possible, so don’t dismiss the notion simply because it’s not the way the process is set up today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Scrum Master or agile coach should actively educate senior leadership on fundamental process problems like this. Allow the executive team to earn &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; paycheck by solving organizational process problems.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Decouple delivery from deployment.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an agile framework, each cycle or iteration should deliver a &lt;em&gt;potentially&lt;/em&gt; shippable increment of work. However, you don’t actually &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to deploy it just because it was delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many agile teams use feature toggles and other continuous delivery practices to enable the team to deliver features at Sprint boundaries (or even more often), without necessarily having to &lt;em&gt;deploy&lt;/em&gt; those changes to non-development environments. By removing deployment to your UAT environment from your Definition of Done and leaving it up to them to enable feature toggles when they’re ready, you create the ability to decouple those elements of your process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this means any issues discovered in UAT will need to be sent back to the Product Backlog or input queue as new work to be estimated, prioritized, and scheduled in accordance with your agile framework. You have lots of flexibility in how you do this, but the one non-negotiable is that &lt;strong&gt;you cannot have an external process that hijacks or bypasses your internal agile process.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By choosing to have separate teams or an external testing process, management &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; accept the trade-off that UAT and deployment are out-of-band, and that the external processes can only create new work for the team at iteration boundaries and  through the consumption of team resources that must be pulled from other activities. One way or another, this is true regardless of the agile (or even non-agile) framework you’re using!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other solutions possible, too. However, what they all have in common is that you (the collective and organizational “you”) must re-evaluate your current assumptions, and then inspect-and-adapt until you have achieved a more efficient process. Note that &lt;strong&gt;accepting the drag on productivity and financial costs of continuing to do business the way you do today&lt;/strong&gt; is also a legitimate business decision, but that management can’t have both “business as usual” and “continuous improvement” at the same time. TAANSTAFL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-10-29T15:27:12.720" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25082" CreationDate="2018-10-29T17:50:30.407" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We decided to scrap the idea of email integration altogether and migrate all JIRA requests to JIRA alone, relying on comments for discussion and the notifications to provide email alerts. This cuts our email down tremendously, and we capture more in comments than we could ever find in an email search. Plus, it makes auditing a lot easier. This may or may not work for others, but breaking the email habit is worth the effort for us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33946" LastActivityDate="2018-10-29T17:50:30.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24845" CreationDate="2018-10-29T21:29:32.237" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Beyond what is the in the tactical role description, I've always looked at the role as the judge or arbitrator when the team can't come to consensus on the decision that needs to be made to keep the delivery on track, hence they are the &quot;owner&quot; of the decision. They need to listen and understand the engineers point of views and differences thereof, as well as that of the business stakeholders. Servant leadership and empathy play critically into this role, if the PO is to be successful in managing such complex matrixed relationships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24110" LastActivityDate="2018-10-29T21:29:32.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25153" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-10-30T02:36:00.640" Score="1" ViewCount="2221" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to print a specific date range from a gantt chart view in ms project 2016, but all that prints out is the whole project. Can you help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33950" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-11-11T23:14:47.180" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T23:14:47.180" Title="Printing specific date range in ms project 2016" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25153" CreationDate="2018-10-30T19:41:18.387" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Dates in print settings only affect the timescale.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the built-in &quot;Date Range&quot; filter (in the Data group of the View ribbon) to show only tasks that start or finish within a certain range.  (It's an interactive filter that will prompt you for the two dates.)  After applying the filter, try printing again. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2018-10-30T19:41:18.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25126" CreationDate="2018-11-01T06:26:21.593" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question involves a typical Finish&gt;Start Dependency, or what Projectlibre calls &quot;Predecessor/Successor&quot;. i.e.: In order to Start &quot;Test Operation&quot; you must first Finish &quot;Install Device&quot;. As the gentleman states, you must first tell the program the order of your tasks, or Predecessor/Successor. You can create a dependency in ProjectLibre in at least two ways:&#xA;Go to Tasks&gt; click the Gantt chart button. In the Gantt chart, left-click-hold on the task &quot;Install Device&quot;, a chain icon will appear with a line attached to it. Drag the chain icon/line to the task &quot;Test Operation&quot;. Now click on the line you've just created, and a pop up will allow you to select FF=Finish-Finish, SS=Start-Start, FS=Finish-Start or SF=Start-Finish; these are the types of dependencies. The initials become pretty self explanatory after some use. &#xA;Another way to create a dependency is to type in the Task Id number in the Predecessor column in your Task spreadsheet. In your case, you type in &quot;1&quot; into the predecessor cell for Test Device. You then click on Information in the Task ribbon, and select the type of dependency you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33967" LastActivityDate="2018-11-01T06:26:21.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25157" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-11-01T08:13:24.293" Score="4" ViewCount="168" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been working for 4 years in IT field (as Developer and QA Lead) and I've just joined this company on Sept 2018 as System Analyst. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some background of the company and the project we are doing at this moment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Company has CMMI Level 3 certification.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team are consists of developers who just joined the company 2 months ago, while the PM been working for the company for 8 years.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project initiated 2 months ago.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This project has no fundamental concepts / base for demo&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team is practicing agile methodology (My first time with agile)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what I noticed about current SOP/Workflow of the team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All user requirements has not been properly documented and signed-off so far.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After gathered requirements, the PM instructed developers to code the solution (according to PM's idea/visualization), while the solutions has not been documented yet and discuss with client for confirmation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;While solutions are either still in development stage or has been completed for demo, PM send the designed process flow to client for reviews. Client feedback with changes (sometimes minor, sometimes major) and PM requested the team to modify according to feedback within next few hours / days.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PM always received call from client, after the call, 90% of the time there will have some changes (modify existing features or add new features) on the system, and sometimes the team need to get it done in next few hours / days.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Today the PM discussed this Idea A with me and the developers. I've documented it and send to PM for reviews. After next few days, when we mentioned about Idea A, the PM will questioned why are we using Idea A as it is wrong, and requested us to change to Idea B.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a healthy project management? I've voiced my concerns to the PM that we should have proper documentation (URS, FRS and etc) and sign off to prevent frequent changes of ideas/request and to buy time for developers, but the PM said this client does not bother about it and will not follow the procedures. What should we do to handle these scenarios?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33968" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-04T12:39:30.783" LastActivityDate="2018-11-05T18:59:06.560" Title="Development solution rushed prior to agreement on requirements - is this a healthy project management?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24845" CreationDate="2018-11-01T08:58:03.290" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest looking at the major roles in an agile team. It's critical to understand everyone's role holistically so that it all makes sense. If the team has latched onto a specific term &quot;owner&quot;, it may be because they're seeking authority or &lt;em&gt;control&lt;/em&gt; and not looking at everything involved. Highlight all the roles and responsibilities and let them figure out where they want to be based on their values and skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Manager&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Owner &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum Master &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum Team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While every situation is different, having clarity for the roles, motivations and responsibilities will let you adapt your team for your size and goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scaled Agile Framework has some good materials to draw out the distinctions.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scaledagileframework.com/product-owner/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.scaledagileframework.com/product-owner/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RaWz0.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RaWz0.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33970" LastEditorUserId="33970" LastEditDate="2018-11-01T17:35:47.800" LastActivityDate="2018-11-01T17:35:47.800" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25159" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-11-01T13:35:06.463" Score="4" ViewCount="1141" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had been in a situation where details about the task and the target to be followed have been explained to the team. However, in spite of multiple follow-ups, they fail to complete the defined tasks in the given timeline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They come up with reasons such as 'I was occupied with personal works', 'I was not well', etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, at the end, I will be responsible to answer to the client for the missed deadline. How to deal with this situation with the client and convince him?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33974" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-02T15:23:45.357" LastActivityDate="2018-11-05T18:42:48.930" Title="How to deal with a team that fails to complete a task?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25159" CreationDate="2018-11-01T13:46:47.460" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_value_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Earned Value Management&lt;/a&gt;.  I'd re characterize the problem; the problem isn't that your team isn't completing the task, the problem is that the project manager is unable to communicate to the sponsors the status of the project and is unable to identify or execute interventions to rescue the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First thing is to set intermediate milestones.  If you measure task completion at task completion, you have already failed.  There is no opportunity to intervene or rescue.  Task completion needs to be measured at a time when intervention is still possible.  If the task is &quot;Deliver the documentation for project Foo&quot;, and it takes 2 weeks, but can be rushed for 1 week, then you need a milestone at 1 week.  That milestone has to be defined - e.g. &quot;At 1 week I expect an outline and rough draft; the second week will involve wordsmithing, quality checking and peer review.&quot;   If you don't have that at the 1 week milestone you can add resources, drop scope or negotiate with the sponsors for an extension (perhaps explicitly invoke technical debt).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project manager's primary responsibility is to at any instant report to management a well formed estimate of project completion.  (I estimate that there is a 90% chance that the project will be delivered on January 15, 2019, and a 1% chance that it will be delayed beyond February 2nd).  The only way to fulfill that responsibility is to understand risks to schedule and issues.  People will get ill, they will have personal problems; that is a natural consequence of working with people rather than parts.  That estimate of completion, and the opportunity to take action to increase confidence in that estimate relies on understanding the status of the underlying deliverables and work products. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2018-11-01T13:46:47.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25161" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25200" CreationDate="2018-11-01T14:19:22.350" Score="2" ViewCount="89" Body="&lt;p&gt;My current team is quite technically young (close to all of us have less than a year presence in my company), in the software framework that my company is using. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The person who has the most experience in that framework, has one-year and half experience and has no prior work experiences, except than this one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest of the team is gone or is working on different projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet we have projects to deliver. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have discussed with my CTO but also with the team about the best way to organize this and I think honestly, this is the optimal way, having think about it again and again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is to make everyone contribute with what they know e.g the senior guy who has the techincal knowledge of the framework but not great software-work experiences and one of our new guy who has great software skills-experiences but no great knowledge of the platform. That means putting on hold until ready the idea of feature teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet someone from an other team came up with this idea, that I disagree with&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Putting our 'senior' person on the coding and asking the rest of the team to work on more minor projects work until they have the necessary skills.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As said earlier, the aim is to create feature teams, each team who will have a good/great contributor and also to train people to get them on the train. And also to deliver the projects we have at hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is the following and is more of a way to say &quot;convince me that I'm wrong&quot;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone tried with a new team, to create feature teams when &quot;Putting our 'senior' person on the coding and asking the rest of the team to work on more minor projects work until they have the necessary skills.&quot; ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13597" LastActivityDate="2018-11-10T03:14:08.553" Title="Creating feature teams when technical teams are still technically immature" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25162" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25163" CreationDate="2018-11-01T14:40:42.483" Score="10" ViewCount="303" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am just getting into user stories (read some blogs and watched some of Mike Cohn's presentations).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current understanding is that the story is a vertical slice of the system.&#xA;Stories are not &quot;Add database so that customer's data is permanently stored&quot; or something horizontally similar.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories are about &quot;&lt;strong&gt;What&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; instead of &quot;&lt;strong&gt;How&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the project/product that I'm working with can be thought as a vending machine.&#xA;So let's say I have the following story in the project called &quot;vending machine&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a customer,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want to receive a receipt,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I can prove my purchase later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This story seems to depend strongly on the printer that can physically print a receipt, but let's say that development has been kicked off but hardware hasn't arrived yet.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can write business logic and GUI, but I cannot integrate with the printer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I can create an implementation that would &quot;print&quot; receipt to console output.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it ok to extract task out of this story and consider the story to be done?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The task would be something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Create xerox printer implementation for [Printer] interface&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can potentially mean that all the stories can be completed before hardware&#xA;arrives, but it leaves us with a bunch of (concrete) tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the one hand, it feels OK, if Product Owner (or whoever accepts the story) understands and accepts that constraint/compromise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, it can be said&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;How come you say that you have completed the story, but you cannot demo it?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;[Hardware arrives]. Well, the hardware is here. Install our software and let's ship it.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  -No, we need 2 weeks for integration.&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, it seems to come down communication (second 'C' in the card, conversation, and confirmation) and common understanding (confirmation).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My concern is that I'm new into this and this is a first and so far only idea how to approach this situation and experience shows that following blindly through initial ideas can lead to dark corners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I have accepted @Sarov's answer, but I would like to leave what I have learned from this thread:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multiple answers and comments brought to my attention that (done) stories should provide value. &quot;How&quot; shouldn't matter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;@Todd A Jacobs points out that the story can be flawed since the value can be delivered without having an external dependency.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33975" LastEditorUserId="11970" LastEditDate="2018-12-07T11:57:56.833" LastActivityDate="2018-12-07T18:32:37.643" Title="Is it OK to defer implementation detail and consider user story to be done?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;definition-of-done&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25162" CreationDate="2018-11-01T14:53:45.080" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you note, user stories should be vertical slices. Another way of looking at that is that they should, by themselves, &lt;em&gt;provide value&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should only burn down stories once those stories can provide value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you may be able to &lt;em&gt;split&lt;/em&gt; and/or &lt;em&gt;rework&lt;/em&gt; stories. As a quick example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recall that stories do not contain implementation details. You could, for example, accomplish your story another way - by allowing the user to enter an email, so the receipt gets emailed to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would then be able to finish the first story, and create a second one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a customer,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want to be able to receive a receipt without providing an email,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I can keep my email private.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...Which could add a secondary, 'print receipt' option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-11-01T14:53:45.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25162" CreationDate="2018-11-01T15:21:06.093" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great question. It all really boils down to answering one critical question: will the minimal amount of work identified in this card still provide value? This question should be answered by the Development team and the Product Owner in tandem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Making sure your work is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;independent from other work, negotiable with your Product Owner, valuable, estimate-able, small, and testable&lt;/a&gt; is a good model for answering the question above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it ok to extract task out of this story and consider the story to be done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;^ this is a question for your Product Owner, who is responsible for maximizing the value of the work your team completes. Leaning on and refining your &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#artifact-transparency-done&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;definition of done&lt;/a&gt; is equally as important as negotiating with your PO on valuable work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, there is no real definitive answer to your question other than to collaborate with your Product Owner to understand and negotiate what's considered valuable. This exercise will not only help with this card, but all subsequent cards moving forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33598" LastEditorUserId="7944" LastEditDate="2018-12-07T18:32:37.643" LastActivityDate="2018-12-07T18:32:37.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24857" CreationDate="2018-11-01T15:35:36.457" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;coming in a bit late, but I've done this a few times, though not specific to Scrum: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting an honest evaluation of your team's confidence in stuff like this (launch dates, complete requirements) is really valuable, but challenging:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Honesty: Self-reporting on the spot is tough -- you want people to answer somewhat thoughtfully, but also without influence from other team members. AND without feeling like they're committing to something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ideally, figure out a stress-free way to do this &lt;em&gt;anonymously&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt; Takes away the pressure of being &quot;right&quot;, but also gives people time to be thoughtful in their choice.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Trajectory: If you're only asked once, it can feel like your answer will be taken as a commitment (&quot;We're way behind, but &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Jane&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; said three months ago she was really confident in the date -- what gives???&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ideally, poll &lt;em&gt;regularly&lt;/em&gt;, and track the trend over time.&lt;/strong&gt; Seeing the line trend down or up is more valuable than any individual number.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've done this manually on a few projects, and it's been super useful to see things like: Launch date confidence was low, so we probed a bit more, found out team wasn't confident we'd got all the reqs captured, so even though all the boxes were being checked, no one was sure how anything would come together in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So useful, but a bit of a pain logistically (extra busywork to send it out, collect results, calculate stuff, etc.). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Pain enough that I actually just wrote an app (&lt;a href=&quot;http://projectpoll.co&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ProjectPoll.co&lt;/a&gt;) that does this for you; if you're interested, feel free to make an account and ping me, I'd be happy to set you up with a project to try it on.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33977" LastActivityDate="2018-11-01T15:35:36.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25161" CreationDate="2018-11-01T15:50:16.997" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've implemented a similar measurement twice in a start-up environment and it didn't work as expected because people left for a more directed way of learning aiming to validate their skills with a bachelor / master's degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The initial decision had implications, requiring me to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;. plan how to educate them (and help when questions arise and when I could);&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;. review their work giving them feedback in how to improve (with CI/CD this is somehow implicit as well and becomes more of a standard);&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;. still ensure things get delivered (and assume major responsibility on this).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was a process that didn't take longer than 3-6 months and was rather intense. This was good for me in terms of managing people apart from doing my work and I was willing to do it. The problem was that people left 1-2 months after.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, it appears to me the proposal has continuity in mind. It comes with a cost but nonetheless, it's an investment that can bear its fruits as long as there's commitment from both senior member and other's. It can also have consequences such as losing the senior member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, from my experience, I agree with the person from the other team only if both requirements are in place (this reduces risks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;. the resources have long-term contracts and / or you know its within their plans to continue in the firm for at least 1 year;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;. the senior member is willing to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27189" LastActivityDate="2018-11-01T15:50:16.997" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25157" CreationDate="2018-11-01T15:52:14.027" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Certainly doesn't seem healthy as described :/. I can't speak to all the points, but one piece:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you're churning on features without having demoed anything, this isn't great. I'm not sure you need more documentation, but you do need to get into a repeatable cycle of &quot;Build a working piece, show it to the client, collaboratively decide the next most important thing to build.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they want changes after seeing it, fine and good -- they need to be prioritized with the rest of the items on the list.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not getting to working/demoable software before the client or PM is asking for changes, OR if the changes are always top priority, then you'll never get into a rhythm of delivering working software, and the project will be predictably fragile and stressful. :(&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fast turnaround demanded for changes and additions is also sketchy -- it's impossible to get into a sane dev cycle if every new whim is top priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure others can chime in with more specific insight -- best of luck though. Don't over-worry about documentation, but do insist on a sane dev cycle, prioritized reqs, and frequent demos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33977" LastActivityDate="2018-11-01T15:52:14.027" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25159" CreationDate="2018-11-01T17:48:20.543" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a not a single answer to this questions. Its imperative to understand how a team should perform so that you can spot dysfunction and respond appropriately. You need to understand the dysfunction to address the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One resource that comes to mind is the book &quot;&lt;strong&gt;the 5 dysfunctions of a team&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;. &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ios2q.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ios2q.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While what you mention initially sounds like &quot;avoidance of accountability&quot; and &quot;Lack of committment&quot; this may come from a deadline that is ridiculous or other requirements that are overbearing but because there's an &quot;absence of trust&quot; the team can't talk about the issues and things end up derailing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you refocus yourself as a &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;leader of people&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (regardless of your title) which is much more than a manager (of anything, people, projects, deliverables, clients, etc). It is how well you are able to lead that affects the performance of the team and acceptance of the client. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Driving the team through control will fail and backfire as you'll invite the bottom four items in the pyramid. Servant Leadership will serve you better. (think agile, read about scrum master principles etc). Anything from John Maxwell on leadership is a good read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another resource I'd suggest is &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Extreme Ownership - How Navy Seals Lead and Win&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;. It highlights that given two teams - one high performing and one low performing - swapping leaders shows that performance follows the leader (chapter 2 - No Bad Teams, Only Bad Leaders). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33970" LastEditorUserId="33970" LastEditDate="2018-11-01T17:53:41.267" LastActivityDate="2018-11-01T17:53:41.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25169" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25171" CreationDate="2018-11-01T17:56:22.237" Score="1" ViewCount="118" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a PhD student and I'm new to Management StackExchange. I'm researching on the kind of contracts that are designed for consultants, and I had a few generic questions about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Since there is a distinct discovery phase in most projects, the purpose of which is to determine whether the project is to be abandoned or taken forward, do consultants get paid for recommending that projects be abandoned?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do employers set deadlines for discovery phase?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help, references, data would be great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33979" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-11-01T19:27:43.570" LastActivityDate="2018-11-05T18:16:28.730" Title="Are consultants paid for abandoning project?" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;contracts&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25169" CreationDate="2018-11-01T19:49:47.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The consultant is paid pursuant to the contract.  If the project itself is a research / investigation type project, the most appropriate type of contract would be T&amp;amp;M.  Therefore, the consultant would have earned and be paid no matter how the contract terminated, unless there was some type of dispute.  Assuming the consultant did nothing wrong, then (s)he would be paid up to when the project was abandoned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-11-01T19:49:47.120" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25169" CreationDate="2018-11-01T20:02:27.027" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Since there is a distinct discovery phase in most projects, the purpose of which is to determine whether the project is to be abandoned or taken forward, do consultants get paid for recommending that projects be abandoned?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Do employers set deadlines for discovery phase?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The deliverable for a discovery phase is usually a document, report, or professional opinion. The contract would typically specify the nature or format of the deliverable itself, rather than define an expected outcome. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The contract will also typically define one or more performance periods, as agreed between the consultant and the client. This is often carefully negotiated to set expectations, rather than simply dictated by one side or the other. However, contracts and contract law are complicated, so your mileage may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What’s Been Agreed Between the Parties?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A contract is an &lt;em&gt;agreement&lt;/em&gt; between two or more parties. In this case, the parties are typically the client and the consultant. They can essentially agree to anything they like, within the constraints of the law. Details like payment terms, deadlines, notice periods, and deliverables are negotiable, and should be spelled out in the contract and agreed to by all signatories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consultants are not generally paid to “abandon” a project, or even to make a final determination on the viability of a project. As a rule of thumb, a consultant has an advisory role, rather than a role of delegated authority. However, see the earlier proviso about contracts allowing any sort of agreement the parties mutually arrive at. Some consulting arrangements are for advisory work, while others are performance-based agreements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since a consultant is often retained for their professional opinion, that opinion often carries weight. If the opinion is that a project can’t be done within the organization’s timeline or constraints, then it’s up to the client’s &lt;em&gt;management team&lt;/em&gt; to decide how to deal with that information. However, a savvy consultant would never sign a contract that puts the consultant on the hook for deliverables over which the consultant has no control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the answer is “it depends.” But unless the contract is fixed price, fixed scope, and has no sane escape clauses for either side, &lt;strong&gt;a discovery phase is just a means for the consultant and client to &lt;em&gt;collaborate&lt;/em&gt; on the scope and deliverables for potential follow-on activities.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-11-01T23:33:06.633" LastActivityDate="2018-11-01T23:33:06.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25159" CreationDate="2018-11-01T20:53:13.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have indicated a few reasons why a task was behind schedule but, in reality, there are far more variables involved that affect schedule performance that a couple of personal reasons.  Work is probabilistic and personal reasons, environmental reasons, external dependency reasons, aggressive target reasons, and then a ton of random or aleatory reasons will affect where you come in on schedule in both favorable and unfavorable ways.  So, how to respond to the team and how to respond to your client really depends on the drivers of why you are late.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your team will always have personal blockers that affect their individual performance and they will also have natural variability in their performance.  Those things should have been considered when you created your schedule and your planned duration.  Sometimes it goes your way, other times it doesn't.  But if you planned well, you should have both favorable and unfavorable variances that net out to a reasonable over or under schedule.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you have have a credible way to manage your schedule so you can unearth variances early and you can both mitigate and communicate them out early and often.  Use critical path management, critical chain, earned schedule as a few alternatives to monitor.  When you start seeing you're late, you inform your customer of the forecasted variance and your plan to mitigate.  Sometimes mitigation fails and you need to educate your client of that possibility.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, this is what PM is.  It is managing risks and variances and communicating the same to all of your stakeholders. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-11-01T20:53:13.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25174" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-11-02T15:37:02.993" Score="0" ViewCount="921" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am having an issue where MS Project 2016 is prorating the actual cost figures for cost resources that have been set to accrue at the end of the tasks. I have tried everything I can think about and the software continues to prorate the figures. For example, I have changed the Default Fixed Cost Accrual to End in Options, and I have also deselected the Actual costs are always calculated by Project option. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can remember it working before when updating without prorating the actual cost figures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any assistance on this matter would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regards&#xA;Calvin &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33989" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-01-16T22:42:52.483" LastActivityDate="2021-05-14T11:06:40.623" Title="MS Project 2016 updating Actual Cost figures for Cost Resources that are set to accrue at the end of the task" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24969" CreationDate="2018-11-02T17:57:59.103" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Answering your question directly, the only acceptable reason to call out to management is when they are not performing as expected, but as it has been mentioned, they need to &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; very clearly what are the expectations. I personally prefer to do as much as possible to sort the issue with them/the team directly before involving management. I think you need to have an individual conversation with them. The best way to do this is by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Setting yourself in a mindset of a resourceful and empathetic individual, make them feel that you really care about them and you are trying to understand what is going on&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Expressing &lt;em&gt;very concisely&lt;/em&gt; the behavior that you observe, but don’t “make the person a problem”. Talk about what you are observing. One way to do it is saying: “we are expecting that tasks get completed every sprint, how do you feel about your tasks? can you help me understand if there's anything getting in your way and how we can help you?” A one not recommended way would be to say: “You are not finishing your tasks and you are a very negative person”&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be incremental. Try to address one or two issues every time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure that it is very clear for them the ways of working and I would even create a team-wide document to explain behavioral patterns that are helpful to work in teams. They might not be completely aware of the &quot;harm&quot; they are causing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you should also get some clarity on what is the perception from other members of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-11-02T17:57:59.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25157" CreationDate="2018-11-03T12:03:21.580" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The team is practicing agile methodology (My first time with agile)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile isn't really a methodology. It's an &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;approach to doing software development&lt;/a&gt; that includes valuing responding to change over following a plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems likely you are following an agile framework, possibly &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt;? If you are working in sprints, then you are likely to be using Scrum. It would be worth finding out more from your organisation about what framework they are following as this will allow us to respond in a more specific way to your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some issues with the current approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the PM instructed developers to code the solution (according to PM's idea/visualization)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not an agile practice. Typically we encourage the people that do the implementation to produce the design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Client feedback with changes (sometimes minor, sometimes major) and PM requested the team to modify according to feedback within next few hours / days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Client feedback is valuable and is very much part of the agile approach. However, it is unusual to respond to all feedback immediately. A common approach would be to receive the feedback, review it, prioritise it (alongside other existing requirements) and then bring it to the next planning session if required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;PM always received call from client&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not unusual to have a &lt;em&gt;primary&lt;/em&gt; point of contact with the client. However, there is usually a lot of value in having members of the delivery team talking with them as well. It would certainly not make sense to put up barriers to communication between the delivery team and the person providing requirements/feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the PM will questioned why are we using Idea A as it is wrong, and requested us to change to Idea B&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is clearly a disfunction. It would be worth getting the delivery team together and speaking with the Project Manager. Suggest a different approach, where the team takes more ownership of development. If you have an &lt;em&gt;agile coach&lt;/em&gt; in your organisation, this would be a good opportunity to get them involved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2018-11-04T22:33:10.580" LastActivityDate="2018-11-04T22:33:10.580" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24845" CreationDate="2018-11-03T16:18:17.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll have to ask Ken Schwaber or Jeff Sutherland where they coined the term from. The source of the term does not appear to be publicly documented, but they likely introduced it &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(software_development)#History&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;somewhere between 1995-2001.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A Non-Canonical Etymology&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the 90s, a number of people were examining agile practices and ideas. Scrum and XP are two of the frameworks developed during this period, with a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_programming#Origins&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;formal definition of XP&lt;/a&gt; apparently predating that of Scrum by a few years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum role of Product Owner bears a close relationship to the role of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules/customer.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;on site customer&lt;/a&gt; in eXtreme Programming. Arguably, XP uses terms that speak to development team members, while Scrum uses terms that try to appeal more to business stakeholders. (This type of business-oriented terminology is even more apparent in frameworks like SAFe.) It could be further argued that the on-site customer is a role that is defined largely from the team's internal perspective, whereas a Product Owner is role with delegated responsibility from the &lt;em&gt;organizational&lt;/em&gt; perspective. Consider the following examination of &quot;ownership&quot; to see why this may be so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, the notion of &quot;ownership&quot; stems from the role's obligation to be solely accountable for maximizing the value of the product under development. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-po&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide says&lt;/a&gt;, in part:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is the sole person responsible for managing the Product Backlog...The Product Owner is one person, not a committee...For the Product Owner to succeed, the entire organization must respect his or her decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, I've always interpreted the &quot;ownership&quot; portion of the term as a way of ensuring that the Product Owner role is a singular person rather than a committee, which in turn is intended to streamline the framework and reduce the organizational burden of providing on-site customers. In governance frameworks, the roles of Application Owner or Data Owner are often structured in a similar way, in order to facilitate communications and create accountability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This chain of reasoning provides a pragmatic explanation for the introduction of the term, and provides some explanation for its utility value over other related terms. However, only the framework's authors can canonically ascribe how the term was decided upon for Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-11-03T16:18:17.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24969" CreationDate="2018-11-05T18:08:14.130" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest that you do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;First, buy each one of them a cup of coffee.&quot;  Separately.  Frankly present each of them with the concerns that you've just raised here.  Then, &lt;em&gt;&quot;shut up and listen.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;  If necessary, clarify that you're not trying to &quot;get them in trouble,&quot; but rather to better understand why their behavior is noticeably different and, in your view, working against the general progress of the team.  No, they don't &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt; &quot;work for you,&quot; as you should stress, but &quot;the project, itself&quot; &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; your delegated responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is quite possible that you will discover something that will enable you to make the problem go away.  It is also very likely that you will be surprised, and maybe, challenged (in a good way).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, it's time to have a private meeting with the responsible manager and to present the matter to him or her.  Then, again, &lt;em&gt;&quot;shut up and listen.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;  It is quite possible that you will be told something &lt;em&gt;else&lt;/em&gt; that will make the problem go away.  Or, you might hear something that relates to the approach that you are now taking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Have an open mind and, generally, a closed mouth.&quot;  You are a professional, and your &lt;em&gt;professional&lt;/em&gt; responsibility is to the project.  You will now have solicited inputs, first from the team members whom you have singled out, then from the project's management. Carefully consider everything that you hear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any questions that you may have about how you should &quot;act differently&quot; going forward should first be presented to the manager for consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34015" LastActivityDate="2018-11-05T18:08:14.130" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25169" CreationDate="2018-11-05T18:16:28.730" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I very-carefully spell out on our website, &lt;code&gt;sundialservices.com&lt;/code&gt;, the first step in any engagement is what we refer to as &quot;present-state analysis.&quot;  &lt;em&gt;(We are ordinarily engaged concerning &lt;strong&gt;existing&lt;/strong&gt; software projects that are in some sort of trouble.)&lt;/em&gt;  This analysis is always-the-first, paid-for step in the engagement, tasked to determine what (if anything) should be done next, and whether-or-not any viable next-step actually exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sort of analysis must not be performed &quot;by a salesman,&quot; because &quot;a salesman&quot; is often the sort of person who got the project into hot-water in the first place.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It must be done thoroughly and objectively, &quot;as an end unto itself,&quot; by a consultant who has only the client's best interests in mind. It very-specifically must be unclouded by any thoughts of whether there is any future business, &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; whether the consultant's company will have any part in that business should it come.  (Sometimes, we help to produce and then to evaluate RFP's that we are specifically excluded from bidding on.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34015" LastActivityDate="2018-11-05T18:16:28.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25162" CreationDate="2018-11-05T18:23:54.033" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps I'm being &quot;contrarian&quot; when I suggest that a &lt;em&gt;(true ...)&lt;/em&gt; &quot;user story&quot; ought not be expected to contain any &lt;em&gt;implementation&lt;/em&gt; detail at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(After all, &quot;your 'user' has no idea at all 'how your software works.'&quot;  And, well, you don't know everything about how your user does his/her total job, either.  &quot;And never the 'twain shall [entirely] meet.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my &lt;em&gt;modified&lt;/em&gt; version of this popular methodology, &quot;user stories are exactly that – descriptions of what actual users want to do and see.&quot;  &lt;em&gt;Implementation plans&lt;/em&gt; are produced by the team, being the only group that truly knows the software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Implementation plans (and schedules) are drawn up entirely by the team, giving careful consideration to all of the supplied user-stories, and sometimes call for new(!) user-stories to be obtained as clarification.  I don't ask or expect users to directly give me those plans in their stories.  The team conceives and perfects the plans, then holds them up against the stories to see if they match, and to decide if we've done the best job that we possibly can for that user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34015" LastActivityDate="2018-11-05T18:23:54.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25161" CreationDate="2018-11-05T18:32:12.653" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If any such person exists in your company, your team may need to engage an &quot;internal mentor&quot; or &quot;internal consultant&quot; who can be tasked with assisting your team in understanding the challenges that face them and with controlling the technical risks of your implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not mean that this person &quot;will write the code,&quot; thus obviating the benefit and most of the role of your team, but rather that (s)he will set the course that your team should best-follow in these uncharted-to-you waters.  This mentor serves as a subject-matter expert (SME) and has the responsibility to guide you as to what is the best thing to do without being tasked with actually doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Face it – the probability is high right now that one or several of you are gonna make mistakes simply because you didn't (yet) know that you were making one.  Your bridge-team needs to take a &lt;strong&gt;pilot&lt;/strong&gt; aboard, because, even though most-of-ye more or less know how to steer the boat, &lt;em&gt;&quot;here, there be dragons ...&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34015" LastActivityDate="2018-11-05T18:32:12.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25159" CreationDate="2018-11-05T18:42:48.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;I had personal matters&quot; ... &quot;I was not well&quot; ...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This project &lt;em&gt;sucks&lt;/em&gt; and I was interviewing with another employer ...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &quot;eAndy&quot; said, you must become &quot;a leader of &lt;em&gt;people.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;  Everyone has 'personal matters,' and everyone gets sick now and then, but if they're giving you these 'reasons' for why the work isn't getting done – &lt;em&gt;(a)&lt;/em&gt; these are merely excuses; &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;(b)&lt;/em&gt; they're serving them to you either because they don't feel that they can speak with you freely, or because they assume that you just don't care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any of the &quot;5 dysfunctions of a team&quot; could be at-play here; most likely all of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, what I try to do is to get the team to some neutral off-site location, then present myself as someone who is both &quot;part of your team&quot; and &quot;responsible to the folks upstairs, as in fact we all are,&quot; and try to clear the air.  Then, with both my future talking and my entire body-language, try to get a breakthrough.  Try to – in utter and complete confidence if possible – clear the air.  &lt;em&gt;If&lt;/em&gt; you can undo that very first bottled-up cork, the rest usually come in a rush.  The most important thing that you can do is to &lt;strong&gt;listen,&lt;/strong&gt; and to, with your body language, signal receptivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34015" LastActivityDate="2018-11-05T18:42:48.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25157" CreationDate="2018-11-05T18:53:05.347" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Believe it or not, the real-world answer might be – &lt;em&gt;maybe not, but we have to do it anyway.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Agile,&quot; first of all, is an &lt;em&gt;ideal.&lt;/em&gt; (A valuable and useful perspective, but &quot;an ideal&quot; nonetheless.) As such, it contains certain simplifying assumptions – which might or might not be true – both with regards to &quot;the client&quot; &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; with regards to the circumstances with which &quot;the client&quot; might be dealing.  Fortunately, your team has a PM who has &quot;8 years of experience &lt;em&gt;with this company.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;  (&quot;Hallelujah.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Computer software is very exacting and it takes a long time &lt;strong&gt;($$$!!)&lt;/strong&gt; to develop.  So, the team might be sent forward in a particular direction &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; that direction is fully understood, &lt;em&gt;knowing that&lt;/em&gt; rework will be the result.  Client requirements might be acted-upon &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the client(!) fully knows what the final requirements will turn out to be, or has made (or learned of) the final business decisions that will determine them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's happening here – and this is something that a methodology really is too simple to understand, despite its merits – is a series of &lt;em&gt;educated guesses&lt;/em&gt; that are simultaneously being made at several different levels, both within and above the team.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Computer programming&quot; necessarily demands &quot;absolute certainty&quot; since the machine in question knows only &lt;strong&gt;1&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;0&lt;/strong&gt;, but this &quot;guessing&quot; is being applied to match the effort against real-world business uncertainty with – we hope – as little waste and rework as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also – &quot;once the software is finalized, it will be fixed-in-stone and therefore much harder to change.&quot;  This is &lt;em&gt;another&lt;/em&gt; argument for the &quot;fluidity&quot; that programming methodologies have so much difficulty understanding.  The business might commit to certain aspects of the overall project, as it were, &lt;em&gt;speculatively,&lt;/em&gt; knowing that some portions will need to be reworked but not all of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34015" LastEditorUserId="34015" LastEditDate="2018-11-05T18:59:06.560" LastActivityDate="2018-11-05T18:59:06.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25142" CreationDate="2018-11-05T19:03:56.453" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To extend slightly on David's comment – every company of any size has both &quot;the financial strategists who take a long-term view&quot; &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... &quot;the Corporate Tax Accountants.™&quot;  &lt;strong&gt;:-D&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore – your financial concerns will be &lt;em&gt;simultaneously&lt;/em&gt; concerned with the overall &quot;spend&quot; of the multi-year project, &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; the underlying annual or quarterly cycles.  Of particular importance to you will be the ability to &lt;em&gt;project&lt;/em&gt; future project behavior against both of these perspectives at the same time, and to give responsible management in each case the most pro-active information possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34015" LastActivityDate="2018-11-05T19:03:56.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25130" CreationDate="2018-11-05T19:08:32.137" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a project that I recently managed – moving a manufacturer from &quot;circa-2001 software running on a dying single machine, to an overhauled version of that software running on cloud VMs&quot; – we actually reached &quot;go-live ready&quot; several months before &quot;go-live&quot; actually occurred.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The business elected to delay &quot;go-live&quot; until the moment that &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;it&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; judged to be &quot;most risk-free,&quot; although this meant that the business continued to make changes to the old system which we were obliged to incorporate while retaining &quot;go-live readiness.&quot;  &lt;em&gt;(Fortunately, the go-live still went off &quot;absolutely without a glitch.&quot;  Woo-hoo!)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34015" LastActivityDate="2018-11-05T19:08:32.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25189" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25192" CreationDate="2018-11-07T20:28:53.007" Score="3" ViewCount="162" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have noticed on some job ads where at the near end company states &quot;we do scrum&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm just getting into scrum stuff and I learned little bit about scrumbuts &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/resources/what-scrumbut&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.scrum.org/resources/what-scrumbut&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to assess if company has concerning scurmbuts or do I need to have years of experience with scrum before I can notice these things?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33975" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-08T10:07:35.760" LastActivityDate="2018-12-07T14:33:38.103" Title="How to assess &quot;We do scrum&quot; on a job interview?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25189" CreationDate="2018-11-07T22:52:28.007" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming you're currently not working with Scrum (or other agile frameworks) at the moment, why would you care about ScrumButs? I mean, different companies will have different &quot;maturity levels&quot; on Scrum (some with more buts, some with less). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is a tool with a purpose, not purpose in itself. If you join a company that's not yet mature enough (or with some ScrumButs) you can look at it as an &lt;em&gt;opportunity&lt;/em&gt; to understand how Scrum could &lt;em&gt;help&lt;/em&gt; the project to address the problem. Maybe Scrum isn't the answer; maybe the people who say they're doing Scrum are not quite sure 'what does that mean', either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, you can identify some teams that are &quot;moving towards&quot; agile methodologies when they fall into any of the below characteristics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Very hierarchical teams, not allowing courage to flourish&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No focus on incremental deliverable &lt;em&gt;with business value&lt;/em&gt; at the end of an iteration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Different specific roles within the team for analysis, development, testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only &lt;em&gt;development&lt;/em&gt; team doing Scrum&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hard requirements / deadlines being imposed on the development teams&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note, worth to notice that some companies and projects are still learning the difference between &quot;being agile&quot; and &quot;doing scrum&quot; and using both expressions indiscriminately, but that could also be considered a smell &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-12-07T14:33:38.103" LastActivityDate="2018-12-07T14:33:38.103" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25189" CreationDate="2018-11-08T16:25:56.047" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first team I was in that practiced Scrum did almost every practice wrong. It was also the most enjoyable team I've ever worked on and one of the most agile. I'd be far less worried about if they practice Scrum properly and more concerned about their overall approach to software development. I'd ask questions like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How frequently does the team sit down with end users using the application?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What happens when the teams learn that expected deadlines will not be met?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What does your release process look like?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you make sure your application meets the appropriate level of quality?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you'll learn far more about the way the company works with questions like this than trying to determine if they practice Scrum by the book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-11-08T16:25:56.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25189" CreationDate="2018-11-08T19:24:50.993" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some questions I would ask are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have a potentially shippable increment at the end of every sprint?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many of the problems raised in your retrospectives can't be solved within the team?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is your Product Owner from the business?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How often do you 'carry over' stories from one sprint to the next?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first one is probably the biggest sign of agility. If they are shipping to production every sprint or &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; ship to production every sprint, then it is likely they are in a reasonably good place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-11-08T19:24:50.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3754" CreationDate="2018-11-08T23:07:04.747" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've taken both Scrum &amp;amp; Agile certification training this year in which Lean was presented as a forerunner of Agile, part of the ground out of which Agile grew.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, not totally separate philosophies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2018-11-08T23:07:04.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25196" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25256" CreationDate="2018-11-09T07:58:44.163" Score="6" ViewCount="1907" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working hard on user stories and it is paying off, but something itches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use Jira, but the problem is that from above the backlog seems clumsy.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;We need to write summary for user story so that Jira can display it, but those summaries are sometimes little bit misleading or not helpful to find some particular story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We don't do scrum, we just use backlog and modified kanban board to visualize our progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like backlog (and the board) to display stories in (readably) coherent structure so that I can navigate more easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this moment to solve that problem I see that I either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find a way to establish some consistency in summaries.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find a way to display (visualize) user story in a backlog in other way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how to go about point 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some ideas for point 1 so far:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use &amp;quot;I want ...&amp;quot; as a summary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the story in summary field, but that would beat the purpose of a summary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accept that it cannot be done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More I think about it, I think that user story doesn't have a summary(?).&#xA;They originated from index cards(?) and represent a small slice of a requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They seems to be as brief as you can get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some example stories (please be gentle if they have flaws) in the context of vending machine or pay station that offers card payment option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a customer,&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;I want to be reminded that my card is in card terminal after I have cancelled card payment,&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;so that I wouldn't forget it to pay station.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a customer,&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;I want to be reminded that my card is in card terminal after I have paid by card,&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;so that I wouldn't forget it to pay station.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a customer,&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;I want to know if I have successfully cancelled card payment from card terminal,&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;so that I wouldn't be confused whether I have paid or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33975" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-11-15T17:21:52.800" Title="How to write a summary for a user story?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25196" CreationDate="2018-11-09T10:49:22.407" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll be very hard to find a canonical answer for this question and considering the problem you have might be shared by other community members, I'll share some thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your underlying problem is how the team visualises the backlog. Regardless of how detailed the summary is, it's only a... summary. &lt;strong&gt;You shouldn't expect to understand everything from the summary.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to see summaries as &quot;pointers&quot;. Your team should have a &lt;strong&gt;session to review top backlog items&lt;/strong&gt; (to get to know the actual &quot;content&quot;). Next time people look at the backlog, by reading the summary, they should have an idea on what each item is about. Reading about &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/product-backlog-refinement-grooming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;backlog refinement&lt;/a&gt; might help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, taking into account your specific Story examples and your Jira usage. If you use a Scrum board instead of Kanban board, you could &lt;strong&gt;group the above stories beneath an Epic&lt;/strong&gt; called &quot;payment by card&quot;... and then, at the Scrum backlog, you could click on this Epic on the Epic filter on the left side of the backlog. You can see an example in &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/21985/430&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could apply the same logic to other Epics, such as &quot;payment by cash&quot; or even leave a specific Epic for &quot;payments&quot;. The bottomline is that the backlog should be easy to read and navigate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2018-11-09T10:49:22.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24648" CreationDate="2018-11-10T02:38:35.727" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would expect &quot;Expected Outcome&quot; to be the intended result of the action, and &quot;Postcondition&quot; to be the state of the system after the action completes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Expected Outcome&lt;/strong&gt;: The Customer obtains cash and a receipt from the machine&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Postcondition&lt;/strong&gt;: The Customer's account balance has been debited the requested amount; the transaction log shows an entry corresponding to the transaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2018-11-10T02:38:35.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25161" CreationDate="2018-11-10T03:14:08.553" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This really seems like a situation that calls for some Agile thinking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the work belongs to the team as a whole&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;collaboration and knowledge sharing increases quality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;growing a team's capabilities has value to the business&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At minimum, I would use pair programming to grow familiarity with the framework, along with team code reviews (eg in Github PRs or similar) which would also help with quality as well as knowledge sharing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I literally had only 1 person with significant familiarity with the framework, I'd rotate that person through pairings with everyone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd build some structured training in the framework for the rest of the team into my schedule at the beginning. Maybe there's a 2-4 week period where FrameworkExpert is paired with one other person doing feature work, while the rest of the team is studying up on the framework, working through a book or tutorial together, with FrameworkExpert serving as a resource for questions. Then in the next 2-4 week period, maybe I can have half the team doing feature work, while the other half continues training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2018-11-10T03:14:08.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10442" CreationDate="2018-11-10T03:30:02.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I use &quot;Sprint N: Sprint Goal&quot;, restarting the count after every release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, we often use only the number, but the number+goal is helpful when reporting over a longer scale, or looking back over the past few months to see where we've put our effort when prioritizing for future sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2018-11-10T03:30:02.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25202" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25204" CreationDate="2018-11-10T06:33:07.227" Score="2" ViewCount="123" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can anybody explain the importance of having long list of risks in managing the project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;i know we should cover maximum of all possible one but what really significant importance to have a long list of risks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34048" LastActivityDate="2018-11-14T21:12:52.247" Title="importance of long list of risks" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;pmi&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25203" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25206" CreationDate="2018-11-10T12:56:27.610" Score="0" ViewCount="166" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Backsory&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;My company has recently hired a new product manager to handle a medium sized project. The new manager is a self-described &quot;Scrum Master&quot; but hasn't initiated any Sprint planning or other kinds of Scum-isms which I'm familiar with. Instead there is a new meeting which is either called the &quot;Weekly Backlog Review&quot; or &quot;Backlog Grooming&quot; meeting interchangeably by the new manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The meeting&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The &quot;Backlog Review&quot; meets once a week with optional attendance. In the meeting the following is accomplished...   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Review all &lt;strong&gt;new&lt;/strong&gt; Helpdesk &amp;amp; internal tickets&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prioritize all new tickets&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(Sometimes) Directly assign tickets to developers &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Problem&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In my experience neither a Backlog Review nor Grooming meetings are meant for any of the above purposes. I can't identify what this meeting is supposed to be or accomplish. To me, the meeting feels like an embodiment of the new manager's coping mechanisms with an unfamiliar product (Being that he/she is completely unfamiliar with this kind of software).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Is there some actual kind of team-meeting in Scrum / Agile or just IT in general that does what I've described above?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34049" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-12T15:00:40.580" LastActivityDate="2018-11-12T19:54:01.633" Title="What kind of backlog review is this?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25202" CreationDate="2018-11-10T13:51:03.997" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with everything else, documenting risks loses its value at a certain point when the benefits of doing so no longer exceed the costs and risks of not doing so.  So if someone is teaching you to document everything without any consideration of costs and benefits, then you should find a new teacher.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Projects and all of its risks can be successfully delivered without one risk being captured.  However, there are benefits of documenting them in some type of log and documenting the risks analytics and mitigation and contingency plans.  Here are few:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communications and escalation (this can include some CYA)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lobbying for project resources to mitigate and recover &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;So sponsors and other stakeholders can validate the quality of the team's risk management  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To monitor progress on a high exposure risk mitigation efforts  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To prepare others on contingency plans&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of these is without its corresponding costs.  So at some point in your risk log, if you have the mindset of ongoing evaluation of efficacy of what you're doing, you'll hit a zero and then negative return and that's when you stop.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-11-10T13:51:03.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25203" CreationDate="2018-11-10T19:21:04.913" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a Backlog Grooming meetings (a few years ago they changed the official name to &quot;Backlog Refinement&quot; but a lot of people still call it Grooming).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; says this about Backlog Refinement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product Backlog refinement is the act of adding detail, estimates, and order to items in the Product Backlog. This is an ongoing process in which the Product Owner and the Development Team collaborate on the details of Product Backlog items. During Product Backlog refinement, items are reviewed and revised. The Scrum Team decides how and when refinement is done. Refinement usually consumes no more than 10% of the capacity of the Development Team. However, Product Backlog items can be updated at any time by the Product Owner or at the Product Owner’s discretion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the first two sound like they fit. This shouldn't completely replace all other events in Scrum - it's just one. Also, since only the development team should decide who does the work and how they do it, the third item seems off. The only exception could be if it is development team members deciding and then it wouldn't be strictly against the Scrum Guide, but I would caution that it's happening much earlier in the process than best practice recommends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-11-10T19:21:04.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25203" CreationDate="2018-11-11T01:33:50.700" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;welcome!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The meeting you describe sounds like the standard weekly or biweekly meeting that my org used before we ever heard of agile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps it is a hangover from an incomplete agile transition? Or perhaps it is something this PM has added to the framework because they find it useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it were me, I would go to the PM privately and ask how they see this meeting fitting into the Scrum framework. &#xA;It might also be worth clarifying whether the PM is intending to run a Scrum project at all: just because someone is a SM doesn't mean that everything they touch will be Scrum, especially if there is resistance elsewhere in the project or org.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2018-11-11T01:33:50.700" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24927" CreationDate="2018-11-12T00:09:17.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds like a symptom of a larger organizational dysfunction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't mention any organizational norms for justifying resource needs, or any organizational vision for how contracts should be staffed. In the absence of those things, it seems each contract is its own little fiefdom, and each delivery manager is quite reasonably out to advance the interests of their own contract without any regard to the interests of the overall org.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be best to try to remedy that from the top down, so that the delivery managers' interests could be held in alignment with the best interests of the company. For example, contracts might be classified A, B, or C priority, so the C managers know going in that they're not going to get the quality of people that the A managers get. Or they might be classified on a risk basis, so that mitigating company risk was understood as the basis on which resources would be assigned. Or some combination -- you get the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you have to look at the delivery managers' incentives. Unless they have incentives that foster a broader outlook, they have no reason not to try to game any system that you put in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2018-11-12T00:09:17.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25208" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25226" CreationDate="2018-11-12T07:58:12.637" Score="12" ViewCount="3539" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new to the Scrum domain and recently found a &quot;Scrum at scale&quot; workshop near my town. I am a software engineer more inclined to data science. How would scaled Scrum help me become better in managing projects with many stakeholders, and how is it different from standard Scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6235" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-12-10T21:07:49.753" LastActivityDate="2018-12-10T21:07:49.753" Title="What is Scrum at scale?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;frameworks&gt;&lt;scrum-at-scale&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25208" CreationDate="2018-11-12T08:03:33.413" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would not help you with multiple stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is already meant to deal with multiple stakeholders (and a single Product Owner consolidating their needs into a single prioritized product backlog). Scrum at scale is meant to help you with projects so large that you need multiple &lt;em&gt;teams&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to know how to better cope with your stakeholders, a Product Owner training would be the better choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2018-11-12T08:03:33.413" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25196" CreationDate="2018-11-12T13:14:59.110" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes that's right, if you are truly using the concept of User Stories, there is no summary. Just the &quot;As a, I want, So that&quot; format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are wanting to, or can, write more of a summary than that, then you are doing, or have performed, analysis work that should be done by the team later. That is the purist approach I guess. It is even a well known practice to add acceptance criteria to the story, maybe in gherkin format, so it is hard to argue that it is always bad to add more than the title. Of course, acceptance criteria are often added later, at refinement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think once you are adding a lot of text or diagrams or screenshots then it starts to move away from the essence of a User Story. That might not always be a bad thing, not all agile requirements have to be User Stories. However the way a lot of places use the term User Story, with entire multi-page word files attached, is not really what we should think of as a User Story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practical terms, in Jira you could store the acceptance criteria in the summary field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="763" LastEditorUserId="763" LastEditDate="2018-11-12T17:11:48.617" LastActivityDate="2018-11-12T17:11:48.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25211" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-11-12T13:19:26.157" Score="5" ViewCount="9765" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the scrum meeting started by the person whom comes to the meeting last &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anybody chosen by the team starts the scrum meeting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tried to find answer to this question but no luck till now&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34056" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2018-12-13T12:07:07.957" LastActivityDate="2018-12-13T12:07:07.957" Title="Who starts the daily scrum meeting?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-ceremonies&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25211" CreationDate="2018-11-12T13:32:42.883" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The quesion looks the same with PSMI exam, one of my colleagues showed to me last month and got consultant from me. Some ideas for you, the practice base on my experience, you should consider the team's maturity to choose a appropriate way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you want to encourage your team member join the daily meeting on time, the meeting could start by person whom comes to the meeting last.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your team use token as sign, who own token will start first.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or Scrum master decide who will start (No recomend).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please share your ideas, I think we have no answer for the type of question, just best practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34055" LastActivityDate="2018-11-12T13:32:42.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25215" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-11-12T14:13:50.947" Score="2" ViewCount="10531" Body="&lt;p&gt;If User documentation is part of the definition of done and there is no technical writer in the scrum team, how the situation is dealt?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should the dev team create user documentation still&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;wait for the technical writer to be on the scrum team and let them take care of it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;form a separate team of tech writers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;let it be undone until the last development sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34057" LastActivityDate="2018-12-10T13:52:04.693" Title="User documentation and technical writer in Scrum" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25211" CreationDate="2018-11-12T14:14:14.957" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As there is no special meaning to who goes first and who goes after, team members should volunteer. If multiple team members volunteer it should take seconds to sort it out because it does not really matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If nobody volunteers you need to speak with your team about their commitment to this project and team. It is in their own self interest that someone starts the meeting on time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2018-11-12T14:14:14.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25215" CreationDate="2018-11-12T14:17:55.373" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The development team is responsible for producing the product. All of the product. Period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So either the development team needs to do what's described in the definition of done, or the whole Scrum team needs to rewrite the definition of done to not include the user manual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2018-11-12T14:17:55.373" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25215" CreationDate="2018-11-12T14:43:06.360" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;... whereas, I would dissent with &lt;code&gt;nvoigt&lt;/code&gt; and say, &quot;it's really up to the business.&quot;  If &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; need documentation as part of the deliverable, and the team does not feel that they now possess the resources needed to satisfy that requirement, then an appropriate person needs to be added to the team, or placed under the team's direction for the purposes of this project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would consider this to be a &lt;em&gt;management&lt;/em&gt; issue which should be discussed with the appropriate managers and stakeholders, promptly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34015" LastActivityDate="2018-11-12T14:43:06.360" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25211" CreationDate="2018-11-12T14:45:29.287" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once everyone arrives – and they should be reminded to always show up on time – &quot;just flip a coin, or roll a couple of dice.&quot;  Or, if someone feels that they have a point that needs to be brought up early and wants to go first, let them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34015" LastActivityDate="2018-11-12T14:45:29.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25196" CreationDate="2018-11-12T14:59:49.417" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Also – it is extremely important to remember that &lt;em&gt;&quot;a 'user story' is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; source-code!&quot;&lt;/em&gt; A user-story is simply a statement of a requirement in human terms. If you &quot;summarize&quot; it, you run two pragmatic risks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You alter it, consciously or unconsciously rewriting it in terms of the evolving software system's design or implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You impose one meaning – yours – upon something that, from &quot;the user's perspective,&quot; might have been intended to mean something else.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your aim is to &lt;em&gt;use&lt;/em&gt; these stories during the process of formulating designs and implementations, so that you can then hold that design up against them to see how the requirement stated in that &quot;story&quot; is to be fulfilled, both by the system and by the hypothetical user who &quot;told the story&quot; when they attempt to use the system.  If you summarize &lt;em&gt;(rewrite)&lt;/em&gt; them, you very quickly lose their intended value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34015" LastActivityDate="2018-11-12T14:59:49.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25208" CreationDate="2018-11-12T15:17:20.617" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, in my opinion, &quot;scrum at scale&quot; is trying to grapple with the real-world issue that – yes, in my opinion – &quot;scrum is an over-simplification.&quot;  Understand this, and you'll be fine.  &quot;Scrum&quot; has many useful ideas for project and team organization, but it rather likes to preach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My advice is simply: &lt;em&gt;&quot;use&lt;/em&gt; Scrum,&quot; because it is indeed useful, but &quot;don't &lt;em&gt;entirely&lt;/em&gt; believe it.&quot;  Sip the kool-aid but don't drink the entire jar.  Keep it in perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Real-world software systems commonly &quot;touch&quot; many different organizational departments and activities, and interact with other projects in ways that impose hard constraints that no single team can solve, or necessarily even see.  Of course this does not obviate the value of a &quot;scrum&quot; organization and workflow within that team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Scrum at scale&quot; argues that scrum-style organization should nevertheless be applied at multiple levels, so that different &quot;scrum&quot; teams are managed in a &quot;scrum&quot; fashion until one &quot;über-scrum master&quot; rules them all.  I will candidly express my opinion that this is effectively nonsense.  The methodology, in my candid opinion, &quot;does not scale,&quot; &lt;em&gt;and ought not be expected to do so.&lt;/em&gt;  Due to the time and expense inherent in all software projects, plus their over-arching influence upon the business as a whole, &quot;this is what we have vice-presidents for,&quot; and it is why their decisions are always compromises.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;=== &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;EDIT:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an attempt to clarify the above-expressed &lt;em&gt;opinion&lt;/em&gt; as to &quot;why Scrum cannot or should not scale,&quot; at Todd Jacobs' request I will now add to my previous comments without eliding them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would now make the observation that all projects are defined with scope-and-boundaries within which management hopes that the &quot;Scrum&quot; methodology will produce satisfactory results in the appointed budget and time, and with acceptable business risk.  But, if we then attempt to apply &quot;scrum&quot; at higher levels within the organization, we quickly reach levels of abstraction and levels of concern which impact the business as a whole, and for which the (inherently risky) &quot;exploratory methods&quot; championed by &quot;Scrum&quot; are no longer applicable or even safe.  This is what I was alluding to when I said, &quot;that's why we have vice-presidents, and that's why their decisions are always &lt;em&gt;compromises.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;  They don't make their fuzzy high-stakes choices based on the same principles that &quot;scrum&quot; holds dear – they can't, and they shouldn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Real-world projects are often interlocked with other projects by technical, business, business-risk and financial concerns that can't be changed, so each project must be architected to consider them.  Scrum-based teams then work &lt;em&gt;within&lt;/em&gt; those determined boundaries in an earnest effort to self-select and self-optimize their activities.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, careful delineation of these boundaries – which is not left up to the team – is in my opinion an essential part of the reason why &quot;scrum&quot; is perceived to be a workable strategy.  It is in my view a &lt;strong&gt;micro-&lt;/strong&gt; strategy but not a &lt;strong&gt;macro-&lt;/strong&gt; one.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is, one might say, a &quot;risky&quot; approach, but when that risk is well-constrained it might prove to be a benefit.  But if the same concepts are then elevated to higher levels within the organizational tree, I believe that these risks become untenable.  We already know how to let executives make decisions at those levels.  My &lt;em&gt;opinion&lt;/em&gt; is that we should let scrum, instead, &quot;bloom where it is planted, and where it sometimes does bloom,&quot; namely, at the &lt;em&gt;leaves&lt;/em&gt; of the organizational project-tree, making each project's outcome the best that scrum can make it be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34015" LastEditorUserId="34015" LastEditDate="2018-11-12T19:04:34.497" LastActivityDate="2018-11-12T19:04:34.497" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25211" CreationDate="2018-11-12T15:31:35.720" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The team should decide. The meeting belongs to the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the issue of starting off is a persistent problem during the sprint, then the SM should bring it up during the retro and facilitate the discussion to come to an agreement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2018-11-12T15:31:35.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24768" CreationDate="2018-11-12T15:35:34.007" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would also aver that this sort of thing should somehow be tracked by the team as &lt;em&gt;&quot;externally delayed.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;  (Regardless of the &quot;scrum name&quot; for this notion.)  Each and every(!) time the team loops around to plan its next &quot;sprint,&quot; it should explicitly review the status of &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of these items, to call management attention to the matter (and to the project-wide implications of it).  Don't just give it &quot;passing mention&quot; in your project report – to someone [else], this is an &lt;em&gt;action&lt;/em&gt; item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Management needs to know – and, to know &lt;em&gt;timely&lt;/em&gt; – that this sort of thing is happening, and especially if it's happening repeatedly. Consider it your team's duty to notify them and to keep them apprised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Here's why.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my view, these represent functional dependencies that exist &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;between&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;the project that your team is working on&quot; and &quot;other projects that you have nothing to do with.&quot;  These are what determines &quot;the critical path&quot; at an &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;organization or even enterprise&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; level. They could easily represent deployment and/or operational issues when your project &quot;goes live.&quot; While these are not &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt; &quot;your concern,&quot; they must be explicitly recognized and tracked both within your project and [far?] above it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34015" LastEditorUserId="34015" LastEditDate="2018-11-12T19:08:46.203" LastActivityDate="2018-11-12T19:08:46.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24927" CreationDate="2018-11-12T15:44:20.007" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would echo the sentiment that &quot;this is a CEO-level concern.&quot;  It is a &lt;em&gt;business strategic&lt;/em&gt; concern, not simply something that can be answered by project management software.  Very-senior management, to whom all of these people eventually report, needs to take up these matters with all of the relevant stakeholders and to devise a policy decision.  It's out of your hands, except to raise it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34015" LastActivityDate="2018-11-12T15:44:20.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25208" CreationDate="2018-11-12T15:53:16.637" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumatscale.com/scrum-at-scale-guide/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum@Scale&lt;/a&gt; is a specific framework developed by Jeff Sutherland and Scrum, Inc. for scaling Scrum beyond a single team. More generally, scaled Scrum (or &quot;Scrum at [enterprise] scale&quot;) refers to the frameworks and practices required to apply Scrum concepts across multiple teams, which is often a requirement on very large or complex enterprise projects (e.g. &quot;at scale&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Standard Scrum already handles multiple stakeholders. Scaled Scrum frameworks target programs with multiple &lt;em&gt;teams&lt;/em&gt;. Managing stakeholders is a the function of the Product Owner in standard Scrum, but may be part of other roles (or even belong to entire teams) in other frameworks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Problems&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At heart, Scrum is a framework for developing a product from a singular Product Backlog serviced by one unitary Scrum team. Over time, various approaches to scaling Scrum beyond a single team have been promoted within the agile community. Regardless of the framework, they all attempt to solve one or more of the following problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management of very large (or even multiple) backlogs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cross-team estimation practices.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resource leveling across teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inter-team communications.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multi-product architecture.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multi-team and multi-product integration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Executive/stakeholder resource limitations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Portfolio management across a complex set of programs or projects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Metrics and reporting for multi-team efforts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not an exhaustive list, but the theme of &quot;multiple teams&quot; is one that Scrum doesn't natively tackle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Survey of the Scaled Scrum Landscape&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Various frameworks and scaling mechanisms that are used to scale Scrum beyond a single team include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scruminc.com/scrum-of-scrums/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum-of-Scrums&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scrumbook.org/product-organization-pattern-language/metascrum.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;MetaScrum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/resources/nexus-guide&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nexus&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumatscale.com/scrum-at-scale-guide/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum@Scale&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://less.works/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Large Scale Scrum (LeSS)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scaledagileframework.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scaled Agile Framework for Lean Enterprises (SAFe)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;NB: SAFe uses Scrum at the team level, but is arguably not truly an attempt to scale Scrum itself at the enterprise level. Instead, it uses other mechanisms and frameworks at different organizational levels. Whether you include it in &quot;scaled Scrum&quot; is a matter of taste, but as one of the more well-known scaled frameworks I chose to include it here for completeness.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other agile approaches such as Lean, Kanban, DevOps, and so forth are not included in this list as they aren't inherently based on Scrum. Nevertheless, the issues of scaling are often present regardless of the framework, and must be addressed in any multi-team or multi-departmental approach to agility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-11-12T16:11:49.623" LastActivityDate="2018-11-12T16:11:49.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25215" CreationDate="2018-11-12T16:18:58.237" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, the ideal would be to have all skills needed to deliver the product on the team. If part of your product includes user documentation, then that skill should be on the team as well. Note that it is the skill, not the job title. So, this raises the question: can your team write the documents?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer is yes and the DoD contains that item, I would say that the team should do the work for each backlog item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer is No, you don't have that skill, then that raises other questions. For example, is user documentation actually required for the product to be done? Is there a reason that the skill can't be on your team (either add the team member or with cross-training)? If you don't have the skill and can't add it and it is required, then you clearly need some stop-gap measure for the short-term, but I would strive to resolve the gap as soon as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-11-12T16:18:58.237" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25211" CreationDate="2018-11-12T16:49:17.853" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;nvoigt, I think there &lt;em&gt;can be&lt;/em&gt; a meaning to whom starts first or make the daily scrum more effective depending on the state of the project. Some advise I can give to decide on a methodology goes as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Everyone should start at least once every certain time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The order should be beneficial for the current state of the project (for example, it might make sense to naturally allow individuals working on close tasks to report one after the other to understand the big picture)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When working on a “Crysis” or very “important” issues, it might be wise to allow those individuals to go first, so that the following individuals know if there’s any change they have to make to their activities during the day, this also allows the team to focus on getting done what is crucial at this point in time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Important to the previous point: everyone should take &lt;em&gt;important&lt;/em&gt; / &lt;em&gt;critical&lt;/em&gt; tasks once in a while depending on circumstances&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I agree that the team should feel safe about being the first to do the daily scrum, so perhaps when whom starts is not important, you can try a random way to select who starts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-11-12T16:49:17.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25215" CreationDate="2018-11-12T17:34:16.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every single Sprint must result in a potentially-shippable increment of work. Furthermore, the increment must:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Meet the &quot;Definition of Done&quot; defined by the team and acceptable to the Product Owner (representing the stakeholders).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be fully completable within a single iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If documentation is part of your Definition of Done, then the only possible answer is that the Development Team is &lt;em&gt;responsible&lt;/em&gt; for integrating documentation in each and every delivered increment of work. Whether that work is done internally to the team or &quot;tossed over the wall&quot; is irrelevant. The Scrum Team as a whole is still responsible for ensuring that all aspects of the Definition of Done are included in the product increment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If documentation is part of your Definition of Done, and the team does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; include it along with every increment, then by definition the work is incomplete. All work is either &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;not-done&lt;/em&gt;, and since the increment doesn't meet the Definition of Done then you have effectively delivered nothing of value for the Sprint. Your current velocity will be zero, and your retrospective will likely focus on the colossal process fail that just occurred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Potential Solutions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can (and should) raise this issue as a process question for the team. Depending on business and team requirements, the team may decide to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make the product more self-documenting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a software product, you should be doing this anyway through comments, clear APIs, good naming conventions, and other effective programming techniques designed to enhance readability. &lt;strong&gt;You should also be writing BDD or acceptance tests in clear business language to create executable and self-documenting code!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Add the effort of writing documentation to each user story accepted into each Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team should be doing this anyway! Whether you have dedicated tech writers on the team or not, the work still needs to get done, and must be included in your estimates &lt;em&gt;for &lt;strong&gt;each&lt;/strong&gt; Product Backlog Item&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Escalate the lack of a technical writer resource via the Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master should be helping the team to clear identified blockers. If this is preventing the team from meeting its goals, then it should be raised as a resource or process constraint with management.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ensure the Product Owner is including documentation stories on the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the documentation can't (or won't) be included in each story as part of the Definition of Done, then the Product Owner must track the work as a Product Backlog Item and prioritize it accordingly. &quot;No invisible work, ever!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, it's up to the Product Owner to ensure that team resources are allocated to the things that matter. If documentation matters, then the work (and the resources the work consumes) should be clearly visible on the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Work the Product Owner (and by extension, the business) to exclude documentation from the Definition of Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an anti-pattern, and generally a bad idea. Nevertheless, if there's value in delivering product increments without the documentation, having a working product may be more valuable than waiting on the documentation to have a potentially-shippable increment. However, this must be &lt;em&gt;explicit&lt;/em&gt; and reflected properly within the Definition of Done!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Danger, Will Robinson!&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Laziness, lack of interest, or resource constraints regarding documentation are not in themselves sufficient justifications for excluding documentation work from your Definition of Done. In fact, even though the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Working software over comprehensive documentation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it simply means that the former is more important than the latter, rather than that there's no value in writing or maintaining documentation. &lt;strong&gt;Don't &lt;em&gt;ever&lt;/em&gt; use &quot;agile&quot; as an excuse to deliver an undocumented (and therefore likely unusable or unmaintainable) system!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-12-10T13:52:04.693" LastActivityDate="2018-12-10T13:52:04.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24239" CreationDate="2018-11-12T17:50:59.973" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that the by strict definition of a WBS and its use lends itself to best be used in the waterfall methodologies...however like mentioned above some of its principles can be applied to managing the Scrum or Agile backlog concept. In Agile . you are essentially breaking the work down into Epics, Features, user stories...which closely matches Project, Deliverable, Work package on the WBS. I personally like the concept of building out a WBS for a Phase of agile work to create the back log. I like meeting in the room and using the post notes to get a high level vision of the work coming. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34067" LastActivityDate="2018-11-12T17:50:59.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25231" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-11-12T19:10:46.233" Score="1" ViewCount="2225" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are the Earliest Occurrence time and Latest occurrence time same as the Earliest Event time and Latest event time or are they different? If they are different can you please explain to me what are EOT and LOT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34069" LastActivityDate="2018-11-19T14:47:56.380" Title="EOT and LOT vs EET and LET" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24239" CreationDate="2018-11-12T19:22:13.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with what [I think ...] Mike Rowe is saying:  the two concepts can be used &lt;em&gt;together,&lt;/em&gt; and they very often are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, when we say that *&quot;you are essentially &lt;strong&gt;breaking the work down&lt;/strong&gt; into Epics, &lt;em&gt;(etc.)&lt;/em&gt; ...&quot; well, there's that same phrase again, just in different context.  We've still got work, and we're still breaking it down.  &lt;em&gt;(But the scope-and-boundaries, and goals, of our breakdown efforts are now different ... and perhaps, &quot;multiple and parallel.&quot;)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the context of these projects, I still find value in applying WBS concepts at two distinct levels:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At the initial stages of the project, as we are trying to develop, or at least to predict or prognosticate, an over-arching expectation for it.  But we then allow the team's self-directed activities to discover the details while the project is periodically held up against this initial breakdown (and, the breakdown is revised).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On a micro scale, awareness of WBS principles can prove to be more effective in ordering the team's short-term next activities, than &quot;simple consensus&quot; might be.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WBS concepts are also extremely valuable in determining what the initial project breakdown ought to be, in a large effort that might involve multiple [scrum/agile/what-have-you] teams.  In my opinion, it's extremely important that each team be set with well-thought-out scope and boundaries, and that anticipated interactions between the various &quot;team boxes&quot; are as well-understood as they reasonably can be at this point.  (And that we then revisit it from time to time, and publish new revisions.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Traditional [waterfall] WBS&quot; broke down, so to speak, because we can't predict the entire future before we begin.  Iterative methodologies (scrum, agile, and so on) were developed as a response to this, realizing that &lt;em&gt;&quot;well, we don't have to.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;  But I'd argue that they certainly didn't discard any of WBS's good ideas.  They just started applying them at different times, at different levels, and with &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; short-term and long-term objectives.  By doing this, we think that we've improved the bathwater, but we didn't throw out the baby in the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34015" LastEditorUserId="34015" LastEditDate="2018-11-12T19:28:55.567" LastActivityDate="2018-11-12T19:28:55.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25203" CreationDate="2018-11-12T19:41:16.373" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Also – &quot;in my experience, every team that begins with a 'methodology' gradually evolves it into something that actually works.&quot;  Gradually, manifestos like the &lt;em&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/em&gt; get pushed to one side while selected parts of its ideals continue to move forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your manager clearly focuses on tickets, since these are concrete work- or change-requests that &lt;em&gt;must not&lt;/em&gt; be allowed to accumulate.  (Too many methodologies are content to shovel them into &lt;em&gt;&quot;technical debt&quot;&lt;/em&gt; where they lurk, waiting to bite the project in the you-know. But, lots-and-lots of &lt;em&gt;external stakeholders&lt;/em&gt; can usually see those tickets!)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, don't be quick to tally these things up to &quot;unfamiliarity with 'this kind of project.'&quot;  It's perfectly fine to at some point ask him-or-her how his-or-her approach matches up to the ideals of a methodology, but when you do, be prepared to listen.  Carefully. Yes, &lt;em&gt;presume(!)&lt;/em&gt; that s/he knows exactly what s/he is doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, take with a healthy grain of salt such pronouncements as: &lt;em&gt;&quot;only the development team should decide who does the work and how they do it.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;  Like it or not, &quot;that's simply not business reality.&quot;  In the &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; world, projects are impacted by a host of ancillary concerns &quot;of which the project's own team – perhaps purposely(!) – knows not.&quot;  Yet, within these carefully-sculpted boundaries, projects are able to efficiently proceed to their appointed destination because &lt;strong&gt;more than one&lt;/strong&gt; set of people are looking out for them:  &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; the team's own membership &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; those &quot;pesky, oft-maligned&quot; managers and outside stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, so, things about which we can say, &quot;that's not the team's concern,&quot; are thus, &lt;em&gt;precisely because&lt;/em&gt; &quot;it is his/hers.&quot;  A key role of any project manager is to act as the &lt;strong&gt;interface&lt;/strong&gt; between the team and the enterprise. (As one long-ago colleague put it: &lt;em&gt;&quot;[almost...] not a single form of life on Earth would be here were it not for a placenta.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;  Heh.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34015" LastEditorUserId="34015" LastEditDate="2018-11-12T19:54:01.633" LastActivityDate="2018-11-12T19:54:01.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25235" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25237" CreationDate="2018-11-12T20:40:46.933" Score="6" ViewCount="215" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a scrum team that consists of client developers and my company’s developers to form a team of 8. I’ve noticed a lot of friction/arguments between team members on what is the best way to solve a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you go about resolving such issues, and make sure that both parties are satisfied and best method was used?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34072" LastEditorUserId="34072" LastEditDate="2018-11-13T09:05:25.037" LastActivityDate="2019-05-09T13:13:10.323" Title="how to manage two teams with different views on a problem" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25235" CreationDate="2018-11-12T21:48:51.767" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Conflict and disagreement are good because it means your team is engaged, they're thinking about things, they're invested, they're looking for a successful solution, on and on.  If you did not have any conflict, while it appears great, you could have a severely disengaged, low morale team, or a serious case of group think or similar phenomenon.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to work the disagreement.  Create a path for the two or more team segments to argue their case, to talk through the pros and cons of various alternatives.  You need to facilitate it to keep things unemotional and fact / sourced base.  You can either play the decision maker or create some type of voting structure to work through an issue or a combination of both.  It can seem like a lot of work and could seem like things are not progressing, but it is far better to get the most of your team's thinking versus moving forward with an inferior solution and then reworking the issue later.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-05-09T13:13:10.323" LastActivityDate="2019-05-09T13:13:10.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25235" CreationDate="2018-11-12T23:52:22.293" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do &quot;architectural spikes&quot; of both.  This means: set a reasonable time-box for the work (typically a day), make sure the work is totally hands-on (build out as much of each competing solution as possible), throw away the spiked work when done, and &lt;strong&gt;only then&lt;/strong&gt; have a discussion to decide.  One way to make this more effective is to get each sub-team to spike the other sub-team's proposal.  This makes sure that you don't end up with a &quot;fallacy of sunk costs&quot; problem after the spikes are completed.  Any theoretical argument will tend towards &quot;analysis paralysis&quot;.  Doing hands-on work is much more effective for discovering the best solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Sprint Planning, this is an allocation of capacity to &lt;strong&gt;learning&lt;/strong&gt; instead of implementation.  As long as it doesn't consume your whole Sprint and the team still works on a potentially releasable product increment (in addition to the learning from the spikes), you should be able to stay on-track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to say this: arguing takes more time than just trying out the alternatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly, making an arbitrary decision is also better than trying to argue out the &quot;correct&quot; solution since it gives your team an opportunity to inspect and adapt faster.  Argument is almost always waste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Ken Schwaber, founder of Scrum says, &quot;use Scrum to build the wrong thing in a month&quot; (paraphrased) and then &quot;inspect and adapt&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33785" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-05-09T13:11:44.807" LastActivityDate="2019-05-09T13:11:44.807" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25239" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-11-13T17:15:59.877" Score="3" ViewCount="97" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a team of 4 developers and 1 QA. My workflow in Jira is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Backlog -&gt; Analysis -&gt; In Development -&gt; QA Ready -&gt; QA Complete -&gt; Done&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every sprint (1 week) all issues get into QA Ready stage (QA member is not finishing to test all features in one iteration), also issues don't get burnt until they reach Done stage (deploy). So I am not measuring the effective team work per sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it recommendable (for a story) to raise an issue for devs and another issue for QAs, so in a sprint I can only include the issues that will be &quot;Done&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this, I will have to change my workflow to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To do -&gt; In progress -&gt; done&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this way, analysis issues, development issues and QA issues will have a shorter lifetime but they will be burnt and measure per iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't like this solution, because there will be 3 times more issues.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing is that burndown-chart is not showing what the team is working, even when I defined to set resolution when the issue gets to QA ready stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29112" LastActivityDate="2018-11-19T06:30:17.497" Title="How can I measure the effective team work per iteration?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;burndown-chart&gt;&lt;measurement&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25239" CreationDate="2018-11-13T20:14:37.547" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The fact that only a small number of stories get completed during a sprint shows a dysfunction of your process and/or team, but it is highly questionable if splitting the stories in &quot;dev stories&quot; and &quot;QA stories&quot; is really going to resolve the dysfunction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The aim of a sprint is scrum is to deliver a potentially releasable product increment. A potentially releasable product increment is an improved version of the product that is ready to go live from a quality viewpoint, but there might be business reasons to delay the deployment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find that lots of stories remain in the &quot;QA Complete&quot; state because they can't be deployed due to business reasons, then you might consider taking the deployment step out from the Definition-of-Done (i.e. the story gets burned once it reaches QA Complete).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you also have the problem that the testing can't keep up with the development, then you might have to look at your development practices. You mention that the team has 4 developers and 1 QA member, but the entire team should be responsible for completing the stories. If the QA phase is a bottleneck for completing stories, then you should discuss with the team how everybody can pitch in to get the testing done faster, which could mean that the developers also need to take up some testing activities.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Also, the QA member should be involved in the stories from day one, and not only when the developers think that the implementation is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2018-11-13T20:14:37.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25241" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-11-13T22:10:21.387" Score="4" ViewCount="368" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example:&#xA;I have a project where I want to import raw data into a new database.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;sprint 1: clean up/validate raw data&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;sprint 2: import raw data to new database&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If sprint 1 fails, what is the SCRUM methodology to stop and redo sprint 1, or introduce a new high priority sprint 1.5, before proceeding to sprint 2?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I truly believed there was no such thing as failure, I would simply import the unusable data, record lessons learned, delete the data and start over?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34088" LastEditorUserId="7559" LastEditDate="2018-11-14T07:28:05.200" LastActivityDate="2018-12-07T18:30:59.100" Title="How to handle real world sprint failures?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;failure&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25241" CreationDate="2018-11-13T22:35:51.027" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As written, your stories are probably too big to be properly agile. However, you can't work on dependent stories until you complete their prerequisites, so if you can't do an import until you have 100% of all data sanitized then you would continue to work those stories in subsequent Sprints before getting to what you're calling &quot;Sprint 2.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As described, your workflow just doesn't seem all that agile. User stories should be vertical slices of functionality. While there may be a valid reason to do data sanitation and imports in separate Sprints, in all likelihood you've failed to define &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt; stories. So, revisiting your backlog items is probably the first step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if we assume that you have have the right stories, and that you aren't able to achieve the Sprint Goal defined for Sprint 1, then the story is &lt;em&gt;not done&lt;/em&gt;. You should review this during your team's Sprint Retrospective to see if you can identify process issues that led to this result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The entire unfinished story goes back onto the Product Backlog for refinement, re-prioritization, and re-planning. In this case, since you currently have only two stories, and the second story is presumably dependent on the first (unfinished) story, then you will likely need to continue working on refined data sanitation stories in the next Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Recommendations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Refine your stories until you comfortably deliver a vertical slice each Sprint. Perhaps you'd sanitize and import user data in the first Sprint, current product information in the next Sprint, and back catalog items in a subsequent Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I don't really know anything about your data or your real use cases, these are just examples. The point is to refine your stories until each one is largely independent of the others, fits within a single Sprint, and can be tested to ensure it meets your Definition of Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-11-15T14:10:50.317" LastActivityDate="2018-11-15T14:10:50.317" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25244" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25248" CreationDate="2018-11-14T10:58:38.690" Score="7" ViewCount="333" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I'm part of a Team with 12 members in which we have recently tried to adopt Scrum/agile processes. I am the Scrum Master of the Team and I am also very new to agile; I'm also an apprentice within the company so the rest of the Team and I are not very familiar with the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, I apologize if there are more questions in here than just the title!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my main issue is that we are a Team that perform a large number of operational roles within our day; we are a Development Team, however we don't get a lot of time for development. Within our Team, we have about 5 development members, 2 main managers, subject matter experts and then also people involved with demand. Our manager wanted us to include everything we do whether it was development or not, however we eventually agreed to just stick to development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main issue is that the non-developers really don't want to get on board with the agile process. We are on our 8th Sprint so 16 weeks of agile and even before it began they barely turn up to meetings, report new stories for the board or come to me for any support. How do I get people on board that are so against the process? They have no motivation to complete what's on the board so we are constantly rolling tasks over onto the next Sprint which drags the whole process down and they don't want to help make the process better. The development members are so keen for the process to work, they work well with the tasks, attend all meetings yet it's others that bring the process down it seems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another issue that I have is that could we even be running agile as a team due to the fact that we get little time to focus on development? We have so many operational tasks that we have so many tasks roll over onto the next Sprint that I am often wondering if we're just wasting time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apologies if it's confusing, it's very hard to explain the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34094" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-12-07T14:32:18.037" LastActivityDate="2018-12-07T14:34:26.683" Title="How to get people on board with Scrum/agile?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;process-improvement&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25202" CreationDate="2018-11-14T12:18:40.940" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The number of risks is not the most is not the most important factor regarding risk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recording the risks is useful, but unless there is an understanding of the likeliness of the risk coming to fruition &amp;amp; the impact of the risks if they do happen then there is no real 'value' to the risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Prince2, for example, risks can be good (opportunity) or bad (threat) - so not every risk register item should automatically come with a downside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can plot each risk on a simple chart according to probability/impact &amp;amp; also identify where you feel uncomfortable you can feed this back up the chain to say 'most of the risks are manageable, but should we go ahead considering risk a &amp;amp; risk b'. In that way the number of risks is less important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HD7TZ.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HD7TZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="693" LastActivityDate="2018-11-14T12:18:40.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25247" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25259" CreationDate="2018-11-14T15:36:37.523" Score="2" ViewCount="134" Body="&lt;p&gt;Trying to have a query that filters out issues that are in the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a workflow status:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/X7bQW.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/X7bQW.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried &lt;code&gt;statusCategory != Backlog&lt;/code&gt;&#xA;And it says: &lt;code&gt;The value 'Backlog' does not exist for the field 'statusCategory'.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34099" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-16T14:05:14.747" LastActivityDate="2018-11-16T14:05:14.747" Title="How do I filter out issues that are in the backlog?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25244" CreationDate="2018-11-14T16:20:37.833" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The below is predicated on the assumption that you work in a complex, adaptive environment where more is unknown than known when it comes to the value your work creates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are books and books on this kind of stuff, and companies that make millions consulting on agile enablement, but it really boils down to how willing people are to embrace the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/learn-about-scrum/scrum-values&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum values&lt;/a&gt;. By people I mean both the team members and stakeholders in charge with empowering a cross-functional, self-organizing team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, everyone must understand Scrum is simply a framework that unearths your issues; it doesn't solve them for you. The silver lining is Scrum gives your team the opportunity to feel empowered to tackle those problems and create solutions that deliver value in an incremental, iterative fashion. While Scrum builds in opportunities to do this, the team has to embody the values to make it work. &lt;strong&gt;It all starts with the values and empowerment to self-manage the work they perform.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, once a team is empowered to manage their own work, the fruits of Scrum really start to become apparent. It's a tough sell- mostly because it changes how work is done - but there are case studies that show the benefits. I recommend finding some of those and working with your team to understand your situation is not unique and can be transformed using the Scrum framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: it may also benefit your team to go through formal training with a certified trainer. Best results if they're all trained at the same time so they can discuss new-found knowledge, their understanding of the framework, and how their role fits into the wider picture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33598" LastEditorUserId="33598" LastEditDate="2018-11-14T16:43:53.423" LastActivityDate="2018-11-14T16:43:53.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25249" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-11-14T18:03:17.033" Score="3" ViewCount="753" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum Master, currently working with an agile coach. The coach has recommended to Senior management that developers should also train to be visual designers in an effort to make the team more 'agile' and vice versa. Senior management seem to think this is a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am strongly against this idea since it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;negatively discriminates against talented Visual designers who cannot code at a high enough level professionally (with training), as well as the developers who are have in depth knowledge but are not creative enough to be Visual designers&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Feel that this is unrealistic, many people are not going to be polymaths or have the time to develop the depth to be good at both, which from experience is roughly 3-4 years per discipline. By expecting people to learn both is undermining the complexity of both fields.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Feel that the quality of work being produced will be impacted, where at best the results will be a generalist team without any depth impacting quality. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do agilists think this is a good idea, and that on the whim they can create teams where members can do every job role with ease. The only time where I can see this working is if people are learning a sub set of their own skill set since it is directly related i.e. a developer learning a new programming language. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2018-11-15T12:36:51.463" Title="T-shaped agile teams, great in theory, impractical in practice?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25249" CreationDate="2018-11-14T18:39:10.350" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the spirit of T-shaped skill sets, you may have a point. The whole point of a broad skillset is to encourage a team-first mindset. It's essentially there to encourage flexibility and resiliency in the face of working outside your comfort-zone &lt;strong&gt;as a team&lt;/strong&gt;. Getting trained in a particular skillset, while valuable for cross-function, can cause distraction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, formal training shouldn't be necessary. Instead, as always, the team should understand the WHAT and HOW during sprint planning. WHAT do we plan to work on next? and HOW should we plan to meet our goal? In the event a different skillset is identified during planning, the team should also identify how to incorporate that skill into the sprint. If that means re-organizing a new member with expertise in that particular skillset, great. If that means consulting with that expert to get just enough training to meet the goal, great. If comprehensive, formal training is absolutely needed, great. But tradeoffs should be taken into account and made abundantly clear when planning the sprint. Is the opportunity cost of training greater than building towards the sprint goal? If so, training may not be the best route. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, a team that strives for T-shaped skillsets embody the Scrum values inherently well. But that doesn't mean they need specific training. More often than not, that knowledge transfer happens organically by leaning on the skill experts to get what they need to build towards the sprint goal. Or, if the skill gap is too wide, they identify that and reorganize to incorporate that skill into the team. Both have merits. But it should be left up to the team who is empowered to manage their own work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My hope is this coach worked with the team to identify the issues with skill gaps and facilitated a solution with them before going to senior management with recommendations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33598" LastEditorUserId="33598" LastEditDate="2018-11-14T18:52:15.720" LastActivityDate="2018-11-14T18:52:15.720" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25249" CreationDate="2018-11-14T21:07:42.233" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your understanding of T-Shaped skillsets does not match mine. What you describe is trying to make everyone an expert, which is absolutely unrealistic. I feel a more accurate example of T-shape in what you describe is that the developer may learn some basic design principles in order to make better decisions when faced with them and I would create a shared understanding of the style guide so that many of the basic design decisions covered in the style guide can be acted on by anyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the designer should probably understand a lot about the Human/computer touch-points. If you are making a web application, I would expect the designer to understand HTML and CSS. Not knowing these is sort of like a painter not understanding how to effectively work with different types of paints. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;T-shaped skillsets do not require deep understanding of all skills. Further, they don't require that every person has every skill in the team. It requires overlap in skillsets so that priority of work can be based on value delivery, not on skill availability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-11-14T21:07:42.233" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25202" CreationDate="2018-11-14T21:12:52.247" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A long list of risks is for risk awareness only. If you identified Abriss once, you might forget about it a week later. Nevertheless it still exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The (long) risk log assists you to not forget anything when you sweep over the log on a regular basis (e.g. 30min once a month) - in a fast way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of that, you do a qualitative risk analysis tobfinish the initial risk documentation in less than a minute per risk: low/med/high propability &amp;amp; impact. Usually, the simple multiplication of impact and propability gives you awareness on the most important risks. Updating the list results in the adjustment of propability and impact while calculation and sorting could be automated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the most important risks, you might do a quantitative risk analysis by calculating cost, identify and track mitigations, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastActivityDate="2018-11-14T21:12:52.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25249" CreationDate="2018-11-15T03:48:40.967" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;That sounds frustrating!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why do agilists think this is a good idea, and that on the whim they can create teams where members can do every job role with ease&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have said, this is not what T-shaped means. The T shape indicates deep expertise in one area, and shallow expertise (&quot;working knowledge&quot;) in other areas so as to be able to pitch in as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The agile team (and particularly the scrum team) is supposed to be self contained in terms of the skills necessary to deliver the product. Ideally, that means that if the project needs a visual designer, there should be a visual designer on the team. That would have been my first choice recommendation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it's not always feasible to do that: maybe there isn't enough work on the project to fully occupy the expert, or maybe there are experts in house but not enough to support every team. In that case, one possible solution would be for other team members to acquire enough knowledge of the expertise that they can work under the direction of an actual expert who would be available for consultation, or available part time. That would have been my 2nd recommendation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If neither of those was feasible, then I would point out the risks of building a product without the necessary expertise to do it well. The risk will depend on how important the expertise is to the success of the product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be interesting to know whether the coach was given any constraints when she started the job. (eg, no new hires, preference for growing teams rather than hiring in)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As SM, it is within your role to raise concerns that are inconsistent with Scrum or would negatively impact the team. Sending people off to train would split their focus and reduce their capacity for an extended period of time. The proposed solution cannot be executed in a short time horizon, and is in that sense not agile (long investment needed before return). And you still don't have a needed expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2018-11-15T03:48:40.967" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25244" CreationDate="2018-11-15T10:27:26.590" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the Dev team is &lt;em&gt;on board&lt;/em&gt;, I suggest you make the Dev team purely Scrum/Agile-centric.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything coming in and out of Dev goes through the Scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Want to know when something will be ready? Come to the Daily Standup. Or look at the Kanban board.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Want to know if your &lt;em&gt;pet-peeve/bug&lt;/em&gt; will be dealt with? Come to the Weekly backlog meeting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure to invite everybody to the daily standup, but start it on-time, every-time, without waiting for anybody. Why punish those that come on time? No calling, nudging or waiting around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And make sure your board, tasks and information are up-to-date beforehand, and that all your props are available; waiting around for the Scrum Master to find a Magic Marker or a Sticky Note is a great way to self-destruct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't bug people to come; simply ask them why they are not on top of their tasks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Them: What task?&lt;br/&gt; You: You didn't see your column/swimlane on the Kanban&#xA;  board?&lt;br/&gt; Them: Oh, I don't get that stuff; give me a break.&lt;br/&gt; You: Well,&#xA;  Dev is now running on Agile; if you want to interface with them you'd&#xA;  better get up to speed. Want me to give you a 10-minute tour of how it&#xA;  works?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We used to video the daily standup (put the camera on a tripod, so nobody needs to be distracted while recording). People who were off-site or late or slow could review it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sending a link to a video also serves as a reminder and a summary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2018-11-15T10:27:26.590" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25249" CreationDate="2018-11-15T12:36:51.463" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you have to first clarify with your Scrum Master the definition of a T-shaped individual and ask many questions to fully understand what are the expectations and how it is going to get implemented. As some have mentioned the definition of T-shaped doesn’t seem the right one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience being a T-shaped individual has several advantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People are much more cooperative, and they can take tasks that don’t require mastery in a different discipline if it is needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They understand better the work of others and empathize with their work, difficulties, etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People &lt;em&gt;tend&lt;/em&gt; to be more open-minded about new ideas and find it easy to adapt and learn new things&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don’t think it is a &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; have, or even a &lt;em&gt;nice to have&lt;/em&gt;. Some people are T-shaped, some love doing their core discipline all the time, but having a mix, can prove to be healthy for a team. One last thing to comment, I think you have to give people options, but not &lt;em&gt;enforce&lt;/em&gt; them (which seems to be the case of what your Scrum Master is planning).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-11-15T12:36:51.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25196" CreationDate="2018-11-15T17:21:52.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use &lt;strong&gt;job stories&lt;/strong&gt; instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All your user stories start with 'As a customer', so you're wasting that line. We know they're a customer. That's a given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, job stories go:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When...&#xA;I want to...&#xA;So I can...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So - for example - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I have cancelled a card payment,&#xA;I want to be reminded that my card is in the card terminal,&#xA;So that I won't forget it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(And then you can add a final line - 'This need is met when...', so that you know exactly what you have to do. If you like.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34107" LastActivityDate="2018-11-15T17:21:52.800" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25244" CreationDate="2018-11-15T21:52:50.887" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Welcome!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another issue that I have is that could we even be running agile as a team due to the fact that we get little time to focus on development? We have so many operational tasks that we have so many tasks roll over onto the next Sprint that I am often wondering if we're just wasting time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps this is why the management team suggested that your manager wanted you &quot;to include everything we do whether it was development or not&quot;. It sounds to me like that was an appropriate recommendation. What was the basis for your team's decision to limit it only to development tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So my main issue is that we are a Team that perform a large number of operational roles within our day&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may find Kanban is a better match for your situation than Scrum. It focuses on a steady flow of work, with WIP limits on the various stages, rather than focusing on sprints as Scrum does. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the non-developers really don't want to get on board with the agile process...  How do I get people on board that are so against the process? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to that depends on &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; they are against the process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that if this has been going on for 4 months (and has it been this bad from the start? or was there initially more participation from the non-developers?), then it's time to stop and rethink, rather than keep doing the same thing that is not working. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you could all benefit from training and/or coaching, not only in how (and why!) to &quot;do&quot; agile/scrum, but how to &quot;be&quot; agile and work together as a team.. or possibly as two teams, since the recommended size for a team is 5-7 people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-12-07T14:34:26.683" LastActivityDate="2018-12-07T14:34:26.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25258" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25271" CreationDate="2018-11-15T22:51:17.823" Score="3" ViewCount="235" Body="&lt;p&gt;Employees of my company are grouped into pools depending on technical skills (e.g. front-end devs, back-end devs, QA engineers, etc). For each pool there's a Tech Lead who doesn't manage projects (or people) but provides general technical directions to the company: he decides technical stacks, standard solutions, best practices and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To initiate a project, the Head of Delivery selects a PM and staffs a team by taking technicians from the pools (depending on the requirements). The PM has full authority over his colleagues except for the technical decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is my company still a projectized organization or do the Tech Leads make it a matrix organization?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you very much&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27694" LastActivityDate="2018-11-18T15:17:47.177" Title="Is a company with Tech Leads a matrix organization?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25247" CreationDate="2018-11-16T11:49:00.773" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Error that you are getting tells that &lt;code&gt;Backlog&lt;/code&gt; isn't status category.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;There are 3 status categories: &lt;code&gt;To do&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;In progress&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;Done&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(You cannot change them as far as I know [&lt;a href=&quot;https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRASERVER-36241&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;a href=&quot;https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Answers-Developer-Questions/How-do-I-add-or-edit-Jira-workflow-categories/qaq-p/528891&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2]&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that you have status called &lt;code&gt;Backlog&lt;/code&gt; and you can search issues by it like:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;status = Backlog&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33975" LastActivityDate="2018-11-16T11:49:00.773" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25260" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25261" CreationDate="2018-11-17T08:04:24.480" Score="6" ViewCount="221" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a scrum master, I don’t want to take my team away from their committed sprint work too much so here is my question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you had to take a relatively high performing team, how many workshops would you do with them in a typical week other than the usual ceremonies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2018-11-20T15:52:17.253" Title="How many activities per week should I be doing with my scrum team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25260" CreationDate="2018-11-17T09:47:42.860" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You said they are high performing, so there seems to be little need for immediate improvement outside the usual feedback cycle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say whenever you see the need for improvement in the retrospective, ask if the team should do a workshop on that topic in a subsequent sprint. That way the whole team (including the PO) can decide if it's necessary and in which sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a typical week, I'd do less than one. Assuming a two week sprint, one workshop on Scrum processes per sprint already seems a lot for a &quot;high performing&quot; team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2018-11-17T09:47:42.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25262" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-11-17T12:05:45.350" Score="8" ViewCount="224" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently, we’re implementing new processes at our company essentially from scratch, but there are a lot of opinions on which columns should be on the task board.  As the one responsible for this effort, I’m a bit stuck on which columns are absolutely essential and which could be added later if proven necessary.  My goal is to keep things as simple as possible in the beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We (PM team) started with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;| TODO | IN PROGRESS | IN TESTING (QA) | DONE |&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then the engineering leads insisted that a CODE REVIEW column must exist between IN PROGRESS and QA.  That said, I think there’s merit to that argument &#xA;, and I started to wonder what else we might’ve missed.  I’d love to get more data on what other PMs use as columns on the task board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34122" LastActivityDate="2018-11-20T12:58:47.363" Title="Which columns exist on your task board?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;&lt;kanban-board&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25262" CreationDate="2018-11-17T15:19:44.570" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a great question. Many teams start with something like what you have or ToDo | Doing | Done. This may be ok, but doesn't tell you much about how your work is flowing. If you want more visibility into your process, you may want more columns, but which ones?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, there is no &quot;right&quot; answer. As a PM team, the first thing you'll need to understand is that you can't standardize this. Different teams work different ways and need to see different things, so different boards will be... well, different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get a truly useful board, you want to start by facilitating a process mapping session with your team. Ask them to draw on a whiteboard how they get from &quot;I have an idea about a feature&quot; to &quot;You can use this feature now&quot;. You can visualize it any way you want, but I find basic flowcharting is the most common. Next, ask them which steps are most valuable to pay attention to. These might be because they are major steps or because they are risky. There's no right answer and they can change their mind later. Those become your columns. Now, as work flows through the process, the board visualizes that flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your question, you ask which columns are essential. Some starting column titled something like ToDo or Not Started and Done are the only essential ones. Everything else is based on the flow for your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-11-17T15:19:44.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25262" CreationDate="2018-11-17T18:51:01.470" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based in my experience, the shortest answer to start is the &lt;em&gt;two basic&lt;/em&gt; (to do / done) plus &lt;em&gt;one for each team&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A single team covering a task from start to end would have then the three main columns, i.e. to do / in progress / done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your scenario, is the same person doing the task and the code review? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes:&lt;/strong&gt; so why having different columns? Just to see the task progress? You should measure progress differently... maybe based on the remaining work (burndown chart, for instance)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No:&lt;/strong&gt; so different columns to identify them, this way each team know when to pick more work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice that you should refrain from adding more columns. At some point, someone will say &quot;look, we need one column &lt;em&gt;ready for code review&lt;/em&gt; and other &lt;em&gt;in code review&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. Same may happen with testing. You may end up with a board with several states.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Daniel mentioned, it'll all depend on what works for you and your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2018-11-17T18:51:01.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25262" CreationDate="2018-11-17T20:19:11.693" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Daniel's answer says it all really, but some column headings I have seen are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Owner review&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In UAT&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ready for retest&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blocked&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-11-17T20:19:11.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25260" CreationDate="2018-11-17T20:21:18.993" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;How many activities should you organise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How many activities should you facilitate if requested by the team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As many as they want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-11-17T20:21:18.993" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25262" CreationDate="2018-11-18T07:32:12.650" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;After multiple rounds with experimentation with different columns based on our process, we came to the conclusion that no amount of tinkering with the specific columns could beat proper communication with each other, so we cut it back down to only &quot;Backlog&quot;, &quot;In progress&quot; and &quot;Done&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now we just learned to communicate so much as a team that everyone is pretty clear on the exact state of a ticket, and we track progress on the card directly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(There's a simple process checklist on each digital card, but it's mostly to keep remote people up to date.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31393" LastActivityDate="2018-11-18T07:32:12.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25262" CreationDate="2018-11-18T12:44:27.057" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some ideas from past experience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;sub-columns for the individual teams&lt;/strong&gt; so as to make the In progress column more meaningful. E.g:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;| TODO | &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;IN PROGRESS&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;| IN TESTING (QA) | DONE |&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;| &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;| ProdOps | FrontEnd | BE |&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;|&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;|&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Depending on your team structure, you may want to add a &lt;strong&gt;&quot;In Debugging&quot; column&lt;/strong&gt;; other times you may want to move it back to In progress.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;| TODO | IN PROGRESS | IN TESTING (QA) | DEBUGGING | DONE |&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Waiting for Approval&quot; column&lt;/strong&gt;; when a lot of pieces need to come together, it can be past QA (First Round) but not Done until related components are done, and QA approves the entire sub-system.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;| TODO | IN PROGRESS | IN TESTING (QA) | WAITING FOR APPROVAL | DONE |&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2018-11-18T12:44:27.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25269" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-11-18T14:27:21.260" Score="1" ViewCount="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I give a general name for documented data that will likely to be accessed and used in the future? Data like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;outline of summary of a meeting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a list of links, found after a research session.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a mind-map file of a brainstorming session. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an excel tracking sheet.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a google sheets inventory list.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To differentiate from other data that is also related to the project- tasks, goals, dates, team members, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We want to figure this out in order to name a database that will be responsible for that.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;We thought of the name &lt;strong&gt;Resources&lt;/strong&gt; but it collides with a different meaning in PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34130" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2018-11-18T15:05:47.597" LastActivityDate="2018-12-18T16:01:30.500" Title="How to name written data that it will likely be used later in the project?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25269" CreationDate="2018-11-18T15:04:40.653" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Could be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Objectives&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assets&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Operations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Data&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2018-11-18T15:04:40.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25258" CreationDate="2018-11-18T15:17:47.177" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The classic definition of a matrix organization is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A matrix organizational structure is a company structure in which the reporting relationships are set up as a grid, or matrix, rather than in the traditional hierarchy. In other words, &lt;strong&gt;employees have dual reporting relationships&lt;/strong&gt; - generally to both a functional manager and a product manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(As Google reports from &lt;a href=&quot;https://study.com/academy/lesson/matrix-organizational-structure-advantages-disadvantages-examples.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; has a similar description.)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not clear (to me) from your description if the employees also report to the Tech Lead or only to the PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they report to both then you are effectively a classic matrix organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2018-11-18T15:17:47.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25239" CreationDate="2018-11-18T21:55:41.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First and foremost:&lt;/strong&gt; avoid breaking down tasks by teams. Based on my previous experiences, it was always painful to put the pieces together retrospectively. So no, avoid the urge to create different tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on your example above, you have two different teams (development and testing) working over the same deliverable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Assumptions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are using jira statuses for each team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each team has a specific board&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your burndown is configured to burn by story points&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fastest solution:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Burn by remaining time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Better solution:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Either avoid the usage of iterations and go back to waterfall (there's no problem on doing waterfall nowadays) OR have a single iteration covering the work (as mentioned by John_C on the comment).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2018-11-18T21:55:41.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25239" CreationDate="2018-11-19T06:30:17.497" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;But you &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; measuring the effective work per sprint just fine. If the team delivers development work but not QA for a few stories, along with some analysis, but nothing else, then the effective work for your team for that sprint is &lt;strong&gt;zero.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because nothing of value has been delivered to the customer, and that's the value of a sprint. Not the &quot;story points&quot;, not the amount of code, not the number of ideas or sketches, not the number of excuses. The only thing you should be measuring that has value, is the number of &lt;em&gt;actual, tested, verified, working features.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trying to measure story points for things that don't deliver value is just gaming the system. All it lets you do is avoid the actual problem in your workflow, which is that stuff isn't getting done. The only thing Agile does is show you where the problems with your way of working are, it does not solve your problems. Shoving it back under the rug by measuring things nobody cares about (like story points on things that don't deliver customer value) won't help you get better in any way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you don't have a problem with &lt;em&gt;measuring&lt;/em&gt; the team's effective work here. You have a problem that the effective work is really low, because the burn time on your stories is very high. You need to try and fix &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt;, probably by slicing stories smaller, and getting the whole team involved earlier. Get your team involved and work with them to find ways to complete the whole story within the week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31393" LastActivityDate="2018-11-19T06:30:17.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25274" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25277" CreationDate="2018-11-19T12:30:36.833" Score="1" ViewCount="187" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a &lt;strong&gt;solutions architect&lt;/strong&gt; working for a private company. The company would like to associate employees' time logs with their payroll. For instances, if an employee is supposed to deliver 8 hours of work in a day and the employee is logging only 7 hours, then he/she would not be fully paid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally feel it's a blizzard decision of management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyways, my role is &lt;strong&gt;solutions architect&lt;/strong&gt; but I also put on multiple hats: Project Management, Hiring Team, Hands on Development, R&amp;amp;D, Production Support and more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I maintain my Time Sheet? Most of my time will be discussing with team members, attending meetings with stakeholders, interviewing candidates doing R&amp;amp;D on few development challenges, Code-Reviewing and Hands-on-development (it's easy to log hours here).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions would be greatly helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FYI: We are already using Azure DevOps (Scrum) for Project Management, but I am not sure how I can come up with my tasks because I will be involved in all tasks of my team members' and more. If I have 6 people in my team and each member is having around 15 tasks in a Sprint, that will be 6*15 = 90 tasks for me. Does it sound right to maintain such a task list for capturing hours?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3653" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-11-21T14:14:50.957" LastActivityDate="2018-11-21T14:14:50.957" Title="Time Logs for Project Manager" Tags="&lt;timekeeping&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25274" CreationDate="2018-11-19T14:21:06.800" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The type of work you do, where you cut across many types of tasks in a supply and demand way, you should charge your time against a single level of effort task that cuts across the entire period of performance.  You could certainly charge increments of time to each task in a very complex way but I suspect the business would eventually find that level of precision does not provide much value.  Your total costs can be apportioned to the tasks in a pro rata way in the event you need to estimate solutions architect level of effort by task.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cut across projects, you would have to maintain separate charge codes for them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-11-19T14:21:06.800" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25231" CreationDate="2018-11-19T14:47:56.380" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Earliest Occurrence Time (EOT) and Latest Occurrence Time (LOT) are terms used to figure out critical path when using critical path analysis.  The EOT is used for calculating the forward pass and LOT would be used to calculate the backward pass.  In Microsoft Project specifically, the scheduling engine uses Early Start / Early Finish and Late Start / Late Finish to run the critical path analysis on your schedule activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My understanding of Earliest Event Time and Latest Event Time is that they are used in a schedule that is built around events instead of activities.  These events are used the same way as activities to determine critical path in MS Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is used to define activities which usually define products and an Integrated Master Plan (IMP) is a structure used to define events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MS Project is built around Work Breakdown Structures, but if you need an IMP structure, you will have to define two or three custom fields to be able to properly track your IMP. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22128" LastActivityDate="2018-11-19T14:47:56.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25274" CreationDate="2018-11-19T15:30:54.070" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, you might not be the first person to face this problem at your company. As each company has distinct scenarios and needs, they fastest approach is discussing the problem with other seasoned managers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case historical information isn't available then it boils down to &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; you have to do it. If there isn't exhaustive reviews of hours, a &quot;one billing project fits all&quot; would be ok.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, however, you have to &lt;em&gt;demonstrate&lt;/em&gt; the time invested at different projects, you should ask for project codes before being engaged to help and bill against it the sooner the better. It may become impractical depending on the number of projects (and the customisation offered by the system you use for billing). Being that the case, you need to go back to the company to confirm whether they want you to spend a % of your time booking time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;bottomline:&lt;/strong&gt; either the company (or other seasoned managers) have a fast solution that allow you to book your time correctly or the company has to absorb the &lt;em&gt;waste&lt;/em&gt; of your time with these activities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2018-11-19T15:30:54.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9401" CreationDate="2018-11-19T15:43:38.340" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that MVPs are for when you are looking to provide a product to early adopters.  You don't know if the product is even viable. So you're looking for feedback. Using MVPs help you define your customer and demand feedback cycles that are very short and provide the ability to pivot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With MMFs you are looking for the next thing you can deliver the soonest. The target market is typically not early adopters but rather existing or new customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We've used the term MBI (minimum business increment)for a decade (with attribution) because some companies complain &quot;we don't market products&quot;.  Also, features is an overloaded term.&#xA;For more check out &lt;a href=&quot;https://portal.netobjectives.com/pages/flex/flex-solutions/minimum-business-increments-mbis/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://portal.netobjectives.com/pages/flex/flex-solutions/minimum-business-increments-mbis/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11845" LastActivityDate="2018-11-19T15:43:38.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25174" CreationDate="2018-11-19T16:31:56.670" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From your description of the problem, I'm not sure how you have set up your cost resources.  So I'm going to walk you through an example I have that works for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a cost item that has capital expenditure on equipment.  Go to Resource | View | Resource Sheet.  Once in the resource sheet, I add my resource by adding Resource Name &quot;myEquipment&quot;.  I have two columns that I need exposed, Type and Acrrue At.  By default Type is set to &quot;Work&quot; and Acrrue At is set to &quot;Prorated&quot;.  I change Type to &quot;Cost&quot; and Accrue to &quot;End&quot;.  You might be tempted to add the Cost column and add a cost at this point, but you will not be able to because now this cost resource has to be tied to the end of a task.  Here is how it looks so far...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/h8EXT.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/h8EXT.png&quot; alt=&quot;Resource Sheet View Setup&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you need to go to the Task Usage view by going to Task | View | Task Usage.  Once you are in the Task Usage view, you will need the Cost, Actual Cost, % Complete, Duration, Start, Finish, Actual Start, and Actual Finish to visualize this example.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the pane on the right, you will need Cost and Actual Cost.  You can change what you see by right clicking on the right pane and choosing your options.  In my example I also changed the timescale to show months.  You can play around with this to get what is needed for your particular schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LHMLX.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LHMLX.png&quot; alt=&quot;Task Usage View Setup&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next step is to add the cost resource &quot;myEquipment&quot; to a task.  I will add it to line 4 in my schedule.  After the &quot;myEquipment&quot; is added to the task, right click on the task (not the resource) and choose to &quot;Information&quot;.  Once in the Task Information box go to the Resources tab.  Next to your cost resource go to the Cost column and add the cost amount.  Here I added $1,000.  Click OK after completing this step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NmKI5.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NmKI5.png&quot; alt=&quot;Cost Resource Setup in Task Information&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You Should be able to see that the $1,000 was added to December even though the task spans from end of November to middle of December.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mw8hj.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mw8hj.png&quot; alt=&quot;Cost Seen in Right Pane with correct cost to Cost Resource&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cost will not incur until you either enter 100% or an Actual Finish Date. The % Complete column will not accept anything less than 100%.  You can see the Actual Cost column populated once I entered 100% complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tPQyL.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tPQyL.png&quot; alt=&quot;Actual Cost Column Updated after 100% complete&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22128" LastActivityDate="2018-11-19T16:31:56.670" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24983" CreationDate="2018-11-19T17:36:44.033" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way a master with sub-projects works is that the Master file is considered a container.  To this container you can insert sub-projects that are basically just pointing to file addresses.  These open up either in read-only or read/write mode depending on how you set up your Master file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Master file then can only read / display columns that are common to both the Master file and the sub-projects, in particular the custom fields set up with formulas and such.  So when I'm setting up a Master file, I make sure that all my sub-projects and Master file contain all the custom fields and formulas in the same columns.  Example, Text1 has a formula that I will have in all of Text1 for all my files.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way you will be able to access all custom fields from all your sub-projects in your master file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Programmatically, you can access all the data from each of your sub-files and put them in an Excel sheet without worrying about what I talked about above.  But that will not give you what you are asking for here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22128" LastActivityDate="2018-11-19T17:36:44.033" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25262" CreationDate="2018-11-19T17:42:56.450" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Something to keep in mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Equally important and helpful as naming and using an assortment of columns is the entry and exit criteria for each column. For example our team has the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An item can enter the &lt;strong&gt;Sprint Backlog&lt;/strong&gt; if...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it's Independent from other work items (not blocked)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it's Negotiable with product owner (business value has been evaluated/understood)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it's Valuable (it's been prioritized based on value delivered)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it's Estimated (the card has been broken down to &amp;lt;= 13 points of effort)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it's Small (can be forecasted to fit a sprint)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it's Testable (a test approach has been agreed upon)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An item can exit &lt;strong&gt;Development&lt;/strong&gt; if it has...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Appropriate unit test coverage?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Appropriate automated acceptance test coverage?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Appropriate level of platform (Browser/mobile device) test coverage?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A successful build, deploy, and manual test coverage via release pipeline?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Appropriate localization/globalization?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Passing automation tests?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A test strategy that is completely documented?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acceptable functionality based on acceptance criteria?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Browser compatibility with IE, Firefox, Chrome, and Edge?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Peer review from the team?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An item can exit &lt;strong&gt;Review&lt;/strong&gt; if...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Owner has used the functionality in QA and has acknowledged acceptance criteria has been met.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice our team only really uses three columns, but denoting criteria for each really helps everyone understand what needs to happen in order for work to flow through the board and why it needs to happen. If you're using Scrum, think of this criteria as your definition of ready and definition of done. The above is simply an example and may not be 100% appropriate for you to use. Hopefully, though, it gives you some ideas and helps your team really understand what each column really symbolizes, however you choose to define them. If it's not working, you can always revaluate, add columns, remove columns, and collaboratively redefine their criteria to fit your team's needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33598" LastEditorUserId="33598" LastEditDate="2018-11-19T17:49:34.017" LastActivityDate="2018-11-19T17:49:34.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16932" CreationDate="2018-11-20T00:31:17.000" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding the leading and trailing spaces in the task names (as well as unwanted double spaces between words), it often happens as a result of sloppy typing and sometimes as a result of copying and pasting from Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. To fix, copy the entire list of tasks and paste into a column (say column A) in Excel. In the next column, use this formula:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;=Proper(clean(trim(A1)))&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will do what the three functions do: sets to upper case on the first letter of each word, deletes non-printing characters, then strips out leading, trailing and double spaces. Then you need to copy the whole lot and paste back into MS Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34144" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-11-20T14:07:38.137" LastActivityDate="2018-11-20T14:07:38.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25284" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-11-20T05:18:22.643" Score="4" ViewCount="510" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am little confused with a difference between project and process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is &quot;An upgrade of software on 100 machines or 1 machine&quot; a project or a process? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help would be much appreciated.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34146" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2018-11-20T10:03:16.570" LastActivityDate="2018-11-20T10:03:16.570" Title="Difference between Project and Process" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;definition&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25284" CreationDate="2018-11-20T10:02:05.787" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a great article on the subject at &lt;a href=&quot;https://theprocessconsultant.com/process-project-even-matter/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://theprocessconsultant.com/process-project-even-matter/&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;h2&gt;Processes are repeatable. Projects are one-offs.&lt;/h2&gt; In detail:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Projects are one-offs.&lt;/strong&gt; At the very least you perform them infrequently. Yes, I know there are such things as project templates. That kind of implies that projects are repeatable. If you are planning a set of activities towards some goal for the first time, it’s a project. Now, if you end up repeating it over and over based on the same plan, I’d say it has become a process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Processes are repeatable.&lt;/strong&gt; They create value by producing a given output on demand. In a way, it’s like an excel function. You put the numbers in and out pops the result. You don’t have to think about it. But someone did the first time through. The designer of the Excel function spent a lot of time getting that right, you can be sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And this is the difference that has the impact. The fact that the activities are repeated means that you can effectively amortize the planning effort over many repetitions. You have to plan a project every time. The effort has to pay off from the outcome of the one time you execute the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you asked &lt;code&gt;&quot;An upgrade of software on 100 machines or 1 machine&quot; is a project or process?&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;strong&gt;process&lt;/strong&gt; that needs to be defined (if you want to be efficient) how to upgrade a machine. This process will take X minutes and have Y steps and Z ways to check it was done properly. let's call this the &lt;em&gt;upgrade process&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Upgrading 100 machines is a &lt;strong&gt;project&lt;/strong&gt; that will define on which machines (and in what order) you will execute the &lt;em&gt;upgrade process&lt;/em&gt;, how many resources you will allocate to it, and when you plan on starting. This will result in a schedule which you can then use to track the progress of this project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;strong&gt;project&lt;/strong&gt; can be summarized as &quot;execute the &lt;em&gt;upgrade &lt;strong&gt;process&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; 100 times&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2018-11-20T10:02:05.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25286" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25287" CreationDate="2018-11-20T11:26:18.073" Score="3" ViewCount="114" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say my team's velocity is 50 and for the next release, we need to complete a 500 worth of user story points. My sprint length is 2 weeks. So if I divided 500 by 50 I need to spend 10 sprints to complete the work (entire scope).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the stakeholders are asking to complete the same scope (500 worth of user story) before that timeline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What kind of steps can one take to overcome this situation??&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34148" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2018-11-20T11:39:30.423" LastActivityDate="2018-11-20T21:03:11.267" Title="Agile Release Planning" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25286" CreationDate="2018-11-20T12:46:31.283" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a baked in supposition that you must do all 500 points of scope in order to meet the user's needs. In Scrum, the first thing we would do is to challenge this assumption. By focusing on meeting needs rather than doing work, we can often find simpler solutions or identify things that aren't really needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, there are two other questions in here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can a team get faster?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do I go faster than a team can go?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For helping the team go faster, the team should be having a retrospective and looking for improvements each sprint. However, any way of working reaches a peak level of efficiency and you have to change approaches of work to get more speed out of the team. This is great, but it is also dangerous. Any change to the way of working will slow the team down while they are adapting to it and it's possible that they won't get it right the first time (or second). This should be done at a time when teams can absorb a slow-down in order to gain improved speed later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can also add teams. Adding people to a project is complex. You would think that if one team was completing 50 points, two would complete 100, but they won't. They have overhead of working together, not to mention that there is a ramp-up time and will slow down the other team during that period. Again, this does have to be done carefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastEditorUserId="31393" LastEditDate="2018-11-20T16:51:39.050" LastActivityDate="2018-11-20T16:51:39.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25262" CreationDate="2018-11-20T12:58:47.363" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our product manager used to work with whiskey so it's themed like so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Preparations | Fermenting | Distilling | Aging | Bottling&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34150" LastActivityDate="2018-11-20T12:58:47.363" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25289" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-11-20T15:24:51.940" Score="4" ViewCount="314" Body="&lt;p&gt;On my team, we're starting to work with kanban and have column limits applied. One of our members will work frequently work in the evenings or at night and is expressing that the column limits prevent him from doing work as in the evenings all the slots are generally full.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We currently have a column limit of our number of team members - 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have mandatory code review, and the review column will fill and can't be cleared without the testing team during normal working hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some strategies that can allow this person to be productive but don't make the column limits too loose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34153" LastActivityDate="2018-11-21T14:16:53.380" Title="Kanban: How can I handle column limits when some members work at night?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;kanban-board&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25290" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-11-20T15:30:48.167" Score="4" ViewCount="110" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand &lt;em&gt;spikes&lt;/em&gt; as being investigation tasks when there is an uncertainty about how a story should be done but my question is more about how to include a software architecture task in a Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, we are starting a new project, working with Domain Driven Design (DDD) architecture concepts. For this new project, I don't want the Dev Team to start coding before defining how the back-end structure will look like. They might want to include some event-driven concepts, etc. in the structure and, in order to arrive to this conclusion, I need the architect to think about it and discuss solutions with the back-end Dev Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How, as a Product Owner, should I include those design/architecture tasks in the Sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34152" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-22T10:25:20.650" LastActivityDate="2018-11-26T17:40:34.593" Title="Architecture task as sprint issues" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;design&gt;&lt;sprint-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25290" CreationDate="2018-11-20T15:48:33.977" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a question for which I have always been looking for an answer. With my experience with this, is how I am managing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These kind of technical tasks are considered 'acceptance criteria'. Or you can have a story based on your infra-requirement, like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;As a (role), I need the system to respond well when there is load of 10K concurrent requests&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can have a task/subtask of the story (assuming you are using a tool like JIRA).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17574" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-11-26T17:40:34.593" LastActivityDate="2018-11-26T17:40:34.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25260" CreationDate="2018-11-20T15:52:17.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no particular number associated with this, but I think it should be totally based on outcomes of your daily Scrum meeting (daily standup) which is must.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum meeting if you find something which is blocking deliverables then to overcome those you may need to align more sessions/meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17574" LastActivityDate="2018-11-20T15:52:17.253" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25290" CreationDate="2018-11-20T16:04:34.110" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not the purview of the Product Owner (PO).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PO should not care &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; the product is built - that concern lies with the Development Team. The PO should only care about &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; is built &lt;em&gt;in what order&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, purely development tasks such as these should be created by the Dev Team, not the PO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If something can be stated in a way that provides &lt;em&gt;direct business value&lt;/em&gt;, then it should be a Story created by the PO. If not (as I believe is the case here), then it should be a Task created by the Dev Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you can feel free to give suggestions to the Dev Team, but be aware that managing such tasks should not be part of your responsibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-11-20T16:56:21.490" LastActivityDate="2018-11-20T16:56:21.490" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25294" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-11-20T16:48:45.893" Score="4" ViewCount="771" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have some confusion regarding the concept of a user story's task's estimation (effort estimate) using hours. What is the actual purpose of estimating effort in hours? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to that, let's say my team's velocity is 50 story points and our Sprint duration is 2 weeks. In the Sprint Planning meeting, we have pulled 50 points' worth of user stories to the Sprint Backlog. Then we started to break user stories into tasks and estimate the effort using hours. Then we have noted that the total hours of all tasks (for all the user stories) is 2.5 weeks. In this situation, the task estimate (effort estimate) is conflicting with velocity. So how do we overcome this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34148" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-12-07T14:14:43.223" LastActivityDate="2018-12-07T14:22:55.260" Title="Agile user story's task estimation" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25289" CreationDate="2018-11-20T17:04:36.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Though not specified, I infer that you have one developer 'owning' each task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can fix this by changing that. Either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A) The night-coder picks one of the in-progress issues and starts working on it. Make sure you're making good use of source control!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B) The day-coders pair up more on issues, leaving more available for the night-coder. Essentially, you have two different WIP limits: numMembers-2 for day-coders, numMembers-1 for the night-coder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-11-21T14:16:53.380" LastActivityDate="2018-11-21T14:16:53.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25294" CreationDate="2018-11-20T19:04:41.163" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your first question re: the purpose of estimating effort in hours, it's really more complex than simply time/item. We're dealing with people here, and people have different skillsets, speeds, and knowledge. If you use hours, you obscure the main reason to use story points in the first place, which is to allow team members who perform at different speeds to communicate and estimate collaboratively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being practical, three developers can start by estimating a given user story as 5 points even if their individual estimates of the actual time on task differ. Starting with that estimate, they can then agree to estimate something as 3 points, &lt;strong&gt;relatively speaking&lt;/strong&gt; to the criteria of work the entire team has already completed. When story points equated to hours, team members can no longer do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this scenario, story points are still about effort, but the amount of time per point is not pegged to the same amount for all team members. &lt;strong&gt;Story points allow for collaborative, relative estimations without the need to take into account each individual developers time to complete the task.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your second question, I recommend NOT planning out the entire sprint at Sprint Planning. I especially recommend not even paying attention to hours/item. Instead, focus on the highest-valued items first, and as requirements emerge, integrate them into the sprint if they help your team achieve their sprint goal. Use your metrics to help forecast your effort. Your entire sprint doesn't have to be planned at Sprint Planning, but you should have an understanding of how the work your team has pulled in will get them to their goal. Delivering value should always be more important than understanding how accurate your forecasts are sprint-to-sprint. That doesn't mean accurate estimations aren't important, but delivering value should be the primary focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33598" LastEditorUserId="33598" LastEditDate="2018-11-20T19:10:12.817" LastActivityDate="2018-11-20T19:10:12.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25289" CreationDate="2018-11-20T19:15:02.270" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's all down to what you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask your team:&lt;/strong&gt; why there's this code limit in place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Potential Answer #1:&lt;/strong&gt; Because we must not work on development if we have pending code reviews. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Potential Action #1:&lt;/strong&gt; Your team must either work together to avoid leaving a lot pending code reviews or the night shift guy must be&#xA;focused on code reviews. What works better for the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;=====&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Potential Answer #2:&lt;/strong&gt; Because we read that the ideal number for a limit is &lt;em&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Potential action #2:&lt;/strong&gt; Increase the limit. These limits are there to HELP the team to deliver more value... not to slow the team down.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;=====&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Potential answer #3:&lt;/strong&gt; I'm not sure to be honest, someone defined these limits.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Potential action #3:&lt;/strong&gt; Ditto as #2. The WIP limit should help, not slow down. Don't apply agile-related approaches for the sake of applying them. Use them to address specific problems your team has.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;=====&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bottomline:&lt;/strong&gt; Discuss with your team and pick the best choice &lt;em&gt;from a team perspective, focused on deliver value, not on adhering to agile methodology&lt;/em&gt;. Agile is a tool to a mean (deliver more value) not a purpose in itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2018-11-20T19:15:02.270" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25294" CreationDate="2018-11-20T20:49:00.333" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Estimating using story points at the story level and time at the task level isn't necessary, but it can be useful, particularly for teams that are new to Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some reasons for using time-based task estimates include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The time-based estimates can act as a sanity check against your story point capacity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have specialists in your team, you can check to make sure they aren't overloaded or under-loaded&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The act of doing the task level estimate can draw out some discovery conversation that might not otherwise take place&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You may have a team rule about a maximum duration for a task (e.g. no task takes longer than a day)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of experienced Scrum teams find the overhead of doing the task level estimates is not worth the benefits. For newer teams though it can be a nice transition step away from a more traditional estimating approach. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-11-20T20:49:00.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25286" CreationDate="2018-11-20T21:03:11.267" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adding to Daniel's answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is dangerous to assume that you won't add stories over a period of 10 sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could happen for several reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feedback received at your sprint reviews may turn in to rework or new work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical problems may only become apparent when you start working on stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also worth noting that velocity can go down as well as up. Sickness is just one of many potential causes of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Committing to deliver everything by the deadline could easily turn into a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_march_(project_management)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;death march&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-11-20T21:03:11.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25289" CreationDate="2018-11-20T22:38:27.540" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I read your question, my initial thought was you were working multiple shifts and that the same task was being worked upon by multiple people - some developer working during the day and some at night - sort of a disjointed paired-programming :)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it looks like that's not the case. Each person is working on their own tasks - and they just happen to be working at different times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a person is working on a specific stage of your workflow - and has the capacity to work - but is unable to because of the WIP Limit on the column, clearly there is a mismatch between the WIP Limit for that column and the available capacity for that column.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The great Don Reinertsen has said in one of the Lean Kanban conferences that a recommended WIP Limit for teams new to Kanban can be twice the average amount of work being done at any time in a column (more about that &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.digite.com/blog/how-do-you-do-scrumban/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).  So, I am not sure you have a high enough WIP Limit and this issue is an indicator of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you decide what WIP Limits to define?  The following are some of the guidelines - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Twice the average WIP as mentioned above as &quot;prescribed&quot; by Don Reinertsen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep a buffer for any blockers - cards that are blocked by team members due to their inability to continue working on them due to some dependency&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Number of tasks a team member is working on at a time and the time it takes for them to do any one task.  For example, a dev team member will typically work with 1 task at a time, while a marketing team member might have 2-3 smaller tasks that they might be expected to complete in a day&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unexpected tasks that need a person to put something on hold and work on the interrupt&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A general thumb-rule I have seen most teams use is a WIP Limit of 1.5 times the number of people assigned to work in a specific column.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, your WIP Limits must be defined based on your own context. If you have people waiting to take up work but can't due to a low WIP Limit, you have an over-capacity issue.  If you have too many tasks in a column not being worked upon, you have a low capacity/ high demand or multi-tasking related stagnation of work (people not being able to complete any one task because they have too many balls in the air).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say, start by increasing your WIP Limit to at least 1.25 times the # of people in and then see how the system behaves.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2018-11-20T22:38:27.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16498" CreationDate="2018-11-21T07:27:22.997" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seems to be a lot of confusion on Risk and Issue. My simple understanding is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A risk is an uncertain future event that has a positive or negative impact on the project objectives, should it occur (or business activities if you are considering BAU) [mathematically probability from 1-99%]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An issue on the other hand is something that has already happened [Probability=100%]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, an issue or recurring issue(s) can lead to a potential risk such as single failure or repeated failures to patch/update a computer software might lead to the potential risk event of a hacker penetrating/hacking the computer/system/organization which will result in ........ &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34160" LastActivityDate="2018-11-21T07:27:22.997" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6252" CreationDate="2018-11-21T13:24:53.350" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Product Management is the process of delivering the &lt;strong&gt;best product&lt;/strong&gt; for an identified market taking into consideration technical and commercial constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An assumption of Product Management is that market and user requirements shift over time, so the process of improvement is never complete - it is ongoing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project Management is not limited to delivering products, and project deliverables are normally more clearly defined/understood in advance compared to products. Hence the assumption that projects can be completed in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34165" LastActivityDate="2018-11-21T13:24:53.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25303" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-11-22T02:02:58.500" Score="0" ViewCount="1169" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to ask if I need to have non working days and working days in a same day. Can we do that in microsoft project? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example Saturday (same date) for items Consultant approval I want to set it as a non-working days but for RC work I want to set that Saturday is working days. Can we do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34169" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-22T14:06:01.420" LastActivityDate="2020-01-07T14:01:05.107" Title="Working and non working days" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;pmi&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25294" CreationDate="2018-11-22T06:16:32.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Finally, I understood some benefit of estimation of tasks using hours and how to overcome my second question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to my understanding, breaking user stories into tasks is beneficial to understand “how much work the Team can commit to for a Sprint”, if we don’t know the team's velocity. However, before estimating tasks, the Scrum Master (SM) should prepare a team’s capacity planning to understand what is the maximum/total working hours the individual members will have in the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, in Sprint Planning, the Team can break user stories into tasks and the SM can facilitate to monitor the individual task commitments against the total capacity of an individual person. If one member is exceeding the total capacity, the SM should inform the Team. In this way, we can avoid the overloading or underloading of a Team member within the Sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once all the Team members have committed to tasks with their full capacity, we can identify the velocity by calculating the committed user stories. However, if the Team is mature enough to estimate using user story points and we know the average velocity (after running 4+ sprints) then there is no need for breaking stories into tasks, unless the company uses individual commitments as their annual evaluation Key Performance Indicators. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To avoid exceeding the Sprint length, the SM should prepare a capacity planning before individual task commitment. The SM should monitoring the capacity of each individual Team member by examining to his/her total capacity so that the Team will not exceed the Sprint length with the estimation. However, in this method, we cannot pull user stories to Sprint Backlog by considering velocity, then break them into tasks and again estimate using hours. Either we have to pull stories by considering the velocity or we have to pull stories using the Team’s capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34148" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-12-07T14:22:55.260" LastActivityDate="2018-12-07T14:22:55.260" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25303" CreationDate="2018-11-22T14:58:12.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Microsoft Project, you can have many calendars.  Right out of the box you will have at minimum the following calendars:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;24 hours&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Night Shift&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Standard&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever you start a new file from a blank project, the project will automatically have the Standard as default.  You can build custom calendars by going to Project | Properties | Change Working Time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have all the calendars you will need for your project, you can start assigning them to the project, tasks, and/or resources.  Therefore calendar assignment can be at the level of the whole project, for a particular task, or for a particular resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that the calendar assigned to the Project will be the automatically used for all tasks within your schedule.  If you enter the column &quot;Task Calendar&quot;, you will see that all the tasks are set to &quot;None&quot;.  This means that all the tasks are being scheduled based on the Project calendar.  It does not mean that no calendar has been assigned to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your particular question, I interpreted it as you want to change what a particular task behaves on a particular day as either working or non-working.  So I've built a calendar called &quot;6/48 Calendar&quot; meaning 6 days / 48 hours a week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/AGTie.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/AGTie.png&quot; alt=&quot;6/48 Calendar Creation&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have that, then you can use it as task calendars to change the working time for particular tasks.  A note of CAUTION: Assign calendars to tasks sparingly. Only use them when necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below you can see how my example is using the Standard calendar for my project.  Therefore tasks are not scheduled during the weekend:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rNcGE.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rNcGE.png&quot; alt=&quot;Tasks Using Standard Calendar&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I assign my new &quot;6/48 Calendar&quot; to Task 2 to see if my task calendar makes Saturday a working day:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9ruJJ.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9ruJJ.png&quot; alt=&quot;Task Using Custom Calendar &amp;quot;6/48&amp;quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22128" LastEditorUserId="11970" LastEditDate="2018-12-13T12:06:49.530" LastActivityDate="2018-12-13T12:06:49.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25309" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25311" CreationDate="2018-11-23T18:01:37.610" Score="-1" ViewCount="123" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a ScrumMaster for a team of developers and testers who are doing very well and their velocity is spiking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am interested in doing an detailed study to understand what factors caused this upwards trend. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have looked at all the major events, workshops, retrospectives and team activities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can qualify this upwards trend to someone senior and non agile?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2018-12-07T14:24:49.100" Title="Why is my team doing so well?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25309" CreationDate="2018-11-24T10:15:33.490" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Glad to hear things are going well for your Team. The simple answer to your question is: ask the Team. Metrics only guide us in where and when to ask questions. They don't tell us much on their own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As one of the comments mentions, velocity isn't really a measure of productivity (at least not on its own). Most measurements need to be taken with other measurements to infer anything. I'd advise also looking at the average story count in the Sprints and the average size of a story in the Sprint too. This can help you infer more about what is happening. Again though, to make sense of it, you have to talk to the Team. If they say &quot;nothing has changed, we just get more done now&quot; I would be suspicious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, talk to the stakeholders. Are their needs getting met faster? More effectively? If so, that is really how you know your Team is doing well. More work without more value isn't really productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-12-07T14:24:49.100" LastActivityDate="2018-12-07T14:24:49.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25316" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25317" CreationDate="2018-11-25T07:42:33.350" Score="2" ViewCount="56" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the tools and technique as part of &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Develop team&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;  process is to give reward and recognition to the people/team for showcasing desirable behavior during project execution. This is done because People are motivated when they feel their work or contribution is valued by organization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As per PMBOK Guide, Generally, &lt;strong&gt;Money&lt;/strong&gt; is viewed as the tangible aspect of any reward system,  although Money is not the ONLY motivating factor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Risk Management planning, for known risks which are threats, typically PMs need to keep aside &quot;contingency reserve&quot; so that if such risks do occur, it can be taken care by the funds kept aside for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My Question is&lt;/strong&gt;:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;do the PMs &quot;reserve&quot; or keep aside a specific amount to make sure&#xA;  reward and recognition  are done as a way for people's motivation&#xA;  during project execution and if yes, does this amount become part of&#xA;  &quot;cost baseline&quot; for that project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21918" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2018-11-25T15:58:09.127" LastActivityDate="2018-11-25T15:58:09.127" Title="Is money for reward and recognition set aside by PM during Cost Planning?" Tags="&lt;cost-management&gt;&lt;reward&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25316" CreationDate="2018-11-25T11:14:57.870" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, the costs of various types of financial incentives are built into your costs; however, you would not likely display 'reward' as a line item in your baseline. No customer would want to pay for that. So it typically becomes part of your burden that you use on a labor rate. So every hour you charge you earn a penny or two towards these incentives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then when it comes time to pay the reward, it comes out of the profit of the project and the customer will not see an invoice for 'party.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-11-25T11:14:57.870" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25316" CreationDate="2018-11-25T15:57:13.290" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you consider you should only pay bonuses for successful* projects or for every project? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Successful projects:&lt;/em&gt; when value is delivered to the client and net profits are generated for your company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If only for successful projects, then I'd suggest you to consider a % of the net profits for bonuses and compensations. You won't disclose profits to your client anyway. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you'll pay it for all projects, even the ones generating no profit, then you can allocate part of the project costs as retribution. It'll be up to you how much cost detail you share with your client. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There isn't likely to have a canonical answer for this question, you need to assess what's better / acceptable for your reality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2018-11-25T15:57:13.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25319" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-11-25T19:18:29.070" Score="4" ViewCount="151" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using a shared resource pool for several project plans (each plan is contained in a separate file), what is the simplest way of working out to which task a given resource is allocated on a particular day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, assume you are wondering why a particular (high-priority) task is not planned to start when you think it should.  One approach would be to show the Resource Usage view, scroll over to the day you think the task in question should start and notice that the resource assigned to that task is, indeed, fully allocated for the day.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At that point, it would be convenient to have a context menu entry for a cell in the Resource Usage view enabling navigation to the specific task (within a particular plan) representing the selected resource usage.  Since no such CME exists, I am wondering how to accomplish the goal of determining to which task a given resource is allocated on a particular day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34191" LastActivityDate="2021-02-22T01:03:50.327" Title="Determine to which task a resource is allocated on a particular day" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25320" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-11-25T21:11:18.410" Score="2" ViewCount="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for a chain of hospitals which have annual inspections by the healthcare regulator. Following the inspections an action plan is created to address any issues identified during the inspection. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the actions, for example, reducing patients' length of stay, are already being addressed by separate working groups and have existing comprehensive action plans. To avoid duplicating work, I am of the opinion that the action should be closed; however, I am wary of closing an action without any assurance that the issue is actually being resolved.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure if there is any best practice guidance on this. Would welcome your thoughts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34192" LastActivityDate="2018-11-25T21:58:43.820" Title="Tracking and closing actions being addressed by other working groups" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25320" CreationDate="2018-11-25T21:58:43.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Close the original action and open a new action to verify and validate the original action has been completed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-11-25T21:58:43.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8377" CreationDate="2018-11-26T11:48:03.370" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nice question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BRD (Business Requirement Document) and FRD (Functional Requirement Document) are the two types of documentations needed. &#xA;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Both BRD and FRD are carried out by a Business Analyst and not by Project Manager.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; I have also observed that many companies ask their Project Manager or UX Designer to carry out these responsibilities which ideally belong to Business Analyst. Business Analyst is the one who is expected to elicit and refine the business requirements by building a strong rapport with the client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Few roles of the Business Analyst (BA):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Liaising with the Designing/Development Team for the &lt;strong&gt;technical aspects/issues/fixations/changes/advises/suggestions/insights/etc.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Liaising with the Project Manager for knowing the &lt;strong&gt;status of project&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Building a rapport with the Client. BA is a &lt;strong&gt;liaison&lt;/strong&gt; between Client and Developers/Project Managers/Designers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Budget Analysis &amp;amp; Requirement Specification Analysis.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stakeholder&lt;/strong&gt; Analysis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk Analysis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Documentation work: BRD, FRD.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wireframing (&lt;strong&gt;optional&lt;/strong&gt;, because &lt;strong&gt;UX&lt;/strong&gt; Designers are meant to be the responsible people for wireframing.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Personally carrying out an &lt;strong&gt;UAT&lt;/strong&gt; (User Acceptance Testing).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen many small companies or start-up companies asking their employees to wear as many hats as they can! &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;But If you are not comfortable with a particular role, then you should straightaway let them know about your concern!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34200" LastActivityDate="2018-11-26T11:48:03.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25323" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25324" CreationDate="2018-11-26T12:59:58.317" Score="6" ViewCount="414" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our development team estimates that they can complete 30 story points in the current iteration. Partway through the sprint they realize that they will complete 50 story points at their current rate. What we should do? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34148" LastEditorUserId="33598" LastEditDate="2018-11-27T10:43:21.867" LastActivityDate="2018-12-06T00:40:56.293" Title="What should a scrum team do if they complete work earlier than expected?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25323" CreationDate="2018-11-26T13:27:48.947" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great question, and a great problem to have :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a team is ahead of schedule, it's still ultimately up to them as to how to manage their work. I suggest asking them what their stretch goal should be relative to the next highest-value yielding work in the product backlog, all while providing transparency to the PO. There's nothing that says you can't deliver more value than you initially anticipated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also congrats to your team!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33598" LastActivityDate="2018-11-26T13:27:48.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25325" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-11-26T22:30:52.463" Score="4" ViewCount="194" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of our PMs on her project has a scrum team from Vendor A.  She needed another developer.  So she added one from another vendor.  I like this idea because it keeps Vendor A honest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to do the same but the project is currently at design stage so I can't use the resourcing excuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;introduce the idea to the vendor (overcome resistance)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;structure the commercials (e.g. SOW for main vendor and T&amp;amp;M for the single contractor)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose another option is to introduce 2 competing scrum teams but we don't have much budget and I think handling the code merges could be difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34204" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-27T10:43:44.330" LastActivityDate="2019-01-19T20:02:45.623" Title="Forming a composite scrum team with multiple vendors" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25326" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25330" CreationDate="2018-11-27T08:35:33.173" Score="2" ViewCount="766" Body="&lt;p&gt;Developers at my company log hours in JIRA. Managers/Scrum Masters do not log hours that religiously. They would only log for Scrum ceremonies.  As a manager, I can see the reason for not adding my Tasks to the Sprint, as meeting with stakeholders, helping team with technical difficulties, liaising with customers etc. are not good candidates for a developer Sprint. These cannot be planned nor groomed nor any such thing. And the Team doesn't need to know the details of these, as these are not the kind of Tasks any member should be able to do. Only I will be doing these Tasks and  while I can ask for feedback from my Team, we don't need to groom these Tasks as such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We recently had a conversation with HR, about finding a way to log managers' work. We can obviously create JIRA Tasks for our work, but then, as it doesn't get added to the Sprint, it doesn't get counted for the amount of work completed for a particular project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you please share any insight into how you are managing this at your company? Do we create a separate Sprint for managers, across projects? Or do we create a Story in each Sprint for each category of Tasks I do during the Sprint, as a manager? We do have 6-10 managers with varying Team sizes assigned to each of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34208" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-11-27T14:08:28.080" LastActivityDate="2018-11-27T15:09:53.117" Title="Tracking hours for Managers/Scrum Master" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;timekeeping&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25323" CreationDate="2018-11-27T12:31:45.070" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;What a wonderful problem to have - to be ahead of schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides for trying to get ahead on future tasks, I would suggest the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Code reviews&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adding comments to the code&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Updating specs to match to match the code&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blackbox and whitebox testing of code &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some fun activity; otherwise you may essentially be &lt;em&gt;punishing&lt;/em&gt; the team for doing a great job by giving them more work to do.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2018-11-27T12:31:45.070" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25326" CreationDate="2018-11-27T13:51:02.400" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;HR is going to use the breakdown. Mostly it would be an audit of the time spent and some insights into areas where people are spending time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a known anti-pattern. If the team is succeeding, then the Scrum Master (as part of the team) is contributing to its overall success. If the team is failing, then the Scrum Master (again, as part of the team) is failing alongside them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team succeeds or fails as a whole. Trying to tease out individual performance for team-based frameworks is an anti-pattern. The way to handle it is to educate the organization on how to effectively evaluate whole-team performance, not hijack ticketing systems like JIRA to track labor hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't feel empowered to have that conversation, that's a problem too. Speak to your line manager, agile coach, or other project sponsor, and ensure that they are fully supporting Scrum's team-oriented culture. Doing anything else is an abdication of your responsibilities as a Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Recommendations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team is routinely failing to meet its Sprint Goals, then this is a problem for the entire Scrum Team to address during Sprint Retrospectives. Neither a traditional Project Management Office (PMO) nor Human Resources (HR)—and for goodness sakes, why is Human Resources even in this picture at all?!—should be involved in assessing intra-team processes or utilization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While an agile community of practice is always a good source of advice and information, the organization should be looking at outcomes (e.g. &quot;Is the team meeting its Sprint Goals more often than not?&quot;) rather than utilization metrics. Trying to convert individual hours into a value proposition is antithetical to core agile principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tracking labor hours within the project is intrinsically a utilization metric, and to a lesser extent a cost-tracking or cost-accounting metric. When done properly at the program level, Scrum typically has an averaged run-rate per Sprint that is essentially fixed. Tracking labor hours instead of outcomes simply doesn't fit this model, except when the organization is violating core principles by matrixing teams or &lt;em&gt;assigning&lt;/em&gt; people (a second anti-pattern) to multiple teams (a third anti-pattern). Don't do those things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't enable organizational dysfunction or support known anti-patterns. Educating the organization on how the framework is meant to be applied, and how to be more agile in their business approach and interactions with the team, is an essential part of the Scrum Master's job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;One Caveat: Wage Accounting&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If HR wants to know how many hours a day people are at work, or when they're taking time off, those are reasonable wage-related requests that have little to do with Scrum as a project management framework. Granular time tracking is an anti-pattern, though, so make sure you don't have an &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;X/Y problem&lt;/a&gt; here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say &quot;no&quot; to utilization metrics, but by all means use techniques like the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;5 Whys&lt;/a&gt; to understand the &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; problem that HR is trying to solve for. You may be able to help them solve for &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; rather than &lt;em&gt;Y&lt;/em&gt; without damaging your Scrum implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-11-27T15:09:53.117" LastActivityDate="2018-11-27T15:09:53.117" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25332" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-11-27T17:40:43.490" Score="2" ViewCount="118" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a product manager at a small startup. Naturally, we have very limited resources and a ton of fires to put out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, when I start working on some specific area, I can easily craft hypotheses, experiment and improve. Additionally, I can imagine a vision and possible iterations for these isolated features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the issue is that I am not working on some isolated area anymore but need to keep the whole app in mind when I work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I need to keep the overview over all parts of the app and how they interact with each other&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I need to prioritise features and hypotheses to test for different parts of the app&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All of these initiatives need to bring us closer to our vision&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a bit overwhelmed and constantly feel like I lost the overview. How do you manage the product at a higher level, take a step back and zoom out of the day to day grind? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there processes, tools or routines that you use to make sure your next steps are a logical consequence of the vision you have for your product vs. just the next best feature that wins in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.intercom.com/blog/rice-simple-prioritization-for-product-managers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;RICE&lt;/a&gt; score?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34218" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-11-28T14:08:34.497" LastActivityDate="2018-12-09T13:53:09.910" Title="What tools or processes help you to keep the bigger picture in mind?" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;vision&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21997" CreationDate="2018-11-27T18:22:09.217" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whats the difference to user stories then?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could also define following user stories instead of &quot;acceptance criteria&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As User I want a button 'Show Map' so that I can open the map view (Google maps)&#xA;As User I expect that the reported adress is marked on the map&#xA;As User I want the 'Show Map' button to be disabled, when there is no adress marked&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Makes it easier to plan, prioritize and track implementation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34219" LastActivityDate="2018-11-27T18:22:09.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25332" CreationDate="2018-11-27T19:07:20.990" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great question, and kudos for being concerned enough about the bigger picture to reach out. A team I worked on a couple years ago was in the same boat as you are: great at the day to day but a bit lost when it came to the bigger picture. We found interactive story mapping really helped everyone understand not only WHAT they would work on next, but WHY. Making this a collaborative effort with the entire team kept engagement high, questions flowing and understanding clear to all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I'm not sure what tools you use today, we ended up integrating a spec mapping tool (&lt;a href=&quot;https://specmap.cc/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;similar to this&lt;/a&gt;) to assist with our story mapping. This allowed the entire team to see the body of work needed (it inevitably evolved) while breaking that work out across the user journey. This not only helped the team understand the work at hand, but it helped reinforce the fact that we were building this solution for &lt;strong&gt;actual people&lt;/strong&gt;. Therefore, user empathy was inherently ingrained into our team dynamics via constantly re-evaluating our story map. Quality became a side effect of this empathy. All of this was predicated on the transparency of actual user feedback. While our Product Owner owned the priority of work, the entire team had a say before the final decision was made to work on something because they saw what users were saying and doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's worth noting the tool itself didn't solve our problems. Rather, the tool helped facilitate the collaboration needed to keep the vision in clear sight and relevant to everyone.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, to answer your question, if you're looking for a tool to help your team see the forest through the trees, I recommend a story mapping tool of your choice. The artifacts of constantly re-evaluating our mapped work ahead were well worth the time investment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for processes, we were fortunate to work at a company that hired us and got out of our way. They empowered us to own the work, to own the failures, and to celebrate individual and team successes as a unit. The artifacts of this are well documented by Scrum (our agile framework of choice). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33598" LastEditorUserId="11970" LastEditDate="2018-12-09T13:53:09.910" LastActivityDate="2018-12-09T13:53:09.910" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25335" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-11-28T01:58:50.070" Score="1" ViewCount="387" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a summary task, and have the 'Leveling Can Split' option set to No.&#xA;The four subtasks which are in sequence, also have LCS set to No.&#xA;In the Leveling options I also have 'Leveling can create splits in remaining work' unchecked.&#xA;The tasks are all Priority 500.&#xA;I have had to insert a factory shutdown, and I have done this by creating a Priority 1000 task which uses the resources in each of the above tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believed the logic should be that the LCS set to No on the summary task would force all four tasks to run sequentially either before or after the shutdown. But the leveler, allows two tasks to be before the shutdown, and two after, with the delay being the span of the shutdown task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone advise on whether I am doing this wrong, or if the summary task cannot be prevented from splitting in this manner? I am at a loss, the summary task has an input field to say the task cannot be split, but there it is split in the schedule. Any suggestions in how to keep these subtasks together?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Declan&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34224" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-28T15:06:58.343" LastActivityDate="2018-12-29T20:01:45.380" Title="MS Project - Summary Task split by leveling" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25336" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25337" CreationDate="2018-11-28T06:18:35.210" Score="6" ViewCount="661" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been working as a software developer for more than a decade. Recently I took a new job where I have to manage a remote team of 5 developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a &quot;stand up&quot; conference call every day at 5pm my time, 10 am their time. (I am the team lead/manager and will be the scrum master as well)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have some questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how to call the meeting? &quot;stand up?&quot;, &quot;huddle?&quot;, other?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have worked in some places where before the scrum meeting the scrum master touches on latest news (political, technology, etc). Should I do the same?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;should I be the first or last to talk in the status presentation?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what other points should I cover?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;are there any books on this subject?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16143" LastEditorUserId="16143" LastEditDate="2018-11-28T06:43:47.037" LastActivityDate="2018-12-09T13:51:15.907" Title="questions around &quot;standups&quot; for remote team" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;&lt;remote-teams&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ClosedDate="2018-11-29T14:46:58.837" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25336" CreationDate="2018-11-28T06:45:15.717" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It isn't clear from your post if your team is practicing Scrum, so I'll start with general information before going to Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no single right way to run a stand-up meeting. You can call it whatever you like (just consider that the term Daily Scrum suggests a specific practice). Usually, the value of the standup to share important information that has come up in the past day that people will need to do their jobs effectively. In a restaurant, this may be new specials and sharing stock levels. In software, it is probably developments in the project, changes in work state, and resolution of blockers. Note that the manager does not need to be the source of the information. In fact, I would advise any manager to help their team get to a point where they are not needed for this meeting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The practice you mention about sharing news can be fine if the team wants. It may build some connections that extend past work tasks. You might consider something like a rotating role that a different person each day must share a piece of news that they find interesting. At the same time, some teams may feel this is wasteful - read the culture of your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now on to Scrum. If you are a Scrum Team, there is a practice called the Daily Scrum. The Daily Scrum is a type of standup with a specific purpose and set of behaviors. Each sprint has a sprint goal and the Daily Scrum is an opportunity for the team to synchronize and replan how they can best reach their sprint goal. The Scrum Master facilitates the daily scrum, meaning that they help make it more effective. This is subtly different from leading the daily scrum. One key difference is that the team should never be giving an update to the Scrum Master. It is for team members to synchronize with other team members. Interestingly, many Scrum teams add in things like the news item you mentioned for the same reason you would in any other kind of standup - it helps build connections on the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information on Daily Scrum, you can read the description in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-daily&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-11-28T06:45:15.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25332" CreationDate="2018-11-28T10:35:02.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My company recently added a top-level strategic roadmap. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has a separate project for each department (marketing, sales, dev, HR and etc.) and each project has only a few works in it with department head being responsible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looks like this (not an actual thing):&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CZHou.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CZHou.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34150" LastActivityDate="2018-11-28T10:35:02.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25323" CreationDate="2018-11-28T10:56:08.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the Product Owner is doing their job then there should be some more stories ready to go in the Product Backlog - get stuck in to the highest priority one(s) that will fit in the remainder of the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21704" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-11-28T14:10:03.813" LastActivityDate="2018-11-28T14:10:03.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25340" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25343" CreationDate="2018-11-28T12:08:18.387" Score="4" ViewCount="110" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have started a new job as a software team lead, the team is remote in another continent and time zone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are good team building activities to do remotely?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Im thinking like some online game, or webinar?. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16143" LastActivityDate="2018-12-13T12:07:04.673" Title="team building activities for remote team" Tags="&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;remote-teams&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2018-11-29T14:46:07.667" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25340" CreationDate="2018-11-28T12:59:13.277" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the university courses and companies I was at remotely / with some distance, it was common to use a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/groups/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Facebook Group&lt;/a&gt; from where we all would connect and discuss relevant content (updates from the university/company, auctions, contests (chess, cooking, ....), discussions about the general approach to solving problems, etc.). The pattern I could see is that here is not required in moment interaction. For instances, auctions would last 1 week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to communicate more real-time, having a &lt;a href=&quot;https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/s40/23721943&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Whatsapp group&lt;/a&gt; fixes the lack of the previous suggestion but the number of persons is generally lower. This is nice to share pictures/gifs/ memes with each other, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also tried &lt;a href=&quot;https://plug.dj/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;plug.dj&lt;/a&gt; to listen to music together but generally speaking people stopped using it after 1-3 weeks as it was requiring more effort to use it than the value itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27189" LastEditorUserId="11970" LastEditDate="2018-12-13T12:07:04.673" LastActivityDate="2018-12-13T12:07:04.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25340" CreationDate="2018-11-28T13:33:17.560" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;random slack channel or something like that always works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it takes time for people to get drawn in but it's the best way for people to get to know each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;we share news, memes, discuss random stuff and etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34150" LastActivityDate="2018-11-28T13:33:17.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25340" CreationDate="2018-11-28T15:50:00.557" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a fan of using a web conference with video to highlight the team member's individual work environments. Kind of like an MTV Cribs-type virtual tour get together that allows each team member to showcase where they work and to interact with their teammates through stories and questions about their work environment. We do this every so often (really whenever we add a new member) and it's actually a ton of fun. 5-10 minutes for each person to use their cam to show people where they work. Some pretty funny quirks seem to surface, which brings some levity and laughter to the conversation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For everyday type stuff, we have a #random internal slack channel where people post funny/weird/interesting stuff to discuss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33598" LastActivityDate="2018-11-28T15:50:00.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25335" CreationDate="2018-11-28T18:56:32.187" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &quot;split&quot; in MSP involves dividing a task into two or more &quot;splitparts,&quot; whether manually or automatically.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Summary tasks in MSP can't be split, whether by leveling or any other technique.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Summary tasks in MSP can't be leveled (i.e. delayed by leveling), so the leveling options have no direct effect on them.  Used as intended, summary tasks are primarily for reporting; they inherit their dates from the (leveled) subtasks, and their durations are back-calculated from the dates.  [It is possible to drive subtask schedules by including specific logical constraints on the summary tasks, but this approach deviates from recommended practices and causes many problems.  Not recommended.  In any case, that doesn't use MSP's leveler.]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using the resource leveler to prioritize limited access is usually a good approach, allowing lower-priority tasks to be suspended or re-directed while the important ones take place.  Still, there is no such thing as a &quot;keep tasks together&quot; constraint in MSP.  Contrary to your belief/expectation, the behavior you describe in the second paragraph - i.e. two tasks before the shutdown and two after - is as designed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Given your demand to avoid interrupting the task string, the solution that springs to mind is to use conditional logic such as: If the last task in the group can be completed before the shutdown, then make the shutdown its logical successor.  If not, then make the shutdown the logical predecessor of the first task in the group.  Generally, you'll need to implement (and update) these decisions manually, though I imagine you could automate the process with a macro.  Not optimal, but doable.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastEditorUserId="25557" LastEditDate="2018-11-29T18:32:39.223" LastActivityDate="2018-11-29T18:32:39.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25323" CreationDate="2018-11-29T06:47:22.893" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it is frequent then it is the major concern. In retrospective meeting you should discuss this point with team and find proper action items. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why? &#xA;Because you are not properly utilizing the team or doing wrong estimation of the user stories. So consider the team capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is once in a while or first time. You can get more user stories from backlog for the development or groom the backlog/ epic/ user stories, mostly needs confirmation from PO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also you can do research development task for future sprints.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34236" LastActivityDate="2018-11-29T06:47:22.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25346" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25347" CreationDate="2018-11-29T08:29:44.640" Score="13" ViewCount="12062" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am in the process of learning Scrum. I got stuck with a question: on which stage does the Scrum Team assign story points to the user stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34238" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-11-30T07:09:59.400" LastActivityDate="2018-12-10T14:07:33.980" Title="When does a Scrum Team assign story points to the stories in the Scrum methodology?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25346" CreationDate="2018-11-29T08:49:57.047" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only certain answer is: sometime before the story is added into the sprint. After that the story point estimate doesn't add much value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Common times that Scrum teams estimate stories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Backlog Refinement: In backlog refinement the team looks one or two sprints out to see what is coming up and prepares these stories to be brought into a sprint. Estimation is a common thing to happen here because the act of trying to estimate the story often brings out details about the story.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Release Planning: This is a planning that takes a high-level look at the next few months and I've worked with many teams that take a first-guess estimate at all stories in the release planning. It is understood in these teams that these estimates are rough guesses used for general planning purposes and they usually revisit the estimates in a Backlog Refinement closer to actually working the item.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sprint Planning: It isn't common practice anymore to estimate right at sprint planning, but it still happens sometimes. Usually, this happens with stories that emerge right before the sprint (maybe a gap discovered in the last Sprint Review). This estimate is usually done at this time in order to weigh the cost/value benefit before deciding to bring it into the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastEditorUserId="7944" LastEditDate="2018-11-30T04:00:43.640" LastActivityDate="2018-11-30T04:00:43.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25346" CreationDate="2018-11-29T08:50:09.247" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A story point number is the outcome of an estimation of a user story, so story points are assigned when the team estimates the stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latest point in time where estimation can/should be done is when a story is being considered for inclusion in the current or upcoming sprint. This is normally during the planning session.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more common point to do the estimation is during a backlog refinement session once the team feels that the story is clear enough and small enough that they can start working on it and complete the story within one sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For long-term planning, it can be useful to already assign a tentative estimation to stories and/or epics that need further refinement. Even such a tentative estimation should come from the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2018-11-29T08:50:09.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25346" CreationDate="2018-11-29T09:17:30.100" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This answer is structured in the following way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Example of a cycle for a two-week sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why story points?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When to assign story points to the user-stories?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following image, taken from &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1484236904&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to Kill the Scrum Monster: Quick Start to Agile Scrum Methodology and the Scrum Master Role&lt;/a&gt; shows an example of a meeting cycle for a two-week Sprint (Of course, all those meetings are not set in stone and can be adjusted based on need):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/h6XnM.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/h6XnM.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;scrum&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Planning&lt;/strong&gt; (mandatory) meeting: The team plans what user stories (backlogs) it will execute during the Sprint and breaks them into tasks. The team commits to completing those during the Sprint according to the Definition of Done (DoD).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Backlog grooming&lt;/strong&gt; (optional) during execution of the Sprint N: The PO will introduce new backlogs if required and this meeting will be an opportunity for the team to ask questions about backlogs for the next Sprint (N+1).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprint review&lt;/strong&gt; (mandatory): The ScMa and the team present to the PO all the backlogs that were committed this Sprint, and status according to the DoD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Retrospective&lt;/strong&gt; (mandatory) team meeting: Team members discuss what went wrong, what went well, and if anything should be changed to improve team performance—also used as a meeting to release some steam. (Can be executed every second Sprint in case of short Sprints.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum meeting or Stand-up&lt;/strong&gt; (mandatory): a short daily meeting where team developers answer three questions: What was done since the last meeting? What are the blocks? What will I be doing next?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, &lt;strong&gt;Story points&lt;/strong&gt; are estimates of effort assigned to user stories based on the amount of work, complexity, uncertainty, and risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eventually, the team will learn how many story points it can take during a Sprint and it will be considered as team velocity. To measure the velocity, the average of the last three Sprints can be used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my experience, the story points were always given in the first day of the sprint, the &lt;strong&gt;planning meeting&lt;/strong&gt;. Of course, sometimes developers realize the story would actually be worth more / less story points (that is mentioned in the &lt;strong&gt;retrospective meeting&lt;/strong&gt;) but generally speaking, because that's a group decision and these conversations increase the team’s knowledge about each story, which will help to make the estimates more accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27189" LastEditorUserId="11970" LastEditDate="2018-12-10T14:07:33.980" LastActivityDate="2018-12-10T14:07:33.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25336" CreationDate="2018-11-29T10:01:31.833" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Q:  How to call the meeting? &quot;stand up?&quot;, &quot;huddle?&quot;, other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A: Call it a Stand-Up - and remind people about this, especially the long-winded ones. People who sit are in no hurry to end meetings - hence the invention of the more uncomfortable stand-up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q: I have worked in some places where before the scrum meeting the scrum master touches on the latest news (political, technology, etc). Should I do the same?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A: That depends on the company culture - and since you're spread over (at least) 2 time-zones I would advise against anything political; you don't want to step on anybody's toes - and not even be able to see that you did it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're entertaining, you could mention something about the latest technological news; but remember, you may be boring a lot of people, and you cannot see them to gauge their interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q: Should I be the first or last to talk in the status presentation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A: Both! You should start by officially starting the meeting with a standard line. E.g. G' Day Team! You're all standing, right? Let's start today an update from ______.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You then call on each team in turn and end off with a summary, some invigorating statement and a reminder to show up at the next meeting tomorrow/Monday/whenever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q: What other points should I cover?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A: People like it short and like information/updates: We're 3 weeks from release - expect a press release bla bla bla. Matt will be on vacation from ___ for 2 weeks; Jane will be covering for him. Congratulations to ____ on _____.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q: Are there any books on this subject?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A: I'm sure there are! But I haven't read any, yet. (I am toying with the idea of writing one.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last piece of free advice: Get a tripod and have somebody video the meetings - and make the MP4s available for those who have trouble keeping up, or miss it or come late/leave early. (And please don't email MP4s - just send a link.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastEditorUserId="11970" LastEditDate="2018-12-09T13:51:15.907" LastActivityDate="2018-12-09T13:51:15.907" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25351" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-11-29T14:01:51.207" Score="1" ViewCount="192" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have spent hours reading up on the leveling algorithm and trying various alternative approaches but I have a problem I simply can't figure out.  I'm using MSP 2016.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My schedule consists of around 1250 tasks made up of about 250 separate and independent projects each with about 5 tasks.  Each project and its related tasks has been assigned a unique Priority Score; eg Project A and all its tasks are 950 whereas Project B and all its tasks are 949.  However, the higher ranked project may be further down the ID hierarchy; eg Project A with score 950 may have starting ID of 525 whereas Project B with score of 949 may start at ID 275.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My leveling options are Month by Month with Can split tasks.  Initially I chose Priority, Standard as the leveling order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This worked pretty well but I found a few tasks that were inexplicably leveled to start AFTER lower priority unrelated tasks, even where there appeared to be available resource to start on or sooner after the original Start date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a particular case the lower ranked task was delayed by leveling to start on 1 Jan and finish on 31 Jan, whereas the higher ranked task, which had a longer duration of 2.5 months and which should have started on 17 Jan was delayed to 1 Feb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So that is my first question; how could this happen?  Why was the lower priority task not split to allow the higher priority task to use the available resources and start on 17 Jan?  In fact, why was this task delayed at all when there appears to be sufficient available resource?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I then sorted my plan by Priority and then ID, and then permanently updated the ID values to this new sort order.  Then I tried leveling by ID only.  The results were similar (not surprisingly) but not exactly the same, and still had the problem with some tasks not being prioritised correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I then changed the leveling order to Standard and found that the problem task now started on the correct date but now had a longer split mid task and that many higher priority tasks were delayed more than previously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried to replicate these issues in a simple generic plan but have been unable to do so, so I assume they are an artifact of the complexity of my plan.  However despite its size it really is not complex as each group of 5 or so tasks is independent of all other groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is really causing me some problems, can anyone shed any light on the causes of these apparent inconsistencies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eric&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33645" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-12-02T06:15:15.370" LastActivityDate="2018-12-02T06:15:15.370" Title="Leveling; getting unexpected results" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25346" CreationDate="2018-11-29T14:03:28.813" Score="6" Body="&lt;h1&gt;User Stories aren't part of Scrum&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User Stories are an Extreme Programming (XP) practice. &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/23782/to-what-framework-do-user-stories-belong&quot;&gt;(see this question)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, every Scrum team I've worked with so far has used Extreme Programming practices alongside scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/scrum-and-extreme-programming-xp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This blog on scrum.org&lt;/a&gt; has a pretty good explanation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Scrum does not mandate the usage of Planning Poker and Story Points.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  That is right. Planning Poker and Story points are actually not part&#xA;  of Scrum. This is the common misconception people have about Scrum&#xA;  that I have found in the community. Scrum Team is free to choose how&#xA;  they want to estimate. In fact, Scrum team is allowed to estimate in&#xA;  hours if they wish. &lt;strong&gt;Scrum Team who is practicing XP will do Planning&#xA;  Poker with Story Points every Sprint Planning.&lt;/strong&gt; Many Scrum Team found&#xA;  this Planning Poker practice with Story Points is helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the blog seems to imply that XP wants you to play Planning Poker each Sprint Planning, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;XP rules&lt;/a&gt; don't talk about Planning Poker at all. They do describe making a time estimate at the moment a User Story is written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no strict rules. Feel free to chose what works best for your team. In my personal experience, it works best to assign story points when creating the backlog, and reviewing them at the start of each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3809" LastActivityDate="2018-11-29T14:03:28.813" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25353" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-11-29T15:35:41.000" Score="0" ViewCount="2083" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to do an earned value analysis and there are tasks in my normal Gantt chart that when I switch the view to tracking gantt are not visible. Could this have to do  with where I set my status date? I set the status date to a point where all of the work in the project should be completed but I dont know if that has anything to do with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34245" LastActivityDate="2021-04-18T01:43:24.730" Title="Tracking Gantt Chart Not Showing All Tasks" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25351" CreationDate="2018-11-29T15:37:00.913" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not really a possible canonical answer but more of a suggestion.  I have found that a tool's leveling feature consistently produces results that were both unexpected and seemingly weird.  I personally avoid allowing the tool to level my project's schedule.  I instead use it to see possible solutions for leveling that I may or may not use as I manually level the schedule.  In other words, use what it does that makes sense and ignore what it does that makes no sense, then punch your baseline.  Also, I avoid trying to get to &quot;perfect&quot; leveling with zero over- or under-utilization since work is always probabilistic.  It's a precision that is only valid until two minutes after you start work, then it's off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-11-29T15:37:00.913" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25340" CreationDate="2018-11-29T17:00:27.670" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are apps that help you know people from your company by asking questions. I.E. &quot;know your company&quot;, allows your team to ask other members about their hobbies, past-times, side projects, etc. And that is a way to discover common topics among your team and discuss them better on random channels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way is to invite your team to share topics they are interested in and give &quot;talks&quot; to everyone else. I.E. in my company, we do that every last Friday of the month and stream the talk to all team members. This allows us to find solutions to problems in the process, to talk about random topics we are interested in (like finances, video games, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29112" LastEditorUserId="11970" LastEditDate="2018-12-10T14:14:47.857" LastActivityDate="2018-12-10T14:14:47.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25353" CreationDate="2018-11-29T18:40:23.450" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Chances are the Tracking Gantt view has been inadvertently modified to incorporate a task filter - either a named filter or an autofilter on a particular column. (The latter can be particularly hard to spot if the filtered column is not visible.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To correct the issue.... On the Filter pull-down menu (in the Data group of the View ribbon/tab), select Clear Filter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2018-11-29T18:40:23.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25360" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-11-29T19:45:49.050" Score="3" ViewCount="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to either create or share my project with others.  I don't want them to be able to make changes to my project though.  I've tried creating a new one, but they still are able to make changes to my file.  I don't know what I'm doing wrong.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34250" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-11-29T21:46:54.973" LastActivityDate="2019-02-06T10:02:25.487" Title="Sharing a file without them being able to edit the main file" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25361" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-11-29T20:11:58.440" Score="0" ViewCount="75" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been tasked with managing an in-house analytics app that was developed by a past colleague. It's only used for internal client accounts (we're an agency) but we're considering bringing it to market down the road.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question— do PMs working solely on in-house apps get paid less than ones working on public-facing ones? Seems to me there's less return on investment to quantify and measure success against for internal apps (save for improvements in efficiency) since there are no direct purchase revenues coming in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is it considered less valuable in the PM world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34252" LastEditorUserId="33975" LastEditDate="2018-12-01T17:58:32.287" LastActivityDate="2018-12-02T11:22:47.077" Title="Do PMs get paid less for in-house apps compared to public-facing ones?" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;career&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25323" CreationDate="2018-11-30T03:38:35.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've actually had this occur on a few occasions. I let the development team pick and choose issues from the upcoming sprint to either incorporate into the current sprint (time permitting) or get a head start on the next sprint. It seems to work really well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this happens a lot, the capacity of the team might be exceeding the story points being allocated to the sprints. The obvious remedy here is to start either allocating more story points or readjust how the story points are assigned to issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29755" LastActivityDate="2018-11-30T03:38:35.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25361" CreationDate="2018-11-30T04:08:25.937" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obviously it is possible that a PM for a particularly prestigious product would command a higher salary. However, past that, salary differences are often more about where you work and your experience than the type of project. It's useful to remember that there are some companies that are only able to offer the services they do because of very strong internal tooling. Tooling projects can be as strong of a market differentiator and driver of value as sold projects can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-11-30T04:08:25.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25364" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25365" CreationDate="2018-11-30T05:05:01.663" Score="3" ViewCount="224" Body="&lt;p&gt;While SAFe is picking up a lot of attention and as I understand seems to yields better long term results (velocity and overall product quality) than traditional Agile, I'm curious about its possible downside. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34226" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-12-01T17:58:45.480" LastActivityDate="2019-12-02T19:39:16.947" Title="Does SAFe yields better long term results than traditional Agile" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;safe&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25364" CreationDate="2018-11-30T06:28:11.960" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I must say that my experience does not match the statement nor am I aware of any study that shows that. When SAFe or &quot;pure&quot; Agile are adopted well, they both have great throughput and quality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When looking at the differences, I'd first look at what makes them hard to adopt well. With SAFe, there are many positions to be filled and it feels a lot like the old positions in waterfall, but they aren't. From a change management point of view, it is tempting to say that managers or team leads become release train engineers, etc. This is where a lot of SAFe adoptions fall apart because people do their old job, not their new one and they carry many of the old dysfunctions that the company was adopting SAFe to fix along with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a more &quot;pure&quot; agile approach, the problem is the opposite (and paradoxically very much the same). Simplifying the organization and decentralizing decision-making is terrifying, and so many organizations simply don't. They put in some meetings and take a few terms from Scrum or Kanban and call it a day. Anyone in change management will tell you that a half-done change is a disaster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You asked about a downside and I would point to this: what change is your organization actually willing to make? Both are a real commitment and neither should be half-done or you are likely to end up in a worse place than you started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other thing to consider: what are you optimizing for? SAFe was always designed for incredibly large projects. I don't mean 5 teams, I mean dozens or more. Scrum is optimized for rapid problem solving and adaptability (at a scaling level, LeSS and Scrum@Scale both keep this focus). Kanban is optimized for flow of work through a workflow. If you need to solve problems and adapt to a rapidly changing environment, SAFe might &quot;work&quot; but in the same way that you can hammer in a nail with a wrench if you need to. Similarly, I wouldn't try to manage massive projects with just a pure Scrum approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-11-30T06:28:11.960" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25361" CreationDate="2018-11-30T13:04:57.650" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wage rate is determined by supply and demand of labor.  You may be seeing a correlation between in-house apps or apps designed to be sold but I doubt this is a causal variable to any real degree.  This is a great read on &lt;a href=&quot;https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-economics/chapter/labor-market-equilibrium-and-wage-determinants/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Labor Market Equilibrium and Wage Determinants&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-12-02T11:22:47.077" LastActivityDate="2018-12-02T11:22:47.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25367" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25374" CreationDate="2018-12-01T07:02:42.177" Score="3" ViewCount="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;My next role is of a Program Manager managing interdependencies between multiple projects. It involves daily program management until the program cycle ends. Each project is being delivered by a different competitor. I would be the only one working from my company on this program; the rest of the personnel are from the client or other competitors. What known risks should I expect in this kind of setting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16585" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-12-07T14:36:15.653" LastActivityDate="2018-12-07T14:36:15.653" Title="Which risks to expect when managing different vendors on a client assignment?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;program-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21997" CreationDate="2018-12-01T07:54:16.730" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;User story should write by focusing on business value rather than functionalities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. As a user, I need option to see event location in Google map so that I can visualize the location. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can write specific features which user is expecting as acceptance critical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. Map should display/pop-up once user click on &quot;show map&quot; button.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Testing team can test individual acceptance criteria when they are testing the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. Tester can click on the button to verify that map is showing property.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34148" LastEditorUserId="34148" LastEditDate="2018-12-01T07:59:43.790" LastActivityDate="2018-12-01T07:59:43.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25371" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25372" CreationDate="2018-12-01T18:45:00.143" Score="1" ViewCount="443" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand that anyone who supports and maintains system can be seen (or should be seen?) as a stakeholder/user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, so far 'logging' has been like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I guess, it wouldn't hurt to log this activity here&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;This error definitely needs to be logged.&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm leaning towards that logging is a subtle part of implementation detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However. I can construct some stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a maintainer,&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;I would like to read systems activities of problematic (payment)transaction,&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;so that I can find and fix the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a maintainer,&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;In case of unhandled error I would like to read potential systems activities that lead to that situation,&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;so that I can find and fix that problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, I have been in the situation where client encountered an error in production and told us to read the logs for details and I was like 'what logs?' - he took 'logging' for granted.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;There were logs, but nevertheless, I was a bit surprised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is system 'logging' captured in user stories (treated as any other feature) or are they part of implementation detail?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33975" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2018-12-10T11:33:46.300" Title="Is system 'logging' captured in user stories or are they part of implementation detail?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;definition-of-done&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25371" CreationDate="2018-12-01T20:44:11.583" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would not expect it to be captured in the story. I would expect logging standards to be required by the definition of done or, if there was some one-off logging need, I'd expect it to come up in the team's conversation during planning or refinement and maybe have a task under that story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-12-01T20:44:11.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25373" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25375" CreationDate="2018-12-02T02:30:20.513" Score="6" ViewCount="98" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my company, if there is any delay in the schedule I need to report the delay-reason and countermeasure. Sometimes this delay happens because of scope change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: Should I report it as &quot;delay&quot; in that case what would be the countermeasure? or I should just report updating the schedule without reporting delay?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34266" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2018-12-02T06:18:04.660" LastActivityDate="2018-12-02T13:32:19.383" Title="Should impact on schedule because of scope change be reported as delay?" Tags="&lt;scope&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25367" CreationDate="2018-12-02T06:29:25.500" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Besides for the regular &quot;delays in schedules&quot; which are &lt;em&gt;standard&lt;/em&gt; risks, here are some ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You need to worry about &lt;strong&gt;interoperability&lt;/strong&gt;. There's no way to know in advance how the deliverables from the various vendor will work together.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another risk is the responsibility of the &lt;strong&gt;inter-project connections&lt;/strong&gt;? Which vendor is responsible for making these connections (and who needs to fix something if it doesn't work - as we said in #1.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are there sufficient &lt;strong&gt;resources&lt;/strong&gt; for all the vendors to work together in the delivery location? If not, who decides who comes first and how do you deal with the delay caused?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The system is more than its parts. How will you &lt;strong&gt;test&lt;/strong&gt; the finished product? Who tests it? Who tracks and decides who fixes what?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;strong&gt;lose one vendor&lt;/strong&gt;, (e.g. he can't deliver, or goes out of business or runs really late) how will that affect everybody else? Who gets to decide who replaces him?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2018-12-02T06:29:25.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25373" CreationDate="2018-12-02T11:27:45.207" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you had a scope change, a legitimate one that was approved via your change process, then you should also have a corresponding and proportional schedule and cost change.  This means that the delay is not a delay but rather a new schedule target. Your first schedule baseline goes away as if it never existed.  Same as your scope baseline and cost baseline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you didn't change your schedule or cost with this scope change, then your change process is broken. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2018-12-02T13:32:19.383" LastActivityDate="2018-12-02T13:32:19.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10442" CreationDate="2018-12-03T05:35:37.490" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We just started new sprint naming type that looks like 'YYYY-QX-X/6'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2018-Q4-5/6.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are setting quarterly team goals. This naming type makes feel a deadline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34276" LastActivityDate="2018-12-03T05:35:37.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25360" CreationDate="2018-12-03T13:34:39.470" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Been a while since I've used 2016, from memory:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;File -&gt; Save As -&gt; Tools -&gt; General Options&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In there, there should be an option to save a version as 'Read Only.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Screenshot as requested, although this is 2013, I believe the option is the same:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cTuMG.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cTuMG.png&quot; alt=&quot;Save options - read only&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34280" LastEditorUserId="34280" LastEditDate="2018-12-20T09:06:25.857" LastActivityDate="2018-12-20T09:06:25.857" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25360" CreationDate="2018-12-03T18:34:56.893" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technically, I don't think there is a way to enforce the requirement as stated.  You can make it more difficult for them to change the file, but ultimately, if they are motivated, they can create a file that includes their changes.  It may be that merely making it difficult is sufficient for your needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on reasons for the requirement, you may wish to consider either&#xA;* Establishing an authoritative source for the data - that way it doesn't matter if they change the file, so long as everyone knows how to get the authoritative copy and the authoritative copy is easier to get than the edited copy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sign the file.  Use any of a number of signature utilities to cryptographically sign the file.  Anyone can edit, but it is easy to identify the correct copy of the file. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2018-12-03T18:34:56.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25367" CreationDate="2018-12-04T05:07:52.700" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess this is a question to fill a risk log initially. To do this, think in general categories and identify individual risks w.r.t. your programme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like to use the PMI Knowledge Areas to think about risks, given e.g. here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.projectmanager.com/blog/10-project-management-knowledge-areas&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.projectmanager.com/blog/10-project-management-knowledge-areas&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. Project Stakeholder Management:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Errors due to bad communication channels to a vendor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vendor does not accept change requests&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7837" LastEditorUserId="7837" LastEditDate="2018-12-04T06:24:35.003" LastActivityDate="2018-12-04T06:24:35.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25382" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25383" CreationDate="2018-12-04T06:47:18.033" Score="2" ViewCount="62" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been asked to produce a report on the effect of vendor delays on my timeline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a team of 6 engineers who are supposed to be a PC roll out team. The Vendor is delayed because of various applications other parts haven't been tested in the new environment. Which is leaving the rollout team idle for x amount of days. This is a given but how do I record this time and the knock on effect on the timeline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On paper the engineers should be knocking out 150 to 160 laptops per week. They work 8 hour days, so one per hour. We are rolling out 1700 pieces. How can I report this in excel, with the time constantly being impacted because of various applications and or  infrastructure sometimes not being in place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6933" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-12-10T14:16:21.060" LastActivityDate="2018-12-10T14:16:21.060" Title="Vendor testing delay hitting timelines" Tags="&lt;scope-management&gt;&lt;timeline&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25382" CreationDate="2018-12-04T10:27:52.807" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;An easy solution would be to load the values in excel of your planned work, and then load the values of your actuals, and you can display progress using a cumulative graph.  Here's an example:  &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hNS4g.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hNS4g.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used 155 as your planning value and loaded it assuming equal numbers each week, which produced a flat loaded schedule.  Then I made up actual values but showed it to be behind the plan.  From here, you can forecast where you are headed based on actual performance using a simple forecast formula in excel, or you could bring a bit more sophistication by using Earned Schedule analytics and it will predict when you will finish based on your schedule performance to date.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The graphic is a nice way to show to stakeholders--easy to read and digest and hard to dispute in terms of your forecast from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding two types of forecasts: formula in excel and ES:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/M0jUn.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/M0jUn.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2018-12-04T13:53:28.203" LastActivityDate="2018-12-04T13:53:28.203" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25384" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-12-04T10:35:55.253" Score="5" ViewCount="658" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our development team works with Jira Software and we aim to use JIRA for other business processes inside our organization:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Internal and external support;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customer success;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Applications building;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implementation projects that are executed by business organization, in other words, building solutions based on the core platform.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project execution contains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planning resources (available hours vs planned hours);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Visualizing project phases and dependencies;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Managing fixed price projects, time and material.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here we have researched and found many time tracking and project management plugins for JIRA that can help us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we are struggling with now, is to find a way to efficiently cope with the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.Store and manage customer data,like billing details;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.Invoice customers based on the type of project: fixed price or time and material.  For example, the second phase of the project came to its end - billing 40% of the agreed price. Or 30 hours of planned hours were time-tracked and approved for billing - post an invoice;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3.Manage invoice templates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Could you please advise with a way to accomplish the above for JIRA cloud?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33799" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-01-13T10:34:33.740" LastActivityDate="2019-11-08T09:59:03.280" Title="Billing customers from JIRA - is that possible?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24558" CreationDate="2018-12-04T14:15:24.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There's &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.co.il/books?id=nqpiCgAAQBAJ&amp;amp;lpg=PA1&amp;amp;dq=&amp;#39;Program%20Monitoring%20and%20Evaluation&amp;#39;%20book&amp;amp;pg=PT19#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=&amp;#39;Program%20Monitoring%20and%20Evaluation&amp;#39;%20book&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; eBook available on Google books. &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cyimw.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cyimw.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There's &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.co.il/books?id=ES7nUJbaCOsC&amp;amp;lpg=PP1&amp;amp;dq=&amp;#39;Program%20Monitoring%20and%20Evaluation&amp;#39;%20book&amp;amp;pg=PR9#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=&amp;#39;Program%20Monitoring%20and%20Evaluation&amp;#39;%20book&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; book which is unrelated to computers that you can buy and preview on Google books. &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6Qlrg.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6Qlrg.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.co.il/books?id=qcaf6J65a_8C&amp;amp;lpg=PP1&amp;amp;dq=&amp;#39;Program%20Monitoring%20and%20Evaluation&amp;#39;%20book&amp;amp;pg=PR4#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=&amp;#39;Program%20Monitoring%20and%20Evaluation&amp;#39;%20book&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here's&lt;/a&gt; another book you can buy and preview on Google books. &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Hus3J.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Hus3J.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Here's a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/research/technologies/projects/mesc/guide-to-monitoring-and-evaluation-v1-march2014.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;60 page PDF&lt;/a&gt; you can download on the subject.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.bookdepository.com/Program-Evaluation-Third-Edition-John-M.-Owen/9781593854065&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here's&lt;/a&gt; a book you can buy on the subject. &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kc2Yv.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kc2Yv.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ebooks.com/2015000/developing-monitoring-and-evaluation-frameworks/patrick-ian-markiewicz-anne&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here's&lt;/a&gt; an eBook on the subject. &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YP9jj.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YP9jj.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2018-12-04T14:15:24.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25241" CreationDate="2018-12-04T15:52:26.703" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you are doing here is running a waterfall project using sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key focus here, I believe, is how you break down the work i.e. how you break down what needs to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to break down the work in a way that value to the business is realised as fast as possible, ideally at a story level but at a minimum at a sprint level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example would be instead of having a sprint that cleans the data, have a sprint that cleans half the data and imports it into the new DB. The second sprint would clean the rest of the data and import it into the DB.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastEditorUserId="7944" LastEditDate="2018-12-07T18:30:59.100" LastActivityDate="2018-12-07T18:30:59.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25215" CreationDate="2018-12-04T15:59:15.183" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the dev team create user documentation still&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for this is, that the team &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be wholly responsible for the delivery of the sprint commitment. If part of this work includes technical writing, the team should complete this during the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no harm with the team asking for help from other more experienced writers outside the team and having learning workshops etc, but they are responsible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the Sprint Reviews, if there is a continual pattern of poor quality documentation the Scrum Master should work with management to solve this problem by bringing in someone into the team, upskilling the team or tweaking the team's backlog so that they do work better suited to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastEditorUserId="32613" LastEditDate="2018-12-05T11:07:45.510" LastActivityDate="2018-12-05T11:07:45.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25211" CreationDate="2018-12-04T16:07:51.100" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master should coach the team to be self-managing so that they decide and find a way of handling this themselves i.e. if they want to have a specific person, a specific scenario e.g. last joiner or they ask the Scrum Master to nominate someone every day, its totally up to the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team repeatedly don't start the standup and they just stand around chatting then the Scrum Master needs to coach them by addressing this in workshops and retrospectives and one on ones to make sure they understand what the standup is for and why its important to kick if off on time and time-box it to 15 minutes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please bare in mind that a Scrum Master is not mandatory at stand-ups, mature teams don't need their scrum master at every standup and they might focus on a second team or another problem and not attend. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2018-12-04T16:07:51.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25093" CreationDate="2018-12-04T16:17:37.023" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 'Spotify Model' is not like Scrum, Kanban, Safe etc. It's a methodology that Spotify created for their specific situation. It may or may not have worked, we have no idea of knowing for sure unless we spoke to many employees and stakeholders at Spotify. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend that you look at something which is proven to have worked at many different organisations e.g. Enterprise Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2018-12-04T16:17:37.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24820" CreationDate="2018-12-04T16:28:39.607" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The the daily standup is an important part of Scrum and is not optional and if it isn't happening every single day at a specific time and time boxed to 15 minutes then there is a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would coach the team based on the Scrum Guide:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master ensures that the Development Team has the meeting,&#xA;  but the Development Team is responsible for conducting the Daily&#xA;  Scrum. The Scrum Master teaches the Development Team to keep the Daily&#xA;  Scrum within the 15-minute time-box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be some work to be done between the SM and PO in terms of trust and influence. I can completely relate and sympathise, its often not easy but if you are not able to coach and influence the PO then I would work on this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team will probably be happy with either or, the problem is if you raise this at a retro and the PO overrides you, this is a problem and needs to be sorted before you raise this at a retro.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2018-12-04T16:28:39.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25391" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-12-05T00:41:07.067" Score="4" ViewCount="1799" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Agile, who's the person responsible of moving tickets in Jira (e.g. moving backlog items into Sprint).  Is this a Scrum Master's responsibility or Product Owner?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34291" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-12-05T12:50:11.650" LastActivityDate="2018-12-07T11:29:15.840" Title="Moving backlog items into Sprint" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25391" CreationDate="2018-12-05T01:01:53.687" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;, the Sprint Planning event is when the Sprint Backlog and Sprint Goal are created and the entire Scrum Team (the Product Owner, Development Team, and Scrum Master) collaborate to produce the plan for the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going into the Sprint Planning, the Product Owner should have an ordered Product Backlog. The items at the top of the Product Backlog should have been refined (through the act of Product Backlog Refinement) by the Product Owner and Development Team to ensure the Product Backlog Items have sufficient information to be worked on and the required effort is understood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the Sprint Planning, the Development Team can review its capacity and determine what work is appropriate to be brought into the Sprint, in collaboration with the Product Owner. The event can be facilitated by the team's Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the course of the Sprint, the Sprint Backlog is entirely owned and managed by the Development Team. If the Development Team realizes that they will be unable to accomplish Product Backlog Items within the Sprint timebox, they should work with the Product Owner to ensure that the highest value work is delivered, and the Sprint Goal can be used to help focus the team. If the Development Team works through the Sprint Backlog before the end of the Sprint timebox, they can likewise work with the Product Owner to determine how best to use the time - perhaps bringing in some work earlier, spending additional time refining the Product Backlog, paying down technical debt would be good options to consider. The Scrum Master can help facilitate the discussions between the Development Team and the Product Owner as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're looking to know who is using the tool, it could be anyone, including a member of the Development Team, who updates the work items in Jira to reflect the fact that they are included in the Sprint. It depends on the flow of the event and who is most comfortable using the tools while still fully participating in the event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would propose that in a new team that is learning the process and tools, the Scrum Master would be most likely to perform the work of ensuring Jira is up-to-date. The Scrum Master is responsible for helping to facilitate the various Scrum events and ceremonies. However, the Scrum Master is also responsible for teaching and coaching the rest of the team in the various ways of working. Ultimately, the Scrum Team should decide the best way to handle it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2018-12-05T12:52:59.860" LastActivityDate="2018-12-05T12:52:59.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25391" CreationDate="2018-12-05T16:45:30.130" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone with sufficient permissions in JIRA can move the stories during Sprint Planning. It doesn't really matter &lt;em&gt;who&lt;/em&gt; actually moves the stories. What matters is that the stories are &lt;em&gt;pulled&lt;/em&gt; by the Development Team, and never &lt;em&gt;pushed&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Responsibility for Moving Backlog Items&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Guide clearly states that the Development Team is responsible for peeling items off the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#artifacts-productbacklog&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Product Backlog&lt;/a&gt; during the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-planning&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sprint Planning&lt;/a&gt; event. The guide says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The number of items selected from the Product Backlog for the Sprint is solely up to the Development Team. Only the Development Team can assess what it can accomplish over the upcoming Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the Product Owner is responsible for the Product Backlog, but the Development Team is responsible for moving those items onto the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#artifacts-sprintbacklog&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sprint Backlog&lt;/a&gt;. The fact that you're using JIRA for both doesn't really matter here, except as an implementation detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Delegation is Allowed&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone with the right permissions in JIRA can move items into the current Sprint. However, this should only be done at the request of the Development Team. Scrum iterations are pull-based queues, rather than push-based, so nothing should be in the Sprint that wasn't approved by the Development Team for the current iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's obviously best if the Development Team has the ability to directly manage its own Sprint Backlog, but sometimes organizational policies or separation of duties can get in the way. If that's the case for your team, then it's okay to delegate the administration of the stories within JIRA, so long as actual &lt;em&gt;control&lt;/em&gt; of the Sprint's content remains in the hands of the Development Team throughout the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-12-05T16:45:30.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25323" CreationDate="2018-12-06T00:40:56.293" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering:&#xA;1.  How good is their story point estimates?  Are they awarding too many story points for too little work?&#xA;2.  Is this a trend?  That is has this happened in previous sprints?  If so...see #1 above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34301" LastActivityDate="2018-12-06T00:40:56.293" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25395" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-12-06T15:28:55.987" Score="1" ViewCount="75" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to find/create a report in MS Project 2013 in order to display hours done in a month by a certain group of resource or a resource only (they are already grouped in the Allocation tab) with the tasks they are assigned to. Can someone help me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34307" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-12-06T15:45:27.503" LastActivityDate="2021-05-14T10:03:35.473" Title="Report in MS Project (Hr/task/resource)" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25391" CreationDate="2018-12-07T01:47:41.593" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Sprint Backlog makes visible all the work that the Development Team identifies as necessary to meet the Sprint Goal.&#xA;The Development Team modifies the Sprint Backlog throughout the Sprint, and the Sprint Backlog emerges during the Sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As new work is required, the Development Team adds it to the Sprint Backlog. As work is performed or completed, the estimated remaining work is updated. When elements of the plan are deemed unnecessary, they are removed. Only the Development Team can change its Sprint Backlog during a Sprint. The Sprint Backlog is a highly visible, real-time picture of the work that the Development Team plans to accomplish during the Sprint, and it belongs solely to the Development Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34311" LastActivityDate="2018-12-07T01:47:41.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25391" CreationDate="2018-12-07T11:29:15.840" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the middle of the Sprint the responsibility lies with the Development team. They could pull-in/change scope after re-negotiating with the Product Owner. The Scrum Master can facilitate this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what the Scrum Guide says about it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the Sprint:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;No changes are made that would endanger the Sprint Goal; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Quality goals do not decrease; and,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Scope may be clarified and &lt;strong&gt;re-negotiated&lt;/strong&gt; between the Product Owner and Development Team as more is learned.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-sprint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-sprint&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think talking about it with common-sense and the full team is important. You want the Development Team to have focus and minimize adhoc-context switching, but sometimes the world changes and everyone needs to be open to adaptation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the Scrum guide suggest to cancel the Sprint when the scope is so big it would change the Sprint Goal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Sprint would be cancelled if the Sprint Goal becomes obsolete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastActivityDate="2018-12-07T11:29:15.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25399" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-12-07T11:30:17.060" Score="1" ViewCount="100" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm handling a Production support team. How to keep the team motivated and busy when the daily 'Business As Usual's are mostly automated and the team requires 2-3 hours in the day to complete the manual work? The management team doesn't want to shuffle/reduce the team, anticipating a new project will be live in the near future (maybe 1-2 months).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team already has done a few proof of concepts and obtained new learnings on the technical and process side. They also help the other teams whenever required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is: how to engage the team and make ideal use of the free time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11970" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-12-07T14:43:52.110" LastActivityDate="2019-01-05T17:39:53.787" Title="Ample free time" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25399" CreationDate="2018-12-07T14:47:30.617" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to keep the team &lt;strong&gt;motivated&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chances are, the team knows both:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What they want to do&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What improvements to their process would help most&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...far better than you (or, most &lt;em&gt;certainly&lt;/em&gt;, strangers on the internet) ever could.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So ask them, discuss, and then ensure they're empowered to actually carry it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-12-07T14:47:30.617" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25401" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25422" CreationDate="2018-12-07T17:23:44.097" Score="1" ViewCount="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to maintain a meticulous spec that contains a lot of legal requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have more than 200 products (and rapidly growing, about 5 products a month) which are all very similar but have differences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, we find ourselves starting the spec with the following words: &quot;product Y is like X but differs with A, B, C, D..&quot;, &quot;product Z is like Y but differs with E, F, G..&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each product will eventually have more than 100 differences (out of thousands of requirements). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is a convoluted way for the developers to understand what the final outcome should look like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also need to follow about 6 different documents to understand the full spec for a single product, since some of the requirements are better visualized in a table rather than text and we prefer to maintain them in something similar to a spreadsheet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could it actually be that the best way to maintain it is the way we do now? And when product X changes to go to Y, Z etc.. and update them accordingly? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7194" LastEditorUserId="11970" LastEditDate="2018-12-13T12:06:57.597" LastActivityDate="2018-12-13T12:06:57.597" Title="How to maintain a spec for a large complex project with repetitive patterns?" Tags="&lt;specification&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25402" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-12-07T18:18:55.273" Score="0" ViewCount="91" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am the mobile product owner (PO) at a firm with a dozen or so scrum teams each managing their own web products.  My team builds mobile versions of the above web products.  I work with each product owner to bring features of their web apps to our mobile platform picking and choosing features that make the most sense on mobile.  We build native iOS and Android apps sharing the same backend API's each products web team created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My firm's long-term goal is to strive for mobile-first products and features that will eventually make their way into each web product.  I am tasked with looking across all of the teams to determine if it still makes sense to have a single mobile scrum team in lieu of each web team building both mobile and web versions of their products.  Bringing dedicated iOS and android developers to each web scrum team.  That way each team controls their product from mobile to web.  Their domain knowledge stays within the team vs the mobile team having to understand and keep up with each team's direction, quirks, priorities etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel it would be very difficult for each web team to manage the diversity of mobile challenges with consistent results.  What are other firms doing?  When a team owns a product does that team typically build mobile &amp;amp; web? or leave mobile (as we do) to a dedicated mobile team.  Thoughts?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34316" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2018-12-10T14:00:26.590" LastActivityDate="2021-03-03T16:45:19.200" Title="Enterprise Mobile-first multi-team-product organization" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;enterprise&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25403" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25404" CreationDate="2018-12-08T10:10:25.797" Score="1" ViewCount="226" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm developing a BPMS system.&#xA;I want to know what is different between Signal Event and Message Event in BPMN?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34320" LastActivityDate="2018-12-08T11:05:46.493" Title="What is different between Signal Event and Message Event in BPMN?" Tags="&lt;frameworks&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25403" CreationDate="2018-12-08T11:05:46.493" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A broadcast versus a targeted event.  If I recall correctly, a signal event is a broadcast message.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-12-08T11:05:46.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25405" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-12-08T11:27:49.870" Score="2" ViewCount="107" Body="&lt;p&gt;Org I work in is trying to be agile, but often struggles with respecting the committed scope during a sprint and keeps forcing us to accept new work. This is coming at a cost; happiness and quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to articulate this using metrics, but if I just use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Total Committed (points) vs delivered (points)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Org may think what has been delivered is the new baseline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please advise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-12-09T11:09:55.240" LastActivityDate="2018-12-10T11:42:38.090" Title="Best way to report impact of accepting additional work in scope?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;scope&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23973" CreationDate="2018-12-08T17:31:51.557" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds like a very promising partnership to me, if it is handled well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One useful framework for discussing impediments during a retro is to place them in three concentric circles: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;innermost = &quot;things we (the team) can control&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;middle = &quot;things we&#xA;can influence&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;outermost = &quot;things we cannot control or influence&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Items in the outer circle, and perhaps in the middle one, would be candidates for passing on to Change Management, &lt;em&gt;with and only with&lt;/em&gt; the full and explicit consent of the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After placing items in this framework for the first time, I might introduce this idea to my team in this way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You know, we have an office of Change Management here, which might be&#xA;  able to take action on some of these items we can't control. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;How would you all feel about that? (discussion) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What concerns do you have about taking this action? (discussion) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I suggest we pick one or more items to forward on, and agree on the&#xA;  wording to describe them. Then I'll forward it in an email that says&#xA;  &quot;Our team has identified the following item(s) that are affecting our&#xA;  ability to delivery quality work. If these issues could be addressed,&#xA;  it would be helpful.&quot; (modified to address the concerns &amp;amp; incorporate&#xA;  elements raised during discussion)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is everybody on board with this? Let's do a &lt;a href=&quot;https://agileforall.com/learning-with-fist-of-five-voting/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;fist or five&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I expect that many teams would be open to, or even excited about, being able to raise &quot;items we can't control or influence&quot; to some external group that might be able to do something about them. I might start conservatively, by picking only one item to submit at first, and seeing how that played out before submitting anything else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2018-12-08T17:31:51.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25408" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-12-08T23:02:21.917" Score="1" ViewCount="926" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am using a 5 working days &amp;amp; 8 hours standard calendar. My task is 30 days . I have selected a start date on Monday and end date on Friday (30th work day) but the durationn reflects as 40 days instead of 30 days? How can I ensure that the duration reflects the correct work days for the task?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34325" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-12-10T14:05:23.703" LastActivityDate="2021-03-29T15:06:40.713" Title="Work days and Duration does not match" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18430" CreationDate="2018-12-09T08:10:40.937" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Definition of Done is for the product Increment, according to the Scrum Guide. DoD does not work for User Stories, but Acceptance Criteria does. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, Acceptance Criteria describe functionality that is required only from the specific User Story or task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33709" LastActivityDate="2018-12-09T08:10:40.937" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21711" CreationDate="2018-12-09T13:13:19.733" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master role is always required for Scrum, but teams that have outgrown Scrum as a framework, or teams that have chosen a different methodology, can certainly evaluate the pros and cons of reducing or eliminating the role as part of their agile inspect-and-adapt cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Role Always Required for Scrum&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Guide &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;defines three roles&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Team consists of a Product Owner, the Development Team, and a Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Guide &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#endnote&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;further states&lt;/a&gt;, rather explicitly, that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum’s roles, events, artifacts, and rules are immutable and although implementing only parts of Scrum is possible, the result is not Scrum. Scrum exists only in its entirety and functions well as a container for other techniques, methodologies, and practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, implementing Scrum without a Scrum Master is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; technically Scrum. It's a &quot;Scrum-but,&quot; where you're sort of following Scrum as a loose guideline, but not actually implementing the complete framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Reducing Scrum Master Time&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are Scrum roles and events that require a Scrum Master. However, a high performing team may not need a &lt;em&gt;full-time&lt;/em&gt; Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A dedicated Scrum Master is certainly best, because task-switching and project/role overhead affect a Scrum Master just as much as it does the other framework-defined roles. Nevertheless, high-performing teams may require fewer man-hours from the Scrum Master, allowing that Scrum Master to participate in multiple teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a practical limit to how many teams a Scrum Master can effectively (or even ineffectively) participate in, though. I can't find the related answer right now, but I believe the functional limit calculated in another answer on PMSE was &quot;three.&quot; With that said, a matrixed Scrum Master is suboptimal, but may fit certain circumstances provided that the role is available to the team and the matrix effect doesn't create delays, blockers, or drag on the Scrum Team's processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;See Also&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/22265/4271&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/22265/4271&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master's job is never &quot;done.&quot; If you think the role has become unnecessary, you're likely overlooking something you should be doing or falling prey to the 100% utilization fallacy. Don't do that!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your job is not to be busy all the time. Your job is to facilitate the process, and to be readily available and actively engaged with the team so that you maintain full situational awareness and remain fully plugged-in to the people and processes that affect the project. Even when it seems extraneous, the Scrum Master's job is to be immediately available for those times when the role is needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-12-10T13:38:37.913" LastActivityDate="2018-12-10T13:38:37.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25405" CreationDate="2018-12-09T13:44:43.210" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When an organization tries to add more work to an already ongoing sprint, the first reaction of the team should be to try to get the ticket on the backlog, so that it can be prioritized along with the other work and picked up in a future sprint (possibly the next one).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the work is deemed too important to wait for a few days or weeks till the next sprint starts, then add it to the current sprint as &quot;unplanned work&quot; and negotiate what can be taken out off the sprint to make room in the schedule. Make it clear that due to the addition of the unplanned work, some things that were planned &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; remain unfinished. That can either be some work that the PO regards as less important for this sprint, or it will be &quot;whatever the team couldn't finish by the end date&quot;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It should be made clear that adding &quot;unplanned work&quot; to a sprint removes any commitment the team has given to the original planning. By removing some work that was originally planned, you might get a new commitment for the new scope. Doing overtime to meet the old 'commitment' in addition to the unplanned work should be so far out of the question that it isn't even considered for one second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to metrics, it is best to track the unplanned work separately. For example&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Originally planned points&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Removed points as compensation for unplanned work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Completed points (from originally planned work)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unplanned work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can make it visible how much work the team is doing that wasn't foreseen during the planning and how it affects the amount of planned work that does get completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2018-12-09T13:44:43.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25405" CreationDate="2018-12-09T17:01:49.643" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would have two concerns over using a committed vs delivered metric to solve this problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People may not care if you are committing to more points than you are delivering. Some may even see it is a good thing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Committed vs delivered does not measure the impact on quality. What happens if the team is delivering all they commit to, but the quality has dropped?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Org may think what has been delivered is the new baseline&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum terms there is no 'baseline' as such. The Scrum team delivers work according to their capacity to get work items to their definition of done. Typically this definition of done includes measures of quality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner maintains a prioritised backlog of work for the team. It is the Product Owner that might bring additional work in to a sprint. The way they would do this is to talk to the team and inform them that a new work item has appeared that is of &lt;em&gt;higher priority&lt;/em&gt; than some or all of the items already allocated to the sprint. The Product Owner and development team may decide to either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put the new work on the product backlog and so not disrupt the current sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bring the new work in to the sprint but take out existing planned work of a similar size&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the changes are very significant, they may decide to abort the sprint and go back to sprint planning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good way forward would be for the Scrum Master or an agile coach (if you have one) to talk with the wider organisation. Educate them about how Scrum works and the impact of the existing way of working. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-12-09T17:01:49.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25405" CreationDate="2018-12-09T19:05:20.383" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don’t create a custom set of metrics if you can avoid it. Instead, negotiate scope when possible, and leverage the framework’s built-in mechanisms for evaluating opportunity costs against significant scope changes when necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Negotiating Scope&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, modest changes in scope must be negotiated between the Product Owner and the Development Team, provided that the changes don’t invalidate the current Sprint Goal. In some limited cases, it’s possible to swap out Sprint Backlog items that don’t impact the Sprint Goal, but this should never be considered a routine “business as usual” approach to such a systemic problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Cancelling a Sprint&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The canonical approach to a significant change in scope that supercedes the current Sprint Plan or makes the current Sprint Goal obsolete is to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-sprint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cancel the Sprint&lt;/a&gt; and return to Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Sprint would be cancelled if the Sprint Goal becomes obsolete. This might occur if the company changes direction or if market or technology conditions change. In general, a Sprint should be cancelled if it no longer makes sense given the circumstances. But, due to the short duration of Sprints, cancellation rarely makes sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When a Sprint is cancelled, any completed and &quot;Done&quot; Product Backlog items are reviewed. If part of the work is potentially releasable, the Product Owner typically accepts it. All incomplete Product Backlog Items are re-estimated and put back on the Product Backlog. The work done on them depreciates quickly and must be frequently re-estimated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sprint cancellations consume resources, since everyone regroups in another Sprint Planning to start another Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from the pragmatic reasons for cancellation, which include the need to replan the iteration, making the &lt;em&gt;cost&lt;/em&gt; of interrupting in-progress iterations visible to the organization is essential. The cost of cancellation includes the time, labor, and overhead necessary to rescope and replan, and forces the organization to make smarter business decisions about whether the opportunity cost of the new work is truly worth more than the overhead requires to cancel and replan a Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Leveraging the Scrum Framework&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there are certainly other metrics you could track, cost/benefit that impacts the project budget directly is generally very persuasive. Furthermore, creating transparency around the impact of replanning on the project’s release plan is also typically more persuasive than trying to measure developer happiness or proxy metrics for quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your mileage may certainly vary, but the framework already provides plenty of opportunity to address this issue within the framework without requiring a custom set of key performance indicators or alternative metrics. Leverage the framework, and only pursue other options when absolutely necessary.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-12-09T19:05:20.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25414" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-12-09T19:59:46.417" Score="3" ViewCount="160" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm fairly new to Scrum and I'm working with a group of colleagues on a project to learn more about it. Long story short our project is simply creating a website for tourists of our country where they can simply create or use courses in a certain city.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we did is think about user stories (We didn't really do any UX Research so just consider these stories as valid) that are relevant to what we want to make. For example, consider the following story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a tourist, I want to create courses according to my requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is just a example, we have around other 15 stories. And since we are new to this process, we defined tasks of stories that we saw more fitting with the story. For example we need to make a login/signup page but we couldn't make a story for it so we included it in the most relevant story. So there are few stories with extra tasks. And since we followed this approach, we actually estimated the tasks and no the stories (somewhat a hack?). Now the problem we're facing is we need to use a scrum tool to help us visualize our work, we chose TargetProcess which is free. In this tool story points are obviously given to stories, while estimation by hour is given to the tasks, and each task is a part of a story. Now if we need to work on a task, we can't do so unless we move the whole story into the sprint backlog. So if a story has only one task planned into the sprint and the rest are not, that would create a problem in creating our burn down charts. So my question here is what could we do to make this work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34326" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-12-09T21:10:22.270" LastActivityDate="2018-12-10T14:39:04.140" Title="How to correctly define tasks in a user story? And can you split the tasks between sprints?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25405" CreationDate="2018-12-10T00:32:54.177" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to convey impact on happiness &amp;amp; quality, a points-based metric won't convey that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Metrics for quality might include escaped defects, or you could report whether &amp;amp; how the Defn of Done has been compromised. Happiness might equate to sustainability, with metrics in overtime hours? Or elevating flight/attrition risk, if retention is a concern in your org.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the underlying problem is &quot;trying to be agile, struggling to respect committed scope, forces us to accept new work.&quot; This sounds like the necessary mindset shift has not taken effect, and I'm not sure how effective metrics will be at encouraging the mindset shift.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do others in the org understand that the purpose of a fixed-scope sprint is to minimize disruptions so that developers can work most efficiently? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a problem upstream that is causing such lousy planning that new urgent work is regularly being identified mid sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I had to design metrics to try to illustrate the problem and change hearts &amp;amp; minds, I might use the elements of the agile framework you're using, and report on success/failure to adhere to each of these for every sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A different approach would be to &lt;strong&gt;make your sprints shorter&lt;/strong&gt;. If your sprints are only a week long, then there aren't many business cases where delaying work for 1 week is a dealbreaker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I second the suggestion of getting an agile coach, if you can, who can coach the whole org, not just the agile teams, in the paradigm shift.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2018-12-10T00:32:54.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25416" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-12-10T09:28:17.987" Score="13" ViewCount="2464" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read in several places that story points are not necessarily linear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;i.e., an &quot;8 point&quot; task is not the same as two 4 point tasks and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I totally get the argument about these being an indication of complexity rather than time taken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if they're not a linear scale, then how can you do arithmetic on them? If an 8 story point takes, say, 3 times longer than 2 x 4 story points, then how do burndown charts work from an arithmetic point of view? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If our velocity is, say, 30 a sprint then this means we could do 30 x 1 story point features. But these might be, 30 half an hour jobs. Equally if it was 2 x 15 story point features, these are probably monster tasks which seems equally unlikely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps I am wrong in my assertion that they are non-linear?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or can anyone explain this to me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34331" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-12-10T14:06:56.970" LastActivityDate="2020-05-17T05:16:32.270" Title="How can story points be &quot;non linear&quot; in relative size" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25416" CreationDate="2018-12-10T10:53:19.020" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never heard of this. Story points are linear (otherwise it would be impossible to use them as a measure of velocity). However the scale is non-linear, to stop people arguing over whether something is a &quot;5 or a 6&quot; - by using a psuedo-fibonacci sequence, you automatically account for the vagueness of estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29898" LastActivityDate="2018-12-10T10:53:19.020" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25416" CreationDate="2018-12-10T11:12:06.190" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps a more accurate way to put it would be that story point estimates are imprecise. If you have a 5 and a 3, that may or may not be the same size as an 8.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make this less confusing, let's start with a non-numeric scale like T-Shirt sizes. XS, S, M, L, XL and so on. We can agree pretty easily that a small and a medium t-shirt do not get you a large t-shirt. Yet, a large is bigger than a medium and a lot bigger than a small, and generally smaller than an XL. Not always, of course. We all know that one company that we have to buy a different size in. User stories are the same way. It's possible I have a M that is actually bigger than some L, but this is the exception, so I can normally assume that a L is one step bigger than an M. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK, now let's do this: XS-1, S-3, M-5, L-8, XL-13. Now, all of the same rules apply. It is possible in some edge cases that a 5 is actually bigger than some 8, but generally speaking an 8 is one step bigger than a 5. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there is the topic of velocity. Because the relationship between the sizes is generally consistent, we can add the sizes together and if we work at a consistent pace we will have a fairly consistent total. It won't be perfect - maybe 45 - 52, but that is consistent enough to be useful for planning. If you have 35 points in the sprint, it is probably too little in this case and 60 is almost certainly too much. This is also why most forecasts are a range, not a precise measurement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-12-10T11:12:06.190" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25371" CreationDate="2018-12-10T11:33:46.300" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend that you create nonfunctional requirements in the form of user stories to provide the foundation or infrastructure for logging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will allow all future features to leverage this and allow logging to be part and parcel of every story and therefore part of the definition of done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2018-12-10T11:33:46.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25405" CreationDate="2018-12-10T11:42:38.090" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your team is working on a project which spans multiple sprints, I would recommend that you create a burn-up chart that covers the whole project. Plug in all the estimates you have for the project at user story and at epic level if you don't have user stories for the whole project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will create a landing zone for you in the future and will show based on the team's velocity when the team is likely to complete the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now show the organisation the consequences of adding additional work to the sprint and how it affects the landing zone as additional work will push out the landing zone and it will take longer for the team to deliver the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2018-12-10T11:42:38.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25414" CreationDate="2018-12-10T11:51:02.457" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like your user stories are too chunky and not independent enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend that you work through your backlog and break down your user stories making them much smaller whilst at the same time being completely independent or as close to independent as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should take between 1-3 days for one user story to be complete. If it's bigger than this, you likely need to break it down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a great resource for breaking user stories down: &lt;a href=&quot;http://agileforall.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Story-Splitting-Flowchart.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://agileforall.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Story-Splitting-Flowchart.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience time-estimating tasks is not that useful. Focus on creating and estimating small independent stories and the tasks are optional depending on the developer that picks up the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tasks are the technical activities that 1 developer or a pair of developers will do to meet the acceptance criteria of the story. Tasks should never takes days to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastEditorUserId="32613" LastEditDate="2018-12-10T11:57:02.057" LastActivityDate="2018-12-10T11:57:02.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25401" CreationDate="2018-12-10T13:56:01.063" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would make a &lt;em&gt;Template&lt;/em&gt; Spec for the similarities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then each product starts by referencing the relevant &lt;em&gt;Template&lt;/em&gt; Specs and then noting the diferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way, when you change something system-wide, you don't have to update hundreds of specs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;GUI: This product is a variation of A - see the spec for A at ________&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other Functionality: This product is a variation of B - see the spec for B at ________&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Delta from A are:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;X - see section 2.1 for details about X&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Y - see section 2.2 for details about Y&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Delta from B are:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Z - see section 2.3 for details about Z&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ty refraining from chaining products; product F is a variation of product G which is a variation of product A. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once a product is a basis for another product you probabaly want to turn it into a template.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the very least, have a clear policy how long  chain can be - and how many leaves it can have - before it needs to be made in to a  &lt;em&gt;Template&lt;/em&gt; Spec of its own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Idea: If you could use Excel to write your specs, you could reference &lt;em&gt;Template&lt;/em&gt; Specs in such a way that they appear as text - and then you can chain - and change - at will and all the specs will be updated all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2018-12-10T13:56:01.063" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8486" CreationDate="2018-12-10T14:04:19.337" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The manager, product owner and scrum master should sit together and discuss this with you as a start to understand where you are coming from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The product owner should have their backlog handy, the scrum master should have burn-downs handy and the manager should have an understand of budget etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You all discuss to understand the different points of view and then most likely the manager would need to see if its financially feasible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you take it to the team and let them decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2018-12-10T14:04:19.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22200" CreationDate="2018-12-10T14:17:54.953" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master has no authority over the team and the individuals in the team, just like one team member has no authority over another team member. The Scrum Master faces management as part of the team and is therefore at the same level as everyone in the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The word 'manage' does not appear in the Scrum guide along with the Scrum Master and it is therefore incorrect to describe the Scrum Master as a manager of people or processes. The only managing that happens, is the team self-managing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As per the Scrum guide:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master is responsible for promoting and supporting Scrum as defined in the Scrum Guide. Scrum Masters do this by helping everyone understand Scrum theory, practices, rules, and values.&#xA;  The Scrum Master is a servant-leader for the Scrum Team. The Scrum Master helps those outside the Scrum Team understand which of their interactions with the Scrum Team are helpful and which aren’t. The Scrum Master helps everyone change these interactions to maximize the value created by the Scrum Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master serves the Development Team in several ways,&#xA;  including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Coaching the Development Team in self-organization and    cross-functionality; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Helping the Development Team to create    high-value products; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Removing impediments to the Development Team’s    progress; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Facilitating Scrum events as requested or needed; and,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Coaching the Development Team in organizational environments in which    Scrum is not yet fully adopted and understood.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2018-12-10T14:17:54.953" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25414" CreationDate="2018-12-10T14:39:04.140" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Welcome to the community, Amine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While not explicitly prescribed in the Scrum Guide, how you choose to break down work during refinement is an integral part of building your solution in an iterative, incremental fashion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of models to help with this part of the puzzle. One of the more widely used models is the INVEST model of breaking down user stories. The INVEST model states: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A good user story should be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I&quot; ndependent (of all others)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;N&quot; egotiable (not a specific contract for features)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;V&quot; aluable (or vertical)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;E&quot; stimable (to a good approximation)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;S&quot; mall (so as to fit within an iteration)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;T&quot; estable (in principle, even if there isn't a test for it yet)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps this is already a part of your process, but having really clear acceptance criteria for each story is also important. This acceptance criteria should come from your Product Owner and negotiated with the team once they believe the criteria has ballooned beyond a small effort. Ultimately the team manages their work, but having solid acceptance criteria from a product owner is the first step in empowering them to own said work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having solid acceptance criteria not only helps with managing the story, but managing the tasks needed to complete the story, which sounds like the problem you're trying to solve. So long as your stories are well INVEST'ed and have good acceptance criteria, your team should be able to find logical seams in stories (thus tasks) to help manage this issue much better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33598" LastActivityDate="2018-12-10T14:39:04.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21711" CreationDate="2018-12-10T14:42:16.807" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always find it quite helpful to refer to the Scrum guide for guidance for these types of questions. It always amazes me that such a short document pretty much always has the answer. The same with the Agile manifesto. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the Scrum guide:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Team consists of a Product Owner, the Development Team, and&#xA;  a Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you take away the Scrum Master you no longer have a Scrum team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not to say that you cannot deliver or that you are somehow now waterfall. It just means that you have decided, based on your own experience, that you don't need one and you have therefore created an offshoot of Scrum for your own circumstances. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum works for thousands of teams around the world because they have adopted the framework and then the team grows and delivers within this framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you remove a part of the framework you may not reap all of its rewards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have worked with many teams that have adopted their own 'method' which takes what they perceive as useful from different frameworks but there are pros and cons to this approach and the happiest highest performing teams I have worked with stick to the framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2018-12-10T14:42:16.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18430" CreationDate="2018-12-10T14:50:35.983" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an excellent question and its something that I have seen to be confusing for many teams and Product Owners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The easiest way to remember the difference is simply to ask yourself this question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this story specific or do all stories need to do this before they are considered done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer is that it is story specific, then it is acceptance criteria for the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer is that generally all stories need to do this before being considered done, then it is a perfect candidate for Definition of Done, which you should take to the team for consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definition of Done should be something that changes over time and I recommend that you get your team to have a fresh look at it every 2 months or so to make sure its serving them well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes something which was once acceptance criteria becomes part of their definition of done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2018-12-10T14:50:35.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23973" CreationDate="2018-12-10T15:31:04.990" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitely, however, this should be at the discretion of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, in retrospectives, you are trying to create a bunch of actions which the team can complete during the sprint. However, if you tell the team, the Change Management team is at their disposal to help, you can potentially create actions for the team and also actions which the team thinks Change Management can help with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another approach is to create a bunch of actions and then tell the team that some of these actions can be sorted with help from Change Management, are they happy to share the output of the retrospective with them or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to summerise: &lt;strong&gt;take it to the team ;)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastEditorUserId="11970" LastEditDate="2018-12-13T12:07:11.740" LastActivityDate="2018-12-13T12:07:11.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25416" CreationDate="2018-12-10T16:29:46.240" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some story point systems do use linear values, but such systems are rarely used by experienced agile practitioners as the numbers are usually misleading. Non-linear systems deliberately expose the imprecision of the estimation process, and rely on smoothing functions to arrive at reasonable planning values for team capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Understanding Relative-Effort Values&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In common usage, &lt;em&gt;linear&lt;/em&gt; means “sequential.” (NB: there are mathematical and scientific definitions that are more complex.) However, most story-pointing systems are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; sequential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most common story-pointing system is arguably Mike Cohn’s modified Fibonacci sequence, where each value is a non-linear function of preceding values. The core idea is to have a reference story equal to one or two story points, and then to size all stories &lt;em&gt;relative&lt;/em&gt; to the reference story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Central to story pointing is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The notion that they represent effort or complexity, not time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An acknowledgment that estimation becomes less precise as stories get larger.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An 8-point story is therefore somewhere between 4..8 times the effort of the reference story, and roughly falls between 5..13 on the point scale.&lt;/strong&gt; Any attempt to treat one 8-point story as exactly equivalent to eight one-point stories misses a core principle of the system, which is that estimates are &lt;em&gt;imprecise by nature&lt;/em&gt; and get more so as the size (and therefore the cone of uncertainty) of a story increases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story point metrics like velocity can provide a &lt;em&gt;range&lt;/em&gt; of values for expected team capacity during Sprint Planning, especially when using a smoothing function like a trailing average. Attempting to wring high precision out of the velocity metric, or treating story points as linear time values, would be a misuse of the methodology. This is a common anti-pattern, so just don’t do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-12-11T07:45:49.237" LastActivityDate="2018-12-11T07:45:49.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25431" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25432" CreationDate="2018-12-10T19:36:28.887" Score="2" ViewCount="174" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team has recently transitioned from essentially zero project management (other than the &quot;put out fires as they happen while trying to stay on top of current workload&quot;) to something more Agile with roots/tentacles into Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation has improved greatly, but our manager is asking for a roadmap/how to know that things are going better. I don't think he's disputing or questioning whether or not our project management has improved; rather, I think he's trying to figure out how much the situation has improved and how to quantify this. To me, this is a difficult question to answer because a) I've only been here two years, and b) it's difficult to quantify improvement to  ~0 to something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any thoughts? I saw &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2542/what-are-some-agile-scrum-metrics&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, but it didn't quite get to exactly what I was looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32687" LastActivityDate="2018-12-14T02:52:01.307" Title="Agile (&quot;Scrum&quot;) &quot;Metrics&quot; Question" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25431" CreationDate="2018-12-10T20:27:44.077" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Basically, you do not have any data at the moment that you can use to quantify how much you've improved. So start collecting it immediately. Be it velocity, lead times, cycle time or qualitative data via questionnaire the main thing is that you start collecting it so you have some kind of historical data which you can use in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would do in your situation is to create a questionnaire for the team and all of the relevant stakeholder groups the team is interacting with. Ask questions like &quot;how much has our predictability improved in X months&quot; and give a scale of -5 to 5 or something like that. Also ask opinions on the current situation so you get some kind of baseline, for example, &quot;how satisfied are you with the team's performance&quot; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully, enough people answer your questionnaire and you get some data to present to your manager. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there's no roadmap for a change initiative. Or not a reliable one, at least. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29075" LastEditorUserId="11970" LastEditDate="2018-12-11T10:17:47.113" LastActivityDate="2018-12-11T10:17:47.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25431" CreationDate="2018-12-11T21:05:23.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Have lead times improved?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See if you can find some historical information that shows when requirements were first raised and when they made it in to production. If your project management process has improved it could well have resulted in the lead times dropping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Have the number of production incidents improved?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most organisations retain some information about production incidents. You might have to plough through some old emails, but you have a good chance of working out if the code in production is now more reliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Do business people in your organisation think things have got better?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Survey the business people in your organisation. Ask them questions like: &quot;Do you have more or less confidence in your development team now compared to 1 year ago?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-12-11T21:05:23.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25431" CreationDate="2018-12-11T21:09:41.627" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you started the changes, what did you expect to change?&#xA;Initially, you do not have roadmap or planning, as I understand. &#xA;Try to think in several directions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt; 1) what changed for you - which improvements helped you?&#xA; 2) what changed for team - which improvements helped your team?&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a second step, when you decide what changed, you could try to understand how to measure this. Whether through some key performance indicators or metrics or through feedback from the team or other stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34249" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-12-11T22:09:26.643" LastActivityDate="2018-12-11T22:09:26.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18430" CreationDate="2018-12-12T02:57:15.017" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The goal of definition of done is to build a common understanding within the team regarding quality and completeness of a product built and ensure that each increment shipped is of a high quality. the list may include the following:&#xA;- code is deployed to test environment&#xA;- unit tests run and all pass&#xA;- code peer reviewed&#xA;- tested by QA team (environment)&#xA;- defects fixed&#xA;- Acceptance criteria met&#xA;- Story is demonstrated to PO and accepted&#xA;- etc&#xA;We must meet the definition of done to ensure quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acceptance criteria is actually a part of DoD.&#xA;The goal of acceptance criteria is to clarify what the team should build and ensure that everyone has a common understanding on the feature and the outcome&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34311" LastActivityDate="2018-12-12T02:57:15.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25439" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-12-12T13:04:49.783" Score="1" ViewCount="63" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find the Autosave feature to be very intrusive and it also interferes with some macros I run.  I know how to disable it via File/Options/Save/untick the box, but even if I then immediately save my file the feature is re-enabled the next time I open the file, so I have to manually disable it again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I either turn it off permanently (for this file only) or disable it via VBA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eric&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33645" LastActivityDate="2018-12-12T15:28:56.120" Title="Autosave: How to prevent it being re-enabled with each new session" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25439" CreationDate="2018-12-12T15:28:56.120" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the problem is that my IT dept have updated my registry which I am unfortunately not able to edit.  This link&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://getadmx.com/?Category=Office2016&amp;amp;Policy=proj16.Office.Microsoft.Policies.Windows::L_PjSaveEvery&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://getadmx.com/?Category=Office2016&amp;amp;Policy=proj16.Office.Microsoft.Policies.Windows::L_PjSaveEvery&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;shows what needs to be changed, and explains why it resets each time I close and reopen Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/l1ygo.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/l1ygo.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33645" LastActivityDate="2018-12-12T15:28:56.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25441" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-12-12T15:38:54.013" Score="2" ViewCount="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to automate the generation of the same tickets (stories) with 'parameters' (i.e. minimal changes in e.g. Title, Epic)? We are working on a digital transformation project with 10 products for 20 markets in 4 brands (i.e. 800 projects). We would like to automatically create a set of Jira tickets for each of them. Is that possible? Is there a plugin?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34368" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-12-12T18:11:40.823" LastActivityDate="2021-04-28T15:27:17.640" Title="Automation: trigger a set of tickets" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25441" CreationDate="2018-12-12T18:13:11.897" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes; you can do a csv import. You first need to create a .csv, of course, following typical Excel csv format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No plugin is needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More details available in the Atlassian documentation: &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver071/importing-data-from-csv-802592885.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver071/importing-data-from-csv-802592885.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WBM link in case of future link rot: &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20210428151403/https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver071/importing-data-from-csv-802592885.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://web.archive.org/web/20210428151403/https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver071/importing-data-from-csv-802592885.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2021-04-28T15:27:17.640" LastActivityDate="2021-04-28T15:27:17.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25443" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25444" CreationDate="2018-12-12T19:37:05.917" Score="5" ViewCount="635" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does the Definition of Done come before everything else, almost like a programming interface? And can it be changed if later on, once it’s realized that it was designed poorly?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By overriden, I mean can individual rules be nullified by more specific protocols like Acceptance Criteria or Acceptance Tests?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Definition of Done requires the team to use a specific coding standard, and the acceptance criteria explicitly states something else, which would take precedence? Would it be the explicit acceptance criteria, or would the variance simply not allowed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would the Scrum Master be able to change the Definition of Done, if the stated requirements are structured poorly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34373" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-12-13T20:43:09.433" LastActivityDate="2018-12-13T20:43:09.433" Title="Can the Definition of Done be overriden or changed?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;definition-of-done&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25443" CreationDate="2018-12-12T20:04:37.437" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The direct answer to your question is that yes, on very rare occasion, there may be something about a story or the acceptance criteria that causes the Scrum team to override some aspect of the definition of done for that case. However, it is a dangerous thing to do. This is sort of like saying that there are cases where jumping out of a second-story window is the best decision you can make, but it doesn't mean it's something you really want to do or that it is safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the examples you give are very problematic. First, the user story and, therefor, the acceptance criteria, should never be specifying implementation, and therefor shouldn't set coding standards. Also, the definition of done is primarily an agreement between the development team and the PO. Any change or one-time exclusion should be agreed between them, not unilaterally by the Scrum Master. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some cases where I have seen DoD items ignored for a particular case might include ignoring UI style guide because a particular UI is being themed for a special event or excusing a performance requirement in order to gain some other business value (ex, the page doesn't need to load as quickly because it is generating a complex report and has warned the user that it will take longer to load). The cases where we might do this are very few and far between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2018-12-12T20:04:37.437" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25443" CreationDate="2018-12-12T22:00:46.223" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Definition of Done (DoD) is a living document that supports collaboration. As such, it’s primarily a communications tool that provides &lt;em&gt;process transparency&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good Definition of Done defines a minimum baseline for quality. It doesn’t define a maximum for quality or create an immutable rule set. Teams can and do adjust the DoD for specific work items; they just need to ensure that they communicate variations or deviations from the standard &lt;em&gt;effectively&lt;/em&gt; within the team and to their stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It’s up to the team and the stakeholders whether the Definition of Done should be a fine-grained procedure document, or if a broader policy document makes more sense. In short, it’s a negotiable agreement, and should be treated as such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because it’s a living document, an agile team should inspect-and-adapt the Definition of Done periodically. The document should be updated whenever working agreements or the “rules of engagement” change. This shouldn’t be a frequent occurrence, but can be done as often as necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;More Ways to Think of the Definition of Done&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some useful and pragmatic ways to think of the Definition of Done are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As the agreement the Scrum Team has made internally regarding what constitutes a complete increment of work.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will generally include basic elements of TDD, BDD, linting, style-checking, documentation, and so forth. It only needs to be as detailed as “done” really is.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As the contract between the Scrum Team and the organization regarding the minimum guarantees for each increment of work.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if your Definition of Done includes successful acceptance testing, then a story or task doesn’t have to be written for acceptance testing because the DoD is an &lt;em&gt;explicit&lt;/em&gt; checklist that is &lt;em&gt;implicitly&lt;/em&gt; part of every Product Backlog Item delivered. If a user story is delivered, stakeholders can feel confident that they story has met the Definition of Done.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As a &lt;em&gt;quality baseline&lt;/em&gt; that can be added to, amended, or modified as needed.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A documentation story wouldn’t necessarily require unit tests or have to meet test-coverage targets. A database story probably wouldn’t require linting. A well-written DoD covers the general use cases that define “done” to a specific level of quality. You don’t have to apply rules that don’t make sense for that story, nor are you precluded from adding to the DoD for a specific work item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, if you treat the DoD as a baseline, then you will have cases where there needs to be additional criteria for “done.” You might have a story to embiggen a widget where the story won’t be considered as done until the widget soaks in the anti-ensmallening bath for an hour. That is part of the Definition of Done &lt;em&gt;for that story&lt;/em&gt;, but is probably too specific for the baseline DoD.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These facets of the Definition of Done are not orthogonal. You can combine them, as well as other interpretations, in any number of ways. The trick is to ensure the Definition of Done is sufficiently complete to describe “done” without being overly prescriptive. As always, the devil is in the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Specificity vs. Generalization&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Definition of Done should be general enough to set expectations of quality and doneness for the majority of Product Backlog Items. There will be exceptions, and it is not intended to be a straitjacket. However, there are some practical guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the team is frequently eliding elements of the Definition of Done, it’s probably too specific, too granular, or poorly written.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the team is frequently adding criteria for doneness to individual stories, the Definition of Done probably needs to be written more broadly, or to capture the essence of increment quality in a less granular way.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the same way that finding the optimal granularity of user stories is an art form, so is finding the right level of detail for the Definition of Done. The DoD should provide confidence in the quality of deliverables, but it should never take on a life of its own. The goal is to &lt;em&gt;reliably&lt;/em&gt; deliver working product increments, not to check off boxes on a list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the Definition of Done stops being a mechanism to improve collaboration, and becomes an end unto itself, then it’s probably time to review it in a team retrospective and with the stakeholders. Agile frameworks value collaboration and working agreements, not detailed specifications. Treat your DoD as a living document that captures key elements of collaboration and you’ll be on the right track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-12-12T22:10:04.907" LastActivityDate="2018-12-12T22:10:04.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24257" CreationDate="2018-12-12T23:07:17.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Anton - I had a very similar problem. I ended up building out a platform to help with project forecasting. It has some light CRM features and some light time entry features but we'll be enhancing those in the coming weeks and months. Specifically, it will help you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep track of pipeline projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Forecast out time associated with a specific role and allow you to assign one of your people&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep track of your team's allocation across all of their projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://taliscape.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://taliscape.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There aren't integrations into any kind of kanban boards but that is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give it a whirl and let me know if this will solve your problem. If not - let us know what features you need and we can bake those into the platform.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34374" LastEditorUserId="34374" LastEditDate="2018-12-12T23:18:11.073" LastActivityDate="2018-12-12T23:18:11.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8916" CreationDate="2018-12-12T23:21:00.037" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've used &lt;a href=&quot;https://taliscape.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://taliscape.com/&lt;/a&gt; to align our people across all of the projects in our organization. It's great to give you a visual look of people's allocated time (similar to a gantt chart) and it helps you understand their capacity vs. assigned hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Doug mentioned, you don't want to overstaff your team - allow for some amount of idle time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34374" LastActivityDate="2018-12-12T23:21:00.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25449" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25452" CreationDate="2018-12-13T13:32:06.450" Score="5" ViewCount="215" Body="&lt;p&gt;We currently have a website solution project in which I am involved. We are also outsourcing the development from local software-development companies. We have not selected a vendor because we are at the request for proposal stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the project plan, I need to allocate a timeline for the development of the website solution (which involves more than just a website). &lt;strong&gt;How do I go about allocating date/time for this?&lt;/strong&gt; Best case I need the website to be finished in a month; however, if I put that in the project plan, then it would not be realistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have the website requirements and I thought about placing estimated development times for each requirement however there are too many line items to enter times for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34382" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2018-12-13T16:05:06.150" LastActivityDate="2019-07-19T11:54:43.223" Title="Timeline for outsourced software development" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;timeline&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25449" CreationDate="2018-12-13T14:36:17.187" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Group the requirements up into Epics (or Feature Groups or however you want to call them...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developers estimate for the individual requirements, and then those are aggregated into the Epics - the Epics are then used to build the schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2018-12-13T14:36:17.187" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25449" CreationDate="2018-12-13T15:59:08.870" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would divide it into 4 parts - each one month long, with a milestone at the end of each month:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Definitions - ending with a milestone of &lt;strong&gt;agreed upon feature spec&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create initial sites -  ending with a milestone of &lt;strong&gt;beta sites&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testing beta sites - ending with a milestone of &lt;strong&gt;list of fixes for launch&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finalizing sites - ending with a milestone of &lt;strong&gt;launch live sites&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality, once milestone #1 is reached, the coding, design, testing and tweaking happen in parallel - but this gives you a neat way to break it down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part #1 also sets the expectations for both sides - here is where the developers get to decide how much they can squeeze into the allocated time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2018-12-13T15:59:08.870" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25449" CreationDate="2018-12-13T16:07:58.177" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have no choice but to get the estimates and planning values--and risks thereof--from the vendors you are planning on using.  Then you need to load those external commitments into your master schedule and read the resulting overall duration.  Better yet, you would have a worst case duration value, best case, and most likely so you can fully understand what you are facing with your project from a risk perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That duration value from this schedule analysis will most likely differ, and most likely unfavorably, from the four-month target you were given.  In this case, you can either lie and tell your sponsors you can get it done in four months and then try to aggressively pursue change requests, or you can tell them the results of your estimating and planning process and put the decision in their hands as to what to do next.  The former I would not recommend; however, I can tell you that is done all the time.  The latter puts the decision in your sponsor's hands, which is where it belongs.  As a PM, you sometimes--and often times--have to tell them bad news.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their choices range from decreasing scope, extending the targets, or firing you and hiring someone who will give them the former answer above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-12-13T16:07:58.177" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25431" CreationDate="2018-12-14T02:52:01.307" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apart from measuring number of incidents, lead times, etc. I would also focus on how the work culture is changing and try to quantify that, because it is very important to keep everyone happy and so that they can work to the best of their ability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-12-14T02:52:01.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25456" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-12-14T14:58:21.553" Score="0" ViewCount="180" Body="&lt;p&gt;What design and strength of magnets are best for a glass whiteboard, used to hold our story cards for daily stand-ups?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a glass whiteboard, and many magnets fail to stick through the glass, or won't hold more than a few cards together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have small cube magnets from an unknown source that are strong enough, but they are so strong they quickly snap together, and it's hard to get them apart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have some small discs that will hold one card, but they have a tendency to snap when stuck together, leading to cuts on our thumbs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28863" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-12-15T18:14:59.640" LastActivityDate="2018-12-15T18:14:59.640" Title="What magnets for a glass whiteboard?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;kanban-board&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2018-12-17T11:11:15.717" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25456" CreationDate="2018-12-15T15:03:15.530" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The part of your question about what product to buy is off-topic. We call those &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.meta.stackexchange.com/a/812/4271&quot;&gt;shopping questions&lt;/a&gt;,&quot; and they are almost always off-topic. They are also generally indicative of &lt;a href=&quot;https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/66377/185951&quot;&gt;X/Y problems&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is an underlying problem here that can be addressed. That is allowing your products to drive your process, rather than picking tools that support your process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your best bet is to just buy the right tool for the job. In this case, that's probably getting yourself a cork board and some push pins. However, in the unlikely case that the team can't do &quot;the simplest thing that could possibly work,&quot; I've also provided some alternative process options for the team to evaluate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis and Recommendations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Working with Your Current Process&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your real problem (not the X/Y problem you're trying to resolve) is that you want a physical kanban board, but have an unsuitable board that you're trying to manage story cards on anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a couple of key options with your current setup:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use the surface of your current board.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use masking tape or markers to define columns and swim lanes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use something sticky to manage index cards on the board, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Masking tape.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scotch (&quot;invisible&quot;) tape.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resuable adhesive putty.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use Post-It notes of whatever size you like rather than heavier, non-stick index cards.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use a different board with a different surface.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get a free-standing or mounted cork board with push pins.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Line a wall with self-sticking flip-board (a.k.a. easel pad) segments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use markers, tape, adhesive, glue sticks, or whatever you want to stick whatever you like to flip-board paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paint a wall with whiteboard paint, and use that instead.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go horizontal!&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cover a table with construction paper or butcher paper, and mark it up any way you like.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use tent cards instead of index cards, avoiding the need to stick anything to the horizontal board.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use slotted place card holders to hold standard index cards. (NB: You can even find holders in different shapes and colors to convey additional information.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't think of a reason why such solutions wouldn't work, other than that they &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; gum up the surface of your glass board over time. Even if it does, so what? You can always use adhesive remover when the project is over, or treat it as a delayed cost where the board or its surface need to be repaired or replaced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, a better solution would be to define your process and buy the right tools to support that process. You want to use index cards and push pins? Buy a large cork board instead of working around your existing equipment!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the project doesn't have the budget for a cheap cork board, that's a separate problem for the team to address. An unwillingness or inability to allocate petty cash for basic process support is a much bigger process issue that should be faced head-on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Inspect-and-Adapt Your Process&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also prefer to avoid the whole issue entirely. If you can't (or won't) buy the right tools for your process, consider revamping the entire process rather than trying half-measures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, if you can't replace the glass board with a cork board, or can't find a workable solution with your existing equipment, then you may just want to switch to a different process altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, instead of trying to solve the physical board problem, you might consider an electronic kanban board such as Trello or Favro. There are literally hundreds of other clones and work-alikes; some are free, some are commercial, but they all have basic Kanban functionality with additional features and APIs that you'll have to evaluate for yourselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You might even consider that a kanban board is a common practice—it's certainly an effective way to visualize the work—but having one is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; required by the Scrum framework.&lt;/strong&gt; While a team must track the work on its Sprint Backlog, that backlog can be a spreadsheet or other artifact just as easily as a kanban board. Perhaps the team would rather have a daily printout of the current burn-down or Sprint Backlog, rather than walking a physical kanban board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number of solutions are limited only by your imagination. If you want a physical board, your best bet is to do it right. If you don't actually need a physical board, then have the team develop a supporting process for the daily stand-up that doesn't involve one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-12-15T15:03:15.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25458" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-12-17T15:20:22.313" Score="1" ViewCount="115" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do the following documents need to be created by a Business Analyst in any particular order? If so, what?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scope Document&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business Requirement Document (BRD)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Functional Specification Document (FRD/FRS)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34408" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-12-17T17:05:55.360" LastActivityDate="2019-01-19T21:02:55.573" Title="Which Document need to be created first by a Business Analyst? Scope Document or Business Requirement Document(BRD)?" Tags="&lt;business-analyst&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25461" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2018-12-18T15:26:37.150" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2018-12-18T15:26:37.150" LastActivityDate="2018-12-18T15:26:37.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25462" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2018-12-18T15:26:37.150" Score="0" Body="Questions related to the formal and informal methods and techniques used by a project manager to collect, organize, and facilitate communication" OwnerUserId="27065" LastEditorUserId="27065" LastEditDate="2018-12-20T12:23:22.120" LastActivityDate="2018-12-20T12:23:22.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22540" CreationDate="2018-12-18T17:16:45.397" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you are using versions in a way which is not what Jira meant to be.&#xA;In software development, you have a piece of software which evolves through different versions, each version consists in a group of changes (issues), all of this is a project.&#xA;To allign with this, you should use one project for each new hardware you have, so you can follow in which version each one of them is at any moment. You'll find out this approach makes easier to use burn down charts and any query in general&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29163" LastActivityDate="2018-12-18T17:16:45.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25464" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-12-19T08:04:06.973" Score="3" ViewCount="133" Body="&lt;p&gt;So in my current organisation for the past year we have been doing the &quot;full-blown&quot; Agile stuff to create software. From planning, refinement, daily SCRUM stand-ups, programming and testing in 2-weekly cycles, through to sprint reviews and even postmortems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our software chugs along and we make a reasonable amount of releases. As a dev team we are fairly happy because we go through all our rituals according to our Outlook calendar. Management are generally pretty relaxed because we have many small customers instead of a few large ones (losing one is not a big deal).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I feel like the biggest reason for Agile was supposed to be to bridge the divide between developers and management, and also keep customers on the same page - esp. with the Extreme Programming flavour. When my boss asks individual developers when they can expect a feature that is currently being worked on to be released for customers, we are dumbstruck and can't give an answer. We estimated based on effort, not hours - so we intentionally didn't communicate poor estimates to management. We know that our estimates are often incorrect, and we work to improve them. However, we still try to hide behind the guise of not telling management our estimates, as per many recommendations with Agile online and in books. We simply tell them what tasks we think we can fit into a Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned, this is all good, until a customer wants to know when it will be done so they can achieve some level of planning for their business. And management want to know because part of their job is to know. Furthermore, management never join our sprint reviews so we never get to talk about this kind of issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are we doing wrong as developers / scrum masters? How do you suggest we could improve this kind of situation and feel more comfortable when the boss asks us an important question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34424" LastActivityDate="2018-12-19T17:56:24.423" Title="I've been doing Agile for years in various organisations, but I still don't feel like we're doing it right?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25464" CreationDate="2018-12-19T08:36:57.580" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Do agile&quot; has several interpretations. Have you gone through the core agile values? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A team that does daily stand ups, do not provide estimates in hours, works over iterations and have constant releases may be adjusting itself into the scrum ceremonies and roles... but forgetting the scrum values. Your project may be what I'm used to call a (fr)Agile project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, back to your main question - is my project agile? You can answer this question by answering the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are we valuing people and individuals over processes and tools?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are we valuing working software over documentation?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are we valuing collaboration over contracts?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are we valuing a fluid response to change over being strict to a plan?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answers for all four questions above is undoubtedly yes, then your project is very likely to be agile. If you are unsure about any of them, something may be not entirely agile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Remember:&lt;/strong&gt; You can consider agile as a &lt;em&gt;tool&lt;/em&gt; to &lt;em&gt;deliver value&lt;/em&gt;. If your project &lt;strong&gt;is agile&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;is delivering value&lt;/strong&gt;, then you might redirect your concerns on how you can improve it, rather than if you're doing it or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2018-12-19T08:36:57.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17001" CreationDate="2018-12-19T08:47:49.460" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a developer and after reading the discussions going on here I would like to answer from my perspective. One thing I have really appreciated about non-technical project managers is the fact they think their dev team is amazing because they pull off the feats they do. They also ask a whole range of questions to understand. In contrast when I have had managers-were-developers over me, they too often treat me like I'm inexperienced and can't be trusted with decisions - even technical ones (I've been coding over 20 years). I feel disrespected and often feel like the project manager thinks he could do a better job. I feel there is less personal care with such managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that experience and possible prejudice out of the way, I would say that the best course of action for you is to meet 1 on 1 with the louder dev and in a relaxed way (shout him a coffee or beer?) ask some questions. It is often what we opinionated devs want - someone to check up on us &quot;in a hands-on way&quot; and see how we are doing and understand us more and how we can be helped through our work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could try questions like: What do you expect from a PM? What have you not liked about past project managers? (Without naming them). Then you will understand if he is just inexperienced or if he has a legitimate point that will help your team. But don't judge him on that. Take everything as food for thought and building a relationship with your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a project manager or any kind of expert on the matter, so please take this as one opinion only. I also tend to agree on some of the points raised that you should not try to steer the architecture for your team; that is the lead developer's job or architects if your company has them (I'm guessing they do not). Maybe you can stick to mentoring your lead developer one-on-one if you think he does not have the ability. You could still do code reviews or suggestions in direction for him, but I wouldn't do much else technical with the rest of the team; I'd make it about your lead dev's personal training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps,&#xA;Ryan&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34425" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-12-19T14:15:02.577" LastActivityDate="2018-12-19T14:15:02.577" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24914" CreationDate="2018-12-19T09:56:31.790" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What would be your course of action with the client?&#xA;Ans : &#xA;1) Share the current status with client&#xA;2) Revisit the project plan and re-prioritize the scope.&#xA;3) Based on the updated scope realign the resources.&#xA;4) Motivate the team to work towards minimal rework, maximum productivity.&#xA;5) Since your working in T&amp;amp;M anything which is not a part of SOW or MSA - should be treated as a CR.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34414" LastEditorUserId="34414" LastEditDate="2018-12-19T12:05:02.167" LastActivityDate="2018-12-19T12:05:02.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25468" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25479" CreationDate="2018-12-19T10:32:21.250" Score="8" ViewCount="231" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am bit confused between the role of project manager and business analyst. What is the basic difference between the two?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33075" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2018-12-27T14:10:43.800" LastActivityDate="2018-12-27T14:10:43.800" Title="What is the difference between the project manager and business analyst role?" Tags="&lt;roles&gt;&lt;business-analyst&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25469" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-12-19T14:07:06.900" Score="5" ViewCount="366" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is a very common issue a lot of companies fight with. So I would like to ask for your input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product Owners often prefer to keep specifications in Google spreadsheet. And then write user stories in JIRA (or any other tool) that link to said spreadsheet. Especially when things get complicated. But this often gets out of hand and suddenly you have a lot of different places to check as a developer to make sure you fulfilled the acceptance criteria. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;From a developer perspective there are a couple of things that speak against spreadsheets:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No transparent versioning. You have to navigate past, present and future with color codes or in different sub-sections&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not all the information is present in the story, so you need to first collect information before you can start to work on a story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They aren’t designed to store files, annotations, conversations, and related information that are essential parts of project communication and collaboration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When doing the sprint review, it is great to have all the acceptance criteria right in the story in order to efficiently check if something can be considered as &quot;done&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;From a Product Owner perspective spreadsheets make a lot of sense:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All the specifications are in one place and not scattered along multiple stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can create the data structure most fitting for your needs. You can define columns, add multiple sheets to your workbook, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You don't have to repeat yourself whenever you write a story. Just reference the spreadsheet.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am currently moderating between a Product Owner who loves spreadsheets and a Development Team who despises them. I am a developer myself and dislike them, but I see the points the PO makes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So I guess my questions are:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are spreadsheets necessarily bad?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there tools or best practices out there that I am missing?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34432" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-12-19T14:37:14.713" LastActivityDate="2019-02-01T14:13:59.360" Title="Specifications in spreadsheets vs. stories in JIRA" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;product-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25469" CreationDate="2018-12-19T14:36:31.553" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;TLDR: It's the Product Owner (PO)'s responsibility to communicate the needs for the product to the Development Team in a format that they can use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll address your provided Pros for spreadsheets:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All the specifications are in one place and not scattered along multiple stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's simple enough to make a filter in JIRA that will give you a report of the Issues you want. You can even export it to Excel!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You can create the data structure most fitting for your needs. You can define columns, add multiple sheets to your workbook, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can, to a point, do this in JIRA as well - most such needs could be taken care of via features such as custom field or quick filters. While it is possible there may be some needs the PO has that are truly impossible, I think it more likely that s/he simply needs to learn how to use JIRA to fulfill them, instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You don't have to repeat yourself whenever you write a story. Just reference the spreadsheet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's another way to not repeat yourself: Don't use spreadsheets. Therefore, this argument isn't really convincing - 'ditch JIRA' and 'ditch spreadsheets' are equally valid solutions to this one particular issue - so I wouldn't consider this a Pro for spreadsheets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect it would be simpler to just keep them in one place, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, though, the most important part I see is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not all the information is present in the story, so you need to first collect information before you can start to work on a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This shows that the PO is &lt;em&gt;failing in his/her role&lt;/em&gt;. The information must be made available to the Dev Team in a form the Dev Team can parse. An Excel sheet is simply not sufficient for most developer workflows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the PO wants to keep using spreadsheets, fine, let him/her. But s/he &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; ensure &lt;em&gt;every single little piece of information&lt;/em&gt; within those spreadsheets are replicated to JIRA at all times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, that being said, just telling the PO 'you're wrong, deal with it' is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; the way to go. I mention above that the PO has to learn how to use JIRA more effectively. Why don't &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; (or another developer - perhaps the loudest one involving this issue?) first learn how yourself, and then teach the PO?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much of what seems 'intuitive' is simply familiarity. Once s/he understands and has gotten used to using JIRA, I suspect much of the preference for Excel will fade. For now, though, in the face of any unfamiliar technology, a common response is 'this is unusual, unexpected, and I don't like it. Because it's not like Excel.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-02-01T14:13:59.360" LastActivityDate="2019-02-01T14:13:59.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25469" CreationDate="2018-12-19T15:27:57.237" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spreadsheets are great for capturing data. User stories and kanban boards are great for visualizing work or providing conversation placeholders. They can exist together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real issue is that both can be misused. Neither spreadsheets nor index cards are &quot;features&quot; or &quot;collaboration,&quot; so don't treat them that way. Instead, treat them as process tools that support &lt;em&gt;ongoing&lt;/em&gt; communication and collaboration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Patterns and Anti-Patterns&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seem to be a number of misconceptions about Product Backlog Items and the user story format. Let's address those first, and then see if your tooling question remains a concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;User stories are not specifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A user story is a &lt;em&gt;placeholder&lt;/em&gt; for communicating about a backlog item. It is not intended to be a complete specification, take the place of communication with the Product Owner or end user, or contain the entire Definition of Done.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Product Backlog belongs to the Product Owner, but the Sprint Backlog belongs to the Development Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you aren't placing in-progress user stories and tasks into the Sprint Backlog, then You're Doing Scrum Wrong™. The Product Owner shouldn't be making changes directly to items on the Sprint Backlog; in-Sprint changes should be discussed with the whole Scrum Team and &lt;em&gt;managed&lt;/em&gt; by the Development Team. So, revision control of Sprint Backlog stories isn't really necessary for a healthy framework implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Change tracking or change requests are an agile anti-pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because agile frameworks embrace change, the notion of versioning or tracking deltas between backlog items is a definite anti-pattern. The Product Owner can make any changes they like to items on the Product Backlog &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; they enter the Sprint Backlog. Once they are part of the Sprint Plan, no changes to scope or backlog content that &lt;strong&gt;endanger the Sprint Goal&lt;/strong&gt; should be allowed without serious consideration of early termination of the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Standard acceptance criteria do not belong in user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/25443/can-the-definition-of-done-be-overriden-or-changed/25445#25445&quot;&gt;Definition of Done&lt;/a&gt; is a living policy or standards document that is &lt;em&gt;implicitly&lt;/em&gt; part of every story. You shouldn't be writing acceptance criteria for each story; that's an indication that you need to review and revise your Definition of Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, acceptance criteria really ought to be required by the Definition of Done. They are usually best implemented as executable tests that the team defines during TDD or BDD development, and should reflect the &lt;em&gt;goal&lt;/em&gt; of the user story rather than specific implementation-level details. User stories should define the features and functionality desired by the value consumers, not the underlying implementation details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any acceptance criteria should be captured as testable elements (e.g. Cucumber scenarios) during Spring Planning or very early in the development cycle, rather than left to an external process at the end. Acceptance testing should be &lt;em&gt;integrated&lt;/em&gt; into the Sprint, not treated as a post-hoc process.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the team has too much work to track progress without extensive notes, annotations, and cross-references, there's a problem with the framework implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An agile team is supposed to be small enough to keep communication and collaboration efficient. In addition, agile frameworks minimize task switching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In software, implementation details should be captured in TDD specifications, code comments, and BDD scenarios, so there should be a minimum of note-taking and cross-referencing going on. In other words, the work should be &lt;em&gt;self-documenting&lt;/em&gt; to the greatest extent possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, the team should be collaborating and swarming over stories. Work that needs to be meticulously documented, annotated, logged, and updated is generally a whiffy smell that the team is falling prey to the 100% utilization fallacy. By not pairing, swarming, and collaborating, the team misses out on many of the benefits of agile frameworks, including knowledge transfer and the &lt;em&gt;creation&lt;/em&gt; of T-shaped teams and processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't treat stories and tasks as individual work items to be tossed over the wall between people or teams; work them &lt;em&gt;as a team&lt;/em&gt; to get the full benefit of agility.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you address these issues of principle, you may suddenly find that &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; you track your Product and Sprint Backlogs becomes a non-issue for the Scrum Team. Even if you don't eliminate the problem altogether, taking these core principles into account will definitely help improve your overall process and allow the team to consider how they can best adapt the process (and any tools that support the process) to best effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-12-19T15:27:57.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25464" CreationDate="2018-12-19T17:56:24.423" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Providing Estimates&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a properly-sized story, feature, or fix is in-scope for the &lt;em&gt;current&lt;/em&gt; iteration, then you can say that it's forecast for delivery by the end of the iteration. If it's a collection of features (e.g. more of a scheduled release or milestone) then you use &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/16372/how-do-you-schedule-delivery-dates-in-scrum/16376#16376&quot;&gt;agile release estimation&lt;/a&gt; to provide the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Caveats&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; caveats. A non-exhaustive list of examples that make agile estimation hard include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your stories or backlog items are improperly sized, and don't fit within a single iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your velocity or queue drain rate is wildly unstable then it may be hard to project when future work will be in scope.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you've decoupled development from delivery, then it may be rolled out earlier or later than at iteration boundaries. This is often a plus when done right, but it's something to be aware of.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Treating estimates like money-back guarantees. Estimates (or forecasts, if you prefer) are only as good as the data and analysis that go into them, even in agile frameworks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A large &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cone of uncertainty&lt;/a&gt;, vague scope, lack of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST criteria&lt;/a&gt;, or insufficient domain knowledge. Without mitigations like story spikes or other tools designed to reduce uncertainty, your forecasts are more likely to be missed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of these examples mean that you can't provide delivery estimates when using agile frameworks. It just means that you need to ensure that you're leveraging your framework's full suite of estimation techniques, applying them properly, and inspecting-and-adapting in a continuous loop to improve the team's accuracy and reliability to within acceptable norms for the business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no silver bullet. However, the practice of continuous improvement (or &quot;kaizen&quot;) will certainly help mitigate the problems you've described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2018-12-19T17:56:24.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25473" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-12-20T04:28:25.967" Score="2" ViewCount="1088" Body="&lt;p&gt;What if the project manager changes all of a sudden during the project at any phase (Due to resignation / Personal reasons / Accident). &#xA;Does the Project charter also change with it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, Who does the changes, what is the process/way to do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31658" LastActivityDate="2019-11-17T11:39:21.237" Title="Does Project Charter change when the Project manager changes?" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;pmbok&gt;&lt;pmi&gt;&lt;project-charter&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25474" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25477" CreationDate="2018-12-20T08:42:55.190" Score="4" ViewCount="82" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to bring up my story for a closing project to have a discussion on practice as a Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At that time I am working as a member in the Development Team roled as a support Engineer and Scrum Master in the Scrum Team for the offshore team.  One day I have received the notice that, the project will be closed and Scrum Master (as Server Engineer as well), designer and the other Engineers will not be in the team anymore except me.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The remaining goal for the current project will be notified the users that the project will be closed.  Actually the team now composed of Product Owner, me and one Engineer in the offshore team. The Product Owner asked me to provide a plan for the remaining time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the team size is far less than what the guidelines mentioned and the goal is clear that the remaining part will not have changes.  I have suggested to the Product Owner to do the followings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Close the current sprint, move all the unfinished tasks back into the Product Backlog archived as Lesson Learned.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adopt Waterfall approach for the remaining time, and breakdown the tasks required to fulfill the goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep daily standup to make sure there will have no impediments for the remaining tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint retrospect will be held on the project closing date and deliver that to the Product Owner.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To my opinion, this is what I can do for the time to keep up with the responsibility for the remaining tasks done.   I would like to bring up a discussion to see what you will do if you were me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34437" LastActivityDate="2018-12-25T19:38:09.497" Title="Please advise on my experience for the final month of a project closing" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;practices&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25473" CreationDate="2018-12-20T08:46:12.337" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project Charter is a document that formalizes the existence of a project and gives authority to the project manager to use organizational resources for the completion of that project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, a change of project manager should not have any impact on the Project Charter. The only change would be to update the assigned project manager's name in the document. This would be done by the new project manager with the approval of current project sponsor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2018-12-20T08:46:12.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25474" CreationDate="2018-12-20T16:56:43.597" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few possible approaches:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Treat the final month as a single sprint. Do all the usual Scrum ceremonies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adopt a Kanban approach and just try and workflow the remaining tasks as best you can.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2018-12-20T16:56:43.597" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25468" CreationDate="2018-12-20T19:28:33.067" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;They're just different roles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A PM is responsible for guiding the project to successful completion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Business Analyst is typically responsible for elaborating the solution from concept to detailed requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There can be conflict between the two roles, also. In some organizations, there is a combined PM/BA role. I tend to recommend against them, because there is often a conflict of interests in how the project should be managed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PM-oriented people tend to want to deliver the project on-time, on-budget, etc. BA-oriented people often tend to favor extending the project to improve the delivered product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20700" LastActivityDate="2018-12-20T19:28:33.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25458" CreationDate="2018-12-20T19:30:45.473" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way you have them listed is standard: Scope, then BRD, then FRD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I typically recommend consolidating all of them into a single document, unless there is some overriding reason to keep them separate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20700" LastActivityDate="2018-12-20T19:30:45.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25481" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-12-20T19:39:25.440" Score="5" ViewCount="605" Body="&lt;p&gt;A team member is taking too much time at Daily Scrums. What is the best way to resolve this issue as a Scrum Master?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I intervene at the Scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2018-12-27T14:16:10.410" LastActivityDate="2018-12-28T15:59:55.273" Title="Daily Scrum development member taking too much time" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25325" CreationDate="2018-12-20T19:42:47.810" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems like an over-complicated solution which will likely not work or backfire. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your goal is to keep your vendor team honest (presumably in terms of estimates or similar), the best approach IMO is to be involved with them. Be an active part of the sprint planning sessions and the daily stand-ups, and I doubt you'll have many issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if you really want to try this approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Just impose a team member on them. Tell them you want to hire another developer to keep them honest. If they don't like it, too bad, they're the vendor.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;SOW and T&amp;amp;M sounds about right. This will probably have more to do with how consulting governance is done in your org though.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, still, there are probably better ways around this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20700" LastActivityDate="2018-12-20T19:42:47.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25481" CreationDate="2018-12-21T00:05:21.097" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master teaches the Development Team to keep the Daily Scrum within the 15-minute time-box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the responsibilities of the Scrum Master is also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Facilitating Scrum events as requested or needed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So - yes. It is the responsibility of the Scrum Master to teach the Development Team techniques for an effective Daily Scrum and to keep it (and other events) to the timebox. You would do this by coaching both the team and the individual in the purpose of the Daily Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, before getting involved, I'd ask a few questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the team achieving the purpose of the Daily Scrum within the timebox?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the individual in question or the other members of the team see the problem?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the team can see a problem, do they have any ideas for solutions? If so, can these solutions be enacted? If not, why don't they see an issue?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Sprint Retrospective is a good opportunity to have this discussion with the team. Although if you are running longer Sprints or it's a very common issue that's impacting the team's performance, it's OK to have the conversation sooner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2018-12-21T00:05:21.097" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25485" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-12-21T15:46:25.320" Score="8" ViewCount="2478" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master, recently attended a meeting set up by PO with stakeholders, one stakeholder was concerned that the budget was not being spent properly. It got heated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the meeting, I was not sure how to intervene since it was the PO's meeting and since it was the PO's meeting did nothing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was thinking at the back of my mind to either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;defend the PO and budget&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;defend the team, since they were kept busy delivering items from the backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bring focus to the meeting by telling POs to keep focus on delivering high value items in the following sprints&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am slghtly confused about what to do in this type of situation, what is the best way to handle it? Am I allowed to participate if it is PO's meeting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-12-24T19:18:36.003" LastActivityDate="2018-12-26T04:59:13.133" Title="How should a Scrum Master deal with an angry stakeholder during a PO meeting?" Tags="&lt;communication&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25485" CreationDate="2018-12-21T16:14:02.227" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am drawing assumptions on your PO's agenda, based on my experience of other PO meetings, and discussing a stakeholder's objections on spend would not be consistent with that agenda.  The PO, or you, or another leader of the team, should acknowledge the issue, validate the issue, and then table it with a promise of an immediate meeting to discuss further.  Defending anything in the meeting would be unwise and allowing the debate to get heated in front of the rest of the team is unproductive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are obvious reasons why a stakeholder would be upset with the spend: spending on the wrong things, over budget, or no controls over the budget to even know we you are in the spend.  It would be good for your project's overall health to listen to the complaints and then run each one down so the stakeholder can get on board with the project, or if unable to run down, then escalate to the project's sponsors to intervene at that level.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-12-21T16:14:02.227" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25485" CreationDate="2018-12-24T18:41:10.597" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was thinking at the back of my mind to either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;defend the PO and budget&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;defend the team, since they were kept busy delivering items from the backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Bring focus to the meeting by telling POs to keep focus on delivering high value items in the following sprints&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The correct answer is &quot;none of the above.&quot; Your goal as Scrum Master isn't to defend anything except the &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt;. A good Scrum Master acts as a coach, an educator, and (when necessary) a process referee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem you're describing is one that often results from poor process transparency, or from a product/portfolio management methodology that lacks rigor, objective metrics, and (most importantly) stakeholder buy-in. There are &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/6240/4271&quot;&gt;a number of existing approaches&lt;/a&gt; for dealing with that, which I addressed in a previous answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below, I offer a process perspective and an interpersonal perspective on what the problems may be. I also offer some practical suggestions on how to address them &lt;em&gt;within the role of Scrum Master&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Process Perspective&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a process perspective, a Scrum Product Owner is responsible for managing the Product Backlog. In practice, this often means managing stakeholder expectations about how priorities are being set and (indirectly) how project budget is being allocated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of techniques for getting buy-in for prioritization and budget, but they all ultimately boil down to good communications and selecting metrics everyone can agree on. If stakeholders are not already on board with the Product Owner's priorities, or if the project sponsor isn't backing the budgeting process effectively, then this is certainly an area where a good Scrum Master or agile coach can facilitate communications and help the organization to collaborate on budgets and priorities more effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Interpersonal Perspective&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it's not your job to defend the budget or the Product Backlog priorities, there are some interpersonal techniques that can make it easier to defuse this sort of unproductive meeting. In general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't get defensive or pick sides.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Capture any concerns or objections raised by the people in the meeting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be willing to (politely) observe that the meeting has created action items for the participants, and that it may be time to adjourn to consider them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discuss the meeting with the Product Owner afterwards, and work together to evaluate alternative approaches.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If welcomed by the Product Owner and the stakeholders, offer to coach the organization on agile prioritization and budgeting techniques.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Suggest hiring an agile coach or consultant if the process is so far off the rails that it endangers the effectiveness of the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In all cases, your goal is to facilitate communication, not defend or change the current process.&lt;/strong&gt; As long as you're continuously improving team and organizational communication, visibility, and transparency, then you're fulfilling the Scrum Master role properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2018-12-25T16:54:18.033" LastActivityDate="2018-12-25T16:54:18.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25481" CreationDate="2018-12-25T19:31:55.803" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Daily Scrum is supposed to be useful for the team. That's not a reporting meeting, that's a place where activities are shared to foster contribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A team member is taking too much time at Daily Scrums.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much is &lt;em&gt;too much&lt;/em&gt;? Has your team complained about it? Has the meeting broken the advised 15 min threshold? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is a tool, and adhering to it for the sake of adhering to it could be dangerous. Improve your delivery quality should be the target, not to stick to ceremonies. Scrum suggests co-located teams between 7+-2 people. Is your team aligned to it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Assuming&lt;/em&gt; the team has complained about it:&lt;/strong&gt; then may be a matter of having a &lt;em&gt;private conversation&lt;/em&gt; with this specific developer, appreciating all the details being provided and at the same time explain to him that the team may not need this specific level of detail &lt;em&gt;during daily scrums&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Assuming&lt;/em&gt; the details provided are valid (i.e. team appreciates them) but 15 minutes rules are being broken:&lt;/strong&gt; then may be a matter of having a &lt;em&gt;team conversation&lt;/em&gt; to understand if the Daily Scrums could be short or more objective (i.e. focusing only on today's activities, leaving more details to subsequent chats, etc.). If your team considers that during specific periods a few minutes more are needed, then try it. Don't be afraid to experiment. The team eventually will improve and naturally will reduce the time taken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is a &lt;em&gt;tool&lt;/em&gt;, not the goal. Focus on the delivery. If you can deliver more value doing 20 minutes Daily Scrum, go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2018-12-25T19:31:55.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25474" CreationDate="2018-12-25T19:38:09.497" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any item on the backlog the PO could prioritise and could be delivered on time? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a small team, you might not need to have all ceremonies (such as Daily Scrum). Do them only if you need they'd help on &lt;em&gt;delivering value&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being the last iteration, you might want proceed with a lessons learned session or handover some knowledge to other teams (in case the product will keep running).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the project will no longer be used, investing efforts on it may be a waste of capacity. If the PO has nothing that could be prioritised, then just make sure you leave the project as organized as possible (in case of an eventual reactivation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2018-12-25T19:38:09.497" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25485" CreationDate="2018-12-26T04:59:13.133" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my experience, these situations happen due to a lack of understanding from all sides. It is probably a good idea to recommend that the team (or only the PO/yourself) start by &lt;em&gt;listening&lt;/em&gt; very carefully to the stakeholder and ask as many questions as necessary until you are 100% sure you understand their reasoning and then you should prepare to explain why the budget was used in the way it was as well as coming to an agreement on the course of action to solve the issue &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2018-12-26T04:59:13.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25492" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27105" CreationDate="2018-12-27T09:27:59.467" Score="1" ViewCount="362" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the &lt;em&gt;requirement gathering method&lt;/em&gt; in projects called when a group tries to find a solution for a specific problem by gathering a list of ideas spontaneously contributed by its members?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34468" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2018-12-27T11:05:26.137" LastActivityDate="2019-08-29T15:02:25.670" Title="What is requirement gathering method in project management?" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25492" CreationDate="2018-12-27T11:10:47.147" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. that's called &lt;strong&gt;brainstorming&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Requirement gathering&lt;/strong&gt; is when the process of deciding which functionality and features will be included in the product and in which platform it will run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To do that you need to ask Marketing what the users want, the Engineers for what is possible to build Product Management for what is the minimum/maximum effect you're aiming to produce, and in what budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2018-12-27T11:10:47.147" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25495" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25499" CreationDate="2018-12-27T13:40:17.277" Score="1" ViewCount="62" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the middle of the activity sequencing process, project manager has identified that the execution activity cannot be started until the hardware required to do the testing is available (this hardware will be provided by the customer). What kind of a dependency that we have between these two activities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34468" LastActivityDate="2018-12-29T15:17:24.243" Title="What kind of a dependency that between these customer and project manager?" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;dependencies&gt;&lt;customer&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25496" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-12-28T03:02:03.790" Score="4" ViewCount="88" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BLUF&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need advice on how to capture cultural or behavioral risks in an organization (Cost, Duration, Scope) to a project in a fashion that can quantify and express those risks and mitigation options without burning political capital or alienating project members or stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My brain distills every problem into a heuristic equation that I can mentally express as an algebraic function, where inputs, peoples, risks, data, etc. are variables, organizational priorities are coefficients, and everything distills into a series of RCAs and data points that either produce a logical conclusion/decision which I can comfortably justify, or present a series of choices for my customer to make.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I consider that a strength.  I keep immaculate notes, can track many simultaneous activities across a project, and can seamlessly zoom in and out from strategic to operational to tactical roles; its part of why I've had a successful PM career.  I made great money, accolades for high profile billion dollar projects, and ultimately retired early because...at the end of the day, the purpose of work is to facilitate a livelihood, and if you are financially secure and don't need work to sustain a livelihood, you don't need to work.  I came out of retirement because fate conspired to present me the perfect opportunity - a literal, &quot;I would not have come out of retirement for ANYTHING ELSE&quot; moment.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also have weaknesses, which is why I need help now.  I report blunt data in what I believe is a non-biased manner.  That data may be painful.  It may expose, embarrass, or shame people, and I am poor at tact - to me, these are problems that need to be identified clearly before they can be addressed and corrected.  Throughout my career, my biggest professional development shortcoming has been that I take great care of my project staff and core teams, while demonstrating zero interest in anyone who is not contributing to my projects.  I focus on selfish goals, and screw the rest of everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't to say that I am not a people person; I am amicable and friendly, but also intense, focused, and driven, and I tend to forget that the person I am about to engage in project related conversation may need to switch mental gears to ramp into a conversation with me because I forget that not everyone is thinking about what I am thinking about, when I am thinking about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I left one of the Fortune 10 after so many years with peers with similar professional experiences, where project metrics are based on efficiency, forecasts, lead times, project cost accounting, and customer focus.  The company I joined is a comparatively small company with a wildly different set of values (patience, consensus, employee gratification, and...I'm not sure what else yet.  I'm ramping up to speed in this new organization that I came out of retirement to join.  I am gathering data and processing inputs to create variables with my figurative mouth to the firehouse and discovering that key members of my non-dedicated project team have the attitude, &quot;I am going to do the minimum required to get by and not get fired, and make it to retirement, then this won't be my problem.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This appears to be a pervasive attitude in my organization, where advancement - up to and including its C-suite staff - is based on tenure instead of merit, and the single most important qualification to be employed there is to be related to an existing employee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were I still in my prior role at my prior company, I could quantify this risk to a project's cost, duration, or scope thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problem Statement&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Employees who are not dedicated project assets are in irreplaceable project roles who express the attitude that they will do the minimum required to not get fired until they can retire constitute a risk to this project's ability to be completed on time, within budget, and to scope for lack of organizational support.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Risk Response:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Avoidance:  We can not do this project.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Transference:  We can pay a third party(s) to complete the work to transfer risk to project cost, time, or scope creep.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mitigation: We can remediate, discipline, counsel, or replace the personnel, either with substitute employees who may fill the same role, or with new employees.  Or we can dedicate resources to ensure project success.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Acceptance: We can accept this cultural status quo and the resultant delays, and the cost impact that these delays will have.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my prior role at a prior company, I had tools to use to guide behavior to facilitate peer leadership - carrots, sticks, peer pressure, a host of tools.  In my new company, our organization pretty expressly disallows rewarding employees (who are all paid exorbitantly well), punishing employees (because company culture forbids it), or treating anyone differently than anyone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot present this data as is to my company leadership, who are responsible for tolerating and perpetuating this behavior - the nepotism for example is surreal.  All four of these options as presented are non-viable.  My company's likely course is &quot;Acceptance&quot; because they are cash-flush, and have traditionally accepted these risks, although they remain undocumented dirty laundry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, I cannot professionally or ethically be in a situation where in a year, I am asking for foreseen but unforecasted million dollar change orders to pay a vendor more money because my company failed to fulfill a contractual obligation with our own delays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how to proceed, and would welcome any advice you all can give.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34478" LastActivityDate="2018-12-30T09:57:55.900" Title="I Need Help Quantifying Risk of Behavioral Variables" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;culture&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25496" CreationDate="2018-12-28T12:44:49.917" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't believe finding some way of expressing the risks you see in a quantitative manner would resonate with the company culture you joined.  Perhaps you should find an ally there who can rewrite your problem statement using the language that would be most tolerated there.  I would also argue, however, that the company risk you see in their current set of employees is exacerbated by the risk you bring to the company by way of fit.  It sounds like they have tolerated, or even nurtured, the first risk and they are now faced with you.  Seems like an easy choice in terms of which to mitigate.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seems like if you really want to be there, you should find a way to fit in there.  Plan your projects understanding the level of effort your non dedicated project staff are willing to provide.  Build enormous contingencies in your baseline.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am in a very similar situation as you describe.  My current firm's culture is much different than where I was raised.  I spend half my time scratching my head wondering how someone said what they just said.  My job is to figure out how to slowly evolve them but I quickly realized I needed, too, to evolve my thinking, my approach, to fit into this 50-year-old organization.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-12-28T12:44:49.917" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25481" CreationDate="2018-12-28T15:47:33.877" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is your responsibility as the scrum master. In every agile team I've been on, the scrum master has worked to help us keep our responses under the 15 minute time limit overall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, you don't necessarily need to address the time length directly, but if you do, make sure it comes across with a positive tone and it's likely to be better received. In other words, rather than saying &lt;em&gt;&quot;we're taking too long at standup&quot;&lt;/em&gt; say something like &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;I'd like to try a new format / a different approach to standups and see how everyone likes it.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; Notice that you need not directly address an individual; instead, challenge the team to keep the working agreement all together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile is intended to be tweaked and adjusted as you go, and the team as a whole should decide and agree on what those changes are. If the team as a whole agrees they want to spend less time on the scrum meeting, then it won't be you getting involved so much as just the Agile way of working, well, working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some ways you can indirectly address it that have worked well in my experience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have everyone literally stand up (people are more likely to ramble when comfortably seated)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a &quot;speaker item&quot; that is passed around to keep things more focused (only the person holding it can speak). It helps to make it a fun item.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask very specific questions to each team member (what did you work on yesterday? what are you doing today? are there any roadblocks in your way?) that don't lend themselves to long answers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try holding the standup at a different time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If worst comes to worst, have a timer that keeps people's responses under a certain time, beeping loudly when the time is up (I've never seen this need to be used). The amount of time would need configured for your individual team, and the idea would be to eventually not need it anymore once people have learned to make their updates more concise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would only intervene at the scrum if the team has agreed the responses should be shorter, and one person in particular continues to ignore this working agreement and go well beyond the allotted time. In this case, it would be appropriate to bring up the working agreement and ask them to work on shortening their responses. It would probably be better to discuss with them first in person, rather than in front of the whole team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it continues to happen, it may be necessary to stop them mid-ramble and say something like &quot;can we have the short version now and discuss the fine print later?&quot; Some people may not realize how much time they've taken unless it's pointed out to them as it's happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23450" LastEditorUserId="23450" LastEditDate="2018-12-28T15:59:55.273" LastActivityDate="2018-12-28T15:59:55.273" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25495" CreationDate="2018-12-28T22:19:48.253" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If Activity B cannot begin before Activity A is complete, it's a &lt;strong&gt;finish-start&lt;/strong&gt; dependency, in PM-speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, if both activities have to start at the same time (pretty rare), it's a start-start dependency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If both activities have to end at the same time, it's a finish-finish dependency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20700" LastEditorUserId="20700" LastEditDate="2018-12-29T15:17:24.243" LastActivityDate="2018-12-29T15:17:24.243" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25500" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25507" CreationDate="2018-12-29T17:34:01.283" Score="1" ViewCount="231" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a biology researcher and I have been part of many research projects over the years. I have also played a minor role in a firm as part of a project trying to find franchisees for the firm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have done 7 projects in all with one being a solo project and one other as a lead. However, in all the other projects, I have been part of a team with another lead researcher or a supervisor. I have done duties belonging to the 5 major process groups like participate in developing a timeline and defining research goals (IN), make changes as necessary on encountering quality issues with results found (EX), participate in writing the final report for publication (CL) etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will my PMP application be rejected since I have not lead many projects? Kindly advice.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33329" LastEditorUserId="33329" LastEditDate="2018-12-30T21:02:40.460" LastActivityDate="2018-12-31T13:51:35.093" Title="PMP application but did only one project as a lead and one solo project" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25501" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25506" CreationDate="2018-12-29T18:15:02.760" Score="2" ViewCount="185" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find conflicting information on how many hours I can claim a year as project management experience with some experts suggesting that I claim just 1500 hrs while others suggest claiming the full 2000 hours. I worked 8 hrs a day, 5 days a week, so I understand that I could claim 2000 hours but I have seen blogs with the suggestion that claiming more than 1500 can arouse suspicion. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33329" LastActivityDate="2018-12-31T13:54:37.610" Title="2000 hrs a year as project management experience in application" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25502" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-12-29T20:51:56.817" Score="4" ViewCount="745" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anybody knows how to export workload of single resources (columns) per task (rows) from MS Project? The result should look as follows: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;.............Resource 1.....Resource 2.....Resource 3 Task&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Task1...........2h....................4h....................2h&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Task2...........0h....................8h....................8h&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Task3...........4h....................2h....................0h&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Anyone who knows how produce such table from MS Project file? I would be very grateful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34488" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-01-16T22:41:56.810" LastActivityDate="2019-04-01T03:14:29.407" Title="Resource-Task table in MS Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;&lt;workload&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25501" CreationDate="2018-12-29T21:47:04.327" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Only the certifying body (e.g. PMI) can really answer this type of question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, 2000 hours distributed among project disciplines is very reasonable, and I doubt that will pique any suspicion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important things are (1) to state hours truthfully and (2) be able to back them up, if necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20700" LastActivityDate="2018-12-29T21:47:04.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25496" CreationDate="2018-12-30T09:57:55.900" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fascinating, but you're working on gut feelings, at least that's how your story reads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need is &lt;strong&gt;facts.&lt;/strong&gt; Risk management is not about &lt;em&gt;I think the contractor will screw us&lt;/em&gt;, but about concrete information. E.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The contractor does not have the necessary skills&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The contractor's estimate does not include inevitable changes that will cost $xxx.xx&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;These are the inevitable changes:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a, with a cost of $xxx and will cause a delay of n days&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;b, with a cost of $xxx and will cause a delay of n days&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could use historical data to buffer your claims, but unless you can create a &lt;strong&gt;fact sheet&lt;/strong&gt; instead of a &lt;em&gt;management horror story&lt;/em&gt;, you're not going to get anywhere and you're not doing your job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't matter who does the job, but rather, that it's done properly, on schedule and in budget. There's no need to fret about the fact that a project is being outsourced that could be done (better, in your opinion) in-house. That's not the important part, nor the part you can change, as you yourself said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So concentrate on getting the project set-up for success; management usually like that concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2018-12-30T09:57:55.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25501" CreationDate="2018-12-30T12:42:33.770" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Writing not from a PMI perspective but rather an auditor's perspective, claiming 2,000 hours in a year could signal suspicion.  Some most certainly log those kind of hours but I think it's on the tail end of the curve, where most log somewhere between 1,500 and 1,800 hours.  After you take into consideration holidays, sick, vacation, funeral, gaps between assignments, and other random unproductive time, getting to 2,000 hours takes consistent work above 50 hours a week.  Some do this kind of thing but it could be a signal that could trigger an audit.  Maybe not by itself but used with another signal or two, your application could get audited.  I don't work for PMI and have no idea what their criteria are but, as an auditor, the tail end of a curve on any metric typically triggers a deeper dive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: Your statement that your worked 8 hours a day, five days a week would likely cause you grief.  The premise behind that statement is that you had 52 consecutive, perfect work weeks without vacations, holidays, sick, jury, funeral, gaps in work, training, and whatever else.  An auditor would not likely find that statement credible and would trigger even a deeper investigation.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2018-12-31T13:54:37.610" LastActivityDate="2018-12-31T13:54:37.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25500" CreationDate="2018-12-31T13:51:35.093" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMI is the authority in determining whether an application is accepted or not.  You won't get a definitive answer here.  The only answer will come from PMI after you submitted your application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The criterion explicitly states, &quot;...leading and directing projects....&quot;  So based on your language, you have two projects that seem to fit that criterion to a degree.  So those two projects need to be no less than 3 and no more than 8 years of non overlapping, cumulative hours equaling 4,500 or more (assuming you have at least a four-year degree).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, this is relatively new language for that criterion, maybe last five or so years??.  It used to read, leading tasks or something similar.  That's because the PMP was not meant for only project managers but also project personnel.  So there's a lot of PMP holders who were accepted that did not meet the new criterion language.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-12-31T13:51:35.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25509" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2018-12-31T16:56:29.550" Score="2" ViewCount="58" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are in the process of implementing a project portfolio management method where none has existed previously.  We have done a good deal of research and developed a process that includes a scoring model.  Analyzing project proposals, working with clients, and scoring them will take a significant amount of time for each project.  For short term projects, the time and effort put into evaluating and scoring the project will be more than the time and effort required to execute the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In your experience, how have you decided what projects should not be&#xA;scored?   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which projects is it not worth scoring because they are so&#xA;short term (dare I say easy)?   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do you do with those projects? &#xA;How do you compare them to projects that are being scored when&#xA;determine which project should be done next?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you even consider these quick wins to be projects, or just tasks on a to-do list?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28298" LastActivityDate="2019-01-01T19:11:11.690" Title="What projects should get scored, and which should not?" Tags="&lt;portfolio-management&gt;&lt;evaluation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25509" CreationDate="2018-12-31T18:03:40.137" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the process of scoring and prioritizing projects, no matter its size and complexity, should generally be the same; however, based on size and complexity, the authority at different clip levels, the rigor and formality, and the controls would be different.  For example, a business case for a $30,000, 8-month project might take all of two slides while a business case for a $25.0M, 3-year project would require a substantial amount of effort and a complex work product.  The former project could get approved by a department head who has a budget of various projects already assigned to his/her department, while the latter project would require approval from an established leadership/governance board of some sort.  Both projects would still have a case, would still get scored, just with different rigor and approval points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you have a project budget for which you are responsible, and designed for &quot;quick win&quot; type projects, you still want to make sure you are getting the biggest return for every dollar you spend.  The only way to do that is a scoring method of some type, allowing you to analyze benefits, costs, penalties, and risks.  Your challenge is to make the scoring method as efficient as possible so as not to overwhelm the process.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2018-12-31T18:03:40.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25511" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-01-01T04:20:10.327" Score="6" ViewCount="355" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a product owner for a remote scrum team.  I am on the east coast of the US.  The scrum team is in India.  This is a 10.5 hour time difference.  I have been participating in their daily scrum at 6:30am EST for a few months now.  This is extremely exhausting.  I have suggested later in my day but half the team has poor home internet.  Meeting in their morning is too late at night for me and even less practical than the 6:30am EST meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any suggestions on how to make the time difference work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34499" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-01-02T14:10:56.307" LastActivityDate="2019-01-02T14:10:56.307" Title="Product Owner in different time zone from scrum team" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;remote-teams&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25511" CreationDate="2019-01-01T09:46:16.447" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;We used to record the Daily Scrum and send &lt;sup&gt;(*)&lt;/sup&gt; it to those who were in different time zones as well as those who missed it for whatever reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your input and feedback should be sent to one person, who will be responsible for being &lt;em&gt;your voice&lt;/em&gt;  at the meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure to have the camcorder mounted on a tripod for best results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To avoid the team from being distracted, the videoing was done by the Office Manager, who &lt;em&gt;wasn't paying attention, anyway&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(*) Don't email videos! Upload them somewhere and email the link.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2019-01-01T09:46:16.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4934" CreationDate="2019-01-01T09:57:32.607" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Congratulations! And pass it along to the team. Specifically, take the team out for a celebration; food and/or activity. if possible, consider giving them a bonus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; pretend the project is not over - that's a sure-fire way to demoralize the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless there's a good reason not to, inform the customer that you are ready to deliver - and make a big deal about the early delivery. After all, you want the team to repeat this feat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; start adding features, no matter how trivial. If it's tested and approved then ship it. Adding even the smallest feature could cause major delays; if it aint broke, don't fix it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; squeeze the next schedule on the assumption that you have a &lt;em&gt;Super Team&lt;/em&gt;. That's equivalent to punishing them for doing a great job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2019-01-01T09:57:32.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1458" CreationDate="2019-01-01T10:22:35.090" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first lesson I was taught by my mentor (trained by IBM) when I started my PjM career was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Project Managers don't &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt; anything; they only manage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As tempting as it is, the PM has to keep their eye on the ball all the time, and getting distracted by having their own work to do harms their efficiency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, sometimes it's simply more efficient for a &lt;em&gt;well-worn&lt;/em&gt; PM to take on some tasks; especially non-engineering tasks, so that the team can concentrate on what they do best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;By well-worn, I mean a PM who has experience and has been working with the team for a while, and doesn't have to &lt;em&gt;babysit&lt;/em&gt; the project every minute of the day, or continuously fight with PM software to make it behave. &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, that's only if these are short tasks, so that there's no risk of the PM getting involved in non-PM work for hours (or days) at end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g.: As PM I often dealt with the translators, sending them the originals and formatting the results so that they could be used by the project. I had some Excel macros set up and it would take my 15 minutes a few times a month. (Writing those macros distracted me for days on end; not good PM'ing)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you do hint to is a variation of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Peter Principle&lt;/a&gt; (an employee is promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to be promoted for various reasons, but we really want them to continue in the job they do best. Often, the solution is to give them the title but not the actual job. Or, in the case of Team Leader, make them the de jure Team Leader, but de facto have somebody &lt;em&gt;more efficient&lt;/em&gt; lead their team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2019-01-01T10:22:35.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25511" CreationDate="2019-01-01T11:38:13.100" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, one by-the-book answer is: &lt;strong&gt;don't&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Daily Scrum is a 15-minute time-boxed event &lt;em&gt;for the Development Team&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your attendance is not required.  And as long as you do your job in &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ensuring the Development Team understands items in the Product Backlog to the level needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There should be no problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the real world answer is probably more complex. My first question is, do you actually &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; Scrum, or do you manage a team in that stand-ups? Do you speak up without being asked a question? If so, you should check whether you really do Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from time-travel, there are really only three choices: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Find a time&lt;/em&gt;. We cannot do that for you. You have to do that with your team. There is no perfect solution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Find a person&lt;/em&gt; that is local to the team that can be a substitute for you. Might be a good idea anyway, since you might be out for a few days when you take days off or have to call in sick.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Move to India&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nobody said working globally was easy... most companies do it because it's cheap, but they never calculate the &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; cost. Right now, &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; are shouldering that cost by yourself, hidden in your discomfort to be up super early or super late. They have outsourced labor to India and &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; pay parts of the cost that was &quot;saved&quot;. If you don't like that, maybe a pay raise is in order, if you don't like it after that, maybe working with a company that employs local labor is better for your own health. The company bottom line is not your concern, your health and well-being is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastEditorUserId="7559" LastEditDate="2019-01-01T13:04:30.373" LastActivityDate="2019-01-01T13:04:30.373" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25509" CreationDate="2019-01-01T19:11:11.690" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For short term projects, the time and effort put into evaluating and scoring the project will be more than the time and effort required to execute the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a way, you’ve answered your own question. Your portfolio management process should define a threshold. This could be almost any set of business metrics such as time, money, or effort. Above the line, apply your full process. Below the line, roll up your small projects into bigger ones, or define a lighter-weight or bypass process so you don’t waste resources managing the small stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With any process, you need to define the level of granularity that you want to manage to. Adjust the granularity of your portfolio management until it’s only tracking things at the right level of granularity to support &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; organization’s decision-making processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-01-01T19:11:11.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25517" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25740" CreationDate="2019-01-02T04:04:25.827" Score="2" ViewCount="120" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you all know, project descriptions are limited to 550 characters in the PMI application. In two projects in my list, I decided to highlight tasks I did in the planning and the monitoring processes and did not put anything under the executing process. This is in order to mention things I never did previously and ran out of characters to explain what I did in the execution phase. Also, in previous projects, I have already demonstrated experience in executing a project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, while allotting hours to each phase, I am doubtful if I should put down zero hours in execution since I did do some tasks in the execution phase of the project though. I was thinking that I might put down a token 10 hours just not to leave it at zero. Kindly advice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33329" LastActivityDate="2019-03-07T13:01:55.360" Title="Putting zero hours under a process for a PMI application" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25518" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25531" CreationDate="2019-01-02T14:15:00.683" Score="41" ViewCount="11785" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why isn't the daily scrum considered to be micromanagement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under any other circumstances expecting to get a daily update from developers would be considered micromanagement. Maybe even pico-management. (did I just invent a term?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even a weekly update was considered borderline micromanagement by many.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What changed that the daily scrum is acceptable, both to the engineers and the Project Managers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(Future question: can this change (if it exists) be used for more frequent updates in a non-scrum setup?)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-01-02T14:24:45.007" LastActivityDate="2019-02-03T09:36:32.207" Title="Daily standup vs. Micro-management" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;&lt;micro-management&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25519" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2019-01-02T14:18:12.250" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As per &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromanagement&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In business management, micromanagement is a management style whereby a manager closely observes and/or controls the work of his/her subordinates or employees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Micromanagement is generally considered to have a negative connotation, mainly due to the fact that it shows a lack of freedom in the workplace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-16T22:43:02.000" LastActivityDate="2019-01-16T22:43:02.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25520" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2019-01-02T14:18:12.250" Score="0" Body="Questions about managers getting excessively involved with the details of projects." OwnerUserId="4384" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-01-02T14:54:12.160" LastActivityDate="2019-01-02T14:54:12.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25521" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25530" CreationDate="2019-01-02T14:33:20.407" Score="2" ViewCount="93" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see other people printing our project's Gantt chart with an up-to-the-date date on the bottom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do they to do that? Is it automatic or must one do something every time one prints the chart?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34511" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-01-03T14:15:19.460" LastActivityDate="2019-01-03T14:15:19.460" Title="How to add dynamic date footer to project print-out?" Tags="&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25518" CreationDate="2019-01-02T14:46:49.283" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The daily scrum is not to be considered micromanagement because it does not target any individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nobody feels threatened when everybody has to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore it is more about getting more tasks to do then about reporting about yesterdays progressing - so no feel of microm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34511" LastActivityDate="2019-01-02T14:46:49.283" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25518" CreationDate="2019-01-02T15:05:43.437" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Daily Scrum is not an update-to-management meeting!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-daily&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Daily Scrum is a 15-minute time-boxed event &lt;strong&gt;for the Development Team&lt;/strong&gt; [...] This optimizes team collaboration and performance [...] The Scrum Master ensures that the Development Team has the meeting, but the &lt;strong&gt;Development Team is responsible for conducting&lt;/strong&gt; the Daily Scrum. [...] The Daily Scrum is an internal meeting for the Development Team. &lt;strong&gt;If others are present, the Scrum Master ensures that they do not disrupt the meeting.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone outside the Team is asking for progress reports or otherwise attempting to micromanage during the Daily Scrum, the Scrum Master should request for him/her to stop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the developers are automatically reporting to someone outside the Team during the meeting (you can tell this if they always face someone during the meeting) even without being asked, then that someone should be &lt;em&gt;removed from the meeting&lt;/em&gt; to remove this temptation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the developers are automatically reporting to someone &lt;em&gt;inside&lt;/em&gt; the Team during the meeting (such as the Scrum Master), then steps should be taken by the Scrum Master to discourage this. For example, the Scrum Master could make certain to move about the room during the meeting, to prevent the person speaking from being able to see him/her (and, thus, force the person speaking to shift his/her attention to the group at large).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-01-02T22:19:22.633" LastActivityDate="2019-01-02T22:19:22.633" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25524" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25525" CreationDate="2019-01-02T18:59:16.237" Score="3" ViewCount="504" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example, if you're building a chat app, having epics be the stages in a project:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Phase 1 - Beta&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Phase 2 - Launch&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;vs. features&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Messaging&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sign-Up&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal of an epic is to capture a large body of work, so it would seem both would fall into that category, but are there are trade-offs I am not considering?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34516" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-01-03T14:11:39.163" LastActivityDate="2019-01-07T10:24:08.673" Title="Agile: Can Epics be time-based rather than feature-based?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;lean&gt;&lt;epics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25524" CreationDate="2019-01-02T19:37:52.200" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is some grey area here, but let's start with a clear answer to work from. Epics are a derived idea from User Stories - specifically an epic is just a big user story that you've broken down into smaller stories, so to address what you're asking it makes sense to walk through the breakdown of the user stories (and therefor, epics). I don't know your business goals, but let's say the overarching user story would be something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a shield agent, I would like to communicate with other agency operatives through a secure chat client so hydra doesn't intercept our messages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This clearly meets a user need and makes a pretty good user story except for the fact that it is way too big, so we need to break it down. Let's look at your second example first. You look like you have two stories like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a shield agent registered in the system, I would like to be able to&#xA;  send encrypted, anonymous messages to other agents so that we can&#xA;  safely communicate without being discovered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As Director Fury, I would like to be able to easily add new agents to&#xA;  the system so that they can communicate with other agents in the field&#xA;  without having to involve tech support. (you know shield had a&#xA;  bureaucratic tech support office)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first one clearly meets the need of agents in the field. The second one allows the system to be a bit more sustainable. I could follow this down further by breaking the first one into encrypted messages and anonymous messages (onion routing, for example). Again, each piece individually adds value, with each extra piece adding more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That brings us to your first example and why it is grey area. The important question is: is there a case where you could stop at beta and it would still add value? I don't want to get hung up on the term beta, but usually beta is reserved for very late testing in which you are knocking off the rough corners before launch. So beta is almost certainly just a late-project milestone, not an epic. However, let's pick something earlier, like a prototype.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen two types of prototypes: one where the team is trying to determine is an idea is viable and one where the team is just warming up to the project. In the first one, the goal is to engage with some subset of the market with a very minimal version of the feature or product that helps them understand the user need. By doing this, the team may choose to continue, drop the project, or pivot to the users need more effectively. This makes a great epic and you can usually identify the learning in it. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a shield intelligence operative, I want to experiment with sending&#xA;  some encrypted bait messages into the field to see if Hydra is able to&#xA;  intercept and decrypt them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, the value is clear and important. On the other hand, if it's just warming up to the project, you have something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a programmer, I want to build a POC for the chat message so I'm&#xA;  more comfortable building the full app.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, the value to the user is far less clear. At best I might be able to claim a small efficiency and cost benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this is not a clear and direct answer to your question, but I hope it provides some of the background around the tools of user stories and epics to allow you to make effective decisions on how to use them in your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-01-02T19:37:52.200" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25518" CreationDate="2019-01-02T21:19:19.777" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;When the &quot;stand-up&quot; is properly orchestrated, it's a free exchange of ideas about each other's work.  It's meant to enforce collaboration, not confrontation.  Unless your manager is actively developing with you (they usually are) they should not be in the meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Too many times have I worked on projects where people who worked across the isle from each other could have saved the other person 6 months' work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34522" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-01-02T21:28:53.820" LastActivityDate="2019-01-02T21:28:53.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25527" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-01-03T01:07:14.027" Score="3" ViewCount="129" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am fairly new to project so apologies up front...I have several tasks in my project plan which have a set duration; i.e. start and end dates/due dates, but the actual amount of time required for each task is not the entire duration. For example, one task has the duration of 1 day but only requires 1 hour of work. I have set each task to Fixed Duration, input the Work column to calculate hours but still have errors regarding resource overallocation. Logically, these resources are not overallocated because they have not even been assigned more than a few hours of work each day. Like I said I am new to project so I know I'm missing something just not sure what. Any insight or help would be much appreciated! Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34528" LastActivityDate="2019-09-18T10:44:42.920" Title="Duration vs Work...Resource Overallocation Errors" Tags="&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25528" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-01-03T04:35:10.200" Score="2" ViewCount="123" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to update my ms project plan with the following:&#xA;- replan al 0% and partly completed tasks from the new status date.&#xA;- Tasks can be split up&#xA;- Plan based on priority and available time for a resource&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MS project has now the tendency to split up tasks in small pieces of minutes and assign 5 pieces of different tasks on 1 day why it should be possible to plan them in sequence without splitting them up. I did not use predecessor field as is most of the time I don't mind which tasks comes first as long as they are done and when a task starts it should be finished before starting another task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why i get now is the following below. I prefer that tasks are not split only when there is no other option. All tasks have a no start sooner than condition but not a fixed end date or dependency, so it should be possible to just plan them in a sequence to avoid over scheduling. &#xA;Tasks needs to be split which have started last year but are not finished yet, these tasks should be split and take over to the next year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice would be appreciated&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3KzMB.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3KzMB.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34529" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-01-03T13:05:53.453" LastActivityDate="2019-01-03T13:05:53.453" Title="Ms project - Avoid task split up in minutes" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25518" CreationDate="2019-01-03T09:19:16.487" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to Sarov's excellent answer, there is also the purpose of the meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The daily standup is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; a management engagement. Neither the Scrum Master nor any other project or senior manager is doing any managing during the daily standup. I see this even stronger than Sarov does - not only is management not being reported to, there is also no flow from management towards the team. Nobody tells the team what to do or how to do it during the daily standup. &lt;em&gt;There is no management activity going on during the daily standup&lt;/em&gt; and that is why it isn't micro-management - because it isn't management at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't mean this culture as-written is strictly put into practice in your environment, so your confusion might very well result from the practice being different from the book. If management has taken over the daily standup and is using it to micro-manage the team, then indeed the daily standup has become micro-management. If you continue to run it in that way, then yes you are engaging in micro-management. But it shouldn't be called the daily standup anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26536" LastActivityDate="2019-01-03T09:19:16.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25521" CreationDate="2019-01-03T09:21:08.033" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/add-a-header-footer-or-legend-when-printing-c2164fee-9d34-4dbf-8b14-61b5d2825873&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;strong&gt;File&lt;/strong&gt; tab, click &lt;strong&gt;Print&lt;/strong&gt;, then click &lt;strong&gt;Page Setup&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the &lt;em&gt;Header, Footer, or Legend&lt;/em&gt; tab, click the Left, Center, or Right tab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now choose the date icon and the field will auto-fill and update when you print.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-01-03T09:21:08.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25518" CreationDate="2019-01-03T09:22:45.920" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you ask this question, or even if you have troubles answering it, you are likely a victim of &lt;a href=&quot;http://ronjeffries.com/articles/016-09ff/defense/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;dark scrum&lt;/a&gt;. A daily scrum meeting, done right, has no micro-management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Terms have power, and dark scrum is one of these potentially important terms that I would like to see spread. Scrum was never made for this kind of micro-management, and its mis-use can have dire consequences for developers, projects and scrum itself (as a concept). If you can, consider using the term &amp;quot;dark scrum&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;from the linked page(ronjeffries.com),&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT: I emphasize that below is a description of &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;dark scrum&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every day, the team is supposed to get together and organize the day’s work. This practice, the “Daily Scrum”, is imposed on the typical team. There might be one person in the room, the ScrumMaster, who has been told how it should be done. The programmers haven’t been told. Quite often, even the Product Owner hasn’t been told. Almost certainly other power holders haven’t been told.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the power holder already knows his job. His job is to stay on top of what everyone is doing, make sure they’re doing the right things, and redirect them if they’re not. How convenient that there’s a mandatory meeting where he can do that, every single day!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The result: instead of the team rallying around their joint mission and sorting out a good approach for the day, someone else drags information of of them, processes it in their head, and then tells everyone what to do. Since nothing ever goes quite as we expected yesterday morning, this improper activity often comes with a lot of blame-casting and tension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dark Scrum oppresses the team every day. Self-organization cannot emerge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34534" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-01-03T16:14:12.657" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25524" CreationDate="2019-01-03T12:57:48.450" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see from your tags that you are posing this as a Jira question so I will answer it from that perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Atlassian have various resources about epics - this is one of them - &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/agile/tutorials/epics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.atlassian.com/agile/tutorials/epics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm an advocate of Jira epics as &quot;large&quot; user stories and an advocate of epics being &quot;completable&quot;. If you are just looking to collect versions or phases, there are other tools within Jira that are just as suitable (e.g. labels and versions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that any time an epic is used too broadly, you end up with these enormous tickets that are impossible to manage. I also find that small related tasks get added on even though the priority is quite low, and these stop the epics from ever being completed. You then end up with a long list of incomplete epics clogging up the backlog board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep the epic at a size where it can be described as a single user story. Make sure the epic is completable. I tend to create an epic for the MVP, and additional epics for &quot;gold-plated&quot; iterations thereafter. When you have done the stories in the epic, mark the epic as done, clear it off the board, and celebrate!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29898" LastActivityDate="2019-01-03T12:57:48.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25113" CreationDate="2019-01-03T14:36:39.367" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While part of the project definition phase is &lt;strong&gt;competitive analysis&lt;/strong&gt;, it's not usually done by developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developers are supposed to be given a Technical Spec and they do the coding. You don't need much knowledge of the field if you have a comprehensive spec.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you may or may not be a successful developer, but measuring that by how well you &lt;em&gt;reverse engineer&lt;/em&gt; (your words) a product is not a measure of an engineer. It may be a measure of a Product Manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Especially since you're not reverse engineering. You are &quot;borrowing&quot; features from other products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Real reverse engineering means figuring out the (compiled) code of a product; now that's &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; engineering work for both hackers and those that work in anti-virus companies, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW: By simply creating copy-cat products and reinventing the wheel, you are not going to get any good products. You are trying to rewrite products that have been out there for many development cycles and are way ahead of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, no, most companies come up with an original idea, and don't base their entire engineering spec on &lt;em&gt;reverse engineering&lt;/em&gt; another product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2019-01-03T14:36:39.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25524" CreationDate="2019-01-03T15:29:35.837" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of your current examples are really valid epics. They are actually labels, and you should think of them as labels for release targets instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To use epics properly, you should treat them as large user stories. You should use epics as &lt;em&gt;inputs&lt;/em&gt; to release planning, but not as a substitute for building a release plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also worth noting that vague labels like &quot;beta&quot; and &quot;launch&quot; don't communicate much about the actual feature set that your milestones are intended to deliver. Feel free to use such labels when appropriate, but understand that they aren't a substitute for tracking features or estimating delivery dates, or for &lt;em&gt;communicating&lt;/em&gt; about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Labels Aren't User Stories or Epics&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Broadly speaking, an epic is a user story that is too large to fit within a single agile iteration. It is not really supposed to be a different classification; instead, it represents a different level of granularity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most common user story format is the Connextra format, which describes the who, what, and why of a feature:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a &amp;lt;who: the archetypal user or value consumer of the feature&amp;gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want &amp;lt;what: a synopsis of the feature&amp;gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that &amp;lt; why: context to frame the solution space&amp;gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you take the agile approach to epics and view them as multi-iteration user stories, neither of your label sets really qualify as either stories or epics. You should refactor them until they do. Plan on refining the epics into a set of more granular user stories when they come into scope for planning, such as within Scrum's Backlog Refinement or Sprint Planning meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within JIRA&amp;mdash;which is at heart a ticketing system, and often imposes non-agile thought processes on its workflow as a result&amp;mdash;the system encourages you to link user stories to epics. However, it still provides the fields to describe epics in user story format, and the ability to track stories independently of epics. Don't treat epics as issue labels; leverage JIRA's features to treat epics as multi-iteration features linked to more granular stories, and use &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiracloud/managing-versions-776636296.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;versions&lt;/a&gt; for release planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Release Planning and Epics Aren't the Same Things&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your question, you define releases such as &quot;beta&quot; and &quot;launch&quot; as possible labels. However, an epic and a release aren't the same things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As described above, an epic is a multi-iteration, semi-granular feature set. Epics, when estimated properly, can help with release planning but are not intrinsically milestones or releases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/16376/4271&quot;&gt;Agile release planning&lt;/a&gt; is done by estimating how many &lt;em&gt;iterations&lt;/em&gt; it will take to address the stories related to that feature, based on estimates of the stories' complexity and the team's average capacity. To the extent that a well-articulated epic can be estimated, you can certainly plan releases around the completion of certain epics, but thinking of them &lt;em&gt;as&lt;/em&gt; releases will lead you to the Dark Side of Agilish&amp;trade; very quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because JIRA is a ticketing system, it often leads users into thinking that epics can be estimated with granularity by simply rolling up linked story estimates or assigning due dates. You can certainly assign due dates to things in JIRA, but this isn't really the same thing at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People do all sorts of things in JIRA to deal with release planning. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiracloud/managing-versions-776636296.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;version field&lt;/a&gt; is usually the right place to put release &lt;em&gt;labels&lt;/em&gt;, and also the right way to apply &quot;Fix for Version&quot; on each JIRA issue targeted at a specific release. However, you should not rely on JIRA itself to define your release dates. You should use an iteration-based methodology to identify the right targets for your versions, and &lt;strong&gt;always remember that agile estimates forecasts rather than money-back guarantees.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Vague Labels Don't Communicate Effectively&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you define a label such as &quot;beta&quot; for your project, it's important to understand that this is shorthand for some presumed-viable feature set. However, simply calling something a beta doesn't really communicate the planned feature set very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're going to label your milestones and release targets, rather than taking the more agile approach of releasing each iteration, then you should make sure you're communicating effectively about the expectations for each label. When possible, give the label a useful name like &quot;messaging release&quot; or &quot;sign-up release&quot; that the team presumably understands even in shorthand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you must use non-deterministic labels to represent release targets in JIRA, consider encoding them into the JIRA versions (e.g. foo-v1.3.5-beta1) and component fields of your issues. Some people also use a primary JIRA issue with tasks and sub-tasks to track the planned &lt;em&gt;contents&lt;/em&gt; of a particular release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, while it can be useful to &lt;em&gt;talk&lt;/em&gt; about alphas, betas, and launch targets, the value of the discussion is in adjusting scope to fit date targets or moving dates to fit current estimates. There is almost no intrinsic value in such labels other than as shorthand to remind everyone of these discussions, so you need to ensure that you're not simply letting the label stand in for actual communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're using meaningful labels, and having discussions around what everyone can expect from the milestone a given label represents, then almost any label will do. However, many JIRA users mistakenly allow the ticketing system to &lt;em&gt;replace&lt;/em&gt; this type of collaborative communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tickets (and labels applied to tickets) are for tracking. They are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the most effective way for teams to communicate or collaborate. Effective agile implementations value direct communications more than artifacts such as ticketing, so &lt;strong&gt;be sure to use JIRA tickets to &lt;em&gt;support&lt;/em&gt; your agile processes rather than allowing it to define or drive them.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-01-03T15:29:35.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25536" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-01-04T03:28:29.330" Score="2" ViewCount="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the inventor perspective that has a patent-attorney-team developing a nonprovisional patent application, I am trying to put together a plan comprising a list of deliverables (to be produce by patent attorneys), each with an estimated date. Although I have project management experience, I do not have patent application experience (first attempt at a patent).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Deliverables&lt;/code&gt; are workproducts and artifacts produced by stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a good list of Non Provisional Patent Application artifacts / deliverables?   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can I gauge progress with a looming deadline (April 2019)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;uact=8&amp;amp;ved=2ahUKEwjwzJaq69HfAhXrpVkKHVTZCFoQFjAAegQICxAC&amp;amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.uspto.gov%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Finventors%2FChecklist_for_Filing_a_Nonprovisional_Utility.pdf&amp;amp;usg=AOvVaw1JpOcOT1hWs-11yKuOGgKh&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;USPTO Patent Application Checklist&lt;/a&gt;, however, I think I should be focused on the claims and how they are progressing between now and the final draft?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25338" LastActivityDate="2019-01-05T01:10:22.313" Title="Patent Application Development Artifacts" Tags="&lt;deliverables&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14048" CreationDate="2019-01-04T16:45:15.210" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been in sort of a similar situation before we went full Scrum with actual planning with the teams and Product Owners to define the sprint backlog. What we were doing to mitigate the constant flow of requests to the development team (20 devs, 7 QA) was the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;had a good idea of what the dev team capacity is, depending on historical data, vacation days, etc (it was an Excel sheet, not proud to say but did the job).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PMs, Engineering and Customer Support all prepared a list of highest priority tickets for them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the dev team estimated all the tickets in that list&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;depending on capacity, priority and an allocated time of 60% for features, 20% for tech tasks, incl refactoring, 10% bugs from CS and 10% was for admin stuff.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprints were being planned based on the priority and ratio above.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a very crude way (and a bit slow) again not including dev negotiations with PMs on slimming down features when possible, and all that beautiful Scrum stuff, but it might help in-between. All that we tried to do beforehand with the PMs and the team leads only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If possible, I'd really advise going full Scrum, if you have a good PO candidate and just starting from scratch. It takes a while to get the hand of the scrum events and proper planning, but it does really pay off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32069" LastActivityDate="2019-01-04T16:45:15.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24566" CreationDate="2019-01-04T19:11:50.590" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What I like about the “Delivery Manager” title is that there’s little question about the purpose – getting stuff delivered.  The role is not about discovery, and it’s not about coaching on process; it’s all about getting stuff pushed live.&#xA;  ( &lt;a href=&quot;https://svpg.com/the-delivery-manager-role/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://svpg.com/the-delivery-manager-role/&lt;/a&gt; )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading the above quote tells me that companies who have no idea what it means to be agile and who just jump on the agile band wagon because they like the idea of shorter delivery cycles but without any of the values, principles, behaviours, and practices. Just deliver what you promised right on the deadline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25949" LastActivityDate="2019-01-04T19:11:50.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25536" CreationDate="2019-01-05T01:10:22.313" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Always Plan Based on &lt;em&gt;Your&lt;/em&gt; Project's Available Resources&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am trying to put together a plan comprising a list of deliverables (to be produce by patent attorneys), each with an estimated date. Although I have project management experience, I do not have patent application experience (first attempt at a patent).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; have experience with patents, you can't really estimate how long something will take someone else to do. The only tried-and-true way to estimate such work is to ask the task-performer to estimate how long it is likely to take &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt; to complete, given their particular skills, experience, and resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a non-patent example, if you ask me how long a particular task would take &lt;em&gt;me&lt;/em&gt; to complete in Ruby, I might tell you a couple of hours. However, my estimate of how long it would take me might be very different from how long it would take &lt;em&gt;you.&lt;/em&gt; Even if you're a Ruby programmer and familiar with the problem domain, you might still be more or less experienced than me, have more or fewer things on your calendar that are competing for your time, or have a better or worse toolchain for building a particular widget. My estimate is therefore unlikely to be valid when used to estimate how much work (or time) something would take not-me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also tempting to think that you can just track against the average time that similar tasks on similar projects have taken other people, but then you're still left with the fact that an average is not the &lt;em&gt;range&lt;/em&gt; that comprises it. You might see that the average is &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; months, but a closer look will show you that similar projects are often done between &lt;em&gt;W..Y&lt;/em&gt;, and the delta may be quite large. So, other people's numbers may help you guesstimate, but they aren't necessarily very useful as a baseline for &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; current project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best thing to do in such situations is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define your ideal budget.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get the task performers to estimate the time and complexity of the work if &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; do it. &lt;strong&gt;NB: This is the most important step for getting realistic estimates for the current project.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Calculate the range of costs (including optimistic and pessimistic estimates) from the task estimates provided to you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take another look at your budget, and decide whether you need to adjust scope, time, budget, or other factors to get to at least an 80% confidence interval in your estimates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contract with your vendors on something other than a time-and-materials basis if you are trying to &quot;toss work over the wall&quot; to them, or trying to make them accountable for estimates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you can't get the contractual guarantees you want (and it probably won't help you as much as you think even if you do), consider a more-collaborative approach where you're doing things in short, easy-to-estimate pieces that allow you to  replan and reallocate as you go along. &lt;em&gt;NB: This is the essence of agile frameworks like Scrum.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By ensuring that you plan based on &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; available budget, and on the resources available to &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt;, you'll end up with a more accurate estimate than if you tried to leverage someone else's timelines or budget. More importantly, by having the task performers estimate their own work, you'll get a more accurate sense of how likely it is that you'll reach your budget or schedule targets than if you impose those numbers by fiat. You may be unhappy with those numbers, or pleasantly surprised that something will be cheaper or faster than you originally supposed, but in either case you will be tracking against a likelier outcome than someone else's average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-01-05T01:10:22.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24408" CreationDate="2019-01-05T09:15:39.017" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use a constraint on an assigned resource. Example, the meeting can only happen in that room, and the room is only available from 1-2 on Tuesday. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27034" LastActivityDate="2019-01-05T09:15:39.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25402" CreationDate="2019-01-05T17:24:12.613" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lately the cases that I see are usually the other way around - building web (and mobile web) to catch up to the mobile apps :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to answer your question - it is possible to have a scrum team of mobile + web + backend working within a certain domain with the PO responsible for that domain - be it identity management, payments, online chat, whatever. This would mean that tackling the mobile platform challenges across the scrum teams (code guidelines, builds, releases) need to be agreed upon beforehand. It's also a good idea for the mobile guys to have iOS/Android technical check-in meetings every now and again. Not part of Scrum events really, but much better than having wild arguments on Slack every day :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32069" LastActivityDate="2019-01-05T17:24:12.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25399" CreationDate="2019-01-05T17:39:53.787" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Things I've done in the past:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Talk to people separately, if I see their motivation is down - try to find out what worries them, what would make them happy, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Go the &quot;official&quot; route: get them to talk in the retrospective or 1 on 1 meetings (as a line manager).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Haul a bunch of people to Oliver's (the next door pub) and get them some beers - usually helps (I'm kind of joking, but kind of not ;)) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;organize any number of small scale events that don't need much budget or hassle: table tennis tournament, pot-luck lunches, board game Fridays, etc. People pick that up rather quickly and it creates some good energy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general I would encourage people to work on personal development in their &quot;downtime&quot; - take a course on Udemy/Coursera, pick up creative writing or whatever gets their juices flowing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32069" LastActivityDate="2019-01-05T17:39:53.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25544" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-01-07T01:57:57.123" Score="3" ViewCount="58" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for project management entry level certification. I searched online and I found CAPM and PRINCE 2. I am bit confused which one should I go for.  Which one is worth doing?? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34600" LastActivityDate="2019-01-07T10:23:32.027" Title="Beginner certification to enter into project management" Tags="&lt;prince2&gt;&lt;capm&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25408" CreationDate="2019-01-07T09:12:51.097" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should not be selecting start and end dates. Select the start date and duration, let project calculate the end date.&#xA;Even better, don't select the start date and use predecessors to drive the date, just noting the duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8722" LastActivityDate="2019-01-07T09:12:51.097" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25395" CreationDate="2019-01-07T09:15:16.740" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use &quot;resource usage&quot; view and change the timescale to months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can group by &quot;resource type&quot; or &quot;resource type&quot; in the view ribbon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8722" LastActivityDate="2019-01-07T09:15:16.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25360" CreationDate="2019-01-07T09:24:02.130" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would try and consider a wider organisational policy and set up user access accordingly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. consider the persons that should be able to edit projects (e.g. project manager, all project support, PMO) and the persons that should be able to view projects (e.g. all PM's, relevant stakeholders, all programme managers). Set up groups and assign these groups to the projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Broadly, I would recommend that this is done at the DMS level / directory permissions rather than file by file. Document passwords are also a real pain to manage. I only use those for confidential docs .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8722" LastActivityDate="2019-01-07T09:24:02.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25544" CreationDate="2019-01-07T09:34:33.627" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are 2 articles that describe the differences so that you can to make sensible choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.girlsguidetopm.com/should-i-take-capm-or-prince2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Should I take CAPM or PRINCE2?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.whizlabs.com/blog/pmp-capm-prince2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PMP vs CAPM vs PRINCE2 - Which One's Right for you?&lt;/a&gt; and you can see that you have a third choice also of PMP.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think a summary would be the quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The main difference between CAPM/PMP and PRINCE2 Foundation/Practitioner is project experience. Having said that, it’s not compulsory to have project management experience under your belt for CAPM, as long as you can demonstrate 23 hours of formal project training instead. There are no pre-requisites for applying for the PRINCE2 exams (although it will be certainly easier to understand the concepts if you have spent at least some time working on projects).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because PMI requires pre-requisites either in the form of training or work experience and PRINCE2 doesn’t, I don’t think they are seen as equivalent (or competing, for that matter).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there is  the issue of cost - both are a similar price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, CAPM certification expires after 5 years and you have to do it again, but PRINCE2 is forever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34511" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-07T10:23:32.027" LastActivityDate="2019-01-07T10:23:32.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25524" CreationDate="2019-01-07T10:24:08.673" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes an No&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Yes — an answer to the headline question&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile is about keeping work in progress low, and doing retrospectives, and …&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Timeboxing if the boxes are small enough, will help you know when to do retrospectives. You will have to employ other practices to keep work in progress low. (Work in progress is, any work that has been started, but is not of a quality that can be delivered to a customer. )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;No — an answer to the detail in the body of the question.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your labels do not indicate agile steps: Beta and Launch, smell of waterfall. Agile is not create, then test, then release. Agile is repeat {add feature (so it is release ready)}. At any point marketing should be able to say, “that is enough features, let us release it.” The product should be in a state to release in minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“The goal of an epic is to capture a large body of work,…”. True but this does not mean that you then dismiss the goal of agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3424" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-01-07T10:24:08.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3414" CreationDate="2019-01-07T10:43:12.800" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only time i have seen this used correctly is when an event - that has a specific date - drives completion of previous preparation tasks.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. an exam preparation work package, two tasks&lt;br&gt;&#xA;1 - exam study&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2 - sit exam  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;sit exam&quot; is a hard coded date - e.g. 1st december. when this task starts, it triggers the end of exam study. if the date of the exam moves, this changes the dates of exam study.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(IN MS Project at least) If the whole project is driven off an end date, then you will be better to &quot;schedule from&quot; &quot;Finish Date&quot; in project information and use FS dependencies.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;OR&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If you just want to set up a part of a schedule to run from a milestone date, mark the relevant predecessors &quot;as late as possible&quot; in task information &gt; advanced and again use FS dependencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8722" LastEditorUserId="8722" LastEditDate="2019-01-14T15:23:36.173" LastActivityDate="2019-01-14T15:23:36.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25551" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-01-07T13:16:47.947" Score="1" ViewCount="380" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our kanban board has a familiar form: Backlog &gt; analysis &gt; QA/Dev Review &gt; Ready to go &gt; in Dev ... etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A topic of discussion found within the team (and across the company) is when should stories be pulled into the analysis column. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The clock on our cycle time starts when we pull into the analysis column and it is the first column represented on our physical board. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's common that much of the analysis work is done by the product team in the backlog. Whether gathering requirements or researching in order to prioritise. By the time the story is written and gets to the board, there is often little or no analysis left to be done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is the view that all work should be captured on the board, and that the analysis time is the reality of the situation, but the reality is also that a product manager may be working on any number of stories in various states of readiness. For example you might have a workshop for something which may or may not turn into a story a month later. Stories may also be deemed lower priority than others and go into the backlog once the full analysis has been done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently we're debating whether or not the analysis column has value and perhaps it should be stripped out. There would still be dev &amp;amp; QA review. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When is it best to pull a card into the analysis column and what work is typically done there? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34606" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-01-09T09:54:42.463" LastActivityDate="2019-01-09T09:54:42.463" Title="In Kanban, when do you pull a card into your PM analysis column?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;&lt;kanban-board&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25551" CreationDate="2019-01-07T15:12:53.277" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my perspective: you can put whatever columns make sense for you and the way you work. But I've also found that keeping it simple is much better - starting with fewer columns and building up when really, really necessary. The simplest being:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To Do&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Progress&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ready To Test&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Done &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From that point on, you can decide whether you need extra things like, Ready for Development (aka Refined), Ready to Merge (if merging the code requires extra checks), etc. If you feel something is not needed and just takes the extra admin effort to move all tickets in that column, I think you should remove it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32069" LastActivityDate="2019-01-07T15:12:53.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25551" CreationDate="2019-01-07T15:27:51.110" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To my view, Backlog and analysis are redundant. However! You &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; want to add a different, 'Ready' or 'Analyzed' column. If you remove the analysis column, then it might be tough to tell which stories are ready:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conceive of work. Put into Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Analyze work... Keep it in the Backlog. May or may not cause confusion - see below.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start review. Move it into 'Dev/QA Review'.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your Backlog is ordered (with the topmost stories being fully analyzed), then it's fine. That's what my Team did for Scrum. Once we lost the Product Owner ordering the Backlog and moved to Kanban, though, we added a 'Ready' column:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conceive of work. Put into Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Analyze work... Move it to 'Ready for Review'.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start review. Move it into 'Dev/QA Review'.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2019-01-07T15:27:51.110" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25554" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25562" CreationDate="2019-01-07T15:42:55.777" Score="5" ViewCount="604" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/212867/259428&quot;&gt;In this accepted answer&lt;/a&gt; (from Software Engineering StackExchange) to a question targeting my blocker, one can read: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(...) think of user stories as a subset of requirements (...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's quite tempting to take this and move on...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what exactly is requirement, user-story and how they relate to each other?&#xA;(Please consider adding some examples so that it's easier to create a mental model)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27189" LastActivityDate="2019-01-07T20:15:06.297" Title="Requirements vs User stories" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;definition&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25551" CreationDate="2019-01-07T15:51:32.473" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In fact, it is critical to understand - and improve - whatever is done during the “analysis” that is done while items are still sitting in the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you said, the product management folks are working on a number of things and their work load/ workflow needs to be understood as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not just important to cover your dev team activity in the Kanban board. Ensuring that sufficient work has been done on new features/ user stories, that there’s enough detail from functional, non-functional, UI and UX aspects, etc. is critical as well. Every time you pull new work into your Dev team’s Kanban board, ensuring you are pulling the right things which reflect the business priorities of your customer or your company is important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The subject of Upstream or Customer Kanban covers all of this. You could do 2 things - either expand the Backlog column into sub-columns or create a new “upstream” Kanban board (or an Upstream lane in the same board)  which reflects the process of identification, detailing, discussion, analysis, functional specification, UI/ UX design, prioritization and scheduling work that happens - or needs to happen - before selecting something for development. You can call it the Product Owner/ Management board or lane.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your current board, which is clearly the Dev board, you can then drop the Backlog and Analysis columns and instead simply have a Ready column where new items prioritized in the PM board show up at whatever cadence you follow for replishing your Dev team/ board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides helping you identifying the process that is already happening in order to produce work for your Dev team, this Upstream board helps you better collaborate with your stakeholders and help them prioritize the right things at the right time. That is crucial for your business overall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2019-01-07T15:51:32.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25551" CreationDate="2019-01-07T17:39:25.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your specific case, you should probably begin thinking of analysis as a queue with work-in-progress (WIP) limits and finite capacity. Analyzing faster than work can be pulled into the next step in the process is generally an agile anti-pattern, where just-in-time (JIT) planning and embracing change are core principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you decide you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; queue in a way that exceeds the capacity of the rest of your process, then you should either define a separate Kanban for that workflow, or break your current workflow into smaller steps that can be visualized and pulled from within your current board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Pull Work Only When It's Ready to be Acted Upon&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban is a pull-queued system. This means that work must:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be pulled into a column by the person doing the work. It is never &lt;em&gt;pushed&lt;/em&gt; there be anyone or anything else in your process. &lt;strong&gt;NB: Even a &quot;Done&quot; column is conceptually a pull, where someone is taking an action to mark work complete.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The pull should only happen when there is available capacity, e.g. both the column &lt;em&gt;and the board&lt;/em&gt; are within their defined work-in-progress (WIP) limits.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in your example, the analyst (or whoever will be doing the analysis) pulls work from Backlog -&gt; Analysis whenever that person has capacity and is ready to queue or perform the work. I recommend only pulling the task when it's ready to be acted upon so that it's actually work &lt;em&gt;in progress&lt;/em&gt;, rather than simply queued up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; allow for the notion of queues, but the queueing column should never exceed WIP limits. If you find the team pulling (or worse, pushing) work into a column that is routinely blocking, you'll need to review your process and your WIP limits to determine how to optimize your flow better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Queueing the Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's certainly possible to design a Kanban process that has multiple flows, with multiple input and output queues, but this isn't really your use case. Instead, you should acknowledge that you can only analyze a certain amount of work at a time, and define your WIP limits and processes around that fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, visualization is important, too. If you really &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to queue work that needs to be analyzed (e.g. queued separately from the backlog), you might consider sub-columns. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;BACKLOG |                      ANALYSIS                        | QA/DEV REVIEW&#xA;  ...   |  Queued for Analysis | Analyzing | Analysis Complete |      ...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, you can visualize how much work is queued, how much work is actively in progress, and what's available for the QA and Development teams to pull into their columns. Just keep in mind that it's still conceptually a pull queue: the analysts pull the work into the queue, and through their own task columns; the developers pull only from &quot;Analysis Complete&quot; when they have capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you go this route, you will also need to ensure that the WIP limits for &quot;Analysis&quot; as a whole, and each sub-column within it, have sensible individual and collective limits. Within a single Kanban process, there's very little point in pulling 10,000 items into &quot;Queued for Analysis&quot; if you're trying to measure cycle time from Backlog -&gt; Release, or having more work in &quot;Analysis Complete&quot; than can reasonably be expected to be done within your cycle time or iteration. That's why the WIP limit for the whole board should be adhered to, in addition to any column-level limits: Kanban requires optimization for flow by reducing queue length and batch size, so you violate those principles at your own risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-01-07T17:39:25.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25557" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25558" CreationDate="2019-01-07T17:42:22.570" Score="5" ViewCount="1279" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have been asked to demo almost all bugs in our sprint demo, except the bugs which were raised for the stories of the sprint. Some teams only demo critical bug fixes, probably to reassure others that the bug has been fixed properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any benefit in demoing bugs? I don't see any and I think it wastes our time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34610" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-01-08T14:13:05.137" LastActivityDate="2019-01-11T23:06:41.153" Title="Should we demo bug fixes in sprint demos?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25557" CreationDate="2019-01-07T18:13:32.747" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It reassures your stakeholders that the bug was, in fact, fixed. It might help them understand what was wrong in the first place, and therefore why it was prioritized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases it could prompt a broader conversation about desired behavior, edge cases, possible new functionality, etc. Remember, the goal of the demo/review is to use the recently completed increment as a springboard for productive conversations about the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're concerned about it being a waste of time, I might ask the PO or other key stakeholders to clarify what they want to get out of the demo. I would not frame it as resistance to this request, but rather, &quot;so I can allocate time to make sure your needs are met.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck (and welcome!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2019-01-07T18:13:32.747" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25557" CreationDate="2019-01-07T18:19:29.110" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-review&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; is a good place to turn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint Review (timeboxed to 4 hours for monthly Sprints) is split into two parts. The first part is for inspection contains a demo, and its essence is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the Sprint Review, the Scrum Team and stakeholders collaborate about what was done in the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is to enable the second phase, in which:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;attendees collaborate on the next things that could be done to optimize value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, your Question can be boiled down to: &quot;Is demoing bugs useful in order to assist in determining the next things that could be done to optimize value?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...Which is a question which should be answered collaboratively between your developers and the people to whom you are demoing. If the answer is 'yes', it must contain justification. If the answer is 'no', then there's your answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Demo bugs if and only if doing so helps you provide value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-01-07T18:28:27.637" LastActivityDate="2019-01-07T18:28:27.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25551" CreationDate="2019-01-07T18:49:12.520" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just before you start analysis on it. But this isn't a question about Kanban itself, it is a question about the process you are applying Kanban to, so you are much better able to answer the question than us. (The question you are really asking is how much Analysis should we do before the lead time timer starts / we commit to starting work i.e. Backlog Refinement, vs how much should be done after this commitment point i.e. Analysis proper- I always prefer Backlog Refinement to be a mechanical activity focused on splitting and estimating the what to build, and Analysis proper (creative work focused on how to build) after this commitment point). You will probably get better true end-to-end lead time statistics by preferring to do less analysis in the backlog, and more after the commitment point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="763" LastActivityDate="2019-01-07T18:49:12.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25554" CreationDate="2019-01-07T19:13:04.677" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's best to think as user stories as a sub-class of requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IEEE and IIBA both use a three-part definition for what a requirement is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;a condition or capability needed by a user to solve a problem or achieve an objective&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;a condition or capability that must be met or possessed by a system or system component to satisfy a contract, standard,specification, or&#xA;  other formally imposed document&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;a documented representation of a condition or capability as in (1) or (2)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User stories are #3 with regards to #1 or #2 -- they're (very light) documentation of a condition or capability the product needs to have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the difference between user stories and (e.g.) functional requirements? A few would include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User stories tend to be at a slightly higher level than functional requirements (more in line with what Karl Wiegers called &quot;user requirements&quot;). Functional requirements are typically more similar to the user story's acceptance criteria.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The typical user story and functional formats are quite different (&quot;As a... I want... So I...&quot; vs. &quot;The system will [...]&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User stories tend to be used in agile environments, and functional reqs tend to be used in non-agile projects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth pointing out that there are dozens of other types of requirements (e.g. business, user, non-functional, data, interaction), and they're distinct from user stories for the same or similar reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20700" LastActivityDate="2019-01-07T19:13:04.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25554" CreationDate="2019-01-07T20:15:06.297" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;While user stories can absolutely be considered a type of requirement, there are distinct differences between user stories and other requirements that I don't see here or in the accepted answer on the Software Engineering site (though it is touched on in other answers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most important amongst those differences is the way in which they encourage the team and user to engage. Remember that in XP, where User Stories originate, that there is no product owner. The customer writes user stories. Because of this, the User Story is an exercise in understanding the needs of the customer. Some of the most effective user stories are completely lacking in any requirements and only discuss the need and let the team come up with a solution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A common example I use to illustrate this difference is a hypothetical story from a tax filing application. This would be a bad user story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a tax payer, I want to fill out my tax form so that I can file my&#xA;  taxes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &quot;user story&quot; matches the commonly accepted form for a user story and would be relatively easy for a team to understand and implement, so why is it a poor user story? The problem is it fails at the fundamental purpose of a user story - understanding the customer. No one &lt;em&gt;wants&lt;/em&gt; to fill out a tax form.  A more appropriate user story would probably look something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a tax payer, I want my taxes filed accurately so that I get my&#xA;  refund back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice, no implementation details at all. Just a need for the team to solve. Now, these are hypothetical, but if you've used TurboTax, you probably know that not only do they dominate their market, but they also never ask you to fill out a tax form, so it's not far off of reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-01-07T20:15:06.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25557" CreationDate="2019-01-07T22:18:44.113" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am finding it hard to see what value could it bring to have that many people reviewing this on a meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps you can ask your stakeholders to check bugs offline?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other two good questions for them are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much time is being invested in this?&#xA;How many times have they found &quot;issues&quot; in the bugs? &amp;lt;-- be aware that if this happens often, then you seem to lack proper QA and UAT in your bug fix process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastEditorUserId="32111" LastEditDate="2019-01-07T22:58:53.627" LastActivityDate="2019-01-07T22:58:53.627" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25565" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-01-08T08:24:20.223" Score="3" ViewCount="229" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently installed a few apps (like BigPicture) which help you see the order of work of each programmer. The problem is that when I link some tasks with estimates less than one work day, the Gantt chart presents this task as a job that estimates one day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I get the JIRA Gantt chart to show tasks of less than 8 hours?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34618" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-01-17T14:01:45.000" LastActivityDate="2019-01-17T17:32:04.213" Title="How can I show short tasks (less than 8 hours) in a JIRA Gantt chart?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25567" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-01-08T15:09:20.763" Score="4" ViewCount="266" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the issues my organisation has is where change requests are requested during a sprint cycle in a particular high volume worksteam. The development team are often forced to accept these change requests, where any resistance results in an escalation, which results with somebody high up in the business just telling the dev team to do it. Thus, team is constantly over-committing every sprint cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have highlighted this as an issue to Senior management, showing the impact the additional work is having on morale and quality, but nothing seems to be changing at org level, and they seem to think the problem is at team level. Hence, keep trying to address the issue by adding and removing Scrum Masters; where they all are having the same problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to address this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-01-08T17:36:53.363" LastActivityDate="2019-01-10T21:42:23.607" Title="How to deal with non negotiable change" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25557" CreationDate="2019-01-08T15:32:09.380" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have been asked to demo almost all bugs in our sprint demo, except the bugs which were raised for the stories of the sprint...Is there any benefit in demoing bugs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefit, if any, comes from whether or not the bugs were part of the increment of work planned by the team. If fixing certain bugs was a goal for the current Sprint, then covering it in the Sprint Review is appropriate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's likely that the stakeholders want to see that their objectives are being addressed, which is best demonstrated through showing working features. It's unlikely that they're asking for a tour of the buggy code and a demonstration of how the team fixed and refactored the code. Demonstrating a bug fix is often just another feature demo of the sort that one &lt;em&gt;ought&lt;/em&gt; to routinely present in a Sprint Review anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If in doubt about the intent, &lt;em&gt;ask&lt;/em&gt; the Product Owner and Sprint Review attendees. Making assumptions or asking strangers on the Internet is not a substitute for active collaboration with stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Demonstrating Work&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Guide defines the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-review&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sprint Review&lt;/a&gt; as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Sprint Review is held at the end of the Sprint to inspect the Increment and adapt the Product Backlog if needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, if your Sprint Goal was &quot;Fix the Embiggening Widget,&quot; then showing that the broken widget is now working is certainly an appropriate thing to do within the Sprint Review. In most cases, this involves demonstrating a delivered feature and some working functionality of the product. The fact that the feature was previously broken and therefore classified as a bug is largely irrelevant from a Scrum framework perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Potential Framework Implementation Smells&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Demonstrating non-incidental work items (e.g. planned stories) that were classified as bugs is probably a reasonable thing to do from a framework perspective. However, there may certainly be some whiffy smells that indicate that this is really an X/Y problem with your Scrum process. Some examples include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bugs being considered non-value work, separate from the delivered increment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bugs being classified, prioritized, or planned outside of the Product Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The demonstrations being used as a way to &quot;hold the team accountable&quot; for bugs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Focusing on the details of the bugs, rather than on the now-working features.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Measuring team performance by bug count, rather than by working features (which are implicitly non-buggy) or reliability of their forecasts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of these smells indicate a process problem, and those problems are often political. It's the Scrum Master's job to address such problems with the team and with the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;When Bugs &lt;em&gt;Are&lt;/em&gt; the Problem&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one major caveat to what I've written above is when there's a &lt;em&gt;specific reason&lt;/em&gt; the team is being asked to demonstrate bugs. If the team is routinely releasing bug-filled code, it points up process problems within the team and lead to broken trust with stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A core goal of Scrum is &lt;em&gt;predictable&lt;/em&gt; delivery. Not fast delivery, and not money-back-guaranteed bug-free code; just a predictable delivery cadence with a Definition of Done that leads to confidence and trust within the organization about what can &lt;em&gt;consistently&lt;/em&gt; be delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team is routinely delivering a large volume of bug-riddled code that doesn't deliver working functionality, then this should be addressed within the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-retro&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sprint Retrospective&lt;/a&gt; and an updated Definition of Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A real bug isn't just a product feature that should be added or changed. A bug is something that &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; work but doesn't, and its existence highlights a missing test or process control that needs to be implemented. Some questions to ask yourself include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should Be &quot;Yes&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does your team use continuous integration, unit testing, behavior-driven testing, test-driven design, and other modern practices to ensure code quality?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does your Definition of Done do enough to ensure consistent product quality?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are all aspects of your Definition of Done included when planning and estimating a user story in Sprint Planning?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should Be &quot;No&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are testing, refactoring, and integration treated as separate from development work?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the team routinely &quot;delivering&quot; stories that don't meet the Definition of Done?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't answer all the questions above correctly, then the problem isn't that you're being asked to &quot;demonstrate bugs&quot; in your Sprint Review. The real problem is more systemic than that, and needs to be promptly addressed in order to restore stakeholder confidence in the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-01-08T15:32:09.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25567" CreationDate="2019-01-08T16:10:41.850" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have both a political problem and a process problem. There is no silver bullet, and you can't fix these problems solely within the team. Instead, you must rely on the agile concepts of transparency and visibility to ensure that the &lt;em&gt;costs&lt;/em&gt; associated with bypassing the process are charged to the project budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Make Costs Visible&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In agile frameworks, change is never non-negotiable. If you are faced with &quot;non-negotiable&quot; requirements that make the goal or plan for the current iteration obsolete, then &lt;strong&gt;the team must scrap the plan.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is true regardless of the agile framework you're using. In Scrum, the Product Owner cancels the Sprint and the Scrum Team returns to Sprint Planning. In Kanban, work is pulled off the board to meet work-in-progress (WIP) limits, and queued in the appropriate bucket until capacity is once again available. Your specific framework may vary in the way it implements this freeing up of capacity, but it's an essential component of any viable agile (and even non-agile) process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cost of replanning and re-queuing is made visible through metrics such as cycle time, cumulative flow, velocity, burn-down, or other framework- and implementation-specific metrics. Communicating about these costs is also essential. By presenting the data to stakeholders and company officers, you place the responsibility for those costs squarely where it belongs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Schedule risk (like any risk) can be accepted, transferred, or mitigated. Which of these three options is best is a &lt;em&gt;business&lt;/em&gt; decision, not a team decision. Regardless of the choice, senior management owns both the choice and the outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;See Also&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/10829/4271&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/10829/4271&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-01-08T16:10:41.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25567" CreationDate="2019-01-08T16:59:21.757" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Todd about it being a &lt;em&gt;political and process&lt;/em&gt; problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to add that apart from showing them the impact on &lt;em&gt;morale and quality&lt;/em&gt; -which I believe that they are quite important for your team- I would recommend having a discussion with them to understand why they believe it is useful to have this way of working and also prepare for them a &quot;business case&quot; that explores &lt;em&gt;what is they key impact of this way of working for the senior management&lt;/em&gt; (trying to talk their own language basically). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the times, this comes down to how much money they are losing by having this way of working. Examples of the impact to senior management are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Delayed features due to the introduction of these changes &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bugs introduced due to quality issues that required to introduce more tasks in future releases.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2019-01-08T16:59:21.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25518" CreationDate="2019-01-08T18:17:44.180" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Under any other circumstances expecting to get a daily update from&#xA;  developers would be considered micromanagement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not true. I'm not even sure if we are defining micromanaging properly here as there are ways to micromanage without requiring a daily update from developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Scrum standup is not for management. It's for developers and by developers. It's where developers get in sync and plan what to do next, who needs help and who can provide help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is meant to go quickly, a few minutes per developer to sync with the other developers and then call it quits. I've work in actual Scrum and Kanban teams doing real stand-ups, and those have been the most productive exercises in my 25 years in software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problem is, many people hijack the term 'standup' to conduct an actual 30 min or even hour-long meeting. Now, a 30-60 min daily meeting &lt;em&gt;can be valid and useful&lt;/em&gt; in some organizations and contexts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem here is two-fold: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;meetings that are not useful in proportion to their lengths of time and frequency,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;people taking those meetings and calling them &quot;standup&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Voltaire allegedly said once : &quot;If you wish to converse with me, define your terms.&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NZWaZ.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NZWaZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Voltaire&amp;#39;s quote&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33274" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-02-03T09:36:32.207" LastActivityDate="2019-02-03T09:36:32.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25574" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-01-08T20:04:10.640" Score="1" ViewCount="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have created a master project ( in ms project 2010 and published in ms epm 2013)that contains only key milestones tasks from external projects. Hence this master project plan contains high level milestones of overall Program and external projects' milestones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need to know how I can add additional columns like project status, division and project manager name, RAG status with color in this master project for the external tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By introducing these columns I will be able to track with respective project owner to track for any delay or other related correspondence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need to know how to do this for managing projects portfolio in ms epm 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34624" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-01-10T15:12:50.853" LastActivityDate="2019-01-10T15:12:50.853" Title="Add columns in master project from external project tasks" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25575" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25578" CreationDate="2019-01-09T10:00:17.343" Score="3" ViewCount="240" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sorry if I'm asking in the wrong community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our company we have a &quot;tradition&quot; to not to pay for licenses for development integrated development environments (IDEs). The business team's arguments are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We don't want to pay extra money.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are free IDEs - use them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue is that some of developers are using JetBrains IDEs like PHPStorm and Idea and don't wish to migrate to other tools. Intuitively we understand why those IDEs are better and why using them we will improve our productivity. But business team doesn't want to hear about that as it is in abstract terms for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What arguments, links and examples we can use to convince them that buying IDEs is not a money waste procedure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: It is a Japanese company with some Japanese management specifics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34627" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-01-09T14:15:03.450" LastActivityDate="2019-01-09T15:57:19.040" Title="How to convince business team why software development IDE licensing is important?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25575" CreationDate="2019-01-09T10:12:17.950" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that there are many reasons why you should buy the license such as an increase in productivity, it makes your job more enjoyable, it is just the right thing to do!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, most &quot;business people&quot; are interested in money, so, I can suggest you to try to &quot;speak their language&quot;. Perhaps you can put together a case of how much time you are saving and make an estimation of how much that is in $$ vs the license fee. Not to mention that this seems like a &quot;basic&quot; requirement for employees to do their job efficiently and not doing so, might make them want to search for other job options, which in turn will make you search for other employees. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2019-01-09T10:12:17.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25575" CreationDate="2019-01-09T13:44:33.993" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, there is no management theory, Japanese or otherwise, that suggests that you should not give people the tools they need to do their job. And this leads to the real problem with your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can make a financial argument for the use of IDE's. For the whole JetBrains pack, it would have to save you around 15 - 20 hours per year depending on what your salary is for it to pay for itself, which any developer can tell you a good IDE absolutely will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this assumes that they are making their decisions based on a strict ROI scale, which I would not assume given the situation you present because if it were the case, it seems like this question would have been resolved long ago. You could inquire as to how these decisions are made to see if there is some other criteria to work within, but I suspect they are simply operating out of a perspective of loss-aversion, which leaves you stuck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of possible reasons for this. It may be pervasive through the whole company or it may simply be that they don't see value in software development and so they look at it as a cost center to be minimized, not a value center to be capitalized on. Either way, you are fixing a broad company dysfunction, not simply getting an IDE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-01-09T13:44:33.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25575" CreationDate="2019-01-09T15:57:19.040" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of your role, this is a project management site. I will therefore answer from the project management viewpoint, rather than the (perhaps expected) engineering perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your role as a project manager isn't to justify anything. Your obligation is to raise issues that impact scope, budget, time, or quality in a way that senior management can leverage to make data-driven business decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use real data relevant to &lt;em&gt;your project&lt;/em&gt; to make a business case. Then senior management must live with the results of &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; business decisions, whether positive or negative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Establishing a Business Case&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The issue is that some of developers are using JetBrains IDEs like PHPStorm and Idea and &lt;strong&gt;don't wish to migrate to other tools&lt;/strong&gt;. Intuitively we understand why those IDEs are better and why using them we will improve our productivity. [emphasis added]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I don't feel like it&quot; is not a valid &lt;em&gt;business&lt;/em&gt; reason for anything. In order to make the case for a budget expenditure, you need to define the need (and the value proposition) in business terms. If you can't do that, then you don't actually need whatever it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not IDEs improve productivity is arguable. As a highly technical executive, I might decide that I'd rather spend my limited project budget on people rather than licenses. I might choose to hire programmers who are comfortable developing on the command line rather than ones who need an IDE to be productive. On the other hand, if I already have a team of developers who are reliant on an IDE to be productive, I might view licensing costs as justified to meet my timelines or quality objectives given the labor force I already have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, the project team  first needs to determine if what they have is a &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; or a &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt;. Once that's done, any request for a budget appropriation needs to be cast into business terms such as cost/benefit, return on investment (ROI), licensing vs. labor costs, or budget vs. schedule. Metrics and justifications that apply to &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; project team, rather than to other random people on other projects, will also help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Establish a Baseline&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since a project must either adjust scope, budget, or schedule, work with the team's current level of productivity (whether you have IDEs or not) to baseline your project. You can't base a project's schedule on people or tools you don't have; you must base it on what resources you can actually apply to the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team's velocity is insufficient to meet management targets, then you can't simply &quot;beat the staff until morale improves.&quot; Management must either hire different people who can work within whatever limitations they set, remove the impediments (e.g. by changing the process, schedule, or toolchain), or accept any demonstrable drag on productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By baselining in this way, you are also providing a starting point to validate (or disprove) any ROI metrics &lt;em&gt;post-facto&lt;/em&gt;. Without a measurement of your current levels of productivity, it will be very hard to demonstrate any deltas from a change in process or tooling. It will even be difficult to establish a use case, since without a baseline you can't actually quantify any potential benefit to a project control or resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, measure what you've got. Then use that to build a quantifiable business case or adjust your project schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-01-09T15:57:19.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25580" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-01-10T08:18:57.580" Score="1" ViewCount="60" Body="&lt;p&gt;I worked as a software developer and recently I became the manager of some web development projects for clients. Can you please recommended some useful tutorials for web development project management through Jira Software?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34148" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-01-13T10:29:04.363" LastActivityDate="2019-01-13T10:29:04.363" Title="Web development project management through Jira Software" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;design&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2019-01-16T22:30:52.457" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20548" CreationDate="2019-01-10T09:45:48.550" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I second &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/17049/ewan&quot;&gt;Ewan&lt;/a&gt;'s approach: &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-testing_code&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Self Testing Code&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_automation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Automated Testing&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; is the way to solve this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-testing_code&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Self Testing Code&lt;/a&gt; - will require reworking existing code and hesitation on your team's part would be understandable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_automation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Automated Testing&lt;/a&gt; - would best be done by hiring another &lt;strong&gt;programmer&lt;/strong&gt; - who then programs tests instead of products - and management would n't notice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, as you suggest in choice #2, simply use some of the existing programmers' time to write automated tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A different approach - depending on your products - would be to start an Alpha-program, where the users are essentially testing and reporting bugs for free; no cost to management and you get your product tested while you are developing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2019-01-10T09:45:48.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25582" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-01-10T09:52:51.953" Score="6" ViewCount="290" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before I start, I just want to point out that this is a hypothetical question that I was recently asked in an interview. I'd like to be able to answer it with conviction if it ever comes up again. Any views or links to valuable resources would be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a product owner you are working using agile methodologies with your team on an application. One of the other departments in the business that you rely on for delivering this software uses a waterfall process. They will not change. How can you continue to be agile in your approach whilst working with this waterfall team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33399" LastActivityDate="2019-03-26T13:05:41.783" Title="How to make Agile and Waterfall work together" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2019-03-26T13:30:27.503" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25583" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-01-10T10:18:50.327" Score="3" ViewCount="129" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our company is facing a challenge regarding the project management organisation. We already have our own working group on this topic but I'd like to get some external opinions in. It's a very specific case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First I need to provide &lt;strong&gt;background information on our company and current project management organisation:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're a professional services company with focus on software engineering which operates in heavily matrix- &amp;amp; remote-organised projects but with an underlying organisation that supports employees in execution of the projects. &#xA;Roughly 600 people of which 70 are active as project manager. The revenues streams are generated within client portfolios. A client portfolio manager has the responsibility on several projects with his clients. The project managers are managing these projects and are together with the client portfolio manager fully accountable / responsible. The project manager is the glue with the remaining organisation and gets via a centralised staffing-unit all experts from other disciplines on his projects to conduct a project, e.g. visual designer, programmers, consultants, UX experts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some details on how our project managers are organised:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We had a company-wide reorganisation 4 years ago and are on a continuous journey to develop us further. Our culture is very open and most of the organisational changes are initiated &amp;amp; happening bottom-up. &#xA;The main outcome from the reorganisation back then for the &quot;Project management department&quot; was to introduce a so called &quot;Project Management Cluster&quot;. Basically a pool of project managers. This cluster was further split up in to Skill Groups: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Traditional Project Management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agile Project Management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Programm Management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every project manager in the cluster had to be in at least one of the skill groups. The skill groups are the professional home for a project manager and identify usually the skill focus and expertise of an employee. The skill groups are mainly responsible for exchange and creating new standards. Also topic specific trainings and onboarding of new project managers is conducted mainly in these skill groups (e.g. Agile Management conducts Scrum Master trainings). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Current challenge:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We saw the significance of introducing agile standards back then and with creation of a dedicated skill group to agile topics we made fast progress. There were project managers active in multiple skill groups to share knowledge but mainly the skill groups were silos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then a market effect hit us in the past 1 - 2 years: &#xA;Currently 80% of the projects are done agile thus the other skill groups became less significant and we had lots of project managers that adopted the agile skills in the agile management skill groups by joining trainings, doing exchange, collaboration on creation of new standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're now in a situation where the initially created specialised silos with these skill groups are getting more and more together and there is a spillover of many &quot;traditional project managers&quot; in the agile management skill group. On the other hand there are also &quot;agile only project managers&quot; that are lacking knowledge of traditional conducted projects since we have no demand in doing these projects from the market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Aspects to take into consideration:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;our company is still growing and I expect to have the Project manager count in 5 years at around 100 people&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;we'd like to be as effective and efficient as possible but understand that because of the size there must be an underlying standard &amp;amp; structure. A discussion some years ago was to form a project management office that supports the &quot;front facing&quot; project managers in their daily work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;we'd like to standardise trainings in the cluster, basically a training offer independent from the skill groups setup but are unsure who &amp;amp; how will conduct these trainings (an idea was to have a dedicated sub-structure: &quot;PM training center&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;culture-wise we'd like to come close together again and gather the project managers in more global events / conferences for exchange &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As highlighted it's a very specific situation. Do you know of best practices or success stories that can help us? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you very much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33477" LastActivityDate="2019-04-28T17:52:19.280" Title="Project Management department organisation in large company - How to integrate skill silos?" Tags="&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25582" CreationDate="2019-01-10T12:40:00.877" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The biggest impact of waterfall in agile principles is that is not prepared for changes, so the approach I would take is to reduce the size of the waterfall by spliting it into multiple smaller waterfalls, this way between them you can introduce changes without affecting the methodology of that department. So as a PO you have to make sure your backlog consists in smalls items which can be completed in a short period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29163" LastActivityDate="2019-01-10T12:40:00.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25582" CreationDate="2019-01-10T13:44:44.850" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is something a lot of teams run into, at least the ones I've worked with and hear about from colleagues. And, as you might expect, there's room for a lot of tension between the two parties that use different methodologies for delivery. The fact is, if this is something that is simply necessary (there may be reasons), both teams will have to understand the trade offs of compromise. It really revolves around two concepts: &lt;strong&gt;change and planning&lt;/strong&gt;. Conventional wisdom will say the agile team is more comfortable with change while the other team is more comfortable with a set plan. Both can be valid throughout the life cycle of a solution, but it's vital to understand which is best for satisfying the intended customer at any given time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question about continuing to be agile in the midst of working with a more traditional waterfall team, I've found being abundantly transparent is vital to help spur collaboration and interactions. Transparency breeds discussion, which is a good thing so long as everyone understands the goal for why you're building what you're building. This is often times different from personal and professional motivations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do we know enough about how this will impact our customer to plan out x, y, and z 6 months in advance? Waterfall and agile can co-exist here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do we need more information about how this will impact our customer before fully delivering a big bang feature? It's probably better to compromise on a plan to deliver on incremental, iterative experimentation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a tricky situation, but at the end of the day collaboration and the willingness to choose the best approach based on customer impact usually helps mitigate a lot of the issues such a situation can present. Snags and hiccups will happen; no one methodology will win. But life becomes easier when everyone is aligned on being transparent, the trade offs of making a decision, and ultimately doing what's best for the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33598" LastEditorUserId="33598" LastEditDate="2019-01-10T16:17:08.613" LastActivityDate="2019-01-10T16:17:08.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25582" CreationDate="2019-01-10T14:06:09.407" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One simple (if not easy) approach to a Scrum team relying on the work of waterfall teams is to simply treat it as a constraint. Can the team work around it? Can the team make the constraint less impactful on their work? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can look at things like the Five Focusing Steps approach in Goldratt's Theory of Constraints as a way to work through this challenge. I did a quick look around online and this page does a pretty good job talking about the Theory of Constraints:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.leanproduction.com/theory-of-constraints.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.leanproduction.com/theory-of-constraints.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-01-10T14:06:09.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25580" CreationDate="2019-01-10T14:09:28.023" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jira is simply a tool. You probably want to look at Scrum or Kanban for the actual process approaches. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book &quot;Kanban&quot; by David Anderson is pretty much the go-to source for information on that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Scrum, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; is a great starting point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-01-10T14:09:28.023" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25588" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-01-10T20:17:40.997" Score="2" ViewCount="53" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a tech lead, who had recently transitioned to becoming a people manager. It was something I wanted to try out, though I wasnt quite sure what it meant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After 6 months at it, I am still not quite sure what it means. Oddly enough, despite the efforts from my bosses are having a hard time precisely quantifying what this job entails. I had two questions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Can you suggest a good book for a novice like me to read and learn from?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) When I think of a skill (my background is in mathematics), I think of  mastering the minutia of it through &quot;drills&quot; (exercises/assignments/what not) in an offline setting before getting to the real online task (solving some real world problem). Simply put, my view is that the better I am at the drills, the better I get at real world problems. What are the equivalent offline &quot;drills&quot; in management, and could you suggest where/how I could practice it in an offline setting? Textbooks/best practices/ anything would help &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34644" LastActivityDate="2019-01-11T16:54:23.510" Title="Effective Manager drills" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2019-01-13T16:41:56.293" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25567" CreationDate="2019-01-10T21:42:23.607" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thank you for your excellent question. There is four dimensions in business administration: planification, organization, direction and control. When you do a degree  in business administration, you develop your personal abilities and skills to become better than others in living day to day those four dimensions. A project management tool or software is a technical help that you can use to help you be a better project manager. They are especially an help in the planification of any project. Some people told me when I was younger that they perform better under pressure; that they have more ideas and more innovations when they rush their work at the last minute. They study like that, they manage their family like that and they expect people to act like that unless they judge them less competent than themselves. If you plan your work in advance, they see you as over stressed and not able to take pressure. The fact of the matter is that meeting deadlines and not spending more than what you budget authorize you stresses them more than you. Many lose themselves in a sprint cycle, in a rush and in a high volume worksteam to forget the stress to finish their work on time. They become specialists in asking delays and more budget. Being to efficient is seem by them as showing to your boss that you don't have enough work to do in your job. It is a fact, creating a rush is seen as the most competent thing to do. I disagree all the way. What is the most competent thing to do is to create space in your project management for the surprises; to plan in advance time to solve problems that nobody saw coming. You are right, last minute work rushes influences of lot the ambiance at work and complaining about having too much work is seen as a weakness. When I was younger, I was told that you do your work before having fun. Today, most people want to have fun in their job or they don't do it. Having the satisfaction of a job well done come from the fact you have the abilities to plan, organize, direct and control your project. When everything have to look easy, developing an ability in planification can be seen as a weakness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user30807" LastActivityDate="2019-01-10T21:42:23.607" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25590" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-01-11T11:11:47.963" Score="3" ViewCount="90" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a long term project, call it Project A. Our direct client (DC) is an organization between us and the Product Owner (PO).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every now and then we're being asked for estimates. The problem is that the PO comes up with a new feature - well, more like an idea, communicates this to the DC who then tries to get us to come up with an estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to the myriad of questions and unknowns we can only give a rough indication. The DC communicates this to the PO as a solid estimate, thus giving us a lot of stress, because when the feature gets built, the estimate is not close to the real development time at all, due to suddenly having to think about edge cases, impact to the rest of the system, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have tried to educate the DC to gather the requirements up front, but due to his limited technical abilities he's not able to really think it through. On top of that, the PO is all over the place and can change his mind about a feature on a weekly basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an optimal workflow to still work with the DC and not leak money going back and forth discussing requirements and get a (mostly) accurate estimate in a short amount of time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34638" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-01-11T14:18:17.770" LastActivityDate="2019-01-11T22:55:47.920" Title="How to structure estimation requests when there is a middle-man" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25590" CreationDate="2019-01-11T11:51:38.420" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I read in your message, the problem isn't the estimation itself but the whole organization of the team with DC and Devs in charge of PO's responsibilities. So, that middleman shouldn't exist and PO should finish the requirement documents after DC gives requirements to PO. You still work with DC, just in a more organized way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This answer I'm providing was crafted with the book &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1484236904&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to Kill the Scrum Monster: Quick Start to Agile Scrum Methodology and the Scrum Master Role&lt;/a&gt; as base, which I think will deal with your problem from the root.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;From Waterfall to &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemanifesto.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (Why you work the way you work)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The issue with this (Waterfall) methodology is that if a project has a big scope, it might take many months if not years until we get final results. A lot of things can change and go the wrong way. Sometimes during the final stage of acceptance and testing, we might discover that the original design stage was wrong. The success rate of a big project executed in this way is alarmingly low&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/V7oCV.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/V7oCV.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;stats&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Overview of Agile Methodologies&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;There are three most common methodologies/methods to implement Agile principles: eXtreme programming, Scrum, and Kanban.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Agile Scrum Deep Dive&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1yv9G.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1yv9G.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;team&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The &lt;strong&gt;Product Owner&lt;/strong&gt; (PO) collects requirements from customers (internal or external) and produces the requirements documents. The PO constantly aligns with customers and determines the scope of work and change in the scope, so the PO will get results from the Sprints. The PO is responsible for providing all the necessary product-related information required by the team and providing requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;Scrum Master&lt;/strong&gt; ( ScMa ) is the servant-leader of the team who helps the team to deliver based on requirements. The ScMa organizes the process and moderates the meetings that will enable the team to deliver. Also, the ScMa provides statuses to the PO or any stakeholders. The ScMa is in charge of resolution of any block and impediments the team faces. The ScMa shelters and protects the team from external teams and stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note:&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;The performance of the individual team members and other HR topics are not the ScMa’s direct responsibility. There is another role Line Manager that is responsible for the performance of individual team members. Line Manager is direct manager for all the members of the Scrum team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;Architect&lt;/strong&gt; (Arc) is the technical lead in the team. Often, most of his or her time will be dedicated to guiding other team members, rather than individual tasks. The Architect creates/approves design, reviews code, and works in close sync with the ScMa and PO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note&lt;/em&gt;:&#xA;Not every Scrum team has an Architect; however, at least one senior developer on the team should have profound expertise on technical aspects of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;Quality Manager&lt;/strong&gt; (QM) or &lt;strong&gt;Quality Engineer&lt;/strong&gt;(QE) is the team member responsible for quality management of the product. The QM organizes the quality process in the team, educates the PO and ScMa on quality best practices, and provides quality requirements to the team based on feedback from the PO, industry standards, and best practices (Including performance, security, usability, accessibility etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Developers&lt;/strong&gt; (DEV) estimate and commit to the estimation on a Sprint basis. They constantly improve the accuracy of the estimation and self-improve from Sprint to Sprint without micromanagement from other roles and managers. Developers distribute between the different expert roles—for example performance, security, and user interface designer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;Technical Writer&lt;/strong&gt; (TW) writes supporting documentation for the project. This role can be centralized, since it is usually not required to have a full-time technical writer in the team. However, technical documentation also can be produced by any other role/roles in the team as an additional responsibility.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27189" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-01-11T12:10:36.973" LastActivityDate="2019-01-11T12:10:36.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25590" CreationDate="2019-01-11T14:24:49.413" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;@tiagoperes's Answer is good, but a radical change to suggest. To provide a less radical suggestion: have you looked at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cone of uncertainty&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea behind the cone is that &lt;strong&gt;all estimates are ranges&lt;/strong&gt;. The range starts out very wide but then narrows down as more information is gained (eventually becoming a point, once all uncertainty is gone - if you finished the feature in 5.7 days, you know what the 'estimate' is - 5.7 days).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, when asked for an estimate, give your best-case-to-worst-case range. If/when the person asking complains, explain that you cannot narrow the cone without more information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At which point they should either collaborate with you to provide more information and narrow the range, or else accept the wide range (and, if using the range for budgeting, accept the worst-case end of it). Or reject the feature, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2019-01-11T14:24:49.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25588" CreationDate="2019-01-11T16:54:23.510" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;welcome to the forum. I think that the actual answer would depend a lot on your values, type of management you do, etc. &lt;em&gt;From my perspective&lt;/em&gt;, these are my favorite 5 at the moment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thanks-Feedback-Science-Receiving-Well/dp/0670922633/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1547225310&amp;amp;sr=8-1&amp;amp;keywords=thanks%20for%20the%20feedback&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Thanks for the Feedback&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.co.uk/Leading-Dignity-Create-Culture-Brings/dp/0300229631/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;amp;ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1547225343&amp;amp;sr=1-1&amp;amp;keywords=leading%20with%20dignity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Leading with Dignity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.co.uk/Charisma-Myth-Science-Personal-Magnetism/dp/B01153ITZ8/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1547225381&amp;amp;sr=8-2&amp;amp;keywords=the%20charisma%20myth&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Charisma Myth&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Google-Works-Eric-Schmidt/dp/1444792490/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1547225421&amp;amp;sr=8-1&amp;amp;keywords=how%20google%20works&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How Google Works&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many equivalents to &quot;drills&quot; in these books, you can practice some exercises offline before trailing them with your team, but to be honest, in my experience, it is a &quot;trial and error&quot; process that needs to be in constant adaptation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2019-01-11T16:54:23.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25595" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25599" CreationDate="2019-01-11T19:29:44.703" Score="3" ViewCount="842" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sorry in advance if my question looks silly, but it's bothered me for quite a long time and haven't found the answer to it yet.&#xA;I work in an IT outsource company and due to specifics of my job I participate in interviews quite often on either side (as a candidate or interviewer). And I can say that there is one popular question for a team leading roles that I never really knew how to answer correctly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Which process methodology (Scrum or Kanban) would you prefer for a&#xA;  project of tough deadline?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I actually don't think that any approach is better in this context, since both have approximately the same amount of process overhead compared to no-process approach. I think the goal of either of them is to make things predictable and transparent, but not faster, and I don't think that time aspect is any measurable here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People tend to answer &lt;code&gt;Kanban&lt;/code&gt; to this question since it's more flexible and has lower restriction for WIP, but i think that Kanban won't win the race if you work on a well-documented huge project and can just scale sprint length to fit your team speed perfectly, so it rather depends on project preconditions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I correct here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28061" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-01-14T14:09:20.190" LastActivityDate="2019-01-14T14:09:20.190" Title="Kanban or Scrum for tough deadline project?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;deadline&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25595" CreationDate="2019-01-11T21:05:48.857" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been a long time skeptic on agile methods, not because I am against new methods to develop but mostly because of the almost church-like, faith based approach a lot of folks seem to exhibit.  So there's my bias.  That said, however, I do try to find any published science to see if there is some efficacy of one approach over another, and by science I mean a truly independent examination using sound qualitative and quantitative research methods, peer reviewed, etc.  I have, so far, been unable to find anything but I do see a lot of pro and anti publications with anecdotal claims supporting their position from obviously biased sources.  So the answer to this question or any other question similar to this is unknown and is more about finding a candidate who agrees with the interviewer.  There might be some goodness around doing that for fit, but doesn't really expose anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2019-01-11T21:05:48.857" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25597" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-01-11T21:16:08.620" Score="4" ViewCount="488" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for out of the box &quot;Scrum&quot; reports (velocity, burn-down, sprint report) that use story points, in the tool Azure Boards/DevOps (formerly known as VSTS). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I played with &quot;Analytics Views&quot; that tie into Power Bi, but nothing even close for the type of data/reports I am trying to pull. I have found dashboard widgets for burn-down &amp;amp; velocity (screenshot). But this data is really only helpful over time, which is the issue... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my first question is - does anyone know of a way &quot;out of the box&quot; to pull velocity and burn-down charts historically. Something similar to Atlassian (JIRA) Sprint report would be ideal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, if not available out of the box (which I suspect), has anyone be able to recreate these concepts (velocity, burn-down, and/or sprint report) using the Analytics Views and Power Bi? I am somewhat familiar, but have no idea how to start this query. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly - any other route to accomplish the goal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These features seem pretty basic - so I am hoping someone has come across this! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26952" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-01-11T21:38:53.493" LastActivityDate="2019-08-29T23:03:15.440" Title="Azure Board (DevOps) Reports" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;&lt;vsts&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25595" CreationDate="2019-01-11T22:30:23.540" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a very tight deadline, use whatever framework the team is most familiar with. Trying to learn a new framework on a tight deadline is just asking for trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both frameworks can accommodate deadlines, but Scrum has the notion of time-boxing baked in. Kanban solves many of the same problems, but is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; primarily concerned with deadlines or time boxes as first-class (or even second-class) concepts. If you have equal experience with both, then Scrum is often a more intuitive fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Comparing Approaches to Scheduling in Scrum and Kanban&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Which process methodology (Scrum or Kanban) would you prefer for a project of tough deadline?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither framework is actually focused on deadlines. At a high level, Scrum is about negotiating scope, while Kanban is about negotiating cycle time. That isn't to say Scrum doesn't care about cadence, or that Kanban doesn't care about scope or time-boxing, but each one by itself tends to focus more on one than the other. That's why Scrum and Kanban are often used together in many agile shops: they're complementary approaches, not orthogonal ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, if someone handed me a project with a very small number of iterations to complete it, I'd choose Scrum. That's not because things would get done faster or better with Scrum, but rather because the framework requires the Scrum Team (and especially the Product Owner) to continually ask &quot;How &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; can we reliably deliver within the given time box?&quot; Whether that time box is a single Sprint, or a time-boxed project with a hard deadline, the framework is designed for adding or trimming scope to meet short-term goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban can do the same thing, really, but scope is less front-and-center in a methodology that's primarily focused on optimizing for flow. If you're a Kanban expert, you can adjust your queues and batch sizes to control cycle time and scope, but it's not an intuitive fit for time-boxing (which is what a deadline really is).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also worth mentioning that Scrum explicitly calls for a Sprint Goal, which is the central cohesion for each iteration. In contrast, Kanban isn't goal-oriented. While you can certainly queue work in Kanban in a way that expresses goals or evolving priorities, the system itself is really about &lt;em&gt;continuous&lt;/em&gt; flow rather than focused, goal-oriented delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, you can use either method, or both together if you like. However, for time-boxed, goal-oriented work products I'd certainly consider Scrum a more natural fit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;See Also&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/16376/4271&quot;&gt;How to Perform Agile Release Planning&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-01-11T22:30:23.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25595" CreationDate="2019-01-11T22:33:16.593" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume as an interview question, the primary purpose of this question is to see how you think through these ideas and decisions. In that regard, it's a fair question for an interview. For real life, it's an overly-simplistic question that ignores far too many other factors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, there is the argument to be made that neither Scrum nor Kanban is a process methodology. Scrum is a process framework which may seem nit-picking, but it means there is a lot of room in that framework for other practices that can influence your process immensely. Kanban is a change management methodology meaning that it's a thing you do to improve and optimize your process, so a lot depends on the process you are applying it to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you could say about the approaches is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are practicing Scrum, you have a potentially-shippable product every sprint. This means that if the product isn't done by the deadline, you still have some shippable product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban puts a focus on optimizing systems, so you should be more effective at delivering work as your team progresses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also worked on Scrum teams that use Kanban to improve the flow of work through their team, so it's not truly and either-or question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps an even more interesting question to ask in response is what a &quot;tough deadline&quot; means. Usually when I hear that what it means is you have a fixed scope, a fixed schedule, and fixed budget to build it in. Of course, we don't need Agile to tell us why that doesn't work. Every project management theory for the better part of a century calls that a recipe for disaster. As I said, fair enough to see how someone thinks through a problem, but ultimately, the question is flawed from any real-life application standpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-01-11T22:33:16.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25590" CreationDate="2019-01-11T22:55:47.920" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there an optimal workflow to still work with the DC and not leak money going back and forth discussing requirements and get a (mostly) accurate estimate in a short amount of time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly, the answer to this is almost always &quot;no&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In software development there is &lt;em&gt;inherent uncertainty&lt;/em&gt;. This arises from several factors, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requirements are often wrong because people struggle to define what they want up front.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is almost always some technical uncertainty. The only exception to this is if you are doing &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; the same thing you have done before.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People may impact the estimate: new starters, people leaving, sickness, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be tempting to think that if you spend more time creating the estimate or if you get better at estimating, that your estimates will become more accurate. Unfortunately the inherent uncertainty may stop this from being true. Usually the effort you spend on estimating has rapidly diminishing returns. That is why a lot of agile organisations use a lightweight estimating process or even no estimates at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One possible approach you can take is to allow some contingency. Even this is a challenge as the contingency necessary to cover the uncertainty is often unacceptable to the client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another approach might be to ask your client to break their requirements down to make them as small as possible. That way your estimates will be smaller and the size of the error will also hopefully be reduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A better long-term solution would be to work more closely with your client using an agile approach. For example, the client could purchase a number of sprints of the team's time. They would work with the team in order to maximise the value that is delivered in this time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-01-11T22:55:47.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25557" CreationDate="2019-01-11T23:06:41.153" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a couple factors to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) What is the timebox of your sprint review?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum lays the framework, but it's up to you to maximize the value and efficiency of your team within that framework, especially during scrum ceremonies.  If your team expresses desire to shorten scrums, you need to focus on what provides the most value in the time that you have and that is typically spent reviewing new stories.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) How critical are the bugs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reviewing minor bugs can tend to lose people, and that decreases efficiency and focus.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Who are your stakeholders? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If your stakeholders' daily work is impacted by bugs, it's likely they will be very interested in knowing they are resolved, in which case a demo would make sense.  But again, if you start reviewing minor bugfixes, you may lose people and essentially burn time, thus decreasing value. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's possible that your stakeholders don't work in the system everyday (think executives or management), so they may more concerned with high-level details, which likely doesn't include a review of bugs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34654" LastActivityDate="2019-01-11T23:06:41.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25595" CreationDate="2019-01-13T06:36:56.407" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Its a trick question. Kanban isn't a process methodology. Scrum has to be the right answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="763" LastActivityDate="2019-01-13T06:36:56.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25607" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25608" CreationDate="2019-01-14T10:16:06.370" Score="8" ViewCount="4274" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a Product Owner (PO) who starts testing while an item is in code review and gives feedback to developers. I see, from the point of view of the PO, that this allows for quicker feedback. However, I don't think she should start testing while code is still in the review stage, but rather wait until the item is ready for testing because we have testers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've got feedback from the Team that &quot;Tasks' turn-around time is slower (testing seems to be slow at times)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas on this topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My idea/solution is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask the PO to wait until the item is in the testing phase, keep to the Sprint timebox, and don't become a bottle neck. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this is an obvious question but I would like to hear if anyone has encountered something similar and what did they do to fix it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34072" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-01-15T14:26:01.597" LastActivityDate="2020-03-27T20:20:17.960" Title="Should a Product Owner start testing while an item is in code review" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25607" CreationDate="2019-01-14T12:56:59.763" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer depends on whether this slows down or speeds up the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How many of the bugs she found were discovered during the Code Review phase?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they were all discovered during the Code Review then maybe she's wasting her (and everybody's time). Though we can still ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How many of the bugs she found were fixed before the Code Review stage?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they all were, then she is saving you time by having you review corrected code with fewer bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then there's the &lt;strong&gt;Type Of Bugs she finds&lt;/strong&gt; that makes a difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Product Owner would typically check the product for UI issues, wording, typos and aesthetics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These &quot;bugs&quot; will not be picked up by Code Reviews or the QA department, as they are mainly subjective. (With the exception of typos.) So the sooner she fixes these issues the less work (of retesting) for all involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, on the other hand, she's only finding &lt;em&gt;hard to find bugs&lt;/em&gt; that a good Code Review would have picked up in much less time, then maybe it's worth pointing out to her that she's wasting her time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last thought: If she's simply taking the product for a quick test-drive and (since she found them) reporting all the trouble she finds, then maybe your coders need better work ethics; if they tested it for a minute before releasing it they would also find and fix these obvious bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2019-01-14T12:56:59.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25607" CreationDate="2019-01-14T12:57:15.483" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In favor of eliminating waste I'd suggest waiting, too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming a PO's time is more expensive/valuable than a tester's or dev's, simply because of supply and demand as there is only one PO, but multiple devs/testers, the following would be a waste of good PO time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reporting errors that would have been found by a developer anyway&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reporting errors that would have been found by testers anyway&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testing the same things &lt;em&gt;again&lt;/em&gt; after scheduled changes (Code Review) have been made&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, developers might be a little miffed if their work is criticized before they declared it &quot;done&quot;. You don't tell a cook their dish is not tasty dragging it out of the oven when the cook insists it's only half-cooked and needs anther 20 minutes. You don't tell people they park like idiot's when they are still in the street moving. In other words, don't tell people they made mistakes when they are not finished yet. It can only be a &quot;bug&quot; if it &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; work in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So filing bug tickets will generate wrong metrics afterwards. Many bug tickets means the developers need to work better. But in this case, they weren't even done yet. So your metrics are skewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as always in Scrum: discuss it with the team, see what everybody has to say and find a solution that works for everybody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2019-01-14T12:57:15.483" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23874" CreationDate="2019-01-14T13:13:17.857" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A classic &lt;em&gt;Responsibility without Authority&lt;/em&gt; setup, with one notable exception:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want to have a say in the other team's code, and their PM wants a say in your team's code. So it should be easier to come up with some solution as it'll be bilateral and benefit all the other managers as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am trying to figure out what model/framework would fit the most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's called Matrix management, as you yourself commented, but the trick is not the model but making it work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case it seems (without any other details) that all you want is a periodic Code Review of the other team's .NET code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is best done without the Project Manager present, to minimize friction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for example, schedule a period, say &lt;em&gt;every Tuesday afternoon&lt;/em&gt;, when each of the Managers sits with each team and Code Reviews their Technology. This may have to be done in serial if there's skill overlap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2019-01-14T13:13:17.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5488" CreationDate="2019-01-14T15:12:02.363" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One system we used for a while is EVS. (&lt;strong&gt;E&lt;/strong&gt;arned &lt;strong&gt;V&lt;/strong&gt;alue &lt;strong&gt;S&lt;/strong&gt;ystem)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, a task can be in 1 of 4 states, defined as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;0% - not started,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;20% - started,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;80% - ready for testing and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;100% - complete&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can adapt the states and percentages to your particular whims and needs. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how does this help you? As I wrote in my &lt;a href=&quot;https://blog.expertpjm.com/2011/07/is-project-management-all-about.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt; many years ago:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important lesson I learned from using EVS was this: It's irrelevant whether the task is 41% complete or 78% complete. It's either 0% (not started), 20% (started), 80% (ready for testing) or 100% complete, having been blessed by QA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This saves a lot of useless schedule updates, which are meaningless since nobody really knows how long the task will take, and often the last 20% of the task takes 80% of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, back to your dilemma:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'm trying to figure out what I need to do to keep them up to date. I can update work complete as tasks get done, but what should I be doing to ensure that we're on schedule according to the plan?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't know if you're really on schedule, because you're not building a 100-floor skyscraper that can be tracked as &lt;code&gt;100 x 1-floor x N-days&lt;/code&gt; to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All you can do is track your 4 states and break it down into small enough pieces that you will have ample time to do Crisis Management if something falls behind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. For your sanity, you may want to do an occasional MBA (Management by Walking Around) to get a feel of how things are progressing by shmoozing to team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-01-14T15:12:02.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25612" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25613" CreationDate="2019-01-14T16:31:32.610" Score="3" ViewCount="1612" Body="&lt;p&gt;As per understanding from given &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/top-five-causes-scope-creep-6675&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;, scope creep is unapproved additional works, requirements or features of a new product. But I am not clear about: what, then, is scope gap? As per definition, scope gap is specifications or activities added to the project late. Can someone elaborate with a working example in a software project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34675" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-01-14T16:44:53.240" LastActivityDate="2019-01-25T03:53:16.843" Title="What is the difference between scope creep and scope gap?" Tags="&lt;scope&gt;&lt;scope-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25612" CreationDate="2019-01-14T17:54:14.333" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;It’s All About Expectations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Unapproved” doesn’t really capture the essence of scope creep. In purely pragmatic terms, scope creep is a slow or gradual increase in scope beyond the original plan. A scope gap (which is not really a very common term, in my personal business experience) is just the shortfall between stakeholder expectations of included scope and the project’s planned or delivered features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, the issue is that non-agile scope is often considered fixed, so scope creep and scope gaps are common. In contrast, agile projects continuously refine and renegotiate scope, so scope creep is typically less of a problem, and scope gaps can’t exist beyond a single iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-01-25T03:53:16.843" LastActivityDate="2019-01-25T03:53:16.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25607" CreationDate="2019-01-14T18:10:53.390" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't see how this is a problem in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the problem is that the PO is not available to give feedback or answer questions then this is an entirely different problem. If the PO is testing things and finding bugs then they're saving your team time and effort.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;So if they're still available to do all the things you need them to do let them do whatever testing they want and be grateful for their input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31388" LastActivityDate="2019-01-14T18:10:53.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25607" CreationDate="2019-01-14T19:09:56.900" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a general rule I would say that &lt;em&gt;the earlier the Product Owner starts testing the better&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for this is that a lot of bugs happen as a result of misunderstanding of requirements. The Product Owner is uniquely well placed to review and give feedback to a team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ask PO to wait until the item is in the testing phase and keep to sprint timebox and don't become a bottle neck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Product Owner discovers an issue in the testing phase, re-work may be required and a repeat of the code review. This could be considered waste if it was possible for the Product Owner to discover the issue earlier in the development cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some Scrum teams I have worked with got to the point of demonstrating features to the Product Owner &lt;em&gt;during development&lt;/em&gt;, let alone waiting for the testing cycle to begin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team currently finds it disruptive to receive early feedback from the Product Owner then I would suggest looking at ways to improve the development process to make this less of a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation would be to build your development process around a flexible and early feedback cycle. One approach I have seen taken is to have an environment specifically for the Product Owner. When the development team feels they have a stable build they release it to the Product Owner's environment and let her know that there are new features to review. If there are known issues then they should be clearly communicated and it is the responsibility of the Product Owner to not report duplicates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Communication and teamwork are critical to making this work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-01-14T19:09:56.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25616" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25635" CreationDate="2019-01-14T21:48:29.163" Score="4" ViewCount="175" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working in a software project with about 25 students (divided in 4 groups). As right now we use Slack for chatting and sharing important decisions we make. Slack is an communication tool similar to WhatsApp with easy use of groups. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I've noticed, everyday there are about 1-10 decisions shared each day, in a special &quot;decisions-group&quot;. These decisions are quite important, mostly for the exact same day but not for everyone. These are not all related to code, an possible decision is the change of code coverage lines. Not everyone is aware of all decisions that are made every day. I have done multiple samples and noticed that there were always people not aware of some decisions. In this problem, I'm not sure if it's a problem with a lack of discipline to actually read the decisions, or if sharing those in a chat is just ineffective. Our intentions of using a chat, is to prevent disturbing everyone constantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I ensure knowledge of decisions is shared in a small project (25 people), in which everyone is aware of the decisions being made, without disturbing everyone constantly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34688" LastEditorUserId="34688" LastEditDate="2019-01-16T10:38:46.797" LastActivityDate="2019-01-16T22:37:17.300" Title="Sharing important information effectively in an small group" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25607" CreationDate="2019-01-14T23:22:44.043" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Acceptance Testing Isn't the Product Owner's Role&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a good thing that you have a Product Owner that wants to be involved in Product Development and the QA/UAT process. However, while collaboration is great, testing is not part of the Product Owner role in Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Guide says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is the sole person responsible for managing the Product Backlog. Product Backlog management includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Clearly expressing Product Backlog items;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Ordering the items in the Product Backlog to best achieve goals and missions;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Optimizing the value of the work the Development Team performs;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Ensuring that the Product Backlog is visible, transparent, and clear to all, and shows what the Scrum Team will work on next; and,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Ensuring the Development Team understands items in the Product Backlog to the level needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What your Product Owner is doing is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; intrinsically doing any of these things, and isn't leveraging framework processes and practices to ensure quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What to Do Instead&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner should certainly collaborate with the Development Team. This includes helping the Scrum Team craft the Definition of Done, set Sprint Goals, and participate in Sprint Reviews and Retrospectives. However, the Product Owner's focus is on defining the work and optimizing value, not performing QA or acceptance tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Product Owner, especially when part of an immature Scrum Team, I may ask the Development Team to demo critical features that meet the Definition of Done throughout the Sprint rather than waiting until the very end. Or, I may ask them to do a &quot;prep demo&quot; within the team ahead of the formal Sprint Review in order to make sure we're all on the same page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the Product Owner, I don't get to &lt;em&gt;approve&lt;/em&gt; the work. Instead, I work through the Product Backlog to define work, and through the Definition of Done to set expectations about quality. Most importantly, I work through the Sprint Goal to set expectations about what qualifies as a delivered or non-delivered increment of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If my Sprint Goal has been met in accordance with the Definition of Done, then the work increment has been successfully delivered. If the Sprint Goal has not been met, then the work increment has not been successfully delivered. That doesn't mean work hasn't been done, or that various bits of work haven't been done properly; it just means that the iteration has not achieved the scope and value planned for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the Scrum Master, part of your job is to educate the Product Owner on the responsibilities of the role. Help the Product Owner use the tools of the framework properly, and to collaborate effectively with the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Building Trust&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Product Owner is routinely &lt;em&gt;testing&lt;/em&gt; the product or its features through each Sprint, this may be an indication that the Product Owner perceives an ongoing quality issue or lacks trust in the Development Team. This is an opportunity to improve communications, re-evaluate the Definition of Done, or otherwise inspect-and-adapt the process to increase trust between the key team roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, if the Product Owner is routinely providing feedback at the implementation level (rather than at the system or feature level) within the Sprint, this is a framework implementation smell that may indicate poor Backlog Refinement, poor Sprint Goals, user stories that lack adequate context, or user stories that don't meet INVEST criteria. If that's the case, then working with the Product Owner and the Development Team to improve the contents of the Product and Sprint Backlogs, and to improve adherence to the INVEST criteria (especially the &lt;em&gt;Testable&lt;/em&gt; requirement), will often yield significant process improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, non-developer inspection of an increment other than at framework inflection points can also lead to scope creep. For example, if the Product Owner is inspecting a feature that meets the Definition of Done but requests in-Sprint changes, this may represent a change of scope or design that wasn't part of the current iteration's Sprint Planning. Developers &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; actively collaborate with the Product Owner to define scope and design issues, but any feedback that changes scope or puts the Sprint Goal at risk needs to be carefully negotiated. An obsolete Sprint Goal, or significant changes in scope, may necessitate cancelling the Sprint and returning to Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In each of these examples, the Scrum Master's key objective is to help the entire Scrum Team build confidence and trust. This means:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Product Owner needs to be confident that the Development Team's process will successfully deliver the Sprint Goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Development Team needs to be confident that they're being given a clear problem with adequate context, and that the information is sufficient to identify and implement a solution within a single iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Development Team needs elbow room to find the simplest design and implementation that will meet the Sprint Goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your goal as the Scrum Master is facilitate trust, which is built through visibility, transparency, and open communications. Leverage the Sprint Retrospective and other framework elements as much as possible, but always ensure that you are solving for any real underlying trust and communications issues, rather than just addressing the symptoms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-01-14T23:22:44.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6763" CreationDate="2019-01-15T00:27:17.983" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Confluence is Atlassian's business enterprise wiki. Your company can use this to document procedures. For example, if you want everyone to complete task A in the same 10 steps, you'll want to create a page here to document Task A and its 10 steps so everyone is completing it the same way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, different departments have their own sandbox to play in, and they may or may not be interconnected. I've worked at companies where everyone has access to all other departments in the wiki, but I've also worked at less transparent places were each department can only see what they've been given permissions for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34691" LastActivityDate="2019-01-15T00:27:17.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25619" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-01-15T01:20:14.173" Score="3" ViewCount="581" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have (somehow) managed to create one column which successfully links to the Resource Sheet.  When using the drop down, it brings up all of the names in the resource sheet, and allows you to choose multiple names.  The column is then populated with all of the names selected.  I have also renamed this particular column for one of our roles (Approver)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to add three more columns (for three additional roles: Action Owner, SME and Developer(s) ) which behave EXACTLY the same way, but cannot determine how to do this.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A simple &quot;paste and copy&quot; of the Approver column, does create another column, but, as expected, the values are exactly the same.  If you change a cell in the &quot;Approver&quot; column, the cell in the other column changes as well.  This is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; what i need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The four columns should all be able to choose values from the same resource sheet, allow multiple names per cell, and, most importantly be totally independent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For example&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Approver:     John&#xA;Action Owner: Mary, Sue, Robert&#xA;SME:          Jason, Todd&#xA;Developers:   Crystal, Scott, Meredith&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How (exactly - step by step), do I:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;create each of these three new additional columns, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;map them to the same Resource Sheet&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have the capability of choosing multiple values for a cell&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have all four columns work entirely independent of each other&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34692" LastActivityDate="2019-10-12T19:02:15.310" Title="MS Project - Link multiple columns to the Resource Sheet" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25620" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25624" CreationDate="2019-01-15T02:07:43.463" Score="3" ViewCount="94" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work essentially for 3 companies. A development team consisting of members from the 3 different companies will be formed to build 1 related product (w/ several versions). The complex part is that, because our team consists of members from different companies, some of the time other members of the development team will be doing tasks for different projects. We used Jira to keep track of the issues we need to work on. Would it be better to keep 1 product and sprint backlog for the 1 development team and keep all items for all projects in those backlogs? Would this also mean that there should only be 1 product owner for all projects that would be interacting with various stakeholders, product managers, senior management, etc. of different projects? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point that I am trying to raise in this setup (1 product backlog and 1 PO) is if a developer is already committed to a sprint of the project, then no one should be able to assign new tasks for this developer except the product owner. Only the product owner should interface with the assigner of the new tasks (coming from stakeholders or clients of different projects) to uphold the sprint commitment, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34694" LastEditorUserId="34694" LastEditDate="2019-01-15T09:24:10.340" LastActivityDate="2019-01-15T11:05:13.117" Title="SCRUM and Nexus Frameworks - 1 Team with multiple projects" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;nexus&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25607" CreationDate="2019-01-15T03:55:37.653" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Todd A. Jacobs nailed it. I find that if a PO does not trust in the development and testing teams, there is a deeper issue there that needs to be sorted. This could lead to moral issues among personnel, as well as the PO mismanaging their own functions, and the project as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34696" LastEditorUserId="34072" LastEditDate="2019-01-15T14:23:56.423" LastActivityDate="2019-01-15T14:23:56.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25622" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-01-15T05:55:06.520" Score="4" ViewCount="589" Body="&lt;p&gt;Should all nodes in AoA represent milestones?  What if I need to show several activities like &lt;code&gt;a1,a2&lt;/code&gt; where there is a single milestone after a2?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34698" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-02-10T17:43:36.457" LastActivityDate="2019-02-11T03:05:19.783" Title="Are all nodes in Activity-on-Arrow diagrams milestones?" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;critical-path&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25623" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-01-15T08:59:12.097" Score="2" ViewCount="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm tired of trying to keep everyone partially happy - some prefer excel, some prefer pdf, very few have ms project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm looking for is a simple link that I could send out to everyone, giving them my file already opened on a viewer that is 100% compatible with MS Project 2016, and would give them the option to filter by a certain field, to print a pdf, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm willing to pay for a 3rd party service that would do that, it just has to be perfect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there something like that available?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34699" LastActivityDate="2019-01-18T02:02:10.933" Title="How to share with a link to a viewer with stakeholders" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25620" CreationDate="2019-01-15T11:05:13.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the idea of one product backlog/PO makes sense with that size of the team. Also, to try to minimize the effect of new tasks from other projects, would the idea of dedicating a couple of fixed days for external work and take account of that in the sprint. For instance the sprint is 10 days of work but when you do the planning you account only for eight days because the other two days will be external work and you can add a ticket for unplanned task to see how the external work affects the sprint to be able to communicate it to the stakeholders if needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3263" LastActivityDate="2019-01-15T11:05:13.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25625" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25627" CreationDate="2019-01-15T12:27:35.233" Score="5" ViewCount="267" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should we add more items in a sprint if there is items that are not completed but a developer is open.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scenario&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lets say we the development team are made up of 5 team members and we have the following sprint backlog with an average velocity of 29SP and we are currently halfway in a 2 week sprint:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Sprint Backlog&#xA; - Login         8SP     State: In Development&#xA; - Add User      12SP    State: Code Review&#xA; - Update User   3SP     State: Done&#xA; - Remove User   5SP     State: In Development&#xA;&#xA;Product Backlog&#xA; - Save User     2SP     State: Ready&#xA; - ...More Stories...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story 3 was just completed and team is still busy with the rest of the stories should we rather:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Swarm/Buddy Program to finish up sprint (&lt;strong&gt;I prefer&lt;/strong&gt;) or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can we add another story (Small Story e.g 2SP) for the open developer because all of the other team members are busy with an item&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As stated in this &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/10822/can-we-add-more-user-stories-to-the-sprint-backlog-if-the-requirements-change-du&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt; I know you can add items to a sprint &lt;em&gt;&quot;Yes, you can add stories to a running sprint...&quot;&lt;/em&gt; if it dos not affect the sprint goal &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/forum/scrum-forum/8658/adding-items-sprint-backlog&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(scrum.org)&lt;/a&gt; post&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My opinion&lt;/strong&gt; is to use methods such as XP, Buddy Programming or &lt;a href=&quot;https://innolution.com/resources/glossary/swarming&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Swarming&lt;/a&gt; to finish the sprint commitment (if they have finished all the items on their plate they can certainly pull in more work as the team deems OK) and if there is time left, they may add another item to sprint backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is your opinion and how did you deal with this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(I know what I should do &lt;strong&gt;as well&lt;/strong&gt; is bring this up in retro to understand why did &quot;under commit&quot; or why is the stories over sized etc.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34072" LastEditorUserId="34072" LastEditDate="2019-01-15T13:08:45.360" LastActivityDate="2019-01-16T07:54:37.063" Title="Should we add more items to sprint backlog if there is items that are not completed" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25518" CreationDate="2019-01-15T12:53:37.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I thought I will also add my 2 cents although &lt;strong&gt;Sarov&lt;/strong&gt; gave an very good answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Under any other circumstances expecting to get a daily update from&#xA;  developers would be considered micromanagement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The developers should not give feedback in the stand up as and update to Managers but rather give the team an update using the three stand up questions &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What tasks have you worked on since we last talked?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What tasks are you planning to work on next?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is anything getting in the way of finishing the work as expected?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scenario&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A NFL team mid game gets together to discuss plans for the next play. The players do not give plays individually but rather a player will say &quot; What did he try the last play, What play he wants to try, and  if there is any obstructions he ask if someone to help  opening the field&quot;  - He did not give an micromanaged update but rather informed the team how he plans to reach the goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather giving &quot;someone an update&quot; look at the sprint board and inform the team what you are doing and keep within the timebox.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34072" LastActivityDate="2019-01-15T12:53:37.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25625" CreationDate="2019-01-15T14:31:03.673" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've worked with teams where this is the norm. That said, we tend to fall back on the Scrum Guide for how to handle this. The team is ultimately responsible for organizing and managing their own work with a Scrum Master there to guide them on choosing the best path forward. While it's the job of the Scrum Master to suss out the options available to the team, empowerment of choice tends to engage the creativity within the team and individuals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to shy away from using &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt;, but in cases like this I always let the team decide their best path forward so long as enough options have been considered prior to making a choice. Whether the forecast is met or not, it goes a long way in aiding the psychology of the team responsible for their own work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33598" LastActivityDate="2019-01-15T14:31:03.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25619" CreationDate="2019-01-15T17:48:44.467" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not how MS Project works. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A schedule has Tasks and Resources. One or more resources can be added to a task to create an &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;assignment&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. The assignment represents the work being done on the task by the resource(s). You can have have multiple resources working on a task but they will all be in one group (shown in a Task view as &lt;code&gt;Resource Names&lt;/code&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use a numbered text field (e.g. &lt;code&gt;Text1&lt;/code&gt;) to contain names of other resource categories (e.g. SMEs), but you'll need to type them in manually as they can't be tied to the schedule's Resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastActivityDate="2019-01-15T17:48:44.467" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25616" CreationDate="2019-01-16T06:36:32.760" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If this is a single channel where only the final decisions are posted (without the discussions) then that should be fine. There is not much more you can do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you say it's a software project, you could have a readme file as part of your source where all decisions are put. That way, anybody pulling the latest source would notice it changed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even then, I know people that don't pull the latest source before they work or don't care for changes. So in the end, it's a question of discipline and professionalism. And students might not have either (yet). I think it's a good setup, there is nothing you could change on the technical level. The only change that will affect the situation is a &lt;em&gt;boss&lt;/em&gt; that holds people &lt;em&gt;accountable&lt;/em&gt; for what they do or don't do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, 25 people involved is not a small project. In the real world, 25 people are multiple teams with at least one person per team assigned with just making sure the communication is working (whether you call that job a Project Manager or Scrum Master). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2019-01-16T06:36:32.760" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25625" CreationDate="2019-01-16T07:54:37.063" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Experiment.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile is all about experimentation and continuous improvement - discuss with the team, try both, compare results. Rinse and repeat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, you can stick to agile techniques that are proven to be effective in the long term such as pair programming (as you suggested), &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mob_programming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;mob programming&lt;/a&gt;, or backlog refinement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your team is less mature or is still grasping to get into agile, the team may decide to add an item to the sprint and keep working, which is fine. However, as Scrum Master, you should raise these scenarios as opportunities for improvement and discover new techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-01-16T07:54:37.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11843" CreationDate="2019-01-16T08:24:01.810" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could add a column without WIP Limit in front of the test column.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example for columns TODO | Implementation | Implementation Done | Test | Done&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The item would then rest in Implementation Done until the HW arrives and someone picks it up. This state would also be highlighted in some way. We use different Magnets on our board: Colors/Symbols - Team member; White - Neutral Zone (ToDo, Implementation Done); Red - Don't Pick it up&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34708" LastActivityDate="2019-01-16T08:24:01.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25616" CreationDate="2019-01-16T09:49:37.207" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems to be a long-awaited for missing feature in Slack: Read Receipts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In WhatsApp, you would be able to tell who read the messages and who hasn't seen them yet. that would solve your problem at some level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have various choices, short of using WhatsApp:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep a list of the &lt;em&gt;non-readers&lt;/em&gt; and send them personal reminders&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a shared sheet that &lt;em&gt;readers&lt;/em&gt; have to &lt;em&gt;sign off&lt;/em&gt; once they read the decisions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a periodic &lt;em&gt;attendance compulsory&lt;/em&gt; meeting where you review the decisions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get to the root of the problem. Specifically:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that you - as a group - are sending a lot of messages. If 1-10 messages are Very Important Decisions one can only guess how many messages came before the decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to come up with a way to send the important messages in a way they will be noticed and not ignored. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a separate &quot;decisions-group&quot; was a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe sending the decisions to the &quot;decisions-group&quot; at a specific time daily would help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest you talk to some of the &lt;em&gt;non-readers&lt;/em&gt; and ask them why they ignore the &quot;decisions-group&quot; and what could be done that they take the &quot;decisions-group&quot; seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2019-01-16T09:49:37.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2017" CreationDate="2019-01-16T10:06:05.603" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found that walking around and talking to each person is the only effective way to get a full status update. the write it up and send an email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you're really good at it, don't use electronic means to record the status; pen and paper is the fastest and least annoying method, as far as those giving the status are concerned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work from the bottom up, going to the managers last. It was fascinating to see the reaction of managers when I reported to them what their teams were up to. The disconnect never ceased to amaze me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's time-consuming. When I did this in a company of about 100 people it took an entire day to collect and write up the information. But it was worth it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;QA used this status report (sent out at the end of the week) to plan their week in their weekly planning meeting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Managers used this report in their weekly coordination meeting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;C-levels used this to plan ahead.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Format:&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Like all good status reports it had last week's plans, this week's achievements and the plans for next week, so that one could see how projects were progressing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a bonus, the weekly status report included current absences, upcoming leaves, vacations and holidays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2019-01-16T10:06:05.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25616" CreationDate="2019-01-16T14:09:28.500" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Knowledge Socialisation Sessions.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each project uses a different name for this, but the bottomline is that projects with more than a a handful of people requires a process where people can have a &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;summary&lt;/strong&gt; of the latest changes or decisions&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our case, I set a bi-weekly meeting where all &lt;em&gt;latest decisions that could impact project performance in the &lt;strong&gt;mid to long term&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; were presented. Tracking each and every item (up to 10 decisions a day, you mentioned) could be doable but overkill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, on the invitation itself there was a list of items discussed, so attendees don't strictly need to remember the &lt;em&gt;specific decision&lt;/em&gt; taken an year ago but remember that &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;it was discussed on this forum&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;... and a quick search on the cumulative meeting invitation would lead to the answer (in our case, Jira IDs with a &lt;em&gt;very brief&lt;/em&gt; summary of the discussion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way, you're &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;offering an opportunity&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for the people to be aware of the latest changes. If someone is not interested on get to know on the latest updates fine... just don't attend the meeting. If someone left for a couple weeks and would like to know what happened, fine as well - just scan the meeting invitation for the latest news.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's important to &lt;em&gt;offer&lt;/em&gt; without forcing people to &quot;acknowledge&quot; they're aware of the information (that's why I don't like the idea of sign-offs or read receipts). People should naturally be interested to know this information, and if you have an engaged team it might work (or the team itself might provide other ideas). OTOH, if the team is not engaged, then there's an underlying problem to be dealt with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Alternatives:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a Confluence / Wiki for the decisions taken&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a turning role on the team to take notes and mail on a timely basis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agileadvice.com/2005/05/10/bookreviews/information-radiators/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;knowledge Radiators&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-01-16T14:09:28.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25616" CreationDate="2019-01-16T22:37:17.300" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Welcome, Jelle!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, expecting that decisions are read in slack is &lt;em&gt;just ineffective&lt;/em&gt;, because they get lost/confusing eventually, especially if it is an update from a previous decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that you could put them in a structured place where everyone can see it when they need to. This place can be either a document, a wiki page, a trello board, whatever you consider more useful for solving your problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2019-01-16T22:37:17.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25637" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25638" CreationDate="2019-01-17T12:51:45.927" Score="6" ViewCount="164" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem I came across:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A 2-week Sprint is close to the end (let's say 80% of the time has passed by)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A particular user story has just been completed (and has unit tests)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What next? Testing takes time, especially if a special environment should be deployed. So at the end of the Sprint I usually have several user stories under QA, so should I mark them as completed, or not?&#xA;(Possibly, the question could be rephrased as: 'Should the &quot;QA COMPLETED&quot; condition be included into the Definition Of Done?')&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34724" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-01-17T14:07:10.577" LastActivityDate="2019-01-24T06:15:07.980" Title="Is QA stage mandatory to be included into user story cycle?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;testing&gt;&lt;definition-of-done&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25637" CreationDate="2019-01-17T13:08:29.000" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The direct answer for almost all teams is that QA must be complete to call a user story done. I would take that further and say that I have never worked with a team where this was not true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;The More Thorough Answer&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, a product increment (the product as it stands at the end of the sprint) must be &quot;potentially shippable&quot;. This is a confusing term, but what it means is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The decision to ship a product to end users or not should be a business decision (do the available features provide a significant enough value to the end users that it is worth the cost to give it to them and the stress of them adopting the new version of the software). If there are technical reasons why the product can't be shipped (bugs, not QA'd, not in a deployable state, etc), then it is no longer a business decision. Therefor, a product increment is considered potentially shippable if there are no technical reasons that the product cannot be shipped to end users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;Definition of Done&quot; acts as a list of those items that must be completed in order to meet the criteria for a Potentially Shippable product. So, the more complete answer to your question would be: &lt;strong&gt;If QA tests must run and pass before your product can be shipped to end users, then it should be in your definition of done and must be completed in the sprint in order to move those backlog items to a &quot;Done&quot; state.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-01-17T13:08:29.000" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25639" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25640" CreationDate="2019-01-17T14:35:38.817" Score="4" ViewCount="94" Body="&lt;p&gt;How to treat users stories which were almost completed at previous sprint but didn't meet Definition of Done due to testers were late for some reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose one of those stories was 5 story points, so how to treat it for the next sprint? Also as 5? Or reestimate it as 1/2?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34724" LastActivityDate="2019-01-17T14:41:11.810" Title="How to treat users stories which were almost completed at the previous sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2019-01-17T15:05:18.380" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25639" CreationDate="2019-01-17T14:41:11.810" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You re-estimate them. The difference is &quot;lost&quot;, it's not part of this sprint's velocity, because it was not done. The re-estimated story can be in the next sprint, but does not have to be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You said &quot;the testers were late&quot;. Does that mean testers are outside of your Scrum team? Then your Definition of Done is not working out. The development team should be able to turn stories into finished product increments &lt;em&gt;on their own&lt;/em&gt;. If they cannot do so, then something is not right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2019-01-17T14:41:11.810" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25565" CreationDate="2019-01-17T17:32:04.213" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The gantt charts like the one you use are not prepared to show that detail level for a reason, and is because it's a planning tool, and you don't make plans to say what are you going to do within a day, but to know if you are going to meet a deadline 3 months from today&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29163" LastActivityDate="2019-01-17T17:32:04.213" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25623" CreationDate="2019-01-18T02:02:10.933" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two options off the top of my head. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One. You can set up &lt;strong&gt;MS Project Server&lt;/strong&gt;, which would potentially give all your stakeholders browser-based access to your project. It would also do another thousand things that would probably be valuable for your organization. This is the expensive option -- the server software is more than $1000, I believe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two. You could have your stakeholders install a freeware project plan file viewer. &lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/projects/mppviewer/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MPP Viewer&lt;/a&gt;, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20700" LastActivityDate="2019-01-18T02:02:10.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18147" CreationDate="2019-01-18T04:01:30.207" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;PEOPLE - it's all about the updating!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to actually use the 'update project' button in the 'Project' Tab, 'Status' section and the 'update Project' button.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can enter the % complete or other value and it will still not update the BCWP until you give the project a formal update via the 'Update Project' button.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34732" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-01-18T14:03:51.783" LastActivityDate="2019-01-18T14:03:51.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25645" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25647" CreationDate="2019-01-18T20:52:38.240" Score="5" ViewCount="3526" Body="&lt;p&gt;When people discuss Sprints that start or stop mid-week, they seem to agree that this should be done on a Tuesday or Wednesday. Why is that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, how do week-long Sprints with mid-week starts and stops follow each other without constantly moving which days of the week are used? For instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint 1: Tuesday to Tuesday, next sprint starts Wednesday.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint 2: Wednesday to Wednesday, next sprint starts Thursday.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sprint 3: Thursday to Thursday, next sprint starts Friday.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the idea to do Wednesday to Wednesday, where Wednesdays are the end of the current Sprint and the beginning of the next?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26258" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-01-18T23:16:36.043" LastActivityDate="2019-01-21T09:26:36.570" Title="Sprints Starting Mid-Week in Scrum" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;sprint-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25645" CreationDate="2019-01-18T23:10:33.147" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Think in Five-Day Cycles&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're thinking in seven-day cycles for some reason. You may have a specific use case for this, but I would consider it unusual to plan this way. As a general rule, Sprints are based on single teams, and a team &lt;em&gt;usually&lt;/em&gt; plans around 40 hours per person during each week, and five business days per team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if  you're planning one-week Sprints, you could start on a Monday, end on a Friday, and then start again on the following Monday. This is a typical cadence, and certainly the most common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum teams that don't decouple delivery from deployment might prefer not to deliver on a Friday, because in such shops there may be no one to tend production over the weekend immediately after new features have been rolled out. In that case, they may prefer to deliver earlier in the work week. This gives newly deployed code a couple of days of &quot;burn in&quot; before everyone leaves for the weekend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this type of cadence, starting each Sprint on Wednesday and ending on the following Tuesday (along with the associated deployment) leaves three business days for burn-in and urgent bug fixes. You could also start on Thursday and end on Wednesday, or (for teams that only allocate half a day each for planning and review/retrospective ceremonies) start and end on the same day each week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Whole Thing is an Anti-Pattern&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case it isn't obvious, all the atypical cadences above are really anti-patterns. They are trying to work around defects in staffing, planning, process, tooling, or organizational politics by routing around the problem rather than resolving it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Truly agile teams should decouple delivery from deployment, and the Definition of Done should include sufficient quality assurance and continuous integration testing to assure that breaking changes aren't likely to make it into production. If these things are done properly, there's no reason to have weekly Sprints that are out of sync with the Development Team's work week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In close to two decades of agile implementations, I have yet to see this type of delivery cycle serve any purpose other than to cover up an X/Y problem of some sort. If you think you &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to do it, then the organization is probably less agile than it imagines itself to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; do it, then adjust your delivery dates to fit somewhere within the middle of the work week where it is least likely to be disruptive to developer flow. As a singular example, delivering on a Monday is usually a spectacular failure for most teams that break for the weekend, although your mileage may certainly vary. Even when following an anti-pattern like mid-week delivery, it's usually best to optimize for flow and shorten Sprints to fit within a predictable weekly cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum framework optimizes for predictability. Select odd or unpredictable Sprint lengths or unusual delivery cycles at your own peril.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-01-18T23:10:33.147" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25645" CreationDate="2019-01-19T14:14:10.350" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also, how do week-long Sprints with mid-week starts and stops follow each other without constantly moving which days of the week are used? For instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sprint 1: Tuesday to Tuesday, next sprint starts Wednesday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprints always start on the same day of the week. That means they must end on the day before that. M-F or T-M or W-T or Th-W. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you're first trying to get used to this, it helps to count off the working days, remembering that there are 5/10/15/20 days in a 1/2/3/4 week sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When people discuss Sprints that start or stop mid-week, they seem to agree that this should be done on a Tuesday or Wednesday. Why is that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen recommendations for starting on Wednesday or Thursday, because there are important Scrum activities that normally occur on the first (sprint planning) and last (review &amp;amp; retro) days of the sprint. Starting or ending a sprint on Mondays or Fridays runs a higher risk of regularly missing folks who are taking a vacation day for a long weekend, or are leaving early on Friday or coming in late on Monday. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there is no absolute/intrinsic answer to this one. It depends on your local circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2019-01-19T14:14:10.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="44" CreationDate="2019-01-20T15:10:02.103" Score="1" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Wrong purpose&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most common problem is planning it as a &lt;em&gt;blaming session&lt;/em&gt; and not as a meeting to come up with a plan to never repeat a mistake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, in the rare case it's about a success: Plan it as a way to get to the root of why we succeeded, and how to repeat that routinely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Placing the blame&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be successful, these sessions must not be about blaming (or complimenting) a specific person (or group).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You always want to be focusing on the process and not the person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Missing timeline&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The timeline of what exactly happened and when in chronological order - needs to be agreed upon before the meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If need be, have a pre-meeting to agree on the timeline, with everybody presenting facts (if possible).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise the meeting focuses on who did what when and why, instead of figuring out how to (not) repeat the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Atmosphere&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The atmosphere at these sessions must be conducive to freedom-of-speech. As already stated, the purpose is to figure out the problematic (or successful) &lt;strong&gt;process&lt;/strong&gt;, not &lt;strong&gt;person&lt;/strong&gt; (or group).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar to a brainstorming session, people should be allowed to say whatever they feel like (politely) without fear of being reprimanded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(At the post-mortem of our worst catastrophes we always had the biggest cake and best nosh. Everybody knew: The better the food the worse the calamity. But it sets the mood: we're not going to shoot anybody; we want to fix the problem.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Strict meeting protocol&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be effective, the sessions need to run along an agenda with a fixed (but not rigid) timeline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only one person is allowed to talk at a time, and they have to remain on-topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will get nowhere if everybody starts talking at the same time, or worse, start yelling at each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Result&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The meeting must have a stated purpose - to prevent (or repat) what we are discussing, by creating a new policy/process that most of the team agrees to. (And all have to follow, until it's proven pointless).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There needs to be meeting minutes taken and disseminated, and there needs to be a clear &lt;strong&gt;bottom line&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2019-01-20T15:10:02.103" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2019-01-20T15:10:02.103" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25645" CreationDate="2019-01-21T09:26:36.570" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the other answers are highly focused on the last half of your question, I'll review the first half...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When people discuss Sprints that start or stop mid-week, they seem to&#xA;  agree that this should be done on a Tuesday or Wednesday. Why is that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on &lt;strong&gt;my experience&lt;/strong&gt;, it's part psychological and part practical - &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Your mileage may vary&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, and that's very important to avoid a debate on comments. Let's see the options (assuming a proper sprint, i.e. Mon to Fri, Tue to Mon, Wed to Tue and so on):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Monday:&lt;/strong&gt; Not a good candidate due to psychological factors (Monday is not the most beloved day of the week by nature) as well as technical factors (if there's working happening over the weekend such as a delivery or a validation, chances are people won't be very happy also starting / stopping iterations).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tuesday:&lt;/strong&gt; The opposite of Monday, with almost the whole week ahead. Usually done on one week iterations. You have a Monday to wrap up what you had pending from previous week and can plan properly how to &quot;start the week&quot;. Also, it breaks the (one week) sprint into 4+1, so psychologically speaking people could tend to plan tasks considering 4 days plus one for &quot;margin&quot;. I'd say that's the common approach on teams onboarding Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Wednesday:&lt;/strong&gt; Psychologically speaking, a less powerful version of Tuesday as you have less week ahead (although you have Mon and Tue next week). This problem almost disappears if you work on sprints with two weeks (or more). I'd say that's a good candidate for more mature teams.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Thursday:&lt;/strong&gt; You start the day with the planning, a lot of energy and enthusiasm. By the time you actually start work (Thu afternoon, potentially) you have only a day ahead before the weekend. That could have a massive negative psychological impact. Besides, by the time the iteration start, people could tend to think &quot;heck, week is almost over, things will start for real &lt;em&gt;on Monday&lt;/em&gt;!&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Friday:&lt;/strong&gt; A Thursday on steroids (in a bad sense). You dedicate a lot of time and energy to review stories, understand and plan them. By the time you completed, you have to go home and try to remember everything after a week enjoying life. Not the best, definitely.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the sprint demo - a byproduct of sprint finish - could be one good reason for having sprints finishing on Thursday (or Friday). Psychologically speaking, there's &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/199809/if-its-thursday-ask-raise&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;more negotiation and compromise on a Thursday and Friday&lt;/a&gt; than any other day of the week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-01-21T09:26:36.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25651" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-01-21T10:01:48.650" Score="12" ViewCount="1439" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently we are following one week Sprint, Post refinement sometimes we encounter few stories which may take more than 1 week time to complete development, integration &amp;amp; Test. This means to produce working software increment it may take more than 1 week. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In planning we are committing logical components development completion and in review we are providing update to PO and Stakeholders on the status of Sprint backlog( how many we achieved and how many we slipped and what happen to make it or slip it). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this correct? &#xA;Does Scrum mandate working demo in Sprint Review ? Or can we agree a set of PBI and  achieve those by keeping demo as optional (do if end to end development &amp;amp; testings is completed)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34755" LastEditorUserId="34755" LastEditDate="2019-01-21T19:18:52.907" LastActivityDate="2019-01-28T09:50:35.633" Title="Demo in Sprint Review" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint-review&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25651" CreationDate="2019-01-21T10:40:31.343" Score="11" Body="&lt;h1&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a lot going on here.  The short answer is that the Sprint Review does not have to be a &lt;em&gt;demo&lt;/em&gt; but Scrum does advocate that the team should produce a &lt;em&gt;potentially shippable product increment&lt;/em&gt;.   That means the code is able to be shipped even if the Product Owner chooses to hold it back for whatever reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Breaking Down Your Post&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Minor points&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum is not an acronym.  It is just Scrum; it comes from rugby.  Imagine the ball is the goal of a project and as a team you are just moving it down the field a small iteration at a time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anything you want is &lt;em&gt;optional&lt;/em&gt;, it just means that you are no longer &lt;em&gt;doing Scrum&lt;/em&gt;,  There is a difference between doing Scrum and &lt;em&gt;being Agile&lt;/em&gt;.  Agile is a set of values.  Scrum is a framework that you can add things to but not take things away from&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Major points&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have one week Sprint but due to application architecture complexity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There one sentence alone could form the basis of a retrospective.  Why is the architecture complex?  Are you working in a tightly regulated environment?  Have the business mandated it that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no wrong answers so just be really honest.  Scrum Teams cannot always change their work environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What technologies are you working with?  Do architectural decisions have to pass through a TDA or a CAB and does that impact the success of your sprints?  Do you have a full time architect?  Are you trying to work with an emergent architecture or plan everything up front?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of these items unlocks another little part of the puzzle to make Scrum a success.  In highly dependent infrastructure projects where the requirements are known then Scrum (short sprints) is not always the optimal solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, in business intelligence there is a large part of the data strategy that must be built up front and cannot be delivered incrementally/emergent because the rework penalty would be so high and the business would suffer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, most projects can be delivered incrementally if a business is willing to change it's behaviours.  Be really honest; what is your project attempting to accomplish and how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;we unable to product working software in end of week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why not?  Is this due to organisation barriers or the technology implementation?  What is the shortest period of time that you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; think you could produce working software?  Are all parts of the project struggling with the week-long timebox or simply infrastructure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In planning we are committing logic components development completion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you breaking down Epics and User Stories to a granular enough level and are you using the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/invest/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST criteria&lt;/a&gt; to evaluate stories?  Are you refining stories before Sprint Planning and do you have a BA to support the activities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, remember that in Scrum, the planning ceremony is a forecast, not a commitment.  The easy way to stop the business punishing &lt;em&gt;slipped items&lt;/em&gt; is to gradually take less and less into the Sprint until you never miss a forecast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in review we are providing update PO and Stakeholders on the status of Sprint backlog( how many we achieved and how many we slipped and what happen to make it or slip it)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have a Scrum Master and are they supporting this activity?  What is the PO doing during the Review?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, the primary goal of the Review is to gain &lt;em&gt;feedback&lt;/em&gt; on what has been delivered or is underway. It is a chance for stakeholders to see the vision of the product and inform the &lt;em&gt;builders&lt;/em&gt; whether that is what they had envisioned. It is not to make teams feel bad for missing forecasts or focussing on &lt;em&gt;what slipped&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not to evaluate the project for hitting an arbitrary timeline or metric of completed user stories.   Especially since we could &lt;em&gt;game&lt;/em&gt; that metric very easily but taking the large story and making it 50 one-line stories.  Suddenly the team have hit 98% productivity and only 1 user stories remains saying &lt;em&gt;deploy&lt;/em&gt;... (Don't do this.  I am just showing how arbitrary Agile metrics can be manipulated).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or can we agree a set of PBI and achieve those by keeping demo as optional (do if end to end development completed)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/resources/what-is-a-sprint-review&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;From Scrum.org:&lt;/a&gt;  Sprint Review is held at the end of the Sprint to &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;inspect the Increment&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; and adapt the Product Backlog if needed. There could have been a single deployment or many deployments during a Sprint which lead up to that Increment to be inspected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Product Owner explains what Product Backlog items have been “Done” and what has not been “Done”&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Development Team discusses what went well during the Sprint, what problems it ran into, and how those problems were solved&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The entire group collaborates on what to do next, so that the Sprint Review provides valuable input to subsequent Sprint Planning;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A collaborative discussion about timelines, budgets and other product/project administration &lt;em&gt;if appropriate&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Other Questions that an Agile Coach or a Scrum Master should ask&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have a Definition of Done?  If so, what does it say and is it valid and when was it last updated?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have &lt;em&gt;play ready&lt;/em&gt; stories and have they been suitable broken down into small enough chunks to ensure &lt;em&gt;sprint success&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have all of the skills within the team that you need?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately this post has become less about giving you the answers and more a chance for you to start framing the problem in a way that a Scrum Master or an Agile Coach would you help you work through it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As always; the first line support for your question can be found in the &lt;em&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/em&gt; and from your Scrum Master. Second line support should be your organisational Agile Coaches.  You cannot go wrong simply reading the Scrum Guide and, if the advice is too difficult, asking why it is difficult within your organisation and project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-01-21T10:40:31.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25651" CreationDate="2019-01-21T11:46:55.787" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Forget about Demo.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before downvotes start to fly, bear with me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Venture mentioned (+1!), you have foundation problems that should be addressed before you get concerned about a Demo. I'll bet you come from a Company where senior management heard that Scrum is the next big thing and you should be having Sprints and Demos and Daily meetings to grab a few awards, &lt;em&gt;amirite&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jokes aside, I hope I'm wrong. Anyway, back to the main answer - before focusing on Demos, review &lt;strong&gt;what's required to deliver &lt;em&gt;value&lt;/em&gt; at the end of the iteration&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You may need to get rid of some activities if they're not helping you deliver (just as focusing on how to have excellent ceremonies without delivering actual value). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You may need more automation (on testing, on deployment, whatever). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You may need more contact with business to understand the minimal delivery you can offer on the shortest timespam. Business should work closer to IT, and IT should understand the business. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You may need to review how to have cadence to deliver and keep a good pace. You may need to have bigger iterations, as you're probably working with a 10 years old juggernaut that has been patched over and over.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have covered &lt;em&gt;all the above&lt;/em&gt;, you'll be potentially working with an agile team (compare above to &lt;a href=&quot;https://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;agile values&lt;/a&gt; to have a more consistent idea). Then, you can think of evolve into a specific framework, such as Scrum. Trying to become agile by implementing Scrum &lt;em&gt;ceremonies&lt;/em&gt; is like starting a house from the roof. So... forget about the Demo. And tell senior management to forget about zero value awards. At least for now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-01-21T11:46:55.787" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25651" CreationDate="2019-01-21T18:15:26.070" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Demonstrations are Required; &lt;em&gt;Visual&lt;/em&gt; Demos are a Best Practice&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum &lt;em&gt;requires&lt;/em&gt; that work be demonstrated during the Sprint Review. The Scrum Guide says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Development Team demonstrates the work that it has &quot;Done&quot; and answers questions about the Increment[.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the framework doesn't require hands-on or visual demonstrations, it's widely considered a best practice. Such demonstrations are generally the most effective way to present useful product information to stakeholders, and to solicit their feedback. Thinking about &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; you might demonstrate the increment forces the Scrum Team to take a test-first (or perhaps &quot;demo first&quot;) approach to the work during Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Guide &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-review&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;defines the Sprint Review&lt;/a&gt; as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Sprint Review is held at the end of the Sprint to inspect the Increment and adapt the Product Backlog if needed. During the Sprint Review, the Scrum Team and stakeholders collaborate about what was done in the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it has more to say, the underlying goal of this Scrum event is to present completed work to stakeholders, and to gather feedback. Perhaps more importantly, the work presented should be in a potentially-shippable state. The Scrum Guide goes on to say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the end of a Sprint, the new Increment must be &quot;Done,&quot; which means it must be in useable condition and meet the Scrum Team’s definition of &quot;Done&quot;. An increment is a body of inspectable, done work that supports empiricism at the end of the Sprint. The increment is a step toward a vision or goal. The increment must be in useable condition regardless of whether the Product Owner decides to release it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, almost by definition, the contents of the Sprint Review should contain &lt;em&gt;usable&lt;/em&gt; feature increments. While there are occasionally products or individual Sprints where visual or visible progress can't be demonstrated, it is more likely that the Backlog Refinement and Sprint Planning processes need work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How to Fix Your Processes&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, &quot;we can't demo our increment&quot; is a project smell that indicates that Backlog Refinement and/or Sprint Planning are not being done in a truly agile way. In many cases, these can be boiled down to a few common anti-patterns with common solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Product Backlog is not properly ordered.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hard to work incrementally when the backlog is an unordered list of work items and specifications, rather than a coherent set of &lt;em&gt;features&lt;/em&gt; that represent an increment of value to the &lt;em&gt;value consumer&lt;/em&gt; of a user story (e.g. the &quot;As a , I want...&quot; part of the Connextra format).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Help the Product Owner refactor the Product Backlog, and make sure that any user stories that are near the top of the backlog are broken down into stories. These prioritized stories should each be smaller than a single Sprint, if not even smaller.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;User stories don't meet &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST criteria&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each user story should be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Independent&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Negotiable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Valuable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimate-able&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Small&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last is actually the most important, and feeds directly into the advice to demonstrate the increment at the end of each Sprint. By thinking about how to test each story to very that it meets your Definition of Done, you ensure that the team takes a test-driven approach to design and implementation. In addition, by designing the tests &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt; during Sprint Planning, you have the ability to bake the &lt;em&gt;presentation&lt;/em&gt; of the work into your plans and estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprint Planning for each increment lacks a cohesive Sprint Goal.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprint Goals are not optional. The framework requires them. The Scrum Guide says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During Sprint Planning the Scrum Team also crafts a Sprint Goal. The Sprint Goal is an objective that will be met within the Sprint through the implementation of the Product Backlog, and it provides guidance to the Development Team on why it is building the Increment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, work selected by the Scrum Team for the Sprint should provide &lt;em&gt;coherence&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Sprint Goal gives the Development Team some flexibility regarding the functionality implemented within the Sprint. The selected Product Backlog items deliver one coherent function, which can be the Sprint Goal. The Sprint Goal can be any other coherence that causes the Development Team to work together rather than on separate initiatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the goal of a Sprint is never to just &quot;do all the work.&quot; It must always be to deliver a functional increment of value. Many new Scrum Teams could solve a large host of framework implementation problems by ensuring that they always start each Sprint with a well-defined, measurable Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The team and stakeholders lack a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#artifact-transparency-done&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Definition of Done&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a Scrum Team lacks a Definition of Done, it can't really meet stakeholder expectations about the functionality or quality of an increment. More importantly, it can't test &quot;doneness&quot; or communicate effectively about scope. Progress on the project then becomes a qualitative, rather than quantitative, metric. This leads to common pitfalls like saying &quot;60% of stuff 40% done,&quot; which in the real world means the project is doomed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team must develop a test-first mentality for its work product, and codify those expectations into a testable (or at least &quot;checklistable&quot;) format. This definition should also include criteria from stakeholders, so that everyone agrees on what &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt; really looks like.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Scrum Team is not working iteratively.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most agile frameworks, work should be both &lt;em&gt;incremental&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;iterative.&lt;/em&gt; The ideal unit of work in Scrum is a thin, vertical slice of functionality that can be developed, tested, and delivered within a single Sprint. When the work is not sized or sliced correctly, you lose essential benefits of the iterative/incremental development model and are essentially doing waterfall within an ersatz Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you practice test-driven Sprint Planning, this issue will become much more visible. Implementing Sprint Goals and ensuring Product Backlog Items meet INVEST criteria will solve a lot of the sizing and scoping problems you're experiencing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprint boundaries are not being respected.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While some advanced practitioners advocate decoupling delivery from deployment, Scrum is a time-boxing framework. Scrum Teams, especially new ones, often struggle with explicit time boxes and the iterative nature of the work. This leads to Sprints that lack clear boundaries for the work, and a lack of independence (remember the INVEST criteria?) between features or backlog items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The absolute best advice for any new Scrum Team is to respect the Sprint boundaries. Each Sprint Goal should be something the Scrum Team thinks it can deliver within a single Sprint, and all the work the Development Team accepts into the Sprint should ideally be only a day or two's worth of effort. In no event should a Sprint Backlog item &lt;em&gt;ever&lt;/em&gt; exceed the length of the current Sprint!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work near the top of the Product Backlog should be decomposed into small, independent, testable user stories during Backlog Refinement. Any epics or user stories that won't fit within the Development Team's capacity estimate for the current Sprint should be decomposed further or renegotiated with the Product Owner during Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your current product roadmap and architecture do not appear to be test- or behavior-driven. The result is work that is hard to time-box, and almost impossible to work on iteratively/incrementally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should leverage the Sprint Retrospective and other Scrum events to identify which common implementation errors your process may currently have, and collaborate with the team and with stakeholders to correct them. By implementing the framework properly, and by adopting widely-accepted best practices such as test-driven design and just-in-time planning, you should be able to reduce the project's friction points significantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-01-21T18:15:26.070" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25655" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25657" CreationDate="2019-01-21T21:04:54.823" Score="6" ViewCount="115" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question's context is a company that creates a software product that consists of several functional components (you could also call them sub-products) and sells the product to a rather small number of customers (~10 core customers, &amp;lt;100 in total). Those customers pay a licence fee for new stuff and an annual fee for maintenance. There are around 20 developers, working with an agile process for several years. We consider moving from project teams to fixed teams. We are discussing two primary principles how to arrange the teams: (1) Each team is responsible for a set of functional components, or (2) each team is responsible for a group of customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have positive or negative experiences with either option in a similar context? Which of the options is better for the given context?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34765" LastActivityDate="2019-01-23T10:27:05.770" Title="Should we arrange multiple agile sub-teams along customer groups or along software components?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25655" CreationDate="2019-01-21T21:27:59.630" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a tough question to answer because it depends on your company. The general guideline is to optimize the team toward value creation. Usually, a question like this is posed as: should we organize teams around system components and functional areas. The answer in that question is easier because with system components, no one team can deliver a valuable feature to users on their own. However, in your case, it sounds like both potentially can deliver a full valuable feature on their own, so the question may be, which can better or more often deliver a valuable feature on their own?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other model to consider with such a small number of developers is completely interchangable teams. If all teams can do all work, then you'll always get to your most important features fastest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-01-21T21:27:59.630" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25655" CreationDate="2019-01-22T11:22:09.610" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Experiment.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No answer presented here will fit your specific product, team or customer. Agile promotes continuous improvement, so go for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind, we can review some key items to consider while experimenting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Why&lt;/em&gt; changing?&lt;/strong&gt; Have clear the problems the team is intended to address by applying these changes. Changing for the sake of change &quot;to become more agile&quot; is not a real purpose. Your real purpose is to deliver value more often and with predictability. Agile is a tool that can help you on it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Teams should be able to deliver a &lt;em&gt;complete product&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt; If you organize teams by functional components, you'll have more expertise on this specific component, but you may end up with a great team in UI delivering a lot of changes that cannot be activated because the backend team is not as experienced. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Understand your &lt;em&gt;current knowledge background&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt; If you have a single person doing UI and this is key for all deliveries, having different teams depending on this single person will eventually create a bottleneck. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;knowledge background&lt;/strong&gt; is one of the most complex changes for fully functional agile teams. If your team relies on specific people's knowledge, before changing the team structure I'd suggest to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;review the current knowledge background the team members have&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;where are the gaps or potential bottlenecks if someone gets sick and then&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;discuss with the team who'd like to expand their knowledge background on these areas &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, one doesn't need to be expert on &lt;em&gt;all and every area&lt;/em&gt; (I still consider a &lt;a href=&quot;https://medium.com/swlh/the-full-stack-developer-is-a-myth-4e3fb9c25867&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;full stack developer&quot;&lt;/a&gt; a fallacy in most cases). Instead, one should have a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-shaped_skills&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;T-shaped skillset&lt;/a&gt; enable every subteam to be able to delivery with minimal dependency of other teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-01-22T11:22:09.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23088" CreationDate="2019-01-22T18:59:06.193" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to &lt;em&gt;use agile on projects where scope is known upfront&lt;/em&gt;? &lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it the &lt;em&gt;best approach&lt;/em&gt;? &lt;strong&gt;Maybe.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It all boils down on how much &lt;em&gt;uncertainty&lt;/em&gt; you'll face along the implementation and how much value you can &lt;em&gt;deliver incrementally&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, when setting up a video conf project, do you know...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;whether the network will be capable of supporting the new demand? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;this new demand will be stable across different offices? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in case you need to change your network provider in a given location, are you aware of how to proceed with it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all the above is going to be delivered &quot;by the book&quot;, then go with waterfall. On the other hand, you may find benefits on the incremental approach agile delivers, as you can setup an initial part of the structure for a few offices while you address the problems on other offices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take this with a grain of salt - agile is about &lt;em&gt;incremental deliveries&lt;/em&gt;. If there's a hard committment date (due to any external factor, for instance) you may want to stick to the Waterfall that will give you more capacity to cover your part of the project from eventual external dependencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-01-22T18:59:06.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25659" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-01-23T07:23:09.467" Score="3" ViewCount="124" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm using MS Project 2010. When assigning a task with duration say 5 days and work of say 10 hours. Then MSP distributes the occupation for that resource over the whole duration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Mon 2h | Tue 2h | Wed 2h | Thu 2h | Fri 2h&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far so good, assume I'm 1 day away from the end date and set the % completed to 20%, i.e. the remaining hours are 8h. How can I make MSP set the occupation for that resource such, that it has to do 8h on the last day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Mon 0.5h | Tue 0.5h | Wed 0.5h | Thu 0.5h | Fri 8h&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know the feature &lt;em&gt;Task&lt;/em&gt;-&gt;&lt;em&gt;Move&lt;/em&gt;-&gt;&lt;em&gt;Incomplete Parts to Status Date&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;That almost does the trick, but using that feature increases the duration. I would like to fix the duration and the work, and &lt;em&gt;simply&lt;/em&gt; change the work per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could simply assign the &lt;em&gt;actual work&lt;/em&gt; per day in the resource assignment view, but that seems to be somewhat cumbersome if I have hundreds of tasks...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31445" LastEditorUserId="33837" LastEditDate="2019-11-04T09:29:27.190" LastActivityDate="2021-03-03T21:01:35.160" Title="Change task distribution with % completed" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25655" CreationDate="2019-01-23T10:27:05.770" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;It seems&lt;/em&gt; to me that doing it around software components is wiser because It looks like the teams will be able to control decisions better since they will receive the input from multiple clients into a single feature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do the other way around: having multiple teams working on the same component with different client inputs, it seems like there might be a chance of stepping on each other's toes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to take into account the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How are you measuring success? What do you think that it will happen after the change?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Could you do gradual &quot;pilots&quot; and see if they actually have a benefit? (example: start moving a team working on a single software component and see if it improves performance in any way)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32111" LastActivityDate="2019-01-23T10:27:05.770" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25661" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25662" CreationDate="2019-01-23T14:39:56.370" Score="2" ViewCount="248" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suppose you work by scrum and set up special meetings to let developers share their knowledge about technologies / experience of the current project parts / enhance collective code ownership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the name of such meetings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34724" LastActivityDate="2019-01-25T15:03:28.043" Title="What's the name of Knowledge sharing activity within scrum metodology" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;knowledge-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25661" CreationDate="2019-01-23T14:53:22.963" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no standardized name in the Scrum framework. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Call them whatever you think is appropriate so your team knows what it is and your organisation will accept it as part of your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen &quot;Workshop&quot;, &quot;Product Training&quot; and &quot;Talks&quot;, but it's really up to you to pick a name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2019-01-23T14:53:22.963" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25663" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-01-23T19:07:37.003" Score="1" ViewCount="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;I responded to an employment opportunity for an XP developer. I have done several XP projects early in the 2000s, but not lately after Scrum has come into wide practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The recruiter said they practice XP, particularly pair programming. And they project the pair programming session on an IMAX screen visible to anyone in the room. I have practiced pair programming, and I love it, for its many benefits - particularly the instant code review and very short feedback loop. Also, a great way to spread knowledge and experience. But our pair programming sessions were private conversations between two people. Sometimes groggy and tired. Sometimes clueless as to how to proceed. Sometimes needing another cup of coffee - you know, human attributes in a real-life working session.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone out there in XPland practice project a pair programming session on an IMAX screen? Or a large wall display (IMAX is extreme!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do practice that, can you please let us know the rationale and the benefits?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34781" LastActivityDate="2019-01-23T20:11:11.570" Title="Pair Programming and Display on an IMAX" Tags="&lt;extreme-programming&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2019-02-26T08:52:09.080" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25663" CreationDate="2019-01-23T20:11:11.570" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know what they are doing there. There are a few potential possibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) They are just enjoying a large screen. I find it incredibly hard to believe that it is truly IMAX. It is probably just a projector or a big screen. I like screens over projectors because I find the screens to cause less eye strain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Maybe they are doing &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVqUcNKVbYg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mob Programming&lt;/a&gt;. This gets many of the benefits pair programming applied to the whole team. It also has all of the challenges applied to the team too - you will notice in the linked video multiple hand sanitizer dispensers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) They are doing this to drive extreme transparency. This can be good or bad depending on the company. Most companies with extreme transparency also develop a culture of understanding and empathy. A much smaller percentage use it as a weapon. If you are concerned about this, maybe they can let you hang out in the development area while people are working during the interview so you can see for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-01-23T20:11:11.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25637" CreationDate="2019-01-24T06:15:07.980" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A story is not &quot;done&quot; till it meets its functionality and is tested for completely.That means you need to bring in QA within your sprint and not as a separate stage. That includes functional in-sprint testing as well as system and regression testing . This is not possible until the team adopts engineering practices such as CI/CD , automation testing .I assure you it is not an immediate state , but definitely attainable given the infrastructure and effort.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34733" LastActivityDate="2019-01-24T06:15:07.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25667" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25669" CreationDate="2019-01-24T11:00:04.353" Score="2" ViewCount="326" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our software team has essentially these storyboard columns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To Do&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Develop&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, people inside and outside the team often attempt to affect the board to represent pre- and post- states of stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has resulted in a board which now looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Draft&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Backlog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To Do&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Develop&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dev Test&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To Test&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tested&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I understand that these are completely reasonable and each team has it's own interpretation of the scrum board, I would like to know if and how anyone running into similar problems has been able to get back to 'pure' columns?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions to that end could/would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is your definition of 'Develop' or 'Test' when in practice each of those can mean potentially 3 different states (waiting for, doing and completed/needs sign off)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the maximum number of columns a reasonable scrum master should allow on their board, on average?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29374" LastActivityDate="2019-01-24T21:54:34.850" Title="Advisable scrum columns for software projects" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;board&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25668" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25670" CreationDate="2019-01-24T11:14:57.957" Score="3" ViewCount="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use ServiceNow story boards and one element of this tool is that it provides little coloured dots for representing attributes of stories or spikes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These dots are very limited in number, but our PM has configured some of them to be quite useful, from a visibility use case:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Red: blocked&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Green: Developer work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blue: DBA work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yellow: Story (as opposed to Spike)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, some of the dots are, IMHO, being bastardised for unrelated purposes. Some of the other dots are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Orange: In Sprint - my objection to this is that a story is in sprint if it is in any column from To Do to Done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Purple: (Dependent upon) External Team - my objection here is that stories dependent on other teams/or being developed by other teams should have that described within the story and should be prevented from entering the sprint during sprint planning (necessarily involving reading of the story content)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pink: Low Priority - my objection to this is that any low priority story will have it's place on the board and is the responsibility of the PO to set it's position; as it's position rises so too does it's priority; hence, priority is not a static attribute but a growing one&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the appropriate response to the Orange, Purple and Pink dots?&#xA;Is there a standard practice regarding even the Red, Green, Blue and Yellow dot approach?&#xA;(Am I overthinking this?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29374" LastActivityDate="2019-01-24T12:53:26.327" Title="Reflecting external dependencies" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;board&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25667" CreationDate="2019-01-24T11:25:33.913" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum doesn't say much about what a task board should look like, so most best practices are taken from Kanban. Some of the Kanban practices that seem applicable to your question are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The board should represent your team's workflow so that moving work through it creates a visualization of how the team is working. This creates opportunities to see bottlenecks and other challenges and improve them. Therefor, the columns on your board should represent the steps you go through on your team. This means, by inference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are no &quot;right&quot; columns. Each team is potentially different.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No one outside of the team should ever be changing the team's board.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Columns are stages of work. There are no queue columns. This means if your steps are &quot;dev&quot; and &quot;test&quot;, you should have those two columns. You should not have &quot;Dev&quot;, &quot;Ready for Test&quot;, &quot;Test&quot;. Visual indicators are commonly used like adding a check or dot to a card when it is ready to pull to the next column or an area of a column shown with a dotted line to distinguish if it is ready to pull. This may seem like minor difference, but it can have big impacts if your team starts applying WIP limits.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no maximum number of columns, but obviously if it starts getting confusing to use, you may need to revisit your board design. I would also watch that board design does not become an excuse to break core Scrum rules. I've seen teams add extra columns after Done so they can say their work was finished in the sprint, but had more columns to go through before it was really done. At that point, you're losing the value of both Scrum and the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-01-24T11:25:33.913" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25668" CreationDate="2019-01-24T12:53:26.327" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ar some level it depends on what you're using the story board for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's for &lt;strong&gt;tracking what the team is doing&lt;/strong&gt;, then you're right; this is overcrowding the board for no useful reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you're using it as an &lt;strong&gt;overview of the project status&lt;/strong&gt; then these dots are useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that different people may be using this for different reasons, in which case you're &lt;em&gt;overthinking this&lt;/em&gt; and your input will not be welcomed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OTOH if the board is too cluttered then you may want to ask for a reduction in dots, so that it becomes easier to deal with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2019-01-24T12:53:26.327" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25671" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25684" CreationDate="2019-01-24T14:59:53.927" Score="2" ViewCount="551" Body="&lt;p&gt;We deliver projects in fixed price, fixed time and fixed scope environment. We have a contract that specify those, specifications of features. Recently, an agile couch was trying to convince me to switch to story points but I fail to see how this would help me?  Why should I add an abstract unit that does not bring anything? Velocity is nice, but I have features estimated with time so I can clearly see whether we are making the deadline or not.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;By the nature of the contract, I cannot not have time estimates as high level estimates were done to calculate the price! So, I know I have 13 people, 5 months and have to deliver X features.&#xA;How would story points help me in this situation? I am really trying to see the benefit here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31435" LastEditorUserId="31435" LastEditDate="2019-01-24T17:42:45.107" LastActivityDate="2019-01-25T19:37:30.603" Title="We work with fixed scope, price and time - why should we use Story points?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25672" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-01-24T15:53:50.577" Score="4" ViewCount="172" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work as a project manager and I usually manage multiple client web projects with the same development team. We typically develop four to five web projects simultaneously. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, we decided to introduce Agile practices to the web development team. Hence, I recommended maintaining one product backlog for all projects. The idea behind this was to prioritize and pick development tasks to the sprint backlog (weekly or two weeks work schedule) in the sprint planning meeting. After the sprint, we can push development tasks to review servers and send clients for review and feedback. I would like to hear your advice as to whether or not to maintain only one product backlog for multiple web projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34796" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-01-24T18:33:20.703" LastActivityDate="2019-07-30T21:36:14.807" Title="Multiple Web Projects - One or many Product Backlogs?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25671" CreationDate="2019-01-24T16:05:18.343" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You should not do &quot;agile&quot; just because it's &quot;agile&quot;. If in your current approach of &quot;fixed price, fixed time and fixed scope&quot; every party involved is happy, then don't change anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know where you get your time estimates from. Developers are notoriously bad at estimating time and story points are a way to make estimations better. But again, if you have time estimates &lt;em&gt;and they are dead accurate&lt;/em&gt; then that's great. Don't change a thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2019-01-24T16:05:18.343" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25672" CreationDate="2019-01-24T16:53:10.063" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally, we talk about each product having its own backlog. In your case, it would be each client site. The backlog has one client/product owner who makes prioritization decisions, ranking the work for the dev team to build an iteration from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you're outlining could work for your team, but there will be some challenges. The biggest one in my mind will be determining the rank of each item in the combined backlog. Are each of your clients' #1 items at the top of the list? Which one goes first? Who makes these decisions? This will be a big thing to figure out, even if you're already implicitly making those decisions by investing time on different clients anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There will be other challenges you identify as you try out the approach. My best advice is to implement the most important feature of Scrum: the &lt;em&gt;retrospective&lt;/em&gt;. If you have good review of your work and consider ways to improve it, you'll improve your process steadily over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20700" LastActivityDate="2019-01-24T16:53:10.063" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25667" CreationDate="2019-01-24T21:54:34.850" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you are having a PBI/user story go through this sequence of states, and that's probably why they're proliferating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My teams have two states for PBIs (that are in a sprint backlog): Committed and Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of those PBIs has &lt;em&gt;tasks&lt;/em&gt; (e.g. design the UI, develop the front-end, test) that will get the PBI to its definition of done. Each of these tasks goes through three states: To Do, In Progress, and Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, my teams would simply convert some of those states/columns (&quot;To Test&quot; and &quot;Test&quot;) to tasks (&quot;Test the product&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, your board sounds like a combination of the product &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; sprint backlogs. The first two states you list (draft and backlog) would not be on our sprint backlogs at all, unless they were truly committed by the team (which is very unlikely for draft stories).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20700" LastActivityDate="2019-01-24T21:54:34.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25676" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-01-25T01:44:05.047" Score="2" ViewCount="155" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can I change the working time to 2 weeks ( working - 14 days) and 1 week (not working - 7 days)? Is this able to be automatically populated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34802" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-01-25T14:04:16.547" LastActivityDate="2019-01-25T14:46:08.613" Title="MS Project Change Working Time - Roster" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25671" CreationDate="2019-01-25T12:41:15.737" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/what-are-story-points&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Story points&lt;/a&gt; have a couple of advantages over time estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, people often find relative sizing of tasks easier than absolute estimating (e.g. this story is twice as big as this other story, rather than this story will take 3 days).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, we use story points in conjunction with velocity, which is a measure of the rate of &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; achieved completed work. This measure automatically adjusts to things that impact on the performance of the team (e.g. somebody goes off sick, a new starter has to be trained, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result of these advantages, story points are often a good way of predicting what your team's true capacity is. If you know your capacity then it becomes easier to understand if you are on track to make a fixed time / fixed scope deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Even if you have a fixed contract&lt;/em&gt; this extra information can still be valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By using story points you would be in a position to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get early warning of possible schedule/cost over-runs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask for more resource when it is needed to hit a deadline&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Understand and document any shortcuts (like cutting quality) you need to take in order to make the delivery date&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the use of story points does not preclude the use of time estimates. Quite a few teams I work with use both, because they see story points as a quick and simple way to estimate capacity and time estimates as necessary for other reasons (such as billing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A common approach is to use story points at the user story level and to use time estimates at the technical sub-task level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an argument that using both story points and time-based estimates is duplication. A team needs to &lt;em&gt;think carefully&lt;/em&gt; about combining the two approaches and should evaluate if the benefits they see offset the extra effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2019-01-25T18:26:14.630" LastActivityDate="2019-01-25T18:26:14.630" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25676" CreationDate="2019-01-25T14:46:08.613" Score="1" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Create a New Calendar&quot; by copying the existing &quot;Standard&quot; (5dx8h) calendar.  I would name the new calendar something like &quot;7dx8h:2w+1w.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reset the default Work Weeks of the new calendar to include Sunday and Saturday as normal workdays.&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Oy6od.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Oy6od.png&quot; alt=&quot;WorkWeek Mod&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the Exceptions tab, add a new &quot;Rest Week&quot; exception.  In the Details for &quot;Rest Week&quot;, specify the exception as Nonworking, with Weekly recurrence pattern, recurring every 3 weeks on (check all 7 weekdays).  Set the Range of recurrence however you need. &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZNjRk.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZNjRk.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2019-01-25T14:46:08.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25671" CreationDate="2019-01-25T14:56:17.653" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea of story points is that people are terrible at writing high level estimates. A story point is relative to existing story points. So you would need a standardized, agreed on scale. A user story of this complexity is 3 story points. A larger more complex is 8 story points. Everyone agrees on the complexity of each point level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly though, tasks within user stories are still estimated in hours. Actual time recorded is in hours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity can also be tracked in counts of completed user stories, which makes the need for story points less. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of three levels of details of estimates: project level, sprint level, and task level. I think your observation that you already have fixed price (estimates), fixed time, and fixed scope is good at the project level. X many people for Y time means Z cost. A technique like story points allows you to flex the scope to fit in each 2 week sprint. The sprint is always a fixed time box, but estimating features that are not fully defined yet is not accurate. There are many variables and users do not yet know what they want until they see it. Breaking a user story down into individual tasks means that the team has thought it through and defined the tasks at a well-defined, achievable level. These tasks are estimated in hours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8244" LastActivityDate="2019-01-25T14:56:17.653" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25661" CreationDate="2019-01-25T15:03:28.043" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum includes a Retrospective meeting at the end of each sprint to accomplish what you describe. Make incremental process improvements, ask what is going well, and how to improve. Retrospectives are blameless reviews. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8244" LastActivityDate="2019-01-25T15:03:28.043" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23088" CreationDate="2019-01-25T15:14:02.960" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lean Agile Kanban approach is better suited to operations and maintenance than a Scrum approach.  A big difference is that Kanban does not have fixed time boxes. Work transitions from a backlog to Work in Progress to Done. The key concept is to limit Work in Progress. This prevents too many concurrent tasks happening at once. Do 2 or three things at a time, not 17 things at a time. Reduce context switching and get each task done quicker. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example: The Department of Motor Vehicles has a single entry queue, then 1 WIP for each clerk, then Done. One clerk takes you from your initial request all the way through. Without limiting WIP, each clerk would serve everybody in line at once. Your time in the DMV would be much longer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8244" LastActivityDate="2019-01-25T15:14:02.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24914" CreationDate="2019-01-25T15:31:31.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key to managing overruns of cost projections is Managing Client Expectations, in both the private and public sector. You have to have a trusting relationship with your client. A relationship cannot work if it is win-lose. It should be win-win-win, for the client, the business, and the employees. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention the scope is fluid. So it is likely that both the development is taking longer than estimated and the client is asking for things more than originally projected. Have the client prioritize all features in a backlog. Then draw a line through the list at the point where the budget runs out. They can add anything to scope they want, but the lowest priority drops off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An honest conversation with the client, &quot;we are in this together, we are both trying to solve your need&quot; approach works well. They realize that you have communicated progress to them all along. Work together to simplify the scope to fit the budget, or maybe they can extend the project into next fiscal year's funding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8244" LastActivityDate="2019-01-25T15:31:31.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25683" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25685" CreationDate="2019-01-25T18:04:53.283" Score="5" ViewCount="381" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assume the following situation.  All but one user story planned in a sprint is completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The remaining user story is blocked.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A developer would like to take on work in the highest priority work in the backlog that has been estimated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the story is bigger than the time remaining.  Ideally, the developer would like to make an early start on work that will be planned for the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the proper way to handle this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should the user assign the unplanned work to the next sprint?  In this case, the active sprint does not include all the work that is actively being worked on (ideally, we want the active sprint to be the source of truth of what developers are working on)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we assign it to the active sprint, then we will most likely have a spill-over.  Everyone would prefer not to do this unless there is a straight forward way to distinguish spill over from planned work vs spill over from unplanned work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the standard way for handling this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17316" LastActivityDate="2019-01-25T19:55:57.613" Title="How to handle when planned work is blocked and a developer has capacity to take on a new user story that may be too big" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;sprint-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25671" CreationDate="2019-01-25T19:30:55.513" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are asking a question in good faith and the truth is &lt;strong&gt;story points may or may not help you&lt;/strong&gt;.  Like a lot of practices and patterns within the Agile ecosystem; &lt;em&gt;it depends&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's break your points down in order of importance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I know I have 13 people, 5 months and have to deliver X features. How would story points help me in this situation? I am really trying to see the benefit here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It wouldn't.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, story points are just one aspect of a wider framework of patterns that the Agile Coach has not explained.  The idea is to move from &lt;em&gt;predictive modelling&lt;/em&gt; to &lt;em&gt;adaptive modelling&lt;/em&gt;.  If your business model cannot support that then definitely carry on with your method.  There are lots of ways to optimise and improve waterfall-style predictive elements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are curious about &lt;em&gt;adaptive planning&lt;/em&gt; then the basic idea is to do a small amount of work, test it, adjust it and use the learning to inform the plan for the next part of the work.  It is nothing new really; engineers and scientists have been applying the principles to lots of things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However&lt;/strong&gt;, because we want to use &lt;em&gt;learning&lt;/em&gt; to inform the plan then we like to decouple time from the equation because we never quite know what we will find out.  It works best for uncertain requirements or partially-certain requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Enter the story-point&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why should I add an abstract unit that does not bring anything? Velocity is nice, but I have features estimated with time so I can clearly see whether we are making the deadline or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the answers have alluded to; the idea is to decouple individual time estimates because a developer is fallible.  Crowd-sourcing during planning is &lt;em&gt;less fallible&lt;/em&gt; so we use the &lt;em&gt;wideband-delphi&lt;/em&gt; method of estimation and we use story points to measure complexity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your team pick a &lt;strong&gt;baseline story&lt;/strong&gt; that represents the smallest unit of productive and independent work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If we were a web design team a 1 point story might represent the addition of a single button coded in test, deployed to non-prod and then elevated to prod.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a cloud infrastructure team a 1 point story might be the deployment of a simple web application, deployed to non-production using the Jenkins pipeline etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your team choose the baseline story and then compare all other stories to the baseline and say roughly how much more complex it is.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What does this give me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It lets you know if the project requirements are too big, vague or unclear since very unclear stories will invariably high estimates since the developers struggle to say they are low in complexity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It gives the team a broad average estimate for &lt;em&gt;any given story&lt;/em&gt; and then you can roughly estimate the entire backlog by applying the &lt;em&gt;average estimate&lt;/em&gt; to every story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each time you run the planning ceremony to estimate user stories your team get better and better at estimating and project estimates get much more accurate and your empirical data can be used to estimate new projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a team delivering a Product, we are not interested in an individual. What we want is the average of what the team can deliver. And that is why we measure complexity. Because the work will be broadly shared around the team. So, by understanding what a team can accomplish in a timebox we can take a very accurate guess as to what a team can accomplish in 20 timeboxes. Or 52 timeboxes and thus model when the project will end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When the project will end?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, if you know what the scope is and you know how many items on the scope you accomplish you can model very accurately when the project will end.  Every time something happens such as new requirements, scope changes, loss of team member, holidays etc...we can adjust the model to show what the new finish date will be without having to adjust the start to finish dates such as a gantt chart. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story points are closely linked to the &lt;em&gt;Burn-up Chart&lt;/em&gt; although you can &lt;em&gt;burn-up&lt;/em&gt; using any unit of measurement, not just story points.  They just go hand in hand like peanut butter and jelly. #&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Fhydg.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Fhydg.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are there any caveats?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, yes, a few. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It needs buy-in from your customers.  It also benefits from having a strong BA presence to be able to author high quality user stories instead of simple line items on an MS project plan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the biggest drawback is that &lt;strong&gt;empirical data is not available from the start&lt;/strong&gt; and it requires a lot of goodwill to get started.  The inception period of an Agile project is typically quite bumpy and fluid within organisation used to more traditional techniques. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also note that the originator of the Story Point has rubbished their adoption across the Agile industry.  Now, you can take that to confirm your own bias or you can take it in the spirit it was intended which is &lt;em&gt;some stuff works, some stuff definitely does not work and some stuff works in some environments some of the time&lt;/em&gt;.  Too many coaches just have a playbook of basic techniques and apply them by rote. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What should I tell my Agile Coach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask him about the drawbacks and the limitations.  Any good Coach should be able to inform you of why a pattern exists, who invented it, where it was pioneered and what problem it was attempting to solve. More importantly, they should simply be focussed on the real problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the quicket, most scalable, most repeatable, most sustainable way of getting business value into the hands of your customers&lt;/strong&gt;.  Story points is one part of a strategy of techniques to do that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastEditorUserId="10462" LastEditDate="2019-01-25T19:37:30.603" LastActivityDate="2019-01-25T19:37:30.603" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25683" CreationDate="2019-01-25T19:55:57.613" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Welcome to PMSE!   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good question.  It may be a duplicate but I could not find it so I will answer.  I can tell you how &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; coach teams to handle it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the story is bigger than the time remaining. Ideally,&#xA;  the developer would like to make an early start on work that will be&#xA;  planned for the next sprint&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I coach to &lt;strong&gt;bring it into Sprint&lt;/strong&gt;.  Personally I believe that velocity is only useful as a measure over time. The velocity of a &lt;em&gt;single timebox&lt;/em&gt; is not that important.  Teams focus on it too much.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real value will be in mitigating some of the deeper organisational clues which we can discuss briefly here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can the story be broken down further? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can the story be broken down using one of the many &lt;a href=&quot;https://agileforall.com/patterns-for-splitting-user-stories/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;story-splitting techniques&lt;/a&gt;?  If so; break it down and take a portion into the sprint as a distinct, smaller story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CfbBW.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CfbBW.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Story Split&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you have a 1-point bucket? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the future, encourage developers to throw basic engineering tasks into an Epic or a bucket called the 1-point bucket.  This is a constant supply of minor, niggling, low-priority or low value stories that can be used as a filler when developers are not ready to take on a substantial piece of complex work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 1 point bucket also serves as a store of work for junior or apprentice developers or new team members getting familiar with the technology such as a &lt;em&gt;system architect trying to learn Python&lt;/em&gt; etc etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can the developer contribute to the Sprint Goal without another story? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before taking on another story, have you exhausted the ways that the developer can contribute to the current Sprint goal.  Can they pair program, debug or test?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can the developer make the next Sprint a success? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can they improve the CI/CD pipeline?  Do you have a support queue that needs cleared?  Does the Product Owner need support?  Can they refactor some aspect of the previous Sprint's?  Is their a technical debt register to be investigated and planned?  Is their another skill they can learn?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;These are just some of the activities that a developer can use to add value to a team before taking on a large user story in the current Sprint&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2019-01-25T19:55:57.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25038" CreationDate="2019-01-26T10:01:55.833" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;An epic can be considered a group of issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create an issue with your epic name, then create subtasks to this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Go to the main issue to see the list of issues and whether they are finished or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to see epic tags in your boards, add a label to the subtasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34506" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-01-28T14:41:09.287" LastActivityDate="2019-01-28T14:41:09.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25687" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-01-27T04:21:09.573" Score="3" ViewCount="97" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me describe what's in the project,&#xA;The people involved in this project is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Company owner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project owner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consultant&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;4 software engineers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm one of the software engineers there. The responsibility/what they do are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Company owner&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most of the requirement is defined by them and transferred to the Owner of the project &lt;em&gt;(I assume this is done orally, there's really no documentation about this)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Project owner&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Brief the software engineers about the requirement from the company owner by telling it in the meeting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Verify the progress by watching the application runs demonstrated by the engineers and sometimes by handing the app to the future user of the app.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Listen to the Company owner/user feedback and translate it to a new requirement that soon briefed to the engineer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discuss with the consultant/engineer what is the best practice when dealing with a problem/requirement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project owner has other many responsibilities, so the availability is somewhat limited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Consultant&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get asked opinion from the project owner about what is the best practice from a problem/requirement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tell/influence the project owner if some requirement is just too difficult to manage later.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The consultant just appear once in a while, so doesn't always available to engineer onsite &lt;em&gt;(maybe available to the project/company owner)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Software Engineers&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Develop the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writing/take notes about the briefed requirement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Demonstrate/report the project progress.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; this is from my point of view. &lt;em&gt;there's no handbook about this&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Project Management Tools&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Notepad/ Text Editor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Trello&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Slack&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The problem&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project owner admits that the requirement isn't all clear, it needs to be discussed with the company owner and all the potential user. So often the requirement changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The requirement isn't documented by a framework so it is just a text from a full meeting. The meeting text isn't always verified by the project owner. The text is just a brief description of a new feature and the constraint, not really detailed like a flow diagram, sequence, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the project owner just assume what he thought about was already&#xA;stated in the meeting and the engineers wrote all the correct&#xA;description about it and will implement as is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a meeting passed, the text will be posted to slack and break down by the engineer to the trello board. The project owner and the consultant can read the slack and the trello board. But there wasn't any complain/correction made to those document. I have a feeling, there may be an occasion where it's not correctly written. But seems it just got away every time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The structure of the trello card isn't defined either. Sometimes it titled by the module engineers worked with and contains checklists of the break-downed task from the meeting (not really detailed) [1]. Sometimes it is just a single task with a little bit detailed description [2]. Maybe that's why there's no complain/correction, but I already talked about it. The project owner &amp;amp; consultant seems just agree and let the engineer take care of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in my opinion, the review process from the project owner seems&#xA;doesn't complete. It just jumped from one to another feature. When it&#xA;seems partially complete the project owner already jumped to review&#xA;another feature. And sometimes just adding more requirement to be&#xA;done. When I asked my teammate, they feel that although we finished&#xA;developing a feature, it doesn't feel complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to propose better project management for this situation, but I haven't really had the experience to say. What kind of project management can be put into work there? I read somewhere that agile is good for prone to change requirement. Should I say agile?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But really, I haven't had any experience about it. I'm afraid, by just doing what I partially understand results in more hassle than good. I want all of the party satisfied by working on this project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I already talked about this problem with the project owner and all the engineers. We agreed that we'll discuss this in the upcoming meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34815" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-01-27T13:37:53.080" Title="How to handle project that (I think) not using any framework or has unclear workflow?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;work-environment&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25687" CreationDate="2019-01-27T13:37:53.080" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This might be too broad of a question to answer completely in a post like this. I'll encourage you to think about your situation and break it down into sub-problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like there are at least two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problems&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, at least some stakeholders (you) are uncomfortable with the current way the project is being run. This can be due to the lack of framework -- there isn't a clear process on features are identified, elaborated, documented, and implemented. There isn't clear responsibility for who owns this requirements definition process either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, there is a lack of communication of what the requirements are. This is related to the first, but they can be addressed separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My recommendations&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To address the first, encourage discussion of the problem among your team. What processes are necessary to ensure that the project is being delivered in an effective way? Are there any frameworks that will help you to achieve this? Slack and Trello boards can be a good start, but you'll probably need additional structure. Look into Scrum as a simple way of running projects of this type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To address the second, and this is more important in my opinion, there needs to be strong two-way communication between the people who implement the features (you and your dev team) and the people who ideate them (business owner, project owner, users, and consultant). I suggest meeting with them every week or two to identify the most important requirements, develop them in detail, and prioritize what will be delivered. This is more or less in line with Scrum's &quot;sprint planning sessions.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are not in a unique position. This is a fairly common scenario. Communicate, try new things, and always seek to improve your process. This experience will be helpful as you progress in your career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20700" LastActivityDate="2019-01-27T13:37:53.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21159" CreationDate="2019-01-27T15:27:13.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can add a flag to an epic if it is in a sprint or on your Kanban board. Just click it like you would a normal issue, select the three dots, and &quot;add flag&quot;. I had to create a separate Kanban board with just epics to accomplish this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34826" LastActivityDate="2019-01-27T15:27:13.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25693" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25734" CreationDate="2019-01-28T08:17:59.150" Score="3" ViewCount="129" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to be able to produce a report I can share with resources on a project so that they have visibility on what outstanding tasks they have (overdue, current, future) and when they are due.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally this would be grouped by task as multiple resources will assigned to a task, e.g. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task 1 | Resource 1, Resource 2 | 25/01/2019&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Task 2 | Resource 1, Resource 3 | 27/01/2019&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Task 3 | Resource 2, Resource 3 | 29/01/2019&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been looking at the reports functionality and attempted to create a custom report but so far have not been able to create anything that satisfies my requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to create a report which satisfies my requirements? If so how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34810" LastActivityDate="2019-02-01T20:15:23.027" Title="Create MS Project report which to return incomplete tasks per user with due date" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25694" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25700" CreationDate="2019-01-28T09:25:21.637" Score="4" ViewCount="204" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;: Carrying items over from one sprint to the next&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Answer&lt;/strong&gt;: Yes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scenario&lt;/strong&gt;: I am a new scrum master on a team and we have just completed our first sprint. I was not here when the team planned the sprint but We planned to complete 73 Story Points. I calculated our velocity is about 53 story Points (Previous Sprints) and some team members was off during December and one person had a child. I am not sure why they planned full capacity with those people on leave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Task 1 : 8sp - Done&#xA;Task 2 : 20sp - WIP&#xA;Task 3 : 8sp - Done&#xA;Task 4 : 5sp - Testing in Progress&#xA;Task 5 : 8sp - WIP&#xA;Task 6 : 8sp - WIP&#xA;Task 7 : 8sp - Testing Failed&#xA;Task 8 : 8sp - WIP&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sprint ends tomorrow and there is a bunch of stories going to the new sprint. As mentioned I calculated the team velocity as 53sp (Previous Sprints), With the work in WIP/Testing Failed it adds up to 21 (If testing passes on 5sp item). They do buddy programming if someone is stuck, which is awesome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do I carry those over to new sprint and if it gets completed mid sprint we just add stories to the sprint from backlog? - I say yes that is correct.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My velocity will be influenced by data such as above, can I work out velocity by: Remove highest (This will be next sprint if we carry items over) velocity and lowest velocity, count the rest and divide by number of sprints?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the current sprints retrospective I will mention the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. Cross skill - Need to work on that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b. We need to plan better and keep leave in mind&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c. We need to speak up during the sprint if we wont make the sprint, then we &#xA;   can make necessary adjustments&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;d. Remind them of scrum values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e. Cant we make tasks smaller?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you perhaps have any other suggestions to improve our planning, committed items to reach our target velocity and am I on the right track?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34072" LastEditorUserId="34072" LastEditDate="2019-01-28T09:38:15.357" LastActivityDate="2019-01-28T14:26:56.177" Title="Carrying items over from one sprint to the next" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25695" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-01-28T09:48:09.873" Score="1" ViewCount="414" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking for a way to include requirements management in Asana.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now we have a very powerful integration with Instagantt, where projects and their scheduled tasks are in sync with Asana's project columns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would like is to also be able to handle requirements for all parts of the project in a similar fashion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, say Project is made of three phases: Alpha, Beta, and Release. In Asana's Project page, I create three columns, one per phase. Are there ways to organize requirements through the three phases so that I can associate requirements 1,2,3 with Alpha; 4,5,6 with Beta; and 7 with Release? Obviously, in a way that can later be changed, say deciding that req. 3 will not be met with Alpha, but rather with Beta.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way that comes to my mind at the moment is to use Instagantt milestones, but it would be unclear to visualize them, and complicated to maintain. Not to mention that actual milestones will be hard to distinguish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34833" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-02-04T14:34:36.673" LastActivityDate="2019-08-29T08:27:29.403" Title="Asana and requirements management" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;asana&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25651" CreationDate="2019-01-28T09:50:35.633" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the story is too large and cannot be completed in 1 sprint of a weeks time, we can look at splitting the story so that part 1 can be delivereed in current sprint. Part 2 in the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case that the story cannot be consumed by the end user by the end of one sprint , then plan part of the story as an enabler story during the first few sprints and subsequently as a business story in the later sprint where it is made available to the end user. The enabler stories and the user story should be tagged to a parent feature to be looked at holistically. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34733" LastActivityDate="2019-01-28T09:50:35.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25697" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-01-28T12:29:33.747" Score="6" ViewCount="1233" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scenario:&lt;/strong&gt; With scrum teams doing a daily stand-up to inform team of progress (yesterday and today) and any impediments. I wonder sometimes do they actually bring up impediments, concerns or issues. Can we have a mid sprint (Once a sprint) catch-up where we look at tasks on board and each team member tells team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1. What they did yesterday, Today, Impediments&#xA;2. Does this still relate to sprint goal&#xA;3. Do they think item will make sprint, Team discussion afterwards (Parking lot): If it wont make the sprint how can we adapt, fix this?&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I know this might take more time instead of the normal stand-up timebox (15min)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Idea:&lt;/strong&gt; I've googled and I can't find a lot of information on a mid sprint catch-up and I know this is not one of scrums ceremonies, but rather I see it as one of the Shu Ha Ri stages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ri&lt;/strong&gt;: Now the student isn't learning from other people, but from his own practice. He &lt;strong&gt;creates his own approaches and adapts what he's learned to his own particular circumstances&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The check-in is more how Kanban does a stand-up (Walking the board) approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand the adding something like this might sound like &lt;code&gt;Poorly-specified requirements, or unclear value propositions or Not writing the acceptance criteria first or A lack of trust&lt;/code&gt; but this is an just an idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34072" LastActivityDate="2020-01-05T16:25:39.823" Title="Is a mid sprint check-in/catch-up a good idea" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;communication&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25698" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25702" CreationDate="2019-01-28T13:10:07.500" Score="5" ViewCount="109" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a DevOps software team with dependencies upon a release process which often requires us to wait before releasing some code to production for up to 5 times longer than our sprint length. This causes stories to either remain on our board or go onto a hidden board, neither are a suitable use case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have recently had a new board layout imparted upon our team. While our previous column layout was not the greatest, I have reservations about this new one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While every team is different, I was hoping to get a critique of this board layout by anyone who might be sympathetic to the scenario above, and perhaps some advice on how better to lay it out. Our board columns are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Draft&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Awaiting Info&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ready&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work in progress&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ready for testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testing failed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ready for deployment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Complete&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cancelled&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;11 columns is a lot and I would much rather use more standard agile terms. For example, Done and To Do are completely absent, here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29374" LastActivityDate="2019-01-28T15:12:23.133" Title="Sprint board critique" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint-planning&gt;&lt;board&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25697" CreationDate="2019-01-28T13:27:08.303" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you're describing as your mid-sprint checkin is exactly what every daily scrum should be. So your idea is good, I would just do it every day instead of once per sprint. Now, you mention this may take longer than 15 minutes. I doesn't have to, but let's say it does because the team isn't practiced at it yet. Is it better for the team to have the right conversation and exceed the timebox or to have an ineffective conversation in the timebox. In most cases (if not all) it's the first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing I'd challenge on the Shu Ha Ri idea is that it is a progression. You can't hit Ri before making it through Shu and Ha, and having effective daily scrums (what you are describing as the mid-sprint checkin) in 15 minutes is definitely a shu-level practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-01-28T13:27:08.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25694" CreationDate="2019-01-28T14:26:56.177" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a lot in there, so let's take it item by item. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, what do we do with incomplete work? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes back to the product backlog. Technically, the product owner decides if it is still important to do in the next sprint. It is completely reasonable for them to say &quot;Nope, that's not what's important anymore, this other thing is.&quot; True, most of the time they will be pulled into the next sprint, but it isn't a given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, partial story points is an antipattern. It rewards the behavior of not completing work, which goes directly against agile principles (Working Software is the primary measure of progress, specifically). The whole story is done or it isn't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Average Velocity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I usually calculate average velocity the same way - it gets rid of outliers. If you have a fairly consistent velocity, you could also just use a median average instead of the mean - accomplishes the same basic thing. It's just important to remember that story points are, by design, imprecise. When we apply math to anything, sometimes we create the illusion of precision and we need to be on the lookout for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Retrospective&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These all seem like completely valid points, but remember as scrum masters we can't wave a magic wand over the team and make them better. The improvement the team finds on their own will stick much better than the one you tell them to make. As a facilitator for the retrospective, can you create a format of the conversation where they are likely to find one or more of these on their own? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-01-28T14:26:56.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25701" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-01-28T14:56:38.873" Score="0" ViewCount="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have set Leveling Order to be Priority, Standard.  Therefore I expected the  hierarchy of leveling tests to be as follows&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the Priority of any of the contending tasks 1000?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are any of the contending tasks Manually scheduled?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have any of the contending tasks actually started?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which of the contending tasks has highest Priority?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are any of the contending tasks Predecessors to other tasks?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which of the contending tasks has the LEAST Total Slack?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which of the contending tasks has the earlier Start date?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do any of the contending tasks have date constraints set?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which of the contending tasks has the longest Duration?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which of the contending tasks has the lowest ID?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My schedule consists of about 50 projects each with 5 sub-tasks.  Each project has a unique Priority Score with the highest being 950.  All sub-tasks for a project share the same Priority as the project, and each Project sub-task except the first has a predecessor to determine its dates.  All projects are independent of each other.  No project of sub-task has a Priority of 1000 and none are Manual and none have an Actual start date.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the above, I expected that Total Slack (item 6) would be irrelevant in my case as I thought Priority and Predecessors (items 4 and 5) would always be sufficient to resolve any resource contentions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I have at least 2 instances where this is not working as expected.  In these cases sub-task A has a higher Priority than sub-task B, it is a Predecessor of another sub-task (as is sub-task B), but the available resource is being allocated by Leveling to sub-task B rather than sub-task A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have noticed that the Total Slack of B is lower than that of A.  In my case, given my schedule consists of 50 independent projects, Total Slack is not relevant, but of course Project does not &quot;know&quot; that.  However, with the above hierarchy (with Priority near the top) and given the Priority of A is higher than that of B, the &quot;Total Slack&quot; test should never need to be applied, should it?  All leveling should be determined by tests 1-5.  Or am I misunderstanding how this should work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for any insights you can offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eric&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33645" LastActivityDate="2019-06-27T22:00:55.113" Title="Leveling Algorithm appears to be taking Total Slack into account when it should not. Why?" Tags="&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25698" CreationDate="2019-01-28T15:12:23.133" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I read this correctly, you are asking about your board / workflow design rather than the overall circumstances in Scrum, so I'll focus my answer on that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, when designing a workflow, especially more complicated ones like this, the benefit comes from matching your process. Since I don't know your process, I don't know how closely this matches it so I can't say if it succeeds in that regard. I can, however, identify a few common patterns I've seen elsewhere that you should consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Queuing Stages&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a rule, queuing stages are problematic because no one is doing anything in them. A big red flag that something is a queueing stage is that it starts with &quot;Ready For&quot;. When we have queueing stages in our system, this means that either we want things to sit around with no one working on them (pretty rare), or we're trying to hide a bottleneck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example here, you have a development stage followed by a testing stage. No action happens between the two so there should be no stage between the two. Typically when I see this in boards, it is so the developers can move faster than the testers, which is local optimization at the expense of global sub-optimization (or to take the jargon out, we slow down the actual completion of work to make ourselves look better).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I want a visual indicator that something is ready to be pulled to the next stage, I usually recommend changing the card color or adding an icon in electronic tools and just a magnet or sticker on a physical board. Or, to be a bit more pedantic, team members could just talk to each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short-lived Stages&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll pick on estimation for this one. I'd be curious what value you get out of the estimation stage. Usually estimation is a quick conversation and when I see these in other teams, a lot of times the team is done with the task before they even remember to move the card. For most teams, &quot;Work must be estimated&quot; could just be a policy for a card to move from Draft to Ready. Of course, I could be completely wrong. It isn't common, but some teams benefit from robust estimation techniques that warrant this being its own stage. Your team needs to make that decision for themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Testing Failed and Cancelled&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These just feel odd to me. They feel like information more than workflow. I feel like I could just put a red dot on the card and completely eliminate the need for these stages entirely. My biggest concern when I see stages like this is that they are often used to set aside cards that would otherwise &quot;look bad&quot; on the board. Again, decide for yourself if these add value. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Final Thoughts&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like this board could be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Draft - Development - Testing - Deploying - Done&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and you could use other visual indicators to show the extra information. But, it's your board and you know what really happens in your team. When I coach teams, I usually say that I'll never tell them their board is wrong, but they should always ask themselves if visualizing their work in a certain way teaches them something they can use to improve how they work. If so, it is doing its job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-01-28T15:12:23.133" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25703" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25704" CreationDate="2019-01-28T16:46:23.267" Score="4" ViewCount="204" Body="&lt;p&gt;We had a recent problem that I would have thought Jira could handle but I can't see where this would work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are using Jira with scrum/agile. While defining stories we had two stories one larger one that would allow some infrastructure to be made and a smaller ticket that had more apparent value that depended on it. Together they were bigger than we were happy with a story being.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In sprint planning, the business was looking to add some small stories to a sprint, saw the small one and added it. It made sense to them to add a small valuable ticket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would have hoped that Jira would have flagged that this wouldn't work, obviously, a ticket that depends on another can't be completed if the other ticket is not done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to get Jira to warn about this or not allow it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1204" LastActivityDate="2019-01-28T19:32:07.257" Title="How to warn if blocking tickets are not in a sprint" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;dependencies&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25703" CreationDate="2019-01-28T17:21:42.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume this dependency in jira is with a link between the issues such as &quot;is blocked by&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A possible Solution in jira would be:&#xA;Your board is fed by a filter. You can edit this filter to exclude issues blocked by items in the sprint (you may need to use advance jql functions like the ones scriprunner provides). If these issues are not in your backlog, nobody can drag them to a sprint.&#xA;Nonetheless you have to list this items in a dashboard in order to resolve the blocking asap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with Todd's comment, you cannot have too many fingers in your backlog, ideally this is the only reposibility of the product owner, who would look into this kind of situations&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing you could do is try to avoid blockings by writing user stories using &lt;a href=&quot;http://xp123.com/articles/invest-in-good-stories-and-smart-tasks/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt; criteria&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29163" LastEditorUserId="29163" LastEditDate="2019-01-28T17:28:50.323" LastActivityDate="2019-01-28T17:28:50.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25703" CreationDate="2019-01-28T19:20:54.553" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some things to think about based on what I've observed from your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While defining stories we had two stories one larger one that would allow some infrastructure to be made and a smaller ticket that had more apparent value that depended on it. Together they were bigger than we were happy with a story being.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This stuck out to me because it indicates a need to further refine the work at hand. The development team is ultimately responsible for managing and organizing their work, thus they should be empowered to refine the work until they are comfortable with the size, effort, and plan of attack from a development approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In sprint planning, the business was looking to add some small stories to a sprint, saw the small one and added it. It made sense to them to add a small valuable ticket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is another case where this issue can be mitigated by allowing the team to manage and organize their own work. The business can obviously be a stakeholder whose priorities can and should be taken into account in the product backlog, but the sprint backlog is owned 100% by the development team. The development team members decide what gets pulled in based on the priority and shared objectives via work in the product backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By making your work transparent (using a Kanban board via JIRA indicates you're already in a good place with this), you can link dependencies and work through those dependencies with your team by empowering them to reorganize their work in a way that can provide value in the form of an increment. JIRA supports flags. You can also link cards by&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Opening the card you want to link&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clicking 'More' (...) &gt; Link &gt; Jira Issue&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Choosing the type of Issue&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Specifying the other card you want to link this card to (text search works here)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adding a comment if needed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it makes sense to address the process breakdown instead of masking the issue with tooling. There are many models for properly breaking down work into manageable pieces. I concur with the INVEST model but more can be found with a simple Google search in the event one fits your needs better than another. Tooling customization can make the team issues more transparent, which should mitigate a need for automated warnings, but coaching the team and larger organization on Agile principles addresses the larger issue you've identified in your question. Good luck; hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33598" LastEditorUserId="33598" LastEditDate="2019-01-28T19:32:07.257" LastActivityDate="2019-01-28T19:32:07.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25701" CreationDate="2019-01-28T20:10:10.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Beyond the excellent article on the subject by Daryl Deffler over at MPUG.com (which it appears you've read), there's not a good answer.  The leveling calculations (and the rules themselves) in MSP are much more complex than implied by the relatively straightforward hierarchy, and they do change from version to version.  (Look for some PhD dissertations on resource-constrained scheduling.)  In particular, I believe the characterization of a leveling decision as the result of sequential binary tests (i.e. tie-breakers considering two tasks at a time) is an oversimplification for real-world schedules.  In your case I would suspect that the relative positions of your two tasks are influenced by calculations involving one or more other tasks in addition to A and B.  You could probably get what you want (A before B) by raising the priority of A and dropping that of B.  You could most certainly get it by imposing a logic link between them.  At the end of the day, MSP's leveling engine is a black box that provides &quot;good enough&quot; results with minimal user control.  Most folks leave it at that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2019-01-28T20:10:10.463" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25707" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-01-29T04:32:21.327" Score="0" ViewCount="46" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically, the y axis of EV chart is the cost, the x axis is the time, and there are 3 lines plotted, one representing the planned value, the earned value and the actual value. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have come across a different notation for such a chart, where the earned value is  represented as y axis in terms of percentage, x still representing the time, and there are two plotted lines, one for actual value and the other for planned value. Could someone please help in providing clarification on this? Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34698" LastActivityDate="2019-01-29T11:21:28.620" Title="Different notation of earned value chart" Tags="&lt;burndown-chart&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25708" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25709" CreationDate="2019-01-29T08:04:58.590" Score="5" ViewCount="1119" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scenario:&lt;/strong&gt; I was asked by management if it is a good idea to add test cases to user stories before the sizing session. This will involve investigating the item, writing test cases, speaking to developers / architects to ensure areas are covered and adding more if needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During a normal sizing activity, the team will take an item from the backlog, discuss it briefly, and each member will mentally formulate an estimate. From a developers perspective, they don't build a prototype, they discuss the item and then size the item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So after doing some research, I am not comfortable for the team to create test cases before sizing because there might be discussions in the sizing session and we might uncover issue with acceptance criteria or the priority might change or technologies might change, as we know the IT industry is always evolving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this should be factored in with the sizing session. The test cases can be created after the item is pulled into the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have anyone tried this before or do you have any concerns or ideas that might help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34072" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2019-01-29T13:35:18.443" LastActivityDate="2019-01-30T11:05:40.807" Title="Adding test cases to user stories (Backlog items) before the sizing session" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25708" CreationDate="2019-01-29T08:58:31.167" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A short answer to start with. If you have the Product Owner available with a well-defined list of Acceptance Criteria against User Stories, your agile team can conduct an effective Story Sizing session. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile estimation (specially the Story Points estimation technique) is based on relative sizing. You need don't need to have 100% clarity to estimate stories based on relative complexity and effort required to complete them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum framework does not dictate whether the team writes test cases or not. The expectation, at the end of every sprint, is to complete the sprint backlog as &quot;done&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acceptance criteria is generally the source of test cases (whether manual or automated). AC are the conditions which will satisfy the PO on the working software that the team delivers after the sprint. Before test cases can be written, the PO should write good user story and acceptance criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Test scripts will make sure that the software meets the acceptance criteria under various scenarios and situations. While writing test cases a team member may come across unknown areas that would require changes in the existing acceptance criteria. Which is absolutely  fine in the agile world. There are different approaches to tackle this learning/change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the sizing activity, discussion between PO and team is more important then having details in form of test cases, including performance, load, negative scenarios which may be useful later on but is a waste at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2019-01-29T08:58:31.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25710" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25712" CreationDate="2019-01-29T09:17:38.130" Score="1" ViewCount="675" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to calculate the critical path for a project, where activity A and C can start in parallel. Please see the image below&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2iSuj.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2iSuj.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I had two activities that could start in parallel (A and C), I also used the dummy start node. Similarly, since my project had 2 nodes at the end (B and D), I added the dummy end node.  Please tell me if my approach is correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34698" LastActivityDate="2019-01-29T14:24:37.020" Title="Start and End node in Critical Path Calculation" Tags="&lt;critical-path&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25707" CreationDate="2019-01-29T11:21:28.620" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For earned value, you can show percent or dollars on the y axis. The math is the same and will yield the same results.  The graph your describing with only the planned value and actual value using percent complete appears to be an earned schedule graph. In this case you are measuring the variance on the x axis instead of the y axis and forecasting from there.  The actual value line should be the earned value and not actual costs since the y axis is not money.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2019-01-29T11:21:28.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25710" CreationDate="2019-01-29T14:24:37.020" Score="2" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yes, adding start and finish milestones to the network is correct.  (Calling them &quot;dummy nodes&quot; is unconventional, as that term is usually reserved for activity-on-arrow diagrams.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You might want to double-check your calculations.  Conventional terminology starts the project on Day 1, not Day 0.  In addition, your start and finish days are not consistent with the durations shown. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2019-01-29T14:24:37.020" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25714" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25715" CreationDate="2019-01-29T20:02:22.123" Score="9" ViewCount="409" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using Scrum, what would be the way to define, structure and estimate a user story, containing work for an artist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main problem that I'm interested here is that an artistic story can take a long time to finish, due to the nature of the work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, let's say I work in cross-functional team of 8-9 people on a highly visual 3D app (think video game). &#xA;I could write a user story like this one: &quot;As a user, I want a car to move through the map&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This story would involve the following tasks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make an approved concept art of the car&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make an approved 3D model of the car&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Integrate the car model in the app&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Program the controls of the car&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than the fact that the user story in itself is a little big, the problem is that the 2 first tasks are subjective, so the artist can take a long time doing iterations. &#xA;For example, he could create a concept art in a day, show it to the creative director, being asked to change some things, redo another concept, change it again because he's not satisfied and then show it again to the creative director. Only then the concept is approved. Now the second task can start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if we break the user story in smaller parts, the time to complete it can still be greater than the sprint, or the effort estimation could be way off. Also, breaking this story in smaller parts is making an &quot;horizontal slice&quot; of the app and not a &quot;vertical one&quot; as would be better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you suggest in this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34063" LastActivityDate="2019-01-30T18:31:14.860" Title="How to write a user story involving artistic work?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;process-improvement&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25714" CreationDate="2019-01-29T21:12:20.823" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you pointed out, part of the challenge with this sort of user story is that it's big and takes a while to complete. Let's say the actual user story is something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a player who's got a basic grasp of the controls, I want to race&#xA;  against sinister opponents so that I have a reason to improve my&#xA;  mastery over the game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this breaks a little from yours because it's an AI, not player controlled, but the idea is the same. Now, to break this down, I want to ask two questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What delivers the biggest value to the user in the shortest time (in traditional project management this was called weighted shortest job first, or WSJF)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the riskiest unknowns in delivering this to the user?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's look at two possible paths. The first is that I decide I need a fun opponent. In this case I'm going to ignore the model for now - probably just a color-swapped version of my player's car. This broken down story will probably read very similarly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a player who's got a basic grasp of the controls, I want a&#xA;  challenging opponent so I have some marker to test myself against.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll probably focus on getting a simple UI together and then get people playing with it. This will almost certainly not be all of my players, but a small group that has been put together to get feedback. From here I'll decide what is next: better AI, catchup mechanics, aggressive driving, or maybe it's time for the car to get a new model to look cooler. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK, let's look from another direction. Maybe the most important thing is to have that car look genuinely sinister. While it's pretty rare that the aesthetics are more important than the gameplay, it happens from time-to-time, especially if you're reusing an existing mechanic. (Holiday Skins for example) Now my first backlog item will focus on confirming my design. You may notice I didn't say User Story. Not everything in the backlog has to be a User Story. Here, my biggest concern is making sure I've got a design that will really land with the players, so that concept art is key. That's probably my first thing and I will almost certainly show it to real players and see the reactions. If it doesn't land, I haven't spent a lot of time modeling and integrating it. I've even seen games companies create a few ideas and put it to a vote with the fans. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to note that backlog items should be close-ended. The concept art could absolutely get more feedback that results in more work. Open-ended tasks assume that the work is worth it no matter how much it costs. I've never seen a task where this is true. Instead, we make it close-ended. Something like &quot;Create 6 different concept art pieces and put them into the online poll&quot;. You might get some feedback that leads you to create another 3 - that's a new backlog item. Now you're paying attention to how much time and money you are spending on this work and can avoid overruns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, let's say I'm doing a model for a movie and it just takes a long time - this thing has to look really good. Creating low-res versions will let us drop it in rough cuts, then you can choose if there are areas that are important to focus on first - or you can group up on work, with different modelers working on different parts of the model. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard this idea many times that artistic work doesn't fit in sprints, and I'm not an artist myself, but I've worked with dozens of artists that work iteratively and every art class I've taken in my life taught me to work iteratively. I've worked with a few game companies myself and know of quite a few others that work with Scrum. In fact, I spoke to someone at a game company recently whose team worked in 2-day sprints (which is way more extreme than I would do, but hey, it sort of ends any debates on if a 2-week sprint is possible). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-01-29T21:12:20.823" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25714" CreationDate="2019-01-29T21:12:48.440" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two aspects of this question, and depending on the perspective, the answer may vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile promotes the usage of the &lt;strong&gt;Minimum Viable Product&lt;/strong&gt;. In the case of the video game, you wouldn't be too concerned about having the best shaped car of all times from iteration one. The goal is to have a conceptual functional car that does basic operations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the other perspective, there may be cases where the car itself is expected (for any reason) to be optimally delivered (i.e. we're assuming that delivering a single car would add &lt;em&gt;business value&lt;/em&gt;, which is something very unusual unless the game itself is already in production). Being that the case, the car in itself would be a story too big to fit into a single iteration... and per definition, would &lt;strong&gt;become an &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/epic/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Epic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bottomline:&lt;/strong&gt; You can decide the best approach by assessing how you can &lt;strong&gt;deliver value faster and better&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-01-29T21:12:48.440" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25714" CreationDate="2019-01-30T08:46:10.520" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe it's just me, but I consider the whole concept of software development to be a creative/artistic endeavor. And thinking about it, I'm not seeing why anything would &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to change when you go from a story that says &quot;make a functional widget&quot; to one that reads &quot;make a pretty widget&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try applying the same measures you use when developing the code, I think you'll get quite far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Other than the fact that the user story in itself is a little big, the problem is that the 2 first tasks are subjective, so the artist can take a long time doing iterations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I'm asked to design a new form to encourage people to sign up for something and leave as much information as possible, that's &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; subjective, and I can also spend a lot of time doing iterations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example, he could create a concept art in a day, show it to the creative director, being asked to change some things, redo another concept, change it again because he's not satisfied and then show it again to the creative director. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same here; the creative director is a stakeholder in the process. If I'm building a form, I'll show early sketches of it to my stakeholders, see if I'm getting it right, and iterate rapidly on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest difference between code work and artist work is that we've got a lot of &lt;strong&gt;experience&lt;/strong&gt; applying the rapid iteration process to our code work, and many artists don't have that experience yet. But the parallels I'm seeing are pretty big, and I think the same rules will apply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So basically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make sure you understand the needs of the story&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;focus on the minimum viable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;iterate rapidly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;show new versions to key stakeholders as often as you can&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;collect feedback early and often&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;measure, collect data&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;stop when it's good enough for now and something else is more important&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever you (or your artist) are stuck, look to parallels in other fields and apply the same methods. Scrum isn't explicitly designed to handle software projects, and even if it is, artistic expression and subjectivity are key parts of pretty much all software. Use the tools you've seen for other types of tasks for these as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31393" LastActivityDate="2019-01-30T08:46:10.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25708" CreationDate="2019-01-30T11:05:40.807" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum is a balancing act between:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Preparing user stories so that the team can effectively work on them in sprints&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not doing too much up front work so that you are able to respond to change.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every team needs to find the right balance point that suits their organisation and way of working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you spend time producing test cases on stories in the backlog then you may be better prepared for sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are a number of disadvantages to this approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If priorities change or new work appears that the effort spent will be wasted or there is an opportunity cost - you could have better spent your time elsewhere&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is the risk that if you put a lot of up-front effort into stories that there will be a reluctance to accept change&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As you mentioned, there is the risk of technical changes or discovery invalidating some of your work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that if you do decide to add test cases in advance you treat it as an experiment. Give it a period of time (say 3-4 sprints) and then see if it has worked out to be of benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-01-30T11:05:40.807" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25719" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25720" CreationDate="2019-01-30T14:22:47.593" Score="5" ViewCount="718" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our product is moving more and more in the direction of a software development kit (SDK) which can be used by other developers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This brings up quite some challenges to our agile processes, though and I am searching for suggestions from people who have experience with this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main question we are struggling with is: how to split user stories, since we are disagreeing on who our user is. Are we planning for features from an end-user perspective (we currently ship the SDK together with a standard implementation, so everything actually has UI, etc. but customers can also adjust this standard behaviour to their needs) or is it enough to define a ticket in terms of &quot;There should be a method in class X doing Y&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &quot;normal&quot; Scrum Teams, it's a bad practice to split user stories by horizontal layers but some team members argue that if we consider the SDK consumer as a user, then a ticket &quot;There should be a method in class X doing Y&quot; should be valid and that a separate ticket for UI for the same feature can be created since that one targets a different user/use-case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope I explained well enough to give you a good understanding. I am happy to hear your thoughts, experiences and suggestions!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33761" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-01-31T09:37:10.893" LastActivityDate="2019-01-31T09:37:10.893" Title="Scrum for SDK development - split stories horizontally?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25719" CreationDate="2019-01-30T15:07:30.580" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remember that very few patterns we consider to be Agile are scientific rules.  They are &lt;em&gt;art&lt;/em&gt; applied scientifically. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, while Use Stories are supposed to be split vertically offering a complete slice of production-ready code, that is not always the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mike Cohn himself has demonstrated a number of case studies from industries that have adapted patterns to work effectively. For instance, game development can have four levels of done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your specific example, let the team decide the most effective way of dissecting user requirements and packaging them for development/deployment.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User Story verticalisation works amazingly well in eCommerce or B2C applications and websites but less well in environments with highly coupled dependencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Run an experiment for 3-4 timeboxes and see how the team react.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't maintain allegiance to any delivery pattern that is causing you pain. The only metric is quality software, delivered regularly under sustainable conditions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2019-01-30T15:07:30.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25719" CreationDate="2019-01-30T15:17:09.317" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that different stories can have different users. If you are building you UI off of your own SDK, it isn't uncommon to have these two use stories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As an SDK user, I would like to be able to grant permissions to a user&#xA;  so that I can manage what different users can do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As an interface user, I would like to be able to grant permissions to&#xA;  a user so that I can manage what different users can do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing the first one first makes the second one much smaller. Both of them deliver real end-to-end value to a user. The only thing that is grey is if they are truly independent. I would argue that they are, because it is &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt; to do either first, it just wouldn't usually make sense to do the second one first. It could though. If the UI users really needed something fast, I could focus on that and shortcut all of the work and testing that would go into making it available through the SDK - it would just be architecturally far less sound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-01-30T15:17:09.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25714" CreationDate="2019-01-30T18:31:14.860" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By treating artistic work as somehow different from other types of development work, you create a waterfall-like project pattern that suffers from BUFD (Big, Up-Front Design). This often generates scope creep, and typically reduces collaboration by exempting the creative work from standard agile practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The solution is often to reframe your expectations for the creative work, and to leverage the iterative development patterns to manage scope through validated learning and time boxing. This is not trivial, as it represents a significant paradigm shift for many organizations, but it’s essential to avoid the trap of “design siloes” or “artistic ghettos” that can derail the rest of the project plan when improperly decoupled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Artistic/Creative Work Should be Iterative &amp;amp; Incremental&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of the challenge here is how you’re conceiving of the work. You’re putting “artistic” work into a different conceptual bucket than other types of work, and so are losing out on the collaborative and iterative aspects of development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While artistic endeavors are certainly more subjective than other types of work, your goals for such work should still include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Making art/design part of a thin, vertical slice of functionality instead of a standalone deliverable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thinking in collaborative terms, rather than as a ping-ping between a single task-performer and a task-approver.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Following &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST criteria&lt;/a&gt; as closely as possible, especially by taking a test-first approach to UI and graphics design.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensuring the work is &lt;em&gt;iterative&lt;/em&gt; by respecting Sprint boundaries, limiting scope, and treating adjustments, changes, and rework as &lt;strong&gt;new work&lt;/strong&gt; to be scheduled for a future Sprint. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people find it hard to think of creative endeavors as testable. While it can be hard to design &lt;em&gt;executable&lt;/em&gt; tests for non-software or non-UI visual elements, it’s not impossible. Pragmatically, what you’re really after is getting the team and the stakeholders to think about the acceptance criteria &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt;, and for everyone to treat work that meets the Definition of Done as complete for the current iteration. This is a scoping challenge, not a creative one! Anything that isn’t part of the agreed-upon Definition of Done, or that represents a change that expands the level of effort beyond the current estimate, should be treated as future work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Scoped, Iterative Examples&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It’s important to think of creative work as iterative. “Make an approved concept drawing of a car” isn’t an iterative task, but the following could be elements of a larger theme or epic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a body panel machinist, I want a concept drawing that I can evaluate for production line feasibility.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a procurement officer, I want a concept drawing that I can evaluate for initial estimates of how much steel I need to order.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a marketing specialist, I want a concept drawing I can show to our sales channels to gauge market demand for the new design.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These types of user stories provide context which can help scope the artistic work. In addition, they give you a framework for developing a Definition of Done and testable criteria for the drawings, such as having estimatable dimensions, a clearly-&#xA;defined scale, or callouts for any design elements that might require precision machining or special production processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, by making the stories about validated learning (e.g. as an opportunity to review and evaluate a design, rather than a piece of work to be “approved”), you create opportunities to collaborate and refine the artistic concepts over time. If stakeholders don’t like the design, or want to make changes, that doesn’t invalidate the work that was done. Instead, it simply creates new scope for future iterations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This type of creative work is thus built up in an incremental, iterative fashion that can be more easily estimated and more easily delivered in bite-sized chunks. By getting away from the notion of “big, upfront design” and by moving to an iterative model with just-in-time design, you allow the creative work to leverage the same agile practices that other types of development work benefit from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-01-30T18:31:14.860" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25723" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-01-31T06:57:06.177" Score="2" ViewCount="190" Body="&lt;p&gt;As per my understanding, Scrum is a Framework. Following is my view of the Scrum Framework and I would like to hear your ideas as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The methodology is a set of principles and practices which can be used to guide processes while the framework is real or conceptual structure intended to serve as a support or guide for the building of something. Agile is methodology since it provides a set of values and principles to guide software development. Any process which can be aligned with values and principles is Agile and there is no need of a framework for being in Agile. Scrum guide itself encourages to follow the defined structure to practice Scrum. Further, it says if you violate any of the Scrum practices defined by Scrum guide, you are not doing Scrum. The Scrum provides a conceptual structure to developing software as it is a framework. In general, a Methodology is an open boundary process while the framework is a closed boundary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the most important thing is we must ensure Agile values and build an Agile mindset for being Agile rather than doing Agile. If you focus more on the Scrum framework, probably you will be stuck in the closed boundary. (This will leads to doing Agile). To being Agile you must focus more on Agile values and practices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34796" LastActivityDate="2019-01-31T08:50:31.033" Title="Is Scrum framework or methodology?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25723" CreationDate="2019-01-31T08:15:46.810" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide™&lt;/a&gt; states that &lt;strong&gt;Scrum is a framework&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum (n): A framework within which people can address complex&#xA;adaptive problems, while productively and creatively delivering&#xA;products of the highest possible value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lightweight&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simple to understand&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Difficult to master&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is a process framework that has been used to manage work on&#xA;complex products since the early 1990s. Scrum is not a process,&#xA;technique, or definitive method. Rather, it is a framework within&#xA;which you can employ various processes and techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is simple.  It is the opposite of a big collection of interwoven mandatory components. &lt;strong&gt;Scrum is not a methodology&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/resources/what-is-scrum&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.scrum.org/resources/what-is-scrum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/790/lunivore&quot;&gt;Lunivore&lt;/a&gt; has mentioned the two descriptions in the answer for &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/3791/what-is-the-difference-between-framework-vs-methodology&quot;&gt;What is the difference between framework vs methodology?&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A methodology is a set of principles, tools and practices which can be used to guide processes to achieve a particular goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A framework is a loose but incomplete structure which leaves room for other practices and tools to be included but provides much of the process required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would disagree from this point that you have written in question: &lt;em&gt;Agile is methodology&lt;/em&gt;. No, &lt;strong&gt;Agile is a mindset&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any process which can be aligned with values and principles is Agile and there is no need of a framework for being in Agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is absolutely correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-01-31T08:50:31.033" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25697" CreationDate="2019-01-31T09:22:55.523" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I wonder sometimes do they actually bring up impediments, concerns or issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This appears to be at the heart of your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps rather than organising another meeting it would be worth discussing this at the next retrospective? If you can resolve it so that the daily scrum is more effective then you may not need an additional meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-01-31T09:22:55.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11853" CreationDate="2019-02-01T06:12:07.560" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are 10s of Scaling frameworks available. I personally have only seen SAFe, LeSS, and Spotify in action. SAFe is the most popular agile scaling framework. and works particularly well in organisations with lower risk appetite for their agile transformation. Usually, in agile transformations, more pain means more gain. And little pain means little gain. I have seen fantastic SAFe implementations with great results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By saying this, I'll be offending some anti-SAFe people. Well I'm myself both a Certified LeSS practitioner and a SAFe program consultant. I keep my emotions out and evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of frameworks objectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now we must also consider that all frameworks are the starting point and organisations need to evolve beyond frameworks. For more information on this, please read on the Shu-Ha-Ri model and how to start with a framework and move to the right approach for your entire enterprise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do publish a lot of articles. If you are interested to know more about Agile and Scaling please see my blog here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://sprintagile.com.au/blog/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://sprintagile.com.au/blog/&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34870" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-02-01T14:19:06.857" LastActivityDate="2019-02-01T14:19:06.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25728" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25731" CreationDate="2019-02-01T07:33:58.467" Score="4" ViewCount="98" Body="&lt;p&gt;I own a front-end development team who's task is to develop a single page web application based on Angular technology stack. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product is currently in beta stage and never been public, only client team and the team of testers have access to this. The requirements are very much agile and I'm keeping hard to keep everything persistent during sprints and day to day work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the work developers are delivering tend to be more error prone and very fragile. They tend to do same mistake over and over however the internal QA team sits as a boundary before the client.&#xA;Due to the app's fragile nature,even QA team can't get caught up all the bugs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to this reason, all the work is now behind, My deliveries are getting late, deadline missing is now a common thing. Client frustration is also a common now. I'm running out of options. &#xA;What an experienced PM would do in this moment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34390" LastActivityDate="2019-02-01T11:57:16.370" Title="What decision should I take regarding a team of front-end developers which delivers unstable releases" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;clients&gt;&lt;deadline&gt;&lt;deliverables&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25729" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25730" CreationDate="2019-02-01T09:22:51.727" Score="6" ViewCount="2373" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very basic question but I don't see any answers on it yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scenario:&lt;/strong&gt; We did sprint planning and I noticed some one saying &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not all developers have a task to do. We need to add more tasks so that everybody has work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a problem with that for the following reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If our velocity is 60 and you add tasks so that everybody has work you may end up with going way over your average velocity, you are setting yourself up for failure.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;With agile I would rather promote peer programming instead of everybody doing a task and when the sprint ends we have more tasks that is in development than those that are closed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Idea&lt;/strong&gt; Maybe stories should be split so that each team member has a task but in all they are working towards the same goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; Do you give each team member a user story or do you plan according to the velocity and then the team should work together to deliver a potentially releasable sprint rather than a half completed sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have experience in this and how did you deal with it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34072" LastEditorUserId="26063" LastEditDate="2019-02-04T09:08:27.887" LastActivityDate="2019-02-07T09:26:19.870" Title="Should all team members be assigned user stories?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;sprint-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25729" CreationDate="2019-02-01T11:23:14.830" Score="11" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Question: Do you give each team member a user story&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A see an anti-pattern here. As a Scrum Master, you don't have to assign stories &amp;amp; tasks to team members. It's their job (under your servant leadership) to self organize and pick sprint backlog items. They can use swarming techniques, they can pair program, they can breakdown technical tasks into granular level to work as a team and deliver their commitment - the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;plan according to the velocity and then the team should work together to deliver a potentially releasable sprint rather than a half completed sprint? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is better. Remember that the estimates are a guess after all. So velocity is a more accurate measure against which you can plan your upcoming sprint. Don't fall into the trap of ensuring that everyone is 100% utilized. Instead focus on 100% optimization. In team retrospective meetings, the current velocity can also come under discussion. Does the team think that their velocity is low? Maybe they have become efficient enough so that the velocity can be go up by planning for more stories in the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a related note, there are two views on assigning tasks to individual team members during the sprint planning meeting. One argument is to have names against all sprint tasks when you end the sprint planning meeting. The second point of view is, task assignment should not be done in the sprint planning meeting. Let the team pick tasks as they go, with sprint completion as a common objective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mike Cohn mentions in his &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/should-team-members-sign-up-for-tasks-during-sprint-planning&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If a team walks out of sprint planning with a name next to every task,&#xA;  individual accountability will definitely be increased. I will feel&#xA;  more responsibility to finish the tasks with my name or initials next&#xA;  to them. And you will feel the same for those with yours. But, this&#xA;  will come at the expense of team accountability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My recommendation is that a team should leave sprint planning without&#xA;  having put names on tasks. Following a real-time sign-up strategy will&#xA;  allow more flexibility during the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More on this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blog.backlogapp.io/why-not-to-assign-backlog-items-during-sprint-planning-7b5bdb7a047&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://blog.backlogapp.io/why-not-to-assign-backlog-items-during-sprint-planning-7b5bdb7a047&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.planningpoker.com/blog/should-your-team-claim-tasks-in-sprint-planning/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.planningpoker.com/blog/should-your-team-claim-tasks-in-sprint-planning/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/97535/who-should-define-assign-implement-and-follow-the-tasks-in-scrum&quot;&gt;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/97535/who-should-define-assign-implement-and-follow-the-tasks-in-scrum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastActivityDate="2019-02-01T11:23:14.830" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25728" CreationDate="2019-02-01T11:57:16.370" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Product is currently in beta stage and never been public, only client&#xA;  team and the team of testers have access to this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How often is the client checking in?  Do you have regular reviews?   You want the feedback loop short and &lt;em&gt;actionable&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The requirements are very much agile and I'm keeping hard to keep everything persistent during sprints and day to day work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could be some red flags that you are having to work very hard.  The team should be improving.   Are you running regular retrospectives?  If not, then you should start and ensure that the meetings are focused. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However the work developers are delivering tend to be more error prone and very fragile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could be one of several things or a combination of things. Let's unpack it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are the team highly skilled?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are they learning new frameworks and technologies?  If so, then they need time to absorb the new information and improve&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are they practising &lt;em&gt;drive-by coding&lt;/em&gt; which is where you care more about the tickets being marked as done and the plan being adhered to rather than letting them have the time and space to craft quality code?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They tend to do same mistake over and over however the internal QA team sits as a boundary before the client. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A retrospective should have flagged this.  It might be time to &lt;em&gt;stop the production line&lt;/em&gt; to ensure that all of the Developers are committed to improving, both themselves and the codebase. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does the code enter the code-base?  Does it go through a code-review?  Do you practise pair programming?  Do you have GIT gatekeepers?  Is there an automated service for flagging errors? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Due to the app's fragile nature,even QA team can't get caught up all the bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do you have a separate QA team?  What sort of activities do they conduct?  How do you define a bug?  It this a lack of requirement clarity?  Are you using user stories?  Do they have clear acceptance criteria?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Due to this reason, all the work is now behind, My deliveries are getting late, deadline missing is now a common thing. Client frustration is also a common now. I'm running out of options. What an experienced PM would do in this moment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The truth is, this does not sound very Agile.  It sounds like some waterfall activities with some Agile patterns bolted on over the top.  Water-Scrum-Fall.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, without greater access to your team, you technologies and your environment, it is very difficult to provide you with constructive advice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will simply say what a previous coach said to me once.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Cut the bullshit&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you implement Agile patterns, then implement them.  Pick a framework; I advise Scrum.  Implement it and see where the gaps lie.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At present the range of issues could be anything from inexperienced developers to time-pressure to unclear requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2019-02-01T11:57:16.370" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23472" CreationDate="2019-02-01T15:49:05.613" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Conway's Law:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was first documented by &lt;a href=&quot;http://melconway.com/Home/Conways_Law.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Melvin Conway&lt;/a&gt; half a century ago &amp;amp; dubbed Conway's Law in Fred Brooks' book - &quot;The Mythical Man-Month&quot;. The Law has since been backed up by &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/demystifying-conways-law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;further positive research&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When developing software systems the organisational structures tend to dictate how software will develop. This is why if a hierarchical, monolithic organization develops software it will tend to want it produced in the same fashion - with GANTT charts, planning sessions, lots of forward planning months in advance &amp;amp; so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In essense if management doesn't buy into scrum &amp;amp; adjust the organization to work in a flatter, servant-leader type way then any attempts to introduce scrum practices will meet so many obstacles that they will be short-lived at best. Been there, bought that t-shirt!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="693" LastActivityDate="2019-02-01T15:49:05.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24456" CreationDate="2019-02-01T16:59:10.583" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Psychologically speaking, the general term for this is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_fallacy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;planning fallacy&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, which is caused by our &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimism_bias&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;optimistic bias&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other related tendencies listed at the end of the optimistic bias page: illusion of control, illusory superiority, normalcy bias, positivity bias, reference class forecasting, self-serving bias, wishful thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://prismdecision.com/the-planning-fallacy-and-optimism-bias/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The three-step protocol&lt;/a&gt; for managing optimism bias and the planning fallacy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify an appropriate reference class (e.g., school building project, IT project, family room addition, etc.).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Obtain the statistics of the referenced class (e.g., percentage by which expenditures exceeded budget, project delays, cost per square foot, etc.). Use this objective research to generate a baseline prediction.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If, despite your disciplined efforts, you believe optimism bias is still at play, adjust the baseline prediction as necessary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27043" LastEditorUserId="27043" LastEditDate="2019-02-01T17:08:50.003" LastActivityDate="2019-02-01T17:08:50.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25693" CreationDate="2019-02-01T20:15:23.027" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The built-in Task Usage view shows this information and can be customized just like the Gantt Chart view (add/remove columns, filter data, adjust time-phase zoom, etc.). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5LYp1.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5LYp1.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tip: to add other time-phased fields such as Baseline Work, right click in the Details column and select it from the pop-up menu.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastActivityDate="2019-02-01T20:15:23.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25735" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-02-01T22:19:33.417" Score="3" ViewCount="270" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’m looking for a little advice…. let me start at the beginning….&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My Organisation is very traditional and our organisation structure a little strange. Our web team are part of the marketing department (which includes content, social media, support &amp;amp; development) and are responsible for all public facing websites.  IT are their own department are responsible for back end systems.  In the past few years the lines between these two sections have become blurred with a web based backend CRM system that plugs into the public facing website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last summer we changed the development team model to an Agile methodology and we’ve seen big gains in performance and efficiency.  I am part of the Development team but had been working (sub consciously as a Product Owner)  with IT implementing their new web based system so I am now the Product Owner for the web team.  We have a scrum master &amp;amp; 3 developers and we all report to the Web Team Manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now onto the problems… I am acting as Product owner for all software products (regardless of which department is responsible for them) which means I have to operate on an organisational perspective rather than any single product. While the Dev team report to the Web Team Manager, ultimately they work on all web based systems we have.  Our manager has placed herself into the Dev team as a pseudo-tester which they feel enables them to attend stand-ups &amp;amp; retro’s and the dev team feel they cannot be open in their retro as a result.  They also act as the point of contact with the organisation on all changes to our websites thus making them the customer also.  Our backlog refinements are now the same people, the Scrum Master, Web Team Manager and myself s Product Owner.  In our sprint demo’s we demo to the manager as they are technically the customer.  On a more operational basis, Dev team members request their holidays through the Web Team Manager, but they always check with me first, then make their request and then the Web Team Manager contacts me to see if request is ok.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a Product Owner, should some of these Line level tasks be routed to me instead or is it best to focus on the product? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a Product Owner, should I be the person dealing with all customers within the Organisation on new pieces of work? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it appropriate for the Web Team Manager to assume the many hats that they have? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Given our somewhat unusual Organisational structure, what feedback would you give on how our structure is setup and what changes would you recommend to bring clarity on responsibility for developing and maintaining our software?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34878" LastActivityDate="2019-02-13T17:14:47.460" Title="Advice on Agile team structure" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25735" CreationDate="2019-02-01T23:29:51.197" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like there are three challenges you are encountering, and they are possibly all separate solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) The manager as part of the team is disruptive to the success of the team.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of leaders simply don't understand the impact their hierarchical difference has on others. It is unfortunate that your scrum master hasn't noticed, but if you're in the retrospectives, there is nothing that stops you from raising the concern. Alternately, you can ask someone from another place in the organization that the manager trusts to have the conversation with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I can't count the number of times a manager comes into a room and says &quot;you all trust me, right?&quot; or &quot;anyone have a problem with me being here?&quot; Again, many leaders don't understand the impact that hierarchical differences can have. In some teams, we're run experiments with the manager there for a few sprints and not there for a few sprints to show the impact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) Scrum doesn't promote middle-men&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what you are describing, the manager is not acting as the customer, they are acting as a middle-man. You aren't supposed to have middle-men. The closest thing you have in Scrum is the Product Owner, who acts as an ambassador and advocate, but that is very different than a middle-man. The whole scrum team should engage with the real customers whenever possible. The fact that you are doing the review with the manager suggests that isn't happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3) Wearing Multiple Hats is really hard&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is true for anyone, not just the manager. Different roles intentionally have tension with one another. Having tension with yourself is very difficult if not impossible and unbelievably stressful. In the worst cases, the person will just use whichever hat drives their own personal goals the best, which is damaging to the team. In the best cases, the person will try to effectively balance them and end up exhausted and stressed out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Bonus:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your team members go through a lot of steps to request time off. It's probably a much more complicated issue than can be easily explored through StackExchange but most companies are moving toward 1 verification at most with many finding that being able to adapt to employees taking vacation at will makes them far more resilient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-02-01T23:29:51.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25738" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-02-04T22:31:37.477" Score="1" ViewCount="991" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am new to MS Project (~1 week experience) and could use some help with an Enterprise Custom Field I'm trying to create. I'm using Project through Project Web App in Office 365 (I assume this is Project 2016?) and trying to create an Enterprise Custom Field at the Project level of type Text to calculate a Project Size based on Work. I have created the following formula in my custom field:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;IIf([Work] &amp;gt; 1000, &quot;XL&quot;, IIf([Work] &amp;gt; 160, &quot;L&quot;, IIf([Work] &amp;gt; 40, &quot;M&quot;, &quot;S&quot;)))&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work is input at the Task level in Hours and is displayed at the Project level in Hours in my view in Project Center. My expectation is that the Work displayed at the project level is a sum of Work that has been input at the Task level for all tasks associated to the project and thus I should be able to use this formula to automatically populate my Project Size field. What I'm actually seeing is that some projects display nothing in Project Size (even though they have non-zero values for Work on tasks) and any project that actually displays a value always displays XL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I missing something about how Enterprise Calculated Fields work in Project or is there something wrong in my formula syntax? Thanks in advance for any assistance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; I added another calculated field (Numeric) that has a formula of [Work]. When I added it to my Project Center view, none of the projects had a value in this column. I went into a project for which I already had 1 placeholder task created and deleted the task. I then added the task back with the same information as the deleted task and saved/published it. After saving/publishing, the project still has no value in the Project Size column, however, my new calculated field is populated with the correct value of Work (in minutes as @Tom-Boyle stated). In addition, if I go back into the project and select Project Details from the left navigation, I do see a correctly calculated Project Size on that page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34896" LastEditorUserId="34896" LastEditDate="2019-02-06T15:34:40.630" LastActivityDate="2019-02-06T15:34:40.630" Title="Project Online - Enterprise Custom Field Not Calculating Formula Correctly?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8955" CreationDate="2019-02-05T09:40:33.773" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even if there is drawbacks on doing so, doesn't mean that you can't. If this applies to your Project and organisation, then do it. Using scrum doesn't implies to &quot;shut your brain off&quot; and follow strict rules without adapting them to your case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34900" LastActivityDate="2019-02-05T09:40:33.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25517" CreationDate="2019-02-05T12:43:48.553" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a PMI application you should focus on what you did in project managment, not what you didn't. It is not relevant to mention what you did not do. You should have PM experience in all project process groups. My suggestion would be to summarize a little bit other processes and add a short description in the execution phase. Then add the 10 hours of course. It's better than leaving at zero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34902" LastActivityDate="2019-02-05T12:43:48.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25741" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-02-05T16:46:46.517" Score="1" ViewCount="69" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for the name of a chart type that (I think) is used in Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a spiral where each revolution represents a sprint and the radius at any given point is the amount of work remaining.  The spiral is overlaid on top of a series of concentric circles representing the amount of work remaining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anybody have any clue what I'm on about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34904" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-02-05T18:04:17.450" LastActivityDate="2019-02-06T09:33:58.347" Title="I'm looking for the name of a spiral chart type used in Scrum" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25741" CreationDate="2019-02-05T18:26:10.857" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just a shot in the dark...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only one I can think of is a risk management approach (not specific to agile or any of the SDLCs). It's called the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_model&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Spiral Model&lt;/a&gt;. It's totally not what you're talking about, but there are some similarities (mostly passage of time as you move away from the center.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that... Fifteen years of Scrum, and I've never seen what you describe. Is it possible it was from some internal slide deck at your organization?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20700" LastActivityDate="2019-02-05T18:26:10.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25743" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25763" CreationDate="2019-02-06T09:11:03.063" Score="5" ViewCount="149" Body="&lt;p&gt;When writing a full Technical Spec - defining in details what every part of the system will do, show and look like - does it help to state the obvious?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take the easiest example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Login Screen needs fields for username &amp;amp; password and their limitations. Those details need to be described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But (assuming you've never done this before and can't copy from another spec) does it suffice to say: Include &quot;lost password link&quot; and assume the engineers are mature enough to know what to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or should it go into the details of what happens when you click on that link, what the text of each stage says and what the arbitrary timeout limits are?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or should it say &quot;...and behave like ____________ does, and a pointer to some other product?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Would there be any advantage to writing 2 - 3 pages with all the details, or will this type of detail be counter-productive, similar to micro-management?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2020-09-23T09:05:10.847" Title="Technical Spec: Is more detail help or hindrance?" Tags="&lt;specification&gt;&lt;micro-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25744" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25991" CreationDate="2019-02-06T09:25:58.633" Score="3" ViewCount="115" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have coached my team to write quite good user stories using gherkin, but their technical stories are still lacking something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that when a person of one technical discipline reads the story of a another technical discipline we are finding it very hard to convey enough meaning such that every technical team member can understand it (regardless of whether they know enough to estimate.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example, though not specific to our case, would be that of a C# developer without SQL skills writing a story in a team which includes SQL developers without C# skills. (I recognise that the former is unlikely but the extant teams of the latter are common, so please bear with me.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We would like the story written by the C# developer to be in a grammar understood by the SQL developer. When the SQL developer writes stories we would like the same grammar to be used. I guess that this would be the technical lingua franca.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The user story's lingua franca would be gherkin. What could be the technical story's lingua franca?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29374" LastEditorUserId="29374" LastEditDate="2019-03-12T14:26:39.377" LastActivityDate="2019-03-12T14:26:39.377" Title="Lingua franca for technical stories" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="16" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25741" CreationDate="2019-02-06T09:33:58.347" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds like a custom chart that someone has designed.  I can imagine how it looks with an ever-decreasing remaining scope towards a bulls-eye.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although the regular burn-up charts are fit for purpose; I can see how an enterprising member of the team might have designed it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The alternative explanation is that it is one of the custom charts produced by &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.aha.io/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Aha! - the product roadmapping company&lt;/a&gt; which now offer additional services beyond their original purpose of &lt;em&gt;visual product roadmaps&lt;/em&gt;.   I have only ever used Aha in a trial basis so I cannot say for certain. I also make no recommendation for their product whatsoever.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have various visual plans including one which looks like the following.  If you cannot find your custom chart, you might be looking at something from this software vendor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rlLI5.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rlLI5.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10462" LastActivityDate="2019-02-06T09:33:58.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25746" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-02-06T09:52:47.433" Score="2" ViewCount="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Perhaps this will get criticised for being technical, but SO seems the wrong place for it.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are running/involved in a project with SAP developers, how do you/they write stories for it? What do the stories usually look like?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be specific, I'm (not an SAP developer but I am...) referring to technical stories which specify changes/additions to web services provided by SAP to client applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our team tend to write good stories, but when the SAP technical stories get written it turns into the legacy style of writing stories and, more often than note, is a dump of the knowledge the person writing the story has with notes to say &quot;change this.&quot; It's not digestible by anyone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29374" LastActivityDate="2019-02-07T06:35:16.257" Title="Writing stories for SAP" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25747" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-02-06T13:56:57.107" Score="0" ViewCount="110" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know if, according to PMI, or any other PM certification, there are official templates for project management artifacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am interested in the following documentation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project charter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Functional specifications&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Non-functional specifications&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;RACI matrix&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Highlevel technical requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found various templates online, however I am not sure if there are any officially standardized templates that could be adopted on a PMO level?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone recommend a PM professional site, which provides such artifacts or a book where such can be found? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34877" LastActivityDate="2019-03-10T04:29:55.303" Title="Project Management templates - Official standards across industry" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;artifacts&gt;&lt;templates&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25747" CreationDate="2019-02-06T16:34:17.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before going any further, you may want to check with your organizations PMO to see if they have the project management templates that you have outlined in your question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although there isn't an official template repository, www.projectmanagement.com which is powered by the PMI, does offer the sample templates you are looking to use.   You must be a member to download these templates.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an alternative, there are plenty of free templates that are available on the internet.  For example, the US government has many of the types of templates that you are looking for; the CDC has a very good project charter that you can download @ &lt;a href=&quot;https://www2a.cdc.gov/cdcup/library/templates/CDC_UP_Project_Charter_Template.doc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www2a.cdc.gov/cdcup/library/templates/CDC_UP_Project_Charter_Template.doc&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;You may want to look at www.smartsheet.com as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34916" LastActivityDate="2019-02-06T16:34:17.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15707" CreationDate="2019-02-06T17:08:20.273" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as you aim to predict the future you should re-estimate spillovers before the next Sprint or before purring them back in the Backlog. The reason for that is very clear - it is describing what is really left to do. &lt;a href=&quot;https://encrypted.pl/re-estimate-or-not/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;You are not getting paid for story points you delivered.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34917" LastActivityDate="2019-02-06T17:08:20.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25729" CreationDate="2019-02-07T05:17:06.993" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly we don't give or assign a story to team member. They should pick it as they are self organized. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Commitment for the sprint (how much can we do) is decided based on team's velocity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is the team's responsibility to ensure that what is committed for the sprint is met collectively. That does not mean that one story is worked by all, but if a team member is stuck, this is made transparent in the daily scrum or even earlier. The team pips in as required and ensures that the problem is resolved and story completed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34733" LastEditorUserId="34072" LastEditDate="2019-02-07T09:26:19.870" LastActivityDate="2019-02-07T09:26:19.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25746" CreationDate="2019-02-07T06:35:16.257" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a user of the reporting service&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;when fetching the latest Klausen statistics&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also want to get the average Neuman-sum over all averages I obtained&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so I don't have to implement that algorithm myself and I can be sure all departments use the same numbers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no reason that the &amp;quot;user&amp;quot; cannot be another program, for example the reporting frontend that another team provides. You could then dump the technical details into a &amp;quot;details&amp;quot; part of the story, so the knowledge does not get lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-02-07T06:35:16.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25753" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25754" CreationDate="2019-02-07T07:53:59.510" Score="5" ViewCount="392" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have started the practice of Kanban (with JIRA) in my team that handles customer issues for heterogeneous products. As part of this we have daily standups to discuss:&#xA;1. How is the flow&#xA;2. Any impediments&#xA;3. Any improvements are required&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The challenge is:&#xA;1. Since changes happen slowly while handling customer issues at level 3, the team finds daily standup to be redundant. They are proposing to have standups on alternate days&#xA;2. Since not all members work on the same product, (though they are all part of the same product suite or are evolution of one over another), they dont see any value in discussing their work item with others and see it as a status update to me (manager)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to handle this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34921" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-03-01T11:42:16.693" LastActivityDate="2019-03-01T11:42:16.693" Title="Standup Frequency &amp; Content for Kanban" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25753" CreationDate="2019-02-07T08:29:11.807" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Focus on delivering, not on hosting ceremonies.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main idea of having a daily meeting (in a support / maintenance context) is to socialise what's being done and identify potential points of assistance between team members, but also to increase teamwork in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You did great by avoiding the &quot;what I did yesterday, what I'll do today, any blockers&quot; script. Based on my experience, it's great for a planned delivery routine but barely applies on projects like support / maintenance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, the standup should work as the team needs. &lt;strong&gt;Experiment.&lt;/strong&gt; Agile is all about experimentation and constant improvement. Do the meeting twice a week. You could help identifying potential cases that could've been addressed quickly if there was a daily meeting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During next retro, discuss about the experience and keep fine tunning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever you have segregation of duties between people on the same team, is good to assess how useful is to have them in contact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;See challenges as opportunies:&lt;/strong&gt;: In our case, we have DBAs, Unix and Bigdata experts. Each work is very specific into their area, however there's &lt;em&gt;ocasionally common related tasks&lt;/em&gt; where they can work together. Even if the amount of shared work is low, it's still important to share a moment to create rapport. Besides, a healthy team should be willing to increase their &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-shaped_skills&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;T-Shaped skills&lt;/a&gt;, and having them shifting low complexity tasks is a very good way to flex some muscles on unexplored knowledge areas. In your case it's even better - having more people knowing more products is always beneficial. I'd just suggest to run away from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://medium.com/swlh/the-full-stack-developer-is-a-myth-4e3fb9c25867&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;full stack developer&lt;/a&gt;, unless you're willing to invest dangerous bucks on your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if there's low engagement between parts, you may consider having standups separately (and reassess if there's a single team or not). Again, experiment &gt; assess &gt; rinse and repeat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-02-07T14:12:28.600" LastActivityDate="2019-02-07T14:12:28.600" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25756" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25757" CreationDate="2019-02-07T11:10:27.730" Score="23" ViewCount="3935" Body="&lt;p&gt;While working Agile, how can a PM estimate a task when he/she is not a developer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34901" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-02-07T14:13:59.517" LastActivityDate="2019-02-08T11:31:56.153" Title="Task estimation for PMs who are not developers" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25756" CreationDate="2019-02-07T14:11:08.293" Score="53" Body="&lt;p&gt;If at all possible, they don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They ask developers to estimate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimates should always be made by the people who will perform the work being estimated. If this is not done, then you run the following two risks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The estimate is inaccurate, as the person who estimated it did not have the knowledge of what work needed to be done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The people who do the work do not have any buy-in for that estimate, and thus are less likely to have buy-in on any target or deadline for that same work, as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2019-02-07T14:11:08.293" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25756" CreationDate="2019-02-07T14:52:59.217" Score="11" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Have Task Performers Provide Estimates&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In agile frameworks (and even in sensible non-agile frameworks), project managers should never estimate work items themselves. Instead, the people who will actually do the work (&quot;task performers&quot;) do the estimation!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get the most realistic estimates, have the task performers estimate the time and complexity of the work they will do. You want them to estimate based on their &lt;em&gt;own&lt;/em&gt; skills, knowledge, and resources, because it doesn't really matter how long it would take for some other person to do the work. All that matters in a pragmatic sense is how long it will take the people assigned to the project to accomplish a task with the resources they have on hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you must rely on third-party estimates for some reason (e.g. having a subject matter expert rather than the task performers provide a rough planning estimate), then you'll want to capture that person's assumptions, and then apply appropriate confidence intervals and fudge factors to the estimates they produce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Express Estimates as a Range&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final product of any estimate should be a range, not a single value. Many practitioners target an 80% confidence interval, but bracket the target with pessimistic and optimistic targets as well. For example, you might use 60-95% as your initial spread, with an initial expectation of 80%. Just be sure you communicate effectively with stakeholders that any estimate is a forecast, and not an ironclad money-back guarantee!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-02-07T14:52:59.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25759" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-02-07T15:25:22.703" Score="3" ViewCount="124" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a principle in Scrum for packaging the different views of the project into different owners' perspectives, or do I just need to get more practice in picking the pieces I need out of the stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a developer's perspective, I see a number of times where we either break a logical set of development work across multiple stories or lump multiple sets of work into one story.  This has led to difficulty in assuring the requirements are met and discussing relationships between components with other developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My group uses Atlassian's Jira.  At least our implementation seems to be more of a strictly hierarchical layout vs. facet-based.  So an epic has stories, stories have sub-tasks, etc. But there's no way to collect parts spread across multiple stories into a unit of development work, such as making one sub-task that is the child of three stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example 1 - Splitting one unit&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;A proxy service routes a specific client's orders.  It receives, validates and passes on the client's request.  A standard intake then handles the request.  A change to accept four new values has been split into two separate stories--one for discussing failing validation and one for happy path.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While a user may see two different outcomes, a developer it is handling the contingencies of one new set of input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example 2 - One concept, multiple components&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;10 new events will be reported in two different business categories.  Events 1-5 are in Story A.  6-10 are in Story B.  Architecturally, Component 1 will receive all 10 events and configuration will handle the detail of each variation.  Then Component 2 will consume Component 1's results, again with one mechanism change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This combines both components into a single story, then does so again.  From a developer perspective, the delineation of work is between components, not event categories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34928" LastEditorUserId="34928" LastEditDate="2019-02-07T17:10:41.287" LastActivityDate="2020-06-13T16:04:45.913" Title="In Scrum, how to handle a functionality that could be used by more than one feature?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25759" CreationDate="2019-02-07T15:57:34.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are actually two parts of an answer to this. The technical coding part and the backlog refinement part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Backlog Refinement&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the backlog refinement meeting, there should be a conversation between the Product Owner and the team where things like this come to light. There may be some cases where working features in a specific way or order actually makes them far more difficult and, therefor, expensive. In some cases, the value created with this order is great enough that it is worth the cost. In other cases, the order or grouping is just coincidence, and the Product Owner will happily adjust the backlog for a less expensive, easier way of building out the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Technical - Decoupled Code&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This problem becomes less and less frequent the more module your code is. In an ideal situation, if I have features A, B, and C and they all contribute to some architectural component, like a messaging layer, I'd like to be able to do any of these first and only build the part of that messaging layer that I need for that feature. Then the part I need for the next feature, and so on. Also ideally, this should not result in significant rework. Respecting principles like dependency inversion, open-closed principle, and single-responsibility goes a long way toward having loosely coupled or decoupled code. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, this is easier to do in some things than others. With practice, you'll find more and more ways to do it. Sometimes there is a question of &quot;should I code this way&quot; since doing it all at once is more efficient. The answer most of the time is this: if you don't change it now, you will in the future. Very little code that is ever written in only touched once in the life of the application. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-02-07T15:57:34.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25756" CreationDate="2019-02-07T16:17:00.127" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is very rare that this is possible. But it can happen, so let's look at it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any estimate is based off of statistical evidence from past experiences doing similar work. If the work we are doing is remarkably similar and we have a large set of data to work from, we can make estimates largely from categorizing the task. For example, I used to work in a data center and we built a lot of servers. From statistical data, anyone (including a PM) could tell you how long it was likely to take to provision a windows server on a particular piece of hardware. They could also look at the queue to see what the likely queue time for the work would be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, that's the kind of situation where it is possible. The reason that you got the other answers (which I completely agree with btw) about how you have to let the people doing the work estimate it, is because almost no knowledge work falls into this category - especially software development. Even if two features or applications look similar on the surface, they are usually very different behind the screen. So, from the PM's view, they will either find no similar tasks, not enough to make a prediction, or they likely do not have the depth of knowledge needed to really identify if a task is truly similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, we pass it off to the team. They also don't have similar tasks to compare it to, but they look much deeper into it until they get to similar tasks. For example, they have run queries against databases before. They've formatted data on the screen. They've handled input validation. Even still, it would probably be much more accurate to call these guesses than estimates, but they are at least educated guesses based on past experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-02-07T16:17:00.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25759" CreationDate="2019-02-07T16:19:37.597" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use Spykes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20180712125321/https://scrumalliance.org/learn-about-scrum/agile-atlas/agile-atlas-commentaries/may-2014/spikes-in-scrum-the-exception,-not-the-rule&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Spyke is a technical investigation to produce an answer in regards to some acceptance criteria on a PBI prioritized in upcoming Sprints.&lt;/a&gt; Consider this as a &lt;strong&gt;kind of enabler&lt;/strong&gt; to break down the implementation complexity, such as how the minimal functionality could be developed in order to deliver upcoming stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definitely easier said than done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind, depending on how &lt;strike&gt;messy&lt;/strike&gt; &quot;monolithic&quot; your code is, the harder it'll be to make the best use of spykes. As the article mention, they should be the exception, not the rule for such implementations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, agile says &quot;working software &lt;strong&gt;over&lt;/strong&gt; comprehensive documentation&quot;, not &quot;working software and &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt; documentation&quot;. Depending on how complex your application is, you may need to dedicate more or less time to document (or socialise) your project changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="37941" LastEditDate="2020-06-13T16:04:45.913" LastActivityDate="2020-06-13T16:04:45.913" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25743" CreationDate="2019-02-07T16:38:21.567" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This really depends on how you and your collaborators like/are expected to work, how much time you want to invest in getting things right, and how painful it is for you to not have some of the detail realized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you want to define something once, look to have one delivery, and expect everything to work 100% according to your own understanding, then you would probably want to break things down to that level of detail and make sure everyone involved can work with it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are planning for a couple of iterations on your deliverable, then you could simply break down your detailed requirements into chunks and revisit those that do not work as you expect them to (without having defined explixit requirements). In this case, you will probably want to make sure that your collaborators are happy to go along with that approach (risk of your always aksing for too much &quot;more&quot;). The risk here is that the team can never really anticipate when it will be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hybrid approach would be to define a high-level set of requirements and add your detailed expectations as a kind of reference/appendix. In this case, you would probably rely on the &quot;maturity&quot; of your engineers without being able to control the outcome (both of you will accept the respective others' perspective). And yet, for anyone caring enough about what you want to see in the product, they could at least skim those details and adjust their take on the high-level requirements accordingly. Again, an option with compromises to be made, but with some prospect of your expectations being met in their entirety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19279" LastActivityDate="2019-02-07T16:38:21.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25743" CreationDate="2019-02-07T17:04:34.953" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Document the &lt;strong&gt;minimum required&lt;/strong&gt; for a &lt;strong&gt;proper, &lt;em&gt;unambiguous&lt;/em&gt; implementation&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It requires a lot of efforts from both analysts and implementors, so will depend a lot on your project environment maturity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're working on a more &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;agile&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; environment, a &lt;strong&gt;close relationship and conversation&lt;/strong&gt; between parts might reduce the amount of extended documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're working on a more contractual, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;waterfall&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; oriented you may need to have a &lt;strong&gt;more detailed documentation&lt;/strong&gt;. To avoid a lot of repetition of text, you may consider to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.uml-diagrams.org/use-case-include.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;include&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.uml-diagrams.org/use-case-extend.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;extend&lt;/a&gt;  such requirements as part of your use cases. Another example &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemodeling.com/essays/useCaseReuse.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-02-07T21:10:36.070" LastActivityDate="2019-02-07T21:10:36.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25753" CreationDate="2019-02-07T20:24:41.943" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;SSR,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think Tiago has provided some great perspectives and solutions to try out.  I will just add a few things - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Kanban (the Kanban Method) is an &quot;evolutionary method&quot; to help you improve what you were already doing.  It says - start with what you do currently, implement WIP Limits and Pull, and manage/ optimize flow.   So, as yourself the question, how were you doing it before? Was the team happy with the process they already had?  If yes, continue to do the same as earlier until your Kanban system throws up opportunities to change and improve.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lean/ Kanban is all about the need and the desire to improve.  One of Kanban Method's &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.digite.com/kanban/what-is-kanban/#kanban-principles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;foundational principles&lt;/a&gt; is &quot;Agree to pursue incremental, evolutionary change&quot;.  As you and your team got started with Kanban, hopefully, there was some discussion on why you are implementing Kanban. (If there wasn't - perhaps it was simply driven by a decision to use JIRA :) - it's not too late to revisit that and present it as an opportunity to improve, grow as professionals and as a team, and deliver greater value to your customer such as reduced lead time, easier prioritization, improved SLAs, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my own experience working with different companies, as well as our own, teams often have issues meeting daily - and they have changed it to meet as often as it makes sense for them.  In some cases, they have remained at 1-3 times a week, in others, they have gradually moved to a daily frequency and found benefit in that. Our own Dev teams meet daily, but our Marketing team, which also uses Kanban, meets twice a week - and it works for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the size of your overall team, and the sub-teams associated with each product - as also the number of different products - it may be feasible/ desirable to do the meetings product-wise. However, as Tiago said, there is benefit in picking up cross-product skills that some of the team members might perceive.  Having cross-product expertise helps you balance demand variations across products more easily. In our case, we have a team of 18 people that support 3 products.  They have a single daily meeting and almost all of them are able to work on 2 of the 3 products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Tiago said, experiment and improve continuously, even tho' some of the changes you decide to implement as a team might cause a drop in performance temporarily. In the end, you will see improvements and greater employee as well as customer satisfaction.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2019-02-07T20:24:41.943" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25766" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25773" CreationDate="2019-02-07T20:41:45.593" Score="7" ViewCount="149" Body="&lt;p&gt;We intend to implement a system that will allow users of our application to suggest new features (eg Uservoice) and vote for or against certain suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can employees working on the application (dev / ux / management / etc):&#xA;- Formulate new suggestions from this site?&#xA;- Vote for or against existing suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the arguments for/against if any?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6450" LastActivityDate="2019-03-26T22:25:37.947" Title="Should employees be allowed to vote for or against a feature request" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2019-03-27T03:59:09.700" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25767" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-02-08T09:49:35.893" Score="4" ViewCount="288" Body="&lt;p&gt;How would you motivate the team when the annual wage increment is minimal (less than 5%) even though the performance ratings are very fair?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11970" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-02-28T20:31:50.087" LastActivityDate="2019-02-28T20:31:50.087" Title="How to improve team motivation with minimal wage increment but fair performance ratings?" Tags="&lt;motivation&gt;&lt;performance&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25767" CreationDate="2019-02-08T10:46:51.413" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The good news is that money has been shown to be a very weak motivator in many studies. The increase one may exhibit by money is short lived. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A guy named Daniel Pink argued that &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;motivation is intrinsic and can be divide into three factors&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;autonomy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;mastery&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;purpose&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start your research here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't mean you can ignore the money.  You need to meet the basic need, you need to be at market wage, and then you focus on intrinsic drivers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-02-28T08:39:14.060" LastActivityDate="2019-02-28T08:39:14.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11567" CreationDate="2019-02-08T11:27:40.987" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing that I'd like to add as a product owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, when a design is needed, I'll write the story like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a: PO&#xA;I want: a design for feature xyz&#xA;so that: further work can be identified for implementation of xyz&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, that'll get assigned to an architect on the team. That's usually the only time I use the &quot;as a PO&quot; though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34948" LastActivityDate="2019-02-08T11:27:40.987" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25756" CreationDate="2019-02-08T11:31:56.153" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a former developer and agile pm, here's my 2p.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some tasks are easy to estimate as they're a known quantity and have been done lots of times before. A sausage factory knows exactly how long it takes to make one more sausage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some tasks are impossible to estimate. A biotech company doesn't know if it will ever find a cure for disease x [insert some currently incurable disease here], it can only pursue promising avenues in an organised way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most development tasks fall somewhere between these two extremes, and a developer will usually have a good feel for where in this range any given task lies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a project manager, you can help this process by asking the developers to identify those tasks that are most risky/unknown, and separating these tasks into a separate stage where the output is a product prototype. The prototype will not have the engineering or robustness of the final product, but you will have put all the riskiest stuff at the front of the project when the least resource has been committed. If some feature turns out to be unfeasible, then you've found that out as early as possible and can alter course at minimum cost. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have a working prototype, it's much easier for developers to plan and estimate the engineering required to turn the prototype into a deliverable project product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last thing, don't underestimate the difference between a prototype and a deliverable product. While it's more predictable, this difference will represent somewhere between 75% and 90% of the total project effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31506" LastActivityDate="2019-02-08T11:31:56.153" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25771" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-02-08T15:37:45.587" Score="1" ViewCount="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have created a Project in MS Project 2016. Of this data there are probably about 50 tasks which are of high importance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would like to do is create a project with the most important 50 tasks, so that, if any of the information about these 50 tasks is updated in the small project, the data in the large project is also updated and vice versa. The other data in the large project is not so important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone suggest the best way to do this? I have not yet come across anything that appears to be useful at the moment and I would like a response by Monday. Thanks in anticipation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34951" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-02-08T16:04:11.410" LastActivityDate="2019-02-08T16:04:11.410" Title="How to update some Key information from another Project" Tags="&lt;ms-project-2016&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25766" CreationDate="2019-02-08T16:18:02.063" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are two questions here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First:&lt;/strong&gt; Can the Development Team formulate new suggestions from this site?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;YES!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can make a weekly or biweekly meeting (name: Grooming) (time box: half hour) where you can collect all new suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Second:&lt;/strong&gt; Can the Development team vote for or against certain suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NO!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will be better to push suggestions to the Product Owner or Investor or some person who takes care of the product. The Development Team has to talk about what and how to implement but not about whether it will implement or not! That is a job for someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this was helpful. Best regards!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34952" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-02-08T16:23:58.593" LastActivityDate="2019-02-08T16:23:58.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25774" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25776" CreationDate="2019-02-08T17:13:53.577" Score="2" ViewCount="61" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our team, we get tickets from other teams. Currently we are trying to work on reducing the time to complete a requirement. We have split the time into 4 slices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time when a requirement is identified but the ticket has not been raised because the customer was not sure about which team gets the ticket. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lead Time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cycle Time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testing time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The image below shows the split:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zvpUo.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zvpUo.png&quot; alt=&quot;Ticket Lifecycle&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there some name for the Yellow portion of the timeline?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16154" LastActivityDate="2019-02-08T18:25:02.237" Title="Terminology for time before a ticket is raised and time after a ticket is completed" Tags="&lt;timeline&gt;&lt;cycle-time&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25774" CreationDate="2019-02-08T18:25:02.237" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might use &lt;strong&gt;Logging time&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As defined in ITIL, this is the &lt;em&gt;Process to record and prioritize the Incident with appropriate diligence, in order to facilitate a swift and effective resolution.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More info at &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.en.it-processmaps.com/index.php/Incident_Management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://wiki.en.it-processmaps.com/index.php/Incident_Management&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note, I'd suggest to use the whole nomenclature already defined by ITIL. It'll ensure there's a common language to be used across the board, based on a very sound and known standard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-02-08T18:25:02.237" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25777" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-02-09T03:16:07.070" Score="0" ViewCount="108" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have been providing a free remote training weekly basis, and We gave them some task/project to do. We tried to track the student's learning progress and project development using Skype and Trello. However, We are not able to keep track of their progress daily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any specific method we can follow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34963" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-02-11T14:07:36.817" LastActivityDate="2019-02-11T14:27:19.263" Title="How to track student's progress remotely?" Tags="&lt;tracking&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25778" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25846" CreationDate="2019-02-09T12:11:02.170" Score="1" ViewCount="109" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is known that software development tasks should be controlled by some project management metrics, that show the progress of work at each particular moment of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What metrics are better to be used if the project is a research and usual work consists of not only making a SW product, but (before that) reviewing and large corpus of scientific papers, making various PoC's? They key point here that at the beginning such project has no fixed architecture and just need to determine what's the best one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our project the &quot;done&quot; criteria are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Our decided architecture decision is best&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have implemented a piece of this architecture and it works&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This approach is new thus our project team is the best who continue the work on it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have published a paper in the top conference/journal about our research.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to achieve this criteria we plan to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;search all possible directions in literature, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;investigate how to apply these directions to our particular problem (because methods from papers can be described for adjacent but different applications),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;estimate how much effort will it take to implement each of approaches,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;estimate how much quality of SW product we can obtain by each approach (we already have this metric, it's deterministic in mathematical sense),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;compare different approaches and choose the best one,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;implement the best approach as a proof of concept,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;write and publish a paper about this approach.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I need to know is that metrics are better to start with in this case?&#xA;We need &lt;strong&gt;metrics that could be tracked on a weekly basis&lt;/strong&gt;, i.e. they must show how much part of work is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34965" LastEditorUserId="34965" LastEditDate="2019-02-20T19:33:16.880" LastActivityDate="2019-02-21T11:02:17.987" Title="What metrics should be used for tracking the quality of research project?" Tags="&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25777" CreationDate="2019-02-09T16:17:27.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;PM.SE is not a community for &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&quot;&gt;software recommendations&lt;/a&gt;. Nevertheless, considering this as a common project problem, we can offer some guidance that could be useful for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the saying goes: &lt;em&gt;How to eat an elephant? One bite at a time.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll need to consider two aspects: one is to have tasks to track progress on a daily basis and some sort of &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/3683/430&quot;&gt;online task tracking tools&lt;/a&gt;. Once you have the team working on specific tasks that could demonstrate their obtained knowledge on the last day or so, you'll be able to obtain the info you're looking for. It's up to the students to keep such tasks updated based on their progress, and up to you to check on a timely manner for a report on how tasks are progressing. This would work as any other project. &lt;strong&gt;The key is to have tasks broken down as much as possible&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-02-09T16:17:27.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14524" CreationDate="2019-02-09T22:42:12.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read many answers above and it seems all of us are taking the same thing again and again with minor differences or I would say using the terms interchangeably.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to Scope and Requirement, it should always be Project Scope and Requirement as Product Scope has no comparison with it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We cannot define the Scope until we define both Project scope and Product Scope. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product Scope supersedes everything and this is defined in the beginning of the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requirements, based on the Product Scope you collect the project Requirement to understand the Product. This is largely Stakeholder Requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project Scope here comes the Box of Requirements and box can take up according to the capacity and therefore its a subset of Project Requirements defined or outlines or requested by the stakeholders&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mudassiriqbal.net/requirement-vs-scope/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.mudassiriqbal.net/requirement-vs-scope/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find more details on the above links of my website &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34969" LastEditorUserId="34969" LastEditDate="2019-02-10T09:15:42.520" LastActivityDate="2019-02-10T09:15:42.520" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25622" CreationDate="2019-02-10T01:38:19.257" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an Activity-on-Arrow diagram, all of the nodes represent a specific achievement in a project with zero duration. A milestone is also an achievement in a project that doesn't impact duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's likely that at least some, if not all, nodes correspond to project milestones. It does depend on who's perspective you are calling it a milestone. A node could represent an internal milestone as opposed to a milestone to an external stakeholder. To reach a milestone in the project, you may need to accomplish several of the achievements represented as nodes on the AOA diagram.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to differentiate between activities and milestones, consider dummy activity arrows. In your particular case, if A1 leads into A2, you can either identify node A2 as the milestone or have a different node to represent the milestone with a dummy activity arrow from A2, as dummy activities have a completion time of 0. This would also allow you to sync up multiple nodes that are prerequisites for achieving the milestone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2019-02-10T01:38:19.257" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25622" CreationDate="2019-02-10T05:31:25.573" Score="2" Body="&lt;h1&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What if I need to show several activities like a1, a2 and at the end of a2 there is a milestone?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In activity-on-node (AoN), you'd be looking for the concept of &quot;virtual nodes.&quot; Standard nodes within the diagram represent activities. Nodes that represent collections of activities, decision points, or other non-activities are inserted as logical nodes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In activity-on-arrow (AoA), each node represents a zero-duration milestone of one kind or another, while the arrows represent activities. In this type of diagram, you can use dummy arrows to represent logical dependencies that roll up into a larger milestone. While not common, it's also certainly possible to borrow the notion of virtual nodes from AoN, and having activities or nodes roll up into a virtual node using dummy arrows. However, if you're doing this often, it may mean that AoA is not the ideal representation for your particular project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, with AoA you should refactor your work packages so that each activity is large enough to lead to some sort of milestone. Otherwise, leverage dummy arrows and logical nodes to represent the roll-up, or switch to a better graphical representation like AoN or a precedence diagram.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Activity-On-Arrow (AoA)&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many practitioners consider AoA diagrams to be outmoded. In practice, they have generally been superseded by AoN or precedence diagrams. So, the first recommendation is not to use AoA unless you have to, precisely because of the sorts of visualization problems you're experiencing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, the dictionary describes a milestone as &quot;an action or event marking a significant change or stage in development.&quot; The key word here is &lt;em&gt;significant&lt;/em&gt;. In AoA, this may force you to visualize work in less-granular terms, such that each node represents sufficient progress to be significant. That in turn means that each activity arrow much be sufficiently high-level that the end result of the activity is a significant change, which makes it hard to diagram granular dependencies within work packages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a milestone with multiple precedent dependencies, you can use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cpmtutor.com/c05/logicdummies.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;dummy arrows&lt;/a&gt; to represent dependencies within your diagram that can't be representated as a standard sequence. Consider this example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ucY2d.png&quot; alt=&quot;Example AoA diagram with dummy arrows.&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Photo credit: cpmtutor.com&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your specific case, you should:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Refactor a1 and a2 so that each activity leads to a milestone of &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; level of significance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a2 is dependent on a1, link a1 to the milestone &lt;em&gt;preceding&lt;/em&gt; a2 (if possible).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a1 is a prerequisite for the milestone following a2 (let's call that m1), but not required for a2 itself, then use a dummy arrow to link a1 to m1.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Alternative Method: Activity-on-Node (AoN)&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because AoA has so many known problems and edge cases, it may be worth your time to consider alternative representations. It's worth carefully evaluating whether AoN would better represent your data or planning/execution process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Activities are Standard Nodes; Milestones are Virtual/Logical Nodes&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_path_method#Components&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Critical Path Method&lt;/a&gt;, a standard node is a component within an activity-on-node (AoN) diagram that represents an &lt;em&gt;activity&lt;/em&gt;. An activity generally is a task or work package that provides a useful unit of work that is a &lt;em&gt;dependency&lt;/em&gt; for a subsequent task/package within the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Milestones, on the other hand, are typically represented as &lt;em&gt;logical&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;virtual&lt;/em&gt; nodes within the diagram. This can be done by using a different shape or color for the node to ensure that milestones and activities aren't visually confused with one another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Milestones Consist of Activities&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a pragmatic rule of thumb, if each activity is a milestone then there's really not much point in differentiating between the two. Furthermore, most businesspeople and project managers expect a milestone to represent some sort of roll-up of tasks or work packages, rather than discrete units of work. So, while you &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; create a project plan that consisted of only of milestones, it's likely that doing so would result in a project plan of insufficient granularity for effective planning and management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, milestones should generally represent a &lt;em&gt;collection&lt;/em&gt; of activities that provide a sensible inflection point for the project. While one could argue that each activity within the project should be measured and controlled, in practice senior management typically concerns itself only with major milestones. Therefore, how much work or which points within the project should be denoted as milestones will depend on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your project plan's level of granularity,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your organization's politics,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the level of executive/stakeholder oversight, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;any contract terms that may apply.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your framework and methodology, these milestones may define potentially-releasable increments, a completed set of features, a phase gate, one or more delivery targets, a payable chunk of earned value, or any other turning point within the project that makes sense for your organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Activities and Milestones: Many-to-One&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think you'll find a &quot;one size fits all&quot; definition of what a milestone should be in every organization or every project. However, I think you'll find a consensus among project management practitioners that activities and milestones should generally have a many-to-one relationship. There can certainly be edge cases, but they will be the exception rather than the rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-02-11T03:05:19.783" LastActivityDate="2019-02-11T03:05:19.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25766" CreationDate="2019-02-10T08:05:33.423" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Voting will depend on their &lt;em&gt;usage&lt;/em&gt; of the application and &lt;em&gt;how priorities&lt;/em&gt; are defined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suggestions of new features are always welcome, regardless of the source of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's still important to understand the &lt;strong&gt;purpose&lt;/strong&gt; behind it. In the majority of the cases, such proposals are either to improve overall application usability or to automate some processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the above is understood, &lt;strong&gt;they should be prioritised alongside other items&lt;/strong&gt;. It's important to ensure their voting won't skew the priorities. These items should be assessed alongside other business needs based on its &lt;strong&gt;costs and benefits&lt;/strong&gt;. Business should buy in these changes before its implementations. This is specially important in cases an improvement required by development causes a production issue - the first you'll hear from business might be &quot;&lt;em&gt;I'm paying for you to work on what I told you to do, not on it&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. Avoid it by &lt;strong&gt;explaining the benefits of these improvements&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-02-10T08:05:33.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25766" CreationDate="2019-02-10T10:53:00.920" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming the employees working on the application actually &lt;strong&gt;use&lt;/strong&gt; the product as it's being developed, as in &quot;eat your own dog food&quot;,  then they surely have useful input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they are simply coding, testing or documenting the system then their vote would need to be accompanied with a good business case as to why they want the feature added/removed. Otherwise, they may want a feature removed because it's a lot of trouble to code/debug/test or they may want a feature added simply because they feel the product is inferior without it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Point being, that if you trust your employees as being perfectly objective then they could vote &quot;blindly&quot;, otherwise their voting needs to have a reason behind it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2019-02-10T10:53:00.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25786" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25880" CreationDate="2019-02-10T17:55:43.237" Score="1" ViewCount="114" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hi looking for some ideas....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of my scrum teams is performing and releasing, we have regular deployments but the planning and board does not reflect the work they have done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what this means, My first assumption is that the planning is not being done correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second issue with the same team is that they can get a certain amount of work done but find themselves unable to deliver the second batch of work in a 2 weeks sprint. So you end up with sprints where work has been pushed live and some tasks which are half finished. This is leading this is making the team think they should stop using sprint cycles (which is fine, if that will fix the issue).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please share your thoughts it will be very helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30234" LastActivityDate="2019-02-25T08:14:50.987" Title="Scrum Team delivery without hitting commitment" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25787" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-02-11T01:34:58.300" Score="0" ViewCount="78" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a company were to pursue different project alternatives in which to invest, would I perform a SWOT analysis on each project alternative or should I do a SWOT analysis of the company and, based on that, make a decision about the different alternatives I have?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34985" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2019-02-11T12:09:10.623" LastActivityDate="2019-03-13T13:39:24.663" Title="The SWOT analysis is applied to the company or to every decision alternative?" Tags="&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;business-case&gt;&lt;analysis&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25789" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25790" CreationDate="2019-02-11T09:11:33.390" Score="6" ViewCount="1077" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: At some point, someone on the team will have work which can justifiably not go on the board. How is this handled in a sprint team when it is a long running thing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our team's technical leader has a number of things to be working on to support the team, which only that person can do (because of responsibility, contractual obligations, skill/knowledge level or system access permissions). Should that work go on the board?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above is a fairly simple Yes, in my mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that the work in question may want to be kept away from the rest of the team because it might cause a distraction (it may result in their current work being disposed of at a later date but for valid reasons), it might simply be more interesting (another distraction they may waste time debating), or that including it in the daily scrum and other ceremonies exposes it to certain product owners who do/should not need to know about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compounding the problem is that higher management accepts that there is certain work which technical leaders take on which is &quot;off board&quot; but still valuable. Much of this is exploratory/PoC type work and (regardless of where the budget comes from) is required but not team story related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, that work is also (by it's exploratory nature) nearly impossible to estimate as it is often very &quot;blue sky&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should this work be handled?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should the technical leader simply report that they deliver a lower amount of time to the team's sprints than regular team members or should we absolutely commit to having everything on the board, regardless? Or somewhere in between?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29374" LastActivityDate="2019-02-22T00:05:03.383" Title="What to do with work not on the board?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;&lt;technical-leader&gt;&lt;board&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25789" CreationDate="2019-02-11T11:15:34.203" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; have a technical leader. You &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; have him do work off the charts. You &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; hide this work from others that don't &quot;need to know&quot;. You &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; reduce that person's capacity to make planning more accurate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But you cannot call that Scrum.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the key features of agile (and, by extension, Scrum) is transparency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Transparency&lt;/strong&gt;: This means presenting the facts as is. All people involved—the customer, the CEO, individual contributors—are transparent in their day-to-day dealings with others. They all trust each other, and they have the courage to keep each other abreast of good news as well as bad news. Everyone strives and collectively collaborates for the common organizational objective, and no one has any hidden agenda.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without transparency there is no &lt;strong&gt;inspection&lt;/strong&gt; and without that there is no &lt;strong&gt;adaption&lt;/strong&gt;. Those are the pillars of improvement. In other words, there cannot be  improvement if you don't know the facts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, the work should be on the board. If it happens that only one person can do this job, then that is the way it is. Maybe it can be improved upon in the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there can neither be a &quot;technical leader&quot; nor a person that has hidden agendas or side-projects in Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastEditorUserId="29374" LastEditDate="2019-02-11T12:21:40.273" LastActivityDate="2019-02-11T12:21:40.273" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25787" CreationDate="2019-02-11T12:16:12.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;An investment alternative or project alternative itself does not have strengths and weaknesses per se.  What it produces as an outcome would have strengths and weaknesses.  From an evaluation standpoint for selection, you would perform a benefit / cost / risk analysis, which is sort of way to predict its outcome SWOT, I suppose.  I think in most cases, when selecting from alternatives, folks reference the strategic analysis as a cost / benefit exercise or a ROI v. a SWOT.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2019-02-11T12:16:12.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25792" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25798" CreationDate="2019-02-11T12:34:09.223" Score="1" ViewCount="149" Body="&lt;p&gt;When there is a new IT project, what documentation should we begin with? What structure do they usually have. Is there a common standard to compose them? &#xA;I am entirely new to IT projects, I am investigating and would happy to receive support from more experienced  community.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34901" LastEditorUserId="34901" LastEditDate="2019-02-19T14:59:00.120" LastActivityDate="2019-02-19T14:59:00.120" Title="New IT project documentation" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;initiation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25789" CreationDate="2019-02-11T15:13:11.117" Score="11" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the work matters, make it visible. If it doesn't, then treat it as &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muda_%28Japanese_term%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;muda&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; and trim it as non-essential waste. You truly cannot have it both ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;No Invisible Work, Ever!™️&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CodeGnome's Law of Transparency says &quot;No invisible work, ever!&quot; Any work that is off the books violates that law, as well as generally-accepted agile principles and practices. Invisible work leads to less effective communication, less accurate estimates, and loss of trust over time within the team and among stakeholders. So, don't do this!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;100% of work that consumes team capacity should be reflected on your project plan. This means that work your team lead is doing should be on the team board, because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It consumes a portion of team capacity, because the team lead &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a member of the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Effort expended on these &quot;invisible&quot; tasks is effort that isn't being spent on something else.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It represents work-in-progress (WIP), which should have a visible impact on your WIP limits.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimates that ignore &quot;invisible work&quot; often fail to set stakeholder expectations, and may impact the accuracy of future estimates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Invisible work is usually a project smell that indicates that legitimate work isn't being valued, or isn't being properly charged to the project budget. If the work is important enough to be done, or essential to delivering the product, then it should be visibly accounted for in the project's budget and plans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't mean each minor task needs to be a separate user story or product backlog item. However, it &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; mean that it should be trackable work, and clearly reflected within the estimates the team is providing for its work. Pragmatically, this means that (at a bare minimum) the team lead's currently-invisible work should be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;prioritized by the Product Owner as an essential component of product delivery,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;discussed during Sprint Planning to identify impacts on capacity and relation to the Sprint Goal,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;estimated along with all other work for the Sprint,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;documented on the Sprint Backlog for tracking, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;deducted from available team capacity to perform other work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anyone argues that these things are unnecessary, or don't apply to the team lead's work, then you have a process problem. In that case, I'd take a long, hard look at how this work actually relates to the Sprint Goal and the team's process to determine if this work is truly on the critical path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's on the critical path, you must make it visible to adhere to the Scrum framework. If it's &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; on the critical, then it's wasteful effort that should be eliminated. It's up to the Scrum Team to collectively evaluate this and come to the right determination for your project, team, and organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-02-22T00:05:03.383" LastActivityDate="2019-02-22T00:05:03.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25795" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25800" CreationDate="2019-02-11T15:35:08.407" Score="1" ViewCount="667" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example... someone who is a computer engineer and his expertise is machine vision or voice recognition or totally machine learning (ML) fields. But we know a robot has electrical parts and mechanical parts as well. Also, it's possible to consider we might like to create an application on Web/Windows/Mac/Android/ios for our robot too! And many other possible extra conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, our founder/project manager is a great man in the ML field but not in web/mobile/electronics/mechanics and other fields of engineering that may needed for the company. Then, how should he manage people with other areas of expertise and evaluate if they are the best people to choose and hire? To do they their jobs well (I mean, there is no better/easier/less expensive way to do that job)? And when one of them is stuck in his/her job and couldn't find the solution, how can he help him/her to get the job done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31252" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-02-11T15:50:21.427" LastActivityDate="2019-03-27T13:11:37.700" Title="How to manage a multidisciplinary project/company?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;&lt;startup&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25789" CreationDate="2019-02-11T16:14:05.633" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume this isn't a 1-time thing, therefore my suggestion is to reduce the resource's allocation on the project that owns the board. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Big Extreme Example -- let's say Bob puts 50% of his efforts into Project A for Company 1 and 50% into Project B for Company 2. You wouldn't expect to see his work from Project-A to be on Project B's board. &quot;Why does Bob only have 20-hrs of work on the board any everybody else has 40?&quot; -- well, Bob is only allocated 50%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Small Extreme Example -- Every month we have one team member that is allotted a few hours work to learn something new; they present this to the team. This is work that must occur, but does not appear on the board and doesn't get reported during standup. During that month, the team member is less allocated to our main project (let's say 90% allocated).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your case, if you feel the work belongs a board, I'd suggest a second board. Unlike the first example, you're the same company and have related resources. You can indicate the &quot;10% allocation to the other project&quot; by putting a &quot;10% Allocation&quot; task on main the board. It isn't anything that would distract the other team members, but it is a reminder that effort is going elsewhere. Your second board can have details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33522" LastActivityDate="2019-02-11T16:14:05.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25797" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25806" CreationDate="2019-02-11T17:11:13.520" Score="2" ViewCount="297" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly I have to state that I am not a project manager. I am a software development team leader that has been tasked with giving a plan for a large project for my team. We work in a Scrum-like environment where tasks are not assigned and, for the sake of this problem, each member can pick up any task that's been planned for that month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been trying to use MS project to create a plan for me where tasks are ordered by priority and then leveled by resource and priority. However I seem to be able to only do this with tasks I have assigned. To try to replicate the idea that assignee doesn't matter I have created 8 resources (&quot;Developer A&quot;, &quot;Developer B&quot; etc) but the timeline is massively impacted because assigning these in the most efficient manner is proving pretty difficult. All I am trying to get out of assignee is to make sure that only 8 tasks are in flight at any one time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'd like to do is set the priority and let the tool assign all tasks in the most efficient manner. Is there any way to do this? Or is there a different approach that I could take to ensure only 8 tasks are concurrently being worked on, at any given time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34999" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-02-11T18:34:45.903" LastActivityDate="2019-02-12T13:23:41.243" Title="Assign Resources Automatically in the Most Efficient Manner" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25792" CreationDate="2019-02-11T17:16:22.283" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some documentation instructions in different service management frameworks like Prince2, ITIL and in certifications like IEC-12207, PMMI etc. and some standards for how to draw diagrams like UML.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you don't want to be certified and don't care about frameworks and all that (and you don't have to unless it's mandated by law in certain domains) you can just roll your own way of working. While that means you can get by without documentation it doesn't mean you should. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My take on documentation is to bake it into your software development process as much as possible. What this means is that you treat each piece of the process as not done until sufficient documentation has been done. Examples that I have used:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When planning a new feature document it's dependencies to other systems. Write some real world usage scenarios. Draw some interaction diagrams of the UI and also the background systems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Document the current architecture in different levels. Have high level diagrams and low level diagrams for each subsystems. When planning new features the draw the changes to the architecture if needed. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use BDD-style scenarios for feature documentation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Document your process and how it evolves through time as well. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write down how to do stuff. For examples how to set up development environment. How to make a build to production etc. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's loads of stuff you can do and what you NEED to do depends on your team, stakeholders, legal requirements etc. But whatever you do, bake documentation in to the process so that Thing X is not ready until sufficient documentation is done. Have it as a part of Definition of Done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29075" LastActivityDate="2019-02-11T17:16:22.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25795" CreationDate="2019-02-11T17:28:44.177" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There really is more than one question here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to organize in an environment where you need multiple skills&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to hire people when you don't already have expertise in-house&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to evaluate people's performance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's try to answer these in a concise manner:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to organize in an environment where you need multiple skills&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use cross-functional teams. If you need multiple skills to bring valuable change to a product all those people should work in the same team. That way it is easier to synchronize their work and also enable them to work on the same priorities. Sure, sometimes not all of the team members have something to do on their specialty (and even if they might have) and you pair them with other team members to learn and collaborate. That way you can, in time, have multiple people with necessary skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and 3. have kind of the same answer if distilled down enough:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll have to trust. If you have no one to make an informed decision then you have to trust the people that are working with you. How to hire? Ask help from a recruiting consultant (a good one, mind you) or outsource to work to a consultancy house or freelancers. How to evaluate people? Discuss with them honestly about their work. Hire someone to act as their manager and trust the managers. In the end you have to trust someone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29075" LastActivityDate="2019-02-11T17:28:44.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25801" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-02-11T18:07:06.783" Score="0" ViewCount="441" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can we describe them separately according their roles?  Actually I am a new student; I don't have proper knowledge about this. Please guide me as a basic student.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35001" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-02-11T18:39:59.537" LastActivityDate="2019-02-13T06:14:22.540" Title="What are the differences/similarities between a project manager and a functional manager?" Tags="&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25801" CreationDate="2019-02-11T19:24:19.227" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although there's a broadly accepted definition of what a Project Manager is, I'm afraid there isn't such canonical answer for what a &quot;Functional Manager&quot; is supposed to do. In most of the cases, it'll strongly depend on the environment or context the question comes from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Potential definitions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A person responsible for a given &lt;em&gt;function within a company&lt;/em&gt; (Sales manager, marketing manager)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A person responsible for a given &lt;em&gt;function within a project&lt;/em&gt; (Development manager, test manager)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A person responsible for ensuring functional requirements are properly tracked (a kind of Functional analyst lead)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another aspects to consider is that usually a function is something &lt;em&gt;constant over time&lt;/em&gt; whereas a project is something with a &lt;em&gt;(planned) end date&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-02-11T19:24:19.227" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25804" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-02-12T08:47:58.307" Score="2" ViewCount="57" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had been reading on structuring VSTS. The guideline on structure of projects isn't very clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our scenario is that we have lots of projects and only a small team of 3 developers, 2 testers and 2 support people. Now usually VSTS(&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;TFS Online&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;) suggests adding a &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;VSTS PROJECT&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for each project but we all work randomly on different projects, sometimes on 2-3 projects in a 2 weekly sprint. So handling X numbers of sprints for N number of projects is going to be a nightmare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence in these circumstances approach I am suggesting is as follow:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project 1 (Epic)&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Release 1 (Epic)&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feature 1&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User story 1&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task N&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User story N&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feature N&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Release N (Epic)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project N (Epic)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it wrong to put all projects in one VSTS project and then create nested epics ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34998" LastActivityDate="2019-02-12T13:16:09.103" Title="Is it wrong to put all projects in one VSTS project and then create nested epics" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;epics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25804" CreationDate="2019-02-12T13:16:09.103" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whatever works for your team is just fine, of course. But there are a lot of considerations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, VSTS (or Azure Boards, as it's called this year) doesn't naturally support the nesting of epics within epics. It &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be possible to attach one through parent-child changes, but this will be a major pain. VSTS just isn't designed for the level of hierarchy you're imagining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make your structure fit, I would change your &quot;Release 1&quot; epic into a Tag (that can be applied to any object in the hierarchy). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; using VSTS for backlog management, that will work. However, if your team is using Repos and Pipelines and all the other modern change management features of VSTS, you'll need to have one project per project (because they have separate code bases).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, my advice is to have one project per product. Over the long run, I suspect you'll run into enough problems that you'll end up having to do a painful migration later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20700" LastActivityDate="2019-02-12T13:16:09.103" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25797" CreationDate="2019-02-12T13:23:41.243" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you are using the wrong tool for the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're working in a Scrum-like environment. I assume you also have a Product Owner that is defining the work to be done (at a feature/story level). And then the team is breaking that work down into development and testing tasks. And then the team members choose which items they will work on next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MS Project does not support this model in any way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your need is to ensure that a small number of work items is being worked on concurrently, that is a feature of several agile management systems. A couple you can look into are Atlassian Jira and Microsoft Azure Boards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20700" LastActivityDate="2019-02-12T13:23:41.243" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25807" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25809" CreationDate="2019-02-13T00:27:35.850" Score="7" ViewCount="15823" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am learning about the agile/scrum process, and currently using it for a 6 month software project at my university.  My team is using Jira.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am starting to get confused between the difference between &quot;tasks&quot; and &quot;stories&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had thought that &quot;story&quot; aligns with &quot;user story&quot;, which was one of the mechanisms we used to define our requirements.  Each requirement on our project has a user story associated with it.  I was told that the agile process is different because it keeps the &quot;user&quot; perspective in mind while developing.  It made sense in my mind that a user story maps to a &quot;story&quot; in Jira.  However, I read that in Jira Agile there is no difference between a task and a story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My team has been creating subtasks for every story, but I was told this was wrong, and that our stories are too large and need to be broken down.  For example, one story was &quot;I want to be able to sign up for a free account to use the system&quot;.  This obviously involves many subtasks.  We ARE creating subtasks under the stories, but we were told the story itself is too big.  How would I &quot;break this story down into smaller stories&quot;?  A user wouldn't have a story about something technical, like &quot;Set up a database server&quot;.  I was told to make stories like &quot;as a developer, I want to install a database server so that I can store new user information&quot;.  This doesn't make sense to me, because we were previously told not to consider a developer as a user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question really is why is it wrong to create a story that consists of many subtasks?  Is this just a choice that the team makes, or is there actually use cases for the difference between a task and a story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35013" LastActivityDate="2019-02-13T02:09:09.897" Title="User Story versus Task in Jira" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25807" CreationDate="2019-02-13T01:24:50.907" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Much of what you're being told may not be wrong, but is missing some context at the least. First, we have to do a bit of defining to clear up term confusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jira did not start as a project management or Agile tool. It started as a bug tracking / service desk tool. This carries with it some baggage we need to work around. Back when I started with Jira they actually called them all tickets. Then they went to tasks. In Jira, the term Task is just a work item - a request that someone has made to the team. Jira, being very versatile, lets you make more specific types of work items that have different fields and behaviors and as people started using Jira for tracking their work in Scrum more, it became common to create a type of work item called a &quot;Story&quot; or &quot;User Story&quot; to the point that I think the default config now has this. So that hits one of your questions - in Jira, a Story is a more specific version of a Task - they are both work requests and the Story was creating to help people who were tracking User Stories in Jira.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, on to those subtasks. In Scrum, there are backlog items (user stories are a specific kind of backlog item the way that in Jira Stories are a specific kind of Task) and these encompass the capability being asked for. They are the &quot;what&quot; of the feature and are usually understandable by a user. However, the team has to organize who is doing what and HOW the backlog item will be built. To do this, many teams create what we always called Tasks. Before we talk about this any more, let's clear up the ambiguous term. Because Jira already had a thing called a Task and it was not the same thing that Scrum teams called Tasks, they created this new thing called sub-tasks (which I personally think is a better name anyway). So, when Scrum talks about Tasks (and for the rest of this paragraph) think of the things that Jira calls subtasks. The sole purpose of the subtasks is to help the team organize there work, so there are some good practices, but no hard rules as the most important thing is that they are helpful to the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, User Stories can be too big, but the number of sub-tasks isn't a good measure of that. There is a good, if vague, rule of thumb is that it should comfortably fit into a sprint, which makes more sense from a risk-management standpoint. Many people interpret this as about 4 - 5 days max in a 2 week sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-02-13T01:24:50.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25807" CreationDate="2019-02-13T02:09:09.897" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are multiple challenges on your question, let's try to consider the key ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First and foremost - &lt;strong&gt;what's wrong is what &lt;em&gt;does not&lt;/em&gt; work for you&lt;/strong&gt;. If it works for you to have several sub-tasks, why would it be wrong? There may be different way of doing this... but next time someone tells you &quot;that's wrong&quot;, ask &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; it's wrong. And then, experiment. And compare. &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Be agile is to continuously improve&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, not to stick to rules that work on other projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why is it a problem on having a Story with a massive amount of&#xA;  subtasks...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;... from Jira perspective?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; You'll have a hard time when doing iteration planning. Jira does not allow planning at subtask level, so you either plan the whole story (with all sub-tasks) or nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;... from an agile perspective?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; If a Story is too big, then it should become an &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/epic/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Epic&lt;/a&gt;. The Epic type also exists in Jira.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Side note on the difference between &lt;strong&gt;Jira Stories and Tasks&lt;/strong&gt;: We have a rule of thumb in our project that everything that's &lt;strong&gt;testeable&lt;/strong&gt;, should be a &lt;strong&gt;Jira Story&lt;/strong&gt; (due to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace-cdn.atlassian.com/files/images/a8f45f80-75e8-45e5-868a-faea5e99877d.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;story workflow&lt;/a&gt;). Anything that's &lt;strong&gt;not testeable, it's a task&lt;/strong&gt; (or an Epic, or a sub-task, but let's make it simple).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, on the &quot;as a developer, I'll install the database&quot;. Try to avoid it. Pick a single user story that needs a database. Define the minimal infrastructure for the minimal tables you need as part of this Story and go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-02-13T02:09:09.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25801" CreationDate="2019-02-13T06:14:22.540" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMBOK makes a clear distinction between these roles; just look to that. &lt;strong&gt;Project Manager&lt;/strong&gt;: person assigned by the performing organization to lead the team that is responsible for achieving the project objectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Functional Manager&lt;/strong&gt;: person with management authority over an organizational unit within a functional organization. The manager of any group that actually makes a product or performs a service. Sometimes called a line manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to look at it is the Functional Manager always has a &quot;home base&quot; within the company, &lt;em&gt;e.g.,&lt;/em&gt; Engineering department. The Project Manager doesn't necessarily have a home base because there might not be a Project Management department, per se.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SOURCE: &lt;a href=&quot;https://medium.com/@pmpeople/the-10-roles-in-project-management-de52e382edd9&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://medium.com/@pmpeople/the-10-roles-in-project-management-de52e382edd9&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34889" LastActivityDate="2019-02-13T06:14:22.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25792" CreationDate="2019-02-13T06:23:34.163" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In PMBOK terms, you'd begin with the &lt;strong&gt;Project Charter&lt;/strong&gt;. PMI recommends a specific structure for it: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.projectmanagement.com/deliverables/289555/Project-Charter-Template&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.projectmanagement.com/deliverables/289555/Project-Charter-Template&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34889" LastActivityDate="2019-02-13T06:23:34.163" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25812" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-02-13T13:06:15.353" Score="4" ViewCount="1276" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are team of &lt;code&gt;3 Back-end developers&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;3 Ios developers&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;1 QA&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;1 Product Owner&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;1 SM&lt;/code&gt;, working on a Social App. We are interested to do this using the agile methodology with the Scrum framework. We are new to agile/Scrum and are having some difficulty implementing them. We are in Sprint 0 and already wrote user stories and wanted to estimate them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have the following questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Who should be included in the estimation process other than developers?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How can ios developers estimate the effort of back-end developers?&#xA;Same goes for &lt;code&gt;Designers&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;QA&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If everyone will estimate his/her own effort then how can the SM get a single story point estimate?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35020" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-02-13T14:18:15.757" LastActivityDate="2019-02-28T16:08:48.663" Title="How to include front end developers and QA into the estimation process?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25812" CreationDate="2019-02-13T13:50:27.293" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The story points need to be estimated by each and every member of the Scrum Team and then they must collectively come to a conclusion on the most likely number of story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the developers who say the max and min story point estimates can explain what they view the complexity of the story to be, and why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35025" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-02-13T14:27:25.720" LastActivityDate="2019-02-13T14:27:25.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25812" CreationDate="2019-02-13T14:23:36.670" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimation in Scrum is done by the whole &quot;development team&quot;. Scrum says that this is a cross-functional group &quot;with all the skills as a team necessary to create a product Increment&quot;. So this would include developers, QA, designers, etc. This would not include non-contributing managers (contributing managers is a whole other conversation), product owner, scrum master, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of different techniques. One of the most common is that everyone shares their estimate at once (often written on cards that are revealed simultaneously) each person's estimate should be based off of their understanding of all the work, including that which may not rest in their area of expertise. Once everyone has shown their estimate, the team can discuss different points of view on the size of the work. This can raise challenges or opportunities that some team members may not have considered. This can be difficult at first, especially if team members have never considered the context of others before, but it gets much easier with practice. What most teams find is that you don't have to be able to do someone else's work to be able to consider how work will impact then and that level of understanding comes fairly fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-02-13T14:23:36.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25812" CreationDate="2019-02-13T14:24:38.990" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Who should be included in the estimation process other than developers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both anyone involved in getting that story Done (likely including QA), as their effort is part of the estimation. And the Product Owner, who may reprioritize stories based on their estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can ios developers estimate the effort of back-end developers? Same goes for Designers and QA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe this has already been answered on pmse. My suggested approach would be to foster knowledge-sharing so that your developers can become &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-shaped_skills&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;T-shaped&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If everyone will estimate his/her own effort then how can the SM get a single story point estimate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look into &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_poker&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Planning Poker&lt;/a&gt;. Everyone estimates, and if a discrepancy is found, the story is discussed then the estimate repeated until consensus is reached.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2019-02-13T14:24:38.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25819" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-02-13T19:48:55.133" Score="2" ViewCount="72" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a software project that we are trying to implement some basic project management for and we're starting simple, just using a Trello kanban board to track bugs/feature requests. I am beginning to transfer items from our in-house help desk system (which doesn't have any tracking features, it's basically just a record of user-submitted tickets with some searching and email built in) into a Trello board called &quot;&amp;lt;insert product name here&amp;gt; Backlog&quot;. In this board, we have &lt;code&gt;Bug&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;Feature&lt;/code&gt; filters, as well as additional filters indicating what section of the app it relates to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm conflicted on whether items should be worded as what is broken or as what work needs to be done. For example, if I have a help desk ticket that says &quot;Financials on this page have a rounding error&quot;, do I create a card with that wording, or should I call it &quot;Fix rounding error on &lt;code&gt;x&lt;/code&gt; page&quot;? Or, as a third option, do I word it as what &quot;should be&quot;? I.e. &quot;Page should have no rounding errors&quot;. Perhaps this is an X/Y problem and I'm trying to do too much with this board, but I don't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a developer turned accidental project manager with no prior PM experience, so any and all advice is appreciated. Not looking to become a scrum master here — I quite like software engineering — I just want to learn and implement some best practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35003" LastActivityDate="2019-02-14T10:22:10.073" Title="Should I word backlog items as what's broken or what work needs to be done?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;&lt;trello&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25819" CreationDate="2019-02-13T20:21:44.827" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Bottomline:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; go for the approach that'll help you solve the end user needs (features or bugfixes) &lt;strong&gt;faster&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A task should reflect the issue from end users view. You can do a triage, but I'd avoid rephrasing what the user has complained about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are three main reasons to stick to user wording:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it's a waste of time to rewrite what's already written  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;maybe the team can propose the correct solution for the wrong problem due&#xA;to a poor understanding &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;maybe the solution provided is correct and the end user reported it wrongly, and you'll want some sort of minimal evidences to substantiate it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind, it doesn't mean that you shouldn't improve the wording. You just should do this &lt;em&gt;with them, together&lt;/em&gt;. Assuming you have a constant set of users, the best approach is to have a &lt;strong&gt;frequent communication with users&lt;/strong&gt; and explaining how they could provide better and clear information for quicker solutions. &quot;Help me help you&quot; mindset. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-02-13T21:59:07.970" LastActivityDate="2019-02-13T21:59:07.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25819" CreationDate="2019-02-14T10:22:10.073" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The language you use on backlog items should reflect the intended audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you anticipate non-team members getting value from the Kanban board then it makes sense to use the language of end users (what's broken).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think the main users of the Kanban board are the technical team then it makes sense to use technical language (what work needs to be done).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also possible to combine both. For example, you could have a top-level backlog item written in the language of end users and then have sub-tasks that are more geared towards the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend you identify the main users of the Kanban board and then adopt an approach. Try it for a while and then inspect the results. Did it achieve what you had hoped for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-02-14T10:22:10.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25823" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25825" CreationDate="2019-02-14T10:23:44.060" Score="4" ViewCount="1054" Body="&lt;p&gt;Forgive me f this has been asked before, I read some similar questions (linked below), but didn't find the answer I was looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our team is fairly new to them and trying to figure out how to best apply them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here' the problem, per sprint;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A developer who is dealing with small tickets and requests might complete; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;250&lt;/code&gt; x &lt;code&gt;XXS (1)&lt;/code&gt; = &lt;code&gt;250&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The same developer who is working on a large feature  might complete;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;1&lt;/code&gt; x &lt;code&gt;XL (20)&lt;/code&gt; = &lt;code&gt;20&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can you measure a teams velocity when this is the case? There is a 10 fold difference in a given developers velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our sizing chart (Fibonacci-ish)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;| XXXS | XXS  | XS   | S    | M    | L    | XL   | XXL  | XXXL |&#xA;|------|------|------|------|------|------|------|------|------|&#xA;| 1    | 2    | 3    | 5    | 8    | 13   | 20   | 30   | 50   |&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/15516/why-use-both-story-points-and-hours&quot;&gt;Why use both story points and hours?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/8853/story-points-to-ideal-days&quot;&gt;Story Points to Ideal Days&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/18398/forecasting-story-points-in-agile&quot;&gt;Forecasting Story Points in Agile&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/23276/alternatives-to-estimating-in-hours-story-points&quot;&gt;Alternatives to estimating in hours/story points&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35037" LastEditorUserId="35037" LastEditDate="2019-02-14T11:37:16.630" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T08:26:25.363" Title="Story Points flaw?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;sprint-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25823" CreationDate="2019-02-14T11:12:33.893" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ok, I will give you a better sizing chart.&#xA;I think the problem is that you set up the wrong system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before anything, you have to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;educate your team to give technical estimation and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;take an average for a user story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Better sizing chart&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;USER STORY SIZE  TIME ESTIMATE&#xA;0                   (-)&#xA;1/2                 (&amp;lt;1/2 h)&#xA;1                   (1/2 - 1 h)&#xA;3                   (1  - 2 h)&#xA;5                   (2 - 4 h)&#xA;8                   (4 - 8 h)&#xA;13                  (8 - 16 h)&#xA;20                  (16 - 24 h)&#xA;40                  (24 - 40  h)&#xA;100                 (40 - 80 h)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note: team estimate is average of all estimate&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34952" LastEditorUserId="12235" LastEditDate="2019-02-14T13:18:50.977" LastActivityDate="2019-02-14T13:18:50.977" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25823" CreationDate="2019-02-14T11:27:08.097" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The official answer to the problem is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no fixed numbers. If it makes more sense to have a big story be 100 points, go for it. If it makes more sense to have stories that are 1/2 point, use that. Use both if you have to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, for your problem, you may want to look at your 1-point-stories though. Are those actually stories and what is your definition of done? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming a default 40-hour work week and two week sprint length, it would mean that the person took less than 20 minutes per ticket. That already includes the fact that that person took no breaks, no coffee sips, no restroom, not a single meeting for the whole sprint. In reality, it's probably closer to 10-15 minutes per ticket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With our DoD, I would not be able to close a ticket in 20 minutes. I have to open it, read and understand it, do a checkout of the current code, change it, write tests for the change, prepare the data for the review/demo, commit, push, merge-request and install my code somewhere for review/demo. Even for a single character typo it takes 15-20 minutes just typing, clicking buttons and waiting for the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With 250 stories that are &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; small, I would question whether having story points for them &lt;em&gt;at all&lt;/em&gt; is useful. Of your 251 stories in the sprint, 250 are faster &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt; than &lt;em&gt;estimated&lt;/em&gt;. Maybe you're better off to organize differently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe let people work on the stream of seemingly small tickets and only if they hit a particularly large one, &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; is elevated to a backlog item for the team. What normally happens is that a company has two teams, one for daily operations (aka 250 super small tasks) and one for development that has the focus to work on the big stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2019-02-14T11:27:08.097" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25767" CreationDate="2019-02-15T00:26:12.350" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Surprising as it can be, it is not the salary that primarily influences the motivation of an employee in his or her daily work tasks; it is the quality of his or her work environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, more than ever, employees change employer regularly. We don't see careers of 20 to 25 years in the same company anymore. Many do not appreciate their work environment and try regularly to find a better place to work. They feel stuck in a job having few alternatives to change the kind of work they do. Many count their years to retirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to accept your choice of career and life goes on like this. If they have a promotion with a good salary increase, they don't feel more motivated because they are still in the same kind of work. Many business models try to counter that, offering a work environment that does not look like a traditional work environment. Facebook for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is difficult, when you have responsibilities, to make a change of career. Most of the time, you have to accept a salary that is much lower than what you are used to. Many study in something they later regret, and wish they could go back to college to study in something different. But getting more student loans, more debts, is not a solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how do you motivate a tired employee to do the kind of work he or she does every day? Falling in burnout or depression takes a greater intervention than organizing a Christmas party.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I witness most of the time, is that most employees have to back up their boss and they have to avoid being too innovative. They adopt a silence in front of the daily dysfunctional processes of their workplace that could be improved to the benefit of all. Day after day, their work environment becomes more and more bureaucratic. Having sessions with a management consultant often bring disappointment. Expectations are raised but fall rapidly on the floor and their business falls back into the same dysfunctional patterns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A culture of confrontation, of fighters who confront themselves to win more power, does not bring more day to day satisfaction and motivation. It takes a humble and competent manager to put the quality of his company work environment first and to create and offer to all an interesting job to do while making a profit at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user30807" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-02-22T14:12:41.660" LastActivityDate="2019-02-22T14:12:41.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25823" CreationDate="2019-02-15T08:10:27.213" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try to divide big user stories to more manageable pieces(less than one day to be done), it can solve your problem. If you increase the user story hardness, the hardness of solving can increase non-linearly, as you can see on your story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28650" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T08:10:27.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25823" CreationDate="2019-02-15T08:26:25.363" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The basis of relative estimating (which is what story points are used for) is that 1 point always represents roughly the same amount of effort. This must be independent of the size of the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that a 20 point task must be about 20 times as much effort as a 1 point task (although the actual effort spent can easily vary between 10 times and 40 times as much due to the uncertainties of estimating).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your example, if a single developer can finish either 250 XXS tasks or one XL task, then the XL task is approximately 250 times as large as a XXS task, not the 20 times that your story point values suggest. This means that either your story point allocation to the t-shirt sizes is incorrect, or that the XL task is grossly underestimated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T08:26:25.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25830" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-02-15T10:05:30.923" Score="0" ViewCount="290" Body="&lt;p&gt;How to decide that a requirement will be my epic or user story.I have a few enhancements from the client which cannot be grouped into something.As for example my request is adding a few informative messages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35025" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T13:33:19.290" Title="how to differentiate between epic and story for an already existing software?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2019-02-15T14:08:10.933" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25830" CreationDate="2019-02-15T13:33:19.290" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of ways how you can decide that a requirement will be epic or user story: &#xA;- Epic is always bigger than 1 sprint (1 sprint can't be longer than 1 month.&#xA;- A user story is one functionality in the product.&#xA;- One big user story can be split in more user stories but it is not epic.&#xA;- Epic is when you have 3 or more big User Stories who are dependent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epic: User Profile&#xA;User Stories: As a user, I want to have a profile picture so that I can...&#xA;I hope it was helpful.&#xA;Best regards&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34952" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T13:33:19.290" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25789" CreationDate="2019-02-18T00:37:16.727" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum is a framework for developing, delivering, and sustaining&#xA;  complex products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything in Scrum is centered around the development, delivery, and maintenance of complex products. In this particular case, the keyword there is &quot;product&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything in Scrum is also centered around three roles - Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Development Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the technical leader part of the Development Team? Based on the description here, it sounds like &quot;no&quot;. It sounds like the bulk of the work done by the technical leader is not related to the items in the Sprint Backlog or in support of the Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the description, it sounds like the bulk of the exploratory work that you are describing falls into what I would call &quot;discovery&quot; or &quot;concepting&quot;. The bulk of this type of work tends to be more product or user centric and less technology centric, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a need for a technical person to support this work in various ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other types of work that also fall into a category that isn't &quot;delivery&quot;. If the technical leader is participating in things like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/three-amigos/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Three Amigos sessions&lt;/a&gt; to get Product Backlog Items ready for the team to refine, that doesn't need to be on any of the backlogs. If the technical leader is holding 1:1s with team members in a management capacity, that doesn't need to be on the backlog, too. If the technical leader is doing work like enhancing the development and test tools, that also doesn't need to be on the backlog (although if it was a Sprint Retrospective item, it may be related to a Sprint Goal).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, Scrum is silent on how to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to present this slightly differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the work of the Product Owner or Scrum Master made visible on the board? If not, how do you make their work visible to the entire Scrum Team or to stakeholders outside of the Scrum Team? If this exploratory work is more closely aligned with creating the Product Backlog and preparing Product Backlog Items for the team, could the same strategies used to make the Product Owner's work more visible also apply to the work of the technical leader?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2019-02-18T13:24:59.220" LastActivityDate="2019-02-18T13:24:59.220" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25786" CreationDate="2019-02-18T09:05:38.917" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The scrum team will work on sprints.The team commits to Backlogs.And the metrics etc will be shown against the committed backlogs. &#xA;But as per what you have said it boards are not reflecting what work has been done,then actually what basis the work is happening &#xA;Is it that they just pick any workitems as it comes?&#xA;Then looks Kanban is the way to go. Where you can track the team on their throughput.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34733" LastActivityDate="2019-02-18T09:05:38.917" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25837" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25838" CreationDate="2019-02-18T12:55:20.613" Score="2" ViewCount="876" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have worked on teams which, while using Scrum, have fallen either side of this opinion: every story must be complete by the end of the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the &quot;official&quot; definition/requirement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I strive to have every story complete by the end of the sprint and recognise that stories should not be pulled in for idle team members if there is not enough time to complete them, such that a feature complete product is ideal for the sprint review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in the real world it is nearly impossible to ensure that every team member (in my case, developers) is not idle for at least a day, given that our team spans 3 very disparate time zones and there is effectively no single &quot;end of sprint&quot; or &quot;start of sprint&quot; time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29374" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-02-18T22:08:21.063" LastActivityDate="2019-02-18T22:08:21.063" Title="Does every Scrum story need to be completed at the end of the sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;sprint-review&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25837" CreationDate="2019-02-18T13:38:57.923" Score="4" Body="&lt;h1&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say that some teams believe the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[E]very story must be complete by the end of the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be true that some teams believe this common misconception, but it's factually incorrect. The Scrum framework requires that the Scrum Team must do its best to deliver a coherent Sprint Goal each Sprint. User stories (or, more canonically, Product Backlog Items) are means to an end, rather than an end unto themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Focus on the Sprint Goal&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always remember that the goal of a Sprint isn't to complete lots of backlog items. &lt;strong&gt;The goal of a Sprint is to &lt;em&gt;deliver the Sprint Goal&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Guide explicitly says (emphasis and italics mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The selected Product Backlog items deliver &lt;strong&gt;one coherent function&lt;/strong&gt;, which can be the Sprint Goal. The Sprint Goal can be &lt;strong&gt;any other coherence that causes the Development Team to &lt;em&gt;work together&lt;/em&gt; rather than on separate initiatives&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, having lots of user stories that are each treated as independent initiatives that all must be completed by the end of the Sprint in order for the Sprint to succeed is an anti-pattern. It's also explicitly verboten per the Scrum Guide. It's certainly common to see this pattern in shops struggling with agile adoption, but just because it's common doesn't make it agile (and it certainly isn't Scrum).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is whether the team can still meet the Sprint Goal if certain stories are not started, or will remain incomplete at the end of the Sprint. The only way to find out is to ask the Scrum Team, and then track progress toward the Sprint Goal in your burn-down chart, Kanban board, Sprint Backlog, or other artifacts. The Product Owner has the ability to renegotiate scope for the Sprint, or to cancel the Sprint and return to Sprint Planning, whenever the current Sprint Goal is at risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Sprint Goals and Increments&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following elements of the Scrum framework are explicitly defined in The Scrum Guide. The Sprint Goal is developed during Sprint Planning, and provides guidance throughout the Sprint. The Increment is the work completed according to the Definition of Done, and is essentially the de facto deliverable for the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Sprint Goal&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The selected Product Backlog items deliver one coherent function, which can be the Sprint Goal. The Sprint Goal can be any other coherence that causes the Development Team to work together rather than on separate initiatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Increment&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the end of a Sprint, the new Increment must be “Done,” which means it must be in useable condition and meet the Scrum Team’s definition of “Done.” It must be in useable condition regardless of whether the Product Owner decides to actually release it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Sprint Failure Conditions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While not addressed specifically within The Scrum Guide, in practice a Sprint really has only three failure conditions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Sprint Goal has not been met.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The delivered Increment is not in usable condition.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Increment does not meet the &quot;Definition of Done.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's it. Individual stories can be done or not-done, forecasts (estimates) can be missed, and the team may have successfully delivered the wrong MacGuffin. Such Sprints are still technically &quot;successful&quot; in that they delivered a potentially-releasable Increment and leveraged the framework to provide the business with process transparency and appropriate opportunities to inspect-and-adapt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-02-18T13:38:57.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25840" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25842" CreationDate="2019-02-19T13:51:51.773" Score="3" ViewCount="463" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to run a retrospective for a huge amount of people involved in a cross-departmental project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is there are 50 people involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was thinking of doing the data gathering, affinity mapping offline and then maybe discussing in groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any format suggestions to make the session engaging and useful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2019-03-06T13:29:10.280" Title="Large group retrospective format" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12679" CreationDate="2019-02-19T16:11:27.033" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although I partially agree with CG (&quot;&lt;em&gt;Scrum Master is not a cheerleader&lt;/em&gt;&quot;) I believe it applies to very mature teams, but most team &quot;becoming agile&quot; requires much more from a Scrum Master. Based on the question details, we can assume your project still has a long way to become a proper agile team (the whole question supports this). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A very mature and stable agile team member has had at some moment in life and inspiring leader. &lt;strong&gt;What an inspiring leader does? It gives a purpose, a meaning to the work.&lt;/strong&gt; It &lt;strong&gt;does not need to be the Scrum Master&lt;/strong&gt;. It could be the PO. It could be someone from senior management. But &lt;em&gt;someone&lt;/em&gt; needs to trigger this spark. If you, as Scrum Master, have detected this, you can work on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer from now on, is not agile-specific. You have to identify what motivates the team and work on it. There's a lot of material like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2013/june/scrum-and-motivation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://medium.com/@leanscrummaster/how-can-a-scrummaster-influence-his-team-motivation-f8e8add43bd9&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://agilescrumworld.wordpress.com/2017/08/28/scrum-master-motivates-the-team-but-who-motivates-scrum-master/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/how-scrum-motivates-people&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; one is very good as it provides a link to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation#t-1100463&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; TedTalk about motivation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does they have in common? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They say that &lt;strong&gt;money should not be a major problem.&lt;/strong&gt; Once this is not a major problem, you have to focus on &lt;strong&gt;Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Autonomy&lt;/strong&gt; because bright people can find solutions for the problems and get motivated by doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mastery&lt;/strong&gt; because bright people likes to sharpen up their own skills and gets motivated by doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Purpose&lt;/strong&gt; because bright people like to do meaningful stuff and gets motivated by doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a last note, based purely on my experience, I'd say &lt;strong&gt;some people and teams are not good for agile projects&lt;/strong&gt;. If that's the case, it should be identified and dealt accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-02-19T16:11:27.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25840" CreationDate="2019-02-19T16:16:57.933" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can define the topics to be discussed up front, based on data collected and affinity diagrams as you suggest. That would make it easier for participants to prepare. But you can also have the participants suggest topics at the beginning of the meeting, and do a dot voting and prioritization. Or use open space technology to have people organize themselves on topics that they consider important. Or turn it into a storytelling event where people share stories on what they experienced and learned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several possible formats that you can use for larger retrospectives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Open Space, where attendees bring up topics (preferable with data) and build their own agenda. Groups will mostly be small and as people are free to choose their engagement will be high&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having people first reflect alone, then with one other person, then in groups of 4, and then everyone involved based on 1-2-4-all from Liberating Structures. This exercise tends to engage people.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doing an Artifacts Contest as described in book Project Retrospectives by Norm Kerth. Since this is more creative and people are doing stuff, it keeps them involved&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using the Bubble up exercise from the Agile Retrospective Resource Wiki. Relevant topics will bubble up, which increases the usefulness&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A timeline retrospective where all attendees bring up highlights and lowlight will probably give a lot of data. To focus, look where there are many post-its, or where there's a bigger span of low and highlights&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure that topics are visible for all attendees. E.g. Use a beamer with live updates, large (A4 format) sticky notes, big markers, etc. This is crucial to keep people involved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16919" LastActivityDate="2019-02-19T16:16:57.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25840" CreationDate="2019-02-19T22:14:18.773" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found retrospectives to be less effective the more people that are involved in them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reasons for this are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A lot of people feel uncomfortable speaking in front of a large audience. 50 people will intimidate all but the most confident speakers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is difficult to discuss a topic that is relevant to everyone. Some people are likely to get bored and switch-off.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation would be to split into smaller groups of no larger than 8-9 people. Once these groups have discussed the project they could share 1-2 points with the larger group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-02-19T22:14:18.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25845" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-02-20T12:03:37.763" Score="3" ViewCount="78" Body="&lt;p&gt;I belong to a developer team in a senior position. I am not on the project management side. I am facing a frequent issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let's say our project's start date is 01-01-2018. The deadline of the project is also decided but without taking the development team into consideration. Let's say deadline is 01-05-2018.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now, as per step 1, everything gets planned and the development team starts working on a deliverable with 01-05-2018 in mind.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now, after one month or something, let's say 15-02-2018, we again get a new surprise that we have a new client and they want to deliver something by 01-04-2018 with many things that were not in scope during the initial plan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They want that without changing the plan for 01-05-2018. From my point of view this is not possible. (Our new team member is over his/her head initially; the on-boarding process took 3 to 4 weeks.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now, the team is still not settled with the new plan for 01-04-2018, and receive new requirements, as someone new is in a top management position and thinks that the project is not up to the level. It is, as per specification and no direct complaints from the client, but the new member thinks that the UI needs drastic improvement. So many more changes are required - with the deadline still intact. (No new team members.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above happened over a short duration. It impacted team morale as well as the morale of the person who handles the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As per my thinking, there should be some concrete plan, at least for some period, if they want a delivery date intact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be suggestion in this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35083" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-02-20T14:23:03.643" LastActivityDate="2019-02-21T11:00:44.800" Title="Project scope increases rapidly and affects team" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;deadline&gt;&lt;scope-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25778" CreationDate="2019-02-20T14:32:01.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not entirely sure I understand the question, so please forgive me if my answer is tangential.  That said, I would ask the questions in the opposite order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First question is (for me) always, &quot;What does done look like?&quot;    Sounds to me like the first phase of your project is to complete a literature survey/market survey/research effort.  Based on your comment, it seems like &quot;Done&quot; is &quot;Determine the best architecture&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I'd construct the decision matrix and preliminary weighting first, and then use it to direct my research.  When the next unit of research won't change the outcome of the decision matrix, research is done.   When I last did literature review, I could estimate the time fairly accurately based on the amount of published research; doing the decision matrix first would allow me to report complete in less time than that estimate.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At that point the relevant metric/KPI is the amount of uncertainty reduced by each time period of research.  Technically you're tracking risk/opportunity - the reduction in uncertainty.  Research reduces epistemological uncertainty; assuming that you start with the higher weight factors, eventually the epistemological uncertainty is small enough that it won't affect your decision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like crunchy data, so I'd probably model the decision matrix with a component that measures the probability of finding new valuable papers, but I'm a frustrated quant. Although I'd find it fun, I think it is actually overegging the pudding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Some notes while I organize my thoughts: what follows will be under revision&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;There are a couple of tools that fit within the &quot;decision matrix&quot; grouping (there are others, and I'll add them as they occur to me, but  the point is that there are multiple tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_hierarchy_process&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Analytical Hierarchy Process&lt;/a&gt; (AHP), which is fairly heavyweight, but may help if the factors affecting the decision are unclear.  On the other hand, it is a front ended process; I'm not sure I'd want to revise the weighting if research were to change my understanding of the problem. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_tree&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Decision Tree&lt;/a&gt; is the tool that was in every PMI course I took. Seems to be PMI's preferred tool.  Probably not my preferred tool for this problem, since half the effort seems to be setting up the tool, and doing so &lt;em&gt;implies&lt;/em&gt; to me that you have a deeper understanding of the problem than is appropriate for a research scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_matrix&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Decision matrix&lt;/a&gt; - this is closer to what I've typically used. Unfortunately this is why I need to take time to organize my thoughts.  Reading this page makes a relatively straightforward process seem like rocket science/PhD material.  I need to find a way to simplify this to the actual process.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fundamentally, all of these tools reduce the problem into a choice, and a set of factors that affect that choice.  Creating a trivial example, if I have a set of software requirements (functional, and nonfunctional) {R}, and a choice of architecture A or B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For each r in {R}, can it be expressed more simply in A or B?  Are there examples in the literature of successful implementations?  Are there known limitations?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are there relevant resource constraints for A or B? (Do we have the relevant skills on staff? Does our intended hardware support? Will we need to provide any infrastructure/logistics support in order to market the software?) -  NFR's such as performance, security and logistics may show up here.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to make the example really trivial here, but if the choice is between Architecture A and B, and the factors influencing the choice are R1, R2, R3 then we need to assign weights to the factors  (R1 is 5 times as valuable as R3; R2 is half as valuable as R1).  At the beginning of the search, A &amp;amp; 5 are each 50% likely.  As we identify relevant papers, they will affect the weighting. If we find a set of papers that indicate that Architecture A has been used repeatedly to fulfill requirements like R1 &amp;amp; R3, then we apply the relevant weights to shift towards architecture A.  On the other hand if there is zero evidence that Architecture A has ever been used to support R2, that will have a lesser, countervailing impact.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Returning to your fundamental question - how do I use this to bound my search? how do I measure progress towards &quot;done&quot;?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still think the coarse measure, and the one I'd use for day to day, is a linear measure of exhaustion of my search space. Inelegant, but I'm willing to bet that it will be close enough. (It is early in the morning, and I can't think of a name for the class of metrics that are like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agilenutshell.com/yesterdays_weather&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;yesterday's weather&lt;/a&gt;; embarrassingly simple, but good enough for practical purposes.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also work from the assumption that I'm going to find the most valuable results early.  I'd calculate the interval between finding useful results and plot the curve of days between interesting results - I'm willing to bet that curve will be a familiar long tail curve, and that I can use that to predict approximately how long it will take me to find the next interesting result. (it is 80% likely that it will take between 5 and 10 days to find the next interesting result).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can look at the decision weight (Architecture B is leading 80% to 20%) and the predicted time to next interesting paper (80% likely to be up to 10 days), and estimate the probability that I will find one or more papers that will affect the weighting by over 16% is less than some threshold.  And I can use that to terminate my literature search early.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2019-02-21T11:02:17.987" LastActivityDate="2019-02-21T11:02:17.987" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25848" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-02-20T17:07:07.727" Score="1" ViewCount="212" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sprint demos are done at the end of each sprint to the clients. This helps to identify the issues and collect feedback from the clients. I have a question on implementing the demo feedback. Should we consider demo feedback as bug, story or task. Usually we receive feedback from client to improve the UI and improve the work flows. Please share your opinion on this &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33461" LastActivityDate="2019-02-20T17:35:06.733" Title="Sprint demo feedback" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;&lt;sprint-review&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25848" CreationDate="2019-02-20T17:26:33.877" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr; There is no &quot;right&quot; answer. Whatever works for your team and client.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Probably Not a Bug&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprint feedback is rarely a bug. While there is no strict definition, a bug, or defect, is a term usually reserved for when an application does something that everyone knew it shouldn't (or vice versa). So unless demonstrating the feature happened to turn up a bug by coincidence, you won't usually get bugs out of the review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other Types of Backlog Items&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that a story is just one type of backlog item and it is meant to express a need or interest from a user. In that regard, it may be well suited to encapsulate the feedback from the review because it can capture the who, what, and why of the feedback. For example, if you show a graph and someone says it is hard to read because they are color-blind, you could write a user story like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a color-blind user, I would like to be able to view the graph in a&#xA;  color palette that is color-blind-safe so that it is not strenuous to&#xA;  read the reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is also really useful because many times feedback comes with proposed solutions. For example, a red-green color blind person may suggest colors that work for them without considering other types of color blindness. A user story is a great way to make sure you capture the feedback without having to pass judgement or make a commitment on the proposed solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I was in a review once where an international feature didn't appropriately localize the date order. Now, you &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; call this a bug if you wanted to, but the team didn't because no one had discussed it before. It was basically a new uncovered need. You could format this as a user story (As a German user, I want the date... ) but it doesn't really add much value, so they didn't. They just created a generic backlog item (some tools call these Tasks, not to be confused with sub-tasks) that read &quot;Localize Date Format, see notes for details&quot; and it worked fine for both the team and the client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastEditorUserId="7944" LastEditDate="2019-02-20T17:35:06.733" LastActivityDate="2019-02-20T17:35:06.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12616" CreationDate="2019-02-21T04:24:42.347" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think way of communication has small impact on morale or motivation. Main important things is what is communicated and how it is communicated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is my personal experience and sometime it create problem for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am working in team ( For single product there are three team) in that I am facing issue due to this. Like one team use Skype, other use Slack, other google hangout ( someother tool). Now every person added to the group but when working on something person has to look at many tools and notification that distract them and even sometime it affects me as a leader as I have to look at many place for information.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Many people choose email as a method of approval or at least other aware of it. Like they send their plan for particular feature or story over email and discussion for same in same email thread. Many time this is quite useful in my case if I have track back who say what.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In person is quite good and effective but at same time there should be a trust between all member. Also when someone say something it should accountable.Like many time during such meeting agree on something and after few days they ask for why something is being done that way or he/she forgot the stuff. Now this type of things happen many time it break trust and people need some short of approval so they choose email over other communication.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35083" LastActivityDate="2019-02-21T04:24:42.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25851" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25857" CreationDate="2019-02-21T08:36:14.400" Score="4" ViewCount="403" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a custom filter defined by this query&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;project = ProjectName AND status in (&quot;In Progress&quot;, Open, Reopened) AND assignee in (currentUser()) AND sprint in openSprints() AND sprint not in futureSprints() ORDER BY updated DESC&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, this filter gets all open tasks of the current active sprint of a specific project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to order by the position of the tasks in the backlog list but I can't find any relevant information about this in the JIRA documentation, not in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftwarecloud/advanced-searching-fields-reference-764478339.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;fields reference&lt;/a&gt; nor in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftwarecloud/advanced-searching-functions-reference-764478342.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;functions reference&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to be clear, I don't want to order them by &lt;code&gt;Priority&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;Level&lt;/code&gt; but really by the order they appear in the backlog page. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is another tricky detail is that (I think) sub-tasks don't actually have a positions in the backlog because they are simply not part of the backlog. Their parent tasks however are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so to sum-up:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it possible (and how) to order by task's position in the backlog?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it possible (and how) to order sub-tasks by their parent-task's position in the backlog?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35094" LastActivityDate="2019-02-21T14:51:54.047" Title="Order JIRA filter by position of the tasks in the backlog" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25845" CreationDate="2019-02-21T11:00:44.800" Score="2" Body="&lt;h1&gt; Preferred Solution &lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Insist and/or suggest (depending on your culture/seniority) that a &lt;strong&gt;Change Management Procedure&lt;/strong&gt; be put in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concept being: &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Since a Dev team's time is a &lt;em&gt;zero-sum&lt;/em&gt; game, for everything they add they have to subtract something else (or extend a deadline).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt; Alternate Solution &lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's not possible, then you need to insist that they give you priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concept being: &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Since we don't have more time, what do you want us to do first? As is well-documented, multi-tasking a Dev Team only slows them down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt; Underlying Problem &lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on what you wrote, the underlying problem is that Standard Project Management Principles are not being implemented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the developers were not consulted on how long the work will take, then how are they fixing deadlines? If you cannot create a Gantt Chart then the entire scheduling is a charade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you really should do is take the deadline given and return it with a Gantt chart of the milestones you agree to supply and their delivery dates. IOW, if the deadline is &lt;em&gt;engraved in stone&lt;/em&gt; then the amount of work needs to be adjusted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every time they add work, you resubmit the list of deliverables you agree to, and assume that the new work has higher priority, if nobody agrees to tell you otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the very least, you will be able to say (when you miss their impossible-to-reach deadline) that you informed them from the start that you would miss their impossible-to-reach deadline. This is not a childish &lt;em&gt;I told you so&lt;/em&gt;, but important because (real) managers like and need to be informed as early as possible that a deadline will be missed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2019-02-21T11:00:44.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25853" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-02-21T11:05:36.010" Score="14" ViewCount="3253" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently been assigned to a project as the PM and I'm fairly sure that a senior executive in the company has heard some fancy marketing spill at a conference and now wants this product at the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I can see, it is an expensive and specialised application to coordinate much more complicated infrastructure than what we have and there is no use case for this product at this company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried explaining this but there is a lack of technical knowledge and the managers have expectations of all these proposed benefits, all of which are hypothetical and frankly unrealistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is my responsibility here? Do I just accept that even through I disagree with the project benefits, I've been given this task to purchase and integrate this application so that should be my goal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I protect myself when the application inevitably does not do everything that management expect it to do? Morally, should I step down as the PM for this project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35097" LastActivityDate="2019-02-22T11:15:56.497" Title="What if you do not believe in the project benefits?" Tags="&lt;ethics&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25853" CreationDate="2019-02-21T11:44:00.750" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a conflict between the &lt;em&gt;Product management&lt;/em&gt; and the &lt;em&gt;Project management&lt;/em&gt; role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Product Manager&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, you're responsible to ensure the product is viable and will have acceptance within users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Project Manager&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, you're responsible to ensure the project objectives are achieved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the context, it seems you have a considerable amount of knowledge on the product. As a professional (role-agnostic) you should ensure the proper people (senior management, probably?) is aware of &lt;em&gt;your perspective&lt;/em&gt;. Assume you &lt;em&gt;do not have&lt;/em&gt; the whole information. Maybe the project becomes reasonable if &lt;em&gt;some other sound changes&lt;/em&gt; are applied. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By raising this concern, try to obtain as much information as possible. It's very important for project successful to understand the whole product picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If after raising the concern the information or context provided is not enough to make you believe on it, it'll be much harder to manage... get ready. This should also be raised as a project risk. If this is also absorbed by the team, it'll be even harder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once your concerns are clear&lt;code&gt;*&lt;/code&gt;, you should go ahead with the project as project manager, focused on the project objectives. Ensure project successful criteria are very clear from the offset. And focus on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;*&lt;/code&gt; IMMV. The &quot;clear&quot; will depend on your company. It may be a chat. It may be a mail. A formal risk entry on CMMI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-02-21T11:44:00.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25853" CreationDate="2019-02-21T13:34:42.817" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agree with @Tiago Cardoso, but I'll provide a different analytical framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM is responsible &lt;em&gt;to the stakeholders&lt;/em&gt; for closing the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the project is authorized based on flawed assumptions (or on assumptions which the PM believes to be flawed), then there is a risk to project success.  (I don't remember the statistics, but from memory, flawed assumptions about benefits/flawed stakeholder expectations is one of the major reasons for project failure).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have reason to doubt that the project can succeed, then I think your obligation is to voice that doubt early, track it as a risk, and create the kind of information that will allow the project to be closed early when it demonstrates that it cannot meet the expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were I in your shoes I would:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make sure the assumptions are explicit.  Make sure that stakeholder assumptions, expectations etc. are explicitly recorded in project documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Work with the project sponsor to craft performance indicators that measure the project's ability to deliver the anticipated results.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make sure that the communications plan includes a section where the stakeholders express the information they want on the project, and that that section includes the metric identified above.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Every assumption is a risk - make sure your risk register tracks risks associated with the assumption.  Do your best to include risk triggers that will escalate the risk to stakeholder attention when the risk trigger indicates that the project is unlikely to deliver expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Work with the other stakeholders to build a coalition to manage expectations for the project ( nemawashi with a grateful tip of the hat to @kubanczyk)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And lastly, and most importantly, I would prepare to be wrong.  I have to admit that the manager may be right, and this might be the right approach.  I have to give the best counsel I can collect, but prepare to be joyfully wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2019-02-22T11:15:56.497" LastActivityDate="2019-02-22T11:15:56.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25853" CreationDate="2019-02-21T13:59:52.117" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the past several years, I have read what seems to be a push to extend the PM's accountability not only with the success of project delivery but also product success and organization success.  This comes across to me as more of way to expand the scope of a project manager versus something that makes sense.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I 100% agree with Tiago and Mark.  The PM's scope of accountability is the delivery of the project objectives.  So if you're the PM, and you have no other role in that company, as the PM, your scope is the delivery of the objectives and that's it.  If the company is choosing to do something silly, or their business case for their project is heavily flawed, as the PM, that's none of your business or concern.  You shouldn't even opine on it because that exposes you spent cycles analyzing it, and that is not in your scope.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wear another hat in your organization, then perhaps then in those other roles you would have standing to discuss the business case.  Have at it, if that's the case, but do so not as a PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2019-02-21T13:59:52.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25851" CreationDate="2019-02-21T14:51:54.047" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The attribute you are looking for is Rank, so you should add &quot;order by RANK asc&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the subtasks you need scriptrunner to make a query like this:&#xA;project = XXX and issueFunction in subtasksOf(&quot;issuetype = story order by RANK asc&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29163" LastActivityDate="2019-02-21T14:51:54.047" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25853" CreationDate="2019-02-21T15:13:32.280" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have pointed out, understanding who is responsible for what is helpful and avoids a lot of chaos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the Golden Rule trumps organizational &quot;walls&quot;. If your conscience forbids you to be quiet while your teammate, regardless of position (including the boss) is attempting to cross Niagara Falls in a barrel then obey your conscience, even if just to say &quot;I want it noted that it is my professional judgment that this project needs to be redesigned before it will have a reasonable expectation of success because...&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on what is at stake and the clarity of the flaw in the planning, lying down in front of the barrel may be in order. But if the ship will not sink if the project proceeds and fails or if you aren't certain that it will then make your concerns known, defer to the leadership and expect your &quot;minority report&quot; to eventually be vindicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not too long ago I was charged with developing some ETL in SSIS. The specs called for grouping at one level while I was very sure that it should have been grouped at another level. The manager told me that we were committed to this spec and just to do it per spec. Also I told him that the spec said to get the data from one source but I pointed out that it would be incomplete if we didn't get the data from a different system altogether. Again, we were committed to the spec. Since I struck out with convincing my manager (who, don't get me wrong, was very smart, diligent... he just didn't see this particular spec the way I did, as that was my area of expertise).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make a long story longer, the program &quot;worked&quot; but gave the wrong results, as predicted. The manager burst into my &quot;office&quot; (a temp situation with a whole bunch of other consultants) and publicly chewed me out (I could tell he was just grouchy because of things bigger than I), asked me if I knew how to program, yada yada... Fortunately I had the example he had given me and my output matched that. He conceded he was wrong and I was able to fix both contested issues fairly easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm driving at is that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I stood up for my concerns&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I let him have the final decision&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When he was chewing me out for failure I had &quot;peace like a river&quot; because I knew I had given him all the information he needed to change his course&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He changed course and all was well&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Had it been a bigger issue I might have gone over his head but in my judgment it was not necessary and instead the whole thing worked out to be a &quot;team building&quot; experience.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you DON'T want to do is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;not say anything out of timidity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;overstate your concerns&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;create a self-fulfilling prophecy (by &lt;em&gt;causing&lt;/em&gt; the failure)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make it personal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;All&lt;/em&gt; team members (except you and I, of course) make mistakes and it is everyone's responsibility to communicate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking of the USA auto industry that was producing a large percentage of defective cars. The Japanese were not. We learned from them the value of anyone on the line having the power to suspend production immediately if the line was in danger of letting a defect slip through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately, many companies today &quot;get&quot; that assuring their teams that everyone has the right - and responsibility - to report threats to quality product delivery, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best case scenario is that you report it and trouble is averted. But the second best is if you report it, they ignore it and they realize that they should have listened to you. The worst case if you don't report it and disaster ensues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35099" LastActivityDate="2019-02-21T15:13:32.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25860" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-02-22T18:06:59.617" Score="4" ViewCount="169" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example: in Sprint 2, on story, A Tester raises 4 bugs. 2 bugs got fixed in the same Sprint. The remaining 2 were pushed to the Product Backlog. At Sprint 6, we are picking those 2 bugs of story A to fix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do these 2 bugs need to be estimated for Sprint 6?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35119" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-02-22T18:26:13.590" LastActivityDate="2019-04-14T16:26:43.840" Title="Do bugs from previous Sprints need to be estimated?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25860" CreationDate="2019-02-22T22:43:55.133" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on how you are using your estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your estimates are measuring the work delivered in a sprint then it makes sense to estimate the bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, however, you are using estimates to measure the team's ability to deliver completed, valuable functionality, then it makes sense to not include the estimate for carried over bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/know-exactly-what-velocity-means-to-your-scrum-team&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mike Cohn explains here how the approach you use determines how your team will use their velocity.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to note is that the best possible approach is to avoid carrying bugs over across sprint boundaries. There are several things you can do to make this happen:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take less work in to each sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try and start testing as early as possible in a sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use automated regression test packs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-02-22T22:43:55.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25863" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25866" CreationDate="2019-02-23T11:40:50.340" Score="3" ViewCount="315" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to come-up with a project plan for migrating a legacy web application to a ReactJS based application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The legacy web application is written in Vanilla JS, HTML, CSS and there are approximately 4000 html files with NodeJS as backend (so its a fairly big application). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now migrating such a big application to a new technology stack will need some kind of planning to avoid bottlenecks at a later stage in the project execution phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some challenges with this migration will also involve convincing the stakeholders about the benefits of the migration + there will also be a learning curve needed for the technical(developer) staff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also since the migration effort might take some time to complete, we will also need to keep supporting the existing legacy application in the meantime. So the &lt;em&gt;agility&lt;/em&gt; for the existing application needs to continue in parallel to the new migration effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any ideas / references / insight here will be highly appreciated in planning such a complex project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What I have already researched:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Searched on Google (but didn't find a suitable guideline for a&#xA;migration project). All the references are pointing to a new project&#xA;planning aimed at &quot;from-the-scratch&quot; development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35123" LastActivityDate="2019-09-11T05:45:16.777" Title="How to arrive at a project plan for migrating a legacy web application to ReactJS based application" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25863" CreationDate="2019-02-23T12:37:26.973" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're planning out something similar in my organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 1&lt;/strong&gt; is to separate all your business logic from your interface/display logic. You can do that in your current application before starting the new one.&#xA;This approach has a few advantages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's a good idea anyway. Even if you don't proceed with the bigger project, you'll benefit from the refactoring.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you start the new project, you'll share a big chunk of code between the current and new codebases which will make parallel development easier.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It will reduce the length of time you must maintain two applications.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 2&lt;/strong&gt; is to select a self contained section of your application to migrate. We picked the administrator section of our application because it doesn't share any common screens or functionality with the rest of the application. Once you've successfully migrated a small section of your application, you can delete the code for the old version and pick the next thing to migrate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32764" LastActivityDate="2019-02-23T12:37:26.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25865" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25867" CreationDate="2019-02-23T14:24:35.993" Score="12" ViewCount="1009" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working in an online mobile game development team, and we've been doing Scrum for several sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are various reasons, but we seem never able to finish all items selected for an sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this mean we are doing something wrong in Scrum, or this can happen for anyone and be just normal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34978" LastActivityDate="2019-02-23T14:57:30.770" Title="If we can’t finish all tasks, does this mean we are doing Scrum wrong?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25863" CreationDate="2019-02-23T14:53:26.573" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also since the migration effort might take some time to complete, we will also need to keep supporting the existing legacy application in the meantime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I take it from this statement that the new development will be done in parallel with the existing application, rather than replacing components one at at time. My answer will reflect this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Use what you have now as a guide&lt;/h3&gt; &#xA;&lt;p&gt;The existing system can be analysed to produce a feature list for the new application. It will also be useful to think about the relative value of the features in the existing system. For example, which is the most important feature? Which features are nice to have and the users could do without (perhaps just temporarily)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now turn this analysis into a prioritised backlog of work. The most important &lt;em&gt;mandatory&lt;/em&gt; features will be at the top of the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, consider producing a suite of (ideally automated) regression tests for the most important features. These tests can be run against the existing system and show to work. The intention will be that the tests operate at the UI layer and so can be run against the legacy system &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; the replacement system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These regression tests will help the development team work with confidence while they progress along the learning curve of the new technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Build the support of the stakeholders by delivering incrementally&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The stakeholders will often get nervous if the new development absorbs resources while showing no results. As you have a prioritised list of features, try to deliver &lt;em&gt;working software&lt;/em&gt; at regular increments. For example, perhaps the first working release will include just the top 5 features of the application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Work with just one backlog&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a good idea to combine the work on the new application with any work required to maintain the existing, legacy system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have just one backlog and prioritise maintenance tasks alongside new development items. It may be that some maintenance tasks are not all that urgent and can be prioritised below new development tasks. Your backlog might look like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fix legacy bug #7&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generate quarterly report from legacy system&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feature #2 on new system&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feature #8 on new system&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fix legacy bug #12&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Consider a staged switchover&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If possible, try and avoid a &lt;em&gt;big bang&lt;/em&gt; style switchover to the new system. Can you run the new application in parallel with the legacy system? Could it be run as a beta with a subset of your users?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you deliver the new application incrementally and run in parallel then you can greatly reduce the risk associated with the switchover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-02-23T14:53:26.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25865" CreationDate="2019-02-23T14:57:30.770" Score="14" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are various reasons, but we seem never able to finish all items selected for an (sic) sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This points to a Scrum implementation failure. The failure is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; that the Development Team isn't completing all its work items; the failure is that the Scrum Team lacks a central coherence for each Sprint. In other words, you need a Sprint Goal as a central feature of Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis and Recommendations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always remember that the goal of a Sprint isn't to complete lots of backlog items. &lt;strong&gt;The goal of a Sprint is to &lt;em&gt;deliver the Sprint Goal.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A focus on &quot;doing all the things&quot; is an anti-pattern that stems from non-agile assumptions about how work should be divvied up and performed. It's also very commonly a form of the &lt;em&gt;100% utilization fallacy&lt;/em&gt; that attempts to maximize the utilization of individual team members, rather than optimizing for the throughput of potentially-shippable features that meet a complete Definition of Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the team is being asked to work on many disparate tasks, rather than collaborating in a cross-functional way on completing vertical slices of work, the results you're seeing are almost entirely predictable. You need to shift your focus away from pseudo-productivity in the form of task-completion towards a focus on &lt;em&gt;feature-completion&lt;/em&gt; to resolve this problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure each Sprint Planning session results in a coherent Sprint Goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure the work selected for the Sprint aligns with that Sprint Goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure everyone on the team is working &lt;em&gt;together&lt;/em&gt; on the Sprint Goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Measure the success of the Sprint on whether or not the Scrum Team was able to meet the Sprint Goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing anything else is not Scrum. Doing anything else will also be painful, frustrating, and demoralizing. So, unless you are an organization of professional masochists, stop doing what you're doing and implement Sprint Goals as a core practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;See Also&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/22971/4271&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/22971/4271&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/25838/4271&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/25838/4271&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/18228/4271&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/18228/4271&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-02-23T14:57:30.770" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25795" CreationDate="2019-02-23T19:51:25.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First, a multidisciplinary company is not the same thing as a multi-products/services company. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Second, to start a business, you have to choose a service or a product that you will sell at a price your future customers are willing to pay. You are never sure at 100% in advance if you are going to sell enough products or services to cover all your expenses and to make a profit.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Third, a company, a corporation, is not a club for your friends. You have to hire people who are able to produce the products or services you sell. You pay them for that. When you start your business, it is easier to hire the right people.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fourth, if you decide to offer a new product or a new service in a new market, you have to do first a business plan that shows how much revenues you are going to make, month by month, for at least 5 to 10 years in advance. Then you can get more financing and pay to train your employees in a new field/discipline or to hire new people.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you have good and bad management. Every day, a manager take the best decisions he or she can to bring enough revenues to cover all the business expenses and to make a profit. With a good business plan, you are able to convince people that your new product or service will make your business grow.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user30807" LastActivityDate="2019-02-23T19:51:25.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25863" CreationDate="2019-02-23T22:33:10.853" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few things to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Organize Around Capabilities, not Features&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;X User will be able to do Y. This approach let's you fulfill and validate user needs quickly. This is also a great way to get user experience refinements without incurring extra cost. It also will help you avoid recreating things that aren't in use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plan Around User Segments&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is hard for users to keep using two systems. Focusing on user segments lets you get some users cut over earlier in the project. This goes over great with stakeholders!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prioritize&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Make it do everything the last one did.&quot; Is the most common and most useless phrase in these projects. When I've worked on these projects in the past, sometimes it was even worth the cost to build out some logging to see which capabilities were actually being used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-02-23T22:33:10.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25872" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-02-24T04:16:00.560" Score="4" ViewCount="264" Body="&lt;p&gt;After almost 20y programming and 5y managing I have arrived at a state to be so confused with the basics that I need help from outside!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the project management we have 3 pillars: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scope: features and functionality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resources: costs and budget&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Schedule: time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And those 3 results the product with a kind of the quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the programmers are employed. They have a fixed time based costs.&#xA;But they have hidden costs too: example producing bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Managers or product owners usually have a yearly budget or a budget for feature set. Usually 2 they have at fixed from 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That resulting the 3rd it is adjustable somewhat or the 4th: quality&#xA;Example 1 year budget for development of X feature is Y sum.&#xA;At PM level is the similar: for the next Sprint in 3 week we need to do 10 backlogs, and I know the team costs ( salary)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if somebody is asking a salary increase?&#xA;if I keep him, I have higher costs. Hence probably my budget will blow up. &#xA;I can try to replace him or raise the budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if  I can't keep him, but can't lose him, because hard to replace him (maybe takes to much time or even higher salary requests are), and the feature set need to met and the quality can't be lowered?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35133" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-03-24T12:26:38.817" LastActivityDate="2019-03-24T12:26:38.817" Title="What can I do when I can't adjust scope, resources, or schedule and a team member wants a raise?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;budget&gt;&lt;constraints&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25873" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-02-24T11:14:11.243" Score="3" ViewCount="198" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on optimizing the process of documentation on the projects in IT company. &#xA;The issue is that right now the company has documentation when the project is started but then they don't continue to add details about the new functions which they add. &#xA;Also, I think there should be a difference between documentation for managers and developers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What tools do you use for that? &#xA;What best practices have you seen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35101" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2019-02-25T08:36:25.697" LastActivityDate="2019-03-28T16:13:04.807" Title="How do you keep documentation on long-term project?" Tags="&lt;documentation&gt;&lt;business-analyst&gt;&lt;specification&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25875" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25876" CreationDate="2019-02-24T16:49:27.137" Score="11" ViewCount="2197" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are implementing scrum in our company. The problem we faced is our traditional thinking, which always requires physical document. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Management is constantly asking for documents like Business Requirements Specification (BRS) and Software Requirements Specification(SRS).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When moving towards agile, is it ok writing user stories and their acceptance criteria as an alternative of (BRS and SRS) in a single document?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's the case, can you supply me with templates or examples? Is there something like an ISO standard related to Agile documentation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use TFS for project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35136" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-02-24T18:41:48.873" LastActivityDate="2019-11-11T13:39:34.857" Title="Where does documentation like business and software requirement spec docs fit in an agile project?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25875" CreationDate="2019-02-24T17:02:11.067" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;https://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;manifesto for Agile software development&lt;/a&gt; one can read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Working software over comprehensive documentation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't mean documentation is a bad thing. Instead, working code is better so you can document what you are going to code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, user stories and acceptance criteria might be all you need to understand the requirements, considering you're not responsible for the Vision and Scope Document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27189" LastActivityDate="2019-02-24T17:02:11.067" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25875" CreationDate="2019-02-24T17:17:56.660" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I encourage people not to think of user stories (or backlog items of any kind) as another form of requirements. There is a critical difference in thinking between the use of requirements documents and backlogs that teams and organizations need to understand in order to effectively use the latter. Backlogs are emergent. This means that they not only change over time (there's nothing stopping a BRS from changing) but that later backlog items build on and modify earlier items such that it is possible that the earlier items no longer describe the application's behavior. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that the documentation you require will largely be separate from your requirements (think of it as what you walked into development knowing vs what you did in development). Note that things like ISO 9001 is mostly about validating that you follow your processes (whatever those happen to be) and that you record information you will need to audit or maintain the software later. The days where documentation and audit standards were about making sure the result matched the original idea perfectly are largely gone. The only place I see that anymore is places where they have it written into their processes and don't want to change the documented processes, in which case it's a conscious choice, not a constraint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding this section to respond to the comment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile and Scrum can be confusing to adopt because there are a lot of good practices that people have come up with that have been lumped into Agile and Scrum, while at the same time, many of the core practices and principles get left out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Agile:&lt;/strong&gt; Agile is just values statements and principles. You can find them at &lt;a href=&quot;https://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://agilemanifesto.org/&lt;/a&gt;. You can't really practice Agile - rather, your practices can be more or less Agile (as an adjective) depending on how well aligned they are with these values and principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum:&lt;/strong&gt; You can follow Scrum practices. Scrum is a lightweight framework, meaning it gives a number of events, artifacts, roles, and practices, but there's a lot of space to fill in how you do the work and what that work looks like. You can find the latest version of the Scrum Guides at &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&lt;/a&gt;. It is probably worth noting that if many teams pick and choose what to follow out of Scrum. While that isn't inherently wrong, it is designed to work as a whole and many benefits are lost when you start dropping practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;XP:&lt;/strong&gt; You didn't mention this, but a lot of practices common in Scrum that aren't specifically listed in the Scrum Guide (like User Stories) are actually from XP. XP is a lot more prescriptive on how to do the work. There's a pretty big change curve with adopting XP and I don't see many teams do it, but when Scrum started, they were often assuming that XP was going to fill some of the how-to space in their framework, so it's always worth looking at. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/&lt;/a&gt; is a good place to start, if a bit clunky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastEditorUserId="7944" LastEditDate="2019-02-24T19:22:36.427" LastActivityDate="2019-02-24T19:22:36.427" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25875" CreationDate="2019-02-25T01:53:59.843" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Customer-side BA here, currently in the middle of a large-scale enterprise data warehousing and infrastructure modernization initiative.  The project teams use Jira instead of TFS, and though the concepts are the same, our use of the platform is mainly as a tracking and reporting tool to interface with the core (enterprise) Agile development team.  The focus of our user stories are mainly to discuss and track testing, enhancement requirements, defect reporting - all of the type of feedback that comes &quot;after the fact&quot; of each sprint's work-product, so to speak, and well after the initial requirements have been published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Key commentary on the &lt;strong&gt;BRS/SRS specifications&lt;/strong&gt; - these should be solicited from end-users in the planning/prototyping phase in order to prioritize architecture development and to develop the overall project plan; this can be accomplished with a survey or other requisition assessment tool, drafted by technical leads and the E/PMO and sent out to consumer leads in the initial stages of planning.  This allows the E/PMO to gauge the baseline scope and feasibility of the draft requirements, make necessary resource allocations, and prioritize work to waves, sprints, along a kanban board, etc. for the methodologies in play.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;User stories&lt;/strong&gt;, on the other hand, tend to be more focused on responding to feedback over particular channels, services, domains, or templates that arise after consumers have conducted feasibility and gaps analysis against the prototyped release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short - while the exact purpose of each document will vary across different organizations and projects, the requirements documentation and user stores are ultimately apples-to-oranges, however all three &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; feasibly be combined in the same basket of fruit. &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Emphasis on the role of each should be tailored to the interests of the group(s) driving the initiative.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;End-users will set their requirements ahead of time and independently of the work being done in each sprint; they will likewise continuously adjust their plan in alignment with BA/DevOps feedback along the way - this communication gets relayed through the user stories during development as a tracking bulletin of sorts.  The three are complimentary, but oftentimes they'll serve to document the interests and needs or distinctly different shareholder groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35140" LastEditorUserId="35140" LastEditDate="2019-05-28T10:55:15.743" LastActivityDate="2019-05-28T10:55:15.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25786" CreationDate="2019-02-25T08:14:50.987" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of my scrum teams is performing and releasing, we have regular deployments but the planning and board does not reflect the work they have done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is this transparent? Transparency helps organizations to anticipate and eliminate undesired surprises and problems, and Scrum makes the teams' work visible and even allows it to be demonstrated at the end of each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what this means, My first assumption is that the planning is not being done correctly&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think if you plan a sprint the developers should add tasks to a story this will ensure that transparency is adhere to and this will also ensure that what is planned and what is done (on the board) matches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So you end up with sprints where work has been pushed live and some tasks which are half finished&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories can be carried over to next sprints but you should plan and try to meet the sprint goal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is leading this is making the team think they should stop using sprint cycles (which is fine, if that will fix the issue)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not the issue, You should have a retrospective at the end of the sprint to find the issues in the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you should go back to the drawing board and speak to the team about the concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember Halfway scrum is not scrum at all &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34072" LastActivityDate="2019-02-25T08:14:50.987" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4440" CreationDate="2019-02-25T09:40:44.900" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Agile is more customer-focused, you have to work very closely with customers for infrastructure delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've used the Agile thinking for large server deployments in the past, working with the customer to deliver capacity in phases. For example, out of 3000 servers, setting up the expectation to have 100 every 2 days ready to go in production. I had the liberty to store at least 500 servers on-site, network gear and cables stocked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can work if all stakeholders are on the same page and with Agile hats on. For example, the supplier has to ship on time to have the stock ready for deployments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best thing is, if you set the right expectations for your customer, you can change the stock keeping unit (SKU) in the middle of deployment and you will have the option to change the order with the supplier accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, as I said, all parties should be onboarded to the idea. Going &quot;Could First ;)&quot; is a way to go. When you need it, where you need it, pay what you use, turn it off and save money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35148" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-02-25T14:11:57.530" LastActivityDate="2019-02-25T14:11:57.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25882" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25883" CreationDate="2019-02-25T10:01:35.520" Score="2" ViewCount="62" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team and I were considering adding a stakeholder actor to the map, but we've got questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, if we have it in the map, how can we fill the 4th field, i.e. how can we affect our stakeholder?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, impact maps are intended to be presented to a stakeholder, does it make sense to have the stakeholder in there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Follow &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.impactmapping.org/assets/impact_mapping_20121001_sample.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt; for more info on impact mapping (found in google)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35149" LastEditorUserId="35149" LastEditDate="2019-02-25T18:20:53.080" LastActivityDate="2019-03-26T22:13:35.923" Title="Is it a possible to add a stakeholder to an impact map?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25882" CreationDate="2019-02-25T13:50:58.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no harm in adding them and seeing if you can come up with any impact or deliverable. You can always take them off later if it turns out that they don't actually want anything. Or, you can even leave them on their for when you show them to say &quot;we don't really understand what you're getting out of this&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, it is great to have anyone who is on the impact map take a look at it. When it's you putting the info on there, it's just an assumption. Having the actual actor look at it helps validate that assumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-02-25T13:50:58.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25872" CreationDate="2019-02-25T14:20:30.980" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's simplify your question down. Feature A is expected to cost $X to deliver and in reality costs $1.2X to deliver. This can be because of a raise, inflation, change in needs, or a ton of other reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's assume for a moment that quality is a constant and you can't just release shoddy work to meet your deadlines. You mentioned the traditional iron triangle: Scope-Cost-Time. The problem we run into with programming is that Cost and Time are linked. Most of my cost (if not all) is labor and I often am working with a set team of people. You can actually increase cost for the same time by adding people (mythical man-month problems aside) but that doesn't help in your situation because you have a fixed budget. Project Management 101 tells us that fixing all three arms of the iron triangle will lead to problems, so in your situation scope must be variable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now usually at this point in a conversation someone says &quot;No, the scope is fixed&quot; and that's just silly. The iron triangle rule isn't suggesting that you shouldn't fix all three, it's saying that it isn't possible to fix all three. At some point you either run out of money, are forced to spend more money, or development stops. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, back to your scenario, you were budgeted for $X and because of a raise it now costs $1.2X (nice raise). Your only option is to develop a version of that feature that is more limited in scope. You mention product owners, so I'll assume you are practicing Scrum. In Scrum, I would be looking to have the core needs of that feature met by $0.5X at the latest. Then everything after that is nice-to-have's. If the team didn't think they could do that, I'd tell the stakeholders that they should consider not developing it at all because there was a risk that you'd work through the money and not be able to deliver what they need. If they want to move forward after that and accept the risk, that's their call.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-02-25T14:20:30.980" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25872" CreationDate="2019-02-25T15:02:36.013" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your job as a Product Owner (PO) or Project Manager (PM) is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to have all the answers. Your job is to have a vision, and to communicate options to stakeholders and business decision-makers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis and Solutions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What if somebody is asking a salary increase? if I keep him, I have higher costs. Hence probably my budget will blow up. I can try to replace him or raise the budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a long-running project, scope creep and cost creep are almost inevitable. If you didn't plan for raises or cost adjustments in a multi-year plan, then you may share some responsibility for the problem, but you don't actually &lt;em&gt;own&lt;/em&gt; it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project sponsor, steering committee, or executive leadership (depending on project and company structure) actually own this risk. Whether they allowed for enough slack in the project or not, they own the risk &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt;. So, what can you do within your role?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most cases, you simply communicate the risk. You inform the decision-making executives of the issues, present possible solutions along with your recommendations (if any), and then let them &lt;em&gt;do their jobs&lt;/em&gt; and make business decisions in the best interests of the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Management's choices include getting additional budget appropriations for the raise, cutting features that they lack resources to develop, or adjusting schedule to allow time to add new resources to the project. In the last case, Brooks' Law says that adding resources to a late project will generally make the project later, but that's still a viable &lt;em&gt;choice&lt;/em&gt; for management to make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the rare case that you yourself have actual budget authority across a portfolio of projects, you can make the same set of choices or request additional funding from the financial arm of the organization. The choices don't really change; all that changes is who is responsible for selecting the most optimal strategy for the company from among the available options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Take-Aways for the Future&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever decisions you make, ensure that your project does some sort of post-mortem or retrospective activity to learn from this situation. I suspect this activity, if properly done, will yield the following list (among other possible lessons learned):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Treating people like fungible assets leads to budget, scope, and scheduling problems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assigning critical work to individuals, rather than cross-functional teams, creates resource constraints.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assuming a best-case scenario for schedule or budget leaves no slack in your process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Treating all aspects of the iron triangle (scope, schedule, and cost) as non-negotiable leaves no options to compensate for change of any kind.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Creating responsibility without authority leads to no-win situations for everyone. &lt;strong&gt;NB: If you are &lt;em&gt;responsible&lt;/em&gt; for delivery, but lack &lt;em&gt;authority&lt;/em&gt; to fully control the necessary resources for successful delivery (including personnel and budget), then this certainly describes your role.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using an agile framework for a fixed-scope project is usually a framework-selection error. (There are exceptions, but this is probably not one of them.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No matter what framework you select, you can't inflexibly meet scope, schedule, cost, and quality goals all at the same time. This creates business risk, and management owns that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk must be accepted, controlled, or transferred. Senior management must decide how they will own all residual risk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone involved in the project must do some soul-searching about how they contributed to the current situation. There are certainly solutions, but none of them will come without cost (in either dollars or project risk). &lt;strong&gt;The key is to &lt;em&gt;understand&lt;/em&gt; how the current situation arose without looking to affix blame&lt;/strong&gt;, and then to take concrete steps to mitigate the situation now and in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-02-25T15:02:36.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25872" CreationDate="2019-02-25T15:15:05.543" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want a salary increase, I need to be able to justify it by showing that your your work saves costs on other elements of the project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is your code of sufficient quality that the total cost of fixing bugs/technical debt is reduced?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is your code faster than it was last year so that I can show that the salary increase will actually save us money because you're more productive than other programmers?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, your job is to communicate risks to the stakeholders/sponsor.  If this employee doesn't get the salary increase, and that will result in the employee leaving, what is the impact to the project?  You can estimate the cost to the project of replacing that employee (on the order of one year's salary between recruitment cost and retraining costs).  Of course you'll have to defend the likelihood that the employee will leave. Are they actually paid (total compensation package) less than comparable employees?  Are there other disincentives? (People don't leave for pay, they leave for better management/leadership).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it simply a good investment?  Are there alternative ways to incentivize the employee?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2019-02-25T15:15:05.543" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25872" CreationDate="2019-02-25T16:48:32.277" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the most affecting factor (increasing the cost) is the time, long time impacts much cost.The market maybe changes its vision and you may reach to state where you need another business requirements, what is i try to say that increasing the salaries may increase the cost but it is really small weight.Try to change the development life cycle, speed up the development by Agile, ask the team to work parallel in timed iteration, assign expert developers to higher business-value projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35136" LastActivityDate="2019-02-25T16:48:32.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25875" CreationDate="2019-02-25T17:26:03.330" Score="3" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Documentation &lt;em&gt;as&lt;/em&gt; code&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is the key phrase here.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Modern testing frameworks combine english readable content with the instructions to perform the actual testing, system calls, UI interactions, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under BDD (Behavior Driven Development), as with TDD you specify the behavior up front as a test, e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The users enter AB234, presses return and sees her access code&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The test fails of course as no actual code has being written yet to implement it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You then write the code and the test passes and then, critically, you have one more test in your suite for the future (often termed regression but I avoid that term, it's just the test suite, same as all testing).  You can now run this test to assure functionality works and often include a flag or setting to show the human readable part of the tests that passed or failed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2602" LastActivityDate="2019-02-25T17:26:03.330" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25889" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25890" CreationDate="2019-02-25T22:49:12.607" Score="2" ViewCount="151" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master and Agile Coach I have been assigned to a team of engineers with little or mixed experience with agile delivery which I aim to address through workshops and training etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The engineers are highly experienced career programmers and very expensive which makes sense this is a critical project but have mixed agile experience. Their core skill, engineering, is sound. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the Product Owner has zero experience and has been working for only 2 years and has zero agile experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it reasonable for me to be expected to ‘make the PO agile’ or are we starting on the wrong foot?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My view is that we need experienced product management. Good PO’s become good through experience and it just seems logical that we need an experienced PO. We have experienced engineers why wouldn’t we have an experienced PO. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2019-03-06T12:07:14.767" Title="Is a scrum master expected to train the PO from the ground up?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25889" CreationDate="2019-02-25T22:55:51.313" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The direct answer to your question should be &quot;yes&quot;, it is the job of the Scrum Master to train the PO as per Scrum Guide:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master is responsible for promoting and supporting Scrum as&#xA;  defined in the Scrum Guide. Scrum Masters do this by helping everyone&#xA;  understand Scrum theory, practices, rules, and values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, the organization should have reasonable expectations of the results of choosing an inexperienced PO and it seems both fair and important for you to raise those without any rose-tinted lenses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-02-25T22:55:51.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25891" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-02-26T08:04:15.407" Score="9" ViewCount="1999" Body="&lt;p&gt;Question for QA- What you are doing if your current sprint is 2 week and you have 20 stories, suddenly PO added more 20 stories how you handle this situation..?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35160" LastActivityDate="2019-02-26T14:36:29.553" Title="Sprint is 2 week and 40-stories" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;&lt;sprint-review&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25893" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-02-26T09:27:48.837" Score="0" ViewCount="66" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm writing an app that track's a project's health. There are several factors that go into deciding how healthy a project is. The three major factors are whether the project is on time, within budget and the burn rate of cash is such that you can finish the project on time and on budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even if a project is on time and within budget, there are other factors that should be taken into consideration that can affect the project's health rating. Here are some:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quality of product/service: If the quality of the product or service being delivered turns out to be unacceptable, this will affect a project's health.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risks: Any major risk that suddenly comes up has the potential of affecting the project's health.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task completion time: Even if tasks are getting completed before their deadline, if the amount of time that they are completed ahead of schedule continues to decrease, there is the risk that eventually the project will be behind schedule. This kind of belongs to &quot;risks&quot; but could be considered separate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there other factors that you can think of that would affect a project's health that I should be aware of?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35162" LastActivityDate="2019-02-26T12:48:50.363" Title="Factors that determine a project's health" Tags="&lt;tracking&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25894" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-02-26T11:00:20.283" Score="2" ViewCount="483" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me start by saying I'm a developer, not a PM - so I'm potentially misunderstanding some fundamentals here. Apologies if so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have created a jira project, I believe kanban made sense (we need the board with swim lanes). The problem is that I think I may have also needed the notion of sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am about to pump jira full of epics, tasks and bugs. Ideally, I don't want them all in the 'to do' lane since, I'd like there to be a backlog too - before items even get to the kanban board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Questions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Must all items be visible on the kanban board or is there a backlog that can be used somehow too?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27244" LastActivityDate="2019-11-27T16:02:31.003" Title="In jira, am I approaching kanban wrong?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25891" CreationDate="2019-02-26T11:02:57.583" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are following &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum as defined in the Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;, the Product Owner cannot simply add stories to the Sprint Backlog. The Sprint Backlog, which is created as Sprint Planning as a negotiation between the Product Owner and Development Team while considering past performance and forecast capacity, is owned exclusively by the Development Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If work comes in and it is a higher priority, there needs to be a discussion between the Product Owner and the Development Team on how to adjust the Sprint to balance the higher priority work with the remaining time and capacity of the Development Team. If the Sprint Goal is obsolete and the work that the team has been working on is no longer relevant or valuable, cancelling the Sprint is an option. If there are multiple Scrum Teams involved, dependencies must also be considered. The Scrum Master can facilitate any discussions or decisions made, including escalation beyond the Scrum Team if necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going back to the Scrum Values, the Development Team needs to have the courage and openness to push back against the Product Owner and protect their time. Going back all the way to the principles behind the Manifesto for Agile Software Development, development needs to be sustainable and done with a pace that can be held indefinitely, with continuous attention to technical excellence. Overloading Sprints or forcing the team is not collaborative and introduces a lot of risk and pain to an effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2019-02-26T11:02:57.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25894" CreationDate="2019-02-26T11:25:19.833" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Jira, the ToDo column of a kanban board &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; the backlog, so naturally it shows everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, not everything is lost. The kanban and scrum boards are essentially a view on the Jira project that contains the actual epics, tasks, bugs and other kinds of tickets.&#xA;This means that you can just create a new scrum board for the project and then you can get your notion of sprints and a separate backlog. On a scrum board, the ToDo column also only shows the tickets that have been allocated to the current (active) sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastEditorUserId="12235" LastEditDate="2019-02-27T10:00:57.647" LastActivityDate="2019-02-27T10:00:57.647" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25893" CreationDate="2019-02-26T12:48:50.363" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my view, project outcomes may or may not signal the health of a project.  Projects can be very well managed but still produce unfavorable outcomes due to many variables, many or most of which can be out of the project team's control.  Judging how well managed a project is/was due to budget or schedule overruns can simply be wrong.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite outcomes, inspection of the various PM processes and controls are far more indicative of health.  What methods are being used to manage and control costs.  If a project has a strong, say, earned value process, even though that process might be yielding very unfavorable cost indices, you have a healthy process and thus a healthy project.  Similarly, how is the project managing its schedule.  If the process includes a strong method of, say, critical path management or earned schedule, despite being late, you have indications of a healthy project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same goes for change control, configuration control, risk management, stakeholder management, sponsorship management, requirements baselines, quality surveillance, communications, staffing management, procurement management, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well managed and healthy projects can produce degraded outcomes and a poorly run project can produce favorable outcomes.  This is an important distinction in determining how to gauge project health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2019-02-26T12:48:50.363" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25891" CreationDate="2019-02-26T14:36:29.553" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;is the 20 old stories represent a release? if yes there is a real problem at the business vision, where that the 20+ stories will completely lead to another product and how these extra stories were added it should be a collaborative process (PO with team), you have to re-estimate the stories, re-planning the release and the iteration, some people make the iteration time dynamic so you can extend it from 2 up to 4 weeks according to the PO business values&lt;br&gt;&#xA;in Scrum it is so important that all team members sit with PO in &quot;Stories workshop&quot; with &quot;brainstorm&quot; term to gathering all stories as possible this lead to good estimation for release, in your situation you must collaboratively re-planning the release(story workshop then estimate then prioritize and re-set the sprint time, finally assign the user stories in iteration according to the team velocity)    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35136" LastActivityDate="2019-02-26T14:36:29.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25894" CreationDate="2019-02-26T15:49:36.047" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This design decision will strongly depend on how many tickets you want to handle and how many tickets you consider as part of your backlog. &lt;strong&gt;Use Jira filters&lt;/strong&gt; to define specifically what you want to present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Kanban board (with or without backlog) should be based on the &lt;strong&gt;specific set of items you want to cover&lt;/strong&gt;, rather than based on all and every single ticket you have. Some tickets may be ok to be there, some requires more &quot;refinement&quot; to be part of this board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To achieve this result, you can do several filters, depending on how customised is your Jira instance. You can only show in your Kanban the items that belong to a specific component, or a specific release. This way, you have your &quot;backlog&quot; as all items not appearing on the Kanban board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's assume all items you work with are part of a given Epic (and the Epic prioritisation is then aligned with your client). Then you can have in your kanban filter to only cover items that are part of an Epic &lt;code&gt;In Progress&lt;/code&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way, you plan at a &lt;strong&gt;high level on a Epic only board with senior management&lt;/strong&gt; and have &lt;strong&gt;your team only focusing on the Epics prioritised by senior management&lt;/strong&gt; (i.e. only items where the linked Epic is in progress).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-02-26T15:49:36.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25900" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25903" CreationDate="2019-02-26T16:22:20.020" Score="8" ViewCount="387" Body="&lt;p&gt;Problem - I've been appointed as a Scrum Master to a new team and &lt;strong&gt;senior management (CTO) expectation is that our team should deliver &lt;em&gt;more than the SP capacity&lt;/em&gt; we can currently &lt;em&gt;realistically&lt;/em&gt; deliver&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This SP expectation is based on previous (over an year ago) estimates. A lot has changed since then. The application has become more complex since then, there are new developers and some developers left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Senior management now brought in a new developer in and they hope that will help the velocity but I told them the velocity will go down and only after a while go up. They should also consider the stress on the testers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;How to approach such situation with senior management?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More background on me and what I have tried:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I was a Scrum Master for one year in another project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I worked with team to break larger stories down because when they carried over a task from one sprint to another it was always big.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Went with a lower velocity that is based on the latest velocity and sprints.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remove impediments and act as the scrum master (The team thought they can do it themselves) in areas such as planning, stand up's etc..&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Promote pair programming (Not mentioned in scrum but helped the team a lot)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I did proper retrospectives (As mentioned by Esther Derby)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34072" LastEditorUserId="34072" LastEditDate="2019-02-28T06:55:16.987" LastActivityDate="2019-02-28T07:22:56.833" Title="As a Scrum Master, how to handle management expectations on delivering story points?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;micro-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25901" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-02-26T23:00:11.063" Score="1" ViewCount="313" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our software team has been doing a lot of R&amp;amp;D work to improve the performance of our product. Of course, the management team would like to know how long it's going to take to improve the performance, and how much improvement we'll get.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to know (1) if there's any suggested &lt;strong&gt;estimation technique&lt;/strong&gt; when you're estimating the time developers will spend working on items such as performance improvements&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if possible, (2) what &lt;strong&gt;strategies&lt;/strong&gt; are useful for &lt;strong&gt;estimating the amount of improvement&lt;/strong&gt; you might be able to get with a given investment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further background:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our specific research is on improving application performance such as content load, the perceived speed of transitions within the application and other aspects of the user experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the developers' standpoint, we don't know how much improvement we'll get until we make the improvements, and we don't know how long it will take to make the improvements until we dive deep and come up with all of the different ways we  might speed things up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read the basic literature about software estimation techniques (story points, function points, etc), so I don't need a primer on those.  We do have at least a good start on gathering baseline performance metrics, and I don't need more info about basic metrics right now.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1506" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-02-28T18:27:41.443" LastActivityDate="2019-03-28T16:49:35.400" Title="How to estimate a Research and Development project?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25860" CreationDate="2019-02-27T09:49:49.113" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Estimation is a propogative of the team.&#xA;The bugs if it is pushed to Product Backlog and in Sprint 6 it is pulled to be worked on by the team.Then it means you been able to estimated that the team can work on the bugs, right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34733" LastActivityDate="2019-02-27T09:49:49.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25900" CreationDate="2019-02-27T14:20:25.763" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are doing the right things and acting as a Scrum Master should.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you may need to do some coaching, explaining to the team, to management and to the stakeholders how Scrum works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try and back up as much as you can with evidence, such as quotes from &lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;, from articles and blog posts on reputable websites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would also be good to get the support of other agile advocates in your organisation. It sounds like there is a considerable amount of education needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Educating your Scrum team is particularly important as they should also be pushing-back against anti-Scrum behaviour from the rest of the organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-02-27T14:20:25.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25900" CreationDate="2019-02-27T15:40:46.807" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not sure if it would help, but an analogy I often used is comparing velocity to your time on a 5K run. (credit where it's due, I adopted the analogy from Mike Cohn) It's only observable. If you think, &quot;I'll just run harder&quot; you'll just burn yourself out early in the run and probably get a slower time. Instead, you can take actions that you think will improve your time (different breathing, better diet, different stretches, etc) and then observe how it effects your time after the next run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity works exactly the same. If I just try to increase my velocity through force of will, I'm going to either decrease it inadvertently or (because it's easier to game than time) I might create the illusion of an increase. Instead I need to take actions like improving collaboration, removing technical debt, automated testing, etc. and then observe how those impact my velocity in following sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-02-27T15:40:46.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25907" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-02-27T21:59:56.683" Score="0" ViewCount="198" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for an advertising agency and we are just 2 developers. We both maintain a total of 120 WordPress sites. We often build 1 new site every month which is done by only one of us at a time (while the other one keeps doing maintenance work).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, when we have to create a new site, we setup a dev server and work there until it's finished, then it goes to QA and then we push it live by manually deploying it to the production server.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, we receive tons of maintenance requests on a daily basis. Some of them we have to do it directly on the live site and sometimes we create a staging server from the live one, do the work and then push live.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since it's only 1 developer at a time, we don't create different branches on the GIT repositories. We just push the changes to the master branch of every project, and next!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I have been thinking if we could implement at least part of the Scrum framework on this environment of multiple mini projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know how can we achieve this here? I would like to improve our dev process by applying Scrum or something similar we could use (other than automated deployments and other stuff that might not be related to this particular subject)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I appreciate any help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35184" LastActivityDate="2019-02-28T13:34:49.050" Title="How to apply Scrum on multiple small projects for an advertising agency?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25908" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25926" CreationDate="2019-02-28T00:00:33.243" Score="3" ViewCount="1908" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Product Owner, I am working with a team that use the 'AS A / I WANT / SO THAT' style of user story. I have a system that has a several workflows to be followed depending on the setting of certain fields (they determine the sequence of downstream activities and whether some are skipped etc). It looks like I have two options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write one story something like AS AN administrator I WANT to set parameters SO THAT downstream activities follow the correct path. I would need to attach a flowchart to the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OR write one story for each configuration of parameters and then what I want to happen downstream for each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second approach seems to be following Mike Cohns advice to break down in to smaller stories, but then the 'I WANT' bit has to get really detailed and possibly quite sequential 'I WANT this and this and if this then this etc'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which approach is more effective?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35186" LastActivityDate="2019-03-05T02:52:28.010" Title="How do I capture business workflow in a user story?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25908" CreationDate="2019-02-28T00:51:16.583" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The purpose of the As A X I want Y so that Z is to create an understanding of the user's needs. I feel like in your situation, it may be ill-suited to effectively describing what is needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it might be worth reaching out to local coaches or even the local agile community to have someone help you through some backlog refinement with user stories and they may be a great way to do it with your situation. But if you look at a situation and say &quot;I have no idea how to fit this in that format&quot; and you just jam it in, you are almost certainly doing yourself and the team a disservice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: To be clear, I'm not saying you can't. You absolutely can. I'm just suggesting that if your business workflow is incredibly complex, the solution for your specific situation will probably be very difficult if not impossible to answer here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-02-28T00:51:16.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25908" CreationDate="2019-02-28T06:45:00.033" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Would it be an option to check with the team? If you explain the situation to them and what you want to achieve, they might be able to tell what they think is usable. I have had the same situation where one story described multiple actions and the team indicated that it would be better to split them in separate stories. In other occasions they indicated to group actions because they are linked together so closely that it would be more efficient to work on them together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35188" LastActivityDate="2019-02-28T06:45:00.033" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25901" CreationDate="2019-02-28T06:59:39.350" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;1)&#xA;To be able to determine the time it will take, you need to scope what you are going to do. If you have a baseline of the current performance, you must be able to determine the things that need to perform better. If you ask developers they can spend years tweaking and improving the performance. Key is, in my opinion, to define a scope and work towards that. Identify the 'slow' parts and determine how fast it should be, the goal does not have to be reached in 1 go. You could create spikes per discipline (e.g. search, back end, front end) so they can investigate the performance and come up solutions. This has worked for me several times&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) &#xA;The improvement can only be proven by running the same tests that created the baseline of performance. A developer will always be able to indicate if something will improve performance or not, but not by how much %. Obviously some testing should be done while implementing the improvements to see if they have the desired effect, but unless they are done on a production like environment it will be an indication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps,&#xA;Bart&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35188" LastActivityDate="2019-02-28T06:59:39.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25900" CreationDate="2019-02-28T07:22:56.833" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Barbaby Golden, and would like to add what helped when I wanted to show the impact of changing the teams often:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Show the management the velocity that is achieved in the last X sprints to show what they can do,backed up with actual numbers&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Check when developers left / joined and see if there is a noticeable change in the velocity around that time to show what the impact is&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me this has worked, I use the sprint report in Jira to create an overview of the last 20 sprints (it was a lot of work) but I was able to convince management about the impact of changing the team constantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35188" LastActivityDate="2019-02-28T07:22:56.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25913" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25915" CreationDate="2019-02-28T09:07:12.923" Score="3" ViewCount="287" Body="&lt;p&gt;When adding steps/tasks to a project plan, I often do this sequentially in the order they need to be done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, pressing &quot;Insert&quot; adds the new task &lt;em&gt;above&lt;/em&gt; the current task. How can I add new tasks &lt;em&gt;below&lt;/em&gt; the currently selected task?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Bonus question: Why is inserting &lt;em&gt;above&lt;/em&gt; the default?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7761" LastActivityDate="2019-02-28T11:50:14.973" Title="How to add new task below the currently selected task" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25812" CreationDate="2019-02-28T11:21:10.870" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I like to do for new features or big changes in the UI: have a design or wireframe ready before the team starts to estimate the story. This helps them to see what needs to be implemented and which features are needed. This in turn helps them to determine if new endpoints (back end) or components (front end) need to be created, this information can be used by testers to determine the scope of testing. E.g. if a component is reused it does not need very extensive testing because it already existed, but something that is completely new needs more testing.&#xA;Having the design ready before the estimation also makes sure that the PO approves the solution (UI wise) and that we are not wasting time building something that needs to be refactored in the next sprint&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then use the planning poker, mentioned by Sarov, with all team members (front end, back end, QA and PO). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35188" LastActivityDate="2019-02-28T11:21:10.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25913" CreationDate="2019-02-28T11:50:14.973" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can I add new tasks below the currently selected task?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You cannot. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/add-new-tasks-6990803e-d0c7-48aa-94c9-ef14387f6792&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Microsoft page for Adding New Tasks&lt;/a&gt; starts by saying &quot;&lt;em&gt;Select the row &lt;strong&gt;below&lt;/strong&gt; where you want a new task to appear.&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All other Google results give the same impression: it's simply not possible to add new tasks below the currently selected task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why is inserting above the default?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's because you can always add tasks below the last line, since there are &lt;em&gt;blank&lt;/em&gt; lines, but how do you add above the top line?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So Microsoft decided that &lt;em&gt;Insert&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Add Above the Top Task&lt;/em&gt; will use the same code and thus save them coding, debugging and adding the above/below option to each &quot;add a task&quot; operation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's a good Project Management decision; if you ignore the dubious User Experience. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2019-02-28T11:50:14.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25907" CreationDate="2019-02-28T13:34:49.050" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum works best when it is used by a team that needs to synchronise their work. Now although your developers work on separate projects, it does sound that there is the need to synchronise setting up environments, testing and releases. It also sounds like the support activities may require some synchronisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could potentially form a Scrum team consisting of your developers, QAs and anyone else responsible for product delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then create a backlog that consists of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Project development work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Release activities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Support work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any other activities necessary to deliver your products&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick is to think of all of these activities as just backlog work items, rather than tracking them separately. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Initially it may still be that one developer is dedicated to a small project, but over time you may start to break project work down so that it can be worked on by more than one developer at a time. This will then give you a bit more flexibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest the steps to go through would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get a bit of training on Scrum (if you don't already have team members experienced with it)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Think about who will be Scrum Master&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Think about who will act as the Product Owner: owning the backlog and making decisions on priorities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decide on a sprint length (shorter is better if your requirements change frequently)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hold a planning meeting to get started&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hold a review at the end of the first sprint to decide if it was better than your usual way of working&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-02-28T13:34:49.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25812" CreationDate="2019-02-28T15:51:20.867" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Estimation process will be done by all development team (developer, tester, designer..), every one estimates the story from his point of view (tester will imagine the testing effort, he imagines all possible testing scenario).&#xA;Not the estimation is the main goal rather than to clarify the story for all team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum master has the choice to make the process timed-box (5 minutes to each story, or by two round if you playing Poker) this is no standard, you can with your team and PO select estimation time but not long time, As i said the main goal is to share the user-story understand by all team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing in the estimation process is the conversation between PM and team. For example if &quot;for some story&quot; the tester estimate the story by 8 points, developer by 3 points, and those the min and max estimates, scrum master will ask these boundary value, why 3 for developer? why 13 for tester? that is, maybe the tester will explain testing scenario absent from developer, and then -at the next estimation round- the developer may volume-up the size.&#xA;Scrum master will select the estimate from different team values according to the conversation about the story, if they don't estimate the same effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ios developers estimate the effort that only they responsible for.&#xA;QA estimate the effort that only they responsible for, and so..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;please you can find more by Mike Cohn &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/how-can-we-get-the-best-estimates-of-story-size&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How Can We Get the Best Estimates of Story Size? &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35136" LastEditorUserId="35136" LastEditDate="2019-02-28T16:08:48.663" LastActivityDate="2019-02-28T16:08:48.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25918" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-03-01T17:08:57.073" Score="2" ViewCount="430" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently my team's burndown charts includes weekends and nights, I feel like this harms the velocity by misrepresenting it, however, I cannot explain this very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what is going on in my head...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my team &lt;code&gt;Velocity = Number of Story Points Completed / Sprint&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;Sprint = 2 Weeks&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YIhEX.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YIhEX.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as an example, in the above image, the commit is 50 story points, while the team was only able to deliver &lt;code&gt;50 - 10 = 40&lt;/code&gt; story points this sprint, so the team's velocity is 40 story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Removing Weekends&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SmAf9.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SmAf9.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently the target burndown chart generate by JIRA (grey) at the start of the sprint includes the weekends, I feel like it should not include the weekends (blue). What are the benefits of including the weekends? What are the downsides of removing the weekends? &lt;strong&gt;Does including the weekends harm velocity?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Removing Nights&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ragnf.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ragnf.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because we track nights, everyday we go above the target line (grey) and it looks like we are under-delivering. What are the benefits of including the nights? What are the downsides of removing the nights? &lt;strong&gt;Does including the weekends harm nights?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What also came to me while writing this, is that during planning we say that each developer will do 8 hours of work per day, however, we track 24 hours of work per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34421" LastActivityDate="2019-03-01T17:48:56.983" Title="Why does the burndown chart include weekends and nights?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;burndown-chart&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25918" CreationDate="2019-03-01T17:48:56.983" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is worth hitting from a few angles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Direct Answer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, to your question, I've never been in a team that found value in showing days on the burndown chart they weren't working. Feel free to hide those days, it won't hurt anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to why Jira puts it in at all, the answer would simply be that some people work irregular weeks. Easier to include it and let people hide them, than to try to code a special case for teams that work irregular weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Velocity&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity is not calculated daily, but by the sprint, so this has no effect on measurements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use of Burndown Charts&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More importantly, if you feel like you are underdelivering because of the horizontal lines, you are reading way too granualarly into this tool. The purpose of a burndown chart is to allow the team and others around them to see the trend of work through the sprint at a glance. Your brain will learn to account for nights or weekends having an odd bump within a day or two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The burndown chart just shows you one interesting trend in a lot of data. It should never be managed to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other Tools&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These charts are super easy to draw. If you'd like a different visualization of this chart, taskboards, or any other visualizations, I'd highly recommend using other tools too. The 30 seconds per day that JIRA saves you isn't particularly critical, especially if you're unhappy with how JIRA is visualizing it. Just create a chart that works better. Plus, you can have fun with it then. I had a team whose burndown chart was modeled after the game Lemmings and if they reached the bottom they saved the Lemmings. So much more interesting than a line on JIRA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-03-01T17:48:56.983" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25921" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-03-02T03:45:48.810" Score="1" ViewCount="152" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my current company, DSDM is being practiced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a new project that we are starting, there are no backlogs yet and it is decided we will be executing the project in sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The duration of the project is about 3-4 months.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this scenario, I believe using a different sizing (T-shirt sizing) should suffice.  I dont see a value in using story point estimation in this type of situation; eg. no velocity calculation required to forecast our deliverable for future or to calculate our productivity for the sprints.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The management would want to continue with Story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please let us know how I can continue sizing stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33671" LastActivityDate="2019-03-02T10:24:50.057" Title="SCRUM - Sizing in sprint. Do I need to use story points in a sprint if the duration of the project phase itself is only 3-4 months?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25922" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25924" CreationDate="2019-03-02T04:57:54.997" Score="6" ViewCount="2480" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I am using T-shirt sizing for my user story estimates, what metrics I can measure and report? We currently use a Sprint burn-down chart when using story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33671" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-03-02T10:02:50.897" LastActivityDate="2019-03-11T09:13:30.050" Title="What metrics can we generate from t-shirt sizes (rather than story points) when estimating user stories?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25922" CreationDate="2019-03-02T10:01:00.587" Score="10" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Summary&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To calculate velocity when using non-numeric relative sizing, you first need to map your story sizes to numeric values. I provide a working example of how to do this with tee shirt sizes, and then show how to calculate the mean velocity of some shirt-based Sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also provide some of my thoughts on this as an agile technique, and some suggestions about when using non-numeric sequences can make sense. Feel free to skip that part if your heart is set on using tee shirt sizes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Use Enumeration&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to use a technique called &lt;em&gt;enumeration&lt;/em&gt;. In this technique, you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;List all your story sizes from smallest to largest.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assign an ordinal (but not necessarily sequential) point value to each element.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the numerical values to perform any mathematical calculations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can do this in the programming language of your choice, in Microsoft Excel, or by hand. The technique itself is the same, but the implementation may differ based on your tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Ruby Example&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a Ruby-based example that maps tee shirt sizes to the modified Fibonacci sequence. Once you've assigned a point value to each tee shirt size, you can then do whatever you'd normally do with a numeric story size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;# Map each tee shirt size to a point value. The value&#xA;# doesn't really matter, so long as it increases along&#xA;# an axis.&#xA;tee_shirt_sizes = {&#xA;    &quot;S&quot; =&amp;gt; 1,&#xA;    &quot;M&quot; =&amp;gt; 2,&#xA;    &quot;L&quot; =&amp;gt; 5,&#xA;   &quot;XL&quot; =&amp;gt; 8,&#xA;  &quot;XXL&quot; =&amp;gt; 13&#xA;}&#xA;&#xA;# Track your completed stories as an array of tee shirt&#xA;# sizes.&#xA;stories_completed = %w[S M XL M L S]&#xA;&#xA;# Sum the point total for each tee shirt size. In this&#xA;# particular example, the result will be 19.&#xA;current_sprint = stories_completed.sum do |story_size|&#xA;  tee_shirt_sizes[story_size]&#xA;end&#xA;&#xA;# Get your average velocity from an array of Sprint&#xA;# results. Since you're just working with numbers at&#xA;# this point, your calculations can be as simple or as&#xA;# complex as you choose to make them.&#xA;points_each_sprint = [21, 15, current_sprint]&#xA;mean_velocity =&#xA;  points_each_sprint.sum / points_each_sprint.size&#xA;puts &quot;Average velocity: #{mean_velocity}&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your output from this application will be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Average velocity: 18&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question the Technique's Assumptions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Relative Sizing Imagery&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole idea of using non-numeric sizing is to help unmoor estimates further from ideal hours, and to increase the team's ability to estimate &lt;em&gt;relative&lt;/em&gt; to other stories. Whether tee shirt sizes really do that, as opposed to something easier to visualize like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Meerkat&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;House Cat&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tiger&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Elephant&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blue Whale&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is (to me, anyway) somewhat questionable. While the technique is popular in the field, I have never found tee shirt sizes or drink sizes to yield better estimates than the Fibonacci sequence. It may help teams with the initial cognitive load of &lt;em&gt;learning&lt;/em&gt; good estimation, but the quality of the estimates seem to have little to do with the &quot;currency of estimation&quot; once the team truly understands relative sizing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Proxy Values&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps more importantly, estimating in non-point values has many of the same problems as treating story points as a proxy for time. In particular:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The mapping itself often defeats the purpose of using non-numerical values in the first place.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It creates a layer of indirection if you're really trying to track capacity or velocity as first-class metrics, rather than simply trying to improve estimation of relative sizing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a purely practical matter, I tell organizations that want to plan in hours to just do that, even when it yields less reliable estimates than story points. The reason I do that is because the cognitive effort (and dissonance!) of pretending the team isn't really estimating in hours doesn't accomplish anything other than to force everyone to keep converting back and forth to come up with unreliable guesstimates anyway. I'm going to give the same advice to you about tee shirt sizes: &lt;strong&gt;If you need numerical values, use them directly rather than futzing around with conversion tables and enumeration!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;When Non-Numeric Values Make Sense&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, estimating in tee shirts, coffee cups, or mammals is not inherently a bad technique. I don't want you to think that it is, or that all the people doing it (whether well or poorly) are out of their minds. It's a good technique, but it's just often misapplied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my professional experience, non-numeric values for estimation are great when:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Initially trying to break teams of the habit of estimating in hours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When the sizes can be truly seen as relative to one another yet unmoored from hours, points, or some other proxy value.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In agile frameworks like XP or Kanban where batch size and flow are more important than capacity planning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since it's hard to really estimate how many meerkats and albino tigers can fit into a given Sprint without anchoring the sizes to numerical values anyway, and since it's never been clear to me how many crop-tops equal an extra-large tee shirt, I strongly feel that such systems aren't a good fit for capacity-based time boxes in frameworks like Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, it's relatively easy to apply a fudge factor for a vacationing developer or an off-site meeting when you have a numerical value for velocity. Need to cut a day from a two-week Sprint? Cut your initial capacity estimate by 10%. Have 7 developers, and one is taking a two-week vacation? Cut capacity forecasts by at least 15%. Granted that these are just fudge factors, and the real planning values will need to be determined by the Development Team during Sprint Planning, but using numbers definitely helps guide a more accurate forecast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Important Note: While the Scrum framework talks about c&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-planning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;apacity planning and forecasts&lt;/a&gt; for Sprints, it doesn't actually require velocity metrics, burn-downs, or other prescriptive practices.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Non-numeric estimates are much more valuable in frameworks like Kanban, where keeping work units as small as possible and as consistent in size as possible are core values. In such systems, work-in-progress limits (not Sprint capacity or velocity estimates) are the most important planning values. Using non-numeric systems as a quick way to sort work into like-sized buckets is great because the aggregate sizes of the stories aren't first-class metrics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story pointing is a great technique. I highly recommend it, as do many agile coaches and practitioners. You can use non-numeric story points by applying a variety of enumeration techniques to convert your arbitrary values to numbers, but this may or may not really buy you anything if your primary metric is numeric.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, your mileage may vary. Shares can be worth more or less at redemption. Caveat emptor. Excelsior!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;See Also&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://smile.amazon.com/Agile-Estimating-Planning-Mike-Cohn/dp/0131479415/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Estimation and Planning&lt;/a&gt;. Cohn, Mike. 2005.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://smile.amazon.com/User-Stories-Applied-Software-Development/dp/0321205685/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development&lt;/a&gt;. Cohn, Mike. 2004.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-03-09T15:10:45.023" LastActivityDate="2019-03-09T15:10:45.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25921" CreationDate="2019-03-02T10:24:50.057" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The team will be doing the estimating and the team will be doing the work. It would seem logical that the team should be the ones to decide which estimating units are most appropriate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only exception I can see to this is if your management are using story points as a cross-project metric. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/is-it-a-good-idea-to-establish-a-common-baseline-for-story-points&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;However, it is usually a bad idea to compare story points across teams&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion would be to have an open discussion with your management about what they are trying to achieve and about the importance of empowering teams to make their own decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-03-02T10:24:50.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25908" CreationDate="2019-03-02T11:09:13.100" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Summary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither of your current user stories will work. This isn't simply a result of writing the stories incorrectly; it's a direct result of a non-agile approach to large systems development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below, I describe what user stories are and aren't. I also discuss other tools that may complement your user stories, especially in regards to providing additional scope and context. And finally, I provide some recommendations for making your systems development process more flexible through emergent design, and better able to embrace complexity through iterative development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;User Stories are Not Specifications or Requirements&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User stories are many things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/articles/questioning-your-users&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Conversation starters&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A starting point for customer collaboration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deliberately high-level feature descriptions or acceptance criteria.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Brief (even shorthand) use cases that describe a value proposition and a value consumer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing they are not, however, is a technical specification or detailed requirement document. No less an expert on user stories than Mike Cohn has &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/user-stories&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;explicitly stated&lt;/a&gt; that user stories are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; specifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While a product backlog can be thought of as a replacement for the requirements document of a traditional project, it is important to remember that the written part of an agile user story (“As a user, I want …”) is incomplete until the discussions about that story occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It’s often best to think of the written part as a pointer to the real requirement. User stories could point to a diagram depicting a workflow, a spreadsheet showing how to perform a calculation, or any other artifact the product owner or team desires.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Use More Appropriate Tools&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on what you're trying to express, other tools and artifacts are often more effective than user stories in defining specific elements for your product. Many of them can be used in conjunction with user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Product Backlog holds &lt;em&gt;features&lt;/em&gt; to be developed, but leave the implementation details to collaboration between the development team and users. Workflows are generally captured with &lt;a href=&quot;http://jeffpatton.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/story_mapping.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;user story mapping&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://theuxreview.co.uk/user-journeys-beginners-guide/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;user journeys&lt;/a&gt;. Acceptance criteria are often best expressed through &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.cucumber.io/guides/overview/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cucumber features&lt;/a&gt;. You might even have other project artifacts that hold additional detail about functional and non-functional requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Agile&amp;quot; doesn't require you to try to stuff all of the details of your product into user stories. Stories are just one tool (among many) for meeting the &lt;a href=&quot;https://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;values and principles&lt;/a&gt; of agility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analyzing Your Use Case&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Write one story something like AS AN administrator I WANT to set parameters SO THAT downstream activities follow the correct path. I would need to attach a flowchart to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is only partially correct. The administrator is not the value consumer, so you want to identify the user who will take the UX journey, use the feature, or gain the benefit. That way, the team can collaborate with &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt; or their chosen proxy. In addition, such a story is not &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)#Testable&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;inherently testable&lt;/a&gt;. While attaching (or referring to) a flow chart is certainly a useful thing to do, such a vague story won't provide sufficient context to develop a test-first solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your other alternative is worse:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;write one story for each configuration of parameters and then what I want to happen downstream for each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This attempts to shoehorn detailed specifications into each story. While possibly testable, this type of approach overly constrains the solution space to the point where you lose most of the benefits of an agile approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are essentially taking a whole-systems, &amp;quot;big upfront planning&amp;quot; approach to your design and implementation. This is inherently non-agile, and the unwieldiness of this approach is contributing to the awkward stories you're finding on the backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choosing between too-big epics and overly-details specification documents is a false dichotomy. Neither is the right choice. A more agile, just-in-time design approach along with iterative development will resolve most of the problems you're currently describing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Recommendations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, accept that agile frameworks are both &lt;em&gt;incremental&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;iterative&lt;/em&gt;. You don't have to design and implement the whole system all at once. Instead, you build up the system piece by piece. This often results in refactoring and rework as the team collaborates with the customer on what's actually needed, rather than simply on what's been asked for in the beginning. This is a fundamental mind-shift that &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; take place for a project to be agile, and for it to succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, foster collaboration. A user story should describe a vertical slice of functionality that serves as a conversation starter between the development team and the users. For example, a good user story might be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an HR administrator,&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;I want the system to automatically reject all resumes&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;so that I don't have to print them out and circular-file each one manually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This story describes a value consumer that the team can collaborate with to validate acceptance criteria and feature fit (the HR admin). It also describes a feature without overly constraining the solution space; it says &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; is wanted, rather than &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; it will be implemented by the system. And finally, it provides &lt;em&gt;context&lt;/em&gt; that helps the development team craft a solution that not only meets the goal, but that can also guide implementation choices to better fit into the user's workflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Iterating and Refactoring&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a big system, there will be many of these types of stories. Each iteration should deliver an increment of potentially-shippable functionality. However, when the system is extremely large or complex, later stories may require changes or modifications to the system to accommodate the new features without breaking the old ones. &lt;strong&gt;This is an expected aspect of agile projects.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &amp;quot;emergent design&amp;quot; is handled by refactoring (changing implementation details without impacting behavior), or by accepting that there will be additional work involved in updating aspects of the system. As an example, let's suppose that some future bit of work says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a compliance officer&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;I want &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; incoming documents to be saved for 7 years&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;so that regulators can never find their needles in our haystacks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe the HR admin's story was implemented with a &amp;quot;reject and delete&amp;quot; approach, because the team didn't yet have this new context in scope. So, the team may need to refactor the HR functionality to reject-and-store as part of this new compliance story, and that level-of-effort would be factored into the new story's estimate during iteration planning. Or perhaps the new story can't be implemented without changing something more fundamental about the system. In that case, the fundamental changes are analyzed, decomposed, and put on the Product Backlog just like any other work for the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile frameworks embrace change. Incremental/iterative development, refactoring, and rework are inherent to the agile approach. By providing transparency within the Product Backlog, you may reduce &lt;em&gt;unnecessary&lt;/em&gt; rework by consolidating related items together so that any conflicting context or workflow differences can be spotted more easily, but you'll never eliminate rework entirely. Accept the benefits of agility (such as the ability to deliver small, complete slices of functionality quickly), and treat refactoring and rework as a basic cost of doing business this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-03-05T02:52:28.010" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23851" CreationDate="2019-03-02T16:11:02.537" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course, you have one product because you have shared parts, that means you have shared resources, scope and other objectives, therefore, they would have a strong relationship with each other. So the best practice in your case is to have one backlog and one working process for all your tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To differ them, you can:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a prefix in the name of the task, for example [Desktop]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a tag for the task&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a color label for the task&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can create sub-backlogs too, but I don't recommend this because it depends on your working process, so you should answer those questions for decision making:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will you duplicate tasks or just move them from the main backlog after, for example, grooming meeting?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will different parts of the team work properly if tasks placed on different backlogs?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35213" LastActivityDate="2019-03-02T16:11:02.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22811" CreationDate="2019-03-02T16:22:54.827" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the main target for this survey? As I understood, you want to assess your teammates, but maybe you want to realize how well is a scrum for you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The target involves what type of questions should you make. But for both reasons I advise below actions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likert_scale&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Likert Scale&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Avoid the feelings in questions (well, bad, good or something like this), use the questions-statements in Likert: &quot;This person suggest many ideas how to improve our products on scrum meeting&quot; and then Likert assessment - &quot;Definitely agree&quot;, &quot;Definitely disagree&quot; and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't have more than 10-12 questions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35213" LastActivityDate="2019-03-02T16:22:54.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25929" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-03-02T22:17:26.083" Score="4" ViewCount="136" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a consulting manager leading over 25 personnel to manage the infrastructure on a Navy Base. The team is currently segmented into Scrum Teams with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;5 SW Devs doing bug fixes and rewriting apps&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;2-3 Cyber security personnel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;8-9 System Admins performing IT duties and installing new apps&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;4 personnel doing Network Admin, debug &amp;amp; new apps and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;5-6 providing Level 2 Help Desk perssonnel handling inputs, and making system upgrades.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Government Contractors many of the Scrum artifacts and methods are useful in the sustainment effort well suited for Kanban. Each team uses a Product Backlog, weekly Sprint Planning and Customer demos. I enforce the weekly demos, though most teams have incomplete products, to ensure each team makes weekly commitments and we get weekly customer feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe Kanban boards posted to the walls or in JIRA would provide sufficient transparency and commitment. I would appreciate feedback from folks in a similiar IT support situation. I may be too much of a micro-manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Respectfully,&#xA;Greg&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35216" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-03-03T12:31:36.507" LastActivityDate="2019-10-31T10:31:47.227" Title="Appropriate Structure to Manage Diverse IT Sustainment &amp; Development Projects?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;infrastructure&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25930" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-03-03T02:33:22.123" Score="0" ViewCount="548" Body="&lt;p&gt;In one of the projects, we have business stakeholders signing off completed user stories in the Daily Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are instances where we will not have any stories to demo in the Sprint Review, as they've all been gone over during the Daily Scrums.  We cancel the Review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum guide&lt;/a&gt; clearly says that we need to have these separate meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please give your inputs on canceling the Sprint Review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33671" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-03-04T14:14:52.690" LastActivityDate="2019-03-25T11:42:34.253" Title="User story sign off in daily standup" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;&lt;sprint-review&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25931" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-03-03T03:43:28.003" Score="4" ViewCount="215" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have few queries on how granular we need to go on splitting stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a story where clicking the phone no in the system should dial cisco or skype or any other telephony systems based on the user environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My query is if using INVEST, this should be 3 different user stories - one for each telephonic users.&#xA;Technically, Dev might be using the same function to call based on individual configurations; so is it okay where dev use the same function or write same code to deliver these multiple functions be combined in a single story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case, when we split them in multiple stories, there might be a situation where related user stories might be missed out in a sprint.  Can we have a practice like after pulling the master user story in the sprint, we again split them into 3 separate stories in the Sprint Planning session.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please give your inputs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33671" LastActivityDate="2019-03-03T12:03:53.520" Title="Slicing User Stories" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;sprint-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25931" CreationDate="2019-03-03T04:44:42.357" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short version is that it is the development team's decision. Let's say you have this story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user with a telephone program installed, I want to automatically&#xA;  dial a number when I client on it in the application so I don't have&#xA;  to remember the phone number and key it in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a product owner, that encompasses the user's need perfectly, so I'm going to take that to the development team - probably during backlog refinement (or grooming - two names for the same thing). Now, the team will either say &quot;Yes, that seems like it is small enough to fit into a sprint, let's leave it as one story.&quot; or they may say &quot;No, that's too big.&quot; At this point, the team and PO must have a discussion to find a balance - what slice is small enough and still delivers value. Maybe it's something like you said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a skype user, I want to be able to click on a telephone number ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you could go ahead and split the others out, but I wouldn't right away. It may be that once they do the first one, all of the rest can be done together. Or, the team may decide to just take it one at a time. That's mostly their decision. On the other hand, looking at them as pieces may create a conversation where the PO decides that some options just aren't that valuable. There isn't a right answer here - just finding a balance through collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this approach, we keep the big picture in mind and focus on the details as they come.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-03-03T04:44:42.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25931" CreationDate="2019-03-03T12:03:53.520" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How granular we need to go on splitting stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to break down &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;as much as you can so that you can deliver the Story within the iteration&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on my experience, if there's a functionality that'll have a &quot;framework&quot; to be used for other similar functionalities (the master story you mention) then you have to decide whether:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it's better to work on them all at the same time (same iteration) and that all of them can be delivered as a single feature OR&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it's better to have the story delivered for a specific case, validated by users and then implement the &quot;related&quot; stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This decision is strongly dependent on the &lt;strong&gt;business&lt;/strong&gt; you're working on and the &lt;strong&gt;team&lt;/strong&gt; you have. Another aspect sometimes overlooked is the duration of your iterations - sometimes it's &lt;strong&gt;better to have larger iterations and deliver more well finished stories&lt;/strong&gt; rather than break them down to fit smaller iterations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remarks when splitting user stories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; break them down by &lt;em&gt;layers&lt;/em&gt; (front end / backend) or technologies. A Story should be fully functional when delivered. You may have tasks written as stories. Avoid them. A task completed (a frontend, for instance) is very unlikely to add any business value.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; break them down alone. Story breakdown should be done by PO and team, together, with a clear purpose.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; try to deliver all possible scenarios at once. Prioritise the happy path. Confirm it delivers the value expected. Create new stories for handling exception paths.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-03-03T12:03:53.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23851" CreationDate="2019-03-03T13:59:35.653" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Product backlog items will initially contain all requirements as a user stories, and we know that the user story is high definition of each user requirements, in addition there will be a test cases design for each platform requirements, every test case will check the happy and bad behaviors for the application, which may lead to specific test-environment configurations for each platform.&#xA;as &quot;Tanya R&quot; said, you can &quot;add a prefix in the name of the task, for example [Desktop]&quot;.&#xA;make your development driven by user acceptance test, imagine what these test would be, surely end-user will verify for his android, ios... ,so make that verification as a requirements in the PBIs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35136" LastActivityDate="2019-03-03T13:59:35.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25935" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25939" CreationDate="2019-03-04T04:05:02.097" Score="1" ViewCount="113" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on an application to help create a grocery list based on the meals (and their ingredients and quantity) that the user provides. So far, the epics that I've come up with are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.) Research (units of measure, popular food items and categories, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.) Login&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3.) Scenarios (have food and possible recipe, need meals etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4.) My Fridge (feature that allows user to store what they already have in the fridge)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5.) Units of measure (locale detection? how do we allow the user to switch between imperial and metric systems)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;6.) Grocery list (how to display, best way to display, email/sms grocery list to self, email/sms to others, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;7.) Food (need to find the most common way each food is measured, display est calories, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm creating epics off major components of the application. Is this the right way to frame them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35222" LastActivityDate="2019-05-13T20:38:22.300" Title="How do I frame epics?" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;epics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25936" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25944" CreationDate="2019-03-04T09:56:15.210" Score="1" ViewCount="98" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am building a project plan on Microsoft Project 2013 and can't understand why it is not allocating a resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a task set as auto scheduled, fixed work, with a 7 day effort assigned to a single resource at 100%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The resource has a limited availability and some days can only work 50% on the project (see image).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LJBT4.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LJBT4.png&quot; alt=&quot;Resource Availability&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I hit the Level All button, Project doesn't allocate the resource to the task on 08-03-2019 at all:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Xp83s.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Xp83s.png&quot; alt=&quot;Task with 50% resource&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if I switch the resource's availability to 100% on 08-03-2019, the Level All button allocates the resource on that day:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RqM7z.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RqM7z.png&quot; alt=&quot;Task with 100% resource&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is: what should I be doing differently so that the resource gets allocated to the task according to the availability defined in Resource Availability?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35225" LastActivityDate="2019-03-04T15:24:04.410" Title="Microsoft Project 2013 - Auto leveling according to Resource Availability" Tags="&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25937" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25943" CreationDate="2019-03-04T10:19:54.103" Score="1" ViewCount="129" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work as a Software developer, but now I am moving to a manager role and I had the following exercise on a course I took to improve my management skills: &lt;em&gt;To solve a code challenge from a manager perspective&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this exercise, I worked with one developer that shared his screen and think aloud about the problem, the goal was to help him solving the code challenge using management skills to understand my thought process and how I put my ideas to support the team, this was a little tricky for me because I've been on a developer role for almost 10 years and the very first thing that I tried was to solve the code challenge as a developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, after staying silent for a while, I tried the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask the developer if an existing issue has been reported in JIRA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it was reported in JIRA, then we try to follow the steps to solve the challenge based on that. Otherwise, we would need to ask other team members to check if they have seen any similar issue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Since no team member on the company has seen a similar issue, then we create a JIRA ticket to track the issue and focus on the challenge description and try to solve it at a very high level like: &quot;hey, I've seen something similar, maybe we can use the following algorithm and this library...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After that, we ask Google for some assistance and check if we get the right solution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once the solution is implemented, we update ticket status with the required information and that's it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not sure if I missed something or if there are more things that I need to take in consideration to improve my management skills for this kind of cases. For instance, what should I do if we do not get an answer on Google/Stack Overflow/Quora or any other site (very unlikely, but just in case).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, as a manager, what can I do to assist a developer with a coding problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35226" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-03-04T14:29:50.323" LastActivityDate="2019-03-04T17:20:16.057" Title="How to solve a code challenge from a manager perspective" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;skills&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25937" CreationDate="2019-03-04T12:27:27.323" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that as a manager you should not provide the answer but the route to the answer. Ask questions to give the developer a path to choose from, just as you've done.&#xA;As a SCRUM Master I try to let people grow by just asking questions and let the developers find a path to follow. It is a bit hard to provide a concrete example but something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What have tried to solve it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What could you try?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there someone within the team that might be able to help you?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By asking the right questions (which is really hard) the developer will find a solution&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35188" LastActivityDate="2019-03-04T12:27:27.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25935" CreationDate="2019-03-04T12:30:16.413" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the information you provided, it seems to be ok. I would not create an epic called research but use spikes instead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35188" LastActivityDate="2019-03-04T12:30:16.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25940" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25941" CreationDate="2019-03-04T12:41:18.727" Score="3" ViewCount="150" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to discuss a scenario in the sprint planning. Suppose the total velocity of the sprint is 30 as per the previous sprints. The objective of the product owner is to plan 3 stories with 10 story points each in current sprint. During the sprint planning, the development team saying that they want 30 days to complete one story. As a product owner, how should I convince the developers? Identifying the story points is not a one sided opinion. Right ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33461" LastEditorUserId="35885" LastEditDate="2019-05-13T07:09:15.863" LastActivityDate="2019-05-13T22:48:49.127" Title="How to identify optimum story points for user stories" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25940" CreationDate="2019-03-04T13:22:45.840" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid you are mistaken. In Scrum, only the dev team doing the work has a say on how much they can take on and, therefore, how many points it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read the Scrum Guide at &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.scrumguides.org/index.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, to your last point, the whole effort is fairly collaborative. As a PO, you represent the user need to the team. If they say it is a month to fulfill, then it raises a question: what can be provided in the next sprint? Also, if the pace of development and the budgetary constraints are not aligned, the PO and team may be able to discuss some creative solutions to that problem. In those conversations, the team is helping identify a technically viable solution while the PO is helping ensure it will still meet customer needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-03-04T13:22:45.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25937" CreationDate="2019-03-04T14:38:47.257" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see a developers' manager's responsibilities, in broad strokes, to be three things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To create/bring together the culture/team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To remove impediments to the team's work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To get out of the way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, I see three possible situations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The developer in question is a senior/knows what s/he's doing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The developer in question is a junior/doesn't know what s/he's doing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The developer in question is a junior, and the manager is the only one around who has been a senior developer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In situation 1, all you need to do is maintain enough presence to know of (and fix) any issues affecting the developer that the developer cannot fix him/herself (e.g. 'we need to buy this software', 'the ceiling fan is too loud', 'my computer's too slow'). And then get out of the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In situation 2, ensure that there's a senior dev available to assist the junior developer. Then act as in situation 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only in situation 3 would I suggest that the manager actively assist the junior developer with programming tasks, but in that instance, &lt;em&gt;s/he is no longer acting as a manager. S/he has&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;taken off the manager hat and put on the developer one.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; Oh, and make sure you're working on improving the junior's skills so s/he becomes senior, hiring a senior, or both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-03-04T14:58:29.850" LastActivityDate="2019-03-04T14:58:29.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25937" CreationDate="2019-03-04T14:59:48.167" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fascinating question and an excellent interview question. (Technically a poor fit for PM:SE because there is no authoritative answer - which is what makes it a great interview question).  That said, I think it is fascinating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you covered the most important element - which is to avoid acting as a developer. So what does the manager do that the developer does not do? My obligation as a manager is to ensure that the problem is solved.  If I were confronted with the question, my response would to ask the developer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do you understand the problem?  Are there any requirements or issues that I can get clarified for you?   Are there elements you're confident you understand that you can start work on?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do you have everything you need to solve this problem?  Do you need any reference material, hardware, software, assistance?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How long do you think it will take you to solve this problem? In the worst case, hungover with constant management nagging how long would it take?  How long would it take on your best day?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How can I help?  Would it help to think out loud &amp;amp; break it down to subproblems, or is my best contribution to go get you coffee/tea/redbull/headphones/a left handed smokeshifter that will get me out of your hair and let you concentrate (in which case I'll come back about 60% of the way through the estimated completion time to check that none of the above answers have changed.  (&lt;em&gt;As a former manager, I strongly believe that one of my most important duties was to shut up and get out of the way&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2019-03-04T17:20:16.057" LastActivityDate="2019-03-04T17:20:16.057" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25936" CreationDate="2019-03-04T15:24:04.410" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mauricio, There are three options (the last is easiest):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For 08-03-2019, set the resource availability to 100% (as you've done), then level.  Then in the resource usage view for the task, manually adjust the hours for 08-03-2019 from 8h to 4h.  This will remove 4h of work from the task, which you will need to add back at the end.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For 08-03-2019, keep the resource availability at 50%, then level.  Then in the resource usage view for the task, manually adjust the hours for 08-03-2019 from 0h to 4h.  This will add 4h work to the task, which you will need to remove at the end.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For 08-03-2019, set the resource availability to 100%, then create a resource calendar exception for that day - &quot;Half-time Day,&quot;  with working time from 08:00 to 12:00.  Re-level. Done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2019-03-04T15:24:04.410" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25945" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25946" CreationDate="2019-03-04T22:03:57.937" Score="2" ViewCount="111" Body="&lt;p&gt;My company is venturing into a niche area of the telecom business. The challenge we are facing is there are very few vendors of some critical software we need and in turn there are very few customers to buy the software. It's just a small market for this particular product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vendor lock-in is a huge concern but seems inevitable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have ruled out developing the software ourselves as leadership feels that may be expanding our mission too much at once. The vendors will also not let us buy the the source code (i.e. the intellectual property), so if we ever do decide to change vendors we will have little that can be reused other than our data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have experience or pro-tips on working with a vendor pool of 1-2 providers where one cannot easily (matter of years) move from one vendor to another? How can we avoid lock-in? My request for proposal (RFP) experience so far has never really been limited by vendor selection and the niche market dynamics is uncharted territory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user35229" LastEditorDisplayName="user35229" LastEditDate="2019-03-05T13:53:52.100" LastActivityDate="2019-04-01T08:23:25.367" Title="Avoiding vendor lock-in with few vendors available" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25945" CreationDate="2019-03-05T03:52:26.417" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You avoid lock-in by owning the process, and by routinely taking control of the project's artifacts and deliverables throughout the project life cycle. Especially in the software world, so long as you have the source code, you're never truly &quot;locked in.&quot; You can always take your football (or source code) and go home, although that's not always your best business strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to actively participating in your own process and keeping control of your bespoke artifacts, you need to consider how you will work with your vendor. A collaborative, transparent approach is often your best bet for maintaining flexibility and reducing risk throughout the project life cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Value Collaboration, Transparency, and Tight Feedback Loops&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have ruled out developing the software ourselves as leadership feels that may be expanding our mission too much at once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anytime you rely on goods or services outside your company, this represents project risk. The size of your vendor pool may change the size of your risk, but it doesn't really change the fundamentals of the type of risk you're facing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a rule of thumb, always avoid the mistake of &quot;throwing work over the wall&quot; to your vendors. You own the product or service that they're building for you, so it is in your best interests to &lt;em&gt;collaborate&lt;/em&gt; with them as closely as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From an agile perspective, your goal should be to have a very tight feedback loop. There should be ongoing transparency, and potentially-shippable increments of functionality should be reviewed together by your stakeholders and your vendor on a predictable cadence of 1-4 weeks. This review should be more than just a sign-off or a slide show; it should be a collaborative inspection of the increment of work. This inspection provides feedback to the vendor, so that any on-the-fly adjustments to scope and direction can be discussed together. It also provides visibility to stakeholders, so that business decisions and trade-offs about cost, budget, or schedule can be made in an informed way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The very worst-case scenario is that you discover the project can't be delivered on time or on budget. By working more closely with the vendor than may be typical, you'll discover that sooner and can &quot;fail faster.&quot; What you do then is also a business decision, but it's often better to discover that a project will deliver late, cost more than expected, or fail altogether sooner rather than later. No methodology will guarantee success, but &quot;failing fast&quot; is the best way to keep your options open and avoid the sunk cost fallacy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-03-05T03:52:26.417" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25947" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25968" CreationDate="2019-03-05T06:55:03.470" Score="2" ViewCount="629" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my current company, Dynamic Systems Development Method (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_systems_development_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DSDM&lt;/a&gt;) is the Agile framework chosen for delivery. Scrum is followed as the Agile process within DSDM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can we really use Scrum as an agile methodology in DSDM? If so, how to mitigate these conflicting processes between Scrum and DSDM?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found conflicting roles / processes / functionalities between Scrum and DSDM, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We have Business roles to supplement the product owner in Scrum and no dedicated product owner in the team.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We have teams of less than 3 for individual projects but conflicts the Scrum team size minimum requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Product backlogs are primarily prioritized based on MoSCoW and not rank ordered numerically.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Timeboxing is used instead of Iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33671" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-03-05T08:44:53.633" LastActivityDate="2019-05-30T13:48:00.753" Title="How to use Scrum in DSDM?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;dsdm&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25949" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-03-05T17:37:09.180" Score="4" ViewCount="62" Body="&lt;p&gt;Small internal IT department that assists all of a company's departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each department has projects that each are 'priority 1' - the departments and executive team are unwilling to strictly prioritize projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of this, the argument was made that IT should not focus on one project, since multiple projects must be highest priority and therefore must be done simultaneously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This strikes me as flawed reasoning, but I was unable to articulate exactly how/why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I wrong - is it actually a bad idea for IT to work as a team instead of multiple individual developers on multiple projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it still better for IT to work as a team and swarm one project at a time? If so - why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2019-03-06T10:37:13.317" Title="Is focusing on one project beneficial even when project priorities can't be quantified?" Tags="&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;team&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25949" CreationDate="2019-03-05T19:34:55.677" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's so situational--and sounds like poor project management. It sounds like the PM needs to revisit and take task urgency, value, and level of effort (LOE) into consideration and reprioritize. Even if it's the difference between 1.1 and 1.2, that should be the outcome you're looking for. Multitasking has never proven to be an effective form of project management, let alone personal productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35236" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-03-05T20:06:56.763" LastActivityDate="2019-03-05T20:06:56.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25951" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-03-06T02:53:44.623" Score="8" ViewCount="269" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am quite new with prioritization requirements in agile. As we know, normally, during the prioritization process in agile, business value is the most important factor that taken into consideration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there any other important factors that will take into consideration while doing the requirements prioritization in agile, in order to make sure that the software will deliver on time.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35240" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2019-03-07T05:29:52.817" LastActivityDate="2019-03-24T04:52:55.123" Title="Prioritization in Agile" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25951" CreationDate="2019-03-06T03:07:26.740" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might even be a stretch to say that business value is the most important factor. Overall, prioritization often comes down to a ROI, but a lot of factors can feed into that, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Types of Value&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is revenue, but there are many other types of value. Security adds value for many companies, as does other hard-to-quantify items like brand recognition, customer satisfaction, and reputation. Then you have other forms of monetary value, like cost savings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Types of Cost&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even the cost side of ROI can be complicated. Is it a once-and-done cost? Is there a recurring cost, like software licenses or support contracts? Unknowns and risks also represent potential costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Technical Considerations&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a bit of overlap with costs, but it may be impractical to prioritize in a certain order because of how something is build. Now, I'd say that 90% of the time I hear this, it's not true - it's just easier to build it one way, which means that the PO should really justify why the extra cost is worth it to prioritize a different way or they can lose the trust of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Politics&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like it or not, we're humans and there are politics in any organization. They might not be mean and complex, but they are there. Maybe a department has been neglected for a while and creating a feature for them will go a long way in turning them from a detractor into a supporter for your department or team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Work in Progress&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be nice if nothing spilled over between sprints, but sometimes it does. There is an assumption that anything spilling over must be at the top of the priority list, but I'd encourage an active conversation about this. It doesn't &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to be, but it introduces a huge risk to leave half-done work sitting around. In fact, usually when a team decides not to continue spill-over work, they instead take on the work of backing it out, which means whatever replaces it better be really important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what do we do with all of this? There are a lot of prioritization models out there. Some incredibly complex with lots of spreadsheets and math, others incredibly simple where everything is reduced down to one point estimate for &quot;value&quot; and one for &quot;cost&quot;. Personally, I like to list out the major categories, give them each a multiplier to signify how they rank against each other, and then do relative estimation for each feature on each criteria. That gives you something to work with at a feature level and then when you get down to stories or PBI's, I find you can use your instincts and that combined with what you had at a feature levels keeps you in a good prioritization, but that's just me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastEditorUserId="7944" LastEditDate="2019-03-06T15:37:48.593" LastActivityDate="2019-03-06T15:37:48.593" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25949" CreationDate="2019-03-06T10:37:13.317" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This would depend on so many factors that it is hard to judge for outsiders I think. If you have enough people to work on several projects at the same time, that might be a good idea. But if you can work with several people on one project and deliver that sooner that is also a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I was in the IT department I would make an estimation on the needed resources to finish the projects, cross reference that with the availability of the resources and if not done by others, I would also try to identify dependencies between projects. With this information I would choose which project(s) to work on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35188" LastActivityDate="2019-03-06T10:37:13.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25889" CreationDate="2019-03-06T12:07:14.767" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that your organization is responsible to train the PO as per scrum guide. The hiring team should be aware that the selected PO may not have any experience in scrum framework. So it is their responsibility to give proper training. And it is not mandatory to hire an experienced Scrum PO. He can expertise in scrum framework through practice and deliver more than experienced PO's. The thoughts and ideas will be unique&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33461" LastActivityDate="2019-03-06T12:07:14.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25607" CreationDate="2019-03-06T12:13:21.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;My idea is to advise the product owner to start testing the user experience and functionality once the coding and testing is completed by both developers and testers. The primary responsibility of the PO is to find out any difference in the functionality as per the user story. So the precious time of PO can be utilized efficiently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33461" LastEditorUserId="35581" LastEditDate="2019-04-15T15:28:58.890" LastActivityDate="2019-04-15T15:28:58.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25840" CreationDate="2019-03-06T13:29:10.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is really challenging to conduct retrospective for a group of 50 members. The success of the retro is depends on the minimum number of people in a meeting. But i have an idea to conduct retrospective for a large group. Here is the details&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Split the team members into a group of Developers, UI Designers, QA's&#xA;and Product owners.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask them to list the expectation and feedback of each teams.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to consolidate the points and discuss&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is more effective because it is a feedback from a group of experts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33461" LastActivityDate="2019-03-06T13:29:10.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25951" CreationDate="2019-03-06T17:58:05.493" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Product Backlogs Must be Ordered, but &lt;em&gt;How&lt;/em&gt; is Implementation-Specific&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As we know, normally, during the prioritization process in agile, business value is the most important factor that taken into consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't actually true. A Product Backlog should be ordered, but the order can be based on any factors (or combination of factors) that the Product Owner considers important. Pragmatically, a Product Backlog is ordered based on a combination of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;business value&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;May include return on investment, bang for the buck, speed to market, total cost, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;related feature sets&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clustering themes and related features together can optimize resources (including the team's cognitive load) or provide a more cohesive feature set for targeted release dates.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;low-hanging fruit&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some stakeholders like to knock out the easy stuff first to get traction or reach a Minimum Viable Product.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;identifying the hard stuff&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some projects benefit from solving the tough problems first. There's no use spending a lot of time and money on a project where some critical aspect is found to be insoluble late in the project's life cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;resource availability&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prioritizing the stuff you can do &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt; is important. If your supply chain won't get you your widgets until next quarter, prioritizing widget-embiggening stories makes very little sense.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;market conditions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have Feature A and Feature B on your backlog, it generally makes more sense to prioritize Feature B if you have a customer already lined up for it. Marketing is important, but paying customers are better.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;everything else&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is in control of the Product Backlog, but they should be collaborating with the rest of the organization and the project's key stakeholders to ensure that the backlog takes all the disparate (and often competing) objectives into account.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many techniques for prioritizing backlog items, including Theme Screening, Theme Scoring, Story Weighting, and others. It actually doesn't matter &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; you prioritize it, so long as all the stakeholders in the organization agree on the methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-03-06T17:58:05.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25959" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25960" CreationDate="2019-03-06T23:27:25.973" Score="2" ViewCount="94" Body="&lt;p&gt;Created user stories for a specific project but not sure if I'm missing to write down some that were hard to spot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to not cause (or reduce) development headaches, how can I detect previously undiscovered (missing, implied, and assumed) user stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27189" LastActivityDate="2019-03-07T01:14:19.597" Title="Detect undiscovered user stories" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25959" CreationDate="2019-03-07T01:14:19.597" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're truly agile, there's no harm in missing user stories. Your business people, including customer and stakeholder representatives, are working closely with the development team. You are regularly delivering working software that the stakeholders or stakeholder representatives can use and provide feedback on. You are responsive as the requirements change (or you identify things that you've missed), using the short delivery cycles as feedback loops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A missing (or incomplete or wrong) requirement, in any format, shouldn't be missing (or incomplete or wrong) for long. If, for any reason, you aren't getting rapid feedback from stakeholders or stakeholder representatives, the delivery team and delivery organization should be reflecting on how to become more effective - how to identify what is most important, how to deliver those most important pieces of functionality quickly, and how to elicit and respond to feedback on the delivered functionality - on a regular basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2019-03-07T01:14:19.597" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25961" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-03-07T03:36:17.913" Score="5" ViewCount="162" Body="&lt;p&gt;In one of the projects, the velocity calculation is done based on the number of user stories that the team is delivering in each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are using story points to size but still the velocity is determined by the total number of stories delivered and not based on the story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The customer wanted to track based on this to ensure we are in line with the release deadline that has been already set for the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to handle this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33671" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-10-21T22:29:19.850" LastActivityDate="2019-10-21T22:29:19.850" Title="Velocity calculation based on number of user stories completed in a sprint" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;velocity&gt;&lt;dsdm&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25962" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-03-07T05:56:34.817" Score="1" ViewCount="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my current company, we follow DSDM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the maturity of the process is in progress and we are adapting various methods to be Agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Current Process:  Currently epics and user stories elaboration happen throughout the sprint and they are not detailed enough at the start of the sprint and stories get updated even after initial code development is completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the above practise, which development approach will help the team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can we combine both methods for development?&#xA;BDD to ensure we gather enough requirements for the story and write the user acceptance test in the required format.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Use TDD to write test first and code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also considering the cost of delays in delivering user stories, which is the recommended approach to be Agile and deliver more?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33671" LastActivityDate="2019-03-07T06:55:22.030" Title="Which development method to choose - Test-Driven or Behaviour Driven Development" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;bdd&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25962" CreationDate="2019-03-07T06:55:22.030" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The practices are not mutually exclusive and, in fact, dove-tail together well. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that either will address the problem you state. Both BDD and TDD write tests as you go throughout the work. You still need to bound the backlog item. Most teams do this with acceptance criteria during backlog refinement or, at the latest, in sprint planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-03-07T06:55:22.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25929" CreationDate="2019-03-07T07:10:57.310" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a few of my projects, I have always struggled with weekly sprints. Unless they are precisely planned it leaves the team high and dry. Weekly sprints leave very less time span for any risk mitigation. The chances of weekly sprints missing sprint goals are high. &#xA;What I have found helpful, is to have weekly client meetings to set client demo expectations (not exceeding 20 minutes) with biweekly sprints ending with client demo aligned with the expectations previously set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is always good to have the client added to the Jira board, this will make sure that the team gives their 100 percent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally prefer KANBAN for maintenance and sustenance projects.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33837" LastEditorUserId="33837" LastEditDate="2019-10-31T10:31:47.227" LastActivityDate="2019-10-31T10:31:47.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25961" CreationDate="2019-03-07T07:22:47.037" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; stories of different sizes, you will need to track velocity based on that sizing, whether it's story points or any other metric.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is nothing you can do to fix a totally broken metric of stories per sprint when they aren't the same size. Throw it away and start over. If you can, generate past velocities for the new metric based on your old stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastEditorUserId="7559" LastEditDate="2019-03-08T11:44:43.850" LastActivityDate="2019-03-08T11:44:43.850" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25966" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25973" CreationDate="2019-03-07T09:03:35.000" Score="2" ViewCount="133" Body="&lt;p&gt;Created user stories for a specific software development project and, &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/25959/27189&quot;&gt;from my last question&lt;/a&gt;, learned to just jump into dev even though there might exist undiscovered user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, i wonder... When to know I'm ready to start with development?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27189" LastActivityDate="2019-03-08T15:56:51.603" Title="When to know I'm ready to start developing" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25966" CreationDate="2019-03-07T10:01:13.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The development in itself and the way it is organized, is left to the development team.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if your question is &lt;strong&gt;when to start the Sprint or the Timebox&lt;/strong&gt; (the first step of which being a &lt;em&gt;planning&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;kick-off&lt;/em&gt;), I would say it is a conjunction of the 3 following points : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;when you have to, according to the delivery date agreed with the customer;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;AND&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;when the estimates of the topmost backlog's user-stories (with highest priority) are precise enough;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;AND&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;when you have enough work to fill a sprint (according to the team capacity).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, you should always be ready to start the next sprint when the current sprint ends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35253" LastEditorUserId="35253" LastEditDate="2019-03-08T15:56:51.603" LastActivityDate="2019-03-08T15:56:51.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25947" CreationDate="2019-03-07T10:13:56.027" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;In theory&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum&lt;/strong&gt; is quite clear: Scrum is a framework and you cannot drop any part of it without compromising its integrity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand &lt;strong&gt;DSDM&lt;/strong&gt; states that it can integrate a wide variety of tools and techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, while you cannot &quot;use Scrum inside DSDM&quot;, you're still free to use Scrum terminolgies and techniques as long as the way you use them is clear (and common) to everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35253" LastEditorUserId="35253" LastEditDate="2019-03-08T15:54:33.237" LastActivityDate="2019-03-08T15:54:33.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25969" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25972" CreationDate="2019-03-07T11:13:58.687" Score="3" ViewCount="213" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a software development project on a team with only two persons and it's not an option to consider hiring more people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This appears to be a case where one has to &lt;strong&gt;respond to change over following a plan&lt;/strong&gt; because the team is small in comparison to the ideal 5-6 people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you happen to know successful cases in such conditions? If so, how was the team organized and how were they able to deliver the project with success?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27189" LastActivityDate="2019-11-19T18:02:20.097" Title="Work agile with a very small team" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25969" CreationDate="2019-03-07T13:24:32.600" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The same rules apply as for a bigger team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Make sure the stories are well defined&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Estimate the work as good as possible&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have a planning session and plan the sprint according to the capacity&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do the work during the sprint&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could argue if it makes sense to have all the SCRUM related meetings because there are only two of you and you work very closely together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully there are customers, stakeholders and product owner to show your work to. If that is not the case then maybe just doing the things I mentioned above would be enough and you do not follow scrum to the letter with all the meetings that belong to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35188" LastActivityDate="2019-03-07T13:24:32.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25961" CreationDate="2019-03-07T14:46:38.323" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to first understand to what extent the story count is helpful and we do this with standard deviation. If we look at the average story size across a release and the standard deviation is low, you will find that the trends created between story size-based velocity or count based velocity are identical. If the standard deviation is high, they will trend differently. If you're not a big math fan, there is an easy visual way to do this. On the same graph (2 different y-axis scales) plot both of the velocities. Do the lines look the same? If so, you can use either. If not, stick with story size, not count.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a fairly large &quot;noestimates&quot; movement that finds a lot of success in right-sizing all stories so they are approximately the same size and then they only look at count. They don't have to be exactly the same. To give a concrete (if hypothetical) rule, a team using point with an average velocity of 40 would probably want most stories around a 3 with a small number of them at a 1 or 5 before they could drop the story points. (This is a deeply flawed example, don't actually use it to implement, just trying to give something concrete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, we should also talk about that last bit about being in line for a present delivery date.  From you comments, it sounds like scope and time are fixed, which is almost always problematic. Regardless of what metric you are using, any less-than-desirable picture the forecast paints must be used to manage the backlog, not the team, or you are going to get a lot of dysfunctional behavior and probably lose visibility into your progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-03-07T14:46:38.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25969" CreationDate="2019-03-07T16:00:49.090" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can adopt agile with any size of team as it is an &lt;em&gt;approach&lt;/em&gt; to doing software development. As you mention in your question, one of the key aspects is to favour responding to change over following a plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It gets a bit more complicated if you are talking about using agile &lt;em&gt;frameworks&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; suggests a minimum team size of 3. This is because with very small teams synchronisation is rarely an issue and so the benefits of Scrum are reduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt; doesn't really have a lower team size limit although you could argue again that the benefits may be slightly reduced in a team of two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-03-07T16:00:49.090" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25966" CreationDate="2019-03-07T16:11:18.600" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is really a question for the team to discuss amongst themselves and decide on what feels right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are using the Scrum Framework a good guide is that you have a minimum of enough &lt;em&gt;ready&lt;/em&gt; user stories to cover the first sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that if you only have one sprints worth of stories that you will likely need to spend a sizeable fraction of the first sprint preparing for the next sprint. So try not to take in too much work so that you have sufficient time for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going forward, the number of ready stories you have will depend on your team's approach and on the nature of your organisation. Good advice would be to just get started and then adapt if you find you are often running out of prepared stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-03-07T16:11:18.600" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25974" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-03-07T18:42:05.250" Score="0" ViewCount="176" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can even take up a course which gives guidelines on how to perfectly write a requirement document which I can attach to a jira epic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35025" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-04-15T02:25:20.260" LastActivityDate="2019-04-15T10:14:27.763" Title="How to make the correct requirement document with regards to agile &amp; scrum?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25974" CreationDate="2019-03-07T19:55:45.700" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, we typically don't worry very much about writing requirements, let alone documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum calls for a couple requirements &quot;artifacts&quot;: the Product Backlog and the Sprint Backlog. The Product Backlog is maintained by the Product Owner and is a ranked wishlist of all features. The Sprint Backlog is maintained by the team and consists of those items, pulled from the Product Backlog, which the team has committed to for a given sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The items that comprise the backlogs are typically called Product Backlog Items (PBIs). They're often in the form of user stories, bite-sized requirements that represent some unit of value to the user. They typically take the form:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;AS A Salesperson, (role/actor)&#xA;I WANT to view a list of all my clients, (requirement)&#xA;SO I can plan my daily contacts (rationale)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User stories are accompanied by acceptance criteria, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;List of clients is sorted by last name.&#xA;Archived clients are not displayed.&#xA;List shows first name, last name, and e-mail address.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that's pretty much it for requirements in the Scrum world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20700" LastActivityDate="2019-03-07T19:55:45.700" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25976" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-03-08T19:15:06.433" Score="1" ViewCount="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;My project have some tasks (landmarks) that occurs at every X month, like:&#xA;- Project technical report (PTR) at each 4 months&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should I define the landmarks date relative to project start?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently I'm using a dummy landmark called Project start and using this as the PTR landmarks predecessors, but this is messing up with the project outline numbers, since it adds a &quot;+1&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35275" LastActivityDate="2019-03-08T19:28:21.987" Title="Add Landmarks lag or date based on project start date" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25976" CreationDate="2019-03-08T19:28:21.987" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sensei Project Solutions has a set of quality standards for Gantt charts that is the best source for project scheduling I've found. (no affiliation).  Two of their rules are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;with the exception of project start, every task on the Gantt should depend on another task.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;with the exception of project end, every task should be the predecessor of another task.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your landmarks don't follow this rule - I'd omit them from the chart.  The landmarks are hard scheduled, coupled with the calendar; their schedule is decoupled from /not dependent on any deliverable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you include them on your Gantt chart, they will play havoc with your critical path, your slack calculations, etc.   They will interfere with your ability to &lt;em&gt;manage&lt;/em&gt; your schedule. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you must include them on the Gantt, then I would create a separate deliverable (numbered higher than all others) that includes all the time fixed tasks.  That will permit you to account for the time &amp;amp; resource constraints.  (Call it oversight).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, Gantt is useful for schedule management; people greatly overestimate the utility for resource management. Most of us don't work in environments where Microsoft Project's assumptions about resource management are useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2019-03-08T19:28:21.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8573" CreationDate="2019-03-08T21:11:54.857" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is an important issue; when project managers actively measure time and cost, but not quality, it is easy to guess which one suffers. The fact the project managers themselves are measured on time and cost more closely the quality does not help either, particularly where organisational culture strongly focuses on short-term efficiency at the expense of effectiveness, (which in many cases winds up increasing time and cost due to scope changes and rework). I have been experimenting with a solution. What I have done is attach several key effectiveness criteria to each work package. (As a 'comment' on the cell containing the work package name in Excel). This is not integrated enough to provide data or metrics at this stage, but at least it opens a dialogue with stakeholders (especially senior stakeholders) on what is required to be effective and provides a benchmark to assess effecfiveness against.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35277" LastActivityDate="2019-03-08T21:11:54.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25979" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-03-09T14:04:33.767" Score="1" ViewCount="69" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team is responsible for a specific type of database infrastructure in our large organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team's work can be roughly divided into three categories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Internal projects&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is work aimed at improving our systems, making the team's work or management easier, developing applications, tools and automations, reducing amount of problems in production infrastructure, etc.&#xA;This category mostly consists of projects which would take a single person between two weeks and several months to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Application projects&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Designing and building an infrastructure for a client inside the organization. Working closely with the client, understanding their needs and designing a suitable database infrastructure. This kind of work can also take a single person between two weeks and several months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Incoming day-to-day events&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unplanned requirements from the team. This includes unexpected faults in production, requests for small changes in a production database, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like the emphasis in the team to be on the first category - internal projects, because I believe that most of the pain in production and everyday work will be gone as a result of this work. And so, I would like us to be able to work consistently and effectively on such projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, we have to satisfy incoming requirements and long-running client projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advice and thoughts on a suitable management framework for my team, and how it would be implemented would be welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35280" LastActivityDate="2019-03-11T12:51:24.970" Title="Management of an infrastructure team" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;infrastructure&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25980" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25986" CreationDate="2019-03-10T02:21:08.370" Score="0" ViewCount="121" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my current company, they are using Waterfall methodology in defining the gateways for new project approval and developing detailed timeline with completion date (gantt chart).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the development execution, we are using a hybrid software development process - DSDM / Scrum / Kanban - not defined exactly but using agile practices of each methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How effective this model will work - one for Project Management and one for Software Development?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33671" LastEditorUserId="33671" LastEditDate="2019-03-11T05:05:22.443" LastActivityDate="2019-03-12T09:27:11.540" Title="Different methodologies for Project Management and Software Development" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25747" CreationDate="2019-03-10T04:29:55.303" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. The PMI website endorses/links to the templates on projectmanagement.com ... &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.projectmanagement.com/Templates/index.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.projectmanagement.com/Templates/index.cfm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34889" LastActivityDate="2019-03-10T04:29:55.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25951" CreationDate="2019-03-10T04:42:55.590" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looks like nobody has mentioned &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoSCoW_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the MoSCoW method&lt;/a&gt; yet, so I'll throw that in. &lt;em&gt;Must have, Should have, Could have, Won't have&lt;/em&gt; ... apply this framework to whatever requirements you may have and it should help you prioritize. Going through this process will help you think about more than just &quot;business value&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34889" LastActivityDate="2019-03-10T04:42:55.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25983" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25989" CreationDate="2019-03-11T05:08:26.547" Score="-1" ViewCount="90" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my current company, they are using Waterfall methodology in defining the gateways for new project approval and developing detailed timeline with completion date (gantt chart) based on the deliverables identified in the foundation phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the development execution, we are using a hybrid software development process - DSDM / Scrum / Kanban - not defined exactly but using agile practices of each methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to make - Scrum or any other agile processes - work, where the project scope is defined up front, duration is 4-6 months and with defined release deadlines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33671" LastActivityDate="2019-03-11T14:21:29.403" Title="How to effectively implement Scrum for a small project (max duration 6 months) with defined project deadlines?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;dsdm&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25922" CreationDate="2019-03-11T09:13:30.050" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;T-shirt sizing is a way to do relative sizing.You can compare stories, as small,medium,large etc.Basically,T-shirt sizing is used for broad level estimations and maximum you can probably use it in planning as well.You can say,I will be able to accomodate 3 small stories and 1 large story in a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34733" LastActivityDate="2019-03-11T09:13:30.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15332" CreationDate="2019-03-11T09:44:04.497" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Uncheck the &quot;split inprogress task&quot; option. In my case, this solved the problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm moving from p6 to ms project. I never really liked this feature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35288" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-03-11T13:02:08.063" LastActivityDate="2019-03-11T13:02:08.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25980" CreationDate="2019-03-11T10:36:42.577" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Combining an agile development approach with traditional waterfall can be highly problematic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Effectively you have two approaches that are pulling in opposite directions. Waterfall is about planning and following plans whereas agile is about responding to change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have worked in organisations that attempt to combine the two approaches and some of the issues I witnessed included:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;During development the teams were demonstrating progress and getting valuable feedback. However, it was difficult for them to incorporate this feedback as it would impact on plans, milestones and the coordination with non-agile teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There was a lot of frustration from the agile teams as they had to do traditional reporting on top of the usual agile approach of demonstrating working software.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The agile teams also found it hard to maintain high quality standards as they were under pressure to deliver against a plan that was quickly out of date.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-03-11T10:36:42.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25979" CreationDate="2019-03-11T12:51:24.970" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I understand of the text, you want to know  how to juggle the 3 different types of work for one team. This happens in a lot of companies and can be hard to deal with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this is all about balance:&#xA;Even though you think the internal projects are more important, the others are customer facing. Customer facing ones usually equal &quot;earning money&quot;, internal projects usually mean saving money after investing a lot of money (salary / training / hardware). This is why companies usually choose to skip the first and blame you when there are issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make the internal projects more appealing for the business, explain what will happen if the maintenance on the systems is not done and how that would affect business. &#xA;E.g. if we do not scale up the machines, queries for customers will take longer to complete and take up more system resources. This will cause a system outage when not addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By explaining cause and effect there should be an understanding with management to spend time on it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35188" LastActivityDate="2019-03-11T12:51:24.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25980" CreationDate="2019-03-11T13:34:27.443" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fundamental purpose of Project Management is to deliver what your clients want at a specific time.  Effectiveness you have mentioned depends on the requirement and tolerance of clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All clients want developing team finished within one month and everything. But they seldom do not know what feature is the most important. From my experience, we use Scrum to address which features must be presented and usable first. Mentioning first, then , final phase to clients is the way to make them know we propose agile development methodology and urge them prioritise the deliverables. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before providing the value judgement or proposed methods to combine the methodologies from the management point of view, we have to figure out the budget, time constraint and possible market competition. OP has to mention more about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for quality of work and communication issues, it is difficult for us to judge because of the discrepancies among working cultures of team members. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4714" LastActivityDate="2019-03-11T13:34:27.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25983" CreationDate="2019-03-11T14:21:29.403" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the most important question is: why do you want to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of groups out there that they that &quot;Agile Development Practices&quot; will make a traditional project complete faster. While this isn't strictly wrong, it commonly fails -  the main reason for this being that without a proper understanding of why different practices work, its hard to pick out the ones that will help and ones that will just trip you up if you try to use them in waterfall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the interest of answering the question, I'd say you should look into Lean and Kanban. These are pretty compatible with small-batch waterfall projects, but it's fairly likely that they will require significant changes at the management level. You can also look at some of the technical practices you see in XP. Pairing and TDD can chop out some of the waste that naturally arises in software development. Of course, the challenge with these is also that people who are driving dev teams in the manner consistent with strict timelines frequently view these approaches as &quot;inefficient&quot; and fight against them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if you want to implement a framework like Scrum because the organization really wants to make that switch, then they need to drop the umbrella waterfall structure. Like any other change management, there are broadly two approaches to this. You can change rapidly and remove all of that structure at once. This has the advantage of getting the pain over and done with. Or, you can take small steps - creating small, protected pilots that are not subject to the timelines. Realistically, unless you have some really strong change agents and leadership behind this, consulting with someone who helps organizations through these transitions would probably be very helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-03-11T14:21:29.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25744" CreationDate="2019-03-11T18:10:13.640" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Gherkin is probably going to be the best fit for your situation, largely because you're using it today. If your team(s) are following a BDD approach, even more so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the example of a change to a RESTful API, I would write something like the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Scenario: Registered web client calls Foo(int id) method to get a list of Bars.&#xA;GIVEN: The client is a registered user of the API&#xA;WHEN: The client calls the Foo(int id) method&#xA;THEN: The API will retrieve the list of Bars for the passed ID&#xA;AND: The API will return the list to the client&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Scenario: Registered web client calls Foo(int id) method with an invalid ID.&#xA;GIVEN: The client is a registered user of the API&#xA;WHEN: The client calls the Foo(int id) method&#xA;THEN: The API will fail to retrieve the list of Bars for the invalid ID&#xA;AND: The API will return the following error message to the client: &quot;Bad ID!&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are trivially short examples, yes, but kind of give a framework to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I'm missing the mark with respect to the actual problems you're running into, provide another example, and I'll edit the post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20700" LastActivityDate="2019-03-11T18:10:13.640" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25995" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-03-12T11:50:14.403" Score="1" ViewCount="135" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scenario:&lt;/strong&gt; We have architects that writes specs and acceptance criteria. Business Specialists and Product owner does not give any documented business specs/logic so the architects writes the acceptance criteria and reviews that with the business specialist and product owner in a meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problem:&lt;/strong&gt; Whilst the PO was testing the task (Product owner testing mentioned in this post: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/25607/should-a-product-owner-start-testing-while-an-item-is-in-code-review&quot;&gt;Post on Product owner testing&lt;/a&gt; she found a scenario that does not work. But we have read through the Acceptance criteria and that scenario was never mentioned and she wants to fail the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;Can a PO fail a task because the scenario was not mentioned in acceptance criteria?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would say No! because that can cause scope creep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Issue:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The PO/Business Specialist should write up business logic/Requirements so when a architect works on the spec/Acceptance criteria they can cater for all scenarios. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't deviate from the acceptance criteria because they can add all sorts of scenarios or requests after the development.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34072" LastActivityDate="2019-03-12T12:29:06.227" Title="Issue found while testing but scenario not mentioned in acceptance criteria" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;acceptance-criteria&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25995" CreationDate="2019-03-12T12:29:06.227" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Before We Dive Any Deeper...&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't have a single problem, you have many. Aside from lacking a cross-functional team that fully collaborates, the two biggest process problems appear to be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The entire team isn't involved in planning the iteration (including acceptance criteria and the Definition of Done).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Product Owner thinks she's in charge of &quot;testing&quot; or &quot;failing&quot; things, rather than seeing herself as an integrated member of the Scrum Team with responsibility for managing the Product Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you straighten out both issues, you aren't doing Scrum. More importantly, the Scrum Team will remain dysfunctional so long as the Product Owner and the Development Team remain in contention rather than collaborating closely with one another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Discovering New Work&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The entire Scrum Team (not just the Product Owner) needs to be re-educated about how iterative development really works. In Scrum, each Sprint has a single, coherent goal (the Sprint Goal) that the entire team works on together to complete. Work is prioritized by the Product Owner, selected and planned for the Sprint by the Development Team, and then &lt;em&gt;completed&lt;/em&gt; work is demonstrated to stakeholders at the Sprint Review. The Sprint Review can also be a place to discuss why the Sprint Goal wasn't met (if it wasn't), and to gather feedback about the product or discuss next steps and future priorities with stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During Sprint Planning, the Scrum Team collaborates on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Crafting the current Sprint Goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Applying the Definition of Done to Product Backlog Items to identify standard acceptance criteria.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Capturing any additional acceptance criteria that might be relevant to particular backlog items that aren't already part of the Definition of Done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Scrum Team did their job during Backlog Refinement and works together properly during Sprint Planning, then  there's no place for a Product Owner to &quot;pass&quot; or &quot;fail&quot; work. It simply isn't part of the framework, nor is it an acceptable practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's really happening here is that the Product Owner, stakeholders, or members of the team are discovering &lt;em&gt;new&lt;/em&gt; work that wasn't previously identified in Backlog Refinement or Sprint Planning. That's great! What should happen next is that &lt;strong&gt;newly discovered work is added to the Product Backlog, so that the Product Owner can refine and prioritize it as future work for some other Sprint.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In iterative development, &quot;scope creep&quot; doesn't happen because newly uncovered work or new requirements can't fundamentally modify the current time boxed iteration. Instead, they become grist for the mill as the product continues to grow incrementally over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sole exception is when something is uncovered that puts the current Sprint Goal at risk. If the Sprint Goal can't be met unless the team goes back to the drawing board, then the Product Owner should declare an Early Termination to the entire Sprint and a return to Sprint Planning. This has a &lt;em&gt;visible&lt;/em&gt; cost to the project (visible is good; cost, not so much) so it's generally best to treat new work as future work unless the impact is high enough to justify the cost. That's the Product Owner's decision, and making that decision is a fundamental part of her job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, work is either &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;not-done&lt;/em&gt;. If it's been done in accordance with the team's plan, completed in accordance with the Definition of Done, and demonstrated within the current time box, then there's no opportunity to &quot;fail&quot; or &quot;reject&quot; the work. The team built the thing that everyone collaborated on and agreed was needed, including the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it later turns out that the Scrum Team built the &lt;em&gt;wrong&lt;/em&gt; thing, then that's a collaboration or communications issue that should be addressed in the Sprint Retrospective. Fixing the process issue will likely involve closer collaboration with non-team stakeholders by both the Product Owner and Development Team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if the team simply uncovered new work or the need for additional refinements, then that's great! That's what agile frameworks are supposed to do. The new work can be prioritized and scheduled just like any other work within the framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;See Also&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/25838/4271&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/25838/4271&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/25867/4271&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/25867/4271&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/18228/4271&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/18228/4271&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/22971/4271&quot;&gt;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/22971/4271&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-03-12T12:29:06.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25997" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26006" CreationDate="2019-03-12T15:56:36.507" Score="2" ViewCount="194" Body="&lt;p&gt;As newly assigned manager on an already ongoing agile software development project, one of the objectives is the following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Motivate team to high performance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be done in various ways and might be different for each individual team member. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive:_The_Surprising_Truth_About_What_Motivates_Us&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Daniel Pink&lt;/a&gt; talks about motivation by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mastery: The urge to get better skills. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Autonomy: Our desire to be self-directed. It increases engagement over compliance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Purpose: The desire to do something that has meaning and is important.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an article by &lt;a href=&quot;https://risepeople.com/blog/5-metrics-team-member-performance/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;RisePeople&lt;/a&gt; they suggest measuring performance by the following 5 metrics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attendance: poor attendance can be a lack of motivation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Helpfulness: increases productivity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Efficiency: looking for missed deadlines.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Initiative: a sign of team satisfaction and engagement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quality: shows that the team cares what they do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most metrics seem difficult to define and measure and I have no experience with it. I would like to hear any ideas or experience on how to approach this and align it with senior management expectations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35296" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-03-13T10:02:37.713" LastActivityDate="2019-03-13T15:29:36.943" Title="How to motivate and measure high performance of team as new manager?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;performance&gt;&lt;leadership&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25999" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-03-12T17:24:43.427" Score="0" ViewCount="200" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to schedule tasks using multiple resources.  The work task is fixed and multiple resources are allocated to the tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to auto-schedule the tasks, however, when 1 resource is unavailable (i.e. through using exceptions in 'change working time'), I want MS project to automatically delay the task until ALL resources are available to complete the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;i.e. I don't want MS project allocate the task to the 1 resource nor do I want the duration extended. Can anyone help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35308" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-03-12T17:56:00.777" LastActivityDate="2019-03-12T21:44:14.560" Title="ms project - delay a task due to unaviability of 1 resource" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26001" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25999" CreationDate="2019-03-12T21:44:14.560" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because you want MSP to &lt;strong&gt;delay&lt;/strong&gt; the task rather than work around the off time, your only real choice is to use the resource leveler along with the resource availability matrix. I.e.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Block out the off-time using the resource's availability grid on the General tab of the Resource Information dialog (Leave the resource's calendar at the normal working times).  As normally scheduled, the resource may be shown as over-allocated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Leveling Options, ensure that &quot;Leveling can adjust individual assignments...&quot; and &quot;Leveling can create splits...&quot; are BOTH un-checked.  Then run the leveler manually.  (You could run it automatically, but then you lose track.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LtDCs.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LtDCs.png&quot; alt=&quot;Leveling Options&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UA5Nd.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UA5Nd.png&quot; alt=&quot;Comparison of Resource Calendar vs. Availability/Leveling&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2019-03-12T21:44:14.560" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26003" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-03-13T11:56:06.823" Score="0" ViewCount="141" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to find a way to write a query in TFS to retrieve any PBIs or Work Items that were added to the @CurrentIteration after date X.&#xA;Usually date X will be the iteration start, so if that is retrievable by some macro, great. If it isn't then I am happy to manually change the date in the query as I go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTE: I am trying to do this through the query editor UI in the TFS website and not by writing any code or anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25601" LastActivityDate="2020-12-01T08:06:15.597" Title="Can I query for &quot;date added to @currentiteration&quot; in TFS?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tfs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25787" CreationDate="2019-03-13T13:39:24.663" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;SWOT Establishes a Business Case, Not Comparative Value&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, (S)trengths and (W)eaknesses in a SWOT diagram are about the company itself, while (O)pportunities and (T)hreats are usually about the market. A project often presents an opportunity or mitigates a threat. Likewise, companies have strengths and weaknesses that can make a given project more or less of a natural fit for the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've certainly seen people use SWOT diagrams to promote a project or initiative, but in the general case it isn't really an ideal tool for portfolio management. It may help to establish a business case, but doesn't intrinsically create a metric for comparing projects against one another or quantifying value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Portfolio management is a discipline, and as such there is no One True Way&amp;trade; to manage a portfolio. However, a solid mix of qualitative and quantitative criteria, stakeholder communication and buy-in, and weighted analyses using company-specific metrics are all essential elements of successful portfolio management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-03-13T13:39:24.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25997" CreationDate="2019-03-13T14:58:19.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the traditional challenges with both motivation and measurement of software development teams is that we isolate the development team (or even a developer in our thinking). Feom a measurement standpoint, we can't measure the thing we really care about: value creation, because they don't do it alone, so instead we start measuring things that can be measured at an individual level like attendance or code commits, which if we think about it are secondary measures at best. From a motivation standpoint, most software developers start in their career because they love creating things and solving problems, but when you isolate the code-writing part, you take a lot of that away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A common solution is that you start measuring at a higher level - a level that delivers value. This is why Scrum teams, for example, include all closing, architecture, design, testing and the business decision maker (PO). This means you can take a problem or need to the Scrum team and they can deliver on it. Without getting too in depth, we can see you autonomy, purpose and mastery can be far more present in this model. Measurements also mean something at this level. How well does the team solve customer problems? How reliable are their solutions? How fast do they turn them around? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do lose individual measurements in this model, but most companies find that when they really adopt it, the team sorts that out themselves. On this point, Yves Morieux has a fairly insightful talk about the problems of individual accountability metrics: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ted.com/talks/yves_morieux_how_too_many_rules_at_work_keep_you_from_getting_things_done?language=en#t-350439&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.ted.com/talks/yves_morieux_how_too_many_rules_at_work_keep_you_from_getting_things_done?language=en#t-350439&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastEditorUserId="7944" LastEditDate="2019-03-13T15:29:36.943" LastActivityDate="2019-03-13T15:29:36.943" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25997" CreationDate="2019-03-13T14:59:27.663" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the thing as a scrum master i tried in couple of scrum teams, for team performance improvement was to &lt;em&gt;identify the aspirations&lt;/em&gt; of each team member and then align/allocate them the work matching to their aspirations as much as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our scurm team composition was varied, some of them were junior developers with 2-4 years of experience and some were senior with 5+ years of experience in their skills. &lt;br&gt; When i spoke with them to understand what motivate them, I got different views.&lt;br&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, junior developers were more keen to learn new frameworks. They were very keen in participating in hackethon events or coding challenges etc. 1 of them even said that he is ready to work over time in project work if needed to compensate for an opportunity to participate in hacking challenge event. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Sr. folks, it was more about participation in estimates, architect the solutions were some of the motivational factors to name a few.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on these inputs,it was clear as to what motivate each individual and while executing the project, there was a deliberate focus from project leadership to assign them tasks which are close to their area of interest.&lt;br&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own observation with this approach was that the individual felt like their voices are heard and hence they took the ownership of deliverables and ensured that the desired quality is met.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21918" LastActivityDate="2019-03-13T14:59:27.663" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26007" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26020" CreationDate="2019-03-13T17:42:59.877" Score="1" ViewCount="248" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wonder if activities like contract and agreement reviews, meetings to discuss preliminary information, SOW review, and contract approved (as deliverable and milestone) should be included in a gantt chart in a specific task list/group to be presented to an external customer or we should start our planning after our contract has been approved and skip this detail in the gantt chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that there are many different styles, contexts, and scenarios. I would like to know the general rule for these activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you define your baseline, will you include the reviews to ammend the contract, tracking all the meetings with the client? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case you include all these activities, your start date for your project should be after contract approval, but gantt would make reference to date that we submitted our proposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32495" LastEditorUserId="32495" LastEditDate="2019-03-13T18:03:05.427" LastActivityDate="2019-04-13T17:35:55.823" Title="Should activities before kick-off meeting be represented in a Schedule Plan" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;&lt;schedule&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26007" CreationDate="2019-03-14T13:46:51.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMI's process assumes that the schedule plan is developed during the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.examspm.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Screen-Shot-2016-07-14-at-11.21.49-AM.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;planning phase.&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;The other activities you describe are relevant to the initiation phase.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I wouldn't build a Gantt till I'd completed the WBS, and I wouldn't do the WBS until I had an approved project charter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2019-03-14T13:46:51.753" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26011" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-03-15T03:11:08.747" Score="4" ViewCount="890" Body="&lt;p&gt;Per my understanding, velocity is just a metric used to forecast work for future sprints, therefore it has no significance other than for planning purposes. Even if technical debt exists, my assumption is that it would get factored in when work is estimated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd still like to understand if there is any relationship between technical debt and velocity, perhaps if I have missed thinking of something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35135" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-10-21T22:27:50.883" LastActivityDate="2019-10-21T22:27:50.883" Title="Is there a relationship between technical debt and velocity?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;velocity&gt;&lt;technical-debt&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26011" CreationDate="2019-03-15T08:35:37.263" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on how you to want to deal with technical debt determines if it affects your velocity. You have a few options as far as I can see:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not allocate story points to technical debt in a separate 'issue'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you take on technical debt without story points, e.g. in a separate task, you will see a drop in the velocity for that sprint. That is expected because the technical debt has no story points associated with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allocate story points to technical debt in a separate 'issue'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By doing this the velocity will be not be impacted because the story points are used in the calculation for the velocity. Doing this consistently will show you a velocity and if the technical debt can be estimated correctly in story points, you should be able to plan the work&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Include fixing the technical debt in the story that requires it to be solved&#xA;If you have a story that can not be delivered until the technical debt is solved, include the work in the estimation of the story. If that means that the story becomes to big to handle in a sprint, create an epic and split the story in smaller parts and connect them to the epic. This has my preference because it shows what needs to be done to implement a feature and you can indicate dependencies in the stories listed under the epic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35188" LastActivityDate="2019-03-15T08:35:37.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26014" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26015" CreationDate="2019-03-15T09:06:02.937" Score="2" ViewCount="149" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read the following &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.quora.com/In-an-agile-team-velocity-is-normally-what-is-used-to-predict-a-projects-duration-When-velocity-is-not-stable-predictability-suffers-greatly-Obvious-ways-of-stabilizing-velocity-are-not-change-the-team-often-or-at-all-improve-user-story-development-readiness-acceptance-tests-wireframes-etc-and&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;thread&lt;/a&gt; and a few articles sharing the same view - velocity should not be used for predictions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has somehow rocked my world, as we often look at the velocity, remaining backlog work and then estimate the end of a project.&#xA;If this is wrong, what is the main purpose of velocity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31435" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-10-21T22:28:45.070" LastActivityDate="2019-10-21T22:28:45.070" Title="If Velocity should not be used for future estimations, what is it good for?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;velocity&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26014" CreationDate="2019-03-15T09:36:03.053" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sorry, but that is not what the article says &lt;strong&gt;at all&lt;/strong&gt;. The purpose of measuring the past is predicting the future and no one in that threads claims different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; claimed though and I absolutely agree is that you should not predict the future in absolute, precise, single values. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I go from one city to the next by car, I will say &quot;I'll be there in 2-3 hours&quot;. And people understand that to be an estimate. I might arrive in 1:45h. Or 2:30. or maybe even 3:20h if it's worse than expected. It was clear from the start that it was an &lt;em&gt;estimate&lt;/em&gt; from the plain fact that I gave a &lt;strong&gt;range&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now if you tell people you will arrive by car at 15:48 (because that is the exact average over all your past trips added to the exact time you plan to leave), then they'll be disappointed if you are 5 minutes late. Or 10 minutes early. You said 15:48, why didn't you keep your promise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So &lt;em&gt;units&lt;/em&gt; matter. Saying it takes &quot;about an hour&quot; is different from &quot;59 minutes&quot;. The first is a rough guess and people get that from the language, the second is perceived as precise and accurate and people will hold the person accountable for that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if your velocity is measured and you have 30, 50, 40 in three sprints and 300 left, &lt;strong&gt;do not&lt;/strong&gt; average it all and claim it will be done in 7½ more sprints. That implies precision that is just not there. The truth is that the data means it should be done in 10 sprints worst case and 6 sprints best case. So go with that and say &quot;it should be done in 6-10 sprints&quot;. The wording alone already implies that it is an estimate, not a precise measurement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastEditorUserId="7559" LastEditDate="2019-03-15T09:52:37.827" LastActivityDate="2019-03-15T09:52:37.827" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26007" CreationDate="2019-03-15T13:35:14.543" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The work you do before you have contract is of no concern to the customer.  The customer would not care what you did, how much it cost you, whether you had issues doing that work, etc.  If you added it to the customer's scope of work, it's only noise that adds no value.  The other way to look at it is that it is none of their business, either.  You may have your own schedule, and a way to capture your costs, for work performed during the capture phase through proposal and through signing.  And some of that work may inform your project work, i.e., early planning stuff, but it does not belong in the project's artifacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2019-03-15T13:35:14.543" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26014" CreationDate="2019-03-15T17:09:58.653" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Estimates and Velocity (most often) do not take accidental complication into account, making it worthless for long-term predictions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cost of a feature is a combination of &lt;em&gt;essential complication&lt;/em&gt; + &lt;em&gt;accidental complication&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Essential complication: how hard the problem is to implement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accidental complication: How much corners we cut, deadline pressure, or the number of bad design decisions because we are not so good at our jobs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now for most feature predictions we only take &lt;em&gt;essential complication&lt;/em&gt; into account. We compare complexity of a new feature and compare it to the complexity of already delivered features. For example with story points. But in reality &lt;em&gt;accidental complication&lt;/em&gt; dominates the implementation effort compared to the complexity of the feature standalone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is explained in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSes_PexXcA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this great short video&lt;/a&gt; :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The cost of your feature has almost nothing to do with how hard it is, and almost&#xA;  everything to do with how much your design sucks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSes_PexXcA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;7 minutes, 26 seconds, and the Fundamental Theorem of Agile Software Development (Video)&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So relative estimates completed over time (velocity) have no prediction value for future work if you have a lot of accidental complication. And trust me most teams have, unless they refactor rigorously and or apply &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeprogramming.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;XP practises&lt;/a&gt; continuously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this in mind I will try to answer your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the main purpose of velocity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A signal of a trend of slowing down, maybe due to accidental complication. Something worth investigating&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assist with sustainable pace, your Sprint Backlog (forecast) contains a realistic amount of work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You know when to stop refining stories, e.g. ~2 Sprints into the future&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give very uncertain predictions. In my experience long-term prediction are off by 25% to 500%. Worthless.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In relative short and simple projects it might be accurate enough for predictions. In more complex and bigger projects, only if the teams have mastered &lt;a href=&quot;https://less.works/less/technical-excellence/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;technical excellence&lt;/a&gt;, but even great developers let accidental complication sneak in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity is a proxy metric, not an actual metric. It keeps you in an illusional dream bubble, until it pops and you see it was a lie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8528" LastEditorUserId="8528" LastEditDate="2019-03-15T17:16:43.440" LastActivityDate="2019-03-15T17:16:43.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26011" CreationDate="2019-03-16T13:58:27.787" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a strong link between technical debt and velocity, both in the short-term and in the long-term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A team could potentially raise their short-term velocity by accumulating technical debt. In effect, they are putting things off so that they can give the appearance of faster progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the long-term the accumulation of technical debt can start to drag velocity down as it makes development more difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A key aspect of technical debt is the &lt;em&gt;visibility of the decision making process&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, when a team takes on new technical debt or recognises existing technical debt it should make a clear and visible decision about what to do about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a team might decide to defer resolving some challenging technical debt because they have a release approaching. They would acknowledge and make visible the impact that this will have on the long-term performance of the team and they may also decide to prioritise resolving the debt after the release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2019-03-16T17:23:57.917" LastActivityDate="2019-03-16T17:23:57.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26011" CreationDate="2019-03-16T23:02:45.660" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity and technical debt aren't directly correlated, and velocity can't measure technical debt directly. However, velocity (when properly implemented) can act as a detective control to uncover hidden debt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technical debt isn't necessarily bad. Just like financial leverage, there is good debt and bad debt. Taking on debt the project can afford may be a necessary choice to meet short-term goals. It's just important to only take on debt that the project can afford, and that the team can pay back!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main problem with technical debt is when it's invisible. CodeGnome's Law of Transparency℠ says, &amp;quot;No invisible work, ever!&amp;quot; Visible debt won't reduce your velocity, but may reduce the speed at which new features can be delivered. Invisible work will act as a drag on velocity, which is an early warning that there may be unknown or unexpected technical debt that should be surfaced and addressed by the entire Scrum Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Technical Debt Defined&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia currently defines &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;technical debt&lt;/a&gt; as follows (bold emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technical debt (also known as design debt&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; or code debt) is a concept in software development that reflects the implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing an easy solution now instead of using a better approach that would take longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technical debt can be compared to monetary debt. &lt;strong&gt;If technical debt is not repaid, it can accumulate 'interest', making it harder to implement changes later on.&lt;/strong&gt; Unaddressed technical debt increases software entropy. Technical debt is not necessarily a bad thing, and sometimes (e.g., as a proof-of-concept) technical debt is required to move projects forward. On the other hand, some experts claim that the &amp;quot;technical debt&amp;quot; metaphor tends to minimize the impact, which results in insufficient prioritization of the necessary work to correct it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a change is started on a codebase, there is often the need to make other coordinated changes at the same time in other parts of the codebase or documentation. Required changes that are not completed are considered debt that must be paid at some point in the future. Just like financial debt, these uncompleted changes incur interest on top of interest, making it cumbersome to build a project. Although the term is used in software development primarily, it can also be applied to other professions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a practical matter, technical debt can be known or unknown, and may be visible or invisible. Known and visible debt may or may not be tracked explicitly within your project, although it certainly &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Technical Debt and Velocity&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity is an agile metric that primarily measures the &lt;strong&gt;capacity for work&lt;/strong&gt; that can likely be completed within a single iteration. The central idea is that historical measurements can be smoothed out (often by expressing velocity as a range or moving average) in order to make &lt;em&gt;reasonably&lt;/em&gt; accurate (e.g. &amp;quot;good enough&amp;quot;) near-term forecasts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are generally two classes of technical debt: visible and invisible. The two classes are compared below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Visible and Known Technical Debt&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity doesn't directly measure technical debt. If you're explicitly tracking your technical debt and making it visible as work on the Product Backlog (as you should), then the primary costs of technical debt will often show up as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increased allocation of team capacity to &amp;quot;debt payments&amp;quot; in the form of chores and explicit refactoring as debt increases, generally at the expense of new features.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A general increase in the size of team estimates, accounting for implicit refactoring and the additional slack required to manage knock-on effects of the debt.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An apparent (although not necessarily real) reduction in stakeholder value from each following iteration, as more and more team capacity is spent on the &amp;quot;debt payments&amp;quot; required to develop the features or keep the project from collapsing under the weight of its technical debt.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the debt is visible and tracked, it will generally not impact the team's actual velocity at all. Instead, it may impact the &lt;em&gt;perceived value&lt;/em&gt; of that velocity, because it will slow the pace of new-feature delivery. 20 points of work may no longer deliver 20 points of stakeholder value, but the amount of actual effort the team can expend each iteration won't actually change much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Invisble or Unknown Technical Debt&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cost of invisible debt—or worse, unknown technical debt—is often paid out in terms of an &lt;em&gt;unexpected&lt;/em&gt; drag on productivity. If the drag on productivity grows large enough, and if it remains invisible long enough, this eventually leads to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A growing inability to accurately forecast capacity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An increasing incidence of iterations that fail to meet team or stakeholder goals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A loss of stakeholder confidence in the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A general loss of confidence in the project management framework.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, rather than blaming the framework implementation, the framework itself (and most likely the team that allows this debt to remain invisible) will be blamed for the lack of progress. &lt;strong&gt;This will be magnified tremendously in agile implementations that only track stakeholder value when measuring velocity.&lt;/strong&gt; As the level of effort for each feature goes up, the &lt;em&gt;apparent&lt;/em&gt; velocity will go down, as the team's capacity for user-visible features decreases dramatically as the invisible technical debt is compounded each Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;General Advice&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity is just one metric among many. Don't depend solely on velocity to measure your project, but don't discard it as irrelevant either. Here is my top-ten list of suggestions for using velocity and other techniques to measure or discover technical debt:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use velocity to measure &lt;em&gt;effort&lt;/em&gt;, not stakeholder value.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use velocity to forecast &lt;em&gt;team capacity&lt;/em&gt;, not potentially-shippable value.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify technical debt as soon as possible during each iteration, including at Sprint Planning, Backlog Refinement, and the Sprint Review.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep known technical debt visible to the Development Team, the Product Owner, and stakeholders at all times.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only take on technical debt deliberately, with the informed consent of the entire Scrum Team (and ideally with the stakeholders, too). You will &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; have to pay it back together!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Track all known work (including technical debt) as items on the Product Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Review your Sprint Backlog at the end of each Sprint to identify new sources of technical debt.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Don't&lt;/em&gt; differentiate between chores, bugs, features, etc. in your raw velocity measurements, as they all require time, effort, and resources from the team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Do&lt;/em&gt; review unexpected increases in time, effort, and resources as this may be the result of invisible tech debt.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Look for invisible technical debt whenever a Sprint Goal is missed, or when velocity drops unexpectedly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Velocity by itself may or may not reveal technical debt, but can certainly act as an early detection system for invisible work. As long as you strive to keep all work visible, your process transparent, and leverage all of your framework's inspect-and-adapt cycles effectively, you'll typically avoid being &lt;em&gt;surprised&lt;/em&gt; by technical debt. You still may accrue it, and unpaid debt may still sink your project, but at least the team and the stakeholders won't be surprised!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Track &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; work that consumes team capacity (including whatever you're classifying as technical debt) as a first-class element within your Product Backlog. Just like financial debt, you're much less likely to &amp;quot;go broke&amp;quot; when you keep close track of your spending and avoid burdensome interest payments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-03-16T23:02:45.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1533" CreationDate="2019-03-17T07:49:52.357" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I realise that this question was asked several years back, but it's still relevant today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's some misinformation in some of the answers in this thread. PRINCE2 is NOT based upon ITIL. ITIL is a framework for IT service management, PRINCE2 is a project management methodology. The fact that they both emerged many years ago from the UK government does not mean they share the same methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, to get back to the question. I've been a trainer in PRINCE2 for many years. Based in Asia I get lots of students who have already got PMP and they want to broaden their knowledge by taking PRINCE2. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I have found is that almost without exception, students find PRINCE2 far easier to understand than PMP (or rather the PMBOK). Students often comment that after doing a PMP course they had no idea what they should do when they returned to work on their project. That was because they found the PMBOK so overwhelming with detail and complexity they found it impossible to see the wood for the trees. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to answer your question, which one you should do depends upon your motives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to learn about project management best practices quickly, choose PRINCE2. There are no pre-requisites to certification other than passing the exam. You can also usually get PRINCE2 Foundation by taking a 2-day course, or Practitioner on a 4.5an-day course. Alternatively you can study online. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a PM certification for your CV/resume, then which one you choose depends upon where you intent to work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you intent to work in either the UK, Europe, Australia or New Zealand, then PRINCE2 is the qualification demanded by employers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everywhere else in the world, you should probaly aim for PMP. Don't forget though that PMP has some fairly strict requirements in terms of lots of hours of PM experience. That might rule out many people who are considering it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want an &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.knowledgetrain.co.uk/resources/qualifications/prince2-and-pmbok-guide-comparison&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;in-depth article about the difference between PRINCE2 and the PMBOK Guide&quot;&gt;in-depth article about the difference between PRINCE2 and the PMBOK Guide&lt;/a&gt; then I wrote an article some years back but it's been updated to reflect the latest versions of the Guide and the PRINCE2 manual. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="862" LastActivityDate="2019-03-17T07:49:52.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26029" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-03-18T10:52:58.897" Score="1" ViewCount="105" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say I have multiple tasks that are supposed to be taken care of one after another. Each has its own date of completion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;task 1 - will be completed on 15 march (1 day)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;task 2 - will be completed on 17 march (2 days)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;task 3 - will be completed on 18 march (1 day)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;task 4 - will be completed on 21 march (3 day)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suddenly &lt;code&gt;task 2&lt;/code&gt; is delayed by two days. I would like &lt;code&gt;task 3&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;task 4&lt;/code&gt;'s dates be changed accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now I use &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.teamwork.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;teamwork&lt;/a&gt;. In &lt;a href=&quot;https://d2.alternativeto.net/dist/s/teamwork_609820_full.jpg?format=jpg&amp;amp;width=1600&amp;amp;height=1600&amp;amp;mode=min&amp;amp;upscale=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;calendar view&lt;/a&gt;, tasks are NOT connected to each other in any way. So if the date of one task changes, the rest stay the same. I need to manually move all tasks on the calendar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can such problem be taken care of in teamwork?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35351" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-05-01T13:05:45.013" LastActivityDate="2019-05-01T13:05:45.013" Title="How to set dependencies in TeamWork app to cascade delays in one task into dates of other tasks?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1399" CreationDate="2019-03-19T00:16:51.017" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, a stakeholder is not the same thing as a shareholder. A shareholder is a person who bought shares in a company and who became that way an owner of that company. They are not suppose to bug in the daily management of the company. They have their own yearly meeting and they elect the board of the company that decides the main goals of the company and the strategies and tactics to achieve them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, now a days, most people are afraid to lose their job. We are getting out the worst economic recession after the great depression of the 1930s. Usually, a company fires some of its employees when they sell less than expected of the products and services they provide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, a company, an enterprise, a small business is not a social group of friends. When you are a private company, you don't receive bail out money from a foundation or a government when you go under for a few months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourth, an employer signs contracts with their employees. When they meet the requirements, they are given a pay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, when people disagree on something you have to find out if they really have at heart the profit of the company. It is not everybody that remind themselves regularly than without a profit, the company must close its doors. You have to focus your employees on the profit making. A good manager can drop a product or a service, start a new one and do that in a way that assures the stability of the enterprise. A good manager is able to see under the disagreements the new opportunities that will benefit all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user30807" LastActivityDate="2019-03-19T00:16:51.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25951" CreationDate="2019-03-19T09:20:41.667" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Business Value is a key factor however,we may also want to look at other factors like 1.How many Users will be impacted. 2.What could be the risk involved with the implementation 3.Cost of delay. 4.Who is your customer? ,What is the value add to them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34733" LastActivityDate="2019-03-19T09:20:41.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26032" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-03-19T10:03:33.667" Score="3" ViewCount="101" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am still new at using ms project Professional. My project has already assigned resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, let's take developers who together have a maximum effort of 200%, which means I have 2 developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: how do I divide that generic resource into 2 individuals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34324" LastEditorUserId="3263" LastEditDate="2019-03-20T08:30:36.257" LastActivityDate="2019-09-10T18:02:10.460" Title="How to divide a generic resource?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26033" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-03-19T10:24:36.453" Score="0" ViewCount="82" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a large organization, every morning a manager from the HQ office has a meeting with the dev team(s) based offshore (India) and checks the work they've done. He's very tech savvy, and says that he can tell whether they're taking the piss or are honest with him always. He's able to dig in the problems and resolve them, and also provide solutions. Some might say that he's doing a great job in scrutinizing their work, especially given that these teams are responsible for millions of revenue to the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This organization wants to move towards more agile ways of working. Is the above suitable to keep or should it be phased out, therefore moving the responsibility closer to the dev team? Is this an issue of trust? What questions would you ask to start changing this approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5522" LastActivityDate="2019-03-19T12:21:50.330" Title="Necessity to micro manage off shore developers" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;remote-teams&gt;&lt;micro-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2019-03-21T19:54:38.867" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26033" CreationDate="2019-03-19T12:21:50.330" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile is very much built around trust and empowerment. Micromanaging and trying to 'catch out' teams is incompatible with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the effects of the current approach include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By providing top-down technical solutions you take away ownership from the team doing the work. If things go badly, they may just think 'well it wasn't our idea in the first place'.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The constant checking-up may result in the team being risk averse. Why take on things that may fail if you will just get hauled over the coals for it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team may even start to hide problems if they feel that the manager does not have the full context and so may misinterpret them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best thing to do is to leverage agile principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if the team releases frequently (say every 2 weeks) then &lt;em&gt;true&lt;/em&gt; progress is clearly visible. If it is not possible to do this production, at least do it to a beta release environment that is viewed by stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, look to use continuous integration and automation to better integrate the offshore team with the in-house one. For example, you could pull the code from the offshore team in to in-house servers every night or when a check-in occurs. Doing this will start to break down the barriers between the two teams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look for ways to build trust. Can the offshore team visit the in-house team, or perhaps some in-house team members can visit the offshore office? Create a &lt;em&gt;safe to fail&lt;/em&gt; environment, where the offshore team knows that they will not be punished for making mistakes and so are willing to be open and look for solutions. Have the offshore team &lt;em&gt;ask&lt;/em&gt; for help, rather than pushing technical solutions to them. For example, you could have a chat application running that allows the offshore team to bounce questions/ideas off of the in-house team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, show that you respect the offshore team and that you want to make their work a success. Encourage them, congratulate them on successes and help them to feel that they are wanted and appreciated. This will foster a culture of transparency and collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-03-19T12:21:50.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26039" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-03-20T16:29:18.800" Score="2" ViewCount="236" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm new both to MS Project and this kind of forum. I've searched for this question and I haven't found it, so sorry if it has been already asked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to make new resources calendars, but they work in a variable schedule (in a cycle of 6 weeks, which means that every week from 1 to 6 is different, and the 7th week is the same as the 1st, etc...). If I try to put exceptions, the program registers an incompatibility between them, so I have to change it day by day. Is there a way to make this more simple?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35374" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-03-20T19:31:49.517" LastActivityDate="2019-03-21T05:33:47.870" Title="Rotating-schedule calendar" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26039" CreationDate="2019-03-21T05:33:47.870" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a VBA solution to create a calendar with a cycle of 6 rotating weekly schedules where each week has a different start and end time; all working days have a single 8-hour shifts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Sub CreateRotatingCalendar()&#xA;&#xA;    ' Create a calendar with a cycle of 6 rotating weekly schedules by&#xA;    '  utilizing the calendar exceptions.&#xA;&#xA;    Const CalName As String = &quot;6 Week Rotating&quot;&#xA;    Const ExceptionName As String = &quot;Cycle &quot;&#xA;&#xA;    Const Week1Start As Date = #7:00:00 AM#&#xA;    Const Week2Start As Date = #8:00:00 AM#&#xA;    Const Week3Start As Date = #9:00:00 AM#&#xA;    Const Week4Start As Date = #10:00:00 AM#&#xA;    Const Week5Start As Date = #11:00:00 AM#&#xA;    Const Week6Start As Date = #12:00:00 PM#&#xA;&#xA;    Const CyclesStart As Date = #3/4/2019#    ' must be a Monday&#xA;    Const CyclesEnd As Date = #12/31/2024#&#xA;&#xA;    ' create calendar, but ignore errors in case calendar already exists&#xA;    On Error Resume Next&#xA;    BaseCalendarCreate Name:=CalName, FromName:=&quot;Standard&quot;&#xA;    On Error GoTo 0&#xA;    Dim c As Calendar&#xA;    Set c = ActiveProject.BaseCalendars(CalName)&#xA;&#xA;    ' in case this routine is run again to update the rotating calendar,&#xA;    '  delete exceptions related to the rotation (and leave holidays)&#xA;    Dim e As Exception&#xA;    For Each e In c.Exceptions&#xA;        If e.Name Like ExceptionName &amp;amp; &quot;*&quot; Then&#xA;            e.Delete&#xA;        End If&#xA;    Next e&#xA;&#xA;    ' remove other shifts and make Shift1 8 hours&#xA;    Dim wd As PjWeekday&#xA;    For wd = pjMonday To pjFriday&#xA;        c.WeekDays(wd).Shift1.Start = #8:00:00 AM#&#xA;        c.WeekDays(wd).Shift1.Finish = #5:00:00 PM#&#xA;        c.WeekDays(wd).Shift2.Clear&#xA;        c.WeekDays(wd).Shift3.Clear&#xA;        c.WeekDays(wd).Shift4.Clear&#xA;        c.WeekDays(wd).Shift5.Clear&#xA;    Next wd&#xA;&#xA;    ' create the exceptions week by week&#xA;    Dim NumWeeks As Long&#xA;    NumWeeks = (CyclesEnd - CyclesStart) \ 7&#xA;    Dim i As Long&#xA;    Dim CycleNum As String&#xA;    Dim StartTime As Date&#xA;    For i = 1 To NumWeeks + 1&#xA;        Select Case i Mod 6&#xA;            Case Is = 1: StartTime = Week1Start: CycleNum = &quot;1&quot;&#xA;            Case Is = 2: StartTime = Week2Start: CycleNum = &quot;2&quot;&#xA;            Case Is = 3: StartTime = Week3Start: CycleNum = &quot;3&quot;&#xA;            Case Is = 4: StartTime = Week4Start: CycleNum = &quot;4&quot;&#xA;            Case Is = 5: StartTime = Week5Start: CycleNum = &quot;5&quot;&#xA;            Case Is = 0: StartTime = Week6Start: CycleNum = &quot;6&quot;&#xA;            Case Else&#xA;        End Select&#xA;        On Error Resume Next&#xA;        Set e = c.Exceptions.Add(Type:=pjDaily _&#xA;                                , Start:=CyclesStart + (i - 1) * 7 _&#xA;                                , Occurrences:=5 _&#xA;                                , Name:=ExceptionName &amp;amp; CycleNum)&#xA;        If Err.Number = 0 Then&#xA;            e.Shift1.Start = StartTime&#xA;            e.Shift1.Finish = StartTime + #8:00:00 AM#&#xA;        Else&#xA;            ' switch to day-by-day to not overwrite holidays inherited&#xA;            '  from the Standard calendar&#xA;            Dim d As Long&#xA;            For d = 1 To 5&#xA;                Set e = c.Exceptions.Add(Type:=pjDaily _&#xA;                                        , Start:=CyclesStart + (i - 1) * 7 + d - 1 _&#xA;                                        , Occurrences:=1 _&#xA;                                        , Name:=ExceptionName &amp;amp; CycleNum &amp;amp; &quot; day &quot; &amp;amp; d)&#xA;                e.Shift1.Start = StartTime&#xA;                e.Shift1.Finish = StartTime + #8:00:00 AM#&#xA;            Next d&#xA;        End If&#xA;        On Error GoTo 0&#xA;    Next i&#xA;&#xA;End Sub&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastActivityDate="2019-03-21T05:33:47.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14214" CreationDate="2019-03-21T20:12:54.447" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, a project is not a leisure activity. It is not free time that you spend with friends. If you start a project and you don't complete it, it is a failure. You have a deadline and a budget to respect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, risk goes with uncertainty. When you start of project, there is many things that are not sure or unknown. You have to evaluate before starting your project that you will not do a deficit (go under), if too many surprises arrive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, an opportunity is a positive thing. It is a person, an event, a technical breakthrough, for example, that permit you to realize what you planed to do. It is a door that opens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, it is not because you have an opportunity that the success is assured. It is not because you have risks that your project will fail. Managing is all about, day by day, doing the most you can to achieve your goal. Business administration is to plan, to organize, to lead and to evaluate/control. Having a training in business administration and/or a degree give you skills and forge your decision making in the right way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user30807" LastActivityDate="2019-03-21T20:12:54.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26044" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26045" CreationDate="2019-03-22T15:01:44.443" Score="3" ViewCount="780" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team is building a web application that has the following high-level user story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user, I would like the ability to bulk exclude components from a&#xA;  given country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The work breaks down into two distinct tasks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create the web application feature that excludes components by country.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fetch component - country association data on a daily basis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first, I started to break this down into two user stories.  However, the second task doesn't really fit into a typical user story format. I started writing something like  this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As the system, I will parse country data from the XYZ feed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On one hand, this task is not user-centric. On the other hand, the ability to fetch component - country data is a well defined, vertically sliced task that is independently verifiable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the proper user story breakdown for this type of scenario? Is it improper to have a system focused user story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35388" LastActivityDate="2019-03-23T00:41:39.433" Title="User Story breakdown - Technical Task + User Feature" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26044" CreationDate="2019-03-22T15:59:43.470" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pay attention to the 'V' in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST mneumonic&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A PBI must deliver value to the stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself: &lt;em&gt;by itself&lt;/em&gt;, does the ability to parse country data from the XYZ feed provide any value to the project's stakeholders?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If yes: good, split it. If no: nope, keep it as-is (or possibly split it some other way that doesn't invalidate INVEST.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: 'The System' is probably not a project stakeholder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2019-03-22T15:59:43.470" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26044" CreationDate="2019-03-22T16:10:03.087" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Sprint Backlog Tasks Aren't Inherently User Stories&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're conflating user stories and tasks. Product Backlog Items often start as user stories on the Product Backlog, but Scrum doesn't mandate the user story format. Those Product Backlog Items get imported to the Sprint Backlog during Sprint Planning. Stories are often refined further at that point, and additional stories and tasks related to the planned work are often generated throughout the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key point, though, is that tasks need not be full-fledged user stories, even if your Product Backlog uses the format. Go ahead and use user stories when it makes sense, but &lt;em&gt;implementation details&lt;/em&gt; rarely make sense as a user story because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The value consumer is often the team, because implementation details serve the team or system rather than a user.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There's no conversation to be had outside the team, because the team is the consumer of the task.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There's often no conversation to be had at all. Usually, by the time something is decomposed to the level of &quot;I will parse X from Y,&quot; the team has already had the planning and design discussions around the implementation and designed the tests for the planned work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User stories are conversation placeholders, and generally provide a value consumer, a shorthand feature description, and some context to guide the implementation and follow-on discussions. User stories are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; specifications! So, don't over-constrain your process by trying to shoehorn implementation details or specifications into the user story format. Usually, the juice isn't worth the squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-03-22T16:10:03.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26044" CreationDate="2019-03-23T00:41:39.433" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that the daily DB fetching could be a task that is part of the requested user story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if for whatever reason, you don't want to or are unable to work both tasks in the same sprint, it might help to focus on the value (that would be) delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The DB fetching task doesn't deliver any value to the user, but it delivers value to the PO by reducing the cost of implementing the user story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2019-03-23T00:41:39.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26048" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-03-23T03:20:27.443" Score="0" ViewCount="535" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_management#ABCD_analysis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ABCD analysis&lt;/a&gt; is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Activities are ranked by these general criteria:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;A – Tasks that are perceived as being urgent and important,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;B – Tasks that are important but not urgent,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;C – Tasks that are unimportant but urgent,  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;D - Tasks that are unimportant and not urgent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is this different to the Eisenhower method? I think it's just a different name? Yet they are listed differently in the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27043" LastActivityDate="2019-03-23T16:20:09.690" Title="What is the difference between ABCD analysis and Eisenhower method?" Tags="&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26048" CreationDate="2019-03-23T16:20:09.690" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;ABCDE is simply a prioritization method with 5 categories of declining importance. It happens to borrow the terms delegate and eliminate for the last two categories, but I haven't seen an explanation that adequately addresses why D should be delegated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Eisenhower, you are specifically categorizing into do, decide, delegate, and delete based on the relationship between importance and urgency. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though they have some relationship to each other, ABCDE is a prioritization model and Eisenhower is a categorization and action model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-03-23T16:20:09.690" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25951" CreationDate="2019-03-24T04:52:55.123" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Technical debt is often sidelined by Product Owners&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product Owners are the ones who are vested with the authority to assign and change priorities. Product Owners are almost always razor focused on business value. In my experience many POs (not all ;)) tend to not just overlook but actively resist technical team's request to give priority to catching up with technical debt, even high risk ones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering OP is specifically asking for considerations other than business value, I will say &quot;Technical debt&quot; is the big one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2019-03-24T04:52:55.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26053" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-03-24T09:59:05.397" Score="1" ViewCount="154" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the difference between scope creep and out of scope ? How is scope creep implemented during project without change request?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35398" LastActivityDate="2019-03-24T11:46:16.127" Title="Scope creep and out of scope" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26053" CreationDate="2019-03-24T11:46:16.127" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The term &quot;out of scope&quot; refers to all functionality that is not part of the scope of the project as it was agreed upon at the start of the project and as it has been amended by change requests. The term can additionally be used for work that does not contribute to achieving the functionality that is within the scope of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scope creep refers to the process of adding functionality that is out of scope without going through the agreed upon change process to extend the project's scope.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;When (attempts at) scope creep occur from stakeholders, they usually take the form of statements along the line of &quot;I know this is what we agreed upon, but I really meant that X was included as well.&quot; Depending on your relations with the stakeholder and the amount of effort that goes into X, you can either expand the scope silently (accept the scope creep), or enforce the proper change procedures to get the change officially within scope (and with the appropriate budget and time for it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2019-03-24T11:46:16.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25930" CreationDate="2019-03-25T09:09:47.507" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would give the following comments to your practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Daily Scrum:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The daily Scrum is a meeting for the team members to discuss if it is possible to reach the sprint goal. In my opinion, there is no space for Stakeholders to review certain user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sprint Review:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't cancel the meeting. Referred to the Scrum Guide, demo the user stories, which are done, is not the only item on the agenda.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Suggestion:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a good Scrum team, there is in any way a lot of contact with the stakeholders. I would define an additional bullet in my Definition of Done: Reviewed the functionality with affected Stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's up to you to decide. But I recommend leaving the agenda list of the Daily Scrum as it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35403" LastActivityDate="2019-03-25T09:09:47.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25930" CreationDate="2019-03-25T11:42:34.253" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few things to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, let's start with the best: you have super-engaged stakeholders. That is so awesome! And nothing in Scrum says you have to wait until the end of the sprint to show completed work to stakeholders. I don't think it can be overstated how wonderful it is that your team and stakeholders talk frequently! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I wouldn't do it at the daily scrum. The daily scrum is for the team to sync up. I can see that knowing if a key stakeholder is happy with the work could be useful info for in my daily scrum, but I would do it before. Personally, I'd be nervous that the stakeholder conversation would crowd out the conversations that are supposed to be happening in the daily scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, I want to encourage you to push further and get more out of it. The idea of sign-off can be problematic in scrum. Because you don't want ambiguity in signoff, you usually consolidate that decision into one person. This can limit your view to one stakeholder, when there are actually many. Signoff also usually frames work in a pass / fail context. In Scrum we want feedback. If you are meeting every stakeholder's every need on the first try, that is suspicious (largely because that is probably an impossible task). This is where is is still important to have that review. Have every stakeholder who is interested attend. Hear all of their feedback. Decide how that impacts your backlog - what do you keep, what do you set aside. This is where the benefits of scrum really shine through!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-03-25T11:42:34.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25873" CreationDate="2019-03-25T14:47:43.917" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;We differentiate between documentation for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Developers&lt;/strong&gt;: This goes right in the source code and will be stored in Git. Whenever a function is added or updated, some &quot;text in green&quot; (our wording for developer documentation) has to be added. We write not only details &amp;amp; decisions about a function to it, we add additionally the reason why a decision was taken. Just think about the typical W-questions. This is a lot more effort to write it, but it helps especially in long term projects a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Managers&lt;/strong&gt;: Strategic Dokumentation is widely created in Evernote with objectives, use cases and other business related information. We add not only text but also lots of charts, images, references to the web and other stuff. Everything is being tagged extensively. Over the time we link many documents with others which results in long term projects in an extensive business documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;End users&lt;/strong&gt;: The user documentation is written in Asciidoctor &lt;a href=&quot;https://asciidoctor.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://asciidoctor.org&lt;/a&gt; which is basically a super fast text processor &amp;amp; publishing toolchain for converting AsciiDoc to HTML5, DocBook &amp;amp; more. Asciidoc is almost as easy as simple Markdown but with lots of chances for a single source publishing. BTW: I am not associated with Asciidoctor - I just love it! Of course; the sources, images etc for the documentation is stored in Git as well. We try to keep the text files as modular and small as possible in order to keep the maintenance issues as low as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are interested in our documentation results just have a look: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.projectwizards.net/en/support/documentation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.projectwizards.net/en/support/documentation&lt;/a&gt; (in this case I am indeed associated with the company. If this is not allowed here please let me know, I will remove the link for sure and immediately).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27866" LastEditorUserId="27866" LastEditDate="2019-03-25T14:57:25.893" LastActivityDate="2019-03-25T14:57:25.893" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26063" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-03-25T23:07:44.360" Score="3" ViewCount="778" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my project one of the metrics we want to use is the amount of times a JIRA issue is moved back from &quot;QA&quot; to &quot;Development.&quot; We call it &quot;comeback rate.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking for % of items that were resolved by developers and then reinstated later by QA (or whoever) due to a defect in the fix or enhancement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My boss wants to use this as a measurement of development process quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can filter for items that are currently resolved or reinstated, but once an item is resolved again I can't figure out how to see this in a filter or report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example of what I would like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Year 2017 - 400 items resolved - 80 items were reinstated at least once - 4 items were reinstated more than once.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Year 2018 - 460 items resolved - 60 items were reinstated at least once - 2 items were reinstated more than once.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In above example, my boss will think: &quot;Good job developers! You decreased your comeback rate!&quot; and we will rejoice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35419" LastEditorUserId="35419" LastEditDate="2019-03-26T21:32:28.147" LastActivityDate="2019-03-26T21:32:28.147" Title="How to count the amount of times a JIRA issue has been in a specific state?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26063" CreationDate="2019-03-26T04:41:08.397" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;I would rather tackle the source of this &quot;comeback&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the face of it, it looks to me that your process needs some basic changes. Do not mark a ticket as resolved unless:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;QA tests it and gives it their approval.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Stakeholders ('whoever') test it and give it their approval.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tools for unit testing, automated testing and Continuous Integration (CI) are readily available in all the major coding platforms. Evaluate using these as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any effort on these lines will be far more valuable than major effort in measuring the results of process deficiencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2019-03-26T04:41:08.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25583" CreationDate="2019-03-26T12:43:52.283" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just right from the top of my head I would create a train the trainer concept. For both agile and traditional I would create two different course paths. For each course I would – including an expert:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Start with an internal workshop to define the objectives, contents &amp;amp; deliverables for the given path.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create training materials.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Training for first set of people which have the highest trainer skills and practise the new training.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then take (2!) two people from the first training and let them teach the next course.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the time pressure you have, you can repeat this quite often. But please be aware the training skills are lower in each level (after each training).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To catch a quality loss, create for each training group a second training which includes the optimized training materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should drive you through a first round of trainings. This is just a summary and there are many possible variants of this concept, but this is one thing I did years ago personally and it was very successful for 1000 people in 4 different courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27866" LastActivityDate="2019-03-26T12:43:52.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25582" CreationDate="2019-03-26T13:05:41.783" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have that in my environment as well: The management runs in Waterfall and the development is fully agile. And of course both does have impact on the other party.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I basically defined three steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reduce complexity: We have defined max. length and max. number of dependencies of tasks for the management. The spring length for the devs is set to 7 days.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Increase communication: Both parties are exchanging they results much more often. We meet on a weekly base, but always with time boxing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This goes together with new features for hybrid project management in my software as the third step: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.projectwizards.net/en/merlin-project&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Merlin Project&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Important Disclaimer: Merlin Project is commercial software and I am the CEO of that company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27866" LastActivityDate="2019-03-26T13:05:41.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26063" CreationDate="2019-03-26T13:50:56.190" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Use a SQL Query&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An answer on Stack Overflow addresses how to &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/a/46058493/1301972&quot;&gt;query for re-opened issues.&lt;/a&gt; I won’t vouch for this particular example, but it certainly shows that reopened tickets can be found through a SQL query. Consider the following example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;tickets = project_name AND status WAS Reopened&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I haven’t tested this solution myself because I don’t have a relevant data set, but it (or something similar) should yield the results you’re looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;See Also&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirakb/how-to-list-all-the-issue-status-transitions-for-past-x-days-with-issue-key-from-database-in-jira-747832195.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirakb/how-to-list-all-the-issue-status-transitions-for-past-x-days-with-issue-key-from-database-in-jira-747832195.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46058405/is-there-a-way-to-count-the-number-of-reopened-tickets-in-a-jira&quot;&gt;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46058405/is-there-a-way-to-count-the-number-of-reopened-tickets-in-a-jira&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://developer.atlassian.com/server/jira/platform/database-issue-status-and-workflow/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://developer.atlassian.com/server/jira/platform/database-issue-status-and-workflow/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.tutorialspoint.com/jira/jira_advanced_search.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.tutorialspoint.com/jira/jira_advanced_search.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Address Underlying Process Issues&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, to expand on @Ashok’s points from his answer, tracking re-opened tickets is an agile implementation smell that indicates one or more of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The lack of a truly cross-functional team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A lack of continous integration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A lack of adequate regression testing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A failure to treat &lt;em&gt;change&lt;/em&gt; as new work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Functional siloes, where testing is divorced from development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A culture of blame, where “you fixed it wrong” is a more important message than “let’s collaborate on fixing it right.”&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A development process that isn’t truly iterative.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A missing or inadequate Definition of Done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you address the underlying process problems, tracking re-opened tickets as a first-class metric hides the organizational dysfunction, and continues to place unwarranted responsibility on the developers without sufficient collaboration with testers and stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile implementations are a team sport. Testers and stakeholders are most definitely part of the team, and must actively participate in the process rather than just passing judgement on the results at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-03-26T13:50:56.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26063" CreationDate="2019-03-26T15:16:31.697" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Got a similar problem and got curious about how to obtain it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There's &lt;strong&gt;plugin&lt;/strong&gt; alternatives, such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://limetrees.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LTSHP/pages/9895940/Reports&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Limetrees&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For &lt;strong&gt;API&lt;/strong&gt; alternatives, you'll need to dig into each ticket to check for this. You'll need to search for the Jira and use the &lt;code&gt;expand=changelog&lt;/code&gt; option to have the info you need. &lt;strong&gt;Source:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Answers-Developer-Questions/API-for-get-transition-and-history-for-issues-by-REST-API/qaq-p/503108&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Answers-Developer-Questions/API-for-get-transition-and-history-for-issues-by-REST-API/qaq-p/503108&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;API Example:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;https://yourJiraServer.com/jira02/rest/api/2/search?jql=key=JIRA-01&amp;amp;expand=changelog&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It'll return a JSON with something like...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;              &quot;items&quot;:[  &#xA;                 {  &#xA;                    &quot;field&quot;:&quot;status&quot;,&#xA;                    &quot;fieldtype&quot;:&quot;jira&quot;,&#xA;                    &quot;from&quot;:&quot;3&quot;,&#xA;                    &quot;fromString&quot;:&quot;Closed&quot;,&#xA;                    &quot;to&quot;:&quot;10010&quot;,&#xA;                    &quot;toString&quot;:&quot;Reopen&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... and you can count the amount of occurences of &lt;code&gt;&quot;toString&quot;:&quot;Reopen&quot;&lt;/code&gt; (or any other state you're interested on). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-03-26T15:16:31.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26070" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26186" CreationDate="2019-03-26T16:05:13.737" Score="1" ViewCount="240" Body="&lt;p&gt;As newly assigned manager on an already ongoing agile continuous delivery software development project, one of the objectives is the following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ensure that software quality meets long term requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project consist of 50+ software developers distributed on different sub-products. So far, the following issues has been identified, which can be possible indicators that improvement is needed of the software quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No big new features been released in recent time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Different UX across sub-products&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some software modules are barely maintained after ownership shifts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Architect team is not responsible for quality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Software developers started leaving project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Seem too much coordinating across teams for new initiatives&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Often workarounds are used meet customer requirements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far, the approach to quality has been implicit. Recently, the following has been added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;Definition of Done&lt;/strong&gt; of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_story#Relationship_and_Usage_of_User_Stories_to_Epics,_Themes,_Initiatives&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;epics&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems not to capture the above 7 issues, as it has a more narrow focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quality seems hard to measure in a purposeful way as suggested by &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1539/how-to-measure-quality-in-a-software-development-project&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/5758/what-software-quality-kpis-do-you-use&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;. Further, it seems hard to navigate after the above 7 issues. This leads to the following considerations. &lt;em&gt;How to identify purposeful efforts? How to estimate the effect of the efforts? When is it enough?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Anyone with any experience on how to approach managing long-term software quality focus?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35296" LastActivityDate="2019-04-12T20:51:32.870" Title="How to manage long-term software quality requirements?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;quality&gt;&lt;quality-management&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25935" CreationDate="2019-03-26T22:06:02.210" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not in line with the Agile methodology and product management principles; this means that you will not be satisfied with the result at the end. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, at the end of an Epic, you want the user to at least be able to do something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you create Epics, you should decide what is your MVP, your minimum viable product. For example: if your goal is to create a grocery list based on the meals the user provides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then your MVP:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;should not include login, because the user can use your app even if there's no login and can get instant satisfaction.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;should be simple. Let's take a user story: Bob is able to open the app and put in meals he likes to eat: Spaghetti, hamburgers and pizza for the entire week. He wants to see a list of groceries: pasta noodles, pasta sauce, ground meat,...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you want to decide how long this is going to take to make: let's say 3 Sprints (e.g. 6 weeks). So maybe the first Sprint will be to create the user input page, the next Sprint will be the output page, then the next Sprint will be the logic layer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is only after you have done the design and research into a user story and market fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35432" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-03-27T13:06:52.520" LastActivityDate="2019-03-27T13:06:52.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25882" CreationDate="2019-03-26T22:13:35.923" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a B2C business, the impact map is more for the external customer.&#xA;For a B2B business, the impact map can be for your internal customers(stakeholders).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on the area of ownership you have for the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35432" LastActivityDate="2019-03-26T22:13:35.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25795" CreationDate="2019-03-26T22:19:15.450" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You want to start building up a product with your core strengths first so that you have cash flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For teams specialized with a different expertise, you must demand that they are able to deliver specific goals to you. If they are at 80% capable of delivering, just make sure they would be able to learn the extra 20%. At the same time, you should learn the big picture and work with them to see how their skills can accomplish the goals you set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35432" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-03-27T13:11:37.700" LastActivityDate="2019-03-27T13:11:37.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25766" CreationDate="2019-03-26T22:25:37.947" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Employees can make suggestions to the product manager as the brainstorming of ideas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The product is owned by the product manager. The product manager has to consider the overall market fit, the company's short term to long term strategy, the profit margin, the timeline of delivering the product, in order to decide what direction to go. If the employee's suggestion aligns with everything the product stands for, the product manager would definitely like to use the suggestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The employee should make suggestions, raise any questions if needed, but should also understand it's not a battle of employee vs. customers, but a battle of the current company to competitions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35432" LastActivityDate="2019-03-26T22:25:37.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26070" CreationDate="2019-03-27T10:07:57.747" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First question is: what quality goals do you have? Typical goals are &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;listed here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you identify a limited number of goals, you could put them in your Definition of Done (DoD) in forms like: &quot;Every commit must keep or improve (modularity/security/whatever)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next question is then: how to ensure and enforce? Do you use code metrics? Do code reviews? And does anyone actually use the DoD? :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32531" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-03-27T13:14:15.670" LastActivityDate="2019-03-27T13:14:15.670" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26070" CreationDate="2019-03-27T22:59:01.227" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While quality can be &lt;em&gt;measured&lt;/em&gt; objectively, defining the domain-specific elements of quality for &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; organization isn’t something where you can rely on a standard dictionary definition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, most of the issues you’ve identified aren’t intriniscally quality issues at all. They seem more like &lt;em&gt;organizational&lt;/em&gt; issues. We’ll look at some of them in more detail, and then follow up with some development and project management practices that can help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Your Examples, Analyzed&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No big new features been released in recent time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Continuous feature development isn’t a sign of quality. When a product is “good enough” to sell in the market, and fit for purpose, then featuritis is often a sign that the company lacks market vision or customer feedback. For example, people didn’t want Clippy or Microsoft Bob; they often just wanted fewer bugs, blue screens, and viruses. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Different UX across sub-products&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; problem, not a quality problem per se. Who is driving the need for a unifying UX? If the customers aren’t demanding it, and your process doesn’t include cross-team integration, then this is a look-and-feel issue rather than an actual quality problem.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some software modules are barely maintained after ownership shifts&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is 100% an organizational problem. Without collective code ownership, a culture of continuous refactoring, or IT governance that enforces component or process ownership, brownfield code almost always become unloved legacy code. Your leadership needs to assign ownership of components throughout the product lifecycle, because hope and wishing aren’t actual strategies. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Architect team is not responsible for quality&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should they be? Architecture is (often, but not always) responsible for high-level design. It’s the engineering and QA teams (or better yet, fully cross-functional teams) that actually implement the solutions and build in and test quality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, quality means whatever your organization decides it means. Define it, agree on it across the organization, and then continuously test for whatever quality metrics you’ve all collectively agreed to. Without that agreement and testing, “quality” is just a buzzword.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Software developers started leaving project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Churn happens in all projects. However, rapid flights of talent often indicate a toxic work culture, dead-end projects, death marches, budget cuts, and other well-known organizational anti-patterns. While the team can certainly hold a retrospective to identify potential problems, the business leadership ultimately owns the responsibility to fix the culture and process problems leading to the loss of key talent.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Seem too much coordinating across teams for new initiatives&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Analysis paralysis” is a known anti-pattern. Large initiatives, especially for brownfield projects, always require more collaboration than small greenfield projects. While the pace of change often slows or stalls as projects get larger, the larger problem may be that you need a framework that scales beyond a single team, and works across multiple teams. Nexus, LeSS, and SAFe are examples from the agile world.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Often workarounds are used meet customer requirements&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this may represent some form of tech debt, it isn’t inherently a quality control issue. While tech debt can slow development, or represent a quick-and-dirty hack of less than ideal quality, the mere existence of workarounds need not indicate insufficient product quality.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How to Improve Quality&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several approaches you can take to improve software quality, but they all generally involve baking quality into your development and organizational processes. Some examples include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Practicing test-driven or behavior-driven development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Integrating modern continuous integration practices into your development pipeline.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensuring that the team and the organization routinely take time to inspect and adapt their values and practices, and make continuous improvement a priority.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consistently tracking technical debt, and routinely allocating resources to paying that debt down.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;“Stopping the line” to address significant quality control issues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Making sure that working software and “fitness for purpose” are more important to the organization than simply meeting specifications.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Taking the time to refactor and redesign any aspect of the system that is hard to extend or maintain.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Taking a methodical approach to change. Writing tests before code, or following the Mikado method to implement redesigns, are just two relevant examples.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Making sure that your software is always in a potentially-shippable state.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leveraging feature toggles and other continuous delivery practices.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of these really fall into the camp of development practices, rather than project management per se. On that front, your best bets are really:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;effective communication (with the team, with stakeholders, and with customers),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;very tight feedback loops, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a relentless focus on continuously improving both your process and the product.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There’s no silver bullet. In the end, you must define what quality means to you, decide how you will measure it, and then inspect-and-adapt your quality controls and your actual outcomes throughout the project life cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-03-27T22:59:01.227" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26080" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-03-28T12:54:59.963" Score="0" ViewCount="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I entered a duration time of 2 days, start date of 20.03.2019 and finish date being automatic schedule, MS Project shows finish date as 21.03.2019. But I want it to count two days after the start date; it should be 22.03.2019.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I accomplish this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35446" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-03-28T13:14:06.840" LastActivityDate="2019-03-28T19:46:37.663" Title="Finish date not calculating correctly" Tags="&lt;ms-project-2010&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25873" CreationDate="2019-03-28T16:13:04.807" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Frank's answer is great, but I will add one further addition. The person/group who uses the documentation is accountable for its upkeep. That doesn't necessarily mean they are the ones who do it, but their manager needs to champion the effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the issues that keep documentation from getting updated is that it is often dependent on someone who is no longer working on that project and any time spent takes away from the time they have to spend on their 'day job'. So it gets put on the back burner until they get some 'free time'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20438" LastActivityDate="2019-03-28T16:13:04.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26080" CreationDate="2019-03-28T16:33:59.343" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a duration time of 2 days, start date of 20.03.2019...MS Project shows finish date as 21.03.2019&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This behavior is correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you start a two-day task on Wednesday, you will finish on Thursday. To see how this is true, change the date format* to show the &lt;strong&gt;date and time&lt;/strong&gt; to see that the task starts at the beginning of the day (e.g. 20.03.2019 8:00) and finishes at the end of the day (e.g. 21.03.2019 17:00).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*To change the date format go to File: Options: General tab&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastActivityDate="2019-03-28T16:33:59.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25945" CreationDate="2019-03-28T16:38:48.357" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have already ruled out doing development in house, but the question is, is this code central to your business. Is it &quot;what you do&quot;? If it is, then there is value in doing the development internally, on the side after you have hooked up with a vendor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say for an example, you go with a vendor named DS9Commander. Eventually you will find a few areas that chafe a bit. you can create your own solution that can specifically address those issues to 1. differentiate yourself, and 2. use it in the business case to get your clients to pay for the conversion to your system later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes you can use middleware to help prevent tight coupling. If this is a possible option I highly recommend it, as I have been involved in a Telco project that was able to replace some back end devices by doing some data mapping/translations in the middle without needing to modify the ends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20438" LastActivityDate="2019-03-28T16:38:48.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25901" CreationDate="2019-03-28T16:49:35.400" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you keep metrics on earlier refactoring efforts? If not you should. This allows for evidence based estimation; What did we do before? How long did we think it would take? How long did it actually take?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have some data points, you can look at apples to apples comparisons. For stuff you don't have, you can take a look at your estimates vs. actuals to be able to determine how accurate your team is.  Even if they are consistently 200% under the actuals, that gives you a pretty good idea that this estimate is also going to be under what it will really take.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;% of performance improvements is harder to quantify, but if you are building things correctly the percentage should trend lower as the easy stuff gets optimized. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20438" LastActivityDate="2019-03-28T16:49:35.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25583" CreationDate="2019-03-28T17:00:28.107" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For an organization your size I would expect at least some would be members of PMI. They have certifications for Agile project management, and the PMBok (version 6) has an Agile appendix taken from the Scrum Alliance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not everything in the PMBok is applicable to Agile, or any project for that matter, but it has most of the tools to do most of the jobs most of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20438" LastActivityDate="2019-03-28T17:00:28.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26080" CreationDate="2019-03-28T19:46:37.663" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;MS Project is calculating correctly. A 2-day duration task will start at 20/3/2019 9:00 and finish at 21/3/2019 at 17:00 (or whatever the calendar states as the end of the working day).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is expected behavior of MS Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you add a successor task, it will start at 22/3/2019 (given that the predecessor task concludes at the end of the day, so there is not remaining time to start the next task the same day).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you want to force the task to end at 22/3/2019, you can trick MS Project by defining the task’s start date as “20/3/2019, 10:00 am” (yes, including the start time – use the time format according to your locale). This way, the task will start at 20/3/2019, 10:00 am, and finish at 22/3/2019, 10:00 am. Then, any successor task will start at 22/3/2019, 10:00 am. Note, however, that this could cause some confusion with team members or other project stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Greetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28645" LastActivityDate="2019-03-28T19:46:37.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25945" CreationDate="2019-03-28T22:28:18.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You want to make sure you have clear boundaries. In general you want to make sure there is a clearly defined interface between your software and their software. Then, when you replace their software, it's not all entangled within your systems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may require additional effort upfront, but it will pay off later. Even if you owned both sides of the interface between system 1 and system 2, you want clear boundaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've worked on many contracts that require the vendor to use standards. This can be a standard in format (like a known XML structure) or a standard in data (HON means HONDA). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also want to make sure your contract with the vendor includes support for migrating/transitioning to another vendor -- the most important of which is getting your data and getting it in a usable format (like CSV) along with a data dictionary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33522" LastActivityDate="2019-03-28T22:28:18.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26007" CreationDate="2019-03-29T00:53:42.033" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My though is that if something impacts the schedule, you should track it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have to submit change orders (CO) with milestone dates -- the problem is approval for the CO can vary drastically (from days to months) and you never know what it will be. Therefore we include tasks like the following (All dependent on their predecessor):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jan-1 &quot;Submit CO [1-Day]&quot; (Assigned to me)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jan-2 &quot;Approve CO [30-days]&quot; (Assigned to Client)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feb-1 &quot;Do real work part 1 [x-days]&quot;. (Assigned to me)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mar-1 &quot;Do real work part 2 [x-days]&quot;. (Assigned to me)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;April &quot;End User Approval [x-days]&quot; (Assigned to client)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;May-1 Milestone: &quot;Project Complete&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this example, we show work that occurs before the contract is approved because we want to show real work cannot start until the client gets approval.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the approval takes longer than 30-days, that pushes out the other deliverables. If the client misses their responsibility (Approve CO) that affects the rest of the agreed on schedule and requires a change management process address the schedule change. The change management process addresses changes in scope/money/schedule and is a negotiation between you and the client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The change management process is an important step because you may have agreed to finishing up by May-1 because in June you have another project starting or maybe your developer is going on vacation. If approval ends up taking an extra 15-days (45D vs 30D), it could push your final deliverable out 60-days (Because the developer is taking time off in May). By adding the &quot;Approval&quot; step, you make it clear to the client that the date is important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTE: You can also cover this under the risks/assumptions section of a project plan instead of the project schedule. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SIDE NOTE for complex CO/SOW: Most times, creating a CO/SOW only requires a meeting or two and we swallow that cost. But, if preparation for the CO/SOW is long, you may need to treat creating the CO/SOW as a separate project with a deliverable of the CO/SOW for the second project (actually doing the work). Sometimes creating the CO/SOW requires a bunch of work from our BA/Architect; that is when we do a CO/SOW to create the final CH/SOW. Due to budgets, we have done a $50k project to create a CO/SOW and then waited a year before executing that CO/SOW.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33522" LastActivityDate="2019-03-29T00:53:42.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9273" CreationDate="2019-03-29T01:47:25.550" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, the no 1 problem of all work places now a days is how to manage promotions. Many feel they never had the opportunity that they deserve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, there is no problem for an employee to go see another manager higher in the hierarchy. The important thing is that the project is done on time and in the limit of the budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, the greatest quality of a manager is not to be afraid of talent and innovation. We all end up to be at the place we want, more or less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourth, when a company increases its revenue and that all the expenses are covered, it is amazing how the tensions disappear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the important thing is to communicate along the way on the problems a team encounter in the realization of a project. It is the only way to be sure to succeed. The secret is to focus on the revenues and on the profit. Managing gives you an higher salary, but you have to handle more work and more pressure. Sometime, an employee prefer not to become a manager and his or her salary increases over the year to be the same as a manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user30807" LastActivityDate="2019-03-29T01:47:25.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5072" CreationDate="2019-03-29T04:28:51.390" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are correct in your example. The Gantt tool will schedule concurrent tasks, if dependencies state so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding resources in this case will cause overallocation, so you will need to do resource leveling. Note that &lt;strong&gt;this is not automatic&lt;/strong&gt;. In MS Project, you will need to use the &quot;Level resources&quot; commands found in the &quot;Resource&quot; tab. If the schedule changes, or if you add more resources, then you'll need to level resources again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, neither Openproj nor Ganttproj have resource leveling features (MS Project does).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Greetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28645" LastActivityDate="2019-03-29T04:28:51.390" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26094" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-03-29T06:56:47.010" Score="7" ViewCount="1281" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working as a product owner, in a fintech based software company. My development team follows scrum methodology, and 2 weeks sprint. They tried to follow scrum ceremony, but not to do story estimation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My stakeholder set 1 production release each month (say 25th of each month), and some time extra hotfix release. Our release cycle is much complex. First QA test the feature in SIT environment. After get the signed off from SIT qa, dev team build the package and send it to devips for UAT deployment. After UAT deployment, UAT tester test the build items (one thing to mention, UAT deployment only happen at time of product release not after each sprint deliverable.). If UAT tester found issue then it gets back to dev team, but they are in middle of sprint and doing some other work. Then dev team fixes the issues raise by UAT tester and send it to them again. Finally signed off from UAT it goes for production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now my question &lt;strong&gt;how could I streamline the process?&lt;/strong&gt;, as development team got frustrated that they need to work sometimes in the middle of the sprint for bug fix or priority. I need guideline/expert opinion to manage production release properly that follow sprint.      &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35455" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-04-05T12:17:12.833" LastActivityDate="2019-04-05T12:17:12.833" Title="How to increase the deployment frequency having to cope with a lot of processes?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;release-plan&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26094" CreationDate="2019-03-29T08:01:11.787" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well done you are doing a grate job. Scrum has lead you to diagnose several problems with your process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend devops, developers and ops merge. They then fully deploy to testing (that is the same as operational). After testing you press a button to deploy to operational. &lt;code&gt;Docker&lt;/code&gt; is a good tool to help with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing (and most important thing) is to conduct a retrospective, when ever you detect a problem (feed back from test: Why did this happen? incomplete/secret spec?, incomplete developer testing?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a retrospective ask questions, without blame. When asking use 5-why. That is ask why, then ask why (5 times). E.g. Why did it break? It broke because we over loaded the donkey. Why did we over load the donkey? Because we did not know how much load we were putting on it. Why? because the scales where missing. Why? because they were being borrowed by bill. Why? Because bill does not have his own scales. Why? because of budget savings. Why? because …&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3424" LastEditorUserId="3424" LastEditDate="2019-03-29T19:37:31.363" LastActivityDate="2019-03-29T19:37:31.363" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26094" CreationDate="2019-03-29T09:35:21.420" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I second ctrl-atl-delor (+1!) - you should invest on automation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile methodology helps on how work is organized, but regardless of the methodology, you should automate as much as possible of your work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a similar scenario in our project - and I'd guess it's fairly common on legacy applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have two main fronts of work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SDLC automation: &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/q/28608015/523742&quot;&gt;Continuous Integration, Delivery and Deployment&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testing automation: &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/135218/16776&quot;&gt;BDD and TDD might be helpful.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on your scenario, you'll need to assess which areas within SDLC or Testing automation you can obtain benefits faster (the low-hanging fruits). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll need support from either &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_title&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;C-level&lt;/a&gt; and / or stakeholders, as you'll definitely need to invest time and effort on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-03-29T09:35:21.420" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26098" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26100" CreationDate="2019-03-29T10:25:15.080" Score="4" ViewCount="228" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was a bit confused to determine column on the Kanban. Whether can be determined freely or are there separate rules? can we convert SDLC process to Kanban columns like Waterfall's (Planning, Defining, Designing, Testing, Deploy) to Kanban as a column (Backlog, Defining, Designing, Testing, Deploy)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried to find some sources but the results are different. &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0984521402&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;David Book&lt;/a&gt; said, we need an existing process that can be convert to Kanban process. If it so, then what is the existing process for a new project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35433" LastActivityDate="2019-03-29T16:04:51.130" Title="Does SDLC process can be applied to Kanban columns?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;lean&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26099" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-03-29T12:20:08.883" Score="1" ViewCount="115" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our team we don't have dedicated Scrum Master so one of the developer is playing the role of SM. I know this is wrong but it can't be changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In out system, we assign story points to all the stories at the time of grooming and Production issues don't have story points but we ASSUME it's 3 story point. For us 1 story point is 1 day (again it can't be changed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How we plan our sprint, in first sprint based on the team member's individual capacity (i.e. 75% only) we distribute the stories and production issues. Problem comes in next sprint planning when we have not-completed items from previous sprint. Then what we do, suppose there was a story of 8 story points and developer has already spent 5 days on it in previous sprint. Then, in the planning of next sprint what we do, we reduce 3 days from developer's capacity as only 3 days work is left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure this is right and not sure how this is gonna effect burndown chart and velocity chart because production issues doesn't have story points. Also, when we get internal issues, how they affect above charts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another confusion is when should we have sprint review and what is the exact purpose it solves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone has any suggestion or comment about our practice and how can we improve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35460" LastActivityDate="2019-03-29T13:23:24.700" Title="Need help for sprint planning when tasks are not done in previous sprint" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;burndown-chart&gt;&lt;sprint-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26098" CreationDate="2019-03-29T12:59:12.987" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Kanban, the board is meant to visualize your process. By visualizing your process and tracking work through it, it is easier to spot your bottlenecks and challenges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the direct answer to your question is: No, the columns are not set. Yes, you can use those SDLC titles IF that is how you currently work. Now, a word of warning, if that is a whole project that goes through that cycle, the board won't tell you much because things will move very slowly. Most groups find that they want to track discrete pieces of work (like features) through it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A little extra info&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of teams and organizations think they are using the Kanban methodology because they have a board. There's more to it than that (though not much). The Kanban methodology requires that each column has WIP limits which are respected. It also needs regular small, experimental improvements to the system, which in turn require some disciplined measurement of flow including lead time, cycle time, and throughput. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, it you're struggling to build your board, I highly recommend looking at STATIK (Systems Thinking Approach to Implementing Kanban). There is a pretty solid blog post on how to do it &lt;a href=&quot;https://elabor8.com.au/start-coaching-new-teams-with-statik/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. I personally do this with any team I work with anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-03-29T12:59:12.987" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26099" CreationDate="2019-03-29T13:23:24.700" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two answers to this: the scrum answer and the deeper answer to the questions under the surface.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the scrum answer on carry-over work. At the end of a sprint, all items go back to the product backlog. There is, of course, strong motivation to pull them into the next sprint to finish, but it isn't assumed. Sometimes in the past 2 weeks other very important items came up that are more important than finishing that item. Also, carry over work is a light antipattern in Scrum. What I mean by this is that we do want to get to a complete product increment each sprint, but we also know that a team doing challenging work won't all the time. The rule of thumb Mike Cohn uses is &quot;100% of the work done 80% of the time&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok, now the answer to why you're struggling. I don't mean to berate you when I say this, but there are a lot of misused practices in there and that is causing the parts of the Scrum framework not to support each other properly. First, Scrum looks to past sprints for the team's capacity. If in the last 3 or 4 sprints you completed an average of 25 man-days of work, then you take on around 25 man-days of work in the next sprint. Also, the team commits to a body of work, not individuals. Also, production issues are often open-ended, so unless you already know the problem and have an idea of what the solution may be, estimating them isn't often helpful. Usually, we want to instead time-box them, which sets an outer limit on how long you are willing to work on them before it impacts the overall sprint. Of course, some are very important, so if you reach your timebox, you don't just drop it, you regroup with the team and discuss how to move forward next. Usually, if you extend the timebox, you are also agreeing what work you will kick out of the sprint to make room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This kind of capacity planning will give you more control over your pace of work and after a few sprints, you can get to that Mike Cohn rule I mentioned before. Once you are there, you can get into the really interesting bits of Scrum. Scrum looks at the team as a whole, not individuals. By fielding work as a team (sometimes this means things like pairing, group sessions, divide and conquer of individual tasks, etc) many teams find synergies allowing the overall team to be much more productive than the sum of the individuals. (I know synergy has become a terrible buzzword, but it's actually a real thing too)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the charts, in Scrum, remember that those charts aren't the goal. Burndown charts, CFDs, velocity charts, they're like meters on a dashboard. They just tell you information. Carry-over work often leaves these charts looking erratic - which just tells you that the team is delivering the work in an erratic way. As they are able to smooth out the delivery of work, the charts smooth out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the review, in Scrum, the review happens at the end of the sprint and stakeholders and users give feedback on the work that was done in the sprint so the team has a better idea of what to do next. This may be another thing that is out of alignment. One of the most important things that Scrum lets you do in each sprint is learn. If the feedback from sprint reviews isn't changing your understanding of the work you are doing and influencing where you put your effort next, you aren't getting the primary value out of scrum. If your work doesn't need that (you work in a service center where you are simply doing tasks first come-first serve or in priority order), then Scrum may actually be the wrong framework to use. Not that it won't work at all, but it's like driving in a screw with a hammer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-03-29T13:23:24.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26098" CreationDate="2019-03-29T16:04:51.130" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Daniel has said - Kanban says &quot;Start from where you are&quot; - meaning, start with your current process, don't change anything.  Simply visualize it and then gradually change it as the team identifies the need for improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your current process is &quot;Backlog, Defining, Designing, Testing, Deploy&quot; - you can start with that and use it to track each Requirement (or User Story or feature - whatever you use currently at the lowest level of your &quot;scope definition&quot; - the actual deliverables for your team).  You can't just have the whole Project (depicted as a card) going through that process - as Daniel said, then you won't see anything progress; NOR can you have your typical project plan tasks flow through that process. (Tasks simply follow a &quot;To do - Doing - Done process).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea in Lean/ Kanban is to track the &quot;value addition&quot; stages of your workflow - and apply it to each piece of value you are delivering to your customer, which, in this case, is software pieces (features or requirements).  Think about each step in your dev process that adds incremental value to the deliverable - even if it does not involve a handoff from one person to another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, here is our workflow that we use for our own product development - and we use a TDD approach - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FHsUL.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FHsUL.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a fairly elaborate process but tracks each value addition step as a developer works through them on a single user story or enhancement or defect, the 3 typical deliverables our developers work on.  The color coding identifies the type of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can start with the high-level flow that you provided - and you can quickly &quot;evolve&quot; to a more granular flow where each of the stages you identified will have some sub-stages.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, remember, that Kanban helps you even out and improve your flow by providing intermediate buffer columns so that each stage of your workflow has enough work and that work is flowing smoothly.  This ensures that - ideally - at no point do your team members get over-burdened or become idle.  You do this by adding intermediate &quot;Done&quot; columns (Design (In-progress/ Done), as an example) and adding WIP (Work-in-progress) Limits on each column. Here are a couple of examples - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/IRawU.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/IRawU.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To learn more about the Kanban Method, you can read David Anderson's &quot;Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for your Technology Business&quot; - which you already referred to.  You will also find many useful articles in our Kanban Guide &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.digite.com/kanban/what-is-kanban/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your other question - there is no &quot;pre-defined&quot; process. You and your team have to decide what process you will use - based on your current development experience and practices - on your new project as well.  If you have been only doing waterfall projects so far, then you start by using the same process again. If you have been doing a Scrum or an Iterative process, start with that.  Kanban will gradually help you improve and evolve as you identify problems with your software delivery if any, and any process bottlenecks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I also agree with Daniel - you can use the STATIK method (Systems Thinking Approach To Implement Kanban) to identify your process and the kind of work you do - I also use it in my Kanban training classes.  However, it is a somewhat advanced topic. I would suggest getting a Kanban trainer/ coach to help you with that initially.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2019-03-29T16:04:51.130" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26070" CreationDate="2019-03-30T09:46:29.527" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I could say something about each of your points, but will address one. If you address this one, then you will figure it all out (eventually).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;“Software developers started leaving project”&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask why? Ask them why? Ask the people that are remaining why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hold regular retrospectives, find out why, have the developers find and fix the problems. Give them as much support as they need/want. Be careful not to dump it on them, and be careful not to continue to control, if they want to fix it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not blame. Do no punish. If they tell you that they/someone messed up, then do not react: this is new information, you would not have known if they had not told you. Ask what can we do to avoid this happening again (no blame). Ask them what they would do to improve things. Run experiments, short iterations. Improve one step at a time. Don't try to fix it all in one go (You will go bankrupt before you finish).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also you team size is way to big (“No big new features been released in recent time”, “50+ people”). However you must not kick them out of the company. Find other independent work for them (another project). Get written assurance from the board of directors, that there will be no layoffs because of process improvement. The first layoff will destroy cooperation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“adding human resources to a late software project makes it later”. — Fred Brooks in his 1975 book The Mythical Man-Month. Removing them may make it earlier. But don't focus on this aspect. Focus on why they are leaving (people may leave in the mean time, and you need to figure-out how to down-size without destroying motivation. You can move some of the team into testing, other support roles, or process improvement. Then eventually into other projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3424" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-04-01T07:23:38.387" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26106" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-03-30T18:04:19.040" Score="4" ViewCount="231" Body="&lt;p&gt;All, I have to work with an Agile team that they have to attend to live system issue(tickets) fixing while working on a sprint. So that we cannot achieve the committed  SP  at the end of the sprint. Does anyone have advice for such an issue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34796" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-04-04T09:55:36.500" LastActivityDate="2019-04-05T13:12:19.567" Title="How to work with sprints having to provide support to unplanned issues?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26106" CreationDate="2019-03-30T19:44:49.070" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The very first thing you should do is make it visible how many support requests the team has had to tackle and how much time that took. This allows the stakeholders to see exactly what the effects are of the support requests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the time spent on support requests is fairly consistent over a longer period of time (or it feels to be that way to the team if you have no measurements), then you can take that into account in your sprint planning and simply reserve time in the planned work to respond to support requests. This should make it possible for the team to feel a sense of accomplishment that they can finish what they promised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, not all problems in a live system are equal. While some problems are definitely blocking for the business (for example, when users can't login to the system, causing the business to lose money), others might be less severe (like a typo on a rarely visited page).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;You should try to get all problems rated to the correct severity. Blocking issues are important enough to be picked up immediately (to the point that you can even consider aborting a running sprint to free up the resources), but less severe issues should go on the product backlog and be prioritized along with the rest of the work.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;To get this done in the organization might be a struggle, especially if they are used to getting all production issues fixed with the highest priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If (truly) blocking issues are a frequent occurrence, then you should also try to analyze why those problems happen so frequently and what can be done to reduce their occurrence rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2019-03-30T19:44:49.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26106" CreationDate="2019-03-31T13:40:20.690" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you're working with sprints, I assume you're working following Scrum framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question then might be &lt;em&gt;&quot;in Scrum, how to commit to a closed iteration if you don't know what'll come mid Sprint?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Answer: you can't.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is based on the idea that, &lt;em&gt;once a specific piece of work is committed to be delivered, it'll be the &lt;strong&gt;only&lt;/strong&gt; work the team will have to deal with&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few alternatives to handle such scenarios:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Go full Kanban and forget about iterations. Requires more mature teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/9101/430&quot;&gt;Split capacity between support and development&lt;/a&gt; and go Kanban for Support and stick to Scrum for development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I see Kanban as the evolved version of Scrum for mature teams. With that in mind, discuss with the team on how to move towards less iteration-centric development models.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-03-31T13:40:20.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25502" CreationDate="2019-04-01T03:14:29.407" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. You can create an Excel Visual Report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the “&lt;strong&gt;Report&lt;/strong&gt;” tab, select “&lt;strong&gt;Visual Reports&lt;/strong&gt;”. In the dialog, select any Excel report from the “&lt;strong&gt;Assignment usage&lt;/strong&gt;” tab (the “&lt;strong&gt;Baseline Work Report&lt;/strong&gt;” worked for me). In the “&lt;strong&gt;Select level of usage data to include in the report&lt;/strong&gt;” combo, choose the time-phased detail you need; unless you need a daily detail (e.g. hours per resource &lt;em&gt;per day&lt;/em&gt;), you can leave the default “&lt;strong&gt;Weeks&lt;/strong&gt;” option selected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will create an Excel document with two tabs. First tab will have a bar graph (you can ignore it). Second tab will have a pivot table with resource work data in it. Here you need to add the “&lt;strong&gt;Task&lt;/strong&gt;” field to rows, and the “&lt;strong&gt;Resources&lt;/strong&gt;” field to columns. You could also need to remove the extra work fields (remaining work, baseline work, and so) from the values list, and left the “&lt;strong&gt;Work&lt;/strong&gt;” field only. You'll also need to drill down to the desired sub-task level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’m adding an image of the result I got form a small project file (it’s in spanish, but you’ll get it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5GMWP.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5GMWP.png&quot; alt=&quot;Hours per task per resource table in Excel, created with MS Project Visual Reports&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps. Greetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28645" LastActivityDate="2019-04-01T03:14:29.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25945" CreationDate="2019-04-01T08:23:25.367" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion &quot;avoid vendor-lock in&quot; this is more a topic of software architecture that belongs do &lt;a href=&quot;http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technically you are locked in to a vendor when your code directly uses vendor-specific-propriatory-datastructures&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make changing from one vendore to an other more easy all vendor specific code should be hidden behind a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adapter_pattern&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;software Adapter&lt;/a&gt;. In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://jeffreypalermo.com/blog/the-onion-architecture-part-1/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;onion software architecture&lt;/a&gt; this is called the infrastructure layer: You have thin adapter interfaces in the core that your own code uses. The vendor specific adapter implementation itself is implemented in the &quot;infrastructure&quot; layer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="418" LastActivityDate="2019-04-01T08:23:25.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26106" CreationDate="2019-04-01T09:43:43.030" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The committed SP by the team has to consider both the stories from the product backlog, and portion of committment towards the production tickets. The sprint planning should be like say 85% product backlog and 15% for these defect fixes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34733" LastActivityDate="2019-04-01T09:43:43.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26116" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-04-01T13:22:37.773" Score="3" ViewCount="89" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am struggling to quantify value (e.g. Cost of delay) of competing priority items so that I can communicate that figure to senior management and can make Lean decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35076" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-04-01T13:27:59.923" LastActivityDate="2019-04-01T16:04:33.440" Title="How can a Product Owner measure items of competing priority in quantitative form?" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2019-04-08T03:11:47.623" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26117" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26119" CreationDate="2019-04-01T14:49:02.977" Score="4" ViewCount="1228" Body="&lt;p&gt;During a Sprint grooming, as a facilitator (optional) of the meeting, SM can ensure that event takes place, is time bound, conversation is focussed on the topic, makes sure Acceptance Criteria, Estimations are provided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What other specific questions can a SM ask during grooming without sounding like a Manager or exceeding the authority?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, can SM ask any of the following questions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How will you test it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who will use it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How will we know when it’s done?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What assumptions are we making?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35479" LastActivityDate="2019-04-03T08:55:44.560" Title="What questions can a Scrum Master ask during Sprint Grooming" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26116" CreationDate="2019-04-01T16:04:33.440" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quantifying value can be a challenge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your organisation may not have done the detailed analysis necessary to work out potential benefits, costs, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Value may also include non-financial factors such as organisational strategy, regulatory requirements, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Different people in the organisation may have different views on what is valuable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quantifying value on small backlog items may be more difficult than on coarser grained items. For example, it is often easier to compute the value of epics/themes than to do it for user stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend you start a discussion in your organisation about what approach they want to take towards defining value. A lot will depend on how much effort they want to put in to this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some organisations it is OK to have a very lightweight analysis of value, perhaps just rating backlog items as high/medium/low value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For other organisations a more comprehensive approach may be required. These organisations might then consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deciding at what granularity level to do value estimation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using some kind of relative weighting for factors like cost of delay, user retention, new user generation, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increased financial analysis, driven by the business (sales/marketing teams), so that more information is available for determining value.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An important point is that much of this may require a significant investment of time and resources by the organisation &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; to come up with a framework for value estimation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-04-01T16:04:33.440" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26117" CreationDate="2019-04-02T09:57:10.373" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key output of backlog refinement is that you are ready for sprint planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master a question I ask a lot at backlog refinement is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are you happy that we can take this story in to sprint planning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team likes to do estimation during backlog refinement then I would also often ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you have enough information to estimate on this story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The questions you mention would be acceptable in a lot of teams, but I would prefer to rephrase them to be prompts to the team rather than being so specific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, rather than:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How will you test it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would prefer to ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are you happy we have considered the testing aspects of this story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-04-02T09:57:10.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26117" CreationDate="2019-04-03T08:54:53.507" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to the existing suggestions, I also like to ask what other dependencies might exist, e.g. the deployment of another task in the same sprint or environment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may help the team think outside the box and detect possible dependencies/limitations, which should be added in a comment on the ticket. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35496" LastActivityDate="2019-04-03T08:54:53.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26117" CreationDate="2019-04-03T08:55:44.560" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I try to make sure that everybody can share their opinion. Some people are more reserved and do not answer a general questions because some else did that (even though they do share the opinion of the other person).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also try to read body language; try to see if everybody is in agreement with what has been said&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35188" LastActivityDate="2019-04-03T08:55:44.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26122" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-04-03T12:38:07.550" Score="3" ViewCount="213" Body="&lt;p&gt;When should a multi-team project be split to run as separate projects? &#xA;Where lays the border, when something should be run as separate project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Case&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;3 feature teams (DEVs+QAs) working on product backlog items (features, bug fixes), and use automated acceptance tests package at&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  a final stage of feature verification.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;1 AQA team, who create automated acceptance tests packages (mentioned before) to test the product from client perspective. This&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  package is delivered to the client and to feature teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Currently this is run as one project, but maybe it is better to split&#xA;  them into 2?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I came up with the following possible criteria for separation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1. Different release cycles and periods&#xA;2. Different life time&#xA;3. Different workflows and definition of done&#xA;4. Possibility to identify clear independent (from other teams) deliverables&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any other criteria to consider or maybe mine are redundant?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5982" LastActivityDate="2019-04-04T23:22:23.050" Title="Separation of multi-team project into several projects" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;&lt;multi-projects&gt;&lt;program-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26106" CreationDate="2019-04-03T12:51:18.613" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on your several previous sprints, you should know (or gather) the average amount of such tickets and actual story points / hours spent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then during sprint planning you allocate certain capacity(e.g. 15-30% of average team velocity) to those unplanned items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there would be more unplanned items, you would collaborate with PO to put some items back to backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there would be less, then again PO could put something to the sprint which teams are confident to handle. This could also be non-functional items (extend unit test coverage, improve project build time, sw performance, technical debt, other enablers for future success)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5982" LastActivityDate="2019-04-03T12:51:18.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26122" CreationDate="2019-04-03T14:07:46.143" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally, the question I would ask is: &quot;What benefit do you gain from splitting them?&quot; The risk in splitting them is that your prioritization loses focus on end value and, more broadly, that you could get a lot done, but not meet the success criteria of the project because some teams excel while others struggle and you erode focus on that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many times I hear this, the stated benefit is so that one team doesn't slow down another or that reports look better, which aren't real benefits. The reports are superficial and if you really are doing a multi team project, the teams are still dependent on each other, splitting the projects just makes the impact less obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So generally speaking, if it is one project because that is what matters to the customer, don't split it unless you can make some strong case for extra value to the customer that they can't get without the split.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-04-03T14:07:46.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26122" CreationDate="2019-04-03T21:05:02.340" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most cases, you should only have one project per product. The desire to split a single product into multiple projects is usually a sign that inter-team collaboration and iterative integration have become a central bottleneck for your process. I provide additional analysis and recommendations below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;One Product ➡️ One Project ➡️ One Integrated Increment&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When should a multi-team project be split to run as separate projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a rule of thumb, each project should run from a single Product Backlog. In each of your examples, you may have multiple teams, but each team is still fundamentally working on the same product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you’re split into feature or component teams, you’re all still developing the same product, and should all be working from the same top-level Product Backlog. You &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to keep this central coherence, as it’s a core element of cross-team collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your actual challenge seems to be &lt;em&gt;integration&lt;/em&gt;. When working with multiple teams, or when work is split along feature or component lines, the central challenge is to ensure that the loosely-coupled work that each team is working on during the iteration still comes back together to represent a potentially-shippable increment at the end of each iteration. That potentially-shippabke increment is the central coherence that aligns your teams and keeps the product development on track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scaled frameworks like Nexus or SAFe each approach this challenge differently, but they also share some commonalities. Continuous integration is a great practice if you can manage it, but that’s not always practical at significant scale. However, frameworks like Nexus address the need for cross-team integration by having a dedicated team whose responsibility is to ensure that all work from the various teams can be successfully integrated and delivered as a unit at the end of each iteration. Whatever framework you follow, ensure your teams are collaborating sufficiently to allow for continuous or per-iteration integration, so that the product is always in a potentially releasable state at each major inspect-and-adapt inflection point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The details may vary by framework or by organization. However, unless you are actually attempting to deliver multiple products, you should ensure that your teams maintain a central coherence and treat iterative integration as a first-class element of the multi-team process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-04-03T21:05:02.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26127" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-04-04T09:31:50.797" Score="0" ViewCount="617" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have predecessor 46 and 147  on task 200. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task 147 finish date is after task 46, but task 200 is starting the day after task 46, not after task 147 as expected.  How do I fix this?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would expect MS projects to have a task start after the finish date of the predecessors with the latest finish date, not earliest finish date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35511" LastActivityDate="2019-04-11T21:54:26.320" Title="Multiple predecessors" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26128" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-04-04T09:55:01.103" Score="6" ViewCount="1007" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the questions while PSM I™ Preparation Quiz which I was unable to digest was,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What provides guidance to the Development Team on why it is building&#xA;  the Increment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The Sprint Backlog &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The Product Owner &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The Sprint Goal &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The Scrum Master&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this I selected the &quot;The sprint backlog&quot; as appropriate answer but it turned out wrong. Correct answer is &quot;The Sprint Goal&quot; with the explanation as &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&quot;The Sprint Goal is an objective set for the Sprint that can be met through &#xA;the implementation of Product Backlog. &#xA;It provides guidance to the Development Team on why it &#xA;is building the Increment.&quot;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My question over here is what is the difference between Sprint Backlog and Sprint Goal?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried googling around to understand this but I was unable to get to any conclusion. Please suggest!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11515" LastActivityDate="2020-07-08T02:01:46.377" Title="Difference between sprint backlog and sprint goal?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26128" CreationDate="2019-04-04T10:39:16.603" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great question! It sounds like you may already know this, but for anyone else, the Scrum Guide says this about Topic 1 in Sprint planning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During Sprint Planning the Scrum Team also crafts a Sprint Goal. The&#xA;  Sprint Goal is an objective that will be met within the Sprint through&#xA;  the implementation of the Product Backlog, and it provides guidance to&#xA;  the Development Team on why it is building the Increment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A sprint goal might be something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A user will be able to see a list of recent transactions on their&#xA;  account and search that list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the team brings the backlog items in that fulfill that goal. Many teams pull in a number of backlog items that may or may not have some coherent theme and then set the goal of finishing the work. The difference between these two approaches is subtle, but it comes down to outcome vs output. The first one focuses on creating an outcome for end users. The second one focuses on output (work being done rather than value being delivered). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something else interesting about this sort of sprint goal is that it is in some times possible to deliver the sprint goal without delivering all of the backlog items. This is a little unintuitive, but when things don't go as planned in a sprint, a great team can rally around the sprint goal to find a new way to reach it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-04-04T10:39:16.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26130" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-04-04T17:12:15.003" Score="1" ViewCount="282" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to plan a project in which for a given task and given resource, workload changes from one month to another. How I can plan this in MS project? It is very critical for me to monitor resource loading per month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35504" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-04-04T17:18:29.053" LastActivityDate="2019-05-08T13:03:00.597" Title="How to plan for variable workload for a given task and resource?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;workload&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26127" CreationDate="2019-04-04T18:05:38.080" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can think about two possible causes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check the relation between task 200 and task 147. The relation should&#xA;be “FS” (finish to start) and should not have any lag value.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Verify if task 200 has any date restriction. This is indicated by a&#xA;calendar icon, in the information field (leftmost column in the&#xA;Entry table, on a task view). Restrictions can force a task to start or finish at a certain date, regardless of its dependencies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Greetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28645" LastActivityDate="2019-04-04T18:05:38.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26122" CreationDate="2019-04-04T23:22:23.050" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, a multi teams project is having many teams working in the development or sell of one project. Your question is how to reorganize a company or a department in many projects. So, you have employees that can be asked to change their daily work. They will have to work for another product development or sell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, it is the boss who decides. The profitability of a business resides in the ability of the boss to offer products that his or her clients will buy on a long term period. A good business man or a good business woman, will regularly adapt the products of the company to assure steady cash flows that can cover all the expenses of the company that accumulate each month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, it is not the same thing if you are a public company or a military owned company. They are more bureaucratic and they do not have the same pressure of assuring monthly revenues because the money comes from the government, from the taxes everybody pays. Most of the time, the government shut down public companies that cost more than what they bring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourth, don't leave to your employees a choice. Put the best qualified persons at the best place for you to reach your goals. Many employees do alliances with other employees to assure a long term career; but the perspective of the employer is not at all in that direction. If some see a job like a reward or a way to have a good life for a long time, they can be surprised if they are asked to move to another department or if they are fired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, regularly remind to your employees that if you don't have sufficient revenues, you will have to close your doors and that everybody will lose their job. It is more important to focus on the development of products to assure a steady profitability of your business than on the career of your employees. A companies that have many products will succeed longer than a company who focus only on one. Be sure that the products you choose will sell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user30807" LastActivityDate="2019-04-04T23:22:23.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26133" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26148" CreationDate="2019-04-05T06:24:18.663" Score="5" ViewCount="142" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a scrum team, and are debating two approaches for fixing P1 production issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For P0 issues, whoever is the expert in that area jumps in and fixes the issue, so that the issue can get addressed at the earliest.  The P2 issues are moved to the backlog and get prioritized for future sprints.   However, P1 issues are such that we cannot wait till the next sprint for them to get fixed.  Hence, we are debating two approaches here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whoever is the dev oncall fixes the issue; though they may not have the complete context of that area of code; they would get the context from the dev owner of that feature and fix the issue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The dev oncall only does the initial analysis to confirm that it is a genuine issue, and dev owner of the feature fixes the issue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In approach 1, the advantage is that nothing planned for the current sprint is impacted, and everyone in the team gets to work on areas that they may not have previously worked on.  However, this approach will spend more of oncall bandwidth, and if there are more issues, then, we may need multiple oncall during some sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In approach 2, the advantage is that the P1 issues will get fixed at the earliest since the person with the complete context of the issue works on it. However, something planned in the sprint will have to be deprioritized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you see any other advantages / disadvantages of these two approaches, and would you advice to choose a specific one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23633" LastActivityDate="2019-04-08T17:53:33.320" Title="Should dev oncall fix P1 issues?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;development-process&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26106" CreationDate="2019-04-05T06:59:47.053" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Scrum is based on the empirical approach, I would treat such things as the feedback to the current work and try to learn from such cases. It would be wise to add people who raise such tickets to the stakeholders list so the Product Owner (PO) would have a better overview of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PO should always maximize the business value of the Development Team's efforts; it may seem insane but sometimes this means that it's more beneficial to continue the work on the new and leave some issues / bugs / crashes for later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you are not able to reject such work, a Sprint content is always negotiable, so the PO and Development Team should have a conversation about what is possible to achieve within the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you need to spend 15% - 30% of the work on maintenance, take a trace of the amount of such work and think over what you can do to make this smaller in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35521" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-04-05T13:12:19.567" LastActivityDate="2019-04-05T13:12:19.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26133" CreationDate="2019-04-05T08:55:01.277" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Welcome to PMSE!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-dev&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Individual Development Team members may have specialized skills and areas of focus, but accountability belongs to the Development Team as&#xA;  a whole.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, your goal should be to progressively move away from the notion of &quot;dev owners of features&quot;. Also, it is good to set aside bandwidth for handling unforeseen production issues. This will minimize disruption to the sprint. As you fear, &quot;if there are more issues&quot; I would look for ways to tighten up the QA process. So, my vote is for your Approach 1. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5438" LastActivityDate="2019-04-05T08:55:01.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20186" CreationDate="2019-04-06T18:00:46.247" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftwarecloud/version-report-777001521.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Version Report&lt;/a&gt;is per board, so if you have more the one board, it will produce a different estimation for each board. So I would consider this approach only when the project uses a single board. The same applies to &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftwarecloud/release-burndown-777002702.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Release Burn-down Report&lt;/a&gt;. I don't think both reports produce a consistent result when there is more than one board. The release (field) is not board-specific, but such reports will depend on the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way you want to provide the forecast is bottom-up, based on estimating the epics and stories. I think the referred report might work only when there is one board per project which is a simple case. Jira should provide a better set of reports with a higher level of customization in order to have some useful tools to predict the future (forecast). The existing reports are difficult to understand with no customization and not valid for a project working with more than one board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another workaround would be to estimate the entire backlog using any estimation technique, it could be assigning story points and then instead of keeping the issues in the backlog, ask the team when they expect to deliver them and then to assign to future sprints. Now we have the work planned. Exporting from Jira the information into an Excel file, and then we will have a plan based on the sprint work future planned. This is a possible workaround to predict the future and make some capacity analysis based on resource planning and to identify possible gaps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see the point of using a different field for estimating at the end as part of grooming activities the estimations become more precise as we know more about the story/epic to implement. The estimation is an iterative process, where the sort term is more precise than the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Nex-Gen Jira Project there a new feature: &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftwarecloud/roadmap-957979308.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Roadmap&lt;/a&gt;, but it is not available for classic projects. Selecting next-gen or classic project has advantages and disadvantages. For example, you have roadmap for Next-gen, but then you don't sub-tasks for example and other limitations too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using a roadmap will provide top-down planning as it should be. For a classic project, the only equivalent solution is purchasing a plugin from Jira Market place, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1212078/easy-agile-user-story-maps-for-jira?hosting=cloud&amp;amp;tab=overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Easy Agile User Story Map for Jira&lt;/a&gt; or any other plugins such Jira Portfolio or Big Project that provide some similar solutions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jira basic version provides limited options to do a forecast. Jira follows the Agile/Scrum principles where the only way to predict the future is through delivering a piece of software and showing to the stakeholders the work done in a demo session. Reports are intended just for internal use of the team, but not for other audience such as external stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to give you a more optimistic answer, but I don´t think the current Jira version (at least for Jira Cloud, the one I know), does not provide a simple way to this forecast estimation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27556" LastActivityDate="2019-04-06T18:00:46.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26139" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26140" CreationDate="2019-04-07T17:04:55.167" Score="0" ViewCount="262" Body="&lt;p&gt;Could you please explain what is meant by &quot;action-oriented&quot; details in the following sentence. Please provide an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the work breakdown structure designer attempts to capture any&#xA;  action-oriented details in the WBS, the designer will likely include&#xA;  either too many actions or too few actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_breakdown_structure#Plan_outcomes,_not_actions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;WBS - Wiki&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2595" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2019-04-28T21:08:51.287" LastActivityDate="2019-04-28T21:08:51.287" Title="What is &quot;&quot;action-oriented&quot; WBS Item?" Tags="&lt;work-breakdown-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26139" CreationDate="2019-04-07T17:41:16.983" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the context of the rest of the section, it is saying that you should focus on the outcome desired, not the action needed to get there. For example, I might say that I should have infrastructure deployed and sub-items may include networking, servers, power, etc. This is as opposed to the actions needed to get there (configure switch, wire racks, install OS, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The wording, frankly, feels clunky to me, but might be summed up as &quot;Say what must be accomplished, not how to accomplish it&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-04-07T17:41:16.983" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23070" CreationDate="2019-04-07T20:09:44.393" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what do you need. Could you add some more detail to your request?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far, I can think about some options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Disable automatic calculation in MS Project Options configuration,&#xA;and then press F9 every time you need to recalculate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use &lt;strong&gt;Manual&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;tasks, not automatic (MS Project 2010 and newer).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use elapsed&#xA;durations (adding an 'e' before the time unit, e.g. &quot;2 edays&quot;), this&#xA;consider duration without calendar restrictions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But please clarify exactly what do you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Greetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28645" LastActivityDate="2019-04-07T20:09:44.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24639" CreationDate="2019-04-07T20:40:50.533" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want a summary task in MS Project that includes all the project's tasks, you can simply set visible the &quot;Project summary task&quot;. In the &quot;Format&quot; tab, check the &quot;Project Summary Task&quot; checkbox. The Project Summary Task always exists, but it is not shown by default.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to summarize only a subset of tasks, then you will need to use custom fields with formulas. But as stated in Ashok's answer, this will duplicate some project variables (work, for example) so it's not a convenient option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Greetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28645" LastActivityDate="2019-04-07T20:40:50.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26144" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-04-08T10:55:45.390" Score="0" ViewCount="177" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problem:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a scrum master ad I've started working with a new team 3 sprints ago. When I started I was warned about the team because they:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has never completed a sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Politics within the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I started I thought OK I can solve some of the issues to &lt;strong&gt;complete&lt;/strong&gt; at least one sprint. The first sprint I noticed a few issues that that I would like to change such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Three week sprints&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They are comfortable to carry items over from one sprint to the next&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product owner actually test the sprint items - Acts as an tester.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum roles and processes are not 100% defined.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Someone predicted the sprint velocity (That I think is incorrect)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team is very discouraged&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They want to add development team members every time something goes wrong&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum is not followed 100%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Obsessive report generation &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Solution&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Three week sprints&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I want to suggest two week sprints, this gives opportunity to adapt using retrospectives. I also feel like team &quot;Chills&quot; the first week and the next two weeks they push hard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They are comfortable to carry items over from one sprint to the next.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've made sure they break tasks down to workable and accomplishable tasks. &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/25694/carrying-items-over-from-one-sprint-to-the-next&quot;&gt;I've asked the question and got an answer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product owner actually test the sprint items - Acts as an tester.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've suggested she does what a product owner should do: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/resources/what-is-a-product-owner&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;What is a PO&lt;/a&gt; But she insist she needs to test each task (I understand her Point of view) because she is an expert in the area. But if the acceptance criteria is clear then there is no need for her to test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;4&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scrum roles and processes are not 100% defined.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fist we have one tester (User Acceptance Tester) for all developers.Then we have a &quot;Business Specialist&quot; and she does not really do anything to help the team accomplish sprints. She tells the architects how to architect. For example she said &quot;There is always a place for hard coded in a system&quot;. As mentioned we have a Product owner that does more testing and closing tasks than doing what a Product owner should do. If a PO wants to test she can but should not become a bottleneck. &#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/25607/should-a-product-owner-start-testing-while-an-item-is-in-code-review&quot;&gt;I've asked the question and got an answer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;5&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Someone predicted the sprint velocity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Before I joined the team the CTO worked out that the velocity is 60 story point and we need to do that every sprint to achieve our goal. The architects and Product owner said this wont be achieved. The data he used it not reliable.&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/25900/as-a-scrum-master-how-to-handle-management-expectations-on-delivering-story-poi&quot;&gt;I've asked the question and got an answer&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;6&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team is very discouraged&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The UAT tester does not talk to the Product owner because they cant see eye to eye. The UAT is a very rude employee and she does not want to be in the office because she has to drive an hour to get to work, and she would rather be at the main office which is a few minuets from her house.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They have never achieved a sprint except two sprints ago, where I helped a lot. There is a communication issue and that cased us to not achieve the previous sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;7&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They want to add development team members every time something goes wrong.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I get constant calls from CTO where he says they want to add another developer to the team to achieve sprint. I've explained this will drag the team down but they don't listen. (We have a weird setup)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is two projects that are done concurrently. We have one developer for that project A (Not that important project - Not my words) and the tester, Product Owner and two architects is the for project B (Important project - Not my words). So that is a development team of 4 people excl PO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Project B has the same tester, Product owner and architects but the project has 8 developers. This team is a size 11 people, excl PO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;9&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Obsessive report generation &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have to send out a daily report to stakeholders containing info such as: Burn-down, Sprint goal RAG status, Date when item is Projected and actually in development, code review and testing. Cumulative area burn-down. My team is transparent and the stakeholders can walk up to our actual or Jira board and see statuses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can read scrum is not followed 100% and to make changes is hard because of the client and management at my company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What suggestions do you have to fix some of the above scenarios or fix all the issues as a whole?.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34072" LastEditorUserId="34072" LastEditDate="2019-04-08T12:49:39.313" LastActivityDate="2019-04-14T21:37:54.083" Title="Issues with team, management and clients to run a proper scrum team" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26144" CreationDate="2019-04-08T11:53:12.303" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's take number 8 first. Is the team committed to practicing Scrum? Is the company committed to it? The answer may not be what they say. They could say yes, but then not be willing to actually follow the Scrum Guide, in which case the actual answer is no. You need to know this to know how to continue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the rest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) 3-week sprints are not completely uncommon and well within the Scrum Guide window. However, shorter sprints often help when teams are struggling with effective sprints - it's just a shorter amount of time to manage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2, 5, and 7) These suggest that the actual plan is many months long, which is exactly what Scrum tells us not to do. If the goal is just to meet the deadline 9 months from now (or whatever it is), then why would I worry about spillover work, sprint-to-sprint velocity, or delivering increments with the team I have today? If the answer to #8 is yes, then they would need to adopt a truly iterative, incremental, and adaptive mindset to their work. If they aren't willing to do that, then the answer to #8 is no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Is verifying each story stopping them from doing their job as PO? Is it possible to focus on the things the team needs to do as PO and if those get done and she wants to do deeper testing, then it probably doesn't hurt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) This is a little confusing to me. Scrum has just 3 roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;6) I'm not there, but throws red flags as a personal conflict that's gone on too long. Why can't she work at the other office? I know face-to-face is more efficient, but that seems really solvable. A team I was on had a member way up in the NW territories in Canada and we just set up a video feed between our team room and his office that he turned on in the morning. It feels like this doesn't have to be a sticking point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the most common misconceptions I encounter is that Scrum can be used to make a waterfall project run faster. It sounds like that might be the kind of situation you are in. Of course, it doesn't. It's a different mindset and requires a different approach to the project. Again, my questions around #8 seem like the linchpin to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-04-08T11:53:12.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26144" CreationDate="2019-04-08T12:01:18.243" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;what a story! It seems that you are working in a difficult environment. Here are my two cents:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Three week sprints&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Covered in your question, but &#xA;It does not have to an issue that a sprint lasts three weeks, but I must admit that when we changed from 3 to 2 weeks there was slacking around. I believe this is a team mindset, they should be able to perform with the same effort in a two week sprint than a three week sprint. But as said, the two week one works better here as well. Changing it seems like a good place to start&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Carry work over to the next sprint&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have a proper planning session in which you determine the amount of work that can be completed? If you do, the team 'commits' to a certain amount of work and should really try to complete it. If you think the low motivation is a problem, try to get them to open up during a retrospect to tell each other what they need to be motivated. You would be surprised how little people might need to be motivated&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PO testing stories&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PO should not test the stories, she should confirm with stakeholders that the implementation is what customers need. This can be done in the review meeting or in a UAT environment after the sprint was completed. If the PO becomes a bottleneck in testing I would try to make that visible. Assign her to the story that she is testing or needs to test and make sure she knows she is holding you back. E.g. by writing a simple report with the information:&#xA;Start date | development complete date | test complete | PO test complete&#xA;This would easily show that you are done but that the PO is blocking you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum roles and processes are not 100% defined&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should be easy to solve, define the roles and processes. E.g. for a business analist you could define that they have to write stories that are functionaly clear. This means that the stories says &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; needs to be accomplished, but now &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt;. The how belongs to the team that does the work. &#xA;Please note that I found this part very difficult to get clear, and after 4 years we are finally at a point that people start to understand what the limitations of their roles are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Someone predicted the sprint velocity&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is weird, you do not need to &lt;em&gt;predict&lt;/em&gt; the velocity, it can be calculated by dividing the total number of story points with the number of sprints. This is actually a fact that cannot  be denied. If the last 5 sprint you completed 40, 45, 30, 45, 38 story points, than you can calculate the velocity: 198 story points / 5 sprints = ~39 points. this could be affected by new people joining the team or vacation / sickness of team members, but that's about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;They want to add development team members every time something goes wrong&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding a resource will obviously increase the velocity, after a period of a lower velocity while getting that person up to speed. But I think the best way to get a good velocity is by having a dedicated team. From what I understand team A and B share developers, which is not very efficient. Would it be possible to divide the resources per project so that they no longer share developers? Then it would make sense to add a new developer to the team&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope you can do something with this, or that somebody is able to help you out further&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35188" LastActivityDate="2019-04-08T12:01:18.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26130" CreationDate="2019-04-08T12:52:32.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The description of the problem suggests the work is &quot;level of effort&quot; and there is likely both normal variability as well as seasonal variability defined by calendar months.  Scheduling this in a tool, such as MSProject, is similar from a risk perspective as any type of project task.  In this case, the tasks repeats self and has a start and finish based on a monthly cadence versus a task that does not repeat itself necessarily and has a start and finish based on the work and its natural completion.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both types of tasks have both aleatory and epistemic variability and both require choosing a planning value somewhere in the probabilistic range you estimate for that task.  For example, if I was estimating a discreet task, I might arrive at a work range of 200 hours (best case), 450 hours (most likely), and 600+ hours (worst case); duration of 10 days (best case), 15 days (most likely), and 25+ days (worst case); and cost of $20K (best case), $45K (most likely), and $60K (worst case).  The schedule requires me to choose somewhere in these ranges where I want to target my performance based on the risk I choose to assume for that piece of work.  If I am uncertain or risk averse, I'd choose on the fatter side of the range; vice versa if I have higher confidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same logic would apply for a LOE task.  You could either choose to use a planning value that you would load in the schedule for all the months, i.e., each month would have the same hours / cost / duration planning values and you simply manage the variances from a cumulative perspective, or you would apply some seasonal logic to the planning values if you knew when the work would climb or descend in op tempo based on the seasonality of demand.  Choose the planning value, load it in the tool, and then manage your variances as you progress in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2019-04-08T12:52:32.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26133" CreationDate="2019-04-08T17:53:33.320" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You present two choices for your team, but it's a false dichotomy. The underlying issues are really:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the lack of intra-team collaboration during development, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;insufficient slack in your process to maintain a reliable cadence.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the answer below, I reframe your current problem in order to analyze your chosen solutions. I then offer a &quot;top ten list&quot; of things your team can consider to craft a more suitable long-term solution for the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Framing the Problem&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, P1 issues are such that we cannot wait till the next sprint for them to get fixed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this statement, you describe a &quot;P1 production issue&quot; as something that takes precedence over the current Sprint Goal or the tasks defined for the current iteration during Sprint Planning. That means that you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; adapt your planning process and capacity planning to accommodate these ongoing disruptions to the Scrum cadence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You define two possible options, but neither is truly optimal. Let's look at why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Analyzing Option One&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Whoever is the dev oncall fixes the issue; though they may not have the complete context of that area of code; they would get the context from the dev owner of that feature and fix the issue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;em&gt;looks&lt;/em&gt; like pair programming, collective code ownership, and collaboration, but it really isn't. By doing things this way, you're creating several problems and violating some core principles. In particular:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are doubling your on-call resources, increasing the level of disruption.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are incentivizing quick fixes over real knowledge transfer. No one is interested in exploratory testing or learning something new at 2 a.m. when they both still have to show up at work the next day.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are still encouraging the team to operate as individuals with unique areas of responsibilities, rather than true collaboration and swarming.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are hiding the impact of production issues rather than making the costs to the project and the team &lt;em&gt;visible&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This approach doesn't surface risk to the Sprint Goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Analyzing Option Two&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your second option is slightly better, but still has issues. You describe the option as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The dev oncall only does the initial analysis to confirm that it is a genuine issue, and dev owner of the feature fixes the issue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach has some pros and cons, rather than simply being all downside. Some examples include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pros&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It reduces the level of off-hours effort to triage.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It pushes the effort of fixing the issue onto the Sprint Backlog, making it visible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It creates transparency by tracking the issue as a task or chore on the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It forces the Sprint Team (including the Product Owner) and the organization to acknowledge the project costs associated with production support.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cons&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doing triage (rather than solving the problem right then) may increase your cycle time for applying fixes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doing triage-only will increase the number of internal hand-offs and touch-points, which is an agile anti-pattern.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It still compartmentalizes knowledge within the team, rather than encouraging full collaboration or T-shaped people.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Production issues that impact your Sprint Backlog may require scope or content changes to the Sprint plan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Impact to the Sprint plan may jeopardize the Sprint Goal and force an early termination of the iteration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Better Solutions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't get trapped by a false dichotomy. If you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; choose between two inferior options, then pick the one that is least disruptive or that optimizes for transparency. However, the entire organization would be better served by taking a step back and performing a more comprehensive process analysis. Some grist for the mill includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Switching to test-driven or behavior-driven design.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Building pair programming and continuous integration into your development and QA processes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensuring your development, testing, staging, and production promotion processes are both automated and effective.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having a solid roll-back plan that leverages source control and feature toggles to avoid the need to troubleshoot production in the wee hours of the morning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allocating team capacity to cross-functional knowledge sharing directly on the Product Backlog, making it a visible (but necessary!) cost to the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider splitting production support into a separate team or activity from development. Scrum is optimized for development, not maintenance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build in additional slack for production support during Sprint Planning, so that you aren't routinely pulling capacity from development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Update your Definition of Done to include regression testing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Treat the routine release of bugs to production as a huge red flag that your process may be broken, and needs careful analysis and redesign. Serious bugs in production should be very, very rare!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use transparency and visible costs to educate stakeholders and senior management on the false economies inherent in an unsustainable cadence, technical debt, or lack of budget allocated to sustainable agile practices.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, slowing down the pace by introducing pair programming, TDD/BDD, code reviews, continuous refactoring, continuous integration (CI), and other agile practices is essential to increasing quality and setting a sustainable cadence. This comes at a cost, though, in terms of time and manpower. It's up to senior management whether they want to pay that cost upfront, or pay it over and over down the line as an ever-increasing penalty for treating agility as a &quot;go faster&quot; button instead of a quality and fitness-for-purpose control framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-04-08T17:53:33.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26149" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26165" CreationDate="2019-04-08T18:35:26.060" Score="3" ViewCount="754" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why do we need Parallel Sprints? I am trying to understand the use case here.  Consider our Use case&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We have two developers and two testers on our scrum team&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We have four developers joining the team (but they are not dedicated team members)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Our sprint cycle is 2 weeks&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you recommend parallel sprints for this scenario? The team is thinking to have sprint 1 and sprint 2 (with four developers) start on the same date, but sprint 2 to have 3 weeks cycle to accommodate the testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35550" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2019-04-15T19:21:08.807" LastActivityDate="2019-04-15T19:21:08.807" Title="Parallel Sprints Use case" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26149" CreationDate="2019-04-08T21:13:50.797" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not certain what is being accomplished with this, but it does feel like it goes against some principles of Scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Guide says that &quot;Development Teams are cross-functional, with all the skills as a team necessary to create a product Increment.&quot; It doesn't sound like that is what is happening here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it seems like running separate sprint cadences impedes your ability to create a product increment at the end of each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-04-08T21:13:50.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26151" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-04-08T21:38:32.870" Score="1" ViewCount="79" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in academia (research). Tasks are varied and almost always involve delving into topics that produce more tasks when you are more informed. A pull system seems appropriate rather than an estimated timed-box scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is then - is time-logging &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; recommended? Projects are so varied, that I would not be comfortable looking at a few previous projects and saying &quot;this new project would take the same as these previous projects&quot;. The goal for us is to be as lean and flexible as possible to have a high-level visualization of each project to know where we are with each at a glance. If new projects come in, we'll have an hour meeting to discuss it and use our experience to give an overall estimate of when we can deliver the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30247" LastActivityDate="2019-04-09T09:55:02.770" Title="Lean Kanban without estimates or time logging" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;lean&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26152" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26154" CreationDate="2019-04-09T08:46:27.407" Score="1" ViewCount="74" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a team of engineers who are building a data intelligence capability for the organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such the team members are I-shaped and the work is I-shaped i.e. 1 team member can only work from 1 of the categories below. The work in each category does support the other categories in some way but its not directly linked like on for example a project building an iOS app.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am trying to figure out how best to structure the backlog, the team and the scrum ceremonies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The different categories of work/roles on the team are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Front end type work (2 team members)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Architecture type work (1 team member) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ITOps/infrastructure type work (1 team member)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is should we all be doing planning sprints together, stand-ups and retrospectives etc or how should we set things up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2019-04-09T12:49:27.543" Title="How to structure backlog and ceremonies around a team with separate skillsets working from a backlog which is not directly connected" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26151" CreationDate="2019-04-09T09:55:02.770" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you see little value from estimating project duration then don't bother with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there may be some value in measuring the time it takes for tasks to pass through the workflow. One of the Kanban principles is to look at cycle time and use it to help analyse process improvements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you might try and put a work in progress limit on one particular stage of the work flow and you can check the cycle times to see if this has made things better or worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-04-09T09:55:02.770" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26152" CreationDate="2019-04-09T11:56:43.530" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simple answer: &lt;strong&gt;You don't.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum framework is a &lt;em&gt;tool&lt;/em&gt; for a &lt;em&gt;purpose&lt;/em&gt;. As any tool, you should know when to use it... and your case is hard to be one. It &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be one if the members are willing to go beyond their siloes of knowledge, but it'll be challenging to have a proper Scrum from day one if you have clear categories within the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, &lt;strong&gt;what &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; you do&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other agile frameworks who could fit better for your case, as Kanban for instance. Kanban might be a better fit as it's broadly known and more fluid to have consistent work done across the different team members. You can also use some of the Scrum ceremonies, &lt;em&gt;so long they are helpful&lt;/em&gt;. You can check for an &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development#Agile_software_development_methods&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;extensive list of agile methods in Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to find the best framework to fit your purpose? &lt;strong&gt;Experiment&lt;/strong&gt;. You can even start applying Scrum for a few iterations, check the team perception at the retro, and propose other frameworks (or variances of known frameworks). Just do not try to make your team to fit a framework because &quot;it's the best framework&quot;. It simply won't work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you have to &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;explore&lt;/em&gt; for the best framework - &lt;em&gt;for your team&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-04-09T12:49:27.543" LastActivityDate="2019-04-09T12:49:27.543" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26149" CreationDate="2019-04-09T12:22:38.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd answer the question with a question - &lt;strong&gt;what's the purpose of the sprint(s)&lt;/strong&gt; in you context?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you use a Sprint as a way to &lt;em&gt;deliver a specific goal&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;both teams can deliver value independently&lt;/em&gt;, having separated Sprints is not a problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If both tickets are dependent between then, why having two different teams?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you use a Sprint as a way of packing up a pile of tickets, why using Sprint at all?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, &lt;strong&gt;the approach should depend on the &lt;em&gt;value expected to be delivered at the end of each Sprint&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (parallel or not).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Side note:&lt;/strong&gt; Based on my experience, when a &lt;strong&gt;team is increased&lt;/strong&gt; by adding new joiners, you don't create a new team. Instead, &lt;strong&gt;you onboard the new joiners as part of the current teams&lt;/strong&gt; (not as active capacity) for training purposes. Once the new members mature and understand how the team works, &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; the decision of keeping a single team or separated teams is taken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-04-09T12:22:38.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26156" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-04-09T16:38:13.793" Score="5" ViewCount="1176" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand that, in theory, QA should be working with dev &quot;collaborating&quot; right from the day 1 of a sprint. But how does it actually work in real life? Let me present two scenarios -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scenario 1&lt;/strong&gt; where a story requires 3 days of development - Let's say it's a complicated report with time consuming database setup and domain logic etc and takes 3 days to code. Since the dev can't deliver anything meaningful to test before 3 days and assuming it takes only 4 hours to write all relevant test cases, what is QA expected to do until the report is ready for testing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scenario 2&lt;/strong&gt; where stories are tiny enough to be completed in hours - Let's consider a login/registration screen. There can be tiny stories for user being able to login, user being able to register, forgot password functionality etc. A dev can complete each one of these stories in hours and pass on to QA and move on to the next story but the next story might break the previous ones. For example, if dev finishes up login functionality and QA starts testing it and then dev starts working on forgot password functionality, it might the break login in unexpected ways because the functionalities are indeed related. If QA waits for all of the related stories to be completed then we end up with scenario 1 above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a perfect world, QA can be expected to do nothing if there is indeed nothing to do and accept it as part of the cost. But in a real world, PMO and other groups keeping track of resource utilization will certainly point it out as poor project management and worse. So, how does it all work in real life scenarios? How best to apply Scrum in these types of scenarios? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25608" LastActivityDate="2020-03-23T20:27:32.740" Title="What does a QA team do during the development phase of a sprint in Agile Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26156" CreationDate="2019-04-09T17:14:32.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can they get things ready to test so when stories/bugs are completed by developers they will be ready to test? Setting up servers, databases or data so they can hit the ground running when it's time to test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have multiple clients all with their own database. Our QA team knows which stories/bugs affect certain clients when the sprint starts. So our QA team creates database backups for those specific clients and gets testing databases ready in our testing environment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found this article interesting: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.352inc.com/blog/what-does-qa-do-on-the-first-day-of-a-sprint/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.352inc.com/blog/what-does-qa-do-on-the-first-day-of-a-sprint/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Encourage your QA person to learn new skills to help move stories to QA. Options &gt; include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Learn to program&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do some design work&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Perform some user tests&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Server setup and management&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35556" LastActivityDate="2019-04-09T17:14:32.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26156" CreationDate="2019-04-09T17:50:24.847" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Test-First Practices Engage Testers/QA Throughout the Process&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're falling into a utilization fallacy by treating development and QA as separate activities. On an agile team, practices such as test-driven development (TDD), behavior-driven development (BDD), or acceptance-test driven development (ATDD) ensure that quality is baked in by &lt;em&gt;writing the tests first&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the red/green/refactor pattern means that QA should be involved before any code is written at all! Even on teams where individuals are I-shaped rather than T-shaped, developers and testers should be working hand-in-hand the entire time through pair programming and continuous integration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Collaboration and Utilization&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Developers and testers should be actively collaborating, rather than working in parallel or in sequence. Even if your organization falls prey to the 100% utilization fallacy, there are always things that testers need to do on an agile team including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Refactoring tests.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Updating test fixtures and harnesses.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Analyzing code coverage and other continuous integration (CI) metrics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Replacing fixtures with factories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Exploratory and manual testing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Working with stakeholders on building executable acceptance tests (e.g. Cucumber scenarios).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identifying boundary conditions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Linting and style checking.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fuzzing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All the other cool and important stuff that QA people do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not in any way recommending that you stovepipe your processes. I'm simply pointing out that there's always plenty of testing and quality assurance work to do, even absent new code or features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Cross-Train Your Team&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also smart money for the project to invest in cross-training developers and testers. Many developers can benefit from learning about testing techniques, so that they can write more testable code. Likewise, testers can benefit from learning more about development, which makes them better testers and more well-rounded resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-04-09T17:50:24.847" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26156" CreationDate="2019-04-09T20:56:20.560" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You asked what the collaboration looks like and that is the important question. In Scrum, there doesn't need to be a QA phase. Practices like 3 Amigos meetings, Test Driven development, Behavior Driven Development, and pairing mean that the QA team members can be collaborating with the team the whole time. To whatever degree we can, we want to use the Lean principle of Build Quality In rather than checking for it afterwards and for that, we need the QA perspective through the whole process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-04-09T20:56:20.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26156" CreationDate="2019-04-10T08:02:12.707" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Along with the &quot;agilisation&quot; of projects, the role of QA is &quot;evolving&quot; considerably. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see Todd's scenario (+1!) as the target state for a mature QA team. Hope your team can make it to it directly. There are cases, however, where the QA team is less mature and requires a few maturity steps in between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;In a perfect world, QA can be expected to do nothing if there is&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;indeed nothing to do and accept it as part of the cost.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no ideal world where someone is doing absolutely &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abraham Lincoln is &lt;a href=&quot;https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/03/29/sharp-axe/#note-8542-7&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;quoted&lt;/a&gt; as having said &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“If I had five minutes to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first three&#xA;  sharpening my axe.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's what any QA, regardless of how mature a process or a team is, should be doing while not doing... well, QA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;So, how does it all work in real life scenarios? How best to apply&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;Scrum in these types of scenarios?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Step 1: Mindset change.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;QA is no longer a team responsible for &lt;em&gt;executing&lt;/em&gt; test cases. QA is responsible to understand in dept how the application works and foresee the potential use cases that could fail and that the developer may not be aware of. In the past, this was heavily done by (functional) analysts. This may no longer be the case. In some aspects, there's an expectation that QA will become the reference for functional knowledge. it's debateable, but it's important to consider this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Step 2: Sharpen up your skills.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/07/26/python-is-becoming-the-worlds-most-popular-coding-language&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Python&lt;/a&gt; is becoming one of the most useful languages nowadays. Developers are using more &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.zdnet.com/article/python-programming-languages-top-uses-tools-developers-reveal-their-choices/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Python for data analysis&lt;/a&gt; than web development. You know who could also benefit for knowing the basics on data analysis? Yes, QA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Step 3: Target the future.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Applying steps one and two, you might be halfway through with a team capable of fit into Todd's QA team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-04-10T08:02:12.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26156" CreationDate="2019-04-10T08:32:56.173" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;All of the points you make in your question are valid, but these problems are solvable by careful collaboration within the Scrum team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of a conversation during sprint planning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Some of these stories will take a few days to develop before they are ready for testing. But a few of the other stories are quite quick to do. Why don't we do a few of the smaller stories first, so that the testers have something to get on with? Then they can work on the first big story when they are ready.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I am worried that a lot of our stories are dependent on each other. That is going to make planning testing really tricky. Shall we refactor the stories to make them independent so that testing runs smoother?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;This sprint is going to be quite light on testing. Why don't we spend any extra time available expanding our automated regression coverage?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the Scrum team matures it may well adopt practices like test driven development and behaviour driven development. You may also get cross-training between developers and testers so that the team members have &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-shaped_skills&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;t-shaped skills&lt;/a&gt; profiles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With more experience and improved working practices the team will become better and better at balancing development and testing. Eventually there will be little distinction between what is considered coding and what is considered testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-04-10T08:32:56.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26162" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26164" CreationDate="2019-04-10T11:41:01.657" Score="7" ViewCount="2262" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-sm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;main roles&lt;/a&gt; for a Scrum Master is to remove impediments for the team, such that the development can progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is, in my undertanding, to ensure that the development team can focus on where they excel - development. This way much of the red-tape (*ahem*, &lt;em&gt;meetings&lt;/em&gt;, *ahem*) that slows down development should, as I understand, be dealt by the Scrum Master.* &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, let's assume a scenario where mid development, the team is blocked because requires a design decision from an external architect. The lack of this decision is blocking the progress on this task. At this stage, I see two options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Scrum Master understands the problem and discuss the options (potentially suggested by the engineers) and discuss aspects with the architects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Scrum Master acknowledges the blocker and points the engineers to discuss with the architects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I believe that a Scrum Master can only &lt;em&gt;truly remove impediments&lt;/em&gt; (and thus, becoming a proper Scrum Master) by having such background, but I failed to find evidences that this assumption is correct.&lt;/strong&gt; Am I missing something?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* ps.: I appreciate a meeting is in most of the cases a a byproduct of other underlying problems, such as poor refinement, poor planning. Consider this as a (joking) example but please don't focus too much on it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-04-10T17:43:11.973" Title="How technical should a Scrum Master be to effectively remove impediments?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26162" CreationDate="2019-04-10T12:32:38.853" Score="14" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Am I missing something?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you are missing the main point of &quot;impediment&quot;, that is a blocker &lt;em&gt;that the team is not equipped to handle themselves&lt;/em&gt;. The Scrum Master is not supposed to be a better developer than the developers or a better architect than the architect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master's job is to make sure the architecture decision is made. By lobbying for more time for the architect to come to a solution. Or by creating an environment (read moderated meeting) so the developers and architect can talk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master has no benefit from a background as a developer apart from better communication due to common terms used. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal opinion is that it might even &lt;em&gt;benefit&lt;/em&gt; from not having too much development knowledge, because we all know that a programmer cannot just walk away from a programming problem without trying to think about a solution. I prefer a Scrum Master that &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; walk away from programming problems and leave them to the programmers and does their own job properly instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2019-04-10T12:32:38.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26162" CreationDate="2019-04-10T14:33:03.813" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While domain knowledge is always useful, the Scrum Master is not expected to be a domain expert beyond the Scrum framework and organizational processes. Scrum framework expertise is essential to being a facilitator and process referee. Organizational process expertise is essential to facilitating the team's progress in the face of organizational or process impediments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Interpreting the &quot;Remove Impediments&quot; Guidance&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-sm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide entry for the Scrum Master role&lt;/a&gt; actually says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Removing impediments to the Development Team’s progress&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, this is often misunderstood. The Scrum Master isn't really responsible for solving the problem directly; rather, he or she leverages the Scrum Master's roles as facilitator and process referee to address the various impediments to progress that the team is facing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to say this is that the Scrum Master &lt;em&gt;enables&lt;/em&gt; the team to be self-organizing, identify process impediments, and support the team's efforts to address those impediments. This isn't really a &quot;momma bear taking care of her cubs&quot; task. It's more of a coaching and facilitation task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How This Applies to Your Example&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[T]he team is blocked because requires a design decision from an external architect. The lack of this decision is blocking the progress on this task.  At this stage, I see two options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The Scrum Master understands the problem and discuss the options (potentially suggested by the engineers) and discuss aspects with the architects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The Scrum Master acknowledges the blocker and points the engineers to discuss with the architects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither one of these options is ideal. In the first option, the Scrum Master is acting alone, rather than facilitating, coaching, or empowering the Development Team. In the second, the Scrum Master is taking a hands-off approach rather than facilitating the discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the real world, both of these are actually viable. I wouldn't dismiss either of them out of hand in all contexts. However, a more framework-appropriate solution is generally to address the &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; issues, and to facilitate learning and self-actualization within the team. For example, I'd suggest the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Scrum Master involves the team in identifying the blockers (in this case, the need for an external design decision).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master involves the team in identifying solutions at both the process level (during the Sprint Retrospective) and at the immediate blocker level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This two-level approach is critical. Even if the team gets the design decision approved or resolved this time around, the fact that the team is dependent on external resources is a fundamental process problem that should be addressed by the Scrum Team with organizational management, and should be taken into account during Sprint Planning and Backlog Refinement.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master facilitates a meeting between the Development Team and the architect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Facilitate&quot; may mean coordinating the meeting, or simply pointing the Development Team to the resource they need to collaborate with.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Facilitate&quot; also means being present at the meeting, to ensure that there's a meeting referee and to gently steer the meeting towards a productive outcome.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Facilitate&quot; may also mean knowing the paths of escalation, should that be necessary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master works with the organization to escalate issues that the Scrum Team can't resolve.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Scrum Master works with the Product Owner to facilitate whole-team discussions about early termination when the Sprint Goal is at risk because of a blocker.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, at each step the Scrum Master is facilitating the Development or Scrum Team's actions, rather than simply handling it directly. As a &lt;em&gt;member&lt;/em&gt; of the Scrum Team, it may be appropriate for the Scrum Master to perform tasks on behalf of the Development Team in some circumstances, but care must be taken to place the power into the hands of the whole team rather than the role of Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's definitely a lot of things a Scrum Master can and should do to help the team. However, it's rarely beneficial for the Scrum Master to take either a hands-off approach or take unilateral action. The former isn't terribly helpful to less-mature teams, and the latter doesn't provide any learning or growth opportunities for the Development Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general rule, I'd extend the Scrum Master's core role as a facilitator and process referee to the task of removing impediments. Support the Scrum Team's efforts to solve its own problems by giving them the tools to do it, and then support them through that effort. That's the best way I know to help teams grow in maturity and process efficiency!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-04-10T17:43:11.973" LastActivityDate="2019-04-10T17:43:11.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26149" CreationDate="2019-04-10T20:13:23.807" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. Lack of a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-planning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;central coherence&lt;/a&gt; violates a core principle of the Scrum framework. Don't do this by choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Sequential Work is Usually Evidence of Organizational Dysfunction&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The team is thinking to have sprint 1 and sprint 2 (with four developers) start on the same date, but sprint 2 to have 3 weeks cycle to accommodate the QA testing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Testing &lt;em&gt;post-facto&lt;/em&gt; is a well-known agile anti-pattern. This is generally done to avoid dealing with the lack of a cross-functional team upfront. In other words, it's an attempt to bury an organizational dysfunction behind something that &lt;em&gt;sounds&lt;/em&gt; agile-ish, like &quot;parallel Sprints.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Scrum, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/26125/4271&quot;&gt;rule of thumb&lt;/a&gt; is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One Product ➡️ One Project ➡️ One Team ➡️ One Integrated Increment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even in scaled agile implementations, you must still have an integrated increment each iteration, even if you have multiple teams. That isn't the case here, though; there's no way to create an integrated increment with teams split along functional lines the way you propose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Integrate Your Teams with Test-First Development&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A core agile practice is to do test-first development. By &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/26158/4271&quot;&gt;integrating your testers and developers&lt;/a&gt; into a single team, you ensure that the team as a whole maintains a central coherence (which is required by the Scrum framework). You will also generally increase product quality and reduce technical debt over the life of the project by leveraging collaborative test-first practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there are certainly cases where you can't fix an organizational dysfunction, the job of the Scrum Master is to ensure that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the dysfunction is surfaced&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;acknowledged by the whole Scrum Team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;accepted as a business risk by senior management, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;kept visible as an ongoing cost to the project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't do those things, you aren't really following agile principles and best practices. As a result, you are unlikely to reap the benefits that a truly agile implementation would provide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If management won't allow you to integrate the testers and developers, they are creating project risk. Management &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; owns business risk, so if they break the process they get to keep both halves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-04-10T20:13:23.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26166" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-04-10T22:07:57.300" Score="3" ViewCount="1249" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's consider a simple story for a user authentication screen:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want to be able to login with my username and password&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I can do xyz.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This looks good, but all of the details related to what should happen when the password is incorrect, how many retries should be allowed, validations, and a bunch of other stuff that should go in with that story are missing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where should all that information go in an agile Scrum setup? Is it an FRS (or any other equivalent monolithic document containing details of all functional specs)? If yes, given there will be hundreds or thousands of these tiny stories, how should references to their corresponding FRS sections kept in sync with each other? How best to manage this level of detail in an agile Scrum world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25608" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-04-11T09:20:30.977" LastActivityDate="2019-04-14T15:58:19.293" Title="How to refer to functional requirement specifications (FRS) from user stories?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20892" CreationDate="2019-04-10T22:42:28.560" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Scrum Master as Coach &amp;amp; Process Referee: Teachable Moments&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it the responsibility of the Scrum master to intervene and interrupt a team member when he/she starts telling about points beyond those 3 that I mentioned?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is. The Scrum Master is a servant-leader whose primary responsibilities are to act as both a coach and a process referee. The Scrum Guide specifically &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-sm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;calls out this responsibility&lt;/a&gt; by making the Scrum Master responsible for &lt;em&gt;proactively&lt;/em&gt; facilitating Scrum events such as the Daily Scrum. It makes this proactive, discretionary aspect clear when it says (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Facilitating Scrum events as requested &lt;strong&gt;or needed&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-daily&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;section on the Daily Scrum&lt;/a&gt; goes on to say (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The structure of the meeting is set by the Development Team and can be conducted in different ways if it focuses on progress toward the Sprint Goal. Some Development Teams will use questions, some will be more discussion based...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master ensures that the Development Team has the meeting, but the Development Team is responsible for conducting the Daily Scrum. &lt;strong&gt;The Scrum Master teaches the Development Team to keep the Daily Scrum within the 15-minute time-box.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Daily Scrum is an internal meeting for the Development Team. If others are present, the Scrum Master ensures that they do not disrupt the meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it might be tempting to treat the second paragraph above as a prohibition against any kind of Scrum Master participation in the Daily Scrum, the contextual intent is to to prevent the meeting from turning into a status pull from the Scrum Master (or anyone else). &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/6657/4271&quot;&gt;The Daily Scrum is a coordination meeting, not a report to an authority figure&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fulfilling the Scrum Master's role as coach and process referee, a Scrum Master is &lt;em&gt;obligated&lt;/em&gt; to point out when the framework isn't being followed, or when the team is missing an opportunity to leverage the framework to best advantage. This is subtly different from the Scrum Master &lt;em&gt;running&lt;/em&gt; the meeting. If you think of it more as a teachable moment, rather than a power play, then you're on the right track!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-04-11T07:12:44.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26166" CreationDate="2019-04-11T00:26:40.390" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You've basically hit on the purpose of user stories. You see, user stories arose when we had large requirements documents that had all of the details the dev team could possibly need to develop the software. The problem with this is that those details take a long time to document and it turns out, they often aren't what the user wants (or at least miss the mark). Now all of that time has been wasted. Instead, we write a user story gives us just enough information to have a conversation with the person who wrote it. The dev team can ask questions and get a better understanding of their needs, then build something that meets them. They'll write their notes someplace and depending on your application, it might even make sense that those are stored in a very specific place. So, the purpose of user stories was to get away from monolithic documents and move to personal conversations. If you are tying a user story back to details in a large requirements document, you've eliminated the value of user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-04-11T00:26:40.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26166" CreationDate="2019-04-11T00:55:44.120" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short answer is that you don't. Big, upfront planning is orthogonal to agile development. Instead, you should focus on iterative and incremental development with tight feedback loops to ensure that you're building the right things and embracing change throughout the project's life cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Big, Upfront Requirements an Anti-Pattern&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing detailed or large-scale requirements at the inception of a project is an agile anti-pattern. In particular, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Manifesto for Agile Software Development&lt;/a&gt; values:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Working software over comprehensive documentation[.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#theory&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Theory&lt;/a&gt; explicitly avoids the use of fixed, upfront planning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum employs an iterative, incremental approach to optimize predictability and control risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there is nothing stopping you from linking user stories or other types of Product Backlog Items to functional requirements, doing so is often a &quot;project smell&quot; that you're fixing scope, which is ideally the movable part of the Iron Triangle in Scrum. Furthermore, it's often an indication that you're making implementation decisions too early in the process. Lean practices require that you make architectural and design decisions at the &lt;em&gt;last responsible moment&lt;/em&gt;, which is almost never at the very beginning of a project when functional requirement specifications are usually gathered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What to do Instead&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within the Scrum framework, you should be leveraging the framework to perform just-in-time planning at the proper level of granularity. In particular:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leverage Backlog Refinement to identify work that will likely be in scope for the next iteration, &lt;a href=&quot;https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;maximizing the amount of work not done&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use Sprint Planning to decompose work into tasks and deliverables only for the current increment, optimizing for just-in-time planning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leave implementation details out of Product Backlog and (most) Sprint Backlog items, allowing for greater flexibility.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gather feedback from stakeholders during the Sprint Review to identify changes and refinements to be treated as &lt;em&gt;new work&lt;/em&gt;, allowing the project to continually evolve to meet changing market demands and to take advantage of lessons learned.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While not required by Scrum, agile practices generally require integrating test-driven design or behavior-driven development (often in collaboration with stakeholders or customers) to ensure that any functional requirements in scope for the &lt;em&gt;current&lt;/em&gt; iteration are well-defined and testable. This type of &quot;living documentation&quot; is often more useful, more accurate, more maintainable, and more effective than typical functional requirements documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-04-11T00:55:44.120" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26170" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-04-11T10:12:55.423" Score="0" ViewCount="324" Body="&lt;p&gt;Starting from the Eisenhower table, I classify my tasks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.imgur.com/l58fjd2.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easy to handle urgent important and unurgent unimportant tasks. The problem is, hardly a task is urgent to me, but most of the time it's just &quot;important&quot;, in the sense that working on it will bring me useful knowledge that helps me work on future tasks more efficient. There are many times I wish I has learnt something in the past or has done it before, so that I'm prepared or don't need to do it now. But when the feeling is past or I manage to continue without it, I just let the task slips away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the task is not urgent, it has to wait for the current urgent task. But when the current urgent task is finished, I usually don't know what to do next. All of the tasks in the wait list are important, but none of them is urgent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My solution is to make a frequency list: every time I see a need to do a task, I increase 1 to the counter for it. When the task or a group of related tasks has high counts, I will work on it. I think this is the way to handle so many unurgent important tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is there any method that has the similar idea so that I can learn more? I'm also looking for an implement of time management tools, like Gantt chart, but it may be hard, since I can't predict the working time of each task (see also the &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/24456/27043&quot;&gt;cone of uncertainty&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27043" LastEditorUserId="27043" LastEditDate="2019-04-11T14:21:52.277" LastActivityDate="2021-01-17T15:20:11.280" Title="What factors can affect the priority of a task?" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2019-04-11T11:38:43.790" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26170" CreationDate="2019-04-11T11:39:22.677" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Eisenhower table is nice in its simplicity, but that simplicity also makes it inadequate to prioritize alone. The first thing you may want to do when trying to prioritize from this points is not look at the insurgent as one big category, but as different cost of delay profiles. Is there some date in the future where the cost of delay jumps? Is there a steady rise in cost of delay? Is it something that requires you to watch the market to know when you need to do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way you can look at it is at the value it creates. The &amp;quot;important but unurgent category&amp;quot; probably has significant value to be gained (if it is really important) and since value often compounds over time that means waiting can be costly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastEditorUserId="27043" LastEditDate="2021-01-17T15:20:11.280" LastActivityDate="2021-01-17T15:20:11.280" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22079" CreationDate="2019-04-11T13:52:01.060" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For me it's like Nexus is an interface and LESS implements it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nexus tells what needs to be in your process, while LESS tells you how to do it (extended rules, mindset, examples, howtos)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5982" LastActivityDate="2019-04-11T13:52:01.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26173" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26176" CreationDate="2019-04-11T20:00:46.117" Score="-1" ViewCount="1399" Body="&lt;p&gt;Little background:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have multiple teams working on developing an app and website. Sprints are 3-weeks long and they start each week for every Team. Meaning, 1st Team has their Sprint starting 1st to 19th, 2nd Team has Sprint from 8th to 26 and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technically we are having a release every week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the issue is with the backend dev; as they working on microservices shared across Teams. So what's happening is when the release is happening, we have stories fully done from say Teams 1 and 2, but Team 3 is still working on a story and has few sub-tasks of the story completed. And this get pushed into Production while the story is not fully complete. Could someone suggest how should I write those sub-tasks so that I am sure whatever completed sub-tasks are getting released to production are of good quality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now Teams write sub-tasks whatever way they feel like; Dev, QA, purely technical that can't be tested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35577" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-04-11T20:51:10.097" LastActivityDate="2019-04-12T13:57:24.913" Title="Guidelines to write sub tasks of user stories" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26127" CreationDate="2019-04-11T21:54:26.320" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;So there are 3 main ways this can happen:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task 200 has an actual start date on it that is the day following the finish of Task 46 so it is ignoring the link from 147&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task 200 has a constraint that is forcing it to start at that time. This can happen with Start No Later Than, Must Start On, Must Finish On or Finish No later Than constraints. If it is anything OTHER than As Soon As Possible then change it to ASAP &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The link between 147 and 200 is not a Finish to Start. Make sure it is a finish to start&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35578" LastActivityDate="2019-04-11T21:54:26.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26173" CreationDate="2019-04-11T22:45:38.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sub-tasks should usually be for the team however it helps them, like they're doing. It sounds like everyone commits to the main branch (which is a perfectly valid approach) but they are doing it in a way that means you want to release things from one team and can't because another team has made the code unstable (or that is the risk at least). This seems like the type of thing I would put back on the teams to solve. There are many solutions to it including different branching strategies, feature flags, or maybe just being more careful with commits. Either way, it's seems like the teams have both the technical ability and responsibility to solve this challenge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-04-11T22:45:38.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26173" CreationDate="2019-04-12T03:16:04.873" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sub-tasks for user stories are usually in two broad categories: technical bits that need to be built, and quality activities that need to be performed.  For the problem you have of releasing weekly (which, by the way is great!), the most common approach has two main elements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test-Driven Development (TDD) at the technical bits level.  By using TDD properly, you ensure that any code that is committed is covered by passing tests and that developers have done a full unit regression run on their development workstations.  This is a quality activity that should be included in the tasks for every user story.  (Actually, most teams would add this to their definition of done.)  I strongly recommend the book &quot;Test Driven Development&quot; by Kent Beck for details on this approach.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feature Switches at the user story level.  Every user story gets a feature switch configuration parameter.  It's &quot;off&quot; in production, but &quot;on&quot; in the development environment for a team until the team has completed the work on the user story.  Sometimes implementing feature switches can be challenging if your current work requires changing existing in-production code.  Therefore, it is also important for teams to have strong refactoring skills to keep the design of the system as simple as possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please &lt;strong&gt;don't&lt;/strong&gt; implement branch and merge for the teams.  This will lead to huge problems as the complexity of your code increases.  Even if you just branch for the duration of the Sprint, you will find that more and more time is spent merging at the end of the Sprint to prepare to release to production.  Instead, great testing, refactoring and other quality and code-maintenance practices will help you avoid this path.  I recommend two books for this: &quot;Continuous Delivery&quot; by Humble and &quot;Working Effectively with Legacy Code&quot; by Feathers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, it sounds like you might not be making effective use of your definition of done.  In Sprint Planning, your team can do task breakdown however they like... but by having a common definition of done for all three teams, you will avoid many common pitfalls.  The definition of done aught to have some basic items like coding standards (naming conventions, patterns, etc.), testing standards (TDD, acceptance testing, etc.), and quality inspection standards (pairing, code reviews, etc.).  Anything in the definition of done doesn't need to be called out as a separate task.  Instead, tasks focus on the technical bits that need to be built such as UI layout, business logic and algorithms, database schema changes, integrations, etc.  In many ways, good task breakdown is like a mini detailed design activity done during Sprint planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33785" LastActivityDate="2019-04-12T03:16:04.873" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26173" CreationDate="2019-04-12T05:20:30.403" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would go for feature flags, meaning that you can release to production with all code available but certain features will not be available because the flag is off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35188" LastActivityDate="2019-04-12T05:20:30.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26178" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26180" CreationDate="2019-04-12T10:42:40.620" Score="1" ViewCount="114" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of you will be familiar with the issue of a customer having vague requirements. Once s/he gets the software, s/he is of course perfectly able to articulate his/her actual requirements, since s/he can explain it on the example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a name for this scenario / paradoxon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35580" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-04-12T13:23:25.047" LastActivityDate="2019-04-12T14:04:21.553" Title="What's the name for the issue where a customer cannot articulate his/her requirements before seeing the finished software?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26178" CreationDate="2019-04-12T12:21:43.483" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’d love to have a clever name for this but I dont. For me this is about them lacking the the language required to fully articulate what they want. It’s up to “us” to assist them. This is why solid analysis is require. A good consultant/analyst that can translate non-developer to developer is always key. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35578" LastActivityDate="2019-04-12T12:21:43.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26178" CreationDate="2019-04-12T13:05:56.910" Score="0" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Emergent Properties&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't believe there's a single word in English that describes this phenomenon. However, it's fairly common in my line of work to consider this a typical property of complex systems such as large software or security projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In agile frameworks, the implementation of various features is often an &lt;strong&gt;emergent property&lt;/strong&gt; of the incremental and iterative development process. This is often more effective and visible when using test-first methodologies, and when leveraging agile inspect-and-adapt cycles to their fullest extent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because complex systems &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; complex, it's often difficult to create detailed specifications such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/26169/4271&quot;&gt;functional requirement specifications (FRS)&lt;/a&gt; upfront. In fact, doing so is a known agile anti-pattern. Agile frameworks compensate for this through the use of various techniques that generally boil down to increased collaboration, frequent or continuous integration, tight feedback loops, and incremental scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, they acknowledge the issue and then work around it by solving knowable problems, rather than the &lt;strong&gt;unknown unknowns&lt;/strong&gt; that fill the funnel of the cone of uncertainty in complex systems. The emergent properties of the system, along with the inspect-and-adapt process, gradually reduce the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cone of uncertainty&lt;/a&gt; over the life cycle of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-04-12T13:05:56.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26178" CreationDate="2019-04-12T13:43:46.897" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are people who are trained to understand what a customer wants/needs even if the customer cannot describe it. In IT, we call those people 'Requirement Engineers'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If by &quot;finished software&quot; you meant &quot;something-you-are-able-to-click&quot;, then you can call that approach &quot;prototyping&quot;. Important: a prototype is not a first version of a product! It is a way to learn what we want/need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35581" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-04-12T14:04:21.553" LastActivityDate="2019-04-12T14:04:21.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26173" CreationDate="2019-04-12T13:57:24.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would also prefer feature toggles. However, a &lt;a href=&quot;https://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;branching model&lt;/a&gt; could help to solve the immediate pain but -- as mentioned by others -- may introduce future problems with poorly integrated code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To solve this it's maybe also a good idea to conduct some workshops (or establish &lt;a href=&quot;https://blog.crisp.se/2012/11/14/henrikkniberg/scaling-agile-at-spotify&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;guilds&lt;/a&gt;) for shared professions across teams to come up with a fitting solution for the technology at hand that can be taken back to the teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17257" LastActivityDate="2019-04-12T13:57:24.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26166" CreationDate="2019-04-12T14:10:41.957" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As said by others, details should be clarified at the last responsible moment, sometimes at the moment of implementation in close collaboration between developers and e.g. business people or UX experts. However, specific information could be noted as acceptance criteria. More general and repeating criteria may be better placed within the team's (or organizations) Definition of 'Done'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For acceptance criteria you may also want to take a look at a syntax like &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.cucumber.io/gherkin/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gherkin&lt;/a&gt; &#xA; -- and you may want to automate testing with things like &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.cucumber.io/gherkin/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cucumber&lt;/a&gt; as a living, more value-adding documentation and base for regression testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17257" LastActivityDate="2019-04-12T14:10:41.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26185" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-04-12T19:23:45.470" Score="1" ViewCount="132" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a Development Team doesn't have the skills or tools to create a “Done&quot; increment, are there techniques that can be used immediately that will allow progress on the increment to be easier to track? I am thinking the team could immediately use TDD, ATDD, or implement a physical board to visualize work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What else might improve the team's ability to complete work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35135" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-04-17T20:15:30.887" LastActivityDate="2019-05-08T19:08:54.903" Title="How can the team improve the likelihood of completing each increment?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;engineering-practices&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26070" CreationDate="2019-04-12T20:51:32.870" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, project management is one thing and product quality management is another thing. Most of the time you have feedback from the people who buy the software, especially when they are not satisfied. Sometimes it is too late to make changes to the software when it is already on the market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, you can include quality circles all along the development of your software to get feedback from potential customers. So, you avoid surprises that arrive too late. It is one thing to develop a product and another thing to sell it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third. you have to set clear, measurable and achievable goals in the development of your product. Goals that are easy to verify regularly. In business administration we call that &quot;quality control&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, it is important to know from the very start who is septic with the success of the product and why. Sometimes, some members of a team prefer to cash on the process than to declare it dead from the start. How are you sure of a success in product management? It is all about the needs of the customers. Nobody is obliged to buy your product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user30807" LastActivityDate="2019-04-12T20:51:32.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22888" CreationDate="2019-04-12T21:50:30.250" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adjusting manually in a usage view is a good way to go but doing so sort of ‘hides’ the new, custom work contour and some  people find that confusing. &#xA;Another way might be to break that T2 into pieces, one for R1 and one for R2 with R2s bit just being the length of the split created by R1s cskebsar excretion. It’s a bit more cumbersome but it Kay’s tje work out in a way that is a bit more visible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35578" LastActivityDate="2019-04-12T21:50:30.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26166" CreationDate="2019-04-12T22:47:00.813" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think part of the problem is that this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;login with my username and password&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is not a requirement.  It's a design choice masquerading as a requirement.  The real requirement is something like: &quot;As a user I need to (securely and uniquely) authenticate with the system so that I can ...&quot;  Choosing username and password immediately rules out other, lower friction, means of authentication.  Already logged in to Active Directory/G Suite/Office 365/another Oauth provider?  Can we use that?  What about facial recognition and fingerprint?  Is that sufficient?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep this in mind as you go through your user stories.  Are they telling you &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; something should be done instead of &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; needs to be done?  Quite often this is OK; they're expanding on/clarifying earlier design choices.  But sometimes it's worth taking a step back, asking yourself what problem are they really solving, and is there a better way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16176" LastActivityDate="2019-04-12T22:47:00.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9454" CreationDate="2019-04-13T00:13:00.067" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Product Owner being the line manager of a Team causes wrong behaviours and is not in line with agile culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team members become competitive with each other instead of collaborative and helping each other as individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team members individually know the Product Owner controls pay rations/promotions and this can lead to the wrong Team vibe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Product Owner being too controlling stifles creativity and self-organising culture, leading to command-and-control and lack of self growth and empowerment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35585" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-04-15T13:12:58.010" LastActivityDate="2019-04-15T13:12:58.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26032" CreationDate="2019-04-13T17:27:45.390" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There isn’t an automatic way to replace a single assigned generic with two non-generic resources. You will need to replace the generic with the first developer and then just assign the 2nd one manually. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bake sure that the resource driven setting on the task is set so that the 2nd resource being added results in the correct distribution of the total task work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35578" LastActivityDate="2019-04-13T17:27:45.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26007" CreationDate="2019-04-13T17:35:55.823" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the customer proposal, no. But for internal use, yes. The effort spent on such things is important in that it consumes time for those doing the tasks so it’s ilportsnt for the organization to understand work loads. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35578" LastActivityDate="2019-04-13T17:35:55.823" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26166" CreationDate="2019-04-14T15:58:19.293" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;how many retries should be allowed, validations, and a bunch of other stuff that should go in with that story are missing. Where should all that information go in an agile Scrum setup?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is why you have &lt;strong&gt;acceptance criteria&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it seams to me that you have another problem: who wrote your FRS? Why you did that investment, if you knew it will be agile project? In agile team decides technical details. If you read agile manifesto carefully, you will see that it is developers call for revolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35581" LastActivityDate="2019-04-14T15:58:19.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25860" CreationDate="2019-04-14T16:26:43.840" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In agile you should practice zero-bug-policy. It can happen that the team could not fix the bugs immediately (Sprint2), but then do it in next sprint (Sprint3). If you waited so long (Sprint6) to deal with it, then you have to estimate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35581" LastActivityDate="2019-04-14T16:26:43.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26149" CreationDate="2019-04-14T16:42:58.663" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile is a team sport. As first step I would see team building. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.teamtechnology.co.uk/team/dynamics/definition/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Team dynamics&lt;/a&gt; is very important subject. When you are done with that then it should be team decision how they want to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35581" LastActivityDate="2019-04-14T16:42:58.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26156" CreationDate="2019-04-14T17:51:42.910" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile mindset and way of working is very different from traditional mindset and way of working. This sentence shows &quot;PMO and other groups keeping track of resource utilization will certainly point it out as poor project management and worse.&quot; that your company has long way until you can call yourself agile. I suggest you to read Agile Manifesto as a team activity and to find out what it means for you as a team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing what seems you are missing: &lt;strong&gt;Testing and QA is not the same&lt;/strong&gt;. Testing is way how we analyse software with aim to find errors we already build in. QA stands for all activities we set with aim to prevent software from built in bugs - no bugs, no need for fixing them! I &lt;a href=&quot;https://trendig.com/en/blog/what-is-software-quality-assurance-and-why-is-it-crucial-for-your-business/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;wrote a piece&lt;/a&gt; on it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In agile team tester can take both roles - finding errors (testing) and setting rules which protect software (QA). For testing you need a software, for QA you don't need a software. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In real life agile testers day could have activities like this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;questioning user story, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;analysing acceptance criteria,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;working on examples,  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;writing ATDD,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pair programming,  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;helping to write unit tests (the hardest part in writing unit test&#xA;is to decide what to test),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;static testing,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;writing automated e2e tests,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;generating test data,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;preparing exploratory testing charters,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;educating team in testing techniques and approaches.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35581" LastActivityDate="2019-04-14T17:51:42.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25384" CreationDate="2019-04-14T18:11:54.280" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jira is an issue tracker, not a billing machine. With Jira you track tasks (e.g. to invoice the customer A), but nothing of those three things you listed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing, it seems that you don't have a system administrator. You definitely need one, especially if you have different user groups with different system rights. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35581" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-04-15T13:11:10.163" LastActivityDate="2019-04-15T13:11:10.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25384" CreationDate="2019-04-14T20:36:29.470" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The functionalities you mentioned (Store and manage customer data / Invoice customers based on the type of project) are usually done using a proper &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer-relationship_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Customer Relationship Management(CRM)&lt;/a&gt; software. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jira is a great and very customisable tool, even &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.atlassian.com/categories/crm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;offering some CRM plugins&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Happens that, even the best plugin won't be replacing a dedicated software. You can &lt;strong&gt;experiment some available Jira CRM plugins&lt;/strong&gt;. If they work for you, great! If they don't, you may consider looking for a CRM-specific solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-04-14T20:36:29.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26144" CreationDate="2019-04-14T21:37:54.083" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your main problem is that your team is not a team. Many managers put people on the project and start to call them a team, where in fact you need to invest time and money to create a team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But if the acceptance criteria is clear then there is no need for her to test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember: in agile user story is done when all the talks - development and testing - are accomplished. Of course acceptance criteria has to be clear, but we need to test it to make sure that we developed exactly that. I suggest you to read &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0932633692&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Perfect Software: And Other Illusions about Testing &lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35581" LastActivityDate="2019-04-14T21:37:54.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25974" CreationDate="2019-04-14T22:03:12.107" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many books and courses where you can learn about agile requirements. Three ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://leanpub.com/agilerequirements&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Growing Agile: A Coach's Guide to Agile Requirements&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Samantha Laing and Karen Greaves  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0321205685&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Mike Cohn &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ireb.org/en/cpre/re-agile/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;RE@Agile&lt;/a&gt; - IREB (requirements) training for Agile projects &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35581" LastEditorUserId="35581" LastEditDate="2019-04-15T10:14:27.763" LastActivityDate="2019-04-15T10:14:27.763" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25974" CreationDate="2019-04-15T01:17:30.110" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have mentions, the writing of requirements is a fairly minor part of Scrum. One could even argue that it is largely optional. However, this doesn't tell the whole story. The Product Owner in scrum has a much bigger job than writing requirements. They are responsible for ensuring that the backlog is healthy and prioritized, connecting a customer group to the Scrum Team,maximizing ROI of every sprint, and more. You can basically think of them as the CEO for the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You asked about a course and I would look at the Scrum Alliance's Certified Scrum Product Owner course as a good starting point. Scrum is a pretty big paradigm shift so there is a lot different to get used to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-04-15T01:17:30.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25894" CreationDate="2019-04-15T09:26:24.500" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In jira, am I approaching kanban wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;yes. &lt;a href=&quot;https://kanbanize.com/kanban-resources/getting-started/kanban-encyclopedia/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban&lt;/a&gt; is flow based agile approach, which uses just-in-time (JIT) methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am about to pump jira full of epics, tasks and bugs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides just-in-time and just-enough approach to all kind of documentation, I suggest you to read about Zero Bug Policy &lt;a href=&quot;https://medium.com/swlh/how-we-got-to-zero-bugs-and-implemented-a-zero-bug-policy-c77ee3f2e50b&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://cjagile.wordpress.com/2010/10/15/agile-testing-days-2010-day-2-lisa-crispins-key-note/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35581" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2019-04-15T10:21:37.040" LastActivityDate="2019-04-15T10:21:37.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26203" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-04-15T09:40:25.387" Score="15" ViewCount="3312" Body="&lt;p&gt;I joined a company where the development is outsourced in an offshore location. I have heard that the people offshore won’t deliver unless they are chased to do so. &#xA;In other words, when they are left to decide how much is too much, they will say commit to 40 points, whereas when pushed to do 60, they will deliver 60. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, management (onshore) has tried a few times and ended up that they need to control the teams (micro manage) in order to get an ideal result. “Lazy, incompetent, lack of proactivity” are some of the words used for the offshore team. Equally, I have observed that the offshore team is disengaged, from the little I’ve seen them in the video conf.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do we provide more freedom to the offshore teams to decide, but also trust that they do the best they can, without compromising product delivery?&lt;/strong&gt; Because the danger here is that the development slows down, and the team offshore takes advantage of the relaxed approach and starts delivering less and procrastinating more (based on previous experience).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5522" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-04-15T10:53:21.807" LastActivityDate="2019-05-23T13:20:04.673" Title="How to motivate offshore teams and trust them to deliver?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;distributed-team&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26203" CreationDate="2019-04-15T10:41:27.237" Score="21" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;when pushed to do 60, they will deliver 60.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a pretty meaningless measure in these circumstances. A team could drop quality to deliver more points or simply game the estimation of stories. Story points and velocity were designed to help teams estimate their capacity in a sprint. They are not intended to be measures of performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to establish a good relationship with the offshore team then I would suggest some or all of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Meet with the teams in person (either onshore or offshore). Establish a relationship with them and gain an understanding of what is motivating their behaviour.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Build &lt;em&gt;mutual&lt;/em&gt; trust. It isn't just about you trusting your offshore team, it is also about the offshore team trusting you. If they think they are being judged or blamed then they are likely to be defensive.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Empower the team. Help them to get engaged in design and architecture. Make them feel like their input is valued. Proactive behaviour comes when people feel they have value.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try and break down the distinction between the onshore and offshore teams. Make sure meetings are held jointly (including retrospectives). Use chat programs like Slack or MS Teams, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Arrange your daily Scrum at a time when everyone can be involved regardless of location (if possible).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-04-15T10:41:27.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26205" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-04-15T10:53:46.863" Score="2" ViewCount="451" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am using MS Project to create Gantt charts for multiple projects. Each project consists of different resources but these resources are shared across all of these projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently these resources have overlapped but I can't find some visual graph where I can see specific resources are overlapping and where I can also see in which project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have managed to find a view called Resource graph; it shows a graph with workers and when they are overbooked. However I can't see in which projects these resources are overlapping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you please help with suggestions on how to do this in MS Project or some other type of software?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35590" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-04-15T13:15:57.297" LastActivityDate="2019-04-16T06:10:08.667" Title="MS Project resource graph across multiple projects" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;resource-planning&gt;&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26203" CreationDate="2019-04-15T11:33:51.783" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL,DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The throughput of an outsourcing team depends mainly on &lt;strong&gt;culture&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;expectations&lt;/strong&gt; on them. Consider both aspects before acting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe there are a few aspects that are prerequisites to be understood before entering into the actual solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Why Outsourcing?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, there's a reason why companies outsource to offshore locations. In most of the cases, offshore is done for costing reasons. As higher the cost differences between onshore and offshore, as likely to be the quality difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Cultural differences?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each culture deals with well... life, differently. There's entire (highly suggested) &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/1610392507&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;books&lt;/a&gt; about it. Some cultures may, as you said, work better when receiving explicit or implicit messages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, &lt;em&gt;considering the aspects above&lt;/em&gt;, to your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do we provide more freedom to the offshore teams to decide, but&#xA;  also trust that they do the best they can, without compromising&#xA;  product delivery?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll have to &lt;strong&gt;understand&lt;/strong&gt; your team, their people and their culture. As Barnaby mentioned, a constant communication (daily meetings, constant trips, etc) is required. but not only that. You have to consider that communication is required and understand that &lt;strong&gt;they'll deliver&lt;/strong&gt; (and work, for the matter) &lt;strong&gt;according to their culture&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, after studying such culture you believe you can push harder for more deliveries, you can &lt;em&gt;experiment&lt;/em&gt;. But always consider the cultural factor. If you provide a candid feedback to a North American saying he's not as effective as you expect, he might deliver twice next time, as usually North Americans are very objective on their conversations. However, if you do the same with some Brazilians (I talk by experience!), you might have the opposite effect, as Brazilians could consider this offensive and that you're attacking him personally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, &lt;strong&gt;do not generalise&lt;/strong&gt; - there's room for several cultures within a single country or group of people. Just because people in Rio de Janeiro loves beaches, it doesn't mean everyone stays at the beach 365 days of the year. just because São Paulo is a very busy city, it doesn't mean you won't have people just 'faking' work from 8 to 5. These are obviously examples, don't consider them literally. That's what I meant by &lt;strong&gt;understand&lt;/strong&gt; your team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-04-15T11:33:51.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26203" CreationDate="2019-04-15T14:33:18.880" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Velocity Isn't a Productivity Metric&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In other words, when they are left to decide how much is too much, they will say commit to 40 points, whereas when pushed to do 60, they will deliver 60.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are managing to a velocity metric, then you're Doing Scrum Wrong™. Velocity is a &lt;em&gt;capacity&lt;/em&gt; metric, and has no utility in measuring a team's productivity. Even if it were, adopting an agile framework like Scrum wouldn't necessarily make teams more productive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What velocity &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; do is achieve a stable, sustainable state. A sustainable velocity make process inefficiencies more visible, so you can address them. It can be used for secondary functions like estimating lead time only when:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The range of a team's velocity is relatively stable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The work to be estimated is granular enough (and familiar enough) to avoid guesstimating about &quot;unknown unknowns.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trying to maximize velocity metrics is a an anti-pattern. Instead, you should increase communications and transparency around your Sprint Goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Leverage Sprint Goals&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you misuse velocity as a management metric rather than for its intended purposes as a planning tool and detective control, you're defining a target level-of-effort by management fiat. As a result, you're practically &lt;em&gt;begging&lt;/em&gt; to be given inflated estimates by teams that try to meet these &quot;visible effort&quot; goals. Don't do this to the team, your project, or your company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, you should switch to an increment-based metric where a central coherence is either &quot;done&quot; or &quot;not-done.&quot; The Sprint Goal was designed for that purpose, and should be what you're using to determine whether the team delivered what it planned to do or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of a Sprint isn't intrinsically to put in a lot of effort, do lots of things, or perform lots of tasks. The goal of a Sprint is to deliver the Sprint Goal! As such, the framework actually &lt;em&gt;requires&lt;/em&gt; that each Sprint have a central coherence that defines it and ties all the work for the Sprint together. This is often a feature (or set of smaller features) that forms a logical increment of potentially-shippable work. This goal is set internally &lt;em&gt;by&lt;/em&gt; the team, and is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; just another way to impose a management target.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of each Sprint, the Scrum Team and stakeholders use the Sprint Review to inspect the increment together. The Scrum Team then feeds the results of the Sprint into the Sprint Retrospective to improve their processes, and into Backlog Refinement and Sprint Planning for further work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a management perspective, a team that meets its internal Sprint Goals more often than not lends predictability to a project. A team that misses its own Sprint Goals more often than not may need additional resources (like money, staff, or a strong agile coach) to succeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Managing Performance&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no silver bullet to managing performance with Scrum. While the transparency, visibility, and communication enhancements of the Scrum framework can certainly increase the efficiency of mature development teams, it will not allow companies to hire junior resources or mediocre people and wring anything more than &lt;em&gt;predictability&lt;/em&gt; from the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, there's no way for anyone outside your company to determine if the inability to reach your project targets is due to poor target-setting by management, poor performance by teams or individuals, or poor &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/16376/4271&quot;&gt;agile release planning&lt;/a&gt;. It's important that your management team works closely with the Product Owner and Scrum Master to ensure that all stakeholders agree on the current release plan, and that the plan is continuously updated based on the current state of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If management defines the release plan, rather than allowing it to be an emergent property of the agile inspect-and-adapt cycle, then this is unlikely to be successful. There are a lot of reasons for this, but of particular concern is the fact that an off-shore team is often not just a team but also a &lt;em&gt;vendor&lt;/em&gt;. A vendor/client relationship within an immature Scrum process is unlikely to result in the level of honesty and transparency required for the Scrum Team to push back and say, &quot;We can't reliably meet those goals.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the flip side, if you have a mature agile process, but your Scrum Team can't provide you with the level of productivity you need, you will need to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Revise your expectations downwards.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Train and improve your existing team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Replace your existing team with another team or vendor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These choices generally require increased budget and run-time for the project, so they are a cost of doing business rather than a cost-free activity. Nevertheless, they are among the primary choices you can make in such situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-04-15T14:33:18.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26208" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26214" CreationDate="2019-04-15T15:39:55.310" Score="1" ViewCount="103" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the difference between Application Management and Configuration Management, in the specific context of managing version, resources and architectures of internally developed applications?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first thought Configuration Management was the responsible for managing these three configuration items (are they CIs?), but my organization believes it is under Application Management, since it is in the scope of managing an application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35595" LastActivityDate="2019-05-16T09:02:15.890" Title="What is the different between Application Management and Configuration Management in ITIL v3?" Tags="&lt;itil&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26185" CreationDate="2019-04-15T16:49:48.410" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Transparency, Visibility, and Emergent Process Design&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Transparency of the process is the result of practices and artifacts that create &lt;em&gt;visibility&lt;/em&gt;, and leverage the inspect-and-adapt cycles of the framework. However, transparency and visibility will not intrinsically help the team complete an increment. For that, you will need to identify the process issues that are getting in the way. This ongoing process improvement work applies the principles of emergent design to your workflow, and is essential to effective agile adoption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Addressing Routinely-Incomplete Increments&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your team is routinely struggling to complete an increment, that's often a sign of poor estimation and scope management. The following practices can help you surface the problems and allow the team to start adapting its processes to resolve them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Manage scope with a Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ensuring the team has a clearly-defined Sprint Goal is not only required by the framework, but also helps to manage the scope of the Sprint and the complexity of the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Manage scope of Product and Sprint Backlog Items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing backlog items that meet &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST criteria&lt;/a&gt; will assist with the complexity and scope of work planned for the Sprint. In particular, writing user stories that are (reasonably) independent, small, and testable will make the work more goal-driven.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Decompose Sprint Backlog Items into tasks of 1/2 to 2 days each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Daily Scrum is a daily coordination meeting for the Development Team, but part of its value comes from having work that's broken up into tasks of less than one day each. Long-running tasks are inherently harder to estimate and track, so decomposition is key.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Shorten your Sprints to 1-2 weeks each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shorter Sprints trade reduced capacity for faster inspect-and-adapt cycle times. For example, by reducing the length of each Sprint to one week, you are forced to accept less work into the time box (which often encourages swarming and pairing), focus your Sprint Goal more narrowly, and think more iteratively about the work planned for the project. It's generally better to predictably get &lt;strong&gt;some&lt;/strong&gt; amount of work &lt;em&gt;completed&lt;/em&gt; each Sprint than to routinely fail to achieve your Sprint Goal by setting your targets too high.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reduce work-in-progress (WIP).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reducing WIP improves flow; reduces productivity drains such as multitasking, communications overhead, and dependency-management; and improves the focus on state transitions during the Daily Scrum. It also makes it much more likely that each unit of work can meet the Definition of Done and integrated into a potentially-shippable increment before the end of the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The list above is generally a good top-5 list on which to build additional capabilities. Unless you're already doing all the things listed above, all you'd be doing by injecting test-first practices into a process that doesn't already support or require them is &lt;em&gt;adding&lt;/em&gt; complexity to the development process. What you actually want to do is &lt;strong&gt;simplify the workflow until bottlenecks and necessary process improvements become self-evident.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-04-15T16:49:48.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26205" CreationDate="2019-04-16T06:10:08.667" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can setup a shared resource pool, as described here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/create-and-share-a-resource-pool-64a2416e-b811-4ddf-b039-e0347e233581&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/create-and-share-a-resource-pool-64a2416e-b811-4ddf-b039-e0347e233581&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically you have one project file with resources that you link to from your other project files. If you already have project files in use, this will require a bunch of initial setup..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33522" LastActivityDate="2019-04-16T06:10:08.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26208" CreationDate="2019-04-16T08:28:24.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Application Management is responsible for managing applications throughout their lifecycle. This ITIL process plays an important role in the application-related aspects of designing, testing, operating and improving IT services, as well as in developing the skills required to operate the IT organization's applications. 'Application Management' is an ongoing activity, as opposed to 'Application Development' which is typically a one-time set of activities to construct applications.&quot; From &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.en.it-processmaps.com/index.php/ITIL_Application_Management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The primary goal of ITIL Configuration Management is to identify, maintain, and verify information on IT assets and configurations in the enterprise. It is one of the areas that comprise ITIL Service Support.&quot; From &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.helpsystems.com/solutions/it-operations-management-automation/service-support-itil-version-2/configuration-management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In human words - Application Management are activities how to manage applications lifecycle (requirements, design, implement, test, build, deploy, operate, optimise). Configuration Management is process of identifying and defining logical and physical aspects of an item. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general I would agree with your company. First you identify and define the item and then you can manage it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35581" LastActivityDate="2019-04-16T08:28:24.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26203" CreationDate="2019-04-16T08:39:18.623" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have 13 years development experience. I worked as an outsource engineer for Weight Watchers from Jordan, and then later in my life I did manage outsource teams myself. I also managed onshore teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Managing teams when they are offshore can be different, but motivation i don't think its much different specially for talented engineers. Whatever motivates you and your onshore team it must also motivate the offshore team. However here are some notes that can be helpful&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get them involved in business&lt;/strong&gt;. Getting engineers involved plays an important part of agile development, and it is a great motivation for talented people. Get them in those brainstorm sessions, ask them about their thoughts, which parts needs fixes or enhancements and take their feedback seriously.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get them to visit&lt;/strong&gt;. One of my favorite trips was to NY Weight Watcher offices, I stayed there for 3 months, got to know the team much better and this has given me tons of motivation. It doesn't have to be that long stay if budget doesn't allow. Two weeks visit can be great two. You can also go and visit the offshore team in their country.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Thanks emails&lt;/strong&gt;. After a major release that recognition of team effort email does a motivation magic and get people really feeling proud of their accomplishment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;General social relations&lt;/strong&gt;. If visits is not easy to do, still on chat and phone you need to have social relations. You need to talk and discuss and stay close. Think of other things to talk about other than the usual weather talk!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well if I think of more points I'll share more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35608" LastActivityDate="2019-04-16T08:39:18.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22835" CreationDate="2019-04-16T13:21:54.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It looks like the Product Owner has not created a Product Vision for the end product that is being worked towards.  This would be a good starting point to get everyone to share a common view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, I agree with @Daniel, having 4 identical Stories for each is a red flag and does not make for a common Product Backlog. Have just one Story for each feature and get each mini-team of 2 to complete their tasks then meet up and share progress and any impediments.  Doing this twice a day should enable them to stay on the same page and be more ready to help each other out should the need arise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this to work the Story will need to have well-defined acceptance criteria; not just as questions to ask, but taking into account each of the 4 platforms being developed against. It is almost like making sure (testing) that a web page's features work the same way in different versions of Windows and in different web browsers for each version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main thing is to give them all a set of common values which pull them all together to achieve the same goal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35613" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-04-17T13:54:06.433" LastActivityDate="2019-04-17T13:54:06.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26218" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26271" CreationDate="2019-04-16T14:35:23.337" Score="0" ViewCount="469" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reading some old posts like &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/18400/430&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; one, I noticed that the &lt;code&gt;TFB / NFC / 1 (Sprint)&lt;/code&gt; estimation technique could be useful for teams moving towards agility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Happens that I failed to find over the internet how to implement it besides &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.flowless.eu/tfb-nfc-1-sprint/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, which is pretty vague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; when defining what's the &lt;code&gt;1&lt;/code&gt;, I see two approaches:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;during Sprint planning, the development team will start from the top of the product backlog, reviewing the stories available and start adding them to the iteration up to the moment they believe they reached &lt;code&gt;1&lt;/code&gt;... and &quot;skipping&quot; the items that are either &lt;code&gt;TFB / NFC&lt;/code&gt; for the next cycle of refinement? Or &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;during Sprint planning, the refinement is done up to the moment the &lt;code&gt;1&lt;/code&gt; contains also &lt;em&gt;refined&lt;/em&gt; items from &lt;code&gt;TFB / NFC&lt;/code&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way of seeing this question is &lt;em&gt;when the &lt;code&gt;TFB / NFC&lt;/code&gt; items are refined? During sprint planning or refinement&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Offtopic:&lt;/strong&gt; One of the first entries I got when Googling this is a tweet from a pm.se member that I haven't seen in a while... &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/89/pawel-brodzinski&quot;&gt;Pawel Brodzinski&lt;/a&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-04-23T16:14:32.003" Title="How to implement TFB / NFC / 1 (Sprint) estimation technique?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;methodology&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26220" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-04-16T19:51:18.107" Score="8" ViewCount="384" Body="&lt;p&gt;I get most of Scrum. However, I can't get my head around what to do with work in progress at the end of a Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we are working in a swarm, we can defer the end of a Sprint, or bring it forward if we don't think we have enough time. However, when working as individuals or in pairs, not every one finishes at exactly the same time. Therefore some people will be sitting around, or producing work that cannot be finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a developer I hate it when I am halfway through my 7th bit of work, and the Sprint ends. If the unfinished work is selected for the next Sprint, all is good; but if not, then I feel disheartened. Even worse is when it is selected in a later Sprint. (This seems to go against the low work in progress philosophy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the past I adapted our practice to focus on low work-in-progress, and regular review (but no Sprints). I later realized that this was Scrumban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Am I missing something?&lt;/strong&gt; I would like to get a better understanding of pure Scrum. (I know we are supposed to adapt it, but understanding it first is also a very good idea).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3424" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-05-03T07:04:22.710" LastActivityDate="2019-05-03T07:04:22.710" Title="In Scrum, what should we do with partly-completed work started at the end of a Sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26220" CreationDate="2019-04-16T22:09:16.987" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't plan or start work that won't fit into the Sprint. Decompose any remaining work further until it fits within the current Sprint, or let the team figure out what backlog items to descope for the remainder of the Sprint while still meeting the Sprint Goal. Then reallocate any excess slack to process improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any work that remains incomplete at the end of a Sprint is re-estimated and placed back onto the Product Backlog as future work to be re-prioritized. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-sprint&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All incomplete Product Backlog Items are re-estimated and put back on the Product Backlog. The work done on them depreciates quickly and must be frequently re-estimated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, unless work is related to the Sprint Goal, or to continuous process improvement, tail-packing work into the Sprint is often a wasted effort. Don't do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What's Missing: Goals and Slack&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Am I missing something?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. What you're missing is the focus on a Sprint Goal. The Scrum framework &lt;em&gt;requires&lt;/em&gt; a central coherence to tie all the work of the increment together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal of a Sprint isn't to complete lots of tasks. The goal of the Sprint is to deliver the Sprint Goal!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you shift your focus to a coherent goal, the tail-packing issue you're experiencing is surfaced as waste (in a Lean sense) and quite likely a variant of the 100% utilization fallacy. It also highlights that much of the team's work is not cross-cutting enough, and that your team itself may not be sufficiently cross-functional or self-directed enough to address continuous improvement issues when they truly have nothing else to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Idle&quot; time is very rarely actual waste in the Lean sense. Downtime and slack are essential to agility, and provide essential opportunities to improve tooling, testing harnesses, equipment, or other aspects of the team's process and infrastructure. Skimping on slack is often one of the key predictors of suboptimal performance for queue-based frameworks, and Scrum is no different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Alternatives to Tail-Packing&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth mentioning that in 20+ years of Scrum and other agile practices, I've rarely seen excess slack to be a real, long-term problem for teams with a healthy inspect-and-adapt process. Instead, I've generally seen teams that struggle with having a reliable product delivery cadence &lt;em&gt;improve&lt;/em&gt; by adding slack and avoiding tail-packing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than tail-packing your work, the team should generally plan to gently undershoot their capacity for the Sprint. This will generally result in a modest amount of slack that can be repurposed to evergreen quality and process work, or (as is more often the case) simply result in better quality as team members repurpose excess slack for code (or product) reviews, testing, documentation, and Sprint demos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some teams also put evergreen backlog items into the Product Backlog so that Sprints that radically undershoot capacity can peel off additional work. You can also work with the Product Owner to move up Backlog Refinement to decompose additional work that can fit into the remaining time box. In cases of truly egregious amounts of excess slack, the remaining time can be spent on workshopping better estimation techniques to improve Sprint Planning and Backlog Refinement in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to avoid tail-packing is to increase swarming, self-direction, and cross-functional activities within the team. Rather than tasking work out to individuals, working as a group on &lt;em&gt;features&lt;/em&gt; rather than &lt;em&gt;tasks&lt;/em&gt; often yields better results. It puts more eyes on the work, and creates a better environment for collective ownership of the increment than task-oriented assignments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, the whole Scrum Team is responsible for meeting the Sprint Goal. They aren't just responsible for their own tasks! If the team has not yet met the Sprint Goal, but aren't saying to one another:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've finished X earlier than tomorrow's Daily Scrum; can I help you finish Y today?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then you don't yet have a mature agile team. If there's work remaining on the Sprint Backlog, it's usually best to complete all current work-in-progress before starting a new work item. Even when not, the whole team should be coordinating dependencies for the Sprint Goal at least daily, which makes what work should be done next self-evident when discussed as a group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Use the Retrospective&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint Retrospective is where this issue ought to be discussed as a team. Discussions about how to estimate capacity better, how to collaborate more effectively, or how to optimize the teams process should be done at least once per Sprint in order to provide a tight feedback loop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have extra time within your current Sprint, use some of that slack time to examine your processes and discuss alternatives. Time spent improving your process pays large dividends over a long-running project, and even small improvements paid early on can represent a significant return on investment through the magic of compounding efficiencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-04-16T22:09:16.987" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26222" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26234" CreationDate="2019-04-17T04:46:58.400" Score="2" ViewCount="6839" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a question during PSM1 assessment: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How is the management external to the Scrum Team involved in the Daily Scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Scrum Master speaks on their behalf&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Management gives an update at the start of each daily scrum.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The development team self-manages and is the - only management required at the Daily scrum.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The product owner represents their opinions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone suggest me proper answer out of given options?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My choice is: &lt;code&gt;The development team self-manages and is the - only management required at the Daily scrum&lt;/code&gt; - As per my knowledge Daily Scrum is belongs to development team only and they are responsible and accountable. But not sure I'm correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28200" LastEditorUserId="28200" LastEditDate="2019-04-18T04:17:50.463" LastActivityDate="2019-09-24T19:20:25.437" Title="How is the management external to the Scrum Team involved in the Daily Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-team&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26223" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26232" CreationDate="2019-04-17T05:37:13.940" Score="4" ViewCount="11595" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a question during PSM1 assessment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Scrum Master is working with a Development Team that has members in different physical locations. The Development Team meets in a variety of meeting rooms arid has much to do logistically (for example, set up conference calls) before the Daily Scrum. What action should the Scrum Master take?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allow the Development Team to self-manage and determine for itself what to-do.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set up the meeting and tell the Development Team that is how it will be done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask the Development Team members to alternate who is responsible for meeting setup.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;inform management and ask them to solve it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone suggest me proper answer out of given options?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My choice is: &lt;code&gt;inform management and ask them to solve it.&lt;/code&gt; - As per my knowledge Scrum Master is responsible for resolution to any impediments to the development team. &#xA;But as per scrum development team is self-organizing team so other possible answer can be &lt;code&gt;Allow the Development Team to self-manage and determine for itself what to-do.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not sure I'm correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28200" LastEditorUserId="28200" LastEditDate="2019-04-18T04:22:10.267" LastActivityDate="2021-01-08T22:17:46.177" Title="A Scrum Master is working with a Development Team that has members in different physical locations" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-team&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26224" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26225" CreationDate="2019-04-17T05:59:47.303" Score="2" ViewCount="7589" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a question during PSM1 assessment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The IT manager asks Development team for a status report describing the progress throughout the Sprint. The Development team asks the Scrum Master for advice. The Scrum Master should/will:&#xA;  (Select two best options)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create and deliver the report to the manager herself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tell the development team to figure it out themselves&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tell the development team to fit the report into the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talk to the IT manager and explain that the progress in Scrum comes from inspecting an increment at the Sprint Review.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask the Product Owner to send the manager the report.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone suggest me proper answer out of given options?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28200" LastActivityDate="2021-01-08T22:04:29.613" Title="The IT manager asks Development team for a status report describing the progress throughout the Sprint" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26224" CreationDate="2019-04-17T06:09:41.860" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Status reports are not a thing in Scrum. The &quot;manager&quot; can be either a shareholder to the Product Owner, in which case they'll be updated through that channel, or they can be hands-off and only manage what is left, i.e. the organisation, not the projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, the correct answer is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Talk to the IT manager and explain that the progress in Scrum comes from inspecting an increment at the Sprint Review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I'd have to pick a second fit, I'd pick &quot;Create and deliver the report to the manager herself&quot;, because the data is all there. The board and burndown chart (or whatever the team uses to visualize progress) should be updated daily and if the manager is not happy with that visualization, maybe because the physical board is in a different building or the tool is not accessible to them, I would see it as the Scrum Masters job to present the same data in another visualization to the manager. Maybe as a screenshot of the board or automated email or graph of the burndown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2019-04-17T06:09:41.860" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26226" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26231" CreationDate="2019-04-17T06:32:24.043" Score="3" ViewCount="5662" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a question during PSM1 assessment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During a Sprint Retrospective, the Development team proposes moving the Daily scrum to only occur on Specific days of week. Not daily. Which two are the most appropriate responses for the Scrum Master? (Select two best answers)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coach the team on why the Daily Scrum is important as an opportunity to update the plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn why the Development Team wants this and work with them to improve the outcome of the daily Scrum&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider the request and decide on which days the Daily Scrum should occur.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have the developers vote&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acknowledge and support self-organizing team’s decision&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can any one suggest me correct option out of all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28200" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-05-03T09:11:44.487" LastActivityDate="2021-05-26T15:47:29.750" Title="During a Sprint Retrospective, the Development team proposes moving the Daily scrum to only occur specific days. Not daily" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;&lt;sprint-retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26226" CreationDate="2019-04-17T08:51:06.943" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trainer myself and I know that it is not helpful to tell right answers straight away. Training is not about learning right answers, but learning for your work life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will give you right answer to this question and offer to guide you with other questions, that you find the right answer yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Coach the team on why the Daily Scrum is important as an opportunity to update the plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Learn why the Development Team wants this and work with them to improve the outcome of the daily Scrum&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why I think those are the right answers? &#xA;Question should be answered from &lt;strong&gt;Scrum Master perspective&lt;/strong&gt;. So you need to remember what kind of role is Scrum Master, what is her/his main activities? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The Scrum Master is responsible for promoting and supporting Scrum as defined in the Scrum Guide. Scrum Masters do this by helping everyone understand Scrum theory, practices, rules, and values.&quot; from &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-sm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ScrumGuides&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both answer options fit perfectly for Scrum Master(SM) role. SM asks the team why they want to changed it. When SM knows where misunderstanding lies, SM can provide necessary information and explain why it is important to have daily status exchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35581" LastEditorUserId="35581" LastEditDate="2019-04-18T12:00:43.133" LastActivityDate="2019-04-18T12:00:43.133" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26220" CreationDate="2019-04-17T09:15:04.653" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you say, not every team member will finish the planned work at the same time. But as long as you don't overload the sprint then there is a good chance they will all have finished by the end of the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is, what does a team member do if they finish early?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some possible suggestions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Help other team members that are still working on sprint backlog items.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take a look at the top of the product backlog and see if there is any preparation that can be done for the highest priority backlog items. This should help with sprint planning and backlog refinement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work on tackling technical debt.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add automated regression test coverage.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn new things. Perhaps read a book about a promising new technology.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-04-17T09:15:04.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3561" CreationDate="2019-04-17T17:33:38.130" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to add to what David's said, &quot;The responsibility of allocating resources, be it human, money, tools, material, or time, rests with leadership.&quot; I think, though, the question might be more about &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; leadership. Does that mean a defined position, or leadership from within a completely self-organized team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a project manager or a product owner or Scrum master or however your team is organized, it is &lt;em&gt;ultimately&lt;/em&gt; their responsibility to figure out who is working on what tasks when. That said, it's the responsibility of the person who's leaving (particularly if it's for an extended period of time, like maternity leave) to communicate the details of their absence to the project's leadership. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you do that? I'm a big fan of one-on-ones.&#xA;From &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blog.resourceguruapp.com/how-to-work-maternity-leave-into-your-long-term-projects/?utm_source=StackExchange&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to work maternity leave into your long-term projects&lt;/a&gt;&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These are not your regular individual meetings because the&#xA;  communication needs to extend beyond tasks and deliverables to any&#xA;  concerns about what will be taking place during the team member’s&#xA;  absence, as well as any developments that require immediate&#xA;  adjustments to the project schedule or priorities. Keep consistent&#xA;  notes from these sessions, and bring in the appointed backup person&#xA;  for any issues that they will need to be aware of or take over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those meetings will also help clarify how whoever is going on vacation or taking family leave is prepping for their time away from work. Just like with everything related to project management, communication is key, and I think that task ownership is a shared responsibility between whomever is leaving and whomever is responsible for the project, and failure comes from one side of the equation withholding information from the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35236" LastActivityDate="2019-04-17T17:33:38.130" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26230" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-04-17T17:59:39.203" Score="1" ViewCount="411" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know if it's possible with Jira to cover the following scenario?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team estimates the items in its backlog in story points&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The backlog is prioritized&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The backlog is handled like a Fifo queue; the team works on the highest items first&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team has a known velocity, predicted by the last days' weather method&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because every item is estimated and velocity and priority are known, I'd be able to show the estimated time when an item is finished. The calculation could be updated dynamically, for example when someone reprioritizes an item or something gets finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The easiest solution I can think of is to simply add another field to each item which is then shown in the Kanban view. Has anyone experience with something like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35630" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-04-17T18:04:52.500" LastActivityDate="2019-04-18T20:02:23.547" Title="Kanban - Simple Backlog Forecasting?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26226" CreationDate="2019-04-17T19:00:22.773" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The struggle with questions about exams is that for many of these, we don't know what the right answer is. I know which I would pick, but I've read the scrum guide multiple times and can assure you that there is no cannonically correct answer to this questions. So, I am answering with some thoughts to help you understand how I'd get to an answer, but I cannot promise that this answer is correct by any means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this were to happen in real life (and it does. In fact, it did yesterday for me) There are a few things I want to look at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Why does Scrum advise that this occurs daily? There is the assumption in Scrum that things can change very rapidly. There is also the assumption that the team is helping each other and can best adapt to rapid change if they check in with each other at least daily. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Does the team feel they need these benefits from rapid checkins? Maybe the work they are doing is so by-the-book that nothing really changes day-to-day. This doesn't describe most work, but I have on occassion encountered this. On the other hand, it may be that the team doesn't really work as a team, and that is why they don't feel they need it. Or, maybe they do need it but...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Is the daily scrum not delivering on the benefits it is supposed to create? There may be many reasons why this is happening. Perhaps it isn't well facilitated or perhaps the team doesn't understand the purpose and therefor they aren't leveraging it effectively. I worked with one team that had a separate synch meeting an hour before their daily scrum, so of course they got no benefit out of what was essentially a second scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, in truth, there are probably two answers that are perfectly valid, but the Scrum.org exams like to play with word use. There is one answer that is arguably valid but uses a phrase in a way that is, on its face, counter to scrum.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-04-17T19:00:22.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26223" CreationDate="2019-04-17T20:04:58.103" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Let Servant-Leadership Be Your Guide&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only possible answer of the four is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Allow the Development Team to self-manage and determine for itself what to-do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other options are all directive and presumptive in nature. Based on the description, it's not even clear that there's an actual problem from the team's perspective, nor that there's a process issue that would justify the Scrum Master role taking direct action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-04-17T20:04:58.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26222" CreationDate="2019-04-18T07:14:48.907" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are correct. The Daily Scrum is a meeting for the development team to coordinate the work they will be doing in that day (or more accurately, in the time till the next Daily Scrum).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People outside the team (including those in a management role) are allowed to be present in the Daily Scrum, but they are not allowed to interfere or speak up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2019-04-18T07:14:48.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26235" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26238" CreationDate="2019-04-18T07:55:09.167" Score="11" ViewCount="1903" Body="&lt;p&gt;When selecting user stories from the prioritized product backlog during sprint planning, is it more important to make sure that we end up with our predicted velocity in story points or that we choose the most important user stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the following example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team feels comfortable committing to 9 story points this iteration.&#xA;These are the stories at the top of our product backlog (from most important to least important)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User Story A - 4 story points&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User Story B - 2 story points&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User Story C - 1 story point&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User Story D - 3 story points&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it better to choose A, B and C (7 story points, based on priority) or should we choose A, B and D (9 story points, based on predicted velocity)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35638" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2019-04-18T12:40:32.180" LastActivityDate="2019-04-18T14:50:34.357" Title="Selecting user stories during sprint planning" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26222" CreationDate="2019-04-18T08:30:33.467" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Answer to your question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The development team self-manages and is the - only management required at the Daily scrum&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Daily Scrum is an internal meeting for the Development Team. If others are present, the Scrum Master ensures that they do not disrupt the meeting.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only development team member is allowed to speak/present concern of other members, in the Daily Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is reference: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-daily&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ScrumGuide.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35639" LastActivityDate="2019-04-18T08:30:33.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26223" CreationDate="2019-04-18T08:52:52.730" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is possibility of both answers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;inform management and ask them to solve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-dev&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Master Service to the Development Team according to Scrum Guide:&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;The Scrum Master serves the Development Team in several ways, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coaching the Development Team in self-organization and cross-functionality;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Helping the Development Team to create high-value products;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Removing impediments to the Development Team’s progress;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Facilitating Scrum events as requested or needed; and,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coaching the Development Team in organizational environments in which Scrum is not yet fully adopted and understood.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will be the Scrum Master's responsibility to remove impediments with the help of management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-dev&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Possibility of Second Answer as per Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Allow the Development Team to self-manage and determine for itself what to-do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Development Teams are structured and empowered by the organization to organize and manage their own work. The resulting synergy optimizes the Development Team’s overall efficiency and effectiveness.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35640" LastActivityDate="2019-04-18T08:52:52.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26235" CreationDate="2019-04-18T09:05:16.863" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a really good question, but there is no definitive answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have the conversation with your Product Owner. Explain to them the situation and offer them a choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner may say that the difference in importance between Story C and Story D is not significant, so they are happy for you to swap them around for this sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, they may say that getting Story C done in this sprint is really important to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may also be worth analysing Story D to see if it can be broken down in to smaller stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-04-18T09:05:16.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26235" CreationDate="2019-04-18T09:19:28.093" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I really liked &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/26221/430&quot;&gt;Todd's explanantion&lt;/a&gt; on how to deal with such situations: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Focus on Sprint Goal, instead of specific Stories.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When prioritising these stories, some will fit better to a concept of a single goal than others. So, instead of focusing on priority or velocity, focus on Sprint Goal. Ok, it's kinda the same as focus on priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, avoid the &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/8337/430&quot;&gt;100% utilization fallacy&lt;/a&gt;. It's more important to deliver value (through the Sprint Goal or prioritisation) than trying to use every Story Point available for the sake of Velocity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your goal is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to go faster. Is to &lt;em&gt;deliver more value&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-04-18T09:19:28.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26235" CreationDate="2019-04-18T14:50:34.357" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, it is a good practice to have the SP estimated following the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_number&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fibonnacci sequence&lt;/a&gt;, where 4 it is not possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question: The Scrum guide specifies that is the Product Owner who will choose the Product Backlog items that should be done during the sprint:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Development Team works to forecast the functionality that will be developed during the Sprint. The Product Owner discusses the objective that the Sprint should achieve and the Product Backlog items that, if completed in the Sprint, would achieve the Sprint Goal. The entire Scrum Team collaborates on understanding the work of the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in that case it is the Product Owner who has to decide that, where probably in your example could decide to do in this Sprint the User Stories 1, 2, 3 and leave 4 as a challenge US where you do not have engagement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32567" LastActivityDate="2019-04-18T14:50:34.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26230" CreationDate="2019-04-18T19:20:24.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;With Kanban, your biggest forecasting tool will be cycle time. I'd start by understanding what your team's average cycle time is (by product, version, or sprint), to help predict how many items could be processed in a specific time period. Jira tracks this using the control chart, which is one of the reports. Out of the box, this report will give you predictability visuals as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35648" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-04-18T20:02:23.547" LastActivityDate="2019-04-18T20:02:23.547" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26244" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-04-18T21:34:02.047" Score="2" ViewCount="228" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a software engineer. Today in the middle of a Sprint I was told to drop all my activities and start doing another task whose Jira entry has like 3 words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The deadline for this task is very tight and they're all telling me to complete it as soon as possible. But I am on this project only 3 days and I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with this task at all. I don't know the architecture or the code of this project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What course of action should I take here? It certainly doesn't feel pleasant to work like this. Is this normal in scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work for an outsourcing company and I feel like I can't voice this as a concern during our stand up meetings because I will be told by my manager that it's an internal issue and that we shouldn't talk about it when our client is there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35650" LastActivityDate="2019-04-19T13:29:10.520" Title="What can be done about a task with a tight deadline and no analysis?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26244" CreationDate="2019-04-18T22:25:00.973" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your boss explicitly told you to not discuss it with the customer, so this clearly isn't part of the standard process anymore. Therefore Scrum won't give you the answer how to handle this situation. You can not discuss it in the Daily Scrum nor in the retrospective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Forget processes, do whatever is necessary!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your managers decided that this is such a critical task that they do not care about processes, forecasts or other priorities, therefore they do not need to hear your concerns at the moment. Pick up the phone and call whoever can explain the issue and start fixing it. If you don't know how to fix it, pick up the phone and ask someone who knows. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They trust you that you can handle it, take it as a chance to prove yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Post mortem&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this must not happen every week. After you solved the problem, do a root cause analysis. For example ask the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;5 Whys&lt;/a&gt; and make adjustments, so that it will never happen again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1264" LastEditorUserId="1264" LastEditDate="2019-04-19T07:46:20.397" LastActivityDate="2019-04-19T07:46:20.397" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26244" CreationDate="2019-04-18T22:47:32.440" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's start with the basics: No, that isn't Scrum. In fact, that type of action is expressly forbidden from multiple angles in Scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, understand the consequences of whatever action you're going to take. Are you ok with this work environment? Are you allowed to request being assigned elsewhere if you are not? Picking a fight on this issue probably won't end well for you, so you should understand the consequences of any action you take. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you decide to go along with it but are still uncomfortable, this may be something you can bring up in the retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, on this specific point, the Scrum Master should really be your advocate here. They seem a bit absent in your story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the company is clearly not practicing Scrum. Just for broader knowledge, here is how that should go in a Scrum environment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 1: Very important item comes in. It gets entered into the product backlog to be prioritized appropriately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 2: If it is critically important, the person bringing it to the team would sit down and have a conversation with the Product Owner and the Team. They would explain the need and impact and the team may share some ideas of what it takes to address it. At this point, one of two things will happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 3a (pragmatic): This is technically against scrum, but it's both common and pretty harmless. The PO, team, and person raising the concern may reformulate their sprint plan to make this the number 1 priority of the whole team and they'll agree to what must drop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 3b (by the book): The product owner crashes the sprint. All sprint work halts, new work is planned and at the front of it is this item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 4: The whole team rallies around getting this item done as fast as humanly possible. I mean, if it was that important, it deserves everyone's attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the way it is supposed to work in Scrum. Work comes to the team. The team determines how to field it. Sprint priorities are respected and if something that important comes along, then it gets the urgency from the whole team it deserves. This makes sure that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the team fields work most effectively&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the team stays focused&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the team pivots as needed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-04-18T22:47:32.440" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="222" CreationDate="2019-04-18T23:52:09.883" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, a project is a thing and a developer a person. It is not the same thing to manage a project than to manage a person or many people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, developers have their own agenda. They can have their own project(s) that they develop. They can work alone or in a team. They can be paid, rewarded or volunteer. Many develop apps that they offer to an IT company after. A project can be in any kind of situation with any kind of people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, if you are a developer manager, you have to be ready to work with many people having many different goals to achieve. You manage developers that have many projects that you don't manage directly. You can organize conventions, trainings, corporation events. You have to be competent in all that your developers do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Forth, project management is not only in the IT industry. You can manage a community project that has nothing to do with start ups and IT innovations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, if you are good at project management it does not mean that you will be good at developer management. The best thing is to have been a developer yourself or have a high interest in what a developer do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user30807" LastActivityDate="2019-04-18T23:52:09.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26244" CreationDate="2019-04-19T00:16:40.447" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I feel like I can't voice this as a concern during our stand up meetings because I will be told by my manager that it's an internal issue and that we shouldn't talk about it when our client is there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What &quot;you feel&quot; and &quot;what is&quot; are not necessarily the same thing. You won't know until you do it. If you do not feel stand-up is the right environment, you must bring it up. Historically, stand-up is a valid time to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can bring it up now (when something can be done about it) or after the fact (when it's too late). Which of these statements do you want to hear:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If it couldn't be done, why didn't you say something. We could have got you help or clarified the task, or re-assigned it?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You were right; it couldn't be done. But at least we all knew this was likely to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could also be that somebody DOES know and can guide you or take the task. This is one of the main reasons for having a stand up meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33522" LastEditorUserId="33522" LastEditDate="2019-04-19T13:29:10.520" LastActivityDate="2019-04-19T13:29:10.520" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26244" CreationDate="2019-04-19T07:35:39.133" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What course of action should I take here? It certainly doesn't feel pleasant to work like this. Is this normal in scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, it is not normal in scrum. I guess your project has no method and uses word &quot;scrum&quot; to cover up incompetence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What to do? This is what I would do in your place:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;go to www.scrum.org and read how it should be done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;remember that agile is team sport -&gt; go to the team and talk to them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;remind my manger that agile is about trust and transparency -&gt; we talk about problems &lt;strong&gt;with&lt;/strong&gt; the customer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in &lt;strong&gt;retrospective&lt;/strong&gt; I would share &lt;strong&gt;how I felt&lt;/strong&gt; during onboarding and  when I got the task without necessary information. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35581" LastActivityDate="2019-04-19T07:35:39.133" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26250" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26254" CreationDate="2019-04-19T08:55:07.637" Score="3" ViewCount="732" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am struggling to understand what the authors of the agile manifesto mean by &quot;processes and tools&quot; in the first agile principle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and&#xA;    helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Individuals and interactions over processes and tools &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Working software over comprehensive documentation &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Customer collaboration over contract negotiation &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Responding to change over following a plan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the&#xA;   items on the left more. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could you provide an example where such entities pose a problem at the expense of &quot;individuals and interaction&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35661" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2019-04-22T11:03:34.143" LastActivityDate="2019-04-22T11:03:34.143" Title="Can you explain what &quot;processes and tools&quot; means in the first Agile principle?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26244" CreationDate="2019-04-19T08:59:23.810" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically my advice in your situation is to &lt;em&gt;reflect the pain&lt;/em&gt;. That is to make it clear to everyone concerned the difficulty of the task you have been given to help them have a realistic expectation of when the work will be completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as your manager has told you not to talk about it in front of the client then you are being put in a very difficult position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I would be looking to speak with my manager and to express my concerns. Depending on the answer I got I would then determine if this was an organisation I wanted to work for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-04-19T08:59:23.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26250" CreationDate="2019-04-19T09:11:12.880" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first principle (value) in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This manifesto explains that the communication between the team members are more important than the tools and techniques we use to deliver software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Valuing people more than processes or tools makes sense, as it is the people who respond to the needs of the mission and execute a task successfully. If the process or the tools drive the task, the team could not be responsive to change and would be less likely to meet the mission’s goals. By communicating to the team what they are doing and why, you show respect for the people you work with and you will find that the morale of the team will vastly improve. This builds a unification of understanding and greater team cohesiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Valuing people more highly than processes or tools is easy to understand because it is the people who respond to business needs and drive the development process. If the process or the tools drive development, the team is less responsive to change and less likely to meet customer needs. Communication is an example of the difference between valuing individuals versus process. In the case of individuals, communication is fluid and happens when a need arises. In the case of process, communication is scheduled and requires specific content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28200" LastEditorUserId="3424" LastEditDate="2019-04-20T11:59:06.880" LastActivityDate="2019-04-20T11:59:06.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26250" CreationDate="2019-04-19T10:50:31.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some examples of where processes and tools can be problematic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Giving a team a long requirements specification but then not being available to answer any questions they may have on it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having people spend a considerable amount of their time completing forms on a tool, even though the information gathered is rarely used.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A team urgently needs help from a specialist, but they can't get it straight away as they have to follow a long-winded process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And some examples of where individuals and interactions are effective:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A Product Owner explains a difficult and complicated requirement to a team and answers all their questions on it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A team asks another team for help and they quickly respond.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An external customer visits a team and gives them a detailed description of how they use their product.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-04-19T10:50:31.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26250" CreationDate="2019-04-19T10:53:09.123" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I worked in a project in the past which was the lively example of this value... &lt;em&gt;but the other way round&lt;/em&gt;: Tools and processes over individuals and iterations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, one way to understand this core value is to exactly look at it by applying a kind of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reductio ad absurdum&lt;/a&gt; and answer this question: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How does a project that values processes and tools over individuals&#xA;  and iterations looks like?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few tips:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There's a single person that, by talking to only a couple of people, defines the process the 100+ people team needs to follow&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People are enforced to follow the process. Even if the process says that you should never use acceptance criteria (*&lt;em&gt;I know you guys were already using, but some are not, so I want everyone to work equally&lt;/em&gt;*)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tickets are closed because they were not properly tagged / managed / updated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The senior management is dragged into several hour discussions about how to tag a specific work as a task or a story&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People invest 5 minutes to understand a requirement and 55 minutes to make it fit into &quot;as a user, I want to, so that&quot; format&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once a requirement is written by business, it's then handed over to the senior analyst, and then to the functional analyst, and then written in Jira. No questions can be raised. Or they can, but won't be answered&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(&lt;em&gt;derived from above&lt;/em&gt;) zero communication between people implementation a functionality and the people expected to use such functionality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teams are enforced to follow a unique communication path&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People are more focused on ensuring the burndown propers burn down regarless of the amount of business value delivered&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People brags about the incredibly high (and constantly increasing!) velocity... with items being delivered to end users every quarter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The list could go on and on, but I believe the idea is clear:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Processes and tools is important, but ensuring there's proper, open, candid communication between &lt;em&gt;everyone&lt;/em&gt;* in the team is &lt;strong&gt;more&lt;/strong&gt; important. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Worth to also notice that forcing people to fit into a working model &lt;em&gt;for the sake of following a model&lt;/em&gt; is &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; an agile anti-pattern. Agile is about experiment. Scrum is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; for every team. And you can definitely work with Scrum &lt;em&gt;framework&lt;/em&gt; (daily stand ups, retros, etc.), &lt;em&gt;without being agile&lt;/em&gt;. And that's very dangerous.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* Everyone: From the developer that joined a few weeks back to the end user, going through the product owner, program manager or any other senior role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-04-19T10:53:09.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26244" CreationDate="2019-04-19T11:04:26.083" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What do &quot;as soon as possible&quot; and &quot;tight deadline&quot; mean?  As soon as possible, to me, means that this becomes your highest priority and you put in your best efforts to achieve the best schedule duration you can.  This could be two days, four months, three years.  Tight deadline means, to me, that someone is asking you to target to finish at your most optimistic, best case estimate.  Again, based on the task, what is that value?  If there is no discussion of that value, you don't have a tight deadline.  You don't even have a deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all you were told as soon as possible, then your next task is to provide them your best estimate of what that might be.  If you have to investigate the task, what it is, what the code is, architecture, root cause, etc., then do so and then provide your estimate.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, when I hear &quot;as soon as possible,&quot; that means to me the assignment is my highest priority and I have license to table whatever else I have in play.  It doesn't mean I have to finish it tomorrow.  I get to provide my estimate of when I might finish, I get to provide the risks I see, I get to design and layout my plan to finish the work.  If they say my best estimate is not good enough and assign a tighter deadline, I'll respond with, I don't think that's possible, and then get to work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2019-04-19T11:04:26.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26250" CreationDate="2019-04-19T17:51:48.973" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This feels like just a different phrasing, but I find that it sometimes helps. When I look at the Agile Manifesto, I reading as the things on the right serving the things on the left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, there are release approval processes. The intent of most release approval processes is to bring all interested parties to the table so that there can be transparency on what is being released and people can raise concerns in the moment. This is a process supporting better interactions between individuals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over time the process may drift from the needs of the individuals and no longer align. Now people show up to the call but maybe don't really listen. There's a lot of work that goes into making a release request from years of built up rules, but the whole process has become a rubber stamp. Now the balance has switched. Individuals are in service to a process that is no longer effective and interactions suffer for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, applying the Agile Manifesto, we'd want to look at this process and ask ourselves how we turn it back around, either getting rid of a process that has outlived its usefulness or revamping it so that it once again serves the individuals and their interactions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-04-19T17:51:48.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26258" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-04-20T01:38:11.883" Score="2" ViewCount="880" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the relationship between a &quot;Product Release Plan&quot;, a &quot;Minimum Viable Product&quot;, and a &quot;Roadmap&quot; in an Agile environment? How are they different? How are they similar? How do they interact?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, what role does each one serve in the Agile process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16524" LastActivityDate="2019-04-20T15:03:54.920" Title="Understanding the relationship between Product Release Plan, MVP, and Roadmap in an Agile environment?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;epics&gt;&lt;release-plan&gt;&lt;release-planning&gt;&lt;roadmaps&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26258" CreationDate="2019-04-20T02:00:07.510" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This can be confusing because there is no authoritative body that sets terminology for Agile and, therefor, there is not &quot;right&quot; answer. But, these definitions and distinctions should be close.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Roadmap&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The roadmap provides stakeholders with a view of how the product might roll out. Many teams do a planning that is longer out than a sprint but within about a quarter. The roadmap often indicates what major features are in that time period and their likely order. Though things change from sprint to sprint, this near-term period is the most likely to have minimal change. The roadmap then often describes the &quot;next up&quot; features. For a new bank teller application, it might look something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Q(n) Focus: Account History. Likely features: Account overviews,&#xA;  transaction history, transaction search, cross-account reference&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Q(n+1) Focus: Account Settings (details changes and switch account&#xA;  types)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Q(n+2) Focus: New Account Creation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Visually, this can take many formats. The right amount of detail would give stakeholders and idea of where a given feature might fit over the next year and no more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Product Release Plan&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could be synonymous with roadmap. If so, use is as above. However, I've also heard this refer to a go-to-market strategy. This might actually be less detailed than the roadmap, if you can imagine. However, it would also have key market information in it. For example, if the first release would only serve customer segment X, my Product Release Plan would call that out and include information on how we reach out to those customers without confusing others. Then, when release 2 also incorporates customer segment Y, there will be new market strategy needs to loop in. In this case, this is a document used to coordinate efforts between teams and maybe whole departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Minimum Viable Product (MVP)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This term has a definition from The Lean Startup and is the smallest amount of work that must be done to learn something about your customer. These are incredibly small and usually delivered in a sprint or two (tops). However, the common use of the term does not match this definition. Instead, the common use of this term is the smallest amount of product that is viable in the market. This would be that first release from the release plan I mentioned. The real term for this is &lt;strong&gt;Minimum Marketable Featureset&lt;/strong&gt;, but as I said, the common use of the term is all mixed up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, if I were creating a streaming service like Netflix, a true MVP would be something that lets people simply go to a page and stream a movie - probably with a basic HTML tag. The goal here would be to see if people go to it and actually watch a movie online. (we take this for granted now, but when Netflix was created, a lot of people thought no one would watch movies online)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An MMF would involve a small library of content, some sort of browsing, user accounts, and payments. These would be nowhere near as robust as we think of Netflix now, but they would be there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-04-20T02:00:07.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26258" CreationDate="2019-04-20T15:03:54.920" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Worth to mention that some agile frameworks such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scaledagileframework.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SAFe&lt;/a&gt; (Scaled Agile Framework) do set some definitions to concepts that, if not identical to the ones you asked, can be somehow be considered related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Roadmap&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; is a long term, high level view, composed of a detailed&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Product Release Plan&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; to deliver the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;milestones&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; considered more&#xA;  critical, which could include a MVP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or even:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Roadmap&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; is what &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Business&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; needs;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Product Release Plan&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; is &lt;strong&gt;how the &lt;em&gt;Product&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; can evolve so that the business needs can be delivered;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;MVP&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; defines &lt;strong&gt;how the &lt;em&gt;Solution&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; will be implemented to minimally confirm if the Product Release Plan (and subsequently, the Roadmap) are valid&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, follows the SAFe definitions for the terms more relatable to the ones you asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scaledagileframework.com/roadmap/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Roadmap&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SAFe clearly define what is a roadmap within its context:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Roadmap is a schedule of events and Milestones that communicate&#xA;  planned Solution deliverables over a planning horizon. SAFe currently&#xA;  defines two types of roadmaps: A near-term PI roadmap and a&#xA;  longer-term solution roadmap. A PI roadmap includes near-term&#xA;  commitments for an Agile Release Train (ART) or Solution Train for the&#xA;  planned, upcoming Program Increment (PI) and offers a forecast into&#xA;  the deliverables and milestones for the next two to three PIs. The&#xA;  solution roadmap provides a longer term—often multiyear—view, showing&#xA;  the key milestones and deliverables needed to achieve the solution&#xA;  Vision over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scaledagileframework.com/program-increment/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Product Release Plan&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concept that closer to a Product Release Plan in SAFe is the Program Increment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Program Increment (PI) is a timebox during which an Agile Release&#xA;  Train (ART) delivers incremental value in the form of working, tested&#xA;  software and systems. PIs are typically 8 – 12 weeks long. The most&#xA;  common pattern for a PI is four development Iterations, followed by&#xA;  one Innovation and Planning (IP) Iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scaledagileframework.com/milestones/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MVP&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MVP is a broadly used concept in agile frameworks. SAFe does not offer a specific definition of it (and it isn't required, IMHO). An MVP can be a Milestone. SAFe provides further examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Learning milestones provide the necessary means to understand the&#xA;  feasibility of the solution and frame the right set of capabilities.&#xA;  Testing a concept of a new capability with a focus group, building and&#xA;  releasing a minimum viable product (MVP), or validating Lean UX&#xA;  assumptions for a minimum marketable feature (MMF) are examples of&#xA;  learning milestones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-04-20T15:03:54.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26262" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-04-22T13:03:31.240" Score="34" ViewCount="7010" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to understand what others believe is the ongoing value of a Kanban board to the development team &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got into an argument recently at my small company because&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A) My dev team isn't properly updating the Kanban board&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B) I said that the Kanban board provides little value to the actual developers (as a partial explanation to why A began to happen).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can solve A no problem. However I am not sure about B.&#xA;I really don't believe the board provides any direct value to my devs at this point - and I don't believe I have read any literature explaining what value the developers should derive from the board other than being able to control the incoming tasks, which is dealt with at stage 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CEO came back at me saying that it should provide a lot of value to them, tracking their work, knowing what phase it is in, ensuring that all phases are completed properly etc. But these are all of value to the manager - Not the developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a very simple digital board which provided a lot of value initially because it got everyone into the habit of doing all the phases I wanted them to do before releasing something - but now they know it and don't need the reminders. And because they are only ever working on 1 - maybe 2 things at a time, keeping track is no problem for them.&#xA;As far as my devs are concerned, they just want to know what is the task at hand, and then they will do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35676" LastActivityDate="2019-04-30T21:07:22.653" Title="What is the ongoing value of the Kanban board to the developers as opposed to management" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;kanban-board&gt;" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26262" CreationDate="2019-04-22T13:24:22.880" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good question - well phrased.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best answer is &quot;Never be the senior guy with a secret&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Development is difficult to schedule.  Last week I told my manager that the new tool enables me to solve very complex tasks in 5 minutes, but sometimes very simple tasks take a day or more.  That experience is fairly common to most of the development tasks I've managed.  The developer, the PM and the manager should all understand that all development tasks must be estimated with a confidence interval.  Sometimes the dev has tools or other infrastructure that doubles or triples the estimated time of the task.  That is just reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But having done dev myself, there are tasks where the language or the environment are missing critical tools and I have to develop the tool before I can develop the deliverable.  Usually that is OK and I'm still within the estimate.  But sometimes when I step off that precipice into the unknown I discover that the limits of the gap are difficult - that I have to develop tools to test the tools that compensate for the missing features.  And I get nested deeply enough in there that I lose perspective on the estimated time of delivery - I'm working on the product, doing what I should, building towards the deliverable, but the time estimate is now completely out of the envelope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's why the devs want to update the board.  Because they want to develop code; they don't want to adjust delivery dates, they don't want to negotiate with stakeholders, they don't want to discuss crashing the schedule or the dozen other things.  The kanban board is the interface /API to the development process.  Devs should be able to concentrate on the elegance of their code - on their professional skills.  Managers should be able to observe that coding and manage cost/quality/schedule/stakeholders/resources/delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to develop, then you've got to share state information with management and permit management to do the things that are not coding.  (Coding without regard to delivery is called &quot;hobby&quot; and it doesn't pay reliably).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't update the kanban board, then you're preventing me from doing my job (supporting the dev).  If you don't update the kanban board and you exceed your estimate, then you're the senior guy with a secret and you deserve all the punishment you get.  If you don't update the kanban board then you're forcing management to do exception handling - which consists of hanging over your cubicle wall bothering you with requests for TPS &amp;amp; estimates, and stakeholder status messages.  If you do update the kanban board, then the manager can do all those things, leaving you free to do the work that is satisfying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An updated Kanban board is valuable to the dev because informed management is valuable to devs.  If management is not informed, management must interrupt flow to get answers.   Having said that, I have to acknowledge the excellent and succinct summary provided by &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/26264/4367&quot;&gt;Barnaby Golden&lt;/a&gt;.   I was working on the assumption that the company was small enough that the knowledge of handoff and complete was conveyed through tribal knowledge and didn't need a process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subsequently occurred to me that &quot;As a developer, Kanban tells me whether my work is critical path, and allows me to estimate how long until I am critical path&quot;.  Although Kanban isn't about &quot;critical path&quot;, on any development effort where the work is shared, there are moments where work is tightly coupled/highly dependent, and times when work is loosely coupled (We can't finish the deliverable until we both finish, but until then we can work independently).  The Kanban board is a place to register information that tells each developer how tightly coupled they are.  If I were developing, I'd want to keep track of whether other people's work depended on mine (or vice versa). That is separate from the fact (described in detail above) that management needs the most status information on the most tightly coupled/critical path development efforts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally I want to recognize @SirTechSpec's &lt;em&gt;excellent&lt;/em&gt; summary which I will quote below because comments are ephemeral&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Speaking as someone who didn't have this at my last job, to disastrous effect - the chief direct value of the kanban to devs is being able to point to it and say &quot;no&quot;, phrased as &quot;I can do that, but I'm at my limit for items in progress. Have you negotiated with the owners of those tasks to suspend work, or shall I add it to the backlog?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban is about throttling effort.  Using the Kanban board should halt the practice of piling work on until the developers protest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2019-04-24T23:06:20.877" LastActivityDate="2019-04-24T23:06:20.877" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26262" CreationDate="2019-04-22T17:34:30.377" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Kanban board helps developers synchronise their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sue glanced up at the Kanban board to see if there were any new items waiting for her to code.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mark had noticed that the review stage on the Kanban board had hit the work in progress limit and so decided his next task should be to review something.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Karen had just heard that the deadline had changed and so pushed one ticket right to the top of the Kanban board. The developers noticed and started a conversation about what to do next.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course the less items the team has to deal with, the less significant synchronisation becomes. I can imagine a situation where the effort required to update the board is not offset by the value gained. However, that is pretty rare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also worth noting that management being able to track work on the Kanban board is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; important to developers as it stops them being constantly bothered for updates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I would say that a developer, like any other team member, should be looking at what is valuable to the organisation and not just what is valuable to them personally. The attitude that they are only there to do one specific task is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_silo&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;silo mentality&lt;/a&gt; that often reduces the effectiveness of organisations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-04-22T17:34:30.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26262" CreationDate="2019-04-22T17:42:58.637" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a developer, a kanban board shows me two things of interest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What work am I and my team members currently working on&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What work is ready to be picked up when I complete my current task&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides that, it is nice to have a place to leave the work card to announce it has been completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a situation where there are no hand-overs (or significant waiting times) between starting work on a work-item and completing it, a board with three columns (todo/backlog - in progress - done) is completely sufficient for the developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your process does include hand-overs (e.g. from developer to tester) or waiting times (e.g. waiting for parts to arrive), then the board might have additional columns so everyone (including the developers) can see why there is no apparent progress on a ticket (still waiting for that supplier), without having to ask the person that last worked on it, or what work is waiting to be handed over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your board contains multiple columns that appear to be of no use for the developers and where they fail to consistently update the board status, then I would advise to have a meeting with the developers and the other stakeholders of the board and discuss what critical information would get lost by merging the columns (and is already being lost due to the lack of updates). On the one hand, this can reduce what is felt as reporting overhead by the developers and on the other hand it can create awareness why correctly updating the remaining columns is of value to all involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2019-04-22T17:42:58.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26262" CreationDate="2019-04-22T19:26:47.533" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;And because they are only ever working on 1 - maybe 2 things at a time, keeping track is no problem for them.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, yes, if every person on a team is only ever working on 1 thing at a time, then Kanban probably isn't bringing much value to anyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't feel like that should be controversial, but I may be mistaken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35678" LastActivityDate="2019-04-22T19:26:47.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26262" CreationDate="2019-04-23T06:08:37.763" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;We used Kanban at my last workplace, with only 3-5 devs (myself included), 0-2 testers and one local manager. We saw several tangible benefits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Knowledge gets spread around,&lt;/strong&gt; because we're encouraged to work on the next thing on the list rather than what we specialize in. Since everyone had a reasonable level of understanding of basically the entire system because of pair programming this worked fine, but in actively siloed or politically charged work environments this may not work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Work got &lt;em&gt;finished&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; rather than just first-round-of-code-complete. Code which is not in front of customers is not finished yet, and Kanban's &quot;rightmost first&quot; rule really encourages people to get things through the pipe. This does require discipline and/or follow-up, though.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No interaction needed to establish the next work item. Pick one up and off you go.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also did regular reviews of our processes, &lt;em&gt;including Kanban,&lt;/em&gt; which is really useful to figure out what the benefits and possible improvements are. If someone brings up getting rid of Kanban then it can be countered &lt;em&gt;in the  open&lt;/em&gt; that management needs some way of getting an overview, and that the replacement may well be more meetings or even some over-complicated ticketing system. Since nobody wants more meetings and all ticketing systems are over-complicated once you try to actually track progress, Kanban gets stuff done with minimal fuss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35681" LastEditorUserId="35681" LastEditDate="2019-04-23T06:13:47.467" LastActivityDate="2019-04-23T06:13:47.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26262" CreationDate="2019-04-23T12:07:37.017" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Direct feedback&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The CEO came back at me saying that it should provide a lot of value to them, [..]. But these are all of value to the manager - Not the developer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;It &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; help&quot; is not an argument. It is a suggestion/command under the guise of what seems to be informative advice. But that doesn't prove that the CEO is wrong, it only suggests that he's not really addressing the concrete reasons for needing to use the board or addressing why the developers aren't using it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless, I can't exclude that this isn't just a case of developers refusing to do the administration that comes with managing their tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I really don't believe the board provides any direct value to my devs at this point - and I don't believe I have read any literature explaining what value the developers should derive from the board other than being able to control the incoming tasks, which is dealt with at stage 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your description is a bit vague for me to judge whether the above principle applies to your case, or whether you simply miss the benefit of (correctly) using kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, based on the following quotes, I do think you're glossing over the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;bus factor&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have a very simple digital board which provided a lot of value initially because it got everyone into the habit of doing all the phases I wanted them to do before releasing something - but now they know it and don't need the reminders. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bus factor: if your devs get run over by a bus tomorrow, will the newly hired devs understand the current state of the project? Nope. Because the old devs never wrote it down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are relying on the fact that when they leave the office, they will be back the next day to resume their work, and you assume they will remember where they left off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And because they are only ever working on 1 - maybe 2 things at a time, keeping track is no problem for them. As far as my devs are concerned, they just want to know what is the task at hand, and then they will do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same bus factor argument applies. What happens if the devs are sidetracked for some unexpected reason, and can only come back to their tasks after a significant absence? Will they remember everything? What if some of the devs don't come back and others have to pick up the work they left?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hallmark for proper documentation (or in this case development tracking) is that you should be able to minimize the time loss from substituting everyone working on the project by someone with equal skill but lacking contextual knowledge of the project.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;That's never truly achievable. Projects always rely on some form of contextual knowledge (even if only to understand the goal of the application). But you should minimize it to the best of your abilities, because you never know what might happen. Every person working on this project could drop dead or become otherwise unavailable at any time, and you need to prepare for that eventuality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A reasonable limit&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing is there there is wiggle room here. When we're talking about tasks that refer to small (&amp;lt;2h) bugs, I agree that the admin becomes a disproportionate hurdle, and the bus factor is minimized since at most you lose 2 hours of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when your tasks include big feature sets, or tasks that take multiple days (or even weeks), the related administrative work is comparatively small and much more relevant. Without proper tracking, if the dev lands under a bus, you're going to lose all the work they did and may end up having to develop the feature from scratch (because it may take longer to figure out what they were doing as opposed to doing it from scratch).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A possibly bad Kanban board&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it's still possible that the kanban board isn't actually tailored to the developer's needs, but only to those of management. Kanban boards can be useful, but that doesn't mean that every Kanban board is sufficiently useful to everyone involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A real world example with Jira's kanban-like board for sprints, used in my company: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My company has defined three swimlanes: to do, in progress, resolved (the fourth, closed is not visible to developers). But there is a complication: the &quot;in progress&quot; time is being tracked as billable hours to the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem this creates is that we sometimes develop something, and it either gets put on hold or it awaits testing by a QA tester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When we put the ticket as resolved, it auto-closes at the end of the sprint. PMs are also liable to communicate the resolution to the customer even though the problem is not provably solved yet. But even if you ignore the auto-close feature, &quot;resolved&quot; does not accurately reflect the state of a ticket that &quot;should be tested&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When we leave the ticket as in progress, time keeps ticking and billable hours become incorrect.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only other option is to put it back as a todo item. But at the end of the sprint, management then comes and asks the developers (not the testers) why they didn't pick up this ticket. And when the developers respond, management explains that they don't care about the internal workings of the desk (testing is considered part of development), they just use this to keep track of the state of tasks so they can update the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem here is that &lt;strong&gt;the board does not allow for accurately reflecting the state of things&lt;/strong&gt;, which means that it loses all purpose for developers, who are now forced to remember the real state of things while also having to update a board that is (to them) incorrect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is just an example, and a very specific one. It could easily be resolved by adding additional swimlanes and ways to calculate billable hours.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;But it highlights an often recurring problem when developers reject using a system that management wants them to use: its intended usage benefits management, but not the developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35694" LastEditorUserId="35694" LastEditDate="2019-04-23T12:15:00.823" LastActivityDate="2019-04-23T12:15:00.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26218" CreationDate="2019-04-23T16:14:32.003" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To gain the benefit of the TFB/NFC/1 technique, defer refinement to the last responsible moment. The team decides whether to refine TFB/NFC items on the Product Backlog or during Sprint Planning, but for Scrum it should be sooner rather than later. In Scrum, the work will typically need to be refined no later than Sprint Planning in order to build a meaningful Sprint Backlog, but will often need to be even sooner to support Backlog Refinement and agile release planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;When to Refine TFB/NFC Items&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You ask whether such items should be refined during Sprint Planning or Backlog Refinement. The answer is &quot;either or both.&quot; The technique aims to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduce the overhead inherent in detailed estimation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prevent work from overflowing the time box.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deferring refinement to the last responsible moment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deciding &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; to address specific items should therefore follow the agile principle of &quot;maximizing the work not done.&quot; Don't refine it unless you have to, or until you need to. This makes it more of an art than a science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Using TFB/NFC/1 by Itself&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal of the technique is to ensure that no single item is bigger than a one iteration, but it doesn't help you to determine &lt;em&gt;how many&lt;/em&gt; such items will fit into a single iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, the sum of all work should be less than or equal to the expected capacity of the Sprint. So, work that's TFB or NFC can't be accepted into the Sprint as-is. Instead, it should be treated like any other epic or story that is too large or too undefined: refined, spiked, or postponed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Scrum in particular, this estimation technique is most often a first-approximation tool, not a fine-grained tool for Sprint Planning. Even if all your estimates are &lt;code&gt;1&lt;/code&gt;, how many of those backlog items will fit into the upcoming Sprint? In a flow framework like Kanban this would matter less, but the unit of work in Scrum is the Sprint Goal, so you'd at least need to select enough &lt;code&gt;1&lt;/code&gt; items to achieve that Sprint Goal without overcommitting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; achieve that without detailed estimates by selecting just enough &lt;code&gt;1&lt;/code&gt; items to meet the Sprint Goal, and then validating that you haven't selected too much work by estimating the entire Sprint Backlog as a single unit using TFB/NFC/1. In other words, ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the selected work be delivered within a single Sprint? Is it too big? Or do we have no clue whether or not we can deliver this increment as planned?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Measuring Confidence in a TFB/NFC/1 Sprint Plan&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When looking at the feasibility of a single-Sprint forecast, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.lucidmeetings.com/glossary/fist-five&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;fist-to-five voting technique&lt;/a&gt; can help build consensus around the forecast built by selecting &lt;code&gt;1&lt;/code&gt; items from the Product Backlog. With a scale of six, fist-to-five is a more granular way to measure confidence in the Sprint Plan than the TFB/NFC/1 scale, but still avoids the necessity of applying an entirely different estimation technique (like story points) to individual backlog items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Mixed Estimation Techniques&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, a mixed-estimation technique that uses TFB/NFC/1 for Backlog Refinement or epics management, and a finer-grained technique like story points for Sprint Planning, might be more useful in Scrum. Because Sprint Planning is often a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapsack_problem&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;knapsack exercise&lt;/a&gt; where the Sprint length and Sprint Goal define the dimensions of the knapsack, you need a more granular metric than TFB/NFC/1 to optimize your packing. This is the problem that story points and velocity solve for, and which the NoEstimates movement would like to ignore. For example, whenever work comes scope for release or Sprint planning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An item that's TFB should be decomposed into INVEST stories that fit within a single Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An item that's NFC should generate story spikes or other validated learning ahead of inclusion into a Sprint Goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An item that's 1 should be decomposed into tasks of less than one in-Sprint cycle (e.g. the time between Daily Scrums) to meet INVEST criteria and control for &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Parkinson's Law&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By splitting the estimation techniques along functional lines such as epic management and Sprint Planning, you may reduce overhead related to developing fine-grained estimates for the Product Backlog and reduce time spent in Backlog Refinement meetings. This can sometimes be a valuable win, especially if refinement meetings run long for your team. However, it also makes it harder to do &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/16376/4271&quot;&gt;agile release planning&lt;/a&gt; when Product Backlog items don't share the same scale, or when the scale can't be measured in cycles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this reason alone, I often recommend using TFB/NFC/1 as a bucket-sorting technique for epics and large stories, but not as a full-fledged alternative to story points or ideal-hour estimates. It represents a trade-off in &lt;em&gt;speed-of-estimation vs. granularity/accuracy&lt;/em&gt;, and is often most useful when trying to quickly sort coarse-grained items at scale. &lt;strong&gt;Once sorted into buckets, it's then a team decision whether to refine on the Product Backlog (to aid release planning and other schedule/budget estimates) or during Sprint Planning.&lt;/strong&gt; In Scrum, the work will typically need to be refined no later than Sprint Planning in order to build a meaningful Sprint Backlog, but may not need to be refined further in Kanban if all work items are within a standard deviation of the same size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a reason user stories rule the roost in most agile implementations. That doesn't make TFC/NFC/1 a bad technique; it just doesn't often fit the broader objectives of backlog estimation once you start getting down to brass tacks in time-boxing frameworks like Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-04-23T16:14:32.003" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26274" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-04-24T07:30:51.420" Score="3" ViewCount="290" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team and I are working with iterations of two weeks (trying to use our own version of Scrum) and we try to deliver a new version after every iteration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After an iteration we let the stakeholders test our new version on a staging environment and they send us feedback. This feedback will be processed and the smoothed version will be deployed to production after we get an OK from all stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way of working is working fine sometimes, but in some iterations we are experiencing problems plannings wise. At the start of our next iteration, it is still unclear how many feedback we will get on our deliverable, so we can't really estimate the time needed to process the feedback in our iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone give us some tips about how to incorporate a correct feedback loop inside or workflow? Maybe we can deliver the deliverable two days before the end of our sprint, so we know how many feedback we have on the moment we start our sprint? I also thought about a workflow in which we let the stakeholders test the features during the sprint, so we can process the feedback in the same iteration we developed the feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35707" LastActivityDate="2019-04-25T08:39:48.013" Title="When to process feedback on the deliverable of the last iteration?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;&lt;feedback&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26274" CreationDate="2019-04-24T08:26:32.607" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few possibilities to tackle this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Using Scrum:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can work in &lt;em&gt;alternated iterations&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;During Iteration &lt;code&gt;i&lt;/code&gt;, you work on functionality &lt;code&gt;foo&lt;/code&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the end of iteration &lt;code&gt;i&lt;/code&gt;, the client assess &lt;code&gt;foo&lt;/code&gt; and you start iteration &lt;code&gt;i+1&lt;/code&gt; working on functionality &lt;code&gt;bar&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the end (or during) iteration &lt;code&gt;1+1&lt;/code&gt;, you get the feedback about &lt;code&gt;foo&lt;/code&gt; and plan changes on it for &lt;code&gt;i+2&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Using Kanban&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your team is mature enough and can &lt;em&gt;constantly deliver value before iteration ends&lt;/em&gt;, restricting your delivery cycle to the end of the iteration may be hampering you. This is one of the alternatives I've seen some very seasoned team adopting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team uses iterations as a high level 'guideline' but work is done based on each feature - having constant deliveries to production, even several deliveries to production in a single day&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This way, as soon as the feedback is obtained, if the feature is ready for deployment, you can deliver it. No Sprint contraints.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMMV. &lt;strong&gt;Experiment&lt;/strong&gt; both approaches and define which one fits better your case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-04-24T08:26:32.607" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26276" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-04-24T09:35:55.123" Score="1" ViewCount="376" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not a homework question but arises from self-study with full access to the answers. I'm not looking for the answers, but rather how to arrive at them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm having trouble understanding how to solve a question on completing a PERT chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My confusion is as to how I could know which arrow has which label without any info on dependencies. e.g. from milestone C, how could it be decided which of the arrows should be labeled with B and which with C?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, shouldn't module testing end after writing the module code?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to know the thought process of an expert solving this. E.g: &quot;This must be B because such and such is true.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fIf3m.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fIf3m.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35711" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-11-05T14:11:41.137" LastActivityDate="2019-11-05T14:11:41.137" Title="Confused by process of writing PERT chart" Tags="&lt;critical-path&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26274" CreationDate="2019-04-24T11:16:28.250" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a big fan of a continuous feedback loop rather than making it stick to a schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion would be to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deploy frequently to your staging environment (whenever you have a stable build).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inform your stakeholders of anything new and significant in the staging environment (perhaps with a newsletter or updated wiki page).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accept feedback at any time (perhaps using an appropriate tool, email address or just verbal feedback).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have the Product Owner regularly update the backlog with any items arising from feedback.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let the stakeholders know that not all feedback will be immediately incorporated. Educate them that the timing of their feedback and how significant the new work is will impact on when the work gets done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first this may seem chaotic, but with careful thought your team can become good at dealing with change in a continuous and controlled fashion. The nature of feedback is inconsistent, so you may as well build a process that handles this inconsistency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-04-24T11:16:28.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26274" CreationDate="2019-04-24T13:38:50.350" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the information you presented, your biggest challenges are that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Delivery and deployment currently depend on out-of-band testing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your delivery and deployment are tightly coupled, and dependent on resources outside your team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The scope of testing, and the amount of work necessary post-testing to meet the Definition of Done are undefined.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are treating all work arising from testing as work-in-progress.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are certainly correct that better feedback loops are essential, but you need to modify your workflow to generate the feedback sooner without adding never-ending scope creep to your list of problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Recommendations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have two basic options for improving your workflow:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Move acceptance testing into your Sprints.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this workflow, you collaborate more closely with testers or end-users throughout the development process. This will generally entail working with testers from the beginning of each Sprint to define acceptance testing criteria (e.g. Cucumber tests or other BDD/ATDD framework), and deploying features to your QA or staging areas as early as possible for testing. You'll also need to ensure that your Definition of Done includes the testing workflows.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Decouple delivery from deployment.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this technique, you use feature toggles (defaulting to off) or environment gates to deliver your increment. Whether you deliver continuously or once at the end of each Sprint doesn't matter all that much, provided that you are validating that the behavior in production is free of regressions and breaking changes as part of your Definition of Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deploying tested features to production, or toggling a new feature already delivered to &quot;deploy&quot; it, becomes separate from your Sprint. The deployment work is treated as new work for a separate operations team, or as new work for a &lt;em&gt;future&lt;/em&gt; Sprint by the Scrum team. In an ideal world, such features are independent and can be managed in parallel. However, they can also be pipelined sequentially if the organization is willing to accept the cost of &quot;stopping the line&quot; when there are problems, or queue delays caused by sequencing issues or intermediate failures that cause sequential work to back up.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can do either or both. In all cases, work that meets the Definition of Done but that takes effort or attention from the team must be treated as &lt;em&gt;new work&lt;/em&gt; in order to avoid continuous scope creep. This is the part that teams often struggle with, regardless of the workflow. That's why a solid Definition of Done and a test-first approach are so important to a successful agile delivery process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-04-24T13:38:50.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26274" CreationDate="2019-04-24T14:56:10.910" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems a little surprising that one of the answers hasn't covered this, but: do you hold a review meeting at the end of the iteration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum and XP both include this meeting to address the challenge you raise. This meeting gets all of the stakeholders there using your app and giving feedback at one time and place before your next sprint. It also gives the team the opportunity to clarify the feedback if it is confusing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-04-24T14:56:10.910" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26274" CreationDate="2019-04-24T17:02:38.733" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are following pure Scrum then &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-review&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sprint Review&lt;/a&gt; can help you. Only sprint review is the event of Scrum when Increment (developed software/feature) is ready for stakeholder review and stakeholders are allowed in this meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-review&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sprint Review&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Sprint Review is held at the end of the Sprint to inspect the Increment and adapt the Product Backlog if needed. During the Sprint Review, the Scrum Team and stakeholders collaborate about what was done in the Sprint. Based on that and any changes to the Product Backlog during the Sprint, attendees collaborate on the next things that could be done to optimize value. This is an informal meeting, not a status meeting, and &lt;strong&gt;the presentation of the Increment is intended to elicit feedback and foster collaboration&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A software product development is ongoing process and will never complete till the existence of the product. So, all such kind of feedbacks can be a part of next sprint, when you have feedbacks from client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28200" LastEditorUserId="28200" LastEditDate="2019-04-25T08:39:48.013" LastActivityDate="2019-04-25T08:39:48.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26274" CreationDate="2019-04-24T17:34:42.767" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Maybe we can deliver the deliverable two days before the end of our sprint, so we know how many feedback we have on the moment we start our sprint? I also thought about a workflow in which we let the stakeholders test the features during the sprint, so we can process the feedback in the same iteration we developed the feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either of these would be good improvements to your current practice, if you can make them happen. Having stakeholders test features during the sprint would be preferable, because it makes the development-feedback loop as tight as possible, and allows stakeholder acceptance to be part of your Definition of Done. Ideally you would do both, in order to get integration testing completed as part of the sprint, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition (or in the meantime), I would change the presumption that you can't plan sprint N+1 until all feedback has been received for the sprint N increment. Reverse that assumption: during sprint N+1, you'll work feedback received prior to the sprint planning, but anything else will have to wait til the following sprint. (It's only two weeks, after all.) Presumably you have a product backlog that you can use to fill out the sprint, if necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2019-04-24T17:34:42.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22740" CreationDate="2019-04-24T19:40:43.990" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The fact that your team has issues with Given-When-Then (GWT) is understandable: it's a cumbersome format - more to write for BAs, more to read for Devs. If your team feels that this is unnecessary - don't use it. You should build the process that fits your team &amp;amp; project instead of blindly following the hype.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The value that BDD-as-a-process sells is that you can re-use these requirements for testing - your Dev or QA team could just take the whole thing as is and automate it. If you don't use this feature of BDD - then there's little value in using GWT for requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: you seem to confuse the terminology a bit. Gherkin is a very specific version of GWT format used by testing tool Cucumber. Your requirements most likely don't follow Gherkin while still being written as GWT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22713" LastEditorUserId="22713" LastEditDate="2019-04-25T06:01:46.947" LastActivityDate="2019-04-25T06:01:46.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26262" CreationDate="2019-04-24T20:20:01.847" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It makes blocks clear and visible. It also makes stand up meetings easy to have via walking the board, going through each item on the board instead of asking each person about their projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the devs are saying it's of no use, that probably means the board has too much stuff on it. Updating the board should be happening during stand up meetings too. No one should be expected to update the board on their own time where no one can see it happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user32952" LastActivityDate="2019-04-24T20:20:01.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26274" CreationDate="2019-04-25T06:32:59.933" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum-compatible:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give &lt;strong&gt;access to new functionality sooner&lt;/strong&gt;. When a task is ready - deploy and ask stakeholders to check it out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You probably have meetings with stakeholders within sprint already - you can use them to &lt;strong&gt;demo unfinished functionality&lt;/strong&gt;. Lets you find out that your direction is wrong even before Devs finished current tasks. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incompatible with Scrum:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't let Scrum and its sprints suffocate you. If it doesn't fit - don't force it upon the team. It puzzles me that with &lt;strong&gt;Lean, ToC, CD&lt;/strong&gt; practices available people still use Scrum. Be Agile - build the process that makes sense &lt;em&gt;for your team and your project&lt;/em&gt;. &quot;Individuals and interactions over processes and tools&quot;, remember?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get rid of The Big Planning&lt;/strong&gt;. Instead of planning for the whole 2-week period you can prioritize tasks for the next 3 weeks and then &lt;em&gt;reorder&lt;/em&gt; them as you get feedback.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22713" LastEditorUserId="22713" LastEditDate="2019-04-25T06:38:19.653" LastActivityDate="2019-04-25T06:38:19.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26285" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-04-25T08:06:27.247" Score="1" ViewCount="163" Body="&lt;p&gt;Edit: Definition of &quot;bug&quot;. Here I describe as bug a bug introduced during development or missing/incorrect implementation of a story found after acceptance of the story. Our team does not face &quot;production bug&quot; reported by users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At work we often have the following situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team member find a bug&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bug is forwarded to PO and Scrum master&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PO set up a meeting with scrum master, team member who found the bug, themselves (and some times more team member)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A long discussion ensue to discuss what happened, what should have happened, is it a bug, how to fix it, when to fix it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem I see is that too many people are put in a meeting to discuss too many details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I think would be better:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team member find a bug&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team member try to reproduce the bug and details how to reproduce it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team member discuss with other team member/scrum master how to fix the bug.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scum master discuss with PO when to fix the bug.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the current situation good or could be improved? Is my solution a correct solution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35726" LastEditorUserId="35726" LastEditDate="2019-04-25T15:24:32.100" LastActivityDate="2019-04-25T15:24:32.100" Title="How should be best discussed bug between team/scrum master/PO" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26285" CreationDate="2019-04-25T09:22:42.753" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/strong&gt; A bug should always go to Product Backlog. If you cannot &lt;em&gt;afford&lt;/em&gt; it, get ready for unplanned work and bring it during next retro to agree a new workflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both flows presented are both creating unplanned work during the actual Sprint. That's because you're dedicating time (either on meetings or on detailed analysis) on something that was not planned. In a proper Scrum team, that's unlikely to happen - not only because it breaks the cadency but also because a seasoned Scrum team has a considerable amount of automated tests done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Worth to review &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/8098/430&quot;&gt;How to handle bugs in Scrum&lt;/a&gt;. Bugs, as any other feature, should go into the Product Backlog and then, prioritised by the PO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there may be cases where bugs are found and must be dealt with ASAP. In that case, I'd suggest you to take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/26106/430&quot;&gt;how to work with sprints having to provide support to unplanned issues&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's your case and you have to deal with bugs ASAP in a fairly constant basis, then your workflow may work. Your focus should be on finding the leanest way to tackle it. Before presenting your solution, &lt;em&gt;state the problem&lt;/em&gt; during the next &lt;em&gt;retrospective meeting&lt;/em&gt;. Tell the team you have a proposal. Don't try to force your workflow - instead, ensure that the team feels that this new workflow has been decided and agreed by the team. Otherwise they may resist on adopting it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-04-25T09:22:42.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26285" CreationDate="2019-04-25T09:56:26.183" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I could provide feedback on your current way of working and your proposed change, but it is better if &lt;em&gt;the team&lt;/em&gt; are the ones making decisions rather than outsiders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Team member you have made a suggestion to adapt your team's way of working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next steps would typically be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bring your suggestion to the team retrospective, or ask the Scrum Master to arrange a team discussion about this topic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the team sees value in your suggestion then perhaps propose trying this approach for an amount of time (say 2-3 sprints).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decide as a team how you will tell if the change has made things better or worse.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Run the experiment and if things do get better than adopt this new way of working.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is all about inspecting and adapting. Get good at that and your team will thrive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-04-25T09:56:26.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26285" CreationDate="2019-04-25T10:27:15.093" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your proposal has one thing that I found interesting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Team member try to reproduce the bug and details how to reproduce it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this mean that currently no information is stored on how to reproduce a bug? If you don't, start doing that! The team can define a minimal amount of information needed to be able to discuss it. Think of things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A clear title&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A clear description of what happened&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Steps to reproduce &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Screen shot&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whatever else the team thinks is needed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would help to create a bug that is still understandable in 6 months, you can try to reproduce it then (because maybe it was fixed already) and still determine which other areas could be affected&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35188" LastActivityDate="2019-04-25T10:27:15.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26289" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26297" CreationDate="2019-04-25T10:45:18.793" Score="2" ViewCount="193" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently we've started an experiment that everyone on the team (six devs) pull the top item off the backlog regardless of what it is. For context we maintain eight existing services that compose of frontend/backend components and we usually work on 2 new projects while fixing and added to those other services. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice what this would mean is dev1 could pull a bug first, then a frontend task on project 1 and then a backend task in project 2 and on and on. This constant context switching seems like it might be counter productive but I can't find any resources to back that theory up. The reasoning for this experiment is to make the devs sure that all the tickets are well scoped with enough context so any dev that hasn't worked on the project before could pick it up and work on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because I can't find a lot of examples of how people manage and maintain kanban boards I'm having a hard time providing data to this discussion but it just feels inefficient. Does anyone have experience with this, is this a good/bad approach, are there any resources about this I can read?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35732" LastActivityDate="2019-04-25T20:09:13.510" Title="Issues with multiple unrelated projects on the same kanban backlog" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;&lt;kanban-board&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26291" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26296" CreationDate="2019-04-25T15:19:29.713" Score="14" ViewCount="3239" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hope someone can help me understand one part of the role of the Product Owner (PO).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my company, we have a PO that is responsible for the Product Backlogs of all our products. I work as a UX designer. The PO specifies features and requirements to the Teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very often, the PO suggests, in detail, how a user interface of our software should be, such as what type of information is to be displayed in the user interface (e.g. &quot;I'd like to see a date in list&quot; or &quot;I'd like to see so and so in this view&quot;). Often the PO has asked the customer, or knows already, but the product UI ends up being quite cluttered and complex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am now introducing user testing to encourage user-centered design and advocate making better design decisions based on user involvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: to what extent should the PO describe the requirements of a UI? Should we (the developers and designers) look to the PO to decide and say what the information in the UI should be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35738" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-04-25T15:29:40.693" LastActivityDate="2019-05-11T19:25:45.240" Title="Should the Product Owner dictate what info the UI needs to display?" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;roles&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26291" CreationDate="2019-04-25T15:31:25.323" Score="15" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My question is, to what extent should the PO describe the requirements of a UI? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the extent that the designers know what to design and the programmers know what to program. In your example, &quot;as a user I want to see a list of dates so I can...&quot; seems to be a good user story. Who else would know what the purpose of that user interface is and what data the users need at that point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should we (the developers and designers) look to the PO to decide and say what the information in the UI should be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. Now the Product Owner might not be a technical person. That means you have to provide feedback on how hard it is to do what the PO requests so the PO can adjust the story accordingly. And you might want to bring in the experience of your job and maybe say &quot;but studies have shown comparing dates is easier done in a grid than a list&quot; or &quot;but the design guidelines of the mobile device say it should never be blinking. Maybe we can use bold font instead?&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in the end, the decision &lt;strong&gt;what&lt;/strong&gt; data to display is a clear cut Product Owner responsibility. &lt;strong&gt;How&lt;/strong&gt; it is displayed is the job of the dev team. Ideally, the whole Scrum team talks about this in the &lt;strong&gt;Backlog Refinement Meeting&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-04-25T15:45:04.907" LastActivityDate="2019-04-25T15:45:04.907" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26293" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26305" CreationDate="2019-04-25T16:03:42.683" Score="5" ViewCount="170" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to setup a Portfolio Kanban to be used at a higher level in my project and I'm not sure how it should look like. What is the key information it should contain?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4319" LastEditorUserId="8132" LastEditDate="2019-04-26T21:59:32.450" LastActivityDate="2019-04-26T21:59:32.450" Title="How does a Portfolio Kanban look like?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;portfolio-management&gt;&lt;process-scaling&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26289" CreationDate="2019-04-25T17:41:06.037" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Priorities are not the absolute decider of work order. A team will &lt;em&gt;try&lt;/em&gt; to work on tasks in priority order, but they will also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider who is available to do the work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Think about the technical implications of task ordering.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider things like training opportunities, knowledge transfer, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider the size of tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A better way to think of priorities is as a guide to help the team when resolving conflicts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can do either Task X or Task Y, which shall I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Task Y is the higher priority, go with that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is important that any decisions made by the team are discussed with the person who set the priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A typical conversation might be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know you said we should make Task X the top priority, but from a technical point of view it makes more sense for us to do Task Y first. Let me explain to you why...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As usual in agile, it is the conversation that is important. Business priorities have to be carefully balanced against the effectiveness of the team and decisions should be taken in a collaborative fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-04-25T17:41:06.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26291" CreationDate="2019-04-25T18:01:36.447" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you are talking about a Product Owner I am going to assume you are using Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you mention in your question, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-po&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;it is the responsibility of the Product Owner to prioritise and maintain the backlog of requirements&lt;/a&gt;. They also ensure that the team fully understands these requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-dev&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;It is the development team's responsibility to decide how to implement the backlog items&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To quote from the Scrum Guide:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No one (not even the Scrum Master) tells the Development Team how to turn Product Backlog into Increments of potentially releasable functionality&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far we have been discussing &lt;em&gt;responsibilities&lt;/em&gt;. How the team works together is just as important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would hope that the development team welcomes any input or suggestions that the Product Owner makes on implementation. Equally the development team may make suggestions to the Product Owner about requirements and priorities. If you are doing user testing this becomes even more significant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the responsibilities are clear. The Product Owner has the final say on the product backlog and the development team has the final say on implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-04-25T18:01:36.447" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26291" CreationDate="2019-04-25T19:37:03.600" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Product Owner is Accountable for the Product, and Responsible for the Product Backlog&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My question is: to what extent should the PO describe the requirements of a UI? Should we (the developers and designers) look to the PO to decide and say what the information in the UI should be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is 100% responsible for defining the features and requirements for the product. The Scrum Guide defines &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-po&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Product Owner role&lt;/a&gt; as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the product resulting from work of the Development Team. How this is done may vary widely across organizations, Scrum Teams, and individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is the sole person responsible for managing the Product Backlog. Product Backlog management includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Clearly expressing Product Backlog items;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Ordering the items in the Product Backlog to best achieve goals and missions;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Optimizing the value of the work the Development Team performs;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Ensuring that the Product Backlog is visible, transparent, and clear to all, and shows what the Scrum Team will work on next; and,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Ensuring the Development Team understands items in the Product Backlog to the level needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner may do the above work, or have the Development Team do it. However, the Product Owner remains accountable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the Product Owner owns the Product Backlog, and is generally the person the organization holds responsible for defining the product's features. &lt;strong&gt;So to the extent that a user interface is a feature, as opposed to an implementation detail, the Product Owner &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; the accountable party.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Increase Your Collaboration&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The unspoken implication of your question is that you feel like the Product Owner is defining anti-features, or perhaps micromanaging implementation details that should belong to the Development Team. In either case, the solution is to collaborate more closely, and to increase the level of communications within the Scrum Team as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Anti-Features&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An anti-feature is something that you strongly believe, in your professional capacity, actively harms the product. If you feel that a Product Backlog Item actively harms the usability or maintainability of the product, then you have a professional responsibility to discuss the issue &lt;em&gt;as a team&lt;/em&gt; to address it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day, the Product Owner has the final say on the product's functional and non-functional requirements. However, the Development Team is charged with &lt;em&gt;implementing&lt;/em&gt; the Sprint Goal and delivering the Product Backlog Items in the most effective way possible. These objectives should not be in direct conflict; while there is overlap and differentiation in the roles, both roles are part of the Scrum Team and should be &lt;em&gt;actively collaborating&lt;/em&gt; to develop the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is conflict or a lack of collaboration, work with your team mates and with the Scrum Master to identify roles, friction points, and process improvements. Continuous process improvement is an essential part of Scrum, and should be a part of each Sprint's inspect-and-adapt cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Micromanagement&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general rule, the Product Owner describes what a feature should do, while the Development Team determines how the feature should be implemented. However, some aspects of product development (user interface being a good example) can fall into both &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; buckets simultaneously. Resolving the dynamic tension of this requires active collaboration and ongoing communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is not the Product Owner's place to tell the team &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; to implement a feature, it is also not the Development Team's place to override the Product Owner's vision for the product. When there is overlap or conflict, mature Scrum Teams collaborate closely so that the source of requirements and the goals of those requirements are clear, and any technical or implementation trade-offs are identified and considered as part of the product development life cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, anti-features and micromanagement are both things the Scrum Team should avoid, but the way they are avoided is through collaboration rather than rigid, siloed responsibilities. Let's look at an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A Worked Example&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a concrete example, consider a story like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a web site visitor,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want all my account-related actions accessible from the navigation bar&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so that I never have to go to a separate screen to embiggen a widget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A successful Product Owner would work with the team to explain the requirements and the objectives, and to provide sufficient context for the team to develop an optimal solution. Meanwhile, the team would provide a solution based on their knowledge and experience that would best meet the goals and constraints provided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing it this way ensures that the solution space is not overly constrained. For example, one way of meeting the goal might be to AJAX in dynamic drop-down menu items. Pre-defining &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; is usually an anti-pattern, but there are edge cases where look-and-feel are part of a product's requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps there are other solutions the Product Owner or customer hasn't considered, in which case the team should explore those options and present them for the whole Scrum Team to consider. Then again, perhaps there are reasons that the team's solution won't meet the customers' expectations, in which case the Product Owner acts as the voice of the customer to ask the team to seek an alternative. This level of active collaboration is &lt;em&gt;essential&lt;/em&gt; to getting the most value out of the agile development process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In almost all cases, better user stories that provide more context will help the team hold the necessary conversations around how to most effectively meet the goals for a feature. In addition, test-first development can help the team differentiate between must-do requirements and implementation details by focusing attention on how successful feature implementation will be measured and assessed. The entire Scrum Team should be involved in writing and refining the stories and tests so that collaboration on the increment is baked in from the very beginning of each Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-05-11T19:25:45.240" LastActivityDate="2019-05-11T19:25:45.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26289" CreationDate="2019-04-25T20:09:13.510" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not quite clear whether you have a multi-tasking or context switching challenge or not.  Since, as a team, you are supporting 8 different streams of work (6 services and 2 projects), you are already used to (the idea of) doing it.  So, mentally, each of your team members is prepared to work in that fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's been a lot of research that shows that context switching definitely creates a problem. See this article by Ruth Mantell - Multitasking: More is Less (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303544604576436572369558128?shareToken=stfcb09c464775476b8fff5b8b5aa0962d&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303544604576436572369558128?shareToken=stfcb09c464775476b8fff5b8b5aa0962d&lt;/a&gt;) or this one - Multitasking: Switching Costs (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.apa.org/research/action/multitask&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.apa.org/research/action/multitask&lt;/a&gt;).  However, what exactly is multitasking and if you are really context switching is open to question based on your specific situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what you have said, your team members pick a task - and implied that they complete that task before picking up the next one.  I'd argue that as long as they are completing the work they have already started, and not juggle between 2 or more open tasks simultaneously, you are doing fine.  You can easily &quot;implement&quot; this using your Kanban board with WIP limits (Work-in-progress) - one of the key principles of Kanban. To learn more about Kanban's principles of improving flow while minimizing multitasking, you can look at our Kanban guide &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.digite.com/kanban/what-is-kanban/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, let's look at your policies you've decided on for your work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You said - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Recently we've started an experiment that everyone on the team (six&#xA;  devs) pull the top item off the backlog regardless of what it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What was the reasoning or thought process behind this? Clearly, your team has committed to supporting those 8 streams of work - and you are trying to provide equal capacity to each.  If all services have the same priority, then perhaps that might work well.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, are their different priorities for each of them? Kanban refers to this as &quot;Class of Service&quot;.  Do you think that instead of giving equal priority to each, there is some differentiation needed in order for you to meet your SLAs to your customers? If so, you might consider organizing your Kanban board differently, perhaps by class-of-service (a separate swim lane on the Kanban board for say, urgent or Expedited items) or some other way - that is a discussion your team needs to have amongst yourselves, and maybe with your customer(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to share our own example, we use 2 Kanban boards - an &quot;upstream&quot; Kanban board for our product roadmap/ backlog grooming, and a &quot;downstream&quot; one where our Dev team works on both roadmap work (similar to your projects) and also on a mix of other work that includes bug-fixes, customer implementation related work and so on.  Our boards and workflows look as shown below - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/c3F55.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/c3F55.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our Dev team's board has multiple lanes to track the different services they provide - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QaGfM.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QaGfM.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a product company, we have established - over years of experimenting - that a 4-6 week cadence for making product releases works well for us.  We work around this cadence for prioritizing and grouping work in different streams.  Our Prod Management team works to identify and prioritize themes, epics and user stories on the roadmap board to keep the Dev team fed with the right work at the right time. Overall, the process works well, and we have been able to maintain a fairly happy set of customers who give us high marks for the support and responsiveness we demonstrate to them, besides of course the product itself :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, my recommendation would be to have a discussion within your team, and with your customers/ stakeholders on - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are they finishing work in progress before taking up new ones? If yes, that's great (else, re-emphasize the &quot;Stop Starting! Start Finishing!&quot; mantra with them.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do they feel confused or unproductive because of having to switch between different projects and services? If no, then great.  If yes, then you've to think of how to perhaps reorganize your team into sub-teams that handle smaller groups of services that are less diverse, helping them work on similar work-items at a stretch.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are you meeting your commitments to your customers? Does everyone have a clear - and common - picture of what those commitments are? If the answer to either one of them is No, you've got to ensure you have clarity there in order to best decide how to reorganize your work policies so that your team is clear and comfortable with what work they pull next after finishing up what they were already working on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully, our Kanban guide as also our &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.digite.com/blog/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt; will provide you with additional reading on how to manage your teams work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2019-04-25T20:09:13.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18556" CreationDate="2019-04-26T07:47:34.013" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My two cents input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His behaviour shows lack of trust. May be because&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team is underperforming and not serious about achieving targets.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team is not capable enough to deliver what is required.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If You are satisfied that team is doing well within the given circumstances/resources then do discuss with him with concrete metrics supporting your point of view and if if still he continues the micromanagement then You may go to management with statistics proving your point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly You can talk to management about his over-stepping and how it is demoralising for the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35748" LastActivityDate="2019-04-26T07:47:34.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26300" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26303" CreationDate="2019-04-26T09:00:12.710" Score="2" ViewCount="566" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am wondering what the best way to implement decomposition is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance let's say we have a feature or an epic that has been in the product backlog for a while, or in the roadmap for that matter. Now it is time to put it into a sprint and hence decomposition becomes necessary. Now, regardless of the tools that is being used (low-tech vs high-tech), how do you guys keep track of the decomposition process? Do you do it at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, let's say I have a feature in the backlog that reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ID: 123 | As a user I want to be able to login&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;this will be broken down into the following user stories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ID: 2001 | As a user I want to be informed when I input wrong credentials&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ID: 2002 | As a user I want to access my dashboard when login is successful&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ID: 2003 | As a user I want to be able to retrieve my lost credentials&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it advisable to keep the original feature (big) in the backlog and link it from the sub features (user stories) with an ID or something or can the original feature be simply chucked?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35661" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-04-29T15:07:52.103" Title="What is the best way to manage features decomposition in scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26300" CreationDate="2019-04-26T09:17:47.450" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that there is no universal method. There are different approaches that you can take the idea from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZIUB1.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZIUB1.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35521" LastEditorUserId="35521" LastEditDate="2019-04-26T09:25:33.670" LastActivityDate="2019-04-26T09:25:33.670" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26300" CreationDate="2019-04-26T10:25:43.587" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is: it depends. &#xA;The answer will be different for different epics and development organizations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a stakeholder interested in knowing the status of the epic as a whole (rather than the status of the individual component stories) and if it is not too much effort in keeping that status up-to-date, then it can have a value to keep the epic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If nobody is interested in the epic as such or if updating it takes an inordinate amount of effort, then you might as well discard it and track only the status of the stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2019-04-26T10:25:43.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26300" CreationDate="2019-04-26T11:05:50.530" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to think of epics as placeholders that exist temporarily until you are ready to break them down in to user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum team works on user stories, so this is by far the most significant backlog artefact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the epic has been broken down I see little value in tracking it or even linking it to the user stories. Its job is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have worked in organisations that value tracking epics but it has usually resulted in confusion and some bad working practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, these organisations may:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Insist that all the stories associated with an epic are completed even if the lowest priority stories are less important than other backlog items.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Insist that only completed epics get shipped in releases.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Track progress in epics, even though it is stories that are being delivered.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-04-26T11:05:50.530" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26291" CreationDate="2019-04-26T11:40:07.963" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For your title, the clear cut answer is yes.  The product is for a purpose, and they are the ones defining that purpose.  In fact it’s quite common to have place holders that say things like “get legal verbiage and place here”. Just as you don’t make up your own legal or product support language, you don’t get to override the product owner on other similar matters, such as whether a displayed date will be a date only or a date and time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the question as asked in your body, it’s a bit more complex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your UI expertise should come in how &lt;strong&gt;best&lt;/strong&gt; to display what they want displayed.  Should dates be dd/MM/yy, yyyy-MM-dd, Saturday, June 12, 1956 at 4:15 in the morning, or something else?  So, you should be free to push for particular looks and to push back against others.  List vs grids vs dropdowns, those are the kind of things that you should generally be deciding.  But depending on the product, they may override you even on that — internal apps where they are the key user, “I find this confusing” is a valid statement no matter how much your research says that it should be clearer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3015" LastActivityDate="2019-04-26T11:40:07.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26293" CreationDate="2019-04-26T19:35:24.717" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Portfolio Kanban boards apply to multiple contexts.  Here are 3 specific examples - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You could use it in a product development context to track high-level Portfolio Themes or Epics, under which you can have user stories on an &quot;execution board&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In a corporate IT or business environment, you can use a Portfolio Kanban board to track &quot;Strategic Objectives&quot; or OKRs (Or. Key Results), which may be tied to lower level Initiatives and Epics which may be managed on a Program Board, which may further have User Stories or Features in &quot;Execution&quot; or &quot;Development Team&quot; boards.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You might use Portfolio Kanban in a classic Portfolio - Program - Project Management context where each level is tracked in separate Kanban boards to manage Portfolio &quot;Initiatives&quot;, tied to one or more &quot;Programs&quot; on a Program Board, which in turn are executed using one or more Projects on a Project Board.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Portfolio Kanban board tracking different &quot;streams&quot; of initiatives might look like the one below - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/367K0.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/367K0.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may tie down, as described above, to lower level boards, such as the one below - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2EMbB.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2EMbB.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Portfolio Kanban can be applied to manage &quot;upstream&quot; work or higher level work.  For example, in our own product management, we use a Portfolio Kanban board to manage our product roadmap, in terms of Themes and Epics, which result in User Stories that are developed on a separate Dev board.  The Roadmap board is managed by our Product Management team while the Dev board is run by the Engineering team.  The Epics and User stories are connected so we can track the completion of Themes and Epics based on the completion of the underlying user stories.  The two boards and the flow of work looks like below - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/r6oXb.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/r6oXb.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can learn more about &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.digite.com/kanban/portfolio-kanban/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Portfolio Kanban&lt;/a&gt; here as well as this excellent example on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.leanability.com/en/blog-en/2017/04/flight-levels-the-organizational-improvement-levels/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kanban Flight Levels&lt;/a&gt; by Klaus Leopold, which provides a similar perspective on the use of multi-level Kanban boards without using the &quot;portfolio&quot; terminology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HTH!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2019-04-26T19:35:24.717" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14059" CreationDate="2019-04-27T01:34:07.710" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Thomas. I'd only add that in my experience, after the design is finished, the next step is to share the design with the stakeholders. This design is supposed to demonstrate HOW the system is going to implement the WHAT to do expressed in the SRS. Sharing the design with the stakeholders will give them the opportunity to pinpoint possible misunderstanding, which gives you the opportunity to fix them before you start the implementation stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends, of course, on the complexity of the requirements. Also, the project could be stopped at this point if the design suggests an implementation that goes over budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35757" LastActivityDate="2019-04-27T01:34:07.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26307" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-04-28T13:12:24.923" Score="3" ViewCount="99" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a simple way to block tasks from spanning days? I have some tasks such as interviews &amp;amp; exams which are 2 or 4 hours long but they obviously cannot span days. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However MS project is spanning them across weekends/days. So far I've been moving them manually but is there any other way?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35760" LastActivityDate="2019-09-18T10:37:20.017" Title="Prevent hourly tasks spanning days" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25583" CreationDate="2019-04-28T17:52:19.280" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hard truth is - &lt;strong&gt;project management skills works as any other professional skills&lt;/strong&gt;. There are areas where knowledge evolves slowly; there are others - specially in software development - one can become outdated quite fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's use an analogy with development. Let's assume you have a specific group of very good, seasoned mainframe developers. They have worked for years with software development, knows how to handle tuff clients and those specific test cases most junior members overlook. You also have very good front end developers. You might have not as many seasoned Angular v8 developers as you have mainframe ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may find yourself in a situation where there's less demand for mainframe. What can you do? The underlying problem is the same:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to keep professionals up to date with market needs? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a question every software company might face at a given moment... Some often than others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can a company do? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Raise awareness&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your professionals must understand what the market needs. In some cases, it's not necessary to raise this awareness, as the professionals themselves are constantly looking at the market to understand its trends. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Support the ones willing to align themselves to the market needs&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the key support a company can do: offer any training, book, workshop your professionals are asking (Needless to say, it should be aligned to market needs. Cooking workshops are nice for weekend dinners... But usually don't guarantee new contracts). Besides, you must &lt;strong&gt;appreciate the people looking for keeping up to date.&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;On it, there's a very good talk by [Victor Kuppers] (&lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/nWecIwtN2ho&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://youtu.be/nWecIwtN2ho&lt;/a&gt;) (in Spanish) defining that everyone is made of KAA (CHA in Spanish) : Knowledge, Ability, Attitude. What truly defines especial people is attitude. And searching for improvements is a good, positive sign of attitude. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Let go the ones that are not willing to change&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people may not want to dedicate energy to recycle themselves. That's fine. There's places everywhere needing all sorts of skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the above exercise is done... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Invest in Communities of Practice&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avoid creating PM-specific training groups. &lt;em&gt;Leadership&lt;/em&gt; training sessions are very powerful, but don't restrain them to PM only. Same as &lt;em&gt;agile&lt;/em&gt; communities. Sponsor timely sessions where people interested in agile matters to debate about their project challenges, to exchange experiences and growth as a group. PMs are highly welcome on these groups, but potentially no longer (only as) as &quot;Project Managers&quot;. Same on other aspects. If there's enough market demand, a more traditional community of practice could be created, although I personally believe there isn't much to debate on traditional management (IMMV, consider your reality). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bottomline:&lt;/strong&gt; Focus people empowerment by areas of knowledge, not by silos. There's much more knowledge to be obtained when sessions are composed by heterogeneous groups. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-04-28T17:52:19.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26310" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-04-29T13:19:40.637" Score="2" ViewCount="292" Body="&lt;p&gt;I noticed this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the real world, people &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; change the end-date for Sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/24822/25606&quot;&gt;this Answer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I've never experienced a need for that, myself. Or maybe I have, didn't recognize it, and missed an opportunity!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So... when/why would a Sprint ever need to have its end-date extended?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB: I'm not talking about having Sprints of varying lengths, e.g. to accomodate holidays. I'm talking about when one is in the middle of a Sprint and decide to extend its end-date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2019-05-16T21:08:20.047" Title="When/why would a Sprint ever need to be extended?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26312" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-04-29T14:28:06.603" Score="1" ViewCount="135" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are 8 members in a team assigned to complete the project. 20% of the team left during the particular sprint. Does the velocity change? If so, what would the velocity changes be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Context&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am preparing for Scrum master certification right now. So my role would be Scrum Master. I'm concentrating more on velocity of the team related questions. Assuming that in a project, we have 8 cross-functional members in the team. Project should be completed within 4 Sprints. 2 members of the team left because they are ill. The project should continue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know if the velocity of the team changes for the current Sprint and the following Sprint. If so, what velocity changes should we expect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35766" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-10-21T22:26:56.507" LastActivityDate="2019-10-21T22:26:56.507" Title="How will team changes impact velocity of a Scrum project?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;team-capacity&gt;&lt;velocity&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26312" CreationDate="2019-04-29T14:48:46.030" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may be conflating two term here - velocity and capacity. Velocity is only measurable after the sprint and will most certainly be less for this sprint because you are short 2 people (by 20% left I'm assuming you mean that two people are on vacation or are in some other way not available). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Capacity, on the other hand is more of a prediction ahead of time. If my past sprint velocities have been 30, 32, 29, and 33, I would predict that the team will probably finish around 30 story points if the next sprint was normal. However, with two people missing, I'd probably plan my sprint goal around more like 22.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this brings up one more slightly tangential point. Using past velocity to forecast future output has risks. In particular, story points (or even backlog item count) are very rough numbers in the best circumstances. Trying to &quot;fill the team's capacity&quot; in this way will almost always result in missed targets, cut corners, and sub-optimal performance. Rather, it helps the PO form their initial sprint target going into planning (what they hope to accomplish and what backlog items would lead to that) and it acts as a check against overcommitment (if at the end of planning that same team had 40 points in the backlog, our past velocity says we are unlikely to meet that goal).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-04-29T14:48:46.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26300" CreationDate="2019-04-29T15:07:52.103" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're missing a couple of key concepts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The ephemeral nature of most artifacts in Scrum, as agile frameworks value &quot;working software over comprehensive documentation.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The concept of themes, which are are &lt;em&gt;related&lt;/em&gt; (as opposed to large) user stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tracking epics or themes as first-class data elements assumes that they can be fully-defined up front, and that they have intrinsic value. They can't, and they don't. Epics, themes, and even most &quot;features&quot; are all ephemeral byproducts of agile development, and are only useful in &lt;em&gt;communicating&lt;/em&gt; about current or near-term work. Because agile development embraces change and assumes that a product will evolve over time, tracking historical work (or worse, legacy planning artifacts like epics) is generally done for political reasons rather than framework-related ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should actively question the value in tracking in-progress or completed user stories. If you find you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; track them, then the team should collaborate with the stakeholders to find the most effective way to do that in your unique context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question the Assumptions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In agile frameworks like Scrum, a working product is more important than comprehensive documentation. Living documentation that describes the current feature set is valuable, but tracking historical requirements and deltas from past iterations is a holdover from waterfall-like methodologies. While documentation like legacy backlog data is not entirely irrelevant, it shouldn't become an end unto itself. So, it's worth asking whether this data is &lt;em&gt;useful&lt;/em&gt; in helping to produce a working product, or in inspecting the project's processes. If not, don't do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many cases, the reason that teams want to do this in the first place is because stakeholders are really asking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How much progress are we making towards Feature X or Release Target Y?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's the case for your stakeholders, this usually indicates one or more of the following Scrum implementation problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Insufficient framework training for stakeholders.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner and Scrum Master should work with stakeholders to explain the process more effectively. The team should also highlight framework processes, artifacts, and events that can be used by stakeholders to evaluate the current status of the project, and the Scrum Team's progress towards the project's goals.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lack of transparency or visibility.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Team should inspect-and-adapt its artifacts and processes to determine why stakeholders don't feel they have full transparency, or lack visibility into the team's progress. Information radiators like the Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, or Sprint Review might need to be improved. On the other hand, it may simply be the result of insufficient collaboration or communication between the Scrum Team members and stakeholders. This should be addressed as a core process issue, and may even belong on the Product Backlog to ensure it's treated as a priority with allocated resources.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Incomplete increments or missing Sprint Goals.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, each Sprint should have a unified Sprint Goal that defines the potentially-shippable increment to be delivered. A Sprint Goal is &lt;em&gt;required&lt;/em&gt; by the framework. If you lack a coherent Sprint Goal, not only are you not following Scrum properly, but you're forcing stakeholders and the Scrum Team to thrash around looking for proxy metrics like epic-tracing rather than focusing on the delivery of a coherent increment of work that is clearly &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;not-done&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A non-incremental or non-iterative approach to development.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product development, especially in software, is never 100% complete. Trying to pre-plan future work is an agile anti-pattern, as Scrum should &lt;a href=&quot;https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;maximize the amount of work &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; done&lt;/a&gt; by focusing on delivering a coherent increment within a single Sprint. Stakeholders should &lt;em&gt;expect&lt;/em&gt; to refine features over time. For example, one Sprint might deliver &quot;basic login capability,&quot; while other Sprints deliver &quot;enhanced user feedback for logins&quot; and &quot;account recovery&quot; features. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, your question seems to assume that all work for a given feature can be known ahead of time, and work should be tracked against this &quot;100% complete&quot; status, including specific implementation details. This is entirely contrary to both agile theory and effective Scrum practice, so don't do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Track Against &quot;Good Enough&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each Sprint, the Scrum Team should be providing a coherent increment of work to stakeholders for review. Furthermore, after the first few Sprints, the product should always be in a potentially-releasable state after each Sprint. So, rather than tracking work against a big, upfront design, the Scrum Team and the stakeholders should be asking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is the current state of the product &lt;em&gt;good enough&lt;/em&gt; to ship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of this conversation may revolve around what's changed since the last time the product was reviewed. That's where the current Sprint Goal, completed features, and epics/themes addressed within the Sprint should be discussed. The goal isn't to evaluate how much remains to be done, though. The objective is to review:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What has been accomplished or discovered this Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether the product is &lt;em&gt;good enough&lt;/em&gt; to ship as-is.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether the product's feature set is &lt;em&gt;good enough&lt;/em&gt; (or bad enough) to call a halt to further development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What refinements should be made in future.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What changes or additions might need to be addressed in near-term Sprints.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epics, themes, and stories are useful ways to &lt;em&gt;organize&lt;/em&gt; work on Product and Sprint Backlogs, but they are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the measure of progress in Scrum. If the Scrum Team and the stakeholders can't evaluate whether the increment is a successful step towards the project's vision or goal without falling back on non-agile metrics like &quot;percent done,&quot; then the cognitive framework the organization is applying to the project lacks the necessary empiricism for successful agile adoption. This should be addressed as a top priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-04-29T15:07:52.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26312" CreationDate="2019-04-29T15:29:25.363" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Velocity and Capacity&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;20% of the team left during the particular sprint. Does the velocity change?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is likely that your velocity will change because the team's capacity has changed, but a lot depends on the work that the team has planned for the Sprint and the cross-functional composition of the team. As a rough planning value, you should probably assume that you will lose 20% of your capacity for the current Sprint, but the Development Team should determine the appropriate fudge factor to apply during Sprint Planning. It may be more or less than 20%, depending on the work selected for the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over time, your velocity will either smooth over a one-off blip in team capacity, or trend towards a new average if this is the new norm for the team. Either way, this sort of trailing metric is essentially self-correcting. Changes in the team or the process &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; generally result in changes to velocity, and that's as it should be. As long as you aren't using it incorrectly as a productivity metric, you should allow the data to correctly reflect these changes rather than forcibly recalibrating the metric.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Velocity and the Sprint Goal&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The correct use of velocity is to determine whether all the work needed to meet the current Sprint Goal can fit within a single Sprint. If Sprint Planning results in a Sprint Backlog that exceeds the Development Team's expected capacity for the current Sprint, the work selected (and possibly the Sprint Goal) will need to be renegotiated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, it is unlikely that a team of 6 will have the same capacity as a team of 8, so less work should probably be selected for the current Sprint. Velocity (with appropriate fudge factors) can provide a sanity check for the team and help avoid oversubscription, but in the end the Development Team is committing to achieving a Sprint Goal rather than delivering a set number of story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focus on the Sprint Goal, not the velocity forecast. If you don't &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; a Sprint Goal, then fix that process problem ASAP. Focus on delivering the Sprint Goal, and let the velocity metric speak for itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-04-29T16:23:15.510" LastActivityDate="2019-04-29T16:23:15.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26316" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-04-29T15:46:47.950" Score="0" ViewCount="131" Body="&lt;p&gt;With the development team of 10 members. Project should be completed in 2 sprints. If the team plan to change the story points, does velocity of the team change? If so which type of velocity changes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35766" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-10-21T22:32:00.057" LastActivityDate="2019-10-21T22:32:00.057" Title="Does velocity change if the storypoints are changed in the particular sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;velocity&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26316" CreationDate="2019-04-29T16:41:53.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;An &quot;Average&quot; of Zero or One Measurements is Called a &quot;Guess&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two Sprints is not enough time to norm a team's velocity, especially if it's a new team or a new project. On a fixed-length project like this, velocity is unlikely to be anything other than a guess, and will therefore have extremely limited value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Don't Misuse Velocity&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also no such thing as &quot;ideal velocity,&quot; and some of your other terms are likewise suspect. Velocity is a trailing metric based on a stable estimation-of-effort technique, generally calculated as a statistical mean or statistical range. It is most explicitly &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a measure of productivity, or a predictive metric of value. At best, it provides a rough baseline to estimate team capacity, and a sanity check to ensure the team doesn't over-commit when selecting work related to the Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're using velocity to &lt;em&gt;plan&lt;/em&gt; your Sprints. or to select work by volume rather than in relation to the Sprint Goal, then you're using the metric incorrectly. Don't do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-04-29T16:41:53.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26320" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-04-29T21:22:36.030" Score="1" ViewCount="323" Body="&lt;p&gt;can anyone help me with a JQL to filter all jira issues in my project that have acceptance criteria less than 20 characters&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35769" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-04-30T10:17:12.260" LastActivityDate="2019-05-30T11:03:00.393" Title="JIRA query to find all issues where acceptance criteria is less than 20 characters" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;acceptance-criteria&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26321" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-04-30T03:26:46.917" Score="4" ViewCount="174" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a rookie PM. We are conducting a Sprint with selected tasks from the backlog, when suddenly critical bugs appear. Should we extend the Sprint, or finish the Sprint on the delivery date and move the remaining tasks to another Sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35772" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-05-06T03:14:59.783" LastActivityDate="2019-05-06T03:14:59.783" Title="Extend Sprints or take the renaming tasks to a new Sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26321" CreationDate="2019-04-30T03:55:42.177" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Welcome Ayesh!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have 3 options, and the best option to choose will depend on the details of what is going on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ignore the critical bugs for now. Finish the sprint you're doing now, and put the bugs at the top of the backlog to be worked in the next sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be a good option when the sprint is going to be complete in a few days anyway, or when there is low risk and/or low cost in waiting on fixing the bugs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, this should be the preferred response for all &quot;suddenly, new &lt;em&gt;stuff&lt;/em&gt; appears&quot;, whether the stuff is bugs or requirements or new priorities or whatever. Sprints are short iteration cycles, short enough that in most cases, it should be reasonable to wait until the next cycle to address &lt;em&gt;stuff&lt;/em&gt;. If the critical bugs were just discovered, then presumably they've been there for a while and you've lived with them this long, so what's another week or two? This is often reasonable logic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add the bugfixes to the current sprint by removing an equivalent amount of work from the original plan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be a good option when fixing the bugs quickly is of more value than completing the original sprint goal, and when there is indeed an equivalent amount of work in the current sprint that can be swapped out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cancel the sprint, and immediately plan and begin a new sprint focused on fixing the bugs. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a drastic and disruptive option; canceling the sprint is generally a last resort. It would be appropriate when the bugs are not only critical but urgent, and fixing them immediately has more value than anything else, including the cost of context switching and lost planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I don't consider &quot;extend the sprint&quot; to be a viable option. Work is planned in sprints (short fixed-duration timeboxes) so that change can be embraced between sprints, and focus can be maximized during sprints, and the team can gather useful metrics like velocity normalized by the constant sprint length. Extending the sprint messes with all that. (And, again, if you extend the sprint in &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; case, are you going to start getting pressure to extend the sprint for &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; reasons that various stakeholders might consider critical? Better to not even go there.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2019-04-30T03:55:42.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18175" CreationDate="2019-04-30T07:18:29.940" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As it turned out, our programmers (the team has only 15 people) do not like long meetings, regular monitoring, and reports as well - it annoys them and distracts from working. So at the end of it, we concluded that we need only 2-3 techniques, which do not detract their attention away, while the project/product manager does the rest for them - analysis and grooming of tasks, prioritization of them, the implementation plan for new features, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, we employ the following practices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;daily stand-ups, but not in the classic version, standing and alive, but through a bot in Slack. Even if the team is in the same office, they prefer this way of reporting and meetings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;retrospectives at the end of the sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sometimes, quite rarely, we run polls on the current sprint or on the priority of tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is enough for us, that’s why guided by the principle of Occam's razor, we do not multiply entities beyond necessity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's why I highly recommend trying &lt;a href=&quot;https://standuply.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Standuply.com&lt;/a&gt;  This is a project management tool for Slack. I believe it is perfect for your team as well, especially if you have a part of the team working remotely. We use it for several years, and the whole team is extremely pleased with that. This app really reduces the work of managers and makes life easier in the process of developing complex products. This is not advertising - just friendly advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35775" LastActivityDate="2019-04-30T07:18:29.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26316" CreationDate="2019-04-30T09:43:50.993" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Actual&lt;/strong&gt; velocity does not change based on story points or planning or looming deadlines or any other surrounding factors. Actual velocity merely refers to &quot;how much work does the team get done&quot;, which is independent of planning, estimates, etc. It depends entirely on scope and time spent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team wanting to change the numbers attached to a piece of work thus have no impact on the chances of them being able to complete the story. The number attached to a piece of work has no true relation to the size of the piece of work. This is why trying to talk a team into a lower estimate is a waste of time, and why placing more items in a sprint than velocity suggests can be done isn't going to help you finish sooner, it'll just make you fail the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you're changing &lt;strong&gt;what needs to be done&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;what time is available to do it in&lt;/strong&gt;, nothing tangible is changing when people modify story points, or update the planning, or move the velocity. All of these things are &lt;em&gt;reporting information&lt;/em&gt; that you can use to adjust real parameters, which are essentially just &quot;scope&quot; and &quot;time available&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The numbers that the velocity generate are likely to change based on changes to story point estimations. Velocity fluctuates over time regardless. You'll see how velocity changes as you recalculate it after each sprint. But it's generally a bad idea to attach meaning to the velocity-numbers; they're a forecasting tool, not a goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31393" LastActivityDate="2019-04-30T09:43:50.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26320" CreationDate="2019-04-30T10:43:33.673" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jira does not offer any native character count function. A few alternatives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Export to CSV and filter the data in Excel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use Jira API&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use &lt;a href=&quot;https://scriptrunner.adaptavist.com/latest/jira/jql-functions.html#_regular_expressions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ScriptRunner&lt;/a&gt;, as you can see &lt;a href=&quot;https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-questions/query-for-text-field-length/qaq-p/696968&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;code&gt;issueFunction in issueFieldMatch(&quot;project = FOO&quot;, &quot;description&quot;, &quot;^.{0,10}$&quot;)&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, more on the PM context: &lt;strong&gt;People using such small acceptance criteria are either very &lt;em&gt;seasoned&lt;/em&gt; or very &lt;em&gt;junior&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt; Understand what's your case. Short acceptance criteria is a &lt;em&gt;sympton&lt;/em&gt;, not a &lt;em&gt;sickness&lt;/em&gt;. I'd avoid monitoring such criteria. Understand why such cases exist and deal with them. Do not consider any of the above approaches as something &lt;em&gt;sustainable in the long run&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-04-30T10:43:33.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26262" CreationDate="2019-04-30T21:07:22.653" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Kanban board, and in general, a Kanban system, properly implemented with WIP Limits and Pull mechanism to let a developer pull new work when they are done with whatever they had on their plate, provide them with the following direct benefits - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It helps reduce overburdening.&lt;/strong&gt;  WIP Limits encourage the team to reduce multitasking, by helping them focus on finishing things in hand first, before taking up new stuff.  While your team may not have had the problem, probably BECAUSE they have a Kanban board, most teams are faced with huge backlogs or demand from customers/ management.  Kanban boards with WIP limits help reduce multitasking and overburdening. This has untold benefits in terms of improving their efficiency, helping their brains become sharper (a multi-tasking brain, in fact, becomes stupider, as research in recent times has shown!), delivering more with less and achieving better work-life balance! One of our customers actually said that implementing Kanban in a DevOps environment helped their teams by freeing them up from mundane tasks and helping them focus on more creative aspects of their jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It provides them reliable, real-life past performance data on different types of work they perform - and this &lt;strong&gt;helps them become more predictable.&lt;/strong&gt;  Kanban boards should provide rich insights into lead time to finish work in general, and over any reasonable period of time, provide a great historic record of what they can accomplish.  It thus helps them become more predictable - for their own ability to give more reliable forecasts of how long it might take them to do a piece of work, and for the team/ system overall to make commitments they can keep to their customer. They can easily use their throughput chart and their lead time distribution charts to get an idea of how much they can deliver in a given period of time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finally, a Kanban system properly implemented, especially with respect to upstream kanban, ensures that a developer works on &lt;strong&gt;the right thing at the right time&lt;/strong&gt;. In other words, there is no ambiguity on what is the work they need to do when they have the capacity. This helps them understand the strategic alignment of their work to corporate objectives defined in higher level kanban boards. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In doing so, the Kanban system also helps the organization and the managers because, as a system, the team delivers more, better.  And that helps the teams who successfully implement Kanban first!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2019-04-30T21:07:22.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26321" CreationDate="2019-05-01T05:42:11.830" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should we extend the Sprint, or finish the Sprint on the delivery date and move the remaining tasks to another Sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is a time boxed framework that values a predictable cadence of events. Work that can't fit into the current time box must removed from the current time box, or the entire time box scrapped so the Scrum Team can adapt to newly-discovered priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Categorizing and Managing Bugs&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, Product Backlog Items are either &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;not-done&lt;/em&gt; at the end of a Sprint. The Sprint is a fixed time box, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/24822/4271&quot;&gt;should never be extended to fit scope&lt;/a&gt;. So, incomplete work or features that don't meet the Definition of Done should go back on the Product Backlog to be re-prioritized by the Product Owner and re-estimated when they are again in scope for Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Correctly categorizing your &quot;critical bugs&quot; is important, too. In Scrum, bugs will generally fall into one of four categories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they are actually issues with the current work increment, then fixing them should be part of your Definition of Done and addressed in the current Sprint (if possible). Unfinished work is addressed during the Sprint Review, and then placed back onto the Product Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the bugs aren't directly related to the current Sprint Goal, or are refinements or other work that was not in scope for your current Sprint, then they belong on the Product Backlog for a future Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the bug is truly &quot;stop the line&quot; critical, the Scrum Team can collectively renegotiate scope for the Sprint to free up capacity &lt;strong&gt;so long as the current Sprint Goal is not endangered.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the bug is so critical that it takes precedence over the current Sprint Goal, then the Product Owner can &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cancel the Sprint&lt;/a&gt; as a visible cost to the project. The team can then return to Sprint Planning, where this critical bug can be prioritized, estimated, and planned. &lt;strong&gt;NB: If the bug isn't critical enough to do this, then it's probably not really &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; critical.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A core agile tenet is that not everything can be &quot;priority number one.&quot; If the business has identified a truly critical bug, then either fixing the bug is more important than the Sprint Goal, or else it isn't. If it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; more important, then the cost to the project of cancelling the current Sprint and replanning is fully justified. If it isn't, then the Sprint Goal should not be put at risk for a less-important issue. Prioritizing work is the Product Owner's job, so you should work with the Product Owner to determine whether he or she is prepared to cancel the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Continuous Improvement&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you do in regards to this particular bug, make sure you take time to address this &lt;em&gt;as a process issue&lt;/em&gt; within the Scrum Team during the Sprint Retrospective. Bugs happen, but the team should implement solid practices that limit the number and criticality of bugs, as well as well-defined processes for categorizing and managing them. There's probably some room for improvement in the team's practices and processes, so use this experience as grist for the mill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-05-01T05:42:11.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26330" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-05-01T12:51:49.497" Score="2" ViewCount="908" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a team of around 25 people and all are divided into sub-streams based on their technical domains. How should I structure the stand-up meeting so that everyone knows what other stream members are doing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35786" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-05-01T13:06:24.947" LastActivityDate="2019-05-01T18:40:37.037" Title="How to structure standup for a large team?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26330" CreationDate="2019-05-01T14:46:59.123" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A 25-person team is big and I bet your stand-up takes forever. I assume you feel there is a need to have &quot;one stand-up&quot; otherwise you would have already split into smaller stand-ups for each sub-team. If you are a team of 25 because you've grown over time, you may want to consider restructuring into smaller teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Small (and close) Stand-ups&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming it's important to have &quot;one stand-up&quot;, I would still do sub-team stand-ups but do it in one (big) room and at the same time. This makes it easy to bring in someone from another sub-team or instantly address the group as needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cannot do it in the same room (due to space or separating remote members) you should at least do it at the same time and in close proximity. This way you can easily pull in a representative from another sub-team.  Scheduling a meeting takes time, effort and coordination. &lt;strong&gt;By having all sub-group stand-ups at the same time/location, you know when &amp;amp; where you have instant access to the whole team.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Reporting Up&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Optionally, at the end of the smaller stand-ups, you can then have a representative from each sub-team talk to the full group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want everyone to have a general idea of what the full team is doing, then you can &lt;strong&gt;have a sub-team representative summarize what that sub-team is doing&lt;/strong&gt;. Maybe the UX team is &quot;working on the shopping cart&quot; and the Database team is &quot;working on the product search&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Everyone Needing to Know Everything&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also included the question of how does every team member know what every other team member is working on. There's no way I could keep all 24 bits of this information in my head. I bet even your Team Lead/PM even doesn't know exactly what everybody is doing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If everyone needs exact details of all active tasks, then &lt;strong&gt;your board is the best way to know exactly who is doing what&lt;/strong&gt;. Anybody can reference it at any time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33522" LastEditorUserId="33522" LastEditDate="2019-05-01T14:58:52.643" LastActivityDate="2019-05-01T14:58:52.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26330" CreationDate="2019-05-01T18:40:37.037" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How should I structure the stand-up meeting so that 25 people knows&#xA;  what every other is doing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You don't.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;X&gt;Y Problem&lt;/a&gt;. Having a stand-up meeting with 25 people is a tentative to apply Scrum into a scope that's far from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/forum/scrum-forum/5759/development-team-size&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;7+-2 Scrum team size&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The amount of communication channels is just &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/DanielPriestley/status/1037752857620037633&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;not sustainable&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/moub5m.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/moub5m.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Potential reasons:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reasons why you want to have everyone aware of everything might be a combination of the below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Everyone touching the same code/components&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Parallel builds&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Monolithic application&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Overly complex technology stack&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mix of development / maintenance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time to market too high (from weeks to months even for simple changes)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If any of the above rings a bell, you're not alone. You might even apply Robert's suggestion, but consider this as a tactical solution. You definitely need to address the root cause, as the daily standup complexity will be only one of the several challenges you'll have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Strategic Solution&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at frameworks for scaled agile, such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://scaledagileframework.com/#&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SAFe&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://less.works/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LeSS&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Tactical Solution&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really, really, REALLY only want to address the &lt;em&gt;communication&lt;/em&gt; problem, the quickest way to address it would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Restructure your team, breaking down by teams capable of deliver work independently&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set sync meetings (similar to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scaledagileframework.com/program-increment/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum of Scrums&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scaledagileframework.com/communities-of-practice/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Communities of Practice&lt;/a&gt; to ensure communication keeps flowing within each specific domain&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, other problems will still appear. You'll have to do a step back before the next two steps forward. And everyone needs to be quite aware of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-05-01T18:40:37.037" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26321" CreationDate="2019-05-02T08:17:42.273" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My two cent input&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the bug has been caused by some work done in current sprint and is kind of show stopper for the release, then it must get resolved in current sprint. Analyse it for the effort required to fix and free up resources by moving equally weighed work back to product backlog without much effecting goal of the sprint. Even if the goal of the sprint gets a CUT, PO can discuss this with stake holders and convince them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the bug has been there in previous releases and somehow could get discovered now, then it can wait for the next sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note, aborting a Sprint is not an option here. It is mostly done in situations when the work being done in sprint is no more relevant. e.g. feature being developed is not required by the customer any more. (Bug is not a valid cause here) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprints are time boxed so should not be extended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35748" LastActivityDate="2019-05-02T08:17:42.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24172" CreationDate="2019-05-02T18:38:09.833" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I were you, I would break down my investigation in two buckets:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Secondary Research:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find product similar to yours, and learn more about them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find publications, reviews and launch notes of these comparable products&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use the above analysis the create SAM or Serviceable Available Market&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define Personas that exists in this SAM&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify the Persona that your product is serving. If you can't find your existing customer segments in this above list of Personas, then you don't have a product market fit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Primary Research:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Run NPS (Net Promoter Score) Survey. This is almost a gold standard for receiving feedback from existing customers. Note that only a handful of your DAU (Daily Active Users) will take the NPS Survey&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Run more detailed survey with existing customers or users to gain detailed insights on which feature are the most appealing. Always, include a free-form text box in any survey for gaining qualitative feedback from the survey respondents. The responses in these text fields are great material for opening your presentations to executives&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do User Interviews with early adopters of your product to gain their insights. Note that this is not to find the next set of features to implement, but more to find what works best for them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stretch Goal: Do Focus Groups with multiple users (&gt;5) with a goal to brain-storm about your product&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surveys are not the only tool to get a pulse on your customers. You have an army of options, and you should use multiple options to get an accurate insight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Final Note: Pick and choose from the above list. There is a cost of doing any analysis, and you should stop when the cost exceeds the benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35801" LastEditorUserId="35801" LastEditDate="2019-05-02T19:00:38.800" LastActivityDate="2019-05-02T19:00:38.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26337" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26341" CreationDate="2019-05-02T20:31:07.217" Score="1" ViewCount="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good afternoon Fellow Scrum-Students/Acolytes/Masters,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm having trouble getting some of my users to keep progress of their cards. I often have to move them to &lt;strong&gt;In Progress&lt;/strong&gt; or remind them to keep notes in their cards during Standup and I wanted to see if you had any helpful tips/tricks to getting your team to adopt these practices as a whole? Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35803" LastActivityDate="2019-05-03T13:17:58.007" Title="How do you get your users to &quot;own&quot; their cards and adopt Agile as a whole?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26339" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-05-03T11:03:02.877" Score="2" ViewCount="352" Body="&lt;p&gt;The story points can be used for estimate user stories and tasks will be marked in hours in Visual Studios. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When there is a critical bug (which is not in the backlog, reported by users) we incorporate to the current sprint and try to resolve it within the current sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In doing so, we have to make adjustments to tasks or other issues, which,in turn will probably end up in a future sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now when we want to estimate for the critical issues reported (on TFS), we can enter the effort in hours. But, this does not display in the charts and nor it is counted. I figured that, if I was to monitor the effort for bugs, I have to create them as tasks and then only I can monitor on the charts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question, is do you recommend this approach or is it there something that I am doing wrong? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35772" LastEditorUserId="35772" LastEditDate="2019-05-06T03:06:03.010" LastActivityDate="2019-05-06T08:21:51.613" Title="Agile Estimation - How to estimate for bugs?" Tags="&lt;bugs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2019-05-06T19:27:53.450" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26337" CreationDate="2019-05-03T11:21:17.747" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If a team does not value a tool they will not use it well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is to do the following in order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discuss with the team a new approach (for example adopting JIRA)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put forward an argument for why you think your suggested approach is good&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Listen carefully to the feedback from the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make a &lt;em&gt;collaborative&lt;/em&gt; decision on which approach to take&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Treat the adopted approach as an experiment. Review it in retrospectives and see if it needs to be adapted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A team that &lt;em&gt;owns&lt;/em&gt; its tools and process is more likely to be successful than one that is told how to do things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-05-03T11:21:17.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26337" CreationDate="2019-05-03T13:17:58.007" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me guess, you started or was asked to start a new process in the organisation because folks don't know why things are not going well and would like to do something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People are not updating or moving items around because they don't see the value or the point in it. If you have an open minded team the only thing you can do is wait and patiently help them understand the idea and see how they react and what figure out what the smallest thing they can do etc. With the retrospectives and &quot;lectures&quot; you are going to drive them away from the new approach; they'll see it your or the management &quot;newest&quot; idea, and they'll wait until it is gone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick help can be to ask them: &lt;em&gt;&quot;what would you do instead?&quot;&lt;/em&gt; If it is not a far fetched idea, do it and check the result. With this approach you can introduce the team to the agile way of working (mind the small 'a'); &lt;strong&gt;trying out new things, reflecting the change, take responsibility of said change and revert if necessary.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastActivityDate="2019-05-03T13:17:58.007" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26342" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26345" CreationDate="2019-05-03T19:29:55.760" Score="0" ViewCount="717" Body="&lt;p&gt;This hypothetical question is directly-inspired by &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/26226/25606&quot;&gt;this Question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During a Sprint Retrospective, the Development team proposes moving&#xA;  the Daily scrum to occur twice per day -- once in the morning and once in the afternoon. Not daily.&#xA;  Which two are the most appropriate responses for the Scrum Master?&#xA;  (Select two best answers)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Coach the team on why the Daily Scrum is important as an opportunity&#xA;  to update the plan &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Learn why the Development Team wants this and work&#xA;  with them to improve the outcome of the daily Scrum &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Consider the&#xA;  request and decide on when the Daily Scrum should occur. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Have&#xA;  the developers vote &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Acknowledge and support self-organizing team’s&#xA;  decision&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a Scrum viewpoint, is this original question and this updated version essentially the same question and therefore have the same answer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own thinking on the topic keeps vacillating so I'm hoping someone more experienced with the process can provide some guidance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35678" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-05-03T19:33:23.253" LastActivityDate="2019-05-29T14:59:34.707" Title="(Hypothetical) During a Sprint Retrospective, the Development team proposes moving the Daily scrum to twice daily" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;&lt;sprint-retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26342" CreationDate="2019-05-03T23:25:48.003" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The original question was about an exam and my answer (the accepted one) was geared toward how to consider the answers. You could consider the same things. However, tlyou are going to answer those differently. For example, the purpose of the daily scrum is undermined by less frequent meetings, while it is not undermined but may or may not amplify that purpose. So I don't think the answer is the same but you can ask some of the same questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-05-03T23:25:48.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26342" CreationDate="2019-05-04T11:37:33.677" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Helping the team identify the root cause of an issue (to avoid X/Y solutions), and then allowing them to brainstorm &lt;em&gt;measurable&lt;/em&gt; solutions that work within the team's unique context is an essential Scrum Master facilitation role. Validated learning and continuous process improvement &lt;em&gt;led by the team&lt;/em&gt; should be the real goals here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your framework implementation to be Scrum, you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; hold a Daily Scrum. If you don't hold all the required events, then &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#endnote&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the result is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; Scrum&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the Scrum framework doesn't prevent teams from holding additional events or implementing their own processes &lt;em&gt;within&lt;/em&gt; the framework. So, if a team finds that it needs more than one full-team collaboration meeting a day, there's nothing that would prevent them from doing that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the third (!) hand, adding additional process overhead may or may not add value, and may or may not solve whatever underlying issue has prompted the team to try this approach. In the abstract, it's difficult to say whether this would be useful or not, but it's certainly within the team's control to self-organize and manage their own internal processes if they want to try. I'd simply suggest that they take a test-first approach to define how they will measure the success or failure of the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Test Perspective&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's almost impossible to guess what the test designers think is the right answer, or how they've chosen to norm it. So, there can't be a canonical answer to a &quot;what's the correct test answer&quot; type of question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, the only two options presented that are congruent with allowing the team to self-organize and collaborate without a command-and-control approach using authority the Scrum Master doesn't have are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Learn why the Development Team wants this and work with them to improve the outcome of the daily Scrum&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Acknowledge and support self-organizing team’s decision&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not the answers are what the test designers are looking for, they are the two best answers in the list. They still fall short, though, because they lack the full context and the right flavor. Repacking this as &quot;What's the best way to support and &lt;em&gt;facilitate&lt;/em&gt; the team?&quot; is a better approach that will encourage the Scrum Master to &lt;strong&gt;coach the team on root cause analysis and help them explore &lt;em&gt;actionable and testable&lt;/em&gt; approaches to validated learning and continuous improvement.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-05-29T14:59:34.707" LastActivityDate="2019-05-29T14:59:34.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26348" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-05-06T03:45:33.527" Score="0" ViewCount="81" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible? &#xA;Or in a more generic question, can XP work under Scrum iterations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35821" LastActivityDate="2019-05-06T11:14:30.880" Title="Can pair programming work under Scrum iterations" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;extreme-programming&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26349" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26371" CreationDate="2019-05-06T05:26:13.273" Score="2" ViewCount="150" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently my manager asked my team for some metrics on the code base, in order to budget for my team. These are the metrics requested:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Number of source code files&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Code Lines &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Comment Lines&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blank Lines&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Integration Point (e.g. How many systems/modules our module integrates with.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not think this is a good way to go about it. Can budgets be estimated this way? I hope to learn some better alternatives than the above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35822" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-05-10T14:07:41.883" LastActivityDate="2019-07-01T11:30:10.780" Title="Can code base metrics be used for budgeting for software engineering or code maintenance?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;budget&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26348" CreationDate="2019-05-06T05:49:51.943" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. In fact, it has been said a number of times by the creators that the reason they didn't specify how to do the work in the sprint is because they wanted it to be open to different types of work and they felt like the problem was already solved by other solutions (like XP).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-05-06T05:49:51.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26349" CreationDate="2019-05-06T05:55:19.507" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have no idea what he plans to do with that information, so I can't say if it's a good approach or bad, but I would struggle to do any meaningful budgeting with that information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, I'd look for how much work a given team accomplishes in a certain area from both a projects standpoint and support. I'd look at my demand for the coming year to see how that aligns with the team. If there is work to support it, relatively consistent teams have a tendency to be more effective, efficient, and productive, so I would look to fund teams for the year if possible. Scaling up and down creates the appearance of being more fiscally responsible, but there are a ton of costs with scaling up a development capability so incurring those over and over usually incurs a far greater cost than maintaining teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the direct answer to your question is: what have you needed in the past and how does demand for the next year compare to that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-05-06T05:55:19.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26339" CreationDate="2019-05-06T08:21:51.613" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is: &lt;strong&gt;Bugs are drag, don't assign points to them.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The long answer is: The key idea behind story points is that they represent business value. The question is, how much business value can you provide each iteration, a value that is used to interpolate into the future. All things that don't provide any direct businesses value, writing TPS reports, safety training or going to trade shows are not assigned any story points, this is considered project drag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bugs are technical debt. You where able to ship X amount of story points in the past, but only by adding technical debt, now you are repaying that debt, which will mean less story points this sprint. This will reduce the projected velocity, but that is correct, since it adds the dept you tend to pick up over time into the equation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to tack bugs is in absolute numbers separate from the velocity. Yes, there are bugs of different severity and effort, but they should average out. Your goal should be to never to release bugs, if the number of bugs is high you should look into your QA processes and refine them. (unit tests / Code reviews / manual tests) In TFS a open bugs and a history of open bugs should go right onto the project dashboard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5270" LastActivityDate="2019-05-06T08:21:51.613" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26354" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-05-07T11:48:01.577" Score="2" ViewCount="110" Body="&lt;p&gt;After the end of a Sprint, many times there are some undone items left. How best, as a Scrum Master, can I ensure the Team is able to do all the stories/tasks that were picked by the Team for the Sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, what are the best communication channels for sharing the red flags with management and the business about the delay in specific stories or tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13556" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-05-07T13:12:11.003" LastActivityDate="2019-05-08T13:17:56.020" Title="How best can I handle/warn about a Sprint's spill-over?" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26354" CreationDate="2019-05-07T13:10:38.457" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're asking two separate questions and your first question seems to already exist as a different &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/22245/25606&quot;&gt;Question&lt;/a&gt;, so I'm going to answer your second question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[W]hat are the best communication channels for sharing the red flags with management and the business about the delay in specific stories or tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Information radiators are much more efficient than information pulls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply keep your board both:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Up-to-date&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Visible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and it should give management the information it needs without interrupting the Team's flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is not wise to think management and business will like to pull the information from the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If management doesn't want the business to work in an optimally efficient manner, then that's their prerogative. It's not your responsibility to force management to make sound decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; your responsibility, though, is to make sure they have all the available tools to do so. Give them access to the board, suggest that they use it, and warn them about the detrimental effects of status pulls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, if they ignore you and continue with the status pulls, simply accept that things aren't going to go optimally and it's not your fault.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-05-08T13:17:56.020" LastActivityDate="2019-05-08T13:17:56.020" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26357" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26358" CreationDate="2019-05-08T09:01:27.100" Score="2" ViewCount="395" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know when the estimates are supposed to be produced. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last time I was part of a Scrum team, I think we were providing initial estimates (that would then be quickly reviewed and confirmed or amended at the sprint planning) during some sessions called &quot;story grooming sessions&quot; which were randomly held all along the actual sprint (an hour here and hour there).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you guys confirm that's the general practice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35661" LastActivityDate="2019-05-08T10:53:12.340" Title="When is user stories estimation supposed to take place?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26357" CreationDate="2019-05-08T09:20:08.123" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The official answer from the guide is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Product Backlog refinement is the act of adding detail, estimates, and order to items in the Product Backlog. This is an ongoing process in which the Product Owner and the Development Team collaborate on the details of Product Backlog items. During Product Backlog refinement, items are reviewed and revised. &lt;strong&gt;The Scrum Team decides how and when refinement is done.&lt;/strong&gt; Refinement usually consumes no more than 10% of the capacity of the Development Team. However, Product Backlog items can be updated at any time by the Product Owner or at the Product Owner’s discretion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But yes, having a &quot;grooming&quot; or refinement meeting is regular practice. Whether they are held randomly or at fixed intervals is up to you, personally I prefer fixed intervals so the sprint can be planned better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2019-05-08T09:20:08.123" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26357" CreationDate="2019-05-08T09:32:28.837" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Story estimates should take place during the Sprint Planning meeting, which has the Product Owner, Scrum Master, and the Product team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also conduct regular &lt;strong&gt;Backlog grooming meeting&lt;/strong&gt;, also referred to as backlog refinement or story time. It is a recurring event for agile product development teams. The primary purpose of a backlog grooming session is to ensure the next few sprints worth of user stories in the product backlog are prepared for sprint planning. Regular backlog grooming sessions also help ensure the right stories are prioritized and that the product backlog does not become a black hole. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The backlog grooming meeting is done to &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Break down large user stories into smaller tasks. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discuss user stories with the team, answer any related questions to smooth out any ambiguity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure upcoming user stories meet the team’s “definition&#xA;of ready” by adding key contextual information and acceptance&#xA;criteria. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13556" LastActivityDate="2019-05-08T09:32:28.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26357" CreationDate="2019-05-08T10:53:12.340" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea is to have stories going in to a sprint estimated by the end of the sprint planning meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, that does not mean you have to do estimation during sprint planning. A lot of teams will do estimation during backlog refinement prior to sprint planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no 'best' time to do story estimating. It will depend on the team, the organisation and the domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth considering the following though:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you regularly struggle to get estimates done by the end of the planning meeting then it makes sense to do some estimates prior to that meeting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you do your estimates &lt;em&gt;too far in advance&lt;/em&gt; then they may need to be re-estimated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimates can help the Product Owner with prioritisation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-05-08T10:53:12.340" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26361" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26366" CreationDate="2019-05-08T12:55:40.080" Score="3" ViewCount="773" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a small team (3 devs and 2 testers) and we have successfully used Scrum for 6 months, despite being a really small team for this methodology. I am a rookie as a Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, we have started to experience problems with Sprints ending with tickets that are finished by devs -in theory - but tester has not had enough time to test them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How should we handle this? Extending the Sprint is not allowed, so moving the tickets to the next Sprint seems to be ok, but how we could estimate them? Since testers could find big problems that could drive new fixes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&#xA;More information: we had 7 tickets... this main ticket was took first, and it tooks from start to end of sprint, so we have just ONE finished ticket. It is the weirdest sprint that we had. Of course: the worst estimation ever, but our retrospective will look so strange with just one finished ticket, and the other with development finished but nothing of test... Administratively what should I do? back to backlog and starting again? estimating the original story point - dev time (that is already &quot;finished&quot;)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35847" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-07-08T10:08:11.550" LastActivityDate="2019-07-09T13:28:48.090" Title="Stories in test at end of sprint" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;quality&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26361" CreationDate="2019-05-08T13:12:44.303" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Discuss in the Retrospective.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a limit to how much advice can be obtained from strangers on the internet. Your Team is presumably aware of the problem, and Scrum prescribes a self-organizing Team. So discuss the issue and brainstorm/evaluate possible solutions during the Retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Have QA be involved during the Planning Meeting.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, during estimation. Estimates should be for the effort needed to get the story Done℠, not just development-done. That being said...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Focus on the Sprint Goal.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you're not completing all stories, okay, no big deal. Are you completing your Sprint Goal? &lt;em&gt;That's&lt;/em&gt; what you should be focusing your efforts on. If you have your Sprint Goal entirely in dev-done but QA is behind, maybe it'd be best for developers to ignore the 'stretch' stories and help QA instead? Just a suggestion - again, consult the Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; a Sprint Goal, then you have bigger problems than incomplete stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2019-05-08T13:12:44.303" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26342" CreationDate="2019-05-08T14:06:00.757" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thanks for the discussion, everyone!  Here are my answery-thoughts on this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; thing about this scenario that violates Scrum in any way is the name of the second meeting.  So just rename it already and carry on.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's nothing in Scrum that says you can't have meetings or that prescribes what may or may not be in those meetings.  Calling the afternoon meeting The After-Lunch Hullabaloo solves everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Strictly in terms of which 2-of-5 answers are best from the multiple-choice list, I'd probably go with &quot;Acknowledge and support self-organizing team’s decision&quot; and &quot;Consider the request and decide on when the Daily Scrum should occur&quot; -- the latter being the decision as to which meeting should get to be called the Daily Scrum, if for some reason the team can't or won't come to their own decision on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks again to everyone who took a look at this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35678" LastActivityDate="2019-05-08T14:06:00.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26361" CreationDate="2019-05-08T16:30:16.183" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to inspect-and-adapt your entire estimation and goal-setting process. However, in the short term, incomplete work should be placed back on the Product Backlog, re-prioritized, and re-estimated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Administratively what should I do? back to backlog and starting again? estimating the original story point - dev time (that is already &quot;finished&quot;)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should have a Sprint Goal. The goal of a Sprint is to achieve the Sprint Goal, not to do lots of tickets. Without a Sprint Goal, you're not really following the Scrum framework, and you won't really be able to properly evaluate the success of the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless, your specific question is about what to do with work that isn't really &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt;. If your Definition of Done includes completion of QA, then the Product Backlog Item is simply incomplete. It isn't partly done, it isn't sorta-kinda done, it's &lt;strong&gt;just not done.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When Product Backlog Items aren't complete at the end of a Sprint, they go back onto the Product Backlog to be &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/15753/4271&quot;&gt;re-prioritized by the Product Owner&lt;/a&gt;. The item may or may not remain relevant, and only the Product Owner can determine if there is still value in allocating resources for it in a future Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If and when the work comes back into scope for Backlog Refinement or Sprint Planning, the work needs to be re-estimated. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-sprint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All incomplete Product Backlog Items are re-estimated and put back on the Product Backlog. The work done on them depreciates quickly and must be frequently re-estimated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much work was done on the item previously is irrelevant. The work must be re-estimated to determine how much effort &lt;em&gt;remains&lt;/em&gt; (given knowledge about present team capacity and cumulative lessons learned, among other things) to implement the feature within a new Sprint. Historical estimates and expended effort should be discarded as data points, because time boxes are ephemeral; what matters is &lt;strong&gt;effort remaining.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-07-09T13:28:48.090" LastActivityDate="2019-07-09T13:28:48.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25235" CreationDate="2019-05-09T08:34:18.323" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;With my little knowledge on Project management, I'd say that I believe everyone wants his/her opinion aired and implemented. One of the qualities of a PM is being a good listener and communicating with the people involved in the project to make the work productive and meeting the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is important to note that as a PM you are meant to balance the competiting objectives of the project, where each teams are arguing on the best way to solve a problem. Your judgement/decision on certain problems is meant to be backed with facts and with the confidence that, without a doubt, you are making the right decision as a PM after listening to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35623" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-05-09T13:07:54.117" LastActivityDate="2019-05-09T13:07:54.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26361" CreationDate="2019-05-09T11:24:38.857" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, we have started to experience problems with Sprints ending with tickets that are finished by devs -in theory - but QA has not had enough time to test them&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;estimating the original story point - dev time (that is already &amp;quot;finished&amp;quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try not to think of testing as a QA activity. It is a &lt;em&gt;team&lt;/em&gt; activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;QA's may run tests, but they also need to speak to the Product Owner / Developers about issues and bug fixes will usually involve the developers. Also, consider activities like root-cause analysis, test automation, code quality metrics, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If testing is not completed successfully the ticket is simply not &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt;. Return it to the backlog and if it is again prioritised you will need to re-estimate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;we had 7 tickets... this main ticket was took first, and it tooks from start to end of sprint, so we have just ONE finished ticket&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an excellent learning opportunity. As a team, think about why this happened. What can be done to prevent it happening again in the future?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but how we could estimate them? Since QA could find big problems that could drive new fixes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why a lot of Scrum teams adopt approaches like test driven development and behaviour driven development. Bugs are notoriously difficult to estimate so it makes sense to spend time preventing them occurring rather than fixing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-05-09T11:24:38.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26369" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26370" CreationDate="2019-05-09T12:02:20.173" Score="-1" ViewCount="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;How to take advantage of multiple people working on a single android app when it comes to tasks and task delegation? It seems like a lot of times it is a matter of sewing multiple pieces of code done by others together. Is there a better way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that the project is very new. We don't have a lot of code and are working ideas and drawings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35858" LastActivityDate="2019-05-09T12:53:13.307" Title="Multiple people working on the same new open source project and chaos" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;open-source&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2019-05-09T13:33:36.810" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26369" CreationDate="2019-05-09T12:53:13.307" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;At first glance, the issue seems to be that the project isn't managed.  Management of open source/volunteer efforts is an interesting challenge that deserves a paper/presentation.  I mention this only to highlight that the question is, I think, more important/significant/on topic than it may initially appear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were to try to manage this project, my priorities would be&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Socialize (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemawashi&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;nemawashi&lt;/a&gt;) and articulate clearly, consistently and repeatedly a compelling shared goal.  Given that efforts are volunteer, the most important way to ensure that everyone is pulling in harness/working together is to motivate people with a shared, compelling vision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Establish a governance mechanism based on consensus with respect for diversity. Once you have a compelling shared vision, you need to refine, reify and maintain that vision.  In my (albeit limited) experience, the best way to do this is to have a core group who are willing to devote the effort to examining contributions and analyzing what impact they'll have on the vision. This can be a Configuration Control Board, this can be a scrum meeting, this can be an autocrat, this can even be an AI based on a random number generator. But it has to do the following things&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Accept contributions as part of the project.   If a contribution is not accepted then specific feedback should be offered.  I strongly recommend that this &quot;accept&quot; process be based on &quot;What impact will this contribution have on the shared vision?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sponsor forks.  There are going to be diverse opinions about &quot;What is Good?&quot;.  I suspect that in most cases the best approach is always to say, &quot;go ahead and fork that, build a spke/sprint/demo and let's see.&quot;  The best way to avert irreconcilable differences is to welcome and respect diverse opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Discuss &amp;amp; approve changes to the shared vision.  Explicitly work the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cone of uncertainty&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Identify priorities - act as the product owner and identify the code fragments that are most necessary to getting to the shared vision.  Make sure those are visible; that everyone knows about the blank spaces on the development map/development debt.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Establish code quality standards. Stitching together code is going to require standard interfaces.  Build some kind of consensus based standard about what the calling code should expect, and the called code should provide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Study bitcoin &amp;amp; other project. Bitcoin plummeted from the savior of the universe to an interesting case study because it forked over a fundamental disagreement about the goals.   If I were in your shoes, I'd study the heck out of that and look for similar cases. I'd write myself papers and look for leading indicators of irreconcilable differences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2019-05-09T12:53:13.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26349" CreationDate="2019-05-10T14:39:08.403" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Level of effort and complexity are much better metrics for estimating work than lines of code (LOC). Furthermore, they can only be effectively estimated by the people who will be doing the actual work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using proxy metrics that don't map to actual costs is not a good way to plan a project or forecast a budget. Unless your company is actually paid for each line of code written, measuring LOC is probably not a useful way to develop the budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; some legitimate use for this data, the only ones who can tell you how that maps to budgeting is someone within your organization. You need to ask your management team to explain the process, though; no one outside your company can help you develop an internal budget, much less one based on a metric like LOC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can budgets be estimated this way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one outside your company can make business decisions for your organization. There may be a legitimate reason for this data, unlikely as it seems, so you need to &lt;em&gt;ask your management team&lt;/em&gt; how this relates to budgeting. There is no substitute for active, internal communications!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general rule, using code base metrics for budgeting is an X/Y issue, where someone has likely decided to compare current code metrics against future projects to somehow arrive at headcount requirements, or to forecast a future project's productivity costs or potential runtime. However, even if you accept lines of code as a valid metric for productivity—something that is widely considered a bad idea in modern software development—this is unlikely to be useful in measuring the complexity, runtime, or level of effort of &lt;em&gt;future&lt;/em&gt; projects. At best, you will end up with data that says something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on our current budget of &lt;em&gt;M&lt;/em&gt; and our headcount of &lt;em&gt;P&lt;/em&gt;, we can produce &lt;em&gt;C&lt;/em&gt; lines of code per unit of time. Therefore, our projected costs for developing and maintaining projects slated for the next budget cycle will apply a fudge factor of &lt;em&gt;F&lt;/em&gt; to our current budget for a total of &lt;code&gt;M * F&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At worst, you will end up with a bunch of useless or misleading data, and lot of failed expectations. If that's what the management team wants, go ahead and give it to them. However, the organization would be much better served by looking at the &lt;em&gt;work&lt;/em&gt; projected for the next budget cycle, having the development and maintenance teams develop a rough level-of-effort estimate for it, and then using that data to baseline your budget forecasts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-05-10T14:39:08.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26373" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-05-11T02:22:22.113" Score="1" ViewCount="114" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many sources say Scrum has a build phase and test phase, but I'm wondering if these are &lt;em&gt;separated&lt;/em&gt; stages since continuous integration essentially combines build and test into a loop. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35872" LastActivityDate="2019-05-24T17:16:42.730" Title="Are Scrum build and test phases separate?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26373" CreationDate="2019-05-11T11:05:49.893" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; says nothing about build phases and test phases, however it does say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;delivering a potentially releasable Increment of &quot;Done&quot; product at the end of each Sprint&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially that means having separate build and test phases is not Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-05-11T11:05:49.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26373" CreationDate="2019-05-11T15:16:32.267" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum intentionally does not say how to do the work. It just says that you should have a potentially shippable product increment at the end of the sprint. From a software standpoint, it would be hard to argue that a software product is potentially skippable without being tested and built.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of phases as part of product development is not expressly forbidden in Scrum, but it is problematic. Phases usually lead to both wait states and batching, which become difficult to reconcile with the short sprints. To your question, practices like continuous integration that largely eliminate the phase concept in favor of rapid repeatable micro-actions are usually adopted by more practiced scrum teams working in software development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, despite the Scrum guide only being 16 pages, there are hundreds of thousands of pages of books and blogs trying to implement it. This is very difficult when companies with monolithic build processes and tightly coupled application architectures try to create a potentially skippable increment in a few weeks. This has led to a lot of writing about coping and bridging strategies that have, unfortunately, become so common that they are starting to be seen as norms or best practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-05-11T15:16:32.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26376" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26395" CreationDate="2019-05-11T16:10:34.620" Score="2" ViewCount="185" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working with team working in a service delivery model. They are getting requests from the rest of a rather large organization. They don't have too much contact with the business side. We are implementing Kanban. How can they use Kanban to shape the demand? I understand how Uber shapes the demand by dynamically changing the price, but this team is not charging their clients. Are there any techniques to shape the demand in this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4319" LastActivityDate="2019-05-14T13:44:55.820" Title="How to shape the demand with Kanban?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26376" CreationDate="2019-05-11T18:54:30.793" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One possible approach would be to use the cycle time and backlog size to calculate the typical time it will take for a new work request to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cycle time (work starts to production) = 4 days&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Current backlog = 5 items&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time for new requests to start = 4 x 5 = 20 days&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This assumes that new work items will be added at the bottom of your backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Publish this value and the more you have on the backlog, the larger the value will be. This can act to discourage the flow of new work requests. As the backlog gets shorter, the value drops and so encourages more work items to be added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-05-11T18:54:30.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26378" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26386" CreationDate="2019-05-12T17:29:54.763" Score="3" ViewCount="278" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work at a startup where I began as the only developer 3 years ago, and now I run the dev team. There's 15 employees total, 8 of whom are engineers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;5 iOS devs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 Backend devs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're currently just building an iOS application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're starting to grow up a bit and now have a UX Designer, a Head of Product, a Head of Marketing and so forth. After a long period of figuring out the product and some very long release cycles, we want to start iterating more quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My goals are:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;to be able to have the team work on 2 or 3 vertical slices of features, in parallel.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;to be able to release those features each sprint&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;to increase responsibility and and accountability within the team&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Issues I'm seeing:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Feels 'top-down' -- a lot of the team communication seems to come through me.  ie. if a backend dev has an issue with some ios component, they might ask me, and then i'll talk to the iOS dev, and then relay information back&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Standups feel unfocused -- because we have 8 devs all working on different &quot;bits&quot; of things, standups don't seem terribly useful because there isn't really a unified effort amongst the team as whole.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Throwing it over the fence -- After Sprint Planning, everyone tends to go into their silos.  We discussed what needs to be completed, but the devs tend to go into their own worlds and, for example, not take initiative to discuss interfaces between front and backend, throwing things over all the wall for QA (which usually comes to me our product owner), etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; I'm wondering if it makes sense at this point to split the team into two cross-functional groups?  I'm hoping this will accomplish the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each &quot;team&quot; will have a sprint goal which may consistent of 1 or 2 vertical feature slices to accomplish.  I think it may be easier to&#xA;self-organize in the context of a smaller group and figure out what&#xA;needs to happen to meet the goals.  Moreover, I think this could&#xA;help aid in accountability since the team will have very specific&#xA;goals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Standups can happen within each team, and therefore, will be focused&#xA;on unblocking and moving progress forward as it relates to their&#xA;specific sprint goals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Because each team has specific goals and accountability, they will&#xA;be more responsible for things like QA, mockups accuracy, functional&#xA;edge cases, etc before delivering to the product owner for final&#xA;acceptance testing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose the above can be accomplished within the context of a single larger team, but I haven't been able to find a good way to make that happen yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35878" LastActivityDate="2019-11-18T13:40:31.593" Title="Startup - is it time to split into two teams?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26373" CreationDate="2019-05-12T21:03:25.753" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum doesnt have a test phase, but a sprint can have testing involved in within the sprint time box, but generally people think that they can do testing work at the end of the sprint, but in actual one should continue the testing work in parallel with the development of code.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35881" LastActivityDate="2019-05-12T21:03:25.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26378" CreationDate="2019-05-13T07:41:22.907" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;from what you describe, I don't think you have a problem with your team size. 5 + 3 seems quite ok. Maybe I should add some comments to your points so you understand why I think your problem is something else:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Goal 1 and 2:&lt;/strong&gt; Why do you think you need to handle 2-3 vertical slices at a time? If your release cycles are currently too long, the way do speed up the cycle is to handle less threads at a time. It is also good practice not to handle one thread by one person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is a common and wide spread problem to handle too many stories at the same time and hoping that it makes things faster. It does not. It will result in splitting your &lt;em&gt;team&lt;/em&gt; into single developers, everyone doing is own stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Issue 1&lt;/strong&gt;: Are your developers in one team? If yes, why should a backend guy ask you about something the iOS developer did? Do they have a common goal? They should try to fulfill their common goal together. If then they find out that something is not clear and they need feedback from the PO, their should ask you. Together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Issue 2&lt;/strong&gt;: See comment to Goal 1 and 2. If everyone is working on different bits of something, you do not really have a team setup. We have also one &lt;em&gt;team&lt;/em&gt; here that is doing it that way, lacking team work and building up technical dept because they need to be &quot;fast&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Issue 3&lt;/strong&gt;: Yes, also team spirit missing. It looks like the typical restaurant problem. Service and cooks are not working together, in worst case fighting their little wars and find out who is guilty and pushing work on the other side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that my comments make clear that splitting the team is not the solution. From what you are describing I cannot give you an easy solution here. Usually iOS and backend devs should &lt;strong&gt;commit&lt;/strong&gt; themselves to a story, all together. And if they do not reach that, both together fail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, if your work is split up so that everyone is doing his own little story, it may also be a problem of personal likes and dislikes. After some round of pushing guilt around, people get biased against each other. This gets even worse if the same people are handling the same topic over and over again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32531" LastActivityDate="2019-05-13T07:41:22.907" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25940" CreationDate="2019-05-13T08:23:28.737" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Doing the math: assuming 2-week iterations and a 30-point historic velocity, this implies that you have a 60-point story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seems to me you have an opportunity to slice the story into smaller chunks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On another note - strange that all of your user stories are 10-points. If they're all the same, you might consider eliminating estimation altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2741" LastActivityDate="2019-05-13T08:23:28.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25940" CreationDate="2019-05-13T09:29:06.910" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From your comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How the product owners will ensure that the story points are not under estimated or over estimated. The story points will change based on the expertise of the developer. Right ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. Story points are an absolute estimation of complexity. So a Senior Chief Head Developer and a Junior Intern Software Assistant should estimate the same task at the same number of points. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously the former might implement it in 2 hours while the later takes 5 days. And that's what the &lt;em&gt;velocity&lt;/em&gt; is for. How many points can your team take on in their iteration. But 10 points is a measure of complexity of the work, not time it takes to do it. Otherwise, how would the two people ever come to the same conclusion in their estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this is a self-correcting system. You cannot really over- or underestimate. Even if all developers always estimate double (or half) of what would be &quot;correct&quot; the system will auto correct, because all you have now is double (or half) the velocity. Whether a story is 10 story points or 47 is meaningless, the only value of this number lies in the estimation of how many stories you can fit in a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2019-05-13T09:29:06.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26376" CreationDate="2019-05-13T09:37:47.497" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You cannot. Kanban (and the alternatives) are systems to work through what is demanded. It has no methods to shape demand because that's the wrong end of the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban is the way to make sure, tasks are done most efficiently by the team. How many tasks come up is beyond that plan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine a callcenter. They introduce a mechanism to route their calls most efficiently maybe using Kanban. But there is no way for that process to control whether it's a slow day, or their product just broke down in a spectacular fashion and every other customer is calling the hotline. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban works and it does not care whether there are 5 or 5000 requests. You may find a way to &lt;em&gt;prioritize&lt;/em&gt; those 5000 requests but there is no way to stop it from becoming 50000 requests. Not inside Kanban. You will need a different system for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2019-05-13T09:37:47.497" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26378" CreationDate="2019-05-13T12:33:11.340" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few things that stand out from your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;to be able to have the team work on 2 or 3 vertical slices of features, in parallel&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do you see working in parallel as a goal? Typically doing work in parallel &lt;em&gt;costs you&lt;/em&gt; in terms of efficiency, due to the overhead of context switching. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;if a backend dev has an issue with some ios component, they might ask me, and then i'll talk to the iOS dev, and then relay information back&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a communication issue. Has the team discussed it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Standups feel unfocused&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has the team discussed this? Have they tried anything to make the stand-ups better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After Sprint Planning, everyone tends to go into their silos&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fixing the issues with the stand-up should help here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that the single biggest improvement you can make right now is to start discussing things as a team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be that splitting in to two teams makes sense, but that decision is best driven by the team itself and not by an individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-05-13T12:33:11.340" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25935" CreationDate="2019-05-13T20:38:22.300" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm creating epics off major components of the application. Is this the right way to frame them?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest framing the epics as functionality that can be delivered and tested in semi-isolation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Out of those you have mentioned :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research &amp;amp; Scenarios dont feel like epics to me:  Research is a spike and documenting scenarios is part of the work to document epics&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Login Capability, My Fridge &amp;amp; Units of measure  - These make sense to me as their own epics&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Food - Food research goes under the research spike. Assuming there's separate display/storage for Food (not the same as Fridge) I could see this being its own epic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grocery list - This one feels like multiple epics. Storing &amp;amp; Displaying the Grocery list could be one, but sending the actual list could be a separate epic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't gone into MVP, but as part of listing out your epics you should have a clear idea of what is absolutely necessary. If your goal is just storing groceries then login and sharing dont sound like MVP. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35891" LastActivityDate="2019-05-13T20:38:22.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25940" CreationDate="2019-05-13T22:48:49.127" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jacobs' Scrum Tautology℠ says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Always remember that the goal of a Sprint isn't to complete lots of backlog items. &lt;em&gt;The goal of a Sprint is to &lt;strong&gt;deliver the Sprint Goal.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The current approach you're describing is not agile, not Scrum, and abuses the velocity metric as a proxy for setting a coherent Sprint Goal. Don't do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Address the Underlying Challenges&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the challenges you're facing are likely due to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Work that's too large to fit into a single Sprint.&lt;/strong&gt; INVEST criteria and story decomposition can help with this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lack of an over-arching Sprint Goal.&lt;/strong&gt; A Sprint Goal is &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/22971/4271&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;required&lt;/em&gt; by the Scrum framework&lt;/a&gt;, and a central coherence is useful in any collaborative development framework.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Velocity is being misused as a measure of productivity.&lt;/strong&gt; Velocity is a measure of a team's historical capacity, rather than a directly-correlated measure of the team's speed or productivity. It should be used primarily during Sprint Planning to forecast Sprint Backlog capacity for the upcoming Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your team should hold a retrospective, perhaps using a root-cause analysis tool like the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Five Whys&lt;/a&gt;, to identify the real issues that the Product Owner and Development Team are facing. Only by addressing the underlying process problem, and collaborating on a solution together, can the agile implementation truly work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Review the Roles and Responsibilities of the Framework&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The objective of the product owner is to plan 3 stories with 10 story points each in current sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This objective is wrong. In Scrum, the Product Owner works with the rest of the Scrum Team to develop a Sprint Goal, and the Development Team then selects work off the top of the Product Backlog to meet that goal within its available single-Sprint capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only the Development Team can estimate stories. Only the Development Team can select work for the current Sprint. If the Product Owner is &lt;em&gt;assigning&lt;/em&gt; work or setting capacity targets, then there's definitely an issue with the team's implementation of the framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner provides the vision for the product, and sets the &lt;em&gt;priorities&lt;/em&gt; of the items of the Product Backlog. The Product Owner then &lt;em&gt;collaborates&lt;/em&gt; with the Development Team to define a potentially-shippable increment of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not the Product Owner's job to crack the whip harder. It's the PO's job to communicate &lt;em&gt;clearly&lt;/em&gt; about what stakeholders and customers need, so that the Development Team can &lt;em&gt;effectively&lt;/em&gt; implement a useful increment of product&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the Product Owner defines what's needed, and the Development Team decides the best way to implement it within the current constraints. It is only in the communication and collaboration between &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; that the emergent properties of agile development can be fully harnessed. You can't dress up command-and-control management in agile terminology and expect to achieve the full measure of the framework's value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-05-13T22:48:49.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26310" CreationDate="2019-05-14T07:33:54.720" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As per the definition, the sprints should be of fixed length. This provides good momentum and adds discipline to the team. &#xA;The Sprints are at times extended when for a week or few days. If the team is working on tight deadlines and a release is planned with the tasks in the Sprint. Due to some: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Technical complexities &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scope creep or requirement change &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unplanned Holidays in the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this scenario, the release is the highest priority and the team has clarity on the stories and the tasks they have to work upon. Since, they were already working on them. In this case, during the Sprint planning meeting, the focus of the team will be on tasks in hand and the not the new stories they have to pick for the upcoming sprint.&#xA;So, I prefer to extend my sprint by a few days, a max up to a week. If it has to be extended for more than a week I ensure, we plan the next sprint and pull the incomplete tasks in this sprint. The release, in this case, is done in the mid of the sprint.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13556" LastActivityDate="2019-05-14T07:33:54.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26391" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-05-14T11:38:21.320" Score="1" ViewCount="271" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I try to add new &lt;code&gt;completed state&lt;/code&gt; to &lt;code&gt;user story&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;task&lt;/code&gt; in &lt;code&gt;inherited process&lt;/code&gt; of my &lt;code&gt;azure devops project&lt;/code&gt;, I get the following &lt;strong&gt;error&lt;/strong&gt; :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;VS403093: Team Services currently does not support changes to&#xA;  'Completed' category. Choose a different category.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have looked all over the web and it seems like this is the desired behaviour as mentioned in this &lt;a href=&quot;https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/content/problem/237062/vs403093-team-services-currently-does-not-support.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;, which I think is very weird.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any workarounds?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to create a &lt;code&gt;Done&lt;/code&gt; state for my work items, and I think that it's dumb to keep only the &lt;code&gt;closed&lt;/code&gt; state for all completed work items since &lt;code&gt;Completed&lt;/code&gt; fits better with &lt;code&gt;tickets&lt;/code&gt; not with &lt;code&gt;user stories&lt;/code&gt; in my sense...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned below, I could modify all the states except for completed&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Xy5WZ.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Xy5WZ.png&quot; alt=&quot;VS403093&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any help would be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35898" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-05-14T13:12:11.773" LastActivityDate="2019-11-25T12:21:58.883" Title="How to add new state to user story azure devops" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26393" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-05-14T13:34:54.113" Score="0" ViewCount="75" Body="&lt;p&gt;I took the PSM about a month ago and almost made it, but sadly I didn't pass. I had a pretty good understanding of the material, but the main thing that tripped me up was around running scrum with multiple teams. That's where my gap in knowledge is, as I've used the scrum guide,my work experience (We started using scrum recently) and a senior PM who has experience in Scrum as my basis for studying and learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wanted to ask if anyone had some resources I could use to further my knowledge and better prepare me for my 2nd go at the PSM. Specifically things that &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; doesn't cover. Thanks so much!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35803" LastEditorUserId="7393" LastEditDate="2019-05-14T16:06:48.537" LastActivityDate="2019-05-14T18:13:26.020" Title="Where can I find PSM resources outside of the Scrum Guide?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2019-05-14T16:11:13.400" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26393" CreationDate="2019-05-14T13:43:33.777" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum.org provides a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/pathway/scrum-master&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Learning Path for Scrum Masters&lt;/a&gt;. It links to videos, blogs, books and other helpful things to help you prepare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PSM assessment is pretty strict on the Scrum Guide's guidance on working with multiple teams:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is the sole person responsible for managing the Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;_&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Multiple Scrum Teams often work together on the same product. One Product Backlog is used to describe the upcoming work on the product. A Product Backlog attribute that groups items may then be employed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;_&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If &quot;Done&quot; for an increment is not a convention of the development organization, the Development Team of the Scrum Team must define a definition of &quot;Done&quot; appropriate for the product. If there are multiple Scrum Teams working on the system or product release, the Development Teams on all the Scrum Teams must mutually define the definition of &quot;Done&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;_&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Sprint Review is held at the end of the Sprint to inspect the Increment and adapt the Product Backlog if needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When applying Scrum to scale Scrum, these basic rules officially still apply. Nexus and LeSS stay mostly within this set of constraints. Nexus+ and LeSS Huge break some of these constraints. SAFe by default overrules all of these constraints. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7393" LastEditorUserId="7393" LastEditDate="2019-05-14T18:13:26.020" LastActivityDate="2019-05-14T18:13:26.020" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26376" CreationDate="2019-05-14T13:44:55.820" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Shaping demand isn't a Kanban problem per se, but Kanban can certainly help in two ways. First, Kanban provides a lot of visibility. That means that if you try some action to shape your demand, you can fairly quickly see concrete numbers to tell you if that action was successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, Kanban does have the notion of &quot;Classes of Service&quot; which can be leveraged to some degree to drive the nature of requests. For example, I know a team who told their internal customers &quot;If your request fits into one of these standard builds, we can automate it and the SLA is 4 hours. Custom requests require a meeting and we try to fulfill them in 2 days, but some requests take longer.&quot; Now, you might think, as they did, that this won't work because people need what they need. That isn't how it played out though. It turned out that most custom requests were just people taking different options because they didn't know if mattered what they selected. Once the standards were in place, a lot of people followed them, lowering overall workload on the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Theory Behind Demand Shaping&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Uber example, there are a few things that you have to look at. First, they treat every driver as effectively interchangable (within its class - you have things like UberXL). This means that their primary concern is a roughly even number of drivers and requests. Second, the motivating factors for drivers and riders are wait time and cost. The driver wants to make more money, the rider wants to pay less, and they both want low wait time for rides. Now, because wait time is reduced when the number of drivers and riders is in balance and it's hard to manipulate in isolation, the cost becomes the main lever, causing them to raise and lower the cost of rides to balance out the ratio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your team, you need to identify what you are trying to shape and what your users value. Are you simply trying to shape number of requests because all requests are roughly equal or are you trying to shape types of requests too? As you said, there is no direct charge, but what do your users value? In the example I gave above they valued turn-around time. This applies for a lot of internally-facing teams, but not all. You need to find that and then incentivize the behavior you are looking for. As I said before, where Kanban will help the most is that any action you take should have measurable results in your kanban system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-05-14T13:44:55.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26393" CreationDate="2019-05-14T14:30:09.260" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Professional Scrum Master, I also did my research when I was studying for the exam. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first advice is to read the and understand the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;scrum guide&lt;/a&gt; at 100%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best and free online exam that I found, where you can find real exam questions, and I personally recommend, is this one: &lt;a href=&quot;https://mlapshin.com/index.php/scrum-quizzes/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mlapshin scrum quizzes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did it until I had all answers right many times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32567" LastActivityDate="2019-05-14T14:30:09.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26398" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26400" CreationDate="2019-05-14T20:01:33.757" Score="3" ViewCount="97" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’d like some advice. I’m busy helping a client ideate an app idea, following which I will start the wireframing, user testing and technical speccing process in an iterative flow. The idea is to ultimately build a beta with a set of core features for testing. They have a somewhat elaborate monetization strategy which they want specced and built off the bat, which I am somewhat uneasy about as I believe the initial version should exclude that and just focus on the core functionality. Thoughts on this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I go with what they want, It will increase the scope of what I have to spec out and prototype, as well as the complexity of the admin panel which I was hoping to almost avoid entirely for the beta. This obviously means I can bill for more hours but my uneasiness comes from wanting to do too much all at once vs staging each milestone and focusing on one thing at a time (ie building and testing efficacy and acceptance of the core features, implementing user and Q/A feedback, then moving  onto planning, designing, testing, speccing, and ultimately building in monetisation mechanism which is core to their business model obviously but not core to the usability of the app in my opinion). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS. My product management experience is limited in that I’ve never done it for other companies; just my own startup as much to ‘the book’ as possible with the time I have available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35905" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-05-14T21:08:49.673" LastActivityDate="2019-05-15T16:41:17.530" Title="Is it a bad idea to include a complex payment mechanism to the product development process for a beta app?" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26398" CreationDate="2019-05-15T06:06:27.603" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is a &quot;correct&quot; way to do it. If the client wants to see the payment feature in the beta, then they want to see it. There is no project management method to tell them otherwise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can understand your wish to take small steps, but that just means you will need to build the beta in small steps (i.e. features first, payments later). If the client wants payment in the beta, it will be in the beta. When you build that beta, it might be step 5 in your 5 step process, but it will be in there, because the client wants it in there. Best case is you show the client milestones or iteration results in regular intervals and they will see that they don't need the payment feature when they see step 3 or 4 working. But that's up to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure your requirements can be met in steps and that those are prioritized (whether you call it an Epic, Sprint Goal or Milestone is not really relevant). But if the client prioritizes payment higher on that list than you like, that's their right, they pay for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sidenote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;monetisation mechanism which is core to their business model obviously but not core to the usability of the app&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe to better understand them: their company will be in business with an app that people curse about because it's missing UX features, but they will be out of business if the monetisation scheme fails. You cannot blame them to set their priorities in a way that keeps them in business instead of in the hall of fame for &quot;greatest UX app that ever failed&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2019-05-15T06:06:27.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26398" CreationDate="2019-05-15T13:05:32.603" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You perceive this as a scope problem, but in all likelihood the underlying problems have more to do with how you visualize the work, how you collaborate with your development team, and how effectively you set the expectations of your stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should adopt an incremental, iterative approach that allows you to deliver features in almost any order. I provide some examples below of how this might work in your particular situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Prioritization, Vertical Slices, and INVEST Critera&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Product Owner, you have the power to prioritize features in the Product Backlog to meet business requirements. If the customer wants to prioritize payments, then the right thing to do in an agile framework is to work with your development team to create a vertical slice of functionality for that work, and to make that the top priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, you could use the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST mnemonic&lt;/a&gt; to create a theme around payment processing. The user stories in the theme would all center around payments, and the team would then wire up just enough features to deliver the business goal of accepting payments. The application might not even do anything else, but it would have a potentially-shippable payment feature that could be integrated into future product enhancements, or refactored and refined as the product evolves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might have some backlog items like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a user,&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;I want to be able to check out a shopping cart&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;so I can process my order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a user,&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;I want to fill in the credit card fields on the order form&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;so I can pay by credit card instead of with cash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a credit card processor,&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;I want the payor's billing address&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;so I can process the payment using address verification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an payment processor,&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;I want an order number to associate with a credit card charge&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;so that the order and the payment can be reconciled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These stories form a &lt;em&gt;theme&lt;/em&gt;. Anything that isn't truly essential for the theme can be stubbed out or left for future phases. As just one example, you might be tempted to flesh out the shopping cart beyond what's strictly necessary for this vertical slice. Pragmatically, all you really need for this set of stories to meet a reasonable Definition of Done and be demonstrable to stakeholders is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a &amp;quot;Check Out&amp;quot; button that provides an order number to the payment processing backend; and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a payment processing backend that can be validated against the payment gateway's API (preferably in some sort of test mode).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Approaching the problem in this way allows you to meet the customer's needs and priorities without going overboard. Don't fall prey to the mentality that you need to build an entire hotel so you have somewhere to put an ice machine, when the core requirement simply says &amp;quot;I want a cold soda.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Create Minimalist Features&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Features should be small, testable, and relatively independent of one another. As a Product Owner, you work with the stakeholders to identify the business priorities, and with the development team to identify &amp;quot;the simplest thing that could possibly work.&amp;quot; A good development team will collaborate with you to identify minimalist core features, and help you pare away non-essential implementation details that allow you to build the product incrementally and iteratively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile frameworks embrace change by accepting &lt;em&gt;a priori&lt;/em&gt; that a certain amount of scope change, rework, integration-related refactoring, and other additional effort will be required over time as the product evolves. This is accepted in exchange for the ability to deliver vertical slices of functionality in almost any order to meet &lt;em&gt;today's&lt;/em&gt; business goals, while retaining the ability to adapt to changing goals and requirements in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Embrace Emergent Design&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Customers have a need. You provide the vision by focusing on &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt;, not &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt;. Then &lt;em&gt;collaborate&lt;/em&gt; with your team in a way that doesn't over-constrain the solution space. Give them goals and boundaries, and then turn them loose so that they can apply &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; subject matter expertise to the problem at hand, often in ways you might not even be able to imagine at the start of a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-05-15T16:41:17.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26401" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-05-16T09:34:15.567" Score="2" ViewCount="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have worked in different organizations an they all take a different approach to the roles that own the tools for agile delivery. Can you please tell me your opinions on what role would govern the tool for an agile product delivery and why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK, I understand this, it makes a lot of sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe it is better for me to elaborate on my predicament. Specifically the workflow administration is time consuming and I am receive a lot of reports of the workflow not being followed with negative impact on the project, however, there is no real ownership of reviewing the workflow, managing the tasks or the usage of the tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own perspective is that this as a collaborative effort and not role specific but without a buy in on on the framework and ownership then it's a finger pointing exercise. Do any of you have any experiences where workflow, the tool and the comms around this have needed reviewing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35915" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-05-17T23:49:21.043" LastActivityDate="2019-05-19T14:03:08.863" Title="Who or what role is the owner of the agile workflow and the workflow tool (e.g. Jira)" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26403" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-05-16T12:38:56.063" Score="2" ViewCount="127" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using Scrum, the Project Manager role doesn't exist. The Scrum Team can build a product by itself. Essentially, the Project Manager's tasks are more or less divided between the Product Owner and the Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what happens when in addition to a product, you also have projects? By that I mean that a product is built through multiple projects. &#xA;For example, client A and B are both paying for product 1, with different deadlines and priorities of course. &#xA;Does the Product Owner of product 1 should manage the scope date and budget of project A and B? &#xA;Is it a good place to introduce someone who has the role of a Project Manager, to manage project A? &#xA;If not, what happens when there will be too many projects to be handled by Product Owner 1? &#xA;If there is a Product Owner for each project, they aren’t real PO because they don’t have power over the product they are delivering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example of a similar situation that could require a different answer is the following: Let's say a service company business model is to build websites for clients. They build a website, ship it and then consider that product to be done. But at some point, they decide to build a &quot;website builder internal SDK&quot; to accelerate future websites development.&#xA;I'm sure we agree this &quot;SDK product&quot; is worthy of its own Product Owner and whole Scrum Team. &#xA;Should each service be under the responsibility of a Product Owner that manages the dates by talking to the &quot;SDK&quot; Product Owner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34063" LastEditorUserId="34063" LastEditDate="2019-09-23T00:38:43.950" LastActivityDate="2019-09-23T00:38:43.950" Title="Who should manage a project that is used to build a product?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;organizational-structure&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26401" CreationDate="2019-05-16T14:09:37.230" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team is using the tool, they should be the ones making decisions about it. There may need to be conversations around budgets of course, but I would hope that the budget holders are supporting the team as much as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for this is that the team has the best insight in to how the tool is being used. There is an argument that consistent use of a tool across multiple teams is advantageous, but I would say that is a conversation to be had between the teams themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-05-16T14:09:37.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26403" CreationDate="2019-05-16T14:26:59.287" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project Maager and Product Owner are two different roles which I think you already understand. Project Manager takes care of execution; how smoothly can the project be finished on time. Product Owner on the other hand will be more inclined towards how the product can be made better, what new features can be added. So yes, in a way, when you have Scrum, the scrum master plays a role similar to a project manager. If it is a large product, it will broken down into phases with possibly different project managers, but product owner should be the same. Another perspective on this would be to consider the job of product owner as somewhat long term in which he or she tracks the progress of the product as a whole irrespective of whether a current project is in progress or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35730" LastActivityDate="2019-05-16T14:26:59.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26403" CreationDate="2019-05-16T14:30:41.493" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using Scrum, the Project Manager role doesn't exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;True.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is nothing to stop you from having a project management &lt;em&gt;capability&lt;/em&gt; within your Scrum team. This does not have to be a particular individual. It could be several team members that have project management skills, such as budgeting, working with outsourced companies, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, the Project Manager's tasks are more or less divided between the Product Owner and the Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not really. The Project Manager's tasks (where they exist) are owned by the team. It would be up to the team to decide how this work is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the Product Owner of product 1 should manage the scope date and budget of project A and B? Is it a good place to introduce someone who has the role of a Project Manager, to manage project A?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner deals with a product backlog. That could consist of work items for multiple projects (if it fits with your organisations way of working).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the backlog could look like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project 1 Item X&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project 1 Item Y&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project 2 Item M&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project 1 Item Z&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project 2 Item N&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner would be making priority calls on the various work items based on what they feel will deliver the most value and make the most sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, what happens when there will be too many projects to be handled by Product Owner 1?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then a conversation takes place. In some organisations this would be a conversation between the Product Owner and stakeholders. Other organisations might have a senior Product Owner role, that has responsibility for looking at the big picture across multiple product teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/the-chief-product-owner-on-large-agile-projects&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mike Cohn talks about one such setup here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But at some point, they decide to build a &amp;quot;website builder internal SDK&amp;quot; to accelerate future websites development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a great topic for conversation amongst your Scrum teams. Shall we spread the work across the teams? Shall we have a dedicated team for this work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally my preference would be to develop the SDK as a part of delivering a product. This helps to ensure that you retain the link between backlog items and end-user value. This helps when prioritising work and retains the Scrum approach of having a potentially shippable increment at the end of each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-05-16T14:30:41.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26401" CreationDate="2019-05-16T17:09:03.123" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;By role I believe you are referring to a job title. Scrum is against having the Project Manager become the Scrum Master because directives from a higher authority may be detrimental for the team. Coming back to the question, the Scrum Master would be one of the owners for sure. And the Scrum master would be one of the team members. It is a time consuming process, so anyone with a weekly bandwidth for task allocation and having good sense of team collaboration and growth could become one. Product Owners are also owners because they raise issues and enhancement requests about their products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35730" LastActivityDate="2019-05-16T17:09:03.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26409" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-05-16T19:40:38.333" Score="13" ViewCount="473" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been working as a pure Scrum Master for a couple of years within a relatively agile organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My other Scrum Master colleagues and I do very little for most of the day except for facilitating stand ups to the point it is making me very uncomfortable from a lack of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My day to day is basically this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Facilitate stand up&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do nothing until self organised team faces an extremely complex impediment which they cannot resolve themselves (happens once or twice a week)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems as though the only time I was busy was at the start when I facilitated a workshop on how agile works, and agreeing ways of working, but since then and now that the team has matured, I feel that I am increasingly adding little value day-day where I am scared that I could be made redundant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Previously when I was a Project manager, it was a lot more hands on and would actively resolve a lot more impediments from actively managing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What value does a SM add to an organisation over a long period of time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am concerned that this is not a sustainable long term career choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2019-05-18T16:28:46.933" Title="Not sure what value the Scrum Master role adds over a long period of time?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26310" CreationDate="2019-05-16T21:08:20.047" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sprints are a management tool.  As with any tool it can and should be bent to meet the actual demands of the organization.  The sprint goal is a forecast, what the team thinks it can deliver within the given time.  Typically adjustments are made to scope not the time.  The reason for this is that it gives better information for future analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A simple example of when you might want to extend a sprint instead: last sprint of a project (moving it from one stage to another, disbanding or shifting the team) and a story is expected to be incomplete.  Normally you would remove it from the current and move it to the next sprint/backlog, but there’s not going to be a next sprint.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Extending the sprint to give it enough time to be done, makes sense in this case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3015" LastActivityDate="2019-05-16T21:08:20.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26411" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-05-16T22:12:08.570" Score="1" ViewCount="342" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a standard calendar work week. (Monday to Friday with weekends off)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our resources have &quot;standard&quot; calendar - so scheduling as standard for them is a normal work week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, we have operational sub-tasks that sometimes need to happen on a weekend - in non-working hours for our resources. &#xA;The weekend tasks are dependent on other normal predecessor tasks completing. ie. the weekend task occurs on &quot;the first available weekend after completion of the predecessor task&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a task perspective this is easy to achieve. We simply create a &quot;weekend calendar&quot; and make the task part of that calendar - the task then naturally schedules itself on the first weekend following completion of the predecessor task/s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To allow scheduling of the Resources in their &quot;non-working&quot; hours, we on the Task we tick the checkbox &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-ie/article/ignore-resource-calendar-task-field-a3d675e0-2a47-4435-a838-a353d5eda56e&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scheduling ignores resource calendars&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Task is created normally and a little red man is displayed in the information column on the left (on the Gantt chart view). Right clicking on the little man causes MS Project to say &quot;Resources assigned in non-working time&quot; - which is fine. This is what we want. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So all looks great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;....until I try to level the resources. At which point MS Project hangs completely and I have to crash out and restart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me a basic requirement for a PM tool to cater for adhoc scheduling of resources outside their normal work calendar on dates determined by the natural flow of Tasks (as opposed to saying &quot;on the 5th of May, create this special exception&quot;). And that ticking the &quot;ignore the resource calendar restrictions for this task&quot; should allow this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am therefore hoping that I am missing some basic consideration. Any help would be greatly appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35920" LastEditorUserId="35920" LastEditDate="2019-05-16T22:23:38.333" LastActivityDate="2020-02-11T12:01:15.133" Title="Microsoft Project 2019 - problem allocating resources to tasks outside their calendar working hours" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;resources&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26412" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26414" CreationDate="2019-05-17T00:20:30.977" Score="1" ViewCount="72" Body="&lt;p&gt;I worked for a company where the following circumstances held:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sprints were two weeks long&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;on each new sprint, the team I was heading was changing in members.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;on each new sprint, the team changed completely codebases (that is, on one sprint, they worked on software Foo using python and Qt, on the next sprint, they had to work on software Bar with Javascript and React, and on the third sprint, they had to work with terraform and node). Developers were mostly junior.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;none of the team members had any knowledge of the code, so planning was pretty much a big game of guesswork as we could not give an effort value to code and goals we knew nothing about.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;During one of the sprints, the team was performing work on two unrelated codebases at the same time. I internally divided the team in two, as their work was completely orthogonal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;End of sprint were treated as deadlines.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results were poor, but I am unable to say what of the above elements are expected and I simply could not cope with them due to lack of experience in these circumstances, and which are completely broken and the poor results are the consequence of forces outside my control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the scenario, what is the possible course of action to salvage the situation as much as possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35921" LastActivityDate="2019-05-21T09:09:46.847" Title="Scrum on constantly shifting projects, team structure and unknown code" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26409" CreationDate="2019-05-17T00:52:01.640" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great question! A lot of Scrum Masters get boxed into Scrum Facilitators early on because that's what a team learning Scrum largely needs. However, as the team gets better at organizing itself, the facilitation aspects of a Scrum Master are needed less and less, as you are discovering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point, the coaching side of a Scrum Master starts to grow. In the team, the Scrum Master stops worrying about the day to day and starts thinking more about optimizing flow and value creation in the team. There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://scrummasterchecklist.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Master Checklist&lt;/a&gt; that provides a lot of good things to consider exploring in the team. Keep in mind though that it is neither meant to be a daily checklist nor is it comprehensive - it's more of a thought-provoker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, the attention of the Scrum Master may turn to the rest of the organization to a degree. You'll start asking what are some ways to coach leadership and others in the organization that can help the team deliver value even more effectively. This is where the Scrum Master can start adding a lot of value because improvements at this level have a tendency to have broad cascading effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-05-17T00:52:01.640" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26412" CreationDate="2019-05-17T01:09:51.763" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It feels like there is a lot more context to the story to get a full perspective, but what you are describing is not Scrum at pretty much any level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, changing teams (while not expressly forbidden by Scrum) is deeply problematic as it prevents the team from ever norming and self-organizing (which is a requirement in Scrum).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Changing products and codebases is not completely uncommon, but to that degree is kind of absurd. This isn't a Scrum issue per se. It's just common sense that this has a massive toll and there better be some amazing value to pay that kind of price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, dev team members with no experience every sprint is a situation that no one could think was a good idea. Imagine getting a new kitchen of cooks that have never used that kitchen before and don't know the menu every night. It might make an amusing gameshow, but I'm pretty sure a restaurant that ran that way would go out of business in a week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your split team question is tricky. I mean, you shouldn't have sub-teams in Scrum. You want shared ownership and splitting the team inhibits that. On the other hand, other things destroyed any code ownership so this point seems moot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the deadline thing. This is perhaps the only nuanced point here. There is a sort of commitment for the end of the sprint. The team does try to meet the sprint goal and not doing it too often is problematic. That is different than a deadline though as the term deadline implies more significant consequences than I think anyone would recommend in Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, 2-week sprints are fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a lot of theory under the surface here about empirical process control, emergent design, and adaptive product development that these things you mention sabotage, but really, this situation is so off the rails it's hard to even talk about those points in a way that connects effectively to this context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-05-17T01:09:51.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26409" CreationDate="2019-05-17T08:43:28.300" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;that's a great question.&#xA;First of all, Scrum Masters have responsibilities towards the team but also &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-sm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;towards the PO and towards the larger organization as well&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master serves the organization in several ways, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Leading and coaching the organization in its Scrum adoption; Planning&#xA;  Scrum implementations within the organization; Helping employees and&#xA;  stakeholders understand and enact Scrum and empirical product&#xA;  development; Causing change that increases the productivity of the&#xA;  Scrum Team; and, Working with other Scrum Masters to increase the&#xA;  effectiveness of the application of Scrum in the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So maybe there are things you can promote and improve outside of the scope of the team.&#xA;In any case, while I understand the feeling of being &quot;out of place&quot;, I'd invite you to look at it from a different angle: if you have a team that is performing well, where dynamics are good, everyone is doing his/her best and results are good... well, if anything, you've done a pretty good job! &#xA;Pat yourself on the back and look for the next challenge or the next team or organization to improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16362" LastActivityDate="2019-05-17T08:43:28.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26411" CreationDate="2019-05-17T10:03:29.523" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don’t ignore resource calendars... If you know which team member will be responsible to do the work outside of the business hours, you should change this resource calendar, marking the after hours activity time as working hours for this resource. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just keep in mind that ad-hoc activities may be a sign of problems in your project. If they are scheduled, they are not ad-hoc, if these activities are part of risk/issues response planning it is ok to add these tasks to the schedule, if none of these situations mentioned applies you are likely adding scope to your project or have a poorly defined WBS. Watch out! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adhoc planning/adjustments of resources is common and necessary. You are likely be dealing with human beings, that get sick, have kids that get sick or have other emergencies that are impossible to predict. So this shuffling and replanning is normal. Ignoring it may be dangerous as, depending on your project characteristics, you may incur in cost-overrun without noticing due to different resource rates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20923" LastEditorUserId="20923" LastEditDate="2019-05-17T10:08:57.210" LastActivityDate="2019-05-17T10:08:57.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26403" CreationDate="2019-05-17T10:38:30.147" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using Scrum, the Project Manager role doesn't&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Correct, but the inexistence of the role doesn’t mean inexistence of responsibilities and the project management tasks. This is largely taken by the product owner. Organisations are finding these days that there is a misinterpretation to what Scrum means in terms of Project Management, and most of these organisations are bringing PMs back to do what the PO or Scrum Master are not educated or prepared to do, which is Project Management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scrum Team can build a product by itself&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Correct, and I would be surprised if they couldn’t. That’s the reason it exists, to build the product! PMs, Scrum Masters or PO don’t build anything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Essentially, the Project Manager's tasks are more or less divided&#xA;  between the Product Owner and the Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed and most often these tasks are poorly performed by both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But what happens when in addition to a product, you also have&#xA;  projects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You shouldn’t have a product without a project, regardless if you deliver it using scrum, waterfall or manuscripts in toilet paper. No product delivered by an organisation if not through a project. Ongoing operations don’t produce products, projects does. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By that I mean that a product is built through multiple projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recipe for disaster. You can have individual components of the product being built by separate projects, which is called a Program (two or more projects delivered in coordination to achieve a common objective), but given the unique nature of a product of a project, it cannot be delivered by multiple projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example, client A and B and are both paying for product 1, with&#xA;  different deadlines and priorities of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Client A and B need to talk to each other and nominate ONE product owner. The nominated product owner need to manage both parties expectations and isolate the delivery team from the conflicting priorities. The PO should agree the priorities with the sponsors and then bring the list of priorities to the scrum team&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does the Product Owner of product 1 should manage the scope date and&#xA;  budget of project A and B?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned before, there is no such situation where 2 projects produces the same product. You may be referring to 2 different projects and YES, the PO should pass the priorities to both scrum teams &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it a good place to introduce someone who has the role of a Project&#xA;  Manager, to manage project A?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is essential as a the Project Manager will relief the PO from administrative tasks and allow the PO to purely focus on the product and business value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If not, what happens when there will be too many projects to be&#xA;  handled by Product Owner 1?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product Owner need to speak with project sponsors to either bring Project Managers or re-structure the projects/product so that more POs can be nominated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If there is a Product Owner for each project, they aren’t real PO&#xA;  because they don’t have power over the product they are delivering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every project need to have ONE Product Owner and each project should produce a UNIQUE product. Anything different to this means organisational mess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another example of a similar situation that could require a different&#xA;  answer is the following: Let's say a service company business model is&#xA;  to build websites for clients. They build a website, ship it and then&#xA;  consider that product to be done. But at some point, they decide to&#xA;  build a &quot;website builder internal SDK&quot; to accelerate future websites&#xA;  development. I'm sure we agree this &quot;SDK product&quot; is worthy of its own&#xA;  Product Owner and whole Scrum Team. Should each service be under the&#xA;  responsibility of a Product Owner that manages the dates by talking to&#xA;  the &quot;SDK&quot; Product Owner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different products, different projects, POTENTIALLY different POs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20923" LastActivityDate="2019-05-17T10:38:30.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26419" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26421" CreationDate="2019-05-17T11:38:22.170" Score="3" ViewCount="6366" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's consider the following and somewhat prototypical user story in one's backlog:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user I want to be able to login to the application so that I can do all sorts of private stuff&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, this is obviously intrinsically composed of 2 major parts (as do most of the user stories out there):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;UI (frontend)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some server side service (backend + DB)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My take on this is that &lt;strong&gt;it provides end user's value as it is&lt;/strong&gt; (as a whole and with no differentiation between UI and backend processing) and that it makes no sense to decompose into smaller user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What it does make sense though is breaking it down, during sprint's planning into tasks that can be developed by different devs. But I suppose that's a different matter that only helps the team from the operational point of view and is somehow irrelevant for stakeholders (in the end, during the review, they will get a login facility and be all happy about it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just wanted to know what you think about it and if decomposition into a UI story and a server side story would make any sense and somehow helps the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35661" LastActivityDate="2020-06-10T15:23:48.723" Title="User story decomposition into frontend and backend" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="762" CreationDate="2019-05-17T11:58:07.183" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Risks identification happens before the project commencement, during planning and during execution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Risks identified before the project commencement are included in the business case, proposal or contract, and given the high level nature of these risks,  these are mostly addressed by including assumptions, factoring management reserve or including in the preliminary scope specific controls and milestones to address those risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Risks identified during planning are mostly determined by running risk identification workshops with project stakeholders and core delivery team. A Risk Identification Workshop is guided by a Risk Breakdown Structure (RBS) which is pretty much a breakdown of every delivery component. The group of stakeholders should analise and raise risks for each of the RBS items (if a risk exists). Risks should be qualitatively analised and response plans should be defined for the medium-high ranking risks. The response plan activities should be included in the schedule baselined. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Risks identified during the execution are mostly determined by holding meetings with stakeholders and delivery team, tracking the project schedule and the overall delivery. These risks a captured in the risk register and the response plans are included and tracked at the action logs. Risks should be qualitatively analised every fortnight or month, to validate if their likelihood and impact has changed and now requires a response plan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is Risk Management 101 and not doing so is a risk by itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20923" LastActivityDate="2019-05-17T11:58:07.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26419" CreationDate="2019-05-17T12:33:19.450" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a rule of thumb (there are always edge cases and exceptions), user stories should represent a potentially-shippable unit of work related to the Sprint Goal. Unless you can &lt;em&gt;ship&lt;/em&gt; the front end and back end capabilities independently, it doesn't make sense to split a &lt;em&gt;story&lt;/em&gt; based on who will be doing the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Split Tasks on &quot;What,&quot; Not &quot;Who&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, it doesn't make sense to split &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt; from a Product or Sprint Backlog based on &lt;em&gt;who&lt;/em&gt; will do the work as opposed to &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; the work is. While there's an arguable point of view that fully-decomposed &lt;em&gt;tasks&lt;/em&gt; can be deliberately aligned with individuals or target individual skills, tasks should really still represent increments of work in a user story's development rather than individual assignments, and as such the tasks should belong to the Development Team as a whole. That definitely argues against decomposing user stories into personal tasks, but that is something I'd leave to the Development Team to hash out as the workflow evolves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Example&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want to be able to login&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so I can access the web site using my saved preferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This story has implicit front end, back end, and persistence requirements. From the user's perspective, delivering sub-components of the feature won't really advance the flag, so splitting this into model, view, and controller stories doesn't really make a lot of sense. Of course, there will be model, view, and controller &lt;em&gt;tasks&lt;/em&gt; required to get this story done, but whether or not you really need to split those intertwined tasks down along those lines depends more on how the Development Team works together than anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team members are very I-shaped, rather than T-shaped, you &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; conceivably split the tasks that fine, but then you're faced with an integration problem when everyone brings their tiny piece of work back together to meet the Definition of Done for the story. As an experienced agilist, I'd argue that the better thing to do is to let the Development Team self-organize around the story. Perhaps the Javascript, PostgreSQL, Ruby, and Cucumber developers will all mob program this feature together. Then again, maybe they'll split the work into tasks, parcel them out between themselves, and then come back together to integrate the work. Let the Development Team work it out for themselves, and then evaluate the &lt;em&gt;outcomes&lt;/em&gt; of the process during Sprint Retrospectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;To Decompose or Not&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum doesn't take a position on how to divide tasks, or how granular they need to be. It also doesn't really require decomposition of user stories into tasks on the Sprint Backlog, although doing so can be useful as an &lt;em&gt;information radiator&lt;/em&gt; for complex or long-running stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While Scrum doesn't take a position, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;principles behind the Agile Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; do. The 10th principle is to &lt;strong&gt;maximize work &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; done&lt;/strong&gt;. That means formal, upfront decomposition (which is also work!) for its own sake is often an anti-pattern. The Development Team owns the Sprint Backlog, and should therefore &lt;strong&gt;decompose user stories just enough to coordinate and communicate within the team&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If decomposition is helpful, then do it; if it creates more overhead than basic face-to-face collaboration without a tangible benefit, then don't do it. It's really that simple!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-05-17T16:15:17.950" LastActivityDate="2019-05-17T16:15:17.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26422" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-05-17T18:01:42.697" Score="1" ViewCount="714" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am doing Scrum in my company. I need to create various reports/charts team wise and globally. The issue is since few fields are custom fields(example Team), I can't display/categorize the chart using these fields either on JIRA or Confluence(cloud). Also we want to display some data after doing calculations(example age of bug, % of work complete in Epic)&#xA;The solution I was thinking is to create charts in Excel the way I want and then just show/display them on Confluence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this possible?Is there any way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35577" LastActivityDate="2019-09-24T20:50:32.470" Title="Is there a way to embed Excel charts on confluence?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26427" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26450" CreationDate="2019-05-18T13:50:28.630" Score="5" ViewCount="282" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to be organizing the retro (Scrum) and I would like to get more experience on it. I have assisted to some and have organized some as well, but the format always seems to be&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;| What went wrong            | What worked&#xA;          ---                     ---&#xA;| What should continue doing | What should we stop doing&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will like to do something else or another format, but I'm not knowledgeable enough on the subject to know how to proceed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/strong&gt; I will like to get feedback from my team during a the retrospective in a way that it's fun, engaging and productive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32763" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-05-18T15:03:55.897" LastActivityDate="2019-05-22T01:31:30.413" Title="How can I organize a more engaging Sprint Retrospective?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;meetings&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26409" CreationDate="2019-05-18T16:28:46.933" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Focus on Continuous Improvement&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A key principle of Scrum is &lt;em&gt;continuous improvement&lt;/em&gt;. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#definition&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scrum makes clear the relative efficacy of your product management and work techniques so that you can continuously improve the product, the team, and the working environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While teams will rarely see &lt;em&gt;dramatic&lt;/em&gt; improvements once they've achieved maturity, they should continue to see refinements and changes over time as an outcome of the inspect-and-adapt cycle. Team compositions change, projects change, and business needs change. No matter how efficient the team may be today, an effective Scrum Master should never stop helping the Scrum Team look for new insights into their processes, and provide opportunities for the team to discover new and better ways of working together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond the Scrum Guide, the role of Scrum Master should evolve with the team. As a Scrum Team and its parent organization matures, the Scrum Master often becomes less of a process referee and more of an efficiency coach. Scrum Masters are members of the Scrum Team, and should be using significant slack time to explore new techniques, practices, tools, and workflow ideas to share with the team as it seeks continuous improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even within the singular role of Scrum Master, there are always opportunities for continuous improvement. Seeking out better metrics, better information radiators, improving communications and facilitation skills, and continuing education in agile techniques and thought leadership should all be evergreen tasks for a Scrum Master who is part of a mature Scrum Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Inspect Framework Fit as Projects and Teams Evolve&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Projects are also not infinite. By definition, a project has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Mature Scrum Teams often stay together for multiple projects, so there's always implementation and adaptation work to be done as the team onboards new stakeholders, new business drivers, and new workflows. If none of these apply, and you have a never-ending &quot;project&quot; that is more maintenance or support than development, you may have uncovered an opportunity to explore other frameworks, educate the organization, or transfer non-development work to a different organizational unit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Avoid the 100% Utilization Fallacy; Seek Value Instead&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Roles in Scrum do not require 100% utilization to add value. If the team and the organization have truly reached total and complete enlightenment, then there is still value in having an experienced Scrum Master available for the next project. There is also value in having this person paving the way for future projects, training other members of the team or organization in the Scrum Master role to increase cross-functional expertise and prepare for scaled agile implementations, and other Scrum-related organizational improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Continuously Adapt Your Career&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally, if you've truly done every single thing the role, team, project, and company can possibly benefit from, it may be time to continuously improve your career. Your goal as an agilist shouldn't be to grow old and die in your current role or at your current company. There are always new teams, new projects, and new companies in need of a great Scrum Master. If you can't add value or continuously improve where you are, then it may be time to move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-05-18T16:28:46.933" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26401" CreationDate="2019-05-19T14:03:08.863" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Barnaby but want to be more specific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Who owns the jira workflow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Anyone who gets the direct benefits of a proper tool usage.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two main roles when talking about toolset usage: the administration and the users. Sometimes, they're the same, which makes things easier. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, based on your comments, it seems you expect some benefits from proper tool usage. Are these expectations common across the users? If they are, then you should mention the expected benefits next time everyone gets together. If there aren't many opportunities or too many teams, you can contact reference people. They'll help you on moving your idea forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the users have admin rights, go for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If administrators are rare, once you have the buy in of users, they should represent no resistance - after all, you already have all users aboard. Notice, however, you should consider &quot;users&quot; in the broader aspect possible of it. Do not consider only the development team. You have to consider other perspectives (such as users or product owners, for instance).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, remember that &lt;em&gt;a tool is supposed to help your team on its goal (deliver value) rather than being a goal in itself&lt;/em&gt;. You should ensure everyone (including you) understands this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-05-19T14:03:08.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26431" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26433" CreationDate="2019-05-19T16:12:38.287" Score="3" ViewCount="343" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's assume I decide to manage a certain project using Kanban. This happens to be a customer service kind of project where the dev team delivers continuous improvement so Kanban is definitely well suited and scrum would probably be over the top and ultimately unnecessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's also assume I want to measure the performance of the team. I know someone prescribes to take a, say, two weeks activity and count the number of tasks delivered in that timespan. You can repeat that process every two weeks and so monitor performance. It is advisable to break down stories so that they are kind of comparable and basically become a unit of measure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never used Kanban before but being able to break down stories into similar sized ones sounds like a not very feasible goal to me. In fact the more I think about it the more it seems difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about adding story points to each task on the board before starting development as we do in Scrum? Would that be a theoretically sound practice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35661" LastActivityDate="2019-05-19T22:56:09.503" Title="Measuring performance in kanban" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26431" CreationDate="2019-05-19T20:07:09.043" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;My suggestions for measuring performance in a Kanban team would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customer feedback - including internal customers like people from the business side of your organisation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collaboration - time spent supporting other team members, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adaption and innovation - track ideas and solutions arising from the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-05-19T20:07:09.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26431" CreationDate="2019-05-19T22:56:09.503" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea of managing a project with kanban is subtly off the mark and may cause frustration for you. Kanban is a method of optimizing process. This means you absolutely can apply kanban to the development process and improve that process. A more efficient process will often support a more successful project, there is a ton about project management that kanban doesn't cover that you need to account for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not certain how the size of items is connected here. &quot;Small batch sizes is an idea that comes from lean and most kanban teams find that the size of their items when they start are problematic and need to be smaller, but size is relative and you will have to decide in your context. Similarly, story points often don't add value in teams using kanban, but if they add value for you, great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On to performance measurements. Some very common ones are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Throughput: amount of items done in some period of time (5 backlog items per week or 3 features per quarter for example)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;cycle time: time it takes from start of work until delivery&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;lead time: time from when a need is identified until it is delivered&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;escaped defects: number of bugs that slip past the team&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;value delivered: like throughput, but measured in some value units realized instead of work items done.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to keep in mind that kanban is much more than the board. If you aren't familiar with the kanban method, you probably want to learn more about the practices in it. In my opinion, it can be harder than scrum because, while it is very lightweight, it takes a lot of discipline and transparency. Also, if you are starting with Kanban, I would highly recommend looking into STATIK as an approach to starting with kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-05-19T22:56:09.503" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26434" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-05-20T01:40:29.380" Score="3" ViewCount="256" Body="&lt;h1&gt;TLDR;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does Azure DevOps have a recommended built in way of marking Resolved Work Items as being actively tested as opposed of being in the queue for testing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Details&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My team is using Azure DevOps with Agile workflow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that out-of-the box a user story goes through the following states&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;New&lt;/strong&gt; -&gt; Implementation started -&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Active&lt;/strong&gt; -&gt; Code complete -&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Resolved&lt;/strong&gt; -&gt; Acceptance tests passed -&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Closed&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is nicely shown at &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/boards/work-items/guidance/choose-process?view=azure-devops&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;docs.microsoft.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/puB1c.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/puB1c.png&quot; alt=&quot;user story states&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Testing happens in when the story (or bug) is in the Resolved state. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The out of the box board has 4 lanes.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/oScOz.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/oScOz.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When looking at the board (or even in queries) I'm having trouble seeing what is being actively tested. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if there are 2 resolved items it is not clear which one is being actively worked on and which one is waiting to be picked up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Showing what is being tested seems like a common desire and my intuition is that the solution for my problem is built in. I want to avoid customising the workflow (and adding a new state called Testing). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35944" LastActivityDate="2020-05-15T17:49:53.120" Title="Azure DevOps - how to know a Resolved work item is actviely being tested (vs. in the queue)" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26435" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-05-20T05:30:00.097" Score="6" ViewCount="2257" Body="&lt;p&gt;My client wants to squeeze &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acceptance_testing#User_acceptance_testing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UAT&lt;/a&gt; into 6 working days from originally planned 10 working days. This is because they want to go live because of an impending business reason. As a risk mitigation strategy I have proposed for 4 weeks of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.theshelbygroup.com/post-implementation-support-part-2-silence-bliss/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;hypercare&lt;/a&gt; instead of general 2 weeks. I have also proposed for complete execution of UAT scripts within first 3 days of UAT and then to retest the defects along with the second iteration of execution in remaining 3 days. How else can I mitigate this risk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16585" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2019-05-20T12:48:39.187" LastActivityDate="2019-05-20T20:31:58.103" Title="What could be my risk mitigation strategies if my client wants to contract UAT?" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;testing&gt;&lt;quality&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26434" CreationDate="2019-05-20T08:29:23.733" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Breaking down between development and testing could be dangerous, as you may fall into a mini waterfall process. Ideally you should have both developers and QA working together. In this sense, the &quot;active&quot; status would suffice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, in case you want to have a specific state for testing, you'll need to use &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/organizations/settings/work/customize-process-workflow?view=azure-devops&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;customised workflows&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Caution:&lt;/strong&gt; using custom workflows opens a Pandora's box you may not want to. For instance, people may start to consider status for &quot;analysis&quot;, or &quot;UAT&quot;, or &quot;acceptance&quot;. These status could lead to a potentially misleading sensation of progress (&lt;em&gt;hey, we're in user acceptance already, it's almost there!&lt;/em&gt;) when all you want is to have a story, functionality &lt;strong&gt;delivering value&lt;/strong&gt; to end users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-05-20T08:29:23.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26435" CreationDate="2019-05-20T11:17:47.600" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is not silver bullet to mitigate skimping on quality assurance. I don't know in what field you are in, but what you can do depends on what the cost is to deploy a new version to your users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, you do the same post launch care you would do anyway. You must remember that mean time to recovery is your key metric and since you know that QA was shortened, you should plan for an above average defect rate. This means you need to have your engineers at the ready to get fixes out. So in your case, having more people available may be a better thing than a longer care period. (If that is even possible.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, in my experience, the key determining factor in QA is the test - fix - retest loop and no mater of automation is going to reduce the manual step of analyzing and fixing the defect. You are primarily removing time to fix the defects, not reducing testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5270" LastActivityDate="2019-05-20T11:17:47.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26435" CreationDate="2019-05-20T13:08:12.347" Score="13" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/92128-it-is-a-capital-mistake-to-theorize-before-one-has&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Sherlock Holmes&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A logical corollary is that it is a capital mistake to devise risk mitigation strategies before stating a risk. There is no risk in your question.  Your client wants to compress UAT. Before mitigating the risk, I would advise you precisely state the risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is it that you are uncertain about?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the potential consequences (good or bad)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How likely is it that the consequences will happen?  Do you have data to estimate? Can you get data?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is this important? Why am I being so rigid &amp;amp; formulaic about this?  Because the client has a business need to go live faster than the schedule permits.  My job as a PM is to advise the client - in order to do that, I need to know the relative value of the business need and the risk(s).  I can't mitigate what I don't understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the information you've presented, I would infer the presence of several risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that all code is buggy and we're compressing UAT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;IF there exists an important bug THEN internal users will have a reduced user experience. It may take longer to complete the task, or increase frustration.  This can be managed with additional support.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;IF there is an important bug, THEN internal users may make errors in completing their task; this might cost the company money, clients, and completely undermine the business value of the advanced start.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;IF there is an important bug that affects external users, THEN external users may be so dismayed that they will go elsewhere, irreversibly damaging the company's reputation and ability to attract customers. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few more - based on information that isn't presented in the question.  But breaking the risks down this way gives me more mitigation strategies&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can I roll out the live site to a small set of cooperative/expert users first?  Treat weak 1 as an extended UAT?  Make sure the users have the knowledge and the contact information needed to quickly correct errors?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can I maintain both interfaces for a period of time and switch high value/high risk/ customers to the old, migrating the friendlier, more experienced users to the new?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can I maintain both for a period and run high risk interactions on the old, and low risk on the new?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What is the failback strategy?  If on day Live +1, I discover a bug that has a million dollar implication to the company, how quickly can I revert back to prevent a second million dollar loss?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SomeAdd questions that I'd want to research before talking to my client&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In UAT, historically, what % of the bugs are found in week 1, week 2, etc. Is it a long tail curve?  What is the estimated probability that the compressed UAT period will actually uncover/resolve bugs?  There is a big difference between a 1% chance of losing a million dollars of business and a 10% chance of losing a million dollars of business.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addendum - thank you for this question - it has clarified some of my thoughts. I've suspected for a while that the value of risk management is more the &lt;em&gt;discussion&lt;/em&gt; of risk than the actual measurement of risk. This question has enabled me to restate that idea &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The better you understand the risk, the more options you have to respond to it profitably.  Discussion of risk, formal statements, of risk, etc.  These are all ways to better understand and share knowledge of risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2019-05-20T15:54:29.650" LastActivityDate="2019-05-20T15:54:29.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26435" CreationDate="2019-05-20T15:25:22.177" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mark provided a great answer, especially the lead in where he asks what is the risk?  Reducing duration on an effort would signal a risk in most cases to most of us, I would suspect, but I think Mark's thinking is spot on because mitigation would be driven off the fact of your risk exposure caused by the reduction of days and where the original duration was when planned, i.e., did you estimate on the fat side of the curve for UAT originally.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, assuming you've taken on additional risk exposure secondary to the reduction of duration, add UAT testers and developers to fix the findings if you can afford to pay for them.  Else, you are in contingency mode.  The extra weeks in hypercare are appropriate, increasing communications to leadership about the imminent number of defects that will be found after go live would be appropriate, a planned exit strategy where you can roll it back would be appropriate, communications to the user community about what they might see and what to do about it would be appropriate.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2019-05-20T15:25:22.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="512" CreationDate="2019-05-20T19:35:49.473" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a bit 'off topic' AND after the WBS comes this next part. &quot;Forewarned is forearmed&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The stuff about the structure above is a good start, Where plans often fail miserably are in two areas: Estimating &amp;amp; Reserves. When people 'estimate' how long and how much money it will take... it isn't pretty. As a planner, you need to do a couple of things. First, you need to 'calibrate' your estimators; see what they guessed and see how they did and put in corrections accordingly. DO NOT change the approved baseline on your own. Second, DEMAND both schedule &amp;amp; money reserves. In some NASA projects, they can both be as large as 25% to 50% of the time and money. (and some still overrun badly). To mitigate the risk, planning based on ACTUAL performance in other projects, projects that have finished successfully, get much closer to reality than most estimates (guesses?). Also, I don't recall a project that didn't use up the reserves. The 'agile' development approaches things a bit differently. Usually, they manage expectations (quickly based on performance) so that the project can chug along and manage expectations, cost, and cash flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been doing or around planning, planners for over 40 years, not all the time, so I have both done it and observed it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35950" LastActivityDate="2019-05-20T19:35:49.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26435" CreationDate="2019-05-20T20:31:58.103" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might want to consider prioritising the features you test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By restricting your testing to the most important features you may be able to get a more thorough test-fix-retest cycle in within the aloted time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The chances of bugs reaching production will likely increase, but the likelihood of high impact bugs is hopefully reduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-05-20T20:31:58.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26442" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-05-21T00:45:22.790" Score="-1" ViewCount="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working on a new asp.net core MVC web application as an out sourced senior software developer/architecture. now i did many requirements gathering sessions with the client, and i came our with a detailed requirement and design document, which have been singed by the client. then i break-down the document into tasks and i calculated the total effort for designing,developing,testing and hosting the web application, something as follow:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Database creation and Design. 50 hours + cost 4,000 USD.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developing user registration and profile creation. 10 hours + cost 8,00 USD.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developing transaction workflow. 200 hours + cost 16,000 USD.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;tasks for development and hosting and UAT goes on...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Final. 500 hours + cost 40,000 USD.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so the above cover the full implementation time and cost for the project. but should this covers by defualt giving the client the application source code? or this is not necessary ? and if our client need/ask the source code then we can separately provide costing for it?&#xA;Now inside the contract we did not mention anything about transferring the source code, currently we only  include that there will be UAT sessions to deliver the system + 1 year warranty to cover bugs + 10% plus or minus variation/changes based on the singed requirement and design document. but we did not include any thing about delivering the source code to the client.. so should we do so? and is it normal to charge the client extra money for delivering the source code (let say 20% of the total price), beyond the implementation time in our case (500 hours/40,000USD)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35951" LastActivityDate="2019-05-21T00:53:15.370" Title="When we are calculating the cost for implementing a new web application, should we have separate cost for providing the source code to the client" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;&lt;deliverables&gt;&lt;pricing&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2019-05-21T03:11:45.807" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26442" CreationDate="2019-05-21T00:53:15.370" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to your question needs to occur before you provided pricing.  Within the contract, you would indicate who owns the what after the what is built.  And then based on that you would price its development accordingly.  So I would advise you not pushing forward the price at which you arrived until you answered this question with your client and get it under contract.  Then re-price your development and then provide to the client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2019-05-21T00:53:15.370" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26373" CreationDate="2019-05-21T05:17:03.670" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum says that each sprint provides a potentially shippable product increment at the end of the sprint. So to be able to provide a shippable product, the sprint involves develop and test togeather. i.e in-sprint testing.&#xA;Now as organization have started scaling,the product required by the team are also grown. So this will involve multiple teams, applications working together.&#xA;Now at this stage many organization need a seperate team to verify the interation/Acceptance tests.&#xA;This separate team need to focus on continuous integration and deployment, and continuous regression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34733" LastActivityDate="2019-05-21T05:17:03.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17593" CreationDate="2019-05-21T07:51:59.433" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm doing commitments in my daily standups. I track them only informally. I don't know whether others track them, but I do use the sentence &quot;I commit to finishing X&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got tired of listening (and often saying) &quot;Yesterday I worked on X. Today I’ll continue working on X. I also worked on Y, and I'll work a bit on Y and Z today, too. Probably, I finish all of them by the next daily standup, this time for sure...&quot; Repeat this for 5-10 team members and for each 3-5 tasks. It's just a big ball of empty promises and hand waving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I commit to the very minimum I want to finish that day. I don't fill up with my daily with tiny tasks. One thing I'm committed to and I want to achieve that day. This helps to stay focused during the day. If everything is high-priority, nothing really is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most often my daily commitment's a small thing as people (including me) greatly underestimate how much effort completing a task in an official setting requires. People forget about manual tests, unit tests, merge reviews, code updates, deployment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm pretty sure it wouldn't help if we enforced this from other members, too so I wouldn't track it formally, for every member of the team. These initiatives should come from the individual, otherwise, some members will feel uncomfortable or make up fake, low-value commitments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35954" LastActivityDate="2019-05-21T07:51:59.433" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26427" CreationDate="2019-05-21T09:03:33.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Spotify Squad Health Check model is quite interesting (&lt;a href=&quot;https://labs.spotify.com/2014/09/16/squad-health-check-model/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;), and provides a list of topics that could be used as 'deep dives' if you wanted to vary the content of retrospectives, by focusing on a specific topic every now and then. We've used this to conduct a survey of all our technical staff on our existing projects, to find out areas that we should be concentrating on, and where the most painpoints lie. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30594" LastActivityDate="2019-05-21T09:03:33.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26412" CreationDate="2019-05-21T09:09:46.847" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Scrum Master, it's your job to explain Scrum to the business. It sounds as though Scrum as has been shoe-horned onto an existing set of processes &amp;amp; practices, and expected to give all the usual benefits, but without conforming to the basics that Scrum demands - stable teams, mastery through practice on a given system. You need to go back to your stakeholders, and explain how the process is broken. Even if you set it up as a kanban system, to allow more flexibility and perhaps smaller teams of developers working on projects more continually, this might help. Best of luck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30594" LastActivityDate="2019-05-21T09:09:46.847" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26373" CreationDate="2019-05-21T12:03:44.873" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum allows you to build and test any way you like within the constraints of the framework. Agile best practices favor active collaboration over a phased approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Scrum Isn't Prescriptive About How You Build Products&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is a framework, and the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;official Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; limits its guidance about &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; a product is built and tested to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requiring a central coherence to each Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Defining the expected output of each Sprint as a potentially-shippable increment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Setting the expectation that there will be a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#artifact-transparency-done&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Definition of Done&lt;/a&gt; that includes testing and integration work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Each Increment is additive to all prior Increments and thoroughly tested, ensuring that all Increments work together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within the boundaries of the framework, you are free to employ whatever workflows, practices, and techniques you like so long as they don't violate the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#endnote&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;immutable aspects of the framework&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Agile Build and Test Cycles&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum doesn't define a build-test cycle as such, but it &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; define an &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#theory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;inspect-and-adapt cycle&lt;/a&gt; (implemented primarily through Scrum Events). However, most agile frameworks (including Scrum) treat both development and testing &lt;strong&gt;as continuous cycles&lt;/strong&gt; rather than distinct phases. While you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; separate development from testing, this introduces unnecessary friction into the process. The application of agile principles generally requires that the development process (which certainly includes building and testing the product) be viewed more holistically. Specific practices like the use of test-driven development (TDD) or the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST mnemonic&lt;/a&gt; are used to implement this intertwined and cyclical approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the &lt;em&gt;steps&lt;/em&gt; in test-driven development (e.g. &quot;red, green, refactor&quot;) may make it seem like testing and development are separate activities, when done properly they are so tightly interwoven into the process as to form a continuous cycle. Likewise, when done properly, continuous integration and continuous testing practices create a &lt;em&gt;continuous&lt;/em&gt; feedback loop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The notion of linear phases, and specifically &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-gate_process&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;phase gates&lt;/a&gt;, is generally orthogonal to agile practice. Effective agility requires a &lt;em&gt;reduction&lt;/em&gt; in upfront planning, hand-offs, and both parallel and sequential development practices. To be fully agile, the framework and the techniques employed within it need to &lt;strong&gt;embrace active collaboration&lt;/strong&gt; throughout &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; aspects of the development process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-05-21T12:03:44.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5236" CreationDate="2019-05-21T18:53:01.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It was always a balancing act. I tended to work the portfolio manager to understand their point of view on the issue and reach a consensus with them as to whether or not to grant an exception. Otherwise, you would wind up escalating it to their manager or senior executives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35955" LastActivityDate="2019-05-21T18:53:01.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26427" CreationDate="2019-05-22T01:31:30.413" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of different options for retrospectives depending on what you want to get out of them. The book &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0977616649&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Retrospectives&lt;/a&gt; by Diana Larsen and Esther Darby is a great place to look. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also highly recommend looking at &lt;a href=&quot;https://retromat.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Retromat&lt;/a&gt; for ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a final piece of advice, I would consider using the 5-stage retrospective talked about in both of those two resources. While it may feel a little over-structured and take a little longer, it ensures that the format of the retro is solidly geared towards valuable outcomes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-05-22T01:31:30.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26451" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26452" CreationDate="2019-05-22T08:34:46.750" Score="10" ViewCount="4620" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Jira, (probably) in next-gen board, when specifying relationship between two issues, I have the following choices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uo0gP.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uo0gP.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- i.e. specifically &quot;[A] depends on [B]&quot; and &quot;[A] is blocked by [B]&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the difference? Does &quot;is blocked by&quot; imply some stronger kind of dependency? Or are meanings of these items just project-dependent (i.e. no universal guideline)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35959" LastActivityDate="2019-05-22T15:17:30.813" Title="What's difference between &quot;depends on&quot; and &quot;is blocked by&quot; relations between issues in Jira next-gen board?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26451" CreationDate="2019-05-22T09:06:35.897" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jira links are broadly used, as far as I can see, for an &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;information-only purpose&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, it boils down to &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;how your team uses it&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind, it'll strongly depend on what is considered a &quot;dependency&quot; and a &quot;blocker&quot; in your context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the following scenario:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;foo &lt;em&gt;depends on&lt;/em&gt; bar&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;foo &lt;em&gt;is blocked by&lt;/em&gt; baz&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way of reading it is as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Foo &lt;em&gt;cannot be started&lt;/em&gt; until bar is completed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Foo &lt;em&gt;was started&lt;/em&gt; but baz happened (an external factor, probably) and it's blocking it's progress&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which could be derived into:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Depends&lt;/em&gt; are used for &lt;em&gt;known or planned&lt;/em&gt; activities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Blocks&lt;/em&gt; are used for &lt;em&gt;unexpected&lt;/em&gt; activities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-05-22T09:06:35.897" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26451" CreationDate="2019-05-22T14:40:29.427" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have always looked at them in the following manner:&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Depends On&lt;/strong&gt; indicates a relation and order of a task to another, and&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Blocked By&lt;/strong&gt; is a task progress status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35730" LastActivityDate="2019-05-22T14:40:29.427" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26451" CreationDate="2019-05-22T15:17:30.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dependencies and blockers are the same thing.  The difference in tag typically means whether the event was planned for or not, whether it presents an unusual problem to be solved, whether it is escalated for different sets of eyes and/or hands, and possibly which bucket of dollars is being used to work it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2019-05-22T15:17:30.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26458" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-05-22T16:15:09.013" Score="0" ViewCount="1771" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team, which consists of network architects and developers has been running Scrum for the past couple of months and the biggest issue we have is how we're supposed to record BAU work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We consider BAU work to be things that are repeatable (i.e. provisioning a new user account) that we have to do from time to time that do not relate to our project at all. We can't give these tasks to people outside of the project because we're a small team and have day to day functions outside of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use a JIRA project to run our Sprints and have considered using Trello or another JIRA project to keep track of our BAU work. We haven't implemented any of these yet since we're still mulling over potential options and haven't identified success criteria yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35803" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-05-24T13:45:58.100" LastActivityDate="2019-11-05T20:01:35.310" Title="How can we track Business as Usual (BAU) work?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;tracking&gt;&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26459" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26460" CreationDate="2019-05-22T20:16:30.687" Score="1" ViewCount="313" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a fixed-duration task in MS Project that is 2 days in duration and 8 hours of work. When I assign a resource to the task, the resource units are automatically set to 50%. If I change the resource units to 100%, the work is automatically changed to 16 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if I set the work back to 8 hours, an error dropdown says &quot;You decreased the amount of work for this task&quot; and gives me 2 options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decrease duration but keep the hours resources work per day (units) the same.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decrease the hours resources work per day (units) but keep the same duration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if I choose option 2, nothing actually changes, and I don't see any errors. Why is this allowed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35969" LastActivityDate="2019-05-22T22:20:57.557" Title="Why does MS Project allow for a 2 day duration task with 8 hours of work and a resource at 100% units?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26459" CreationDate="2019-05-22T22:20:57.557" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The work equation always applies to task resource assignments:  Work = Units x Duration&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you cut the work in half (from 16 to 8), then MSP has to reduce either Units or Duration to balance the equation.  For a Fixed-Duration task, the Duration is held constant by default, and the Units are reduced automatically.  This default change is kind of held in a buffer while the pull-down alert gives you the opportunity to override it by selecting option 1.  (Selecting Option 2 simply leaves the default response intact.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar alert/default/buffer responses are raised any time you change (after initial entry) one of the three components of the work equation, with their precise behavior depending on the task type (FD, FU, or FW).  You can always choose to ignore these alerts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2019-05-22T22:20:57.557" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26462" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-05-23T06:34:56.647" Score="5" ViewCount="1150" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have some problems in our team which I would like to describe here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The test is almost only represented by a test in the agile team. He is entrusted with all eventualities. From planning, structuring to acceptance test, exploratory testing. The tester criticizes this massive work overload, and that for months in the retro. But there is no solution, or no solution is offered. Thus, the sense behind the retro is not given here.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We also have a big difference between the Project Owner and the UX development team. Yes, it is true that the PO has to take the decisions alone, what will be done in the next sprint, whether technical orientation or UX. But does not the UX team have any rights in an agile team?&#xA;How can this topic be solved sensibly, currently almost every retro drifts off.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where do you have the role understanding within an agile development?&#xA;If problems are not solved in a retro (Too little time / Too little money / too few developers) how to handle it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a PO can not solve the problem. Because he is offered no solution by the management. How can he then solve the role of understanding in decisions accordingly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my point of view, we are coming to the limit of the feasible here. Whether agile or waterfall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can the PO but according to a &quot;You make it immediately&quot; mentality prevail?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if he actually harms the team, because the actual problems (even if not his problem) are not solved?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are several problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No understanding of management for agile development&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A PO that does not teach management that you need more people and capacity&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An ambiguous view of the PO but also the agile departments.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is the PO really always right?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can the PO also decide to harm the team?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The retro does not work because there are no solutions. The other major issues can not be solved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team feels betrayed both by the PO and by the management. This leads to angry reactions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, it is not going well. And so far any attempt to change this situation has failed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We tried as a team to talk to the PO and the management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have suggested solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one-on-one talks, we also have the chance to talk to people at eye level apart from the retro.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you have an approach that we have not thought about yet?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35402" LastEditorUserId="35402" LastEditDate="2019-05-23T06:59:22.280" LastActivityDate="2019-05-24T09:51:45.787" Title="The roles understanding in the agile development / Is the PO always right?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26462" CreationDate="2019-05-23T09:00:14.327" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Testing&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The job of testing in an agile project falls to all team members. It makes senses to have a dedicated test engineer on the team. But when they start to get overwhelmed with work, other team members, especially developers. It should be part of the code review process to actually checkout and build the changes and test them. This may be a bit more effort, but it results in increased quality and less test / fix / test loops with the dedicated QA people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Project Owner&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project owner's job is to tell the team what the software should do, not how. Especially on the externalizes, it is not uncommon that the PO can give some suggestions on how certain things should be. But the team experts should have the last say on how something works. For example if the PO suggests to put 1TB of data into Excel, the team should push back and use a proper database instead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of UX, this gets a bit complicated. The look and feel of an application is a bit of the what and a bit of the how. Often it's more about taste and learned usage patterns. Here it helps to do usability testing. If you can't run a proper external usability test, get people from the inside the company that kind of match the expected users and show them the application. Learnings from the usability testing should override both developers and PO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5270" LastActivityDate="2019-05-23T09:00:14.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9603" CreationDate="2019-05-23T09:14:34.243" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Team decides. Product Owner cannot decide this. Product owner only prioritizes.&#xA;How does team decide? First time just a guess/common-sense. Second time(sprint) history(20%) + guess(80%). Third time history(40%) guess (60%). And there comes a time when history decides(90%) and common sense(10%). This is the best you could get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tip: In the sprint planning meeting keep 1 extra user story ready, otherwise another team meeting might be needed to include a new one in the sprint(if the team finishes faster). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12195" LastEditorUserId="12195" LastEditDate="2019-05-29T13:49:49.153" LastActivityDate="2019-05-29T13:49:49.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26462" CreationDate="2019-05-23T09:21:53.387" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as the PO is responsible enough to take the blame if the product fails, it should not be a concern. The project team will be concerned if the PO shoves all the blame on the development and the design teams for a product failure. There will be differences in opinions. When the PO requires something to be done in a certain way, the only way to prevent that from happening, if experts in the team think otherwise, is to communicate what can be and what is, and explain the differences as much as possible and the pros and cons. It requires any agile team time to stabilise and achieve good velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35730" LastActivityDate="2019-05-23T09:21:53.387" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26462" CreationDate="2019-05-23T09:51:47.293" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding testing, there is no test role in a scrum team. People may have affinity with testing and might describe themselves as testers, but that does not make them responsible for the test activities. The entire team is responsible that all the needed activities to come to a potentially releasable product are carried out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PO is supposed to have a vision regarding the product that the team is making and based on that create backlog items that are steps towards that vision. This vision may contain UX aspects, so there might be a balancing act between the vision of the PO and the professional opinion of the UX designers. The PO is certainly not always right, but the UX designers are also not always right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One role I did not see mentioned in the question is that of the Scrum Master (SM). The role of the SM is twofold:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The SM should see to it that the Scrum process is followed. This includes ensuring that an active sprint is not unduly disturbed by scope changes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The SM should resolve impediments that hinder the team in reaching their full potential. This could include escalating issues to management, for example if there are too few team members with testing knowledge. Or problems that come up in a retro and that are outside the team's ability to resolve.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2019-05-23T09:51:47.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26467" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-05-23T10:14:31.293" Score="0" ViewCount="121" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have very little data currently in order to make prioritization decisions, track progress or to understand the pain points of our product. Therefore, I would like to create some dashboards/reports to clearly display this data and use going forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The outcome I have come up with is &quot;We enable data driven decision making&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I am not sure what to use for Key Results. I would like to know the quality of the data/dashboards and how much the data is being used to drive decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How could I measure this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35975" LastActivityDate="2021-03-14T20:39:33.383" Title="Key Results for usage of data in decision making" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;product&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26467" CreationDate="2019-05-23T13:03:25.213" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of the usual metrics for decision-making are time, errors, and cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you can measure &lt;strong&gt;how often your projects hit deadlines&lt;/strong&gt; (% compared to previous results) with your data-driven approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How often it resulted in an error&lt;/strong&gt; (negative target metric).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I don't think it's going to work for cost but it depends on the nature of what you're doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34150" LastEditorUserId="34150" LastEditDate="2019-05-23T13:09:07.190" LastActivityDate="2019-05-23T13:09:07.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26469" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26474" CreationDate="2019-05-23T13:16:10.790" Score="1" ViewCount="67" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm migrating this question from &lt;a href=&quot;https://sqa.stackexchange.com/questions/39294/why-is-business-used-in-business-rules&quot;&gt;SQA&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do expressions like business analyst, business intelligence, business rules, etc. using the word &quot;business&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess that is because usually software is ordered by a customer coming from a certain industry and for them it makes sense. But to me, the word &quot;business&quot; evokes ideas of accounting, sales, trading and similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe it is a dumb question. If so, please close it. I'm not a native English speaker and &quot;business&quot; just seems muddy sometimes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35962" LastActivityDate="2019-05-23T14:33:53.927" Title="Why is the word &quot;business&quot; used in business rules?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;business-analyst&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26462" CreationDate="2019-05-23T14:03:43.333" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The test is almost only represented by a test in the agile team. He is entrusted with all eventualities. From planning, structuring to acceptance test, exploratory testing. The tester criticizes this massive work overload, and that for months in the retro. But there is no solution, or no solution is offered. Thus, the sense behind the retro is not given here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is there no solution? The solution is obvious. If a teammate has so much to do that they become the bottleneck, &lt;em&gt;you help them&lt;/em&gt;. That means the whole development team is responsible for testing, as it should be anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But does not the UX team have any rights in an agile team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Matter of fact, they don't. Because there is no such thing as a &quot;UX team&quot; in Scrum. There is the PO with their vision and there is the development team with the abilities to implement that vision. Assuming the development team contains UX experts, then when the stories are refined there can be a lively discussion whether a feature should or should not contain a specific UX, but in the end, the PO decides what they want the product to look like. The job of the development team is &lt;em&gt;help&lt;/em&gt; with this decision by bringing the experience to the table and mentioning &quot;costs&quot; (or development time) of each variant. But if the PO wants the product to be blinking pink, then that's their call. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will no quote the rest of your questions line by line, but let me ask you something: does the development team get a say how much gets into a sprint? Because that is the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; problem I could see with what you describe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprint planning is a collaborative process. The PO cannot put something into the sprint that the development team did not agree to. As a start, normally the sprints self-adjust based on &lt;em&gt;velocity&lt;/em&gt;. Basically you look what you managed in the last sprints and base your current sprint on that. So (very simplified) if you only get 4 stories done of 10, the next sprint you will only start with 4 and hopefully finish all. And then the development team and PO can adjust that. But only &lt;em&gt;together&lt;/em&gt;. Bottlenecks or not enough manpower are not a problem of the development team. They will work to the best of their ability. That the product is not ready as fast as the PO needs it? That is &lt;em&gt;the PO's&lt;/em&gt; problem. And if they cannot get more resources from management, management will have to live with the fact that the product is late. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is not easy to get right. It looks easy, but it's more than just the guide. I would suggest you get a good Scrum coach or a very experienced Scrum master to get you through the transition. You also need management approval. In actions, not words. If you don't have that (and you hinted at that) you are bound to fail. Scrum is not a grass roots movement. You cannot do Scrum &lt;em&gt;against&lt;/em&gt; your management. Because it's a collaborative process and if management does not play ball, it will not produce quality results. And it will come back full circle, when management sees the poor results and says &quot;see it does not work&quot; when in fact they were the one's who made it fail in the first place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some reason management is more inclined to listen to a consultant they already paid big bucks to listen to, instead of believing that their own people might actually have a brain, too. So if that's the case... get a consultant. Make management pay for the same thing you could tell them, because to them, advice is worth more if it had cost more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Transparency&lt;/em&gt; is a key value of Scrum. You cannot solve all the problems in the team and you cannot make management buy you out of all either. Maybe there simply is no budget to hire another person. Your job is not to work for two, or nag management over something they cannot change. Your job is to make the consequences of that decision transparent. Maybe by providing charts on progress or estimates or simply explaining that it is not economically viable to have a developer test all the time when a specialist could do a much better job. But in the end, that's where your responsibility ends. You &lt;em&gt;reported&lt;/em&gt; it. Made it visible. Anything else is up to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2019-05-23T14:03:43.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26472" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26473" CreationDate="2019-05-23T14:08:17.243" Score="2" ViewCount="220" Body="&lt;p&gt;According the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events-daily&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;: The Daily Scrum is held every day of the Sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering that the Sprint Planning, can last for up to 8 hours, has the Daily Scrum be held as well during the days of Sprint Planning, Sprint Review or Sprint Retrospective?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32567" LastActivityDate="2019-05-24T16:50:16.597" Title="Has the Daily Scrum be held every day of the sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26472" CreationDate="2019-05-23T14:23:56.383" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on when your other events are scheduled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of the Daily Scrum is to coordinate among the team - to inspect progress toward the Sprint Goal and adapt. If you no longer have time to make progress toward the Sprint Goal, why would you need to inspect your progress and adapt your plans to achieving it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, I think it depends on exactly when you are holding your other events. For example, I was once using &lt;a href=&quot;https://less.works/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LeSS&lt;/a&gt; to scale Scrum to 4 development teams working on a single product. One day was &quot;Sprint Day&quot; - the morning was the Sprint Review (a single event for the 4 teams) and the afternoon was the teams conducting their Sprint Retrospective and Sprint Planning. On these days, we did not hold a Daily Scrum, simply because it made sense - no team was working toward a Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you situation is different, you may want to hold a Daily Scrum. For example, you may have your Sprint Review in the afternoon. That may lead to several hours in the morning and a touchpoint for the team to coordinate may be valuable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2019-05-23T14:23:56.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26469" CreationDate="2019-05-23T14:33:53.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason is exactly as you guessed. &quot;coming from a certain industry and for them it makes sense.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If you look up the definition of the word &quot;business&quot; in say &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/business&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Merriam Webster's online dictionary&lt;/a&gt; you will find multiple definitions. The first listed by Webster more closely matches the ideas you think of when you encounter the word, but the second: &quot;ROLE, FUNCTION&quot; perfectly matches in this context...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Business Rules lay out the purpose for some process, i.e. what ROLE or FUNCTION it serves.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Business Analysts analyze those processes to eke out both the abstract and specific rules...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31453" LastActivityDate="2019-05-23T14:33:53.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26475" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-05-23T15:26:37.887" Score="4" ViewCount="1473" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have multiple tasks that have different durations that I want to start at different times from a go live date, i.e. finish date for an entire project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: Project must finish on 01 Dec 2019. Task 1, duration 10 days, should start 20 days before 01 Dec 2019. Task 2, duration 20 days, should start 50 days before 01 Dec 2019, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I set this up? I would like to be able to amend the finish date (if needed) and have the dates for all tasks recalculate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35984" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-05-23T15:45:27.963" LastActivityDate="2020-06-16T18:06:20.467" Title="Microsoft Project - how to calculate start dates based on a set time from the finish date?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26472" CreationDate="2019-05-23T15:55:20.410" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master I offer my team the option of not having a daily Scrum on the day they do sprint planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some teams are happy to skip it and others prefer to stick to the routine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-05-23T15:55:20.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26475" CreationDate="2019-05-23T16:35:05.987" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is what's called a backward pass. You want to calculate the task dates based on a fixed project finish date. To do this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create your tasks and link them together.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For the last task, set a constraint type of Must Finish On and set the go-live date.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For all other tasks, set a constraint type of As Late As Possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastActivityDate="2019-05-23T16:35:05.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26480" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26482" CreationDate="2019-05-24T02:39:34.653" Score="0" ViewCount="205" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just a bit of a background, I am working to manage a big legacy system that has at least 32 branches for it's sub systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The challenge is how to manage and not miss required change points or defect fixes to be deployed to different branches. Currently the team has a 30% chance that the deployment is missed, and I am targeting to make this close to zero as much as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I use JIRA for bug tracking and the process goes as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fixed defect/completed implementation activity is reported by a technical leader in charge to PM&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PM asks for expert judgement from technical leader on which branches is it necessary to be deployed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Based on the expert Judgement PM reviews, creates the records and updates a deployment log similar to the following.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tj3p8.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tj3p8.png&quot; alt=&quot;deployment log&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The created records are then assigned and processed to be implemented.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Current known problems with the said process are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some branch deployment implementation are past the deadline when a defect is detected and gets rejected for release. This causes some fixes to have been logged in the deployment log to have inconsistencies with them, saying they are deployed but not really deployed. I am thinking of creating an additional file where these items can be tracked. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PM and technical leader gets very busy and this task of filling up for 32 branches take 4 hours (at least) to analyze and fill up. This yields rushing analysis work by technical leaders and further potential misses. Also it implies costs to the project's budget and development timeline.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is at what part of the process is it best to improve on? Or what points of this process needs improvement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35991" LastActivityDate="2019-05-24T05:52:59.930" Title="What are some best practices for deploying bug fixes to multiple code bases?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;process-improvement&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26462" CreationDate="2019-05-24T04:05:49.917" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No understanding of management for agile development&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can probably be solved by handing the managers some basic information, e.g. link to agile manifesto and some blogs about the subject. They also have to understand that no process management format is a silver bullet. Neither agile, waterfall or whatever else you can come up with will automatically solve all problems. Ultimately the quality of the people involved determines that. And I mean quality in terms of role specific skills, but also soft skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A PO that does not teach management that you need more people and&#xA;  capacity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Management may or may not be able to afford more resources. And the number of resources should only determine how fast a project can move, not how well it functions. So if they are happy with the speed then there should be no need to add more people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An ambiguous view of the PO but also the agile departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either role in a Scrum team should have a clear understanding of what their responsibilities are and what the other roles responsibilities are. If that is understood then there should be respect for the decisions each responsible person is taking for their role. Here is a brief rundown:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product owner: Is ultimately responsible for the product. Hence she can determine what will be developed. But she is doing that through maintaining the product backlog list only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum Team / Scrum Master: The team is responsible to work on the highest priority topics from the product backlog. They are also responsible for determining how long development tasks take and for organizing the work in the team. Team members should all be technical and everyone should be able to fulfill development tasks. That includes testing and QA related tasks. Many organizations hire &quot;testers&quot; as a separate role from &quot;developer&quot; (often lesser paid) and that seems to be the case in your organization. From an actual agile team perspective that distinction should not be made and a developer should be able to write tests for the SW his team develops. Incentives should ideally be made to the whole team and not individual members. Scrum Master should ideally be a role that is passed to someone else every Sprint (underscores the fact that the development is a team effort). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team is responsible to estimate their productivity and commit to a set of product backlog items to be developed during the next Sprint. The team should make their best effort and if they frequently miss their goals, then they are bad at estimating and should learn to improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A scrum team should not have more than 5-10 people. If it is larger it should be broken up into multiple teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is the PO really always right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See my previous point. He is always right when it comes to determining what are the priorities for items in the product backlog. This will determine what will be chosen for development in the next Sprint planning. He needs to be trusted in terms of those decisions, but he cannot be involved in determining development timelines or technical implementation decisions. He can only influence development by providing the right backlog items with descriptions for the next Sprint planning. He cannot influence development during a Sprint and he does not even need to be part of Sprint planning if the user stories in the backlog are well described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can the PO also decide to harm the team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is an absurd question and the answer should be obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The retro does not work because there are no solutions. The other&#xA;  major issues can not be solved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The retrospective feedback should be mostly for the Scrum team internal organization, but if there are suggestions to management they should be documented and sent in written form to the responsible managers (with CC to upper managers if no reaction / response happens).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The team feels betrayed both by the PO and by the management. This&#xA;  leads to angry reactions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fixing the teams feelings should be your first priority. Keep in mind that you absolutely have to trust the PO on his backlog decisions and on the other hand make sure he can trust the teams development estimations and results. If you are frustrated because of a lack of additional resources, then you should organize your scrum team differently. Have some of the developers help with testing tasks and make sure to include those efforts in Sprint planning. This will mean the team can develop less features in a Sprint but everyone will be more happy with the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that it is very hard to fix a toxic workplace and it is only possible if everyone wants it to happen. If it happens to be the case because of toxic managers then there is nothing you can do but find another job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to actually reading the &lt;a href=&quot;https://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;agile manifesto&lt;/a&gt; I recommend to watch pragmatic Dave's &quot;Agile is Dead&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-BOSpxYJ9M&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;speech&lt;/a&gt; or read his &lt;a href=&quot;https://pragdave.me/blog/2014/03/04/time-to-kill-agile.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog entry&lt;/a&gt;. With that and a little common sense there is probably no need for a Scrum trainer or consultant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35992" LastEditorUserId="35992" LastEditDate="2019-05-24T09:51:45.787" LastActivityDate="2019-05-24T09:51:45.787" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26480" CreationDate="2019-05-24T05:52:59.930" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your known problems already have a fix planned. It's called the &quot;legacy code base&quot; for a reason. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One obvious big red flag is the fact that your system tracks deployments that have been rejected as &quot;deployed&quot; even if they aren't. This is something you should be able to fix in your process immediately, because this has nothing to do with the number of branches at all. If it happens for one branch of many, it would be happening if you had no branches at all too. we cannot help yo with it, that is your organisational structure, workflow and ticketing system. It seems that this would be your primary concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once this is fixed and your reports don't lie anymore, you will have to face one hard truth: the system is too big to be handled in the time management wants it to be handled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is very little you can actually &quot;improve&quot; as in gain some obvious benefit for little cost. 4 hours to make 32 technical decisions is already fast, to the point mistakes are made. If you want to get your error rate down, you have to put in &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; effort there. So it will take even longer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether that's worth it, where the sweet spot between time spent planning and time spent fixing the planning errors later is is up to you to figure out. Gather facts, measure times or work and prepare a plan accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you did not mention the implementation time of the bugfix in all branches as a problem, I don't think there is any technical silver bullet to get you out of this. You want to get the errors down? Then you need more effort to not make them in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2019-05-24T05:52:59.930" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26458" CreationDate="2019-05-24T09:30:05.523" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen three variants depending on the nature of interrupting tasks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;1) Capacity&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the work is very evenly distributed, just subtract it from the capacity beforehand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Example:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every developer in the team has a one-hour one-on-one meeting with heir line manager during each sprint. Every developer has to fill out their timesheets. There is a scheduled fire alarm drill for all personal in the building this sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;2) As a story&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the work is predictable, make a story of it, estimate it and put it into the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Example:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the rollout of the new library, the sister team will need help implementing it in their own product. Questions or difficulties are not known yet, but will arise as soon as they start working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;3) Batman&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If random requests will pop up in random frequencies and random quality, you need someone to answer the red bat-phone when it rings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Decide on a single person per sprint who will handle &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; those requests. Their work will probably be interrupted constantly. They might not produce anything towards the goal of this sprint. But at least the interruptions got contained and the rest of the team could focus on the sprint at hand. In addition, it's easier to measure how much time was lost to those tasks, compared to giving them to different people and having to come up with a number afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Example:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;any kind of support work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-05-24T09:30:05.523" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9603" CreationDate="2019-05-24T15:36:34.823" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key to not having this sort of problem is in determining the estimates right. One way to have reasonable estimates is to take estimates from each field expert and reason why he or she thinks so. Thereafter taking all points in consideration estimate a time frame in consensus. For example, if there are three members for taking care of Web-services, all three must explain reasons for estimating the same task. Considering the views from each member, the task is assigned a target time-frame unanimously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35730" LastEditorUserId="35730" LastEditDate="2019-05-24T15:42:18.733" LastActivityDate="2019-05-24T15:42:18.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26486" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26487" CreationDate="2019-05-24T15:53:03.760" Score="0" ViewCount="147" Body="&lt;p&gt;Textbooks and training courses about Agile always compare it to Waterfall. I imagine that IBM in the 1960s used Waterfall, and there may well be some government agencies that use it, but in the small business world I have never ever seen Waterfall used for software development. I've only ever seen it used as a bad theoretical counterexample, specifically when talking about the value of Agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a formal word for the kind of unstructured development that real-world small organizations actually do (or used to do, before Agile was taught in school)? It definitely isn't Waterfall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28746" LastEditorUserId="28746" LastEditDate="2019-05-24T16:18:42.210" LastActivityDate="2019-05-24T16:19:33.187" Title="Is there an official word for the pre-Agile &quot;just do whatever&quot; methodology?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26486" CreationDate="2019-05-24T16:18:37.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Direct answer to the question:&lt;/strong&gt; Other than &quot;unstructured&quot; there is no commonly accepted name for people &quot;just doing it&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Deeper answer to your whole question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been a number of different approaches to software projects and there are plenty of companies that do not apply any structure. I think no one really compares structured approaches to &quot;just do whatever&quot; approaches because we all assume that the challenges with a complete lack of structure with anything more than a handful of people are obvious. (it is worth noting that Scrum has a bottom limit on team size because it acknowledges that if you're just 2 or 3 people you should be able to self-organize fine without the overhead)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;About Waterfall:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hear plenty of people in the agile community conflate different terms when talking about Waterfall, but generally speaking, they mean TPM or Traditional Project Management as the whole family of project management approaches that focuses on sequential project phases, deep separation of responsibilities, individuals as resources, and single-release plans where you identify the entirety of what you are going to do before you build it. This grouping of project management approaches provides a useful contrast against Agile as a way to avoid confusion as people try to make the transition. For example, one of the most common misunderstandings I see across StackExchange and StackOverflow is questions about the testing phase in Scrum. This confusion comes because the person asking the question doesn't understand the contrast between the two approaches and that one has sequential phases and one does not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefor, the goal is not to define other approaches to software development. Rather, the goal is to provide enough contrast to help people understand what Agile, Scrum, Kanban, etc are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-05-24T16:18:37.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26486" CreationDate="2019-05-24T16:19:33.187" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before Agile was taught in school, people were doing Agile. There just wasn't a single name for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The start to what we call Agile was in February 2001, when seventeen people met in Utah to talk about the things that they found were working well in software development in a world where there were a lot of projects that were behind schedule, over budget, and maybe never even delivered. This meeting led to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Manifesto for Agile Software Development&lt;/a&gt;. But these seventeen people were doing these things for a while by this point - they had developed or were actively using methods such as Scrum, Extreme Programming, DSDM, Adaptive Software Development, and Crystal on real-world projects for real companies and delivering value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although not represented, I'm pretty sure that there were also others. A good candidate example would possibly be Lean Software Development, where the first book about it was published in 2003, but it seems unlikely that the Poppendiecks developed it, vetted it, and wrote a book about it in 2 years. I'm sure if you were to ask the seventeen people who were at Snowbird, they would be able to mention other people who were not only doing, but writing and talking about their approaches to building software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, waterfall was and still is used as a methodology for developing software projects, even though it is not only flawed (and identified as such in the 1970 Winston Royce paper titled &quot;Managing the Development of Large Software Systems&quot; that identified it). People as early as the 1960s were identifying that managing software projects isn't the same as managing other complex engineering projects and wanted to work toward iterative and incremental development and tight feedback loops with customers, and you can see this in the 1968 NATO Software Engineering conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2019-05-24T16:19:33.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26472" CreationDate="2019-05-24T16:50:16.597" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is recommended yes. 15 mins of Standup should be doable. When Sprint Planning is scheduled, the team members assemble together either way. Therefore after the Planning is over, the team may just quickly run over the priority tasks and pick a story to work on next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35999" LastActivityDate="2019-05-24T16:50:16.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26490" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-05-24T17:10:35.347" Score="0" ViewCount="194" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a planned sprint, it is hard to see the Actual burn chart close to the Ideal even though the required amount of points have been met. Is there anything specific to keep in mind to achieve an almost ideal burn chart at the end of the sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35730" LastActivityDate="2019-05-25T16:50:44.760" Title="Tips for achieving ideal burn chart" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;burndown-chart&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26373" CreationDate="2019-05-24T17:16:42.730" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;By test, if you mean testing a Beta version of the product, then that should be planned separately. A sprint, however, should include unit tests (if not regression) before considering a task done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35999" LastActivityDate="2019-05-24T17:16:42.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26490" CreationDate="2019-05-24T19:22:50.360" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing to acknowledge is that the ideal line is ideal in the mathematical sense, not in the qualitative sense. In fact, if I ever saw a burndown that matched the ideal line, that would be a massive red flag for me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, certain burndown profiles can be indicators of problems and we can look at those. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Risk: Work not completing until late in the sprint is risky. The longer I pile up work, the more likely it is that an unexpected event like an outage, weather, integration problem, etc pushes those 9.5 days of work over the line and out of the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cover-ups: When we take on that level of risk, teams often work extra hours or push things into the next sprint &quot;in the shadows&quot; to make it look like the work was done. This reduces transparency and leads to a long list of other problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cutting Corners: Another tactic for finishing everything on time is to cut corners. Planned automated testing doesn't get done or code review gets skipped. This comes back to haunt us in quality problems later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reenforced Silos: A frequent cause of work spanning the sprint is that all work is taken on at once. People take tasks for themselves and everyone works separately. This intuitively feels more efficient, but loads of research has shown that the opposite is true. You actually get more done by ganging up on work items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Output focus over value focus: Just like the last one, splitting up tasks amongst people often leads to a focus on individuals getting tasks done rather than delivering value, which usually requires multiple people to coordinate on a single effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This are all possible issues that could be happening in the team when you see burndown charts far off of the ideal line. Not are certain. The burndown chart is just meant to trigger a conversation, not explain anything by itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what can you do to improve it? Well, asking yourself if you're having any of the problems above can help. For example, if you worry about output over value, you can ask the product owner to only express needs from the user point of view. For example &quot;I wish I didn't have to re-enter duplicate information each time I fill out this form.&quot; The team can rally around this problem and work together to implement the solution. This will have multiple people working on it for a few days, then it's done. A side effect is that having a sprint full of these will cause the burndown to reduce each time one of these needs is met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, a lesson from Lean: small batch sizes. Break things up into small value deliveries. Scrum says we have to get to a releasable increment every sprint, but many experienced teams return to a releasable increment every few days or even more frequently. Small steps allow for more rapid pivots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-05-24T19:22:50.360" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26493" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26514" CreationDate="2019-05-25T16:38:31.407" Score="2" ViewCount="140" Body="&lt;p&gt;How to be agile when there's a massive amount of sales / prework / product discovery to be done before actual implementation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking generally, our product is a user facing portal that displays data from multiple sources. It can take several months to display data from a new source. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The steps involved are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;business and legal agreement with the new source&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;discovery to define how they will connect to our system&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;building the interface/technical infrastructure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;negotiating about collecting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;analyzing and transforming the data to meet the portal standards and finally&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;displaying it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are trying to implement agile Scrum with JIRA and it has become a challenge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because this pre-work necessary to deliver value to the customer is something the customer does not care about, pre-work cannot be tracked as user stories! A consultant suggested we use tasks instead. But tasks cannot be assigned points so how can they be tracked? Should we use kanban instead of scrum? Then what will be the purpose of sprints? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36006" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-05-29T07:41:12.910" LastActivityDate="2019-05-29T23:12:20.130" Title="Is it possible to be agile during steps prior to implementation like sales and product discovery?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26490" CreationDate="2019-05-25T16:50:44.760" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some things that I have found to help are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Smaller stories / tasks - the smaller they are, the easier it is to get them to &lt;em&gt;done&lt;/em&gt; earlier in the sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maintain high quality - bugs are the arch enemy of a smooth burndown&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Automated regression tests - running automated regression tests in continuous integration usually reduces the number of bugs that get found towards the end of a sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Careful planning - try and avoid bottlenecks (particularly around testing)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take less work in to the sprint - avoid over-packing the sprint so that the team rushes at the end&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduce external dependencies - difficult to get a smooth burndown if you have to rely on work that is outside of your control&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid a &lt;em&gt;waterfall sprint&lt;/em&gt; mindeset - get the team thinking in terms of work being completed in small chunks regularly throughout the sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-05-25T16:50:44.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23157" CreationDate="2019-05-25T17:09:58.570" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Technically Driven vs Value Driven&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's often true that in waterfall, requirements are simply in or out of scope, and the customer doesn't get anything until it's done. But the work is often still prioritized because it happens serially. In this case, the requirements can be prioritized purely from a technical perspective: looking at the entire project, what is the most efficient way to proceed? and/or what is the least risky way to proceed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Agile, prioritization is value-driven, and the incremental releases often go to the customer. While technical and risk considerations should be discussed with the customer so they can make informed choices, the customer-value prioritization typically won't look like the technically-sensible prioritization. So for example, it may often be the case that some minimal infrastructure is done early, to support relatively simple but highly valuable features; and that it is later torn out and replaced with a more robust infrastructure to support more complex but less valuable features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-05-25T17:09:58.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26496" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-05-26T10:54:59.383" Score="1" ViewCount="200" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently working in an agile role (Scrum Master), where the core values of agile is Trust, respect, commitment and courage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I am increasingly finding professionally that I am meeting fellow agilists who are doing a similar role that pretend they embrace these values but are more concerned about power, status and have massive egos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I've seen in my current role, individuals who like the idea of being&#xA;able to make influential decisions (in the name of continuous improvement) which impact many employees&#xA;careers as opposed to doing the role with people's interest at heart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These Scrum Master's will act as team representatives and often make decisions either indirectly or directly without the team's consent. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Arrogant Agilists - one Scrum Master I work with for example gets&#xA;very passive aggressive if he feels    his agile ideas are being challenged&#xA;which totally goes against the idea of openess.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have also seen agile coaches who dictate and project agile 1000s of&#xA;times in a patronising manner to the point people bicker about it. To then carry an attitude that if the team doesn't get it, it's not their problem and will go ahead and implement agile anyway by focusing on getting out of touch senior management to buy into it so that the team are forced to follow.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have seen agilists not fairly challenging decisions if it means it impacts&#xA;their status in the company negatively. Hence, I have been the victim of agilists unfairly trying to belittle my skillset in order to influence management over and further their career within the organisation as opposed to behaving in a supportive way.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a moral dilemma now, where I am starting to re-think management/agile as a career profession.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The moral dilemma I have, can you climb the career ladder in this profession by acting straight forward, caring, honest and fair? Does agile work to promote a better environment or is it idealistic? I got into Agile because I truly felt it was a more supportive way of working, but it doesn't seem to be translating that way in practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastEditorUserId="20871" LastEditDate="2019-05-26T11:14:47.533" LastActivityDate="2019-06-26T10:41:44.750" Title="Does agile really promote a better work environment?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26493" CreationDate="2019-05-26T16:49:41.723" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The challenge here is to stop thinking about the end solution and start thinking about interim steps that can deliver some (small) value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have taken some sample data from the client and uploaded it in raw form to our database - not much value delivered yet, but now the data &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; available, all be it in a very inconvenient format&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Next step is that we had some initial conversations with the customer about format and applied some basic data manipulation rules - still not very valuable, but now there is data available in a better format&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put a basic user interface on the data - not something that we would ever say is the end-product to the user, but it is something that lets us test the data and do demonstrations to the customer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work on automating a data import - value is that the data can be more up to date&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add monitoring and reconciliation - value is that the user can have more confidence in the data&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some possible user stories could be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a user I would like to have some of my data available so that I can view it (possible epic, to be further broken down)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a user I would like to have the addresses in standard format so that I am comfortable viewing them&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a user I would like to have my data reconciled so that I can be sure that it is accurate&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a user I would like to have my data uploaded daily so that when viewed it is up to date&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; still use valid stories, it is just that they may only deliver limited value. The process of breaking the work down this way will enable you to regularly demonstrate progress to the customer and will allow you to iterate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-05-26T16:49:41.723" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26496" CreationDate="2019-05-26T18:08:16.407" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does agile work to promote a better environment or is it idealistic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are aspects of following the agile approach that promote a better environment, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bringing technical people closer to business people can result in a more rewarding environment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doing frequent releases can be more satisfying as you get more opportunities to receive positive feedback&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Empowered teams are hopefully less frustrated at work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sustainable pace should also be more enjoyable and better for work/life balance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;can you climb the career ladder in this profession by acting straight forward, caring, honest and fair?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a tough one to answer. A lot of organisations will be political and have a blame culture. It may well be that in these kinds of organisations agile values are not as useful when it comes to things like promotion, pay rises and bonuses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in the right organisation you can certainly succeed by displaying these attributes. My personal experience has been that organisations that at least try to adopt agile are more likely to be like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-05-26T18:08:16.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26500" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-05-27T08:39:09.473" Score="3" ViewCount="382" Body="&lt;p&gt;The scrum team performs following tasks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Development -- Dev Team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testing  -- Test team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Merging -- Senior Team [BOTTLE NECK]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acceptance Testing -- PO/BA [BOTTLE NECK]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Dev and Test team finishes the tasks as per the plan however availability of PO and Senior team is an issue. Senior team is busy with their planned activities so they delay the merging. Sometimes the stories are not closed because PO cannot verify the story or find out the issues pretty late. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So during this period, rather than waiting for senior/PO, developers start working on next stories and that results in large number of committed stories while the delivered stories are always less than committed but almost constant  from last few sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to these dependencies and bottleneck the few stories spill over to next sprint. I am sure this is not the unique scenario but your experience might help me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17791" LastEditorUserId="17791" LastEditDate="2019-05-27T10:11:00.793" LastActivityDate="2019-05-28T17:14:55.677" Title="Reducing Spill Overs" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;sprint-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26500" CreationDate="2019-05-27T09:17:31.530" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Those &quot;phases&quot; you describe sound very non-agile to me, but there are instances where a single person cannot complete a story and needs help from another team member even in super-agile environments, so lets just assume it is indeed necessary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take those points and discuss them in the next retrospective. There is no silver bullet, you solution will look different from mine. But what you need to do is make it visible. Have a column on your board or a tag in your system or whatever you use. Make sure it's visible that there is a bottleneck and everyone knows about it in the standup. And if senior people decide that they have more important things to do, then the story will not get done. You cannot do more than notify the people responsible. Don't forget to lower the velocity when you did not finish tickets so you don't get the same problem next sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a while, the senior people will get into problems with management on why their team is delivering so slowly and will see the need to optimize this, too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an ideal world, they would see it from the get go, but unless you know an ideal company you could switch too, you will be stuck with the real world :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2019-05-27T09:17:31.530" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26502" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2019-05-27T10:24:49.703" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2019-05-27T10:24:49.703" LastActivityDate="2019-05-27T10:24:49.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26503" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2019-05-27T10:24:49.703" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2019-05-27T10:24:49.703" LastActivityDate="2019-05-27T10:24:49.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26500" CreationDate="2019-05-27T15:04:15.347" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The bottlenecks are known so the first thing is to bring them to a Retrospective, as was already suggested. Try to find the root-cause of why they're seen as bottlenecks. Why do they have to hold back the entire development process? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, I would say that there's apparently an over-commitment. If there are bottlenecks, it's because it's been proven that the team has less capacity than the demand of the work thrown on them. So, reduce the Work In Progress (WIP) so that things can get done. Once bottlenecks are improving, increase the WIP limits as you go along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26867" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-05-27T15:24:33.977" LastActivityDate="2019-05-27T15:24:33.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26500" CreationDate="2019-05-28T08:46:32.750" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I feel there is an issue in sprint planning itself because as part of retrospective meeting, we know the progress of previous sprint and team commitment, so this has to be addressed for the upcoming sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35979" LastActivityDate="2019-05-28T08:46:32.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26508" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-05-28T15:33:29.350" Score="1" ViewCount="1051" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a project that has multiple workstreams.  In much the same way a single task may require multiple people to work on it, it also may touch multiple workstreams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I created a custom column called workstream with the list of workstreams to choose from but I can only select 1 workstream per task. Is there a way to set it up so I can select multiple workstreams (check boxes rather than just a drop down list)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36025" LastActivityDate="2019-06-28T01:01:25.177" Title="How do I Create Custom Drop down that allows multiple selections (like resource selection works)" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22438" CreationDate="2019-05-28T16:13:41.613" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Managing developers means you are the team lead of those developers. As a team lead, it is important to note that no suggestion is invalid, incorrect or insufficient. Little fragments make a rock.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, during your weekly team meetings, get someone out of the team to take note of every idea suggested and issues detected. After everyone has spoken, take the note and discuss everything by appreciating their inputs and enhancing their suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is obvious that you are the decision-maker as the team's manager, but make their opinions count; even if you feel a hitch about a particular one, appreciate it and tell them how you feel about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then go ahead to make them know &quot;not you&quot; but &quot;we are&quot; going to implement it. i.e allow them make their mistake... if there is any mistake to be made at all. People learn from their mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try not to dominate the meeting with your own ideas, even if they are well-analyzed and important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35623" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-05-28T17:03:55.580" LastActivityDate="2019-05-28T17:03:55.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26500" CreationDate="2019-05-28T17:14:55.677" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your dev team is too big.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More accurately, it is providing too many developer-hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a &lt;em&gt;great&lt;/em&gt; problem to have; there's always other projects and teams that need more resourcing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35678" LastActivityDate="2019-05-28T17:14:55.677" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26493" CreationDate="2019-05-28T17:23:25.980" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you've noticed, your project is not especially amenable to an Agile approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This it not particularly unusual; &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; projects are not very amenable to Agile approaches.  Software projects are the outlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you might not have noticed, your project is mostly not a software project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Yes, there are non-software projects that are well-suited to Agile approaches, but I maintain that they are unusual cases.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35678" LastActivityDate="2019-05-28T17:23:25.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26508" CreationDate="2019-05-28T19:17:12.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using Project Server, you can create enterprise custom fields that allow multiple values to be selected from a drop-down list. But this option is not available in MS Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastEditorUserId="13635" LastEditDate="2019-05-29T00:09:46.573" LastActivityDate="2019-05-29T00:09:46.573" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="343" CreationDate="2019-05-29T06:47:02.590" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If your project:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;can be handled by one team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;can be split in a way so that each part can be handled by one team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then Scrum is the way you go (of course if you need agile too).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multi-team, multi-project scenarios with high inter-dependencies require synchronization between the teams. Critical chain project management is a playbook for such a scenario.  Use it when needed, but don't play by it if you do not need it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile task estimation is coarse - you can map this to buffer estimation. The popular modified Fibonacci series e.g. would give you aprox. 30% buffer size. Map this to the number of sprints you need to complete a &quot;task&quot;. E.g.: Team A will need 3 sprints to deliver feature X: add a buffer of one sprint for calculating the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might regularily re-evaluate dependencies in cross-team sprint retros or the like, re-plan your task-net and thus update buffers deadline expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36030" LastActivityDate="2019-05-29T06:47:02.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26493" CreationDate="2019-05-29T09:28:03.207" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're letting a tool drive your workflow, and deliberately hiding work rather than making it visible. Both of these are agile anti-patterns. Furthermore, you're not slicing work up in ways that reflect capacity consumed by the Development Team, as opposed to simply tracking external dependencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fix is easy: more transparency, more visibility, and greater collaboration with stakeholders and customers. I detail some of the ways you can achieve this in the sections below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;No Invisible Work, Ever℠&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because this pre-work necessary to deliver value to the customer is something the customer does not care about, pre-work cannot be tracked as user stories!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is absolutely wrong. Agile frameworks and methodologies heavily rely on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;visibility,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;transparency, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;intense customer collaboration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By hiding &quot;pre-work&quot; or attempting to bury it inside some other attribute of the work, you are actively harming communications and active collaboration with the customer. How can the customer possibly make informed business decisions or trust in the process if, like an iceberg, most of the &quot;real&quot; project is hidden below the surface? Don't do that!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it's true that most customers won't care about the minutia of product development, it's extremely important that they are able to see &quot;how the sausage gets made.&quot; If a feature is difficult to implement, or requires a high level of effort in areas that don't &lt;em&gt;directly&lt;/em&gt; deliver value, the stakeholders &lt;strong&gt;must see that&lt;/strong&gt;. When this currently-hidden work is surfaced and visible, stakeholders can make better-informed decisions about what features they value, what resources they can bring to bear, what processes they can improve or impediments they can remove, and whether the cost/benefit or return on investment is still worth it after evaluating the full measure of work involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;This is a 40-point story&quot; is not a useful business metric. &quot;This feature will likely take 12 one-week Sprints at an estimated cost of $105,000 in labor to deliver&quot; is a much more useful decision-making tool. Scrum isn't just about completing Product Backlog Items; it's about completing the &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; user stories, and constantly re-evaluating the process and the prorities!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Tasks are Decomposed User Stories; Sprints Deliver &lt;em&gt;Increments&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A consultant suggested we use tasks instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe. A task is not a user story, and a user story isn't necessarily a shippable feature. In this specific case, you are allowing your tool to dictate your process. Never do that!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your process has a whole host of issues, but most of them stem from trying to hide work from your customers. This creates a set of X/Y problems that will lead you to the dark side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most customers primarily care about potentially-shippable &lt;em&gt;value&lt;/em&gt;, not necessarily features. While a great user story represents a vertical slice of value to the viewpoint character in the story, it may or may not be a shippable increment on its own. Instead, the team should focus on the increment delivered by each Sprint, which is generally captured by a Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth noting that JIRA is primarily a ticketing tool. It's not &quot;Scrum in a box,&quot; so trying to implement Scrum solely through the lens of JIRA is a surefire way to drive your team nuts. JIRA provides no core mechanism for representing a Sprint Goal, or to treat the output of a Sprint as a coherent increment. While you can abuse various features of the tool to simulate those things, the Scrum Team (not the tool) must take responsibility for tracking the right aspects of the framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each Sprint need not result in a formal release. It simply must deliver a potentially-shippable increment of value. There are cases where multiple Sprints are needed to reach an agile release milestone. That's okay! But you can't measure your progress towards that release unless you're tracking all the value-added steps needed to get there. In this case, &quot;value-added&quot; doesn't inherently mean &quot;customer-facing.&quot; It simply means work that adds value to the product, and work that is essential to the &lt;em&gt;development&lt;/em&gt; of the product adds value, too!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Decompose to Fit the Time Box, and Track Everything&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most product features will have a lot of pre-requisites. When possible, vertical slices that fit within a single Sprint are ideal. That's not always possible. In such cases, you capture the feature as an epic, and then build themes and user stories that will collectively deliver the epic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, a user story is a coherent bit of product development that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Meets &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt; criteria.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contributes to the current Sprint goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fits within a single Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a story or epic such as &quot;Display data from Faux News&quot; that won't fit into a single Sprint, then you need to decompose the work into measurable increments that &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; fit, and that work should be visible to both the team and stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe the current Sprint Goal is to display stats on every Disney Princess ever filmed. You have some spare capacity in the Sprint, though, so you also take on the story that says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As corporate counsel,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I want to send over an initial contract to Faux News&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so we can get agreement to add them to our portal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Development Team might then decompose this into some low-effort tasks. Some examples might be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Request the corporate counsel write a contract for Faux News.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Validate that the contract has been sent to Faux News by the last day of the current Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Add a story to the Product Backlog to follow up on the contract status in a future Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality, these sorts of stories are often 0.5 - 2 story points because the level of effort for the Development Team is quite low. They're basically conversations that need to be held, resources to be requested, or tracking activities to be performed. You aren't tracking the lead time or cycle time of the task, but rather the level-of-effort required by the members of the Development Team!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind, most of the stuff you've defined as &quot;pre-work&quot; definitely belongs on the Product Backlog because it needs to be tracked by stakeholders and by the project. However, I suspect most of the pre-work stories represent &lt;em&gt;dependencies&lt;/em&gt; for work the Development Team must do, rather than high-effort work the team must do itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, you could redefine a user story like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;# This story is probably wrong unless the Scrum Team&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  # has a lawyer as a full-time member of the Development Team&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  # who is actively participating in the Daily Scrum.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a team,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  We need to get a contract from Faux News&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  so we can integrate it as a data source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;into a more accurate &lt;em&gt;task&lt;/em&gt; like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Email Bob and Susan over in legal about the contracts we expect to need next Sprint to begin working on the Faux News data source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This turns a misleading and incorrect story about &quot;pre-work&quot; (more accurately, an external dependency over which the team has little control) into a concrete task the team can actually perform. Specifically, the task becomes one of &lt;strong&gt;making a request&lt;/strong&gt; rather than &lt;strong&gt;delivering an artifact&lt;/strong&gt;. This is immensely more measurable, easily estimatable, and simple to track as as done or not-done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you make each contract request a user story in its own right, or whether you bundle up a bunch of similar tasks into a user story like &quot;request all the current contracts&quot; is up to you and your stakeholders. Finding the right level of granularity is an art, but visibility, transparency, communication, and collaboration are the guiding principles that can help you define the optimum level for your particular project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-05-29T23:12:20.130" LastActivityDate="2019-05-29T23:12:20.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26515" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-05-29T19:43:21.467" Score="2" ViewCount="360" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of my team members wanted to email their feedback for sprint retrospective meetings instead of gathering in a room and write down their feedback in a sticky note. Other than telling them that emailing deprives the anonymity of the feedback, I couldn't give the reason I learnt a few years back in a scrum training. Hence my question: Why is sticky note the tool of choice in writing feedback in sprint retrospective meetings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36036" LastEditorUserId="11661" LastEditDate="2019-05-30T02:40:59.080" LastActivityDate="2019-05-30T05:44:33.440" Title="Why are sticky notes used in sprint retrospective meetings?" Tags="&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;tools&gt;&lt;retrospective&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26515" CreationDate="2019-05-29T20:53:21.453" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Welcome yasouser!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can think of a couple of reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;sticky notes are small. you can't write very much on them. This is a feature not a bug: per the principle that face to face conversation is the most effective means of conversation, the sticky note is just a placeholder for the person who wrote it to talk about it and start the conversation&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;sticky notes in retros are frequently dot-voted to decide what to discuss further, or categorized or prioritized - with one item on each sticky, you have lots of flexibility&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;if we're all writing sticky notes during the retro, then we all get the same amount of time to give our feedback, and it doesn't matter if someone has better writing skills than someone else&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;you can do more things with sticky notes than just talk about them and dot vote them. there are a number of retro approaches that involve creative placement of the stickies: in different places on a picture that signify different areas (helps, hindrances, learned, appreciations, etc); or different places on a timeline that represents the sprint; and more I'm sure. Creative approaches help make retros more relaxed and playful, which helps with any difficult conversations that might ensue, and also put the team's brains into more creative spaces for problem solving.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2019-05-29T20:53:21.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26515" CreationDate="2019-05-30T04:20:26.443" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I frequently do not use sticky notes. I use whiteboards and electronic tools quite often. The retrospective is about the team members discussing how they worked in the sprint and identifying actions to take on together as a team to improve. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Email as a mode of communication is particularly poor for this sort of conversation because it is slow, lacks visual communication, and generally doesn't support the quick back and forth of a verbal conversation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I read further into your question, it sounds like the team isn't getting value out of the retro. There can be a lot of reasons for this. They could feel like it is old, they could not understand why they do it, they could feel disempowered from making a change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One option: you could do a retro about the retro. You could share the purpose of the meeting, maybe grab some excerpts from the scrum guide, books, or blogs, etc. Then ask them to identify things they'd like to try to make the retro a valuable use of their time and achieve those objectives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-05-30T04:20:26.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26515" CreationDate="2019-05-30T05:44:33.440" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If people want to prepare themselves before the retrospective is held, organize their thoughts, and think about the things that they want to bring up, that can be helpful for them and improve the quality of the input. If they want to share that with the retrospective facilitator, I appreciate that, as it gives me some idea on what to expect and better prepare myself. I don't act on it, just take notice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I ask them to still write sticky notes or mention the things from their email in the meeting. The facilitator is not a secretary, and I want to see them actively participate in the retrospective. You may need to inform them about this to set expectations right. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16919" LastActivityDate="2019-05-30T05:44:33.440" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2019-05-30T05:44:33.440" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9603" CreationDate="2019-05-30T12:44:52.407" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the following factors decides the stories to be included in each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product long term vision  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product owner prioritizes the user stories&#xA;in advance as per the requirement from the client. This decides the&#xA;list of stories to be considered in an order. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Development team estimate the user stories considering the development effort. Of course, the sprint velocity is already identified by the team. This helps to include the user stories in each sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, it is the combined decision of PO and development team decides the stories to be included in each sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33461" LastActivityDate="2019-05-30T12:44:52.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26523" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26524" CreationDate="2019-05-30T13:16:15.240" Score="1" ViewCount="1129" Body="&lt;p&gt;The primary duties of a product owner is to collect requirements from the client, manage the product backlog, writing and prioritizing the user stories and performing user acceptance testing. Considering this duties, the PO spend more time in requirement analysis and research about the new features. I feels difficult to measure the productivity of a PO in a daily basis. For example, the QA's daily work is counted as test cases and developer's work is counted as partially completed codes. But the work of PO is not counted on a daily basis. I mean that outcome is not available always.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my questions are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to measure the productivity of a product owner in the scrum&#xA;development framework? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to be more productive in product owner role?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33461" LastActivityDate="2019-05-30T13:57:44.573" Title="How to measure the productivity of a product owner in the scrum development framework?" Tags="&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26523" CreationDate="2019-05-30T13:42:15.073" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Measuring Individual Performance is an Agile Anti-Pattern&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your metrics are inherently not-Scrum. With agile frameworks in general, and Scrum in particular, you measure the success of the team as a whole. You don't measure individual performance, because that actively &lt;em&gt;prevents&lt;/em&gt; the level of collaboration and whole-team orientation that agile frameworks require. Don't do that!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What to Measure Instead&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of trying to measure individual performance, you want to measure team performance against self-defined Sprint Goals. In other words, when the Scrum Team defines a Sprint Goal each Sprint (which is &lt;em&gt;required&lt;/em&gt; by the framework), can the Scrum Team as whole meet that goal more often than not? Perfection isn't the objective, but a team that can't meet reasonable goals it sets for itself around 80% of the time has a process problem that merits close inspection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Scrum Team&lt;/em&gt; should be measuring its own efficiencies routinely, and especially during the Sprint Retrospectives. In general, teams should be measuring and improving their &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt;. That requires a certain amount of team and individual maturity, which is why Scrum is not a silver bullet for mediocre hires or poor team-formation choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find yourself in a situation where the organization needs to measure individual performance because the Scrum Team is not performing, and the organization is looking to affix blame:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Scrum Master must step up individual and team training.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Product Owner must include training and process-optimization work on the Product Backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Scrum Team must fully embrace agile practices that optimize flow and collaboration over individual success.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The senior management of the organization must take responsibility for their choices in hiring, budgeting, fiat schedule-setting, organizational processes, and other management choices that impact team and project performance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Senior management is &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; responsible for project outcomes. If they have failed to hire self-actualizing teams or failed to provide sufficient training and empowerment to properly adopt agile frameworks, then they have no one to blame but themselves for an underperforming agile implementation or a poorly-performing project. They can't wish this responsibility away, hand-wave it, or micromanage it out of existence. If they break the project, they get to keep both halves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Responsibility Checklists&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, with all that out of the way, the Product Owner still has some core responsibilities that are either done or not-done. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-po&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide provides a partial list&lt;/a&gt; that includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clearly expressing Product Backlog items;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ordering the items in the Product Backlog to best achieve goals and missions;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Optimizing the value of the work the Development Team performs;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensuring that the Product Backlog is visible, transparent, and clear to all, and shows what the Scrum Team will work on next; and,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensuring the Development Team understands items in the Product Backlog to the level needed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These aren't the sort of metrics that are useful for measuring individual performance in the usual command-and-control way, but they are certainly key dimensions on which a Product Owner's individual performance can be assessed within the structure of the Scrum Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the Scrum Team feel like Product Backlog Items are clear, and can be readily used for communication or Sprint Planning purposes? Do the stakeholders feel like the Product Backlog provides a roadmap that will deliver the value they're seeking? Does the organization feel like the Scrum Team is optimizing value through the potentially-shippable increments it's delivering? Does the Development Team feel like the Product Owner communicates effectively and remains accessible throughout the Sprint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are, for the most part, qualitative metrics rather than quantitative ones. Nevertheless, other than functioning &lt;strong&gt;as an integral part of the Scrum Team&lt;/strong&gt;, these are the sorts of things that can set a mediocre Product Owner apart from an exceptional one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, though, the assessment of a Product Owner comes down to how well that person fulfills the role and supports the Scrum Team. The &lt;em&gt;whole&lt;/em&gt; Scrum Team succeeds or fails as a unit. The Product Owner can't succeed while the Development Team fails, nor can the Development Team succeed without a successful Product Owner. They must support one another. They each have unique roles within the Scrum framework, but the Scrum Team can only be properly measured &lt;em&gt;as a single, unified team&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-05-30T13:57:44.573" LastActivityDate="2019-05-30T13:57:44.573" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25947" CreationDate="2019-05-30T13:44:54.100" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am very new to this and am currently studying DSDM Agile, I have researched on Scrum also. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By definition unless you are following the 8 principles of DSDM or the principles of Scrum you are not doing either, it would be by name only and that would in turn inherit its own floors. However there is nothing to suggest that you couldn't use parts or Scrum, Kanban or any other PM methodology as long as it is compatible within the structure of DSDM, as the opening statement in the book states that DSDM can be dovetailed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I am talking complete rubbish please let me know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36045" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-05-30T13:48:00.753" LastActivityDate="2019-05-30T13:48:00.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26526" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26538" CreationDate="2019-05-30T17:51:41.717" Score="1" ViewCount="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently submitted my project estimations for peer review and I have been advised that we need to estimate the business users' availabilities that will be required to complete each Sprint. I was also advised that we need to agree with the same stakeholders on their availability before commencing the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this mandatory? How can I estimate a client’s availability?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35979" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-05-31T15:55:28.087" LastActivityDate="2019-05-31T18:07:37.407" Title="Should we estimate business users' availability for an agile project?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;clients&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26527" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-05-30T18:21:29.333" Score="0" ViewCount="104" Body="&lt;p&gt;For some reason some of the epics are displayed as swimlanes on active Sprint view. Board filter, sorting config are fine.&#xA;Any ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36049" LastActivityDate="2019-05-30T22:36:04.117" Title="Some of the epics are shown on the active Sprint view, I'm not able to remove them" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;&lt;epics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26527" CreationDate="2019-05-30T22:36:04.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;JIRA has several options for how you display swimlanes, one of which uses epics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can change to a different type of swimlane if you want, or turn swimlanes off all together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The configuration for this is found under board settings. &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftwarecloud/configuring-swimlanes-764478010.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;More details here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-05-30T22:36:04.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26532" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26537" CreationDate="2019-05-31T04:53:04.120" Score="2" ViewCount="216" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am preparing a high-level project plan in mpp to see the top level view when the project will finish based on the resources availability and work estimation. &#xA;My requirement is as: I have an estimation of Task 1 for 365 days. Two resources are available from 3 June and three more would join in Oct. I have to see based on the work and resource availability when the project will finish. &#xA;I added 365 days in the work column, assigned 5 resources and adjust the start date of all 5 resources. But, the mpp has distributed the work evenly across all 5 resources so that first 2 resources would leave the project early and 3 resources joining in Oct work at later date. What I want is all 5 resources would finish the project at same date so it would give me project completion date.&#xA;Please suggest how to do? Any other method to do without mpp? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&#xA;Vibha&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36055" LastEditorUserId="36055" LastEditDate="2019-05-31T11:36:22.610" LastActivityDate="2019-05-31T16:12:15.113" Title="How to calculate project finish date with fixed work and different date of resource availability" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26532" CreationDate="2019-05-31T07:00:23.013" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is going to look like an ad so I understand if it's going to be removed by moderation but.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm using epicflow plugin for MS Project (also works with Jira and as a standalone tool) It lets me see how project will be affected over time if I add or remove resource, start sharing resources with other projects and etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a feature called &quot;what if analysis&quot; It creates a duplicate project environment where you can make any changes and move to any date in the future to see how your project will change (which deadlines will be missed due to resource overload, which projects will be affected, which resources will be under/overloaded in a week, month, year or whatever timeframe you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34150" LastActivityDate="2019-05-31T07:00:23.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5008" CreationDate="2019-05-31T14:13:28.053" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have a good question, and I think looking at the user story can help break down some parts of the problem. My initial reaction is, as a user you don't care about the status of the purchase order, that isn't important to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The user story can be much simplier and be &lt;code&gt;As a user you want to be able to use Mastercard to purchase an article&lt;/code&gt;. This implies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Given any number of a parallel processes, the article actually get's delivered. More specifically you can generate a number of user stories which are derived from this one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional user stories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a user successfully purchased articles are successfully delivery to me.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a user I want to be able to use the credit card of my choice (a solution should include all necessary credit cards)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a user when my card get's declined I want to know about it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your example there are these following ones, which need to be investigated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What was &lt;code&gt;While a customer places an order, their user session times out&lt;/code&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;should be: &lt;code&gt;As a user when I place my order, I expect not be charged twice nor get multiple orders without paying&lt;/code&gt;, and likewise, `I should be able to look up my order and understand the status.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What was &lt;code&gt;While a customer uses an ATM machine, the machine runs out of receipts and needs to warn the customer&lt;/code&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should be: &lt;code&gt;As a user when I ask for a receipt but there are none, I expect to emailed the receipt&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or an alternative &lt;code&gt;As a user I expect a transaction to be declined if there are no receipts available but I want one&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What was: &lt;code&gt;While a customer places an order, their credit card number doesn't exist&lt;/code&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should be &lt;code&gt;As a user, when I enter an invalid credit card (for whatever reason) I should be notified before the order is placed, so I can correct it&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or alternatively: &lt;code&gt;As the finance department when a invalid credit card is entered send an automated email to the user to indicate their order will be cancelled unless they fix the credit card number&lt;/code&gt;. Finance can be your user as well, not just your customer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What was &lt;code&gt;While a customer places an order, the PIN failed&lt;/code&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can be &lt;code&gt;As a user when I enter an invalid PIN, I should be alerted to enter a valid one&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And additionally &lt;code&gt;if this happens more than 3 times, I want my card to be destroyed in case of theft.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the specific advice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do you advice me to put in the backlog stories that covers these situations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create individual stories for each of these. The resulting system is a composite of all the user stories, you don't need in a user story to include &lt;code&gt;and also all other user stories&lt;/code&gt;, that is de facto true.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do you advice me to create stories that follow a &quot;Task Process Workflow Diagram&quot;? (this second question is different but related)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If this a question of the actual technology, it will be specific to what you have at your disposal, having an architecture diagram of all the processes in this space can be helpful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If this is a question about how to execute the tasks, I suggest the (A) write down the user story =&gt; (B) Validate the user story with multiple users =&gt; (C) create a working prototyping =&gt; (D) validate it works as expected =&gt; (E) include additional user stories =&gt; (F) Track the usage of the prototype to make sure it actually is solving a real problem =&gt; (G) Iterate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36043" LastActivityDate="2019-05-31T14:13:28.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26535" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-05-31T14:39:15.193" Score="1" ViewCount="57" Body="&lt;p&gt;A law firm's product is legal services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The IT for the law firm wants to purchase and deploy new laptops.&#xA;Current laptops are EOL. e.g. Slow, insecure, incompatible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this within realm of &quot;The Product&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consumer: (Law firm) lawyers  - The value would be increased productivity. Greater level of security.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Buyer: Law firm - This entity is paying for this upgrade.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Producer: (Law firm)  IT - Compliance, increased lawyer productivity, IT salary&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Product: Upgrade of laptop environment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34843" LastActivityDate="2019-06-03T17:10:34.947" Title="What is &quot;Product&quot; with regards to internal development and use" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;product&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2019-06-04T11:02:14.193" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26535" CreationDate="2019-05-31T15:01:37.623" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the perspective of the law firm, the IT department provides a service to them that enables them to provide their product / service. However, from the perspective of the IT department, their product / service is the tools and technology that enable the broader organization to function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, from the perspective of the IT department, the consumer is the other employees of the law firm. This could be broken down into several categories by department, role, or some other means. The buyer would be the IT department itself, since it probably has an allocated budget or needs to conform to some kind of rules. The producer is the IT department as it does the work of providing a product or service to customers. The product is the services itself, or in this case the specific tools and technologies provided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2019-05-31T15:01:37.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26532" CreationDate="2019-05-31T16:12:15.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;MSP's ability to allocate work among multiple resources is pretty limited, and the allocation doesn't account for the restricted availability you describe.  Nevertheless, the solution is easily found using a simple spreadsheet calculation.  Besides the 365-day (presumed) man-day work estimate, the key input is the number of workdays that resources r1 and r2 must work alone before the others arrive.  I've used 88 workdays (~4 months from early June to early October) in the example, and this leads to a total task duration of 125.8 workdays.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/noYn8.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/noYn8.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The duration can be confirmed in MSP by assigning the 5 resources to the Fixed-Units or Fixed-Work task at the pre-computed work allocation levels.  (Some assignment leveling would be needed to reflect the resource availability restrictions in the Usage tables, but this doesn't affect the task's duration.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2019-05-31T16:12:15.113" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26526" CreationDate="2019-05-31T16:50:29.303" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this mandatory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum terms, no, this is not mandatory. There is nothing in the Scrum guide that requires stakeholders to state their availability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is definitely &lt;em&gt;value&lt;/em&gt; in explaining to the stakeholders what their role will be and getting a commitment from them to support the Scrum team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can I estimate a client’s availability?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest the first thing to do is to sit with the stakeholders and explain how Scrum works. Take them through the role of the Product Owner, the sprint review, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure they understand that the effectiveness of the Scrum team will depend to some extent on the contribution that they are willing to provide. The more they can help, the better the product development will likely be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One approach that I have found helps is for the Scrum Master to pre-book the sprint review meetings many months in the future. This helps the stakeholders to ensure they are available. Also, discuss with them if particular days of the week or times of the day are better for them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-05-31T16:50:29.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26526" CreationDate="2019-05-31T18:07:37.407" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can add their availability in the Project Plan under Assumptions/Dependencies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Project Assumptions/Dependencies/Constraints&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The project schedule is dependent on the availability of {teams} teams.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Business User Availability - This project requires an estimated 2hrs/week from the business users involved in the current/next development sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, in the Project Schedule, you can put placeholders for regularly occurring meetings with the business users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Project Schedule&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[WBS-10] 2019-01-01 - 2HR - SPRINT1\Business User Review&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[WBS-20] 2019-02-01 - 2HR - SPRINT2\Business User Review&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[WBS-30] 2019-03-01 - 2HR - SPRINT3\Business User Review&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33522" LastActivityDate="2019-05-31T18:07:37.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26540" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-06-01T10:35:09.687" Score="3" ViewCount="158" Body="&lt;p&gt;How to manage development tasks and bugs/issues in a small fully-remote development team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've just hired two developers so I need to put a system in place for managing development tasks, reporting bugs and getting them fixed. Up to now it's just been me. We are a fully remote team.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's my first go at creating a simple solution (see diagram below):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two Kanban boards, Development/Features and Support/Bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The service desk will be used by our Customer Services team and the internal users to report issues/bugs to my development team.   They may also use this board to add feature ideas etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once on the service desk, any bugs can be moved to the backlog on the Support/Bugs Kanban board. All feature ideas are moved to the Features Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The app we are developing is used heavily within our company by most people.  There is also a client part that lets them login and do things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking I'll use JIRA (Jira software + Jira service desk) to set this up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a good solution? Is there a better way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some may argue that the bugs and features should be added to the same board, as after all, they are just another development problem to be solved with code.  This application runs in a highly regulated accredited laboratory environment.  Bugs have a special status and should be fixed asap.  I'd like a place to see any outstanding bugs and putting them with all the feature requests might make that harder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/G1pGS.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/G1pGS.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36066" LastActivityDate="2019-06-03T18:22:09.707" Title="How to manage development tasks and bugs/issues in a small fully-remote development team?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;kanban-board&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26540" CreationDate="2019-06-01T13:41:38.227" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apart from using two boards, your proposal will certainly work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having separate boards for bugs and new features is a very good way to ensure that either bugs get ignored or that new features get mis-labeled as bugs to get them implemented. You will find that in the day to day work, at least half the team will only look at one board. If you are unlucky enough to have plenty of bugs, that board will be looked at and new features will be forgotten. If you have only seldom bugs, then the bug board will be ignored as it usually won't have any work on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A better strategy is to use a single board with a properly prioritized backlog/To Do column. If bugs are more important than new features, then they should be placed on top of the backlog as soon as they are reported. That alone should already give you an insight in how much bug-related work there is. To support this, Jira has different kinds of tickets with different icons.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;For developers, they should just pick the top idem of the backlog when they need to pick up some new work. This can then be either a new feature or a bug.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One big advantage with a single board (and thus a single backlog) is that you can easily override the default that bugs have the highest priority and, for example, put a very important new feature above a very minor bug that there is a small typo in a screen (for example, that the login screen contains &quot;pasword&quot; instead of &quot;password&quot;). This will be much harder to realize with separate boards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2019-06-01T13:41:38.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26542" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26543" CreationDate="2019-06-01T13:50:07.747" Score="2" ViewCount="89" Body="&lt;p&gt;We're currently developing tests for a software product that is very liable to changes - the changes are introduced very often and therefore we have to modify our test very often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Commonly we are given an area, a part of the product function to test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is Scrum suitable for our case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35265" LastActivityDate="2019-06-06T14:47:13.807" Title="Using Scrum for test development for a constantly changing product" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;testing&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26542" CreationDate="2019-06-01T16:38:19.827" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically in Scrum we treat the development of software and the testing of that software as one activity, rather than separating them out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Scrum team consists of people that provide a capability for both development and testing. Work is taken on by the team based on their capability both to develop &lt;em&gt;and test&lt;/em&gt; it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the Scrum team works, they will create new tests and modify existing ones. The frequency with which they have to modify the tests will be determined by how much work the team is taking on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question, it is likely that Scrum will be suitable for your case. However, the way you have worded your question suggests that you might need to make some changes to the way your teams work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-06-01T16:38:19.827" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26540" CreationDate="2019-06-01T16:45:53.040" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some may argue that the bugs and features should be added to the same board&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be one of those that argue for one board! Having more than one board will bring problems of synchronisation, clarity and will make prioritisation more difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'd like a place to see any outstanding bugs and putting them with all the feature requests might make that harder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most tools, such as JIRA, allow you to filter your Kanban board to show one or more issue types. As such, you can add a simple 'only show bugs' button that would filter out feature requests and so make it simple to see a bug-only view when needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-06-01T16:45:53.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26545" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-06-02T16:16:03.373" Score="1" ViewCount="261" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to show user stories that have no tasks?&#xA;I need this stats to be shown in a report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36071" LastActivityDate="2019-06-03T13:05:41.947" Title="Jira how to show a report of user stories without tasks?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8739" CreationDate="2019-06-02T18:26:25.483" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As they say, every project is unique in its own way so I am not sure if Six Sigma or any other methodology can be used as-is without tailoring it to fit your project needs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence the alternative approach &amp;amp; Purely from Quality Management perspective could be assess following few points regarding the Quality requirements of your IT Project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;what are the Quality requirements of this IT Project? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Are these Quality requirements, if successfully delivered, will satisfy the needs of all the stakeholders (like legal, finance etc.) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Who all are involved in defining the Quality for this Project? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;How as a development team, these Quality requirements will be achieved &amp;amp; verified?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my view Answer to these above points will be very specific to your project &amp;amp; it's Quality requirement needs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on that Analysis - the best Quality planning/approach can be selected that satisfy the Quality requirements of the Specific IT Project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21918" LastActivityDate="2019-06-02T18:26:25.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26547" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-06-03T10:49:49.297" Score="3" ViewCount="1706" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the Scrum Master responsible for creating reporting on behalf of the development team to drive continuous improvement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I currently do this, and use that as a basis to improve processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other Scrum Masters however prefer to get the team to solutionize the problem at retrospectives and run work shops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the right approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20871" LastActivityDate="2019-06-05T05:20:58.183" Title="Scrum Master role: Reporting?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;process-improvement&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26547" CreationDate="2019-06-03T12:23:53.847" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would start by asking: What is the report and who is it for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no singular right answer - I don't think it's safe to say that &quot;the Scrum Master should create all reports on behalf of the development team&quot; or &quot;the Scrum Master should create no reports on behalf of the development team&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Scrum Team contains three roles - Product Owner, Development Team, and the Scrum Master who provides services to these other roles. The Scrum Team also exists in the context of an organization, and the Scrum Master also provides services to the organization. These services tend to include ensuring common understanding, teaching or building methods and practices, teaching agility (and the Scrum framework), facilitation of events, removal of impediments to success, and improving the productivity of the teams and organizations. Producing reports isn't one of the defined services, but assisting in or removing impediments to creating reports does fall squarely into the realm of the Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, depending on what the report is, the Scrum Master may be the best person to write it, based on their knowledge, experience, and insight. Generally, reports should be written by the person closest to the information and with the most knowledge. That may or may not be the Scrum Master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2019-06-03T12:23:53.847" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26547" CreationDate="2019-06-03T13:02:12.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the right approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think they are alternatives, they are logical, sequential steps of escalation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First the team should try to find a solution in a retrospective or workshop. If it's clear a solution cannot be found inside the team, it becomes an impediment. At that point, it needs to be reported higher up the chain and I think the Scrum Master is well suited to make sure the team speaks &quot;with one voice&quot;. The Scrum Master is also able to follow up without impeding the development work &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; able to ask for suggestions from the other team's Scrum Masters on how they solved that problem for their team in their own Guilds or Tribes or whatever you want to call it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it's not one or the other. It's &lt;strong&gt;both&lt;/strong&gt;. Team first, reporting up second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2019-06-03T13:02:12.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26545" CreationDate="2019-06-03T13:05:41.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using the JQL you can use the issueFunction not in hasSubtasks() combined with issuetype != Sub-task&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the query will look like something like the below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;projectname = [Name] AND (issueFunction not in hasSubtasks() AND issuetype != Sub-task)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3263" LastActivityDate="2019-06-03T13:05:41.947" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26551" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26588" CreationDate="2019-06-03T14:15:34.767" Score="2" ViewCount="1525" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Azure DevOps, under the Scrum template, is there a way to auto calculate the Backlog Item's &quot;Effort&quot; field based on the summation of its child Task items' &quot;Remaining Work&quot; field?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A new Backlog Item is created. The &quot;Effort&quot; field is left empty.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A new child task for the previous Backlog item is created, the &quot;Remaining Work&quot; field is set as 5.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &quot;Effort&quot; field of the Backlog Item created in step 1 is automatically updated to 5.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A new child task for the Backlog item defined in step 1 is created, with the &quot;Remaining Work&quot; field set as 3.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &quot;Effort&quot; field of the Backlog Item created in step 1 is automatically calculated to 8 (the sum of 5 and 3).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can this be achievable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is not possible, how do you guys manage the correlation between a backlog item's estimated effort and its children tasks' remaining work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36079" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-06-03T18:56:17.010" LastActivityDate="2019-06-09T20:35:22.423" Title="How can the Backlog Item's Effort field be auto calculated in Azure DevOps?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26547" CreationDate="2019-06-03T16:26:50.407" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is the Scrum Master responsible for creating reporting on behalf of the development team to drive continuous improvement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is nothing in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-sm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; that says the Scrum Master is responsible for reporting. Reporting isn't mentioned under any of the other roles either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would suggest that reporting (if required) is owned by the whole Scrum team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master as a member of the Scrum team may end up doing some reporting. However, it should be clear that this is not a responsibility of their role, just an agreement within the team as to who does the reporting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-06-03T16:26:50.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26535" CreationDate="2019-06-03T17:10:34.947" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Definitions Matter: Project Management vs. Business Products&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks like some of your confusion stems from terminology. What you seem to be doing is developing a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=%22use%20case%22&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;use case&lt;/a&gt; or business justification, rather than defining a project or product. From a project management perspective, a product is a deliverable or outcome generated by a project. In other words, a project &lt;em&gt;produces&lt;/em&gt; something; that's the product!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You appear to be conflating &quot;product&quot; &lt;em&gt;in the project management sense&lt;/em&gt; with the goods and services (confusingly &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; &quot;products&quot;) a company sells to its customers. A project (especially an internal one) need not be directly related to the products or services the enterprise provides its customer base. The product of a project can be tangential to the core business, although it should still theoretically add &lt;em&gt;value&lt;/em&gt; to the business or the organization in order to justify allocating resources towards it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Is Your Use Case for a Product or Service?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again looking at this from a project management perspective, a hardware purchase may be either a project or an aspect of service delivery. In IT service models like ITIL, a hardware refresh like this might be a cyclical part of the ongoing asset and configuration management process. The business might also consider consider hardware refreshes or capital acquisitions as part of a continuous lifecycle, and thus more of a process than a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, PMI &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pmi.org/about/learn-about-pmi/what-is-project-management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;defines a project&lt;/a&gt; as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A project is temporary in that it has a defined beginning and end in time, and therefore defined scope and resources...[a]nd a project is unique in that it is not a routine operation, but a specific set of operations designed to accomplish a singular goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A routine update of computer hardware is probably part of ongoing IT operations, while a large-scale capital acquisition and company-wide rollout could be considered a project. As a purely pragmatic matter, how it's categorized has more to do with how the &lt;em&gt;business&lt;/em&gt; chooses to structure the activity (and, by extension, how the activity is funded and performed) than anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the executive sponsor for the activity whether it should be structured as a project or as part of an ongoing service or business process. At your company, that's likely to be the only answer that actually matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-06-03T17:10:34.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26540" CreationDate="2019-06-03T18:22:09.707" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have lead a team through this transition.  This is an important problem to solve.  Since your team is still fairly small I would pick a tool that gives you the most flexibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were all colocated I would suggest a pencil and paper.  Since you are not colocated then Trello is the next best thing.  This will give you the ability to figure out and confirm your process before getting too deep in any given tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going from 1 to 2 is much harder than going from 2 to 6.  This is why you need to keep flexible and communication free flowing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1910" LastActivityDate="2019-06-03T18:22:09.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26555" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26558" CreationDate="2019-06-03T18:29:05.967" Score="2" ViewCount="174" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our team noticed during this Sprint that a user story is not plausible to do from a technical point of view. We approved this decision with our stakeholders and client and we want to mark this user story as &quot;will not be implemented&quot; or something similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find any official documentation on how to deal with these sort of user stories. Is there an official way to mark these user stories and are there some functionalities in the tool Jira for that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36080" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-06-03T18:47:30.973" LastActivityDate="2019-06-04T16:31:14.840" Title="Mark user stories as not possbile/plausible" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26555" CreationDate="2019-06-03T18:50:58.723" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no &quot;right&quot; answer to this. If you want to keep it for tracking purposes, you should be able to archive it as discussed in &lt;a href=&quot;https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-questions/Is-it-possible-to-archive-a-Jira-issue-not-delete-it/qaq-p/223179&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this Atlassian community post&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you don't specifically need to track it, you can just delete it (from a Scrum standpoint).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-06-03T18:50:58.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26555" CreationDate="2019-06-03T18:52:20.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I can't find any official documentation on how to deal with these sort of user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If by 'official' you mean &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;as described in the Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt;, then there is none. Scrum generally doesn't go into details on the how-tos, leaving it up to the Team to determine those for itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;are there some functionalities in the tool Jira for that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure. What my team does is just add (Rejected) to the start of the summary for the Issue and put it to Done. Since that's simple and good enough for what we need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more complex approach would be to add a workflow transition to Done that sets the resolution value to a certain value (e.g. &quot;Won't Do&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are various ways; you should find one that fits your Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2019-06-03T18:52:20.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26555" CreationDate="2019-06-03T19:48:05.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a formal Scrum perspective, the format and contents of a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#artifacts-productbacklog&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Product Backlog&lt;/a&gt; Item such as a user story is undefined. The Product Owner is solely accountable for its contents, and must ensure that &quot;the Product Backlog is visible, transparent, and clear to all.&quot; Scrum doesn't formally specify any other &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#artifacts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;artifacts&lt;/a&gt;, so creating a special status outside of the Product Backlog is going to be either idiosyncratic to your project or a known anti-pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than track this sort of dead weight, it's often better to communicate with stakeholders about the story. Either alternatives can be found, or the story is treated as an ephemeral artifact that will be removed from the project's collective consciousness, to be revisited in the future if needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agility is about collaboration and communication, not spelunking through long-buried artifacts. If you're creating an artifact just to archive it, don't. There are more agile approaches built around people and interactions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Perennial Low-Priority Stories: An Anti-Pattern&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within the Scrum framework, a Product Owner &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; keep &quot;won't do&quot; items forever at the bottom of the Product Backlog, but this is usually a bad idea that's covering for some other process problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, consider the &lt;em&gt;point&lt;/em&gt; of tracking won't-do items in the first place. Teams or stakeholders generally implement something like this either as an accountability artifact (e.g. &quot;Bob brought this up; we looked at it rather than ignoring Bob; it's not feasible.&quot;) that nobody ever dredges up unless people are pointing fingers, or as a (largely ineffective) mechanism to prevent duplicates entering the workflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a large or long-running project, the Product Backlog continuously grows and evolves. Over time, more and more won't-do items will get added to the tail of your Product Backlog, to be either totally ignored or as a growing form of technical debt that must be paid by constantly revisting old items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keeping won't-do stories on the Product Backlog also fails as a duplicate-prevention control, because free-form text comparisons are hard to automate, and user stories can vary just enough that two almost-identical stories are rarely exact duplicates. This also creates technical debt, because now the Product Owner has to compare each incoming story to some legacy story to see if it was already addressed. Even if this wasn't cumbersome, it's also pointless because the &lt;em&gt;business context&lt;/em&gt; around why a duplicate or similar story is being introduced now is more important than the fact that something was addressed at some point in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, the reasons something was impractical in the past may no longer be so. Keeping legacy decisions around serves very little purpose other than CYA. The real question for the Product Owner is whether the requirements have changed, and whether the team can provide a solution for the &lt;em&gt;current&lt;/em&gt; need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other related solutions simply create zombie stories or additional reports and artifacts that create very little value, but often involve additional process overhead. The basic advice here is &quot;just don't.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Solve for X with Communication and Collaboration&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reason people want to keep zombie or discarded stories around is because they have an X/Y problem. For whatever reason, communication or collaboration with stakeholders or customers is poor, and rather than fix the underlying process issue teams try to mask them through artifacts like rejected requirements. Don't do that either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Agile Manifesto's &lt;a href=&quot;https://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;four core values&lt;/a&gt; are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Individuals and interactions over processes and tools&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Working software over comprehensive documentation&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Customer collaboration over contract negotiation&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Responding to change over following a plan  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Zombie stories or rejected requirements don't really reflect &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; of the values on the left. There are more agile approaches to the need than keeping legacy artifacts around forever, creating drag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Find the X in an X/Y Problem&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, consider the need. If Bob in accounting keeps requesting Feature X, there's probably some business need or workflow issue that Bob thinks will be solved by implementing this feature. As long as this underlying need remains unfulfilled, this backlog item or ones just like it will keep cropping up &lt;em&gt;as they should!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than &quot;rejecting&quot; the story as infeasible, the Scrum Team should &lt;em&gt;collaborate&lt;/em&gt; with Bob to figure out the underlying problem that the feature is supposed to address. Maybe there's an alternative solution that the team &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; implement, or perhaps there's something that needs to change about the organizational process or workflow. In any case, rejecting a request or trying to block future requests of a certain type is the opposite of collaboration or embracing change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Involve Stakeholders; Don't Status Them&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, marking Product Backlog Items and keeping them around is a proxy (and a poor one at that) for effective communications. Rather than &lt;em&gt;talking&lt;/em&gt; to Bob, or collaborating on a solution, the Scrum Team is attempting to rebuff or block Bob in a non-personal way by labeling or categorizing the backlog item. This is a way of &lt;em&gt;limiting&lt;/em&gt; communication rather than opening up a dialogue, and is therefore non-agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bob deserves some direct feedback. This may be from the Product Owner or from the Development Team, depending on the disposition of the item, but in any case someone should &lt;em&gt;talk&lt;/em&gt; to Bob. Bob is an individual, and should be treated as such. If he's a stakeholder, then he's part of the reason the Scrum Team has formed, and should therefore have visibility into the team's capabilities, priorities, and resources. If nothing else, knowing that what he's asking for is infeasible and &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; could help Bob make better use of the product or find an alternative solution on his own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Embrace Change&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, zombie stories are an artifact that assumes the project or its business context will never change. Teams gain and lose capabilities, products evolve, and the business environment is rarely static. A story that was infeasible six months ago might be practical now. A story that was too resource-intensive before might have a new technical solution. Something that could be dismissed as impractical in the past might be sufficiently business-critical today that finding a solution or throwing more resources at the problem are essential to the business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By keeping the Scrum process free of legacy decisions, you free up the team to address backlog items within the &lt;em&gt;current&lt;/em&gt; context. Why does it matter if someone brought up this story last year? It's important now! Why does it matter if it couldn't be done before? It might be possible now! In all such cases, the important thing is to address the current need in the current context, and to prioritize it against current project resources. Anything else is not embracing change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-06-03T19:48:05.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26561" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26562" CreationDate="2019-06-04T14:30:09.547" Score="0" ViewCount="77" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am very new to MS Project and I am struggling to create a Look-Ahead formula for a flag field in a master project file (collection of sub projects). I can't seem to get even the simplest formula to work-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;IIf([Start]&gt;[Status Date],Yes,No)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything looks as if it is defaulting to &quot;No&quot; and I am so new to MSP that I don't know why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5Pkdp.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5Pkdp.png&quot; alt=&quot;Custom Flag Formula&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gnOfO.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gnOfO.png&quot; alt=&quot;Master Project&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm almost sure that I am misunderstanding something fundamental, I just need someone to point out where I am being a dunce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36097" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-06-04T14:39:55.057" LastActivityDate="2019-06-04T15:14:08.100" Title="How to Create a Custom &quot;Look Ahead&quot; Field Formula?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26561" CreationDate="2019-06-04T15:14:08.100" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming you have a linked project structure, then the sub-projects reside in separate files.  In that case you need to open each source file directly (not as a subproject) to modify and save the custom field formulas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2019-06-04T15:14:08.100" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26555" CreationDate="2019-06-04T16:31:14.840" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you resolve a story in JIRA you get to select the resolution from a list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;JIRA comes with a bunch of standard resolutions like: Done, Won't Do, Duplicate, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However you can also add custom resolutions, so you could add a resolution called &quot;Will not be implemented&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can add a custom resolution by going to JIRA settings -&gt; Issues. Under the ISSUE ATTRIBUTES, select Resolutions. Click add.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More details on adding a new resolution &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiracloud/configuring-statuses-resolutions-and-priorities-776636333.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-06-04T16:31:14.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26547" CreationDate="2019-06-05T05:20:58.183" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;1 of the 4 values of Agile is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Working Software Over Comprehensive Documentation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reporting of any kind - physical or electronic - is a form of project documentation. It was observed that enormous amounts of time were spent on documenting the product for development. The list of such documents for example Technical specifications, technical requirements, technical prospectus, interface design documents, test plans, documentation plans was extensive and was a cause for the long delays in development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence Agile Manifesto values documentation, but it values working software more. Agile does not eliminate documentation, but it streamlines it in a form that gives the developer what is needed to do the work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As stated by others there is nothing specified in scrum guide to clearly tell who is supposed to do project reporting &amp;amp; hence its very important to know the whole context behind the need of Reporting - following are some key questions to consider  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;what exactly are you reporting?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Who is asking for such reporting?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Are they not part of SCRUM team?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During any of your scrum retrospective meeting - you as a SM can bring this topic to brainstorm above points, uncover the need of such reporting, see if any gaps in team collaboration &amp;amp; communication etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then as a SCRUM team you should be able to define who is supposed to reporting if needed after retrospection. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21918" LastActivityDate="2019-06-05T05:20:58.183" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26569" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-06-05T10:55:52.900" Score="0" ViewCount="88" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to be able to fix the &lt;em&gt;time of day&lt;/em&gt; that a given task must start at and its duration without specifying the actual start date. In this scenario, the date would depend on the end time &amp;amp; date of previous tasks while the start time would be defined. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, task 2 is set up to have a Finish-Start dependency on task 1. Task 2 is assigned a start time of 13:00. If task 1 ends on July 5th at 20:00, then task 2 will start on July 6th at 13:00. If task 1 is changed so that it ends on July 5th at 10:45, then task 2 begins at 13:00 on July 5th. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for any input on this. Never needed to do this exact thing before, but assumed it was possible with minimal fuss. Maybe I was wrong? I'm using Project 2016.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Background:&#xA;I'm planning a rather complex 5 week trip with some long train journeys. These journeys are obviously at fixed start times and are long enough that they should properly be considered in the planning. I thought why not use MS Project to allow me to make changes to each task such as adding stops in a particular place, changing the duration of stops etc. When I make such changes (say to a task in the middle of the trip), I'd obviously like the subsequent tasks to be affected from the point of view of their start &amp;amp; end  times. In particular, I'd like to be sure I actually have time overall for all the stages planned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In principle one can just have dependencies from a given stage set to the completion of the previous one with a Finish-Start relationship. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This works for most things, but a problem arises when organizing things that must start at a particular time of day like train journeys. I don't want to fix the date &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; time of things like that as changes made to task durations before that date will not be properly reflected in the overall timeline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36104" LastActivityDate="2021-02-24T17:06:10.640" Title="Fix task time of day (Trip planning with MS Project)" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26570" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26579" CreationDate="2019-06-05T14:41:21.527" Score="2" ViewCount="243" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my company, we've just completed a large survey of features that we might want to add to our web application. Now we want to share this list with about a dozen (non-technical) product stakeholders (sales reps, customer support, etc) to get their input about priority. There are about 20 features under consideration. For now, let's suppose that all stakeholders are equally important, and we're not yet considering implementation difficulty. We just want to know what features are important to people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current best plan is to put the items in a shared spreadsheet and ask everyone to vote on what their preference would be. To make this manageable, we could have everyone:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Specify their top 5 (or N) desired features&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rank ALL features by priority, but with low granularity, like Low/Medium/High, and maybe you can only have a maximum of 5 &quot;High&quot; votes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone recommend a good way to do this, or suggest a better variant of the above?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36108" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-06-05T17:07:08.697" LastActivityDate="2019-06-07T20:54:32.973" Title="How to collect stakeholder feedback on prioritizing features?" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;&lt;feedback&gt;&lt;product-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26569" CreationDate="2019-06-05T15:47:54.707" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consider using Task Calendars to constrain the departure time for each train journey – according to the published timetables.  In the example figure below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Train 1-2 is a work-week daily service that departs City 1 each weekday (M-F) at 13:00.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Train 2-3 is a daily service that departs City 2 each day (M-S) at 23:00.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Train 3-4 is a weekly service that departs City 3 only at 08:00 on Wednesday mornings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For each journey, there is a 1-minute “Depart” task – e.g. climbing aboard and taking your seat – that is a successor to the local city tasks and predecessor to the long train ride.  This “Depart” task is assigned a Task Calendar that constrains it to occur only during one of the one-minute windows prior to each scheduled train departure.  If the predecessor tasks are delayed, then the journey will automatically be delayed to the next scheduled train, with cascading effects through the schedule.  (Be advised that using multiple calendars can complicate the calculation and interpretation of Slack and any other Duration-type variables, if that’s important to you.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XcLv4.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XcLv4.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2019-06-05T15:47:54.707" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26570" CreationDate="2019-06-06T09:35:17.683" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way would be to set up a quick &lt;em&gt;survey&lt;/em&gt; - there are sites that let you do this for next to nothing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rank each feature between 1 (must have) to 5 (hardly necessary).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or else &quot;Yes, Maybe and No&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Else you could send each a spreadsheet and use a clever macro to merge the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you'd get more accurate results if you ask them to choose their top 5 &quot;must&quot; have future features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For most accurate - and meaningful - results, add a field asking them to explain why each feature they choose is important. This prevents people from simply ranking them &lt;em&gt;to get you off their back&lt;/em&gt;, without even caring what they vote for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2019-06-06T09:35:17.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26542" CreationDate="2019-06-06T09:42:04.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;See the other answers for the value of Scrum in your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically regarding an often-changing product, I would encourage a quick daily stand-up meeting early on in the day with a basic Kanban board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way you can update everybody about recent changes and change the goals - and their corresponding sticky notes - very quickly and efficiently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best would be to take &quot;defunct&quot; notes and put them in their own - clearly marked - lane, all the way past the end, so that people can see they have been removed and not finished or fallen-off the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2019-06-06T09:42:04.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26542" CreationDate="2019-06-06T14:47:13.807" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is a framework for developing, delivering, and sustaining complex products, that evolve over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum makes clear the relative efficacy of your product management and work techniques so that you can continuously improve the product, the team, and the working environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32567" LastActivityDate="2019-06-06T14:47:13.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26570" CreationDate="2019-06-06T14:58:27.880" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would create a &lt;a href=&quot;http://listmoz.com/#yFvFf0C87W72rhBJrsw6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;drag and drop online list&lt;/a&gt; and I would share it with the stakeholders. In that way, you promote the discussion between them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The result will be an ordered and prioritized list that has the agreement of all the stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#artifacts-productbacklog&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Product Backlog&lt;/a&gt; is also an ordered list of everything that is known to be needed in the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This solution is visible, transparent, clear to all and at the same time you keep the coherence with the Scrum framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32567" LastActivityDate="2019-06-06T14:58:27.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26577" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-06-06T18:58:19.727" Score="0" ViewCount="109" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to know about tasks analysis and estimation methods that can be used in a Scrum process to make task estimations for a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deciding whether a story(task) is small or large requires some investigation of that story(task). And this investigation must be assigned to one team member - not to the whole team. Right? I need to organize the team's work so that they analyse the tasks (from a backlog) and provide an objective value of complexity for each task (kind of a story point) before starting a sprint. So that we can reliably estimate an amount of work we can plan for a sprint. Using the statistical method (the time spent during the previous sprint) just doesn't work good enough for us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35265" LastEditorUserId="35265" LastEditDate="2019-06-09T06:47:11.483" LastActivityDate="2019-06-09T06:47:11.483" Title="Scrum task estimation methodologies" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26577" CreationDate="2019-06-06T22:41:24.637" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile teams look at project work as an assignment to the collective team. &#xA;Rather than working in the units of time it will take to finish each piece of work, &#xA;they think about the amount of effort that will be required to complete the work, &#xA;and the complexity and amount of sustained concentration it will take to produce &#xA;it in a finished, tested, and workable form. For example, it may take an hour to &#xA;change a tire and also an hour to rewire the fuse box in your basement, but there &#xA;is a pronounced difference in the complexity and knowledge the person will need &#xA;to embrace in order to finish each task to a workable, usable, stopping place. The &#xA;sustained concentration and testing is much more difficult on rewiring the fuse &#xA;box than merely changing a tire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the team will be committing to complete this work as a single entity, it &#xA;makes sense that they should also be in charge of looking at the details of what &#xA;will be produced and figuring out a way to show a relationship between tasks in &#xA;terms of their difficulty. Then, a relative number, usually called story points, can &#xA;be assigned each task (a smaller portion of a user story) to allow the group to intel-&#xA;ligently assess how much they can do in the upcoming iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am actually reading about this topic from a book titled &lt;em&gt;Agile Practices for Waterfall Projects - Shifting Processes for Competitive Advantage&lt;/em&gt; Chapter 8 &lt;em&gt;How Do Agile Teams Estimate?   page 108-111&lt;/em&gt; specifically reviews a few estimating processes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fibonacci sequence &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Planning poker&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team estimation game &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;t-shirt sizes &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;dog estimates &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks like you can read the whole chapter through Google Books - best of luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33504" LastActivityDate="2019-06-06T22:41:24.637" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26570" CreationDate="2019-06-07T06:59:03.797" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From my experience, I recommend the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.innovationgames.com/buy-a-feature/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Buy a Feature&lt;/a&gt; game. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This works best if you can get all the stakeholders in the same room, so that your stakeholders have a chance to discuss their opinions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting a virtual &quot;price&quot; on features helps you to adjust the prioritization to the relative effort that it takes to implement a certain feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36124" LastActivityDate="2019-06-07T06:59:03.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26581" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-06-07T12:52:03.237" Score="2" ViewCount="73" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work on a construction project. I have a task that needs 1000h to be completed. Depending on the amount of manpower, the duration of the task will vary. &#xA;To complete the task I need scaffolding that is rented and paid for by day rate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I insert a scaffold resource (in my exercise it is a &quot;work&quot; resource) so it won't affect the duration of the task but still will show on the resource graph and cost report?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36126" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-07-17T13:03:24.683" LastActivityDate="2019-07-17T13:03:24.683" Title="Work resources that don't influence the duration of the task" Tags="&lt;ms-project-2013&gt;&lt;resources&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26582" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-06-07T15:27:52.323" Score="2" ViewCount="485" Body="&lt;p&gt;This was asked in an interview. I had one such experience in the past and at that time a single developer and PM initially conducted a pilot (manual + semi-automated) for a month/two to understand the requirements well. In other scenarios it might require the team to build an initial prototype/beta and then seek feedback from users before finalizing on the final requirements. Once you have the mvp requirements nailed out then it follows the regular process of finalizing the roadmap for the remaining 7 months or so with periodic checkpoints and finally a month for user acceptance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the interviewer did not look happy with that response. So, just checking with others if there is another method to handle such a requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only other thing I can think of is lean startup kind of methodology where I build iteration after iteration and move the product closer and closer to acceptance (as and when the requirements get clearer with every release). But that way I will never be sure if I can meet a fixed 9 month delivery schedule. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36130" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-06-07T16:09:30.037" LastActivityDate="2019-06-17T09:16:52.253" Title="How to handle a large and ambiguous requirement with a fixed timeline/deadline (9 months to deliver)" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;&lt;interview&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26582" CreationDate="2019-06-07T16:00:00.383" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm struggling to see a better approach than a standard agile backlog and fixed date/variable scope approach however as Todd points out this is difficult without knowing what the interview wants to hear. That's where the discussion comes in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, if I was asked that question I would discuss the how I would break down the requirements as far as possible and list them all in in order of priority, something cannot be worked on until it is properly understood (regardless of how important it is) and you can't start something and until all it's dependencies have been completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you get going I would explain how I could use the team's velocity to predict (avoiding detouring into planning poker and estimation of workloads to keep the answer on track) how much work which will be delivered by the fixed date and add confidence levels for over/under achievement. Periodically update this estimate as you get more data (and the client restructures the backlog) and make it very obvious which work I'd expect to be delivered and which won't make the cut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also stress the importance releasing little and often, not only for feedback but to make sure you're not doing a big bang release (I'm assuming you're talking about software here but it applies anyway). The risk of getting something wrong (like an environment not working or a customer not getting what they want) are vastly reduced by releasing as often as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11768" LastEditorUserId="11768" LastEditDate="2019-06-07T16:05:12.937" LastActivityDate="2019-06-07T16:05:12.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26582" CreationDate="2019-06-07T16:01:32.427" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question itself is unanswerable from a Q&amp;amp;A perspective because there's no canonical answer. We don't know what the interviewer wants to hear, and we can't guess at &quot;correct&quot; business decisions that really boil down to contractual issues between the company and their client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the question you posed is likely an &lt;a href=&quot;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66377/what-is-the-xy-problem&quot;&gt;X/Y problem&lt;/a&gt;. The underlying issue is buried in the question, where you say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But the interviewer did not look happy with that response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You and the interviewer were misaligned, and the solution to misalignment (in an interview or otherwise) is always &lt;em&gt;communication&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Ask, Don't Tell&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some things have yes/no, black/white, clear-cut answers. Some don't. Interviews, much like project management in general, are really about &lt;strong&gt;managing expectations&lt;/strong&gt;. In this case, the interviewer was probably looking for a specific &lt;em&gt;type&lt;/em&gt; of answer or a specific approach to problem-solving. It sounds like you didn't hit the mark on their unspoken expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what should you do when someone doesn't like the answer you provide? Start a conversation about it! Instead of leaving an unsatisfactory answer lying on the floor, you should pick it up, dust it off, and hold it up for collaborative inspection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Interviewer&lt;/strong&gt;: What would you do if the project parameters will lead to doom and gloom?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Job Seeker&lt;/strong&gt;: I would embiggen the widgets, maximize the floobits, and widen the therbligs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Interviewer&lt;/strong&gt;: I have a sad.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Job Seeker&lt;/strong&gt;: Well, there are certainly other ways to approach the problem. Do you want to hear some alternative ideas, or did you have a specific approach in mind that you'd like me to expand on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach embodies two of the four &lt;a href=&quot;https://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;agile values&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Individuals and interactions over processes and tools&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Customer collaboration over contract negotiation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agility is all about conversations and collaboration. Any interview for an agile role is likely exploring your capabilities in that regard, and you should be deploying those capabilities in the interview itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-06-07T16:01:32.427" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26582" CreationDate="2019-06-07T17:28:23.850" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;With a fixed deadline you have two elements of the development iron triangle left to play with: scope and resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A typical agile approach would be to (at least initially) fix the resources and start iterating. The idea would be to deliver as much value as possible against the list of requirements. The customer might not get everything they want, but they should at least get the &lt;em&gt;most valuable&lt;/em&gt; functionality by the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the customer required you to deliver &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the functionality by the deadline then the only thing you have left to play with is resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would make sense in this situation to start iterating immediately so that you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collapse as many unknowns as quickly as possible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get a feel for the velocity that you can achieve&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get feedback from the customer at the earliest opportunity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt; &#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hope is that by doing this you can get a better feel for if you have sufficient resources to complete all of the requirements by the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The usual caveats about adding resources late on in a project apply. You need to discover as quickly as possible if you need more resources, so that you have the chance to bring them onboard, get them up to speed and then evaluate their impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-06-07T17:28:23.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26570" CreationDate="2019-06-07T19:09:57.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest using the MoSCoW prioritization; e.g. ask them these questions for each feature:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would we have problems if this feature doesn't exist in the product? (y/n)&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yes: Can we have a workaround for the problem? (y/n)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No: How much relative value does it add? (1 to 10)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a single answer, YY is a must-have, YN is a should-have, and N is a could-have. For your case, with multiple votes, you can calculate an average and then map it to the values above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage of MoSCoW prioritization is that it's relatively objective, and based on something that makes sense in the product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19320" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-06-07T20:54:32.973" LastActivityDate="2019-06-07T20:54:32.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26570" CreationDate="2019-06-07T19:29:10.773" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;My approach would be to send the list first and get the ranking (1 to 10) order, sit and order the requirement based on the ranking and call for a meeting with all participants, discuss and go for a ranking negotiation that enhances the understanding of what customers really want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35979" LastActivityDate="2019-06-07T19:29:10.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26551" CreationDate="2019-06-08T00:43:30.663" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jira does do what you ask natively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can do what you want with a free plugin &lt;strong&gt;VSTS Rollup&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=canarysautomationspvtltd.vstsrollup&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=canarysautomationspvtltd.vstsrollup&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this is a disfunction in Scrum, your items are far too big.  &lt;strong&gt;You should not need to do this&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Jeff Sutherland's (co creator of Scrum) latest book on Scrum Patterns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No Sprint Backlog Item typically should be any larger than a single Development Team member can complete in a single work day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sprint items should be as small as possible, if you need to get a tool to sum work for you you are working on an item that is far too complicated and risks failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3336" LastEditorUserId="3336" LastEditDate="2019-06-09T20:35:22.423" LastActivityDate="2019-06-09T20:35:22.423" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26589" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-06-08T11:59:55.150" Score="2" ViewCount="134" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a company that wants to become more agile in the way they work, they brought in an agile coach. The coach is exploring what changes need to be made, makes suggestions and helps coach the company's employees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However there is a senior manager out of the two in the company's vertical, who is resisting to anything that he doesn't think will benefit from, or his department (product). He has been in the company for more than 10 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the coach may suggest to co-locate with the delivery guys, and he will say that he doesn't think this is crucial. Another example is he is resisting to extra training, stating that the product owners already had some general agile training and they should just be able to do their job. A third example is that he disagrees on running value stream mapping exercises with the whole team, because he doesn't think that spending &lt;em&gt;his&lt;/em&gt; team time is worth just for the sake of doing an exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the people around him deem that he is not supporting the change, yet he is the one, along with the senior manager of delivery, to have called for an agile coach to help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What suggestions would you make to support the rest of the department by engaging this senior manager more to buy into the change?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5522" LastActivityDate="2019-06-10T13:04:25.047" Title="Resistance to change from senior manager" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26590" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26600" CreationDate="2019-06-08T17:47:06.307" Score="1" ViewCount="131" Body="&lt;p&gt;I working for a high profile C-team member. He has a few success stories and big brands to his name. I have a lot of respect for this person. This person has recently come in and taken line management duties away from Scrum Masters/Project Managers and given them to senior developers. I'm not necessarily against the idea however the process in doing this may have changed the dynamics of the tech function in that the Project Manager (Scrum Masters) perceived to have been undermined (opinion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Project Manager, how do I deal with senior developers who think they know more and undervalue the PM function? (often going above my head)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30234" LastActivityDate="2019-06-10T15:41:22.773" Title="Project Management and People Management" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26590" CreationDate="2019-06-09T01:26:38.090" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's important to understand that power is derived from the PM's position in the organization and the PM's personality. Project leadership is a process by which a PM can direct, guide and influence the behavior of the team and participants towards accomplishing the project objectives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's best to develop a plan to enhance your power to influence the outcome of the project. In your new structure, you need to change your leadership style to more of a negotiation style of leadership with your functional managers, and more of a participative and collaborative style of leadership with the project team members. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33504" LastActivityDate="2019-06-09T01:26:38.090" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26589" CreationDate="2019-06-09T01:33:42.273" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two views that may be helpful here. The first is that it is much easier to create change in a place where it is wanted than to try to force it. When I coach I rarely try to coach a team who isn't ready for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, let's say you don't have a choice. There are a number of models for resistance to change you can look at. I personally like Dannemiller's formula because it is simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;D x V x F &gt; R&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, the dissatisfaction with the status quo, vision for the future, and concrete first steps together must be greater than a person's resistance in order for change to happen. In the manager's case, you can ask &quot;Is he dissatisfied with the current situation? Has someone conveyed an enticing vision for what his team can become? Are there clear first steps to reach that vision?&quot;. One of the things I like in that formula is that it is multiplication. Anything times zero is zero, so if one of those is missing, the left side will never overcome even basic resistance to change and the change won't happen. If you do have all three, then it is a question of magnitude on each side of the equation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-06-09T01:33:42.273" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26589" CreationDate="2019-06-09T16:50:39.173" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The formation of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_of_practice&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;communities of practice&lt;/a&gt; can help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When communities of developers, testers, etc. speak with one voice in favour of agile change it can influence the opinions of managers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would also be worth investigating what the motivation is for the resistant manager's behaviour. If you can determine that then it may make it easier to mitigate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-06-09T16:50:39.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26596" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-06-10T12:41:32.890" Score="8" ViewCount="2235" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are working on a technology of which the team is not sure how would it go. I would like to estimate and timebox this story. However, the scrum team has to have goal or a shippable product at the end of this story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35025" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2020-08-27T09:29:41.160" LastActivityDate="2020-08-27T22:54:02.960" Title="How can you estimate a spike story?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;sprint-planning&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26589" CreationDate="2019-06-10T13:04:25.047" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most effective way may be by waiting for other managers' teams to go through the process, and then show him - through example - the benefits, rather than try and persuade him upfront.  If it can be shown that other teams are now performing better, this will be a good persuader. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30594" LastActivityDate="2019-06-10T13:04:25.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26596" CreationDate="2019-06-10T13:10:01.563" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two things jump out at me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the end result of a Spike is not a shippable product. Spikes are used to learn, and do research. The end result is an answer to a question or finding some information or gaining knowledge in a given area. That doesn't mean that there's not an output associated with a Spike, but it's almost certainly not a shippable product. It also doesn't mean that an iteration that contains a Spike can't also result in a shippable increment that results from other work done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, you shouldn't estimate Spikes. I consider a Spike to be a well-bounded form of backlog refinement activities. One of the end result should be better defined work items in the team's backlog. If you're using Scrum, it is suggested that the team would spend about 10% of its capacity on refinement activities, but this is not a maximum - it can be much more, if necessary. Other frameworks may offer different guidance. The work done to a Spike would fall into the backlog refinement activities, which would be capped at the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: don't estimate Spikes, but do consider the total team effort to perform refinement activities when planning your iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2019-06-10T13:10:01.563" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26596" CreationDate="2019-06-10T14:07:22.583" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not every story in a sprint needs to result in a (potentially) shippable product. But as a sprint typically contains multiple stories, it should still be possible to have a (potentially) shippable product at the end of the sprint without having one after each story is completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The objective of a spike is to gain knowledge that can be used later when working on stories in that area. As such a spike doesn't directly contribute to a shippable product, but gaining knowledge in a particular area can even be a valid sprint goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for estimating a spike, the team will most likely push back if you ask them how much effort it will be to do the investigation, especially as it will most likely be uncharted territory for the team. But what you can do as an estimation is establish how much time you all are prepared to invest in the investigation. That should give you some insight in the team capacity that goes into the research and how much capacity is left for the other work you want to plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2019-06-10T14:07:22.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26590" CreationDate="2019-06-10T15:41:22.773" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Neither Project Manager nor Scrum Master is normally a line-manager function. I don't know who came up with the idea of doing that in the first place, but it seems that mistake has been corrected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as you are no longer the boss by hierarchy, you need to ask and answer yourself the following question: how does the team profit from my work. How does my work improve the result of our work as a whole. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can answer that question and make the rest of the team see that truth, you will have their respect. And their respect is all you need to be a good project manager or Scrum Master. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an ideal world you already have that, but I will take a guess and say the fact that you were boss meant that you decided things based on &quot;I'm boss, we do it my way&quot;. That time is gone. You will need to prove your worth to the project just as anybody else on the team now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a developer let me say this: a good PM is worth it's weight in gold and I don't envy them for their jobs, even if better paid. I don't want to do that job and I'm happy as pie if someone does it very well. If that person has a bigger car or house or bank account... god bless, they earned it. &lt;strong&gt;However&lt;/strong&gt;, mediocre PMs are a drag on a project and something that can seriously hinder a projects success. As I said I hate that job, but I will do it if I see that the actual PM is a dud and I could do his job better in half the time. So what you need to do is make sure you are in the first category. Do a good job. Developers will love you for it. If they don't... think about the question of what you bring to the table. How would &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; life be harder or more inconvenient if you were not there. If their life is not better when you work, then something is wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2019-06-10T15:41:22.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26596" CreationDate="2019-06-10T17:01:35.690" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/spikes&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Spikes&lt;/a&gt; are typically time-boxed, so it is usually easy to work out the impact they will have on a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you might time-box a spike on a new technology to be one developer for one day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea with a spike is to do &lt;em&gt;just enough&lt;/em&gt; investigation so that the team is then able to estimate the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If at the end of the spike the team still does not feel confident enough to estimate then you could potentially do a further spike or alternatively try and break the work down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-06-10T17:01:35.690" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26602" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-06-10T19:54:27.200" Score="3" ViewCount="97" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Current Situation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Small team of 4 developers and 2.2 QAs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to implement work in progress (WIP) limits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are currently many (37) Stories waiting for QA (also 22 currently being QA'd, but that's a separate issue).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of these Stories, some of them are an entirely new application that isn't yet live. Most/all (I haven't checked) have been merged to develop branches but are alone so could always just delete develop and remake it from master. It's possible (though somewhat unlikely) some of them are merged into develop with other work, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Problem&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, as per my understanding, as per how WIP limits should work, the team should be focusing on reducing those 'waiting for QA' Stories instead of heaping more Stories into the 'Waiting for QA' by developing more stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problem is, until now, the team has been working on things without much regard to priorities. So many (~2/3) of the Stories waiting to be QA'd are much lower priority than things that are waiting to be developed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So... what should be done? I can see these possibilities, but have no idea what is the best approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ignore the low-priority Stories (and, consequently, reasonable WIP limits) until sometime in the future when they can be addressed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create some other field or column to hide the work until such time as it's relevant.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Throw away the work and move the Stories back to Ready to Develop.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ignore priorities and get the work under WIP limits as soon as possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some solution I've missed...?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-06-11T13:06:29.227" LastActivityDate="2019-06-11T13:06:29.227" Title="WIP Limits broken by low-priority Stories - What to do?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;&lt;work-in-progress&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26602" CreationDate="2019-06-11T09:06:14.737" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found that temporary fixes (like ignoring low-priority stories) often end up being long-lived.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Better to get your board to a good place first, then work to optimise the WIP limits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The downside of this is that some high priority stories will be delayed, but the benefits include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fewer items on the board, so it is easier to see what is going on&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is easier to predict cycle times for stories as there is less clutter and no parked/hidden stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team starts to think in a disciplined way, rather than being reactive in the short-term&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my suggestion would be to first clear as many stories through QA as possible. The developers could spend their time assisting with QA, tackling technical debt, writing automation tests, etc. This will reduce the inflow of new stories to QA while the backlog gets cleared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the backlog has been cleared, settle on a relatively low WIP limit. Try that for a while and see how overall throughput looks. If necessary, tweak the WIP limit up, but always keep an eye on the impact on overall throughput.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-06-11T09:06:14.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26604" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-06-11T14:33:58.953" Score="0" ViewCount="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;If yes, I want to make sure consistency is maintained in both the applications. Also, let me know if I can use labels or components. I also have a team which create web services for these projects which are common for both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35025" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-06-11T14:44:10.777" LastActivityDate="2019-06-12T12:38:57.640" Title="I have an mobile app as a product. Do I create 2 projects in JIRA for iOS and Android?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26605" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26620" CreationDate="2019-06-11T15:48:40.833" Score="0" ViewCount="177" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am looking to get certified in project management , however in my 20 year job history I have never held a &quot;Manager&quot; title.  I have served in an &quot;software developer&quot; , &quot;system analyst&quot; and &quot;application architect&quot; role , but never a &quot;manager&quot; . Is this a show stopper for PMP ?  Per PMP requirement one has to have previous project management experience to qualify.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have led projects ( more of a scrum master role) before.  How do I know if this qualifies for PMP certification?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36165" LastActivityDate="2020-10-09T14:12:59.603" Title="PMP certification without having served in a management position" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26604" CreationDate="2019-06-11T16:10:34.823" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are looking for a consistent feature set across both, it feels like you would get more value out of treating them as the same backlog. I would consider actually going a set further and making &quot; works on Android and iOS&quot; part of the definition of done so that a story like As a user, I would like to see a record of past actions&quot; would only be done when it worked on both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-06-11T16:10:34.823" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26605" CreationDate="2019-06-11T17:16:33.553" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can find the PMP criteria on PMI's website.  The criterion you seem to be struggling with is the experience one, in which PMI requires either 7,500 or 4,500 of hours (depending on your college degree situation) &quot;leading and directing&quot; projects.  That criterion does not use the word &quot;manage&quot; or any of its derivatives nor do any of the criteria require a &quot;management&quot; title of any sort.  None of the criteria speaks to any title whatsoever.  So based on the published criteria, a lack of management title should not filter you out.  But as Sarov suggested above, you should not rely on us or this site to indicate whether your application would be accepted.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2019-06-11T17:16:33.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26608" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26613" CreationDate="2019-06-11T18:39:16.530" Score="0" ViewCount="65" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm attempting to build a schedule and use MS Project to calculate dates and flow, based on constraints and task linking, but am unable to overcome an apparent issue with how the 'Late Start' is calculated for sub-tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Minimalist Example:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/40l3c.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/40l3c.png&quot; alt=&quot;Working Late Starts&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a simple schedule with two tasks, and a completion milestone, with a simple linear dependency structure, and a 'Start No Later Than' constraint on the final milestone.  The 'Task Group' is a placeholder in this scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 'Late Start' dates calculated by Project here are working as desired and expected, moving back appropriately from the 'No Later Than' date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I move 'Task 2' to be a subtask:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vE60p.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vE60p.png&quot; alt=&quot;SubTask with Wrong Late Start Date&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the 'Late Start' for tasks 1 and 2 are not what would be expected based on the task hierarchy and durations associated with the tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone help me to understand how I can create a set of grouped tasks that will set the 'Late Start' date appropriately, per the scenario above?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36168" LastActivityDate="2019-06-12T21:12:27.670" Title="MS Project: Sub-tasks causing unexpected 'Late Start'" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;schedule&gt;&lt;constraints&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24231" CreationDate="2019-06-11T21:05:32.603" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are  couple of docs I'd recommend you read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/boards/work-items/guidance/agile-process&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/boards/work-items/guidance/agile-process&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/boards/work-items/about-work-items&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/boards/work-items/about-work-items&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/boards/backlogs/set-up-your-backlog&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/boards/backlogs/set-up-your-backlog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answers to most of your questions. The basic answer is: This is a different tool and it has its own quirks. I've never been able to fully appreciate Jira, probably cause I've lived with the quirks of TFS/Azure DevOps since 2005 and have gotten used to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I see Features and Stories have separate backlogs.... why? Is there a    way to see them together? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can turn on &quot;see hierarchy&quot; to see them as a tree view. The reasoning behind seeing them &quot;at their own level&quot;, is to allow people to focus on &lt;em&gt;that level of detail&lt;/em&gt;. You're making major ordering decisions at the Epic level, why would you rank an Epic with a Story, for example. It focuses the discussions. There is a Mapping View to easily map Stories to Features and Features to Epics. Once an Epic is broken into one or more features, the some features of one epic may be above some features of another epic. The tree view can't visualize this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I can see how I would use Iterations similarly to how I am using Releases in JIRA. But why do iterations have a backlog? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Iterations are time based buckets. Best compared to Sprints. In Jira you have a similar feature. You can group multiple sprint iterations together in a parent iteration (release), but that tends to only work if you're doing pure release based delivery. And tends to get in the way of how most teams actually work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I figured out how to rename board columns on Features/Stories, but how do I rename the columns on the Iterations boards? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the 'Work Items' just a flat list of tasks? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Work Items hub is a free format query hub where you can query any kind of work item as a list, tree or over a relation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why do I need to go into Backlogs to a see the Current iteration? I have to explain to the Team that to see the board, they have to go under Work -&gt; Backlogs -&gt; Click the current Iteration -&gt; Click Board? That is not going to go over well. Is there a quick way to get to the board for the current iteration? 99% of the team will only ever need that. It seems that Work -&gt; Backlogs defaults to the board view of the current iteration. The the main issue is the odd naming, telling them to Backlogs to see their 'Current' tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This grew from how the product was setup ever since 2005 and has had a couple of changes over the years. I've always wondered why Jira was such a mess in its navigation. I suppose it just takes time to get used to it. You can create a Dashboard with the links to the locations you want people to easily get to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I want to simplify things and Make Epics and Issues go away, can I do that? I foresee wasted time on people debating the difference between an epic and feature, and issue and bug, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can disable the higher levels in the Process configuration or you can hide them in the Team's configuration of their board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a way to get rid of the Capacity tab?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can I rename priorities low/normal/high? I don't want debates of when 1 is     a higher priority than 4. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can change the contents of some of the pick lists in the Process configuration at the account level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In some of the forms certain letters of words are underlined, such as the 'e' in State, and 'A' in Area, and 'r' in Iteration. What is the point of that? I can't find mention of it in shortcuts help. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the &lt;kbd&gt;alt&lt;/kbd&gt;+&lt;kbd&gt;letter&lt;/kbd&gt; shortcuts to move the cursor directly to that field.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you log work against task? Or do the Effort (hours) have to be manually recorded? (we rarely use this features, so not a big deal)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Manually recorded. The general recommendation is to not track actual hours in Azure DevOps, but capture that in another tool. There are 3rd party extensions that offer better time tracking features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most Agile development frameworks/methods frown on detailed hour tracking anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are areas equivalent to components in JIRA? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could be. Area is a way to break down the project. You could put components in there, or teams, or workstreams or whatever. Just remember that areas in Azure DevOps define how work is allocated to teams. If you have multiple teams, you assign one or more areas to each team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do I complete an iteration? Start another?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just set the end-date. When you pass the end-date, the iteration stops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you mark a task as Resolved? It only lets me set it to New/Active/Closed? What is the diff between resolved and closed?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tasks have a very simple state model. Story/Bug has a more complex state model. A story can be Resolved, meaning the work is done, but the change hasn't been accepted yet. Once whoever does the acceptance is happy, they move the item to closed. &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/boards/work-items/workflow-and-state-categories?view=azure-devops&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;State model is explained in the docs&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7393" LastActivityDate="2019-06-11T21:05:32.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26604" CreationDate="2019-06-12T12:38:57.640" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both may be viable options. My rule of thumb is that each deliverable product should be its own project in Jira, which enables more effective use of the built-in functionality around components, releases, and versioning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are building the applications independently, using native programming languages, then two projects is definitely the way to go. If you've got two separate code bases that leverage native technologies, you may end up able to support different functionality in each application. You may also have more freedom to follow device-specific user interface guidelines, which would require different UI mockups to be attached to guide developers. And since you have separate code bases, you may have bugs in one product or another, and these bugs may drive patch releases (new versions) of the app for one device, but not the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are using a framework that enables you to target multiple platforms with one codebase, then perhaps it's OK to consider one project. If you decide, in the future, to spin off and go native, then you can follow the suggestions above and have one Jira project for each deliverable entity. You may continue to maintain your existing framework-based app for a while, while managing two additional native projects, until their hit a state where they can take over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases, I would use a separate project for your web services. If you have a requirement or bug that depends on changes to the web service, Jira allows you to link the issues and identify that one issue depends on another. Various plugins can also add functionality to these links, to let teams know when a dependency has been resolved, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2019-06-12T12:38:57.640" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26612" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-06-12T20:39:53.577" Score="2" ViewCount="181" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our software department consists of a single-product team of three developers and two higher-ups with domain knowledge whose roles on our team are similar to that of a product owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have organized our backlog into a single Trello board with four columns: Unreviewed, Wishlist, Future, and Soon. New items that come in through our help desk are added to Unreviewed so they can be reviewed, estimated, and sorted into one of the other three columns during our weekly meeting. When we create a new sprint, we populate it with items from the Soon column based on priority and scope of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, we've been creating a new board for each new sprint, with the board being named something like &quot;Sprint 6/6/19 – 6/12/19&quot;. This makes it easy to see just what's in the sprint and see what everyone's working on, but it also makes it hard to do reporting from a central place. There's also a tendency for long-lived items that take weeks to get through to keep getting kicked to the next sprint once that sprint is complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these just innate characteristics of multi-board projects, or is there a better way to organize things?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35003" LastActivityDate="2019-06-14T14:58:36.843" Title="Is it more effective to create a Trello board for each new sprint or have one long-lived sprint board?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;&lt;trello&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26608" CreationDate="2019-06-12T21:12:27.670" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The general rule is that the late date of a task is the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;earliest&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Its successor late dates, adjusted for lag, calendars, and&lt;br&gt;&#xA;duration;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Its Deadline, adjusted for calendars and duration;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Its SNLT/FNLT/MSO/MFO Constraint dates, adjusted for calendars and&lt;br&gt;&#xA;duration;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The task’s early dates, if it has no successors and&#xA;“calculate multiple critical paths” is checked;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Project’s early finish date.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an exception, top-level tasks (with no outline parent) ignore this last condition.  While some advanced users might find the exception useful for tracking terminal float in a contract, I think it’s useless.  In any case, the exception is confusing, leading to your misplaced expectations in the Minimalist example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In MSP, there is no way to force a group of (subtask) milestones to recognize a late date that is later than the early finish date of the Project.  You might consider the common method of adding a “target” milestone as an immediate successor to each of yours, then applying concurrent SNET constraints AND Deadlines to the new “target” milestones.  That delays the Project’s early finish date enough to remove it from the late date calculations for your grouped tasks/milestones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2019-06-12T21:12:27.670" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26614" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-06-13T01:03:03.317" Score="0" ViewCount="73" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm using MS Project 2013 Professional&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Details View using Task Form, displaying Predecessor view, it is sorting alphabetically by Task Name when I would rather see it sorted by Task ID.  I do not even see the task ID, only the task name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q:  How can I change it to display and sort by Task ID, then show the task name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36180" LastActivityDate="2021-03-04T17:02:40.270" Title="Display in the Details View --&gt; Task Form: Sorting Predecessors by Task ID, not alphabetically" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26615" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26961" CreationDate="2019-06-13T08:00:13.413" Score="4" ViewCount="394" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even for smaller projects, some &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/24982/why-does-prince2-specify-that-the-project-manager-and-executive-roles-cannot-be&quot;&gt;PRINCE2 roles should not be combined&lt;/a&gt;. Does anyone know if this is also the case with the roles of &lt;a href=&quot;http://prince2.wikidot.com/executive&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Executive&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://prince2.wiki/Project_Assurance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Project Assurance&lt;/a&gt;? First of all I'm wondering how this would inlfuence the dynamic with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://prince2.wiki/Project_Manager&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Project Manager&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36185" LastActivityDate="2019-08-07T23:03:46.127" Title="Prince2: Can the Executive have the role as Project Assurance?" Tags="&lt;prince2&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26616" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-06-13T08:45:46.133" Score="2" ViewCount="620" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a software development company, where we use something which resembles scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have sprints of 4 weeks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have 6 sprints / release&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We plan a development per sprint, with an estimate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have a debug factor, this is the time per sprint allocated for debugging (varies per developer)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have maximum levels for our bugs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We run into the issue that when we are working on our developments, and the bugs start coming, we need to drop our development work and focus on debugging. When the maximum levels are reached, we don't release our software anymore and we need to first fix bugs before we make new builds for our customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This all seems perfectly reasonable, since we only release every half year and we have customers waiting for the bugs to be fixed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this creates the situation where we sometimes don't find the time to work on our developments, because we have to keep debugging for weeks sometimes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can we plan correctly for bugs?&#xA;A couple of things I thought about, but I'm curious what your opinion is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plan bugs as regular developments, with an estimate. Don't give them priority&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a developer spends it's debugging budget for a sprint, don't debug anymore that sprint and continue work on the development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other options?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31119" LastActivityDate="2019-06-23T18:42:36.230" Title="How to plan for bugs, looking for advice" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26616" CreationDate="2019-06-13T10:28:09.960" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several ways that you can deal with bugs. But regardless of your bug policy, there is one thing that you really should do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your developers are spending a significant amount of their time on fixing bugs, you should give it a high priority to find out where those bugs are coming from and what can be done (on a technical level or on a process level) to prevent those kinds of bugs in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if your customers only see the new features when you release them and then complain that those features don't work how they expected it, then you should look at ways that you can involve those customers earlier in the validation of the new features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for bug policies, the two major ones that I know of are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Zero bugs&quot;: Any bug is one too many and it should be solved with priority over picking up new development. This requires that you have a robust classification process to avoid that changes to correctly working functionality are classified as bugs. If there are many bugs reported, then this can mean that no new development is done for a significant time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Prioritize bugs along with new development: For each work item the priority in relation to the other work is determined, regardless of if the work item is a bug or new development. During planning, the top N items are taken into the sprint, where N depends on the capacity of the team. At least for planning purposes, it is useful to have an indication how much effort would go into solving each bug.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I like the second approach, because it gives the Product Owner the possibility to decide on a case-by-case basis if that highly demanded new feature is more important than fixing that bug that hardly anyone notices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2019-06-13T10:28:09.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26614" CreationDate="2019-06-13T13:17:36.647" Score="0" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sorry, there's no way to modify the predecessors presentation in the standard MSP user interface (e.g. task form, task details form, task information dialog.)  Predecessors are typically sorted in the order that they have been added to the task, not alphabetically.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you can't see the ID in these forms, then the forms may be corrupted.  You might need to repair the installation or restore the global.mpt file.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some add-ins provide forms with more control; they are not free.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2019-06-13T13:17:36.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26605" CreationDate="2019-06-13T15:14:29.813" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What does not matter:&#xA;- Your job title;&#xA;- Whether you managed a project end-to-end;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does matter:&#xA;- You had a leading/directing role;&#xA;- You have experience with all five main process groups (being Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring &amp;amp; Controlling and Closing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please find more explanation in the PMP Handbook on the PMI site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36124" LastActivityDate="2019-06-13T15:14:29.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26621" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26631" CreationDate="2019-06-13T15:58:30.360" Score="1" ViewCount="148" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have previously &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/24475/software-dev-team-managing-task-across-multiple-projects-in-a-manufacturing-pla&quot;&gt;asked a question on PM&lt;/a&gt;, which was not well focused, but I still received some useful tips. I do plan on putting some of the notions in front of my manager, but I would like to re-approach our issues here to see if I can't get any more insight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work for a mid-sized American company (300ish) on a very small, not officially/organizationally recognized development team (3). Only one of us has a degree in CS (and it isn't me). Our manager is an manufacturing engineer and has negligible experience programming, designing software, or managing a development team (except for the past two years of our 'covert developing'). On top of this, our developer with a CS degree tends to work on projects solo, separate from the other two of us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have an &lt;em&gt;insane&lt;/em&gt; amount of projects our manager is looking to achieve. Essentially he is hoping to digitize most of our Quality &amp;amp; Inspection processes &amp;amp; paperwork, all the way to semi-automating our PPAP/PFMEA documentation. Frankly it is all way more than is chew-able by such a small, inexperienced team (in any sort of respectable time frame), in my opinion, but I admittedly tend to have a 'glass half-empty' attitude. So far our extended time frame hasn't been an serious issue to our company's President. Half of the projects are very large... our current project has more or less taken up about 70% of overall work-time for two of our developers, and has taken 2 years to develop, and still going (we had to restart the architecture and include unit-tests because we didn't know what we were doing when we started).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, our manager (who, to his credit spends a lot of time reading on relevant subject matter to try and understand our position as developers better) wants to try and work under a Scrum framework. I have taken on the role of Scrum-Master, our manager as Product-Owner, and of course the other two developers are... developers. Other mgmt. and our President would be the 'shareholders'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My main issues that I am struggling with, and unsure how to approach are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Our 1 'team' actually consists of two separate development teams&#xA;working on unrelated projects (mentioned in second paragraph) and either team can, currently, get our priorities changed independent of the other team's priorities as well. This seems like it should be 2 separate scrum teams but our manager/PO does not have the time for that, and I don't think I have the mental energy for it, currently. Also, how are we supposed to be accountable as a team for separately developed projects?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Projects are all essentially interwoven into the same 'suite' and our&#xA;projects kind of have blurred borders/edges.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even if we break projects into hard-defined boundaries... the&#xA;projects are still quite large and our product backlog could be too&#xA;much to navigate if it is fully populated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fully and accurately populating the product backlog seems daunting, as&#xA;often times 'case-scenarios' are often overlooked by shareholders in&#xA;favor of 'the ideal interaction' or they state outcome but struggle&#xA;to define how to get that outcome even on paper. Sometimes processes get such a vague description such as : &quot;The quality tech would look up the relevant specification and make sure the document conforms&quot;... which you can't turn into programmable logic on its own, we aren't making magical PDF parsers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More on the previous point: Getting vague, generalized process outcomes from shareholders has required us to go and talk to individual employees that actually do the paperwork, often times the nuances in their process will slightly deviate the generalized mind's-eye picture of the shareholders, which then often triggers long, grueling conversations where we as the developers are just trying to get the shareholders to understand &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; we need to know and &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; we need to know it... this seems incredibly anti-Scrum and I don't see how we are supposed to essentially design an enterprise-level software-suite if we have to re-explain why we need to understand case-scenarios and the nuanced details of the process every time we outline a new software behavior. &lt;em&gt;Is there a way I can get non-programmers to understand our needs better? Especially when I have a hard time outlining our needs because we are trying to digitize processes that often rely on 'tribal knowledge'&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We lack personnel to be able to handle documentation, training, and&#xA;maintenance (we often have to drop development work to handle these&#xA;&quot;fires&quot; as they come up)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;EDIT: some of my other points kind of speak to this, but how&#xA;granular/detailed should a PBI be? Do all PBI's have to be finishable&#xA;within a sprint?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also, can Scrum Planning, Review, and Retrospective be held without &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;PO or Shareholders if none of them have time?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32932" LastEditorUserId="32932" LastEditDate="2019-06-13T16:15:37.480" LastActivityDate="2019-06-14T13:35:34.717" Title="How to move towards Scrum when we don't really seem to be able to fit into 'The Scrum Guide'?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26616" CreationDate="2019-06-13T19:00:58.037" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;we use something which resembles scrum&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion to you would be to move closer to Scrum by looking to have a &lt;em&gt;potentially shippable increment&lt;/em&gt; at the end of each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the key word for you here is 'potentially'. You can still release every six months if that is what your Product Owner wants to do, but you should still target having something ready to ship every sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To do this you will need to think of features only being done when they are bug-free. The work that you take in to the each sprint will be the capacity your team has to develop new work &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; correct any bugs that are raised by the new development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working this way will make it easier to plan, as your team will become aware of their real capacity to deliver work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also a lot of merit in reducing the chances of bugs happening in the first place, by using engineering techniques like automated regression testing, continuous integration and behaviour driven development (BDD).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-06-13T19:00:58.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4232" CreationDate="2019-06-13T19:09:11.557" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not introducing a ton of change at first is probably a good idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If by feature, you mean a large piece of work that will be broken down into smaller tasks, it's been recommended to me to estimate the number of tasks that feature would get broken down into. Once you have a guess at the number of tasks a feature will take, you can use your lead-time metric to estimate how long it will take to do that feature. I like that approach because you can do your 3-4 month-out estimation without having to go through all the work of breaking down the feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding tasks being different sizes, I think you would be fine if your tasks were relatively close enough in size so that the law of averages would give you a reasonable lead-time metric. I would not recommend allowing large pieces of work to go into the queue for a variety of reasons. Instead, use the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/five-simple-but-powerful-ways-to-split-user-stories&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;spidr techniques&lt;/a&gt; to break a story down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8456" LastActivityDate="2019-06-13T19:09:11.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26624" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26634" CreationDate="2019-06-14T01:31:22.370" Score="1" ViewCount="412" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DLAGR.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DLAGR.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;shouldn't the calendar days be 2/7th longer than the duration if we're not working Saturdays and Sundays?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36188" LastActivityDate="2019-06-15T15:15:53.720" Title="Why does my duration = calendar days for a 5 day work week?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26625" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-06-14T02:47:10.333" Score="1" ViewCount="134" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bTKdo.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bTKdo.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know I performed the calculations correctly but I'm not confident about the 3 values in red&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36188" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2020-10-21T12:40:52.443" LastActivityDate="2020-11-20T14:06:40.713" Title="Did I input the correct ACWP, BCWS and BCWP values? [EVMS]" Tags="&lt;metrics&gt;&lt;evm&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26627" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-06-14T07:31:29.597" Score="1" ViewCount="1541" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are currently switching from our so-and-so somewhat agile management approach to  Scrum and I as a developer have a hard time understanding, what comes first in Azure DevOps as the top level item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my understanding the road map of the product is the product backlog, so everything that should be done, should get put in here first as a &quot;Product Backlog Item&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PO then prioritizes each product backlog item (PBI) and in the Sprint Planning we decide if this is a Feature (one Sprint duration) or an Epic (multiple sprints), which in turn then get concrete tasks assigned to it, that need to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a Visual representation this would look like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;PBI&#xA;|&#xA;----Feature&#xA;    |&#xA;    ----Task 1&#xA;    ----Task N&#xA;|&#xA;----Epic&#xA;    |&#xA;    ----Feature 1&#xA;    ----Feature N&#xA;        |&#xA;        Task 1 - N&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our organization this is currently somewhat turned around, so that the Feature / Epic comes first and those have PBIs assigned to it and those PBIs have the tasks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Feature&#xA;|&#xA;----PBI&#xA;    |&#xA;    ---- Task 1 - N&#xA;Epic&#xA;|&#xA;----Feature&#xA;    |&#xA;    ----PBI 1&#xA;        |&#xA;        Task 1 - N&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From how I understand, the PO can or should not create Features or Epics, only PBIs, and we as the development team, with our technical knowledge about the product then estimate then decide if it will be a feature or epic. But that would mean, that we would need to create parents of that PBI and this is confusing me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which of the 2 is the correct (or more correct approach) and why? I am aware, that I might completely misunderstand the logic behind this and both approaches might be wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36192" LastActivityDate="2020-01-29T03:58:12.130" Title="Correct Work Item Hierarchy in Azure Dev Ops" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;epics&gt;&lt;devops&gt;&lt;features&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26627" CreationDate="2019-06-14T09:59:20.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Guide does not say anything about the backlog other than there is &quot;items&quot; in it. So consider the following my experience, not the official guide:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner should be able to decide whether something is an Epic, a Feature or a User Story. Because it's not about how complex it is or how long it takes, but what it is to the product. There is no hard rule that an Epic &lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt; to span multiple sprints. If all it's features' stories can be done in one sprint, that's great. And it does not make it less of an epic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A user story is basically a users interaction with the product. For example: &quot;As a user I want to select a screen name from the list of online people to start a chat with them&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A feature could be the ability to chat in general: &quot;Users should be able to chat with each other&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An epic might be the ability for users to interact: &quot;The product should have a social component so users can interact&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The decision is a business decision and your PO should be able to decide that from Epic down to User Story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2019-06-14T09:59:20.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26616" CreationDate="2019-06-14T12:05:46.503" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several ways of tackling this, I've tried most of them and none are ideal simply because you are dealing with what Scrum calls &quot;unplanned work&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the most important things, in my experience, is having a good bug triage system in place. When a bug is reported, someone should make an informed decision, based on a company-wide-known policy, what the severity of the bug is and if it needs to be addressed immediately or can be put off until the next Sprint. Things you want to consider here are rate of reproduction, percentage of user base affected, risk of data corruption, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you know what the severity of your bug is you can decide what to do with it and how to handle it. If the severity is high enough to pull it into the Sprint, you handle it as unplanned work with the highest priority in the Sprint Backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How you handle unplanned work is something completely different; there are several ways of doing it. Below are the two techniques I've used in the past; both work equally well but will not suit all Teams. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use a &lt;strong&gt;&quot;fast track lane&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;. Any bugs that pop up in the Sprint Backlog that need immediate attention get put up on the &quot;fast track&quot; and need to be picked up before any other new work is started. The fast track is a separate priority &quot;swimlane&quot; or &quot;expedite&quot; lane that goes above all other swimlanes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use a &lt;strong&gt;&quot;swat team&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; if you Team is big enough. Introduce a rotation system in the Team, where every Sprint one or two people are the &quot;swat team&quot; that will immediately jump on any unplanned work that pops up on the Sprint. The lower availability of these developers should be accounted for in the Team velocity for the Sprint. Generally you want the swat team working on lower priority Sprint stories since they could be pulled off the tasks at any time. This obviously only works in large enough Teams.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26704" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-06-14T13:13:01.633" LastActivityDate="2019-06-14T13:13:01.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26621" CreationDate="2019-06-14T13:28:05.883" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's a lot of information to digest my friend, I'm going to pick some items I've also encountered and answer them, hopefully someone will chime in to fill in the remaining blanks :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our 1 'team' actually consists of two separate development teams working on unrelated projects &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's possible yet not at all ideal to do scrum over multiple projects. The reason I'd absolutely stay away from doing it like that is the main reason scrum works: your sprint works towards a potentially releasable product increment. How are you going to do that with only 2 engineers when you need to constantly context switch between projects in a single sprint? I'd say that is a big no-no and you need to do all you can to convince your manager that this is not the way to go. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Build a product backlog (more on that later) for each separate project, determine the requirements for the &quot;version 1&quot; release and then plan out your sprints to reach that first goal: &quot;version 1&quot;. In reality all your manager wants is to know when things will be done, if you can tell him &lt;em&gt;&quot;We'll be able to deliver stories 1 through 12 in 3 sprints, that totals 6 weeks&quot;&lt;/em&gt; he'll be happy. After that you can move on to the next project or start work on v2 of the first project, etc ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Projects are all essentially interwoven into the same 'suite' and our projects kind of have blurred borders/edges&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This smells like a lot of technical debt, a failed microservices architecture? You should determine how to isolate your projects beter so they can be maintained easier and won't affect the whole &quot;ecosystem&quot; when they are updated. It's a daunting task but it has to be done if you want to keep your sanity in the future. Take it step by step, sprint by sprint, the most important thing is that you have a plan on how to tackle this problem, break that plan down in manageable steps and then plan them in sprints together with your regular work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've worked with a type of story called &quot;Technical story&quot;. The product owner has no say over the priority of these stories and the development team can plan them in the sprint as they please, but at all times a sprint should still deliver a &quot;potentially shippable product increment&quot;, so an &quot;all-tech-story Sprint&quot; is a no-go. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fully and accurately populating the product backlog seems daunting&#xA;  How granular/detailed should a PBI be? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you shouldn't. A good backlog respects the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.visual-paradigm.com/scrum/what-is-deep-in-agile-product-backlog/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DEEP model&lt;/a&gt;. The thing you want to look at here is &quot;Detailed appropriately&quot;. It's not a problem that the items at the bottom of your backlog are vague, you won't start working on them any time soon. If your product owner deems them important enough he should put them higher up in the backlog and then your team should pick them up in the backlog grooming sessions to break these large and vague stories (or themes, epics) into smaller and well detailed stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your product backlog should &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/why-your-product-backlog-should-look-like-an-iceberg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;look like an iceberg&lt;/a&gt; where only the tip contains fully detailed, discussed and documented stories, the deeper you go, the more vague and abstract your stories will be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do all PBI's have to be finishable within a sprint&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. Gonna slap another model on it again: Your PBI's should respect the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/invest/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST&lt;/a&gt; model. The &quot;S&quot; in &quot;INVEST&quot; stands for &quot;Small&quot; which means that a story should fit in one iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;talk to individual employees that actually do the paperwork, often times the nuances in their process will slightly deviate the generalized mind's-eye picture of the shareholders&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might be a rather controversial opinion but imho you shouldn't go talk to the individual employees, that's something your product owner should do. They both also have a different goal. Your product owner wants to maximise the value you output each sprint, the employee wants to get his specific part of the work done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't mean you should NEVER do User Research, but you should probably not directly talk about story scope with individual users. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing you could try is changing your approach, your product owner cares about value, make the discussion about that. If the change you propose actually increases the value of the product increment or future increments you will probably have an easier time convincing him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;can Scrum Planning, Review, and Retrospective be held without any PO or Shareholders if none of them have time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. Your PO is essential in all of those meetings (maybe he could skip a retro now and then but rather not). In the planning meeting the PO needs to be there to answer question and together with the team determine what stories are pulled into the next iteration. In the review you'll want to demo the product increment, the PO should actually want to be there at all costs to see what you have achieved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adopting agile means getting all parties on board, and that is the hardest part in large companies. Something that could help is strictly timeboxing your meetings, get a timetimer clock or some other visual timetracking device that counts down the time of your meeting, this also prevents long stretched discussions about certain topics and forces attendees to stick to the point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26704" LastEditorUserId="26704" LastEditDate="2019-06-14T13:35:34.717" LastActivityDate="2019-06-14T13:35:34.717" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26616" CreationDate="2019-06-14T14:45:22.983" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;While you are resolving the problem of how to allocate time for bugs, you may also want to look at ways of reducing the number of bugs you're finding. You may be able to catch them earlier in the process, leading to less rework later on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of methods/tools to help do this - peer programming; code reviews; static code analysis tools; automated testing; ensuring user stories have good acceptance criteria agreed between Product Owner, Tester and Developer before work begins; close communication between testers and developers early in the development process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30594" LastActivityDate="2019-06-14T14:45:22.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26612" CreationDate="2019-06-14T14:58:36.843" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like the underlying challenge you are facing is a lot of items spilling over sprint-to-sprint. Otherwise, you could have one board, pull from the product backlog into a sprint backlog, work those items to done, then pull the next set in the following sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A key part of using sprints is that the timebox provides a constraint. Among other values, that constraint pressures the team to return to a stable, releasable state every iteration. The frustration you are experiencing is because the constraint is highlighting the difficulty the team is having wrapping up the sprint. So, if that is still a valuable tool, you should not make adjustments in the board to relieve that pressure, you should work to make sprints completable. (including including addressing the root cause of long-lived backlog items)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-06-14T14:58:36.843" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26624" CreationDate="2019-06-14T16:24:58.630" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is correct. There are 62 weeks between 1/14/2004 and 3/22/2005. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say you have a task that starts on Monday, June 10, 2019 and finishes on Friday, June 21, 2019. That is 10 work days which is the same as 2 work weeks. The duration could be entered as &lt;code&gt;2 wks&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;10 days&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;80 hrs&lt;/code&gt;—all are equivalent and correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update for additional question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use the &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/language/reference/user-interface-help/datediff-function&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DateDiff&lt;/a&gt; function in a calculated field to show the elapsed (calendar) time between two dates. Customize a number field, e.g. &lt;code&gt;Number1&lt;/code&gt;, with this formula: &lt;code&gt;DateDiff(&quot;h&quot;,[Start],[Finish])&lt;/code&gt; to show the elapsed hours between the start and finish of each task. In the example above, the answer would be 273 hours between 6/10/2019 8:00 AM and 6/21/2019 5:00 PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since some task durations might not be shown in hours, use this formula in another number field to calculate the duration in hours for comparison: &lt;code&gt;ProjDateDiff([Start],[Finish])/60&lt;/code&gt;. (For information on this function see the vba reference, where it's called &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/api/project.application.datedifference&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DateDifference&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For tips on how to use custom fields: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mpug.com/webnlearn-recordings/microsoft-project-custom-formula-guide/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Microsoft Project Custom Formula Guide&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.lynda.com/Project-tutorials/Working-Custom-Fields-Formulas-Microsoft-Project/555800-2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Working with Custom Fields and Formulas in Microsoft Project&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastEditorUserId="13635" LastEditDate="2019-06-15T15:15:53.720" LastActivityDate="2019-06-15T15:15:53.720" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26635" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26636" CreationDate="2019-06-14T19:52:27.207" Score="1" ViewCount="108" Body="&lt;p&gt;My customer signed off on a major enhancement to an existing application.  The enhancement will be delivered as a single new release and I can't change this. However, how we get to this final release is in my control and I'm thinking we could still benefit from a sprint model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My goal is to break down this large chunk of work into smaller user stories / tasks and hold sprints as we work towards the release, which is several months from now. My team is familiar with agile methodologies, and I think it will help us define the work, split it up across our team, build momentum, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The area that is not clear to me is when to test. Normally, we would fully QA each item within the sprint, but with so many changes going into the application and the absence of UAT until all the work is done I'm not comfortable relying on testing that was done months earlier before handing it off to the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have experience with a similar approach? When is it best to test? Should I keep a traditional waterfall testing phase, test within the sprints, or is there a hybrid approach that is suitable? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35388" LastActivityDate="2019-06-14T20:59:59.137" Title="An agile approach with a waterfall delivery and the QA impact" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;testing&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26635" CreationDate="2019-06-14T20:59:59.137" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The sprint timebox offers you iterations, which are a convenient pace-setting mechanism. For your question, we want to look at the idea of adding incremental development into the process. In incremental development, you complete fully-functioning and potentially shippable increments of the product regularly. You combine these together and you should have a potentially skippable product each sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefit to this even in a waterfall environment is that you have a much better idea of what is and isn't complete. In a phase-gate approach, you don't know if anything is complete until the final stage sign-off. If this is a benefit you want to get, you have to do testing inside of the iteration, not in a later phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-06-14T20:59:59.137" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26637" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26638" CreationDate="2019-06-15T15:50:47.317" Score="0" ViewCount="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xPGGr.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xPGGr.png&quot; alt=&quot;Picture of problem&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I calculated the span based on my start and finish dates to double check the file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why are these two columns not equal? Is there a setting wrong somewhere? Does this mean my end date isn't being accurately calculated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36188" LastActivityDate="2019-06-15T19:58:10.713" Title="Why are my calculated spans slightly less than my durations? [MS Project]" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26637" CreationDate="2019-06-15T19:58:10.713" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The calculated span does not include the time between &lt;code&gt;3/22/05 5:00 PM&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;3/23/05 8:00 AM&lt;/code&gt; which would be exactly 62 weeks after the task started (&lt;code&gt;1/14/04 8:00 AM&lt;/code&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: MS Project has been around for a long, long time; it calculates the dates correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastActivityDate="2019-06-15T19:58:10.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26581" CreationDate="2019-06-15T21:45:52.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project does not have a native way to handle a cost-per-day resource. One workaround is to use a custom cost field (at the task level) to calculate the number of days and multiply by a rate. Reports that show cost by task can be modified to show this custom cost field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uyhsE.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uyhsE.png&quot; alt=&quot;ms project screenshot&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this example, the resource &quot;worker&quot; has an hourly rate of $50 and the &quot;scaffold&quot; resource has a rate of $0. The tasks are set to Fixed Work so that increasing resources reduces the duration. The scaffold resource work on tasks 1 &amp;amp; 2 is set to only 1h so that it does not constrain the duration of the task. If it was set to 100h like the worker resource, you would have to manually keep the resource units in sync. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;code&gt;Cost1&lt;/code&gt; field has this formula: &lt;code&gt;IIf(InStr([Resource Names],&quot;scaffold&quot;)&amp;gt;0,500,0)*(DateDiff(&quot;d&quot;,Fix([Start]),fix([Finish]))+1)&lt;/code&gt;. The first part checks to see if a scaffold resource is assigned, and if so, sets a daily rate of 500 (note this rate could be stored in a number field). The second part of the formula calculates the number of days, taking into account that if the task starts at noon on Monday and finishes at 9:00 AM on Tuesday, that it is 2 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;code&gt;Cost2&lt;/code&gt; field has this formula: &lt;code&gt;[Cost]+[Cost1]&lt;/code&gt; which simply aggregates the native costs for the tasks with the scaffold cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastActivityDate="2019-06-15T21:45:52.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26582" CreationDate="2019-06-16T09:35:10.527" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask more questions to the clients and prioritize which features must be done first. Agile methodology is the common practice &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4714" LastActivityDate="2019-06-16T09:35:10.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26641" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-06-17T03:21:57.767" Score="2" ViewCount="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;Initial Project Schedule (IPS, or Baseline schedule) had been approved. Several monthly updates were approved. The owner has requested KTR to incorporate a score (20) of new activities from the contract modifications into the schedule, with contradicting directions, i) first, &quot;all twenty activities at once&quot; ii) then later, &quot;just new activities that falls into the duration of the monthly update this time (and repeat the same for the subsequent updates.)&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks like if I do ii) 'only the relevant activities for the update duration', I would lose opportunities for time extensions that I would surely be entitled to get if I do i) 'all at once.' &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an industry standard in reflecting new activities added from the contract modifications? &#xA;Can I insist to go with i) and how can I convince them? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36204" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-06-17T10:46:37.950" LastActivityDate="2019-06-17T13:26:30.810" Title="How to add new activities from the contract modifications into Schedule" Tags="&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;feature-creep&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26582" CreationDate="2019-06-17T09:16:52.253" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the other answers here are quite strong. I'm going to add one more almost as an edge case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We know that the timeline is fixed.  That means the only opportunity to manage is with scope or resources.  If it must be done in 9 months, then we can either shrink the scope to that which can be done in 9 months with existing resources, or we can increase the resources until we have enough to do the task in 9 months. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm going to ignore the opportunity to manage resources.  That is an academic option; in reality we rarely have the ability to alter resources, and when we do, we run into the mythical man month - the effort of adding new resources may actually delay our work. This is a 9 month deadline and I don't think there is any way to bring new staff up to speed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We know the scope is ambiguous. In my opinion, this is the risk/opportunity.  If I were in this situation, I would:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Work to reduce ambiguity by clarifying scope. The highest priority is to reduce the ambiguity in the scope.  Meet with stakeholders to do two things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First, identify the parts of the scope that are not ambiguous.  We want to get the team working on the stuff that everyone agrees on.  We don't want staff sitting idle while we argue about ambiguity.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once the team is in motion, start working to clarify the scope.  What is definitely in scope, what is out of scope, and what are the discussion elements?  My temptation would be to use something like the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoSCoW_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MoSCOW&lt;/a&gt; model.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the scope clarification progresses, keep working with the team to estimate each requirement.  Use the estimates as a feedback loop to the scope clarification process - very quickly you're going to have to start making the statement &quot;That is a valid requirement, but adding it to scope runs the risk of slipping delivery beyond the 9 months timeframe.&quot;  Estimates for each requirement are going to have to be in confidence intervals (To do requirement X, will probably require Y weeks.  Best estimate is Y-Z, but worst case is Y+W.  I'd estimate that there is an 80% chance that we can do Y within Y+V).  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In tandem with clarifying the scope determine the governance - who has the authority to add a requirement and increase the chance of missing the deadline?  Who has the authority to accept that the risk of missing the deadline rises by 1%?  Who needs to be consulted? Who needs to be informed?  Under what conditions can the PM declare that the project has missed the deadline and that success is no longer possible?  This includes stakeholder analysis and communications planning (which stakeholders need which information, how often, through which channel? What are the triggers for each risk?)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many other techniques that could be used to manage this project, but to my mind if the duration is fixed, then the PM has got to double down on managing the scope. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2019-06-17T09:16:52.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26641" CreationDate="2019-06-17T09:31:49.053" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your aim here is to make them realize that this is not part of the original schedule or SOW or whatever you agreed uopn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly: &lt;strong&gt;Clarify&lt;/strong&gt;. In your scenario it means:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask for clarification concerning the contradictions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get approval from all stakeholders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next: &lt;strong&gt;Budget&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find out from both / all sides who is paying for the extra work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If by now none of the stakeholders have insisted the additions get pushed off to another milestone, then out on your PjM hat. By now that surely realize that it's beyond the original scope, so that don't blame you for the delay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next: &lt;strong&gt;Scheduling&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask what priority this has; does it push off or replace or delay existing work?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then request approval of a new schedule, based on the answer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If you start with scheduling, then it becomes &quot;&lt;em&gt;Project Management caused a delay&lt;/em&gt; type of scenario.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2019-06-17T09:31:49.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26644" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2019-06-17T10:48:15.977" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2019-06-17T10:48:15.977" LastActivityDate="2019-06-17T10:48:15.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26645" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2019-06-17T10:48:15.977" Score="0" Body="The process whereby an agreed-upon scope of work grows with requests to add (often minor) features." OwnerUserId="4384" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-06-17T13:04:59.217" LastActivityDate="2019-06-17T13:04:59.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26646" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-06-17T12:22:05.830" Score="0" ViewCount="62" Body="&lt;p&gt;My company is establishing a Project Management Office (PMO). Because we are limited in the number of project managers, we need to carefully design a project intake and qualification process. Anyone have an idea of where to start? We want to be able to demonstrate the value of the PMO, but also want to avoid taking on more than is manageable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, we may expand the number of PM's and as skillsets may vary within the PMO, we'd also like to consider a process that matches skills of the PM with requirements of the project. Thanks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36208" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-06-17T13:08:30.287" LastActivityDate="2019-06-17T15:05:45.680" Title="Designing Project Intake &amp; Qualification Process" Tags="&lt;program-management&gt;&lt;pmo&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26641" CreationDate="2019-06-17T13:26:30.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an underlying assumption that, since this change was a contract modification, it followed your change process so that all stakeholders are aware of what changed.  This should also mean, and it seems it does not, that the schedule and cost and other impacts have already been discussed and understood such that your contracts direction should not include a scheduling mandate that is not physically possible.  If it does, then you have a change process that is broken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of the change process should include understanding what the cost and schedule impacts are and, in the modification, a scheduling solution that is possible, well understood, and agreed upon.  Your problem indicates this is not the case.  To resolve it, no matter what the mandate is, you should schedule the new work within the old work based on what is possible and inform them of your scheduling solution.  And then you need to fix your change process so that this does not occur again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2019-06-17T13:26:30.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26646" CreationDate="2019-06-17T15:05:45.680" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your OP is slightly disturbing and appears to be a tail wagging the dog strategy.  You indicate that you need to control the types and numbers of projects based on number and skill set of your PM.  It's the other way around.  Your projects for the year should dictate what you need by way of PM and should trigger either shedding those you don't need or hiring those you need.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am assuming that your firm commits some amount of money during your planning process available for projects.  You should evaluate your projects during that planning cycle based on the benefits it'll provide to the firm, the costs, and the risks of doing the project.  You can create a rather simple scoring method based on those criteria, or a decomposed set of criteria, and then rack and stack the projects.  Based on what you can afford, commit to those projects that are on the top.  It might be good to reserve some of those budget dollars for projects that bubble up during the year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2019-06-17T15:05:45.680" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16612" CreationDate="2019-06-17T20:33:05.450" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The sooner the better ROI :)&#xA;Start automating as soon as application is getting developed and deployed by Sprint2.&#xA;But do not start automating the test cases if your System/application is not stable otherwise you will end up correcting the scripts and spend time &amp;amp; money on correcting the same.&#xA;I will say start targetting Framework, project structure and flow that helps you automate tests by Sprint2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use these top tips to ensure that your software testing is successful and you get the maximum return on investment (ROI):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decide what Test Cases to Automate &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test Early and Test Often &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Select the Right Automated Testing Tool &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Divide your Automated Testing Efforts &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create Good, Quality Test Data &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create Automated Tests that are Resistant to Changes in the UI&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, you can get the most benefit out of your automated testing efforts by automating:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Repetitive tests that run for multiple builds.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tests that tend to cause human error.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tests that require multiple data sets.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Frequently used functionality that introduces high risk conditions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tests that are impossible to perform manually.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tests that run on several different hardware or software platforms&#xA;and configurations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tests that take a lot of effort and time when manual testing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36215" LastActivityDate="2019-06-17T20:33:05.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26650" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-06-18T03:41:26.763" Score="1" ViewCount="556" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hi everyone I'm looking for some help with my upcoming exam, I'm struggling to think of answers relating to quality management..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A question on my previous project management exams goes like so:&#xA;&quot;Modern quality management requires &lt;em&gt;customer satisfaction&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;prefers prevention to inspection&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;recognises management responsibility for quality&lt;/em&gt;. Explain, with examples, why each of these is important for quality management. What problems would you expect if these aspects of quality management were ignored?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some examples of why these things are important? And what problems would you expect if these principles were ignored? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can think of one: Inspection of produced units would take much longer than assuming prevention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But otherwise, I'm struggling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36216" LastEditorUserId="36216" LastEditDate="2019-06-18T03:55:56.800" LastActivityDate="2021-03-01T09:11:46.810" Title="Principles of modern quality management and their repercussions" Tags="&lt;quality-management&gt;&lt;customer-satisfaction&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26651" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-06-18T08:53:50.320" Score="40" ViewCount="10999" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am developer, I have worked with three Agile teams for the last eight years, with different organisations. The organisations have had a mix of Scrum, Kanban &amp;amp; Lean Startup Mindsets. &#xA;&lt;p&gt; I have observed for almost all of sprints that I have worked with them, the teams usually didn't finish all the stories in the sprint. &#xA;One place it was 4 week sprint.&#xA;&lt;p&gt; All other places it was a 2 week sprints.&#xA;&lt;p&gt; In one of the team, we practiced story splitting, Specification by Example &amp;amp; having a lot of constructive discussions during Sprint Refinement. We even added an extra Sprint Refinement day. We are familiar with estimation points.&#xA;&lt;p&gt; Is it normal for teams to overshoot their goals ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36217" LastActivityDate="2019-06-23T19:25:54.187" Title="Why do all the teams that I have worked with always finish a sprint without completion of all the stories?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26651" CreationDate="2019-06-18T09:19:58.527" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is common, but it isn't right. Here are a few things to consider that may be contributing to this challenge:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is the team focused on delivering a potentially shippable product increment each sprint or just doing work in a larger project? I hear a lot &quot;it doesn't matter, it all has to be done on the deadline&quot;. If I hear that, they're probably right. They probably aren't actually practising Scrum and they're just all working toward a large release with 2-week pace-markers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are people breaking down their work small enough? Large work items make it hard to wrap things up at the end of the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does the development process have large wait states built in? This is really the same problem as 2, but the solution is different - instead of just breaking things down, you need to drive out those wait states.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is work in the team siloed? It's not that people can't have areas of expertise, but when you silo off work, often people are taking on new work to keep busy instead of helping each other wrap up work in progress.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastEditorUserId="35563" LastEditDate="2019-06-19T13:16:09.707" LastActivityDate="2019-06-19T13:16:09.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26651" CreationDate="2019-06-18T12:09:52.167" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/26652/30&quot;&gt;the questions that Daniel poses&lt;/a&gt;, I'd pose a different one first:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the team achieving its Sprint Goals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint Goal for a team following Scrum is the objective that should be met at some point during the Sprint by implementing Product Backlog Items selected for the Sprint. It can help focus the team's efforts toward specific work and objectives should issues arise or decisions need to be made about what work to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team is regularly achieving the Sprint Goal, then it may not be an issue that the team is not completing all of the work in the Sprint Backlog. However, it is still something to talk about with the team as there may be concerns around capacity and Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team is not regularly achieving the Sprint Goal, then that should be addressed and the team needs to work with the Product Owner to craft an achievable Sprint Goal and plan the work to achieve it within the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2019-06-18T12:09:52.167" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26651" CreationDate="2019-06-18T17:11:20.743" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are using story points and tracking your velocity then this should rarely happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the team fails to complete stories in a sprint then the velocity will tend to compensate for this by dropping. As the velocity gets lower the team &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be bringing less in to sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A team brings 30 story points in to a sprint but only completes 25 story points&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rolling average of velocity for the team is reduced from 30 to 27&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team brings 27 story points in to the next sprint and manages to complete 24 story points&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The velocity again falls, down to 25&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this way the team &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be guided by the velocity until they are bringing a realistic amount of work in to each sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a good guide, Mike Cohn recommends that a team completes all their planned work in a sprint 80% of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is not happening then things to look out for include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team is taking credit for stories that are incomplete at the end of the spint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team is ignoring their velocity and is focusing on what people expect them to get done&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team treats finishing the planned work before the end of the sprint as a bad thing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-06-18T17:11:20.743" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26651" CreationDate="2019-06-18T23:18:08.683" Score="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot speak to your particular situation but yes, it is pretty common that not everything is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is in fact a logical consequence of the structure of the team, and you being a developer are in a prime position to appreciate it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Load and delay&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were to ask you “do you run a server at 100% load?” you would likely laugh in my face. So I might follow up with “OK if that is ridiculous, what sort of load is acceptable?” and you might offer a number of responses including simply “how do you define load?” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think we could settle on the idea that more or less no matter what the definitions are, you would not like server loads above, say, 10-25% of capacity: certainly not much above 50%. And were I to ask you “why not?” you would very likely first give the Wrong Answer: that you’re worried about hardware failure. That’s a fair point but usually if you’re doing it right you’re already guarding against that risk. And then second you would give the Right Answer: that you’re worried about latency spikes. If the server doesn’t have spare capacity, it can’t begin a new request until it is done finishing up old ones. And that’s true of people, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The core problem is that a sprint model typically assumes one way or another that there is 100% developer load, and developers respond by padding out their estimates with safety buffer so that they can hopefully only operate under 50% load or so. Then you have natural problems dealing with the same two problems: hardware failure (employee burnout) and latency spikes (hey, Legal said one week ago that Floozels must only be awarded for the Flotsam that is also Jetsam—why isn’t this fixed &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt;?!). In practice nobody wants to accept the latency spikes and so they simply throw story points of developer time out of the current sprint in order to keep latency low with their bosses and the business at large. Similarly any “some other issues came up” workloads appearing in stand-up have the same origin. So your developers are taking care of their own health and that means some amount of doing non-work, and this sometimes bleeds into losing story points; and your developers are doing one-off requests or unexpected workloads, and that sometimes bleeds into losing story points. Those are the two main sources. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact the problem is somewhat larger than this because safety factor in estimates is much much bigger than even the typical advice to “always multiply estimates by &lt;em&gt;N&lt;/em&gt;” suggests. The reason is that the private estimate for completion completes the goal with, say, a 90-95% probability, which for realistic situations might already add a factor of 2 of safety versus the 50/50 chance of completion that we should idealistically be able to target; furthermore a PM then buffers those estimates with some additional padding anywhere from 20-100% when communicating with the business as a whole. Take any software project, and something like three-quarters or more is safety buffer. We devs would be completely scandalized at the idea that any project would ever run over-time or over-budget if we understood how much safety buffer we have to spare to complete it. The typical excuses we give, “oh we will be late because in our last week a hurricane took out our data center causing all of our systems to be down for several days, but the team worked together and pushed really hard and we got everything working and we’re only going to be late by three days” are laughable simply because given the safety buffer we should have delivered way before that hurricane hit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Waste and purpose&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there is a paradox of we have huge safety buffers and we still deliver late. The solution to the paradox must be &lt;em&gt;waste&lt;/em&gt;; we must be wasting all of that precious safety buffer. This happens in many different forms and enumerating all of them would make this answer very long. However I think we need to point the finger first squarely at management simply because &lt;em&gt;the developers lied in the first place&lt;/em&gt;; they padded their estimates first from 50% to 95% and then they added another factor-of-two on top of that, and this means that management has not created a space where they feel safe in being totally honest with their estimates. Why do I feel free to take care of myself by answering a question on Project Management SE? Because I am at the start of a sprint and everything has luxurious unspent safety buffer still and so nothing seems desperately urgent. Come back to me on the last three days of the sprint and see if I am still on PMSE, heh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can also give a quick sort of aspirational vision for how to solve it. In theory there is a dependency graph of tasks-to-be-done for your Sprint Goal or any other release you have, and it typically involves some real stinkers that nobody wants to take on, like “figure out why the QA server is crashing even though we have implemented workarounds to make it not crash so that QA is unblocked, we have no idea what’s causing it, good luck, don’t break anything.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think about commits on this sprint to your &lt;code&gt;develop&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;master&lt;/code&gt; branch, you see that even though the dependencies are in many cases not enough to structure the thing completely, the tasks will ultimately form a directed acyclic graph and there is some &lt;strong&gt;critical path&lt;/strong&gt; from sprint-start to sprint completion: the path through this graph of work-as-done which takes the longest amount of time. Then there are several side-paths—other devs working on important things which are not on this critical path—which have to merge into that critical path.  I don't care about them unless they delay the critical path, really: people can be free to goof off within some reason on their side-paths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the ideal project there is therefore at any given time exactly &lt;strong&gt;one&lt;/strong&gt; developer who is in a state of &lt;em&gt;panic&lt;/em&gt;. They are working on the critical path, and they know that this responsibility is upon them. The critical path is something of a &lt;em&gt;baton&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;hot potato&lt;/em&gt; that they are looking to pass off to the next person as soon as they can; and they are given considerable &lt;em&gt;power&lt;/em&gt; to loop in other developers to help them with their task, or to compromise scope of their feature to be &lt;em&gt;good enough&lt;/em&gt; to pass the baton on. PMs and other facilitators have several roles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They encourage people. Deadlines in this model are routinely missed because they only have a 50/50 chance of being completed, so facilitators need to remind people that this is &lt;em&gt;okay&lt;/em&gt; and we have a project safety buffer &lt;em&gt;precisely for this&lt;/em&gt;; this thing is still urgent because we’re now digging into the project safety buffer but we have it so that we can use it when this happens.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They prevent burnout by ensuring that the baton keeps being passed from person to person (as others are given a great deal more latitude to rest).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They coordinate dynamical changes to the critical path. Suppose the schedule looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Time:          0     1     2     3     4     5     6     7     8&#xA;Side-Path:      [Alice-----][Bob-------][ safety buffer ]&#xA;                                                         \&#xA;Critical Path:  [Carol-----------------------------------][Dan----...]&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in this diagram, Alice and Bob are on a side-path; they both have a 50/50 shot of completing in 2 units of time, Bob’s work can’t start until Alice’s is merged. They share a safety buffer of 3 units of time for their thing before it merges into the critical path; it is needed when Carol hands off her changes to Dan; she has a 50/50 shot of completing in 7 units of time. Now when this schedule meets reality, you have to accept lots of “it’ll be done when it’s done” and trust these four to be doing their best; Carol is aware that the entire project right now is riding on her work and is in the state of panic. But what can happen is that Alice was pulled into something else and it is t=3 and she has at least one time unit before she can finish and hand it on to Bob at t=4; but Carol is estimating that her task was much easier than expected and is going to be handed on to Dan at t=5 or t=6. So in theory facilitators should be noticing when the safety buffers on these side projects are running out or when the tasks on the critical path are getting done early (either alone is enough to potentially lead to a shifting of the critical path) and letting folks like Carol know that they’re no longer custodians of the hot-potato: that it has shifted and they can relax a little because now the person who is most affecting our precious safety buffer and hence our ability to meet the deadline is Bob, who now needs to feel that responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They lubricate these jumps. When Carol (or Bob...) hands the baton to Dan above, the facilitator is ultimately asking Dan to completely drop everything that he is doing: this will be disastrous if he does not have advance warning. So they are asking the panicking Carol for realistic progress updates, but again &lt;em&gt;they do not care if she is at her deadline or not&lt;/em&gt;. Remember, that deadline was only estimated at being 50% chance of completion; it is therefore rightly meaningless for holding anyone accountable and there is no shame in missing it. So Carol needs to be approached with gentleness and good faith and asked how soon she thinks she can be done with her task, purely so that the facilitator can tell Dan, “hey in around two days or so I am going to ask you to drop everything else and work on this one specific task, you will have the baton, please clear your schedule for that and start getting ready to sprint with it.”&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If facilitators can do all of that with compassion then they can build a trust and hypothetically deliver projects significantly faster, because the key feature here is that we are treating the safety buffer as a precious resource. Teammates are under pressure proportionate to their ability to affect that buffer: the ones who most affect it are therefore not wasting it with “oh let me go check Reddit...”. The others are allowed to rest so that you get the benefits of a well-rested team. And finally, we do not waste anything we get when someone delivers early because we communicate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this is a very pretty vision but I have to attach some caveats. This is not a universal structure of all business. It is a derivation of some general principles for a specific context where every object being produced is a fundamentally new artistic endeavor and only is produced by some big complicated cooperative effort. Your software teams may be working in a different business sector which does not work this way: for example Valve no longer makes big software games to be bought for a big price tag but instead makes skins and user customizations sold on Steam to get a lot of micro-sales; one can imagine that the Valve Before would have strongly benefited from this sort of structure whereas the Valve After probably would not see those sorts of returns. But those sorts of patterns are pretty common in software development so it is reasonable to think that many software shops would benefit from something looking similar to this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35715" LastEditorUserId="35715" LastEditDate="2019-06-19T22:51:29.447" LastActivityDate="2019-06-19T22:51:29.447" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26658" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-06-19T06:22:48.003" Score="12" ViewCount="6400" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team consist of 6 backend developers, with 4 different test phones and tablets.They need to use test phones to cross check front end developers work, and debug their API.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Testing in mobile is about 10% of their workload.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I let them take the test devices home? Or put those devices in office and let those who need to perform testing to take the device?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36229" LastEditorUserId="22638" LastEditDate="2019-06-23T09:52:45.437" LastActivityDate="2019-07-03T14:48:48.200" Title="Should test phones be taken home or kept in the office?" Tags="&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26660" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26663" CreationDate="2019-06-19T07:24:43.863" Score="0" ViewCount="95" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am surprised by the last row in this &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Request_for_information&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;RFI&lt;/a&gt; response form:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QAncf.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QAncf.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My project's initial fees are 1m$, recurring fees are 100k$/year, under the assumption that I provide only the software and they run it on their own hardware. If I had to provide the hardware too that would cost double. In my internal expense calculations, I calculated how much everything actually costs me and then I added +10% to account for risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I write &lt;code&gt;Add 1m$ initial + 100k$/year for hardware&lt;/code&gt; in the &lt;code&gt;Assumptions&lt;/code&gt; field?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or should I fill the three fields with &lt;code&gt;900k$&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;90k$/year&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;100k$ initial + 10k$/year&lt;/code&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or does it mean something entirely different?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The field is very small, preventing me from writing anything more than a number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I managed to &lt;a href=&quot;https://d2myx53yhj7u4b.cloudfront.net/sites/default/files/IC-RFI-With-Cover-Letter-Template-WORD.dotx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;find&lt;/a&gt; the template for this RFI on the Internet, unfortunately it does not seem to provide much more information.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6320" LastEditorUserId="6320" LastEditDate="2019-06-21T07:12:51.140" LastActivityDate="2019-06-21T07:12:51.140" Title="RFI response form asks for &quot;Assumptions&quot; as just a single money amount" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;&lt;project-proposal&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26658" CreationDate="2019-06-19T09:03:24.567" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Make a rule for them to ask for it every time and explain why they need a device at home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will stop them from making a habit of taking devices home for no reason and will give them an option to do some testing outside of work when necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34150" LastActivityDate="2019-06-19T09:03:24.567" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26658" CreationDate="2019-06-19T11:27:22.377" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer mainly depends on whether you have enough phones so that if people are using them outside the office nobody in the office will be searching for a phone (and can't find one because all of them are at home).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you have lots of phones, you can allow them to go home, otherwise, you probably want them in the office all the time, unless there are tests that are best done remotely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But more importantly, if you do let people take them home then you need to have a clear &lt;strong&gt;procedure for tracking who has which phone.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If somebody leaves the office with a phone they need to &lt;em&gt;check it out&lt;/em&gt; from a spreadsheet or database - and then it's their responsibility to return it safely. &lt;br/&gt;Otherwise, you will quickly start losing phones; &lt;code&gt;easy come = easy go&lt;/code&gt; as the saying goes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2019-06-19T11:27:22.377" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26660" CreationDate="2019-06-19T11:33:24.623" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the link you provided, the next field (after &lt;code&gt;ASSUMPTIONS&lt;/code&gt;) is called &lt;code&gt;PRICING  METHODOLOGY.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that's where they expect you to explain yourself. Pick one of your 3 answers and then explain yourself in the &lt;code&gt;PRICING  METHODOLOGY&lt;/code&gt; field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(That's assuming you don't get a clear answer when asking them in the Q&amp;amp;A session.)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2019-06-19T11:33:24.623" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26658" CreationDate="2019-06-19T12:13:01.580" Score="27" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I let them take the test devices home?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;No&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For several reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Insurance: company property on company grounds is covered by the companies insurance. Company property in the hands of an employee damaging it after hours on private grounds? Might be insured. Or not. You would need to figure it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Availability: If employees come in one morning and don't have a device to test on, that's bad. You said you have more employees than devices, so even if they all need one, they can talk and figure out priorities in the office. If the device needed is still on Steve's kitchen table because he had an urgent doctors appointment and is late today, then you cannot do anything but sit around and twiddle thumbs. Equipment that is not available is not acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Accountability: Lets say it gets lost or stolen. Apart from insurance, is there enough trust that an employee can &amp;quot;lose&amp;quot; a thousand dollar consumer electronics device and not be suspected or reprimanded?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Work/Life Balance: An employee should have a healthy time off. There is no reason to have a work device in your spare time. Leave work &lt;em&gt;at work&lt;/em&gt;. Live a happy life and come back to work relaxed and ready. That's way more productive than being &amp;quot;always on&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-06-19T12:13:01.580" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26665" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-06-19T15:57:05.910" Score="1" ViewCount="183" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://demo.redmineup.com/projects/agile/agile/charts?query_id=29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;redmine agile plugin online demo&lt;/a&gt;. The website advertises the plugin with a sample image for &quot;Work Burndown&quot; - I am trying to replicate this graph using the demo itself. The sample image from &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.luisblasco.com/en/agile-plugin-redminecrm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the linked page&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/q5f9W.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/q5f9W.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm most interested in the portion circled in red. As I understand it the &quot;Ideal&quot; grey colored line as you see it here extends out beyond the actual work in order to provide a projection/estimate of when the work might be finished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As previously stated I am trying to use the online demo itself to replicate this graph and can't seem to figure it out. This is either due to lack understanding of agile/burndown or the tool itself, or both. Here is my graph from the online demo:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/guYt0.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/guYt0.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice that in my graph the &quot;Ideal&quot; line doesn't project out past the actual work remaining, it simply &quot;staircases&quot; down to meet the end of the graph. It does this no matter the date range I specify.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any recommendations on how I can make this thing display the estimate projection like in their advertised screen shot? At the time of writing the &lt;a href=&quot;http://demo.redmineup.com/projects/agile/agile/charts?query_id=29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;online demo is available here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36238" LastEditorUserId="36238" LastEditDate="2019-06-30T18:06:39.360" LastActivityDate="2020-03-26T21:03:40.550" Title="Burndown Chart Ideal/Projection" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;burndown-chart&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26665" CreationDate="2019-06-19T16:29:52.233" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are looking for a forecast line. That is a different thing (that this tool may or may not do, not sure). In a burndown chart with a fixed set of items and a fixed timebox (like a sprint) the ideal line simply shows the mathematical ideals to complete the total work in the timebox. It is only meant as a point of reference to compare the actual to. It is always a strait line from (0,a) where a is the amount of work in the sprint to (b, 0) where b is the number of days in the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-06-19T16:29:52.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26651" CreationDate="2019-06-19T17:13:50.350" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is Push Response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a disconnect between the reality and the promised. The Business sector is coming in with their expectations to push a project forward but not allowing Project/Product Management to actually finish a sprint and the leadership of the Technical Team doesn't feel comfortable reigning in their expectations.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found that going for a 3-week Sprint instead of a 2-week Sprint, but aiming for the 2 weeks, is more beneficial. If we are ahead a few days we gain a pad going forward and know that having a completed sprint saves us time going forward. If we push the wall to 3 weeks but get a fully completed sprint and ability to circumvent issues by being proactive in completing the sprint we have less issues on roll-out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Director of Automation, I use a gentle Push Back - explain the technically-reachable goals, going 3 and 6 months out, with the current resources and constraints.  If there is a significant increase with regard to time then we adjust the time-frames and alert the Business Team. If there is a minor increase in time then we go to Change Management and implement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36240" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-06-19T19:24:29.017" LastActivityDate="2019-06-19T19:24:29.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26658" CreationDate="2019-06-19T17:14:54.767" Score="10" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Yes, if they test with it&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a simple reason. You need to test your apps &lt;em&gt;beyond&lt;/em&gt; the idealized conditions of your testing lab.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't tell you how many Really Bad apps and websites I have used when the app was &lt;em&gt;clearly&lt;/em&gt; only tested on the latest hardware, with an all-internal-router gigabit pipe to the servers, and never &quot;in the wild&quot; with cellular data networks falling back to last-gen and 5% packet loss. In those cases you just get stupidly dopey performance, and &lt;em&gt;testers are oblivious&lt;/em&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, get those phones out into the real world and test.  And take the data seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35012" LastEditorUserId="35012" LastEditDate="2019-06-19T17:20:11.257" LastActivityDate="2019-06-19T17:20:11.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26669" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26670" CreationDate="2019-06-19T18:34:00.527" Score="0" ViewCount="178" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently working with a couple of students on an course project (2x8h per week).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the last sprint planning we have taken one main backlog story to implement, and I was expected to be the primary implementer of it, besides a helping hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now on day one I had to do a couple of backend tasks (for which I'm currently responsible for) and my helping hand, let's call him Jerry goes exploring the technology. Once I came back to the actual task Jerry found a good library to help the implementation and tried it out already, and I agreed on the library.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when I tried to collaborate on how to implement the feature, Jerry informed me that he wishes to implement the feature by himself, to which I agreed since I wanted to give him the chance to prove himself (not much code is written by him yet). Later he asked me to write tests for the feature, which I did, but he does not use them and he does not write any tests himself (aside I had difficulty writing tests since I am not supposed to change anything in his code).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problem is 1) I don't believe he can do it in time (we got a 5 days sprint, two days left). 2) I fear this will reflect badly on me since I was intended to write the feature. Should I say he took over the feature in the next daily?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36242" LastEditorUserId="36242" LastEditDate="2019-06-19T19:42:42.190" LastActivityDate="2019-06-23T09:41:31.470" Title="What do you do if developer takes on a task that was intended for you and he can't finish it in time?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;work-environment&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26669" CreationDate="2019-06-19T19:37:04.597" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Your processes look broken.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint is not meant to be a commitment the business can use to punish developers for not meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I fear this will reflect badly on me since I was intended to write the feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...Who says this feature was intended for you? In Scrum, work is assigned to the Team, not to individuals. If it was assigned to the Team, then why would it reflect badly on you specifically? If it was assigned to you specifically, then why is another developer working on it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should I say he took over the feature in the next daily?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Daily Scrum is not meant to be a status pull. Who would you be reporting this to? Why do they need to know? The Team should be empowered to deal with these issues by themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your process is broken. You don't appear to be following Scrum, despite mentioning Sprints. You should look into fixing your process. That being said...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Individuals and interactions over processes and tools&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just talk to the guy. You're both (presumably) reasonable, professional adults. Talk to him, tell him how you feel (try to use 'I', not 'you'), and then ask him for input and listen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; to go about doing that, you'd do better to ask on Workplace or ipse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2019-06-19T19:37:04.597" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26672" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-06-20T09:58:54.390" Score="2" ViewCount="234" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've turned from Scrum to the basic &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.agilealliance.org/resources/sessions/introduction-to-large-scale-scrum-less/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LeSS Framework&lt;/a&gt; for scaling Scrum beyond a single team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://less.works/less/framework/product-backlog-refinement.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;product Backlog Refinement&lt;/a&gt; article, 3 types of Refinement have been introduced which are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Overall Product Backlog Refinement (&lt;code&gt;4 hours&lt;/code&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Team-level Product Backlog Refinement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multi-team Product Backlog Refinement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the &lt;a href=&quot;https://less.works/less/framework/product-owner.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LeSS meetings section of this page&lt;/a&gt; mentioned &lt;code&gt;4 hours&lt;/code&gt; duration for &lt;code&gt;Overall Product Backlog Refinement (PBR)&lt;/code&gt;. But I couldn't see anything about the duration of the other two Refinements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to know what are the Time-Boxes on a team and multi-team level Refinement? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29739" LastEditorUserId="29739" LastEditDate="2019-06-24T14:04:23.340" LastActivityDate="2019-06-24T14:04:23.340" Title="What are the Time-Boxes in Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS) Product Backlog Refinements (PBR) session?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26673" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26678" CreationDate="2019-06-20T10:48:58.330" Score="1" ViewCount="353" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a small team of 4 software developers trying to use Scrum. We have a large project to start from scratch and we've hit a roadblock regarding slicing the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project is a distributed system with many different components:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SQL Server database&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A couple of web services implementing OAuth 2.0 (which we're rolling ourselves)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An audit web service&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A FHIR web service (eventually)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Server-side modules (.NET assemblies)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A JavaScript based Single Page Application (SPA)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;JavaScript based modules housed within the SPA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Our own in-house JavaScript framework for building the SPA modules&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our first PBI seems so simple: A user can log-in using their smartcard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem now is using this user story to vertically slice, as just about all agile advice out there recommends: do we slice across the entire system?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we do, it seems we're biting off a monumental amount; we would need to implement all of the OAuth behaviour including permission verification, most of the JS framework (HTTP handling, template and data-binding), the basics of the SPA and all the database structure and SQL logic that's required just to support this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we are to see each PBI as a deliverable unit that provides value to the user, there doesn't seem to be a way to break this down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read so much on this yet all examples refer to much smaller and simpler applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are we just being too rigid with our interpretation of Scrum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22429" LastEditorUserId="22429" LastEditDate="2019-06-20T11:01:36.697" LastActivityDate="2019-06-20T16:06:10.453" Title="How far should you vertically slice?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;planning&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26672" CreationDate="2019-06-20T11:52:40.157" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://less.works/less/framework/product-backlog-refinement.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;5-10% of a Sprint&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GP7cw.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GP7cw.png&quot; alt=&quot;LeSS Product Backlog Refinement&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is somewhat consistent with the Scrum Guide, which states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Refinement usually consumes no more than 10% of the capacity of the Development Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in Scrum, that is not typically seen as a timebox. Sometimes, teams will spend more time refining. Othertimes, they may take on less. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/forum/scrum-forum/30937/how-estimate-spike-stories&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;I recently responded to a question on the Scrum.org forums about estimating Spikes&lt;/a&gt; where I tried to make this point - identifying Spikes in the backlog are one method of planning and accounting for refinement and if there's a lot of research, investigation, and learning, the team members may spend more than 10% of their capacity trying to refine Product Backlog Items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing to consider is that LeSS elevates refinement to events, where Scrum just has it as something that happens and leaves it as an exercise to the team to determine how. I believe that having refinement meetings are valuable, but refinement can (and should) happen outside of the meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2019-06-20T11:52:40.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26673" CreationDate="2019-06-20T13:33:17.933" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you have a distributed system with many components, you can run into this kind of issue. I've found that a good starting point is the idea of technical enablement. You have a top level expression of a need, but you can create other Product Backlog Items that can enable that. Each one should be able to be designed, built, tested, and delivered independently. Perhaps, alone, they don't satisfy the final user need, but they allow you to plan the work and ensure that you have what you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It gets even better if these technical enablement pieces of work can unblock several different user-facing Product Backlog Items. Depending on what the various Product Backlog Items are, you may be able to find creative ways to slice up the technical enablement in certain (&quot;lower level&quot;) components to enable a swath of Product Backlog Items while ensuring that they are reasonably sized, scoped, and deliverable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the tooling that you are using to manage your Product Backlog, you may be able to set relationships and links between the work to identify that a technical enablement item &quot;blocks&quot; other work or set dependencies appropriately. This can help in planning and scheduling the work, making sure that everything required is done and delivered when its needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2019-06-20T13:33:17.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26651" CreationDate="2019-06-20T14:48:06.110" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;it is a pobulare problem,&#xA;had you changing your team members?&#xA;is this situation occurs for all project?&#xA;who participate the estimation process?&#xA;you can learn from your data, do a statistical study through your different projects, compare the same user stories in different projects(is it the same team), i think it isn't pure agile development, starting from me we have to think Agile, not practice Agile, we have like this situation in our team but, and because we are new in Agile, we do so like learning of our projects to determine what is the wrong action.&#xA;I can say we also tend to be Agile but really some thing make us Mini-Waterfall, it isn't an essay practice to estimate the story effort without uncertainty, but more by more projects, i believe we can reach to the perfect state when your estimate fit with your team effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35136" LastActivityDate="2019-06-20T14:48:06.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26673" CreationDate="2019-06-20T15:11:08.860" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is: no, do not slice through all of it unless the thing you are doing actually goes through all of it, then keep it limited in scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of the vertical slice was to get away from backlog items like &quot;Design database tables for customers.&quot; If you are using backlog items that provide value from the customer's perspective and it only touches a few of them, that's fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, start with simple architectures. You almost certainly don't need all of those things to support your first few backlog items. I am frequently surprised how far into a software project I can deliver value without things like a database. If we build the application to be loosely coupled code or, better yet, highly decoupled code, adding in extra components later when we need them isn't too much work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-06-20T15:11:08.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26673" CreationDate="2019-06-20T16:06:10.453" Score="7" Body="&lt;h1&gt;You are gonna need it, but not immediately&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the point of vertical slicing is to take something like the database and say precisely, “I do not &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; the &lt;em&gt;whole&lt;/em&gt; database right now.” So let’s validate your claim: do you need the database?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let us be clear about what a database does: it &lt;em&gt;distributes&lt;/em&gt; changes of state across several servers, and &lt;em&gt;persists&lt;/em&gt; those changes when the server restarts. If you want plain persistence but no distribution, you can write to a local JSON file or so. If you want distribution but no persistence, you can have nodes broadcast messages to each other e.g. with ZeroMQ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don’t see anything in your first user story about any number of parallel servers, and I’m not sure I see anything in your first user story about any persistence; you might be able to tolerate the default in-memory behavior of “when we roll out a new version of the software everyone gets logged out and any changes they have made get reset.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you don’t need a database. You might need (if you have a list mapping some smartcard tokens to some sort of internal username) some static JSON file (not clear on whether it should be committed to repo or just a config file distributed over email/Slack and copied in as the last part of initialization; if you do not mind the data being saved to the repo then it can even be saved into one of your source files, no JSON parsing/file reading needed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, do you need a big Javascript SPA? I don’t think so—you might need a card reader or an HTML form depending on whether it’s a hardware token displaying some digits or something more interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you need a permissions structure? No, the only permission your user story covers is “is able to log in with a username and a smartcard associated with that username” and that is a global permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you slice vertically you reduce each layer to only the subset of functionality which it needs to make the user story work. You are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; trying to deliver one twentieth of the database and one twentieth of the permissions structure simply because you have twenty user stories and you are trying to deliver one of them. You may often find that in the early phases several of the layers are empty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Use delayed functionality to get better business requirements&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact you should &lt;em&gt;desire&lt;/em&gt; this. I would strongly recommend that you delay creating the database &lt;em&gt;as long as possible&lt;/em&gt;, which means, until you have real users who will get grumpy both about downtime and about their changes not being persisted over server restarts. There is a really important reason for this: &lt;em&gt;top-down design is typically nearsighted.&lt;/em&gt; You want to be able before you eliminate your freedom to mess with data structures to get a real user to mess around with the business logic of your tool and tell you something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Oh no! You are assuming every Purchase Order has a Contract but that’s not correct, we actually have Prototypes which are experiments to try and get a Contract... We register purchase orders against them to build them, but they are not part of any Contract.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Yeah that wasn't part of our original spec. Do you have a common term that encompasses both Prototypes and Contracts so that I can show you a list of _____ and then a column that says &quot;type=Prototype&quot; vs &quot;type=Contract&quot;? What would that list be called?” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Oh yeah, we just call them all projects.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then you rewrite your internal data structure so that purchase orders belong to a project, which might have &lt;code&gt;type=Prototype&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;type=Contract&lt;/code&gt;, unless you get enough differences between them that you need a Prototype table and a Contract table that are foreign-keyed-to by the Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is that if you don’t delay the creation of the database until you get this feedback, then under pressure you will start to get a very warty database:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Uh, why are these Contracts having all of these null values? Did we just forget to make them &lt;code&gt;NOT NULL&lt;/code&gt;?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Maybe. Do they have a number for their &lt;code&gt;prototype_id&lt;/code&gt;?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Yeah...”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Well see what the database calls a contract is actually what the UI calls a project, because when we started we thought that all projects were contracts, but they are not, some are prototypes. So either all of the contract columns need to be null and the &lt;code&gt;prototype_id&lt;/code&gt; needs to be not-null or else the &lt;code&gt;prototype_id&lt;/code&gt; needs to be not-null and the contract columns need to be null.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People think best when they can interact with a system. Especially people who are giving you requirements. The point of Agile is that traditional software design is sort of like asking a committee who knows nothing about clothing to write a specification about what sort of clothes they want to wear and then we will produce those clothes exactly to that specification and then if they are unhappy with how they fit they are free to not wear them or to produce follow-up documents anticipating how they change. An Agile shop is trying to instead produce a set of successive tailored approximations that at all times fit the client exactly but do not look right. So they start with “ok, we will throw a sheet over your head” and receive the feedback “OK but I cannot see through the sheet and also it is the wrong color for what I am going for.” New sheet in a better color with a hole in it. “No, it needs sleeves and a hood.” And so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can deliberately delay getting important bits of functionality right, because you might be misunderstanding something like the “color” that requires a considerable amount of rework from scratch. This happens all the time with database structures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35715" LastActivityDate="2019-06-20T16:06:10.453" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26658" CreationDate="2019-06-20T16:47:21.400" Score="1" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Yes, because then real-world testing comes for free.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the applications the testers are developing are applications they would be using anyway, or if the testing runs automatically in the background, then by all means let them take the phones home.  Or on holiday, or anywhere else.  The quality of system testing is roughly proportional to time spent, and the more time spent, the greater the probability of running into one of the (inevitable) corners you've not thought about.  Your team don't need to be doing anything in particular, they just need to have the phone with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I worked in mobile phones for a couple of years.  We were all issued with development phones which we could take home with us, fully equipped with logging.  If anything went wrong when we were away from the office, we raised an issue and dumped logs when we got back in.  I was working on system-level debugging, so a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of my work came from these issues.  It was incredibly effective, it didn't take time from the engineers, and it only cost the company the price of phones, SIMs and calls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most significant case where this helped us was an obscure issue with the phone dropping the network.  Hong Kong were reporting this as a regular occurrence, but we simply couldn't reproduce it over here.  Then a team leader happened to go to the local pub near us, and found that his phone fell over repeatably with exactly this fault.  This was the first time anyone had managed to get it to happen anywhere in the UK.  So my friend talked nicely to the landlord, and for the rest of the week his entire team relocated to the pub, occupying a fair chunk of the restaurant area with their PCs and hardware test kit, until they'd fixed the bug!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31410" LastActivityDate="2019-06-20T16:47:21.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26680" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-06-20T16:57:47.120" Score="1" ViewCount="746" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use a sort of cruddy old SLDC module in Service Now for keeping track of sprints.  It has a field for Story Points and Priority.  Priority is 1 - Critical through 5 - Moderate.  Does this track with Business Value in the Scrum World?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At my previous job, where I was scrummaster and we used paper to track stories (at least during the sprint), I asked the Product Owner to place a number (in the same scale as story points, but I don't think that's essential) on each of the stories he brought with him to sprint planning.  Then we did our ROI calculations to prioritize our work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I don't see this &quot;Priority&quot; in Service Now being anything but a holdover from people who don't understand or care about Scrum.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the difference between priority and business value and how can I effectively communicate that we, as a scrum team, need a Product Owner who puts business value on stories? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16260" LastActivityDate="2019-06-23T09:33:38.723" Title="Priority vs Business Value" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;&lt;value&gt;&lt;return-on-investment&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26680" CreationDate="2019-06-20T17:16:27.283" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Business value is a factor in priority, but there are other factors to consider as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a medium value item might end up getting prioritised over a high value item because it is quicker and cheaper to do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technical factors may be involved as well. The team may advise the Product Owner to change the priorities due to some technical reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there is a people element to prioritisation: perhaps the team wants to delay starting a particular item until somebody returns from sick leave. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion is that priority and value are best stored discretely. A common approach is to note the value as a field on each item and then use the order of the items as an indication of priority. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-06-20T17:16:27.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26680" CreationDate="2019-06-20T23:55:51.463" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner can track business value or other information on items in the Product Backlog. However, from a process perspective, only the sequential order of Product Backlog Items really matters. The sequence can be &lt;em&gt;negotiated&lt;/em&gt; with the Product Owner, but that person is the sole and final arbiter of Product Backlog contents, including its ordering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Useful Definitions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I won't bother with dictionary definitions here. Instead, I'll discuss pragmatic definitions in terms of successful Scrum implementations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Priority&quot; is ordinal. It provides the Scrum Team with a sequence of items to work on in descending order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Value&quot; is a subjective measure of how useful stakeholders think some feature will be. This is often financial (e.g. &quot;How much money will this feature make our company?&quot;) or utilitarian (&quot;How useful will this feature be to our target user?&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A Product Backlog &lt;em&gt;Must&lt;/em&gt; Be Sequentially Ordered&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, the Product Backlog is strictly ordered by the PO-defined priority of the items it contains. This priority is solely defined by the Product Owner, although often with input from stakeholders and other members of the Scrum Team. An ordered Product Backlog sets out the sequence of items to be worked on, but that order can (and frequently does) change between Sprints or through negotiation with the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While value may impact the order set by the Product Owner, such as by placing higher-value items closer to the top of the Product Backlog, the &quot;value&quot; (if any) is never tracked on the &lt;em&gt;Sprint&lt;/em&gt; Backlog because it's largely irrelevant (from a process perspective) to the Development Team. Discussions about value are usually between the Product Owner and stakeholders, and sometimes between the Product Owner and the Development Team during Backlog Refinement or Sprint Planning, but managing or assigning the business value of features (as opposed to incorporating the &lt;em&gt;value statement&lt;/em&gt; of the viewpoint character from a well-written user story into planning and development activities) is not a defined responsibility for the Development Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is solely responsible for the content of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#artifacts-productbacklog&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Product Backlog&lt;/a&gt;, and so they can certainly note business value or any other details they like on Product Backlog items if it helps them do their job. However, from a whole-team perspective, only the &lt;em&gt;sequential order&lt;/em&gt; of items on the Product Backlog matters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-06-20T23:55:51.463" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26680" CreationDate="2019-06-21T11:16:03.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It all depends on how you define business value and priority. It would be easier if you forget about the labels and focus on the &lt;strong&gt;final goal&lt;/strong&gt;: the final goal is to create a product that doesn’t have all the possible features, and yet has the highest &lt;strong&gt;benefit/development_cost&lt;/strong&gt; ratio among the products with different combinations of features that are created with the same capacity and limitations. The features that are needed to bring you toward that product will go to the top of the product backlog and will be ordered based on their contribution to the final benefit/development_cost ratio. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an oversimplified model, we can think of benefit/development_cost ratio of &lt;strong&gt;single items&lt;/strong&gt; and use that to order the backlog. This is not completely realistic, because the benefit of each feature has a nonlinear relationship with other features that you have in the product. If you believe that this nonlinearity is significant, you will have to use a holistic perspective to order the items, and otherwise, you can use the simplified method. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefit/development_cost ratio is what serious resources on value management (e.g., MoV from AXELOS) call value, which may be confusing, because the day-to-day meaning of value is the same as benefit (e.g., when people say “it’s good value for money”).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the nonlinear relationship among items is significant and you’re still forcing yourself to use value for ordering, you will find the need to consider extra criteria to improve the ordering. These extra criteria are those that usually summarized and labeled as &lt;strong&gt;priorities&lt;/strong&gt;, and then combined with business value to order items. It can be a quick fix to the problem, but most priorities have double-counting problems and can’t help as much as they should. However, there are certain types of prioritization that can work on a higher level and even contain the business value; e.g., &lt;strong&gt;MoSCoW prioritization&lt;/strong&gt; (with its precise definition in DSDM). You can use MoSCoW to categorize features into 4 relatively objective groups, and then use a rough estimation of business value to order the features inside each group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19320" LastActivityDate="2019-06-21T11:16:03.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26685" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26690" CreationDate="2019-06-21T11:17:56.893" Score="2" ViewCount="95" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have designed our system with the follow steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Backlog (epics)&#xA;Ready for discovery (epics)&#xA;In discovery (epics)&#xA;Ready to break into stories / 3 amigos (epics-&gt;stories)&#xA;Ready for development (stories)&#xA;In development (stories)&#xA;Ready for QA (stories)&#xA;Ready for PO review (stories)&#xA;Done (stories)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We designed it so that the team can take more ownership for creating the stories as we don't have an experienced PO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a weekly queue replenishment meeting. We focus on the input queue i.e. at the incoming epics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far it seems to be working fine however I want everyone to keep on top of the stories that are coming out of the epics being broken down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is how do we ensure that epics don't spawn endless stories  - since the developers are creating the stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do coach the developers on the importance of having defined epics with a start and finish and not to use them as containers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: &#xA;Example of an Epic: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a BI/Data Science team, so this is a rough example of an epic: Airflow pipeline - create a json data contract between an existing application and a nightly s3 bucket and in turn it transforms the data several times and eventually the data ends up in snowflake&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second example of an epic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Create a dashboard for a specific business department in Looker (would include Explore, LookML)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4364" LastEditorUserId="4364" LastEditDate="2019-06-21T16:58:51.817" LastActivityDate="2019-06-21T17:09:53.563" Title="In our Kanban system how do we stop epics spawning endless stories" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;kanban-board&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26665" CreationDate="2019-06-21T11:27:12.037" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your understanding of agile burndowns is fine. Daniel correctly points out, that the tool only shows a simple linear relation between the span of time and the total amount of work. This shows how much work should remain at any given point of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of the demo it seems to also take into consideration the weekends (flat parts of the &quot;ideal&quot; line). For shorter time frames (e.g. the Burndown of a 1-4 week iteration) this is very useful in my experience. For longer time frames (e.g. a quarter year) it's probably insignificant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tool you reference, simply draws the ideal line for the time span that is displayed in the diagram. You can change the date filter setting to a custom time span to get the desired result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GMgIO.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GMgIO.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16052" LastActivityDate="2019-06-21T11:27:12.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26687" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-06-21T13:01:13.707" Score="2" ViewCount="2032" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are a consultancy delivering projects for a number of our clients. For some clients, there is a Product Owner who writes the user story and the acceptance criteria (I understand that Acceptance Criteria are not mandatory, but we generally advise them as we work with a variety of resources in a distributed setup so having detailed Acceptance Criteria is always helpful). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is generally accepted by everyone that Acceptance Criteria should be available before the development of the work begins. The question is around who should be writing the Acceptance Criteria. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am of the opinion that the Product Owner writes the User Story describing the feature request and the Acceptance Criteria should be a collaboration between the development team (developer or tester) and the Product Owner and not necessarily handed entirely off to the Product Owner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it would be something along these lines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;User Story&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;As a contact centre agent I want to capture basic information about the customer when they call in&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Acceptance Criteria should be &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Data Capture&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First Name&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Last Name&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Date of Birth&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Phone Number&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Address&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Purpose of Call (this should be in a Phone Call record)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Validation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Phone Number should be a valid UK number&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Address should be a valid UK address (use a lookup service)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They are over 18 years of age&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Last Name is mandatory&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Acceptance Criteria can be written by the Product Owner but it can also be written by the developer / tester as long as it is signed off by the Product Owner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A colleague mentioned that the problem with asking the developer / tester to write the Acceptance Criteria is that it is additional work. They also mentioned that there is no process to capture that the Product Owner has signed off on the Acceptance Criteria so they might turn around and say that is not what we asked. &#xA;(The second part of the concern is probably not agile-related and is more related to when we work as a consultancy). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, who should write the Acceptance Criteria - is it the complete responsibility of the Product Owner or is it the team's responsibility?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="400" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-06-21T15:58:02.153" LastActivityDate="2019-06-23T09:16:41.743" Title="Who should write Acceptance Criteria in a project delivered using Scrum Methodology" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;acceptance-criteria&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26688" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26691" CreationDate="2019-06-21T13:02:35.543" Score="0" ViewCount="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems as though I can't set full days and part days in one go?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've created a new Calendar from the standard calendar and can assign the full days but cannot see how I would split that one day in particular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36296" LastActivityDate="2019-06-21T17:35:35.080" Title="I have a resource who will work all day Tuesday, Wednesday &amp; Thursday and a Friday morning every week, Can I set him up as one calendar entry?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26687" CreationDate="2019-06-21T13:25:09.250" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It should first be said that there are no hard and fast rules on this. That said, the most successful teams I see operate as you describe. Specifically, the PO creates a backlog item with initial acceptance criteria and shows it to the team in backlog refinement and if needed, they collectively create more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And while the backlog item should be &quot;ready&quot; before development starts, it is not uncommon that the act of development and testing uncovers new questions which require the PO's input and the answers to those may result in updated acceptance criteria. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#team-po&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Guide&lt;/a&gt; is pretty clear on this point:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The Product Owner may do the above work, or have the Development Team do it. However, the Product Owner remains accountable.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your colleague made a point about creating acceptance criteria being work, and it is. The challenge is that scrum looks at development as a team effort where everyone is involved in all types of work. Understanding the right thing to build is just as important as the act of building it, and involving the development in that activity helps build that understanding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing your colleague mentioned was about process. For most teams, the fact that those are written in a backlog refinement with both team members and PO means that you can be virtually certain that the PO is aware and signed off. That said, if in your case you need something more concrete, most online process management tools allow for modified workflows. For example, I know it is possible to custom flows in Jira that would ask a PO to click a button signing off on the change in the user story description was updated. I expect many other tools can accomodate this process for you too. It may be a fair business concern for you, but it shouldn't be hard to overcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-06-21T13:25:09.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26685" CreationDate="2019-06-21T17:09:53.563" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're going to be using the User Story format, I'd start by recommending that your Epics follow the same format as a Story. Focus on what you want the user to be able to accomplish and why. You can even go as far as developing some initial acceptance criteria that may be applied to various Stories that are written and delivered later on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you aren't necessarily tied to the User Story format. You can also use a Use Case format, where the Epic level is a full description of the use case and the major paths through it. Then, your Story level work would start with the &quot;happy path&quot; through the use case and then include various alternative paths through the use case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as &quot;spawning endless stories&quot;, this may be expected. As the work is refined, people may throw out ideas. The important piece is to order the work so that way the most valuable and most important work (or dependencies for the most valuable and/or most important work) is done first. Deliver what makes sense, get some feedback, and reorder the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also recommend having someone who isn't a developer take responsibility for writing the work items. Although developers can help, there should be someone with a vision for the product. This person can sanity check a lot of the work and see if it makes sense. Depending on the tooling you are using, there are different ways. In electronic tooling, you can log the work and apply various tags or labels to it so they are available but not necessarily visible unless included. If you're using a physical board, you may not want to record them until there's a clear user-driven need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2019-06-21T17:09:53.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26688" CreationDate="2019-06-21T17:35:35.080" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;On your new calendar, no exceptions needed.  Check [Default] Details on the Work Weeks tab. Make Monday a non-work day, then delete the second shift on Friday. Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1rJq4.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1rJq4.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2019-06-21T17:35:35.080" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26687" CreationDate="2019-06-23T09:16:41.743" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Acceptance Criteria is about usability. When a feature meets the acceptance criteria, then for sure it can be used. The acceptance criteria is as clear as black/white.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See this video, please: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/resources/definition-done-vs-acceptance-criteria&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.scrum.org/resources/definition-done-vs-acceptance-criteria&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, anyone can write a User Story and put it in the Product Backlog. Each user story needs to be refined before it can be selected into the Sprint Backlog during Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that each user story written by anyone is discussed during the Product Backlog Refining meeting by the Development Team and the Product Owner. Both the development team and the product owner write the acceptance criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, the user story already contains the acceptance criteria when it enters the Sprint Planning meeting or the acceptance criteria it is defined during the Sprint Planning by the Development Team and the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A colleague mentioned that the problem with asking the developer / tester to write the Acceptance Criteria is that it is additional work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This work is done either during the Product Backlog Refinement or Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They also mentioned that there is no process to capture that the Product Owner has signed off on the Acceptance Criteria so they might turn around and say that is not what we asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's suggested by the Product Owner to be taken into the Sprint Backlog by the Development team, then we know that the Product Owner has read and agreed to the Acceptance Criteria of the User Story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, the acceptance criteria can evolve during the Sprint. Any modifications should be discussed on the fly by the Development Team and the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no time to wait for the next Product Backlog Refinement. The User Story has already been selected to be delivered this Sprint so the discussion needs to happen ASAP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's why the Product Owner should always be available for the Development Team. And that's why there is no &quot;sign off&quot; in Scrum/Agile. Because any feature might suffer modifications when the Development Team actually starts implementing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner should acknowledge this ASAP and clarify, based on the new information, what does it mean &quot;the feature is usable&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A user story is about making something visible on the user interface.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, this makes the user login take 5 seconds more due to a big, slow request against the backend. So, the user story could be delivered as it is, but is it usable? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it acceptable for the user login to take 5 seconds? This is a question for the Product Owner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the alternative? The Development Team claims it needs to optimize the backend request and wants to increase the complexity from 2SP to 3SP. In return, this means that another User Story might not be delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should be done? Choices for the Product Owner:&#xA;1. Deliver the User Story as originally described, accepting the added 5 seconds login time.&#xA;2. Update the User Story to 3SP and optimize the backend request, esentially giving this User Story higher priority than another one (which might not be &quot;Done&quot; this Sprint).&#xA;3. Deliver other user stories first, then start working on this one, upgrading it to 3SP and possibly not delivering it this Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner needs to consider the new information (&quot;5 seconds user login delay&quot;) and decide on the spot what to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36312" LastActivityDate="2019-06-23T09:16:41.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26680" CreationDate="2019-06-23T09:33:38.723" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the Product Backlog, the order of the items matter. The ones at the top have higher priority so make sure you get this right. There's no need to fill the Priority field, just move the item higher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Sprint Backlog, the priority field of the User Stories can be used to show which user stories are more important (to the Product Owner) than others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Five user stories are selected in the Sprint Backlog:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 critical&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 high&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 moderate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 low&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is clear for the Development Team what is should deliver first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The low priority user story (and even the moderate priority user story) might not be delivered by the end of the Sprint, because the priority is to deliver the critical and high ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36312" LastActivityDate="2019-06-23T09:33:38.723" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26669" CreationDate="2019-06-23T09:41:31.470" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1) I don't believe he can do it in time (we got a 5 days sprint, two days left). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is the case, just raise the issue with him. Tell him: &quot;Jerry, if you work alone on this I think we will not deliver it in the time left. Please let me help you&quot;. If he refuses, raise it with the Scrum Master (it's an impediment). This is a topic for the Sprint Retrospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) I fear this will reflect badly on me since I was intended to write the feature. Should I say he took over the feature in the next daily?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole Development Team is responsible for delivering the items in the Sprint Backlog, including you two. So, have the discussion with Jerry the moment you realize you (as a team) won't deliver the item. If it doesn't help, raise the issue in the Daily Scrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not about shaming or (avoiding) responsibility. It's about transparency. Be kind and talk about the problem itself (&quot;I think we won't deliver it if only one developer works on it&quot;) and don't point fingers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36312" LastActivityDate="2019-06-23T09:41:31.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26695" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-06-23T14:07:48.650" Score="0" ViewCount="489" Body="&lt;p&gt;Problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A team should be able to do the increment. But with multiple team the product may become unstable because the changes from different teams may create code or functional conflict. Who should solve this problem and how?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We have no architect role (all members are developers without additional titles), and code quality rules may be different in teams. One of the teams may always add technical debt to the product and the other teams will suffer from it. How to solve this problem?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assumption: project is a big monolith application with tight coupling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36314" LastEditorUserId="36314" LastEditDate="2019-06-23T19:07:28.587" LastActivityDate="2019-07-09T06:28:59.990" Title="How several teams should work on one product using Scrum?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26695" CreationDate="2019-06-23T17:29:13.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way to reduce problems from several teams working on the same product codebase is to use continuous integration and automated regression tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is how it works...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the important functionality in your product is covered by an automated regression test. As new functionality is added, corresponding automated regression tests are also added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a team commits some code it automatically triggers continuous integration which in turn runs the suite of regression tests. If the new code breaks any tests then the team knows they have caused a problem. They will typically roll back their commit until they figure out what went wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using this approach you can maintain a stable codebase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have no architect role (all members are developers without additional titles), and code quality rules may be different in commands. One of the commands may always add technical debt to the product and the other commands will suffer from it. How to solve this problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no simple answer to this question. The best thing you can do is get the teams to work together. In Scrum we often have something called a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/articles/advice-on-conducting-the-scrum-of-scrums-meeting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum of Scrums&lt;/a&gt;, where the teams regularly communicate over issues such as technical debt, architecture, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also want to consider having &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/cultivate-communities-of-practice&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;communities of practice&lt;/a&gt;, which may help you to establish standards across the teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2019-06-23T19:32:10.440" LastActivityDate="2019-06-23T19:32:10.440" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26695" CreationDate="2019-06-23T18:09:34.890" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A command should be able to do the increment. But with multiple command the product may become unstable because the changes from different commands may create code or functional conflict. Who should solve this problem and how?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One product has one Product Owner and a one Product Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, the issue is that you have split the application in multiple non-independent parts which are lead by multiple people. These people are not in agreement and have different opinions, creating the conflicts you stated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The solution is to appoint a single person Product Owner over the whole product. The rest can be advisors and they can form a comitee, but only one person leads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have no architect role (all members are developers without additional titles), and code quality rules may be different in commands. One of the commands may always add technical debt to the product and the other commands will suffer from it. How to solve this problem?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One product has one Definition of Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Definition of Done is a one document which describe the &amp;quot;quality rules&amp;quot;. All the Development Teams contribute to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the technical people needs to sit at a table, propose, discuss and agree on the Definition of Done. Then everybody uses it as a reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The teams have different components (e.g. A, B, C, D) of the application inside one big monolith project. And some stories requires changes in several components (e.g. A + C), so people from one team (A) can be affected by code in component (e.g. C) of another team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While scaling Scrum, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#events&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum events&lt;/a&gt; are common, meaning all the teams are aligned to them and have them all at once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember: There is a single production (monolith application) and the purpose of using Scrum is to deliver a potentially releasable Increment by the end of the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's clear that all the teams need to collaborate to achieve this. So, during Sprint Planning, the User Stories are discussed in technical details before starting working on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this particular case, the Developers of the two teams agree on how they are going to implement the User Story so that it's compatible. They also they agree on when they will be working on it so that there is enough time to put it all together and deliver the functionality by the end of the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The level of details is just enough to reach an agreement, because anyway they might change along the way. When they change, the two teams communicate this in a common Daily Scrum, call it &amp;quot;Scrum of Scrums&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest you scale the Daily Scrum like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First, the Scrum of Scrums takes place. It has a timebox of 15 minutes and it's focused on the collaboration of the two teams and integration of work. The Developers from both teams join and discuss.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Second, each Development Team has its own Daily Scrum.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any technical topics are discussed right after, with the Developers working on it. They may be from different Development Teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/what-scaling-scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;quote Ken Schwaber&lt;/a&gt;, one of the founders of Scrum:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scaling carries with it the responsibility that all of the attributes of the smallest element are found in the sum of all of the elements (100 or so teams perform like one team)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, when a Development Team grows beyond the optimal size (at most 9 members), it is split into two Development Teams. These two teams need to work together as one or the essence of Scrum is lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scaling Scrum &lt;strong&gt;is tricky and is not a one size fits all solution&lt;/strong&gt;. There are many frameworks that claim to do this, but fall short because the essence of Scrum is lost along the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To &lt;a href=&quot;https://techbeacon.com/app-dev-testing/enter-nexus-ken-schwaber-scaling-scrum-future-agile&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;quote Ken Schwaber again&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The introduction of things like the Scaled Agile Framework, disciplined agile delivery, and enterprise shared services started to reintroduce methodological, prescriptive, one-size-fits-all thinking back into software development, at the same time claiming that it was agile. However, all of these approaches fall apart at the software development level. They typically just say, &amp;quot;use scrum,&amp;quot; but scrum is a one-team, one-sprint thing. Also, these methodologies don't tell you how to run large, multi-team scrum projects or programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a successful scrum implementation, when organizations want to execute large projects or releases for up to 3,000 people, &lt;strong&gt;they devise their own techniques for working out dependencies&lt;/strong&gt;, cause frequent integration to unearth festering dependencies, and adopt continuous integration and build.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, teams and organizations should use Scrum &amp;quot;as is&amp;quot; for one team and devise their own techniques for working out dependencies when greatly scaling Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, team and organizations try to customize Scrum for one team (because Scrum raises many issues) and use a fixed framework (SAFe, LeSS etc) when scaling Scrum (because they are losing it completely). This is how the essence of Scrum is lost, but everybody claims they are Agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36312" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-07-09T06:28:59.990" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26616" CreationDate="2019-06-23T18:42:36.230" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main problem I see is that you are releasing each 6 months, which is too rare. There's a reason why Scrum says a maximum of 4 weeks per Sprint. Because at the end of the 4 weeks, the increment needs to be potentially releasable. You don't have to do it, but it has to be in this state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, because the releasing cycle is too long, your customers raise their issues as bugs, which you are forced to fix before the new release. You can't convince them to wait for the release because it takes 6 months, which is clearly too long. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you should do, as a company?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should choose a Sprint length that your customers will accept to have the bugs fixed. Obviously there will be some critical bugs which need to be solved ASAP. Allocate to those 10% of the Sprint. Keep in mind, it's a team metric.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest of the bugs go in the Product Backlog and get prioritized along with the features you are developing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's assume you do this and you start a new Sprint with some features and bugs in it.&#xA;Now you have three types of bugs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The bugs you've selected in the Sprint Backlog. Just fix them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The bugs that appear during QA of the features you have selected in the Sprint Backlog. You need to fix them in the same Sprint to deliver your feature.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Critical bugs not in your Sprint Backlog. Use the 10% allocated time to fix these when they appear (eg. production bugs).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the Sprint you deliver a new version which has:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some bugs fixed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some features developed (and the bugs found during QA already fixed)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Critical bugs fixed with priority. (10% of your time).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The customer can accept this because it's reasonable to wait 2-4 weeks for some minor bugs, while the critical bugs get fixed ASAP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if 10% of the Sprint length is not enough, then you have Technical Debt. You may increase to 15% or maximum 20%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to anticipate these bugs. You need to refactor or redo some of your code if you know it has critical bugs that your customer will discover. Create some items in the Product Backlog to anticipate these bugs and talk your Product Owner into giving them high priority. Anticipate your customers' bugs and you'll have a better Sprint Planning and time management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, you may have a customer which claims every bug is critical. When you receive it, have a look at it. If it's not critical (eg. some button in the UI which never worked), ask the Product Owner to discuss with the customer or do it yourself if you can deliver the message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When assessing priority/criticity put yourself in the customer's shoes. It may be a small technical bug, but if the customer is losing money on it, then it has high priority. How high? Ask the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you allocate 10% of your time to fix critical bugs and actually use more of it, your Product Owner should decide which of the Sprint Backlog items should not be delivered. It's simple: you put something in, take something out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36312" LastActivityDate="2019-06-23T18:42:36.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26627" CreationDate="2019-06-23T18:58:49.597" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Epic is just a bigger Feature which itself might require smaller features (multiple User Stories) to get Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When an item is first added to the Product Backlog it is unrefined, meaning somebody just added it there and it needs to be discussed during the Product Backlog Refinement meeting. This meeting anticipates what will be worked on in the near future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner sees the PBI and gives it high priority, thus including it in the PBR meeting. Based on discussions with the Development Team, this item is estimated and probably broken down into smaller items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The initial estimation might be something like 20-30-50SP and estimations by each Development Team member might be all over the place. It's normal because it's too big, too broad and it's not (yet) clear what exactly is needed to get it Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember: only the PBIs which can be delivered within one Sprint should be selected during Sprint Planning into the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the item is too large, it needs to be broken down into smaller items before the Development Team works on it. An Epic is broken down into Features and further into User Stories, which are just smaller features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OkIOm.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OkIOm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Product Backlog Refinement in Scrum&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36312" LastActivityDate="2019-06-23T18:58:49.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26651" CreationDate="2019-06-23T19:25:54.187" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Sprint is just a timebox for turning some Product Backlog Items into a Done increment.&#xA;It's as simple as selecting some stuff to get Done (at the start of the Sprint) and check the stuff that actually got Done (at the end of the Sprint).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The percent that actually gets Done varies from Sprint to Sprint. People get tired, sick, holidays. A team member leaves, another one joins the team. The Product Owner changes. All these events affect the Velocity (which is the speed of turning PBIs into a Done increment).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then again, the Scrum Team formulates a Sprint Goal at the beginning of the Sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember: the Sprint Goal only refers to the most important items in the Sprint Backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the time is not enough to deliver all items (it almost never is), some items are more important than others. The Product Owner clarifies which ones have higher priority and which ones can be left out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think a Scrum team deliveres on average 60% to 80% of what was planned. If we were to use the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoSCoW_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MoSCoW method&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;60% of the items selected into the Sprint Backlog are MUSTs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;20% are Shoulds&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;20% are Coulds&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The rest are Won'ts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner is able to clarify at any time if an item is a Must, a Should, a Could or a Won't (do this time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team constantly delivers its sprint goals, then the team is performing well because it is constantly delivering the Musts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During Sprint Planning, the Scrum Team needs to be aware of the fact that something might be left out. The Product Owner might on purpose suggest a few important items and a few lower priority items. It's up to him (her). But even between those most important items, some of them are more important than others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, during Sprint Planning the team should discuss practical availabilities and raise any issues which might affect the velocity (sickess, holidays, deaths, births), in order to get closer to delivering everything that was planned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum is about people. If the people can't perform for some reason, it is how it is. The best you can do is get the real picture and do some real estimates and planning. You'll get less things Done (due to things out of your control), but you might also get almost everything Done (out of what you have planned). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36312" LastActivityDate="2019-06-23T19:25:54.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26701" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-06-24T06:07:57.390" Score="4" ViewCount="121" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is very common for projects involving people from different time zones which brings with it a bunch of management and communication issues. Is there a terminology used in Software world for such type of projects or such type of scenarios?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36317" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-06-24T10:01:52.327" LastActivityDate="2019-06-24T10:01:52.327" Title="Is there a terminology for projects spanning across multiple time zones?" Tags="&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;definition&gt;&lt;remote-teams&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26701" CreationDate="2019-06-24T07:29:28.237" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's the term &lt;strong&gt;Virtual team&lt;/strong&gt; (also known as a geographically dispersed team, distributed team, or remote team) which defines the ones made up of people in different physical locations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One can also read in two different articles the following definitions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;groups of geographically, organizationally and/or time dispersed&#xA;  workers brought together by information and telecommunication&#xA;  technologies to accomplish one or more organizational tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220627357_Virtual_Teams_A_Review_of_Current_Literature_and_Directions_for_Future_Research&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Powell, Piccoli and Ives (2004). &lt;em&gt;Virtual Teams: A Review of Current Literature and Directions for Future Research&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;small temporary groups of geographically, organizationally and/or time&#xA;  dispersed knowledge workers who coordinate their work predominantly&#xA;  with electronic information and communication technologies in order to&#xA;  accomplish one or more organization tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.researchgate.net/publication/202044119_Virtual_RD_Teams_in_Small_and_Medium_Enterprises_A_Literature_Review&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ale Ebrahim et. al. (2009). &lt;em&gt;Virtual R&amp;amp;D Teams in Small and Medium Enterprises: A Literature Review&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information i suggest you to read the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_team&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; about virtual teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27189" LastActivityDate="2019-06-24T07:29:28.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26695" CreationDate="2019-06-24T09:55:27.413" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are different scaling frameworks. There are three that are heavily based on Scrum - &lt;a href=&quot;https://less.works/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Large-Scale Scrum&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/resources/nexus-guide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nexus&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrumatscale.com/scrum-at-scale-guide/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum@Scale&lt;/a&gt;. Both have slightly different takes on how to organize teams and events, but may be a useful starting point for multiple teams working on a single product with one product backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A team should be able to do the increment. But with multiple team the&#xA;  product may become unstable because the changes from different teams&#xA;  may create code or functional conflict. Who should solve this problem&#xA;  and how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A common theme here is that the teams should be responsible for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A baseline Definition of Done can help significantly. Teams can introduce additional requirements, but a common core to the Definition of Done can ensure that all teams are working toward the same expectations for work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Automated testing from unit through acceptance can help significantly as well. Even with a single team, automated testing improves the repeatability of tests, reduces the waiting for feedback, and allows for massive amounts of tests to be run frequently. If the tests are good, you can get very rapid feedback on any conflicts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frequent integration of work will also help. When coupled with automated testing, you can make sure that everything has been integrated properly. Some may advocate for continuous integration, but this may not make sense for your context. Increasing the frequency of integration is a good start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have no architect role (all members are developers without&#xA;  additional titles), and code quality rules may be different in teams.&#xA;  One of the teams may always add technical debt to the product and the&#xA;  other teams will suffer from it. How to solve this problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A common Definition of Done will also help here to make sure that the team's are achieving a baseline quality. Work that doesn't meet this bar should not be integrated into the mainline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some level of cross-team communication is also beneficial so others are aware when decisions are made to increase technical debt so this can be accounted for in planning, either to work around it or to pay it down in the future by the team or one of the other teams involved. There are different strategies for how to enable and facilitate communication across team boundaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2019-06-24T09:55:27.413" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26704" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-06-25T01:05:26.217" Score="1" ViewCount="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a project and I want to minimize the costs. I am are responsible for the inspection of 1000 kilometers of sewer grid in Canada. My goal is to provide time high quality inspection reports. I tried to define the problem using optimization but I haven't used for a year. I want to know what would be the optimised number of people I should hire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The people I have to pay are robots drivers and inspectors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have a $\$90000$ budget, two months on site and two weeks off site before.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;robots drivers take 6 pictures of every pole under different point of views and upload them on my cloud. The drivers upload their pics once a week.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A well trained driver can inspect 15miles of sewer grid per day. Training lasts for one day, you can train two pilots in parallel.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A photo inspector performs a quality check of the pictures on the Sterblue cloud. Sterblue asks the drone pilots to reinspect any poles not passing the quality checks. You can assume 10% of the poles have to be re-inspected.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My AI on the cloud detects the defects. The customer expects 95% accuracy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The inspector performs a quality check of the detections found by the AI. They cost $300 a day and can handle 30miles/day for image quality review, 30miles/day to review the work of the AI.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have a free operations team that generates the inspection reports. 0,5 day is needed to prepare a report for 100 miles of grid.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Y81Zo.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Y81Zo.png&quot; alt=&quot;Attempt of &quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where x_1 is the number of robots drivers, x_2 the number of inspectors, y_1 the time spent by robot drivers, y_2 the time spent by inspectors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that inspection can't start before reports, and that I haven't found a way to write the 95% accuracy constraints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you help me improve the problem so I take into account every constraints to determine the number of people I should hire ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know I should do a Gantt diagram as well but I don't know yet where the major steps and dependencies are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36322" LastActivityDate="2019-06-25T01:05:26.217" Title="How to determine the human resources I need given financial and operational constraints?" Tags="&lt;gantt&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26705" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-06-25T06:23:58.027" Score="2" ViewCount="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm used to creating project checklists in software such as OmniFocus, which shows me 'next available' tasks: those that are available now, aren't deferred, whose predecessors have been completed, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've just built a fairly simple schedule in Project, and I want to see the same. From the ~100 activities, which can I do &lt;strong&gt;right now&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't seem to generate such a simple list. I've played around with the Reports but none of them are right. I can filter based on date in the task list view but it feels like Project should do this for me. Can it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36323" LastActivityDate="2019-06-25T06:23:58.027" Title="How can I see 'next available' tasks in MS Project?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26706" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-06-25T07:45:26.833" Score="1" ViewCount="161" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to write a System Requirements Specification for an upcoming project and it is the first time that I draft such a document. In my case we are creating a smartphone App which will have a basic application and a couple of well defined sub-modules that can be acquired. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am now asking myself how to handle such a case in a SRS: Should I write different SRS for the sub-modules or should I keep all in the same document? Some of the sub-modules will exist from the launch of the app, some will be defined and coded at a later time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36324" LastActivityDate="2019-06-25T12:02:35.617" Title="SRS for project with multiple sub modules" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;documentation&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26706" CreationDate="2019-06-25T12:02:35.617" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I associate a set of requirements (in whatever format) with a releasable entity. So, my question would be: Are these submodules going to be independently released from the application?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are developing libraries or reusable components that you want to design, build, and version independently for traceability, then each component will need its own set of requirements. If you're using a requirements management tool, that could be just assigning a label or tag or some other kind of attribute to each requirement so they can be managed independently or in conjunction with others. If you're using documents, then separate documents would be the way to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if your sub-modules are simply logical pieces of code that are not independently built and released, then there's no need to split up your requirements at once. The overhead of managing multiple requirements sources is not necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also two caveats here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a system level, you could make the argument that it doesn't matter what your underlying architecture is. The requirements are capturing what the system does without regard to how it's implemented. The set of requirements are levied against your system and it's a design decision on how to realize those requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Planning for reuse too early is generally wasteful. If your implementation is only going to be used in one or two applications, then rewriting the implementation is usually safer. There's added complexity in making a robust, reusable component and you don't typically see value until at least 3, if not more, instances of reuse of the component. By that time, it may make more sense to refactor and extract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation would be to start with one set of requirements. However, by appropriately labeling them and allocating them, you can be prepared to refactor your requirements. I would recommend using at least a spreadsheet application to manage requirements over a word processor, since there are some inherent sorting, filtering, and data analysis features that can make it easy to manage requirements over a long term project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2019-06-25T12:02:35.617" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26708" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-06-25T15:06:10.177" Score="2" ViewCount="6665" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the difference between an Epic and a Sprint? I have a general idea of how an Epic is a collection of Stories which can sometimes have a collection of tasks. However, what I am confused on is: if an Epic is a collection of Stories, does that mean that a Sprint is a collection of Epics? Maybe it has to do with a Sprint's typical duration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36331" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-06-25T18:43:53.560" LastActivityDate="2019-06-27T15:24:50.513" Title="Epic versus Sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;terminology&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26708" CreationDate="2019-06-25T15:11:53.310" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The concept of an Epic is related to that of User Stories, which come from Extreme Programming. There are two primary definitions for what an Epic is. In some cases, it refers to a very large User Story that needs to be broken down and decomposed into smaller User Stories that represent value-adding work that can be delivered. In other cases, it can be used to refer to a collection of related User Stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint is a concept from Scrum. It is a timebox that includes a Sprint Planning, a Sprint Review, a Sprint Retrospective, and Daily Scrum events along with effort spent to perform backlog refinement and to implement work. A timebox means that it has a beginning and a firm, fixed end point. Scrum defines a Sprint as a period of time that is no more than 1 month, after which the team produces a product increment that is suitable for delivery or release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Extreme Programming techniques are often paired with Scrum, which means that some teams using Scrum will express their Product Backlog using User Stories (and perhaps Epics). However, Scrum doesn't provide guidance on exactly how to represent Product Backlog Items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2019-06-25T15:11:53.310" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26708" CreationDate="2019-06-26T01:28:37.233" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not an uncommon confusion, especially when you're looking at everything in terms of stories. It's much clearer if you start from first principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to give you an iteratively elaborate set of answers. :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Sprint is a timebox.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An Epic is a sizable work item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Sprint is a timebox during which a planned amount of work is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An Epic is a conceptually cohesive work item that is too large to fit into a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Sprint is a timebox during which work is accomplished to meet the sprint goal. A set of stories that will meet the sprint goal and can be accomplished during the sprint timebox constitute the planned work for the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An Epic is a conceptually cohesive work item that can be divided up into smaller Stories, each of which delivers some business value and is small enough to fit into a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example of a sprint goal: Add a gallery to the website.&#xA;  - This is a cohesive piece of work that may require working several stories (set up gallery of rotating pictures; select the pictures; add the pictures), but the work is small enough to fit into a single sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example of an epic: Add a store to the website.&#xA;   - This is conceptually a single &quot;thing&quot;, but it includes infrastructure (secure credit card handling) and multiple features (search, filter, compare, shopping cart, user profile, order tracking, payment, etc): too much to fit into a sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're looking at a pile of user requests, and you hit one that is either too big to fit into a sprint, or too big even to estimate, then it's an epic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS - If you're using JIRA as your ticketing system, you'll see JIRA helps you with this. You can create an Epic ticket type, but it will not show up in your product backlog. That's because an Epic is by definition too big to fit into a sprint, and the product backlog is by definition the place where you pull stories/tickets to populate a sprint. :) You have to create separate tickets (Stories, presumably) and associate them with the Epic; then those tickets will show up in your backlog, with a visual indicator of the epic that they're a part of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(PPS - this is not a &quot;pure scrum&quot; answer. It's a pragmatic answer.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2019-06-26T01:28:37.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26496" CreationDate="2019-06-26T08:09:58.180" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wonder if this is more a question of work life balance.  Resilience can be pretty important.  Sounds like you, yourself, maybe do believe that those things matter.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's to say that if you went to a different workplace or profession that you wouldn't find the same attitude that you don't like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen Agile in a number of environments, and it seems to matter how its applied.  I think it can be used in a good way.  I've also seen it abused.  I wouldn't throw in the towel over Agile.  But Id consider the integrity of those around me.  The pace of it can test that aspect of a personality, some people cant resist the opportunity to be loud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hers my suggestion.  Strange as it may seem.  Make time to do some volunteering and surround yourself with some good people on a regular basis to build resilience and keep going. If you, yourself, believe in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36336" LastActivityDate="2019-06-26T08:09:58.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1164" CreationDate="2019-06-26T08:35:25.783" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it changing?  Yes I think so.  Agile is ever becoming more popular.  However if you are asking whether PMBoK is becoming less useful I think that answer is no, we still need to know that stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, given experience I have in managing project portfolios I can see that Agile will ever fully take over.  Perhaps some portfolios in some industries, but not all.  Where we have a more stable level of demand we can better predict resources required to meet that and that presents a cost benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile requires a pool of resource that can be called upon.  At the portfolio level when attempting to smooth demand waterfall has an advantage.  Agile requires a little headroom, always it seems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is based on what I've seen at the portfolio level for top tier mining companies and in banking. Primary industry is only as reactive as those at the helm want it to be, retail banking was quite different, the market or regulators can want something almost out of nowhere.  Mining companies have the option of being stable.  I would not steer away from PMBoK in that environment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36336" LastActivityDate="2019-06-26T08:35:25.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3097" CreationDate="2019-06-26T08:53:17.327" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would telecom only as a second alternative.  I think generally you would be better to have them together at least sometimes.  So much of communication is body language, tone of voice and facial expression.  You will catch something earlier if you have that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it also depends on the duration of the project.  A good team might be able to hold it together on telecom for a short time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is based on my experience having to do telecoms with people in other countries.  Its just not ideal for the longer term.  A good team needs to know each other.  You maybe wont get past storming without that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Id suggest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself the duration of the project and if the team can hold it together.  If its long term definitely no.  Escalate if need be.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Still do at least something physical on a regular basis if you can.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36336" LastActivityDate="2019-06-26T08:53:17.327" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26496" CreationDate="2019-06-26T10:41:44.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes it does. The problem with Scrum - is that some companies try to use it wrong. Scrum shouldn't be considered as some &quot;magic pill&quot;. And the reason is that in some cases companies just can't use it in the way it's supposed to be used, e.g. the team size is too big or too small. Or there is no clear requirements, or the customer doesn't want to work by Scrum, or there is no scrum master in the team. Or scrum master doesn't understand their role in the team, simply justifying their ego. Sometimes the emploees are just not the team players, in this case it would be very hard to make something like scrum.&#xA;At some point, Scrum is idealistic. It has rules, which  some companies can't follow completely, just because of its culture or politics. It doesn't mean that it's wrong. But at first you should think, which way is useful to your company and helps it to grow, earn money, does it satisfy the team. You should analyze your company, sometimes trying to make things with agile/scrum you will fail, and it's not your fault, it's just not the suitable way. Try to find the team, which will accept all this values, or create your own. It's easier than trying to put agile/scrum in the place where it wouldn't be accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36061" LastActivityDate="2019-06-26T10:41:44.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14189" CreationDate="2019-06-26T15:07:57.347" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to my understanding of your question i can say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;end user is interested in features, only the features, so the good estimation process will produces one feature as a collection of user stories, &quot;We eat the cake from top to bottom not from right to left&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;i think your the two user stories are independent , you  have to label every thing that does not related to an end user as acceptance criteria, and it is the scrum team responsibility to select  the development technique, you can add an internal team task that link data to the design , this task is not visible or valuable and it does not interested end user at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;if you merge your two user stories to one like:&quot;as an end user, make sure that i can view data via custom card view&quot;, do you think that it is really a big story and exceeds the sprint time frame &quot;timed by 2-4 weeks&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;your scrum team for that user story should define multiple tasks like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1- design the form designer.&#xA;2- develop data providers classes for each data view component.&#xA;.&#xA;.&#xA;.&#xA;testing team with developers will check  that an end user can design card view and link it to back-end data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;please, clarify me if i I misunderstood what you asked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35136" LastEditorUserId="35136" LastEditDate="2019-06-26T15:13:14.190" LastActivityDate="2019-06-26T15:13:14.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26717" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-06-26T15:34:47.060" Score="2" ViewCount="63" Body="&lt;p&gt;there! First time user here!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that we have three Jira projects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;USERS, which users use to enter issues;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;BACKEND, which is internal to our backend team;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;FRONTEND, which is internal to our Frontend team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our flow today is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User enters a ticket into the USERS project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The PM creates two linked issues: one for the BACKEND project, and one for the FRONTEND project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The PM links the BACKEND ticket as &quot;blocks&quot; the FRONTEND ticket.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Both the BACKEND and the FRONTEND tickets go into the usual backlog/sprint process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem today is on the handout process. The FRONTEND team has to wait for the BACKEND team to finish their work on their ticket. When the first team is done, they tell the FRONTEND team, and the frontend team will start working on their part of the job. This, of course, is not optimal, because the first team will often forget to tell the other team after they are done. It's up to me to keep an eye on their tickets to see what's marked as RESOLVED and then trigger the start of the work on the Frontend court.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can we do this better (without re-engineering the whole organization and the way our teams are organized)? Is there any way to automate this handout with Jira?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you a lot!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some remarks:&#xA; 1. Both teams are already big enough to be separated. One big team would be too big to be properly managed.&#xA; 2. I'll add more remarks as I think of them ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36338" LastEditorUserId="36338" LastEditDate="2019-06-28T18:22:56.020" LastActivityDate="2019-07-02T13:12:43.847" Title="How to handle hand-outs from one jira project to another?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;&lt;process&gt;&lt;process-improvement&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26717" CreationDate="2019-06-26T15:46:05.243" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TLDR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Combine the teams into one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Combine the Stories into one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use SubTasks for segregating work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a single board that shows all work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work in tandem if possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a lot here that I see as problematic, so let me hit a few major points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Teams should be cross-functional.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why separate development into two teams? This is exactly why that's a bad idea - it creates dependencies and hand-offs, which creates waste.&#xA;Combine the two teams into one team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Both teams are already big enough to be separated. One big team would be too big to be properly managed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay. So then take half of team A and swap them with half of team B. Now you have two cross-functional teams that don't have dependencies between them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Stories should, by themselves, provide business value.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST mnemonic&lt;/a&gt;. Stories should be Independent. Otherwise, you end up with a lot of finished stories as part of half-finished requirements. You can use SubTasks to segregate the front/back-end work, if desired. Ideally, over time, your developers should work together and become T-shaped, thereby allowing one person to complete some stories entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;There is no overall view of the Project's work&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, this should be a nonissue if you heed the above advice, but if for whatever reason you can't/won't, then you need to create either a single Jira project (separating by epics if necessary) or else a single board that shows both Jira projects. This way there's a consolidated view of the state of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Why a block?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why would you even need to have a block, here? All you need is an agreed-upon API, after which the two teams should be able to work on the feature simultaneously. What advantage do you gain from adding a roadblock?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-07-02T13:12:43.847" LastActivityDate="2019-07-02T13:12:43.847" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26708" CreationDate="2019-06-26T16:29:53.320" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;An Epic is a large User Story which needs to be refined and broken down into small enough User Stories that can be delivered in only one Sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An Epic is not a collection of User Stories, which suggests it is some sort of container.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the inception of the product, a few generic directions for the product are drawn. It is already known that these are large chunks of work, thus some people call them Epics, but in Agile Project Management they are actually called Themes. The Themes are broken down into Epics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, at the same time it may happen that a Product Backlog Item that was considered initially a regular User Story is now called an Epic because during the refinement process the Scrum Team realizes it is a really big chunk of work, bigger than what they can deliver into a Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This kind of information emerges and this is a key difference between traditional project management and agile project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint is an iteration of the development process. It's a timebox, meaning it has a limited duration of time at the end of which the Scrum Team provides a working increment of the product. Because of this and in order to deliver each time a working increment (&quot;new version&quot;), the User Stories that are selected to be Done during the Sprint, must be small enough to fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The User Story must either be small enough, or be further refined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The beauty of Agile and of the periodical refinement process is that much of the work that was planned to be done is not done in favor of the newer work that emerges constantly. That's why many Product Backlog Items are never done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This goes against about the concept of having collections of collections of collections of work, which all need to be done at some point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, the Sprint length is not determined based on the size of the User Stories. It is determined based on how often the product needs to be delivered in order to meet the business aspects and requirements (time to market, opportunities, risks etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, we don't plan to deliver it all and compute how much it takes. This is traditional project management. We plan to deliver as much as we can (of what the customers actually need, while stripping down all what's not necessary) in the time we have. This is agile project management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36312" LastEditorUserId="36312" LastEditDate="2019-06-26T17:04:56.540" LastActivityDate="2019-06-26T17:04:56.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26720" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-06-26T22:47:44.893" Score="1" ViewCount="81" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am creating a forecast of a project timeline. In this I envision several swim lanes that will converge and fork as needed. sort of like product version controls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an easy way to generate this. the timelines and milestones are changing as we discover new idea/potentials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uR66O.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uR66O.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;example of branch based timeline&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36339" LastActivityDate="2021-03-22T15:01:02.133" Title="how to create branch based project timelines" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;timeline&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26708" CreationDate="2019-06-27T15:18:28.657" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to provide a concise explanation of the two for you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftwarecloud/sprints-946603733.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sprints&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A sprint is a fixed time period where a team completes a set of issues that they've committed to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of 1, 2 or 4 week Sprints where your team is fully focused on those tickets for the duration of the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/agile/project-management/epics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Epics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An epic is a body of work that can be broken down into specific tasks (called “stories,” or “user stories”) based on the needs/requests of customers or end users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These specific tasks typically require no more effort to be completed, ideally, than can be accomplished during a single Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36164" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-06-27T15:24:50.513" LastActivityDate="2019-06-27T15:24:50.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3803" CreationDate="2019-06-27T18:07:23.670" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want a good project management tool that has a time tracking feature (I personally also think it's very helpful when apps have it), I'd recommend Kanban Tool &lt;a href=&quot;https://kanbantool.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://kanbantool.com/&lt;/a&gt; . I've used it for a while and in my opinion, it's even better than some most popular tools of this kind. I like that it can serve multiple purposes and is easy to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36344" LastActivityDate="2019-06-27T18:07:23.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3803" CreationDate="2019-06-27T18:19:12.347" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working for Eylean and I think your problem seems like something that our tool can solve. Eylean is a very visual and simplistic tool to involve anyone in organization, especially when talking about non-IT employees. Eylean has everything from daily task management to time tracking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find more at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eylean.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.eylean.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/p02VE.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/p02VE.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5562" LastActivityDate="2019-06-27T18:19:12.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26724" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26725" CreationDate="2019-07-01T07:56:08.810" Score="1" ViewCount="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if a Gantt chart / Gantt software is the wrong tool for my use case, or I'm unaware of some technique / terminology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given (1) a set of tasks, (2) time estimated to complete each task, and (3) dependencies to other tasks, I want a view that shows when each task would be completed &lt;strong&gt;if a single resource were allocated evenly among all tasks&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe easier to imagine: &lt;em&gt;&quot;Roughly how much can be accomplished by September given a 1-person team?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far I've played around with Teamweek and TeamGantt (advanced trial) with no luck. These seem to require manually assigning hours or tasks per day per resource, whereas I want that assignment done automatically, rolling over incomplete tasks (&lt;em&gt;e.g.&lt;/em&gt; unexpected sick day) automatically as well, so that I always see a forecast of completion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are Gantt charts the wrong tool? Or is there some technique or term I'm missing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8423" LastActivityDate="2019-07-01T09:38:34.577" Title="Gantt chart that automatically distributes hours across multiple concurrent tasks, and automatically rolls over unprogressed tasks" Tags="&lt;gantt&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26724" CreationDate="2019-07-01T08:01:05.107" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ah, I think I found my answer through one of the related questions: &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/26093/8423&quot;&gt;Project Management Gantt Tool makes All Tasks Concurrent&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks like what I'm trying to do is &lt;strong&gt;level resources&lt;/strong&gt; (in my case, a single resource).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's &lt;a href=&quot;https://teamgantt.uservoice.com/forums/105753-general/suggestions/1562299-resource-leveling&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;not available in TeamGantt&lt;/a&gt; for sure, and I don't believe in TeamWeek either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of June 29th, 2018, one of the commenters in that link states,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I tested more than 30 project management software and [only] found [resource leveling] in Gantter and MS Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much easier to research now that I've found the term &quot;resource leveling.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://help.wrike.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/115003260285-Effective-Resource-Allocation-within-Wrike&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wrike supposedly supports resource-leveling as &quot;Workloads&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, but it costs over $65/month to get Gantt charts (for 5 users), and then more to get the Resource integration that introduces Workloads. Microsoft Project, in comparison, currently costs $30/month/user. So, I guess it depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8423" LastEditorUserId="8423" LastEditDate="2019-07-01T09:18:20.273" LastActivityDate="2019-07-01T09:18:20.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26724" CreationDate="2019-07-01T09:38:34.577" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understand your problem properly: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you would get the result you expect if you treat your resource as a task - I think most software would then handle it properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2019-07-01T09:38:34.577" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26349" CreationDate="2019-07-01T11:30:10.780" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been using Weighted Micro Function Points metrics to get initial quick estimate of time/budget (for development part) , and it works very well for me (since doing a manual estimate takes too long for client's first inquiries, as many get rejected).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36364" LastActivityDate="2019-07-01T11:30:10.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26729" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26732" CreationDate="2019-07-02T16:04:17.603" Score="2" ViewCount="84" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have only just recently starting using Kanban, so we have little or no predictability data about how long epics and stories take to move through our system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do we give the business an idea of how long epics and stories will take to exit the system?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2019-07-03T07:18:09.957" Title="How long will it take for epics and stories to exit our Kanban system" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;kanban-board&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26729" CreationDate="2019-07-02T16:29:10.020" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;That sort of system is all about trends. You can't provide data you don't have, so you need to start building it up by doing the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-07-02T16:29:10.020" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24239" CreationDate="2019-07-03T06:16:53.527" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, the &lt;strong&gt;WBS is not outdated, obsolete, deprecated, nor useless.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The WBS is just a &lt;strong&gt;decomposition of WHAT&lt;/strong&gt; you want to deliver. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Building a WBS is not a one-shot task, but it is &lt;strong&gt;an interactive and iterative process&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One best practice in project management is to &lt;strong&gt;create a product oriented WBS&lt;/strong&gt;, that you will use later to structure your planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my article &lt;strong&gt;&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agileprojectmanagement.eu/how-to-create-a-product-oriented-work-breakdown-structure-example-from-a-real-case-wbs/?utm_medium=forum&amp;amp;utm_source=stackexchange&amp;amp;utm_campaign=post%20-%20product%20oriented%20wbs&amp;amp;utm_content=answer&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;how to create a product oriented WBS&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;, I go through this &lt;strong&gt;process with an example&lt;/strong&gt; for a recommendation system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In agile we talk about user story map&lt;/strong&gt;, which is a view of the user stories organized by EPICs and Features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is the user story map the same that the WBS?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, &lt;strong&gt;these tools are not the same&lt;/strong&gt;, but they can be used together as from my point of view they &lt;strong&gt;are complementary&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my experience, the &lt;strong&gt;WBS&lt;/strong&gt; is better to communicate with &lt;strong&gt;stakeholders outside the team&lt;/strong&gt;, and the &lt;strong&gt;user story map&lt;/strong&gt; with the &lt;strong&gt;team&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to know how you can transform your WBS into a user story map, you probably would like to give a look to my article &lt;strong&gt;&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agileprojectmanagement.eu/convert-your-work-breakdown-structure-into-an-user-story-map/?utm_medium=forum&amp;amp;utm_source=stackexchange&amp;amp;utm_campaign=post%20-%20wbs%20into%20user%20story%20map&amp;amp;utm_content=answer&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;From a WBS to a user story map&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers&#xA;Falcon&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36377" LastActivityDate="2019-07-03T06:16:53.527" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26729" CreationDate="2019-07-03T06:27:13.297" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ideally you wait until a number of stories and epics have passed through your Kanban board and then use that data to help estimate future cycle times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you absolutely need to provide estimates from day one then you can use the following approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Break the stories down in to sub-tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimate the hours for each sub-task&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Calculate the capacity of the team (number in the team multiplied by the available hours per person)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use this data to give some initial estimates of cycle time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is similar to traditional development estimating and as such is vulnerable to over-optimism, pressure to size estimates based on business needs, etc. There is also an argument that this kind of estimating is a form of &lt;em&gt;waste&lt;/em&gt; as it takes the team time to do but provides only limited value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend that if you go with this approach that you drop it as soon as you have a reasonable amount of cycle time data available (say after a few weeks or a month).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-07-03T06:27:13.297" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26729" CreationDate="2019-07-03T07:18:09.957" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually you can use little's law to do this, assuming you have at least some (at least 2 I guess) items leaving the system (i.e. they were started a long time ago before you started using Kanban) and you have a throughput. (It is not required to have any items traveling all though the system - I did this at a company that had lead times of 300 days plus, so weren't going to wait that long before predicting lead times)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Expected Average Lead Time = Current WIP / Throughput&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="763" LastActivityDate="2019-07-03T07:18:09.957" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26734" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26738" CreationDate="2019-07-03T11:18:16.503" Score="0" ViewCount="302" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently I am creating a story map for a product. We've defined the future process which should be represented in our new product. For the first step the user will get a classical windows application, but later on there should also be a mobile app.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering whether it makes sense to draw the functionalities of both (classical application and mobile app) in one map or work with two seperate maps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dWQEI.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dWQEI.png&quot; alt=&quot;Example Story Map&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it will be fine to have both in one map, as both are solving the same problems / supporting the process. But as I am quite new to story mapping I would appreciate hearing some experiences / opinions from your side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks a lot!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alex&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36383" LastEditorUserId="36383" LastEditDate="2019-07-03T11:23:21.973" LastActivityDate="2019-07-04T09:47:08.637" Title="Use one Story Map for planning two different solutions of one process" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;roadmaps&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26658" CreationDate="2019-07-03T12:48:03.187" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, but only on weekends and when necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel that only staff who have pending tasks to be done and have decided to take the device home over the weekend to finish should be allowed to take it home. There should be a rule for them to ask for it whenever they need it, explaining why they need a device at home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreso, every task done during the week that needs testing should be tested before the weekend to enable those with pending tasks take it and those taking the device home must make sure it remains in good condition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36384" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-07-03T13:09:36.043" LastActivityDate="2019-07-03T13:09:36.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8076" CreationDate="2019-07-03T14:04:42.453" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From Prince 2 Manage by exception principle. This eliminates a lot of meetings and micromanagement. This creates a more efficient project and reduces the amount of overhead involved in the execution and management of a project. it enables the team, project manager,project board and executive to know the stages of each project by daily documentation of each stage boundary. &#xA;The use of mobile gadgets is distracting to a resourceful meeting. However, taking their phones might not be a good idea because most times these meetings might be too long and exhausting, which could cause less assimilation of everything that would be spoken about.&#xA;Alternatively, if you are more interested in holding meetings you can send a Mail across the teams about the consequences of distracting meetings with mobile gadgets and how you want everyone to be attentive and engaged in the meeting to avoid receiving a query, because discipline is very important in any organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35623" LastActivityDate="2019-07-03T14:04:42.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26658" CreationDate="2019-07-03T14:48:48.200" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;i thing this is related to your company policy and the business needs.&#xA;some products need to be released in a certain time, so over-time or night-shift team will be a necessity to end up with expected release date.&#xA;you can decide according to the&#xA;number of phones.&#xA;who used it.&#xA;and the priority of the product that phone are needed for.&#xA;in our company as a night-shift testing team we suffer from another morning Work Team, some people take devices to work from home.&#xA;our manager order us to collect all device in a draw to be available to all team.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35136" LastActivityDate="2019-07-03T14:48:48.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26734" CreationDate="2019-07-04T08:23:28.803" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found story maps are a useful way to help prioritise a team's work. The map allows you to categorise what is in each release and so order your product backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, I would suggest that combining both solutions on one map might be the better approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do two separate maps then you will have to figure out how to prioritise across them. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Release 1 from Map 1 followed by Release 1 from Map 2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can make this approach work, but I would worry that it gets confusing if you want to pick up the odd story from one solution or the other:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Release 1 from Map 1 followed by Release 1 from Map 2 followed by Story X from Map 1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-07-04T08:23:28.803" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26734" CreationDate="2019-07-04T09:47:08.637" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The essence of Agile is to do barely sufficient documentation so that you can get going and learn more. For your immediate purposes, you need the process flow/functionality for the classical windows app so draw this first. If you think there may be specifics that are different for the mobile flow, you can add this as you find them later on, or even add them as specifics now, but at a very high level (these are in the future, so the likelihood of changes to the details of these is higher, so keep detail to the minimum required at this stage for decision making/any other immediate purposes that you need them for). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30594" LastActivityDate="2019-07-04T09:47:08.637" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26740" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-07-04T13:48:39.610" Score="2" ViewCount="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's take the customer churn definition from &lt;a href=&quot;https://blog.markgrowth.com/eliminating-churn-is-growth-hacking-2-0-47a380194a06&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, that I have also seen in other sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Let’s do the maths with one example: On January 1st you have 1000 customers. 100 of them are not using your service at the end of the month anymore. Furthermore you have acquired throughout January (31st of January) 500 new customers where 125 directly churn out. Simplest calculation looks as follows: (100 + 125)/1000 = 0.225&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do we divide by 1000? Wouldn't it make more sense to divide by the total amount of users in period, 1500?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36398" LastActivityDate="2019-08-03T16:02:20.297" Title="Why is customer churn rate calculated in relation to users at the beginning of a period, not people at beginning plus acquired?" Tags="&lt;metrics&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26740" CreationDate="2019-07-04T15:13:12.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Customer churn rate is simply the number of customers lost over the period divided by the starting number of customers for that period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we look at the formula in the link you share, it says basically it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LKfPO.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LKfPO.png&quot; alt=&quot;customer churn formula&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here we read to divide by &lt;strong&gt;Total customers at the start of fixed period&lt;/strong&gt;. Considering the begining is 1st of January and we have at that point 1000 customers, it's clear one needs to divide by 1000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;To note&lt;/em&gt;: To understand whether you lost or gained customers overall you can compare the churn rate to the growth rate (divide the number of new customers by the starting number of customers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27189" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-07-04T15:18:31.487" LastActivityDate="2019-07-04T15:18:31.487" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12372" CreationDate="2019-07-04T17:56:45.233" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some metrics like &quot;function cyclomatic&quot; should be checked and alerted on each commit, as they might be harder to fix later on, but release quality metrics such as &quot;no commented out code&quot; can be left to code review on version delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use Sonar CI for simple daily auto-inspections, and ProjectCodeMeter for end of sprint (release) code reviews. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36364" LastActivityDate="2019-07-04T17:56:45.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2804" CreationDate="2019-07-04T18:06:53.923" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Revic 9.2 cost estimation model also estimates the requirements and review stages. Note, though, that it's based on lines of code, so it's a ballpark estimate. Plus it's a U.S. Air Force model, so it's aimed at military projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36364" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-07-04T21:23:17.493" LastActivityDate="2019-07-04T21:23:17.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26745" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-07-05T09:43:18.873" Score="1" ViewCount="311" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have created a macro in my MS- Project. I am admin. Now how can I make it available to be used by other MS- Project users of my enterprise? Macro is created in Global file/template.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36403" LastActivityDate="2019-08-11T18:03:05.450" Title="How to share MS Project macro?" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25449" CreationDate="2019-07-06T15:43:29.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers are great, just one more tip, for safety use more than one estimation method:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Analogy based (like WMFP) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In house expert Score Card &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the contractor estimate (as they know best their team productivity and size)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then look into any difference between them&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36364" LastActivityDate="2019-07-06T15:43:29.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26748" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-07-07T19:39:08.030" Score="4" ViewCount="390" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the best way to handle task dependencies inside one story? The story itself is independent from other stories and we do have cross functional teams (design, backend, frontend).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For most tasks - especially at the start of a project - frontend work is usually blocked by the backend and design work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say that we want to implement a login story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a customer I want to log in to be able to access the private parts of the site&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This story has a three parts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Login form design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Backend API implementation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Frontend implementation (with styles and connecting to backend)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, tasks #1 and #2 can be done in parallel, while task #3 is dependent on both of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also have very different effort levels needed for the completion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When doing estimate, should each part be estimated separately? How to calculate &quot;total&quot; estimate?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to avoid spillover? If most of the tasks are entangled like this, it is possible that few tasks will be done-done, since the work is serial instead of being parallel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to commit on something that is so uncertain (other people's work)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I've read most of the topics that mention dependencies, but couldn't find a good solution to this problem&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36414" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-07-08T10:07:59.213" LastActivityDate="2019-07-18T11:49:09.523" Title="Inter team dependencies in one story" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;dependencies&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26748" CreationDate="2019-07-07T23:26:40.480" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For estimation, you want to estimate at the Product Backlog Item level. If you're using User Stories, the User Story is typically the Product Backlog Item. And when estimating, you want to account for all of the work necessary to get it to its done state, per the team's Definition of Done any any acceptance criteria on the Story itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to handle any dependencies is to reduce or even eliminate them. This will help you avoid (or at least reduce) spillover, focus on not estimating other people's work, and having clear states of being ready and done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your particular case, I believe that you can eliminate the UX/UI design task dependency. I would normally expect this work to be done as part of defining the work. I would expect a UI design to be complete, at least to a wireframe level, before the Product Backlog Item is refined by the team. Unless you know what the form is supposed to look like and how the UI elements are to behave (from a UX perspective), how can you estimate and order the work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you move design (of the UX type) as a prerequisite for refinement of the work by the Development Team, you can open different possibilities for managing the discovery work done by product managers and user experience designers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2019-07-07T23:26:40.480" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23136" CreationDate="2019-07-08T14:42:17.600" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile methodology looks to the development process as a &quot;Collaborative Process&quot;, so every role has to participate in development process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The testers look at the product in a different way that the developers look: in general, the testers try to make the software product &lt;em&gt;fail&lt;/em&gt;. In contrast, developers try to make the software product &lt;em&gt;pass&lt;/em&gt;. This difference in the methodology of thinking increase possibility of discovering bugs early.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sharing dedicated testing members from the beginning life of the product gives them a good understanding about the business and technical aspects of the product.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35136" LastEditorUserId="11661" LastEditDate="2019-07-09T02:40:14.310" LastActivityDate="2019-07-09T02:40:14.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26751" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26753" CreationDate="2019-07-08T20:32:53.460" Score="1" ViewCount="153" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to write a Project Charter for an IT Project.&#xA;The work will be completed by external consultants.&#xA;The technology being implemented is cutting edge and therefore we have no previous projects to use as a basis for estimating budget.&#xA;I am told that correct PM process means I cannot go out and get some quotes until the Project Charter is in place (because in order to get quotes we would have to commit alot of resource to define the detailed requirements that the consultants would need to quote against).&#xA;I have no idea if they charge £1000/day or £10,000/day and I have no idea what the timelines would be. Surely I need to get some quotes before I write the Project Charter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is - How to define Budget in Project Charter when Cost is unknown?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tim&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36420" LastEditorUserId="36420" LastEditDate="2019-07-08T20:38:08.520" LastActivityDate="2019-07-08T20:41:55.977" Title="How to define Budget in Project Charter when Cost is unknown?" Tags="&lt;project-charter&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26748" CreationDate="2019-07-08T20:34:16.147" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot can be done using mocks and stubs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the team could work out what the API will look like first and then rapidly build a stub API that returns fake data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This helps to separate out the frontend and back-end development tasks. Now the frontend developers work using the stub and the back-end developers work to flesh out the implementation of the API.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be that a stub is insufficient to properly drive the frontend and in that case you might want to build a more sophisticated mock API.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is just one example of the mindset of trying to reduce dependencies to allow the team to work more in parallel. This is a worthwhile approach as it easier for the team to focus on completing a user story rather than having many stories in progress at once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-07-08T20:34:16.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26751" CreationDate="2019-07-08T20:41:55.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You cannot know the exact cost until you have your quotes from your vendors and you have chosen your vendor.  In fact, unless you go with a firm price, you won't know your exact cost until the project is over.  In the project charter, the cost projection is a ROM (rough order of magnitude).  If you are unable to arrive at your ROM without external input, then you need to obtain the external inputs.  You have to ask.  One way of doing it formally is putting out a request for information, in which you can ask several questions about your possible project including costs.  The responses would give you a nice range that you can choose where you wish to commit your ROM within the charter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often times, the charter is updated several time as more information is known.  So you may get an initial charter approval in your firm with a TBD for costs but are required to update that piece when you get smarter with the unknowns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2019-07-08T20:41:55.977" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26754" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26755" CreationDate="2019-07-08T21:41:50.207" Score="5" ViewCount="2347" Body="&lt;p&gt;User Stories are generally written using INVEST method; the E meaning easier estimation which does not apply to Kanban and S meaning small enough to fit into iteration which also does not apply to Kanban. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rule of thumb is generally that a story should move through the system in 2-3 days. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can’t find out why though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If user stories need to be small for Kanban, why do they need to be small? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the reason due to WIP limits? This is even more confusing since WIP limits are empirical.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastEditorUserId="32613" LastEditDate="2019-07-10T09:28:08.407" LastActivityDate="2019-07-10T09:28:08.407" Title="Does a user story need to be small and why, when using Kanban" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;kanban-board&gt;&lt;work-in-progress&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26754" CreationDate="2019-07-08T23:53:45.060" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a word: feedback. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you’re coaching a soccer team, flying a drone, planning a city, or writing a dissertation, the sooner you can get feedback, make adjustments, and get more feedback, the more successful you’ll be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Kanban, you get feedback by completing stories and observing how they affect the system. A smaller story can be done faster, getting you feedback sooner and more frequently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are various forces that limit how small we can make a story in practice. In your situation, that limit may be 2-3 days, which is fine. No matter where you are, you should always be looking for ways to reduce the batch size and cycle time without unwanted side effects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2188" LastActivityDate="2019-07-08T23:53:45.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6244" CreationDate="2019-07-09T01:03:59.113" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having specialized as a UI developer and occasional Scrum master over the past 10 years, &lt;strong&gt;here’s what I’ve learned about external dependencies&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They’re always late. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They’re always buggy / different from what was expected. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By the time the whole system is working end to end and people starting using it, we discover a fatal flaw in the design that leads to a lot of rework. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, not &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt;, but I like to be pleasantly surprised. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that knowledge in mind, I’ve had a lot of success designing stories that anticipate these challenges. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, it’s a &lt;em&gt;user&lt;/em&gt; story.  We focus on &lt;strong&gt;creating value for the user&lt;/strong&gt;. Sometimes we discover that a lot of the value can be realized even if the dependency is never done. For example, with a little extra processing, maybe we can get the data from an existing API. Even if it’s slower and missing part of the data, something may be better than nothing. Even if we’re going to throw that work away, it generally pays off in terms of time to market and learning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When that option is exhausted, we start working on stories that can’t be completed without dependencies. The definition of done has a provision that &lt;strong&gt;a prototype may stand in for the real dependency&lt;/strong&gt;. The team has to do a bit of extra work to build a prototype that may not even be used, but it pays off. It gives us a head start in finding our own bugs and we can get a close approximation of the full working system in front of the user faster. We sometimes learn things that will affect what we need from the dependency, so that we can redirect the other team, spare them some rework, and get the end-to-end project done sooner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of tracking third party dependencies on the backlog, we do &lt;strong&gt;everything we can to keep moving forward with or without the dependency&lt;/strong&gt;. If we get to the point that we’re truly stuck and can’t do anything without the real dependency being done, we look for the next story on the backlog that doesn’t have a dependency.  When the dependency is ready, we create &lt;strong&gt;integration stories just-in-time&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2188" LastActivityDate="2019-07-09T01:03:59.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26748" CreationDate="2019-07-09T07:29:42.737" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When doing estimate, should each part be estimated separately? How to calculate &amp;quot;total&amp;quot; estimate?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the teams participate in the same Sprint Planning, discuss all the aspect of the User Story and fully estimate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You first need a reference User Story which has 1 Story Point. You discuss this User Story so that all the parts are understood. It may be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;As a web user,&#xA;I want to reset my password,&#xA;So that I keep using my account&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has design, frontend, backend work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, you ask the Developers (design, frontend, backend) to give their estimates on how much more complex your story is, than the reference story. If it's just as complex as the reference User Story, then it gets 1SP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The user story estimation contains all the work to get it &amp;quot;Done&amp;quot;. All of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.How to avoid spillover? If most of the tasks are entangled like this, it is possible that few tasks will be done-done, since the work is serial instead of being parallel&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to practice iterative development, most notably the inspection and adaptation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This story has a three parts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.Login form design&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.Backend API implementation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3.Frontend implementation (with styles and connecting to backend)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During Product Backlog Refinement you come up with some initial drafts for the three parts and add them to the User Story. Then you have an imperfect User Story, but still one which has all the parts, so all the Developers can start working on it. The User Story is selected for a Sprint and further discussed during Sprint Planning. More details are added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you start working on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Iteration no. 1:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the User Story details, the frontend uses the draft design and expects some backend endpoints, mocks them. All the work is integrated on the development environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One-two days later, the Developers and the Product Owner have a look at it (literally, on the UI). This is inspection. And decide how to modify it further. Adaptation comes next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Iteration no. 2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The design is updated. The frontend updates it. The backend delivered some endpoints. The frontend removes some mocks and uses actual endpoints. This is adaptation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One-two days later, it's feedback time, again. Somebody clicks the login button, it doesn't work. Is it frontend or backend fault? Backend. The design could use a different font. This is inspection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Iteration no. 3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The backend fixes and delivers all endpoints. The design is updated with the new font. The frontend puts it all together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One day later, it's feedback time, again. Now it looks good and works as expected. This is inspection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now you merge the stuff and deploy it to staging environment. The Product Owner can now show it to stakeholders for more feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More iterations might happen until it's &amp;quot;Done&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's not exact science, it's complex, but this is the flow of working and collaboration.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because one part might be delivered slower than the others, you (the faster one) may switch to work on something else. You may even demand feedback on partial work (design and frontend with fully mocked backend).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These things can be smoothen out in the Sprint Retrospective. In a true cross-functional team, the frontend can do some design and the backend can do some frontend (and/or vice versa) so that all the Developers deliver at the same time and you don't have to wait on one another. It's all planning, expertise and capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Separating the people by expertise doesn't help at all, it only makes things worse. It makes the feedback loops longer. So, while you may think the User Story is &amp;quot;Done&amp;quot;, you actually haven't received (yet) some feedback which will make you update it again, as a &amp;quot;bug&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no splillover if you expect it. You should actually want this feedback ASAP to get &amp;quot;Done&amp;quot; with it. Obviously, if you think it's &amp;quot;Done&amp;quot; and some unexpected feedback comes, you need to put more work in it and have less time available for other User Stories or Bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3.How to commit on something that is so uncertain (other people's work)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/three-pillars-empiricism-scrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Along with inspection and adaptation, transparency is the third Scrum Pillar&lt;/a&gt;. Just be honest and collaborate to deliver the common User Story, to achieve the common Sprint Goal. This is commitment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/resources/commitment-vs-forecast&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;commitment was changed to forecast&lt;/a&gt; because the former has bad implications on the quality of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After committing to deliver a list of Product Backlog Items, the Scrum Team, foremost the Product Owner and especially the stakeholders may feel that there is an obligation to actually deliver all of them at the end of the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36312" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-07-09T07:29:42.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19926" CreationDate="2019-07-09T09:08:49.660" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, don't worry about &quot;authority&quot;.  A Scrum Master is a &lt;em&gt;servant leader&lt;/em&gt; who achieves things through persuasion, not decree.  It's your job to ensure that people and the project are getting &lt;em&gt;value&lt;/em&gt; from the ceremonies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important meeting in Scrum is the Daily Scrum.  If we let that slide, we lose the tightest feedback loop we have.  This stand-up is what keeps us working as a &lt;em&gt;team&lt;/em&gt;, even when we're all focused on different parts of the project - that's our prompt to ask for help, or to offer it when we see that someone's making no progress.  Without that, it's all too easy to keep pushing on alone without help.  It's also the best opportunity for the team (including PO) to understand whether the current sprint is on track to meet the Sprint Goals, and give early warning to stakeholders if it becomes clear that we won't achieve them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I said &quot;including PO&quot; above, but not your CIO.  My recommendation is to not require his presence, as he should be getting suitable updates from the PO during the sprint, and will be present at the end-of-sprint Demo to see the tangible results.  (Of course, make sure he knows he's always welcome as an observer, but won't be allowed to derail the meeting).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team aren't getting benefit from the stand-up, then perhaps it can be improved.  The most common problem I've found is that it's unfocused, and goes on too long in too much detail.  Try strictly enforcing a 30 second time limit on team members to give their progress towards the Sprint Goals and what they intend to do by the next stand-up.  Any discussion that's not about the goals needs to be shut down so that the meeting can move on; anything that needs to be discussed in more depth should be noted as a &quot;Meet After&quot; item for those affected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a really good idea to have the Sprint Goals prominently visible during the stand-up, to help maintain the focus.  By keeping the meeting brief and focused, the team are getting better value for the time spent in the stand-up, and you should suffer less from wandering attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next most important meeting in Scrum is the Retrospective, because without a retrospective, we have no mechanism for improving our processes.  I like to do my Retrospective in three parts, with tight timeboxes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Summarise what happened during the sprint (5 minutes)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Individually, write stickies with at least one good and one bad thing that happened (10 or 15 minutes)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a team, group related topics together to identify the strongest themes (10 minutes)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take the biggest theme, and brainstorm actions to sustain (if good) or rectify (if bad) (15 minutes)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Write down the actions along with how we'll measure whether we're successful. (5 minutes).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keeping it focused on identifying ways to improve helps avoid the meeting just becoming a &quot;whinging session&quot; where issues are endlessly discussed but never addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, are you really working as a &lt;em&gt;team&lt;/em&gt;, or merely a group of individuals each working on their own thing?  If the latter, then one way to encourage more collaborative work is to set a limit for work-in-progress that's lower than the number of team members.  That means that at least one story must be worked on by two people together, helping them to broaden their knowledge and skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35563" LastEditorUserId="35563" LastEditDate="2019-07-09T09:26:37.647" LastActivityDate="2019-07-09T09:26:37.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26754" CreationDate="2019-07-09T09:35:25.167" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many of your ideas are based on faulty assumptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;S meaning small enough to fit into iteration which also does not apply to Kanban&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The rule of thumb is generally that a story should move through the system in 2-3 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You link to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/invest&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Agile Alliance page that defines INVEST&lt;/a&gt;. However, that page links to &lt;a href=&quot;https://xp123.com/articles/invest-in-good-stories-and-smart-tasks/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the XP123 blog post by Bill Wake that captures the original definition of the INVEST mnemonic&lt;/a&gt;. If you look at the original definition of &quot;Small&quot;, it doesn't mention iterations at all. It does say that Stories &quot;typically represent at most a few person weeks worth of work&quot;, but some teams may choose to make them smaller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The S from INVEST should still be applied to whatever your work item when applying kanban, but how big S really is depends. You are right that you can't use your iteration length as a boundary for the size of the work item if you are following a leaner approach, but you would be able to if you are &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/resources/kanban-guide-scrum-teams&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;applying kanban to Scrum&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the E meaning easier estimation which does not apply to Kanban&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a relatively common misconception. There are two techniques around estimation in kanban approaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The leanest approach to estimation is to decompose the work into roughly equal sized chunks, where each work item that moves across your kanban board is roughly the same size and you can simply count number of work items and time to progress. However, you can also use relative measures (such as story points) or time measures (person-hours) as well, but you would need to consider these when computing many of the metrics commonly used in a kanban system, which adds complexity and introduces additional room for error. My recommendation is to work toward the first approach, but if you are transitioning from something like Scrum, it may take some time to get there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both approaches are still estimation, though. If you aren't thinking about the size of the work, you aren't able to determine if two pieces of work are roughly the same size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point of David Anderson's comment is to consider why you are estimating and your current approach. How much time are you investing in estimating using your current technique? How much value do you get from it? Why are you doing it? I think it's much like the #NoEstimates movement - it's not opposed to all estimates in all cases, but rather a drive to think about what you are doing and why you are doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, to the heart of the matter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If user stories need to be small for Kanban, why do they need to be small?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is the reason due to WIP limits? This is even more confusing since WIP limits are empirical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two reasons for small work items when applying kanban: feedback and predictability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smaller work gets done faster. It goes all the way through the value stream and delivered to the next stage in the process. You can get feedback on the work, which would allow you to change your backlog based on the changing situation. You can also get feedback on the process, finding bottlenecks or opportunities for improvement based on how long the work was in each activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the work is equally sized or you can easily tell the relative size, as work moves through the value stream, you can predict how long it will take to go from an arbitrary point in the backlog to done, assuming it's not reordered. Or you can tell how long a work item typically lives in a particular stage of development. Equally sized work makes this much easier, but after some work items have passed through the process, you can use historical data to make predictions about new data. And if you're following an empirical process and inspecting your processes and methods regularly, you are hoping to improve, which could be time reduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/098643633X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Actionable Agile Metrics for Predictability: An Introduction by Daniel S. Vacanti&lt;/a&gt; is a good intro to metrics around kanban and other lean approaches. I found it a little dense, but very informative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2019-07-09T11:30:43.090" LastActivityDate="2019-07-09T11:30:43.090" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26754" CreationDate="2019-07-09T17:16:51.977" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, consider the following user story: I want to be able to install the software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's pretty much irreducible, so that's what it's going to be. But it's probably going to take longer than a two-week cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This was the user story when we got tired of building the software directly on the demo machines.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25371" LastEditorUserId="25371" LastEditDate="2019-07-09T18:36:40.717" LastActivityDate="2019-07-09T18:36:40.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6647" CreationDate="2019-07-09T21:01:30.293" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I have to &lt;strong&gt;take over a project&lt;/strong&gt; and I need to &lt;strong&gt;review or improve the schedule&lt;/strong&gt;, I follow the &lt;strong&gt;same steps I follow when I have to create&lt;/strong&gt; a schedule from scratch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my experience, &lt;strong&gt;the 6 first steps are:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Open the latest version of you &lt;strong&gt;work breakdown structure&lt;/strong&gt; to outline&#xA;the schedule &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask to your team&lt;/strong&gt; what needs to be done to deliver what&#xA;is in the work breakdown structure &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify with your team in which &lt;strong&gt;sequence they suggest&lt;/strong&gt; to do the&#xA;activities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get to know &lt;strong&gt;what the team need to work&lt;/strong&gt; on the tasks to deliver&#xA;what is in your scope&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get the &lt;strong&gt;first estimations&lt;/strong&gt; of the effort and duration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consolidate all the information in the &lt;strong&gt;project management tool&lt;/strong&gt; you&#xA;will use to manage the project schedule&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my article “&lt;a href=&quot;http://agileprojectmanagement.eu/steps-for-creating-a-project-schedule/?utm_medium=forum&amp;amp;utm_source=stackexchange&amp;amp;utm_campaign=post%20-%206%20steps%20for%20creating%20a%20project%20schedule&amp;amp;utm_content=answer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;6 steps for creating a project schedule&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;”, I write also about &lt;strong&gt;what happen after&lt;/strong&gt; you follow these steps &lt;strong&gt;and things to keep in mind&lt;/strong&gt; to create great project schedules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Falcon&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36377" LastActivityDate="2019-07-09T21:01:30.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12716" CreationDate="2019-07-09T21:14:24.460" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are right, the &lt;strong&gt;WBS and your project schedule are strongly related&lt;/strong&gt;, but allow me to add a &lt;strong&gt;small nuance to your first line&lt;/strong&gt;: WBS task list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;project management best practice&lt;/strong&gt; (PMI or Prince2) is to create a &lt;strong&gt;product oriented WBS&lt;/strong&gt; or product breakdown structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have your product oriented WBS, you can structure &lt;strong&gt;your planning based on it&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to know &lt;strong&gt;how to create a product oriented WBS&lt;/strong&gt;, I suggest you to read my article &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agileprojectmanagement.eu/how-to-create-a-product-oriented-work-breakdown-structure-example-from-a-real-case-wbs/?utm_medium=forum&amp;amp;utm_source=stackexchange&amp;amp;utm_campaign=post%20-%20product%20oriented%20wbs&amp;amp;utm_content=answer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;how to create a product breakdown structure&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. You will find the &lt;strong&gt;process and an example&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About how &lt;strong&gt;to create a planning&lt;/strong&gt;, from my experience, &lt;strong&gt;the 6 first steps are:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Open the latest version of you &lt;strong&gt;work breakdown structure&lt;/strong&gt; to outline&#xA;the schedule &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask to your team&lt;/strong&gt; what needs to be done to deliver what&#xA;is in the work breakdown structure &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify with your team in which &lt;strong&gt;sequence they suggest&lt;/strong&gt; to do the&#xA;activities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get to know &lt;strong&gt;what the team need to work&lt;/strong&gt; on the tasks to deliver&#xA;what is in your scope&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Get the &lt;strong&gt;first estimations&lt;/strong&gt; of the effort and duration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consolidate all the information in the &lt;strong&gt;project management tool&lt;/strong&gt; you&#xA;will use to manage the project schedule&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my article “&lt;a href=&quot;http://agileprojectmanagement.eu/steps-for-creating-a-project-schedule/?utm_medium=forum&amp;amp;utm_source=stackexchange&amp;amp;utm_campaign=post%20-%206%20steps%20for%20creating%20a%20project%20schedule&amp;amp;utm_content=answer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;6 steps for creating a project schedule&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;”, I write also about &lt;strong&gt;what happen after&lt;/strong&gt; you follow these steps &lt;strong&gt;and things to keep in mind&lt;/strong&gt; to create great project schedules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheers,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Falcon&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36377" LastActivityDate="2019-07-09T21:14:24.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26764" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-07-10T10:45:20.917" Score="3" ViewCount="108" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a team that's distributed across several locations, time zones, and managers. Quite often, some team member needs to know if or or more other team members are generally available, or on leave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What means can you think of to efficiently make this information available to everyone?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What doesn't work&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Individual's Outlook calendar. It's way too clumsy to determine availability of a group of people in this way. You need to start creating a meeting, add the individuals and hope that their calendar is up-to-date. Managers have no easy way of seeing if their team members have put in their vacations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An Outlook calendar shared by someone. Also clumsy, and doesn't work if people move on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Excel. Not really. No concurrent access.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The corporate leave management. Not accessible across organizational teams due to missing permissions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What I don't want/need&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I know there are commercial leave management systems with nice web interfaces. But I don't want to manage people's leave -- that's what HR does. I only want to make leave known to other team members. For instance on Confluence, but how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36440" LastActivityDate="2019-07-10T17:46:38.677" Title="How can I make availability of team members visible to everyone?" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26765" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26771" CreationDate="2019-07-10T10:53:51.983" Score="1" ViewCount="122" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am facing a problem with some engineers and I want to know if is possible to detect some characteristics during the interviews or through some test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my company (a software house), we are hiring software engineers. We have some tests, mostly about programming skills and we are introducing some assessment tests too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have detected that some engineers require too much effort to manage them. The following can be a kind of characterization:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The engineer doesn't follow all the required instructions written down in a procedures document (even short ones)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The engineer needs to be frequently asked if they follow the steps that some issue requires (like creating a profile following instructions)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is a public channel where the team post important links to follow and news, and this kind of engineer tend to not read and follow links to important issues, even for themselves.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even if the manager of these engineers is not a micromanager, he/she seems to be forced to micromanage them, if not, the tasks are not accomplished.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the issue is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to detect during the recruitment steps, that you are dealing with this kind of engineer?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to detected that the engineer requires some kind of micromanagement (to avoid it in fact).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any kind of test that can detect some tendency of this in advance?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Project Manager, I am looking for engineers that are self-organized, that you don't need to push them all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36439" LastEditorUserId="36439" LastEditDate="2019-07-10T11:00:02.953" LastActivityDate="2019-07-11T11:42:19.380" Title="How to detect in recruitment, engineers that are not self-organized" Tags="&lt;micro-management&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26764" CreationDate="2019-07-10T13:51:49.840" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can thinking of making some thing exclusive for your team, if it is really a problem for your company. &#xA;You can self develop custom calendar arrangement product, it is according to how much really you need to share members status between all channel, make a balance between the feasibility and required cost and effort.&#xA;if the locations of your company are distributed will remain, it is a good choice -in my opinion- to develope needs-driven product.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35136" LastEditorUserId="35136" LastEditDate="2019-07-10T13:58:56.280" LastActivityDate="2019-07-10T13:58:56.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26764" CreationDate="2019-07-10T17:46:38.677" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Shared calendars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two mainstream platforms that can host shared calendars:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Confluence &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sharepoint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are shared platforms by their own nature, are centralised and what most people don't know is that you can show these calendars in your [own outlook instance](Productivity - Better Outlook - Show meeting room availability right in your calendar &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/productivity-better-outlook-show-meeting-room-right-tiago&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/productivity-better-outlook-show-meeting-room-right-tiago&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, some projects are using Jira Tempo Team planned times to denotes availability. Needless to say, you need to have Jira and the Tempo plug-in available. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyways, if you're working on a cross cultural, multi time zone project you might have at least one of the above solutions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-07-10T17:46:38.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26765" CreationDate="2019-07-11T08:56:34.853" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, to your direct question, there is no reason that you can't ask things like &quot;When you are working a task and finish it, what do you often do next?&quot; Or &quot;Describe to me how you organize your day.&quot; A question I used to use frequently was &quot;You have an important deadline and you've discovered that the implementation that was selected won't accomplish the goals of the project. What would you do?&quot; This tells you all kinds of useful info.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, people are not inherently self-managing or not. Perhaps a better way to put it would be: is the engineer used to self-managing? If I look at companies who are prime examples of environments that support self-management, there are enough mechanisms in place that people not used to it quickly get used to it or self-select out. The situation you describe is familiar and often happens when organizations are stuck in between. You mention that the manager chooses to micro-manage instead of letting a task go unaccomplished. This is an enabling behavior. The manager is teaching that person that they value delivery over self-management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many advantages to self-managing teams and employees, but you need to be committed. I often recommend looking at David Marquet's Ladder of Leadership as a series of steps to start safely building in self-management habits in both the managers and employees. It is a little more psychologically safe than all-or-nothing but doesn't enable bad behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-07-11T08:56:34.853" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26765" CreationDate="2019-07-11T11:42:19.380" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a science to hiring.  There are extensive literature on the predictive validity of various kinds of selection methods.  Start your research with Schmidt and Hunter.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Structured interviews, work sample testing, and mental ability tests have scored high in predictive validity (r &gt; .5) while other methods or indicators, such as experience, scored extremely low.  Read up on Korn/Ferry's Lominger Competencies: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.kornferry.com/media/lominger_pdf/LomingerToolsandServices.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LomingerToolsandServices.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're serious about improving your talent recruiting, hire the right kind of professional.  Look for I/O Psychologists or similar training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2019-07-11T11:42:19.380" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26772" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26787" CreationDate="2019-07-11T14:16:09.337" Score="0" ViewCount="148" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have some tasks to be be performed on each project daily. I can write a macro to automate those tasks for a project. That way I have to run that macro exclusively for each project. How do I write a macro that will run on all projects and perform those Tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36403" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-07-21T08:35:27.873" LastActivityDate="2019-07-21T08:35:27.873" Title="Macro to run on projects" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26773" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26779" CreationDate="2019-07-11T14:17:18.960" Score="3" ViewCount="138" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Problem&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're working in a full-stack development team composed of three guilds (backend, frontend, QA), so as a team we share a single sprint board.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;User stories we take into our sprints are written in a way that they may require work from at least one or multiple guilds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far the story received single estimation as a composition of votes for all involved guilds. But this way we're unable to tell how heavy the story will be for every single involved guild, which causes us complications in sprint planning meetings and later on in sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine you want to maximize the team effectivity by minimizing down-times of each guild. Because (not every, I know) user story can be worked on in parallel by multiple guilds, you can do that by selecting such stories to sprint where summary of estimations for each guild gives closest capacity of that guild. You mustn't, of course, forget to count with dependencies between stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it OK for single user story to have estimations for each of involved guilds? And if so, is Jira (cloud) able to deal with that? Does anyone have any personal experience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Note&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also thought about estimating only sub-tasks, not user story itself, but we rejected that because this would inflate the estimation unreasonably.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine single story with work required by all three guilds. In refinement the story receives following estimations (3 SP: backend, 1 SP: frontend, 2 SP: QA). The guilds agree on single estimation of 5 SP and give this to the user story. Sub-tasks for each guild are left unestimated (with estimation zero).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In opposition when the story itself would not receive any estimation (zero), but sub-tasks for each guild would receive their respective estimations. This would give unreasonably higher SP count (here 6 SP instead of 5 SP in the first case), because you'd have to sum all SPs for each sub-task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36451" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-07-14T12:51:17.483" Title="Should single user story contain estimations for each involved guild in full-stack development team" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;refinement&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26773" CreationDate="2019-07-11T14:28:01.317" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using terms like &quot;guild&quot; makes me think that you are organized like something similar to the Spotify model. However, what you describe as a &quot;guild&quot; doesn't appear to be consistent with that. In the Spotify model, work is done by a cross functional team, which they refer to as a &quot;squad&quot;. A guild is a cross-squad (and also cross-tribe) organization that works on a a particular kind of cross-cutting problem to spread knowledge across the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, in any of the agile methods, you want cross-functional teams that take on the work. This means that the team has all of the skills needed to take an arbitrary piece of work from its initial state to some defined final state without going outside of the team. It's not always achievable - there may be subject matter experts that the team may need to draw on for some work - but it is a desired state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were to structure your work in this way, the team would be able to estimate the effort to deliver the entire work. There would, ideally, be no dependencies outside of the team. If there were a dependency, then that can be considered in the estimate, but I would suspect that it would have a much greater impact on planning the work than estimating the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cross-functional team structure would probably also lead to less resistance from the tools that you are using, as long as you are configured to use them in a way that is designed to support agile software development methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2019-07-11T14:28:01.317" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26775" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-07-11T20:12:42.867" Score="1" ViewCount="500" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm being tempted to take the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum-institute.org/Register_Scrum_Certification_Program.php?utm_source=International%20Scrum%20Institute&amp;amp;utm_campaign=ac6853bb1c-0001%20-%20001%20%2528Welcome%20and%20Books%2529&amp;amp;utm_medium=email&amp;amp;utm_term=0_a47ff48ae0-ac6853bb1c-120362457&amp;amp;goal=0_a47ff48ae0-ac6853bb1c-120362457&amp;amp;mc_cid=ac6853bb1c&amp;amp;mc_eid=3396a07bc4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scrum Master Accredited Certification at Scrum Institute&lt;/a&gt;. Initially, I was planning to get PRINCE2 certification but then got an advice by a fellow PM that I should get this one as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really don't mind the cost for it, but I just want to know if this one is being recognized/accepted. Also, is there anyone here already took the said certification from them? If yes, what was the reason behind it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note I've already read the following before posting this question: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/9702/which-scrum-certification-provider-is-most-widely-recognized-or-accepted&quot;&gt;Which Scrum certification provider is most widely recognized or accepted?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2165/career-path-in-project-management?rq=1&quot;&gt;Career path in project management&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/871/is-the-pmp-or-other-project-management-certification-worth-while-to-have?rq=1&quot;&gt;Is the PMP or other project management certification worth while to have?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36454" LastEditorUserId="36454" LastEditDate="2019-07-12T13:01:09.863" LastActivityDate="2019-11-14T14:11:59.810" Title="Is getting a Scrum Master Accredited Certification at Scrum Institute worth it?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;career&gt;&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2019-11-14T14:16:09.583" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26776" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26778" CreationDate="2019-07-12T03:46:22.200" Score="1" ViewCount="94" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working on a new project that currently has only me to lead it, so I often have to ask for help from some members from other department units.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I already set a timeline and scheduled a task for each member assignee to complete their task. However, because there are additional tasks for them, they do not have enough time to do it for me; they are busy with their daily tasks, so the project is running late.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could not force them or use bossy words in order for them to do it because I am the one that's going to ask them for help. Still, I need the project to be on the schedule timeline set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: how can I make this project be on its timeline schedule, since now it is running late because other departments' assignees are already busy doing their daily tasks? It also might be that they do not want to help me or something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any advice or suggestions are really appreciated. Thanks so much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36459" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-07-12T13:15:53.100" LastActivityDate="2019-07-12T13:15:53.100" Title="How to inspire team member to do project task effectively while they are busy with their daily task?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;project-team&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11675" CreationDate="2019-07-12T06:07:16.657" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A classic explanation on Story Points - a measure of effort (time). &#xA;This article is 4 years old and we have been doing agile for nearly 20 years, but still people misconceive story points. I have often heard story points based on Effort or Complexity. However it is always about the effort and complexity influences the effort. I believe the example in this article will put this debate (misconception) to bed: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/story-points-are-still-about-effort&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/story-points-are-still-about-effort&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Story point is about estimate but what could take 2 days for me might be 1 day for another person. So we agree as a common unit as 1 point. So I can do 5 points in a 10 day sprint and the other person 10 points. Eventually I will become more experienced and do more points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36461" LastActivityDate="2019-07-12T06:07:16.657" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26776" CreationDate="2019-07-12T06:16:33.837" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The expression &lt;em&gt;run behind schedule&lt;/em&gt; exists and is used to describe something that as high risk to or is actually going to arrive / leave later than the time that is expected. This can also be applied to projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your case, you answer to someone, there's agreed SMART objectives defined but workers aren't able to cope with it. Consequently, the project is behind schedule and not in budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's great you try and understand the forces driving the project off schedule but the problem, from what I read, isn't necessarily the workers doing multitasking and losing productivity. It can be yours if the schedule didn't consider uncertainties and unknowns, or of someone pulling your team off project, or all (Just a few examples).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's normal the initial plan changes. You should re-plan and find the problem, the possible solutions for that problem and be all eyes to understand the outcomes of the applied solution, so that you learn from it and you're able to deliver what was promised. This requires also communication from your side because the project is only happening because someone wants and that someone should be updated. That's what project management is about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27189" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-07-12T06:23:29.583" LastActivityDate="2019-07-12T06:23:29.583" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26773" CreationDate="2019-07-12T06:55:11.480" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Imagine you want to maximize the team effectivity by minimizing down-times of each guild. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trying to get more work out of a team by minimizing down-time is called the resource utilization trap. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CostXs2p6r0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a nice video showing how minimizing down time does not actually increase the output of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The target of a sprint should not be that everybody was busy the whole time, but rather the amount of work that gets delivered with good quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Optimizing the amount of work that can be delivered starts with knowing how much work the team as a whole can bring to completion within the timebox of a sprint. And as we are looking at the team as a whole, the most value is in a single, whole-team, estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is one point where estimates per discipline can be useful, and then traditional estimates in hours are the most useful. That is during planning, when there is a fairly strong specialization within the team, to ensure that the work that is being planned will not overload one discipline too much.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;These estimates are not expected to have lasting value, so you might just note them down on a piece of paper during the planning session, or, if you are used to estimating earlier, put in a comment in the ticket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this situation, you would first plan the stories according to the capacity of the entire team to deliver work. This will usually be based on their previous track record as indicated by the velocity they reached in the past sprints. After the team has indicated they feel fairly confident that they can fully complete the work that is on the table but they can't complete another from the backlog, you would do a cross-check by comparing the expected availability of the team members to the per-discipline estimates to ensure that the load isn't too skewed. As the team matures, you may see that they start complaining earlier in the planning about a skewed load. In any case, when the load is skewed a negotiation with the product owner can be held to exchange some work to even-out the work more (and if you are lucky, take on more work).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastEditorUserId="12235" LastEditDate="2019-07-14T12:51:17.483" LastActivityDate="2019-07-14T12:51:17.483" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26783" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-07-12T12:55:03.333" Score="2" ViewCount="736" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently working as product owner in a firm where we follow agile methodology. I would like to discuss about a scenario faced in my daily work life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have started working on a project to implement a new report in our product. I proposed a design and shared it with the UI team. Then I started writing user stories based on my proposed design. The proposed UI design was finalized by the chief product officer. But during the product refinement meeting, the Development team suggested a totally different UI design. This creates extra work to update the stories based on that design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my questions are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the best time to start writing stories?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should we finalize the UI design first instead of writing stories?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it fine to start working on stories after finalizing the UI design?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any suggestion which can be followed to avoid similar issues in&#xA;the future?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33461" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2021-01-18T08:16:56.460" LastActivityDate="2021-01-30T03:06:05.343" Title="Should we finalize the user story or UI design first?" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;user-experience-design&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26775" CreationDate="2019-07-12T13:13:17.957" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generically speaking, a certificate truly worth it if it passes two tests: 1) the process of certification is challenging enough that it filters out those who are consistently lower performers, and 2) the hiring market trusts and is using the certificate as a criterion in its selection methods.  It is somewhat worth it if test 2 is true because, even though the certificate would be useless as a valid predictor, the market demands it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Test 2 is largely geographic.  What might be true in one area could be false in another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you want to know the answer to your question, you need to find research to see if there is any finding that certified Scrum people are higher performers than non certified folks, and then you need to scan your market to see if employers and seller of services are requiring the certificate.  Some folks here might be able to answer, and provide sources, for the first part of this research but only you can determine the second part since none of us knows where you live.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just an aside, I found three or so studies on the efficacy of the PMP certificate and all three generally found no difference in performance between those who held the PMP and the rest of the PM population.  Only three studies but it does not look like the PMP is a valid predictor of performance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2019-07-12T13:13:17.957" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26745" CreationDate="2019-07-12T18:03:01.457" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few ways to do this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can send others your global.mpt file and they can replace theirs with yours. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can use the Organizer to copy the module into a blank project file and send that out to your team. They would then use the Organizer to copy the module into their global.mpt file. This is likely the better way so that each user's global file, with their own macros, customizations, etc. is not replaced with yours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Organizer is located under the File tab of the Ribbon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/copy-reports-calendars-and-views-in-project-78d9c687-b70f-4a20-86c5-e1c65c124261&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Microsoft's documentation&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;Here is a better &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.teachucomp.com/the-organizer-in-microsoft-project-instructions/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;overview of the Organizer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastActivityDate="2019-07-12T18:03:01.457" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26772" CreationDate="2019-07-12T18:06:03.227" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Create another macro that loops through your list of projects that does this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Opens a project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Runs your macro&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Closes and saves the project&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Repeats steps 1-3 for each project in your list*.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Your list can be a simple array of file names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a basic code example. There are many different ways to loop through files; search stack overflow, google, etc. to find examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Sub RunDailyMacroOnAllProjects()&#xA;&#xA;    Dim myProjects() As Variant&#xA;    myProjects = Array(&quot;Test1.mpp&quot;, &quot;Test2.mpp&quot;)&#xA;&#xA;    Dim prjFile As Variant&#xA;    For Each prjFile In myProjects&#xA;        FileOpenEx prjFile&#xA;        MyDailyMacro&#xA;        FileCloseEx pjSave&#xA;    Next prjFile&#xA;&#xA;End Sub&#xA;&#xA;Sub MyDailyMacro()&#xA;    ' code here&#xA;End Sub&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastEditorUserId="13635" LastEditDate="2019-07-15T04:05:34.167" LastActivityDate="2019-07-15T04:05:34.167" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26790" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-07-13T02:16:00.757" Score="5" ViewCount="398" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am the PM / Scrum master in a development team, we follow a semi-agile framework for app development. The team (which is newly formed) consists of 3 developers. I am not the line manager of the developers but only the PM/Scrum master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problem:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a developer on the team (let's call him Tom) who is constantly missing out on his deliverables. Tom, for example, delivers only 70% of the story points that were estimated at Sprint planning. Those were the stories that he personally estimated and volunteered to take on during the sprint planning session.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Analysis:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My analysis is that he is capable of delivering 90-100% of the story points however he has not been engaged enough to work on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evidence - I sit close to him and notice that he spend a large amount of his time doing 'lesiure stuff'. We are in the Tech department of a MNC, there are barely any overtime so the average productive hours is about 7 hours per day (9 hrs minus 2 hrs of breaks). The amount of leisure hours he spent is close to 3 hours per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For these 3 hours, he would walk around the office and discuss anime with the other colleagues, or watch downloaded movies, or do online shopping. It is only at the last few hours of the day then he would only sit down and rush to finish the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do I manage such a person? The department itself has quite a relax working culture so I don't want to be the person who is creating conflicts unnecessarily. However, I am worried that he will spread his working attitude to the other team members who are so far still performing. Tom's coding skills is considering slightly above average and is more experienced than the rest of the team. He can rush his code pretty quickly (completing 70% of the deliverables despite working for only slightly above 50% of his time) so I also don't want to let him go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional info:&#xA;We are in the Tech department of an MNC so salary wise it is not as competitive as big Tech companies, but it is at least market median.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36469" LastEditorUserId="36469" LastEditDate="2019-07-13T03:18:34.883" LastActivityDate="2019-08-01T13:57:46.893" Title="How to manage a developer with poor work ethics" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;motivation&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26783" CreationDate="2019-07-13T05:43:22.867" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What is the best time to start writing stories ?&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;You should have a product backlog of all the features, and refine the prioritized stories sufficiently before every sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Should we finalize the UI design first instead of writing stories ?&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;It goes hand-in-hand, hi-level design + hi-level features, detailed finalized design-&gt; detailed stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Is it fine to start working on stories after finalizing the UI design?&lt;/em&gt; You should refine the stories after finalizing the UI design. But the stories should already exist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Is there any suggestion which can be followed to avoid the similar issues in future.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;Discuss your issue with the scrum master or PM, let him help with the coordination. The main issue I see is the lack of communication and agreement of process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36469" LastEditorUserId="36469" LastEditDate="2019-07-13T13:44:16.377" LastActivityDate="2019-07-13T13:44:16.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14280" CreationDate="2019-07-13T13:49:57.317" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Subprojects are parts of main projects goals. Subprojects&#xA;Have deliverables to deliver by the end as final product which is part of the main project deliverables. The reason we have subproject to have better control over the main project.&#xA;Phases have specific milestones and deliverables&#xA;For specific goals. They show progress of phase.&#xA;Phases are for project management team so if the performed work is too much this means the phase life cycle would be bigger. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36473" LastActivityDate="2019-07-13T13:49:57.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26775" CreationDate="2019-07-13T15:17:48.657" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A certification, any kind of certification, is worth more when you are inexperienced and worth less and less as you gain more experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you are inexperienced, the knowledge you acquire from the certification is worth a lot because you might not have had exposure to it and you learn about it as you get certified. If you are a scrum master with 15 years of experience you probably know a lot more than the knowledge required to pass the certification exam, so the information needed to get certified isn't worth as much because it's stuff you already know, it isn't an investment in something new. Either way though, if you are after the information and the knowledge, you will spend the time to acquire it and it is irrelevant if you get certified or not. So, to you, getting certified is, from this point of view, kind of irrelevant. Sure, passing the actual exam is a validation for you that you understood the information, but you could use test exams to verify the same, without actually spending money on the piece of paper that says you know Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is thus only about that piece of paper that says that you are accredited. It's not about the knowledge, since as a Scrum master you still need to know the stuff that's in there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The certification becomes important for companies as a selection criteria for new Scrum masters. Is it important all new hires are certified or not? If someone has 15 years of experience and great successes helping Scrum teams, but no certification, is that important? What if someone has 15 years of experience and great successes helping Scrum teams, and a certification, is that even more important?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's why I said in the beginning that a certification is worth more when you are inexperienced. Because, when companies decide to hire junior Scrum masters for example, and they find a few candidates with similar knowledge and skills, and similar salary demands, the certification might be the decision factor since it might show that candidates that have it are more commited to the Scrum practices and more invested into  becoming better Scrum masters. But that's a belief, not a fact. As others have pointed out, in this post and in the ones you linked, there is no proof that a certification will make you better at your job. 15 years of experience though, might say more about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to interview a lot of Java developers back in the days where everyone was chasing the SCJP certification, and what I noticed was that the worst candidates were the ones with certifications. I'm not saying I attributed this as the cause, what I'm saying is that the developers that were bad, were bad even after being certified as Java programmers. If you suck at your job, be it Java developer, Scrum master or watever, you will suck with having a certification also. The certification just shows you can study some material then pass an exam. You get more skills from experience and exposure, not exams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the other answer here mentions, you need to search within your job market to see if employers are requiring the certificate or not, and if you want to work for them or not, because not having a certification will be an elimination criteria and a disadvantage to you. But then again, if research show no remarkable difference between those with certifications and those without, and from experience people discover (as I did) that they don't make someone suck less, then why are the certifications so important for such companies? Just saying...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36474" LastActivityDate="2019-07-13T15:17:48.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26783" CreationDate="2019-07-13T19:50:30.247" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;During refinement you discovered another design and went with that one instead of what you thought originally. It happens. That's what refinement is for. To add details to the backlog items, acceptance criteria, estimates, priorities, etc. If you discover better ways to add value to the product, or conditions change, or you get new insight into what youare building, then the user stories can of cource suffer changes. The product backlog is not fixed and is never complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This creates an extra work to update the stories based on that design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not clear from your question, but by any chance did you create very detailed user stories based on the original design? You need to update the user stories based on the new designs, but how much is this &quot;extra work&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User stories should be short. It's &quot;what&quot; needs to be done. User stories are not software specifications where you detail the &quot;how&quot;. If you decided on a new design, that normally shoudn't affect the &quot;what&quot;. The &quot;what&quot; is the same even if the UI is different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to your questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What is the best time to start writing stories ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no best time. All the time. Whenever needed. They are a way to organize the work you need to do, track it, take decisions about, discuss with others, show the result after they are implemented, etc. So whenever you know what you need, you can start writing the user stories. You can add details later. The stories at the top of the backlog are detailed enough to be able to do the work, but as you go down, stories become less detailed to the point they are just a placeholder to have a conversation about them and detail them when their turn comes to be implemented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Should we finalize the UI design first instead of writing stories ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depends on how much the design affects what you need to build. Do you need all of it to be finished before doing anything? Are there parts that are already known? Finalizing the design and writing stories are not necessarily exclusive to each other. Like I said, the product backlog evolves all the time. You might write some user stories now, some later, some are important now, some will become important later, some user stories will be more detailed, some less, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Is it fine to start working on stories after finalizing the UI design ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should have an idea of what needs to be done even if the UI design isn't finished. During refinement and sprint planning you will discuss details of how to implement each story. For that it's best to have the design finished so you don't come back and change your implementation if you get a new design. In Agile that won't be a problem, things change all the time. But it will be inneficient. It's better to have the design finished before starting work on implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol start=&quot;4&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Is there any suggestion which can be followed to avoid the similar issues in future ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Collaboration and communication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you as the PM interact with the development team? Do you give them work to do or are you all a team working on the same goals but with different roles and responsabiities? Giving people work has delays as one needs to define the work to be done then present them to who needs to do it, they give feedback, you make changes, then repeat. When you increase collaboration and communication these things still happen but the delays get reduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36474" LastActivityDate="2019-07-13T19:50:30.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26775" CreationDate="2019-07-13T20:06:08.623" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Glad that you did your research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at this site I would strongly discourage any &quot;certification&quot; with them. There is no single name of any renowned expert associated with that site. In fact there is no name at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looks more like a scam site. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I looked at &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/9853/3501&quot;&gt;my answer to original Scrum certification question&lt;/a&gt; and it seems to still be valid. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3501" LastActivityDate="2019-07-13T20:06:08.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26790" CreationDate="2019-07-14T08:04:20.603" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First questions to ask yourself are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;can I afford to lose this developer?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;will I have a hard time finding a replacement if you lose him?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what impact will his behavior have on the other team members/project if this is allowed to continue?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the third question, from experience I can tell you that his behavior will get worse and that inevitably some of the other team members will start behaving in a similar way. Think about it. Tom is slacking off and he is not confronted about it. This creates an indirect incentive for him to slack off even more just because he can. At some point, others will figure out that Tom is slacking off and nothing happens to him, so they figure out that they could step down a gear also and work less hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you have to do something about it. And here, the first two questions above become important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to tell Tom what you noticed. Tell him you know he can do better and you would appreciate if he does. From personal experience with things like this, I can tell you Tom will not all of a sudden say &quot;Oh gosh... I wasn't aware of me doing this. Thank you for bringing it into my attention. I will immediately start behaving differently&quot;. Won't happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's likely to happen are things like the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tom will start working more, but he might also start looking for a job somewhere else and leave. His behavior most likely isn't developed in your team, he possibly picked it up somewhere else where he was doing the same and got away with it. So he can find another company where he can do the same;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tom will get defensive. You are exaggerating. You are seeing things. Imagining things. He might unwind here and there when he loses productivity but he gets back to the task. He recoups his work. He delivers 70% but maybe that's because he's a bad estimator, not a lazy worker. He will probably overestimate things from now on, or take less work next sprints.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tom will behave in the same way but now he will be more careful not to show it. He will be at his computer, his IDE will be opened, but he will stare into space. Or he might be typing code but for a personal app of his. You don't know what he's doing there. People who want to slack off will find ways to do so no matter what you do to monitor or prevent it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;he will start talking behind your back to the other developers. Telling them you have some issue with him. That you are a control freak that insists people are productive 100% of the time. That you can't even look out the window without you pointing out that one should be looking at his monitor instead.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There might be some resentment, conflict or undesired consequences if you approach Tom about this subject. If you figured out this can't absolutely be allowed to continue, then that's life. Tom is an employee. He gets employee treatment: bad performance reviews, official notices, less salary increases, whatever the company's policy for under-performing staff is, which includes being fired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You say you are not his line manager. Who is? Talk to that person. You are a PM/SM so you can't really evaluate Tom‘s work, you can only observe that he's working less than the others. But maybe he's more productive, maybe his code is better, maybe he works on hard technical tasks that take a toll on his brain power so he needs more breaks. For a developer, time spent banging at the keyboard might not be time spent being productive and doing a proper job. So take it up with his superior (which I hope is another developer, not a manager, or you will have the same problem or worse).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The alternative is micromanaging Tom. Yes, micromanagement sucks, but for the right people it is the right tool. We all wish employees are proactive, professional, don't need to be told what to do, ask for help when stuck, etc. But people come in all shapes and sizes. Tom isn't the right shape and size so it needs more attention to rough out the edges. This can backfire too and cause Tom to talk behind your back like I mentioned above if he's the only one being micromanaged. You might also start micromanaging other stuff too if you see it brings better results with Tom, but that is a very slippery slope for you to be on, which on the long run might cause even more damage to the team and projects than Tom could ever do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever you decide to do, do something. Worst thing you can do is look the other way. Even if your decision is to leave it be for now, but monitor how things are going to take a better informed decision later, it is still better than looking the other way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Situations like this are never fun, but if you are a PM/SM, they are part of your job description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36474" LastEditorUserId="36474" LastEditDate="2019-07-16T08:56:15.887" LastActivityDate="2019-07-16T08:56:15.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26797" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-07-14T18:52:03.527" Score="2" ViewCount="196" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am trying to create an LMS system using Angular and NativeScript. It's a LMS web application like Adobe connect (although a simplified version) that will be written in Angular 8 for example, and a mobile version of it that has a different UI and some different features that will be written in NativeScript-Angular, but is connected to the website and both use one back-end. So the project has 2 front-end interfaces written in Angular and NativeScript-Angular and one back-end that will be written in NodeJS. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As this is my first project (startup), and I am in low-budget, and web/mobile applications aren't my expertise (my expertise is in AI field, but I have some student experiences in mobile/web applications), I need some advice about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many front-end developers are needed?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many backend developers?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I do the job in parallel or I must end up the front-end at first, then go and do the back-end part?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How long will it take to finish the work? (I need some estimates)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And many other questions that I will try to ask in comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30123" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-08-27T13:35:14.397" LastActivityDate="2019-11-15T14:33:16.830" Title="How can I calculate how many developers do I need and how long it takes to complete the project?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;team-building&gt;&lt;timeline&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2019-11-22T12:44:34.567" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26798" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26803" CreationDate="2019-07-15T01:33:42.380" Score="1" ViewCount="91" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wonder what would be the formal procedure and step according to PMI when you realize that your project ran out of money and no more financing from client is available?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think no other alternative to terminate the project, but project manager is not accountable for that decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to PMI, what should be the next step, and what should the project manager do after once he/she monitored costs, and he/she determined that the project was not more achievable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should the PM manager write an issue in the Issue Log and report it to the sponsor, and let him/her take the decision?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been googling for this scenario, but no success found. Can you point out a reference in the PMBOK, process or a PMI article to read about it please? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32495" LastEditorUserId="32495" LastEditDate="2019-07-15T01:44:00.940" LastActivityDate="2019-07-16T13:00:22.530" Title="What to do when no more financing is available for a project in PMI" Tags="&lt;process&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;&lt;performance&gt;&lt;pmbok&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26799" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26801" CreationDate="2019-07-15T08:02:34.280" Score="2" ViewCount="52" Body="&lt;p&gt;An article I came across suggested that we should pick the largest and smallest story in the prioritised backlog and relatively estimate the remaining stories. This makes sense. However, I was wondering how this works from sprint to sprint? For example, in the next sprint the largest story might be 5 points compared to the 8 point story in the previous sprint and similarly the smallest story might be 1 instead of the 3 from the last sprint. This seems like it can cause the velocity to fluctuate from sprint to sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like I'm missing something fundamental in the way to do this correctly. Looking for the experts to clarify.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36437" LastActivityDate="2019-07-15T08:39:04.050" Title="When choosing the largest and smallest stories in a backlog for estimation how does it impact each sprint?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26790" CreationDate="2019-07-15T08:15:29.420" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can share a dialog schema that I use to solve issues such as the one that you have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The schema consists of four essential parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prepare your arguments well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agree on the problem definition.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work on the solution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Follow-up.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me go through these steps one-by-one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;First, your preparation.&lt;/b&gt; This is the most important step, so invest time and effort into making sure you are well prepared. A few principles first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;p1. Your conversation has to be done at the right time. You will want to do it when there are no urgent things to do in the next 60 minutes, when the person is not upset, and when the problem is still actual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;p2. Your conversation has to be fact-based. You have to tell exactly what the commitment of Tom was (and back it up with objective evidence), what was the result, evidence of procrastination and so on. Always rely on concrete facts only. DON'T: &quot;You are always procrastinating&quot;. DO: &quot;Yesterday I asked you to finish task N. I noticed that by the end of the day you could not finish your task, and I also saw two times that you could not focus on your work because you were browsing Internet&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;p3. Focus on the problem, and never on the person. Your goal is to solve the problem, not to change Tom (which he can only do himself, and only if he wants to).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In preparation focus on the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1a. The problem definition. Work on the importance and urgency first. Importance = whether/how it influences the business. (if it does not, then it's not a problem, stop right here). Urgency = what will happen if the problem is not solved now. (if nothing happens, then you will want to use a different method than this one, stop right here and look for another solution).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1b. Empathy. Think of why this is a problem for you (and explain this later on the meeting), and why it is a problem for Tom (important! you will want to attach the problematic situation to Tom's personal goals - career, reputation, respect from team members etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1c. What could be the point of view of Tom. Normally people do not do bad things intentionally. There is likely a good intention in everything. For example, Tom may give too optimistic commitments to make his manager happy? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Explore other options as well, definitely the following: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Goal is not clear enough. Does Tom understand that the goal is to consistently deliver to the commitments? Why is it even a goal?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No skill. Does Tom have skill / experience / training to give realistic estimations?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No resources. Does Tom have everything he needs to provide the result?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No will / motivation. Check this one only after you checked other possibilities?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1d. Think of when did it start. Imagine for example that Tom is going through difficult times in the family. Putting more pressure on him may not do any good. You may want to support him instead and agree on how you collaborate in the meantime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;----- START OF THE CONVERSATION -----&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Second, agreeing on the problem definition.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not take 100% of time for your speech. Instead go for a dialogue. State the situation and a supporting fact, then make a pause, and let Tom respond. Do not go into argument (if you feel you need to, then you did not prepare well - wrap up the conversation and go back to step 1). The first goal of your conversation is to have a mutual agreement on the problem. If there's no agreement, do not go further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Third, working on the solution.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the skill / will apply different tactics here (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situational_leadership_theory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Situational leadership&lt;/a&gt;). Try to have Tom develop and own the solution, help when needed. Make an agreement in the end on what the solution will be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Fourth, the follow-up.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Provide feedback - both positive (managers often overlook this!) and negative. &#xA;Example of positive = &quot;Thank you, I see that you've been working on this!&quot;. &#xA;If something is not going right, you should appeal to the agreement that you've made before. &quot;We had an agreement, is there anything that's not working?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck, hope you are able to solve your issue!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36124" LastActivityDate="2019-07-15T08:15:29.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26799" CreationDate="2019-07-15T08:16:35.833" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The practice you are referring to is commonly called baselining. There are multiple ways of doing it. The one you refer to (smallest and largest) is one way. Another common one is you pick a story that seems fairly middle of the road and make that some middle number (perhaps a 5), then estimate all other stories off of it. You also often do spot-check comparisons of  other stories to each other and see if the estimation holds (one that is an 8 and one that is a 13 are both bigger than the 5, but is the 13 bigger than the 8).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because baselining can often invalidate previous numbers, you wouldn't re-baseline every sprint. I find that doing it once per quarter or release is the most frequent I would - sometimes far less frequently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, it's worth remembering that the user story pointing technique was specifically intended to not be an exact science. The purpose was to make it lightweight so the focus moved to the conversation in the act of estimating, not on the estimations themselves. These estimates don't have to be very exact for mid- to long-term forcasting, so minor drift isn't particularly troublesome. We just baseline occassionally to correct any significant drift.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-07-15T08:16:35.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26799" CreationDate="2019-07-15T08:39:04.050" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;User story sizing is an estimation technique and at the end of the it is not expected to be exact. Comparing user stories while sizing helps team to stick their scale of measuring Small, Medium and Large user stories. and helps generate consistent knowledge to forecast.This is called Relative estimation technique. Relative estimation helps restrict the fluctuating sprint velocity too.&#xA;An example of relative estimation would be to say, &quot;I think this feature is twice as complex as this other feature.&quot; There is no mention of time requirement, just that it is more complex than the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may say that feature B  is &quot;twice as complex&quot; as feature A, which is a feature that you have completed. Because feature A took you three weeks, a reasonable guess for feature B would be six weeks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35076" LastActivityDate="2019-07-15T08:39:04.050" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26798" CreationDate="2019-07-15T12:59:48.110" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The PMBoK is a body of knowledge guide.  It is not even THE body of knowledge.  It is not a methodology and it will not &quot;tell&quot; you what to do.  You will, however, find the basis of information you are looking for in the PMBOK in Integration, Cost Management, Stakeholder Management, and Risk Management.  It talks about funding, securing funding from stakeholders, monitoring the funds, reporting on the variances, capturing those variances in your risk management, using contingencies, and of course closing the project.  You will have to connect the dots because, again, the PMBOK is not designed to do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer comment:  I cannot speak for how PMI collectively would answer your question but I can provide what I would do in your situation.  First, there is a dependency on the type of contract you have.  If a firm fixed price type, the lack of funding is irrelevant assuming they funded you and are paying you the fixed price agreement and assuming there is no scope creep.  If those two assumptions are true, you continue working until you have provided your scope per your contract.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If T&amp;amp;M or Cost Plus, as the PM I would have made known the funding risk as early in the project as possible, i.e., when I knew it, and begin the process of asking for more funds.  If the ask was rejected, I would--again, as early as possible--start recommendations on descoping the project in order to fit what remains.  If the customer refused to even consider this, I would inform them of the date funds run out and when my team stops work.  On that date, I would stop the work, invoice whatever remains in terms of what they owe me, perform other contract close out activities, and then start my next gig.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastEditorUserId="574" LastEditDate="2019-07-15T16:11:29.483" LastActivityDate="2019-07-15T16:11:29.483" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26798" CreationDate="2019-07-15T13:29:33.950" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that PMbok is based on the assumption that the PM is accountable for all decisions - or at least the assumption that the PM has the absolute authority to close (cancel) a project at any time. This is not realistic, but it is the PMBOK answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Realistically speaking the PM has the responsibility and authority to inform stakeholders of any risk to project completion.  Lack of funding is one of those risks. If the project is no longer funded, then that should be communicated quickly to sponsors and stakeholders, along with a revised project plan to close out the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2019-07-15T13:29:33.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26790" CreationDate="2019-07-15T16:24:05.353" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Step 1: put him on notice of an expected performance increase on a timeline.  If he makes it, march on.  If not, see Step 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step 2: replace.  You should always strive not to have a single point of failure on an individual performer, no matter how great.  If you have a single point of failure on a marginal performer, then you have another issue to solve.  Allowing marginal performance is a cancer on a team and will metastasize.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2019-07-15T16:24:05.353" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26806" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-07-15T18:21:00.510" Score="0" ViewCount="78" Body="&lt;p&gt;My company sells an ERP software in a very specific niche. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The process is turnkey and every bit of data is entered for the client before launch. Since a lot of our customers have different needs, we assess as much as possible what features they will need in the system and code it for them before delivery. Although we know the client will never get a full grasp of the whole system and all it's details before a few years of usage, we want to &lt;strong&gt;agree&lt;/strong&gt; on a final deliverable solution and leave the rest to basic annual customer service / support or custom development that can be purchased separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seemed like an impossible task for us at the time see the kind of feedback we had below : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I did not know the sales report would look like this, it doesn't look like my old paper report. We want you to change X, Y and Z without paying extra development costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or even&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I know we've had the system for a few months now but I just got around to using X tool and I would like it to be able to track Y also, I thought it would already track it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These demands can go on for months and even years after the initial delivery. We are very close to the client during the development process and we try to flex everything around his needs but we need to find a way to draw a line somewhere and stop it. The customer has the system in hand during the development process to look at it but we feel he doesn't even bother to look at it before delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fast forward a few years, we decided to document the whole system step by step &lt;strong&gt;for every deliveries&lt;/strong&gt; as it will be delivered to a client. So we take a look at the client, we record a &lt;em&gt;dummy&lt;/em&gt; job go through the process, we write a fully detailed guide of all the steps and screenshot every possible pages of the application for the customer to &lt;strong&gt;signoff&lt;/strong&gt; on. Once he signs, we deliver it exactly like explained in this detailled report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is &lt;em&gt;extermely&lt;/em&gt; time consuming. But if it did fix the initial problem, it wouldn't bother us much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It still won't work very well as the client doesn't even take the time to consult that whole documentation (who does?) and he still comes back with tons of adjustments we could have made earlier. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this question is very hard to answer and that thousands of software companies dealing in custom probably have the same questions but I was wondering if anyone had some insight on what we could try next. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do you agree with a customer on the version that will be delivered to him/her if he doesn't take the time to look at it?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do you get the client comfortable enough in your system that he is able to clearly agree on a deliverable version that suits his needs. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do you agree with a deliverable product with the client without explaining step by step and screenshot by screenshot what the whole thing will look like. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like my customer is buying a house but will only take a look at the blueprints / pictures and everything else once the house is completely built then bother the contractors for a year after to tell them the garage shouldn't be there and that there is a missing bedroom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9069" LastActivityDate="2019-07-16T11:22:29.513" Title="How do you agree with a client for a deliverable version (definition of done) on a big project" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;clients&gt;&lt;definition-of-done&gt;&lt;deliverables&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26807" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-07-15T20:02:59.633" Score="1" ViewCount="117" Body="&lt;p&gt;for some time now the team, product owner and me (SM) have been busy with one task: the story acceptance and the ability to get potentially deliverable SW at the end of a sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What sounds simple is - at least for us - not really easy.&#xA;In the review, the Scrum process goes through the stories and accepts them or doesn't accept them. At this point the sprint activities are finished and the next sprint already greets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So where is the problem? 2 teams (15 developers) are working on stories to bring about changes to a variety of SW modules. Continous integration is used, nightly full automated tests support quality assurance. Every team member has to merge his results at the sprint end to the development branch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each merge is critical, as each developer makes changes to several modules for a story, which at best are coordinated with his colleagues. The independence of stories, which may be given in terms of content, is no longer given on a code basis by the access to common modules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a story is not accepted, the changes must be rolled back, usually with collateral damage to other accepted stories. Also tests have to be run again to be able to say with a clear conscience that this SW is quality assured and deliverable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the consequence? We have now reserved the last two days of the sprint for clean-up work: Day 1 is for merge activities and day 2 is for checking the nightly test results with fixes if necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the team this leads to displeasure (2 days missing), the product owner wonders if this can be done better - after all, Scrum is a success everywhere (?).&#xA;Anyone who has read this far will wonder how a review works now. In fact, the review at the sprint end is more of a demo, the acceptance has already taken place for logistic reasons (2 days before). An acceptance doesn't take place in the review anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in how other Scrum teams deal with this everyday problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a) Will the review be moved forward ? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;List item&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;b) Are there approaches that    defuse the problem?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;c) ...other experiences?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35402" LastActivityDate="2019-07-17T07:35:17.373" Title="Story acceptance vs. ability to have potentially deliverable SW ready at sprint end" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;daily-scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26807" CreationDate="2019-07-15T21:16:25.990" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of things that might help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, acceptance can be a continuous process. Could more frequent checking with the PO catch problems earlier? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has the team discussed better approaches to doing the work in retrospective that either lead to less rejections or easier rollback?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, are stories being rejected and rolled back because they were done wrong or because now that they are done, the PO has a better understanding of the need and requirement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of why teams who really adopt scrum improve is because the constraints surface challenges that the team can improve. Very few teams successfully start delivering working software right away. It is only after multiple cycles of inspecting and improving their development process do they start to achieve this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there are two potential antipatterns that you may be experiencing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, continuous integration suggests that everything is built and integrated quickly. I wouldn't expect any team member to go more than a few hours at most without checking in and merging code. What you describe sounds more like merge avoidance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, your 2-day freeze creates a buffer. Buffers are often used to avoid facing challenges. They can be helpful as a bridging strategy, but should always be temporary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-07-15T21:16:25.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26807" CreationDate="2019-07-16T07:46:04.870" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adding to Daniel's excellent answer...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good way to de-risk merging is to merge frequently &lt;em&gt;in the other direction&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the team could use continuous integration to automatically pull code from the head into their feature branch. That way if anyone has introduced code to the head that breaks the branch they will know about it immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefits of this approach include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Code conflicts are found very close to when the code is committed, so it tends to be easier to fix them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The code in the branches is typically in a reasonably good state&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The code in the head is stable almost all of the time (because you are merging in already merged code)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The continuous merging forces the teams to communicate frequently&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are using a distributed version control system like Git you can even go a step further by regularly merging from head in to individual's repos. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2019-07-16T08:17:13.703" LastActivityDate="2019-07-16T08:17:13.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26806" CreationDate="2019-07-16T11:22:29.513" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From your text I assume that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You mostly have issues with small scope / minor customization, which your customer keeps demanding from you to do for free.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your typical delivery tactics is to deliver the first project with fixed scope / fixed price, and then sell time-and-material consultancy services on top. You want to determine which scope belongs where.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you have issues with minor scope within a fixed scope / fixed price project, there is no way around except to specify all those details in the contract. What I normally do in such cases is try to limit the fixed price / fixed scope part to a standard onboarding with little to no customization. This will allow you to specify the requirements more precisely. By &quot;little customization&quot; I mean that you can still be open to customization within a predefined range of options (you can choose how entity X is named, what are the colors of the buttons, what will be the logo in the top left corner etc. - you get the idea). These choices will have to be made by the customer and provided to you in written by a certain milestone to be implemented for free. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the rest goes to the post-onboarding time-and-material phase, where you will further customize the ERP to fit the customer requirements. There you can create more reports, custom forms with custom logic etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36124" LastActivityDate="2019-07-16T11:22:29.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26798" CreationDate="2019-07-16T13:00:22.530" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ok - my suggestion is to forget about PMI documentation and think about some common sense solutions.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some questions to be asked:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is the project fixed scope or time and materials? If fixed scope - then your firm is on the hook unless you can get customer sponsorship for changing the definition of success and closure. If time and materials - what does your contract say about termination?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Communication - is this a &quot;projected&quot; out of money an &quot;oh crap&quot; moment and you are in imminent danger of doing work with no payment? If it's projected -then start communicating internally to your management now and work on an approach to present to the customer. If it's an &quot;oh crap&quot; moment (which it sounds like from your comment on another answer)- then prepare for professional pain (and questions like - why didn't you alert us earlier?) and communicate status today to your internal management.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do you have subcontractors? Can you change their scope or ask for cost reductions of XX%?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially - you have a number of solution areas to explore, including:&#xA;a. potential contractual language to deal with the situation&#xA;b. internal funding to cover gaps in your scope&#xA;c. team reduction to close up the project&#xA;d. cost reduction (subcontractors, people, etc)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is never fun - but actually pretty common. In all cases I would be prepared to answer tough questions about why monitoring wasn't in place, root cause analysis of what happened, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33378" LastActivityDate="2019-07-16T13:00:22.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26807" CreationDate="2019-07-17T03:27:06.527" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the things Scrum does effectively is surface problems, and I believe that's what is going on here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Every team member has to merge his results at the sprint end to the development branch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't a sprint or scrum problem: it's a repository workflow problem.  Having developers work on separate branches for days at a time and not merging til they're done sounds like a recipe for merge conflicts no matter what else you're doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with Barnaby's practical advice on how to address this underlying problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2019-07-17T03:27:06.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26807" CreationDate="2019-07-17T07:35:17.373" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;All the other answers contained helpful advices, I have to add some more:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Continous integration is used, nightly full automated tests support quality assurance. Every team member has to merge his results at the sprint end to the development branch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not &lt;em&gt;continuous&lt;/em&gt; integration. In teams I've been working with, &quot;Sprint Branches&quot; turned out to be helpful. The whole team commits then to that branch during the sprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If best effort stories are taken into the sprint near the end, and it is totally unsure, if that story can be finished on time, sometimes we create a feature branch for that story, but only very rarely! At the end of one sprint - or the beginning of the next one - the sprint branch is then merged into the develop branch, totally no hassle, since it is only one merge where most of the time only one of the two branches has changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also, are stories being rejected and rolled back because they were done wrong or because now that they are done, the PO has a better understanding of the need and requirement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, stories are not rejected because of misunderstood requirements or the PO changing his mind. First of all, you should involve the PO early in the development process, show him features while they are growing, ask him for feedback during the sprint, not just at the end. Especially if the devs are unsure they (!) should ask the PO directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if PO finds out that he wants to change a feature after its story was implemented, thats good. That is why you develop agile - to get early customer feedback. But the story has to be accepted nevertheless - PO can create a new story with the changed requirements. (I have to admit, if the PO changes his mind too often, it can get a bit frustrating, especially if you have to remove things you were proud of)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If a story is not accepted, the changes must be rolled back, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this, your devs could implement feature toggles that can be configured after deployment/installation. They would simply hide features that were not accepted while keeping the parts of the code to fix the things that lead to the denial of acceptance. I never worked with feature toggles, only know them from theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, if the PO did not accept a feature, it was simply fixed during the next sprint. The potentially shippable product was not put productive every sprint, but POs planned some sprints in advance and before a &quot;go live&quot;, some time was dedicated to polishing the product. (Maybe with things that were not worth a whole user story like &quot;put this box three pixels to the left&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have now reserved the last two days of the sprint for clean-up work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you sure, the length of the sprints is working good for you? If you need two days for cleanup (besides that maybe necessary cleanup is not a good sign at all), maybe shorter sprints would suit your situation better? You also &quot;force&quot; your PO to give you feedback earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally I would suggest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adapt Scrum to what your teams need - but don't call it &quot;Scrum&quot; then any more ;-)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You as Scrum Master have to &lt;em&gt;defend&lt;/em&gt; the team against misunderstandings - either by arguing with the PO or better by helping the PO to write stories that are clear for both sides.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Find solutions to the occurring problems with the teams in the form of retrospectives! Don't push them to any suggestions from outside - they have to decide for themselves. But please don't let them change too much at once - later it will be hard to distinguish the changes that were helpful from the hindering ones.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36494" LastActivityDate="2019-07-17T07:35:17.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26815" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26834" CreationDate="2019-07-17T15:55:02.483" Score="0" ViewCount="112" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an 8-month project am I planning. It's a software development project with 11 developers (and many other resources). I count &quot;Devs&quot; as one resource item, rather than Dev1, Dev2, Dev3 etc. On the &quot;Devs&quot; line in the resource sheet, I set the Max units to 1100% and set a per-hour rate in Std.Rate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My expectation is that: when I assign 1100% of the &quot;Dev&quot; resource to a 5-day task in the Gantt Chart, it's 1100% (or 11) * the hourly rate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the cost against the resource in the task resources tab nor the cost reports reflect this. They reflect 1 &quot;Dev&quot; costs rather than my 11 Devs. Also, in the resource usage view, the hours still reflect the total hours for 1 developer, not 11. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm missing something, I assume, to allow for MS Project to calculate the cost / hours based on unit percentage?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36510" LastEditorUserId="28186" LastEditDate="2019-07-18T09:30:11.453" LastActivityDate="2019-07-19T19:19:27.277" Title="Correctly Calculate Cost Based on Units Percentage" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26816" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26819" CreationDate="2019-07-17T18:19:12.290" Score="3" ViewCount="550" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your org goes agile.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You decide to make every process explicit.  My understanding is that each process is a kanban board.  One organization will have many processes and thus have many boards with work flowing through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am trying to map teams to processes (boards) and determine which is higher in the hierarchy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does each team own a set of boards (e.g. processes)?  This means each team is autonomous, capable of managing and burning down its own backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The alternative is that one board needs serviced by members from multiple teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first case processes have to be segmented according to team boundaries.  In the latter ownership of the process (board) becomes vague.  When there's no clear owner responsibility is less likely to be taken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36512" LastEditorUserId="36512" LastEditDate="2019-07-17T21:31:02.353" LastActivityDate="2019-11-13T12:31:43.560" Title="Is it proper for a kanban board (process) to involve several teams or just one?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;kanban-board&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26817" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-07-17T18:44:00.343" Score="1" ViewCount="68" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been discussing the question with a co-worker lately. We saw a project that was on track and almost ahead, and during the meetings the stakeholders were quiet and &quot;satisfied&quot; telling that everything was OK and they understood everything. However, after testing and ready to transfer the product to the end-users, a stakeholder told that something was not OK and wanted a fix for that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM was performing this near to closing phase preparing his final report,  and shared this with some colleagues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As he was ahead, someone told him to apply the change to avoid friction, and I said that he should request a change control process formally. According to PM, the feature was a nice to have, but stakeholder insisted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are always trying to be compliant with best practices, but there are some situations that make us think in an accurate solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was reading last time that any change that impact the baselines should go for a review in the Change Control Board and even more if the PM and sponsor are not part of it. However, minor changes that could not affect the project should be within the PM's decision/authority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this was a problem of communication or engagement or identifying well the stakeholder?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As this PM is ahead of schedule, should he include the feature if there is no impact according to him and record the issue on the log?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should wait for approved change any ways?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or talk to the customer to close this project and incur in a contractual phase 2? This is risky as the stakeholder can be resilient to this decision and create a bad reputation for the product even if the product is fine.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32495" LastEditorUserId="32495" LastEditDate="2019-07-17T20:01:40.433" LastActivityDate="2019-07-17T21:21:50.523" Title="How to handle last minute misleading requirement and/or dissatisfaction" Tags="&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;&lt;stakeholders&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14227" CreationDate="2019-07-17T18:56:56.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.techstreet.com/ieee/standards/ieee-iso-iec-16326-2009?gateway_code=ieee&amp;amp;vendor_id=4555&amp;amp;product_id=1662346&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;IEEE Standard IEEE/ISO/IEC 16326-2009 &lt;/a&gt;  which seems to lean heavily on the PMP. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sis.se/api/document/preview/914426/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;See this PDF for a table of contents.&lt;/a&gt; Chapter 5 TOC shown below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Dq1Rt.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Dq1Rt.png&quot; alt=&quot;Chapter 5 of the standard&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="569" LastActivityDate="2019-07-17T18:56:56.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26816" CreationDate="2019-07-17T19:53:44.077" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why not both?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most decent Kanban softwares (e.g. Jira) will allow you to separate boards so that you can have one task appearing on multiple boards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, each team has its own board, and then you can combine them into an 'overview board'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2019-07-17T19:53:44.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26817" CreationDate="2019-07-17T21:21:50.523" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suspect you'll hear book answers and so called &quot;real life&quot; answers.  I have chosen to follow the book answers to the degree possible since most likely the book answer was a practice that seemed to work and it found itself written in a book.  If a stakeholder's comment about a requirement is inconsistent with your requirement baseline, then do a change under control.  Whatever the process is, follow it even for a minor change because a lot of minor changes equal a major change.  If you do work for free, even minor work, you're conveying what your work is worth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2019-07-17T21:21:50.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26816" CreationDate="2019-07-17T22:34:01.243" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ideally, each team should have one Kanban board, with multiple swim lanes representing each process they support (or each service they provide) - for example, New feature development, maintenance, support, etc. in the case of a software team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professional Kanban tools such as SwiftKanban, Kanbanize and Leankit provide support for multiple swim-lanes, with each having its own unique process.  This way it makes it far easier for them to manage their work and provide visibility to their stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WJmVo.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WJmVo.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can then combine complex/ multi-team processes with a &quot;portfolio kanban&quot; board that combines the work done by these teams into a single value stream at a higher level, where each column represents the work done by one of these teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WFDSH.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WFDSH.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can imagine that each column on the higher board can be exploded into its own board, with each card at the higher level expanding into multiple cards at the lower level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you'd like to take a look at a guide on how to design your initial Kanban board(s), there is a decent guide available on our website &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.digite.com/resources/10-factors-for-kanban-board-design/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. One of the best-known techniques it references is the STATIK - or Systems Thinking Approach to Implementing Kanban, which was originally coined by David Anderson and written about in detail by Mieke Burrows in his book &quot;Kanban from the Inside&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, of course, Kanban is all about experimentation, feedback loops, and improvement - so no one way is best!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastEditorUserId="8132" LastEditDate="2019-07-18T17:22:41.527" LastActivityDate="2019-07-18T17:22:41.527" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16054" CreationDate="2019-07-18T05:48:45.137" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This could have been a test from your CEO - he did not consult you about your thoughts on T's idea - although he sees you as team lead and therefore as an expert.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would talk to your CEO about a bit (!) formalism in the planning of new requirements, so that more than one developer can think about them and the estimate of effort is done either only by one experienced team member or by two or more developers together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For time estimations I recommend the book &quot;Waltzing With Bears&quot; by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister. It's not too long and fun to read and will teach you an improved method of time estimations (optimistic - realistic - pessimistic) where you can set the reliability you want to have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also talk to T, but more to get his intentions why he did that solo with the CEO. Does he want to be part of the team? I think his action will have cost him trust of the CEO &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; the rest of the team. Did he think of this risk before? Is he just an a**hole and wants to be the shiny star of the company? Does he want to take over your leading role?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should not ask him all those questions directly, but I hope you have enough intuition to find out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36494" LastActivityDate="2019-07-18T05:48:45.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26748" CreationDate="2019-07-18T11:49:09.523" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understand you correctly, you wanted to title the question with &quot;Intra team dependencies&quot; - the dependencies are occuring inside the team. You should try to establish cross-functional developers, not just cross-functional teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use pairing of developers of different disciplines (one backend with one frontend developer) or mob programming (the whole team sits around one computer) to improve the missing skills of the team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, each developer of the team can do any task at any time. In practice, you will have experts for each topic, and the rest knows more or less what and how to develop in that topic. The experts are consulted during development or explain details if estimations show big differences between team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might be interested in search results for &quot;scrum comb shaped&quot; like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/which-letter-shaped-employee-you-gaurav-sharma&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/which-letter-shaped-employee-you-gaurav-sharma&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the estimations, @alexandru-jieanu already wrote an excellent explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36494" LastActivityDate="2019-07-18T11:49:09.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26826" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-07-18T14:21:30.870" Score="3" ViewCount="1054" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a team that works in Scrum and a PO who prioritizes the backlog.&#xA;Outside of this, we have 3 project managers that hold the communication with our clients (each one with 2-3 different countries). They (instead of the PO) are the communication point with the clients. Also we have a chief PM, who holds the overall roadmap of all the projects. The team estimates and does a little bit of each project's work in each sprint, depending on then deadlines and priorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However more often than not, a client will put through some last minute changes, that are not small, and he wants them delivered in 2 days, therefore blowing up the rest of the sprint. This leads us to trying to juggle too many things and compromising in quality at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We tried to bring the clients closer to us to let them understand how we work, but their nature of business is advertising and media, and therefore their response usually is &quot;the ad goes live in 2 days&quot;. Therefore their product has to be ready in 2 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this setup is far from ideal, however how do you tackle the &quot;client&quot; part with the last minute changes, given that it's only one scrum team that has to cater for everyone? &#xA;Or, even better, how do you prove that this is inefficient? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5522" LastActivityDate="2019-07-30T21:31:12.213" Title="Last minute changes by the client" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;&lt;waterscrumfall&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26826" CreationDate="2019-07-18T14:50:11.390" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an unenviable position. I'm not sure there are any good/easy answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who is accountable in this scenario?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Who approves the changes? Changes (last minute or not) have a financial impact on the company.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the change control process?  It isn't clear whether the 3 PM's who communicate with the clients have the authority to unilaterally approve changes.  It isn't clear how the resulting changes are coordinated with the PO. And I'm not an initiate of scrum, but my understanding was that in scrum the self-organizing team needs to be included in discussion/coordination/decision of substantive changes. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that the changes cost you money, do they represent a billable cost? Does the client have to pay for last minute changes in scope?  Does the client have to pay a penalty for scope changes that affect other deliverables? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever the risk is disconnected from authority/accountability, problems will persist until the two are connected.  There appears to be no disincentive for the client's behavior; all the risks/issues/damages/consequences rest elsewhere.  I predict the client will continue to behave as your incentives communicate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“I never allow myself to hold an opinion on anything that I don't know the other side's argument better than they do” &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7447184-i-never-allow-myself-to-hold-an-opinion-on-anything&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Charlie Munger&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not going to pretend that I understand the situation better than you do, but based on what you've shared, if I were in your shoes, I'd&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Internally decide on a change control process that is mandatory for any consequential change.  Ensure that everyone who will be affected by the change has advisory input, but place accountability for the change on someone who can bear the consequences.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do an internal practice session - use the last five changes as scenarios and run them through the process to tell &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; the process should be invoked, &lt;em&gt;by whom&lt;/em&gt;, and how long it takes.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Communicate to your customer their role in change control &amp;amp; scope management. Changes during scrum planning/backlog grooming are free. Changes once the self-organizing team start work are financially costly.  (or just jack up your costs to this client)  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prepare to lose the client. The client is not going to be pleased with the change, but you are not going to survive unless you control scope.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="12235" LastEditDate="2019-07-19T09:06:12.550" LastActivityDate="2019-07-19T09:06:12.550" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26828" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26833" CreationDate="2019-07-18T18:22:41.860" Score="2" ViewCount="412" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently working as a product owner in an investment banking firm and we follow agile software development. As per my understanding and research, the user story should follow the below checklists &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Acceptance criteria &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;follow 'INVEST' rule&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;mention about user permissions&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Handle concurrency and conflict checks&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Proper UI design &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Impact in other functional areas&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure if this fulfills the qualities of a good user story. My intention is to understand and prepare a best checklist to write quality user stories. Please suggest and highlight the points to be included in user story with examples. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33461" LastActivityDate="2019-07-23T22:25:30.823" Title="User story checklist" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26829" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-07-18T23:20:20.520" Score="2" ViewCount="66" Body="&lt;p&gt;The department I am working in is Data Support Dept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nature of work, is providing reports to other departments, and do some data integration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am thinking of using Agile in the dept. but I don't know how is that going to be implemented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The projects here are support, so we do not have list of features need to be delivered and no timeline as well. once we finish user get the updated report directly&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;on top of that each request has its own owner. in other words we could have 10 product owners at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I implement Agile in such environment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33125" LastActivityDate="2019-07-21T11:33:24.927" Title="How to implement Agile in Data Support" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26828" CreationDate="2019-07-19T05:32:51.730" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The things you list can all be useful in creating good user stories, but none are strictly required. I do think you're approaching the problem from the wrong angle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To really create effective user stories, you need to focus on the fact that a user story is, first and foremost, an exercise in empathy with a user. In XP (where the practice originated), the user story would actually be written by a real user and it is meant as a way to convey a need they had. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, I know of a credit card company whose users were frustrated in the card selection screen that simply seeing the last 4 digits of the card wasn't enough to know which card was which. So this results in a user story something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a cardholder with multiple cards, I would like to be able to easily&#xA;  tell which one is which so that I don't waste time clicking on the&#xA;  wrong card.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a pretty good user story even without any of the checklists because it effectively expresses the needed and allows the team to empathize with the customer. From here, the team inquired how people usually told the difference between their cards and found that they used the different visual appearance of the cards, so they showed what the card visibly looked like on the screen to solve the challenge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't mean to suggest that the those items you list aren't useful. On many user stories you may find in backlog refinement with the team that some or all of those items are useful tools. However, the only real litmus test I would apply to all user stories is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this story help the development team effectively understand the need of the user and allow them to start creating a solution for that need?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-07-19T05:32:51.730" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26829" CreationDate="2019-07-19T07:18:51.567" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Agile is an approach, so can be adopted by all kinds of teams. To do this you need to favour responding to change, customer collaboration, interaction and the other values of agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adopting the Scrum framework is a bit more involved, but is readily achievable within a data support team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can think of the reports the team generates as the product. The reports have value and so can be prioritised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would make sense to have a &lt;em&gt;single&lt;/em&gt; Product Owner who is the judge of report value and who will own and maintain your product backlog. The people who make the requests act as the stakeholders rather than multiple Product Owners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage of this approach is that the Product Owner becomes a single voice of requirements in to the team. Their job is to listen carefully to the stakeholders (report owners) and to distil their requests down in to a series of user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of a user story on your product backlog might be something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a sales director I want to see the monthly sales figures broken down by district so that I can see which areas need help&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This requirement is translated in to an update of the sales report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have several such user stories representing the requests from report owners then you have your product backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-07-19T07:18:51.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26826" CreationDate="2019-07-19T07:35:06.527" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two parts to your question: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do the clients really need to make changes at very short notice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If this is a real need, what do we have to do to respond to changes very quickly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would start by speaking with the clients and explaining the impact of last minute changes, which might include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Efficiency lost due to context switching (i.e. shifting to a different piece of work)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Efficiency lost due to very short-range planning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Efficiency lost due to having to drop some work at short notice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The clients may say that they appreciate there is lost efficiency, but that their business means they need to make short-term changes anyway. If this happens then the next thing to consider is how to quickly adapt to last minute changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you know and accept that last minute change will happen then you can build you entire process around it. It may well be that Scrum is not the best framework to use in this situation as Scrum requires a certain amount of stability within a sprint. It would perhaps be worth considering using a more responsive framework like Kanban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other things that may help with rapidly changing requirements include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Extensive use of automation, so that setup and deployment times are reduced&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use of test automation for regression testing, compatibility testing, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Establish a process for rapidly re-prioritising your work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Establish a process for rapidly determining the impact of changes to prioritisation (e.g. by informing other clients that their work may be delayed)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that agile is all about adopting to change. Change itself is not a bad thing, but it does have implications that need to be carefully considered. If you adopt the right approach then you can &lt;em&gt;welcome change&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-07-19T07:35:06.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26828" CreationDate="2019-07-19T14:18:57.933" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A guiding value of agile is individuals and interactions over process and tools. What this means is that agile favours conversation and interaction between team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is one of the reasons that the user story came about. It is not intended to be a detailed requirement. Instead it is an &lt;em&gt;invitation to a conversation&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is quite acceptable for a user story to be a simple sentence and it is not necessary to have details such as user permissions, design and impact areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are probably thinking that a user story without details is not going to contain enough information for the development team to do the work properly. This is correct and that is where the conversation comes in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of a user story as going through a life cycle:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First it is a simple sentence, just sufficient for people to understand what the requirement is about and so do prioritisation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As the user story moves towards the top of the product backlog the team may do some backlog refinement on it. For example, the Product Owner might talk about the story with the team to ensure they are clear what they are after.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When the user story reaches the top of the product backlog it may be that the team wants a bit more detail added. They do this so that it is easier for them to estimate. For example, they might ask the Product Owner to work with them to add some acceptance criteria or other details.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You ask the question &quot;What makes a good user story?&quot;. I would answer that it depends on where in the life cycle the story is. Initially a good user story will just be a clear, descriptive sentence. By the time you get to sprint planning a user story should have evolved to include any details that are necessary for the team to estimate it and then start work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2019-07-23T22:25:30.823" LastActivityDate="2019-07-23T22:25:30.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26815" CreationDate="2019-07-19T19:19:27.277" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like the total work for the task remained the same (40 hrs). The cost is dependent on how much work the resource(s) are doing which is not always the same as the duration of the task. Typically, when more resources are added to a task, the duration shortens to keep the work the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Insert the &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/api/project.task.work&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Work&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/api/project.task.type&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Type&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/api/project.task.effortdriven&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Effort Driven&lt;/a&gt; fields into your Gantt table to review the values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is more information about these settings: &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.office.com/en-us/article/change-the-effort-driven-setting-for-task-types-18efd7c7-d146-4b06-bdbe-b6a11564bdf3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Change the effort driven setting for task types&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastActivityDate="2019-07-19T19:19:27.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26835" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-07-20T10:03:51.203" Score="1" ViewCount="297" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am about to take a role as a BI Product Owner, but there is some debate as to how to structure the team.  Some of the articles and white papers discuss a BI 'team' but this causes me a few conceptual concerns.  If I read people like Craig Larman (Large Scale Scrum) he advises creating a 'feature team' that works across the stack to create a coherent customer-centric product.  That might include embedded BI to the extent that the customer wanted it and found it valuable.  If so, the feature team might need BI skills, as well as their other cross functional skills to deliver, but at least they would understand the data since it would be part of their app.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, BI is also a valuable internal product...using customer/app data to deliver customer insights, but also a whole range of internal operational issues that the customer might have no interest in.  If you create a BI team centred on that 'product' then you have diverged from the customer-centric view (at least from a revenue generation point of view) but also you have a team that is not working right across the stack and doesn't work directly with the data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone see that as a tension?  Any thoughts/ideas/observations/resources?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All input gratefully received.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ged&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36543" LastActivityDate="2019-07-21T09:25:49.303" Title="How to structure a BI team in agile/scrum" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26835" CreationDate="2019-07-20T12:21:26.897" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some of the articles and white papers discuss a &lt;strong&gt;BI 'team'&lt;/strong&gt; but this&#xA;  causes me a few conceptual concerns. If I read people like Craig&#xA;  Larman (Large Scale Scrum) he advises creating a &lt;strong&gt;'feature team'&lt;/strong&gt; that&#xA;  works across the stack to create a coherent customer-centric product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about having both?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On scaled frameworks such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scaledagileframework.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SAFe&lt;/a&gt;, the guideline is to have, as you rightly mentioned, the feature team able to deliver value capable of delivering value with as less external dependencies as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, SAFe understands that the knowledge amongst peers sharing same role and areas is not only important but &lt;em&gt;critical for leveraging the multiple experiences and different types of practical knowledge available from a variety of people&lt;/em&gt;. How to address this? &lt;strong&gt;Creating &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scaledagileframework.com/communities-of-practice/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Communities of Practice&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way, you'll still be part of a &lt;em&gt;client-centric&lt;/em&gt; feature team as PO, and at the same time constantly catching up with other BI POs in a &lt;em&gt;product-centric&lt;/em&gt; community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastActivityDate="2019-07-20T12:21:26.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26835" CreationDate="2019-07-21T09:25:49.303" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, BI is also a valuable internal product&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this sentence you have answered your own question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is preferable to have feature teams rather than component teams, but not all products are externally facing. Many products are for internal consumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way I like to define a product is something that provides business value and has distinct customers. Those customers can be external &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; internal to the organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tricky bit is defining what is a means to an end and what is a genuine product. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Authentication component&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does not of itself deliver value. The authentication component is typically combined with other components and code to becomes a product that delivers business value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;BI sales report&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an internal product as it delivers real business value to the sales team. They may use the information in the report to influence their decisions and so there is clear value and a defined customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-07-21T09:25:49.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26829" CreationDate="2019-07-21T11:33:24.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the core of Agile you find a set of &lt;a href=&quot;https://agilemanifesto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;values&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;principles&lt;/a&gt;. Agile is more of a mindset than a way to implement software development. Agile is also an umbrella term for more practices that share the same values and principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see you tagged your question &quot;scrum&quot;. You don't necessarily need to go with Scrum if you want to be more agile. For support teams that work based on received requests from multiple &quot;product owners&quot;, &lt;strong&gt;Kanban&lt;/strong&gt; might be a better choice. I suggest you give it a look. It might be closer than how you currently do things, and it's a starting point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take into account also that you don't necessarily need to pick one method and stick with it forever. You might later move to Scrum is the nature of your work changes. For example, a lot of teams start with Scrum and develop a product, then switch to Kanban for maintenance and support just because it matches better the nature of the work. You could start with Kanban then slowly evolve toward something else. There is also Scrumban which combines features from both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One work of caution though. Try having one &quot;product owner&quot; for the work you are doing. I have it in quotes because it isn't necessarily someone that does a product owner job (since you get work from many directions), but someone who decides on priorities. When you have 10 product owners at the same time, inevitably each considers their requests to be top priority. If your team can't work at all reports at the same time, someone needs to prioritize across the board and everyone be in agreement with why the work is done on some reports now and others later.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36474" LastActivityDate="2019-07-21T11:33:24.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26839" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26849" CreationDate="2019-07-22T03:19:49.600" Score="5" ViewCount="3045" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm unfamiliar with Agile/Scrum (not sure which is the right term here), and I have what seems like a very basic question, but I can't seem to find an answer online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an exaggerated hypothetical to illustrate my problem:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say my sprint has only enough capacity to fit in either 1 big, high priority story (let's say the priority/value is 5) or 10 smaller, low priority stories (priority/value of each is 1). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mathematically, it seems like I should choose to fill my sprint with the lower priority stories, since that delivers &lt;code&gt;10 x 1 = 10&lt;/code&gt; units of 'value' to the customer, as opposed to just &lt;code&gt;1 x 5 = 5&lt;/code&gt; units.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, intuitively, I don't think the customer would be pleased with that. From their perspective, I feel like they wouldn't care that the 'total' value delivered was higher -- all they'd see is that their most important story wasn't done, but a bunch of less important stories (that they might have been okay with not being done?) were done instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, which of these two perspectives is correct:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Deliver as much 'total value' as possible even if each individual story isn't the most important&lt;br&gt;&#xA;or&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Deliver as many of the most important (highest value) items as possible, even if the 'total value' at the end is lesser than in the first option&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36551" LastActivityDate="2019-07-30T13:36:07.677" Title="Is it better to deliver many low-value stories or few high-value stories?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26840" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26897" CreationDate="2019-07-22T03:34:55.847" Score="0" ViewCount="1084" Body="&lt;p&gt;In JIRA Board, only &quot;stories&quot; are showing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Filter for JIRA from (vertical3 dot &gt; Board setting &gt; General &gt; Filter &gt; Edit Filter Query)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;project = NAP ORDER BY Rank ASC&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here I can &lt;strong&gt;see&lt;/strong&gt; all the &lt;strong&gt;EPICS, STORIES, SUB-TASKS&lt;/strong&gt;. I tried to change it to &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;project = NAP AND issuetype in (standardIssueTypes(), subTaskIssueTypes()) ORDER BY Rank ASC&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NAP is project name&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, it is also same only. As standardIssueTypes(Bug, Epic, Story, Tasks) &amp;amp; subTaskIssueTypes(Sub-tasks), together is ALL&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, when I am going to board, it is still showing only &quot;stories&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36552" LastActivityDate="2019-07-29T23:33:10.240" Title="Only stories are showing in board in JIRA. I want all Epics, Stories, Tasks, Sub-taks to see in board" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26839" CreationDate="2019-07-22T06:56:25.597" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great question - people frequently ask similar things like this: in a big backlog of items, does it matter which I do - and it does. In fact, it might be the most important part of scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key is that each sprint, scrum asks the team to create a potentially shippable increment of the product. This can be a confusing term but for this question, let's just say that some real user in a customer group can potentially use the changes in some environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the team is doing this, then part of planning is answering the question &quot;What would be the most valuable next increment?&quot; This can be many type of value including actual customer features, knowledge value, risk mitigation, etc. Answering this will tell you which backlog items are most important to work on. Some sprints it will be a few bigger ones. Other sprints will be many small ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-07-22T06:56:25.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26840" CreationDate="2019-07-22T07:02:30.873" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Epics appears on the right side when you're browsing the backlog view. Also, you can use the swimlanes (board configurations) to group by Epics in the board view. But to have the Epics as an issue to track progress and so, this is not the common behavior of the Jira board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the rest of the issue types, make sure you have permission to view the issues. As by default everything shows in the board whether Scrum or Kanban, nothing is needed to have everything showing in the board. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3263" LastActivityDate="2019-07-22T07:02:30.873" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26843" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-07-22T07:39:19.037" Score="0" ViewCount="79" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a story where we want to have uniformity across our product suite by using a same jar file across three products. Consider it as an add-on to the original product, and as of today we have different versions for different products, due to Java 8 &amp;amp; Java 11 compatibility concerns. &#xA;&lt;p&gt; The customer won't know anything once the feature is done. So they just run the software (3 products said earlier) as usual with the latest version of the add on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is something a feature only if it is customer facing ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does a Non Customer Facing Internal update count as a feature too ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36217" LastEditorUserId="36217" LastEditDate="2019-10-07T15:13:49.990" LastActivityDate="2019-10-07T15:13:49.990" Title="How can we decide if a story is a feature or just an internal change?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;features&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26839" CreationDate="2019-07-22T08:47:11.800" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with so many things in agile, the answer is to &amp;quot;ask the team&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no right or wrong answer as every situation and domain varies. To follow agile you do not need to always pick one or the other approach, but you do need to have the conversation with the right people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the real world, I can imagine a conversation such as this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team: &amp;quot;We have the capacity this sprint to deliver a large, high-value story or many smaller stories. Our preference is for smaller stories as they make it easier for us to manage the sprint. What are your thoughts Product Owner?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product Owner: I appreciate that it is easier and probably more productive for you to work on the smaller stories, but in this case it is very important to my stakeholders to get that high-value story in place. Could we focus on that please?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team: Understood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-07-22T13:01:54.623" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26843" CreationDate="2019-07-22T09:22:28.030" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are working on a customer facing feature. It is just that you are replacing a component in the product so that the feature will behave in the same way as before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you rolled out the new jar file and then suddenly took it away, what in the product would stop working? That then defines the features that you are working on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, say you were replacing the login component with a like-for-like version that is functionally the same. The feature you would be working on in this situation could be represented by a user story like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user I want to login to the product so that I can securely access my data&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to think about is what would happen if you roll out the new jar file and it goes wrong? I'm guessing it would impact on your customers, so it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a customer facing feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-07-22T09:22:28.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26847" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-07-22T10:43:44.490" Score="1" ViewCount="131" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to create another Kanban board in my project where the columns are people names (we have 4 analysts in the team) and in the column shows all the cards created (reported) by each analyst, so we have a quick &quot;go-to&quot; to see who made which cards, and to keep track of our own cards more easily. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't seem to find how to map a &quot;status&quot; to &quot;reporter&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36556" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2019-07-22T10:48:12.833" LastActivityDate="2019-07-30T13:25:26.617" Title="How to create JIRA Kanban based on ticket/card reporter?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;kanban-board&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26847" CreationDate="2019-07-22T12:55:34.613" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you're asking for makes no sense in the context of Kanban. In Kanban, each column is a step in a workflow so that the workflow and the state of work in that workflow can be visualized. However, a reporter is not a state in the workflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can generate swimlanes for each reporter, though. Unfortunately, you can't do this dynamically. You would need to create queries that return the set of issues that you want in each workflow, which would be one query for each analyst on the team. The more typical breakdown is by the current assignee of the issue, or some other method - there are some built in swimlane formats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2019-07-22T12:55:34.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26839" CreationDate="2019-07-22T13:06:56.970" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You've encountered two important facts about planning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Priority and value are not the same thing. You have a number next to each story. If those numbers do not have the property that 10 stories with the number 1 next to them are worth more than 1 story with the number 5 next to it, then &lt;em&gt;the number next to each story does not represent value&lt;/em&gt;, at least not on an arithmetic scale. In which case don't call it &quot;value&quot;. If those numbers do not have the property that greatest value is achieved by working on the story with the biggest[*] number first, then &lt;em&gt;the number next to each story does not represent priority&lt;/em&gt;. In which case don't call it &quot;priority&quot;. Unless the numbers somehow contrive to have both properties at once, don't call them &quot;priority/value&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) The numbers are only vague approximations anyway. Also, depending where the numbers came from, things might have changed since the time when someone wrote a number next to the story. So any process that &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; crunches the numbers will sometimes not give you the right answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want to do the thing with highest value to the customer, which is fine. Your instinct in a particular case might that the 5-point story would have higher value to the customer than all 10 1-point stories. That is to say, your instinct is that the numbers you have really do represent priority, not value. That's also fine. If you're doing Agile then you have direct access to the customer pretty much at all times[**], so you can easily check whether your instinct matches that of your customer. You can also check with the rest of your team. If so then proceed with what you collectively believe to be highest value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are circumstances where the customer would prefer the 10 small fixes over the one big fix. For example this would happen when many of the small things are annoying on a day-to-day basis, while the big thing is a new feature that will be lovely when it lands, but everyone is getting on without it. Then you would do a sprint designed to improve general quality of life rather than to deliver &quot;the next feature&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, whichever is the &quot;right answer&quot;, if the numbers written next to the stories don't give you the right answer, then they don't represent what they claim to represent, and you should not kid yourself, your team, or the client, that this is what they represent. You can't do good work by blindly following bad numbers. So, either write down better numbers or else pay only very loose attention to the numbers and do what you all agree is right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[*] or smallest, if priority 1 is the most prioritous!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[**] this is the logical contrapositive to the statement, &quot;if you can't check in with the client then you aren't doing Agile, so don't kid yourself you are&quot;. The &quot;client&quot; here might be some stand-in for the actual fee-paying customer, especially for software that has a very large number of paying customers. But if you can't talk to at least a nominal customer then you're not agile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16402" LastEditorUserId="16402" LastEditDate="2019-07-22T14:24:36.473" LastActivityDate="2019-07-22T14:24:36.473" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26850" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26851" CreationDate="2019-07-22T13:15:06.820" Score="1" ViewCount="268" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use story points to estimate our user stories. We find that story points solve the problem of underestimating the amount of actual work which is required to complete a task, as it takes the complexity of a task into account along with the amount of work. But some team members find it hard to stop estimating in hours, especially when they are in a hurry. It's a common question to ask for the burnrate when we are having a sprint planning meeting. But since we believe that the burnrate will be more accurate if the person does not calculate his estimate based solely on hours, we want that to change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone help us with how we can make the team compare tasks and get to an estimate which includes complexity and amount of work instead of just calculating it with hours multiplied by our burnrate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33206" LastEditorUserId="33206" LastEditDate="2019-07-22T13:46:19.677" LastActivityDate="2019-07-22T13:55:42.960" Title="How can we persuade team members to estimate in story points instead of hours?" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;story-points&gt;&lt;team&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26850" CreationDate="2019-07-22T13:55:42.960" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can't really force people to stop doing hour-estimations in their head and then converting them to story points. I am a big fan of story points and even then I sometimes catch myself making a conversion from hours to points. And withholding the latest burn rates is also not sufficient to break the habit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few practices that are less conductive for doing an hour conversion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Use reference stories.&lt;/em&gt; Pick one or two stories where the entire team has a good idea how much work is involved in getting the story Done. One story should be on the smaller side of the estimation scale (say 2 or 3 points), and if you choose to use two reference stories, the other should be on the large side.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Then you start explicitly referring to those reference stories when asking the team to make an estimate. If you use this to break the habit of converting hours to points, the reference stories might be something that is not yet implemented, so that there is no chance to ask for how much time was actually spent on them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Use a dis-continuous scale&lt;/em&gt;. If you don't accept every number as an estimate, but only the numbers that belong to a scale with holes in it, then the people that do an hour-&gt;point conversion need to start rounding their estimates. If the scale has progressively larger gaps, then the rounding becomes more aggressive as the estimates get larger, which is also where the hours estimation tends to get less reliable.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;A very common scale is the modified Fibonacci sequence (0, 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, 100).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2019-07-22T13:55:42.960" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26839" CreationDate="2019-07-22T15:25:55.980" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You do the stories at the top of the backlog first. It doesn't matter if they are a 5 or a 1 or whatever. A product owner that has done his or her job properly will have the backlog ordered by what brings the most value to the users and/or client. By value one understands usefulness for users, market advantage for the client, making more money, shipping more products, adopting more puppies, whatever it is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's in the top of the backlog then that's needed next. The product owner has had the proper conversations with the client and decided that this or that are the next things the team should work on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's lower in the backlog then that means it can wait a while while some items at the bottom of the backlog might never be done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is not to jam your sprint with whatever fits best, or whatever looks like the team achieved more, but to take into the sprint whatever the team needs to work on next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum/Agile, the client can stop the project at any time. They can say &quot;the product does everything I need. The rest of stories we could have or are nice to have, but not critical&quot;. Let's stop here. Thank you. Now imagine the client wants to do the same but you didn't work on the story of 5 which was more valuable but instead worked on a bunch of 1s. They now need another sprint or two for the team to add what's missing to the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have an ordered backlog or not? The stories with 1 do you pick from various places withing the backlog just because they happen to be 1 and you can fit more in the sprint or are they at the top of the backlog? Is the 5 story at the top of the backlog?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product owner together with the client decide on what you need to work next. You don't do it mathematically by &lt;code&gt;1 x 5&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;10 x 1&lt;/code&gt;, or intuitively because it feels you are achieving more. Product owner together with the client decide. The team just tells them what they can actually achieve into the sprint. There might be some negotiation if, technically, some stories make more sense to be done first or in a certain order, but you always work from the top of the backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the numbers you have next to stories actually reflect the value they provide to the users/client, then the stories will be at the top of the backlog, in which case the numbers next to them become redundant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36474" LastActivityDate="2019-07-22T15:25:55.980" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26853" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-07-22T17:07:46.567" Score="0" ViewCount="82" Body="&lt;p&gt;How can we manage the issues that were planned to be done at one sprint, but at the end, it didn't, and has to be done in another. Do I change the Milestone? Do I create a new issue on the new Milestone? Or something else? The biggest problem is knowing when the issue did not fit in the sprint and had to move to the next, without appearing in the reports as if it had been made in Milestone planned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36561" LastActivityDate="2019-07-31T05:44:00.650" Title="How to jump issue sprint to sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26853" CreationDate="2019-07-22T17:24:21.317" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can we manage the issues that were planned to be done at one&#xA;  sprint, but at the end, it didn't, and has to be done in another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, at the end of the Sprint, the common recommendation is that unfinished work is returned to the Product Backlog where it is prioritized. Unfortunately, the only context for this in the Scrum Guide is in the context of a cancelled Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, there are two options. The work can be &quot;rolled over&quot; into the next Sprint or the work can be put onto the Product Backlog for reprioritization. How this is done is up to the Product Owner and Development Team, but there are risks and trade-offs. At the end of the day, the Development Team needs to be able to accept the Sprint Backlog and Sprint Goals based on their capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do I change the Milestone? Do I create a new issue on the new&#xA;  Milestone? Or something else? The biggest problem is knowing when the&#xA;  issue did not fit in the sprint and had to move to the next, without&#xA;  appearing in the reports as if it had been made in Milestone planned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This depends on your tool. What tool are you using?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also depends on what you mean by &quot;milestone&quot; and if the work is still on target for a given milestone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2019-07-22T17:24:21.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26856" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-07-22T19:03:58.350" Score="0" ViewCount="102" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our organisation, the technical design for the user stories/requirements is done by the onshore resources in the USA and the actual construct/development (coding) is done by an offshore development team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We follow 1-week sprints. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is: how should the story points be assigned? Should they be assigned by the onshore team for the overall story, or just the development effort? Sometimes the actual designing and gathering requirements can take 2 weeks but the development task can be completed within a week. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question by the team is: should story points be assigned only for dev effort or overall? Since overall is beyond the 1-week timeline (as in, designing and getting technical requirements done).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: I understand that the above may not be pure Scrum. But given the circumstances, how should one estimate? Should there be different story points just for design and development?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36563" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-07-23T14:26:11.183" LastActivityDate="2019-08-04T23:21:19.170" Title="Designing by onshore development/construct by offshore team and estimation" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26856" CreationDate="2019-07-23T07:30:14.907" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea of a story point is that is described the approximate size of a piece of functionality. In forecasting, this is usually used to show how much functionality is delivered and how much known functionality remains. With that in mind, it rarely makes sense to apply story points to portions of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, regardless of measurement unit, there are multiple advantages to the people doing the work estimating the work. This presents a challenge to your teams because you have split the work across teams and geographies. However, if you are looking to use story points and relative estimation, you really should have the whole group estimate story points for the whole piece of functionality together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also important that this is not an aggregate (2 points for design, 3 for coding, 2 for testing). It is one number that the whole group agrees on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-07-23T07:30:14.907" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26856" CreationDate="2019-07-23T13:52:22.917" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Splitting estimates without splitting stories is a known anti-pattern. You should either consolidate the efforts of both teams to collaborate on smaller units of work, or decouple the estimation and delivery for each team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Splitting Estimates Within a Backlog is an Anti-Pattern&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, your onshore and offshore teams should be &lt;em&gt;collaborating&lt;/em&gt;. That would make the effort required for any work a simple aggregate of everyone's contribution, and simplify estimates. There are other models, but this is the agile ideal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you truly have separate teams with separate workflows, then you should probably be splitting the work in such a way as to have separate Product Backlogs and a more loosely-coupled set of Sprints. However, if the &lt;em&gt;deliverable&lt;/em&gt; both teams are working on is inherently tightly coupled, this is an embodiment of the Scrummerfall anti-pattern. Either the &quot;teams&quot; are a single Scrum team working together on a single Product Backlog, or they are separate teams for which basic Scrum is a poor fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are ways to work with multiple teams, but they generally require a scaled approach that addresses the fact that you don't have a unified Scrum Team working from a unitary Product Backlog. Such frameworks generally require another layer of integration work between the teams (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scrum.org/resources/nexus-guide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nexus&lt;/a&gt;), and often involve practices such as test-driven development and continuous delivery to reduce the friction inherent in a multi-team approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Work Item Sizes&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of whether you're using a multi-team or single-team approach, you should keep the following in mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work can &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; be estimated by the task performers. You can't have one team (or person) estimating for another.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work items &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; fit into a single Sprint. Multi-Sprint work or items that would cross Sprint boundaries should be &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;decomposed using INVEST criteria&lt;/a&gt; until each separate user story or backlog item fits &lt;strong&gt;entirely within a single Sprint&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's okay to have goals, features, epics, or themes that require multiple Sprints to complete, but each individual user story or backlog item must &lt;em&gt;still&lt;/em&gt; be small enough to fit into a single Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each Sprint must have a unifying Sprint Goal, and the work items selected for that Sprint should contribute to that goal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each Sprint should deliver a potentially-shippable increment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, agile frameworks optimize for &lt;em&gt;flow&lt;/em&gt; rather than &lt;em&gt;utilization&lt;/em&gt;. So, when working from one Product Backlog, it's actually more effective for each team to do less work (and thereby create more slack) than to try to have two teams attempting to work at capacity to deliver an increment. The process overhead involved in larger teams or multiple teams means that insufficient slack will actually &lt;em&gt;slow the pace of development&lt;/em&gt;, rather than speed it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your objective should be to increase the number of Sprints that achieve the Sprint Goal, rather than to increase the velocity or work-effort for each Sprint. If you focus on the Sprint Goal, the process changes needed to consistently deliver them Sprint after Sprint will become more self-evident over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-08-04T23:21:19.170" LastActivityDate="2019-08-04T23:21:19.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26839" CreationDate="2019-07-23T16:30:32.547" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is better to maximize value delivered in a Sprint, so whatever mixture of stories does this in the Sprint is better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An approach is to have stakeholders / PO assign a value to stories, and the Team assign effort. Your velocity is how much effort you deliver each Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Manage your Backlog and Sprint stories based on delivering maximum value per Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not a substitute for talking to people. But it can guide the Backlog-grooming and increase focus on &quot;low hanging fruit&quot; by deferring focus on high-effort, low-value stories until later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, stakeholders adjust the initial value to make the Backlog fit what they want it to be - and that is OK. The discussion about the &quot;real value&quot; of stories is often useful and can refine stories to what really has value. Once stakeholders see Sprints delivering stories, they stop worrying so much if their story is in this or the next Sprint (until a deadline approaches).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that value and effort (Story Points?) can be unit-less, and often benefit from being so, as long as they are proportionate between stories. This removes many pointless arguments of time and money when trying to rank stories for the Backlog. I like the semi-Fibonacci sequence of 1,2,3,5,10,20,30,50,100 to avoid people wasting time estimating things that are too big and fuzzy to be accurate anyway (but if someone really wants a value or effort of 45, who cares?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36578" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-07-23T17:02:01.413" LastActivityDate="2019-07-23T17:02:01.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26843" CreationDate="2019-07-23T17:19:47.970" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The distinction is largely irrelevant from an agile perspective, but may have other drivers that require you to evaluate and adapt your process. If you must do so, involve the entire agile team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis and Recommendations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Is something a feature only if it's customer facing?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Does a non-customer facing internal update count as a feature too?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &quot;feature&quot; is simply some functionality or behavior of a product or system. From a marketing perspective, features are often differentiators that are only called out when they reach a meaningful threshold of significance to the user or differentiation from competitors. From a project management perspective, though, a feature is simply a shippable increment of functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it doesn't matter if an increment is customer-facing or not. All sorts of development work takes place &quot;under the hood,&quot; and most customers don't care about internal implementation details. However, that doesn't mean implementation details don't add value, affect system behavior, or improve the product!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With all that in mind, it sounds like your project team is struggling to differentiate between functional and non-functional requirements. In an agile sense, both are features, but the priority and business value of the features may vary based on how the Product Owner views the return-on-investment of project resources (especially time, money, and labor) for each feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your best bet is to work with the Product Owner to understand &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; you need to make this distinction for the project. If not, forget about it! If you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; need to distinguish between these concepts for contractual, political, or other business reasons, then involve the whole agile team to discuss the best way to incorporate that into your process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-07-23T17:19:47.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26828" CreationDate="2019-07-23T18:21:12.657" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;User stories are short descriptions of something your customer will do either on your website or phone app. I think you are on track with using INVEST to develop criteria, but it looks like you're missing acceptance criteria. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your scorecard is INVEST - does the story meet all criteria? Next - how do we know when the story has been successfully completed, this is where your acceptance criteria comes into play. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the example above: &quot;As a cardholder with multiple cards, I would like to be able to easily tell which one is which so that I don't waste time clicking on the wrong card.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acceptance criteria: &#xA;* customers can select specific cards identified by last 4 digits of card&#xA;* customers will see a list of cards in their profile identified by last 4 digits of card &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think identifying what makes the story successful first will help develop the actual story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33504" LastActivityDate="2019-07-23T18:21:12.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26864" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26868" CreationDate="2019-07-24T11:41:48.897" Score="0" ViewCount="156" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a product owner without any technical background especially without a correct sense from the back-end development process and tasks. I have a brief knowledge about MVC architecture but our team uses customized architecture so I'm almost blind to the technical concept of back-end part of our project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem appears when I want to breakdown user stories into tasks with the back-end team. I cannot understand anything about their tasks and I just jot down their orders and then import them to the JIRA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a task was done, I can't realize what part of the project has been progressed, because usually the tasks are related to many user stories. In fact, the back-end team told me!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have this problem with neither the mobile team nor the front-end, because their tasks have a pattern so I can predict the other user stories' tasks based on it and understand them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is there any template or pattern for Back-end tasks or any related hint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36413" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-07-24T14:11:12.200" LastActivityDate="2019-07-24T14:15:08.503" Title="User Stories breakdown for back-end team" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;product&gt;&lt;product-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26865" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26866" CreationDate="2019-07-24T11:42:20.847" Score="1" ViewCount="121" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an Agile Coach for a bunch of Business Intelligence Engineers and Data Scientists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is generally speaking 2 different work item types which they undertake:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User facing reports and dashboards e.g. Business Objects, Looker&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Platform related enablement e.g. Airflow data pipelines, AWS configuration, Snowflake and S3 work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried everything but I have not managed to get the team to work in vertical slices - they just say that its impossible and so they essentially work in horizontal slices with each team member working from his/her own backlog of technical tasks e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One developer will constantly work on new data pipelines and maintain existing data pipelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One developer will only do Looker or BO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One developer will do exclusively Snowflake related activities etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The work does marry up eventually but there is so little user facing value that the business is starting to get unhappy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few more variables which make my problem more complex. We don't have Product Management skills within the team - we do have a PO but he is a business person with no real agile IT experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the ask of the team is also to embed the skills of creating dashboards and reports within the business users e.g. self-serve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is simple - how do I get my team to work in agile way and slice things vertically. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastEditorUserId="32613" LastEditDate="2019-07-24T11:48:15.170" LastActivityDate="2019-07-25T07:11:56.123" Title="How to get a BI team to work in vertical slices e.g. User Stories" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26865" CreationDate="2019-07-24T12:51:50.673" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the looks of it, you currently don't have a team. You have a group of developers presumably working in the same office. To turn them into a team, you need to get them to take collective ownership of the unsliced work-items that provide value to the business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few suggestions in that direction are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hold a retrospective with all team members about how they can collectively turn around the perception of the business that they aren't delivering anything. Let them come up with ideas themselves and try the most promising ones (or the ones that get the most support) for some time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't allow the team to horizontally slice a work-item. If no vertical slice can be agreed upon, then assume that that is the smallest that the work-item can become.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;At the same time, impose a WIP limit on the work-items. If a team member wants to start on a new work-item that would exceed the WIP limit, tell them to  assist in completing an already in-progress work-item, even if that work-item has no work left in their area of expertise. This will help in getting work-items done faster and it also cross-trains the team.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;You can allow the team to create (horizontally-sliced) sub-tasks under a work-item to know in which technical areas work needs to be done, but the completion of a sub-task would have no meaning for any metrics that you track. They can, however, help the team to see where/how multiple people can collaborate on the same work-item.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastEditorUserId="12235" LastEditDate="2019-07-25T07:11:56.123" LastActivityDate="2019-07-25T07:11:56.123" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26864" CreationDate="2019-07-24T13:33:28.017" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am assuming you are using a Scrum process, but the core of the answer will not be significantly different for other agile processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The core of your problem lies in that you try to coordinate the work within a team or between teams on a technical level without understanding all the technical details. The solution here is not a particular template for tasks or a particular way to break down the work, but rather to delegate that coordination to the people that should have the knowledge: the team members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing to do is to make sure that all the developers know which stories depend on each other. This is relevant for the developers, because it highly influences their decisions what to pick up next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the coordination is within one team, then the daily standup meeting is exactly intended for this kind of coordination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the coordination is between teams, then I recommend looking at the various scaled agile frameworks. The easiest would be a Scrum-of-Scrums meeting, in which representatives of each team coordinate with each other to get the work that touches multiple teams done as effectively as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2019-07-24T13:33:28.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26869" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26871" CreationDate="2019-07-24T13:57:19.460" Score="0" ViewCount="288" Body="&lt;p&gt;If change request is pushed by the client during the sprint aggressively, who takes the final decision if it needs to be included or not&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36590" LastEditorUserId="36590" LastEditDate="2019-07-25T04:58:41.357" LastActivityDate="2019-07-25T12:04:05.627" Title="When requirement changes comes during the sprint, who takes the final decision to include or not" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26864" CreationDate="2019-07-24T14:15:08.503" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner doesn't need to care about Tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should not be creating them. You should not be looking at them. You should not care about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You create and prioritize the Stories. The Team then creates Tasks and Sub-Tasks. The Team must update Stories when they finish working on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no such thing as a 'half-finished Story'. A Story is either Done or not. If it's Done, it's burned down. If it's not, then it's not Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No Story should take longer than a single Sprint to complete, so you shouldn't need to care about such fine-grained progress details as Tasks. If they're not, then split the Stories so they become smaller and accomplish-able in one Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2019-07-24T14:15:08.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26869" CreationDate="2019-07-24T16:25:54.217" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The final decision is up to the product owner. If it's &lt;em&gt;really, really, really&lt;/em&gt; important, the product owner could just cancel the current sprint and start a new one with just this single story in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that that is an extreme measure and normally the product owner should consult the team about it and figure out a good way for all participants. But prioritization is the product owners domain. They say what is important and what needs to be done first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2019-07-24T16:25:54.217" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="531" CreationDate="2019-07-24T19:27:51.437" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I frankly don't care if others see it as rude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work in Construction as an Estimator. I can relate to the OP Project Manager role as we often share the same information and are tasked to distribute data that requires a prompt response/acknowledgement; to assure quality of service to projects that are on-going or in the near future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a matter of professional discipline in my field, where accountability is determined by court of law through evidence that is collected such as the receipt of correspondence. I cannot rely on others to reply with a &quot;will do&quot; every single time I email. I rely on coworkers and partner companies to do their job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you decide not to send a receipt, that is your choice. If I can't get a reply, I will have to follow up to ensure you do your job or got the message! The information is streamlined and construction trades are responsible for gathering their scope of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you decide not to send a receipt, just make sure you do your job of acknowledging if you see that the information requires prompt action. Or it's your ass on the line...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36593" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-07-24T20:56:11.970" LastActivityDate="2019-07-24T20:56:11.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26869" CreationDate="2019-07-24T19:58:40.613" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First and foreMost, it is the responsibility of the product owner to decide the requirement change should be included in the current sprint or not. Obviously , this involves more development work and chances of pill overs in the sprint. Ideally the product owner prioritize the requirement change over other stories and deliver based on that . And finally, it is all about agile framework. Changes are always welcome in the agile development to improve the quality of the product &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33461" LastActivityDate="2019-07-24T19:58:40.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26869" CreationDate="2019-07-25T12:04:05.627" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I consider &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/26871/30&quot;&gt;nvoight's answer&lt;/a&gt; to be mostly correct, but there are other considerations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, the Product Owner is accountable for managing the Product Backlog. In the context of handling requested changes, the Product Owner is the one who needs to remain accountable for ensuring that the request is reviewed, expressed appropriately, and ordered with the rest of the Product Backlog Items. The Product Owner also collaborates with the Development Team on an ongoing basis to refine the Product Backlog Items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'd also argue that the Scrum Master has a role to play. One of the responsibilities of the Scrum Master is to help stakeholders understand empirical product development, Agile Software Development, and Scrum. The stakeholders are only only the Product Owner, the Development Team, and the development organization, but also include clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be quite concerned if a client, in the middle of a Sprint, was aggressively requesting changes. I would have a few approaches and, if I were in a coaching role with the team, would work very closely with the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing I would look at is the Sprint cadence. Sprints are typically between 1 and 4 weeks long, with 2 and 3 week Sprints being the most common. Outside of a critical defect that is preventing work from happening, I would question why the change could not wait until the next iteration. I would consider that if this was important enough, a potentially shippable increment can be produced before the end of the next Sprint that included just the priority change - Scrum allows for, and techniques such as continuous integration and continuous delivery enable, multiple potentially shippable increments to be provided during a Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For non-critical issues, I would encourage placing the changes at the top of the Product Backlog and ensuing appropriate time with the team to understand and refine the work. Doing this will likely yield higher quality work. By giving the team time to understand the need or want, work with the Product Owner to refine it and estimate it, there is a better chance of the work being done right. In addition, if the change is extremely high risk or requires a large amount of effort, the Product Owner will be able to manage stakeholder expectations or work out a plan to decompose the work and slowly introduce the changes in an appropriate timeline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cancelling a Sprint is an option, if the change request is deemed important enough and cannot be done with the current capacity. However, the Scrum Guide uses the phrase &quot;traumatic&quot; to describe cancelling a Sprint due to its disruptive nature. Also, cancelling a Sprint may not be possible in a scaled environment where multiple teams are synchronizing their Sprints and have dependencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2019-07-25T12:04:05.627" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26876" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26877" CreationDate="2019-07-25T12:33:52.277" Score="1" ViewCount="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;We essentially have a centralized project, but bits and pieces of that project are built with funding from many different budgets. Separate billing codes are created for each budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to place a field on all of our issues that stores the job code that should have that issues logged hours be billed against. &lt;strong&gt;What type of field do you think is best suited for this?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FWIW, I currently have a regular text field, but this is tedious for PMs to consistently enter codes into and I've had multiple folks ask me to replace the field with something more intuitive and user friendly. Any advice would be appreciated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3231" LastActivityDate="2019-07-26T01:11:27.360" Title="Best type of field in Jira for handling job codes?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26876" CreationDate="2019-07-25T16:35:48.103" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It will depend on the job code structure and hierarchy (if applicable). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We added a custom field: select list (cascading) type with all our account codes within by department. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's &quot;selectable&quot; and allows to seek and filter. Nevertheless, if they are many this is gonna be messy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you can add a parent level by Job Source, Department, Company, Vendor, etc... to filter your job codes later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at this tutorial on YouTube.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-yG7mJfyUQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Example Configure Cascade List In Jira Cloud&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another suggestion. If your projects are internal and as you use JIRA, I have an intuition that you are going in an agile approach maybe. It means that you are involving your stakeholders in the projects of the company to fulfill their expectations (sprint initiation, review and retrospective). You can create an access to key stakehokders per project and allow them to specify some data for your user stories (job codes) and later confirm the resolution of the issues after quality control. Hope it helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32495" LastEditorUserId="32495" LastEditDate="2019-07-26T01:11:27.360" LastActivityDate="2019-07-26T01:11:27.360" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26878" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-07-25T16:55:08.727" Score="1" ViewCount="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use MS Project for work. I want to create a column that multiplies the cost of 'work' resources by 5% and 'cost' resources by 15% for each task line. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Excel I know I could use an 'ifs' statement &#xA;(If it is 'work' than x 1.05, if it is 'cost' then x 1.15, if it is neither then do nothing)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;= ifs(A2=&quot;work&quot;, B2*1.05,A2=&quot;cost&quot;, B2*1.15,&quot;&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot figure out what I need to do in MS project.  How do I create a calculation based on the type of resource&#xA;- Do I need to make multiple columns and then sum them? or can I create a statement formula?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;this is the formula I am trying, but of course I am getting errors&#xA;IIf([Resource Type]=&quot;Work&quot;,[Cost]*1.05,IIf([Resource Type]=&quot;Cost&quot;,[Cost]*1.15))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36605" LastEditorUserId="36605" LastEditDate="2019-07-25T18:25:25.813" LastActivityDate="2020-08-20T17:04:55.430" Title="Custom Column Calculation" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26879" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26884" CreationDate="2019-07-26T10:13:05.587" Score="0" ViewCount="69" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know its very subjective question, however in general I wanted to understand which are the top three metrics as PM, I should look at while working in a Software project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36590" LastActivityDate="2019-07-27T06:33:38.343" Title="Which are top three metrics one should look at as PM specially from IT industry perspective" Tags="&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;cost-management&gt;&lt;pmi&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ClosedDate="2019-07-28T20:16:34.813" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26880" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-07-26T12:33:04.593" Score="0" ViewCount="2030" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was hoping for any good examples of how anyone has effectively presented RAID logs (or the individual lists of Risks/Assumptions/Issues/Dependencies) in their projects. In particular for Agile/Scrum projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I look after a team of PMs and have recently been looking at how we can better manage RAID. There's a well established method of using a spreadsheet such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.projectsmart.co.uk/docs/raid-log-template.xlsx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this RAID Log example from Project Smart&lt;/a&gt;, however I was wondering if any other ways have been used/proven to be effective in the past? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use Jira and there are a couple of extensions available that basically use a new issue type to track the risks. Also having a highly visible &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_matrix&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Risk Matrix&lt;/a&gt; and Dependency Mapping board I have found useful in the past. I'm ideally looking for creative ways of getting high visibility and participation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dave&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36608" LastActivityDate="2019-07-27T06:50:56.030" Title="Good RAID Log examples &amp; usage" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;risk&gt;&lt;dependencies&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26881" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26882" CreationDate="2019-07-26T14:39:56.420" Score="1" ViewCount="135" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a PO I plan to write user stories for a project. In this project, we'll send messages via email that should get formatted according to a style guide, as an example. What is the best perspective to write the user stories in such cases?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I, as a receiver of an email notification want to find my new messages&#xA;  all styled in a way making it identify them easily as sent by&#xA;  ACME Corp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I, as the brand manager of ACME Corp. want to see all messages sent by&#xA;  email apply our corporate style guides?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that this is just an example (don't waste your time on the email idea), I wonder which of the two perspectives is most useful for the development team that is going to implement my stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36609" LastActivityDate="2019-07-30T13:32:25.873" Title="How to chose the right perspective in user stories?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26881" CreationDate="2019-07-26T18:16:18.760" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A key part of the purpose of a user story is to understand the need from the user's perspective. As such, you want to explore their need. This should be their perspective and focus on their need, not the solution. For example, I could write a user story that reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a customer newly registered distributor for ACME Corp, I would like&#xA;  a confirmation of my registration emailed to me so I know that it went&#xA;  through properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also important to remember that not all backlog items must be user stories. I could simply say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Reformat confirmation email to match new branding guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sort of thing can be useful when you have to go redo something with a specific solution. Alternately, if I was going to do a new project with emails, I would probably include something in my definition of done that says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All communication meets branding style guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and it would never be a backlog item, but would rather apply to all backlog items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-07-26T18:16:18.760" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26881" CreationDate="2019-07-26T19:11:31.497" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I wonder which of the two perspectives is most useful for the development team that is going to implement my stories? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all honesty? None. &lt;strong&gt;Most useful is the conversation you (as the PO) have with the dev team about the user story&lt;/strong&gt;, explaining them what needs to be done and what the acceptance criteria is for this particular functionality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A one sentence long statement of what you want is usually not enough to understand everything that needs to be implemented. &lt;strong&gt;User stories are not detailed requirements&lt;/strong&gt;. They express what the user needs the application to do for them. They are from the &quot;user&quot; perspective, that's why they are called &quot;user stories&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going on your example, my idea of an user story might go something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user of the application, I want to receive relevant marketing emails so that I can profit from the best deals&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nowhere in my example is there specified &quot;how&quot;. How the email is formatted? How is the email styled? How is the email sent? These are part of the discussions the PO and the dev team need to have around the user story when it's time to implement it. As a user I really don't care about that, I just want the application to do it somehow. It makes business common sense for the email to carry your company's branding, but that's your acceptance criteria as the provider of the application, not necessarily mine as the user of the application (this shows another problem with user stories, sometimes they are not written by real users, but by someone from business who &quot;thinks&quot; they know what the real users want).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, not everything in the backlog needs to be a user story. How about bugs? Do you write bug issues from the perspective of the user? It's ridiculous, right? Somehow though, people try to force all features, functions, requirements, technical changes and implementations, etc into user stories and think it's OK to do that. But it's not. It just creates administrative overhead because instead of specifying what's needed in a natural language, then discuss further details based on that, people spend a lot of time to write &quot;the perfect user story&quot; on a constraining pattern. Sometimes that goes overboard and you end up with anomalies like &quot;As a developer I want a back-end API so that I can implement a rich front-end&quot;, which is worded as a user story, but it's not a user story.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An item like the following is just fine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All email communications to users should be properly styled/formatted&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't overthink it&lt;/strong&gt;. As long as everyone understands what it means and what needs to be built (which rarely is understood from just one sentence - thus the conversation you need to have), it needs not to be forced into a &quot;As a [user type], I want [some thing] so that [some reason]&quot; pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you find it hard to express it from the user's perspective, then maybe don't write it as a user story&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36474" LastEditorUserId="36474" LastEditDate="2019-07-27T08:43:14.510" LastActivityDate="2019-07-27T08:43:14.510" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26879" CreationDate="2019-07-26T20:21:20.830" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Metrics are usually accounted through what is called Earned Value Management (EVM).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EVM allows Project Managers (PMs) to&#xA;measure i) the technical performance, ii) cost and iii) schedule of a project against planned objectives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMs compute metrics so that they can act proactively rather than reactively to address an issue on scope, cost or schedule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For classical projects, metrics are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cost Variance (CV), Cost Performance Index (CPI)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Schedule Variance (SV), Schedule Performance Index (SPI)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Budget/Estimate/Variance At Completion (BAC/EAC/VAC)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To Complete Performance Index (TCPI).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, EVM depends on what lifecycle you adopt for your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are three different lifecycles that you can use to manage your project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Predictive (classical),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Iterative (incremental),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adaptive (flexible).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, for IT and Software projects, PMs choose iterative or Adaptive lifecycles. For example: Agile or Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is however possible to implement EVM in Agile projects using 3 parameters: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Backlog,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Velocity,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and Cost. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using these, PMs can assess scope, throughput and cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For details, Pls refer to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK®) Guide of Project Management Institute (PMI®) at&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pmi.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.pmi.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36612" LastEditorUserId="36612" LastEditDate="2019-07-27T06:33:38.343" LastActivityDate="2019-07-27T06:33:38.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26880" CreationDate="2019-07-27T06:50:56.030" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;RAID logs are not usually maintained when working with Scrum. The reasons for this include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We release frequently, which often reduces risk&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Frequent releases also reduce the need for assumptions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agile favours individuals and interactions over process and so we prefer to regularly discuss things rather than to rely on documentation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Scrum retrospective is designed to address issues&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The close relationship between the development team and the Product Owner reduces the need for separate external reporting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact one of the arguments for moving to Scrum from a traditional development approach is that it helps to eliminate processes like maintaining RAID logs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-07-27T06:50:56.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26881" CreationDate="2019-07-27T09:26:24.573" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a general rule user stories are written from the point of view of end-user value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I, as a receiver of an email notification want to find my new messages all styled in a way making it identify them easily as sent by ACME Corp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That would work if it is &lt;em&gt;valuable&lt;/em&gt; to the end-user to easily identify emails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I, as the brand manager of ACME Corp. want to see all messages sent by email apply our corporate style guides?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This wouldn't usually work as I'm guessing most end-users won't care if an email follows the corporate style guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may feel like the brand manager is a customer for the user story, but in this case I don't think they are. This is because the brand manager does not get &lt;em&gt;direct&lt;/em&gt; value from the story and is not a genuine internal customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are products that deliver direct value internally. Say, for example, you were writing an internal application that let the marketing director coordinate their marketing campaigns. That is an internal product and so the end-user is an internal person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-07-27T09:26:24.573" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26878" CreationDate="2019-07-27T15:58:46.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are getting errors because Resource attributes (e.g. Type) are not accessible to Task custom field formulas.  Any queries would need to go through the task-resource assignments, and that requires vba.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A possible workaround in your case makes use of the “Resource Names” Task attribute – the list of all the resources assigned to the task.  It requires some very special conditions, namely:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each task has ONLY 1 resource assigned&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resource names or initials are intelligently coded – easiest with a prefix letter – to indicate the corresponding Resource Type.  E.g. An initial “c” designates cost-type resources, like “c-Subcontract Invoice”.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Costs are only entered through resource assignments – i.e. no direct entries in the cost column.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If these conditions are assured, then you could use a formula like this in the Cost1 field:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;=[Cost]*Switch(Left([Resource Names],1)=&quot;w&quot;,1.05,Left([Resource Names],1)=&quot;c&quot;,1.15,1,1)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The Switch function is a streamlined alternative to nested IIf functions - like the new IFs function in Excel 2016+.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2019-07-27T15:58:46.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2669" CreationDate="2019-07-28T16:48:31.713" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As per PMBOK Guide, there are 3 core competencies which PM Should have and those are&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.Technical knowledge,  2 Leadership &amp;amp; 3. Strategic &amp;amp; business management &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The estimation and risk management aspects of project comes under the technical knowledge management areas of project management such as resource/cost/activity estimation and risk management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Practice, the PM are found frequently rely on the expert judgement for both estimation purpose and risk management. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lets understand from an example of estimate - suppose there is a project to develop suite of test cases for testing a web site using a tool called Selenium. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the best resource to &quot;estimate&quot; how much time will be required to complete such suite could be a technical test architect who has previously worked on a tool such as Selenium &amp;amp; &quot;knows&quot; how much time each test case takes to develop using this tool. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PM himself might never has used this tool and hence he cannot say for sure how much time it will take to develop the test suite &amp;amp; in such case PM has to rely on this technical expert's judgement as far as estimation is concerned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, what PM Must know regarding the estimate is below key points, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;how it was developed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;explain/document all the assumptions made while estimating&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;list down any known constraints&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;indicate the confidence level of the estimates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So essentially, apart from being aware of personal expertise, PM must know to find others with the needed expertise, to be successful as project manager. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21918" LastEditorUserId="21918" LastEditDate="2019-07-28T16:58:12.480" LastActivityDate="2019-07-28T16:58:12.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26889" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-07-29T02:23:50.247" Score="4" ViewCount="326" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am working as developer in product based software company. In all companies I worked as of now , we say that the quality of this delivered story is good or bad. But I find this is subjective. Is there a standard rule of thumb where we can say for a work of X man hours , Y hours of rework in defect fixing is fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Y value is within the range &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a to b: Quality is very good  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;c to d: Quality is average  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;e to f: Quality is bad&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a standard rule like this ? May be it can not be standardized as  it depends on lot of other factors like complexity of work, skill of resource etc., but then what are the factors/metric I should consider to objectively say&#xA;that quality is good or bad? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any formula that takes into account these factors and tell about the quality. I agree that measurement may not be true but it will act as pointer or work to cement the subjective view ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="33236" LastEditorUserId="12235" LastEditDate="2019-07-29T08:49:19.713" LastActivityDate="2019-08-05T05:09:56.590" Title="How much defect rework is expected?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;quality&gt;&lt;engineering-practices&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26889" CreationDate="2019-07-29T08:48:19.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no standard measure of acceptable quality as each organisation exists in its own domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a startup working with a radical new technology may accept a large number of issues as for them speed to market is more important than quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A company building medical applications will usually aim for a very high quality standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, in recent years the trend has been towards increasingly regarding rework as unacceptable. This trend is driven by the desire to release frequently and by highly competitive industries where issues can have a severe impact on sales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main outcome of this trend has been for organisations to invest in baking quality in rather than in spending time and money on fixing issues. There is a good argument that investing in continuous integration, automated regression tests, etc. saves money in the medium/long-term due to less time being spent on rework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-07-29T08:48:19.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12863" CreationDate="2019-07-29T09:10:58.563" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I completely disagree with the other answers. You can use a burndown as a progress tracking tool, but you have to choose the correct metrics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use &quot;Remaining time&quot; instead of &quot;Closed issues&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developers need to update the remaining time daily&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This more or less implies that you use hours instead of story points, unless you want to report fraction of the original story points value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding story points vs hours, each one has its merits, story points is IMO only useful when the individual velocity between developers is too different. Otherwise it is just a poor excuse for &quot;people are bad at estimation&quot;, to which I reply: &quot;yeah, but engineers must be good at estimation&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more detail: even if you do what I said above, you will not necessarily be always close to the ideal line because you need to incorporate one more thing: team profile over the sprint. Example: my team starts quite fast but late bugs pop up later in the sprint, so my ideal curve starts below ideal line and later creeps close to the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36621" LastActivityDate="2019-07-29T09:10:58.563" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26892" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26893" CreationDate="2019-07-29T10:04:45.433" Score="3" ViewCount="553" Body="&lt;p&gt;What mechanism can Scrum or Kanban teams use to track Continuous Improvement activities - something which can also involve cross-team collaboration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g. CI: Improve Product Management by reducing WIP at Epic level - this may involve meeting with other teams who have more mature product management practices &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was thinking we could create tickets on the team's boards which could also pull into a combined board that all Agile Coaches view and discuss weekly or something like that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2019-07-29T15:07:02.253" Title="How should Scrum and Kanban teams track Continuous Improvement activities?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26892" CreationDate="2019-07-29T12:00:19.033" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what tools you are using, but I believe that you are on the right track with your thinking about using your ticketing / issue tracking tool and providing appropriate views and filters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm most familiar with Jira, but the way I handle this is that I create a new Jira project for the continuous improvement work, with its own workflows and issue types. Since we're scaled, I carry over the team field to this new project as well. I make sure that the filters for team boards look at cases where the team is set so it displays on the team's backlog and board views. For cross-team items, I don't set the team field. Everything, regardless of if it is on a team backlog and board or not, shows up in a backlog and board in the continuous improvement project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, it seems to work well. It gives transparency over what improvement efforts the teams are working on, and if two teams have similar objectives, they can coordinate, where coordination may mean working together or running two simultaneous experiments and discussing results at the end or something in the middle. It also lets us prioritize improvement efforts with product discovery and delivery work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2019-07-29T12:00:19.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3791" CreationDate="2019-07-29T15:44:50.467" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum: Framework or Methodology?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Per definition, Scrum is an Agile framework. Some see it as a methodology, though. Now, who’s right? It really depends on how you look at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, let’s try to clarify the difference between framework and methodology. In this context, a framework is a loose guideline, that defines the main structure of software development. However, it doesn’t dictate how to do certain things. A framework is not a step-by-step recipe, in that it doesn’t tell us what tools and processes to rely on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given a framework, we can define the way we want to achieve our goals. Now we’ve got both a structure and a set of standards, tools, and practices. That’s the methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a methodology if you fill in the gaps of the structure defined by a framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, let’s go back to our original question. Is Scrum a framework or a methodology?&#xA;Scrum defines a structure for sure: it tells us that we need development Sprints, with Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, and Retrospective meetings. Thus, Scrum fits the definition of a framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does Scrum tell us what tools to use, such as Excel for planning, Trello for progress tracking, or Microsoft Visio for designing our software? Nope!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, Scrum is a framework, not a methodology, right?&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;Well, not so quick! Many people perceive Scrum as a methodology because the tools and the standards are already given. Mature software development companies don’t have to introduce new software and processes, just adapt the existing ones to the structure provided by Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’ve witnessed several transitions from Waterfall to Agile that didn’t require significant changes in tooling, but rather in people's minds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36626" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-07-29T15:53:25.763" LastActivityDate="2019-07-29T15:53:25.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25087" CreationDate="2019-07-29T21:21:31.670" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Create area paths that represent the workstreams you'll ultimately want to sort against. In this way you'll be able to look at a particular path, which will show all projects within.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36629" LastActivityDate="2019-07-29T21:21:31.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26840" CreationDate="2019-07-29T23:33:10.240" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Subtasks don't show up in a backlog view by design. However you can configure your backlog to see the subtasks as jira issue id's under their associated Story or Task. In your Board Configuration, go to Card Layout and under Backlog choose &quot;Sub-Tasks&quot; and add it. Now in your backlog at the bottom of each card you'll see any subtasks created for that issue. There won't be details there, but it will at least show you if there are any subtasks associated to that story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36631" LastActivityDate="2019-07-29T23:33:10.240" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26889" CreationDate="2019-07-30T10:50:35.423" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Refactoring&lt;/em&gt; is a natural part of iterative and incremental development methodologies. However, a high ratio of defects in a product indicates one or more fundamental process problems. Such problems represent a cost to the project by consuming budget, schedule, and resources. High defect rates also create a drag on productivity that increases over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Identify the Process Problems&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no standard ratio of work to defects, either in project management nor in software engineering. Defect rates represent a cost to a project, either in time and budget to fix defects or in customer dissatisfaction with the project, so minimizing &lt;em&gt;foreseeable&lt;/em&gt; defects is important. Your company or agile team should have a well-defined Definition of Done and a notion of what level of quality is acceptable from both a business and an engineering point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is really an X/Y problem, though. If your defect rate is high enough to even ask the questions you're asking, there's a process problem that needs to be uncovered. It's time to ask yourself and your team some hard questions, like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the team effectively use source control?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the team use continuous integration (CI)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the system have unit tests that must pass before code is checked in?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do the tests provide adequate code coverage?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the team following test-first development practices?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the team creating new regression tests each time it finds a bug?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does each work increment fully meet the team's Definition of Done?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the Definition of Done being updated when quality problems are identified?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're already doing these sorts of things, why are &quot;defects&quot; making it outside the development cycle to become bugs? This is often a process issue where good engineering practices are not being consistently followed, or an indicator that the team has chosen to &quot;work faster&quot; at the risk of a higher rate of defects. This is often a false dichotomy, because when working faster simply generates defects faster you haven't actually gained any real operational efficiencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Agile Teams Have a Bias for Predictability&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From an agile perspective, the goal isn't to work &lt;em&gt;faster&lt;/em&gt;. It's actually to work &lt;em&gt;more effectively&lt;/em&gt; at a sustainable pace. Part of setting a sustainable pace is to empirically discover how reliably the team can deliver product increments that meet an &lt;strong&gt;agreed-upon level of quality&lt;/strong&gt; at a &lt;strong&gt;predictable cadence&lt;/strong&gt;. It's up to each team (and each organization) to define what level of quality is acceptable, sustainable, and cost-effective for the business. You then adjust your processes and your cadence to consistently meet that quality standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-07-30T10:50:35.423" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26847" CreationDate="2019-07-30T13:25:26.617" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can't do this in Jira unless you have some hacked awful workflow where everyone has their own status and each status corresponds to a different column on the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2019-07-30T13:25:26.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26881" CreationDate="2019-07-30T13:32:25.873" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend that you write user stories from the perspective of both users as both users have different needs but they are driven. I would then link the 2 stories so that the developers are aware.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2019-07-30T13:32:25.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26839" CreationDate="2019-07-30T13:36:07.677" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend that you look into Lean Value Tree. It has helped our teams tremendously with making sure we deliver that right products to meet the strategy of the organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2019-07-30T13:36:07.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5269" CreationDate="2019-07-30T20:50:42.587" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can apply to PMI to take your PMP exam, as long as you meet the requirements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As part of the application, you'll need to have your hours broken down into the different process groups -- in addition to the overall dates/hours of work. Here's a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.projectation.com/pmp-hours-spreadsheet/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;link to a spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt; (with instructions) you can use for this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as stated by jcmeloni, there is the possibility of an audit. From what I've observed, the audit has a higher likelihood of being done if your numbers are unlikely/over zealous (i.e. &quot;Been a PM with no degree, for 4 years and have 7500 hours of experience...&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no other requirement to document your work with PMI. You won't need a letter from your employer(s) (past or present). That being said, it'd be great to give your employer a heads up that you're applying and that they may get contacted as part of an audit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36629" LastActivityDate="2019-07-30T20:50:42.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26853" CreationDate="2019-07-30T21:15:58.043" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what you've described here's what I'm hearing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have a number of issues that during sprint planning were included in the effort for that sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have a number of issues that, due to severity, were interjected after sprint planning was completed. They are extra effort for that sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Regardless of if they were planned for or added because of severity, they are included in the current sprint's effort. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a couple of ways this could go, but the end result is the same. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You have a User Story with issues/bugs/tasks under it. Various work items have been completed, but at the end of your sprint this particular issue wasn't started. Move the User Story to the next iteration. (Depending on the interface you're using, it's very likely you'll just tag it as &quot;carryover&quot; and change the iteration path to the next one.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You have a single Issue, completely detached from another work item (user story) and your sprint ends without it being started. Move the Issue to the next iteration.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The assumption in all of the above is that the Issue had been included in the sprint. As it was included, it gets moved to the next iteration if not completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is just a random Issue someone would like to get done and ISN'T included in the sprint, it should be put in the backlog so when you're doing the next sprint planning it can get added at that point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36629" LastActivityDate="2019-07-30T21:15:58.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26826" CreationDate="2019-07-30T21:31:12.213" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We tried to bring the clients closer to us to let them understand how we work, but their nature of business is advertising and media, and therefore their response usually is &quot;the ad goes live in 2 days&quot;. Therefore their product has to be ready in 2 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lots of good answers above -- and obviously educating and involving the client is the way to go. I mean, do they really not know where something is in their sales/delivery pipeline?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, one thing you might consider is having multiple teams that have different sprint cadences for this client. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The bulk of your developers run a 2/3/4 week sprint cadence for technical stories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A small team of your developers run a 5 day sprint for creative stories. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like this client wants a team &quot;at the ready&quot; for ad hoc requests. If there's enough capacity, this might be your solution...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36629" LastActivityDate="2019-07-30T21:31:12.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25672" CreationDate="2019-07-30T21:36:14.807" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a best practices perspective, each site should have it's own backlog (as it is a unique &quot;Product&quot; -- owned by a Product Owner).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The different sites can roll up under a common branch though. So when you're doing sprint planning, feature planning or even increment planning you can rank what gets done and in what order. As DPH said, depending on what you're using to manage the work, you can assign hours to projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36629" LastActivityDate="2019-07-30T21:36:14.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25597" CreationDate="2019-07-30T21:51:42.560" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a variety of &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/report/dashboards/widget-catalog?view=azure-devops&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;OOB charts in Azure DevOps&lt;/a&gt;. Some simple ones can be viewed under &quot;Charts&quot; after you run a query for your current sprint. (I don't know why they don't display in the Sprint view):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lEGci.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lEGci.png&quot; alt=&quot;Azure DevOps query for &amp;quot;current sprint&amp;quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you run the query click Charts -- you can then view/edit a number of different charts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mSjng.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mSjng.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Azure DevOps chart based on query for &amp;quot;current sprint&amp;quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you can get fancy with Analytics views and integration with Power BI. But these sound more like what you're after. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36629" LastEditorUserId="36629" LastEditDate="2019-07-30T22:21:14.233" LastActivityDate="2019-07-30T22:21:14.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16085" CreationDate="2019-07-31T10:20:45.450" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is the duty of the Team to attend and manage the Daily Scrum. The Product Owner (PO) is not responsible for Daily Scrums. In fact, the PO should not even intervene in the discussion of the Team. If the PO is taking over, then you should talk to the entire Team and then to the PO for a clear understanding of roles and responsibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36645" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-07-31T13:22:56.813" LastActivityDate="2019-07-31T13:22:56.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26909" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26910" CreationDate="2019-07-31T17:02:16.077" Score="1" ViewCount="78" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any estimation technique that can help us to estimate the number of needed test cases in traditional software projects? For example, we have a Software requirements specification (SRS) with 200 use cases; can I say &quot;we need 200 *10 = 2000 test cases&quot;, as a rough estimation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We need this estimation to write a test plan for the project manager. Sometimes we don't fully understand the application from the SRS because of having spent too little time performing test planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35136" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-07-31T17:16:50.327" LastActivityDate="2019-07-31T18:45:45.467" Title="Is there any estimation method to estimate end user testing?" Tags="&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;testing&gt;&lt;software&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26909" CreationDate="2019-07-31T18:45:45.467" Score="5" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no single formula for determining how many tests a set of specifications will require. However, you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; estimate level-of-effort and set quality targets based on your test plans, provided the people making the estimates are the ones who will be doing the actual work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Testing Pyramid and Its Effects on the &quot;Iron Triangle&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no universal formula for how many tests you need for each specification. That will vary based on the product, the frameworks that you're using, the complexity of the specifications, and the criticality of each unit of functionality. However, you can get reasonable estimates by asking the actual task performers (e.g. the developers and testers who will be doing the work) to estimate the amount of testing they anticipate for each block of work on the project plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, you should expect that an agile shop will have many unit tests, and very few manual tests. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eDowe.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eDowe.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Traditional vs. Agile Testing&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Sliders and Trade-Offs&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;a href=&quot;https://duckduckgo.com/?q=testing%20pyramid&amp;amp;iax=images&amp;amp;ia=images&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;many variations of the testing pyramid&lt;/a&gt;, and the details of what belongs in each layer can vary based on your product, industry, and process. However, experienced developers and testers who are invited to collaborate with you on the planning and estimation of the project can often provide reasonably-accurate estimates regarding the level of effort involved for each phase or component of testing, and help you make the necessary trade-offs between:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;percentage of test coverage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;speed of test development&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;speed of test execution&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;speed of development&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;speed of regression testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;speed of defect reproduction/isolation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These factors, which are often complementary or opposing sliders, will impact your project's costs, schedule, and quality. It will also have a major impact on your technical debt and defect rates, depending on what the team and organization agree to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Incorporate Test Metrics into the Definition of Done&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your Definition of Done should always include agreed-upon targets for test coverage. The rest of the testing details are likely to be more of a negotiation and a set of guidelines than a fixed percentage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;See Also&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://martinfowler.com/articles/practical-test-pyramid.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Practical Test Pyramid&lt;/a&gt;,&quot; Martin Fowler. Retrieved 7/31/19.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/the-forgotten-layer-of-the-test-automation-pyramid&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Forgotten Layer of the Test Automation Pyramid&lt;/a&gt;,&quot; Mike Cohn. Retrieved 7/31/19.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-07-31T18:45:45.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26911" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-07-31T21:56:04.350" Score="-2" ViewCount="97" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am learning about management and coming from software development I was wondering how I would design a tool to help users manage their software development projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to the data architecture, my idea is to have the following entities (but the proposed solution might or might not follow through with it)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) &lt;strong&gt;Project&lt;/strong&gt; - a company / division can work on multiple projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) &lt;strong&gt;Milestone&lt;/strong&gt; - each project can, but does not have to have multiple milestones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) &lt;strong&gt;Requirements&lt;/strong&gt; - each projects can have multiple requirements. Multiple requirements can be grouped into a milestone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) &lt;strong&gt;Task&lt;/strong&gt; - each requirement has one or more tasks created by the developers. Same task can be a part of multiple requirements. A task is set to be done by a single developer within 2-5 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) &lt;strong&gt;Subtask / Checkpoint&lt;/strong&gt; - Each task can have multiple subtasks, each of them to be done within a day. The idea is that tasks could be created with a template (f.e. initial requirement analysis + required time estimation + design and implementation + test 1 + test 2 + documentation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this, I'm considering to build a view that shows projects, its requirements and task in a tree structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you tackle this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Appreciate your guidance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36545" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-08-01T15:08:27.140" LastActivityDate="2019-08-01T15:59:40.393" Title="Design and architecture considerations for management tool" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;software-development&gt;&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;design&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ClosedDate="2019-08-01T17:30:21.357" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26911" CreationDate="2019-08-01T01:28:21.503" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure if you are in a product world (software or other) or in IT (applications development/ maintenance) - but irrespective, here is how I would advise you to think of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conventionally (in the traditional waterfall world), all planning happened in terms of projects, which would get funded and staffed.  However, depending on corporate/ financial imperatives, it was easy to kill projects - and cause staff turnover.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lean/ agile thinking encourages you to move away from project thinking to product (or application) thinking - where products/ applications get funded based on their overall longer-term importance in the organization.  They provide you a longer-term planning and execution timeline - as well as staffing capability (typically over multiple years) as opposed to projects that can be very short to very long, and not always intentionally!  (Software and IT projects are notorious for their horrendous cost, time and scope overruns!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From an overall planning perspective, think of corporate objectives/ business milestones/OKRs (Org Key Results) at the top of your planning hierarchy.  These may be planned for a year broken down into quarters and months. To successfully deliver on these OKRs, an organization must build/ implement/ launch products that help it meet those OKRs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of these Products/ Applications as the key assets that need to be developed/ maintained/ implemented.  Teams need to be dedicated to these products - a team should be dedicated to a product (of course a team might manage multiple products, but ideally, a product should not be split between multiple teams as far as possible. Lean/ Agile thought process highly encourages stable, self-organizing teams that can manage how they work and deliver their product deliverables, given a clear and unambiguous priority for those deliverables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also have shared services (special skills teams) such as UI/ UX design, DB, Architects, Documentation, etc - which split their time supporting the dedicated product/ app teams.  However, shared services are discouraged as much as possible to reduce dependencies across teams because they reduce the flow of work for any given team.  (Imagine a new requirement's development work being held up due to non-availability of the design team).  However, it is quite hard to reduce such dependencies to zero in my experience, in any sized organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you then have dev/ maintenance/ implementation work being done in the Lean/ Agile world in either short time buckets of Sprints and Releases, as in Scrum, or in a continuous manner, as in Kanban. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum teams will deliver their product at the end of each Release. Kanban teams will typically build and deliver work continuously on to a staging server as each feature gets built, or each defect gets fixed, and make releases to a production environment or to an external customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the Sprint and the Release come closest to your project/ milestone definition.  A release may take 8-10 weeks (4-5 sprints) or lesser.  At our company, we do monthly releases - by teams that follow either Scrum or Kanban.  The release cadence really depends on your business context and the cost/ overhead of making and deploying a release. Typical corporate IT may not be willing to take new product releases from an internal or an external (vendor) dev team - because the cost of testing and certifying a software release before it can be deployed into their production environment can be quite high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The software/ product itself can be functionally decomposed into a Theme --&gt; Epic --&gt; Feature --&gt; User Story hierarchy - those are your Requirements - the actual hierarchy/ nomenclature can vary from company to company.  However, typically, each Sprint will complete a certain number of user stories; which roll up to a certain number of Features getting delivered in each Release. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be the job of the Product Management/ Product Owner organization to ensure that the Themes, Epics, and Features are identified, prioritized and detailed in time for each dev delivery cycle. And that they are aligned to those OKRs as well.  This is typically taken care of between Portfolio Management and Product Management functions in an organization.  They would also have some way of tracking &quot;New Ideas&quot; that might typically spawn an investigation leading to a new initiative/ dev effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many Scrum teams create a task-list against each user story - and use those tasks to track their work and effort. However, many Scrum teams are moving away from effort tracking - the tasks simply work to encapsulate a standard process/ workflow they follow to build each user story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Kanban team, on the other hand, will typically visualize the workflow on a Kanban Board, where each column represents the next stage of development (value add) - and they track each user story's progress through this workflow.  Many teams use both Scrum and Kanban together and may or may not define and track tasks at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, hopefully, that gives you a good picture of what I am trying to communicate :) - and the hierarchy would look like this - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Product/ Application&#xA;-- Themes/ Epics/ Features/ User Stories&#xA;--- Tasks/ Workflow stages&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Release --&gt; Sprints&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Teams&#xA;-- Dedicated to products/ apps&#xA;-- Shared services teams&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Projects/ Milestones (Optional - mostly in project services companies)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A company that is in the business of doing projects (including fixed cost/ fixed price projects might still do the traditional Projects and Milestones - but ideally, they should use the project plan/ milestones at a high level to guide incremental software/ product development, build sufficient feedback loops (sprint/ release demos) so that by the end of the project - and even for each milestone - they are delivering working software/ features - or sometime even documents/ prototypes - that allow the dev team and the customer be on the same page of what the customer needs and what is being built.  Many System Integration/ IT Services do this and call it &quot;Hybrid Agile&quot;.  Of course, such delivery models are possible when there are mature trusting relationships between customer and delivery team/ service provider (or business and IT) - where each side is ready to collaborate and benefit from the flexibility that this model gives them both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on everything you have mentioned, a combination of Portfolio/ Program/ Team level Kanban boards would be your best bet to capture and track all of these.  At the team level, teams might use a Scrum or Kanban or Scrumban approach to building and delivering their work.  You could have Kanban boards to track new ideas, OKRs, new initiatives, some of which would drill-down to program and team level boards where Epics, Features and User Stories would describe their implementation, while they get grouped into Sprints and Releases for their actual delivery.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban tools are typically not meant for tracking project plans and milestones - so, if you have to do that, you'd need to do that in a traditional project management tools such as MS Project or many others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Portfolio Kanban tools, you could consider our tool - SwiftKanban, which has some great Enterprise/ Portfolio Kanban capabilities that match your requirements - or others such as Kanbanize and Leankit which are also very good, besides several others lesser ones such as JIRA Agile/ CA Agile (earlier Rally) and VersionOne.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8132" LastActivityDate="2019-08-01T01:28:21.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26913" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-08-01T12:22:46.163" Score="3" ViewCount="472" Body="&lt;p&gt;The team is working with a user story and they are stuck on some technical issues and unable to resolve them. This story is committed for the current Sprint. Shall I put this story on hold after discussing it with the Product Owner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36654" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-08-01T12:25:46.773" LastActivityDate="2019-08-01T15:22:30.297" Title="Can a story be put on hold within a Sprint?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;&lt;sprint-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26913" CreationDate="2019-08-01T12:32:39.707" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This story is committed for the current sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teams should not commit to completion of Product Backlog Items for a Sprint. The team's Sprint Backlog is a forecast, based on the team's past performance and looking forward for the expected capacity of the team. The idea of commitment only appears in respect to individuals committing to achieving the goals of the Scrum Team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a given Sprint, the team's commitment should be to the Sprint Goal. Ideally, there is alignment between the Sprint Goal and the Sprint Backlog. If the entire Sprint Backlog is necessary to be completed to achieve the Sprint Goal, there is risk. Ideally, there are items in the Sprint Backlog that the team feels that they have confidence in completing, but are not necessary for the accomplishment of the Sprint Goal by the end of the Sprint timebox.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Shall I put this story on hold after discussing it with the Product&#xA;  Owner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the failure to complete the work jeopardize the Sprint Goal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Sprint Goal is in jeopardy, then yes - this needs to be raised with the Product Owner immediately. The Product Owner needs to work with the Development Team to understand opportunities and trade-offs, and then work with stakeholders to manage expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Sprint Goal is not in jeopardy, the Development Team should focus on the Sprint Goal first. This can be raised with the Product Owner to let them know, but the main expectation of stakeholders outside of the Scrum Team should be on receiving the outcomes of the Sprint Goal and not on particular units of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2019-08-01T12:32:39.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26913" CreationDate="2019-08-01T13:04:32.997" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Blocker Assessment&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two ways to look at this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Temporarily blocked stories that can be resolved eventually within the current Sprint. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unresolvable blockers that can't be successfully addressed within the current Sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Resolvable blockers can be placed on hold temporarily, but in general it's better for the Scrum Team to swarm over unblocking a story that's on the critical path than to put it to the side. Circumstances and particulars will certainly vary, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Temporarily Blocked Stories&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Temporarily blocked stories should be evaluated to see if:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The story is essential to the Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum, each Sprint must have a unifying Sprint Goal. The objective of each Sprint is to complete the Sprint Goal, not just &quot;work on lots of stories.&quot; So, if a user story is blocked, but the Sprint Goal can be completed without completing this particular user story, then the team should take the story off the critical path for the Sprint. Depending on the story, it should either be discarded or placed back on the Product Backlog for the Product Owner to re-evaluate in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Team (including the Development Team, Scrum Master, and Product Owner) can unblock the story somehow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may involve changing the scope of the user story, or identifying additional Sprint Backlog items necessary to complete the original story. Unblocking things often involves negotiation with stakeholders, end users, or external process owners as well as the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The blocked story can be put on hold &lt;em&gt;temporarily&lt;/em&gt; within the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sprint Backlog belongs to the team, so its contents and ordering is up to the team. This can free up a work-in-progress slot for something that &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be completed. However, it's very important that this technique isn't incorrectly used to create a multi-tasking situation or to cover up blockers that impact the Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a rule of thumb, stories should be worked on until completed rather than placed on hold. When a story is blocked, the whole team should collaborate to unblock the story. If a user story isn't important enough to throw the entire team's resources at resolving its blockers, then it's arguable that the story isn't important enough to the Sprint Goal to be on the Sprint Backlog in the first place!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Unresolvable Blockers&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a blocker can't be resolved &lt;em&gt;within the current Sprint&lt;/em&gt;, then it needs to be carefully evaluated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Stories that impact the Sprint Goal must be unblocked or revised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the blocked story would impact the Sprint Goal, the Development Team must work with the Product Owner and Scrum Master to find a way to unblock the story. If it can't be unblocked as-is, the Scrum Team should revise the scope of the story or add additional Sprint Backlog items that allow the story to be completed in any way that doesn't jeopardize the Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Blocked stories that don't affect the Sprint Goal should be removed from the Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Sprint Goal can be met without this story, then it should be removed from the current Sprint. It can be discarded if it has no value, or the Product Owner can place it back on the Product Backlog for re-prioritization and re-planning in a future Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Blocked stories that would jeopardize the Sprint Goal should trigger a return to Sprint Planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A user story that is essential to the Sprint Goal, and that can't be unblocked, revised, or otherwise modified to be completable within the current Sprint should trigger an adjustment to the Sprint Goal (when possible), or result in a Sprint Cancellation called by the Product Owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Team can then hold a Sprint Retrospective to identify process changes that need to take place, and then return to Sprint Planning. The team then identifies a &lt;em&gt;new&lt;/em&gt; Sprint Goal and selects user stories to meet the goal that &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be successfully completed within a single Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Product Backlog Items don't automatically roll over from Sprint to Sprint. So, Sprint Planning should ensure that all work selected from the Product Backlog relates to the current Sprint Goal and fits fully within the current Sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blockers that prevent progress towards the Sprint Goal are common enough that the Scrum framework provides mechanisms for dealing with them. As long as the Scrum Team is sure that the blockers can't be resolved, then it's up to the Scrum Master to provide the team with framework-appropriate options such as those described above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-08-01T13:04:32.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26790" CreationDate="2019-08-01T13:57:46.893" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Talk to him about this. Don't attack his behavior, but point out the implications that you think his behavior has on the team. If he doesn't see the problem and doesn't want to change, take action and let him go. Hire for attitude, train for skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17737" LastActivityDate="2019-08-01T13:57:46.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26913" CreationDate="2019-08-01T15:22:30.297" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Outside of the Sprint Goal decision(s) mentioned above, rather than putting this story on &quot;Hold&quot; you might use &quot;Spike&quot; instead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agiledictionary.com/209/spike/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Spike&lt;/a&gt;: A task aimed at answering a question or gathering information, rather than at producing shippable product. Sometimes a user story is generated that cannot be well estimated until the development team does some actual work to resolve a technical question or a design problem. The solution is to create a “spike,” which is some work whose purpose is to provide the answer or solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36629" LastActivityDate="2019-08-01T15:22:30.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25087" CreationDate="2019-08-01T15:43:08.177" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Azure DevOps extension &lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=YodLabs.TagsManager2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tags Manager&lt;/a&gt; may work for your needs. Docs declare you can perform the following operations with each Azure Devops Project:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CRUD tags &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Search tags&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to install this extension into your Azure Devops instance, another alternative is the Visual Studio extension &lt;a href=&quot;https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=UtkarshShigihalliandTarunArora.TagAdminforVisualStudio2017&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tag Admin for Visual Studio 2017&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36655" LastActivityDate="2019-08-01T15:43:08.177" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26911" CreationDate="2019-08-01T15:59:40.393" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;As we are considering software development, that's how i would tackle it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UH9Ta.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UH9Ta.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;ER model for software development management tool&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The model is self explanatory but let me add some more information for context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Job_sites&lt;/strong&gt; - locations where users can post jobs (for instances, &lt;a href=&quot;https://weworkremotely.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;We Work Remotely&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.freelancer.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Freelancer&lt;/a&gt;, ...).  This would have attributes such as Job Site URL, Who added to the list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Jobs&lt;/strong&gt; - what a &lt;em&gt;potential&lt;/em&gt; client wants someone to do. This would have attributes such as Client Name, Job Title, Job Description, Currency, Price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Client&lt;/strong&gt; - someone that has one or more jobs.  This would have attributes such as Client Type (potential client or existing client), Person Name, Email Address, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project&lt;/strong&gt; - a job that the client agreed on us taking over. This would have attributes such as Job Name, Project Name, Project Description, Manager, Status, Priority, Estimated Start / End Date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Resources&lt;/strong&gt; - workers. People hired to take over the success of clients (Customer Success Managers), to manage projects (Project Managers), ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To note then you want to manage user's permissions, not everyone needs and wants to see everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to track Activities and Tasks, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jira&lt;/a&gt; does a pretty good job. There's the perk they get access to that information though but that's the price for using something that good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27189" LastActivityDate="2019-08-01T15:59:40.393" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26921" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-08-02T11:24:42.993" Score="5" ViewCount="1590" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to coach a new team. Team consists of very senior and junior members. Senior says juniors have attitude problem and Junior says the senior doesn’t share functional knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My observation says there's clearly a lack of trust among members. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can i solve this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36654" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-08-02T13:05:56.007" LastActivityDate="2020-01-07T16:04:31.430" Title="Conflict between senior and junior members" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;&lt;conflicts&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26921" CreationDate="2019-08-02T12:21:24.940" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This answer is inspired in the work of Tom Graves understanding perspectives and resolving conflicts in enterprise architecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Things work better when we work together, on a purpose&lt;/strong&gt;. If you don't act upon this, things will tend to follow the same consistent pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've done great so far by exposing the assumptions each side have. That's the initial part and it shows there's good communication, with trust, between you and them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to make sense of their perspectives you have to go back to basics and question the assumptions their holding. Some of the questions you can ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;. What's the point?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;. What's the purpose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;. What are we striving for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27189" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2020-01-07T16:04:31.430" LastActivityDate="2020-01-07T16:04:31.430" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26921" CreationDate="2019-08-02T16:48:55.093" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may seem pedantic, but you don't solve this. They can solve it, but you can't make them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two approaches that come to mind on working through this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;actual conflict mediation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;team building&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conflict Mediation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are books and certifications on this - far more than fits in a Stack Exchange answer, but a starting point is to talk to them individually about what has happened, what they would like to see as an end result, and potentially ask them things like &quot;why do you think the other person is doing what they are doing?&quot; or &quot;If you were in their situation, what might cause you to take similar actions?&quot; to create some empathy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After some one-on-one conversations you can ask if they are up for some group conversations. There is a nice technique you might find helpful called non-violent communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The risk with a conflict mediation approach is that if you overstep you can become part of the problem and enflame the conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Team Building&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A potentially safer, though far less direct approach, is to focus on team building. Exercises like identifying team values and working agreements can help create new shared positive experiences in the team that start to supplant the old negative ones. They can also allow the team to plant some working agreement items that take the edge off the problem. For example, the team might agree in their working agreement that anytime there is a task that only the senior person knows how to do, they will pair with a junior developer and the junior developer will do the work with the senior one mentoring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is more indirect and will not overcome severe personality conflicts, but can be very helpful if the conflict is normal team-forming stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-08-02T16:48:55.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26925" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26934" CreationDate="2019-08-02T23:34:27.877" Score="0" ViewCount="46" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given an end date and the amount of hours I'm willing to spend per course (say 250 hours each for 2 concurrent courses), how do I make MS Project Professional 2019 spread out the courses evenly every day (say 4 hrs/course) given an 8 hour work day? I want to be able to determine when I need to start studying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment I'm only able to have the tasks in sequence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36671" LastEditorUserId="36671" LastEditDate="2019-08-02T23:43:05.933" LastActivityDate="2019-09-18T10:33:57.177" Title="Scheduling based on end date and amount of hours willing to spend per course" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26926" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-08-03T04:27:06.020" Score="2" ViewCount="187" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sprint planning is done. Sprint backlog is ready. Sprint goal is set. Now stakeholder wants to add one more story, even though there's not enough capacity to deliver it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team agreed to take this story, if we can remove any other story from sprint backlog to accommodate the new one, but stakeholder refuses to remove any story from the Sprint backlog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I already explained that the Sprint goal is set and it’s not advised to change the goal when Sprint is already in progress. How to handle this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36654" LastEditorUserId="430" LastEditDate="2019-08-03T14:41:44.030" LastActivityDate="2019-08-09T07:59:55.697" Title="Stakeholder pushing to add more stories into the sprint" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26926" CreationDate="2019-08-03T10:31:52.930" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three things to consider: Sprint length, Sprint Planning, and Product Ownership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the determining factors in Sprint length is the ability to synchronize with the business or stakeholders. You want them to be long enough such that you can get value-added work done, but short enough to be able to incorporate valuable feedback. You also need them to be long enough to allow stakeholders to generate feedback, but not have to wait a long time to get an Increment with the feedback incorporated. In your case, perhaps a 3 week Sprint is too long - if feedback comes in very early after Sprint Planning, the stakeholders may be waiting nearly 6 weeks to see that particular feedback delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another common piece of advice is to not allocate 100% of your Sprint to the Sprint Goal. Consider that the Sprint Goal is what the team is committing to delivering to the stakeholders. If your entire Sprint capacity is dedicated to the Sprint Goal, you have no way to handle things that come up, such as team members needing to take time off without warning or production issues that require immediate attention or minor changes to the Sprint Backlog based on feedback. A rule of thumb that I've seen and encourage applied is between 60-70%, as a maximum, of the Sprint Backlog should be related to the Sprint Goal. If your organization frequently has the team handling emergent issues, you can consider dedicating even less of the Sprint Backlog to the Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third point is Product Ownership. The Product Owner needs the ultimate authority to order the Product Backlog, which often means the ability to say no to stakeholders. However, having a Sprint length that better supports synchronization with stakeholders outside of the Scrum Team and a Sprint Backlog that is more forgiving to emergent issues can both help the Product Owner and the Development Team support changes while still being able to give reasonable forecasts and then reflecting back on the forecasts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also sounds like a good opportunity for the team's Scrum Master to teach the stakeholders about the value of iterative and incremental development, empiricism, and the strengths of Agile Software Development and Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2019-08-03T10:31:52.930" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26928" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26947" CreationDate="2019-08-03T17:39:50.627" Score="5" ViewCount="228" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a data analyst. &lt;strong&gt;I get assigned small projects.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The projects usually take anywhere from 1 day to 2 weeks to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example would be: Create a system/query that will generate a list of roads that are suitable for next year's asphalt crack-seal program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I don't usually get good direction from management about projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to come up with some &lt;strong&gt;standard questions&lt;/strong&gt; to ask management (and stakeholders) that would encourage them to put the project into context and give me the direction I need to be successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The questions might resemble something like this:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is our department's overall goal? *&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What problem are we trying to solve?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What happens if we don’t solve it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why do we need to solve it now?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Also, how will we know if we succeeded? And as a follow up: Did the product withstand the test of time?)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;* The department's goal has already been defined, I just want to remind people of it and tie the project back to it.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there industry-standard questions that I could ask so that I get good direction from management and stakeholders?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="28814" LastEditorUserId="28814" LastEditDate="2019-12-05T13:27:35.740" LastActivityDate="2019-12-11T19:40:47.833" Title="Small Projects: Asking the right questions" Tags="&lt;tasks&gt;&lt;initiation&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26929" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-08-04T07:13:51.453" Score="3" ViewCount="422" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hi Everyone &amp;amp; Have a Good Day!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am doing research on requirement prioritization in Agile. I need to prioritize functional and non-functional requirements by integrating both them simultaneously. Although the non-functional requirements always been neglected during the requirement prioritization process, it has a serious impact on the quality of software being produced. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;May I know any technique or approach that always been applied to prioritize both of the requirements in an Agile project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30332" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-08-05T10:30:38.957" LastActivityDate="2019-08-05T10:30:38.957" Title="Prioritizing both functional and non-functional requirements in Agile" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;requirements&gt;&lt;prioritization&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26929" CreationDate="2019-08-04T08:11:02.167" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scrum is based on the principles and foundations of the Agile methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fKEon.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fKEon.png&quot; alt=&quot;How Scrum works&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A key principle is the recognition that customers can, and probably will, change their minds (what they want, how they want it, and when they want it). This volatility means that requirements cannot easily be addressed in a traditional predictive or planned manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Product Owner (PO) is one of three roles defined within the Scrum methodology. He is usually someone with a solid understanding of the business, organization and market that represents stakeholders in the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PO is responsible to create a prioritized list of requirements called a product backlog (can work directly with a product manager to be able to assess product backlog requirements). These requirements are organized by themes (requirements aggregation), epics (big requirements that have to be detailed) and stories (detailed requirements viewed from the perspective of the product user).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These requirements are then estimated by the team using techniques such as planning poker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During sprint planning, the PO describes the team's priority requirements. This description allows for more detailed planning of the activities required to develop the priority requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer you're question, prioritization of requirements happen in two different stages&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When creating the product backlog. Here we have the stakeholders with PO. Prioritization here is highly dependent in the objectives the stakeholders are trying to achieve. Let's say we are building two applications (one Android and one for iOS) and the stakeholders are giving a conference (for whatever reason) where they want to showcase the product to an audience using mostly iPhones, they will want to give priority to the iOS app.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;During Sprint Planning. Here we have PO and team. This stage happens after the one mentioned above, so the requirements have already a specific priority attached to them and agreed by the stakeholders. Nonetheless, priority for the sprint ahead can change due to constraints that come through. For instances, I've worked as a developer with a team it had to rearrange certain priorities because the mockups had still to be approved (it was a very unusual case where the solution had to be done for yesterday, the user stories were created without much information and predefined design but things had to move due).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. you might like the following &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/25554/27189&quot;&gt;question I've asked&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27189" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-08-04T09:03:47.173" LastActivityDate="2019-08-04T09:03:47.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26926" CreationDate="2019-08-04T08:27:55.133" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adding to the excellent answer from Thomas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of people who are not experienced with software development think that the more features that get implemented in a sprint, the better it is. They do not understand that there are implications for quality and for team workload/morale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try not to think of the stakeholder as a problem. Instead, work closely with them to understand their needs and their motivation. The ideal result is an approach that works well both for the team and for the stakeholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also important to &lt;em&gt;reflect the pain&lt;/em&gt;. If the stakeholder insists on adding work to an already packed sprint then they need to understand the implications. If you don't have time to do some testing or if there are incomplete stories at the end of the sprint, ensure that this is widely communicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you could say at the sprint review something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With the late addition of a story it was a real challenge to complete all the work in the sprint. We ended up having to skip some compatibility testing and we didn't manage to do any user acceptance testing. On top of that there is some technical documentation that still needs to be updated, so we haven't been able to get all the stories to the team's definition of done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try not to be adversarial, but also make the results of their action transparent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-08-04T08:27:55.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25929" CreationDate="2019-08-04T08:37:01.440" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From reading your question and the comment from Tiago Cardoso i reckon your problem isn't &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/12465/how-to-structure-our-organization-and-define-agile-teams-in-a-multiple-concurren&quot;&gt;How to structure our organization and define agile teams in a multiple concurrent projects context?&lt;/a&gt; as you also have a specific structure and things seem to be working fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, you're searching for guidance to maintain control of the project (and increase productivity) and be able to communicate that to the stakeholders. To create this sense of ownership, i suggest two things&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use a Kanban Board, which is a tool for organizing work in progress (WIP). The work is represented on cards, post-its, plates or magnets. Each of these objects represents a working component. Objects are then organized into lists that represent the production process or product development. An example of organizing lists is &quot;Not Started&quot;, &quot;In Progress&quot; and &quot;Completed&quot;. This allows visibility about work and work progress helps also each team member feel responsible for the whole.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you're building an application and you're using a version control like Git, you can place the content from the master branch in a private location for them to see. Every time the branch is updated, you'll update what that content location has. If it's a web application, you can provide them also with a list of users with different permissions for the case they want to test themselves or show to loved ones (which i find to be often the case).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27189" LastActivityDate="2019-08-04T08:37:01.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26929" CreationDate="2019-08-04T09:14:34.443" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two approaches I have seen for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;1. The development team owns engineering quality&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this approach the non-technical stakeholders (and Product Owner if using Scrum) focus purely on functional requirements. The development team owns the non-functional side of things, will set their own non-functional standards and will add their own work items to the backlog in order to meet those standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example a development team might say something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Page response time on a representative server will not be worse than 4 seconds&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All key features will be monitored&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All data will be backed-up and can be restored in 8 hours or less&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team would then work on functional requirements, but all the time ensuring that their engineering standards are being met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;2. Create user stories for non-functional requirements&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this approach non-functional requirements are represented on the backlog. This might include stories like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a user I want web pages to return in under 4 seconds so that I enjoy my browsing experience&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a user I want to be confident my data will not be lost in the event of a server failure so that I don't worry about data loss&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a user I want to be sure that my product report is accurate and that the numbers reconcile so that I can confidently use the data in the report&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These user stories would be prioritised alongside functional ones in the product backlog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-08-04T09:21:24.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26925" CreationDate="2019-08-05T00:45:00.867" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's an example of how to do this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create 2 tasks, one for each class, auto-schedule mode.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assign yourself as a resource to teach task, but only 0.5 units (e.g. 4 hrs/day).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set constraints on the tasks--choose one of the finish constraints such as Finish No Later Than or Must Finish On. This example shows the difference with these two types. The MFO is a hard constraint so the start date will be moved later to ensure the task doesn't finish early. The FNLT is a soft constraint and the task will start as soon as it can (in this case it will start on the Project Start date which defaults to the day the schedule is created.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lbzLC.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lbzLC.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the work should be set to 250 hours which will change the duration to 500 hours because that is the amount of working time &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;spanned&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; when you only work 4 hrs a day on a task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-08-05T00:45:00.867" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9493" CreationDate="2019-08-05T04:52:42.547" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;We use 0 points estimation in our integration user stories (enabler), for example one system  out of many integrated system may not require any effort or work done for the story to be realise, hence put 0 SP. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36687" LastActivityDate="2019-08-05T04:52:42.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26889" CreationDate="2019-08-05T05:09:56.590" Score="0" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Rate all defects in terms of severity-- critical, high, medium, and low. Once you've organized defects in this manner and have addressed them when possible, it will be easier to determine the quality of your software. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have a predetermined criteria for when a task is done.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30882" LastActivityDate="2019-08-05T05:09:56.590" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26937" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-08-05T16:02:04.910" Score="2" ViewCount="189" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I've been promoted to a senior position where the responsibility include managing a project. To help me with the overall project, the company provided me 2 persons (resources) that are also senior and older than me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It happens that I have a serious problem with this 2 people. Allow me to explain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One looks like doesn't want to listen to me and both don't want learn or work, so they just do the bare-minimum (or less of it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instances, each time i try to explain an activity they've never done, they mislead it and this becomes problematic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though this is going on, the company wants me to keep on working with them and make them operational.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, would like to know &lt;strong&gt;your experience in such situations&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;including your approach&lt;/em&gt;. Thanks in advance for your time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36696" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-08-06T08:16:00.400" LastActivityDate="2019-08-06T09:38:42.400" Title="Resources Management - I can't manage some people" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;human-resources&gt;&lt;resources&gt;&lt;workload&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26937" CreationDate="2019-08-05T18:05:33.713" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Management Fundamentals&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Managing a project involves considering its constraints, namely scope, resources, schedule, budget and risk. So, part of &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/2324/27189&quot;&gt;managing the project requires managing people&lt;/a&gt; when they are resources allocated to that specific project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Human Resources (HR) Management&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Activity resource requirements is a primary input used to determine the HR needs for the project. If the company allocated to that project two resources i reckon your company considered it and decided the project you're managing requires them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your point-of-view is of someone managing a specific project. It is unclear if you're seeing the whole picture or just considering the project when you say they don't work or do the least as possible. A few thoughts come to mind&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Utilization vs. throughput situation. Some managers expect workers to perform 100% of the time, but that's unrealistic. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/6012/27189&quot;&gt;Are they allocated to other projects?&lt;/a&gt; Sometimes workers are switching often between projects, activites or tasks and this has its impacts.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You don't treat them in a good way. Picking up the learning example, you say they haven't done any activity like that before, but how do you know it and how far is that different from their common work? The following excerpt suits such case (except in this case we're not talking about moral matters)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Reasoning in moral matters is always reasoning with somebody. You&#xA;  have an interlocutor, you start from where that person is, or with the&#xA;  actual difference between you; you don’t reason from the ground up, as&#xA;  though you were talking to someone who recognized no moral demands&#xA;  whatever.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Taylor, C. (1992). The Ethics of Authenticity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They really don't work. How do you know and what leads you to say that? (You need grounds for that accusation)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;They really don't work...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It already happened to me managing a project remotely that required 5 resources (including me). 1 decided to go away from the firm and 3 (that were also dedicated to other projects) showed up very seldom, so they worked less than bare-minimum. The project had a tight deadline, was important to be delivered and everyone had different incentives accordingly to their objectives. I ended up doing most of the work and was more rewarded for it. It already happened as well one i didn't get any distinction and was ok because they were just to me and gave what was agreed in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to proceed&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would consider the thoughts mentioned above to get more clarity for the case and learn more about managing resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27189" LastActivityDate="2019-08-05T18:05:33.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26937" CreationDate="2019-08-06T06:28:44.160" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe I am wrong, but from your message &lt;strong&gt;I can see two main problems&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No common &lt;strong&gt;way of working&lt;/strong&gt; (their way and what you have in mind)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have resources but &lt;strong&gt;you don't have a team&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was &lt;strong&gt;confronted to the same situation&lt;/strong&gt; last year: new team, different profiles, different ways of work. It &lt;strong&gt;took me 6 months&lt;/strong&gt; to get full speed as a team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Keep something in mind&lt;/strong&gt;: you have lot of things to teach to these guys, but they also have lot of things to teach you. This is why teams are powerful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I was in your situation, the &lt;strong&gt;first thing&lt;/strong&gt; I will to is run &lt;strong&gt;a retrospective&lt;/strong&gt; that allows me to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify a &lt;em&gt;common goal&lt;/em&gt; (or get aligned to the common goal defined by the company)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Let &lt;em&gt;these guys to express&lt;/em&gt; their feelings and frustrations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Define your &lt;em&gt;working agreements&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you guys start growing as a team, agree in how you will work will be &quot;peanuts&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the retrospectives, I use design thinking. You can find the retrospective session outline on my article &quot;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agileprojectmanagement.eu/an-example-of-how-to-run-an-agile-restrospective-using-design-thinking/?utm_medium=forum&amp;amp;utm_source=projectsmart&amp;amp;utm_campaign=post%20-%20design%20thinking%20retrospective%20protocol&amp;amp;utm_content=topic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Design thinking retrospective protocol&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Falcon&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36377" LastActivityDate="2019-08-06T06:28:44.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26940" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-08-06T06:43:40.367" Score="1" ViewCount="181" Body="&lt;p&gt;My team has got a dedicated QA for 4 developers (I know there is no such role in a Scrum Team, but I am writing here to provide information).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the problem is: we are heading to Sprint end and she is on sick leave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few user stories that need to be tested. Can the Business Analyst or other Team members test and close the user stories even though they don't have a testing background?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36654" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-08-06T13:06:47.383" LastActivityDate="2019-08-07T23:02:03.980" Title="Who else can test in absence of QA?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;testing&gt;&lt;acceptance-criteria&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26940" CreationDate="2019-08-06T07:19:35.583" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The user story is closed when the acceptance criteria is met. So if any team member can check if the story acceptance criteria passed or not, then yes they can close the tickets. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If any technical background/setup needed, like creating automated tests, test data..etc. then it's more dependent on the setup or the person who have it on their machine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3263" LastActivityDate="2019-08-06T07:19:35.583" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26942" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-08-06T08:19:58.037" Score="0" ViewCount="145" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just joined a new team as scrum master and I have observed team has forecast 35 effort points in every sprint and they are delivering more than 50 points . I feel there is some problem with estimates. I need to make sure that estimates should be not very high . Is there any way to control this ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36654" LastEditorUserId="36654" LastEditDate="2019-08-06T08:47:33.297" LastActivityDate="2019-08-22T10:00:42.093" Title="Team over estimated" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26942" CreationDate="2019-08-06T09:19:25.973" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you need to do is document the facts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep a clear record of the forecasts for each sprint and the actual deliveries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you have dates for each fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have a few weeks worth of data then you can approach the scrum master and ask them to explain their methods of estimation and suggest ways to improve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You cannot expect to change anything by making claims of what you seem to observe as a newcomer unless you have it clearly documented. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also want to find out if you can get to some historical data; possibly the past few weeks have been &lt;em&gt;special circumstances&lt;/em&gt; that you aren't aware of, and usually, they are better at estimating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also &lt;em&gt;shadow them&lt;/em&gt; by running a parallel (hidden) system with your estimates and show them - after a few weeks - how you approach is better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-08-06T09:41:28.147" LastActivityDate="2019-08-06T09:41:28.147" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26940" CreationDate="2019-08-06T09:31:27.597" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this answer I'll start by explain what's the role of acceptance tests (AT) in the context of user stories give an example and finalise by answering your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To note this answer is adapted from the content provided by the Coursera course &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.coursera.org/lecture/principios-de-desenvolvimento-agil-de-software/user-story-testes-de-aceitacao-wNHe0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Principles of Agile Software Development&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, from Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Acceptance tests&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The acceptance tests are the result of the conversation between the Product Owner (PO) and the development team. In our case, they will look to see if the user story is satisfied (just looking at the result), not being interested how the product was coded (it is assumed / expected the code to have quality).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing worth mentioning is that acceptance testing is implemented during Sprint. During Sprint, the development team has to develop  the user story and make use of these  ATs, so it's highly advised to have the acceptance tests before starting to code. Still, there may be some user stories that one can't set good acceptance tests at that time (for instances in Sprint zero). In certain situations, the development team may also suggest the PO new acceptance tests. If he/she accepts to be the owner of that test and say that it is valid, then it is valid, otherwise it is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acceptance testing will help the PO and the development team know if what they developed for the user story is correct or not (that's what the acceptance test is for).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, the development team, in that sprint, already have the ATs and US they will implement. The first thing they do is implement the user story; then, they code the acceptance tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example of AT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine that you have a video streaming application to run on smartphone, tablet or computer. When you are watching a video streaming program and, for example, your mobile phone battery runs out, you would like to resume on a tablet, or another mobile phone, so without forcing you to enter the menu and go through many steps to get to the point you were.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We want to solve this problem, that is, when you switch from device to device when you are watching video streaming in this application that is going to be made, you start again from exactly the point you had stopped before, no matter why you had stopped before, you will start over from that point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The user story can be as following&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user of video streaming (role), I want to start watching program&#xA;  on my mobile device, then I want to be able to resume the same program&#xA;  on another mobile device at the point I stopped at the previous one&#xA;  (goal), so that I don't miss a second of the show I was watching&#xA;  (benefit).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I get off device, get on the other and already have access to the point where I had stopped, no matter why I stopped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the acceptance criteria to make sure that the US presented is working or not can be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If there was streaming video being streamed in the last hour and the user starts another session of the app, the system should ask the user 'Would you like to resume streaming from where you recently stopped?'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the streaming video he was watching is over (for instances, in the case of live events), the user will not see the resume message from previous stream, just the main menu of the app.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum Team without testers?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum exists only three roles, Scrum Master, Product Owner and Development team. In your case, the person currently sick is part of the development team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The development team is responsible to develop the user stories and implement the ATs (in certain cases also create ATs which then need to be approved by the PO).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, anyone that's part of the development team can test if what was developed for the user story is correct. Once this point arrives, there's a ceremony called Sprint Review / Demo. In this ceremony, development team demonstrates to the PO and other interested parties what was implemented for the specific USs. The PO is the decision maker, and can then say &quot;This US is done&quot; or he/she is also free to change his/her mind and say &quot;This US didn't go as i thought, the direction isn't the one i want and we need to do some changes&quot; (considering not done).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27189" LastActivityDate="2019-08-06T09:31:27.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26937" CreationDate="2019-08-06T09:38:42.400" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Please excuse the condescending tone, but you did ask for my approach. So here it is, in the raw:&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, you need to change your attitude. As a successful project manager, you &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt; get along with your team. A PjM who cannot get along with everybody is doomed to failure. If you can't do that - or at least fake it - then get yourself another job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, you need to start taking responsibility. Communication is a 2-way street, but if they aren't listening to you, assume the problem is with your approach, attitude or ignorance. Stop blaming other people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next: Treat your team with the respect they deserve. Since they are older and senior to you, treat them as such. Possibilities: Ask them for suggestions instead of dictating to them. Maybe the reason they are not cooperating is because they know, from experience,  that this project is already dead, for example. I know that &lt;em&gt;respect&lt;/em&gt; is &lt;em&gt;old fashioned&lt;/em&gt; but it works - especially with people older than you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Build the team. You may be the PjM but you are useless without your team. Build the team; get to know them. Shmooze to them, find out their background and experience. Find out their favorite drink and pastime and join them. Once you're all good buddies then they will automatically be cooperative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that as things stand, you are the new &lt;em&gt;bull in a China shop&lt;/em&gt; who plans on rocking the boat and creating unnecessary work. They've probably dealt with a dozen of your predecessors and are well experienced in how to get rid of you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary: Stop working for a few weeks and concentrate on creating the team. Hang out with the boys and become their buddy. Then you can start asking their opinion about how to get some work done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2019-08-06T09:38:42.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26928" CreationDate="2019-08-06T15:10:44.413" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no standard list of questions, defined by PMI (or any other organization). You have your own industry, your own vertical, your own org and your own group. It's very specialized...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part 1, Chapter 5 of the PMBOK covers Project Scope Management. Chapter 5.2 is about Collect Requirements and goes through the Inputs, Tools &amp;amp; Techniques and Outputs of that Process Group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part 2, Chapter 3 of the PMBOK describes the Planning Process Group. Chapter 3.3 is about Collect Requirements and goes through Project Plan Components and Project Document Examples. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These provide a framework for you. Your ask falls under the topic of OPA (Organization Process Assets) or possibly EEFs (Enterprise Environmental Factors). The questions you need to ask are very specific to your organizational needs and your industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Review those sections of the PMBOK and see how they apply to what you're encountering. If your company doesn't have OPA that covers these situations (formal or not) then you'll have to go outside of your organization; trade-specific groups/periodicals/organizations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, your industry and contract channels might have EEFs (federal rules, local municipality requirements, OSHA/ANSI standards, etc.) that your process should snap to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, long story short:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There's no specific list of questions that exists for your situation. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The questions you're looking for are actually OPA/EFFs. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PMBOK best practices provide a guide to finding/creating the questions so they're most effective.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36629" LastActivityDate="2019-08-06T15:10:44.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26949" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26953" CreationDate="2019-08-06T20:18:45.143" Score="3" ViewCount="82" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work as scrum master for all of our corporate systems related to ServiceNow. Unlike many projects, we have a ton of different (internal) clients. Finance/Legal/Facilities/Contract and the list goes on. We have large scale projects that we surge on and continue to support and update for some clients, we have 1 off issues for others and everything in between. Some of these larger projects are interconnected or are owned by multiple internal departments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A problem we are having is that many of these groups aren't fully aware of what we are getting completed. The changes simply pop-up for them on prod after our scheduled deployments and they may not realize all of the value we are delivering. I know that the sprint review is a common way to allow the client the work your team has completed at the end of each sprint but we have so many clients, many who aren't interested in much of the other work we complete. I fear that marathon reviews/demos will take up too much time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this context, how can I effectively let my various internal clients know all of the work we completed so they can see the value we deliver and provide feedback?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36606" LastActivityDate="2019-08-27T09:14:59.707" Title="How to provide sprint results to large array of clients?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26950" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-08-06T23:35:14.343" Score="2" ViewCount="341" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many variables to measure when dealing with clients, but to me these are the most important variables that I dealt with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Clients that are internal or external: If internal, it should depend from the organization structure, power, influence and authority.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Clients that are being manage remotely&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Clients that are from other cultures (time and motivation): Those countries where time management is polychronic and not monochronic&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Perception of displacement of people when automation arrives: Mainly reluctance to change&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of these cases were included in my risk management plan. I set up many strategies to reduce negative risks. However I found many troubles when dealing with &quot;external, polychronic, reluctant-to-change&quot; clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to talk to them before to adjust my schedule, send status reports to my close involved stakeholders. In some cases where things didn't work out, I requested to appoint a project coordinator from client's side. Things go well, but at some point that person has no control over end-users. Tests, feedback, answers to documents get late.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to have a balance upon this situation, I have some contingency reserve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes I escalate these issues to a higher authority what makes things work &quot;faster&quot;, but not better, because it creates a toxic environment. My team and I are performing mostly on time, but client cannot follow our rhythm. There are many excuses on every weekly remote web conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is ridiculous how many months it takes the client to test some things. They think that we have all time of the world. In some cases, my boss tells me not increase the cost or produce a change order, because it could be so aggressive. He says not to push them, but to keep communication and producing my weekly reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is this a problem? I keep getting new projects and having few projects like in stand-by, makes me forget things about processes and I need to review again all my planning and project documents (flowcharts, designs, issue logs, meeting records, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realized that when a project is in-house and have the end-users, stakeholders and coordinator on the same office, and people were well communicated about the vision of the project, they tend to work on my track. This happens in some cultures where people need to be watched and tracked. Even in these cases, I can have a slight delay, but recoverable time that allow me to close the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would you manage delays from external clients according to previous scenario? How to help engage better these kind of customers and how to accelerate the project?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32495" LastActivityDate="2019-09-08T09:38:26.030" Title="How to manage delays from external clients" Tags="&lt;time-management&gt;&lt;clients&gt;&lt;performance&gt;&lt;delays&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26951" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26958" CreationDate="2019-08-06T23:56:53.920" Score="2" ViewCount="158" Body="&lt;p&gt;This happens all the time. I have a project that has a deadline. Let's take an example we're the project is to be completed by the end of this month.  Yet my manager who has not gone to any of the meetings or enolved in the project likes to add to the project and expects it to be done while keeping the deadline. This has typically meant that I work on those items on my own time. How do I handle this? I'm working more than 40 hours a week and he know this yet it seems like it doesn't matter. Any suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36724" LastActivityDate="2019-08-07T14:23:34.647" Title="What to do when your manager keeps adding" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26952" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-08-07T06:30:17.143" Score="10" ViewCount="568" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can see that a Scrum Master has two important role out of many; namely building a self-organised Team and removing impediments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from teaching, mentoring and coaching, what else does one need to do to make a self-organised Team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36654" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-08-07T13:05:49.243" LastActivityDate="2019-11-13T12:00:41.043" Title="How to guide a team to be self-organizing?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26949" CreationDate="2019-08-07T06:59:16.233" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This can be a real challenge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some suggestions that may help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have several short demos sandwiched together in the sprint review. Publish an agenda prior to the sprint review which includes times so that stakeholders can attend just for the bits they are interested in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider video taping your demos and splitting them up in to the various features that were delivered in each sprint. Make the videos available online and provide a method for stakeholders to watch them and provide feedback.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publish a sprint review &quot;news letter&quot; containing details of what work was done and distribute it to all stakeholders. Provide a method for feedback.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Demo as you go along in the sprint. As each piece of functionality is completed, let the relevant stakeholders know that they can come over for a quick demo.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-08-07T06:59:16.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26954" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-08-07T09:05:45.343" Score="0" ViewCount="84" Body="&lt;p&gt;In our scrum team, we can often get user stories which are not very complex and not ambiguous but have a high amount of leg work associated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: We receive a user story to replace the name of a client on 100+ pages. A lot of manual work is required for this but the process of finding the content and updating is very straightforward but requires a good amount of time to complete, say 6 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the complexity and ambiguity of the task are low we estimate it as low, but the cost of time is still a factor and effectively a day of work has been taken out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to rationalize in my mind how this would still work when it comes to the velocity at the end of the sprint, reasonably this could cause a reduction in velocity due to the low estimation but no less work would have been completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a better way to handle these sorts of stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36728" LastActivityDate="2019-08-07T14:22:17.160" Title="How are low ambiguity and low complexity tickets dealt with when they have a high work cost?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26952" CreationDate="2019-08-07T09:15:29.263" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scrum Master&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master is one of three roles defined within the Scrum methodology. As part of the Scrum Team and acting as a servant leader, its primary responsibility is to help the team follow the Scrum process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike a project manager in a waterfall approach, Scrum Master is not responsible for planning, it is done by the product owner and the team. Nor does it manage the team members, nor is it responsible for product quality, this is done by the team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you said and right, Scrum Master is responsible for ensuring that the team follows the process as well as being a facilitator who removes obstacles from the team. These responsibilities translate into:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Facilitate daily Scrum&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Help the team maintain the burndown chart&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Organize planning sessions, sprint reviews and retrospectives&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Protect team from disruption during sprint&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Remove obstacles that may harm the team&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Encourage Development Team - Product Owner collaboration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The necessary dedication to the project&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some projects require a 100% dedicated Scrum Master. In other projects, he / she accumulates his / her role as team member. At first, this job tends to be full-time. However, after a few sprints the processes will tend to systematize. That way the workload will drop and he / she can actively contribute to Sprint Goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27189" LastActivityDate="2019-08-07T09:15:29.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26952" CreationDate="2019-08-07T12:07:37.887" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It should be continuous coaching process for the team, to transition and grow Product Mindset in all members of the team. &#xA;Development team should share ownership of product and understand what is the most important for business at the moment and why. &#xA;During Sprint planning it is a good idea just to setup the high level goal(what has to be achieved and why) and let the team to drive process of breaking tasks and defining what and how will be built. Ideally to define ownership during this event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32278" LastActivityDate="2019-08-07T12:07:37.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26954" CreationDate="2019-08-07T14:22:17.160" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Estimates should be based on effort.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Complexity tends to increase the effort needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ambiguity serves to widen the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Uncertainty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cone of uncertainty&lt;/a&gt; of an estimate, which correspondingly increases the estimate because when providing a single-value estimate, you generally want to be estimating on the upper side of the cone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But at the end of the day, estimates are estimates of &lt;em&gt;effort&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Low complexity means the base effort won't increase much. Low ambiguity means that you can be confident in your estimation of the effort. But the base effort of the task is high, so the estimate should be high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Decrease effort if possible&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, consider alternate solutions. For your example, why not write a program or a regex to find and replace all instances of the client's name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing so would increase the complexity, but could end up substantially decreasing the base effort, and therefore the estimate. e.g. Instead of taking 6 hours of drudge work, it instead takes 1-4 hours of programming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25606" LastActivityDate="2019-08-07T14:22:17.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26951" CreationDate="2019-08-07T14:23:34.647" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you need to do is some Project Management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Start with a Task List - a simple Excel Sheet will do. or use an online tracking system like Trello. You need a few columns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Priority&lt;/strong&gt; - a numbered list where the top item is always #1, the second #2, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Task&lt;/strong&gt; - a short description&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Duration&lt;/strong&gt; - how long it'll take. If you standardize to hours or days, you can total the column so you can see when the project will end. (Based on x hours/days per week, and some a formula).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For whom&lt;/strong&gt; - who asked for it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Status&lt;/strong&gt; - one of: not started, in progress, in testing. (You can add done and move those to a separate list or move them to the bottom)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, every time your boss asks you to add an item to the list, you ask him where to put it - before or after which item in the list, and inform him of the new deadline this causes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;treat it as a zero-sum game. IOW, you no longer work more than 40 hours per week, so something else will have to change; either remove an existing task or move the deadline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2019-08-07T14:23:34.647" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26940" CreationDate="2019-08-07T20:59:22.387" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When developing software in Scrum, QA is a skill, not a role. So, the answer to your question is: who has those skill in the team?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No SubTeams in Scrum&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Guide says that there are no subteams in Scrum. This means that for any skill, there may be an expert in the team that usually does the work, but the team shares the responsibility for ensuring it is done. For something as common as QA, I would definitely encourage any team to have a number of people with capability in that skill and if they don't have it currently, do some cross-training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's Still a Skill&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scrum says anyone on the team &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; do any task, but it does not guarantee that they'll be good at it. Testing is still a skill that people work many years at developing. I've seen teams take this too far and dismiss testing as something anyone can do and then they get rid of their QA expert and are left with a group of people with a very slow skill level in testing and as a result, their quality sucks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your current situation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Realistically, unless you have an extra person with some testing experience, you may be stuck - you may not have anyone else in your team with enough skill in testing to reach your desired level of quality. If this is the case, my best advice would be: don't sweat it. You will probably have a bunch of items that aren't done. It's a painful learning opportunity, but one you can address. The person will help with this items when they feel better and how to avoid the same thing happening again will make a great retro topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-08-07T20:59:22.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26615" CreationDate="2019-08-07T22:56:04.390" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Assurance&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project Board's responsibility to assure itself that the project is being conducted correctly. Each member of the Project Board has a specific area of focus for Project Assurance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Business Assurance for the Executive.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;User Assurance for the Primary User.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Supplier Assurance for the Primary Supplier.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Executive&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Individual with full responsibility to ensure that the project achieves its objectives and delivers the projected benefits. This individual should ensure that the project maintains its business focus, has clear authority, and that work, including risks, is actively managed. The Executive, in addition to being responsible for the Project Board, representing the client, is also responsible for the Business Case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Executive vs Project Assurance&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Executive is responsible for the Project Board, which is then responsible for Project Assurance. However, an independent Project Assurance team may also be appointed by the Project Board. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Implications for the Project Manager&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the PM is given the authority and responsibility to manage the project on a day-to-day basis and to deliver the required products within the constraints agreed with the Project Board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27189" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-08-07T23:03:46.127" LastActivityDate="2019-08-07T23:03:46.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26940" CreationDate="2019-08-07T23:02:03.980" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're absolutely right that there is no such role as QA on a Scrum Team. Scrum does not recognize titles or sub-teams. However, Scrum does recognize that members of the Development Team may have specialized skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first recommendation, for the immediate concern, is that the Development Team members take responsibilities for ensuring that the work is tested according to the team's Definition of Done. That is, the Product Owner or Scrum Master should not be performing the testing (unless this person is also a member of the Development Team). This should make the entire Development Team accountable for getting the selected work to Done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My second recommendation, for the long term, is to improve the team's cross-functionality. In response to this particular instance, the dedicated QA specialist should be teaching the necessary QA and testing skills to the rest of the team. The others may not be experts in the subject matter, but they should be able to pitch in and help in cases where the workload to test is high or the QA specialist is unavailable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only other consideration is if you need to have independent testing. I'd point out that in most cases, except for the most critical software, independent testing is most likely not needed. However, if your organization practices this, it should be moved outside of the Scrum Team. That is, the Scrum Team should take responsibility for fully testing the work within the Sprint timebox and the independent testing should be a process checkmark and find only minimal issues with testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2019-08-07T23:02:03.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26950" CreationDate="2019-08-08T08:18:56.307" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been involved in many projects with similar issues, though in a slightly different environment. Being assertive in your communication from the beginning is one thing, so like in my case I ensured all my client had what I called Project Interface Officer. He/she gets a copy of all communications and attends to them on behalf of my clients. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, where issues like yours had become a culture, I will suggest using the cost of the project to control time, such as hourly pay and discount to the client when you get a response in time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, this I will suggest as the last resort but sometimes it can save you a lot; always arrange a short meeting with your client (the project owner) ahead of your test in order to sure you get what you want. If you like you may the cost it to them, believe it if it saves the client some time too, the client will definitely agreed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36740" LastActivityDate="2019-08-08T08:18:56.307" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26964" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-08-08T08:43:59.267" Score="4" ViewCount="466" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I am asked to inspect the Kanban system our company is following and I am having some difficulties to fix it. I am working in a startup company and in software department there are 5 developers and 1 tester. We use JIRA for our Kanban board. Tasks initially appear in backlog and when the task is approved and a developer is assigned, it is moved to development. When the developer starts working on the task, it is moved to in progress and then it is send to review/test/deployment phase. If it fails the test or review, it is moved back to development again, otherwise it is done and moved to done status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a really large backlog, it is full of tasks that are almost forgotten and it does not seem to get any better. For example, the oldest task has been there for 3 years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are mostly running on urgent customer demands or important bugs. Developers complain that there isn't enough time to eliminate some work from the backlog as they are mostly concerned with urgent tasks. Also there are some stall works which are tasks that our team cannot figure out how to handle and these tasks are everywhere -backlog, development, and even in review. Tasks get stuck in review phase because some of them take long time to simulate or test so the developers are not willing to go through the testing phase because they prefer working on urgent tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There isn't a limit in WIP because they say they are constantly interrupted by unplanned or urgent tasks and that it would be pointless to limit WIP. So I am unable to limit the number of tasks developers work on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think the developer team is undersized, I just think that they lack a system and they like to work things out in their own way. The work I have done so far is about filtering the customer requirements so that the backlog wouldn't have any redundant tasks but the old tasks are still there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can I offer the team so that they can deal with both urgent tasks and stall tasks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36738" LastEditorUserId="36738" LastEditDate="2019-08-08T08:51:35.300" LastActivityDate="2019-08-08T12:23:58.313" Title="How to handle large backlog" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;&lt;kanban-board&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26964" CreationDate="2019-08-08T09:24:57.407" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First: It's clear that &lt;strong&gt;your testing team is way too small&lt;/strong&gt;. A ratio of 5:1 is simply going to (1) cause a huge backlog and (2) cause bugs to slip through. Your own project is proof of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you could prove that your 5:1 ratio is sufficient you need at least one more tester. A team of 1 tester is not a good idea because you don't have anybody testing the tester. As you yourself wrote you have a constant list of &lt;em&gt;important bugs&lt;/em&gt;! QED.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second: Your team is wasting a lot of time with juggling the list. And some of this list is simply &lt;em&gt;never going to be done&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;You cannot see the forest for the trees!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestion is to take off an afternoon and play &lt;em&gt;kill the list&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spend the first half hour setting the rules (that you should prepare beforehand, but you want 80% buy-in to retain your sanity.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few rules you may want to start with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Any item older than (x months) will be moved to a category called &lt;em&gt;too old&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; and we'll look at it again if we ever run out of work.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any time any ticket in the future hits the expiry date, it gets added to the &lt;em&gt;too old&lt;/em&gt; list without further ado.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why? Because if the customer has managed to live with it for (x months) then they'll probably survive a while longer. Besides it's not being done anyway, it's simply wasting our time to review continuously.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any item that &lt;strong&gt;nobody has a clue how to solve goes into the &lt;em&gt;mystery&lt;/em&gt; category&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe hire a hacker to tackle these mysteries of they seem important.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe have a hackathon weekend with prizes for solving these mysteries.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Either way, get them out the way. If they are (also) bugs, mark them as &lt;em&gt;know issues&lt;/em&gt;, and add it to the documentation.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A standard joke is that a bug can be turned into a feature simply by documenting it. Funny or not, use that approach meanwhile.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Divide all other work into 3 categories:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Quickies&lt;/strong&gt;: stuff that will take an hour to fix. &#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;These can be done at the end of the day, or the end of the week when nobody feels like tackling a big feature, or during a weekly/monthly &quot;Whack a ticket&quot; period where the one to fix the most of these gets a prize.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Big Bugs&lt;/strong&gt;: the stuff that will take longer than an hour&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Customer&lt;/strong&gt; requests / features &#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Everybody needs to alternate between them; one Bug, then one Customer then a Bug, etc. This way you get to some equilibrium.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The aim of this is to get the list small enough that everybody can see what they are going to be doing in the foreseeable future. They will stop wasting their time reviewing stuff that they will never get to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last: You don't think &lt;strong&gt;the developer team is undersized&lt;/strong&gt;. But if you read your post again, it's hard to believe. I don't see how even the slickest system in the world could shrink a 3+ year backlog  - that is being fed constantly - without adding manpower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2019-08-08T09:24:57.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26964" CreationDate="2019-08-08T09:37:25.773" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of problems here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first problem is the large backlog. This is relatively easy to solve - review the items in the backlog and resolve anything that is no longer necessary. Resolution could be anything from deleting the items to marking them as &quot;won't do&quot; or &quot;obsolete&quot;. Removing duplicates can also be done at this time. This smaller backlog should be easier to prioritize and generally manage going forward. I would caution removing known issues from the backlog - it's feasible that customers or potential customers may request to have access to known issues or a relevant subset of known issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second problem is the lack of WIP limits. I would recommend instantiating these. However, since you are also working on critical issues, having an &quot;expedite&quot; row on the Kanban board. I would also recommend starting to gather metrics around throughput and cycle time so you can start to predict future work or when you can possibly start and finish work based on where it is in the backlog. I believe that one of the things that these metrics will reveal is that you need additional people or a change in process that allows you to move work from the ready for testing time through to done faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third problem appears to be around the number of critical issues. Having large number of critical issues that cannot wait or need to be expedited could indicate poor quality. It could also indicate poor product management and prioritization of these issues. Going back to having metrics, if you have data on how long it will take work to be done given a placement in the backlog, you can work with stakeholders to determine if work really needs to be expedited or if it can be prioritized appropriately and follow your WIP limits. In general, reducing the number of defect fixing work being added to the backlog would also be beneficial to the team and project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2019-08-08T09:37:25.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26964" CreationDate="2019-08-08T11:13:38.837" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have a really large backlog, it is full of tasks that are almost forgotten and it does not seem to get any better. For example, the oldest task has been there for 3 years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One approach I have used in the past is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work out roughly how long it takes on average for a task to get completed (using historical data).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Work out roughly the rate at which 'urgent' items are added to the backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then, calculate how far down the backlog the team can realistically get in 6 months.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finally, speak with the people who requested items that will take &lt;em&gt;at least 6 months&lt;/em&gt; to get completed, telling them that these items will be archived if they don't respond saying they are OK waiting this long.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find this approach tends to focus minds. What often happens is either the people requesting the work agree to archive the tasks or they push for more resources for your team so that the tasks will get done sooner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There isn't a limit in WIP because they say they are constantly interrupted by unplanned or urgent tasks and that it would be pointless to limit WIP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a situation where WIP works really well!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When an urgent or unplanned task appears then the team looks to see if it will cause the WIP limit to be exceeded. If it does then something else needs to be withdrawn from that queue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, an urgent bug fix comes in. The team already has 5 items in the 'development' column, which is the WIP limit. They look down the list and and remove one item, putting it back in to waiting to start column.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next the team informs the person that requested the item that just got returned to the waiting to start column. They tell them that their work will be delayed due to a higher priority task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefits of this approach are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The team has clarity on what work they need to do as there is reduced clutter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Expectations for when things will get completed are realistic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People requesting tasks will quickly grow to understand the impact of unplanned tasks upsetting the flow of work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you may find it valuable to try and quantify the impact of the urgent and unplanned tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, you could put out a fortnightly status email saying things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Due to the urgent fixes to the database that came in last week we had to halt work on several tasks. The team took almost a day to switch across to the new tasks and that time is effectively lost. We would estimate that the impact on the team was a reduction in efficiency of 10-20% over the course of the fortnight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, this will help to focus minds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-08-08T11:13:38.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26964" CreationDate="2019-08-08T12:23:58.313" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The fact that your oldest note (task) is three years is not necessarily a problem, simply because no matter how big a team you have they together with your customers will always be able to generate more ideas on new things to develop/change/refactor/fix/etc than what your team's capacity will be able to manage. If this is understood by the team members they will have less of a problem with an ever increasing backlog. However you might want to spend a day or two per year to clean it up; simply by going through the older items and get rid of the ones that no longer would create value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefits of using WIP limits are very well described &lt;a href=&quot;https://leankit.com/learn/kanban/benefits-of-wip-limits/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://leankit.com/learn/kanban/benefits-of-wip-limits/&lt;/a&gt; in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However your question was on how to manage both urgent and stalled tasks, let me try to elaborate a bit on how we manage it in our development, which is working quite well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all I believe you might consider changing the content of your notes. You mentioned that you have notes containing tasks. In our development model we are trying to make sure each note is describing a deliverable that will add value to the product. To complete that deliverable (note), a lot of different tasks may have to be undertaken (requirements analysis, architectural choices, design, implementation, documentation, verification, validation etc). When working with WIP limits, we have seen that it becomes more effective if you use deliverables instead of tasks. We have two different WIP limits. One for the notes on the entire board (not including notes in the backlog or the done columns), we call this the Kanboard WIP Limit (KWL). The other one is the WIP limit for the individual phases on the Kanboard, we call this Phase WIP Limit (PWL).&#xA;KWL = team size - 1&#xA;PWL &amp;lt;= KWL&#xA;On top of this we have also said that the PWL should decrease as we move from right to left on the Kanboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example:&#xA;If your Kanboard has the phases Requirements and Design (RAD), Development and Component Test (DCT), Feature Test (FTE) and Integration Test (ITE), while your team size is 4.&#xA;KWL would be 3 (team size - 1) and PWL &amp;lt;= 3. PWL starts from one in the rightmost column and increases by one up to a max of 3 in this case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;RAD has a PWL of 3&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;DCT has a PWL of 3&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;FTE has a PWL of 2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ITE has a PWL of 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We try to keep the estimated effort for a note in the backlog to maximum of what can be completed within 2 man weeks. Since the number of notes in progress are limited by the WIP limit, this means that more than one person will work on at least on one of the notes; promoting team work.&#xA;With the PWLs decreasing over the board, it also supports the core idea with Kanban to support flow (getting things ready for release) instead of keeping many things in progress (or stalled) at the same time. If a note is stuck in the ITE column, then no other note may move there. This emphasizes even more on that it is more important for the team to jointly finish off the remaining tasks to get that note done instead of starting something new.&#xA;With the estimated deliverables are of at most 2 man weeks, we believe that they are broken down well enough to support that all persons in the team will be able to understand what is to be done to get the note to the &quot;ready for release&quot; column. When deliverables in the backlog are bigger than that, too much time tend to be spent on doing things that are not necessary or things get missed simply because what to deliver is not clear enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lets say there is an item stalled in the ITE column and only 3 out of the four people in the team can contribute to working on it, then the fourth person should work on the top-most note in the FTE column (highest priority at the top in each column, just as in the backlog). Maybe that fourth person cannot contribute (easily) to the FTE note or the DCT note or the RAD note for that matter. In that case slack has occurred (slack in the sence of what is described in the link above).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stalled notes need to be managed by the team or team managers just as any other note. If something is hindering the team to continue working on it, then a manager/product manager/project manager/scrum master/agile master (or whatever you have at your place) needs to assist in solving the hinderance. If this is something that does not involve the team members, then the note should be put back into the backlog again (because nobody in the team is actively working on it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Urgent tasks as you say may very well be tasks (not necessarily deliverables). It could be &quot;investigate this bug report&quot; or &quot;measure this&quot; or &quot;summarize this for a customer&quot;, &quot;a bug that prevents the team from working needs to be solved&quot; etc. For these, we have introduced an ambulance (just one) on our Kanboard. Such an urgent note is accompanied by the ambulance as it moves over the board and the ambulance is the only item that is allowed to break the WIP limit. When the ambulance is on the board, it takes priority over the other notes and as many as possible from the team should contribute to remedy the urgent note as quickly as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use this setup and find yourself in a situation where the ambulance is always (or very often) present on the Kanboard then you may have to consider setting up a single specific team to manage only the ambulance notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36730" LastActivityDate="2019-08-08T12:23:58.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26969" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-08-08T12:52:53.813" Score="0" ViewCount="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I'm managing a group of people. It has 3 areas, with each area having an average of 7 people; there are 20+ people.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;To make a monthly report to my boss, I am faced with the following problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I can't use online management tools like Trello (because my boss doesn't approve of it).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Installing management tools on the local server will require a large process of revision, approval, and others.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm new, and I don't know exactly the work done by each people yet (I can't assign tasks)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People are either developers or support staff (a developer could have 3 tasks in a day while a support personnel will have more than 30 tasks in a day)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, I'm working with a simple Excel template (Using Google Drive is not approved), then each people fill in their daily work by adding rows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the month, I have a lot of work, because I have to review and summarize 20+ Excel files with 30+ sheets. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you have any way to better manage this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36050" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-08-08T13:32:17.687" LastActivityDate="2019-08-08T16:43:36.357" Title="Manage activities of a group to make monthly reports" Tags="&lt;team-management&gt;&lt;reporting&gt;&lt;task-management&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26970" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27008" CreationDate="2019-08-08T13:25:59.400" Score="0" ViewCount="103" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have an existing project file (.mpp file). I realized that duration of all tasks is one day longer comparing to my estimation. For example, a task with duration 2 days starting at 3.6.2019 is scheduled to finish at 5.6.2019. After checking resource usage I realized that Project schedules only 7 hours for the first day of the task (3.6.2019). For the second day (4.6.2019) Project schedules 8 hours and the remaining one hour schedules for the third day (5.6.2019). This applies for all tasks within the project - work for the starting day of the task is always scheduled for 7 hours only. &#xA;All tasks use fixed duration type, and all are automatically scheduled. Standard calendar with 8 working hours per day is used. What is the reason that Project schedules only 7 hours for first day of every task?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: I see that Project schedules the first day from 9:00 to 17:00, but all other days schedules from 8:00 to 17:00. Default start time of project calendar is set to 9:00 and default end time of project calendar is set to 18:00.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36744" LastEditorUserId="36744" LastEditDate="2019-08-08T14:21:09.443" LastActivityDate="2019-08-14T14:30:28.190" Title="MS Project schedules only 7 hours for starting day of task" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;&lt;scheduling&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26971" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26972" CreationDate="2019-08-08T13:29:03.183" Score="5" ViewCount="451" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to discuss and hear some advice from you about a pretty common situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We develop the functionality that has huge business value for the customer’s project and thus the customer is particularly interested that this feature is completed asap. I selected the most appropriate developer for this task based on my team’s current workload, experience with the project and vacation schedule in the team. The developer started researching the problem. The functionality is completely new, connected to the integration with third-party API and plugin and contains numerous technical and business unknowns. The developer made an initial rough estimate of the task and it showed that by the time of his vacation there might be an MVP of the feature. I communicated with him on a daily basis and the progress seemed satisfactory. I felt that by the time of his vacation the developer would finish the main bulk of the task and the other team member could assist with its testing during the absence of the key developer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before the vacation, I gathered both developers to define a set of actions that an interim developer should do during the vacation week. &lt;strong&gt;Planned functionality was not completed as expected and another developer could not test anything yet. Interim developer listened to an explanation of the feature, read the code and said that he was not able to continue development since the feature was so huge that it required at least a week to research everything.&lt;/strong&gt; In addition, there were still several unanswered questions that might impede the development of the feature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1)  What should be my actions in this situation now? I cannot tell the client that the development of the feature has stopped because the dev went on vacation. This would be unprofessional. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2)  What could I do earlier in order to avoid this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36742" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-08-13T11:19:16.590" LastActivityDate="2019-08-18T17:31:57.803" Title="Dev went on vacation leaving his work unfinished. How to manage this without informing the customer?" Tags="&lt;planning&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;risk-management&gt;&lt;risk&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26971" CreationDate="2019-08-08T13:37:28.803" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What should be my actions in this situation now? I cannot tell the&#xA;  client that the development of the feature has stopped because the dev&#xA;  went on vacation. This would be unprofessional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honesty is the best. You don't necessarily need to mention vacation, but being up front that, due to circumstances, the work will not be completed as originally projected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What could I do earlier in order to avoid this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one works alone, in isolation. Things happen - people take vacations, people get sick, people win the lottery or get hit by a bus. These are risks that need to be managed. Building cross-functional teams where everyone on them is capable of getting work done is best. Everyone isn't going to be equally good at everything - everyone will have strengths and weaknesses - but there shouldn't be single person bottlenecks on a team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2019-08-08T13:37:28.803" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16881" CreationDate="2019-08-08T16:16:47.790" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I realize this is an older question, but I think it's still relevant given my struggle to find an answer to your question. Here's what i've come up with for some best practices for writing frontend tickets/tasks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mockups (which often drive frontend tasks) should be done after user stories (who, what, where, why) are written. These stories should explain value to user, which is important context for frontend tasks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Frontend tasks/tickets should be part of user stories and driven from users stories, but an individual frontend ticket or task does not need to have a user story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Frontend tasks may be better described with functional descriptions and acceptance criteria instead of user stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Resources:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://balsamiq.com/learn/resources/articles/userstories/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://balsamiq.com/learn/resources/articles/userstories/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://builttoadapt.io/this-is-what-my-user-stories-look-like-50c7b127bb26&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://builttoadapt.io/this-is-what-my-user-stories-look-like-50c7b127bb26&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature-driven_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature-driven_development&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36750" LastActivityDate="2019-08-08T16:16:47.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26969" CreationDate="2019-08-08T16:43:36.357" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't a tool problem. It's a &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt; problem. The solution is to make the costs of the current process visible to your management team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis and Recommendations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't identify your role, or that of your boss. Nevertheless, for most of your issues you point to your boss's decisions and company policies to explain why data reconciliation is a manual process. Processes have an associated cost, and the time spent reconciling all those Excel spreadsheets is one of them. Those costs, as well as any process improvements that could cut costs, should be visible to your management team so they can make an informed decision about whether or not the current process is optimal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By definition, management owns all costs and risks related to a project. That includes the responsibility for budgeting for capital costs such as purpose-built tooling or other process automations, or opting for semi-manual processes such as the one you have now. In either case, management is making a &lt;em&gt;business decision&lt;/em&gt; as to which costs they prefer to incur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Making the costs (including everyone's labor to fill out the data, as well as your labor to reconcile it all) and risks (manual processes are often error-prone) fully visible to management supports better executive decision-making. Making potential quality improvements or cost savings visible to management gives them &lt;em&gt;options&lt;/em&gt; about where they want to invest business resources. If you make a case for a different process or tool that can save the project money, management can then decide whether or not to implement the change based on the needs of the business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether senior management applies resources to improve your process or not, they still &lt;em&gt;own&lt;/em&gt; the process. That means they must explicitly or implicitly accept the costs, risks, and consequences of whatever business decisions they make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project manager role shouldn't be held responsible for the choices of senior management. In this type of situation, the responsibility of the role extends to making known issues and potential improvements visible, and then gathering a funding or implementation decision (which may include acceptance of the status quo) from project sponsors or the accountable executive resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-08-08T16:43:36.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26952" CreationDate="2019-08-08T17:21:00.240" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question is general to management roles and speaks about &quot;&lt;em&gt;building&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;people&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;up&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just Googling these 3 words lands countless views and advice — please avoid theoretical and commercial docs, focus on real-world blogs and talks by real people speaking in their own name or their company's (i.e. take advice from those who've already succeeded at what you seek). Or read actual &lt;em&gt;books&lt;/em&gt; (a few links in this post).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to quickly brief, then frame for the SE domain. (Disclaiming, this is my personal/anecdotal exp., so take it with salt, sugar, pepper too, and maybe some vinegar.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Short Brief&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Building people up is sometimes termed the &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; value of management: the 'benefit' for all parties lasts longer than their involvement (you come back home with it; while the company keeps it too, as culture). It's also contagious by nature (someone 'built up' tends to build up others quite naturally).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Remove limiting thoughts towards a &quot;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindset#Fixed_and_Growth_Mindset&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;growth mindset&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;, as Carol S. Dweck puts it (of all theories, I can confirm this one is true; reading this book literally changes lives). Basically the idea that success/failure is the result of work, effort, actions, and certainly &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a judgement on ourselves: you wrote bad code today, doesn't mean you're a bad programmer, just that you botched that task and need to put more effort on this one.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lead by example. Period. It's just the only sustainable form of leadership: you eat your own (manager)dog food. Your own advice, you don't preach it, you don't even voice it much, you simply &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt; / &lt;strong&gt;apply&lt;/strong&gt; it yourself, &lt;strong&gt;for yourself but for all to see&lt;/strong&gt;, and let others observe and, if your ways are good, slowly convince themselves that they should imitate you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement#Positive_reinforcement&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;positive reinforcement&lt;/a&gt; (rewards) as feedback. Generally, everything else is moot or counterproductive (notably punishment, shaming, etc.), a necessary evil, &lt;em&gt;last-resort can't-avoid-it&lt;/em&gt; kinda situation. Make your positive reinforcement &quot;fair&quot;: praise always when it's &quot;not bad&quot; (positive even just above neutral), but moderate the intensity accordingly. The key concept is that others feel &quot;recognized&quot;, &quot;acknowledged&quot; for their &lt;strong&gt;efforts&lt;/strong&gt; (it's not about making them feeling like the best always, but more intimately feeling that they are &lt;em&gt;seen&lt;/em&gt;, that they &lt;em&gt;exist&lt;/em&gt; in the team. Like, &lt;em&gt;&quot;I know. I know that you show up and you really try. This has value for both of us, I see that.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; can't be said only once or in not-so-clear words). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As you've guessed by now, it's an empathic process much more than a technical task.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the growth mindset: it's the one thing you wish to focus on, if you win this you win life, period. (grains of salt and everything)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its beauty is to nurture a genuine appreciation — all the way up to love — for work and effort because these solve our problems. It's always very positive but never undeserved or entitled or random: we stick to the dumb facts and go from there each step of the way. But ultimately, step by step, you can really get there, wherever &quot;there&quot; is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One take away is that you become able to &quot;love what you do&quot; (whatever you do) and not feel restricted to &quot;(only) do what you love&quot; (because that's unreal and out of your control anyway).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, you cease to think or say things like &quot;I &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;am&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; (I &lt;em&gt;am&lt;/em&gt; a good/bad programmer, I &lt;em&gt;am&lt;/em&gt; a good/bad communicator) and become more factual, more &quot;in the now&quot; (I &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; a good/bad job on this programming task, I &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;did not&lt;/em&gt; communicate my problems well). Hence, there's always room for improvement, next time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Building people up in Software Engineering&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll face the 3 demons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Imposter syndrome&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; or related lack of self-confidence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This freezes initiative, offers to help, communication. It's worse for the team than the individual itself. A team that behaves as a whole like an imposter has lost before they even begin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the toughest part, because &lt;em&gt;spoiler: you can't change people&lt;/em&gt;. This is why we &quot;hire a person, not a profile&quot;: you can always train someone to meet a job profile but you can't change a &lt;em&gt;person&lt;/em&gt; unless they want to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly, my best shot at it is to have people read the book &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11233933-mindset&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mindset&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Carol Dweck. That's what cured me of imposter syndrome and I think it works for many, maybe most people. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Silence&lt;/strong&gt;. Lack of communication. Silos, sub-groups, divisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a great book on organizations called &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2741559-tribal-leadership&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tribal Leadership&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Dave Logan, John King &amp;amp; Halee Fischer-Wright. I think it's a tremendous read for anyone looking to manage any kind and size of team(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In SE it's even worse than other fields for more or less obvious reasons. Be flexible with meetings but have at least 1 full team meeting per week (no longer than it should, show respect for people's time); one-on-one's also need to happen regularly and cannot be substituted. The spirit should always be that of transparency, and people be made &lt;em&gt;certain&lt;/em&gt; that revealing their mistakes will not &lt;em&gt;ever&lt;/em&gt; turn on them: you use everyone's mistakes as stepping stones to build the team, the culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How? Well here's a typical situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Someone makes a mistake and some bug makes it to final build (in the hands of your &quot;customer&quot;, whoever eats your code next). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First of all, you &lt;strong&gt;thank&lt;/strong&gt; that person for making the mistake and sharing it (everyone makes mistakes, human beings, if it were not that person it would have been someone else eventually, and that includes you: emphasize that publicly).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then you work with the whole team to find out how we can prevent such a mistake leading to this outcome, how can we intercept or avoid the mistake in the first place (that's the real problem to solve here).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First, let them shoot ideas, don't interrupt or judge anything right away (have everyone do the same, fire ideas, no response/judgement yet). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only then, when ideas get dry, review propositions and select/mix the best (maybe we both can lint it out and write/improve a test unit). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Positive feedback (good job everyone! have a cookie) then move on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you just did in this example is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reassure someone, make them feel safe that their mistake isn't reflecting bad &lt;em&gt;on them&lt;/em&gt;, rather the team takes it as &quot;we've shipped something buggy&quot;. So that someone feels free to speak, and you've eased everyone else's concerns too because they've just seen it happen. &quot;Oh, we can make mistakes and admit them here, it's visibly OK&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Allow a mistake to be revealed and thus identify a weak point in your process. That's how we solve problems, as opposed to burying our heads in the sand.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take this opportunity (problem) to engage in teamwork. Note that the non-judgemental &quot;free ideas&quot; first step is critical to quality.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Effectively solved &lt;em&gt;forever&lt;/em&gt; this particular mistake, it won't ever make it to final again. The team really can thank that person, because now we're better for it: beyond 'resilience' (means recovering to your initial state after a hit), you become &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13530973-antifragile&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;antifragile&lt;/a&gt;&quot; as Nassem Nicholas Taleb words it (problems make you grow, you become stronger the more difficulty you face, building a culture able to tackle ever-bigger problems).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reinforced that this is the way to go.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note that it's long to write and properly explain, in real life such informal talks about mistake X can happen in all of 2-10 minutes. This approach is directly inspired from accidentology, the study of the causes of accidents, and subsequent elaboration of methods and processes to ensure safety e.g. in air transportation or medical care).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other good tools are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pair programming (senior with junior makes for fast progress for the latter; more on-par duos are good to trounce through work like star players). Let people associate freely, also do some matchmaking if you feel like it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pair peer review (people review each other's code in pairs, sometimes the same functional bit, just to compare and bounce ideas on problems)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;one-on-ones with your guys, take 5 (minutes!) every day or so. Your invaluable vantage position lets you guide them with relevance, because you know where others are at. Always come off as &quot;hey how's it going, what can I do for you&quot;, offer this space where others feel safe. Here's a great book if you want to train your interpersonal skills: &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15014.Crucial_Conversations&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Crucial Conversations&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically anything in groups of 2-3 is great to reinforce communication. Lone wolves usually have their own way of dealing with it; don't force anyone, just be open and transparent about what you expect — like it's OK to pretty much reveal the whole &quot;from making individual mistakes to growing stronger as a team&quot; process, be totally transparent how that works, people can then own it and use it in whatever they do with whomever (like your pair progs hehe). [It's also great for educating children]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lack of trust&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that's my way. It builds up on everything above and then some, of course. But basically in practice, day-to-day, it comes to this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Begin with your customer, see them, who's the &lt;em&gt;direct&lt;/em&gt; customer of your team? (probably some other team who takes your work and goes from there). Now make it clear we work to satisfy these people, our customer, whoever eats the food we cook. Forget about the 'end' customer as a team manager, let the higher-ups do the global cohesion (it's their job), focus on &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; team, these are &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; guys. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Your guys&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, your crew, your partners-in-crime, your merry gang of nerds or whatever. This isn't about being friends (that part is out of your control), it's about feeling for each other in very professional/technical ways: acknowledge and ease the pain points, train the weaknesses and strengths, share interest in getting something out of it, etc. See how it builds on 1. and 2. above.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Be a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servant_leadership&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;servant leader&lt;/a&gt; of a servant team. Not 'boss' (petty) but &lt;em&gt;'How can I help you?' 'How can I&lt;/em&gt; facilitate &lt;em&gt;whatever it is you have to do?' 'Can you help me help you rise higher or easier?'&lt;/em&gt; That's your job.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Then, only then will people talk to you: when they feel you're &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; them. Goes true against your hierarchy: you protect your guys, you don't throw blame at them, you suck it up and own the team's successes and failures all the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because remember, even if someone's subpar and made more mistakes and eventually needs to go, it was the team's failure all along that &lt;em&gt;we&lt;/em&gt; shipped buggy. Your team must trust you speak as one, and take the hits. Your best guy too needs to feel free to speak and admit their mistakes, especially your best, so it's not &lt;em&gt;&quot;oh it's OK now but I'll throw you under the HR bus next time though&quot;&lt;/em&gt;: it's OK forever or never).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And because you &lt;em&gt;serve&lt;/em&gt; them, they'll reciprocate by &lt;em&gt;serving you&lt;/em&gt; too and work to avoid more 'hits', to ship 'better', to succeed. Not &lt;em&gt;for&lt;/em&gt; you, dear master, but &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; you, as one. Then can you claim 'mastery' at orchestration, organization. &lt;code&gt;;-)&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The take away is that you want to break these damn walls that people — legitimately — erect around themselves to allow 'trust' to 'flow'. Like a river. Trust is a flow, it doesn't really stop, only grows or shrinks in time. Trust never burns, it heals: people want to trust but are afraid to, and by showing them real tangible examples of situations where they could trust you and each other, fear will subside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you hear stuff like &quot;trust is earned, not given&quot;. It's a bit vague, forget about such pop-philo. Trust, according to psy studies, is &lt;em&gt;built&lt;/em&gt; by sharing circumstances, i.e. being in the same boat enough with someone (implying they're on your side, did not turn on you). So don't fret it. It'll come, it's one of these genuine things of the heart than no 'system' can hurry. But you can see how it all contributes (the team meetings, the openness in a &quot;safe zone&quot; kind of setting, the pairs, the one-ness of you taking the shots outside this 'sanctuary')...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's this book whose title says it all I think: &quot;Sometimes We Win, Sometimes We &lt;strike&gt;Fail&lt;/strike&gt; Learn&quot;. If you can make someone genuinely agree to that, you'll do great at managing teams in Agile environments (the fundamental premise of Agile and streamlining such as DevOps is to take &quot;a little hit on initial quality&quot; to &quot;massively increase total throughput&quot;; so you really need at least resilient and at best anti-fragile mindsets, and systems, to work under such paradigms. Basically, get ready to make mistakes and fix stuff).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I get that's a lot to take in, honestly that's more like a plan for the next 5 years, you'll probably change jobs twice or more on the way to mastering these things. Which is why I included down-to-earth examples, simple things to do. Compound effect: you do a little here, a little there, but every single day, and it builds up to mountains in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice I didn't use much words like &quot;self-organizing&quot; and &quot;initiative&quot;. That's because you can't really &quot;require&quot; or &quot;suggest&quot; these things — merely show by example but then again, it's part of a larger frame. You rather elicit, or nurture, such behaviors by &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;removing barriers (like allowing mistakes and even making it valuable to reveal them, building trust, etc) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;facilitating, helping (you seem on point with this, coaching etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;making it clear the collective and individual rewards are on the other side of &quot;us&quot; doing great, thus each and everyone being a team player to help, facilitate other's jobs — at which point, they imitate you, they becomes masters, you've elevated them or rather enabled them to evelate themselves, from within.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you get it, you can't really do &quot;wrong&quot; as a team lead but only learn/grow: making mistakes is also something &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; can do, and if you just reveal and fix them asap, as you go, and as a team too (maybe with your guys, maybe with your hierarchy too), you'll earn this even-higher level of trust called &quot;respect&quot; — for being fair as a leader who self-judges themselves, and behaves, according to the very standards they seek to promote onto others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36751" LastEditorUserId="35563" LastEditDate="2019-08-13T17:13:17.213" LastActivityDate="2019-08-13T17:13:17.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26976" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-08-08T19:30:09.373" Score="0" ViewCount="80" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the next sprint, Jira displays the total number of story points in the backlog, calling it &quot;Estimate.&quot;. This number leaves out tasks, which are estimated in hours, not story points. This makes it difficult to get a sense of how much load is being increased as tasks are being added to the sprint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One approach is to wrap every task inside some story. Is there a better approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36753" LastActivityDate="2019-08-27T08:36:39.230" Title="Tasks during sprint planning" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;estimation&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;&lt;tasks&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24566" CreationDate="2019-08-08T19:40:37.620" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Scrum Master and the Agile Delivery Manager (ADM) are quite different (According to SAFe) For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Scrum Master has no reporting relationship with the team members, where the ADM is the manager over the team members and is responsible for helping guide team members careers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Scrum Master is responsible for establishing Team-level Agile practices (e.g. introduce ATDD to the Team). The ADM is responsible for creating policies and procedures that relate to quality, etc. (e.g. How code reviews are conducted and governance around making sure code is up to the companies standards)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Scrum Master does not control a budget around the Team's needs. The ADM will have a budget on tools needed, contractor work, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are some examples; hope they help. We are in our 7th year of our agile journey applying SAFe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36754" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-08-08T20:47:48.990" LastActivityDate="2019-08-08T20:47:48.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26976" CreationDate="2019-08-08T19:47:39.633" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mixing relative and absolute estimation is problematic and difficult. If you were going to use relative estimation (story pointing is one form of relative estimation, while hours is absolute estimation) I would only use that. There will be some things that don't get points (spikes, bugs, etc) but usually this is a small enough percentage of the work in the sprint that it isn't particularly impactful. In this approach, we use past velocity to plan capacity instead of hours available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, nothing about Scrum says you have to use relative estimation. A lot of the industry has moved away from that because studies have consistently shown absolute estimation to be wildly inaccurate in many contexts. This may not apply to you and if your context lends itself well to absolute estimation, nothing should stop you from using that, but then I would use just that. In Jira, it looks like you can change using points or Original Time Estimate in the board settings: &lt;a href=&quot;https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftwarecloud/configuring-estimation-and-tracking-764478030.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftwarecloud/configuring-estimation-and-tracking-764478030.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-08-08T19:47:39.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26980" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-08-09T00:41:13.973" Score="1" ViewCount="129" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hopefully you can help provide me with insight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'm new to the Agile functions of MS Project, and I have a board with sprints and tasks set up. When inspecting the dates for Start/Finish times of these tasks, the dates are all incorrect; for example, if I move a task from To Do to Complete on the Sprint Board view, see it marked as complete, and check the Task Sheet, the date says 8/5 (start of the Project Date) despite today being 8/8 and the task being created today (which shows the correct date). No matter what task or sprint I mark as complete, the date always shows the Project Start date instead of the date its being modified on. I've checked Project Information and Today's Date is set appropriately at 8/8, so I don't think that's the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What am I missing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance for your help!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36757" LastActivityDate="2020-02-15T12:01:30.183" Title="MS Project Agile Showing Wrong Start/Finish Dates" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26981" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26985" CreationDate="2019-08-09T03:33:45.153" Score="4" ViewCount="295" Body="&lt;p&gt;I run a team with a few iOS developers and a few backend developers.  Over the last couple of months, we've been experimenting with different ways of structuring users stories for sprints and have generally tried two approaches:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;breaking a feature into very small, bite-sized stories&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;encompassing a feature in one very large monolithic story, with many small technical tasks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The former is tricky because there end up being a lot of blockers between stories, and it's difficult to visualize all of the information for a feature since it's spread across many stories&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latter solves the centralized source of information issue, but the story becomes so large and overwhelming that the details end up getting lost in it all&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coming up, we're going to be revamping our onboarding flow for our iOS application and I thought it might be a good opportunity to try a new approach.  I think the smaller stories worked better than the larger one, but i'm still not quite sure how to structure it such that there aren't lots of blockers, but perhaps i'm thinking of things in the wrong fashion.  The high-level (and very terse for the sake of this post) stories &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a user needs to be able to signup with a phone number&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a user needs to be able to sign up with email&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a user needs to be able to choose a username&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a user needs to be able to connect their contacts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a user needs to be able to login with phone or email&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, each of the above has lots of dependencies on one another (ie, you can't really choose a username until you've signed with an account, lots of UI elements and workflow pieces are shared between the above flows, etc)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I be thinking about this differently?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35878" LastActivityDate="2019-08-10T19:31:19.630" Title="breaking down a feature into stories and avoiding dependencies" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;sprint&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26971" CreationDate="2019-08-09T03:55:49.780" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In terms of how to do better next time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds as if you identified the risk as one of medium risk (might be ready) and high severity (huge business value), and you decided to &lt;em&gt;monitor&lt;/em&gt; the risk (communicated with him on a daily basis and the progress seemed satisfactory). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Monitoring the risk basically left you in a situation of &quot;success-oriented scheduling&quot;: by the time it was apparent that the risk had manifested, it was effectively too late to do anything about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given medium risk and high severity, I would suggest taking action to &lt;em&gt;mitigate&lt;/em&gt; the risk: plan for the likelihood that the risk &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; manifest right from the start, and make a contingency plan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On day one, when you determined that he might have something ready, and that the bulk of the work would be complete before he left: if you had asked yourself &quot;What's my contingency plan if those things &lt;strong&gt;don't&lt;/strong&gt; happen on time?&quot;, what would you have answered?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would likely have assigned 2 devs to the feature from the start; or at minimum had the &quot;interim dev&quot; doing design &amp;amp; code reviews and otherwise getting debriefed by &quot;prime dev&quot; every few days so they are fully up to speed and don't have a big learning curve at the handover. But I'm sure there are other possibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the specifics, the principle is to determine from the start whether monitoring is sufficient, or mitigation is necessary; and avoid &quot;success-oriented scheduling&quot; for things that matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps. Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11661" LastActivityDate="2019-08-09T03:55:49.780" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26981" CreationDate="2019-08-09T09:43:35.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you should think about this differently because what you have are claiming to be high-level user stories are tasks. Consider reading the question &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/16739/27189&quot;&gt;What is the weighting difference between Epic/Story/Task?&lt;/a&gt; to understand better the concepts (which are good enough to be used and followed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a few words, a task belongs to a user story and, accordingly to &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/a/7994970/5675325&quot;&gt;Assaf Stone&lt;/a&gt;, reflects&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(...) the work needed to be done on each of the components that your story&#xA;  touches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A user story is written from a user perspective that provides some business value and follows a specific format&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;As a [role] I want [goal] so that [benefit].&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to create good user stories, start by remembering to &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/16314/27189&quot;&gt;INVEST in good user stories&lt;/a&gt;. INVEST is an acronym which encompasses the following concepts which make up a good user story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Independent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Negotiable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Valuable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Small.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Testable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, even if they were user stories, by being dependent contradicts the I from Invest, making it a bad user story. &lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/26944/27189&quot;&gt;Imagine that you have a video streaming application to run on smartphone, tablet or computer&lt;/a&gt; and we want to solve this problem, that is, when you switch from device to device when you are watching video streaming in this application that is going to be made, you start again from exactly the point you had stopped before, no matter why you had stopped before, you will start over from that point. (this is an example i'm giving in another answer). The user story can be as following&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a user of video streaming (role), I want to start watching program&#xA;  on my mobile device, then I want to be able to resume the same program&#xA;  on another mobile device at the point I stopped at the previous one&#xA;  (goal), so that I don't miss a second of the show I was watching&#xA;  (benefit).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27189" LastActivityDate="2019-08-09T09:43:35.373" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26981" CreationDate="2019-08-09T10:37:02.247" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short of it, imho:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;your user stories are too atomic, they're not stories but rather steps&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it however shows a possible room for improvement in terms of backend design: how &quot;mature&quot; is your API? how modular your backend (microservices vs monolithic, scalability/concurrency, etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;at a fundamental level you're on the right track and if you reverse the flow of thinking — which is the point of user stories in Agile — you would probably know just what to fix/change in your backend to remove some of the problematic dependencies found in stories or between steps. There's no two ways: it's either linear thus dependencies become a non-problem, or it's multi-path and you have to design for that, thus flatten the interface and expose independent &quot;verbs&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize it's a bit dry so I'll try to elaborate &lt;em&gt;enough&lt;/em&gt;, in practical terms. Also possibly a discussion at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;About the atomicity of stories&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's how I think of it, back to basics: a story is not a sentence (task: &quot;I opened the menu&quot;). A story is a not even a group of sentences — that's a paragraph (&quot;I wanted to change a setting. I opened the menu. I looked for a familiar &quot;settings&quot; or &quot;parameters&quot; icon/text. I found it and opened it. The &quot;theme&quot; setting was first in line.&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each sentence is supposed to express 1 thought, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;each paragraph is supposed to express 1 idea, 1 &quot;point&quot;, 1 &quot;scene&quot; or &quot;shot&quot; (think storyboard, comics, movie editing). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &quot;story&quot; is a collection of such paragraphs or scenes/shots.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if they're one liners, at least, we have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a premise (who*/when/where from),  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a plot (what? why?), &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a development (how?) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and a resolution (where/how do we end? options from there? =&gt; paths to other &quot;base&quot; story clusters). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* &lt;em&gt;We want different &quot;persona&quot; to test against, link with BI/analytics if possible.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note, &quot;UX&quot; is when we've got a more-or-less unified set of &quot;paths&quot; whose salient points should be exactly our user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's important to retain all of that substance in order to &quot;understand&quot; the story. A good idea is to imagine it as a comics: usually 1 page at most, but typically more than 1 vignette (or it better be damn expressive!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like we could make 1 'main' or 'base' story there, e.g. tell the story of &quot;a user signs up &lt;em&gt;normally&lt;/em&gt;&quot;; then make ad hoc variation/fork stories if necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The &quot;maturity&quot; of a backend interface&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our API-s should be as &quot;expressive&quot; as the codebases they link.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's the backend/upstream on one side, and the client/user &quot;experience&quot; (collection of all their stories) on the other side. In the middle, your API. From a dev standpoint, the API's expressivity often dictates (limiting or enabling) how much you can &quot;play&quot; with the codebase. From the user standpoint, even if it's invisible, it dictates how &quot;fluent&quot; or &quot;stuttering&quot; they feel when trying to express themselves &lt;em&gt;through&lt;/em&gt; the application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that when dependencies tend to creep up in the simplest user stories that you nonetheless wish to enact, it's usually due to upstream constrains — i.e. backend either not micro-servicing enough (too &quot;monolithic&quot;), or &lt;a href=&quot;https://blog.restcase.com/4-maturity-levels-of-rest-api-design/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;API not &quot;mature&quot;&lt;/a&gt; enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is thus possibly not related to how we chunk our user stories — a sign of that is those dependencies showing up no matter what — but deeper to how we structured the backend interface. That would be my intuition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avoid &quot;epics&quot; like we avoid &quot;god methods&quot; to solve such problems. Rather seek to solve at the most essential / lowest level: actually &lt;em&gt;remove&lt;/em&gt; the dependency through architectural change, rather than work &lt;em&gt;around it&lt;/em&gt; — before we know it, it's become a minefield like &lt;code&gt;npm&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agile/scrum, in that view, isn't the problem but part of the solution: it helped identify the issues (good job, next/new problem = progress). It will help us design the solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it doesn't mean that it's bad, it's a design decision that has to be made.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/33041733/microservices-vs-monolithic-architecture&quot;&gt;Hear&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://martinfowler.com/bliki/MonolithFirst.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;hear&lt;/a&gt;! (SO, Martin Fowler!)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Oh look, Fowler &lt;a href=&quot;https://martinfowler.com/articles/richardsonMaturityModel.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;again&lt;/a&gt;!.. this time on the Richardson maturity model.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Discussion (1) Human Centered Design&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that thinking differently? I'll let you be the judge of that. I think it's simply zooming out, taking some perspective, seeing the &lt;em&gt;flow&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what is the flow? Think back to a fundamental purpose of Agile/scrum: to design &lt;em&gt;faster&lt;/em&gt; so we are &lt;em&gt;closer&lt;/em&gt; to the &lt;em&gt;end user&lt;/em&gt;. Shorten the cycle, you shorten the &quot;shipping&quot; part of the feedback loop. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enter &quot;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User-centered_design&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;user-centered design&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically an offspring of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-centered_design&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Human Centered Design&lt;/a&gt;, itself part of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interaction_design&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Interaction Design&lt;/a&gt;. Lots of good food for thought in those articles, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Human-centred Systems] involves a radical redesign of the interface technologies and at a philosophical level the objective is to provide tools (in the Heidegger sense) which would support human skill and ingenuity rather than machines which would objectivise that knowledge&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inception time: Agile too is one such &quot;human centered system&quot; at heart, compared to some diktat of the machine circa UNIX 1980s. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User stories, as a tool (for developers), aim at reversing the traditional top-down &lt;em&gt;&quot;developers mouth-feed whatever they think best down into users throat&quot;&lt;/em&gt; (in this model, &quot;upstream&quot; is dominant) towards a &lt;em&gt;&quot;bottom-up&quot;&lt;/em&gt; model. Because in Agile we consider user stories first, as a basis, we start from &quot;downstream&quot; and develop &quot;up&quot; so that our work ends up being shaped, from the onset, by its users, or more specifically their experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This, imho, is one of the greatest merits of the &lt;em&gt;Agile&lt;/em&gt; paradigm (&lt;em&gt;et. al:&lt;/em&gt; scrum, devops, etc), and should survive it even. It's just a golden principle of great product design regardless of the field. [Apparently was already true in good old Babylon...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again my subjective observation, but it seems the trend towards microservices and beyond (serverless / functional programming), the modularity of virtualization (the success of LXC/LXD containers, from Docker to K8 passing by Red Hat solutions etc.) and software-defined &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt;, CI/CD or the 'devops' culture... all of this seems to follow/build one silver thread: to enable &lt;strong&gt;infrastructure&lt;/strong&gt; (and its makers, us) to &lt;strong&gt;support&lt;/strong&gt; the above shift towards &lt;strong&gt;user-centered design&lt;/strong&gt;. It's just necessary too, when every living person and their cat has become a walking multi-site network relying on hundreds of remote services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Discussion (2) The Art and Freedom to Design&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's too much noise out there, and we lose track of the essence... We replay 'human stories' and ironically forget that, as devs, this is a just a &lt;em&gt;tool&lt;/em&gt;, for we are literal &lt;strong&gt;gods&lt;/strong&gt; in this application we're &lt;em&gt;writing ourselves&lt;/em&gt;. This is a great power and it comes with great responsibility in a bottom-up paradigm: at the end of the day, we design-ed for users whether we realize-d it or not, whether we take/took it into account or not. We might say, for instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ie, you can't really choose a username until you've signed with an account&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that's &lt;em&gt;our choice&lt;/em&gt; as devs, &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; a fact. It's only true for &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; applications/workflows. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were these decisions motivated by user stories, thinking of user experience? Or thinking in terms of designing a good &lt;em&gt;application&lt;/em&gt;, a good &lt;em&gt;backend&lt;/em&gt;, a good &lt;em&gt;security practice&lt;/em&gt; i.e. make &lt;em&gt;developers&lt;/em&gt; happy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Zoom out. We could perhaps do otherwise. If we want to. Do we? Will we?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I mean is that our decisions, all of them, tend to impose some constrains on &quot;the set of &lt;strong&gt;possible&lt;/strong&gt; stories&quot;. And that's good, as long as we're fully cognizent of that. Sometimes more important than &quot;what does this code change add to the table?&quot;, always consider the devil's advocate plea: &quot;what does it &lt;em&gt;remove&lt;/em&gt;? what does it &lt;em&gt;deny&lt;/em&gt; us that was allowed before/without?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've designed in a way that imposes the constrains you now meet. Own that, the 'why' and 'what', because it frees you to plan your next step with maximum agility indeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We like &quot;modular&quot; &quot;microservices&quot; because it tends to leave the architecture opened to change, but really there's a happy medium to strike (user stories and API maturity help you find the sweet spots, as you seek/find how to make the two meet in harmonious accordance, and design around &lt;em&gt;the interface&lt;/em&gt;, starting from there rather than having it as a distant edge concern). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, there is no good or bad, just decisions and results; but owning the whole user-centered/downstream-up process, even if/when we were clearly swimming downwards from our ivory tower, is how we increasingly remove our limiting thoughts (the &quot;can't&quot;) and open ourselves to see &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; possibilities, try other things. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously we can't rewrite the whole thing &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt;. It's a long-term marathon, but the magic of this endless short-cycle self-evidently lies in compound effect, quick iterations, small fixes that build up to major refactorings in time, as integral part of the CD process (we build and maintain at once).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps, even at a high level (can't do much more in abstraction). Don't hesitate to ask further questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36751" LastEditorUserId="36751" LastEditDate="2019-08-09T10:49:54.573" LastActivityDate="2019-08-09T10:49:54.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26987" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-08-09T22:01:15.563" Score="1" ViewCount="53" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you have any recommendations to track Roadmaps when working with multiple teams and cross-teams projects? Right now we work with Jira and spreadsheets, so any useful templates or tips for combining both would be highly appreciated!&#xA;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4895" LastActivityDate="2019-08-09T22:01:15.563" Title="How to manage Cross-teams Roadmaps and high level tasks" Tags="&lt;release-plan&gt;&lt;roadmaps&gt;&lt;cross-functional&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26981" CreationDate="2019-08-10T08:53:41.123" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few things to keep in mind when following an agile approach and working with user stories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A user story has to deliver &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; value, it doesn't have to deliver all the value that is in the final product&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It may make sense to have intermediary steps that you may not have had if you did not follow the agile approach (because you value responding to change)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, each of the above has lots of dependencies on one another (ie, you can't really choose a username until you've signed with an account, lots of UI elements and workflow pieces are shared between the above flows, etc)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can have the functionality of choosing a username without the &lt;em&gt;full&lt;/em&gt; functionality of signing up for an account. I could create a simple stub that generated a basic account for all users that only consisted of the username and no other details. That stub would be sufficient to implement the story to choose the username.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't the kind of thing that you would ship in a finished product, but it does deliver a small amount of value (i.e. you now have a way to create a basic account and let the user specify their username).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick is to carefully use interfaces so that as each story gets completed the stubs / working-code can be swapped out and replaced with more feature rich code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same goes for the UI elements you mentioned. I would want my fully featured UI element everywhere in the app when it is released, but as an intermediary step it is perfectly acceptable to have a cut-down version of the element behind an interface so that it can be swapped out at a later date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It takes a little while to get used to this approach. It can be difficult to think in terms of intermediary steps that may actually end up including some throwaway work. When following agile we take the decision to &lt;em&gt;pay this price&lt;/em&gt; so that we can adapt quickly to change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One way to think of it is imagine if at the end of each sprint there was the chance the team could be switched to work on another product. As such, you want to have a &lt;em&gt;potentially shippable product&lt;/em&gt; available at the end of each sprint. The potentially shippable product certainly won't be perfect, but it would deliver &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; value if shipped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="16031" LastEditDate="2019-08-10T19:31:19.630" LastActivityDate="2019-08-10T19:31:19.630" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20553" CreationDate="2019-08-11T03:28:50.143" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend you to study the motivational theories, as the PMP exam will ask you around 2-3 questions about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&#xA;Theory X and Theory Y represent two suppositions about human nature and behaviour at work from which styles of management are adopted. These theories were put forward by:&#xA;    Mayo&#xA;    Ouchi&#xA;    Maslow&#xA;    McGregor [ANS]&#xA;Source (&lt;a href=&quot;http://wps.pearsoned.co.uk/ema_uk_cu_glasgow_man_pro_2007/76/19569/5009871.cw/content/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://wps.pearsoned.co.uk/ema_uk_cu_glasgow_man_pro_2007/76/19569/5009871.cw/content/index.html&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also lookout for scenario based questions as well in this regard. Its true that the PMBOK doesnt have all these detailed, that's how the PMP exam is formulated, we need to do our research on certain topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a helpful link that explains some of the theories =&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.dummies.com/careers/project-management/pmp-certification/motivation-theories-you-should-know-for-the-pmp-certification-exam/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.dummies.com/careers/project-management/pmp-certification/motivation-theories-you-should-know-for-the-pmp-certification-exam/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31658" LastActivityDate="2019-08-11T03:28:50.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26990" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-08-11T07:51:26.060" Score="0" ViewCount="107" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen positions such as Value Assurance manager. How it differs from Project Assurance manager or even Project Manager?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36768" LastActivityDate="2019-08-11T13:29:36.427" Title="What is Value Assurance all about?" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;value&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26990" CreationDate="2019-08-11T13:29:36.427" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whenever you find a job title that's not very common, it usually means that the company tried to put a name on some job responsibilities that are wider than what existing job titles can cover, like Project Manager for example. The job title usually also sounds cool and implies a certain degree of authority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't really know what it means until you read the job description and see what one is expected to do on a daily basis. Other companies might use the same job title to mean a different set of requirements and responsibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every time I've encountered roles like these it usually meant some sort of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_office&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Project Management Officer&lt;/a&gt; mixed with some Agile coaching and with a certain authority given by top management. Their job is to supervise projects within the company and make sure they all align for best results, or should I say &quot;best value&quot; in the context of this answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authority given to such managers usually falls in the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_office#Functions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Controlling&lt;/a&gt;&quot; type of PMOs, which means that they don't take charge of projects (i.e. not &quot;Directive&quot;) but when they say you should do something, you must do it, you can't ignore them (i.e. they are not just &quot;Supportive&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So really, it's important what the responsibilities are and what you are expected to do on the job. Job titles matter less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36474" LastActivityDate="2019-08-11T13:29:36.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3867" CreationDate="2019-08-11T13:40:38.070" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just spent a week comparing quite a few free online Gantt chart solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not found anything that is visually similar to MS Project that is free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I settled on free excel template that I converted to G doc (the &quot;simple&quot; one from this page &lt;a href=&quot;https://exceltemplate.net/gantt-chart&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://exceltemplate.net/gantt-chart&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's online on our google drive to allow for collaboration. Does the job but does not have all the bells and whistles online software would provide so if anyone did find a better ONLINE and FREE software, please chip in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17562" LastActivityDate="2019-08-11T13:40:38.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26971" CreationDate="2019-08-13T11:03:37.980" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1) What should be my actions in this situation now? I cannot tell the client that the development of the feature has stopped because the dev went on vacation. This would be unprofessional&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact I agree to Thomas' &quot;Honesty is Best&quot; approach. Having another developer assigned to the task will definitely not align with the budget and I suppose that this disruptive change in task assignment will not fully solve the problem. In such cases, I usually experienced:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;feature still not developed on time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;quality decrease &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;dissatisfaction of team members involved leading to&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;loss of reputation and authority for the project lead (me)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel that it is inevitable to continue the work on the feature without any knowledge transfer, I strongly recommend to assign more than one developer to the task rather than introducing another person as the &quot;single point of failure&quot;. Especially since I suppose that the main task is to &quot;learn the concept from the code implementing it&quot;, it is good to have a small team of at least 2 persons so that they can correct each other. Psychologically, there is not a single programmer who takes all the (unfair) burden of compensating a management mistake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which leads me back to your question about communication with the client. By acting this way, you could tell a story like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;I am very sorry, but the programmer assigned to the project is unexpectedly unavailable for an uncertain period of time. We acted on this by doubling the resources assigned to the development of this particular feature. The feature may still be on delay but we do our very best to mitigate the impact for you, dear customer. I will keep you posted about the progress.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36782" LastActivityDate="2019-08-13T11:03:37.980" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26996" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-08-13T13:38:08.040" Score="1" ViewCount="118" Body="&lt;p&gt;If team strictly follows Agile's core values and principles and they started living as per the Agile manifesto, does this mean the team’s mindset is now changed to Agile? Or does anything else need to be done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36654" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-08-13T21:09:14.640" LastActivityDate="2019-08-14T18:32:11.380" Title="What does it mean to cultivate a team's Agile mindset?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26996" CreationDate="2019-08-13T14:31:17.483" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often found that the opposite is true. &quot;Strictly following&quot; something is IMO against the agile principles. I worked with several teams who were conducting agile rituals every day and talking agile language but who were far away from being agile, especially in terms of &quot;valuing individuals and interactions over processes and tools&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience so far was that it is much harder to &lt;em&gt;keep&lt;/em&gt; the team agile than &lt;em&gt;starting&lt;/em&gt; an agile process. The process easily takes over the control over the individuals even if it is an agile process (like Scrum). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So not to be too long with the answer, I found these methods are helpful to maintain agility:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make clear to every team member that what he/she is doing, thinking and feeling really matters &lt;em&gt;to the team&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make clear to the team that the process is here to support them, not vice-versa. That is, encourage thinking about and changing the process&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;make progress tangible - not only for the artifacts the team is creating but also for the way the team is collaborating&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do this every day (not literally but more than once per sprint/iteration or whatever you call it) until you have a strong confidence that the team has established a robust process of self-reflection and self-improvement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36782" LastActivityDate="2019-08-13T14:31:17.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26996" CreationDate="2019-08-13T20:08:12.270" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a little hung-up on how you strictly follow values and principles, but I'll take that to mean that they genuinely believe in them and try in earnest to let them guide their actions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To your question, I'm afraid there is far more to do still. Think of it like an athlete. When you first start in sports, you have to develop a mindset that training hard and taking care of your health lead to better performance, but once you achieve that, you aren't done. You have to live that mindset and constantly refine how you train and live to perform better and better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also like athletics, there is a natural pull back to the easiest option - to stop being so disciplined and stop working so hard. This is often true for agile teams too and that mindset needs constant tending. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I once heard a coach and trainer put it this way: our skills are constantly deteriorating, so we have to constantly be rebuilding them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a concrete example of a practice that does this: periodically go through an exercise where the team ranks the 12 principles from strongest to weakest in the team. For each of their strongest 3, the team identifies 2 - 3 concrete things they do that make them strong in that principle that they can double-down on or share with others. For each of the weakest 3, the team brainstorms 2 - 3 concrete things they can do differently that may help strengthen those principles in the team. From this exercise, the team has 12 - 18 items for their improvement backlog to chose from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastEditorUserId="7944" LastEditDate="2019-08-14T18:32:11.380" LastActivityDate="2019-08-14T18:32:11.380" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26999" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-08-14T06:01:18.560" Score="1" ViewCount="1552" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently wondering about the differences between PMP and PMD Pro and what are the pros and cons of both certifications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can you help me here, then do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36797" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-08-20T09:45:07.167" LastActivityDate="2019-08-20T09:45:07.167" Title="What to know about PMD Pro vs PMP" Tags="&lt;pmp&gt;&lt;certification&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26999" CreationDate="2019-08-14T08:49:58.983" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;PMD Pro (Project Management for Development Professionals) was developed in partnership with &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pm4ngos.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PM4NGOs&lt;/a&gt; (Project Management for NGOs), an organization dedicated to optimizing international project investments and improving professional project management skills in the development sector.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMD Pro is an adaptation of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Management_Body_of_Knowledge&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PMBOK&lt;/a&gt; (Project Management Body Of Knowledge) methodology and other successful business methodologies to the social sector reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pmi.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PMI&lt;/a&gt; (Project Management Institute), the methodology systematizes the concepts and techniques of project management, teaching how to apply project management concepts to the specific context of social projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The main difference&lt;/strong&gt; between PMD Pro and PMP is that the first works with means of impact measurement, human development, quality of life and risk mitigation that are not commonly used in the business market hence why it appeared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to &lt;strong&gt;the benefits&lt;/strong&gt; for PMD Pro, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pm4ngos.org/pmdpro-story/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PM4NGOs&lt;/a&gt; states the following three&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;On Time&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;NGOs using PMD Pro report reduced delays because PMD Pro tools help&#xA;  development staff define project risks and goals, assess progress, and&#xA;  efficiently delegate work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;On Budget&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;NGOs using PMD Pro report improved cost management, enhanced donor&#xA;  reporting, and more confident project and program staff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Proven Results&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Project stakeholders report benefits from increased transparency,&#xA;  common vocabulary and improved project outcomes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;em&gt;To note&lt;/em&gt;: one can find other reasons why to take this course in firms where it's possible to book the exam (for instances &lt;a href=&quot;https://apmg-international.com/product/pmd-pro&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;APMG International&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.humentum.org/training/project-management-development-professionals-pmd-pro&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Humentum&lt;/a&gt;).)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are at least two acceptable QAs on if one should take PMP certification&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/871/27189&quot;&gt;Is the PMP or other project management certification worth while to have?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pm.stackexchange.com/q/16876/27189&quot;&gt;How important are PMI certifications in the beginning of a PM career?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27189" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-08-14T08:59:27.037" LastActivityDate="2019-08-14T08:59:27.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27001" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27003" CreationDate="2019-08-14T09:04:31.470" Score="7" ViewCount="2970" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's suppose that, as a PO, I have a mini-project with my team.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;The project consists of displaying messages and announcements on big shared screen.&#xA;The admin can write messages on a page on his terminal (pc, laptop or mobile device) and the message should be displayed on the big screen for two days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The confusion for me comes from the fact that I'm not sure if I should ask my dev team to build a DB right away or keep for the last story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;US1: as an admin I want to write a message on a new page dedicated&#xA;for this matter. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;US2: as an admin, I want to display my message on the big screen. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;US3: as an admin I want to display my 5 last messages.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;US4: as an admin I want that all messages be saved so that the last 5&#xA;messages can be displayed as soon as the app is opened on the&#xA;big screen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the US4 useful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36362" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2019-08-14T11:18:06.570" LastActivityDate="2019-08-22T09:46:54.757" Title="Should I leave building the database for the end?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;product-owner&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27001" CreationDate="2019-08-14T09:28:27.020" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;US3 and US4 seem to be the same thing to me. If you need to display the last 5 messages, then that means saving them somewhere, so US3 should somehow deal with that. If US3 does, then US4 is redundant and not needed anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But why do you think you need a database? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As the PO you should not care about and/or decide on technical implementation details on your own.&lt;/strong&gt; You just tell the developers what you need the application to do and they will then decide if they use a database, a file on disk, or something else. If a file can be used to do what you want, then a file can be used. If your requirements cannot be fulfilled by a file on disk, then maybe they use the next best thing, be that a database or something else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You need to have a conversation with your team.&lt;/strong&gt; Discuss the functionality, pros and cons of different solutions, any concerns you might have, make sure everyone understands what's needed, then decide together on an approach. The developers then need to be responsible people and - in regards to the persistence technology they use - build a full working solution, one that isn't insufficient in some way, but also not over-engineered in some other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you decide you do need a database, you add it when it's needed.&lt;/strong&gt; You don't leave it for the end, unless it's needed at the end. If you are concerned that changing the database will be costly later on, then it makes sense to add it last. On the other hand, adding it last might cause some issues that you don't see right now, but the developers might be able to spot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, the right thing to do is to discuss it with your team and decide together on the opportune moment to add the database.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36474" LastEditorUserId="36474" LastEditDate="2019-08-14T16:38:07.553" LastActivityDate="2019-08-14T16:38:07.553" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27001" CreationDate="2019-08-14T09:48:20.153" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is worrying that you have no &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; part to your user stories. This is an important element of the user story format as it allows us to evaluate the stories and to prioritise them. It appears that you are writing technical requirements but partially using the user story format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also notice that you focus the stories on the admin, when I suspect the value from the stories is derived from people viewing the messages on the big screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can imagine user stories for this project being something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a team member I would like to be informed about activities planned by the admins so that they do not disrupt my work&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a team member I would like to see news from the admins as quickly as possible so that I can react before any disruption takes place&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How the development team chooses to implement this is up to them. It seems likely that they will use a big screen and possible also a database. But none of those technical implementation details are relevant to the user stories. However, they may well be relevant to &lt;em&gt;technical tasks&lt;/em&gt; relating to the user stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-08-14T09:48:20.153" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26996" CreationDate="2019-08-14T09:56:06.837" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reinforcing the agile principles is best done by inspecting and adapting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once your team understands and applies the agile principles they should look to continually check that changes they make have a positive impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be done by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Retrospectives, reviews, health checks, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Metrics (used carefully to avoid gaming)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Surveys&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Speaking with customers and people your team works with to get their feedback&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By continually inspecting and adapting your team will grow to understand how much their mindset has really changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-08-14T09:56:06.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27001" CreationDate="2019-08-14T10:01:06.760" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no right or wrong answer if we just focus on effectiveness, as long as in the end we have the agreed solution built.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The DB isn't even required, one could use the File System writing the users and messages in text files.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The decision is up to the development team to whether or not the DB is developed before, after or during the implementation of the USs. Some developers like to build static content first and make it dynamic afterwards, others like all dynamic right away (I'm considering static content to be the one hammered into the code for testing purposes without going to a DB).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To help with the final decision, one should consider the Definition of Done, more precisely the acceptance criteria of the USs. You won't be able to match all the acceptance criteria, move the user for testing and have it done unless there's the DB (or File System) in place. So, the question is, do you want the users to close the User Stories right away one by one? If that's the case, i would go for DB first (but then again, the decision is up to development team).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the US4, i can see it useful if we understand the messages to be from all the users. Still, it could stand a some editing to something within that line&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As an admin, I want to see the last 5 messages (from all users) once the big screen is&#xA;  opened, so that I get a fast idea of what has been written recently by the other users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This would be like a Recent Posts section in a weblog - the screenshot is from my weblog)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tmCSy.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tmCSy.png&quot; alt=&quot;Recent Posts weblog&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we understand it to be the 5 messages from the admin, that's quite similar to US3 and you could specify in the US3 acceptance criteria you want the messages to appear right away once the big screen is opened. You can also create USs for each screen and define in the acceptance criteria how it should view. For more complex views, with many features, you might require to break it down into more USs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The admin doesn't care if it's saved or not, he/she just wants to see the messages.Then it's up to the developers to know what implications it has and express that into tasks (and sometimes speak with the PO to create more USs if some don't exist or others are just too complex and long).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;To note&lt;/em&gt;: User Stories typically follow this template and only one of yours match it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;As a &amp;lt;type of user&amp;gt;, I want &amp;lt;some goal&amp;gt; so that &amp;lt;some reason&amp;gt;.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27189" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2019-08-14T10:08:06.687" LastActivityDate="2019-08-14T10:08:06.687" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3791" CreationDate="2019-08-14T10:03:46.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being an Analyst at Software Firm, I will try to explain it with a simple real time example, hope it may help.&#xA;Suppose you work in a organization, where you get proper notifications prior to things get implement, emails, support from your higher management, these are the set of attributes reference as a framework of saying that organization have mature processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather, when you go in a formal way and see that your organization qualifies the certification of process maintenance awarded from an auditor is actually a process which says that the organizations actually follows the processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hereby, process can be a more formal attribute and framework as a real time attribute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36801" LastActivityDate="2019-08-14T10:03:46.980" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27007" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-08-14T11:23:55.860" Score="0" ViewCount="187" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently working on a project in which a so-called Waterfall-Scrum process is completed. This includes one week of development and one week of testing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each team (currently 7 teams building on each other!) currently has its own Definition of Ready and Definition of Done. This means that there are often strong problems in the process of testing and delivery to the next stage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problems that arise:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Partly late deliveries, from development to the next development&#xA;stage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unclear definition of when, what, where to ship (even with different&#xA;build times)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unclear circumstances which team tests when, where, what. It starts&#xA;with the team that should use the Unit Test, only doing Functional&#xA;Tests.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;However, other teams build on the only partially tested products.&#xA;This results in a spiral of mistakes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some teams have a staging process, others only partially.&#xA;Pre-production is missing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Approach (My suggestion)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Analysis of the process with all participants&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use a new global definition of Ready and Done that clearly defines&#xA;all teams when something needs to be done.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Standardize the staging problem by introducing clear structures and&#xA;unit testing. This allows you to intervene at an early stage in case&#xA;of misconduct.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've thought about some points, but I need your advice here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team's own definition of Ready and Done should remain in place.&#xA;The global definition of Ready and Done should only describe the individual stages (delivery to the next test days).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Am I right with my approach?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should a Global Definition of Ready and Done be able to solve&#xA;problems within delivery and testing?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do you have other approaches?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should you only adapt the cross-team definition of Ready and Done?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps one or the other has already experienced something similar in another project? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35402" LastActivityDate="2019-08-22T10:54:18.957" Title="Definition of Ready and Done in a Waterfall-Scrum Process (Global Definition as Solution?)" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;waterfall&gt;&lt;definition-of-done&gt;&lt;waterscrumfall&gt;" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26970" CreationDate="2019-08-14T14:30:28.190" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;After modifying the calendar for a particular project, it is important to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure that the time of day that is included in the &quot;Start date&quot; of the Project Information dialog matches the intended work time constraints of the calendar.  (Otherwise, the first project day can be truncated, with cascading impacts.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure that the default Calendar options for the project are aligned with the intended work time constraints of the calendar.  E.g. Default start time, default end time, hours per day, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25557" LastActivityDate="2019-08-14T14:30:28.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27009" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27012" CreationDate="2019-08-14T21:14:51.820" Score="1" ViewCount="303" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have 4 teams working on same product. Currently we use separate backlog for each one. When creating a story PO puts it into proper backlog in advance. His list of rough ideas (before they become stories in JIRA) and their priority is tracked in his separate system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm regularly thinking about having a single backlog, as Scrum prescripts. But I see that in practice having single backlog can just create mess:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I like to have a rough stories allocated for 1-2 sprints ahead for each team. If we have single backlog it means that I will have 4 active sprints and 4-8 pending on a JIRA list view. Which is hard to manage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I will have all bugs for all the teams in a single place, and will have to additionally put special tags on them to understand which team is responsible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Backlog will be huge!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Backlog grooming may get messy, since a lot of people will be bored while grooming other team's items.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you think? Am I missing something?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36809" LastActivityDate="2019-12-09T16:49:30.883" Title="Why single backlog for cross-functional teams is important?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27010" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-08-14T23:25:12.943" Score="0" ViewCount="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm working at an organization that is almost entirely a &quot;buy&quot; versus a &quot;build&quot; shop.  They prefer to implement off-the-shelf applications than build them from scratch, and have nothing in the way of lifecycle management tools.  As a result, things get implemented and never updated, then one day the pain of using outdated applications gets too much (e.g. the vendor sends a notice that the 15-year-old platform will no longer be supported) and they panic trying to find a new solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been searching for some sort of tooling to help this situation.  At the outset, it seemed sensible to search for &quot;Application Lifecycle Management Tools&quot;, but that turned up a list of tools focused on development and getting a product out the door in revisions.  I tried a bunch of other terms (Configuration Management, Portfolio Management, etc.) and came up with nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do your organizations manage the lifecycles of implemented software?  Do you manage requirements for the implementation projects?  Do you use the tools to manage upgrades?  How about patches and version updates?  When do you know its time to go to a new application to serve the same business need?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36812" LastActivityDate="2019-08-15T23:58:41.010" Title="Application Lifecycle Management Tools for a &quot;Buy&quot; Organization?" Tags="&lt;pm-software&gt;&lt;tools&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2019-08-16T13:28:43.637" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27009" CreationDate="2019-08-15T07:17:06.083" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The biggest advantage of having a single backlog is that it makes priorities clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are multiple backlogs then priority can be obscured. For example, is the second item on the Team X backlog more or less important than the second item on the Team Y backlog?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is important when:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are shared resources between the teams - such as a shared database administrator or just one performance test environment. When contention for the shared resource happens then a priority call needs to be made.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are dependencies between the teams - if story A needs to be done by Team X to unblock Team Y, does it have priority over other stories in the Team X backlog?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have none of these issues and multiple backlogs work for you then that is fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I will have all bugs for all the teams in a single place, and will have to additionally put special tags on them to understand which team is responsible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why must one team be responsible for a bug? All teams should be able to work on any backlog item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-08-15T07:17:06.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27013" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27018" CreationDate="2019-08-15T08:41:56.377" Score="9" ViewCount="4393" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been working with a Scrum Team and also a Kanban team for about 6 months and 10 months respectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scrum team hasn't shown any improvement and I haven't really managed to impact the management of the team either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a Scrum Master, is there anyway I can measure whether I have made any impact and when I should consider giving up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2019-08-16T14:04:30.910" Title="How to measure if Scrum Master is making a difference and when to give up" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;agile-coach&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27007" CreationDate="2019-08-15T09:19:27.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you can make this work for your teams then that is fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would caution that a global definition of done has several drawbacks, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Getting consensus over several teams is challenging. If not all the teams agree with the final solution then they may ignore it or work around it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some aspects of the definition of done may be specific to each team.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;With the definition of done used so widely it will become difficult to make quick changes to it. So you may lose some of your ability to adapt to change.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the definition of ready is a &lt;em&gt;solution to a problem&lt;/em&gt; and not a stand-alone method. Teams typically introduce a definition of ready as a temporary way of reducing the number of requirements that are not ready to be estimated in planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is temporary because the long-term solution is to ensure everyone understands what is needed in a story being ready and that your process supports this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-08-15T09:19:27.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27001" CreationDate="2019-08-15T13:50:42.230" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The requirements tend to define the data structures. If we want to X, we will need to know Y (data). So, you can go ahead and define your stories (from requirements, I hope) and expect the data structures to fall out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to implementation, I prefer to work from the inside, out, starting with the data structures (and hardware abstraction). If you do not have the data structures defined, you cannot code the features which use the data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By all means, leave the actual database till last, if that is what you prefer (*), but if you have not defined the data structures, then you cannot implement the features. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lack of well-defined data structures is a definite &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_smell&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;design smell&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(*) make sure it’s preference and not fear. If your team is putting off the database stuff because they are not comfortable with it, you need to aware of that, and allow more time when it does come.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36819" LastActivityDate="2019-08-15T13:50:42.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27016" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29590" CreationDate="2019-08-15T15:16:19.110" Score="1" ViewCount="57" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I have read, there is no out-of-the-box solution to auto-create watches from @mentions in Jira.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since there @mention triggers an email event, is there a way to add additional triggers in Jira or secondly, have an Outlook trigger create a new watch in Jira?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36786" LastActivityDate="2020-04-26T10:53:41.510" Title="Auto watching @mentions in Jira?" Tags="&lt;jira&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27013" CreationDate="2019-08-15T15:25:33.680" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many things you can do, but the first thing I would start with is a coaching agreement. I've seen very simple and very complex coaching agreements, but all of them hit a few key points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How will the coach work with those being coached?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do those being coached want to improve on?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do we understand and acknowledge that the coach can't improve for the team or leaders - they can only help accelerate their own improvements?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This gives you something to refer back to when people are 'too busy' for coaching. It also tells you where people are open to improvement so you can focus your efforts there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After this, I recommend creating a regular cadence of coaching and improvement. For a scrum team, the sprint cycle works well with the retro at the end of it. Each retro should have 1 (or 2 tops) action item. It isn't required, but I always recommend that an action item specifies the thing that's happening that is either challenging and they want to improve or good and they want to capitalize on; what the action item is; how they think it will improve the situation; and how they will measure that improvement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And now you have measurable improvement...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't have to stop here. You can also build a coaching wall (pull your fellow Scrum Masters into this). Over 5 or 6 weeks, keep a running set of notes on what you're helping your team with. This builds a narrative of how you've helped the team improve. If you do it with other Scrum Masters and teams, you can also pick up on common trends across the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-08-15T15:25:33.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27013" CreationDate="2019-08-15T17:34:26.970" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key to team improvement is &lt;strong&gt;good retrospectives&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I started running retrospectives, I found they often just degenerated into whingeing sessions that didn't achieve much, other than giving the team an opportunity to vent our frustrations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I go into the retrospective with a clear goal, stated at the beginning of each one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We're here to find what we, the team, most want to improve, and decide on how we'll do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I keep tight time-boxes on the main phases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Summarise what happened in the sprint.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Individually, write good/bad/ugly memories on stickies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a team, group the stickies into themes, and pick the most important one (possibly two, but no more).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Brainstorm ideas for the improvement activity (i.e. sustain a good thing, or reduce a bad thing).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Refine the best ideas so that they are concrete actions with a result you can measure (look up &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SMART criteria&lt;/a&gt; if you haven't already).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, as a Scrum Master, your role isn't necessarily to make the improvements yourself; the key trait is to &lt;strong&gt;facilitate&lt;/strong&gt; the team.  So the important thing is ensuring that the Retrospective takes place, and kept on track towards its outputs (the improvement activities).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have the improvement activities agreed, then the Scrum Master can be monitoring the agreed metric, and checking that the improvement activity is actually happening.  This can involve reminding team members of what they agreed to do in the meeting; I find it helpful to have the list of improvement actions visible in the stand-up area, so that we are all reminded of them every day, and can have a quick check of our progress towards them as well as to our sprint goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35563" LastActivityDate="2019-08-15T17:34:26.970" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27010" CreationDate="2019-08-15T23:58:41.010" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.project-open.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;]project-open[&lt;/a&gt; is an open-source project management / portfolio management tool, that has a large feature list out of the box, so it's pretty much &quot;buy&quot;. Some organizations used it for ALM, as it also contains a ticket tracker and a configuration database etc. Configuration is not easy, though.&#xA;Disclosure: I'm part of the ]po[ team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6266" LastActivityDate="2019-08-15T23:58:41.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27020" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-08-16T00:48:33.337" Score="5" ViewCount="232" Body="&lt;p&gt;While the term &amp;quot;swarming&amp;quot; is used quite commonly, I found it hard to find a definition for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different swarming approaches seem to range from &amp;quot;do pair programming, if otherwise the WIP limits would be broken&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;all people work on a single problem, all the time&amp;quot;. Similarly, the opinions seem to diverge on whether swarming should be avoided or be &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; way of working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My goal when asking this question is not to have the range of opinions represented in different answers. My goal is to understand different forms of swarming and which form to use in which situation and project management style. My impression is that swarming is an umbrella term for different ways of working involving more than one person to work on a single problem. Are there more precise terms that could be used for the different forms of swarming, in order to avoid misunderstandings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;I added the 'kanban' tag because I had to add at least one tag and swarming is often used in a Kanban context. However, I’m also interested in a general, method-agnostic definition.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36287" LastEditorUserId="36287" LastEditDate="2021-02-15T11:33:33.287" LastActivityDate="2021-02-15T11:33:33.287" Title="What is swarming?" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27020" CreationDate="2019-08-16T05:45:41.917" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are correct that it is often used as an umbrella term. However, when you apply some math and theory, we can get a bit more specific. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much of the WIP conversation in Kanban centers around Little's Law from queuing theory. You can look up the math around it if you'd like but it basically shows that in a graph of throughput (y-axis) over WIP (x-axis) throughput peaks at some WIP value and then drops. The take home message is that a group of people doing only 1 thing at a time often leaves people idle but taking on too many things creates overburden and also reduces productivity. Therefore, to gain the highest level of productivity, the group needs to find the balance where they are not too idle and not too overloaded. Henrik Kneiberg has a great demonstration of this on YouTube called The Utilization Trap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for the purposes you describe, the most useful definition of swarming is probably adding people to a single problem until a point is reached that another person helping does not meaningfully increase the speed at which the task is done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A common way to achieve this is that the board is worked right to left with each person first checking if they can help a task forward before moving left on the board. In this manner, no new task is started if someone could be helping on an in-progress task instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-08-16T05:45:41.917" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27022" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27024" CreationDate="2019-08-16T10:35:13.790" Score="1" ViewCount="178" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am just revising Anderson's Kanban book where he discusses 'input types' and it doesn't seem like he prescribes whether the team work with vertically sliced user stories - something which has been a pain in my side for months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, if I can't get the team to create vertically slices user stories, can we still see success with small technical tasks or was the original intention of Kanban to to have small independent user stories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2019-08-16T16:31:53.837" Title="Does the Kanban require teams to work vertically sliced user stories or can we use small technical tasks" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;backlog&gt;&lt;product-backlog&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27013" CreationDate="2019-08-16T14:04:30.910" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having made an impact is a very broad, undefined statement. There are soft elements (team morale, engagement, ...), delivery elements (what have the teams delivery and in what fashion) and there are hard data facts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel the first 2 are already covered in the answers above - what I am missing is what kind of hard evidence (metrics) have you identified to potentially quantify impact. For instance, metrics around:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is our delivery capability improving?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where are my delivery risks?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How accurate are my estimates on delivery?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are my teams collaborating to ensure quality and avoid risks?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which capabilities/teams/partners are causing delays and issues? Are they repetitive?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are we becoming more Agile?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are some of the questions scrum, delivery &amp;amp; team managers we work with look at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36838" LastActivityDate="2019-08-16T14:04:30.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27022" CreationDate="2019-08-16T16:31:53.837" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;User Stories are an Agile Practice, Independent of Kanban&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;User stories&quot; are an agile practice. They are not intrinsically part of Kanban. While many practitioners &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; use user stories as cards or work items in a Kanban system, this is not a requirement. User stories are common in Kanban because they are often easier and faster to estimate, not because the Kanban system requires them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; use technical tasks instead of user stories as your unit of work in Kanban. However, vertical slices and units of work that meet &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INVEST_(mnemonic)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INVEST criteria&lt;/a&gt; such as &lt;em&gt;small&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;indepedent&lt;/em&gt; are generally considered agile best practices, and you should follow those best practices unless you have a strong, overriding reason to deviate from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The team can't/won't create vertical slices&quot; is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a compelling reason. It often indicates a lack of agile buy-in from the team, a lack of experience in effective agile estimation, or a lack of training in agile practices and techniques. If the team gets measurably better results from doing something atypical, that's certainly a good reason to deviate from best practices. In the absence of meaningful metrics or a clearly-defined process problem that must be worked around instead of resolved, go ahead and do whatever works for your unique circumstances. Just don't make the mistake of confusing agility with lack of rigor; effective agility comes from establishing a predictable inspect-and-adapt cadence, rather than from Emotion-Driven or Personality-Driven Development&amp;trade; practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastActivityDate="2019-08-16T16:31:53.837" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27025" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27030" CreationDate="2019-08-16T17:11:31.157" Score="11" ViewCount="2783" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a person on my team who is leaving in few weeks. He is flat-out refusing to provide a knowledge transfer to another team member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've raised this with my manager who has spoken to HR. However, apart from releasing him early, it seems we've no other recourse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He has always been incredibly difficult to deal with and I am delighted he is leaving. However, I would like for him to complete this handover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He had acted unprofessionally but it seems like there are no consequences for him. Is there anything I can do to get him to do his job and provide the handover?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36839" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-08-16T17:32:55.503" LastActivityDate="2021-01-05T15:57:14.927" Title="Resource is refusing to do a handover before leaving" Tags="&lt;human-resources&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27025" CreationDate="2019-08-16T17:30:57.880" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are consequences to his behavior.  For one thing, (assuming he as an at-will employee and your live in an at-will area) there is nothing stopping your company from cutting string with this person immediately.  From the sound of things, he is in sabotage mode so it would be in your company's best interest to mitigate that and send him on his way.  That also means he does not earn or collect the last few weeks of his pay.  Second, he is burning a bridge.  And that will come to haunt him at some time in his near future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, you are also exposing a serious issue with managing tacit knowledge of your employees.  Having a transfer of knowledge from an exiting employee to a new one is a normal activity; however, if your management processes are so immature that losing the opportunity for that transfer causes severe performance issues, then you have another problem to cure.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So ask him politely to participate in the transfer, let him know what those expectations are, and if he fails to do it, then have your HR department cut him loose.  And then do what you have to do to recover from the knowledge loss and make sure you are not in that position ever again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2019-08-16T17:30:57.880" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27025" CreationDate="2019-08-19T11:12:20.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You ask: Is there anything I can do to get him to do his job and provide the handover?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One approach&lt;/strong&gt; would be to &lt;em&gt;ask him for a personal favor&lt;/em&gt; - either you or somebody he's somewhat friendly with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This echos back to something I've written about multiple times. A Project Manager should be &lt;em&gt;getting along&lt;/em&gt; with everybody. Just because &lt;em&gt;he has always been incredibly difficult to deal with and I am delighted he is leaving&lt;/em&gt; does not mean you shouldn't have gotten to know him well enough that he would do you a favor.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could start the conversation by asking if he wants you to write him a letter of recommendation. This may get him to realize that burning bridges isn't such a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Another idea&lt;/strong&gt;: Maybe define &lt;em&gt;knowledge transfer&lt;/em&gt;. Some people hear that - or similar - terms and assume they have to write a long document. Or that they have to add hundreds of comments to code they've written over the years. They'd rather get a bad name than go through that torture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you change it to &lt;em&gt;a 15 minutes code review&lt;/em&gt; done verbally, you may get a different answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Maybe try this&lt;/strong&gt;: Plan a small farewell party for him - and (with careful secretive planning) it can morph into a high-level code-review/handover. &quot;We're really curious to know how you solved x, y, or z&quot; could be a starter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you'll need quick and easy access to relevant code, and possibly have it recorded, as you won't have time to take elaborate notes. Forget about trying to boot up laptops, connect them to projectors and networks and go digging for the files. You want everything ready (probably off-line) on a reliable machine (or printed out) so that you can run through them before the fellow realizes he's doing a handover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why will this work? Because most people like showing off their code and showing how clever they are, or how hard they had to work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as everybody else has already said: Make sure all systems are backed-up in case of malicious sabotage - and get him off the premises ASAP. Make sure IT is aware of the &lt;em&gt;danger&lt;/em&gt;; they can probably monitor his activity once they know about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-08-19T15:06:01.217" LastActivityDate="2019-08-19T15:06:01.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27025" CreationDate="2019-08-19T20:43:39.693" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The loss or malfeasance of key personnel is always a project risk. You can often mitigate such risks through technical or administrative controls, separation of duties, and cross-training, but the risk level will never be zero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once a risk is actualized, &lt;em&gt;preventative&lt;/em&gt; controls are rarely practical. Instead, you will need to trigger (or create) detective, compensating, or administrative controls to handle the current situation, and then inspect-and-adapt your process to control for similar risks in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Acknowledge and Address Project Risk&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there anything I can do to get him to do his job and provide the handover?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't &lt;em&gt;make&lt;/em&gt; someone do anything. Even if you are in a position of authority (project managers often lack direct authority), you must still rely on your business processes and interpersonal influence to get the results you need. If the company has already burned its political capital with this employee (or vice versa), and you can't rely on either the employee's professionalism or on existing business continuity processes, then you probably need to accept the situation for what it is, and then move on to system recovery or exploratory testing to address the project risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, apart from releasing him early, it seems we've no other recourse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might get other answers over at &lt;a href=&quot;https://workplace.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;The Workplace&lt;/a&gt;, but from a project management perspective it is often too late to avoid or mitigate this type of business risk &lt;em&gt;post-facto&lt;/em&gt;. In the future, you should:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ensure your project team is cross-functional. Everyone on the team should have at least basic knowledge of how the system works, where key elements are documented or stored, and have a role in business continuity planning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Guard against low bus factors in your project. No individual should ever be the single point of failure for your system or your process!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a documented business continuity plan (BCP) that includes knowledge/password/key escrow and clearly-defined recovery processes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Proactively test business continuity and disaster recovery plans. Don't wait until someone quits or is fired to discover whether your plans work effectively!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a clearly defined process for onboarding and offboarding people from the project, including the granting and revocation of access to your project resources.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, if you have no influence with this person, and no meaningful incentives to offer that might encourage constructive collaboration during this transition period, then the business should cut its losses, accept that foreseeable personnel risk has come to pass, and begin implementing sensible next steps (whatever that means for the current project and the organization).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't &lt;a href=&quot;https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/shut-close-the-stable-barn-door-after-the-horse-has-bolted&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;close the barn door after the horse has bolted&lt;/a&gt;. This risk can no longer be avoided, so focus on what the project needs to move forward rather than on spinning your wheels about how the project got to this point. Just make sure the organization learns the &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; lessons from this experience, and doesn't end up here again in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-08-20T13:44:29.560" LastActivityDate="2019-08-20T13:44:29.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27031" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27032" CreationDate="2019-08-20T01:59:31.617" Score="1" ViewCount="65" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm new to project management and trying to get a grasp on it. My latest challenge is bug reporting. I created a bug reporting form that contains standard questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Summary &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Steps to Reproduce&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Expected Result vs Actual Result&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Screenshot&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Operating System&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Browser &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Urgency&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the urgency field, I have a ranking of 1-4 with 1 being the lowest priority and 4 being the highest. I also included definitions of each ranking to assist users in selecting the correct ranking. A co-worker of mine, who is in charge of sales and on the frontlines, wants a new priority about bugs that impact revenue. All the bugs that he reports are in this category. While important, some of them are not as urgent as his knee-jerk response to the situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My boss also doesn't want revenue listed as a ranking factor in the priority situation due to the concern that we will end up back in the situation that we are currently in where everything is crisis-urgent and we need to move resources/engineering to this bug when in reality it's not as urgent to push other revenue-generating new features aside. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone been in this situation? Do you have advice on how to handle this situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36874" LastActivityDate="2019-08-28T17:43:59.200" Title="Bug Reporting and Revenue Impacting Bugs" Tags="&lt;project-management-style&gt;&lt;bugs&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27031" CreationDate="2019-08-20T05:43:29.820" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, every customer facing bug has an impact on revenue. That impact can be big or it can be small, but the impact is there. With that in mind, I would recommend extending the criteria for the various urgency levels to include guidance on the possible revenue impact.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;For example,  bugs with a low revenue impact can fit in the lowest urgency class, while bugs that stop sales belong in the highest class. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next to that, I would set a policy that the urgency specified by the bug submitter is no more than a suggestion. The final urgency will be set by a committee (consisting of representatives from project management and the developers/testers) based on their assessment of the bug's impact.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The reporters of bugs may have a skewed view on how important their issue is in the larger context of the project. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12235" LastActivityDate="2019-08-20T05:43:29.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16827" CreationDate="2019-08-20T06:07:50.827" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Goals&lt;/strong&gt;: High level statement referring the possible businesses and allied benefits consequent upon the completion of a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Objectives&lt;/strong&gt;: Comparatively low level statement and referring to tangible benefits,consequent upon the completion of a project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scope&lt;/strong&gt;: The method to achieve the goals/objectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Deliverable&lt;/strong&gt;: The term used in Lump Sum projects, which are easy to achieve and are a subset of scope. Payments in Lump Sum projects are linked with deliverables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36875" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-08-20T13:04:26.507" LastActivityDate="2019-08-20T13:04:26.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27034" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-08-20T10:38:44.323" Score="0" ViewCount="105" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say I'm working on task 1. I found bug and created new task for that. Let's say task 2. Does it make sense if I impede task 1 under my name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36879" LastActivityDate="2019-08-27T08:33:52.010" Title="Can task be impeded under its assignee" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;impediment&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27034" CreationDate="2019-08-20T12:44:37.210" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The concept of you impeding a task doesn't make sense, conceptually. An impediment is &quot;a hindrance or obstruction in doing something&quot;. I highly doubt that you are obstructing yourself from completing the planned task. However, the bug that you found can be a hindrance or obstruction. I would refer to the existence of the bug as the impediment. If the bug must be resolved in order to complete the planned work, then I would say that the bug (task 2) blocks the planned work (task 1).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, in the context of the Scrum framework, I would raise this impediment at the Daily Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2019-08-20T12:44:37.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27025" CreationDate="2019-08-20T13:19:29.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interesting question! And some interesting answers already. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to add another option (which goes in the direction of &quot;ask him for a personal favor&quot;): Assign the task to continue development of his code to someone else (let's call him/her &quot;developer B&quot;) of your team and define some new features/bugfixes/changes to be implemented by developer B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now hopefully the code is not so messed up that developer B cannot do anything about the tasks, so he will dig into the code and try to wrap his head around it. For sure questions will come up, which developer B will ask the person leaving your company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would expect that concrete questions about &quot;how does this code work?&quot;, &quot;why does my changed code not work as expected?&quot; or &quot;why have you done it like that instead of like this?&quot; from a fellow colleague are much harder to reject than the question &quot;Please transfer all your knowledge&quot; from a manager. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36782" LastActivityDate="2019-08-20T13:19:29.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27025" CreationDate="2019-08-20T14:55:20.873" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only possible leverage you have is if HR asks him to leave immediately for refusing to co-operate in the handover and he loses his few weeks of pay - assuming HR and Legal say this is kosher to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if he is not really bothered and just wants to leave early (probably due to having another role already lined up), he could even be trying this stunt so that he gets to go earlier. In this case, you just have to take it on the chin as a Mgt. lesson learned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mentioned it to be a frustration and inconvenience, not a disaster, so you are lucky in a way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, if you don't want to face a similar situation in the future, best to set up regular knowledge sharing meetings within the team and also ensure documentation is created and updated regularly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36884" LastEditorUserId="25606" LastEditDate="2019-08-21T13:04:28.490" LastActivityDate="2019-08-21T13:04:28.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27034" CreationDate="2019-08-21T15:19:43.620" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;In Brief&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does it make sense if I impede task 1 under my name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. No. Maybe. It depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, Kanban is about &lt;em&gt;flow&lt;/em&gt;. If your unit of work is a task, rather than a user story that represents a vertical slice, then it's certainly possible for a task to be blocked for any number of reasons. However, a task isn't inherently &quot;blocked&quot; simply because another task is taking up a slot; in practice, this is usually a normal function of a Kanban in response to work-in-progress (WIP) limits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Newly-discovered work should be prioritized using your project's agreed-upon methodology. Enqueued work is then marked, moved, and sorted as needed to visualize the work on the board. This &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; involve blocking, but can also involve moving work forward or backward in queues, reshuffling queued work, or other adjustments that optimize for flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talk to your team. Ask whether you should tie up a work-in-progress slot until the task and its new dependencies are complete, or whether the work should be moved back to a previous column to be replanned and reprioritized. There is no right or wrong answer to that; it depends on your team's operating agreements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Handling Blocked Tasks&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you have a column or board of your own within your Kanban system implementation, it doesn't make sense to &quot;block&quot; your own work. What you're probably trying to do is describe dependencies, and handle over-limit work in a sensible way. Here's one common approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;| Backlog | Ready (WIP: 5) | In-Progress (WIP: 2) | Done   |&#xA;|---------|----------------|----------------------|--------|&#xA;| task 9  | task 4         | task 2               | task 1 |&#xA;| task 10 | task 5         | task 3               |        |&#xA;| task 11 | task 6         |                      |        |&#xA;| task 12 | task 7         |                      |        |      &#xA;| task 13 | task 8         |                      |        |      &#xA;| task 14 |                |                      |        |&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say you're working on task 3, and discover some unexpected dependencies on the task. If your work units are at the task level, you would:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify the dependencies (e.g. tasks 15 and 16) and put them on the backlog.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Color-code, notate, or otherwise mark task 3 as blocked.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Move task 3 out of WIP, because you can't work on it before working the dependencies.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Move task 3 down into a blocked status within the &quot;In-Progress&quot; column if this work unit takes priority over other work items in the backlog or ready columns.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Move task 3 back to &quot;Ready&quot; or &quot;Backlog&quot; if it should be re-prioritized along with its dependencies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Move tasks around within and between columns as needed to visualize the work and respect WIP limits.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Re-prioritize the dependencies as needed for your process by re-ordering your queues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pull new work from the appropriate queue &lt;em&gt;if and only if&lt;/em&gt; a free WIP slot is available in the following queue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;New Kanban State, with Dependencies&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if task 3 is still a priority, your new board configuration might look like this after visualizing the dependencies and blocked tasks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;| Backlog              | Ready (WIP: 5)   | In-Progress (WIP: 2)   | Done     |&#xA;| -------------------- | ---------------- | ---------------------- | -------- |&#xA;| task 16 -&amp;gt;(15), &amp;lt;(3) | task 15 &amp;lt;(16, 3) | task 2                 | task 1   |&#xA;| task 4               | task 5           |                        |          |&#xA;| task 9               | task 6           |                        |          |&#xA;| task 10              | task 7           |                        |          |&#xA;| task 11              | task 8           |                        |          |&#xA;| task 12              |                  |                        |          |&#xA;| task 13              |                  |                        |          |&#xA;| task 14              |                  |                        |          |&#xA;| -------------------- | ---------------- | ---------------------- | -------- | &#xA;|                      |                  | task 3 -&amp;gt;(15, 16)      |          |&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This configuration basically says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task 3 remains a top priority. We can't do additional work until task 3 and its dependencies are completed, unless it's de-prioritized and moved back into a preceding queue.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have to finish task 2 to free up an &quot;In-Progress&quot; slot for task 15.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Task 16 is waiting for 15 to be pulled from Ready -&gt; In-Progress to free up a &quot;Ready&quot; slot.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We should complete tasks 15, then 16, then 3.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can certainly handle this in many other ways, so long as your process respects your WIP limits and prioritization agreements. Agreements within the team, and with  business stakeholders, will define how new and blocked work should be handled. The less slack in your process, the more likely it is that you'll have to move things around or eject items from your activity columns to accommodate new, higher-priority work. However, that's largely an implementation detail, and the how of it can vary widely between projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4271" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-08-21T17:59:01.677" LastActivityDate="2019-08-21T17:59:01.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27039" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-08-22T02:21:06.810" Score="4" ViewCount="218" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a name, a study, a blog post about the management failure to give clear priorities and objectives?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I experience this every day. My boss gives me long term deadline that I discuss with him. We agree to it. They are correct deadlines.&#xA; Then during development he comes with many other new super urgent requests that interfere with main development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end I'm late on all my deliverables. I cannot reach my deadlines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3687" LastEditorUserId="4384" LastEditDate="2020-05-10T11:37:30.617" LastActivityDate="2020-05-12T17:53:17.853" Title="Changing priorities and focus every days. What name for that?" Tags="&lt;product-management&gt;&lt;change-management&gt;&lt;definition&gt;" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27039" CreationDate="2019-08-22T06:04:41.080" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Management by surprise.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing you might try is each time your boss comes in with new urgent tasks you ask him: &quot;Which of the tasks we have already agreed on should I drop in exchange for the new one?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.vitalsmarts.com/crucialskills/2015/01/dealing-with-a-last-minute-boss/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.vitalsmarts.com/crucialskills/2015/01/dealing-with-a-last-minute-boss/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36782" LastActivityDate="2019-08-22T06:04:41.080" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27001" CreationDate="2019-08-22T08:34:29.353" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you are the product owner, you should think of the product in terms of users. Do users care about the database? No, right? Then you should not either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your user stories should be rewritten from user's perspective, not technical team's perspective. See below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;US1: as an admin I want to write a message on a new page dedicated for this matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As an Admin, I want to be able to write a message in a full screen, so that I don't get distracted by other items.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;US2: as an admin, I want to display my message on the big screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As an Admin, I want to be able to see my message on &quot;big screen&quot; so that I can ....&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;US3: as an admin I want to display my 5 last messages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As an Admin, I want to be able to see my last few messages, so that I don't have to search through the whole list of messages.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;US4: as an admin I want that all messages be saved so that the last 5 messages can be displayed as soon as the app is opened on the big screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As an Admin, I want to see my last few messages when I open the app, so that I can take a quick look at what was my last message.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of now, your stories do not contain enough information for anyone new to see what is being built by the team. These stories lack transparency, because I need to understand what is &quot;big screen&quot;, &quot;why exactly 5 messages&quot; etc. What you have written currently are the tasks that go in the user story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, coming to the point of database building, it should not be first or last. Any technical artifact whether it is codebase, database, design documents, coding guidelines, functional tests etc are all living things. As and when your user stories are being worked on, database should be modified as required. Otherwise you will not be able to use the learnings in the future stories. This is also why user stories should be understandable to anyone vaguely familiar with the application, e.g. CEO, IT director etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the short and sweet answer to your question is, &quot;&lt;strong&gt;don't focus on when to build database. let the team do that as and when needed&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;. You should focus on just the functionality from user's perspective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing I noticed just now, user story 3 and 4 are actually the same thing. They can both be clubbed as below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As an admin, I want to be able to preview last few messages so that I don't have to search through the whole list of messages.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you can add &quot;Must display preview on login&quot; as one of the acceptance criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23395" LastEditorUserId="23395" LastEditDate="2019-08-22T09:46:54.757" LastActivityDate="2019-08-22T09:46:54.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27042" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-08-22T08:39:11.210" Score="0" ViewCount="242" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need to write a macro to reschedule multiple projects. I am able to do everything, except I am not able to perform actions exactly same as in-built Reschedule option does. Is there someway that I can use or run in-built functions like using API or something? I hope my idea is clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36403" LastActivityDate="2019-08-22T16:23:40.613" Title="How to call MS Project API" Tags="&lt;ms-project&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26921" CreationDate="2019-08-22T09:07:25.067" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You solve it by not solving it. Dev team has to understand and solve this by themselves. You should just mediate and facilitate. Maybe sit down with the team and ask them for specific examples. Ask them, if they have to fix it, how will they do it. Let them figure out the plan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23395" LastActivityDate="2019-08-22T09:07:25.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27044" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27046" CreationDate="2019-08-22T09:51:52.160" Score="5" ViewCount="239" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been asked to interview for a Scrum Master position. The position is mostly remote, i.e. all people in the company generally work remotely and then meet up once every 2 weeks for Sprint Planning etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it realistically possible for a Scrum Master to be effective when working mostly remotely? What are the major differences in how he would approach the role, and how would he fill his days working totally remotely?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastEditorUserId="4271" LastEditDate="2019-08-23T04:36:55.477" LastActivityDate="2019-08-23T11:39:39.893" Title="Can a Scrum Master be effective when working mostly remotely?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;scrum-master&gt;&lt;remote-teams&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26942" CreationDate="2019-08-22T10:00:42.093" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is this regular? As in more than 5 sprints in a row? If yes, then you should help the team improve their estimation. And this is to ensure that they are fully capable of estimating properly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they are still estimating higher than expected, that's a good thing. This means you have enough buffer to deal with unplanned problems like additional work, change in scope etc. Just make sure, it is because they underestimate their own skill level and not because they are incapable of correct estimation. Because the latter will cause problems some day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23395" LastActivityDate="2019-08-22T10:00:42.093" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27044" CreationDate="2019-08-22T10:43:14.237" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two major impacts of a remote Scrum Master in my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first is that meetings like the retrospective and sprint planning are a real challenge. The biggest problems are usually with audio quality, particularly if using phone lines or teleconference hardware that mutes the end of the call that isn't talking. If you can get a top quality audio connection over IP and even better a video conference connection then that can mitigate a lot of the issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second issue comes from the Scrum Master missing out on incidental conversations and situations. An example might be a stakeholder wonders over to the team and starts making demands about new requirements. If the Scrum Master is in the room they hear this and can step in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, there are things you can do to mitigate this problem. Having a good persistent text chat facility helps, as does having a permanently on webcam so that you can see which members of the team are about and what they are up to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can fill your day in the same way an on-site Scrum Master can, but you need to be a lot more organised. For example, you can coach the Product Owner and stakeholders, but this is going to need to be at pre-arranged times over the phone or via computer audio/video conferencing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I think an on-site Scrum Master will always be better, but with careful mitigation you can reduce the impact of working remotely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-08-22T10:43:14.237" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27007" CreationDate="2019-08-22T10:54:18.957" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without understanding fully, I don't think we can suggest the best approach. With that in mind, here is my approach based on the information given. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Remove the concept of 1 week development, 1 week testing. It should be test as soon as developed, fix bugs as soon as it is tested. This will ensure that your deliveries have as little amount of bugs as possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Divide the teams based on different modules. 7 teams mean you can have 7 business functions in progress at a time. Maybe a team that focuses on just payment systems, one on just user accounts. Idea is to reduce the dependency on other teams. One team should deliver a releasable increment without external dependency (in ideal case, obviously).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Have a global definition that is agreed upon as minimum required. Individual team should have their own definition. This means even if the teams are working separately, your global definition can be considered as &quot;lowest quality gate&quot;. Some teams might add their own additional items and provide better quality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Ensure every team has proper pipeline in place. Staging or not, they should have automated quality gates for every code pushed into the master repo. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) Stagger the release schedule. Every team works on their own schedule and own sprint length. Account related features can wait for 3 weeks, but main business process should not wait for 3 weeks. So, have different schedule based on what is right for that team. Another advantage is that you are releasing in smaller batches instead of a full fledged release, which means your support team can manage a smaller load of production bugs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;6) In future, plan to move into a scaled version of Scrum. This will just help the team be more consistent with their approach, and help you facilitate their Scrum events more effectively. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, this is just my approach. It might change based on more information, or on based of team's understanding of agility, management's interest in adopting change etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23395" LastActivityDate="2019-08-22T10:54:18.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27042" CreationDate="2019-08-22T16:23:40.613" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To do these actions in VBA, use the &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/api/project.application.updateproject&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UpdateProject&lt;/a&gt; method of the MS Project &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/api/project.application&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Application object&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YRISB.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YRISB.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also: &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/api/project.application.updatetasks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UpdateTasks&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/api/project.application.rescheduletonextavailable&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;RescheduleToNextAvailable&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13635" LastActivityDate="2019-08-22T16:23:40.613" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27044" CreationDate="2019-08-23T10:03:24.023" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The real question is, can &lt;em&gt;the team&lt;/em&gt; work remotely. Of all the roles, the Scrum Master is not more or less dependent on good communication than the other roles. At least not if they work &lt;em&gt;as a team&lt;/em&gt;. Sure, you can lock a developer in a room somewhere and they'll produce code, but that's not what a team is. &lt;em&gt;Teamwork&lt;/em&gt; only works with all the people in the same room. That can be a real physical room or it can be a virtual meting space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real problem is that some teams (or mostly bosses really) think that &quot;remote&quot; can mean one person is remote. Or one role is remote. I have seen this fail every(!) single(!) time(!) they tried. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teamwork is &lt;em&gt;critical&lt;/em&gt;. I have seen teams work in the same physical room. I have seen teams work in the same virtual room. Every time a team tries to mix that up, let's say the developers work in the same room, but SM and PO are elsewhere, or even worse, 3 developers are local and another two are remote, that fails. You need to commit to one room and one room only, whether it's physical or virtual. As soon as there are sub-teams in sub-rooms, it kills teamwork. And without &lt;em&gt;actual teamwork&lt;/em&gt;, the team is only a shell. It's Scrum in name only. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to summarize, yes, a remote Scrum Master can work just fine, &lt;strong&gt;if everybody else it remote, too.&lt;/strong&gt; If it's only you, or in general only parts of the team... run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2019-08-23T10:03:24.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27044" CreationDate="2019-08-23T11:39:39.893" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it realistically possible? Yes, I’ve witnessed it happen on several occasions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other answers make a good point about challenging factors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;team work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;communication&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;technology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An effective Scrum Master will need those things and also will need to know how to ask the right questions to get the right information out of the team. It’s an information game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the most best tools you’ll need is some way of displaying your scrum or kanban board. Anything that might be physical on your wall or desk needs a nice visual and interactive version for the team - simple video does not work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Video conferencing is perhaps the best because in communication in general because people often use non-verbal communication. Knowing someone might have something to say without them saying it is sometimes important. Knowing how something you say goes over sets your expectations and tells you if you were successful in delivering your message, if you need to spend more time to address confusion, or even if something wasn’t well received to prep you for follow up (perhaps 1-on-1).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On premises or remote, it’s important to note that perfection is not a reality. Each has its trade-offs, costs, and benefits. It is important to meet and know the team independent of where Scrum Mastering occurs :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3961" LastActivityDate="2019-08-23T11:39:39.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27053" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-08-23T21:57:18.693" Score="0" ViewCount="105" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are trying to do CD where we have a sprint per release on each board. So we are working off a board, and when we either get all the tickets to Review, or just decide to pull a release, we make a new board, and our tool (YouTrack) will flow undone items to the new board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is what does this process look like in most orgs? My feeling is the actual cutting of the new board should just be mechanical because whoever called for the release, there, you got what was agreed to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other issue we are trying to figure out is splitting tickets. So I might have been adding some feature to a number of places, but I didn't finish. I should split that ticket somehow so I can show what went in the first release and what is still awaiting another release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question is how other teams are doing this process of flowing stories onto CD boards. Mainly I feel now that the tools just do not support the obvious reality that most projects/stacks require multiple, separate releases. Even something as stupid as being able to have links to the 3 platform sprints that are currently being worked on (e.g. iOS, Android, backend) is impossible in YouTrack, so we waste a lot of time going back and forth between sprints. Of course we could make a single sprint, but then we don't have the clarity of a sprint that maps to a specific release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36746" LastEditorUserId="36746" LastEditDate="2019-08-26T18:21:04.320" LastActivityDate="2019-08-26T18:21:04.320" Title="Rolling Boards (Kanban) while doing Continuous Delivery" Tags="&lt;kanban&gt;&lt;lean&gt;" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27039" CreationDate="2019-08-24T01:45:08.403" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found &quot;state of perpetual emergency&quot; used in multiple contexts to describe this.  An article that I recommend that describes this in the context of software development is &quot;Catch the Pig!&quot;.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pragprog.com/magazines/2011-05/catch-the-pig&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://pragprog.com/magazines/2011-05/catch-the-pig&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask: &quot;Do you think that there will be a day any time soon that is less busy than today&quot; to get work done?  So: &quot;Shall we do the right thing today or never?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36928" LastActivityDate="2019-08-24T01:45:08.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27039" CreationDate="2019-08-24T10:33:44.443" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer:&lt;/em&gt; This comes from my experience on the financial sector. It may or may not be applied to other areas, as some expressions are very common on specific industries but not used in others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Fire-fighting management.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As described by this &lt;a href=&quot;https://hbr.org/2000/07/stop-fighting-fires&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;hbr.org&lt;/a&gt; article, firefighting is the working &quot;model&quot; where&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Managers and engineers rush from task to task, not completing one&#xA;  before another interrupts them. Serious problem-solving efforts&#xA;  degenerate into quick-and-dirty patching. Productivity suffers.&#xA;  Managing becomes a constant juggling act of deciding where to allocate&#xA;  overworked people and which incipient crisis to ignore for the moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="430" LastEditorUserId="18103" LastEditDate="2020-05-09T18:05:39.073" LastActivityDate="2020-05-09T18:05:39.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27039" CreationDate="2019-08-24T10:52:38.970" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;By this brief description, it sounds like you company is busy, has a strong client base and healthy demand; it sounds like your company is staffed lean and mean; and deadlines are not a critical success factor, i.e., your clients are still providing a healthy demand despite their work being delayed.  Perhaps your company is bringing in a healthy profit, as well.  If my assumptions are correct, then I would label your scenario as &quot;normal.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every now and again, you get a product or a company or an individual with such a unique value proposition that customers are willing to stand in a line in the rain to get.  Bringing in additional talent can certainly drive revenues up but there is a point where additional talent no longer yields that growth; it is the point of diminishing returns.  Perhaps your leadership has determined that is where your talent utilization is and made a decision to maintain current levels of talent and allow deadlines to slide as there is little to no downside to client relations and satisfaction.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am making huge assumptions here but wanted to bring another point of view or another possibility in the mix of answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="574" LastActivityDate="2019-08-24T10:52:38.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27058" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27059" CreationDate="2019-08-24T13:19:46.043" Score="4" ViewCount="455" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do agile teams need a technical lead, where the technical lead is someone who has technical knowledge about project skills that the team is working on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36932" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2019-08-24T15:05:04.667" LastActivityDate="2020-06-12T10:00:30.413" Title="Do agile teams need a leader with technical skill?" Tags="&lt;scrum&gt;&lt;agile&gt;&lt;team-management&gt;" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27058" CreationDate="2019-08-24T13:49:29.587" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The typical answer would be to ask the team. Many of the methods built around agility favor self-organizing teams, where the teams would assess the knowledge and skills that they have and determine if they are missing something important or relevant for the team to be able to do their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as methodologies that go that have a similar role, both DSDM and Disciplined Agile do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.agilebusiness.org/page/ProjectFramework_07_RolesResponsibilities&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DSDM has a role&lt;/a&gt; for Team Leader. Some of the responsibilities do imply technical knowledge and skills. The description of the role does say that the person who holds this role may perform a different role on the team, including a Solution Developer or Solution Tester role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pmi.org/disciplined-agile/people/roles-on-dad-teams&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DA has a role&lt;/a&gt; called Team Lead which includes facilitation of both technical activities as well as coaching and impediment removal. This is a full-time role on the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't an exhaustive list, but does cite two process frameworks that I'm familiar with that call for a person with a leadership role and technical skills to be a part of an agile team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2020-06-12T10:00:30.413" LastActivityDate="2020-06-12T10:00:30.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27053" CreationDate="2019-08-26T04:51:43.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no one right way to develop software, so I can't say that what you are doing is wrong or right, but I don't think you can compare it to CD or Kanban best practices because you don't seem to really be doing either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CD&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Continuous Delivery is exactly that: continuous. There are no release batches in continuous delivery. Now, it is fair to say that due to some constraints, it is possible that you have continuous deployment to a staging environment and you kick over to live on an interval, but that gets messy and is often best avoided if possible. Due to this, you also don't have the splitting problem you mentioned. You you probably handle caching in small pieces from the start - each deployable on its own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanban is actually pretty flexible in what you do, but a few things are required. First, you visualize your process, so deployment would probably be just a part of that visualization. Also, you observe a whole item go through the process. You wouldn't cut partway through something. The board switch thing is very confusing to me and I don't think it fits in Kanban. In addition to visualizing your process, you are supposed to measure andanage flow of items from end to end and limit WIP,. It seems like the switching boards thing would make that very difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My goal here is not to tell you that how you develop software is wrong, but that simple comparing yourself to other CD and Kanban practices is potentially problematic and could lead you down the wrong path because that isn't what you are practicing. If anything in this post triggers a good idea, then that is great, but I'd be very careful with it and, at the least, apply things experimentally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7944" LastActivityDate="2019-08-26T04:51:43.060" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27061" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-08-26T06:44:58.307" Score="0" ViewCount="77" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pardon me if this question seems kind of newbie question or not appropriate. But as a new &lt;strong&gt;Technical Lead&lt;/strong&gt; i'm a bit confused about is my DB schema is perfect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working with a small team of 3 to 4 person all are fresh graduates. Only I'm the one with experience of more than 3 years. We are working on new product documentation and schema designing. After 2 weeks of hard work our documentation and schema is complete. Schema is passing and fulfilling all the major functionality we mentioned in the documentation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My question is how to ensure that there is nothing left behind or handle any scenario which will occur in future?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36940" LastActivityDate="2019-08-27T09:44:50.147" Title="As a technical lead how to ensure that DB schema is perfect for the new project to start with?" Tags="&lt;project-team&gt;&lt;small-projects&gt;&lt;technical-leader&gt;" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27062" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27065" CreationDate="2019-08-26T07:43:55.143" Score="3" ViewCount="1084" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are looking into capitalizing our agile development costs - however, we have a few teams with different maturity levels. One team uses time estimations with relative ease, other teams use story points with let's say varying success. I want to avoid disrupting the teams' existing methods as much as possible, therefore I would like to use both story points and time estimates as the basis for the capex/opex ratio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's been suggested internally to have the teams input the actual values (in story points or time) after the tasks have been completed, so the ratio wouldn't be based on pure estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'm wondering if basing the ratio on story points for some teams and time estimates for other teams would sit well with Finance and the auditors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anybody implemented some kind of &quot;dual track&quot; capitalization (e.g., with provisions for both estimated time and story points being used)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36942" LastEditorUserId="36942" LastEditDate="2019-08-27T08:31:38.097" LastActivityDate="2019-08-27T17:02:38.093" Title="How do you capitalize agile costs with less mature teams?" Tags="&lt;agile&gt;" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27061" CreationDate="2019-08-26T09:01:31.000" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, I'm not so sure this has to do with Project Management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More to the point, why bother? It's rather simple to add fields to a database - even a live one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're &lt;em&gt;really paranoid&lt;/em&gt;, you could always add a few extra fields, to be named &lt;em&gt;spare1, spare2, etc.&lt;/em&gt; and use those later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer the actual question of &lt;em&gt;how to ensure that there is nothing left behind or handle any scenario which will occur in future?&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Run through as many &lt;em&gt;real life&lt;/em&gt; use cases as you can think of and make sure the DB schema handles everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Classic things that come up when it's too late (based in my experience):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When did it start? I.e. when did user first sign up/when was item first included in the inventory?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When was the last time it was accessed?  I.e. when did the luser last login/backup, or when was the item last sold/bought/etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nowadays that space is no longer expensive and speed is not an issue, there is no reason not to have a transaction table; one that logs all transactions so that you can figure out every movement of every user/item, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multiple (encrypted, of course) password fields to support lost password emails, no-reuse of previous passwords and related rules you may want to enforce.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4384" LastActivityDate="2019-08-26T09:01:31.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27062" CreationDate="2019-08-26T09:36:04.710" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different teams estimate in different ways. Even if all teams agreed on story points, a 13 point story in one team does not mean the same as a 13 point story in a different team. It's just a number. That's why one team might have a velocity of 50 and another of 205.7, even if both produce working software at the same speed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all you need is capex vs opex, then have the team classify every ticket and calculate the number you need &lt;em&gt;per Team&lt;/em&gt;. Team A has 70% based on 70/30 story points and Team B might have 70% as well, based on 209/89 story points. And maybe Team C has 65% based on T-Shirt sizes. &lt;em&gt;They&lt;/em&gt; know what the estimate and what it means in real life, so let them figure out how to come up with a ratio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the diligence of updating their tickets with this information: If it's required by management, make sure they do it. If necessary have their manager write them up if they don't. This is work, they get paid for it, they better do it. However, it might be easier to &lt;em&gt;show them&lt;/em&gt; what the information is good for. If you generate charts, show them. If you make decisions based on those numbers, let them know. If they know this is &lt;em&gt;useful&lt;/em&gt; they may actually be motivated to fill in this data. That's a lot easier than to come after them when they fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a sidenote, because I don't know your requirement, normally things like that are tracked based on &lt;em&gt;facts&lt;/em&gt;. Let each team member track the hours spent on each ticket and then calculate your ratio &lt;em&gt;based on facts&lt;/em&gt;. That makes the whole issue of estimation and story points and different teams obsolete. Those are complicated because predicting the future is hard. Tracking the past is stupid easy. Maybe you could do that instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7559" LastActivityDate="2019-08-26T09:36:04.710" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27061" CreationDate="2019-08-26T10:05:30.323" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't try to handle everything up front or predict the future. It's a waste of time and effort. As you build out the software and get stakeholder feedback, you will learn more about the true needs of the stakeholders. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd recommend looking at the techniques of &lt;a href=&quot;http://agiledata.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Data&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://agilemodeling.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agile Modeling&lt;/a&gt;. These two sets of practices can help you apply and integrate database engineering and modeling techniques with Agile Software Development methodologies, including balancing your up-front design with product delivery and refactoring at the database/data model level to account for changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastActivityDate="2019-08-26T10:05:30.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27061" CreationDate="2019-08-26T10:57:38.060" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Strongly normalized data schema &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be more flexible to change to meet evolving requirements. Ensure the schema is normalized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, this is a quality/suitability to business requirements problem.  Collect and test against your requirements. Rely on your team (although I think the most important phrase in your question is that you are the only one with experience).  I wonder if this is an opportunity to do some early skills transfer by getting them to come up with use cases and misuse cases for database queries.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My gut says that the database schema is a symptom of a truly interesting question about skill transfer, training and capability building.  Good luck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2019-08-26T10:57:38.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27062" CreationDate="2019-08-26T11:46:08.377" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the simplest ways to do this is to ignore individual developers and instead base all your costs on sprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given a known team and a known sprint duration you have an easy to generate cost figure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It helps if the team tries to avoid mixing products worked on within sprints as this complicates the cost. But if you can arrange it so that sprints are exclusive to a product then capitalization becomes relatively simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One sprint = 10 days&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team size = 5 people&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cost per team member = 500/day&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cost per sprint = 25,000&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team worked on project X for 4 sprints for a cost of 100,000&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-18T08:23:13.127" LastActivityDate="2019-08-26T11:46:08.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27070" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2019-08-26T14:33:32.077" Score="0" ViewCount="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an existing project, the team is attaching tasks directly to Epics.  I would like to introduce stories to the workflow and n-number of key dates to either the Epics or features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this, I would like the PMs to be able to add date/owner/description fields by hitting a &quot;+&quot; or something like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The use case is that projects will have different milestone dates, owners, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can this be accomplished?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36786" LastActivityDate="2019-08-26T14:33:32.077" Title="Adding n-number of due date fields and descriptions to Epics and Stories" Tags="&lt;user-stories&gt;&lt;jira&gt;&lt;epics&gt;" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27058" CreationDate="2019-08-27T06:29:07.390" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will answer your question with reference to Scrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Scrum there are just three roles: Scrum Master, Product Owner and Development Team member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no stated leader, which is done deliberately as leadership is seen to be distributed across the whole Scrum team. For example, when working on a particularly database-heavy project one of the team members with a lot of database development experience might step up and take leadership. On another project that is front-end heavy a different team member may show leadership. When working with an external supplier a team member that has had some project management experience may show leadership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is that everyone is seen to have the capability to step up and show leadership. In this way we maximise the potential of the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16031" LastActivityDate="2019-08-27T06:29:07.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27058" CreationDate="2019-08-27T08:30:25.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No they don't. A scrum master and an agile coach are both leaders but don't necessarily need technical skills to be effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's useful for the members of the team to have varying levels of technical ability, some senior developers and some more junior ones but in my experience there doesn't need to have a designated leader if the team is a quite a mature agile team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could perhaps have someone like a scrum master or an agile coach or a tech lead when they are forming, but these people can fall away when the team starts storming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2019-08-27T08:30:25.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27034" CreationDate="2019-08-27T08:33:52.010" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;So you are saying that task 2 is blocking 1 essentially and you own both?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is what you are asking, then I would say if task 2 is a new piece of work that needs to be done and you need to do both pieces of work, it makes sense simply to move task 1 part back and finish task 2 first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2019-08-27T08:33:52.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26976" CreationDate="2019-08-27T08:36:39.230" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have already started the sprint - i.e. its an active sprint and you want to see the 'burn-down chart' in hour instead of story points, then you can go to the settings of the board in Jira you can change the burn-down to look at hours instead of story points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2019-08-27T08:36:39.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26952" CreationDate="2019-08-27T08:42:52.523" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In all my work as a Scrum Master and Agile Coach the one thing that always always impedes teams from becoming self-organising is meddling third parties:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g. 1: a manager that wants to micro-manage individuals on the team - this totally blocks any self-organisation happening e.g. engineering manager, architect&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g. 2: a command and control product owner that assigns work to team members and wants to control how the solution is engineered - self-organisation will be very slow if not impossible with this situation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would recommend is that you build strong relationships with all the people outside the team who are very close to the team and then start coaching them on how it is important that they don't meddle with the team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g. 3: a command and control or micro-managing team leader or technical lead within the team - this is more of an internal role, but still has the same effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="32613" LastActivityDate="2019-08-27T08:42:52.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26949" CreationDate="2019-08-27T09:14:59.707" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perh